Paragons

So, the nice thing about the nearly dry riverbed just south of Overholser Dam is that it is bordered by scrapyards and abandoned quarries. The likelihood of interacting with another human are scarce, if any.

This is where our now officially unusual band was now waiting for the Monster they had originally encountered in the coffee shop earlier that day. Although at the moment it seemed they were just hiding watching a mad satyr jumping around and playing a harp in the sand.

Grier had dropped their
camouflage and refused to dress again for the anticipated battle.

While Galwix's antics are entertaining, Grier needed something to do with their hands.

They plopped down started making a sand castle.

Adele shuffles back and forth in a nervous, fretful sort of way while checking and rechecking the placement and availability of her art supplies.

"What's the best sort of defense on this thing?" she asks Prudence as she pauses her pacing. "I was wondering about trying to recreate that tornado thing that seemed to leave it here, but then you won't be able to retrieve any shards it has."

Polishing her sword in an almost distracted manner Prudence gives a grin to Adele.

"I would go with big, and heavy."

All at once, the scene of relative calm is disturbed by not one, but two portals opening across from each other.

One, bringing with it the former body of Dominic now possessed by some alien deity, opens directly next to Galwix.

The other, bringing unwitting space travelers... opens on top of Grier.

Gem yowls nonstop throughout the wormhole -- while the journey is brief, it's not particularly pleasant. She knows she's already apologized to Vivian for the inevitable clawing, but she still shuts her eyes with guilt as she digs further into the teen's shoulder.

Upon finding herself unceremoniously dumped atop a nude individual and their sandcastle, she scurries off to the side and stands, back arched, tail puffed up, and ears flat, before realizing she recognizes where she is.

Earth!!! Sweet, sweet Earth! She shakes off one back paw, then the next, stretches, and then chances a look at those around her. Determining that there's absolutely no way that her shapeshifting will be the weirdest thing here -- she just dropped through a literal wormhole, someone's naked and someone else literally has goat legs -- she steels herself, focuses, and shifts back to her human form.

Honestly? As disconcerting as being pulled through another portal was, Vivian struggled more so not to laugh at the poor cat's howling, which seemed to last for infinity and only a moment all at the same time.

Sand got into more than just the scratch wounds from the trip as Vivian's injured side uncomfortably met with the former parapets of an unfinished castle and reduced them to smithereens under her weight, the cat quickly retreating from her person as she let out from around the cigarette in her teeth an exceptionally appropriate groan at the uncomfortableness of the landing before even beginning to shift and move.

Extricating her limbs from where they'd gotten tangled up in the others among their merry band with an unceremonious series of either shoves or squirms or both, Vivian rolled onto her stomach before pushing herself up out of anyone's reach and taking a breath as if to regather her senses.

Barely taking stock of their surroundings, or even looking at anyone, Vivian started to brush off what she could of the sand from her clothing, wincing as she carefully ran her hand once down the burns in her side before giving up entirely when she caught sight of the unlit cigarette, giving it a brief cross-eyed glance.

Once again, intergalactic travel had snuffed out its embers and though it was almost spent anyway, Vivian's shoulders hunched over as she made to light it and take one of the last long draws of its life. She shoved the lighter back into a pocket and kept her hand there, the other hand mirroring its fellow and finding the other pocket to do the same before she glanced around at where they'd ended up.

"What the what helling shit!" Grier shouted a jumbled puzzle of profanity as bodies piled on top of them. And their sandcastle.

They squirmed and wiggled out from underneath limbs. Somewhere a cat was rather unhappy.

When Grier managed to stand, they found no cat in need of rescue.

Looking at the mess of... women?

They're all women, right?

Grier tilted their head to the side and disappeared.

Adele glances at her art supplies again with a sigh. Big and heavy. Big and heavy... But her musings are abruptly cut short by two portals opening up. She screams and jumps in surprise.

In the next few moments, her brain recognizes the new arrivals as some of the people from the coffee shop, and she breathes a sigh of relief at seeing the kids. But her relief quickly switches to anxiety with the return of the strange entity from earlier. Right. Big and heavy. Not really my style... What can I do? She pulls out a large sketchbook and markers as she contemplates her move.

Shielded by invisibility, Grier takes a closer look at the individuals dropped from the vortex.

A robot? Cyborg? Was she created in a lab too? Where did that cat go?

Movement caught the corner of their eye.

"More shitting hell," they thought. Seeing the blood monster back in such proximity made them shudder.

Seeing the blood monster back in such proximity to Galwix made their jaw set. They sunk their weight into their heels, every muscle tensing. "I regret this already."

Grier charges the god with hopes of clotheslining it away from their friend.

The Illusion spell Galwix had been using to lure the monster out was rather sophisticated... but still required his proximity to execute. Unfortunately that mean that when the monster teleported in he was rather close by...

His true form appeared about ten feet away from the floating beast and began screaming. "It'n bees 'ere, go'n toss ereting ye got at 'em!"

Prudence, needing no further prompting strode forward sword in hand.

"Die foul creature!" She said with conviction while swinging her impressive weapon in powerful arcs trying to either get the beasts attention or punish it for ignoring her.

Before the beast got to her, however, it ran into something invisible briefly which it had to float around.

Knocking into the tentacled Dom-zombie felt good, though not as good if Dom were in there too. Grier landed on their knees after the hit. When they pivoted around, they couldn't help smiling at the charging Prudence.

Maybe she wasn't so bad after all.

They sat down and started outlining blueprints for another castle on the ground.

You know...Vivian really hadn't thought her day could get any weirder.

Seeing a gargantuan void-creature devouring ships in space was pretty dang weird--Animorphs, giant robots, sentient books, and knife-throwing military aside. Not to mention aliens who look like children but talk like stiff-collared adults.

But between sandcastles forming out of thin air, the faun gallivanting about the riverbed, the LARP-armor chick with the sword, the fairy dragon, and tentacle Inkheart over there...

Let's just say Vivian was WAY ahead of herself in regards to the phrase 'I need a cigarette,' though the ever faithful, interstellar traveling cig was in fact almost used up at this point.

Not having the faintest idea what was going on with the fantasy guild out yonder, Vivian stepped back to help Trouble on their feet if they weren't already.

"You alright?"

Okay then. Big and heavy. Wonder if this'll work... Adele sits on the ground and holds her sketchbook up in front of her face as she begins scratching in the outline of the tentacle monster thing. She glances around the edge of the sketchbook now and then to make sure she's got all the important details. Once she's happy that the sketch looks like this freaky human-undersea monster corruption, she starts laying on heavy chains over it and hoping they'll spring to life on the real thing. C'mon, c'mon. Don't fail me now!

0814 stood slowly, accepting the assist from Vivian. Slowly they floated up into the air as an adult sized suit of armor materialized around them.

As they alighted back onto the ground they spoke in a voice that had a distinctly robotic tone to it.

"Friend Vivian! I have access to my weapons once more! Let us destroy that beast together!"

Vivian found her neck craning back as Trouble came to rest towering over her.

While, yes, her wide-eyed surprise could indeed be translated as clearly as the thought in her head--Now that's dope.--in the next moment, she had lowered her forehead to meet with a raising palm which rubbed down the front of her face in her exasperation that belied the stupid sort of grin she had as she shook her head in her hand for a moment.

"I was kind of hoping to avoid that, Trouble, but no one's stopping you if you're feelin' it." She looked over at the encounter as it unfolded. "I dunno who that or any of these people are." She pulled the butt of the cigarette from her mouth to consider it for a moment, "For all I know, he could be saving the world and they could be destroying it." She shrugged and remembered something the other said earlier, suddenly looking around for that one military-looking individual who'd helped them fight the robot in space...

To Adele-
As your sketches take on the paper and Prudence and a rather strange looking robot charge forward together towards the monster large metal chains suddenly appear binding it hand, foot and tentacle!

You feel the edges of your paper tearing, as if something is trying to pull it apart...

Vivian -
You *do* see the military woman from space... lying on the ground her skin an unhealthy pale color... clutching the bleeding book to her chest...

Gem blinks and shakes her head a few times as she tries to process everything going on around her. She'd just about managed to accept all the oddities of her current situation -- she'd just been in space, after all -- until the kid had gone full Gundam and charged at a man who had, seemingly from nowhere, become enchained.

She follows Vivian's gaze to where the woman from the coffee shop is lying on the ground. Determining that there's absolutely nothing that she can do about suits of armor, tentacled strangers, or inexplicable chains, she crouches and starts to make her way over to the woman to see how she can help -- she doesn't look well, and that spooky-ass book is still bleeding... What's more, Trouble's words are echoing in her ears: "We need the energy in that woman... if we want to get back to your planet." Given the pallor of the woman's skin, the thought is, well, troubling.

Gem is torn between full-on running, just to get to her quickly, and trying to go as sneakily as possible. Quickly, however, she realizes there's absolutely nowhere to hide. She brings herself up to stand and darts over to the woman.

Grier flattened to the ground as chains flew over their head and bound the Domtopus. They were lucky. The chains could have been on fire.

They stood and brushed the sand off their body. Another sand castle gone.

And the small robot was gone- replaced by a much cooler one.

Grier looked around for a perch. A tree. A car. Somehow to get up high. Unfortunately the tallest objects were the people running toward the Domtopus. They could provide a piggyback ride, but Grier wasn't thrilled about being that close to the action again. They spotted Adele with her art supplies and scampered over to her.