Board Thread:Roleplay/@comment-26892768-20190104042326/@comment-26892768-20190105023032

(Accepted)

 (Let the games begin!)

Waking up to the sound of a distant, cheering crowd was not exactly how she thought she'd start her morning.

Captain Holly Short of the Lower Element Police's recon unit (LEPrecon for short) groans, getting up on her knees and rubbing her head slowly as she looks around. She quickly becomes more alert once she takes in her surroundings - some sort of massive coliseum, with all the seats filled to the brim with alien people. She can't quite make out any individual features - light blue skin, wide ears or possibly fins, antennae...maybe? - but she's also quick to realize that they aren't the only ones to worry about. She's not alone in the center of the coliseum, after all. She's part of a crowd that, much like her, is just regaining consciousness, and what an unusual crowd it is. Sure, some seem like typical Mud Men, albeit with some having questionable fashion tastes, but there's a plant, some kind of squid girl, what look like Mud Men-made monster suits come to life, a group that she's pretty sure are just blobs with more blobs for hands and feet, and a giant robot.

Holly Short has seen weird. She has experienced weird. For a good amount of her life, she seemed waist-deep in the weird and bizarre as she went off to save the world for the umpteenth time. But this...this is beyond even her standards for weird. This is beyond that. This is...

 "WELCOME!"

Any train of thought Holly has has promptly been derailed by a booming, masculine voice. It doesn't seem to come from any particular place at all - it's as if the air, the earth beneath them, the coliseum walls - everything - began speaking in the same voice.

A lone figure leaps up from a throne installed in the coliseum and descends, landing in front of the crowd. He's probably a good six feet or so, and appears to be wearing some kind of royal garb...but that's about the only normal things about him. His feet are like clouds of cosmic dust somehow taking solid form, and, when one looks up from there, they can see his body composition transition from dust to various different elements that seem to be constantly shifting - one could probably find each element of the periodic table in those legs - and finally into some kind of cosmic energy, with the transition ending at the knee. From there, the figure's body seems to be like the night sky - pure black and littered with stars, with his forearms and hands appearing to be home to entire galaxies. He wears shoulderpads of an unknown material, and from those shoulderpads extend not spikes, but completely different, rather unusual shapes, constantly moving - some in the crowd may recognize these shapes as mobius strips. Connected to the shoulderpads is a cape that seems see-through, but anything seen through it appears to be in a color negative, like some sort of filter. His eyes are mismatched - the one on the right seems to be a light so bright that it could blind, while the other is a void through which no light can escape, only recognizable in that it absorbs the light the other eye produces, giving it an outline of sorts. And, to top it off, he wears a large crown/battle helmet combination, and if one were to look into the reflection of the crown, they would see new lives being born, and old lives becoming no more.

This is clearly someone - or something - very powerful, and one who likes to show it off.

Holly hates him already.

 "Welcome, my champions, to your arena!" The figure continues, being greeted with roaring applause and cheering from the crowd.  "Now, some of you - well, let's be real, most of you - may be wondering, 'Where am I? Who are these people? Why are they so weird? What's even happening right now?' Well, to answer some of those questions...you're in an alternate universe. Anyone you don't recognize is from an alternate universe. There, I said it. You should be thankful, really; some of your universes are so far apart that the chances of you meeting were astronomically low before I-"

There's a scream of rage within the crowd, and something leaps at the figure before it promptly gets stuck in mid-air. Holly has to do a double-take - it appears to be a teenage Mud Girl, but this one is far from normal. Her only real article of clothing is pale, worn hospital garb, there are iron cuffs on her neck, wrists, and ankles, nails are in her shoulders and hips, there's a giant buzzsaw attached to her via a cord extending from her back, and finally, she appears to have a mask stitched onto her face, which really serves to highlight her pure red eyes.

What concerns Holly the most, however, is what's running through this girl on the inside. She doesn't know what the deal is with her blood, but even from here, she can tell - there is some kind of malicious magic in there, and whatever it is, she doesn't want anything to do with it.

 "Well, that was surprisingly quick." The figure remarks.

"NGHRAAAAAAAGH! Get me back home now, or I'll cut you to ribbons!" To her credit, the Mud Girl is certainly trying, squirming, and trying to get as close as possible - but even with her buzzsaw, there's no way she can reach him.

 "Ah, it's cute how you seem to think you can do me any harm, seeing as I clearly am far more powerful than you...but, then again, your constant rage and fight against those above you is part of your charm, eh, Carol?" The figure winks.

Carol. Holly files that away mentally. Might be useful later.

The girl seems shocked for a moment, but that shock quickly turns to rage. "DON'T CALL ME THAT!"

 "Well, what else am I supposed to call you? Painwheel?" The figure scoffs, as if the idea were about as valuable as the idea to count grass.  "Really, Brain Drain has no sense of taste - I mean, the mere fact that he calls himself Brain Drain is a sign of that. Is he trying to sound like a supervillain? Now, in contrast, I'd like to think this avatar of mine is well-designed. Eye-catching, but not too flashy, you know what I mean?"

Okay, now Holly has to say something. "I've met a megalomaniacal pixie genius who was more subtle than you. I guess you know about her too, huh?"

 "Ooooo, so this is the trademark wit of Captain Holly Short!" The figure turns to the elf with glee.  "This is already far more interesting than the years before! Am I right, folks?"

The crowd cheers once more.

Holly is really hating this guy.