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

[aestrix]

Their boss's boss's boss's boss's boss... Seems to be a group of people, actually. Several tens of thousands of years old, all of them. The person most responsible for the ridiculous state of order and cleanliness seems to be a man named Hiarnas, who has organized most of the empire, or pushed for his companions to organize it.

The closest official prison is a correctional facility several hundred miles away.

The closest, most classified, secret prison, is... Actually several hundred meters below the giant tree Jinx is currently in. Most people don't even know it's there.

Phi will be here in about three minutes.

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx looks around.

There is a metal catwalk. She is carrying grenades. She has a cutting laser. She has three minutes to build the biggest gun she's ever used.

She grins.

It's time for SCIENCE.

[aestrix]

SCIENCE!

... The assholes are alarmed by SCIENCE. They opt to A. Trap her in a tiny spot with several invisible walls, and then B. Immediately shoot her with as many poison darts as they have available at the moment. That is, twelve. They're getting more, but they have twelve right here, in shooting range.

[itstandsforjinx]

Pink light streams from Jinx's eyes; when the warning bleep of her scanner sounds, she smiles - then, with a single sweep of Pow-Pow and a torrent of destroying light, both the walls and the darts are gone.

!The work must not be interrupted!

[aestrix]

Well now they are kind of frightened.

They drop the walkway out from under her and send her and her work into the sawdust water below. Or, well, they try to, anyway.

[itstandsforjinx]

The work is self-supporting, by now. What, did they expect that she would build a gun the size of a car on a tiny little catwalk?

Jinx moves back and forth along the length of the cannon, tightening each bolt by hand, hammering in nails with her bare fists, the light inside her calling the form of the thing out into the world with the work of her body. It is almost complete, already.

[aestrix]

Now they are very frightened.

Phi isn't nearly close enough.

They... Do not have the resources to stop her. They try a few more invisible walls, but they're out of darts and out of options.

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx has a cannon.

Jinx has targets.

Wall over to my right and up, please go away. There are things behind you I want to shoot.

If there was ever a gun that could miss the broad side of a barn, it would be this one. But it doesn't take much precision to hit a wall.

[aestrix]

Blam! There goes the wall.

The assholes find this alarming! They are alarmed. Watch how they call in more than just Phi.

[itstandsforjinx]

Ooh! What are they calling in now?~

Jinx puts a shell into the perimeter of the faraway prison. Let's see how she can make them dance!

[aestrix]

They are calling in some people that are not part of squads, but are apparently some of the best arcanists in the world. Some of these people are far away, but a few of them are very close.

Also, now people that are not directly involved are very alarmed.

[itstandsforjinx]

Oh dear, how close? That'll teach her not to do her research!

She dismounts from the cannon and unslings Pow-Pow, signalling for her ride as she does so. Prooobably about time to beat feet. At least for the moment.

... Then again, the underground prison is really tempting...

[aestrix]

Most of them are entangled in doing various things. Two think it's not worth their attention. One is busy with research and refuses to drop what he's doing until it's done, and it's nowhere near there. A fourth thinks that there's no one on the planet who could stand up to Phi.

Some of the people that are highest in the chain of command are worried that Jinx knows about the underground prison. They are planning to move the prisoners there, put them someplace far, far away...

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx pokes her Apokalypsi scanner. Okay, update on Phi, when will they be here? Also, where are they planning to move the prisoners?

(Data security? What's that?)

[aestrix]

Phi's almost there. Thirty seconds to a minute, probably.

They don't know where they'll put their prisoners, not yet. None of the places they're talking about are easily accessible, though, and they plan to up the security by quite a lot.

[itstandsforjinx]

Well then, let's put the next shot in the general vicinity of Phi. If they're a minute away, she can probably aim for them.

(Hitting them is another matter, but if they're bringing a vehicle she might be able to peg it with a potshot. Which would nicely solve all her problems.

Because she doesn't really expect that to work, she pulls out Fishbones as she starts to back into her nice little transport-box.)

[aestrix]

They were likely in a vehicle before, but they're in one no longer. At the moment they are rappelling from above.

Hitting them might take out some of the ceiling. Is this a thing Jinx still wants to do?

[itstandsforjinx]

Only if it's not going to fall directly on her. Is it going to fall directly on her?

[aestrix]

Nope!

Some of Phi is hit. Not all of Phi, but some. They are, appropriately, killed in a horrifying fashion. A few are just injured a little, but that's not likely to stop them. Of the eight original members, three are dead, two are majorly injured, and one is slightly singed. The remaining two are completely fine.

They turn out to have nasty things. One of them attempts to freeze the blood in Jinx's arms. One of them attempts to stop her heart. One of them throws poison darts that are very similar to the earlier poison darts. One of them is healing himself and his majorly injured companion. But hey, at least three of them are dead now!

(There is swearing on the crystal network. Creative elfy swearing.)

[itstandsforjinx]

Firing a rocket and then falling backwards into the transport device appears to be the thing Jinx is doing about this.

(It turns out that having your arms frozen solid does not help with the whole 'making devices' thing. Nor does having a heart attack.)

There is a shimmering altar of Xom here.

Dedicate yourself to Xom, Y/N?

HELL YES HELP

[findsthishilarious]

  You kneel at the altar of Xom.
_Xom welcomes you!

A few moments later, sparks fly from Jinx's elbows and laughter echoes ominously in the distance.

This isn't supposed to be particularly helpful (in fact, it should do absolutely nothing), but maybe Jinx can work with this?

[itstandsforjinx]

Jinx does not find this particularly helpful.

Her Mania does.

Atomic fire burns in her veins, seizes electric charge, funnels it-

And with a gasp, Jinx rolls to her feet, ice crumbling from her arms, the Inspiration within her refusing to let her die.

Her fingers shift on the smooth metal casing of Fishbones, blindly finding the trigger from years of long practice. Fortunately, Mania-powered rocket launchers don't have a back-blast.

The shark-toothed rocket leaps away, aimed squarely at the trio of attacking Phi agents.

[aestrix]

Well that's unfortunate for them, isn't it.

Unfortunate for one of them. Person with darts has just had a very bad day. They're still alive, but only just, and they are out of commission for this fight.

But the other two that are fighting... manage to not get disintegrated. Somehow. This seems to have something to do with the arm-freezing person. Her arm twitches up towards the explosion as it goes off, and the explosion decides that it would much rather implode upon itself instead of continuing what it's doing and taking her and her companion out of commission.

She seems to be very concentrated on what she's doing, but her companion has no such problem. Hey remember that heart attack? Yeah it has a friend now. That friend is 'stroke.' Hope you didn't need those blood vessels in your brain, Jinx! Some of them are slightly exploded now.

[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!)