When Bad Guys Go Mad

#46

Swix heard CP's little speech before he came over and she heard him shut the door, along with him turning around and yelling at the not exactly Nym. In the darkness Swix's eyes lit up as she started giggling crazily from underneath the floor, of course, she'd gotten her living darkness tendrils out earlier and in her giggling fit completely lost control of them. It was a dumb thing to do in the first place, but then she wasn't really in her right mind in the first place.

So as the limbs swung crazily around the woman, totally out of control, they made very loud thuds on the wall and started shaking the very ground underneath the house with the force. All the while, with Swix giggling insanely underneath the buildings foundations.

#47

The screech made the fur stand up on the back of CP's neck. Had his missed something? Done something wrong? The woman he was totally trying to comfort just now had turned on him, plotting his demised before the last tears even left her cheeks.

He wasn't sure if that was surprising or not.

"Evil! Bad... Tricker!" CP shouted, obviously losing his thesaurus somewhere. He paddled back several steps, but the purple flame just kept growing. Even with a clouded mind, he knew this was trouble. Options? A few. Some kind of sound in the basement was starting to make him really curious.

No. Focus.

Some kind of sound in the basement was starting to make him really curious, so the electric mouse took several more steps away from Raven, over to where the hatch was. Cautiously, getting warmer, (from the fire, or disease, it didn't matter) he lifted the trap door and looked down into it.

Of course, this is somewhere around the time Raven released her explosive, which slammed hard into the area behind the little Guardian. He left the ground, banged his head on the hatch, and fell backwards into the hole. Luckily, it couldn't get any-

WHAP!

Stars overtook the poor mouse's vision as he fell right into the flailing tendrils. It caught him on the head, nearly knocking him off the brink of consciousness. With more thuds in the dark, he hit the tunnel wall, then earthen floor, smoldering and broken.

#48

As the terror abated, Raven watched the little Pikachu tumble back into the hole. The sight caused a giggle to bubble up her throat. Well, at first it was a giggle, but it turned to full fledged laughter. She doubled over, clutching her sides as the laughter spewed out of her. "Smart big fish fly left!" She gasped as she giggled. Through the fog in her brain, she suddenly realized what she had just said. "When this space?" Wait, that wasn't right either. Her brow furrowed for a moment, before she started giggling again. She sounded rather silly.

As she spluttered with laughter, her mind - though fogged - was working hard. 'Something's wrong.' was her immediate thought. She forced herself to examine herself - she was sweating like a waterfall. Yes, something was definitely wrong. The irritating humans who'd assaulted her earlier came to mind - along with their and her own strange actions.

A disease, perhaps? This could be bad. It was obviously highly infectious. She walked slightly unbalanced towards the hole where CoolPikaaa had fallen down. Wait, CoolPikaaa? 'Oh dear.' Raven was slightly horrified at herself... at first. Then the memories of her behaviour instead set off more giggles.

Well, if anyone could help it was CoolPikaaa. Raven vaguely remembered him being good at science and genetics or something. She wasn't really sure and she couldn't think clear enough to remember. Making her way over to the tunnel entrance, she peered down... only to see CoolPikaaa lying in a damaged heap on the ground - with dangerous looking waving tentacles everywhere.

That could be bad. She tried to think of someone else who could possibly help with her condition. No one came to mind, and she had a feeling that it wasn't because she couldn't think straight.

"Wooo... You think awake." She muttered, shaking her head in an attempt to clear the light headed feeling that had suddenly struck her.
She needed help, who knew how much worse this thing could get? So, her objective in mind Raven jumped down into the hole with the tentacles. She evaded them as best she could, but was struck once - twice- three times before she reached the damaged little animal. She swayed, unsteady on her feet and in pain from the hits. If they were strong enough to shake the foundation of the buildings... well, Raven was just glad she wasn't human.

Feeling a bubble of laughter coming, Raven did her best to stop it. 'I need to focus. I need to focus. Focus, focus, FOCUS DAMMIT.' She slapped herself as hard as she could, her neck snapping to the side with the impact. It worked! Well, somewhat. She couldn't get him out of here without damaging either herself or himself.

'I better not regret this...' Raven thought as she pulled a vial out of her pocket. Inside it held a shimmering, red liquid. Her own creation of course - very hard to make, very hard to procure the ingredients. She kept it on her for an emergency. Of course, she'd assumed the emergency would be for herself. It should heal his wounds... well, that or kill him. She didn't really think about the fact that they were different species and it might effect him different. Oh well, hopefully it would be okay.

She moved the rodent further into the cavern a bit, away from the flailing tentacles but close enough that she could keep an eye on Swix. Kneeling down, Raven steadies herself as she almost fell. Another giggle threatened to burst from her throat. 'NO! Focus dammit!' She berated herself. Squashing the impulse to laugh, she uncorked the potion and poured it down CoolPikaaa's throat.

She then promptly fell on her ass and burst out laughing.

(( The potion is made of magical ingredients. Theoretically, it could possibly cure whatever has infected him - but I'll leave that decision up to you. Raven didn't have the mental capacity to realize it was possible. Otherwise she'd have just taken it herself and left everyone to die whatever horrible death the disease may bring.

Of course, Swix, if you have any kind of problem with it working like that I have no problem. I just kinda' realized that without at least one healthy person in the Role Play we're probably won't ever get anything done. That of course is up to debate

))

#49

((Well, I've now updated CP's profile with a list of the effects gained by this here potion. If you were wondering, all in all, I suggest Raven drug people more often. XD

... Wait, that doesn't sound right.))

Cp either couldn't move, or really didn't want to. He was face down in the dirt, it was dark, and he was fairly certain he had a few broken bones. Swix could certainly flail hard with those tendrils of hers, as could Raven throw a mean fireball. Why had he come down here even? Now, laying here broken, everything felt so much more clearer. The electric mouse could picture a hundred different ways to escape the intoxicated woman's flames, and none of them, in theory, led to his current state.

Does that mean I'm sick too?

Yes, it was almost certain. He could already feel the clouds floating back over his mind as he became more comfortable with his situation. Raven's kiss had gotten him sick. If she was in her right mind, she probably would have thought that funny. Or maybe not... it was kind of hard to tell with her.

Now he was thinking about Raven. Damn it. He needed to focus.

He heard a few more thuds, a couple whip-like snaps, then the soft settling of dirt. Someone was down here with them. Swix didn't seem to mind, she was far too busy hitting the wall, but Cp kind of had to wonder which of the two from upstairs had come to finish the job.

There's a slap, then he can feel someone standing over him. Despite the predicament, he still doesn't move, until feminine hands carefully pick him up and carry him further into the tunnel.

"Be gentle." He whispers, dazed, wondering why Raven is flipping back and forth like this. Swix had been crazy. Of course, he hadn't seen her at the beginning... would this happen to him? They move out of the reach of the tendrils, and CP opens his mouth to question her before he gets too messed up in the head to put sentences together. Before he can form his first word though, a dazzling red liquid is trickled down his throat.

"Gagh!" Cp coughs, red vapor spreading slowly out into the air before his face. "That tastes like iro-"

<small>Crack.

Pop.

Pop pop, crack.</small>

The electric mouse stops, an odd sensation spreading throughout him. He felt... wonderful. Complete. Enchanted. Blissful. Red sparks poured out of his cheeks, dancing all over his body. He felt bones mend, with only a tickle, the singed areas of his back grow out, and even, though he couldn't be too sure, a luxurious thickness and sheen to his coat.

The red sparks waned, only to be replaced by bright white ones. His own electricity... supercharged. Feeling great, he wormed out of Raven's grasp, and did a second long hop-jig, to the Demoness' apparent delight. She probably was just laughing at anything anyway, but it felt so good, he needed to share it with someone else.

"Raven! What did you give me!?" He cried out ecstatic. The natural electricity still danced all over him, lighting up the tunnel. "Oh, no, Nevermind! We have a disease to cure!"

He really did almost start sprinting then and there.

"Oy! Swix! Come on, then!"

#50

((God forbid Raven have an excuse to give anyone mind altering substances; the world would end with a happy little puff of rainbows and giant mars bars.))

Angel's flightpath was free and clear all the way to the village they had agreed to meet at; no adverse weather or nagging associates to spoil a perfect sky. She'd made good time too; crossing dimensional boundaries could be tricky, but the Peak and Ana were well matched.

She circled the village on a slow descending sweep, looking for the pub Raven had mentioned, but the things going so rapidly awry in the inhabitants quickly caught her eye. They were manic, moving about like mice in a new cage, and laughing at nothing. It didn't have the crazed quality of hysteria, most of the time, and she slowed her wingbeats right down with a deep frown, reluctant to land without knowing precisely what was going on. They seemed to be finding everything just... hilarious. It wasn't the weirdly externally motivated laughter of nitrous oxide either.

She couldn't feel a spell, but with so many types of magic floating around the 'verse, she couldn't be sure she wasn't missing something and eventually she dropped to land in the central square. Her wing shoulders ached from the slow, hovering flight and she shrugged them irritably into a comfortable rest against her arm shoulders as she looked around; that wouldn't have happened five years ago, she was damned sure.

The villagers around the square weren't just happy; they were swinging wildly between different emotional states and Raven, what are you doing don't go down the hole.

With her feet on the ground, Angel could feel an ominous rumbling in the subsoil and there were villagers starting to notice her and advance in worrying ways. They were sweating; fever, hysteria, moodswings, this was a disease.

She strode quickly towards the open room from which Raven had just vanished and banged the door closed irritably behind her, in the face of a villager who, to all appearances, had wanted to give her a big, sweaty hug.

"RAVEN!" She called down the trapdoor, poking that the charred remains of its hinges with her boot. "Why did you jump down a hole with TENTACLES?!" She peered into the dark, which was filled with writhing patches of extra-crunchy, darker-than-dark limbs. There were a few sparks of light, but not enough to show her more than Ravens outline.

"Do NOT make me come down there." She said to herself, kneeling by the edge of the hole to get a better angle. The voice wasn't one she recognized immediately, but the name he/it used was familiar from the old days. She sighed; there was a disease, Raven was apparently caught up in things and there were old acquaintances from the Dojo involved.

"I'm coming down; try not to kill me before I hit the bottom, hm?" She swung down, gripping the edge; no room to spread her wings, she'd just have to drop. It wasn't that far, not for someone with the necessary weight-savings for flight.

She let go, eyes wide open to try and pick out anything in the dark.

That really was a lot of tentacles...

#51

Swix had progressed so deeply in to her laughing fit that she barely noticed her out of control limbs smacking the fallen rodent when he came down, or the fact that they'd smacked Raven as well when she'd dropped down after him. No, it wasn't until she heard the slap coming from the opposite end of the tunnel that everyone was intent on jumping into that the manic laughter abruptly stopped. Swix's hazel eyes turned towards the pair as there was a flash of red, then white, and then there was CP yelling at her, daring her to come after him. He sounded peppy, pumped up and pleased with himself for some reason. The womans hazel eyes narrowed in the dark as she stared. Then, almost as abruptly as her laughing fit had ended the crazy woman started running towards the sparking little mouse, taking the out of control tendrils of darkness with her.

#52

Angel just about had time to think "Christ-on-a-bicyle, what the he--" before the rapidly thickening wave of black, shadowy limbs tangled around her legs.

They flailed, gripped, released, battered and made an utter, painful nuisance of themselves right up until she landed on the floor and flattened herself to the earth. Rather than the nice, neat, knees-bent landing she'd been hoping for, she came down heavily on her left shoulder. The sound of running feet passed by her head and the mass of tendrils started to thin out again.

She groaned and then swore vigorously: she had no way of telling if she'd just been infected.

"Raven!?"

#53

Oh, good... She was charging.

Several possible ideas raced around CP's now enchanted little head. He could run, probably guaranteeing a chase from Swix. He could roll neatly to the side, waiting for her to hit a wall. He could also zap her, given how much harm those tendrils would cause should they get too close. They were all fine, normal suggestions.

But today, he was feeling exceptional.

Cp waited until the woman drew close, noting an odd movement slightly behind her. The light from his sparks didn't quite reach that far, and once Swix got in the way again, he was having trouble spotting it again. Probably just a trick of the dark. Or something. Either way, Swix was nice and close now.

The little electric mouse gave her exactly two more seconds, then when she was dangerously close, sprang. He moved easily over the leading tendril, landed on her shoulder, then bounced off aiming for the top of her head. His weight would certainly ruffle her hair a bit. Maybe enough to temporarily impair her sight while she continued to rush forward. But...

"SWIXY! <big>AWWWA<big>AAAYYYY!"</big></big>

When else could he even think he could pull off something this cool?

#54

Raven's laughter had been on the verge of hysterical when after she'd helped CoolPikaaa. After forcing herself to breath deeply in an attempt to calm herself down, Angel dropped down into the tunnel. The situation once again seemed so absurd that she burst out laughing again. Unable to control herself at all, she collapsed to the tunnel floor in a heap of gasps, tears and laughter.
"A-angel!" Raven exclaimed, still in convulsions. "When were me sitting there?" She tittered out at her old friend.

Then something happened that made the laughter of earlier seem like nothing in comparison. She'd always known the little Pikachu was insane. It seemed a mandate of Pax - to survive one must be mad. But this? An anguished gasp escaped Raven's throat, a desperate plea for air. It was too much. Swix being rode like an angry bull?

She was going to die from laughter. She couldn't breath, her face was turning red. It was too ridiculous.

Then she fainted.

#55

Angel stayed close to the ground, her wings mantled protectively, while.... was that Swix? Not someone she knew well, but still...

The mad cackling in the tunnel petered out and Raven spoke up; the hoarse, wavering quality of her voice was consistent with having just been laughing uncontrollably. Because of course Raven was infected. At least that explained the aphasic garble; 'when' could be 'why'... which put 'were' as 'are. 'Me' was a pronoun, take away the possessive... ah, and retrieve the time component of 'when'; "Why are you still sitting there?". Probably. But potentially "Why am I here?".

The pikachu, presumably also affected or independently insane, was leaping about and that certainly got Ravens attention, as well as casting the light, which Angel realized was coming from the little creatures cheeks, into a chaotic mess of shifting shadows and arc light.

And Raven, bang-smack in the middle of the chaos of swirling light and tentacles, was about to pass out. Angel swore quietly and sprung forwards, running low to avoid taking another hit, but didn't quite make it in time; Raven pitched sideways, curled around her stomach as her hilarity pushed the last of the air out of her lungs.

Angel had to admit it looked... pretty amusing.

She only kept her balance through virtue of her bowed-out wings as she scrambled to a halt. She managed to deflect a few blows with them smoothly, but the rest came from bad angles and the force was less inclined to dissipate along the line of her primary feathers; the quills snapped. Those were going to be a pain to grow back in...

When she rolled Raven onto her back, she was breathing, just about; her laughing had probably dumped all the CO2 out of her blood, so her body thought she was fine. Angel wasn't so sure, but it would have to wait until a. Coolpika got control of Swix, b. he drove her away into the tunnels, or c. Angel moved Raven out of harms way.

Option c felt like the most expedient, so she wormed an arm around Raven's ribs and lifted her top half off the ground. Balancing with her other arm against the cave wall, she dragged her back from the flailing limbs before flopping gracelessly against the wall and pulling Raven onto her lap to make her breathing a little easier. Fever, sweating, cognitive effects including but not limited to hysteria, and Angel was almost certainly infected now. Just... brilliant.

#56

Swix had barely noticed that in her total lack of control of her tendrils, the four stronger main tendrils had been joined by many more less powerful limbs that were going just as crazy. It also seemed that they'd caught up someone else after they'd thwacked Raven. But just as she was thinking about stopping, the rodent decided to leap through all her manic tendrils and then up to the top of her head-where he proceeded to scream in her ear and push the her messy hair in front of her eyes.

"Gah-agh" the woman yelled, as her hair went in her eyes, temporarily blinding her, and CP's shout echoed in her ears. The manic tendrils were joined by damp arms waving about the top of her head to try and remove the pikachu, and her charge came to an abrupt halt as she could no longer see where she was going.

#57

He really had expected this to go differently. If Swix could've carried him all the way to her garden, the only lead they had, he could have saved the day, cured the townspeople, and then gone back to find Holloweyes.

He couldn't wait to try out these new enhancements on the Parasitian.

Instead... Coolpikaaa slid forward, one paw completely flailing off of her head. His other paws probably could have held on, but the thought of violently tearing out Swix's hair was quite unappealing. A bit less gracefully then he wanted, Cp finally reached a point where he simply jumped off to avoid a fall.

"Swix! We're supposed to go find whatever made you sick remember? Aren't you supposed to he leading the way?"

#58

When CP finally let go of her hair, the woman stopped wildly waving her arms about trying to get him off. Instead she fixed the rodent with a semi-focused, mostly confused stare. Lead him to where she'd gotten sick? Is that why she'd gone up to see him in the first place? ... and what was this about a garden? Swix shook her head, rubbed the sweat out of her eyes, and stared at the yellow mouse some more.

"Left" she said eventually, an eye twitched again, and she shook her head again. The woman then started walking forwards with purpose this time. She stopped once to turn around and beckon to the pikachu to follow her again,only then noticing the walking chaos she'd turned into and finally putting the crazy limbs away.

"Devil gone dove?" she said when she caught sight of the other two figures in the cave, prompting another eye twitch. "Hmph" she grumbled, then "Away!" she said to CP, beckoning to him again before she started to make her way deeper into the tunnels..

((Welcome to Infectionville Angel

))

#59

Raven's eyes fluttered open and she inhaled a large breath. The gasp turned into a short coughing spree, and it was at that moment she realised there were arms around her.

Female arms. 'Hmm.'

She looked up and saw Angel. Wait, Angel? What was she doing here? She looked around and saw that Swix no longer resembled a tentacle monster, and CoolPikaaa was no longer trying to tame her like a raging bull.

"Angel...?" Her voice rasped, raw from the extreme laughing. Her brain was fuzzy, but she knew what was going on... as far as she knew.
She was sick... right?

"What's going-" A sudden wave if dizzyness assaulte her and she clutched her head.
"Off?" Oh dear, her reprieve was gone. Back to nonsense.

#60

"There she goes..." Angel muttered to herself as Raven returned to the world of the... mostly insane. At least Swix was getting a hold of herself. Sort of.

She tilted her head to look down at Raven's upside down face; "Yeah, its me. Please tell me hallucinations aren't in my near future?"

Raven looked suddenly nauseous; "and no vomiting on the feathers, Little Miss." She said, chiding, as Raven went a little green and held on like her head had a mind of its own. Which, on second thoughts, it technically did, the rest of the body was just along for the ride. And it was already starting wasn't it?

Angel's skin felt tight and clothes and armor that she'd worn in months ago started feeling confining and almost painful on hyper-sensitive skin.
"Right, up you come," she said, shuffling to standing and pulling on Raven's tense shoulders, "word is that the cure is thataway. Or at least a clue. Just a hint would do, really..."