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interstellar55552016-08-03 01:24 pm
interdimanagers) wrote in interstellar55552016-08-03 01:24 pm
☆TRACK XIII: HIT THE BOTTOM PT 2
 It’s almost the very end of the Tokyo tour when it happens. There was no way for anyone to be sure when exactly Gold would strike, but at least with the information gained from Silver and their dreams, the rebels have been able to prepare and lay in wait. Despite some effort, contact with Gold has been impossible. It isn’t until Lesedi has presented herself on stage that Gold comes out of hiding. It’s a special occasion, presumably. Maybe our of arrogance, or maybe as some key feature of her plan, one of the final performances is Lesedi Santiago herself singing. The crowd loves it, irrationally so – it’s clear to anyone that knows what’s going on that by this point Lesedi could be making fart sounds into a microphone and the audience would swoon. The magic is thick, and the civilians are all but zombies in its wake. So much, so, that they don’t even seem to notice when Gold drops the entire metal lighting structure right onto the stage, on top of Santiago, mid performance. Gold rides the structure down, and metal bends and grinds, screeching as lights explode and sparks fly. It’s so brazen that even Lesedi doesn’t seem to be expecting it. That becomes all too obvious when the nebulae emerges from the wreckage, furious and literally glowing with astral energy. Her song and its momentum has been cut like a rope, and the stage has fallen down like the figurative piano. “What is this?!” she screeches, indignant beyond words but ostensibly not actually hurt. Metal shrapnel bursts into the air as Gold emerges as well, a powerful aura surging around their masked form as well. The remaining musicians that were dosed with Gold’s powder some months ago will feel a strange pull against their spirits. “You.” The word is cold, in contrast to Lesedi’s fury only a moment before. Gold only offers a theatrical shrug as they tight rope walk across twisted metal scaffolding. The crowd roars in appreciate for a performance that only they seem to understand. “This is where you swear you’re going to destroy me, right?” Gold says, with antagonizing ambivalence. “Well, here’s your chance, princess.” Yet, in this moment, Silver is nowhere to be seen. [This is mostly going to be one, big free for all log, though you can make separate top levels if they aren’t going to be related to the main fight. Remember, your actions here matter! What players characters do or don’t do will heavily affect the outcome.] |
(1/2)
"STOP PISSING INTO THE WIND, YOU LITTLE FUCK!" Lesedi roars at Terry, slashing across Gold's face and scoring a grazing blow. She can feel it now - Gold's music is getting stronger, and all the while she's wasting more and more energy towards this fight. How will she ever catch up - ?
And then a lot goes on all at once.
Lesedi staggers as something seems to drag against her magic, interrupting the flow of her own strengthening spells. It shakes her, and with her already swelling mania it feels like a step towards totally losing her mind - just as Gold leaps forward against, and pries both of her filthy hands into Lesedi's chest and releases a sickening jolt of magical force.
Lesedi is knocked back, and hard, leaving a trail of smoke and steam in her wake. She crashes against the metal covering the ground as Gold begins to pursue.
And then the first of Mars's arrow strikes - straight through Jenny's shoulder.
(2/2)
Then the first arrow strikes. Jenny collapses to her knees, claws and fangs still out and snarling. Gold's eyes widen. And then the next - it flaming point blows straight through Don's prone chest as he screams in pain.
Gold is stopped in her tracks, and for a moment she can't breathe. Don was never as strong as them. He can't defend himself like they could, and he can't heal.
"Domenic," Gold breathes, and her music skips, like a scratched CD.
From the ground, Lesedi offers a shrill and mocking laugh. She appears at Don's side far too quickly, as he squirms in his death throes. She could fix this, Gold realizes. This isn't more than Lesedi could heal.
But that's not what happens.
Like the vampire she is, Lesedi grabs him up like a rag doll, and violently tears something out of him - something that is bright and dark indigo all at once. Then she consumes it like a quick snack.
Don falls lifeless while Gold stares.
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No. Garnet is bent down, and suddenly, her hair - what's left of it from the grip, at least - if free as Jenny falls to her knees. She has some cuts from where she was slashed at, but her throat, at least for now, is safe. She needs to do something.
Get out of Lesedi's way, for one - she refuses to end up like Don did, not now, not while Steven and Greg are here. Get away from this Predator, for another. And, she has to keep singing. Don't break it. Encourage Gold even as she thinks of what to do. Her mind races as to what she can do with Jenny on the ground.
"Go ahead and try to hit me if you're able.
Can't you see that my relationship is stable?
I can see you hate the way we intermingle.
But I think you're just mad..."
Ok. She has one idea. Good possibility idea. A parting shot, as it were - she distracted Jenny from her objective, and Gold is still standing. Which is a plus, she hopes. So, Garnet bends down just a little to get into some kind of plausible position for her offensive hit - and to (fail to, unfortunately by now) alleviate the throbbing her hair being pulled has now produced.
Time to attempt a nice, good, hard knee jerk, up into her opponent's chin. Here's to hoping the Predator doesn't find a way to eat her knee, whether it connects or not, before she has a chance to flee to a safer position away from the battle proper.
"..cause you're SINGLE--!"
just gunna borrow my new account
This part of Multiverse was not prepared for this. Not at all. It had felt like such a release to join together, like a sudden weight off of his shoulders to be so free, but the sight before him nearly brings it all crashing down.
Someone just died. He's not sure who threw the first shot, but either way, Lesedi finished him off. She... she ate him. Somehow.
His head spins. Their head spins. He isn't sure anymore. It just suddenly becomes nearly impossible to focus on the rhythm that they'd secure when Steven's half is filled with utter terror and the sudden desire to throw up.
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Oh fuck.
Terry's instinct is to run to Don, try and see if he's still alive — he's an asshole of the highest order, but that doesn't mean he deserves to have his essence ripped out and eaten — but Terry knows it's pointless before he's even moved.
But where Gold stops, Terry's music keeps going. Still in her key, still in her BPM. Something furious in the way he bangs out the chords; all that anger and hate he's been holding onto this last year.
It's all he can think to do in the moment. Bolster Gold, try and keep her going.
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Had he just done that? His intention was to scare Don, only take his life if it was absolutely necessary and yet the man's torso had caught fire for a moment after that spark from up above.
He catches his breath and turns towards the stage to look at Jenny, realizing she had also been hit. That's right, that fire was from somewhere else, someone else. What was he thinking? And this is war. He's a soldier. He's killed hundreds before. It's just...
Roy curses and tries to refocus. This isn't the time to complain that the Lieutenant isn't by his side. Why did distracting memories of mistakes need to bother him now of all times? Enough lighting people on fire for now. He turns his attention to the ceiling. If needed Santiago or Jenny just might get a beam dropped on their head with the help of a small explosion. That is, if there's an opening.
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"Uh Garnet, why aren't you using your weapon?" she does have one criticism. She's about to attempt tying Jenny up with her whip when Jenny gets hit in the back by a flaming arrow. From a gem's point of view, she thinks for a second that Lesedi had just grabbed Don's gem with the intent to shatter him but as his body falls aside lifeless on the floor it becomes clear this is a most disturbing human death.
"That's it! I'm mad!" Amethyst snarls and lets her whip fly at Jenny in an attempt to wrap up her upper body and prevent any more of that obnoxious music magic from her.
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When Santiago claims Don's crystal he turns to Ivan and encourages him to play Gold's tune. Now more than ever they need to give her the strength she needs. While their power is aimed at Gold alone, Doctor calls out to Multiverse telepathically. "We can mourn later! Greg, Steven! Right now we have to make sure we remove Jenny from the scene without allowing Santiago to take her crystal next! Be strong for the rest of us, please!"
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His gem glows a dull pink, and he grasps at his guitar. This is why he can't give up, they can't--he can't let anyone have their gem, or their Gem, taken from them. The two of them survived it once each. They know better than nearly anyone why this can't stand.
All well and good to talk, but harder to follow up with your head spinning from panic and vertigo. For the moment, his beat with the rest of them is lost while he tries to keep himself in sync.
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"Don't kill her," Gold manages to plead, before Lesedi takes her opportunity. With the surge of energy she gained from devouring Don's essence, she seizes control of space-time long enough to make her attack.
Some of the people there may be familiar with this move. They've seen it take a life once before. It's only a last moment reaction from Gold that keeps it from ending the same way here.
Lesedi disappears, and instant later reappears behind Gold, just as Gold anticipates the move and begins to turn. Lesedi's hand materializes straight through Gold's shoulder, tearing through the matter there instead of expelling Gold's heart, as intended. Gold staggers, and for a moment Lesedi's fingers being stuck in her flesh is the only thing that holds her up.
"I - ghhn. Wow," is all Gold manages to gurgle, blood pooling in her mouth through a damaged lung.
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Gold's revel as one of the Pride musicians makes 3 pause and watch. (They are so going to have s'mores and hot cocoa now that she knows that Gold has a mouth and can eat them. And maybe lecture her a bit about the power of teamwork.) And then things get even worse. One of Lesedi's goons gets shot, and then Lesedi... There's swirls going down her throat like ink dissolving in water. Some kind of energy if 3 had to guess. It mixes until it becomes indistinguishable from the energy Lesedi gives off.
3 pulls the goggles to rest on her forehead. "The goggles do nothing! Everything's foggy, and some people are foggier!" Nothing like ruining her aim. She'll continue the fight without them because they don't really give her any new information. Except that the bad guys are cannibals on top of being bad guys.
She shrieks when Gold is struck and throws another Burst Bomb at Lesedi. Lesedi is 3's main target now. "Leave Gold alone!"
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It's hard to tell, with the cacophony of noise going on, but, somewhere in the distance... There's a roar. As 3 shoots her ink, to the side of Lesedi a portal suddenly swirls into existence and immediately deposits a giant fully grown bright pink lion tackling into her.
Ignore the screaming thirteen year old girl on his back.
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"Hey Garnet, what do you say we take the Scary Boss Lady's second potential power snack somewhere far far away?"
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Garnet's attention is brought back as Amethyst asks the question. Oh, yes, right. That.
"Yes? That...might be an idea!"
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"We need help," he says as he fishes the boon he had received from the ghosts from his pocket and crushes it in his palm. Time to call in that favor.
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Lion's roar cuts through the cacophony, and Multiverse jerks to attention as the beast and his furious rider come bursting through to join the fray.
"Connie--?!"
The sight of her pushes away some of the suffocating crowd of thoughts. He can't lose track of what's in front of him, what they need. They've come too far to lose their rhythm now. Multiverse takes a deep breath, steadying his hands before playing again.
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..As it turns out, him. That's what he's been doing.
But at some point, forcefully pushing people to the exits, he looks back and something about the scene strikes him. Is he really going to do nothing? Just going to run away?
Man, fuck that.
Pushing back into the fray, Artolo looks around and spots a certain musically powerful boyband loser who's going to get his name called in a hot minute. "YO, JAMIE!" Is that a bottle of cheap beer getting thrown his way with unnatural accuracy? Absolutely. From across the way, Artolo is grinning as he slides the shades from his face.... and reveals bright glowing eyes.
"Wanna be drunk dumb assholes?"
There's too many people around in this clusterfuck for him to just... he doesn't know. Drop all the speakers on her? Yeah, can't do that. So Artolo tries to do the next best thing: raising one hand surrounded by a fluctuating red-blue glow, he tries to pour all his telekinetic energy into trapping Lesedi Santiago where she is.
Hopefully someone can do something with that, even if he only holds her for a second, because he's got nothing. That's why he's using his other hand to drink from another beer bottle.
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Jamie was just going to keep urging the concertgoers away from the venue, trying to deprive Santiago of their energy - it's a solid plan and someone has to keep it up, after Terry ran off to throw himself into the jaws of death - but then Lesedi stabs Cass in the torso, and after that Jamie's distracted by a bottle coming straight at his face.
Bottle-throwing might be a normal occupational hazard for some acts, but boyband audiences don't generally throw liquor containers at the stage, so Jamie is actually a little surprised, even as he uses his magic to arrest the bottle's flight a couple inches from his face.
He's less surprised when he figures out who threw it. Kind of horrified, though, when Artolo proceeds to show off his glowy eyes and use some kind of magic mojo on Santiago.
For whatever reason, this is the final straw. Maybe it's Art calling him out by name, maybe it's seeing Cass mortally wounded by their shitty boss, maybe it's just everything that's at stake right now, but Jamie decides that now is when he needs to do something really, really stupid.
"You dumbass," he says, probably directed at Artolo. (In response to this utterance, someone in the crowd screams "WE LOVE YOU, FLASHSTEP!") Jamie bounds off the stage, parting the crowd before him almost as an afterthought, and charges toward the altercation surrounding Santiago. He's still hanging onto the beer bottle. What if he can use it? A thrown object won't have any effect, obviously, and it's too risky to turn it into something flamey or spatter-y like acid, but what if...
He pounds across the concert grounds, leaps onto the backs of some enraptured fans ("'scuse me sorry," he says distractedly as he does so) and uses them as a platform to launch himself into the air. It's almost all natural athleticism; he's a runt, but he's a runt who's in particularly good shape.
With a sort of snarly grunt he flings the bottle at Lesedi, only instead of a bottle it's now a pointy metal spike, aimed right at her head and propelled by sheer fury.
#yolo
He doesn't have a sword, which sucks. He managed to pick up a relatively straight, arm-long piece of pipe, either on the way or from whatever stash the rebels allowed him near, and that sort of sucks too but it's the best he's got. The little shark disappears, letting him focus better on his makeshift weapon, and it flares blue, covered in his nullifying flame.
He moves fast, though he's not quite back to top shape yet. He tries to time it just as a bunch of others seem to be throwing everything at Lesedi. She can't possibly bitchslap all of them at the same time, and if she can, hey. The next wave of attackers will have something to learn from.
(If he does manage to reach her, he'll be trying to shove that magic chloroform covered stick into whatever part of her he can reach. If she's still huge, it's... probably up her ass? Leg? In normal size, he'll just try to go for the obvious middle of the chest. At the very least, maybe taking care of this painfully blatant charge will take her attention away from Boyband Lightweight's headshot.)
(Oh yeah. He does supposedly also have ghost protection connected to him.)no subject
There's a lot of people focusing on Lesedi, so Terry opts for the next dumbest thing he's done since joining the fray to begin with. Using a burst of magic to hurl himself across the stage and grab Gold in some attempt to pull her off that hand and away from Lesedi.
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She tried to save him. He remembered her. He remembered them dancing on the beach, and everything that it meant to him. If he's every going to get to be that person again, he can't give up.
"Let's do this!" Multiverse yells, and maybe it's just sheer blind positivity for the sake of it. But that's how showmanship works, right? You make yourself believe it so everybody else can.
His bass rhythm falls back into sync, pushing back against Lesedi's own flickering control.
1/?
She's forced to wrench her hand out of Gold without being able to inflict much more damage. One of her hands swings up to clutch Lion's paw, the other pressing against his sternum, as she pushes back against the beast and his mount, the remains of her high heels digging into the floor. Vicious, she's sure, but lions are nothing but her mascots. This is nothing. Nothing.
She manages to hurl Lion and Connie away from her, and is just about to turn to finish the job when more comes along.
Somewhere inside of her, Lesedi Santiago has started to become afraid. This isn't going how she wanted, and even her vast storage of musical energy is failing her. This isn't how things should go, and it's an outcome she had never considered.
And then Artolo attacks, and she can tell exactly where it's coming from. Just one more betrayal. Again, and again, and again-
She's hard to keep a hold of. Telekinesis affects physical matter, and she's only partly that. She jerks back and forth, parts of her body fragmenting and becoming mist-like to accommodate. She tried to teleport, but something else is holding her now - magic coming from somewhere else. Somewhere near-
Jamie's pierces her straight through the head.
She yelps out her hurt, a hand going up to seize the thing and to try to wrench it out of what should have been her brain. There's no blood - just the image of the spike going cleanly through her skull. And then Squalo jumps her with the pipe, and something about it is far more draining than any mundane object should be.
Gold staggers back with Terry's arms around her, blood gushing from the wound in her chest. Fingers don't make that clean of a wound, do they?
2/?
She jumps the gun, the moment she sees Gold's blood. She launches the spell that her and Juno were preparing with a lyricless incantation - making her stay still, for just a little longer.
Juno watches in confusion, effortlessly shifting her tune to match Anansi's derailment of their plan. With their tunes so intermingled, she's noticed something awry - but neither of them can risk taking a moment away from their casting in order to acknowledge it.
3/4
Her magic could heal this sort of thing, but it would take more focus than she can dedicate. She'd have to break this spell to start one so completely different, and then everything would just be fucked. She can deal with a sucking chest wound for a few minutes if that's the alternative, right? Haha...
She feels the moment that the spirit of Arpegius appears. It's such a sad familiar presence, she can't help but almost laugh. She doesn't know how he knew this was happening, or how he knew this was just the moment they needed. But, hey. She'll take it.
Arpegius appears near Roy, called by his summons. It doesn't take long for him to clue into what's happening either.
"We're going to fix this," he'll say to Roy, before flying off to where Gold and Terry are standing. He doesn't spare a moment to dally or ask for permission - he leaps straight into Gold's body, and she seems to accept it without qualm.
She stands back onto her own feet, the bloodflow slowing as she clenches her fists, her power mingling with the spirit's.
"Hey man," she says, quietly. "It's been a while."
Last chance. Better make it count. Arpegius agrees.
Lesedi too distracted to see it coming. Gold is out for the count, as far as she's concerned. Down and bleeding. But no, not yet. Not until this is done.
Syncing with the music of the other musicians, Gold reclaims her song. She moves so quickly, she almost puts Lesedi to shame.
Music magic has always been the bending of reality through spiritual energy. Most people don't have enough to create much tangible effect - a little bit of well wishing, maybe, or enough spite to give someone a stomach ache. A crowd, though - there isn't much a crowd can't do if they were all in unison. Something that never really happens outside of the craft.
That's the magic of it. Making things happen that shouldn't. Things like shattering a nebulae's spirit.
Gold reaches her hands into Lesedi, grasping for that spirit like something physical. The will of her magic makes it so. She takes one half in each hand and then rips-
The sound it makes is nothing human, and the release of force is enough to blow everyone surrounding Lesedi back like a bomb detonation. Gold never claimed it to be elegant. But hey, sometimes that works.
4/4
Left in her place is what can only be described as some kind of spacial rift - like a shattered place between reality and space-time that is impossible to describe or even look at. The pieces one can see are like a vaporous cloud of starlight and lightning. There is a scream, but its not something you hear so much as you feel.
The rift flickers in place, tendrils of space reaching out as if trying to take form and then failing. The energy moves towards Jenny's fallen form, but Gold is already staggering to her feet and moving herself in the way.
The light flair and then start to fade, rushing from the dimension as if sucked into another by sheer pressure.
They only get a few moments of warning. Those from Pride that still have their chips in will feel the tingling of something pulling at them, too - the feeling of being teleported, but with much greater effort than it ever took Lesedi before. She's leaving, and she's taking them with her.
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