[IC] TotMV:G^2: Clash of Fate: The Armory (Social/Prep Phase)

[Aurorix]

"Heh, I don't know about you but I feel like you're a pretty damn good guardian." Jade said with a smirk tilting up his hat with the thumb of his left hand. "You protected multiple generations of people. Some folks can only protect a few people while others can barely protect themselves, though you could protect millions. Hell, from my perspective you guarded my life as well as everyone else in our rag tag group. So try to keep your head up Lass, I don't think your followers or anyone here want to see you sulking like this."

[Chevaleresse]

"It's. . . You say that, and I know you mean well, but I am a god. Or, I was." She looked up at Jade without raising her head, through her hair. "My guardianship was small, for a divine being. And I could not protect even that. Imagine being entrusted with the care of a cat, and failing even to keep that animal alive when your peers are raising families. That is how pathetic my failure is." She sighed. "I am sorry. I am being horribly rude to you and your concern." She started to stand up, turning toward the exit and giving her face a final once-over with her sleeve - a gesture that did nothing about the obvious redness and dampness of her eyes. "We should go. Our companions await us."

[Aurorix]

Jade let out a sigh, "Aye, best not keep them waiting too long now." He spoke before getting up. This was probably the best he could manage, it's not like he's a professional counselor. If he somehow knew a way to get a smile on her face he'd do it in a heartbeat. He shoved the cork back into the top of the bottle and heads towards the door. He opened the door and held it open. "After you, Lass." He spoke keeping the door open for Mitsurugi.

[Chevaleresse]

A girl's labored breathing echoed through the mostly-empty spaces of the armory as Hiroki stumbled through it. I don't. . . I didn't want to actually. . . She, without thinking, moved into the forge and nearly collapsed in a corner of the room, sitting on the rough stone brick floor and sliding herself as far into a corner as she could do, wedging herself underneath a shelf and next to a sturdy table in the process. Calm down, calm down, you can't be weak in front of everyone else, even if you just . . . killed people. . . She clutched her legs against her chest, squeezing them together with her arms. 

[Sutoratosu]

Spoiler

 

Ghost entered the room not long after, and after a moment of scanning the room found.... more or less what she was expecting. There in one of the corners, huddled under a shelf, pressed against a table. Still transfixed with that same, far away gaze, that stare that could pierce a thousand yards, see clear over the horizon and see the sun setting on the opposite side of the world. She knew naught how many times she'd encountered it over the decades. But at the very least, it was often enough to where she had come more to expect to see it, than she did not to. Legionnaires, coming back from the front, their bodies marching forward and eyes straight ahead, though their soul was quite thoroughly dead. Young men and women who, up until she and Sumur had found them, had gone their entire lives as nothing but mere dust farmers, cultivating what little they could, hadn't even thought about having to commit such acts until someone had pressed the blade into their hands and told them plain; that this would be their life now, if they wished to continue it... that this is the only way you will survive the coming storm. She may well have been able to get them to rise up, to reject the fate about to descend upon them, but the after... oh the ever after, that was always the hardest. No matter how much you inspired them by word and by deed, there would always be those who left with scars. Scars that cut deeper than any wound, scars that killed men yet left their bodies and minds still alive, to wander as mere shells of themselves, living husks in all but decrepit, rotting form...

      And though you may tell yourself that, between the evil of tearing away whatever peaceful existence they once knew in order to help them or standing by and doing nothing as that peaceful existence becomes the reason they are raped, slaughtered, and pillaged, that teaching them the ways of war to defend themselves was the far lesser vice... you would always know, somewhere inside of yourself, you were the cause, whether you've the courage to admit it or not. You would always know you have saved no one, merely killed them without even giving them the mercy of Oblivion.

 

"And now, I may well have killed another... yet one more walking death to add to my name..." no, no, no. She banished the thought, banished it three times, as she approached Hiroki, intentionally making her footfalls loud despite knowing perfectly well how to cover ground better than even a wraith, all to give the girl some warning and not catch her totally off guard in this already fragile state of her. She stopped as she finally drew closer to the corner, keeping far enough back to give the girl some space as she dropped down to a knee, setting herself and Hiroki at eye level as the girl cowered there. And there, up close, she could see it all too well, written in every movement she made, see it even clearer than she had on the faces of the soldiers who fled after Gozer's bombardment. If she recalled from the team loadouts, then the girl's name was...

      "Hiroki," she began. Her was voice soft, and her expression even softer; the hard, cynical mask of indifference or snark usually plastered on her porcelain mug, the one she had always so readily met the world with for so many years, now replaced with a knowing look in her eyes, mouth set in almost motherly concern "About everything that occurred... out there, if you wish to talk about it, I would be more than willing to listen; I'd perfectly understand if you didn't want to right now, though."

[Hal Henderics]

A Rambunctious Snake Woman is followed by a Squirrely Earth Elemental, who set up shop in the Armory.

 

Dackly immediately sets to the task of Softening the Emeralds, Melting them together with the power of love, and then splitting the 10 she used into 20 smaller ones.

 

In the process, she accidentally reincarnates one of the Dragon Tooth Warriors, an angry little thing that attacks her immediately, before it is picked up by Gozer.

 

Panting, Dackly looks the unthinking automoton dead in the eye.

 

"I haff plan for you, special plan." she comments, closing one eye to glare at him.

 

Eventually, all 19 Emeralds are glistening with magic, due to Gozer's Ministrations.

 

"Each of these should heal whoever has it slightly.  Our healers are overwhelmed currently.  This will help that."  He says.

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Earlier, at the Courtyard

 

At Dackly's statement, Walmond nodded, gesturing to Lambda to follow him as he moved after the duo, "That's why I've gone to look for you two. That experiment should be completed" Walmond stated, thinking to himself for a bit, "... This is a possibility, but these gems, you say they're pure Life Force. That WOULD include the soul of whatever you petrified, correct?"

 

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Once they arrived at the armory though, Walmond remained quiet, for the most part, as he watched the two get to work. When Dackly accidentally revives one of the skeletal warriors, Lambda nearly lashed out, noticing the hostile before it was picked up by Gozer. At Gozer's statement, Walmond nodded, looking at the emeralds, "I can see how that would be helpful. It would save me the trouble of mending the wounds on everyone in the middle of combat" Walmond stated, actually a bit grateful for that, since... Well, in the last battle he had been healing as much as he could and they STILL were nearly beaten, due to the sheer numbers of enemies.

[Hal Henderics]

Dackly's face turns a bit more serious.

 

"Yeah, Gems made from living things contain their souls.  Breaking the gem does release the soul within, it's just the energy FROM that release that is useful, and the energy it naturally releases from simple existence.  Nothing... unsavory."

 

"Unless you meant something else?"

 

 

[GodofGamingRWBY]

"It was simply something that passed through my mind. After our discussion before we left for our operations, I thought a bit on the relationships of souls and my method towards achieving living machines. One hypothesis I thought of was that my soul simply wasn't compatibly for my goal... Though, that depends solely on an if. I'll pursue the answer to that question after our test using alchemy, but until then, it's something that can be a possible explanation for why our results vary drastically in this field" Walmond explained, his own face not budging an inch in response.

[Hal Henderics]

"Very well, Let's begin.  We have to say something dramatic, or the magic doesn't work, I swear."

 

 

Dackly flips open the crackpot with a flick of her wrist, the paper-like cauldron opening like fragile origami.

 

"Step Aside, God(s that aren't Nyx), as I upset the very balance, Of Creation!" she cackles madly, Throwing the Robot into the pot and activating it's power source with an Earthen Emerald.

 

Gozer gives a small golf clap at her presentation.

[GodofGamingRWBY]

As Dackly began to do her little presentation, she'd find that the sheet of metal had been changed into a basic frame, folded up like a human-like origami. While Lambda stepped back to watch the show, Walmond stepped forward, placing a hand on his chest before slowly pulling outwards. As he did so, a bit of bright blue mist began to come out of the spot where he had his hand, before snapping away from his body and balling into his hand. Without any hesitation, Walmond began to tamper with the mist, melding it into different shapes before suddenly walking up to the pot and dropping it in, watching as it quickly spread through the top of the cauldron, before it began to dissolve into it.

 

With that, the scientist stepped back, letting Dackly do her work.

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki looked up with a rather sudden motion - rather than having her eyes squeezed shut, they were opened wide. Her first response was to shrink backward into her corner, but she took a deep breath as Ghost spoke to her, attempting to regain some semblance of control over her features. She. . . wasn't particularly successful. The girl had entered a tournament that would pit her in heated combat against the best fighters across Tempest to become a god, largely on impulse; self-control was not among her strong points. "I. . . I don't, um, I don't know. . ." she managed, face screwing up to prevent the welling of tears behind her eyes from moving forward. "They were going to kill all of us if I didn't, but. . ."

[Sutoratosu]

"...but you weren't ready... You didn't want to...." Ghost softly finished the statement with what she knew was most likely to be the sentiment. A flicker of hot, annoyed rage passed through her mind as an absolute ruckus erupted in the armory as the very same plant and earth elemental she had commended earlier emerged with some scholarly type and began to work away on some asinine creation.

     Were the topic of this literally anything else, she would've stood, whirled on her heels, and chewed them all out so hard they would've wished she was a mere drill sergeant. But she suppressed it, let none of that fury at how utterly fucking blind and socially incognitive the three newcomers obviously were to the conversation going on right in front of them, as she reached out a hand in offer to Hiroki. There was no judgement in the smile she offered, no condemnation of any perceived weakness.... only a knowing sadness, backed by too many years to count "I know, hiroki, I know.... taking someone's life is... never easy. Here, I don't think you particularly want to be around all this noise right now of all times, do you? What do you say we find somewhere quieter to talk?"

[Hal Henderics]

Dackly cuts herself as she reworks the magical recipe, her hand leaking clear blood, she clenches the fist after dumping the pile of dirty razors into the pot, only laughing louder and louder.

 

The Cauldron erupts in swirling bands of green, gold, and brown, spiraling into the sky in a single beam as concepts cascade into reality.

 

The result, when poured onto the ground, is a single adorable Hedgehog.  It seems to be nearly a perfect example of false life, aside from it's spines being deadly sharp razor blades.  It is roughly the size of a large dog, and seems amicable enough.

 

"Not my best work, but it's hard to beat a spider made out of sculptures of garbage that leaks foul smelling toxic acid forever."

 

She says, shrugging, and tosses a small plastic bottle of "Urth B Gon", a crudely labled bottle of green liquid, which she had demonstrated earlier to turn Dirt into compressed razor blades, removing massive swaths of it in the process, at Gozer, who catches it gingerly.

 

"I am not comfortable with that creature, nor this bottle of Earth Eradicating Acid."

 

"Oh get some stones Gozy, it only melts dirt." she responds, dismissing his concerns.

 

"Now come to mama little guy, come to mama while also remaining within a safe distance" she coos, as the Hedgehog begins waddling towards her, heedless of her warnings.

 

She is forced eventually to leap atop Gozer, her cut hand making a faint imprint on his hide as she drags herself atop him swiftly to escape it's love.

 

"Maybe too much life, this little guy seems happy to run me down for my last hug." she pants.

[GodofGamingRWBY]

While Dackly cackled like a mad scientist as she went with her work, Walmond remained silent, observing the job and analyzing everything that he could. When the resut was poured out of the Cauldron, Wamond REALLY began to look over the creation, taking in how it moved and reacted to the world, and comparing it to his other works. Needless to say, the hedgehog seemed much more... "life-like" than his own.

 

"I find it a good result. Though, I can see why a machine with sharp blades wanting to hug everything would be a problem. Let me attempt something" Walmond said, then turned his full attention to the hedgehog, "Theta, stand still" Walmond commanded, watching as the hedgehog suddenly stopped waddling towards Dackly, it's arms falling back to it's sides. Seeing this, Walmond nodded, mostly to himself, "It's still able to follow commands well. You can keep Theta, if you wish. I doubt we'll have much time for me to truly inspect them, though I've learned quite a bit from this experiment. All I need to do now is replicate the effects for Lambda here" the scientist finished.

[Hal Henderics]

"I'll be sure to take good care of my little Edgehog."  Dackly says warmly.  Maybe he would like to meet his vaguely arbitrary brother Trash Spider, she thinks.

 

"My last words on the matter are ones I think fit this situation.  Life is, before anything else, before even a single other word could be used to describe it, Life is messy.  It's so very, very messy." she says, with the closest thing to a sage tone she has managed since that time she was smoking sage.  Sage isn't even a drug, she realized, years later in therapy.

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki squeezed her eyes tight in one blink, before they opened back to being just a bit too wide. She nodded, unable to verbalize anything at the moment, at Ghost's question. The girl let go of her legs like a latch popping on a chest, and she slowly stood herself up, resisting the urge to lean on the woman she barely knew; she stumbled forward a bit in this process, as she wasn't quite short enough to stand up beneath this shelf. I wish Blink was here. Blink would know what to do. Or Kagari would do something weird so I didn't have to think about this. With this, the reality of her situation was starting to crash in around her; she was here, separated from what few friends she'd made in that tournament, in strange worlds - worlds that should have been wondrous with their scenery, their plant life, the fact that you could walk over the horizon and come back home safely, were they not painted with the flames of war - that she knew nothing of.

[Yours Truly]

Solomon hadn't noticed/cared about the fact that his new found companion seemed to have disappeared quite recently as he gingerly opened the door to the armory. And he had quietly floated around the place to continue his search for Bridgett once more up until Spicy HG finally decided to join him. He would then greet her appearance with a slight smile before he asked "So what did you think about Navin and Mitsu anyway?".

[Sutoratosu]

Ghost stood up at the same time as Hiroki, catching her as she stumbled a bit from under the shelf. At the same time, she took note of how the girl seemed to actively resist relying on her- sign of stubbornness, perhaps? maybe an independence streak or just plain pride? She only guess at it for now, it was a small detail that wasn't terribly important at the moment anyway. Even now the child didn't respond, that distant, empty gaze seeming to dominate everything... 

     Ghost briefly glanced behind her- yet more socially inept fools had filtered into here, each one of them totally oblivious and absorbed in their own pursuits. The old commander couldn't help but shake her head at the general lack of situational awareness this group seemed to have, she'd been noticing it since she got here, and this only further confirmed it. But there was a problem beyond that: Despite her offer, ghost had no real idea of where would even be a quieter place than here, that was unlikely to have someone barging in and potentially triggering the girl... well, no idea of anywhere in the physical plane.

 

"Things are going to... shift a little," she told Hiroki as she finally settled on the solution, "our surroundings will look a bit different, but you should be fine so long as you hold on. What I'm doing now should shut the rest of them up."

    With that simple, albeit somewhat cryptic, warning to try and mitigate any surprise, just as ghost said, the room she and Hiroki stood on took on a hazy filter, as if some bizarre type of light fog or steam  had suddenly rolled in... a fog that one could easily see right through though, if they concentrated hard enough. In fact, just about anything around them could be seen right through with concentration alone. At first, the talking from everyone else in the armory still filtered through, but all Ghost had to do was will the dimension's laws to alter ever so subtly, and like that, their voices ceased to be. The two of them could still see them all, but it was, for all intents and purposes, like watching a silent movie play out. Ghost turned away from the crafting and chatting misfits, and back to Hiroki once more.

   "Like I said, we can't hear them anymore. They can't see us while we're in here, and there's no way they could ever hear us either, unless I explicitly allowed them" the look on her face, still mostly one of concern tinted by maternal-instincts, made it abundantly clear that she had no intent of doing that however "...you can start whenever you feel ready, Hiroki."

 

It would likely be best to let the girl take the lead for now, lest discussion lose a fair bit of it's effect. It was how Ghost had tried the counseling in the past, at the very least, and for the most part it had seemed to make things a bit easier when the one bearing the scars was allowed to speak as much, or as little, as they so desired with minimal interruptions or her leading them by the hand through the conversation. Of course there had been times before where she might have needed to jump start things a little, ask a few minor questions to get things going, but she'd withhold on that for the time being.

 

It was just the two of them, in that void of silence, as the rest of the armory milled about without their physical presence...

[StormLord]

Friedhold:
On their approach to the Castle Friedhold finally gave in to the Little Sister's demands and let her "Help some singing angels" on the remains of the battlefield.

Afterwards once in the courtyard he simply followed the sound of cackling madness to find Dackly, Gozer, and Walmond working on some sort of Hedgehog contraption.

 

"I expected to find you three working on something, interesting project you have here. Mind if I propose my own?" Friedhold said while digging through on of his coat pockets and pulling out a metal canister with a handle and pin.

"I'd like to see what your Alchemy can do with this Dackly."

 

The Little Sister meanwhile found herself somewhere reasonably nice to sit near where they were working and promptly passed out.

 

Spicy HG:

As she entered Solomon would notice Spicy HG rubbing her right eye.

"Oh, they both seemed nice enough, but I wish I could have met Mitsurugi in...a different situation.  If you know we're about to meet a God or Goddess would you mind giving me a heads up next time?"

She straitened herself up and began looking around the room, checking for this "Bridgett" person Solomon was looking for.

[Chevaleresse]

"I. . ." She cleared her throat. "I don't, um, know, it's just. . . I didn't actually want to hurt anyone, and, um, then we got into this war and suddenly people were actually getting hurt and it wasn't just monsters that I was. . ." The girl swallowed, forcing back the tears that still started to leak from her eyes. "I've, um, never tried to, um, kill anyone, not for real -" the only time she had done anything that placed someone else's life in danger, she'd been reassured they wouldn't get hurt and an angry god still tried to tear the victim apart because of it "-and now. . ." The only thing that was stopping the girl from completely breaking down was the tone in Ghost's voice; it was oddly comforting to the mech user, for a reason she couldn't quite place.

[Hal Henderics]

"Well, what is it?"  Dackly asks, after a few moments of Friedhold not explaining anything.  She looks intrigued.

[Sutoratosu]

"You can let it all out here," Ghost reassured, moving a bit closer to let the girl have a shoulder to cry on- in both the literal and metaphorical sense -if she needed one. "No need to hold anything back, dear. What you're feeling right now is nothing to be ashamed about...and there's no one here to judge you for it, either." 

    And with that, the woman went silent, electing to let the child vent her emotions for as long as she needed to. Just as she'd thought, it was precisely the same issue she'd seen in so many others her age who, either through circumstance or despotic machinations, were forced onto the killing field long before they could even come close to being considered fully grown men and women. And at the same time, she knew that this was simply an ugly truth, but questioned really it was truly as inevitable as she had always accepted it to be. Every time it happened, there was always that growing doubt in the back of her mind, those winds that whispered vile nothings of she was just as much to blame, of how-

 

She took a solemn breath, once more banishing the thoughts to the furthest corners of her mind. Delving on guilt would do nothing here. Her hands had been tainted with blood for far too long to even remember now by her very nature as a killer of men and mice alike. What use was guilt now, after the fact, when she already spread that blood so far in a futile attempt to prevent it's stain from propagating in the first place? What used was that guilt when she had spent so long trying to end the madness that is war, but in end only ever managed to help perpetuate it?

     Nothing. Absolutely nothing. To dwell in her own Guilt may as well have been the same as to dwell in her own self-pity, for everything she had done she had a choice in, regardless whether or not she had elected to take that choice, regardless what- or who -she would've lost because of that choice. She knew full well someone like her, someone who for some many decades had stood by and not only been complacent to the evil going on around her, but in many cases had taken an active role in its commission, did not even deserve so much as the mere idea of atonement, let alone pity. No matter if she had finally made the right decision in the end and turned on it all.

 

Yet, a wretched creature such as her, so tainted by the blood she had spilled and the suffering she helped sow, had still profaned to attempt for the former anyway. She would not dare wallow in the latter.

 

The only one who deserved any pity here was the weeping child before her. Probably taken from some world where, at the very least, if war was not nonexistent, it was far enough removed from her life that she wouldn't had to ever experience the horrors it brought. Taken from whatever family or friends she might have had, and plopped down into this.... this battlefield. And that... struck Ghost as the single biggest injustice here of them all. 

 

Why mere children? Why the young ones? Why not assemble this force exclusively of the elders and the seasoned ones that could be spared from a world? Why was there a boy barely old enough to shave fending off spells like he'd been doing it all his life? Why was there a girl no older than 6 or so who'd been infected with some ungodly parasite and used as a mere tool? Where was the sense in forcing any of them to fight? Where was the sense tearing them away from their homes and loved ones, ending their innocence and shattering their childhoods with the harsh reality of the killing field?

 

What type of monster did it take to give the approval on their conscription for this? For, even ghost, vile wretch that she was, tried her damndest to only involve the younger ones when there was no other way, and even then, she did all she could to make sure they were as close to adulthood as the situation allowed, and even then she had strict limits she would never have crossed. Limits where she would never have hesitated to take the field herself and fight as long and hard as necessary, if that was what it took to preserve at least some innocence in the places she visited for just a while longer. There was a fine and hard line between teaching people how to defend themselves, being the hero they need while at the same time, teaching them what they needed to know to be their own heroes in due time... and virtually going in and destroying every fragment of the life they had once known before the crises had befallen them. Crossing that line was the sumuric way, the way of the empire and it's countless legions... it was a way she had vowed to turn her back on, and someday, gods willing, purge from the very face of the earth. 

   And yet whoever had gathered them for this fight, obviously had no issues taking that line, that principle, and snapping it over their knee as they watched mere children be torn apart by the burden of what they had done.

 

And as ghost stood there, letting Hiroki express all that she needed to, no judgement against the girl anywhere in her heart, just as she had promised.... she found a new fire burning within her soul, a new target upon which to direct her fury, in the far future.

 

It would have to be once the threats of sumur, the despotic powers of other worlds, and finally these "trespassers" themselves were eliminated, but she vowed, right then and there, she would find whoever had been tasked with assembling this group, and she would face them just as she had any other apathetic tyrant willing to use, abuse, and cast aside people as it deemed necessary for its goals.

 

She had spent nigh her entire life under powers that had no trouble decreeing the ends of their machinations justify whatever means they employ. She had sworn to stand by no longer, long ago. This.... 

 

This was no different.

 

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki made a small noise that might have been an attempt at words before seemingly accepting Ghost's invitation at face value. Whatever she had been trying to say was drowned as the floodgates holding her confused emotions shattered, the girl very quickly turning into a bawling mess. She blubbered mostly incoherently, trying to somehow put into words just how wrong it felt to do this - especially with the way her last action even resembling this ended. What it was like watching the man be seared to death by plasma launched from her own mech, and her HUD reacting in confusion before finally deciding to mark him as an inoperable mech. She didn't pull closer to Ghost, though, seemingly preferring to huddle to herself again in her distress.

[Yours Truly]

6 hours ago, StormLord said:

Friedhold:
On their approach to the Castle Friedhold finally gave in to the Little Sister's demands and let her "Help some singing angels" on the remains of the battlefield.

Afterwards once in the courtyard he simply followed the sound of cackling madness to find Dackly, Gozer, and Walmond working on some sort of Hedgehog contraption.

 

"I expected to find you three working on something, interesting project you have here. Mind if I propose my own?" Friedhold said while digging through on of his coat pockets and pulling out a metal canister with a handle and pin.

"I'd like to see what your Alchemy can do with this Dackly."

 

The Little Sister meanwhile found herself somewhere reasonably nice to sit near where they were working and promptly passed out.

 

Spicy HG:

As she entered Solomon would notice Spicy HG rubbing her right eye.

"Oh, they both seemed nice enough, but I wish I could have met Mitsurugi in...a different situation.  If you know we're about to meet a God or Goddess would you mind giving me a heads up next time?"

She straitened herself up and began looking around the room, checking for this "Bridgett" person Solomon was looking for.

Solomon simply couldn't stifle a giggle at Spicy HG's question, and he almost immediately replied by saying "Sorry, but I just didn't know that they made you feel that uncomfortable". He would then turn around to continue his search for Bridgett once more...and only to inevitably come to the conclusion that she just wasn't there anymore. He would then shrug his shoulders at HG for a few moments, as if he was unsure about what the two of them should do. Up until he finally said "Welp huh, I guess she is just nowhere to be found right now...clever girl.". He then struck his golden breastplate once before he said "Well I honestly don't know where else she would be, and it honestly doesn't feel right to drag you around everywhere with me...so uh, why don't you tell me more about yourself or something?".