![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsTeam 2 takes on mystical monks in the Lowtown temple.
The temple had been, since it was built, a place of safety and discipline in the middle of the rush of Lowtown. Before Lowtown was Lowtown, it was still crowded and hot and a place for the worst of the world to mingle, and the temple was smooth pebble in the midst of that.
From the outside, it was almost severe in it's lack of embellishment. Simple wood and iron gates opened onto an open courtyard, free of the trash and debris that piled up in alleys and corners only a few meters away. A stone walkway cut through a sparse garden, small trees growing in the clean rocks and moss. The stone walls seemed to eat the sounds of the city, sucking them down into the temple's grounds so that the clatter of carts and people and buses and stray dogs because a muted unintelligible muttering.
A pair of younger monks swept the walkway, their movements precise and orderly, even their glances up as people walked past the open gates timed with metronomic perfection.
The slightest hint of Nicki Minaj's "Beez in the Trap" from the white earbuds that the monks shared ruined the effect.
=
Marie-Ange broke from the group of students rushing past the gates and shook the hood down from her sweatshirt-jacket. "I saw two monks, and I am certain there are more where they came from. I do not see any way to sneak in, but I think maybe that we should try to at least take some by surprise? I am just not sure we have many options besides a blatant frontal assault."
Amanda frowned. "Normally I'd just 'port in, grab what we're after and 'port back out, but..." She closed her eyes, reaching for her connection with the city, and then winced as if slapped. "Madripoor isn't playing nice. So, we need an alternative." She glanced at Artie. "How good are you with covering yourself with an illusion? Think you could blend in with the scenery and sneak in?"
He shrugged. "I could do it if there was a distraction, or something else going on that ensures that they're paying attention to something other than me. The more attention you're paying, the less real my stuff looks." He eyed Cammie speculatively. "Can you manage to get their attention?"
"Define 'get their attention'," Cammie said, cracking her knuckles, "Because yeah, there's a lot of ways I can get attention. I just don't know what one you want, kiddo."
Marie-Ange rubbed at her eye, expression thoughtful for a few moments. "No, I think Cammie should be on backup. I can send in images, Artie can drop fog and night, and then we send Cammie in to stick her hand down their throats. Metaphorically. Or not." She looked over at Amanda. "How much do you think the city will give you? Enough to provide us some cover fire?"
"A bit," the witch replied with a slight grimace. "And I've still got a decent store of energy from New York. Just don't expect anything spectacular." There was, of course, the healing spell, which she could use offensively to drain the lives of the monks, but she preferred to use that as a last resort. "Let's get moving before we wind up being spotted and all this planning goes to shite."
Artie nodded sharply and waited till the monk nearest the wall looked over at, just in time to see eight tarantulas run out of a crack in the stonework, one after another. The monk gave and jumped back in horror and their carefully synchronised steps broke down into chaos.
He was already through the gate, invisible against the bricks of the wall on the other side of the courtyard.
Cammie cracked her knuckles and went in. Generally she preferred to do this type of thing with the metaphorical guns blazing, but you didn't live too long if your solution to every problem was to rush in like your ass was on fire. So Cammie stuck to the shadows. The second she had an opening she'd take it. No need to waste an opportunity, after all.
Giant spiders. Well, spiders the size of purse dogs, which was still giant, even for spiders that were already large. Marie-Ange could work with that - she waited until one of the monks tried to swipe at the spiders with his broom and copied them - having Artie around was just so -very- convenient for her own images. The monk's broom passed through the first spider, and he gave a loud shout of "ILLUSIONS!" but then the second spider broke away from the group of now-nine and ran up his leg. Then the group of spiders was ten, eleven, twelve and more spiders swarmed the monks.
Marie-Ange hauled herself up atop the plain stone wall, and lay flat until she could see Artie give her the hand signal for "I have you covered" and then hurried her way down the wall and behind a pile of carefully balanced rocks.
On the other side of the gateway, Amanda cursed under her breath as she struggled to scale the wall - she was short and climbing wasn't a strong point. Being able to 'port in would have been a lot easier. She finally made the top and, like Marie-Ange. lay flat while she checked the coast was clear. There was a path beneath her, and from the temple itself, she could see more monks hurrying towards them.
"Okay, Madripoor, let's see what you'll give me," she muttered, before drawing on one of her more basic spells - the fire summoning. Fire sputtered from her fingertips, before gaining strength and streaking out towards the monks in multi-coloured flashes and loud pops and bangs. Of course, given the Chinese influence - fireworks. Jubilee would be so proud.
Artie watched the women come in from his position under cover, and pegged the moment Marie Anne's spiders arrived, and sent his scuttling over to them, letting their bodies sink merge with her more tangible ones.
He switched to fireworks, supporting Amanda by making it impossible to tell what was and wasn't real.
Cammie grinned. Now, she thought. There was the opening, she lunged, planning on introducing her elbow to the monk's face. She didn't give a flying fuck that monks were generally religious. They were in a part of the world where they were also trained killers, and fuck it, but she wanted to have some fun.
"Hey there, sunshine."
The monk spat out something in a language Cammie didn't speak, but understood anyway - the equivalent of "Fuck you" is clear no matter what the language is. He shifted to dodge the flying elbow, sliding away gracefully, and then coming right back with a high stomping kick that should have broken Cammie's arm, if she'd been there to be hit, and hadn't gotten now-years of lectures that kicking high in a fight was for people who watched too many movies.
Marie-Ange glanced over at the interplay between green-haired brawling and saffron-robed 'watched the Matrix one too many times'. Sarah's influence on Cammie's fighting style was showing - there were some ugly moves in there. The other monk - the one who had called out Artie's spiders as illusions was sliding away, his shape going indistinct in the chaos under a cloak of shadow as he tried to avoid Amanda's fireworks.
She resisted the urge to mutter "anything you can do, I can do better." - she really couldn't do -that-, after all, although Artie < i>could, and instead added to the confusion by copying the one person in the fray - Cammie. A second green-haired woman appeared out of nowhere, launching herself at the shadow-cloaked monk. When the fake-Cammie hit, it exploded into a splash of ectoplasmic goo, coating the monk, and disrupting his illusions.
Artie sprinted inside under his own cloak of shadows, extendable baton in one hand. The monks cleaning just inside the door of the temple whirled at the sound of his footsteps, despite being unable to see him. One came at him with a mop, wielding it like a bo-staff. Artie ducked the first swing, blocked the second with his baton and struck again, hitting the monk's elbow with the baton before slamming the blunt end of it into the monk's nose and snapped it back again, hitting him in the neck. A second monk threw a bucket of water over the area. The shock of the cold water hitting his back made Artie lose the grip on the illusions hiding him. He was suddenly blindingly, damply obvious and he backed away crouched low and holding the baton out in front himself.
"Oh bollocks." Amanda had been keeping the cavalry pinned down with her fireworks, but seeing Artie in trouble, she knew she had to change tactics. With a grunt, she dropped off the wall and onto the gravel path, making a sweeping movement with both of her hands. A stinging cloud of dust and gravel, accentuated by what power she could glean from Madripoor, enveloped the monks and drove them back into the building. Then, while Artie's opponent was focussed on the young man, she came up behind him and lay her hand on the middle of his back, siphoning his life force from him. Her eyes glowed gold as his dimmed, until he dropped, shrunken and lifeless, at her feet.
"Tarot, Scorpion, we need to push these bastards back. They're distracting us from the target!" she called, jerking one shoulder towards the temple.
For a moment, Marie-Ange's hooded jacket seemed darker, obscuring her face. It faded as a card fluttered to the ground and a long scythe appeared in her hands. The shadow-cloaked monk who had already been slowed by the dissolving image had no time to react - the blade flashed, and then he was on the ground, bleeding out of a sliced throat.
"Okay, bored now," Cammie said, dodging a fist to the face before lashing out with her left hand and letting go. She didn't really care how much she used, so there was more than enough to turn the flesh green as the monk dropped to the ground and Cammie quickly made her way inside.
"Down!" There was a burst of flame as they crossed the threshold of the temple and Amanda reacted instinctively, clapping her hands together an generating a shield. Powered with the monk's lifeforce, it glowed almost blindingly gold as the fireballs glanced off it, but the effect was short-lived as the spell burned out the energy almost instantly. Blinking in the sudden darkness, Amanda ducked behind a column, trusted her team to find cover as well. "Mystic monks. I feel like I'm in one of Cypher's computer games," she groused.
Artie ducked the fireball and enveloped the head of a monk in a ball of darkness. In the brief moment where the monk couldn't see, he smashed his baton into his face. The monk dropped, face bleeding.
Marie-Ange had come in behind Amanda, and ducked herself behind a statue just in time to avoid the glare from Amanda's shield. She slid out and flicked on a small flashlight to cut the dim. "Oh if only. Then we could have save points and cheat codes, and a magazine with a map telling us where to go next." She tucked the flashlight up into her sleeve, so only the smallest bit of light showed. "You would think they would have electricity..."
"All the better to have us stumbling around in the dark. I figure they blew the lights when we came over the fence." Amanda clicked her fingers softly and her werelight appeared, faint and fuzzy. "Time for the glo-ball decoy," she said as she sent George bobbing forward with a flick of her fingers.
The place was really darker than it should have been, Cammie decided as she walked in. For being a loud, bombastic person she moved quietly when it called for it. She stopped and squatted down to examine a body on the floor, it was shriveled. She wrinkled her nose, "Jesus. And I thought I left ugly corpses behind."
"Yours smell worse." Marie-Ange offered. "You can pride yourself on smelly corpses." She pulled a handful of cards from up one of her sleeves and tucked them into the pockets in her jacket and jeans. "We most certainly will have more to deal with. I was getting readings for flocks all day yesterday for us."
George bobbed along ahead of them as they stepped over the remains of the monk that Amanda had drained, and the one that Artie had blugeoned. The little werelight flickered between the warm butter-yellow of a streetlamp as they approached and then to the dim reddish glow of a nearly-burnt out bulb as he was sent on further. They passed a pair of open and obviously hastily-emptied rooms, and then another before coming to the end of the hallway, blocked by a set of double-doors, tall and heavy and so dark that the wood seemed to draw the light out of the werelight, and Marie-Ange's little flashlight.
All sound cut out before anything else. For a moment it was utterly silent, and then the doors blew open into fragments of black fire, showering the group with splinters that sizzled and popped. In the now open doorway stood a tall robed man, and behind him, a horde of grey-clad monks that rushed towards the intruders.
Artie stepped out from his place against the wall, suddenly visible and smashed his baton into one's face before fading back into invisibility again and sidling along the wall and through the open door. Cammie could handle this.
"Something to do," Cammie said with glee coloring her voice as she pulled the bandages completely off her left arm, "Hey boys, I don't mind the occasional threesome so why don't we fucking dance," she said, reaching out and grabbing one Monk in the face, sending him twitching and vomiting on the ground. She kicked another guy in the crotch while biting her tongue and spitting in the face of a third who didn't seem effected by it, but only for a second. The screaming was loud, and whatever was happening to him, his clawing at his eyes made it worse.
"Glad someone's having fun," Amanda muttered, rolling her eyes slightly at Cammie's enthusiastic slaughter. She had her hands full, however, as the sorcerer type started tossing black fireballs around, interspersed with arcs of lightning. Given she was the only magically-equipped one there, she needed to draw his fire so Marie-Ange and Artie could get to the bloodstones. "Oi, ugly!" she yelled, sending George zooming at his face to explode in a shower of sparks. "Try picking on someone your own size!" She followed it up with another stream of fireworks then hastily blocked the incoming dark energy that splattered against a personal shield. "~Tell Artie make for the stone!~ she yelled to Marie-Ange in badly-accented French, fairly sure the monks wouldn't know it. "~You, Cammie and I will keep them occupied!~"
Marie-Ange had less room to move than Amanda, right up until the long-bladed scythe came out. She swung, and the weapon slipped through a monk's robes like butter, and bit deeply into his thigh before melting down to goo. She kicked the bleeding man, sending him tumbling into one of Cammie's ex-dance-partners and ran past his twitching body.
The scythe replaced itself with the usual long knives that Marie-Ange tended to prefer in crowded conditions between one step and another, and another monk fell, bleeding out before she got to Artie's side to relay the message.
He nodded and hit a monk from behind and then, a visible copy of himself appeared at the far end of the corridor, screaming wordlessly and attracting attention only to vanish as the first monk reached it as Artie moved along the wall, silent and invisible until he reached the altar and grabbed the stone, stuffing it into his pocket.
Artie's illusions made it difficult for his friends to see him as well, but the absence of the bloodstone from the altar was a good sign. "We good to go..." Amanda paused, realising they didn't have a codename for Artie in the field yet. Oops. "Chameleon?" she went with, even as she ducked a bolt of energy that went whizzing through a hole in her shield. "Please tell me we're good to go."
There was one flicker of movement from behind the altar, a flash of something blue, and then gone again. It might've been Artie sticking out his tongue to taste the air, Marie-Ange thought, because it wasn't one of what seemed to be an obnoxious number of monks. She elbowed one in the face, imaged armor sliding over her arm and back to mist in a single motion, and took a kick to the knee for her trouble from another. "Oui, rapidement!" They needed to go, fast.
The card that slid from her sleeve to her hand was damp with the ectoplasm that stained her sleeve, but the image was clear. The scales of the enormous snake appeared first, and then the rest of the ouroborus, head with it's needle-like teeth gripping it's tail last. The coils writhed, looping around and under and above themselves and the monks and the altar and the columns of the altar room. It writhed and trapped bodies whereever Marie-Ange looked to direct it as the image became stained with red - from crushed monks, and from the nosebleed that trickled down her mouth in drops onto her card.
Artie blinked back into view again, suddenly visible as he ducked away from the snake, eyes wide in terror. He fucking hated snakes. And this was even worse than... well, a real one. He tripped over a fallen monk and smashed his baton down onto the hand that reached out for him before snapping it around to catch the monk in the face and climbed back onto his feet.
Cammie was enjoying her dance, being foot loose and fancy free with quite a few bald, monkish partners. It was a regular orgy of combat, and her wild grin gave away how much she was enjoying it. A few years ago, without the training she had she would maybe have lasted five minutes, but now she was a one woman army.
The world wasn't really a martial arts movie, of course, and it didn't take too long for the monks to wise up. The rookies who weren't ready to be toe tagged and had been danced out stayed back and her dance partners started getting more and more competent. That was when it started getting fun, a fight was only a pleasant distraction until you had to think. Then it became a transcendent experience, at least for her. A small part of Cammie couldn't help but to fear that she had been designed that way. In the end it didn't matter. Fuck Monica, Cammie was aimed where she wanted to be fighting the battles she wanted to fight.
Cammie was one on one now with a monk she might have found good looking had they not been trying to murder each other. The dance now was a series of bobs and weaves, turns and near misses and almost touching skin. Cammie was laughing and didn't see the flash of metal of the hidden knife until it was too late.
"Shit!" Cammie said as the knife hit the flesh of her stomach, the sharp pain and the sudden pungent smell a very good reminder of why her getting cut was bad for everyone. Her hand went to the wound and then smeared the black blood across the monk's face sending him twitching to the ground and her to her hands and knees. The odor was enough to keep the rest of them back, as those who got too close choked and gagged.
"Guys, big fucking problem!"
The smell had hit Amanda a second before Cammie's yell, and she automatically clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. Which made mystical battle difficult, since she needed both hands for some spells. "Bail!" she shouted, muffled by her hand, hoping Marie-Ange would know what she was going to have to do. And hopefully she'd be able to manage it before Cammie's blood killed her.
The witch brushed aside another force bolt from the sorcerer with her failing shield, and rushed forward. He hadn't expected her to take things physical, and she was able to take advantage of his brief surprise - and the weakening effect of Cammie's poison in the air - to get close enough to touch him. Close enough to steal his life, using it to heal herself of the initial effects of Cammie's blood and boost her immune system. The sorcerer's withered body had barely hit the floor before Amanda was spinning towards Cammie, laying her hand on her teammate's shoulder. "This'll hurt like fuck," she said briefly, before releasing the healing spell, draining every monk around them to power it.
Even if Marie-Ange hadn't heard both shouted warnings, the smell was warning enough. And as she'd said hours and hours before, they were out of hazmat suits. She spun, running and pulling her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose at the same time. The imaged snake uncoiled itself as she ran, following her like an enormous scaled monstrous puppy, clearing bodies in it's wake. She felt the tug of fatigue as Amanda's spell went off, just a hint of it, but kept moving - there were enough people to sacrifice that they didn't need her or Artie to help.
She caught up with Artie only a few steps after, and grabbed his free arm, the one that wasn't partially covering his mouth like he was afraid his tongue might try to climb out of his face, and half-dragged him towards the exit - he had the stone, they couldn't much afford for him to trip and end up vomiting up his digestive organs and have to go back for him.
The healing hurt, "Jesus fucking crispy ass christ on a fucking thick ass cracker," Cammie breathed. Yeah, she had been warned but it wasn't the same as actually feeling it or seeing the effect it had. "Oww," was all she managed as she worked herself to her feet.
"You're welcome," Amanda managed through gritted teeth, for her part looking slightly woozy and pale - Cammie's poison had managed to effect her despite her precautions. Around them were desiccated husks clad in monkly robes - the 'donors' for the spell. "Let's get the fuck out of here. I don't think Madripoor is going to appreciate me wiping out a bunch of local clergy types."
"Nah, the locals love murder sprees," Cammie returned looking back to the door, "It adds to the mystique of the place. But I'm okay with getting the fuck out of here. Let's go, I hate the smell of my own blood."
The temple had been, since it was built, a place of safety and discipline in the middle of the rush of Lowtown. Before Lowtown was Lowtown, it was still crowded and hot and a place for the worst of the world to mingle, and the temple was smooth pebble in the midst of that.
From the outside, it was almost severe in it's lack of embellishment. Simple wood and iron gates opened onto an open courtyard, free of the trash and debris that piled up in alleys and corners only a few meters away. A stone walkway cut through a sparse garden, small trees growing in the clean rocks and moss. The stone walls seemed to eat the sounds of the city, sucking them down into the temple's grounds so that the clatter of carts and people and buses and stray dogs because a muted unintelligible muttering.
A pair of younger monks swept the walkway, their movements precise and orderly, even their glances up as people walked past the open gates timed with metronomic perfection.
The slightest hint of Nicki Minaj's "Beez in the Trap" from the white earbuds that the monks shared ruined the effect.
=
Marie-Ange broke from the group of students rushing past the gates and shook the hood down from her sweatshirt-jacket. "I saw two monks, and I am certain there are more where they came from. I do not see any way to sneak in, but I think maybe that we should try to at least take some by surprise? I am just not sure we have many options besides a blatant frontal assault."
Amanda frowned. "Normally I'd just 'port in, grab what we're after and 'port back out, but..." She closed her eyes, reaching for her connection with the city, and then winced as if slapped. "Madripoor isn't playing nice. So, we need an alternative." She glanced at Artie. "How good are you with covering yourself with an illusion? Think you could blend in with the scenery and sneak in?"
He shrugged. "I could do it if there was a distraction, or something else going on that ensures that they're paying attention to something other than me. The more attention you're paying, the less real my stuff looks." He eyed Cammie speculatively. "Can you manage to get their attention?"
"Define 'get their attention'," Cammie said, cracking her knuckles, "Because yeah, there's a lot of ways I can get attention. I just don't know what one you want, kiddo."
Marie-Ange rubbed at her eye, expression thoughtful for a few moments. "No, I think Cammie should be on backup. I can send in images, Artie can drop fog and night, and then we send Cammie in to stick her hand down their throats. Metaphorically. Or not." She looked over at Amanda. "How much do you think the city will give you? Enough to provide us some cover fire?"
"A bit," the witch replied with a slight grimace. "And I've still got a decent store of energy from New York. Just don't expect anything spectacular." There was, of course, the healing spell, which she could use offensively to drain the lives of the monks, but she preferred to use that as a last resort. "Let's get moving before we wind up being spotted and all this planning goes to shite."
Artie nodded sharply and waited till the monk nearest the wall looked over at, just in time to see eight tarantulas run out of a crack in the stonework, one after another. The monk gave and jumped back in horror and their carefully synchronised steps broke down into chaos.
He was already through the gate, invisible against the bricks of the wall on the other side of the courtyard.
Cammie cracked her knuckles and went in. Generally she preferred to do this type of thing with the metaphorical guns blazing, but you didn't live too long if your solution to every problem was to rush in like your ass was on fire. So Cammie stuck to the shadows. The second she had an opening she'd take it. No need to waste an opportunity, after all.
Giant spiders. Well, spiders the size of purse dogs, which was still giant, even for spiders that were already large. Marie-Ange could work with that - she waited until one of the monks tried to swipe at the spiders with his broom and copied them - having Artie around was just so -very- convenient for her own images. The monk's broom passed through the first spider, and he gave a loud shout of "ILLUSIONS!" but then the second spider broke away from the group of now-nine and ran up his leg. Then the group of spiders was ten, eleven, twelve and more spiders swarmed the monks.
Marie-Ange hauled herself up atop the plain stone wall, and lay flat until she could see Artie give her the hand signal for "I have you covered" and then hurried her way down the wall and behind a pile of carefully balanced rocks.
On the other side of the gateway, Amanda cursed under her breath as she struggled to scale the wall - she was short and climbing wasn't a strong point. Being able to 'port in would have been a lot easier. She finally made the top and, like Marie-Ange. lay flat while she checked the coast was clear. There was a path beneath her, and from the temple itself, she could see more monks hurrying towards them.
"Okay, Madripoor, let's see what you'll give me," she muttered, before drawing on one of her more basic spells - the fire summoning. Fire sputtered from her fingertips, before gaining strength and streaking out towards the monks in multi-coloured flashes and loud pops and bangs. Of course, given the Chinese influence - fireworks. Jubilee would be so proud.
Artie watched the women come in from his position under cover, and pegged the moment Marie Anne's spiders arrived, and sent his scuttling over to them, letting their bodies sink merge with her more tangible ones.
He switched to fireworks, supporting Amanda by making it impossible to tell what was and wasn't real.
Cammie grinned. Now, she thought. There was the opening, she lunged, planning on introducing her elbow to the monk's face. She didn't give a flying fuck that monks were generally religious. They were in a part of the world where they were also trained killers, and fuck it, but she wanted to have some fun.
"Hey there, sunshine."
The monk spat out something in a language Cammie didn't speak, but understood anyway - the equivalent of "Fuck you" is clear no matter what the language is. He shifted to dodge the flying elbow, sliding away gracefully, and then coming right back with a high stomping kick that should have broken Cammie's arm, if she'd been there to be hit, and hadn't gotten now-years of lectures that kicking high in a fight was for people who watched too many movies.
Marie-Ange glanced over at the interplay between green-haired brawling and saffron-robed 'watched the Matrix one too many times'. Sarah's influence on Cammie's fighting style was showing - there were some ugly moves in there. The other monk - the one who had called out Artie's spiders as illusions was sliding away, his shape going indistinct in the chaos under a cloak of shadow as he tried to avoid Amanda's fireworks.
She resisted the urge to mutter "anything you can do, I can do better." - she really couldn't do -that-, after all, although Artie < i>could, and instead added to the confusion by copying the one person in the fray - Cammie. A second green-haired woman appeared out of nowhere, launching herself at the shadow-cloaked monk. When the fake-Cammie hit, it exploded into a splash of ectoplasmic goo, coating the monk, and disrupting his illusions.
Artie sprinted inside under his own cloak of shadows, extendable baton in one hand. The monks cleaning just inside the door of the temple whirled at the sound of his footsteps, despite being unable to see him. One came at him with a mop, wielding it like a bo-staff. Artie ducked the first swing, blocked the second with his baton and struck again, hitting the monk's elbow with the baton before slamming the blunt end of it into the monk's nose and snapped it back again, hitting him in the neck. A second monk threw a bucket of water over the area. The shock of the cold water hitting his back made Artie lose the grip on the illusions hiding him. He was suddenly blindingly, damply obvious and he backed away crouched low and holding the baton out in front himself.
"Oh bollocks." Amanda had been keeping the cavalry pinned down with her fireworks, but seeing Artie in trouble, she knew she had to change tactics. With a grunt, she dropped off the wall and onto the gravel path, making a sweeping movement with both of her hands. A stinging cloud of dust and gravel, accentuated by what power she could glean from Madripoor, enveloped the monks and drove them back into the building. Then, while Artie's opponent was focussed on the young man, she came up behind him and lay her hand on the middle of his back, siphoning his life force from him. Her eyes glowed gold as his dimmed, until he dropped, shrunken and lifeless, at her feet.
"Tarot, Scorpion, we need to push these bastards back. They're distracting us from the target!" she called, jerking one shoulder towards the temple.
For a moment, Marie-Ange's hooded jacket seemed darker, obscuring her face. It faded as a card fluttered to the ground and a long scythe appeared in her hands. The shadow-cloaked monk who had already been slowed by the dissolving image had no time to react - the blade flashed, and then he was on the ground, bleeding out of a sliced throat.
"Okay, bored now," Cammie said, dodging a fist to the face before lashing out with her left hand and letting go. She didn't really care how much she used, so there was more than enough to turn the flesh green as the monk dropped to the ground and Cammie quickly made her way inside.
"Down!" There was a burst of flame as they crossed the threshold of the temple and Amanda reacted instinctively, clapping her hands together an generating a shield. Powered with the monk's lifeforce, it glowed almost blindingly gold as the fireballs glanced off it, but the effect was short-lived as the spell burned out the energy almost instantly. Blinking in the sudden darkness, Amanda ducked behind a column, trusted her team to find cover as well. "Mystic monks. I feel like I'm in one of Cypher's computer games," she groused.
Artie ducked the fireball and enveloped the head of a monk in a ball of darkness. In the brief moment where the monk couldn't see, he smashed his baton into his face. The monk dropped, face bleeding.
Marie-Ange had come in behind Amanda, and ducked herself behind a statue just in time to avoid the glare from Amanda's shield. She slid out and flicked on a small flashlight to cut the dim. "Oh if only. Then we could have save points and cheat codes, and a magazine with a map telling us where to go next." She tucked the flashlight up into her sleeve, so only the smallest bit of light showed. "You would think they would have electricity..."
"All the better to have us stumbling around in the dark. I figure they blew the lights when we came over the fence." Amanda clicked her fingers softly and her werelight appeared, faint and fuzzy. "Time for the glo-ball decoy," she said as she sent George bobbing forward with a flick of her fingers.
The place was really darker than it should have been, Cammie decided as she walked in. For being a loud, bombastic person she moved quietly when it called for it. She stopped and squatted down to examine a body on the floor, it was shriveled. She wrinkled her nose, "Jesus. And I thought I left ugly corpses behind."
"Yours smell worse." Marie-Ange offered. "You can pride yourself on smelly corpses." She pulled a handful of cards from up one of her sleeves and tucked them into the pockets in her jacket and jeans. "We most certainly will have more to deal with. I was getting readings for flocks all day yesterday for us."
George bobbed along ahead of them as they stepped over the remains of the monk that Amanda had drained, and the one that Artie had blugeoned. The little werelight flickered between the warm butter-yellow of a streetlamp as they approached and then to the dim reddish glow of a nearly-burnt out bulb as he was sent on further. They passed a pair of open and obviously hastily-emptied rooms, and then another before coming to the end of the hallway, blocked by a set of double-doors, tall and heavy and so dark that the wood seemed to draw the light out of the werelight, and Marie-Ange's little flashlight.
All sound cut out before anything else. For a moment it was utterly silent, and then the doors blew open into fragments of black fire, showering the group with splinters that sizzled and popped. In the now open doorway stood a tall robed man, and behind him, a horde of grey-clad monks that rushed towards the intruders.
Artie stepped out from his place against the wall, suddenly visible and smashed his baton into one's face before fading back into invisibility again and sidling along the wall and through the open door. Cammie could handle this.
"Something to do," Cammie said with glee coloring her voice as she pulled the bandages completely off her left arm, "Hey boys, I don't mind the occasional threesome so why don't we fucking dance," she said, reaching out and grabbing one Monk in the face, sending him twitching and vomiting on the ground. She kicked another guy in the crotch while biting her tongue and spitting in the face of a third who didn't seem effected by it, but only for a second. The screaming was loud, and whatever was happening to him, his clawing at his eyes made it worse.
"Glad someone's having fun," Amanda muttered, rolling her eyes slightly at Cammie's enthusiastic slaughter. She had her hands full, however, as the sorcerer type started tossing black fireballs around, interspersed with arcs of lightning. Given she was the only magically-equipped one there, she needed to draw his fire so Marie-Ange and Artie could get to the bloodstones. "Oi, ugly!" she yelled, sending George zooming at his face to explode in a shower of sparks. "Try picking on someone your own size!" She followed it up with another stream of fireworks then hastily blocked the incoming dark energy that splattered against a personal shield. "~Tell Artie make for the stone!~ she yelled to Marie-Ange in badly-accented French, fairly sure the monks wouldn't know it. "~You, Cammie and I will keep them occupied!~"
Marie-Ange had less room to move than Amanda, right up until the long-bladed scythe came out. She swung, and the weapon slipped through a monk's robes like butter, and bit deeply into his thigh before melting down to goo. She kicked the bleeding man, sending him tumbling into one of Cammie's ex-dance-partners and ran past his twitching body.
The scythe replaced itself with the usual long knives that Marie-Ange tended to prefer in crowded conditions between one step and another, and another monk fell, bleeding out before she got to Artie's side to relay the message.
He nodded and hit a monk from behind and then, a visible copy of himself appeared at the far end of the corridor, screaming wordlessly and attracting attention only to vanish as the first monk reached it as Artie moved along the wall, silent and invisible until he reached the altar and grabbed the stone, stuffing it into his pocket.
Artie's illusions made it difficult for his friends to see him as well, but the absence of the bloodstone from the altar was a good sign. "We good to go..." Amanda paused, realising they didn't have a codename for Artie in the field yet. Oops. "Chameleon?" she went with, even as she ducked a bolt of energy that went whizzing through a hole in her shield. "Please tell me we're good to go."
There was one flicker of movement from behind the altar, a flash of something blue, and then gone again. It might've been Artie sticking out his tongue to taste the air, Marie-Ange thought, because it wasn't one of what seemed to be an obnoxious number of monks. She elbowed one in the face, imaged armor sliding over her arm and back to mist in a single motion, and took a kick to the knee for her trouble from another. "Oui, rapidement!" They needed to go, fast.
The card that slid from her sleeve to her hand was damp with the ectoplasm that stained her sleeve, but the image was clear. The scales of the enormous snake appeared first, and then the rest of the ouroborus, head with it's needle-like teeth gripping it's tail last. The coils writhed, looping around and under and above themselves and the monks and the altar and the columns of the altar room. It writhed and trapped bodies whereever Marie-Ange looked to direct it as the image became stained with red - from crushed monks, and from the nosebleed that trickled down her mouth in drops onto her card.
Artie blinked back into view again, suddenly visible as he ducked away from the snake, eyes wide in terror. He fucking hated snakes. And this was even worse than... well, a real one. He tripped over a fallen monk and smashed his baton down onto the hand that reached out for him before snapping it around to catch the monk in the face and climbed back onto his feet.
Cammie was enjoying her dance, being foot loose and fancy free with quite a few bald, monkish partners. It was a regular orgy of combat, and her wild grin gave away how much she was enjoying it. A few years ago, without the training she had she would maybe have lasted five minutes, but now she was a one woman army.
The world wasn't really a martial arts movie, of course, and it didn't take too long for the monks to wise up. The rookies who weren't ready to be toe tagged and had been danced out stayed back and her dance partners started getting more and more competent. That was when it started getting fun, a fight was only a pleasant distraction until you had to think. Then it became a transcendent experience, at least for her. A small part of Cammie couldn't help but to fear that she had been designed that way. In the end it didn't matter. Fuck Monica, Cammie was aimed where she wanted to be fighting the battles she wanted to fight.
Cammie was one on one now with a monk she might have found good looking had they not been trying to murder each other. The dance now was a series of bobs and weaves, turns and near misses and almost touching skin. Cammie was laughing and didn't see the flash of metal of the hidden knife until it was too late.
"Shit!" Cammie said as the knife hit the flesh of her stomach, the sharp pain and the sudden pungent smell a very good reminder of why her getting cut was bad for everyone. Her hand went to the wound and then smeared the black blood across the monk's face sending him twitching to the ground and her to her hands and knees. The odor was enough to keep the rest of them back, as those who got too close choked and gagged.
"Guys, big fucking problem!"
The smell had hit Amanda a second before Cammie's yell, and she automatically clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. Which made mystical battle difficult, since she needed both hands for some spells. "Bail!" she shouted, muffled by her hand, hoping Marie-Ange would know what she was going to have to do. And hopefully she'd be able to manage it before Cammie's blood killed her.
The witch brushed aside another force bolt from the sorcerer with her failing shield, and rushed forward. He hadn't expected her to take things physical, and she was able to take advantage of his brief surprise - and the weakening effect of Cammie's poison in the air - to get close enough to touch him. Close enough to steal his life, using it to heal herself of the initial effects of Cammie's blood and boost her immune system. The sorcerer's withered body had barely hit the floor before Amanda was spinning towards Cammie, laying her hand on her teammate's shoulder. "This'll hurt like fuck," she said briefly, before releasing the healing spell, draining every monk around them to power it.
Even if Marie-Ange hadn't heard both shouted warnings, the smell was warning enough. And as she'd said hours and hours before, they were out of hazmat suits. She spun, running and pulling her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose at the same time. The imaged snake uncoiled itself as she ran, following her like an enormous scaled monstrous puppy, clearing bodies in it's wake. She felt the tug of fatigue as Amanda's spell went off, just a hint of it, but kept moving - there were enough people to sacrifice that they didn't need her or Artie to help.
She caught up with Artie only a few steps after, and grabbed his free arm, the one that wasn't partially covering his mouth like he was afraid his tongue might try to climb out of his face, and half-dragged him towards the exit - he had the stone, they couldn't much afford for him to trip and end up vomiting up his digestive organs and have to go back for him.
The healing hurt, "Jesus fucking crispy ass christ on a fucking thick ass cracker," Cammie breathed. Yeah, she had been warned but it wasn't the same as actually feeling it or seeing the effect it had. "Oww," was all she managed as she worked herself to her feet.
"You're welcome," Amanda managed through gritted teeth, for her part looking slightly woozy and pale - Cammie's poison had managed to effect her despite her precautions. Around them were desiccated husks clad in monkly robes - the 'donors' for the spell. "Let's get the fuck out of here. I don't think Madripoor is going to appreciate me wiping out a bunch of local clergy types."
"Nah, the locals love murder sprees," Cammie returned looking back to the door, "It adds to the mystique of the place. But I'm okay with getting the fuck out of here. Let's go, I hate the smell of my own blood."
