Scene #1591: Curtains of Ink

Owner	Pose
Ainsley	-The City of Aztlan- -The Tunnels- Carved of an eerie black stone that seems to absorb all light, the walls are decorated with a strange, angular yet still distinctly mesoamerican aesthetic. The wide open pathway of the main tunnels brings to mind dwarves rather than Central American tribals, though, seemingly made by impossibly skilled craftsmanship, without anything approaching supporting pillars. The tunnels are stained with blood, especially down the stairwell that the party has walked down. The undead that were destroyed down here near the Plaza Chamber have been eradicated, however, letting the party see the area beyond, where they'll be gathering. -PLAZA- Like the heart of a great ant nest, the plaza connects all of the main tunnels and quite a few side tunnels to one room, acting as a sort of central marketplace. It hasn't been used as a marketplace since the disaster, however, and there's no signs that survivors still dwell here. The corpses are, however, all gone, the ones that had been strewn about having only left smudges like soot on the floor in the vague shape of bodies. Like they had spontaneously combusted. In the center of this chamber filled with stone benches, artwork and market stalls, there is a thick stone column that stretches up into the abyss of a ceiling above, like there is nothing but darkness that one might fall into above. On the column is a painting of sorts, of a feminine figure, a Quetzal woman, whose eyes are empty. She holds a book to her chest and a dagger in her off hand. Before her are kneeling figures in black, apparently other Quetzals. Running from the woman's empty eyes is water. It appears that she's crying. There is no sign of the blood or the paint from before, the piece of art being far less gruesome and more simply sad and perhaps a window into the history of the city. The water seems to glow like a blacklight, illuminating the room and casting up sparkling motes that float around. The fountain makes the room feel safe. Perhaps an extension of the magic that protects the city. Ainsley is here, staring at the fountain, which lacks all of the markings of the Filth that had tainted it before. She has a stoic look to her face, not particularly excited about being back to Aztlan and distracted by the painting itself and what it means. She seems to know, and she doesn't seem to approve. The party entered from the EASTERN TUNNEL. There are three other tunnels: NORTH, WEST, and SOUTH. There are also side passages that look like they might lead to other areas.
Wuyin Tsai	The black walls that don't seem to care for light are kind of annoying. Wuyin has taken steps to make sure their path in and out is marked, which is to say, he brought a bucket of off-white glow-in-the-dark paint and has been putting arrows on the floor so they don't have to fuck around with maps. It glows kind of green like those plastic dinosaurs everyone seemed to have when they were kids, where he's from anyway. "It's better without the literal nightmare fuel," Wuyin remarks, looking up at the crying painting-slash-fountain. He has the paintcan in one hand and the brush in the other. The arrows are crude but effective. They probably offend Riva every time she sees them. He looks to the other tunnels. "Any idea what might be down there?"
Emiya Shirou	"I'll second that about the nightmare fuel." States Emiya Shirou as he's strolling up towards Ainsley and Wuyin. He's wearing a jacket over his normal clothes, but the hood's down and he seems to be in a pretty good mood, never mind the crying statue. But he's been called here because there's trouble, so the young man's not really smiling. he almost never is. he smiles more with his eyes than his mouth anyways... "Yo, Ainsley! So... what's this about more trouble...?"
Riva Banari	Riva is, of course, here, and she's holding the sundial that they pulled out of the Kingsmouth Graveyard. Some application of Anima-based reforging shenanigans restored the broken device, but there was a small problem: No one really knows what it's for or what it's supposed to do. Therefore, Riva is holding onto it like some kind of adventure game luggage. As they reach the underground plaza, she approaches the column and hums for a moment, looking it over. "Huh." She says, observing the fountain-decoration for some time. "Crying for the past, or for the future?" She asks enigmatically to no one in particular. She reaches over and gives Ainsley a quick hug, and then looks around. "Okaaaaaaaay, so for our next trick we're going to try to find where to go next, right?" She looks over to Wuyin and purses her lips at his paintnanigans, but doesn't comment. She has no complaints about NOT GETTING LOST. She shrugs, and digs out the sundial. "Maybe this will tell us what's up? It had to be in the graveyard for a reason." Riva then dutifully starts waving it in various directions and at tunnel entrances to see if anything happens. the central fountain also gets a poke with the sundial.
Kotone Yamakawa	Even if she wasn't as weak as she used to be yet? This place terrifed her when she thought about it for too long. What had happened here and even how the wards powered the city left her uneasy. Some sort of horrific supernatural meme for lack of a better term for it had infested this place truing it into a living nightmare. She does see the Plaza seems to be clean but she's also on edge as she cradles her rifle in hand she moves a bit more confidently than she used to and she looks a bit more polished in how she looks for lack of a better term it seems she did go pretty hog wild on her new body from the looks of it. Shes also clad in a black body suit that isn't revealing which seems to webbing for holding various bits of gear. She comes up on Riva and looks at her for a moment and frowns a little bit until she moves to also try to hug Ainsley as well she seems to need one as well and Riva had the right idea. "Good to see all of you, and we really need to go somewhere sometime just to relax together."
Ainsley	Ainsley blinks in surprise when she's hugged, her expression lighting up when she looks at Riva. The tall feathered serpent woman smiles at Riva's gesture of friendliness, and reciprocates it, and also with Kotone. Then she simply watches as Riva goes about the meticulous task of figuring out where the hell they should go next. Ainsley turns her head and looks... down at the glow-in-the-dark arrows. She laughs lightly at the ingenuity, and shrugs at Wuyin, her mirth apparently easing some of her tension. It's only after this that she tells Riva, "That is the First Quetzal. The painting is an artistic perspective, in truth she does not feel anything. She acted on behalf of the Quetzal and did everything she could to teach and protect them, but ultimately she could not empathize with or love them, and that led to her founding the Grey Scholars when the schism formed between those who idolized her and those who wished to embrace their heart." She points at the kneeling figures. "Those are the Scholars. She's weeping because this isn't what she wanted. The story says she wanted to cry so badly that the magic stained this room and created the fountain." With that THOROUGHLY depressing fact given to them, she turns her head when she sees something distracting. The sundial lights up in the center light emitting a beam of sunlight when it touches the fountain, and dims when it's pulled away, like it resonated. And when it's brought to each tunnel entrance in the cardinal directions, it emits, instead, an eerie red glow that hurts the eyes. It's pretty much a compass, but whatever was done to it is making it react. North and South seem to glow red, but West glows Black, and pulsates slowly. "... Hmm. West, then?"
Ainsley	-WESTERN TUNNEL- Like the Eastern Tunnel, it is carved of a deep black stonework that seems to absorb light. However, as the party progresses down this path, they run into an obstacle along the way. Ahead of them is a solid wall of complete darkness that, if looked at from the right angle, seems to contain stars that no starmap would have catalogued, seeming to cut off the tunnel with the harrowing expanse of the infinite void. Creatures stand between the party and this expanse, and they are different than anything the party has encountered before. A writhing mass of twisted, rotting serpents made of angular shapes and possessing far too many eyes crawls on the walls, the ceiling and the floor. Their feathers slice into their own flesh, and they emit a constant breeze of decay that muddles the mind. They rattle and howl when the party approaches, but they don't attack, not immediately. Instead they seem to bar passage to two doorways, one on other side of the passage, parallel to eachother. The snakes seem to move in impossible ways, passing through eachother or floating through the air as if curling around invisible trees with jerking movements, and in some cases they display wings that flutter like crippled songbirds. Ainsley has halted at the back of the party, INCREDIBLY unnerved and not in a hurry to get near these things after the Tzitzimitl incident. She frowns at the curtain of black that bars passage to the rest of the tunnel, and instead looks to the doorways that are available to the party. The Sundial's glow has spread throughout the whole object. It now radiates a darkness for as long as it stays in the presence of these horrible sights.
Riva Banari	"Sure, Kotone. I see you've got your new body mods. How are they working out?" She asks the cyborg offhandedly. Ainsley's explanation gets a frown. "That's... Really depressing." Riva replies, waving the sundial around. When it glows pver the fountain, Riva ooooohs. "I love it when things work! I have /NO IDEA/ what this means!" She exclaims gleefully, but CHECKS EVERYTHING to be sure. When they get to the point where one of the tunnels glows black, she hums, "One of these things is not like the o-thers~..." She turns and waves to the others. "Come on guys, the Sundial senses EVIL! This is actually pretty cool o/~" AND SO THEY GO WEST, YOUNG ADVENTURERS. They proceed down the tunnel, only to run into something unpleasant. Riva pauses at the edge of the horrible mass, staring at it quietly for several seconds. Finally, she speaks: "You know, this is goddamn horrible. HEY WUYIN! DO THE FIRE THING!" She calls. "I think I can /feel/ my brain screaming at me right now. And what's that Godawful /stench/? Why can't we have gone to the land of Evil Clean Ponies And Rainbows?" She falls back, letting Wuyin get his Elementalism on. Because this definately falls within Riva's 'kill it with Fire' territory.
Emiya Shirou	The story was depressing to say the least. Enough to get Shirou making a hard, scrunched face at it. But that story's not the most important matter at hand... Figuring out just what's wrong with this place and what danger it holds to others is. He gives Kotone a low wave in greeting and Riva gets a warm look in turn! But then everyone goes West into the Awful Black West. Where they encounter more of those horrific creatures. "...Trace... ON!" With a grunt and a wild lightshow of dark and light prana sizzling from his palms, Shirou forges the twin legendary chinese shortswords from the flames of his soul and projects them into reality. KANSHOU and BAKUYA take form in his hands... But when nothing moves to attack he doesn't either... if anything he seems confused about what to do. Perhaps from the muddling, perhaps from the horror, perhaps from Ainsley's silence... "Should... we get rid of these... things?!"
Ainsley	"I don't know," Ainsley replies to Shirou, seeming as lost about what to do about this as anything, "Do the stabbing thing, Shirou, they seem to be in the way of a couple doors we can check." She motions to the doors that the snakes seem intent on blocking. "If they aren't killable, we can just check another tunnel."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa says nothing till afte rhte hugs are done she does think Ainsley seems a littile better now and she now shifts her mind to busines as she listens Ainsley as she seems to have quite a bit to say ont hings here. "A sad tale by all acocunts but iut does I think help to explain a few things." Kotone nods as they make ready to move west and she tries to not think about the storyt oo hard as they enter the western tunnel. She attmeps to not look at the horrible things for too long and she wonders how to get past? "I did Riva and not just mods, an whole new shell actually so far so good. I had to dial a few features down in every day situations. I was feeling the exact makup of fabric. I agree we need a lot more fire, and Wuyin is our man for such." She is wiating like Shirou for a yay or nay on gettting rid of them.
Wuyin Tsai	Wuyin, when they decide to Go West (Young Adventurers), sticks the paint into his inventory. It goes elsewhere (but not quite Elsewhere, it's way more livable). He peers down the corridor. Riva makes a request and Ainsley kinda-sorta seconds it. Without any further prompting, Wuyin touches the effigy on his belt, gesturing with his free hand down the corridor. There's a spark of Anima, and a rolling tide of flame pours into the passage and towards the snakes. It is rather indescriminate, but at least he does it in /front/ of everyone. 'Kill it with fire' is the default down here.
Emiya Shirou	"...alright... then.. TAKE THIS!" Redheaded wannabe heroes just gotta yell. Shirou hurls kanshou and Bakuya inexpertly, but they cut a wide swath through the room. The blades aren't exactly holy, but their ceremonial properties and pure construction ward off the impure world - they confer both some amount of magic resistance and cut deep into monster-flesh. Doubtless that will be handy here!
Ainsley	Fire rolls through the passage and slams into the mass of snakes. Thankfully, they don't react like the painting did when it was attacked, and there's a very clear impression that the attack is working. The sheer volume of snakes diminishes enough to suggest that keeping at it would work. Flinging swords into the mass helps to carve up the impossibly-shaped serpents that seem to dance around each other. However, when attacked, they do not just sit idle and let it happen. Instead, they congeal into one giant super serpent with a sudden rush of wind that threatens to bowl everyone off their feet, blasting them with the awful stink of a cesspit. Soon a coiled serpent with twisted wings is sliding down the tunnel in twitching, unreal movements that defy most momentum expectations, seeming to flap its broken wings to propel itself toward Wuyin in particular. Fire crackles along its body, but it hasn't completely combusted. Ainsley flings a bolt of lightning into its maw when the impossibly-large mouth cracks open as if to try and swallow the anima-wielding adventurer whole, which results in the creature briefly halting from the stun of its muscles locking up. However, it is still tremendous, and still trying to eat Wuyin's torso off his legs, much in the same way the Tzitzimitl tried to bite Ainsley's head off. Its mouth is full of stars. There seems to be a pattern in the monsters here.
Riva Banari	Riva stands to one side, tucking away the sundail as the rest of the group gets their alpha strikes on. "YEAH! YOU GO SHIROU AND WUYIN!" Riva yells as they attack. What she's not expecting is the manifestation of a huge snake of doom. Her eyes are wide as the massive maw opens and it tries to consume Wuyin. "My God, it's full of stars." Riva whispers... And then gets smashed to one side as she pancakes into the wall in the movement of the huge being. "OW! Okay, that's it! IT'S HAMMER TIME!" There is a rush of red-gold Anima as Riva brandishes the two-handed Ajoran cross-hammer that she's taken to wielding (It's heavy with mercy), and she launches herself bodily at the beast, attempting to jam the weapon into the mouth to keep it from biting down on Wuyin!
Wuyin Tsai	Well that worked out. Kind of. The horrible snake monster knocks Wuyin on his ass by way of /snake-fusion/. He performs a quick kip-up after a couple seconds on the ground, jumping back to his feet in front of the lunging snake-creature. It goes for the legs and nearly gets them, the Riva-interception keeping him from getting a big piece bitten out of him. Wu doesn't linger on the mouthful of stars; he's too close for that to be a good idea. Instead, he releases his effigy, extending his right hand as if he were holding a handgun. A hand crossbow, all in green, materializes in his hand. There's a 'click' as it fires nothing at all. A storm of phantom bolts spray downward from the top of the tunnel a second later.
Emiya Shirou	"H-hwagh!" The wind DOES bowl Shirou over before he has any idea what's going on. The teenaged magus goes tumbling end over end but eventually scrambles to his feet. Another flash of prana marks the birth of another weapon - a hastily-conjured-- Wait, the blade isn't in Shirou's hands? "We don't have time to be playing around with monsters!" The boy exclaims, waving a hand and pointing vehemently at the monstrous thing. A dozen lesser Noble Phantasms and other weapons hover in the air around him. They all follow his gesture, flying through the air like arrows and aiming to impale themselves in the creature's dark and aberrant flesh!
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa has thankfully got a load of incenerary rounds in her rifle given her previous experiances here. SO she raises it wiating for an open shot then starts firing controlled bursts into the horrible huge thing. Stars? She notices the stats and tries to give Riva more covering fire as she goes in with her hammer. "Back to the hell that spawned you creature!" She also moves to lay down some more fire to keep the creature busy and away from her friends.
Ainsley	The snake experiences what is, quite embarrassingly, a frequently-used adventurer tactic. A long object is used to trap its jaws open, which makes it unable to close its jaws for any reason. It thrashes, instead, from side to side, which might clip the party with its violent mass. It is a VERY big snake, and could crush bones with seemingly little effort. To make matters worse for the snake monster, the weapon Riva uses is absolutely immune to being devoured, and the longer it stays in there, the more the very touch of the blessed weapon sears its rotting flesh away and just makes it more and more unhappy. To retaliate, it turns toward Riva, blinking with about seven milky-white eyes that fixate on her with slitted, warped pupils. Which is stopped short by a storm of projectiles that pierece into its hide and slow it down. The fiery bullets that Kotone employs do a great job in shattering one of the creature's wings, making it move all the slower. Ainsley blasts wind magic at the creature, keeping it more contained and repelling it from her allies, though she can't really do much against this thing with that. The reason for that is that it responds to the attacks it receives with a loud and awful roar that threatens to launch the party backwards away from the snake, the rotting wind being the absolute worst thing they had ever smelled in these tunnels. It's quite clear that this corrupted creature is wind-themed, because it keeps the roar up for a solid ten seconds, which Ainsley is barely able to counter with her own magic, grimacing at the powerful stench which nearly dissolves her concentration.
Riva Banari	It's kind of about this time that Riva comes to the realization that this might not have been the best plan. Riva clings to the hammer, getting whipped around constantly like a doll as the massive snake flails around. "WAAAAAAGH! STOP! AGH! OW! WHUFF! STOOOOOP! THIS! IS! NOT! FUUN! STOPPPPPP!" And then it stops and opens seven eyes of Doom, looking down upon her in much the same way a serpent looks at a mouse. "Um. Hi." A Beat. "How about you just go back to that flailing thing? That was way better." She grimaces... And then the beast roars, Riva's Grip Meter being tested as sheis forced to hang horizontally in the stinking evil wind. She starts gagging intensively, clearly trying to not lose her lunch in the middle of the hallway during a fight. At the moment, it's all she can do to try to keep the hammer wedged in order to deprive the beast of its most potent (but not grossest) attack.
Emiya Shirou	"Hwrgh...!" Shirou has a strong stomach but this is beyond stinky and rotting. The stench catches him right as he's panting for breath after that strain and the timing is just awful. He doubles over, heaving and struggling to NOT empty his stomach on the ground. That wouldn't do anyone much good. The boy wobbles and almost topples. Waves of nausea hit him hard enough he seems like he might just black out for a moment but somehow he holds on and struggles upright. No doubt if this continues everyone's going to be incredibly ill or possibly poisoned... Light sparks and fizzles in his palms as he straightens up. It takes on a rainbow hue and expands into the form of an invisible mold made in his mind... the form of JOYEUSE, the Glorious Blade that Shines a Thousand Colors! "That's enough of that!" The young man leaps in and brings the weapon down with a crude slash, but though the slash is crude... It does indeed trail a thousand colors through the air, a wave of destructive light trailing both ahead and behind the swing!
Wuyin Tsai	Definitely Not Arrow Storm Technique seems to /kinda/ work; it puts on some damage but not enough to stop it. Wuyin backs off while Riva holds it at bay (read: gets turned into a hilarious chew toy), looking for a better opening. Fire kind of worked last time, so he might as well try it again. He draws up another ball of flame -- It roars. Wuyin drops flat to the ground, holding his breath and clinging to the stone ground. He slides backwards, trying to keep tight against the stonework, and only keeps himself from being flung away or barfing. Neither are good ends for him. When he feels the 'wind' finish blowing, Wuyin snaps his hand forward and upwards. A small, bright orb of fire gets flung out of his hand and at the thing's head... or, more specifically, into its mouth, where it will turn into a /substantial/ ball of heat and fire. 'Inferno' is an apt word.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa seems to have slowed the creature down and that's some majorly good news. She moves a lot faster than she used to and even then she was pretty fast before. She keeps firing shots hoping to keep Riva and anyone else up close somewhat guarded with her fire. Then comes the horrible wind and een as a cybrog she can smell it and it's wrong, it's suck and wrong. It smells somehow worse than death. Carrion would be nice in compariosn but thankfully she doesn't have a lunch to lose but it does effect her aim a bit. While her body is machine? HEr brain is sitll there and she fights her old gag reflex.
Ainsley	Riva will have to hold on a little while longer, because it just doesn't seem to be dying very fast. When the creature keeps thrashing and slamming about to try and dislodge her after the roar, it makes rattling howls that stink up the place even further. It is very unhappy with the disadvantage it has right now... it seems Riva's quick thinking very easily turned the tide in the party's favor, even if she's regretting that right now. This leaves the snake open to being struck with a holy sword that shines shimmering light. The cut itself is shallow, but the shockwave of rainbows itself blasts pale scales and grey flesh off of the thing, spattering rotten blood all over the tunnel walls. The orb of fire is flung past Riva and her war hammer, which is very easy to do because the snake cannot close its mouth. The fire seems to burn away the awful black expanse within, and when the fire expands, Wuyin can see tongues of flame shoot out of the rotten holes along the snake's body as the spell cooks it from the inside out. This is enough to completely combust the creature, but it doesn't go down immediately, giving a few death thrashes to try and crush Riva between its burning bulk and every available stony surface in the tunnel. As it burns, it howls actual WORDS at them, and its words are piercing yet simultaneously empty: THE WIND WILL NEVER REACH THE SIXTH AGE Kotone's gunfire slams into its crumbling face, and the snake recoils backward... and collapses, twitching as it begins to dissolve into ash, its death freeing the tunnel and leaving only that ominous curtain of darkness... and the two stone doors that it was guarding. NORTH DOOR: A stone door with 'LIBRARY' written above it in big Spanish block letters. It has a huge metallic combination lock on it made of four concentric circles, each having identical symbols seemingly representing the four classical elements: Fire, water, wind and earth. One might intuit that the door can be opened by finding the right combination, and pressing the button in the center. SOUTH DOOR: This door is labelled 'STUDY HALL,' and it is most certainly not locked, apparently operated with a pair of large bronze handles to slide the two panels into the wall frame. It seems to have angular artwork etched into the door of surprisingly modern Quetzals sitting at desks and listening to teachers, as well as casting lightning from their hands and other quite direct symbolism.
Emiya Shirou	"Whoah!" Shirou's style might be unrefined and basic, but he at least has one. he leaps back the moment Wuyin's fire starts blasting everywhere and manages to get away with only a few singes. Most of it's caused by the strange rotten body reacting oddly to the flame and his own efforts. It's the words that have him the most harmed though - and by that, he's disoriented and vulnerable. Those were words? Whatever they were, he's confounded by the message. "what...?" Thankfully that's the end of it. And Shirou can scramble into a corner away from the horrible stench and get some proper air. "Let's never run into that thing again." However they could... who knows. he's not thinking too straight right now. But after getting a good look around he spots two doors. One locked, one not... and gestures at the unlocked onee. "Easier path first? Anywhere to get out of this reek for a minute would be great."
Riva Banari	Riva is full of regret. SO MUCH REGRET. Since she lacks leverage and the ability to counter the serpent's moves, she is unable to do much about its thrashing except try to not get crushed. The first impact causes some unpleasant crunching noises, and it's about at this time that Riva is flung away, skidding and tumbling to lie there on the ground. She's not mov- "Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh." No, wait, she's alive. "That was the /dumbest idea everrrrr/." She doesn't seem intent to move much at the momrnt, instead lying there and praying she starts healing soon because getting crushed /sucks/. "I think I broke bones I didn't even know I had." Whine, whine, whine.
Wuyin Tsai	Wuyin ACTIVE DODGES backwards when the death throes start to happen. He does a friggin' standing backflip, clearing out of its immediate reach in a singularly acrobatic motion. As a result, he does /not/ get crushed or burned, and only smells kinda bad. The fire cleanses some of that. Some. Wu dusts ash from his shoulders and looks to the doors. He goes over to the combination lock and, not having experienced the poisonous hell that was the Illuminati tunnels, fucks with the lock. He puts the wind symbol at the top and earth at the bottom, and the fire on the left and water on the right. Then, he pushes the button. Boop.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa wonders in the back of her mind, if her life as it is? Is the result of asking too many questions. It's too late now as she's full out in on a lot of things. She's not sure what she's changing into but she does know she's changing into. She can't worry about that now. What she needs to worry about however is the horror which might not be down yet. Okay it's dead she lowers her weapon now and moves to put a fresh clip in at this point, just to be safe. Once the exchange is done she'll look at the doors wondering now, which way to go. "Riva... do you need medical aid?" She knows they can regenerate but not how fast from non fatal injuries and she's clearly concenred for her friend. She ius however also keeoing alert while Wuyin goes to check things out. "Ainsley? Shirou? Also your right we got very lucky..."
Ainsley	Ainsley is catching her breath back there, and uses this opportunity to wash the tunnel of stink with some wind magic, blowing it out into the plaza chamber that they came from. Her eyes are closed as she does this, mouth drooped into a great big frown. It takes a minute or two. She voices no opinion one way or another about where they should go next, and instead turns her attention to the doors with some curiosity. She steps up to the combination lock, her brow furrowed at it. Wuyin comes over to mess with the lock, so Ains leaves him to it, instead stepping over to loom over Riva and smile down at her, not unsettled by her crushed state. "Ahh. You did fine," she assures the whining half-crushed adventurer. "You kept it from eating us. It could have gobbled any of us up in one bite. That was very smart." Wuyin makes attempt at the puzzle. He quickly finds that he doesn't know the combination just by hazarding a guess, and when he presses the button, an absurdly lethal amount of electricity leaps from the button and into his hand all at once, likely to blow the man out of his shoes and into the opposite door, which would, almost comically, blow the door wide open and send papers flying out of the Study Hall from the force of the blast. The stone doors have crumbled surprisingly easily. Ainsley looks up, wide-eyed, at what just happened, her mouth agape.
Wuyin Tsai	Boop. BzzZZAP!! WHOOSH. KA-WHAM. Wuyin ends up in a heap inside the study hall in what was either a low shelf or a pile of now-destroyed furniture against the far wall. His shoes are still in the hall. It is safe to say he is not moving.
Emiya Shirou	"You did great, Riva." Shirou reassures the hyperactive heroine. or tries to, anyways! She doesn't look too bad off to him. He's just saying that when Wuyin goes FLYING through the air while a sizzling noise assaults his ears - "WUYIN?!" Like the idiot hero he is, Shirou just goes charging after the scorched chinese guy! Right through the door... Predictable.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa looks to be a bit calmer now as she sees there's a puzzel but she's pretty sure Wuyin's got it right? She then watches as the trap flat out kills Wuyin, she panicks for a moment before she thinks Wuyin will get better she looks to Ainsley and then to Shirou shaking her head a bit. "I can't get much in the way of net reception here to try and resarch for this one...Riva? Can your phone make it through?"
Ainsley	Ainsley approaches the doorway into the study hall. She looks around the room silently, and then to the crumpled heap of a man that is Wuyin Tsai. She frowns heavily at the sight of the very dead Dragon, and instead ... chooses to largely ignore his state. She's well aware of the ability of these people to come back from death, so she isn't worried about him that much. She's sure he'll understand. Instead she walks past a bunch of overturned study desks and to the back of the room, where a chalkboard has a very complex diagram on it. The diagram is white, but it dances eerily and seems to be made of jagged lines. It vaguely resembles a mathematical equation. She grabs the chalk eraser, and wipes down the board, clearing the symbols off the chalkboard entirely, not hesitating in destroying the magic there. She seems to be very purposeful about it. When she's finished, the chalk fades from the eraser, and a weight seems to lift from the room. "I know how these work now," she tells the party, "We need to find the other side of this at Solomon Island." She looks around the room, and frowns gently... "I have an idea as to where it might be. We had been so close to it without even realizing it..." She pulls a chair over to set it upright and relax there, staring at the blank chalkboard thoughtfully.
Riva Banari	There's some unsettling noises coming from Riva as she lies there. Apparently since she wasn't immediately killed she is kind of... recongealing. Bones snap back into place, internal organs stop haemorrhaging, shock fails to set in, et cetera. "Gimme a minute. I'll be okay." Riva grunts, a weird look on her face. "I don't think I've ever felt my spleen /unjellify/ before. Thank you guys for the feedback, though. Glad it was usef-" ZORT. Riva watches Wuyin go flying past her. She lies there at him. "Fudge the Illuminati." Riva comments absently for NO REASON. Finally, after about a minute, she sits up and wipes away the dried blood, standing up to look over the puzzle door, and then the smashed-open study hall. "Would we even /find/ this on Google?" She replies to Kotone. "How about we look in there first and maybe we'll find some clues." She casually picks up Wuyin's smoking shoes and brings them into the hall to drop them next to his corpse. No one deserves to rez barefoot. No one.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa listens to Ainsley lay out everything and has to agree with her assement of the situation. "So we need to go find the other half then? I don't think we should try that again given what happened to Wuyin." She pauses for a moment at the mention on Google. "...you have a point and even if it was multiversal Googlefu gets dicey at best." It's hit her just what a derp moment she had there.
Emiya Shirou	Having seen Wuyin come back from death before, and noticing Riva's not freaking out too much... Shirou edgily decides to leave him be for the moment. Waiting him to rez as they tend to. After all the same thing's happening to Riva. "You two really need to stop getting killed. Just because you don't die..." Shirou complains a bit. They're giving HIM a heart attack. Several times over. "Well, we know it's elements. What I want to know is why didn't they just have a key for the door? ... I could try Structural Grasp and see if I can figure out the right combination by examining the mechanism..." Sometimes Shirou's sharp! Sometimes he's not. But right now he's just looking worriedly at Wuyin and Riva...
Riva Banari	"He'll be okay in time. And believe me, /I/ agree with you one hundred percent. Wuyin's a lot more casual about this than I am though. Now why someone would lock a door with a murder-puzzle? That's some Illuminati level crap right there. There's probably something interesting in that library though. Why put something that complicated there otherwise?" She approaches Ainsley and folds her arms. "So someone's establishing a bunch of links back and forth between our world and yours? This is messed up. What could they possibly be getting out of that? All it's done to Aztlan is inflict horror and evil on it. Whoever's done this needs a rampant ass-beating."
Ainsley	"I don't know if they did it on purpose." Ainsley looks over to Riva with a bit of a sad frown. "Look at all of the things we have run into so far. Remember the man from the sewer? Remember all of those zombies on Solomon Island? The Draug? The ghosts? The man warped by the Filth that Michael ran into?" She shakes her head slowly. "I don't think whoever did this was in a right state of mind. I think this was something else." She looks back to the doorway out of the Study Hall. "Do you think that any sane man would do this to an entire city?" she wonders at Riva.
Riva Banari	Riva shakes her head. "Maybe... Not anymore." She looks out the door to follow Ainsley's gaze. "I have a feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better, though."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa says "It could be on purpose or it could be due to some thing in common with both worlds, right? Yes I do I recall that." She hadn't seen Michael in some time. She tilts her head again and seme to be lost in thought. "I hate to say it but IT hink your right Riva..."
Emiya Shirou	"The link does seem to be the corruption. The Filth, the darkness here... it all ives me the same bad feeling." Shirou states simply and rather unhappily at that. He's folded his arms and is making a grumpy face. Who, even an insane person, would spread this? It's BEYOND just crazy. "... but who would have that kind of skill?"