World Tree MUSH

A small city in southeastern Ireland.
June 7th, 1997.
Late afternoon.

A narrow alleyway near a major shopping center suddenly erupts into chaos as first a woman in plate armour rushes out. There's a confused halt for a brief moment, in which point a pair of massive half-rotten wolves threaten to catch up and she spurs her horse on to keep going.

Following the pair of zombie direwolves is a collection of short zombies made from smaller humanoids, each riding a zombie wolf. At the center is a woman of the same race as the other humanoids, scales pale white and eyes red. After a moment of confusion, she begins to bark orders at the others.

The fastest are to chase down the fleeing woman should she not stand and protect the civilians. The others are to kill the civilians. She herself stays back.

A tall, gangly woman with brown hair is walking along down the street, with a golden-furred catlike and vaguely squirrel-like critter on her shoulder. "This is kind of wild," says Anna. "In this world, it's literally, like, three and a half years before I was born."

Spiral nods thoughtfully. "Time-displaced worlds are pretty neat!" she says. "Think a version of 'you' is gonna be born here?"

Anna shakes her head. "Probably not, I checked, there's no 'Brighton, Massachusets.' We --"

Screaming crowds! Anna immediately moves one hand up to hold Spiral down, and rushes forward at the speed of a car, legs glowing with a blue light! She comes to a stop and the blue light vanishes as she sees the monsters. "Ohhhh boy! Spiral, stay back!"

"Right!" Spiral floats back up to a safe distance.

A pale blue glow surrounds Anna as she gathers her magical energy into herself, and then it forms a column of light, which shatters to reveal that she's in a blue magical girl costume with pink and white trim! She then charges straight at the zombie wolves with a cry of "WINDRUNNER BOOST!"

Spiral facepaws. "She's really calling out all her attacks now," she mutters to herself. "Heh, ohhhh, Anna ..."

>> SUMMARY[Heart Mage Anna] >> Anna transforms, and holds boost to win!

    Ireland is... Not normally on Rydia's way back to Snowpeak. But the last of the Summoners has been feeling particularly cooped up and in need of a bit more fresh air on her way back to the lonely mountain fortress, after some errand or another.
    Needless to say, in a semi-modern 1997 Irish city, a girl wearing nothing but green, with green hair and green eyes, might seem a little too into the local shamrock spirit. But then there's the fact that she's mounted on a giant yellow bird.
    Gripping the reins of her loyal chocobo, the green-haired child lets the bird amble at a carefree pace-- right up until the alley she's about to cross explodes with action.
    "--The hell?!" She blurts, at first. Before she actually sees just who and what burst out from between the buildings.
    A woman in armor. Okay.
    Zombies.
    It takes her a second to parse this all before a dawning realization clicks into place as the undead are ordered to turn their attention on civilians nearby.
    "Hylia damn it." The child hisses before tugging on the reins. "Chocobo! Do something!"
    "Kweh?" The bird twitters. Before he squawks. "WARK!"
    This is about when a big yellow bird and his little green rider surge forward in a burst of speed, the massive bird leaping up to lash out with deadly claws in a powerful kick to try and take down one of the undead riders and wolf mounts.

Somebody's always bringing That One Guy to the party. You know, the guy that gets way too drunk, acts way too wild, and ends up breaking all your grandmother's expensive china plates. That's more or less what it looks like is going on here. Except That One Guy brought an entire army of destructive drunks. And they're not drunk, they're undead. And instead of breaking china plates, they're trying to eat the other partygoers' faces.
 
So nothing like that at all, but the analogy still works. It's just as annoying. But also incredibly dangerous for people who don't have the ability to face down a horde of zombies mounted on wolves that are also zombies. Which is likely most of the people who live here. So it's a good thing that Lucia happens by, along with a bunch of other off-worlders.
 
Lucia leaps and wall-runs onto the roofs, figuring there would be less resistance up there. Running with supernatural speed even in her human form, she heads for the site of the trouble. Her gray suit may not stand out too much, but that white mantle on her shoulders and her bright crimson hair will probably stand out as she runs and leaps over the rooftops. She'll worry about how to get down when she gets where she's going.
 

>> SUMMARY[Rydia] >> Chocobo KICK!

The response surprises both the undead leader and the woman in armor, the former issues quick instructions, simple concepts. 'Get in formation' 'take down the insurgents' and 'slay the living.' This despite the fact that Anna's charge bowls over and nearly flatters one of the wolves against the wall, it slumps down to the ground, motionless. This despite the fact that a giant yellow bird tears through one of the riders, slashing open the wolf it rides.

The woman stops her horse and turns around, draws her lance and turns to the others. "I know not who ye may be, but hear me. If you wish to bring an end upon this scourge and protect the living, you must tear apart their anchor to mortality."

She points her lance towards the paleskinned, red-eyed woman leading the undead. "So long as the energies that bind her to this mortal realm are intact, she will maintain the binding on the dead put under her command." And yet, it isn't as simple as that. Some of the zombies in the back have bows, and begin to take pot shots at the fleeing civilians, those at the front respond to the aggression with which they've been met in kind. Claw and fang from the wolves, steel from their riders.

Anna nods. "Take out the leader, got it!" she says; she has a somewhat androgynous voice. "Oh shit --" Her eyes go wide as she archers start firing at the civilians, and she quickly does a backflip out of the way of the wolves, gathering Heart Power into her hands and firing blasts of pale blue light towards the archers! She makes one halfhearted attempt to try to block the arrows directly with her own blasts, but she simply doesn't have the proper aim or precision at her current level of experience.

    Depite the rotten stench and the sticky mess of fetid viscera, the small girl on the big bird keeps enough of a cool composure to yank back on the reins as the wolves and riders turn their attention.
    This doesn't mean Rydia isn't stifling a curse when attention turns towards her, though.
    Rydia curses. It is particularly colorful, coming from a girl her age. But that does not mean she isn't paying attention.
    Green eyes dart to Anna as she starts to fire on the archers. The woman on the horse indicates the leader of the undead horde. Rydia's decision is made for her. There is little she can do to protect or save the civilians directly. With the calmness of a killer, she unslings her shortbow from where it rests on her back and pulls an arrow from the quiver at her side.
    Nudging her avian steed with her knees she lets him run free as she knocks the arrow into place, green eyes narrowing. Chocobo plays evasion, darting amid the wolves and riders while Rydia takes aim... And unleashes a shot aimed for the red-eyed woman.

It does take Lucia a few moments to get to the area of the trouble. She can barely catch the instructions from the armored woman from her height, but she does hear them. And now there's the matter of how she's going to get down from a tall building. With the undead beginning to attack the civilians, there isn't a whole lot of time to screw around trying to figure out a safe path down. So instead...
 
Lucia just jumps. She tucks into a streamlined position that should make her fall faster. She's not going to just hit, though... A few moments before she would have hit the ground, there's a burst of light and flame, and Lucia is gone. In her place is a birdlike humanoid with white feathers that seem to glow with an inner light. She has those curved swords, though, and their blades are fiery orange-red.
 
More than that, a large pair of wings erupts from her back, slowing her fall. Of course, on the way down, there's no reason she can't rain down fire-elemental feathers from above on some of those bow-wielding undead, care of the Flame Heart in her Amulet. Fortunately the feathers home in, so it shouldn't hit any of the others that are also trying to attack the undead.

- = Lucia's Amulet Status = -
Attribute: Flame Heart (Fire-elemental attacks)
 Movement: Aerial Heart (Flight)
  Support: Offense Heart (Greater attack strength)

Anna takes down some kobols, and even interferes with some shots. The kobold zombies aren't particularly strong, nor skilled. Their aim relies on numbers rather than accuracy, their strikes are wasteful, aggressive and dangerous, but wasteful. Right as Rydia's arrow pierces the red-eyed woman's throat, truth is brought to the armoured woman's words. The wolf Anna nigh-flattened gets up, seemingly little worse for the wear. Angry and vengeful, though, lunging at Anna.

Lucia takes care of the archers that Anna didn't reach, for the time being. The fire seems to work better against the wolves they ride than the riders themselves, perhaps explained by the red-eyed woman opening up her jaws and revealing rows of sharp teeth just long enough for a cloud of noxious fumes to spill forth as flames would spill from the mouth of a dragon.

"Don't breath that in." The armoured woman warns, likely without needing to, and spurs her steed on to create some distance, taking out her bow and aiming a few good shots at the joints of the wolf the undead leader is riding.

    A shot like that would be lethal. Except against someone already dead.
    Rydia scowls as her target displays an undead resilience that should really not surprise her, but in the end renders what would have been the perfect shot moot and impotent.
    The girl slings her bow, focusing on not getting mauled by the other riders, guiding her chocobo in an evasive pattern...
    Right until Lucia descends.
    The sudden bright flare of light distracts her, and when Rydia turns her head to look, she is met with a vision that makes her breath catch in her throat.
    Light. Fire. Fire. Even so briefly visible from the bird-like figure that drops from the sky stalls the child.
    "A-ah...!?" Rydia's calmness is gone. Her composure shatters in an instant as flaming feathers rain on kobold archers and the next thing she knows, she's burying her face against her chocobo's neck.
    "Kweh! Kweh!" The bird chirps and takes immediately starts backing down, to calm his rider and keep away from the noxious gas the undead woman is venting.

Anna's eyes go up at the sight of the strange white figure descending! "... Wow!" she murmurs, eyes wide, just before Lucia unleashes her flames on the surrounding zombies. She jumps back to avoid the suddenly-unflattened wolf, and then ...

Oh crap.

"Rydia!" Anna exclaims in alarm, sparing a brief glance towards the distressed summoner. She turns back towards the leader, starts gathering a large amount of Heart Power at once, and then ... stops. "... actually, how about I not transform into Magical Girl Pretty Collateral Damage," she mutters.

She jumps back to avoid the cloud, shakes her head, and sighs, gathering a considerably smaller amount of Heart Power. "Heart Power ..." She then throws all of it at once directly at the red-eyed woman! "... SHOOT!"

The bird-woman floats down to land lightly on the ground, and then she reels in the demony-ness. With a reverse explosion, the bird-woman disappears and Lucia returns. Though all of a sudden the cloud of ick spreads from the zombie woman, and upon the advice of the woman in armor, Lucia gets some distance with a few backwards flips.

It's only when she's more or less out of range that she notices Rydia's break of composure. And of course instantly gets the wrong idea -- the girl saw her as that great winged fiend. Clearly she's frightened of Lucia wholesale -- afraid of Lucia, who believes herself to be a monster. It gets a slump of her shoulders, and the tilts her head down for a moment.

('Not now,') Lucia tells herself, and squares her shoulders. There will be time to grieve for her lack of humanity later. Right now there's trouble.

That stuff the zombie woman breathed out is a danger, Lucia realizes, and seeks to dissipate it. Though her idea of dissipating it happens to involve explosives. She pulls a strange black and red thing that looks a little like a knee pad for a bicycle rider, minus any straps, from a pouch on her belt. "Stand clear!" Lucia calls out. Then she presses something on the device, which sets it to beeping.

Though she actually holds onto it briefly, until the beeping speeds up, before tossing it into the vicinity of the zombies. Even if it misses, the shockwaves should help dissipate that fog of ick.

Rydia's shot was not impotent. Where before the leader was barking commands, now she's just acting and gesturing, and the group's cohesion breaks. The other undead, it turns out, are thicker than a castle's walls. They are predatory and instinct driven, and descend upon Rydia's moment of weakness, despite an attempt of their leader to gesture them to order.

Anna's shot is effective in that confusion, piercing the noxious fumes and knocking down the leader, thereby bringing an end to that vile breath attack. Lucia's bombs dissipate the gas to a point where breathing it will at worst make you feel sick for a few days.

The armoured woman sees them all descend upon Rydia, but this gives a perfect opportunity. "This is our chance, they abandoned their post. Charge forwards." She recommends forcefully, swapping back to the lance to follow her own words.

    Too panicked to see rhyme or reason, to even notice that she's muted the leader, Rydia clings to her chocobo for dear life. The bird valiantly does his best to keep his rider safe in the sudden turning of the tide that rushes them as the undead give in to their bloodlust and turn on the delicious fear of a terrified child.
    Alas, her terror is not for the reasons Lucia may think, but even now there's no time to explain; she only barely registers Anna calling her name, and jade eyes glance up from her hiding place in the bird's yellow-feathered neck.
    And then it dawns on her. They're all giving chase. They're all chasing her. For an instant, her heart quails. And in the heat of her terror, Rydia reaches out for someone. Something. Anything to come to her aid as a faint glow suffuses the last Summoner of Mist.
    "WHITE WOLFOS!" She shrieks without thinking.
    And the world grows cold.
    A thin fog rolls in from around the corners of the nearby buildings, hanging in a mist low to the ground. And a low, mournful, howl pierces the skies.
    And then the Wolfos is there. Charging down the streets at a full-tilt sprint, crystals of ice jutting from its snowy fur, the beast stops in front of the child; a massive wolf easily the size of a car. And it turns its hateful red eyes upon the undead and snarls. Before it is among them, thrashing and gnashing, great claws of ice and murderous fangs brought down with an indiscriminate hate.

>> SUMMARY[Rydia] >> Summon: White Wolfos

Anna is still very concerned for Rydia, and she does flinch back a bit when Lucia's explosives go off. But she nods. "Right!" she says. She takes a deep breath, turns to the red-eyed woman, and gathers her Heart Power together once again!

White Wolfos.

Anna blinks, startled into dropping the attack! "... Okay, then," she says, and a lopsided grin forms. "Anyway!"

She gathers Heart Power into her hands, but doesn't fire it yet. She leaps forward, and a pale blue corona surrounds her entire body as she glides through the air. When she passes over the red-eyed woman, she blasts straight down, the kickback launching her higher into the air!

>> SUMMARY[Heart Mage Anna] >> Rocket jump.

Charing on a little girl? Rydia may be no ordinary girl -- but to be fair, Lucia doesn't know that. All she knows is that Rydia is really good with a bow. Which may not help her if she's scared. And since Lucia believes she caused it, well... she's under obligation to do something about it. The pauses briefly, to fiddle with her amulet again -- she's switching out a couple of the small stones inside it, the astute will be able to see.

The reason she's doing this becomes clear when, after she's done, she tucks the item away, and that nimbus of energy surrounds her again, exploding outwards. And again the bird-woman appears. But her swords do not glow with orange-red power anymore. This time that energy is blue-white.

She heads right for the approaching horde of zombies, moving with true supernatural quickness. As she strikes out at the horde, it's not just the quick strikes of her swords that causes damage. Small particles of ice and snow fall from her swords as she swings, freezing at the area she strikes every time she attacks.

- = Lucia's Amulet Status = -
Attribute: Frost Heart
 Movement: Quick Heart
  Support: Offense Heart

Rydia's summon and Lucia tear through the undead. Anna's blast tears through their leader right as the armoured woman's lance pierces the heart, and what's left of this little force not only goes feral and turns on itself, it also becomes sluggish and easy to mop up. It doesn't take long to do any of that.

The woman raises the visor of her halmet. "Please forgive me if this sounds strange to ye. I would rather not ask, but alas, I must." She loos towards those who fought with her, "What in Cadwaladar's name is this place and how did I get here?"

    As quick as it had come, the White Wolfos is gone, charging off into the distance after dealing what it viewed to be sufficient damage and fulfilling its contract. There's not much left to the undead, after that is there? Rydia watches almost vacantly as the white figure that is Lucia, along with Anna and Gwyneira wrapping up the assault and take out the leader.
    It takes a nudge from her chocobo's beak before the girl even realizes the armored woman is addressing them. "Wh... uh..." ... Where exactly are they is a good question. It's a good thing Rydia was paying attention to that sign she passed earlier.
    "... Ireland..." She answers, voice hollow with the telltale signs of shellshock.

Anna feels kind of weird about helping to get rid of the undead, but honestly mopping the floor with hordes of mindless monsters is perfectly within her usual idiom.

She takes a deep breath, and walks over to put a comforting hand on Rydia's shoulder. "It's okay," she says softly. "The fire's gone now. You're safe now."

It's only then that she turns to the other woman. "Well," she says, "you've wandered through a portal to another world." She looks back the way the zombies came. "... An ephemeral, unstable portal to another world, looks like." She turns back. "But anyway ... there's like hundreds or thousands of worlds, all connected to a massive World Tree, basically. I'm Heart Mage Anna Freeman, and this is Rydia the summoner."

Spiral floats over at that point. "And I'm Anna's friend Spiral," she says. "I can probably answer any question you have about the World Tree."

Anna nods in agreement. "Probably better than I can."

"I want to say that's not possible, but in my days I have never seen a city like this. Nor people who fight like ye do, so I guess I may have to consider it." The woman answers Anna, clearly unsure what to do with Rydia. "So they call the place Ireland? I'm Gwyneira Haf, a woman at arms."

    There's a slight flinch at the hand on her shoulder. But it does what is needed pulls Rydia back from the haze of her horrors. The girl draws a deep, slow, mind-clearing breath while rubbing at her face with one hand.
    "M-mn... Rydia. Of Mist." That's her proper introduction, even though Anna just gave it for her. "... I'm fine. I'm okay, really." Muttered a breath later before she's on the proper topic of 'where is poor Gwyneira'.
    "It's... Complex. The tree-thing. I try to not think about it too hard. It's easier that way."

Anna shrugs. She concentrates for a moment, and then in a smaller burst of light, she's back to her brown-haired civilian form. "'Ireland' is a particular ... nation, I guess, on a world named Earth." She makes a face. "There's like a lot of different alternate versions of Earth, too."

"Pretty much," Spiral says. "But Rydia also has good advice, too."

"Good to make ye acquaintance." Gwyneira answers, "Wish it'd been under better circumstances." She listens to what they have to say and thinks. "I shall just accept the matter as fact for now, and see what I must do with this after. Does the name Islwyn mean ought to either of ye?"

    For a girl so young, Rydia has advice that could rival that of a sage. ... Except for the actual Sage that she personally knows, anyway. She's still a little rattled, but is rallying faster with each passing moment.
    "Can't say I've even heard that name before. They someone important?"

Anna smiles. "Nice to meet you, too!" Magical girls are totally all about friendship. At the question, though, she frowns thoughtfully. "I haven't," she says. "What about you, Spiral?"

Spiral shakes her head. "Can't say I have."

"Then ye are blessed. He's an immensely powerful necromancer" The woman frowns a moment, thinking. "I haven't seen a town where the people didn't cower in fear of his undead legions in decades. What ye fought was bit a sliver of one of his vanguards, and naught compared to his proper legions." She begins collecting the corpses, "Thank ye for the assistance, I'm going to dispose of these corpses, in case of residual necromancy."