trans_9 | The Other Gods -- The World Spirit

The effects of the Nightmare King have faded, the battlefield is gone. Stacy is rebooting her systems, and will be online again soon. It's over, it's finally over at last. They've won. They're all alive!

Except that it's not over.

Through the city, a wave of destruction spreads out from where a teenage boy rockets out of what's left of Escherville and floats in the air. A shockwave of air shatters the glass in nearby buildings; the stone foundation that serves as the overlay of Stacy's flesh that most of the city rests on cracks where he passes over it. Eyes and tattoos glowing, long hair whipped around by the winds he's creating, Aang is a force to be reckoned with--and not one to be reasoned with.

This is the Avatar in his full fury, angrier than his comrades have ever seen him, nearly thoughtlessly so.

He's overwhelmed by such senseless rage, the world breaks down around him--at the whims of the elemental forces under his control--stone cracking, water condensing out of the air and freezing over surfaces, wind whipping rubble around in a deadly, gouging tumult, fire crackling through the air.

Aang's voice is many voices, old and young, thousands of them all intermingled, as he cries out:

"WHERE ARE THEY, STACY? WHERE IS THE CREW? ANSWER ME!"

Stacy tries to reason with him. Some of her systems are damaged, she is awake and aware, but her security measures are not back up yet. And even when they are, what then? She can't hold him down forever. In this state, he needs to be calmed, and the AI knows that's something she is incapable of.

So she tries reason. ||Avatar Aang, the original crew is dead. Only refugees from podsleep are awake--||

A building is swallowed up by a sinkhole that appears in the stone.

"YOU'RE LYING!"

He doesn't remember what Leon and the others told him in the dreams, about the original crew being dead. His consciousness had been separated from his body for a very long time, and to have it snap back so suddenly to a physical form at the height of an adrenaline surge, that had been trapped in the Avatar State for more than a year...

A whole year trapped as he had been is enough to unsettle his mind, to make him angry. Now that he's free, everything contained over that time--kept stuffed inside so that he could maintain composure--is bursting free in a frenzied maelstrom of emotion and destruction.

Not that most of the crew will know this--for all they know, if they didn't hear his words, he could be the Nightmare King.

"THEY'RE NOT DEAD! THEY ABANDONED US! THEY LEFT US TO HIM! WHERE ARE THEY?!"

||They are dead. Avatar Aang, you must calm yourself. You have been forced to endure a tremendous physiological and psychological strain--||

She isn't answering the way he wants. She isn't telling him where they are, so Aang reacts by destroying her city. A wave of his arms and there's a blast of air that destroys a temple. He's going to continue until he finds them, finds someone to direct his rage at, or until something manages to calm him down first. The latter is entirely possible, given some time--but at what cost?

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Claire was getting monumentally sick of overpowered teenagers/adults/gods/tofu. She was also kind of sick of being forced to separate from Leon because of all this, but nothing could be done there, and she had a little girl to find.

Not that that was particularly easy, with the city crumbling everywhere and the fact that she couldn't just ask Stacy right now to GPS her kid. The AI was obviously kind of busy. So she picked a direction that she'd assume Sherry would go in to try and find her parents, and went with it, ducking out of the way of debris and narrowly missing getting squashed a few times. She called out her daughter's name as she moved, because honestly, it's not like she needed to mask her position, and she needed her little girl to know she was trying to find her. She was trying to keep calm, but the situation wasn't really helping, and each time she screamed Sherry's name above the racket there was an obvious tense panic in her voice.

After the initial shock (and a few more tears that were hastily wiped away), Sherry started down the road again, counting the seconds between each blow and doing her best to anticipate where to ~~press A not to die~~ duck and when to move.

She was getting good at it when a sudden rock threw her off her counting and she hid inside the doorway of a building. Then, Sherry heard something under the roar of the wind. Familiar and similarly terrified.

"Mom? MOM! OVER HERE! MOM!" Sherry screamed back and hoped that it would be enough.

She was just about to turn down another street when she heard the familiar voice a little ways away, but not in the direction she'd been planning on heading. She spun and headed in the direction of Sherry's voice, and while she had a little trouble pinpointing it at first thanks to all the background noise she found her and ducked into the doorway, immediately crouching down to scoop Sherry into a hug (and also to get the hell out of the way of the wind and debris for a second.)

"Oh God, Sherry! Sweetie, are you okay?"

Sherry hugged back, tightly, "'m okay." The answer was muffled into Claire's shoulder, "I hit a wall." Which, in the long run of things, probably wasn't the worst thing that could've happened. She could've been sliced to ribbons by that class.

She pulled back and sniffled, "Where's Dad? He's okay, too, right?" Sherry bit down on her lip to keep it from wibbling. Wiggling lips would not get her answers. She flinched when another large chunk of debris flew past their hiding spot.

Claire automatically lifted her arm to shield Sherry as debris passed by where they were, before smiling a little weakly, brushing a hand over Sherry's hair.

"Dad's fine." Hopefully. She glanced out the door, nodding her head to indicate the chaos going on outside. "He's taking care of business, right now, but we'll meet up with him again once this is over with. Right now we need to try to find somewhere a little safer, though." Not that anywhere in the city was safe from that thing right now, but.

Sherry winced when Claire's fingers brushed the goose egg she'd gotten from the wall. "Okay," Sherry looked out at the street and its veritable obstacle course of an escape route. "Where, mom? It's destroying everything..." Maybe the other floors, but how would they get there?

Still, further away from whatever it was screaming at Stacy and demanding answers was probably the best place to be.

Claire felt that bump and saw the wince, and she frowned a little, settling her hands on Sherry's shoulders.

"You whacked yourself pretty good, huh?" She smiled slightly, before sighing a little at Sherry's question, and glanced outside again, lost in thought for a moment. Obviously they couldn't get to the hub to get to a higher floor since it was smack dab in the middle of the city.

"Well," she finally replied, looking back at her daughter. "We can either see if this place has a basement and risk getting buried under the building, or we can work our way away from where that kid is freaking out. Get to the other end of the city, the damage might not be as bad." In theory. As it is, she didn't really feel comfortable standing in one place for too long.

"Not as bad as I did when I fell out of that drain," Sherry replied with a weak smile.It hurt her head to do it, but she shook it vigorously at the mention of going into a basement. "I think we should run away from him," she said and then immediately added, "far, far away."

She kind of figured Sherry would agree with her on the moving idea. Nodding her head she glanced out at the street again, trying to get her bearings as to which way they shouldn't head.

"Okay. You ready to move?"

Sherry nodded and gripped Claire's hand. That wind was particularly uninviting, and if she let go, who knew what she'd end up running into this time? "I'm ready." Then, an afterthought, "Don't let go."

She squeezed Sherry's hand in hers tightly, raising up and glancing around the area before looking back at Sherry and smiling slightly.

"I won't. Promise. Stay close, okay? And if you can't keep up let me know and I'll carry you." She'd be a little slower having to carry Sherry's weight, but she could handle it. It wasn't like the little girl was very heavy. After a heavy chunk of wood flew past their hiding space Claire gauged it safe to move, and still holding onto Sherry's hand tightly she pushed away from the doorway, running further down the street, keeping close to the buildings to avoid being too far out in the open.

Running? Running Sherry could do. She puffed her cheeks out and kept up as best as she could with her mother. There were worse things than flying debris, and she kept telling herself that as she fled.

"Ov-Over there!" she pointed to another safe spot, between buildings that they could probably reliably pass through to get further out.

The Other Gods -- The World Spirit

Re: Oh Shit! Bystanders!- Hey Mom, Look What I Can Do!

Re: Oh Shit! Bystanders!- Hey Mom, Look What I Can Do!

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