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]

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!)

[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.