Oz: Crossroad of Legends

Location: Yggdrasil

Ozma was giving instructions to her troops inside the entryway, when she suddenly stopped to listen.

....

Her eyes widened. She grabbed a communicator, giving instructions to those present and those in base at the same time. "Defensive positions! Now! Code Ruby! Get me my crown!"

---

In the sky, a thin black mist swirled over the winds. The mist gathered and became a thin trail of black sand. From the sand, a spark ignited a flame, from which a single eyeball spawned forth and observed the land of Oz.

It didn't like it.

The air quivered, as if it was retching in disgust. The eye dissolved back into sand and departed.

---

Ozma stood with her Code Ruby guard both inside and outside the tree. They wore pressure suits with air-tight helmets, and were comprised entirely of mages. Ozma herself stood crowned with anti-magic at the ready. It was a custom made ready comprised of solid fire that Ozma liked to use as a battle platform.

She couldn't feel the changes in the air, but that was good. If she could feel them she'd probably be dead very soon. She looked left, and saw nothing. Right, and nothing. Her mages were casting time-loop detection spells, but they weren't triggering. And that is very scary. Time-loop detection alerts the caster to the exact time and location of a surprise attack just before it happens. Once the surprise does happen and the information is confirmed, the information is relayed back in time to avert it in the first place. So if it's not triggering, either everyone dies in the attack anyways rendering it moot...

"Or we never actually see anything." Ozma muttered through gritted teeth. Realization hit her as she looked up, and noticed the swirling black mist weaving its way through Yggdrasil's leaves. The tree inhaled, and the mist was gone.

Ozma tore off her helmet. "Bugger!" she yelled.

She grabbed her communicator again, "Fortify the base. Witch is in the tree."

Suddenly the ground rumbled, causing Ozma to pull her ready into the air, obviously ready for the Kalidah that clawed out of the ground in a fury. Ozam waved her hands and the fury had a critical malfunction, forcing it to eject the Kalidah to the wayside. Painfully. Meanwhile the mages behind her fired into the air above them, as their detection spells had caught the Poppipods floating in gently from above. Ozma hit her alert button and troops jumped onto the battlefield, ready to fight off yet another wave of witchspawn.

"It's quite all right, child", said Glinda. "Say... When my own daughter was young, I used to do her hair all the time. Would you like it if I fixed yours?"

---

Whatever the masked guy said was something Irving wasn't quite able to process. His vision fell to a blur, his head began to pound like a drum, and he almost felt like throwing up, forcing him to place a hand on the ground to re-orientate himself and hopefully keep his breakfast where it should be.

"Grr... Not easier the second time around."

He violently shook his head and stood upward, stumbling slightly. Once his bearings were straightened, he eyed the bridge.

"You two alright?" he called over to Baron and Catie. "Time's a wastin', and that bridge ain't gonna fall on it's own soon."

"Ready when you two are", said Irving.

Location: Yuleia

"I got it."

Celeste had a whirring beeping thing strapped to a space-age mobile in his hands. And whatever it was, it was working. Anthea nodded and re-appeared next to a bridge some far distance away from where Celeste currently was. She triggered a communication relay implanted in her cybernetic brain and spoke.

"Test message to science guy, repeat, test to-"

Test message received. Psycho-cellular network is active. Encryption proto-

Anteha appeared next to Celeste again.

-cols engaged.

Celeste looked at Anthea. "That's going to get old pretty soon."

"Oh it already has," she said, "to me anyways."

Celeste held out the device and thought to her again, "If you please, put this somewhere safe inside the castle."

He was hardly finished by the time Anthea got back from doing it. "Hm. Thanks." Celeste thought to her again, now crossing his arms and just looking at her. Jirachi kept going cross-eyed as he tried to keep track of Anthea's comings and going and by this point he just gave up.

"So is everyone hearing your thoughts now?"

"No. Psychic control keeps it directional, and it only transmits intentional verbalized thought. You can't send images or anything like that since that wouldn't interface with the earpieces. It's quite literally just like talking on a phone, only faster and with thoughts. I could start listening in on everyone by disabling the filters on the hub, but frankly I'm not interested."

"...I am here you know. You can talk, like, with words."

"I think this is faster. But you would know, wouldn't you."

Anthea thought through a variety of reasons why Celeste might say that at this point, and just decided to get the exposition over with.

"Relativistic cognition with passive automation," she said, tapping her head, "I can think as quickly as I like while skipping the boring parts of running for a relative week straight."

"But naturally the automation stops if your intended route is interrupted."

"It's retroactive. I'm paying attention to every nano-moment but it's deleted from memory if it's not important, so I'm not burdened by it." She said, and actually felt a bit relived actually being able to talk to somebody about this kind of stuff.

"And you interact with us on the slow path-"

"By being very patient."

Celeste chuckled, still making eye contact.

"There's a battle going on."

"Neither of us care."

"True."

Still looking at her.

"So what do you think I'm thinking right now? With an infinite cognition speed and that kind of computing power you should be able to predict my every action."

"And yet I can't."

"Or you want me to think you can't."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you're trying to convince me to trust you, since you need me to ensure you some leverage against an aggressor with power even greater than yours. Did you think I'd get that far?"

Anthea smiled.

"I amended my estimate a thousand times for every subsequent syllable you said, each time populating and depopulating trees with exponential growths of possibilities. But before you had begun verbalizing your conclusion, I did, actually, think you'd get that far, yes. But you do over estimate me."

"How so?"

"Because I'm still human at heart. And sometimes something just doesn't occur to me, even after thinking through it a million times."

"Hence why you currently look kind of silly talking to yourself." Celeste gave a small grin.

"Yep." Anthea said, without flinching. Any embarrassment was retroactively deleted from memory so she wasn't burdened by it.

Celeste nodded, "I can get you inside that base. Even at relativistic speeds, your position function is continuous. You need a teleport to clear the defenses I'd assume. Otherwise you'd have already done the extraction."

Anthea nodded.

"So let's get started." Celeste projected some blueprints. He expected materials to spontaneously appear around him as they did before...but this time nothing. Instead he saw Anthea with a finger raised.

"We have a slight problem."

Celeste followed to where her finger was leading. His gaze landed on a young woman with red hair dressed in purple. Her arms were crossed and she looked at Celeste like he was made of orichalcum.

"OH GOD NOT YOU!" Celeste yelled, highly appropriate given his context.

"Found ya," she said, "You know you're going to have to pay for all that stuff right?"

Celeste was rather at a loss for words, but there wasnt any pounding in his head so he managed to utter "Stuff?" out loud.

"Mhm. Crystals. Tech supplies. Flux capacitors. Dream Mist. I have a whole list of stuff on your tab."

She pulled out a rather long scroll. Celeste looked around, and noticed Anthea was nowhere in sight. Great.

"...ah, I uh...was wondering where all those materials were coming from. Unfortunately...I have no money. Of any kind." He admitted.

Contrary to expectations, the girl seemed to light up. She clapped her hands in front of her. "Oh good," she said, "that means you owe me."

She grinned. It made Celeste shiver.

"I can't see a truly good plan, so I instead have to decide on the plan with less potential risks. Maybe while we're farther away you could revert to human form, and we could approach cautiously. We have a better chance at reasoning with them if they don't know you're a fearsome dragon yet," Elia said, then she added "And of course, if something does go wrong, you could transform, and we would certainly have the element of surprise and gain an advantage."

Whatever presence is in that tree is immensely powerful, and I don't want it to sense us if we can avoid it. It likely knows we're here already, but we have to do something, so it's a chance we'll have to take.

In between getting her faced licked off by Charlie and cursing her luck Lana noticed the masked guy and his strange creatures enter her room. "Sigh when did my room become so popular?" Lana sighed as she inched her way towards her bedroom.

-------------------

Baron saw Irving and was about to instruct Catie to attack the bridge but then he got a message from Nobunaga. "Catie hold we have to wait for a signal," Baron said stopping Catie. "Sigh," Catie pouted as she placed the special arrow back into its quiver.

------ Meanwhile dood--------------


"Wait what hold my what...?" Bowser said looking around confused as the world went dark. Bowser, Kamek, and Alyssa appeared on the other end with Nobunaga. "Gwa, the pain it hurts, please Dr. Mario help me," Bowser moaned. "Shh you stupid lizard," Alyssa said to Bowser.

"Sigh, you think he would be use to it sire you use to teleport remember when you were younger," Kamek sighed. While Kamek was busy facepalming Alyssa recived the message about the fog and waiting for a signal. "Hey Kamek is it, tell King Moron that the fog is going to help us and hurt our foes," Aylssa said. "Okay," Kamek nodded as Bowser finally gained his bearings. "Hey why did my minon's hair turn white, and why is it so cold?" Bowser asked nobody in particular

"Yes. We should also find something to talk about along the way. It will help pass the time. There's an additional benefit in the fact that two people having a casual conversation appear less threatening and brooding to scouts and sentries than two people who are silent and quite focused on reaching the tree. Something so simple could ultimately be quite helpful," Elia said.

"A good idea," Ethan says thoughtfully, nodding. Hrm... Even I didn't think of that angle immediately... Interesting. Very interesting indeed.

"Tell me, then. What is your world's magic like? In my world, most mages need the aid of tomes to cast magic. But you carry no obvious tome, and I sense a great power, hidden deep within you. A power that may even be comparable to mine, if not greater. This intrigues me greatly. Can your people use magic freely, or is there some other restriction placed on you?"

--------

"Arista," she replies, smiling slightly. She seemed to feel a bit better now. "But everyone just calls me Aris. Um... Those creatures you have with you... If you don't mind me asking Mr Joshua, what are they? I've never seen anything like them before."

Elia took a few minutes to form an idea of what magic in Ethan's world must be like. She wasn't sure exactly how accurate the picture was, but it gave her a place to start in order to explain the differences. "In Austur all humans are born with magick, while psuedohumans and metahumans have innate powers instead of magick. In Austur, for instance, you would have all the powers of a dragon like yourself, but no magick since you would be a form of metahuman unless you were originally born as a human and then became a metahuman. That's the only reason why I can use magick. And no, in my world magick doesn't need something like a tome. Instead we have a limitation in the form of a mana pool. Mana pools are unique to each person, but even those born with a small mana pool can end their life with a far more significant one, through various means and various effectiveness. The most common method is as simple as training. When we use up our mana pools we can still continue to use magick, but it uses up our life energy at that point, so it's possible to cause your own death by doing so."

"There are also seven distinct circles of magick. A person is born into one of the circles, and can only use magick in that circle. The lower the number of the circle, the fewer mages in thag circle at a time. Most of Austur is made up of Type-7 mages who use pure magick, which means millions of people. On the other hand there are usually no more than 20 or so Type-1 mages at a time. Type-1 mages provide healing and defense in battle, but rarely use their magick offensively because with a few exceptions it's often impractical. However, if the enemy is undead holy magick is the best offense. That's not to say offensive holy magick can't work in a normal battle though. It just takes a little more creativity and a watchful eye to find an opening that can be used."