The Neverending Challenge

[amenities 3775]

What would have happened if the lance connected with Axel? Little more than whatever immediately flammable material there was on his surface. With but a grab-and-throw of the fire in the nearby basin with his psychic grasp, Cain had in fact yet to access any of his puppets’ elemental abilities.

His Dialectic already extended through the fine grain of reality between them, Cain was able to watch the shadow even as it moved aside, resolving again as Voldstar. Its movement was agile, almost unpredictable; now the fighters stood facing one another between the basin and the huge valley. Now Axel was holding twin rapiers.

"We've gone straight from fists to spells, and skipped blades, then. You wouldn't mind if I rectify that poor ordering?"

Cain’s sempiternal smile, his blazing eyes, his eyebrow quirked just slightly as Axel drew his blades.

“A weapon fight hey!?” The wildhaired ginger laughed, extending his pale muscular arm between them with his hand out. Closing his palm, there rested within it a dual-bladed scythe. “I admit I am much more magically inclined. I was hoping we could skip this part, but I will take this risk just for you!”

With a quick motion of preparation, Cain slid his left foot forward, bent his right leg as if in a joust, and detached the scythe into two smaller sickle-like blades. The left he held extended before him, his right arm bent to extend the other readily just behind it. A breath.

Axel was upon him in a near instant! Cain was quite fast himself, some of his puppets even faster than Axel, but the suddenness of this man’s tactics struck Cain as his fire lance must have stricken Axel; Cain was caught off guard. He paced practicedly backward to give himself another half second, ready to parry Axel’s attack and aware of some possible shadow manipulation. As Cain stepped back, tendrils of black ink crawled from an epicenter at his stomach to cover his body like a black tattoo. When the fighters clashed, it would just be creeping up his chest from beneath his robes.

They were indeed fighting in Axel’s greater field of expertise, for now.

[Froggychum 36]

Axel knew he had to end this fight quickly... Though this man had given him so many benefits of the doubt, so many in fact that he had lost track of all of his smaller kindnesses... Axel's inherent power was resonating... not in the good way either! That meant he needed to kill Cain Rose, and fast!

All of Axel's powers came from an inborn ability that some would call Sorcery. However, it was a bit more complicated than that... Axel called his ability Sorcerous Augury because it required him to react to changes in his environment... over a long period of time, not a single combat.

His power's current frequency was one of two that he recognized... and unfortunately, it was the one giving him a warning that his foe had a better chance of defeating him than vice versa. This is why Axel bit back his duelist's honor. He needed to ramp up to his maximum, from his multi-faceted spar with Cain... to becoming a bringer of immediate death.

Axel's stylizing of this 'ramped-up form' was a bit dramatic, but to him it rang true. He had to focus on a single task. And that would be quick, painless murder.

As Axel's half-thoughts subsided in his head, the handsome rogue's forward momentum hadn't stopped, at all. He had noticed Cain change his form into blades, and with one last pang of shame, Axel raised both of his blades, aimed straight towards the shadowy mage's neck. The force behind the two simultaneous attacks incredible, but the form of the strikes was awfully basic. In fact, it seemed like a technique a barbarian would use, rather than one who had trained so much like Axel had.

The reason for this was simple. Axel wasn't looking to make his opponent lower his guard so he could slice his side or even cut his head clean from his neck, like he would against an opponent who was trained in blades. Axel's blades were shooting straight forward, because he was going to try to ignore the man's defense, completely.

The mage had already seen him turn to shadow... but he had a second technique he could only use on his blades. His two blades would turn spectral, meaning they would slide through the mage's swords, armor and flesh, as if they weren't solid at all... because they wouldn't be. In fact, they were utterly ethereal, and would cause no harm.

That is, until Axel cancelled the transmutation, leaving two blades trapped in the man's neck, even though he had never taken a hit, at all.

This wasn't a technique he used lightly, as it was more exhausting than an hour of swordplay, which for him was nearly trivial... but this had to end soon, before the mage could reveal any of his own tricks!

Axel mused that perhaps he should change his middle name to Anticlimax.

[amenities 3775]

Cain knew the time for words had come to an end when Axel’s feet came toward him. Focusing his battle-readiness and claiming total control of his melee mind, Cain prepared for Axel’s clash. Only, there wouldn’t really be a clash would there?

Voldstar and his agile blades grew nigh as Cain danced back to give himself time to observe. The former’s technique was indeed strange, but within its strangeness lay a deadly cantrip that Cain didn’t catch until it was almost too late. Cain had reached forward to extend the full length of his left blade, easily going to bat it aside, when a well-timed transmutation occurred. Voldstar was indeed as quick of mind as he was of foot as, just before the curved blade in Cain’s left hand would have clashed with the straight one in Axel’s right hand, Axel’s blades faded into ethereality.

Cain dropped the sickle in his right hand, the runic stones called the Big O sliding up his forearm and emanating a quickly charging hum.

Rose barely had time to rotate with the inane batting of his left blade in order to catch Axel’s right blade not in the neck, but in the right shoulder. A grotesque cracking sound issued between them as Axel’s blades materialized once more, gently ensconced INSIDE Cain’s shoulder tissue. While a ghastly wound like this would normally take a moment during which the body recognized it had been punctured before gushing with blood, the black ichor poured from inside immediately and surrounded the blade, holding it in place. A type of Dialectical magic settled around it that analyzed Axel’s transmutation of his swords.

As soon as the blade lodged itself inside Cain’s shoulder he lifted his right hand, palm facing Axel’s abdomen, and the Big O slammed back down on Cain’s wrist. A cylinder of psychic energy would slam into Axel’s midsection from Cain’s hand only inches away. It wouldn’t kill Axel by any means, but it would throw him a good five or six feet backward and probably knock the wind and a cough of blood out of him. Another caveat was that, the way Cain pushed him, Axel would be pushed into the side of the basin of fire (not INTO the basin but into its side), which sizzled at about 1000F.

One thing was certain: Cain seemed intent on dying as slowly as possible, if at all. Axel would see, close-up, that Cain’s smile had took on a devious undertone craving of blood.

Blood poured from Cain’s right shoulder as he knelt to pick up his second sickle. The Troll that had been climbing up his chest now reached the gushing wound, and his skin around it turned black but blood still poured from within. There was still a grin on his face, but the bloodlust shone in his eyes. It was inevitable that someone like him react like this to the sight of blood, even his own.

"I guess you've found your bearings, huh?" Said Cain, pain evident in his voice.

[Froggychum 36]

Axel's blow had damaged his enemy... but... his blade felt stiff... Also, Cain's reaction to being wounded filled Axel with the antithesis of confidence, which frustrated him... Uncertainty was one of his least favorite emotions! Along with boredom... shame... that feeling you get when a rich bastard refuses to pay you... he also didn't like being trapped.

This man seemed to have a pool of abilities of which Axel could not see a bottom! Hopefully if he did defeat this dark mage, he'd never have to fight him again! Axel believed his chances of winning were rapidly dwindling with the longer this fight went on! The bright side thus far was that he still had a couple tricks up his sleeve, and also of course that the rogue had drawn first blood... at the cost of a sword, it seemed?

Besides his remaining combokinetic tricks, and his arguably most powerful ability... which was purely reactive, and incredibly tiring... Axel was down on his luck, and was determined to get his opponent too busy swordfighting him to use any further magic--

But, then the man's right sickle was gone, and instead, his palm was inches from the hooded gentleman's abdomen... before Axel could twist out of the way, or use his other blade to sever the fist, that was now adorned with an odd runic artifact... BLAM! The power of such impressive force, at such close range blew Axel's hair back!

It was impossible to dodge! Axel grit his teeth and clenched his muscles, ready to be knocked back and preparing for the pain he knew would come from the heat that roared in his trajectory... momentum began to occur but then-

VVVWISH!

Axel blinked once... and then sagged internally. A wave of lethargy flowed through him, just as the reality of this world rushed back to meet him. His ability... it had activated on it's own! He was surprised... but not shocked. This wasn't entirely new... His Warp-Dodge seemed to work on an unconscious level... it had saved him from quite a few projectiles or knives he'd never seen coming... One time it had even saved him from being stabbed in his sleep!

But... how did it stop an unpreventable attack? Is... that why this exhaustion felt so much worse than normal???

Axel had to take advantage of this opportunity! Wait-- had... had Cain said something? Yes, he had asked a question... was it rhetorical? Wait-- Cain was speaking... again?

"I guess you've found your bearings, huh?"

That... wha...? He already asked that question! Or... was this warp-dodge ability really this powerful? What had it done?

Axel tried not to show too much of his confusion on his face... He had always had a moment of deja vu after this ability activated... but... this was much stronger!

Thousands of possibilities rushed through Axel's mind... which just tired him more! Finally, his brain settled on the simplest explanation for what had happened... normally, whenever this ability was activated, Axel was hit... but then he would be unhit... or, rather, he would anomalously cheat out an evasion!

But.... this time, in the face of these dire, unique and outlandish circumstances.... the ability had done something different... something that seemed deceptively similar!

It had undone the fact that Cain had ever attacked him at all! His heart raced with extreme intensity, and his face lost all sense of composure! This activation had done so much more than usual, but it had extracted an even higher price!

The runic thingie was still in Cain's grasp, and everything else seemed to be happening just as it had... but, there had been no force push... Cain had... what had Cain done? Axel thought hard about this, as he entered a fighting stance and moved towards Cain, who had backed up quite far away!

Then, Axel Voidstar remembered. He remembered that Cain Rose had not made an attack against him... Everything else was the same... but instead of attacking back, Cain had continued moving backwards and using his other abilities, as if the thought of attacking hadn't even occurred!

Axel had only one rapier now, since Cain had taken the other one... how much time had passed, as Axel's brain recoiled? It felt like a dozen seconds... but that wasn't true! Had it really only been two seconds???

Axel shook his head as the last of the fuzziness faded from his mind. He had only one rapier now, his left one... this wasn't ideal... He held it in front of him, crossed diagonally across his chest, the point passing several inches over his right shoulder. His right hand grasped his waist... was he going to draw another weapon?

He responded to Cain in a voice that was equally sympathetic as it was filled with worry... "I hope so" he said simply, before leaping back towards Cain off his right foot, with his right knee raised, moving at a similar speed to before... though he was slightly slower due to his exhaustion, the main thing that had been drained from him was his stamina. Which was ironic considering he had wanted to end the fight quickly... it seemed now, that would be happening... one way or another.

 

 

[amenities 3775]

The immaculate, gridlike sensory magic that was Cain’s innate energy called the Dialectic had been spread around them since the moment Axel arrived. As it processed the first phantasm committed by Axel, another even more confounding phantasm occurred! While step two of the first trispell ensued, step one of the second trispell began; while the first trispell processed information on Voldstar’s Shadow-Walk, the second trispell gathered information on his Warp-Dodge.

For now, though, both abilities of Voldstar’s— his freedom to move through the Dialectic as if he weren’t in fact an animal on the chopping block— remained intact.

It remained so surprisingly intact, in fact, that the smile on Cain’s face faltered as Axel rematerialized in his original position. Not in anger or even sorrow for the loss of his opportunity to watch Axel bleed (a memory he seemed not to have for a moment), but in thought. The top inside of his right eyebrow quirked with a tiny dimple, quirked with his wonderment. And then, like a predator who thinks it’s cornered its prey, his smile deepened. Lines as deep as the rivers of time tensed on his forehead as the sinister Cain seemed to settle on some conclusion. He didn’t appear to know what had happened yet, but like a savage who doesn’t know how badly fire burns he appeared ready to attack again, even though he bled. What occurred in that moment of thought was the bleeding Cain, too, having forgotten that he attacked. Cain was different, though: he had both the Dialectic and a hivemind of thousands of puppets all of his own that thought his every thought, that would catch the dissonance of the situation and spit its reality back to the Puppet Master.

‘I hope so,’ came Axel’s faux innocence.

“I think so,” said Cain.

He didn’t reach down to pick up the sickle he’d dropped as laces of black energy began sewing his shoulder shut. Instead he dropped the other one so that both of them sat in his shadow on the grass, and just as Axel reached for his waist a curved dagger thrown from Cain’s left hand zinged through the air for Axel’s chest.

Gradually, feeling began trickling back to Cain’s arm as the Dialectic trispell processed the magics that had just hit him.

[Froggychum 36]

Axel held back the urge to swallow, as the first hints of sweat began to bead on his face; They formed as much from stress as they did from his actual exhaustion, which was quickly accumulating a hold over his reactions--

A knife flew towards him. He barely snapped out of his state of lethargy in time, as he heard the familiar whistle of death flying towards him.

The rogue dodged clumsily, turning his back to the knife and moving to his side in one motion, as he nearly tripped over his legs.

It was helpful to avoid being impaled, but the curved blade still scraped his back through his clothing, cutting a dash.

Axel sighed. He was beginning to ponder over his choices, in this bizarre battle. Perhaps this man's seeming kindness that he had originally shown would have been enough to allow Axel to escape the fight with a victory.

Then, a thought stampeded it's way to the front of his mind... He didn't have to die here, did he?

... His opponent had told him that it was entirely possible for him to concede the fight rather than lose his life ...

It could be a lie, but everything about this was far too out of his ordinary for Axel to get a clear grasp on anything else, so he decided to place his faith.

"This battle has been excellent, stranger. However, I believe you outmatch me completely. To my shame, I must concede this battle to you" Axel said to his opponent, bowing his head respectfully.

He felt a little silly conceding when he hadn't even begun to bleed... but he knew that magic could kill you before you even knew about it.

Even in this odd situation, he had no reason not to value his own life over an unexpected duel.

[amenities 3775]

[End Fight]

 

[Next Fight]

[Praetorian 4896]

Setting Quick facts:  Top right corner: North. Bottom left corner: South

Tree 180' tall from base to top. 60' wide at the widest.

Island 200' radius, 50' depth, river 20' wide at mouth/dropoff point, floating approximately 200' in the air, 210 feet above sea level.

10% humidity, 80 degrees fahrenheit, wind SSE 3 knots, gusts 5 knots, visibility 10 miles. 

Assumed characteristics - for purposes of area and circumference calculations, island is perfectly and uniformly round. Standard gravity, no noticeable thrust vector from island, floating because reasons (cannot be dispelled). 5 PM, late spring to early summer. Anything 30 feet above the highest point of the tree, past any side of the island, or below the further point down on the island, is out of play. River (gravel and small rock bed) has infinite flow at 10 knots with average depth of 12 inches. Dry land is mostly flat with light zoysia grass coverage (less than 1/4 inch in height) and is approximately 18 inches above river level.

 

Ashton’s gaze lingers for a moment as he glances over the edge. The question that rolls through his mind isn’t “Can I survive the fall?”, but rather “How long would it take me to stop screaming if I fell?” He suspects the answer might be, too long. Of course, he’s perfectly content leaving this hypothesis unexplored for the time being. In fact, he might very well be okay with leaving it unexplored for forever, if it weren’t for the fact that he would eventually need to get down. “That’s a problem for future me.”

Bringing the sword up, to lay it across his right shoulder, the redhead turns from the edge and walks due North toward the tree, seeking out not only the cool of the shade but also the comfort of not peering over a sheer drop. His trek ends near a root that rises well above his head, which he plants his back against before sliding to the ground, the blade being set on the ground next to him in the process.

His left hand rises up, index finger extended, as he lazily starts to draw in the air, trails of ethereal light left in the wake of the passing appendage¹. The worst part of any fight isn’t the combat, it’s the waiting… of course if there is anything the terran military had successfully trained him to do… it is wait.

Spoiler

1. Prep - The Great Filter.

Current Preps: 0

Turn Summary: Ashton is sitting by a tree drawing runes in the air.

 

[amenities 3775]

He had seen it coming from a mile away and yet, somehow, like in one of those dreamlike fugues where you’re striving to move but can’t, he couldn’t dodge it. He wanted to avoid it, keep his record unblemished, but he could tell deep in his gut this would be a tough one. The tunnel of light that always led to Hell, always swallowed him whole, sucked him up and spat him out somewhere foreign. Anxiety filled his body, his heart, his very lungs with a stinging fear that made him clench his muscles into a protective cocoon of tenseness.

When Michael Commager appeared, his eyes opened and he tried as hard as he could to find the immediately inevitable individual who would try to kill him today. Michael found the man as he made a finger and began tracing it through the air familiarly. Too familiarly. Commager himself wore a bed gown under which he was most certainly naked. That did not mean, of course, that Tori had not accompanied him; he never went anywhere without his ‘earring.’

Ashton, whose name Michael did not know, and Michael, were on the same plot of land about twelve feet apart, Michael five feet from the edge of the plot of land. Within his peripheral was another plot of land whose distance was not evident without him dividing attention to it which he was not willing to do, but it seemed close enough to jump for in extenuating circumstances.

Without the time to observe the distance between this height and the one below, Commager’s vertical compass gave him the impression that he was on a very high ledge. 

“Hey, stop!” Michael said agitatedly, raising his hand as if to halt Ashton. He knew it was useless, though; their duel had already begun the moment of his arrival.

Gaia, it was hard. Hauling himself up from a midday nap into this inferno of different maps and different deaths he found himself— once again— fighting for his life, experiencing all the pain that was entailed in those deaths as the cost of defeat. Raking victory out of his foe’s innards by tooth and nail. But by Gaia, Michael Commager fucking did it.

His hand still raised, his mind racing to understand if Ashton was indeed a threat, the anxious tension in Commager’s sinew mounted. A tinge of red light emanated from his earring which slowly crawled across the outline of his nape. *

“You wanna swordfight?” the nightgowned man asked with a wicked grin spreading across his face.

Spoiler

Gathering Prep(*): Fire

[Praetorian 4896]

In a world of magic and intrigue there isn’t much pause over. Certainly, if you live long enough, you eventually become desensitized to all of the preternatural oddities. It is perhaps then, why the most mundane of things, those truly unremarkably, are the ones that are the most jarring. Ashton pauses, mid draw, at the appearance of Michael, not because Michael appeared from nowhere… no that’s common enough. But rather it’s his choice of attire that leaves him befuddled. Although, even this is short lived and almost immediately written off as an attempt at subverting expectations.  Present yourself as harmless and then capitalize on the opposition’s hubris. It’s a tried and true tactic, one that the redhead has leveraged a few times.

“Sword fight, huh?” He stands, his right hand grasping the hilt of the sword, pulling it up with him. At the same moment his left hand grasps the newly formed rune, crushing it¹. A fine glittery powder seeps from between his fingers, each shimmering particulate a letter of a spell. It dances through and against the air currents, traveling some unknown leylines, writhing its way toward Commager as an expanding cloud of glimmer.

Unable to identify where a sword could be secreted away on Michael, save for his prison pocket, Ashton concludes one of two things. Either tucked beneath the nightgown is a rather large and sharp butt plug, or there will be a magic at play. Assuming it’s the second, clearly deception is at play because a magical sword fight isn’t a sword fight.

“No, I don’t think that I do.” He finally answers the question as he initiates his trek into the newly formed cloud, which does little to obstruct either’s vision, but does provide some nice magical ambiance in the form of soft white outline glows, and gold and silver shimmering.

The tip of the sword drags along the ground as he advances, bumping over rocks and branches, while its otherwise dull, though heavy, blade barely leaves a noticeable ravine in the soil. And as he approaches the 7’ mark, Ashton hefts it up, swinging it not directly at Michael but merely to place it in a superior position to attack, later. Remaining squared off with his opponent, a single hand on a two-handed sword, the tip pointing to the sky at a 30-degree angle, Ashton pauses to afford Michael the chance to try to capitalize on his subversion or at the very least raise any further objections. “Ready?”

Spoiler

1. Prep - More Greater Filter

Preps from last turn: 1

Preps this turn: 1

Preps used: 0

Turn Summary: Ashton advanced to within 7 feet of Michael. A magical cloud was created that has expanded uniformly so that it has a 30 foot diameter, centered on the original point of casting.

 

[amenities 3775]

There was no condescension, there was no deception, there were no buttplugs. One of the greatest assets of externalizing Tori— the now-intricate crystal once a stolen jewel lodged crudely in Michael’s left eye socket— was the Warmind’s ability to draw from Michael’s stores of energy without him having to divert his focus as well as expending the energy.

“Sword fight, huh?”

A red tinge growing around Michael, the unknown knight stood, unperturbed either by Michael’s arrival or his attire or the crimson becoming him. Ashton brought his sword along, but more importantly he exacted his runic ritual. Michael, too, understood that these realms sucked from their participants a cruel sense of duty. Made, maybe, mere beasts out of generous men. As the cloud broke from Ahston's shimmering rune and made its own web of the stuff of fantasies, the nightgowned man’s gaze hardened, pushing everything but focus on the objective at hand from within. Red light climbing its fingers and manifesting in its palm his extended hand closed, and within it like the flip of a lightswitch there was indeed a magical sword of Peachy Keen light. A magical sword fight is a sword fight, he was clearly trying to imply.

“No, I don’t think that I do.”

“Huh, we’ll see.” So that’s how it was going to be. Michael’s expression didn’t deflate at the remark, but he did rove his blade to create a vertical neon line between them. It illuminated the scar on his eye where once there had been a jagged rock embedded.

What’s more Tori, formerly known as the red earring on Michael’s left lobe, left her perch as Ashton and the cloud moved forward. A singular node, a tinge of red separated Michael from the advancing cloud of shimmer. When the cloud met the plane Tori created between Ashton and Michael, though, something interesting happened. It would be like smoke washing over glass, Ashton’s cloud spreading over the fine outline of Spirit Fire.¹ A bubble of the mage’s magic extended from the crystal hovering at chest-level between knight and knight to form a blazing nucleus in the existence between Michael and the cloud emitting from Ashton. Almost immediately upon cloud meeting fire, Michael’s grim face was illuminated by the sword, the space around him darkened, his hair stirred with the vacuum of the flames around him.  Magical discharge hissed from the point of contact between Ashton’s spell cloud and Michael’s barrier. A dark warbling emanated from the orange blade in Michael’s hand.

“Ready?” asked the mysterious warrior as he raised his blade.

“Ready,” said Michael.

At his response, a focused red incendiary beam pinged directly for Ashton’s chest. It wouldn’t bore a hole in his sternum or anything, but it would burn the shit out of it, and what’s worse, it didn’t stop; the beam would last for about three seconds. ²

Spoiler

1- Gathering Prep, Spirit Fire
- This is not an AOE but a magic-eating barrier. New magic, for example Michael's sword, can exist inside the barrier.

2. Quickdraw, Incendiary Beam @ Ashton's chest.

Whole Preps: 1 fire

 

[Praetorian 4896]

Destruction, interference, assimilation, hijacking, anti-magic, magic jamming, at the end of the day it’s all magic. Through countless fights and an endless cycle of building and breaking magical systems, Ashton had come to understand this fundamental truth. And from this fundamental truth he came to understand a second, and perhaps even more important truth; systems hate chaos. Magic requires precision and order; the slightest tweaking of variables makes it wildly dangerous or in some instances utterly useless. Changing a single value can break a spell, or cause it to backfire. It’s this randomness, this lack of order, that Ashton hopes to introduce and capitalize on with his latest spell.

Michael, who stands tall, braving the cloud as it engulfs him, confident in his own ravenous power, assuming that his magic will protect him from the glimmering dust, allowing it to ebb past and around him, has miscalculated. Although, to be fair, so has Ashton.

It isn’t instant, the reaction of two magical systems interacting, but Michael’s devouring barrier is the catalyst that procs the transformation¹. There is a brief but intense flash, the ground heaves, and rubble rains from the sky. The thunderous roar that accompanies it is indistinguishable from the concussive impact blast that follows, the timeframe between the two is simply too small to measure.

The simple truth is that, as much as Ashton would have preferred to inject chaos directly into Michael’s system, it’s much easier to create a system that reacts randomly. The reactive field he created, with no known outcome in mind, converts into a blast of lightning. The 30’ cloud, which Michael stands three feet deep in, explodes².

With both fighters off center, it becomes a directional charge, one that launches Ashton toward Michael, and presumably launches Michael away from Ashton. And although the bombardment of ionized particle and searing plasma is without a doubt damaging, the bulk of the energy is expelled as a shockwave which lifts and hurls not only the fighters but the ground itself, several dozen feet.

Spoiler

Rolled a 7. 

1. – All preps are transferred to incoming magic, causing magic to backfire on caster.

2. – A prep transfers to the incoming magic, causing the magic to backfire on caster.

3. – Field deflects/scatters magic off to the side.

4. Field and magic polymerize into a solid object.

5. – Magic transmutes into a chicken

6. – Field and magic neutralize, results in an explosion that showers everything within 30’ in acidic rain.

7. – Magic travels unimpeded but field converts to lightning.

8. – Field increases the speed of the attack.

9. – A prep transfers to incoming magic bolstering its power.

10. – All preps transfer to incoming magic bolstering its power.

---

1. 30' field converts into lightning upon procing off of Michael's spirit fire.

2. Lightning strike generates concussive blast that acts as a directional charge, launching Michael and Ashton. 2 preps used.

Preps gained this turn: 0

Preps used this turn: 2

Preps remaining: 0