Lionel Qualls is just as stupid and not one ounce more than like, many of the people in this group. Maybe he shouldn't relate to someone long dead, but, he gets why he'd want to come. Whatever introspection Tybalt's ill-equipped brain is trying to do is cut short by Claudia screaming, and he's boosted in to immediate action, swearing.
Whether on purpose or not, he imitates Claudia, and yeets his crutch right at the encroaching weird-robed asshats.
Wyatt feels that same terror creeping up his spine like an invasive vine. "It's not real," he sputters, as much for his own benefit as anyone else's. "I mean, it's a memory, it's not happening now."
"Yeah. But I'm pretty sure we're in real danger," Fiona says quietly, shivering, her heart thudding. As the cultists come closer, she reaches out and slashes with her pocket knife. She'll be damned if she's going to let them hurt her or her classmates.
Boof! (ROLLED 8) Like the opening shots of a bullet time action sequence, the cardboard cut out of Doug Bobson slices right up through the air, smacking the rightmost Cultist in the face. A daring attack from the corrugated boyfriend of big bed, but he earns the ire of the Cultist (ROLLED 1) who blasts the cut out with a burst of bright purple that turns Doug Bobson into dust.
That crutch takes a nice spin as it flies, which makes its path unreliable, hard to dodge (ROLLED 7). It nicks the left Cultist right on the side of the mask, putting a crack in the porcelain but not stopping its assault.
A blast of purple light hits Tybalt (ROLLED 3) squarely in the stomach, so forceful it pushes him back into the frozen Lionel Qualls.
Fiona rushes to try and intercept another attack with her switchblade drawn, (ROLLED 6) and though she slashes, she can't quite make contact with the misty form. The left cultist retaliates, catching her arm with jagged claws, leaving red scrapes, beading with blood (ROLLED 4).
See? Wyatt was right. Everyone should have just dropped out of school when they had the chance.
Too late now, though. All he can try to do is not die and keep the others from it too, so he chucks one of his razor sharp tarot cards that Pouch gave him.
"DOUG!" Claudia cries out when the cardboard cutout meets his end, momentarily forgetting he isn't (wasn't!) even real.
"He was a GUEST!" She grips that yipping dogeball in her hands and uses every ounce of double varsity double sport strength to slam that ball at someone's face. This is for YOU, Dougie!
The air gets knocked out Tybalt then he flies back, and it'll leave a mark later. But he's taken worse hits before, and he bounces almost immediately back. "...I'm gonna try something!!!"
Is his companions' only warning before he runs to stand a little way off before he pulls out his spray paint and lighter, spraying one, lighting the other, to create a burst of thrown flame straight at the furthest-away cultist. Fight fire with fire was a thing for a reason, right?
Hopefully this won't end in their deaths. Sorry, guys.
Felicity stands frozen, eyes locked onto the cremated remains of Doug Bobson CEO. She should be doing something. She's vaguely aware of people moving around her, casting spells and hurling objects. She hears their words and cries as distant echoing sounds.
But can't look away from the dust. Not yet. Memories of their time together come in flashes.
Tricking Zed into selling them booze. Falling asleep on his shoulder in big bed. Bringing him home over winter break and introducing him to her dad. Taking him to the hot springs and putting him in a trash bag to keep him dry and joking about how he had the silliest looking bathing suit. Sitting by the lake when the weather got nice. Looking over during a Quodpot game and seeing him in the stands, cheering (or being jostled by the wind, it was hard to tell).
Felicity looks up, suddenly very present. She swings her accordion onto her back, pinches her Big Gulp under her armpit, reaches into her plastic bag, rummages around the apples, sigils, heart framed photos of goats, mini bottle of alcohol, spray paint, sage, beater bat, and grabs what she's looking for: her burner wand.
She looks at the cultist who killed Doug Bobson CEO, grits her teeth, yells "FUCK YOU, FUCKER," and then casts a spell she does not know.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
Edited (you're allowed to fail her) 2020-06-10 03:57 (UTC)
Fiona retrieves a couple of tissues from her bag and presses them to the wound on her arm. As her classmates deliver their attacks, she feels useless just standing around. Though she's doubtful it will do any good, she steps forward and kicks a cultist in the shin as hard as she can.
Wyatt's card spins a wide arc, neatly slipping past obstacles to embed itself in the mask of the left Cultist (ROLLED 10), stuck fast and deepening the crack left by Tybalt's crutch.
The Cultist clutches its grotesque porcelain face, spraying purple light wildly, catching Claudia (ROLLED 2) just as she releases the Red Dogeball, and grazing Fiona (ROLLED 4) with the burning ray.
Claudia may be doubled over from searing pain, but her weapon's on a mission. With a loud bark, the red ball bounces, off the ceiling, off the floor, right into the right Cultist's gut (ROLLED 8 + 1). The smoke bends around the ball, dispersing the being for a moment before it reforms again.
A faceful of fire (ROLLED 7) from Tybalt's improvised flammenwerfer makes sure that Cultist doesn't get the chance to attack. It scrapes and scrambles to get out of the flame, its constant whisper cut by a hiss of pain.
And that's when there's another bark.
For all her difficulty in the past (ROLLED an honest to goodness 10), it seems Felicity's finally found the right memory, because a seal bursts from the end of her wand. The sea puppy sails through the air as easily as water and does a barrel roll right into the right Cultist's face.
While Fiona (ROLLED 8) lands a solid kick on the Cultist on the left, the right Cultist's mask shatters from the relentless assault.
Purple flowers turn black, petals fall to the floor. The person beneath whispers, "Finally," before they disappear in an explosion of sunlight.
That hurt? That, like, really hurt? And not in the way that Claudia usually kind of enjoys — getting your teeth knocked out in a Quidditch game, or pushing your lungs just that much harder to cross the finish line in a long race. The hands holding her there are burning, making her skin feel like it's melting, and as soon as she's free she hits the floor, and she's back in the fight.
Prepared for any pain that might come her way now, Claudia dives to tackle the remaining cultist at the knees.
Tybalt is legitimately concerned about one of his good friends and chaos mother for a few seconds. But she leaps back into the action, and that Patronus from Felicity was amazing and it’s hard to know if the loud Woo! he lets out is for that or the cultist’s disappearing. Regardless, he drops his fire equipment for now, and makes to jump on the cultist’s ghost-y back, pounding its sort-of head with his fists, schoolyard brawl style. This is the fighting he knows.
Tybalt knows where it's at. Those cards are really cool, but Wyatt's more used to throwing hands. That's what he does now, using Tybalt's leap as a distraction to get in there and punch the cultist in the center mass.
(ROLLED 8, ROLLED 6, ROLLED 10) Claudia and Tybalt and Wyatt throw themselves on the remaining cultist and it squashes flat under their weight. The black mist of its form shocks and burns bare skin, but that doesn't stop them from pummeling the creature (although Tybalt (ROLLED 1) does sock Wyatt in the nose accidentally).
Pressed to the bottom of the quodpot dogpile, the second Cultist's already cracked mask smashes. The face beneath chokes and gasps as flowers fall away, and all three teens are thrown back by the sudden burst of sunlight.
THE SECOND CULTIST WAS DEFEATED! Find the linchpin and get going!
Stinging from the cut on her arm and the brush with the ray, Fiona needs a break. She stumbles over to the group of people and sinks into a chair, grabbing a chip and a baby carrot. Hey, one of these could be the linchpin. She's not being completely useless.
Claudia lays flat on her back, teeth gritted, panting. Parts of her skin feels like it's on fire, others tingle and buzz like there's something under it.
But suffering is what Claudia lives for. She doesn't need a break, she needs to keep going.
"Do we have to beat up the other guys?" she asks, hauling herself up to a sitting position. There's at least a dozen more masked people in this room. "Or can we just take down that guy?" Claudia raises a hand and points it directly at Burton Bland standing at the back of the auditorium.
"Oh, and there's snacks??" Hell yes. Claudia ruins her own badass moment by scrambling to her feet to follow Fiona for some baby carrots and dip.
“Sorry! Shit! Sorry” Tybalt pats out at Wyatt’s face as though to take back the punch. But it’s over, then. They’re done. Blinking, he picks himself off the floor and retrieves all the items he’s thrown. Normally, he’d be stuffing handfuls of ill-begotten chips into his mouth, but this environment makes him wrinkle his nose. “That’s cult food.”
"I got apples," Felicity chimes in, "y'know, if we're worried about cult food." She'll toss you one if you raise your hand.
She's still in a bit of a daze. Doug, cultists with flower faces, her Patronus!!!! Damn, that was a good ol' fashioned Quodbrawl.
Claudia asks about the man at the back of the auditorium, and Felicity turns to look his way. "Ninety-nine percent sure that's weird nipple guy," Felicity says helpfully. "Ain't that right, Wy?" To confirm, she walks over to him and tries to pull off the cowled mask. And peep them nips.
The mask comes free of Burton Bland's grip, glowing gold once it's in Felicity's hands. That's the linchpin alright! But before she can get a good look at the goods, the memory changes. Not movement, but absolute stillness. Everything feels taut, the very air thin, breath held around the room until one of the cultists takes a step toward El Qualls.
This is no monster, it's just a man and L.Q. moves in response. Quick as a whip, El's got his wand out. He flings a concussive blast that scatters a few of the plainclothes cultists. Food and chairs go flying in all directions, from silence to a raucous cacophony. In the moment of chaos, El turns and flees, throwing open the metal double doors and escaping through a passage that looks here like it leads back out to the Sorting Path.
"Get him," commands Burton Bland, and his twelve robed cultists give chase.
[MEMORY COMPLETE! Linchpin found! You may continue to thread here or leave through the door.]
The way the memory continues ramps up the tension, and Claudia loudly crunches the baby carrots between her teeth as she watches. She wants to save El Qualls. She wants to follow after him and defeat the guys in masks again and again until, finally, things go his way. Until he escapes, goes home, enjoys his life and comes back for birthdays and Leap Days.
But she can't. They can't.
All because he'd done something no less stupid than what they were doing right now, and the wrong group of people took advantage of that.
"I guess that was it," Claudia says quietly, stepping toward the metal double doors.
Tybalt takes a few sprinting steps toward the retreating cultists, hand on his lighter, but everything stops, and he remembers, too, that he can't do anything to save Lionel Qualls now. Not knowing what else to do, he again resorts to following at Claudia's ankles, very lost-puppy. "...Did we save him?"
That's what happens, right? They go into memories, they pluck the golden shit out , the person got freed. That's how it's worked all night. But what is there to free, now?
Felicity adds the cowled mask to her growing bag of goodies. She makes her way toward the door with the others, but bends down at Doug Bobson CEO's dust and scoops it into her Big Gulp. No chance she's leaving him behind.
Claudia, Felicity, Fiona, Tybalt and Wyatt completed the memory "Neoprene Robes"!
The portal disperses as the last of them leaves the memory. While it's unclear who or what was freed, the nightmare tree roars, protesting what you've done. The ground rumbles, the walls shake, and then everything is still.
It's afraid. It knows that you know you can beat it.
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peckenpaugh2020-06-01 11:19 am
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Whether on purpose or not, he imitates Claudia, and yeets his crutch right at the encroaching weird-robed asshats.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
That crutch takes a nice spin as it flies, which makes its path unreliable, hard to dodge (ROLLED 7). It nicks the left Cultist right on the side of the mask, putting a crack in the porcelain but not stopping its assault.
A blast of purple light hits Tybalt (ROLLED 3) squarely in the stomach, so forceful it pushes him back into the frozen Lionel Qualls.
Fiona rushes to try and intercept another attack with her switchblade drawn, (ROLLED 6) and though she slashes, she can't quite make contact with the misty form. The left cultist retaliates, catching her arm with jagged claws, leaving red scrapes, beading with blood (ROLLED 4).
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Too late now, though. All he can try to do is not die and keep the others from it too, so he chucks one of his razor sharp tarot cards that Pouch gave him.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
"He was a GUEST!" She grips that yipping dogeball in her hands and uses every ounce of double varsity double sport strength to slam that ball at someone's face. This is for YOU, Dougie!
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Is his companions' only warning before he runs to stand a little way off before he pulls out his spray paint and lighter, spraying one, lighting the other, to create a burst of thrown flame straight at the furthest-away cultist. Fight fire with fire was a thing for a reason, right?
Hopefully this won't end in their deaths. Sorry, guys.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
But can't look away from the dust. Not yet. Memories of their time together come in flashes.
Tricking Zed into selling them booze.
Falling asleep on his shoulder in big bed.
Bringing him home over winter break and introducing him to her dad.
Taking him to the hot springs and putting him in a trash bag to keep him dry and joking about how he had the silliest looking bathing suit.
Sitting by the lake when the weather got nice.
Looking over during a Quodpot game and seeing him in the stands, cheering (or being jostled by the wind, it was hard to tell).
Felicity looks up, suddenly very present. She swings her accordion onto her back, pinches her Big Gulp under her armpit, reaches into her plastic bag, rummages around the apples, sigils, heart framed photos of goats, mini bottle of alcohol, spray paint, sage, beater bat, and grabs what she's looking for: her burner wand.
She looks at the cultist who killed Doug Bobson CEO, grits her teeth, yells "FUCK YOU, FUCKER," and then casts a spell she does not know.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
The Cultist clutches its grotesque porcelain face, spraying purple light wildly, catching Claudia (ROLLED 2) just as she releases the Red Dogeball, and grazing Fiona (ROLLED 4) with the burning ray.
Claudia may be doubled over from searing pain, but her weapon's on a mission. With a loud bark, the red ball bounces, off the ceiling, off the floor, right into the right Cultist's gut (ROLLED 8 + 1). The smoke bends around the ball, dispersing the being for a moment before it reforms again.
A faceful of fire (ROLLED 7) from Tybalt's improvised flammenwerfer makes sure that Cultist doesn't get the chance to attack. It scrapes and scrambles to get out of the flame, its constant whisper cut by a hiss of pain.
And that's when there's another bark.
For all her difficulty in the past (ROLLED an honest to goodness 10), it seems Felicity's finally found the right memory, because a seal bursts from the end of her wand. The sea puppy sails through the air as easily as water and does a barrel roll right into the right Cultist's face.
While Fiona (ROLLED 8) lands a solid kick on the Cultist on the left, the right Cultist's mask shatters from the relentless assault.
Purple flowers turn black, petals fall to the floor. The person beneath whispers, "Finally," before they disappear in an explosion of sunlight.
ONE CULTIST HAS BEEN DEFEATED! One remains.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Prepared for any pain that might come her way now, Claudia dives to tackle the remaining cultist at the knees.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Re: MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Pressed to the bottom of the quodpot dogpile, the second Cultist's already cracked mask smashes. The face beneath chokes and gasps as flowers fall away, and all three teens are thrown back by the sudden burst of sunlight.
THE SECOND CULTIST WAS DEFEATED! Find the linchpin and get going!
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
But suffering is what Claudia lives for. She doesn't need a break, she needs to keep going.
"Do we have to beat up the other guys?" she asks, hauling herself up to a sitting position. There's at least a dozen more masked people in this room. "Or can we just take down that guy?" Claudia raises a hand and points it directly at Burton Bland standing at the back of the auditorium.
"Oh, and there's snacks??" Hell yes. Claudia ruins her own badass moment by scrambling to her feet to follow Fiona for some baby carrots and dip.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
She's still in a bit of a daze. Doug, cultists with flower faces, her Patronus!!!! Damn, that was a good ol' fashioned Quodbrawl.
Claudia asks about the man at the back of the auditorium, and Felicity turns to look his way. "Ninety-nine percent sure that's weird nipple guy," Felicity says helpfully. "Ain't that right, Wy?" To confirm, she walks over to him and tries to pull off the cowled mask. And peep them nips.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
This is no monster, it's just a man and L.Q. moves in response. Quick as a whip, El's got his wand out. He flings a concussive blast that scatters a few of the plainclothes cultists. Food and chairs go flying in all directions, from silence to a raucous cacophony. In the moment of chaos, El turns and flees, throwing open the metal double doors and escaping through a passage that looks here like it leads back out to the Sorting Path.
"Get him," commands Burton Bland, and his twelve robed cultists give chase.
[MEMORY COMPLETE! Linchpin found! You may continue to thread here or leave through the door.]
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
But she can't. They can't.
All because he'd done something no less stupid than what they were doing right now, and the wrong group of people took advantage of that.
"I guess that was it," Claudia says quietly, stepping toward the metal double doors.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
That's what happens, right? They go into memories, they pluck the golden shit out , the person got freed. That's how it's worked all night.
But what is there to free, now?
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes
Felicity adds the cowled mask to her growing bag of goodies. She makes her way toward the door with the others, but bends down at Doug Bobson CEO's dust and scoops it into her Big Gulp. No chance she's leaving him behind.
MEMORY: Neoprene Robes - COMPLETE!
The portal disperses as the last of them leaves the memory. While it's unclear who or what was freed, the nightmare tree roars, protesting what you've done. The ground rumbles, the walls shake, and then everything is still.
It's afraid. It knows that you know you can beat it.