The Imagiverse

Laadan reacts quickly by lashing out her tongue, wrapping it around a street pole and, like an elastic band, snapping her back against a building where she stick to it like a gecko. The strange thing is that despite her size, there is barely any sound of impact, so oddly light on her feet. She stands up, fully horizontal to the street below her and then draws her neck back, pulling the post up from the sidewalk and... consuming it. Laadan in turn seems to become ever so slightly larger overall, like the mass of the object was added to her in some strange way.

"Laadan is more than strong," she boasts as she springs off the building, colorful wing cloak flaring up brightly in the air reacting to the violence, body dripping violet ooze on the ground before changing direction abruptly coming down straight at Kira with both her large fists aimed at him. "Laadan is strongest!"

As Max charged Kira, he did not dodge. Not because he did not want to dodge, but because he was not quick enough to avoid many attacks. The hook collided with Kira as his head was thrown in the direction of Max's punch, however all that really did was leave a mark on his face. He may have lacked speed but made up for it with resistance and power. "If you plan on fighting close then combo your attack like this!" Kira called out as he dropped both of his weapons and retaliated with an uppercut aimed for his gut...or at least the area where his gut would be because he was a strange cuboid person. If he landed the blow he would follow this up with a haymaker to his chest, then a knee which would send him into the air and finish it up by round-house kicking him into Laadan. He would then quickly retrieve his weapons while Max was in flight.

Of course if Max found a way to avoid colliding into Laadan or avoiding his initial strike he would not be able to avoid Laadan and be forced to defend himself from what appeared to be an agile opponent.

Max, due to his strength making up for his lack of speed, would be subject to one helluva combo. He would be flung in the direction of Laadan, but, because of his mass, he would just roll across the floor below the alien. Despite the beating, he is only moderately bruised. When he lifts himself up, glaring at Kira, his nose would be bleeding, his right eye slightly bruised and squinting.
"That all you got?" Max would grunt, clenching his robot arm, which begins to glow. When the world stopped spinning, he would notice a punty sea-green duck sneaking carefully across the street, a seltzer bottle in his hands, pointed at Kira. Max would not attempt to draw attention to Jack, letting him attempt to do whatever the hell he's doing.
Jack would look at Max, almost frozen solid in fear, and then turn his gaze and witness the alien, which refers to itself as Laadan, dart from the side of Jumbo's Artillery towards the enemy.

Despite defying the conventions of weight, Laadan has some kind of force when smashing down atop Kira, cackling wildly like a child with a new toy. The force also splatters the ground with more slime that is not slick or sticky, but negates friction, objects thrown about slide out of control against the goo.

"Okay, you entertain Laadan for a while, blade man," she cackles, her eyes widening. "Try not to break too quickly!"

Kira would pull up his arms and take the blow from Laadan head on. He chuckled a little when the strange creature spoke and saw Max getting up still ready to fight. "Looks like this world has some tough fighters, but you are going to have to try harder than this! Vaasa Strahl!" Kira called out as both of his arms were infused with both dark and light energy.

He would then throw both of his fists at Laadan to hit her, if the move did connect the move would unleash a beam of energy from his arms sending her flying. Of course if she did dodge the beam would still be sent flying colliding into any building unfortunate to be in its path.

As the two figures rolled together into a ball of violence, Jack would walk up to Max, the seltzer bottle still in his hands.
"Max?" Jack would say.
"Yeah?"
"What the hell ith going on?" It would be time to explain that Jack's manner of speech is rather hindered by his beak.
"Ya see," Max would say, putting his tree trunk arm around Jack's shoulders. "That alien thing there's from a place called Nod, which I think is near the Edge. To be honest, I didn't catch whatever that thing was saying about it, but I think it'll breathe some life into John's skull. The alien, from what I picked up, is a schizo. When I met it, it was called," he would pause, wrapping his mind around that weird string of syllibles again, "Zi-lee-thigh, but right now, it's name is Laadan, I think."
Jack would slowly nod, looking at the alien. It was definitely different to what he had encountered before. True, he never sees Edge-dwellers often, and was glad for it. You'd never know if a seemingly harmless creature was in fact a minion of the Maelstrom, God of Chaos. The thing he was seeing now certainly wasn't harmless, but it didn't look like a Stromling either. Quite often, it would have to have fountains of black tar-like substance in place of it's eyes, and it had to look like the work of a rather questionable taxidermist. None of which seem to apply to this gooey near-transparent thing that was currently assaulting this bladed vagabond.
"And who'th the lunatic?" Jack would say.
Max would turn to Jack. "No idea."

"Oh, that is pret-," Laadan begins to say before being blown back, spraying slime about. She is hurled through the air, slamming against the corner of a building then bouncing against the walls of an alley before falling into a dumpster and the lid closes atop her. After a brief silence the dumpster begins to rumble and a dark violet streak shoots through the top of it, and Laadan lands on top shaking off a banana peel from her head, eyes aglow like a wild beast, dark and light residue remains flowing upwards like smoke. "No, no, no! Laadan does not eat garbage, this is... is... filthy!"

In her rage she extends out her winglike cloak. glowing brightly and she gets down on all six like an animal, maw open and growling. She takes off, charging fully vertical against the wall before launching at Kira again, this time swinging at him with her long tail. "Blade man! You ruin Laadan, now Laadan ruin you!"

Kira looked at the slime being thrown around. As Laadan was thrown back and landed right in a dumpster he took a moment to check out the slime. It was not sticky, but it was not slick either. It was like ice only not ice.

Whatever it was it would make him slip out of control, and that was not something he should fight on. But before he could get to clearing all this slime, Laadan emerged from the dumpster with light and dark residue surrounding her. And she seemed to go into a raging state. As she went to hit Kira with her long tail, he raised his axe to defend himself.

As the blow impacted him he was send skidding backwards but worse of all onto that slime. Instead of skidding for a few feet maybe a yard he was sent skidding yards away from her and crashed into a building. He quickly recovered from the attack and cracked his neck a bit. "Now this is a challenge! Dispair!" Kira called out as he raised both his axe and sword into the air before bringing it down and shattering the ground beneath him as a wave of energy like a massive tidal wave was sent forward seeking to destroy all in its path.

"Well," whispered Jack to the Robloxian. "Thith thure ith imprethive. At leatht we're not in it."
"Oh, I don't know about that," replied Max. "Pretty soon, we might have to intervene. Someone could get hurt."
The Chosen Few are not, by definition, heroic. They do not charge into someone else's fight, even if it's for the safety of the local area, if they don't feel like it. They've seen so much action and horror they've become rather desensitized. This is mostly because whoever, or whatever, they fought, they defeated by a landslide. Many years of experience had toughened the group into a band of capable, if less than enthusiastic, defenders of the Imagiverse. Of course, they never heard of Grand Gaia, except Adam Skelecoot, who had the pleasure to meet a pair of musician warriors, who were the first in their world to stumble across the greater-scaled realm of Fantasy.
Having seen the confrontation in Armourer's Place, which was at the risk of having a fireworks display occur if any of the stock were disturbed, Adam Skelecoot, the skeletal quarter of the Chosen Ones, decided he would take Equestrian Avenue and turn at Skull Lane to meet up with the rest. He stepped beside Jack, crossing his yellowy-white arms.
"That the alien?" He'd say in his default South-English accent, pointing at the pissed alien thing.
"Yep," said Max conversationally. "Quite a toughy, by the looks of things."
"Did you ask it the "Friend and Foe" thing?"
"Yep, and it is negotiable." He would pause for a moment. "Well, the one that I talked to, anyway."
The skeleton would turn to Max, his expression that of mild puzzlement.
"It'th got multiple perthonalitieth," explained Jack.
"Aaah."
They would continue to watch the fight.

"Despair," Laadan mutters, her antennae/tentacles wiggling in frustration, twisting her large right arm, with the lack of bones her arm just winds up in a spiral. "Laadan knows despair, despair and fear, knows it too much! It made a void inside, then Laadan ate it all up and got sick, and then only rage remained!"

With this Laadan does not dodge the attack, but instead charges directly at it, absorbing the debris that is flung against her, slowly gaining size then swinging her loaded right arm forward with it spinning wildly, splitting the air itself with one loud thunderous crack. She planned to plow straight through without any self regard.

Kira watched as the creature charged through his attack, the wave on energy did impact the creature however unlike its surroundings which was being blown away or obliterated entirely it could walk through with some injuries. Seeing as how the creature was still standing, Kira sneered in irritation. He was supposed to be the stronger being here! Not that creature!

Kira raised both his weapons and got ready to ramp up. "I will not lose here! If I have to demolish this entire town to destroy you so be it! Dämonische Licht!" He yelled out as his body was consumed by light and dark energy. It was clear that he was not just a regular man. Two horns grew from the sides of his head, one light and one dark. It was clear that he was associated with demons.

"Time to get serious here! I will crush you! Xeno Verto!" He called out as he charged forward, his weapons glowing with raw power. The wave he had sent earlier has dissipated along with many buildings in its wake.

Laadan's ethereal tongue hangs out, panting, one of the horns of her boney plate mask cracks off dissipating into nothingness, hairline fractures spreading downwards to the eyehole. The strength of the attack coming her way was formidable, she couldn't just punch through it. But something else flooded her mind, took priority over everything else: she was not returning to Nod, not to the place she was before, she had gone too far to crawl out of the depths, out of the emptiness that was her prison. Freedom tasted too good.

"Laadan is not going back," she roars, a sudden shift upon the spacial fabric displaces a small chunk of the city around her, including buildings. It was not like it was destroyed, exactly, the structures remained intact without crumbling, and a phantom-like imprint remained of the objects that once existed there, it was like what was consumed now was a wobbling three dimensional photo negative. The immediate surge pushed Laadan further, growing again, looking more monstrous than before, the boney mask more toothy and savage, her claws more pronounced, she looked like some bizarre alien dragon. The runes on her body glowed with a ghostly blue light, her eyes fuming with green smoke, that whimsical and playful Laadan has been replaced with something more primal: the desire to be. She slams down her smaller claws into the ground, then swings her larger ones together like a clap to clash against Kira's attack. "Laadan will not be forgotten, not again!"

It became apparent to the Chosen Few, as horns grew on Kira's skull, that the interloper was not a normal mortal. They were more familiar with demons associated with one side of the coin, i.e, Chaos. They never heard of entities embodying both sides at once.
The arena had become more active around the brawl. Several buildings destroyed, a crowd of bizarre bystanders had surrounded the fight. Before they arrived, they were aware of explosions in Armourer's Place, noises that could only be placed on the result of a few weapons, gunpowder and nuclear, being disturbed. The crowd tried to edge away from the areas of fallout and still get a good viewing point at the same time. A few of the shopkeepers, covered in soot and radiation, made up a small percentage of the audience, yelling at whoever costed them an arm and a leg, and more appendages on that note.
Of course, they were just outside the area where the fabric of Fantasy was currently being put through the wringer.
The fabric of Fantasy is rather loose, as is apparent in worlds like the mobile Discworld, and the mana-infused Equestria. Dimensional distortions occur on a regularly basis. In some places, fungus vivere, or mushroom men, are often spotted bapping each other to the death, fighting over chunks of necrotic debris, sourcing from the Necrostar in the Vice Quadrant.
To sum it up, the Chosen Few are, currently, considering ending the fight before demons from the Dungeon Dimensions begin to crawl, or whatever mode of movement they use, into the Imagiverse Centre. Adam Skelecoot tried to prevent himself from seeing formless horrors in his peripheral vision.
Preparing to prevent the Centre becoming a hub for demonic portalling, Adam unsheathed his magic sword, labelled Hope in ancient runes, from the back of his ribcage. Max set his robot arm to Cannon mode, which involved the arm expanding at the upper arm area, a circular hole opening up at his palms. Jack, well, rummaged into his backpack for something useful against dual demons.

"I will not lose! I am and will be the strongest being!" Kira yelled as he clashed with Laadan. However when he saw that two more people had arrived he knew he was outnumbered, however he still had his ultimate attack. But if he used such a thing this town would indeed suffer for it, but of course there was the threat of excess energy tearing a portal and allowing a demon to enter from it.

He decided it was best to fall back home, there was a high chance that one of them could avoid his attack. And there was a greater chance that people from Grand Gaia would arrive to assist in subduing him. At least he can leave with the thought of three people needing to stop him. "Adversus!" He called out as he leapt back from the clash and using his sword cut the ground in front of him causing it to split and create a massive gap. This was not now the move is usually used however he needed to pull back. No point is losing here, it would all be for nothing.

With that Kira would rush to the portal he had entered from.

Laadan seized up in mid attack, her ablaze eyes wide in disbelief, now just big round circles of green light. She was speechless. It was so abrupt that she had nothing to say or any idea on how to react... on top of it all, she was cartoonishly frozen in place. With Kira's departure it would be moments until she finally stood straight again, towering over most of the residents that had gathered, her antennae falling limp and dangling at the sides of her head.

"Laadan... w-won," she says, puzzled, lacking the confidence she once held, rage drained in an instant, tilting her head to the side like a confused lost puppy. She lowers her head, folding both sets of arms in thought then raising back up and straightening up, eyes beaming once more. "Yeah... YEAH! Run away, axe man! Laadan is strongest there is, strongest there will be! LAADAN ... ..."

With this she finally looks around at the destruction that their fight has wrought upon the centre, curling her cloak around her body and sinking her head down. Unlike Zilthai who has more nihilistic when it came to emotions, as an Id Laadan was an unfiltered giant ball of it, and right now she felt bad. She even began to literally shrink down in size losing a portion of mass she gained, some of the things she consumed returned to their original state starting with the street light she ate at the beginning of the fight.

"Is sorry."

The Chosen Few, though slightly disappointed, took a sigh of relief and sheathed, shut down, and packed their weaponry. In a sense, they had defended the Centre from total annihilation, simply by being there. And it would seem reality, or fantasy rather, had taken it's usual, if still warped, shape. From the crowd came a few cheers, whether it was directed at the Chosen Ones or Laadan was rather unclear. Adam would glance around at the crowd, then begin to grin and raise a closed fist, an expression associated with a boxer who just realized he had, in theory, won because his opponent was knocked out by a falling searchlight, before Max would elbow him, the bump amplified by his superhuman muscles.
The misfits' eyes would explore and, possibly for the first time, notice the collateral damage caused. Several buildings lie in ruins, several unnamed critters, persumably the victims of the imploding Innovatium, were hopping around, and there were some irate shopkeepers that needed some answering. In the middle of the cracked arena, the alien had now, quite literally, shrunk under the deflating feeling of Guilt.
From within one side of the street, a figure would budge through the crowd, muttering things like "''scuse me" and "pardon me" as he approached the scene.
He didn't follow the usual three-dimensional rule of a living entity. For some unknown reason, the paper stick figure was able to travel from A to B without folding over or, more accurately, blowing away in the wind. His white mohawk hair rose like a frozen tide, his entire being outlined in black, as if he was a doodle that was pulled straight out of the page, or more accurately, cut out. The stick figure was wearing nothing but a pair of orange shorts, his stick torso bare. His face was crudely drawn on the circle of his head, his eyes two shakey lines. The overall appearance looked like something a pre-schooler would draw.
He went by the name of Fancy Pants, the youngest member of the Chosen Ones, and considered the heart of the group.
"Excuse me, did I miss- oh," said Fancy Pants.
The band of heroes turned.
"'Ey, Fancy," said Adam, waving. "You missed a bloody good fight."
"Sorry," said the stick figure, who was the type of person who punctuated almost every sentence with an apology. "I should have come earlier, but it was my sister's birthday."
The Chosen Few sneered in a vacant, "typical" way. Fancy Pants was very enthusiastic when joining the group. At a younger age, he trained solely to become, at least, as great as the Chosen Ones, fighting crazed penguins and the like. Of course, he learnt a valuable lesson on the fact that, in person, your heroes aren't as great as they cracked up to be.
"Fancy," said Max, pointing an arm at the shrunken alien. "This is Laadan. In a way, he, or it, did all the "defendin' against an intruder" for us. He's the alien I was talking about."
Fancy would glance at the thing. Well, you see something new every day, and the sight he was witnessing was definitely new in his book. He wasn't sure to address Laadan, partly because he didn't know how to address the eldritch, but mainly because it looked like it wasn't in the mood.

"Please do not refer to Laadan as it," she says in response to Max, wrapped tightly in the strange cloak wings, now pulsing a soft blue reflecting the current mood. She had been called an it, treated as a beast and chained up deep down by Chuza, the superego. It was not without reason, she was once a chaotic mass of impulses once. It was only later that she became something more, an individual with her own conscience. "Laadan may not be any Rebecca Lappet but Laadan is a she."

She had completely butchered that reference somehow...

She turns slightly, looking back to the open portal that Kira escaped into. "Axe man could return to finish this... at least... Laadan would."

"Sorry, she," said Max, rolling his eyes.
"Rebecca Lappet?" said Adam. If he had eyebrows, they would scrunch up. "Never heard of her. Is she a fashion model?"
"No idea," said Fancy Pants.
"Funny thing," Jack said. "We don't watch teleffithion a lot, do we?"
"You know us," said Max. "Busy busy."
The Chosen Few would follow Laadan's gaze towards the open portal. A part of each of them wanted to go through it. But, where will it lead? Do they really want to fight that guy again? He looked pretty tough, and they never fought a dual demon before.
"Weeelll," said Adam, uncertainly. He had a nagging suspicion he was going to go where no other figment had gone before. Maybe it led to Grand Gaia, where he heard there were beings stronger than he had ever encountered. At the time, he wanted a challenge.
Now, though...
"Whaddya think, guys?" he would say, looking around at his compadres, who were getting the same feeling, and weren't as enthusiastic.
"Why not?" said Fancy Pants, shrugging. "It would be one helluvan adventure."
The Robloxian would grunt. "Maybe I could get some real action," he said.
"Yeah, why not?" said Jack. It would seem the Chosen Few had come to a decision, albeit a hesitant one.

"Laadan would have gone anyways, but... Laadan appreciates that it will not be a lone journey," she says in a low tone, nearly a soft growl before leaping over the gap and standing before the gate. She looks back then at the gap, then at the street light she ate at the beginning of the fight and proceeds to lash out her tongue, grabbing it and creating a makeshift bridge over the chasm Kira created. It was actually not normal for her to give this much thought or consideration. Then again, guilt was not something she felt normally either.

With one more glance at the damages she heads into the gate.

The Chosen Few glance at each other before stepping towards the portal.
No one had ever travelled to Grand Gaia before. It is one of those worlds that make themselves apparent. The Imagiverse is growing by the minute, so it wouldn't be surprising that it had developed a new world. Or had it already existed? Who knows.
One by one, they stepped into the portal, into the uncharted world of Grand Gaia.

Behind Laadan, there is a slight cacaphony of thumping and cursing, which is revealed to be the Chosen Few falling over each other. They haven't mastered portal travel yet, even with their experience with everything else. It was always the collected momentum of travelling thousands of light years across the Imagiverse that always catches them off-guard.
The pile, from the bottom upwards consisting of Fancy Pants, Jack the Ducky Boy, Adam Skelecoot and, unfortunately for the formers, Max the Robloxian, stood up.
Adam scanned the forest with the look of mild disappointment. It would have been nice to teleport in a city, or anywhere near civilisation. Instead, they have been stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a world they've never been in before. As far as the eyehole can see, there was just trees, fauna and more trees.
The Chosen Few, as a whole, shared the singular feeling of one that, when expecting a holiday country to be an exciting experience, had found out that, in fact, it was too bloody hot and the food was crap.
"Right," said Max, who wasn't going to stand around all day. "Which way?"
Fancy would shrug. "I dunno. Just go one way and, if we read the edge, we go around the forest until we find somewhere to stay. If there isn't a town or something already there, course," he would add.
"Sounds good," said Adam.

The Chosen Few would look the new figure up and down. The warrior seemed to run by the theme of the primordial flame, much to the displeasure of Fancy Pants. The sword was a nice touch.
There would be a collective mumble that run by the theme of "friend, yeah, definitely friend".
"Ur, 'scuse me, but, ur," said Adam, taking a cautious step forward. "Could you direct us to the nearest town?"
Behind him, there was the sound of metal slapping flesh from an exasperated Max.
"Uh yeah," said Jack, ignoring Max, "we theem to be lotht."

The group would follow behind Laadan. The sound of monsters and demons sparked their collective interest. Nevertheless, they need to settle down somewhere before they go any further.
"Is this the Grand Gaia you were talking about?" Fancy whispered to the red-bandana'd skeleton, who was vacantly examining the forest.
"Oh yeh," said Adam. "John wanted to visit it, to, you know, research it and that. Shame he didn't come, but, then again, we were cleaning up some bodies by Skele Manor."
"Come again?"
"Oh yeah, we got attacked by bounty hunters when those two girls - you remember me telling you? The warrior-musician wossname, hybrid sisters? - those two girls left for Grand Gaia."
Fancy Pants would turn his gaze forward, nodding. The main worlds of the Imagiverse had known each other for so long, nearly hundreds of years, that they got to diplomacy and so on. The idea that there was another world they never even heard about...
But then again, the Imagiverse was growing all the time. He vaguely remembered Jonathan telling him about Ideas, the blueprints of everything in the Imagiverse, that grow until they ripen into whole worlds. That was how places like Toontown and Anti-Earth came around.
Grand Gaia must be a very recent world, if they never knew it existed.
"Say," said Adam, bursting his thought bubble. "There's a God here? What sort of god is it?"

At the news of the nearby god being one of the strongest, Adam would grin, revealing that his front teeth were gone, giving him a buck-toothed look. "Sweeet."
Gods were a common part of the Imagiverse. They embody, or control, certain aspects of their daily lives, like the sun rising and setting, death, life, the weather, the list goes on. They are so common, in fact, especially in the Discworld, that it had come to a point when believing in them seemed a waste of effort. It is obvious they exist, and denying their existence brings a sticky end to atheists, so gods are not so much as worshipped as acknowledged. Believing them is much like believing in the milkman.
In Grand Gaia, however, they appear to be different. Whilst the other gods in the Imagiverse aren't too bothered with mortals, gods here are savage, bloodthirsty, power-hungry beings, who seemed to have warred against the mortals for maybe centuries. The idea that a god would dislike mortals wasn't new to the Chosen Ones, as apparent in Evil Hand, the God of Fear, and Caedor, the Blood God, but the thought of a group of gods terrorising an entire world was, to put it lightly, a bit intimidating.
"Wait a minute," said Fancy, who was considering this currently. "I get that you lot are several steps below the gods in the sense of power, but, hope I don't sound stupid saying this, why do these gods want to kill you?"

Listening to Chuza's observation on his position on heroing, Adam thought about how jaded he had become during his time in the Imagiverse. It was just that he had seen things that people would go mad witnessing, malformed abominations that roamed the outer cortex of the Imagiverse, decayed visions of untold suffering and madness, the threat of having everything he knew be reduced to mere threads flapping across the frayed fabric of his reality. It's not that he had gone mad from these revelations - it is practically impossible, his mind is so vacant as to be a vacuum, sucking in any anomalous hysteria and destroying it entirely - it was just that he had gotten rather empty in the process, this being evident, to those who had known him the longest, in his characteristic vacant stare which seems to be directed somewhere thousands of miles away.
"Well, that, and that I've really got nothing to lose," said Adam.
The Chosen Few would receive a pint each of beverage, thanks to the generosity of the sisters. Max, having a liver bigger than his stomach, would down his pint in one go. "So, Vargas," the Robloxian would say, examining his empty pint. "You stood up against some Gods, did ya? By the sounds of them, that must have been demanding, to say the least. I've yet to compare these Gods of yours to the ones we have to deal with. One god, Evil Hand his name is, is the boss of a sort of demon mafia in the Imagiverse. He's, in a way, the godfather of Chaos, taking charge of all the evil in the Imagiverse. Bit of a ponce, though."
"Oh, Evil Hand?" said Fancy. "Yeah, he's-he's an oldie in terms of villains, in fact, he used to be alright, but he found that box, didn't he? The one that held a whole mass of Chaos that would become the Darkness. He opened it, it consumed the central sun of the Imagiverse - after that, they had to make seperate suns for the worlds - and it corrupted him, making him it's leader."
There would be a collective affirmative mutter from the group.