Scene #9052: A Tipoff From Grandma

Owner	Pose
Natsuki Nuki	Futaba Nuki had received a tipoff from the Council Of Grandmothers - the gang of bluebloods at the local community parlor who got together to play shogi and gossip about everything going on locally. More accurate than newspapers and more overbearing than private investigators, the obaasan connection was a reliable and vivid source of news for all things local and interesting. One such tipoff was how, apparently, a dekaiiiiiii frog had been seen in the woods outside of Sotenbori, along a winding mountain road that the local constabulary had closed off for 'rock slides'. Well, rock slides weren't seasonal! It wouldn't be until winter or spring that those took place, making the events awful convenient -- and awful suspicious. Wouldn't you agree, dearie? Followups at the police department weren't helpful, but hitting up the local sensationalist spiritualist papers in Old Town proudly proclaimed: Massive Frog? Alien from Outer Space? Kami Save Us! and a location that corroborated the Grandma Tipoff as where the local orange-haired hero should check out. Along the roads, and past a fenced and closed off sidepath on a mountain road the local dragsters and drifters dared not (or hadn't gotten around to) cross, topped with cool-waving trees and run through with a stiff and slightly unseasonal breeze. The creaks and cracks of the distance sounded like logging, but, a storm had started deeper in the woods, the leading edge of a local stormfront held in the valley pass deeper in and challenging the approach. Surely, something was going on. The air was practically electric with potential.
Futaba Nuki	Girls Futaba's age should probably be hanging out with girls her age, but she's always been sweet on the Council. Sure, it does make sense strategically that she'd want to stay in the good graces of The Source of local news she can't really get anywhere else. What it really boils down to, though, is that they make good snacks and bribed her with them from an early age, creating the sort of impression that few people could even dream of now that she's no longer a wee bab. Also, she just likes hearing the gossip. Today's a work day, though, so she doesn't stick around too long after hearing about the frog and prying about who's going to see who after the meeting. She doesn't really stick around long at the police station, either, mostly just going there to verify where things went down before getting the real deets from the rags in Old Town. The breeze feels nice in the waning days of summer, but Futaba's not here to enjoy that (yet) (but she will later). She's here to look into this funky frog business, and she makes sure her scarf is nice and flappy in that breeze before starting to rush along the path, leaping atop a branch and swinging off from beneath it into a sick backflip that lands her directly on top of the next. She slows down as she hears those cracking noises, then dips beneath the cover of those same trees when she hits the local storm. No weapons yet, just zipping forward through that electric air, seeking the densest concentration of it all. There's no telling what the frog those old ladies mentioned could be like, and she's not about to a start a fight she can't preface with a snappy dialogue first.
Natsuki Nuki	Leaping across the treeline is an excellent way to track across the rainy Osakan forest, the manicured and explored paths and road access giving away to hiking trails and unwalked paths. Woodland creatures scatter and stare up with Futaba's passage, and local birds tweet angrily as the ninja's passage lands from branch to branch and sways the trunks of trees while the orange-haired heroine ascends higher for a vantage. The winding river at the base of the valley seems to be both the center of the deepening-dark rainstorm and the direct locale of the disturbance in the forest. The animals seem agitated by the rain, but they flee from something that sends shivers and ground tremors through the forest: Breaking from the tree cover, a bipedal-format broad faced frog-being ribbits balefully and steadies some sort of low-slung cannon or support weapon, firing into the trees twice before a third shot goes high and wide, firing into the dark clouds above. It appears to be battling something, but it's hard to see what - dark clouds dip low in the air, and the darkness in the deeper rainstorm gives little visual clue of what's going on. It's dangerous though, and the big frog stomps around and muddies the river with the power suited form of its bulk. A bolt of lightning strikes down, pealing a kraka-THOOM of gold-white energy down to fry the frog from gun to suit, and with a ribbit-roar, more plasma cannon fire goes wide through the forest. This is definitely a job for a Ninja hero -- but it's already hot! And why is the frog fighting weather?!
Futaba Nuki	Despite all the rain and mud, Futaba keeps jogging along at a comfortable pace in pursuit of something or another. Presumably, it's goign to be a big frog, but she can't really recall the last time a frog had been a portent of such a storm. Then again, she didn't look too closely at what the Council of Grandmothers had decorating their tables today, so it wouldn't be particularly surprising if one of them had decided to make... Wait. Would those ladies make a pet of a random frog? No, that might be a kid thing. Or some kind of food stall...? Whatever it is, she's letting her mind wander a little too much, and she comes face to face with the dekai frog that's most certainly too small to fit in anyone's jar. Stranger still, it's armed with some kind of futuristic looking gun that definitely doesn't belong here, and it's firing... At the sky? And the sky's winning? The forest certainly isn't, at least, as the plasma fire goes wide enough that it reaches Futaba. She yelps as the plasma rakes across her front, halting the damage only somewhat by transforming her flesh to stone to arrest further damage. What's more concerning, though, is the plasma itself. If it hits too many of those trees, it could spell disaster for the rest of the forest! "Alright, alright... Break it up, you two!" The ninja announces herself with a crack of stone against stone as she bashes her fists together, strategically breaking off a thin layer of surface stone and pulling a flaming katana out of her palm to give the visual that she's pulling a (ninja) sword out of the stone (hand). With a quick flourish to get plenty of steaming rain drops hitting that blade, she leaps off another tree to launch herself towards the frog. "Duking it out's one thing, but don't mess up everyone's homes for this!" She shouts, whirling the katana and her tail around on opposite ends to build up speed (and look like a more massive target than she actually is) while spiraling into the frog like some kind of flaming mecha animal.
Natsuki Nuki	Detonations of hot and crackling plasma split treetrunks and vaporize riverside, some landing close to Futaba and others going wild and wide into the sky. Up close, the 'combat' is a bit more certain - and Futaba is completely correct. The stompy giant scaled frog fights the sky and the storm itself. Thick fingers of stormclouds reach down out of the miserable pouring rain, crackling-thunder veins rippling down and snapping bolts and spitting-branching strikes that find ground in the riverside rocks and blast down the centerline of the kaiju frog. Futaba shouting loudly, even if it's about stopping the fight, gets at least some attention as the beleaguered alien. Bringing around cannon and stabilizing while the cannon-mouth charges up, Futaba is much faster with her flaming spin startup! Spinning tail and flaming dragon blade delivers a powerful slash down-diagonal across the frog's armored chest, the followup tail-smash sending the super frog staggering back and the damaged chestplate hanging down and exposed. Fried and now fire-slashed, the retreating frog looks down at Futaba while falling into the river with a splash-- And that 'finger' from the clouds sweeps around for another pass, figure 9'ing in a loop before driving down unnaturally onto the center of the frog, creak-cracking the armor and bursting out a bright flash of electricity and light accompanied by a deathgurgling scream like a cooked lobster's shell-scream. A silhouette, in the light, from the black stormcloud, stands atop the fallen and finished frog, pulling a thick arm out of the frog's collar and neck, above the broken armor, with a wet-meat 'gulk' as the giant expires in a deflating pile. The figure, white haired and tiger striped, turns and rises on the corpse, to look at Futaba with glowing red slit-pupiled eyes. Behind the shape, a whipping tail of uncertain dimension reburies itself where monstrous arm once occupied, mashing and thrashing through pliant flesh. "Homes?" Asks a familiar voice, cut with snarling tone and the dark amusement of someone hearing something completely idiotic. "That's why you're interfering? That's too bad. It almost was fun." Springing off of the corpse, the tigerstripe and black tailed figure lunges with extended viscera-slick claws to grab and lift Futaba in a throat-gripped moment of closeness. In the rain, the thunder peals again, boom and flash as one from proximity, highlighting a head of white hair and a tanuki-masked face, disbelief-masked-with-anger twisting familiar features. "Futaba?" The familiar monster asks, throwing aside the tanuki ninja if she can get claws on the slippery ninja, or sweeping out arm in the rain and panting lightly. "It can't be."
Futaba Nuki	This frog must have done something bad to piss off the sky. There's no other explanation for it, and Futaba's not entirely surprised. She's seen people from the sky, she's spoken to people that might as well be rocks, and she's spoken to rocks that might as well be people. Why not a sky that gets angry like people, too? As she rebounds from cutting up the frog with her katana, Futaba does several unnecessary backflips in a row along the ground to get some distance between her and the frog, looking for an opportunity to get right back in. Instead, the cloudy finger smites the big gunner wholesale, and she shields her face briefly from the flash as it expires. That gives the foggy figure enough time to deflate the frog right in front of her, and to make her presence known. "Of course! that's why they call me the Interferi-nnnah that one sucks." Futaba sighs lightly and just a bit overdramatically as she realizes she could never do that sort of title justice, then looks up in curious surprise at the tigerstriped figure rising into the air. Although the ninja's reflexes keep her throat nice and safe from that postt-lunge grab, her desire to be showy about everything all but requires her to meet the figure head on anyway, with her own arm coming up in a mirrored motion to wrap around the arm belonging to- "Who...? Wait. Si...?" That, however, does catch Futaba by surprise utterly. With the tanuki-mask darkening her face, she can easily see Futaba's eyes widening in disbelief moments before flinging her aside. Flipping a few times (unnecessarily, of course) as she sails through the air, the ninja slides across the ground in that three-point pose with her free hand on the ground and the other slowly sliding the flaming katana back into her fanny pack. "Sis? Is that...? Natsuki?" As the realization continues to settle, Futaba's expression shifts from shocked to frantically excited, and she sprints right at that familiar face and leaps right at her, flipping again into a running dropkick with the dumbest smile on her face. "Natsuki! It's yoooou!"
Natsuki Nuki	Arm to arm, Futaba grabs hold of the thick and fuzzy forearm of the gorilla-wide and tiger-furred chimera's grip, and Natsuki's disbelief-wide eyes leave an instinctive softening at the tips of her claws, and her discarding throw leaves her stunned on followup for a few moments. Rain falls, pattering across lifting and falling chest, down white hair, channeled elegantly in sheets down the lingering shock the chimera-woman experiences. Natsuki experiences, but not the strangely wicked tail coiling off the base of her spine. Gore-slick and dripping with dark gleep goop and rain equally, the mandibled-stinger end-mouth opens, blooms as a flesh flower of muscular petals and gleaming fangs and eyes on the inside, widening irregularly within the splitting-apart length. It hisses, rattles, shakes as a rainstick of displeased hate. Crackling down the fangs a jumping spark pilot lights a further emission, directed as a thunderbolt to chase the diving-back Futaba with a chase of contiguous-leaping electricity. But she charges, and Natsuki widens her stance to receive Futaba straight on, open palms coming together to grip the dropkick and slam the potentially shocked tanuki back onto the corpse behind her! "You're supposed to be HOME!" Shouts the confused chimera, tail whipping about and shutting back to serpentine as she turns. "Sitting on your soft butt! Takeshi swore you were being a perfect little princess for the old man!"
Futaba Nuki	Unlike Natsuki, Futaba's still mostly embracing her humanoid form. Her face markings and tail are unmistakeably tanuki-esque, of course, but it's a far cry from the more beastly form that Natsuki's in at this moment. Even that vibrant orange hair might be something of a shock, but there's a lot to be shocked about at this moment with so many questions starting to fire off in Futaba's head. Unlike Natsuki, Futaba's looking ecstatic about what's going on. Getting caught and slammed into a corpse does bring her back to reality a little bit, of course, but she still can't help but be excited at what's happening. "It's been.. Like... How long? Too long. Way too long!" Still lying face down on the other side of her chimeric sister and neck deep in deflated frog guts, Futaba lets out just a little grimace as she pushes her head out of it to look back. With just a bit of subtle transforming, she does a complet 180 with just her head, then the rest of her body exactly two seconds later to really emphasize the comedic timing or whatever it is she's trying to do. "I was home earlier! Today, even!" As she explains herself, the serpentine tail grabs her attention, and Futaba responds in kind by turning her legs into a long, snake-like tail that stretches out to try and grab onto Natsuki's like earphone wires inside a cluttered pocket. Rather than trying to out-force Natsuki, Futaba's pulling herself in with her tail to start trying to bind her up with a multitude of octopus limbs straining to even wrap around those gorilla-like arms. "And I'll have you know my butt's anythin' but soft!" Futaba boasts with a quick smack and snicker, then squints when she starts to realize something. "Perfect princess? Maybe not the way dad likes it, but Takeshi probably told ya how good I've been." She laughs cheerfully, apparently not knowing shit. "Anyway. Aren't you supposed to be in school? Or.. Wait. No, university, yeah? You look..." She pauses in mid-slither, trying to actually get a better look at Natsuki from close up and slithering around all the while. "Whoa... Even I ain't brave enough to pull that off yet... When'd you get back? Is it a surprise? Should I not be tellin' all the folks back home?"
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki's chimeric form, most divergent from Futaba's, features a particular feature -- or, a particular lack. Despite the apparent heavy twist of her form into a monstrous amalgam, there's no single-dot leaf atop her head, no 'I'm shapeshifted!' cutesy mischief-marker. Instead, the darker brown of the tanuki tones and her dark eye-mask are what remains of her original shape, and her mid-length white hair carries the fresher stylings of city fashion for all the monstrosity of her arched legs and broad arms and hissing-sparking tail. It's the same face, the same nose, but the eyes are the wrong color, the wrong shape. A yokai that growls in disbelief with Futaba's sister's voice. "Precious little princess, the old man's special miracle girl, and you think..." Natsuki steams, trembling-tensed with ripples of emotion that run down jaw from neck to foot, and then a shift of weight lets her spring forward in a pounce, claws out and pointed to rip Futaba apart as she comes up out of the corpse and slowed by disbelief. The rain-displacing lunge stretches out Natsuki, leading with snarl-wide sharp teeth and the extension of her arms, and Futaba's quick adjustment shoves the nest of twisting octopus-tentacles up into the falling claws. Constricting around the wet bullet of muscle and mass, Natsuki is given the oddest welcome back hug from a completely baffling encounter with her estranged sister, and thrashes as tail and legs are wrapped by Futaba's rope-leaning resistance (and over-tangling foolishness). Natsuki threatens to come apart at a hundred seams and is squeezed back into shape by Futaba's slippery-slithery coils, causing her to howl out in frustration. Like an older sibling losing the shoot on a single wrestling moment, her petulance peaks as demon-slit pupils stare into glittering-wonder filled eyes. "--that hugging it out is going to fix it?!" The dark-storming sky which pours rain onto the deflated frog and the pair of siblings rumbles again, but the flash comes from within the hold, an electrifying transmutation to pure energy for a brief moment that might be quite shocking -- before Natsuki-the-thunderbolt bounces and arcs backwards in calamitous current and leaps to the high point of the shattered kaiju-frog armor to crouch in a deep knee bend, gargoyling with right arm up and claws readied, and left arm gripping tight to the armor beneath curled feet. "It's been four years, little sister! Four years, and I can still smell that bastard old man's house on you. He never told you?" She turns her eyes away, looking out into the trees, while across her stripes black and red eyes seam open and shut with her breathing and slow tension flexes. "That little shit Takeshi didn't tell you either. I'm going to wring his smug little neck for this." Natsuki growls, low in her throat, utterly unamused. Back on Futaba as she moves closer, Natsuki's red eyes stare wide, wild, a hyoo-hyoo of a deeply sick laugh caught as a bird in her lamenting throat. "It wasn't about bravery. And the old man already knows - he's the one who didn't like me coming home the way I did!" From her back, a growing brace of chitinous spines grow out and joint themselves, narrow and spindly-sharp. Arachnid force from the needlepoint legs throw Natsuki from her vantage, this time the bigger sister's large paws landing to seize and claw in on Futaba's shoulders while her evil tail's ending-jaws snap down on the sister's long tail or whatever her legs become in the moment. About and around, like a cage of chitin, her eight extra legs land in points piercing through the frog's flesh, and the whole corpse erodes and deflates further under both their weights and a disappearing mass.
Futaba Nuki	The closer Futaba looks, the more she realizes that a lot of things are different about Natsuki. What happened to her eyes? What happened to her face? Why does she seem so much angrier now? That earlier joy she had felt upon seeing Natsuki again after so long steadily gives way to confusion and worry as Natsuki speaks to her in that still-familiar voice while sounding utterly unlike her memories. "Hu...? Oh. I thought we were... Y'know, wrestling, but with our own styles since way back when!" Futaba still manages a laugh at that, but it's considerably less natural than how she sounded just a minute ago when she clearly thought this was all a welcome-home game to ease them both back into getting used to each other's presence again. Natsuki's jolt backwards goes uncontested, as Futaba barely even gives chase. Instead, she steps forward with anxious deliberateness, just trying to first comprehend the source of Natsuki's anger. "That bas...? Who never told...?" Her hand comes up to rub at the side of her head, shaking it a moment later and glancing back in the direction of their.. Or at least her home, from the sounds of this. "What was Takeshi telling you?" She pauses, trying to come up with who else Natsuki could possibly be talking about and drawing a blank. "If dad knew you were comin' back today... Why didn't he tell anyone else? What was wrong with the way you came back?" Futaba's tone isn't accusatory, as one might expect if she was talking to someone else and defending Natsuki. Instead, she's simply clueless about it all, only able to gather together the notion that something happened between them. "Is that why you didn't come back after school? Wh-" All those questions are far more important to Futaba than even her own safety, as she's caught flat-footed when Natsuki finally unleashes those spidery legs all towards her. Although her flexibility with these octopus-like limbs keeps her from getting pierced right through the chest, there's little room and time to get out of the way before Natsuki snatches her arms, tail, and multitude of legs right up in her own. She howls out painfully at the clear imbalance in power, too, as she can't quite break herself free with these spindly octo-limbs "Gnh..! N-Nats... Why'd you leave us? What happened between you and dad?!" It's the shock of actual pain that brings Futaba's attention back to the fact that this is closer to an actual fight. Despite that, however, there's still something clearly keeping her from trying to leverage her sword or any other weapons against Natsuki. Instead, those octopus-legs turn into gorilla arms not unlike Natsuki's own. In this case, though, it's all eight of them turning into gorilla arms, each one aimed at those spider legs to try and pin Natsuki in place with Futaba's own sort of multi-pronged force.
Natsuki Nuki	A kind, but tired face. A set of grey eyes that always seemed to hide a fresh wit, even if it was all foolish kid stuff in the end. The sister that had left for high school, and then 'University', and for some reason, dad never ever let Futaba know why Natsuki 'got to go' and she 'had to stay'. Ash in the mouth, tears in the rain. Things that now were not the same. A face contorted with pain and anger. And eyes, so many eyes, and none of them grey and kind. Red to a one, the eyes of hungry spirits and yokai. A monster wearing the skin of useful beasts, without the jester's motley of mischief. Futaba's noncomprehension does more damage than any strike or constriction. Neither sister, after a little practice, had to care about scrapes and bruises. Their harms had to burrow deeper to bite. --- "I'm going to the big city!" A grey-eyed Natsuki, years ago, had confided in her younger sister. "I've convinced mom and dad to let me go to school in Tokyo, seeing as," Her voice had dipped, an odd lingering, a bitter taste on her tongue, and she had forced back her smile. "Seeing as you're going to be looking after the temple, and the estates. So, remember to practice your prayers and charm-work!" Natsuki had patted Futaba on the shoulder, and then, fell into a two-armed hug. Chin past her younger sister's shoulder, Natsuki closed her eyes and willed herself not to cry. "A priestess has to know those things, so practice hard. I'll be back, okay?" She had squeezed, then, and for a moment, she wobbled between abandoning it all one last time. To herself - and her sister - she offered the same words: "I promise." --- "I didn't come back today!!" Howls the chimeric monster. "I CAME BACK A YEAR AGO!" 'What was wrong with the way you came back?' This nearly sends the Nue-Natsuki into a berserk frenzy on the spot, the lack of being understood - the years of boiled down and concentrated negativity over her own state simmered in bile and curses until it could only flow black out of wounds, cry from the eyes, leak from the scales of her tail. The cursed-tears that wetted her eyes with a second sort of rain didn't wash away - couldn't be, as the water was 'hers' too. "Dad and I got into a fight when I came home, when I had made something of myself. He wasn't happy, wasn't satisfied, and I wasn't good enough! I never was good enough for him -- not after you!!" Eight extra legs meet eight extra arms, and that leaves the sisters grappling claw to claw and palm to palm, struggling, fighting, matched palms and limbs braced and pushing, but it's the emotions that clash. --- The sisters matched each other once again, in the back yard of their estate, hidden away where their parents wouldn't bother them near the inner-wall lake. Takeshi floated in a tube and soaked up sun while the sisters wrestled, palm to palm. Natsuki had thrown Futaba - again, twisting about at the waist in a corkscrew of several bonelessly extra rotations and letting the coil tension out in an end-over-end with her legs as she resumed standing. "Good! You almost got me!" Smiled the tired older sister, and something about her expression wasn't happy at all with the development. At the same time, she was - bitter and pleased at once, a dark baking chocolate savoring. "Maybe there's something to that miracle child stuff mom and dad keep talking about..." Natsuki had murmured, and then didn't finish her thought. What was there left for her? In a few short years, would she be the one being thrown? In a few short years...
Natsuki Nuki	--- Tonight, the match is inconclusive. Stretching out her brace of arachnid limbs, Natsuki's chitin shifts to eel-slick tendrils and she shoves her pressing sister away. The fingers of the storm drop down again, dark clouds spilling around Natsuki like shrouding fog or black smoke, swirling about her and lifting her off the dessicated and flattened frog-corpse, no viscera or even meat left - a still-wet skin in the rain emptied out. On a platform of smokedark cloudstuff, Natsuki glares down. "Have you been practicing your charms, little sister? You'll need them, to take everything that was promised me. I've found what I deserve other places. Ask that slime brother of ours if you want to know." "His gang's been mine since I came back." The storm bursts with thunder one last time, a titanic crash that fills the whole of the forest with a brilliant flash of light, and when it clears... There is no cloud carrying Natsuki. There is no Natsuki. The rain, slowly, comes to a stop, but the dark clouds over Osaka don't clear.