Cross Effects 3.0 - November 16, 2014—April 13, 2015

[Knick]

Mia

Mia tilted her head as her neck pinch had no effect and looked down at her hand in confusion before looking back up the man. It did not work, why did it not work. As Mia pondered this as the man turned to her and talked.

She ignored him, only continuing to look at him with her head tilted and obvious confusion in her eyes. Then it was almost as if a small dial was being spun in her mind until it settled on a mindset.

Then her head fell, hiding her eyes as her arms went limp and she leaned forward slightly. Then a small sound began. It was a soft giggling.

And she just kept giggling. Paying no mind to the man telling her to “scram”.

[Elf]

Forest

Forest folded her arms around herself and resisted the urge to punch the kid for nailing it on the head.  At least in the simplest way possible.  So what, they were kindred spirits with angst and tragedy.  He was also a bloody child compared to her and from what she was smelling, she doubted he'd been through the same Special Hell she had.   

She sighed and said, "Look, if I feed off of you, things are going to get awkward.  Really awkward.  And I really don't need to feed right now so . . . I'll leave you to your shower because I need to take one myself."


Saber

Shirou's words helped cut through her sleep filled fog as she set the dragon plush next to Rin.  She said, "If you give me a moment, I can assist you.  Even though, she can take care of herself.  She is not helpless and . . ."

She is not Ilya.


The Fanged Threesome

Buffy smirked as Mr. Tall, Dark, and Knightly decided to save the day.  She gave him a tiny salute and said, "God Save the Queen.  Menfolk, we're rabbitting!"

She picked up Spike's severed hand along the way, figuring that there was some demonic healer that could fix that for her BFF.  Angel on the other and was watching the dark knight with an expression she knew all too well.  "You can torture the guy later, he's letting us escape," the blond said as she took her lover's hand while he lifted a grieving Spike to his feet.

[Panda]

Senses sharpened by countless fights and hunts noted the vampire tensing up ever so slightly.

...She seems to be getting...

...hostile...? Not quite, but...

We should stop now...

"Very well," Adjutor says with a nod, "My apologies for my rudeness."

[Elf]

Forest

Forest sighed and said, "I might take you up on your offer, but we just met and . . . "

She shrugged and said, "Donating is a very . . . intimate act, that's all. Unless its in battle then it's a great distraction, but that's not the point so I'm going to go now.  And shower."

[Kotomine_Rin]

Lorenzo Remei

"Of course, there is no better teacher than experience herself after all, is there?"

With that, Lorenzo clicked his tongue in amusement, smiling at Guts. "You're straight to the point, I like that. We should share a drink sometime."

In a sudden turn, the pirate stopped.

"Guts, you felt that, didn't you? We're being followed." Turning around, he faced a bunch of armed men, each costumed with weird getups.

Pumpkins?

Lorenzo chuckled. "Look at that, it seems your training sessions are more popular than I thought."

Quickly unsheathing his rapier, the pirate smirked cockily. "I am shivering with fear.", Lorenzo muttered in a sarcastic tone.


Halloweeners

"It's them boss!, they are the ones who blasted yer car!", one of the thugs sneered in an annoyingly high pitched voice.
There were about a dozen of them, each armed with firearms, more firearms, guns and knives, surrounding the two from all sides.

One of them wielded a machete and wore a thick ogre costume, heavy gun, probably a mini gun, rested on his shoulder lazily. He was by far the biggest, bulkiest of the bunch, and it showed.

"Well well, which one of you motherfuckers messed with my car!", the colossal freak barked.

Laughing lazily, he grabbed his gun and aimed it at the thickly armoured man.

"Not that it matters, you can go lick my ass and die, shits."

[Alice]

Rin

Something about Mia being gone, and breakfast being ready? Rin wasn't alert to process it all yet. Even the dragon plushie which now sat next to her went relatively unnoticed.

Food was mentioned. Yeah, food was a good place to get started. The sleepy magus rose out of the bed and walked towards the kitchen with all the grace and speed of your typical zombie. She absently tugged down the sleeve of her cat pjs and attempted to smooth out some of her more wild bedhead as she trecked onward.

"Nice to see you so alert and raring to go already Rin~ Truly you're an example for magus everywhere~"

Rin shot the wand, now in her more portable stickless disc form, a glare, still too tired to even care to articulate a response or even be terribly angry at the accursed stick as she reached her destination.

Her mind still in a fog, she blindly searched for the breakfast Shirou'd been talking about earlier. Where was it again? In the fridge maybe? But that wasn't like him, putting it in the fridge, usually it was out. Was it out already? Was she blind? Maybe she should just go back to bed, bed seems nice...

[Panda]

Adjutor can't help but give Forest a curious look. Fortunately, it lasts for all of a moment.

"...Fair enough," Adjutor says, "Don't let me keep you, then. The offer remains open, any time you decide to take me up on it."

[Elf]

Forest

"Thanks," Forest said with a tiny wave as she headed towards her bedroom so she could shower and change. 

[Panda]

"No problem," he says, waiting for her to leave before quickly undressing and stepping into the shower before turning the hot water on all the way, familiar with the long seconds spent waiting for the water to heat up.

The agonized scream that might have brought someone running is barely stifled by Adjutor biting down on his arm as he uses his other hand to turn the hot water down and add some cold water to the mix. With the source of the temporary agony fading, Adjutor extracts his arm from his mouth and, noting the distinct lack of bite-marks, is once more thankful for the Armogarians making his arms partially metal.

With that embarrassing incident out of the way, Adjutor quickly goes about the task of cleaning off the past day or two of grime, dust, dirt, and blood.


...Great, Guts sighs disgustedly to himself as the sudden commotion of punks with guns, Just what I needed.

Then this really big one lumbered on over, said a few words, and likely would have started to bring a gun with way too many barrels on it to bear if Guts hadn't just smashed him open with a single fluid motion, Dragonslayer held in one hand as the thug's blood and entrails slowly slid down the blade.

Without even allowing the punks a moment to process the shock, Guts takes off again, moving far too fast for what one would expect of a man carrying a weapon of that size. All that had the misfortune of being in front of him found themselves scattered and splattered as Guts tore through whoever was unfortunate enough to be in range of the massive chunk of iron with a single hand, the primal roar sounding as if it were being torn from his very lungs as he reduced every Halloweener within range to bloody chunks before moving on to the next set.

[MissingMandible]

Corporal Mathew Blackburn:

For such a small woman, she has quite the strong grip. Kowtowing is going to be the norm here, indeed. Noel practically dragged him back to the apartment.

"Fine, fine, I need to clean my armor anyways."

Noel sighed. "You can't get too trigger happy, alright? One of us could get in big trouble." She looked him over carefully. "Hmmm, I think you're well enough to come with me tonight. What do you say?"

"Well, you said that I will be paying you rent for a time," Mathew began, "And I'd like to buy some of the groceries here."

The first part was truth, the second was, well, father said that the best lies were half truths. The groceries were more for him to not have to eat whatever vile concoction the woman makes during his stay here.

"So, am I assuming that this is going to pay well? And can I have cliff notes of what these 'Nazis' are aside from 'Bad People'?"

[Kaze]

EMIYA SHIROU

Saber’s expression cleared up and grew sharp before Shirou’s eyes, and just like that she was the Saber he had once known again. She set Charles down on the bed and assured him that Mia would be able to handle herself. She was going to say something else as well, but trailed off as Rin got up from the bed and grumpily moved past them both, walking down the short hallway.

“Yeah, Mia will probably be fine,” he said. It’s the trouble she’ll cause for others that’s the real worry here, he thought to himself. “I’ll finish breakfast, but I’m still going to look for her. This ‘Nexus’ isn’t safe for anyone, especially for someone so young.”

Leaving the former king to clean herself up, Shirou made his way back to the kitchen, finding Rin standing next to an open fridge, looking confused. He handed her the cup of milk he had prepared beforehand and guided the teenage version of his oldest friend to a seat. Breakfast would be done in just a moment, hopefully she was more awake by then.


MARK BURRIDGE

The girl didn’t pay him any mind, just kind of stared for a few moments before giggling like a fucking psycho. Mark had seen more than enough horror movies to know that some serious shit was about to go down, and started backing up slowly. His instincts roared that he should be standing his ground, attacking even, but he was above such base impulses. To attack first, against a little girl in public, would only get him the attention he was trying to avoid.

Whatever happened next would have to be played very carefully.

[Kat]

“I’ve heard of some before, but I haven’t met any either.” Faust chuckled. “However, as you said, this city is bizarre, you can’t take anything for granted.”

"I'm curious if you heard about the same as I did. There is that vampire hanging out with that Saber girl. How outrageous or naive to associate yourself with someone who sucks human blood." Mordred did not hide her feelings about the vampire kind. Stealing mortal blood to perpetuate one's existence was disgusting to her even if a vampire only weakened the victim without killing.

[SINIB]

Noel

Well, you said that I will be paying you rent for a time," Mathew began, "And I'd like to buy some of the groceries here."

Noel nodded. “Yes. if you’re going to be living here, I’m going to need you to help with living costs. I don’t have the money to board people here for free. And if you want to buy some of the groceries, that’s fine, I guess.”

"So, am I assuming that this is going to pay well? And can I have cliff notes of what these 'Nazis' are aside from 'Bad People'?"

Noel confirmed his assumption with a curt nod. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I told you, it’s going to net each of us about twenty thousand dollars. And as for the Nazis...” Noel paused and sat down, thinking for a while. “Um, let’s see--The Nazis were a horrible group of people who tried to take over the world and tried to eradicate many groups of people, most notably the Jews. They herded them into death camps and gassed them purely because of their religious affiliation.”

[Kotomine_Rin]

"Hey, hey. Leave some for me dammit!", Lorenzo yelled before leaping at one of the men, a quick slash on the thug's throat ended his life before he knew it. Others focused fire on the pirate, but he quickly moved around, taking cover behind a wall.

Drawing his flintlock, he shot the nearest thug he could find, running swiftly as he avoided the gunfire. It is actually very difficult to accurately shoot at someone, if he was to constantly be on the move, bullets were as inconsequential as falling leaves. Zipping around the battlefield, he pounced on a larger thug from behind, the cold steel penetrated his body, he used the inert cadaver as a human shield in order to protect himself from the hail of bullets.

His cheek and shoulder had been grazed by the bullet fire, but it was nothing to worry about. Protected by his new shield, he focused on the guns, a small incantation was enough to have them immediately burst into flames before exploding, the gunmen's hands going with them.

Without wasting breath, he shot from his flintlock a torrent of energy, bullet-like blasts tearing their bodies to shreds.

"Mph, that makes about five...", he muttered before looking at guts, who was by now surrounded by a puddle of blood, their blood.

"Well, that was lame. I expected something a bit more out of them.", he wined before joining the warrior once again.

But the clash was far from over, suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his back. Quickly turning around, he saw a faraway man, dressed in a skeleton costume most likely. Sitting atop a rooftop, he was attempting to snipe them from afar.

Before they knew it, more men surrounded them from all sides, this time a greater number than before.

[Panda]

"Kid," Guts says, looking around at the punks surrounding them, "When I say go, you take care of that sniper."

Then Guts spots the minigun dropped by the 'boss'. With a feral grin, he takes one last look around before replacing Dragonslayer on his back, moving his hands as if he was about to surrender, turning his back to the dropped weapon.

"Go!" he shouts, reaching over and pulling the lanyard on his arm, not bothering to brace himself. The cannonball tears through a number of punks on the far side, but of greater importance is that the recoil propels Guts towards the fallen man. Gunfire from the punks behind him either pings uselessly off of Dragonslayer or is turned away by the armor, though a few shots do manage to get through before Guts reaches them. A single wide swing is enough to eliminate the immediate threat, with Guts letting Dragonslayer leave his hand to splatter a few more while he reaches down with his other hand. The magnet in the palm provides a reference point for where to grab the gun, while Guts hefts the thing up, hoisting the dead man on his back for more cover and so he can move around with the ammo backpack that seems to be feeding to the gun.

All this accomplished, Guts quickly moves to the nearest piece of cover and starts trying to figure out how to use this damn thing while bullets slam into his cover, wearing it down.