Run the World (Quest)

[Hela]

There was a rage in Azula’s eyes as she reached up and accepted Hela’s extended arm. Grin deepening, Hela hoisted the teenager up out of the water and then into the air, allowing her legs to dangle above the surface of the water for a few minutes.

“You really are a waifish little thing, aren’t you?” Hela spoke with a faint sneer as Azula swung at her with a foot. The queen twisted away from the teenager’s kick and winked. “Calm down, Dear, just didn’t want you to drip all over the boat.” With that, she casually threw the raven-haired little princess onto the floating platform and very nearly wound up tossing her back into the ocean in the process.

As Azula, hands clutched to the surface of the makeshift barge as her feet again sank into the ocean, pulled herself up out of the water, Rominia stepped over to Hela and asked the obvious question. “What’s the plan? We just going to steer our little boat over to the pirate flagship and murder everyone?”

Shrugging her shoulders, Hela snapped her fingers and conjured an engine for their craft. The whole platform jerked, and Azula, still catching her breath on her hands and knees, was nearly tossed overboard yet again. She managed to catch herself after a handful of choice obscenities.

“Come on, Princess,” Hela cooed. “Stop playing in the boat. We have to plan.”

“I hate you,” Azula rasped as she stood up. Rather than ring out her damp clothes, the adolescent simply set a gentle fire across her arms and hands. The heat immediately started to cause steam to start issuing off of her outfit.

“I know,” Hela replied before pantomiming a kiss to the teenager and turning her focus back to the werewolf. “We’ll do one of the few things we’re good at, Dog.”

Rominia bristled but didn’t take the obvious bait. “And what is that?”

The Goddess of Death glanced over at a scowling Azula, who still seemed shaky and a bit discolored as the little platform hummed through the turbulent ocean. “We’ll kill them all and burn their ships. Isn’t that right, Zuzu?”

Azula opened her mouth, but at that moment, their ‘boat’ rocked hard, and the color on the princess’ face took on some greenish hues.

***​

Hela wasn’t exactly sure how they managed to pull it off, but with some luck—and Rominia’s loose understanding of ship navigation (not that Hela planned to give her any credit)—the trio and their little makeshift boat found themselves within a spyglass’ view of Jolly Roger’s flagship. Unfortunately, the dread pirate was now accompanied by two smaller vessels.

“He has friends,” Rominia stated bluntly as she handed the green-and-black spyglass over to Hela. The queen could see the three shapes at this distance, so she declined and turned to look at Azula, who remained seated.

“You should be pleased,” Hela deadpanned before trying to subtly gesture with her head for the young woman to sit up and join them. After a few decreasingly subtle motions, the Queen of Asgard grabbed a fistful of Azula’s sleeve and yanked her up. “More ships.”

“I can see, you hag.”

Hela patted Azula on the head, which only led to the princess swiping at her, claws-first. “More ships for you to burn.”

“Just be quiet and steer us there,” Azula grumbled as the boat swayed. “I don’t know why you couldn’t have created a more stable vessel,” she added as she almost lost her balance.

“What’s the fun in that?” Hela whispered as she snapped her fingers and prompted the whole platform to sink underwater. As it did, walls sprung up around them to seal them inside before they were flooded.

“What are you doing?” Rominia asked from the darkness of the enclosed vessel.

“We’ll have a better chance of surprising them if we come at them from underneath,” Hela whispered as she willed three more turbines into existence and steered them toward Jolly Roger’s little flotilla.

“Do we divide and conquer?” Rominia inquired.

“We could,” Hela muttered. Even in the dark, Azula could feel the woman’s smug eyes on her. “Something tells me that we’re not the best equipped individuals to try cloak-and-dagger.”

“Speak for yourself, Witch,” the princess retorted.

In the dark, Hela placed a palm over her heart. “Calm your hormones, Dear, I’m just making generalizations. The dog here swings a large hammer, your shoot literally flames from your hands, and me? Well I’m me, so that’s irrelevant, since I’m great at everything.”

“Separate ships,” Azula replied. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally mistake you for an enemy combatant.”

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” Hela laughed as she reached out and ruffled Azula’s hair, prompting the teenager to swipe at her once again—this time with a hand wreathed in blue flames. “We’re almost there,” Hela remarked as she waved a hand and turned part of the roof into a transparent material.

Standing up, Azula stepped up between the pair and gazed up through the glass pane. “I want Jolly Roger.”

At that, Hela laughed as she looked down at the princess. “You?”

“He destroyed my ship, and I will put him in his place,” she growled. “Beneath my heel.”

“He bested you,” Hela replied plainly. “Literally bested you within the last twenty-four hours.”

“I learn fast,” Azula spoke with a scowl as she looked at the woman. “It’s one of the benefits of not being and looking a thousand years old.”

Hela feigned outrage before rolling her eyes. “As you will,” she muttered. “No wonder you’re just a princess… they probably wouldn’t trust you to lead anything, because you’d direct it straight into ruin.” The woman then grabbed Azula by the ear. “And I’m over two-thousand years old,” she added before twisting the lobe and giving the girl a ‘playful’ shove toward the wall of the vessel.

Even mid-stumble, Azula was opening her mouth to throw something back at Hela, but before she could, a fresh wall popped up in front of her. A moment later, the wall behind her vanished, and Azula found herself having to kick and swim up to the belly of the ship that lazily traversed over her head.

“Will she be okay?” Rominia muttered as she glanced back at Hela.

Hela shrugged her shoulders. “If she falls down a well, I’m sure you’ll be able to find her.”

The werewolf rolled her eyes. “Warn me before you plan to jettison me from the ship.”

No sooner were the words out of Rominia’s mouth, and the vessel had split into two miniatures that were each aimed at one of the support ships.

Quest: In the Heart of the Sea
Post WC: 1110 (via MS Word)
Quest WC: 17168/20000

 

[Azula]

Ugh. Bitch.

Azula flailed in the water, lips tightly sealed as she haphazardly swam up towards Jolly Roger’s ship. She may have commanded a largely-naval army in her past dimension, but she was still a fire bender; water wasn’t her domain. A necessary evil she dealt with, but not something she would ever say she felt particularly confident dealing with. A stretch for her to admit, given her considerable confidence with, well, everything else.

Still, she couldn’t waste this opportunity to spit on Hela’s criticisms. By now, of course, surpassing expectations was par for the course for the fire princess — just ask Zuko — but the hag and her dog seemed determined to keep her down. No matter how impressive she proved herself, they continued to look down on her with disdain. They treated her like an extra, like their wily, mischievous stepdaughter who needed to have some sense knocked into her. Well… that was their mistake, then. One day they’d learn her true power.

One day she’d prove them all wrong.

Starting with Jolly Roger. What a ridiculous cretin. Shambling around like a motherfucking zombie in that ridiculous purple coat. She’d make him pay dearly for embarrassing her, and would return that shame twofold to him.

Her hands slapped against the bottom of the ship, and she tried her best to summon her flames. Predictably, here in the middle of the ocean, her embers were quickly snuffed out, which meant that more… mundane options had to be on the table.

She dug her fingers into the wood and ripped it off.

It was amazing what fury could motivate someone to do under the right circumstances, and with just a little dash of adrenaline.

Rrrrrip. Tearrrrr.

She yanked off one piece of wood, then another, then another until she’d made a hole large enough for herself to crawl through. She clambered up into the bottom of the ship, pushing onto her feet. Skeletal pirates scrambled around her, unsure of which problem to deal with first: the psychopathic princess that had just appeared, or the fact that their ship was suddenly sinking.

Azula didn’t give them time to decide, lifting a hand and immediately launching a fireball into one of their faces. Bones turned to ash as the firebending prodigy kicked her feet into the air and thrust her fist in every direction, launching a stream of flame this way and an orb of flame that way. Within minutes, she’d disintegrated every single bony buccaneer this bottom chamber had to offer, and all before the water had even reached ankle height. She looked around at the piles of ash floating in the drink, and scoffed. They should’ve feared her. They should’ve all known she would come back for them, come back to have her vengeance. She would not be embarrassed a second time.

She burst through the door of the chamber, stomping up stairs with no regard for who noticed her. Forget that stupid witchy bitch’s suggestion of going cloak and dagger -- Princess Azula of the Fire Nation was on a motherfucking rampage, and at this point, she could feel it in her gut that she would not be stopped.

The trapdoor to the below decks swung open, and she vaulted into the air, her form cutting through the night sky like a foreboding blood-red streak. Pirates shouted warnings to their fellows as Azula’s hands reached out, embers of blue flame igniting at her fingertips and launching onto the ship’s starboard side below. Pirate after pirate fell under the princess’s white-hot rage, and she felt herself turning victorious, felt every ounce of her being growing in power as she launched her all out assault on Jolly Roger’s crew. When her feet finally touched the ground, more than ten skeletal scurvy dogs lay dead -- again -- on the ground, and she felt a different sort of fire burning in her stomach.

She laughed.

If only Hela could see her now.

Hag.

“Back again, lass?” Jolly Roger said, emerging from the captain’s chambers with his sword already drawn. Azula glanced behind her, barely letting her smirk be seen over her shoulder. She could tell even without fully seeing him that something was different this time. His sword was out, his demeanor more mocking but less confident than before. He knew that she was out for blood. Was he… afraid?

The ship lurched as the lower decks began to fill with water, and Azula almost lost her balance. She steadied herself, holding her hands out to keep herself upright, almost missing the swipe of Jolly Roger’s sickly green blade barreling towards her. She fell backwards, grasping onto the ship’s railing with her hands and lifting her feet off the ground, launching a fiery kick into the skeletal captain’s abdomen that sent him tumbling backwards.

He stumbled, one of his skeletal hands grasping onto the fresh burn wound blackening the little bit of pink muscle that still hung on his rib cage. His eyes flitted up to Azula, just in time to swing his blade at a fire princess who’d decided to rush at him. The sword sliced through her outstretched arm, forming a long, brutal cut from elbow to wrist that immediately sent a searing pain up into her shoulder and chest. She ducked away, sprinting to set a distance between her and Jolly Roger that would give her time to examine the wound.

Blood dripped from her arm, and she could already feel herself going woozy. He’d certainly gotten her in a particularly disadvantageous place, and if she didn’t do something about this fast she knew that was going to faint.

Jolly Roger was already on the attack again, lifting his green blade high above his head and launching it down at Azula. The fire princess somersaulted past him, the blade smashing into the deck of the ship as she crouched behind a nearby barrel for cover.

Have to… cauterize… now, she thought hurriedly, slapping her hand down on the wound and conjuring up as much flame as she could muster. The heat slowly but surely closed up the wound, blocking any more blood from coming, and she took a deep breath. This was it, then. She couldn’t let him get close again lest she risk another swipe like that.

She stood up.

Jolly Roger was running at her, wildly swinging his sword like a madman. Azula could see Tia Dalma’s amulet clinking against his chest as he sprinted, and as it glinted in the pale moonlight, she couldn’t help but smirk. The ship lurched again, beginning to sink further into the water, and Jolly Roger tripped. The fire princess opened her mouth, and without warning, flames began to pour out of her, gorgeous blue fire lighting up the night and setting Jolly Roger’s skeletal body fully aflame.

His screams echoed into the night as the blue embers wrapped around his body, licking up every single one of his bony body parts and turning it into ash. Azula stood perfectly still and watched as he melted before her. The reflection of the azure flames flickering in her eyes might’ve been the only light left in them as she let her inhibitions wane and instinct take over.

Azula uses one focus to utilize the Dragon's Maw ability to its full power before officially purchasing it. 2/3 Focus remaining.

Quest: In the Heart of the Sea
Azula, Hela, Romania
Post WC: 1203 (according to Google Docs)
Quest WC: 18371/20000 (according to GDocs)

 

[Hela]

For a moment, Hela lingered within the black sphere as it bobbed beneath the waters of Opealon’s unending ocean. Her eyes were squeezed closed, and the only sounds she could hear were her shallow breaths and the gentle pulse of blood through her temples. The pseudo-silence was pleasant, but at her core, the Queen of Asgard did not relish it quite as much as others may.

After all, she much preferred the sensory overload of frenetic combat. Silence was okay. Music, depending on the genre or the artist, could be all right. Nothing quite matched the screech of steel, the screams of the dying, and the overall tapestry of sights and sounds that was a pitched battle to the death. For untold eons before her imprisonment, Hela had butchered her way across hundreds of such battlefields.

This?

This was a pittance.

However, beggars couldn’t always be choosers—even if they were royalty.

Hela opened her eyes and gentle unflexed her fingers.

***​

The formation of three ships had mostly ground to a halt following the raising of warning bells from the right vessel. As a wild-eyed princess tore her way through the hull of the central vessel, the mercenary sailors who operated the left ship found their attention pulled in another direction. Just a few meters from the port side of the Lanza de la Muerte, the crew saw the dark shape burst up from the turbid, unsettled oceans.

By the time Hela’s heels clicked down onto the deck of the vessel, she had shed the remnants of the improvised submersible. Her clothing dry and impeccable, the Goddess of Death lifted a hand and grinned at her nails as she waited for the crew to encircle her. Once the wet thumping of boots on wood had ceased, Hela glanced away from her hand and smiled at the nice ring of sabers that surrounded her.

“Hello, Boys,” the goddess spoke in her haughty, nearly-a-shout tone of voice. “If you put your swords away, I promise to make your deaths quick and painless.”

At that, Hela got what she had hoped for—a few chuckles from the collection of hired swords. Before the proverbial line of snark could be uttered from one of the sea-drenched scallywags, Hela skewered them through the back with the collection of necroswords she’d willed into existence between her remarks.

As that first patch of briny cannon fodder collapsed in screaming heaps around her, Hela turned her focus to the next wave of pirates, who swarmed down from the forecastle and from the stern of the ship. Without skipping a beat, the Asgardian queen stomped one of her boots down on the deck’s timbers and smashed her way down into the underlying gun deck. Landing on her feet amidst the haze of wooden flakes and dust, Hela jumped backwards as the pirates up above drew their sidearms and fired down at her.

Twisting to her side, the Goddess of Death, necrosword in hand, stabbed a shocked pirate through the sternum and left him sputter and die on the floor of the gundeck as she set her sights at the crate next to his cannon post. With a flick of her wrist, Hela telekinetically hoisted the collection of cannonballs from the crate and proceeded to send a pair of them down through the gut of the ship. She sent a few into the adjacent ship for good measure before using what remained to play a positively fatal game of hide-and-go seek with the crew of the gundeck, who had lost any resolve they may have had seconds prior.

For the recently dead, the woman’s arrival and subsequent circus of horrors had likely felt endless, but for Hela, it had been just under a minute or so. She heard the clamor of the boat’s more stalwart defenders rushing down in some likely vain effort to save their ship and slay the green monster from the depths.

Near the front of the gundeck, a half dozen pirates had reached the foot of the stairs and fallen into a shaky position with their muskets drawn. One of them, a particularly salty sailor with a bandana wrapped around his brow and a collection of teeth missing from his mouth, brandished a somewhat ornate flintlock pistol from the back of the row.

“Surrender,” the pirate barked, revealing a mouth that was missing a few teeth.

“How original,” Hela muttered as she sidestepped, grabbed hold of the nearest cannon, yanked it away from its wooden base, and hurled it at the crowd. Most of the men scattered, but a pair of them couldn’t get up quickly enough from their kneeling positions and were crushed against the stairwell like the helpless insects they were as the Goddess of Death sent a hail of buzzing blades zipping across the deck of the vessel.

“The child was right,” Hela snickered as she picked up a piece of wood and threw it calmly through the throat of a groaning pirate. “We are glorified garbagewomen.”

As she turned around to see if there was anything around that would tickle her barbaric fancies, Hela was slammed in the chest and face by a concussive force. The shockwaves shuddered the already foundering structure of the pirate ship as the ragdolled Asgardian flailed for a few meters before managing to right herself midair near the far side of the gundeck. Flipping her hair away from her face, the woman fought to maintain her composure as she dropped back down to the solid floor below and glanced at her ambusher.

“The Jolly Roger made sure we were prepared for you, Witch,” the pirate snarled as he lifted his fists to reveal a pair of rune-inlaid bangles over his wrists and forearms. “Like ‘em? Smuggled out of the City of Hope. Guess they’re designed ‘specially for scum like you.”

There was a tug-of-war in Hela’s mind as she wavered between feeling incredulous or enraged beyond measure. “You think some jewelry will save you from me?” She spoke through clenched teeth as the air around her filled with dancing necroswords. “Not even death itself can save you from me,” she rasped as she hurtled a dozen glistening blades at the pirate.

Undeterred, the emboldened scallywag adjusted his position and proceeded to punch his fist into his opposing palm. When he did, the runes on his bracers flared, and a translucent dome sprung up around him.

Hela scowled as her blades shattered against the protective field.

Forearms still aglow with whatever magicks fueled his armaments, the pirate stepped forward and thrust his palms forward, releasing another shockwave. Unlike before, the Asgardian knew what was coming, and she took flight—crashing her way through the exterior of the ship and into the misty madness. On the upper decks of the Jolly Roger’s flagship, she heard the all too familiar sounds of Azula ‘fighting’, and even though the stench of brine was thick in the air, Hela smelled the erratic bursts of flame.

The flagship was likewise foundering in the water, but Hela had her own listing ship with which to occupy herself. Propelling forward down the ship, she twisted around a shockwave as it bellowed out from within the lurching vessel. With a smile, the Asgardian threw herself back into the gundeck. She crashed right into the pirate, and while she squeezed through one of his shoulders, the ungrateful fool still managed to strike her in the jaw with his remaining, rune-reinforced fist.

At the coppery taste of her own blood, Hela grabbed two fistfuls of the man’s face and tore through his fragile mortality like a peasant would tear into fresh bread.

***​

Azula stepped forward and tore the amulet from the smoldering, partially collapsed carcass of Jolly Roger. While the smoldering corpse continued its journey into ash, the princess lifted the trinket up to her face and glared manically into its reflective surface.

Around her, a collection of pirates had formed a loose circle, and while a few seemed eager to keep up the fight, many of them seemed withered at the sight of their leader’s charred remnants.

Amulet held up to the level of her head, Azula turned and sneered at the rabble. “Bow down to yo—”

Everyone on the Harkaway found their attention pulled hard to the left as a shadow started to grow across the deck of the flagship.

The Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, her moment of victory secured, could only scowl as she watched the nearby ship—water and loose cargo spilling from holes and cracks in its hull—lifted from the ocean.

For a fleeting moment, the young Fire Bender had hoped to see some sort of tendril or hooked claw grasping the underside of the ship. Instead, she eventually found herself staring into the eyes of the very last person she wanted to see holding a naval vessel fifty yards above the sea. “That… bitch.” Azula muttered beneath her breath as Hela proceeded to throw the ship across the Harkaway and into the remaining vessel in the pirate flotilla.

A few moments later, Hela dropped down onto the deck of Jolly Roger’s former flagship, and a heartbeat later, the mortified remnants of the crew were impaled by a hail of black spears.

“I wasn’t done here,” Azula spoke with a scowl as the older woman slit the throat of a pirate who hadn’t been impaled in a vital enough area to die instantly.

Looking away from the fresh corpse, Hela made a pouty face. “Aww, did you want to play with the salty, smelly toys some more?”

Before Azula could retort, the two of them heard the wet thump of something collapsing onto the deck. Their heads both snapped in the direction of the sound, and they found themselves staring at a wheezing, waterlogged Rominia.

“Whose fucking idea was it to drop a fucking boat on me?” She barked as she stood up, wobbled for a moment, and then proceeded to remove her boots.

“Why don’t you ask the flying witch?” Azula spat as she spotted a groaning pirate and set him aflame.

Hela laughed as she proceeded to pat the princess a bit too hard on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Princess, someday when you’re all grown up... I'm sure you’ll be able to win fights without looking like you crawled out of a junkyard in the process.”

Hela used an application of Focus to use Flight without needing as much … focus.

Quest: In the Heart of the Sea
Azula, Hela, Romania
Post WC: 1732 (according to MS Word)
Quest WC: 20103/20000