lostcarnival | ⇨ WYLD HUNT

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⇨ WYLD HUNT

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 100
Where: Shabondamashii
What: The Wyld Hunt unexpectedly crashes the Shabon's dimension, leaving chaos in its wake. Those that have been with the carnival for a while might recognize it as the personal army of a fae called the Huntsman - also known as one of the Ringmaster's age old rivals, whom she dethroned thousands of years ago. The last we heard of him, he was pursuing the carnival, and it turns out he found them faster than anyone thought.
Warnings: Violence, theoretical cannibalism.

THE AUTUMN MOON↴

There isn't any warning. You might not even notice what's happening at first, with the approach of the threat happening as spontaneously as a zombie uprising. You're minding your own business, enjoying Shabon, when a random alien charges you on foot with sudden and aggressive intent. Whether or not you can throw them off or defeat them, you'll soon find they weren't alone. An entire army is descending upon the city now, and the carnival is the target.

► THEY ARE LEGION: The Wyld Hunt comes in all shapes and sizes, with beasts and men from all kinds of different universes having been caught up in its sway. Those that have been in the Hunt for a long while have more or less completely lost themselves - they now function only as part of a pack, hunting whatever the Huntsman wishes and consuming what their prey leaves behind upon death. Some members of the Hunt are newer and more unsure, but they are all a part of a psychic hive mind that compels them to move as a unit. Everyone in the Wyld Hunt instinctively know what the Huntsman wants them to do, even if they never speak to him.

Their skills, powers, and physicalities are all over the board, but there are a notably large quantity of Wyld Fae among them, often being used as mounts by more powerful humanoids within the Hunt. When NPCing members of the Hunt for threading purposes there is a lot of flexibility to what you face, including entities and beasts from your own worlds - provided they are creatures capable of functioning independently.

► HUNT OR BE HUNTED: When set upon by the Hunt, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Unfortunately, in that situation, the only way to beat them is to join them. Beginning to hunt alongside the others will immediately pacify them against you. As soon as you start to follow, the thrum of the Huntsman's will will start to take over - the more you hunt, the harder it is to turn away from it. If you do stop, or successfully oppose the compulsion, they will be quick to set upon you again. Like the others, you will feel the craving to consume any individuals the Hunt has felled - you must resist this, because once you have eaten the prey of the Hunt, you'll be trapped within it indefinitely.

► WORN OUT WELCOME: The people of Shabon are used to crisis, but this is a bit beyond what even they are prepared to tolerate. The Hunt will be causing collateral, both of the human and the material sort. While the workers in Shabon have very well practiced escape procedures in the event of something like this, the other guests are not as fortunate. Plenty of them are capable of fighting back on their own, but they will not always be capable of avoiding the hordes. The longer this goes on, the worse it will get. Eventually, the Shabon workers will realize who the Hunt is after and start actively trying to turn carnival members over to them in order to make it stop.

► IN TWO PARTS: Tragically, this turn of events and the realization that she's managed to put everyone in danger once again will be what finally causes the Ringmaster to split in two. One side will immediately become disinterested in using violence to counter this problem, while the other will be desperate and reckless. This will also completely screw her ability to get anyone back to the carnival in time. There will be at least one Megathread dealing with her actions during this.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a conflict the carnival is meant to survive, not win. The main point of this is to get the plot rolling in a new direction, so don't worry about figuring out how to defeat the Huntsman, because in this moment it basically won't be possible. Have fun threading out the crisis, and see where it leads. I wanted to be up front about that, as opposed to letting everyone grasp at straws to prevent a result that will be inevitable, even if the details will shift.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Phew! Things are slowly getting sorted it sounds like. Reira helps Yuuya up a bit- or at least as much as she can manage, given that larger arms did not mean that much of a strength boost. "...Yeah." It sure is Her, Yuuya. "...Are you ok? You hit a wall."

He probably realized that.

As it is, she turns her focus to everyone else, waiting quietly as the others explain. With (Light) Ignatius' decision, she lets out an audible sigh of relief. Only to pause, and frown a moment at the others. "...It'll probably be easier to make that kind of deal as one person anyway," she notes somewhat blankly. Initially to herself- and then to whoever is listening. "...Everyone split up like this hasn't been able to feel certain things- because one side would have what the other one didn't. So... ...Whatever is 'best', I don't think it would be easy to tell until you were one person anyway."

Would they have even been able to get the heart if they were in pieces? Who knows. Doesn't matter. Getting together is key. "...How do you go back together?"

She. She doesn't know how this all works, so.

"Yeah, I remember." Yuya rubs the back of his head as he slowly blinks to awareness. There's a moment of relief that, at least, Reira's here and accounted for.

He uses the wall to slowly pull himself up and takes a step forward, looking at Ignatius.

"You can't... listen, Ingatius. This won't fix anything. Destroying pieces of yourself isn't going to get you what you want, and it won't really fix what's hurting. You think it'll be fine, but you won't really be yourself anymore."

There's a gravity, a certainty when he says it
Because he knows, exactly how you start to be someone else when you lose pieces of who you were.

He gestures forward, palm held up. "I know it doesn't feel whole without your heart. But if you do this to yourself, you really won't be able to get that feeling back. I mean, not really."

He shrugs a shoulder. "And who knows what it'd do to your heart if there's less of your soul left?" Yuya doesn't know, and he's pretty sure no one does.

Edited 2018-09-19 05:51 (UTC)

Strange gets a dirty look from Rita when he calls out Peridot and Shima. Couldn't he wait until after they fused to pull a stunt like that!?

But then Ignatius has her attention again... and she feels a chill run down her spine at his oddly amicable answer.

"That easily?" she asks, studying him with a wary look. "You sure changed your mind quickly." And that worries her.

It worries Strange as well and he matches Rita's wary look.

"Of course, it would be best if you reformed before you got your Heart back. This splitting stuff is powerful magic. We wouldn't want to chance anything going wrong."

"Then go find them," Dark Ignatius says to Peridot, in response to her expressing her impatience. He sounds resigned. "We're about to be discovered, anyway."

Apparently Ignatius has a pretty good sense of these things, because it's at the moment that a hunting party breaks into the secluded area they'd been hiding in. There are several fairly average looking humanoids in tattered clothing, adorned with bones, as well as roughly gator-raptor shaped beast that tears trough the paper screen of the wall with trivial ease.

Light Ignatius grits his fangs, casting his other half an the general group an irritated look. Fuck it, though - some of them have a point. He can't afford to divide the power of his soul any further right now.

He swings a fist at Dark Ignatius, who catches it in a palm, and then smirks just a little. There is a burst of light from his direction, just as the hunters descend upon the group.

There's some relief when Ignatius moves to reunite himself, but just a little. Once combined, would that sympathetic part of him still play a major part in his decision-making...? There's no time to agonize over that, nor does Rita even get to watch them rejoin, as danger looms, and she whirls around to face it.

"Give us your word, Ignatius!" she calls to the fae as she conjures a mass of water in the shape of a large hand and swings it at their humanoid pursuers. Some are quick enough to evade, but one gets slapped hard enough to be thrown off his feet, out into the street, and sent crashing into an overturned food stall. "Promise that if we return the Heart, you'll use your power to protect us from this. And that anyone who enters a contract with you today will be released and returned to the Ringmaster once the danger has passed!"

She needs to hear it from him. All of him. And those of them who have some way of getting the Heart probably need to hear it, too.

The water-hand manages to grab a second hunter around the waist, where it clenches tightly and freezes, partially trapping him. He smacks his weapon against it to try and chip away the ice, but is rendered vulnerable in the meantime.

Yuya snaps his attention around to where the hunters start to pour through the wall, with one very scary raptor. Rita's quick to retaliate, but Yuya's mind focuses on the fact that Reira is still right here with them.

So he lunges to try and haul her up and carry (or drag) her away from the direction of the hunters to the opposite side of the group, with his back to the onslaught so he can use his size to shield her as best as he can. He won't abandon the group. He has nowhere else to take her. But he's going to try and get her to the outskirt of the other side of their gathering, so she has the easiest retreat.

Relief is as always extremely short lived. In the half second it takes to see the things coming, Reira prepares to make a shield- but the light created by Ignatius causes her pause.

Just long enough a pause for Yuuya to haul her upward. And really, that's not hard- she's about 3 and a bunch feet of Frail Weight, and Yuuya's a skilled acrobat who's hauled her around before. "Umnfh-! Wait, where are we going to go..!" she protests, finding the lack of obvious 'exit routes' a bit concerning. Maybe if Strange opened a mirror or something...

Well regardless there's no time to argue. Even as she shouts at Yuuya, she squirms to get her arms over his shoulders into a proper 'out stretched' position to focus.

Focus on making a nice sizable dome of a shield, which is probably better than a back. It might not be the biggest thing- it'd be fine if she wanted to turtle about on the floor, or even fill up a doorway, but not for much else- but it's a domed Thing that can at least somewhat stand between herself, Yuuya, and whatever tries to go directly for them.

As Strange is one of the group closer to the hunting party, he quickly springs into action. He gestures to the group: the fire that was wreathing his hand shoots out towards the hunting party in a blazing hot stream. Thankfully, he's aiming in a different direction that Rita's water magic is aiming at. Though everybody's still standing, one person is badly burned and two more are quickly shrugging off their now on fire jackets.

"Yuya, the mirrors!" Strange yells. Hopefully Yuya's gotten good enough at his magic to take a passenger with him through the mirrors, because that might end up being their best option.

Welp. So much for further negotiation.

Peridot scrambles backwards in shock when the hunters first appear, but her recovery is pretty quick. She straightens up and jumps to put herself between the raptor and Yuya (and Reira), flashing her sharp teeth as electricity starts to crackle around her form.

"Bring it on you CLODS!" she snaps at the interlopers, arming herself with two lead pipes from her storage gauntlet. Both become electrified on contact; one gets flung with metallokinesis at the guy that Rita currently has locked in an icy clutch.

Everyone else going for the humanoids means that there is still a very aggressive lizard thing coming to tear someone apart. It screeches something in actual words, about how the stench of those gathered is repulsive-

And then, suddenly, Ignatius is grappling it, wrapping his arms around its neck and forcing it back.

"I swear it, Rita," he says, his words a bit staggered with confusion and exertion. Gaining purchase, he rotates his grip, and then hurls the creature back through the screen in an incredible feat of strength.

Notably, there is only one of them.

Yuya's concern is the same as Reira's--where will they go? These things are everywhere, and the Ringmaster isn't responding. Does he have anyplace safe to take her? Or any of them?

His face scrunches for a second, before something occurs to him. Thankfully, everyone else seems to be holding the line enough to give Yuya time. His attention snaps up, back the reflection Strange was scrying from not far away, and starts to push Reira to it.

"Come on--Reira, I'm going to send you to a mirror really close to the carnival, okay? You need to get in there as fast as you can!"

Unfortunately Yuuya has forgotten to factor in a very important fact about Reira and that is the fact that Reira is an incredibly stubborn seven year old.

Also, after being tossed through the air numerous times by Joker in the name of 'Escape' (Upsetting), overhearing about how faerie deals haven't gone through the Ringmaster yet (worrying), and more than that, simply knowing who Yuuya is and what he's likely to do...

Reira tries to keep her shield up, while at the same time looping every limb she can around the boy, as if she were a strange rock covered koala. "Me? What do you mean me, you're coming too right? What about the others?"

She doesn't care HOW close to that portal you get her buddy, she's not keen on running around alone instead of hanging around with 5.5 capable fighters in this mess!

Edited (I FORGOT *SHIMA,*) 2018-09-20 04:57 (UTC)

Ignatius gives his word, and Rita hesitates, letting those words sink in. Can she believe him...?

There's no time. She'll have to go with her gut.

"All right, we're doing this!" she calls to the others. As more pursuers move to close in on them, she hurls a burst of fire at them, forcing them to duck and scatter. In the next instant, she turns her attention to Peridot and Shima. "What do we need to do to get that Heart?"

Shima falls back behind the attacks of his fellow carnies, conserving his strength and only sparing enough energy to dodge attacks and put their more active fighters back between himself and any of the hunters.

"--Like Peridot-san said, there's nothing we can do ta give it over ta him right now, it's gonna take deliberation, ya know? The most important thing we're gonna need is the testimony of you 'n maybe Yuya-kun, anybody who witnessed and gets what kinda changes Ignatius-san gone through. After that it's up in the air, unfortunately!"

An idea occurs to him--"Give us a Rita bead 'n we'll see what we can do!" He and Peridot are going to have to split off from the group.

Edited 2018-09-20 06:05 (UTC)

"They're not all beads, you know!" Rita protests, but her concerns over the naming of her ability are cut short when an arrow slices through the smoke left by her last attack, whizzing just by her head.

Right. Not the time for that.

"Ugh! Fine... Use this!" Rita holds a hand up to her ear and focuses for a few seconds, transferring information about this exchange with Ignatius into her earring. She then removes the accessory and throws it over to Shima. The earring itself appears to be a handmade Shabondamashii souvenir, made to resemble a dangling cherry blossom. "Now hurry and do what you have to do!"

Shima catches the earring, taking a moment to review the contents for the info he cares about--not the deal that Ignatius offered to Rita that she's ultimately willing to take, which he has mixed feelings about, but the reasoning behind it. It's those details that will most inform whether or not it's even safe to return the Heart, no matter what Ignatius' is promising. So he finds those moments: Dark Ignatius' appeal to Rita because she has the most reason to distrust him, his admittance that he wants her to live, the argument he has with himself when Light Ignatius shows up to try to kill him--that they ALL deserve a chance to live...

--Good, it should have everything he needs.

"Thanks Rita-chan ♥ I'll be sure ta keep this safe for ya!" He pockets the earring. "Don't lose your radios! And try not ta lose Iggy-san either, please if ya could."

Then he nods to Peridot, "Ya said ya've got some friends ta find, right? I'm with you."

Edited 2018-09-20 11:11 (UTC)

"We just got him back!" Strange chimes in. His strategy seems to be 'set everything on fire', as his flamethrower spell shifts to target a different group of people. Strange is also way too happy for someone who's given at least two people third degree burns but hey, Ignatius is himself again and not trying to murder himself, that's good.

"I'm not going to let anything like that happen again. Stay safe out there!"

A different person fires an arrow in Strange's direction. Unlike Rita, he only barely dodges it, as the arrow scrapes his shoulder and Strange starts to bleed. This doesn't take him out, though, as he shifts his target to the asshole who shot him.

Yuya glances over his shoulder as he urges Reira along. He's not good at visually navigating a battle scene, but nobody's shrieking in pain whose voice he can recognize, so...

"I'm going to come as soon as I can, but the safest place for you is the carnival." Or so he thinks, if anyone could get to it. Unfortunately, he gave up the radio before he had any chance of hearing that discussed on the public channel. "Listen, there's a mirror... when you walk out of it, go left. You'll be close enough to the portal you can see it. You need to get in there, okay?"

It's a short enough run, he's actually less worried for her going off on her own after that than her staying in the middle of the city while the hunters ravage it. Reira can't fight these people, she's so small.

The reptilian beast returns through the torn up screen, giving Ignatius very little time to collect himself. It bowls him to the ground, trying to utilize its long talons and fangs to tear him apart. Ignatius is tough - as tough as could be expected among the ranks of the carnival - but his loss of power is becoming increasingly obvious.

He doesn't have the raw power needed to put this thing down, and he doesn't have a weapon. It leaves him helpessly grappling with it on the ground as the carves out chunks with its claws. It's not nearly deep enough to kill a True Fae, but Ignatius can't seem to put an end to the struggle either.

If he can't deal with this thing, right now...

"Move!" Ignatius yells. "We can't hold this position.!" The longer this goes on, the more of the Hunt will come.

Normally Reira would agree with Yuuya. The safest place definitely needs to be the Carnival. Except no one trying to help her out before even mentioned going there, and right now if anything, people are preparing to split up and do other things.

Yuuya might be able to defend, and who knows maybe he DID pick up more, but the fact is in her mind, he is still that '.5' of a fighter. Everyone is going to be splitting off somehow here, especially with what Ignatius said- so Reira only latches tighter, cheeks puffed in the pout that's replaced her habit of chewing her lip.

Her shield, thank god, is enough to at least deflect those stray arrows coming their way. ...She supposes she could bite someone worst case, but given Ignatius' words again, that probably isn't a good idea. So.

"Not without you..! He just said we all have to go, so you come too!" The radio crackles, as if to accent the anger-

It only crackles though. Hopefully she didn't break anything while getting tossed around by Joker.

Peridot is about to take Shima up on his suggestion, but that raptor pinning down Ignatius gives her pause.

That that thing is probably not going to love being bowled over by a dragon the size of a Volkswagen Jetta, but that's what's happening now. She charges in and slams into it with her horns, sending it flying.

"Everyone SCATTER!" She yells, adding to Ignatius's command.

He spoke to soon, apparently. Yuya stumbles a little from Reira's weight as Ignatius' order surges more urgency in him.

"Yes, we're all leaving! So I need you to listen, Reira--" She's making it difficult to move. He looks up at the mirror just feet ahead, shoulders tense before he grabs Reira back to roughing haul her along as he speeds up. He can apologize for that later, right now...

As soon as he gets beside the mirror he shakes an arm free, pressing his hand to the surface and focusing on opening the pathway for Reira. It's going to have to be one at a time, but if they can be quick enough.

"Go. Just touch the mirror." He looks back to the others. "I can take people through the mirror!"

It's gotta be better than just running straight and hoping they lose them, right? This is a hunt.

While the others shout, Rita's busy chanting a spell. Dark magic gathers around her, arranging itself in a magic circle at her feet. That lizard freak's even stronger than she thought... With that realization, she decides to target it with her spell.

"Bloody Howling!"

Wherever Peridot's charge leaves the raptor-like creature, the ground beneath it glows with a dark light, then erupts with black flames. There's no heat to them, however, as they're of a spiritual nature, but the pain they inflict should be no different from that of being caught in an inferno. Fortunately for Ignatius and Peridot, Rita's formulated the spell so that it has no effect on them should they be caught in its path. To them, the dark fire is as harmless as a mere illusion.

"I'm sticking with these idiots," she calls to the others, already preparing another spell as she speaks. By these idiots, she seems to mean Strange and Ignatius. "The rest of you, get moving already!"

⇨ WYLD HUNT

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