6812/Hearts Of Glass: The Annealing
From Multiverse Crisis MUSH
| Hearts Of Glass: The Annealing | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 03 September 2019 |
| Location: | Mitakihara Town |
| Synopsis: | A tale about three friends who tried to cross the sea. Because the debt has not been paid. |
| Cast of Characters: | Lezard Valeth, Haguro, Staren, Sarracenia, Touta Konoe, 7002, 6895, Rean Schwarzer |
| Tinyplot: | Hearts of Glass |
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Mikage Orphanage is a small multiple-story building, tucked away in the shadow of two larger buildings. It's positioned so people can't see it or recognize it from the street, a little secret tucked back behind the convenience store that faces the traffic. The location is mostly self-contained, with a large fence around a worn-down playground. The pastel blue paint on the building is cracked and peeling, the location seeming to be just this side of maintained, as if out of obligation instead of any actual care.
This seems to be the site of the next Witch attack. Water seems to be leaking out around the doors, sounds of yelling and splashing within. The cause of the problem is obvious, the ghostly, glassy ephemera seeming to form a cylindrical wall around the entire building. Not only is it acting as an impediment to entry and exit, but it catches the water, keeping it contained as the level slowly and visibly rises.
HEARTS OF GLASS
CHAPTER 3: THE ANNEALING
Theme: https://youtu.be/FjG0ivBT4lQ
- Haguro has posed:
With the Witch appearances becoming so frequent, Haguro doesn't miss a beat when news of another one at an orphanage comes in. She's already finished eating, her turrets are all loaded, and she's also made sure to bring a few extra chain knives for grabbing onto things or tying people up.
Who needs tying up, she's not sure. Someone, maybe, or she could always use the extra mulligans for maneuvering once the place gets all weird and book-y.
Spotting the leaking door and that familiar sheen, the shipgirl sighs quietly as she doesn't try to just bust her way in for once. Instead, she steps up to the barrier and places her hand on it, trying something a little different!
"Hello? If you're in there, can you hear me?" It's worth a shot, at least. If the barrier tries drawing her in, she'll go along with it. If there's no response, though...
Then she'll resort to blasting it. No sense standing around forever if diplomacy doesn't work.
- Staren has posed:
Staren arrives as usual, but this time, he doesn't charge in to fight the witch.
That hasn't worked.
So this time, he stays outside. Hmm. Some way to neutralize the witch from outside would be nice, but it probably requires magical knowledge of their workings he doesn't have. He sets that plan aside for now, and tries something else: Cutting the barrier. Weaponsfire, beam swords, explosives... maybe SOMETHING will work if he concentrates enough energy in a small spot?
- Sarracenia has posed:
With the knowledge that Mikoto is always in danger thanks to the magical girl curse (Sarra doesn't know what else to call it), Sarracenia has been keeping her ears open for instances of Witches and Mikoto. Especially after the disturbing confession that Mikoto apparently tried to kill her own uncle. So, Sarracenia raced here when news reached her of another Witch appearance, and is now hovering above the bubble in the Dyna, her wooden VTOL.
With sounds of yelling and splashing, Sarracenia's eyes widen. "Are there still children inside?!" she exclaims. Children could be drowning! And unlike Haguro, Sarracenia isn't willing to wait. She sets her vehicle in hover, then pops the canopy open and starts tossing Bob-ombs against the barrier. The little bomb creatures explode against it, adding to the pressure already on the barrier thanks to others.
- Touta Konoe has posed:
The last few times Touta's been in Mitakihara, like those times he's come prepared to deal with Witches where ever they may end up showing up. The casual black attire he commonly wears along with the black taichi resting on his shoulder he's ready to deal with whatever magical phenomenon that's going on from these Witches. "Alright, so guess this is the place..."
Touta's been explained what's been going on with Mikoto regarding her past, the present, and now Touta just wants to make sure that Mikoto's future might be just a bit better. He's not sure what he can do but Mikoto's resolved herself to fight her own despair so he wants to support her in anyway he can. If that means dealing with Witches in a place regarding her past then he'll be here. If it means having her back in a bad situation, he'll be there. That's what friends are for right. Speaking of Mikoto, they probably arrive around the same time...That a coincidence? Maybe! The moment they can see the orphanage in sight though he feels the need to check up on her though, "Hey, you gonna be alright?"
He knows what she wants to do, what she plans to do, but even if you know something doesn't always mean you're in the right state of mind for it.
- Mikoto Shimizu (7002) has posed:
Mikoto sighs as she looks at the place. An orphanage...that sealed it, she couldn't ignore it anymore, they were specifically going after her past. Two might have just been a weird coincidence, but this seals it. The hate felt for her as well...
She shrugs towards Touta, already in her outfit and her blade laid flat over one shoulder. "Probably," She says, though not really believing it herself. This wasn't where she grew up...but it was an example of what she hates. That or a certain victim from her time growing up is here if she had to guess.
She takes a deep breath, and swings as hard as she can at the barrier, trying to break down the gate and step through into the Labyrinth. No more hesitation, no more fear...whatever is here, she'll deal with it. Afterward, she was going to have a talk with someone. These are too convenient.
If it is what she expects...then it is her fault. Her hand grips the sword righter.
- Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
Since Lilian settled on a not-quite-arrangement with Ganondorf last time, she's appeared to gather intel on this weird special Witch (and Witches in general) proper this time. She actually suited up, albeit hasn't bothered with any the trappings of mundane enforcement.
"I wonder what it is this time? Childhood bully? Aggressively apathetic caretaker? Abusive instructor?" she muses aloud. It's less condescending then it maybe should sound like, but for the most part, there is at least the outward presentation of business mode to her right now.
"You're late to the station. I already circumvented the barrier last time and found out all there is to know." she says to Staren and Sarracenia. "The realspace inside will be partially intact, but overgrown by the dimensional distortion like moss. It doesn't correctly displace its surroundings, but isolates and infects them. The breach divides fractally, but without a preset pattern. It's probable that the presence of multiple Witches is causing destructive interference in their Barrier formation, if it's still multiplying, and still Architect Encroachment class."
This time, Lilian does the exact opposite. She heads straight into the Barrier.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Haguro arrives. She is prepared and direct. There is nothing that stops her from approaching, though firing /through/ the Barrier might be a problem considering prior behavior. When she places her hand on it, she might note that it feels cold... and brittle. Much like the glass it resembles. A sensation that quickly spreads as the Barrier reaches out to engulf her and draw her in with a chorus of giggles that contrast wildly with the yelling and chaos inside the building. A moment later, Haguro is gone.
Sarracenia is new to the situation, but that doesn't keep her from acting. The possibility of children being inside is quite high from the loud sounds of pounding and splashing and yellin within the building. The Bob-Ombs thud against the Barrier, the first two blasting against it and causing a section to shatter like broken glass, but the fragments hang in the air, shining and twisting there as if in slow-motion. She might be able to dive inside and avoid touching the Barrier if she is careful, but who knows how long it will be breached?
Touta arrives as well, checking up on Mikoto. He is cautious, looking over the situation before he chooses to act unlike Sarracenia. The Barrier does not seem to react to his presence, continuing to present the inherent problems that such things always do.
Mikoto is facing the possibility of some unpleasant facts about this spate of Witch attacks at this point. They all seem to be related to her in some manner. Where did they come from? And why are they here? The third time is a pattern that continues to eat at the magical girl. It takes little to breach the Barrier. It /wants/ people to come inside the Labyrinth, apparently, welcoming Mikoto in with a flash of glass and light.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lilian shares her findings with the others as she arrives. She is quick to do so, making her observations known before diving into the Labyrinth with the others who wish to directly confront the Witch... or Witches? The nature still seems uncertain. What Lillian can immediately tell is whatever is going on, it's getting significantly stronger. This is obvious to her even at a casual glance. What secrets might remain may be answered when she enters a world of glass and light.
Staren remains outside, believing that his efforts are not coming to fruition. Whether they have been useless or not is an exercise for the observer to decide. Despair is always plentiful around a Witch, after all. Striking the Barrier with enough energy causes it to recoil, the hostile actions seeming to be capable of disrupting the Barrier in limited amounts. But this one seems significantly stronger than the first time... And even the second. It is more defined, more visible, more firm in the way it is warping space. Still, he can put a hole into it, and the water gushes out, spraying all over the area and spreading in widening puddles.
INSIDE THE LABYRINTH:
The wind is cool and fresh, a sea spray tang in the air as the world twists and folds in on itself. Light cracks and shatters into infinite prismatic shards of glass, forming the world in multichromatic shards. The world is flat, lacking in dimension as the world becomes a radiant pop-up book of stained silicates.
The source of the scent is obvious, jagged rolling waves of curled blue surrounding the arrivals in all directions as far as the eye can see, the setting sun rendered in gold and crimson to the left. Beneath their feet is a small ship, also forged of glass, cresting the waves with a billowing sail. A small cabin is to one side, the craft seemingly intended for perhaps shorter voyages than that this one has embarked upon.
Fish leap from the water in the distance, formed of angular impressions and razor-sharp shards. Shards that are all too apparent as fleets of fish leap from the roiling glassy waves and attempt to simply pierce themselves into the invaders!
- Haguro has posed:
"If there are children inside, we'll get them o-" As Haguro's replying to Sarracenia, she's in! Despite this being the third time through, it's still somewhat terrifying to just get yanked inside the Witch's domain. Thankfully, it's actually somewhat pleasant inside compared to the last few times, if still odd and even more oddly familiar. Peering down at the ship, Haguro gets on one knee to give it a few taps with her knuckle before looking towards the approaching fish. It's a lot of approaching fish, and she's not quite sure what to make of them as they leap from the boat to try and impale the whole lot of them.
"M... Miss Mikoto? Have you ever had any traumatic experiences with fish before?" She asks that completely seriously, bobbing and weaving as the fish ding up her armor and scratch up her uniform. In between moves, she snaps her fists forward to punch whichever ones she can out of the air while grasping at others to try and swing some fish at the others to thin their numbers. "Or fishermen, or ports...?"
- Mikoto Shimizu (7002) has posed:
Mikoto, not happy with the needling from Lillian focuses on the slash, putting that feeling into it to make it hit harder because that's...a thing, right? We'll just call that a thing. The barrier welcomes her, and she steps into it willingly. It appears she might have been right about all of this, and she sighs.
"So why are you even here? Is this just another power trip to you? Oh, the great Lillian, master of all magic bullshit, has deemed it worthy to grace us with her presence," Mikoto says, pretty much making it clear how she feels about the woman.
"Ano-Woah!" she says, as a fish jumps out of the water, and attempts to impale her. The blade comes in a swing, shattering the thing as she jumps back and gets into moving swiftly. "Well, that was fast. Alright..." she says, and swings the blade in a wide arch, aiming to try and utilize the strength of Haguro and her own skill in the blade to...
Create a strong force of wind so powerful it would hover over the water and attempt to split it, aiming to slash every fish that was in a single line in front of the swing.
- Sarracenia has posed:
Sarracenia is about to throw more bombs at different areas when the others start entering the barrier. She blinks, then hesitates only a moment before setting the Dyna in hover. She makes a very quick phone call before diving off of the VTOL and down into the barrier. She rides her huge hammer down straight through the breach she made with the Bob-ombs.
When she arrives on that ship in this glass shard sea, Sarracenia is in awe. All these sparkly things flying around, the artistic waves, the...flying glass shard fish trying to shred people?! Sarracenia apparently arrives just after the first wave of them have passed. "Right! Um...Architect Encroachment class...I think I still have that guide somewhere."
A few minutes after she dives into the barrier, a wooden airship some 100 feet long arrives, ready to collect and evacuate any survivors.
- Touta Konoe has posed:
Enters the Witch's barrier along with Mikoto without a fuss, even if he's being somewhat cautious he's not gonna leave the person he came here for hanging. As he looks around he can't help but speak up though, "Yeah, no doubt about it...Definitely a Witch's barrier. These places just really are way too...Surreal?"
Maybe that's not the best choice of words for a magical murder world but he's from the boonies, cut him some slack he even knows that word.
He arrives with the others finding himself at 'sea' with the rest. The smell of sea water fills his nose making it pretty obvious what this world is supposed to be. "Guess that explains all the water though... Though they hadn't even been attacked yet and it looks like this boat's getting rocked. Mikoto starts going at Lilian's neck and while he knows there's beefing to be had he feels the need to step in so he gets to Mikoto's shoulder trying to whisper to her, "Hey, I know she's been giving you trouble but she's not the one we're here to deal with right?" He pulls his head from Mikoto to greet Lilian, they were cool right? "Lilian been a while has it -" That's when the sound of Mikoto blurting out 'Ano-Woah!' occurs, she dodges the swordfish quite elegantly...And in doing so Touta not seeing it coming ends up getting a fish to the gut.
Touta falls to the ground blood spilling across the glass deck, but it's already starting to recede back into his body as he picks himself up. Hooray for immortality. "Well, that worked out...I always did wanna go fishing!" With that the boy takes his own blade and starts following Mikoto's lead to filet every damn fish that comes flying his way from the water, though at the same time he's trying to spot anything that might look like a Witch on the water's surface. It has to be nearby right?
- Staren has posed:
It's not despair. Staren is confident the witch can be defeated, he's just not sure blasting it directly will work anymore. So he must search as another way. "It's not about knowing. There are people inside and the Witch is killing." He blows a hole, and water gushes out. That's... something? Who knows, maybe attacking the barrier will weaken the Witch in another way. So he keeps it up, trying to actually drain the water.
- Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
Lilian takes a short look around the interior of the barrier. She breathes in the salty air of glass. The translucent lines over the surface of her suit whine faintly, and drops of white light pulse up towards the neck, mirroring where energy flows beneath the surface. Her eyes gain a slight, glittering glow. Her balance slips and then reorients itself like a top. She straightens up, adjusted, like vision to the dark.
"It's sort of pretty." she decides to herself. "Where's the Witch though?"
She glances once, barely, to Mikoto, and doesn't rise to the barbs. She doesn't seem to even want to. "Because I said I'd exterminate it. Code ten: When thou speak with thy authority, thou shalt not rescind it without judgement; it is borne through or made impossible."
This time, she draws her own sword. The sound of generic steel scraping the neck of its scabbard becomes a haunting ringing of glass, oddly fitting, yet jarring dissonantly with the theme of the Barrier. Rough black iron somehow polished to a glassy sheen of pewter exits the understated sheath, red light already running through countless etchings of curling vines and flowers, tapering to translucent glassy edges. Black fog trickles out of its holster like dry ice.
An intense, murderous aura pulses off of it, like a palpable, shuddering wave.
Lilian strikes out against the wave of glass fish, smashing them apart with looping ribbons of her streaking blade, swatting them down with one hand. As glass, they break into tiny pieces, embedding bits of shrapnel into the front of her suit, until she blows the rest away with an irritated wave of her hand and a sweeping blast of black-red fire, immolating the shoal.
Still looking around for something that could be called a Witch, she flips the bloodthirsty sword downward, utters "Come out." and thrusts it into the stained glass ground. Pitch black thorns erupt from the ground around it, spreading into the substrate of the Barrier, carving up its insides, piercing out through its skin. The hateful essence of the old blade, honed into its edges, burns and tears at the otherworldly fabric of the Other Realm in which the group finds themselves in, corroding it at the core.
- Rean Schwarzer has posed:
While everyone else is in the labyrinth, Rean's outside with Staren trying to make that hole in the barrier bigger. He hacks away at its edges until the hole is big enough to move through.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
This is a story of three friends who tried to cross the sea.
The Red Girl was called to a great place of learning where she would become a scholar.
The Copper Maiden was to meet her promised husband across the sea.
The Mistress of Gold wished to see the world with the remainder of her days, before returning home.
The three friends set sail on a great boat into the sunset, the waves crashing against them as the wind carried them farther and farther away from land. The great blue waves spread around them, a glittering canvas that welcomed them.
But not forever.
Haguro taps the boat. It seems to be sturdy enough albeit made of wood-colored and textured glass. It even returns a ringing sound as she raps upon it. However, Haguro is uniquely suited to this environment, as alien and twisted as it is... It is still the sea. And she strikes out the fish, shattering many of them as they get near her with her expert strikes. They certainly don't die like fish...
Mikoto seems to be distracted as she enters the Witch's den, and finds herself under assault. While she defends against the attacks, warding them off, her wind-strike seems to result in the fish parting before them, smoothly arcing around the line as the gleaming sea splits and cracks before her, flooding back in as tiny fragments fill the gap.
Sarracenia dives into the Barrier and lands on the ship with the others. A ship below, a ship above. The VTOL continues to hang in the sky for now, rendered stark and angular within the motif of the Labyrinth, ready to collect survivors... But there don't seem to be any inside the Labyrinth, the place designed in its own way to contain and create a level playing field out of the nature of the Witch involved in order to destroy her enemies.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Touta arrives, his description apt enough. Surreal is a good choice of words. Blood splashes from Touta, the glittering fluid tinkling across the deck and rolling along in fragmenting beads. Even that seems to not be immune from the influence... or perhaps it is especially appropriate, the vivid red decoration seeming to be particularly intense here. It takes more than that to destroy Touta, however, and he sets to work, slashing at the fish and working to cleave them into pieces... But when he tries to do so they seem to simply shift in the air, dodging in blatant violation of the principles of motion high or low, working to get in past his guard and harry the immortal swordsman.
The devastating attacks on the fish litter the surface of the ship with shattered, glittering remnants that crunch under one's step. But the onslaught doesn't stop yet, gleaming oceanic life beginning to crest the sides of the boat. Squid with writhing tentacles that pierce, barnacles that attempt to get underfoot, even dolphins that hurl themselves across the bow, seeking to collide with the invaders as they seek to crush or knock them aside.
In the distance, the disk of the sun slowly vanishes, a violet splash illuminating the fractured sky with its frozen rays, while from the east there is a distant crackling rumble, curved edges of a darkness rushing forward towards the ship...
And then there is a screeching noise when Lilian pierces into the boat, unleashing her enchanted bane-blade to begin striking out at the underpinnings of the environment. There is a discordant shriek in the air, the wind gusting stronger, darker as the clouds gather, crashing with intense jagged bright forks of lightning that spear downwards, blasting chunks of the ship apart and anyone around them. Meanwhile, something begins to something stutter and warp in the background of the Labyrinth...
BGM SHIFT: https://youtu.be/bXfHKEaDg4s
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
OUTSIDE THE LABYRINTH:
Staren continues to blast holes into the barrier. This prevents the house from continuing to flood further, at least, but it doesn't seem to be solving the core issue. He will probably want to either navigate inside the uncorrupted space at this point and attempt to stop the source of the water and/or remove the people inside, or drive off the Witch, which would remove the thing making the flooding potentially lethal. Something, however, seems to make the Barrier warp, shuddering and shifting unpredictably as it begins to creak audibly.
Rean moves in to help damage the Barrier how he can, supplementing Staren. Maybe one can act while the other tries to keep the hole open?
- Haguro has posed:
That's not how fish work. That's not how fish work at all! Alas, the weirdness is not striking Haguro quite as much as it did before, and she takes it all in stride as she approaches the edge of the boat. "If that water really is water, then..." She sees the creatures startying to attack their ride. She sees sees Lilian blasting apart the boat. Haguro takes a few nasty smacks to the face as more of those fish hurtle out of the water, swinging back at them while weighing her options.
"... Oh, why not." The cruiser braces both hands on the edge of the boat before flinging herself off of it at the creatures below. "Climb on board! Then we can tear that boat apart and see if it draws the Witch out!" She shouts before glimmering with a confusing light, her body warping and glowing until a warship appears where she had been moments earlier.
Said warship promptly drops downwards, crashing into the water and poised to crush several of those sea creatures underneath. It's not going to help her evade anything coming at or below her, but she can worry about personal safety later.
For now, providing cover and stable footing for her allies is the priority. Also, that strange warping in the background and in the clouds. Haguro's turrets aim upwards, and she fires an explosive shell into the cloudy sky to see just how far this Witch's Barrier truly reaches.
- Mikoto Shimizu (7002) has posed:
"To answer your question.." she says, looking around, "We're in it." She says, with a focused tone. "The small fries are familiars, they eventually can bud off and become their own witch, but until they are just here being stupid minions."
Tentacles come over the side, and Mikoto just thinks about how that's just in bad taste. Dismissing the internal joke and grim humor in the face of shit hitting the fan, she looks, noticing the oncoming waves. That was probably the core.
"The witches in their barriers that we fight are kinda there core. But while in their barrier, it's their world that applies. Oh, and these apparently can narrate? That's not normal."
One of the tentacles sweeps towards Mikoto, and she uses the sword to brace herself, as the shards shatter on the blade slicing at her exposed skin. Frowning, she dashes back from the strike, giving herself some room as she thrusts the blade down below her.
From the water, as the magical symbols glow beneath her, her own water creatures are summoned. A giant squid appears, aiming to wrap around the other sea monster, while sharks move around her to eat fish. The Phantasmal Animals aim to try and counter the Familiar Animals.
- Staren has posed:
Water. Doesn't Sarracenia have powerups for that? Staren flies up to the ship, grabs a couple, and flies back down. "Well... here we go." He activates the suit, a frog costume covering his armor and making it hard to move other than hopping on land. It looks ridiculous, but they have lives to save. He dives into one of the gushing spouts of water and swims upstream! Planning to hand out suits to the kids and deploy some kind of structure to guide the water's flow and create a safe space, if he can.
- Rean Schwarzer has posed:
The water's not stopping, so someone needed to jump in there and shut it off. "...Guess it's time to put Instructor Neidhardt's extreme swimming lessons to good use." REan mutters. Granted, the water was pouring out fast, so it was possible that not even THE MANWAY METHOD would make him strong enough to swim against that current.
Then Sarrencia suggests one of her powerup suits might help with the situation. Rean runs over to Sarrencia's airship and starts waving at the Piranha Plants aboard. The plants look at each other for a moment and then throw down another suit after Staren flies up to grab some of his won. After its on and secure and he's not falling over because whoa suddenly hopping, he jumps into the water after Staren. His priority is the source of the flooding, wherever it may be.
- Sarracenia has posed:
Lightning strikes and sealife assaults them from all sides! And that blackness is coming toward them! Sarracenia is getting flashbacks to another battle...and this time Doctor Strange isn't here to make a pocket dimension for them. She leaps aboard Haguro as soon as possible. Well, get's blasted aboard is more accurate, as one of those lightning strikes explodes right behind her. She avoids a direct hit, but is still sent sprawling across Haguro's deck.
She gets back to her feet quickly, looking a little freaked out. Is this world going to disintegrate like Denmark did? Will they be killed if it does? But, worrying about that has to wait as squid and dolphins and barnacles assault them. How are barnacles even moving?! Sarra seems to stomp on the little creatures on purpose at first. They are icky! But of course that is a bad idea since they are made of sharp glass, and after cutting her foot she yelps and focuses on those larger creatures. One dolphin leaps at her, and she swings that massive hammer. Like a designated hitter she smashes it, aiming to send it crashing into the giant evil glass squid. "What do we do, Mikoto?! How do we find the Witch in all of this?!" She isn't panicking. Not at all.
- Touta Konoe has posed:
"Nnnngh! Come on!" It seems Touta really isn't cut out for fishing...That didn't intend to be a pun but it is now. His strikes can't seem to hit the mark as the irregular movement of the fish mess with him. Thankfully, it seems the others are havin a bit more luck than he is with dealing with them, or with the barrier itself.
Sadly, he's messed with Witch Barrier's enough to know when you poke at something you shouldn't you get poked back. That ends up being the case with Lilian as the additional sea creatures arrive to rock the boat. Then there's the screaming from...Everywhere. "Hey Lil, I think you made it mad...Nice job!"
And then it calls down the thunder, Touta's lucky to avoid being electrocuted. He might be immortal but he doesn't want to get shocked if he doesn't have to. Dying hurts ya know.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like his blade's gonna get much done to mess with this Witch, "If only I had something to...Ah!" He looks back up at the clouds with an idea. Touta digs out his hula-hoop and starts getting Revolution ready. "Alright, come on...Hit me, hit me, hit me..." He waits patiently for another blast of lightning with an arm raised towards the sky. After a bit of waiting one bolt of lightning comes at him like he's a lightning rod! And in that same moment that lightning gets sucked into that boy's palm. "Yes! Got it!"
Touta grabbing what he needs spots Haguro's boat, "Nice trick, Haguro!" Without missing a beat he jumps over making sure he's still keeping his hoop circulating. Once he lands he takes a look at the boat they had just been on making sure everyone's evacuated the ship before he releasing that captured lightning he had been shot with back at the boat. "Have a test of your own medicine!" He aims his fist at the glass ship and from that fist the same lightning that had been trying to distribute divine punishment upon him gets blasted at the ship's hull.
- Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
"That's right." Lilian breathes out more than she 'says', the air fogging up from her lips with the exhalation. Dark patterns creep across her fair skin, reaching as far as the edges of her face. The whine of magic augmentation rises steadily for several seconds, fading and then rising again, until it pulses steadily like a heartbeat. "That's what I thought. You don't get to have it your way either." She wrenches the sword from the deck again, flipping the blade around upright with a short little thrown spin.
The clouds gather. The wind howls. The gorgeous little fairytale world, midway through its pastiche of storybook moments, recoils in pain and displeasure. She feels as if the storm is looming over her specifically, glowering at her in stern, angry frustration at the interruption. 'Get on with it', she thinks at the oncoming storm. 'I'm not interested', as if it'd somehow hear her.
The lightning crashes down. Smiting bolts from on high rendered in magic and glass, thrown down in blanket vengeance to blast the hell out of the ship and the distracting interruptions on it. Lilian holds that exhalation --the state of empty breath and slowed heartbeat-- and she-
-----[stop]----------[start]----- flickers
-----[stop]----------[start]----- over and over
-----[stop]----------[start]----- between bolt
-----[stop]----------[start]----- after bolt,
-----[stop]----------[start]----- with the lightest of steps
-----[stop]----------[start]----- whirling to and fro,
-----[stop]----------[start]----- practically dancing through the storm.
Pirouetting to the bow, she hacks one-two-three through tentacles along the way, sword flashing left-right-left, then back around for a fourth, hop to the figurhead and five-six lopped off at the tips. She leaps to Haguro, bouncing off her toes at the highest point, and then her sword ignites a streaking arc of bloodred light.
She whirls it rapidly back and forth around her, cutting deep, slashing gouges into the glass around her. She is soon surrounded by surreal, hovering black 'wounds', fixed in space like tears in a page. She keeps moving as she goes, hacking a trail through the glass pastiche like a thicket of unwanted jungle vines.
"Come on come on~ The Witch is supposed to be the core of the Barrier, right? You're going to have to deal with it sometime. Come out and let me get a good look at that pretty little face. If you don't, I'll keep ripping it up until there's nothing left. Are you really fine with that?"
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
During the night, Gold look-- thered. A terrible st#()# was apprOaCHing, and #!)KR###!JJJJJJJJJJJJ. Red criED out in DESPAIR as the -OR#JNAEEEN, tossing the ship about while C##OOOOOPPR#RRRR embraced her, trying to #J)# her in the FLASH of -3#@ LIGHTning.
"Are we going to die-DIEDIEDIEDDDDDDDDDIE?" asked Red.
"Everything will-N##E#VER(## be fine," said Copper. "Just hoLD ON. Gold-3j931 WHAT TO DO."
But Gold simply 39jr-0aksssssakkk2kk2n-ASHing waves, the rain-RAIN-RAIN-rain. "WE ARE GOING HOME."
Fish absolutely do not work like that. It is like a mockery of a familiar space ot Haguro, a twisted, corrupted environment where the rules that she knows so well no longer apply. However, Haguro gets the idea to make use of her own special powers, launching from the ship to become her own ship. The warship crashes down into the glassy water.... And feels the water scrape against her hull even as the water displaces with a massive rush. The act seems to put even more stress on the Barrier, creating a crackling creaking that resonates through the area, contrasting with the way the story playing in the back of the minds of those present seems to fracture and warp. The cannons aim high, and the explosive shell flies up, up.... and crashes into a false ceiling, high above them all. The impact shatters the storm-glass sky, leaving a hole through which flickering light leaks into the world through the encroaching darkness of an intense storm.
Mikoto strikes out while explaining what she understands, even while pointing out how this thing seems to differ. Things continue to grate with this thing, screeching against Mikoto's understanding like nails on a chalkboard. Even as she attempts to remain intact, the great squid she summons grabs onto the creatures, the multitude of limbs wrapping around and crushing them with crackling bursts of glass shattering.
Doctor Strange might have been an interesting addition to this party, but he's not here to help Sarracenia or anyone else at the moment. She brings out her hammer, and it turns out blunt trauma might be a good way to go in a world made of glass. She smashes into the dolphin, sending it crashing into a glass squid, blasting the pair right away into a scattering of mostly-harmless shards. After the barnacle it is probably very satisfying.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Touta, meanwhile, engages in a very odd method of making them take their own medicine. There is a crash of thunder as he acquires that blast of lightning, the mass pooling in his hand in a misshapen mass of molten, red-hot glass that crackles to the touch, as if something had somehow turned the lightning into putty... But it strikes back nonetheless, blasting into the air and crackling across the fake sky, creating a splayed spiderweb of cooling glass that hangs from the 'ceiling' to eye level on Haguro's deck. Maybe it didn't actually hurt the Familiars but it certainly might be useful somehow...
Lilian, meanwhile, can't shake the sense of something larger shifting, moving beneath the darkness, /watching/ her, the way something massive and langourous slowly turns to look at whatever just jabbed it in the big toe. She calles down the thunder, she flickers back and forth, dodging each strike with temporal perfection as she flaunts her mastery within the denizen that she is seeking to slay. It is graceful, impossible, intense, as she attempts to work on another level, cutting into the glass to try to find out what is behind the glittering collage... And something begins to answer.
The ship shatters under the constant pounding, the glass craft disintegrating under repeated hits and dumping the group into the ocean, at least those who have not had the presence of mind to leap onto Haguro beforehand. In the flashes of lightning amist the storm, one can see a light approaching, a glowing, almost hypnotic lantern... That rises up, cresting to reveal a massive maw lined with jade-colored spikes. The huge anglerfish barrels towards Haguro, attempting to take a bite out of it while three figures on its back are revealed. Each look the same, a white-masked figure with a bone-white china mask of a laughing girl. Each one seems to have a purple light that bobs behind that mask, shifting from eye to eye. There is no proper figure per say beneath, only the suggestion of one, only a colored, hooded cloak that drapes around the figure in an impression of a being. The only difference is the color: One is red, one is orange, one is yellow. While the Angler strikes for Haguro and those caught in the water, Red veers from the thing's back, sweeping in to interpose itself before Lilian's storybook massacre, lashing out with a sudden cleaving slash that unfolds from within the cloak to carve back at her and detestable blade.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
OUTSIDE THE LABYRINTH:
Staren gets his frog on. He dives into the water and swims throuygh the water, making his way quickly into the the building. It's not hard to get inside, the problem has always seemed to be the influence of the Barrier. Staren can feel the oppressive weight on the back of his mind as it attempts to influence him too, trying to worm its way into his optimism and begin dragging it down while he breaks the door down and begins getting the kids their own powerups.
Thankfully, it's not hard to do that either. The kids seem to be able to doggy paddle and his efforts seem to have prevented the water from getting high enough to reach the toaster on the kitchen counter. That might have been bad. Once the kids have their own frogsuit powerups, they go from panicking to laughing, even. It's a lot more fun to be flooded with water when you don't need to breathe, after all. Still, whatever your opinions on the sight, there's still more to do.
Rean continues to work to find the source of the flooding. It seems to be coming from upstairs. Rean gets treated to the sight of a door leaking and gushing fluid all over the place, the weathered thing seeming to be already ready to shatter. What does he do?
- Staren has posed:
Staren glances at the toaster, but what about the OUTLETS? "Alright everybody," he offers a friendly smile to the children who are now happily swimming around, "It's not safe here, you all need to get out, come along..." And he takes a computer-aided headcount to make sure they all get out, telling the oldest and most serious-acting to watch over the others outside until emergency services arrives. Rean may need his help dealing with the source.
- Haguro has posed:
Each person jumping on boar dHaguro gets... Well, they get good footing. Also, they get to see that each of Haguro's turrets are twisting all over the place, almost like they're twitching from that distorted noise ringing in the back of Haguro's mind.
Also, from all the scraping going on below her. Water's getting into places where it shouldn't be, but it's still manageable for the time being as the cruiser surges along, turning her side towards the oncoming beast as it chomps right into one side of the ship. Steel tears, more water gushes in from below deck, and some of the worse-positioned turrets even get bitten right in half as Haguro starts teetering slowly.
At least she didn't crash straight into it. "Gah... H-how's everyone doing? Take cover behind me if you need to!" Haguro's voice echoes throughout her deck even though there's no visible mouth to speak of, sounding somewhat muffled like her voice is coming through a shitty radio and speaker system.
In fact, it is coming through a shitty radio and speaker system. "And the sky... It's cracked. The voices are getting more distorted, too. K... Keep it up!" She shouts words of encouragement to her allies while her turrets facing the anglerfish turn towards it to start pelting it with all manner of solid shots. They're not explosives this time, but they still pack a punch with their sheer punching power and the distance between them! It's the best she can manage at such short range, especially if she wants to actually get that toothy beast off of her.
- Mikoto Shimizu (7002) has posed:
Mikoto's JUMPING ONTO HAGURO. AHHHHHHH!
Landing, in a roll, she looks up as...
"Oh shit!" she shouts as the TEETH come down. She swings the blade up to try and deflect the tooth away, but instead just sends it off course enough to get a nasty bruise along the arm. Flipping back to try and get some distance, she looks around. Where is that witch?
Closing her eyes, and sharpening her senses she reaches out...
There. She leaps from Haguro and onto the giant fish. The upper half of her face slightly shaded as she flips over the witch, and right onto the back of the wish. Her blade thrusts in, trying to impale it to the fish itself. She sighs, even as she does this act of ultra-violence...
"I'm sorry. This is my fault," Is whispered.
- Rean Schwarzer has posed:
There's an old wooden door uphere that's dripping with water. Behind it is PROBABLY the source, but this door is also likely serving as a dam keeping more water from spilling out into the house. "...Staren, is everyone out? THere's a door up here that I'm pretty sure is going to turn into a wall of water when I open it." Rean asks.
- Sarracenia has posed:
Sarracenia grins as her attack shatters a giant glass squid. Only for that grin to sink into a fearful frown as that -very- toothy fish attacks! Along with figures representing people from the story! Sarracenia blinks as she spots Mikoto heading up onto the fish, and she leaps to join her friend. Unfortunately, one of those sword-like teeth manages to catch her as she is passing by, slashing her side quite badly in a downward angle and causing the princess to cry out. Her blood no doubt crystalizes like Touta's did, but she continues he leap and run as she follows Mikoto.
She leaps once more as Mikoto goes for the impaling, and somersaults once before bringing her hammer down in a powerful downward attack right next to that sword. Or actually on that sword if she can. Either way, the impact is strong enough to produce a small shockwave. "How is this your fault?" she asks Mikoto, her voice a little more forceful than she was intending due to the heat of battle.
- Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
"There you are." Lilian utters to herself. It echoes. It still sounds like she hasn't breathed back in.
The Extinguisher pauses her assault on the fabric of the storybook, well recognizing the stutter in the tale for what it is. She turns back down the length of Haguro's deck and vaults to the highest point, leveling her blade towards the leviathan anglerfish rising from the depths, and from some later point in the story. She points it towards the Witches atop, moving it across their number, as if selecting one to pick off.
Red comes for her first, making the decision rather easy. The Witch is upon her immediately, bladed death springing from its cloak rather than the pictures of a story. Lilian lunges into the blade-
-----[stop]-----
Then, she reaches out, slaps her hand down on the flat, and vaults heels over head across it, rolling into Red's inner arc, too close for comfort. Guessing at the Witch's reaction speed, she conserves a few seconds by shaving off the end of the maneuver.
-----[start]-----
-and appears behind its reverse edge, so close to the Witch that it'd be distance for feeling her breathing on its skin if it had any. Her sword --the Night Mist-- is already in motion. In a blink, it seems like the glass has caught a beam of red light and refracted into a dizzying spray of rays through its countless angled fragments, but the rolling crackle of bursting air and the blurring of Lilian's arms makes it apparent as countless rapid fire slashes cleaving back and forth across through the Witch's space at every possible angle, until it looks like a laser bouncing around inside a prism. A palm thrust and following shockwave of fire follows it, center mass, aiming to blow away the Red component of the Witch into tiny shards.
She doesn't have anything to say to Haguro, despite using her as a platform, nor anything with which to condemn Mikoto. At the moment, she appears to be taking the situation relatively seriously. The sheer amount of malevolent-feeling magic and the force of the shockwaves coming out of her makes that obvious.
- Touta Konoe has posed:
"Tch..." That's all he can say when the 'lighting' turns into a heated glass in the palm of his hand. That was definitely not what he had expected, and while that web in the sky might be useful for something, he can't really think of how in such a situation when there's a signal light showing the incoming anglerfish approaching them. It attempts to take a bite out of Hakuno's ship and all of those aboard it. Mikoto deflects the jaded teeth with but a scratch, and Touta for the most part ends up the same way. He'll consider that lucky.
"Now I'd be really lucky if I could just find the wi- Mikoto?!"
Without a word, she leaps off Hakuno and towards the fish, she clearly knows something and so he does what he's intended to do since the beginning of this trip, follow Mikoto. As she leaps from Hakuno onto the fish he follows her and Sarra. As she goes to thrust her blade into the witch, Touta's blade follows suit. It's less about adding an extra slice to her attack for power at this point and more about making sure they hit this thing. After all, if it's anything like these damn fish....
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
the WAV!$J CRASH3
BroKEN
-33339jjhnnnnboifnabsbu938888sahattered-drowning
the beautiful waves opened beneath them and they saw a light
L I G H T
it 5h1MM3rs
Haguro, meanwhile, gets to enjoy the really unusual feeling of liquid glass knives sloshing about in her belowdecks. It's probably something she'll be glad to say that she'll never feel again. She blasts with her turrets into the sides and massive maw of the glassy anglerfish, blasting off chunks of it... Or would, if the Orange Witch did not suddenly bring up the waves to interpose it between them, using the shards to block the blasts and rob them of valuable momentum and impact. The fish sweeps around, the Yellow Witch giving the impression of gesturing as she seems to control the creature... And all the others about them.
Mikoto takes it directly to the Witches, the magical girl sensing the pair on the fish and the one gliding across the sea to savage Lilian itself. As Mikoto impales Yellow directly into the fish, it emits a grinding keening noise, the fish shuddering and lashing about as it attempts to hurl Mikoto off of the beast! If there is any sign that it understands what Mikoto is saying, she sure won't be seeing one.
Touta follows suit, leaping over and stabbing down into the Witch. The second blade cleaves deep, doubling the piercing into Yellow as they both impale it with deadly intent. The screeching only increases, pain curldling the glass about them as it writhes there.
When Sarracenia's blood leaves her body, it, too, crystallizes and shatters across the landscape, splattering and tinkling red across any surface and decorating it without care or cause to its nature. She leaps across, and follows Mikoto. The answer to her question will have to come from the magical girl, because there is none coming from the Witch. The hammer comes down, smashing into the two blades and forcing them both to shear deep into the giant angler. It is forced to rear back as Yellow literally tears itself off of the impaling blade, leaving a massive gash down its body. It quivers and twitches, emitting incoherent noises as it flies backwards, Orange following up with another wave of glass ocean in an attempt to wash them both off as the Anglerfish begins to disintegrate from the massive damage imparted.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Meanwhile, the battle between the Red and Lilian becomes an intense clash, dancing along the top of Haguro's ship-body as they twist and twirls with mutually impossible dexterity through the heights. Lilian again makes use of her temporal mastery to position herself perfectly. The blade rises, impeccably aimed to obliterate Red and put an end to this creature. The blade curves, sinking into the cloak-----[stop]-----
HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE
-----[start]-----
Red is gone. Red is there. Red's cloak is wrapping around her neck, lovingly cinching tight.
In the meantime, Sarracenia, Haguro, Touta, and Mikoto are more in danger from environmental effects than anything else at the moment. Yellow doesn't seem to have recovered enough, and the anglerfish is collapsing in on itself, Orange seems to lack much in the way of direct assault other than making the glass waves rise up and pound at them with jagged surf, attempting to grind the lot of them under the glass!
OUTSIDE THE LABYRINTH:
Staren finds that the outlets actually have those plastic plugs in the vast majority of them that keep kids from sticking things inside. This keeps things mostly water-sealed... Also, the fuses blew in most of the rest of the house, just not in the kitchen because all the plugs were mounted high on the walls. The kids, given direction by Staren, begin frogging along, the group swimming in what would probably be adorable if it were not ridiculously tragic and damaging on a greater scale. Rean is soon clear... But what will he see behind the door?
- Mikoto Shimizu (7002) has posed:
Mikoto looks up at Sarra, the face is one of someone who does not want to say what they are about to say, but has to anyway. However, right as things are about to come to a head, Mikoto is forced to hold onto the blade to keep herself on the fish for as long as she can. Eyes narrowing down at the witch.
She didn't think so.
Her strength augmented by Haguro is brought to bear as she swings the blade upwards, aiming to tear it out of the witch...just not out the same way it went in.
Her hand moved up, gripping the gun that was gifted to her by Lilly as she fires a few shots towards Yellow. This time, she activates the speed from SONIC, and uses the bullets as something to bounce off of. Finally aiming to get directly above her, and come down like a deadly ax, aiming to carve her way through the witch in one strike.
- Rean Schwarzer has posed:
Once the building is clear, Rean turns to the door. He reaches out to open it, but pauses. THere's PROBABLY a dead body behind it, someone Mikoto hated that drowned and then left the water on to kill everyone else in their Witch inflicted despair. Still, they needed to get this done. Tear the bandage off as it were. He opens the door.
- Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
Lilian's flash slashes rip through the Witch a hundred times, but then pass through only its Red cloak, tearing up its metaphorical afterimage rather than the being below it. The Witch is gone faster than blinking, just before the nigh-instantaneous barrage has had it, and its disappearance in the blast of fire. Lilian looks into the clearing explosion, tense and ready, and then recognizes something at the very last instant. Not recognizes. Feels.
The cloak appearing about her throat snaps shut around empty air. Lilain wheels forward through the air over it. Her movements are faster. The sword burns baleful red. The black designs have crept past her jaw and onto her cheeks. Her eyes have gone from green to a hazel-crimson.
"You think you're better than me?"
She shoots back down with a ring-shaped blast of blackness, buzzsawing the sword through the Witch that so hates it in that short distance, and then shooting forward at a sharp right angle to shoulder check into it and hurl it from Nagato's upper decks, point angled forward to run it through with the impact. The blade erupts with an explosive pulse of red-black fire from the crossguard upwards.
"All the hate you can dredge up --I guarantee you I've got more."
- Haguro has posed:
'Enjoy' is a word. It's not the word Haguro would ever think to describe that unique feeling belowdeck, but it's definitely a word. It's things like that wihch make her miss those days of simply being a ship and not having any sort of consciousness with which to know what liquid knives in her feel like.
Alas, this is not a dream, but reality. Reality sucks. Those noises ringing in the back of her head suck. All tose waves of knives washing into and over her suck. She can only provide so much cover for her allies on board when everything around her is knives, and she can't really do much mobility-wise when she's a giant ship with all the maneuvering issues involved with that.
If nothing else, though, she can at least keep that knifewater coming in only one direction for those on board rather than from every direction. Yet more steel and hull gets shorn away as the waves no longer have thaat giant fish to block them from washing over Haguro, and her turrets struggle to keep up with the trio of witches zipping all around.
"They're so fast... But they're breaking down. If we can just keep them still, then..." Easier said than done, of course, but something clicks. Instead of loading her guns with explosives, the sound of rattling chains comes from the turrets as they start reloading. "I'll try and pin them down. Give them everything you've got!" Although she doesn't say anything specifically to Lilian, the fact that her and Red's battle has been somewhat inconclusive isn't lost on the ship. Taking aim, the Cruiser fires off a multitude of harpoons in several directions, each one aimed at impaling the Witches or slowing them down.
- Touta Konoe has posed:
Everyone's strikes seem to put a nasty strike into the yellow fish witch. Enough where it's forced to detach from the Angler. Sarra's hammering of their blades puts the nail in the fish with the Angler having it disperse as well. That seems good at first till you realize that you'll be falling into jagged glass waves. If they landed in that it didn't really matter what would happen...Well he might be fine but he'd rather not see Mikoto and Sarra impaled to death. So there's only one thing he can do...
"Mikoto! Sarra! I'll make an opening!!! Side stick!!!" The boy shouts into the air, and his blade that had been shot into the angler fish from Sarra's attack flies back into his hands. "Five-Hundred Ton Drop!!!"
As of the moment all three of them had been falling at around the same velocity till Touta's blade increases it's own force of gravity and Touta goes plummetting ahead of them. Just as he makes contact with the ocean, he slams his blade into the water and as if he were Moses he splits the Witch's ocean in half where his blade slams into creating to large waves from where he striked. One becomes a tidal wave in the direction of the orange witch intending to ensnare her in her own waves.
- Sarracenia has posed:
Sarracenia's grin returns as she hammers those swords home, and even moreso as the team attack causes Yellow to flee before their might! Those waves come in as the giant angler starts to collapse, and Sarra's grin becomes nearly manic as she sees an opportunity. An opportunity that Touta seems to also see! "H-hey!"
Well, that saves Sarracenia from the incoming waves of glass! And she has to admit that Touta's method of parting those waves is pretty impressive! With her plan not really needed now, Sarra pulls out a leaf and in a puff of white smoke she has raccoon ears and a tail, which acts as a parachute to let her safely land on Haguro's deck once more. "Good job, Touta!" she calls out, then reaches into her purse...
And pulls out a missile pod! It is a bit more high tech than her usual gear, looking more like a modern weapon. She rests the oversized weapon over her shoulder like a normal rocket launcher and aims the six barrels in between Yellow and Orange. There are some beeps and blips that are unmistakeably target aquisition sounds, and her grin definitely becomes manic as she pulls the trigger.
"Better get back, Mikoto! I do not want to hit you again~" Sarracenia sing-songs as rockets start pouring out of the weapon with a staccato not far off from a machine gun, and plenty are spared for each target! A veritable storm of missiles heads for both, streaking and spiraling through the air and leaving dozens of jet trails behind. A few moments later a steady series of explosions erupts around each target.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
ARMs clOS#$- s0 WA@#)RM330 GLASS
GLASS FILLED WITH LIGHT
STOP
D0N6T TaK3 M#(*$ L16H7
Something seems to be horribly wrong as things begin to shake and collapse within the Labyrinth. Something has started some kind of collapse, something unintended, something outside of the Witch's capability to compensate for immediately. Haguro begins firing harpoons in all directions, filling the air with innnumerable blades in order to achieve through area denial and saturation what her cannons have not been able to accomplish with raw firepower.
Touta lashes out, leaping into action in order to prevent his allies from being slashed into pieces. So Touta simply splits the ocean. No big deal, right? He drops, blasting down into the ocean with incredible force as it shatters and heaves around him. The glass below him breaks, the coloration rapidly decending into an abyssal darkness as he plunges down, down, down... And the waves curve upwards. Moments before the Orange Witch attempts to dodge out of the way, Touta might see it getting riddled with the harpoon blades, before those waves come smashing upwards, shredding and grinding Orange with a taste of its own medicine.... Though oddly, there is a glimmer of something below him, a shining in the darkness...
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
Mikoto and Sarracenia team up to strike at Yellow, trying to finish the job. Mikoto makes her own plaforms, moving with incredible speed, perhaps the fastest thing alive as she blurs, leaping high into the air. Haguro's harpoons punch through Yellow, forcing it still as Sarracenia's rocket barrage slams into the Witch over and over again, air-juggling it while it remains impaled. There is another incoherent shriek of pain from the thing as it is repeatedly shot, Mikoto coming down to finish the cominbation with a potent vertical chop that splits the Witch in half, hanging there as the world seems to slow...
Red and Lilian continue to dance back and forth, the slashing blade that seems to flick from the thing moving with eye-defying speed to match Lilian's own enhanced maneuvers. If anything, the Witch seems to fight more and more like Lilian as time goes on... There is another stutter, but something crackles, the Witch's masked head suddenly reeling back as it something just detonated inside it. One of Haguro's harpoons punches through the Witch, holding it perfectly in place. Whatever meaning or response it might have had is lost as Lilian crashes into it head-on, shredding it in half vertically and dropping it right off the impaling chain. Red is hurled to Haguro's deck as the blade comes down for the finishing blow, the mask parting to reveal something behind...
In that moment, the world if bathes in light as /something/ peers in from the shattered hole in the sky.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
FLASH. Everything jolts, jerking and upheaving in on itself. Everything has gone stark gray, like a pall overlaid existence that sucks all color out of it... With the exception of the forms hanging above. Seven figures. To the left, the maimed and mangled Red, Orange and Yellow. To the right, the bashed and battered Blue, Indigo, and Violet. In the center hangs a seventh, larger than the others. It, too, wears a mask, but this one is immediately identifiable. It's Mikoto's face. A terrible pressure radiates outwards, voiceless words forming.
IT ENDS WHERE IT BEGAN. YOU TOOK HER FROM ME.
YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME.
IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU I WOULD BE HAPPY.
At that, everything vanishes, the glass world imploding in on itself and spitting the contents out onto the waterlogged environs as the Barrier vanishes. Haguro might want to change back. As the real world asserts itself once more, there is a lingering, singsong tone that hangs about the back of the mind:
And so it is said,
One to open wide the gate,
Two for vengeance's maw to sate,
Three drown all in a sea of hate,
The Seventh comes to seal your fate.
- Lezard Valeth has posed:
OUTSIDE THE LABYRINTH:
Rean opens the door. A massive gush of water floods into him, but that's expected. What isn't expected is the heavy thud that smashes into him, a mass of something clammy and sodden that entangles with him as the water carries him right back down the stairs and washes him out the front door.
That's about when some screams are heard as he has to come to terms with the fact that he's staring into the face of a blue-tinged, waterlogged corpse of an adult female.
When he gets that handled he can run back upstairs and stop the broken-open bathroom faucets through whatever means he sees fit. Possibly by shutting off the water valves to the room.
- Staren has posed:
Staren comes up to help Rean with whatever's behind the door and ends up washed down with Rean and a corpse.
Of course, his reaction to 'a fresh corpse' is more like how others react to seeing someone bleeding out. While Rean and the children are screaming, he applies medical nanites to try and prevent the body and especially the brain from rotting.
He wonders, briefly, surrounded by screams, if maybe something is wrong with him for not being shaken. Has he seen too many corpses?
No, the thought comes back. Screaming will not save any lives. Even if this woman turns out to be beyond saving, screaming does not make the situation better. The problem is with everyone else.
- Haguro has posed:
The harpoons hit their targets, and the Witches start falling one after the other. The sky opens, light fades, and there's six of them surrounding Mikoto. Her turrets twist, but everything feels off when the words hit Haguro's mind once more.
Even more questions. Before she can start asking a single on, however, the glass breaks, and Haguro feels herself falling. Her instincts are good this time around as she actually transforms back, landing headfirst on the ground in relative safely rather than landing on someone as a ship.
She doesn't get up right away. She's still listening to that odd song.
She doesn't understand what she's hearing yet. She can understand screams, though, and she hurries towards the source of it to (eventually) find Rean, Staren, and a corpse.
Just lovely. Haguro's quick to move, though trying to usher Rean and any lingering children out of the room. "Come on. We should get you all somewhere safe. Or... Not so wet?" She tries to smile reassuringly, but her effectiveness may be somewhat impaired at the moment.
Haguro's a little bloody from the glass world with chunks of broken metal and torn fabric everywhere. She's trying, though!
- Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
When the whole Barrier collapses, Lilian doesn't have a lot to do except rapidly adjust her balance, reconfiguring her enhanced senses back to something that handles the mundanity of Mitakihara outside. She stumbles, braces against the water crashing past her, straightens up, and then snaps the long blade back into its scabbard, where its seething, heavy aura finally fades, and the markings on her face retreat back to where they came. She inhales again.
"So, seven girls died so you could skip out and live a carefree life, huh?"
The theory was strong. Mikoto herself confirmed the result. "That's what it is. You already traded something away for power, and then tried to trade away what you took on for even more. Deals against deals; those things tangle together until you get trapped in them. I knew you weren't fit for this, but then are any of you? Picked up off the street at random. A tragic result is just to be expected. In this case, though, it's a tragic result for everyone but you. Double digit bodies. How does that feel?"
With a deep sense of freshly evoked confidence, Lilian says: "The sixth Code. Power bled for is power earned. Power bargained for is not."
Since everything else is seen to, Lilian leaves on that. She dials a number, and just as she finishes, disappears.
