Ruins of Khazan - Part 1: All Things Among Fallen Leaves

[Sharpandpointies]

Jane continues to process...whatever her necromantic senses are bringing in. That's fine; Krys is in no hurry. "I get that," they call back to Kinu. "Sometimes going straight through is the only way. I just don't want that to be the first choice." Their lips quirk for a moment. "I'd rather figure out the best choice, be that sideways, around, zigzag, or retreat." And I don't like going straight through anyway.

If Krys is going to go through something, one can bet it'll be in a way that doesn't pit herself head to head against that thing in its area of strength.

They watch with some interest - and divided attention, keeping much of their perception upon the city, assessing and analyzing - as Nemo comes out of her own trance and attempts all manner of minor...magics? Magics, Krys supposes. There seems to be a great deal of potential in the woman's learnings, but unfortunately Nemo, by her own words, only has a trivial capacity at the moment save in very specific areas. "Sorry about your situation, Nemo." Krys shrugs; it's what they have, and they'll need to make due. "Pity," they murmur. "Would have been nice to have some kind of legendary sorcerer with us; might have made this a whole lot easier."

Her gaze turns ahead, back to Kinu and the shifting landscape around her. "Perspective, yes." Krys makes a moue of annoyance. "Sorry. Basically, what we're seeing is an impossibility. Not just on visual, 'oh, I've never seen this before', but on a very fundamental level that's not readily apparent." Their frustration becomes a broad, surprisingly engaged smile. "Well...it's an impossibility, again, from our perspective - the perspective of people who live in universes and at a scale where time is an actual, seemingly constant thing, where everything behaves as it should within our kinds of systems. Even magical universes still obey those laws, for the most part. But this? This doesn't."

The smile softens slightly. "Doesn't mean it's any less real or valid, though. Just because something 'shouldn't be' from our perspective doesn't mean it can't be. Just means it's working off different rules, and we're the outsiders."


Kinu is clearly a deep thinker, already jumping to the possibilities the tree might represent and how it might be attached to the system of 'rules' here. A good thing, and Krys ponders their words before gesturing to the impossibly close, very distant Tree. "So...is the tree responsible for that? Or is the tree just part of the landscape - something that happened because of the rules, here, and it's just 'feeding' on whatever makes this place run, like you say? Or...? No idea. Yet." Now their lips press together, bloodlessly tight. "Doesn't matter until we arrive, I guess. For now, the trick will be getting there." Still standing in front of Jane, Krys allows their gaze to again rove over the city, prying and seeking, analyzing and calculating.

"Alive."

[Postmania]

Jane's hands remained closed for some time, placed up in front of her in her oddly prayerlike manner. As Krys had seen before, they were perfectly still, as inert as a stone that had long ago been formed by pressure and heat and no longer faced anything akin to the violent circumstances of its birth. However, over time, there was a subtle difference. Small at first, but then eventually detectable to anyone looking in her direction as they clenched, tighter and tighter, until the metal joints creaked slightly under the pressure. Then of course, there was the whine of her processors, usually inaudible, now marking a tone of vague alarm. Finally, the alarm quiets, and Jane's hands loosen and still. Her head slowly lifts as she seems to come back to herself, systems reactivating one at a time.

She starts to pull her hands apart, which takes some effort as they have locked in place from the previous tension and then catches herself for a moment, staring at them in confusion.

Are these my hands? I must have gotten prosthetics after the dogs chewed me up.

Then suddenly a wave of revulsion passes over her as she remembers her circumstances and is Jane again. She drops her hands with some distress.

"I think," she says, carefully, obviously trying to contain the numerous emotions still welling up in her from her recent experience, "that was probably unwise."

She stood (had she always been sitting?) and looked at the others for a moment, recalling what she had been saying before she had taken it on to herself to perform near-death reconnaissance.

"I mentioned before I...left, that I had an additional function. It is somewhat similar to the experience I had when being transported here. Experiencing another's death, or multiple others, within a short range. This function allows for information gathering in an unconventional manner."

She rolls her shoulders, trying to clear out the tension across her body.

"If you can withstand the experience. I had only used it in trials, simulations, but I believed since I had such a recent experience of connecting to those that were dying that I would be more acclimated to it as a result. It seems that hypothesis was incorrect. But in this case," she looked at a loss, confused as to why she undertook such a risk. "I thought it was important."

"I saw the death of someone close. Close in proximity to this location," she clarified. "A woman was being chased by some form of canine creatures. There was something about them that spoke to some level of magical enhancement. She was alone. Not much of a fighter, I believe," and for a moment Jane's tone dips into something like disapproval before continuing on.

"Either way, she was hunted down and consumed. But the key detail is that she wasn't hunted by mere dogs. They were assisted by what I believe to be a master. Someone magically capable stopped my, I mean her, run with a fireball," she reported, a note of barely controlled cold fury entering her voice. "Predation, as I suspected should have happened outside of the Gate, but didn't, seems to be what happened here. Without a doubt. And there was another. A mechanical life form such as myself, I estimate. It seemed to be not on the side of the hunters. It could be an ally."

Throughout the last few sentences Jane had found herself looking back at her hands again from time to time. For some reason, the experience in an organic form, running, unlike in her previous encounter in transit, or the experiments before, had resonated with something inside her. Her hands still seemed strange for some reason, somewhat unfamiliar. She wrenched her gaze back to the others.

"When I was looking for the presence of death around me, I found numerous others, but something about this place seems to be as equally unmoored in time as in space. I found those who had died hundreds of years ago as marked by chronometer. But my timekeeper also told me they had died just a few days ago. Or, " this time she seemed puzzled, temporarily shifted from anger to a more speculative mood, "they hadn't died at all. Which leaving aside chronological misalignments should not even be possible because then they would not have been registered by my Death Sense."

"But this woman didn't have this uncertainty. She died not far from here. Some way along the road. Someone will always have killed me. Her. And I'm going to go back to that place, and I'm going to kill those dogs and that spellcaster."

Jane realized she wasn't making any sense at this point, but this blind fury seemed to bar her from making any corrections to her speech. She whipped out a pistol in her left hand and unleashed her sniper rifle from her right arm, and took off jogging in the direction of the dead woman. Even with the rage infecting her circuits, she heard that voice again still.

Do what comes naturally.

OOC: Jane is stacking PRE, SKI, BRA, and CHR now.

[Sharkerbob]

"Only thing I know about magic is it doesn't come for free. Whatever this tree's feedin' on is part of some cycle. But that's all I can get with a look."

"It ain't even free in our reality," muttered Rae.

"Sorry about your situation, Nemo." Krys shrugs; it's what they have, and they'll need to make due. "Pity," they murmur. "Would have been nice to have some kind of legendary sorcerer with us; might have made this a whole lot easier."

She smiled a bit sheepishly. "Thank you, although I was hardly legendary, more of a jack-of-all-trades. But it does put us on the backfoot more than we expected."

Her gaze turns ahead, back to Kinu and the shifting landscape around her. "Perspective, yes." Krys makes a moue of annoyance. "Sorry. Basically, what we're seeing is an impossibility. Not just on visual, 'oh, I've never seen this before', but on a very fundamental level that's not readily apparent." Their frustration becomes a broad, surprisingly engaged smile. "Well...it's an impossibility, again, from our perspective - the perspective of people who live in universes and at a scale where time is an actual, seemingly constant thing, where everything behaves as it should within our kinds of systems. Even magical universes still obey those laws, for the most part. But this? This doesn't."

The smile softens slightly. "Doesn't mean it's any less real or valid, though. Just because something 'shouldn't be' from our perspective doesn't mean it can't be. Just means it's working off different rules, and we're the outsiders."

Nemo and Rae nod sagely. They know all about Worlds that "shouldn't be", but are anyway.

Kinu is clearly a deep thinker, already jumping to the possibilities the tree might represent and how it might be attached to the system of 'rules' here. A good thing, and Krys ponders their words before gesturing to the impossibly close, very distant Tree. "So...is the tree responsible for that? Or is the tree just part of the landscape - something that happened because of the rules, here, and it's just 'feeding' on whatever makes this place run, like you say? Or...? No idea. Yet." Now their lips press together, bloodlessly tight. "Doesn't matter until we arrive, I guess. For now, the trick will be getting there." Still standing in front of Jane, Krys allows their gaze to again rove over the city, prying and seeking, analyzing and calculating.

"Alive."

"Definitely a fascinating phenomenon," said Nemo, taking a fuller look at the great tree. Before she'd been more interested in the constant shifting of the buildings and what it might have meant, but the Tree seemed to certainly be the center of the phenomenon. Before she had the chance to really lend her own analysis, however, things were already moving along. Nemo pursed her lips, a little annoyed with herself for not taking a more meticulous study of the environment along with her companions, even as she knew circumstances made it crucial to assess her mystic reserves before anything else. Her explorer's instinct wanted her to hang back and take the time to pick things over, but this just wasn't the situation for a meandering inspection.

"I think," she says, carefully, obviously trying to contain the numerous emotions still welling up in her from her recent experience, "that was probably unwise."

She stood (had she always been sitting?) and looked at the others for a moment, recalling what she had been saying before she had taken it on to herself to perform near-death reconnaissance.

"I mentioned before I...left, that I had an additional function. It is somewhat similar to the experience I had when being transported here. Experiencing another's death, or multiple others, within a short range. This function allows for information gathering in an unconventional manner."

"That sounds decidedly unfun," said Rae.

"Will you be alright?" said Nemo.

She rolls her shoulders, trying to clear out the tension across her body.

"If you can withstand the experience. I had only used it in trials, simulations, but I believed since I had such a recent experience of connecting to those that were dying that I would be more acclimated to it as a result. It seems that hypothesis was incorrect. But in this case," she looked at a loss, confused as to why she undertook such a risk. "I thought it was important."

"I saw the death of someone close. Close in proximity to this location," she clarified. "A woman was being chased by some form of canine creatures. There was something about them that spoke to some level of magical enhancement. She was alone. Not much of a fighter, I believe," and for a moment Jane's tone dips into something like disapproval before continuing on.

"Either way, she was hunted down and consumed. But the key detail is that she wasn't hunted by mere dogs. They were assisted by what I believe to be a master. Someone magically capable stopped my, I mean her, run with a fireball," she reported, a note of barely controlled cold fury entering her voice. "Predation, as I suspected should have happened outside of the Gate, but didn't, seems to be what happened here. Without a doubt. And there was another. A mechanical life form such as myself, I estimate. It seemed to be not on the side of the hunters. It could be an ally."

Throughout the last few sentences Jane had found herself looking back at her hands again from time to time. For some reason, the experience in an organic form, running, unlike in her previous encounter in transit, or the experiments before, had resonated with something inside her. Her hands still seemed strange for some reason, somewhat unfamiliar. She wrenched her gaze back to the others.

"When I was looking for the presence of death around me, I found numerous others, but something about this place seems to be as equally unmoored in time as in space. I found those who had died hundreds of years ago as marked by chronometer. But my timekeeper also told me they had died just a few days ago. Or, " this time she seemed puzzled, temporarily shifted from anger to a more speculative mood, "they hadn't died at all. Which leaving aside chronological misalignments should not even be possible because then they would not have been registered by my Death Sense."

"But this woman didn't have this uncertainty. She died not far from here. Some way along the road. Someone will always have killed me. Her. And I'm going to go back to that place, and I'm going to kill those dogs and that spellcaster."

Jane realized she wasn't making any sense at this point, but this blind fury seemed to bar her from making any corrections to her speech. She whipped out a pistol in her left hand and unleashed her sniper rifle from her right arm, and took off jogging in the direction of the dead woman. Even with the rage infecting her circuits, she heard that voice again still.

Do what comes naturally.

OOC: Jane is stacking PRE, SKI, BRA, and CHR now.

"Oh boy, we been here ten minutes, and we're already gunna be scrappin'!" said Rae. "You got enough juice?"

"I guess we'll have to just field test it," said Nemo. Despite the frown, she followed along with the rest.

[grampagen]

Jane continues to process...whatever her necromantic senses are bringing in. That's fine; Krys is in no hurry. "I get that," they call back to Kinu. "Sometimes going straight through is the only way. I just don't want that to be the first choice." Their lips quirk for a moment. "I'd rather figure out the best choice, be that sideways, around, zigzag, or retreat." And I don't like going straight through anyway.

If Krys is going to go through something, one can bet it'll be in a way that doesn't pit herself head to head against that thing in its area of strength.

They watch with some interest - and divided attention, keeping much of their perception upon the city, assessing and analyzing - as Nemo comes out of her own trance and attempts all manner of minor...magics? Magics, Krys supposes. There seems to be a great deal of potential in the woman's learnings, but unfortunately Nemo, by her own words, only has a trivial capacity at the moment save in very specific areas. "Sorry about your situation, Nemo." Krys shrugs; it's what they have, and they'll need to make due. "Pity," they murmur. "Would have been nice to have some kind of legendary sorcerer with us; might have made this a whole lot easier."

Her gaze turns ahead, back to Kinu and the shifting landscape around her. "Perspective, yes." Krys makes a moue of annoyance. "Sorry. Basically, what we're seeing is an impossibility. Not just on visual, 'oh, I've never seen this before', but on a very fundamental level that's not readily apparent." Their frustration becomes a broad, surprisingly engaged smile. "Well...it's an impossibility, again, from our perspective - the perspective of people who live in universes and at a scale where time is an actual, seemingly constant thing, where everything behaves as it should within our kinds of systems. Even magical universes still obey those laws, for the most part. But this? This doesn't."

The smile softens slightly. "Doesn't mean it's any less real or valid, though. Just because something 'shouldn't be' from our perspective doesn't mean it can't be. Just means it's working off different rules, and we're the outsiders."


Kinu is clearly a deep thinker, already jumping to the possibilities the tree might represent and how it might be attached to the system of 'rules' here. A good thing, and Krys ponders their words before gesturing to the impossibly close, very distant Tree. "So...is the tree responsible for that? Or is the tree just part of the landscape - something that happened because of the rules, here, and it's just 'feeding' on whatever makes this place run, like you say? Or...? No idea. Yet." Now their lips press together, bloodlessly tight. "Doesn't matter until we arrive, I guess. For now, the trick will be getting there." Still standing in front of Jane, Krys allows their gaze to again rove over the city, prying and seeking, analyzing and calculating.

"Alive."

"Sounds like you got an eye for stayin' outta trouble," Kinu replied, "That'll suit us just fine when it comes to survival."

One way or another, she would. The way the Great Tree ate through civilization was, in some way, far too familiar to her sensibilities but for the sheer magnitude of it. The dilapidated cities, the bodies of the fallen...and that faint sentiment that she was on someone else's string.

Still, whatever Krys was seeing, it seemed to be quite a struggle to put into words.

"Hmm-mm." Pointed nods came out to the rhythm of each point, as if to covey that she had indeed heard them, at least. "Well you're right about that. We won't know 'til we get there, what any of this means."

"I saw the death of someone close. Close in proximity to this location," she clarified. "A woman was being chased by some form of canine creatures. There was something about them that spoke to some level of magical enhancement. She was alone. Not much of a fighter, I believe," and for a moment Jane's tone dips into something like disapproval before continuing on.

"Either way, she was hunted down and consumed. But the key detail is that she wasn't hunted by mere dogs. They were assisted by what I believe to be a master. Someone magically capable stopped my, I mean her, run with a fireball," she reported, a note of barely controlled cold fury entering her voice. "Predation, as I suspected should have happened outside of the Gate, but didn't, seems to be what happened here. Without a doubt. And there was another. A mechanical life form such as myself, I estimate. It seemed to be not on the side of the hunters. It could be an ally."

Throughout the last few sentences Jane had found herself looking back at her hands again from time to time. For some reason, the experience in an organic form, running, unlike in her previous encounter in transit, or the experiments before, had resonated with something inside her. Her hands still seemed strange for some reason, somewhat unfamiliar. She wrenched her gaze back to the others.

"When I was looking for the presence of death around me, I found numerous others, but something about this place seems to be as equally unmoored in time as in space. I found those who had died hundreds of years ago as marked by chronometer. But my timekeeper also told me they had died just a few days ago. Or, " this time she seemed puzzled, temporarily shifted from anger to a more speculative mood, "they hadn't died at all. Which leaving aside chronological misalignments should not even be possible because then they would not have been registered by my Death Sense."

"But this woman didn't have this uncertainty. She died not far from here. Some way along the road. Someone will always have killed me. Her. And I'm going to go back to that place, and I'm going to kill those dogs and that spellcaster."

Jane realized she wasn't making any sense at this point, but this blind fury seemed to bar her from making any corrections to her speech. She whipped out a pistol in her left hand and unleashed her sniper rifle from her right arm, and took off jogging in the direction of the dead woman. Even with the rage infecting her circuits, she heard that voice again still.

Do what comes naturally.

Her own musing cut short, it seems that Jane's...mechano-magical...apparatuses behind her view allowed her to find something a bit deeper than the surface.

"Eh? How do you figure-"

When she seemed to flit in and out of some kind of identity crisis, Kinu cocked her head to one side as Jane had, to the first time to her reckoning, gave into the emotion that tempered her analysis. What the hell? Something must've really kickstarted her hardware.

Which did not speak well of the circumstances, either what she found out there, or the way she took off prepped to shoot whatever was lingering in this twisting patch of infinity.

"Heh, things are gettin' interesting..."

"It ain't even free in our reality," muttered Rae.


"Definitely a fascinating phenomenon," said Nemo, taking a fuller look at the great tree. Before she'd been more interested in the constant shifting of the buildings and what it might have meant, but the Tree seemed to certainly be the center of the phenomenon. Before she had the chance to really lend her own analysis, however, things were already moving along. Nemo pursed her lips, a little annoyed with herself for not taking a more meticulous study of the environment along with her companions, even as she knew circumstances made it crucial to assess her mystic reserves before anything else. Her explorer's instinct wanted her to hang back and take the time to pick things over, but this just wasn't the situation for a meandering inspection.



"Oh boy, we been here ten minutes, and we're already gunna be scrappin'!" said Rae. "You got enough juice?"

"I guess we'll have to just field test it," said Nemo. Despite the frown, she followed along with the rest.

"Suppose we'll see what it's feeding on soon enough," Kinu replied. The voice from the cloth she seemed to regard as no different from the others, in turn. "Don't have many pleasant experiences with the stuff, even less fighting against it."

Sequestering the leaf for now, the Kinu's mouth stretched into a grin, and dark ichor seemed to fall from the corners.

"But then again, a little pain is worth it to scare the living daylights out of even those who worship the darkness."

With that, they were off. As they followed Jane's path down the ruined alleyways, Kinu slunk behind in the shadows.

The rush of the moment stilled her thoughts to a place more familiar; they were on the hunt.

EDIT:

With Jane leading the pursuit a good deal ahead, and Nemo not far behind, Kinu chuckled darkly to herself. They'd surely beat her to the punch...fair play, they'd set up the spot first.

As they made their way towards the ones in deathly straits, she veered off. Before she got shook, she mentioned taking to the top...

Stalling her stride, she took a small leap, and when she planted her feet, the ground seemed to wobble where she touched it, and she sprung off of it like canvas, into the walls of the alleyway, scaling up and up...

OOC: Applying Trait Check for Squared Circle for +15 AGI; Kinu's Stack remains on AGI and SKI, raising Stealth to 24 in total.

[Sharpandpointies]

Krys inclines their head toward Kino for a moment. "I do prefer to avoid fighting when possible," they admit. "As for not being 'legendary'," they continue to Nemo, "I expect that depends on which world you found yourself." 'Power' is subjective, after all; what might be considered potent in one place would be happenstance in another. Nemo seems to be quite well-versed in her world's magic; where Krys comes from, she would be consider an impossibility, a miracle-worker.

Then Jane begins showing signs of stress.

Immediately Krys shifts to where they can watch both the woman and the landscape, standing beside Jane rather than in front. They wait, concern slowly growing, as Jane grows more and more distressed, and their thin lips thin further at the alarming sounds. Finally it ends, Jane relaxing - somewhat - but seeming confounded by whatever she has discover. Krys waits in silence; whatever comes next, they feel, will be of importance. To the group? To Jane? Hard to say.

Finally Jane stands, and words tumble from her mouth.

A grimace twists Krys' mouth now as the woman relates her experience, the details growing more and more unsettling as the story flowers. What did these people do to her when they made her? More emotions, more anger enters the tone of a weapon created and manipulated to be emotionless, and Jane studies her hands as if they are separate beings. Krys wonders what passes through her thoughts, unspoken as yet. For a moment, the feelings disappear as Jane seems to grow more thoughtful, but then the contained anger boils over; weapons shift into view as she states her intentions, then the hunter is moving out into the city, controlled and careful yet still with astonishing speed.

"Jane!" Krys calls, breaking into a full-on run, struggling to keep up. It's clear the woman will not back down from this, and equally clear the others mean to support her; Krys will, as well; there is no question. And while her fury seems all-consuming, it does not set her running pell-mell - quick as she is, Jane is obviously not blindly rushing. No sense in shouting 'be careful', then; it seems redundant or pointless, one or the other. "We're right behind you!" And, potentially, falling further behind with every step...every step requiring to pass over terrain, to cover this annoying 'distance', to require every millimeter to be moved through. "All gods curse it," Krys snaps under their breath, falling into habits of two lifetimes ago at the feeling of air burning in their lungs. They push harder, and even so...it's not fast enough.

Things, they recall, used to be so much more easy. Distances were non-existent. Lengths, widths, these concepts had value, but 'between' was merely something to be crossed at will - it mattered not at the tiniest measurement possible or at the largest scale. There is a truth in granularity, part of their mind muses through the frustration. On a Planck scale, space-time can only be traversed in discreet shifts, without regard to the infinitesimal-but-real distances. As below, so above, they consider, deliberately misquoting Hermes Trismegitus. Some things are transferrable. And that being the case...

*flicker*

Between one step and the next, Krys is a few inches further when their foot touches the ground.

*flicker*

Their motion forward twitches them along, this time as if several frames are missing from a movie.

*flicker*

Krys moves past a knee-high mound of rubble, rather than over or around it.

But it's only of marginal benefit, and still not enough, not nearly so. They're just too.

Cursed.

Slow.

Despairing, Krys watches Jane slip further ahead. Nemo, as well, is quicker, and Kinu? Faster still than Nemo, slipping through the shadow-dappled terrain like a ghostly panther. They're too much and I'm too cursed limited. They might need me, and Jane isn't thinking clearly! But this body... A deep breath, a narrowing of the eyes, and Krys fights off the frustrated, chaotic desperation. It's not always about raw speed, Krys. Sometimes it's timing. And sometimes...

Their eyes narrow further.

Sometimes it's about choosing the route.

'How quickly one arrives' depends on both velocity and distance. If one cannot increase the velocity? Find a way to deal with the distance. And distance, they remind themselves, is factual...but flexibly so. At this scale, the world appears solid, immutable, distances clearly measurable and unchanging. Now living on this scale, trapped within entropy's grasp, Krys automatically interacts with All Things in that way. But there had been a Time outside of Time... Swallowing thickly, they reach within themselves again, hunting for those shards of memories, a reminder of that capacity to sense such things, of that abyss-deep interaction with All Things, and a way to force her very self to remember that perspective. One further strain, a blooming pain behind their eyes...and there.

For an instant, they move within Time out of Time, the world becoming a mad palace of refracted crystal light, and Krys remembers.

Everything.

...under the proper circumstances, distance is also a matter of perception...

Perspective shift; the world is now a shifting flow of tidal forces, invisible to the macro scale but nevertheless forces Krys can ride, or choose paths along. 'Shorter' without being shorter, going with the flow rather than against, and they move through All Things in a pathetic mimicry of Absolute Freedom. Faster? No. Nor do the micro-shifts increase their frequency or take Krys further, nothing of the sort. To all perceptions, they run as before, pushing themselves down the broken roadway in pursuit of Jane.

Inexplicably, without any sense or reason or 'speeding up', they nevertheless close the gap as memory chuckles within.

~ "I'll never be late for a date again! Unless I totally forget. Not that I had a punctuality problem or…" ~

Tears slick their cheeks, flicking from their chin with every footfall.

OOC - Krys will indeed follow Jane. I'm somewhat assuming that 'jogging' for Jane, with her Speed of 51+Stack, is well-beyond Krys running with a Speed of like...10+Stack. Stacks go into SPD, SKI, DUR and CHA. Krys will use Distance Is Factual, But Flexibly So (SPD Buff, 4 rounds, CHA stacked for this, RES NOT stacked) as their first technique action during this move, following with All Things Are But Foam Upon The Waves, of course (ENR replenishment). I'm hoping that means a running Krys might be able to catch up to a 'jogging' Jane. If not, I'll modify post to indicate that the gap widens far more slowly.

[MrSandman]

The rock flies with an uncanny strength for one made of hard light and strikes the largest dog on the snout. The creature lets out a roar that threans to drown out Ella's warning to the other mechanical lifeform but, even as it turns toward her, Ella is already rushing away across the open courtyard putting as much distince between her and the burning maw of teeth as possible.

Ella was already mid sprint when the furious roar of the hellhound came from behind. Clearly she had the mutts attention now, or at the very least had caused sufficent cranial damage to allow the robotic victim an moment of escape. Either way it wouldn't be long before she became the focus of the spittle-flame warhounds.

In lieu of an alternative, that was as good a name as any for them...Johan would like it.

As she approached the countyard area of the field of pillars that lay within she quickly spung her camera to face the rear and ascertain how far they were behind, as well as if the robot had managed to make its escape.

The mysterious robot reacts quicker than the dogs and twitches strangely. Around its feet, the spindly metal warps and shifts into a rounder shape, complex systems seeming to knit themselves out of solid metal, and a pair of small wings suddenly erupt from its upper arms. There is a violent bang of heat and light and a set of jet boots send the machine hurtling over the head of the dog that was menacing it moments ago. It swoops down and bears toward Ella.

Due to the speed of the jets, it catches up with her almost instantly but, as it goes to land, it stumbles and tumbles head over heels, spinning awkwardly and rolling until it collides with a pillar. For a split second it is silent before the jet boots and wings abruptly retract with a snapping hiss.

"Good afternoon/cycle/[TIME_OF_DAY]," the machine intones, while still lying with its head on the ground and its legs in the air, "Designation of contact: [HARD_LIGHT_CONSTRUCT] Therefore designated [MECH-ME-M-M-MECHANICAL_L-L-L-<srrkr>IFEFORM]. Do you require assistance?"

Despite understanding the words as they reach her, Ella is aware that this machine is speaking to her in some kind of extremely alien machine code and transmitting directly to her auditory systems rather than making conventional sounds. How she understands it must be some facet of the infinite city because she knows that decoding a sentence of this level of complex language would require several minutes of dedicated runtime for her under normal circumstances.

Emotion was something Ella had a firm grasp of, on both a technical and often demonstrable level. To say it was a simulation would be understating the processes involved with generating such emotion...she was not created with them, but learned them as her intelligence developed. She could be happy, sad, frustrated, calm, kind, cruel. Each was the result of one or a combination of external simuli. Really....she was no different then a human as far as she was concerned in that regards.

Vastly superior in every OTHER way....but emotionally? Totally nothing fake about hers and you should feel bad for thinking that way.

So, upon turning back, Ella was struck with the emotion known as.....
*processing*

33% Surprise
33% Dissipointment
33% Annoiyance

*processing emotion*
Emotion Found: Deadpan
Ella watched with a neutral expression as the robot sailed overhead, crash landed into a roll before smashing violently into the pillar ahead of her and finally settling on the ground in a heap. Several throughts raced through Ellas processor....had she been able to do that the whole time? Was she even in danger?

Then the robot "offered her assistance" in so much non-binary machine code gibberish. Ella knew several languages from memory and this certainly wasn't one, yet she clearly understood it as if it was....like a babel in the machine. The thought quickly had her running a self diagnostics in case she had been unwittingly infected with owlingo malware. In the meantime however, she quickly ran the rest of the way to the downed robot and began helping her up while answering back and hopeing this malware ran output as well as input.

"Your the one who looked like they needed assistance." Ella pulled the robot up, glancing swiftly behind to check the distance. "Don't worry about me....stay in the air where its safe, or better yet..." Ella glanced around, her processer buzzing with potential ideas. ".....can you ram that pillar from the air? The one over there." Ella pointed to the standing pillar closest to them. "Knock it towards me and the dogs as soon as they are close....but don't put yourself in danger. Stay in the air as much as you can."

She hears the woofing howls of the dogs as they prepare to charge. She doesn't have much time to act.

GM Note to Ella: It is now your turn in the rotation, please report to the Combat Notation Thread for your next turn.

The howls pulled her attention back to the approaching dogs. "Go, I'll lead them away."

Ella turned, running to the base of the pillar she had indicated before and then turned to face the incoming attacker.

Dumb hounds cared about one thing above all others....biting and running.
Two things, dumb stupid hounds cared about two things above all others....biting and running and crapping on her nice cafe floor.

....four of which were irrelavant...

As they charged closer, she began warming up the emitter. Channeling energy from her internal batteries into the light projector as her body began to glow. She would wait until the very last moment....as the monster in the lead closed in....barreling full speed to what it thought would be an easy kill....and then....

Ella unleashed the energy as a blast of light at both it and the dogs behind it.
Epic Mind Technique - Flash Emitter

...and then weave to the side in hopes the hounds feeble jelly orb optics were sufficiently fried to have it smash into the foot of the piller.

[Nik Hasta]

Then the robot "offered her assistance" in so much non-binary machine code gibberish. Ella knew several languages from memory and this certainly wasn't one, yet she clearly understood it as if it was....like a babel in the machine. The thought quickly had her running a self diagnostics in case she had been unwittingly infected with owlingo malware. In the meantime however, she quickly ran the rest of the way to the downed robot and began helping her up while answering back and hopeing this malware ran output as well as input.

"Your the one who looked like they needed assistance." Ella pulled the robot up, glancing swiftly behind to check the distance. "Don't worry about me....stay in the air where its safe, or better yet..." Ella glanced around, her processer buzzing with potential ideas. ".....can you ram that pillar from the air? The one over there." Ella pointed to the standing pillar closest to them. "Knock it towards me and the dogs as soon as they are close....but don't put yourself in danger. Stay in the air as much as you can."

Ella pulls the robot to its feet. It computes for a brief moment before responding.

"Suitable instruction from [HARD_LIGHT_CONSTRUCT]. Calculating appropriate vectors,"

Ella has little time to see how well the other machine would follow her instructions as she turned to the oncoming hound.

As they charged closer, she began warming up the emitter. Channeling energy from her internal batteries into the light projector as her body began to glow. She would wait until the very last moment....as the monster in the lead closed in....barreling full speed to what it thought would be an easy kill....and then....

Ella unleashed the energy as a blast of light at both it and the dogs behind it.
Epic Mind Technique - Flash Emitter

...and then weave to the side in hopes the hounds feeble jelly orb optics were sufficiently fried to have it smash into the foot of the piller.

The largest of the dogs pounds toward her, jaws wide and boiling saliva dripping between the jagged and awkward looking teeth. Ella can tell that it is only thinking about the chase and of biting, it has no real perception of her as a genuine threat.

A misapprehension she swiftly corrects as her Flash Emitter engages.

For an moment, it is like the sun itself appears in the courtyard. Ella is capable of putting out supremely huge amounts of light at her peak capacity. Even Ván, well outside of the effective range of the flash is momentarily dazzled by it.

The large dog lets out a sudden whine and attempts to arrest its run as it loses almost all of its vision. Ella dives to one side and the hellhound collides with the pillar in a sickening crunch.

- Big Dog takes 16 DMG from impact.

- Big Dog is inflicted with Blindness - Total Darkness for 3 turns.

- Big Dog has burnt out its Mastered ENR reserves preventing the full duration of the effect. (-20 to all stats)

- Big Dog takes 22 DMG from burnout.

- Small Dog 1 is is inflicted with Blindness - Total Darkness for 3 turns.

- Small Dog 1 has burnt out its Mastered ENR reserves preventing the full duration of the effect. (-20 to all stats)

- Small Dog 1 takes 30 DMG from burnout.

- Small Dog 2 is is inflicted with Blindness - Total Darkness for 3 turns.

- Small Dog 2 has burnt out its Mastered ENR reserves preventing the full duration of the effect. (-20 to all stats)

- Small Dog 2 takes 30 DMG from burnout.

As she rises, she is immediately set upon by the largest dog; despite being dazed, and blinded it summons what little remains of its energy and snaps in her general direction in a display of largely impotent fury. The other two, smaller dogs, begin to stumble towards her but they are clearly shaken and dazed from the impact of the massive blast of light.

Ella, you can select and option for your Defences, please see the combat notation thread and make your selection.

[Nik Hasta]

Also, GM update on ENR levels from the main group to reflect Stack:

Krys: 180/180 (-40 to capacity for Stack)

Jane: 160/160 (-40 to capacity for Stack)

Kinu: 80/90 (-20 to capacity for Stack)

[MrSandman]

As she rises, she is immediately set upon by the largest dog; despite being dazed, and blinded it summons what little remains of its energy and snaps in her general direction in a display of largely impotent fury. The other two, smaller dogs, begin to stumble towards her but they are clearly shaken and dazed from the impact of the massive blast of light.

With lighter then air grace and agility, Ella perceived the closing hound as little more then a typical rowdy customer...almost mockingly dancing away from its snapping mouth. "What a stupid mutt, kindly pick on someone your own intelligence." She proclaimed loudly. A bit too loud...but entirely with the purpose of drawing the blind dogs into position for the pillar fall.

...assuming the other robot came through for her.

[Nik Hasta]

With lighter then air grace and agility, Ella perceived the closing hound as little more then a typical rowdy customer...almost mockingly dancing away from its snapping mouth. "What a stupid mutt, kindly pick on someone your own intelligence." She proclaimed loudly. A bit too loud...but entirely with the purpose of drawing the blind dogs into position for the pillar fall.

...assuming the other robot came through for her.

As Ella dodges the attack of the larger demonic hound, she sees the other two dogs stumbling and doing their best to hurry toward her. Their multiple sets of eyes, two sets apiece, are blinking and streaming as they struggle to recover from the dazzling light. She can see that they are swiftly overcoming the shock to their bodies and they are starting to move closer to her with more confidence.

Meanwhile, as the blast of light fades, Jane pounds down the street toward the courtyard. She has moment to see Ella dodging the clumsy bite of the large demonic hound as the silvery robot rights itself against the pillar, apparently gearing up for something given its posture. Beyond them, she can see two smaller hounds closing fast.

She remembers the bites and ripping of these creatures in the memory of the dead woman she inhabited, she can detect a large amount of heat emanating from within them. Her guns are drawn and it is her moment to act.

Jane, please report to the Combat Notation Thread to lay out your actions.

[Postmania]

As Ella dodges the attack of the larger demonic hound, she sees the other two dogs stumbling and doing their best to hurry toward her. Their multiple sets of eyes, two sets apiece, are blinking and streaming as they struggle to recover from the dazzling light. She can see that they are swiftly overcoming the shock to their bodies and they are starting to move closer to her with more confidence.

Meanwhile, as the blast of light fades, Jane pounds down the street toward the courtyard. She has moment to see Ella dodging the clumsy bite of the large demonic hound as the silvery robot rights itself against the pillar, apparently gearing up for something given its posture. Beyond them, she can see two smaller hounds closing fast.

She remembers the bites and ripping of these creatures in the memory of the dead woman she inhabited, she can detect a large amount of heat emanating from within them. Her guns are drawn and it is her moment to act.
[/B]

Despite the cold fury still flooding her circuits, Jane moved as she always had: poised and ready for minimal applications of energy to inflict maximum damage.

Her optical sensors registered a mechanical lifeform, which was expected, but also a second being. For a moment she was puzzled, her mind drawing out possibilities that actually that woman had not in fact, died, but she shrugged off the feeling. Her chronometer would have told her if this was what she decided to term a Maybe-Death as it had the others. She had no time to ponder this fully as she noted the dogs seemed to be in combat against the robotic figure and the other, the details of which her sensors took in but simply did not bring up in her main thought pattern. Instead they drew her attention to another detail of the area.

Key Feature: Elevated Terrain, her display read, and without hesitation she ran forward now at full speed to the pillar closest to her. Two steps from the pillar she girds herself for her maneuver. Her right foot steps onto a block that extends from the pillar, bringing her up in a vertical leap, to reach another extruded block in the structure. Her left arm reaches the block, and in a motion that seems easy but also improbable she spins the rest of her body upwards perpendicular to the pillar, almost seeming to cartwheel in midair up the pillar, landing at the top with aplomb. While in midair she releases a barrier on her processing power, and her eyes dim for but a moment before flaring back to life brighter than ever as her system overclocks her targeting system with Immortal Technique. By the time she lands her targeting systems are already engaged and she swivels her rifle to the big dog and fires her Mark of Death into the head of the creature.

At this range, she knows her shots will hit their mark more cleanly, and as one motion her left arm swings up and unleashes a second shot into the big dog's head after, the obsidian Blackstone bullet carving a path into the skull and, due to the precision of her shots, arriving in the exact same trajectory and hole as the previous shot.

[Nik Hasta]

While in midair she releases a barrier on her processing power, and her eyes dim for but a moment before flaring back to life brighter than ever as her system overclocks her targeting system with Immortal Technique. By the time she lands her targeting systems are already engaged and she swivels her rifle to the big dog and fires her Mark of Death into the head of the creature.

At this range, she knows her shots will hit their mark more cleanly, and as one motion her left arm swings up and unleashes a second shot into the big dog's head after, the obsidian Blackstone bullet carving a path into the skull and, due to the precision of her shots, arriving in the exact same trajectory and hole as the previous shot.

Jane's shots strike true, a deafening crack of gunfire. Two shots so close together they were almost simultaneous.

- Big Demon Dog takes 121 DMG from Mark of Death and 81 DMG from the follow-up basic attack.

- Big Demon Dog has been inflicted with Dizzy for one turn.

- Jane is at 110/160 ENR (-40 capacity for Stack)

The creature lurches and lets out a bellowing roar however, despite her aim being exact, the creature does not fall. The skull clearly almost too hard for her bullets to penetrate easily, though the ringing impact from the bullets have left the creature dizzied and woozy. Blood seeps from the head wound, from the amount of bleeding, Jane intuits that there is little keeping this demonic hound alive.

[Nik Hasta]

The strange silver automaton regards Jane with a blank look, as it has not even an approximation of human features, but somehow manages to communicate a feeling of surprise.

"[MECHANICAL_LIFEFORM>COMBAT_CLASS]," it intones in a flat artificial voice, as if audibly designating Jane for its own reference. The machine moves jerkily, as if it was not designed with bipedal locomotion in mind, and approaches the far side of the pillar. It then suddenly emits a passable impersonation or perhaps, given the audible hiss in the background of this new voice, a recording of Ella's voice with the instructions it had been given.

"<**Knock**it**towards**me**and**the**dogs**as**so on**as**they**are**close.**>" Ella's voice says from the strange machine. It raises its right hand and Ella and Jane see that the metallic surface of its hand shifts and ripples to become a kind of rudimentary hammer. It swings and strikes the pillar with a loud crunch, sending a small amount of masonry clattering to the floor.

And the pillar remains standing.

The robot takes a moment before looking around the pillar, again its blank face registering no emotion, before speaking to Ella in the same flat monotone voice interspersed with the recording of her words.

"Substance density significant. Further attempts will be made to**knock**it**towards**me**. Please wait and remain calm," it says. It then swings with its left, unarmoured hand against the pillar with a clanking noise that seems to do little to the stone structure.

Ella, please report to the Combat Notation thread to lay out your actions.

[Nik Hasta]

With Jane leading the pursuit a good deal ahead, and Nemo not far behind, Kinu chuckled darkly to herself. They'd surely beat her to the punch...fair play, they'd set up the spot first.

As they made their way towards the ones in deathly straits, she veered off. Before she got shook, she mentioned taking to the top...

Stalling her stride, she took a small leap, and when she planted her feet, the ground seemed to wobble where she touched it, and she sprung off of it like canvas, into the walls of the alleyway, scaling up and up...

OOC: Applying Trait Check for Squared Circle for +15 AGI; Kinu's Stack remains on AGI and SKI, raising Stealth to 24 in total.

GM note to Kinu:

spoilers:

Kinu bounces the wall of the nearest building and lands upon the roof. Below her she can see the rest of the party following along behind Jane. She is struck by how far away they look, she could only have climbed a few floors up yet she feels a dizzying sense of vertigo as the ground seems to pull away from her in a twist of space. Looking at the building she just climbed, she can see that there are only three floors below her. She climbed those herself, she saw the windows - held static by her observance of them - pass by her as she ascended. And yet she feels as though she is at the top of a twenty storey building based on how tiny her allies look from up here. She will have to jump across a few gaps between buildings to get to her destination. They appear close enough that is but a simple hop for someone of her agility and physicality. In the back of her mind, she can only hope, if anything goes wrong, that the distance to the ground is measured in floors rather than feet. She's taken bumps like that before but perhap has never been so unsure about an aerial move. Before she can start moving though, she also spots the imposing figure of the robotic giant from outside the walls, apparently having moved through the gates. On bright blue jets, it glides past her and flies off in the direction of the tree. Kinu wonders if his perception of the height of his flightpath is as uncertain as her own.

end of spoilers

[grampagen]

Off the dilapidated bricks from ashen frames Kinu bounded, one step after the other. In the final push to the top, she leapt over in a tumbling arc and landed with her coat clearing in a last flourish.

Easy-peasy. Still unseen, silent as a puma, and not a speck of dust in sight, she turned her eyes to the ground. Now I- whoa-!

Peering over the edge, the rather large difference between the number of steps she took and the distance below hit her rather starkly.

What the hell, is the ground spinning? Narrowing her eyes, the effect that had pronounced itself the moment they'd passed through the gate seemed to root itself again here. ...all a matter of perspective, was it, Krys? Ugh...

After all, why should the dimensions matter, if the space came lengthwise or topwise? Muttering to herself, Kinu measured out the cluster of moving bodies on the ground. There was still some distance to clear before she'd be able to survey them properly...

Then, flooding the rooftop from one side, she spotted the armored mech-frame as it passed by. For its size, the jump jets were quite silent as she saw it took flight - at least, significantly quieter than the runic-and-incantation based methods the Administratum Witches had used. Back in the Walled City, seeing such a thing meant that someone form up high had pronounced a sentence, and judgment had come for the sector; seeing this marvel of metal and heavy arms move in pursuit of the Great Tree, same as they'd been, brought about a greater sense of forboding.

Dunno if it's a full-on toolkit, or if there's someone in there, but looks like they got their eye on the prize too.

Kinu measured the distance in her mind, estimating it'd be half a block forward to meet the others - in passing, rather, the drop down was quite something else. Though she'd never catch up to the iron giant on foot, she nonetheless stole after it, hoping to steal a glimpse of what it would encounter as it head skyward.