Session 44 - Welcome to Night Vale

Previously, across the Horizon…
Our heroes have been exploring the Viesen-Croyle warehouse in service of AZYS, with seemingly every room bringing more trouble.
Medical equipment designed for sylphs and humans, but no others.
A sylph ripped apart into her component element, just a bloodied scarf remaining.
A plant-based bioweapon in storage.
A dead Vice Director of Crystal Development, burned to death by his own bioweapons in his own office.
A cannon designed to destroy something more dangerous than ships, free for the taking if they agree to report the results of the beta testing.
A test subject who signed in, and never signed out.
A test subject somehow changed by the test itself.
A test subject that is about to engage the party, whether they like it or not.
We join our heroes as time speeds back up into the clear and immediate danger…
**
"Ohhhhhhhhh we're in so much trouble," Linnet laments.
Jacaranda Vale, test subject, airship engineer, missing person, normally human, normally not forcibly merged with the general concept of the feline couerl, her face twisted beyond normal recognition, her body rearranging itself to try to accommodate the creature warring within her, leaps.
"Nah, I knew this was going to happen. We're good!" Orrey shouts as his telltale opener unleashes a crushes black gravity ball at the leaping Vale.
Bast aims his crossbow back through the doorway on the east end of the catwalk, deliberately slowing his breath down after the dash to get there.
Orrey watches as the devastating magnitude of the gravitational implosion surrounds and crushes the creature below.
And then he wonders what the hell went wrong when it barely affects her at all. "She's got some kind of shield up...or something?"
"I repeat: we're in so much trouble."
The shattered remains of a once-functioning elevator slam into the ground, compressing with a whurmmmm sound. Vale's one good whisker twitches.
"Oh /kudzu/," Yves mutters.
"Then we just have to hit harder," Isa says, breaking into a run. She hops up into the air, plants a boot on the catwalk railing, and launches towards the top of the open area.
Bast lets loose something between a grumble and a sigh as Isa charges in. Oh, and a crossbow bolt. The pull of the gravity ball drags it slightly off course, but it still easily finds its way into Jacaranda's side.
Yves stares anxiously down at the person formerly known as an actual normal human, honest, and tries a tentative "How does this being feel about being shot in the face with lightning?" first approach.
Linnet follows it up with a bolt of ice to Vale's less human shoulder, in case the lightning is insufficiently persuasive.
Vale barely flinches from either elemental barrage, skin swirling itself around in response to the external stimuli.
Orrey watches as everything launched at Vale does little besides slowly wear down whatever is blocking for her. He focuses on the watch at his side and a grey lock over a sword appears to fly out to Vale, surrounding her and glowing brightly before an aura of the same color drapes itself over her.
Vale retaliates with a sudden, piercing screech, far more animal than human erupting from her throat.
Orrey claps his hands over his hears but manages to weather the sonic attack.
Another bolt follows the first as Bast tries to see how Orrey's doing from his nice sturdy doorframe.
Orrey shakes off the ringing in his ears and puts on a grim face as he watches Isa.
The tip of Isa's spear is nearly incandescent from the force with which she descends; a cone of compressed air is visible around her and the impact with Vale's body sends a ring of dust up from the pit. And yet, the actual damage seems to be minimal, as Isa hops back and starts circling the couerl-hybrid warily.
Immediately following Bast's bolt, there is the sound of a shattering crystal, and then the snap of a fractured psyche.
Jacaranda Vale breaks.
The couerl battling for supremacy within Vale's twisted body wins.
And then they both lose.
Vale's left arm explodes in a jagged twist of steel and sinew, claws like greatswords snapping out to scrape along the metal wall just below Bast's position.
The limb reels back like a tape measure, jolting a bony buckler and cracked bow on the right arm.
Jacaranda Malison Vale scans the room, two mismatched eyes with three intellects shining behind them, and then moves.
Vale swings her left arm, muscles whipping out into a spiral of snapping tendons, two separate lines of claws extending for a double cut at Orrey.
The right arm slams into the ground and pushes the debris down, caving in the ground beneath the newest arrival, Isa.
The ground beneath Isa shifts into a jagged pit of medically-equipped spikes, but the dragoon is already elsewhere.
Orrey flies backwards as the blades slash him open, blood spattering on the walls behind him just before he slams into it. Orrey breathes out as he realizes that she's still in there!!!
The blood splatter is very reminiscent of the one on the ceiling, it can be noted.
Linnet looks up at the ceiling, down at Orrey, up again, down again.
"Vale's alive! She's being controlled by some sort of...I don't know, parasitic mind control device creature thing!!! We can still save her!" Orrey shouts.
"...minimize damage?" Yves asks, completely baffled. "Couldn't we just get her a nice forest or--fine, right, okay!"
Isa hops back from spikes, looking up towards the railing. "She isn't going to do us the same favor!"
"After we minimize the damage on you, we'll think about it." Linnet runs a hand down Orrey's shirt and knits up some of the damage (to both shirt and skin). "As charming as the bullheaded adventurer approach was, we all like you a little better when you think things through a bit more. Let's go do that." She offers him a hand up.
Orrey puts on his best Linnet face as he starts lecturing himself. [Expression is exasperated, yet somewhat amused] "Stop being such a bullheaded adventurer, self!"
Linnet snorts in appreciated amusement.
Orrey then copies her spell on himself, sending out healing light.
"Okay. Okay. Shoot her with lightning, but not... /too/ hard," Yves mutters to himself, sparks flickering along his fingertips as he stares down into the murder pit. He swivels, and aims for a spot on the floor that's merely /near/ Vale.
The lightning bolt hammers down into the ground, and then crackles out across the rest of the room, electrifying everything in the room that isn't Yves's friend. Broken lights briefly flicker to life. Machines whirr. The elevator shifts and buckles under the weight.
"...I mean, could've been harder," Yves says to himself. "Pretty sure it could've been."
Orrey takes some cover in the door opposite of Bast and waits for another opportunity to strike.
"Minimize damage," Isa mutters to herself, shifting around and trying some experimental jabs. "The hell good does that do." The jabs don't seem to do even minimal damage, as she continues to probe defenses.
The left arm moves, twisting to aim at Isa, with the cat's eye on her head traveling all the way down to the bulbous end to open wide with a full Blaster Shot at the Dragoon. Another similar tendril lashes out wildly, hurtling through the air past Orrey at Linnet, green crystalline shards emerging from the end.
Isa vanishes for a brief second inside a massive beam of yellow light, emerging much the worse for wear.
The crystal-edged whip slashes through Linnet, leaving intense pain in its wake.
For a moment, all is serene for Linnet. A soft summer's breeze, drifting through a field of flowers. Perfect peace. Everything as it should be. Outside, the wind is howling, but in here, there's just the slightest drift, the gentle breath of a warm day, the calm sensation of everything just working itself out, everything's going to be all right.
The moment, always vanishing. The reality, much worse. Much, much worse.
The wind is still blowing, Linnet's hair whipping about wildly. But she can no longer hover.
Bast snarls loudly as he sees Linnet scythed down and Isa staggering from the attack she took. Crossbow forgotten for the moment, he snatches something off his belt and hurls it in a straight line at Jacarantha's sinuous, orange-furred back. "Eat this!"
The cloud of vile-smelling smoke seems horribly familiar.
Linnet opens her eyes to a much less serene scene than her brain had conjured for her. Her entire abdomen hurts like a red-hot cleaver went through her, and...her feet are stuck to the floor. Um. Okay. One problem at a time.
"Everyone use those potions Orrey found, my healing's really not going to be enough right now." (Even her voice feels like it's been slashed.) She follows her own advice and pops a potion from her bag, chugging it and wincing at the fake berry flavor. Then she tries to fly up out of range...and only succeeds in knocking herself backward. "I can't fly. Why can't I fly?" Her voice rises in combined anger and panic. "You crazy blowhard, what did you do?"
"Are we /really sure/ about this whole 'gentle damage' thing?" Yves asks, with a level of anxiety that's about to break into either panic or calm and hasn't decided which way to cascade yet. Regardless, he goes for another...loosely targeted... sort of lightning bout.
Orrey pulls something out of his bag and walks to the end of the balcony. "Isa, open wide!!!" He uncaps a bottle and hurls it...in a Perfect Spiral directly to Isa's open mouth.
Isa looks up, still looking like she's been put through the wringer, and then the mangle, and then the garbage disposal. She manages a confused "wha-" and then the bottle ploonks into her mouth and she looks, briefly, ridiculous. Then she gulps down the potion, spits out the bottle, and looks a lot better. "Fuck it," Isa says. "You're lucky I'm staying on the ground. That's minimized damage." Her spear finds home at the juncture of limb and body, and she's not nice about it.
Jacaranda Malison Vale pulls the moving eye back to the side of her head, a roar of pain mixing with a cry for help, and the left arm flares into a roaring outward wave of fire, covering the full room in one quick wave.
The right arm snaps over and... scratches the top of what might be the forearm on the left side, lovingly, like one would tenderly stroke a beloved pet.
Bast takes a half-step to the left as the gust of flame blasts through the doorway, and leans out to return fire once it passes. The bolt lodges itself somewhere between the pieces of metal on her left arm.
"Right, panic later." With one hand, Linnet throws a snowball at Vale's fire-shooting arm; with the other, she casts a dramatic arc and briefly fills the room with sparkles and the scent of cinnamon rolls.
Yves, whose anxiety was being toasted toward panic, straightens under the sparkles and says, "This had /better/ be what we're supposed to be doing. But I guess not every problem can be solved by mind-speech with the arcane or just lots more arcane..." On which note he drops down another handful of carefully spaced sparks of a very different nature than Linnet's, for the gentlest possible LIGHTNING TO THE FACE process he currently has available.
Orrey immediately copies Yves' mood, anxiety flaring, and his stance, hand rising and lightning crackling. His eyes flick back and forth between Thunderbun and Jacaranda to get the casting down to a science, and then he sends out a lightning bolt to match.
"Didn't we agree to NOT RETURN TO BULLHEADED ADVENTURER MODE?!?!?" Linnet yells after him on his way down.
"...huh," says Yves, as Lightning!Orrey goes over the railing.
Isa looks up. "Oh for..."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" Orrey yells as he brings down his knife into Vale's arm.
Isa tilts her head as Orrey connects. "Huh. Nice work!" she yells over to him, and darts in for some puncturing of her own. Her spear finds purchase, but an objective observer would have to admit, Orrey did a better job.
Orrey collapses in a pile nearby after bouncing off of the creature post-hit. "Thanks... I think I get partial Dragoon status now!" Orrey beams at Isa.
A bubble of poison surges inside the arm.
Jacaranda Malison Vale... breaks.
The Malison rips itself free of its human host, shredding skin and bone as it pulls itself up into its own living, pulsing, breathing, bleeding, snapping thing.
Four legs, one whipping tail, two crystal-bladed arms, half of a cat's gaping face, bone plating over the place where a human's face never should have been but was regardless.
The Malison, a centaur of scientific nightmares, rages.
The left arm again surges, this time lighting surging through the entire room, sparks shooting off of the ruined machines.
The right arm surges, crystal shards again slicing out, seeking out fresh sustenance.
"Orrey! Get her clear!" Isa starts calling out orders as she sizes up the new version of the old foe. "Yves, light it the fuck uRGAHHH"
Bast just manages to get the elemental aura on his crossbow activated as the crackle of electricity finds its way through the catwalk and up his spine. The crossbow whacks hard into the doorframe, and only a few cold gusts of wind seem to chase each other around the stock as Bast gets his muscles back under control.
"Orrey, save your potions! I'll heal her once we're done with this clusterfluff!" Linnet throws more snowballs at the Malison, but they burst harmlessly over his head.
"Oh! Yes! Right!" Yves shouts back to Isa. He claps his hands together, and... points.
The first time Yves did this, the lightning spoke for him.
This time, Yves speaks through the lightning.
Flick, swipe, left, right. Flick, swipe, left right.
Then Yves is not alone, as the lightning follows his every move, twitching and crackling along Yves's outline right by his side, an electric double following his every move, stronger currents coursing through the matching places for the earrings along each drooping ear.
Every motion matched, every step met, every gesture mimicked, save one -- Yves and the double giving the briefest of nods to each other.
".../right/," says Yves, very calmly, lets the center of the thunderstorm exist in one specific part of the room. As does his double, in perfect harmony. It's not so much a pair of lightning strikes as a singular whirling pillar of blinding blue-white energy rising from that point right... THERE.
The Malison is erased.
Isa gives Yves an armored thumbs-up, and sits down on a chunk of rubble.
Orrey checks on Jacaranda.
Yves thumbs up back. As does his double.
Bast leans on the railing in front of him, crossbow dangling at ease, as he contemplates the spot where the Malison was just a moment ago and blinks his eyes to clear the glare.
"...who needs cannons?"
"Is she okay?" Yves calls, echoed by a staticky replica of his intonation.
Linnet races over and drops to her knees by Jacaranda's side, heedless of the blood.
"Are you okay?" Bast calls to Linnet across the room.
"Thank you, but don't ask. Not thinking. Checking on her first."
Jacaranda Vale is very badly hurt. The entire left side of her body is covered in bruises and mild burns, three lines of scarring across her throat. Her leg is certainly broken, her elbow may be as well. She is far too thin, skin stretched across her bones. Her hand is covered in blood, not all of it hers, her fingers cut up badly.
But Vale is alive.
And recognizably human.
The lightning double winks out, and the rest of the flickering electricity in the room goes with him, leaving the battered and bruised in the darkness.
End session.