Furry Fracas - Mythological Creatures IC

[Gizmo]

A sudden wind kicked up in the middle of Liberty Park, followed the crackle of building energies and a blinding, blue-white flash. An oddly anticlimactic *blink* deposited a group of seven figures onto the jogging path, to the surprise of the locals.

A furry creature wearing a long blue coat and a red bandana mask stepped forward to look around, smoothing a pair of long ears around the antlers which protruded from the top of his head as he did so. "An entire world of ladies who've never known the joys of Jackalope of all Blades?" the leporid fellow observed. "That’s positively criminal!".

"You realize they’re not even your species, right?" asked one of his companions, brown and black furred with a canine muzzle and leather jacket.

Jackalope grinned, revealing prominent buckteeth. "Lambkos, m’man, when has that ever stopped me?"

A dainty clearing of the throat drew attention to the toga-clad white cat calmly adjusting her porcelain mask. [divine]"Does everyone have the homing devices Doktor Architeuthis gave us? We should be getting a reading now that we’re here,"[/divine] instructed Feline, examining her immaculate claws.

"Wha-ha-ha! I’m getting a reading, alright!" cried a squirrel in a eye-searingly bright orange and and blue suit, bouncing up and down energetically. "In my pants!". A prominent bulge appeared in the front of his slacks; reaching inside he retrieved a wooden dowsing rod which jerked back and forth, pulling him along with it. "It’s a bigg’un, you betcha!"

"Enough, Jestnut!" a gravely voice insisted. Concealed in the shade of a nearby tree, Avengemouse wrapped his leathery wings around himself and narrowed his eyes. "This world is no place for your foolishness. It’s dark, gritty, realistic." He paused briefly for effect. "My kind of world.".

A loud snort came from the towering, equine figure hovering in the air nearby. "Oh, lighten up, bat boy," admonished Foalcrum, the cape rumour said that she’d inherited from the Centaurian himself flapping behind her.

"It’s just a costume," came the reflexive response, eliciting a chorus of half-hearted placating agreement.

"Regardless, we should get going," Foalcrum continued. "People are starting to stare."

Flying beside her, Calico Angel flapped her broad, feathered wings and stretched in the sunlight, patchwork fur rippling. "Some of us are used to stares, dear," she remarked smugly.

Before the horse-headed heroine could respond, small devices each of them carried began to beep, a round screen indicating direction. "Gotta go go go!" cried Jestnut, bouncing off on a bushy tail which had suddenly acquired spring-like qualities.

"Try to keep him under control," Foalcrum called to Lambkos as she and Avengemouse flew off in the opposite direction.

The wolf gave the departing paragon a doubtful look as he started off after the squirrel. "I’ll do what I can... Although I think a panzer division would have a tough time keeping Jestnut ‘under control’."

Feline slipped in next to him as they continued to walk. [divine]"Don’t worry, honey, controlling men is what I do best,"[/divine] she purred coyly.

"Guess that just leaves you and me, wings!" Jackalope called up to Calico Angel.

The lithe shorthair rolled her eyes as she flapped off. "Being part succubus doesn’t mean I don’t have some standards, antlers-for-brains."

Hopping hurriedly after her, the rabbit spread his arms pleadingly. "Aw, c’mon! You’re breaking my heart, here!" Within moments, the odd group had dispersed, leaving Liberty Park’s local visitors wondering if it was going to be another one of those days in Freedom City.

[Gizmo]

Jack of all Blades normally kept his patrols restrained to the West End and after dark, but he'd been getting the oddest sense of echoing deja vu from his energy awareness coming from the Parkside area and decided to investigate. The acrobat was still reveling in his new grappling hook, swinging from rooftop to rooftop across distances he never would have been able to cross unaided. As he did, he kept an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

As he swung low, something bounded into his peripheral vision. Snapping he head around, Jack's jaw dropped. Keeping pace with him via prodigious leaps was a five foot tall anthromorphic rabbit in a costume practically identical to his own.

Jackalope of all Blades considered his human counterpart analytically. Suddenly his mouth spread in a bucktoothed grin. "Shucks, I can even make being a bald ape look good!" he announced.

The Earth-Prime native responded with a startled, "Gah!" accidentally letting go of his grapple line in surprise. Momentum threw him up into the air until he began to arc back down, plummeting between buildings to the street below.

"Whoops," Jackalope winced as he hopped forward. "Slightly less handsome me is still too good looking to be carrot topped street pizza! Calico, a little help?" he called to the winged cat flying nearby.

[Nyrath]

"I've got him, you, whatever." Calico Angel called to Jackalope as she swooped in to keep the fur-less Jack from become a piece of modern-street art. Diving hard she managed to get to the falling human in time to snatch him up, and to break out of her dive before she left a hole in the concrete. "Hello handsome, drop by often do we?" Said the masked feline.

[Gizmo]

Jack gave the creature who had caught him a nonplussed look. "Miss, I don't mean to alarm you, but I appear to be 'on the drugs', as the kids say," he deadpanned. As he regained his bearings, it dawned on the swashbuckler from where he recognized the winged cat's voice. "Wait... 'Angel? What the heck happened to you, girl?!"

Nearby, Jackalope sprung from an awning to a flagpost, ending his series of leaps on the rooftop of the building his human counterpart had been swinging towards. Collecting the dropped grapple, the swordsrabbit waved his compatriot over.

[Nyrath]

The winged feline merely smiled at Jack's deadpan delivery, then the furless swordsman recognised her voice. "Ah, I see you know my 'counterpart'." Calico replied. "Name's Calico Angel. In brief we're two, of several, heroes from what you might know as Ani-Earth. We're here to stop a bunch of villains from our dimension. Since they've probably gotten in touch with their counterparts we figured it might be a good idea to see if we couldn't get help from ours."

She flew over to Jackalope once the antlered rabbit had collected the grapple. "Which is were you come in my steamy sword swinger. This is your counterpart, Jackalope of all Blades." Calico finished.

[Gizmo]

Landing lightly on the rooftop, Jack looked back and forth between Calico and Jackalope, opening his mouth as if to say something before snapping it shut and rubbing the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"Alright, don't tell me," his antlered counterpart said, scratching his furry chin contemplatively. "You're... Man-drill of all Blades! Hugh-man?"

The Earth-Prime swashbuckler gave him a long, nonplussed look before responding, more than a little disturbed to hear his voice coming from the five foot tall rabbit. "Uh... no. It's just 'Jack'."

Jackalope clocked his head to one side, his long ears twitching. "...I don't get it."

Jack sighed. "Alright, I assume the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I get to wake up." He turned to the winged cat, pointedly ignoring her very Mongrel-Angel-like flirtation. "We're looking for the, uh, other 'you', then?"

[Nyrath]

"Yes. And if we are to go by this nifty little piece of kit the doctor provided my likely delicious doppleganger is," Calico examined the homing device for a moment while she talked. "that way. The feline angel pointed pretty much straight at dome of the Kirby Museum of Fine Arts. "You want a lift Jack? Either off you?"

[Gizmo]

Jackalope tossed the grapple to its owner. "C'mon, Cali, you know I don't do the 'carried by my armpits' thing," he snorted with bucktoothed smirk.

His human counter part snatched the device out of the air and cocked an eyebrow. "You know I heard that." Firing the grapple, he lept from the rooftop, swinging in the direction the winged cat had indicated. His antlered double followed suit, keeping pace with Jack with prodigious leaps.

[Nyrath]

Calico simply shrugged, not particularly bothered that her offer had been turned down. There would be other opportunities. Before long the Kirby came into view, the winged cat getting there ahead of the two Jacks. Seated at the base of the crystal spire with her back leaning against it was to be found a purple haired, chocolate skinned woman with a laptop nestled between her lotus position legs.

"Heya!" Calico called out as she landed nearby and walked up to her double. Mongrel looked up and saw a sight she'd only glimpsed partially in a mirror once; an anthropomorphic feline version of herself. Granted, she had seen it before and wasn't unversed in the matters of the multiverse so the dark angel took it in stride. Closing down her laptop and tucking in away in one of her 'special pockets' before standing up the supernatural mongrel gently prodded at her seeming doubles mind, looking for confirmation of her suspicions. She found it.

[Gizmo]

Jack flipped through the air, landing lightly a short distance for Mongrel Angel and her double. Jackalope hopped over and the pair of swashbucklers stood in silence for a moment while the two winged women apparently sized each other up. Eventually Jackalope looked up at his taller counterpart. "Five bucks says they make out," he wagered.

"No deal," Jack replied, shaking his head. Frankly, he thought it was a sucker's bet.

[Nyrath]

While to an outside observer the two winged ladies seemed to be simply stareing at each other, in fact a lot of information was being volleyed between the pair. Without the need for relatively cumbersome words they were exchanging information, catching up on what had happened to each other during the two years of experience that seperated the two of them. As the two Jacks caught up with Calico the purple haired pair had covered the major points at least, and were rapidly shifting minor details, aligning their minds more closely.

"Five bucks says they make out," he wagered.

"No deal," Jack replied, shaking his head. Frankly, he thought it was a sucker's bet.

Well, let might as well avoid disappointing the boys. Will be fun too. Both the angels smiled and then the shorter Calico leaped at Mongrel, who caught her double. Both with her arms and her lips as the case happened to be. It didn't take to long for pair to finish though. "Business before pleasure sadly." The supernatural due spoke with an eerie synchronisation. "We need to get moving and stop the Factor Four/Fur and their counterparts."

[Gizmo]

There was a long, nonplussed pause from the fencers. Jack winced. "That's... actually a lot more disturbing than I was expecting it to be," he admitted.

"You're telling me," his antlered double snorted, nose twitching. "No offense, but you guys are, y'know, shaved. Not that there's anything wrong with that! ...I guess."

The human swordsman gave him a sidelong glance. "Right... I kinda meant the -"

"- talking in unison thing?" Jackalope finished. "I'm thinking that's gonna get worse before it gets better."

Before the conversation could continue, a sudden flare of energy sent them both spinning around as a pair of fiery forms streaked through the sky toward them. Jack recognized the first as Pyre, Factor Four's resident thrill-seeking pyromaniac. Beside him flew a long, thin form, similarly engulfed in flames. The creature's flat head featured a frill to match Pyre's goatee, framing a pair of long fangs and a murderous smirk. "Pyrethon!" Jackalope of all Blades supplied.

[Gizmo]

"What did I tell you?" Pyrethon hissed, his long form undulating as he slithered through the air. "Little heroesssss, come to play!"

His human counterpart flew in beside him. "Heh, the resonance of the Prime Elements is gonna make this almost too easy," he scoffed.

"You just need to learn to play with your prey," the fire serpent smirked before breathing a massive fireball at Calico Angel, who batted the flames away with one wing.

In unison, Jack and Jackalope of all Blades snapped their fingers, sparks of electricity from lampposts on either side of the street streaming to their outstretched hand and paw respectively to take on the shape of twin rapiers of crackling energy. "Told ya our Pyre was uglier," the Earth-Prime swordsman remarked.

"No way!" Jackalope retorted. "Granted, he's ugly, but you can really see the dim, lack of comprehension in Pyrethon's eyes. Ugly and stupid."

Jack nodded thoughtfully. "So we can agree that they're both on the high end of the ugly/stupid scale, yeah?"

"Oh, definitely," his bucktoothed counterpart agreed amiably. "When you're right, you're right."

"Shut up!" Pyre shouted, shooting a pillar of fiery death at the swashbucklers, who nimbly hopped out of the way.

[Nyrath]

While the swashbucklers verbally trash the pair of firebrands the angels seperate and unveil why they've been a bit slower to react. The winged pair had been channeling their soulfire into their hands and as they leapt into the air they fired off a pair of massive blasts of hellfire at the fiery ones. "BURN!" While the flying duo were less verbose than their allies their erie synchronisation seemed to hold.

[Gizmo]

The fiery villains didn't even attempt to avoid the blasts, assuming that the immunity to flame granted to them by the Prime Element of Fire would make it a futile gesture on the part of the winged heroines. Instead, the mystic energy crashed into them with massive force, knocking them into each other where Pyrethon's slender form quickly became entangled with that of his human counterpart. Disoriented and in pain, the pair fell from the sky under the hellfire assault.

"Woo!" Jackalope of all Blades cried out, hopping up and down enthusiastically. "Stick it to 'em, ladies! Rah, rah, shish-boom-bah!" His powerful legs sent him into elaborate backflips and acrobatics.

The more composed Earth-Prime swordsman simply took a step back and bowed, gesturing with his free hand for Mongrel and Calico to go ahead.

[Nyrath]

The two villains hadn't surrendered and they still moved; that meant the fight wasn't over yet according to the Angels' standards. So, bouyed by Jackalope's cheering and their own successes the mind synched duo toss another volley at the fiery pair down below, then dived down and deliver yet another blast of hellfire each. If either Calico or Mongrel was doing any bantering they did in the safe confines of their own head, or heads. It was a little hard to tell just how deep the synchronisation went.