HH [1v1] Gotta Go (Barth + Zar)

[Toshihiko Two]

Barth was miserable. It wasn't because of the pressure, and all of his friend's problems coming to a head at once. It wasn't his looming duals with death. It wasn't even because of the overly physical graduation requirements.

It was poor judgement and frustration.

He had spent the last few days in and out of his bathtub. He had been snippy with Calder, and Zar, and even Christof. He had been nasty in general and was determined to have zero contact with any other being, no matter how badly he needed it.

Especially because of how badly he needed it.

He had run yet another bath (his skin still felt tacky), but when he opened the door to the bathroom it was not right. There was a whole hallway full of stalls. Lockers lined the sides. He could see the beginning of a large, public shower room. Fog rolled out, and he was pretty sure it wasn't from steam.

"Ohhh, you've got to be kidding. You bastards. You bassstardss."

Quote:

Rolling a 5: ALL PLAYERS AT ANY POINT CAN FORFEIT THEIR ATTACK TO ROLL 2d12. If you roll odd, you do this damage to your opponent. If you roll even, you do this damage to YOURSELF - no modifier, you can ONLY DO THIS ONCE. You feel an uneasy unsettling feeling, as if something is coming, but you can't place what or when.

 

[Baneful]

Zar on the other hand, had been tired. Really, really tired. And no matter how much he slept, it didn't seem to go away. He found himself wondering if it ever would. After a while he'd dragged himself from the pillows - which weren't a bed (this really bothered him for some reason) and had crawled across the floor of his room in the direction of the bathroom.

Only when he got there, it wasn't his bathroom, the tiled floor unfamiliar and a lot less scrubbed than he liked it.

He let out a heavy sigh as if all the weight of the world had landed squarely on his shoulders and lay like a goatskin rug where he lay. This was Barth's fault. Entirely Barth's fault. This kind of thing always happened to him lately and he was really beginning to wonder if the haunted house was following him because he was due to leave the school altogether soon.

Well it could stop it. He did not enjoy the overly attached house of nightmares thing one bit. "Anyone there?" he called out, feeling more helpless than he usually did. He could just stand. He could. He could just stand up and look around. But it seemed really, really tough. And maybe someone else was around, even a hunter would do.

 

[Toshihiko Two]

All the shower heads were on. Hot water clouded the room, making it difficult to see. Barth got a weird feeling, like he was being watched. Hell. What did he care? If the House wanted a show, let it have one.

He undid the loops of the belt of his robe with his thorns, and hung the black and overly-fluffy garment on a series of hooks. There were fresh towels. If anything came crawling out of the floorboards, he was going to string it right up to the ceiling and leave in there.

He thought he heard a voice, but like before, the acoustics made everything strange.

Barth took a few deep breaths, and stood under the shower.  

[Baneful]

Zar finally was left with no option but to move, every step grudging and furious as he took it. He wouldn't need to be here, he wouldn't need to be putting so much effort into things if it wasn't for his own jackdamn stupidity. His tail was a burden, his horns were a burden, everything was just additional effort. Everything was heavy.

With a sigh, he shifted out, shedding mass gratefully. But it wasn't nearly enough, this form had wings and a tail too and though normally not a problem, right now they felt like the most superfluous and hellish things he could possibly have dreamed up. His wings didn't even work!

There was water running in the room from all of the showers. It didn't bother Zar, who was dressed in nothing but a simple pair of gym shorts - he did not wear his full formal attire in his own dormitory for obvious reasons - slime did not agree with silk for one thing.

Through the swirling fog and steam, he saw a hazy outline and felt the heat from another body, but without his glasses, which of course he'd left back in his dormitory, he couldn't be sure at all. All he could do was approach, slow and shuffling, his hooves heavier than they had any right to be, until he was just a looming silhouette in the haze.

This time, he didn't attack first. The stairs had been a harsh lesson, instead much more civil, he tapped the fuzzy shape on what appeared to be a shoulder.

 

[Toshihiko Two]

Barth, at least, did not quite start- but there was a familiar biting pain in Zar's ankle.

He relaxed, slightly, when it realized who it was. The pain disappeared. It did no damage whatsoever.

"Zar," he said, as civilly as he could muster. But the tone was short.

Barth leaned a claw against the shower, letting the water get his back.

"We should really stop meeting like this."

HP: 60
DMG: nope  

[Toshihiko Two]

^dice  

[Baneful]

It was Barth of course it was Barth. He seemed to be at the root of all of these awful expeditions into the haunted house. He had walked a very long way to get here and now he was being, well he was practically being rude about it. This was nothing to joke about, did he even REALISE the distance that now lay between him and his pillows? He wanted to rest, he wanted to sleep, and now he was stuck here, getting soaked.

"I agree." he said and it was slow and careful. "I am not much for excursions right now. In fact I would very much like to leave."

And there was the looming implication that there was one obstacle in his way.


 

[Toshihiko Two]

"I'm in no hurry," Barth said. He was tired of the ridiculous house and it's insipid..whatever it was doing. At least this portion of it had a shower. Which is what he had intended to do in the first place.

"In fact, until something ghastly crawls out of the drain, I'm going to finish my shower."  

[Baneful]

Finish his shower. He intended to just have a shower, to make Zar just stand there all heavy horns and wings and tail while he indulged himself. He really was an obstacle.

"Well I am." Zar said, and he was. He was in a hurry to get back to doing nothing, to return to his soft warm pillows which were all he could think about. And now he'd even have to deal with being damp, the water soaking his hair and skin in the spray, he'd have to be cold before he could be snug and warm.

And of course Barth didn't care.

His tail slowly reached out through the water and what could have initially been mistaken as a caress of one arm turned very rapidly tight and twisting.

"I would rather we left." he said. "Via the usual route."

HP:50
DMG: 7
 

[Toshihiko Two]

Barth hissed at Zar's touch, but didn't push him away. He didn't want it, he did...

It turned very quickly into a rib-compressing squeeze. Barth struggled to breathe, and used what he had left to hiss,

"What- what are you doing- you-!"

There was a burst from the thorns, an almost excessive amount of Fear, drawn deeply and accidentally from the house. They shot up with record width, black and with long, wicked hooks, and uppercut Zar right in the jaw.

HP: 43
DMG: 9  

[Baneful]

Zar opened his mouth to say that he was doing exactly what needed to be done and found his jaw snapped shut with an agonising clip as he found himself uppercut in the jaw.

He went down hard like a sack of bowling skittles to the tile and groaned in despair at even the thought of standing back up.

Instead he lifted his tail (slow, painstaking effort) and smacked it (more like threw it) against the back of Barth's knees.

HP:41
DMG: 7
 

[Toshihiko Two]

Barth dropped to the tile, knees clattering against the hard surface. Water seemed to pour down from every direction. He gave Zar a cold look through a curtain of wet hair.

Slime slid out of from Barth's hand. It was a deep and awful red, and built up quickly into a large and sentient pile that rose between Zar and Barth. It towered between them, triangular shoulders rippling with slimy bulk.

"Keep him off me," Barth snarled.

HP: 36

T3 Barrier in effect!: 15/15  

[Baneful]

"Just give in." Zar said, and it was almost a plea as the other demon eyed him, a fight sounded like so, so much work and made him want to burst into tears of frustration at the very idea of having to deal with it.

However on the list of things he expected to happen, Barth summoning red slime wasn't one of them. His immediate conclusion was to link this slime and the slime in the field class - had he been attacked?

"What do you call thissss?" he hissed, still sprawled on his side.

He slowly slithered his tail through the shallow water around the slime creature before tightening his grip to constrict it.

HP:41
DMG: 9

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"Goolems. Suddenly feel like resssearch?"

Even more slime built up, this time in a rainbow of small, squatty piles. Tiny gremlin faces twisted up in snotty smiles, giggling and squelching to themselves in the buckets of water. They waited for a command.

"Get him," Barth said miserably, sitting back on the tile and wiping water from his face.

The whack from the tail had squished a significant amount of the red goolem down the drain, but it still swayed, determined.

The rest of the smaller, vicious goolems piled onto Zar, self-destructing as they splatted against him.

HP: 36
DMG: 11

T3 Barrier in effect!: 6/15  

[Baneful]

Zar was too dumbstruck by the fleet of goolems to even respond at first, simply staring at the creatures. He had been so upset about the stupid slime, so upset and yet Barth could summon it or at least a similar variant - he doubted it had the same functional origins.

He didn't have it in him to fight back and merely looked irritated, splattered with an array of rainbow slime and soaked to the skin.

He sighed dramatically and laid his horns out on the floor weakly. "You are an utter b*****d. An utter, utter b*****d. I am never getting back to my bed."

HP:30
DMG: --