Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Operator     The jujutsu sorcerers, along with the Elites, have tracked the curse spirit to a dilapidated industrial zone on the outskirts of another Kyoto. The place has clearly fallen on hard times. The road underfoot is cracked and dirty, the surrounding buildings all have broken windows and graffiti on the walls. There is signs of recent occupation by homeless and vagrants such as charred barrels and circles of tents, but there's no one around.

-----------------------------------FLASHBACK------------------------------------

    "Oh right, the boxes!"

    While the Elites were enjoying the cafeteria of the sorcery academy, Aoi recalled the cardboard boxes he arrived with, running back to the meeting room to retrieve them. Upon returning, he dumps them on the cafeteria table and explains. "Miwa thought her junior reporter scthick would be enough, but I know it takes more than asking a guy's co-workers to know them. So I went dumpster diving at his apartment for the stuff his landlord threw out." The contents of that box were disappointing. A faded futon and pillow, a folding chair, a small CRT TV and cheap DVD player, and a laptop with a printer. "But no luck there. Not even a single porn mag so I can't figure what his taste in girls is."

    He then opened the second box and continued. "But I had better luck at his office. Claimed to be a distant cousin coming to collect his stuff, and they were all too happy to let me clean up after him." This box contained books on myriad subjects, scattered pens and pencils, and a thick journal. Utahime and Miwa both flinched at the sight of the last thing, making Aoi smirk. "You feel it too huh? There's cursed energy in this thing. I think the reason this guy became a cursed spirit was because he was turning into a sorcerer."

    The contents of the journal were certainly strange enough to warrant it becoming a cursed tool. Each pair of pages was dedicated to a person with a picture of them glued in. It's clear that it had been maintained for decades by the fact that the early pictures were Polaroids while the later pictures were digital prints. With the pictures were what appeared to be some kind of numerical breakdown of what Hayato Ishiguri thought of them. Their various qualities were written down, with a number value beside them, some positive and some negative. A final breakdown was written on the bottom left corner, with some having been updated multiple times. The range of people was broad, going from classmates and teachers at their college, to bartenders and regulars at their usual dive, to co-workers and higher-ups. It seemed like he had been working on it since his late teens.

    Several qualities recur, and they have the same number each times, implying there was some kind of system in play. 'Alive' is always the first one listed, and worth 10 points. More points are ascribed for harder-to-obtain qualifications (A Bachelor's degree is worth 15 points, a Masters is 20, a PhD is 30), and having children would vary depending on your parenting style (being strict and teaching them to be hard workers will gain you points, being relaxed or permissive loses points).

    "Real winner this guy," Miwa said, making a decidedly annoyed face as she considered the journal's contents. "Yeah, but check the first entry," Aoi said. The girl flipped back to the first pages, and revealed a Polaroid of a girl who looked to be in her late teens, smiling brightly and giving a V-sign to the camera. The pages themselves are a total scrawl, covered in black scribbles over and over, erasing any ability to read what Hayato thought of her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Operator     Thanks to Lilian's ability to track anything she wants to find, it's no trouble at all to follow the steps of the cursed spirit. It lead them all right to this neglected part of the other Kyoto, and even now it's leading them to one specific factory. Those with sharp senses will smell the coppery scent of dried blood in the air around it, and the general vibe around the place is similar to the unsettling feeling one would get from the journal, but far worse.

    "Oh, he's here all right. I can feel it," Aoi says, his face splitting into a grin. Utahime nods in agreement. "He is. Last chance to make your preparations now. Miwa, pass them out." The blue-haired-girl, having lost the game of rock-paper-scissors to decide who would play pack mule, drops a heavy laden military backpack from her back with a relieved sigh.

    "Okay! In case your usual gear won't work, we have..." She first unwraps the bindings around a long package, soon revealing a yari, a long spear with a cross-shaped head. "This one's for you Nephra! I hope it suits you." Next, she begins producing loaded magazines for Berislav, as well as various knives, truncheons, and other short weapons that can be carried as backups.

    "When you're all ready, head in. I'll provide backup, and cut off their escape if they try to run," Utahime instructs.
Remee Halcyon Remee arrived late. She gives some mumbled excuses as she goes to join the group.

"Right. I brought some blessed ammunition, but if you've got something local that's tested to work, I'll gladly take that instead," she says, when the backpack comes out. Whatever is picked, be that from the backpack or her own stock, she only seems to need one clip, plus a backup clip for her sidearm pistol.

She could smell the blood well before approaching this place, and while Lilian Rook is leading the tracking effort, another reliable indicator for how close the group is getting is how often Remee wrinkles her nose. Experimentally, she feels for her other senses - and aside from the familiar narrative threads that those like Tamamo no Mae have woven around them, which in this case serve as a control that yes, her narrative senses still work - she can't pick up anything definite. Oh well.

"Alright. Ready over here."
Father Berislav      Earlier, in the school proper, Berislav had reacted with some dismay, at the sight of the journal--or rather, its implications. It's always disheartening, he'd explained, when someone is cut short of a chance to do real good in the world. Were circumstances a little different, perhaps this man could have been pulled from his life of drudgery as a modern-day huckster, and put through training to properly develop his abilities.

     "The sheer number of entries speaks to a lifetime of this... cataloguing. Don't look away, Miwa," the priest had urged. "It's disturbing, yes. But only because you're seeing it written, plainly. The evil in these pages is all around us, hiding in plain sight, behind inocuous words and ideas taken for granted as facts of life. This man simply internalized it more rigorously than the average person does. It's good that you're repulsed."

     The next entry had the priest uttering a 'hm' and pushing his reading glasses up his nose, brow furrowed in concentration. With both hands folded behind his back, he'd offered an observation. "Someone he couldn't 'grade' so easily, I wonder? Or, perhaps, someone for whom he made an attempt, only to change his mind?" He tilts his head slightly. "I wonder if that was because of non-conformity, enmity, or... fondness."

     In the present, Father Berislav stands, hands folded, on cracked asphalt. "I see," says Berislav, in response to Aoi. Without another word, he holds palm out. Reaching through an orange wound in space, he procures a heavy gunbelt, strapping it at an angle around his chest, for an asymmetric twist draw. The guns come next, pulled from the same un-space.

     Two revolvers, with barrels as long as his forearms. One holstered high, the other low. Empty moon clips, next, hung on little loops of the gunbelt. Having coordinated with Miwa beforehand, he'd made sure to get bullets chambered properly for his guns. His thumbs fall into a familiar rhythm, sliding the cartridges free of the magazines she'd provided, slotting them into moon clips like an assembly line at full speed. At the base, they're nearly half the length of his thumb. The projectiles themselves have blunted noses, with depressions inside. "Thank you, Miwa," he says with polite warmth. "These will do splendidly."

     Nodding at Utahime, Berislav sedately swings one cylinder open, loads it--five shots--then repeats the process with the other. "I'm ready as well." Smoothing down his cassock, he enters the factory.
Karlan Nobles EARLIER
"Dumpster diving? Is that... Safe?"
"Not without gloves, no. Probably not even with gloves, I'm afraid."

The duo of Pramanix and Courier had watched Aoi with mixed awe and anxiety as he goes through the box of junk from the cursed man's apartment, the former because of the sheer amount of stuff he was able to bring back and the latter at whatever might be uncovered. Thankfully, nothing terrible is brought out, and they're marginally less nervous about the second box coming from his workplace. Noticing the reaction to the journal, they take note of that scoring system and the obscured notes for that specific girl on the first page.

"What an odd scoring system... Is he trying to find people to haunt? Follow? Murder?!"
"That would need a much bigger penalty for being dead if that was the case. It might be a value assessment, but for what?"

NOW
On the way to Kyoto, the two animal-eared people from the mountains are still hard at work trying to figure out what Hayato's scoring system is even for. At least, they're hard at work for the first stretch until they start seeing all the sights that they're specifically not stopping for, and then Courier is hard at work trying to jot down all the different places Pramanix points out to go look at after the fact.

Once they're hit with the smell of blood, though, they quickly quiet down and get their work-faces on. Courier already has his own sword in his hand, but he's quick to pair it with one of those truncheons provided by Miwa and does a few practice swings with both weapons to get a better feel for their differences. Pramanix, meanwhile, takes a single knife for herself, slipping it into her belt momentarily before taking it out with her belt and holding it with her bell in the same hand.

"Thank you, miss Miwa. If things start getting hectic, I can slow things down for everyone. The weather here's too warm not to, anyway."
"Do be careful not to slip if that's the case. Er. Everyone else, I mean. If the snow melts too quickly, we might have an electric hazard on our hands."

With their own weapons and their local backup gear in hands, Courier and Pramanix advance into the factory as well, with Courier taking the lead for the two right behind Berislav and Remee.
Stanley Padgett     Stanley would look disappointed in the lack of 'here have a rapier/foil' if the young man wasn't already able to use PERSONA MAGICKS and beat up spirits. Though, that's Shadows and this is his first time fighting Angry Ghosts but also he's fought weirder things and this is going to be really good experience and also don't be a dolt in front of all these people you gotta look cool ALSO this is perfectly fine that this place smells like the meat packing plants back in Arkansas it's fine it's fine it'S FINE-

    The young man shoves that anxiety-ridden thought process out of his head and slaps his cheeks a few times as the ELITE GHOST GANG is getting their briefings. "Man, starting to think maybe this guy didn't work himself to death, maybe. A weirdo pervert with this sort of... a collection is not the sort to devote themselves to working till they died." A grump. "...dudeguy's full of wrongness."

    The others are getting quite prepared, and Stanley does as well. Remee and the Padre suit up, and with a breath, Stanley's Persona slips into place around him, the electro-tunic fluttering gently on his shoulders.
    And just on the off chance that this place is especially weird, he pulls out his phone, and checks to see if the Reversal has any signal here. Does this place have a Shadow Side?
Tamamo     Tamamo has arrived in support of Lilian, and for the sake of seeing the situation of evil spirits and exorcists in another land. This is generally within her wheelhouse, even if her own history with onmyoji left a strong, one-sided grudge. There's no reason, of course, to hold the actions in the line of Abe no Seimei's duty against a group of almost-children.

    In fact, her every outward indication is friendly, and is likely to remain so so long as people don't bring up certain accounts of legendary history. "I am known as Tamamo," is the shortest version of her introduction, with "it is a pleasure to meet you." There are a couple of elites here she hasn't met in person, too, before now.

    She does, despite having tools for dealing with evil spirits as a matter of course, accept a short, straight blade, at the offer of back-up weaponry. "Merely as a precaution, I shall hold onto this, for the moment, and return it at the conclusion of our work."
Sleek Shimmer     Sleek Shimmer's been working hard recently to recall her heights of style and manners from her arena days, things she'd let slide after winning her freedom. Let slide even more after discovering the Multiverse. Some strange gut feeling's telling her they'll be very useful for this quest...

    And so, earlier, she'd obtained a plate of food (half meat, half miscellaneous) from the cafeteria in her human-like form, ears and tails on display, and chowed down at a table near the study session on their target's habits, listening carefully.

    The idea of anyone painstakingly judging and each and every person they've ever met by exacting criteria unnerves her. Who DOES that? WHY would they do it? ... such thoughts merge with the recent fashion contest and maid-off, and her face screws up in a spectacular show of disgust. The only saving grace, any hint of being normal, is that he couldn't describe his thoughts about ONE PERSON. A girl, of course. Nothing unusual there...

    Well, THAT WAS THEN. And this is now.

    The strong whiffs of blood reach her and immediately put her on edge, reaching out with her spiritual senses towards that direction - the factory. "Creepy spirits are definitely at work here." She agrees with a shiver, taking one of the offered knives. It vanishes in a flare of twisted space into some unknown place though. "Hopefully won't need it..."

    She briefly tenses, ready to simply barrel into action like she usually does... but something makes her hesitate. Instead...

    Instead, she shimmies over towards Father Berislav, stopping about four feet off to his left. "Cursed spirit is right. This place gives me nasty shivers. Don't wanna dash off alone for once. Do you mind the company?"
Nephra Tangent     Standing in the asphalt-radiated summer heat, Nephra can't help but faintly smile at the worn-down familiarity this sort of industrial limbo carries with itself: comforting, almost, if not for the uneasyness demanded by the seeping cursed energy. The kind of area one locks car doors to drive through, bystanders ignore any strange noise they can in, and where things go to be forgotten about.

    Still, by the time the factory is all that remains in front of them, concern over the examined journal crops back up- along with her own unvoiced ponderances. No wonder he bit it, Haha. Bet he judged himself just as hard as the rest of the world, huh? Spare the rod, spoil yourself. Poor sap. She absentmindedly sticks another blowpop into her mouth.

    When her attention is drawn to the gear, the yari gets picked up gingerly with one gloved hand- the other used to poke at the crossbar's prongs- and Nephra makes a click-click noise with her tongue. A fainter clicking sound comes from her prosthetic left eye, however, as its inbuilt systems image the weapon's integrity. Purely for curiosity, of course, she trusts fully that it'll do what's needed of it. And it's pretty, too. That warrants a bigger smile.

    "Woah, this is really something.... Haha. Thanks kindly, Ms. Miwa. I'll put it to good use." She blinks at her. Or winks. It's impossible to tell with only one flesh eye. As her gaze returns to the yari for a moment, it takes far more willpower than she'd like to admit to not take a step back to play with the new toy- or, as she'd justify, test how to adapt her style to it.

    "Rearing and ready to rumble, are we?" She takes her place with those about to enter the compound, rocking heel-to-toe with obvious excitement.
Lilian Rook     Given such ample material to work with, and more than enough preparation time, the hunt for such an anomalous cursed spirit is trivial for Lilian. Though she is unable to point to a specific trail, or indicate any markings, leading the group with a general demeanour of 'just trust me, idiot', she navigates from gate to gate, then point to point, with ostensible ease, subtly changing course at signs and buildings that she has seen before, until the cursed energy is so thick in the air that anyone could feel it.

    "So he is." Lilian replies, blandly, to Aoi. "And not for much longer, if I have anything to say about it." The fact that Utahime and Miwa had all come as well burdens her with a certain degree of unvoiced suspicion, verging on concern, for how else this cursed spirit may be special, but she keeps it to a guarded look. "I've never been much of a procrastinator. I'm more than ready." she says to Miwa, waiting only for the others to arm up.

    After all, Utahime had given her appraisal of Night Mist already; and when Lilian draws it again, the aura it exudes is somehow already significantly worse. The sense of malice boiling out of its blade is hot and humid and cloying, like warm blood and fresh tears.

    "He's not a pervert for keeping it in a book." she says, running her fingers idly down the flat. "He's not even weird." Satsified, she rests the sword against her shoulder, and begins to move. The spiral constellation of black-gold particles of light and mass sweeps over her, replacing her day clothes with steel grey second skin and fine black knightly plates, fitted like the parts of a watch, flashing glints of gold in the seams where she moves. The radiant design beneath her quasi-exposed collarbone silently pulses at an agitated pace.

    "You're all like this. You just keep it in your heads, and don't consciously focus on it. All he did was write it down on paper. If anything, he's more honest."

    She stops just outside, but only to wait for Tamamo to catch up. She swaps back to Japanese, for the correct honourifics. "Utahime, if you please. Escape and collateral preventative measures. I know you're waiting to deploy them. Just go ahead. With any luck, you and Miwa will be able to wait by the exit without seeing me work at all."
Operator     Newcomers are given the polite bow by Miwa and Utahime, and hit with the wakeup "What kind of girls do you like?" by Aoi, as everyone else was back at the school. But the man isn't goofing around any more as you all stand before the factory. He's stretching, getting his arms, legs, and back all straightened out before the fight. Miwa is running her thumb over the handguard of her katana nervously. Only Utahime is totally composed, but those with keen eyes may have caught her popping a throat lozenge in when she thought no one was looking.

    One everyone has geared up, Aoi strides forward and grips the old handles of the factory door, and with brute strength, begins sliding them open. They give off a loud shriek, rusted wheels protesting as they're forced to turn. The interior is dim, but some sunlight peeks through the broken windows, enough to see the interitor. Rusted remnants of some kind of assembly line remain, conveyor belts leading from and to machines, hydraulic presses and cutters wasting away. But it's not just that. Newer things are contained too. Cars are parked wherever there's space, all generally budget models. There's a pile of clothes in one corner, and what seems to be cages in the far back. Vaguely-shaped lumps are contained within.

    But, more importantly, Hayato Ishiguri is right there, sitting on a conveyor belt. He looks exactly as he did in the picture in Miwa's folder, down to the cheap suit. The one change is the black woollen fingerless gloves on his hands.

    "You're finally here," he says, in a voice that sounds like TV static hiss if it hated you personally. "The oaf, the ditz... ah, you've replaced the rich brat with some ugly miko I see. And..." His hollow, sunken eyes pan over the Elites before he scoffs. "A pack of Multiversal freaks. All this for me?" Miwa stomps forward, clearly stinging over the 'ditz' remark. "You're a lot more conversant than last time. Not screaming for your life anymore?" Hayato chuckles, an unpleasant derisive sound, and shakes his head. "No. You should have chased me when you had the chanced. I've used this time well. Learning these strange powers, practising them on people... let me show you."

    He unclasps his hands and raises them. Putting his left hand flat parallel to the ground under and before his right, which he raises with his thumb, index, and middle fingers pinched (the finger thing that means the taxes). Utahime starts to yell, "Get back! He's-"

                              "Domain Expansion."                              

    Blackness begins to rise within the factory, covering the walls, doors, windows and ceiling. Aoi's hand moves fast, grabbing Miwa by the shoulder and flinging her back, getting her through the door behind you all just before it becomes fully closed off. Once the darkness is complete, it changes. A neon blue grid pattern begins to gently pulse through it as a large shimmering pillar in the same color rises up in the middle of the factory.

                      "Maypole of Phantasmagoric Riches!"                      

    Immediately, two things happen to everyone. The first is that a chain erupts from their chest, lashing out to tie around that glowing pillar. The second is that information on this Domain floods into their mind.
Operator             RULES FOR THE DOMAIN "MAYPOLE OF PHANTASMAGORIC RICHES"            

1.) Hayato Ishiguri is the Head Broker. All others within the Domain are Investors.

2.) Upon the creation of the Domain, the Head Broker designates something shared by themselves and all Investors as the Prime Collateral. In this instance of the Domain, the Prime Collateral is YOUR LIVES.

3.)The Head Broker and Investors (hereafter referred to as "parties") are all given their initial Value based on the Prime Collateral. Their Value will appear on the back of their right hand.

4.) Committing violence within the Domain will reduce the attackers Value based on the scale of said violence. However, damage dealt to another party within the Domain will increase their Value proportional to the damage dealt. Further, Value will decrease based on the amount of damage parties within the Domain take.

5.) The party with the greatest Value within the Domain becomes the Market Leader. The Market Leader will take less damage from all other parties within the Domain, and also deal more damage to them. The scale of these is based on the difference between their Values with a greater difference benefiting the Market Leader more.

6.) All parties within the Domain may offer up Collateral to increase their Value. Collateral may be any material item the party has on them, or insubstantial aspects of themselves such as memories or personal skillsets. These will then be confiscated by the Domain. The amount of Value you gain from Collateral will be reflective of how valuable the Collateral is. All aspects of the Collateral will be instantly communicated to the Head Broker and a reasonable amount of Value must be assigned by them.

7.) Parties within the Domain may grant any amount of their Values to another party. However, if the Head Broker is not a party in the transaction, they will claim a percentage of the Value traded.

8.) If someone's Value reaches 0, they are Bankrupt. Their Prime Collateral and any subsequent Collateral is permanently the property of the Head Broker, even after the Domain is lifted.
Operator     As everyone reels from having the rules put inside their brain, Hayato murmurs something under his breath, and a second chain erupts from his chest to tie to the maypole, intertwining with the first. They slide all the way up the pillar, now glowing green and spiking up and down as the curse spreads his arms and smiles. "No running for either of us now. Come forth."

    Aoi is smirking now, and shrugs off his school jacket, flexing his muscles so that they strain his shirt. "I'm getting excited now. Fine. I'll show my own technique to you this time." Turning his head to the Elites, he says, "We're in his Domain now. Usually, sorcerers and curses get a sure-hit attack within their Domain, but he spent his on starting his game and giving us the rules. This constitutes a binding vow. He's as subject to the rules as we are, and the technique becomes stronger from him explaining it to us. But just keep these two words in mind, and our victory is certain; believe in me!"

    He breaks into a mad dash, leaping over machines and miscellanea to close the gap between he and Hayato!
Remee Halcyon > "What kind of girls do you like?"

"Oh, that's easy to answer, I like-"

She gets interrupted.

<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Hello again, Ms. Halcyon. First, an investigation at the scene of a crime, and now... well, I suppose we have met again under somewhat similar circumstances. There had been an evil spirit involved in that matter, as well."
<J-IC-Scene> Remee Halcyon says, "Ah - just Remee, if you please. And yes, you're right. I wouldn't mind it becoming a specialty of mine, to be honest."

The rules slam into Remee's mind, along with the phantasmal chain. "... Right." This is not... actually entirely new territory. Her handful of jaunts to the narrative plane have had various people (mostly Reynard) trying to enforce specific rules (mostly eternally being the butt of Reynard's clever schemes, followed by torture and death) on her.

She casts her mind over the rules, and then to what the group found.

> having children would vary depending on your parenting style <being strict and teaching them to be hard workers will gain you points, being relaxed or permissive loses points>

"I place as collateral..."

"... my upbringing. As a scion of House Halcyon. As someone with strict expectations and rules placed upon me, as one child of seven that were expected to compete for taking the reins of the family - and to carry it on as a similarly large family of my own."

"All that I have experienced as such, and all that it has shaped me to be, I commit to the domain as my collateral."

If simply stating so is not sufficient, she goes to grasp the chain tying her to the maypole, and attempts to work out how to impart it with that part of her essence. Either way, when it is complete, Remee shakes her head, clearing it. She's... missing something. She knows she's missing something, because she remembers wagering it here, per the rules she still remembers. What was it? She'll... work it out. For now...

She cocks her rifle, chambering the blessed bullet, and takes aim and fires. Her marksmanship has always been a result of her passions, seperate from her           as a        , so she still has it.

... Wait, her what, from her what? Or - wait, what was she thinking about? It's like this... hole, in her thoughts.

She shakes her head again, trying to clear it.
Father Berislav      "I keep *something* in my head, Lilian," Berislav gently corrects, removing his reading glasses to consign them to that orange expanse his palms paint onto the air. "And I like to think I'm very honest about it, too. Focused, as well. The difference is in what we each value. The specifics of our individual rubrics. In that regard, this man and I are worlds apart."

    Does he mind company? "Hardly," says Berislav to Sleek Shimmer. "It'd be unwise to split up, anyway. We don't want to spread our sorcerer allies too thin."

     To be sure, he was expecting a search. A tense, quiet bit of skulking through a factory, nerves on edge, body coiled like a spring. To find Hayato waiting everyone out was a surprise, and it's evident on Berislav's face. He walks a slow half-circle, silver eyes sizing the spirit up without so much as a word. His hands don't reach for the massive revolvers holstered at his chest, though his fingers twitch at his sides all the same.

     When blackness surges, he does as might be expected--his body springs into action, feet planted on the forgotten husk of factory equipment and carrying him vertically. He springs off of it. As he inverts in midair, sailing overhead in a moonsault, his twist draw clears leather faster than those obscene barrels have any right to--but not fast enough to outrun the chain bursting from his chest.

     Hayato can see the gears turning in the priest's head, if he bothers to look away from Aoi's bullrush. Shock turns to deep thought, then boils over into anger, all in the span of a few airborne seconds. Berislav lands, one foot after the other, without having pulled the trigger once. He whirls around to face Hayato again, his right arm swinging out. Two trigger pulls fill the room with the sound of thunder.

     Hollow point bullets zip from the muzzle of the gun in superhumanly quick succession, the powerful buck of the firearm suppressed as if it were nothing. The bullets curve harmlessly around Aoi--one under his arm, one around his shoulder--to slam into Hayato. Berislav feels the dip in Value, and cares not at all.

     "Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people," the priest coldly recites, before charging in right after Aoi.

     "Making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless." His chain rattles, bouncing from its tether as he clears the distance in a frighteningly short time. "What will you do on the day of reckoning," he asks, darting around Aoi's right side, twirling the massive revolver in his left hand deftly, to hold the barrel parallel to his inner wrist. "When disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help?" Berislav whips his left hand in a vicious hook, attempting to club Hayato in the temple with it. He feels the loss of Value from the effort--but in this moment, he is too driven to care.

     "Where will you leave your riches?" A followup, immediate. His right knee rises as if it, too, were a bullet, aimed for the ribs. "Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives or fall among the slain."
Tamamo     'What kind of girls do you like?'

    "Whether a boy or a girl, the most important and necessary aspect of a prospective partner is their desire for good. No one can live without a dream, and without a dream to support, what can you truly do for your partner? If you wish for a more specific answer, there is naturally only one that I can give. Look to your left, and you will see her. I have a chosen a woman to love."

    And then, a walk through Another Kyoto, to a factory. "Is it strange that we see no one here, apart from the signs that others have been?"

    Further, the interior of the factory.

    "A rude welcome, but not an unexpected one. Ah, but I can forgive you that, I suppose. Be grateful, though not to too great an extent. If this is your chosen world, even forgiveness cannot be given freely, but must come at a price. That would be to your own preference, would it not? It is so much easier to estimate the value of something which is given a price."

    From Tamamo's sleeves, she produces strings of holed coins, glinting gold. Sealed jars held up by thin, hemp ropes beneath their lips, each containing alchemical reagents. Folded papers of powdered medicine, and others compressed into pills. "Providing collateral is no issue. I am ever prepared, in this respect."

    Her own style of ofuda and mystic gesture shouldn't be terribly unfamiliar to some here, though she's an archaic figure, by comparison. Some things never go out of style, and among these are blessings of wealth, as well as the reverse.

    The threads she pulls aren't the same as the chains binding everyone to the maypole, but if they represent similar things, Hayato is likely to notice when Tamamo reaches out with her hands, grasps a tight hold onto 'something,' and twists fortune and misfortune to curse his fate, to the direct benefit of the wealth of everyone else.
Nephra Tangent     Dropping the yari for a moment, Nephra shrugs the sleeves off her shoulder, and shakes the cuffs off her wrists, letting her gaudy raincoat crumple to the ground behind her, impacting the domain's floor more like folded tin than nylon. She really ought to have suited up outside, but there's no drama in preparation, and late is better than never. Her bare back now exposed, she rolls her shoulders, their blades stretching scarred skin, and the metal of the Androktasia's undeployed form clear and centered on her spine. For this singular moment, the world around her doesn't matter, only the droning whine of reflexive motors kicking on, and the growing weight of lifeless metal.

    The barest hint of Lichtenberg figures dance on her arms, as she prepares herself. It looks like she's just stretching, at first, when she tenses her arms out to the side, but hissing hydraulics quickly rupture out from the black matte caterpillar-like bundle, pumping inwards like angry steam pistons. It's not until the vinelike tendrils of armor cladding, feathered with their graffitied plates, rope out around her flesh that the metal starts to
    scream,
        sing,
            live.
    The pressure is remeniscent of a hug, to Nephra, as the reaching strands search for the neural interface points studding her limbs. The second they're found by their paired sockets, however, her one pupil shoots fully dilated, in the same moment a shuddering breath passes her lips. Lightning in her synapses, coded acetylcholine bouncing into metal-made-skin, the new touch of her suit reminds her what it's like to have something amputated and returned. By the time the shell is sealed, air-tight and all-embracing, only her head remains bare, with a wolfish grin clenched into her jaw and mandibular muscles pulsing to the dull thu-thud of her second heart. It's a carapace of overlapping steel, propelled by cradling exoskeletal limbs, painted every-which-way with turqoise and crimson. Each plate slides over and underneath one another with the slightest of movement, and Nephra flexes her now-clawed and gauntled hands from open, to fists, to relaxed.

    Everything feels heavy, just the way it should.

    A heavy boot strikes down into the ground, hitting louder and heavier than it should, subsequent p-wave tremors knocking the dropped yari just high enough into the air for Nephra to lean left and snatch in her clawed vicegrip. She doesn't even need to look down.

    Her advance begins immediately, limbs snapping and careening forwards, and Nephra lets out a laugh.

    "Oh, I've been waiting for this kind of show... Collateral, huh? Bet white-collared goons like you just /love/ to watch flesh and blood get sold. Haha. I'm putting my whole right hand in the pot." Despite her comment, she's full of glee, and keeps the line between her eyes, the spearpoint, and Hayato's forehead from ever shiftting from dead-straight, moving with her shoulder front-facing and torso in profile. Every step she takes thunders just a bit louder, until she's close enough for the polearm to bite out. Her thrust snaps, left hand levering forwards and up to her plexus, as her right's grip extends, loose, guiding the jackhammering shaft on-target. But, projected and expected as that simple strike is, the real attack comes with the downswing- her suit's reactor screams, acute tidal forces reaching on neural reflex, as a sudden split-crushing weight drags the blade's edge down, down, down.
Stanley Padgett     Stanley's answer of 'does this place have a Shadow Side' is decisively answered as he and everyone else are shoved into the Investment Banking Bro Deathmatch Extravaganza or whatever this is... The young fencer staggers as he gets his bearings, shaking off the mental WHAMMY that was just shoved on him, and... "Oh hell." He glances down at his own hand, expecting this Value to be something piddling already, before looking around at the others. "This isn't good."

    Stanley teleports twice to try and get a good angle on what's going on, and is dismayed to find that ghostly chain continues to connect him to the Maypole. "...Okay, so that's how this is going to work. And on a day I left my wallet home." He grips the sword tighter, and then follows suit to Father Berislav. "You just gotta keep bein' a shitty grown-up, even when you're dead or a wizard or a dead wizard? Why's everything got to have a full on Value like that?" The Brave Fencer lashes out at Hayato, both himself and the great shade of Mercutio checking the spirit's defenses. Short touches, in and out, to see what the heck he's going to have to work with to get a proper stab or two in.
Sleek Shimmer     Sleek Shimmer smiles, in simple pleased relief, at the positive response from Berislav. She sticks a little closer when walking in...

    And then, everything, even the plan of sticking together, goes to pot via: Domain Expansion.

    The moment those words are out of the cursed spirit's mouth, a wave of dread washes over Shimmer. All her mystical senses and instincts scream to flee. But... she's here to DEAL with this creep, who's, no doubt, the source of that freakish scent of blood.

    And her dread is proven right when that spectral chain lashes her to the domain and its rules flood her.

    And, within a few tense seconds, Shimmer's heartrate skyrockets, teeth grind, and breathing turns erratic in panic.

    She has been LEASHED. Again. No. No. NO NO NO NO. HELL NO.

    A shiver runs through her, her ears flatten and tails curl downwards and stance slouches a bit as she seems to make herself smaller, a gesture of reflexive submissiveness. It takes ALL of her willpower to keep her expression stone-faced. At the same time...

    Waves of thick bloodthirst emanate from the foxgirl as she looks over Hayato, forcing a look of impressed admiration and joyous smile to her face. The sensations of bloodthirst are swiftly suppressed.... she gives Father Berislav a brief but dire look, one that screams 'I have an idea.' And quickly looks away from him, subduing that look too.

    "Oh, what a stunning display, sorcerer! And you've learned to do this in what... months, weeks?" Her tone and style has shifted completely. Gone is the proud warrior, replaced with the respectful but subservient singsong of a servant praising their better.

    Space around her warps and twists, and in a flash she's next seen seated on a box in front of the conveyor Hayato's using for a perch. "People have struggled for years without so much as being able to light a candle to show for it. I wondered why this group was looking for so much help..."
Karlan Nobles "Pervert? Where did that idea come from?"
"There's many reasons someone might take such detailed notes about people, but it's too early to say."
"This doesn't feel like that sort of issue, anyway. It'd be more... Focused, I think, if it was."

With more allies around them and several of them seeming well versed in the matter of curses, Pramanix and Courier are able to follow Aoi through the doors with renewed confidence and only slight winces at the screeching of the doors. They notice the cages with the vague lumps in the distance, but they'll have to save the investigation for later as they see their presumed target far closer and considerably more forthcoming about his abilities than expected.

Before they can heed Utahime's warning, however, Hayato coats the factory in blackness, then that eye-searing neon grid. What catches their attention even beyond that, though are the chains coming out of everyone along with the flood of information hitting them all at once. It's a lot ot take in, and Pramanix is inwardly cursing at not bringing SilverAsh along for once, but what's done is done. Luckily, Aoi explains what Domains are succinctly enough for them to just get it right there, and they nod firmly while brandishing their weapons.

"We'll trust in your expertise, Mister Aoi. We have your back! And if it's collateral this domain demands, then I will offer..." Pramanix slides her coat off a little too eagerly, more than relieved to have a reason to ditch it for the sake of the fight. She's still wearing a lighter shirt underneath it, although the distinct lack of sleeves makes it clear she doesn't get a lot of sunlight.

"Two words...?" Despite his brief confusion, Courier follows Pramanix's lead and takes off his own jacket as well. Like Pramanix, he's gone for the sleeveless approach with a tank top, but he actually has the expected color from going outside far more.

The bulges in both of their garment's pockets are from their phones and money being in there, too, so there's at least plenty of financial value in those things, if not necessarily any sentimental value.

After recovering from their initial brain hit of so many rules, Pramanix and Courier spring into action. With her bell in hand, Pramanix starts to ring it at a steady rhythm with careful steps around the factory floor, already starting her ice-summoning ritual as a light fog starts to spread through the factory. Courier, meanwhile, goes right on the offensive as he follows Aoi's lead, kicking up clouds of dust and debris from the abandoned machinery while bounding over conveyor belts here and springing off of aged cars there.

"Hayato Ishiguri! What's your angle here? Why did you do all of this?" Stalactites start forming on the ceiling as the temperature at the top of the factory rapidly drops from Pramanix's ritual, and one of the largest falls from directly above Hayato as Courier moves in to occupy him from the ground. His long sword comes in from straight ahead with a quick thrust before he follows it up with a wider overhead swing from the cursed truncheon, then a double-weapon swing from the side to try and gauge Hayato's defensive capabilities from a multi-pronged attack.
Lilian Rook     Lilian slips through the factory doors on autopilot, ducking under Aoi's arm and brushing right up against him so she can be first. Despite the amount of steel(?) on her, none of it clatters like real armour. The sound of metal on metal is so subtle and regular that it sounds like the ticking of watch. Her footsteps clack almost as if she were wearing high heels. Having her hair down like that can't be practical, but it's not as if she untied it purposefully; it just sort of happened when she got the black antler half-circlet. The light cast from the swirled lines of her armour's inner skin don't illuminate the walls at all. And she scans around the inside as if she owns the place. As if she is doing something for the second time.

    §Just like that time. I can practically hear the Noise already. Not that we're likely to run into alchemists again. A cursed spirit is something very different. Look. It's not even hiding it. Brand new. Greedy. Instinctual hoarding behaviour? Or . . .§

    Lilian doesn't react to the voice. Her non-reaction is strangely telling. The TV usually hates her anyways. She's too busy looking at the cages behind its source. Piecing together the theme of the random clutter around the factory floor. Assessing the area for potential surprise threats.

    'A pack of Multiversal freaks.'

    "I'd be careful with who you go calling ugly." Lilian replies automatically, bile filling her tone without effort. "I've seen your album, you know. You looked like a greasy convenience store hotdog with legs while you were still alive. Dying hasn't done you any favours either." A single syllable laugh, witheringly dry, escapes her recalcitrant throat. "And who dies like that anyways? 'Dying of being too much of a failure'? That's so embarrassing they went and wrote 'heart attack' for you. Isn't that nice? They gave you a posthumous excuse for flunking out of life." The bitterly fake smile falls off her lips. Under her breath, Lilian whispers, "God. I bet she'll look like you too, in ten more years."

    §Domain what?§

    Lilian gasps as the chain bursts from her chest, but even her flinch of alarm is turned into backstep and reflexive raking cut at the source of the 'attack'; she only processes what's happening when nothing happens to the chain. Of course, she focuses on 'Hayato', but as the rules flow into her mind, she's already dissecting them in her head, putting them together in a hundred different configurations, evaluating the risks and benefits, and formulating her strategy to exploit them as thoroughly as possible. Just like a successful entrepeneur. Just like Lilian Rook.
Lilian Rook     "Thank you, Todo. I was wondering." is what she says out loud to Aoi. "Explaining the entire technique to us struck me as a fatal tactical blunder." It takes her no time at all to come to the obvious conclusion. "I suppose it probably boosts his value to the level of the 'market leader' by doing so. Otherwise his 'value' would be so piss poor his own technique would work against him." But what she thinks is different.

    §Attacks and damage are scaled as acquisitions and returns. You spend money to make money. Which means sloppy and ineffecient attacks will drain you of your value until you die. He probably plans to let the aggressive types here exhaust their strength with a handful of ill-aimed attacks that tank their value, then trounce them as he obtains a market lead over them. The lead is designed so that the rich get richer; once we make a few false steps, he'll be easily able to stomp on whoever fell for it, and extract exponentially higher value from them, accelerating his lead. I can't allow that.§

    She glances to her right hand.

    §I don't know the sheer scale of his technique, but he's prepared it quite well. The junk here is probably set up just for this. He can likely offer those cars, even the lives of whoever's in the cages, as more collateral to boost his value. That way he can get an enormous power boost very easily. It's possible that if he becomes a high enough market leader, it'll be difficult for even me to take him down. The obvious impetus is to force us to gamble away parts of ourselves to try and catch up to him; that's the trap that keeps us here, otherwise we lose it by retreating. But there's an obvious loophole. I can close up his early lead strategy and cut losses and inefficiencies from our side at the same time as getting a huge market lead on him straight away. Then I won't have to offer up anything.§

    Lilian turns away from Tamamo and Aoi, putting her back to the enemy so she can look at the Watch; Shimmer, Stanley, Remee, Pramanix, Nephra, and Berislav in total. §That's plenty.§

    "Hey. Haven't you noticed?" says Lilian; a direct and unrhetorical question. "This whole thing is set up to engineer a monopoly on power. There's no benefit to having a numerical advantage in weaker fighters. We just need to power up our strongest, and we win with no risk." She chokes up on her sword, one hand on the blade instead. "Three or four of you should be fine. Don't worry; I won't kill you or anything. You can just sit this one out and I'll handle it in a second."
Sleek Shimmer     Well, buttering up the cursed spirit's one approach. She had hoped to buy time for her plan, expecting everyone to at least pause and consider the ramifications of those Rules.

    They don't.

    Her perfect mask cracks in no time. And so she when she reaches a hand to him in a congralatory gesture... it quickly turns nasty, as her fingers open up like a claw.

    In the center of her palm, a light flickers. It seems both clear and white at once, a pearlescent sheen... and it unleashes an aura that spreads outwards to rapidly engulf the whole area around Hayato.

    "But the price of putting a leash on me is high, sorcerer. I'm afraid it's going to cost you... EVERYTHING."

    That aura swirls into a raging, tearing vortex. It rips at everything. The conveyor belt begins to fall apart, torn haphazardly into motes of light and will quickly collapse. The air itself is shredded. And Shimmer has no remorse in unleashing the full power of her ability to devour reality on the evil spirit. The vortex tears at Hayato's very essence, ripping away at his reserves of power, the very substance of his being as a spirit. If he cannot escape it, it might well UNMAKE HIM.
Operator     As Aoi took to the air to launch a flying haymaker at Hayato, two of the cars suddenly come to live, driving at speeds far beyond what their engines should be capable of, and they launch themselves to collide together with Todo between them. "You get to be first, you lower life form," Hayato says coldly.

    The sound of a clap before the crunch of metal, and Hayato is between the cars being crushed.

    Now Aoi is standing where Hayato was, looking very smug as the curse forces the cars to peel apart. He was so close to being crushed that his shirt is ripped, and he peels the rags off to reveal his chisled strongman body. "That is my ability. I can make two things instantly trade places. I call it... BOOGIE WOOGIE!"

    Hayato scowls, clearly furious at being played so easily, but everyone else begins to play the game. Remee offers up her upbringing, and Hayato grins cruelly. "You were quick to give that up. I can't imagine it matters much to you. I have to take into account personal and sentimental value too." The Value on Remee's hand increases from 10 to 20, and immediately reduces to 17 when she attacks. The bullet strikes true, hitting Hayato hard and drawing a hiss of pain, and her Value increases to 33.

    Berislav joins Aoi in his assault, adjusting smoothly when he and the curse swap places. His flurry of blows and bullets gradually chips at his Value, but each one finds purchase. Hayato may have developed his power, but he's still an inexperienced combatant, and the priest ends on 23.

    "Why shouldn't I do all this?!" Hayato demands as his feet struggle to find purchase on Pramanix's slippery floor. "Kaizen is all about 'continuous improvement.' A business is worth less than dirt if its value does not continuously rise! And a business is made of people. If you're not living your life AND afterlife accumulating value, what good is your time spent?!" The two-pronged attack has him on the defensive, raising his arms as wounds open on them from the stalactites and weapon strikes. It seems the cursed tools really aren't necessary after all. The two end their flurry with 23 Value.
Operator When Tamamo offers up a bunch of material wealth, chains lash out from the maypole to grab them and bind them to its surface. "Hmph. I suppose gold always maintains its value. And there's enough living here that medicine matters." Her Value increases to 14. Her attack reduces it to 11 but it goes back up to 27 when Hayato finally slips on all that ice and falls thanks to the misfortune curse. Unfortunately, it seems like she can't manually manipulate or redistribute his actual Value.

    Nephra takes to the system like a dog to water. Immediately, she bets her hand, and chains lash out to phase through her suit to grab it. It painlessly separates, and is bound to the pole. "Brave, but foolish," Hayato says, as her Value rises to 15. She rumbles forward, shifting gravity to amplify her downswing, and Hayato causes a car to try and intercept it, but she carves right through a scores a deep hit, her Value going down then back up to 28.

    Stanley sends out his Persona to harry and harass Hayato, but the spirit seems more focussed on answering him than defending. "I am being an adult about all this, yes," Hayato hisses at Stanley. "'Childish optimism' is called that because it would be too harsh to name it as it is. You're a fool boy, and you're going to die before you realize it." His Value becomes 24.

    Lilian proposes an alternative; collate Value into one person. Hayato smirks at her. "Now you're getting into it. But I ask you this; what is MY Value? How much do you need to become the Market Leader?" He raises his right hand, which is covered in those fingerless gloves; his Value is obscured. "What if you get it all, and it's not enough? Are you going to give everything else up to try and close that gap?" He touches his chain and twirls it around his fingers. "All you young people only think about yourself. You haven't even considered what I gave up to get this position. How valuable could it be?"

    A sudden clap, and now Todo is beside Lilian, having swapped with the headlight of one of those crashed cars. He stands over her, a disappointed look on his face. "Are you really going to do something so boring? Him being the Market Leader doesn't make him invincible after all. Are you so unconfident in your skills that you think you can't take him without winning his game?" He lets that hang for a moment, before finishing with, "If you're going to do that, give the Value to me. I'm the strongest here after all." The boast is heavy with a challenge; he's stating that he's stronger than Lilian, and that if she is going to play this game, she may as well play it all the way and take a backseat.

    Meanwhile, Sleek is tearing Hayato apart in a domain of sorts of her own. Her Value drops to 5 but rises again to 21 as he tanks the hit.
Operator     But he still seems fine at the end. His injuries are not a severe as they should be. Dusting himself off, he asks, "Are you all done? My turn if so."

    Everything in the Domain springs to life. Conveyer belts leap from their rollers and lash around Berislav and Courier, launching them towards a press and cutter that have sprung to life and begun their mechanical duties, uncaring of what is under them when they come down.

    Cars rev to life and begin doing doughnuts in stark defiance of physics, launching themselves at Nephra and Sleek, aiming to ram them and pin them against the walls.

    From the piles of clothes comes wallets, watches, jewellery, and makeup. They launch themselves like bullets at Tamamo and Lilian, the wallets separating into bills and coins and cards that hit hard enough to slice and break bone.

    Lastly, the factory itself seems to come to life. The ground under Stanley and Remee's feet bursts, the concrete itself launching them into the air so that the very rafters can pepper them with ejected rivets and nails!
Remee Halcyon Lilian comes up with some insane plan. "Are you serious?" What a fucking bitch. No wonder she and Petra can't leave each other alone. She kinda wishes one would just go ahead and kill the other, it'd get her some peace and quiet.

Remee's collateral gets priced. "Hey! It's not low value, just because I was ready to give it up!" Ready to give... what up? Was it in fact important? Is she better or worse off without it?

Things move. Remee ends up getting riddled with nails and other factory ephemera. There's a hiss of pain - but she starts healing through it. At least she didn't go with her first idea to put that on the line, instead of giving up... whatever the other thing was.

"You think..."

She turns - not on him, but on the factory itself. "You can use a *building* against me?"

"Do you even KNOW WHO I AM?"

She drops her rifle. She grows, becoming not the 5' something girl, but an 8' hulking monster, rippling with muscle. "I'm the mother-fucking big bad wolf."

"And you're hiding behind this... this house of paper wealth. As if all the money in the world could possibly save you. Not from what's coming to you."

"Not from me."

She feels... free. Freer than she has been in a long while. Was what she gave up holding her back?

"So here's a question, fucknuts. How much value do I gain..."

She approaches the nearest support pillar, and winds up. "IF I HUFF AND PUFF AND BRING THIS ENTIRE FUCKING BUILDING DOWN!"
Stanley Padgett     ONCE AGAIN, Stanley is called out, but this time he just smiles. "That's right! You're absolutely right, I am a Fool, but I'm a Fool that know what he's about. And if we're supposed to be shifting values around... how about we do something about that..."

    And instead of making another direct attack, Stanley disengages from the fight, and sprints over towards one of those cars. Actually, he's not the best with car brands, but this one is a stick shift and Stanley has thankfully been learning those from his erstwhile Rider mentor. It's even got the right side drive. Perfect. The Fool smashes the window of the car, and hops inside. "Good news, then. Cause if there's something I know how to do... it's how to mess up a car." He's reaching under the steering column, ripping bits out to find the ignition cables on the vintage sports car. "And one REALLY good way to do that is to just take it for a test drive!"

    The car's ignition catches, and Stanley Padgett has upgraded from Petit Hoodlum to Car Heister. He woops, buckles up, puts the car into drive, and simply... starts driving around. That is to say, Stanley is going to be purposely driving into things. Art objects, other cars, any sort of walls he can. The maypole once or twice, incoming attacks. Anything to purposely fuck up the Value of this car, and everything else that Hayato might decide to toss into the bin of Values. "WOOOOOOOOO! This is great! I wonder how fast this thing is supposed to go!"
    
Karlan Nobles "There's more to life than the value of a company. I've already seen what chasing that can do to people, and you're one of the worst about it I've seen in a while!" Pramanix snaps at Hayato, leaping onto a stopped vehicle in mid-ritual to project better and keep her steps going instead of just stopping at the first thing that's not floor-height. Realizing that the attacks seem to be working regardless of whether or not he's using the cursed tools, meanwhile, Courier keeps pressing onward with both weapons anyway so as to not bring up something potentially awkward about what Pramanix just said.

'Three or four of you should be fine. Don't worry; I won't kill you or anything. You can just sit this one out and I'll handle it in a second.'
'We have to offer something of ourselves, and unless it's something of greater value than what he can use here, we'll be on the back foot the entire time just trying to catch up.'

"I don't doubt you'd be able to pull it off if we obliged, Miss Rook. If we had nothing of value to offer, then.. Yes, that'd probably be the safest plan, but only if." Pramanix takes a deep breath to steel herself, then stops her ritual abruptly as she slides the bell back onto her belt. Although there's no more ringing throughout the factory, there's still that ice lingering on the ceiling and the last of the snow flowing the air as she takes a moment to consider the alternative presented by Lilian one more time.

Unpalatable though it may be, it's the safer alternative. It wouldn't put her position as a leader to her people at risk, and it certainly wouldn't put her relationship with her siblings at risk. At worst, she'd lose all of it, and then...

"I am Pramanix, Saint of Karlan, leader of Kjerag, second surviving member of the SilverAsh clan." Another pause as she draws her bow with her left hand while holding out her right. "My stake for this battle is my memory of my homeland, of my past as their leader, and my power as the Saint!"

Enya braces, and she glances at her right hand as she feels something missing. Without knowing what exactly is missing, though, she doesn't have much to focus on but her opponent before her. Arrows start flying one after the other as she slips between flying machine parts and rushing vehicles, yelping when the car she's standing on speeds after Sleek and Nephra right from under her. She picks herself up a moment later and starts seeking higher ground in the form of stairs or less-moving things, all while continuing to launch even more projectiles straight at Hayato's center mass.

Courier, lacking anything in particular to wager himself, just keeps pressing the offense from up close. When a converyer belt catches him off guard and launches him back, though, he has to shift gears almost immediately even after her tumbles right towards the lines of cutters and crushers. He brings up his sword just in time to avoid getting cut through before throwing himself off the belt, sliding past a press that just narrowly misses turning him into a pancake.

Before long, though, Courier is back on his feet again to get right back at Hayato's face. The sword comes up at him in a quick slice, immediately followed by the cursed truncheon coming in towards Hayato's side. Powers aside, there's a visible combat experience gap he fully intends to exploit here, trying to keep the Domain's wielder on the back foot for his allies to capitalize on.
Nephra Tangent     Crashing one lump of steel into another is a bold choice, but Hayato's attack is met with matching blind ferocity. As she locks her feet to the ground, the gravity beneath her surging enough to make blood run backwards- if only for the split second it takes to stand her ground and crush her gauntlets through the ramming car's grille. Her hand bought her value to burn, and encased in her suit, the stump where it used to be is still a wrecking ball. Clutching metal around the yari's haft with one hand, and impaling the other arm into the engine block, the lifting feeling in her gut as gravity releases its chokehold back to One-g feels almost like flying.

    Just enough like it, in fact, to lever the car's remaining momentum away from her torso and off the floor, so her twisting footwork can hammer-throw the automobile in Hayato's direction. As its mass is pulled away from her arms, whining jet turbines combine with explosive kinetic leveraging in her leg reinforcements to catapult her up.

    On top of the thrown car.

    Nephra's actions are purely on reflex at this point, ancillary processing blending with spinal interneurons flaring her core to masquerade the crushing pull of Jupiter, spiking the vehicle down at the broker with her own body. There's no escape plan, no backup, just sheer force.
Sleek Shimmer     Sleek Shimmer pulls a huge torrent of energy from cursed spirit, all of it swirling in towards her. It floods her body in no time and she sets about rapidly circulating it through her meridians, condensing it into her spiritual sea, and distilling lessons about its nature.

    A glow begins to shine on her flesh, a pearly-white-blue. Lines, curls, and swirls, with some it almost resembling circuit lines, though many mark major arteries. It's quite obvious to anyone with occult theory what's actually going on here: she's overflowing with spiritual energy.

    So much that it's probably PAINFUL.

    As she stands there, focusing her power, a barrage of trinkets, coins, and everything from lipstick tubes to brushes strike at her, cutting through her flesh. She briefly staggers, but doesn't fall.

    No, instead... with the best approximation of a screeching howl she unleashes all that power and ignites it. The glow within her meridians externalizes into a great flame several times her body size and she lifts right off the ground.

    Space around her bends and twists and THINGS begin to appear from nowhere. Travel knives. Dead (but fresh) fish and small game. A loose handful of coinage from several dozen worlds. Several unusual rocks - some have odd patterns, some contain fossils. Some are aglow. Several look like actual gemstones, but they glow with elemental patterns. Several very durable-looking books, sealed shot by strange-looking belts. Cutlery and eating utensils from a variety of cultures.

    Shimmer spreads her arms around and the array of belongings forms itself into a whirling tornado that forms a very effective shield against the rest of the flying debris.

    "That's just the beginning. You're going to pay a GREAT DEAL MORE! Nobody puts a leash on me. NOBODY!"

    Shimmer, her grand aura, and her array of swirling junk all vanish and reappear right behind Hayato... and not only does this put him in range of being bombarded by all kinds of things (and likely smacked in the face by a dead fish), but Shimmer springs off the ground with a RISING KNEE for the middle of his back with enough force to put a crack up a cliffside.
Father Berislav      'Domain' is more literal here. The space is Hayato's, to do with what he pleases. Berislav had some idea of what that meant, but direly underestimated the extent to which it was true. When the belts become animate like serpents, he's caught on the back foot, flung bodily through the air. Tumbling head over heels, he's forced to make sense of a rapidly spinning world, in fits and starts.

     He can do it--this is the priest's reassurance to himself--that it is just like his acrobatics, with the only difference being he didn't plot the course himself. Twirl. Twirl. He's flying towards a press that'll stamp him flat.

     Twirl. Twirl. Head, piston. Too resilient. Frame. Too uncertain. Hose. His muscles move with only the faintest higher thought process. A hollow-point bullet ricochets off of the sharp blade of the cutter, the projectile blossoming out after the initial impact. It tumbles through the air, like the priest in microcosm, sharp splayed edges of the spent projectile cutting a hole in the hydraulic hose. Berislav hits the assembly with a controlled exhale, rolling out of the way of the weakened press as it slams down and tears a swath from his cassock in passing.

     He takes a breath, looses a shout of effort and hits a falling blade with a superhumanly powerful elbow strike, shearing it from its housing in time to push with his legs and free himself from the assembly before the next blade can slam into him.

     Hayato can use anything and everything in this factory to his advantage. Occupying his attention, demanding it, has to be the solution, but doing that at close range means opening himself up to another blindside like that. The moment his shoes hit the ground, Berislav breaks into an unnaturally fast sprint, vaulting a crashed car. Two blistering trigger-pulls from the left gun, aimed straight at Hayato, the massive bullets piercing snakelike conveyor belts to reach him. "But there is one person you couldn't put a value on, shade," answers Berislav, pulling the right trigger to bounce a bullet from a reinforced breaker box. It tears the protective cover off, a momentary obstruction of Hayato's view occurring as it flies past. Just enough time to toss a revolver into the air and retrieve a directional charge from subspace. "Either that, or she caused you to reconsider."

     When the protective cover falls, Berislav hurls the explosive so hard its passage through the air sounds like being overtaken on the highway. Plastic explosive sticks to a defunct robotic assembly arm, waiting for input.

    "Look at yourself, shade," says Berislav, his stride unbroken even after the misdirection. He charges straight at a coiling conveyor belt, diving to escape its grasp a second time, threading the needle.

     He needs to keep the spirit looking at him. Talking. Not looking at the charge he'd placed. A trigger-pull from both guns, seemingly at the support beams of a catwalk. Calculated, like each of his other shots. They bounce from the metal with spark-flying impact, zipping over Berislav's head, the already blossomed-out hollow-points on a less-impactful course towards Hayato. He should think the priest is underselling it, here. Berislav hits the ground in a roll, rising. Making a beeline for the support beams he'd just shot.

     "Had you found even a shred of happiness in life, had you learned what was truly of worth," he calls, as he runs up the sheer surface, "You wouldn't still be chasing transitory 'value' in death."
Father Berislav      "Instead," he says, inverted in the air, guns seemingly pointed right at Hayato, "You will be cast from this place..." One-two-three-four. Blink and it's over. He missed Hayato.

     But he didn't miss the ground near him. The microadjustments of his aim hadn't misaccounted for the flight of his own bullets or the position of the now-stripped rollers. Flattened projectiles rain, one-two-three-four, as above, a three-second counter ticks down.

     "...as poor before Mammon as you are before God." The explosive goes off, raining down shrapnel, molten slag and the assembly arm onto Hayato.
Tamamo     "Sentimental value, is it? Is it not strange, to value something for such a reason as another's feelings for it, or to hold its value as lesser for that they willingly parted with it? Are you, perhaps, such a pessimist as would believe one's benefit can only be equal to another's pain? Ah, yes, I see."

    Tamamo has a difficult time, even with help, avoiding the full array of projectiles flying at her. They shatter against shields that were invisible up to that point, warding talismans dulling and breaking as they absorb and redirect the energy of each, but she's still forced back by the sheer volume of metal and paper fired her way.

    "Endless growth... and yet, this is an optimistic viewpoint, is it not? The koi cannot outgrow their pond. Are you aware of this contradiction? One may endlessly grow toward the Sun, for so long as the Sun shines, for that is freely given. For yourself, what growth is possible? Toward what can you grow, as you are now?"

    Tamamo claps her hands together, and brings them apart to show a shining light, seeming to pulse with its spin. It's too bright to look on directly without pain, yet still draws the eye, and becomes only worse as it rises, right up until it hits the ornate mirror floating in the air above her, which spins to focus that burning light on Hayato, tracking his motions. Lilian's the only one wholly unaffected, even empowered, by that light, thanks to the gifts Tamamo's given her.

    Tamamo, for her part, is moving toward the entrance, concerned about what houses might get blown down with a Big Bad Wolf about. Is there an 'outside' while within the Domain? She's not sure.
Lilian Rook     Todo is right beside Lilian. Reasonably, this should be the part where she gets a taste of the disorientation of someone simply appearing out of thin air, but she's so focused on calculating whose value will be most effective for her to extract, it takes the words for her to respond.

    'Are you so unconfident in your skills that you think you can't take him without winning his game?'

    "That's not it!" Lilian snaps by sheer reflex. "Obviously I can! So what?! What's wrong with taking fewer risks?! Is there a problem with doing it the smart way just because I could muscle through it the idiot way?!" The more she talks, the louder her voice gets. "These fucking people should be thanking me! I'm shouldering all the risk, and all the responsibility, as usual, because they're allergic to thinking about anything! They think they can just push through on effort and have everything their way, forever, until they exact moment 'they can't!"

    'If you're going to do that, give the Value to me. I'm the strongest here after all.'

    In a heartbeat, Lilian's tone changes completely. "Like hell you are!" Finally, she turns to look directly at Aoi. "And I strictly prohibit you from trying! I'm the only one here who doesn't have anything to--"

    Lilian stopping herself is a reassertion of control driven purely by the reflex to not feed a stranger anything that could be used against her, but the way she looks at Aoi as she chokes the words off, and then looks away from him, is more than enough to tell that she knows fully well that she was just about to start telling the truth. Cold nausea threatens to take control, grappling with her wavering focus and the steadiness of her sword hand. She holds her breath for an exact length of time, and releases. Tired conviction takes it instead.

     "Well, there's no need to try so hard with small fry. I grasp the idea of that power. If you can swap with me, do so as often as you like. I won't need warning. You'll see."

    When the barrage of money-bullets comes flying, Lilian disappears. Unlike with Aoi, nothing takes her place. What happens is a lengthy fan of projectile bills and coins divert a seemingly random number of degrees and puncture the factory walls, floor, and ceiling, a handful emitting mysterious sparks several feet in front of Tamamo instead. She's directly behind Hayato now. He hears the words "Did you know, you can inflict all kinds of damage to someone, without ever committing an act of violence? Just like a market acquisition, you don't have to pay anything to get what you want. If you do it correctly, you can let the system do it for you." while she waits for him to shift, retarget, and for the entire sensible length for an opportunistic switch.

    Then she's just right in front of him again. The attack that should immediately follow, doesn't, because her sword is already held away from her body and out to her side. Then she's beside him, weapon extended and down, tip to the ground. Opposite side, picking her sword up as if she'd had it stuck into something. In front-- no, actually behind for real, this time. Back and forth, stuttering through space in the area around him. Bullets fly right through empty space. Collapsing architecture lands where she isn't. Aoi is somehow able to hop to her without her taking his old place. Heavy strikes and blasts land on empty air. A softly glowing footprint on a conveyor here, a handprint on a vertical beam there.
Operator     A curse is a bad thing. It's the most fundamental lesson of jujutsu. A curse can be 'less bad' than other curses but it is still a curse at the end of the day. And right now, a curse borne of a single man's resentment is going against the archetypal "fear of the forest." Hayato's eyes bulge, and he moves to get out of the way of the collapsing pillar, but Aoi acts fast. Breaking into a sprint, he puts himself under the pillar, and claps at the last second. Instantly, Hayato is there now, and he's forced to catch it to avoid being crushed.

    With a groan, he looks up at the transformed Remee and yells, "Ridiculous! Fairy tales are nothing more that moral lessons for children! You don't scare me!" That whole collapsed pillar begins to twist and coil in his arms into a spear, which launches itself at Remee's breast!

    While he's recovering from this, Stanley tries to run him down in a hotwired car. But as he gets close, Hayato simply raises a hand and it... comes to a complete stop, floating an inch off the ground so the wheels have no purpose. "Stupid boy. I posses total control over everything I own. And you think to run me down in my own car?" He closes his hand into a fist, and the whole car begins collapsing in on itself, poised to crush Stanley inside!

    Pramanix... no, Enya bets big. Something terribly valuable and precious is ripped from her head by chains, and Hayato looks over with wide eyes. "Well, that is... uh, quite valuable, yes." Her chains surge up the maypole, not as high as Hayato's, but high enough that she's now threatening his position. Meanwhile, Courier just rushes Hayato down, and Aoi joins in on it, piling on the pressure with the swordsman and using Boogie Woogie to constantly switch their places from the front and behind of the curse, messing up any attempt he makes to defend himself.

    "Get OFF me!" he shouts, waving his hand. Seatbelts leap from the crashed cars he was crushed with and fly at Enya, aiming to coil around her wrists, legs, and throat. They bind tight, tight enough to cut off circulation and air. If Courier doesn't act, she might choke to death!

    But while this happens, Nephrea has completed her hammer throw windup and launched that car that Hayato blocked with back at him. She leaps atop it, surfing on the wreck towards the curse who tries to run clear of the impact. But the sharp sound of Aoi clapping makes him snarl, "No!" and turn his heel to dodge in a different direction. But he didn't teleport at all, and now he's back under the descending vehicle and power armor. "Clapping my hands doesn't necessarily mean I'm activating Boogie Woogie!' Aoi taunts as Nephra crushes him with an awful heavy thump, like a bass boosted car crash being played in an Olympic swimming pool.

    The car had crumpled around Hayato, creating a safe area for him to lie in under it, but the crashing gravity still has him pinned. The vehicle begins to come apart under Nephra, and the battery suddenly flies clean through the hood to fly at her. The casing is cracked, and battery acid is flying free, aimed at splashing her and burning clean through the armor!

    When Sleek warps behind him and encases him in a nova of whirling things, he responds with his own debris cloud, but can't respond to the rising knee, and Aoi replaces a fish with himself so he can follow up with a falling hammer strike to spike the curse into the floor.

    "I really am sick of all the wealth puns! If all you can do is ape the same thing over, you deserve a zoo cage instead!" he shouts as that pile of clothes throws itself at Sleek, slapping with increasing intensity as they wrap themselves around her. This wouldn't be so bad, but the gasoline from all the wrecked cars also fly out to soak the clothes. And then lighters in the pockets of said clothes all spark at once, igniting the bundle with her in it!
Operator     Berislav manages to evade becoming a sliced Berry Slav Sandwich, and he closes the distance between he and Hayato fast. He tries to use a car door to block the shots, but another application of Boogie Woogie has he and the door switch places, forcing Hayato to soak the bullets.

    "Don't you DARE talk about her!" the curse roars, sending a conveyor belt at the priest for him to weave through. "You don't know a single thing! Do not think that some authority of man peddling the words of a false God gives you authority to speak of someone you don't know, priest!" The play works. He's not looking at all, just throwing whatever he can at Berislav, even smirking and saying "You missed" when the charge detonates, dumping the arm and molten metal upon the curse. But as he is engulfed, the safety railings on that catwalk comes to life, coiling around the priest and hurling him across the factory to crash into those cages at the back.

    "Markets run on assigned value girl," Hayato snarls to Tamamo, breathing heavily as he tries to calm down. "If everyone only sold at cost, no one would make money. Everything needs to seem important to the buyer in order to sell at a profit. But yes, ultimately, life is zero-sum. Eventually there will be one left atop the pile of refuse."

    The light is shone on him, and he raises an arm to try and block it. "Growth?... there is none for me, never was. I am only trying not to die!" The ceiling lights spring out, dangling on long wires to surround Tamamo and shine intensely bright, aiming to blind her as she as him. But by overloading the bulbs, he causes them to burst and send shattered glass flying in her face!

    But while all this is happening, Lilian has taken Aoi's bait. Rather than turn on her allies to monopolize Value, she attacks without attacking. And somehow, it works. Maybe it is because she is acting outside of the Domain's awareness, or maybe this is legitimate loophole Hayato didn't realize. Either way, her Value does not budge, even as she continues to arrange things falling on the curse, diverting towards him. "What is this?!" he screams, trying his best to track her. But between Lilian and Aoi constantly blinking around him, constantly putting the pressure on, he can't keep up.

    "ENOUGH!" Over by Berislav, the hatches on those cages open, and things begin to crawl out. People and pets, emaciated and terrified. "Protect me!" Hayato yells, and they suddenly move at forces that their bodies can't take. The sounds of bones cracking under muscles flexing harder than they should are audible as they rush to surround the curse, charging through obvious sightlines to give him cover.
Operator     Berislav manages to evade becoming a sliced Berry Slav Sandwich, and he closes the distance between he and Hayato fast. He tries to use a car door to block the shots, but another application of Boogie Woogie has he and the door switch places, forcing Hayato to soak the bullets.

    "Don't you DARE talk about her!" the curse roars, sending a conveyor belt at the priest for him to weave through. "You don't know a single thing! Do not think that some authority of man peddling the words of a false God gives you authority to speak of someone you don't know, priest!" The play works. He's not looking at all, just throwing whatever he can at Berislav, even smirking and saying "You missed" when the charge detonates, dumping the arm and molten metal upon the curse. But as he is engulfed, the safety railings on that catwalk comes to life, coiling around the priest and hurling him across the factory to crash into those cages at the back.

    "Markets run on assigned value girl," Hayato snarls to Tamamo, breathing heavily as he tries to calm down. "If everyone only sold at cost, no one would make money. Everything needs to seem important to the buyer in order to sell at a profit. But yes, ultimately, life is zero-sum. Eventually there will be one left atop the pile of refuse."

    The light is shone on him, and he raises an arm to try and block it. "Growth?... there is none for me, never was. I am only trying not to die!" The ceiling lights spring out, dangling on long wires to surround Tamamo and shine intensely bright, aiming to blind her as she as him. But by overloading the bulbs, he causes them to burst and send shattered glass flying in her face!

    But while all this is happening, Lilian has taken Aoi's bait. Rather than turn on her allies to monopolize Value, she attacks without attacking. And somehow, it works. Maybe it is because she is acting outside of the Domain's awareness, or maybe this is legitimate loophole Hayato didn't realize. Either way, her Value does not budge, even as she continues to arrange things falling on the curse, diverting towards him. "What is this?!" he screams, trying his best to track her. But between Lilian and Aoi constantly blinking around him, constantly putting the pressure on, he can't keep up.

    "ENOUGH!" Over by Berislav, the hatches on those cages open, and things begin to crawl out. People and pets, emaciated and terrified. "Protect me!" Hayato yells, and they suddenly move at forces that their bodies can't take. The sounds of bones cracking under muscles flexing harder than they should are audible as they rush to surround the curse, charging through obvious sightlines to give him cover.
Operator     As the people who belong to Hayato rush out, the Values are as follows:

    Remee has 31

    Bersilav has 44.

    Enya has 116 and Courier has 36

    Tamamo has 28.

    Stanley has 14.

    Sleek Shimmer has 28.

    Nephra has 28.

    Lilian remains at 10.

    Hayato's remains unknown as his gloves obscures his hand. However, his chain now barely sits above Enya's on the maypole in the middle of the factory.
Remee Halcyon "OOF!"

Remee gets hit right in the middle by the thrown pillar. She's driven back a bit.

She checks her hand. 38. Good. She has some wriggle room.

"Ridiculous! Fairy tales are nothing more than moral lessons for children! You don't scare me!"

"That's where... you're wrong."

"This is the tale of the little curse spirit, who built his little warehouse full of fancy things, and his little domain to protect him, and assumed it'd all be enough..."

She reaches down to her gear bag, and fishes her shotgun out. "You'd best start believing in fairy tales... because you're in one."

"Because the big bad wolf said... I'll huff."

She thumbs a new cursebreaker round into the chamber of her shotgun.

"And I'll puff."

She cocks the shotgun, and aims.

"And I'll blow your market share down."
Karlan Nobles Although Courier doesn't actually know what Boogie Woogie is at first, it's not hard to start understanding what's going on by the second or third time he swaps positions with the local veteran. The timing is still a little tricky for him to figure out, though, so he starts opting for wider swings and spinning slashes to make it that much harder to predict attacks coming from his direction.

After all, how could Hayato predict when Courier's weapons are going to strike if he's not even sure when they'll hit?

Enya, meanwhile, still has that nagging feeling that maybe she did something she really shouldn't have. Whatever it is, though, she'll have to worry about it later as Hayato starts launching seatbelts her way. Although she's fairly quick on her feet, she's not quite fast enough to avoid getting tied up by all those leather (faux or real) bindings. Choking at a gasp, she starts stabbing at some of them with one of those cursed knives, but only until another belt forces even that to stop.

That, of course, forces Courier to have to divert course. "I'll be back, Aoi. Lady Pramanix needs a hand!" Giving him that advance warning, he hurries back to start slicing through all those seatbelts, moving through them with far more efficiency and haste than he did in slashing at Hayato moments earlier. It'd be a pretty bad look to let his boss' sister die, after all!

Once she's freed, meanwhile, Enya only spares Courier a brief glance and nod as she forces in several breaths to catch herself. "Thanks! Um... You. Watch your head!" She warns as more of those cars keep getting tossed about, forcing both of them to take evasive maneuvers and separate while taking cover behind more of those machines. Once the creatures from the cages start swarming around Hayato, though, they start to move when it looks like there's an opportunity to catch him while his movements might be limited.

As Courier fights back some of that apparent concern at Enya's non-recognition of him, he takes the lead in rushing for Hayato, once again doing all matter of flips and jumps to get around the factory to his target. He keeps moving erratically as he slashes around, too, being every part the fluttery nuisance to try and throw Hayato's defenses in disarray. Enya, meanwhile, has her bow readied again as she takes aim at Hayato, watching for gaps in those very defenses to launch arrow after arrow in, aiming to pierce right into the curse's limbs, center mass, anything that she can punch an arrow right into.

The last arrow, of course, is drawn so far back that the bow itself snaps, as though she might have pulled a little too hard on the poor weapon just to fire it right through him entirely.
Father Berislav      The priest's mind races as surely as his body does, across the factory floor.

~Keep moving. Anything and everything is an extension of Hayato. His 'property.' Don't watch the surroundings, watch him. He'll give it away--for everything else Hayato's curse can do, it isn't his eyes and ears, or else Boogie Woogie wouldn't fool him. There...!~

     A sudden sneer on Hayato's face, a flicking of his eyes towards the priest as Berislav slides beneath a conveyor belt, and the shade rises from his previous attack. His 'tell.'

-The catwalk...!-

     Berislav's eyes widen as the railings lash free of their moorings and seize after him like ropes pulled taut. It's too fast to escape. The only option is mitigation. Steel digs into his abdomen, crushing him and drawing out a pained gasp.

-Use every second you have.-

     His thumbs catch the breakopen latches on both guns. Empty casings rain down a moment before he's hurled violently towards the cages. He's a quick learner, adapting to his second chaotic hurtle through the air much faster than the first. The priest's wrist slams against the top of the cage, forcing an awkward roll up and over, stripping some momentum. Even so, he still slams with wince-inducing impact into the neighboring wall.

     Cursed cartridges emerge awash in orange light, rolled from his palms down the grip of the open revolvers, one after the other, neatly into the chambers. With mechanical grace, both guns are fully loaded by the time the cages swing open.

     "I know all I need to," spits Berislav, silver eyes narrowed as the hostages are forced into protecting Hayato. He forces himself back to his feet with an agile kip-up, running up the wall and leaping just as his momentum runs out. His feet find uncertain ground on a hanging overhead light fixture, for just long enough to make a dive.

-The hostages. I can't risk hitting them. But how... That's it.-

     Sailing overhead, he calls out.

     "AOI!" One gun is aimed downwards, pointed straight at Aoi--but aimed a good length down from the spot between his eyes. Exactly where Hayato's head would be, were he standing in Aoi's place.

     Berislav pulls the trigger with the forward gun, sending a fully-jacketed cursed bullet racing towards him.
Nephra Tangent     Acid bites its way at Nephra, sizzling into the ablative coating of her suit and, in some places, against the flesh beneath the overlapping plates. As feedback sensors and neuroelectrodes corrode, it feels like utter static up and down her synapses, adrenaline tight in her racing heart. Teeth grit hard enough to creak- twisted into a smile. But there's no time to revel in the thrill, despite how much she'd love to, there's an onslaught of minions pouring in- innocent, presumably, and thus not worth tearing apart like the cars and machinery the phantom is throwing around. She takes a moment, and the straining effort required, to think, and pull her focus away from how much she'd like to hammer the smug businessghost's face.

<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Those protecting him... forced to shield him... I will attempt to clear the path."
<J-IC-Scene> Nephra Tangent says, "Haha, want some help softenin' them up a bit?"
<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "I have a gentle touch."
<J-IC-Scene> Nephra Tangent says, "That wasn't a no.~"

    I can be gentle enough too. Haha. Just try me. Sucking a deep breath in, and bracing herself even within the protection of her suit, and the click-snap of its hydraulics lock her body rigid as her reactor ramps up. And up. And up. Barely visible, a rotating nova of dust starts to spin around her, sucked towards the jet intakes of her suit, twisting and dancing to the heartbeat pulse of gravity growing stronger.

    Her core's gravitic influence doesn't stop by her feet, like with her other attacks before, but grows throughout the whole factory floor, limbs growing heavy and blood flowing slower and slower and slower. Painting force with broad strokes across the domain's tapestry, the pressure of constant crushing weight is an attack in itself, burning the effort out of the muscles of the encroaching enemies without having to make them bleed.
Tamamo     'But yes, ultimately, life is zero-sum. Eventually there will be one left atop the pile of refuse.'

    "Is that so? If something is important only to you, do you not reduce the value within the world, in giving it away? Were they to return it, would the value of all things together not be increased? I had thought this inequality a basic truth among merchants, that wealth can be created by exchange."

    ...he causes them to burst and send shattered glass flying in her face!

    Though Tamamo moves to shield herself, the force of the Market Leader's Domain enhances the attack well beyond what she can casually block. Even glancing strikes are more forceful than she expects, tearing through her warding shields, and drawing blood as they gash her robes and her arms, raised to protect her face. Her healing talismans go to work, gradually smoothing over cuts without leaving scars, but the initial damage is done. She hisses through her teeth in pain. Perhaps it's better that the glass be sharp, for making cleaner cuts.

    Closing her eyes, she focuses on her magical sight, which will do about as well while she recovers, given that everything here that concerns her is either made up of or powered by cursed energy.

    "Using even 'people' as 'assets,' I see. It is not as if I do not understand the concept, but here, as is so often the case, the result is unacceptable." Tamamo draws her mirror back down to herself, rotating it behind her, doubling the halo of light that shines from her.

    "I have a gentle touch."

    The light is gentle, as she said, but hard to ignore. It carries its own message, which Tamamo echoes rather than directs, when she says, "Be at peace. Be still. Rest yourself. Nothing is more important than listening to my voice."

    It's not, precisely, an attack on Hayato, though it might be thought of as freezing his assets.
Stanley Padgett     The car stops straight up against Hayate's hand, and Stanley's impact is simply thwarted, stopped, prevented, the young man's base instinct to STEAL CAR and GO FAST is ended through sheer force of I OWN THE PINK SLIP HERE. And then the car is simply SMASHED around him in a fit of pique.

    Stanley's frame disappears into the crushed metal and crumpled carbon fiber and the FINE INTERIOR LEATHER and- He reappears on top of the now fucked up car, gasping and staggering. There's cuts and marks along the neon tabard, along the young man's body, as he staggers back to a proper stance. He nearly didn't *voop* out of the crusher in time. "....hhnnnn, you think ownin' all this stuff, makes you better."
    The young man wipes smeared blood and oil from his face, where it leaves a crimson grey mask across his cheeks, and then brings the saber up to level with the spirit again. "...Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, foul haunt." He rolls his neck and hisses out the words of Richard the Second. "Let's choose executors and talk of wills." Above the boy, Mercutio hovers, drawing sword and flintlock. "You're pushing up flowers already, my guy. "Everything here is gone. Out of your reach."

    Stanley Marigold Padgett takes a breath, yanks on the ethereal chain attached to his chest, and snarls. "You can't even wrap your head around the level of shit you're in. You're still just... scrabbling at the scraps of what everyone else around you dribbled from their own gobs."
    A snort. "'Died at work.'" Stanley's voice is that of a sad OL. "'Oh, he just couldn't handle his own life anymore, the poor fellow, the company ought to give more sick days or time off.' That's the only thing people are ever going to remember about you. All this Value you're talking about? Garbage. Just that you worked yourself to death like an imbecile, for people who don't give a fucking thought for yourself."

    "...FIGHT ME." It's not a request, it's a full command, as Stanley spits in Hayate's face, and gets into ready position.
Sleek Shimmer     The foxgirl has certainly dealt with any number of odd attacks over the ages. Getting wrapped up in excess laundry isn't one of them. "What--" She doesn't get oujt whatever she was gonna say before getting turned into a T-shirt and blue jeans mummy, struggling. It's not that the fabric's hard to tear, but the positioning and sheer VOLUME of it ill-suits just flexing free.

    Muffled screams follow when the whole thing's set ablaze and the struggling continues for a few moments longer until--

    Until the fire just sort of freezes, torn away from its moorings and spiraling. Horrible ripping and tearing noises that offend the ears pierce the thick layers of fabric as it comes apart to bits and pieces, the same devouring-vortex that Shimmer showed off earlier simply consuming the matter and the flames...

    Though, not in time to save her from coming out covered in first and second-degree burns which are slowly healing. Her senses a-blaze and scanning the area in great detail for everything going on as, in great focus, the world all-but slows down for her. She spots Father Berislav raising his weapon towards Aoi... and realization glimmers.

    "Aren't you..." She gasps out, pained but fuming, "The one..."

    A hard but focused inhale follows.

    "Forgetting who's..." Her form flickers and blurs towards Aoi's direction and--

    And she appears five feet from Aoi, off to the right in Berislav's vision, both hands ablaze with eerie blue flame.

    Hands she brings together to aim at exactly what Berislav's aiming at... "A one-trick pony?!"

    Blue flames rush forth with explosive pressure and a searing roar, turning almost white in their fury!

    She has seen what Berislav and Aoi are up to, and clearly fully believes this plan HAS to work.

    Which might be why she decides to suddenly scream, at the top of her lungs, words that echo thunderously through the abandonded factory, "I LIKE GIRLS WHO SMILE BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN!!"
Lilian Rook     Lilian can't decide whether her value being the lowest bothers her more, or--
    Well, no, not really. Being at the very bottom of someone else's value system is pretty normal. Giving things up, offering them to the judge, to increase her worth; to forestall what they intend to inflict on her; that's always been worse. That's the one thing she never does.

<B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "Whether it's credits or anything else, giving things up to satisfy people who don't know and who don't care about you will eventually make you bleed."
<B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "No matter how poor or weak or unfortunate or sad someone is, when you tell them with 'please, I can't live my life if you do this, take this little part of me, I'm offering it up, just stop', it lessens you."
<B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "If that's why God doesn't do miracles for the needy, then good for him."

    If Hayato can compel his assets to move, telekinetically or sympathetically rather than mentally, Lilian finds her direction in doubling up with Tamamo, skipping between caged bodyguards and laying them out with blunt-sided strikes, dropping crates and machinery, pinning them under construction materials, or tied and nailed down with strange black metalloid ribbon or cable.

    Where they are not, finally, a threat, Winter Crow is whirled up from her side, aimed sidelong in duelling stance at Hayato and fired dozens of times in rapid succession, the flickering spell circles at its muzzle blazing continuously for several seconds until it clicks dry. The clip frame is stripped and ejected with a clockwork ping. Waste shells of solid gold jingle and roll around her ankles. The gun breaks open. Superheated aether gushes out. Another rod of raw alchemical amalgam is slammed into the well. It closes with a flick of the wrist. "Hey. Pick up my leftovers." is the offering.

<B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "I'm at the range seeing how much I have to re-zero Winter Crow after this much use and the steadily growing pile of gold on the floor and my steadily diminishing desire to sweep it up catalyzed at the point of my asking."

<B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "Let's see . . . twenty-eight point three four grams of gold is about one point two cubic centimeters of unalloyed gold, it's patterned after the ten millimeter so just shy of ten point five grams . . . Oh, that's not so bad."
<B-anter> Not Doctor / Metaphor says, "...you've never calculated the worth of the- literal... trade metal printer you're using?"

    She resumes firing.
Operator     "This is no fairy tale. It's a horror story!" Hayato retorts to Remee. When the shotgun fires, the floor panelling of the factory suddenly rips up before the curse, becoming a wall that soaks all the pellets as three of his slaves throw themselves at the wolf. "That's one pinned down, but I still have 8 more surrounding me. The Market Leader benefits aren't great enough to close the gap of numbers and combat experience!"

    Tamamo, even blinded and cut, speaks kindly. Her words reach Hayato's ears, and he freezes up. "You... you sound like her..." he murmurs, before pressing a hand to his forehead. "NO! She's dead! Dead by her own hand! Dead by this world's hand! Don't listen to her!" But at the same time, Stanley changes. Their words become unlike their own, and they challenge the curse to stand and fight. The conflicting command collides with Tamamo's. One appeals to the man, and the other the curse. He doubles over, clutching his skull and screaming. "Need to listen to her but she's dead and I need to kill them all kill them and harvest their power and accrue Value and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

    In this position, there's little he can do to resist Nephra increasing the gravity within the Domain. He buckles near immediately, falling to his knees then to his face. His prisoners also buckle, no longer reinforced by his cursed energy enough to stay upright. A pained wheeze escapes Hayato's throat, and he struggles to get his feet under him. "Can't end like this, I need to do something. All this Value and it's doing nothing for me! It only works within the Domain, empowering whoever has the most... but what if I liquidated it somehow?"

    Courier continues to rush, using wide swings to take advantage of Aoi's Boogie Woogie. The muscleman joins the assault, using his technique to reposition with Enya's arrows to ensure they find their target. Hayato only offers a meagre defence, caught up in his ruminations. "I need to invert it somehow. Instead of empowering the things I own, I need to make the things I own empower me. Convert Value into raw cursed energy, but how?! I need to... the source of it all... cursed energy is purely negative... but if I multiply it by itself...!"
Operator     The air around Hayato begins to change. The shattered and scattered cars and machines begin to become ghostly and ephemeral, converting into black whisps that become absorbed by Hayato. His captured slaves begin to shriek in agony as Aoi yells, "Finish him! He's figuring out reversed curse technique!" Berislav's voice cuts over his own, and the man understands immediately. The bullet is fired, and the teen claps. Instantly, Hayato takes a round clean through the skull before he can react. Blue flames from Sleek engulf him, and the strange process begins to end.

    Hayato floats there, cooked to a crisp. For a pregnant moment, it seems like he might finally fall. But his hand lashes out, another piece of railing flying into it, coiling into a spear. "I'LL KILL YO-"

    The staccato of Lilian's gunfire interrupts him, the bullets slamming into the curse over and over and over. He falls to the ground. Another mag is emptied. The Domain disappears, the black barrier shattering. Enya regains her sainthood and title. Remee remembers her lineage (unfortunately). Tamamo gets back all the balms and tinctures and gold she surrendered. Nephra gets her hand back, it flexes and unflexes like it never left. The factory however, remains in ruins, and Utahime and Miwa rush in, the latter gasping at the sight of carnage and the emaciated people.

    One more mag dump to be sure.

    "Stop!" the curse wheezes. He lays there, his form burning up in smokeless bright blue flame. Starting at the fingers and toes, he gradually loses cohesion and form. "I'm... I'm done. I thought maybe I could... if it was just the three from before. But it wasn't to be... dragged into this world and immediately marked for death. What a joke..."

    He's talkative now. Any pressing questions might only get answered now.
Stanley Padgett     BRAVE FENCER STANLEY stumbles out of that confident ready stance, as the whole place crumbles down around them. He didn't even have to stab the ghost again, that was good. But rather than standing on a wrecked luxury car, it's simply a crumpled piece of shelving. He steadies himself, and then slips to sit properly, working his shoulder in its socket where it got smushed by the crumpling car.

    "...I'm serious though. All you're going to be remembered for is dying at work. Unless you think there's something more important that people should care about."

    Careful, Stan, that's a dangerous question.
Tamamo     Having those additional supplies returned to her is certainly convenient timing, for now being in the presence of so many emaciated former prisoners. Tamamo's still breathing heavily, even if her wounds aren't so severe as to last more than the next few minutes. The blood, as ever, remains. What she lost can be restored, but she can't put what she's bled directly back into her veins. From being long accustomed to it, she allows her healing talismans to work without touching her face to check how bad it is.

    First things first, then. She looks over to Lilian, and from her to each of the other participants, quietly counting off heads. Everyone is standing, on their side? Yes, good. She lets out a breath, releasing the tension with it. Carefully, she reaches into her sleeves, and pulls out a large number of health charms, grasping their strings together.

    "Would you mind assisting me, in passing these about? They will do more than preserve what life remains, though that is the most important point, in the moment." Tamamo offers them to the jujutsu sorcerers, first, and then to anyone else who might be otherwise unoccupied. For her own part, she goes next to see Hayato.

    "You knew there was another path, did you not? The path of which 'she' told you. It was only that... this world was not kind to her, was it? And so, you despaired of there being any such path open to you, or to anyone."

    Bringing her hands together, "At the least, I may send you away in peace. All things may be purified in time, though even the opportunity to live again as a human, should the wheel one day allow this to you, will come with suffering, no matter how noble your aims and efforts. It has been hard, has it not?"
Remee Halcyon Remee's collateralized upbringing slams back into her mind.

"... Oh."

"Oh, no..."

She pomfs* back into human form immediately, and takes a deep breath. She was... rude.

She called Lilian the b-word. She made inappropriate comments about Tamamo. Aside from worrying about Lilian coming after her with an axe over that, she was acting very, very unbecoming of a young lady. She'll have to make up for it.

... Later. (And if Lilian gets the axe out before she can make up for it, she'll just have to deal with it.) There's more important things to do right now.

Remee starts with going around to all of the enslaved people. "Hey. Can you stand?" She's not much of a medic, but she can at least start passing out Tamamo's talismans and making sure nobody's in immediate danger of dying.

(* Remee does not actually pomf.)
Karlan Nobles Courier skids along the ground lightly as he finishes his last bout of slashing while Enya picks herself up off the floor after the sudden snapping of her bow from her final arrow. They don't look ready to stop just yet even after the curse calls for an end to the fighting, though, with Courier still having his sword drawn and Pramanix (once she gets her memories and such back) keeping that cursed knife firmly in her hand.

It's not until the latter sees that burning at the ends of the curse's body that she signals for Courier to stop, giving the deer-eared man reason to relax a bit more when it actually looks like she recognizes him again. There's also a moment where Pramanix looks incredibly awkward as she recalls just what happened, moving over to Courier to give him a light nudge.

"Sorry about that, Weiss. It was... I wasn't expecting to forget that much."
"Don't worry, Lady Pramanix. I'm used to it."

Sucking in a bit of air awkwardly through her teeth, Pramanix turns her attention towards Hayato instead while Courier follows suit. Tamamo's healing charms are taken with grateful smiles and nods, meanwhile, although Courier's smile doesn't seem to change much at all in comparison to the more expressive Pramanix.

"What drove you to do all of this, anyway? Did someone pressure you into this stunt?"
"How did you even get a hold of such a power, anyway? Did some... Hm. Did you seek this power yourself? It had to come from somewhere."

Although Pramanix sounds like she's scolding Hayato at first, her expression takes on  a considerably more somber look as she brings her bell back out. After looking it over to make sure everything's in place, she waits until the Q&A is done before starting to chant solemnly and ringing the bell at slow intervals. A far more gentle snow starts to fall inside the factory, cooling things down just a bit and focused on Hayato himself as if trying to cleanse what's left of him before he passes.
Nephra Tangent     Before the altered gravity's wound itself back to a stable normal, Nephra's already disengaging her suit. Her hand returns, the feeling of it filling a small portion of the emptines in her nerves after her armor pulls away from her peripheral implants. She shivers, visibly so, and crosses her arms in front of herself- still clutching the borrowed yari. It's more defensive of a posture than anything she's assumed during the whole brawl itself, with her own weight leaning on the spear's haft instead of just her own. Without her raincoat interfering,- as it's likely under rubble somewhere, which Nephra is assuredly not excited to dig it out afterwards- and despite her efforts to shrink her posture down, the red soreness and scabs around every one of the electrode studs sticking out of her skin is plain and visible.

    "Hey. Haha. Um...." With the shift in the room's tone, her courage for acting- or speaking up- melts away with the adrenaline being flushed out of her blood. She swallows hard, shuts up, and goes to help with the distribution of the talismans, awkwardly giving Tamamo a small nod. Her hands are more useful than her words are right now, if they can speed up the relief the prisoners deserve.
Sleek Shimmer     Sleek Shimmer, after unleashing all that flame, drops to her knees to gasp for breath, feeling all the fight having left Hayato. After a few moments though she does clamber back up to stand, her hostility slowly bleeding away... mostly. She remains on edge, but she isn't about to strike someone in cold blood without something further to press the matter.

    And so, she steps closer, her blazing aura dying down and gathered power dispersing. Her belongings vanish back into her storage space and her shoulders sag as she tries to calm down a bit. Relax. Just somewhat.

    "The three you mention, tell me that you are not really a ghost, not the man you think you are. Just memories and grudges. ... Maybe they are right. I am not so sure. I've never heard about anything like it before."

    She crouches down onto one knee so as to not loom over the spirit. "Well... true or not... the memories are real, the grudges are real. It's time to let go of them." There's a firmness in her tone, but still, some empathy. She definitely understands grudges and vengeance.

    "But if there is some kindness I can do for you, speak it. A message to someone? Evidence of a wrongdoing to expose?"
Father Berislav      Berislav sails through the air for a harrowing few seconds. A fall from that height should be gravely injurious, if not lethal, for a man of his build and height--but with unnatural precision and fluidity, he tucks and rolls, both guns shoved into burning orange subspace.

     Breathing heavily, he wipes beaded sweat from his brow, then tucks a lock of silver hair behind his ear. "Thank you," he says to the sorcerers. "And thank *you,* Tamamo." The life charm is accepted graciously.

     "For what it is worth," says the priest to the shade, stepping closer, hands folded before him, "You're right about one thing. It is a joke," he says. "But Hayato was the victim of the joke, not the substance. The lie of infinite growth is cruel, uncaring, and widespread."

     "I am not sorry to have stopped you, shade. But I am sorry, truly, that even what warmth you remember from Hayato's life was stripped from him. In these, your final moments, you have a chance to erode that lie, in however small an amount."

     He pauses, taking a moment to catch his breath. "Take your 'value' and do away with it--you will not take it with you, where you're going. Instead, think for a moment about the power you feel it would have given you. Strip that power of any shape, or source, or aesthetic sensibility, and think about it only for what it is."

     "If you had 'enough,' how would you have used it to help her?"
Operator     Miwa quickly takes the talismans from the Tamamo and nods eagerly. "Right away!" Eager to have contributed something to all this, she begins putting the talismans around the necks of the emaciated people, asking them for the details and noting them down for later. Remee offers her assistance, and Utahime starts directing her to carrying them to the road while making calls on her smartphone. Nephra's aching body draws a gasp from Miwa, and the girl discretely slips her two of those talismans.

    "I didn't want to be remembered," Hayato wheezed at Stanely. "I just didn't want to die... can you imagine it boy? Dying, and then waking up? Praying to the gods for some kind of explanation, only for three teenagers to turn up and try to kill you? Being told your existence is aberrant, and that you need to die? Everything I did... was to try not to die again."

    He looks to Tamamo as she speaks of another path and shakes his head. "No... her path ended the same way, only sooner. She... her name was Kaede. I was attending university to study finance, she... studied anthropology, with a focus on the Ainu. I always told her there was no future in it, but she always smiled and said she didn't want a boring future..." He wheezes, and those flames swallow up everything below his elbows and knees. "But I was right, in the end. She couldn't find work. Publicly expression opposition to the way the Ainu were treated made you unpopular back then. I saw her once, and she was smiling like usual. I should have noticed... it wasn't until I saw her obituary that I realized."

    Now struggling to lift his head, he answers Pramanix and Courier. "I... I don't think anyone gave it to me. There was a strange encounter after a night of drinking... a man in a robe approached me, I think. But I scarcely remember what he said. As for this power... simple application and practice. Where do you think... I got the factory from? The cars? Those people?" Aoi makes a face at this and says, "Could just be he would have been a natural sorcerer had he lived. Maybe even a special grade. Creating a Domain isn't easy, even I can't do it."

    Sleek asks if there's anything that can be done to put Hayato to peace, but expressly calls this curse not-Hayato. "Heh... I suppose even he couldn't be as miserable as I...You... found my-his book, right? The photo on the first page, of Kaede... lay it on Hayato's grave. I think he'd like that."

    Finally, Bersilav hits him with the ultimate question. All that value, for what? Would it have helped her? "I don't know... get her a job maybe. If it was enough, fund her studies, her campaign... it doesn't matter. I was never looking at her as a person. Only for her... eccentricities. I could not... the way she 'lived her own way.' I couldn't ascribe it value. Could not... decide if it was positive or negative. And then she died, and even though it seemed obvious now... I couldn't accept it." He's weeping now, his body breaking apart, Until finally, naught is left but ashes that get scattered on the breeze.

    Aoi walks around, giving slaps on the back of everyone and murmured, "Good job,"s. But he stops before Lilian, and says, "You said we were alike. But honestly, I don't think that's true any more. I live free, freer than anyone. And you live enchained, carrying burdens for others that no one asked you to. And I don't know if that's what made you so strong, or if that's holding you back."

    Walking past her, he concludes with, "But I do know one thing; you're strong enough that you don't have to do what's 'optimal.' Do what you want Rook. Be greedier. Maybe then you can say for sure that you're stronger than me."

    With that, he begins striding away, all cool like. Miwa and Utahime begin co-ordinating with Elites to arrange a story as the distant sound of sirens approach to provide aid for the malnourished prisoners.