3347/Sakura and the Purple Pentacle

Sakura and the Purple Pentacle
Date of Scene:	07 November 2015
Location:	Tomoeda-865
Synopsis:	Thirty minutes ago, Sakura Kinomoto disappeared chasing a mysterious man. Two minutes ago, Jean announced that every multiversal in world 865 would die. We've only got less than an hour to save the world...
Cast of Characters:	Crys Gattz, Staren, 165, 172, 312, 560, Tomoyo Daidouji, 707

---

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    The Unionites find themselves outside a tower block, one of many in this part of Tokyo. This is where all their searching and scanning has lead them. There's a disturbingly high amount of magic radiating from the tower block... dimensional magic, like the sort used for teleporting long distances. Or accessing parallel dimensions. Magic also seems to have been flowing INTO the block, but stopped before anyone arrived...

    There's no one around. The entire district is devoid of people, although it's obvious people LIVE here - there's cars parked by the curb and lights are still on in a lot of homes and businesses.

    The door to the block is unlocked.

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
    Always, he's thinking. Ren Tanaka's mouth runs fast, but never faster than his brain.

    Jean Estella has made his move. Jean has Sakura; it's an easy conclusion to make. Jean has also threatened to kill all multiversal outsiders in 865: not Tomoeda, not Tokyo, but the entire world. A planetary evacuation couldn't be done in an hour.

    So we've got an hour to save the world.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUopgijs2uk
    Endless Dash - Princess Waltz

    Let's assume that Jean and the Purple Pentacle had a plan, a plan that involved Sakura and her cards. The specifics of that plan are not as relevant as the fact that We the Multiverse got involved. We, the multiverse, have been consistently assisting Sakura recollect all of her cards. Well the Union, but that's probably not relevant to a man like Jean. 'The multiversals' are his enemy. They are the 'if you meddlers hadn't interfered then this would have gone the way I intended for it to go'.

    So now whatever plan Jean has involving Sakura, it now has been changed to involve us as the endpoint, and Sakura as the means.

    And this is where it all goes down. This tower. Somewhere in a lounge or conference hall or empty apartment space, we will face down Jean for the fate of the world.

    Ren is running cleanly up the outside wall. This is a familiar behavior for him, magical sense of a brick. But it's not hard for anyone to know that something is awfully, terribly wrong here.

    "You take the horizontal road, and I'll take the vertical road, and call me if you get to Scotland before me..."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
'Any multiversals still in Earth-865 in one hour will die. This is not a threat.'

If Jean was seriously hoping to avoid a fight, that was something like the dumbest possible thing to say when a group from the Union was out looking for their friend. Xiaomu is loaded for bear and looking for a fight, and while she's not technically against laying down her life for a good cause, she's sure as hell not about to lay it down *cheaply* - especially to the likes of the Purple Pentacle. They've given Sakura and her friends a lot of trouble, and since Xiaomu was already in Tomoeda-865 when that warning went out, rather than heading for the nearest warpgate, she joined the search.

Rather than trying to scale the outside of the building, the sage fox from Shinra is simply heading in through the front doors. "Let us know if you figure out which floor they're on," she radios to Ren and the others ... then pauses in front of the elevators.

Thinks briefly, possibly as if she's trying to focus her senses.

... then heads towards the stairs, starting to jog up them. Elevators are generally asking for trouble in a situation like this.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Threat or no threat, Shirou doesn't care. Kinomoto Sakura has gone missing and he's not about to let that stand. He doesn't waste time on pomp or circumstance... or much care on blending in. Decked out in grey and blue plate mail with an open-faced helmet he comes BOUNDING onto the premises with leap after leap, wasting no time at all. Each leap takes him many meters and the armor doesn't seem to slow him down much. But he skids to a halt at the tower...

    ANd gazes up its height...

    "What is it with towers and these people?"

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
    A black car with tinted windows pulls up at the meeting point, and from it emerges Tomoyo, along with her four bodyguards. She's still in her school uniform, and looks exhausted. Though she was quiet on the radio, it seems that she's been looking all over for Sakura up until the readings were found.

    She tilts her head back to stare up at the building. "She's in here?" she asks, voice hollow and utterly lacking all trace of her usual quiet cheer. She snaps her fingers, and all four bodyguards produce a collapsible baton from inside of their coats.

    Tomoyo looks to each Elite present with tired eyes. "I'm counting on all of you. We're stopping him for good this time." Those sure are some words, especially coming from Tomoyo. Without saying anything more, she leads her group inside, producing that jade mirror from the inside of her bag.

Staren has posed:
    Staren doubts there are many multiversals here, besides them. For once, Sakura isn't a target, since she's from here. Still... Sakura's missing, and Jean is up to his old tricks. How could he not come investigate?

    Staren's in his armor of course. He looks the building over, "My sensors indicate a lot of magic and dimensional distortion. I guess it's nothing unexpected..." Staren looks up, and up, and UP. "It's coming from somewhere near the top. Does anyone need help getting up there?"

Crys Gattz has posed:
Crys Gattz was here agains he'd known Sakura for a sizable amount of her life and intended to help out Sakura about anyway she could. So she wasn't even clad in hotpants this might be the most clothing some of the people coming to help has ever seen the newman in. Yet that's not what she's focused on today as she arrives a moment after Tomoyo does and looks to her for a moment. She was not happy with howe things are.

"This is too much like the colony on Ragaol, way too much like it." #-1 ARGUMENT OUT OF RANGE
Her eyes narrows a little bit and she wasn't aloan her mag hovered by her shoulder silently watching all that was going on around there.

"This is a clear operation."

No she's not gety happy from the sounds of it. Staren wouldn't have heard her this put off in /years/.

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    The apartment block is pretty easy to search. There's no one in any of the apartments, and anyway, the magical signal is definitely coming from the top three-ish floors. No matter how they get up there, the Unionites find themselves un-accosted. There are no magical sigils on the walls, no Pentacle goons blocking the way, no traps of summoning creatures...

    It's surprisingly easy. Either Jean threw this together at the last minute, or he wants to be found?

Staren has posed:
    Staren considers options. He offers teleports to the roof for anyone who wants them, then once they're up there, he tosses them some synthetic rope, then steps a short ways to the side, aims his beam cannons downward, and blows a hole in the roof, dropping down. Like heck he trusts the door, that's an obvious trap.

    ...Well, he /was/ going to just make a beeline for it, but his sensors aren't as precise as he hoped. He seaches the top floor as fast as he can.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Xiaomu's own theory is that Jean's realized the Union Elites can plow through any kind of opposition he can think of to throw in their way, and decided to save himself the trouble of bothering. And given the wording of his ultimatum, he may have been expecting the threat of imminent death to be enough to drive off his would-be adversaries.

Which might actually have WORKED, except for the whole thing about presumably holding a friend of theirs captive.

Xiaomu is fairly quiet about her search, albeit not terribly subtle. Rummaging through offices is one thing. but private apartments - well, if they LOOK inhabited, she doesn't want to tear people's belongings apart. Apartments which are vacant, unfurtnished, and show no signs of habitation are fair game ... even if there's less to go through. Anyway, a ritual - or even a big honking magical distortion that is either being harnessed, or is being deliberately nourished by another source - is going to get her attention in a hurry, probably before she even lays eyes on it physically.

Whatever she can do to help narrow the search area down, she'll let her allies know which areas can potentially be ruled out.

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
    What is the worst case scenario here, anyway? Ren thinks, because there's not much else you can do while walking up the featureless glass plain that is the outside wall of a block of apartments. What is the best case scenario? Do we lose anything by having someone like me linger behind? Do we gain anything by someone like me move ahead and hide in wait? Much like Xiaomu's plan, he is considering caution. He has the rest of the Union on the radio to advise him and feed his ideas, but...

    Xiaomu suggests he make a straight beeline for the rooftop. Ren has another idea...
    Once he gets to the top, he can move down one level while making use of his skills at stealth...

    Except Staren just blew a hole in the roof. "I need to say something to that boy about discretion..."

    In any case. Get in. Be silent. Sneak around. Maybe he can get the drop on Jean.

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
    Tomoyo is definitely upset by things, but she's not entirely irrational. Not yet anyway. "Jean wants us here. He wouldn't have announced it on the radio if he didn't," she says aloud. "So I doubt we're going to be prevented from using elevators."

    It seems that everyone else has their own means of doing things... including making holes, judging by the rumble that goes through the building. But, Tomoyo is a mundane girl, so she takes the mundane route. The call button on the elevators is pressed, the five women stepping inside.

    Since Ren was climbing up, Tomoyo decides to go for one of the floors just below the uppermost floors. Once the door pings, the four guards make a perimeter around Tomoyo as they search, the girl herself bearing a white-knuckle grip on her mirror.

Kaede (312) has posed:
    It may be a surprise, or it may be something he's ignored and allowed until now, but Kaede is in one of Ren's pockets. Passively scanning with her augmented sensor package, she pokes her head out to peek out of an opening in the Box. Very Tactical Espionage Action-y, this. Shinki approved.

    She keeps quiet so as to not blow Ren's 'cover'.

Crys Gattz has posed:
Crys Gattz is going to take the port from Staren it doesn't take long before the Newmman arrives and she's now moving to summon her weapons a hulking mechanical claw appears over one arm and a heavy pistol appears in her off hand as she looks to drop on the enemy. She was ready to make her move but she was holding back until they had the moment to strike, she was never one for stealth anyhow.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    To keep things pretty short, Shirou decides to waste little time with elevators. He projects Vruasa's rocket spear and decides to just FLY up the floors, BANG ZOOOM! Up and up.

    Right to the 39th floor. What he hopes is the 39th floor. He goes crashing through a window to do it, coming up with the smoking spear held defensively. "ALright, where are they?!"

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    The room Shirou crashes into is... bigger on the inside. MUCH bigger on the inside. It's like an auditorium. The walls are covered in sparkling, twinkly stars, and the floor is completely devoid of markings. Or furniture. In fact, the only things he can see are the door to the apartment, waaay off in the distance... and two figures.

    Ren and Kaede might see these figures too, as the door bursts open the moment Shirou crashes into the room.

    One is... very obviously Sakura. Stripped down to as little clothing as possible while still remaining decent - that is, she's wearing her blouse and her bloomers, her skirt, blazer, hat and shoes having been discarded. Her skin is covered in yellow, glowing sigils. Her eyes are closed, but can be seen glowing the same yellow between her eyelids.

    She's also floating several feet off the floor, above an intricately designed magic circle.

    The other figure is a man in a purple robe. He's currently staring at Shirou.

    "What the HELL are you wearing, boy?"

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
    So, in conclusion for the sake of summarizing the ooc: Ren, sneaking, box of meatabix with the eye holes cut out, Kaede in his pocket, konami reference ahoy. Hooray!

    All of this is kind of a moot point, because when Shirou enters from another direction, the door that Ren was sneaking past just swings open at EXACTLY the right time and....

    Aaaaand.
    And.

    And he is standing up from out of the box.

    "Hello, Jean."

    And stepping out of the box.

    "I'm very unhappy with you. I'm rather unhappy with you right now because, among other things, you're a spiteful kicking sort of person, and that didn't really endear me to you last time we met. But I'm also unhappy with you because if you bothered to actually listen to any of those subordinates who were apparently quite loyal to you, you would have known that we were all perfectly willing to compromise and work together on a goal that we were apparently all on the same page about anyway."

    "But I don't think that would have happened, because it seems as if you're not really very concerned about what everyone else who follows you is, and you're a lot more concerned about 865 for the 865ians, deport the immigrants, that sort of thing. That's a very churlish way of behaving."

    "And apparently you are so desperate that you decided to not only operate out of some random apartment, but you also did things to Sakura that I find rather reprehensible by sight alone."

    He's doing all of this while walking right up to Jean, across this huge auditorium space. Prattling all the while, walking right up to Jean.

    "Do you have anything to say about this to prove me wrong? I would really rather talk this through with you."
"Or rather that's what I would say if I didn't have a secret weapon in my pocket."

    And then he picks Kaede out of his pocket and flings her at Sakura.
    And /then/ he tries to suckerpunch Jean.

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
Ren Tanaka for the scenesys:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0r55oVPXyo
    Judgement Again - Cardcaptor Sakura
    OST #3 - Cardcaptor Sakura

Kaede (312) has posed:
    Kaede is grabbed and flung. She tumbles through the air, before a brilliant flash of light clads her in her full armour. Jet turbines whine to life, as her jetpack flares up, and she flies right up to Sakura... only to slam right into a forcefield. Shinki is getting angry. So out come the scalpel blades, clawing at the invisible barrier. "LET MY MASTER GO!" she screams at Jean, running her battery directly through the cutting edges, electrifying them.

Crys Gattz has posed:
Crys Gattz crashes through the roof with staren and hist the floor running it doesn't take long for the newman to bust in on what's happening to Sakura at this point in time. She readies the Fal Claw for a moment it clanks for a moment.

"You are vile man for what you have done and seek power you have no true way to control. You are greedy and a fool, this is where it ends for you."

She doesn't have much else to say she's ready to fight.

She focuses for a moment and unleahses some of her power to buff everyone's defences.

"Deband!"

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Shirou blinks a few times, getting a load of what is in there. He... not only found Sakura immediately but...

    Wait, this guy's complaining about his clanking armor? He glances over at Sakura, then at his accuser...

    "You don't get to complain about my clothing when you have Kinomoto in a position like that!" He retorts, twirling the spear around threateningly and dropping into a combat stance.

    "And about that, let her go! All of my allies have this place surrounded. Call off the ritual and nobody'll get hurt further!"

    His body fills with magic, Reinforcement flowing through the armor in a circuit-like pattern that another mage might detect. Mundane steel? Is now stronger than ever.

Staren has posed:
    Staren makes his way towards his allies' transmissions in the fastest, most direct way possible, regardless of destruction. That's probably a floor and at least one wall blown through.

    Staren takes in the scene for a second. "_What did you do to her?!_" Staren shouts, and begins approaching. "And why are you doing this?! Sakura only wants to make things better for everyone! Is it because you want to keep power for yourself? Because spoiler alert, /it's already too late/! Extraversals and people like Sakura are /already/ too powerful for you to rule! If you want that, and you were /smart/, you should run to the Confederacy and find some little world we've never heard of to conquer."

    Staren points at him. Notably, that arm has two beam cannons and two micromissiles on it. "I'm /trying/ to give you a chance because people I care about don't want people to die. But you'd better start talking FAST."

    Staren keeps moving towards Sakura, watching Jean.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Thirty-ninth floor. Fortunately, Xiaomu's near a set of emergency stairs when Ren confirms where he found Sakura and Jean; she vacates the room she was in and heads for the fire stairs, pushing through the door and hastening up one flight.

Once she's on the right floor, the sense of that distortion, that world-warping magic, is MUCH clearer. The sage fox pours on the speed, unleashing ice magic on the door and trying to superchill it, make it brittle -

** CRASH **

- the better to bulldoze straight through it. Her staff's rings chime as Xiaomu shoulder-rolls through what's left of the door and comes back up, planting her staff and drawing both handguns. She pre-loaded anti-spirit rounds for this, anticipating that those would be useful. She's not shooting at Jean, though.

Instead, Xiaomu starts John Woo-ing it up - at the MAGIC CIRCLE, as if she's aiming to blow away individual glyphs via the anti-spirit bullets with which Silver and Platinum are loaded. (She totally knows what she's doing, she's a professional; she may not know this exact style of magic, but she's had to disrupt rituals before.)

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
    Tomoyo didn't seem to care all that much about inconveniencing the people who actually live here. Each door they pass is pounded on, but the fact that there is no answer is starting to trouble her. Hopefully, the place is just empty. Jean wouldn't want to hurt natives, right? But what if they're filled with his goons, lying in wait? He almost wants to have her guards kick down a door to check...

    Sakura might be in trouble, after all. She'll jut pay for repairs later.

    But thankfully, Ren spares a whole lot of people the inconvenience when he gives everyone the location over the radio. Immediately, she directs her guards up the stairs, and looks for the nearest open door. Bursting in, she stares.

    "... how /dare/ you?..." she mutters, that mirror starting to crackle with electricity. She snaps her fingers again, and her guards step forward to form a semicircle around Jean, between he and the door. Not that that would do much with a teleporter, but the thought is there.

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    Jean looks around at Ren as he enters. "Oh. You. Of course you'd be here." He shakes his head, taking a few steps to the side - to keep Ren and Shirou both in view. "Oh? Willing to talk, rather than simply charge in guns blazing? How -very- unlike you-" And then Ren goes and proves him right with a punch to the face.

    Blip. He's suddenly standing a good five yards away. "...Of course. How naive of me."

    He keeps on walking. "Fine. We'll do it your way. Although do forgive me if I tend to babble anyway."

    Blip. Jean's robes fall to the floor, and very suddenly he's right in Ren's face, a silver boxing glove coming up to meet Ren's chin. The punch is... actually surprisingly strong. The Mages in this world tend to be fairly athletic, especially the masters like Jean.

    He's then teleported away again. He's... he's dressed in boxing gear. But the way he's moving, his stance... it doesn't actually look as ridiculous as it should. He looks quite serious.

    Crys is just given a curt "Piss off," before he actually responds to Shirou and Staren. "I can see the future. Did you know that?" Blip. Tomoyo's guards have him semicircled... so he teleports away again. "Five years ago, my colleagues and I were working towards a better future. The future we all saw. Peace! Prosperity! The magical society would finally stop hiding and integrate with society. We would have reached a golden age within thirty years."

    Blip. He appears right in front of Shirou. A purple magical gliff burns on his right arm as he slams a magically-reinforced fist right into Shirou's chest. "Then, four years ago, everything was RUINED!"

    Xiaomu's bullets don't reach the sigils - the forcefield is being projected OUTSIDE the glyphs. Each strike from Xiaomu or Kaede cause the shield to flash brightly, but it doesn't seem like it's having much of an effect.

Crys Gattz has posed:
Crys Gattz has made up her mind she's going to need some heavier weaponry for this it does warrent it.

"MUUT DITTS POUMN Code Idola."

Crys's photon trap reacts as the secured slot activates at the vocal command her current weaponry vanishes and a blood red scyth with a teal glowing blade appears in Crys' hands, the weapon was seldom deployed the last time she'd used this weapon had been upon the plains of Malfeas. Those who might sense it the weapon feels wrong, there's just something not right about it.

"To think what you are doing warrents me unsealing the Soul Eater. Come now! Let the harvest begin!"

(OOC the weapon )

Crys then races in it's clear she knows how to use this weapon as she makes ready to make her move and she'll strike out with the weapon and thats when it feels stranger the thing is feeding off Crys in some fashion as she uses it's empower he attacks with it. She's clearly however.

"Yet you ... could have worked towards is till you ran off and did this?"

She takes a deep breath as angry as she is she's going to say something that's going to be very strange to come out of her.

"If that is your motivation it's not too late then, there are other ways it can be done. Your world's not alone."

Crys is pretty old for a Newman to be perfectly honest and she's got a bit more wisdom becaus she's reched nearly the age of twenty.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "Four years ago?!" Shirou's apparently now able to focus and talk even as he fights. Vruasa's spear is spun into the way of Jean's fist. The weapon's mighty and BENDS drastically instead of immediately snapping, absorbing most of the impact and sending Shirou skidding baaaaaaaaaaackwards--

    Dangerously close to the window he just blasted through in fact.

    "Agh! Too close!" The spear snaps but does a good job of parrying given the circumstances. But just as it's vanishing into motes of light....

    Shirou's lips mumble something...

    *CL-CLANG!*

    And Jean's assault is harmlessly repelled by a pair of crossed swords, yin and yang working together.

    "That's unification. Don't tell me you think Kinomoto was behind that!"

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
    Ooh, that's a tooth-chatterer.

    Ren takes it on the chin! As you should.

    Rubs his chin. Well, that's not exactly a bruise, but it still hurts a lot.

    "Listen," he says, rolling his neck. "You want to talk? I'm perfectly fine with talking. But nobody- especially not emotional people who put a lot of value on friendship- are going to talk to you like rational adults when you have a very good friend of theirs half-dressed and half-concious hovering in the air at the centre of some sort of magical ritual."

    "Am I wrong here, Jean? Am I making a huge mistake? Did you see some sort of mysterious catalysm? Are we all completely wrong here, and you /just so happened/ to, after four years of not actually thinking about doing it, decide 'oh well maybe I should appear in front of Sakura Kinomoto and tell her about this so we can actually work together on this?"

    He folds his arms and walks towards the magic circle. "Are we all barking up the wrong tree? Is this some sort of desperate last-minute scheme? If I were to say, 'we're willing to talk if /you/ come across a little less incredibly openly hostile and let Sakura go', will /you/ say 'I can't let her go because she's busy concentrating on whatever this is all about'? And then I'll say, 'ok, well, that's reasonable, but let's be honest I'm still going to say you deserved getting a couple hard knocks because nobody was willing to talk this through?"

"Do you want to talk, Jean? Do you want us to stop trying to hit you and talk? Do you want to do what we should have done two weeks ago? Months ago? Years ago?"

    Ren puts his foot down and flings his arms out. "THEN TALK TO US! SPIT. IT. OUT. GET. TO. THE. POINT. And for pity's sake, stop doing LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOU POSSIBLY CAN to make us raise arms against you!"

Staren has posed:
    Jean... actually talks! Huh. "What are you /talking/ about? That's what Sakura wants, too! That's what we all want! It's you, constantly threatening everyone and kidnapping people, that's giving magic a bad name! How is /this/" Staren waves a hand around at the room, "advancing your goal at all??"

    Since Jean isn't attacking him, Staren's still moving towards Sakura. He's going to see if he can walk into the magic circle and grab her, if he gets close enough.

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
     Tomoyo is not listening really. Not really paying attention as Jean goes on the offensive, starts ranting about why he's doing all this. Her eyes are fixed on Sakura, trapped, being used as some kind of... battery? She doesn't know magical stuff.

    But she does know she has to do something.

    But what /can/ she do? Kaede and Xiaomu can't even breech it, what hope does she have? Her bodyguards, realizing what they're up against, shift position to encircle Tomoyo, their backs to her. They don't want to give Jean any hope of reaching her without getting past them.

    Again, she doesn't notice.

    Her mind is racing, thinking back. Is there any hope at all? She recalls the few times she was able to help with capturing the Clow Cards. Things seemed so much easier then. They were powerful, but limited in domain. Even something as simple as turning on the lights would weaken them. But against someone rational, who has taken every magical precaution...

    Wait. EVERY magical precaution?

    Distantly, she recalls their journey to save The Voice. The tower, and the mages foolish enough to make a barrier that keeps Sakura, and only Sakura, out. Jean was certainly more competent than they were... but he also seems to be time-constrained, irrational with anger.

    He hates everyone from off-world, and doesn't want them to interfere... but she's not FROM off-world, is she?

    Could it really be that simple? Possibly not. But right now, she's ready to try anything. The urging she gets from Ren over the radio urges her on, to push past her guards and make a dash for the barrier, arms raised to protect her face!

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
It only takes about four bullets before Xiaomu ceases fire, glaring at the barrier around that magic circle. She holsters her handguns again, grasping her staff and turning to face Jean. "'I can see the future' is a REALLY bad excuse for flipping out when something unexpected happens, you know!" she calls out - scolding him? .... well, yeah.

"So something happened that ruined your plans. And the best thing you can think of to do about it is take it out on one girl with powerful magic and her friends from across the Multiverse? What in the unnumbered Hells made you think trying to slam the door shut on the Multiverse is going to do any good? NOBODY has figured out how to reverse Unification; the one time anyone TRIED to, it was a group of Confederates who had resources and knowledge from countless worlds to draw on, and it blew up in THEIR faces! Your Purple Pentacle can't do anything about the Multiverse - except what every OTHER world has done so far ..." She takes a deep breath.

"ADAPT TO IT!!"

Xiaomu realizes that she's uttering what could be considered a degree of hypocrisy; after all, Shinra - her organization in her own world - has found itself in the unenviable position of trying to keep things orderly despite the opening of warpgates both inside and outside of closed, controlled portions of the city. Mostly, things have gone pretty smoothly.

They've been lucky that way, and Xiaomu knows it.

"Also, shut down the ritual and release Sakura. That'll do a LOT to get us to stop trying to wreck your face long enough to make a good-faith effort at talking this out," she adds. She's ready to cut loose with additional magic if necessary, but it WILL be a lot easier if Jean cooperates. She's willing to give him a chance.

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    "Kinomoto has nothing to do with this. She's just a handy stand in for the only Mage in history to ever attempt dimensional magic of this scale. I haven't done anything to her except induce a trance state." He shakes his head. "Sakura will remain unharmed and will be returned to her family once this is over. You, on the other hand..."

    And Crys is coming at him with a scythe OH JESUS. Blip!

    He doesn't want to get hit by that scythe.

    As Tomoyo runs at the barrier... she passes right through it! But Jean simply teleports right next to her. "...Bad girl." Blip! And they're both outside the forcefield again.

    "We've spent the past three years gathering data. Determining what makes you multiversals -different-. Your... 'dimensional frequencies'. We learned to differentiate them from a native's."

    "Of course, our only chances to do any research on you multiversals was when Sakura had a card to capture. But that began to get too -easy- for her... no one was coming to help! So we decided to... increase the challenge."

    Blip! Staren is next in line to get a punch to the face. Jean doesn't really expect it to do much more than distract him though. "I don't even begin to entertain that my words will convince you of anything. I'm just buying time. Do you know it's been fifty-seven minutes since my announcement?"

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
"Ah, I see," Ren says, quietly, rubbing his chin.

    "Well, if nothing else is going to work..."

    "Might as well go down swinging, and all that, right?"

    Ren is lying.

    Do you know what's interesting about Night caste solars? Well, it's the fact that for one thing, we are SOLARS. The flashy essence releasing sun champions. But night castes... when they go too ham, everything sort of flips around, and they go from essence ragers to mysterious, shadow-wreathed semi-visible presences, simultaneously filled with energy and very hard to see.

    So that's what Ren does.

    He creases his eyebrows, and begins to SHUDDER with energy... his caste mark flaring up, going into a low animal stance, simultaneously giving off flickering anima power that shines like magical blue and blurring into ... well, night...

    And you'd better believe he's doing it all right up in Jean's face! He's going to become a twisting, grappling presence, a confusing, shining champion!

    And it's all a feint.

    He says as much in the radio-

"I'll happily fight you until I can't move any more! Face a champion of the sun! I'll give you a spanking you'll never forget even if it's the last thing I do!" Ren shouts in Jean's ear, as he tries to get him in a wicked monkey-like armbar!

    Oh, this is so embarrassing.

Staren has posed:
    Staren's face falls a little. "I see." So this won't be ending peacefully. He turns and fires at the magic circle, only for his beams to hit the forcefield. Hmm.

    There's another possibility, of course: If Jean isn't alive to remove Tomoyo from the field, then Tomoyo can save Sakura.

    Staren's hand dips into his bag and pulls out a small canister, a plasma grenade. He hurls it at Jean, set to airburst if it misses, then charges, drawing his plasma sword but not activating it until his first slash, in case Jean doesn't know what it is.

Crys Gattz has posed:
Crys Gattz is not able to connect but she's not giving up she is actually listing to what he has to say but something seems off he doesn't seem to be acting rationally at this point. She gets that btu she also has some idea about what he wants yet they need to to stop this and get Sakura out of there. She'll act to cover the attempt to get Sakura out, shell drop in and end up acting to guard Tomoyo as needed she'll also make strikes on Jean if he gets close, but for now she unleahses waves of ice in his general direction.

"So how do we change it we make things eaiser to intergrate you can learn from other worlds that have had to do much the same thing!"

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Angry as she is, Xiaomu is still cool-headed enough to pay attention to a few things.

Tomoyo was able to pass right through the barrier. Xiaomu suppresses her magic as much as she can - she's still a youkai and she's still shapeshifted - and moves over to the barrier. Rather than trying to step through it on her own, though, she lets Tomoyo lead her while Ren and the others are holding Jean's attention. If the barrier can be tricked into letting Xiaomu inside, maybe she can do something more effective to separate Sakura from the circle that seems to be holding her.

If it DOESN'T work, she then can switch tracks, jump into the fray, and help keep Jean ValJerk from noticing what the magicless girl is doing.

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
Theme of our one last gambit!:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p9MSnsRncE
    We Go Further - Yuki Kajiura
    Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle OST

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
    Tomoyo is prepared to bounce right off the barrier, her whole body ready to properly 'fall' so she doesn't hurt herself... so when she actually slips right through, she's so surprised that she musters no resistance as Jean pops in to dump her outside it once more.

    But it worked. She has a way.

    It seems that everyone has already grasped what this means, and are rushing in to keep Jean as busy as possible. Her bodyguards have come over to make sure she's okay, but she already has new orders for them. "Spread out. If he teleports near you, rush in to keep him busy so the others can catch up." The four women look at each other, before giving the tailor a crisp nod, splitting up. Should Jean teleport close to them, they'll immediately rush in swinging with their batons, lashing out with punches and kicks to distract him.

    Meanwhile, Tomoyo goes back to the barrier, taking Xiaomu's hand in her own before trying to go through once more!

Kaede (312) has posed:
    Kaede has had about enough. She stabs one last time at the forcefield, then turns baleful eyes on Jean. "You." she says darkly. "You're the one hurting Master." She turns in the air, her jetpack flaring out like a pair of daemonic wings. "Noone hurts Master." The jets suddenly fire, and she becomes a teal bullet, adding yet another distraction to the mix. Pulse blasts fly from her little hand blaster, and if she gets close enough? He'll feel the bite of her talons in his flesh.

    "NOONE!"

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Shirou decides his best bet is to try and take down that barrier! And he has two methods to do it with. Well, no. Possibly three. But he'll try the most efficient method first.

    That being... he simply CHARGES the boundary field while Jean's busy with the others. Kanshou and bakuya are brought forth and readied...

    The two weapons are his best projections. The highest quality relative to the originals, though much is still to be desired in those areas. But they alone are resistant to magic, their ceremonial purity having the interesting qualities of fending off magic.

    And at the end of his charge, Shirou brings them both about with a yell...

    AND TRIES TO SIMPLY STAB THE BARRIER WITH THEM!

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    Shirou charges the shield! He slashes it with his magic-resistant blades! The blades pass right through the shield!

    ...And achieve roughly jack squat. Still, apparently the swords can reach through the shield!

    Meanwhile, Jean is a bit distracted by Ren's sudden display of might. So distracted, in fact, that when Staren charges in with a plasma grenade and sword, he doesn't react in time, and...!

    Boom goes the grenade. It certainly kicked up a lot of dust and smoke! ... Do plasma grenades normally do that?

    The shield remains in place, even as Tomoyo and Xiaomu pass right through it. Still! They can probably easily disrupt it from in there, right?

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Xiaomu nods to Tomoyo, a wordless gesture of thanks as she lets go of Tomoyo's hand. She's inside the barrier now, and Tomoyo is going to need to catch Sakura. In the meantime, the sage fox has her other card to play, and the clock is ticking.

No reason to waste time, if there were enough time to waste. She shifts her staff to her left hand, raising the right to point her palm at Sakura. "Sage Fox Sorcery: Demon Gate Seal!"

She projects her power and her will, to interfere with and hopefully interrupt Jean's; a binding circle of Xiaomu's own snaps into existence, an eight-trigrams magic circle appearing on the ground as a sphere of sorcerous force forms above it, englobing Sakura. The sphere in particular is the sort Xiaomu uses to contain and immobilize monsters so her partner Reiji can beat them up with his elemental arsenal, but it's not limited to that; the important part is that it's meant to *hold in* whatever is within it. Normally, it's an enemy. Nothing technically stops her from using it on a friend.

If this works, Sakura's power SHOULD be trapped within the sphere and cut off from Jean's magical array on the floor. And if that collapses the ritual, then - mission accomplished.

If it doesn't work, she's going to have to think fast ...

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
Thank goodness there are friends and allies here to help him out. Tomoyo's bodyguards, Staren, Crys and Kaede working together to just give Jean too much to think about- an overwhelming assortment of targets-

    Because at the end of the day Ren's not actually really very good at all at fighting another human.

    And with Shirou trying to affect the barrier, and Xiaomu and Tomoyo pushing through it to rescue Sakura, Ren really hopes- really knows- that this is all going to work out. Which is good, because he's not going to be able to keep this act up for a lot longer.

    So, score another point for being disarmingly distracting by way of prattle, lies and chicanery. It's not pretty, it's not going to make him proud, and he's not made all of the best decisions during this- everyone will forgive him, I'm sure- but Ren can help everyone come out on top.

    "You can't stop the future," he says, speaking firmly to Jean as he dips into the smoke cloud, speaking from a mouth that's set on a face made of shadows, and yet seems like it's a statue of gold in the darkness, filled with conviction, filled with confidence--

    "Not when friendship and free will are making it evolve every day."

    Filled with trust.

    Wait, where is Jean in this smoke cloud anyway? Ren needs to pin this guy down so someone can arrest him! Jean? Where are you?

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
    They're in, and Jean isn't immediately here to *blip* them out, or punch them in the face. So it looks like everyone outside has it handled. Now that they're in, Xiaomu can probably dispel the whole thing just fine.

    So Tomoyo fixates on Sakura. It's what she does best.

    Walking up to the floating girl, she carefully reaches up, grabbing onto her however she can. She begins to shake her while also trying to pull her down to earth. "Sakura? Sakura, wake up!" she calls. The stress of her going missing, of Oka, Yukito and Kero weakening in her absence and then everything leading up to this has her eyes watering. "Jean's trying something awful and he's using you to do it! Please, wake up..."

Staren has posed:
    Out of the corner of his eyes, Staren sees Tomoyo and Xiaomu get through the field. Good. But it could still be stopped by a last-second teleport.

    Staren will stop that.

    The grenade goes off, with more smoke and dust than he'd expect. Staren suddenly realizes Jean could have teleported it to explode Tomoyo instead. Damn. He can't risk that again, he'll have to stick to other weapons. He continues his charge and slashes into the cloud, trying to cut Jean down, wherever he is.

Sakura Kinomoto (172) has posed:
    Xiaomu's sealing magic is effective. See, the magic circle wasn't powered by Jean's power - it was powered by Sakura's. Cut off from its source of power, the sigils suddenly turn black, and the forcefield vanishes. The glyphs look to be... waterproof marker.

    That shouldn't be easy to erase.

    Meanwhile, the dust and smoke clears, to reveal... Jean. He's... not moving. And is also missing an arm.

    Gross.

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
    "You're going to have to stop making this business of taking peoples' limbs off into a habit, Staren," Ren says, looking at Jean. And while it does sound kind of flippant, he's got a stern tone of voice.... and now he's going to have to do something about that wound. At least he's got the handcuffs in their cardboard package, this time they might actually work. Otherwise, as usual, he will just be an idiot with a box.

    He glances at the thinning smoke through at Sakura and Tomoyo. Part of him feels as if this is the part where the tearful couple reunite and the triumphant kiss happens, and then he remembers that that's not how this is going to work out at all, really.

    His head feels a little strange.

Crys Gattz has posed:
Crys Gattz has found Kaede to be a very good partner in covering Tomoyo.

"Your loyalty is impressive Kaede."

She keeps on fighitng as the battle with Jean is raging on but then well STaren seems to get a heck of a blast in place. She does sees Xiaomu and Tomoyo are in.

"Time is the fire in which we burn and some of us have shorter wicks than others. You can't stop it marching forward as much as you want to."

She's going to have to trust in the otehrs to get Sakura out of there and now she's doing something with ice in a attempt to pin Jean down further. She has no idea if he's dead or not but she's attempting to keep things under control.

Tomoyo Daidouji has posed:
    Once the magic is cut off, Sakura would probably stop floating, right? Good thing that Tomoyo is there to catch her then! But she's still not especially strong, so she's kind of straining to do it.

    But that's what bodyguards are for! They come in to help Tomoyo carry her out of the circle (just in case) and lay her down on the ground, the tailor removing her school blazer to serve as a pillow under Sakura's head.

    "Thank you everyone..." she says, looking to Xiaomu especially, but everyone else present too. Then her eyes fall on Jean, and her face goes even more pale than usual. "Someone should treat him..."

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Slamming into the barrier leaves Shirou with his weapons embedded in the sizzling field, trying to force them further. He grunts and groans -

    And then FOX MAGIC.

    The barrier goes down suddenly. Shirou lets out a squawk of alarm and goes toppling forward. WHUNK-CRUNCH-CLANK! Seems he's still getting used to that darned armor. The weight threw off his balance.

    A few confused moments pass. But he breaks that silence by JAMMING KANSHOU AND BAKUYA TOGETHER into the markered-up glyphs where they seem to be most complex.

    Then starts rolling over and up to his feet.

    A glance left. A peer right.

    It doesn't take long until he's seeing Jean and Staren over there. "Is it over already?"

Ren Tanaka (165) has posed:
Ren Tanaka says, "Don't say 'already'! We don't need him to turn into some one-armed flying bloke with technicolour wings."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Xiaomu breathes a faint sigh of relief, but keeps the sealing sphere up a little longer to make sure the connection between Sakura and the glyphs on the floor has been severed. Tomoyo can't go anywhere from inside Xiaomu's ward, after all - that's kind of the POINT of that reliable incantation.

She gives it about ten seconds, making sure anything which MIGHT have been drawing power from Sakura has gone completely dark, before lowering her arm and letting the Demon Gate Seal expire. She can re-cast it if she has to - but with Shirou hacking up the magic circle, she doesn't figure it'll be necessary. "Well, if we didn't break the ritual to kill every multiversal, we're gonna find out real fast," she jokes, glancing around for a clock.

And then Ren's rejoinder to Shirou's question interrupts the sage fox's relief - with a VERY emphatic facepalm. "Blast it, Tanaka, if he goes sequential-boss on us I am PERSONALLY blaming you for it!"

Staren has posed:
    It does occur to Staren, after swinging blindly into the dust, that maybe he doesn't have to /kill/. The other mages were moving their bodies while casting, weren't they? Maybe just cutting the mage's hands off would do it...

    The smoke clears.

    Oh. He's down. And an arm is off anyway. But that shouldn't be enough to kill him. Not this quickly.

    "Would you rather I killed them?" Staren replies coldly. Shaking a little. He almost killed Jean. But should he even care? Jean was... is a very bad man. It /looked/ like maybe there was a chance for peace, but there wasn't. It was a false hope.

    So why is he shaking...

    The Traveler is taking care of the wound. "Make sure he can't cast." He turns to Tomoyo and Xiaomu. "Quickly! Get her out of there!"