Poultrygeist (10) : As Destiny City is a bustling metropolis, it’s not unexpected that there should be some strange animals running the streets. Sometimes it’s a tiger, sometimes a monkey, sometimes a chicken. Sometimes it’s something worse. Strange egg clusters have appeared in Destiny City’s parks and officials aren’t really sure what they are; these eggs have nothing inside of them. Though it’s an anomaly, they are chalking it up to teenaged pranks. However, they have advised to just leave the eggs as they are. Nobody wants to say why, but if you’re out late at night, you’ll find out. In the darkness, whispered between the sounds of the city: a guttural, rasping cluck. The creature stands on stilt-like legs, rooted to the ground with razor-sharp talons. It wears a cloak of long, oily feathers that drag on the ground with a sinister scraping. If you stare into the darkness, piercing red eyes stare back at you. That’s all it takes for a confrontation: a mangled bird, maybe a chicken in another life, comes barreling out at you. It stands easily as tall as a person, but the proportions are all wrong. The smell of sulfur follows it as it lunges, pecking and screaming and scratching as it attempts to chase you away. Maybe, from the nests full of empty eggs. The battles are fierce, but fleeting; it will viciously try to chase you away but the effects are always the same: at some point, the eggs are crushed. As always, there’s nothing inside of them, but with one final wail, the bird will vanish into a plume of foul smoke.
Note: If you choose to encounter one of these bird-like creatures, your character will recognize they are not youma. It is impossible to tell if it is a single entity or if there are many. The bird does not seem to understand or care to listen to human words. It will always disappear in a malodorous plume of smoke and leave nothing but a foul odor and a clutch of empty, broken eggs behind. This RP can be used as a battle requirement as long as there are two powered characters involved; you must be interacting with another player’s powered character. This does not count as the one youma battle per stage for growth. This can only be used as a battle requirement once per character, but there is no limitation for how many times a player can use this prompt.
"W-what..." The glossy golden feathered sleeves of his jacket dragged through something oily and putrid as Bäl shuffled backward on the ground, away from... that thing that had knocked him over.
He wouldn't consider himself easy to intimidate, generally. He'd dealt with all manner of people, some on the unsavory side. He'd dusted a Youma on his first encounter with one, despite having no idea what it was or what was going on (though maybe he'd been a little intimidated then). And he'd already assaulted persons affiliated with the Negaverse. Even though Bäl generally didn't subscribe to all this ridiculous space mumbo-jumbo, he didn't think he was necessarily afraid of it. Just mostly in a state of disbelief.
But the thing in front of him now, the very solid thing if the way it could knock him over was anything to go by, smelled, looked, sounded much worse than any creature or person he'd come fave to face with so far.
And it didn't feel like a Youma, though maybe his untrained senses were off in that regard...
It made another warbling, high-pitched cry, and a taloned foot shuffled closer to where Bäl had fallen backwards onto the ground. The creature was absurdly tall for a bird, feathered and oily. And it stank like the s**t of the earth. Some rotten egg cloud that clung to it and exuded out around it. ...And Bäl was like ninety percent sure it was going to kill him.
Or try.
It shrieked and dove, and Bäl did the same, though where the monster dove forward, he dove backward, flipping to his hands and knees and bolting with whatever extra speed his Senshi form granted him while the chicken monster snapped its gnarled beak at him.
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2026 4:18 pm
Now that it was warmer, Thistle was having a great time exploring Destiny City. however, now that it was warmer, Sailor Nemousa was having a slightly worse time exploring Destiny City: his uniform had not been designed for Earth summers, it seemed. He didn't know what sweat was called, but he knew he did not care for it. He especially did not care for it on other people - it made them stink. It made them stink bad.
So what may have looked like 'patrolling' from the outside was, in reality, little more than trying to find a safe space for his little nose.
And technically, he was successful in that endeavor: he did find a place that was free of the stinky smell of human sweat.
However. That was probably because it was full of another scent, and that scent was rotten.
Now, Nemausa had grown up in what most people would call 'one big giant garbage heap'. It was in reality many-several smaller garbage heaps, each with their own distinct personality and inhabitants. Nemausa was not one who was unused to things that were stinky. Human sweat was only bad because he wasn't used to it yet; there were lots of smells on Earth that he didn't think he liked very much but also thought he'd grow to enjoy, or at least tolerate. There was something called 'cheese', for instance, that lived mostly on bread of various kinds, and he loved that, but some kinds of cheese were very smelly. He'd never let something like that stop him from putting something in his mouth, though, and he'd found that in some cases, the smellier the better!
But this...creature? This creature was the worst thing he had ever smelled. He didn't think that this was the same as it had been with the cheese: he did not think that the smellier the creature, the more...friendly, or something.
Mostly because it was trying to eat somebody.
"Hey! Quit that!" Nemausa shouted, his voice squeaky in the warm night air as he sprung into action. Without even thinking, he cast his hand forward and shouted, "Hide!"
Directly beneath the stranger's body opened a hole, and the stranger fell into it. Nemausa leapt over the hole and the stranger, squaring up between it and the creature. "Run! Get outta here!" Nemausa said over his shoulder, hands curling into fists as he eyed the creature. The burrow - the tunnel - would take the stranger far away from the creature, and Nemausa was pretty sure he could hold the creature off once his magic ended.
Y'know. Probably. It was looking at him in a way Nemausa did not like, and Nemausa glared right back at it. "You're just a big dumb--big dumb--big dumb--thing!" Nemausa said, stamping a foot in frustration at not being able to come up with a good insult.
Perhaps the creature took this as an insult, or a challenge - because the next thing Nemausa knew, the creature was charging him.
Quote:
Nemausa and allies within 10 feet of Nemausa see an entrance to a burrow appear in front of them, big enough for them to step or slide into, if they so choose. If they enter the burrow, they disappear from the field and enter a pocket dimension in the form of a maze or labyrinth of burrows, which keeps them from being seen or attacked (or attacking others outside of the labyrinth). They may follow the burrow for 15 feet in whatever direction they choose, whether to run away or sneak past an enemy. The burrows exist for 30 seconds at this stage; at the end, anyone inside is shunted harmlessly back to the surface and out of the pocket dimension. This attack may be used 3 times.
Bäl's sense for others was still untrained, at best. It wasn't often that he powered up and had to deal with other people- the whole event of turning into a Senshi was mostly for show! Just something that his brothers liked to see him do to 'fulfill his destiny' or whatever. He didn't do it with the intention of actually having to fight anything, usually.
It just hadn't worked out like that this time.
And when another Senshi, some small little rat of a boy with massive ears, pounced in front of him, Bäl scrabbled for escape with renewed vigor- it just didn't amount to much. The ground suddenly yawned open in front of him, and with a little startled yelp of horror, Bäl found himself toppling into... into some... unidentifiable space.
Where the ******** was he. Why had this happened. That rat had done this? Why? 'To help him?' Some treacherous part of his mind whispered.
Bäl had been practically trapped beneath that putrid monster, another Senshi had seen him, and of course, dove in to help. That was what Senshi were supposed to do. Fight evil. Help people. The whole stupid 'savior' thing (it wasn't exactly what Bäl did, but that was irrelevant). And now before him was the Great Choice.
Run. It was what the other Senshi had suggested he do, and if he scampered down the pathways of this burrow, he was sure he'd wind up farther from the monster than where he'd started.
Or...
Or.
Man, Bäl did not like 'or.' But the most reasonable thing to do, instead of letting mousy fend for himself against a creature that Bäl had gotten tangled up with, was to stay. Help. Two of them would have better odds of fending off a dangerous enemy than one of them, no matter how little Bäl liked it. So it was just a matter of figuring out this... this strange pocket-space, to make sure he ended up where he wanted to go.
Oh, and maybe he had a few seconds to spare to rummage through his own space pocket? He'd hardly found good use for it, but he'd decided to keep a bag of essential, necessary survival items. A backpack with a billion pockets, heavy and crammed full of notebooks, pens, an extra sweater, the heaviest water canister one could find.
And a few seconds later, when he popped out of the burrow to see the stinking chicken looming over little rat-boy, Bäl hefted this ridiculously heavy backpack and swung for the monster's stupid, ugly head.
Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2026 8:11 pm
Nemausa was surprised - stunned, actually - that the other Senshi stuck around. On Nemausa, it was eat or be eaten, and nobody would turn down the chance to get away from danger safely. But his surprise didn't last long; he watched the backpack (was there a Senshi of Backpacks? Was that Senshi this Senshi?) collide with the creature's face.
"Yeah!!" Nemausa cheered, actually pumping his little fist in the air as he cheered his new friend on. It was a very good thing his new friend had stuck around, he realized belatedly, because he didn't really have another move, other than the burrows that gave him his Sphere.
Nemausa darted up to join the other Senshi, over the dazed creature. He did not have any weapons, but he did have his feet, and he used them to kick the thing, hard, two or three times. Then he grabbed the other Senshi's hand and tried to pull him away from the fight.
"C'mon!" Nemausa said. "Let's get outta here!" Again, he cast his arm forward and a burrow entry appeared a few feet in front of them. He didn't know if the monster was defeated and he didn't really care, he just didn't want himself or his new friend to get freaking eaten!
He was actually a little bit surprised that the stinking monster was stalled after a walloping from his heavy bag. These types of ghastly supernatural creatures- Bäl couldn't say what would stop them, so he was very, very quietly smug that his non-magical attack hadn't done nothing.
But the thing still rumbled, still writhed, twisting its great head around to glower at them as the little rat-boy darted forward to grab Bäl's hand. And as a point of fact, the avian beast did not actually seem injured by anything either of the Senshi had done. Stalled for a moment, sure. But stopped? Nnnno... Didn't look it. It lifted itself to its full height, oily wings splayed wide and let out an eradrum-rupturing shriek that had Bäl shriveling down to try and cover his ears.
...And then his stupid big brotherly instinct must've kicked into overdrive, because he didn't even spare a second of thought before he was throwing an arm out to wrap around rat-Senshi's head, covering his comically large ears.
Escape was starting to sound pretty good, since this was probably the extent of the damage they could do- and it didn't look like much.
"Right," Bäl agreed with a crisp nod, letting the other boy bustle them toward the burrows, even as the chicken caterwauled a great cry and dove for them.
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2026 6:55 pm
If not for his new friend's hands over his big floppy ears, Nemausa probably would've been struck momentarily deaf, so loud was the creature's scream. He stumbled back with the other Senshi as they crashed into the relative safety of his burrow.
Nemausa was still fumbling backwards, deeper into the burrow, when he felt something crack all to pieces beneath his boot--and above, everything went deadly silent. Slowly, dreading what he might see, Nemausa lifted his foot and saw remnants of an egg, crushed, beneath it.
The egg must be connected to the bird, but - Nemausa didn't know how. He patted his pockets and pulled out one of the shinies he'd gotten from a vendor in town, a charm of some kind, and used the edge of it to pluck a bit of broken shell out, intending to examine it, but it disappeared in a puff of icky-smelling smoke before he could get a good look at it.
Either the chicken was planning a sneak attack, or it had disappeared too, because it was deathly silent up above.
Nemausa looked at his new friend, eyes wide as he whispered, "...Do you think it's gone?"
Alright, so this was obviously <******** nonsense. His city had not had all this ridiculous s**t in it before, Bäl was sure of that. He'd lived in Destiny City his whole life, and had never had to deal with stinking, oily monsters or weird, non-human... aliens until a few months ago, so the only reasonable solution was that he had some brain tumor or something that was making him hallucinate wildly. ...Yeah, that was it.
They were safe(?) in the burrows created by the other Senshi, at least to the extent that it didn't seem like the monster could enter them- for now.
Bäl watched with a perturbed- disgusted, confused, tense- expression as the smaller boy scrapped something off the bottom of his boot. Or tried to. It dissolved into an array of particles before the action was even complete, and that single weirdness might have been enough for Bäl to lose it right there.
It just disappeared. Any evidence they'd had of something existing was just gone. Like the Youma he'd fought when he powered up for the first time. Just gone, and he'd had to struggle with 'how could this be real' then, too.
...But he'd been with his family, then, with his brothers. Not some stranger.
He couldn't let some outsider see him crumble into hysteria.
Bäl's face pinched, shaking his head, swallowing down a cold in his throat, fighting to be normal and not freaking out. "It-" He choked. "I think- maybe, yeah. Maybe it's gone. I don't hear anything..." But that could just mean it was in hiding... But whether it was or not, they couldn't stay in these burrows forever- how much magic could this little Senshi really have? "I dunno. Maybe we should try and get further away before we do anything... stupid."
Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2026 6:50 pm
Nemausa's ears twitched as he strained his ears, waiting a moment to see if he heard anything - absolutely anything - from up above. He didn't, but his fellow Senshi was right; they couldn't stay in the burrows forever.
"This way," Nemausa said with a nod, then took to all fours to dart down the burrow, as far away from the entrance, the nightmare bird thing, and whatever it was he'd stepped in as he possibly could.
It didn't last long, and soon the burrow path escalated slightly and expelled them gently. They were far enough way - Nemausa hoped - and he looked back at Bäl, concerned.
"Are you okay? That thing didn't get you, right? You're not--I dunno, bitten or pecked? Bleeding?"
Bäl could not help the way his face dropped immediately into something perturbed... and maybe also a tiny bit disgusted as his new mousy 'friend' dropped to all fours and scampered ahead like an animal. But perhaps he shouldn't have thought anything of it at all. He had eyes and could see incredibly clearly that this Senshi was strange.
Everything about this powered life was so ******** strange.
They made it out of the burrow. Despite it being an ally's magic, Bäl still found himself relieved. He didn't generally mind being cooped up- he wasn't claustrophobic or anything- but he was very near magic-phobic, and it definitely wasn't his favorite thing to be at the mercy of someone else's spell. Of anyone's spell, really. Even his own abilities were something he'd barely used...
And they probably would've been helpful in protecting them from a creature like that.
He dismissed Mousy's convern with a flippant wave of his hand. "A few scrapes from falling. A cut here and there. Basically nothing. Don't worry about me." Against his better judgement, and with obvious hesitation, he continued, "I'm Bäl."
He didn't like this name, didn't like calling himself this weird thing- someone he felt like he wasn't. But Mousy deserved something for getting them out of there... "And you? Are you hurt? You didn't have to jump in and help. I would've been fine." Probably. He had been fine every other time he'd come up against an enemy...
Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2026 9:21 pm
"Nemausa!" Nemausa chirped back. "Senshi of Burrows. Like the one we were just in," he added with a happy, simple smile. Now that they were out of danger, Nemausa was content as could be, the stress and drama having floated away like clouds in front of the sun.
"I'm okay," he promised, touched that his new friend--Bäl--was concerned for him. "On my planet, there's lots of very scary monsters hanging out in the Piles, so we gotta get good at running away or else we'll get eaten or stamped on," he explained, with an almost sheepish smile. "They come in handy when you just need to get away." Nemausa hesitated. "It...it was really nice of you to come back and help. So we can just say that we helped each other and did it together, cause you probably would've been fine and I probably would've been fine but...together is better, don't you think?" Nemausa gave another bright smile, then eyed the other Senshi's outfit curiously.
"What are you the Senshi of?" Nemausa asked, tilting his head at the golden wing-like accents draped over the human's arms. Unless he wasn't a human and those were part of his body! Maybe this was another friend from far away!!
