Avatar RP VIII: Chapter VII: Timing

[Bard The 5th LW]

"Oh wow we're really doing this?" Bard inquired as Mauve started throwing magic at stuff. "I guess I'm OK with this," he said as the countdown began to approach 1.

How sad. He was going to die, and he still hadn't shanked Steel Shadow or gone on a date with Rose. He closed his eyes and prepared to go out anyways though, even with his regrets in mind.

Still closed. He felt turbulence. Which afterlife was this? He opened his eyes. They were flying. Wait, they? Mauve, Steel, and Pyros were still there. In the control room.

"So, did we all sell our soul to the same elder god or something?" he asked, examining himself for signs of life.

"Now, I'll admit, there were setbacks. Mostly I blame Bard and Arhra. One for being a Dirty communist for no real reason, and the other for trying to kill us all. But it's all worked out now. Who cares? We're flying into space to combat the evil Valker hordes. I think. It's been a while. And we have a flying city! Isn't that neat?"

"So would anyone mind if I stab him?" the not-so-able summoner inquired to Mauve and Pyros. "Like, just a little bit? To teach him a lesson." The lade was recovering from his near-death experience fast.

[PyrosNine]

Pyros was way ahead of Bard, and Steel got a Kittyblast to the face for being Steel.

"I'm a fire god (despite totally being capable of surviving an eruption of fire) and even I don't know what's going on, so obviously it's your fault!"

Pyros ignored the fact that his other dimensional self had commented on business between Steel and about plans that were lost for turning the city into a spaceship, and so technically "a" Pyros was to blame for NPF soaring off into the sky. But now she was a Dr. Ashley Ethington so it was entirely not a Pyros's fault.

Pyros was even tempted to regain his normal form and chuck Steel off into the strangely starry sky, but considering his recent actions, and the fact that the very reason for Pyros's being here (namely, the pursuit of teh Craaazy Arhra) was over, it was nap time. So Pyros merely saved Steel from discovering who was just as much a master of SPACE as Steel was a master of TIME for another day, while he opted to remain in his Mauve hat perch.

Besides, if he kept doing awesomeness, it meant his other self was relegated to pushing paper and feuding over office supplies.

* A few seconds earlier. *

"Eeeethington."

Arhra V entered the room, staying barely ahead of a sea of hair. "I see you managed to get a little work done." she said dismissively, looking at the fruits of her labour.

"Oh my my, isn't this just the sweetest pleasure? My esteemed colleague has deigned to 'solve herself from defragment'in in her private quarters to better my lab with her regal presence."

She sipped her float like it was ambrosia. She'd had ambrosia, so she could do a better job at acting it out than other people.

"Well, I s'pose I have got a little work done. Considering the epic scale of the things you haven't built yet, what I've actually built mayhaps seems a mite small! It's only a fully working Battleship the size of-"

There was a sudden eruption.

"-the devil?"

The size of Ol' Scratch non-withstanding, something had happened that had made the room vibrate a bit. The internal inertial dampeners built into the lab itself had kept any kind of cluttering about caused by external forces. Otherwise nothing would ever get done in NPF, what with all the explosions.

This was most strange. It was as if NPF was going into outerspace. And not as in "The people of the NPF" though that was true as well. But the actual Nuklear Power Forums. As in she hoped someone had installed some sort of atmospheric barrier to keep people from dying of solar radiation and lack of air inherent in space, or the boiling blood and eyeball popping of being in a vacuum.

There were only two people who were capable of causing this level of shenanigans. One was some silly time traveler, and the other was-

"VEEEE!"

Dr. Ethington whipped around, her hair destroying a portion of the wall from the force of the turn, with the ice cream float getting a safe haven in her hand. The sounds of a few lab assistants suddenly getting tugged through the air were heard, and ignored.

"You....is this you doing? What in tarnation have you done? Have you no shame? Do you know what this means? It's straight from my signature! THE BLAME I SHALL BE GIVEN WILL BE THOUSAND FOLD!"

To calm her spirits down, she chugged the float, then reached under her desk pulled out an ice cream bar and shoved into her mouth.

"I thought better of you Arhra, I declare! But this...this crazily seems like somethin' crazy thought up by some sort of crazy time travelin' fool!"

* Hundreds of Years....IN THE FUTURE! *

Arhra IX looked at her bill. It read "NPF Public Library." She looked up at the public library's sign. "NPF Interplanetary Public Library."

She looked back at her bill. It had no ink, a mere piece of white paper. She looked up at the sign. "Established 20XX."

She looked back at her hand. The paper stopped existing. She looked up again. "Sponsored by Old Spice (of the future!)"

She looked down. She was on a horse.

Arhra IX whistled. Steel had made himself a fan!

[Astral Harmony]

Armored Bishoujo's head swimmed with agony and vertigo. But Armored was thankful for it just a little. It meant that she wasn't dead after all. Slowly and steadily, Armored struggled to her feet. But she didn't move away from the corner from where she was knocked out. Armored looked around. She could vaguely hear the voices of the other NPFers and even see them as well. Her head protesting, she picked up her displaced sword and hand blaster, sheathing the sword and holstering her gun.

"Captain, you alright?"

Armored instinctively placed her right hand up to her right ear. "Yeah, I think I'm okay. Concussion, bruises, a general feeling that tomorrow will be a real bitch. That's about it."
"Ah, that's better than we feared. Since you were out, something big happened. There were two immense energy reactions. The first was the entire city taking off. The second was a very large explosion that we could see from all the way up here."
Armored blinked. "The city is airborne?"
"Want me to send Rosalyn, Maya and Chloe to meet you?"

Armored thought about it for a moment. Rosalyn was brilliant with computers and an accomplished hacker. Maya knew engineering like the back of her hand. Chloe was a superb mechanic and technician in her own right. If there was a problem with the city, chances were that the three of them could figure it out. But...
"Not yet. I'm going to go find what we're doing next. My guess is that we'll probably be taking on the Valkyrs, since we're up here in space, anyways."
"Aye-aye, captain. We'll be on standby."

[Inbred Chocobo]

The sky above NPF slowly faded from a clear blue sky patched with clouds to a starry sky, unmarked my mans pollution. The vastness of space laid before the eyes of the forumers as they gazed up through space. Constellations unmapped laid before them, their brightness bloomed far greater than what could be seen on the highest peaks of of the world. It was a beautiful site, one that even the lowliest bum could humble before.

Well, humble before pieces of debris started raining down into NPF, taking out buildings and smashing giant holes into the concrete. To be fair it wasn't so much as it was raining the stuff, as it was just kinda floating their and the entire city was running straight into it. Those on the surface got to play run the fuck away from the giant piece of shrapnel about to fall on my head. The forumers hiding in the smashed up control room, with no way of steering the flying city found the roof in the middle of the room collapsed, revealing a huge piece of metal, unlike anything they have seen, pierce from the ground all the way down here. Looked like it was once a stairway, considering how there were stairs on the sides of it, though most of those stairs were broken and upside down.

Those that gazed up through the onslaught of the shrapnel rain saw the site of a massive ship, big enough to house NPF twice over. Its majesty was only shallowed by the fact that most of the outer walls have been blown of, and that tiny explosions still ran amok in the ship. Two dots of Furian energy did battle onboard the ship, faster than most could lay eyes on. Of course, the closer they got to the ship, the better they could make things out.

Wait a minute... you are looking straight up at a mothership and its getting closer. Sounds like you should probably do something about that guys, don'tcha think?

[Shyria Dracnoir]

"You know," Shyria wondered aloud in-between dodging flaming chunks of shrapnel, "all things considered, the forums turning out to be a giant extraplanetary space vessel is probably the least confusing thing to happen to me today." That was good, because now she could focus all her attention on the other huge extraplanetrary vessel about to squish them to paste.

She stretched her wings, preparing for takeoff. They had to get up to that ship and stop it before it got to them. "One-way tickets to glory and alien buttkickery, on sale now!"

[Astral Harmony]

"I'd like a ride," Armored said to Shyria, ignoring the aching of her own body. If she needed more power than her body could give her in its current condition, she still had her Fury Pill.

However, she had one last bit of dialogue with the crew on her ship.
"Armored to Aesir."
"Alean here. Go ahead, captain."
"See that big space fortress or whatever about to consume the city I'm in?"
"Yeah, it's kinda hard to miss."
"If you can, try to find a way inside. Take whoever you think you'll need. Chances are that us in the city are going to need a distraction when onboard somewhere."
"And we're supposed to be that distraction?"
"You know how I am with my outrageous plans."
"I also know how some of those plans tend to fall short just at the success point."
"Quiet, you. Armored out."

With that out of the way, Armored mounted Shyria (giggity!) and braced herself because dragons seldom came equipped with seatbelts.

[Arhra]

"VEEEE!"

Dr. Ethington whipped around, the jungle that was her hair destroying part of the wall as she spun, dragging interns with it. There were only two people who could be responsible for flying NPF shenannigans and one of them was in this room.

"You....is this your doing? What in tarnation have you done? Have you no shame? Do you know what this means? It's straight from my signature! THE BLAME I SHALL BE GIVEN WILL BE THOUSAND FOLD!"

To calm herself, Ethington chugged her float and then shoved an icecream bar in her mouth.

"I thought better of you Arhra, I declare! But this...this crazily seems like somethin' crazy thought up by some sort of crazy time travelin' fool!"

Arhra V grinned. "I'm flattered you think so highly of me," she told her rival, "but that wasn't me. No need to stuff yourself like a pig."

"What I did do is complete the transition to my second generation chassis," the cyborg indicated her new and improved body, "built myself a levitation array for space combat, built a prototype Fury extractor (untested), designed and manufactured equipment to make dragons space-capable," she lugged a crate into view with her hair in much the same way as Ethington, "made comms gear for everyone and devised an innoculation to protect against the terrible dangers of space." she finished, holding up a fistful of auto-injectors. "Speaking of which..."

She stabbed Ethington with one.

Stepping back again, Arhra V received a signal from the monitoring equipment. Her eyes went wide and her pupils contracted. Shuddering violently with excitement, it took her a visible effort to steady herself.

"I-I have to leave. Now." the cyborg gasped, still humming like a tuning fork.

The lab's sensors had just reported that the immense flaming hulk of the Valker mothership was on a collision course with the NPF. To the cyborg's slightly Fury-addled mind (and inherent crazed tech-lust), there was a vast stockpile of advanced alien technology headed this way and it wasn't coming to her fast enough.

"You'll have to get this to the others." Arhra V informed her rival, the sea of her hair depositing three crates of gear in the room. "The D-type equipment will auto-install when brought within a metre of a suitable dragon and I'm sure you can figure out the rest." she called over her shoulder as she exited.

Outside, she dropped into a froglike crouch, knees out to her sides and a hand splayed on the ground between her legs. The air darkened in a sphere around her, pebbles drifting upwards as her levitation array came online. Her Fury tainted eyes glared up through the thinning haze of the atmosphere, past the debris to where the distant shape of the Valker mothership approached in the void beyond.

"VALKEEEEEERRS!!!" she howled.

Arhra V leapt into the sky.

She wanted to fuse with the enemy mothership and nothing was going to stand in her way.

* * *

Faced with sudden liftoff and the spectacle of the assembled NPFers proceeding up the side of the Kurosen Tower in grand style as the NPF's bridge installed itself atop the highest point in the city, Gestalt Arhra slowed to a halt.

The chimerical girl turned back to address the spectral summon she had been luring this way with stolen pizza.

How are we supposed to get up there?" she asked Geist, wings twitching in irritation.

* * *

Atop the Kurosen Tower, the stars of heaven glittering around them, the NPFers were celebrating a lack of explosions, the fruition of ancient plans and gearing up to face their final battle against the Valker scum.

One or two details from the aftermath of their battle with Arhra II had gone unnoticed as a result.

There came an unstable, unfocused pulse of chaos magic where the dead sorceress lay. Back arched, body writhing, Arhra II was trying to get up. It was a sight most unbecoming for a dead person.

Arhra had always possessed the ability to resurrect herself, casting aside her expended husk in an explosion of chaotic energy and taking on a new form at the heart of the blast. But ever since there had been more than one of her, her reincarnation function had been broken. Unfortunately, Arhra I - the person best positioned to deliver exposition on this - was still lying on the ground in a fetal curl and completely unresponsive to the world.

A tiny, animal gasp and the sorceress went limp.

Softly, she started to glow a second time, her reincarnation attempting to trigger again.

The same alien magic as she had briefly used materialised above Arhra I: a ring made up of hundreds of silvery glyphs, more raining from its edges like water from an overfilled gutter. No books were to be seen and the sorceress was clearly dead. Ghostly images were fading in, drawing in to superimpose themselves on the healer as the strange spell dragged her unresisting body into the air. When she was upright the ring contracted into her and was gone.

Arhra I swayed a little, fractionally out-of time images overlaying her small form and then opening her red eyes slowly. She looked at the assembled NPFers, naked hatred in her eyes, and then up at the sky. She chuckled. It was not a sound to inspire confidence.

"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" she said, a hint of a slur in her voice.

"If you think you can stop it, go ahead and try."

[PyrosNine]

Dr. Ethington briefly quaked a bit, trying gain her ground as the injection ran it's course. It felt as if a robot had pushed her down a flight of stairs. She finally managed to get a hold of herself as Arhra V flew up into the sky to absorb the mothership.

"That cybernetic trollop dare inject me with untested technology? VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE!" She cleared off a load of her own hair to reveal several buttons, with labels ranging from "Ice Cream Party" to "Linkin Park Science" to a giant red button that read "Destroy the Hateful Arhra with Righteous Lasers."

Dr. Ethington made a fist and was ready to pound. She caught herself with her hair.

"No, that's the sort of thing pa wouldn't want. Now, I need to work together with her, if NPF is to survive. I'm a big girl now, pa would want me to-OOOPPPS!" Ashley elbow dropped that button with her own brand of fury.

A large cannon popped outside of Ethington's side of the lab, focused with a Holy crystal and powered by blessed turbogenerators (getting the local priest to do it was a field day) and painted with the prayers of the innocent. It charged up and fired a beam of pure Righteousness, of such divine purity that the focal point of the laser looked like Sword Kirby wielding Excalibur while riding on the back of a peanut butter and honey sandwich. If you squinted a little. The Sandwich could also be a mushroom and Kirby could be JigglyPuff, from a certain angle.

What was true from any angle, is that the laser missed V entirely. It didn't look like it was even pointed at V, and yet the autotargeting insisted it was pointing at the "hateful Arhra."

"Oh come on! I wasn't being literal! You know what I meant!"

* * *

Pyros sighed, and pawed Mauve's hat.

"Meow!" He totally meant by this meow, that he could feel the aura of the Dark Arhraverse again, and it was time for her to become Sailor Mauve, and hurl headwear at the problem.

Then a laser erupted from practically nowhere and blasted the spot where Arhra I was standing. She had been remarkably full of hate for some reason.

***

"Well, whatever, that was a one trick pony anyway. Time for my awesome spaceship to get into action!" She pressed another button that read "GTFIMMFS", and pressed it.

Pancakes and Syrup went everywhere.

She hit it again, and made a mental note to use the ship's bathroom asap.

Dr. Ethington, the crates, and a few lab aides disappeared in a flash of light.

There was a soft, slow whirring sound somewhere. The laser cannon shook violently, then popped down into the ground beneath the labs.

Then the labs themselved moved, splitting open on a not so imaginary line that intersected the lab by the breakrooms and a few staff bathrooms. A man who should have just held it in found himself falling into a dark abyss, pants flapping after him.

Lights. Two highpowered beams of light emerged from within the darkness beneath the lab, and moved upwards. The ground shook (more than it did because of the town lifting off into space) and rocketing up was the NPF Azure the largest and most powerful ship ever created by the NPF. Oh sure, it was smaller than the Valkyrie mass planet exodus ship, but this was meant to be crewed by a few dozen maniacs so it needn't quite be that big. It needed only to be big enough to give a dragon a ride, store a few weapons of mass destruction (the DHARMA Cannon from my first RP even!) and a few shipboard science devices, like a teleportation array, a pancake mixer, and a zero point energy beam, like the one being fired at the rising NPF City to slow it's ascent up into the heavens (and the Valkyr ship).

It was bigger than a skyscraper, and more spacious than 12 football fields, owing to messing with depth and dimensions as already seen within the Ethington lab o'science, and a light greenish blue, owing to the fact that Dr. Ethington was sure Azure was a color, but wasn't completely sure which color it was.

It was also heading towards those stuck on the ground, ready to pick them up with the teleporter, but the range of her teleporter was under a few miles, with increasing distance increasing the likelihood of people getting fused together, de-aged, or merged with the environment.

[Overcast]

Overcast was unsurprised. After all he had already seen this mass of wreckage when he had come up here to try to fight him just before he landed back to continue the fight with the sorceress. He wasn't sure how much more they could actually do to the creeps with the appearance of their ship. Altogether he just wished he had a large laser so he could finish the job.

But hey he was just a box, what did he know,

"SOLD!"

He exclaimed to Shyria's offer to take off toward glory under space dragon wings. They had to be space dragon wings after all since she was so keen to go diving into the deadly vacuum of space with no protection! Course he could have taken the big ship that had suddenly appeared, but hey screw that, that was far too easy to be right.

[Inbred Chocobo]

Shyria, having some of the NPFers mount her *snicker* took off, dodging an explosion, causing one of those cool effects where you see people flying out of a ball of fire. The NPF Azure scooped everyone else on board for ice cream and candy, with the wonderful Doctor at the wheel steering the thing like a mad-man in the debris field. As the ship and dragon flew through space and shrapnel, they came ever closer to a duel between two fury-powered warriors.

Everyone found out what IC had been up too (like it was a surprise). He had been taking on the Admiral of the Valkyrs, having stolen some fury pills for himself. Both IC and the Admiral's fight came running up towards the NPFers in space, IC and Draken jumping off floating platforms of twisted steel and broken plastics, engaging in hand to hand combat for brief moments, then the chase is on. The admiral caught IC off guard when IC closed the distance, hurling him into Shyria.

The admiral then jumped towards a floating platform, kicking it and sending it flying like a rocket at the NPF Azure, attempting to take it out before they have even had a chance to get into battle.