|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 1:57:45 GMT -4
i wonder how many wishes a star can give When the school unveiled a partnership with the national military in the form of an open house event for quirkers, he balked. The brightest combat experts, engineers, and experiments in the country, all accessible to Yuuei students. This was madness. A complete 180 from the government-sanctioned crackdowns against superhuman abilities prior. Yet at the same time, he appreciated their willingness to adapt to shifting demographics, especially when monsters like Thunder Guy and Shark Dude ran amok. Rather than suppress inexplicable powers, the defense department opted to embrace them, study them, and possibly incorporate them into their special programs. His optimism and trust deflected all nefarious insinuations. Instead, his mind sifted through were the infinite possibilities available to him thanks to these newly made connections. So there he stood, one lonely boi scared stiff at the entrance of a firing range. Red and white targets lined the back wall, erratically arranged. Beneath his feet spanned concrete that spanned the size of a football field, a cold canvas dotted with empty shells. A mustachioed man flapped his gums at him, but the boy couldn't hear a word between his earmuffs and the consecutive blasts from neighboring zones. His best lip reading of Mr. Shinichi's relentless ramble went something like, "Based on what I've tasted, the Triple Loaded Zippy Zap would pair well with Christmas laundry." Kutsu just smiled and nodded. Then all of a sudden, the engineer handed him a rifle. The young student's eyes turned into saucers. It took every fiber of willpower in his body not to drop the firearm. He cradled the weapon in the crook of his arm while temporarily pulling his hearing protection off. "To start off, give this one a try," suggested the arms-savvy host, voice clearer now despite the background noise. "In the meantime, I'll show you what I mean." And with that, the man turned heel and shuffled toward one of the cookie cutter gun huts. Kutsu didn't know what to do. He had zero context for why he was handed this. The visiting student looked up at his new friend, Prickles, who towered silently beside him. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and tightened the strap with a casual, "Target practice?"Prickles clapped her reptilian hands and bent low enough for her master to scale up her back, grabbing the spikes along her spine as handholds, until he sat cross-legged atop her head. He steadied himself by pushing outward against her bugged out eye sockets as the 4.5 meter tall plushie waddled closer to a throng of people shooting at the far wall. The blue-haired dinosaur jockey squinted his eyes and, through his slightly smudged safety goggles, recognized one of them as a classmate. "Alex! How's it going?" he called out, waving a free hand at the expense of nearly toppling off. Hopefully the brunette in question could hear him over the hubbub. He gestured below to the green and blue creature supporting him. "This is Prickles, I made her last weekend. Wanna hop on?" In this arena, the bullseyes sat stationary, but thanks to his newest creation, they'd get in some moving target practice.
wc: 520
tags: @alexander
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 13:38:22 GMT -4
It didn’t take Alexander very long at all to realize that he really liked guns.
He didn’t see much of a practical use for most of them for hero work, given that bullets would naturally cause death a lot more than most other forms of weaponry and there wasn’t really a way to reliably lower the fatality rate of shots. The solution of just hitting them in the arms or legs didn’t seem to be very feasible, especially when moving targets were involved. It was a lot harder to hit the damn targets with these things than he thought, honestly. Even hitting stationary targets, really.
The rifles were definitely the most fun, but he couldn’t see himself ever using them in an actual fight because he’d have to lug the damn thing around so he focused primarily on handguns that would just strap onto his leg or something and be much more accessible if he wanted to go that route later on. While he was by no means a marksman in any sense of the word, he was able to at least hit the man-sized target somewhere pretty consistently. It usually wasn’t anywhere near the bullseye, but a body hit was a body hit. It would still hurt like hell and it would still bleed and do damage.
He didn’t hear Kutsu call out to him through his hearing protection, but as he went to reload he was definitely aware of the shadow of something almost comically large fall over him and he turned to see what it was. Confusion registered on the boy’s face first, and the only reason he didn’t attack it immediately out of instinct was because he recognized the material it was made out of. This wasn’t a normal giant monster sent by a villain to murder him. This was a special giant monster sent by his classmate to murder him. Or say hello. One of the two, but probably murder.
He looked up to see his excitable classmate riding on the giant plushie dinosaur’s head, gesturing for Alex to come up with him. Now normally the American would have likely declined. Kutsu wasn’t exactly the most reliable of individuals in his mind and was just as likely to shove him off the plushie as he was to catch him if he lost his balance and fell down. The entire point of this military demonstration was to try out new things, though, and quite frankly if he was able to use the shadow from the giant dinosaur he could do a lot with his own quirk. Being able to bring around your own giant shadow would be a huge advantage, and he honestly never thought of his classmate’s quirk in those terms before. He thought he was only capable of making those normal sized terrifyingly weaponized plushies with the metal jaws that could probably snap his leg in half.
Knowing that Ito could also make horror movie sized monsters and probably outfit them with metal teeth that could snap shut and destroy entire buildings was probably not the most reassuring thought in the world long-term, but for the moment it was exciting because they could potentially combo quite nicely together. Nothing like a terrifying monster to keep people away from melee range, after all, so the delinquent wasted no time in trying to climb up the back spines of the dinosaur to try and meet up with his classmate. After all, when would be the next time he could ride on a giant weapon of mass destruction like this? It was like a VIP tour of the demonstrations from a sky high view. It was awesome!
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2018 15:06:21 GMT -4
i wonder how many wishes a star can give From atop his dinosaur friend, he could see over the barbed walls of concrete that separated each area. On his right glared brilliant explosions, a testbed for blasts. The left hand side contained a jungle of brightly colored obstacles, strewn with rainbow splatters from what appeared to be a paintball tournament. This military base really had it all. As his view swept across the partitioned fortresses, he felt his seat rattle beneath him. He glanced back and smiled at the brunette dragging himself up to where he sat. "All set?" he shouted over the dissonance. Once he felt assured Alex wouldn't tumble over and splat, the boy stretched forward to pat their trusty steed on the snout, signalling to proceed. The trio embarked. Kutsu held on tight, because they were bouncing along as violently as one would expect from riding a giant reptile. Her movements were awkward, sluggish, Hollywood-esque. Despite her apparent stomping, not a peep could be heard. While she appeared ready to crush everything in her path, Prickles weighed no more than a petite teenaged girl, and distributing that mass across this large of a volume didn’t bode well for combat. It didn't take much to topple a tower stuffed with cotton. This was by far the largest creation in his inventory, however, and it served well as a turret in this exercise. The blue-haired student reached back to grab his rifle and propped the butt against his shoulder. From his perception, red and white bullseyes bounded past them, upping the difficulty level. He halved his vision, took aim, and pulled the trigger. He winced at the yellow sparks that streaked across the concrete floor, right below the targets themselves. "Man, this is ten times harder than being on the ground," came his exasperated huff. "Any luck on your end?"His flickered eyes in Alex's direction and watched him practice for a few moments. He then tried to recall his quirk. Birthdays were one thing, but slapping on individual abilities to his mental filesystem of peers costed a hefty toll on his brain. A thoughtful finger tapped his chin. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd seen it before. They shared, after all, a rescue operations lesson together, and he saw examples during the class get-together. Two instances forever lost to the neural voids. Kutsu turned his gaze over his shoulder and formed a sheepish grin. "By the way, Alex. Could you remind me what your quirk is again?" he laughed nervously. "There are so many, I can't keep track anymore."
wc: 425
tags: @alexander
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2018 20:31:06 GMT -4
The dinosaur itself was a lot less stable than Alex had originally imagined when he started climbing up. He briefly thought of aborting the entire plan and hopping off the damn thing, but that thought only lasted for a second as he resolved that he wasn’t going to be a little bitch about it and would continue all the way to the top. Kutsu wasn’t stupid, he wouldn’t be sitting up there if it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t like he was suicidal and the dinosaur would just throw both of them in the middle of the shooting range to die by stray bullets, right?... Right?
Immediately upon getting up top, he questioned his decisions and his classmate’s sanity as the damned dinosaur seemed to rock back and forth much more than was healthy. Alex solved the issue of not having enough balance to really reliably stay on top of the thing and shoot by creating a bunch of little clips to secure himself to the plushie itself. Dozens of them soon secured his legs and his belt onto the dinosaur, and once he was convinced he wasn’t going to fall off and die any second he was much more willing to fire off a few potshots down range, even if none of them came anywhere close to making any sort of mark with this much movement. He was at best a rank average shot, and an average shooter trying to make a shot while on the top of a moving and extremely unstable dinosaur and having that worry that they would be dropped to their death at any moment in the back of their mind would be about as accurate as Alex was at the moment.
”Nope, no luck on my end.” the American responded to his classmate when he asked if the delinquent had any luck hitting any targets. How the hell could anyone ‘have any luck’ in conditions like this? He was afraid to even reload his gun because it would take attention off making sure he didn’t fall off the damn dinosaur and splat somewhere on the ground and take a long trip to the infirmary.
When his classmate asked him what his quirk was, he was too focused on other things to really have an emotional reaction. Normally he might be a little bit hurt, but the current situation and the constant, nagging worry that the support system that he created with his and Kutsu’s shadows would snap and hurt the fuck out of him kind of prevented that. To respond to the question, Alex pointed behind him and materialized a rope that attached to a few of his belt loops and snaked down to wrap around the neck of the plushie to give him another support in case he fell off. Or, at least, he assumed it wrapped around the neck of the plushie. It was hard to know for sure without visual confirmation, but he was pretty sure the neck of the thing was smaller than the dimensions he made the rope. The appearance of the rope was black but largely featureless. It lacked most of the texture of a true rope, and was in truth more a synthetic looking material like an exercise band.
The entire thing looked as unnatural as it was, the inky blackness being completely opaque so it was impossible to see through and a little bit too perfectly black to be natural. Even the sunlight shined on the construct in an unnatural way, seeming to bounce off the rope as if it was more square shaped rather than the circular shape it visually appeared to be.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2018 18:45:53 GMT -4
i wonder how many wishes a star can give Sniping from atop a dino. Not his best move. Bipedal critters had a reputation for being a little awkward to steer, with their garish gaits and high center of gravity. The two teenaged headpieces she wore only amplified her sways. Her riders continued to fire unsuccessfully at the distant circles lining the zone's boundaries. Kutsu took care to not let her stray too closely to the walls, mindful of the bright yellow paint that marked "Do Not Enter" territory. Otherwise, they'd be dancing right in front of everyone else's line of fire, staring helplessly at the wrong end of a rifle. Due to the mandatory safety gear, they couldn't hear the instructors too well, much less their words of caution. So when Alex didn't address his question, he turned to repeat it. Except his classmate eliminated the need, despite the commotion. Somehow on their makeshift amusement park ride, the brunette managed to conjure a web of seatbelts made of… black… stuff? What on earth? Curious, he tapped Prickles' snout to pause the rickety mayhem, then leaned over to brush his fingers against the dark substance stretching from his classmate's waistband to their steed's neck. How unsightly. It was a good thing the walking plush didn't have a sense of pain or discomfort, otherwise this harness presented an unarguable choking hazard. At contact, Kutsu's eyes widened. Solid. An unexpected texture, especially when it so closely resembled ink or slime. But from where they came, he hadn't a clue. His focus followed the tendrils' travels until he saw them sprout forth from his own shadow. "Ah, I get it!" The boy beamed. His foggy recollections turned clear, filling his mind with scenes of Alex swinging his shadow incarnates around his body. Up close, they really were absences of light. He'd never seen a shade so deep before. His prolonged staring actually began to unsettle him, until he looked up to compliment his friend's fancy seat belt rig. "Hey you!"A stilted voice blared behind them. The wide-eyed student looked past his copilot, only to encounter the oddest ball in the bunch. The stranger pointed an aluminum finger at the dino gang. "Let's battle!"The robot loomed over the soldiers engaged in target practice. Their little gaggle quickly dispersed, not out of fear, it seemed, but on cue. This must have been a coordinated entrance. When the last uniform disappeared past the gates, dread dug into his gut. He removed his earmuffs. Ignoring the occasional helicopter sputter, painful shout, or faraway explosion beyond these walls, the field lay suspiciously still. Then the robot took a step. Boom! Kutsu flinched. A dire contrast to the innocuous shuffling performed by Prickles the Tyrannosaurus Rex. She waddled side to side, spinning herself and the students to face this mysterious challenger. The two creatures stood at odds, staring each other down. In terms of volume, they were equals. In terms of weight, they weren't even close to sharing the same class. A drop of sweat fell. Were they really expected to fight this thing? Suddenly, the mecha made a pose, as if flexing its mechanical biceps. A screech resounded, then a collection of red circles glowed across its body. One on its forehead, another at its knee, and, unseen to the aspiring heroes from this angle, a third planted on its back. Each sized like a dinner plate. Maintaining its flamboyant stance, the figure finally explained what the dickens was going on. "Shoot the three targets on my body," came an artificial voice from its mouth speaker. "Or else I won't stop doing this." It raised a fist, then out from its wrist blaster flew a pair of plastic red frisbee discs, aimed straight at the Yuuei boys. "Hold on!" cried Kutsu, grabbing onto the shadows like a set of reigns. He yanked the so-called rope to the right, forcing Prickles to sidestep the ammunition headed their way. His heart rate nearly tripled. He cast his fellow rider a frightened pair of eyes on the verge of tears. The sound of accelerated blood pumping filled his hearing. "I don't remember signing up for this part," he almost whimpered. But then again, he'd put his name down on a lot of sign-up sheets that day.
wc: 705
tags: @alexander |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2018 22:40:48 GMT -4
When people were this fascinated with his quirk before, he used to feel this sense of deep pride. Like he had anything to do with his own quirk, but in recent years if anything it made him feel slightly uncomfortable more than anything. In his mind getting by with just your quirk wasn’t something admirable, and in most cases should be seen as the opposite. It was a weakness, because those with versatile quirks were not required to learn other skills like the people with more specific or seemingly useless quirks were. Without his quirk, the delinquent was nothing and was keenly aware of that fact. If he tried to reverse that at this point, though, he would never rise to the level that he needed to in order to become the first ranked student at U.A. He had one skill – his quirk – so instead of shoring up weaknesses he would amplify his strengths. If all he had was his quirk, then he would make sure it was trained until it was the second best quirk in Japan. The first, of course, being Darkshine’s which was basically the next evolution of his own it seemed like.
The sound of a voice over what sounded like a loudspeaker caught the delinquent’s attention immediately, though, and red eyes turned to see a… giant robot? ”What the fuck is this?” the American breathed, too dumbfounded to even put any real volume in his voice. What the fuck was this, indeed. Giant robots were supposed to be something reserved for video games and animated television shows – seeing that shit made him actually pinch himself to see if he was dreaming. This shit was way too weird for real life, right?
When the guys inside the robot did their threat, honestly the delinquent was expecting more than a couple of frisbee disks. Alex scoffed at the gesture, and focused on swatting them down when they got into range but instead he had the biggest scare of the week when Kutsu legitimately tried to murder him by yanking on the rope that was keeping him from going splat on the ground. The only reason he didn’t fall down when the fucking mad man yanked on that rope was the other clips that he created that kept him rooted to the dinosaur’s head.
”Holy shit!” he barked, the stress and anxiety in his voice very clear. It was an instinctive respone with a lot of volume tacked on as well. ”Never do that again, I’ll just smack down the frisbees with my quirk.” he ordered without yelling this time, his tone much harsher than it would have been if his classmate just didn’t try to kill him moments before. ”Do your best to move her forward a bit, this guy’s fucking insane if he thinks we’re dumb enough to fire live rounds randomly in the rest of the camp.” he continued, his worse losing its harshness but not its authoritative tone. ”Get me close enough and I’ll ruin this little shit’s day with my quirk.” the delinquent’s anger shifted from Kutsu to the soldiers manning that fucking mech almost instantly, because he recognized that they were the ones who caused the fucking safety risk by being little scumbags who could’ve got someone killed with an order like that.
Shoot the targets, my ass. Neither of them were good shots to begin with so that just meant they would be firing from fifteen feet up bullets that would drop and could travel quite a distance before hitting innocent people. What the fuck was that jackass thinking telling a couple of teenagers dicking around at a range to fire off random shots? Was he trying to get people killed?
”Hey you! Shit for brains, partially evolved ape!” he barked, his voice at full volume. ”Are your eyes fucked, too? What the fuck is that piss poor aim, they grab you from the resource room or something?” he taunted, the rage searing through his voice as he screamed at the fucking animal who almost just got him killed just now. He was going to go over there and smash through as much of the internal circuits of that mecha as he could get his quirk into. He was going to destroy that fucking thing and get that fucking animal fired for his incompetence. Who the fuck did he think he was, coming in and clearing an entire area so he could play fucking MechAssault with his new toy? That type of wanton stupidity could only be answered with the appropriate countermeasure: revenge. If Alex had fallen the entire length of that dinosaur onto the concrete below him, he would've been in the hospital for weeks. This guy was getting the ass kicking that he deserved, whether it was from the delinquent himself or his boss when he returned a fucked up and broken mecha back to the shop. Oh, this was going to feel so damned good when he annihilated this son of a bitch.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2018 5:43:47 GMT -4
i wonder how many wishes a star can give Whew, crisis avoided. The discs, plastic and light, wouldn’t have bruised either of them too badly, but the sight of red circles hurtling toward them had jump started his fight or flight response. Unsurprisingly, flight tended to come out ahead. Though they’d managed to dodge this round of attacks, his fellow passenger didn’t seem so relieved. He winced at his classmate's biting tone. As someone who’d known exactly what would transpire, Kutsu had been fully prepared for the sudden tilt-a-whirl ride. As someone who’d expected them to stand their ground, Alex had been caught completely off guard. “Ah, sorry! Are you alright?” he checked, concern in in his voice. Hopefully the brunette didn’t get too motion sick. The only thing that could possibly make this worse was having to deal with projectiles from both ahead and behind. Thankfully, he appeared fine. Charged, even. His aggression heightened to levels Kutsu hadn’t seen before at school, worrying the boy. Neither of them were calm, and their panic had sent the two to opposite ends of the spectrum for unhealthiest responses: anxiety and anger. Kutsu took the liberty of taking a 360 degree sweep at the concrete walls jutting sky high at the field boundaries. "A-Are you sure we shouldn't do what he says?" he gulped. "It should be safe as long as only one of us is firing. Plus..." His eyes flitted back and forth, doubt overflowing at the thought of engaging a war robot in close quarters. "I dunno if we should fight it hand-to-hand, even with our quirks."In spite of his grievances, his fear of Alex currently outweighed his fear of the mech. It wasn't safe to let a spiteful teen stew for too long. Besides, at least he had confidence in his abilities, something Kutsu couldn't say about himself. Heart palpitations monopolized his hearing. Surely the military wouldn’t go overboard with them, right? Filling his lungs with half-hearted determination, he signalled Prickles to shuffle towards their opponent. Sirens sounded from its speakers. "Activating defensive maneuvers," it droned. As the students tried to close the distance, the robot worked to maintain it, walking in reverse with pounding steps. The novice marksman slapped his forehead in defeat. "It's running away," he wailed. As he grumbled, two mechanized fists pointed at them and, without warning, let loose a barrage of frisbees, flying toward them in rapid succession. "How many of these things does it have?" cried Kutsu, throwing his hands up to shield himself. It took all he could not to pull the same stunt twice, and he prayed his practice partner could handle this level of firepower. But even if Alex could, Prickles couldn't. A couple struck her face, inflicting zero pain, but still playing a dangerous game with her center of gravity. She wobbled, arms flailing, before barely catching herself in a series of backward stumbles. Somehow, Kutsu managed to grab hold of a shadow rope to keep himself steady, otherwise it'd be a swift trip to the medical tent. Apprehension started to roll into annoyance. Whether due to a rapidly depleting supply of patience or to Alex's exasperation becoming contagious, the boy found himself crawling past his classmate and sliding down the dinosaur's back. "This is too crazy," he huffed, grabbing the rifle strapped across his torso and aiming it at one of the glowing targets. He stood beside his green friend. Looking up, he called out to Alex. "I didn't put any seat belts on Prickles, so I'm better off on the ground." The reptilian plush toy appeared much more comfortable supporting only one person instead of two, especially when the rider could forge makeshift safety straps. He tugged on her tail as a reminder to sit tight. "Let's stay back here for now," he shouted. "I don't want to shoot you by accident." At the end of the day, the mech towered over the boys. Even if Prickles helped level the playing field, she didn't have nearly enough mass to put up a decent brawl. He really didn't want to send Alex to his demise.
wc: 680
tags: @alexander |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2018 21:33:48 GMT -4
One of the downsides to instantly making decisions without any facts, however, was that sometimes critical things were missed. Normally when a strange authority figure told someone to do something, the initial reaction was that of deference to authority in Japan. It was this whole concept of respect for elders and those of a higher status than oneself, but at the end of the day Alex wasn’t Japanese. The delinquent was American, and carried through that cultural distaste with him for better or for worse with him across the globe and into this camp. If someone he thought was inferior or not worthy of giving orders was doing so, he was just as likely to lash out and blatantly do the opposite as he was to follow the actual orders. Sometimes that worked out for him just due to sheer rapidity of action, and other times it was the worst possible course of action.
His classmate tried to dissuade Alex from the course of action he had already decided upon, but was promptly ignored. ”Get me in close and I’ll fucking destroy that goddamned robot! Shit for brained animal, I’ll fucking rip that guy to shreds!” he growled, but even though Kutsu followed his directions the mech activated its ‘defense protocols’ which basically meant it just fucking ran away like the coward it was. ”I’ll fucking crush you, you shit for brained animal! I’ll rip that stupid robot apart, wire by wire and beat you with the steel plates!” he screamed uselessly in unbridled rage. When the next wave of frisbees came, Alex used the remaining bits of both nearby shadows to create a shield that blocked them quite easily from hitting the boys… but he didn’t shield the plushie that was holding them up.
”Fuck!” he yelled when he realized his mistake and the plushie rocked. ”Fine, we’re doing it your way, Kutsu!” he finally conceded as his classmate started to climb down while the plushie was still rocking from the impact and barely catching itself from falling over completely. The dude was fucking insane, but he was brave as shit – the delinquent had to give him that. There was no way in hell that Alex was climbing down the plushie when it was still rocking like that. For the first time, the American actually took a scan around the area and finally realized there were actual walls that were pretty damn high to prevent the whole collateral damage bit. He didn’t verbally admit his mistake, at least now, mostly because his eyes were still burning with anger and hatred at the mech in front of him.
He pushed the eject button of the magazine on his handgun and used the material he just used for the shield to pop in a new one into the firearm. This mecha guy was a giant pain in the ass, but he couldn’t just absolutely lose his shit again if he wanted to make sure that fucker felt some pain for just barging in and doing this. If the bastard would run every time he saw the plushie moving forward, then he would just have to break the mech. Sure, the guy had said if the students hit the three targets on its body they would stop… but there was no consent for this. There was no agreeance from either student to participate in this shit show.
Oh no, Alex wasn’t aiming for the targets. He was steadying his grip on his handgun with his quirk to make sure there was no recoil and there was no shifting from shaky hands before he fired three rounds in quick succession at what appeared to be exhaust vents for the robot. Most would call it poor form to intentionally try and break military equipment, but anger did funny things to a delinquent. Three more shots followed, aimed at an upraised part of the robot near the chest region that looked like some sort of power source, which he honestly hoped fucking exploded if he managed to hit it. That would be the only ending he would really be happy with at this point, if he actually managed to fuck up that robot and cause damages in excess of what they would consider to be acceptable losses. He wasn’t playing to win at this point, he was playing to fuck over the bastard in the cockpit and ruin his day for recklessly endangering both Kutsu and himself with this hare brained garbage. What if the plushie fell over and killed both students? Would the dude suffer any consequences? Probably not, because it would be assumed that it was somehow their fault they were attacked from behind and put in life threatening danger. That would be what the headline was, he could see it now.
‘Two U.A. students die in accident while training.’
That’s what the headline would read, and absolutely nobody would question it because they were just dumb kids, right? Well, they were dumb kids that were going to fucking destroy that mech and make this fucking animal lose his job for putting teenagers in danger for absolutely no reason other than his own twisted amusement. Disgusting, really, that this sort of behavior was accepted in the military of Japan. If he managed to destroy the mech, Alex was really doing the people of Japan a service for making sure this fucking psychopath didn’t go out and accidentally kill anyone with his own stupidity which may very well be contagious.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2018 16:18:03 GMT -4
i wonder how many wishes a star can give More yelling meant more flinching. He honestly had no idea how to respond to his classmate’s blind rage, the kind that spurred him to advocate for senseless violence and over-the-top measures. Those frustrated sentiments, he certainly shared them too, but his disapproval toward the soldiers’ tomfoolery simply drowned in a stew of more overwhelming emotions, like worry, fear, stress. It was one thing to wreck the robot out of spite, but to target the pilot, if there was one, felt cruel. "Wait, let's not hurt anyone!" He raised both hands, not quite patting him, but hovering close like a defensive barrier. With half his attention on their assailant and his other on the assailant-to-be, formulating their next moves was an impossible task. The moment a hazy idea began to solidify, a booming, metallic step would burst his thought bubble. Too much stimuli and not enough time. Only after he’d planted his feet firmly on the ground did he realize the extent of his altitude change. Craning his neck to stare up at his classmate, he cupped his hands around his mouth and projected. “Are you okay up there by yourself?” As long as he was closeby, the dinosaur would behave, but piloting a semi-autonomous figurine was easier up there than down here. With soothing hushes and gentle pats, he managed to calm her down, let her regain her balance. The rocking ceased, and Alex was still in one piece. A success worth celebrating, if only they could catch a break. It remained unclear how the robot made decisions. Was it a guy in a suit? Was it remote-controlled? Was it the product of machine and advanced A.I? Whichever the case, somehow it noticed the shadowy defenses and elected to kick it up a notch. One arm turned from outstretched to raised, pointing forward then upward like a sports movie protagonist. That crackly, unappealing, nasally voice broke through the speakers once more. “Activating weapons upgrade.” Cue a minor transformation sequence. Mechanical whirs and grinding gears echoed from inside. A clang, a bang, then finally, it rang another round of sirens. Kutsu tensed, triggering a shot, accidentally of course, but misfiring nonetheless. He grazed its foot, thank goodness, but it served as a grim reminder that they weren’t dealing with toys. The robot, however, was. It pointed both knuckles at the students again and let loose its idea of a joke. Out from the right, a series of frisbees, the usual weapons they’d seen. From the other hand, he didn’t want to believe it, but hurdling toward them were boomerangs. Polished and bent, they arced past the trio before swinging around and behind. Prickles didn’t take well to the chaos. Stray discs thunked dully off her snout, but just because she lacked nerves didn’t mean it annoyed her any less. Even worse, these new projectiles also smacked the back of her head, compelling her to turn around. Stomping, unstable, a clumsy jig. Alex managed to squeeze in a few shots, but now this carnival ride had begun. The plushie trainer waved his arms in front of the animal and shouted at her to stop. Reluctantly, she obeyed, so he took the chance to glance back at their foe. His heart nearly stopped. Flickering a motel neon blue was a cracked, and important-looking, plate of glass. The barrage had stopped, and the mech sputtered to a halt, freezing in place with a zombie-like stance. All its lights flared, then died all at once, dimming in unison as they would in an outage. At first, there was silence. “I think we won,” came his shock, his delight. None of the targets had been struck. But at this point, he was fine leaving business unfinished. “Not so fast.”Distorted and grumbly and straight from a nightmare, that voice he so hated was back. With a crescendoing whine, the blue returned center, though it was much fainter now than before. The targets remained dead, but that seemed not to matter. The robot straightened. “Threat detected. Activating offensive maneuvers.”It took a step forward, stiff and inhuman. Then another, then a third shortly after. Its paced quickened until it broke into a demonic jog, directing itself toward the students. Kutsu’s jaw dropped. “We’ve gotta run!” Not with Pickles, though. She was awkward and slow. He reached up and urged his classmate to take his hand, because the ground tremored stronger with each shallow breath.
wc: 735
tags: @alexander
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2018 21:19:51 GMT -4
Height advantage still counted for something, and the objection from his classmate was summarily ignored as the delinquent fired away. Fuck moral objections, that idiot was legitimately trying to kill both of them! Why the hell should they be restrained by the thought of accidentally hurting someone when their opponent clearly didn’t give two fucks about the well being of two teenagers? It made no sense and boggled the mind. It was a stupid request, therefore the American elected to ignore it. Simple as that. No hard feelings against his classmate, but he wasn’t going to be constrained by a need to make the other bastard safe for as long as that idiot was trying to kill him. If he wanted a cool fight, he could have just asked instead of clearing the entire area like assholes and surprise attacking them both. First of all, that was rude. Second of all, it was dangerous as hell and the boy did not appreciate either of those slights.
His classmate had somehow managed to stop the plushie from rocking back and forth in a miraculous display of skill… and was quickly countered by the mech shouting some nonsense about an upgrade. Wait, fuck. Upgrade was bad. Upgrade was very bad. Alex had very little shadow to rip in his immediate surroundings, and there was no way he could block attacks from both directions. He fired off shots with his pistol and decided to just defend himself from the back, erecting a barrier that the boomerangs would crack and cause to crumble moderately but never pierce. Of course, that meant that he was eating the frisbees that managed to actually hit him in the front… but he could at least see those coming and mentally brace himself for the impact unlike an attack from behind that would just fuck with his ability to function and at worst risk him breaking concentration and knocking him off Pickles entirely with his anchor shadows dissipating the moment that happened. Nope, he wasn’t going to risk that, so he just chose to eat the ones that he could prepare for right in the face if necessary.
Unfortunately, it was necessary and the American did get hit in the face quite a few times from the frisbees. One of the shots that he managed to fire off did manage to hit something important, though, it looked like. The machine sputtered to a halt as Kutsu was doing his best to keep the plushie upright and prevent Alex from dying from the impact on the concrete below them, and it didn’t take long for the delinquent to find the cause of the stoppage. It was a flickering blue light that he thought might be important so he fired about three shots at, and it looked like one of them had managed to hit. All of the lights briefly flashed on the mech before it completely shut down. The boy was so focused on making sure the damned thing was actually down for the count and this wasn’t some sort of trick that Kutsu was the first to react to the situation.
When Kutsu said that they had won, the delinquent’s immediate response was to raise his left fist in the air and shout: ”Damn right we did! Fuckin’ broke that big damned robot and showed them what happens when you—“ he was interrupted, though, by the mech spoke up again. All the bluster of victory was gone in an instant, and for a moment or two the delinquent just froze. The plushie couldn’t handle another barrage like the one they had just encountered, and it was impossible for Alex to protect the entire length of his mount because he did not have access to its giant shadow on the ground. It was entirely possible he would just splat on the ground the next time the damned thing fired, and that was not the most pleasant of possibilities. He had nothing to really break his fall other than his quirk, and the last thing he wanted was to test if he could fall this distance without breaking his entire body and spine in the process if he managed to use his quirk just right.
Kutsu was the one to react first this time and knock the American out of his reverie. The robot was starting to move, and Alex reached out for his classmate’s hand immediately after the verbal cue. He needed to get down to the ground, or they were toast. Once he was prompted to start moving, though, he did so as efficiently and as quickly as he could… mostly because his life probably depended on it. Scaling down the giant beast was no small task to do in such a short time, but once they reached the very edge of the delinquent’s range he was able to create what amounted to a giant bean bag for them to jump down on to expediate the process using the huge amount of shadow present due to Pickles giving such a great helping hand in that regard. Reliable or not, giant plushies cast giant shadows and that was really good for them right now because Alex needed a giant shadow to make that bean bag thick enough to make a difference.
”Run!” the delinquent yelled as he hit the bean bag and his fall was caught, rolling off of it as fast as he could but making sure that Kutsu got out first before he started running as well. The American sure as hell could not pierce through metal, that was for sure, and he doubted his classmate could do much better. Besides, Alex was the one who caused this by shooting the damned light open in the first place. As he waited for Kutsu to go, the boy fired off the rest of his last magazine in his pistol aimed directly at the damaged plate of glass much the same way as he did before using his quirk to steady his aim. Once the gun clicked to signify it was empty, it was dropped and the whole sprinting for his life started.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2018 14:58:34 GMT -4
i wonder how many wishes a star can give With each loud bang, he whipped his head around to check for any casualties. Those shadows were nimble, able to maintain a stable hold despite their flimsy appearance. He trusted Alex wouldn't shoot himself by accident, but with a pseudo-sentient carnival ride swinging the boy around, pessimism rode at an all time high. Even if he managed to avoid self-injury, there were innocent passersby to account for. The space had been emptied to enable this whole mess, but that didn't mean the field was on lock down. There were still access points. Thankfully, no one had accidentally stumbled into the crossfire, but it was only a matter of time before some unknowing third party walked in. They had to end this fight, for their sake and everyone else's. Plastic met skull before clattering to the ground. He made a note to include extra details on his birthday plushie, because right now, Alex was really taking one for the team. Those face smacks looked awfully painful coming in at that speed, and the cracks in his defenses signaled his limit. It was a bizarre sight, seeing the absence of light behave like a brittle solid. A dark, phantasmic substance aligned more closely with his expectations, but then again, he did grab onto one earlier as a handhold. Watching the shadows flail desperately reminded him of an animal trying to protect its egg, the way they struggled to shield both fronts. He wondered why they couldn't stretch farther to encompass him fully, creating a black igloo of sorts. But if he couldn't enshroud Prickles, then perhaps the limit didn't solely pertain to strength. His worries momentarily dissolved when a celebratory cry joined his own. At last, they could recuperate. They'd narrowly braved the storm. Unfortunately, their soon opponent revealed they'd only passed through the eye. There was still life in it yet, though barely. Suspicious creaking filled the air, and despite its running form, it moved through molasses, giving the students just enough time to scramble off the dinosaur and regain their bearings. Could they outrun a mech? With its stride ten times longer than theirs, he doubted it. But milling around wouldn't do them any good. Hand clasped onto his, Kutsu helped keep him steady while his copilot dismounted. Swiftness was key, but so was care. One slip and they'd be bashed against pavement. To his astonishment, Alex managed to accommodate both in his next move. The two of them landed in a surprisingly soft heap, leaving him to wonder if the shadow's texture was also within the user's control. This was a very different experience compared to clutching rope or breaching walls. One word was all he needed to take off into a sprint. As he set his rifle down, both for safety and to trim off weight, his trigger-happy partner fired one last shot at the approaching mass. Then, side by side, the two teenagers fled toward a side exit, escape being their number one priority. As such, he felt a twinge of guilt leaving his creation behind. She topped the list as his most onerous project, but that only made her all the more special. It didn't take long for his sphere of influence to empty. The instant he crossed that imaginary border, she perked up, confused. She then turned to face a figure of similar size and utility. It'd committed to a head on collision course with her, and the threat triggered her instincts. Normally, the robot would've barreled over her with ease. It was a hulking piece of metal, while she was just stuffing. However, the bullet Alex cast had lodged itself alongside its siblings, deep within the glass case. That was enough damage to send another wave of malfunction throughout the machine. It paused and stumbled and tried to collect itself, only to be knocked off balance by the sweep of a tail. It landed sideways but was smart enough to get back up. Prickles went in for the kill. The robot thwarted her. There stood two teetering towers on the brink of collapse, latching onto one another for support while trying to bring the other down. It was the type of low-budget Hollywood that made him want to stop and watch, but he knew it was inevitable, his guardian's defeat. "Keep moving, keep moving!" Whether she intended it or not, she had bought them time, and with adrenaline high, they made it to the door. An angel choir accompanied the click of the handle. It was actually unlocked. As soon as they stepped out, all parties were subject to the military's house rules. No more tricks. Wiping his face with the hem of his shirt, he sent a weak smile to his fellow escapee. "I don't know about you, but I think I'm done for today." He'd give anything to crash on a couch. Let the trauma roll slowly off. Perhaps if the zone reps were feeling apologetic, they'd let him scavenge Prickles' remains. Somehow he doubted it.
wc: 830
tags: @alexander
notes: exit! |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2018 6:27:43 GMT -4
ito 76 exp
Alex 78 exp
|
|
