this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[from_scratch]

Cam keeps harrying her with miscellaneous appearing damaging matter.

He asks his armband where Flechette is.

[wormcan]

It responds, "Flechette, BC-6."

"She's the one marked green!"
Flechette is one of the comparative few standing on ground level. She stops while loading another bolt to dodge a projectile, then fires when no teammates are in the way.

[from_scratch]

Cam lands next to her. "Somebody recommended I give you a twenty-foot sword?"

[wormcan]

As Cam approaches, the scream gets louder. And more like a song; now it sounds like someone is singing with a voice like nails on glass instead of just a few isolated tones. Still no unpleasant memories whenever he blinks.

"She's still on that? Here?
...well, the arbalest isn't working like I'd hoped. That might actually help. Does have to be scaled down to where I can move it, unless you're planning to using my power on a flagpole and just topple it on her."

Flechette looses another shot, the three-foot needle flying straight through where the Simurgh would be if she hadn't stopped short.

[from_scratch]

"Will your power work okay on a nanotube structure?"

[wormcan]

"What kind of a structure? It has to be long and thin, like the arrows. A thread won't hold the shape." Another bolt.

[from_scratch]

"It'll - here." He hands her a twenty-foot-long sword, light enough to wield with one hand.

[wormcan]

Flechette takes it with both, only expecting wielding it at all to be physically possible because powers don't have to make sense.
She concentrates on it for a moment, then swipes it toward the Simurgh.

The Endbringer just flies twenty feet higher, and is then struck back down by Alexandria.

[from_scratch]

"I wish I had known about you sooner I would have given you wings and taught you to fly," mutters Cam, adding six feet to the sword. She's got both hands on it, should be fine.

[wormcan]

"You can do that?"

She swings the sword, and it cuts through some of the Simurgh's wings' wings on the way toward the core. Feathers flutter down, along with a few more substantial pieces, but the Endbringer twists out of the way.

The road beneath the Simurgh cracks, then flips upward and launches itself at Flechette.

[from_scratch]

Cam anchors the road to the ground below it and trips, wings outflung, between the chunk and the girl in case it keeps going.

[wormcan]

It does. Cam isn't the only one responding, though, so he gets struck by assorted chunks of recently blasted ex-road instead of by the whole thing.

The Simurgh takes advantage of everyone's distraction to extend a wing through Eidolon. He briefly turns gaseous and then resumes blasting her slightly less powerfully.

[from_scratch]

"Yeah but I can't insta-teach-you-to-fly," Cam replies, getting himself back into a standing position.

[whole_new_can]

At the next attempt, the sword stops mid-swing. It refuses to budge, then snaps into three pieces which clatter to the ground.

"She could do that all along?"

[from_scratch]

Cam hisses and says, "How fast can you apply your power to a sword, if I make it handle first and make it through her?"

[wormcan]

"Split second at least, and I can't infuse anything that isn't there yet. But we have to try it."

[from_scratch]

"Hand out."

And as soon as her hand is posed to accommodate a sword, he makes sword straight at the Simurgh, very very fast.

[wormcan]

As soon as he starts, the intervening space fills with the densest pieces of debris from the immediate vicinity. Air rushes out of their path. Creating more sword suddenly gets correspondingly harder, but it's clearly a temporary defense.

[from_scratch]

He can create sword through all this stuff.

...

"Other hand," he suggests anyway. And when her other hand's poised he arms that one too, so defenses will have to split between two paths.

[whole_new_can]

The Simurgh solves this problem by interposing the most swordproof object available. Cam feels a wrenching sensation, and is suddenly directly between Flechette and the Simurgh regardless of how the other two move.

[from_scratch]

Cam can permit a hole through himself if he wants and the Simurgh doesn't get a say in the matter. "I'M FINE DO THE THING!" he yells before swearing loudly about having a sword through him.

[whole_new_can]

The Simurgh really only needs hesitation. Humanoid shields are good at providing that. By the time the weapon appears and gets infused, it has already missed. And Cam being visibly impaled naturally does wonders for morale.

She knocks a flier out of the sky with a barely-visible strand of hair, and then the third group of capes starts rotating in.

[from_scratch]

Ugh. Cam wrenches himself away from being impaled, this would be a bad time to be on painkillers so he sucks it up, everything heals presently. Is Flechette ready for another sword? This is at least commanding the Simurgh's attention.

[wormcan]

Flechette is absolutely in favor of more swording, but is being rotated out with the rest of her team. Keeping the most effective people at the front for as long as the timers allow is a tempting strategy; it also has an unfortunate history.

[from_scratch]

Right. Fair enough. Cam follows her, looking over his shoulder occasionally to take potshots at the Simurgh with pathetic, conventional damage.

"D'you have a range limit when you're working on arrows?"