capeandcowllogs | DRAIN YOU OF YOUR SANITY

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DRAIN YOU OF YOUR SANITY

WHO: The Emissary and co. versus everybody
WHERE: Off the coast of Battery Park and throughout the City
WHEN: Just before midnight October 31st (technically November 1st)
WARNINGS: Violence and frightening imagery
SUMMARY: Drawn by Illidan’s magic, a demon from beyond reality has come forth to help the Betrayer doom the world. The battle that saves or destroys everything has begun. Happy Halloween, Cityverse!
FORMAT: Paragraph to start, whatever works after.

It came.

The Moon of midnight on All Hallow’s Eve shone wetly on the waters of the City’s Harbour. From beneath the surface a rumbling could be heard, as though emanating far, far below, within abyssal depths and ancient fathoms that could not possibly be there. First there was a ripple, then a wave, then the creature began to arise from the waters. It slid upwards and upwards, rising smoothly and continuously out of the ocean like a living edifice, a vast Thing ancient and immovable, a walking island sunken no longer. The head then the shoulders then the wings then the misshapen body came forth, yet still more of Its bulk remained beneath the waters, with slow thighs beginning to move It towards the City. All around it the sky and the ocean seemed to darken with an almost positive quality, as though jet-black ink was spilling into the universe itself. The Emissary had come.

Water flowed off Its body in torrents, mixing with drool and ichor. An unending series of sickly slopping and slobbering noises came from the twitching forest of tentacles around Its mouth, the product of a ravening hunger. The ocean heaved immensely around the Titan form, waves thrashing from the power of Its body. How to describe such a thing? How to even conceive of such horror, outside of madness or nightmare? That immense octopus head crowning the terrible body, those dragon-bat wings sprouting from Its back, those rubbery, sea-green scales, the mingled and loathsome aspects of the reptile, the mollusc- and the human! For it was on two feet that It moved, and with two arms did the Emissary reach out toward the morsels It slavered for.

An aura of panic and despair announced It, greater than any herald’s trumpet. Merely to look upon that incomprehensible shape and its alien geometry was to gamble with one’s sanity. Its very presence emanated a sense of immeasurable insignificance and absence of meaning, as though all the Earth was plankton in the presence of a whale. It moved with a shambling, unwholesome motion that had nothing to do with clumsiness, gathering speed. A mountain walked or stumbled! Toward the City, toward the Well. Toward the end of the world.

[ooc: goddamndoomchat is open on AIM if anyone's interested! There are some people fighting the Emissary who have not been slotted into threads yet; we will work those out as we go along! The raid against Illidan in Central Park will be posted by Jill later. Have fun everybody!]

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Well. He'd heard the warnings from Namor, so he'd been prepared for something pretty bad, but this? No, definitely not this. He'd sent a quick call to Carol, because he definitely needed some kind of back up against this kind of nightmare. So from Starktech it was a quick flight off the roof, and toward Battery Park. He wasn't going to let this thing go too far, at least not if he could help it. The quick flight was punctuated by a quick data dump into his brain about what he was looking at. Lovecraftian in nature, which meant, oh. That's right. Madness. Just perfect. Nothing to do but try and avoid that as best he could. So Iron Man went in flying blind and deaf, using satellite data to guide his movements toward the squid-esque horror.

By this point, Hellboy thought he'd seen every kind of Lovecraftian horror that was possible. And yet, even he found himself dumbfounded at the shear size of the creature lumbering slowly but surely toward the shore. He stood a few dozen yards inland at the edge of the trees, the waves lapping at his feet. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to fight this thing. But all his plans pretty much devolved into 'clobber it in the face,' anyway. He just had to think of some way to get up there before it started trampling buildings.

Well, he'd think of that before the thing arrived on shore. Which probably wouldn't be too long now. He drew his gun in preparation, and began to march through the increasingly large waves toward the sandy beach.

Carol had ben waiting for this all day with an anxious sort of anticipation. She wasn't exactly up on her Lovecraftian horror knowledge, but any self-respecting geek knows a little bit about Cthulhu and so she couldn't deny the slightest bit of apprehension when it came to the whole fighting it or something like it thing. But when the call came, she went without another thought. It wasn't exactly Avengers Assemble, but it was good enough for her.

She flew out her window and towards the shore as fast as she could, her clothes changing into her costume as she raced through the sky. Her mind was clear and everything in her seemed to hum in anticipation as she headed for what was sure to be one hell of a fight. She charged up her fists as she got closer to the shore, trying not to look at It directly while trying to find a good place out of reach to zap it with energy. Since, well, punching It in the face was probably not the smartest idea in the world.

Kuwabara had left the house after lunch and ended up here, where he'd sat and waited and thought about things he considered important until the actual change in the world began to happen. Again, he thought he was probably a total moron for thinking this was a decent idea, but... It was really the end, if that thing got too far. Hell, if it touched land, it was at least the end of some things.

He made his way to the shore, looking down ahead of him instead of up and out into the ocean, at the creature rising up out of the water. It was still the worst thing he'd ever felt, and every approaching step made his skin crawl more and more. This wasn't gonna be pretty.

The Emissary beheld the tiny little morsels of juicy flesh standing or flying in front of It, and was pleased. Appetizers before the main course! Namor and Orin had evacuated all fish from the harbour while the heroes were doing the same for the City's humans, so the Emissary was looking to slake the hunger It had built up entering this dimension and wading towards the shore.

Once the monster was closer enough it stooped down, leaning forward eagerly and reaching out with Its sticky, flabby claws. Snatching at the heroes with surprising swiftness, It sought to sweep them up to be stuffed into Its tentacled maw.

That wasn't good. Iron Man was reacting as quickly as readings from the satellites could come in, and it was only a second too slow for the fingers to clasp at him. Struggling wouldn't work, but a good blast of jets could possibly slip him out of the fingers, but coming from a cold start was a little difficult, he shot off with his hand canons as well, trying to propel himself up and out of the way of the fingers gripping tight to the metal armor.

At least he wouldn't taste very good.

"Oh crap," Hellboy muttered as the tentacle wrapped around him and began to lift him into the air. Well, this was a familiar feeling, if nothing else. And he had been wondering how he was going to get up to its face.

"Alright, you want a snack? Come on, I'll give you something to chew on, you damn ugly octopus!" He fired off a few shots at its head, but didn't expect much of a reaction. It was like throwing darts at a mountain.

The second Carol saw something grabbing Tony, she let loose with and energy blast aimed right towards the hand that was grabbing him. A second one quickly followed as she grit her teeth and swore under her breath.

She flew closer to It then, aiming the largest shot of energy she could right at Its face. "Where's a nuke to absorb when you need one? Or Sentry. Or someone else who could throw this ugly son of a bitch into the sun." She probably looked a little crazy muttering to herself like that. But she was fighting fucking Cthulhu what did she care?

"Aw, fuck!"

The first instinct was to try and avoid the hand, but running backwards through sand wasn't exactly the easiest thing to maneuver. Why had he done this? Why, why, why? Even as he flailed his arms out to produce his sword, he knew part of him was screaming against this.

The groping hands... Hell, he could slash and jab all he wanted, and it'd come up like a paper cut. Against this, even more than against the highest class of demon, he felt utterly insignificant. That made him angry, though, in addition to afraid, and he brandished his initial weapon on choice wildly, already desperate in a sense. And at least he wasn't alone, right?

"Fine. Fine! Come on!"

Annoyances. Something wretched and jellylike within the Emissary's hand was scorched by Carol's second energy blast. The terrible grip around Iron Man spasmed like the twitching of a fresh corpse, just long enough for him to possibly break free.

The injury also distracted the beast from Hellboy, Its other potential meal. Instead of stuffing the other demon into Its mouth, the creature lifted him over Its head, frighteningly close to that looming face and swollen, bulging octopus-skull. Almost as an afterthought, it raised one of Its massive clawed feet up out of the water. The Atlantic dripped off Its claws onto Kuwabara as the Emissary lowered the foot towards him, aiming to crush him like the ant-sized obstacle he was.

Carol was now the main target of Its ire. As her blasts slammed into Its face, It sucked in great heaves of air before spreading its mouth-tendrils wide and roaring at her like the cry of the Leviathan. The effect can scarcely be described. The vast onrushing of air coming from within Its body hit like a wind tunnel, or even a sonic boom. That air was foul to the point of toxicity, tainted by passage through the Emissary's unholy form. Worst of all was the mingled water and ichor that was blasted out of its mouth by the roar, gallons of ocean mixed with vile greenish poisons beyond the knowledge of human medicine.

The pressure on the suit decreased, and he went for it, his boots hitting a heatless blast of power, and he was up and out. "Thanks!" he managed at Carol, sensors running into overdrive while he flew higher. He needed to get out of it's range, but he was hit back from the breath, adjusting his own jets to hit a sonic boom of their own in response, before he threw caution to the wind. Time for one of his favorite protocols.

'Fuck it, fire everything', was the mental command. And out went about every weapon an Iron Man could actually hold in such a small suit.

"Jeez!" At least he wasn't alone in fighting this thing, since it looked like the wrath of God was being unleashed by the robot or whatever the hell it was flying nearby. Hellboy didn't have anything so flashy, but the ol' one-two with his right hand had yet to fail him in these kinds of situations.

"Have a taste of this!" As the tentacle brought him close to the face, he wiggled his arm free and proceeded the put as much force as he could into a haymaker.

Carol moved when It opened Its mouth, but she wasn't fast enough to avoid the acrid air that slammed into her and made her choke with the stench of it. The water and slime that followed pushed her back until she slammed into the ground a ways from the battle, unconscious and looking a little green around the gills. Also wet and slimy. Eugh.

That was going to be a pain to wash out of her hair and costume once she woke up.

Again, Kuwabara let out a string of curses and more or less ran for it, trying to get out from under the enormous foot-fall. Even if the step itself missed him, however, it kicked up a gust and disturbed the sand. A narrow escape was only escaping for the time being, and that possibility hit him hard. He saw the blonde woman tumble from the sky, heard weapon-fire... He needed more. He needed that greater force.

It didn't appear right away, though, he pushed forward, energy through palm, to try and find it and it sparked and failed. Plan B was to scramble to his feet and run again. Not away, never away, just... He didn't really want to be stepped on.

He tried again, seized by another wave of panic, trying to remember all there was to lose, and the Dimensional Blade appeared obediently this time. It wielded a little cry of "Hell yeah!," and he turned sharp and clumsily to slash up into the air at the monster. It was probably still the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight, but he could at least feel a little better about his chances.

One down, three to go. Yet before the Emissary could roar in triumph at Carol's fall it rocked backwards, partly because It had just gotten a dimension-slicing thorn deep in the sole of Its foot courtesy of Kuwabara, partly because the Right Hand of Doom had just smashed a pulped, quivering, jellylike dent in Its face, and partly because Iron Man was unloading Armageddon into Its body.

Waves foamed around Its legs as It took a step backwards into the ocean. As It did, the hand around Hellboy released him- accepting for the moment that this lesser red demon was not going to be an easy meal, the Emissary simply let him fall.

One last barrage of energy blasts, missiles, and other Iron Man ordnance rippled a series of explosions across Its torso. The Emissary was still for a second then, steam hissing from Its body, vile green and yellow fluids from Its wounds tainting the ocean around It. For a moment, It was stopped.

Then the slobbering began again, and the creature took a great bounding step out of the water and onto the land of the City. Water dripped off Its body and showered the shore beneath It as the Emissary continued striding forward away from the ocean.

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DRAIN YOU OF YOUR SANITY

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