Xaviers!

"Haley" was walking down main street, dressed in a cowboy hat, crop-top and blue jeans. She occasionally glanced around herself nervously as she walked through the streets, making her third cycle of the main roads.


High above her, a very fat raven soared.

After about twenty minutes of wandering around downtown 'Haley' is met by people hurrying down the street towards her. Or rather past her as they flee from something that becomes immediately obvious when a massive explosion rocks the sidewalk and about a block down from them the face of a store is blown across the road, debris smashing into the buildings on the other side of the road before a scattered rain of broken glass and bricks comes down on the area. Char steps out from the ruined storefront and onto the sidewalk, turning to look at 'Haley' as if she'd been waiting.

"Woulda expected more than one o' you at a time, but I'll take it." she grins. Her eyes are flaring brightly to the point that wicks of glowing energy are trailing behind her a little and unlike during their entrance at the school gates when she was more subdued she seems restless, almost manic.

In all the commotion of people fleeing, it might be easy to miss one person who isn't. A fairly unremarkable woman who is calmly working her way through the crowd towards the explosion.

"Well, slap my boots and call me Sally, if it ain't one of them critters what who made a heap-o-a-mess back at the homefront," 'Haley' said in a thick Texas drawl. "Y'all have to be so goshdarn ornery 'round these parts? Y'all best skedaddle before y'all get my dander up."

"Fuckin' hell, Void, you coulda picked somebody more obnoxious?" Char mutters to herself.

"Hey, good news!" she shouts louder, "I've decided to just kill you." The air around Char begins to shimmer with heat and a moment later flames begin to roll off of her in thick waves, quickly filling the entire width of the street before bursting out towards 'Haley' and the unassuming civilian. The fleeing people go from a hurried jog to full-blown panic as two or three stragglers are simply enveloped in the rolling wall of fire.

"Haley" jumped at one of the stragglers, knocking them to the side and trying to use her body to shield them from the flames.

Shit, where the hell are the rest of them? the Raven cursed from up above.

"She'll know where they are."

"Good news, Char." A woman to the side says.

"You don't have to fight just one of us."

With that, a roiling cacophony of pecking and scratching descends on Char's mind.

The flames roll over 'Haley' and ignite clothes skin cracks as it hardens into fired clay, but the woman she tackled to the ground is mostly unscathed safe for some singed hair.

The wave of flame misses Sam but it gets close enough that the heat coming off of it is uncomfortably warm. Her mind finds Char's and latches on, but where most peoples' mental defense is represented by a wall or similar metaphorical demarcation, Char's is a sort of reckless abandon. The pecking beaks hurt her, but there's no flinching back or hesitation, just flames. Her power surges like reckless abandon, raging like a wildfire in her mind and Sam can feel that Char's conscious control is tenuous at best.

In the physical world Char is standing on pavement that's smoking in places and has caught fire here and there with her at the center, cackling to herself. She raises both hands towards Sam and heat distortion gathers in her palms for a moment before exploding outward in a narrow cone aimed right at Sam. The flames are less intense but instead the shockwave throws Sam off her feet and slams her into a storefront, quite literally knocking the air out of her.

Will tried to roll her protected civilian to one side, getting her out of the range of the danger zone.

The raven swooped down, coming in at Char before swooping up at the last second, zooming just over her shoulder.

A white splotch dropped -- not quite right on her head, but at least on her shoulder. Aim was tricky.

Sam gasps as she's slammed against the wall, her form faltering back to her normal one. Scrabbling to get back up, her eyes dart about for potential weapons. She finally scoops up a jagged piece of metal.

Char barely notices the splotch of white at first, although something about the mental pecking and being targeted by a bird seems to click.

"Really? That's the best you got?" she laughs at the bird swooping away.

And that's when an elephant fell out of the sky over Char.

Char's eyes go wide and she throws herself off to the side, narrowly avoiding getting squished. The sheer impact of something that big right next to her on the pavement sends her tumbling for a bit until she releases a small explosion that tosses her straight into the air just enough that she can land back on her feet. Holding out her hands a cone of flame erupts from them and engulfs Elephant-Will.

Where as the flame had caused Haley-Will's clay to blister, crack and harden -- in fact, she was still slumped in the corner, shielding her bystander -- it did not appear to have the same effect on the elephant man.

As the cone of flame dissipated, a green-haired man strode through. The tips of his hair still smoldering, he smirked as he strode forward.

"Run."

Char does look a bit disconcerted, but not scared. She might be incapable of feeling frightened, at least when she's fired up like this. She does break into a run but she runs at Will with a primal scream, the air around her distorting in a heat shimmer and exploding out in a cone of force at Will once she's at point blank range, throwing him off his feet and splattering him against a wall in a splotch of clay. Unlike a regular explosion though, this shockwave persists, the brick-wall around Will crumbling and being blown apart until the blasts finally subsides after a good twenty seconds. All the remains of the building is the Will-splotch-shaped section held together by grey clay.

Then the section of wall topples forward and slams Will into the ground like a - well - wall of bricks.

Meanwhile a little voice in Sam's head berates her.

"You ignore half of your arsenal! Stop using it only to cavort with your girlfriend! Stop playing it safe! Are you worried the humans might see you as a monster? Because you know they already do."

Sam grits her teeth and charges at Char before the girl can get a chance to work up another blast, her form warping and changing as she lurches forward onto all fours and into the form of an immense aurochs.

Or at least that's what she's trying for, her focus not exactly perfect at the moment due to her anger.

The wall of bricks shook, and then flew off as Will ~grew~, expanding out to about 20 feet tall, shaking bits of debris from his hair.

"Wrong move", his voice boomed, as he also charged after Char.

"Stay down," Will whispered to the bystander she was protecting. "On the count of three, we're going to head for that alley, alright? You're going to be alright..."

The civilian just nervously nods at Will.

Sam's body shifts and it feels right. Four legs, hooves, sharp horns. From an outside perspective though, it's a little less clear-cut. Her skin is still the pinkish-white of a human and a shock of red hair is running down the ridge of a spine that's very noticeably pushing up against the skin. It even gives Char pause when she spins around to face Sam and is caught by Sam's head, one horn leaving a gouge across her stomach as she's tossed through the air, right at the giant Will. But before the green giant can grab or smack her out of the air Will's leg suddenly gives out from underneath his step. Severed at the knee it slides off instead of providing the traction of a step and the forward momentum sends him crashing down on the Samrochs.

On a nearby rooftop, Reach is smirking down at the scene, twirling a big meat cleaver on a wrist-strap.

Will grunted in pain, as his giant clay mass came crashing down on the Samrochs. He had the presence of mind to turn from flesh into clay before landing on impact, so rather than being flattened, Sam was more enveloped I suppose that is a small favor.

"Bastard," Will cursed, spitting as he landed.

"Ready for a fastball special, Sammy?" he asked, as sotto voice as a giant could make.

"...do it."

Sam braces herself.

Rather than standing up and giving the crazy bastards more time to slice and dice, Will simply undulated and flexed, sending Sam up through the clay of his body.

"Hey, asshole! Suck on bothadeez! he said, gesturing to his groin, and then extending a hand and flipping Reach off.

And then his middle finger vanished, and Sam was fired out of it like a shell from a cannon, straight towards the rooftop.

What was barreling towards Reach wasn't an aurochs anymore. If anything, it was hard to make heads or tails of it, quite literally. It was a mass of barbed tentacles and tusks reaching out to engulf him.

"How adorably vulgar." He looks like he's about to launch into more of a speech when he's interrupted by the mass of tentacles flying his way.

He throws himself to the side but doesn't quite manage to get clear and several tentacles manage to grab on to him, yanking him prone as Sam impacts on the roof right next to him. For a moment he struggles to get away, pulling against the limbs holding his arm and leg. Then he manages to sweep the cleaver and suddenly the tentacles holding him go limb as a chunk of Sam is cleanly cut off the rest of her.

The distraction allows Will to scoop up her civilian and try to make her way out of the combat zone to safety. Her skin was still baked solid, like pottery fresh out of the kiln, limiting her mobility. But hopefully, the crazed goddess and the 20-foot doppleganger would give her enough cover and time to get everyone safely away.

Satisfied that the Morrigan could probably handle a shitty butcher, Will turned his attention back to finding the firebug.

"Fi, Fi, Fo Fum. C'mere, ya little bitch, papa hungry," he bellowed, crawling along the street towards her last known location.

Though the creature squealed in pain and was bleeding profusely, what's left of it seemed to break up into dozens of black birds, surrounding and pecking at Reach.

Char has hit the ground on the sidewalk nearby and is staggering to her feet, steadying herself against the wall with one hand.

Reach is on his feet already, kicking the severed tentacles off of him when the rest of Sam bursts into birds. He hurls the cleaver at the swarm as it descends on him, the tumbling blade missing all of them and the projected cuts from it only clipping a couple feathers here and there. He's batting at the birds with one hand, keeping them from his face and accepting them scratching and pecking at the rest of him as he pulls a switchblade from his belt. The blade dances through the air as he continuously open and clothes it, creating a flurry of slashes that cut into the flock, clipping wings and here and there cutting deep enough that they just fall from the air, dead before they even hit the ground. Despite the fact that he's bleeding from numerous cuts and tears himself he seems to be having a hell of a time.

Meanwhile Will manages to get the civilian into the alley which ends in a brick wall after 30 feet or so. He's only a couple feet into it when there's the faintest whirring sound behind him, almost drowned out by the distant sound of birds and giants fighting. Just inside the mouth of the alley, right behind him and the injured civilian Manikin is hanging in the air from a wire extending up to one of his hands clutching the edge of the roof. The hand lets go and he drops the remaining foot or so to the ground as his arm is rapidly pulled back to his elbow where it snaps back into place.

Will awkwardly moved her baked and hardened form, putting herself between Manikin and the civilian.

"You can't have her. Go back to where you came from," she said, still in Haley's Texan accent. "Just...get along, now."

Char wrote:Char has hit the ground on the sidewalk nearby and is staggering to her feet, steadying herself against the wall with one hand.

Will increased his speed, crawling along and propelling himself at Char, his giant form allowing him to quickly close the distance. "When I'm through with you, you're going to have all sorts of new exiting holes to talk about."

It's hard to notice exactly when the flock started to come together, but Reach certainly might notice as two pale but bloodied arms wrap around his neck from behind to try to put him in a sleeper hold.

Manikin's head flops to one side, then the other as he regards Will. Then he raises a hand and points at her. There's a sudden sound of decompression and from one moment to the next Manikin's finger has embedded itself in Will's forehead, a thin wire trailing back to his hand. It's uncomfortable, but Will's been through worse. Then there's a slowly building pulling sensation but the wire connecting finger and hand is still slack somehow. Still the feeling persists and, if anything, gets stronger and it's too late that Will realizes it's less of a pull and more suction, clay being pulled in by the armored digit and forced through the hollow wire by an immense pressure differential on the other end.

Char whirls around at the charging Will and raises a hand. The explosion isn't nearly as strong as previously, she's shaken and hurt so while it tears a chunk out of Will's shoulder it doesn't do much to slow him down and he crashes into her, slamming her into the wall.

"Clever girl." Reach chokes out as the arms wrap around his neck. He is, however, still holding a switchblade. The flurry of cuts stops being cast about when he flicks it open into a reverse grip and drives the blade deep into Sam's left arm.

Char wrote:Char whirls around at the charging Will and raises a hand. The explosion isn't nearly as strong as previously, she's shaken and hurt so while it tears a chunk out of Will's shoulder it doesn't do much to slow him down and he crashes into her, slamming her into the wall.

Will reached out his hands and tried to clamp them around Char, melding them together to create an impromptu prison. He would shift them into steel so she couldn't just burn her way out, if he was successful to begin with.