Tyranny, meet anarchy

[aestrix]

The city of Eantasyl is fortunate in its placement, and is considered old for even an elven city. The streets are some kind of shimmery stone, the buildings neatly arranged and well maintained. It's pleasant, and generally considered a nice place for the rich to retire. There's a noticeable lack of greenery and foliage on the streets themselves - the place is kept very dense, and it's can be guessed that its citizens thought they had enough foliage already. It sits at the base of one of the very first world trees. One could be forgiven for missing the city for the tree - it's several thousand feet tall, and its branches bring shade to more than half of Eantasyl. They do not need gardens. They have enough to spare, up in the sky.

(The leaves are a pain to rake.)

Despite many of its flaws (and there are many) the Sunrise Empire isn't actually a horrible place to live. This place especially. Just steer clear of the government, keep your head down, don't join any rebellions, and don't break any laws, and you'll be fine. Probably. Unless there are dangerous criminals running around, causing trouble.

But that hardly ever happens. The Ministry has it all under control.

Comments

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx would be very dead right now if it weren't for her pesky little friend, Mania.

A flicker of brilliant light flashes behind her eyes, and the damage knits, patching and repairing, Jinx's Inspiration rejecting the foreign unlogic and preserving its host. She stumbles - but then she steadies.

Retreat? She's just starting to win.

Rather than waste time reloading, she pulls the pin on one of her flashbangs, and slams the door of the box closed as blinding light and concussive sound erupts behind her.

Up!

The device materializes sideways on the tree's trunk, a few feet to the left of Mr. heart-attack. Jinx pops her head out and grins at him, clinging to the side of the green box. Her eyes spark and flicker.

"Hey, you're pretty cool with the whole brain-exploding thing, wanna join my gang?"

[aestrix]

He rubs at his eyes, glancing about at the sound and spotting her. He looks at her like she's absolutely insane.

"Why in the hell would I want to," he begins, and then he looks into her eyes. "To. To..." He trails off.

"Fuck, my job is insane!" he says. "You know what would be better? Blowing my stupid-ass crazy government to hell."

His remaining reasonably uninjured companion recovers, and... realizes something is very wrong with her teammate. She starts to do something, and -

Then she is interrupted by her spontaneous stroke.

She spasms, then dangles limply from her line.

"Hell yes I wanna join your gang!" says Mr. Heart Attack.

(People on the crystal network are very alarmed!)

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx patches herself into the crystal network with her little Apokalypsi device. It is time to do some taunting.

"Hiiiiiii Elveses! Thanks for the strike team, it really shows you care! Sorry, but I'm going to go have some fun at your prison now, toodles!"

She grabs Mr. Heart Attack by one hand and yanks him into her green box, and with a flicker of light...

[aestrix]

... they are in a dark room, unearthly cold, unnaturally quiet. Even the sound of the green box arriving is muted, silenced.

(It is completely filled with traps, is Jinx going to immediately try to exit her green box?)

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx looks around, then does it again with her apokalypsi scanner. She was really expecting at least some guards, jeez.

[aestrix]

It doesn't have guards. It doesn't need them.

Already, the room is being filled with a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that is excessively deadly. There are approximately three hundred darts aiming themselves at her green box, set to go off momentarily.

Mr. Heart Attack's eyes widen. He firmly grabs Jinx by the shoulder and pulls her completely inside, before slamming the door shut. He keeps a hand clamped on her shoulder, closing his eyes.

"Ma'am, you have a fuckton of poison in your system, I am making it stop with its killing you business, one moment."

[itstandsforjinx]

"Oh, thanks."

Jinx pulls another of her grenades from her belt, flicks it over to being an injector with a few twists of her fingers, and stabs it into her shoulder, tranfiguring even more of her body over to dealing with toxins. She looks a little more spindly now, her packed athlete's muscle thinning away visibly.

[aestrix]

"Yep! It's what I'm here for."

Mr. Heart Attack can actually help with that! He is dealing with a lot of the toxins himself, but he notices what she's doing and sets in on helping her body process toxins faster. He's such a good minion.

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx waits (mildly patiently) for Mr. Heart Attack to finish what he's doing. She has something a bit more involved to build than a one-use injector at the moment, anyway. Fortunately she tossed a bunch of random scrap into the green box before she took off: there's more than enough materials in here to make a decent transmuter with.

[aestrix]

Mr. Heart Attack is pretty good at his job, actually. He takes out the toxins in her quickly.

"Hey," he asks, "mind if I upgrade the shit out of you while I'm doing this? If I can touch you while you work we can both work at the same time, you don't have to stay still while I do magic."

[itstandsforjinx]

"That sounds fucking awesome. Just watch the hair and try not to jostle my arms while I'm working. Also, can you teach me the ways of how to give people heart attacks?" Jinx grins.

[aestrix]

"Sure. Want blue hair that's naturally blue? I can definitely teach you some magic, but maybe not heart attacks in particular! And it takes a while and needs a bit of setup, so we should finish whatever we're doing here first."

He gets to upgrading her. Skin: more resistant to being punctured. Muscles: stronger and less likely to tear. Bones: harder to break. Her immune system gets a boost, her digestive system gets more efficient, her liver more able to process things. Things that are pointless are gently streamlined into a system that works.

[itstandsforjinx]

"Yes please."

Jinx grins.

"Just for that, you get a real gun." She hands up her shock pistol to her new gang member. "Keep having smart ideas and I might make you some stuff special: for now you get my pistol. Switch on the left hand side swaps between nonlethal but painful and excessively lethal. It shoots lightning bolts. Switch on the right hand side changes whether it arcs to other nasties or not."

[aestrix]

"Awesome, shiny prizes. Thanks!"

He takes the gun, and goes back to upgrading. She now naturally grows blue hair.

"Ma'am, warning, I am about to upgrade your senses a little, unless you'd rather I didn't. Also - how'd you do that transmutation thing earlier? I bet I could give you something easy to transmute with so you don't have to use muscle next time."

[itstandsforjinx]

"Yeah, please upgrade my senses. As for your question: I build things. There's this guy called Viridescence, he sent me some videos, they gave me superpowers. Hey, wait a minute, now that I think of it, I still have them. They take a while to watch, but you might get powers as well whenever we have time for that. We can trade magic." She grins. "Anyway, mostly I make weapons, but I also do scanners and things that transmute one thing into another. I fiddled my biology with one of the transmutation ones - this thing I'm working on will turn the poison out there into regular air. Also, call me Jinx, I'm not a Ma'am."

[aestrix]

"Sure, Jinx. Trading magic sounds fantastic. Want me to give you easy transmutation material along with all of the other stuff I'm doing?"

Tweak, tweak, tweak. Jinx now has perfect vision, better hearing, better taste, and a better sense of smell. Also slightly improved balance. And her body can recover faster. Jinx has a very convenient minion.

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx blinks, then smiles. "Sweeeeet, high-definition. And sure, I'd love to have some extra transmutation material. You definitely get a custom gun. Though I guess I could also make you a hologram projector or a tranmuster or a scanner or something."

[aestrix]

"We can talk details later," says Mr. Heart Attack.

He carefully gives her extra transmutation material! This takes longer than the other tweaks he made. He has it double as protection for her major organs, strong and light and dense.

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx nods. "Well, if anything happens to me you can find the tapes behind the altar over there." She points. "D'you have, like, a thirty-second summary of how to get magic, in case the other way around happens?"

[aestrix]

"Sure I do. Uh... Gather up the following: a wooden bowl, a sharp object of sentimental significance, the more you feel about it the better, a stick of graphite, a hunk of quartz, distilled water, and a gram of copper. Draw abstract stuff on the bowl, put quartz in the middle, fill the bowl with water. Cut yourself with the sharp thing, drip the blood into the bowl, then as quickly as possible put your dominant hand over the quartz, the copper over the hand, and your remaining hand over the copper. Then think about yourself as much as possible. And then you have magic."

[itstandsforjinx]

"Cool. It's a bit awkward, but I ought to be able to find that kind of stuff with a little creativity."

Jinx snaps the last few parts into place, and picks up the vaguely-rifle-shaped device. Sparks crackle down her arms, earthing themselves into the machinery, and it hums to life.

"Incidentally, what's your name?"

[aestrix]

"Kuvairian Ysentiril. Just Kuvair works, though. What exactly is down here that we're braving a fuckton of traps for?"

[itstandsforjinx]

"So far as I can tell, this is where the local government keeps its super-secret prisoners. Which I'll bet you are mages that they slapped down for not liking their rules. Also, I have an Apokalypsi scanner. It isn't exactly hard for me to find the traps. Speaking of which..."

She pings the local area. Little scanner, gimme a trap map for the whole prison.

[aestrix]

...

That's a lot of traps.

A hell of a lot of traps, actually.

Different kinds, too. Poison and cold and fire and various sharp objects and stinging insects and something that just drains all oxygen from the room and one that unleashes these horrible half bear half plant creatures with venomous teeth. The half bear half plant creatures do not, of course, need to breathe. Why would they do that.

This is a very very deadly room.

"Arcanists," corrects Kuvair, idly. "I'm - there are a few arcanists in here, but not nearly enough to fill a prison." Pause. "... Arcanists can sense other arcanists, by the way. There's five in here."

[itstandsforjinx]

Do any of the traps appear to be hardened enough to withstand contained-antimatter blasting? 'Cause it's generally kind of hard for traps to kill you when they've been destroyed at the molecular level. ...then again, magic.