lostcarnival | ⇨ INVASION!

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⇨ INVASION!

Who: Everyone! But especially HARBINGERS!
When: S2:D16-22
Where: All over Wismuth!
What: As the Harbingers reveal themselves, those among the carnival that Creation has chosen will start to discover new powers within themselves. It's because they're magical girls, yo.
Warnings: Harbingers being assholes.

HARBINGERS OF VOID↴

On Day 16, the Harbingers begin revealing their new selves... in the form of wreaking havoc on the city! CY-Ren isn't looking for mass panic or serious structural damage - instead she wants constant annoyances and distractions, of the sort that will keep those that might be on her tail distracted from her true plans. However, when Creation is faced with the threat of twelve new Harbingers, it will have to fight in kind...

► HARBINGERS: Your job is to use your powers to create messes for other people to clean up! CY-Ren gives no specific instructions outside of a general framework... flex your powers! See what you can do. Don't destroy the city or anything, but give Creation a run for its money. She needs these civilians alive for her later plans.

► STAR GUARDIANS: Twelve members of the carnival have been chosen by Creation to fight in its name, even if they don't realize it yet. When confronted by the Harbinger's chaos, their Sparks will make themselves known in whatever form is appropriate to the character - and they will be asked if they are willing to use the power of their soul to fight the darkness. How this scene plays out can be flexible, but essentially they will find themselves faced with the question: are they willing to fight for the preservation of life? If they say yes, their Spark will emerge, and they will be able to trigger a magical girl transformation, as you do.

► CHARITY CONCERT: While everyone else is busy with the sudden rise of the Harbingers, CY-Ren's PR team is releasing a statement -- they will say that new information has revealed that there had been bomb threats made against the canceled concert, which are now being blamed for the damages. CY-Ren will make a personal statement, saying that in order to apologize for the failure of her previous performances, a new free to attend event is being planned for the near future - people who had tickets to the previous event and had to go home early get top priority!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Probs," says Amethyst charitably. "C'mon, Per, this would be sooo much easier if you were on our side."

The engineer makes a choking noise and goes completely rigid, shock and disbelief both flashing across her face. She finds herself utterly incapable of responding right away. Did... Did she actually hear them right? Because. If she did... This is literally the most horrific thing that Peridot has ever heard out of either of them. And Amethyst once tried to instruct her on how to shape-shift some bowels.

There's a tense few seconds where it looks like she's maybe about to screech, or start crying at them, or just COMPLETELY freak out. But it stops? She stabilizes, a sort of eerie calm overtaking her, and then looks between them both very seriously. "OOooooooooooooooohhhh," she says slowly, like she's finally comprehending something. "Okay. I get it now! I get that... you've both gone COMPLETELY CLODDING INSANE!!!!!"

Steven sighs softly, not sure what he expected. Peridot hadn't been easy to bring over to his side the first time around, so it makes sense that it wouldn't be easy now either.

He lifts his purple arm, apparently made of crystalline vines, as it divides into five, sharp segments. Each tip looks deadly sharp.

"It's okay that you feel that way," he says, inwardly frustrated. "That's how I felt at first, too. But, try to be careful..."

He pulls back his arm, aiming the sharp points right at her.

"I really don't want to end up hurting your gem."

Shing. Three of the tendrils go slicing straight for her. It'll be best, he thinks, if he can destroy her body in one shot.

Amethyst makes the tiniest grimace, and cups one of her paws to her mouth. "Hang in there, Peridot! I know you don't get it right now, but I swear this'll all make sense soon!"

Peridot's eyes widen with shock, taking a frightened half-step backwards when Steven aims at her. This whole conversation on her side of things has just been her going through steadily increasing degrees of disbelief, but this... She really doesn't want to believe it, but he's actually serious about this. They're BOTH serious! Some time from now, Peridot will be able to reflect back on this moment and understand that neither Steven or Amethyst are in control of themselves, and she'll be able to forgive them for trying to cause her grievous bodily harm. But in the heat of the moment? She feels nothing but incredible hurt, and betrayal. That last comment, the fact that Steven is even willing to risk hurting her gem at all, just makes it even worse somehow.

Spoilers: She's not about to stand still and let this happen, no matter how nicely Steven asks her.

Instead of the poof the harbinger might be hoping for, there's a burst of light. And where Peridot was standing? Now there's... nothing. That spot is empty. Because above it, slightly off to one side, there's now a bat. A bat that's squealing with distress and flapping frantically, ready to get the fuck out of dodge. She's not about to fight these two. She can't. She won't! She needs to get back to the safety of the carnival, and, yeah buster, you better believe that she is REPORTING THIS.

Edited 2018-02-16 02:35 (UTC)

Oh, right, she can do that now. Steven's reaction is mostly irritation, because he knows that her being that small will make it even more difficult to do what he wants to do - but, it's not enough to stop him from trying. He flies after her, retracting the vines back into an approximate hand shape, and using that hand to swipe at Peridot like it's a net.

"Peridot, come on!" he pleads, trying to think of what else he could do with his power to slow her down. "Don't you miss Lapis? She'll be really happy to see you!"

As much as that sounds just like creepy nonsense, Steven really does mean it. He genuinely sees this as being for the best - the best way for all of them to be happy, before the end. That happiness won't matter once it's all over, but it doesn't mean they can't try, right?

Oh stars he's chasing her, why is he chasing her?! The bat squeaks and twists out of the way of Steven's claws, pale yellow wings flapping frantically.

"I miss the regular, SANE Lapis, sure! Just like I miss the Steven who would never in a million years have tried to POOF ME!" Peridot squawks without looking back at him.

"Garnet poofed you and you still like her!" he calls after her, in what he feels like is a compelling argument. Why are other people allowed to poof her, and not him? Seems like kind of a double standard. Why does no one ever want to let him do things?

He extends his vine fingers further, interweaving them in a better attempt at making a net to capture her with. If he can grab her first, poofing will be easy. It's exactly what Garnet did, after all.

"Peridooot, c'monn!" Amethyst calls out after them, although at this rate it won't be too long before she's out of earshot. "Quit being like this, I totally miss you too!"

Peridot heartily wishes that she could stop what she's doing just so she could yell at them and tell them exactly how faulty their logic is, but there's really no room for pause here. Even still, she can't help but sneak a glance back towards Amethyst, a miserable pain gripping her chest. It's just not fair, to have been so worried about both of them, to finally reunite and then be faced with this betrayal--

Distracted by her thoughts, she very narrowly avoids flying right into Steven's little net trick. She's forced to put on the air brakes, essentially, yelping in an undignified manner. Flinging her wings out, she backpedals hard for a moment to slow herself before deliberately plummeting straight downward, twisting midair, and then shooting back in the direction they came from.

Edited 2018-02-17 02:14 (UTC)

Slowing down suddenly is a lot harder for Steven, given how much bigger he is. Thankfully, he has the added advantage of being able to control his descent, which means that it's possible for him to simply force his momentum to stop - but it does mean he has to turn around and build it up again, which is going to lose him time.

This is making him angry. He's felt so much madder since he gave up on stuff, which is weird, because he thought he'd feel at peace knowing that the end was coming. Maybe it's just that he has no reason to hold it back anymore, when he knows that nothing is ever going to get better.

So, instead of trying to catch up with her, he lets that frustration flow through him - and raises a catch of purple vines around them with a violent gesture, closing as quickly as a steel trap.

"NO!" he roars.

He tries to wind those bars as close together as he can, to keep even someone her size from getting away, with rows of sharp pink thorns emerging in the space in between. He doesn't want her to leave. It isn't fair.

"I don't want to do this without you!" he cries, his distress showing plainly on his face. There is genuine pain there, even if he's the villain here. He doesn't see it that way. He doesn't get it, anymore, and he just wants them all to stay together.

Edited 2018-02-17 02:31 (UTC)

Being trapped, having Steven right there, screaming at her, in obvious pain; Peridot is in an absolute panic, flitting this way and that and emitting terrified little bat chirps, searching in vain for an opening that she can squeeze through.

It's useless. She's blocked in. She absolutely doesn't want to hurt Steven but he's kind of not giving her much of a choice here?

Well, if she absolutely must make a stand...

Peridot grits her teeth, and starts to reach out to whatever magic there is here that she can tap into. "Well I don't want YOU to do THIS!" she howls, still facing the wall of thorns, flames flickering at the corners of her mouth. Her whole form starts to glow, and then grow, and suddenly where the bat was, now there's a dragon. It rears it's head back, and then starts to attack the vines with a torrent of flames.

Steven is suffering from his own heightened emotions, though it's not exactly panic. It's more like when you are too confused and frustrated to think properly, where all you can comprehend is doing anything to make the thing that's agitating you stop. She's still trapped in the vines for now - they're crystal, and won't burn like normal plants.

He's still got a shot.

"You're - not - LISTENING TO ME!" he cries right back, raising his weaponized arm again as the fingers shift into blades. He lashes out at her with all five tendrils, determined to poof her before she can get away again.

Peridot turns just in time to see those blades coming towards her. She twists in mid-air, trying to avoid the strike, but she isn't anywhere near as agile as a dragon as she was as a bat; Steven scores a glancing blow on her, putting a gash in her left side and piercing the membrane of her wing.

"GGghhk--!" Unable to keep flying, she plummets to the ground instantly, wing torn free by her own weight, shredding it further. She lands hard on the pavement, immediately struggles to get back to her feet but her side feels like it's on fire, her injured wing is stretched out and twitching uselessly--

Oh... And there's blood. A lot of blood. Most of it's coming from her wing, dripping rapidly onto the pavement of the footpath that she's landed on. It's bright green and utterly unnatural looking, almost as if it's meant to match the peculiarity of an era-two Peridot being able to shapeshift into a huge dragon in the first place.

Peridot lifts her head, looks at the mess she's making, and swears a particularly vulgar human swear. Loudly.

This... isn't what Steven was expecting.

Gems don't bleed, generally. They either break or they don't break - they take scuffs, or they get pierced and their body falls apart. The possibility of just tearing part of her wing apart never occurred to him, especially with its own bright green blood coming out.

Her still being here, her swearing so loudly and panicking, means that she's still suffering. He'd meant to just end it all at once, to just poof her and go from there. Even if it hurt for a moment, it wouldn't have mattered much in the grand scheme of things.

But this... this hurts a lot. He can feel it in the air empathically, along with all the stress and terror he's causing her. Isn't this the stuff he was trying to end? He doesn't know what to do.

"P-Peridot..."

Should he try to finish the job? What if she still doesn't poof? What if it just hurts her worse and she's in even more pain? Would she die? He clearly doesn't understand how transformations work for her, because it's not like Amethyst at all. He doesn't know what will happen.

If she died, would that be okay?

Isn't ending all of them the plan?

What's wrong with saving her from the pain of seeing what they've become?

Steven looks petrified by what he's seeing, the horror clear on his face. His movements are halting and confused as he lowers himself to the ground at her side, his toes dipping into the puddle of green blood that's forming.

"It's okay..."

He reaches out to her with his right hand, but the viney one is still raised and sharp, like it's ready to strike again at any moment. His eyes are wide and empty with shock.

A little of what's happening with the people who'd gone missing has started to filter back to the Carnival by now, and as a result Jasper is... well, if asked about it she'd offer a relatively respectable explanation, like just keeping an eye out for any trouble and trying to get a better idea of what's going on... but the reality of it is she's looking for a fight. She knows Lapis and Rose -- Steven -- are among the Carnival workers who didn't return, and thus potentially among those spotted around the city causing havoc. And if that's not an excuse to get into it with either of them, she doesn't know what is.

When she sees Steven and Peridot streaking overhead, she doesn't recognise either of them at first. She's been hauled around by Peridot in her dragon form before, but she still doesn't make the connection straight away -- and Steven's current getup is different enough from the way he usually looks that she doesn't pin it as him straight away. Still, that's something suspect enough that she's already running after them when it occurs to her what those crystal thorns she's seeing might mean.

And then the dragon falls out of the air with a splatter of neon green blood some fifty feet ahead of her. Jasper picks up her pace.

She catches up as Steven's beginning to reach towards Peridot's injured form. The glamour makes her less immediately noticeable -- less bright orange, less eight feet tall -- but she still casts a fairly sizeable shadow over him.

This close she recognises Peridot's gem, and so it's her, ostensibly her superior in this situation for all that she hates it, that she turns to for an explanation.

"What's going on," she barks, already shifting her stance to brace for combat.

Steven shouldn't need his magical empathy powers to see that Peridot is absolutely terrified of him right now. She actually gasps and tries to shrink away from him when he approaches, gripped by an animal fear of getting goddamned stabbed again. Her motions are unsteady, wobbly almost, thanks to a combination of blood loss and also just the sight of that much blood making her woozy, because it's something that she's absolutely not accustomed to seeing in relation to her own body.

She's almost certain Steven's about to finish her off and then infect her with void cooties or whatever, when, lo and behold... Well. The cavalry arrives, and Peridot has literally never been so relieved to see Jasper in her entire life.

Hopefully her arrival is enough to draw Steven's attention away because Peridot drops the dragon transformation spell at this point. Curiously, as she shrinks and returns to her normal form, the blood on the ground also glows bright green-white, and then disappears. "There's no time to explain just GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

Edited 2018-02-18 17:13 (UTC)

Jasper does gain Steven's attention, but maybe not in the way Peridot was hoping. Instead of direction himself at the other quartz, he just sees her as another threat to his interactions with Peridot, which he is still desperate to make happen despite how obviously not into it she is.

He growls in response to Jasper's blunt questioning, and tries to wrap his arms around Peridot and pull her back, as if the cage is for protection and not a means to trap her. Her wounds disappearing as she changes form is a great relief, though that image won't leave his mind anytime soon.

"Go away!" he yells at Jasper, his ears folded back and his tail anxiously wagging. This whole situation is so out of control.

Edited 2018-02-18 17:33 (UTC)

Jasper's not here for Peridot. What she wants is to destroy her old enemy. Seeing that Steven has finally shown Rose Quartz's true colours and turned on the Carnival is both something she feels needs her intervention, and a convenient excuse.

But as she steps forward, hands forming big, heavy fists, she... slows down, for a moment. That strange sense of hyperrealness that suffuses this place, that intensity, that brightness, seems to increase. The air feels thick. And she can't articulate how, but there's a suggestion there: protect, instead of destroy. She wants to scoff at the idea -- if she obliterated them both then this treacherous Peridot would get what was coming to her -- but something makes her hesitate. It might be the fact that behind that suggestion is an offer of power, if only she'll put it to the use Creation intends. Or it might be that as soon as she saw what was happening here, a part of her hoped this would mean Peridot would realise she'd been wrong, and there'd be someone here she could trust after all.

She doesn't scoff. Isn't this what she was meant for, anyway? If she'd been offered the power to protect her Diamond, her colony...

She accepts, and in a burst of light the glamour is gone and she's standing there in her full eight foot tall, stripy, orange, blatantly nonhuman glory -- but her utilitarian Yellow Diamond uniform has been replaced with ruffles and frills in gleaming white, gold and pink. Even her helmet has been given a makeover, although she's in no position to examine it -- or any of it, honestly. Right now all she knows is that she feels stronger, and it feels wonderful.

"Get away from her," she growls, looming over Steven as menacingly as any person can manage with an enormous sparkly pink ribbon on the front of their outfit, "or I'll smash you into rubble. Don't think I don't want to."

Peridot is... completely overwhelmed. Steven's sudden protectiveness of her is giving her some second thoughts about siccing Jasper on him, and for a moment, she thinks about saying something to intervene. But then Jasper changes, and all Peridot can do is stare, slackjawed, as the quartz is wreathed in light and then in ruffles and ribbons.

She stares at Jasper. And then glances at Steven. And then back to Jasper again.

"What the--"

She swears again.

Steven balks as he sees the lights of creation swirl once again, this time choosing Jasper of all people. It's maddening - it seem so unfair. Why are people like this being chosen to represent life? Maybe that goes to show just how bad off Creation is.

He needs to look on the bright side. This makes it easy. Far easier than trying to fight Peridot, someone he loves, he can focus his aggressions on Jasper instead.

"You can't scare me, Jasper," he growls back, with not even the vaguest attempt to diplomacy, which is very much out of character based on their past conflicts. Keeping his vine arm wrapped around Peridot defensively, he extends his other hand - causing the crystal vines around them to violently shatter outward, peltering Jasper with shards. In the same moment, he leaps upwards and extends his wings, as if he's intending on just straight up flying away with Peridot instead of spending any more time trying to convince her.

"This time, I'm stronger than you!" he yells down at her.

Jasper’s eyes narrow, but there’s the hint of a smirk on her lips as she watches Steven launch himself into the air.

“We’ll see about that,” she says, and launches herself vertically after him. Jasper can’t fly, but she can about clear medium sized buildings in a single bound; as she braces herself to jump the golden seams along her helmet begin to glow, culminating as she draws level with Steven in a blinding light at the end of its battering ram, which she slams down towards him like the world’s sparkliest rhino.

"Wh--" Peridot starts to grunt as Steven grabs her. "What are you doIIIINNNNNNNnnnnggg," she yelps as they become airborne once more, and really, she could be talking to Jasper OR to Steven at this point. She squirms, trying to muster up enough energy to make the shift back into bat form again, assuming that's her best bet for slipping out of Steven's grip.

Well, it's not exactly very inventive - Steven has already encountered her headbutts of death before. It means he already knows what to do. As Jasper descends on him, he holds himself in the air and summons his shield. It's the same as it should be, except now it's also covered in a layer of thorns.

The vines from his arm have started curling around Peridot, desperate to keep her with him. Of course, that gets shaken when helmet meets shield, and Steven's entire body is jarred as he pushes back against her assault.

Edited 2018-02-18 23:38 (UTC)

There's an explosion when Jasper's helmet makes contact with the shield. She wasn't expecting it, at least not consciously -- she could feel something building even if she didn't realise what exactly -- and it sends her backwards, somersaulting midair to land in the grass below. Her pleated skirt billows gently, and she looks up, trying to refocus on her target.

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