New Beginning 22: Once Upon a New Beginning...

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The Vault looks over to the creature it was going to ride and finds it......Dead.

Right.

The electricity.

It shook it's head. "Gonna beat the crap out of that robot."

It heads up the gangplank at a breakneck run, launching up onto the deck only to see more robots.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

"Oh, ech do machina--!" The Penultimate groans; he doubles back for the self-wounded Bug, and as he hoists him up to the Road to Dawn by the collar of his shirt, the Penultimate looks down to his friend and teases, "Goodness...I think I'd leave you all broke up if I didn't need your help so much."

Shaking his head with a grin, he channels healing life energy into Bug's body, just as they make footfall on the deck of the Road to Dawn. Setting Bug on his feet, the Penultimate charges up psionic power in each fist, to meet the robotic underlings sent to seize the Vault's ship for the prison vessel. Eyes ablaze with fierce laser energy, the Penultimate leaps into the fray.

They won't be taking this ship today.

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

The underlings blink in vacant unison, and then head toward the Penultimate instead. No fun attacking a target that can't take damage.

(Come on, folks. We're taking up valuable page space. And GV, can you change the part of your post about Bug, please?)

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

The underlings turn, their attention unanimously caught.

Invulnerable, invulnerable, how did one handle the invulnerable?

Ah! They had it!

As one, they moved with lightning quickness, to encircle Bug. They sped around in a circle, or fear of staying in one place, and taking damage. And the barrier they projected was multiplied twenty-fold by their combined effort. Not to mention, it was nearly airtight. It was time to suffocate Bug.

(Your posts are just fine. Just sometimes, you get ahead of my narration. It's okay, though; easily remedied.)

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"OI!" Came a voice behind the robots.

The Vault had it's hands raised over it's head and it's sleeves rolled up, the "flesh" of it's arms rippling and choppy.

"If you lot aren't here to replace the robots I lost, then get the hell off my ship!"

It cupped it's hands above it's head and brought them down onto the deck. They splashed, then rose, then widened, and soon a dark, churning title wave rolled across the deck towards them.

[Zaleramancer]

I look at the plant monster.

That was way to much mobile cellulose to waste. A quarter of my energy reserves had been burned in just this fight.

I flowed towards it, boneless and fluid, all sharp claws and rippling muscle- my humanoid form vanishing. I claw into it, body material flowing.

It tries to devour me.

But instead, I begin to devour it.

I reached whatever passed for a nervous system and began taking it's place.

Time to get this critter on the road.

It spasmed and quaked, slapping aside robots.

With a clumsy heave, it began rolling and wiggling out of the ship.

[The Narrator]

Narrator follows the others.....

[Zaleramancer]

A storm descended on the robot's ship.

Crackling thunder mixed with the baying of the hounds and sounds of horns and whoops.

Fay creatures of horrific and lovely description danced through the air, riding winds and beast. Over twisting, growing trees and around the metal of the ship. Their numbers were countless and their power wild.

Time and space began to wrinkle as the power of faerie contaminated it. Seconds passed like minutes or minutes like seconds. The distance from one tree to the next switched from inches to yards. The smell of blood and ozone filtered into the air.

Plants and animals ran rampant, growing and duplicating wildly. Thousands of birds, or what passed for them, flew suicidally into the face of the robots at the command of the princes of air.

Speedy elves and wicked dwarves descended upon those that remained, twisting at unreal angles.


The plant monster was bookin' it as fast as it could, hoping like hell that the fay would leave it alone.

We needed to be somewhere else before they noticed the other ship.

[Philote]

"I'm sorry, it doesn't appear that I'll have the time to dance with you"

I place a thumb against Vexus' forehead quickly and release a weak spark, one that would barely cause her discomfort. Vexus' tendril stabs at me in response and I raise my Soul Sphere in defense. The hooked end of the tendril clangs against the energy of the sphere around me. I open one of the elemental gates covering the sphere, the Gate of Water, and the already flooded cave begins to build in pressure at the outpouring surge. The great increase in matter forces me and Vexus apart and I teleport up to the surface next to Zale, leaving Vexus to find her own way out.

"Alright, I got the message! Let's get out of here!" I say to Zale.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

As the great, writing mass of plant matter inhabited by Zale plops down out of the enemy ship and begins schloping its way through the shallow sea of Aeon, the water around it's clumsy bilk begins to change, pristine blue warping to a sickly pea green. Clumps of matter start to appear in it's wake, growing, stretching down into the seabed and up toward the shining sun.

And the green blot in the blue world was expanding.

Cervantes Hidalgo watched this through the sight of a Chloris Terraformation Cannon, just one of the many models of cannon that that bastard Vault had, like the human Frankenstein, slapped willy nilly onto his beautiful ship in an effort to "improve" it. Still, they were parts of his ship now. He had no choice but to love them and know them intimately, like a good captain should.

The Chloris Terraformantion Cannon was entirely organic, and had to be watered every few weeks. They were grown from the Chloris ships themselves, and though called a Terraformation Cannon it was really more of a terror weapon. It fired Chloris Terraformation Shells, which, upon contact with water, started to grow and expand into a rapidly growing bioweapon hostile to any non-Chloris that it came into contact with. Fired into an ocean, it would eventually grow and expand across the entire planet. Planetary conquest, accomplished with a single bullet.

Under the circumstances, it had been the best choice. There was no computer to worry about, it could keep a whole ship busy for quite a while, and it withered and died if it went ten minutes without water. No reason to have water on a robot ship, only stood to reason. He had made the shot clean, right through the Vaults leg and into the bowls where it would never have made it to another water source in time.

Then the main bulb had begun behaving in ways that it was never supposed to behave. For example: moving. Cervantes wasn't even sure how it was doing that or why, but he blamed the Vault on general principle. Now, it's spores were spreading in this little sea. And this wasn't exactly going to stop.

The only recorded way to dispose of this type of infestation was to burn the site from orbit. He leapt away from the cannon and set off in a dead sprint for the wheelhouse.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

The underlings exchanged confused glances, and then proceeded to repeat, like a creepy "Neener neener."

Apparently, he had been mistaken for a member of Na-Nanu Neena tribe of planet Nan.

"Neener neener. Neener neener."

Or, to those without degrees in Na-Nanu Neena linguistics and culture.

"Die die. Die die."

They drew ever nearer with stunning electrical pincers at the ready.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

And that's the moment the wave hit them.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Computress' staticky voice drew out thin into the air, or at least started to, before being cut off mid-sentence as a spectral horseman ran through it, right into the path of the Penultimate. Stopping, his phantom steed reared up, eyes alight like smoldering cinders, and with a voice half-horse, half-banshee.

Taking a nervous half-step back, the Penultimate raises a hand, attempting to calm the ghostly beast. No such luck.

Now obviously called for more desperate measures than simple communion with the fay (not that his current power level could even muster a rapport with the fay, anyhow).

So, he raised up his second hand, and thrust his body forward warp-speed, through the spectral horse and rider, and behind them. In the place he stood not a second ago, was a perfect copy, though intangible, and only constructed of the most feeble psionic energy.

Though, the rider and his steed needed not know that. They needed only to see this reality-bending ruler of Celadon, cowering before their terrible supernatural might. And by the time they realized his ruse, a combo of superspeed and teleportation would leave them and their cohorts unable to pick up just where he'd skittered off to.

And when he'd reached a safe place, the Penultimate would try his best to make way for the others.

[The Narrator]

Narrator and his two cohorts watched on.....

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The wave passes completely through Bug, scattering robots left and right and ruining a rose garden.

The Vault runs past and waves his on. "Come on. We've got to get out of here with or without the Philote guys friends."

[Ericus Europaeus (Bug)]

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