soul_logs | [Event] Invasion!

Characters: OPEN to everyone!
Location: All over Death City
Rating: Various
Time: February 2nd
Description: Witches have invaded and are attacking the city!

The attack, when it comes, happens quickly enough that Death City would have been caught flat-footed had there been no prior warning, but it's not completely unexpected because of the city's heightened state of alarm the past day. Warning sirens start sounding to alert the citizens and guests the moment a dark, slow-moving mass out in the desert to the south-east of Death City is spotted by Shibusen sentries. There's even time for civilians to run and hide before the mass is identified as an army of what looks like decaying, shambling corpses. The city's defenders are slow to move, however; most of them are distracted and are having trouble dealing with the black blood in their bodies. While agents are gathering to head out to deal with the zombie threat, that's when the witches make their move.

Portals begin opening in the skies above the city, disgorging hideous familiars: bulbous spiders and leggy ants the size of dogs. They drop hundreds of feet down into the streets and alleyways of Death City, and scuttle off in search of victims. The spiders are poisonous and can spin copious amounts of web to capture their targets, the ants spit acid that cause agonizing, paralyzing pain. Their masters bear down on the city in a cloud of black shadows--massive ravens strong enough to carry off adult men. There are five witches, women on broomsticks, beautiful if not for their crazed grins and obvious glee at the chaos descending upon the city. At some unknown signal--maybe the cackling from a couple of them--they dive in concert and disappear into different areas of the city.

Their masterful plan has begun!

ooc: Feel free to make your own threads. Please follow the format: [Character][Location/Time][Open/Close]

- if you want your character to run into a witch, please comment here!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Emil failed to spot the lie, having mostly known people who used more traditional weaponry (for a certain definition of traditional). And really, if Kanji could do better with some kind of weapon than with none at all then who was Emil to stop him?

Emil himself fought best with his sword, however, so he continued as he was doing and cut a deep gash into the arm of one zombie who'd gotten a little too close, kicking that one away with one foot and using the momentum to twist around and take on another. He'd been out here for a little while, but as far as he could see the streets looked no different from how they'd been when he first began. "Damn. How many of these things do they have?"

Kanji worked best unarmed, but to destroy the brain or spinal column, one needed more than their fists. The best he could do, he found, was rely on a heavy melee weapon. Gray eyes checked left, checked right, and grabbed a zombie by the arm, swinging it in an arc and letting go. The dead weight would send a few others toppling down.

"Dunno!" He replied simply, and with a growl brought the pipe down again, slamming it atop a half-deteriorated skull. Kanji winced when a bit of gore hit him in the face. He hated when that happened.

"But that Witch has gotta have limits to how many she can keep goin' at once!" One less zombie, ant, and spider was just one less problem. He was sorely regretting parting ways with Naoto for the time being... paired with a Weapon, either one of the Meisters could single-handedly clear out this street and the surrounding areas.

There was a screech from overhead, and Kanji knew their problems just multiplied.

"Tch! We got incoming! Can you handle the raven? I'll keep this shit back!"

"On it!" Emil leapt at the raven as it came bearing down on them, angling his blade so even if it swerved he could get a hit in. The thing was oversized for a raven, but he was no stranger to large birds and certainly not to fighting them. No problem. Too bad he couldn't use some of his artes here; Emil had had to learn to adjust to the lack of mana here and months after arriving in the city he'd long gotten the hang of it, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten how much easier fighting felt the way he'd first picked it up.

He dodged out of the raven's way as it swooped down, taking the opportunity to jump up again and swipe at its back before watching it fly back up out of his reach. He didn't like the way it was looking down at them, like there was something else he was missing here. "What the hell do you want?" he demanded at the raven as he followed it. "You want to fight or not?"

The raven came down flying at him again and this time he turned as he brought up his sword to block it, widening the gap between the two of them and the thick of the rest of the action to give Kanji space.

Kanji left Emil to the task and ran his thumbs over his fingers, popping the knuckles individually before balling his free hand and slamming that fist into the moldy nose of a zombie that wanted to get in close, sending it falling into a heap. With a swing of his leg, he kicked at its neck and broke it. It was far more violent than he was accustomed to, but the zombie would only get back up otherwise.

The teen was making decent work at keeping the zombies and occasional ant away from the blond swordsman, though with the sound of wing beats and the boy's shouts, he quickly glanced over his shoulder, then back to his own task. He reached down and tore off one of the mandibles from an ant that went down earlier, using it as a makeshift serrated knife.

"They're all like that! They don't peck your face or nothin'!" He called.

All he'd seen them do was grab and air-lift people as quickly as possible. It was a pretty painful way to kill or injure people, dropping them from a higher altitude, but... as Kanji's eyebrows furrowed, he began to realize that he'd never seen them dropping people.

"It's unnatural," Emil muttered as he kept a careful eye on the raven. He'd been attacked by bird-type monsters enough to know how they fought, and this was not how they went about assault of any kind. Even the ones with magic didn't act like this.

The bird shifted to one side, and Emil followed it; it flew up higher and Emil took a step back, ready to run if it started flying forward. What was this thing planning? If it never did anything nothing was going to get accomplished by either the bird or Emil himself - and maybe that was a valid tactic, distracting him when the insects and ravens and undead outnumbered the fighters in the city, but if so he would have expected them to be more actively malicious about it.

"Watch out!" he called out to Kanji. "I don't know what this thing is up to, but I don't like the look of it."

Personally, he preferred if they pecked and scratched like normal birds. With a roar and a strong horizontal swing, he sent another trio of zombies reeling, and then he took that mandible and jammed it deep into as many rotten heads as he could find within reach.

Emil called out and Kanji spared a look over his shoulder. The raven was moving and gaining altitude. It looked like it was adjusting its wings for a dive.

What the... what was it looking at him for!?

The raven moved like a shadow, no sooner than Kanji had that thought enter his head.

Emil rushed to attack the raven as it swooped down, but this time its speed was too much for him to catch up to and it evaded him easily. That would have been simply irritating it that had been the end of it, but the raven continued on in the same direction - towards Kanji, he realized with a hint of panic. Damn it, he'd been trying to give the guy some room--

But right now all he could do was chase after the raven, shouting at Kanji and hoping he hadn't screwed up. "Watch out, it's coming your way!"

There was a flash of panic on his face as his mind drew a blank. He'd been targeted by the ravens all day, had far too many close calls to shrug off the presence of the birds completely.

A punch of adrenaline entered his system, and though his mind screamed LEFT, his legs didn't move. The raven's talons closed on his shoulders, and with a triumphant cry, it beat its wings to gain altitude.

The sharp pain and pressure of the claws testing his leather jacket and shirt beneath brought him back to his senses. Baring his teeth, Kanji clutched the pipe in both hands and and brought the business end sharply upward.

The black bird cawed in pain and curled inward, its grip loosened. The teen fell.

Fortunately, the fall was a short one, the quick thinking preventing the bird from gaining too much air.

Unfortunately, he landed right among a cluster of ants down the street who acted immediately, swiftly moving in with mandibles open wide.

[Event] Invasion!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I'm so sorry this is late, work's been delaying my log tags!

Don't apologize, I got the saaame thing going on over here, anyway. You're fine.

no subject

no subject