Re: Clinch River: Gotei, Rollout!

Sat Mar 26, 2022 10:47 am

Clinch River

Taking no chances this time, not that a clean thrust straight through the skull was usually that risky, Amon was able to evade his attacker and strike head from twisted neck. The blow soundly dealt, the creature was felled once more and did not look to stir again.

But that was only one foe, and right now they faced many, so the Shinigami spread out their attacks.

Hayden launched a table, equipment and papers scattering everywhere, into one of the creatures approaching from behind. There was a rather sickening squelch as the rather flaccid mass seemed to absorb much of the shock from the blow, but it was still driven back some distance by the strength behind it. The other one advanced upon him, both hands raised high for an overhead swing, whilst a muted cry struggled to escape its lips.

Amon and Hanako looked to deal with the three to their fore, with the Vice-Captain covering her comrades advance with a wide-reaching energy attack. On paper the move was no doubt effective, but this was far from an ordinary simulation. The energy from Hanako’s attack struck each of the three creatures in turn, beating Amon to the opponents whilst she followed in his wake, but even as it connected with the first one it was clear that something had gone awry. Rather than taking damage, the energy was - for lack of a better word - consumed by the creatures. Where before their bodies had been broken, they now stood taller with limbs healed in a matter of instants. Suddenly, these were not the slow dull creatures of before, but something actually dangerous.

Amon struck forth, hacking an arm from the first creature he reached first only to watch as two more twisted and conjoined arms spawned from the stump that he had left in his wake. A second strike found the creatures neck, but it was tougher now and the blade could not quite cut through as easily.

Hanako was not met with quite so much challenge, her strength quite vastly superior to her comrade’s, as Bakumusha cleaved through limbs with a practiced ease. The two creatures that Amon was not tussling with were quickly dispatched, a gory scene of broken limbs and spilt insides was all that she let remain.

They were making progress forwards now, the path to the last few desks open to Hanako, but both Amon and Hayden were in the thick of it with their opponents to the front and rear respectively. That was not all though, as another pair of bodies descended from on high and crashed into the floor near the far door with a now-familiar crunch.

Whilst one was no different to the rest, the last one appeared slightly more human in construction. Their body was misshapen and bloated but it also seemed to have fused with a lab coat that had perhaps once been worn. A former lab technician, perhaps?

Will It Ever End? | END POST

Wed Mar 30, 2022 11:39 pm

The Big Woman

Hanako Yamada

Clinch River: Gotei, Rollout! - Page 4 6EdIfMt

The lips of the tall woman moved to a silent curse when she saw what effect her Shigure Shinrin Ryu had on the enemy: the exact opposite of what she had hoped. When she had witnessed how fragile the bodies of the creatures were she had hoped to be able to cut some corners, quite literally. Even if the Third Form didn’t give her attack any boost in strength, it would probably still would have been enough to cut everything in its 30 feet path before it dissolved. If only they weren’t able to absorb the energy and heal themselves. Not only that, it was so fast. She could see before her very own eyes the broken bodies healing. And it still wasn’t enough. From the corner of her eye she could see that one of the three creatures that faced Amon and her actually regenerated a severed limb, after her colleague hacked away at it.

After Hanako dealt with two of the creatures the old fashioned way for one horrible fraction of a second she imagined what would happen if she had released Bakumusha. Being in a closed room the inevitable release of energy accompanying it would have had nowhere to go and the creatures would have been practically bathed in it. Sure, she would gain a lot more physical destruction power but it could very well be that the release of energy would feed the creatures so much that they’d gain more strength than she would. She decided to only put this to the test if there was no other way.

“Don’t use any energy based attacks on those things.” she called out to Hayden and Amon. “Cut them down, throw furniture, tear them apart with your bare hands if you have to, but don’t use energy if you can avoid it.”

Hanako could hear two more familiar impacts at the far end of the room and looked up. There were two more of the creatures who had come down. But they weren’t her first concern now. Also the last desks. There was not much sense in her searching them. She turned around. Her two teammates were surrounded.

With a hissing exhale and bared teeth like a hungry lioness in humanoid form, she jumped forward. Knowing now that her best bet seemed to be raw physical force, she brought her sword up above her head with both hands. With a hollow howl the blade cut through the air as she brought it down again, aiming to cleave the head of the first of the creatures that surrounded the others.

“Go on, to the last table! Find us a way out!” she yelled.

With a brutal move she would then turn her blade sideways and rip it out of the creatures body it just had sunk in, cutting apart whatever would be in front of it. The time to take it slow and cautiously to get through this room seemed to be over. Action was now required. Bloody, brutal action. Whatever greater danger might lie beyond this chamber was a problem for a near future where they actually managed to come that far, a bridge to cross when they got there.

If Hanako managed to free her blade she would then turn it again and execute a diagonal cut upwards at the next of these creatures, lunging forwards in one flowing motion. And again she was targeting heads and necks.

Coding Altered From: [The Frost]

Thu Mar 31, 2022 1:23 am

With his blade being pulled out of the neck with greater force than necessary, Amon had no choice but to augment his strength. Channeling some of his energy for an added strength and attacked from the other side with vicious and murderous intent, completely cutting off the toughened head. It was then he realized that these things can regenerate limbs. Still he continued his work hacking and slashing and downed one more for before moving onto another, but Hanako had leapt into action.

From there she stated that the "zombies" could absorb energy. Great! It was there that Hanako turned to Amon and gestured to the last table which he didn't even hesitate. Amon cut down another enemy before quickly going ahead the extra steps to finally reach the table. He looked through whatever he could, anything like a code or digits, he was rushing but skimming slow enough to not miss anything. That was when he felt something behind him like the wind, he turned to face one of the things which was ready to pull him into its body. With a solid, "Nope," Amon slammed a wood chair into the creature's legs first impaling it then shoving it to the ground, then finished it up by taking its head.

More were closing in and time was of the essence, so Amon continued to look through notes, then he said to the other two urgently, "If you happen to find anything hanging from these things or even on them like cards or whatever grab them if you can. I can't guarantee I'll have anything over here!"

Thu Mar 31, 2022 4:06 am

.Hayden Cemplus

As Hayden faced his next opponent, he swung his sword from right to left, using his might to drive the arms of the creature away as he stepped around the mass of animated flesh, to it side. With his new position, he raised the sword over the creature, then brought it down hard on its next, tearing through it as cleanly as the one before. At the very least, the ones he was facing now were nothing too tough. They were, for better or worse, normal flesh and bone in their make-up. While he didn't like the fast that they were severely outnumbered, he was feeling a bit better about himself as he saw the skull fall to the ground, with a measly bounce like a deflated basketball.

Hanako's words echoed in his mind for a moment before he disregarded them. Not for any disrespectful reason, but simply because his Kido skills were quite frankly shit. Anything he could have attempted that would, to him, be a waste of energy that he could otherwise use in a physical endeavor to do significantly more damage. However. Instead his response was to pick up a piece of fallen equipment up, and toss it at the first zombie he saw. And as Hanako cleaved one with that devastating lunge, he followed though with his own attack on the separate entity, tearing through another neck as her instructions came from behind him. He decided he would cover Amon, the only matter at the moment was getting there. So in a quick motion, he jumped into the air, and sort of back-stepped in the man's direction.

However the result was significantly more distance than what would have normally occurred, with the flashstep putting him right to the back of the body his ally had just felled. One he was back on both his feet, Hayden opted to kick the body away with decent force, and repositioned himself to be between the nearest zombie and Amon, lunging forward and swiping his sword again at neck-level. He didn't notice any access-card but in the rush of the situation, he may have missed a lot of details.

"A little bit preoccupied to be looting bodies at the moment," the shinigami commented, as he swung his sword at the next closest abomination.

END POST.

Sat Apr 02, 2022 9:56 pm

Clinch River

With all three Shinigami moving in sync towards the next table, they were, fortunately, able to make light work of the creatures that remained in their path. From Hanako's brutal strikes to Hayden's precise lunges, the near half dozen abominations were quickly dispatched until all that remained were those still slowly encroaching from behind. Which left Amon with enough time to begin to sift through the assorted documents that were scattered upon the table as they arrived.

Most of it was the same as what had already been recovered, duplicate copies or notes that had degraded to the point that it was now illegible, but there was one single piece of paper that stood out from the rest. A single laminated form with the heading "W/c 04/03 - LAB 201-208" and then several strings of numbers and letters of varying lengths that certainly could be interpreted as potential codes. There were fourteen in total, written in pairs, with no further context given, so it would definitely take some time to work through each one methodically.

They were not out of the woods yet though, as the forces milling above seemed to be taking more notice of the group as they made more noise dispatching their peers. All-in-all, near a dozen more forms fell down behind them to reinforce the two that still remained behind them whilst a few more rained down right on top of them. But that was not all, as even those that had previously been beheaded or dismembered were now beginning to move again. Nothing was putting them down for good it seemed, they could just summon up the power to continue to regenerate.

Time was running out, there was the last dash to the door and then they would just have to hold out whilst the codes were entered. A deadly gauntlet of flesh and blood against steel.

Will It Ever End? | END POST

Mon Apr 04, 2022 3:16 am

The Big Woman

Hanako Yamada

While Hayden watched Amon’s back, Hanako watched Hayden’s back. For a moment there it really seemed as if they were making progress. At least they were at the last table there was. If Amon couldn’t find anything here that would open the door… well, they could of course shake down the corpses, but they could also always try and blast their way through the door, which of course had the distinct drawback of most certainly announcing their presence to everyone beyond this room. If they wanted to preserve any chance at all to keep themselves hidden from the other factions in the facility, they should probably keep what happened in this room contained to the room.

With the almost sickening and already familiar crunching sounds even more of the creatures rained down on them. And while most of them, this time almost a dozen, jumped down to reinforce the two creatures left behind them. As usual they simply let themselves fall to the floor without any concern for themselves. Mindless zombies…
A few came down right on top of them and Hanako even had to make a quick evasion step to the side to avoid one of the non-corpses to land directly on her. With a swift strike of her sword-tip she split the gooey-soft flesh where she assumed the head would be.

Then she looked up and the little hairs on her neck stood straight up.

“Oh…you. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.” she said, more to herself than to the others.

The creatures they had already felled, the ones decapitated or straight up bifurcated…they moved again. Impossible to tell right now if they managed to heal themselves up like the ones Hanako had ‘fed’ her Shigure Shinrin Ryu to or if they were just lumps of flesh refusing to die. But moving they were and this opened up a whole different set of problems.
After the split second of realisation what they were dealing with, another realisation followed. Blasting through the door was completely out of the question. They needed to go through it and close it behind them or else these things would just follow them.

Hanako looked over her shoulder at Hayden.

“Are you okay? Looks like we’re not done, yet.”

Over her other shoulder she looked at Amon.

“Have you found anything?”

They needed to get to that door and they needed to get there and through it fast. The situation was on a downhill slope and hanako didn’t have the impression that the slide would slow down anytime soon. She looked up to where the shadowy figure had been when they entered the room. There was no one to be seen from her angle. It was what she had expected. There was a possibility that whoever it was would be able to reach the door from the other side and let them through. Only Hanako hadn’t expected them to really help. After all, their stupid thumping seemed to be what alerted the creatures to their presence in the first place. So either the figure was not interested at all, or not the sharpest tool in the shed. EIther way, Hanako didn’t expect anything from that direction.

Instead she concentrated on the problems at hand again. With a lunge forward she proceeded to hack the next of the enemies, that was closest, to pieces. Immediately afterwards she made an evasion move to the side and swung her sword at the next.

Hanako would wait and defend against any creatures that would come too close, until Amon would be finished at the last desk. Then she would quickly retreat behind it, so that it was between her and the creatures. Then she’d set a foot on it and use her strength and power to hurl or slide it at the oncoming zombies, in the hopes of at least slowing them down as much as possible.

Coding Altered From: [The Frost]

Mon Apr 04, 2022 11:07 am

Sifting through papers was not so difficult, doing it under pressure that something might attack you from all angles made it difficult. Curse after light curse, Amon's face started to grow red with frustration knowing there wasn't much time left, but he couldn't make the process go any faster than what he was doing right now. That was until he stumbled upon a specific piece that had the lab numbers on it, then he read through it until his eyes settled on the list of number combinations. With a sigh of relief and some sense of accomplishment Amon now stood fully and shoved the piece I to an empty jean pocket.

"Alright, got what we need, let's get out of here-" Amon's sentence was cut short when he noticed the fallen creatures were writhing on the ground now, going from dead to very-not-dead in just a minute.

Wasting no time, Amon would start to move toward the door they needed to be at, starting to hack and cut away as fast as he could. As of now he couldn't spare any more time on trivial things, none of them could, as the numbers were growing and even remained instead of going down. His worries were building up but not to the point of panic, not yet, and he'd oy hoped this was their ticket way out of here.

Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:32 pm

.Hayden Cemplus

Hayden's breathing was relatively controlled, trying not to over-exert himself too early into their mission. With multiple other groups having a presence in the facility, he didn't want to be exhausted in case they had to meet under less-than-peaceful circumstances. When asked by Hanako how he was doing, he glanced to her and gave a nod and a grin, but no verbal response just yet. He was afraid of jinx-ing his luck so far.

Not that it helped much. The writhing of headless bodies made his heart drop. If it was only incapacitating them, they needed to leave the room fast. He wondered if maybe they were missing something, that maybe whatever was animating them wasn't contained in the head, the trauma was just what laid them out temporarily. However he couldn't think of anything to make a more permanent solution. The spinal cord was already severed if the head was cut off. Maybe the heart? Maybe there was simply no way of permanently killing them…

He couldn't think properly about it. As Amon grabbed the paper he needed and they moved to the door, Hayden's focus was on fending off the zombies so his peer could figure out the passkey. During a split-second of respite, he thought about fire, but quickly realized that he had no way of starting. He also remembered Hanako's words from earlier about energy, and decided that likely wasn't a good option. He didn't know what they were going to do if Amon couldn't get the door open. Because certainly staying here wasn't an option.

When one got close to him, he lunged forward, stabbing it through the heart, twisted, then wiggled it around as much as he possibly could before he needed to push the zombie away. If it was just going to get back up otherwise, he may as well sate his curiosity…

END POST.

Mon Apr 18, 2022 10:08 pm

Clinch River

Though few enemies remained between the party and the door, they stood firm as the trio fell upon them. They were resilient, and seemingly only growing more so as they continued to exist in the Shinigami's presence, but still posed little threat to Hanako - who was comfortably able to bat away any poor creature that crossed her path. Hayden and Amon fared capably enough to clear out the stragglers and soon the jeans-clad warrior was at the door and keypad himself.

As the remainder of the horde slowly collapsed upon them, forming a rough semi-circle, there was a momentary lull in the fighting as Hayden and Hanako held their ground. Some approached on dilapidated legs, others still crawled, and a few of the particularly broken ones even pulled themselves forwards with whatever limbs they had that were still functioning, but regardless they all were converging on this one location. There was an instant where they held their positions too, a single brief second where it seemed like they might have lost interest in the fight, and then suddenly they were rushing forwards again.

The Vice-Captain was more than capable of holding her own even against the swarm, the bodies soon piling up at her feet only for them to eventually begin to move again. Hayden was a little more outmatched though, thrusting cleanly through the heart of one enemy and watching it collapse only to find himself again facing the same enemy with a hole still present only a few moments later. It was as if, rather than healing the wounds themselves, the bodies were simply adapting to the changes being given to them and then continuing to function. They were in the thick of it now, all that remained was to press on and hope that Amon found the code to breach the door before either of them was overwhelmed.

Will It Ever End? | END POST

Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:24 am

The Big Woman

Hanako Yamada

Hanako had long since given up on refined techniques and only employed precision in that she didn't hit floor, ceiling or a comrade and aimed mainly for enemy heads. Other than that she had fallen back to simply brutally hacking and slashing, dealing as much damage with as little movements as she could. Not that the creatures were armed and skilled at fencing.
It was now clear that nothing short of grinding these zombies into a pulp would stop them and even that wasn't a given. So the aim was to at least slow them down as much as they could and give Amon as much time as possible.

While she hacked away, side by side with Hayden, Hanako's thoughts raced and searched for a way to permanently subdue these undead pieces of meat. Just in case they didn't make it out of this room in the next few moments or had to blast the door.
What were their options? Releases? Hanako could possibly use her Shikai in here, the room was large enough. If push came to shove she would have to accept her feeding the creatures some energy with the release and then use the far greater destructive potential of Bakumusha’s Shikai to get them to a state where they were no harm, even if the pieces kept moving. The secret ability was probably a better bet and the rather large explosion in this confined room would pretty safely disintegrate the zombies. The problem was that the three Shinigami were in here with them, too, and would probably die along with them. So that was out of the question. Besides that, even if they survived, even if Hanako managed to only singe herself and her comrades a little bit, she’d inevitably alter Hayden’s and Amon’s memories in the process. It wouldn’t harm them at all, chances were even they wouldn’t realise it even, but this was still something she’d only resort to when it was either this or die.

What about fire? Did they have any way to start it? There was kido, like Shakkaho, but this, again, would feed them energy. But on the other hand, with all the old rags hanging on the creatures, it would probably also set them on fire. This was something that could actually work, the fire maybe consuming them faster than they could regenerate from the energy they had fed them. Or, well, they could find themselves facing two dozen burning, but otherwise unimpressed, zombies, still backing them into a corner. In any case, Hanako wasn’t able to produce a decent kido of that level without an incantation and she highly doubted the creatures would halt their assault long enough for her to go through the whole text. But maybe…

“Hayden..:” she said in between swings.

“Are you able to produce a Shakkaho or any other fire spell without incantation? I know what I said earlier, but we might need it as a contingency plan.”

These damn zombies. It was like they became more durable by the minute. Were they feeding off the natural spiritual pressure the trio emitted? It was something they couldn’t just switch off, especially not now, when they needed it. But these things just kept coming. Hayden and Hanako cut them down with relative ease, but they didn’t stay down. They kept on coming and coming. And eventually they would wear the Shinigami out. Then they’d start pushing them back, until they stood back against the wall. At that point they would have to decide if they would resort to more extreme measures…or died. As far as Hanako could tell neither would probably agree with their mission.

They weren’t there yet.

“How’s the door coming?” Hanako yelled without turning her head.

Coding Altered From: [The Frost]