World Tree MUSH

    Previously, in Assassin's Creed.

     "Glad you're here."
     "Sounds like someone who doesn't want to be here, to me."
    "You're not who we're looking for."
    "Well it took you long enough! I had to free myself I was waiting so damn long."

     Aquila, and Piera by extension, meanwhile follow Amalia. >Emily, target has stopped at a small building just outside of town, sending you coordinates and a visual reference. Piera is here also, waiting for you to arrive before confronting.< radios the shinki, sending through a coordinate burst and an image taken from her own vision of a one-storey house in the middle of a field, with a few trees dotted around the property.

    For Emily, teleporting from point A to point Z without passing through the other letters of the alphabet entails holding the destination in mind relative to her current position. When traveling five feet, this only requires a little bit of concentration. Getting to the town ... well, Emily's traveled farther. So it just takes a moment to open a staticky portal and add an effect which makes it look like darkness.

    She comes out right behind Aquila, and gestures to The Mandalorian to follow. "For the record," she says in a quiet voice, "the visual reference is unnecessary, but I mean, it doesn't hurt. Lessee ... defenses against that goddamn stabbinator ..." She taps her chin thoughtfully, considering for a moment.

    Stepping through Emily's portal shortly after her is not one but two figures. The beskar-clad bounty hunter known simply as The Mandalorian strides through the rip in the fabric of spacetime with the casual ease of someone who's been through one of the Eudaemon's portals enough to know that they're safe effective, and they work.
    "I was wondering." Is all he says in reply to Emily's remark as the second, smaller, figure comes floating out at his side in a hovering pram. The wide eyes of the little green youngling called The Child looking to and fro at his new surroundings.
    "Had a run-in with the spear huh?" Mando muses. "Well. Here's hoping we walk out with the spear, without it in one of us."

    Piera looks up from her perch as Emily steps through the portal, with Mando and Kiddo following soon after. She nods to The Mandalorian's comment, then stands. "Amalia isn't unreasonable, unlike the Templars, Isuppose she had a reason to steal the artifact." she muses, then hops off the edge of the roof into a hay cart below, rolling out of it like she were just stepping out of the front door.

    "Amalia Giacomo! I know you're in there. We just want to talk."

    As she calls out, she makes a gesture with her hand, out of sight of the house. Aquila lifts off her perch and zips off and around to the far side to provide overwatch, in case the thief tries to bolt again.

    Emily grins to Mando, declining to explain her teleportation in more detail. "Yeah, I got got!" she says cheerfully. "Fortunately I'm made of nanomachines, and we had a Crazy Diamond on hand."

    She shrugs at Piera; and with four arms, you have more with which to shrug. "Could've just been desperation, or something," she says. "Still, I suppose you know this world better than I do." There's a bit of ... unnecessary sharpness in her tone.

    She considers another moment, and in a swirl of silvery nanomachines, she becomes a four-armed robot of chrome from the neck down, just a human head with glowing purple eyes, silver hair in a pixie cut and massive holographic twintails which clip through the ground, and with a silver gleaming body covered in visible seams. And then ... her body separates at the seams, different chunks floating away from each other with no apparent means of connecting them, before they rejoin the next moment.

    "Okay," she says, adopting her amused and faintly smug smile. "I think I'm ready to rock!"

    And so they reach the house. For a moment. For a good, long, moment; The Mandalorian stares at Emily. Thankfully the faceless mask of his T-shaped helmet visor is sufficiently impassive for him, considering the Eudaemon's newest transformation and display.
    But The Child... The Child is enraptured. Reaching out from his little floating crib to try and ~touch~ a floating chunk of Emily Nyx while they're separate and floating.
    Mando on the other hand is back to business very quickly, shifting his helmet's visor mode to thermal scan the house as he draws his blaster and flicks a setting with his thumb.
    A keen eye would notice that he's dialed it back to 'stun'.

    From within the house, a voice cries out as something heavy thunks to the floor, then a stream of curses, before the door opens... and a man in gleaming silver armour steps out, dragging a wounded but still alive Amalia in one hand, with the Spear extended in the other, its tip seeming to 'flicker' as it seeks a new target, blood being tossed from the tip with each rapid twitch.

    "So nice of the little rat to lead me to my prize." comes the muffled voice of the man in the armour. His face is completely obscured, but it's obvious his eyes track from Piera, to Emily, then to The Mandalorian in turn. "You have a choice now. Save the girl, or take the prize." he then hauls Amalia forward, tossing her onto the ground in a heap with a wheeze of pain, the woman clutching a large wound in her abdomen... this guy has much better control of the Spear than The Seeker ever did!

    Emily chuckles at the Child, but doesn't respond. "You got a cute kid you're bringing into a combat situation, Mando," she says dryly. She takes note of the stun setting ...

    But, hmm. Well, this is a situation. He's much too far away to catch him in the Timestop Templartifact's area of effect, too. "Bad idea, dude," she calls back to the armored man, while privately getting ready to open a portal ... just as soon as she figures out the best place to put it. "We saw this coming a mile away, DeLorean Man here has his guns set to kill!"

    << I can get close enough to catch him in my time-stop, >> she radios her allies. << Or, I mean, close enough to do just about anything, really. Anyone got any preferences? >> (Her irreverent tone suggests that she might ignore said preferences.)

    The Child is still trying to paw at Emily even now that she's reconstituted herself.
    "He's seen worse." Mando asides in the most casual tone possible as... The situation takes a turn.
    "Too bad that Josuke kid isn't here right now." Mando muses coolly as the door opens and Amalia is handily dropped to the ground with a nasty wound. [Crazy Diamond] would have really come in handy right now, but it looks like the group is going to have to improvise.
    Once again, he looks to Emily. The choice?
    Save the girl or retrieve the precious artifact.
    <<Both?>> He comms under his breath to Aquila and Emily. <<Both.>>
    Then he pauses and turns to give Emily a very quizzical look from that faceless visor.
    DeLorean Man? Really?
    His focus returns quick and razor sharp though.
    <<Do it, Emily.>>

    Piera isn't privvy to the plans of the others. Aquila's the one with the radio, but she lifts over the edge of the house, floating midair behind the Spear Dude. She signals to hold, a clenched fist and the other arm held across the upraised fist arm in a + pose. Piera's eyes only briefly glance, and she holds her ground, turning brown eyes onto the armoured figure. She'll wait for the others to enact their plan.

    Amalia grunts, and slowly pulls herself along the ground, away from the Spear Dude, who just chuckles menacingly. "Neither, is it? A pity, perhaps it will spur the others into action if I finish off this little rat!"

    He lifts the spear, aiming to extend it out to lance through Amalia's prone form.

    << "Both" is good, >> Emily replies.

    "Nope!" shouts Emily, and a staticky portal opens up between Aquila and the Spear Dude. No time to add the darkness-y special effect. A Templar-like signet ring appears around her finger, too, glowing with glitchy, flickering runes. "Cuz guess what ..." She glides sideways through, ridiculously fast ...

    In a sphere a dozen feet wide, the world inverts colors except for Emily, leaving Amalia, Aquila, and the Spear Dude frozen in place. "... I've got a new trick up my sleeve," she finishes, conjuring up five golden energy bolts -- three aimed at the man's back, two at the arm holding the Spear -- which then also become inverted and frozen in time. "You could say that the Nyx is now a Run --"

    The timestop sputters and disappears, letting the bolts fly. "... a Runner-Up," she finishes quickly.

    The spear is raised. That's a cue to move if ever there was one.
    Both it is.
    As soon as Emily opens up the new portal, Mando moves. She's in faster. He crosses the threshold just as time stops.
    It's a tense span of time in which everything except Emily is frozen. He watches her unload.
    The Child's expression while frozen can be summed up as...

    8D

    As soon as everything unfreezes, he baseball-slides to Amalia and hauls her up one-armed, the other firing a quick series of stun bolts at the armored figure, because he hasn't had the time to re-set the blaster to a more lethal mode just yet.

    When Emily's portal appears, Piera moves with a fluid rapidity, her off-hand flicks out in an arc, sending a tight spread of throwing knives at the Spear Dude, which get frozen in place, mere inches from the slits in his faceplate and under the raised arms striking at weak points in the armour.

    Amalia cries out as she's hauled up, but doesn't resist. She gets a foot under her and starts pushing to help Mando get her away from the Templar.

    As Time unfreezes, the bolts, blasts and blades strike all at once, knocking the man flat on his face, knocking the spear out of his hands, and adding a surge of STUN for good measure... blood pools from where the blades struck, and the Templar doesn't seem to be moving. Aquila flits over to grab the Spear, the weapon having collapsed into it's 'waiting' form, which allows the little robot to wrap herself around it and float off as if grasping a bodypillow, her jetpack flaring with the extra weight.

    Emily makes a face. "Jeez, I didn't even need to fire anything at this point!" she says dryly, glancing between Mando and Piera. "And I probably shouldn't have wisecracked like that, either, damn." She nudges the prone man with her foot.

    She glances over at the Child's expression. "I've changed my mind, bringing the kid here was awesome," she says cheerfully. "Amalia, uhhh ..." She regards the young woman's stomach-injury, furrowing her brow. "... you ... doing all right?"

    Is it over? Mando is keeps himself between the injured Amalia and the now very prone, very bloody Templar.
    "..." He's silent for a long moment, and the child looks at the fallen Templar too.
    "Huh."
    That was... A little too easy.
    Not that he's going to complain.
    "You okay?" He finally asks the thief. "He was alone, right?"

    Piera looks at Emily, casually walks over to the downed Templar, and kneels. She does, at least, wait until the Eudaemon isn't looking, before slipping her Hidden Blade between the seam of the helmet and under-armour, ensuring the kill. She does it quietly, and removes the blade before saying. "Requiescat en pace... may you find what you seek in the next life." She stands, then, digs in a pouch and tosses a package to The Mandolorian, giving him a quick. "Give her this." as she tosses it his way. Inside is a vial, a couple of tablets, and the parcel wrap itself has some kind of adhesive and seems to be made of very absorbant material. "Il Mentore made sure all Medico we use carries these. They are, what do you say... 'all in one medical kits'."

    Amalia, for her part, grunts and applies pressure to her wound. "Si Signore, he was alone, was waiting for me when I arrived, Bastardo!" she spits in the direction of the now dead Templar. "Templar scum... I thought the group with the spear were Templar... that's why I stole it to begin with."

    Emily shrugs at The Mandalorian. "Eh, we outnumbered him six to one," she says, apparently counting Aquila, The Child, and Amalia. She glances at Piera. "Also, I have eyes in the back of my head, amicida," she adds (a portmanteau of 'amica', friend, and 'omicida', murderess). ... She wasn't actually looking with invisible eyes, but she was still aware of Piera's general location, and what did she think Emily would think she was doing? (She may have misconstrued exactly why Piera was waiting until she wasn't looking.)

    She nods to Amalia. "Damn," she says. "I'd say 'look before you leap', but it looks like in this case, the Templars were also looking where you were leaping." She shrugs. "But, uh, no, you took it from the Assassins. They assassinated the last Templar who had that thing." She theatrically pats her stomach. "I got momentarily scratched by it, though! This is their idea of diplomacy." Not that Emily is that much better at diplomacy ...

    Annnnd the Templar is handled.
    Mando says nothing as Piera does what she has to do.
    "Yep." He asides to Emily. Even the kid totally counts, apparently, as he takes the medical kit Piera handed over and starts tending to Amalia's wounds for some basic first aid for the moment.

    Piera remains quiet in the face of Emily's accusations. She simply pulls her hood back up, and begins to walk away in the direction Aquila left in. The Eudaemon has made her mind up about her, and her Brotherhood, no point trying to change it. She will be the Amicida... perhaps the Maestro will even grant it to her as a proper title.

    Amalia looks contrite as Mando tends to her with the kit, allowing the Bounty Hunter to treat and bind the wound. "I'll have to gut that slimy little bastard that tipped me off. He's probably a Templar shill."

    Emily shrugs. "Ehh, I'll leave that to these guys," she says, gesturing to Mando and the now-wandering-off Piera. "As for me?" She pauses theatrically. "Well ... if you ever need a place to hide from the Templars, you and your sister can seek the world called the Halcyon Remnant. I am Nyx-model Emily, sometimes known as Emily Nyx, and I ... have a great number of objections to how things usually go in the World Tree."

    And with that, she conjures up a wide-brimmed hat in her hand -- gleaming chrome, like her segmented robot-body -- and turns to leave, dramatically putting it on; it seems to cast her face in an unnatural amount of shadow.