Sibling Reunion [Nisha]

[Ruin]

Joshua hadn’t meant to pick a fight with tiny, adorable little pigs, it just sort of happened. He’d been hungry, they’d looked appetizing, and things had… escalated from there. He had spotted them wandering through the Windsor Greatwood, snuffling at the bottom of the huge tree trunks that populated the woods, their attention focused one hundred percent on foraging and searching for food along the dirt and roots of the local plantlife. They hadn’t appeared even slightly aggressive, looking for all the world like scrumptious, porcinus domesticus and so he’d been fooled into sidling up to one and trying very politely to murder it via a boot to the head.

Or cloth shoe to the head, whatever. The important part was his foot, not his footwear.

The mobile piece of bacon, quite unreasonably, refused to be murdered. Joshua couldn’t explain how it had managed to survive unless by saying that physics had also decided to take a rude, ill-timed nap: despite the fact that Joshua was a heavily muscled rugby player whose stomp should have easily crushed, or at least dented its skull into a far more concave shape, his attack did nothing more than leave a slight bump on the back of its head. He’d have been less surprised had he landed face first on an egg and discovered that he’d broken his nose and both of his cheekbones. The piglet squealed, dashing away to hide behind the rest of the group.

The rest of the herd, perhaps jumping to conclusions a mite too quickly, turned on him, suddenly looking rabid, their blunt teeth opening wide as they slavered and snorted ominously at him, their foraging and scavenging expedition suddenly forgotten.

With such a sight confronting him, Joshua did the only possible thing given the circumstances:

Run away and flee.

Since he was being mobbed by a horde of baby pigs, it wasn’t exactly a dignified retreat, but needs must. It took less than a second to point his magic wand at the ground, and somewhat less than two to trigger his one and only skill. Smoke curled at the edge of the ground in a star pentagram shape before he summoned forth his first and most useless distraction: the laziest green blob of a slime known to Log Horizon. It slorped, surprised, before a pig slammed right into it, intent on getting at him but unable to brake in time. Bubbles exploded from the inside of the slime as the captured mob thrashed within, trying to get back to air. Joshua ignored his summons sudden distress: it was meant to do stuff like this. The fact that it didn’t would forever annoy him. He didn’t like tools that were not being used to their full potential. It always felt like he was being obscurely mocked.

Still, he had to deal with more than one piggy, and it seemed that his distraction was all tapped out tying one of them up. Lashing out, Joshua dealt a weak, ineffective kick on the snout of another piglet and sent it back, snorting and huffing before he feinted to the right, spun on his heel and sprinted in a new direction. Small, blunted teeth nipped at his boots and HP bar before he successfully broke away, crashing through the underbrush, hands pushing at the vegetation. Leaves and branches brushed by him in a blur, snagging at his ridiculously soft clothes as he juked left and took off in westwards direction. Beside him, a surprisingly mobile Frankenstein blob of jelly and pig somehow kept pace, as he looked over his shoulder and fired off a burst of light from his ‘magical’ notebook to discourage pursuit.

A pig squealed, wounded and peeled off limping, too hurt to continue the chase. The other pigs snorted and kept going, undeterred.

“You were supposed to distract them,” he told the green blob, murderously cheerful smile decorating his mouth. “Now go back and do your duty.”

The slime slorped forward without reply, leaving a trail of sticky green goo behind. Well, presumably sticky. Ruin hadn’t actually seen anything get stuck in it yet. Perhaps it wasn’t real goop, just some sort of metaphorical representation of goop. The pig, on the other hand, cried out in distress, surfacing for a moment before being mercilessly swallowed back into the depths of the slime. Joshua whistled appreciatively: that was possibly the most useful he had seen his slime at. If he could get his summon to perform so admirably on a routine basis, this might almost be a tolerable existence.

All in all though, this summoner gig had proven to be a massive disappointment. Myriel had saddled him with what was likely to be the least compatible class with his personality and philosophy. She’d probably done it on purpose too, dang her.

WC: 801

[Nisha]

The aforementioned Myriel, or Nisha as she was named in the game had finally decided to... no, not look for her brother, but instead take a nap. Or had tried to, after forging her own body for a while with training on the fields, she had felt like it was a good time to stop after having tried out all her samurai and sub class skills and that it had been time to head back to that low house and relax a little before grinding a bit more. But woe was her as she could not find the way back, no one was either in sight nor hearing distance as she had weakly wondered if someone was around several times before just braving it and deciding to just head in whatever direction, after all this sea of trees could not be endless, right? Right? Well, after several minutes she was even less sure about it and wondered if someone would even mind if she was gone at all, missing forever in the woods, living off scraps and stuff she found around the forest while hearing pigs squeal... wait a second.

This was not what was supposed to be audible in the forest, was it? Well, it damn well better meant she could find her way out following the loud sounds. getting up from her favorite position she had for despairing, boredom and general uneasiness, her knees below her chin, sitting on the ground, while her tail was placed somewhere around her head, this time on top of it, so it worked like a helmet or hat of sorts and kept her from feeling too cold. After getting up, she strained her ears on top of her head, slowly they rotated like radar dishes around and finally made out where the sound came from. Even though it was more difficult to hear with these in crowds, in a quiet forest, she could pretty much exactly make out where sounds came from and the approximate distance, just like an animal, Nisha thought and started her sprint toward the sound. Only to stop dead in her track as she heard a voice, she would knew that voice everywhere, not only because she had heard it that often, but had pondered what it´s first words toward her would be. She sighed and wondered if she should move back into obscurity before facing that voice. She had not yet steeled her enough for the stern talking her brother would most likely give her to after giving him a character that did not really fit him and then, well it had not been her fault, become trapped for however long it took someone else to create an escape from this world and forcing it on people. Nisha was pretty okay with staying in here for... well, indefinitely actually. She liked her body, her class and this world better than the real one anyway, where nothing really drew her back to, her parents would take take care of her body for sure, they would most likely even cry for her, but Nisha did not feel like that was enough reason to go back. She did not have many friends and no boyfriend at the moment either and no person she really loved to make her want to come back.

And since no one was permanently dying in the game, there was no reason to rush out as well. Sighing, she took another step, feeling not ready for it, but accepting her fate as she climbed up a tree and navigated from there to the voice of her brother and the pigs for whatever reason close to him. She even saw the forest getting lighter again and most likely the exit was close, but first her brother. Seeing him below her, she sat down on a branch close to him and called out to him. "Pigs, brother, really? Shouldn´t you just kick them dead or something, they can´t be that much of a threat." After saying that, she jumped right behind one of the pigs and drew her sword as well as the grimoire from her sides and held her sword in her left and the grimoire in her right. Time to help a bit and get some goodness points, she thought and slashed through one pig and shot a bolt of magic at another to draw attention to her. After all, her brother was so much more squishable than her, at least in this world, in the other world, he was bulky enough to be in a football team or something and would most likely have eaten these pigs in one gulp. Several of the pigs were now focusing on her and turning away from her brother, activating her lightning armor, sparkling electricity running over her armor and body she sped up and slashed here and there to keep the pigs away from her brother, rarely doing much damage, but at least getting some nice aggro.

Words: 829
Mood: Cautiously happy
Music: get your groove on
Tags: Ruin

[Ruin]

Joshua ran. His slime followed along, gliding behind him across the ground like a slick, rocket-propelled slug. The small horde of pigs, unsurprisingly, chased them both, crashing through the underbrush like a Miyazaki movie come to a very noisy, if surprisingly cute life. The usual forest sounds were drowned out by the pounding of their tiny hooves and the sound of their high-pitched, honking squeals. Only the higher-pitched squawks and caws of outrage from the local bird population could be heard above that noisome furor. At some point, the piglet trapped within the slime had finally dissolved, leaving, of all things, a small offering of money and a single porkchop that quickly melted within the slime’s acidic flesh. While somewhat stumped about what money was doing inside a pig, Josh’s stomach rumbled in sympathy and he swore his slime smirked despite having all of zero visible facial features. It was the way its translucent ‘skin’ tightened over the rest of its green flesh.

Despite the gory death of their compatriot, the pigs continued to give chase. Joshua eyed the gold speculatively: it wouldn’t tarnish or rust or dissolve, he was pretty sure of that.

Oh well, something to keep in mind. He could always use it to buy a snack or something.

He ran some more, occasionally picking them off one by one with the help of his trusty grimoire, less so with the help of his slime. After the fifteenth minute or so of running around, it started to dawn on him how silly this entire thing was. How truly absurd reality had become.

This was stupid. This was really, incredibly, immensely, impossibly dumb. There were not nearly enough words in the entire English language to explain to what degree this entire scenario - being chased by baby pigs through the undergrowth of an old growth forest on the outskirts of London after being transferred into the reality of a virtual reality simulator - was goddamn ridiculous. If there was an actual index for impossible events, maybe measured in Saints™ this would probably have to be rated in the Millions of KiloSaints™. Not the least because he should have done the smart thing and climbed a bloody tree until they all went away.

But damn was it fun.

Running in the middle of a forest was not like running on turf or grass. It was an obstacle course and a subtle death trap rolled into one conveniently packaged and positively advertised (for the health conscious, anyway) outdoor experience. Advice you'd get from track and field coaches would range from: 'don't' to 'SERIOUSLY, JUST WALK' at various ranges of the decibel chart. Unless you had some way of anticipating each fall, each patch of loose earth, each jostled rock, each wobbly pebble, each hidden root, warren and rock your chances of getting through a sprint of even fifty meters were not good. You might even say they were very not good. Uneven ground was dangerous, possibly deadly. Every year hundreds of people vanished from National Parks around the world, never to be seen again. The slightest misstep could send you hurtling into anything from a bush to a tree to a bear. A sprained ankle was the least of your worries when you were being pursued by porcine menaces intent on goring you to death. You could get lost, wander around for days until you died of dehydration, starvation or some animal attack. There was a reason why people were generally not stupid enough to run full tilt through forests.

"AAAAAAaaaaarghhhhh," Joshua roared, scrabbling across the ground as he went all out, running full tilt past the trees and bushes that speckled the landscape. It felt like at any moment he would fall, in a bad way, the sort where recovery would verge from unlikely to impossible. He started pulling away from the pigs, and then even from his slime.

It felt great.

No, it was wonderful. He wasn't going to say something insipid like for the first time in his life he felt alive, but it was definitely fun. Risking your life, your well-being, your very essence for a few seconds of exhilaration... well, he could definitely see why thrill seekers and risk takers took those risks now. It was for moments like this. Moments where life and death converged and something remarkable was created.

The moment was sadly put to death by his sister.

"Pigs, brother, really?"

She had a habit of doing that. It would have been quite off-putting too, had it been anyone else.

The slight sigh and drily British mockery in her voice was unmistakable. Her body less so. The person that vaulted from the tree branch above his head to the ground next to him was not the Myriel he’d recalled. She was… petite, smaller than he’d ever remembered since she’d been an unmotivated, underachieving brat in grammar school. The ears and tail were new, but that was almost to be expected in such a setting. The angles of her face had changed: her eyes were thinner, as well as a different color. Just as disturbing was how easily she flowed in her new body, understated, but overwhelming grace and power in a small, tightly bound frame.

His hand unconsciously crept towards his face: had his own visage changed? What did he look like now? The same? Different?

Well, it didn’t much matter. Within that moment of contemplation the pigs had switched their targets from him to her. Her sword was out – how come she got a sword – flashing red as it sliced and diced, finding its way into the targets.

“Yes Myriel, pigs,” he said, equally dry. With the breathing space that his sister had created he could manage a little bit of banter. The slime, wonderfully useless companion that it was, was not exactly the most witty conversational partner ever imagined. He took out his magical notebook and activated the spell, sending out another searing bolt of light. “I’d like to say it was all part of the plan, but I really didn’t expect to be trapped in a game like this. Especially not in such a lame class.” He brandished his wand. “I have to use a stick to fight. A stick.”

Word Count: 1042
Tags: Nisha

[Nisha]

This was indeed what she had expected to hear from her big brother. But really, she had quite gone and done a job on his character. Not only had she given him a class that had barely any physical capabilities, she even had sat down and painstakingly created something that was at the same time beautiful and yet comically interesting. She should really get him a mirror or maybe pull him to some river for him to see, but right now, she still had to deal with a small horde of pigs wanting their heads. Or, seeing how they were barely scraping up to be the height of their knees, start with their ankles and work their way up. A grin appeared on Nisha´s face as she instead, now that she had teh aggro of most of the pigs, slashed through the ankles and feet and lower body of two pigs at once in one swing. One of them exploded and left behind dozens of shiny little balls that quickly vanished and were added to her own count she already had.

Taking the second she needed to call forth the blue magical bolt from her grimoire, she had swung open, the pages fluttering through the air, her grip sure on the books back, she turned quickly and with a smile said toward Ruin, after all she would know the name of a character she and her brother had created: "Accept this and we can kill them together easier and get some experience and such together. Also, not Myriel, Nisha from now on." Nisha swung around to send her ball at the pig she had nearly killed off with her sword before and send it to have the same fate as the first pig, maybe her brother had even already taken the party invitation and accepted it, meaning he would rake in points as well. But knowing her brother, he might not even notice the box of the party invitation that would hang around for a while, she could imagine that he was having, just like Nisha, too much fun to even care much about it. Well, it did not matter in the end, Nisha did not think that these pigs would give much experience anyway or coin at all. But since it was automatic that they got money from stuff like this, it was pretty much badass they just got stuff from monsters. Suddenly her lightning armor was ripped away as a pig collided with her ankle and bit it away. Sprinting away from it a bit with the remaining seconds on her movement speed, she came a bit closer to her brother and stood in front of him to take her role as a tank seriously. After all, she coudl soak much more damage with her armor as him adn take quite some more hits, pigs and monsters of this level would have to gnaw for quite a while to get to her.

Suddenly remembering something, Nisha turned with a smirk on her face and her face looked like it had suddenly basked in darkness and evilness, a real mischievous grin, those who knew about her mostly feared. "Oh, before I forget, everytime you use someones real name without their permission or give yours away in this game without me knowing, I will play a prank on you." Turning back to the pigs, she jumped over a charging little pig and used her sword to pin it to the ground and shot a bolt of magical energy at it, pulling her sword back out and looked at the half dozen pigs left over. Also, there was a slime... Yeah, that was weird, but since slimes were even less dangerous on her scale of monsters... or was that her brothers monster? Nisha wanted to laugh loudly, but was distracted by another attack. "But a stick looks good on you brother dear. Perfect to whack stuff with, just like I told you." Ah, just remembering her latest masterpiece warmed her up from the inside and felt quite nice, knowing that it was permanent was a little damper to her mood, but none the less, it would turn out alright, just like it always did for her and her brother.

Words: 708
Mood: Happy
Music: Let´s break'em
Tags: Ruin

[Ruin]

Joshua dodged to the right, spinning on his heel and leaving a long shallow mark on a passing pig with the end of his wand as his sister fought and spoke, her blade flashing and her own magical notebook sparking as she occupied their opponents’ attention with an eclectic combination of enthusiastic gusto and casually brutal efficiency. With an actual combat effective in the mix, the pigs were quickly being routed. Even if his slime did nothing but quiver in place like a gigantic dessert waiting for dinnertime to arrive, and he himself did nothing but occupy the attention of a single piglet and strike ineffectively at its snout, she was proving more than a match for the entire horde. They couldn’t effectively penetrate her defences and she was taking them out almost with each stroke of her sword. Apparently they were in fact as weak as they looked.

That he could not single-handedly defeat the pack probably said nothing good about his chances of surviving a higher-level encounter. Not that he worried about it, mind. Challenges made life interesting.

It was just the means that he objected to. Was it truly so much to ask for, being able to kill something with a lump of sharpened iron? Or his bare hands, even? This blunted stick nonsense was making him feel like a teacher out of a Dickens novel, eternally vigilant against impropriety and whatever other nonsense it was that Victorian era schoolmarms were armed with switches for and on the lookout for. If he was going to kill something, he at least wanted to see it bleed properly. Or have the option to see it bleed properly. He was a big believer in options. Flexibility in thought and approach was essential to survival. Focus too greatly on a single concern and you lost all rational perspective. It was an unfortunate situation to be in. He’d managed to get into it once due to his own sense of aesthetics, and after digging himself out of that particular pit had then sworn off that nauseating weakness.

Or so he tried. It was occasionally difficult to get his imagination to cooperate with his will. He liked life interesting, which rarely – if never – meant ‘safe’.

"…without me knowing, I will play a prank on you." His sister told him. He wasn’t sure if she was being mock-serious or just serious.

Joshua hadn’t the foggiest notion why Myriel – well, Nisha now – was so committed to changing names. No, that wasn’t true, he did have some ideas, but there were far too many of them for him to simply count and tabulate, each more splendidly inane than the last. Why it could have been anything from an exercise in dissociation, to a momentary caprice, to a role-playing commitment, to a bizarre fashion statement. Perhaps it was even a quaint and curious internet custom from long ago and far away. It was not like their true identities could conceivably introduce them into more trouble and danger than they were already in.

And if it did… well, that was interesting. That was very interesting indeed. Interesting enough to be worth the risk. There was only one person in the world that would want him dead and she was supposedly still incarcerated. Joshua had often wished to visit, but in the real world, gloating was a risk he was unwilling to take.

Here… well, he’d be almost happy to see her. He’d always wanted to thank her in person.

He supposed he could humor his sister, so long as she remained interesting.

Of all people, his sister really should know better than to try to threaten him though. Punishment was not exactly a deterrent in his case. Quite the opposite. The risk and the thrill… maybe that was why she’d decided to give him all of a prank war as incentive. He’d only resort to it if he got truly bored.

After all the lure of the illicit and forbidden was always the first thing that tempted him when boredom reared its head. A prank war might be fun, but it wasn’t tempting. Not yet, anyway. He filed the thought away for later. Unless this world turned out to be spectacularly predictable, he didn’t foresee having to bug his sister for the sake of entertainment alone.

“I’ll keep that warning in mind, Nisha,” he said, emphasizing her new name. Cracking open his dark purple notebook, he sent out another errant blast of light. It missed, slamming into the dirt just before a pig.

He wasn’t sure how he was aiming in the first place so a miss seemed par for the course. Still, he had better start trying to figure out how to aim his ‘magical’ attacks. When he had a grand total of one legitimate means of attack, piss poor and awful as it was, he’d have to figure out how to strengthen it and make it more reliable. Four out of five were decent odds, if not great ones.

"But a stick looks good on you brother dear. Perfect to whack stuff with, just like I told you."

Joshua raised an eyebrow demonstrated the supposed utility of 'good looks' and 'whacking stuff' by poking the pig with his stick.

Its reply nearly clipped off a third of his health. Well, to be exact, nearly a third of his remaining health. The once green bar was getting perilously low, switching to an orange-y red color.

He shrugged, smiling and stepped back.

“I’m out!” he reported cheerfully.

He wasn’t sure if his sister heard, but the pig definitely had and apparently took this as full permission to go completely bananas trying to catch him.

To put it bluntly, the wand was stupidly ineffective. He wasn't even sure he managed to raise a welt by using the painted, cherrywood: surely he wasn't doing any better than his feet and fingers would have managed. If anything he was probably doing worse. Even if the initial bacon sandwich had not died due to a powerful blow to the back of the head, it had been visibly damaged. This plinking and fooling around with a wooden stick had an effectiveness that landed somewhere between 'waiting for old age to set in' and 'hoping that this prancing around will summon a meteor or something.' Fortunately though it wasn't a dangerous exercise in futility: with only one enemy to account for he could let his natural agility take care of the very small challenge in dodging the pig's attempts at counter-attacking now that he wasn’t trying to get a hit in, letting it slam itself into trees and various bits of the undergrowth as he took shots of opportunity and the occasional grimoire aided magical sneak attack.

With the help of a person who could actually fight (as oppose to flail away ineffectively and then run for the woods) the porcine menace turned to be as dangerous as enemies of their stature should have been. It was remarkable what a physical class could accomplish - magic classes were largely ineffective in comparison.

Finally, the pigs were all gone, their gutted corpses disappearing into motes of light that gathered around Nisha.

"Well, that was embarrassing," Joshua admitted, putting two hands behind his head and pursing his lips so he could start whistling.

"It really was," someone called. The voice was thin and reedy, cracking on some syllables as if it were about to break. “I think I might actually feel sorry about this.”

There was a glint of motion and out of pure instinct, Joshua threw himself backwards. An arrow, neatly fletched, slammed into the tree he had been standing in front of, vibrating as its momentum bled away.

There was a rustle of movement from up ahead. “Heh. Just kidding.”

Word count: 1,295
Tag: Nisha

[Nisha]

Nisha sighed, she did knew of what was going through his mind most likely, after all, he was about the only one, who could give Nisha a lesson in doing what you want and not care for consequences or even do something just because it meant something would happen. But Nisha did not going as far as her brother, sure if it seemed interesting, which it usually did, she went and helped and did what needed to be done for it to happen, but she had her own ideas what fun encompassed from what her brothers were, so sometimes she sabotaged stuff, just like the character that was flailing and failing around over there. Ah, it was an image she would definitely save in her mind, since she could not take screenshots of it. But yes, it was definitely interesting to see someone trying to beat a pig to death with a stick, Nisha took on the horde and barely lost life while her brother was having a very hard time dealing with even one of them, even so far that his life had turned red before he had been able to do something about the pig. Nisha was not even sure if these were categorized as monsters, but that was just what it looked like since tehy exploded when she killed them. But they were definitely no fun, one or two strikes at most with a dash of a blue bolt of magic was all it ever took to take them out for Nisha and she was about to yawn as she heard her brother say that he was done.

Or out or whatever, she never paid all too much attention to others when bored, but that made her tilt her head while she finished off the last pig without even looking, it had bit into her ankle and Nisha had fought the others while carrying it around and so the last thing to do was to crash the pig against a rock leaning at a tree until it let go and then poking it with her katana until it died. About a minute was over as she was done with that and looked around to see if her brother had really run off. It would be definitely a funny story to tell him over and over again, since he usually took the fight to whatever was annoying him. But there he was, apparently hehad just meant to say that he was gonna around like a wild goose, as was evident by all the broken branches and earth and such sprayed where they had run. She shook her head in amazement, that he had really doen it and even without his summon, quite a feat... not. "Err... you know you have your slime, right? Even though it looks weird, it can do stuff, you know?" Nisha had seen the arrow and the answer, but was ignoring it for now. Taunting whoever was around to coming out, she had no plan aside from that, tilting her head over to where the voice had come from, her new ears were very helpful in that matter, she said: "I mean even someone as brutish as you should understand that, right?" Something rustled in the bushes and Nisha was nearly sighing again, why were people always so inflexible when it came to unsults? They did not mean anything and did no harm, they washed off like water flowing from skin, you might remember from how it felt, but it leaves no mark. Nisha had known insults because of how well she developed since kindergarten, preschool and up until middle school, where she had suddenly been greeted by exactly the opposite kind of talk. And that had started her general days of boredom and not wanting to having anything to do with people, because when they dislike you, they are at least honest, but after she climbed the ranks abruptely and sat on the pile, barely anyone was interesting anymore since no one dared to be, as if she had some kind of aura that inflicted fear. Cowards all of them and the only ones showing off in front of her had been some human beings that threatened that marker and who had not even been remotely enough to be considered on equal terms.

But even in kindergarten, she had never really much cared for talk, if someone really wanted something from her they had to use actions. Not only because Nisha barely listened to uninteresting or new people, but also because she usually did not care for people anyway, no matter who they were, all that mattered was her own wellbeing and habing as much fun and pleasure she could get out of things, boring things were a dime of a dozen, and interesting things were just not to be found aside from some individuals she had met alongside the way and games. Nisha had always wondered what her brother saw in his sport activities aside from maybe the brutish ways, since she did not see the fun, but maybe she had been born with a little more chromoson than what was needed for enjoying that. And there he was, tottering out of the overgrowth, he walked toward them, some kind of idiot who was easily lured by whatever was said around him and even though Nisha did inhabit this body, her voice was still the same, the same quality to her demands as to her insults and always a tone of challenge in there, that no one consciously noriced, or at least not most. Nisha did not even let the archer talk before she had activated her lightning armor and pushed her sword with iaido into his stomach, so the blade split open the digital back and pointed toward the sky as Nisha kicked his shins, making him fall on the grip and pushing the katana in even deeper. It did not really matter what level players were, because in the end, they could not escape their natural fears. Even if he had been ten level above her, every human alive would flinch and be confused by a sword sticking through even if their pain was dampened it had still some quality to it and that was enough to david every goliath. Sitting down on top of the player, his arms below her legs as she sat in a kneeling position on him, Nisha looked at her brother with a smile and said: "Do you think your slime might want to partake into some of him? I think he might just about to be overripe for us to do the honors, what do you think? Oh and don´t worry, we will most likely only kill you since I don´t think we have any questions for you." She patted the side of his face that was tinged a slight bit with panic and quite some terror and surprise.

Words: 1155
Mood: Indifferent
Music: Song
Tag: Ruin
Skill: Denkousekka

[Ruin]

"You're - you're crazy!" the archer gasped, ineffectively trying to pull the sword out of his body. He seemed to be on the verge of tears, his eyes quivering almost as much as his hands and arms trembled as he sliced them repeatedly on Nisha’s blade. For someone that had tried to murder them in cold blood, he really did seem to be a truly vile human being. Weak, cowardly, contemptibly normal, GIFTed et cetera. It was almost disappointing, really. For a moment there, Joshua had thought they had met something of a kindred soul. The sort that you just had to eventually dispatch, but not first without a little bit of showmanship and friendly competition turned murderous.

Oh well. This had its upsides too. A whinging brat might not have been his first choice, but there was no way he would say no to a bit of theater.

"The slime only seems to respond to magic," Joshua admitted, shrugging as he got up and dusted himself off. Even without a mirror he knew that the chase, battle and just-a-second-ago fall had mussed his perfectly coiffed hair, turning it into a tangled mixture of mid-length hair and foliage. With a hand he brushed out the larger leaves, parted it towards the right before cracking his neck. It was a little overly casual, unconcern elevated to the exaggeration of a mime. As a means of provocation it was a little too obvious, but it had the desired effect anyway: the squirming, impaled archer who was making the most entertaining facial expressions imaginable.

“What the hell man? Call off your c-”

Joshua stomped on the would-be-assassin’s face, shaking a finger. To his dismay, the maneuver hadn’t even broken his nose. Still, it seemed to surprise the manchild into silence. “Tut-tut. Don’t interrupt. Especially not with words like that. Adults are discussing important adult matters here. If you are very good, you might be invited to lend your voice at a later time.”

“Fu-”

Joshua placed his foot back on his mouth and beamed at the lack of extraneous commentary.

He waved around his magical notebook: "I noticed when we were tossing around little magical bolts, it almost ignored the little piggies and crawled towards us. I think I'd have to drop the slime on his face for it to have any effect."

He considered his foot, then considered the slime. The cooldown period had already ended so there was no real reason he shouldn’t try something as simple as…

With a gesture he tossed a slime onto the guy’s face and watched, fascinated as a status effect immediately appeared above the archer’s head.

WC: 440
Tag: Nisha

[Nisha]

At this point some people may wonder, how can someone do that and not be called evil? nisha would shrug and maybe throw some cold water into whoever asked faces just for giggles since they seemed to be pretty uninteresting people, but Nisha per se was not evil. She got no kicks out of torturing this guy or how she got comfortable on top of his back, even as he stopped making weird comments or how her brother stomped his face, none of these got her any more evil or good than she had been before, she looked at these acts in sequence and with prejudice as she liked. But if he had not attacked them first or if her brother had not gotten to him sooner or later, he could have passed without them caring, but attacking her was a straight no and she would go after these people without holding back or taking whatever tools she had in store for them. Nisha was mostly indifferent against things that did not seem fun or did not end in fun in her opinion. She also only smirked at the fact that she had just gotten her first one versus one against a player out of the way and had won. The victory and not the process or how she gained it, gave her happiness and meant fun to her. That did not make her evil at any level, but rather on a beast like level of indifference and judgement against people.

Quite fitting she had taken on this kind of form in more ways than one, even though she did look so much different. One could say this was exactly how she had always wanted to be. Feeling him squirming, she paid it no heed and instead listened to what her brother said, wondering if he knew how evil he sounded like, she sighed and saw how her brother finally got around to casting his slime at the head of the player, well, it had to be pretty weird to feel a slime over your head and breath it, but he also deserved it plain as day. Yawning, she touched the blunt side of the blade and pushed it a little bit away from her. She did not need to get damage from her own blade after all and with how much he was squirming, she felt the blade sticking out might do just that while she was sitting here. "So, Ruin, had any adventures yet? Met some people? Enjoyed yourself?" Nisha asked and noticed the squirming getting less and less, maybe it was time to stand up, she did not want to fall down from him turning into money or something, she had not killed a player in this game before, so she did not know what might happen to him. While asking she was also thinking about where to start if he would ask her what she had done until now, even though he might just not ask. Well, reminiscing about her encounters was nice anyway and she had nothing better to do until she could pick her sword back up, that they guy below her so selfishly clung to.

Words: 532
Mood: Bored
Music: Let go of my sword
Tags: Ruin

[Ruin]

"Enjoy is such a... complicated word," Joshua said, finally stepping into his role. What did Ruin like? What was Ruin like? An adventurer, yes, but more than just that. Ruin was someone who liked and hated life in equal measure. Someone who could banter while a man suffocated to death before him, and unironically judge another for not being empathetic enough about those who were scared of this new, Post-Catastrophe world. Someone who could call up demons and devils and truck and barter with souls that were not his to sell, and yet also someone who would run screaming into the night pursued by a herd of baby barnyard animals. An artiste with delusions of neither grandeur nor triumph, but rather an all-encompassing passion to seek the highest form of self-indulgent gratification. Someone who loved petty things like puns, and great things like pain. Someone who would answer every problem and criticism with a deadly, leering smile.

Someone who would answer a simple question with excessively unnecessary flourishes.

"Let us say, rather, that I was not bored."

A particularly dramatic cloud decided at that precise moment to cover the sun. The temperature dropped by a few degrees as wind rustled through the leaves and stirred his hair.

"There was an assassin," he reminisced. "A quiet fellow. Quieter than this one, in any case" he said, giving the mentioned archer a kick. Immediately the body spasmed, bubbles escaping as it thrashed and contorted itself. The status effects were starting to pile up, no doubt to the acid, suffocation and having a slime invade one’s esophagus. Ruin shook his head, his smile neither growing nor faltering. "He looks like a stuck pig. I’m not sure it suits the décor."

Waving his hand, he desummoned the slime. Immediately the archer began to gasp, his breathing loud and labored, bubbles popping from his mouth and nose. Slime dripped from him, clearly still stinging him: his eyes were so bloodshot they sceleras were almost uniformly pink.

“Puh-puh-please-” he started, tearing up.

“Shut up,” Ruin said pleasantly, crouching so he could pat the man on the shoulder. “I’m trying out a new personality. It would help if you didn’t speak, you’re much too pathetic to be even the merest prop.”

The archer whimpered. Whether he was acting or truly broken, Ruin did not know nor much care. With a sword still stuck in his chest he probably could not last that much longer anyway.

“Where was I? Ah yes, the assassin. Quiet. Deadly. Fit all the usual characteristics to a tee. Utterly forgettable for the same reason, though I suspect that was part of the desired effect. Otherwise I think he would have stood out, he did have that aura about him.”

“I met a duellist as well. First, actually. He was strangely chatty. Talking to him never quite seemed like a conversation where you knew where you were going. He liked talking over everyone and making observations out loud. It was… interesting. We all killed some time together before going our separate ways. I heard a rumor during that time about a certain adventure. Just a word though. ‘Sarum.’”

WC: 524
Tags: Nisha

[Nisha]

Listening to her brother talk, she fiddled around with the blade a little more, slowly making circular movements until she saw her brother do something weird and interesting. He suddenly released the man below her from teh slime and Nisha wondered what the hell was going on. She tilted her head and furrowed her brow, but did not know if he was going to do something else instead. He was not going to... No, there was no way. It was hilarious to even think about it now that she was thinking about it, it could never happen, would he let this guy go? Ask Nisha to stand up and let him leave? that would not only be weird, it would be something so far away from what Nisha was expecting it would not be funny in the least, but she would wait a little longer before taking matters in her own hand. She would not let a wounded enemy run his course, or run away, that would not gonna happen, killing someone instilled fear and since she did not know what would happen would be at least interesting. But letting them go would incite more resistance and even though her brother might like that idea, Nisha was far from letting that happen, it was definitely not fun to be hunted down.

But it sounded like he had met some interesting people, even though Nisha wondered how many uninteresting people had to suffer on their way as soon as they crossed Ruin. it was interesting to think about a pile of people piling up behind a summoner who defeated them barehanded. And then somethings he ahd heard as well came up. Sarum. "Ah, it is mostly boring around there, most monsters have been killed, there is little to scout and the people always do stuff in groups. Crafting is easier since you can just use what they give you, but you don´t keep it in the end, so it is only good for raising your level a bit. In the end, the people there have a ratio of let´s see, maybe one in ten being slightly interesting? Well, the enemies there are all golems and lose their interesting factor after defeating one or two of them, you know those old timey games where they just changed the color scheme for monsters? Kinda like that." Nisha having lost interest sitting on someone gave the blade one quick push and retrieved it as it came out at the other side of the pk in spe, now killed. The player had stopped moving and Nisha stood up and stretched after sheathing her katana, not looking at the body even once more since something dead could never be all that interesting or fun. But really for her brother to say he was not bored in a game was a little success that this game could write in it´s curriculum vitae and be proud of, how many would have suffered for it, well, she had already pondered that and she did not see any reason to not believe him when it came to this kind of stuff.

Words: 521
Tags: Ruin
Music: None, watching tv
Mood: None especially

[Ruin]

As Ruin spoke Nisha seemed to be idly stirring the man’s guts with her sword. Was she bored? Intrigued? Neutral? Ruin couldn’t really tell. Life was usually like that: neither of them were ever quite certain what the other sibling would do, only that it would likely be quite entertaining. The man, however, had obeyed his word. That he was not begging for relief and mercy seemed oddly out of character – Ruin had pegged him for a coward and a weakling. Either pain here was dampened or he was hiding certain positive characteristics from them that required prompt and wonderful destruction. He was still crouched next to them both as Nisha spoke her part.

“One in ten?” Ruin mused. He grinned, standing back up so that he towered above his sister. Sitting down on top of the archer as she was, the top of her pointed ears did not even reach his waist. He suspected that if they stood side by side, she’d have lost nearly a foot in height, reducing her to a few heads shorter than him. While she was not exactly tiny - the top of her head would not serve as an armrest – she was definitely short. Strangely though, it already seemed like she had always been this height and shape. A petite spitfire of a sword-wielding powerhouse. Then again she was Nisha, and Nisha had always been a member of whatever vulpine tribe she belonged to. “Acceptable, given the circumstances. You’ll have to tell-”

Around him, the ghostly outlines of small, goblinoid foes appeared like little nightmare apparitions that someone had forgotten to color in. They were nebulously translucent. Hunched over, they couldn’t have been over three feet tall. They wore harnesses covered with blades and little feathers in their hair. Although most had a small, rusted sword, one carried a rough stone axe, another a bow and an arrow. He waved a hand through one without effect, noting a set of numbers floating above their translucent heads. A hundred eighty. A hundred seventy-nine. A hundred seventy-eight. A countdown. One with three minutes or so of time left on the clock.

Precognition? So he was an actual fortune teller now? As surprises went, that was actually quite… hm, he wasn’t sure how to think about it yet. Delightful in some ways, disappointing in others.

“-me about them.” He said, finishing his last thought before launching into another. “It appears we will have company soon,” he stage whispered, for the benefit of the archer lying in the dirt. “Five – no, six foes. Levels seem a little all over the place, maxing out at hm, eight. They are definitely not ‘golems’ though. And they don’t look particular interesting – I think they may be goblins. We’ll have to decide what to do with our cumbersome friend here before they make an actual appearance.”

“So, friend,” he asked, nudging the evil-doer in the shoulder with his toe. “What do you think we should do with you?”

“Bait? Kill? Hmmm?”

WC: 500
Tags: Nisha

[Nisha]

Well, that was interesting, it was the first time Nisha had seen it in action, but the second her brother was cut off mid sentence, she knew something was going on, even though he was quite unpredictable, he spoke in full sentences mostly and something interrupting him must have been something great indeed, Nisha tilted her head and waited for his reply, letting her eyes and ears move around while her tail was twitching and licking nervously at the sudden break. She could not hear anything but the usual soundtrack of a forest with little life in it. No breaking branches, little sound from birds and the occasional small animal around. Nisha breathed in slowly to keep the sounds to aminimum, but even straining her ears got her no result, which was why she froze for the slice of a second as her brother started talking again, having focused on other sounds so much, he nearly startled her, but now her ears were ringing from his sudden speaking and telling her that some monsters were coming at them. Five or six of them at once, huh? Mustering her brother, letting her eyes wander to his staff, then to her sword and her grimoire. All in all, they stood no chance at their level adn seeing how her brother was still even with regenerating passively at best in the yellow, maybe nearing half, they had no chance in hell against all of them. Nisha had taken some hits too, but her health should be about back to full by now, maybe five or so percent off, but against anything other than the pigs... Their chances definitely were not good if they could not split them up, once they were higher levels they should be able to do these with ease, but right now they could be happy that they had ambushed a pker like this or they had been nailed to a tree and taken care of by him, and Nisha knew that he had not let them off with just this little abuse her brother had given him, but would have gone further maybe, dedicated pker always went too far, one of the many flaws this kind of thing brought with itself when only targeting those they thought would not be able to defend themself, noobs and such and if Nisha was not the person she was and a bit more good, she may have even tried to reason with him and plead for their lives. Well, it had happened as it had happened and now they had to deal with this new threat.

"Well, I say we go and look for something nice and small your slime can wrap around and digest to get you some more exp, but if you have a plan do tell, brother. Also, you don´t have to kill him anymore, he is dead, so bait with him as you like, I don´t think he would mind all too much now. And I guess that was precognition from fortune telling? Well, can´t say I have not given you something interesting then. Also, if there is really a level 8 around, we are both gonna die if we fight him. You after half a hit and I after maybe two, not counting the other stuff." Nisha was already ready to go and leave, wondering if her brother would come up with an ingenious plan, even though there was little he could try to do, none of them had traps on them and bait only worked if they cared about dead players, which monster usually did not. Nisha guessed low calorie and nutrient were the reasons for them not going after players once they were incapacitated, seeing how they were mostly pixels and digital informations and those did not weigh all that much in the stomach. looking around, Nisha also finally saw the exit of the forest out there again, or at least light shining and telling of an end to the tunnel that had been this godforsaken place. So she knew which direction to run to at least.

Words: 682
Music: The quiet before the storm
Tags: dusty
Mood: Like a marathon sprinter before starting
Skills: None