Nikose gave a quiet shrug. "I can't use Magic." And begins searching around, hoping that some benevolent power might have allowed his satchel to remain unscathed, which contained a change of clothes. The only thing Nikose was wearing seemed to be a small silver bracelet now.

MT yawned. "Neither can I, and I still managed to poof myself a skirt." She punctuated this by stretching, then fanning herself a little. "Dang, this armor's hot..."

"Then change it to something less hot, we're not in any immediate danger," Fenris[feminine suffix] said. "Why complain about uncomfortable clothes when you can change into something more comfortable at the drop of a hat?"

"PMS and back-pain already? Dudes, you're like the quickest chicks to develop that ever." Phil, having changed very little, was more miffed at losing her arm hair than anything. "I like my arm hair. It's been with me forevarz."

MT was asking Phil to help with Nikose's nakedness problem. "You know what, no. You guys don't do it right. I'm not making myself any less special by teaching another guy to dramatically transform like the sentai of old, only to have him use it to add belt-loops to his pants. So nyeh."

Phil got ready to sit and pout until they moved on, but remembered something she had to do. "Nik-nik, what the heck?" she asked, waving a finger in the air. "I don't even have my dangle-buddies currently, but I still respect the dignity and, dare I say, sanctity of those organs. What could possibly possess you, a member in good standing of the XY club, to grab another guy's junk? Seriously."

Nik shrugged to Phil. "It felt like a clever idea to control him at the time. Also, I figured getting him under control and forcing him to talk might get us somewhere OTHER than the violence before us."

"Well, rational arguments are all well and good, but still... balls, man, with your hands. That just ain't right."

Phil relented. "Anyway, if we can't change back, let's roll Mauve up in a rug or something and get going. We don't want to be around when he wakes up." Phil jerked her thumb toward the prone bull. "We'll all just have to get used to using feminine pronouns."

"Well excuuuuuuse me, Princess," MT puffed, unequipping her armor for the time being.

"I'll carry Mauve if we don't wanna revive her yet, but either way, we really do need to get moving."

Nik, having found his satchel and thanking the gods that it was unharmed, dug out a fresh change of clothes- Dark blue shades of the outfit he had been wearing, tripped in Pearl lace. it even came with a new, Dark blue hat. Nikose took his bracelet off, which turned into a silver feather, and he stuck it into his hat gently, and placed it upon his head before dressing himself. He then turned, happily in his clothes again.

"Much better!" He declared, then walked over and knelt down before Mauve. "I can't heal her, but i'll carry her and protect her from anything that comes her way," Nikose said, sounding serious for the first time since he'd arrived.

"Serves her right," Arhra muttered, seeing Mauve collapse. Her gaze roved around, watching the NPFers pick themselves up. Gina and Flare were making the rounds with healing magic, Philla was mourning the turducken, Fenriet was discovering the mystical staff wasn't working and hammering lady hawks while Mammothia experimented with various potions.

"What stairs?!" Arhra roared unexpectedly at Gina, the nymph flinching and jumping back.

One of the larger piles of rubble next to her shifted a little. "Little help?" Hydra's voice came feebly from beneath it.

"How do I know this isn't some sort of trick?" Arhra demanded.

There was a short pause form the rubble pile, "... um... you're Arhra?" Hydra said tiredly, knowing this could go on for some time.

"Good point!" Arhra declared, bending over and, with an effort, pulling out a small, but strategically placed rock that was firmly wedged into the pile. Hydra had found the right answer. She burst out suddenly, erect and arms outstretched, sending rocks rolling away. Arhra's sense of the dramatic had begun to rub off on her.

Looking up at the very tall snake-girl thoughtfully, Arhra said, "How come you didn't use your largeness to break out on your own?"

"I don't have your freakish strength." Hydra hissed snippily.

Dropping the matter, Arhra decided to weigh in on the popular subject of gender bending, though she was miffed that Phil had beaten her to the point, "Yeah, you girl-dudes always complain! It's always blah blah blah blah, I bleed! Blah blah blah blah, back pain! Blah, blah, blah JUGS!"

She walked between Fenria and Mammie, draping her arms around their shoulders casually, "I mean, my problems kick your problems' asses. I'm suffering a terrible, recurring headache from one of the worst cases of split personalities that can possibly exist and I'm here doing the equivalent of herding cats in order to help do something that's technically impossible!"

"Saving the universe is impossible?" Hydra chimed in.

"What?" Arhra paused for a moment in puzzlement then burst out, "Haven't you been paying attention to anything I've been saying!" She took a deep breath, expression turning more relaxed.

"Anyway, Fen-Fen, Tankie," she said, looking left and then right into both of their faces, excluding Hawkina on the basis she couldn't tell the difference and Philissa because she busy telling Nikose off, "You need to relax," Arhra pulled them in a little, almost a hug, "Just enjoy the moment while it lasts."

A hammer did... something and then the universe returned to normal. Hawk ignored it once again.

He was about to reply to Fenny but about eleven people beat him to the post button and the thread of the conversation was lost.

Then some more shenanigans happened, involving an irate Arhra stroking her ego, and a pussy weak Hydra.

The numerous stinging stab wound pains in Hawks back from the ice shards came back and she zoned out. The next thing Hawk heard was Arhra talking;

"You need to relax, Just enjoy the moment while it lasts."




"I think I want to die."

Moving from Mauve to Hawk, he gently knelt to pick up hawk, and cradled the bird in his arms, before moving back to Mauve. "I'll be gentle, little one," Nikose cooed to Hawk as he brought her to the healers of the group. "I'll ensure you're wounds get closed up soon."

((OOC: I dunno. I felt like having Nikose be a nice guy for now.))

With a rattle and bump a looming tower of confectionary deliciousness bears down on the NPFers. The tiered cake sways worrisomely, the little bull figurine on the top almost being grated off by the ceiling.
Teeth beaming with delight, Lumaes emerges from behind the cake trolley,
"Whoo! I'm heeeee'yahhhhh!" he proclaims sunnily, twirling delightedly as he gazes up at the frosted monstrosity of a wedding cake,
"I've got the cayke and the celebrahnt and I sent out all the invita-sions (extra-glossy with the embossed dove motif" he counts off the duties on his fingers when he freezes and opens his eyes from the painful looking crescents of glee and surveys the scene...
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!!" he screams, flurrying his hands about in a panic,
"My perfect, perfect wedding!" fat, dramatic tears drip from his eye-sockets and he runs back and forth pointlessly.
"You've ruined everything you miserable little monsters!" the skeleton wails, throwing himself down on the ground and flailing about madly.

He composes himself, drawing himself darkly into a malevolent blot,
he seemed to have overcome the forces of Melodrama but still scowled and skulked grumbling at everyone else under his breath.

He perks up slightly, gliding grimly over to Fenella and snatching the staff again, "If it's dead then its mine"
He wiggles it around and it sputters and smokes dully, "What have you done to the poor thing?" he shakes his head worrisomely at the NPFers then tilts back his head and opens his gaping mouth GLAAAAAA. The skeleton swallows the staff and champs his teeth together,
"None of you can mess with it till its better now"
His eyes unfocussed for a moment and he coughed - sparks shedding from his eyes, "...well that is most peculiar."

I finished up the Life-2 spell on Mauve, and just waited for her to wake up.

(Sorry for the wait, guys!)

Mauve muttered something incoherent as white magic pulled her from the heavy darkness of her unconsciousness. Her eyes cracked open ever so slightly.

"Mph. Not dead. Good to know," she commented groggily, staring up at the ceiling. She guessed that meant her Hadoken hadn't pissed people off TOO badly. She blinked once or twice to clear away the hazy fog swimming in her view before pushing herself up to a sitting position.

"Thanks Flare," she said to the fire dragoon "Consciousness is nice."

She rose to her feet and surveyed the damage. Nikose was standing next to her, holding a battered Hawk in his arms. Lumaes had returned at some point and was looking rather unhappy and full of magic sparks, the men-turned-women were complaining about their newfound dislikes of things like boobs and the uterus and the pains associated with them. So everything seemed pretty normal.

That dianosis complete, the mage turned back to Hawk. He-- no wait, she. Gender inversion. Right-- looked rather bad. Sort of like she got into a fight with an ice sculpture and lost.

"Here you go," she said, handing over a bottle of health potion. "That ought to help a bit." Although Flare had helped a lot with the Life-2, Mauve thought it was best to avoid casting spells for a few minutes longer. The hadoken had taken quite a lot out of her.

Normally at this point, Mauve would go into an internal monologue detailing the awesome vision she recieved in her standard-issue NPF coma dream. But she promptly decided that would take too much effort and instead started looking for the way to the Caryatid. And she planned on sneaking some cake off the cart that Lumaes brought in with him at some point.

"Glad to see you're up Mauve." I said, while handing her a pack of jelly beans that had fallen out of her pocket. "Since you said you gain MP back faster if you have candy, guess now's the time to use these." I said to Mauve. Looking back at the Manataur, I saw that it was knocked out, but not dead. Grabbing my spear, I walked over to him and promptly shoved my spear into his back, over his heart. "Well, hopefully we won't have to worry about this walking quarter pounder again." I said as I pulled hard on the spear to take it out, and ended up on my backside, and my helmet went flying as it suddonly gave. "Ow. Again." I said, rubbing my head.

Nikose did a stop-gap. "FLARE. THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED FOR THAT!" He nearly screeched like a harpy. "He wasn't hurting you at all anymore! That was remorseless murder!"

"Well, usually," Fenris was reminded of how innocent Nikose seemed.

She stood up and stretched, and walked over to Nikose. "Don't worry too much about it, hun. If you're good, I'll take you to the Hat Show after this is all over, okay?"

"The hat show? Really?" Nikose asked gleefully, every other idea gone from his head. "We're going to the hat show, we're going to the hat show!" he began skipping around Fenrissa happily, still holding Hawk in his arms.

"Hey, I'm a fiend. What can I say?" I said, sticking my forked tounge out at Nikose. "Plus it's a preventive measure. Now he can't hurt anything, plus he's now potental food."

"Hey, Flare, can I talk to you for a second?" Fenris said, taking her aside.

Whispering, she continued, "Yeah, don't talk about killing the minotaur ever again. It'll be less annoying when Nikose thinks we're going to the Hat Show instead of moaning about how you killed it, okay? Just drop it, and be thankful he didn't hear you remind him about the dead creature."

"So he'd better not ask about the burgers I'm thinking about making from his corpse then." I said, taking out my pack and producing a large bag, and started to put the manotaur's corpse into it, and then stuffing it back into the pack.

(If anyone asks, it's the same reason why characters in RPGs can carry 10 million pounds of stuff.)

Nikose caught site of what Flare was doing, and walked over and pushed the corpse down and held it from going into her bag. "No." He said to her firmly, looking her straight in the eyes.

I just looked at him, held up a hand near his face, and a fireball started to form. "Back off, unless you'd rather have a fireblast to the face." I said coldly at him.

"No. Some things are not done. This is one of those things." Nikose said firmly, holding his ground. He cradled hawk against himself gently, petting him. "You will leave the Manotaur alone."

"Fine then." I said, firing the Fireblast at point-blank range at Nikose's head.

Nikose took the fireball to the face, gritting his teeth as the fire washed over him, tears streaming out of his eyes as the flesh melted, holding his screams for the sake of Hawk in his arms. he checked hawk to be sure she was alright. "You could have hurt your friend." He said angrily. "I'll say it one more time- Don't desecrate this creature's corpse."


(OOC: Editted for spelling))

"Ok, let go of me you wierdo", Hawk said to Nikose as she wriggled free of his grasp and got the hell out of the way in case another fireball happened to be forthcoming, "I didn't need your help in the first place, it was only a slight case of 17 stab wounds to the back, a mere flesh wound at best!"

(Irony, anyone? *Edited )

"Obviously this guy has yet to see what happons to corpses in the wild." I said, putting it away and sealing it up. "Ok, let's get going. Besides, I'd rather have this thing for food over someone ressurecting this thing as a zombie or something like that." I said.

(Irony anyone? *Happens )

Fenris promptly took the bag and set it down, opening it up and removing the corpse from it.

"Flare, Nikose has a point. You are being belligerent for the point of being belligerent. We're fine. There is no honor in slaying an opponent while they sleep and then eating them. Furthermore," she continued, "what the fuck are you thinking, launching a fireblast at an ally who is carrying a wounded ally? Furthermore still, I'm fairly sure that this thing not going to be back as a zombie. Y'know, considering we're the only people out here and zombies do not sprout on their own. This corpse will rot and it will go into the earth. There is no need to desecrate a body for the express purpose of making Nikose angry."

She paused, before finishing, "Your actions sicken me." She sighed and walked away.

"Also, continuing to desecrate the corpse after I tell you not to pisses me off more. Learn to take a hint, mmkay?"

I just sighed and said "You have no clue what's in here, do you?" I said with a sigh. "I know this place....well, another part of it I'm quite fimilor with anyway. This was a guardian, and it's fallen. Unless you want to further offend who lives here, you'll let me continue what I was going to do." I said, a very pronounced hiss punctuating my last words. "Let's see...what's the way to the nearest lava lake....." I said, looking down the path.

"Yes, because eating it obviously means throwing it in a lava lake. I can totally see the connection. Your words don't scare me, Flare. I deal with worse than you on a daily basis. Take your fluffling of feathers to make yourself look bigger and tell it to somebody who cares."

She thought for a moment.

"Oh, and the nearest lava lake is up the ladder and over the side of the bridge. Nikose, want to help me dispose of this properly? Also, don't believe for a second that I don't know that you're not bluffing completely out your ass. You happen to know exactly who's assisting in the end of the world, eh? Tell them to stop with your so-called connections and let us get this over with that much quicker."

Fenris paused, and something clicked. She pulled out her knife and her hammer, and shaved off a portion of the base of her hammer, and inserted the shaving into the minotaur's bloodstream via the jugular.

"Silver in a corpse. No undead here, it'd die again instantly. So, as I was saying!" She turned to Nikose. "Let's get rid of this thing the right way, with a proper burial."

Nikose nodded, half obediently, half proudly, as he lifted the giant on his end of the corpse. "How shall we honor the fallen foe?" Nikose asked quietly.

"I say a burial would do fine. Would Nenyel oblige to being transformed into a shovel for this task?" Fenris grabbed the creature on the other side and helped Nikose carry him to an area away from too many people, where there was enough free ground to bury the beast.

"No."

"Oh, okay then." She felt around for an area of solid rock.

"Bingo." She grabbed her hammer and smashed the rock to enough bits to make a body-sized crater, and had Nikose help her dump the body in. She pushed the debris over the corpse and said a quick prayer.

"Now don't touch this corpse and let's move onwards via Flare's astounding navigational capabilities when it comes to this volcano."

Nikose reached down and grabbed hold of a shadow in the hole, and pulled the shadows across it- it was more than dark enough here to do his trick. He solidified and pushed the shadows downward, crushing the mass and and shattering the rocks into gravel to cover the grave, and leaving the shadowy barrier up to keep it covered. He straightened. "Honor." He said quietly, then turned to Fenris and bowed, before smiling again. "So we're going to the hat show?"

Fenris barked out a laugh.

"We're going to the hat show, just as soon as we save the world."

"Save the world, huh? Sounds like fun. is that what we're supposed to do... okay." Nikose shrugged and scratched his nose, then started giggling again.

Phil never cared for arguing. Provoking the blood thirsty snake woman also struck Phil as a bad idea. Thankful that it was over, Phil moved to follow her deeper into the cave. If things came to blows again, she wanted some credit with Flare so she could could be on her side, and following quietly seemed a good way to show some fake confidence in Flare's leadership.

"Wait, did Fenry imply that we're all worse than a flesh-eating fiend?" Phil mused as she followed where Flare lead. "That mod thing's going to her head."

"Are you guys QUITE finished with burying our former enemy who was trying to KILL us? Ok sure I'm all for honor on the battlefield but we have more pressing matters right now."

With that said, Hawk moved off after Flare and Phil.

(OOC: Fenris isn't a mod yet, that happens after Avvy IV and before Avvy V)

"Yeah, we're done with our break. Let's move on." She too, followed Flare, hoping that Flare wasn't bluffing earlier.

Fenris makes little sense like that.

Mauve had ignored most of the past page and a half of goings on, because the bag of jelly beans she was digging through was far more interesting. Mauve had a habit of eating jelly beans one at a time rather than by the handful, and was particular about only eating the flavors she actually liked. So the whole process required patience and a great deal of attention.

But by now she had pretty much picked out all of the good ones, leaving only the yucky flavored ones like buttered popcorn and strawberries-n-cream. It went against Mauve's code of ethics to eat the nasty flavored jelly beans. She tied the bag closed and put it back into her pocket. She'd get rid of them later, after she'd given them ample time to think about their fatal choice of being gross-flavored.

Feeling a little better already, the mage shoved her hands in her pockets and walked after Phil and Flare, whistling to herself.