PURIFIED [Event]

The dragon Cetus was evidently far cleverer than its strange appearance might indicate, for the great beast not only noticed, but retaliated against several of the supers' attacks.  However, in at least once case, it made a grave mistake! 

One might think that flinging a horde of cats several hundred feet into the air would quickly eliminate said horde- but this was not so! Cats were experts and righting themselves in the air, and a cat with its limbs spread produced a surprising amount of drag.  Indeed, their terminal velocity was only 60 miles per hour, far slower than that of a human.  This gave them the ability to survive falls from incredible heights, an ability that came in handy at this moment.

Though a few of the cats perished from unfortunate landings or the sheer force with which they had been flung, the large majority of them came literally raining back down on top of the tail, quickly latching on to it again.  One did not simply keep a cat away from its fish!  Cetus would need to try far harder to rid itself of Big Martin's ravenous armies.

Action: Aggression (Confinement) against Tail.

As the dragon continued to lurch forward, Titan was dragged along, as he desperately pulled it back in an attempt to slow it down, along with many others that assaulted the tail. The cats continued to latch onto the beast, swarming it in a clear attempt to invoke death by a thousand cuts. Fellow Bulwarks Purity and Passion had worked together to restrain the dragon's tail to the ground. Even pieces of paper seemed to deliberately place themselves on the eyes to blind it. The fact that it slowed down seemed to indicate that their efforts were working. They couldn't be any more wrong.

The sudden burst of powerful energy shot upwards, sending the pieces of rubble away into the air. As the debris littered the sky, Titan held onto his grip as tightly as he possibly could, expecting the worst. And the worst came. What goes up, must go down, and it did. The rubble slammed down hard onto the battlefield, and while Titan could handle the smaller, bullet-like shrapnel raining on him, something hit him. The structure of concrete and steel slammed hard onto his head after being sent hurtling down at high velocity. The pain was unlike anything he ever felt. Vision was blurry and his head was ringing like a bell, but he still held onto the tail, making sure his grip wouldn't loosen for a second.

It was all for naught, as the creature's deceptively swift tail sliced through the giant's palms, sending blood spurting out of the wounds. Titan collapsed to his knees, the only noise he could hear being loud ringing. That...thing had been toying with them. They had failed. And now it was going to kill more.

No. He was not having any of that. Slamming his fist into the ground, Titan stood himself up. He wasn't going to lie down and let more die. He was going to help wipe this thing off the face of the earth, if it was the last thing he ever did. Going into a sprint, running faster than he ever did before in his life, Titan let out a roar as he tightly gripped the tail once again, ignoring the pain from his slashed palms.

Action: Aggression (Confinement) against Tail

Her tactics were working. As expected, there was a reason it was hiding most of its body, and it looked like at least a couple of people were able to score some good hits on it. The fact that it seemed to also make the creature do less damage to the surrounding houses barely registered in Aurora's mind. The damage was inevitable. Trying to mitigate it like that was stupid, the only true way to stop it from doing more damage than it could was to kill it quickly. Her aurora swelled, becoming brighter and covering more of the sky than it ever had before. It was rare that she ever needed to collect this much junk for anything, so the aurora's sheer size dwarfed anything she used in the past. At this point she could drop something on any part of the dragon should it surface, not that she thought it would accomplish that much. She was starting to wonder if she'd start seeing an upper limit to how much stuff she could collect at once. It wasn't something she'd ever run into before, but because of that it was one of the few aspects of her power she wasn't sure about.

In the chaos of everything, she heard a familiar voice and audibly groaned. Aurora had nothing against Giza, but he was acting embarrassing here. She didn't need his protection, and she wasn't his mom here to make him feel better about what was going on. She rubbed her temples when he landed on the bulldozer.

"I'm right in front of you, there's no need to shout."

Everything seemed to be going well, almost too well. These were supposed to be city destroying monsters, and while it managed to do a sizable chunk of damage, it was hardly what she would call a city destroying threat so far. It wasn't even what she would call a district destroying monster. Something wasn't right here. Aurora visibly tensed as she continued taking out chunks of asphalt from where it was going. Sadly, doing so meant her eyes had to be focused in that direction and she couldn't watch the dragon closely. When it finally did make its move, she was taken by surprise. The earpiece she was wearing practically screamed inside her ear. Wincing, she quickly took it out of her ear and dissolved it into particles. Her ears were ringing for some time after that, but before she could even regain her bearings, there was a dome surrounding the entire battlefield. The sheer size and scope of her aurora made it easy enough to see, hopefully it'd be the same for everyone else, but she doubted it would stop there. Without turning towards him, she addressed Sanduleak, speaking significantly louder than usual since she was basically deaf in her right ear right now.

"Looks like it's up to us to make sure everyone can still see. Light him up!"

Then the dome fell. Aurora's eyes widened as she thought about the implications of this, but it was something she could do something about. It was something she would be incredibly good at doing something about, but the sheer amount of stuff meant she couldn't just dissolve it all. In the end, she could only dissolve one object at a time, and even at less than a second, the time needed to dissolve them all meant that a large chunk of the falling debris would hit the ground. It meant she had to prioritize. Her heart sank. As good as she was at prioritizing like this, she didn't like it. First, she had to focus on the ones that would hit people, but even that wasn't going to be enough, she had to narrow it down further. First, she'd go for the people that would be least likely to be able to avoid it from what she'd seen, and the ones that were doing the most to the most damage to the dragon. It was hard to tell given it was faking being hurt earlier, but she was pretty sure that Sanduleak of all people managed to do the most. She prioritized the bulldozer, then that scrawny Bulwark kid Timezone, before moving onto the ones that were trying to punch through the main body like it'd actually be that easy. Her eyes were focused on the sky, trying to take out as much of the falling debris as possible.

That wasn't all she could do though. Before turning her attention skyward, she noticed that the horde of cats and another idiot Bulwark hero, Titan, were managing to restrain the tail a bit before it managed to wrench itself out of their control with a sudden movement that likely hurt the tail itself. It wasn't a bad idea, and while Aurora wasn't sure how useful this would be, she always liked the idea of using other peoples', or in this case monsters', powers against them. With every piece of the falling debris she collected, she relocated it to fall right on top of the dragon's tail, along with the other junk she'd been collecting at this point. It was a complete hail of debris, but she was careful to keep it towards the base of the tail so it hopefully wouldn't land on Titan or any of the cats.

Action: Aggression (Confinement) on Tail

"Of course that didn't work," Geata sighed. Still, it helped to show him a hint to how it worked. Not that it made it any easier to actually understand the science behind it. The faster stuff was certainly affected more, but he wasn't sure what to think of that just yet. He didn't have the time to focus on that anyway. It didn't work, he needed something that would. Other supers' attacks did, so he would just have to try and experiment. It also seemed like different types of attack worked in different areas.

Suddenly, everything seemed to change. The dragon suddenly exploded with numerous more distortions and quickly showed the supers that it was a force to be reckoned with. The matter that was taken by the distortions appeared above the group and started to fall. Geata stared, wide-eyed, at the incoming attack. Without thinking, he opened up a portal as large as he could make it almost directly overhead and on just over the ground a few feet behind him. He hoped anyone near enough to him to get underneath didn't need to be told because there wouldn't be enough time and he needed to focus. If he didn't, the portal could close too early and he would be a puddle underneath all the debris. He couldn't even pay enough attention to see if anyone else took shelter.

After the impact and the resounding shockwave, not to mention the strain of keeping the portal up, Geata was pretty shook up. Maybe not physically, but his nerves were already shot. Still, when he noticed the dragon was getting away, he didn't waste a single moment. A portal opened up directly underneath him and he vanished through it. I didn't even see if anyone took cover, he noticed as he shot after the dragon. He could only hope the effort wasn't wasted.

When he got close, Geata noticed the giant super grabbing on to the dragon's tail. He could see blood on the back of his head. There was no doubt that he had just sustained that injury from the falling rubble. Feeling determined to make sure the super didn't get hurt again, Geata sat himself down on the giant's left shoulder. "Hey big guy," he said quickly. "I'm gonna do my best to make sure you don't get hit again, alright? So don't mind me." He then prepared himself to open a portal at a moments notice in order to protect against attacks from any direction.


Interference (Obfuscation) against dorsal fin

It’d been a long time since Limen had last felt true terror, but when that eye fell upon her, between the buildings and away from the fight, she felt a deep chill run down her spine. She was frozen in place, an unnerved smile on her lips. She had the uncanny feeling that, had the dragon wanted to, it could have ended things for her right there. It simply had bigger targets than her; better things to do.

What the hell was she doing here?

It was the screech in her ear that snapped her back to reality. She ripped the earpiece out and threw it to the ground like it was a spider. She could still hear it screeching in the ear that hadn’t just been blown out.

Rocks and rubble began to rise from the ground. Better cover was starting to sound like a really good idea. Acting quickly, Limen stuffed a couple of choice items from her bike bag into her pockets and abandoned her motorcycle. Keeping under the structures as she ran, she scanned the area for her teammates. Gil had left black marks on the dragon where he’d hit it - maybe the dragon’d like a bit more bruising?

Limen drew her bow over her shoulder and five explosive arrows from her quiver. Seeing the spots, even from this distance, was simple. Hitting them would be simple as well, as long as the thing didn’t start moving all over the place again. She hoped those who were holding the tail could keep it in place.

She shot the first four arrows in quick succession. The second hit an unexpected piece of rubble and exploded mid-air, but the other three should otherwise hit their blackened marks. As she was stringing the fifth, however, a large piece of rubble fell from the sky and struck her in the shoulder. Limen let out a grunt, dropping the arrow. The place it hit already felt wet. There wasn’t time to shoot any further arrows; more rubble and attacks would be coming soon. Limen hopped down from her small perch and continued to move through the ruins of complexes. She had to keep moving.

Action: Aggression (Subdual) against the main body

So much was happening at once, and Awenydd was taking it all in as her fingers tore along the strings of her guitar. A guy in a hood had jumped off of a soaring motorcycle to hammer punch the dragon head on. Another grabbed its tail and looked like he could swing it out of left field. Someone was drawing their blade against it, and there was a horde of...cats? Yes. Cats.

“That...is metal as fuck.” Ideas surged through her mind as she continued to play, feeling a brief lift as it looked as though some of the hits had landed. The chaos that tore around the dragon seemed to be doing better than nothing, spurring them all on.

And then the delusion went up in a blaze of vainglory. She lifted an arm over her head, trying to dodge the worst of the debris as it rained down on everyone, feeling the sting of cuts along her arm and back. Hissing with clenched teeth, she braced herself as the dragon went low on its side, exposing its fin on a level that was more within rage, but was it another trick? 

Only one way to find out, and the tail was too unpredictable for her liking. She changes songs, unleashing her fury at the fin of the beast as it turns about, expressing her rage against  that which would dare to come to this place, to her home, and destroy it.

It was time to invite karma to the party.

Action: Agression (Destruction) against the fin

    Misty was glad that she had removed her own sense smell as she walked through the strange distorted, twisted buildings. They were unsteady, some had fallen, crushing their occupants. Other had lit on fire, burning people alive. Still more corpses looked as though they had themselves been twisted by the dragon's power. Misty stretched out her power, feeling for anyone that was still alive. Misty had seen destruction before, not this bad, but very close, and it made her feel sick. There were people trapped up on the top of one distorted building. It wasn’t on fire, at least not anymore.

    Misty scaled the building with ease. They had been burned, but not terribly. Misty decided that it was best to move them to the ground before she healed them. Less resistance from them. One at a time, all eight of the clustered, burned adults were moved to the ground. It was tiring work, at at times they would moan. One man in particular was very very heavy, apparently having had a bit more than his fair share of food throughout his life.

    Once her host of burned, and some slightly bruised from the descent from the roof, patients were all on the ground, She healed the burns to the point of new skin and perished the bruises from existence. The smoke was thick in the air here, and Misty took a few minutes after she finished healing the last man to sit and clean out her lungs. After she had finished with that, she did again, something that she would never dream of doing under normal circumstances. She woke them up, one at a time.

They grumbled and groaned as they woke, coughing in the smoke. One woman saw Misty as she turned to leave.

    “Hey you!” the woman called, not seeing well through the smoke, “What happened?”

    Misty grinned to herself, knowing that the woman would want nothing to do with her the moment that she knew that she was a super.

    “A dragon has attacked Emerald City, coming in from the north. You're near the middle of the line of damage. You should head south, and get out of the city.” Misty told her.

    “Hey, weren’t we on the roof?” One of the men, know fully awake, asked.

Misty smiled under her hood, not that they would see.

    “You were. This is as much as I can do for you. There are others that need help. Get out of this city.” Misty told him, before walking off into the smoke, not giving the people that she had just saved more than a second thought. As she walked away she thought she heard one of them say ‘I think that was a super.’ But she wasn’t about to go back and find out.

    On she walked, following the mounded disruption in the ground, the place where the dragon had been. She didn’t like the feeling the ground that the dragon had touched gave her. It seemed to sting at her ever so slightly. She had a bad feeling about it.



[Maneuver Speed against Dorsal Fin]