15 Days Remaining -/|\- Oops -/|\- World State: Late 2002

15 Days Remaining. Spent a while hanging out with an old friend, shooting the breeze and playing Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. So far, I run Deadpool, Ryu, and Haggar. This is subject to change, as I only got the game last week, I've still got plenty to learn, and I may not have TIME to learn before this all gets unpleasant.

According the Forgemaster, the sword is coming along nicely.

Haven't gotten an actual post from Ryuu in a while. She hasn't been on AIM either. She's responded to my posts and to other people's posts, but I've got a bad feeling. Lord knows that Morningstar said he was going after her. I wasn't kidding about what I said I'd do to him if he tried. He's made it clear my threat isn't deterring him, and so it looks like I'm going to have to take on a proxy earlier than I thought I would. After what happened to Scott a few weeks back, I'm not letting ANYONE who is within my range get caught by this thing. In any case, I owe her. Next time I hear from her, I'm getting a location from her. I'm not making the same mistake twice. In any case, I've got a fantastic plan that only requires a paintball gun, a bit of Forgemaster's expertise, and a willingness to flip the bird at an ancient and terrible monster.

How about it Morningstar? Ready to play?

^_^ "Yay, now is fighty time, fighty time, blood blood blood!" -Wade Wilson

-/|\-

Oops:

I remember after the revelation that I was connected to someone, and directly in love with her, there was a point when I was working on fighting my inner gatekeeper.

The Inner gatekeeper is what guarded the knowledge I had been born with, things that I simply knew and understood and could make use of as whatever I am to try and stay alive. In theory, everyone like us has one. For sake of ease, I think the best label I could give myself is "Shaman." It's simple, it's easy, and it explains a lot.

"Being chosen by spirits, taught by them to enter trance and to fly with one's soul to other worlds in the sky or clamber through dangerous crevasses into the terror subterranean worlds; being stripped of one's flesh, reduced to a skeleton . . . and then reassembled and reborn; gaining the power to combat spirits and heal their victims, to kill enemies and save one's own people from disease and starvation -" Shamanism, by Piers Vitebsky

Well nuts. I wish I had remembered that little passage. Could have saved us plenty of time. I don't feel comfortable running around and waving the Authority stick by calling myself a "Guardian", and just about every tradition in this field warns against all the threats to one's health and sanity by sticking to this job...yeah. It's as good a label as any.

Anyways, the point is that I had to fight this thing. These things are always a warped and twisted version of your own personality. And mine was a clown. It makes sense, I'm a joker at my best and at my worst. The fact that we're talking a scary murder clown like in Steven King's "IT" gives you an idea of how much of a warped version of me this was.

Time Lord asked me as I did this, "So you're worried about this girl?"

I shrugged, "Yeah. Considering how bad things are here, how bad are they there? Who knows what could be out there? Think you could take a look?"

Meanwhile, in my mind I've got two scimitars and I'm doing some fancy bladework against an acid cream pie tossing, unicycle riding, magic sword spitting clown. Just another day at the office.

He said, "Eh. I just follow the emotional connection between you and her, pop on out, see what's going on..."

Suddenly, he got really, really quiet. I didn't notice, my eyes were closed and I was busy fighting my ICP loving alter ego. I had my rhythm going, and I was feeling pretty good about smiting my inner clown. So I opened my eyes, continuing to duke it out in my head, and saw Time Lord flat on his back. He looked like he'd just been hit by a freight train. You see, it turned out that the Presence had been entertaining guests. I would not finish defeating the clown until tomorrow. Time Lord went kind of nuts when he woke up. Apparently, someone had gotten the drop on him and beat him senseless. He got all worked up, calling on every resource he had to put together a protection detail for the Presence.

Who was her guest? A person who's going to play a big part in things to come. We'll codename him Rogue Wizard. Needless to say, this guy had betrayed everyone, trying to conquer the heavens themselves with his powers. He and his four cohorts had tried and failed in their coup, and now they were on earth and most definitely our problem.

-/|\-

World State: Late 2002

The period between 2002 - 2004 involved some of the absolute worst conflicts between spirits and entities beyond our world. To say that most of the nearby lands connecting to earth were torn asunder puts it mildly. But we're not at that point yet.

It is July 2002. Everything is intact at this point. Vast demon hordes can be found in several of the "lower planes" around our world, and are beginning to pour into the astral plane, which is the plane most immediately accessible from the Earth's physical plane. Forces have been dispatch from the higher planes, as they'll jump at a chance to duke it out with a couple of demons. Countless entities that stand inbetween them are battening down the hatches and hiding in their fortresses, or just running wherever they can. They know what it is to stand between these two eternal enemies when a war starts, and they want nothing to do with it. The Astral plane is not so lucky. The entities there know that they'll be in the thick of the war no mater what they do.

The Astral Plane of earth has not seen a conflict like this in decades. No one knows how big or how nasty it's going to be. The varying rulers of the different factions are picking sides between the higher plane armies and the lower plane armies. The Lower Plane armies have NEVER won a war on the Astral plane. They've given the Higher Plane armies a hell (pun intended) of a run for their money over the years, but they've never actually won. Everyone's pretty sure they're standing with the boys and girls of the Higher Plane for this little shindig.

What no one realizes is how absolutely screwed they all are. No one saw it coming. No one could have DREAMED that what happened is about to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the Thirty Xanatos Pileup. I get to cover THAT in the next post.