|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 11, 2008 11:59:08 GMT -5
A portal opened up within the confines of the Palace Courtyard, and Vincent flipped out of it, shaking his body of the shadows as the portal reduced to nothingness as it closed behind him. He stood up slowly to normal height, and surveyed the new world around him with glowing golden eyes. It appeared he had arrived in front of some sort of giant building, a elaborate palace, with the area around him being completely deserted. He smelt sand in the desert breeze that blew past, tugging at his raven hair and tattered crimson cloak, convining him he was in some sort of desert area.
In front of him, lay two giant doors leading towards the palace. Behind him, on the opposite side of the rectangular walled-up space of garden path, were another identical large two doors. Vincent could hear market chatter behind it, and figured it led out to the street.
As long as he was here, he might as well go introduce himself to the royals in the palace, if they were as friendly a kingdom as Ariel's Atlantica was. He strode over to the first pair of doors he had spotted, and held up the huge iron ring that acted as the doorknob, pulling at it.
Nothing. It was locked.
He wasn't one to go jumping locked doors just to meet the local guard that might have been behind the door. Too much effort for so little a curiousity. Instead he turned around, cape billowing in the desert breeze as it followed him, walking over to open the doors out to the marketplace instead.
Then he could find out where he was, mark it on the notes he had been editing in his phone, and journey to the next world. He didn't expect to foresee any difficulty with the Heartless along the way. It was too quiet, really.
But that could be changed, if the Heartless arrived and attacked him. He felt he could handle another one of someone else's experiments...
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 11, 2008 12:21:50 GMT -5
"AAAAAAAAAAHH! They're everywhere! RUUUUN!"
Three men ran right by Vincent, scared out of their minds. Silence followed when they turned the nearest corner to escape...whatever was chasing them. Nothing was chasing them though. Three screams, a roar, then an arm splattered on the other wall. The screaming stopped when a body slumped against the ground, and was being dragged away.
An eerie silence. Something stank of death nearby, and it wasn't recent. More silence...almost the tell-tale sign of an untimely doom. The shadow of some kind of...beast...loomed against the wall, and by the size of its shadow, it was large.
Another gritty, almost watery roar followed.
((Xurg will show up...just not right now))
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 12, 2008 9:10:39 GMT -5
The ex-Turk didn't look the slightest bit alarmed by the events that happened before him as he opened the door to the marketplace, after the two men that had run past him screaming like they had their limbs cut off. He stepped over one of the those limbs now that had splattered against the wall, not bothering to look at the creature behind the corner that was now probably too distracted devouring one or all of the doomed men. There was nothing he could have done to save them, they had been fated to die, and now there was no-one to save.
And he wasn't about to go piss off a creature that was able to kill three one or two grown men in less than a few seconds. The local guard or whoever protected the people of this world could deal with the beast themselves. If it was this freely rampant within the city walls of a palace kingdom, they must have had dealt with creatures like this before.
He didn't even batter an eyelid as he passed by it's shadow on the wall, as he stepped as quietly as a phantom, across from the corner to the open alleyway adjacent the palace gates. The creature most likely wouldn't jump him if it was too busy eating it's victims. And if it did, Vincent had dealt with worse. His body thanks to Hojo's modifications was near indestructable, and if it was killing out of bloodlust and jumped him, he'd sense it coming before it touched him and transform into something just as deadly to give it something to be afraid of.
But for the moment, he was quite content with ignoring the predator and focusing on his main objectives. He wasn't looking to stay for any length of time.
He would have no part in this.
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 12, 2008 11:01:18 GMT -5
Another shadow appeared, then another, and another, and soon the rooftops were coated in the monsters. One of them came up over the edge to look down at Vincent. The thing looked like a type of giant skeletal dog, with huge teeth and claws to match. It clicked something, then roared, getting the attention of the nearest dozen of the creatures. They clicked, and got the attention of the nearest dozen as well. Soon the packs all had their eyeless gazes on Vincent.
Just like wolves, they started to surround him. The monsters all snarled at him, including the one with the bloodied face. Several huge ones, bigger than the ones that had surrounded Vincent, made themselves known on the rooftops. Pack leaders?
How nice.
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 13, 2008 1:12:42 GMT -5
Vincent sighed. He heard and smelt them all coming before he could see them, spotting they were all alike to the one with the bloody face, which must have killed off the three men. Of course. There had to be not one, but a whole pack of them. Effectively killing off any hopes he had that the locals could deal with it. But even so, he would have kept on walking. What was stopping his path now was the newly summoned pack members that now surrounded him, blocking his path or any route of escape.
He wasn't detered by this, however. Even if the creatures did not look of this world. He had dealt with packs of Guard Hounds on his own planet, the last pack he had eliminated was on route to the WRO headquarters from Nibelheim and the Shinra mansion, where he had eliminated the alpha pack leader, the Crimson Hound. They looked just as fierce as the pack leaders he had noticed watching from up on the rooftops, who must have planned on observing while their pack members tore Vincent apart.
Hmph. Like that was going to happen.
He stopped and stood unflinching in the middle of the pack of seemingly large wild canines, his right hand clutching Cerberus under his cloak. At the first signs of attack, he would react faster than they could anticipate, and do whatever it took to protect himself, even if it meant another face-off with their pack leaders again. But for the moment he waited, patiently for the pack to organize themselves and make the first co-ordinated strikes against their prey, so he could study their attack pattern and exploit any weaknesses. There was no intention to attack first, as he didn't know what to expect of the pack in this world - for all he knew, he was about to slaughter off a bunch of werewolves that were innocent, sentient people otherwise, and he had just walked in on their hunting time. Or if another hero or heros were going to appear and take out the dogs for him, blaming him for stealing their glory. Another reason why he didn't want to get involved in other-worldly affairs.
Other than that, it was just more of the same mutt on a different world, on a different day.
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 13, 2008 11:20:15 GMT -5
There were roughly...almost beyond dozens of them now. The pack leaders snarled, then emitted a loud, ear-piercing screech. Their pack followed suit, screaming an unearthly battle cry. The screeches literally made the nearby buildings shake a bit. The screaming stopped, replaced by low, gutteral moans. Zombies. Zombies started to come around the corner. So they didn't eat them, they just killed them then proceeded to raise them later!
The pack leaders were smarter than anticipated.
The zombies went right by the creatures, and went after Vincent. The pack leaders barked something in a supernatural wail, and the pack members simply stood still, and let the zombies handle it.
For now.
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 15, 2008 6:47:52 GMT -5
He couldn't believe what he was seeing, even as he was standing in precaution with a pack or so of skeletal hounds surrounding him, it all seemed like some really awful horror movie. He couldn't understand the natural selection process of these creatures and how they survived as he put together why they were howling.
So, they attacked their prey not to kill them, but to turn them into zombies... so, what did they eat exactly? The victims their zombie underlings fed on? Why have the slow undead kill their prey if they couldn't already do so themselves? And if so, why would the supernatural evolve these creatures to have sharp canine rows of teeth and claws, and hunt together in packs, when the zombies killed their prey for them? All they needed was a way to convert people into zombies, like develop a simple set of fangs to inject them with. All the rest of this intimidation seemed unnecessary - in fact, raising the undead against him seemed more disrespectful than the threat they first impossed as a pack. Did they really think Vincent Valentine's end would come from a herd of zombies?
He sighed. They were even less cunning than he thought they were.
And so he waited there simply, still not moving, still not showing the slightest expression on his face that he was at all affected or even impressed. He would wait for the zombies to come at him, and simply do away with them. One of his forms was one of the undead, after all, so he knew their weaknesses and how to handle them. And then he would deal with the hounds.
It didn't seem like a challenge at all. Just an annoyance, really.
((Uh, is Xurgon going to appear at all?))
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 15, 2008 9:34:26 GMT -5
Three heavy, huge, stone blocks proceeded to drop upon three of the pack leaders' heads, surrounded in a purple aura. The thick skulls shattered under the sheer force and weight of the drop, bone shards flying everywhere. That caused the other monsters to turn around, but were greeted by rolling stone blocks. Bones flew everywhere, in shards and in whole pieces.
The zombies were taken out next, splattering everywhere with each slam. That left the rest of the pack members, and their leaders that were not crushed.
The bloody blocks then surrounded a man, who was also surrounded in a purple aura, same as the stone blocks. So this was the one splattering the creatures?
Interesting.
(( Sorry, short and I gotta go do finals ))
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 16, 2008 13:55:08 GMT -5
The demonic man watched as the skeletal pack was seemingly obliterated by flying rocks. To the untrained eye it would have looked like magic or invisible people, but Vincent felt he recognised the purple aura surrounding them, having seen it before.
He watched amusingly as the zombies were next. It wasn't so gratifying to watch the bodies of dead civilians be mushed to pulp, but at least now their bodies had been laid to rest.
He watched as a man strode into sight, the same purple aura surrounding him as they did the blocks, and Vincent felt that he had recognised the raven-haired Nobody. He couldn't believe he had already done his work for him.
It didn't even look like after all that tension, he would need to even lift a finger to stop the undead creatures.
Hmph.
Maybe it saved him the effort... but their presence had started to annoy him slightly. As he walked over, he pulled out his machine gun Griffon from his cloak, and smirked at the Nobody that stood before him.
"Xurgon." he acknowledged him respectfully.
If he was fighting these undead creatures, it changed everything. Xurgon had helped him more than once fight against the Heartless. It was time to repay the favor.
And so he simply raised Griffon, and shot roaring volleys of firey shots at the pack leaders and their followers that were left remaining, a smirk tugging on his lips as he laid waste into them.
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 16, 2008 14:37:59 GMT -5
The emotionless response, "Valentine."
He controlled where the blocks went, then proceeded to throw them at a grouping of the monsters. The purple aura faded away from the block, and momentum carried it to crush the group into piles of splinters. Xurgon proceeded to cause chaos among the undead ranks by tossing blocks like tossing quarter-sized rubber balls. He shattered the skull of a pack member by heel-dropping it.
Vincent's machine gun ripped through the skulls of the beasts, like shooting ceramic dishes. Soon the rooftops and the ground were littered with bone shards. Xurgon dropped the rest of his "borrowed weapons", and touched the ground, the aura fading from him.
He took a quick look at the damage, "Productive."
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 17, 2008 9:50:43 GMT -5
(Btw, forgot to mention this last time, but it's okay with the short posts due to exams. As long as we're amused, they get things done.)
"Quite. And with haste." Vincent replied offhandedly, in his usual stoic tone. In a way that he wouldn't admit to recognise, he and Xurgon were a good match in terms of buisness partners: they were both curt with each other, not allow talking to fill the silence and distract them from their combat. no fuss, no muss.
Except for the splinters and limbs of the undead everywhere.
"You knew these creatures?" Vincent commented openly, Griffon winding down with a wisp of smoke rising from it's barrel before he put it away in his holster against his body. "Native to this world?"
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 17, 2008 10:24:21 GMT -5
"They are the bones of creatures from other worlds, constructed, then animated by darkness. These beasts get more and more advanced the longer the construction takes."
Xurgon was about to say something else to top it off, but was interrupted by a floating lantern whacking him on the back of his head. The large lantern floated off after, and several more followed it. Soon, a circle of those large fancy lanterns were dancing around Vincent, in a syncronized pattern. The blue flames inside the lanterns followed the dancing, flaring with each swing. What were they doing? Another trick of the dead?
The enviroment started to get darker, blue spell runes popping up underneath each dancing lantern. Well this was new. The spell runes started to pulse, oozing some type of magic. The air stank of the stuff, and a low buzz started to penetrate the ears.
Xurgon woke up to the squeaking of the lanterns, and the buzz of the runes. Words would be too late to stop the spell, so instead, he bounced a message into Vincent's head:
Do not let them finish! Shoot the lanterns!
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 20, 2008 8:07:32 GMT -5
He shifted in footstep as Xurgon explained the nature of the beasts. They sounded like a menace, and considered the chaos they would bring if they reached Midgar. Just because him and Xurgon had destroyed the bones, it didn't mean the darkness wouldn't reanimate them again. "Not Heartless or Nobody, then?" he assumed quzzicly, wondering if this was a new type of threat.
He didn't have long to consider it before something new had arrived. Vincent watched as now ghostly lanturns floated out of nowhere and started circling around his head. First skeletal wolves, then zombies, and now this. He didn't need Xurgon to tell him that they were a threat, as he had encountered a Ghost Heartless that had brandished a lanturn before that attacked him, and anything in general that look eerie supernatual was often bad.
So he whipped out Cerberus, allowing some cool-down time for Griffon so it wouldn't overheat and lock-up if he used it, and started trick-shooting the lanterns with several repeated shots from the hip. Each cluster of bullets fired from his tri-barrelled gun effectively took out bunches of lanturns at a time, until they were all apparently destroyed, glass shattering and scattering on the sandy ground.
Once he had finished, Vincent kept his weapon of choice out in case more came along, and looked expectantly at Xurgon with bright golden eyes. "Heartless? Nobodies? Or more 'friends' of yours?" he questioned curiously.
|
|
|
Post by xurgon on May 20, 2008 11:44:02 GMT -5
The lanterns dropped, and the beasts fully solidified. They were, for lack of a better word, ugly. They were covered in the blue flame that was in their lanterns. Each monster shrieked, causing nearby pottery to shatter from the high-pitched eerie note. That interrupted Xurgon's next sentence before he could get it out.
The destruction of the lanterns themselves cancelled the spell, resulting in a backlash of magic. The runes exploded in brilliant columns of light and energy, shooting toward the heavens. Then they all exploded simultaneously.
Xurgon back-kicked one of the monsters, effectively hitting it in the face, but the fire softened the blow considerably, like hitting it with a pillow. A bonus, for the monster's part, was when inflicted with physical damage, the one inflicting it got a good taste of the burning fire. Xurgon's foot was on fire! Just as he put it out, a fiery fist met his face, sending him off the roof.
The monsters were skeletal and dragon-like...
Skeletal wings and tail...
Skeletal body and head...
No legs or pelvis...
...and very large in dimensions. Including that fist.
They decided to attack Vincent, gliding quickly like a phantom to their target. A message, not done by Xurgon, invaded Vincent's mind; a voice not of any human calibur:
JOIN US....
|
|
|
Post by Vincent Valentine on May 21, 2008 8:47:07 GMT -5
Join us?
Hmph.
That wasn't happening.
Vincent leapt into action, jumping onto the rooftops of the Agrabah streethouses towards where Xurgon fell, shooting rapidly towards the new skeletal monstrocities that had grown out of their lanterns when their spell on Vincent had failed.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a Cure materia that Reeve had had one of his Cait Sith clones give him during one of their misadventures. As soon as he saw Xurgon, he inserted the Cure materia into Cerberus, and cast Cure on Xurgon. The only other materia Reeve had given him was a Fire materia, and that certainly wasn't going to help against these flaming monstrocities.
He flipped over to Xurgon, shooting rapidly in mid-air with the same destructive tri-shot bullets that had been enough to pierce through a Deepground Dragonfly helicopter, towards the pack of wyvern skeletons that were now pursuing them. It was a shame none of his forms had any cold-enducing elements that he could use to put out these hellions, so he could only hope his bullets had the same, if not lesser, effect on them that they did with the skeletal wolf pack. He stood defensively by Xurgon's side as he waited for him to pick himself up, a faint smirk tugging at his lips slighty, too busy being on the defensive to turn to look at Xurgon.
"Looks like you draw unwanted attention as much as I do." he suggested humorously as he related the undead to Deepground, as the former dragon undead closed in on them.
((OOC: Love this imagination of yours by the way, it doesn't seem to have any limits, just unending creativity. I don't know if I could do the same. Great job.))
|
|