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xp_logsWith all fishies in the water, Cyclops and Blink take point on scouting ahead.
Rainbow Britefish (Topaz) and Synch track our missing phoenixes, pirates and princes.
Topaz was trying very hard to keep her ire to a minimum, if only because she was liable to start projecting at this point, and no one needed her angry feelings - they had plenty of their own, she was sure. But for fuck's sake, she was a rainbow....fish...thing. Two days ago she had been in Hell. Two months ago she had killed her zombie mother. "What the fuck is my life?" she muttered. Strangely, the fact that she could talk wasn't the weirdest thing about all this.
The one, one benefit of being able to get down this far was that she no longer had to strain to feel any of the kidnapped people. Which wasn't even that great of a silver lining considering it just confirmed even further how Not Right they felt. It wasn't quite like Alaska, she realized now that she was closer. There had been feelings, they had just been warped to obey dear old Norbert (may he rest in peace). This just felt... wrong. Like Slendermen, she realized after a moment. Basic. It felt basic. That wasn't good for human beings.
Ev swam next to her. Though his mutant detection range was limited, he could synch to her empathy and support her search that way until they got close enough. He too noticed the stark contrast between the simple emotions coming up ahead and the more complex — if soggy — one of his comrades. Particularly the aggressively self-directed hostility and confusion emanating from the young woman next to him.
"Can you get any count up ahead?" he asked. "It's all just blobs of feeling to me."
"Hard to tell when they all feel the same," Topaz murmured. She closed her eyes and relaxed, trying to block out everything else and stamp down her own emotions, lest they get in the way. She was here, she might as well be useful. "Four?" She guessed after a moment, eyebrows scrunching. "No, five. Five or six. They all kind of bleed together."
"So they're all kept together. Good." Ev sped up, the scales of his mer-tail reflecting the faint multicolored light of his aura like a disco ball in the otherwise almost pitch-black area. It might call attention to them but also signaled the rest of the group to keep up. In another scenario, Ev might think it charming. He did hope Wanda could see it, at least.
"Yeah, don't have to hunt anyone down." Topaz frowned. "There's something wrong with them, though. Their emotions are all off. I don't know if that's good or bad for us."
They were coming with half an army, so Ev counted on it being good. Just think about the mission, not the possibility of magic going awry and them all dying a terrible wet death because their fake gills closed up. "I'm feeling something else," he said. "Not your powers. It's . . . mutants! A psi and one, two, maybe three? Physical mutations. Can't tell so far away. And no way to tell if these emotions are theirs, either, or someone else's. Or something else's," he added unnecessarily dramatically.
"Dun dun dun," Topaz muttered. "The psi is probably Doc Jean. Don't know anything about the others. Or Namor for that matter."
Ev waved jazz hands to underscore the tension. "Couldn't say. But probably about time to roll initiative."
"Great. Three unknown mutants, Doc Jean, whatever the hell Namor is, and whatever is down there guarding them." Because there had to be something. They weren't lucky. "And we're..." Topaz waved a hand at her self. "I don't need to roll. My initiative is zero. Let's go."
Daytripper and Wildchild are beset upon by Lemureans and an Atlantean bearing (wait no, WEARING) squid.
Amanda's head whipped around as the previously too-calm area was suddenly boiling with activity. Bad activity, in the form of fish-men with pointy things and unhappy expressions and even worse, the sight of an Atlantean bearing down on them, his head [obscured/sporting] what honestly looked like a squidhat. She grimaced, flashing sharp teeth in contrast to her supernatural beauty, and called out to her companion:
"Kyle, incoming! We've got ourselves a whole lot of ugly!"
Amanda's words scraped over Kyle's skin before they even got to his ears, and he was already swimming towards her in a flash of grey and beige scales before he had put conscious thought to her words, and the movements he could feel in the water around him. He bared a mouthful of teeth, rows and rows of them at the sight of not only Namor but the same aquatic creatures that had come through the strange device and into the mansion ages ago. "I know these assholes." He snarled. "Fishdicks. Lemurians. They taste real bad.."
"Well, at least we know where all this weirdness came from." Amanda looked over the forces against them. "I'll need you to distract most of the attention while I work on whatever spell's holding the Fish King there. But," and here her expression become predatory, "first we need to weed out some of the opposition." And with a strong downbeat of her long green tail, the witch shot forward towards the Lemurians.
The shouts from the guards, and whatever nonsense Namor was spouting went ignored. It was probably more of the same thing Kyle had heard in half the fights he'd been in during his life. Stop or we'll shoot. Stop or we'll use our mutant powers on you. Stop or we'll stab you with a barnacle-encrusted trident. He slipped through the water silently and towards the ocean floor where his scales and skin blended in with the sand and rock. He skimmed along the ground and dragged his claws through the sand, hiding himself further from the guards as they approached.
Amanda barrelled into the Lemurians, scattering them with the force of her speed. A flick of her tail and she turned, lunging at the closest foot-soldier, long-nailed hands reaching for his throat. His eyes bulged as she squeezed, mouth opening and closing futilely.
The clouds of sand erupted into all several hundred pounds of Kyle, belly up but with claws and teeth bared. His mouth was all the wrong shape to effectively bite through Lemurean scaled skin, but his claws caught one guard in the flank and tore long bloody wounds up it's side. He snapped at the ribbons of blood in the water, lingering in the reddish cloud longer than he should have - and caught a bone knife to the arm for his inattention.
The blood in the water only served to add to the ferocity of the combatants, with Amanda discarding the throttled guard and turning her claws and teeth on another. A trident was thrust at her ribs and she pivoted, letting her prey take the blow. Her face had become even more inhuman, predatory and fierce.
That was, still pretty human compared to her next opponent. The squid hat was a curious creature: it seemed to have melded with Namor, but also accentuated his face underneath with lovecraftian features. It's single, unblinking eye was a blank slate of emotion, and the sway of its tentacles over the Atlantean's jawline and neck was almost mesmerizing in its deep, eldritch horror.
Horror waylaid by the fact that Namors were good for punching, and punching was rarely eldritch. Namor, deciding on a target, lunged toward Amanda first.
The transformed witch managed to dodge the Atlantean, but it was a close thing. She may have been a mermaid, but Namor had been born in the sea, had lived it his entire life. And there was no way she'd survive one of his punches, even with the impact blunted by the water. She was going to have to play this smart and ignore the inner voice singing within her to simply tear out his entrails. "Kyle!" she shouted, propelling herself upward with a strong sweep of her tail. "Need a hand here!"
A small and only slightly transformed part of Kyle's brain screamed "squid! prey! most delicious!" as he quite humanly headbutted his guard opponent in the scaly face. They didn't seem to breathe through the parts of their faces that were nose-like, but it must have hurt because the guard reeled back, giving Kyle a chance to shove it away and swim directly at Namor.
He cut up under Amanda's tail and grabbed at Namor's waist in what was mostly an attempt to distract the timelost king and partially done out of an unignorable desire to chew on the squid attached to Namor's face.
On the one hand: it worked. On the other: while everyone in this might still had two hands, Kyle quickly learned that Namor still had both of his legs. With an oof, Namor kicked hard at Kyle's chest and head in attempts to dislodge himself. The squid-bound atlante-man's gaze, however, barely registered the threat — his intent still squarely locked on Amanda.
It was remarkably difficult to get back to one's feet when one did not, technically have feet. The kick had pushed Kyle away by yards, and it took him what felt like far too much awkward swimming to get himself and all his parts re-oriented. "Yo, Squidward!" He yelled, words vibrating oddly around the water in his throat before making another pass at Namor - and this time correcting his poorly thought out tactic by aiming for the problematic legs in question. "Come on, fight me, not the pretty witch. She's harmless." He bared teeth, way too many teeth, entirely way too many teeth at Namor. "See, she's all pretty and green and I'm a big dumb shark."
This got a glance from Squidmor, but in terms of priorities communication and English were not remarkably high on the Squidhat's skills to care about. All were connected via The Mother. All that mattered was protecting The Mother. Outwardly, this creepy internal monologue only registered as a snarl and a brief dodge -- Namor let the shark pass him, and Kyle got a bite out of exactly how durable being semi-impervious really was.
Sneering, Namor kicked upward toward Amanda.
An excess of teeth scraping against extra-durable skin felt exactly like that one time Kyle had thought chewing on some tin foil was a good idea. His growl of frustration and pain came with a spat-out tooth even as he grabbed at the other man's ankles. He got one arm around Namor's foot, and dug his claws into the feathered wing that clung wetly to his ankle.
This was met with a yelp of pain as Namor registered the injury, but, oddly enough, his focus did not shift or waver. This was extremely unlike the Atlantean — it was no secret that his wings were the most delicate part about him (barring his ego, possibly) — but this was just more evidence that Namor was not home right now. So even as blood leaked into the water as one wing dangled limply, Squidmor continued his fight toward Amanda albeit more weakly.
"Sod this," Amanda muttered. It would be risky, trying to reverse the spell in a hurry, but Namor could survive underwater. She called up the reversal spell, drawing on as much stored power as she dared, her hands glowing bright blue as she plunged downwards towards the Atlantean. She managed to grab his arm for a moment, enough to cast the spell, before she was flung backwards, one part by a sweep of his arm, but mostly by backlash. The spell hadn't worked - something was actively working against it.
"Oh bollocks." Realisation dawned. "These bloody things are aware. And fight back."
The moment - just a moment - where the water went blue and cool and misty like a foggy winter day was all Kyle needed to regain his momentum and literally haul himself up Namor's legs in two powerful pulls. He simply could not in any way meet the aquatic king's speed in the water, but he could hang on for dear life. "Good, means I can hit it more!" he yelled back at Amanda - and wrapped one arm around Namor's be-tentacled neck. His claws had proven useless against the other man's skin. But not quite as useless against the flabby, fishy, cyclopean -thing- attached to Namor's face.
Kyle dug in with one webbed and clawed hand, drew blood - or ink maybe, it bled grey-black all over his fingers.
At this new attack, Namor reeled back and snarled all of his teeth at Kyle. He growled low, predatory, at this intrusion. Kyle had been right in going after the squid, but now the meremutant had the pleasure of Squidmor's complete attention. It came quickly, too, as Namor pounced on Kyle, a flash of tentacles and wings and fins, in a violent bezerker frenzy.
"Kyle!" Amanda called, hoping to get his attention above the thrashing and violence of an enraged squid-possessed Namor. "I'm going to have to regroup for a bit! I need another spell, something to shut the bloody squid brain up so we can get some sense out of him again!" She gave an apologetic shrug. "Sorry?"
"I got this!" It was the happiest Kyle had sounded in hours, not since calling Topaz "rainbowbritefish" and throwing a wet fishy towel at Clint. Even with a grey bruise already showing on his face from one of Squidmor's wild punches. "I got a plan!" He could see - past the blood in the water and the ink and the sand and little bits of sharkskin and more blood that was probably his - another rainbow mer-person, this one glowing with the unmistakable aura of Everett Thomas's mutant power.
Anything Namor could do while brainwashed by the ugliest calamari Kyle had ever seen, Synch could hopefully do better.
Rainbow Britefish (Topaz) and Synch track our missing phoenixes, pirates and princes.
Topaz was trying very hard to keep her ire to a minimum, if only because she was liable to start projecting at this point, and no one needed her angry feelings - they had plenty of their own, she was sure. But for fuck's sake, she was a rainbow....fish...thing. Two days ago she had been in Hell. Two months ago she had killed her zombie mother. "What the fuck is my life?" she muttered. Strangely, the fact that she could talk wasn't the weirdest thing about all this.
The one, one benefit of being able to get down this far was that she no longer had to strain to feel any of the kidnapped people. Which wasn't even that great of a silver lining considering it just confirmed even further how Not Right they felt. It wasn't quite like Alaska, she realized now that she was closer. There had been feelings, they had just been warped to obey dear old Norbert (may he rest in peace). This just felt... wrong. Like Slendermen, she realized after a moment. Basic. It felt basic. That wasn't good for human beings.
Ev swam next to her. Though his mutant detection range was limited, he could synch to her empathy and support her search that way until they got close enough. He too noticed the stark contrast between the simple emotions coming up ahead and the more complex — if soggy — one of his comrades. Particularly the aggressively self-directed hostility and confusion emanating from the young woman next to him.
"Can you get any count up ahead?" he asked. "It's all just blobs of feeling to me."
"Hard to tell when they all feel the same," Topaz murmured. She closed her eyes and relaxed, trying to block out everything else and stamp down her own emotions, lest they get in the way. She was here, she might as well be useful. "Four?" She guessed after a moment, eyebrows scrunching. "No, five. Five or six. They all kind of bleed together."
"So they're all kept together. Good." Ev sped up, the scales of his mer-tail reflecting the faint multicolored light of his aura like a disco ball in the otherwise almost pitch-black area. It might call attention to them but also signaled the rest of the group to keep up. In another scenario, Ev might think it charming. He did hope Wanda could see it, at least.
"Yeah, don't have to hunt anyone down." Topaz frowned. "There's something wrong with them, though. Their emotions are all off. I don't know if that's good or bad for us."
They were coming with half an army, so Ev counted on it being good. Just think about the mission, not the possibility of magic going awry and them all dying a terrible wet death because their fake gills closed up. "I'm feeling something else," he said. "Not your powers. It's . . . mutants! A psi and one, two, maybe three? Physical mutations. Can't tell so far away. And no way to tell if these emotions are theirs, either, or someone else's. Or something else's," he added unnecessarily dramatically.
"Dun dun dun," Topaz muttered. "The psi is probably Doc Jean. Don't know anything about the others. Or Namor for that matter."
Ev waved jazz hands to underscore the tension. "Couldn't say. But probably about time to roll initiative."
"Great. Three unknown mutants, Doc Jean, whatever the hell Namor is, and whatever is down there guarding them." Because there had to be something. They weren't lucky. "And we're..." Topaz waved a hand at her self. "I don't need to roll. My initiative is zero. Let's go."
Daytripper and Wildchild are beset upon by Lemureans and an Atlantean bearing (wait no, WEARING) squid.
Amanda's head whipped around as the previously too-calm area was suddenly boiling with activity. Bad activity, in the form of fish-men with pointy things and unhappy expressions and even worse, the sight of an Atlantean bearing down on them, his head [obscured/sporting] what honestly looked like a squidhat. She grimaced, flashing sharp teeth in contrast to her supernatural beauty, and called out to her companion:
"Kyle, incoming! We've got ourselves a whole lot of ugly!"
Amanda's words scraped over Kyle's skin before they even got to his ears, and he was already swimming towards her in a flash of grey and beige scales before he had put conscious thought to her words, and the movements he could feel in the water around him. He bared a mouthful of teeth, rows and rows of them at the sight of not only Namor but the same aquatic creatures that had come through the strange device and into the mansion ages ago. "I know these assholes." He snarled. "Fishdicks. Lemurians. They taste real bad.."
"Well, at least we know where all this weirdness came from." Amanda looked over the forces against them. "I'll need you to distract most of the attention while I work on whatever spell's holding the Fish King there. But," and here her expression become predatory, "first we need to weed out some of the opposition." And with a strong downbeat of her long green tail, the witch shot forward towards the Lemurians.
The shouts from the guards, and whatever nonsense Namor was spouting went ignored. It was probably more of the same thing Kyle had heard in half the fights he'd been in during his life. Stop or we'll shoot. Stop or we'll use our mutant powers on you. Stop or we'll stab you with a barnacle-encrusted trident. He slipped through the water silently and towards the ocean floor where his scales and skin blended in with the sand and rock. He skimmed along the ground and dragged his claws through the sand, hiding himself further from the guards as they approached.
Amanda barrelled into the Lemurians, scattering them with the force of her speed. A flick of her tail and she turned, lunging at the closest foot-soldier, long-nailed hands reaching for his throat. His eyes bulged as she squeezed, mouth opening and closing futilely.
The clouds of sand erupted into all several hundred pounds of Kyle, belly up but with claws and teeth bared. His mouth was all the wrong shape to effectively bite through Lemurean scaled skin, but his claws caught one guard in the flank and tore long bloody wounds up it's side. He snapped at the ribbons of blood in the water, lingering in the reddish cloud longer than he should have - and caught a bone knife to the arm for his inattention.
The blood in the water only served to add to the ferocity of the combatants, with Amanda discarding the throttled guard and turning her claws and teeth on another. A trident was thrust at her ribs and she pivoted, letting her prey take the blow. Her face had become even more inhuman, predatory and fierce.
That was, still pretty human compared to her next opponent. The squid hat was a curious creature: it seemed to have melded with Namor, but also accentuated his face underneath with lovecraftian features. It's single, unblinking eye was a blank slate of emotion, and the sway of its tentacles over the Atlantean's jawline and neck was almost mesmerizing in its deep, eldritch horror.
Horror waylaid by the fact that Namors were good for punching, and punching was rarely eldritch. Namor, deciding on a target, lunged toward Amanda first.
The transformed witch managed to dodge the Atlantean, but it was a close thing. She may have been a mermaid, but Namor had been born in the sea, had lived it his entire life. And there was no way she'd survive one of his punches, even with the impact blunted by the water. She was going to have to play this smart and ignore the inner voice singing within her to simply tear out his entrails. "Kyle!" she shouted, propelling herself upward with a strong sweep of her tail. "Need a hand here!"
A small and only slightly transformed part of Kyle's brain screamed "squid! prey! most delicious!" as he quite humanly headbutted his guard opponent in the scaly face. They didn't seem to breathe through the parts of their faces that were nose-like, but it must have hurt because the guard reeled back, giving Kyle a chance to shove it away and swim directly at Namor.
He cut up under Amanda's tail and grabbed at Namor's waist in what was mostly an attempt to distract the timelost king and partially done out of an unignorable desire to chew on the squid attached to Namor's face.
On the one hand: it worked. On the other: while everyone in this might still had two hands, Kyle quickly learned that Namor still had both of his legs. With an oof, Namor kicked hard at Kyle's chest and head in attempts to dislodge himself. The squid-bound atlante-man's gaze, however, barely registered the threat — his intent still squarely locked on Amanda.
It was remarkably difficult to get back to one's feet when one did not, technically have feet. The kick had pushed Kyle away by yards, and it took him what felt like far too much awkward swimming to get himself and all his parts re-oriented. "Yo, Squidward!" He yelled, words vibrating oddly around the water in his throat before making another pass at Namor - and this time correcting his poorly thought out tactic by aiming for the problematic legs in question. "Come on, fight me, not the pretty witch. She's harmless." He bared teeth, way too many teeth, entirely way too many teeth at Namor. "See, she's all pretty and green and I'm a big dumb shark."
This got a glance from Squidmor, but in terms of priorities communication and English were not remarkably high on the Squidhat's skills to care about. All were connected via The Mother. All that mattered was protecting The Mother. Outwardly, this creepy internal monologue only registered as a snarl and a brief dodge -- Namor let the shark pass him, and Kyle got a bite out of exactly how durable being semi-impervious really was.
Sneering, Namor kicked upward toward Amanda.
An excess of teeth scraping against extra-durable skin felt exactly like that one time Kyle had thought chewing on some tin foil was a good idea. His growl of frustration and pain came with a spat-out tooth even as he grabbed at the other man's ankles. He got one arm around Namor's foot, and dug his claws into the feathered wing that clung wetly to his ankle.
This was met with a yelp of pain as Namor registered the injury, but, oddly enough, his focus did not shift or waver. This was extremely unlike the Atlantean — it was no secret that his wings were the most delicate part about him (barring his ego, possibly) — but this was just more evidence that Namor was not home right now. So even as blood leaked into the water as one wing dangled limply, Squidmor continued his fight toward Amanda albeit more weakly.
"Sod this," Amanda muttered. It would be risky, trying to reverse the spell in a hurry, but Namor could survive underwater. She called up the reversal spell, drawing on as much stored power as she dared, her hands glowing bright blue as she plunged downwards towards the Atlantean. She managed to grab his arm for a moment, enough to cast the spell, before she was flung backwards, one part by a sweep of his arm, but mostly by backlash. The spell hadn't worked - something was actively working against it.
"Oh bollocks." Realisation dawned. "These bloody things are aware. And fight back."
The moment - just a moment - where the water went blue and cool and misty like a foggy winter day was all Kyle needed to regain his momentum and literally haul himself up Namor's legs in two powerful pulls. He simply could not in any way meet the aquatic king's speed in the water, but he could hang on for dear life. "Good, means I can hit it more!" he yelled back at Amanda - and wrapped one arm around Namor's be-tentacled neck. His claws had proven useless against the other man's skin. But not quite as useless against the flabby, fishy, cyclopean -thing- attached to Namor's face.
Kyle dug in with one webbed and clawed hand, drew blood - or ink maybe, it bled grey-black all over his fingers.
At this new attack, Namor reeled back and snarled all of his teeth at Kyle. He growled low, predatory, at this intrusion. Kyle had been right in going after the squid, but now the meremutant had the pleasure of Squidmor's complete attention. It came quickly, too, as Namor pounced on Kyle, a flash of tentacles and wings and fins, in a violent bezerker frenzy.
"Kyle!" Amanda called, hoping to get his attention above the thrashing and violence of an enraged squid-possessed Namor. "I'm going to have to regroup for a bit! I need another spell, something to shut the bloody squid brain up so we can get some sense out of him again!" She gave an apologetic shrug. "Sorry?"
"I got this!" It was the happiest Kyle had sounded in hours, not since calling Topaz "rainbowbritefish" and throwing a wet fishy towel at Clint. Even with a grey bruise already showing on his face from one of Squidmor's wild punches. "I got a plan!" He could see - past the blood in the water and the ink and the sand and little bits of sharkskin and more blood that was probably his - another rainbow mer-person, this one glowing with the unmistakable aura of Everett Thomas's mutant power.
Anything Namor could do while brainwashed by the ugliest calamari Kyle had ever seen, Synch could hopefully do better.
