AW [Secret World] Luminocity

[Big Dicc Marty]

Justice could not imagine the feeling of his face peeled away into petals and tongues, he could not imagine the snaking lengths of prehensile muscle tasting the raw air. No, that was out of reach for him. What he could see, as his brain worked a thousand times faster than he could ever have believed, were biceps. Arms, legs, muscle groups. Close enough to him, to his own body, that he could project a command. Were he so lucky, this terrible screech would come to an end.

Justice used the last twinge of his mind before it devolved into unending pain and vomit...
...to kneel.

He lowered himself onto one knee and bowed his head, hoping to project onto the remnants of 16 bodies to make them kneel with him. Prayer... prayer was familiar. He remembered his father helping him to pray. The gods he held before, old and forgotten, weren't there in his mind. He'd only prayed once to them. He knew of another, though. Small fragments of a name whispered by secret clerics and the walls of hidden chapels, someone ascended to god hood or simply always was.

Justice let his arms fall limp in servitude and faith, projecting this moment of vulnerability now to anything he could affect. On his knees, eyes shut tight, mouthing a prayer to Lady Ishtar. He let himself believe if only to better force such violent empathy on the abominations, if only to make them kneel and pray too. At the very least, the dissasociation would help him get through the riptide of a cacophony projected at him.

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgment's head began to swim as the mosnters began their attack. "You assholes..." The AUGUR cursed, bringing a hand up to his head.

He attempted to steady himself, but ended up dropping to one knee. His overly sensitive ears were making the dizziness 10 times worse. "Would someone shoot these bastards already!" He said forcing down bile.

 

[LavaLung]

If Moon's actions were not already entirely beyond reason, the concept she might have been shot by the other survivors might have given her pause- As it was, the enraged, animalistic struggle of fighting these things kept her entirely occupied. Her bleached pink stature had become horridly thin and rakish, so she understood the biomechanics of why these things found grappling with her difficult- But it ended up being a complete stalemate, as her clumsy malformed hands were now too awkward to catch the monster's fleshy barbed hooks.

Was there even anything left of her, beyond this haphazard, wretched thing?

The noise, the twisted distortions of her already damaged ears, the deranged feeling-beyond-pain that spoke of something of a soul deep down in there, still capable of feeling such things.

She howled back. It was a grotesque and slathering noise that erupted from her unseen face, sounding equal parts human scream and ursine- Perhaps a even bovine- lop-jawed slathering screech.

The eclipsed Moon pounded towards the abominations, thunderously, then simply grasped at one of the exposed wriggling tendrils and kicked the torso in the opposite direction.

Already melting down. Not enough self-preservation left in her animal-brain to make her cower. Cornered, she did what all animals did, and lashed out, regardless of consequences.

 

[Char]

Hall

Justice' prayers were terse and clipped. The intense feeling of unease permeating his head like someone was violently shaking his very brain as the off-sounding frequency of the abominations affected him and the other augurs and a shared trauma.

The inner ear, disturbed, would not remain so due to each of their baselines counteracting the effect with their senses. But it made them feel sick and ill at ease as noses bled and visions shook as inch by inch the pack of monsters took slow stomping steps as even Moon in her fury was hit square in the brain by the psuedo-psychic attack and as she attempted to real back the worst came to pass.

For the first time one of the Augurs experienced the sphincter-claws at the end of the monsters hands as three inches of black-hook from four fingers plunged into Moons outstretched calf from the kick and then dug the hooks deep. The other hand of the monster followed suit and the transformed Psychic had eight hooked claws latched deep into the muscle.

Just one of the beasts would have been manageable. But as a pack with shared objectives and so clumped as they were the abominations on either side of the first followed suite and one dug its claws into her boot, and another lunched forwards to close its face around her knee.

While having yet fully understood the parasite in the myclopean body and its capabilities another came to the fore as, with the petals clamped tightly around Moons knee not painfully but firm if uncomfortably the Augur could feel the briefest pressure as the Parasitic tongue pulled back into its cavity with no room to do more. And before Moon could even process with her advanced cogitation she fell backward, overextended, onto her back and tripped right over the kneeling Justice as the two fell to the floor.

An Augurs ability to hyper-cogitate faster than the human brain was usually capable of disseminated the entire scene for the entire group.

Moon, her leg raised above her, simply ended at the knee in a bloodied stump. From the feeling of the near-instant attack the Abomination had somehow rapidly friven its spiked body like a pistol through her leg and sheered it off through even the bone as even now the Abomination had the boot of Moons leg sticking out of its petals while it tried to intake it like sucking on a cigar.

The only saving grace was for moon, her body, depleted as it was, felt only a fraction of the pain as he hyper focused mind simply kept too focussed to register it beyond an uncomfortable pinch-burning sensation mixed with aggressive pins and needles numbness.

With of the psychics prone now, and one of those being essentially dazed and confused, the Abominations did not surge but insted continued their psuedo-psychic assault and slowly inched forwards like inevitable death.

In the back of the pack one Abomination rose to tower over the others. And then kept rising until it was clearly off the ground and almost to the ceiling. The monster twitched and thrashed as if it was restrained to a pillar with its arms pinned to its side as it kicked out uselessly. Slowly, while fighting all the time its torso began to twist in a counter-clockwise direction while its hips and neck the other as the monsters body oddly began to wring itself like a wet rag until with a sound unhead through the burbling it twisted fatally into a parody of itself and then dropped back to the ground.

Still at the back of the pack another monster rose into the air.

Behind the psychics, Mollay was shouting something muffled through his gasmask at them...

 

[Big Dicc Marty]

For Justice, that was all that he wrote. All he attempted. The crumble of thin stretched flesh now draped over him shattered any of the strained concentration he had left. The deep fatal thrum in his head kept the ground too liquid for him to build any more foundations. He simply wrapped his arms around Moon and screamed, screamed as loud as his voice would carry. Screamed because he had nothing else to do but hold Moon and scream. It was this constantly mounting over-stimulation boiling over onto his weakened psyche.

A constant ringing bell kept roaring in his head that he barely had the patience to fend off.

"Throw yourself in. It's better to die than to suffer this torment any longer."
"Ball your fists and swing, die standing and fighting, not clenching a body.
"Be a hero."
"Run. Don't be a fool. Better to live another day."
"Break the line and run out of this hell. Damn the reactor."
"Dad wants you alive."
"Dad wants you to be a man."
"Die fighting."
"Live running."

A thousand miles a minute. Too fast. Too loud. Screaming, tearing, a shattered pain endurance.

Justice went dark after his voice shattered the wind of his lungs. To him, it was respite, finally. He could have fainted or his mind shattered and let loose to whatever rabid desires of survival or even simply died. It didn't matter. He could whimper, rest, lick his wounds in that sudden black void that made the ground lift to meet him and the ceiling above a distant memory.

 

[Char]

Hall

With Moon and Justice prone, and the rest thoroughly out of the way there was a thrush of pinpricks felt just over their heads as from down the hall Mollay opened fire with his jackhammer.

Between the psychic assault and the mass-driven bullets flying over head each of the psychics felt as though the world was moving in slow motion as things seemed to draw to a crawl.

In fact, things had slowed down to a crawl as their advanced minds cogitated what was happening at incredible speeds. A feeling not connected to the psychic assault had seeped in and drowned over it like oil onto water and could now be felt bearing down on them.

It was oppressive. In more than just the psychic force of it it felt like someone's mental reading. Of absolute power and the certainty of it, of oppressive might and unassailable will. Of the uncaring apathy and contempt of a god...

The hall stretched through their mental perception and twisted like it was grabbed despite not actually deforming in the slightest as that will was imposed. It draped onto every abomination, every Augur, every OIA stormtooper.

And then it pulled. Time sped up again as the abominations, as though now separated from them through a pane of glass were each yanked away like a chorus of puppets pulled by the strings as they flew down the hall like an open airlock. Not affecting the psychics at all it was like watching through a screen as they diverted around a central object and past as they were battered against the wall, doorframes, and impaled on exposed pipes that began jutting out of walls.

They flew further and smashed into the end of the hall at the T-junction into a heap of bodies all mangled into unnatural shapes as, either stunned or in shock those that survived opened and closed the petals of their heads like gaping mouthes on fish gasping for breath. One single Abomination stood, floating in the center of the hall and obstructing the figure as it strained against the mental bonds. Something behind it strode perceptably closer and, with a gesture unseen the Abomination began to fold in on itself with a sickening wet sound as it was twisted like a pretzel and wrung like a dish rag until something audibly popped inside of it and the black-brown meatball that was once a monster dropped to the floor with a wet splat.

Exposed now and unveiled like a psychic sun, Scathatch Kay stood.

Half naked in but the shorts she wore under a torn skirt and a salvaged OIA jacket that read Black.

Not dead either, the Aforementioned liquidator stood behind Kay, Gasmask missing and a fabric blindfold tied around her eyes as she navigated with one hand on the first-generation Augurs' shoulder.

"Are you there, children?" Black intoned, unsure and unseeing as she turned her head listening for a sound. "Whose screaming, Justice? Are you hurt? Kay I can't see a damn thing with this on what's going on?!"

Kay, The Hierophant, gave them a wide grin as she veiled herself once again and the only feeling that came off of her went from imperious and overbearing might to just the tingle that her psychic gaze was brushing over them.

"Yoo Hoo~ Sorry, we're late." She whistled between her teeth as she took one step forwards, and then took both herself and Black tumbling over an abominations corpse as both women unable to see stumbled and fell into a heap on the floor.

Mollay, finally reaching them, paused as if unable to understand what just happened as he looked from the prone psychics to the new arrivals and then back to his comrades who seemed equally stunned.

"Bloody hell you lot are something else, you know that?" He cursed at the Psychics and their current state. "Get up, all of you, It isnt safe here." He urged, his weapon still at the ready as he called over to Kay and Black.

"You okay over there?" He shouted though his mask, getting a thumbs up as Kay shot one arm up in the air to affirm as she and Black tried to right themselves only for Black to slip on a puddle of the clear fluid from the abominations and fall back down.

"Can you stand? Its ok lad!" Mollay asked to first Moon, reluctance in his mental reading to touch her and then to Justice as he tried to soothe the shocked psychic.

 

[Gunhand4171]

Judgement had finally recovered from the psychic barrage the monster. He sat there on his knees for awhile still getting his senses back under control.

"Welcome back Hierophant..." Judge called from his spot on the floor. At Mollay's comment, he turned his head towards the man. He wanted, with every fiber of his being, to curse back him. To shout and scream about how he didn't do shit to help. However, Judge didn't have the strength to do so. He simply ignored the normie and looked back around at the others then back to Kay. He was going to have to get stronger. His precognition wasn't strong enough yet.

 

[Wolf626]

"Who am I?" mumbled a young voice. The voice was small and quiet, unsure of itself. It hurt to even think. But then he realized, he had been the one to speak. His mind felt sluggish and weak and slow, but he rolled himself, his ego in his mind's eye. Growing bigger, stronger and clearer than before. Yes, he was Magician. He was an Augur. He had a mission. No. A quest! And he was lying on the floor.

As the child rose up, flashes of his brief firefight surged back. He had been fighting beside Moon, retreating against an onslaught of monsters. Magician had lost count of how many shots he had fired even before the psychic attack had scrambled his brain. As he stood near Justice's comatose body, he tried to rouse him, raising his head towards to Mollay. "We might need to carry him."

 

[A_Bibor_Farkas]

Tower stood, albeit frozen by the Barrage, blood rushing from her nose as the creatures came closer. Her eyes rolling into the back of her head as all of the noise was drown out, sitting around the table, were four variations of Gemini herself. As if on Cue, the others welcomed the now conscious "normal" variation. "We have required and emergency meeting, us the board of directors have deemed some of ourselves more useful than others." The more calm collected variation spoke first." In order to survive this hellscape you find yourselves in." She continued.

"One of us should take over until a time at which you don't find yourself bombarded with heavy psychic attacks." She finished as the others began to rattle off talks of violence from one, crying from the other." Then we agree?" The calm Tower spoke, as the "normal tower nodded anxiously." Protect everyone as much as we can, so they don't dig in their head like they did us..."
The calm Tower smirked, nodding in acceptance as her eyes rolled forward just in time to see Kay and Black moving to the group. "Heirophant! You look like ass, are you alright? I can make a wheelchair for justice in the mean time, until we need to move again." She made mention, looking to the unconscious AUGUR at her feet, looking to moon and to Magician." Are you both alright, minus maybe a headache from hell?" She patted Magicians head as he stood, before looking to black and the other agent." What's the plan? Where do we move next?"