strangetrip | Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

At the crest of the mountain, Coc'zac sat atop Nazu's head looking through a glass that Hotor held to his eye. Vokva sat beside them, little more than a pile of bones atop a pile of rocks, and Hafur paced behind them, holding the troops in check. They milled in the pre-dawn gloom, skeletons, wights, zombies, wraiths, and all manner of undead creatures. Periodically, Nazu swept the space behind them with their tail bowling over anyone who'd gotten too close.

The first pinpoint of light had Coc'zac's teeth chattering with excitement in his disembodied head. Today was the day he'd been planning for. Soon, soon the Inn and its occupants would be his. Nazu unleashed a heavy sigh tinged with poison and necrosis. Fortunately the troops were all dead already, and Coc'zac didn't have anything in the way of arms to hit them with.

It fell to Hafur to gesture the troops forward as punctuation to Coc'zac's 'rousing' speech, and together they crept through the portal, avoiding its fizzing and popping edges demarcated in what would be neon blue, if they could still see in color. They couldn't properly hear either, but they were aware of the noise and the danger it marked.

Once they were all through, the advance scouts, four bands of skeleton archers swept quietly as they could through the shadows to take up position around the main buildings, prepared to pick off anyone who exited--for example for a pre-sun jog. And once they'd settled into wary, silent waiting, occasionally interrupted by the pop of a joint or the clatter of toe bones on stone, the next wave rolled in finding shadows to hide in until the residents emerged with the wights taking point.The bone naga and three flameskulls slipped through the lobby doors and stealthed toward the offices, assuming to find the command center there.

It wasn't long before the invaders caught the notice of the residents, and then shouts began to echo through the grey light and journals filled with messages and reminders of siege plans. Several strongly worded messages urged the kids and those without weapons or fighting skills to head for the Temple where the Hallow spell would protect them from unholy undead things.

And so the battle for the Madonna Inn began...

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Xavin was female when she opened the door, male as he ran out, and a massive pile of orange rocks as he ran to meet the bone creature's fists with his own.

Neither of them would escape!

Mary was not sure her experience hunting things would help at this particular moment, but she couldn't simply stand back and do nothing. She saw Xavin transform into... Whatever that was and meet the creature head on. Mary moved to the left and shot off two rounds of her gun when she had a clear shot. Would bullets even hurt this thing?

Dean actually didn't care if bullets hurt it, he was getting to fight something supernatural! Plus, he was fighting with his mom, Sam and Xavin. Dean was in heaven.

When his mom fired, his own weapon fired a quick succession of bullets to keep the whatever the hell it was in a confined space.

Having given his rifle to Dean, Sam felt more than a little naked bringing psychokinesis to a...bonefight? Hell. What was this thing? And he had no idea what Xavin could do--except apparently be something that was almost as inhuman looking as the bone pile?

Rolling his tongue behind his teeth, Sam set his feet, held up a hand (yeah, yeah, stop in the name of love, shut it, Dean) and pushed a blast of mental force ahead of it to slam into bones. And immediately, in case it had some kind of demonic intelligence, began chanting an exorcism while he sought to grab its mind.

Vovka had not been expecting an inhabitant to turn into something like her. There waa a grunt of surprise and then a growl of frustration. The smaller humans we're sending projectiles at it and while she was unfamiliar with what they were, they were more painful than she'd like to admit. When the taller human emerged, she felt the blast and was pushed back a few inches. A wizard, perhaps?

Angrily it reached for Xavin to pick it up and throw Xavin at the tiny males. The female was too far on the other side of her.

Xavin declined to allow himself to be thrown by a dead thing. It wasn't even a living enemy. But he didn't know how strong bone things were (Kree level? Lower? Higher?) but knew better than most that the Thing was not the strongest in the universe. Very strong and very tough... but enough? Who knew?

The bone thing was grabbing high. Xavin dropped the Thing's powerset, transitioning smoothly to the Invisible Woman's powers and his male human shape. A few invisible slashing fields would hopefully take off the creature's hands. If it couldn't grab, Xavin could go back to punching it without concern for his allies.

Mary was so surprised about Sam and his apparent powers that it took her a moment to resume the fight. She blinked and refocused, filing away the mental note Sam and her were going to have a talk.

"Hey! Over here!" She wanted the attention off her boys, but she also knew that Xavin appeared to have a lot more up their sleeve than the rest of them and Xavin would need help.

It did work, though, and Vovka turned and flung a fist at Mary - while trying to avoid invisible cuts. In fact, Vovka was flailing all its arms while it tried to evade.

Mary was tossed into one of the bushes a lot like a rag doll.

Unlike Mary, Dean had seen Sam in action before, just not for years and certainly not in a place that didn't have Ruby. That little fact flew out the window of Dean's mind the moment he saw his mother tossed. He had more important things to do, like try to rip off the bony arm that hurt his mom. What he wouldn't give for a good chain saw right about now.

He had to settle for a blast of bullets toward the head as he ran forward toward the Golem. If Dean had to gnaw off the thing's arm, then he would.

Sam bit back a snarl at Mom trying to get the bone pile's attention. They weren't under attack and they didn't need protection. This was a war, and everyone had to rely on everyone else to do what they were good at.

They'd be having a talk about protecting him and Dean in the middle of a firefight later. Right now, Sam needed to focus on killing this thing that was throwing his mom (yeah, yeah, she was the only one it had hit yet; it wasn't the same!) around.

Again and again, he threw his arm out, using the gesture to direct the force at the Bone Thing. The blasts weren't as strong as Xavin, he was sure, so he aimed for the joints. Anything that flexed had an inherent weakness.

And he redoubled his efforts to try to drive the intelligence out of the bones, drilling it with his chanting until blood ran from his nose.

Vovka did not like the fact the tiny creatures were surround her. She definitely did not like when one disappeared and continued to attack it. Their attacks both hurt and were quite annoying.

She let out a loud angry shriek in frustration - the sort that might cause someone who heard it to be temporarily stunned if they weren't strong enough to bear the sound.

Then she swung out in hopes to it the invisible one and the swung with it's claws at Dean hoping to slash him and send him into Sam if she could. Her arms, however, were looking as if they were looser than they once were.

The invisible one was smaller than the bone creature expected him to be, but all the same Xavin ducked its swing to ensure not even being clipped. His training for war, for generalship, had long since kicked in, and thoughts ran through his mind quickly.

The Invisible Woman was powerful, but when he used her powers no one knew what he was doing because he or the forcefields or both were invisible. Not the best for a team who didn’t know all a Super-Skrull could do. The Thing’s fists hadn’t even held its attention, much less done damage. And as for the Human Torch, Xavin doubted that fire would do any better than stone fists had. That left....

Trust your squad. Xavin dropped invisibility and that powerset both in favor of the least generally-useful power the Fantastic Four had to offer: Mr. Fantastic’s elasticity. He stretched up, out, around, wrapping and pulling like living rope in complicated knots. Bind the creature, expose the joints, make it easier for the Winchesters to blast it to pieces, as they’d been so impressively doing.

Mary climbed to her feet after having the wind knock out of her. She had hit the ground hard with her face and blood trickled down her nose, but this wasn't anything she wasn't used to growing up.

She raised her gun after taking a moment to find it again on the ground and used the opportunity Xavin gave them to shoot at one of the shoulders.

Dean had no idea what the hell Xavin had done but he appreciated the hell out of it. He felt a little of the rage leave when his mother got up on her feet, but only a little. He was going to take the son of a bitch down.

The opening that he'd been looking for showed itself when Xavin squeeze hard enough to expose the joint that had attacked his mom. He raised his gun and fired a blast right into it.

The bone-pile was huge, but with Xavin cycling through a bunch of really cool and useful powers, they were starting to get the better of it. It couldn't get close enough to hit him and Dean, and as long as Mom stopped standing in front of it and trying to tank when Xavin could obviously take the punishment, they'd wear it down, soon.

Since the exorcism wasn't doing a damn bit of good besides giving Sam a splitting headache, Sam stopped and dashed off toward the side to get a different angle on the exposed joints. Without the exorcism ongoing, he could redouble his efforts and add a second and a third blast of focus fire to the same spot.

There was cracking as her arms weakened. Vovka screamed again in frustration and while she tried to shake Xavin off, the torque in her arms hindered rather than helped her cause. With the projectiles and psychic force being thrown at the right weak points, Vovka suddenly found herself without her arms.

No

This was not worth it, even for Co'zac.

She shook violently as she tried to get Xavin off. She needed to retreat to safety.

The problem with being what amounted to living rope was that if a few coils were removed, the whole tangle could fall apart. When the bone thing's arms came off, the sudden slack couldn't help but make it possible for the bone thing to shake off the Skrull's bonds altogether.

Well, that was fine. Without its arms, it couldn't attack effectively, and that had been the purpose of binding it in the first place.

Xavin let himself slide off, almost liquid, before reforming back to the much-larger version of himself with the Thing's rock armor and strength active. Because it was there, and because it would crush the creature's morale further, he seized one of the severed arms and started using it as a weapon, striking the thing as hard as he could with its own dead limb.

Vovka was turning around, looking as if it were trying to flee.

Mary was not about to let that happen. Mary switched her aim for the head, having to reload again. She didn't have a lot of bullets left.

Dean had to like Xavin's style using its own limb against it. If he was closer he might have joined him. Instead, he moved to help cut off the son of a bitch's exit and fired one last round toward its knee joint.

Sam kept firing off psychokinetic blasts, but he also sought out Dean's attention and jerked his head in the direction that the creature was trying to retreat. He lifted a brow in question, Let it go so we can see where it came from?

And then tried to quietly speak the same question to Xavin when next they came Sam's direction. Dean would have to relay the message to Mom.

Xavin wanted to kill the thing. He really did, if only because they'd already made such progress in actually doing that. But he had to admit: not killing was almost always better, and Sam made an excellent point.

The creatures had come to the Inn from somewhere. If they were not stopped at their source, they could come again. And again and again.

He threw the arm he'd been using to beat on the bone creature and moved away just far enough to switch powersets one more time and take to the air (not too high up, more like take to the hover) wreathed in the Human Torch's flames. Fire was likely not an effective tactic against the bone creature, but perhaps it would be fearful of the heat or sudden light.

Dean knew that even though their mom had been around Sam for a while she probably hadn't got up to speed on Sam's different looks when they were hunting. This was one that was very familiar to him so he picked up his pace to get closer to Mary. Plus it was an added bonus that he could see for himself how she was since he was an old hand at fighting through his own pain.

"That lifted brow, if you can see if through Sam's shaggy hair..." Dean smirked because he would never let a chance to jerk Sam's chain about his hair go by. "means let's let the thing go so we can follow it back to its lair, den or whatever place it came out of. Sound good?"

Mary looked briefly at Dean, then back to Sam and gave a nod - she only had four bullets left anyways and would need to use them when it counted anyways.

Vovka took this moment that she assumed was confusion from her scream. She backed up a few paces and then turned and started to sprint at her full speed into the desert towards the mountain.

Xavin flew a few feet higher to ensure very little heat reached the ground, then took off after the bone creature, pursuing it at an easy distance. He could fly more than fast enough to keep up, after all.

Fortunately, without its arms for balance and with many of its joints splintered, the creature couldn't move terribly fast even at a full out run. Still, Sam was grateful he'd been running to stay in shape; it made it easy to fall into a long, ground-covering lope and occasionally direct a force blast at the bone creature to make sure it kept running instead of turning around to fight.

It seemed to be heading up the mountain. Interesting. There was always something that pinged his instincts at the top of the mountain. And he knew he was totally not alone in that.

Of course it was the mountain. Dean huffed a breath in frustration. Why didn't bad guys every have their den or lair somewhere convenient? He took his cue from Sam and shifted where he was going to run to make sure bone thing didn't turn back around to the inn before they figured out where these things came from.

And more importantly how to get the hell out of here since they seemed to have a door.

Re: Vovka - Boss Fight

st_ockcharacter - 2018-09-23 19:23 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Vovka - Boss Fight

st_andingtall - 2018-09-25 20:41 (UTC) - Expand

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