Titanomachy Rebirth (IC)

[RacingeR]

Kaguya & Aster Hunter
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – 6th Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

“Dammit. I know he’s got good points. I don’t like it but fuck.” Hiyori spat a string of curses under her breath, and stepped in front of Kaguya, stance at the ready.

“Oh, shut it.” Camila took point, leading the improvised team forward. “Mob ‘em! Don’t let them fly away! Two for each one!”

It ultimately didn’t take much to take the remaining three crows out, once you moved in an organized way. The creatures were agile, but lacked enough mass to push people aside. Employing a series of counters, they went down easily enough.

Aster took one out with a well-placed parry and strike. Hiyori caught one with a counter of her own, albeit she got some scratches from it before Camila knifed its neck. The last one got inevitably cornered after pecking at June, and was subject to a series of attacks from the rest of the party before the angry redhead bashed its brains out.

Mutated Crow x3 has been slain

It worked out easily enough. Camila seemed to have a surprising amount of experience in fights involving two parties composed of multiple people, and all of you had found yourselves taking the positions she wanted you to, almost unconsciously.

But… the easy part was over.

“Here it comes!”

The approach of those heavy footfalls announced that the hard part started now. It was fast. Much faster than something so heavy should be. And it was coming for your blood and flesh.

It burst through into the room like a hurricane. The gray aura around it roared along with its howl, as the heavily mutated creature rose to all its foul height, towering even over Aster. Rot-covered muscles pulsed. Red light almost shone from those savage eyes.

Without a doubt, it was by far the strongest monster all of you had witnessed so far.

Encountered Ghoul

Claws shone in the warped light of the room as it stepped forward. The fangs of the corpse-eater pointed at your throats. And the fight for your lives was on.

Vs Ghoul
Turn 1

[Airen]

Rika Griffin
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

One more moment of violence.

The instant in which the zombie spends the last of it's strength is the same instant that her body decides to ensure it can never rise again, sending it's weight crashing down to the floor below with a thick, wet sounding slam followed by a knife-like kick to the head, not trusting the teeth of these sorts of things enough to risk putting unguarded fingers near their mouths.

Not that they would ever be fast enough to bite her, but it was the principle of the matter.

---And then the body cools off, tries to calm down with adrenaline coursing through it's veins, and...

Ah.

She comes back to her proper mind just as quickly as she had left it.

Someone's screaming.

It was a sound that made sense she supposed -some people scream during fights- but now was honestly not the time with the whole in-the-monster-nest thing-!

"We don't know if it's contagious, calm down."

She speaks to the unfortunately bitten girl, before grabbing her by the hand, glancing at Eilian and...

"Come on."

Moving towards the North.

Away from the serial-killer like sounds coming from behind them.

[Katie]

Eleanor Lansing
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways - ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

It’s an ominous scene. A lone teacher, standing in the darkness. The lights of the school, rearranged to be dim and almost useless. It sends a shiver down her spine. Try as she might to be fearless, but those days, locked in that room, creep back up to her. But she is strong now, so there is no need to fear. She has to remember that.

Her past is long behind her. The only way to move is forward.

Still, her past scars stop her from abandoning caution, so her approach grinds to a halt. Surely a teacher would have noticed her by now, done anything human. Tell her to hide, tell her to find safety, all that. The stillness, however, is unsettling. Maybe it’s someone in shock. Perhaps speaking will help.

“Teach,” she offers, trying to sound friendly, “is everything alright?”

[Plue]

Eilian Aubrey
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

The blonde stares at the corpses on the ground, the white haired girl having completely destroyed them in short order. The shrieking of the other girl echoing in her ears annoyingly.

"Come on."

Eilian doesn't hesitate before following the two. She had no desire to be any closer to whatever is making the metallic sound than she currently is now.

"Contagious? Do you think they had rabies?"

That... does not seem quite right though. Humans had a much different reaction to rabies than animals after all, and increased strength was not one of them. Or durability. No, wait, hold on though. What kind of disease would be able to make human skin harder than metal?

And why would this Rika know about it?

"Were you in the biology track?"

[RacingeR]

Cyrus Ferdinand
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – 2nd Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

What was this strange feeling?

Déjà vu, perhaps?

And yet you didn’t remember ever jumping out of a window like this while illuminated by nothing but an eldritch sky, while escaping from certain death.

And yet there was that strange feeling, as if you had done this once before or had you done it countless oh so countless times before?.

Then the feeling disappeared, and your brain was occupied with thoughts about how to, for example, keep your skeleton intact after this fall.

“Wait! Damn it, you fucking idiot!” An explosion of expletives, followed by a rather unfeminine grunt of exertion.

Suddenly, you felt arms wrap around your frame, lifting you up and then bringing you up towards a chest you were fairly sure was a girl’s.

Somehow, Cecily Ridley had jumped after you and had managed to catch you in mid-air, bringing you into a classical princess carry as she fell.

She landed on her feet with a loud thud. You heard her release another grunt of pain as she absorbed the impact for you, not that being carried like this by a shorter girl was very comfortable at all.

Cecily Ridley has lost 5 HP.

Then she just unceremoniously dumped your ass on the hard ground. She rubbed her legs while making a face that seemed a lot more annoyed than pained.

You looked around yourself. You were at the school’s courtyard, that much was clear… but you couldn’t recognize this place at all. Where the hell was this? Evidently the place had changed a lot since you’d last seen it.

Shrubs and trees, all looking strange and menacing. And no way to know where you were relative to the school, disoriented as you were after your brusque awakening and that mad race. At least the slimy threat was no more, for now.

You looked towards your companion.

“Fucking hell. My fucking ankles!”

Yep, real helpful there.

What to do now?

[Tobias]

Neru Sune
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

Some people might have gotten annoyed at orders being screamed at them in a crisis moment, but Neru found himself falling into the category of people more or less happy to have direction. Its not like he had any fuck'n idea what he was supposed to do. About the only real thing he had going for him was he was fairly used to gore, so he was able to choke back down a mouthful of vomit when a nebulous, and extremely fragrant, dark liquid burst from a pustule on the body he hucked more or less in the direction he wanted to go. He didn't even have time to wipe his hands before one of the other students half bounced off him in the scrum.

The blue haired buy wasn't even able to figure exactly out who it was, he only caught a dim flash of a stark white face wracked in terror.

Neru could smell urine in the air. One of the bodies perhaps. Or another student.

Maybe his own.

The bigger monster was like the worst kind of enemy from some absurd horror game. The braver students were getting battered around and didn't seem to be doing much. Neru watched a boy take a massive fist so hard Neru fully expected to see his head pop like a dropped melon. Amazingly the other boy stayed up, mostly.

Either that guy was hardier then he looked, or the monster's skin was a decayed as it looked and therefor might have enough of a give that the leathery flesh cushioned the blow a bit. Small miracles.

Well, that left Neru and the other group of kid's he was mentally starting to think of as "the useless bunch" (a name which narrowly edged out "the doomed" and "the red shirts") to deal with the random thrashing of the lesser creatures. Fortunately Neru's strategy, co-opted and enhanced by Rosalin, had actually worked well enough. The creatures had gone down and were mostly propelling themselves around the dirty floor by method of crawling.

The frail boy was less optimistic the Rosalin. Rosalin was trying to get everyone more or less focused. The blue haired boy kept feeling his thoughts drift in irreverent, pointless directions, but he still understood what he needed to do well enough, but he didn't trust the others not to panic and run. Instead of trying for further "Rallying of the troops" as it were, he enacted the last part of his plan he felt he was both mentally and physically capable of.

As Neru, wearing a strange, fear stricken grin, raised his right leg and proceeded to start curb stomping the nearest zombie into paste. Getting them off their feet did more then reduce offensive power. Curb stomping someone really didn't require that much strength, or accuracy. Even if these things had skulls just like a human's, all you really needed was your own body weight and a bit of leverage. Either the others would see what he was doing and join in or he would get all the downed ones himself. He may be weak, but if you wanted something done right, etcetera.

There was a disturbing crack.

It may have been a monster, but in the darkness, it could have been just some kid. It was easy to paint a mental picture of some life coming to an end at the end of an up raised tennis shoe. The ambiance of terrified whimpers and the smell of blood added all the sensory input needed to truly make it feel as if he was casually committing a murder.

Again Neru's gorge rose. He felt a trickle of acid tasting bile trickle past his lips. He wasn't choking on it though, so he had been through worse. He swallowed it once more to clear his airways. It was a trick he learned from his nightmares. If at all possible, don't let yourself start throwing up, the aftershocks and heaves slowed you down.

He was becoming less and less convinced his original plan of dealing with the little guys and then bum rushing the bigger creature down through sheer weight of numbers would actually work. It was starting to look like the Tank had more then enough power to wipe out the whole lot of them. To say nothing of that strange mist. Empirical evidence suggested some sort of defense mechanism based around mitigation of melee attacks, but he wasn't sure enough about that to start calling out warnings. Plus, the one's with enough bravery and stupidity to have directly engaged it seemed more experienced in...wherever and whatever the hell ass fuck this was. They could figure out anything he could.

At any rate, if he could finish off the rest of the zombies, their enemy would therefor be more or less in one direction, which plausibly meant it would become more feasible to run the hell away.

[RacingeR]

Myo
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Courtyard – Northern Yard)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

Your chosen direction was the northern entrance to the school. Maybe there were students in need of help elsewhere, but it wasn’t your job to help them, nor did you have any reason to care about their fates. For now, you had to do your thing and learn as much as you could about what the hell… this was all about.

Accelerating, you jumped from treetop to treetop, moving towards your target. The rats, startled by your sudden movement, followed nonetheless. Troublesome, but you were confident they couldn’t do anything to you for now, even if they gave you a bad feeling.

But then again, what here didn’t give you a bad feeling?

You stopped atop one of the strange, gnarled trees, as your eyes beheld something as unbelievable as the broken sky above.

Their eyes were empty. They moved slowly, shuffling, but you instinctively felt they were much faster than they looked like. And they were, without a doubt, dead as a doornail. And yet they still moved, they still lived, and they still had ‘something’ within them that made them look at you with hunger and hostility.

Whether you would know the term ‘zombies’ or not, that was the only way to describe the undead monstrosities you were witnessing right now.

Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolboy) x4
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Adult)

You were in one of the open areas you had noticed in your earlier inspection. The nearest bit of terrain you could use was a piece of… decoration? Some sort of thing that had once probably meant to be akin to a Greek pillar that now jutted strangely out of the ground.

But the distance between your tree and the pillar was so big you weren’t sure you could actually jump it. And dashing for it…

Well, the rats didn’t seem to be friends with the undead, seeing how they immediately jumped to the nearest zombified student and started ripping him apart. That left you another four that seemed to be already aware of your presence.

It was an open area so you could always dash away and try another approach, but the zombies were blocking your more direct routes by ground. You didn’t have much information about them but you doubted the students were all that difficult to fight given how the rats were quickly taking care of one, but… the adult one gave you a bad feeling.

You were considering your options. Then you ran out of time to consider your options.

The first warning bell was feeling the bark of the tree subtly shift below you. That put you on high alert, and then…

From the corner of your eye, you saw something moving towards you quickly, something coming out from the tree itself. Was that a vine?

Encountered Mutated Tree

[Tangerang]

Myo
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Courtyard – Northern Yard)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

Confronted with the situation at hand, Myo did something she rarely ever did. She hesitated. Not out of fear or confusion or anything of that sort. She simply found herself in a situation she never thought she would be in. It was something she never expected, when she started her creed. After all, her creed was white and black, as simple to understand as life and death. And all of a sudden, there are shades of gray.

She would not kill anything that she was not hired to kill. That was her rule. That was the responsibility of one who cuts the thread of life and death. Killing for joy, killing for power, killing for convenience... all of these were mere excuses of those who treated life far too lightly.

But this scene. These creatures. Do they even qualify as alive? Would it be okay to kill them if they were already dead? Not to mention the... plant approaching? Where do plants fall in the grand scheme of things?

Unfortunately, Myo was neither a philosopher nor a theologian. She could not answer her own doubts.

Myo moved her hands over Crimson Scar and Colbalt Scar. She tightened her grip on their hilts. And then she let go, releasing her hold.

No. This was not her place to decide. She couldn't just simply interpret the situation in a fashion that was convenient to her. The power over life and death was too heavy a responsibility to bend it whenever to suit one's whims.

She cannot exert her power to kill outside of a job or contract. She can't kill for her own sake, but for someone else. Similar to how weapons must be wielded, assassins must be hired. Otherwise, she's nothing more than a common murderer.

In other words, given that communications with her organization seems to have currently been disrupted, she would need to find an interim employer. Ideally, it would be someone with the status, influence, or resources to afford her services. But in a pinch, she can always offer reduced services at a lower cost, depending on the person.

She gave the zombies a wary look and shrugged. It was a far off chance, but who knows. This situation was clearly something outside her comprehension anyway, so she can't really be surprised at anything.

"So... are you able to understand what I'm saying? Are you capable of conversation? Is there anything you want?"

Myo spoke without much expectation of any answers. But who knows, clearly there is some unknown power moving them. And of course, otherwise she would simply continue to move on and continue her journey.

No matter how fast they may be, she is still the Godspeed.

[Prepared Evasion]

Eva: 15 + 5 (Godspeed) = 20

[RacingeR]

Jordan J. Jones
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – 4th Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

As far as ideas went, it was probably the single best one you could’ve had. Given how bad the situation had become, and how you’d fallen from danger to danger, your quick thinking would’ve probably made Lavrenti proud of you.

Coach Philips had also been rather fond of telling you to trust your body and its training to do the thinking for you. In this particular case, he’d been correct, and it was a good thing you’d followed his advice.

Now the question was if it was going to be enough. You had little information you could use to measure this thing. Its gait was unsteady, and you could easily predict its relative lack of coordination, even if you couldn’t place exactly why. You suspected you’d hit it with this maneuver, but would it be enough?

The main problem was that your companion wouldn’t be of much use. The blond girl was surprisingly fit, judging by the speed she had shown when running away. She was in fact, well above average there. Her endurance wasn’t anything to write about, judging how she didn’t even have the breath left to reply to you as she ran towards the desk and started to push alongside you.

Zeus High had excellent P.E. programs. Mr. Dawson was a real miracle worker, and there weren’t really all that many couch potatoes in the school, surprising given the sheer number of students. But you’d only needed to take a look at this blonde girl’s build to tell that while she definitely worked out, and had strong legs, her arm strength would be quite lacking. And in fact, you could tell she was under the average.

You were also a case of strong legs and weaker arms, relatively speaking, but you were much taller than she was and out-massed her considerably too. Your own strength was a fair bit above that of the average teenager, and that of the average adult too. That without even counting your own ‘cheat’ as well.

It was incredible how one’s mind wandered when you were in an imminent collision course against an impossible undead who looked easily capable and willing to rip your cranium apart to get to the brain whom the aforementioned mind belonged to.

The thing growled at you, a deranged and savage snarl that sent a foul odor your way, and then lunged towards you. And the fucking thing was fast as hell too.

Two forces collided with an unbelievable noise, unnatural flesh against wooden desk. Time slowed down to a crawl.

Battle calculation

Jordan & Lizzie’s Attack.
-25 (Jordan’s STR + Xth Gear + Lizzie’s STR) – 10 (Decayed Being (HB) B’s STR) = 15 damage.

You heard something crack loudly from the zombie’s chest, at the same time a smashing sound nearly blew your eardrums out. The zombie’s arm wiped at you, but it was unable to reach you. Instead, it hit the desk a few centimeters away from your hands, loudly, shattering the point where it hit, showering wooden splinters everywhere. The twin impacts nearly ripped the desk off your hands: the thing was by itself nearly as strong as your combined charge, and you were exceedingly glad you hadn’t discovered that particular nasty surprise on your own flesh.

Then the undead creature went flying away, globs of blackened blood dripping from its facial orifices as it went, at the same time the farther half of the desk crumbled away. Lizzie let it go with a crying yelp, her arms unable to keep hold of the surviving half, the impact pushing her backwards, while you managed to keep yourself on your feet, albeit your momentum had been stopped.

The zombie banged itself against the floor, and for a moment, you thought you had slain the monster, for it laid unmoving on the ground. The sweet illusion only lasted less than a second, as the monster picked itself up with another bestial snarl, its movements stiff but quick.

Its chest had sunken in. You had crushed his ribcage, and probably transformed a few of the ribs into deadly shrapnel that had destroyed its lungs. Had it been a living creature, it’d be dead. But then again, it had already been sporting mortal wounds, hadn’t it? It looked like you had done damage to it, but could it even die in the first place?

This thing was a nightmare. It was at least as strong as an Olympic gold medalist, and while you were faster than it was, it was quite speedy too, faster than the blond girl at least. Taking a direct hit from it would be bad, but you were sure of one thing: you were still on the advantage right now, and while the others couldn’t, you could probably dodge its attacks.

You heard another noise, and risked a glance backwards. The noise hadn’t come from the groaning door, still under siege by the slime trying to eat through it, but from Adelyn. The girl had woken up at last, and the noise had been produced by her: a sputter of confusion as she sat on the floor and looked around herself.

Her eyes bulged progressively more as she absorbed each and every impossible detail, becoming impossibly wide as she stared at the wounded zombie. She sputtered again, said something unintelligible, tried to get up, then fell back down, chocked on her words at least two times more, and then finally managed to grate something out.

“What the fuck?!” She asked. She even managed to sound positively indignant.

[RacingeR]

Ishmael Freeman
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

And run you did.

The problem was that the darkness simply didn’t make for much of a cover. You couldn’t quite explain it, but it was as if the darkness moved along with you. No, more like as if it limited your field of vision to a certain distance.

There was no way in hell this was natural.

And the damn zombies were in your trail. There was nothing to distract them from you or that you could use to disappear from their field of view. Maybe if you made enough distance… but these things were much faster than you were.

In fact, they were gaining on you quite quickly. They’d been at the edge of your vision limit before, now they were halfway through. How unlucky they’d had caught you in an open, long hallway. At least you knew that your instinct about these zombies had been right: they were way faster than they should be. Maybe they were ignoring the automatic limit on muscle usage most people had?

At least the witch was at your side. The portal was moving along with your run, and while she’d say nothing more, you saw her look towards the enemies, muttering something. A strange feeling ran through your spine. You could feel… something radiating from her, some sort of intangible energy that was making your hairs stand on end.

No time to think on that. Run and run and run- and then the hallway was over.

The room you burst into wasn’t particularly big, and you were sure it hadn’t particularly existed before. It was a stark square, well-illuminated by a disorder of lamps on the ceiling. Broken furniture was strewn about, most unidentifiable, albeit you saw pieces of cupboards cabinets, wardrobes and the like.

And corpses. There were corpses strewn about the wreckage, bloodstains still outstanding in the broken desks, their sheen mostly visible on the metallic bits. Many of the corpses, most of them, were the rotted carcasses of students, many looking like they’d been dead for way more than they should’ve been, perhaps in a state similar to the zombies chasing you.

There were, however, a dozen plus corpses that looked relatively fresh and recent, not yet all that marred by rot. These hadn’t been zombies. These had been living students, you realized, slain by whatever lurked in the school. Many looked half devoured, as if chewed and eaten by beasts. Or by zombies.

The room had three exits: one to your side, and another directly opposite to the way you’d come from. The wreckage had to be from an improvised barricade, and you judged it had been placed on the latter exit, before the monsters had broken through and gotten to your schoolmates.

And that was all the time you had to inspect the room. You couldn’t even stop and see if you recognized any of the corpses. The zombies chasing you were coming. They weren’t in the room yet, but would be very quickly.

“Buy a bit more of time.” The witch didn’t seem the least affected by the disaster zone that was this room, coolly giving you an order. “I’ll take care of them.”

[RacingeR]

Masaki Tomomi
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Twisted Classroom – 4th Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

“I see that you’ve got a good understanding on the situation.” Stacy said dryly. She was looking back at you, and like always, you simply couldn’t read her. Were your suspicions true or not? Her face didn’t hold answers.

But you knew very well that Zhong was not the type to take orders… and that whatever came to pass, the seed of a future conflict was already sown, before even the survivors had gotten to group up.

Survival came first, but the foreknowledge of how ugly the situation was bound to turn, sooner or later, remained in the back of your brain.

“Well, glad your ass is ready, because we gotta go.” Zhong said, catching you (and Stacy) by surprise. She hadn’t been particularly sneaky in her approach, but you two had been too busy measuring each other.

“Ashley and her boys got in contact. They’re near the kitchens. Found one of the doors, but it was barricaded, so they’re turning around and trying to find another way in. Let’s go and see if we can meet up with ‘em.”

“Got it.” Stacy nodded, then looked towards everyone else. “Let’s get going, people.”

----------

And into the twisted hallways you went. It was hard to measure the passing of time without a clock, in these still and bloody hallways, but Zhong had evidently picked a route she was reasonably sure had been cleaned out and your progress was fast at the start. For a while, you had nothing to worry about.

The formation had Angelina, Stacy, the two non-gang members whose names you didn’t know and you at the center. Zhong took point, marching at the forward center, with the two gang boys at either side. The two gang girls were the rear guard.

Nobody was very talkative. Angelina had remained in sullen silence, whatever had went between her and Zhong while you were distracted with Stacy, it was clear that the present company wasn’t the hacker’s preference. It was also clear that Zhong didn’t give her much importance, at least compared to how she had treated you.

Everyone else looked too tired, or too concentrated on their surroundings. Nobody was having a good time, that much was clear, except for your squad leader, who, while not looking precisely merry, was on her element.

And Stacy, of course, who you simply couldn’t tell what she was thinking about or what she was feeling.

You were clutching your own brand-new pointy metal club, as was everyone else. Despite Zhong’s assured gait, the tension could be cut with a knife. They were all expecting an attack at any time.

Yet, nothing came clawing out of the darkness for your throat. You wandered quite a while, until you reached a split in the hallway, an unnatural V that divided the path in two.

“You think it’s over there, Matt?” Zhong asked the taller of the red-haired boys.

“Yeah, should be. Explored the other side with Brad, before he…” Matt interrupted himself with a grim expression. “So, if you guys got a look to so much of the floor as Stacy said, I think the stairs down should be over there.”

Zhong nodded, then looked at her second-in-command. Stacy shrugged. “I don’t know how much we’ve mapped out, really, but I’d say we have about a thirty percent chance of the stairs down being there.”

The gang leader grunted in acknowledgment, and then shrugged. “Well, we gotta gamble at some point.” She grinned at her words, as if enjoying the thrill of venturing into the unknown, putting her life on the hands of whatever deity reigned over this insane world.

No, that’d be incorrect. Zhong’s life was where it always had been at. In her own hands.

The tension grew and grew as you proceeded down that passage, continuing in a straight line and ignoring the side-routes that appeared once in a while. Now in unexplored territory, everyone expected an encounter with death.

And you knew death couldn’t be too far. It smelled truly putrid over here. The stench of rot and blood had been ever-present, but much lighter in comparison to how it was now.

Then there were the noises. All too vague to tell where they were coming from, but all disquieting, all scary. You knew people had to be fighting and dying all over the place, but you weren’t running into anyone yet.

And thus, you heard and smelled them before they appeared. The procession stopped as one, alerted by some sort of instinct.

“Trouble.” Zhong grunted, the first to notice the approaching enemies.

You’d seen then before, but they had been mercifully put to death very quickly, so the five zombies that emerged from the dark, very mobile and very dangerous, were a new and unpleasant experience. They looked even worse in motion, like a bad nightmare, and their hostility and ferocity, as well as their hunger, was almost palpable.

Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolboy) x3
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolgirl) x2

“Damn, that’s a lot. How fucking unlucky.” Matt cursed, raising his weapon up. The other boy did the same, and Zhong’s center of gravity dropped as she took on a fighting stance, fists at the ready. The two gang girls looked ready to rush forward as well.

“The girls are really fast, but not as strong. We’ll be in trouble if they go for us.” Stacy told the center group. “We need to mob one of the boys. No time to hesitate, we just go for one of them when we get an opening, and try to not get caught if you don’t want to die-“

The redhead interrupted herself. Footsteps, there were more footsteps. From where?

You looked around. The hallway was a straight line, and the direction you were going towards, considering it east for organizational purposes, was where the zombies had appeared from.

There was a door at the south, more or less at the height you were at. Another door at the north, behind your group. Both looked like classroom doors, but it was hard to tell if there were classrooms behind them.

But you couldn’t place these footsteps. Whatever was playing hell with your sense of direction inside this hell zone was doing the same with the noises. Where they were coming from? Which door? Or could it be they were coming from behind?

You had numbers in your group, for sure. But you now were seeing the disadvantage that came with that.

[RacingeR]

Johnny Justice
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

Zombie Jamboree
Turn 5

For the king of the jungle, mere mooks like the zombie girl that’d been harassing him mattered little. In fact, she’d been barely a detail, a mere bother that’d been destroying itself by trying to destroy him. No, it wasn’t something worthy of his attention, in comparison to the monster standing in front of him.

This was new to you. This monster over there was by far the strongest thing you’d faced in a frontal fistfight. It wasn’t as threatening as a human with a handgun, or perhaps in comparison to a pack of street rats with knives, but individually speaking it was overwhelmingly powerful. It was indeed like fighting against a savage feast in the jungle.

“Everyone has a beast within themselves, Mr. Justice. What matters is how big the beast within you is, and what kind of beast it is.” Who’d told you that? The memory bounced in your mind. It’d been Vinnie, right, that fateful day, while you were in the car. Then the memory bounced again, off and away, because you didn’t have time for it. You had to focus.

You knew your own beast, and it was big and mean and hungry for prey.

Hands like jaws snapped the unworthy prey from its place, heaving the zombie girl with ease. She was almost unnaturally light, and not actually worth that much as a thrown weapon, but you launched her nonetheless.

Battle calculation

The Incredible Flying Zombie Girl’s Speed
-21 (Johnny’s total AGI) > 19 (Decayed Being (HA)’s EVA)
Johnny’s Attack
-24 (Johnny’s total STR + projectile) – 14 (Decayed Being (HA)’s DEF) = 10 damage.

The zombie girl died instantly. You heard her spine snap on impact, and then she fell in a heap against the floor, unmoving. And then the undead teacher crushed the corpse as it broke into a run towards you.

Decayed Being (Human Schoolgirl) has been slain

Timmy had hesitated, perhaps wondering how to interpret your words, but instinct took over the moment the monster ran into his general direction. Meaty fists crunched against the husk’s ribcage with enough strength to send the rotting creature tumbling away.

Battle calculation

Timmy’s Speed.
-18 (Timmy’s total AGI) > 16 (Decayed Being (HA)’s total EVA)
Timmy’s Attack.
-25 (Timmy’s total STR) – 14 (Decayed Being (HA)’s DEF) = 11 damage.

This time you clearly heard the sound of ribs shattering, the already deformed and partially destroyed torso caving and distorting. And yet the monster kept going nonetheless, barely showing any signs of debilitation, pushing past Timmy Bolton, who let a surprised grunt as he was pushed aside with his zombie girl cargo and all, and bearing down on you.

It had to have at least a modicum of instinct, not entirely mindless hunger, perhaps. Enough to discard the too tough and hardy presence that was your companion, and go for you, who looked more wounded, and who had hurt it the most.

You saw a fist coated in purple energy close onto you like a meteor. It had to be the same sensation as standing like a deer in headlights in front of an oncoming truck. The same sense of unreality and perhaps awe that came with facing something far beyond human strength. You saw the punch come, coated in violent energy, the worthiest prey so far showing you the power of its fangs.

Battle calculation

Decayed Being (HA)’s Speed.
-22 (Decayed Being (HA)’s total AGI) > 18 (Johnny’s total EVA)
Decayed Being (HA)’s Attack.
-35 (Decayed Being (HA)’s STR+SPI) – 6 (Johnny’s EXS) = 29 damage.
Johnny’s HP: 80 – 29 = 51 HP.

It got you right in the temple. You felt your cranium break, a breach spreading from the point of impact, your body shaking with the application of force. Your brain shook within its cage, ramming against the prison’s barriers, the concussion causing your vision to swim, and your body to suddenly go slack.

The strongest KO punch you had taken to date. You had survived so many impacts, so many attacks, and this was the strongest you had ever taken. You felt your legs and arms becoming suddenly disobedient. Your knees buckled against your will. Even the light your eyes were seeing distorted, and then darkened. Blood poured from your nostrils.

For a moment, the king of the jungle’s legs started to kneel.

And then something within you.

Clicked into place.

------------

“Everyone has a beast within themselves, Mr. Justice. What matters is how big the beast within you is, and what kind of beast it is.” Vincent Santini said as you and Cyrus Ferdinand sat inside the limousine that would take you to the venue of the biggest gamble of your lives. “Some people are more in touch with their inner beast more than the commonfolk. Us three make fine examples of that.”

He had exhaled a puff of smoke, not minding the fact that he was filling the limousine with the odor of cigarettes, and looked intently at you. It was perhaps the first time Vinnie had frankly acknowledged that he was the same as you were. No, perhaps not the same. This man who, like you, preyed on predators had ice in his veins where you had fire. His temper was more akin to Cy’s than yours, but he was still the most effective killer you’d ever met.

You’d never had the chance to see him in action. No until you were ready to take on something like the Ferro Family and their organization. There’d simply hadn’t been an occasion for that, if only because your gang and this particular mafia were a sort of unofficial allies.

Until today.

“The people you’re going to be meeting today are like that too. They’re all beasts wearing human skin. Don’t be confused by the fancy suits and dresses. These people don’t smile: they show their teeth.” He’d said, almost idly, eyes unwavering. “They see you as prey, Mr. Justice. And that’s because they’re a different animal than you are.”

With an almost elegant gesture, he put out his cigarette on the car’s ashtray, still examining you intently, as if searching for something, and then sighed, if an expression so cold could even be called a sigh.

“This concrete jungle is too small for you, Mr. Justice. The beast within you is still half-asleep. There’s nobody in the streets able to challenge you anymore. Only people on the physical level of Olympic athletes, consummate martial artists and the like would be able to give you a fight, and I suspect that only those like you born for violence are able to truly match you.”

He folded his hands in front of himself, and closed his eyes. “Perhaps by taking a step into this side of your world, you’ll be able to enter a bigger jungle, one where you can awaken your beast. If you are able to take this first step… and that’s only if the devil once again smiles at you two.”

You hadn’t taken that step. Oh, yes, you’d entered that venue, with that fancy furniture and even fancier whores, and you’d stared at that fancy people and seen the beasts that dwelled within them.

Vinnie had been right. They were animals very different from you. No, they were more akin to Cyrus, perhaps, in that what they had was more like a devil within them. Perhaps their devil was smaller than that of your friend, but they were there.

You’d lost, and with it had gone your whole gang. But you knew that the place you’d left behind there hadn’t exactly had what you wanted. The people there had strength, yes, some could’ve given you a good fight, but their real strength wasn’t the strength of the individual, but the strength of an organization. They were stronger than you in the sense that their organizational leviathans could have worn down and eventually taken down your strength as an individual, but while there was a certain thrill to that, it wasn’t what you sought.

The jungle of the world was too small for you. There was no reason for the king to open both eyes to swat down worthless prey. Only in Zeus you’d seen individuals that could match your hunger, and for one reason or the other, you’d taken your time on them, maybe because once you were done with them there’d be no reason to stay in the school, and nothing to look forward to anymore.

But no longer.

Something inside you blazed.

You had been thrown into another world, into another jungle. Into the biggest jungle of them all. Into the ultimate showdown of predator and prey.

Johnny Justice’s inner beast awakened at last, roaring its challenge to the sundered skies of the Warped World.

------------

Awakening

Race changed to Enhanced Human.
Lifespan increased to ???.
Path to Ascendancy unlocked.
Attribute Unbound activated.
Trait Fate-Breaker activated.
Stat cap increased to 40.
Spiritual Power “Godhand” awakened, information on how to wield it obtained.
Healed 20% of max HP.
Status Effects cleared.

Kill the gods, Survivor.

You didn’t kneel. Your knees straightened up, the breach in your cranium mending, the concussion disappearing.

Standing here, you realized that you had changed. Your body, now truly past the bounds of humanity, thrummed by power. And you felt the air around you thrum as to match you. A tattoo had appeared in your right arm, where there’d been none before, and you knew how to use it, how to activate it. How to make it shine with blinding light.

The enemy before you was a beast capable of destroying any normal human, but instinctively, you could sense that it was still ‘weak’. But if this thing existed, logic said that even stronger things must exist.

All roads had to start somewhere. And as Vinnie had once said, to enter into a new world, one had to make a first step. And this undead creature would make for a nice footstool.

[arkturus]

Olivia Reeds
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Courtyard – East Side)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

Olivia grinned when he saw the slight blush on Jack’s face. Yeah she still had it. Maybe they could have some fun later, when they were in significantly less danger that is.

“I’ve gotten word from some friends that the school lobby and the dorms are safe.” Jack said, all business.

“But the lobby’s entrance’s at the south, and I don’t know about you but I don’t like the look of the Great Bush Wall over there.” He added, pointing at the creepy bushes. “Dunno how long it goes, too. I guess we could either try to get inside the school again and get to the lobby through there, or wrap around from the north to get to the dorms.”

“We can decide where we go next after we complete our first objective. Who knows, we may find more information along the way.” She wondered from who exactly gave Jack the intel on the safe zones and how true could they still be. Out of date information could just as likely get them killed if the situation changed. With all the strange things she had seen, Olivia wasn’t going to take what she just heard as the truth.

“Either way, yeah, getting some equipment first sounds good.” He grinned confidently, taking your hand in a casual gesture. “You keep an eye out behind us, I know exactly where to go for weapons.”

“Lead the way big boy~.” She grinned back, letting the boy guide her forward.

Banter out of the way, she focused on keeping an eye out for anyone or anything following them. It proved to be fairly difficult with the heavy darkness obscuring her view. However it did not last for long. She was grateful as their sight cleared and the silhouette of a baseball diamond appeared.

“The bats should be over here.” Jack let go of your hand and walked up to a shed while whispering. He frowned, however, when he noticed bloodstains on the door. He opened it ever so slightly, and peeked inside from the gap.

“Shit.” He muttered.

Olivia joined Jack at the open door to see what had stopped him. It was a corpse, a deceased member of the baseball team. One look at his blood and guts strewn across the floor and his uniform would tell you that. But it was…moving. If such an injury wasn’t enough to kill whatever the dead student had become, what would it take? Cutting off neural signals to the body by severing the brain stem and spinal cord? Or would they have to destroy the brain completely? Incapacitating it could also work but with what exactly.

She glanced at the walls of the shed. Surely the team could afford more than one baseball bat. If they could only get their hands on them.

She tapped Jack’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. “I’ll get its attention and draw it out of the shed onto the diamond. You grab some gear for the both of us and we’ll both engage it. How's that sound?”

[Frantic Author]

Johnny Justice
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon

Zombie Jamboree
Turn 5 - Johnny's Round

"Gyaaaaaaaaaahhhhh..." Johnny let out a long sigh, rubbing his head as blood dripped from his nose, blinking wide eyes once, twice, and a third time, "that really goddamn smarts."

He cracked his shoulder, and took a step. He could feel a cool wind against his skin, and his blood reverberated through his entire body, making his muscles twitch even as it circulated through his veins.

All the tension had been taken away, and his eyes saw everything. He stared at the undead in front of him, and a smile started to slowly crawl across his face like a knife slitting through skin. Step, step, step. His feet felt lighter then air. His skin tingled with an energy he didn't know.

"Hoooooh...." Johnny breathed deep, holding up a fist and staring at the tattoo that now covered his arm - a jagged circle with broken sides that sat near the middle of his bicep, with knife like tendrils carving away from it and encircling his entire arm. If he had squinted at it, it would be easy to mistake for something else; the sun, the moon, maybe even the stars.

But Johnny knew what it was in truth. Internal beliefs shown externally.

"Not crowned till I'm already out, eh? Bit of an embarrassment for a king, but ya can't win 'em all, can you?"

Johnny rolled his shoulder, and his senses were so heightened he could feel the creaking of his bones. The tension in the back of his knees. The whipping of wind that flowed around his arm, and as he looked at the undead before him, he knew it in his gut.

In this world, where man eats man, the only way to rise to the top of the heap was the exact same as that concrete space he had once called home. Before the mob. Before that great and grand loss. This was a place where the streets spoke, and the all screamed out the same things, same phrases, and the same ideas: a desperate lust, almost an instinctual need, for violence.

To be king, you had to be willing to walk through miles of corpses. And Johnny's shoes were feeling a little bit too damn dry. He felt more ready, more alive, and more prepared than he had in years.

Facing his opponent, Johnny grinned a bloody grin, pulling back his arm, feeling how light it was. And he punched, his eyes widening with surprise as a second hit came out when he was least expecting it--!!

[Attack on Decayed Being using Delayed Strike.]

Wise Up!

Spoiler:

[Godhand]

Takes the form of a tattoo on Johnny’s right arm. Johnny’s arm glows with a brilliant shining light, and his body gains a massive increase in both strength and speed. All physical attacks that Johnny makes - with or without his right arm - gain a delayed impact after the first strike, which ignores his target’s defenses. The additional pressure of Johnny’s spiritual energy has the inherent nature of the wind itself, and the disorientation caused by the blow is so staggering that there is a chance it will inflict Confusion.
[Godhand – Spiritual Power. When activated, STR+SPI. AGI + 0.25 SPI. Attacks passively carry a slight chance of causing Lvl 1 Confusion. Costs 10 SP per turn to maintain. The following applications become available.]
[Delayed Strike – Spiritual Power. Activatable on a physical attack. If that physical attack is successful, a second, delayed impact occurs. Deals total STR x0.5, but ignores the target’s natural DEF. Costs 15 SP.]