I don't know. Right now though it looks like everyone is waiting for Arhra to post. Or I am at least.

POS, wanna do that thing we briefly talked about?

Uhhhhh, not really, no.

I've just been a little busy lately. Hard to find time for much postage. Not to mention trying for inventive answers to a variety of scenarios such as the battle of the corporate enforcers, someone trying to cram themselves down someone's throat, big idiot fighting bigger, stronger, dumber idiot, someone trying to revive the ancient art of the capitalist toss and crazy energy feedback flavoured with the possibility of stomach explosion. Still, I'm planning to get something done in the next day or so.

So...Arhra....still having RL issues?

Gargh, I swear I'll try and post something either tonight or tomorrow during the day. I plomise!

It does take a while to cook up a post of that size you know. That and I usually wait a little while to see if anyone else is going to do anything. And I was a little busy on Tuesday night seeing a movie. I can safely say the Devil does wear Prada.

On one or two side issues, POS, the simplest way to finish this is either let you do a big post that involves defeating Bruticus, or he can just ninja-flip away and join the League of Unresolved Plot Threads as a possible recurring enemy.

And Newb, you're in a bad place, especially seeing Thod has much longer arms than Syttulg. He is a very difficult enemy to fight in the way you've been fighting. Difficult as in 'you die'.

EDIT: Difficult as in 'you can't get out of the situation that easily'.

Unresolved plot threads, my black ass! No, the former is much more my specialty, and I shall get right upon it! Onward!

EDIT: Wow, okay, that took quite a bit longer than I expected. Enjoy!

I should note that I am intending to keep Arhra unconscious for a while, so really its up to you lot to move events along if you want to do more than sit there. Call it an experiment of sorts.

You'd probably want to get everyone together and pointing in the right direction. The hall where the Caryatid waits is not too far away, less than a ten minute walk if you knew the way, although finding it will be a little tricky. I'm not planning to have any more battles before the Caryatid. Once you get there, the large, ornate doors are pretty hard to miss.

The jungle will be much more quiescent with the Capitalist dead - fighting tends to stir it up - but it'll still be muttering and menacing as it did before. Effects of the fruit are variable in how long they'll hang around for - most will stay for quite a while but become less severe with time. 'Status effect' removing spells will help shorten this duration.

As IC has cunningly realised by me blatantly telling it to him, yes, you can easily placate Thod with the fruit now its no longer inverted. Well, once at least. Newb, you've repeatedly missed what I've been telling you - fighting that way against Thod means you'd get your ass kicked - and so I'm declaring Syttulg much more beat up than you've been showing.

POS, uh, didn't Rei get her spine somewhat crushed? Is that somehow miraculously better or is has she just not noticed it yet in the euphoria of her first victory?

I might just annotate something people's actions. As you may have noted, people writing really short attacks like 'I cast a spell." or "I hit him." really haven't been accomplishing much. If you want to have a real impact, something a little more impressive is needed. Make it clear that the character is putting effort behind the action. Inventiveness is always a plus - lathe harpoons or feeding someone till they explode for example.

Fixed.
Two things.
Syttulg wouldn't have tried a different tack in his current state.
The nannites can still heal him, it's just that at his current IQ, he's incapable of giving them new instructions, so he can't make them do anything complex. I've been taking this into account when showing how beat up he is. I probably should have officially declared that they were actively healing him, but I thought that this was a given. You will notice that I said he needed more energy, this is because his batteries are nearly empty from the thrashing he got.

Well, I was hoping that it would be inferred that, with his bony, fleshy human hand, Bruticus wouldn't really be able to do that much damage in that short a time. At least nothing that would affect her functionality. There was maybe a few seconds for Bruticus to do his thing before Rei reactivated and beat him to death with her bare hands.

Seriously, were you paying attention there? I'm pretty sure that was the most gratuitously violent thing I've ever written! I mean, I've posted some rough shit in the past, including my first post in this series, my run-in with that one noob, every awful thing I ever did to Fenris, the entire Avatar Arena fight between myself and Arhra, and that one time I shot Raiden in the face. But this is the first time Rei's really ever had to get her hands dirty, and what a way to do it. My little girl's growing up!

As for the issue at hand, however, I would like to note that I had originally intended to have a short scene where Rei is rubbing her slightly damaged neck before charging at Bruticus, but in the end I felt that it detracted from the narrative flow. The scene, like so many others, can be found in the extras for the "NPF Avatars: Special Edition" DVD.

Among the collected bonus features is the "Make a Newb Persona" generator, which takes a variety of randomly selected significant personality flaws, one or two powers, and tries to claim that it's a well rounded character. :p

Oh, I just thought of something: How are we gonna get Flare? Ahrha'll be easy; someone just carries or drags her along, but how are we gonna collect someone who's splattered all over the ground and mixed with splattered Capitalist remnants?

Unless you're willing to find the little red-orange blobs and help pull myself togeather.....

Meh, been there, done that. Of course, I was the one that had you blown up to begin with. Now that I think of it, you seem to have had some really bad luck so far with your slimegirl form.

Hey, I've survived. That's all that matters.

Sounds like a challenge to me!

<.<

So, umm if you all are leaving me here, I'll just roll some random powers and personality flaws and drop my new persona on you seconds before the boss fight, shall I?


I think I'll fudge the personality rolls a little and put "abandonment issues" on there.

>.>

Are you crazy?! Leave him there?! He's far too valuable as a packmule, trap lemming, cannon fodder, distraction and general expendable guy to be left behind.

Well, since we needed a new thread, I decided I'd better wake up. Of course, strange dreams are a must. I would have liked to have heads suddenly popping off and flying skywards, but that would have been far too copycat. Ah, if only I'd thought of it before seeing that comic. Damn you Clevinger!

Title deed? Arhra, we're so going to court after this is all over.

So uh... I'll just write up a post in which Thog gets hit by the fruit and wanders away, shall I?