[F02-PP] Coruscating Winds of Change <<Feeding Your Enemy>>

[Freyd 0]

"Well, to be fair," he began, grateful for her tender touch, yet also impressed by the sheer wall of gathered goods arrayed against them, "my shop actually used to be my backyard, and surrounded by a zombie-infested wilderness.  It didn't feel right leaving all of this stuff stacked out in the open in Urbus, when I relocated.  And you wouldn't want to see everything else I already keep in my inventory."  Sheepishly scratching at his own bearded grimace, Freyd hesitated momentarily. 

"I might also have stirred the old Angel's Point mess on purpose, occasionally, just to drive Quip crazy and keep her on her toes - and occupied.  You've met her.  That woman's tongue could whiplash the most silver-tongued devil.  Distractions were always key to survival whenever she was within shouting distance. Plus, her brother, Dingo, has always been kinda useless." 

Stepping carefully into his workshop he gently tapped the familiar haft of her weapon.

"You might want to keep that stowed, or at least be careful what you poke at.  Most of the gear in here is still unidentified.  Who knows what you might unintentionally trigger.  Samael's Pride, your own weapon and many other pieces of current frontliner gear had their origins in this trove."  Gingerly straddling the first barricade, made mostly from stacked tunics, breastplates and vambraces, the entire space was brimming with so much stuff as to be virtually unnavigable. He just didn't want to poke his own bits by accident, if it could be helped.  Part of him envisioned them astride an icebreaker looking for some deep diving arctic kraken, just waiting to give them the full, frigid tentacle treatment.

"Yeah.  Okay.  I get your point."  There was simply no denying truth that required a full game of Twister just to walk through.  "It might be high time I actually sort and organize all of this.  Just don't tell our friendly neighbourhood Scottish typhoon that I said so, or she'll never let me live it down."

A rack full of loosely laid swords and polearms shifted and fell, clattering all over the surrounding goods - no chance it could ever find a square inch of reachable floor in this place.  Something gave a high pitch squeak and darted away from the noise.  Freyd swore it looked like one of those old WWI German helmets with the spike on top, forgetting where he might have gotten such a thing.  Diving for the nearest cavernous dark, Freyd slipped through shadows in full Scrooge MacDuck style, only to reappear directly in its path.  

"What the--!?"

Wait is that... and is it.. frolicking?!

He really hadn't expected the helmet's base to suddenly gleefully open to reveal a wide slurping maw full of tentacles and teeth that instantly leapt to latch itself onto his face.

"Mhdhsjhskg.... get it off!  IT'S CUDDLING ME!!!"

Edited January 20 by Freyd

[Elora 0]

That was easier than I expected., she mused, admiring Freyd's own conviction and willingness to change. Or, at the very least, to consider the prospect of undertaking such a monumental endeavor. Fashioning her spear into a sort of walking stick, Elora slinked behind her trailblazing partner. Their 'path' ahead, however, appeared more obscure than the majority of Aincradian forests she'd ever had the displeasure of bushwhacking through. Clutching the weapon even closer to her chest, she did her best to squeeze between towering stacks, maneuver around strewn piles of potions and armored plating. All the while, she went against Freyd's instruction, sending cautious taps from the pointed blade or its hefty hilt to test the integrity of anything she dared traverse.

By the time they'd trudged only a few meters in, items had begun to slide and fall from their perches atop many others. It was as if journeying through the junk was like entering a living organism, one whose sensory network sent distress signals to every other corner of the room. An unexpected squeal diverted her attention from exploring the metaphor any further. 

"What was --", she exclaimed just as Freyd had done the same. Before she could even ask, whatever poltergeist they'd been chasing had lurched into the air. Like a sticky hand slapped onto the underside of a ceiling, the creature suctioned around Freyd's face, reducing his screams to a horrific muffle. Elora immediately brandished her spear, her mind, blessedly, sparing the seconds necessary to refrain from severing her boyfriend's head from the rest of his body.

"WHAAA --! F-FREYD, HOLD ON! DON'T PANIC --!!", she cried out, her brain in limbo between several different responses. "W-WHAT DO I DO?! STAY STILL FOR A SECOND!", she demanded as limbs erratically swayed and slammed into their surrounding objects. As if by some hilarious and cartoonish law of nature, the piles around them began to shake. Elora watched in disbelief as mounds of the horde began to teeter and cascade into one another like calico dominos in the distance. Shaking hands tried and failed to aim between the slim hit box of the the insidious abomination and her lover's countenance.

With no other means to save him, she cast her polearm to the current of clutter and dove into the fray.

[Freyd 0]

Flailing and failing to find purchase against his nemesis face-sucker, Freyd spun sideways and smashed his face into the nearest solid surface he could feel in a vain effort to get the bloody thing off.  It didn't work, triggering instead the avalanche whose initial seismic precepts Elora had already elaborately queued.  At least he'd found the chest piece of some gaudily ornate suite of plate mail, and not accidentally mashes himself up again an axe, resplendently pointy morningstar, or a piece with more thorns enhancements than an infernal briar bush.  Gong resounding loudly, if also somewhat squishily, he flattened his gelatinous assailant against cold steel to the disconcerting sound of its gleefully childish giggle and his beloved's anguished pleas.

"WHAAA --! F-FREYD, HOLD ON! DON'T PANIC --!!"

Easy for you to say!  

No beckoned words came, due to an abundant absence of air, his mind failing to find the switch marked 're-inflation' in his addled brain. The gloppy thing slathering itself all over his features suddenly lurched and skittered upward . Into the yawning helmet of a leering hollow knight's regalia threateningly ready to fall, it scrambled. Bizarre skitter-pop sounds of tentacles releasing their grip to take on another in quick succession filled the air like firecrackers at a festival. Twisting and bobbing about, the previously empty shell banged about awkwardly, dancing an awkward jig to the tune of a bucket of ball bearings clanging about its metallic innards and setting them all to life.  Freyd pointed, still shy of the breath required to cry out actual warning, as Elora loomed in close and tried helplessly to shoo it away.

"W-WHAT DO I DO?! STAY STILL FOR A SECOND!"

Possessed, the armor straightened and bloated, as their mischievous quarry swelled and filled its void, threatening to assume its functions.  Limbs bloated with inky purple flesh suddenly grabbed his beloved from behind in a wholly inappropriate bear hug, and the most disturbing smacking of lips either of them had ever heard.

"Let go, you little menace!  Or, so help me, I will peel you open with a spoon!"

A single tiny tentacle slid out to open the suit's visor and peek out a single bloodshot eye surrounded by unnaturally placed teeth, glaring giddily at him from over her shoulder and nodding its agreement.  Freyd gulped, realizing its intentions too late for any warning as its pulpy purple mass spilled out from its current container into the back of Elora's clingy clothes and leathers.

"Hey1  Private space, perv!  The suit's already occupied."  

Hands perched and ready to rip it free or else tear off the intervening barrier, his brain suddenly stalled again as he realized he was already out of viable options.

"Oh.  Fuck."

And then the room's precariously quivering contents, which had watched and waited, biding their time in all their grand Rube-Goldberg chicanery, came thundering down upon them all.

[Elora 0]

Elora yelped in equal surprise and terror as the suit of armor suddenly hoisted her from the ground. With arms pinned to her side, she resorted to kicking her heels back and into the mail's scalloped plating. The fruitless effort did little more than create a cacophony of clangs and scrapes. "You mangey, cunt, I will END YOU!", she threatened with a fuming hiss. Taunting and downright infuriating cackles were its only response.

Normally, biting would have proven a viable next resort. Unfortunately, the thought of sinking her teeth into a steel vambrace filled her with a comparably, far greater sense of dread. "F-FREYD, DO SOMETHING!!", she commanded as her partner appeared to come to his senses.

"Let go, you little menace!  Or, so help me, I will peel you open with a spoon!", he threatened in equal measure.

Well thanks -- I could have said that!, she scowled as Essential Verdigris coalesced into her hand. "Let's see how much you like the taste of steel!", she huffed, prying the blade of her weapon between the connection of kneecap and sinew. In an instant, the insidious laughter was transmitted into squeals of agony. Elora would have almost felt bad for the creature if it wasn't such an elusive asshole. As if out of panicked desperation, tentacles released from the armor, sliding down the length of its forearms and tunneling directly into her...

The sequential crackle of ripping seams was immediately disguised by the sounds of a cataclysmic collapse. Thudding and clamoring echoed from all around, ricocheting from the walls with a prolonged and deafening crescendo.

Amidst the avalanche of chaos, Elora had been released from the soldier's strangle-hold. Falling onto the ground, she brandished her spear overhead, instincts demanding a shield from the impact of plummeting objects. 

Edited Monday at 02:01 AM by Elora

[Freyd 0]

Still struggling to catch his own elusive breath, Freyd was only half-aware of Elora's miscellaneous plights. One never seemed to suffice. Instinct warned him that her weapon was in play, she having nearly skewered him more than once with some variation of sharp stick during their adventures.  Partners develop a certain innate danger sense for such things, apparently. Somehow, amidst all the unravelling chaos, he managed to catch a better glimpse of the thing as it poured itself from steel casing into occupied elven-shaped leathers.

"It's a mimic!  I fought one ages ago with Freya, I think?"  Doesn't matter who, dumbass!  Do something about it.

Total collapse of the room's ignobly sorted infrastructure halted any opportunity for planning. The best he could manage was to reach out and grasp Elora's ankle to offer tabs for the aftermath.  Wave after wave of collected junk spilled over top of them both, burying them beneath a tide of treasures left to be counted another day.  One that had yet to come and developed a backlog sufficient to stymie the gods of time themselves.  When the crashing, clattering and smotherfulness had ceased, Freyd followed the solitary tether still linking them.  Fingers sliding upward pas calf and thigh, he could hear cursing, giggling - possibly both - and other sounds too muffled to clearly identify.

Hip... waist... vest... something squishy. Ah-hah!  Gotcha!

Desperately hoping he wasn't about to earn a stabbing, Freyd thrust his unseen hand beneath a thicket of fabric and grasped the squirming thing within, taking momentary care to be sure he wasn't about to accidentally yank on any sensitive bits.  Slowly, but firmly, he pulled the snared suspect free with one hand, while excavating Elora's freedom with the other.

"You're okay," he offered, leveling off his voice against the thudding heartbeat in his chest, trying to calm the scene.  The gangly purple splotch of goo in his hands  blinked its solitary eye at him, the thing too scared and dazed to do anything more, for the moment.  

"Wait... Wait.  WAIT!" 

Placed himself between Elora and the thing, the vivid twitch in her eyes suggesting darker intent that he was used to seeing. 

"It's just a baby!"

[Elora 0]

If there was ever a time to be thankful for a pain-suppression system, it was beneath the torrent of a thousand different plates and blades. A waterfall of assorted weights barreled onto them both until she was certain that neither was capable of resurfacing for air. Despite her overdramatic resignation, Elora swore she could hear -- feel the motion of something rummaging through the cataclysmic clutter. A sudden squeeze around her calf startled her as she attempted to wriggle her weapon free from its gooey prison. In the aftermath of it all, whatever thing had possessed her clothes was now schlorping across her chest and arm.

Hands failed to tread the sea of discombobulated refuse amidst its oppressive pressure, her voice squealing and making vague threats toward the tentacles that tickled her skin. "W-when I get out of this -- I'm turning you into a calamari hors d'oeuvre!", she swore with vengeance.

Successive grasps urged her to reconsider her original assessment. The gentle caresses, now constricting her thighs, then her waist, were not the product of another spirit gone rogue, but the touches of her lover, scaling her body like some sort of prehistorically-oversized jungle vine.

How romantic.

"You're okay,", came Freyd's belated reassurance as he attempted to salvage her from the pile of debris.

An obstructive cloak swept from her face gave way to a considerable inhale as Elora feigned an otherwise-inevitable suffocation. "Freyd!", she called out with coquettish spectacle, "You saved me!"

Precious moments flitted away before Elora registered his attention on a much smaller, much more dilapidated item perched in his palm. Turning to regard her with one bulging, mischievous eye, she immediately reciprocated its sight with the tip of her serrated blade.

"Wait... Wait.  WAIT!", cried Freyd as he lunged forward to shield the inky homunculus, "It's just a baby!"

"A BABY WHAT -- ?!", she yelped, "A BABY MIMIC -- That could be anything, Freyd! LITERALLY anything!!" Recalling her weapon, she did her best to explain to him, "How do we know that's really what it looks like?? What if it's not the only one --" The rosy color of her face went pale at the thought. "What if it goes back into the walls -- we don't know where it will go next --!"

 

[Freyd 0]

"How do we know that's really what it looks like??"

He flinched at that one, the barb sinking deeper than she intended, in a place she hadn't meant to strike.

"What if it goes back into the walls -- we don't know where it will go next --!"

Snaring an open mid-sized jug and a wholly inexplicable plunger from amidst the refuse, Freyd stuffed the wee beastie though its funnel-shaped opening and plumbed it inside.  A quick pop and corkscrew cap sealed it in, promptly reinforced with a convenient clamp top. Stuff too tightly to move, all the mini-mimic could do was slowly squirm and start at them through the glass with its one bulbous eye.  He was pretty sure that one of the more oozy tentacles was also its tongue, but preferred not to overthink it.

"It... didn't hurt you..."

Still gasping and clutching at his collar to loosen it from around his neck, he kept his hand on the jar and himself between it and Elora.  

"Look.  I know it spooked you, and its been frolicking in a mess that I promise to clean up and organize, but think for a moment."

A sideways glance assessed the scale of the promised he'd just made with justifiable regret before returning his focus to the scene.

"Mimics lure and trap.  They don't... play, however excessively friendly."  Her loosened bodice and tinted mix of blushy rage drew a haggard grin as his heart finally steadied its pace.  "If this thing was hostile, it wouldn't have slunk around for this long, or played harmless tricks.  It also wouldn't surprise me if it was stuck inside something I brought back from one of my quests."  

Leaning over to give the little purple thing a better look, its features were far less intimidating than when first glanced.

"Which one, I wonder?"  A genuine echo of child-like curiosity infecting his inflections.  Fingernail tinked against glass, to be echoed by what looked like a spike or a tooth from the other side, the thing's eye matching the look in his own.