883/The Ghost of Stingy Jack

The Ghost of Stingy Jack
Date of Scene:	30 October 2014
Location:	The Secret World <TSW>
Synopsis:	Who is that selling pumpkins. Who dies? Who lives. You get what you give - you get what you give - you get what you give! (TSW Halloween, part 3 of 3.)
Cast of Characters:	Kotone Yamakawa, Staren, 151, 481, Riva Banari, Wuyin Tsai, Inga, 560, Ayako Hasekawa, 596

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Wuyin Tsai has posed:
                            THE GHOST OF STINGY JACK

As Halloween approaches, the nights on Solomon Island get more and more dangerous. The jack-o-lanterns that light up the foggy nights continue to shine all across town, save for the police station and the Orochi encampment at the foot of the bridge. By all reports, removing them resulted in a vicious fight with the lingering spirits the following night. They certainly didn't try it while they were /around/.

The local heroes know that Jack-o'-Lantern, or Stingy Jack, is within the Wispwood and gathering the souls of the lingering dead. They also know that he's plunged the whole of the wood into the spirit world, and that the barrier between the realms of the living and the dead have a tendency to kill anything that tries to cross them. The blood-bought pumpkins seem to be the key to making the crossing safely... but how?

Wuyin looks to have the answer (or, well, /an/ answer). He's currently standing in what used to be someone's backyard, before the fence got busted up and the fog rolled in. He's got a rumpled piece of paper in his left hand, and he's launching controlled bursts of fire with his right, scorching some kind of circular emblem with a myriad of lines projecting out from the center into the grass.

Everyone who has even expressed an interest in trying to solve this problem has been advised to go get a pumpkin from the seller -- one that has been replaced with a listless, quiet ghost woman, who only murmurs that single phrase -- if they don't have one, or don't have a way to physically enter the world of the dead intact. Since even /he/ can't, that's probably everyone.

It's past 11:30pm on the 30th. Not long now, he thinks.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako quietly watches Wuyin fire those bursts of fire with his right hand. "Umm... so... what's the plan, Wuyin?" She's sitting side-saddle on her floating broomstick with her jack o'lantern in her hands. Unlike some of the fancier cuts, Ayako has opted for a very simple happy face; a ':)'-style if you would, for her jack o'lantern.

    However, it can be noted... as it gets closer and closer to midnight, Ayako starts looking more and more nervous. About Stringy Jack? Nope. Rather, she's more nervous about her own forced transformation.

Inga has posed:
Despite her reluctance, she could find no other way to enter the spirit world physically with the others. Not wanting to be left behind, Inga had gone down to the seller and paid with blood for her pumpkin, which she had since carved into a jack o lantern like the others. Her design is a curious symbol of three interlocking triangles. Mythology nerds might recognize it as the valknut, a symbol of the god Odin. It seemed appropriate to invoke the Old Man this night. The Wild Hunt would soon be riding.

Inga has worn her least nice dress for the occasion, knowing it will get covered in blood. The sleeves of the underdress are ripped off at the elbows, ready for her to use her blood magic with the easy access veins. Her long hair is tightly plaited, hanging down her back.

She stands to the side, watching Wuyin, holding her pumpkin in her arms. Her eyes hold a far-off stare, her expression changing so quickly and without provocation, as if she were dreaming with her eyes open.

Not far from the truth.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva has acquired a pumpkin of her own and has carved a witch-kitty into it. It's also been painted to add to the highlights and such. Because that's how she rolls. "If I didn't know better, it looks like you're planning some kind of reverse-the-polarity shenanigans, Wu." Riva comments as she watches him lay down a pattern.

She frowns. "I guess I'm going to need to start learning what's up with all this weird magic stuff." She sighs, and then wanders over to Inga and Ayako. "How are you two doing?" She asks.

Kirika (481) has posed:
    A pumpkin has already been acquired by Kirika along the way. She's dressed the way she was before, but her eyepatch was replaced by a pair of biking goggles as a motorcycle pulls up and she dismounts the vehicle. Approaching with sword in one hand and her pumpkin tucked in the other arm, Kirika nods to the others before she steels herself.

    Can't be riskier than before, right? At least they came prepared now.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley is prepared to go into this realm of the dead. She is not, however, very excited about it.

    The lizard sorceror finds herself floating there, anxiously staring at the circle that Wuyin is etching. Her brow scrunches and her eyes begin to glow as she takes in what he's doing... trying to memorize it for later inspiration, if it has anything to do with the dead or the soul. It might, in fact, be fairly appropriate for her own form of life magic, so she can't pass up the chance.

    She's just doing this to distract herself. The pumpkin she's holding under one arm remains held tightly, and her whole body seems tense, as if she's afraid something bad is about to happen at any second.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Spelunking into the realm of the dead is unfortunately just not one of the things Zwei is equipped for, what with the realm of the dead not having actually existed when it was built. Not wanting to risk one of its units going dead in a zone it can't recover it from, it has made good on its initial attempts to get a pumpkin and finally secured one; one that currently rests in Weiss' lap, sitting on the lawn as she laser carves what appears to be 180 orbital paths surrounding a stylized sun. "Yes, I'm interested to hear the plan myself! Now the barrier Stingy Jack has erected should be at its weakest, but what about getting there? And what about when we do?

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa is here again on Solomon Island, she keeps comming back when she shouldn't she's not thrill seeking, no maybe it's because there's people who been left for dead like she was here. Andy, The Sherif, Moose, all of them just left to die, she does not know why a nuke drop hasn't been attempted unless the govenrment knows a nuke would just make shit worse. That worries her honestly but here he is once more and is game to solve the problem. She's armed but her weapon isn't pulled out, she'd be insane to not be armed here.

"...most insane halloween stunt I ever been involved in."

Staren has posed:
    Staren knows that you do not give spooky eldritch things your blood, so he came prepared with a variety of offerings. Synthetic blood. Oil from one of his robot bodies. A vial of medichines. A regular pumpkin. Whatever he can think of that might be sort of valuable without spiritually linking him quite so badly. He even prepared some of his own blood with the DNA-containing bits removed as a second-to-last resort. Only if nothing else works does he finally hand over some of his own whole blood.

    In any case, he's gone with a fairly stereotypical jack-o-lantern design... Crescent eyes, triangle nose, pointy teeth... although, it's asymmetrical and the mouth curves a bit too wide on one side. It /is/ halloween after all, so he can at least try to go for creepy.

    He's shown up in his power armor, of course. The jack-o-lantern is held in a sort of lantern holder. If it's a big pumpkin, the armor's strength helps. "Zwei, in the multiverse problems often end up being solved by finding the right bad things or people and punching them. When they're resistant to violence, the answer is usually to find the right /way/ to hurt them. Hopefully, /getting/ to Stingy Jack was the hard part, or at least, the complex part, and what we do when we meet him will be rather more straightforward."

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    This is bound to get ugly. Maybe not bloody, but definitely ugly. So Shirou's come dressed for battle. As dressed as he gets, anyways. That mainly boils down to 'grabbed some protective gear from the Union armory.' A black fiber-weave vest over his vitals, really. Gloves with extra-tough grippage. Simple things like that. He should probably invest in a helmet and proper armor one of these days, or something.

    under it, he's wearing his casual clothes. Shirou's Magic Circuits are open too, and the Anima users and anyone good with magic might be able to sense a circuit-like pattern of power flowing through him and out into his gear to Reinforce it. It's only a little, but way better than nothing.

    Slung under one arm, he's got his oni-faced Jack'o'lantern. His own face bears a scowl right now, so they're two of a kind, maybe.

    Scowling because this is likely to be really nasty.

    "Ayako, are you sure you'll be alright?"

    Mentally, the boy's already preparing a Projection or two. With extra time to spare NOW, it'll mean a higher quality result LATER.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
The pumpkin seller doesn't hand anything over until it gets blood right from the source. Sorry, Staren.

The circle is some kind of summoning thing. The mystically-inclined might take note of its focus on the dead and, perhaps more specifically, the damned. It's like he took a design for calling a demon and smooshed it together with one for binding a ghost. Or, well, /someone/ did. The thing on the paper is hand-written, second-hand notes with a simpler sigil than what he's doing.

Wuyin casts a glance at Riva, and then gets back to it. His 3D glasses are currently tucked away, making him look more serious and severe than normal. "Something like that." He makes another curving line, and then steps back, examining it and the paper. "Hmmm..." Wuyin looks to Ayako, and then Zwei, and then the circle again. He nods at it.

"I found a summoning circle meant for Jack," he explains. "Deputy Andy and Madame Roget helped locate the design, I think with the Innsmouth Academy staff... well, nevermind. The idea is that we are going to be summoning him in reverse." Wuyin makes an adjustment to the design, and then pulls out his smartphone with his free hand. He pockets the page.

"We have a few minutes; do anything you think you need to, and then put your pumpkins on the intersections here." He points at where the straight lines extend out through the wider circle. "Stay nearby. If it works, it will open a path to him. Then, well..." He smiles slightly. "Staren has the right idea. We find out what he's doing, and we stop it."

"Any other questions?" he asks.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako looks over at Riva and then Shirou with a hesitant smile. "I... I'm doing alright... but... I'm going to transform soon... and..." She whimpers softly. "It's going to get awkward..." She shakes her head quickly. "But... but... I can't just leave this situation alone, right? S-so... I'll just deal with the awkwardness... I hope." She takes a deep, shuddering breath in and out... and then whispers, "I hope..." Her expression does brighten a little when she spots Riva's jack o'lantern in better light than when the group first met. "That's a nice jack o'lantern, though, Riva."

    "Uuu... I might as well get this over with so at least people won't be too shocked when it happens..." Ayako swallows wincingly and looks towards everyone. "Umm... everyone? At midnight tonight, I'm going to end up suddenly transforming into... well, for lack of a better term, my formal appearance. When it happens... well... it's still me and... well..." She shudders slightly. "P-Please treat me the same as before. If you can. If you can't... I'll understnad..." Slight tears form in the corners of her eyes.

    Ayako then turns back to Wuyin. "A-ah... so it's a teleporter path to him?" She nods her head slowly... "I see..." She places her pumpkin where indicated and then floats off to the side to not get in anyone's way. Her hands clasp together and then sweep towards everyone. "W-Water Bubble!" Her usual weak water barrier forms around everyone and then vanishes from sight. "I'm... I guess I'm ready as I'll ever be..."

Inga has posed:
The far-off look in Inga's eyes doesn't change as she looks toward Riva. A slow blink. A gentle smile. "Your mother wanted you to be a healer, wear a white jacket...but your paintings were so beautiful," she says, reaching up to give Riva a gentle pat on the cheek.

After a moment, her eyes clear. She shakes her head slowly, taking a deep breath. Inga looks around, seeing everyone. "Hail, everyone," she greets, pulling her knife from her belt. "I will give you all wards as usual," she says, waving them forward. Start an orderly line perhaps. Inga opens up her vein enough for blood to flow readily, if not enough to make it spray everwhere. That's for later. Just a steady flow, enough to wet her fingers and draw a complicated rune of warding somewere upon the skin of those present who would accept her assitance. As an extra precaution, she pulls a pouch of very finely ground bone dust, taking a pinch and sprinkling it atop the anima-infused wards. "Ground dragon bone," she says with a small smile. She'd spent all day preparing it.

She starts with Riva, giving her an apologetic smile. "Sorry...it is difficult not to see the weaver's web tonight," she explains quietly.

Inga looks to Wuyin, nodding as he inscribes the circle. "Always with the circles...well, at least I've some experience with them now," she says, and would place her pumpkin down where directed. "Allfather grant us victory," she preys, quick but sincere. Maybe she should have brought a goat.

Ayako warns them that she is going to transform into...something. Inga tilts her head slightly. "Of course, water-spirit. I just hope my ward will stay with you when you do," she comments.

She moves to Wuyin then. "Need any assitance?" she asks.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa humms for a moment and nods to Wuyin.

"Andy's pretty obsertant and she did? so she's noty just for show huh? I'll keep that in mind and ... we're getting far too love craftican now."

She admits and she moves to get ready at this point. She doe agree with Staren, Jack needs to be stopped.

"...It's all right Ayako...I can't throw stones given my self."

She shakes her head muttering.

"A soul neither heaven nor hell would take..."

THat's got her worried and she is thankful Ayako warned her. The last time someone transformed without warning? Kotone opened fire without thinking. Xcom training is like that.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Shirou glares Staren's way, disapproving. "That's not how you solve problems. I can't see this ending many other ways besides a fight, but we don't really even know what this guy's after." Yeah, he does NOT like hearing Staren reducing this Heroics into 'find what's wrong and punch it.'

    Turning to Ayako, he states, "Un. I promise. Whatever you're worried about can't be that bad if it's just temporary." There's a friendly warmth to his tone. Seriously, he's just that kind of a guy.

    "Trace, on." First, he sets his pumpkin down on the pattern... then focuses on his Projection. Bright golden energy crackles and arcs between his fingers and stretches out. With a *SIZZLE-CLANK* the energy subsides, having solidified into the image he's formed of Priscilla's Lifehunt Scythe. The weapon has been downsized, however. Shirou deftly spins the scythe about a few times in his grasp and takes a stance, just testing the weapon's balance.

    "Any idea what we're going to find besides just him, Wuyin? This is some kind of spirit world!"

Kirika (481) has posed:
    Kirika pops her neck. "Let us be done with it swiftly." She says, red eyes burning with intensity as she sets her pumpkin down. Then she grips Kinugiri tightly, turning over to the portal with a deep breath. Here we go...

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva listens to the Plan. She nods. "Right. No problems here." She tilts her head. "Innsmouth Academy, huh? I haven't been over that way yet. What's that region of the island like?" Wait. There's /more/?

She sets her pumpkin down when instructed to do so, but first, she just leans over and gives Ayako a hug. "No matter what happens, Ayako, don't worry, okay? We're friends. It'll be all right." She then smiles. "Thanks! I was thinking of putting cat ears and a hat on the pumpkin but it just didn't look right."

Inga then draws her attention with her words. Wordlessly, Riva gives her a hug as well. "You might be the most blessed or cursed of all of us, Inga. Be careful, all right?"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    "Oh well that's fortunate!" Weiss says to Staren. "Even if I'm pretty sure this pumpkin is linked to Weiss instead of Asche, she can punch things plenty hard!" Having finished her pumpkin carving in short order, Weiss waits for the newly finished jack o'lantern to start glowing like all the other ones, casually scanning Staren's power armour as the most interesting, non-mystical thing in the metaphorical room. "So we're going to summon ourselves to him? That makes sense I guess. As much sense as anything involving magic makes anyways." This talk of true appearances from Ayako is equally as engaging of a prospect as seeing Sting Jack. Good thing the two aren't mutually exclusive. "Don't worry. I make judgements based off of persistent psychological profiles rather than what someone happens to look like at the time. Since you've informed me ahead of time, there won't be any problems!"

    Grabbing her pumpkin underarm, Weiss lines up for her complimentary ward, and then starts making preparations like Wuyin had suggested. Last time the main threat had been some form of touch attacks from incorporeal enemies, so putting on her combat frame would probably be more or less useless here. Instead, she settles for constructing the two personal weaponry options in Zwei's databanks most suited for a close range fight in a dense forest. A faint breeze picks up from the process of splitting apart air molecules and repurposing their atomic components into various nanomaterials, reverse-disintegrating some sort of compact submachine gun with no magazine or charging port, magnetically attached to one hip, and a straight, single sided sword made of the same matte-black material, the edge of which sports a steady, neon green glow. Adequately armed, she places her pumpkin at the indicated point, simply waiting for the go-ahead.

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks at Ayako. "Woah... Ayako, calm down! Nobody's gonna hate you for looking different." He tries to sound consoling, but he's also trying not to roll his eyes.

    He turns his head towards Shirou. "That's right. This /might/ be solved entirely differently. But we're all prepared for a fight, aren't we? I'm just teaching Zwei about the Multiverse." Inga gets a quick nod. "Thank you."

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
"I'm not sure. I expect it will bring us to him, but it might just open a path. I've been assured that it's mostly safe." The 'mostly' is a little quiet. Wuyin looks at Ayako for a moment after that, adding, "If you think it's better if you stay behind, I'll understand."

The circle is finished, and a look gets shot at Inga, with a quiet, "I think I have it in-hand; thank you for the warding," added in. It's entirely likely that he's concerned this will explode and kill everyone if it gets messed with. Then again, he might be concerned that it /won't/. It's really hard to tell when Wuyin is involved.

Wuyin goes and gets his pumpkin and walks over to the center of the circle, stepping over the others. He checks the time again, murmuring, "Almost time." He tucks his phone away and pulls out his glasses, slipping them on and taking a slow breath. "I expect, Shirou," Wuyin says, "there will be ghosts and will-o'-wisps along with him. It's hard to say if they will be a problem. Are we all ready?" He gives one more look around, making sure all the pumpkins are in place.

There's a beeping noise from his pocket. It sounds like an alarm in the form of a digitized bell tower, a countdown to midnight. Wuyin bends down and puts the pumpkin in the center as soon as it's over, taking a deep breath, and funneling what is best described as 'an assload' of Anima into the sigil. It's all in one burst, a jump-start to whatever this is supposed to do.

All the pumpkins light up. They turn on the ground, focusing inward, and then rotating outward, casting orange light from within them. Everything feels very cold all of a sudden, and the color seems to seep out of the area around the sigil as the burned-out grass lights up with bright white and pale blue intersecting lines. Everything outside the circle blurs, fading away.

The group finds themselves in an old wood, standing in a clearing where the overlapping branches don't tangle together. There is an enormous tree in the center on top of a small rise, an old, gnarled thing with branches that reach up like skeletal arms trying to grasp the sky. The thick roots are clustered with jack-o'-lanterns, all of them lit and glowing... and all of them containing a swirling white light, circling the orange ember inside endlessly behind the grinning mouths. It's all that cast color in this cold, grey world --

-- except, that is, for you. The summoning circle is at the base of the small hill, near the edge of the treeline where the pumpkin patches don't quite spread so far. Each pumpkin seems to pulsate with the beating of its owner's heart, or with the rhythm of their soul. Everyone is acutely aware of their own mortality, be it through the feeling of pumping blood, flowing water or rapid-fire electrical impulses. This is a dangerous place to stand. The lanterns seem to be keeping you safe, somehow.

The other pumpkins in the grove shiver, as if in anticipation. The lanterns scattered through it rattle and turn, leering faces seeming to watch you. A shape seems to move in the branches of the tree -- or is that the tree itself, swaying in the howling wind of the shadow world?

Staren has posed:
A /reverse/ summoning circle? "That's a clever idea..." Staren comments.

    And then here we go!

    "A creepy tree. Of course there's a creepy tree." He looks around for Jack, then his gaze is drawn to the jack-o-lanterns. Then his head jerks up to look at the branches and he raises his arm, FIWS cannons ready. "Where is he??"

Inga has posed:
Inga smiles softly to Riva. "It can be both," she comments.

Now it is time. Inga inspects the cirle, but nothing jumps out at her as horribly wrong. Not that the few circles she's blown up now makes her an expect. The woman takes a deep breath. Wuyin's little alarm sounds and the pumpkins turn, glowing with light as the circle's magic activates...a gate of some kind, a portal...

Suddenly they are somewhere else. Somewhere in a clearing in the dark woods by the old, gnarled tree. She's looks to the Jack o lanters, keenly aware of the blood pumping through her veins, of her heartbeat's pounding in her ears.

Inga is ready, as ready as she can be, for a fight. She holds her staff, ready to use it to channel the lightning she's learned to use. May as well start with that. Everyone has their wards, they should hold for now.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Well that's certainly a unique feeling. Seeing this kind of thing in action, processing the changes wrought by esoteric magic, taking in the sights of the other world, and generally immersing itself into the creepy atmosphere of halloween (or samhain) folklore had been the goal alright. What Zwei hadn't expected, was to suddenly and intensely feel as if doing so was a bad idea. For the first time in a very long while, even with only one unit deployed, it feels . . . vulnerable. As if suddenly reduced to the level of a human in way over their head. Of course, logic outweighs gut instinct for an Armiger, and Weiss doesn't have the capability to subconsciously or accidentally reflect inward emotions, and so she appears as calm as possible while she detaches the SMG from her leg and braces it against her inner arm; scanning the clearing with wide pulses of electromagnetic resonance imaging to see if she can catch one of those cold spots again.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako smiles softly at Inga after she gets a ward from her, "I'm sure the ward will stay on. And I definitely appreciate said ward." And then nods towards Kotone. "You have a nice self, though, Kotone!" She smiles softly with a hint of awkwardness to Shirou. "It... it is pretty awkward, so... don't drop that scythe when it does happen."

    And then giggles softly when Riva hugs her! "A-ahh... th-thank you, Riva." Ayako returns the hug with a bit more cheer than she had before... and then smiles softly at Weiss. "A-ahh... I see, Weiss. Although... I do act slightly different when I look like... well... The appearance makes me a bit pressured to act a bit different... I can't really explain it well but... you'll probably understand when you see it." She groans softly and then smiles not so convincingly to Staren. "I... I am calm Staren... well... okay... maybe not." Ayako shakes her head slowly to Wuyin. "No, I'm coming along... I don't want anyone to get really hurt, and I definitely don't want anyone getting stuck on the other side too."

    And then midnight hits. Water materializes around Ayako... and sheets of clear water start to swirl about her body. "Uuu... here it comes..." The sheets of water quickly obscure her body... and light begins to emit from the water. Suddenly the water explodes outwards in a fine mist, and Ayako floats there in her spiritual finery. Of course, all of this happens at the exact same time as the pumpkins lighting up on their own and then turning. So people might understandably be distracted from seeing her transformation!

    Ayako's golden gaze takes in her new surroundings... the golden chains in her headdress jingling gently as she slowly looks around.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    As they surge between the land of the living, and the land of the dead, a peculiar thing occurs to Ainsley's scales. A pattern of lines appears on her face, a very subtle glow, where the way her magic works reacts to the very powerful sensation of 'this is the land of the dead.' Thanks to the way she dresses, it's hard to tell what, exactly, the full extent of the changes are, but she looks a bit more like something straight out of a Day of the Dead picture in modern Mexico, complete with a vaguely skull-like grin pattern around her mouth.

    She hasn't seemed to notice. She looks around with some mild interest in the environment they have arrived in, with the longsword she has on her belt pulled from its scabbard in a sloooow motion. She makes sure her own pumpkin isn't, well, shattered, or anything silly, having set it down before Wuyin activated the circle properly.

    She turns her head, and peers out into the trees. "Jack," she calls out, "You are going to have to confront us. Better sooner than later." She frowns gently, her confidence obviously a false one. Her tail won't stop twitching, and her left hand -- the one that isn't holding the sword -- keeps flexing, just to keep herself from shivering. Each curl of the fingers is indicative of how powerfully the sensation of her own life is unnerving her.

    She murmurs to herself, "Let's just be done with this."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa Catches the mostly bit, she sighs in for a penny and in for pound.

"Tch I could make a small pile of money selling copies of this from my external memory."

She mutters for a moment and looks over to Shirou and says

"So here e go again." 5R
Then the pumpkins light up she watches for the momeht she looks about she's on edge now hwr weapon's ready.

"Keep alert."

Ayako's change still catches Kotone off guard but not so much she flips out and opens fire, warnings and information allies of what you can do has paid off here.

"Come on Jack, Heaven and Hell don't want you, you got no where to go."

Kirika (481) has posed:
    KIrika tries to remain as calm as possible as she makes it through the portal. When the summoning circle appears, Kirika raises her brow curiously before tightening the grip she has on her blade. Tail twitching, Kirika thumbs her blade until a small amount of steel is revealed. Her hand draws the katana from its scabbard, and the half-kitsune narrows her eyes intensely.

    "Come out, devil! Know that we have come to end this little game you've played all these years! It ends tonight, whether you are banished from this plane and others or no."

    Her feet spread, and Kirika prepares herself for whatever Jack has planned out.

Staren has posed:
    Then Ayako changes! Staren looks at her curiously, keeping the cannons aimed up at the branches. ...Huh. "I don't see what you're so worried about. You just looke a bit more... watery."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva doesn't seem sure if there's going to be murder or not when Go Time arrives, but when the sigil is activated and the color drains out of everything, she instinctively pulls her MAC-10. "Wow." She whispers, looking around the gray expanse. "It's just like when..." She stops. Of course it's just like when they die, they're knee-deep in the spirit world at this point. And it's the pumpkins that are keeping them afloat.

Ayako's transformation, however, does get Riva's attention. She looks over the new appearance with an expression of wonder tempered by the extremely scary situation. Maybe this is a way to keep her distracted from Uber Spooky Tree over there. "You'd make a killing in the Paris fashion scene, dear. I don't think they'd be ready to compete." She smiles kindly at Ayako, and then looks around as people cast out their challenges.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    And so here they all are in the supposed spirit world. This is not a story to tell too much about later, huh? Shirou shivers upon regaining his sense of balance and glances around. Here, he can feel his Magic Circuits almost pulsing along with his heartbeat, and it's an unnerving sensation to say the least. He slowly looks about left and right, and the hand gripping the Lifehunt Scythe turns whitish as he grips it even more tightly.

    He's even more grateful for Inga's wards now. Though he doesn't know how they work, he'll just have to trust that they do.

    He finally notices that there's a... oh, hey, Ayako.

    The boy blinks a few times. He doesn't seem spooked. Or reverent. Just... confused. That was NOT what he expected whatsoever. "What are you so worried about? That's a great look!" It does take a moment for 'water spirit' to settle in... but he doesn't really seem bothered, after the initial surprise.

    For now, he's looking around at the VERY eerie scenery and reisting the urge to back away from that rattling tree. "... W-well, we're here. Now what?"

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley finally looks over to Ayako, since people are making comments about it. She relaxes, for a moment, and smiles at the water spirit. "Ahh... I am not sure what you were worried about. Perhaps you can explain after we deal with this?" she offers, then returns to looking out for threats, not bothered by the appearance Ayako has taken on. "You look fairly majestic, actually."

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako smiles softly at Staren and just shakes her head slowly, making the chains jingle a bit more loudly. She does giggle softly at Riva's comment, though. Not so surprisingly, Ayako's voice seems to reverberate from any water nearby. Although the spirit world doesn't seem to have much in the way of water! She smiles softly at Shirou-it seems she doesn't like to talk much while like this. And then nods her head once towards Ainsley. She does blush lightly at being called 'majestic', though.

    As for this world's atmosphere... Ayako doesn't appear to be affected by it too much. Instead, her eyes focus on the pumpkins around the great tree.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Everything is cold spots. This whole place is wrong. Zwei's sensors register that they're in a place with a different set of rules, but it's having a hard time filtering out what should be useful information from the 'noise.'

"Neither Heaven nor Hell, no," crows the voice of the pumpkin seller. "Tartaros, Mictlan, Avernus, Hel..." The voice is echoing through the grove. It's hard to tell where it's coming from. Listen closer. "...even Niflheim doesn't want ol' Jack! The Krampus want their Gate, you see, but not a proper gatekeeper, oh no, oh no. They got what they gave."

A burning light, the smoldering ember, lights up a shadowed spot in front of the great old tree. It's maybe five and a half, six feet off the ground, illuminating the face of a leering jack-o'-lantern. It changes like a man's face would, though the expression seems locked in a too-wide grin set into a moldering pumpkin. The eyes glow brightest, a red like the fires of Hell. "But you, you, you! All of you appreciate the /old/ ways. You know ol' Jack from the stories, don't you?"

The face rises. There's a dim outline visible as it rises and brightens, the shape of a narrow, asymmetrical body beneath the rotted pumpkin head. It creaks while it moves. "You want a /confrontation/, eh? A showdown? A brawl, ye say? Well, ol' Jack hasn't had a good one in a year or so, so why not?"

The pumpkin-rattling gets worse. Jack finally reaches his full height, at least twelve feet tall, maybe taller. He throws back his shoulders and throws his arms out to the sides, the ropy, green and orange masses of twisting vines and dead branches making up the long, lanky limbs suddenly visible in the lantern-light. He laughs, long and hard, and the world seems to shake with each exhalation. It's suddenly hard to keep your feet, even from this distance.

"COME ON, THEN!" Several of the lanterns suddenly tear themselves free of the ground. They have bodies that seem to be made of twisted roots and chunks of wood and dirt. The white light behind their eyes continues to twist and swirl, twist and swirl. A half-dozen of them, first, each a little more than half Jack's height, stretched out tall and then hunched over as they approach with loping strides. "COME AND JOIN JACK'S MERRY BAND!"

Inga has posed:
Inga notices Ayako's change, but was rather expecting...well, something like she'd seen others do. Bigby and Finna turned into hulking murder-beasts. Ayako just looked...ethereal. Glowing golden, like liquid sunlight. Perhaps it is shocking in a way. She's gorgeous. Inga feels suddenly quite plain and awkward. Ah, well, so no different than usual? Moving on.

"This is what it looks like...when we die," she says, knowing this even if she hadn't yet done it. She'd looked into the spirit world plenty. It was...a little different here, but not so strange. The lack of color is very unnerving. When she sliced open her skin again, would even her blood be grey?

Then, Jack speaks. A shiver runs up her spin, but Inga squares her shoulders in response, her eyebrows rising at mention of Hel and Niflheim.

His face appears. Inga can't help a bit of a grin. "The old ways. Yes, I suppose that's what they are," she says, more to herself than anyone else.

The world shakes. Inga, not terribly steady on her feet to begin with, toples.

Jack is a terrifying being to behold here in all his power, in his own territory. Something...a good fight? Not in a year? Oh...

Inga climbs back to her feet as quickly as she can, holding her staff high, pointing it toward the giant, spindly creature as he moves toward them. Lightning cracks, flashes white, the sound nearly deafening, aimed of course for Jack.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Surprise surprise. The sensors are practically useless here. Like a compass spinning around in circles. Weiss' face still refuses to reflect Zwei's stern disapproval at these shenanigans, but she does spare just a moment for poor Ayako. "I was expecting something more monstrous. By all standards, you look beautiful right now." The targeting beam mounted just over the muzzle of her gun is starting to scatter into the fog, illuminating the sweep of a green laser through the clearing as she turns back and forth.

    Zwei isn't kept waiting long. Verbally challenging Jack appears to have been just the thing to find him, however the legendary stingy man himself is far different from its expectations. Over double Weiss' height and not registering any kind of vitals, the only thing to be thankful for is that he doesn't seem totally incorporeal. The Armiger's body sways back and forth as she automatically balances herself against the shaking, nearly falling over. "That's right! Just like the stories!" She replies in a strangely chipper tone. "It's nice to finally see you, Jack!" Weiss attaches her sword to the small of her back, slapping the side of her gun with a building electric whine and a steady glow springing from where the bolt and chamber should be. "And I don't mind if I do!"

    Aiming for the smaller pumpkin men first, Weiss braces her left forearm over the top of the SMG to cancel out the kick, and then begins sweeping across them with a scything stream of fire. Without the need for high levels of explosive yield, she channels the weapon's output into smaller projectiles barely more powerful than high caliber bullets, fired at an utterly absurd cyclical rate, aiming to chew up ghastly pumpkin heads with thousands of rounds per minute.

Staren has posed:
    Staren turns to face Jack as he rises. His armored tail lashes back and forth. "You tricked the devil twice. But if you were /really/ so clever, you'd have tricked death as well!"

    Staren swings his arm around with the cannons. "Old ways, new ways, I don't care. But you're hurting people. So if you want oblivion... you got it!" He takes a few potshots with the cannons, but the big weapon here is the shoulder missile launchers -- a plasma missile or two is fired into the crowd of mini-Jacks to clear the way for Staren -- who activates his wings and charges, over the mini-jacks if needed, activating his beam saber and trying to cut Jack in two.

    Okay, it probably won't be this easy, but man, what if that /was/ all it took, huh?

Kirika (481) has posed:
    "You look incredible." Kirika manages a brief smile just as she sees Ayako's transformation, before she gets serious again when the excitement begins. As Jack monologues, she raises an eyebrow as he boasts and blusters until she rolls her red eyes and stares at the ghost when he shows his ugly mug.

    "You're as foul as your reputation implies. May this be swift and your destruction swifter." She growls, then raises her sword as she plunges headlong into the pumpkin men.

    Sword blazing with magic fires, Kirika lets out a shout as she slashes upon them like a whirlwind of slashing and fluff, her jackboots and officer's uniform just adding to the severity with which this woman fights with.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley turns to look at Jack properly. Her eyes fixate on his face as he rises up, and speaks to them. References to The Old Ways and the idea of a fight. That he manifests as such a tremendous creature, something physical that she can more readily understand, makes her more at ease. Her face hardened, the skeleton grin turning into a frown. Quite an odd white scale pattern there. And did he say... Mictlan?

    His manifested Merry Band arrives to the sound of his laughter. She isn't toppled, but she has a hard time staying put in the air, as if the laughter pushed a powerful gust at her. She only lands when he's done with that awful noise.

    And then she speaks a phrase in a furious Spanish: "Your heart will burn, Jack, if I have anything to do with it." One gets the feeling she's going full pseudo-Aztec here.

    She lunges at the Merry Band, and makes no second thoughts about what she is fighting. Whether they were once people or not, young or old, doesn't matter. They are now the thralls of an ancient spirit, and she's going to cut them down to set them free. She chops with vicious swipes of the longsword, which, as something imbued with the element of wood, might have an odd effect on plant-like ghosts of this nature.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa halts for a moment as she hears the voice of the pumpkin seller her blood for a lack of a better term runs cold she has to wonder for a moment as she looks about seeing the thing moving like a human face that should not. She looks around to hert allies and then as the battle is about to begin at this point she's brought reaper rounds in the rifle and is very glad she did so. She's not sure how she's here in this grey place. She feels like she's seen it before once...she has an idea when but she does not seem to be trying to focued on that.

She lines up a shot and opens fire before she starts moving.

"...your not taking anyone this year."

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "Gah!" With Jack on the rise, Shirou is on the retreat. Just a few steps, anyways. The boy's fearful eyes have gone wide. That... is... tall. And EXCEEDINGLY unnerving. The redhead can't help but gulp even as his teeth grind together and determination to overcome whatever comes his way boils and churns up. He's scared, sure. But he's just as defiant as he is frightened and that's what counts.

    "N-no, I came to find out what you're up to." Krampus? What the heck is the Krampus?

    Apparently, he does know of something a bit obscure like that, but it takes a few seconds to register. Unfortunately, he's got to focus on these enemies first. Shirou twirls the scythe then lunges out with it to give a good sideways strike. Scythes make for weird weapons, but Priscilla's is a true reaper's weapon - it will eviscerate anything it can bite into.

    "Uuuuahhh!" He's beset by weird pumpkin-things, and so the weapon dices left and strikes right to clear out the horde.

    But.

    CRAAAAAAAAASH!

    Apparently his image was faultier than expected. That weapon's a delicate and weird thing, and it went through a teleportation he hadn't accounted for.

    "Gah...!" The magus' arm literally tears open. A nasty, bleeding gash. His body can't handle the Lifehunt, either!

    Raggedly, he draws in another breath.

    Golden energy flares and solidifies into another projected weapon. This one's a spear. A very... strange-looking spear. It has ROCKET THRUSTERS. Those who know him will have no trouble recognizing it as one of Vruasa's designs. The AERODYNAMIC ROCKET SHOCKSPEAR in fact.

    Which Shirou draws back, takes aim... then HURLS. The weapon will probably shatter on impact as it's quickly made, but before then it's gaining tremendous speed - WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

    Those rockets are NOT just decoration. It's really a rocket-propelled, thrown spear. Adding insult to injury the tip's actually a tazer. ZORCH!

    "What are you doing with all these ghosts, Jack?! That's what we came to find out!"

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako smiles softly at Weiss and Kirika, and then quietly watches Jack... Her headdress' chains jingle loudly and her body ripples visibly as the world shakes with his laugh. Her gaze goes quickly over to his jack o'lantern cronies. As they lumber forward, she moves back behind the group. Preferring to keep in back away from the assault, she watches. And quickly begins figuring out an appropriate barrier for the situation, for each person. As she usually does.

    However, at Shirou's sudden cry of pain and gash from using Priscilla's scythe her gaze moves straight to him. Ayako does a gentle twirl and the arms hidden underneath her robe move outwards in a sweeping gesture towards him. She whispers, "Healing Water" and one of her chains suddenly orients in the direction of Shirou and sprays a stream of purple water at him to heal his arm.

Riva Banari has posed:
"It doesn't matter where you came from. It doesn't matter where you go. There's only one thing that matters." Riva straightens as Jack makes his appearance. The grinning visage causes her to cringe, but her hands tighten on her guns as she watches that. "You get what you give, huh. If you want to live like that, you have to remember that goes both ways."

He lunges to his full height, and Rive looks up, shocked for a moment before he's joined by a large number of backup assistants. "Come on!" Riva calls to the others. "Let's put this scary story to an end." She levels her guns, and starts firing at the smaller group. Her high rate of fire on the guns makes her better suited to clear out the backup so the people with the big weapons can focus on Jack himself. She wades right in, blue-green bolts of Anima bouncing everywhere as she rains down magical gunfire.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Lightning rips across the clearing. It skips right over the Merry Band and slashes across Jack's body. He stops his step forward when he's struck, rearing back and screeching to high heaven. His arms flail out wildly, and his scream of utter agony seems unending --

-- until he freezes, and then lowers his arms with a deep, throaty chuckle. The air seems to quiver like it did a moment ago, though less roughly. There are burn marks where the lightning struck him. He dusts a hand made of detritus across his shoulder, and a bit of ash is brushed onto the ground. "A good effort. A nice try." He thrusts one hand towards Inga, and a spear of green energy, like will-o'-wisps hammered into shape, erupts from it and flies towards her in a descending arc. "You get what you give, witch!"

The Merry Band, or 'mini-Jacks,' are quick. They're not quicker than super-fast gunfire. One of them gets shredded into bits of plant matter by Zwei's focused fire, but it takes a lot of ammunition to take one down. When it goes down, two more spring up, practically leaping out of the Earth and diving at the Armiger. Their wooden fists nonetheless feel like iron bars, and they use them to pummel and pull, seeming to recognize the not-quite-alive being and trying to take it apart. Another pair get engulfed in plumes of plasma, but they come through as burned trees, almost skeletal. They're slowed, but they drop into a crouch... and then fling themselves upwards, their heads coming clear off and detonating in Staren's face while he flies at Jack like high-explosive mimics of his own missiles!

"Well! I'm glad /someone/ appreciates a good yarn," Jack says, a twisted grin directed at the Armiger. He starts to stride forward, his steps long and his legs lifting high to take rocking, swaying, even springing steps. It's hard to tell if he's doing it on purpose, or if his weird plant-like limbs make him move so oddly. He regards Staren next as he approaches, taking his time of it. "What makes ye think I /didn't/? Am I lying in a grave, a moldering corpse somewhere to be food for worms and other things? Ha!"

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
The smaller Jacks keep rising and keep coming. Kotone's first few shots are either well-aimed or lucky, puncturing the pumpkin on one's head. The rounds blast the top off of it, and the rest follows suit shortly thereafter, exploding into a white-grey ball of something that isn't /quite/ fire. It knocks a couple of other members of the Band over, sending them tumbling. They right themselves immediately and start to regrow their blasted bits, and one rushes right at her, arms outstretched to try and take her gun from her. The others get intercepted by Kirika, who finds that swordplay is not /quite/ adequate to deal with things made of plant matter like they are. Enough will do it -- she kills one that way and cripples a second, hacking a leg off of a damaged one -- but they /keep coming/. Her sword seems to keep them from regenerating, though...

"My 'reputation' is for having a grand ol' time, lass. Now, if ye'd like, I'm sure I can show you one, eh? Heh heh heh --" KA-PANNNG! The rocket-spear hits Jack in the neck, sending him reeling. He exhales a bark of a laugh, a quick, "/Ha/!" and the weapon gets sent flying wide by the shockwave that rolls out of him. Whatever he's made of, it's /tough/. "I'm buildin' a Merry Band, lad! I'm gatherin' the poor unfortunates with nowhere else to go, or nowhere /better/ to be, and going ta' lead 'em on a whirlwind tour of the best places in the /world/! We'll get bigger and bigger... and then, /just/ maybe, we'll see what Heaven has to offer too! HAH!"

The Merry Band presses towards the pumpkins on the circle. Some of them are going for them, obviously reaching out too-long arms to try and snatch up the lanterns linking people here. Ainsley has neatly found a way to keep them at bay, with the plant matter violently recoiling whenever her sword manages to connect. It starts to bend them out of shape in uncomfortable-looking ways and freezing it like that, not doing much damage but debilitating the 'mini-Jacks' quickly. Riva's Anima-fueled gunfire seems to do the trick to take out the then-twisted lantern-monsters, the Anima-charged weapon working exceptionally well against the foul creatures and leaving burning, sizzling wounds.

"My heart... feh! What use is a heart for a man like me, eh? More than a man, now -- a /legend/!" Jack is practically on top of all of you. He stops suddenly, just behind the wall of smaller creatures. They keep rising, but they'll run out of pumpkins near you eventually. "I'll get what I gave -- a grand ol' time, that's what!" He throws his head back again and lets out a thing between a snarl and a screech, then swings his arms forward and slams both hands into the ground. The branches, roots and vines dig in, and pumpkins start to grow in fast-forward all around the grove. They get big and plump, start to rattle... and then /explode/, massive detonations like the ones turned on Staren. They're strewn throughout the places the group has occupied, most of all.

Get moving!

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako keeps careflly watching... and her eyes quickly go straight to the green energy spear the moment it appears emenates from Jack's hand. She recognizes the energy from last time and swiftly sweeps her arms downwards towards the ground in front of Inga. "That energy... it will not hit this time! Eleven Dimension Crossed Boundary Barrier!"

    A barrier made of white light appears in front of Inga to intercept the green energy spear. From a normal viewpoint, it looks similar to a white water lily flower blooming in the direction of the spear. To those that can see beyond the normal three dimensions, it is an intricate and carefully woven multiple layers of barriers. Like all of Ayako's barriers, it is a soft barrier. One that doesn't completely stop an attack, but slows, weakens, and redirects it to allow the person inside to avoid being hurt. This barrier in particular also appears to amplify magic that passes in the direction outside of the barrier as well! Both defensive and offensive. A distinction worthy of the pacifistic water spirit.

    Ayako's eyes widen as pumpkins begin growing on the ground and quickly floats away from them and upwards to avoid the explosive pumpkins.

Staren has posed:
    Staren gets shot by PUMPKIN MISSILES. "Ahh, what?! You gotta be kidding me!" Staren tumbles through the air, a shower of amber sparks falling off his forcefield as one of the discs on his chestplate pops and smoulders.

    At least he's too high up for the detonations on the ground later.

    "Yeah, but you're stuck HERE. Like THIS." Staren points out, and takes a couple more shots at the mini-Jacks. The cannons take a little under four seconds to cool after each shot, it seems. Staren flies around, taking shots at Jack's army while observing the pumpkin master, trying to figure out how to attack him.

    Then Jack explains his long-term goals. Staren nods. "Alright, I respect your ambition. Buuuut I still have to destroy you," Pew pew! "for conscripting the souls of children into your spirit army. You want to take on Heaven with an army of spirits," pew pew! "I want a future where kids don't get abducted into your spirit army. Mutually incompatible goals." Pew pew!

    "Also: You're a /monster/." He punctuates the statement with an armor-piercing missile that tries to embed itself in the target and then explode from inside, rather than scorching a wide area. Let's see how Jack, or any mini-Jack that blocks it, handles /that/!

Kirika (481) has posed:
    The difficulty with which it is to have these Micro-Jacks cut down is noted by Kirika. She expected this, given their plant-like appearance. Her fire seems to halt their regeneration however, which gives her an idea.

    When she stops slashing away, her hand lashes out to send forth a torrent of holy fire towards the Jacks, flames cleasning them without mercy.

    "BURN, FOUL CREATURES! KNOW THAT YOUR END COMES AT THE SWORD AND FIRE OF A NINE-TAIL'S BROOD!"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    As suspected, there aren't any vital places to strike and immediately take a mini-Jack out of the fray. It comes to to all but completely destroying their bodies to really get rid of one. What is /un/expected however, is that it would take anything close to the amount of firepower it does just to do that. Zwei had been calculating based off of an error margin of 300% from actual plant matter composition, not well into the thousands. It's pretty much all Weiss can do to keep her portion of the targets at a safe distance without turning up the juice enough to endanger her allies. She completely ignores the pair of pumpkins erupting out of the ground right by her, only to have the gun go flying from her hands as the first couple of fists smash into her bracing arm, causing her simulated skin to fizzle as a hairline crack splits down the layered graphene beneath. They'd completely ignored her shielding. How?

    With no time to study or contemplate the phenomenon, Zwei chalks it up simply to magic, and redirects all power going to shielding towards Weiss' piezoelectric circuits, flooding every synthetic muscle fiber with multiple Farads at once. The Armiger draws her sword in the same motion as a 360 degree sweep, going from convincing human movement to a blurring spasm of motion that sends a miniature thunderclap echoing through the clearing as most of her body breaks the sound barrier. The edge of her sword trails a dizzying arc of lurid green light where the photon-width edge splits air into plasma, passing through each member of the Merry Band surrounding her. Without waiting for more of them to overwhelm her, Weiss disappears from the spot in a crater of shattered earth and with the sound of a bullet whizzing by one's ear, visible only by the viridian trail that follows her as she rockets off from the ground with a blistering slash aimed for one of Jack's arms.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    The twisting and recoiling of the pumpkin minions draws a smile out of Ainsley. So she has something that these creatures don't want to be touched by. So she has a way to hurt Jack, she wagers, a way that is probably very vicious. Brandishing Mercy toward the tremendous pumpkin man, she rises up off the ground again, preparing to charge at him. And then he slams his hands down, and a pumpkin flies directly into her and blows up, sending her slamming into the ground painfully.

    When she gets up, she's bleeding and unhappy, but not dead. She flies up higher into the air, and then with a mighty roar, she charges for Jack and tries to skewer him between the eyes with a sword that these creatures do not enjoy going near.

    The angry howl picks up to animal-like levels, as any missed attempts are added onto with more vicious stabbing motions. Yeah she REALLY doesn't like Jack. Maybe she's just trying to yell louder than he can? Probably more than that. She was just as riled up about that man selling the pumpkins.

Riva Banari has posed:
"Something tells me his idea od a grand ol' time isn't your average bar crawl, based on that story." Riva comments, raising her guns to the sky and firing a salvo of bullets up into the air. The arcing projectiles sizzle into the sky, a spreading circle of blue-green energy irising open on the ground filled with hexagonal color patterns. The bullets rain down, damaging enemies but not allies.

Bees indeed.

Riva blinks at Ayako's maneuver. "Whoa, that's cool!" She didn't remember seeing /that/ one before. That distracts her, however, as she's standing near a pumpkin... "OHCRAP!" She yells, as she is detonated with spiritfire and pumpkin guts.

She lands on the ground, smouldering, strewn with orange. "Ugh." She groans. "That's gross /and/ painful," She laments. "Why do I end up with gunk all over me every time I fight an eldritch horror?"

The staggers back to her feet and tries to catch her breath so she can keep running interference on the little guys.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa takes down one of the lesser pumpkins and she pauses for a moment as they all explode wait what just happened. She's trying to keep back she does see they are trying to grow back and they are coming for her she opens fire and starts moving. She's not a by stander she's very agile for well being made out of metal not military grade but well certainly beyond some . Maybe she should have brought a grenade or two with het?

"... you became a legend to become ... imortal?!"

She's more than a little stunned at Ayako's she's just going to accept her friend as she is. She keeps moving and shooting.

"Because that's how it goes! At least you get back up if you slip up!"

Inga has posed:
"Not even the Wild Hunt take you, Jack?" she calls. "So now you will lead your own!?"

Inga turns aside, her healer senses tingling. Shirou has injured himself somehow with the blade he's using. For some insane reason it makes perfect sense to cut herself and fling her blood at him--except that it would appear Ayako has this covered. Inga nods to Ayako, but cuts her vein open again anyway, ready.

She's going to need it. Jack makes a show of being hit by the lightning...then laughs, and slings his retaliation. Inga's eyes narrow, hoping her various protections will keep her alive enough to heal from whatever terrible pain she is about to be in. A green spear of energy lances toward her, but Ayako is watchig out for her. A barrier of light forms in front of her, a good deal of the damage she would have taken (likely enough to kill her right there) shaved off so that when it does reach her, Inga's own wards take care of the rest. Inga smiles toward Ayako, nodding her thanks.

Unfortunately, a pumpkin then explode behind her, blowing her off her feet and falling forward. She tries to catch herself with her staff, but goes down anyway, her ears ringing, likewise splattered in pumpkin goo.

Groaning, before she even gets to her feet, Inga draws the blood from her arm, the liquid forming into several thin spears of dark brown/red. The spears sail toward Jack, Inga's expression a dangerous one as she pulls herself back to her feet. "Perhaps it is time that you are forgotten, Jack," she says.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "Screw that!" Shirou barks, seething with sudden anger. "You're just athering a warband to get revenge...!" Well, the motivation makes sense. It makes sense, but...

    It is pretty awful no matter how you look at it.

    Shirou again finds himself disarmed, but not for long. Ainsley's daggers appear in his hands as he draws both arms back... and then they're flying at Jack courtesy of a quick double toss. They're not really meant for throwing, but who cares? They're expendable.

    He's sprayed with healing power, but will it be enough? For just as he's taking in this fact... pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere. He notices them a bit late. "...Crap-" BOOOOOOOOM!

    They explode just as he's leaping away, catching him in the blast's fringe and knocking him off-balance. He hits the ground with a thunderous impact and goes rolling back towards the linking-pumpkins. He's winded and disoriented more than injured, and covered in pumpkin guts. Another hit like that might take him down, though....

    Normal weapons just aren't cutting it. He needs something more fitting to take this guy down.

    "My body is made of swords." After chanting those heavy words out, Shirou grips the air as if grasping a weapon. Yet again... one forms at his call. It takes a good five seconds, however.

    A few people might recognize this one. The weapon is about as long as he is tall. The weapon's grip is thickly carved rather than shaped with hammering. A blade of obsidian covered in ancient runes that glows white-hot with tremendous energy. Even in this spirit world, the weapon shines with an ominous inner force.

    Shirou takes a defensive stance near their own patch, ready to lop down anything approaching the crucial pumpkins!

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako's barrier is still there, floating in front of Inga. The white water lily responds to the barrage of thin spears of dark brown/red and amplifies the offensive magic going through it. The spears grow in size and length slightly and... almost as if responding to Inga's own dangerous expression, they become far more dangerous looking as well!

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Jack seems to notice the barrier as something more than just a simple shield. A lump on his shoulder splits, and vines lash out, flung up in the air towards the water spirit. They do not seem to care if she's mostly insubstantial; here, she's as solid as anything else he wants to hurt, and he seems keen on wringing the life out of her.

The mini-Jacks suffer from the sustained bombardment by Staren, forced to jump and roll to not get blown to hell. Jack does not intend to allow him free reign to fly around willy-nilly. "I can agree to disagree, but 'monster' is going a bit too /far/, isn't it? Aren't you the creature with the traits of an animal, and with pieces of metal embedded in your body? What isn't monstrous about /that/, eh?" Jack isn't idle during his query; he turns a trio of Will-o'-Wisps on him, flying up from the branches of the tree as balls of green light firing bolts of the same energy in a spiritual dogfight.

The missile comes down, hitting him in the shoulder and digging in. It explodes, blasting chunks of rotten plant matter off of his back, leaving a dripping, quivering wound. Before he can retaliate, Wuyin appears out of basically nowhere, jumping up and thrusting his sword into the wound. The fluids spray out from it, and Jack lets out a snarl of aggrevation more than pain, swatting him away like an annoying fly. He gets some air and tumbles down the hill, out of sight again. Jack turns --

-- and Ainsley embeds her sword into his misshapen face. The pumpkin twists in an ugly expression, and the sword sinks deeper, turning the normally-tough Jack's head into the consistency of... well, a rotten pumpkin. He reels for a few critical moments, just long enough that the mini-Jacks stop spawning out of the increasingly-broken ground as soon as they're killed.

Kirika's flames burn away a layer of dirt and grime on the outside of the mini-Jacks. They slow... and don't heal. Several catch fire, starting to burn away under the concentration of holy fire. They come at her again, and Riva's well-timed bullet-spam starts to pound them into the ground before Kirika can be completely overwhelmed. Kotone moves away, and with the combination of the fire and the /gun/fire, finds that her mostly-normal ammunition is suddenly much more effective. She's also probably aware that she can detonate them with exceptionally-lucky headshots, but that's not a great plan if they're in melee.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Which they are. A few still get through, coming at the three of them with crushing grips and clubbing hands. As it turns out, being on fire /doesn't/ make them any less terrible or terrifying. The burning jack-o'-lanterns are rapidly thinning in number, but they're relentless. Shirou gets some attention the moment two /more/ of Ainsley's weapons get embedded in Jack, a trio of the mini-Jacks running at him for burning tackles. They do not seem to recognize that the Zantensuken will kill the shit out of them if they get too close.

Zwei breaks free of the swirling melee by lopping limbs off of the mini-Jacks and going after the main event. Jack recovers from the stagger just enough to try and intercept Zwei with one of his long arms, but the Armiger is faster than he is in this state. That blade cuts up the inside of his forearm, leaving a green gash that bleeds some kind of thick, viscous fluid onto the ground. Wicked spears of blood hammer into him, hitting him in the midsection with a quick tunk-tunk-tunk, his torso bending almost double from the strikes. They stick, sizzling and burning, the deadly weapons eating holes right into him.

"Greaterrrr thannn th' Hunnn-tuh," he says, voice warped by Ainsley's sword currently stuck in his head. "A hhhosss-tuh -- unnnbounnd!!" His eyes burn, the light of the Devil's ember flaring up. His mouth opens wide, that twisted, split-faced grin stretching the rotten 'skull' of his wider than ever.

And he laughs.

The sound hits like a train at such close range. It has physical force and serious weight behind it, enough to break necks and flip cars. What it doesn't send flying away from him gets shaken up, the ground itself trembling and threatening to break apart where he stands. Projectiles get turned aside, and even magic is wrenched away from him, sent curving to one side or another -- a phenomenon observed when Wuyin tries to fling a fireball into his back from the other side of the hill to no avail. Even across the grove, the power can be felt, with it being 'merely' a sucker-punch at the edge of the trees... though it doesn't seem to affect the pumpkins, or those within the circle.

He's not healing, though, not really. His wounds remain, save those to the rotten jack-o'-lantern that is his head. It's /hard/ to hurt him... but you're definitely doing it, and getting just what you give in return.

Staren has posed:
    Staren gives an exasperated sigh. "I mean /psychologically/. I have to /say/ that? Explaining it kind of ruins the whole 'dramatic moment' thing. Whoop!" He's pushed into an aerial dogfight -- with three on one and no way to tell which way they're aiming, his forcefield seems to sort of heat up and crack apart from the attacks. Staren fires back at them with the cannons, but they're probably hard to hit.

    He leads them up and away from the others... then suddenly pours on the speed by using gravity, jet boots /and/ his wings to dive down while firing a plasma missile up and hoping to catch the will-o-wisps in the blast.

    Being focused on /them/ means he doesn't see the shockwave coming. He's sent tumbling past the tree.

    As soon as he can right himself and get eyes on Jack, though, he retaliates with a volley of five of the AP missiles. He didn't stop the first one, so here's hoping it didn't teach him how to stop the rest...

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako's eyes widen when Jack suddenly targets her! She forms a ball of water almost as big as herself and then quickly flings it at the ground by everyone else. Once that's done, she starts trying to float away from the vines. She's not terribly fast in the air, but she is extremely flexible and is-as appropriate for her-as hard to grasp as water. Unfortunately, she's too busy evading the vines to heal anyone or use another barrier!

    And then Jack's laugh happens! She isn't close to Jack so she isn't hit by the hardest of it, but it still hits her hard! Her body ripples visibly and she winces... but keeps trying to avoid the vines!

Inga has posed:
Inga, now on her feet again, leans on her staff, watching the blood spears be empowered by Ayako's magic. Well, that's very useful! How could Inga make something like that, she wonders...

No time for that now, though. Tuck that thought away.

Inga shakes her head at Jack. "Tch...that's why you're trapped now. This is your only entertainmant all year, isn't it? You can't be greater than the Hunt. You've tricked the devil, but he was stupid. Odin will lay you to waste," she says.

Jack laughs, showing he is a spirit of terrible power. That laugh carries years of power gathered, his story told every Halloween...

Time seems to slow, the pupils of her eyes rapidly widening in one of the rare moments she catches a glimps of her own strands of fate. The weave stretches out before her, a path rapidly traveled...and she knows.

Inga flies backward, the force of the blast ripping her off her feet and snapping her head back quickly and violently. As if that wasn't bad enough? She collides with one of the trees with an audible snap, spine breaking. She falls to the ground like a doll made of rags, no longer moving, her eyes open and staring.

Kirika (481) has posed:
    KIrika swears as she is about to glare towards Staren to get him to stop talking during all of this, but she is sent flying by the shockwaves Jack emits before she can say a thing. The half-kitsune is flung far, but she holds her ground until she is sent sailing towards a tree. Something breaks, but Kirika flops from the tree and lands to the ground just as Inga does.

    Her eyes see the mage breathe her last with horror, only for that to become replaced with something else.

    Rage simmers in Kirika deep within, and she begins to feel herself piece her body together through magic. Painful snaps and pops are heard as bones and flesh are knit back together like a seamstress patching a hole in a shirt with thread and needle, and before long Kirika is back to her feet in order to avenge INga's death.

    "MONSTER!" She roars, before leaping towards Jack directly to unleash a flaming slash to his chest, her holy blade aiming to bite deep and hard.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Weiss seems to have cleared the ground just in time to avoid being taken out in the pumpkin flavoured carpet bombing earlier, spearheading the attack on Jack along with Inga, Shirou, Ainsley and Staren. It's fortunate that Jack is as damaged as he is, because in the air, she has no way to adjust her momentum; leaving her to twist her body just barely out of the way, plant her feet into that disgusting, grimy plant matter, and run along the inside of his arm with her blade trailing rotten blood all the while. Reaching his shoulder, she steps off the embedded daggers and vaults straight up towards his head, bringing her undamaged arm back and charging it to the maximum with electrostatic energy in order to cleave through the massive pumpkin in one go, only to be hit full on at point blank by that ungodly explosion of wicked laughter.

    The Armiger swiftly reverses direction in mid air, sent flying backwards and downards away from Jack at a meteoric speed, hitting the ground in an explosion of mulch and dirt. Dank soil clings to her hair, skin and clothes as she extricates herself from the crater; a much more visible series of cracks running up half her face, like broken white china. "Your tale really is an interesting one!" Her voice fizzles slightly before evening out. "I never would have guessed you'd have that kind of ambition! Or one at all really. I had assumed this was all just pointless, spooky violence. I'm actually impressed!" Lunging from the indent in the ground, Weiss takes a diving roll across her discarded gun, slides into a low crouch, and wirelessly distributes the power flooding her body into the weapon's focusing chamber, making the muzzle glow white hot. "But you get what you give right? So between the damage you've done to all of us, I think the end sum equates to total annihilation for you!" The targeting laser settles between Jack's eyes, and the instant the trigger command is given, the air is filled with streaking, incandescent fire. Every bolt of light that hits Jack explodes into a rippling conflagration, thrashing the leaves on the trees with shockwave after shockwave with the equivalent of someone setting off fifty kilos of TNT over and over again.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Creating swords is not easy. Even if Shirou's solved his prana problems with Iianor's help, making something like Zantetsuken with any real accuracy demands tremendous focus. At this pace, how long can he keep fighting?

    "Fine. If that's how you want it!" The redhead's normal friendly voice is now cold yet intense, and fierce determination shines in his eyes.

    Every enemy who approaches is cut in twain. One moment there's mini-Jacks and pumpkin monsters.. the next they're toppling to the ground in pieces as the monstrous blade passes cleanly through them at lightning speed. The weapon's wielder, however, isn't faring as well. Each swing wrenches Shirou's body this way and that with force far beyond what his body can take. Every enemy felled is an arm muscle torn just slightly more, and a breath he didn't get a chance to take.

    But he's letting NOTHING through. No matter how many come, they will all fall.

    "URAAAGH!" Slash, slash, slash. The magus doesn't really seem suited for this weapon whatsoever, but it is DEFINITELY doing the job.

    Until...

    Inga goes down.

    The laugh's shockwave nearly shakes Shirou off his feet. He's forced to stop attacking and shield his eyes with an arm instead lest they get struck by all kinds of dust and debris. But he weathers it, even as it rattles his bones. He's the furthest away, and all it manages to do is shake him down to his knees.

    Yeah, it does help that he was defending the circle, doesn't it?

    "I-Inga!" Momentarily, Shirou has forgotten that these people can regenerate from death. He's seen Wuyin do it, but never Inga.

    Could he have saved her? Is she still alive?

    He can't find out, not right now. If they're going to help Inga, Jack has to go down. Now.

    The boy raises Odin's weapon high over his head. Responding to his will, its ominous edge gleams all the more brightly and eerily. Those sensitive to magic of any kind will feel a dreadful force building within Zantetsuken... and thick currents of all the ambient energies flowing towards it. Into it. A tremendous power's gathering in that thing, many times the piddly amount of energy Shirou's giving off - or channeling into it. So much prana flows through his arm that it glows green in circuit-like patterns.

    The boy opens his mouth, only to declare the beginning of an ominous phrase.

    "Mine obsidian blade shall split atwain the threads of thy future..."

Inga has posed:
Looking at the unnatural angle of her neck and spine?

Yeah, she's dead.

Riva Banari has posed:
Finally, the horde of miniature pumpkins is thinning. This is fine for Riva, as she sees another critical issue that needs to be dealt with. The vines lashing out for Ayako cause Riva to launch forward, swapping out her weapons to pull... That crappy warped sword she's still carrying around. Nevertheless, the important thing is it can still channel Anima. There is a flash of white-gold light as Riva pours it in, and she brings the blade down, trying to hack at the vines savaging the healer!

Unfortunately, there's still the problem of the incoming spectral upheval. Riva turns, and quickly braces, using her weapon to guard as the shockwave hits. Were it a normal hit, she'd be fine.

This hits her with the impact of a mack truck, the strike shattering the weapon into a thousand pieces that fly out across the battlefield in a rain of shrapnel as the is sent impacting into the ground, tumbling across the clearing with a shout of pain.

There is an unpleasant snapping noise on contact with the ground. "D... Damn!" Riva says, her leg bent at an awkward angle as she sits up. Gritting her teeth, she digs out a can, pops it open, and chugs the contents. And then she yells in pain as she forcibly pulls her broken leg into place. Her other hand comes up as she sits there, unable to move for the moment as she sends some bullets in intermittent spurts, trying to clean up the rest of the problem. As she does so, she sees the cumpled form of Inga. "Dammit!" She grimaces, angry despite she knows that she'll be back.

At least, she hopes Inga will be back... All bets are off with soul-capturing pumpkin spirits.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa says "..."

She makes no further comments given what she is after all. She sees the mini jacks and she's still shooting she's got to take them down she's go ttry to take them down if she's able to. She's not complaining about the reaper rounds doing more damage she's just glad she didn't bring standard rtounds that would have faired less well.

SHe's very lucky she didn't get out side the safety zone as it were it's clear the fodders's got to be kept off everyone else's back.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley is /right there/ in Jack's face when he projects that wave of force. It is such a powerful blast that it does quite a lot to hurt her. In fact, it outright breaks one of her arms, but she somehow manages to keep herself from flying backwards like a loose plastic bag, and instead pushes into it. The force blasts around her, a cone of air billowing around her as she forces forward. Her broken arm is limp at her side, and the horrid squealing roar she bellows right back at Jack is drowned out by the cacophony around her.

    And then she pulls the sword out of his face, and uses a huge overhead swing with every ounce of power she can muster from that close to try and cleave his pumpkin head <span style="color:ompletely.

    cred">"HRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"</span>

    Whether she hits or not, she's going to pass out in a second, either from the screaming or the pain of her arm catching up to her.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Staren's missiles don't get the chance to close. The laugh is long and loud, and they get scattered into the woods nearby -- almost all of them, anyway. One detonates close to him, catching Jack in the edge of the blast. The wisps are less lucky; there's one left limping along behind Staren, projecting hindering light to try and drag him down to the ground, and violently.

Inga's demise triggers another laugh from Jack. It's less apocalyptic. When he stops, Kirika comes in with a vengeance, the fiery attack hitting him dead center. It joins the other burning wounds, the holy flame catching like it had just hit an oil spot and starting to eat away at his center of mass. His response is a gutteral roar, lifting a balled fist, and bringing it down at the top of Kirika's head like a wrecking ball.

Ainsley, potentially the more enraged combatant, never actually left. She brings her sword down, and it splits the pumpkin-head in twain, cutting right through the gourd but stopping before it can cut into the bottom of it. It hits something like a stone and stops cold -- and then her sword starts heat up, the blade immediately growing cherry red as the mere touch of the hellish ember inside his lantern-skull starts to superheat it. Something grows inside it, a cloud of fiery brimstone that starts to billow out. Ainsley is still /right there/ -- and he's exhaling.

Ayeko is free by this point, the crushing vines going limp the moment Riva actually focused on them. Jack didn't really have to retaliate; he just let his voice do the work for him. He still casts another spear of green off towards the tumbling Riva as a matter of course with his unoccupied hand, the Anima-wielder becoming a prime target the moment she got in so close. He's forgotten about animating more of the mini-Jacks in the meantime.

That does not mean that the remaining ones aren't there. They are, however, weakened. Kotone fights a gradually-losing battle, the mini-Jacks dying as she pumps round after round into them. She's going to be short on ammo before she's short on enemies. They close in on the pumpkin patch they brought with them, and on Shirou, still trying to get through even as he cuts them down. If he's concentrating on something, he needs to be interrupted, they seem to think. If they think.

Zwei gives Jack something to think about. He looks like he's about to reply when the incandescent fury starts to lance across the wooded battlefield. Nothing has made Jack take steps back yet, but this /does/. Each blast forces him backwards a ponderous step, and each one burns off another layer of thick, inexplicably tough plant matter. She gradually blasts open his chest with shot after shot, and when it's all over, he looks like someone with their ribs exposed and pulled open. His insides are a disgusting soup of bubbling juices and rotten plants.

Wounded and crippled, Jack tips forward. He lands on his hands and feet, and his body seems to uncoil and unwind. His 'skin' splits, and roots and vines tear free, stabbing forward like spears at those closest to him. They keep going, on and on and on, ripping a swath across the grove out towards Zwei and even in the air at the pacifist and the lab-cat. The burning ember turns like a great red eye in the cross-split pumpkin head, focusing on their blood-bought pumpkins in that circle. The vines start to pull back, readied like striking snakes. There are too many to stop, if he really goes for it --

There's a sound. Music, small and kind of tinny, as if from a tiny speaker. Jack freezes, and he ever so slowly turns his head to the source. Wuyin stands on the hill behind him, battered and bruised, holding up his cell phone. It is the source of the music at which Jack stares, momentarily dumbfounded.

BGM CHANGE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8DRen60X10

Now would be a good time to kill it.

Kirika (481) has posed:
    Kirika sadly isn't fast enough to avoid Jack's reprisal, and she is smashed to the ground like a fly swatted out of the air by an irked human. She leaves behind a crater, and her costume is ruined entirely as she remains lying in the ground, twitching and bloodied horridly now. "Nnnnngh..." She tries to get back up, but she can only roll away to safety before she collapses, beaten and done for the time being.

    She raises out her hand, and after aiming it at Jack, she focuses what power she has left before letting off a blast of fire, sending it hurdling towards Jack to help end the being once and for all.

    After that, she flumps and lies there for the time being while her wounds heal.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa doesn't have much in the way of super moves, reallyu there's a lot she might be able to do in time. Still she's moving at a good clip and she's not normal she's not even holding back. She's just trying to keep them away, after all they could bumb rush everyone she knows th much but something about Jack has really angered Kotoine it's just grabbed some part of her Ghost. Some part of it is screaming at her to kill it in fire and she is not agianst this at all. She she pauses at the music, she's almost laugh, she might do so later when she's not in danger of dying however. There's an opening she shits her line of fire trying to line up a shot with Jack's head and opens fire with what ammo's she's got left in the clip

"Emiya! Keep the small fry off the others I think if we bring Jack down they go with him!"

She also is unaware as she starts humming along with the song while she keeps fighting.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Superheated by hellfire. That is one heck of a way to hurt someone. Ainsley's functioning hand sears with awful, blinding pain. But that doesn't discourage Ainsley, oh no. She howls and regains her consciousness, and the wind whips around her just to keep her from burning to a crisp the moment the fire starts blowing up at her from Jack's rotten skull. She howls mostly from the effort of expending so much magic, from the instinctual fury of fighting something so awful and antithetical to her very being, and from the pain of her wounds and from forcing herself to stay awake.

    He drops, and she's left without the fire to suppress. She follows him, but only after rising for a beat, and then dropping down onto his shoulders with both feet. Her body surges with red light, and a loud SNAP occurs in her broken arm as she heals it jusssst enough to grab the sword hilt with her other hand, and try to drive it into his skull. She uses her Visual Field like a barbaric surgical camera, and she does something very vicious:

    She tries to cut the hellfire out of Jack's head, like carving the jack o' lantern that his head looks like.

    Ainsley is currently on fire.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako whews softly as the vines that Riva cut are no longer coming after her. And then she notices that aggravating green energy is being thrown at Riva! Riva just helped her! Well, then it's her turn!

    Ayako's body instantly turns into water in mid-air. At the exact the same time, the water Ayako had thrown onto the ground suddenly rises up and changes it's shape into the water spirit. Floating right next to Riva. Her right arm raises and she glares at the green energy spear that's rapidly coming towards them. "Sixteen Dimension Omnidirectional Barrier!"

    A blue water lily barrier blooms around both Ayako and Riva, severely disrupting the green energy spear. And Ayako sighs softly in relief.

    That relief doesn't last long, though! As Jack's body suddenly uncoils and unwinds and new vines begin sprouting! And then an opportunity provided by Wuyin's music! "Riva! If you have anything big, now's the time! Shoot it through the barrier! This one doesn't last nearly as long as the other!" Indeed, the blue water lily barrier is already starting to fade.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    The surge of encroaching vines going straight for Weiss distract her fusillade from her pimrary target, diverting fire from Jack to the tips of the frenzied plants streaming towards her. Double and triple tapping, she intercepts each vine with several shots at a time, making sure to be thorough enough that each one is destroyed in sequence, but doing so ultimately takes too much time. She clambers to her feet, steadily backing up as she continues flinging bolts downrange, her face lit up by the strobe of her weapon's muzzle flash; but sooner rather than later, the sheer number of attacking vines manages to get a couple of them through. One stabs straight through the side of her gun as she turns at the last second, wrenching the weapon out of her hands where it violently explodes. The second, she only barely avoids being skewered by, twisting back just enough for the animate vegetation to go raking over her collar rather than straight through her chest.

    When Wuyin comes back, the joke is completely lost on Zwei. In fact, it takes Jack's sudden pause rather seriously. Did this particular song have some kind of occultic power related to the original tale of Stingy Jack? If so, why hadn't he used it earlier? Regardless, Zwei isn't one to waste a vital opportunity, and so the instant Jack and his vines pause, Weiss dives out of the line of fire, sprinting along the edge of the clearing towards the original circle as her sole integrated weapon charges up, gigawatt by gigawatt. Shirou appears to be in the middle of concentrating for some form of tactical strike, and Ainsley and Kirika are doing their damndest to at least keep Jack on the defensive until then, so her best strategic option is obvious. Finally letting the barrel assembly pop out of her wrist, Weiss aims for Jack's center of mass, and lets off the full charge in the form of a buckshot-type deluge of fire. The same type of explosive bolts as before, though much smaller in size, flash out in a two hundred shot salvo that is perfectly shaped to hit nothing but as many square centimeters of Jack's body as possible. Rather than instantely and massively destructive, the distribution of kinetic energy should be enough to throw him backwards, perhaps even off his feet, buying time for everyone else to bring out their battle-enders.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "...whilst its crimson fuller shalt channel the lifeblood of thy past."

    As That song echoes through the eerie spirit world, Shirou's still focusing hard on his traced weapon. It's only Kotone's help that's allowing him to gather mana (prana, anima, aether, whatever you wish to call it here...)

    Whatever the boy's doing requires boundless quantities of energy. Thankfully for him, MOST of it's coming from his surroundings rather than himself. The bad part is that he still has to CONTROL this massive influx of power, and his Circuits are starting to scream in his soul. Too much, this is too much.

    He chokes down on the urge to cough, but a bit of blood leaks from his lips regardless. That same crimson color's shared by his weapon though - baleful red lightning encircles Zantetsuken as his stance wavers.

    THUMP. THUMP.

    With a heart beating wildly and head throbbing as he struggles to control the blade that cleaves all reason, the magus somehow manages to stay standing, and brings his other hand to Zantetsuken's grip.

    He waits. Waits. waits... for just the right moment, when he has a proper angle to attack. An angle that doesn't include anyone in its path. This means he'll be aiming slightly UP, instead of perfectly horizontally. It's to his advantage now that Jack is SO DARNED TALL.

    The gleaming weapon howls and shines. For one blinding moment it's the brightest thing in existence.

    Putting every bit of force into it he can, Shirou finally swings as his answer to Kotone.

    For one brief instant, hearts might stop, everything's quiet, and a bright yet harsh line's traced in the air by the steel-slaying sword.

    It's broken by Shirou's voice a half-instant later!

    "Now wail as thy soul is bestrewn across the plains of Valhalla!"

    Inga is probably going to have words with this Odin, one day.

    With that, all the floodgates are unleashed and every erg energy Shirou gathered storms forth as a 'flying slash.' A silvery-white light screeches through the air at an upwards diagonal. It utterly EVISCERATES everything in front of him that isn't practically invulnerable, and by the time anyone would even be registering that it's already up in Jack's face... somewhere close to it. Almost as an afterthought, the air catches up with this massive distortion and kicks into a fierce, howling gale through the region!

    That weapon, that technique, there is something noble about it, but also savage. It is a dark and dreadful power, a wargod's pride.

    No human should be handling that thing.

Staren has posed:
    Staren can see the missiles' paths on his automap. "Oh, COME ON!" There's one last willowisp, but he decides it's faster to just try and catch it in a plasma fireball than to shoot at it. Overkill, maybe, but it's not like the plasma missiles were helpful against tree people...

    Okay, so he has some kind of crazy wind to deal with. Projectile weapons are out. Staren flies up onto a branch and readies his laser sniper rifle... only to notice Jack is... is... what the hell? Some kind of crazy plant thing now?

    And there are vines stabbing for him! Staren fires the rifle wildly and makes a swipe with the beam saber as he takes back to the air.

    And then Wuyin distracts it.

    The wind is stopped.

    Electric-blue tendrils of energy reach out of Staren's chest and hold his weapons for him while he draws forth another one, an oversized revolver.

    The triple-M monogram engraved on the side catches his eye.

    "Happy birthday." he whispers.

    And then he aims at Jack's head and fires all six cylinders, one after the other.

    The recoil is noticeable, even /with/ his power armor.

Inga has posed:
Inga finds herself in a word of grey...

Wait, she was already in a world of grey.

Inga finds herself standing in light, anima surging around her. Incredibly disoriented, she looks around. Where was she? Where was Jack? Had he thrown her this far? Why wasn't she hurt? Why did she feel as though she were just a--

Well, fuck.

"I'm dead," she says, numbly. It must have been a quick death, at least. She remembered a flash of impossible pain, then nothing else.

Inga feels a pulling on her spirit, begins walking. She even has some version of her staff, for some reason she can't begin to understand. Voices are pulling at her awareness as she marvels. Now is the test.

Soon enough, Inga is standing over her crumpled body. If she wasn't a spirit, she was sure she'd be sick right now. Strangely, she doesn't feel anything but the pulling. Gods, looking at her body she wonders if she can even heal from that. Neck broken. Back, too. But the pulling...

There's a strange sort of voice that isn't a voice. 'Your body is nearby. Resurrect here?'

"U-um...yes?"

Suddenly, Inga's body twitches. She gasps loudly, pulling air into her lungs again desperately. Her spine straightens, her healing kicking into overdrive. The sound of buzzing fills her skull.

The world is coming back into focus. Jack is, sadly, still alive and attacking.

He killed her. Fuck him. Inga still has her knife. She draws it, slowly and awkwardly as she's still re-knitting, laughing quietly as she stabs herself artlessly. She's just come back to life, and she's already stabbing herself.

Another blood spear forms, sails forward with deady intent...

Hopefully, he doesn't see it coming.

A smile curves her lips unexpectedly as she hears Shirou talking about Valhalla. Oh, how wonderful...as soon as she can move again, she's going to hug him.

Riva Banari has posed:
Yeah, of course Jack is not down with the Anima users. They're local. He probably /knows/ what's up with them. Hell, he's probably killed a lot of them. She knows there's a bunch of them out and about...

All of this, however, doesn't help much as the blast smashes down on her. In desperation, she throws herself to the side, resulting in even more intense pain from moving the mostly-broken leg. Even that wouldn't be enough if it wasn't for Ayako's mystic barrier!

She rolls up, leveling her guns as the words give her focus. "Right! Thanks for the save! One more go..." If she's going to do anything useful, now's the time. Anima rolls into those guns, and she pushes as much as possible into the weapons until they practically hum (buzz?) with energy. Bringing the weapons behind her head, she thein throws them forward, aiming at Jack through the barrier. A circular blast of green Anima radiates off of the barrels as a disturbingly large blast punches out of the weapons... And then it hits the barrier, augmenting through it with Ayako's magic to streak in a blue-green tinged bolt to strike right back at Jack!

She has nothing witty to say. She's in too much pain right now.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
Jack stares at Wuyin for a moment. His head stitches back together weirdly, but just enough for him to speak.

"Are you having a laugh over there?" he asks, in a voice that hisses like a hot iron plunged into water.

"Nnnnnn..." Wuyin, slightly concussed, goes, "yes."

Jack chuckles. It's enough to blow hair back and allow for a dramatic ripple. A trio of those vines go backwards, and Wuyin finds himself grabbed by two while he fights with a third. He's hauled off his feet and into the air, upside-down. "That's cute," Jack says, clearly amused. "I like cute!" Beat. "I'm gonna keep all your bones after I take them out."

"Ah," Wu replies.

Jack's attention is re-grabbed by Kotone pumping the rest of her magazine into his head. Unlike Ainsley's sword, they don't penetrate very well. However, he's already messed up, and they tear his face back open. Jack makes a sound of frustration, a cloud of smoke and brimstone hissing out the exit wound. It gets abruptly worse when Kirika hits him in the face with a fireball, and his rapid pumpkin-focused recovery just... stops. There are problems here that he decides he needs to address.

He starts to do something about it, but Zwei unloads with the explosive shotgun-like blaster and promptly puts an end to that line of thought. Jack is torn free of the ground and bend in the middle, compressed like an accordion or folding like paper, depending on your perspective. His insides are flash-boiled and evaporated, the sludge disappearing entirely. It's uncertain if that was super deadly or just really gross. He looks a bit like he was hollowed out for proper pumpkin carving now, with pieces starting to fall off from the sudden lack of moisture.

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
His burned and blasted body starts to come apart under the withering fire getting sent down-range. He raises one arm to stop Riva's circular blast, but the augmented Anima shot breaks the twisted arm in six places before it shatters into shrapnel. He loses his footing, tipping the other way, trying to get back onto his feet again -- and then Staren shoots him from above, forcing him down onto his chest again as the inordinately powerful rounds hammer into exactly the kind of thing they were designed to kill. He's momentarily stunned, dropping Wuyin, who starts channeling lightning into him through the vine as soon as he's not about to get killed by it.

Jack tries to rise one last time -- but Inga is revived, pinning him to the ground with a spear through the hollowed chest cavity and into the dirt. He hisses out a word that is lost from the sheer damage done to him, but his tone is annoyed and exasperated. He gets his one arm underneath him, writhing as the electrical current gets funneled into him, trying to free himself before --

Before Shirou happens. The Zantensuken's slash summarily annihilates the remaining members of his so-called Merry Band, smashing them like porcelain dolls tossed out a window on a freeway. It's immediate and ugly, and the only thing that's left of them are little swirling lights in the pumpkin-mush where their heads land. The slash carries on... and just misses Jack's head, catching him in the shoulder and passing through his ruined misection until it exits at his hip. His remaining arm comes off. His legs are rendered immediately useless. Pieces are blown across the grove, the intensity of the wind carrying bits here and there.

Ainsley, practically in mid-leap while all this is happening, finally lands on top of him. She cuts away at his head while it tries to heal, finally recovering from the fire, digging deep with the burning blade. She gets at the ember, hacking at it while it refuses to be levered free. She finally manages it, and the split, squishy skull of Jack of the Lantern empties its contents onto the ground: a burning ember, tumbling down the hill, away from the remains of the monster. It rolls, further and further away, burning a path through the spirit world. The magically-attuned can feel the hellish thing eating up Anima as it passes through the normally-grey world. It looks like the air is fraying at the edges.

The ember bounces and rolls to a stop against a pumpkin. It burns through the outside with a hiss, and the pumpkin rattles and shakes. It splits open, eyes and a mouth opening up on it. It looks... disoriented. Jack laughs, though without the power he had behind it, weakly and wearily.

"Good one," he says. "The spirits are yours, then; take 'em." The jack-o'-lantern grins wider still. "I'll see you next year."

Jack's new head disappears into the ground, pulled beneath the dirt.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley stops being on fire, watching the ember roll down the hill. It is quite clear that it is Jack's soul, when the body that she is standing on stops moving completely. She drops her sword on the ground as it melds into the pumpkin over there, her mouth agape and very, very dry and cracked. And now a weakened Jack pops up, and she just wells up with so much petulant fury that she starts to cry. Not making anymore howling noises because she completely blew out her voice.

    And then she collapses in a heap atop the scorched, demolished, squishy corpse of Jack's old body. Ainsley is in bad shape.

Staren has posed:
    Holy shit, Staren thinks, as he sees the raw power his allies are unleashing on this guy. Some of them, he didn't know they could /do/ that!

    Jack falls at last, a piece of him even rolling away down the hill. "Is... is he dead?" Staren asks, suspiciously.

    And then OH SHIT THE EMBER IS HIM. Staren stares in horrible realization, then firees his cannons at the ground Jack dug into -- followed by grabbing his rifle out of the air and unloading a burst with that, too. "Dammit... /seriously/?! Isn't there any way to make him /stay/ dead?!" He sighs and stomps his foot in anger, then looks to Wuyin. "So, what happens now? Do these spirits even have bodies to go back to?"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    For some, strange reason, something about the way that altercation ended put Zwei in a really good mood. Nobody died (permanently), nothing significant was lost, there was more than enough data to record, it got what it came for, and in the end, Stingy Jack was such a great sport about it all! "Oh, Inga! You're not dead anymore!" Weiss says as the wrist raiser folds back into her undamaged arm. "Actually, the fact that all of you are alive is pretty impressive! I'd calculated a 90% chance of at least one fatality, and a 30% chance of two!" Reaching for her own face where the ugly spiderweb of cracks has ruined her otherwise perfect features, Weiss begins slowly running her fingers down the black fissures, mending them at a gradual pace, if only for appearances sake. Fixing the insides will take longer. "So what was that you did at the end, Shirou? With the poetry?" And then to Wuyin. "And what was that song about? If you had a trump card like that, why did you wait so long to use it?" Then Kirika "And how did you prevent him from regenerating? Is there some special technique to it?" And then Staren. "And that gun /has/ to be magic. It's really obvious when Riva uses it on her weapons, but not so much with that revolver." Lastly, she looks at Ainsley. "Inga? Ayako? Are one of you going to take care of that?"

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako just stares in amazement as Jack's body is just plain torn apart by: So. Many. Attacks. She nods her head slowly when she notes Jack's new head burrowing underground. The blue water lily barrier vanishes and Ayako quickly floats over to the collapsed Ainsley. "Healing Water Torrent!" All of her golden chains suddenly point downwards towards Ainsley and several streams of purple water pour out from her chains to rapidly heal Ainsley!

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Having burned up practically all he has with the effort to control and execute Zantetsuken, Shirou's response to Jack toppling over, his soul finding a new pumpkin, and him ditching the battlefield is quite predictable.

    He staggers, ggasps, wobbles. Zantetsuken's already fading into nothing from the tip-down as he does so. He can't stay standing.

    He tries to look up at Zwei when he's addressed, but...

    THUMP THUMP. THUMP THUMP.

    "Ghuuuh..." His mind screams. His body's wailing in agony at him. The whold world is red and bleak and hurting.

    He's unconscious before he even hits the ground, face-first. THUMP.

Staren has posed:
    ...Aaaand Ainsley collapses. "Ainsley!" Staren hasn't seen Inga's body yet. He hasn't thought to look, she's right /there/ after all. He runs over to her and kneels by her. "Ainsley?"

    Zwei gets a brief look. "...This gun is... special. ...Shirou! Darn it! Did he do something?! Is he still here?!" He looks around for Jack, warily.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa gets a click form her rifle as she's out of ammo and that was the last clip, she's going for the pistol now for all the good it's going to do at this point but it seems that's not going to be a huge concern this time iit seems that Jack is down but it hits her Inga died she feels a chill. Riva, Inga? Wu? They get back up anyone else here won't. She pushes the thought from her mind as Jack finally goes downa nd seems to stay down.

"...next year? We need to find a way to seal him..."

Inga has posed:
Inga is alive. She was dead. Now she's alive.

Everything still hurts rather terribly, but slowly, Inga begins to laugh. And cry. She was dead, and is now alive. "Ahaha...ahahaha...wasn't really...so special at all...maybe he was just...a Bee! Ahahaha...."

Apparently, Jack isn't the only one who's goard has been rattled.

Inga pulls herself together, using a bit of her blood to set a healing barrier around herself, eccelerating her healing even more. She still feels horrible. She can't even begin to think about it. Work to do. People need help.

She's not done bleeding yet.

Inga pulls herself to her feet, but she's been seperated from her staff. Her limp is more exaggerated, taking her longer to get toward Ainsley--and Shirou. Ayako is helping Ainsley too, but Inga is pretty sure she could use more. A blood rune is drawn into her, animal channeled, healing begun. She's never seen Ainsley so roughed up. "Odin's bones," she breathes. "We'll have you alright again Ainsley," she says, somehow managing to work through the panic just below the surface of her psyche to say some soothing words.

She leaves the healing to do its trick, moving over to Shirou. He's out cold, so he can't exactly put up a fight as she bleeds on him. It's good for him. "Anyone else...?" she asks, looking around.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako shakes her head slowly as she listens to Staren. "The only real way to probably kill him is to completely kill his story." Now that the battle has passed... Ayako's echoing, reverberating voice is probably far more obvious.

    She floats quietly over to Shirou and frowns softly. "Emiya... you're still Far. Too. Reckless!" As she says so, her golden chains aim downwards and blast him with both green, red, and purple healing water. Ayako seems... familiar with Shirou's current state and seems to know how to treat him to get him back up. "I don't think anyone wants to carry you out, so get up!"

    Ayako then smiles softly and looks towards everyone else with her glowing golden gaze. "Anyone else not as reckless need some treatment?" She giggles softly.

Staren has posed:
    "How can we kill his story? Erase our memories of all this somehow?" Staren asks.

Riva Banari has posed:
Finally, Jack is finished off. "Oh God..." Riva breathes. "Is it finally over? Holy cow, how does something get that strong?"

She reaches into her coat and pulls out a few wrapped tacos. She begins unwrapping it and responds to Weiss as she asks the question. "I can channel Anima. It's like ambient earth power or something, I guess." Riva explains. "I use it to power my weapons, it's a lot more effective than just hacking away at things. Believe me, I'd be useless otherwise."

THUMP. Emiya falls over. "God dammit, Shirou." She looks over at the unconscious guy. "Can someone get him a drink or something? My leg hasn't finished rebuilding yet." Ainsley's rage and grief makes Riva try to scoot, but she winces, still unable to walk. Give her a minute.

"He'll be back next year I guess. If we can find a way to seal him forever, great, but for now... Everyone's a lot safer."

Wuyin Tsai has posed:
"It wasn't a trump card," Wuyin replies, picking himself up. He starts to walk over. "It was asymmetric warfare. I thought it might be irrelevent enough to throw him off of his game, so to speak." He looks at the pumpkins. The lights are getting weird. Wordlessly, he offers Inga a wrapped parcel, too distracted to explain the death taco. "As for that --"

The remaining lanterns disgorge (disgourdge?) their contents: the accumulated spirits captured by Stingy Jack, rematerializing as what looks like monochrome people with empty eyes, narrow bodies and long limbs. They look at you, the enormous amount of them staring down to you from behind the lanterns.

Smaller figures come out of the crowd. Children, dressed in Halloween costumes from recent years and more commonly much older ones, drift forward. They take the tops off the jack-o'-lanterns, extending closed fists over them and then dropping something inside. They do it in rows, the depressingly large number of them taking their turns. The other spirits do the same, each in turn, drifting up into the air and over the trees once they're done. They hover there, drifting lazily in a circle over the enormous tree.

Once there's all done, there's an enormous SNAP. The world is suddenly unbearably bright, the starlight piercing down through the night's gloom and even the fog far above. When everything comes back into focus... there they are, standing at the base of the big gnarled tree in the Wispwood, back in the world of the living.

The jack-o'-lanterns are still here, almost a dozen of them. They're filled to the top with what are almost certainly treats. Given the holiday, this is probably the best result they could have hoped for.

Inga has posed:
Inga is handed a taco. She eats it, watcing the spirits, still just barely holding back the mad, giddy laugh that continues to try to escape her throat.

Taco. Taco good. Good Taco.

That little laugh finally does escape, just before Inga quite girlishly faints.

Nap time.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    With so many people pumping him full of power, Shirou actually wakes. "Nrgh......?" Realizing he's face-down in dirt, he pushes off the ground, wipes his face, looks around... notices he's kind of bloody, and peers at Inga.

    The fact it's her blood hasn't really registered yet. "You're alive!" These first few words out of his mouth are full of relief. She's alive! That makes all of this worth it.

    The ghostly procession registers moments later, and Shirou falls silent to watch it. It takes no time at all for him to understand just what this is all about.

    these are the people they ended up saving. Though.... can it be called saving, when they were already dead?

    If their spirits are free, that's something at least. He's just about to say something, and reaches out a hand when -- PPOOOOOMF.

    It's all over with, and he falls backwards onto his rump with another thud. Still conscious though, this time. He's just breathing hard and STILL drastically overheated. Plus, a pounding headache refuses to leave him be so just keeping his eyes open is a strain!

    Judging by his somewhat vacant expression, he's sort of out of it. Probably needs a minute to get his bearings.

Staren has posed:
    Staren watches the ghost children, confused. What are they doing?

    When they return to the world of the living, Staren looks around expectantly for the children.

    ...When it's clear they're not coming, he hangs his head sadly. Then, wordlessly, he packs up his weapons and retieves his pumpkin.

    He's not sure if he should eat this candy or not.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa is chilled bny hee expierance in the spirit world she shoulders her weapona nd hugs her self for the moment. She watches with a strange looks as all of Jack's victems. She hangs her head for a moment. It was saving the spirits from being tormented by jack that's something right? She looks to the fallen inga and is going to pick her up after she takes her cut of the loot wondeirng just what she might find in the bag.

"...that's the second time I seen...that world..."

But Kotone's never been to the spirit world... has she?

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley, vaguely conscious but just sort of draped on the ground, soaked by water and a bit mended by anyone else's efforts at the time, turns her head to look at Staren blearily.

    "Hey, Staren." She pauses a beat, her vision a bit too blurry to tell whether he noticed or not. "We saved all of those people from what might have otherwise been eternal servitude to Jack. Look a little happier, okay...?" Her voice is almost destroyed, so it might be hard to hear her. She is also probably trying not to speak into the ground right there. Yeah she can't move, whether or not she received some healing. "I'm sure they all went to a better place than where they were at."

    After this, she makes a weak effort at standing up. It doesn't work. "Hrmf."

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    "That is the question, isn't it, Staren? I don't really have an answer either..." Ayako quietly watches the lanterns suddenly release their captives. She smiles softly at the released spirits and curtsies towards them as they drit up into the air and then over the enormous tree.

    And then blinks her eyes quickly as there is an enormous snap sound. "A-ahh... the bounded field is gone..." Ayako glances around... and then notes the jack o'lanterns. "Haa... some treats for us, I guess..."

    Of course, even outside of that eerie place, Ayako is still in her very floaty, watery, and faintly glowy water spirit form. She gently sprinkles healing water on everyone as she floats around, gently tending to everyone's wounds, even Weiss' mechanical ones.

Staren has posed:
    Staren lifts his gaze to Ainsley. "I suppose they did... but we don't really know what it's like, do we? And some of them may have friends and families here that will never even know what happened..." He sighs.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    "Not every story is a happy one," Ainsley tells Staren, "But we know we helped them, and their families will find out eventually." The implication being that they'll find out when the family members are, uh... dead. Morbid, but she thinks she has a point. She furrows her scorched brow. "Can I ask you for a favor, Staren?"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    "That was . . ." Weiss trails off, a little mystefied at the proceedings. ". . . kind of depressing." She finally decides; the Armiger suddenly becoming relateable for a brief moment. "Well, I'm glad that turned out well at least! I'll come back to bother the rest of you when you're feeling better!" She bends down to grab a hold of her pumpkin now that her face doesn't look like cracked glass. "I don't think I'm done with this area just yet though, especially not with the Filth, so I'll still be checking in from time to time. Once I get Weiss fixed up at least. You know how to get ahold of me!" Her two seconds of empathetic attitude over and done with, Weiss starts to march on out of the clearing, back into the open where Asche can come and pick her up.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva pauses in devouring her taco to watch the procession. It is fascinating, compelling in the morbidity, the catharsis and peace that begins to take shape from the many, many freed spirits. The appearance of the child ghosts causes her eyes to tear up.

The shunt from the land of the dead to the land of the living is a familiar sensation to Riva. That doesn't keep her from shivering, and watching on quietly.

The moment might be kind of ruined by her casually munching on her tacos, however.

Staren has posed:
    Staren looks at Ainsley and cocks his head to the side slightly, awaiting her request.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley smiles, once she has Staren's attention. She smiles for a while to properly give herself some time to breathe and him some time to feel some anticipation. And then she asks:

    "I can't move. Can you carry me?"

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "That coul'dve turned out worse. Let's call that a mission gone well." He's not gonna say victory. What he really would like is impossible. But that's not unusual at all.

    Thanks to Ayako's efforts, he manages to get up and brush himself off, then smiles at her... and Kotone. But he glances Inga's way... oh, she fainted. "Geeze. We've all been through the wringer here. Can we make it back to the station?"

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks. Another tendril of magic carries his pumpkin for him, and then he kneels down and picks up Ainsley. "After that, the draugr are nothing."