Friday, March 18th, 2011
???, Dark Continent
(Multiversal Emulator)
"What did you do?!" You demand as you skid to a halt just in time to snatch your Master out of the air, turning the motion into a light spin in order to bleed off momentum.
And… dodge the Grimm. Can't forget about those things.
As it turns out, while you could conceivably kill an infinite number of these things, particularly with all your minions out and about for once - an action your Emulation would have literally never taken, but that you absolutely would - you can't kill them faster than they can spawn. At least, not enough to appreciably put a dent in the cloak of black and white shrouding the landscape and straddling the horizon.
"Hey! What–?" you begin to repeat yourself, hoisting your Master up in front of you while whirling about to put yourself between a charging bear monster's jaws and your charge. It is at this point, with what amounts to an entire bear wrapping its jaws around your upper spine, that you realize your Master is unconscious. Her hands still have a white-knuckled grip on her sword and cane, and she is still breathing - so she's obviously alive. But unconscious? You try to remember the last time your Master exerted herself so hard that she blacked out, and come up blank.
"Oh, crap." You curse, slamming your head backwards and into the bear that is biting you before it can temporarily cripple you. You can't afford to be paralyzed for even a second right now. Your Master checking out of the fight makes the entire situation abruptly more dangerous.
In more ways than one.
"Don't melt, don't melt, don't melt..!" You chant to yourself, hoisting Taylor over one shoulder and leaping over the crowd of monsters towards a cleared patch of ground that has recently been scorched by the charging form of Balrog. All around you, your subordinate demons rage, razing the earth with brute force and obliterating massive swathes of monsters with each passing moment. You mostly ignore that, as you frantically pat yourself down until you feel a finger slip into the tiny Gap that keeps you connected to your own Earth - currently located under your jacket near your kidney. You poke and prod at your skin in the area for a moment in order to get a feel for things, and when you determine that the Gap isn't shrinking or otherwise changing - thus dooming you, your Master, and Mem to death - you breathe a sigh of relief and turn your attention to the other rather large problem you didn't bother to pay any attention to.
"What did you do!?" Salem demands as she emerges from the crowd of Grimm, her clothes having largely failed to survive your younger sister's apparent efforts to maim the Queen of the Grimm beyond all recognition.
The woman herself is fine though. In at least two ways even.
"I'm allowed to check out the evil queen, right? It's not bad unless she tricks me with it somehow. I think. Probably." You mutter to yourself. You don't bother to turn your gaze away - because that would be suicidal - but you do catch the faint twitching of the womans eyebrow as you say it, so you assume she heard you. Also, she conjures a new dress of liquid black Grimm material not more than a few moments after your comment, so…
She can feel modesty, at least. You had been wondering given the nihilism on display with her whole… 'end the world' plot.
"Answer me, you wretched oaf." The Queen of the Grimm demands of you, her voice deceptively quiet. You realize that with her demands, the battlefield has gone utterly silent, save for the distant rumble of your demons raging. It is the only reason you can ever hear what she says.
The moment is very solemn, and dare you say, climactic.
So naturally, you ruin it by being a smart ass.
"Hey, look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I'm Multiversal Emulator, but all my friends call me Emmy. I know I came here to help my Master obliterate you and all that, but could I interest you in something I think is a very pertinent piece of information?" You ask with a quick glance at your opposition. An untold number of Grimm, an ancient immortal Sorceress, and your Master still unconscious.
Eh, you've dealt with worse.
"Ah, so only now when you realize the futility of your attack do we see you for what you are. Just another pathetic, self interested, hu-" Salem starts to gloat, her demeanor easing in the face of what you are sure she perceives as you mouthing off in your last moments.
"Pretty sure it was the birds." You cut her off with a winning smile, and a single finger pointed up and over her shoulder at the sky.
Salem - perhaps secure in her immortality - grits her teeth in visible irritation and glances over her shoulder. Now, under normal circumstances, that would probably have been a ruse. Your current emulation is known for his flippancy and, to a lesser extent, his almost cartoonish love of a good gag in the middle of a fight.
This is not one of those times.
Something Salem seems to register only slightly slower than you, as she turns to regard the tide of blackened avians currently descending on your location.
And by descend, you mean really descend. The speed those things are displaying is less 'bird' and more 'cruise missile' at least, if you're judging things right.
"Explain." Salem growls at you, not bothering to turn towards you as she says it.
"Well, you see, when a mama bird and a daddy bird love each other very much--" You say, barely managing to hoist your Master out of the way of a giant clawed hand of shadow that rises out of the ground and snatches at your face, digging its sharpened digits in the sides of your face with what you are pretty sure is an intent to rip your face off, which…
You've been eviscerated a lot, and you are pretty sure you can survive having your face ripped off, but wow do you not want to have to learn what that feels like.
"Explain." Salem demands again, somewhat more urgently as the storm of feathers angles sharply downward towards her and the army of Grimm around you.
You open your mouth to do just that - although, your explanation was going to be 'I have no idea' - but something curious happens.
The birds, all of them corvids of some stripe although not all the exact same type of corvid, land amidst the Grimm with such a ferocious physical impact that hundreds of the creatures are obliterated by the landing. You are briefly confused by this - because birds don't generally have the kind of power and your Master didn't exactly explain her plan to you ahead of time - but Salem's answer quickly provides itself to her, in the form of an army of pale-skinned humans.
Wherever a crow or raven descends, there is a burst of force, and instead of a bird there stands a person. Each of them different, each of them wreathed in energy, and each of their faces contorted into such a mask of fury that you almost have a hard time believing it.
"It's Bird to Human." Taylor grunts from where you are holding her over one shoulder, facing away from the witch queen.
"That's… great. Little help?" You murmur to her while Salem is distracted by the frankly absurd sight of a wave of naked men flinging thunder and flame from their hands at the Grimm surrounding them.
Your face is still in the claw thing after all.
"Sec." She responds, sounding very tired still as she pushes herself off of you, then swings once at the shadowy claw gripping your skull with her sword, severing in the middle and causing the entire construct to disperse into the air around you.
"Should we… help them?" You ask curiously, and with a not inconsiderable amount of relief. You are confident in your ability to survive out here alone - even disregarding how little you dying even matters - but you were really worried that you weren't going to be able to fully protect your Master for a second there.
"Maybe. I'm going to try something." Taylor says, flicking her sword hand and causing Nemesis to vanish to wherever she goes when not in use. Then she lifts a finger to prod at her glasses - the Crystallized Wisdom - which instantly change to mimic the rounded appearance that Ozpin seems to favor.
"You like it? I know it's kind of a waste of power but I think the man who taught me would be pretty proud of it." She calls tiredly to Salem, twirling Long Memory and planting it in the ground around her. The island of peace you were in earlier rapidly shrinks as the chaotic combat going on all around you pushes man and grimm alike about. As powerful as these new arrivals are, they don't appear to be exceptionally durable, at least not in the same way that Aura makes a person. Some of them have already been wounded during the fighting, but for every one the Grimm take, two more appear to defend their injured comrades. They aren't just angry, they're desperate, manic almost. Even as you make that observation, one larger than normal man rams his fist directly down the gullet of a gorilla Grimm. He then ignites the air around himself, obliterating both the monster and his arm in one fell swoop.
Then to your utter amazement, he turns and continues to fight, even sans the arm.
Salem, for her part, whirls on your Master, her face set in a snarl.
"How?" She demands, stomping towards you with no regard for her own safety, a choice that proves ill-advised as three of the bird people (you make a note to find a better name for them than that) jump on her, levering her to the ground and unleashing their elemental power on her.
"Magic, obviously. What do you think? 'Trifling' enough? That was the word you used, right?" Taylor says blandly. Then she frowns when it becomes obvious that the woman is too busy regenerating to talk to her.
"Hey, knock it off, I'm trying to have a moment here." Your Master calls to the bird people, who continue to heap abuse on the pale skinned woman.
"I said," Taylor growls, allowing her spider-shaped aura to emanate up and out from her just enough to force them to pay attention to her. "Stop it."
This gets their attention, and though you can tell she still isn't back to her full power - usually she would be more than capable of casting a shadow over the entire battlefield, but this use of her power barely extends past Salem herself - the two men and a woman abusing the Witch slow and then stop their assault in favor of merely holding her still.
"Where was I..? I had a bit planned, but… eh. Anyway, I doubt you recognize everyone the gods killed, and I definitely couldn't bring them all back, but I think I got enough of them, don't you think? Might be hard to monopolize the continent with all the monsters on it when there's a whole civilization here killing them off before they can get anywhere." Taylor says, taking short tired steps forward until she is only a few feet away from Salem.
"So? What's the plan now? I gather you were under the impression you could just use attrition to get your way, but how does the math for that work out when I can just bring back everyone you kill? Your magic is useless against me, your monsters are useless against me, your spies found, your plots spoiled. You brought your best and I've dashed it against the rocks in a single afternoon." Taylor says, her face slowly shifting from tired to the menacing smile of Yukari Yakumo as she speaks.
"You… You are the reason Cinder stopped communicating with me, aren't you?" Salem asks in a hoarse voice.
"Put the fear of God in her, yeah." Your Master says offhandedly. You don't think she notices it but the bird people shoot each other knowing looks at her statement.
"Are-" Salem pauses, and for the first time since you've met her, displays an expression besides contempt or rage on her face. She looks… afraid.
"Are you a god?" She whispers.
Your Master - responding in a way you are sure she has decided to based off information the wisdom gives her - sidesteps the question, instead returning with one of her own.
"If I was, do you think you could stop me?" She asks placidly.
She doesn't respond verbally. Instead, her answer is made obvious by the glowing of her body, as her form is condensed down into a small angular shape on the ground. A dagger, a black one, with a fleshy unpleasant looking handle, and a single ophidian eye in the center of the blade.
"I'll take that as a no." Taylor says smugly, summoning Nemesis and using her blade to flick the dagger upward so that one of the bird people can catch it.
The second she does so, there is a moment of sudden stillness on the battlefield.
And then the Grimm… start to die. They don't suffer any injury, and nothing is actually attacking them. Rather, they seem to be simply… dispersing, like magic being dispelled.
"Well. That was certainly a workout. Sorry about the abrupt, well you know…" Taylor says awkwardly to the bird people - who are the only living beings present, all of them naked, and all of them spread across the landscape in massive groups that nearly match the number of Grimm that had once been present. Overhead, yet more of the birds swirl in a hurricane of feathers with its eye centered on the spot your Master is standing in.
Slowly, hesitantly, the woman who caught the dagger gets down on one knee, facing your Master, and as though that singular action was the start of a massive chain of dominos, so too does everyone around her, and then everyone around them, and so on and so forth - until you are the only person standing in line of sight.
'I didn't think this through.' Your Master shoots at you in a sudden panic.
'Doesn't Earth Bet have a whole legend about the resurrection of a single man? There's a whole book about him? How did you figure doing the same for a whole civilization was going to be regarded?' You send back with some amusement.
'I thought I'd just thank them for the help and go! I didn't- I mean-' She babbles at you.
'Do you want me to handle it?' You ask.
'Please.' She begs, suiting her words to action and immediately pivoting to cleave a Gap open for her to vanish through.
"You. You are her herald?" The woman asks you, standing from her kneeling position the second your Master is out of sight.
You blink, turning toward her after confirming the Gap isn't shrinking while you stop to talk.
"...Yeah, something like that." You say slowly, pausing for a moment to mentally beckon all your wayward demons back into their weapon forms, and then away to wherever it is they go when you aren't using them. Some of the bird people were starting to look at them oddly.
"Please. What-" The woman begins haltingly, glancing around herself and then taking a step forward to place herself in front of the two men that had been helping subdue Salem. Her skin is incredibly pale - so much so that she could easily be mistaken for being Salem's sibling - and her hair is the same bizarre pattern of feathers in the place of hair that Mun sometimes takes on when she is halfway between her two forms.
"- what do we call her?" she whispers.
"My Master goes by many names!" You say boisterously. "Buuuut mostly they call her Nexus back home." you add more seriously.
"Ne…xus." She mutters with a frown.
"Yeah, you know, like… the point where everything connects?" You explain.
"Yes… I believe we do. What would she have of us?" The woman asks, glancing nervously at the open Gap.
"She's big on free will. Just… don't be evil, I guess? You know, normal stuff for this place - kill the Grimm, help people." You pause to think. "Maybe put some pants on before someone comes to investigate."
She nods at you. "Her will be done."
"Ah… maybe don't do that. She's not big on worship either. Seriously, just don't be jerks or people will blame it on my Master." You caution.
When you are sure the woman takes your point - or at least, grasps the 'don't be jerks' part - you nod at her and step through the Gap.
Directly into your Master's bedroom.
"Are… we not going to talk to Ozpin? We kind of just solved a major problem for him…" You say slowly, turning on the spot until you find your Master, sitting on her bed, breathing quickly into a paper bag she seems to have acquired from somewhere. Mem and Nemesis sit to either side of her, patting her on the back with varying degrees of enthusiasm and concern.
Mem seems genuinely worried. Nemesis just seems amused.
"She wrote a letter for him before she began to hyperventilate." Mem explains to you.
"Didn't feel like dealing with the fallout of her actions? What about your sort of sister?" You ask. Taylor lowers her paper bag to respond, but Nemesis beats her to it.
"Hey, hey, Emmy, is the weapon of a God also considered a God? Am I right? I'm a God! Woo!" She cheers.
Your Master replaces the paper bag and goes back to hyperventilating again.
"...We also left a letter for them." Mem explains.
You can't help yourself. You snicker at her.
You can clear the issue up later.
After all, with Salem handled, what's the worst that could happen?