FourEyesIsAFish

Andria Honda-del Toro Andy cried onto the pillow, her body curled up to fit on the grounded mattress she calls her bed, tail wiggling back and forth. Ill-fitting pajamas fit tight against her skin, one of many reminders of the monster inside her. (Normal people don’t turn into an over 7 ft tall half-salamander hybrid when their emotions get the better of them. ) It was the fourth night in a row she had woken up like this, after that last mission. It was her fault, after all. Maybe if she had let herself release the beast within from its chains a bit, maybe then everything would have gone right. Would have gone fine. She shuddered again. Her tail hit a nearby bookshelf, causing vintage books and her well-worn VeriLink to cascade down with a thud. A thud immediately followed up by a beep beep! An indication, combined with the lighting up of the screen, that she had received a message. One look at the screen was all it took to verify it was Cori. This was tradition, more or less. Every month, on the 27th, like clockwork, the same message. Rent due in two weeks. That was it. No mention of the previous mission’s catastrophic failure, not even the vaguest suggestion of who may have been to blame for it, simply the same routine that accounted for a larger portion of Cori’s time “at” the apartment than one might suspect. She slowly rose up and gently grabbed her oversized, retro-styled device. With her large fingers, she slowly typed out a response as steam continued to collect by her legs, which had sunken deep into the mattress. Yeah, I know. Thanks for the reminder, I can have it for you tomorrow if you want. Andy hesitated for a second, took another deep breath, and took a leap. Are you mad at me? For… the incident. Incident? I think I would know if an unimaginable chain of events led to the single worst failure in TARTARUS’s books, and I’d definitely know who’s responsible for it. But I can’t seem to remember such an incident, and can’t even imagine who to pin the blame on. I guess it didn’t happen! : O She sat there kind of stunned for a moment before sighing a breath of relief. Not the direct confirmation she’d want to hear… but at the same time, knowing Cori this was the closest she was gonna get. …thanks Cori. I needed that. The steam stopped flowing from Andy’s eyes, and she felt the slightest upward push from the mattress as she slowly began to cool off and shrink down. She stood up and started to slowly put the books and tapes she’d knocked down back on the shelf where they belonged, carefully handling them to avoid damaging them further. It's an unusual day when Andria Honda-del Toro isn't the first one to a TARTARUS meeting, especially considering that most of the time she's already in TARTARUS's base of operations cleaning, organizing, and otherwise assisting Cordula with keeping the place in working order. However, today is a very unusual day for Andria Honda-del Toro. Andy filed in to her boss/roommate/partner's office after the rest of TARTARUS, carrying a platter holding six plates of lovingly homemade, soft-tortilla tacos for her coworkers and herself, a nervous smile plastering her face but not hiding the clear tension in her movements. She set the platter silently down on the table as Cordula began to talk before sitting down, her chair creaking a bit ominously, as it always does. "...it's a miracle VERITAS even acknowledges we exist after whatever master class in fucking up we did last time. Not only am I not going to discuss that further, but I'm going to declare: Any talk of our last job is banned in this establishment forever!" After last night, that’s all she needed to hear to sigh in relief before taking a bite out of one of the tacos she claimed from among the plates. Andy kept listening intently to Cori’s words, her muscles tensing up at the mention of experimental and scientists. Her body grew out slightly from the resurgent nerves, new freckles popping up as she felt her teeth subtly sharpen. (It’s a weird feeling, one that she couldn’t really describe to anyone but Cori, and even then it was only barely translatable. It was even harder to describe the feeling of holding those changes back.) Andy breathed in, then breathed out, and took another bite as Cori finished up her talk. As the room descended teasing for a moment, Andy tried to interject with “Min’s the most comfortable with blood of al-” before shutting up as the conversation continued on without her. As much as she wanted to defend Min more… at the moment, she honestly didn’t have the confidence to. Good thing Min could defend herself for the most part, as Trois’s (rightfully earned) punch to the face proved. After the fighting died down and Levi and Min both raised the valid concern of needing more information to properly plan the job, Andy decided to raise one of her own. “Uh… Cori, I’m probably going to need to be on higher alert than normal on my dominion. There’s a lot of potential triggers, from the sound of it.” “If personnel are a concern, rest assured I’ve already accounted for them. That’s what this is for.” Cori then pulled out “this” from her jacket pockets. A pair of handguns. “VERITAS didn’t specify we had to keep anyone alive. Due to the recent lack of work we’ve had, I want to do this quick and brutal. Real yakuza shit. Go in guns blazing, scare the bejeezus out of all the staff, kill anyone that doesn’t work on, maybe have one take us to the device, then get the hell out of there.” Cori then returned the guns to her pockets, looking over her assortment of hard workers, surely eager to get back on the clock again. “Objections, anyone?” “...could I help with the scare part? And maybe the killing part, but I’ll have to see how I feel in the moment for that.” To be honest, even with trying to have at least somewhat of a moral code… letting herself be the rampaging monster for a change felt like an invigorating possibility. “Sure.”

I Am My Monster

Rip. or we do a three person rp

I have to say, RIP this. If I ended up accidentally killing i'm so sorry, and I'm willing to revive again if everyone else is interested and isn't too busy! (might need to get reinvited to the discord server though)

I know I'm not around much, but I'm also interested if this is still happening!

long time since i've been here but probably count me in? definitely interested at least

yo?

Madison Yamane Madison sat as St. Peter dug into all of them. Sure, it was likely a larger scale problem... but it still felt very, very personal to the girl. Then he dropped the bombshell. "From here on out, Class 2 Soulders shall be assigned a team of 5, and are to meet a quota of recruiting 1 Lost Soul per week. Now, before I have to do it myself, I suggest you find some people you like and make a team yourself. After reporting to me, I'll assign you your first mission by the end of the day. DISMISSED!" Madison's face went blank as she processed the announcement and her feelings about it. On one hand, working on teams was a nice change of pace from normal operations, and having a support network on the job would help with any unwanted... outbursts. On the other hand, as much as it pained her heart to admit it... she didn't trust herself around anyone else. Sh-her soulverdrive, she corrected herself, was a primal power that no one, not even herself, could fully control. She felt like she'd just be a danger to those around her, a bomb with a short fuse destined to blow up everyone she held dear. "We got five here...instead of lollygaggin' around with us tryin' to find a team of five, just have us here be the team of five and cut yer losses. Just thinkin' it could be a lot easier that way. But I'm just speakin' out loud and most likely out of turn and order, but I'm just bein' honest." Virgil's voice drew Madison out of her thoughts like a riptide. While she knew some of the other soulders here, most of them were relatively new to her. While normally that would be a bad thing for a team... it would likely mean that they would be quicker to put her down if anything went wrong. So of course... "Sounds like a plan..." After Letty introduced herself to the group, Madison swallowed her courage and took the floor. "H-hi. I'm Madison, though some of you already know that. Uh... my soulverdrive..." She struggled on how to explain her nature to the group, but after a few seconds blurted out "My soulverdrive turns me into Godzilla and I... well to be honest I can barely control it." She let out a massive sigh as sweat rolled down her forehead. She felt her nails start to dig into her hands. "So if you see me start growing scales randomly for no reason uh.... I might need a hug?", her cheeks turning red from the embarrassing finish as a tiny bit of stage fright caused herself to shift ever so slightly, some one-off scales darkening.

Sammy Sammy was looking at the menus when Aoki tracked her down and loudly greeted "Heyyyy! Sammy!" Sammy quickly closed out of the menus and turned towards Aoki. "Let's travel together! Us Brawlers gotta stick together, amiright?!" "Oh, course I would! Lemme do this real quick...." She pulled up the menu and quickly partied up with Aoki and friended the boy, all the while Sequoia was chomping on the bits waiting for further orders. "Should all be set now." Sammy's voice stopped for a moment before she looked down at Aoki. A soft, melancholic undertone weaved through her speech as she said. "...thank you so much. It means a lot." Sammy took the chance to take some deep breaths in order to keep those painful memories from flooding her mind again. Soon that slight twange of anxiety faded and she was once more ready to face the world.

Skelly Skelly meandered throughout the town of Sandy Grove, seemingly searching for someone in the chaos. Eventually, she finds who she's looking for: the armored warrior Alliyma, who was found stomping toward her large, rover-like D-rig. Two gaping holes have been pried in the rig's hull where two summon cores used to be. Skelly slowly walked over to the warrior and gently said, “Hey…” Alliyma slammed her fist on a button at the bottom of the cockpit, the glass enclosure rising with the sound of pneumatics to allow access to the driver's seat. "What." “…it looks like we’re stuck here for a bit” "A few minutes. Then we kill the asshole responsible and I'm on my way." “…I say we don’t kill him. Could just disable their cores and leave 'em to the desert to die." "Don't be stupid. We are in no position to dish out petty karmic justice when so many lives are at stake." Pulling herself up into her D-Rig, she pressed a button within, the canopy slowly closing, "I recommend you get your rig in that 'Behemoth' soon, or you'll be left behind. I have a little bird to check on." Skelly walked over to the Frankenstein's Lab... and immediately saw the hood opened and the Synchro Core that had one sat there gone. She opened the door to the interior of the cabin... and saw her stuff rummaged through. For a minute, she panicked... but luckily nothing was stolen. With nothing left to do, Skelly drove to the behemoth, turned her duel rig off, and took out her deck. She took out one card in particular, a purple-bordered card with a chimeric wolf roaring as the art. "Hopefully this goes well, Indy. Hopefully it goes well..."

Skelly It had been a late night for Skelly. Any art form can be quite the endeavor, but Skelly's taxidermy creations required multiple full days of planning, sculpting, and carefully treating animal parts before even beginning final assembly. But, finally, her latest creation, a small recreation of one of the desert's sand otters in a half-dead state, was almost complete. All that was left was the eyes. Skelly turned to the small cabinet in Frankenstein's Lab with the glass eyes and began sorting through... but found she was out of the one type she needed. I did not expect running out so quickly she thought. She looked to her other supplies, finding that they were running out too. Looks like it's about time to head to Sandy Grove again. Skelly's ancient looking RV, which looks like it has seen better days, slowly pulls into the town of Sandy Grove. Skelly herself was covered head to toe in cloth, goggle, mask, and bandage, having come down these roads many times before. It pays for someone something like her to be careful. As Skelly drives up, however, she notices a giant D-Rig sitting on the road. She gets out to examine it, removing her goggles to allow her glassy, blackened eyes to look closely at the rig to see if she could make out anything. No luck. The woman sighed and got back in her D-Rig, and drove up to town. Skelly walked into Sandy Groove, keeping her usual distance and getting the usual side-eyed glances from people, of course. Some of them knew her, some of them didn't. She took out her usual case of mostly-covered corpse-sculptures from the back of her RV, taking a minute to look at the sideboards, which were a mix of rotten wood and bone. However, despite her mostly keeping her eyes in the depths of shadow, someone noticed Skelly's unusual features. It was over in an instant, Skelly being grappled by a hand grabbing the cloth of her shirt and an ornate blade of obsidian being held to her neck. A female voice hissed from behind her "Your eyes. How'd that happen?" A deep, primal fear coursed through Skelly's icy-cold veins, but she wouldn't let it show. Not with this much on the line. "...dead men tell no tales, do they not?" she whispered in a steady, almost robotic voice. "Elaborate." "...how about we go somewhere a little more private and handle this like civilized people?" Skelly growled, her voice dripping with artificial venom and manufactured outrage. "No." The woman pressed the blade lightly to Skelly's throat, the cut oozing dark ichor in place of blood. "Something about you is wrong, and you are going to tell me why. Now." "You think that threatening me wants to make me tell you anything? Cute. What about your own... secret, that giant machine?" It was a bluff, of course. Skelly didn't know if this woman was connected at all to the giant duel rig out side town... but in these wastelands, every bit of leverage counts. "The what?" The bluff failed, as Skelly knew it likely would. "Ah, so that isn't yours then. Fine, as long as you let go of me, I can explain." The intimidatingly armored woman released Skelly, pushing her forward and away a few feet, "Don't try anything, or you'll start losing limbs. These feathers were dyed with blood, but I wouldn't mind turning a few of them black with whatever fills your veins." Skelly beckoned the woman to follow her as she walked off, and the woman followed, keeping just a far enough distance away to always be within arms reach. Soon enough the two found themselves out of earshot of town. Skelly turns to the stranger, and does the one thing she hates most... she takes off her hood and mask, revealing her pale, dead face for the world, her face lined with darkened veins and old wounds never quite healed. The other woman startled back slightly, seemingly caught of guard by this. "How." Skelly didn't answer, her body held still as if a corpse held upright. With a grunt of fear and rage, the woman dashed forward, blitzing the immobile Skelly and pinning her limp against the wall, the blade once again at her throat, "I get it, you're dead, whatever. What. Brought. You. Back." Skelly's body limped against the wall as she frantically thought of what to say. She's been wondering that question for years, about who she is and why she was brought back and how she was brought back and where she came from and- "Last chance!" the woman screamed as she bashed Skelly's skull against the wall by her short hair. "What is the last thing you remember before dying??" "I wish I knew. Why are you so angry?" The woman's brow furrowed in confusion, Skelly's simple statement seemingly piercing deep. "You don't remember?" "Not at all, asides from my name." "Which is?" "Mary Walker. Please, call me Skelly, and I apologize for my curtness" The woman stared into Skelly's eyes for several long seconds, her rage piercing all the way through, before abruptly backing off, the ferocity dissolving as she resheathed her weapon. With a half-smirk, she extended as hand forward, "Pleasure to meet you, Mary. Alliyma." Skelly cautiously shook Alliyma's hand. "Please, pardon my appearance... and the smell... and..." "Trust me, I was prepared for worse. Now if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to." Sprinting to the side, Alliyma jumped up off of a half-ruined metal container, catching the top of the wall with her fingertips and pulling herself up, quickly disappearing among the rooftops. Skelly nods as she heads off before putting on her hood, goggles, and mask, and heads back to town to trade some of her taxidermy creations. Soon she makes it to her favorite glassblower, a young lad completely enthralled with his craft, and exchanged one of her smaller taxidermy insects for a renewed supply of eyes. Soon however, she began scanning the rooftops for Alliyma again.

Remnant of the Wasteland

Sammy "EMERGENCY MISSION: DEFEAT KUWAGAMON AND HIS ARMY..... MISSION SUCCESS! CONGRATULATION TAMERS! BITS earned: 1000 EXP Earned: 100" The message of victory came across Sammy's screen just as the last bit of the Flygon melted back into the air. "We did it kid! How does it feel to win a real fight?" Sequoia asked, his roots looking quite worn from the battle. "Honestly, I just feel relieved we're alright right now. But good job there Sequoia!" Sammy crouched over and offered Sequoia a fist bump, which he quickly accepted. The two of them just stared at each other for a few minutes, just kind of taking in their victory over overwhelming odds. Then Sammy noticed their company was missing. "Hey Sequoia, did you see where that kid and his digimon went?" "Which one?" "The devil-looking one. Weren't they just standing over there?" "Maybe they couldn't handle our brutal efficiency. I don't know." Sammy just kind of stood there, the utter ruthlessness of her attack against Flygon only now hitting her. "Oh god..." she muttered to herself. "I'm a mon-" "Hey kid, you 'aight?" Sequoia asked his tall friend. "You seem a little out of it." Sammy crutched her face in her hands as she starts to cry. "...I regret everything I regret everything!" Sequoia looked down towards the ground. "...look, kid, it's fine. If you feel like you went too hard well... there's always next time. And that Flygon did nearly kill us..." Sammy nodded. "Yeah, I guess you're right... might as well check up on everyone else."