Scene #9327: Diplomatic Incident-3

Owner	Pose
Calvin Nash	PREVIOUSLY: Around a partially collapsed overpass that won't hold the weight of the trucks, over a completely collapsed tunnel, through the open ribs of a fallen-down skyscraper, Calvin cuts his light bar and tells JM to do the same. Just as the trucks roll down an incline in the night, into a leveled business park, lights are seen dancing in the distance. Smoke rises up to twirl like a rope before a scant backdrop of stars. It isn't the thick curtain of an uncontrolled inferno, but the narrow plume of a tended flame. The beat of drums is faintly heard on the wind before it howles through the concrete ribs behind you. So, too, is churlish laughter and cavorting. Hammered, rusted corrugated metal does its impression of swept roofs, over squat buildings made from repurposed (likely ground, reconstituted and re-fired) brick and mortar; all of it walled off and distinctly out of place for an American city circa mid-90s. It looks more like Heian period Japan meets grungy post-apoc. NOW: <This is the place,> Calvin broadcasts over Khosa's telepathic net. For Petra, a gesture--an index, driven downwards out the driver side window, as if to say 'right here.' "Let's go," he says, hushed. <Let's park under that oak and head in.> A venerable old oak springs up from the cracked pavement of the leveled business park like the arm of a sleeping giant shrugging off bedsheets. Its boughs spread wider than even its considerable trunk, which makes it ideal cover from any aerial surveillance that might pass by--as much as any remains following Futaba and Dimo's distractions. As the two trucks (and the unicorn) pull up to it, Calvin gets halfway out, leans towards the back of the cab and pulls himself into the bed, opening a toolbox just under the cab's rear window. A canvas tarp flutters out, and as everyone exits the truck, he spreads it over the chassis to hide any reflections in the night. From there, he hops down, the distance between the bed and the ground substantially higher with the lifted suspension and overlarge tires in the equation. JM does similar with his truck, though he doesn't have to finagle so much. <Now, we're gonna head in there and get some information from them sumbitches,> Calvin briefs, after chambering a few rounds in his shotgun and racking the pump. <You give an oni an inch, he'll take a mile. So don't be afraid to get 'insistent' and for damn sure, don't be afraid to bust a pop-knot on their heads if they don't talk.> "We're goin' in and askin' questions and we ain't takin' 'no' for an answer," he summarizes for Petra in hushed tones. But-- <We don't need 'em to talk,> Richards transmits. She holds up a little amber charm with a small seed suspended in it. It's smoothed into the shape of a cone; the seed inside glows softly, light traveling through the amber towards the point of the cone. The amber itself hovers in the air, pointing towards the oni compound. "He's here." Calvin chews on that revelation. It's good news, but he isn't smiling. "Well. Ongyo-ki prolly is too," he whispers. "So what we'll do is, JM, you hit us with Quietus. Then you give us a ten count, radio the dragnet, let 'em know we found 'im. Then you catch up with Richards." "I want a heavy hitter or two with Richards. If Ongyo-ki or somebody he trusts is watchin' Thoth, then we ain't gettin' him outta there without a fight. That's why the rest of us're gonna follow 'em a ways back, in a half-circle," he says, illustrating with an index on his palm. "And come up from the opposite direction. When they find Thoth, we're gonna squeeze in from behind and kettle anybody that tries to run in and stop 'em. Now. I ain't your daddy, so figure out who you're with and let's get."
Calvin Nash	The compound spans five buildings; two on the left, two on the right, all smaller than the one in the middle, which faces south. JM's sound-suppression spell muffles footsteps, Unicorn's footfalls, speech and the soft click-click of Richard's scabbard against her hip. What it doesn't muffle is sound that doesn't come from one of you--the whipping of the wind through mounds of rubble and decaying buildings, the settling of their crumbling bones, or the boisterous laughter and celebration of the oni, which grows louder as Richards' charm takes you towards the main building. A few oni are posted outside the side buildings. A dozen more or so cavort around a fire in the center of the plaza, roasting game, drinking, and challenging one another. That's just the periphery of the celebration--the main hall must be packed if the sound of drums and the cacophony of clashing conversations is any indication. Richards' charm is leading you right to it. With JM's spell up, it's highly unlikely the revelers inside will hear you deal with the oni on the periphery. <Change of plans,> Calvin transmits, at the relative paucity of oni outside. <Ain't hardly none outside. Let's clean 'em up and just head straight in.> "Down in front," he whispers. Shouldering his shotgun, he takes aim at the oni outside the southwest building and pulls the trigger. JM's spell muffles the sound of the igniting powder, the silvery web vibrating as if in a heavy wind. It doesn't hide the flash--but the one oni who turns to look doesn't have the chance to raise an alarm. Rather than a slug or a spread of pellets, what travels from the end of Calvin's shotgun is a smoky silhouette; as it travels the smoke sloughs off to reveal a disembodied head in a silent scream, its hair a tangled and writing mass of snakes. It passes through the oni guard and turns him to stone, with the same fate befalling the guard at the northwest building before the projectile dissipates. It's safe to assume you can make short work of the guards outside and the oni that evidently aren't welcome inside--the real threat is going to be the sheer number of them inside, to say nothing of Ongyo-ki.
Futaba Nuki	Once the aerial suppression work is done, Futaba comes back down to the ground while transforming partway through the dive. She shifts easily from that pterodactyl-y form into her usual ninja-themed human form, bouncing off the ground with her tail as a shock absorber before turning around to hold her arms out wide in case Dimo wants it. <"Hit 'em hard and hit 'em fast, eh? Works for me. Just need to be careful not to mistake Thoth with one of 'em, although that shouldn't be too hard."> As the ninja joins in on the strategizing, she slips a hand into her pouch to make sure her flaming katana is properly sheathed, then checks over her other little things in her pouch to make sure everything's in order. <"Car, pipe, pipe... Yeah, this should be good if we need to clog things up on the way out. I'll come in from the right, then. More eyes that way means fewer of 'em paying attention to who's closing in from the sides, yeah?"> Seeing the carousing oni outside, though, already has Futaba fighting internally with herself. This would be such a good opportunity to grab eyes if she just went in sword blazing, but the hostage...! She takes a moment to breathe and to try and keep her head on straight, but it's Calvin's call for a change of plans that really gives her an idea on how to proceed. <"I'll be the green one. Don't hit me by mistake if you're coming along to the r... Southeast, yeah? You think Thoth's gonna keep his head down once things start gettin' loud?"> Without elaborating further, Futaba circles around towards the southeast building, staying in her usual orange-haired fat-tailed human form at first complete with proper 'ninja' posture while running. Once the oni are in sight, however, she turns into a snake to start slithering towards them, zipping by rapidly to stay out of sight for just a moment. As she transforms again behind the guard, Futaba takes on the form of a similarly sized oni, but in leaf-green and leaf-motifed clothes. She wraps her arms around one of them, then swings her entire upper body around in a thoroughly unnatural way to javelin-toss that oni into the next closest to get things started.
Meresankh	Henutep handles most of the outdoor fighting on his queen's behalf. When Meresankh enters battle it'll be a real light-show, and all the better to preserve the element of surprise. He proves quite capable in close fighting, hewing through limbs with his axe-bayonet and smashing petrified oni with the butt of his rifle under the cover of the Quietus spell. Meresankh floats a few meters behind, swiftly catching up once the guards outside are dispatched. <My Queen and I shall enter through the front, and make space,> he grumbles over the telepathic net. The corrugated-metal door crumples under a kick from Henutep's solid metal foot, and the first oni is body-checked backward to collide with its fellows thronging the room. Then, Meresankh floats inside behind Henutep. The queen does not bother to speak here - she could amplify her voice, but even then it would be lost among the clamor of the partying oni. Instead, she allows her scepter to do the talking. Threads of lightning lash out from the glowing orb as she holds the implement before her in a two-handed grip. The nearest oni unlucky enough to have their backs turned are scourged by the currents, but the tendrils move just slow enough to force the oni who can see it coming to give ground to one of their most hated elements. Notably, the tendrils miss Henutep entirely even when their courses lead straight toward him, instead veering away or flowing around at the last moment. What might appear to be the random whims of electrophysics is in fact a carefully choreographed pattern, each thread monitored by a sub-process in Meresankh's machine-mind and directed to fill any space not presently or imminently occupied by friendly bodies. <Move freely,> she transmits to her allies. <It will not harm you.>
Petra Soroka	After the mass of ghosts is 'punctured' by Petra's psychic lance, and the emotional deluge of dozens of dead spirits washes through her in return, Petra falls silent for a while. Even more so than the psychic barrier drawn around the mech like a sheltering blanket, that cuts her off from the casual telepathic contact, there's a sluggishness to the way that the Beauty of Ash picks its way through the rubble behind the two trucks. Snoutlike head angled downwards, the shoulders of its forelegs hunched up, even after the first casting of JM's Quietus fades, the Beauty of Ash doesn't make any noise besides the tiny, shy clinking of the tips of its limbs against broken concrete without dislodging any of it. Drawn towards Lilian by some intangible magnetism, the Beauty of Ash paces behind JM's truck with Lilian in the passenger seat for some time before flickering and appearing crouched on top of it with barely a shudder to the truck as it moves. With a flash, the mech shatters and pours off of Petra, leaving her sitting in the truck bed with her knees pulled up to her chest and teartracks drying on her cheeks. She waits out the rest of the trip there in silence, rattling around with the truck without complaint. Eventually, a single thought of hers comes through the telepathic link, directed towards Calvin. Words from Petra's mind feel like tangles of brambles, clumped into an approximate shape rather than concretely defined, the thorns dragging along wispy fragments of associated feelings like lint or cloth-- in this case, the payload of directionless guilt, discomfort, and shame. <Sorry.> "He's here." Petra drops out of the truck bed and scrubs at her eyes with her forearm. Taking a breath to recenter herself, she presses her hand to her mirror and pulls out Fourth Match Flame's charcoal handle, the glowing embers of the blade not illuminating beyond her wrist or the stones at the ground around the tip. "Okay. So if most of them are packed into that one place, we can pretty much assume that going through the front entrance would mean that they'd make sure that we'll have to go through every single oni in the crowd to get to Thoth. Even though they outnumber us, I don't think it's really valuable to keep them at a chokepoint like that when it also slows us down a ton, and not only do they know the area way better than we do and could escape with him or something, but the longer we're fighting, the more likely we'll end up getting the Dogs' attention, right?" Petra looks up at Calvin, then at Lilian, for confirmation before continuing. She pokes a little semicircle in the ground with Fourth Match Flame, which doesn't do anything much to illustrate her plan. "After picking off the guys outside, I'll open up a hole in the wall with the Beauty of Ash opposite that door. That way, wherever Thoth is inside, at least one of us will be relatively close to him." Petra lifts up Fourth Match Flame to blow on the blade like a birthday candle, temporarily snuffing it out. Circling around to the back while Meresankh handles the front, Petra takes out her revolver to fire a pair of quick shots at the oni guard behind the main building, flickering to close the distance in an instant when he moves to throw up an alarm. Fourth Match Flame ignites again with the sudden rush of air from swinging it up towards the oni's body, the flare-up charring around where the sword cuts.
Lilian Rook	"Bust . . . what?" Keeping regular contact via psychic ping to Petra is easy enough. Once the ghost encounter passes, the bumpy ride feels significantly less worth complaining about too, though it comes at the unfortunate expense of Lilian's opinion of the other knight present. Locating the oni by their camp wasn't difficult at this point either, which leaves the sole remaining challenge for Lilian to overcome 'decoding Calvin's localisms'. "I don't plan to give them anything. We're not here to negotiate are we?" Lilian scoffs in her indoors voice. From the moment she dismounts the truck and puts her feet on post-apocalyptic soil, the 'operator' bleeds back into her stride, instinctively softening her tread and gravitating to solid cover. "Are you certain you're actually armed for this? I doubt they'll find that very convincing." she says, eyeing his shotgun; even in the same breath as !chamber checking her own sidearm. 'I want a heavy hitter or two with Richards. If Ongyo-ki or somebody he trusts is watchin' Thoth, then we ain't gettin' him outta there without a fight.' "If it were somehow a debate, I'm the only one here with an especially effective attack type." Lilian says. "Though, as usual, I can do literally every single other thing too. If they have Thoth tied up in a bundle of rope sitting in a corner, I'm just going to take him immediately. Don't act surprised if that's how it is." 'After picking off the guys outside, I'll open up a hole in the wall with the Beauty of Ash opposite that door. That way, wherever Thoth is inside, at least one of us will be relatively close to him.' "I'm always 'close'." Lilian says to Petra, but silently nods her head after a moment longer to think about it. "They'll certainly respond to the breach immediately. They won't split up equally. Even if their commander has enough of a tactical grasp to order them to, it'll take them a minute to actually respond to it. Make certain it isn't a breach you can be overwhelmed through." Annoyingly, as much as Lilian thinks to herself 'I could have just done this' about JM's silencing spell, she has to think more highly of the rangers' preparedness and coordination; if it's something she herself would rely on, done by someone who isn't her, then their competence must therefore be closer to hers than average; she doesn't have the capacity for doublethink to feel otherwise. So, rather than break ranks as soon as the opportunity arises, Lilian (somewhat grudgingly) remains close with her designated escortee, all the way up until the moment Calvin fires. §Ohhhhh. That makes a lot more sense, actually.§ Though she doesn't have a small number of Tamamo's spare talismans, Lilian still intends to save them until the climax; perhaps more than she necessarily needs to, with the one week war still somewhere in her habit buffer. She opens up on the oni outside one of the branch buildings with their alleged other weakness, in as much as she actually has it, cycling Winter Crow's array pins to fuse alchemical tin and spit slugs that disintegrate into bolts of black and white lightning while firearms are still silent, liberally firing extra shots rather than waiting to confirm kills. Broadcasting an affirmative ping once her work is done, Lilian waits for the the branch buildings to be silenced as well, then breaks off from Richards to wait by the front doors for Petra's breach. Back pressed to the side of the building, she flicks the break action and chambers another rod of amalgam drawn from a hip case, though one hand drifts to her sheathed sword anyways. The moment she hears the back wall crumble, she plans to kick in the front door.
Dimokratia	PREVIOUSLY, A streaking silver specter through the air, technologic instead of spiritual, Dimo flight through buildings involved several stages that themselves set things in motion. Leaping through wall and floor in fizzle of quantum uncertainty and peeling-pouring-fizzing-transforming as objects graze past each other in uncertain atomic slide-past and communion, the Champion can gracefully translate through the spaces and drag metallic spills of brushstrokes across the surrounds. Ashes, the abandoned, debris, and detritus all pass in Dimo's wake, and her 'wet' waves of morphmetal flowing from her back turn to uncertain spills that spill and soak and spread through the buildings, slowly chasing the retreat of the vermin and predator both. Then, she's clear through the far wall, already in posture to phase through slanted surface and launch from an extension of legs and pseudopodic force. Creaking and cracked, shattered like eggshell and discarded as broken, the Silver infiltrates the broken gaps and bridges back together the damaged surfaces. It's not the first or second building that the Champion passes through that starts to bring any one location on but the sequence she takes through the city curves along the gutters of 'before' and spills warm light into the runners and crevasses of Atlanta. Spending unsalvageable material or useless components as resources to be moved elsewhere, building power generators are sparked to life again as the failed automated is mended and a hundred flaws are fixed a second along bomb-ruined lines and electromagnetically disrupted systems receive a second touch-breath of life. Cables bound into snakes of like-located searching work serpentine through belligerent blockages in maintenance runs, animated by an expanding network of vaguely plant-like synthetic growths. In locations heavily occupied by specters, or resistant entities, the growth works around them, though they are softly forced back by the sheer inexorability of progress from every angle to fill and align the location into form and function. While Dimo gathers the Red Dog's attention, the sophont acknowledging Calvin with an assured-toned response purely over the radiowaves. <"When you are asked, 'what will you do to ensure this never happens again', you will have an answer ready."> The trap works marvelously, of course, between the three elites involved and the growing support of every structure around them and the infrastructure underneath the streets. Midway through the Red Dogs' all-hands call with the worst of Athas and a ninja Pterodactyl, Dimo tromps down a shattered demonic police car's roof, crunching hood metal and glass scraps under sure heel to click-land on the smoothing ground beneath her, warm and dense with singing information for those with the proper sensors to hear. "It is a shame we cannot exhaust them here and chase them to their camps to root and weed this fallow-laying field." Dimo shares, to the air, Khosa, and Futaba. "Let is loop back, as planned." NOW, Dimo's swooping glide is silent, felt first as a psychosomatic heat and then a literal one and then her presence, silver wings heron-folding into flowing trails and walk as smooth as if she had leisurely strolled here and not turbo boosted the whole way. Calvin's pause by the two trucks (and one magic horse) gives the Egyptian-dressed sophont to appraise the situation, cross her arms and quirk a brow during the briefing appropriately, and, 'You give an oni an inch, he'll take a mile. So don't be afraid to get 'insistent' and for damn sure, don't be afraid to bust a pop-knot on their heads if they don't talk. We're goin' in and askin' questions and we ain't takin' 'no' for an answer,' Smiling broadly across carbon-dark lips.
Dimokratia	"I understand you, Marshal." Dimo lowers the quirk of her brow and opens opens her crossed arms, a sworl of silver becoming a cylinder becoming a length of metal translating and filling out a shape in her hand until the most simple of spear-shapes has flowed into grip. "I will see to Richards. I had intended to give them much less than an inch, and so much more, but what I certainly do not intend to give away is victory or satisfaction." Travelling at Unicorn-side at one-hand-on-side showing off silent stride, Dimo keeps her spear lowered and her attention on the path ahead and Richards, primarily, smiling at the Paladin and offering faint conversationals like "You seem to have some interest. Would you share it?" and "Have you not seen...?" before the Quietus takes effect. Keeping her pace in the silence, Dimo maintains the leisurely-warm aura even as the Oni outside do their best impression of 'every extra we can find, jump the martial arts heroes NOW!' scenes. There's no need for Dimo to spend extra energy or effort moving, anyway. Her command of the long, living streams of metal from her back makes Petra's look like a child splashing around in a public pool in summer. One moment, they hang as strings-and-gossamer with flecks and hanging dots suspended through stiff connecting filaments, and then they collapse and twist and mechanize suddenly, structures emerging and being suddenly built, flexed out of the substance as a muscle might express through the membrane of skin. One limb coils into blade-necked thresher and trims limbs from approaching Oni as one might prune a hedge, bellowed by a clamshell scoop that shovels away the rushing and leaping equally. There's a surgical kind of mercy to the operation, a clear 'capture, alive' aim to the butchery, but the state of 'alive' is anything goes: exactly as Calvin requested. The other limb of silver metal extends as near-angelic spread of wingspan over and around Richards and Unicorn in shielding posture, flight surfaces and armor plate and interlocks and seams and metal 'pinions' that no bird would find native.
Calvin Nash	Sorry. <Yeah,> Calvin's harrowed response comes. <Me too.> You think Thoth's gonna keep his head down once things start gettin' loud? <He's s'posed to be smart,> Calvin transmits. <He is smart,> Richards answers defensively. <He'll keep his head down.> Don't hit the green one JM and Fionn catch up in time to hear that. Everyone seems to trust that there will be a 'green one' soon even if there isn't one right this minute. As it turns out, they are vindicated in so trusting. It doesn't take much to confuse oni--the rank and file sorts like these aren't known for their cleverness. Futaba can easily handle the scattered guards, and quickly enough to make it back to the main building. Calvin, JM and Richards cast bolstering spells upon their demon partners and on themselves before heading in. Are you certain you're actually armed for this? I doubt they'll find that very convincing. "Yep," says Calvin, racking the pump. The inside of the main building is a roaring din of celebration, as Henutep, Lilian and Meresankh find. The air is heavy with drumbeats, with the aroma of smoked game, and, even after that door is crashed through, with laughter. "Hey! Looks like they're back for more!" It would seem that the revelers you mopped up weren't outside by choice. "Wait, who the hell is that?" Several oni are ashed by the lightning arcs, and the ones that see them are smart enough to back up. The music, cavorting and laughter all quickly fade into a hostile silence, eyes falling first on Meresankh and Henutep, then the rest of you as you enter.
Calvin Nash	With room given, you can see that this scavenged but sturdy building is an imitation of Heian style internally, as well--such that the available resources nearby will allow, anyway. The entryway is a grand hall, wide enough for five people to stand shoulder to shoulder, and functioning as a reception space where the head of this 'household' sits. Sitting seiza on a tatami made of finely brushed scrap metal, Ongyo-ki is as tall as Calvin. Standing up, Marshal Nash would have to look up to make contact with the smoldering red eyes of the oni's dull metal mask. A polearm with bladed crescents at either end rests across his lap. His gaze sweeps, relaxed, across his unexpected guests. Beside him, in a cage of hammered metal bolted to the paved floor, is Thoth--a white-furred baboon with a golden crescent headdress and a colorful regal mantle, bound in irons at his wrists and ankles. "Go and welcome our guest at the new back entrance," he calls, not seeing Petra for the breadth of compound but certain nonetheless that it was breached. Petra has to deal with a few oni; Ongyo-ki sent a token force mainly to slow her down. "Waltzing into my compound with all of my men here. Poking a hole in it, to boot, by the sound of it. Isn't that bold? Bold enough to have earned an audience before I kill you, I'd say." "Almost as bold as attacking a diplomatic envoy in broad daylight," Richards fires back. "Opportunity knocked," admits the oni with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "But I should have known it was too good to be true."
Calvin Nash	"You couldn't'a known if somebody didn't tell you. I want names," says Calvin. "Oh, you do, Marshal?" says Ongyo-ki with an amused ring to his voice. A chorus of low chuckles rises from the oni in the grand hall. "Is there anything else you'd like? Perhaps a jug of wine for the trip home?" That elicits a laugh from the oni, and surprisingly, from Calvin too. "I'd like that," Calvin says, seemingly good-natured, even pointing amusedly at Ongyo-ki. "Hell, I like you. If I had a sister, I'd introduce you!" In an instant his amused grin is gone, replaced with a stony scowl as he steps forward, ignoring the slew of raised tetsubo meant to stop him from approaching the Great Oni. "You listen here, you bushwhackin' piece of shit," says Calvin, unbothered by the rank and file menacing him, "There's a good woman that ain't comin' home to her daughter 'cause of you. You might have gotten the drop before, but you're right in front of us now, and you ain't too big for me to knock that mask offa your head." "Calvin..." JM warns, with a tone that suggests he knows where this is going. "Struck a nerve, did I?" chuckles Ongyo-ki. "I'll cut you a deal, Marshal. If you and your friends can beat me, I'll tell you how I knew where Thoth would be." "And if we can't?" asks Richards suspiciously. "Well, then you'll be dead, of course. Men," he says, standing to his full height and looking past Calvin out over the proceedings, "Carry on. Keep the drums banging and the drink flowing for me." He stands to his full height and cracks his neck. "Let's see if you can make good on that promise, Marshal."
Calvin Nash	BOSS BATTLE ONGYO-KI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcZHm4VllDs Ongyo-kiis fast. He is upon 'you.' All of you--there's one for each of you, and the dim lighting of makeshift torches does little to distinguish one of him from the next. His crescent staff strikes Dimo's shielding wings with an audible crack, at the same time his knee crashes into Calvin's chest, concurrent with the locking of one crescent against the flat of Fionn's longsword, and the other against Chernobog's two-hander. Another guards Thoth from Lilian, clicking his tongue and barring her with the haft in a whirlwind of a pendulum counter that menaces her with the razor-sharp point. Cheers erupt from the crowd, who (minus the ones attacking Petra at the back end of the building) don't interfere with the fight. One clone of him flicks the edge of his staff against the horns on his mask, making a handseal with his free hand; the sparks from the impact bloom out of control into a blinding flashbang meant for Futaba, while another makes a different seal and attempts to hurl Meresankh and Henutep with a conjured gust of wind. Another boasts a murderous gleam in the smouldering red eye of its mask--"Loa!" Calvin shouts, and the floating-skull demon intercepts a roiling ball of dark energy, which dissipates against it and triggers an icy-fanged counterattack from the snake residing in it. Calvin, lifted off his feet by the clone he's fighting, steadies the shotgun and pulls the trigger--even as he does, the clone is upon him, scarcely giving him a chance to use it. With you, it's much the same; the amount of time he gives each of you to act is very slim; his offense is aggressive and his defense is frustratingly fluid when you do have an opening, almost as if he isn't really there. Fionn attempts to root out the issue with a wide-arcing slash that sends a shockwave of faintly-visible force down the hall; to the last, all of the clones, even those with their backs to him, reliably dodge it. "Wide-angle shit's out!" calls JM. "Man-to-man only!" "Heard!" calls Calvin back. "He knows Dekunda! Don't overdo it boggin' 'im down!"
Futaba Nuki	Rolling her shoulders as she drops the last oni on the outside with a quick pull and shoulder check to flip them right over her shoulder, Futaba reaches up briefly to touch her eye before flinching slightly at touching her eye. <"Nnh. Southeast side's clear. Should be clear to start pushin' them in and grabbing our guy. Sounds like-"> She pauses to look towards the other sides she can't quite see, but it doesn't sound like any alarms have been sounded yet even as she sees the Beauty of Ash moving into position. <"-you're all doin' good over there. Alright, remember that I'm the green one!"> Heading into the faux-Heian stylings of the main building, Futaba actually winces briefly at the sudden rush of noise hitting her. Once she recovers from recoiling, however, she starts pretending to look right at home with all that, banging her head lightly to stay on beat while not having to pretend to look interested in that scent of smoked meat hitting her, too. "Back for more? You damn right we are!" She calls out to the shouting voice, extending her neck just a bit to try and identify where thatvoice came from. That's probably not so important once the lightning starts flying out, though, and the silence signals rather clearly to her that there's not much fake-partying left to be done. It's a relief for her ears, at least. Spotting the head further up on that tatami, the ninja-turned-oni rolls her shoulders again as she listens to the back and forth between Ongyo-ki and the rangers. It's not long before a light scowl forms on her face, scrunching up her transformed oni-face even more than it already is. "Ongyo-ki... I heard you were supposed to be THE big guy. THE ninja around here. So..." Futaba looks over at where Thoth is being held in the cage, and she finally remembers to transform back into her usual ninja-humanoid form to grimace properly. "What the heck're you doin' taking a hostage? Real ninjas don't need that! If you want to prove your worth as the real one..." Spitting off to the side, Futaba draws her sheathed katana from her pouch to hold it at her waist properly, settling into a low stance with one hand holding the scabbard and the other resting on the hilt. "Then let's fight like warriors right here, right now!" Before she can launch into pumping up the Elites present, however, Ongyo-ki is already coming towards everyone at once! Turning towards the clone facing her, Futaba starts running fast and low to the ground to get closer, keeping her eyes trained on him the entire time. That means the flashbang does, in fact, blow up right in her face, but the blinding light and loud burst of noise doesn't throw her off (too much). Rather than recoiling and leaving herself open, Futaba quickly transforms into an advancing mass of slimy tendrils. Moving in a snake-like fashion like she had earlier to get the jump on those guards, she zigzags in semi-random patterns, both to throw off predictioons of where she'll be, and to buy herself a little time to let the flash wear off. "Dekun...? Heh. Right, riiight. Think he knows Frumunda?" Once she can see again, Futaba bursts up and around the Ongyo-ki clone with several of those tendrils, all forming briefly into a silhouette of the tanuki before the one on his right turns into the real thing. She draws the flaming katana, and she starts swiping it rapidly at the clone one-handed while her other arm stretches out and turns into an axe-on-a-whip, assailing him from two sides to keep the pressure on. The axe-head turns into a proper hand sometimes, too, staying that way just long enough to grab loose furniture and fling it around.
Meresankh	"Man to man," Henutep growls, a hint of glee in his voice. He fights with a cold cruelty toward his opponent and himself - some attacks that could be blocked are instead let through to allow for savage counterblows, then followed up by defensive fighting while his wounds heal. To a Necron warrior as practiced as him, unconstrained by limitations of blood and pain, bodily integrity is a resource to spend like any other. When the wind rises to force him back, he responds with a quick swing of his bayonet, a childishly easy attack to block - and then he twists his weapon in his arms when Ongyo-ki parries, locking their weapons together. Even if Henutep rises off his feet briefly, his weight and the locked blades hold him in place well enough. Meresankh, already in the air, is not so lucky, nearly buffeted back out the front door of the hall. Her head connects to the doorframe with a CRACK, and she falls - but the dents left in her head will smooth themselves out, if she can only buy her bodyguard more time. In the weapons locked to one another, Meresankh spies an opportunity. As she rises to her feet, her scepter's orb glows green-orange and emits a thin ray of energy. When it strikes Ongyo-ki's staff, the weapon rusts and crumbles in an instant, giving Henutep an opening to follow through with a mighty downward swing!
Lilian Rook	Lilian almost wants to give Ongyo-ki credit. After thinking about it just for a second, she decides she does; recreating the vague atmosphere of a Japanese-style mansion from American rubble is, actually, kind of impressive. The thought is a distant little fluttering thing in her mind, given space to breathe in the quiet before the storm, while the boss himself takes time to talk, and Lilian scans around the room. §Annoying. Bolted down, durable cage, durable floor; Thoth himself will be dead weight like that. Can't guarantee he won't get hit if I try breaking it open as collateral damage. The oni in here are stronger than the ones outside, but eliminating them all is unnecessary, even if it would be satisfying. I was expecting a scowling musclehead as the boss, but I suppose that bit about him being a ninja wasn't just a mention of his side gig. That's more troublesome than him being ten feet tall.§ 'I'll cut you a deal, Marshal. If you and your friends can beat me, I'll tell you how I knew where Thoth would be.' §He's not fucking it too badly. He's too small a man to pull it off, but no points lost for telling it how it is. The only issue is that I wouldn't trust a ninja to tell me the truth about his employer if it'd kill him not to.§ 'And if we can't?' §Stupid question. Dumbass. I can't believe I prefer the Marshals to you. God.§ 'Let's see if you can make good on that promise, Marshal.' "As if he has to." says Lilian, all but incidentally. Her presence here doesn't mean anything special to practically anyone. Amidst the Elites, she's a less freakish freak amongst many. It's habit that compels the sigh from her lips and the slow scrape of steel, practically a ritual for herself alone. "What becomes of your mask will be the least of your worries when I'm through with you." The last of her lazy contemptuousness vanishes as if expelled by the sharp exhale that precedes her taking a stance. The moment she feels Ongyo-ki get serious, her footing, her grip, the pattern of her breathing, all changes on a dime. The flood of shadow clones that follows is an outright shocking first move, §The type of offense I'd mount right out of the gate to immediately thin the weakest out. Reducing the number of targets to keep track of is savvy. He doesn't seem to be trying to maneuver us into anything, though. Are there no traps? His followers are probably too stupid to avoid them, so there's no point in laying them down. If there's only one of them to each of us, they either split or drain his power considerably; otherwise he'd outnumber us rather than match our number. So--§ "What in god's name is a Dekunda?!" Lilian shouts back without turning her head. Sword in hand, she leaps the steps, charges the cage, drops one of her tactical cases from her belt as she moves, feints a wide overhead swing with little actual defense, then lets her sword drop behind her back and carries it swinging upward from the side, raking through the corrugated tatami flooring and spitting sparks into the shadow clone's face. §Likely no use destroying the torches. I'd bet he can see in the dark. Do the clones use their own senses, or do they perceive what the original does? Are they autonomous, or is he actively controlling them?§
Dimokratia	The masses of oni before - the ones that could be blasted down by flashes of synaptic crackle when they got past Meresankh's sphere of force - do not prepare Dimo for a show of actual skill. Prideful - and better, because of her intruding and invading synapse-force to calm to surrender or usefully scan the minds of the onrushing, knowing - Dimo thinks herself far greater than the Oni that have arranged themselves as their foes. Certainly, she is better-constructed and better-designed, and clearly more disciplined than them. Surely, she is powerful and skilled and solid, and proof against any harm. Surely, proof. And so when that surety along the wing is pressed upon, struck to spark, shear, splash wet as viscera and crunch in mal-function for the shielding span, Dimo takes keen note of that. A wide, retaliatory spray of two centimeter long barbs arc into the empty air from the oni's hit-and-fade, and the Champion doesn't wince from pain or failure but sees the burst of countermeasures bury downrange without effect and coldly appraises up. Rather than reinforce itself, the whole broken mechanism of the smashed in wing in semiliquid silver amputates itself in melting contact of seam and bolt, reshaping as the stunned and disordered material's loss. Splitting an extending, shifting from the breadth of wings to a flanking of two extra pairs of skeletal arms, just length and joint and claw at silhouette of a hand in suggestion. Attacked by a clone of the truth and menaced by that crescent staff, Dimo summons more poleweapns to grip, forming them in time with the motions of the limbs themselves - extra expression to the very movements of 'self' appended and developing dynamically in flight. Checking the staff with a crossed pair of spears and thrusting with a low sub-arm, an artful sweep-about of form and flow is just as deadly a counterattack, limbs departing their shapes and becoming a penumbra of precisely sweeping points of lacerating contact, forming as a single support unit around Dimo's right arm as she draws it back and couches it in her spin to thrust it out at the clone racing at her and Richards. Both trails, woven around her stable limb, shift into sudden-flowing activity, surging outward and developing new branches to root spear and span and sink grip through the clone if possible, an iron maidening that builds itself around the victim to be tightly worn and lovingly enjoyed in choking proximity. With the wet splash of her limb retracting after, connection or no, Dimo still circles Richards, not committing or confirming her 'kill' or subdual such that it was. "Do not let these fabrications draw away your discipline! Their hope is to force us into error!" Dimo reminds, as if she is leading a training or rallying a religious flock with warm reminders of a bright power.
Lilian Rook	The upward slice crashes against the oddball double crescent polearm, slides along the haft along the angle of the clone's moving grip, and then Lilian twists with both wrists to angle a hanging guard with the quillion under the matching blade, hooking behind it. Gauging her footing in an instant, she pulls back against the bind, then rocks forward to thrust into the gap, the tip of her sword diverted again just before reaching its mark and embedding into the floor. §So that's what that weapon is for. Saecen freak shit. For once, he has more reach than me; it's actually a pain to get close while he's spinning it like an asshole, and he doesn't have to stop defending to attack.§ Lilian sharply leans back as more of the continguous counter-attacking motion comes her way, much closer now. She grits down a gasp when the blade strikes the armour directly in front of her neck, and shifts her weight to the side along with the blow's momentum, pulling her sword free and circling closer to Thoth's cage. §I could try baiting him into using a jutsu, probably. But there's no need to try and wear down his stamina. He uses overwhelming momentum, raw physical stats, high situational awareness, and increased numbers as his primary tools. I already have a good answer.§ Lilian leans aggressively into her sideways strafe, counterbalancing the torque needed to swing her sword upwards at her enemy's head from that awkward floor position. When she feels the blade make contact with the haft again, twisted away, bladed end extended towards her again, she lunges from the other side of the polearm; just behind its rotation where it can't be reversed quickly, standing just behind the blade as well. Her blinding thrust aims for the shadow clone's neck, just below the mask, then angles out to pull a decapitating slice from the stab. Her sidearm blinks up from her waist, dumping a second stack of lightning shots into the clone at point blank. Striking the floor with her lead foot, she doubles her momentum forwards, tackling through the clone and into the cage. Following the direction of her cut, Lilian twists her body, Night Mist revolves fully around, and slams through the bars at the top. §It's fine if he sees that once. My trump card are the talismans anyways. Does the original gain information from the clones? See if he reacts to Night Mist; surely, as a demon manifested from the collective unconsciousness, it has to especially hurt him.§
Petra Soroka	On the opposite side of the building, the wall blossoms with a pearlescent sheen creeping over it, like a laminate layer of frost freezing the bricks in place. A moment later, they shatter with a telekinetic impact, throwing a swirling spray of glass-rimed shrapnel at the few oni that come to stop her. Beyond the hole punctured through the wall, the Beauty of Ash waits arched on all fours, glow subsiding in the spikes on its back. A moment later, the mech splinters along glowing cracks, spilling back into Petra's compact mirror in one hand, while the other holds out her sword to gesture for her own army to clash with Ongyo-ki's. Her own, knee-high army. Drops of Silver fall to the ground and sprout into chibified, metallic silhouettes reminiscent of Petra herself, all wearing tiny Lobotomy Corporation suits. They brandish their miniature replicas of Fourth Match Flame and Pillar of Creation, hurling the spears at the oni clustering around her, and though the ones that charge in with Fourth Match Flame are easily squished into morphmetal puddles, there's always more to come behind them. With those oni distracted, Petra slips past them and tries to advance towards Thoth while Ongyo-ki's back is turned to monologue to the others, only to be intercepted by his clone. Petra blinks instinctively to pull her sword up and catch the staff swinging down out of the shadows, but the sheer difference in height slams her backwards with the impact. The dim light coming from Fourth Match Flame barely adds any visible detail to the silhouetted form of Ongyo-ki, but Ongyo-ki can almost certainly see much better than Petra in the torchlight, so she needs all the help she can get. A steady drip-feed of Silver continually brings more chibi soldiers to Petra's side, but she hesitates before using them to swarm Ongyo-ki. He's showing off for the crowd, obviously. They're all hyped up by the victory and the party, and that means they trust that he's strong enough to fight all of us on his own, and it's obviously in his interest to prove them right. But that only works to a point, and if the entire swarm of backup guys all showed up right now, we'd barely be any better off because of aggroing all of his little goons. Once it's an army versus army fight, or once he's losing enough that they don't have faith in him, they'll all join in, which means I want to keep that from happening as long as possible. So, going against all of my instincts, that means I have to not insult him in front of all of his underlings. Petra keeps a ring of Silver soldiers around herself for a constant shifting defense, rather than having them all rush in to dogpile the clone of Ongyo-ki at once. After a few exchanges, Petra starts mirroring his tempo, fast flurries of offensive magic blocked by a frenetic supply of suicidal ablative chibis, who burst into morphmetal drops when hit by any of his spells, and only counterattacking when an instantaneous flicker would let her full-size Fourth Match Flame land in a single moment rather than getting caught up in his chaining defenses. Petra winces when she watches one of her own tiny metal clones have its head cleaved through by Ongyo-ki's staff, and resolves to interrogate that feeling later.
Calvin Nash	Calvin jukes a swipe from his Ongyo-ki's crescent staff, racking the pump on his shotgun and rolling out of the way of an overhead in one motion. Chernobog fills the empty space between them before the clone can, warding off with a temporary fool's guard that erupts into an upwards one-handed stab. What in god's name is a Dekunda?! "Counterspell against bog-standard, whittle-down type shit," Calvin answers from the fray. In other words, trying to wear him down with generic debuffs will only work until he decides to clear them--and Calvin apparently tried that tactic already with his custom cartridges. "Chernobog, sweep!" Sparks fly from numerous rapid-fire impacts between the towering demons' weapons, Chernobog's death head grin matching Ongyo-ki's almost mocking masked visage in impassive regard of the violence committed by and done around the both of them. Upon Calvin's command, the god of endings, winter and entropy locks Ongyo-ki's staff to the ground with his blade, shoulder checks with surprising force given his tall and wispy physique, then follows up with a two-handed sweep of his sword. The combination attack sees the clone jump--at which point Chernobog remains bent over for Calvin to take his shot. Calvin's 'shot' in this case is a massive tunnel of wind which flows from the end of his shotgun and pummels the clone into the corrugated metal ceiling of the compound, the barrel fighting his white-knuckled grip and attempting to rise for every second he holds the trigger down. Richards and Unicorn meanwhile, are much more in their element fighting (what they perceive as) the minions of evil; her one-handed straight sword has a disadvantage in reach until an uttered word wreathes the blade in blazing flames which extend out to twice its length, and clash with Ongyo-ki's staff as if the flames themselves were metal. Unicorn keeps the party topped off with heals like it's his job, his horn creating a near-constant corona of bright light around him. While Petra has pledged not to insult Ongyo-ki, Futaba has apparently annoyed him enough to earn a lecture--which he seems fully capable of giving without giving up his mental real estate for the fight, confirming Lilian's suspicions about awareness being a strength of his. Real ninjas don't need that! This elicits laughter which is probably directed at Futaba from the oni watching. "Please," Ongyo-ki responds with dismissive amusement. "'Real ninjas?' Only someone who is a stranger to the lean times which created them could say something so childish." The word is punctuated with a thrust of his staff towards her in tendril-form, twirling it overhead to parry her initial strike with the katana.
Calvin Nash	"They were peasants," he says, reversing his grip to trap the axe beneath the beard and taking a step back to space out the katana, "Humans, who sold their services as mercenaries, spies, saboteurs and assassins to feed their families. Times changed, they faded into memory, and the humans that came after them lionized them in story." "If they are not humans, driven by naked necessity, but heroes, who follow unbending oaths, then all the blood they spilt in those days is absolved." She's forced him onto the defensive--but even there, he's a frustrating, almost ethereal presence. Striking a two-handed seal moments before she advances and strikes him with the katana, he transforms himself into a standing cyclone, occluding the form of his parrying staff and striking back at her with blinding speed. Meresankh's beam disintegrates his weapon, though, oddly, not via rust. It just... goes away, as if presented with a compelling argument moreso than presented with any scientific principle. That's unusual. This gets his attention enough for Henutep to strike true. And he does--yet it's unsatisfying, for a veteran warrior like him. Why? Something isn't right. "Even when I hit 'im he ain't bleedin'!" Richards calls. Yes--that's it. It would be a grievous injury, dealt by someone with Henutep's experience and strength. So why isn't there blood? Other demons have certainly had it, as a component of their corporeal form; certainly the other oni here did. There's resistance, but whatever is doing the resistance isn't flesh, blood or bone. Dimo feels much the same, pincushioning a clone in that way; the material there is all uniform, as if the clone she trapped were simply made of one Platonic unit of 'stuff.' Moreover, trapped in such a way, she can feel it dissipate before another is made to close in on her. But by then, at least one secret of his clone jutsu is revealed--namely, that there's one 'real' one amidst the clones. "Mine neither," shouts Calvin, as the wind tunnel from his shotgun dies down and the clone falls in a slump from the ceiling. That one--the one he's fighting--would have been the 'original,' too. Thus, Ongyo-ki can switch places with his clones at-will and perhaps even seamlessly. Petra's chibi miniatures may be smashed easily, but Ongyo-ki himself attests to their effectiveness. "Clever," the clone (?) mutters. He can no more easily close on Petra than Petra can on him--and though he can use his height and reach, whatever he does manage to get through is inevitably bogged down by little Petras with their little One-Fourth Match Flames. So--he has a high degree of situational awareness, a unique weapon he's very familiar with using, the ability to reposition easily, he's a master of tempo offense and he's got a good ability to mitigate harm to himself through multiple ablative layers. It's not looking good--until the process of elimination reveals the real one. "Not mine neither," calls JM. Lilian strikes from a point where her clone can't easily retaliate, at an angle that takes him by surprise. He's experienced enough to know what an opponent's sudden absence means, and avoids losing his head with a tuck and roll which still sees Night Mist slough off a heap of flesh from his neck. His blood splatters against the ground. The moment it does, the other clones dissipate. That's the weakness--if the real one is hit, the others all vanish. A second hangs supermassive in the air as everyone realizes no more clones are summoned. "Well struck." He stands up again, to the sound of cheers from the oni. Many cheer for him, despite his apparent yield--some cheer for all of you.
Calvin Nash	"I think that's proof enough that you people could kill me. So, given that my employer will, if I tell you, I suppose..." "You're up Shit Creek," says Calvin. "Quite," says Ongyo-ki. "But, if I die either way, I'd prefer to get something out of it." "Lemme tell ya somethin'," Calvin says hotly. "You don't have half the leverage you think you do, shithead." A pointed index finger is jabbed into the oni's chest without much offense taken. "I'm well aware. Still, it's customary in these situations for someone with valuable information to get an assurance of protection, isn't it?" "I don't give two shits what's customary," says Calvin, jabbing his finger at the oni again. "You get what you get, you murderin' sumbitch." Ongyo-ki laughs. "A respectable answer. And what is that?" "Zionga." Calvin's fist, wreathed in electricity, jackhammers into the oni's stomach then jitters upwards to smash into Ongyo-ki's mask as he doubles over. "A man of your word, I see," says the oni, standing back up to reveal that half of the mask is missing. A black void rests behind it. "Now," says Calvin. "What you ain't gonna get is a free ride. You wanna dodge the heat, I can help you. But you're gonna work for me." "Excuse me?" Richards steps forwards to stare daggers at Calvin. "Calvin, I ain't sure that's a good idea," echoes JM. "For you?" again, the oni laughs. The rank-and-file find it funny too. "Our values are nothing alike. To summon me, a man like you would need a king's ransom of magnetite." "I didn't say nothin' about summoning, now did I." A silence settles in. "...I see. I suppose it's better than returning to the Expanse." Calvin flips open his COMP. "Names first. Then we make the contract."
Petra Soroka	The intangibility of hitting Ongyo-ki's clones isn't too surprising to Petra. After all, ninjas do that sort of thing, right? I just expected... what is it called? The whole... clone teleportation thing. I thought there's normally a log that they leave behind, but I'm not feeling anything solid past the clothes at all. The shadow clone... fucking, Qetra would know the term. Damnit. While Petra is considering the tactical advantages of watching more anime-- after all, the demons here are derived from cultural concepts and emotions, a lot like the Abnormalities! Familiarity with more cultural icons can only help, with how often things like this tend to come up.-- she keeps applying pressure to the clone in front of her. Carefully measuring out her time until she can land a decisive strike through the empty cloth of one of the Ongyo-ki gives her the opportunity to steal more ground towards Thoth's cage before the next one comes, but it's unsteady progress, and hard fought. With everyone distracted by having their attention split a half-dozen different ways watching the duels with the clones, eventually Petra gets close enough to feel comfortable deploying her little army for their true purpose: cartoonish chibi goober heists. A handful of knee-high Silver Petras drop to their hands and knees and dodge-roll behind the enemy line of Petra's clashing sword with a spell Ongyo-ki threw at her, dipping out of the focal area of the crowd. At the lip of the platform the cage is on, the Pettas form up to clasp their hands together to give a third one a boost up, which reaches down to haul the other two up along with it. With exaggerated high-step tiptoes, the faceless metal dolls creep around to the cage, using the fight with the clone and Lilian nearby it to shield themselves from view of the crowd. Being fluidically squishy, the Pettas can squeeze their oversized heads through the bar and hold up one finger to their nonexistent lips to shush Thoth when he sees them. As if clambering up rope, one of the Pettas inches up the bars of the cage until it hangs from the top, climbing across like monkey bars until it's hanging over the chains between Thoth's wrists. Then it slowly lowers itself upside-down with one strand of Silver coming out of its leg, meant to evoke a cable, but since it's the exact same material as the Petta itself, it ends up feeling more like spider silk. Then it uses the teeny Quarter Match Flame in its hands to carefully saw through the chains, while the other pair of Pettas attempt to unlock the cage, with one standing on the other's shoulders so it can reach the lock.
Petra Soroka	Meanwhile, the fight's ended, but the Pettas don't stop their work until they get in trouble for it. Petra lowers her sword when the clone in front of her disappears, breathing heavily and turning towards where the sole remaining 'real' Ongyo-ki stands. "Well, fuck. I had no idea you'd actually be intelligent." "Er--" Petra's eyes widen and she awkwardly fumbles for words, in the way she always does when she's worried about committing a liberal faux pas. "Like, intelligent as in actually smart, not like, obviously as a species you're capable of being intelligent, like-- not like dogs. Just, we had this whole conversation earlier about how rarely people surrender, and..." Petra narrows her eyes. "... Wait, I don't actually need to apologize to you. You murdered someone Calvin cares about." "Our values are nothing alike." Petra folds an arm across her chest, Fourth Match Flame hanging down across her body. "Are those your values, then? What you said earlier? About... being desperate to survive, doing anything necessary to feed their family, helplessly forced by the era you live in to become a slavering animal for the highest bidder?" Petra tilts her nose up and huffs disapprovingly, while the Pettas finally cut Thoth free within his cage. "Well, I'm glad Calvin's so unlike you that he can't summon you. But that also means you should know that we're your best option, and we'll always be the best option, so no matter who your boss was or whoever else comes along, it's gonna be us or the Expanse." The fact that some of the Oni are still cheering despite their leader's loss is a good sign, but it's not a good enough sign for Petra to feel comfortable. She edges closer to Calvin, eyeing the crowd for any signs that the built-up energy of the party and then the fun little surprise bloodsports show isn't going to overflow into a riot. "Hey, uh... even if he signs with you, what about the rest of them? Do you think we'll get out of here easy?"
Futaba Nuki	"Counterspell against bog-standard, whittle-down type shit," Even in the middle of a fight, Futaba finds time to shake her head slowly. "Cannot be real..." She mutters under her breath in continued disbelief, unable to accept that explanation so easily even with Calvin asserting that that name is real. She can blame that on dedicating at least some of her mind to Ongyo-ki instead, rearranging her tendriloid form to open up right in the middle when his staff comes dangerously close to striking her dead on. "Only someone who is a stranger to the lean times which created them could say something so *childish." What she can't avoid so easily is hearing something that runs counter to everything she stands for, to her idealized image of what a ninja should be. Sure, what Ongyo-Ki's saying about the historical ninjas makes lots of sense in the context of their usual skillsets compared to her idealized form of them, and this certainly wouldn't be the first time she's heard of humans dramatically overstating things. "Nah, you're right. I don't doubt plenty of 'em were back in the day, desperation and all. Rich folks ain't the usual sorta people to get into this work when they could just be comfortable, and most of the ones that do dip their toes in ain't even good at it." With her axe-hand trapped by Ongyo-ki's staff, Futaba tugs on it to launch herself forwards, keeping the offensive and noticing jsut how hard it is to actually land a good hit on the oni. "So... Which one are you? You got this big crowd with ya here and plenty of stuff to party with, and that doesn't scream desperate or hungry to me." Approaching the cyclone proves to be rather dangerous, too, with bits of those tendrils being sheared off by the cyclone and the strikes coming at a pace Futaba isn't ready to match with her katana. "So who're you trying to feed? You got someone back home you're doing all this for? Someone worth kidnappin' a brainiac diplomat for, killin' good people for, and throwin' who knows how many others under the bus just to do it?" Instead of trying to parry or even block against them with that flaming weapon, then, she instead just keeps advancing forward with the katana thrusting forward on another elongated limb while turning the axe into a spear to do the same. She keeps pressing the attack, too, until she can get close enough to practically whisper to the oni even while holding in bleeding wounds of her own with rapid transformations to hold it all in until she can try and get an answer. "Or are you like me, tryin' to be one of those heroes humans'll go on about long after we're gone?" Once she gets her answer, Futaba keeps her attention on the crowd even while Calvin starts negotiating with Ongyo-ki. It'd be one thing if all of them were his clan members and held to some manner of honor code, but considering their reaction to the oni outside earlier, she's not about to let her guard down just yet.
Dimokratia	Dimo's eruption of angles and complexities in martial abstraction retracts, refolds, reflows into smooth trails behind her as she pins the clone jutsu with her spears and threshing. There's no need for her to engage in technique - his problem is solved mathematically, chemically, by titrating away the offending vector of attack with equally overwhelming counterforce. But the trick is good. Dimo's awareness crackles, hot, before and not within her body, leaning to press to the clingfilm of reality and press closer still, to be a weight upon the world and warm it via contact, just to bear a little closer to something interesting. It's not her optics, false-things for show and humanoid expression as they are, that see Ongyo-ki's wispy clones dissipating, and track towards the real one. In this, for a moment, Dimo's tracking awareness sees the Pettas, squishing their silver-blob heads around and engaging in Quarter Sized Adventures, and along and besides how violently offended Dimo is for the insults Petra delivered to her there is a following sense of awareness, of parenting from the park-bench as the playground was engaged with, and pride of a kind - interest in the complexities she had already found, the nascent understandings she had begun to internalize. As well, the Champion's hot synaptic awareness sweeps towards the blood, a cone shown in targeting by the shift in her optics, and finally she locks gaze on the true Ongyo-ki from some distance away, smiling in understanding like a well entertained patron of a magician's show. "That is a good technique. Worthy of knowing." She says, as if she shares the privilege, and nods while lowering her arms slowly to side. The morphmetal in her trails weaves about in patterns, processing something partially muscular with faint contortions and motions, and then still and droop, the Champion taking the time to appraise Calvin's approach with the head oni - and how the crowd now cheers for them-and-Ongyo. "You understand what death gains you - and you think critically about it." Dimo begins, thoughtful, her pride cooling as so much reason is shown by the demon. "And you are mercenary enough to take the better offer. Very wise, for I am --" Dimo's carbon-dark lips smile more broadly at the 'slip'. "-- we are currently giving out that better offer. Because of your motion, Atlanta will soon be brought into alignment, and then there will not be a territory for you to occupy. If you would like to participate in that alignment, you are welcome to - I'm sure there's many things I could offer you if you were willing to speak at length about your. . . particular values." Dimo has a fondness for warriors, though especially the wise and prudent types. "Once under Calvin's contract," Dimo continues, stepping besides Richards with a resumingly mechanical-angelic sweep about the shoulder of, to comfort via wingspan and attention. "We will have better leverage, and a deeper command, correct? He is doing 'mission work'." The tall synthetic pours as honey atop the dagger-staring sort, soothing. "Now please, you seemed so interested, why not focus your attention on our side conversation instead, while this resolves?" Over Richards' head, Dimo glances at the Oni, grin remaining. "I am not sure there is such a difference as there is expected. On survival -- on the need for prudence, banding together, and strength -- I am sure there are shared views."