trans_9 | The Accursed Island [Closed]

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The Accursed Island [Closed]

Planet Designation: Forcellia Status: Terrestrial, H-class. Non-sentient life: Extensive flora and fauna. Semi-Sentient Life: Yes. Sentient Life: Homo Sapiens. Water: 69.5% of the planet's surface. Climate: Earth-like Landscape: Varied. Air: Normoxic concentration. Air Pressure: 101.3 kPa (kilopascals) = 14.7 psi (pounds per square inch) Sky: Blue, with variable cloud cover. Sun: A class G2V, yellow star. Warnings: Wildlife and plant-life can be hazardous. Humans can be hazardous. Mission: Negotiate for or otherwise obtain the artifact known as the Scepter of Domination.

Forcellia, or at least the part of it that contained the clearing in which the group now found themselves, wasn't exactly welcoming. The ground was little more than rocky soil, the sky violet-grey and overcast. Here, it was evidently late afternoon, edging into evening. It was slightly humid, as if from a recent rain; faint clouds of steamy mist seemed to curl off the ground, partially obscuring their view of their surroundings. Scraggly trees rose up out of this mist here and there, as if grasping towards fresher air.

The villagers in the area had supposedly been contacted ahead of time, and this had been the place they’d agreed to meet the crew. Whether or not they knew anything about this supposed Scepter of Domination, however, was not yet clear. What the Scepter even did or how it might contribute to their struggle was even less clear.

In the distance, they might hear the occasional whinny of a horse, or the lowing of a cow carrying up to them from the distance, though it was difficult, if not impossible, to tell from which direction the sound was coming from.

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Where has Punchy been during all this? Oh, he just forgot to calibrate his night-vision goggles to their daytime setting and ended up temporarily blinding himself. Which means he's spent the last thirty seconds stumbling around trying not to get stepped on or knocked over, and possibly would have been turned to roast if not for Ronnae and Soren's magic.

Awesome. Perfect way to start a superheroic battle. His good mood is ruined.

Finally able to see again - although those spots floating across his vision might as well be disco balls - he tries to figure out what to do. Most of his comrades are using ranged attacks, but Punchy's never been good with that (as if evidenced by the fact that his name is not, in fact, Projectiley). So he runs around the dragon's flank and charges from the opposite direction of Wakka and Sofia's attacks, seeking to punch the dragon in the ankle.

Sofia's spell hit the dragon full on, casting a cascade of electrical sparks down the creature's neck. For some reason, however, most of the spell seemed to run along its side briefly before rebounding back into the air, as though the dragon's scales were repelling it.

Alendian, on the other hand, was so small and light that while the beast noticed her disappear, it wasn't even aware of the sudden added weight on its back. In fact, the pointed tip of the grenade hit the thick armored scales of its back squarely and... bounced off. Oops. Maybe she could tie it to one of the long ridges that ran along its back or something.

As that moron stumbling around blindly finally started to run around to the dragon's side, it whipped its tail around to meet him. Ha! You think a thousand knights haven't tried that already, Punchy? That's totally what tails are for. Also, this tail was tipped with a massive club of barbs, easily two or three times as long as a grown human, so, um. Hopefully you are not impaled and dead now.

Wakka's ball flew boldly through the air, spinning toward the dragon's snout. It hit, the impact punctuated with a faint poof noise, then bounced off.

There was a brief pause.

Then the dragon shrieked in what could only be true fury. You threw sporting equipment at it, Wakka. And it was so mad.

It drew back its head and opened its jaws, sending an immense plume of flame in the direction of Wakka and those near him. Soren's spell would protect them from most of the damage if the flames hit, but then its power would be spent and they'd be defenseless for another round.

For Ellyn, it was pretty damn hard to do anything. She didn't want to admit to being paralyzed with fear, but. Well.

The only dragon on her world was a Monarch. Bigger than this dragon for sure. And you didn't go off and attack a Monarch if you liked living.

Which Ellyn did, all bravado aside.

The fire, though? That, at least, she was pretty sure she could do something about.

She hoped. Dragon fire wasn't exactly the same as natural fire, but she could control magically called fire just fine. Ellyn figured it was worth a shot. Even if it might hurt. If not, hey, it was just going to energize her!

It took little more than a few seconds, but the effect would be similar to lightning to a lightning rod. The pyromancer called the dragon's fire to herself. If her gamble worked, it'd ground it all to her, and Soren might have his spell left.

Ellyn hoped.

Ronnae had been stuck between assisting and attacking, on one hand, she was already plenty skilled at fighting dragons and knew this was a chance at delivering a well placed blow, but right now there was a teammate in harms way that wasn't in the shield or way of the firestorm. With but a split second to react, the young, half orc girl charged at not the dragon, but at Punchy, tackling him to the ground in hopes that they both avoided the massive barbed tail.

Finally Freid's transformation is complete, and when the spell circle breaks Caro is riding a huge white dragon which roars once again. They bank low, flying over their shipmates and toward the attacking dragon.

"Everyone get back!" Caro shouts as Fried opens his mouth wide. Her pink gems glow again as magic builds between his open jaws.

"Freid, Blast Flare!" And then a massive fireball shoots toward the attacking dragon.

Alend snarled in frustration, her anger overcoming the mask on her personality. Ripping the sword off her belt, it activated with Alend's psychic energy and the blades began to whir. If the grenade wasn't going to fit, she'd just have to carve a hole for it.

Though that wasn't what the other members had in mind. Hooking the grenade on a scale, she teleported off the creature and into safety to get away from the incoming fireball. Of course, the grenade went off, blasting the creature with electric energy meant to disrupt circuitry in mechanical vehicles and nervous systems in biological creatures.

Punchy doesn't end up dead, thanks to Ronnae's quick thinking. He does end up getting the wind knocked out of him, but big whoop, that's small potatoes.

"I had him, Red, I was about to waste his-" he argues as he pushes up off the ground, but then he sees the dragon open its mouth. Going off instinct, he puts himself between Ronnae and the flames, punching forward and using Puppet's force field to protect them both.

His hair and jacket and are a wee bit on fire when the flames subside. He pats them out and looks at Ronnae. "So. We square?"

Ronnae looks from the dragon, to Punchy and smiles, giving him a reassured nod. "We square." She figured that meant even!

With that, and thanks to her new chance at another shot, Ronnae rushed up the tail and past it's back, looking for the general soft spots of most dragons... Mainly, the soft sinew at the joints of their wings, looking to not only ground the beast, but damage it both physically and mentally.

So somehow before the dragon got a chance to throw a giant bout of flame at Wakka's face, Wakka's blitzball rebounded back in the air at him, and Wakka jumped up to grab it.

The dragon didn't look blinded. But there were about ten-thousand other things happening around him, so who knew was was going on with that thing. And also there was rather a lot of fire coming right at Wakka.

At this moment, Wakka wished Yuna were there.

Okay, screw you guys. Soren wasn't planning to let a dragon burn him to a crisp. What he was going to do was make a break for that ballista he'd found earlier. The heat from the dragon's last blast had warped and blistered the wood, and the metal joints and trigger were still red-hot. Donning thick work gloves that he'd kept hidden in his robes, he shoved at the contraption, attempting to turn it in the direction of the giant reptile.

...attempting being the operative word.

Because Soren had a build of like 5 or something in Path of Radiance. He probably weighed more than Caro, but. Not by very much.

Sakura was equally petite and liable to not look like she could benchpress a Chihuahua, but she had on gloves (which would be next to worthless) and the ability to think fast on her feet.

Seeing what Soren was attempting to do gave her a better focus than "tie exploding tags to kunai hope for best," given the lack of easy surroundings to use against the giant fire-breathing animal. Sakura manipulated her chakra and threw her considerable shoulder into helping Soren move the ballista, ignoring whatever heat she had the benefit of enjoying in favor of getting it pointed in the right direction.

"Tell me when it's right," was about the extent of her gritted-out conversation. Making this move was deceptively easy, if the contraption itself was entirely new (to her).

The column of flames didn't particularly want to obey Ellyn, but a sizable portion split off to wreath itself around her. It didn't seem quite like entirely natural or magical fire, either, but it was white-hot, and it seemed almost to have a mind of its own; a thick, piercing malevolence that sought to destroy her if it could -- from the inside, if she tried to absorb it into herself.

Fried's magical blast did... nothing. Well, pretty much nothing. I mean he just shot fire at a fire dragon. For what it's worth, the impact did end up shoving the dragon backward a brief distance. Also, it gave the beast enough pause to cut off the plume of flame, which arced up into the sky and away from the others.

Oddly, Alendian's grenade seemed to have more of an effect; the creature roared as the electrical blast went off, thrashing its immense body violently even as Ronnae began her climb. Unfortunately, this also had the effect of creating a localized earthquake that threatened to knock the crew off their feet. Imagine like fifteen (actually, probably more) T.Rexes using the ground under them like a bouncy castle. Yeah. It was like that.

P.S. that dragon still hadn't forgotten that you hit it with a ~~beach~~blitzball, Wakka. It was just... busy right now.

There was a cry in the distance; for those who cared to look, the mist had cleared enough for them to see two figures on horseback, both on the ride toward the landing area. The first was a woman in light armor, her red hair cropped short. She held a broadsword before her, calling out to the crew as she approached. “Out of the way, idiots! Don’t you have the sense to run?”

A dark-haired man followed closely behind, his expression dispassionate. There were villagers trailing after the two of them, but they were on foot, and likely wouldn’t be able to reach the landing quickly enough to provide reinforcements… if reinforcements might even make a difference, in a situation like this.

Caro looks shocked that nothing happened. Freid's fire never had no effect before. But luckily she has something else to try.

Fried swoops around for another try, Caro focusing on her power boost so she cam make this one count.

"Blast Ray!" And this time it's just a long ray of pure magical energy, pink of course, shooting from Caro's gloves to Freid's mouth, then in a laser-precise beam toward the dragon. It's a little less area-effect than Blast Flare, but at least it won't harm anyone but the intended target... hopefully.

Shoutarou has been dodging and trying to work out what to do all this time. The Trigger Magnum may has well have been a peashooter, and this thing was throwing some heavy stuff at them, so it's time to go defensive! The Trigger Memory was replaced with Metal, changing the blue armor to silver, and replacing the gun with a staff.

...just in time to be knocked down due to the earthquake. Crap!

"Enough!" cried Soren, when he'd judged the angle to be correct. It was difficult to aim with a moving target, but at least now he should be able to fine-tune his aim using the ballista's swivel.

He darted around behind the contraption, using his gloved hands to grasp the still red-hot triggering mechanism and aim the giant steel bolt. Soren gritted his teeth, biting back a scream as his fingers touched the metal, even through the thick leather. He purposefully did not think about what it might be doing to his hands... and what that rather unpleasant, familiar smell that rose up from the trigger was.

He released the mechanism, and hoped his aim was true.

Oh, don't you worry, giant dragon thing. Wakka still remembers that you were trying to burn him with fire that, through chance and happenstance (or actually the efforts of the other nine people he was with), was mostly all diverted away from where he was standing.

Wakka bet that this thing slept sometimes.

"I think it's time you had a nap, ya," he said as he clutched his very impressive sporting equipment in his arm, and it became enshrouded with a pinkish-purple haze. Sleep Buster. Assured to put anything to sleep that could be put to sleep. For one single round.

Unless it was immune. Oh well, at least it'd do physical damage even if that didn't work.

Until he fell over from all of the shaking that was going on. Still clutching that glowing purple ball to his chest.

This really wasn't his day.

The Warp Spider planted her sword in the ground to steady herself. She originally had planned to shove it into the dragon but with the ground like this, she was just as likely to lop off her own arm if she tried that. But...

...if that ballista could puncture the dragon's armor (Soren you aren't even an archer what are you even doing), her Death Spinner could actually do some damage so her hopes lied on that.

Civilians! Or, at least, people who aren't superheroes or part of the crew, which must mean they're totally helpless and in need of some immediate salvation!

Which, eh, someone else can take care of, because Punchy's trying to be awesome and take down a dragon right now. Besides, at least two of them have horses.

Rather than trying to rush the dragon again, Punchy follows Ronnae towards the tip of its tail, then splits away from her into a grove of trees. Waiting until the dragon's tail is back on the ground, he punches through a solid amount of the trees and throws his shoulder into it, toppling them over. Hopefully that'll take the dragon's barbed tail-tip temporarily out of commission, or at least draw the dragon's attention to its hindquarters.

Holding on to the rampaging dragon, Ronnae deftly made her way over it's back and onto the area that held it's wings, slowly nudging herself and bracing onto its thick scales. They would provide the support she needed for the task at hand...

Which was to bury, hack, and slash at his wing join with both Shadowmourne and Lightshope. She put into each attack all her strength, even increasing her already massive attack by letting a bit of the bloodlust take over. The reddish aura that began to surround her increasing in intensity.

She still had enough sense to keep track of where her teammates where positioned, that after all was part of having been at the head of her team back in her world.

Sakura did her best to hold steady as the elephant stampede that was the dragon trying to chacha shook the ground. Keeping mental track of who was where, and how these new folks figured in (hey, they didn't look daunted, maybe they hunted things like this for brinner or something), she grimaced and waited to see results.

Ellyn was busy, which was probably a good thing. Otherwise, the mission's diplomatic component would've gone straight to hell, between her usual penchant for saying exactly what was on her mind, and the impressive stream of swear words she was spouting as the pyromancer wrangled with the dragonfire.

She'd heard her father tell tales of the Firesoul, a pure fire elemental, and existing in its innards for a while--but Ellyn wanted to wager that this had to be close. Worse, it twisted and turned as if it were alive, unruly, and didn't want to obey.

On the outside, it didn't look like much was happening--save the pyromancer was sweating, and her skin was reddening as if she were gaining a sunburn within the span of a few breaths.

With a roar of triumph, Ellyn gestured, making a ripping motion with both hands. The ring of fire surrounding her dissipated into a few wisps that flashed into nonexistance.

"I'm th' daughter of two Monarchs an' the best pyromancer in th' land! Ya gotta do better'n that!" she bellowed.

Well, she must still be feeling okay, as the bravado was still in full effect...

Considering their options and to keep the dragon occupied, Sofia opts to attack from the front, knowing full well how dangerous this gamble might be. However, the armour she wears protects against magical attacks (although not stopping them completely) and the shield she carries allows her to cast the bounce spell, which reflects back most magical spells at the caster. She has a feeling the dragon might be immune to its own flames, but at the very least, she know she won't be burned going near its jaws headfirst.

Aiming for the snout was the best idea. Cause the nose to bleed and they'd have more trouble breathing. She sent out a boom spell at it, which wasn't fire, but rather an explosion of red-hot air ~~Lash would be so jealous~~.

Even as Ronnae began her attack, the dragon lunged for a nearby cliff face, smashing its massive back against the stone to crush her. Unfortunately, the sudden, violent motion carried it well past the Blast Ray, which it barely noticed sail past its flank. Every once in a while, a human would try the same stunt, apparently not satisfied at hacking at its tail or snout. It made the dragon angrier every time.

The trees came as a brief surprise, as humans generally weren't strong enough to punch down trees (saw, yes. Punch, no); some of the old wooden trunks, brittle as they were, actually impaled themselves onto the creature's barbed tail, transforming it into an even larger implement of doom. It swept barbs and tree trunks both at Sofia, whose figure, sword in hand, it recognized as kin to the countless knights and warriors that have sought to slay it for thousands of years.

Out of sheer dumb luck, though neither explosion nor heat seemed to give it much pause, the explosion from Sofia's spell brought Soren and Sakura's bolt not into range of its heavily armored sides and throat, but almost directly at its eye (an eye that, by the way, was bigger than the harpoon itself). It closed its eye just in time, and the missile struck the membrane of its upper eyelid, sending a brief spurt of red blood up from its face.

The dragon hissed in fury, drawing his head back and shaking his head from side to side; even that singular motion sent the ground trembling once again.

“Insects,” the creature rumbled, his voice a booming, thundering noise that itself seemed almost like an earthquake, “You think to strike at me?”

P.S. Not kidding about how giant this guy is

The contour of the creatures back, along with her extensive training fighting its kin back in her world made for her quick reflexes, flatenning herself against the creature and minimizing the impact zone to a minimal damage spot, that, with the added support of her enchanted armor made swift work of any damage she might have gotten.

Quickly standing up to her same position, Ronnae grinned. "Yer gonna have to do better than that you overgrown lizard! Even Sindragossa was a tougher challenge and she was already dead!" Taunting had always been one of her favorites when training to be a protector, she had been bred, trained and enhanced to take massive damage and still laugh it off. This was her job!

She quickly regained her resolve and started hacking away at the sinew of it's wing joints again, she'd ground this bastard soon unless she somehow had to go down to help in another area.

Roaring to gain a higher boost of strength, her rage aura was now at it's max, making her own attacks be highly damaging. She was a warrior of the Horde, leader of the Bloodhowl Heavy Assault team. She'd make sure he let the beast know she wasn't to be played with.

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