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Lilian Rook     This time, 'where this is', 'why we're here', and 'who said so' are, to Some, only the general region, a vague, singular objective, and 'a private contact'. It's been a while since any official reason to go back to the Japanese islands, and whether this one constitutes 'official' or not is difficult to guess.

    It begins with a chartered flight by seaplane from the renovated yards of old Tokyo, now eclipsed into the Yamato Urban Center, flown exclusively by a bald and stoic man named 'Domen Akihiro' who is as politely helpful as he is professionally unforthcoming about the nature of the flight, in exactly the manner of someone who is routinely paid to not talk a lot. With little of anything approaching the old days of air control, you're able to take off straight from the coast, after Lilian -- ostensibly the patron and contractee of this flight -- accounts for all of you.

    From there, an hour long flight goes from a blessedly normal-looking blue ocean, into a clouds-to-water wall of phasmic white sea fog, and from there, certainly a wildly unsafe amount of flying almost completely blind, with little more than white mist rushing past the windows and the drone of the engines, with only ancient magazines and an equally ancient DVD player and its selection of old Chinese action movies to kill time.

    The reason for this level of privacy, Lilian reveals only once you're well away from the coast, is that she has somehow, through some connection or another she refuses to divulge, pinned down the general location of one of the few Muramasa blades currently listed as MIA; lost somewhere out in the wilds, and not on any clan's ledgers. The twenty third of the series, 'the Muramasa of Distortions', specifically. Something of essentially immeasurable value to a great number of people, for both good and ill.

    Originally belonging to the Oda clan, this one disappeared thirty years ago with one of their most major family retainers and his personal detachment, on a trip to bring something back from what was cryptically code named 'the dragon's garden'. The thoroughly not-Japanese young lady is sure she knows exactly where he got to. Not so much what else might be there. Your directions are simple: protect the sword, protect the plane, protect yourselves, in that order.

    As seaplanes do, the private craft splashes down in the water, somewhere where positional data says is not too far off of the coast of the Kyushu region, facing towards the Chugoku mainland and Shikoku island. The agreement doesn't involve getting any closer; an unarmed and unarmoured chartered plane would likely be less safe even for you in the event of an attack than swimming. That said, the mist outside is ice cold, and the only alternative to said swimming is an inflatable life raft and plastic oars dug out of an emergency supply closet.

    At the very least, the sea is calm. Almost unnaturally so. It feels more like a giant, fog-shrouded pool more than anything. Even without movement data, you can tell which way the shore is for the faint glow that diffuses into the fog from one direction, as if a giant flood lamp were facing directly towards you through a mile of mist.
Ben d'Tarkanan      Ben is keen to take up his apparent benefactor on a flight by seaplane. Naturally, he tries to chat up the pilot, but Akihiro's professionalism bars most topics but polite conversation. That said, the necromancer seems perfectly fine with it. He's dressed today in something that calls to mind the wealthy of the bygone Old World, as they might have dressed in Eastern Europe. There are differences, such as the well-made yet slightly ostentatious leather jerkin worn atop the colorful, breathable fabric of his shirt, or the distinctly non-Earth patterning at the hem of his sleeves.

     He occupies himself with a magazine, and seems *very* keen on avoiding the mist. Something about it has him nervous. He's gripping the magazine tightly enough to crinkle the pages, despite the affected expression of pleasant neutrality he's wearing. When at last they land, he seems relieved, tossing the last of the magazines back into its place.

     "Remarkable invention, these seaplanes, eh?" The question is uttered as if he's searching for something to say. Anything. If it comes to swimming or the raft, he'll naturally opt for the raft, and will offer to row, as well.

     If there's any other way closer to the shore, he'll take it--and he offers a solution of his own. "You know, friends, depending on how far out we are, I might just ice us a path. What do you say to that?" If walking across a frozen bridge would be less tiring for everyone, he'll make one for them, assuming it's not too far to the shore.
Xion Is this enough data for a sane, self-interested, cautious adventurer to go on? Absolutely not. The pay would have to be astronomic.

Is this enough data for a weird cult-addled teenager to go on? Well, Xion likes Lilian a lot and also she's getting more guidance on this mission than her usual kinds of missions! So yes, absolutely.

Having watched bad Chinese action films with rapt attention for the last few hours to thouroughly obliterate all the thoughts in her head, Xion steps out from the seaplane onto the surface of the calm water and makes a soft 'plap plop plap plop' as her Action Hoodie Teenager sneakers walk across the surface of the water.

Xion yawns, stretching out her arms and leaning back as she watches the zodiac get inflated.

"Seaplanes are great! I kind of want to get into the engine." She wiggles her fingers. "I remember reading about seaplanes having really interesting weatherproofing for the internals that I'm really interested in." Her eyes sparkle. "Are you, too?"
Tamamo     Tamamo entirely avoids being bored on the flight over. In fact, she may be altogether too invested in this aged entertainment. She's soon pointing out a play-by-play to Lilian, and anyone else willing to listen, in a tone not unlike some sheltered court lady remarking on the physical prowess and feats of a brave warrior from the countryside, as the low-resolution action flick plays out.

    "Does his martial ability not seem even greater while he protects the infant with one arm? Perhaps it is some paternal instinct, that his ingenuity should be so elevated. There, you see! To think a wooden ladder could be used in combat in such a way. And so steadfast is his commitment to peace, he tells them again his desire to avoid trouble, and yet, the villains have closed their ears. Such a common tragedy." Her approval for this action star is consistent until other matters require her attention, and the movie must be left unfinished, to a trace of disappointment, quickly hidden.
Tamamo     "Flight is another choice, but one presents its own particular dangers and difficulties. An iced path was in my own thoughts, as well, sir d'Tarkanan. If it is little trouble, then, I shall follow and assist." Tamamo selects the appropriate talismans from within her sleeves

    Technically, this magic is a curse associated with frozen hells, rather than a simple manipulation of water, temperature, or ice formation as an element, but that's not so important in practice. The talismans burn away to release their powers and create frozen fields, all the same. A bit of aiming and control is the difference between offensive uses and utility.

    Having offered only to assist, she limits herself to a few, leaving the greater work to Ben.
Archer EMIYA      Archer is no stranger to vague requests and secret seaplanes, something that is very questionable for a Chinese blacksmith to be familiar with. Perhaps it's the work of the Moon Cell, or perhaps Archer is simply a liar about his identity. Whatever it is, there will be no answers to this totally important mystery, just silent book readings until they've finally landed.

     "Of course the mages first idea is to ignore a perfectly good boat. Excuse me if I don't feign surprise on my face, but it's been a long trip."

     Contrary to what was just said, Archer doesn't seem the least bit tired already his attention to the inflatable boat option. It's better to be as inconspicuous as possible whenever you can with this sort of thing as far as he's concerned. As inconspicuous as an inflatable boat can be, anyway.
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: YOU KNOW WHAT THE PLAN REQUIRES OF YOU
>Arthur: Find the Muramasa of Distortions

    Arthur knows that having access to one of these blades is going to be crucial for the PUNCHCARD ALCHEMY PLAN, which is why he's going to need an unadulterated code, only achievable through exclusive access to one of these blades. One has to hope that "distortions" doesn't include distorting the captcha.

>Arthur: Can you make a better way to get to shore?
>Arthur: Make a Gate to the shore.

    "Hey, don't SHIT TALK them MAGES, dawg." He says, twirling his broom several times as he says, "Why WALK? We don't wanna give 'em a LEAD to the PLANE, for real. And the BOAT just means we might LEAD 'EM BACK!" He points his broom in the vague direction of where he understands the shore to be, aims it like a rifle, and fires a bright green bolt. Then he aims just outside the window, and blasts again. A Gate appears! This should get them *closer*, at least, if not right where they ought to go. He takes a big running jump through the Gate and to wherever the nearest fast-travellable shore-site is. He's here to minimize traceability as much as he can!
Ben d'Tarkanan      "I'm interested in most clever things, Goodlady Xion!" Ben smiles weakly at Xion. "Provided they're not solely in the hands of a select few."

     Archer's dry response draws a frown from him, as if he were about to say that he's only trying to help. He begins the work of icing it, anyway--because he imagines that rowing would just be more tiresome, whether that's correct or incorrect.

     Thankfully, he doesn't get long into it before Arthur proposes a much more expedient solution: a Gate. He smiles at Arthur's coarse language. "Much appreciated, old chap," says the necromancer in response, clapping Arthur on the shoulder.

     He then vanishes, though there is a trace of him--the sound of his feet pushing off of the seaplane's little debarkation ramp. He invisibly leaps through Arthur's gate, taking a moment to get his bearings.

     For this kind of work, what he wants is hired help. And so, if he's able to do so, on the other side of that gate, he'll make use of his magic to conjure up some undead allies--preferably ghosts, but skeletons or zombies will do in a pinch.
Xion "I think most things are like that. If you fight for what you believe in, and give people a chance to back down, good things happen to you, you know? I know if I was protecting myself or one of my friends I'd fight *really* hard."

The Nobody blinks. "Speaking of: I still want to fight you, Ghost Warlord!" Xion shoots back at Ben. "But you never gave me any contact information after saying you'd fight me, so, I tried to call some random numbers but you didn't pick up."

Xion produces a smartphone in a vaguely panda-esque phonecase and chases Ben through the Gate provided by Arthur - with a 'Thanks!' added for good measure to the Mage - so she can shove his phone into Ben's hands!

"Put your number in there."

The Contact name is already filled in as 'Ghost Warlord', helpfully, and a hipshot of his face in an unflattering grimace is already added.
Archer EMIYA      Sighs as he just gives up on the boat. Continuing any further at this point would just come off as being stubborn. Which, he is, but he's also not stupid... Not that stupid.

     Either way, he's silently conceded that Arthur's portal is better than an air-filled dinghy, so he goes with that. Hopefully he's not punished by the Gaming Wizard for his transgressions against Wizard-kind by using it.
Lilian Rook     Lilian, along the flight, seems immensely entertained by the fact that Tamamo is immensely entertained, for reasons she does not describe. On the way down from the ramp, she says to Xion "I hadn't heard anything about that. I'm sure if you ask politely, he might let you look, but don't go touching it until we're out of no-man's land. I don't think any of us want it getting accidentally broken while we're still here. Neither option regarding getting to shore seems to register with her, given that this is probably a good example of why her career aspiration forces everyone to learn flight.

    Constructing an icy path all the way to shore turns out to not be as difficult as one would expect; though the mist is thick and the water eerily calm, the distance isn't so nearly as long as both of those would suggest. The lack of being able to see anything is more of an impediment to gate warping, though not of any wildly supernatural nature. Insisting on rowing a cheap raft is perhaps a worse of both worlds, save still being somewhat faster than walking.

    Arriving across the sea or through a hole in space is a very different experience. Moreso than would be assumed just by the kind of transit.

    Arriving via portal dumps the traveler into yet more of a world of ice cold mist, frothing and churning silently of its own volition, and feeling unnervingly as if many freezing hands are weakly grasping and pulling all at once. The light ahead is bright, still somehow seeming to shine directly face on, but the ground clinks and crunches with each step, looking like coarse ground glass, somehow smoothed like river pebbles, if not to the point that one would ever consider going without shoes. Wandering around blindly is a fool's errand. The light is the only point of reference, and even then, it's impossible to find direct rays that show an angle to it. The most one could stumble over is a withered tree petrified into some kind of oily, iridescent silver.

    Keeping in contact with others, those making their way to the light from the gate in fact pass right through what should be their field of vision without ever being seen. Not until they cross a certain boundary. A path laid of stones fresh enough to have gathered moss rather than have been bleached and buried, and a squared arch of roughly carved and polished bare aspen wood.

    Those going directly from the sea to the shore are the first to find what those coming from the gate take some time to stumble upon. Breaching the topless and bottomless clouds of mist, they're left to walk squinting into bright, direct sunlight, streaming from a clean and improbable hole through the immense, national-scale fog bank, revealing a cloudless blue sky that is contemporaneous with the several kilometers of land it illuminates.
Lilian Rook     A white shore shaped like a deep, circular crescent, cutting inland deep enough that one could anchor dozens of mid-sized ships around the inside, and have room for a few to exit and enter at the same time. It comprises the bottom of the overall bowl-like geometry of the valley that it terminates, geometrically sloping down from high, flinty cliffs to either side. The water is slow and gentle against the sand, but crashes scenically against the sheer rock faces, making up the natural ambiance of the ocean. The valley itself remains, somehow, heavily forested, with unseasonal aspen and plum blossoms taking the richer soil while thick groves of bamboo and gnarled oak colonize the rocks, roots growing out into thin air. Wide, wet fields dominate much of one side in tiers, while the rise on the opposite side is given over to wild grass and winding trails, up to the conspicuous sight of something like a cluster of rough cottages built close to the inner cliffside. There is no sign of smoke, nor artificial light.

    Outside of how abnormal it is for nature to exist in this small pocket, there are a few other signs that people were here 'less than a century ago'. Dilapidated, fading canoes moored at simple dock platforms of chopped and dried wood, rocking against on sodden and frayed ropes. Simple fenceposts around each tier of field, separated by rough earthworks, and lining more vertical paths. A rocky path around the midsection of a cliff and into a partially submerged cave entrance is marked with posts and guarded with rope. Sparse and simple torchposts line the few, barely trodden dirt paths between places. A stack of canvas-covered boxes lies dusty and defunct in a cleared, packed earth yard.

    That, and, at the center of the crescent, where the water is just barely still shallow enough to see the colourful mat of close-to-shore reef below it, a featureless orb hovers thirty feet above the water. An unreflective, vantablack circle, through which a Japanese sword has been thrust and lodged, like the stereotypical arrow through a heart. It emanates a very faint ringing sound within a short distance, but otherwise, the only sounds are of slow waves, creaking cicadas, and the occasional bird call, seldom answered.
Tamamo     As Ben chooses to instead take the gate, Tamamo puts back away her prepared ice magic, and considers Arthur's words for a few, thoughtful moments, before she presses a pair of different talismans to the outside of the craft, by the door. One of them is, to any classically trained mage who cares to examine its effects, clearly a tracking device. The other is not.

    Almost, she steps through the gate as well, but then looks out toward the shore, through the gate--inasmuch as she can peer through it, which is hardly at all--and finally decides to take the iced route, after all.

    Yes, there is the matter of leaving a trail back toward the aircraft, but the second talisman she'd left there, a ward to hide from misfortune, will help avoid such dull developments as finding the vehicle of their return compromised in their absence. Something else having felt strangely uncertain, she'll use up more of her Frigid Hell spells than originally intended, for the sake of approaching the shore from a fresh perspective. Tall geta save her from touching the cold of the ice she forms, yet prove little trouble for her sense of balance. That's just practice, really.

    And there it is. Bright sunlight, where there had been mist. A sudden change in scenery, the boundary far too stark. "Oh, my. A protected cove, is it? How curious. There, is that not farmland? And there, what might we find...?" Looking from the tiered fields over to the watery cave, Tamamo trails off as her gaze focuses on the orb.

    She continues walking, finding her way to shore properly, off of the ice--quite entirely without getting wet--and then stares at the sword. She can easily imagine pulling it from where it is, but imagining will have to be enough. The point where it's stabbed inside, "Just what... is that?"

    Asking aloud isn't any more useful than asking quietly. Only with her own senses can she hope to find some useful information. Among these, she reaches out to find the unseen threads, looking for one in which the sword is /pulled out/. To what fortune and misfortune will that lead? What actor shall enter the scene when that blade is pulled? If she knew that, she would know the greeting to give.
Xion Much adventuring - and some bumbling, because Xion was a part of the PORTAL GANG PORTAL GANG PORTAL GANG - later, on strange polished-glass-shard beaches and terrain of mists and oddities...

They FIND the SWORD. It's STUCK in the AIR.

"Well... do you think it's locked? If it's just stuck, I can get it."

She points at Arthur. "If it's just a long way away, even a whole universe away, he can get it."

She points at Tamamo. "If it's cursed or warded or magically forbidden, she can get it."

She points at Ben. "If it's beyond mortal grasp, he can get it."

Archer gets an odd smile. "If it's just a sword, though, I think the Heir of Blades should get it. That's you, right? If it's just taking a sword by the grip and having the will to swing it, then he can get it."

Xion thumbs back at Lilian and the boat, though obviously she's so spun around her gesture actually points out over open water. "And if there wasn't a problem, Lilian would have already gotten it!"
Arthur Lowell >==>

    Arthur drifts through the mist weightlessly, he's unnerved by the strangeness of this place. The freezing hands. The diffuse light. The pebbles, the lack of geometry. Everything is failing to properly map for him, and as a result, he spends some time calculating things precisely as he can. From where he started, where has he gone, in distance? What about his friends? What are the angles? He keeps these things in his mind, calculated as precisely as the information will go.

    They eventually reach the edge of this "clearing". Arthur reaches the shore, coming to rest and standing on the sand. He regards the strange sphere in an unnerved way, gritting his teeth at the thing and wincing slightly. "Feel like this be straight SEALIN' SOMETHIN', dawg." He mutters, as he approaches. He's almost ready to take it, before Xion speaks up. "Naw dawg, ARCHER ain't HEIR OF BLADES, that's the MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN GIRL HEIR. WE're workin this angle for THAT. Anyway, I need it for ALCHEMY after we extract that bitch, gotta HARVEST A CODE." His ~sick flow~ is only a bit faltering in the strange atmosphere. But he'll let Archer do that business -- expecting to at least get it in his hands after. If something terrible doesn't happen.
Ben d'Tarkanan      Ben is invisible. But he's not at all undetectable. He doesn't appear to realize that, in the mist, he's breathing heavily. His footsteps aren't as careful as they should be, as his mind is somewhere else. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Have to keep it together. Don't think about it. It's just cold air. It's not what you think it is. It's not *where* you think it is. That place is behind you. It can't hurt you.

     There is, from thin air, a relieved sigh, once he reaches the anomalous hole in the fog. Ben drops his invisibility, and trys to play it off like it's some other kind of sigh. "Reminds me of home," he says quietly, with a forced smile. It doesn't. Rather... it reminds him of someplace near home. Someplace no one will ever call home again. "Brisk winters, there, to say the least."

     This small pocket of nature is much less stressful than the mist was. The cave, marked with rope, seems at first like the place to go for a sword--until Ben notices that there is a sword lodged into that orb of pitch blackness above the water. Shading his eyes with his palm, he turns and looks back towards the partially submerged cave. Roped off... "Well, chums, I assume we're not simply going to grab the sword, yes? It *is* right there, but, surely, that's too obvious. Surely there's a reason it was put there."

     Arthur's response--noting that it is, after all, the sword of distortions, does draw a thoughtful frown. IS that the sword, up there, or is it somewhere else? Is that just the distortion? Well, whatever and wherever the sword is, Arthur is probably right in thinking that removing it is going to cause some kind of disturbance or fight to erupt.

     So, in lieu of knowing what to do regarding the sword itself, Ben instead prepares for that disturbance ahead of time. Drawing his sword with his left arm, he points the blade towards the dilapidated cottages in the valley.

"Attend me."

     A lance of sickly green energy fires off towards the valley, branching off as if it had a will of its own, darting into the earth, around corners, winnowing away at the edges. It dissipates fairly quickly. At first, there's nothing.

     Then, figures, pale, white. Skeletal. They rise from the earth, marching down the valley, clods of damp earth sloughing off of their bones. As they march, they carry rusted farm implements, others yanking planks free from their former homes to bring down to the shoreline. The skeletal laborers, pressed into service, begin constructing barricades, forming a defensible choke point.

     There is a wall, now, two persons high, with places for the others to stand atop and fire down at any attackers who might be coming from the valley. Ben, meanwhile, fortifies the water with a wall of ice, creating razor-sharp icy spikes to impale anything which might try and crawl up from the depths.
Archer EMIYA      The portal was actually probably not as good of an idea as he initially thought, given where they ended up. Now would be the time to panic. Or it would, if he were a lesser man, but he's not. Archer is a big strong ghost man who is fully capable of taking care of himself. He's also got a posse which helps solve a lot of the problems one would face when being stranded alone, so there's that.

     After some more fumbling through what feels like miles of fog and trailing behind the other two. They find a sword. THE sword, if Archer was to hazard a guess, given the general feel of the place.

     "Firstly, I'm not a heir to anything other than a mountain of forgeries. Secondly, excuse me if I'm not eager to touch anything with the the name 'Muramasa' attached to it."

     Despite his voiced disapproval, he's already walking up to it. Though rather than do anything rash like pull the blade out, he simply squats to inspect the rock the weapon is embedded in.
Xion "What? No, that's fake. This is super obvious. Even if it's Japan, I'm sure popular legend fantasy won't fail me. It's a sword--" Xion points at the distortion. "-in a stone! All we need to do is have a worthy person un-stick it."

Xion approaches, cracking her knuckles and rolling up the sleeves of her hoodie to the elbow. "I'm so worthy right now. This kind of thing - big adventure hero stuff, gripping swords, becoming King of England - is my jam!"

If not stopped, she'll just try and GRIP the SWORD. She's stoppable, as this is a Full Party Duty and gathering must be concluded before the party ventures forth.
Lilian Rook     When Ben violates the sanctity of the old hovels' graves, likely having good reason to be glad of nobody but his fellow eccentrics watching, he has one lovely little insight for the effort: in amongst the rusted implements half-buried in decades of nature's reclamation and corroded by years of seasonal rains and sea salt air, several of the skeletons dredge up bright and shiny, if slightly battered and scratched, counterparts, with titanium heads and fibreglass handles. A ratio of no better than ten to one, certainly, but their usefulness is the irrelevant part.

    Though no significant scouting has occurred, Tamamo's assessment of the earthworks, more concretely tiering the valley rise on the right side, as an agricultural area seems to be very correct. It's flooded in small amounts at high tide and strained through many elaborate gravel and sand barriers, though wild weeds have choked out any semblance of orderly rows, and few, unripe ears of rice still grow. The cave is roped off and torch un(lit) in a way that suggests it saw semi-frequent traffic. A cart can be dimly glimpsed in the shallow of the mouth.

    The threads of fate are dense and unpleasant. Likewise, Arthur's sense of space is slightly inverted. It feels like there is more space condensed into that vantablack blot, than it feels like there could be space inserted into this clear area, which feels strangely normal.

    "I'll take that assessment." Lilian says to Xion's opinion of 'why it's here'. "Though I thought there might be other reasons you'd want to see this place. And it seems my intuition I was right." She then shoots Arthur a Meaningful Look once he starts blabbing about mountain girls.

    The anomalous blob is obviously unsubject to gravity, nor the sun, and especially not winds or tides. It's difficult to tell whether it's solid or abstract. An object or a lack of one. Getting as close as one can be without ascending to its height, it seems to expand and contract by centimeters, doing so quickly, but with long, regular pauses between them.

    The sword itself is clearly unusual to even the most dim-witted of examiners. As seems to be a pattern with the few seen so far, the blade cannot possibly be plain steel; the mirror bright polish reflects the viewer's face and their surroundings right-way-around instead of flipped around, and catches the sunlight in a way that it almost seems to soak in the golden rays like a stain.

    Archaic kanji are etched near the tsuba, in the form of a sentence fragment. "--they who conquered the isles unseen bow to--" to a Japanese reader. The trappings vaguely suggest a cherry tree competing for space with some unrecognizable flower in an equal and opposite, yin and yang style. Only some sort of bizarrely inspired weirdo would come up with the artistry of it, and all of the mundane characteristics of Muramasa's style are there, for someone knowledgeable of Japanese swords like Archer. There is a bit of blood flicked across the bottom of the handle, dried but still bright red.

    There is nothing holding the sword in its place. Even experimentally touching it causes it to slide frictionlessly by a hair. It'd be trivially easy for anyone to pick it up again. Lilian adds to the ongoing discourse "The idea of making these kinds of mad ideas as swords is that 'swords exist to cut'; they don't create. More than extraordinary weapons, it's said that the Forty Four were stepping stones on the way to the ultimate goal of a way to cut and sever something Muramasa obsessed with even after death. 'A sword that severs distortions'." She glances around the area just once. "Though that definitely doesn't explain the aberration of all this existing. I don't see any signs of a battle from here."
Ben d'Tarkanan      "You. Bring that here."

     One of the skeleton laborers does as it's asked, bringing the titanium-and-fiberglass shovel to him. He holds it up, for everyone else to see, before handing it back and setting the skeleton back to its work. "This place looks like it's been abandoned for some time," he says to the others, "But some of the tools seem to contradict that. I wonder why?" The most logical explanation would be that someone came more recently and offered them up, but that just raises more questions--such as, how much time has passed since these people died?

     "Stay here and protect my friends," Ben orders the skeletons. Addressing his 'friends,' the necromancer gestures with his right hand to the valley behind him.

     "I'm going to head into the valley, chums. See what I can find! Just give a holler if you need me, hm?" He's got his sword drawn, just in case, but he doesn't expect anything to really happen until or unless someone pulls the sword. In the fog, he seemed very much off his game. Here, though, he seems, if anything, in his element. It's hard to say whether there are 'good' memories from back then. But there were times when he could feel proud of his work, if not the ends it led to. It's a good fortification. And he's about to do some good advance scouting.

     He spends the next few minutes rooting through the dilapidated cottages, looking for any written records of any sort--ledgers, diaries, letters (unlikely as that might be in a place this small), even something anachronistic, like the titanium and fiberglass tools.
Xion <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Ah, Xion, might you hold from pulling on the blade? To /touch/ it may yet be no issue, but we have several additional paths that may hold other secrets, before we risk them being swallowed by this distortion, do you see?"

Xion's fingers hesitate, a dozen or so paces from the sword struck through the vantablack distortion, and her fist closes. "No... You're right. I never seem to get it, when the others tell me to wait up. It just seems like..." Xion kicks her shoe on the ground. "I forget the little things, I want to do the big thing, it's so..." She glances longingly at the vantablack distortion wrapped around the sword like compressed gravity. "... pretty?"

Her shoulders slump. "But Demyx keeps saying I don't get out and smell the sunshine or listen to the roses or other weird things. So, yeah."

She smiles at Tamamo. "I'll join your party, then. Sorry." Her cheeks flush and she claps her hands to them, looking confused.

XION has joined TAMAMO's party!
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Brace the space

    Looks like everything in there is compressed...? Or is all of stretched out? This isn't clear. Arthur isn't understanding. "Shit's WILD in here. There's some hardcore GEOMETRIC DIFFERENTIALS. Like, there's way more SPACE on the INSIDE of that ORB than we got all up in here OUTSIDE. Either OUTSIDE is STRETCHED THIN, or the INSIDE is FUCKED UP." He traces the space around it, carefully trying to understand this more and brace against an explosive or violent event! Or understand it more when it happens, anyway. The scanning and bracing apparatus should hopefully contain the dangerous effects, and it also looks kind of cool for anything to have Saturn rings.

>Arthur: Have a chat with the boys

    Is that even possible here? This mist is so thick even those motherfuckers might not have any insight. Arthur looks up, muttering briefly in thickly American-accented Dersian, "What's your take? Does this thing need changing up? Do you guys even give a shit?" Beseeching the Noble Horrorterrors for their wisdom, he also sasses them a little about their apathy as usual. Let's see what the cosmos thinks about what should be done about this!
Tamamo     "Oh, now, to focus only upon that primary point within a scene, that to which the eyes are naturally drawn, and its greatest source of clear wrongness, is quite natural. I have not the right, nor would I wish to restrain you overly much," Tamamo says to Xion. "What is the phrase... 'I'm not your mom'?"

    She stops and ponders, head tilted. "Such ironically familiar language." Another pause. "Ah, but do not mind it. Rather, thank you. Let us see what else may be found. It may be over-caution, or it may prove vital, but only those who search every path can state their right course with certainty."

    Ben has chosen one path to investigate, and so Tamamo instead aims for the cave, hiking up her robes as she nears the water. When she releases the cloth, it's been appropriately shortened. Along the way, she considers Arthur's finding, and thinks back to their initial briefing. "The wielder came to find something valuable, and return with it, yet failed to do so. This place, was it the site of an old colony, or a recent one? Was it both? Was it made because of 'a thing that is here,' or was 'that thing' brought here? Of greater importance is this: Is this the dragon's garden? If it is not, then where can it be found?"

    Her tall footwear at least provide some protection from shallow waters, if only for the quite shallow. She steps in, minding the ropes.
Archer EMIYA "Reasonable words coming out of that face is something I'm never going to get used to." The words are spoken his under his breath, but he's clearly talking about Tamamo.

He may not be completely convinced that taking the sword is worth it, but touching it should be fine.

"I'll be with you all to baby sit in a bit. But please, carry on without me."

As everyone walks out to leave and explore different areas, Archer finally walks up to the sword, wrapping a hand around the weapon's handle as he tries to glean information from it. He however, completely avoids trying to yank on it. He values his life just enough not to tempt fate there.

Assuming he's not horribly ruined in some way for touching a cursed item, Archer keeps to his word about babysitting and eventually joins back up with Xion and Tamamo.
Lilian Rook     Ben's perusal through the old things of a rural Japanese coastal backwater is how someone gets cursed. Even the most cosmopolitan, westernized modern member of the country would uneasily tell him to slow down for the five different ways he's inviting some kind of grudge or ill fortune. Nothing jumps out at him though, neither dead nor inhuman in nature.

    Instead, his attempts at scrounging up records, light as they are, find only a few things. Small, hard bound journals aren't too hard to find, dusty and yellowed as they are, in small drawers and on brittle shelves inside vacant cottages. They date back many decades, where the years are noted at all. The couple he finds were probably kept by old people, waffling as they are. A casual flip through finds boring talk about seasons, neighbours, and occasional mention about one whole radio there that they express some unease about. There's an entry in one that says 'soldiers showed up yesterday' and told them that 'they had to leave' and 'they couldn't stay here anymore', expressing no intent to follow, and no entries since then.

    The most anachronistic piece he finds is no less dusty, though obviously several decades more recent, and is little more than a pocketbook written in with fragmentary reminders and references. What looks like inventories, charts, duty rosters, and unintelligible sticky-note tracking that makes no sense to him now. There are a lot of names crossed off and a lot of charts redone and re-redone. There is what seems to be some sort of smartphone or tablet in the same house, but long since flatlined and waterlogged. There are also a number of things scribbled in the back of the book with a much more cursive and formal hand, in a dialect too archaic for a non-native speaker to grasp.

    Arthur is probably doing the safe thing by ensconcing the eerie-yet-uneventful anomaly in that lattice of spatial regulation rings. Beseeching the distant watchers from beyond the stars of worlds come and gone has the opposite of the ring of apathy too it. The sense that there is too much wrong. Everything is a little wrong. All the parts of this timeline are subtly and uncomfortably out of place. A Noble Horrorterror wouldn't like being bothered to look upon this place. Oh, but for the place Arthur is in *specifically*, there's a very stern and warning sense that This Is Not A Place Of Honour and the big black blot is more or less a matter of moving a nuclear waste drum out of the ground now, and risking breaching it to disastrous consequences, or just hoping it doesn't poison the water table in fifty years and invisibly kill everyone.
Lilian Rook     Archer using his Sword element analysis on the sword finds some very simple and startlingly clear facts right away. The article was, indeed, made by Muramasa, personally and non-figuratively. Worked in an out-of-the-way forge not kept on any records. In . . . 1632. Bits of fine jewel steel, sharkskin, carbide, and cherry wood make sense to him, all with some kind of history --bronze fastenings blessed by a zenko, wood fitting pulled from an old tsukumogami-- but there are extensively integrated semi-metals and organic components he hasn't ever seen or heard of before. The sense that it is a sword that 'severs distortions' feels True and Correct, though it's hard to grasp what that means. There doesn't seem to be a specific technique or anything associated with it. It is also, as he can feel a lingering intent in it, Meant For Someone. A gift, or inheritance.

    Tamamo heading into the caves is 'supervised' by Lilian going with her, partly just because old rustic seaside caves tend to be dangerous in general. In this case, there's little risk beyond no lights and slippery floors. There's no sign it'd been used as any kind of mine of note within the last century, probably tapped out a long, long time ago, and rendered into a very small and basic quarry. There is the unmistakable scent of lived-in freshwater coming from somewhere further down, neither barren nor salty, and a surprising amount of warmth that carries on humid air that seeps through narrow bends and out-of-the-way cracks in corners of the short, chaotically spread tunnels. The draft has the cozy, clinging air of an indoor swimming pool, save that it carries a whiff of magic rather than chlorine.
Tamamo     Tamamo shines some light, through the simple method of emitting it, herself. A trio of foxtails provide sufficient volume to somewhat soften shadows.

    "Ah, now, what is this? I had thought water might cover our prospects, but that is not seawater I smell, is it? No, it something... more pleasant. Odd that it be here at all, yet no more so than what we have seen, above. Shall we?"

    The cramped environment of 'mine tunnels' is most of what prevents her from doing anything like skipping, or linking arms, as she largely fails to acknowledge the implied danger of caves. Getting to that scent of magic is more important. Preferably before any surprises occur elsewhere in the expedition.
Muramasa This place unsettled him, Muramasa decided. It was as if it were woven in the thick string of karma, wrapped in a cocoon of negativity. 'What came first? This haunted feeling, or that sword ... '

He'd been told that it was called the 'Muramasa of Distortions'. Its described purpose made sense to him; indeed, there was no need to check for its authenticity. He could feel it, that was a sword that he had made. Maybe not himself in the literal sense, but ...

    Muramasa the swordsmith was the one who made that sword.

This is an undeniable truth. 'The twenty third, huh ... I made so many that eventually, I lost count. But according to what I heard, there are fourty four of these swords.'

Unconsciously, the servant rubbed the back of his neck. It was hard not to harbor feelings of responsibility for the matter, all things considered. Muramasa frowns and straightens his back, sliding his hands into the sleeves of his floral haori. With a pointed sigh, he wanders closer to Archer with a consterned expression, "Oi. Don't go touching that thing carelessly, that holy shroud might not be enough to protect you."
Ben d'Tarkanan      The smell of aged paper is always welcome, bringing back fond memories of an education worlds away from here. Ben smiles, ever so slightly, leaning his sword against a decaying table as he cracks open one of those yellowed, dusty journals. More of the familiar, of what's comfortable, certainly won't bother him, after his unease in the fog. The talk of everyday life is flipped through rather quickly, until he comes across mention of the radio.

     That catches his attention, and, shifting his weight slightly, he pores over the next few journals with interest. Soldiers, a radio, a set of modern tools--mention of these turn that faint smile into a thoughtful frown. The last such written record--the pocketbook, must have been left by one of those soldiers. Turning around, in that forgotten dwelling, the floorboards creak beneath his feet. His boots make dull thuds as he strides over to the waterlogged electronic device. He knows these--or knows of them.

     There is a brief and fruitless effort to power the device before he realizes it's not going to turn on. Not through anything his hands can do, anyway. He slips it into the traveling bag at his hip. Maybe someone else can coax something out of it. That just leaves the pocketbook, which, for the most part, is unintelligible. Ben makes one last read-through of it, this time searching the inventories for mention of those more modern, titanium tools, as well as the duty roster.

     With respect to the roster, it's not so much the 'who' that he's interested in, as the 'what.' If there are any indications as to what responsibilities the soldiers were given, he aims to find them. Something else he aims to find is that radio, if it's still around. He doesn't expect it to still be operational, but its construction might offer some insights. Stepping out of the shack with the pocketbook in hand and the smart-thing in his pack, he searches the other houses in the valley for that radio.
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Explain some things

    "HOOOOOOO DAMN." Arthur mutters, clapping a palm against his temple in a brief motion that looks like he's dislodging water from one ear. "We got that big-ass CAUTION SIGN up in this bitch." He approaches the sphere again, now featuring its elegant saturnal rings. It's given a blank, absent sort of regard. Alright, we have a dire breach possibility, which means Arthur needs to figure out how to arrange this to minimize risk.

    He strides up to the blade and regards Archer and the two blade-themed men. He can't handle providing power to a tiny device, but a blade like this might be right. His assumption: If something truly awful happened here, it was the result of an Antegent. And if an Antegent was involved here... that means whoever put the blade here was likely fighting them. Blades are used by humans, and Antegent almost never use tools after all!

>Arthur: Provide additional power to MURAMASA OF DISTORTIONS

    This is the logic he uses while putting a palm near the blade and trying to apply additional power to it. Can its pseudo-magical bladesmith mechanisms go even harder with additional energy provided to them? If so, what effect does it have on that strange and truly concerning nuclear waste dump of a sphere? Does it seem more stable or less? More dangerous and substantial or less? It sounds like whatever the Antegent risk was, technology made it worse, so maybe simply giving more power to a low-tech solution is better! What effect does that have?
Archer EMIYA 1632 is a bit off for what Archer knows about Muramsa's lifespan, but everything else is about what he expected. A beautifully crafted sword with beautiful intentions. It's a shame it's ruined by the fact it's a weapon made by MURAMASA, though honestly Archer is able to empathize with pure intentions becoming corrupted. For some reason. It is a mystery.

"What are you rambling on about now, old man? You know better than me if I was ripped to pieces on the spot, I'd have considered it a blessing." Archer speaks in his usual sardonic deadpan voice that makes it hard to tell if he's serious or joking. Except for Muramasa, he probably knows there's more truth in that statement than joke. He doesn't stick around because he has CHILDREN to babysit (read: Xion), but he'll leave the blade in Arthur's capable hands. Not Muramasa's hands though. They're weak and baby-like.

"Caves again. It seems I can't escape them. Go figure."

There's nothing much more to add, just overall stoic silence. It's a damp cramped cave. There's not much to comment on other than that. It can smell like magic all it wants, but that just means whatever awful thing is in here is magic-flavored rather than natural-flavored.
Muramasa The redheaded youth's eyes scrunched, as if quietly condemning Archer in some way as he was allowed to pass. It was as if there was some kind of quiet, wordless exchange of barbs there beyond what was spoken.

'Though, I'm certain I'd died by 1632 .. I think. It's possible that this world's version of myself had lived longer, or perhaps, had been born later.'

Muramasa remained behind to keep an eye on the sword, and by extension, Arthur. He couldn't help the bitter vexation that Archer had left him with, though.

'Idiot. Talking about it like it's someone else's problem .. he'd be lucky if all it did was kill him. Most of my swords are much meaner than that.'

Many of them, unfortunately, weren't capable of being wielded by anyone or anything -- better to be smelted down, purified to the base components. It's what he'd wound up doing to most of his work.

He wondered, idly, how much had survived him in his own world, before focusing back on the task at hand. "This one is different than most of my work. But, this somber feeling is familiar, tinged with regret. Or, rather, I guess it'd be more accurate to say remorse."

Yet, he had the distinct impression that the circumstances of the Muramasa who'd made that sword had been different in some capacity to his own, even if their lives were most likely, incredibly similar.
Lilian Rook     However familiar Ben is with radios, what he finds is in the largest construction up on the hillside, built with the kind of hall that should house a number of people for assembly, but not with serious accommodations for long term habitation. It's an enormous, boxy, vintage thing, locally from the early 90s, gathering dust on a covered table surrounded by a forest of empty chairs, amidst the remains of a night's drinking. It is much older than the pocketbook, and in fact probably older than later entries of the journals, albeit in very good condition. The batteries are completely dead by now. Replacing them doesn't help, as the station it was last tuned to is now just static and eerie noises.

    Said pocketbook has fewer names in it than this valley would suggest living here, though it's still perhaps three hundred or so in total, skewed somewhat towards masculine names. Doing his best to divine the essential functions outlined in the schedules, Ben can get the idea that this is some individual's handbook for laying out duties for either 'gardening' or 'crop cultivation', general repair and maintenance, cooking, foraging, 'watch', 'caretaking' or perhaps 'babysitting', and, specifically, diving. It has the air of belonging to someone giving all the orders, who never took anything like a secretary. A commanding officer type. But there are almost thirty years between the dates in the pocketbook and the last one in the journal, not to mention the archaic Japanese in the back.
Lilian Rook     Arthur running power through the Muramasa piece has simultaneously dramatic and little effect. The blade conducts the cosmic power of outer space and celestial geometry like a tuning fork, practically singing when he charges it up, causing the blade to reflect the outdoor sunlight better and more sharply than the glittering waves until it's as if it's giving off its own light. It vibrates, barely perceptibly, in place, stirring up the spherical anomaly of black+ that it rests in, the rhythmic throbbing of which quickens to the rough pace of an agitated running heartbeat.

    It also doesn't actually do anything. Though the steel thrums with power, it seems it can't be harnessed or directed without an act of swordsmanship. There seems to be no means of make use of it in a significant way without employing it As A Sword. It doesn't seem like the late Muramasa designed it in such a sloppy way that it could be coaxed or scienced into doing something without a swordsman, in his perfectly mad process. The best he can tell is that, despite how little effort it'd take to pull it out, it feels as if it was very difficult to get the sword where it is in the first place. It wouldn't be as simple as jamming the pin back in. There's a lot of spatial fabric tightly wrapped around it. The disproportionate 3d weave feels as if it's been cut and clamped together in several places, repeatedly, threatening to come loose, then tightening when he fiddles with it.
Lilian Rook     Cave spelunking is less of an exercise in fiddling with a definitely at least mildly cursed sword and volatile metaphysics and the 'cutting' thereof. Patrolling around the seaside cave several times, it appears to terminate in nothing but a bunch of dead ends, easily navigated and without much to find. It seems like it might have been used as a copper mine at some point forever ago, then lightly used for stone, salt, and some basic phosphate and nitrate rock digging. Never industrial. The only thing like cart tracks are old worn wheel grooves in the flatter floors.

    It takes the use of magic to get anywhere; if not Tamamo's, then Lilian's when she gets impatient enough. Finding some false corners and extremely narrow hairpins, a little crawling and shuffling and climbing takes one to a pit that has been roped off in the shinto style, rather than with corded nylon and reflective markers. Shimmying around from there, one can find rough and narrow makeshift steps if they so please (or jump if they aren't worried about broken knees). It's a laborious enough route that hundreds of bored and ill-supervised children might not find it on their own.

    The results, however, are well worth it. The feeling of warm water rises up almost like steam, though it isn't quite hot or humid enough to mist the air. The steps wind down to a cramped tunnel, and then open up into a massive underground fissure cave, deeply buried enough in the coast that it no doubt hasn't seen the light of day in ages, if ever, but big enough to host any sporting event of choice -- as long as it involved water, for the fact that it's almost entirely flooded. A veritable lake underground.

    The additional light is unnecessary here as well. The whole cavern is painted in shades of teal and blue, with rippling patterns of light from the water. The glow seems to come from extensive, shallow reefs of softly radiant corals, some like thick carpets, others in enormous spirals or fractals. The floor and walls surrounding the tremendous pool is covered in solid nacre, exposing no original stone, and capturing its own iridescent reflections.

    The water is warm, slightly foggy, and bubbles in certain spots from shallow vents, where small hot springs are localized to various sub-pools. Despite the lack of sunlight, the whole length of the indoor lake is densely populated with reeds, water flowers, and freshwater kelp, and colourful schools of fish, tiny crabs, snails, and giant clams. Careful attention can pick out the odd octopus, eel, or sea snake, and even more careful attention can spy many more breeds of critter that are definitely out of place here; some of which in very striking or unnatural colourations.

    The water is definitely intensely magical. It practically radiates a palpable sense of vigour and life, and the cavern feels especially 'pure' in several eastern senses.
Muramasa Keeping his keen eye on the events at hand, Muramasa releases a disatisfied hum once Arthur's experiment concludes. Without a wielder, the blade remained inert; this was natural, of course. At the end of the day, even his cursed armaments were steel wrought in spirit. They could do nothing without a swordsman's grip but seethe.

'That sword was left with its edge stuck between the layers of the world. Not so much a sword in the stone like in the west, but ... '

Discussions were held on how they should proceed. Ultimately, the decision had been made to wait for the results of the cave-bound party's exploration before doing anything conclusive, though a favorable suggestion had been made by Arthur for them to combine their talents and turn the wound in reality into a sheathe of sorts to transport the sword in.

Approaching the sword himself now that he had the opportunity, Muramasa peers down at it. From the style of the handle to the waves of the tempering, it was certainly one that he had made.

It indicated, at least to him, that there only existed negligible differences between himself and the Muramasa who made it. 'It is very similar to the Myoujingiri.' he surmised.

'Still, 1632 was a while after I'd kicked it. By that time, even my own children would have been goin' gray, if they even lived that long.'

Magical waters in the cave below .. it was just a hunch, but he couldn't help but wonder if they had allowed the him of this world to extend his life; especially since this place was supposed to be connected to a 'dragon garden'. If it's what he thought it was, then ...

    "Tch. No use thinkin' about it now."
Ben d'Tarkanan      Ben is familiar with the idea of a radio, and roughly, with the aesthetics of those from several worlds and time periods. He is familiar with these things in that he thinks they're neat. 'Investigating' the radio is mainly 'pushing random buttons and hope something cool happens for some free praise.' Alas. Nothing happens.

     Tapping a finger to his earpiece, an artifact of his own world's design rather than a modern consumer electronic device, he announces his progress. "I've found all the answers the village holds," he says, idly turning the pocketbook over as he ceases his fiddling with the radio. "...unless someone happens to speak the local dialect."

<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "The local dialect? Why, that should be of no difficulty."
<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "I know the older styles better than the modern, yet the writing is unlikely to have so changed."
<J-IC-Scene> Ben d'Tarkanan says, "Bully! I'll be there shortly, your grace."
<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Ah, if you did mean you found some papers of interest, be careful of the water. We continue to wade, and are like to only find more of it. There is a hint of something here, yet to be found."
<J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "Yeah, pro'lly somethin' the LOCALS knew."
<J-IC-Scene> Ben d'Tarkanan says, "Ah, yes--they're quite old. Perhaps for caution's sake, I shall have an attendant await you with them, at the mouth of that cavern?"

     He can see in darkness perfectly fine, and it probably wouldn't be too difficult to just wade through the water while holding the little book aloft. But... he does really want to see if a scabbard could be fashioned for the sword, from that same anomaly in which it's buried. By the time that Ben is out of the front door, one of those skeletons is waiting for him.

     Empty black sockets face forward, focused on Ben through some faculty other than mundane sight, utterly silent save for the creaking of bleached bones.

     "Her Grace explores the cavern there, with Dame Rook as escort. Await them at the mouth of the cave, and present Her Grace with this upon her exit." The journal is placed into the undead's bony grasp. It marches crookedly off towards the cave entrance, pocketbook in hand. There, it will wait, silently and unnervingly extending the record to Tamamo for her perusal.

     Meanwhile, Ben makes his way back through the valley, down to the shore, where the rest of his skeletal workers have finished constructing the crude barricade. They stand in unnerving stillness, eyeless pits seemingly locked on fixed points in the distance. Ben's presence sees a subtle shift, heads turning to face him with creaking and cracking of forgotten bones.

     Having not made Muramasa's acquaintance, Ben ignores the pliant gazes of his servitors to introduce himself. "Hello there, old chap. Ben d'Tarkanan, of the Sharn Tarkanans." He smiles wryly, but doesn't attempt to make much conversation at present--this is something that will likely take concentration, after all.
Xion Xion, having faded from the collective consciousness by putting her hood up and walking throught he cave in the wake of great and glowing people, has time to think about feelings. So many feelings. Two whole feelings. Dim memories that didn't belong to her, bubbling to the surface and popping in twitches and pangs of doubt, shame, and frustration. She can hide it, losing the definition of illumination across her cheeks in the gloom of the cave that Tamamo lights up. Hanging her head, she's alone with her thoughts in the party.

And then Archer starts following her. Minding her. Like a petulant child, she begins oscillating between speeding up and slowing down, veering off and fishtailing around, and generally being a Garbage Child.

Then the cave opens up, bathed in the strange water's power and the warmth of something clean and good and secluded.

She turns, auburn haired, to look at Archer with her cheeks puffed out poutily. "You don't need to follow me around, even if you're Riku's partner!" 'Kairi' puffs at Archer, stamping her shoe into the cave ground.

She brings her hands to her mouth - knowing what she's done. "U-uh, I mean--"

She turns back towards the pool, wading in to her ankles and bringing her hood back up from where it fell around her shoulders - from spinning to address Archer.

"Oh, wow, this water's so magical, I feel funny, oooagh." She fakes a groan and holds her stomach with a hand. "But I bet we could use it to do some... purity-cleaning of the blade? Un-distort the distortion? Like, slide it out, yeah. Like WD-Forty."
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Test crafting compatibilities. Can you make this a sheath?

    Arthur is stuck, for now, awaiting the results of an expedition into the past to examine the nature of the anomaly. For now, Arthur comes to a definitive conclusion: It would be entirely unwise to separate the anomaly from the blade. This Is Not a Place of Honor, and if that's true on a level that the noble horrorterrors would tell him, Arthur thinks he's got a better approach than to simply break open the hazard-marked barrel.

    He snaps a finger. Out of Gates come his PUNCHCARD ALCHEMY equipment! A hefty Captcharoid camera allows him to capture a photo of the Anomaly (though capturing a photo of the blade itself is simply a non-option, it's too obscured). With that, and his older sword equipment, he intends to match the blade with its missing piece: A sheath! "NO IDEA if this gonna work, yo, but..." The huge, heavy, blocky metal machines twist and turn in robotic ways, churning as he punches and inserts large punchcards into various slots. "I'm thinkin', maybe we DON'T BREACH OPEN THAT ANOMALY? Like, why don't I CRAFT IT into a SHEATH for this fucker. Get that PAIR BOND so it won't get SPLIT OPEN. I don't got the BLADE-RELATED KNOW-HOW for that bullshit, but..." If he's right, a perfect combination might produce a way for the alchemiter to convert the anomaly into a ANCIENT SEALED SHEATH to match the blade! Or at least see if that's a valid track of approach.
Archer EMIYA A big pool of water? Inside a cave? And there's no horrible aquatic cave creature coming out to attack them? What are the odds of that?

"Moving up from beating up old men to offer them ideas and just telling them out right? You've grown up so much since the last time we met. Sentimentality aside, it's not a bad idea, once we figure out what exactly removing the sword does."

With nothing to really do and being less than qualified to deal with blessed bodies of water, Archer bends down and attempts to scoop up one of the eels inside to get a better look at it.
Tamamo     Once she has signs of 'something' being down here, but begins to run into dead-ends, Tamamo wastes no more time before using magic to circumvent the problem, tracking down the source of that magical scent. It's actually simple, though the talismans look fancy. She's less eager toward, and therefore leaves to Lilian, all necessary shimmying. This isn't the outfit for that.

    Beyond that, Xion has been quiet enough, and though Tamamo is used to her and focused elsewhere, she's less used to Archer's presence. That he is, in some sense, already familiar with 'her' has the unfortunate side-effect of attracting her attention, now. Any conclusions drawn by her glances, or in happening to hear Xion speaking to him, remain mysteries, for the moment. They don't seem related to the immediate dangers, at least.

    "Certainly, this area has been kept purified. As to whether this could assist with the blade... perhaps they did have such aims, yet failed to enact them. The disappearance of the wielder remains a burning question, for they must have had their hand upon the blade when it was placed." She moves over to examine the water, reaching down to touch... "Hot springs? My, my. You do not find these just anywhere. A pity we are not here for a vacation, and the inn is yet quite unavailable."

    A few passes of her fingers and some careful 'looking,' thoughtful noises that don't mean much to anyone else, and she pronounces, "Removing the blade may be less our problem than is containing that which it has cut. Though strangely sealed at the moment, it... no, if it is released..." She turns, looking out to sea, despite presently being in a cave with no such view. "The waters here are one matter, and the boundary protects them, but the outside will not regain its life. We should not permit this. The goal, then, is to retrieve the blade, yet prevent the release of what it seals."

    That doesn't really help. They're looking for ways to do something about the situation, not reasons to not do things. "I shall go and see to that writing of which sir d'Tarkanan mentioned. Ah, I will not need an escort, I think. Please pardon me."

    Tamamo heads out, at that, back to meet with Ben's skeleton servant, which gets no more than a subtly raised brow at its ghastly state, as she silently accepts the discovered text, and begins to read it.
Lilian Rook     Archer's attemt to pick up eels goes about as he'd expect. The eel doesn't want to be picked up, and slips out of his grip as eels do. The first sight of one he arbitrarily picks turns out to be shockingly big and strong, and trails a colourful fan moreso than its fin being the same shade as the rest of its body. It is obviously not a normal eel you find anywhere, and the water is warm and feels inherently soothing to his big strong hands.

    When Xion ventures in, even just up to her ankles, it's tempting enough to just slide into and take a nap against the mother-of-pearl shore walls, despite its dense population of critters. The way it tingles gives her the distinct impression that this is probably Too Magical for a regular boring modern human to be making a habit of soaking in, as it brims with a sort of otherworldly vitality all its own. It's probably influenced the lake-life into what it is, not vice versa. She can also see where the water continues further undeground, through a tunnel on the opposite side, extending who knows where in particular, rather than being a purely stagnant and enclosed system.

    Lilian has the radio for a minute while Muramasa examines his fellow's sword. "No, you're entirely correct. This Sengo Muramasa was long dead when he made these. The Forty Four are notable for that reason. The man lingered in this world for quite a long time, unable to pass on or reincarnate, until he'd finished his business. The alleged forty fifth, all others along the way supposedly being considered 'failures' in some capacity. I'd be glad to hear your opinions on what that could be. Or any idea about the cipher broken up between all those writings on them."

    Ben's presentation of the pocketbook at the entrance is somewhat eventful for Tamamo. The archaic writing in the back is actually old enough to be contemporary for her, being essentially gibberish by modern meanings of the characters and structure. It takes her only a second to figure out that the vast majority of them are haikus. Reasonably skilled ones, too. Most of them, she can imagine being inspired by this area, and are concerned with a writer's uneasy exposure to peaceful, unventful living. One grabs her attention at the end.

            Pale Sky, Withered Grass
            Where They With Long Fingers Roam
            I Have But One Sword

    Arthur's attempts to alchemize the vantablack void are in vain. His captchalogue system helpfully reminds him that captchaloguing has never and does not work on living things.
Muramasa         "Hm."

Muramasa stops to consider the new information as Arthur moves to make his preparations. After thoroughly mulling it over, Muramasa responds over the local channel, "They never turned out right. Some were closer than others, but most were failures to what my intention had been outright."

He couldn't judge him. After all, it was the same way he was now -- although he had regretted hurting his family and pushing them away like he did during his lifetime, even now, he still pursued the glimmer of Truth he'd caught a glimpse of at the end of his life.

    " 'All paths cross here. All desires flow here. ' "

"What he sought was the heart of his sword, his Tsumugari Muramasa. If he indeed was capable of reaching it, that would be the fourty fifth blade. A sword that would not sever flesh or bone, but one that would cut through destiny; a weapon against karma itself."

Muramasa pauses again before continuing, "This sword, you said it was the twenty third, right? It is very similar to a blade I made before. Its name was Myoujingiri; the God-Demon Cutter. It was a failure like any other, but it held powerful anti-mystic abilities, such that it could defy causality in its cuts."

More than a sense of responsibility, he held a desire to see what the fruits of his other self's labor had been. But at this time --

"The only option left to us now is to remove the blade. I am capable of doing so, but there will be consequences. Is that alright with the rest of you?"
Tamamo     It's a good thing, by Tamamo's expression, that she came outside. After she's done reading, both aloud and in commentary, she takes some hurried steps over to Muramasa. "Ahh, wait, if you please! We must at least set up a barrier, or the land will not recover." That's spoken with a tone of finality, as she takes her turn approaching the sword.

    There's a moment of concentration. Of Something Happening, while she does not quite touch the blade. The blade, specifically, and not the hilt. Then, she turns away again, and takes some distance.

    "I should like to have found some more of use, yet we can only move forward. At the least, we have found good reason to preserve what remains here." While complaining, Tamamo begins moving about the area. "I should like assistance in this, yet to explain would likewise take time. A layered defense would not be entirely remiss, and may be the swifter, if any else have confidence in either barriers or purification."

    It's easy enough to tell, for anyone with either the esoteric magical background or, specifically, Shinto expertise, that's that what she's setting up. Various tools appear from up her sleeves, with no effort toward making the prestidigitation appear natural or possible. Metal stakes with ropes and streams of folded paper fly into the air just high enough to fall with weight, driving themselves into the ground. The scuffing of her sandals leaves lines she fills with handfuls of white and gold powder. None of it has the feeling of 'activation,' yet. It's just building potential. She needs to complete the circle for that.

    Given the time, unhurried, even with only the (rather large array of) items she had on-hand, it's a fairly complete project, if not the most powerful she's made this year. She would very much like, despite the deficit of information, to avoid any chance of 'releasing the pin' resulting in an uncontrollable spill. Seeing the barrier in the cave gives her some confidence that the same techniques will work, and hers are, in her own opinion, the more expert in implementation.

    Xion shares some of Tamamo's interest in the waters, leading Tamamo to say, "Perhaps later, if we should prevent this place's destruction, as I do hope we will." Perhaps a traditional inn could be built. They're hot springs, after all. "Ah, for that purpose... might you assist me? Once I am done here, that is. It would take overly long to explain the intricacies of barrier magic, yet I imagine you will not need such knowledge merely to lock the barrier, once it is made." She's seen some, previously, of how these keyblades function. "It would give me some peace of mind to have the help."

    As the circle is completed, and the request accepted, Tamamo warmly continues, "My, how reliable. Thank you."

    The magic is ready, now. She only needs to speak the command, and the talismans will burn away, and separate the space inside from that outisde. Having lacked the time to bulid a gate, it will be difficult to pass through without destroying the barrier itself, or having it undone by its creator. That does necessitate being on the inside before the barrier is raised and the sword is pulled.
Arthur Lowell >==>

    Wait, what? It's *alive* in *that way*?! Arthur looks in bafflement at the CAPTCHAROID CARD produced by his CAPTCHAROID, whose CAPTCHACODE has been processed in that way that indicates a totally incompatible living being. Buzzing Xs pop up on certain options, locking out his ability to manage this.

>Arthur: Move the anomaly somewhere where it's safe to extract the sword.

    Arthur doesn't know a safe place to put this!

>Arthur: Can you move this at all?

    Better question. "I mean, if we gotta YANK IT, better we DO IT SOMEWHERE GOOD. Since I know y'all wanna get this place all HERITAGE PRESERVED." Arthur's saturnal rings spin in varying configurations as he tests the sphere. Would it be possible to transpose this space somewhere else, so that the sword could be extracted while only putting the group at risk, rather than the sword, the island, this entire region... He notes the barrier. "Y'need a GATE up on that?" He asks, but shakes his head a bit. "Naw, this thing gotta stay KINDA SEALED. It's RADIOACTIVELY BAD, yo."

    "If I can move this, y'all got any IDEAS on PLACES?" He asks, gritting his teeth a bit. "REAL BAD if we DUMP THIS TOPSIDE, for real." He remains inside and nods to Muramasa though, arms up and ready to start digging into heavy-duty containment efforts when this breaches... or starts to fight them.
Muramasa Muramasa blinks as he finds himself practically being strong-armed by Tamamo no Mae. It doesn't take much for him to capitulate, not being in a hurry to release the Muramasa of Distortions from its resting place. While he couldn't truly say he got along with divinity, it was hard to dislike her earnest nature, he supposed.

And besides that, as far as mystics went, he vastly preferred her to that Onmyou-wretch from back then.

Muramasa waits patiently for both her and Xion to finish their work; while he hadn't interacted much at all with the younger of the two, he couldn't help but notice her disposition. Like looking at a painted-glass mural. Then again, that Archer always liked to busy himself with problem-children.

"Don't worry about it, er ... Arthur Loewell," he paused, taking a moment to remember his full name, " ... rather, I can take care of it. Technically speaking, this is my mess. I'll clean it up."

Muramasa casts his gaze about, counting heads and waiting to ensure that everyone was where they decided they needed to be. And once it was all in place, he removed his hands from his haori sleeves and stepped up to the twenty-third grave sword.

Firmly, he wraps his fingers around the hilt. The balance was all correct, he could tell immediately. In his grip, the sentient weapon practically hummed with might.

A normal person grasping onto the weapon would have had their spirit overwhelmed, it wasn't a sword that could be wielded by just anyone. Even he wouldn't be doing so if the situation didn't call for it; Muramasa shifts slightly, pulling up as the folds around the edge tighten.

Rather than removing it by force, he gently pushes forward on the hilt. "Hiken."

The pressure runs down the edge of the sword and cuts, like shredding a fallen leaf as he pulls back in that same instant to remove it from its place, drawing the length of the weapon out of the 'wound'.

Effectively, he cut a second incision from within the gap to slide the sword out.
Xion Well, this sure is a call to action. Instead of having to face her two-faced weirdo problems, Xion has a direct call to be useful and not drift through a hazy dream of remembrance or wade around in the hypnotic fizzy soda jaccuzi.

There are things to do, main story quests to complete, and checkboxes to firmly sticker over journal entries.

There are friends to help. The most simple, elemental need, is a buddy.

Using Tamamo's bright north star of desire helps Xion in shaking off the funk of the Coca-Cola Dragon Jaccuzi's alluring naptime underwater wishes (where she wouldn't have any problems and could dream about ice cream and large pink Eastern dragons giving her life lessons) and getting her back on mission: Building a barrier.

Carefully stepping to the inside angle of the barrier, Xion two-finger saluts when directed to help. "Don't worry - I've got just the thing. Um, actually, you've got it? I'll just borrow a tiny bit." The Nobody explains, while extending her hand towards Tamamo. A golden mote whisks out of the sun-goddess and in to her palm, where it coalesces into -- a medallion, of some sort, cast in gold with a stained picture of highly stylized Tamamo-face.

Summoning her Keyblade with a metallic 'shwink' into her other hand, the golden light coming off the medallion leaps into her weapon, heating the metal like liquid. The head reforms, tassle-ing out before forming into a head of keyrings and dangling charms. It jangles awfully. It is exactly the weapon you use only for its special power and AT NO OTHER TIMES.

Xion's hair takes on a Gawain Sunchad Blond as she holds the weapon, swooshing it meaningfully as she finds the catch in the air where the malformed awful-SFX keytip finds the metaphorical 'lock-hole'.

"Okay." She rotates the Travesty Of Jangling meaningfully, and the world emits a soft

    'click'

Sunchad Blond Xion observes her new weapon thoughtfully. "I feel like I should have a mask to go with this. Huh."
Ben d'Tarkanan      So, it doesn't appear that making the anomaly into a scabbard is possible. That's unfortunate... Ben strokes his chin thoughtfully, as the odd skeletal servitor tasked with delivering the pocketbook to Tamamo comes creaking through the barricade. Muramasa asks if anyone is opposed to the removal of the sword. He smiles, but is it sincere? The necromancer gestures to the barricades, and to the skeletons, armed with farm implements.

     "My good man, I rather expected it might be our only option. Please," he says, nodding towards the sword. "I can think of no better person for the task." He says that--and he has no problem with Muramasa going for the sword. But it's hard to ignore the tension present within Ben, despite his apparent conviviality. His thumb fiddles with the pommel of his sword, even as he wears that smile. He would very much like to appear confident, but with the elegant solution posed by Arthur and Muramasa off the table, he's not at ease.

     The fortifications are done, the skeletons as armed as they can be. It's not a good position to be in, when one might potentially be up against a reality-warping foe. This is like... no. "Don't think of that place," mutters the necromancer under his breath. Don't think of it... The memory of... that place... is suppressed.

     He goes from fiddling with the sword to gripping it outright, then... Then Arthur asks if there are any places it can be moved. He can't help it. He thinks of it. Of that place. Of a river bank, not a hundred feet away, swallowed up by fog as if the weather itself had an appetite. Of inhuman shapes writhing and pulsating within it. Of silent dread, as it dawned on him that wounded men were left within that miasma. Were those shapes what became of those men? Or were they something different, some new and awful thing called from the blackest depths of whatever nightmare conjured that fog?

     His breathing picks up. The leather of his weapon's handle squeaks beneath his unnaturally strong grip. They could put it *there.* Put it there and forget about it. Just like he forgot about...

     "No!" Reflex. He doesn't realize that he's wheeled around to shout his answer at Arthur, until after the outburst. He looks down, at his left hand, the sword having been drawn. Ben swallows. "That is... no. I know of no such place... Goodman Lowell." He shakes his head. There is a painful, awkward silence wherein he searches for some way he might explain away that abrupt outburst. Thankfully, Muramasa makes his move. He turns, sword still in hand, just after the swordsmith speaks what the necromancer assumes to be a word of power.

     He isn't sure if this is something that can be brute forced. But he's going to try. In the precious seconds he has while Muramasa retrieves the weapon, Ben uses his sword to inscribe a series of hasty sigils into the sand. They are, essentially, weak magical land mines, designed more to test how this anomlaly responds to a given type of spell, more than to outright destroy it. He only has time for three--an ice spell, a corrosive spell, and raw necrotic energy.
Archer EMIYA Archer firmly grasps on to the eel with his strong hands. Yep, it's an eel. Not one he's ever seen before, but it's a real living thing. As much as he'd love to keep it to test a theory of his out, he's not one for excessive animal cruelty. He gently throws the creature back into the pool, picking himself off his knees but not before pocketing a nearby rock. It's not going to come in handy or anything, but it'll sate his curiosity later down the road.

With nothing left to do and no desire to ruin the ecosystem with overfishing or too many swords, Archer decides to head back, leaving the cave with only his rock friend in tow.
Lilian Rook     The man who had come here before had been old, he had been skilled, he had been ambitious, and his people had been loyal. He succeeded as best he could, and spent his last years here in relative peace, before it all went away. What he did was something to be proud of for one man. Even without his last haiku, Tamamo, gets the idea. But what he could do wasn't what the combined expertise and abilities of all the people here can do. The work isn't quite complete. There was But One Sword. That needn't be necessarily true anymore.

    The natural landscape surrounding the core of the Distortion is fully receptive to Tamamo's eastern geomancy, taking on the patterns and layered cardinal blessings easily. The inconvenient location of the 'blot' means a wide array is necessary to capture it, but there's nothing here to interrupt her. In a way that seems almost habitually coordinated, Lilian joins the group effort by finding the correct locations to add western runes to the auspicious natural features of the area, not quite so flashy, but reinforcing the general task of containment and protection without interfering or competing with the sealing circle. The use of Locking it with the Keyblade, though ill-understood to pretty much anyone but Xion, feels emphatically important, when even the seawater inside goes still from the echoing click, and the vibration inherent in the spherical blight comes to a near-halt.

    Muramasa is able to approach it without difficulty. Laying his hands on the hilt, he can feel the intense urge to use the sword flow through him, urging him to Cut with all the desperate irrationality of a severe drug withdrawal paired with an existential crisis. The sword is meant to cut; cutting proves the sword's existence, and by extension, his own. This is how 'failed' swords go, though this one is eminently much more usable than most, if one possesses the discipline and character to resist it. Being a swordsmith himself, he also feels, if only briefly, the uncanny sensation of this piece being something like a gift. Like he'd intended to give it to someone and just forgotten who. It'll nag for a while.

    The result of slicing through in the same motion as 'unsheathing' the blade is by far the most dramatic thing to have happened thus far. The eerie, spherical stain of hovering blackness almost instantaneously triples in size, expanding as if having exploded within, only to slam fast against the saturnian rings Arthur had layered around it. As braces of a specific purpose, --staples in space itself-- they perform the task exceptionally well. The rings vibrate, glow, fade, clatter, but do not break. The distortion expands and contracts several times, like walking back to get a running start and trying to ram a door over and over again.

    Where Muramasa withdrew the blade, there is a sliver of washed-out light visible in the midst of the blackness, like peering between the slats of closed window blinds. From it, some kind of liquid oozes and pools up on the surface of the water without mixing. It is suggestive of a liquid only by its behaviour, as the actual substance of it is only visible by its contrast against its surroundings, like faint image artifacting that grows worse as the 'bleeding' puddle spreads with the distortion's repeated attempts to unravel and expand.
Lilian Rook     It has the look and *feel* of bleeding. Spurts of it drool from the torn line with each bout of violent activity. The pool becomes a spider web of splattered rivulets, which roll gradually on to shore. Where the suggestion of fluid paints over the sand, long grass, brittle and orange, 'sprouts' from the ground like an optical illusion, visible only from the angle of looking towards the black orb. A wind visibly stirs it, causing it to hiss and rattle in an unwholesome, slightly menacing way, but there is no such breeze on the beach. The water under the same effect looks pale and silvery, reflecting a washed out sky with the lighting of an old waiting room.

    The spread stops completely at the layers of locked and reinforced barriers. It pools up at the edge and diverts into a wide circle, running along the inner wall, and finding no means to escape. It turns the dirt a muddle, blood-rust red, filled with tiny pockmarks and holes, and, rarely, what appear to be the old fragments of bleached bones grown over in the grass. From the right angle, one can see the corroded skeleton of an utterly vintage tractor, covered in climbing red weeds of some kind. Where it brushes the edge of the boat moor, the wood looks pitted and petrified, more like rusted old iron.

    Worse still, from those just-right angles, looking into another room through a crack in the door or a half-veiled window, one can see shadows moving across the long, hissing grass, though not hear any sort of physical movement. It isn't until the 'bleeding' is extensively spread, and Arthur's rings are starting to become strained, that a pale grey hand the size of an entire torso manages to wriggle its way around the 'corner' of a stream and thrust into the open air; something with six fingers, two opposing thumbs, and too many knuckle joints. It blindly gropes around the limited area it can reach, scraping and clawing, like trying to find and drag something out from under a piece of furniture.

    It finds one of Ben's glyph-mines instead, and blows off two of its fingers, causing the massive hand to sharply retreat around the edge of the visual distortion and out of sight again, as if burnt on a stove. A number of long shadows gather in the area, shifting back and forth along with the sounds of dirt being scraped and swept.

    Regardless, the sheer number of layered protections seem to be in no danger of being compromised. A ton of careful preparation by many specialists has gone into them, and the once-defeated aberration appears to have been on the lower portion of its metaphorical bar. Without the ability to re-expand, and swallow up all of this perfectly natural space, it doesn't seem to be able to gain back any power or Inflict its Gimmick, and the amount of threat it poses is very limited.

    It's not clear whether the ugly, slightly alien alteration to the terrain that is visible is real, overlapping, or merely visible and 'somewhere else', nor whether the things 'inside' are simply too large to be able to get out at the minute, or are part of the 'interior' and cannot meaningfully exist outside of it, but there are plenty of signs that there is a great deal of space contained within it --just as Arthur had felt-- now bleeding out bit by bit from the Muramasa wound. Possibly miles and miles of distortion, once laid over the landscape, and then cut away like a scalpel, pruned down to just the beating heart of the singularity, now trapped under glass.
Muramasa Drawing the length of the blade back and around so that it was pointed to the ground, Muramasa had to focus himself so that he wasn't lost in the sword's 'tug'. It had a mind of its own, as most of its brothers and sisters did, and all it would take was an inch for it to obtain a mile. It was addictive; being so well matched with a sword that it was an extension of yourself. Where you stopped and it began would blur away. You would want what it wanted.

It was a downward spiral from there, as any kind of delineation between 'you' and 'it' would cease to have any real meaning. The human body wielding the sword at that point was just as much a component of the blade as the handle or tang.

Everything going around him seemed to drown out as he and the sword resonated with one another. "Ah."

        "I see..."

This wouldn't stop bugging him, would it? This feeling of having forgotten something incredibly important. Constantly itching at the back of his skull, and yet ..

        "Trace on."

In his head, he could image the sword he held in its hand. From its base components to the method of its make .. further than that, he could see the imperfections in the blade as well. And with machine-like precision, he filled up these imperfections with magical energy through Strengthening, and then performed Alteration to fit it all into place.

The blade became harder. Its edge became sharper. Every beat of his heart was like a hammer striking hot metal. It took on a new sheen, as if it were better than new.

Even as the others began to discuss, he sought for wood, oil, cotton, and hardy cabling. It'd be too dangerous to leave something like this with its blade out in the open, and so he would make it a scabbard. No sword was complete without one.

He pauses, briefly, in his scavenging. "A picture? Go ahead, though, I'm not sure that device will work on this sword, either."
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: DO WHAT YOU CAME HERE FOR
>Arthur: Captchalogue SWORD
>Arthur: Return SWORD
>Arthur: Punch MURAMASA OF DISTORTIONS code onto blank CAPTCHALOGUE CARD
>Arthur: Use DISTORTION SWORD PUNCHCARD on ALCHEMITER

    Arthur reaches a hand out to Muramasa -- the swordsmith, not the sword -- and wants to take the sword. "Hey homeboy, trust me, this thing WORKS THE WORK when it comes to POWERFUL ARTIFACTS. If you got some way'a SWINGIN' IT, though, YOU'RE gonna have to DO THEM HONORS, I can only use BROOMS." He doesn't take a picture so much as take the sword into his inventory -- and suddenly it's in a card, one he's holding and reading off the back of. "NICE. Alright, here." He hands the blade back! "You hang on to the REAL DEAL." And then he starts punching codes, putting a card in, pressing something repeatedly...

    He attempts to alchemize just a few more iterations of the blade. Knowing the curse, four is appropriate; by placing them in the anomaly, the anomaly will now own four, and become subject to the absolute misfortune curse. Each are handed off, if they can be produced in some reasonable way, to anyone else here whose game mechanics do not entirely prohibit them from using a sword, and who seems to know what's up about them -- Muramasa seems to be the one who claims the most knowledge of it, but Archer has a mirror of that Adult Male Sword Owner energy, so he should suffice too, right?
Tamamo     Though briefly very concerned with Ben's outburst, Tamamo can well understand how the situation might stretch tension into one's nerves, and so passes over it with only a glance, not quite commenting.

    Xion acquires something of Tamamo's--at least, Tamamo is pretty sure that's what happened. She doesn't feel lessened for this tiny bunrei-esque ceremony, though she must suppress a frown at the jangling, worse even than the most obnoxious monks of her memories. She had, after all, asked for help. It would simply be gauche to mention how Xion would certainly have no trouble startling oni or scaring off animals. The light-dyed hair is curiously interesting, but probably not a topic for right now.

    The 'click' is what was important. The completion of the barriers. The locking of those inside, inside. As Tamamo mentions to Archer, this will hold until they open it--which they must, for they would otherwise be unable to leave.

    Arthur has a plan. Though technically able to use a sword, in the most literal sense, Tamamo will refrain from accepting one. She has out her mirror, and though not technically limited to mirrors, she is practically limited in only telekinetically swinging about the one. It's a physical manifestation of a divine blessing, so it should suffice for most things.

    How, exactly, she should combat this opponent remains a bit of a problem. It is certainly some sort of curse, some sort of corruption, some sort of alien thing that is Wrong and Should Not Be. On this, the signs, the feeling, and most importantly, the readings of Fate are all very clear. But if she could have left it to a purification rite, then she would have stood on the outside of the barriers, and let it waste away its strength inside, slowly giving itself up. That, she is certain, would not have worked. Whether 'well' or 'at all,' she is less certain.

    Not a blade made for cutting distortions, but a manifestation of the Eightfold Blessings of Amaterasu. Perhaps it cannot slice, but it can oppose. Though lacking the power to raise civilization from nothing (by nine to the sixth, precisely), the mirror is still an instrument of blessings of growth and order, the rearrangement of nature to the benefit of humanity. It is, then, directly opposing the Antegents and their own, twisted terraforming.

    Tamamo makes the gesture of a benevolent ruler, and speaks the secret words. The mirror shines with her will. Its light is reflected by all sides of the barrier, filling the prepared space. Life appears, green shoots breaking the ground in regular, planted rows, attacking the corrupted artifacting, the rust-like splashes, the palpable Wrongness by its very, determined, existence.
Xion With a bit of embarrasment at there not being a fight, and thus, being within the Danger Zone but not the rings of securing rendered entirely moot, Xion lets go of the jangling keyblade, the weapon unravelling into sunbeams before touching the ground.

She make a little 'guiltyyyy' he-henn towards Tamamo before stepping back. "I'm not an Adult Male Sword Owner, so I'll let you guys handle it." She decides, to Archer and Muramasa.

The former had really wanted to prove a point earlier.

With blond and summer-wheat hair ruffling in the breeze of Civilization, all that's left to happen is the results of the combined plans.
Archer EMIYA Archer is a smith of sorts, he's a maid, and more importantly, the feeling in his chest tells him this is right. . The distortion may be contained, but it's not removed. This needs to be corrected, and he needs to start carrying his weight. Although with what he's about to do, this is basically giving another win to the old man.

"Trace on."

A good glance at Muramasa's sword is all he needs as he holds an empty hand out in front of him. Green circuits shoot up his arm as his magic circuits feel like they're burning with fire.

"Many paths, converge here." More circuit board patterns, though this time they spread out from his empty hand, taking the shape of a katana.

"Enduring desires, flow here." At this point, the circuits have been replaced with a vague green sword blob, far from finished, but a lot more tangible.

"Unjust deaths, gather here." At this point, the green shatters away, revealing a 'perfect' copy of the sword mounted on Saber's hip. He grips the newly formed weapon tightly, holding it vertically as he looks it over.

"My whole life has been for this single swing." He basically mutters the last line as he loosens the blade out of its sheathe with his thumb.

He's somewhat cut off from what he was doing when Arthur just hands him another copy of the Muramasa blade they've been sent to retrieve. There's a bit of hesitation to take it, but he grabs it with his free hand.

"So. Just shove the swords in? I'd say this is unreasonably simple, but after all we've been through, I suppose we deserve something like that."

There's no real fanfare to it. As much as he'd love to swing the swords around like some sort of sword idiot, he simply thrusts them into the anomaly. Maybe next time, but pragmatism beats showing off in this case.
Muramasa Muramasa works with almost inhuman vigor as he manages to craft an excellent wooden scabbard for the Grave Sword, its cotton insides soaked with oil to keep the blade comfortable as he, at last, slides it into its new home and ties thick cable through the hooped guard to keep it in place.

By the time he finishes, Arthur had dispersed the copies that would be taken. Truthfully, Muramasa did not want to accept the forgery, but his desire to put the distortion here to rest won out in the end. For as much as Sengo Muramasa could not accept it, the part of him that was Shirou Emiya further could not accept anything less.

Muramasa secures the original Grave Sword to his waist for safe-keeping, a headache thrumming in his skull from prolonged contact with the cursed sword.

An eye is cast to Archer, who unceremoniously shoves them in. It irritates him to no end.

"You idiot. You're just relying purely on the swords; that forgery of yours too is .. "

There's an intense frown. " ... Hmph. You pass, barely. I heard you could do something similar with King Arthur's sword .. even so, there's plenty to improve on."

Rearing the sword back, Muramasa takes a single, minimal shuffle forward and thrusts like lightning, initiating his Blade-Testing Art to force the sword's properties to the edge, emitting cursed waves weaving up and down, like the teeth of a chainsaw.

His strike is placed perpendicular to where Archer had struck his own.
Lilian Rook     The process of creating a scabbard for the blade isn't any harder than it needs to be. The physical reality of it is the same as for any fine Japanese sword, which Muramasa himself has made countless numbers of. The mad aura to the weapon relents somewhat when sheathed and the hilt left alone.

    Alchemizing copies is more of a process. Were Arthur out to create fully fledged instances, the grist costs would be astronomical, and involving some really obscure kinds that aren't exactly handy. However, what he needs is 'four grave blades', not 'four of the Sword that Severs Distortions'. Filling all the major conditions is pricey, but much more doable, though it takes some time to work.

    Tamamo has access to considerably more powerful magic than anyone who has been to this place in a long time. The blessings of Amaterasu are more than sufficient to inject powerfully flourishing life into the unseemly earth and air. Oddly, that rush of life causes the ostensibly withered orange grass to crumble away and be torn out at the root by brilliant green shoots; rather than being revitalized, it looks as if it were poisoned and replaced. Doing so also shrinks the edges of the 'in' commensurately, preventing further growth of the spill. Agitated scraping sounds come from within. Something large and round, shadowed by the sun, tilts and lowers near to the ground, partially visible through a thin slice looking in and out.

    Four grave blades are chucked wholesale into the imprisoned black blot. They disappear soundlessly. A few seconds later, there are a series of audible, clattering thuds, like three metal objects falling from a great height onto hard dirt, and one loud splash. The scraping shadows cast by the invisible, washed out light move towards the sound of the noise, somewhere near to the center, yet beyond sight. It has the ominous air of 'monkeys and guns' cranked up an almost unbearable level of tension.

    Muramasa doesn't have to do anything special with the original article. The minute the sword re-enters, all of the 'bled' exposure turns abrubtly black. A smash cut. An awful, deafening, roaring, squealing, crashing, thundering sound. Howling shrieks, drowned out in the nails-on-chalkboard drawn-out disaster. A metallic snap. Then silence.

    The vantablack sphere slides gradually apart, like two halves of a wet cut of meat, and falls unceremoniously out of the air, slipping from the edge of the sword. Both halves hit the water, and quietly burst on its surface, billowing under as a cloud of red blood, like the visceral moments after a shark attack. The Muramasa is dripping with red blood. The corruption is gone. The space rings are gone. The captchalogue code of the sword is a hideous streak of frenzied garble. All that's left is the healthy new growth created by Tamamo, and the sigils, glyphs, talismans and bindings, now containing nothing.
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Observe curse

    The passing of the voidbeast rips apart enough to make Arthur shudder as several screens on his user interface flicker and shake. "What in the hell..." He whispers, watching a punched captchalogue card distort in his hands as he glances between his crafting station and the offending extradimensional corpse.

    Eyebrows shoot up with a kind of subtle awe at the nature of what the creature was -- and its current effect on what *is*.

>Arthur: DEVISE

    "Curse even worked on that. Damn, Muramasa, you go hard in the bellows." The mage mutters. "I guess we got it. Idea might work." He regards the fucked-up code. "But we're gonna need another blade to do it. This one's code is fucked up, that thing managed to strip it clean outta reality. I'm gonna need another one." He points to Muramasa. "You're right 'bout that one bein' made for someone, and right now it's got a date it better keep. Let's get that shit back in that plane in case there's more out here, though."
Ben d'Tarkanan      As the anomaly is initially relieved of the sword, Ben's blade is held with both hands in a rigid grip. The bastard sword is perfectly still--but to say that the necromancer is calm would be fiction. He looks as pale as a ghost when the otherworldly, two-thumbed hand extends from the gap in its constraints, a sheen of sweat visible on his brow, his breathing audibly shallow once the waves are stilled by XIon's keyblade.

     His skeletons take up a defensive position, following some wordless order given. They form a crude phalanx, walling him off from the threat. As if they'd be able to stop it. That hand is as big as a human torso, easily. Skeletal servitors-turned-warriors lift their tools in defensive postures. What would it do, were it to find purchase? What does that hand seek, and for what gruesome purpose?

     He won't have to find out, today. For a mercy, his mine seems to have worked, this time, on this creature. That is cold comfort--for the alteration to the terrain, real or perceived; the ur-things spied 'inside'... they call to memory familiar and ugly things.

     There is one last thing to do. What is contained here today must never escape--and it has been fairly well sealed such that escape from within is nigh impossible. It's very unlikely that anyone else would find this place. But... should they ever... there would need to be precautions taken. And even if such precautions were already made, the memories drudged up by today's events will not be put to bed without excessive effort on his part.

     Before he leaves, there is one last thing he does. Every book remaining is painted with glpyhs similar to those he made to test the anomaly. But, these aren't destructive. They're mind altering. Any eyes which peer into those books will notice two words, each with a powerful mental compulsion:

         LEAVE. FORGET.

     When he returns to the shore, he looks... weary. Tired. Not at all like the convivial image he attempted to present at first. He looks haunted.

     "Rest."

     Marching in disturbingly uniform single file, the skeletons creak back into the valley and return to stillness.
Muramasa Through their combined efforts, the creature is dispersed -- and with it, the darkness that was plaguing this place began to waft away as if they were storm clouds, stirred apart by the wind. Bringing the blade up to stare into the reflection of the blood, Muramasa pauses before reaching into his satchel, retrieving a small jar and a pick. Gently, he scrapes the blood off the blade and into its new container before capping it to take with him. The vital fluids of such a creature were excellent reagents, after all. Waste not, want not.

"Eh ... you're not wrong. I'll take the compliment." Muramasa grins, wryly, at Arthur.

"It looks like everyone's itching to get out of here. I'm of the same mind, even if it'd be nice to go soak in those hot springs before we leave ... also ... "

Bright, golden eyes glance to the side awkwardly, as if struggling to find the correct way to put forth what the swordsmith was feeling.

"For what it's worth ... I'm sorry for the trouble my work's caused. I came here out of a sense of personal responsibility, but, if it's possible, I'll help look for the rest too. I'm interested to see what the other 'me' cooked up."

"And .. you all did a good job. Even the ones I don't usually care for."
Archer EMIYA With the distortion dealt with, Archer takes a few steps, his legs shaking before he gives up and falls back willingly, his ass making a dull thud as it impacts the ground.

There's a tremble in is voice as he simply chuckles. There's the occasional muscle spasm as his magic circuits misfire, and it feels like every part of his body has a hot iron rod shoved into it... But honestly, he's felt worse. Though after catching his breath, he's quick to pull himself back off the ground. God forbid anyone worry about his health, because he'd rather cough blood up in peace rather than with someone over his shoulder.

"After it's all over, the first thing to come out of your mouth is 'I wanna go home'? Really?" He's not upset because Ben asked, but only because he got beaten to the punch.
Tamamo     Tamamo is cheerful. "In all respects, a success. An impressive, if perhaps unorthodox, use of swordsmanship." A clean, unambiguous victory is their reward, the threats of spreading toxins coming to nothing, thanks to extensive preparations. This done, she gives the countersign to her barrier--though it the additional effect of Xion's keyblade-locking might cause a delay before she can step outside, and acquire a good vantage point from which to look over her work.

    Not all share her optimism in the current circumstances, it seems. "Are you quite alright, sir d'Tarkanan? I wonder if Mr. Lowell's gates might connect more easily to the cities, now that the distortions have been cleared."

    After a moment's thought, "Rather, I might have some use for a gate to return to the Dragon's Garden, but I should not keep you." She has some business here, beyond admiring the effects of her own blessings.

    It's not strictly personal business, either, as she says to Muramasa, "My, but that was easily construable as a compliment, in the spirit of which I shall accept." This is, again, in good cheer, though she does not pretend to understand why red swordsmen have some sort of difficult impression of her. It is merely one of the mysteries of the era. More importantly, "If you do wish to try the hot springs, I certainly will not stop you. I shall see to them after certain are preparations are made, and these the more swift, should we have the good advantage of gates. In some hours, perhaps, and then I shall make good on such curiosity, myself. As to *other* matters, there are," she gives a exaggeratedly conspiratorial wink, "secrets involved, and we may speak of these. Your position affords a right to know of the fate of your swords, I should think." Small-f fate. She's not yet clear on the big-F Fate.

    Lastly, able to avoid saying anything after such clear signs that this is very much not her business and not to be pried, but not quite able to do nothing about it, she slips a palm-sized, drawstring pouch to Ben, with a, "It is only as a shrine might provide, but please accept this." That's a lie. The health charm inside the pouch is far beyond what 'a shrine' could provide, and can enforce almost-noticeably implausible events for the sake of preserving the bearer's health. Not that it'll do anything for remembered horrors, which are outside her domain.
Ben d'Tarkanan      "I do," says Ben to Archer, with the kind of honesty that can only come at the end of a hard day. "Quite fervently, old chap." He does manage to muster a tired smile. It's an effort. But Archer's tone doesn't seem hostile, so there's no need to react with hostility. It's over. He can leave here, and put this behind him. "Home means a warm hearth, a bottle of wine, and pleasant surroundings."

     These surroundings are familiar. They are not fondly regarded. But these people have been... understanding, about that. Most surprising of all, the swordsmith himself. Tamamo even offered a wellness charm, which he accepts, peering down at the pouch in his palm. Perhaps the magic of the charm itself can't erase the memories, or the fear they cause. But kind words and gestures have a magic all their own.

     "Thank you," he says, quietly, squeezing the charm. It is no longer just a health charm; it's a reminder of the time he found something nice in the last place he expected. He pockets it--and though he is still quite glad, when Arthur's portal comes through, he doesn't seem *quite* so tired as he leaves.