Crush stepped outside her cell and shut the door behind her, a rather useless gesture since the lock on her door was now missing. From what she had seen from outside, the… dragon’s, and it really took a lot for a woman of her education to even THINK of calling something that, seemed to be more interested in catching people than killing them.
The good part of that meant no one had died yet, at least from what she could tell. The bad part was that now the monster and its two buddies down by the entrance had a LOT of hostages. At least, Crush hoped they were being held to use as hostages.
Before running off, Crush turned back around and looked at the hallway towards where Slasher and Shrike were being held. She knew they were going to be trying something with all this going on, but there were more important things to take care off. For a second she just thought of running over and knocking them out, but that every second counted in situations like these.
Without wasting further time on thought, Crush ran to the nearest staircase while trying to think of how she was going to do this. Freeing the hostages came first, but there was no way she was going to win a fight against something like what was running around down there without the element of surprise… and a nuclear weapon.
Sometimes, being a hero really sucked.
Meanwhile, outside the prison…
“Wait… wait, I think, I think I can see… something now,” Ranma said as he frowned and looked at the prison. He could definitely make out humanoid… blobs running around inside of it. “But, I’m not seeing any monsters or nothing. At least, I don’t think I do.” As far as he could tell, everybody ‘looked’ different.
Sue stood silent for a bit more and waited for Ranma to tone down the amount of power he was giving his eyesight. “Well, that’s a start I suppose. Just because you know how to use your abilities thanks to the knowledge ingrained in your DNA, doesn‘t mean you‘re going to be an expert at it right off. That takes practice.”
With Ranma no longer looking around, Sue looked back up at the jailhouse and frowned. When she had first first felt the lair guardian and came to a place like this, Sue had expected it to be underground and asleep or something. The fact that it was inside a human fortress this… defenseless, was quite the letdown.
Several yards away and a few stories up, Shrike peeked out the window as the rather loud maniacal laughter continued past, then groaned. “This isn’t good.”
The understatement of the year made Slasher look back to her cellmate in anger. “Well DUH! We have a wannabe Lizzie running around outside and yanking up guards for dinner while we‘re stuck in here waiting our turn to get grabbed! OF COURSE IT’S NOT GOOD!”
With a lot of counseling from her others, Shrike resisted the urge to bitch slap Slasher to shut the girl up, and maybe knock some sense into the woman. “Not that dumbass.” That much was obvious. “But Puddin’ is probably gonna try and do something about it. Then-”
Slasher suddenly brightened up at the mention of Crush’s nickname that the two of them thought up. “Hey you’re right! She’ll get eaten. I gotta see that.” She ran back over to the window. “Hey Lizzie, get back here! I don’t wanna miss the show!”
We’re working with this moron? two different Arrays thought at the same time.
“No you idiot!” Shrike yelled. “Even if we don’t die.” Which was looking less and less likely as the dragon collected more food. It was strange though, none of Array knew of a dragon that ate humans. Well, still ate humans anyway, history said they had once been a favorite snack of dragons. “This prison is going to be totaled, and we’ll be relocated.” Even on the off chance that they did end up in the same prison, it would take time to concoct a new escape plan. Time Array really didn’t want to waste. “We gotta go now.”
Shrike closed her eyes and concentrated. A second later she got the impression of being in more than one place at the same time, and two more women appeared beside her. One was a nerdy-looking mage in a rather outlandish wizard costume complete with a wand that had a star on the end, while the other was a woman with her hair cut short and dressed in a skintight green jumpsuit. They both had pink hair, the came color as the seemingly dyed stripe Shrike had.
Slasher took one look at the two extra women, then to Shrike’s hair, and then the newbies. “Oh Array, it’s you.” She was about to tell the woman to hurry up and unlock the door, when another loud crash from outside interrupted her.
Outside the prison, Jane picked herself up and shook off the chunks of prison wall that had come crashing down on her. She had lost her concentration for a moment, and her wings shut off long enough for her full weight to bring the already weakened barricade crashing down on top of her. Still, this wasn’t as important as what she had just felt. N-No way.
Ranma looked up to the window and frowned. “Okay, what the hell was that?” He could feel the thing Jane and Sue had been talking about. It definitely felt different than a normal person but… “I thought you said there was only one?”
Sue found herself almost completely speechless. “It… it just made two copies of itself. But… the only dragon who has that kind of magic…”
Grandfather Exthilion Jane thought to herself. Somewhere inside this prison, was a lair guardian belonging to the most powerful dragon alive! Although advancing her age to the point it was had given her power, she was still far below what a naturally aged dragon had acquired thanks to countless experiences it had gone though. To be able to just have a peek at something created by the being that invented magic… she could hardly contain herself.
However, inside her cell, Slasher didn’t share Jane’s sudden enthusiasm despite her soon to be obtained freedom. The reason for this was…
“HOLY $#!^ ARRAY, HAUL YOUR ASS! THAT THING’S COMING THIS WAY, AND I DON‘T THINK SHE LIKES HER NEW NICKNAME!”
The three women who shared the same mind looked at each other, and then the mage quickly ran to the door. Although with all the alarms going off, she doubted anyone was going to care about another cell door being opened, or even notice it on the security monitors, sticking to what had been done in rehearsal was a took way to accomplish a task… despite the immense amount of fear they were all feeling right now.
“You idiot, you #%&$ing idiot! You just had to go and piss her off didn’t you?” Shrike yelled at Slasher while her magician persona Myria used a simple unlocking spell on the door and opened it.
Right as the last of the group made it through the cell door, the building shook with the impact of the dragon landing on it, and one of its claws tore through the window to reach inside and group around the empty cell right as the door shut behind them.
"Where are you, you little morsel?”
“AHHH! Array, do something quick,” Slasher yelled. “SHE’S GONNA EAT ME!”
“Like what?” Ranis, the Array with the short hair in the skintight suit demanded through gritted teeth. “Even if I had all of me here, I couldn’t take a dragon!” At the same time, she was consulting with all of her other personalities to come up with an idea.
Beg for mercy the original suggested.
We gotta run, Shrike thought.
We’ve got to hide, Myria told herselves.
You’ve got to pray! Jesus, Allah, Buda, we love you all, Marry, the priest personality suggested.
You’ve got to throw Slasher to her and run, the pirate Jackie Swallow ordered.
You’ve got to cast the Dragon Slave!, Yoko told them.
…
What?
This is why we don’t go back to Japan Array told the rest of her.
“Hey, that’s it!” Myria shouted as the dragon started to climb down the side of the building and look inside the hole she punched into the wall. Not the stupid suggestion that their otaku personality had thought, but she did have a spell that would help. She just hoped the dragon didn’t decide to nuke the building just to get at them. “PRESENCE MASK!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
As soon as Jane looked inside the cell, she squinted her eyes and groaned in frustration. Apparently the little lair guardian had a Presence Mask spell in its compendium of magic. Jane hated that damn spell. Not only did it make the people cast on undetectable by any means known, it screwed up all the aura trails in an eight mile radius from the casting point.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”
For a dragon’s eyes, that made for a pretty sickening lightshow of colors. Note to self, dissect liar guardian slowly and VERY painfully the dragon told herself while trying to deal with her new migraine.
“AHHHHH-OUCH!”
From her place on the floor, Slasher looked up to Shrike and frowned. “Hey, what was that for?”
“Shut up idiot,” the other prison inmate told her. “She can’t see or hear us! You’ll be fine.”
Slasher looked over to the part of the dragon’s face she could see through the hole and gulped. Great, now she looks even madder! Of course, she’d be long gone in a minute or two. “Sweet,” she said after jumping to her feet, “let’s get the hell outta here!”
Before their thief could get away, Shrike reached over and grabbed her. “Not so fast.”
Okay now what? She can’t see us, but I can’t move, Myria thought to the rest of her collective consciousness.
A few seconds later, the dragon’s form shimmered and disappeared from the outside, then a woman wearing what barely could be called clothes and some jewelry landed inside the cell. “Okay where are you?”
Slasher blinked. “What the hell?”
“Don’t explain, it’ll just really confuse her,” Ranis said aloud so the woman that wasn’t a part of her could hear. “But what is she-”
The woman threw out her hand towards the cell’s left wall and a wave of force impacted it hard enough for cracks to appear.
Oh no! If that hits me, we can kiss our masking spell goodbye. It’ll break down unless I stay in one spot to keep it going the magician told the others.
Ranis looked over to the whole reason they were here. Shrike, can you carry Slasher out of here ?
Shrike groaned. “Yeah, but I ain’t gotta like it,” she mumbled.
The woman blasted another shockwave from inside the cell and damaged the other wall. With all of the area inside the thing checked, she looked back toward the outside and started gathering energy for another spell.
Then run! I’ll check out now, and Myria will stick around long enough to give you a head start. Call us out again when you get to the tree line so I can make a gate Ranis told them as she started to disappear.
“Hey, hey! What’s going on?” Slasher demanded as one of her rescue party faded from sight. A second late, a pair of arms grabbed her from behind and she was hefted over her cellmate’s shoulder. Judging by the tail covered in pink fur, she had just changed into the freaky half-cheetah form of hers that let he run at…
Oh crap the thief thought before the world became a blur.
Back in the cell, the sudden dust storm told Jane that her prey was trying to get away at rather high speeds. It can hold a presence mask spell and still move?
No, that was impossible. If one of them was moving away but still unable to be seen, then one of the liar guardians had to still be standing right in front of her. Jane finished charging her spell and smirked, at least she was getting something out of this little trip.
But before Jane could let it go, a strange sound followed by the appearance of two more powerful auras in the area made her look back at the hole she had punched in the prison’s wall to see two beings materializing on the ground below. “Now what?”
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(Posted Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:26)
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