"I don't really like it. What if it's like one of those scary movies and it chases us? Or grows into a whole new monster?" She stuck her hand out toward the arm. "Uh, Sandra, can you back up a little? I'm gonna try to blow it all the way up."[/b] Tooru's palm glowed once the girl moved out of the way, and quickly let out a mana bolt roughly equivalent to a shotgun blast at the errant limb.
"We should keep going, though. This place is weird, and the way it's trying to be all nice is just making it creepier!"
Assuming nothing untoward happens other than blowing up the arm, try to feel for that sense of despair and where it's strongest. If that's not helpful, just. . .keep going forward, I guess, making sure we don't split up.
Just as you start to prepare a bolt, Aleksandra starts walking forward towards the struggling arm. You hold your hand out in front of her, warning her away, and she meekly complies, stepping back and giving you room. You nod, and turn back towards the arm, focusing your magic into your hand, and trying to shape it before you throw. It's... difficult. You can only barely even recognize the sensation of your charged magic, like a prickling in your hand, and you have no real clue on how to control the form it will manifest in when you release it. You try anyway, visualizing a more spread-out blast, and then
release your manabolt while thrusting your hand forward towards the arm.
There's an bright flash as your bolt arcs forward, and then the arm
explodes, flinging clay all over the walls and ceiling, though none reaches back to you or the other girls. You're not really sure whether you actually managed to change the form of your bolt, though, you think it was still just a simple projectile, though you couldn't really see. Maybe if you tried it with a talisman? That way, you could alter the magic after it's separate from you, but before it's launched. The talismans are kinda hard to make, though, so maybe it would be a foolish idea; wasting your magic on minor changes might not be worth it.
While you were thinking, the other girls have started to continue down the corridor, so you rush to catch up. You cautiously poke your toe at one of the a small piles of clay when you pass by the arm's remains, but it seems pretty dead. You smile; your magic is pretty effective, even without modification!
"I have no idea. I thought that figthing monsters would be fun, but everything here is confusing and kinda creepy. How are we even supossed to find witch in first place?"
Poke clay arm with AK-47. Does it look dangerous?
You start to walk forward, keeping your eyes and your rifle trained on the undying arm, but Tooru holds her arm out in front of you, telling you to stay back. You obey the experienced girl, giving her room, but still keeping your gun ready, just in case. Tooru nods, then pauses for a few seconds in an odd pose, before thrusting her arm forward and launching a bright orange bolt of energy directly into the clay arm... which explodes
spectacularly! You mutter a quiet
"Wow...", impressed with the effectiveness of her attack.
Still, you want to be sure, so after glancing at Tooru to make sure she's not doing anything more, you cautiously walk up to the remains of the arm and poke at some of the clay with your rifle. It seems pretty dead, you think? It's not dangerous anymore, at least, unless it, like, pulls back together and turns into spikes, or... you scowl, unhappy with how you don't really understand how the clay even
works. For all you know, it'll be dangerous no matter how many little bits you split it into.
You jump and spin around when Mina, who apparently walked up right behind you without making any noise at all, speaks up and says that the clay is dead. You loudly tell her to
not sneak around like that, and she gives you a confused look, before turning around and walking back towards the others. As you follow along, you wonder
how she's moving so quietly, anyway. You're all walking in ankle-deep water, and it splashes loudly for everyone else.
If it wasn't clear, stick with the group - try to sense for where the witch might be with Alida
You stand and watch as Tooru prepares her magic, taking unusually long to actaully throw it. It's sort of neat to sense how the magic is settles just inside and around her hand, not quite real, in the same way as the blood pumping through her, but just as present all the same. Then, in a flash, the magic compresses and slips into full existence, with Tooru launching it in the same motion. Her target, made of soft clay, detonates impressively, splattering over the walls and ceiling.
Aleksandra heads over to the clay to inspect it, and you meander along behind her, curious yourself. Once you're close enough to sense it, you're unsurprised to find that the bits of clay, much like the remains of the last clay familiar you destroyed, are still animate--they're just too slow and chaotic to form any coherent form. Aleksandra, just in front of you, is still poking at the bits of clay with her rifle, clearly uncertain. You tell her that the clay isn't a threat anymore, and to your surprise she jumps four inches into the air and spinning around to face you, while subtly bringing her rifle closer to bear on you. She then angrily tells you to not be so quiet, which... you're not sure how to take, since you spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. So you just ignore her outburst, and return to Alida and the others.
Alida seems to still be deliberating on where to go, so you close your eyes and focus on the flow of despair again. It's pretty much identical to the last time you checked, being a tiny bit fresher, at most. There's no real flow, or at least no flow strong enough to be apparent. It's more like the emotions have just been sitting here for a long, long time.
You open your eyes, and tell Alida this. She nods, and then rudely says that she thinks you're wrong, because she can definitely sense a flow coming from down the corridor. With that, she marches forward, in the direction the clay man fled. You trail along behind her, a bit insulted, but not really wanting to speak up.
Try to sense which way leads closer to the witch. If I can't do so, pick a direction at random.
You decide to try and find the witch again while Tooru deals with the arm, figuring you've been walking long enough for something to have changed. It's difficult for you to focus, though; your blood's still running hot after the encounter with the clay man, and just when you've calmed down enough to focus, you hear the loud bang of Tooru's manabolt, breaking your concentration. You growl in frustration, but don't give up, and keep trying to focus your senses anyway. You have plenty of time.
Eventually, you once more get a vauge sense of the despair, but it's virtually identical to the last time you checked. You think. It's really hard to focus, but you're
pretty sure that the flow is coming from ahead, in the direction that the clay man retreated, which makes sense. And then just after you realize that, your concentration is broken again, by Mina speaking up from directly in front of you, saying that there's no flow whatsoever, the despair currently surrounding you is just slightly less old than the despair in the room you came from. You open your eyes, annoyed, and point out that obviously if the despair here is newer, there's a flow, which is coming from the witch. Then you brush past her and begin marching down the corridor, your club held ready just in case the clay man comes back.
Asha cleared her head of this long daze. She gasped, slightly startled by the arm, and by the clarity of her thoughts. She felt strange, as if she just rediscovered how to breath. Speaking felt curiously strange.
"I- I think we should follow it, won't it lead us to its mistress?"
Stay with everyone and move forward.
You stay close to Alida, watching nervously as everyone else goes about their business. Everyone seems to have something to do, even Alida is doing... something, though you're not really sure what it is. You feel a little guilty, you don't really have anything to add, unless you use your hurting spell, again, but you don't want to hurt anyone, even if it repairs their soul a little. You're pretty much useless until someone gets injured...
Eventually, everyone's finished their various little chores, and Alida marches forward, leading the group after the clay man. You follow along, starting to feel like you
want someone to get hurt, just so you have a purpose in being part of the team.
The group doesn't walk for much longer, coming across the end of the corridor within a couple minutes. It terminates in a doorway identical to the one the group first came through, and Alida wastes no time opening it and stepping through.
She finds herself on a balcony overlooking one side of a grand entrance hall, flamboyantly colored much like the previous room. The balcony's floor is still covered with water a few inches deep, but it runs off the side of the entire balcony, draining onto the lower floor yet never lowering in depth, despite the lack of any water source to feed the wide waterfall. On the far side of the hall there's another balcony mirroring the one the Alida is standing on, which runs the length of the hall and has three doors camoflaged by the rainbow paintjob--the rightmost one being directly across from her--along with its own impossible waterfall which runs for the entire length of the balcony. To the left, she can see two doors on her balcony, and that both balconies terminate into a mundane wall, and to the right, both end in staircases which curve towards the center of the room, before meeting in a flat platform and then continuing down to the floor of the hall as one staircase. Water runs down the stairs, as well.
Alida leans over the balcony to look at the bottom of the hall, a good two stories below her. The floor is thickly carpeted and extravagantly, chaotically colored, and unsurprisingly, is covered with crystal clear water, though it doesn't look nearly as deep as it should, considering the long, huge waterfalls. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any furniture in the room, and aside from pillars that support the balconies, the only obstacle is a massive and heavily rusted chandelier sitting half-crushed in the very center of the room, a dark stain which stands out against all the bright colors. She looks up to see that the ceiling, which must be four or five stories above her, is composed of the same bare concrete as the rest of the rooms have been, with a rat's nest of wires and bare bulbs providing illumination, lighting the room up quite well despite their distance. Six wires hang down from the ceiling, one going feeding through the top of each of the six doors, the only thing making the presence of the painted doors obvious.
The blonde girl continues to examine the incongrously distant ceiling of the room while the other girls follow her in, and take in the sights themselves. She's only startled out of her thoughts when she hears Aleksandra shriek to her left, and everyone immediately turns to look. The Russian girl is leveling her rifle at the bottom of the wall at the far left side of the room, where a tuxedo-wearing clay man is leaning out of a very tall seam in the wall, just far enough to reveal his glass tie. Just after Aleksandra starts to aim at the monster, he retreats through the seam in the wall and disappears from view, and the seam closes an instant later. After a couple seconds, those watching realize that there's a seventh door down there, much taller than the others but still painted to be nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the walls; since it has no power cable leading to it, the large door would've been nearly impossible to spot if the familiar hadn't been leaning through it when they came into the room.
((Next update on Friday the 9th. Labyrinth music no longer audible.))Soul Gem: Glowing with a fading light.
Form and location: Medallion, pinned to her left breast.
Age: 14
Hair Color: Salt-stained blonde.
Health: Completely drenched and ashy, and with a bunch of deep cuts in her left shoulder, bandaged with two of Asha's ribbons. The bandages are soaked through with blood.
Inventory: A magically-lengthened club, and a boxed pair of new (if wet) shoes in her backpack. A fistful of marshmallow pie held in her offhand.
Totem: A fishing club.
Stats:
Bravery: Talented~
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Amateur...
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Skilled!
Creativity: Cursed ;-;
Love: Cursed ;-;
Abilities:
Mobility Lvl2
Close Combat Lvl3+1
Totem Manipulation Lvl2
Berzerker Lvl3 Active; Bloodied! (Cheap discount to power use)
Painless Lvl2
Effigy Lvl1
Soul Gem: Glowing with a Vibrant light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her left ring finger.
Age: 13
Hair color: Ashen
Health: Fine, if very wet! And covered in asha!
Inventory: One ribbon.
Totem: A Ribbon. The one her late sister wore.
Stats:
Bravery: Skilled!
Joy: Cursed ;-;
Innocence: Cursed ;-;
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Talented~
Creativity: Amateur...
Love: Skilled!
Abilities:
Mobility: Level 3
Close Combat: Level 2
Totem Manipulation: Level 1 (+1)
Heal and Steel: Level 2 (Active: Next attack rolls on Mercy)
Soothe: Level 3
Flagellation: Level 3
Memento: Level 1 (Given to Aleksandra)
Soul Gem: Glowing with a warm light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her right index finger.
Age: 14.
Hair Color: Bright green.
Health: Dazed, a bit bruised from her fall, and covered in ash, aside from her wet feet.
Inventory: A halberd! Which I can't stop visualizing as a Black Knight Glaive!
Totem: A halberd.
Stats:
Bravery: Amateur...
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Amateur...
Purity: Skilled!
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Talented~
Love: Cursed ;-;
Abilities:
Mobility: Level 2
Close-Combat: Level 2 (+1)
Regeneration: Level 2
Sixth Sense: Level 3
Semblance: Level 2
Projection: Level 2
Soul Gem: Glowing with a shadowed light.
Form and location: Necklace, worn around her... neck...
Age: 13
Hair Color: Bright scarlet.
Health: Fine! Somehow dry aside from her feet, but very ashy.
Inventory: Nothing useful, not even talismans...
Totem: Ofuda talismans, primarily thrown as manabolts.
Stats:
Bravery: Cursed ;-;
Joy: Talented~
Innocence: Skilled!
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Amateur...
Love: Skilled!
Abilities:
Mobility II
Mana Bolt III (+I)
Regeneration I
Totem Manipulation II
Invigorating Passion I
Outburst II
Duet with Reality II
Ward: Glowing with a foolish light!
Age: 12
Hair Color: Black.
Health: Fine, though her ears still hurt. Also, she's drenched.
Inventory: A cute blue ribbon tied into her hair, and an ancient partially-loaded AK-47 held in her hands. She's wearing Alida's coat, it's a bit big and baggy for her, not to mention somewhat ratty... but it's surprisingly comfortable.
Stats:
Bravery: Skilled!
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Talented~
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Cursed ;-;
Love: Amateur...
Author
Topic: Pumsy's Seeds - A ~MAGICAL GIRL~ game inspired by PMMM (Read 149982 times)