~Open~
Location: Lindblum
Theme: Next Poster Sets
Time: A week after Chaos Lands in Jenovah
~Open~

The Temple of the Acheron was a small temple by the standards of this city, and now that the Order of the Acheron had moved the seat of their power into the deserts of Alexandia, it was all but abandoned. Still, a few templar patrolled the area, dressed in their black uniforms and silver armour. The vast majority were armed with pikes, but one, the commander, denoted by the gold spike on the "nose" of his helmet, carried a sword of the Ragnarok design.

From the spire of the nearby but much larger temple of Addremelech, a black-robed figure looked down at the smaller temple. The quietest chuckle escaped his lips.

"All right then... Let's have some fun."

Then, at that moment, several cages littered around the square opened, and a swarm of antlions stormed the area, attacking monks and civilians alike.

A Fighter and a Black Mage (no, not the 8-Bit ones >_>) were wandering through Lindblum when the attack started. Caught off guard, they fled into a nearby building.

In said building, a rather large human, dressed in a tank-top and ragged combat pants, was eating lunch with a moogle, who had blue-grey fur and was dressed in combat fatigues of the same color as the giant. The fur on her head was longer, styled almost like human hair and dyed a brilliant red. The giant was covered, from bald head to toe, in some sort of black tattoo. The ruckus, however, had disturbed their supper, and even as the two took cover, the moogle was climbing onto the human's back, drawing a handgun.

The human said something in a strange language, and stood up.
The moogle nodded to the fighter, "Hey, you, what's your names?"

Perhaps surprisingly, almost as soon as his templar were in the square, the OA commander called out to them, calling them back. As soon as all but three were indoors, the door was barricaded, and the three turned around, to hold the security of the door.

"Protect the Tome at all cost! That must be why they're here!"
"It's just Antlions."
"Yeah, well, everyone thought that the assault on the Order of Karen's temple was just some bombs, and now the First Book was lost."

Startled again, the two whipped around to see the diners.

"Oh, uh...hello. I'm Mark, and this is my wife, Stephanie. Do you know where all of those antlions came from?"

Steph looked out the window, surveying the situation. She figured she'd need at least five Blizzaras to clear a street...

The giant mumbled something.

"All right, follow us! We'll cut a path for you!"

They dashed out into the street. Even as they ran, a weapon formed in the giant's hand, a spear of ice. Most of the antlions in the way, though, were cut down by the firepower of the moogle on his back.

"Well? Come on!"

"All right!"

Drawing his weapon, Mark charged behind the giant, stabbing stray antlions in the face if they got too close. His wife followed, blasting things with Blizzara to support the moogle on the giant's back.

The last antlion ran toward the giant while the moogle was reloading. He span the spear in his off hand, before taking a low stance. Stupid bug charged right into the head of the spear, and a slight push from the giant ended its suffering.

There was little time to relax now, though, as the figure from the top of the spire bounded down, gliding on crow's wings into the square. He stayed well above normal reach, and fired a shot at the giant.

The giant had noticed him, however, and as soon as the pulse from his strange rifle reached him, a plate of ice appeared between the projectile and himself, protecting him. He threw the moogle up and backward.

As the moogle sailed through the air, toward the roof of a temple, it opened fire on the strange creature with both handguns.

The two humans froze, looking upward at the strange figure. Who was it? And why was the moogle shooting at it?

Whatever the case, they were currently allied with the moogle, and so they began attacking the thing with carefully aimed Air Renders and black magick.

A boy with dark hair who looked about fifteen entered the square, holding a long knife; however, rather than use it, he started yelling rude things at the figure with crow's wings.

However, the (usually) harmless (unless you were sensitive about how your feathers looked oily and worm-infested) shouts quickly magnified beyond all compare, and the buildings around them began rocking violently in the ground.

The birdman flew backward, rather elegantly avoiding the vast majority of the attacks. As the sonic waves approached, he rolled so that backwards was now forwards, and used the air pressure involved in such massive sounds to send himself clear through a window at the Temple of the Order of the Acheron.

The moogle cursed, and dropped behind the ledge of the roof, reloading her handguns, "Bardok! Panka di noko!"
"Asai!"

Spinning his spear around to hide it behind his back, he ran toward the temple, following the two guards into it. By now, the moogle had reloaded, and dropped down to the square, using the fall to glide part way on her wings, "Nume buddy, is that you?"

Mark and Stephanie were knocked to the ground by the sharp noises, but luckily didn't go deaf.

Nume cringed at seeing Mark and Stephanie. He hadn't directed the blast near them.

"Er, yeah. It's me. Want me to go after birdy?"

"Yup. Take me with you!"

With that, the moogle hopped up, tucking one of the handguns away to grip his shoulder.

In a matter of seconds, Nume had changed into a gray, bipedal wyrmlike creature. He spread his wings and shot after the crow-person.

The elder of the couple helped the younger up.

"Looks like that bird thing went into the temple. Shall we investigate?" inquired Mark.

"I don't know...I mean, that one kid just turned into a dragon of some sort."

"Good point...but we've already started helping; we can't stop now."

Sighing, Stephanie reluctantly followed her husband to the temple.

No sooner had Nume burst into the temple after the figure, than the figure used some sort of red orb to blow out an entire wall of the building. Even as it collapsed, he shot out that way, dragging some sort of book with him.

A large, canoe-sized section of the roofing fell down onto the giant, who knew no more.

Nume groaned and moved quickly over to Bardok, whom he dragged out of the rubble.

"You want to stay here, or keep with me after Birdy?" he asked in a growling voice.

The couple found themselves blocked by Antlions as they tried to approach the temple, and were fighting them off when the wall was blown up. They quickly knew that the bird-thing was out of their league, and they quickly fled in the opposite direction.

"I'll make sure Bardok's okay, you go get the birdhead!"

The fleeing combatants would have ran past a young boy who wore a fine black cloak over his white robes. There were two blades on his back, with some sort of mechanics attached to them. If one were to stop and study, they would realize the blades would unfold to form a two-headed scythe. Despite this fearsome weapon, he seemed to exude an aura of calm, and several people who ran past him actually stopped to watch the air battle.

So, they have the second book...

He seemed to stare through a point ahead of W'cor's flight, where nothing was, ... How did you get up there, Moe?

Nume spread gray wings and shot into the air after W'cor. As yet out of clawing range, the half-wyrm attempted to burst one of the villain's eardrums with a careful manipulation of the sound around them; if successful, this would at least throw him off balance.

The crow-being swooped around from the sound wave, almost as if he could somehow sense the change in airpressure before it reached him. As he did, he brought the handgun to bear on the half-wyrm, spraying out a cloud of pink-red crystals that seemed to actually change direction in mid air to keep moving toward him.

The crystals fell away, suddenly dust, and Nume kept flying, picking up speed. He swooped upwards, suddenly, to tackle W'cor from below.

The crow-man swooped sideways, rolling slightly before stabilizing himself below Nume, flying toward a cloud.

"Kid, I've been flying since before your first ancestor was born! You think I can't outmaneuver you?"

On the ground, the kid with the weapons on his back had emerged into the square, watching the battle from below. Suddenly, his gaze fell to the cloud... the only one in the sky.

"Oh, so that's how he escaped Midgar." the child mused, "What an outdated tactic..."

The boy set his weapons down on the cobblestones, before taking of the black outer cloak, revealing white robes underneath, "He won't outsmart me..."

Behind the crow-man, Nume yawned. "You're boring me, birdy." Something screeched past W'cor, and suddenly the clouds were gone. In their place, Nume was winding up a punch a clawed punch, and let loose as the sonic boom from his very rapid movement reached them.

W'cor span in the air for a minute, reeling, before he grabbed the ledge of a wind vane with his feet. He straightened, pointing at Nume.

"This just got a lot more exciting."

At the snap of his fingers, it would have become exactly and perfectly obvious what had been behind the clouds, and was now behind Nume. A destroyer-class airship that, at the snapping of his fingers, loosed three fighters which swarmed in on the half-wyrm.

The kid was picking up his weapons again, calmly unfolding them to make a double-bladed scythe, "Hmm. Never seen that trick done with a ship that large, though. Interesting."

Bardok had emerged from the rubble, nodding to the kid.
"Give me a toss, buddy."

Nume span into the air, wings spread, and evaded the fighter group's first swoop. "Excuse my vernacular," he shouted to the area below, "But bloody hell how did you get a ship up there?!"

W'cor dropped backward off of the vane, before shooting off to the airship itself, landing on deck.

"Sir!"
"Open fire!"

At his command, the cannons of the destroyer itself, as well as those on the fighters, opened fire. Because Nume was the focus of their operations, the kid with the scythe went completely ignored as he shot through the air.

Until he landed at W'cor's feet.

"If it isn't everyone's favourite new demon."
The crow being chuckled, "If it isn't the world's shortest messiah."


"Commander, there's an intruder on deck."
The grizzled bangaa opened his eyes, "Did he bring food?"
"I seriously doubt it, Commander."
A heavy sigh, as he closed his eyes again, "Then just kill him. Don't need me to tell you that."
"Yes, Commander Claw."

Nume, with a combination of speed and luck, managed to survive this onslaught. With a few flaps of great grey wings, he touched down on the deck, morphed back into a boy (shirtless, as it happened, but he remedied that by reaching into a bag on his back).

"I'd like to make a complaint with the commander of this vessel."

W'cor smiled slightly, "That would be me, so long as I am standing here."

Eli's stance lowered, as he settled the scythe in the crook of his arm.

Nume frowned, then noticed Eli. "Oh, hey, Sharona! Fancy seeing you in a place like this. How's things?"

"Getting exciting." the scythe-wielder smirked a bit, "Let's kick some-"

W'cor suddenly shot off into the air. As he passed over the bridge, a great, huge-even-for-a-bangaa Bangaa jumped through the window. W'cor caught him, and an instant later, the entire ship simply exploded.

Tumbling through the air, Eli screamed. There were ways to avoid damage after huge falls, but they all required at least a moment to prepare beforehand. This... this just sucked.

Nume, for all his young age, was by now experienced with things disintegrating at his feet, and managed to right himself while still human. The air around his legs seemed to go wavy, and produced a low-pitch resonance unpleasant for fleshy things. He seemed unsteady at first, but given the debris that would no doubt be dropping soon, looked around for Eli.

Eli was still falling through the air, though he'd righted himself, no longer tumbling through the air, instead made stable by the drag produced by his spear, held overhead, as he fell.

"Needaplan, needaplan..."

He reached into his robe, tossing something to the ground. As it fell, it unfolded, becoming a magic circle when it finally hit.

"First Circle! Transmutation!"

There was a blinding light, and when it cleared, Eli was hovering in place. His hair had become much longer, reaching past his shoulders, and was straight instead of its usual wavy nature. Large, grey-feathered wings sprouted from his shoulder blades, holding him aloft, for now.

"Heh! I'm a genius!"

Nume was hovering beside him, though he seemed to have increased the frequency of his legs so that it wouldn't shake anyone to pieces.

"Well, why didn't you have a means to escape such a predicament beforehand? Hm?"

The boy looked around. "That aside, where are our foes?"

Eli span in the air, scanning the skyline for any sign of W'cor or the enemy commander.

"Where indeed..."

"I can't hear them over my legs and there's no way I'm just turning off my hover lickety-split. You have any supernatural ways of finding them?"

"Hmm... worth a shot... Syn wa desu! Prydi wa desu!"

As he said it, two creatures, similar to him, one in burning darkness, and one in burning light, appeared.

"Find them and destroy them!"

The two flew off in opposite directions.

An awkward silence ensued. "So... how's your sister?"

"She's in Midgar right now, doing damage control after a raid just like this..."

He pivoted in the air, to face Haka, "Well, the airship in the last one wasn't noticed, but now that we know how they hide them..."

"Behind clouds. Honestly, I mean, how did they get an airship behind a cloud? It looked like a pretty clear day until there was an airship in my face."