[Log] Exalts Are Idiots, Part Une
WHO: Luminous Sapphire, Li Syaoran, Frozen Heart, Peleps Kaizoku Seki, some nuts on the radio
WHERE: Kaiju-Ravaged Tokyo
WHEN: Thursday evening, at dusk, while Mothra's caterpillars sleep
WHAT: A shipment of a certain kind of mushroom gets attacked by an angry short necromancer and a greedy short Solar. A clever short priest intervenes. Then things get...well, Tokyo.
WATCH FOR: Highlights from the Celestial Games, Li cursing his fate, Sapphire's attention span, and Frozen being a grouch.
It is dusk here in the hapless city of Kaiju-Ravaged Tokyo, and all is quiet. Well, relatively so. That'd be Godzilla there making a mess of things in the financial district, but he seems to be behaving himself for the most part. Mothra's caterpillars sleep quietly just outside of town atop a building covered with silk, and Ultraman has the day off today and is spending it with family, thank you very much.
A shipment of something valuable from another plane seems to be coming in the Gates, via a series of armored trucks. Rumors along Syndicate lines indicate that this is an offworld-grown plant, herb, fungus or something else that the people of this city hope will help their local defenders stop the constant stream of kaiju, or at least fend them off for a while. Clearly, this must be something very valuable, which is why Frozen Heart stands perched in the shadows, waiting in an alley for the armored cars to pass. His hand is on his bow, and he is readying an arrow for just. the. right. time.
He hears tell it is something that makes creatures taller. And he is absolutely thinking of using it on his monsters, of course, and finding uses for it in potions, and certainly NOT thinking that in addition to acquiring a shipment of something valuable for the Silver Prince and the Syndicate, he would perhaps like to be a foot taller or so.
Luminous Sapphire, on the other hand, is very much thinking it'd be nice to be a foot or so taller, and anyone who thinks less of her for it can go wrestle a siaka.
Thus it is that, using similar lines of information, the Triumphant Horizon has pulled into port at Kaiju-Ravaged Tokyo, the crew breaking up to go perform various dastardly bits of petty larceny (a city like this one is like easy mode for looting), while their captain has set up shop in an alley near the Gate, ready to rush in and make off with a crate at some point or another.
Sapphire doesn't really think very far ahead.
"-Dammit." Frozen scowls as he spots a familiar ship on the horizon. "By the Silver Prince's hands, can't I ever pull this off without some sun-brat interfering?!" He tosses his hair out of his eyes in a huff, narrows his eyes, aims and fires off an arrow of frozen Essence.
The arrow itself merely pierces the glass and hits one of the drivers, causing him to start veering about as he panics due to ARROW IN ARM, but it also serves as a signal. From the alleys and shadows, aided by the necromancer's magic and the fall of night, zombies and skeletal creatures start streaming out to attack the armored trucks. This is enough of a frightening distraction to ground the trucks, as their drivers attempt to ward off the sudden surge of undead.
And meanwhile, Frozen himself leaps out, running towards one of those trucks. "At least this should be simple and easy..."
Luminous Sapphire, despite her seething hatred for the undead and those who traffic with them, doesn't actually have terribly acute senses for locating them. Thus, when the arrow descends and the undead begin to swarm, Sapphire spits, "Sun's light, can't I get one easy job!?" She reaches up and pulls the sizeable wavecleaver daiklave Thousand Seas off her back, then, with no apparent thought, simply sprints out of the alley she's been hiding in. Golden Essence trails along her veings, caressing vital lines of force, boring into her chakras. Her body glimmers with a faintly metallic sheen, although she has not truly turned to metal. She doesn't attack anything yet, her concentration consumed by invoking the Iron Skin Concentration, but she's charging right at the trucks adn golly she doesn't look like she plans to stop.
Perhaps surprisingly, no pirates spring out of the woodwork to help her, although a perceptive soul might notice a collection of shadows forming on a nearby rooftop.
Frozen points, meanwhile, as some of the skeletal creatures he commands rush upon the grounded trucks. They're rather fragile, being dead, and some simply break apart as they try to break open the armor. This is no surprise; they were expendable, after all, and are mostly there to draw civilian defense away from the main threat.
Himself, of course.
He turns to glare at the incoming Solar, whispering some kind of unwordly curse as he adjusts his glasses and takes off in a leap. His tattered cloak blows behind him as he lands atop the truck, quietly preparing a spell. He'll simply blow it apart before she can get there, with the proper application of sorcery, that's all.
This is, at least, what Frozen thinks he can do. This is because deep down, a lot of Celestial Exalts are /stupid./
For anyone nearby with, oh, magic sense, there's something very horrible and very wrong about the Deathknight. Something that goes right to his soul.
Early Celestial Exalted are spectacularly dumb because they don't get a training manual.
Sapphire is one of those!
The Solar, her persistant armor Charm invoked, charges onward, toward the trucks. She begins hacking through masses of the dead as she goes, her golden blade gleaming with every strike. She is not running her anima banner just yet, but that may change very soon.
Sapphire's own energies are unusual to those with the gift to sense them. A Solar Exalt is a magically-empowered demigod of the same sort as the most mighty of epic heroes, although the blue-haired pirate is sort of a wimp compared to the Yellow Emperor. Her energies are tinged toward the holy, however, and due to her nature, she registers as a priestess to anything that might search for that sort of thing.
Of some interest, she is sitting on a pool of magical potential somewhat larger in terms of pure energies than that of a nuclear bomb.
Meanwhile, Sapphire continues to run. "Deathknight!" she yells. "Get your hands off of that! That's MY loot!"
Not that Li Syaoran has read his IPA training manual....but inside that manual, this is what they describe as a 'disturbance.' Not the Exalts yelling at each other bit, but the bit about hacking things, even if those things are dead. It is the sort of thing heroes should stop.
Li does not wish to stop this. He is too busy staring at his Rashindan angrily.
"That is not a Clow card," he says from his position atop a building. "That is a demon fighting...." Li peers in Sapphire's direction. ".....whatever that is." The young man pulls a large card from his pocket and rubs it on the eight-pointed board. "Clow card," he says sternly, then points the board at the Exalts. "Stupid people."
Rub.
"Clow card."
Point.
"Stupid people."
For those just joining us, a gothy, short, skinny necromancer in glasses and a sprightly, attractive, short pirate with blue hair are both, apparently, arguing over the contents of overturned trucks. Reports on the disturbance would indicate that those trucks contain a shipment of some kind of offworld plant or fungus that the people of Kaiju Tokyo were hoping would improve their harried lives. Seems both Exalts want it, too.
MAYBE IT'S POT.
"Solar!" Frozen manages to catch himself before the old, outdated term 'Anathema' slips through his mouth. His body briefly shimmers with a dark-tinged aura as the corrupted Essence gathers around him, charging into something that ought to be quite explosive when it releases. "This belongs to me. I have claimed it, and I won't have some haughty common thief in glowing raiments get in my way /this time./" Part of his sneering defiance stems from the fact that this is the same Solar who humiliated him in front of certain individuals, and he will not let that happen again.
"HA...!" His eyes widen, and he releases the dark Essence in a concentrated explosion that blows the armored car apart, shrapnel flying everywhere. His own body remains protected from the blast by a brief flare of his shadowy anima banner, though he falls onto the ground when the truck he was standing on, well, explodes.
What remains are scattered crates, some of them broken open, with...something spilling out. Frozen seems temporarily stunned from having cast that spell, something that may COST HIM DEARLY. Or not.
Sapphire doesn't go to this kind of trouble for pot!
...well, sometimes...
The even shorter of the two short superbeings continues hacking her way toward her foe, looking greatly irritated because this was supposed to be an easy heist. "Do you always talk like that!?" Sapphire barks. "I mean, seriously! Points for length but WAGH"
Frozzy blows the truck the hell up, sending shrapnel and crates everywhere; she gets hammered by one, smashed clear across the street and impacts against a building. "Why can you do that!?" she demands, hopping to her feet. "I can't do that! Damn Deathknights, you're all cheating aren't you."
She is irritated enough at Frozen's superior special effects budget that she totally fails to notice that he just broke open the crates and she could start stealing any time.
Li Syaoran pockets both Rashindan and card, then drops into a crouch to survey the fight, seeming perfectly content to let the two Exalts fight each other over the contents, and then swoop in and wipe up the remnants. And then Frozen Heart creates an explosion of pure evil, which puts an end to that plan rather quickly.
"Shimatta," he hisses, scrambling to his feet, his hands opening and closing. He's not supposed to get involved. But there are people in this city not equipped to fight this. He's supposed to look after his own. But he's a priest. He's supposed to capture Clow Cards, not....fight evil, like some sort of spell-slinging sorceror or brainless swordsman.
But he promised her she would.
"Damn your eyes," he hisses, quickstepping along the rooftop, his robes dangling behind him as he draws a strange-looking ball-and-string. Li leaps across the gap between one building and the next, then begins sliding down the long, sloping roof toward the fight, the dangling ball and string flaring with white light, coalescing into his sword as he slides toward the battle, his eyes narrowed.
The necromancer is as yet unaware of the young priest's presence, too absorbed in standing back up and then glaring at one of his newfound rivals to notice. Such is the nature of ego. "I don't always talk like that, but when you listen to the Silver Prince speak often enough, you pick up on it." He dusts himself off, as if to illustrate that casting a spell of /that/ magnitude is no big deal at all, and then raises that Soulsteel bow. Li may notice something off about it. Soulsteel is metal forged of unwilling souls, after all.
"Now, get out of my face!" With that oh so eloquent battle cry, Frozen Heart forms three arrows of ice Essence between his fingers, releasing them in a spray at the Solar Pirate. He also tries to kick open the crate near him, and something spills out. And he tries his very, very hardest not to find it /totally/ embarassing that this valuable, rare plant is apparently a...
mushroom. A stupidly cute-looking mushroom.
Sapphire frowns, but can't think of a witty comment in time to make it before the arrows are coming. One smashes into her shoulder, but she barely seems to notice; she slips to the side, cartwheeling away from the other two. She rips the offending arrow out of her body, casting it aside, and then starts in on Frozen. She is not the most perceptive person in the universe, which is why she doesn't even notice Li despite the fact that he wears like four gigantic bells on his person. "Slow!" she jeers, and then charges forward, hopping a crate, coming down near Frozen and--
"...why is it a mushroom?" she asks dumbly. "And why is it smiling like that? Shouldn't it at least glow evilly?"
Li Syaoran crouches a little as he nears the edge of the roof, his legs surging, carrying him up into the air over the Anathema, turning in mid-air, issuing a soft 'hup!' that might attract their attention.
"Demons from another world!" He calls out, his hand diving into his sleeve. "Your time here is over!" A thick Clow card comes whirling out from his sleeve, and he raises hiss sword overhead in both hands. "The /FREEZE/!" he booms, magical energy shimmering outward as he strikes the card with his sword's point.
What comes soaring out of the Clow Card is, in fact, a gigantic white fish with a ruby on its head, ice flowing out from its body as it dives down toward both Exalts.
"I don't know why it's a mushroom," Frozen hisses. "Rumors mentioned a 'fungus,' but I imagined some kind of substance in jars, or-"
So busy is the young Abyssal in being indignant that he doesn't notice the giant ice fish diving for him until, well, it's too late. "-What in the Shadowla-AAAGH!" The fish hits him head-on, knocking him backwards and leaving an icy film on his body that, for a brief moment, immobilizes him. This leaves him even more indignant. That boy, whoever that child is, just /used ice on him./
He narrows his eyes, managing to speak. "GET HIM." And with these words, a few of the remaining skeletal creatures dive at Li, attempting to tackle and tear at him.
Sapphire probably had a scathing retort ready for the Frozen Heart Ensnared in a Thousand Arrows, but you'll never know what it was! She turns away from him when Li starts yelling. "Ugh, this again. Kid, I'm WHOA"
Being trapped amid a bunch of crates and debris and a slow-as-hell rival doesn't really give one a lot of room to dodge. Sapphire brings her sword up to block what she can of the freezing torren, blown a few feet back and encased in ice. She begins breaking out almost immediately, the ice cracking at the edges.
She does not have quite the same ego invested in the use of particular elements as Heart over there does, at least, so she's just pissed in general.
Li Syaoran touches down and almost immediately whirls, slapping a slip of paper with strange Chinese characters on it onto a nearby crate, where it sticks. Weirdest Post-It ever, or something more sinister? More on that later.
Li turns back toward the Exalts, his face blanching as the undead charge toward him. He tears his sword around in a hard cut that clashes into the first skeleton, but is bowled over almost immediately by its momentum and that of the ones behind it.
"Shimatta!" he snarls, reversing grip on his sword and trying to wriggle away from the monstrosities. And thus another person learns that skeletons have edged damage reduction.
"Gggh..." Frozen hisses as the ice immobilizing his body starts to crack, finally shattering as he channels his Essence through his body. This materializes in a brief flare of his Anima Banner, and Li will witness a deep black aura surrounding his body for a few seconds as a mark on his forehead erupts and starts bleeding black. It resembles a circle, with the top half filled.
The skeletons continue to advance towards Li, although a few begin to fall apart in the heat of battle. Their construction was not perfect. One sprawls towards Li, attempting to headbutt him into the air with the force of a bull. Perhaps because it has the head of a bull.
As for Frozen, upon standing back up, he chants something under his breath as Essence swirls around him. He makes a strange insignia with his hand, and calls out a declaration: "Flight of the Brilliant Raptor!"
His own Essence forms into a flaming bird of prey, glittering in red and white flame, that swoops and swirls towards Sapphire. It screeches like some horrible ancient beast as it plunges downwards. Should it hit her, it will briefly encase her in sorcerous flame. And whether or not it does hit, it lets out a minor explosion that shatters one of the crates-though not the one hit by Li's seal-and tosses its contents outwards.
This cannot possibly end poorly.
The ice surrounding Sapphire explodes outward, and Sapphire bellows, "That was REALLY COLD!!" before she adds, "HOLY SUNSPOTS" because there is a gigantic flaming bird of prey screaming at her head. Not in any real position to dodge, she...does it anyway, her body twisting strangely as she bends far backward, the bird flying mere inches past her nose. She plants her hands on the ground and somersaults back to a standing position, jeering, "You can't hit me with an attack that slow!"
And then she gets blown up in the ensuing explosion, which leaves her scorched and in the path of crate debris.
"I hate it when they do that," she mutters, though offers no counterattack since she's not really sure who exactly she should be hitting right now.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART NEXT POSE, maybe.
WHERE: Kaiju-Ravaged Tokyo
WHEN: Thursday evening, at dusk, while Mothra's caterpillars sleep
WHAT: A shipment of a certain kind of mushroom gets attacked by an angry short necromancer and a greedy short Solar. A clever short priest intervenes. Then things get...well, Tokyo.
WATCH FOR: Highlights from the Celestial Games, Li cursing his fate, Sapphire's attention span, and Frozen being a grouch.
It is dusk here in the hapless city of Kaiju-Ravaged Tokyo, and all is quiet. Well, relatively so. That'd be Godzilla there making a mess of things in the financial district, but he seems to be behaving himself for the most part. Mothra's caterpillars sleep quietly just outside of town atop a building covered with silk, and Ultraman has the day off today and is spending it with family, thank you very much.
A shipment of something valuable from another plane seems to be coming in the Gates, via a series of armored trucks. Rumors along Syndicate lines indicate that this is an offworld-grown plant, herb, fungus or something else that the people of this city hope will help their local defenders stop the constant stream of kaiju, or at least fend them off for a while. Clearly, this must be something very valuable, which is why Frozen Heart stands perched in the shadows, waiting in an alley for the armored cars to pass. His hand is on his bow, and he is readying an arrow for just. the. right. time.
He hears tell it is something that makes creatures taller. And he is absolutely thinking of using it on his monsters, of course, and finding uses for it in potions, and certainly NOT thinking that in addition to acquiring a shipment of something valuable for the Silver Prince and the Syndicate, he would perhaps like to be a foot taller or so.
Luminous Sapphire, on the other hand, is very much thinking it'd be nice to be a foot or so taller, and anyone who thinks less of her for it can go wrestle a siaka.
Thus it is that, using similar lines of information, the Triumphant Horizon has pulled into port at Kaiju-Ravaged Tokyo, the crew breaking up to go perform various dastardly bits of petty larceny (a city like this one is like easy mode for looting), while their captain has set up shop in an alley near the Gate, ready to rush in and make off with a crate at some point or another.
Sapphire doesn't really think very far ahead.
"-Dammit." Frozen scowls as he spots a familiar ship on the horizon. "By the Silver Prince's hands, can't I ever pull this off without some sun-brat interfering?!" He tosses his hair out of his eyes in a huff, narrows his eyes, aims and fires off an arrow of frozen Essence.
The arrow itself merely pierces the glass and hits one of the drivers, causing him to start veering about as he panics due to ARROW IN ARM, but it also serves as a signal. From the alleys and shadows, aided by the necromancer's magic and the fall of night, zombies and skeletal creatures start streaming out to attack the armored trucks. This is enough of a frightening distraction to ground the trucks, as their drivers attempt to ward off the sudden surge of undead.
And meanwhile, Frozen himself leaps out, running towards one of those trucks. "At least this should be simple and easy..."
Luminous Sapphire, despite her seething hatred for the undead and those who traffic with them, doesn't actually have terribly acute senses for locating them. Thus, when the arrow descends and the undead begin to swarm, Sapphire spits, "Sun's light, can't I get one easy job!?" She reaches up and pulls the sizeable wavecleaver daiklave Thousand Seas off her back, then, with no apparent thought, simply sprints out of the alley she's been hiding in. Golden Essence trails along her veings, caressing vital lines of force, boring into her chakras. Her body glimmers with a faintly metallic sheen, although she has not truly turned to metal. She doesn't attack anything yet, her concentration consumed by invoking the Iron Skin Concentration, but she's charging right at the trucks adn golly she doesn't look like she plans to stop.
Perhaps surprisingly, no pirates spring out of the woodwork to help her, although a perceptive soul might notice a collection of shadows forming on a nearby rooftop.
Frozen points, meanwhile, as some of the skeletal creatures he commands rush upon the grounded trucks. They're rather fragile, being dead, and some simply break apart as they try to break open the armor. This is no surprise; they were expendable, after all, and are mostly there to draw civilian defense away from the main threat.
Himself, of course.
He turns to glare at the incoming Solar, whispering some kind of unwordly curse as he adjusts his glasses and takes off in a leap. His tattered cloak blows behind him as he lands atop the truck, quietly preparing a spell. He'll simply blow it apart before she can get there, with the proper application of sorcery, that's all.
This is, at least, what Frozen thinks he can do. This is because deep down, a lot of Celestial Exalts are /stupid./
For anyone nearby with, oh, magic sense, there's something very horrible and very wrong about the Deathknight. Something that goes right to his soul.
Early Celestial Exalted are spectacularly dumb because they don't get a training manual.
Sapphire is one of those!
The Solar, her persistant armor Charm invoked, charges onward, toward the trucks. She begins hacking through masses of the dead as she goes, her golden blade gleaming with every strike. She is not running her anima banner just yet, but that may change very soon.
Sapphire's own energies are unusual to those with the gift to sense them. A Solar Exalt is a magically-empowered demigod of the same sort as the most mighty of epic heroes, although the blue-haired pirate is sort of a wimp compared to the Yellow Emperor. Her energies are tinged toward the holy, however, and due to her nature, she registers as a priestess to anything that might search for that sort of thing.
Of some interest, she is sitting on a pool of magical potential somewhat larger in terms of pure energies than that of a nuclear bomb.
Meanwhile, Sapphire continues to run. "Deathknight!" she yells. "Get your hands off of that! That's MY loot!"
Not that Li Syaoran has read his IPA training manual....but inside that manual, this is what they describe as a 'disturbance.' Not the Exalts yelling at each other bit, but the bit about hacking things, even if those things are dead. It is the sort of thing heroes should stop.
Li does not wish to stop this. He is too busy staring at his Rashindan angrily.
"That is not a Clow card," he says from his position atop a building. "That is a demon fighting...." Li peers in Sapphire's direction. ".....whatever that is." The young man pulls a large card from his pocket and rubs it on the eight-pointed board. "Clow card," he says sternly, then points the board at the Exalts. "Stupid people."
Rub.
"Clow card."
Point.
"Stupid people."
For those just joining us, a gothy, short, skinny necromancer in glasses and a sprightly, attractive, short pirate with blue hair are both, apparently, arguing over the contents of overturned trucks. Reports on the disturbance would indicate that those trucks contain a shipment of some kind of offworld plant or fungus that the people of Kaiju Tokyo were hoping would improve their harried lives. Seems both Exalts want it, too.
MAYBE IT'S POT.
"Solar!" Frozen manages to catch himself before the old, outdated term 'Anathema' slips through his mouth. His body briefly shimmers with a dark-tinged aura as the corrupted Essence gathers around him, charging into something that ought to be quite explosive when it releases. "This belongs to me. I have claimed it, and I won't have some haughty common thief in glowing raiments get in my way /this time./" Part of his sneering defiance stems from the fact that this is the same Solar who humiliated him in front of certain individuals, and he will not let that happen again.
"HA...!" His eyes widen, and he releases the dark Essence in a concentrated explosion that blows the armored car apart, shrapnel flying everywhere. His own body remains protected from the blast by a brief flare of his shadowy anima banner, though he falls onto the ground when the truck he was standing on, well, explodes.
What remains are scattered crates, some of them broken open, with...something spilling out. Frozen seems temporarily stunned from having cast that spell, something that may COST HIM DEARLY. Or not.
Sapphire doesn't go to this kind of trouble for pot!
...well, sometimes...
The even shorter of the two short superbeings continues hacking her way toward her foe, looking greatly irritated because this was supposed to be an easy heist. "Do you always talk like that!?" Sapphire barks. "I mean, seriously! Points for length but WAGH"
Frozzy blows the truck the hell up, sending shrapnel and crates everywhere; she gets hammered by one, smashed clear across the street and impacts against a building. "Why can you do that!?" she demands, hopping to her feet. "I can't do that! Damn Deathknights, you're all cheating aren't you."
She is irritated enough at Frozen's superior special effects budget that she totally fails to notice that he just broke open the crates and she could start stealing any time.
Li Syaoran pockets both Rashindan and card, then drops into a crouch to survey the fight, seeming perfectly content to let the two Exalts fight each other over the contents, and then swoop in and wipe up the remnants. And then Frozen Heart creates an explosion of pure evil, which puts an end to that plan rather quickly.
"Shimatta," he hisses, scrambling to his feet, his hands opening and closing. He's not supposed to get involved. But there are people in this city not equipped to fight this. He's supposed to look after his own. But he's a priest. He's supposed to capture Clow Cards, not....fight evil, like some sort of spell-slinging sorceror or brainless swordsman.
But he promised her she would.
"Damn your eyes," he hisses, quickstepping along the rooftop, his robes dangling behind him as he draws a strange-looking ball-and-string. Li leaps across the gap between one building and the next, then begins sliding down the long, sloping roof toward the fight, the dangling ball and string flaring with white light, coalescing into his sword as he slides toward the battle, his eyes narrowed.
The necromancer is as yet unaware of the young priest's presence, too absorbed in standing back up and then glaring at one of his newfound rivals to notice. Such is the nature of ego. "I don't always talk like that, but when you listen to the Silver Prince speak often enough, you pick up on it." He dusts himself off, as if to illustrate that casting a spell of /that/ magnitude is no big deal at all, and then raises that Soulsteel bow. Li may notice something off about it. Soulsteel is metal forged of unwilling souls, after all.
"Now, get out of my face!" With that oh so eloquent battle cry, Frozen Heart forms three arrows of ice Essence between his fingers, releasing them in a spray at the Solar Pirate. He also tries to kick open the crate near him, and something spills out. And he tries his very, very hardest not to find it /totally/ embarassing that this valuable, rare plant is apparently a...
mushroom. A stupidly cute-looking mushroom.
Sapphire frowns, but can't think of a witty comment in time to make it before the arrows are coming. One smashes into her shoulder, but she barely seems to notice; she slips to the side, cartwheeling away from the other two. She rips the offending arrow out of her body, casting it aside, and then starts in on Frozen. She is not the most perceptive person in the universe, which is why she doesn't even notice Li despite the fact that he wears like four gigantic bells on his person. "Slow!" she jeers, and then charges forward, hopping a crate, coming down near Frozen and--
"...why is it a mushroom?" she asks dumbly. "And why is it smiling like that? Shouldn't it at least glow evilly?"
Li Syaoran crouches a little as he nears the edge of the roof, his legs surging, carrying him up into the air over the Anathema, turning in mid-air, issuing a soft 'hup!' that might attract their attention.
"Demons from another world!" He calls out, his hand diving into his sleeve. "Your time here is over!" A thick Clow card comes whirling out from his sleeve, and he raises hiss sword overhead in both hands. "The /FREEZE/!" he booms, magical energy shimmering outward as he strikes the card with his sword's point.
What comes soaring out of the Clow Card is, in fact, a gigantic white fish with a ruby on its head, ice flowing out from its body as it dives down toward both Exalts.
"I don't know why it's a mushroom," Frozen hisses. "Rumors mentioned a 'fungus,' but I imagined some kind of substance in jars, or-"
So busy is the young Abyssal in being indignant that he doesn't notice the giant ice fish diving for him until, well, it's too late. "-What in the Shadowla-AAAGH!" The fish hits him head-on, knocking him backwards and leaving an icy film on his body that, for a brief moment, immobilizes him. This leaves him even more indignant. That boy, whoever that child is, just /used ice on him./
He narrows his eyes, managing to speak. "GET HIM." And with these words, a few of the remaining skeletal creatures dive at Li, attempting to tackle and tear at him.
Sapphire probably had a scathing retort ready for the Frozen Heart Ensnared in a Thousand Arrows, but you'll never know what it was! She turns away from him when Li starts yelling. "Ugh, this again. Kid, I'm WHOA"
Being trapped amid a bunch of crates and debris and a slow-as-hell rival doesn't really give one a lot of room to dodge. Sapphire brings her sword up to block what she can of the freezing torren, blown a few feet back and encased in ice. She begins breaking out almost immediately, the ice cracking at the edges.
She does not have quite the same ego invested in the use of particular elements as Heart over there does, at least, so she's just pissed in general.
Li Syaoran touches down and almost immediately whirls, slapping a slip of paper with strange Chinese characters on it onto a nearby crate, where it sticks. Weirdest Post-It ever, or something more sinister? More on that later.
Li turns back toward the Exalts, his face blanching as the undead charge toward him. He tears his sword around in a hard cut that clashes into the first skeleton, but is bowled over almost immediately by its momentum and that of the ones behind it.
"Shimatta!" he snarls, reversing grip on his sword and trying to wriggle away from the monstrosities. And thus another person learns that skeletons have edged damage reduction.
"Gggh..." Frozen hisses as the ice immobilizing his body starts to crack, finally shattering as he channels his Essence through his body. This materializes in a brief flare of his Anima Banner, and Li will witness a deep black aura surrounding his body for a few seconds as a mark on his forehead erupts and starts bleeding black. It resembles a circle, with the top half filled.
The skeletons continue to advance towards Li, although a few begin to fall apart in the heat of battle. Their construction was not perfect. One sprawls towards Li, attempting to headbutt him into the air with the force of a bull. Perhaps because it has the head of a bull.
As for Frozen, upon standing back up, he chants something under his breath as Essence swirls around him. He makes a strange insignia with his hand, and calls out a declaration: "Flight of the Brilliant Raptor!"
His own Essence forms into a flaming bird of prey, glittering in red and white flame, that swoops and swirls towards Sapphire. It screeches like some horrible ancient beast as it plunges downwards. Should it hit her, it will briefly encase her in sorcerous flame. And whether or not it does hit, it lets out a minor explosion that shatters one of the crates-though not the one hit by Li's seal-and tosses its contents outwards.
This cannot possibly end poorly.
The ice surrounding Sapphire explodes outward, and Sapphire bellows, "That was REALLY COLD!!" before she adds, "HOLY SUNSPOTS" because there is a gigantic flaming bird of prey screaming at her head. Not in any real position to dodge, she...does it anyway, her body twisting strangely as she bends far backward, the bird flying mere inches past her nose. She plants her hands on the ground and somersaults back to a standing position, jeering, "You can't hit me with an attack that slow!"
And then she gets blown up in the ensuing explosion, which leaves her scorched and in the path of crate debris.
"I hate it when they do that," she mutters, though offers no counterattack since she's not really sure who exactly she should be hitting right now.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART NEXT POSE, maybe.