World Tree MUSH

    The storm picks up strength, thick dark clouds becoming nearly black and only illuminated by the volumnious lightning. Thunder echos and rolls across the nascent mountains and plains while rain drives forward in oppressive sheets. Seeming to be the literal eye of the storm is a baleful red glow from just beyond the edge of the new world. The city-cathedral still glows brilliantly with all the colors of sunset, the only constant source of illumination in this place.
    The click-clack of the world's weaving has stopped, the titanic ribbons of shimmering chaos no longer weaving into the new world at the edge. Through the haze of rain, barely lit by the lightning and the unreal sunset, is a glinting form of glass and starlight so large it beggars the senses. It is vaguely shaped like a nightmare hybrid of scorpion, spider and predatory bird. From one end of the foggy horizon to the next, bigger than the world itself, looming impossibly tall into the vast storm.
    Fair-Spoken Rishi, the golden man with strange magi-tech implants from the city, visibly blanches at the sight of the beast. Many of the war carnival of raksha, the fair ones who had been enemies of the World only moments before, break for the gates of the city screaming for mercy and protection from the behemoth. 
    Those fair folk who didn't flee are still dazed by the sight. The war singer whom Holly had crippled with hot sauce down the throat says a name to Holly, Cagliostro, and Rishi. "It is Ishiika, the grass-cutting scythe."

Holly looks up at the massive creature, wondering how they're going to fight such a beast. Her attention then turns towards Cagliostro, "I'm guessing you don't have any way to make it a lot smaller do you? I don't think I can take control of it with my magic." Even if she did, what would she do with such a monster. She doesn't think that there's many places that could safely live without causing any trouble.

    Cagliostro frowns. "That makes it sound like a lawn care specialist, which worries me more. 'Ishiika, the Rolling Devestator of Worlds' would be bad enough. But at least it isn't 'Ishiika, the Palfator' or something." She sounds flippant, but she actually is rubbing her chin in concern. "What sort of special abilities does it have? Or is it just... big and stompy? That can be bad enough."

    Holly's question immediately gets a shake of Cagliostro's head. "No. Well, yes, of course it's possible. But in the time we have here, with the materials available, and without knowing more about it? No, definitely not. We'll have to think of some way to either pinpoint its weakness, or just divert its attention away, I think."

    Asharaya hesitates, face tweaked a bit in concentration before she explains the best she can to Cagliostro. "It is a weapon. No different than my voice." She pats a hand to her throat, then says. "I do not kill with my blade, I kill with my heart." Her voice is still terrible and raspy.
    The other remaining fair folk approach Holly and Cagliostro, looking more like a court of royalty than warriors. "Do you need weapons, shape-born?" Strange things are presented, such as a sword hilt with no blade, a fistful of dust, a ball of wind, and more esoteric and undescribable things besides.
    A man wreathed in sunlight opens the gate, talking with the fair folk who seek asylum. After a few moments, the fair folk are allowed inside. The corona of sunset is emanating from the man, who winds his way down to the raksha warriors, Rishi, Cagliostro, and Holly, gripping an oversized hammer made from a white stone and red-gold metal. The otherwise ordinary appearing man looks at Cagliostro and Holly, slightly sheepish looking. "Sorry I'm late. Name's Syd."
    The beast named Ishiika unleashes some kind of bladed limb that rends a gash in the sky, from which no light emanates. Thunderous footsteps roll through the storm as the nightmare shape approaches.

"Maybe, it's weak against the cold? It's partly a giant bug after all. Divert it? I mean, I guess we could get to chase after us, but what would get its attention? Maybe a giant insect to eat?" Holly figues it must eat a lot of it does so. 

 "I'm guessing they don't have a giant bug swatter." Lavaux looks at the weapons offered to them before his attention turns towards Syd, "A hammer's not a bad idea, but I think you're going to need something larger to squish it."

    Cagliostro waves away the suggestion of weapons. "I wouldn't know how to use them." This doesn't seem to bother her. She's just looking thoughtful, then turning aside to Syd, "Hello." Trying to maintain a calm and collected presence is important for morale! Even if she's kind of a troll at times, she understands this.

    "Well. I suppose the first thing we could try would be just blasting it to the side, to make it go away." She looks around. "I don't suppose there are any records of how anyone ELSE got rid of this thing?"

    The glowing brown-haired man (who seems to have a glowing half-filled circle blazing on his forehead) scratches his head. "I... don't know. This is all really new."
    The hoarse-voiced singer says suddenly, realizing a thing. "Changes you Shape-born make to us are permanent."
    "Oh." Syd scratches his thin beard in thought. "What if we shaped the beast into something else? It'd be nice to have some stars in the sky."
    Ishiika the nightmare thing carves a vast furrow in a mountain, sending plumes of earth across the world, carving trails and muddy craters near the city.
    Syd ducks as a granite chunk flies uncomfortably close overhead. "... Any better ideas?"

"Making it into stars, isn't a bad idea...wait, you can do that?!" Holly sounds like a kid on Christmas as she says that. "You can reshape people's forms just like that? Wow, I wonder if I can make myself into a great witch..." She can't help but to wonder about that now.

 "I think they can do that because they don't have tangible forms." Servis is quick to point out

"So it's not like Rue's magic where she transforms people then? And could they make someone into a living human again?" She looks at Servis and Lavaux as she does that.

    "I think it is only creatures like this that are... not entirely fully formed," Cagliostro suggests, making a careful stare at the massive creature in the distance. She decides to step... back away from flying granite and trees and whatever, and then clucks her tongue.

    "Very well," she reasons. "Then we just need to force it into something that is more useful. One of those scythes would make a nice waterfall, don't you think? Though if I am to do that, we need to get closer."

    Rishi and the warrior raksha hurry back to the city, seeking shelter from the stone rain as well as the fury of the storm. There's flashes of light from the city as the cannons on the wall shoot down the incoming rocks and debris. There's a soft midnight blue glow emanating from the city after the defensive fire. Cordon walls start to emerge and form a protective shell, making the city look closer to some kind of space-faring vessel.
    A ride in a fast ship later, the heroes are close enough to Ishiika to jump onto the thing if they want, though it appears it is crawling with smaller versions of itself; nightmares of glass and starlight chitin.
    Syd sees this. "Saturn's mask, why does there have to be so many of them?" He glances at the others, shrugs, then leaps, hammer in hand.

Daisy watches everything, staying quiet and letting people who're actually good at talking do the talking. She just rides along, peering at this Ishiika curiously. "I don't think it's Ishiika's fault it's like this." She muses to the others. "So... when the stories are told of this, write it as a rest, a reward for doing its duties - not a punishment It might help stop it coming back angry later, or tryina make aliens to come invade or something."
Daisy looks at the wave of bugs, and she's about to reach a hand out to stop him when he makes the jump. "...at least let me clear you a landing zone first, man." She protests, unslinging her cannon. Ammunition rattles down the flexible chute even before the barrel locks into place, the possum unleashing two slug shells at where she estimates Syd is going to land. There shouldn't be *too* much fragmentation from those rounds, while at the same time it should clear the bug-things enough to provide a much firmer landing for him.

"Wait, a moment...they're just glass? Holly just summon something heavy and drop it on them." Servis realize they're not as much as he first thought. "From a safe distance that is, we don't want you to get lacerated."

 "I don't know, if I can summon anything that large..." Holly focuses for a moment and tries to summon something that would be helpful before several small metal cookie tins rain from the sky at the glass insects.

    Ah, someone with actual firepower is here. Well, Cagliostro does have her flying snake, but that's just circling her at the moment. She hops on, hitching a ride while considering the situation. "So. I am not sure if this will work, but if it does it will be really interesting, so you should watch."

    With that, she finally does something. Her gestures reach toward the various 'little ones' and she tries to make a... fire blast! But she needs elemental sources for that. So... she'll just see if this wild-spawned creature anatomy is good for raw materials, yes?

    The smaller versions of the great beast aren't precisely glass or chitin. They're made of something else that's only quasi-real. Cagliostro's magical gesture causes one to explode into a miniature nebula of light and dust before it billows outward into a wall of fire. 
    As the cookie tins are conjured, they take on a sort of life of their own from the presence of something of raw chaos. They twist into cutesy versions of the Halloween creatures they were supposed to be and begin attacking the smaller beasts. 
    The rocket scatters the beasts on the back of Ishiika in that area and causing a crack in the hide of the behemoth as well. From it emanates light, sounds, smells, and objects instead of blood.
    Syd nods, having been helpfully kept back by Daisy. "Something I can get my hands on then!" Now he jumps into the cleared space, reaching with one hand as the brilliant sunset aura heatlessly blazes. There's a brief vision of some kind of lion surrounding Syd as he grabs the chaos-stuff leaking from the Behemoth. "I have *no* idea what I'm doing!" He starts pulling, yanking ribbons of glowing matter from the wound.

>> GAME >> Syd Fortis spends an Edge for: Grabbing Raw Chaos

    This isn't something Cagliostro is used to working with! She's messed around with raw chaos in her own world, but the rules are slightly different here. Not so different that she doesn't exercise a bit of caution. She has a giant ego because she knows what she can do, but also what she might not have the best chance in doing.

    "I wonder..." The little alchemist huffs, and nurses a bruise on her shoulder from one of the rocks thrown about. Then she makes for more of the raw chaos creatures, only this time she doesn't make them anything as volatile as fire. She's trying to wrestle with the creatures themselves, the tiny versions, to force them into shapes of stone and metal, bindings that turn back the giant beast. Ishiika is not something she's sure how to handle otherwise, but perhaps she can use the strange rules of thos not-yet-settled place to turn it away. "This is a new experience for me, as well! And that's so very difficult to find!"

Holly looks a bit surprised as the cookie tins transform as what she was trying to summon. Was this a way of fixing her magic? She would have to do further research into this. She can't help but to notice the crack in the beast's back, it seems like they found a weak spot. The witch hops on her broom and takes to the sky before slamming herself with full force into the creature's back trying to use her physical strength to break it open further.

Daisy watches the mages doing their work, thinking on how best to help, considering she's got the magical talent of a dead haddock. Her armour helped her weather the rock-storm so she's mostly unhurt. Okay. Keep the magic people safe so they can do things she have no hope of understanding. THis, Daisy can do - she settles her feet solidly on Ishiika's back and starts to fire on any of the little creatures that get too close to Holly or Syd.

    Holly opens up Ishiika's carapace more, allowing Syd to grab with both hands. He pulls, the lion in the blazing banner surrounding him roaring with the effort. White hot matter shoots upward as it spatters against the determined Solar exalt, meteors shooting improbably upwards instead of falling to the earth far below.
    There are so so many of the beasts to keep away from Syd and Holly. The shelling helps keep them at bay, breaking them into small multi-colored glass-like fragments.
    There's another will fighting Cagliostro's transmutation efforts. It feels as though it is coming from the baleful red light in the distant sky amid the storm. Slowly, the little beasts closest to Cagliostro become stiff and immobile, becoming rock and iron.
    It is the presence of the latter that causes Ishiika to stop rending the landscape and heavens. A roar that engulfs the senses rolls across the land as cold unworked iron touches the fae weapon. Countless smaller Ishiika are thrown like drops of water from the beast as it bucks in pain.

Daisy binks a bit, feeling the creature buck and hearing that roar of pain. "Huh." She mutters, struggling to keep her footing and unable to keep firing; she's got to use her wings to stabilize herself. 
When things calm a little, as an experiment, she touches the barrel of her cannon to the ground; if raw iron hurts it, what about worked modern high-tech alloys? They're even further from raw chaos than raw iron is, right? It's gotta be worth a try, right? It's got iron in it!

    Seeing the effect the transumation has, Cagliostro blinks, then quickly comes to the realization that something here is amiss... in a way she can use. The peppering spray of bullets from Daisy is already pretty useful as cover, but the petite blonde wastes no time in hurriedly dashing toward Daisy, calling out, "Oh possom dear, I don't suppose you could do little me a favor, hmm? I just want to make a teensy little change to your bullets..."

    Meaning, she's going to use transmutation again, and hopefully Daisy will allow her to, because fighting the possom's will would make it very difficult to do this on the fly. But she chimes, "Keep shooting while they do their little thing, hmm?" And she's just going to transmute the bullet to iron as they're firing.

Holly notices that bullets are effective against the beasts. She thinks for a moment if there's anything she can summon that has bullets. She points her candy shaped staff at the ground and focuses for a moment trying to conjure a weapon of some sort. There's an orange flash of light before she summons a chaingun turret with a bandolier of candy corn bullets.

    There's a clunk as Daisy's gun barrel makes contact with Ishiika's carapace, but no massive reaction like the ferrified little ones elicited. However, the transmuted iron bullets are just fantastic, exploding the lesser ishiika into shimmering cobwebs that rapidly fade into nothing. The weirdness of the candy-corn shooting chaingun seems effective too, working as well as bullets.
    There's retaliation from Ishiika, a massive insect-like limb looming like a shadow of doom from above. Syd grabs onto a beast who's been transmuted to iron with both hands and pulls, shaping a massive cavalry lance from it with his bare hands. "Hey! Keep it busy, huh?" and tosses the weapon towards Holly. Syd spares a glance around and feels gratitude that Cagliostro, Daisy, and Holly are warding off the little beasts.

Holly struggles a bit but she manages to catch the lance. The witch isn't the most coordinated person after all and has little experience when it comes to wielding weapons. Sure, she can use the weapon to pierce the beasts but she wouldn't fare well in an actual duel unless she got possessed by the ghost of a skilled warrior.

Daisy blinks at Calgiostro "Uh? Sure." She agrees, letting Cagliostro have access to the ammo drum and feed mechanism on the side of the cannon. "Make whatever it is you do happen in the belt not the drum, because that's the bit I swap out when it runs dry." She double-takes at Holly's gun and laughs "Nice! I like it!"
Daisy opens up with the transmuted bullets as soon as she's finished, having to re-adjust her footing every 3-4 rounds. "...can you anchor my feet down? I could keep up a near-continuous stream of fire if I didn't have to stop every few rounds to get my balance again."

    The request to anchor Daisy gets Cagliostro to purse her lips. "Aha!" That actually earns Daisy points, because Cags doesn't think highly of most of the people here. A quick-thinking request like that is actually pretty high on her list of good ideas.

    "I can," the alchemist offers. She briefly swaps from the transmuting bullets to wrap Daisy's lower legs in solid rock! The tight grip keeping her footing, but... "If your knees break, I'll heal them later," she offers, as if that were a minor inconvenience. Hey, that COULD be a side effect if Daisy isn't careful about that recoil!

    The small ishiika are well in hand, despite being innumerable. The iron lance and transmuted bullets make short work of them despite the endless waves.
    Syd probably should have told Holly to lance the incoming Ishiika limb. He didn't trust his own aim enough to simply throw a hastily made javelin that far. Not really having time for other options, he punches and chops a chunk of iron into a simple and rough spike about six feet long. "BRACE YOURSELVES!" And then he drives the spike directly into the open wound on Ishiika's carapace using the white stone hammer with a blow that rattles all the bones in his body.
    The beast flinches, scattering most of its smaller selves every which way across the new world. Cracks race across Ishiika's carapace from where the iron spike penetrated, becoming vast crevasses as the behemoth thrashes in agony. Syd tries to hold onto the spike for dear life as the death throes begin. The spike works itself loose amid the widening gaps and he's flung into the stormy skies.

>> GAME >> Syd Fortis spends an Edge for: Kaiju Killing Blow

>> GAME >> Daisy spends an Edge for: Fuck it, we'll do it live.

>> GAME >> Syd Fortis spends an Edge for: Weaving The World Into Existence

Oops, well Holly isn't the most perceptive person but she does her best to fight off the smaller beasts as the large one begins to die. The witch just hopes she isn't creating a buncy of new ghosts in the process. She's not quite sure how the afterlife works here especially since the beings aren't fully formed yet.

Daisy chuckles "They're replacements anyway, supposed to be rated for this. If they break I get free replacements AND I can sue them for false advertising." She giggles. Before she's fully grabbed in stone Daisy adopts a braced footing position, leaning forward a little and opening fire again. This time she can keep herself stable for the rest of the magazine. If she wasn't limited to 60 rounds per drum, her knees would indeed be at serious risk, but with the brace from her tail sharing part of the load and the rock around her lower legs stopping her sliding back, she can handle that much.
She watches Syd get thrown away and looks to Cagliostro in horror. "Break me loose!" She slings her cannon across her back, the barrel automatically folding into storage position while she waits, and then leaps into the sky, keeping her wings tucked to stop herself catching too much of the wind. She's almost lost in the storm fairly quickly, only the pink-tinted glow from her engines visiible as she chases Syd down, intending to grab him and fly him back to the others.

    Cagliostro rolls her eyes and sighs. "Lock me down, set me loose. Make up your mind." Despite her complaints, she actually does see why Daisy wants let loose, so even while she's grumbling her fingers are moving, and Daisy gets... waterlogged boots for her trouble. If she even wears boots. Mainly she turns the rock into mud, so it's a bit messy but quickly allows Daisy to fly upward.

    Cagliostro herself is left with the worry of any of the smaller beings here, but her flying snake can take care of defense, she hopes. She isn't going to send it out to attack anything, but it should at least protect her physical body.

    Syd hurtles through the air, thinking over how stupid his plan was. Just hit it really hard with a nail. Was every problem a nail to him? He couldn't even tell where the ground was for the storm clouds. So he had no idea how long it would be before he suffered a sudden collision with the ground. His next incarnation would never hear the end of it from his wife.
    Daisy can see Syd's trail easily, owing to the fluctuating scarlet, gold, and indigo the man's aura was blazing with. The quick-thinking opossum catches Syd long before his appointment with the earth below.
    Ishiika breaks apart, dissolving into glimmering cobwebs and those into stardust. With the breaking of the Grass-Cutting Scythe, the unrelenting storm finally begins to subside, as though the malign intelligence behind it, Ishiika, and the invading fair folk was conceding this round. The clouds disappate to reveal a dark and inky sky with sparse stars.

Daisy brings Syd back to the others, setting him down gently after landing and stepping over to Cagliostro for a fistbump. "Sorry to flip-flop on you like that." She says. "I just couldn't see any other way to stop 'im going splat. Nice work though, at least we managed to get one full drum out."
It's about now she notices the sky starting to clear, looking up with a blink "...woah."

"Wow, that was tough!" Holly's a bit exhausted after all that fighting and the chaingun disappears long since having run out of ammo. "Everyone okay?" She looks at the others. "That was a nice catch! I don't think I could have got him on my broom in time." She has enough trouble flying it by herself.

    For all her sass, Cagliostro is quiet when things start to clear up. At least until Daisy returns, and she idly gives the possom a fistbump back, casual as can be. Ourorobos whips around to encircle her again as she giggles, "Well, it looks like it worked. Thanks to yours truly, of course!"

    Her narcissism aside, she does give a brief, intrigued look at Syd as he returns as well. "Yes, it was very fortunate. This was an interesting little adventure indeed, wasn't it?" That part is genuine, the alchemist looking pleased at such a bizarre experience, far from the boring 'adventures' she often sits through.

Daisy beams at Holly. "That chaingun was neat. Thank you. Just like Blitzball right? Keep focussed on your target and make the catch."

    Syd whews and looks at the stars. "They'll need herding into the proper constellations. Don't know where we'll get a moon." There's a long pause as he glances around at the forests and vegetation. "Or a sun. Might have to make those..."
    The man shakes his head and then looks at Daisy, Holly, and Cagliostro. "Thanks for the help. You're welcome in the Patropolis of Ot any time." He indicates the city-spire in the distance, still faintly luminous with a deep blue aura.