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Episode 108: All Hands
"Rrrrh." Light growled softly when she saw what they were
up against. The six-armed giant had just fallen into place, and—with
her and Rory invisible for the moment—started looking for someone
to hurt, or something to destroy.
"Something wrong?" Dr. Quinn near-whispered, standing
several steps away from the building whose wall Light was leaned back
against, holding the latter's sword loosely in her right hand.
"Bad memories." She gave it an illusion to chase down and start trying to chop up. This one just had a sword (a huge, long one, the equivalent of something that would be two-handed for a human) at the end of all six of its arms. "It won't see you, but—be careful it doesn't grab or impale you anyway."
"Will do!"
"Bad memories." She gave it an illusion to chase down and start trying to chop up. This one just had a sword (a huge, long one, the equivalent of something that would be two-handed for a human) at the end of all six of its arms. "It won't see you, but—be careful it doesn't grab or impale you anyway."
"Will do!"
Its back was to both of them by now, so Rory ran up, raised the
sword, and leapt up most of the monster's height to stab the blade
into its back and slam it in deeper with a palm on the hilt. While it
roared and started turning, reaching its arms around, she twisted
upside-down and started running down its back, keeping the sword's
hilt gripped in both hands so it sliced its way down with her. She
pushed off once the monster started a backwards roll to try and crush
her, and when it whirled to try to chase after her, Light gave it a
fake Rory to chase and slice at instead.
"Hey, think I could get a replacement?"
Light re-summoned her weapon and tossed it underhand Rory's way so she could catch it—and then immediately turn and more or less pitch it directly at the monster, landing the blade squarely in its side.
"Whoops, butterfingers!" she grinned huge. "Think I could get another?" The thing screamed again and started running their way.
Light re-summoned her weapon and tossed it underhand Rory's way so she could catch it—and then immediately turn and more or less pitch it directly at the monster, landing the blade squarely in its side.
"Whoops, butterfingers!" she grinned huge. "Think I could get another?" The thing screamed again and started running their way.
"Move!" Light ran to her to hand her another blade,
then continued off to one side, letting it see someone running the
other way—and gesturing to follow her in the same direction. Rory
thankfully took the hint and came with her, turning to watch as the
thing veered away from the building at the last second, trying in
vain to hit an illusory Light who was impossibly good at dodging its
blades.
"..You know, I feel like 'sneak attacks' aren't really my style,
but I could get used to them."
There was a swirling cloud of black mist in the sky. It was that
ominous thing that the especially huge and dangerous monsters did
where, instead of just showing up right away, they would steadily
gather themselves into place way up in the air and then drop down and
start wrecking things. But it gave the advantage of a significant
advance warning, including being able to tell about where they were
going to be landing when they did finish doing that.
Petra was standing, sword in hand, at the front, flanked by two of
Clark's puppets—one with blue hair and the other red. Behind them
Karis's Stand stood, and Clark and Karis themselves were with Magus
at the very back. Magus turned around at the noise of footsteps to
find Zeno running up.
"Yo! Glad I didn't miss the action."
"You might be less glad pretty soon," Simon's wife
said. "By-the-way, Karis. Nice to meet you."
"Likewise," she nodded. "And—you two I've met
before. Puppets're new, though."
"It's here." Clark hadn't stopped staring forward.
Magus had dealt with some pretty big monsters in her few days as a
vixen; it was one thing to see them on news footage or pictures
online, but an entirely different experience being up close
and personal with one. There was that thing they'd fought that
morning, that was pretty big. And then the worm—that one was
gigantic, but it was a little harder to appreciate its size
from her perch on a rooftop a slight distance away, and when it was
mostly length and the thing was almost never fully straightened out
all in one place. So her experience was relatively limited,
but—anyone would have to agree, really, that the hecatoncheires was
very, very, very big. Even at her present distance from it,
she had to crane her neck up a little bit just to get a full view of
its head. Heads?
It was like a grape bunch, except the "grapes" were all
giant human-like bald heads with brightly gleaming red eyes, no
noses, and unnatural-looking wide mouths lined with the signature
giant teeth. Except, when it landed, this "bunch" seemed to
open along a horizontal seam about two-thirds of the way down like it
was all one head, exposing a much larger mouth full of
even bigger teeth, so it could let out a roar so low and loud
that it felt like the ground was shaking. Well—maybe the ground was
shaking too, due to Petra's powers. But anyway, the head was the
easiest thing for a human (or fox-girl) brain to make logical, visual
sense of, because the majority of the thing's body below that was a
writhing, tangled mass of arms and "hands", with the lower
half or so of two appropriately gigantic legs beneath that.
And—calling them hands was rather generous; very few seemed to take
a form resembling hands—a form that seemed big enough to pick up a
person like an ice cream cone and ending in spear-like claws rather
than fingers— while the rest were huge animal-like heads, hard
weapon-like shapes, animal limbs like tentacles or stingers, or just
random, misshapen arrangements of spikes and claws.
It was sinking by the time Magus had visually processed all of this,
trying to take a step forward but falling into a massive hole which
Petra had started making from the instant it appeared. The smaller
heads making up its head all opened their mouths and let out a
discordant chorus of haunting shrieking while several of its hands
rushed forward—some at the three targets right in front of it, more
sweeping around or above impossibly far to come after everyone else.
Magus raised her sword and took several quick hops back as some of
them swarmed up over everyone else to stab down at her,
landing giant weapons into the ground she'd just been occupying.
Petra stood her ground, blocking most of the hands coming after her
and the puppets with quickly-erected concrete walls and bashing one
or two that slipped or broke through back with her sword. The puppets
scattered, one of them tossing Clark's needle into the air so it
could go wind itself around a number of the monster's limbs. The
other vixens (including Remedy) danced around through the slashing
and biting limbs, Zeno placing light-shields to halt some strikes
aimed not just at herself, but some of the others as well.
Magus stopped several more yards back from where she'd started
when she realized there were no longer hands raining down at her. A
weakness of this particular variety of monster which other teams had
found valuable—and which she had made certain to let the others
know about—was that it really liked to whip all of its hands out at
once, then retract them before sending them out again. The moment its
assault stopped and it began pulling itself back together again was
the opportunity to do damage, or really pretty much anything
else besides trying not to get killed (or grabbed and eaten). So, she
used this moment to start channeling and throwing some long-range
projectiles at the thing's head: Small fireballs, ice shards, and a
lightning strike at the end. It really didn't enjoy being hit on the
head, and made its displeasure known vocally, drowning out all other
sounds.
Meanwhile, Clark raised up two more puppets—black and white
hair—and had them quickly fan out around the thing as it used some
of its hands to start trying to push itself up out of the pit. Petra
pushed the handholds out from under it, dropping her blade to focus
both hands on crushing inward at its legs to try to pin it in place.
Karis just stuck close to Zeno and made Remedy throw her sword at it
a few times, not having any really good ideas for ranged attacks
otherwise. Zeno, of course, used her bow, firing a probing volley of
arrows to try and see whether the thing had some part of its body
that was particularly vulnerable. Its arms didn't seem to emit much
mist from being hit themselves; the heads and hands seemed at least
somewhat more susceptible.
Rowan's car screeched to a halt, and she and Cynthia jumped out and
ran—their target had already appeared, and Fay had arrived ahead of
them to confront it. They soon made it to a small, hastily-evacuated
park to find five human-sized monsters each with a different pair of
weapon-like ends to its hands, all of them crowding around Fay and
working in unison to try and find an opening to hit her. She was
dancing between the attacks, parrying with her staff, placing point
explosions to give herself space—but obviously couldn't keep up
this pace for much longer.
Cynthia sent a wave of fire on one side of her, through three of
them, and Rowan darted the other way, slashing her blade through the
backs of the other two. Fay placed an explosion and took several
steps back while it spread, panting heavily.
"Relieved...you're...here."
Two of the three hit by the fire started running after Cynthia;
Rowan's targets whirled to attack her; the last one waited, readying
to chase after Fay. "Sorry it wasn't earlier." Rowan used
some brief water-tentacles to block the two after her and forced her
way between the free one and Fay, parrying its attack, stabbing it
and kicking it away. The redheaded vixen tossed some fireballs into
the center mass of her attackers as they approached, then backed up
and placed some short-lived walls of fire to force them to give her
space.
"Fhh..five of them. Should be easy."
"Lemme guess, 'is not easy'?" Cynthia said, continuing her
half-retreat in a direction that circled Rowan's position.
Fay paused, standing up straight, and nodded. "Mmh." Then,
evidently recovered enough for the moment, she ran in and caught
Rowan's opponents by surprise, getting an explosion inside two of
them and striking the third one several times in the back with her
staff.
Rowan took the opportunity to move away from those three and catch up
to the ones chasing Cynthia, slashing through both of them before
backing off again."The message identified these as
'quintuplets'," she said. "No documentation with that title
exists, but they presumably operate similarly to the twins."
"Which means what exactly?" The redhead threw a
stream of fire at the two of them while Rowan had their attention,
then moved around to toss a fireball Fay's way. She parried all three
with her staff in a way that let their weapons lock it in place, then
let go of it to make a long backwards leap at the last second, just
before the fireball landed and Cynthia expanded it into an explosion
of heat.
"Kill all simultaneously," Fay said after sticking the
landing.
Sam stood a few steps in front of Ning's store, holding in each hand
the end of a long string of her steel wire—which had been hastily
put together into several nets, tripwires, and other traps scattered
around the area. "Gotta plant my feet to manage all these,"
she said. "Get their attention, lead 'em in and I'll bring 'em
down."
"Then we wail on 'em!" Ning said, nodding.
"Right..."
Before too long, three of the type of mist monster they'd been warned about appeared, all in a little crowd. Ning hurried up to them, throwing some sparks their way, and once they made to stampede her she turned around and ran toward the nearest trap, hopping over a tripwire and leaping past a net. The beasts' long, spindly legs had two of them miss the former, but the third one got caught, the wire immediately snapping off of the fire hydrant and electrical pole it had been loosely attached to to whip up around the monster's leg. For the other two, Sam snapped the net up and around to tangle the legs, but one of them leapt out of it and kept up the charge, so Ning kept on running to reach another tripwire, and when the monster's legs carried it right over this one, Sam had it pull off of its bracings and wrap around both the thing's hind legs from behind, pulling hard on her end of that wire to make it tip backwards and bowl over.
"Then we wail on 'em!" Ning said, nodding.
"Right..."
Before too long, three of the type of mist monster they'd been warned about appeared, all in a little crowd. Ning hurried up to them, throwing some sparks their way, and once they made to stampede her she turned around and ran toward the nearest trap, hopping over a tripwire and leaping past a net. The beasts' long, spindly legs had two of them miss the former, but the third one got caught, the wire immediately snapping off of the fire hydrant and electrical pole it had been loosely attached to to whip up around the monster's leg. For the other two, Sam snapped the net up and around to tangle the legs, but one of them leapt out of it and kept up the charge, so Ning kept on running to reach another tripwire, and when the monster's legs carried it right over this one, Sam had it pull off of its bracings and wrap around both the thing's hind legs from behind, pulling hard on her end of that wire to make it tip backwards and bowl over.
Ning whirled, bringing out her sword and throwing its sheath at the
most distant of the three, breaking it into a burst of sparks when it
landed. The blade itself she raised and drove down into the head of
the closest monster, first with her hands and then giving it a good
swift kick in the back of the hilt to get it in even deeper. Then she
took a couple of steps back, raising her hand skyward, and struck the
weapon with lightning three or four times, each time making the
electricity carry through the monster's body to the wire around its
hind legs, and then through the wire to the sections of it which
bound the other two.
By this point they were starting to struggle free, tearing the wire
through their own bodies to pull upright. The one with Ning's sword
on it thrashed and tried to bite at her, but she hopped back out of
its way and hit it with another bolt of lightning before turning to
run off to one side, toward the next set of prepared traps.
This was almost a relaxing break compared to her fight that morning.
Even if they burned through all of Sam's preparations this way before
these things were dead, they'd take a lot of damage first, and
in a way that tired Ning out much less than she would've from them
chasing her around by herself.
"Shield of...hff, fffh...Barrier!"
Magus got her defensive spell cast just as some arms came to her,
bashing themselves against the crystal-like forcefield hard enough to
crack but not shatter it. The one problem with this spell was
that it required her to stay rooted in place while a
snake-mouth-shaped hand continuted to snap its gargantuan teeth at
the shield and bash its head into it repeatedly, slowly widening the
cracks...but it withdrew before it could fully make its way through.
Magus knew, logically, that there was no way just a few impacts like
that should be able to break something that lightning hadn't
made it through before, but seeing this still gave her something of a
scare.
When the gargantuan monster had spread its hands out this time,
they'd freed themselves from Clark's attempts at binding them
near-instantly, snapping many apart and pulling loose even the ones
which didn't break near-instantly. It crawled its way forward toward
Petra while one of its hands grabbed a puppet and crushed it into
dust, and another puppet was hacked in two by one sweep of a
sword-hand. Zeno and Karis both danced carefully through its
strikes—the latter unsummoning Remedy just before she would've been
hit. Clark backed away, moving more slowly and placing puppets just
in front of its attacks to lure the hands into destroying those
instead of hitting her.
"I could braid string together to tie it up, but I'm just not
strong enough to hold it..." Dr. Quinn seemed to be talking to
herself, somewhat quietly; she already had a couple of new puppets
out and a needle passing between them, weaving thread together, as
the hecatoncheires's hands retracted. She quietly said what Magus was
pretty sure was the other Dr. Quinn's key-phrase, twice in quick
succession.
Magus dropped the shield, getting an idea. Or, really—remembering
an idea she'd already had and had decided she wanted to try at some
point. She spent a moment channeling, knowing full well that this
spell would be a fairly costly one and wanting to minimize the needed
effort as much as possible. Meanwhile, Petra was raising a concrete
wall, moving the ground underneath the giant's feet backwards like a
conveyer belt to slow its advance—but still slowly taking steps
backwards as it continued to approach. Zeno shot at its multi-head
several times while slowly circling to try and get to a position
where not so many of its hands could go up to block the arrows.
"...Flame and heat, converge and animate! Flarepearl!"
From the tip of Magus's sword several streams of fire spread out,
making their way a few feet forward before all converging again,
forming together into a sort of floating ball of flowing fire. It
grew to around half the height of a person before she had to let go
of her weapon, finishing the spell. She dropped the sword clattering
to the ground, feeling like it was suddenly far too heavy to hold up,
and was left gasping for air from the exertion for a moment after
that, but—it had been successful! Magus could 'feel' the blob's
location in her mind, within a certain kind of 'connection' that
would let her command it. It was—essentially—a summon.
"Hhh..hahah, yeah! Woo! Class up, dude!" She sent it flying
high up into the air and then over in the direction of the monster's
head. Unfortunately, the flarepearl was sort of like a big ball of
flying lava, and dripped boiling-hot pieces of itself down below as
it flew over. Karis almost got hit by one, but was alert enough to
dodge to one side and watch it make a small indentation in the
concrete instead.
"That's cool and all, but do we need to have a conversation
about team synergy and literal friendly fire!?" she
yelled backwards.
"Uh, no, I—got it from the subject line. Sorry!" Magus
quickly diverted its path over to one side so it wouldn't go directly
over Petra—or anyone else for that matter—and when it was close
enough, it shot out a stream of fire like those it had been formed
from right at the monster's heads, burning it up and making it roar
in rage.
Rory played with the six-armed monster a little more, slashing or
throwing Light's sword into it some three or four times before
apparently just thinking to heck with it and running up
invisibly to its foot after throwing a sword into the back of its
head, grabbing its ankle in a kind of bear-hug and suplexing the
entire thing onto its back on the ground hard enough to make the
earth seem to shake. The thing flailed its arms briefly before
pushing itself upright, angrily chasing after another false image
while Rory moved over to one side of it.
"You know that didn't really hurt it much," Light said. However, she had taken the opportunity to run up and slash its head a few times herself while it was prone.
"Yeah, but it felt good. Oh..Clark needs to borrow some
of my strength," she reported. Both of them turned toward the
sound of someone running up to find Emma on her way. Light could see
that she was carrying Amp in her arms and putting up an illusion to
hide her. "Heyy, great timing!" Emma split, Plus continuing
to bring the blond-haired vixen closer while Minus broke off to one
side to throw some things at the monster's side and attract its
attention away from the sound of Rory's yelling. It whirled
and ran after her, and Light gave it another illusion to chase
instead.
"I gotta tag out for a minute," she said. "Oh, hi
Amp!"
"Not so loud, I'm invisible." Amp came up to Light, who nodded, gently picking up the smaller girl into a brief hug and feeling the usual sense of power flow into her as Amp ran her fingers across her ears. Meanwhile, Rory spoke Clark's phrase twice—apparently to signal that it was now okay for her husband to use her power—and moved over toward the building to get a little bit of distance from the fight. Once Light had set her down, Amp went to join Dr. Quinn.
"Not so loud, I'm invisible." Amp came up to Light, who nodded, gently picking up the smaller girl into a brief hug and feeling the usual sense of power flow into her as Amp ran her fingers across her ears. Meanwhile, Rory spoke Clark's phrase twice—apparently to signal that it was now okay for her husband to use her power—and moved over toward the building to get a little bit of distance from the fight. Once Light had set her down, Amp went to join Dr. Quinn.
Plus turned and fired off some lightning into the monster's back,
Minus using the reprieve Light had given her from running away to
twist some shadows up in between it and Plus. As it whirled and
started in the direction the shocks had come from, the thorny shadows
grabbed onto an ankle, tripping it and sending it toppling forward;
it struck out four of its arms, stabbing their ends into the ground
to keep itself from falling fully prone.
Light lightsped herself to the top of its head and hopped down to
just past its neck, drawing two of her sword into her hands and
striking them halfway into its back before running down along it,
letting them scrape through its body behind her. It roared, pushing
itself upright, and she leapt off with the momentum, turning in
midair to throw both blades into its chest as it twisted around to
try to slash at her. Emma threw it some fire and icicles from the
sides, and it chose to turn in Plus's direction—also where the
nearest building was—so Light, now standing on its right, quickly
gave it an illusion of Plus running off to its left. She didn't make
the illusion too fast, so it could easily catch up and start
trying to slash through it.
While they were keeping it busy, Amp boosted Rory, and she took the
opportunity of the giant six-armed beast coming close to run up,
jump, and kick it in the side with both feet, pushing herself off to
jump away and roll along the ground, popping upright next to the
building again. The monster tumbled forward-sideways onto the ground
and rolled briefly in the direction it had been kicked toward, ending
up front-side-up and flailing to get upright again.
Light moved herself next to Dr. Quinn, raising her hand and
concentrating some sunlight down into some lasers through the
monster's chest. "I thought Clark was borrowing your power?"
"Not all of it, especially when I'm like this!" she
said, grinning.
Rowan moved effortlessly through the attacks of her two present
opponents, stabbing and slashing them here and there throughout. The
other three broke off, one running in Fay's direction while the other
two pursued the source of their most recent pain—Cynthia. She laid
down a wall of fire again, but they just dove through it, quickly
coming too close for comfort. She got out her sword and blocked some
strikes, watching as Fay ran up, striking the one after her on the
back with her staff to knock it stumbling forward on her way past it.
The redheaded vixen quickly dove away to one side as Fay came close
enough to place a point-explosion between her two assailants.
Both of the ones Rowan was fighting collapsed at this point, becoming
indistinct yet still present, and began to slowly reform themselves.
She went to Cynthia to offer her a hand in getting up.
"Fffh..push 'em all into one spot and I can burn them?" the
redhead said, taking Rowan's help after a brief hesitation and making
it to her feet. Fay's two targets turned on her, and she dodged and
struck back, knocking one of them over. The one she'd sent stumbling
came running after her from behind, so Rowan intercepted it, catching
its blades, kicking it in the stomach, and then following up with a
slash through its chest while it staggered backwards.
"Solid enough plan," Fay replied, keeping her opponent
occupied just long enough for Rowan to deal with the one behind her
before whirling, her and Rowan swapping places for the latter to grip
the monster's arms in short-lived water tentacles and stab it through
the chest. By now, the two that had been prone and indistinct had
become somewhat solid again, and were getting back on their feet with
some snakelike hissing sounds coming from their mouths, getting ready
to press the attack again. "How to execute?"
"Stand in the center, Cynthia," Rowan advised, pointing at
a particular spot with her sword. "You'll have to play bait for
a moment in order for this to work."
"Got it!"
"Got it!"
As the hands came out to attack again, one of them swatted at the
flarepearl and landed a direct hit, causing the summon to erupt into
a fiery explosion in the air that caught several of the arms going
around that way and made black mist steam up off of them. Magus's
concentration was naturally elsewhere, as she began quickly backing
away in anticipation of more incoming arms. She brought her sword
back out and forced her hand to start slowly lifting it against some
strenuous objection, thinking to channel another barrier or
something.
One of the arms swept around and then suddenly came straight along
the ground, charging right at her from her front. The end of it had
an uncomfortably familiar, stinger-like shape. "Nngh...!"
Pushing her arm to the position to cast Block was painful; it just
didn't want to bring the weight of that sword all the way up to where
it had to be.
Magus's backwards steps were going faster and faster, making her
balance unstable, and that thing still rushing up at her.
She started to panic.
"B-block, block, block block blockblockblockblock!"
Only the very last one actually worked—her arm and the sword
finally up in the right position—and the shield appeared
just barely in time for the stinger to hit it headlong. On its
approach the stinger-arm had swept downward and struck up, aiming for
her center mass, and the impact from it shattered the shield with all
of its momentum and strength. Even though Magus wasn't physically
connected to the shield, that force carried through it anyway,
flinging her a terrifying distance up into the air.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
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