Fire at Moontree Manor

November 17, 2015:

After rebuking his advances, Rain finds that the cost of turning down a demon may be her very home. WAND and Zee come to assist in fighting the supernatural fire.

Moontree Manor - New York City

Moontree Manor is a modest-sized, imposing manor built in Gothic style, complete with foreboding paint job. The roof and spire on the right are done in a dark blue paint that offsets the white. It's like someone went a little wild with the colors. A wrought iron fence surrounds the property, and the lawn grows wild, with various herbs and flowers taking over. Ivy and vines crawl up the walls, hopeful for sun. The building seems to be in good repair despite this.

Inside, the atrium and living room are luxurious. Greeting guests is a large statue of Anubis, his hand outstretched and acting as an incense burner. The atrium is painted black, with flecks, indicating stars. It's a very afterlife-esque journey inside. The floors are a beautiful, black marble that lead one inward. There's stairs to so many rooms, it feels almost intimidating.

Characters

NPCs: Moontree Manor Staff

Mentions:

Plot:

Mood Music: Papa Roach - Burn


Fade In…

The manor, or the left and side wing of it anyway, is in flames. Churns of magical fire pour out of broken windows in the front room, the structure full of heavy smoke and the onsets of real fire, started off the baking heat of the inner magical source. In shallow graves all over the lawn, undead claws sink into the dirt and heave themselves upwards. Six have already lurched onto the sidewalk and some into traffic, causing all manner of chaos in the street as drivers slam brakes, hit each other, and veer wildly. Others abandon their cars, a few with skeletons chasing them. Many of the skeletons are heading into the inferno of the manor, their skeletal bodies black charred shapes, magically animated, backlit by the horror of the flames.

Really? Rain let him into her house and - she's kind of reckoning she deserved it for spruning him but - The witch is grabbing her cat and getting out of the house before turning to the skeletons. "Hell's bells." She's got to stop those skeletons, but she does alert for help through any communicator she can. Normal firefighters would just get killed. Time to exorcise the undead.

Having gone to the park to meditate for a bit in the cool wind of a New York autumn, Snake-Eyes is quite surprised to find the home he was visiting a short time ago is now under a full-blown call Ash Williams and bust out the chainsaws Evil Dead invasions. Skeletons to the left, zombies to the right, flames all around, and a brat of a genie in charge of it all.

While the supernatural is not something that Snake is typically used to, he's gone through enough that a new twist on the changing breach that is his life is not terribly huge on his psyche, the Arishankage ninja focusing his qi to calm his spiirt as he clicks his radio, a short Morse message to detech anyone in the area before both the blade of the clan is taken out with the right hand and paired with a large combat knife in the left.

Setting himself, he takes off in a sprint down the street, blade slashing through the air as he comes across the first skeletal target before it is paired with a second attack. He's not bothering with the skeletons on the ground. He doesn't know where Rain is, and assuming that she may still very well be within the home as he leaps from the street to the fence, then up onto a tower on the first floor, and then through a window on the second floor where he rolls across the floor and gets to his feet as he starts to scope the house, looking for any of the helpers that he knows out through the back door, and searching actively for Rain, Captain..

..and the person responsible for this.

Zee's received the request for help from Rain and let Fenris and May know … and also dropped by The Triskelian, to collect Agent May. Teleporting the two women to the manor and arriving at the gates, Zee looks to May and shakes her head "This … is bad. I'll try and take care of the fire, can you handle the skeletons for a moment?"

Eyes glowing blue with her magic, Zee doesn't waste any time and murmurs the words of a spell. She knows the fire is magically induced, but fire is fire none the less. She's going to seal the room where she detects the source of the flames to be and evacuate all the air.

Rain is heading out into the yard. "Snake?" She calls out. She has Captain in her arms, who looks terrified. The servants are scrambling out. They can likely teleport. Steven uses wire-style weapons and garrotes a nearby skeleton. DAVID SMASH, and the roller derby succubus has running after one with a chainsaw while her daughter sighs.

Rain's going to try to help create water, but she waves to people. "Be careful, please!" She calls out. "I probably did deserve this a little, but he sort of went - a lot upset."

Fenris arrives in the yard. Fires of victorian gothic mansions in the middle of Flushing Meadows park definitely get his attention. Also all kinds of other attention. The Skelotons though, those are interesting. And by interesting we mean something that the God-Wolf frowns upon. He winds up near Rain after coming through a portal. "What in the Nine Realms…"

Melinda May arrives via the Zee teleportation service, then as she takes a looks at the goings on while pulling the butterfly swords from under her jacket, the blades gleaming with freshly applied consecrated oil. "Gladly." And then she's charging toward the skeletons. Perhaps she's a bit displeased by seeing Rain's home on fire?

There are a lot of opening graves in the yard! Somebody was really busy, or on a very high skill level of 'Plants vs Zombies', at the least. And brings a bit into question about where they came from, potentially. But for now, they are starting to amass on the inside of the fence. Maybe singly they are easy to take apart, but as a group, that could start to be a problem. Most of the ones chopped apart fall over… and their hands grab and cling to the heels of the people near them. Innocent people have skeletons attached to them and are screaming. Heroes usually help poor innocent people, and their number is growing. Chopped in half? Still clawing, which suggests a naughty level of necromancy.

A huge fiery bat launches out of the front window, with a loud shriek of potent magic. The bat dives at the nearest targets at the gate (Zee and May at this moment), with fire guano falling into the bushes, and setting those ablaze. The front rooms don't have a magical source now, but there's also a lot of illusion focused in a few places near it. And a basement room? The portal is open, and is spewing forth a lot of foul things. How evil of Rain to have a portal there!… Someone didn't just go crazy, this looks really elaborate: like a guy going 'crazy' who just happened to have a body bag in his car.

Smoke curls and puffs in the source room of the flames, turning black with soot and expired flames. That room looks decent, although really fried, as the source of the fire. So long as one doesn't intend to breathe, it'd be safe, as a room. The fire spread and is on the roof in various locations, but the source has stopped emitting more magical flame.

As Snake-Eyes makes his way through the house, the ninja has to focus on what is real and what is illusionary. Fortunately, having visited the house before, he knows most of it and slides to a halt before the basement, blades on the defensive. He knows when it might be just a little out of his specialities. Backing up the stairs, he swipes the mikimoto, with it's chi enhanced blade as he pushes upwards.

Clicking his radio, he burst transmits in Morse code. 'Basement. Portal. Illusions. No sign of attacker.'.

As he comes to the foyer, he looks up towards the second floor, hearing the whoosh of air from the sitting area as the door slams shut and Zee sucks the air from it to put it out. 'Pushing upstairs.'.

When Zee works out just what happened here, she is not going to be happy. If Kythe thinks he got a speaking to before, he's in for a big surprise. Those with magic powers, no matter how they are conferred, have a responsibility and acting like a spurned brat is not acceptable.

The fire is going to have to wait, there's a bat diving at Zee and May and the Mistress of Magic turns her focus to it. "May, Sword!" the raven tressed woman calls, knowing that May generally keeps her swords annointed in holy oil. With a murmur, a gout of fire from the bat hits the sword, hopefully igniting it … that should help May with Skeletons.

With another murmur, a small portal opens just above the bat, sucking it in to banish it… if the spell works as it should, that is.

He really set this up. Rain feels horrified by all that he planted. All that's going on. A feeling of regret and betrayal. Rain is just goin to work on keeping an eye for people. Magic is woven to help create water and banish a skeleton. Countering necromancy is difficult and Rain is distraught. "Wow. I thought batshit insane was just a metaphor. STOP CRAPPING ON MY LAWN. YOU ALREADY SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE!" Rain is upset. Dreadfully upset. One Skeleton burns up in a silver flame.

Fenris whips up the winds and goes looking for a water source. Ah there's one. Time to make it rain. Though in this case the old wolf means that literally. He may well empty a nearby water feature but it's time to bring a bit of a drenching. If that bat comes back Fenris is going to have more than just sharp words for it.

Melinda May turns to look at Zee when she shouts, then puts her swords in the path of that gout of flame. All right, skeletons deal with this now. And, upon hearing the morse code over her comm and knowing what it means, she says tersely in reply, "Close that portal, Snake. Or regroup out here." And then she's back into the fray, swinging the flats of her blades at the skeletons and following those hits with particularly vicious kicks.

It's almost like watching River Tam surrounded by Reavers. But not really.

Close the portal? Close the portal?? Snake-Eyes is not a mystic or a mage. He's just a ninja. How to close a portal? Well, when you're with his experience, he grabs two of the M-67 baseball fragmentation gernades from his belt, yanks the pins, throwing them down into the basement, before slamming the door closed.

Hopefully portals don't like explosives.

The rooms where Snake entered are starting to gain fire now, and are darkening with smoke and extreme heat. It's very hard to see. The manor's helpers are outside now, so none of those are about where Snake is located, and no sign of Rain or Captain in the upper level, nor of demons or people with obvious magical zippos. However, at Snake's feet, something is coming up through the floor. It looks like a ghost, if a ghost were draped in bloody mist. It writhes through the floor, jaw unhinging and soundlessly reaching out at him, with claws of extreme heat. Several more start to rise nearby, but seem to have very little vision, as they do not turn towards him. It would not be a far guess to assume these are portal related.

The bat doesn't appear to have a warlock or mage controlling it, it enters the portal Zee made mindlessly and is sucked away. It didn't veer or have intelligence, which would read that it was just sent, maybe as a distraction. Magical fire flows over the sword, but can't find purchase on the holy area. The fire, upon touching the holy oil, will go out. But there is plenty of other fire around to re-ignite the sword with. The lawn is a good example now, as a piece of roof tumbles down and crashes to ignite it. Plenty of non-magical fire to go around. So a simple whip of May's swords will grab that fire, and send it through the skeletons. So much fire! The skeletons don't seem to like it.
At least, until Rain starts dumping a lot of water on the lawn, and things turn to steam. At first, Fenris's wind makes things a lot worse: the roof fire spreads all over, with the gathering wind. But not for long. As the rain begins from Fenris, the house will turn into sheets of very angry steam, extremely hot, and turning the whole situation into a murky mass of steamy heat. And the skeletons, well, they get rained on. So they're not on fire as much now, and can reach for May. If, that is, she wasn't cutting them apart anyway. It's hard to do a lot when your pieces are very, very small.

The basement, upon getting a grenade, starts to laugh. "/REALLY/?" Kythe calls obnoxiously, just after the door slams closed. Maybe they do like explosives.

While the gernades were.. not effective, they did have one effect. Pausing at the door on his way out, he sends a message.

'Kythe is basement. Repeat. Kythe in basement.'

'Target with extreme prejudice.'.

And with that, Snake-Eyes retreats from the interior of the house of horrors to allow the bigger guns a chance to take their turn on it.

With the fire out and the bat gone, Zee turns her attention to the Skeletons. "They don't like fire?" she asks May "Stand back, calling Lightning…. " This is something that the young mage has practiced a lot.

Focussing her attention on the remaining Skeletons, eyes still glowing as she speaks the words of yet another spell, she uses the electricity in the air, causing lightning to streak down and strike at least some of Skeletons.

Now she recognises Kythes presence and she turns her glowing eyes to Rain, "Where is his staff?" Rain has to have it, surely? She should be able to compel the staff bound demon to behave.

Rain pauses. "He kept it on him, so likely it's in his room or near the basement." In otherwords, near or with him. "I had tried to be kind and respect his rights as a sentient being. THAT backfired royally. Hang on, I'll try to divine it." Rain is going to reach out and try to find that staff.

"Do that. I'll send him elsewhere if I can. And if you want." Fenris growls as he finishes with the rain and begins to whip the winds up again. Steam go away. Wind is so underrated sometimes. Good thing Fenris has had a lot of practice using it.

Melinda May moves clear quickly and pulls Derby Succubus with her so they're both out of the way when Zee strikes several skeletons with lightning. Then she drops her swords, pulls her batons to offer to the succubus before pulling her own chain whip. SHe's resorted to it less of late because it can be rather … ostentatious. But right now, she needs to mow through the rest of the skeletons, and quickly. She sidesteps clear of the succubus so as to avoid catching her with the weapon, then starts the chain spinning fast enough to whir through the air audibly. A moment later she's kicking the end of the chain at a skeleton's head.

And no, she's not immune to the heat and steam and wind. She's working through them now, and will suffer for it later.

The skeletons seem to not like electricity a lot more than they disliked fire. It arcs through their wet bodies and even conducts to MORE skeletons than Zee could hope for! They rattle and dance and do nothing effective, which makes them Dead Meat for Melinda's weaponry. Most of the skeletons can be treated with this magic combo, if Zee keeps it up. The ones that are mindlessly roving into the street and chasing onlookers around (this will be epic on youtube) are all spread out and harder to chain-lightning, so May is most effective on those.

For some reason, the others start to … act disoriented, slower. Like the magic holding them together suddenly got revoked, down to just a trickle, and unexpectedly.

But now, some people have thought of the staff. It can be sought. It isn't easy to find, something is wrong with it's trace. But there it is: it's on top of the portal that he opened, the portal which is belching out haunting spirits of some type. Haunted Manor incoming. However, there's something really strange: something is pulling the staff. It is being called away by a magic that isn't present. Nobody nobody sees this side, so it won't be obvious at first what it is. And then it will be, as the Staff is pulled away: it just got summoned, by somebody. Somewhere. And it's gone. If Kythe had more to do and more things to set on fire, he doesn't get to do it.

The mess of the portal remains, but is starting to close by itself. The haunting spirits aren't a type to care about it, they're just here to vengefully turn on anything in their vicinity that they can see.

What remains? A house on fire, but the rain is minimizing the exterior blaze. Some of the other wing could be saved, no doubt, from the fires. The skeletons have been zapped or just collapsed. And the spirits are in the house, poltergeisting dishes out of cabinets and stacking charred books in ways that no humans would think to stack them. There is mess to clean up, but the 'threat' seems to have other problems of his own to deal with now.

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