Monstrous Compendium Ch5 bit – Plans

~ crossovercreativechaos

Agil kept the urge to panic locked down tight; if any of them had the chance to make it out of here, he had to keep his head and run the raid. So far the plan had… worked wasn’t the word he was looking for, not with a field boss with a purple icon soaring up out of the flames. But it’d done what he intended it to do. Hit a teleport crystal with a psiblast, and if you were lucky, it might just toss you somewhere random. If you weren’t… sometimes they just didn’t work at all. So he’d given Argo the go-ahead and had the DDA get ready to set up the floating discs. If her shaped spell worked, they’d get everybody they could down to the medics in more or less one piece. If it didn’t – hell. Fireball had to be a better way to go than eaten alive.

“Bows and spells!” Agil yelled over the buzzing. “Keep her down!” Because flying bosses were the worst, bar none. The queen could hover up there all day flattening them with mind-stunning attacks, while the few people they had with wings or rings of air-walking would never be able to take her down alone. Their only chance was to force her down near the surface, where people could bring enough weapons to bear that it didn’t matter if a few of them got stunned.

Maybe we’ll get lucky, and someone will fry her wings off or web them together–

A wand-wielding wizard screamed as a psiwasp bit through his arm, and the last floating disc shattered. Before the comb could hit it.

Damn.

Arms like furry constrictors around him and Klein swearing and impact–

Their avatars didn’t technically breathe. Kirito felt as if all the breath had been crushed from him anyway, squeezed out by a too-friendly clutch of clawed hands.

…Ow.

Kirito gave the world a moment to stop spinning so much, and squirmed free of the arms wrapped around him like a cat with an overgrown kitten. Blinked to focus on his HP bar. Not good – but not as bad as Klein’s. “What were you thinking?” Don’t you dare die on me, I couldn’t bear it, not another party member-!

“Hey, weretiger?” Klein coughed, scrambling to find footing on the wobbly paper comb. Easier said than done, even with his uncanny balance; the impact had crumpled some of the hexagonal structure, leaving what was intact tilted at odd angles. “Unless there’s silver spikes under us, I get better.”

As if that were even the point–

19 thoughts on “Monstrous Compendium Ch5 bit – Plans”

  3. Wow, this is a perfect place for a pot/kettle joke… made even better by Kirito’s black swordsman getup. Not so much fun when other people are taking the insane risks, is it Kirito?
    It’s probably too much to hope that this will get him to reconsider his suicidal recklessness, but it might be a good start

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  4. wonder what Stheno will thin about the entire operation, their actions, priorities, and general behavior.
    i think its first time she got to actually see the Clearers in a Raid. Youkai Adopted and human.

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      1. >Along with serious thoughts of what might happen if the Five Nations get wind of this. Ow.>
        I suspect that the Five nations would send some extermination armies, I mean holy Crusades to wipe the monsters from existence once and for all.

        Because the unholy monsters rebuilding their strength using stolen humans souls? That call’s for purging with fire.

        Cue the Savages style BGM only with no Pocahontas expy aiming to stop the upcoming war.

        Because every Youkai will know that the Five Nations are not going to stop for anything short of one of the gods manifesting and saying “No”.

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      2. Heh! Crusades are more of a Thrane thing, and… I have some interesting plans for that, eventually. 😉

        Karrnath would probably be along the lines of, “Damn, they pulled our shtick, just without undead!”

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      3. >Heh! Crusades are more of a Thrane thing, and… I have some interesting plans for that, eventually. 😉>
        Will said interesting plans happen to involved a hinted highly ironic paladin of the Silver Flame? 😉

        Nothing like a god-induced crisis of faith and doctrine to cause a Theocracy to start crumbling under it’s own weight.

        We will need popcorn. Lots of it.

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      5. >> Nothing like a god-induced crisis of faith and doctrine to cause a Theocracy to start crumbling under it’s own weight.

        The funny thing is, it’s not a crisis of faith. It’s purely a crisis of doctrine and more strictly of dogma.
        Anyone who’s having a crisis of faith over this? Needs to have that pointed out.
        Because that means their ‘faith’ wasn’t in the Faith in the first place so much as it was the dogma, doctrine, and structure of the church around the Faith.

        Terry Pratchett’s got some great stuff to say on the very subject in the Discworld novel Small God’s.

        So does Kevin Smith in his film Dogma actually.

        Small Gods is less preachy, Dogma is less subtle.

        On a more DnD side of things, it may do the theocracy some good to be reminded that while Lawfulness and order have their importance and uses, Law can be corrupted. Nobody likes Internal Affairs, but it’s an important job, dammit, and the Watchman must be Watched as well, otherwise that law and order don’t mean much of anything.

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  5. Actually, Kirito, that is exactly the point. Klein, provided you lot don’t die at the hands of psychic monster bugs, will heal that and quickly. You would not.

    I understand why you are neurotic as heck about this but that doesn’t change the fact that appropriate response to someone saving your bacon is not to act like they kicked your dog for risking their skin. Especially if their risk of permanent injury or death from doing the thing might be lower than yours. Because in that case, Klein was being less risky than you.

    Somewhere across the multiverse, everyone who had to pound through Kenshin’s skull that all lives matter includes your life too damnit has a sudden surge of understanding with someone out there. . .

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