ic Brimstone and Bullet Casings (IC)

[RocketLord]

Nevermore II

 

Charlie leaned back out of reach, using minimal effort to move out of the way for once. Alek had taught him that little trick, and it usually scared the crap out of people like this guy. Guy in cape and cowl, barely even bothering to move to get out of the way? Yeah, that should work.

 

"Man, you really don't know who you're dealing with, do you?"

 

He reached into his belt and pulled out a small silver ball-like device. With a grin, he tossed it the guy, where it would explode into a quickly expanding grey foam that wrapped around the man, potentially keeping him stuck to the ground.

 

"I'm Nevermore. Y'know, like in the Raven and..."

[Kaede Kimura]

Shadowborne

 

Muirne gave up on retrieving the spear for now and instead focused on the power inside of her. She concentrated on drawing many small pieces and sending them to her splayed out fingertips. Pain lanced through her as they quickly turned shadowy and lost distinction, vanishing into the night so thoroughly that even she struggled to see where they were. Ignoring the possibilities that sprung to mind at that she focused again, pointing her fingers at the demon. The pinpricks of shadow ejected from her hands towards the demon at high speeds. Despite it's attempts at dodging most of the fast moving projectiles caught it, slamming into the creatures body causing it to shriek in pain as the ravening shadows skittered across it's scales before it fell from the building onto the ground.

[Kaede Kimura]

GM

 

The gangster cried out in alarm as the foam expanded over him. His attempts at escaping left him increasingly trapped as he floundered. He looked up at Charlie as he said his cape name, the panic on his face changing to fear. "Wha- Y-  You're kiddin'. Th- The Raven isn't here, right? Man he is isn't he? Oh we're so fucked." The gangster swallowed nervously as he looked around as if he expected to spot the hero hiding in the night. "L- Look man, I don't know shit. You don't wanna take me, I'm just a grunt yeah? You c- you can just forget you saw me and let me go, right?" He tries to smile up at Charlie but it is weak and wobbly.

 

Edited March 5, 2021 by Kaede Kimura

[Nerdzul]

Luke ducked to avoid the wave of shadowy projectiles aimed at the creature, witnessing its fall with a satisfied grin. “Good job.” He smiled at Muirne and jumped down from the building with ease. Time to check on the actual gangster that, as expected, was now in Chaz clutches. He could only hear the last sentence, but that was enough for him.

 

“No we can’t forget.” He remarked angrily as he saw the man trying to worm his way out of the scene. He closed the distance between them with unnatural speed, his solid gold eyes burning as his gaze met with the one of the gangster. “You are in trouble man, you brought freakin’ demons on the streets.” He half said half growled. “And my bet is… Your new friends aren’t going to forget about you either. The way I see it. We are your best chance of getting out of this now. So you better start talking. Fast.”

[Kaede Kimura]

GM

 

The Gangster's eyes darted between Charlie and Luke, a cold sweat forming on his face. "Look, I- If I tell you anything they'll kill me! Just- just promise if I help you that you'll get me out of Southside, okay? Somewhere far away where the demons can't get me. Deal?"

 

He frantically looks between the pair of you as he talks.

 

 

 

[RocketLord]

Nevermore II

 

"Man, you wish the Raven was here," Charlie added, pointing with his thumb towards Luke. "See, me? I'm not like him. I'm good at making friends. And guess what? I'm friends with a dragon."

 

He wasn't lying, not really.

 

"We'll get you outta here, sure, nobody gets killed while we're here, but you gotta tell us something first: You called your friends, and they're on the way. How long until they're here? How many are coming? Both people and demons, or just one or the other?" Charlie was talking fast now, counting out on his fingers as he asked each question.

[Kaede Kimura]

GM

 

The Gangster looks between the pair of you, his mouth working soundlessly for a few moments before he finds his voice. The sweat that had been building up on his forehead is pouring off now. "Yeah I called 'em. Should be fifteen minutes till they get 'ere, five if they come with cars and bikes. Should be maybe ten or twenty guys with the same number of demons, we are all given a demon and it stays with us all the time." He's starting to look around frantically. "You did get the one who was with me yeah?"

[RocketLord]

Nevermore II

 

"Are all the demons like yours? Anything they're weak to?" Nevermore was staring into the man's eyes, his lips crooked into a grin.

 

Yeah... This could work. He'd need to be quick about this, but it could work, and Luke and Muirne were the perfect people for this to work.

 

He turned away from the man, approached his friends and put his hands on their shoulders, drawing them in close.

 

"So... here's the plan: There's a bunch of people coming all at once. We're in way over our heads, of course, but y'know... they don't know anything about us. So, we get ready. Buddy here is bait, and I got enough traps to cover most of the area. Nightsale, you got your illusions. Use them to confuse them, keep them off balance. Shadowborne, we'll need some darkness. We can see them, they can't see us. Take them down one by one, we make sure that we don't draw too much attention all at once. Running and hiding is fine, we'll circle back."

[Nerdzul]

Ten or twenty of those things? Or worse? That's messed up. plus, as many gangsters, in Luke's mind they were much more of a problem, after all, with demons he could unleash his powers with abandon, dragonfire on a bunch of people in cars and bikes? Yeah he wasn't going to do that, no matter how vile.

 

"Everyone of you have their own little personal demon?" Luke echoed the gangsters' words. "What did you ***ckers give them back in return? I mean, sounds to me that you are all screwed." Indeed, now, he was not an expert of things occult, truth is he knew nothing on the matter, but then again, it didn't take much to figure out what a demon might want in exchange for its aid. He gave the gangster one disgusted look, before turning his attention back to his friends.

 

"Whatever we can take them." He shrugged, with a cocky grin on his lips.

 

"By the way, that definitely reminded me to never make you mad." He teased Muirne's playfully, his gaze briefly shifting toward the place where the demonic horror used to be.

 

"Do you guys think I should transform?" After all, his monster form could hopefully scare a bunch of gangsters with ease. 

 

He nodded at Chaz's plan. "Sure thing... They won't know who hit them." He closed his eyes and worked in a bit of his innate magic, forging copies of themselves, defiantly standing in the alley, close enough to one of Charlie's traps. "I won't we able to keep them up when we start fighting, but hopefully they will draw some fire." 

 

 

[RocketLord]

Nevermore II

 

Charlie admired Luke's illusions. They were plenty lifelike, could cause some confusion until they disappeared.

 

"Stay like you are now, don't go full dragon until we need something big. Nobody's gonna like going up against a dragon, but if they know you're all big and scary coming in, they'll be ready for it."

 

He grinned, poking lightly at Luke's shoulder.

 

"Nobody's ready for a sudden surprise dragon."

[Kaede Kimura]

Shadowborne

 

Muirne focused on breathing steadily after the shadow bolts, letting the boys handle interrogating the gangster. She was glad her Shadow Bolts worked, but that didn't mean that it didn't suck.

 

She listened in as they talked, apprehensive at the idea of possibly fighting forty enemies even if half of them were regular humans. Still, Charlie clearly had a plan and it involved her so she's give it her best shot.

 

She smiled at Luke as he complimented her, "I could say the same about you, Lu- Úhtfloga1." She quickly switched to a different word to avoid spoiling his secret identity, even if it sounded like she'd added an L to a word without one.

 

She turned back to Charlie, "Do you want me to make an area of darkness, or to just make us invisible in the night?" Neither option would stop something from smelling them out of something but she'd assume at least some of the demons could see I'm the dark.

[RocketLord]

Nevermore II

 

"You can do that?" Interesting. Very interesting. "Yeah. Make us all the way invisible, then. How fine's your control of that? Can you make just some of us visible before the others? I'm kinda counting on the shock of a big scary dragon showing up to give us a small advantage here."

 

He grinned, pointing at Luke with his thumb while he spoke.

[Nerdzul]

“Yeah makes sense.” Luke nodded at Charlie’s suggestion.

 

“Thank you.” Luke smiled fondly again, as Muirne complimented him.

 

“Like make us invisible? That’s gonna work great.” Luke nodded enthusiastically. “They won’t know what hit them.” He added confidently. “How does that work?”

 

“Hey, Maybe I can make like some illusionary cover for us or somethin." He tossed. “We won’t be able to see through it ourselves though…”

[Kaede Kimura]

Shadowborne

 

Muirne smiled at the pair of them. “I can effect others, but it won't last if you attack. Outside of that we'll be invisible though." She smiled at the two of them. She turned to Luke as he asked how it worked, giving her boyfriend a grin. "I take the power that I channel and force it to run along the outside of our bodies and clothes. It is a bit uncomfortable, but you guys are tough enough I'm sure. Just think of it like a slightly stinging ice bath."

 

With that she placed her hands on their shoulders, keeping her breathing even as the pain that accompanied channelling her darkness lanced through her. She forced the shadows to run over her armour and out of her hands into Luke and Charlie, keeping the shadows from entering their bodies proper. To an observer they vanished into the night, starting with Muirne's core and quickly expanding out to cover the boys.

 

And then they were gone.

[Kaede Kimura]

GM

 

The Gangster looked around, trying to speak with the gag in his mouth as the trio vanished from sight. Still, his cries didn't draw a visible response and after about half a minute he gave up. And so the heroes waited. In the end, including the time they took to set up traps, plan, and make witty comments, the gang took around seventeen minutes to arrive. There were seventeen of them. The lead of their number was a heavily muscled and tattooed man. His tapestry of skin was dominated by a large cross with a rat pinned to it across his torso. An enormous fancy sword in an equally fancy sheath dangled from a shoulder strap on his left shoulder while an assault rifle dangled from his right. The other men who were in a group with him were armed more normally, having baseball bats, simple clubs made of wood and some knives, although three in the back had some pistols tucked into their waistbands.

 

There didn't seem to be as many demons as people, by the group's count there were fourteen. One, a similarly sized humanoid demon in armour walked alongside the man at the front. It had a large axe slung across it's shoulders. The rest of the demons were split amongst three groups, three demons flew above the street and the houses there, glinting in the night like crystals, while two groups of five remained closer to the ground. One of those groups were made up of the Spinethrower demons fought earlier, scuttling along the walls of the street while the other five where a group of translucent creatures that slowly floated along in a loose formation above the gang.

 

The lead gangster stopped near the entrance to the alleyway before turning to the rest. "Alright, the ten o' you with the budget demons, pair up and start lookin' for these heroes. Holler if you find anything, and try not to get your asses kicked too hard. You six stick close and keep your heads on a swivel. I don't like that we don't know who we're up against but we'll beat 'em down regardless." The demon next to him leered around, sniffing the air with a vicious grin on it's face.

 

The smell of sulphur is overpowering.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Kaede Kimura

[RocketLord]

Nevermore II

 

Guess they knew whow was the guy in charge, then. 

 

"See-through isn't good..." Charlie muttered, looking at the group. There was a lot of bad guys here. Traps or not, these were gonna be a pain to deal with. "Watch out for those things. They might be, y'know, untouchable. They're all yours, Shadowborne."

 

Reaching into his utility belt, he pulled out a small capsule and threw it towards the gangster they had gagged, hanging upside down. It started making a noise calling for help. At the same time, he activated some of the noisemakers he had hidden out in the street. Everything was ready to take down at least some of the bad guys.

 

"Nightscale, hold off a moment, then go full dragon on them. We need them surprised and panicked, then we throw a dragon at them."

[Nerdzul]

Luke nodded, although he wasn't exactly sure that any of his friends could see him, given that Muirne shadow veil enveloped them. Hopefully the demons would suffer from the same trouble.

 

Now, as satisfying as it would have been to just burst out of their hiding place and land in the middle of gang, scattering them with his wings, Nevermore was right, there was a small army there and plenty of hellspawn to follow them, they needed to thin those number a bit. Dragonfire would have maybe done wonders with it, but admittedly, Luke wasn't ready to barbecue a bunch normal of guys with no superpowers, even if their choice of alliances was a questionable one Plus, bringing guns and knives to a dragonfight... there was no way they were a threat to him.

 

Let's stick to misdirection for now. 

 

He closed his eyes and shaped a few images in his mind, they were little more than shadows, clad in the Academy costumes and just barely in sight of their would be pursuers, enough to attract attention, but not to become easy target without running closer to them and hopefully in the range of one of Nevermore traps.

 

 

[Kaede Kimura]

GM

 

There was a moment of pregnant silence as Luke spun his illusions and the noisemakers began crying for help. The groups started scrambling to catch sight of the sources of noise.

 

Four of their number went down as the traps went off, snaring two demons and two gangsters, while the third group saw through the trap and sent their demons forwards to no effect.

 

The illusions proved less effective, although a single Spinethrower demon did bound off into the distance over the protests of it's gangster.

 

The last standing individual in the first group- A Spinethrower Demon- skittered backwards away from it's roped up fellows, hissing in fear. At the same time it's only fellow still present and standing put itself next to the gangster who commanded it, a spine in hand, rest to be thrown at some unseen assailant.

 

The flying crystals gave less dramatic responses, merely dropping closer to the ground and beginning to glow with tiny little pinpricks of light, like a constellation of sickly stars.

 

As the demons responded a general wave of cursing and bellyaching swept the crowd of gangsters and the lead demon readied his axe, moving towards the location the teens were hiding. The lead gangster scowled, following his demon with rifle in hand.

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by Kaede Kimura