Avalon’s Monday evening odd encounter(Amber)

August 26, 2025

Date: 2025-08-25 18:54

(Avalon’s Monday evening odd encounter(Amber):Amber)

[Mon Aug 25 2025]

On Sycamore Avenue/span>/spanafternoon, about 81F(27C) degrees, and there are a few wispy white clouds in the sky. The mist is heaviest At Birch and Sycamore/span>/spanAmber shuffles her way over to a power junction box near The Multibox, where she seems to have picked up a little gadget or two just before. “There’s not a lot of info in the intel. Just that the power isn’t dead. It’s being drained, and supernatural power along with it. So figure we find the source of the drain and handle it and we should be golden. I’m not much of a fighter, so you two can cover me and destroy whatever’s hoovering up our juice.” She opens the panel and places a gadget on it, “Sound good?”

Lillian follows Amber, rapier remaining at the ready. “Sounds good to me. Have any idea where we should expect whatever is threatening you to come from?”

Avalon lifts his hand right after Amber is done explaining, following up with a “While I still hit- I’m not as good at receiving when… Well” Another motion up towards the air, sighing “So keep that in mind- A lot of my strength comes from shifting- My kind is normally quite thin” He comments as an aside with another sigh, following along the two women, leaving a moment of pause there and then asking “So, when we find it… We just smash it and problem over?”

Amber, for whatever reason, presses one of her charms to the device while trying to read it. “Should just be that simple, so let me just get some flow going and-” she goes flying as the box shorts, crashing into the ground. While she’s down, a flicker of spark lingers behind and starts to grow into a proper elemental from some other plane. Or, perhaps, formed of the supernatural power in the lines.

Lillian’s eyes widen with alarm as Amber is sent flying back. “Ah, fuck.” She rushes forward — not to the elemental, but to stand in between Amber and it, sword raised so the blade is in between her and it.

Avalon watches the woman go to the ground without too much effort put in to prevent it, barely moving even if just to pretend. His sight though gets stuck on the appearing elemental, reaching to rub at his face before realizing he’s got both of his hands full and just stopping mid-movement “Great… Our compass has just crashed down… And now we have someone to welcome us- How is this thing not being just as drained as us?”

The leader is indeed down and out, at least for the moment. The electrical elemental flickers and fades a moment, but a tendril keeps it connected to its power source in the box. Of course, a rapier might as well be lightning rod in a situation like this, and it goes BZZT through the air towards Lillian. The pull of the power drain slows it, though, so Avalon could come to aid in her defense if so desired.

“Shit,” Lillian mutters to herself. She waves the rapier around, not realizing what’s happening at first. After a few pointless seconds of this, it finally clicks for her. She starts trying to direct the elemental away from the box by drawing it away with her rapier. Of course, she has to give the act some flair, so she practically dances about with her blade to try to gradually draw it away.

Avalon drops his weapons the moment he sees the energy coming out towards Lillian through means of her own weapons, rifle and hammer now left behind, he decides to, instead of running to aid the endangered teammate, instead rush towards the tendril that connects the elemental to its energy source, and, seeing as to it’s made of electricity, and his vest is made of some sort of kevlar, a pretty good insulator- Instead of attempting to cut the tendril in any way, instead he simply- Kind of gets his body in between power and elemental, hoping that’s enough to sever the connection

The electricity chases Lillian’s sword, but it seems to just keep stretching and drawing more and more power all the while. Its attention elsewhere, though, allows Avalon to get in the way and disrupt the flow. Without the ability to maintain its power, the elemental dissipates in the blink of an eye. Either it returns to where it came from, or it simply no longer exists without the energy that lets it survive.

By the time the dancing is done, a sore Amber is pushing up to her feet. She watches a few lingering sparks land on the earth and worm their way below. “Oh shit, my contact did say it’s underground, too,” she says with a wince and a cough, “There’s a manhole over there. One of you get it so we can follow it where the power’s going?”

Lillian isn’t the most muscular, despite her swordfighting prowess. So she stands between the rest of the group and that energy source, rapier extended, in case the team needs more cover while they open a way down below.

“But the thing was getting it from…” Avalon starts to say, pointing a thumb vaguely towards his back, assuming the severed tendril would lead to the solution- But he’s quick to let it go, waving the hand that was pointing away and slowly walking back to pick up his weapons again “Well, you’re the expert…” He seems to assume, groaning a bit as he leans down to pick his gear, like an old man, and then repeating the noise when moving towards the manhole to get it out of the way, taking a step backwards upon opening in case anything comes out, and asking Amber while on it “Do we have to go down? Maybe a grenade or something can fix it from here?”

“It’s flowing through there, but not the source. My fault for trying to use magic during a cleanse,” Amber apologizes awkwardly, “But should be close, you’re right.” But once the manhole is out of the way, she’s already hopping down. Likely forgetting she has human ankles now as her voice echoes up with an, “Ow! Fuck!” There’s a pause and she calls up, “You can guard up there if you really want! But I can see all the cables! And you have the big hammer!”

Lillian backs up close to the manhole opening so she can shout down in Amber’s direction. “Be careful, babe!” She’s quiet for a moment, eyes still searching the surface for threats, then adds on, “do you need more lightning rod protection down there!?”

Avalon nods to himself once the hammer comment is thrown upwards, daring now to glance down the hole, now that Amber has so valiantly thrown herself into the mouth of danger. But once again, he makes really no effort to follow down or to do much other than stand with a foot resting on top of the displaced cover of the manhole, glancing around the area and asking out loud “And once you deal with the cables… Magic’s back up, yes? No need to fight anything else if it all goes well?”

“One of you get down here in case there are sewer gators or something!” Amber demands, not so valiant after all, “Preferably both of you! Just going to follow the cables to the source and break whatever is there. You two are the breaking-things-experts. Once broken, we done.”

doesn’t need to be told twice. She straps her rapier back to her thigh and starts to head down… only to hesitate halfway down. Fuck, it smells down here. Maybe she does need to be told twice. But her poor girlfriend is down here and in need of her help! So with a dramatic groan, Lillian finishes her climb down into the sewer to stand next to Amber, rapier poised and ready again.

“Thanks,” Amber offers more quietly to Lillian, giving a shoulder-bump despite the perilous locale. She squints up, “Coming or guarding up there, Captain Hammer?” This is directed to Avalon.

“Oh, I thought you wanted me to guard…” Avalon almost mutters to himself as he glances around, shrugging his shoulders and slowly moving towards the manhole, descending through the stairs carefully and commenting to the two as soon as he joins them down the underground “Now, for this I am thankful of the cleanse- No sensitive nose in the middle of… Well here”

“I was giving you an out in case your old bones couldn’t handle the drop,” Amber gives a crooked grin over at Avalon, “But rather have you here than not.” She moves to one side of the tunnel, where there’s maintenance walkways, “I’ll go ahead first. I’m at least still pretty sneaky without vampire powers. If there’s stuff in the way, we can avoid them.”

Of course, she was expecting them to be ahead. Not already waiting for the group. A food goes down, and there’s an “OH FUCK” as Amber is brought under the water by a barrel-rolling modern day dinosaur in the shape of a crocodile. Once more, useless while Lillian and Avalon have to do all the work. Useless and maybe missing a leg. Let’s find out.

Lillian is QUICK to jump in. She can’t let a fucking sewer crocodile of all things — they’re supposed to be urban legends! — get Amber. It’s sword first, thoughts later for a panicked Lillian.

“I’m only over a hundred, I am not /that/ old” Avalon counters to Amber as she starts making her way forward, strapping his rifle to his back and instead only wielding the hammer “Even if I couldn’t I’d just heal aft-” But his speaking stops the moment the leader of the operation trips on a beast, letting out a sigh before approaching the animal and trying to bring the hammer down onto its head

Amber gets thrashed around underwater, bubbling helplessly as she’s knocked off her feet. Lillian grazes the thing and Avalon breaks its stubby neck, leaving her freed from this hell so she can push up to one foot and participate in a fresh one. She winces as she tries to put weight on the injured food, looking down on it, “Oh that’ll go septic as fuck if we don’t fix this soon.” She spits some befouled water and gives a little cough, reaching for Lillian in hopes of support, “It can’t be much further. Fuck stealth, let’s just get it done.” She points into the tunnel where a subtle glow can be seen.

Lillian wraps an arm around Amber and walks with her as fast as the weakened vampire is able. “I got you,” she murmurs as she helps her get to the destination.

Avalon lets Amber and Lillian get some advantage in getting to the objective, seemingly left behind only to deliver a second hammer blow to the crocodile for good measure- And he’s quite a stocky man putting his weight into it, if the first broke the neck, surely this can spill some blood, if not mangling the corpse. But he’s soon to catch up, now with a smile drawn on his face, it seems that thing did get on his good spirits “Yeah, the sooner we get it done, the sooner I can shift again”

Amber doesn’t look back as Avalon lets out the second blow, seemingly unbothered by letting him do what he gotta.

But as the group get a few dozen feet further, they see it. A machine, wired into dozens of cables here… but also dozens of cables leading through small gapes connecting to other worlds. Both seem to be powering the massive, bulky machine that hums like a dozen generators at once.

“I can cut them up, yeah?” Lillian offers after a moment or two of observation.

Once the machine is in sigh, Avalon nods towards it, probably not very effective given he’s the one at the trail of the group, prompting Amber after Lillian asks “Yeah, can it be mangled in any way or is this one of those things in which smashing will worsen the situation?” He asks, again, making no effort to go for it, content to just follow the group and let them taste the danger despite having proven he can probably deal with it. Instead he runs a finger to scoop a bit of blood from the hammer and wondering out loud “Do vampires have the blood thirst even when cleansed?”

“Well,” Amber starts, easing off Lillian to lean against a wall instead for the moment, “As the group engineer, my diagnosis is…” She eyes Lillian and Avalon, “Smash that fucker up. Looks pretty unstable. Just make a dive for it if it makes a weird sound.” She glances down to her ankle with a wince, then back to Avalon, “Actually woke up hungry for normal food instead. Was weird. No thirst except when I leave the range. But, uh. Hulk smash and we can all get back to normal.”

Lillian immediately steps forward and just begins attempting to swing her sword through the things.

“Sounds good to me” Avalon replies licking what bit of blood he had gotten himself before approaching the machine, trying to deliver the same treatment the crocodile got, but this time from a side, horizontally delivering the blow in hopes of simply having the thing break down while someone takes care of the different wires

It really is a shoddy machine. It’s already shaking and whirring uncomfortably after Lillian cuts a few cables. But one solid blow from Avalon is enough to cause it to crumple in on itself and collapse entirely. The cracks to other worlds seal themselves as the machine can no longer hold them open, and the lights in the sewer tunnels power back on as electricity is restored.