The moment the enemy took his leap from the rooftop Mistral whirled, planted her foot behind her and a palm on the pommel of the meteoric iron blade, then thrust the black knife upward at the air, seemingly at nothing.  Yet, the point of the blade flared and boiled with glowing supernal vapor as she projected its point and velocity into the space that the man was leaping into, causing him to effectively throw himself upon her blade.

As she thrust Mistral hissed quietly, “Tu ne peux pas m'échapper, connard.”

---

Ranged Blow stab at the leaping muffin-man at range, trying to align it to leverage his leaping momentum to make him fall on her virtual-blade:

• 06:57, Today: Mistral rolled 5 successes using 7d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling on 8 or more with rolls of 10(+8,3),2,9(+3),4,9(+7),7,9(+6).  Ranged Blow attack!

No defense roll against it!
This message was last edited by the player at 16:16, Wed 04 Dec 2019.

 The enemy mage took a knife to the gut as he leapt off the roof top. However, he had the wherewithal to begin weaving a spell that Mistral immediately recognized as a portal.

 She tried to interfere with the casting but to no effect and the man in question vanished elsewhere.

 The time read 3:00.

Prometheus ran to the edge and fired his gun just as the man vanished through the Portal, "Either he is stupid...or he knows a damn good healer. I am guessing the second."

Looking at the time he growled quietly, Chasing a space Mage is a terrible idea, but do you think you can work out his destination from the Reassurance in...about 2 minutes?"

1 minute to flee would be cutting it close, but was not the worst idea.

Mistral stopped near the building’s edge as the man jumped and quickly worked to unravel his spatial weaving as he fell, and though she sapped the spell’s potency significantly, it was not enough.  “Merdasse!  Hold, I will find him.”  Mistral ran a thumb along the flat of the blackened blade, wiping from it some of the mage’s blood.  She smeared the blood onto the center of her small brass mirror and began quickly chanting while tracing circles onto mirror.  Her eyelids fluttered, pupils twitching as she cast her sight across space to the owner of that blood as held Défaiseur poised like a cobra ready to strike...

 Mistral worked her magic and an image of her target appeared in front of her, in the middle of Time Square. He was attracting more than a few worried looks due to the severity of his wounds and panicked fleeing. Many were on their phones.

Mistral seemed to catch sight of her quarry, but stayed her hand for the moment...

---

OOC: uff, typical tourists still on their phones out in Times Square despite the apocalypse rolling in ;P

Noticing Mistral making no move to peruse or cast anymore, leads Prometheus to check the timer.

Trust the Spcae Mage...she has a plan and we still have plenty of time to get out.

Finally he said, "He's making this difficult, isn't he?"

 Mistral waits, watching, and notices something strange about the people around the mage. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something was just... off.

 It could be attributed to the fact that some people were just stupid... but, from the roof, it looked like the sky had swallowed part of the city.

 The mage finally wandered into an alleyway and began incanting the words to heal himself. Mistral had seen Promethius use the same magic on her.

 The time now read 2 minutes.

OOC: I rolled for you. you don't know what it is and can't explain it, but you have an uneasy feeling about something you're seeing

Mistral’s eyes and her focus were cast elsewhere, but after a delay she replied to Prometheus, “He jumped to Times Square.  It appears crowded.  He hopes I will not end him in public.”  She paused, then rapidly thrust the black-bladed dagger upward, bright vapor streaming off the edges as she twisted and then dragged outward.  Mistral concluded drily, “He was mistaken.”

Edit: cut out a premature conclusion
This message was last edited by the player at 06:47, Fri 06 Dec 2019.

 Mistral feels nothing as the knife slides in and, when she slides it out, it is coated in blood.

 The man clutches his leg and collapses... only to change into a man with the distinct look of a drunken businessman. He vomits into the rain as he breathes his last breath. The actual mage was nowhere to be seen.

Mistral stared blankly ahead after completing her attack, and then her demeanor hardened.  She spoke over the earpiece, “Extraction on roof in one minute, building detonation in two.”

Once Ralph had arrived to the rooftop Mistral re-opened the horizontal portal through which she previously dropped the last of Talion’s children.  She gestured to it in invitation to the two men, “After you, Monsieurs.  Do not worry, you’ll have a soft landing.”
This message was last edited by the player at 15:23, Fri 06 Dec 2019.

PM

As Mistral awaited Ralph’s arrival for extraction she knelt at the roof’s edge, lips moving and eyes darting rapidly, intently focused on scrutinizing the spatial resonance left in the enemy mage’s wake.  A hovering black ball of candy apparated from nowhere as she worked, and without looking Mistral plucked it out of the air, popped it into her mouth and chewed, not losing a moment’s focus.

PM

The time for extraction came, and Mistral awaited Prometheus and Ralph to jump down into the portal that would drop them onto the oversized bed in her cabin on the S.S. Grey.  Once they’d both gone through, the portal closed behind them, but Mistral remained on the other side.  Her voice came through over the earpiece to the two of them, “Le sorcier has escaped me.  I hunt him now, but can only do so alone.  I will return soon, unless I can not.  It has been an honor to work at your sides, and tell the others the same if I can not.  Au revoir, Monsieurs.”  With that, the line went dead.

On the rooftop, Mistral incanted words of power to reconstitute the spatial pathway left behind by her enemy, then made a running leap off the rooftop.  She fell briefly before vanishing into thin air, leaving the building to detonate in her absence.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:07, Sat 07 Dec 2019.

OOC: Sorry about the delay everyone. I had to a bunch to do the last two days and it took longer then expected.

Prometheus made no comment when Mistral's expression hardened or despite the concerns he held for these events. Something wasn't going right and he didn't know what it was. Space Mage battles were always risky.

Still, when she said it was time for extraction, he went through eagerly, well aware of how little time they had before the building exploded. They could peruse the Space Mage latter.

OOC: ---> To Return Trip (0.1.8)
This message was last edited by the player at 02:04, Sun 08 Dec 2019.

 As Mistral fell, the building exploded, the fireball expanding above her as she fell through the midair portal.

 Mistral had had the foresight to check the enemy portal, scry on the location, and alter the portal's destination before following through. It had been a good thing too, because the original endpoint had been moved to the top of a building in Time Square.

 Instead, she landed in a nearby alley. There were still quite a few people out in the driving rain. Despite the lightning, despite the howling winds... and, as such were all staring slack-jawed at the sky as a funnel cloud passed above them, ripping the lightning rods from the tops of buildings.

 It was only then that these people began to actually seek shelter.

 The problem now was "where to go?".

 When she had followed him sympathetically, she had ended up following someone else... so now the question became how to track a space mage through an apocalypse storm without any resonance.

Mistral landed in the alley, absorbing the impact with her knees as if she’d just jumped from a rooftop, which she had.  Hood upraised and fading into the rain like a specter, she flattened herself against the alley wall and checked her immediate surroundings.  Then she moved toward the enemy mage’s last known location, or at least of his treacherous will-working that placed an innocent drunkard in the path of a killing blow meant for him.

The storm was worsening, and what were all these people doing out here, she wondered?  Was Talion aware yet that his children were safe?  Ten of them, at least.  Mistral didn’t know about the others.

Mistral found the place where she’d been made to do a murder, and her placid demeanor faltered for a moment.  It was the connard I hunt who has killed you...  Was she trying to convince herself, the corpse?  The corpse didn’t care.  Mistral searched for resonances, wards, residual teleportation signatures, as well as evidence of more mundane movements.  Even if her scry had showed her false imagery, he had been here at least briefly...

 Mistral found little other than what she knew had happened with her mundane eyes. Her magical investigation, however...


 By the time she was done examining, she heard a loud crash behind her. Someone's AC unit had been torn off the roof and landed on the ground dear her. Debris was falling from the sky and an uprooted tree landed in the middle of Time Square.

 The puddles around her were literally boiling, despite being cool to the touch. Spirit resonance swirled around her, touching and destroying every sympathetic trace. She witnessed graffiti in the alley she was literally melting off the walls and the trash surrounding her was likewise melting as though someone had poured acid on them.

 You had seen Grey disassemble matter in a very similar way before, but you could not see her familiar metallic sheen in any of this work.

 Suddenly, the lightning illuminates the silhouette of an apartment building flying through the air above her, followed by a deafening crash of thunder.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:28, Sun 08 Dec 2019.

Mistral did not find the trail she was looking for, but what she did find was curious indeed.  The resonance had familiar aspects, but a large part of it was unlike any arcanum she’d ever studied.  She’d have questions for the author of this strange arcane cocktail... if she weren’t going to kill him first.

She arose to her feet just as an AC unit crashed to the ground nearby, causing her to dart away into the cover of a recessed doorway.  Mistral glanced up at the debris raining from the sky, then to the seething puddles and all things melting.  No, not everything... just the trash and graffiti, as if things were being cleaned up.  Interesting.  The apartment building hurtling through the sky overhead confirmed that the situation had become perilous.  Yet, she’d detected no residual teleportation signatures, which might mean her quarry was still here, somewhere.

Mistral opened her second sight and went on the move, keeping to cover as well as she could as she stalked the streets of the apocalypse like a ghost in the rain.  The situation had grown particularly dangerous and she had little hope to find her quarry now, but she had a feeling there was more to be found here...

 The rain had begun to drive down hard, reducing visibility to only a few feet. The sound of wind had become deafening, to the point where she could only hear the thunder and the sounds of large objects landing around her.

 With her second sight, the only thing she could truly see were the masses of spirits... and something of incomprehensible scale in the clouds. A spiritual leviathan swam within the storm above her, illuminated by lightning, even a single limb of which was fully more massive than the largest buildings in New York... and it was searching for something.

 You locked gazed with the titian for a moment but, just as quickly, it lost interest.

The weather was worsening by the moment, and it was quickly growing into a maelstrom that made a category-5 typhoon look like a pleasant spring shower.  Mistral could see next to nothing with her eyes, but her second sight revealed an incomprehensible sight.  Oceans of furious spirits roiling in flocks through the driving storm, and in the sky swam a spirit leviathan so vast as to defy imagining.  The titan turned toward Mistral for the briefest moment, and that terrible gaze struck like a blow both physical and psychic.  Mistral staggered back and was slammed against a wall, then collapsed to her knees.  She regained her feet, still reeling and fighting the urge to shiny herself away from this roaring chaos.

Yet, she thought this dreadful leviathan might be searching for the same thing as she.  On a foolhardy impulse, Mistral ran out from shelter into what she thought was the open plaza of Times Square, though in this apocalyptic storm she could not be certain.  It didn’t matter, for she only needed an unobstructed view of the spirit titan she sought to entreat.  Shouting words of power over the roar of the world’s ending, Mistral projected a psychic impression across the vast distance.  It was a brief vision of the enemy mage as she had seen him on the rooftop, driving Talion’s child before him at gunpoint.  The image was colored by Mistral’s impotent rage at being tricked and robbed of the chance to bring justice to this scum.

She didn’t realize until after she’d sent forth the image that she’d been screaming into the storm, heard by no one.

 The leviathan stopped and turned to stare at Mistral once more, this time with interest... but, as she'd seen with the smaller ones, the interest of a rage spirit was never welcome.

 It roared a peal of deafening thunder and glass began shattering around her, mixing with the wind and the rain to create a flaywind maelstrom. A car near her had its sides shredded and, as the leviathan approached, its foreclaw descended.

 In the material realm, it was a tornado... a swirling funnel of death reaching down, as if the sky itself had come to lay claim to all things terrestrial.

There could be no doubt that Mistral had succeeded in catching the titanic rage spirit’s attention by showing it the enemy, but there was a small problem in that she now had the attention of the titanic rage spirit.  She had no way of knowing whether the leviathan came now to destroy her or the enemy mage who might yet be nearby, but what difference would it make if the whole of Manhattan were turned into a crater with them both in it?

Mistral swirled her hands in mirrored gesticulations as the shattered glass whipped up into a destructive whirlwind all about her.  She shouted the High Speech incantation and was gone in a flash of bright supernal mist, which was instantly torn away by the terrible gales.

 Surprisingly, even though she found herself in the midst of a glassblown gale, she managed to teleport away before she was harmed.