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Grave Matters     The trail for the Paladins-associated trio of death-wizard-magical-girls (and allies) has led them to a park in Shinjuku. The Shinjuku Gyoen was once the residence of the Naitoh family in the Edo period but in the modern era it is a large park and garden open to the public. It closes at 4:30 p.m., so the night fall the investigators are operating under is definitely after hours. There are three gates leading onto the park grounds, the Okio Gate to the western end of the southern park grounds, the Shinjuku gate to the eastern end of the southern grounds, and the Sendagaya gate is all the way to the north on the opposite side.

    Matsuri, a girl with pinkish red hair down to her ankles, is the leader of Grave Matters, with Ruri, a ponytailed redhead, and Shiho, a gray-haired and more mature seeming girl in accompaniment. The air is cold for August in Japan, as it almost always seems to be at night here. Further, the energies of death leave traces in the air wherever one goes, leaving the tiniest bit of foulness to spoil the otherwise sweet scents of nature. Inhaling is like biting into a crisp, beautiful, delicious apple, and discovering half a worm.

    The shadows also seem deeper and darker than they should be at night. The light doesn't penetrate quite as far as one would expect. This means that even with the park lights on, they produce small yellow pools around each lamp post, and degrades to twitching shadows almost immediately outside that circle of faint illumination. And beneath the boughs of trees... It can quickly become totally unnavigable by normal vision alone.

    Even not knowing the situation, there may be ample reason to come investigate, even if only by chance wandering. For once one arrives here, there is evidence enough that there is something wrong with this world.

    "Okay, so here's the situation--" Matsuri begins.

    "Say <<Sitch>> instead!" Ruri interrupts.

    Matsuri turns to squint at the princess. All three girls are dressed in school uniforms to minimize the attention they draw, though the designs and colors are different, indicating they go to different schools. "What?"

    "Say <<sitch>>! It is short for <<situation>>!"

    "If you were trying to save time by abbreviating, you've already consumed more time with this interruption than would have been saved." Shiho says, her yellow eyes and cross-shaped pupils giving her a vaguely cat-like appearance. Appropriate given the black cat with orange stripes perched on her shoulder.

    Ruri thrusts out a hand and pronounces forcefully in English, "<<No!>>" Then she props her hands on her hips. "She should say <<sitch>> because it is <<way cool>>!"

    Matsuri continues staring at Ruri for a few seconds, then turns to look back to any allies. "Here is the situation: People have been going missing, wandering away in a daze even in the middle of work or while attending to their families or having meals. The most recent walked right through traffic, drawing a lot of attention, which is how we were finally able to locate the place the missing have been drawn to... This park, Shinjuku Gyo-en."
Grave Matters     Matsuri passes out maps to anyone who needs them. "Whoever or whatever is responsible has scattered its energy so no one has been able to evaluate its threat level, but it's safe to assume it is using some form of mesmerism to entrance the non-wizards of Shinjuku. It may be a trickster or something more predatory. Be on your guard in either case."

    Shiho says, "There is also the possibility of a rogue magic user or a Lure. If it's the latter, we are facing an uphill battle. Compared to ghosts and spirits, a Lure is leagues more dangerous, and it primarily operates through others, making finding and defeating the source much more difficult. If we try to confront it too soon, it may just retreat and start over somewhere else."

    Matsuri nods to the summary. "I recommend splitting into three groups, and each group entering through a different gate, to search for the abductees."
Count Kord     A silhouette sits against the buildings framing the park, hidden in the darkness but for two points of light that show where it is. The stealthy creature silently observes the party as they start to gather, and turns his head in interest. Then, with a soft blustering, the shadow unlatches from the building and swoops into the park. He dips down into the area, and starts to prowl on all fours, his massive Pokemon shape slinking through the dark as if it weren't an issue at all for him.

    Because it isn't. He has a distinct ability to see in the dark as if it were daylight, unhindered by shadows in the slightest. His dark form hunts for the source of the unusual aura this place gives off, moving with speed and silent agility.

    --SOMETIME EARLIER--

    The eerie shrieking the creature gives in Kord's claws, trapped by his incredible strength, falls on deaf ears. Alien blue eyes examine the spirit with interest. And his head turns to look at the fellow that wandered on by the alley he was skulking in, totally unawares of the thing that was feasting on them.

    "This is different." The wriggling, incoherent spirit tries to bite him but it does nothing. He responds by crushing it to spiritual goo in an instant. He turns his hand over to watch the spiritual shreds drip off of his claws.

    "Should be a good hunting ground," he muses aloud.
Orchid      For various reasons that will become apparent, Orchid has brought along what looks like a piece of luggage. For other reasons, she's come in her usual armor. This makes her robotic nature more apparent, but this could lead to combat. In any case, she sets down the suitcase on one end, lifting a panel on the top end to reveal a laptop-sized computer built into the device. From panels near the bottom robotic spiders emerge, climbing over the walls.
     "Good news, bad news time," Orchid states, tapping into nearby networks. "Good news, there are local cameras. Bad news, there's a lot of interference with them. Good news, it looks nothing like normal interference, so it's likely this is likely something that causes trouble. Bad news, that means I can't see much in there. Good news, I brought my spiders, so either we'll get a camera pointed at the thing, or if they fall to the same problems, we may be able to narrow down where this this is, depending on how much each spider's signal is degraded."
     "Also, I'll send a few more spiders to each entrance, so if someone is going in, they'll alert us and follow them.
Cu Chulainn Among the Paladins gathered are a pair of men in suits. One has short purplish-black hair and a series of wires attached to his wrists, wearing black gloves that cover his hands. The other has blue hair in a ponytail, wearing a pair of long silver earrings. The second man is magical, which any with magic senses could tell. These are Felt Haddask and his Lancer, whose identity as Cu Chulainn has yet to be revealed. The red spear Gae Bolg isn't currently present, though Lancer will draw it when necessary.

For now, the pair sticks together, Lancer resting against a street lamp or something similar that can support his weight, arms crossed, while Felt takes notes. The sitch derailment causes Felt to quirk his eyebrows, but he doesn't comment, instead taking the map as Matsuri passes it out. "Alright. Lancer, any preferences on gate?" Lancer speaks up to respond to Felt, his voice laid-back and not taking this too seriously, yet. "Let's take Okio. We'll be closer to that lake and the big formal garden," Lancer gestures to the map, which he can see with his keen eyesight, "And can investigate the greenhouse first."

Felt nods, and puts the map away. "We'll head to Okio Gate. If anyone wants to join us, that's fine." And then, with Lancer taking the lead, as soon as everything was set, the pair would move to travel through that gate, ready for action.
Solomon Roget     In the midst of all these Paladins who clearly know what they're doing in the Multiverse, Solomon Roget is rather out of place. A mercenary-looking type in medieval gear, he's looking about in bewilderment at... well, /everything/. Streetlamps, cars, and everything else considered indigenous to Earth are novel to him, and he's already had a couple embarrassing exchanges with the locals. See, his world only just unified, and he's yet to get used to the new reality. He's actually relieved to find something out of the ordinary here, and joins up with others who maybe, hopefully, aren't from this world and won't stare at him blankly just because of how he looks.

    "Don't suppose this is the 'anomaly' Mandrith told me about?" He mentions this audibly to himself, sounding a bit skeptical that mere unnatural darkness would count as an anomaly. He's very much close enough to catch Matsuri and Shiho explain the situation, though, and extremely happy to hear about wizards and ghosts being involved; at a minimum, /that/ was something his background made him comfortable with. Well, let's make the introductions. "Greetings! I am Solomon Roget, a great duelist from... Gielinor." He pauses a bit to glance at a parchment with notes on it. "I've been sent here to investigate some strange occurences. So, tell me, is it the ghosts you mentioned, or the civilization in general? Because ghosts aren't exactly unusual... although it /is/ rather dark here." A bit of a pause. "Um. If we need to fight any ghosts, I'm particularly good at it. Got a spell specifically to deal with them."
Grave Matters     Matsuri and Ruri look a bit weirded out by the spiders, while Shiho looks intrigued. Or maybe intrigued isn't the right word. Fascinated? Infatuated?

    "A-ah... I see. Well, let us know if you see anything, but I'm not expecting cameras to catch much. Even without us doing damage control, there's a lot of creatures that aren't very... Photogenic." Matsuri says while trying not to watch the spiders as they crawl over the wall.

    "It is so weird that spiders outside the Underworld aren't on fire. They are <<super creepy>>!" Ruri protests. The standards of one who grew up in Basically Literal Hell But With Eastern Motifs are a bit different from those of someone who grew up on Earth.

    "They sure are~." Shiho says with a weird grin and a flush on her cheeks. Infatuated it is.

    "Guh...! Keep your weird fixations out of missions, Miss Horrorphile!" Matsuri says, producing a scythe and her outfit changing to a different one in a wave of magical modesty lights that pass over her body. She now has a scarf, purple sweater, and a red skirt. Also the scythe bigger than she is.

    "Hmph. Just because you don't appreciate skittering legs and the brush of unseen creatures upon your skin doesn't make me weird." Shiho grumps as she likewise transforms into a witchy outfit (sans pointed hat) with spider-web patterns and a black and orange color palette. She lifts a black and orange parasol and lifts off, floating up into the air and over the closed and locked Okido Gate. She rotates when Solomon speaks up, and introduces herself. "I am Shiho Shinozaki. We welcome your aid. I would not assume it is a ghost we face necessarily, though that is a possibility. I will go with Mister Haddask and his... Friend."

    Matsuri turns to Solomon and says, "Matsuri Noriyama. We face off against a lot of ghosts, to be clear, but there's other types of spirits in the world. Either way, if you're experienced at fighting the dead, you'll probably be of use. We'll go together. Shiho is our undead expert, and Ruri has a weapon especially effective against the dead, so if would be best to distribute such powers equally among the groups. How fast can you run? I can circle the park and get to the northern gate, Sendagaya, in a couple minutes at most, but if I need to run a bit slower for you, I can." She also recaps the situation again for Solomon, if he needs it. Missing persons. Supernatural involvement. Keep normies out of the loop or they become targets for open assault by monsters that don't like their prey knowing they exist. Rescue people, stop the one or ones responsible, then they'll preserve the mental integrity of the victims with memory adjustment.
Grave Matters     Ruri looks to Orchid and says, "I guess that means that <<I am with you>>! Shinjuku Gate for us! I, Ruri Tsuguhara, Crown Princess of the Underworld, will lead the way!" Then frigid, unearthly chains erupt from the wall surrounding the park, encircle Ruri's arms, and yank her up and over, releasing her so that she flies a short distance before landing.

    Inside the park, near the Okido Gate, the shadows close in around Felt, Lancer, and Shiho almost immediately contrasted with outside the park fences and walls. Unlike where the city lights provided at least some illumination, the darkness here is almost alive, and sometimes gives off the impression that it's squirming with many small shapes, though it only takes blinking a few times or looking into a light source to dispel the illusion. It persistently returns after enough time looking into the shadows however.

    Heading towards the lake Lancer mentioned, there's a small speck of blue light hovering over the water, a bobbing ball of cyan flame. Shiho whispers, "Fox fire, hm? A minor spirit pretending at being a kitsune, perhaps?" The flame seems to spot them and go flying off towards the north-west like a cold blue comet, and the garden beyond the lake. A lead already!

    Ruri and Orchid, once they are both inside, find themselves in a similar situation of near-living darkness, though the cameras Orchid is using may pick up movement both near the greenhouse towards the Okido gate, to their west, and near a restaurant closer by, to the north. Ruri is busy making karate moves all around them to ward off surprise attacks, so it may be up to Orchid to decide their destination.

    Before Matsuri and Solomon can set off on their trip to the opposite side of the park, the scythe wielder turns around to peer into the darkness, trying to spot the huge magic source she can feel. A different one, not like Lancer. "Oi. Show yourself." Is the one responsible for the disappearances nearby? Or just another interloper, like that Dorian, from Setagaya? "If you're not involved with the disappearances, then we have no reason to fight you." Matsuri tries. Diplomacy isn't her strong suit.
Orchid      "The spider form makes for something that can sneak in, climb walls, and not be noticed," Orchid explains. "And I'm afraid I've left the really creepy ones at home this time. We don't need clown spiders." She closes the computer, having set the spiders on an exploration mission. She'll get a ping if they find something interesting. Picking the box back up, she follows Ruri over the gate, with a jump, an air dash, and a landing.
     Once inside, Orchid sets her optics to low-light mode, scanning around. "This park is closed, so I don't think any movement here is normal now," she muses. "There and there," she gestures to the greenhouse and the restaurant. "I'll let my spiders look at the greenhouse, let's go that way." She starts moving towards the restaurant.
Count Kord     The red and black monster surges up from the dark, wisps of black following him. He stands to his full height, nearly twenty feet tall, and his blue and white eyes peer down at Solomon and Matsuri for a moment. Kord is naught but a vague shadow in these conditions, with his faintly glowing underbelly the only sign of his physical presence in the darkness.

    "No reason at all?"

    He sounds disappointed, his baritone voice playful and menacing, thrumming in their chest. "Then I will keep seeking the spirit that inhabits this place. Nobility must find its diversions. Stay out of my way, and we will not come to blows." His head turns, the haughty, devilish draco-bird's profile visible for a moment and his eyes squinting off into the blackness in another direction. He glances at them, and then slinks back into the darkness, out of sight.

    He'll follow the pair if they don't protest too heavily about it. He doesn't seem interested in picking unnecessary fights just now.
Cu Chulainn "Well then, let's go, little lady." Lancer responds to Shiho as she joins up with them, leading the pack. As they move into the pack and the darkness, Felt reaches into his pocket for his phone to use as a flashlight, muttering about how he should have brought one, though he's not sure if the magic darkness can mess with it or not. The weird darkness is already messing with Felt, but Lancer's trying his hardest to ignore it, blinking away and turning towards the lights every few seconds. As they move towards the lake, though, and there's a speck of flame...and then it flies off to the garden beyond the lake.

The edges of Lancer's mouth form into a grin already, toothy, as he juts a thumb out. "I'll get it." Before Felt can even say a 'wait', Lancer's crouching, and then breaking into a rapid sprint. Felt just sighs and laughs a bit.

Lancer is fast. He's moving to beeline around the lake as much as he can, since he can't run on water, to reach the garden before the light can get too far away. It has a head-start, but he's hoping he can get to it right when it lands somewhere, or perhaps get close enough to it in case it attempts to flee afterwards.

Felt's just going to try and catch up the slower way, though still in a workout in a suit.
Solomon Roget     "I can easily keep up a good running pace, although..." In the middle of replying to Matsuri, Solomon looks at the path being referred to. "...it'll take me more than a couple minutes to cover that distance. Open fields aren't really where my agility excels, to be honest." Nevertheless, he follows Matsuri around to the Sendagaya gate. "I'm also not a specialist against the undead. It's really the one spell, strong though it is. So, what other types are we dealing with? There's ghosts... um, sorry, that's the only kind of spirit I know."

    Also, he's got to know what's going on with Orchid and the spiders. "So, I take it other worlds have golems that control spiders? Most curious. Is this common in the... is this part of what's known as the Multiverse?"
Grave Matters     "You almost sound disappointed, Mister Shadow." Matsuri remarks. "If you can think of a reason I should fight you, feel free to mention it. Otherwise, I'm here to stop monsters from abducting innocent bystanders. You're welcome to tag along." Then she turns and takes off running along the outside of the wall surrounding the park, a circuit that will take her to the north end of the park, and the gate there. She's very fast, to be sure, though she is regulating her speed so that anyone who isn't as fast as her can keep up. "Ghosts are the spirits of the dead. But there are spirits found in nature, and manifestations of negative emotions that have welled up and pool in a place like curses with wills of their own, and there are creatures from the Underworld that could be compared to so-called demons... And that's not even getting into the undead. A ghost is like a memory of a person that doesn't want to be forgotten. Compared to that, there are far worse things in the world."

    She has to shrug at the question about the spiders. "I'm pretty new to the Multiverse myself. To keep myself from boggling too hard at all the differences, I just think of them as 'other worlds' with their own rules. Like how in the Underworld, being dead is normal but being alive would be weird, while in most places it's the opposite. Some people can make... <<Goreimu>> or whatever, I guess. I mostly use magic."

    Shiho is left behind with Felt as Lancer goes tearing along the circumference of the lake to get to the garden. Felt starts trying to run, but Shiho lifts off into the air again with her parasol. "Please grab onto my leg. I'll carry us across the lake. That should be faster. But don't you look up!" she chides. If Felt cooperates, she then flies the both of them right over the lake to try to catch up to Lancer and the fox fire.

    Lancer, meanwhile, manages to cut across the path of the bobbing ball of flame, causing it to come to a sudden halt, sputtering frantically and hesitating as it moves back and forth, uncertain of which way to go next.

    "A restaurant!" Ruri announces cheerfully when they reach their destination. It's closed, of course, but that doesn't stop her from sniff-sniffing the air in anticipation, trying to catch a whiff of food. As she hops up on top of the building, she manages to see what Orchid did with the camera. A figure that is moving in a stitled, staggering manner. A zombie!?

    No, more like someone sleep walking or something. There's some salaryman in business attire wandering around in a daze, looking tired, dirty, and maybe dehydrated by how dry his lips are. Ruri leaps down and tries shaking the man to wake him up, and causing his head to bobble around wildly. "WAKE UP, OLD MAN!" she yells to try to get through to him. Then she thinks to be quieter given they are in a park illegally at night and might draw attention from whatever has been abducting people. "Wake up, old man!" she says more quietly, shaking him once more and causing his head to bobble around as well, until he falls over.

    At the greenhouse, there likewise seems to be a person in a daze, some woman in a summer dress with her purse over her shoulder, in a similarly fatigued and dirtied state. She looks worse off than the salaryman... Perhaps she has been here longer.
Orchid      Well, it's a good thing Orchid doesn't shoot first. It's also a good thing Orchid has search and rescue skill. "Dehydrated, so is that woman by the greenhouse," Orchid says as she walks up to the man. She's going to shake his shoulder, try and get him out of the trance. If that works... "I think we need to break into this place, see about getting some water in these people, before they get worse," she says.
Solomon Roget     "Right. So we're dealing with ghosts, undead, and demons. Sounds like pretty straightforward stuff." Once the group reaches the gate, Solomon starts pushing the gate to open it. If it happens to resist, he pushes harder - putting his bulging biceps to work. "And we're dealing with spirits capturing the local population. That part is a bit worrisome. Though, Matsuri, you might be interested in exploring Gielinor. Magic is commonplace, and most residents will understand you if you start talking about your own world. I think, anyway. At the very least, it'd be a good way to expand your understanding." He resumes shoving the gate open for a bit before having another thought. "Oh! Hey, if you don't mind me asking. Do you happen to know if the stronger adventurers have gotten together to form groups or clans on a Multiversal scale?" The word 'faction' might be more recognizable in this context, but Solomon didn't think to use it.

    The shadow known as Count Kord piques Solomon's curiosity. This being is clearly, blatantly evil, but is going to help the party? Although. He's looking for a fight. Solomon likes fights. He addresses Kord with an upbeat and interested tone. "Shadow being! If it's a battle you're looking for, I'd be happy to oblige! Here and now is not ideal, but if you wish to engage in a bit of sport after we're done here, I relish the challenge!"
Count Kord     Kord doesn't answer Solomon beyond an ominous thoughtful rumbling noise. His offer interests the weird shadow beast, but he doesn't think it's worth engaging into too much chatter while he's out hunting creepy-crawlies. He slinks through the dark near Matsuri and Solomon, keeping up just fine with the running pace, keeping out of immediate sight by abusing his ability to bend shadows around him. It's not terribly stealthy if one's aware he's there already, but it is great for keeping any random bystanders from suddenly spotting an enormous dragon beast jogging through their city.

    "My name is Kord," he corrects, since they've both called him some version of 'shadow.'
Cu Chulainn As Shiho asks Felt to grab her leg, he hesitates, and then does so. Getting pulled into the air, he hangs on as tight as he can, trying to not fall into the lake below. Lancer, meanwhile, has his hands full with the fox-fire. The first thing he imagines as it seems to hesitate when he gets in its path is that either it's intelligent, or it's being controlled by someone. Time to check how much, and if not, deal with it anyways.

A long red spear materializes into the Servant's hands, his legendary weapon Gae Bolg. Crossing it against the ground, he brings it up to point at the fox-fire, smug as he speaks. "Yo! No clue if you can understand me or not, but I'm gonna start a chat anyways. I'm looking for whatever's causing this place, something spooky. You think you can lead me to it, fireball?" The spear is brought back down, planted into the ground, and leaned against with arms crossed.

If it goes in a different direction, Lancer will follow it. If it moves to attack him, he's expecting that - and is prepared to launch the spear out of the ground with a quick pull and whip it upwards to cut into the fox-fire. He's hoping it either tries to communicate or to lead him somewhere, though.
Grave Matters     "Hai, hai. Mister Kord then." She can already hear Ruri asking why he's named after cord when he doesn't look like rope. She'll leave that to worry about in the future, however. There's bigger problems afoot. She looks down in mild annoyance as Solomon punches the gate down. "I could have given you boost over, you know. I was hoping for at least one mission where I don't have to fill out the paperwork for the Fixers to repair things." Her group tends to accrue a lot of property damage. Once they're inside, Matsuri glances over her shoulder to check on Kord, still leery of him. She can't be sure he's not involved after all. He didn't explicitly deny it. And even if he's not involved, that doesn't mean his intentions are good.

    Matsuri pauses as the darkness closes in on them, bringing back bad memories from when she was homeless and living in a park like this. She raises a hand, and tiny ghosts appear around it, doing loop-de-loops around her fingers and bumping into each like fat, flying marshmallows with faces and stubby arms. /(owo)\ "Go look for whomever's responsible, okay?" she asks. Covering the park from three directions, they should be able to narrow down the locations the culprit could be. The ghostlings fly off, leaving a trail of spirits. After several minutes of walking through a park turned spooky by the saturation of death energy in the air, the environment continues to worsen around them. Streams seem to sputter and gurgle like someone drowning in their own blood, and the ponds they come across take on a tone to match. Large lumps of unidentified meat-looking substances float in them, and it appears as though a disembodied hand is pulling itself along the ground across the path ahead of them on its fingertips.

    "This is..." Matsuri begins, then scans around, noticing the eyes in the trees, the crimson sky above them, the smell of rot hanging over everything. "...A boundary. Our culprit is in here somewhere."

    The fox fire flies around in a circle while emitting a high pitched noise like wind whistling through reeds, and then takes off skywards, trying to lose the Servant. Unfortunately, being a glowing ball of light against the night sky, it's relatively easy to track. Shiho winds up changing direction and going after it as well after they cross over the lake. "My apologies, Mister Haddack. I think you will need to hang on a bit longer." It's hard to see through the trees from above, but with Lancer below, and them up top, the fox fire flits back and forth between altitudes, unable to determine which way to go to escape.
Grave Matters     Eventually, they cross over the same boundary into the hellish environment that Matsuri, Solomon, and Kord have. There, upon a mound of chewed bones and scraped-clean skulls, is some skinny, ghoulish creature, with extremely long strands of hair scattered across an otherwise hairless body. As the fox fire comes down, returning to its maker, the ghoul snatches it out of the air and reabsorbs it. Then it turns to look at the trio who have just arrived with large, disturbingly human eyes set in an otherwise rotting face.

    "My, my." the monster says in a woman's voice. "My little helper drew some troublesome people here, didn't it? I don't think you'll make easy meals at all." Lady Ghoul stands and starts making her way down the bone pile as clothing and skin start crawling out of nowhere behind her and covering her, eventually giving her the appearance of a Japanese woman again. She's very pretty, if on the skinny side. "Hmm..." She looks Shiho and Felt over, licking her lips. "But maybe two of you will be tasty after all." Then she leaps up at them, fingers growing longer and gaining claws, as she bares sharp teeth!

    Meanwhile, Ruri clenches her fists and gets sparkly eyed., "<<Bee. And. Ee!? <<Yes>>!" Finally, just like in Great Tyrant Automobile, she gets to break the law! She punches the restaurant doors inwards, and they fly as though hit with a rocket to careen through the dining area and smash into the kitchen. "I will go get this other person! You find water, <<okay>>?" She gives a thumbsup and then runs off to look for this other dehydrated woman.

    Meanwhile, Orchid is left to look for water in the vandalized restaurant... With some weird demonic-looking door standing in the middle of the room, unattached to anything. Was that always there?

    ...And why do the skulls and stuff lining its edges sound like they're whispering?
Orchid      It's not STRICTLY speaking breaking the law. Or at least Orchid could make a good case for acting under 'good samaritan' clauses for a simple broken latch. A door kicked in, that's harder.

     That said, the restaurant becomes a MUCH less appealing place to stash the victims safely, given the unearthly door. Orchid puts the man in a chair, then turns to the door. "There's little way this could really be happening," she says to herself. "Under the laws of physics as I understand them, there's no way opening this door could lead to someplace else, not without a generator twice the size of this building. And yet-"

     Orchid opens the clearly strange door.
Solomon Roget     Eurgh. This place is just overkill, and "kill" is the right word for it. Solomon's more used to harsh environments with lots of lava and sulphur, not harsh environments with chunks of freshly-murdered meat floating in a blood marinade. The living shadows that clearly don't belong to Kord aren't helping matters, either. Once Matsuri mentions that their quarry is nearby, though, Solomon starts feeling around in a medium-sized pouch on his hip for a few things. He pulls out a couple runes, meanwhile scanning visually through the trees for signs of someone or something aggressive. "Alright, got one Crumble Undead ready to cast. Any guesses as to... huh." The fox fire light catches his eye. "Well, that's probably the direction we need to head, at least." With that, he rushes in that direction, feeling a wee bit queasy from the sheer density of rotting death surrounding him but otherwise focused.

    He doesn't exactly wait for the others.
Cu Chulainn The ball of fire continues to try and flee...and Felt eventually ends up in another dimension. He nearly slips his grasp from the surprise of crossing the boundary, but manages to calm himself fast enough to catch on tight. It's not /too/ weird for him, he just doesn't have much experience with this sort of thing. Lancer crosses over soon after with his own speed, and turns to face Lady Ghoul. As she puts herself together, he speaks up, as his suit is replaced by a blue bodysuit with metal pauldrons. "I'd say that a beautiful lady like you doesn't need to be so aggressive, but we both know that's not your real face, eh? I'll end your feast!"

Gae Bolg is spun around in his hand, and then rapidly brought up for a block as the ghoul leaps forward, if she's aiming at him. With fast footwork, he moves to slam the spear into her, whipping it side to side to batter her with superhuman prowess. He's gearing to push her back so he can get a solid thrust into her body, but he doesn't yet have the opening. He will, however, throw fast jabs if he does get the chance, to further force her back.

At this time, Felt gets the chance to shout out, even though he knows his Servant is already proceeding. "Lancer! Extermination approved, because I'm pretty sure she's eating people!" "What do you think I'm doing? I've got it handled, Master!" Lancer shouts back in reply, which will probably distract him long enough to get scratched across his armor pretty badly.
Count Kord     Kord lurks behind Solomon and Matsuri at a polite distance, to avoid getting in /their/ way just as much as he told them to stay out of his. He doesn't make a peep as the environment took a shift for the worse, but his eyes turned to scan his surroundings for the cause of it. He hasn't got magical senses beyond those that allow him to see in pure darkness, so he is a bit out of luck pinpointing where the source of the unusual meat dimension is. And then Solomon takes off in a direction, and Kord pursues. He is pretty fast, able to keep up with a swift gait that shows he's, uh, not possessed of a skeleton by the way his body lurches and his mass tries to keep up with his momentum.
Grave Matters     When Orchid opens the door, it's to a pure black space, with some huge monster in it. It looks like a mummified bat, with an oversized head, and a serpent's skeleton for its spine and lower body. Ancient bandages trail and flap about its body in some unfelt wind, and it radiates a choking smell of dust... Though whether that would impact Orchid at all is hard to say. She's an android or something, right? Its back is to her, and it does not appear to have realized the door has opened, as it is watching the battle unfold through some sort of... Membranous 'window' in the otherwise totally featureless void.

    It is also speaking to itself. Its voice is as decayed as its form, withered to ashes, no more than a chorus of whispers ushering up a long-vanished gullet from an empty ribcage. Whatever it's saying is unintelligible, but the pace of its whispers seems to change with how the battle is going for what looks like some woman in a dress with long fingers and sharp teeth as she attacked by Lancer and engages in hand to hand combat with him.

    Is this creature responsible? Back when this started, Shiho mentioned something called a 'Lure' that operates through others, and that it might get away if confronted directly too early. Now that its servant is engaged, and the Lure is distracted... Orchid may have just discovered its escape route. And now she has a clear shot at its exposed back!

    Meanwhile, the Ghoul is nowhere near as fast as Lancer, and probably not as strong either, but she's TOUGH. His blows batter her light frame, hurling her about like a marionette without strings, only for her to keep getting up no matter how gouged her flesh. It just regenerates back.

    "My 'true face'...?" she snarls, her eyes widening and going bloodshot. "What would you know about that? Nobody knows! Nobody sees the real me! Everyone tells me how pretty I am, what a great model I am, but I have to starve myself and starve myself to stay this way! And whenever I look in the mirror, all I see is the same fat girl I've always been! But now I can eat as much as I want AND look pretty! All thanks to that treasure and that voice...!"

    She lunges at Lancer, and dislocates her jaw like a snake, expanding her mouth to inhuman degrees. "AND NOW I'LL EAT YOU!"

    Shiho bombards the ghoul with crimson bats made of magic energy, slamming her into the ground in mid-leap as she lowers to set Felt down, if he isn't already on the ground. "Worry not. I shall protect your friend, Mister Lancer." She lifts her parasol after she lands and holds it ready to use as a shield.

    Then Solomon, Kord, and Matsuri arrive. Matsuri is holding her breath to avoid the stench, so her own heroic words come out as, "Mmmghh mmm mgfff mmgggrr mfffhr!" due to her unwillingness to open her mouth. >:I
Orchid      Orchid looks at the monster. She uses her internal systems to take a silent photo of the creature. Then she...

     slowly...

     quietly...

     closes the door.

     It's not the bravest response, but it is more useful than gibbering in fear. With a stiff mask of calmness, she pokes her head out the restaurnt's ruined door.

     "Um, Ruri!" she calls out to the mage in the darkness. "You need to come look at this."
Solomon Roget     That is new. That is definitely new. Solomon had dealt with zombies before, and wasn't put off any by the ghoul's appearance (which to him was similar enough to a zombie). That's about the only non-disturbing thing going on here. There's the horrid stench. There's the unhinged jaw. There's that speech, the words of which manage to be more disturbing than the visceral hellscape surrounding him. And there's the fact that spearing Lady Ghoul doesn't seem to be all that effective. All of this combines to make Solomon extremely uncomfortable, enough to get him to just fling out blasts of undead-murdering magic one after the other, pausing just long enough between shots to pull more runes out of his pouch. Much like Matsuri, Solomon is not really willing to open his mouth unnecessarily, and just grunts with each spell cast, as if wanting to get this over with quickly. As far as environments go, this place SUCKS.
Cu Chulainn As the Ghoul regenerates her wounds, Lancer tsks. He spins the spear back into both hands during her monologue, preparing for another strike. "I know that your ugliest spot is in your heart, you witch." Though even if he's frustrated by the regeneration...this is his first fight in the Multiverse, and it's proving to be a challenging one. He likes that. Especially when she threatens to eat him, because he's going to fight her off. Though as she opens her mouth so wide, he doesn't have much defense, and she may be able to chomp down on him...

Up until Lancer spins Gae Bolg to try and pin her mouth open and stop himself from getting devoured. If this works, he moves to quickly yank the spear back once he's out of the way, and then use any distraction he can make to try and stab her in the stomach with the blade.

And while it's probably not strong enough to stop it completely, Gae Bolg's stab would be able to make regenerating more difficult, more stressful for Lady Ghoul. He's hoping that'll turn the tide, especially as allies come along.

Meanwhile, as he lands on the ground, Felt remains behind the parasol. Lancer has this, and is more skilled at melee combat...he'll need time to try and set up his wires, so for now, he'll stay ducked behind. "Give her hell, Lancer!"