File: Joker - Wireframe (Episod(...).pdf (212 KB, PDF)

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>>979075

(Gentlemen - For this episode, I'm doing something a little different: The attached PDF is a wireframe for Joker's current status. As I'm sure long-time readers have been wondering, the system functions as follows: Joker Quest relies on a locational damage system. When a location is destroyed, any excess damage 'overflows' to the target's torso - For instance, landing a hit on a 'destroyed' arm counts as landing a hit on the torso. When the torso or head is destroyed, the target dies.

As you can see, the system ensures that most attacks - Unless specifically aimed - strike the target's torso, prioritizing the arms above the legs.

Good luck, gentlemen - It's been a long, strange road to get here, and I'm eager to see how it ends.

Note that due to FOREBODE's effect, Joker automatically has the initiative in the final battle.)

>>979077
>Note that due to FOREBODE's effect, Joker automatically has the initiative in the final battle.
We will cheese the fuck out of this.

>>979075
You're the best OP. We're so close to the conclusion, so lets ride this crazy train right to the end of the line (and maybe beyond).

>>979075
Heres hoping we don't fuck it all up right the finishing line. Either way lads its been one hell of a ride.

YES
ES
S
TIME FOR FUCK

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This is how it ends.

The chamber - the heart of the Diadem - is vast. The walls are polished ebony and etched ceramite, inlaid with glyphs and crystal and silver. Dark and monumental, it is fifty times as wide as it is tall: Hints of spirals, lines, swirling runes - tiny dots of light, illuminating smalls parts of the face of some impossible structure, cyclopean in its immensity.

Pazuzu's great machine. His bridge. His gate.

The Crux blazes in his skeletal fist, the Nihl Eye burns in his blankly porcelain mask. He is hierophant and jester, wizard and priest - A stark figure of bleak and grinning death. In his free hand - Like a magician's trick - tiny spheres circle, locked in perpetual motion. Energies crackle between them; Even from here, from where you stand, beneath all this - the Tempest Scrander a dead weight at your back - voiceless warnings spread spidery runes across your HUD.

The first - Pyreflame. The second - Negative space, compressed and folded and *tortured* into a tiny pinpoint of impossible density. The third - Acid, bleak and seething, each droplet burning tiny holes in the fabric of time itself.

He is waiting, as he has waited for so long, to make his victory complete.

HE WILL KILL YOU.

HE WILL DESTROY ALL WHO STAND WITH YOU.

HE WILL RAZE THE WORLD.

SUCH WERE THE WHITE JOKER'S WORDS.

Toxic light fumes around him, beneath the charnel machine, across the plain of lightless stone. When you first discovered the heart of the Diadem, it was a place of fluid and ever-shifting potential: mechanisms roiling and twisting, gurgling and chuckling like running water.

Pazuzu has made refinements entirely his own.

AND I SAID TO HIM-

THEN WE SHALL HAVE A DESTROYER OF OUR OWN.

(Continued)

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>>979107

In the shadow of that great, wretched machine - an atrocity, a horror, a massive interconnected network of broken anatomy - It stands.

He is-

He-

Black bone. Ash. Those empty sockets of staring darkness, mournful, hating.

And that grin. That leering, eternal grin. A skull's grin, through scorched-black teeth.

He - It - raises his head. Light, vile light, throbs within him - A flickering illumination the color of old blood.

Then fresh blood.

Then open flame.

The shapes, moving within it. Clinging to those hollow ribs. Tiny forms, shrilling out their agony; Souls, made of fire, lost in their misery.

P̴̖̹̟H̻̱̫̬ͅͅA̖̙̼̭̹͕͢ͅN̢͓̗̣͕̖̙T͟O̗͚̝̘̣̳ͅM̱̜̦̰̮̻̩̀ E̲̕D̜͍̭͘G̨̳̗̲̫Ę̯͖̟̮

The Thief - Akira - is on his knees. He is convulsing, as his arm - his remaining arm, his right arm - rebels, rippling and warping. It swells, vastly - grown tumorous, grown bloated, hard pearls of corruption opening up in the very substance of the limb-

There is a haze around him. The beginnings of a sound, a buzzing, buzzing-

Flies. The air around the Thief swarms with flies.

"Akira-"

Daegal, on one knee. Kazuya, your first and best friend. Still new to the armor he wears, the orichalcum gleam tarnished by the fall of night. He is frozen in the act of reaching out, dismay written in every line of his form-

There is a half-cohered shout. The beginnings of a cry. Distortion Haze, the tachyon glow of Omen flickering across his chequered armor - the eyeslits of his helm a wan yellow as he takes a staggering step forward. Between one footfall and the next, Rook's - the thing that *was* Rook - carrion features split along a vulturelike beak, a raptor's hunting shriek making the ground tremble. Vast wings beat the air, sparks and smoke coiling from each fingertip, writhing tendrils of maiden's hair snaking and snatching in an invisible gale...

All of this, you intuit in a moment as your senses accelerate.

Pazuzu. Phantom Edge. Rook. Daegal. The Thief. Haze.

They stand equiposed between life and death, and your first move will collapse their wave function into history.

And you hear-

Drip.

A droplet at a time, parting from Phantom Edge's right hand - that welter of gore, slick and red and pulsating - thin strands of blood run together in a long rivulet, curling and twisting in their course towards the black marble floor.

Choose.

HP: 89.9%
COBALT BOOSTER: 170%
ASSAULT SHROUD: 150%
METER: 47%
ENCROACHMENT: 15%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

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>>979121
Contact Kazuya via the Dirac.
"Kazuya. I have a plan. You're going to need to trust me. And stab me."
Use the Orthrus Crest to swap places with Akira.
Then activate the Abruption Jets and tackle Kazuya away from Phantom Edge. Hand him the Misericorde mid-air.
Jesus christ this is going to go terribly.

>>979123

(My apologies - To clarify, Phantom Edge and the Thief are two separate entities, and they're largely on opposite sides of the battlefield. There is a substantial distance between Phantom Edge and your forces. Pazuzu is almost directly overhead and behind Phantom Edge.)

>>979123
This.

Also, activate Fortress Mode to protect us while it happens.

>>979126
Are we standing next to Daegal?

The crux of the idea is to let him use the Misericode on us.

>>979126
Ah. Then forget about the Abruption Jets.
Just hand it to him, I guess.
Quickly.

Or if Kazuya and the Thief aren't next to eachother, jet over to him and then jam the dagger into his hands

>>979123
Do it. Maybe throw out a SWARM to act as a smoke-screen.

>>979121

Double Tau Gun shot. We are not going to kill ourselves, you morons.

>>979131
Dude, we will die in a conventional fight.

Our only choice is esoteric bullshit. Like passing on our armor to Kazuya.

>>979131
It's a flawless plan, come on.
I mean, if it works.
And Daegal doesn't just override the Red Joker armour.
Or if it happens the other way around and leaves Kazuya as an underpowered Red Joker.

But, you know. Otherwise, it's flawless.

>>979123
>>979130
>>979128
>>979127

(Gentleman, I'll pause to say this: I'm fairly certain - If I've intuited your intention correctly - is not really going to help. It will simply kill you stone dead.

He's not going to receive an abrupt improvement to his abilities through transferal of the armor - only the template, which is unlikely to help the situation.)

>>979131
>>979132
Though I agree that it might be wise to use any free actions that we might have on shooting off Akira's arm.

...If our plan fails, we will be considered the master of betrayal.

>>979137
>He's not going to receive an abrupt improvement to his abilities through transferal of the armor - only the template, which is unlikely to help the situation.)
Fuck, time to re-plan.

Kaz has a Helix gauntlet. Can he cast consume if we give him the Nihl sphere?
Half-cooked idea, but could we chain up DRAW_FORTH, to heal us, while Kaz consumes us at the same time to heal himself?

>>979142

(He has a Helix Gauntlet - notably, without with the Crisis Arm - but he hasn't had any Codebursts inloaded. He's arguably in the best physical condition of all the remaining fighters.

You've almost completely exhausted the Nihl Sphere's charge.

The main sources of Lachryma in this chamber are Phantom Edge and - ironically - AMALGAM/ROOK.

>>979143
Welp.

No matter what we do, we should cast EXEC_BARRIER. We are fighting fucking Pazuzu, after all.
Maybe bait him to make sure he wastes his powers on us.

>>979143
Well if suicide leading to a dramatic powerup isn't a viable option, and Daegal's the least damaged here, could we take Akira's sword and toss it to him?
I'm assuming his armour would function as usual and upgrade it.

We could also do as >>979139 suggested, to prevent Akira's situation from getting any worse.

>>979144
I'll second this. And burn some of our Shroud on SWARM to keep Phantom Edge busy for a moment or two.

>>979126
>and they're largely on opposite sides of the battlefield.
Does that mean all of our enemies are on the opposite side?
If yes, we might want to think about using our railgun on Pazuzu.

>>979148
>Well if suicide leading to a dramatic powerup isn't a viable option, and Daegal's the least damaged here, could we take Akira's sword and toss it to him?
>I'm assuming his armour would function as usual and upgrade it.
I mean, we could give Akira the Red Joker armor, but he'd probably stay as hurt as he is, even with the incorruptible condition of a pristine Joker armor.

>>979151
>If yes, we might want to think about using our railgun on Pazuzu.
Oh, that's a good idea. At this distance the Railgun might actually reach its full potential for the first time in the Quest.

So, we have two enemies.
One is a melee monster trying to take over one of our allies, the other one is a dickass wizard.

We basically just need to avoid PA's takeover of Akira/his sword and make sure that Pazuzu doesn't fuck with anyone.

So, we need to slow PA down (SWARM should do the trick), kill Pazuzu (Railgun and Barrier) and prevent PA from getting his full power (Giving the sword to Kazuya or something).

PA seems like the type to be a high-speed fighter, so we might want to put a Harrow on him to keep track.

>>979152
>>979151

(Gentlemen, two shots or a single shot?)

>>979164
Go big or go home.

>>979164
Two shots.
We need to alpha strike the fucker.

One shot.

>>979148
>>979143
>>979144

You move first.

Always, always, you move first.

Thought becomes action becomes deed-

Your Assault Shroud *rills*. It ripples, like a live thing. Shapes bulge, swell within it - the clatter of wingcases in darkness, writhing shapes pushing out from beneath the fabric. And then comes the eruption, the frantic ticking, the stridulation of locusts. Unseen elytra in their double-millions crisp and rub against each other, as the swarm boils forth.

The black damnation cloud boils forth from you, a writhing weight that *flexes* and surges forth. Your vision is momentarily obscured, your form lost behind the churning mass - the sound is deafening, all-consuming, buzzing in that uniquely carnivorous drone as red light froths in monstrous compound eyes-

They sweep forward, on their first and final fight. Mandibles clatter with ravenous hunger.

A blurt of brutal code, jagged fragments of data coalescing, combining-

There is a flash. A brilliant flash, as if light has suddenly become solid, as if the air has suddenly become hard. Fractal patterns blister the air around you, concentric circles and jagged lines of arcing neon. Cising sparks crackle across the Sinistral, the burning wedge of the hard-light drive fuming with violet unlight - the thunderclap trails in your wake as you *move*-

Schematics sketch themselves into existence. Magnetic accelerators. The long, lethal line of the barrels. The energy feeds and power linkages that make the Longinus Railgun part of you. You are already turning, already moving in the frozen moment - Your Argus System is dead, but the phantom chime of a target lock peals hollowly through your HUD as your spear Pazuzu's crested skull on the crosshairs-

First fire.

Magnetic capacitators discharge. At optimum range, the superdense projectile is invisibly fast - A blur in the air, a powerful linear distortion, the flash-flicker of the round a punctuation outracing its own sonic boom-

The first shot bursts before it can hit Pazuzu. It does not explode, mere ruptures: All of that titanic force swallowed up, sealed away. The air fills with white, papery dust, raining down like deep winter snow-

No. Like bone ash.

Your second shot is a heartbeat slower, an instant after the first.

It is perfect.

(Continued)

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>>979173
>It is perfect.
[SUSPENSE]

OP, just wanted to say I'm happy I could make it for this. I've read through the archives over the past week and didn't even realize the finale would be today, funnily enough.

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>>979173

>>979173

The second round - Like all railgun rounds - is an inert penetrator. It makes a tiny, pin-prick entry mark as it enters Pazuzu - a split-second ahead of whatever defense he can muster - and makes an extravagantly gigantic exit wound.

His chest caves in. He lurches back, struck down in mid-air. His back blows out, in a mad spray of spalling, shattered plastics, liquidised internals, bone shards-

The effect is catastrophic. That single, lethal round exits through his spine - It empties him. It unmakes all he is, in less time than it takes to write these words.

It kills-

It k-

It-

The Crux burns with gauss fire, and reality *twists*. You can *hear* it crackling like a log fire - a thick, nauseating sound that eclipses the infernal insect drone of wingcases as EXEC_SWARM engulfs Phantom Edge - coiled, burning symbols writhing like snakes against the infernal, unnatural dark-

With a sickening *wrench*, the devastation unmakes itself. Weird, negative electricity crackles - the expanding cloud of Pazuzu's innards reversing their course, the fountaining gore becoming twisting strands of matter, overlaid and renewed and remade. In an eyeblink, your second shot continues it's original trajectory - deflecting high, with a splintering CRACK, from the obsidian walls-

Agony shoots through your shoulder. The absence of Cybele's symbol aches - It will ache forever. But there is an answering pain, a burning coal that sears through the very core of your being.

The Athame? No.

Kotone's cross.

The sensation is tooth-grinding, agonizing, unbearable in its intensity - But then your fusion reactor howls with renewed force, green telltales flickering across your HUD, the wire-frame schematics lighting up with new life-

HP: 123.2%

(Continued)

FUCK I DONT WANT JOKER QUEST TO END

>>979188
Did we just get to absorb imaginary Essence with our leech module?

>Anons suggested a plan that would kill us in the first turn

Back like we motherfucking never left

>>979190
probably Pazuzu having extra lives.

>>979188

TEMPEST SCRANDER ONLINE

ESSENCE CORE RESTORED

COBALT BOOSTER RESTORED

Remade, Pazuzu - For a mere instant, for the span between one breath and the next - hesitates. His head turns, fitful light flickering in his Nihl Eye - the complex mechanism of his true eye cycling and countercycling. You can feel the chained fury of his mind, as he sweeps the Crux through the burning simulacrum of Cybele's Emblem: the complex symbol scatters, becoming tiny motes of illumination on the wind, there then gone.

The simple cross - Such a small thing - blazing against your armored cuirass, lines of fire licking against your joints as it glows with the stolen fires of Pazuzu's Crux-

And everything begins to happen very, very fast.

The thing that was Rook - that *is* Rook - shrieks. The raining ash is blitzed into a swirling storm of petals, as the marble floor splinters: Tiny cracks jag across the flawing surface, dust pluming up in tiny sprays of powdered stone.

"Nnnnnnnh-" Daegal staggers, clutching the sides of his helm in agony. The Thief, lost in a world of unjust pain, convulses - His fingers claw at the ground, leaving bloody streaks of Lachryma, a brittle blurt of static from voxponder as his limbs rebel-

And for one moment - For one frozen instant, you hear Alura's voice.

P̸̙̰̬̜̖ÅZ̧̭̜͚̩̤͑ͦŲ̗̦̲Z̛U̼̓ͧ̆̚̕

Rook *springs*. The cords stand out on the vulture-winged predator's neck. Veins bulge beneath Rook's warping flesh, a trick of the light making them into vicious maws and screaming faces. The inky stains of the many, many wounds he has taken are grey, pallid, lines of toxin threading into the vast pinions and feathers, mottling them.

He howls like a flaming banshee, autoreactive talons gouging great furrows in the ground as he leaps - borne aloft by wings of smoke and ash, the tendrils bulging from his spine becoming tiny lashing maws as smoking talons arch towards Pazuzu-

(Continued)

o fuk

>>979207
>COBALT BOOSTER RESTORED
Its ogre now
Its all ogre

>>979207
>TEMPEST SCRANDER ONLINE
FUCK YEAH.

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JOKER QUEST ISNT ENDING
ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING ITS NOT ENDING

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>>979207

There is a sharp sound. A sudden, wet crack. An explosive spray of blood, an abrupt eruption of gore.

Rook's shriek cuts off, abruptly, choked off between one breath and the next. There is a tiny noise - A brittle crunch. He is frozen mid-leap, smoking wings spread - as if he is an anatomical model, placed on display, a bird or an insect pinned to the board.

"What-"

And then you see it. A tiny, ragged hole, pushing through Rook's substance. Black, against the warping shimmer of his convulsing, changing form. Such small things, against Rook's mass.

Phantom Edge's fist.

"*Holy*-"

Daegal is staring. He is frozen, locked in place by disbelief.

Between the moment when Rook began to spring and the moment when he would have taken to the air, Phantom Edge appeared and put his fist through his heart. To Daegal, unused to his accelerated senses, it is as if the grinning spectre of cold and hateful death has stopped the flow of time, and edited itself into the frame.

But you know better. Even as the Longinus Railgun ejects twin shell casings, the heavy brass skittering across the ground - even as the weapon's suspensor yoke flickers from existence - Phantom Edge's fist clenches.

It *pulls*, inexorable. Sick light gathers.

This time, when Rook shrieks, it is a howl of pure unalloyed suffering. There is Alura's voice in it, and Shuya's, and more - the mortis-cry of a multitude, knowing that they are dying all over again. It is the singularly most terrible thing you have heard through the long and bloody day.

"ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKK-"

Haze's howl is human. It is a sound he is not equipped to make. It is inarticulate, filled with the purest hatred as his eyeslits flicker venom-green.

He turns Rook's name into a battle-cry.

He is running, fighting the inertia of his own limbs, closing the distance towards the contorted figures before him. OMEN comes up - the tachyon blade *reconfiguring*, folding upon itself, becoming the gun you've only seen once before - hard radiation flaring on your HUD, as the charging rods that stud Distortion Haze's shoulders and spine push out to unchain the seething fury of his nuclear heart-

(Continued)

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>>979229
HAZE, KOHAI NO!

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>>979229

In that singular moment, Haze has forgotten all that he is. He forgets the limits of his limbs, the knowledge of his own fraility.

Phantom Edge wrenches his left hand free.

It is clutching Rook's spine.

The ruin of Rook's form crashes to the deck, bitter black Lachryma coursing from under him in all directions. Phosphor flickers across the tangled length of myomer and vertebrae in Phantom Edge's fist, dripping with spinal fluid, wires and barbed nerve-endings in equal measure. Rook's core throbs at the end, a shape like a diseased and faltering heart - Something infinitely fragile flickering within the tumorous, uneven shape like the final electrode of light in a failing screen.

And it is changing. Reshaping. Becoming something worse.

-You remember the Thief, ripping his right hand free from INOX FANG's helm, her substance *condensing*, being remade-

Phantom Edge is turning, with slow, inexorable gravity - As the obscene trophy squirms and coils in one bloody fist. As Rook thrashes, head flopping on his neck, ripped open and emptied out, he is already forgotten.

Phantom Edge's lightless gaze turns to the Thief.

HP: 123.2%
COBALT BOOSTER: 109% (EXEC_BARRIER ACTIVE)
ASSAULT SHROUD: 119%
METER: 29%
ENCROACHMENT: 6%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

Well, fuck. I know it's likely not happening, but I really want Rook to survive this. He has the biomass for it, a punch wouldn't damage him _that_ much unless Phantom Edge has some sort of additional attribute to his hand-to-hand attacks.

>>979247

(Gentlemen, note that you hit Phantom Edge with EXEC_SWARM. He's been affected, but he's moved out of the area-of-effect, which is trying to follow him.

Also, Kotone's Cross is still active, but the effect has ended.)

>>979247
Keep the Barrier for another round, SMITE PA, Fire another Railgun round and then use Abruption Jets + Scrander to close in on Pazuzu and fire Rubicante and Cagnazzo.

Not sure if that's the correct distance to fight at, though.

Also, use the Scrander's hover mode once we are on the ground again.

>>979250
Will you be posting the system behind this once the quest ends?

>>979253

(Yes, once I have my final notes in order.)

>>979250
>He's been affected, but he's moved out of the area-of-effect, which is trying to follow him.
Oh nice. This means we have a Shroud pickup flying around for us to recall.

Remember to activate our afterimages for the next rounds.

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How do we fix Theif? Plus having No plan with /ourboy/ deagel and Haze is really bad

>>979254
Garo wehn

>>979247
Use the Harmonia to cast SMITE on Phantom Edge, shoot Pazuzu with the Railgun again and tell Kaz to chop/blast off Thief's arm and take the sword through the Dirac channel.

>>979256
We give Phantom Edge to Daegal, whose armor insta-masters it, denying Phantom Edge the blade and leaving him with whatever vertebrae whipblade he is currently forging out of Rook.

>>979261
In fact, can we EXEC_CONSUME Rook to deny that? Preferably somehow at range.

Would crippling Phantom Edge's legs with say... Chernobog be a good idea? It'd help out the rest with taking him out, while we could focus on Pazuzu.

>>979262
Scylla fully regenerated.

>>979264
I think Chernobog might be unwise with Phantom Edge - he's so damn fast and the weapon is slow and unwieldy iirc.

>>979262
You wanna get Haze to lose the will to fight?
Because that's how you get him to lose the will to fight.

>>979262
>>979268
Wouldn't he just nuke us all after that?

>>979262

(My apologies, EXEC_CONSUME is a melee-range attack.)

>>979252
>>979255
>>979257
>>979261

(Gentlemen, if I'm reading this correctly: You're activating the Tempest Scrander, casting EXEC_SMITE on Phantom Edge, and firing at Pazuzu with the Railgun - While telling Kazuya to remove the Thief's arm and take the Fatal Abyss?)

>>979268
Fair point.
>>979270
It is what I think the consensus is, yes.

>>979252
>>979255
>>979257
>>979261

Kazuya.

"Anon - Jok-"

Take the sword.

"Wha-"

You move between moments, now. The Tempest Scrander swoons to life - For the first time in what feels like forever - your Abruption Jets flaring at elbow and knee and shoulder, the wrenching surge of acceleration *flinging* you into the air-

And then there is only the boiling rush of charged air, as you ascend on wings of jetair and flame.

HARMONIA - Cybele's most prized possession - chimes, the oblivion shards shedding violet unlight. A mere echo of the Nihl Sphere, but enough. Ethereal lightning flickers, the air shimmering and bending like a phantom lens - Your HUD blurring with static, as fragments of broken code form the spiralling lines of the eruption to come...

Instinct alone saves you, when a seething blot of black fire hurtles from Pazuzu's hand. You bring your Sinistral up, EXEC_BARRIER's field expanding as you duck behind it-

And your vision fills with rushing flame, a vast gouting torrent that splits and parts around you. White tongues of black-cored flame sear the air, slagging the edges of your armor as your Assault Shroud catches fire. Afterimages scatter from you like burning leaves, half-cohered, tumbling away like portents of flaming death - Where the death-blast meets the walls, the hungry fire sears across it in grasping, coiling tendrils, flailing at the air before they fade out. Somehow, somehow, you find your footing and brace yourself, stabilizers roaring as you correct your spiral with a hissing jet of thrust-

Acid, this time. The second sphere lofts overhead, erupts in a boiling rain-

As you brace, everything stops. You hear the virulent, brittle *hiss* of the first drops striking EXEC_BARRIER's field, unmade upon contact...But time stutters, and runs out of joint, falling faster within the hail than without. The world runs together into a slow-motion nightmare, stuttering in and out of coherence-

Chronal displacement. The acid rain - bright green, actinic, erupting into perfect starbursts of emerald flame on contact - forms a glittering cage around you, droplets hesitating in their descent: A time-frozen minefield, bubbling reality around itself as rents begin to appear in the Sinistral's field.

Without EXEC_BARRIER, you'd be frozen - trapped in slow-motion. But the acid is very, very real, the first few seconds of a monsoon captured before their final descent.

(Continued)

I miss the Vulcans being useful. Those were the days, when all we had to worry about was the occasional duel and some Correctors.

>>979315
I miss the interceptors

>>979316
Have those things ever been not shit?
Don't get me wrong, I digged the idea of using Not!funnels, but pretty much all they did was job.

>>979322
The cobalt'd cutting lights were very useful against primarily organic things.

What would you use to run games in this setting?

(Gentlemen - Extremely good choice with EXEC_BARRIER, by the way.)

>>979309

Where's-

The Longinus Railgun chimes with a false lock. Another. A third.

*Two* copies of Pazuzu. Walking on air. Electrical discharge spilling from eyeslits, as unnaturally jointed fingers gesture - Arcane motions, trailing radiant filth in signs on the very edge of understanding, each blurring into the next. Your sensors try - and fail - to comprehend the low, almost subliminal binary chatter that filters from them, lines of scrapcode racing across your HUD as a presence builds...

And the true one. Hovering between them, a high priest presiding over his acolytes. He merely watches, reserved, almost distant - gauss fire limning his staff of office, his free hand beginning the slow spiral of orbs once more-

Two, now - Compressed space, and something that flickers with dangerous lightning, building the rotation that threatens a tornado.

No more words, now. Just the *pressure*, building, building-

HP: 101.5%
COBALT BOOSTER: 48% (EXEC_BARRIER ACTIVE)
ASSAULT SHROUD: 94%
METER: 43%
ENCROACHMENT: 0%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>979327
Many depressants and a diet of anime, mecha and existential terror.

>>979309
>>979329

(Gentlemen - To clarify, you're currently caught within an acid field. EXEC_BARRIER has negated the slowing effect, but pushing through the 'cage' will still damage you. Pazuzu is beyond the field, and appears to have created two copies of himself - it's pretty clear which one is the original, however.

It's still your turn, as your earlier actions were disrupted.)

>>979329
So he needs to recharge his orbs between attacks.
His copies are probably casting codebursts manually.

We need something to fuck him instantly.

OP, are we close enough for Rubicante?

>>979336
Wait, how close are his copies to himself?

If they are close, use the Orthus Crest to teleport to one of them, then attack him with the Plasma Caster in dual fire through emulation.

>>979329
Fusion Annihilator or Rubicante at Pazuzu. Blast a path through the acid field and fly through.

Wait...

>IV - INVICTUS

I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

(COST: 13% ENCROACHMENT)

>Each round - with an effort of will - you can shrug off one status effect that currently affects you. Attempts to disorient you, blind you, poison you, weaken you, set you on fire, disrupt your systems can all be automatically resisted and dispelled. Note that you can dispel one such effect each round. Note that this only applies to effects that are personal to you, and it doesn't stop the effect from being reapplied later.

Coud we use this?

>>979336

(Yes, but you'd have to scrap your earlier plan to use the Longinus Railgun. You'd be able to fire with CAGNAZZO as well, however.)

>>979338

(This is also viable. Pazuzu is not a valid target for the Orthus Crest - Neither is Phantom Edge - but his copies are.)

>>979341

(It was never purchased.)

>>979343
>(This is also viable. Pazuzu is not a valid target for the Orthus Crest - Neither is Phantom Edge - but his copies are.)
Nice.

Now the questions is how we act after switching places.

We can either focus on Pazuzu (Where we have about ten different types of fucking him up) or dispose of his other clone first.
Can Muleta fire at the clone while we attack Pazuzu? Or is that an additional action?

>>979350
Also, pay BARRIER's upkeep with HARMONIA for the next round.

>>979341
I wonder what our echo would be, assuming the Red World is still around when we die, and that someone can inherit the armour.

>>979351
The upkeep itself is cheap. And is equal to the Cobalt Booster's regen. What should it be used for is countering the next codeburst.

>>979353
Suffering and guns
Maybe the bio armour if we never fix this

>>979338
>then attack him with the Plasma Caster in dual fire through emulation.
Use Rubicante. The PC isn't suited for breaching Pazuzu's defences.

>>979353
Probably the Crisis Arm.
A hightech fist instilled with a hundred years of combat skill.

>>979358
Agreed.
We fuck him over now with a good alpha strike.

>>979360
It'd have to be something related to our over a hundred years of violent ruthless murder and combat skill, yeah.

(Gentlemen - I'd love to continue, but it's extremely late for me. It's about 2:40 AM here, and I must rest for now. I'm very glad to be able to continue this at last, however.

Good night and God bless - You've been a great audience, and I apologize for the delay. If this thread is still up, I'll continue directly from it.

Also, I'm surprised that you're doing so well - Though it likely means more casualties at the hands of Phantom Edge.)

>>979367
>Though it likely means more casualties at the hands of Phantom Edge

see
>>979230

catch ya next time JQOP

>>979367
>Also, I'm surprised that you're doing so well
Is it our choices or our rolls?

Glad you could finally continue this, OP. I had thought this thread would go a lot worse.

>>979371

(It's fairly early, but it's a bit of both. You can likely see the fluke results, here: Joker being unable to dodge the acid sphere, and Phantom Edge doing tremendous damage to Rook with a single critical.

It's actually rather similar to Armaros's death, when he was - on paper - capable of dueling Rust Kaiser.)

>>979373
>It's actually rather similar to Armaros's death, when he was - on paper - capable of dueling Rust Kaiser.)
Well, this isn't quite as anti-climatic. We knew that Phantom Edge is absurdly strong and that he instagibbed Rook feels less like a hook and more like a case of jobbing.

>>979380
>hook
*fluke

>>979373
So will each character's stats and how you make them be explained by your system notes later on?

Also, what sort of music and shows inspire you to write?

I have so many questions, because this quest is amazing.

In terms of the game world I think we've hit critical mass failure wise, we've fucked up everything and got everyone we loved or cared for killed or kidnapped, as it stand I think the best outcome for this quest and a fitting end would to be to truly embrace the red joker and bring about the destruction the white joker mentioned, take both Nihl spheres, we already have athame, after defeating phantom edge we should take fatal abyss, take the adamantium armour and I'm pretty sure we have a piece from everyone who is meant to bare witness to the end, then we use the combined power to end the red world entirely

>>979559
What is the exact purpose of Pazuzu's gate, or do we know? We could potentially use it somehow if we absorb his essence or Reap his thoughts.

>>979559
So, you are saying that we need to get bags of cash and create hyperinflation by throwing them out of helicopters?

>>979559
>we've fucked up everything and got everyone we loved or cared for killed or kidnapped
But it was so perfect the way it played out, it was like some fantastically twisted Shakespearean tragedy.

Joker going off on his reckless rampage after losing Hecate then having vented his just kind of forgetting his pursuit of her to chase another girl (EXACTLY as foretold in the play no less), the short sighted decisions to string along Cybele and use her for her power and the catastrophic ramifications that decision had when everything all came to a head and began tumbling tumbling down. And then biggest bestest baddest bro pulling us out of it by being AMAZING.

Seriously, his introduction made every stupid inadvisable decision the thread ever made totally worth it.

>>979726
Couldn't agree more it was fantastic how things occurred, I think it'll be fitting though to truly embrace the joker and bring about the end with the combined power of all the various relics from those who were going to bare witness to the end, the joker is a wild card with the power to destroy hence I think it'd be poetic to destroy everything using the power of those he's befriended fought trusted and been betrayed by

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>>979849
Nah man I'm shooting for the Big Damn Heroed ending

>>979849
>>979860
Much like the play, the real hero is Kazuya. We're just the unstoppable force out to destroy and ruin things - he's the one who could rebuild. It'd probably be for the best for us to die at the conclusion of the tale rather than try and live in a better world. Pazuzu is right - we don't belong in the Promised Land.

>>979881
Huh. I think this might be the only story I've seen where the *protagonist* is the much cooler, darker morally ambiguous foil rather than the goodhearted paladin type hero he plays opposite. And in those stories, it is always that guy who sacrifices their lives to pave the way ahead. Hm.

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>>979881
>Pazuzu is right - we don't belong in the Promised Land.

U wanna go m8?

>>980238
It's sad but it's true. Anon is too damaged to live in peace.

>>980286
That's what selective memory loss is made for!

>>979358
This. And don't get distracted by pazu's mind games.

>>979726
It's been a hell of a ride

>>979956
>And in those stories, it is always that guy who sacrifices their lives to pave the way ahead. Hm.
Note how our original plan was actually to kill ourselves to pass the armor on to Kazuya.

>>979726
Someone wrote a beautiful review a short while ago. It really summed up how everything fits together.

Also, I hope we will get another chance at using Frost Cestus.

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Pottery

>>982894
Link to that review? I'm interested...

>>982946
That's him though, not us.

Far as I can tell, nobody actually knows what Joker ultimately wants, not the characters, not the players and possibly not even Joker himself. Quite fitting for a man defined by being a wildcard.

Everyone has their own notions and interpretations, but beyond the vague and ongoing goal of looking out for the people he knows (and maybe doing some minor good along the way), it's not clear what he really wants, perhaps not even to him. He just seems to kind of take existence incrementally and deal with the order of the day. God only knows what he's going to do if he's still alive at the end of all this. I mean, can you imagine his life without the Red World? Even at the beginning of the quest he spent more time there than the real world.

>>982894
I tell you something else that worked out great, the mystery of Hecate. When she was introduced at the start we didn't know what she was, who she was or what she wanted and she played her cards very close to her chest. All we knew was that she had some kind of plan. And thanks to a freak occurrence of chance resulting in her loss it wasn't until far, FAR later that we were able to start to put together the pieces and begin to understand her.

>>982981
Quite honestly, given how the Quest has gone, I could not imagine Joker living through this. Daegal and Haze of course, and possibly even Thief, but not him.But you know what this Quest does better than almost anything I've seen before?

Catharsis.

The entire fight with Bardiel, from him transforming into a goddamn airship to his final villainous breakdown, to giving the middle finger to Rust Kaiser by pulling that incredible switcheroo, to finally Rook getting his revenge on that monster Alura, who I loved to hate.

What were some of your favorite moments in Joker Quest over the years?

>>982989
>What were some of your favorite moments in Joker Quest over the years?
Kazuya becoming Daegal is probably my favourite, by far.

>>982989
>>982993
Honestly, my favourite thing about Joker Quest has been the fact that the story told itself. What made so much of this special was that much the best stuff that happened occurred through chance or decisions to do just the right (or wrong) thing at the right time.

But if I had to pick one moment?

>"And I used to think that there are no heroes left in man."
>"No heroes, Anon?"
>Kazuya's voice - And it *is* his voice - carries across the distance, as he turns his head to regard you; Molten light bleeding from his helm, as he raises the Condemner in salute - then sweeps it across his chest, to guard.
>"Here and now..."
>Despite everything - In *spite* of everything, the red doom and crimson ruin and the fire that rains down from the heavens, the deaths of before and the death that is to follow - you can hear the shadow of a smile in his voice.
>"-I see one right in front of me."

All the bad decisions and moments of weakness, all the miserable tragedy that had led us there, players started to think we'd walked a path of nothing but failures and fuck-ups. Failing to protect Hecate, alienating Natsumi, chasing Bardiel like a fool, ignoring the play's warnings and chasing Mio, getting duped about her, two timing with Cybele and the subsequent collapse of everything. And then we realise who that armour we'd carried was meant for. Who had been there for us even if he knew he was out of the loop because he was just that noble.

>Close up, the armor's inspiration - Beneath the gilded surface, beneath the serpents that curl around the seals of the gorget, the suns, stars and moons of all phases running around the embraces and the arm-guards - becomes clear. There is a heraldic significance to the war-armor, one captured by the forges of the Hollow Sun in every mark and engraving, every inscription and device.
>Your story.
>There, on the right arm - Blue light fuming from the joints - is the unmistakable mark of the Helix Gauntlet. The ruby icon on his breastplate, glowing with flickering inner radiance...The fires of the Cobalt Booster, refined for a singular host's use.
>The actinic green radiance that burns in the eyeslits of his helm - Stylized like an apex predator - that sweeps across you and lights up your sensors with a handshake of exchanging data, as the light of a new ally flickers into existence...The Argus Sensor.
>All from you.
>All *because* of you.

His equipment was inspired by ours, our very story engraved upon his form. And then, right there, when that friendly icon winked across our visor? We realised we hadn't failed at all. All our effort hadn't been for nought. We couldn't be the hero the Red World needed, but we could create him. And we did. And it was beautiful

(When he arrived I knew I had to listen to this during that scene and boy did it enhance the experience. Try it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OlcJzin3LE

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Joker Quest for the past few dozen threads has been nothing but pic related.

>>982999
That's extremely not fitting to me personally my friend.

>>982999
That was an incredible scene, and I imagined that exact music when he turned into Daegal.

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>>979336
>>979340
>>979350
>>979358

Around you, the world seethes. Acid, time-locked, rains down from above - A million million perfect spheres of liquid green flame, frozen in time. Beyond the invisible confines of EXEC-BARRIER, the world is a sluggish time-distorted nightmare - But you can still see, and while you still see, you can act.

Pazuzu is, of course, shielded. Your sensor-fields show nothing of what might be within: an absolute, perfect nothingness. Darkness beyond darkness.

A black hole.

The distorted space-time synthasia of the Orthus Crest warps around him, searching for a hold - Failing to find one. Like Phantom Edge, like Rust Kaiser, he's beyond the Relic's reach.

But the copies of him - the dark, rippling shapes fuming with hellsmoke and sick light - them, you can reach. Them, you can target.

Around you - beneath you - the ground trembles. The air is charged, oily with power, cising sparks crackling and leaping. The pressure differential increases, exerting the beginnings of the hammerblow to come-

RUBICANTE and CAGNAZZO leap from their holsters to your hands, your draw as fast as ever. You crouch, mono-optic sensor cycling, the wolfheads on your pauldron writhing against their chains - bitter fangs champing against the cold iron bit. Tiny flecks of matter swirl, as your armor begins to crumble from the inside-out - the crimson scouring away, leaving only grey, a twisting spiral of tiny motes coiling around you as your HUD chimes silent corrosion warnings...

Pazuzu thinks he has you caged. In that, he is mistaken.

The Tempest Scrander thrums with hungry energies at your back - the furious heart of Argent's particle reactor linked with yours, arcs of red electricity leaping across the control surfaces. The fingertips of your gauntlets begin to crumble, erosion in real-time: You're already feeling the effects of whatever Pazuzu is summoning, some Codeburst - a reality-rip, a ritual - so ruinous it cannot be performed alone-

Now.

There is a bang like a fusion bomb. There is an aftertaste like bile and burned paper. A sickening sense of dislocation - As if every fibre of your being has been pushed through the mesh of an electric sieve, every molecule of your form scorched and jolted.

Blackness. Unending.

Cold blood. Dead sound. The *rushing* sensation of savage displacement, perceptions accelerating through the jagged fabric of reality - the feeling of falling without moving through clouds of black light-

There is a monstrous bang of decompression, and the Tempest Scrander roars at your back. You're airborne, accelerating, pulling up hard - the world is a furious blur of impacts and cancophonous sound, jagged lines of red and blue forking across your mismatched firearms as you hurtle through the air. Your jump pack blasts you forward, jagged red lightnings pluming outwards in your wake.

(Continued)

>>983103

The remaining copy is in front of you, a gesticulating shade - Arcane gestures and motions seizing up, already faltering now that the target is lost. It's already moving to intercept you, hands raised like claws-

-Your autoreactive talons gouge into the phantom's skull, turning it into a stepping-stone. The howling backwash of your Tempest Scrander incinerates it, pushing you higher into the air - Hissing jets of thrust turning you in a tightening spiral, CAGNAZZO already spitting death as you rocket towards Pazuzu.

He is caught in the act of turning, the Crux raised like a talisman. Shells crash from CAGNAZZO, shedding spent casings in a fountain of gleaming brass - A hailing rain, buzzing as they riochet from the columns and spires of the vast charnel-machine. Each shot is a spitting tracer, *curving* towards the target on impossible trajectories, converging in a blizzard of shots-

The Crux flares across every spectrum, and crackling aetheric flame envelopes you. It engulfs you - breaks around you - Kotone's silver cross burning with matching light as you punch through the seething, leaping holocaust-

Somewhere below you, behind you - A monotone vox-howl.

The Thief's rasp, raw and pained - "Kazuya-"

He wasn't aiming at you.

Pazuzu's clawed hand *clenches*, and the warped sphere of collapsed space swells in his fist. CAGNAZZO's hissing rounds wrench away, drawn into the void - Each shot *goes out*, smudging out lines of searing blue slipstream: wrenched into an inexorable singularity, unmade before they can impact.

A swelling ball of rippling space. A bubble of heat shimmer-

Your Abruption Jets flare, wrenching you out of the way as it roils past. The insides of the sphere is a nightmare of shredding surfaces, of cutting blades - there's a sound like the world grinding to a halt as it descends, as bright, intricate surfaces snap open, bite shut, become spiked, become corrosive, swelling to fill your vision-

All right.

What about this?

RUBICANTE glows, as if fresh from the forge - A momentary, lurching weakness coursing through you, as black veins spider across the Colt Python. As you juke to the side, you *fire*.

Just once. Just once is all it takes.

There is the shriek of the fastest wind. Something in you tears free, as the vividly scarlet round leaves the barrel - It is a blur, a swirling vortex of distortion. It punches through the punishment sphere, black entropy ripping through gears and blades and counterbalances, crumbling corrosion eating through the world's very heart. The entropic round chews through mechanisms and warped space and folded time-

It takes Pazuzu's left arm off at the elbow.

(Continued)

>>982971
http://pastebin.com/3YnDWZgA

That's the review.

>>983103
>the furious heart of Argent's particle reactor linked with yours
I love this little touch.

Now is the time where everything comes together.

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>>983135

You *see* it happen, vividly. You see the ravening fury of the entropic round tear through his layered defenses, disintegrating those skeletal fingers as his hand crumbles to dust from the faintest caress. The entropic wave wrenches his arm off, like a dried twig - a rending, tearing, shredding effect, like the scrabble of mindless claws-

A rasp.

YOU DARE?

Pazuzu's machine responds for him. Around you, the columns tremble - Even as smoke gouts from RUBICANTE's barrel, even as the chamber cycles - and lash out. A shockwave of invisible force slams out in all directions: Caught in midair, it *hurls* you aside, all control gone, on the bow-wave of energy. It hits you full on, carrying you like a leaf in a hurricane-

-And you feel every breath you have every taken explode from your chest, as it slams you into the ground like a rogue meteor.

The Tempest Scrander crumples, at your back. The reactor is smashed flat, a feeble crackle of electricity announcing your jump-pack's death as the stabilizers rip free. Your red armor shrieks as it leaves deep grooves in the onyx marble, the shock-pressure stamping you down to the earth-

BLACK.

"He's-"

"-bastard-"

"-Jok-"

Phantom Edge in profile. Grinning death, rotting teeth in a scorched skull.

It has a weapon. It has a scythe - A polearm six feet long, with a blade so curved and toothed and *sharp* it is dark division in physical form. The shaft is black wood, scrolled with roses and snaking vines - a wreath of what looks like feathers sweeping back from the reaping edge, shed in perpetual molt.

They are not feathers. They are blades. Tongues of polished, sharpened metal, more intricate than the real thing.

But then, Alura always had a taste for the baroque.

Phantom Edge is fighting Daegal.

(Continued)

>>983174

The scythe mutters and moans to itself with each brutal sweep. The scattered feathers move with a life of their own - they become flechettes, become daggers, swept up by invisible winds before they descend with bulleting impaling force.

The speed is phenomenal, blinding. Daegal is wielding OMEN, and OMEN is a meter-long bar of tachyon fire that beats back the thickening black haze. You hear Kazuya's hissing grunts, as their blades flare and flash, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast you cannot truly see them - Space itself roils and burst and crashes, boiling with power and lightspeed riochets of lethal intent.

How he's lasted this long - how he's lasted an *instant* - you can't tell. In his hands, OMEN is a emerald longsword that green contrails when it swings, moving and darting like a living thing, faster than thought.

But Phantom Edge-

The scythe orbits the black spectre, humming with lethal hunger, the blade a blur of blood and smoke. It moves with a deadly velocity - every strike is sweeping, unfurling, every blow flowing fluidly into the next. Steel flechettes rain down, pinging from Daegal's armor as he gives ground, again and again, reduced to hacking and stabbing furiously, retreating and lashing out, doing anything he can to give himself another second of life-

Distortion Haze lies where he has fallen. He's left his mark - Phantom Edge's right arm, that gore-streaked perversion of a limb, has the texture of charred blood and burnt bone. Tiny cracks star that grinning skull, tarry black fluid leaking from the surface, across old stains - As if something within has burst from the pressure.

Haze's cuirass is splintered, as he struggles - tries - to his feet, with a helpless and terrible rage. His armor is so crushed in, so warped by the furious backhand he's taken - unworthy of the blade - the edges cut into his myomer musculature, ripping at power-feeds and hydraulics. His own protection is ripping into him, the jagged edges expanding the cut.

"Rook," he says, again and again, with a dull crackle of vox. "Rook. Rook. *Rook*-"

He grips his warped torso plating. His arm bunches, artifical muscle bulging, as he *pulls*, with a frustrated roar. It is an act of self-mutilation, an animal chewing off it's own leg to escape a trap.

He doesn't care.

(Continued)

>>983202

Akira. Where is-

There. Crumpled like a broken toy. A dozen flechettes are embedded in his back. His hand claws at the ground, makes a fist, trembles. He is like a man broken by a stroke, aspirating a grunt of ultimate effort, reaching out from his side-

He is reaching out towards Phantom Edge. There is something composed, something utterly centered about that singular motion - A focus so intense you think it might kill him.

And then you see it. You see the one reason why Daegal is still standing.

Daegal has two swords, one in each hand. He leads with OMEN, each furious swing blazing like an emerald star.

The other is the Fatal Abyss.

You've seen the sword in the Thief's hands, with a bleak and singular force. You've felt the dreadful malice, the acid hunger, the pit older than all the eons in a single shard of the blade.

But to Kazuya, it is only a sword. Superlatively balanced, keen enough to slice a hair down its centre, but still only a sword.

Phantom Edge catches the Fatal Abyss in a toothed niche of the scythe, and *twists*.

"No-"

You can't tell if it's the Thief, or Daegal, who has spoken. It rips the blade from Daegal's grasp, drawing back and up, dragging the weapon with it - Sending it tumbling, end-over-end, on a final trajectory, a burned-black hand of bone reaching up to receive it-

Daegal lunges, with Omen. Phantom Edge - with one hand - flicks the scythe over as it falls. It is an impossible blow, too fast to see.

It catches Daegal's helm along the only point of weakness - His lens - and rips it away. Kazuya's head snaps to the side - Delicate mechanisms rupture, a spray of fluids spurting. Micro-connectors tear out and fizzle.

"AAAAAAOHSHIT-"

He's staggering back, the side of his head mangled. The pain - For a Player without the chance to master himself - must be beyond imagining.

The moment freezes. The Fatal Abyss, descending. Daegal, reeling back.

The inertia that has gripped you releases your limbs at last, and you feel the rising tide dragging you into motion.

-Now.

HP: 68.9%
COBALT BOOSTER: 42% (EXEC_BARRIER ACTIVE)
ASSAULT SHROUD: 70%
METER: 26%
ENCROACHMENT: 0%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>983245

(Gentlemen - My apologies for the long, long post. While I have to turn in for the night, I hope this has adequately established the situation.

Note that the low Meter is due to your use of the Orthus Crest. Your HP has also been reduced due to use of the Entropic Shot.)

Holy fuck boys what do we do?

>>983245
So, we gotta stagger Phantom Edge, catch the blade and make sure that Pazuzu isn't fucking around.

Is our swarm still active?
Do we still have a Scrander bolt?
I wish there was a surefire way to know if Disrupt would help against PA.

Two Maser grenades on Phantom Edge.
Swarm moves to Pazuzu.
Accelerate to the Fatal Abyss.
Send a Chain Mine on Phantom Edge if the maser grenades worked to stagger him.

Actually, has Phantom Edge shown signs of feeling pain in this fight?

We are at the other end of the battlefield, so sending yet another Railgun shot at Pazuzu is also an option afterwards.

If we do get the Fatal Abyss, we might join Kazuya in fighting off Phantom Edge.

>>983247
Op, thank you so much for the absolutely incredible journey so far. Get some good rest, and we look forward to your return!

>>983248
I...I don't know. Catch the Fatal Abyss? Throw it to Daegal, or Rook? Stash it and keep focusing on Pazuzu?

>>983245
Fire Cagnazzo at the Fatal Abyss to break its trajectory and send a shot at PE with Rubicante.
Rush towards the sword with the Abruption jets, catch it with Scylla.
If PE approaches, switch to Havoc Launcher and send two Maser Grenades along with a Chain Mine.

>>983253

> Is our swarm still active?

(No. Pazuzu incinerated it.)

> Do we still have a Scrander bolt?

(Yes, but the Tempest Scrander has a risk of explosion.)

>>983268
Seconding this, it sounds like a competent plan.

>>983268
>If PE approaches, switch to Havoc Launcher and send two Maser Grenades along with a Chain Mine.
CounterStrikeWeaponSwitch.gif

The mental image is funny.

Would everyone prefer to continue discussion, or leave the thread uncluttered for OP's glorious return?

>>983268
That sounds good. Backing.

>>983268
Adding:
Shrike blades. Let's throw in a few Shrike blades.

>>983399
Discuss if you have something to discuss.

>>983399
I'll discus you you lil' shit; beam ur head rioght off ye cunt.
But nah I'm thinking... unless someone comes up with something better >>983268 >>983700 seems the best.

>>983704
Waifus.

Discuss.

I personally think that Me gum I would have made for an interesting storyline. I wonder if she and Rust Kaiser could have been persuaded to join our side? Or Enfer, for that matter.

Enfer best waifu.

>>983864
This thread has shown us that only Kotone is a reliable waifu.
I'm not a Kotonefag, but now I wish I was.

We should have paired off Mio with Kazuya. That might have been a healthy pairing for once and could have led to an interesting endgame.

>>983873
Christ, you're right. That would have worked wonderfully. It would've been poetic, pairing Red and Black jokers to save (?) the world.

>>983864
I get the feeling Megumi would have backstabbed us anyways.

Mio probably could have worked out if it weren't for Cybele shenanigans.

>>984109
We made so many mistakes with the female characters. Anon really is a callous motherfucker.

>>984669
To be fair to him he's kind of utterly broken. He's like a thing trying to be human but falling short in some key areas.

Alternatively he's all too human.

>>985068
A century of nothing but brutal combat on the black-sand acidic beaches of hell will do that to you.

Speaking of which, I would love a mini-quest that is nothing but fights and flashbacks of Joker's time as Frost Cestus.

So i haven't read this in like 50-75 threads. Did we ever find first waifu (i forgot her name) or is she dead?

>>985792
The waifus are dead.

I'm not joking, we literally killed all the waifus or caused their deaths after destroying their hearts.

There is nothing but suffering here.

>>985792
Everyone we tried to waifu ended up drad or in suffering

Even Kazuya, especially Kazuya

>>985792
There is one living(?) waifu and she fucking hates us.

>>986827
Oh shoot, we missed one? Jokers slacking, can't leave any waifu dead or un-miserable. Who is it, out of curiosity?

>>986867
I think it was Mio, and I also think she's plenty miserable

>>985068
I don't blame Anon. Much. He's a victim of mental illness of sort, and I see him a bit like I do mentally ill serial killers - deserving of pity and some degree of sympathy, but still a terrible person.

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>>983268
>>983700
>>983704

The Assault Shroud's nanomaterial rattles, a chiming ring of steel - parting into individual pinions, hiltless swords ratcheting into position. Each one is a impossibly sharp sliver, a monomolecular razor-round charged and released through electromagnetic action-

Your fusillade rips across Phantom Edge, a blitz of hailing blades that explosively peppers the far wall. They are nearly invisible to the naked eye, so sharp they shriek as they slice the air like a volley of knives-

And Phantom Edge sidesteps. The Shrike blades, screaming like a billion angry hornets, rip a long broad blizzard of stone chips from the black marble floor. The scouring wind of knives and razor-shot riochets from the stasis-locked pillars of Pazuzu's great machine - the sound they make as they splinter against the containment fields is like a sledgehammer being taken to stained glass.

You're already firing, even before the blades go wide. RUBICANTE thunders, the shooting iron bucking in your fist, each shot spitting a howling round across the distance - Muzzleflash flaring, recoil compensators whirring as your crosshairs whips and skids, trying to track that blurred shape-

You cannot hit him. Your aim is true, but each shot hisses through - around - the fold of smoke the shadow of the reaper has become, and leave Phantom Eden untouched.

Why can't you-

-hit-

The *crack crack crack* of CAGNAZZO's rounds is nearly lost in RUBICANTE's thunder - but the fiercely actinic shots leave burning filaments of cold light in their wake. Your shots clip the Fatal Abyss as it begins it's tumbling descent - brutal sparks flaring, as rounds riochet from the blade, twisting free from first and final descent-

You Tempest Scrander sparks at your back. Argent's reactor is a hot coal, feverish lightnings cising across the wreckage of smashed control surfaces and circuitry. But the Abruption Jets fire, a very hot, hard *push* as blunt as a grunt of pain. Your leg scrapes against the floor with a shriek of tortured metal, the world whipping past in a surge of blind acceleration - You barely clear the ground, hurtling forward at an oblique angle with a force that nearly snaps your spine.

Through the air. Towards the sword.

Towards Phantom Edge's scythe.

(Continued)

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>>987026

The blade is a singular line, a linear division. The air ripples, from the fluid speed of the rushing blow - the toothed edge of the murmuring scythe directly in line with your sensors. And like some awful trick, some mockery of perception, the blurred edge angles down-

Phantom Edge means to take your head.

You're accelerating towards it. Towards your own end, the looming black figure filling your vision-

A tiny, tumbling shape - rotating end-over-end, already coming to pieces mid-flight. Your HUD processes each individual component: Separating fuse, canister, payload.

Payload-

There is a roar. A concussive detonation. A fury of light and sound. You go blind, as the stun grenade detonates - a blur at the edge of your sight as you wrench away...

The blade carves through your armor without a sound.

Coldness whips through your torso. The scythe slices through coolant feeds, super-cooled fluids spurting from your rent armor - patches of frost forming, turning the ceramite brittle in an instant-

And then you are past. You hit the ground at an angle, short of your target, clawing towards the Fatal Abyss as it hits the ground blade-first, sinking smoothly into the stone all the way to the hilt.

The Thief has raised himself to one knee, his hand spasming open - The act of throwing has unbalanced him, brutally, but he wrenches himself upright. There is something indomitable about Akira, some inexorable in the way he drags himself to his feet-

"-To the end, Joker," he rasps. "To the-"

(Continued)

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>>987051

Akira-

*Behind*-

The scythe, rising. Coming across, a sweeping arc-

A sphere of fuming smoke - propelled with a speed and velocity that makes it seem as if it possesses a will of its own - streaks across the room. It smashes into the ground, and erupts. Jagged plumes spin out from the maelstrom: they smash into Phantom Edge, shrouding him in smoke. It burns, corrodes - you see raw gashes of pitted bone, in the heartbeat before the fuming cloud engulfs the fell shape...

"Bastard," Haze spits - He's unarmored, now. Fluid-heavy feed lines snake across his naked carapace, myomer musculature starkly outlined like an anatomist's sketch - Mechanisms clattering within Haze's torso as the shreds of his armor scatter, cables bunching and twisting as his needle-gauntlets and serum tanks slosh with venoms. "Bastard - I'll kill - I'll-"

The Thief hurls himself forward. The scythe whips overhead, so close you feel the wind of it's passage. He's a heartbeat ahead of you, as you roll onto your back - CHAGAN unfurls like a twisted blossom of metal, as your Triskelion launches go dead. Neon lines jag across your arm's brass frame, segmented plate shifting, sliding, *reconfiguring* - A bewildering array of filaments and hydraulics, augmetic cables and receivers...

-Compacting into a smoothbore barrel, the drum-magazine cycling with dull thumps as your autoloader feeds grenades into the cylinders.

Green. Radiation.

The launcher fires, twice. The grenades arch high, tumbling through the smoke - They're on their downward path when they detonate, your HUD fizzing with the brutal shriek of high-yield radiation. It sears through the churning haze, twisting and warping it in odd patterns - strange, inexplicable crashes and thumps echoing from the noisome dark.

The Thief wrenches the Fatal Abyss free from the ground. He is hunched, nearly contorted with pain - you see the tremors wracking his form, gripping the hilt so tightly it seems his fingers must crack.

The Fatal Abyss keens. The sound is subliminal, on the very edge of perception. Even from here, you can feel the foulness that radiates from it - A sense of something uncoiling, something from beyond the veil, pressing close, moving towards the sterile light of the Red World...

THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.

Before you-

(Continued)

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>>987126

The smoke parts, before the absent sweep of Pazuzu's remaining hand. The robed figure descends, blurred by wretched darkness - a halo of filthy astral light flickering around him. Your mono-optic sensor whirrs and clicks, trying to process his form - you glimpse flashes of the void beneath his cassock, the flickering violet light of his Nihl Eye. There is a sense of terrible concentration, of vast energies held in check by an iron will.

Pazuzu has suffused himself with power, a vast degree of it. The twisted lines of the Crux writhe in his hand, like a live thing - Kotone's cross burning with the same empyreal light.

THE LAST SILENCER. HERE, AT THE END OF ALL THINGS.

There is a strange satisfaction to Pazuzu's hollow voice, as he contemplates the tableau before him. There is a terrible relish to the moment, as he speaks to the Thief for the first time - a kind of mocking amusement, an anticipation that only grows with each passing second.

"An - Joker. I can't see. I can't - I can't."

Daegal, on his hands and knees. One hand grips the side of his helm, where an optic dangles out of the shattered socket of his lens by nerve-connectors, flopping against the mouthpiece.

"I can't-"

Pazuzu's staff comes up. With careful precision - As you push yourself to your feet, as your weapons cycle - he levels it before him. You - the Thief - Daegal - Wyrd-lights flicker between the Crux and Pazuzu's regalia, strange winds rustling his robes as a force gathers.

HP: 60.2% (COOLING SYSTEM [ARRAY] DAMAGED)
COBALT BOOSTER: 34% (EXEC_BARRIER ACTIVE)
ASSAULT SHROUD: 48%
METER: 44%
ENCROACHMENT: 0%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>987026
>>987051
>>987126
I'd forgotten how much I loved your utterly over the top prose.

>>987137

(Gentlemen - Note that Phantom Edge is behind you, and temporarily suppressed by Haze's Miasma Launcher. He'll likely shake off the effect by his next turn.

As it's extremely late, I'll likely dedicate tomorrow to a full continuation.)

>>987138
It is LovecraftIan in its beauty. As if the man himself descended to write Kamen Rider marbled with Nietzsche.

It is a thing of supreme horror and grace, and we are loving every syllable and punctuation of it, JQOP.

>>987137
Fire two void grenades at our position. Detonate them once we leave them behind.
Use a Shroud decoy to bait him into the mines.

Abruption Jet + Crisis Arm into Pazuzu. Just fuck him up. Full blast with Cobalt augmentation. Bind him with Scylla and fist his face while also stabbing him with Muleta, then take him down with Rubicante.

>>987148
Get some great rest, JQOP, and thank you for today!

Gentlemen, how should we proceed? Shall we continue the assault on Pazuzu, or attempt to ignore him and wear down Phantom Edge?

>>987154

(My apologies, the Abruption Jets are currently recharging. You could reach him with a Cobalt Boosted leap, however.)

>>987156
If we ignore him, he kills Kazuya.

Wait, doesn't Daegal have an Argus Sensor?

Tell Kazuya to rely on his sensors.

Hollow Sun when

>>987137
Dirac Message too Daegal for him to rely on the Argus System, cast SMITE from Harmonia on Phantom Edge while he's held down. Switch places with Akira, strike with the boosted Crisis Arm, bit down with Scyllle and unleash the Scrander Bolt.

Might want to channel some power to Kotone's cross from either the Nihl Sphere or Harmonia at that point.

>>987207

(You can't actually channel power from Kotone's cross. The cross seems to react with the Crux's effect: When Pazuzu healed himself, you were similarly healed. He was also unable to affect you directly with the Crux.)

>>987215

Are you saying that we've had the counter to his superweapon literally 80 chapters ago?

And we almost GAVE IT AWAY?

>>987269
We did, in fact, give it away, but then demanded it back.

>>987154
>>987207

> Dirac Message to Daegal for him to rely on the Argus System.

The Dirac channel flickers, as you subvocalize the words - Smoke roiling across the black marble of the chamber, coiling upwards like funeral essence, a dry, dirty fog.

There are faces in the mist, now. You glimpse them, a tidal press of almost-human faces and figures, roiling with an oil-on-water incandescence, flowing back into the maelstrom before they can take full form. A trick of the light, perhaps. Mirages, on the very edge of perception.

Reality is wearing thin, now. Soon ruin will break, like a storm.

Around you, the mechanisms of Pazuzu's great machine murmur and groan. Flickers of energy, dark and unhealthy, are flaring - Like troubled synapses, writhing and firing through the serene layers of the vast charnel structure. There are odd harmonics, like the low moaning of a thousand voices - Hidden generators humming louder, power arcing along feed-lines and energy channels. There is a tremulous sound, rising octave by octave...

Data scrolls across your field of vision. Alien, indecipharable - the Black Cardinal's genius wedded to the occult engines that drive the Diadem, an answering tremor juddering the walls of the chamber. Is the Diadem still in flight? Did it already happen, at some point in the fury of the combat below?

A familiar Essence signature - the faded, attenuated phantom of one, a fading data-ghost - casts false readings for your targeting sensors. Here, something that is almost Bell Zephyr; there, the harsh silver filaments and arcane, abtruse symbols spidering above panels and recessed consoles, a memory of Armaros. Perhaps the mineral growths - Superconductors? Catalysts? By-products of the alchemical process? - that bubble and seethe within transparisteel crucibles bear something of Calcite Arrow.

But not Rust Kaiser. Never Rust Kaiser. Him, you annihilated.

Pazuzu never intended to take them with him, you realize. From the beginning, they were fuel.

Fuel, nothing more.

(Continued)

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>>990679

A terrible silence descends - A momentary lull, before the fury of renewed combat lights up the space like a lightning storm. The Thief slants the Fatal Abyss before him, in his remaining hand: He does not sweep it across his chest in a fencer's salute, or raise it in greeting.

He merely intends to put the blade through Pazuzu's heart.

The only sound is Kazuya's pained, half-coherent subvocalizations - Even as the remaining lens in Daegal's helm flickers a cold, actinic blue, a sterile light that matches the glow of his Argus Sensor. Wordless, Daegal staggers to his feet - His hand coming away from his helmet, gauntleted fingers trembling, as if he expects everything within to spill out.

His senses, you know, tell him that he's blind. Everything he knows tells him that his skull is shattered.

But as Daegal draws the Condemner - the snap-hiss of the pulse field engaging echoing in the liminal space, golden circuitry uncoiling across the guardless blade in the brief moment before the sword's length bursts into flame - you know he's going to fight on anyway.

And still you stand, through the stillness. Your Cobalt Booster hums with charge, cold strength ambling through your limbs - veins of light flickering across your cuirass, the Emulator Module at the base of your artifical spine pulsing.

The stump of Pazuzu's left arm smolders, threads of black vapor bleeding into the tainted air - drawing the moment out, as the Crux gutters with corposant.

Who dies first, Joker?

Who dies first?

Akira is silent, even across the Dirac channel. But from the way he tenses - His form like a coiled spring - you're of one will with the Thief: You have to finish this together.

Swiftly, but without haste, he lifts the Fatal Abyss above his ivory skull - now cracked, the synthetic bloodshine of his eyeslits now a dull emberous glow. Phantom Edge's flechettes, cruelly hooked and curved, are embedded in his back - the black fluid weeping from the deep, gouging wounds are a mere trickle now, like stains of pitch against the Thief's battered form.

(Continued)

>>990692

(Gentlemen, an extremely quick question - After the Dirac message, I presume the sequence of events is as follows:

- Cast SMITE on Phantom Edge, via Harmonia.
- Use a Cobalt Boosted leap to clear the distance to Pazuzu.
- Strike with your Emulated Crisis Arms and Scylla.

I need to have your confirmation on this course of action before I proceed.)

>>990693
That sounds good to me.

>>990693
Use a Shroud decoy when we charge Pazuzu.

>>990693
>>990699
And prepare to cast REND from either Harmonia or the Nihl Sphere if we are in danger.

>>990693
This might be just Pazuzu trying to bait us, so do>>990699 and >>990701. Have the Scrander Bolt ready too, even if it's risky to use.

>>990693
Confirmed.

>>979077
>The attached PDF is a wireframe for Joker's current status
Pretty sure you could write sourcebooks for games and mecha series with work like that.

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>>990692

Pazuzu is still speaking. His voice echoes to infinity. It is the voice of the Diadem, from the ship's very heart - booming hollowly through the Diadem's corridors and passages.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FORTUNATE IN MY-

And from behind you, a flicker of motion - Phantom Edge, carving through the smoke. Indomitable. Relentless. His skeletal form corroded by the churning acid vapors, trailing from those burned-black limbs like streamers.

HARMONIA - Cybele's most prized possession - glows with an unlight of its own. It is not even a shadow of the Nihl Sphere, but it's enough. As the second Oblivion shard bursts and burns out from within, a blaze of insane geometry cut from liquid light arches and jags around Phantom Edge - It erupts, an abrupt plosive column of annihilation, blasting upwards in a howling column. The ground shakes, the chamber flashing white and red and green, hungry tendrils of light lashing out at the floor and walls, snapping and hissing and spitting sparks-

The light turns red, then darker still. The blaze grows more intense. There is a howl in the voice of the wind-

In that moment - Backlit by filthy red light - the Thief *moves*.

He becomes a blur. A speed-distorted phantom.

And a heartbeat slower, an instant after, you move too. Smoke swirls around the hydraulics of your legs, overcharged myomer muscles swelling with force, with veins of blue light. Tiny, hairline fractures spiderweb across the black marble, the autoreactive talons of your boots ripping great chunks of stone free as you *leap*-

Pazuzu is ready for you. It is a feint within a feint, as Cybele's Emblem flares - brilliantly - in the burning space above the Crux. Ruin reverses itself - vapor twists and condenses, becoming a skeletal arm draped in folds of black cloth-

-And you are remade, too, in that moment. The false light of the Crux is nothing like the true light of Cybele's power - it feels like hot needles being driven into your flesh, a flesh that does not exist. Just pain, and then a sudden *awareness* of systems going from damaged to whole, ruptured coolant tubes self-sealing, angry red damage telltales giving way to serene green-

HP: 89.9%

COOLING SYSTEM [ARRAY] RESTORED

(Continued)

HOLLOW
OLLOW
LLOW
LOW
OW
W
SUN
UN
N

Oh yeah what ever happened to Thunder Tits?

>>990711
We can't. We missed the opportunity to use it for ourself iirc.

>>982993
>>What were some of your favorite moments in Joker Quest over the years?
Fighting together with the Black Tri-stars and Cypher before everything went to shit, bro-ship with Iron Ogre.

>>990717
Has Kaz tried calling it again recently?

>>990709

Great slabs of black stone rumble upwards from the ground, wrenched free by an invisible hand. They slant down from the ceiling, like great jaws closing - The Thief is an instant ahead of you, the first barrier missing him by inches.

The second is in his way, and the Fatal Abyss becomes a shearing line - there is a shriek of rending stone, colorless sparks flaring as the Thief carves his way through Pazuzu's shield. The shards scatter around him in a dozen fist-sized fragments - before they have a chance to fall, the Fatal Abyss blurs again and *again*, until only powdery dust bars his way.

Your Crisis Arm rockets forward - Targeting rings drawing concentric circles to the looming black slab, astral pathways guiding your strike as gravimetric accelerators flare in your wrist and elbow. The zero point field flares in the instant before it falls, tics of lightning jagging across half-meter-thick stone as your blow splinters the rumbling shield into a million million pieces...

There's another, in the way. It merely means you must swing again, another shattering blow that sends an echoing thunderclap pealing across the intervening distance. Your boots find the edge of the splintered slab, the Cobalt Booster's charge jagging through your limbs in contrails of fuming light-

But it has cost you time.

The Thief reaches Pazuzu, first. He leads with his sword - the final motion of the lunge that began an instant ago. It is a perfect thrust - Fluid, beautiful in it's simplicity. The Fatal Abyss's point trails vapor, as it drives at Pazuzu's Essence Core-

And it is a moment too slow.

If you had reached Pazuzu an instant earlier. If your Crisis Arm had splintered his jester's mask into a thousand pieces. If-

Pazuzu cannot touch you with the Crux, as long as the cross shields you.

The Thief has no such defense.

Astral fire blasts into Akira. It crackles and seethes around him. His entire form smoulders, as he flash-burns. It sears the Lachryma from his remaining arm, an instant before the Fatal Abyss pierces Pazuzu's heart. The smoke-light flare momentarily bleaches all color from the world, as it sears across the intervening distance - the horizontal column blasts across you, almost in passing, leaving only a patina of ash on your armor: Kotone's cross glowing white-hot, incorruptible, as the raw fury of the blast parts around you.

Across the Dirac channel:

"An-"

Silence. Static. A pattern breaking up, a signal lost.

TOO LATE AGAIN, JOKER.

Pazuzu is a silhouette, except for the burning unlight of his Nihl Eye. Looking directly at you. And you know, for a moment, he does not stand at the very crown of the Diadem - He stands amid the ruins of Nara Dreamland, as Bardiel's Shrike Blades tear into Hecate from behind.

TOO LATE.

(Continued)

>>990736
Fuck. Should have gone through with switching places.

>>990736

(Gentlemen, I am terribly, terribly sorry. For the record, it was using EXEC_SMITE that allowed Pazuzu to move first. I initially considered proceeding with the post blind, but I decided it wouldn't have been fair if you didn't get the chance to reconsider the decision - As it had yet to receive a majority - before striking.

Note that I'm aware you used a Shroud decoy, and accounted for it.)

>>990739

(To be fair, it would have slowed you even more and disorientated the Thief.)

>>990736

The splayed column of acid flame blasts the Thief apart, like ash in a gale. The remains of his armor disintegrate: the damage is catastrophic, as it catches him full-on. It disjoints him, unmakes him - It strips the remains of his tattered coat from his armor, then his armor from his body, then his body from his bones. And for one instant, exposed at last, the core of his being is all-too-clear.

-down in the depths of the original hive, grinning figures with cracked skull-helms and bleak and rapacious eyes, spikes of wailing red energy in bony fists-

-A Silencer. One of many. Or, perhaps, the only true one.

The Fatal Abyss hangs in the air, in the wake of the death-blast. Motes of Essence - fiercely green, amid flickering sparks of fading red - hang in the air.

All of Akira that remains. All that he is and was, drawn inexorably to Pazuzu-

NO.

And then the motes are wrenched away, like iron fillings drawn to a magnet - Borne by a great and terrible gravity. Through the smoke. Through the foul mist. They ghost through the hollow decoy left in your wake by the Assault Shroud, forever locked mid-flight.

It lights the figure in the smoke - a black shadow in the paler cloud - from within.

In that frozen moment, you hear: Drip.

Blood, not water at all, hits the cracked and broken ground in fat, heavy drops.

Phantom Edge takes a single, slow step. You hear a long, wet, rasping purr.

The hell-glow of red light, from within the fading mist-

HP: 89.9%
COBALT BOOSTER: 22%
ASSAULT SHROUD: 18%
METER: 56%
ENCROACHMENT: 0%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>990750

Fuck this. Fuck everything.

We save up for the Singularity Cannon on Pazuzu. Fuck it all.

Damn it. Akira was our best chance to control the fucking blade.

Knowing JQOP, we can quite easily just die here and the quest will end in a loss. Why didn't we crisis him?

>>990750
Shit, Phantom Edge got a powerup.

Are we still on course to Pazuzu?

I say we take the fucker apart in melee.

>>990755

(You had to deal with his active defenses. You destroyed them with your Crisis Arms, but Pazuzu engaged the Thief before you could reach them.

You were very close, however.)

>>990750
We're still heading towards him, right? Add to the momentum with the Jets, strike with both Crysis Arms and release the Scrander Bolt at point-blank. Capture the Fatal Abyss with Scylla and stab it into Pazuzu from behind.

>>990756

If we do that, Daegal and Haze are 100% dead. We don't have many friends left, and I honestly rather die fighting for my buddies than out of vengeance.

Because we've been fighting for hatred and vengeance the entire time and it hasn't helped.

>>990771
That's really no different from giving up at this point.

>>990765
>>990756

(Gentlemen, to clarify: are you going to retrieve the Fatal Abyss first, or are you going to attack Pazuzu first?)

>>990771
If we don't kill him now, he'll fuck with us for another ten rounds.

We cannot engage Phantom Edge until we actually kill Pazuzu. Otherwise that dude will just constantly interfere.

>>990750
Update us on the situation OP.

Pazuzu is fully recovered, Phantom Edge is upgraded, we've healed a little and Haze and Daegal are fucked?

>>990784
Attack first.
We already lost one chance because we delayed for a round.

>>990787

(Pazuzu has restored his arm, but he's also expended a tremendous amount of energy. The aura around his is less intense, now, but still substantial. The Crux's power does not appear to have a limit, even after the blast he used to incinerate the Thief.

Phantom Edge has received the Thief's Essence. However, the Fatal Abyss remains in the air. You have an action before Phantom Edge takes his turn.

Daegal and Distortion Haze are within reach of Phantom Edge. Distortion Haze has finished augmenting himself over the past turns, and Daegal has - mostly - recovered.)

>>990784
Daegal go for FA, kill Pazuzu now.

>>990784
Pazuzu. Save the sword and we'll just spend the next few turns being tortured to death with no chance of a turn-around. Give up the sword and even we're almost guaranteed to get cut in half in the next round, but at least we'll have a slight chance to win.

>>990784
>>990789

Take the sword first. We must absolutely take the sword first, because it's the only thing the asshole is afraid of.

OP is highlighting that attacking Pazuzu is pointless. TAKE THE SWORD FIRST.)

>>990802
Ok.
Take the sword and ram it up Pazuzu's ass.

>>990802
Fine, take the sword.

>>990799

(My apologies, but he won't reach it by the time of your action. He simply cannot move fast enough.

If you give him the order, he can retrieve by the end of his next turn - i.e. the coming turn.)

We are not giving up now. We fight alongside Daegal and Haze. We win with them, or die with them doing the right thing.

We need to protect them as best we can.

>>990807
I vote we grab the Fatal Abyss and defend our allies. They are all we have, now.

>>990786
>>990789
>>990800
>>990802
>>990805
>>990803
>>990848

There is a terrible hush. There is an awful silence, the sound that comes before the shattering of worlds.

"Oh, no."

Distortion Haze's voice is a tiny whisper. Low, over the Dirac Channel.

"Joker."

"We're dead now, aren't we?"

His words linger in that empty space, an-

There is a sound. It is raw, unfiltered. It is a cry of anguish, defying even the emotion-sapping monotone of vox-speakers. The humanity of the sound is utterly chilling, an outpouring of singular grief - of pain - of horror.

Kazuya.

Your Abruption Jets have barely recharged. There is a rush of boiling air as they howl to life, a dizzying acceleration as you leave the ground. Not true flight, but enough.

The Fatal Abyss hangs in the air, suspended there by some invisible force. Perhaps it waits for Phantom Edge's hand - Perhaps it waits for Pazuzu's.

Perhaps it merely waits.

When you leap, lightning sears the ground at your feet, turning it to slag. Some Codeburst from Pazuzu - Or is it the Diadem's automatic defenses, brought online at his will? The river of sparks and ionised air claws against the black marble, charring it glassy and smooth-

You will fall short. By an handspan, maybe less.

Scylla will not. The hydra-heads of the augmetic frame - blind, questing, sheathed in heavy cowls of armor - erupt forward, wrenching that awful weapon close.

And your hand closes around the hilt.

The hand you use to grasp it tingles. There is a throb.

Something opens in your mind. Despite the churning inferno of Pazuzu's death-blast, everything is very cold. Something *pulses* - A deep, foul heartbeat. You can smell neurotoxin, molecular acid. There is the taste of copper in your mouth.

You've been here before. You've felt the venom, the infinite malice of the Fatal Abyss. The cold, eternal hunger. Not merely to consume life - to extinguish it. It is a tool of severance, of unmaking-

But so are you.

Lachryma runs in your veins. The Athame judders, in your chest - threads of red running down the stake, like arteries, drawing the burning promises into your black blood.

The Fatal Abyss comes to life in your hands.

The blade burns. There are a thousand secret glyphs deep-graven into it, from forte to tip - as graceful and as smooth as brushstrokes. They shift and twist and shimmer and crawl along the Fatal Abyss, sucking light from the air - Burning with fire so black, the eye cannot hold them. It is a nullity to your sensors, a fragment of void caged and captured by the Red World.

Brought here.

Now.

For this moment.

(Continued)

>>990855
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE WORK

>>990855
Hey, OP, didnt we unlock hunger dogs for ruining rust kaiser too?

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>>990860
>We never got to upgrade any correctors

>>990865
Wait, didn't Kazuya almost manage to summon our corrector?

Wait...OP?

Is essence getting absorbed by the Gate, or would a player that kills another player be able to rightly absorb their essence?

I am considering an insane plan....we sacrifice ourselves at Daegal's hand so he can absorb our shitload of essence, and our cross, and the blade.

He's the true hero in this.

>>990855
So despite Daegal's weapon-mastery trait, Fatal Abyss was mostly just a really nice sword in his hands? But in Red Joker's...

>>990880
A sharp stick

>>990875
Retarded.

>>990880
>>990881
You need lachryma to use it correctly it seems.

>>990880

(Daegal's armor, and arguably Kazuya's nature, shielded him. Orichalcum is an incorruptible and impervious material.)

>>990860

(Actually, IMAGO paid in advance. His Hunger Dogs joined the battle when CHROME CYPHER and your remaining squads attempted the breakout. They were in position during the Festival, and actively hunting Smilers when the shroud fell. The pack only stopped to impart EXEC_CASTIGATE to you.)

>>990855

The pain is all-consuming. The inside of your armor has turned into needles - Stabbing every centimete of you, from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head. They do not stop - they grow, lancing deeper. You can feel them behind your eye sockets, drilling through the bone of your skull and into your brain.

You feel them by what they cut away.

You feel your phantom flesh begin to blister. Red smoke surges from your spine, into your limbs. Black threads spill across your armor, beneath it - it is a disease, an aggressive cancer, consuming the host in fast-forward.

You can wield it for moments. For minutes, at most, before all that you are is devoured from within.

But moments may be all you need.

> RELIC ACQUIRED: [FATAL ABYSS]

The blade of Phantom Edge, the FATAL ABYSS is a weapon of ruin. Long and straight and heavy, the FATAL ABYSS takes the form of a pitch-black longsword - the hilt is of knapped flint, wound with what appears to be, upon examination, human skin.

Amongst its host of powers, the FATAL ABYSS instantly slays any Player or Corrector it strikes. In its activated state - as of now - the FATAL ABYSS cannot be stopped by any known defenses, with the single caveat: the wielder is not protected in any way. (i.e. the FATAL ABYSS can carve through barriers and unravel defensive Codebursts - but the wielder is not shielded from any of the above.)

Contact with the FATAL ABYSS spreads ravening corruption through the target. Assuming that the initial strike fails to slay the target outright, the corruption that spreads through the target Player's Essence Core or Corrector's organs is equally lethal. A plausible cure may be the severance of the affected limb.

The FATAL ABYSS can slice through intervening space, narrowing the distance between the wielder and the target. Notably, this effect requires a target to function.

The FATAL ABYSS cannot be parried by most ordinary weapons. Weapons infused with living Essence, weapons that rely on energy fields and orichalcum/neutronium weaponry are exceptions.

A hit from the FATAL ABYSS is an automatic critical.

The wielder of the FATAL ABYSS begins to rapidly accumulate Encroachment, with all of the effects that entails.

The FATAL ABYSS's true abilities are only available to the incarnation of PHANTOM EDGE.

(Continued)

>>990884
How bad of an idea would draw forth and Over Armour be?

>>990889
Draw forthe to heal may be wise.

>>990887
So, we instakill Pazuzu and then encase it with Assault Shroud's Fortress mode to hinder Phantom Edge from interacting with it while we engage him?

>>990887
So I don't know, would it work on Phantom Edge since it's an extension of that monster?

I mean unless we fuck up really really bad, we can probably kill Pazuzu, but then what?

>>990892
That's not a bad idea, actually. I would back it up.

>>990893
Also I'm not really sure how Phantom Edge being here works. Is it like once he was summoned here, he's just gonna stick around until he's defeated, or is Pazuzu's arcane suffering array all that's keeping Phantom Edge in this dimension?

>>990887
Hm... I have to wonder whether we should use this to kill Pazuzu or instead destroy his machine.

>>990901
>>990899
I think breaking the Gate would be the better option, next best being to attack Pazuzu.

>>990901
If we kill Pazuzu, he can't stop us from breaking his shit or fixing any of it. Also is there a chance we can claim the power of the Crux for ourselves if Pazuzu is dead?

>>990908
Remember, he has the second Nihl Sphere.

I wonder what Kazuya can do with it.
I also wonder how EXEC_CONSUME works. OP said that Kazuya has no codebursts, but CONSUME was attached to the Helix gauntlet when we got it. The codeburst is a result of channeling the Nihl spheres essence eating through the gauntlet, after all.

Does "any Player" include Phantom Edge, OP?

File: C0pWvJxUoAAWZDq.jpg (30 KB, 600x465)

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>yfw The Thief ASSUMES DIRECT CONTROL of Phantom Edge

It's gonna happen
I believe

>>990913

(You don't know. You know that the FATAL ABYSS's full abilities are only available to PHANTOM EDGE.)

>>990887

All of this you intuit, in the span of a second. Something wet and black drips from the seams in your gauntlet, an immense pressure bulging against the joins. The fluid is thinner than oil, thicker than blood, hissing like acid as it falls to the stone.

Pazuzu is still. Achingly so, as he hovers before you.

The nature of the battle has suddenly changed. You can see it in his eyes. You hear the rumble, the deep, tectonic rumble, as more slabs of stone push from the ground - the distant ceiling - like giant's teeth.

The FATAL ABYSS throbs in your grip as it comes up. The black runes can no longer be contained by the blade itself - they spiral outwards, floating like ball lightning, hooked and coiled and cold.

There are more than three, and less than one. A thousand, twisted into a single light.

And as you crouch to spring-

There is a rattle of chain. There is a shriek.

And then your left shoulder explodes. Bright jagged slivers of pain overlap with the agony that already races through you, every second blurring your vision - It is not the false pain that can be mastered. It is excruciating, crippling, so all-consuming it stutters static across your HUD, even before the great barbs flare outwards with machine precision-

A harpoon. You've been hit by a harpoon.

Phantom Edge's bony fist closes around the rattling chain - each link weeping softly, trembling in a paroxysm of suffering - and *pulls*.

There is a violent *snap*, as if the entire world has been wrenched off its axis. Your feet leave the ground. You are hurled back, back, towards the shadow of the reaper and the black talons that await-

"JOKER!"

There is a flash. Another.

OMEN slices into the chain, first - the tachyon blade shrieking, as it hacks into the moaning links of black and barbed chain.

The Condemner severs it.

(Continued)

>>990921
Where did Phantom Edge even find a harpoon.

>>990921
FUCKING CUNTNIGGER

>>990928
I'm honestly expecting Unlimited Blade Works from him

>>990919
Oh that would have been awesome. I really, really hope TOTENAZ fucked up nature is too much to swallow for him.

Akira's like an Amaglam, down to the insistent fuck up of the spelling.

>>990934
Wanna go full Anime and call out to him/his soul?

Cause I do

>>990928
He probably reshaped the Rook-scythe into it.

OP, if the Rook-scythe survives the fight, is it theoretically feasible to unwrap it back to Rook's essence core and put it back into the ruins of his body?

>>990937
I do, but we need to support this by _SOME_ sort of "game-mechanics" action. Like a codeburst or _something_ idk what.

Without that we don't, likely, have even the slim chance of OP playing along.

So, ideas?

>>990938
>He probably reshaped the Rook-scythe into it.
I would wager that it might have some similarity to [kura].
Hell, maybe that thing was a Phantom Edge relic.

>OP, if the Rook-scythe survives the fight, is it theoretically feasible to unwrap it back to Rook's essence core and put it back into the ruins of his body?
Are you retarded?

>>990937
>>990942
Are you drunk?

>>990942
All I can think of or see is Nihl sphere fuckery

>>990948
No overly optimistic

>>990921

You hit the ground, amid the scattered links - They clatter from your armor, with bulleting force. An instant later, so does Daegal. His Assault Shroud is in tatters, when he slams to the ground - He lands badly, one leg still damaged, sparks flying from the joint. Somehow, somehow, he manages to avoid cutting himself open on the mismatched swords he holds, OMEN's blade slamming into the ground a handspan from your helm as he drags himself to his feet.

A shadow falls over you. A hand - bristling with syringes - closes on the impaling spear, still sending waves of crippling agony coruscating through your form. It feels like your skull is about to burst from within.

With an effortless, grotesque strength, Distortion Haze rips the harpoon free. The white phosphorous that single action ignites within you - it burns spastic jerks through your twitching limbs, and smashes your helm against the floor hard enough to crack your optics.

But you do not scream.

Haze is crooked, bowed. He is hunched over, the control rods in his back at full extension. His form has grown bloated, swollen with grossly enhanced musculature. Something like a mechanical spider bristles from his shoulders, needles driven through his pauldrons into the synthetic mechanisms beneath.

He has filled himself with combat drugs. With stimulants. With reflex boosters. The alchemical reaction courses through him - Soon, he will reach critical mass. Haze's eyes are no longer the yellow of indecision, or the green of conviction.

They are a pure and lusterless white.

"Come on-" he rasps the words.

"Come on, *Joker*-"

Yes.

On your feet, now. The Fatal Abyss in your hand. Daegal at your right hand, Distortion Haze at your left.

And before you - Phantom Edge. Made whole.

His stature has not changed. An emberous light - achingly familiar and awful at once - glows in the recessed sockets of that leering skull, tiny fractures spiderwebbing the surface.

But he is worse. The welter of gore - his false right arm - has been seared away, leaving smoking talons. He has cast away his scythe, and the remnants of chain looped around bony knuckles.

Pazuzu's machine moans, in something like fear. Power flickers - Components slow, with ugly whines of protesting mechanisms. There is a hauntingly gentle chime, as a turning gear, a bank of hammering pistons fall silent, red warning signs flickering. Something within them...Motes, shining flecks of gold leaf borne upon the breeze...are drawn to Phantom Edge's open and empty claws.

Shapes coalesce. They condense.

(Continued)

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>>990988

A web of metal - schematic lines shuddering, trembling as they cross - weaves itself across Phantom Edge's hand. It grows, layering upon itself, becoming cruelly hooked and scimitar-bladed, wet with slow ripples of liquid lightning. On his arm: A tarnished shield, the rusty surfaces sculpted into new and disturbing shapes. Screaming faces, tiny mouths parted in agony, bordering a single central eye that darts back and forth with mad focus as it weeps ochre tears.

In his right hand - A great, black-bladed axe. Some ancient hide-scraper, the obsidian blade smoking as bony talons curl around the haft. The fire that swarms across it is a sullen, acid green.

How careless he is with the lives of others.

HP: 76.3%
COBALT BOOSTER: 36%
ASSAULT SHROUD: 61%
METER: 56%
ENCROACHMENT: 23%

YOU HAVE CONTROL

>>990990
Wait, what's Pazuzu doing right now? We didn't kill him did we?

>>990990
Wait, can we encase Phantom Edge in the Assault Shroud and use Fatal Abyss to make a killstroke on Pazuzu?

>>990994

(He's sealing himself off from the fight, calling up slabs of stone to shield himself.)

>>990997
Would the Fatal Abyss' space-cutting ability allow us to close up on him before he finishes?

Otherwise we should at least try to enclose a few mines in his sand castle.

>>990990
Tell Haze to grab the fucking scythe.

>>991005

(The scythe isn't visible. It's likely shattered or simply been discarded.)

>>990999

(You could try, but that means turning your back on Phantom Edge.)

>>990990

(Gentlemen - I'd love to continue, but I'm utterly exhausted. I'll continue this tomorrow, as soon as I get the chance - I'm not sure if the thread can be archived, but I'll open a new one if this has fallen off the board.

Good night and God bless - It's been an amazing final fight so far.)

>>991007
>I'm not sure if the thread can be archived,
Suptg works with /qst/, iirc.

So I don't know, what would happen if we took Fatal Abyss and just fucking jammed it into one of the Players Pazuzu took apart to make his machine? Would the deathly poison spread to the whole structure like a virus, and would that stop Phantom Edge from being boosted or would it actually increase the output?

Like if there's a way to restore them back to normal after Pazuzu and Phantom Edge are dead, then obviously it's a huge dick move, but I'm not sure how plausible that is.