Scene #9793: Protecting Spirit Homes

Owner	Pose
Tamamo	For those who've been here before, but only that once, it's a return with a dramatic contrast. For any who haven't, the contrast is instead graded over kilometers, passing through a low-grade no-man's-land, a place visibly touched by what's most recently been dubbed the Pandemic Threat, only for that alien vista to fade away into what's somehow even less usual -- ordinary earths, tough grasses tolerant of poor soil and, ever so gradually, more and more green. It's semi-clear where a boundary is passed, as every stone has moss or creeping vines, trees dip their roots in the riverwater. Water flows lazily, then quickly, finding gaps where nature that looks far more than a year old grasps it. Brush grows densely, the bite of winter still a long ways off, from ankle high on up to trees tall enough to form a comfortable shade. Not too high. There are limits to the growth, as much as the rules have been bent. One can see, too, where all of this started, there on the stretch of land between two winding courses of water, a tiny island that can barely be called such, having been just large enough for what Tamamo had intended. But that's not where everyone is going, today. After all, last time... "That guy's been working at the edges, you know~ Where the green ends, and the red begins. Some are too used to the red, you know~? They've survived that way, instead of sleeping for spring." . . . "Oh~ yes, that one won't join us here, doesn't want to, so..." That's what the little spirit in the tree had told them, the effective 'leader' of the land-spirits gathered on that island, insofar as they have such a thing.
Tamamo	"Tamamo? What is it?" Lilian had asked. "A disagreement, yes, a... ah, you know how it is, that such spirits are 'of the land,' yes? A spirit may be transformed, if the land is transformed, as well. There are spirits of disaster the bring the same, and those that are so made by elements of disaster. The way in which this was spoken, I suspect it to be such a case, that this was one adapted to 'that' land. One who could not survive until restoration without joining that other side." So she had answered. And now... They arrive, again, by boat, avoiding air travel for the risks often posed by it. Speeding travel by water, as by techniques to manipulate wind or water, don't create the same dangers, though it is a bit of a trek in any case, for this place being so far from a warp gate. The remoteness is intentional, and cannot truly be helped. Not when the 'project' that has been occupying so much of Tamamo's time is of the scale it is. The island, however, is not their destination, and they must land toward the rightward, facing to the northeast. It is a little bit of a hike to get across to their destination, from there, but not too much of one. This would be more comfortably terms hill country than true mountains, and there was time to locate the easiest path beforehand. "We cannot know quite what it is we will encounter, nor the point at which we will be attacked -- which is an inevitability, if we do not simply scare it off with our presence." Tamamo's explained a bit along the way, to catch up Ru Li and Kale on last week's visit. "It is not, in truth, an Antegent -- or so I expect. However, there may be certain similarities, for it to be doing this by intent." Things get weird before too long. The terraforming extends only so far, most of the plant growth held back by the ridge, but what has gone over and further from the water yields more quickly, compared to what had been seen on the way up, from 'green' to 'red.' And there really is a lot of red, in several shades, not quite resembling an underwater scape, but much more so than river valley country like this is known to be. Something close enough to think of as kelp grows in winding stalks, swaying without regard for the wind. Vein-like growths that definitely aren't moss spread over stones and choked, dead brush, warm and pulsing. Even the 'bare earth' is different, dust turning from stone hues to paler, then darker dust, roiling as the terrain descends like a knee-high fog.
Ru Li	There is a small part of Ru Li Cheng that desperately wishes they could walk through the no-man's land of broken desert turning slowly to green. That part of him is also why he is wearing a low-top wide-brim cowboy hat, a pair of spurs on the back of his heels (he's switched to non-slipper shoes, at least, though they aren't boots), a holster for the red-and-gold Belial Riser, and a sheriff's star on his robe with the characters for his own name writ upon it in immaculate black-ink handwriting. He is flush with a silver tinge as he sits down in the boat, and he is flush with a silver tinge as they ride the boat, and he is flush with a silver tinge as they get off the boat. He knows. He knows he looks ridiculous. He knows that he looks absolutely absurd. And he knows that he will probably never, ever wear this again. Certainly he'll never wear shoes like these again - covering his feet completely in hard leather, with uncomfortable heels. The hike is deeply unpleasant for him as he walks along, ever-aware of the jingle-jangle of his spurs. It is probably mildly annoying. Still, Petra once told him to go all in with the aesthetics he liked, and right now, he's trying out this one. It's a romantic ideal that suits his admiration of heroes who keep their word even unto their death. As they go past the green to the red, however, and the knee-high dust rolls in, Ru Li's mood mildly improves. Yeah, he's still blushing a light silver, and he's pulled his hat down over as much of his face as he can (it doesn't cover his mouth) to hide said blush, but the feeling of the dust all around him as his holster bounces next to him is doing a lot to make him feel more like he's in one of those songs. "I see." At least he's not doing a stupid voice, thank...him. "So we must prepare for things to get very strange, then?"
Petra Soroka	It's Petra's time to row again, in order to cart Tamamo and Lilian down the river. Having Kale and Ru Li here might change that, on account of the introduction of masculine pride to the little riverfaring band, but it's precisely for that reason that Petra treats her rowing with the current as a given. Once she shucks her hoodie off for the physical exertion, she's wearing her 'MY MISTRESS'S WIFE IS HOTTER THAN YOU' shirt on underneath, binder visible to either side of her chest. "I sent Matilda the pictures," She idly chatters during the voyage. "And it cheered her up a bit. I think she's gonna be recovering better soon-- like, it seemed that way, when we talked." Upon arrival, Petra's fully prepared for the hike. For various reasons, she kind of expects Lilian to be a bit fussier than usual today, so she has a backpack loaded up with sweet and salty treats as well as water, with more than the little group with typically need. Even with the extra weight, she's plenty energetic while scampering around in the Antegent-claimed no-mans-land, metallic Silver tail swooshing around, new to both Kale and Ru Li. "It is not, in truth, an Antegent -- or so I expect." "Yeah, that does make sense." Petra runs up a hill and teeters to a stop, resisting the urge to let her momentum carry her down the other side and looking around from the vantage point instead. "I mean, the Antegent wouldn't even, like, register all that much, would they? But a spirit that's survived the last few decades by adapting to the Antegent would be sort of-- 'similar enough' to be a problem, or something."
Kale Hearthward	Kale speeds the boat along. It's a delicate maneuver, spinning stronger winds but then separating the woven magic into softer, gentler continuous breezes, like the careful unweaving of a precious sweater, but it should take care of propelling the boat in full, with only minimal steering needed. He doesn't stop Petra from rowing, however. Maybe he figures it's enrichment for her. Maybe it's just that he doesn't like Petra quite enough to point out she doesn't have to row. He looks visibly upset as the green starts turning to red. "I see." "Hopefully, whatever it is, we don't scare it off - it'd just leave and come back then, wouldn't it?" While they're on the watch for the antegent, and needing to focus on an apparently inevitable attack, is the perfect time to bring up new conversational topics! "So, what's with the new tail?" "I didn't think you were the type."
Tamamo	'So we must prepare for things to get very strange, then?' "It is ever better to be prepared than to be surprised." 'Hopefully, whatever it is, we don't scare it off - it'd just leave and come back then, wouldn't it?' "Yes, I expect so. It would be better that we confront it now. If we cannot... I have some supplies for setting up wards, but doing so for a large area is a bit of a fool's errand. If trouble does not arrive here, it will arrive somewhere else." 'But a spirit that's survived the last few decades by adapting to the Antegent would be sort of-- 'similar enough' to be a problem, or something.' "I hope we can do something about it." That's a little bit of a strange answer, since they're obviously going to do 'something' about it.
Tamamo	There's no path to follow. Nowhere to go but into what is at best, to every sense, alien foliage. Tamamo's sense for spirits has suggested only that they're 'close.' Without any visually obvious disturbance, it's a fair guess that the one they seek is hiding. It is. It strikes only once everyone has fully entered the wilderness, and it's not as if there'd be any other way to find it. The 'kelp' hadn't really been doing anything, apart from being weird in a dreamlike, uncanny way. It doesn't react to any sort of bothering done to it, and gives no sign of having the means to do so. It is, nevertheless, the immediate vector of attack -- rather, the growth of it is, creeper vine-like, shooting up from all around to wrap and drag and choke the life of every person present. Tamamo tries to back up, to shout a warning, but there's nowhere to really back up to. She's summoned her mirror in a moment, the materialized Eightfold Blessings, and there's a heat-haze shine around her that burns most of what's falling onto her -- though that snaking right at ground level isn't being caught by this defense. And only then does it appear, needing no warning for 'this is it.' As if announcing its presence, it appears in a blink, like it was always there, or moved only in the moment of a saccade. A far-too-large quadruped of exposed silver bones and black seas instead of fur, the edges slightly formless where they aren't shining. Antlered and with the elongated skull of a deer, but every leg has an extra joint, presently bent in a crouch like it's about to charge. That something twenty feet tall could go entirely unnoticed like this should only be unsurprising for the fact that, as expected, this is a spirit. Tangible, at the moment. It doesn't charge. Not yet. It is completely still, four hooves planted. Its eye sockets glow near-infrared.
Petra Soroka	"So we must prepare for things to get very strange, then?" It can never be said that Petra Soroka doesn't have tact. Or, it can almost always be said, but at least in this specific case, she manages to not voice her opinion that Ru Li looks absolutely ridiculous in his silly little cowboy cosplay. It's like he's a kid out on Halloween!!! He has spurs?! For a hike?! It's so bad. It doesn't suit him at all. But Petra did encourage it, and she can remember all the times that she's worn a completely out of pocket outfit and just stuck to it until it did suit her, so she's not going to sabotage Ru Li now. She can fuck with him a bit, though. "It's already pretty strange if you look over yonder, bucko. Because of the Antegent and the Onslaught and everything. So don't start sitting easy in your saddle, now--" She breaks off into giggling, unable to keep up the bit. Really, if she thinks about it, she's not dressed much like she did last time Ru Li saw her either! This amount of bare skin, the corded pendant around her neck and the beads around her wrist, not to mention the tail, would've made her crawl out of her skin two years ago. "So, what's with the new tail?" "Goddddddd." Petra rolls her eyes, and her tail flicks derisively. The soft morphmetal 'fur' coating around it, that lags a split second behind the mechanical core, briefly sharpens into a whipped blade in the direction of the motion, then loses tension again. "The 'type'? Because I frankly think I'm the exact type to take a little nibble out of an alien Fruit of Knowledge and get a tail made out of my own robot blood permanently affixed to my body. It makes a lot of sense, like, now that it's happened."
Kale Hearthward	> "Because I frankly think I'm the exact type to take a little nibble out of an alien Fruit of Knowledge..." "Actually yeah that makes a lot of sense?" He pauses. "You know, you've changed so much, is there any of the original 'you' left? It reminds me of this thought experiment. Have you ever heard of the Ship of-" With perfect timing, the kelp attacks. Kale tugs and rips at it with his hands desperately - it cutting off his airflow, aside from literally killing him eventually, would leave him entirely helpless. "Hrk." When he has a half second of peace, he yanks out a sword, swinging it desperately, carving some space around himself. When he has more than a half second, he brings it up to his beak, literally breathing magic into the opening in the hilt. He doesn't wait for the sword to finish its transformation before swinging again, not having the luxury of sitting through the entire cinematic sequence. But when it does, the blade splits in half lengthwise, leaving a mirrored prism suspended in the air between the two halves. Kale switches stances and swings low as soon as the transformation is complete, and now as the sword slices through the air it leaves a particularly sharp trail. It's a way to carve out some space, almost literally, as anything coming up against the afterimages is going to get torn apart no less than if it'd run into Kale's actual sword. "Is everyone alright!" he yells, though he's probably gotten the worst of it. "We're being attacked!" he adds, also redundantly.
Ru Li	Petra starts giggling at him. To Ru Li's credit, he does not get mad. He just pulls his hat down a little deeper (since he can see everything around him anyway this is purely irrelevant) as his blush deepens even further. Now his neck can be seen with a little bit of electrum discoloration. Looks like his coolant systems are working overtime. "Y-yes. I. Reckon. That is the case." Ru Li immediately strikes the word 'reckon' from his vocabulary unless it's followed by an '-ing'. Trying to stay in his normal formal speech patterns and also use cowboy words is possibly even worse than his ludicrous outfit. Possibly. Maybe. He brightens up a bit (though the blush does not disappear from his neck, so presumably not from his face either). "Oh! That is the tail that was mentioned to me. I think it suits you! It is very distinctive and does indeed resemble a sort of sin-entity." "P-pardn-" Nope. "...actually...you look very different. You look much more confident, Petra. I am...very happy for you." That's not sarcasm! He sounds like he means it. He's just grappling with his sense of shame. He's about to say something else, probably another attempt at some cowboy stuff, before he goes silent. His blush vanishes. Silver light spills out of his hat, probably from his eyes. Something tastes...wrong. It takes him a moment to pinpoint it. The kelp in front of him is easily dealt with. Both of his arms are much stronger than the kelp. He simply rips it to shreds, easily, as more and more strands grab on. The kelp behind him, though...well, there's a lot of kelp, and ridiculous reflexes don't help when you're completely surrounded. Several vines manage to get around his throat and start squeezing. Metal strains slightly beneath the flesh. He grabs the kelp and starts pulling. He is very, very strong. The ground starts to crack, chunks of it coming up. But the kelp continues to close around him. And these damn heels are- The heels. The spurs. Ru Li wheels his foot backwards. The spurs slice through the kelp in a single blow. Before the creature can even appear, Ru Li is already drawing the Belial Riser and turning in its direction. "DEATHCIUM BEAM!" Click. The creature blinks into existence right in front of a massive beam of red light. It looks exactly like an Ultraman's Specium Beam, but it's red and black and swirls with lightning. The blast carves through what vines are still trying to choke him on its way straight for the creature. From nowhere, Ru Li's brush-slash-sword appears in his other hand. He holds it up in a defensive stance and crosses the Riser over it to help him aim. But just shooting it won't solve the problem, will it? Gods need to be pacified. He's going to try and find a shrine in the middle of combat. When he...has a break. Yes. When he...has...a moment... ... Well, it's an alright plan.
Lilian Rook	This time, Lilian's arm isn't broken. Which, admittedly, feels pretty good, but only in a very complicated way. Three weeks to think on it was sufficient to put another little nick of permanent emotional harm somewhere on this year's foundational ring, but as always, life relentlessly carries on, and even she can only keep it at bay for a little while. Come to think of it, it was actually six weeks, wasn't it? Now it's sort of her karmic burden to use that arm wherever possible. And also, she's unreasonably annoyed by the idea of it having atrophied. Rowing is happily* within her purview this time, though it's still as barely-necessary as before. Sufficient time since getting Kenshiko's contact information and putting her in for a Shrine of Adversity membership list has given Lilian's 'triangles' (now more or less a small cluster of irregular metal shards) time to stop being devil horns, so she's feeling pretty thankful for that as well. She spends most of the walk continuing her work in trying to exercise any kind of deliberate control over the constellation of black fragments following her around, which causes plenty of floaty motion and very little helpful. Her first goal is being able to put them in her pocket or something. Fuck's sake. Well, it does get easier once they're deep into no man's land. As tempted as she is to blame it on the obvious, Lilian privately concludes that it has to do with how these places heighten her sense of bodily awareness by contrasting against everything that 'doesn't belong'. And with her still annoyingly-heightened senses, it's easier than ever to feel that boundary of 'Earth' and 'everything else' start and end at her skin. Which is how she concludes, accidentally out loud, "Oh. So it does proprioceive like that." Even that is much less interesting than this-- their collective work and Tamamo's present quest-- however. Triangles are triangles and this is the fate of the adorable little glade of hope and whimsy that Lilian had emotionally invested herself in deeply even aside from it being her wife's pet project! And she loves Tamamo having pet projects! Lilian has so many herself! It's good for her wife to have them! So before long . . . . . . . . . . . 'I sent Matilda the pictures, and it cheered her up a bit.' "I'm glad." Lilian sighs. "I feel a bit bad for shouting at her. The fallout of her nonsense was very distressing, but she's going to feel hurt about it for much longer than I'm distressed. I'll have to make it up to her when she's discharged." 'I mean, the Antegent wouldn't even, like, register all that much, would they?' "The warping, rerouting, and destruction of leylines is more or less incidental to their behaviour. They don't even pursue non-humans." Lilian says, sliding down the same way. "The closest I've personally seen the line drawn is Nobodies, to give you some perspective. Of course the spirits would hate one moving in and terraforming the place, but practically all of that class are already dead. The ones still alive tend to be completely sessile; like the Cycle of Tears or Muteki no Ha." 'So, what's with the new tail?' "Secret eighth bonus sin." Lilian says, choosing Petra's own words because she likes them. "Nika likes it, though. So it's sort of in a positive reinforcement loop." A beat. "Mutual friend of ours. She's very cute."
Lilian Rook	'I hope we can do something about it.' "I'd like it to be somethng we can purify rather than destroy." Lilian says, a little wistfully. 'It's already pretty strange if you look over yonder, bucko.' "Oh be nice to him." Lilian says, half-hearted, because she's laughing silently too. "He's already embarrassed enough. Let him pursue his fixation for a while. Otherwise he's committing high treason against desperately squatting in a cubicle for all eternity for no reason." 'You know, you've changed so much, is there any of the original 'you' left?' "What? Wouldn't the original you be a newborn baby? Then there's nothing left of it in anyone. That's--" In the split second before the attack, the hovering cluster of fragments, successfully drawn nearer to her hand than her head, clatter together from a tense, implosive 'pulse'; in the very same instant that Lilian's eyes go wide and her hand jumps to the hilt of her sword. Night Mist leaves the sheath faster than thought. The wave of vines that'd snuck under Tamamo's barrier are tossed into the air as so many tattered pieces, with Lilian at the center of an irregular circle of gouges and flying dust. Having sheathed her sword again is only for having caught sight of the cause, and wanting to very slightly lower her threat profile; not intentionally trying to look like an anime swordswoman. 'Is everyone alright!' "Uninjured. Target in sight." Lilian says, equally redundant; military marco polo. Her gaze slides sideways. "Tamamo? Is there anything you can do about this one? Corrupted, or just angry?" She has a few options of her own, though none so convenient as a purification spell.
Petra Soroka	The first thing Petra does when she sees Lilian when starting the voyage through no-mans-land is look at the top of her head and go, not sounding disappointed but some other thing, "Oh, they're gone." "So it does proprioceive like that." "Really? So it's like--" A droplet of morphmetal floats towards Lilian's own cloud of fragments, trying to bump up against them like fingers touching tips. "Y-yes. I. Reckon." "Hell yeah, pardner!" Even though she's still snickering, that comes out much more earnestly, and she throws her hands up into the air and claps above her head. This is exactly what he needs!!! Yes!!!! "You look much more confident, Petra. I am...very happy for you." Petra folds her hands behind her head, looking up out of the corner of her eyes instead of at Ru Li. Being called a sin-entity is enough of a compliment that Ru Li's shame about it doesn't even register, over the awkwardness of a direct observation of her body and style and everything. "Well, I grew my hair out. A bit. Didn't ever think that'd happen." It's not the most noticeable thing different about her, but the previously trimmed bob cut is now shaggy and just barely down to her shoulders. "The confidence sort of came after." "The warping, rerouting, and destruction of leylines is more or less incidental to their behaviour." "Okay, yeah. That's what I'd guessed, but it's good to know for sure." It's a good thing that Tamamo is here to be the expert, and Lilian secondarily as an experienced shrine maiden, because Petra doesn't know even where to begin calming down a corrupted land spirit. It's not like they have the time or freedom to tend to 'healing' the land as a whole, with how much time Tamamo's project is already taking, and the whole problem is that this spirit's being hostile to that. "... So what does a natural Antegent ecological cycle look like...?" "Nika likes it, though. So it's sort of in a positive reinforcement loop." "Nika does like it," Petra agrees, a little too smugly. The tail thwips back and forth, fast enough that the lagging metal nearly forms a complete fan. "And she is very cute." "He's already embarrassed enough. Let him pursue his fixation for a while." "Oh, yeah, yeah! I'm encouraging it, even! If he can't survive one single buckaroo, then he's yee'd his last haw before he's even begun!" "You know, you've changed so much, is there any of the original 'you' left?" "Well, fun fact, the Fruit was basically asking the same question, and--" The moment the kelp starts moving unnaturally, Petra skitters away from it as if it's a snake in the corner of her vision. As the rest reaches for her, she clicks open the pendant around her neck and draws out Pillar of Creation from the mirror within, fist pulling away from her chest with the spear in hand. Each tendril that grips her gets sliced off by a flash of the spearhead, until she's carved out a shredded red pile of plant matter that's fallen limp. The EGO spear's leveled at the spirit, but she's a little hesitant to attack it. "Er-- yeah, what would be the method to calm this one down? Or-- is it hopeless to try and get it to reconcile with the little guys' home?" "DEATHCIUM BEAM!" In the span of seconds where the Deathicum Beam drowns out all other sounds, Petra wonders about Ru Li's arguments that Belial is not, in fact, the devil of space.
Kale Hearthward	> "Tamamo? Is there anything you can do about this one? Corrupted, or just angry?" "Ideally without having to destroy it?" Wait, Kale Hearthward looking for the nonviolent solution too?
Tamamo	Kale gets some space. The vines aren't really difficult to cut -- they're more dangerous for the sheer number of attack vectors. It's as if the entire world is out to get him, but he'll realize in a moment how much easier it'd be to get away by going up. They'll follow, yes, but they're not filling the sky, yet. Ru Li strikes directly! The spirit absorbs the blow without moving, but the energy leaves electrical sparks all along the silver bones. The black spaces between the bones boil throughout, and then the channeling disperses the beam into the ground. It did something, but... Lilian protects Tamamo, and Petra likewise gains space. This doesn't stop more attacks from coming, but with an immediate area cleared, the biggest danger of an ambush grip is lessened, making it much safer to stand exactly there, though no less danger to take five steps in any direction. The spirit moves for the first time, head lowering. <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "It is both angry and corrupted. Angry, of course, for the same reason as a forest's spirit would be angry at the forest being cleared away. 'Corrupted' in the sense of..." <J-IC-Scene> Ru Li says, "I suppose that dog will not hunt, then. Could we build a rapid altar? I do not know that I would be able to identify the right methods to bless it for the Maintainer, but you might know already...? ...assuming that is even possible, if it is corrupted." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "I am unsure. There are similar cases wrought by human folly, in which impurities spread by humans were reflected in the spirit, and these could be cleansed, restoring an original, healthier state. For this one, it has survived a long transformation. It would need to undergo a swift and difficult reversal. It is not as if there is an 'essence of evil' that can be removed." <J-IC-Scene> Ru Li says, "...what if we wore it out without killing it? Could you contain it until we could construct something to make it less ornery for you to work with?" <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "It is somewhat like teaching a fish to breathe without water." After a moment, "...which can be done." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "--yes! I do have the supplies for a sealing array. It will need to be worn down to the point it is no longer spreading itself over the field." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "You can feel it too, yes? It is using its own essence to influence the... plants? I suppose they are plants." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Yes ma'am! That's actually an easy goal to focus on." <J-IC-Scene> Ru Li says, "I can. It is everywhere. It is all over the land." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "We can keep it occupied so you and Lilian can set up the array once it's worn out." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Very good. It will be so much easier to find a safe solution once--" --and it charges, right at Lilian. Or, maybe, at Tamamo, who's right behind Lilian. Whatever the case, it's as fast as a bolting animal, if that were scaled up to a frame the size of a small house, instead of slowing in the manner one intuitively expects of anything 'big.' Silver points menace, and inertia threatens to carry through even if struck. The spirit turns oddly, when it does, as if that same inertia were merely a suggestion rather than a physical law, drawing a curve to threaten everyone in the same trampling charge unless stopped cold. The dusty, ankle- to knee-high clouds of dust are stirred up by its hooves. After some unseen critical point of disturbance, they begin falling into the sky like rain, clearing ground but striking uncomfortably like a sand-blaster.
Tamamo	Tamamo gets to work, trusting Lilian to deal with everything else. In fact, she's trusting Petra and Ru Li and Kale to deal with everything more than a few feet away, and Lilian for that immediate space that lets her root around in the magic pocket of her flared sleeves to find the sealing array she mentioned. "Ah... here it is!" It's a set of talismans, of the same self-plastering paper kind she uses for defining boundaries. "These need to be space around an area, and the spirit pushed into it, after everything else is prepared. The shape should be five-sided, flat to the west." She's going to work on doing that, too, but explaining the process means other people can help, if they aren't occupied with getting the -- presently highly mobile -- spirit to slow down.
Ru Li	Ru Li lands in a roll, both hands on the Belial Riser as he stops in a kneel. "I believe I am already over this," he admits, "While it is somewhat enjoyable to speak this way, the spurs have come in handy, and I do rather like the hat and holster, the boots are infuriating. I despise heels." Preaching to the choir, Ru Li Cheng. "I do like the music, though." And that's as much as he gets. The spirit charges. It lunges at Lilian and Tamamo, and Ru Li, hand on hat, goes running to try and stop it. Both the Belial Riser and the blade vanish into thin air as he goes. He's too slow to stop it, but when it turns to charge, well, it's aimed at him, and it's coming for him, and... Ru Li charges at it. He's fast. He's strong. But more importantly, he's flexible as all hell. Joints that shouldn't bend that way do as he slides under the creature's charge. His feet go almost fully backwards like an action figure on ball joins to make his slide smoother. His head goes backwards so far that only the nose gets scraped (though it looks quite painful - it may have bent entirely backwards. Some quicksilver is indeed leaking out of it). One hand remains firmly attached to his hat as his other snatches up several of the trails of kelp severed in the initial fight. When he comes out of the slide on the other side, he's already tied the kelp together at superhuman speed. Bureaucrat god he may be, but a god is still a god, after all. And he may have no experience whatsoever with this weapon, but he's still strong enough and dextrous enough that he has no doubt in himself whatsoever. He whirls the lasso overhead so fast it sounds like a helicopter. Radial senses pinpoint the spot. Rapid thought pinpoints the trajectory. The lasso hooks around the spirit's neck. Ru Li jumps and lands on its back, slamming his spurs into its side. "Yee-haw." Yeah it sort of loses something without the shout, doesn't it? "Easy now, you great galoot." He pulls, hard, on the lasso and digs his spurs in even deeper. "We do not want to kill you. We want to help you."
Petra Soroka	So, the goal is tiring it out! There's no saying how easily tuckerable this massive corrupted deer spirit could be, bonded to the land as it is, but it's not so alien that Petra would expect it to not be tired out at all. But it's big, and that means it moves fast, and here on the ground, Petra can hardly move around without getting tangled up in the kelp it's controlling. And it lowers its head to charge, which is expended energy, but towards Tamamo and Lilian! She draws the transteam gun in the same motion as she lunges out of her safe-gardened area, the trimmed kelp whipping around to grasp her. When the trigger's pulled, the cloud of smoke envelops her and the tangling plants alike, and then explodes in a firework display with the gritty announcement of SILVER! ST-ST-STING SILVER! that throws them off as charcoal. Now in her armor, Petra's jump is augmented by a pulse of energy from the thrusters in Sting Silver's legs, propelling her towards the charging stag. As it turns towards her, it's already too late to change course, so she tackles it head-on, wrestling with an antler to wrench its course further away from where Tamamo and Lilian are. The bee-design on her chest throws out sparks where the antler scrapes against it, and she struggles to hold on while its head swings around to dislodge her. "I despise heels." "You're telling me!" Petra's voice is distorted through her mask as she shouts down at Ru Li. She twists around in her flailing with the big spirit, showing in a glimpse how the bottom of her own suit's boots have jagged scratch marks where she snapped its heels off, during her first fight using the suit. The lasso-ing actually combines very well with Petra's tactic, allowing her to finally get a more secure grip on its antler. Once the spirit itself is slowed, Petra tries to yank it so it's turned around, entangling it further in Ru Li's makeshift rope as it tries to shake her off, boosting with her thrusters to keep clinging like a persistent mosquito. With approximately one quarter of its head in a headlock, Petra suddenly laughs loudly, crackling through her mask. "Giddyup!"
Kale Hearthward	Oh, right, Kale can fly. He drops his sword and he starts casting with both hands. He's getting buffeted by vines and dust and having close calls with the charging spirit beast, each of which leave him a bit worse off than before, but he keeps casting. Kale draws out lifebreath from himself, his fingers grabbing it and pulling it, somehow transmuting it from literal air to a substance he can hold and manipulate. He keeps pulling it, thick airy strands forming like taffy in his grasp, but just as quickly as it forms he's putting it to use, laying it out inside of a complicated spellform. For being magic, it's an unusually physical and tactile act. Calling it 'weaving the spell' is quite literal, with the strands of magic being overlaid and underlaid and knotted and looped. The spell is finished by tying the remaining strands off as Kale cuts off the flow of his magic, and it is done. The result is an imperfect sphere of magic, and it is not stable. No amount of fancy knotwork would make it stable - it started trying to unravel itself from the moment Kale started on it, and now that he's no longer forming it the spell is trying to break apart and return to equilibrium even more insistently. The spell's half life is measured in seconds, at most. Not that it needs to last long. Kale's already grabbing the sphere of air with both hands, pulling both arms back and slamming it down towards the ground as hard as he can. This part of the lifebreath tradition is also quite physical, and in fact bordering on just plain violent. The sphere breaks apart on contact, and with it the assertions Kale's knotted into the winds take hold. The winds still. The pressure increases. A bubble of calm air (not a literal bubble) forms, protecting the elites inside it from the dust, while the pressure differential constantly pushes back any vines trying to get to them. Being freed from the constant environmental distractions should help everyone focus a little bit more! At least, that's the hope, as Kale starts casting again, maintaining the bubble with a constant flow of his magic.
Lilian Rook	'Really? So it's like--' "Ah ah. Don't be a pervert." Lilian says. She gives herself an extra foot of distance, and gently fends off the silver drop with her hand. "That's taking advantage. I don't know how, but it is." 'Well, I grew my hair out. A bit. Didn't ever think that'd happen.' "Whore." Fond as usual. '... So what does a natural Antegent ecological cycle look like...?' "Oh my god. What a question. How long do you have? Because I had voluntary classes about that for years." -------- 'Wear it down' is something she cand do. Protecting Tamamo is something she can practically do in her sleep. The world around her narrows in pursuit of those two objectives, and her worries about being rusty after three weeks fall outside of it. 'Ah... here it is!' Lilian stares down the coming charge and sights past the edge of her blade. The inhale comes when the spirit's hooves stir, and the exhale follows simultaneous with her diagonal-backward lunge and full-strength vertical blow to the creature's head. Her sword strikes antler and deflects with purpose into skull, driving its head low into the dirt and turning its charge into a swerve away from Tamamo. The momentum is what she uses to propel herself backwards from the antlers as well, supporting her weight on her sword instead of her feet. The curving charge exposes its flank to her. The entangling gives her time to charge up and cast a half-dozen consecutive slicing rays of black-gold magic in a baton-like flurry, aiming for aggregate damage to its body below the neck and staying away from deadly blows with her anti-spirit sword.
Tamamo	It's working. That can be seen, easily enough, by the changes in speed. Charging a curve as if it were a straight-away it can do, but the spirit can't manage to instantly regain speed lost from Lilian striking its skull to the dirt. Ru Li gets his lasso on as it slows into the curve toward Petra, who grabs the antlers before its built up speed again. It does, then, build up speed, carrying her along and also keeping low enough to try and drag her through the ground -- and out of the cleared space and back into the kelp. This has mixed results, as Ru Li yanks from one side and Petra from the other and Lilian's magic eats away at -- calling it 'flesh' isn't quite right, but holes briefly open in the black substance that makes it up between the silver bones, revealing glints of other materials beneath before they close again. Petra has to put in full effort to get anywhere, partly for something this big being hard to get a full grip on, but also because the extra limb joints make it deceptively flexible. The fact that it can maintain balance through rotations no Earthly quadruped would enjoy probably doesn't come as a surprise. But still, it slows. It breathes, the bone jaws opening to let out a gray mist that smells sickly-sweet. Its pin-prick glowing eyes move and focus and widen -- on Petra, mostly, now. It bucks, but removing Ru Li isn't easy. His lasso isn't made of terribly strong material, but his own dexterity can make up for it. Other vines grow toward him, but not fast enough, and Kale's orb of calm disrupts the reverse rain into an aimless fog. Now the black dust clouds merely scatter when stepped through, rather than hitting with blast forces. Tamamo goes to work, laying out her talismans. The space she has to prepare is relatively large, only because the spirit's form is, too. It's taking her a little while longer, and in that time, the feeling of desperation is, perhaps, the least alien reaction one could hope for out of a corrupted spirit. Fully rotating one hooved leg to strike the ground, there's a rumble in the earth. The vein-like definitely not-moss growths in the stone, sometimes hidden by the kelp, bubble and burst in an expanding circle, sizzling and fading away. Only very close examination, in the midst of everything else happening, can tell that they're 'retracting.' The trees that burst out of the ground aren't really that dangerous. They're just trees, really, stark white with cracking gray slice-sections as they grow and bend, spreading low more than they grow up. In moments, as a miracle of no apparent tactical purpose, they bear glittery fruit that smells far too sweet. They'd just be rather pretty, even, if seen from a good distance, and they weren't growing so close as to form tangles of branches into which Petra is being pushed, half-covering up Tamamo's partly-finished sealing array before she switches to a fiery curse to start clearing and, most importantly, if the spirit didn't twist its entire body about to begin running along the spreading branches, rotating sideways, then upside down. The sky is getting cluttered, now. They aren't ceasing to grow.
Ru Li	Ru Li doesn't even need to look up to ask Petra, "Did you snap the heels off of your suit?" In the middle of his struggle with the lasso and his spurs, he says, "It looks incomplete but undoubtedly feels much better. I did not know those suits stayed damaged once you dismissed them. Fascinating. I-" Whatever else he was going to say literally doesn't matter. The spirit inverts. The cowboy hat goes falling off. And Ru Li's head literally goes directly into the dirt. But he refuses to let go. His spurs swing forward to dig into the gaps cut by Lilian's blade. His grip on his flimsy lasso tightens as he holds on for dear life. The whole time his face - his entire head, and his neck - is being dragged through the ground. It's leaving a trench all the way through the dust. As the spirit gets out of Kale's bubble and the reverse rain starts pelting his arms there's a moment where his grip starts to waver. In pure stubbornness the god wraps the lasso around one of his wrists and dangles his other arm to his side. Wait. Not dangling. Something appears between his fingers. It's a small capsule, like the sort Riku uses to capture kaiju, but...different. This one is ringed in electrum and quicksilver, with a gear-lock on the top. Ru Li grips it tightly in his hand as if it's the only thing in the world. The gear on top turns with a pneumatic hiss. Energy wraps out towards the spirit's wounds to draw some piece of its essence - something - away. Maybe it'll help calm it down! Who knows. Ru Li has literally never used this capsule before. He certainly hasn't used it on a fellow divine entity, and he definitely doesn't even know if it'll work. He's gratified, despite the twin trails of quicksilver and electrum he's leaving along the trench and the agonizing pain of having his head in this position. A smarter god probably would've bailed by now. Ru Li can take it. He'll be fine. Silver and gold light lashes out from the capsule. It wraps around the creature, seeking some part of it to draw within the capsule, some piece of the thing. This prototype is not gentle. Its lashes dig into the spirit. When it's found what it's looking for it draws the energy back into itself with a fierce, ferocious, fearsome yank. The capsule closes itself, the gear locks, and a picture of the beast's face appears on the side. The capsule vanishes, and Ru Li's free hand grabs the ground next to him and digs in. All of his leverage goes to the ground. His wrist bends backward. His other hand has the makeshift lasso wrapped around it. His shoulders stretch. His neck finally remains in place as he uses all of his very considerable divine power to try and stall the thing just long enough for everyone to finish bringing it to rest.
Kale Hearthward	Trees! There's not much that wind magic can do about trees, not at the risk of blowing everyone else away. Kale does what he can, though. He grabs for his remaining sword, activates it with another puff of lifebreath, and starts swinging as it transforms into a gigantic, grinding drill, thrice as long as before and nearly as wide as it is long. "Keep them off of Tamamo's talismans!" Each swing is not aimed at drilling through, but instead using the massive grooved drill as an ersatz chainsaw - the inset 'teeth' on the long sides of the drill ripping into and yanking apart branches as it spins rapidly. And if this doesn't work, he might need to have this sword handy to bust them out of here, anyway!
Lilian Rook	"Hang in there a little longer." Those are the encouraging words that Lilian chooses for, probably, Ru Li's benefit. Settled into the years-long routine of patrolling Tamamo's personal space and defending her work from enemy attack, the motions of combat are something separate from, but not unrelated to, highway hypnosis for Lilian. The feeling of the sword back in her hand is good. Being able to do something uncomplicatedly helpful feels good too. So despite the rampaging spirit, she has time to think about him too. "Hearthward is right. We can deal with the trees. Don't distract yourself." 'We can deal with it' amounts to taking the wild overgrowth that spills over from Kale (kind of doing all the real fighting on his end) and hacking it down in blistering flurries where it threatens to encroach on the pentagonal array. Though they're certainly hardier targets than bamboo stalks, Lilian can spare both hands and judicious surges of magical energy to scythe through them as they freshly emerge rather than waiting for them to grow thick and problematic, limiting herself intentionally to the area near each talisman until it's too cluttered with stumps and roots for new growth. The sickly sweet smell is overpowering. It makes her feel slightly ill. Somehow the grey mist puts a faint ringing in her ears that makes her want to gag. Worrying as it may be, she hardly has anyone to ask about it. Lilian holds her breath and waits as Ru Li gets a handle on the spirit's momentum and starts trying to divert it. Then one more flash draw strikes clean through the tree the spirit leaps to right before it can actually touch it, hoping to send it into freefall into the array.
Petra Soroka	Petra wrangles herself into a position where her arms can wrap around the spirit's neck, briefly stabilizing herself against its thrashing. The Silver flowing down the arms of her suit drips off her gauntlets, coiling around its neck and antlers to anchor herself there, and then she tucks her knees between her arms to invert herself and plants the bottom of her boots against its side. Semi-somersaulting, the makeshift reins quiver and tighten into chains for her to loop around her fists. They hold as she strains and boosts to fight against its momentum, yanking it the opposite of whichever way it tries to go to frustrate it into exhausting itself. "I did not know those suits stayed damaged once you dismissed them." "Just that bit, really! I've had it shattered off me enough times. It-- ah..." Ru Li being flattened into the ground ends the brief conversation, and worse, frees the spirit's attention to focus on getting rid of her next. The more its gigantic neck flails around, the harder it is for Petra to keep a hold on it at all, and with Ru Li's lasso slipping, the surprisingly dextrous body below twists around to remove her footing. Petra tenses, waiting for the perfect alignment of several bucking body parts, and then lunges to arm bar both horns, wrenching its head backwards. The spirit's head ducks down suddenly, and Petra's body flips heels over head to hang in front of its face as it readies another charge. Tree limbs spring up out of the ground to scrape at the back of her suit, and then as she's swung like a doll around into them, the branches splinter and crack with plastic squealing as it endures hit after hit. "Keep them off of Tamamo's talismans!" The spirit's head rears up for the sideways swipe that would drag her through newly sprouting trunks and rip her grip right off, and Petra shakes and kicks to try and dislodge some of the twigs still skewering her armor. She gasps, and whips her arm out to the side. Droplets of Silver roll off her gauntlets' fingertips and solidify into claws, raking through the trees around her to clear branches before she smacks into them. "Hhaa--! There's only so much I can do about uprooting trees!" Besides whatever damage she might do to them by the spirit smashing her through the copse, she's fairly helpless as long as she holds on, but loses control if she lets go. Bracing herself, she clings and grits her teeth until she reaches the gap where Periactus has already chewed through the trees, then abruptly loosens her grip around the spirit's antlers and drops down to the ground. As she falls, she detransforms with a flash, yanks her mirror off from around her neck, and throws it to the ground to impact before her. The Beauty of Ash erupts from it, unfolding to catch her in its cockpit and slicing through a line of trees with its back legs as it swivels around to face the spirit. The scaled mimicry of Petra's own Silver tail lashes and cracks a trunk in two, and then the mech pounces on the deer-spirit. Less than half its size, but sharp enough to shred its home terrain advantage, the Beauty of Ash tries to wrestle it down in place long enough for Tamamo's array to go off.
Tamamo	Ru Li gets something, though the details aren't yet known by anyone else. That will come up later. The Beauty of Ash somewhat evens the differences of scale, and gives a better means than 'wrestling' for dealing with the sudden, aggressively growing forest. Petra yanks and twists and is rewarded by the now clearly understandable signs of an animal tiring, even if delivered with a face and breath like... that. The silvery bones are cold to the touch, as is the mist. Not once has the spirit shown an ability to fly. It firmly plants itself where it wishes to do anything. Kale breaks the trees around it and, when it leaps for another, Lilian is already there, breaking the purchase it would have had. All there fall, now perfectly positioned above Tamamo's sealing array. Each line connects, Tamamo making the necessary gestures and rapidly speaking the necessary words, invoking five elements, four directions, and two natures. It's with a tone of finality and sense of completeness that she makes the final, cutting gesture, activating the array with a burst of golden light. The once-upon-a-time mountain stag folds up its triple-jointed legs and slowly, laboriously, lays down. And then, it disappears, leaving only a head-sized stone in the middle of the talismans, run over with lines of silver. It may have already been there. "Ah... that..." Tamamo looks at it. She murmurs something apologetic, then looks up toward everyone else. "That was well done. We will need to safeguard this area a bit more, of course, but this will buy for us all the time needed for adjusting this one to a new home." Purposefully, she doesn't voice any doubt about that working. It's probably not something anyone's done before. Naturally, Tamamo goes to lean on Lilian until she's calmed down a little. Anyone in need of healing before then will need to be a bit loud.
Ru Li	Some muffled acknowledgment of Lilian's encouragement emerges from the dirt as Ru Li clings for dear life (or, at least, not having his arms ripped out of his sockets). And he does hold on. He holds on long enough for everybody to hold it down for Tamamo. When the creature finally disappears, Ru Li falls forward, his head still in the dirt, his spine bent backwards in what looks very unpleasant. He pushes himself out of the ground and straightens. His face is very beat-up from rocks, coated in dirt and coolants. His nose is bent at a diagonal upwards angle that would probably have made any human being pass out. Ru Li reaches up and simply shoves his nose back into place with both hands. "Ouch," he says simply. He fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his face clean. "Well." "I believe that I am finished with both rooting and tooting for the time being. The heels are very unpleasant, and I do not think it all comes together without the spurs. Surprisingly practical, though!"