Roleplaying

Sola turned her head at the mention of Qeo being her 'cub.' It was an interesting assumption, and one that Sola did not take offense to for once. "Oh no, he's not..."

She was interrupted by Qeo's panicked warning, just as she heard the mechanical click that warned her it was a little to late. Reacting on instinct, Sola twisted and completely enveloped Qeo in a living shield of fur ans feathers just as a needle embedded itself in her shoulder blade, and another thunk-ed into a tree above her.

Liquid fire spread from where she had been shot, and Sola snarled in rage. "Run and hide until I come find you." Her tone left no room for argument as she commanded Qeo to flee. She spun around; her eyes narrowed in the direction of the dart. She hoped whatever it had been laced with was a neuro-toxin; it would make she sick but she would live that due to her tail making neuro-toxins of its own.

Enraged, Sola charged into the bushes; the lion having been forgotten. Once she spotted the creature with a gun, Sola's muscles coiled for her to pounce and pin it to the ground.

You will pay for that... she thought as she jumped. 

Ylva’s warning came a heartbeat before the blue thing’s, giving Keanah time to drop her body to the floor in an attempt to void whatever it was that was headed for her. Unfortunately the trajectory was not one that could be so easily avoided, and the roar that burst from her jaws was filled with both fury and pain.

Keanah had almost managed to avoid it, but ultimately the damage had been done. The dart had embedded itself into her front leg, her mane offering little protection in that area. She had thought at first, that it was not going to be very effective, but the pain that spread from the tiny point was quickly becoming unbearable. Ylva was snarling in fury. She couldn’t take her own form and she had not been able to move Tau’s body in time for them to miss being shot at.

Tau was not so helpless. With a reassuring rumble to both Ylva and Keanah, he took the lead, having watched the Black Tiger’s exchange with her cub and feeling inclined to follow her lead. He charged after the female, giving only a cursory glance to the child. Ylva’s instinct told her to stay with him, keep him safe until the other female returned, but Tau’s rage overshadowed that.

He was limping by the time his attacker came into view, and he crept forward as the female pounced at the humanoid. The pain was clouding his mind, but he had enough forethought to stand a little way away, ready to attack the humanoid if it managed to avoid the other feline’s pounce.

He crouched to the ground, focussing solely on the enemy and ready to leap to the left or right in his own pounce if the creature tried to escape in his direction. If he knew the Winged Tiger better, he would have attempted to assist her attack, but it was not smart to interject himself into a strange feline’s hunt. So preparing a back-up defence was the best he could manage, all the while it finding it increasingly difficult to suppress the pain radiating from where the dart sat.

When The Princess peered over the edge of her hammock, she noticed two things.  Firstly, she noticed a lion, far closer than before, in some kind of rapidly degrading defensive stance. Moreover, she noticed the winged one moving towards her rapidly, and estimated that she had about two thirds of a second before it made impact, maybe a little bit more. Luckily, her pack was already secured, no need to worry about that.  She'd miss this hammock though.

The Princess did not devise a plan, exactly- she moved on instinct. But we'll call it a plan, so that we can say that her plan went a little like this-

Point zero seconds - Exit hammock.

Point two seconds - Brace self against tree.

Point three seconds - Open cavernous jaw.

Point five seconds - Lash out tongue, careful to keep in mind a big cat's swiping habits.

Point six seconds - Bind its front paws together with tongue.

Point seven seconds - Bite off its head. Or, well, it might not fit entirely, hard to tell from here.  At the very least, bite through its head.

The Princess exited the hammock, braced herself against the tree, and her cavernous jaw snapped open with a horrid clacking sound. Her tongue lashed out, and she briefly wondered why any animal would ever lunge like that- if you leap head first into something that removes them, there's very little chance that you'll ever get it back.

Sola saw the humanoid creature move, and just as it prepaired for her attack, Sola prepaired to counter. At this point, the nuero-toxin had spread its painful fire through half her body, and nausia was begginging to set in. Sola didn't let it show though, years of vigerous training had thought her how to effectivly hide weakness.

Pushing through the pain, Sola opened her wings, pushing them trough the dense undergrowth. The wind captured threw her body into an upright position. Her hind legs hit the ground, slowing her enough to twist ever so slightly that the tongue the humaniod creature had lashed at her wrapped around her wing rather than her front paws.

Rather than stopping her own momentum, Sola used this tongue connection to her advantage. She closed her wings; trapping the tongue within them, and she droppedher weight down so she was on all fours as she slid. This all took fractions of a second, honed skills from her training coming together in an instictual adaptation. Her tail; which had been coiled for strike until now, snaked forward, its fangs extended as it went to strike the creatures toungue. She planned to inject her own neuro-toxin, which wouldn't kill, but sent a fire-like sensation that made veins burn and skin crawl.

The Princess was perturbed - perturbed to a ridiculous degree, as that creature's venom was extremely painful. She swore loudly, and then made a mental note to power up her suit's spare liver after this altercation, clear out her burning veins and make sure she didn't end up with anything too permanent.

The winged cat probably though it was so clever, tying up her tongue like that. Well, two can play at that game. The break-the-weapons-they-reveal game, that is. So she tightened her tongue's coil on the wing, leaped to the side, retracted her tongue with as much force as possible once she was at a weird enough angle, and wondered whether the resounding sound was the shoulder popping or the bones snapping.

Once The Princess had her tongue back in her mouth back in her mouth, she spat out a few feathers, and whistled for Cat. The jumping spider landed on her head, and The Princess instructed her to fetch the anaesthetic out of their pack before sitting down, back against a tree, ready to take a chunk out of whichever limb came at her first.

A pained roar clawed its way from her throat as her wing was wrenched out of socket. She recoiled, relaeasing the creature tongue from her limp limb. Sola's ears flattened and her jaw cleched, even as adrenaline rushed through her. She ignored the gut-wrenching pain and focused on what was going on.

When the spider landed on the humaniod's head, and then rushed for a sack of what looked like dart, Sola's attention turned away from the tongue-creature. she jumped, even as this caused excrutiating pain in her wing, her paws narrowly missing the spider as her jaws locked arround the bag. Clenching it in her jaw, she opened her one good win in an attempt to look bigger, the serpent in her tail hissing a threat. She droped into a crouch, talking around the strap in her mouth. "I don't tink so. We end tis wif out narcotics." Her speech was mumbled, but audible.

For what felt like the thousandth time that day, Keanah had could not comprehend what her eyes were seeing. There was no way the thing that had attacked them was human. And she was starting to have serious doubts about where she was. Nothing about the place was familiar, and its inhabitants were even less so. The closest thing to normal was the black tiger that could, she assumed, fly with those massive wings and – having only just noticed – a snake instead of a tail.

She didn’t have much of a chance to continue watching the fight after the snake sunk its fangs into the creatures tongue, waves of pain ripping through her body as the neurotoxin continued through her system. She was sure losing a paw would leave her better able to defend herself then this pain, and her eyes were squeezed shut in a futile attempt to isolate and minimise the pain.

Ylva’s attention was focussed inwards, building a wall around herself to block out the pain while she tried to search for a way to stop it. It was on the brink of another excruciating blast of pain that she grinned wolfishly at herself. Like the last puzzle piece falling into place she felt the thrall that kept them bound to Tau’s form slip. Keanah felt it too and it was with her consent that Ylva initiated the switch from Tau’s form to her own.

Tau was in control when the pain magnified itself tenfold. The initial fire caused by the neurotoxin was a mosquito bite in comparison to the burning sensation he felt from head to tail. He tried to stop the shift-to keep his own form-but to no avail. The command to change to a wolf had flooded his system with various chemicals, one of which had identified the neurotoxin and reacted by stopping any further shift to occur.

Unfortunately for the shifter, there was no such thing as a middle form, and contradictory though it was, their body was also being flooded with the chemicals TO shift. The result was ultimately to end up stuck in Ylva’s form until her system was balanced once more and a shift that would prove to be significantly more painful than what it was when Ylva or Tau forced themselves into the driver’s seat.

There was an old story that Keanah remembered being told at the monthly gathering of her clan, a time when everyone came together to swap information and strengthen the bonds between themselves. This story was older than she was, and though it was told for years, she couldn’t quite remember it. It told of a lizard shifter, whose bite was said to be toxic, and the unfortunate bear shifter who angered him one day while on a hunt.

The bear shifter was in his human form, and the lizard shifter was in his beast form. Their paths crossed and the bear shifter needed up with a chunk of meat ripped from his hamstring while the lizard shifter scuttled away. The fever and nausea was almost instantaneous, and in his need to return home, to die amongst his clan-mates and warn them of the venomous shifter living nearby, the bear shifter asked his other half to lend him his shape one last time. Whatever it was that gave him the ability to shift also gave him the ability to heal, though at a great cost. The pain caused during the healing shift was so great, that he could not find the will to change back to his human form. He feared the change, and as is the way with shifters, the balance between man and beast did not last. When his clan realised that he would never be able to shift back to human he was banished, two minds trapped eternally in the one body. Keanah had always believed it was told to teach them about the dangers of staying too long in one form, and, when she grew older, as a reason behind the pain caused during a forced shift. Never had she thought it was the healing shift that was being warned against.

Normally, the change was almost instantaneous, the pain akin to a mosquito bite in that it was just a momentary “Owch” before the system was flooded with enough adrenaline to see the initial aches and pains through. When it was a forced shift, the change was longer, and the adrenaline took longer to flood the system. This time, Keanah could feel her body changing. A building sense of dread caused her to slam up emotional barriers between herself and her animal counterparts. She refused to force them to endure the pain that she felt was to come. Essentially, she locked them in mental rooms, with no way to access the greater majority of her mind, and as such cutting off all ties to her physical body. It meant that she couldn’t communicate with either one of them or draw on their strength to assist in bearing the agony to come, but would at least leave them in a sound mental state. She didn’t know if it would be enough but she needed every chance she could get. She truly was lost and strange creatures were undoubtedly wandering this part of the world. If herself, Ylva and Tau were all incapacitated then what hope did she have of surviving much longer?

 Her shoulder popped and the bones seemed to shatter, the sound like dry leaves being stepped on during fire season and driving away any other thoughts Keanah could form. She whimpered at intensity of it all and was instantly made aware of how lonely she was without Tau and Ylva’s presence. Her muscles practically dissolved while her skin bubbled, fur falling off in unsightly clumps before everything began reforming again in a mismatched manner. The pops and cracks were never ending, even the fur sprouting seemed to have its own noise, almost a tearing sound as it pushed through the skin and lengthened. Her skull cracked loudly and the bones shifted, her muzzle splitting and lengthening as white teeth fell to the ground from bloodied gums only to be replaced by the sharp beginnings of newer teeth. The bones were constantly moving, grinding together and reshaping themselves as needed. Her insides burned as organs re-aligned themselves, and for a moment it felt as though her internals had disappeared completely to be replaced by new ones. Her heart was racing through the change, and gurgled noises came involuntarily from jaws that were torn and bloody as teeth continued to fill it. It was by no means a quick change, and with a few final pops as the last few joints settled into place, Keanah was left gasping for breath in a pile of blood-splattered lion fur, whimpering with each exhale but every bit a wolf.

She wanted nothing more than to retreat, if not physically than at least mentally. Her mind was blank and she longed for the feathery touch of Ylva and Tau’s minds on hers. Had she been human, she would be crying as she lay, unable to move while a battle was fought barely twelve feet away.

Flushing the system during the shift had allowed Keanah to combat some, but not all of the toxins introduced into her system by The Princess’s dart, being able to produce only a few of the necessary compounds to fight it off. It had done what it was supposed to do, however, and kept her spirit from joining her ancestors, if only for a short while longer, and while the decrease in size had forced the dart itself to fall to the ground, what exactly it had done to her system remained to be seen as of yet.

Tau managed to break the walls Keanah had placed around him first, wrapping his presence around Keanah’s tightly and trying to break her ties with the pain she had endured. Ylva was not far behind him, though she took control of their body and attempted to move, wishing to seek a covered spot where she could rest and hopefully recover. Her efforts were in vain, though, as a simple twitch of her paw left her in almost unbearable pain. With moving out of the question she was left relying on a steady growl that she hoped sounded intimidating enough to prevent closer inspection while trying to figure out what was happening around her through sound and smell alone. The whine that periodically punctuated her growl did, however stop the desired effect from holding true.

Grace finally woke up, and immediately she saw Kinto. She snarled "Get. Off. Right. Now!!"  She shot upward, making Kinto fall off her chest and flat on his face.

Kinto got up and stared at his sister. Not the best introduction to the others...... Kinto suddenly squealed and stared in fear at something behind Grace.

Grace looked at him, confused. He never, and she ment never, looked at her in complete fear. She turned around and screeched in fear. IT WAS A DRAGON, A REAL, IN-THE-FLESH, DRAGON!!! OH CRUD! Grace, unable to think in fear, just flew smack dab on the dragon's forehead.

Kinto could help not doing a facepalm. You stupid idiot......Grace, you do not have any idea of what you're doing are you.

Yep.

The Princess' jaw clicked shut juest before she let loose a torrent of profanities, muffled somewhat by the bones between. He jaw opened a few inches and, in a somewhat pained voice (due to the pain,) she spoke. Her voice was very articulate, which contrasted the rampant contractions sharply. "

So, you're sapient. 'Course you're sapient. I apologize; where I come from, the sapient've either got a decent manipulatory appendage or some complex apparatus to compensate for one, because sapience-sans-manipulation is s'posed to be a living 'ell. Also spit that out and I'll give you narcotics, a detox too if you need it. You don't look like you need it. You've really gotta spit it out, though, it's worth 'undreds of times more cubes than it probably should be."

At this point, The Princess would be displaying a look of cool indiference, perhaps even smooth superiority, but her one hundred and eleven square inches of teeth were not particularly emotive.

Now Sola was thoroughly confused. First of all, the humanoid had ceased attacking, and second, half of the words it said were something she couldn't put an image to. Cocking her head to the side, she saw a slight blue movement in the bushes, and the sight of Qeo renewed her sense of determination.

Sola spat the bag out at her feet, and looked at where the line had been, and another wave of confusion washed over her. Tufts of hair and remnants of the lion were visible, but instead, a wolf lay there attempting to growl, even as it whimpered. Sola knew what shifters were, so that would have been a logic conclusion, except that the wolf was a female; Sola was very sure the lion had been male.

The dart laying near the wolf seemed to give Sola her desired conclusion. She rolled the bag forward with her nose, growling, before twitching her head in the wolf's direction. "Help... her first. If you try anything, I will not stop until one or both of us join whatever afterlife awaits."

Now that the immediate fight was over, pain lashed through Sola's body, making her extremely exhausted. A headache, which was quickly becoming a migraine, erupted through her head, and the bruises on her back from earlier throbbed. Her dislocating wing lay limp at her side, near useless in its present condition. To add on to it, as the adrenaline left, nausea caused Sola's stomach to turn violently, threatening a promise of vomit.

Sola growled, forcing her eyes to stay focused on the humanoid. "Don't try anything." She punctuated her threat, trying her best to show none of her current weakness. 

Rowan growled louder and pressed herself to the ground. This could go one of two ways.

One, she simply left. Rowan was unsure of this option, as the horsey-dragon might pursue her.

Her other option was to fight. Of course, this could also be a bad choice. Rowan knew literally nothing about this opponent. She herself was very, very used to fighting,but even if the individuals had been unknown to her, she was familiar with the specis. Not now. What was really bothering her was size. This... WHatever she was, was weasily at least twice as big as Rowan, possibly even three times. 

Rowan was a small dragon, and used to fighting things bigger than her. But was this creature small for her own species? Was she large? Was she used to fighting smaller things? 

THe uncertinaty combined with Rowan's injuries made the situation too risky.

Not that she was telling herself that, in Rowa's mind she was simply going to ignore this whole situation because she needed to get back.

Rowan crouched even lower, and without warning, darted under Tambia and off into the jungle.

The setting is flexible, and will change as the characters move from world to world.

 

Currently, the portals are leaving people in the middle of wild, untamed jungle. The forest around you is so thick, any sunlight that filters through is a dark, shadowy green. The weather here is unpredictable, raining one minuet and crushing its inhabitants with heat the next. To add to the treachery of the landscape, you are perched on the side of a mountain, challenging every step you make with crumbling stones and jutting cliffs. Beware of your surroundings, The Order of the Shard are not your only enemies here. This planet is inhabited by dinosaurs, as it seems the portals have dumped you into some sort of prehistoric earth.

 

Now, you have one decision; up, or down?

 

The space and time continuum has been thrown wildly out of order, causing portals from across the universe to rip open at seeming random times. These portals cause a violent reaction in the area around them, sucking in all near by beings through and dumping them into a new world, in a new time. It is up to you to figure out what is going on, and how to survive in this uninhabited and hostile world. However, you are not the only one in this journey. Creatures from all sorts of other worlds, some which you could not imagine, have been pulled to this planet as well.

 

The reasons for the disturbances are not as random as you may think. An organization, know as The Order of the Shards, or Shard for short, also inhabits this planet. They are led by a woman who goes by the name of Anthanaisia, who believes that her cause is the only way to save the universe. She is seeking out the seven split pieces of the Great Crystal, and with its power she plans to destroy all the current worlds and create a new, perfect one.

 

But the shards are well protected. It is up to you and the friends you make to find the even crystal shards. The Shard of Bravery, The Shard of Faith, The Shard of Sacrifice, The Shard of Will, The Shard of Passion, The Shard of Vitality, and The Shard of Hope. With these shards, you can restore the Great Crystal. With its power, you can stop Shard and return everybody to their proper times and dimensions.

 

But it is not as easy as collecting the pieces. You will be racing against time itself to find the shards before Anthanasia, or perhaps racing to gather them for her. These shards will test you in trails to prove you are truly worth the honor of possessing them. Will you be able to pass the ultimate tests of character?