Chevaleresse

"Yes. I've never met an American." Tusbasa continued to stare at Cicivexa. She was thinking about her response, yes, but mostly just wondering how the hell she was supposed to wrap her tongue around that name. After a moment of internal frustration, she gave up, electing to use the title instead. "Then, Black Mage, you should know that there's only one source of magic." Things could be different here, of course, but his behavior wasn't inspiring confidence. Especially given his stature: an adult bearing and voice, but a childlike size almost always meant a demon that had been transformed as a child - and survived long enough to mature, to boot.

Tsubasa glanced back and forth between the others that addressed her, the short one and the one with the. . . something. . . each getting a glance. Particularly the short one. She let some of the tension out of her stance, standing, sweeping her blade in front of her in an almost lazy fashion, and sheathing it. They'll probably assume they're safer that way. As she did so, she took a deep breath, before looking back to the one with the big metal thing. "Sanada Tsubasa. A foreigner, then?" I suppose we're all foreigners, huh? "I don't know who you are to lie to you. The reason you have to trust me is that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and not shortening you on the assumption that you intend to unleash some sort of Blood Demon Art on me with that." She nods at the rod, which she assumed could hurt her somehow with how it was being pointed at her. Realistically, she likely couldn't fight all of them at once if they turned out to be hostile, but she refused to let fear creep into her mind.

Tsubasa slowly nodded, eyes tracking not the one speaking but the weapon. Which reassured her, in a strange way, because a demon wouldn't have drawn a weapon, regardless of how strange it looked. "That Makuta said something about that before he jumped at me." She frowned for a moment. In hindsight, that may not have been an attack; after all, this mask on her face didn't seem to be doing anything adverse to her. "I didn't think I could trust him, so I cut him open." Mostly due to panic, really, though he surely had to have known it was about to happen. "Apparently he was telling the truth."

Tsubasa smoothly pulled back into a guard, the blue blade she wielded glinting in the firelight. More of these odd metal things, though at least they seemed to not have expected her. Were they minions of the Makuta, as he called himself? She'd never seen anything like them. . . at least, until she caught a glimpse of herself and saw the same sort of traits on her own body. "Is this the part where I start decapitating demons?" A brief, tense pause. "Or is someone actually going to explain what this place is?" Technically, she had just received some explanation, but it was neither trustworthy nor entirely comprehensive. Normally acting on limited information was something she didn't mind so much, but this was beyond even her comfort zone.

The tastiest demon slayer

Continue spraying fire at the Deadites for 3d10+DEX damage.

Youmu tilted her head in confusion, but the white blob following her swooshed about irritably. "What do you. . . This is serious, don't make stupid jokes at me!"

Lucine, having exhausted the other distractions within the lab, investigates the conveyors, seeing what's on the upper floor of the lab.

Justine was quiet for a while after Arthur spoke. Thinking, considering, and wondering, as she always did. Then, abruptly, she turned and hugged the mage, squeezing her arms around his chest. "Thank you, Arthur." She held the hug for a moment before disengaging. "Sometimes I lose sight of myself." She sighed, but there was less weight to it than before. "We should head back, though, before Kane tears down the forest looking for us."

"I don't know what a machine gun is -" she seemed to stumble over the term "but of course, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get Yuyuko back."

"My name?" The girl almost seemed surprised; the white blob following her around even formed a bit of a question mark shape for a moment. "O-Oh, it's Konpaku Youmu. You're sure that she'll be okay? Yuyuko's going to go back to normal?" She stopped herself again, taking a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I'm just. . . I've been working for her for so long, and we've been through so much together." She inhaled again. "She, um. . . She fights using danmaku like everyone else, but she has the ability to invoke death in humans." She glanced over the very-obviously-humans and near-humans in the group. "So you ten should all be careful. I don't think it'll bother the two of you from the Netherworld," she gestured at UB-65 and very distinctly at the seemingly empty air beside her, "or you," she pointed at LOTUS, "but I can't say that everyone else is safe."

Mitsurugi stared down at the demons for a moment. It wasn't strange for youkai to stay put in a god's presence in her home, true, but in this sort of era it was something else. . "Youkai, you must have a very important reason for not fleeing one of the Thousand Gods. And to be in this place of refuge." They might have been guardian youkai not too dissimilar to herself, like many oni formerly were, but that didn't stop Mitsurugi from tensing up in preparation for a strike where she stood atop the gate. "Name it or suffer my judgement."

Damn you. She glanced back at her squadmates for a moment, and at their objective. They'll just be more people to talk about where we are. Scarlet bent down and pressed a hand to each of the downed individuals for a moment, ignoring the prickling on the back of her neck that served as her nanite system's warning that she still had unrepaired damage. "Come on you two, this isn't a good place for a nap,' she said, not exactly aware that she'd said anything aloud. "Knowing my luck, you'll turn me in as soon as you see me. . ." The mercenary's words were low enough to be hard to hear over the storm; unsurprisingly, as she didn't quite intend for them to be heard.

Hiroki wastes no time, not bothering with Edmond this time. It was do or die, and she planned on doing; as she moved down the hall, she built up as much speed as she could manage (which was quite a bit in a straight line.) As she closed on the edge of the pit, she wreathed herself in plasma. Just as she reached it, she blasted it downwards, catapulting herself into the air and (hopefully) over the gap.

"I can patch that later. Might be some way to get my nanites to interface with yours." That had never been her specialty, though. She'd always had teammates to handle the technological side of things. Not that she was incompetent by any means, but delicate work like that was something she'd learned was best left to professionals. Unfortunately, the only "professional" about seemed to be that one scientist dragging a body pillow around, and that was something that wasn't coming anywhere near the things keeping her internal organs running like a sixteen year old's instead of. . . how old was she now, again? Enough. For the moment, though, Scarlet turned her attention to the two downed individuals in the street. She eyed them at a distance, searching for any signs that they might not be as unconscious as they look, then approached slowly. "We should see who our friends are here, first." Assuming she wasn't stopped, she'd grab for the tazer and get it out of reach before prodding at them and seeing who they were and what they were doing passed out in an alley.

Youmu continued to aim her sword at the group, especially after IP pointed a gun at her, but she calmed herself enough to reply after another tense moment or three. "Well, I had just finished cooking for Yuyuko and I was getting out to tend the plants, of course, and as I bent over there was this weird magical. . . rock, or something. It wasn't there when I was in the garden earlier today, so I went to pick it up, but Yuyuko suddenly showed up and said something about wanting to see it, so I let her. And then a little while after that, she said something about being hungry, which isn't really that unusual, but it was all off, and then she- she-" Youmu cleared her throat, clearly distressed. "She attacked me, and I had to run away. I don't know if her ability would work on me, but she seemed like she really wanted to kill me, and I. . . You have to help me get her back to normal!"

Scarlet coughed - yep, there was definitely a bruised lung in there somewhere. Wouldn't slow her down for long, but hopefully they could avoid more engagements for the moment. "Fucking hell. . ." She glanced at the ribbons of her teammates on the ground around her. Fortunately, one of them was probably still savable via conventional medicine. Scarlet moved to Harold, quickly verifying that he had a pulse and breath, then gave him a shot of nanites with an order to get him moving. Then, the ex-pirate gingerly leaned down and dragged the various bits of Jack littering the area and gave them a second shot of nanites to kickstart the process that he already seemed to have going earlier. "I'm not getting paid nearly enough for this bullshit." Her temmates mostly reassembled, she moved over to the broken-in-half android. Retrieving her own rifle, she put another pair of shots into her forehead for good measure before glancing back at the Dove. "We can't move until these two are capable of doing so. And it doesn't sound like you've got a safehouse." She leaned over to pick up the grotesquely-shaped blade, still splattered with blood. "Damned thing is so poorly balanced it was probably some kind of anti-theft mechanism. . ." she muttered, starting to move towards the alleyway the Dove had already entered.

Scarlet staggered to her feet, probably unexpectedly given this merc's attitude. "You really wanna play this game?" She spat out blood - maybe she bit her tongue, maybe it was lung damage. "With the Inferno?" Stall for time, wait for more damaged muscles to come online. "I don't think you understand who you're dealing with." She threw her rifle onto the ground, brandishing her left hand threateningly and shooting a gout of flame from the device there. Which gave the right a moment to retrieve her railgun and start the charging process. An electrical whine sounded as she swung the weapon forward while moving backward to evade the inevitable rush. The characteristic pop-BOOM of an electromagnetic weapon firing a supersonic round tore through the air, straight at Executioner. Fire Railgun at Executioner, dealing 20 damage and ignoring damage reduction. Scarlet takes 5 recoil damage.

As the party (presumably) moved past the unconscious man - who apparently really had just passed out, as he didn't even have any traces of magic on him for those sensitive to such things - they encountered a few more frightened humans that looked equally afraid of the group, shrinking back into the woods. Or behind buildings, as the village rather abruptly came into view, with archaic houses and huts of a simple construction dominating the architecture. The source of the chaos was quickly apparent, as a white-haired girl in green clothing (that seemed to have the odd dirt stain on it, much like Isobel might accrue after a hard day's work) with some sort of equally white blob following her about was waving a sword around, pointing it at passerby and demanding something mostly incoherent and nonspecific. When the inevitable shriek and/or rapid leap into terrified unconsciousness occurred, she whirled to face her next victim. Which seemed to be Masako. "YOU!" With the shout, the ghost(?) girl darted at Masako at blurring speed, going for. . . a fall to her knees. "Please, you have to help me!" she begged. "Tengu run the newspapers, you have to know something about what's going on with my mistress, right?" She noted UB-65 out of the corner of her eye, and abruptly swapped to her. "Or you! You've been to the Netherworld recently, right?" she asked, with a glance at what seemed to everyone else to be at empty air. "Have you seen anyone weird around? With some kind of... weird artifacts or something? Yuyuko is acting all strange, I can't figure out what's wrong with her. I mean, sometimes she messes around but she- she actually attacked me, and I don't know. . ." She popped back up onto her feet, still clearly distraught and trying to compose herself, before her expression abruptly shifted, and she pointed her sword at the submarine instead. "Unless it was you! I haven't seen you there before, so it had to have been you! You appear right after she goes all crazy!" She took up a proper fighting stance. "If you tell me how to fix her, I won't have to cut it out of you, so fess up!"

Mitsurugi pondered the gate for a moment. She could request entry on the grounds of being one of the Yaoyoruzu no Kami, but that might fall embarrassingly flat if the residents of this place were otherwise occupied. Instead, she took a graceful flying leap up towards the top of the barrier, landing atop it to more easily assess the situation.

The peaceful trip through the woods was (somewhat predictably at this point) interrupted, this time by a rather spooked-looking man running down the path towards them. Or, judging by the looks he was casting backward, running away from the village for some reason. He began to yell something about a "ghost girl acting all crazy" and something involving a sword (presumably belonging to said ghost girl.) He then seemingly took in the party, with their myriad unfamiliar looks, froze, mouthed what was probably a prayer, then keeled over unconscious with no apparent damage.

"Oh, Arthur. . ." Intentionally or not, he was saying precisely the sorts of things she would have told someone else, had she been in his position. And they sounded. . . more than just encouraging, which didn't help her inner conflict. "You're right, one does need courage and drive to make the world a better place. But. . . I can't help but feel like I've been lying to myself. Acting like I belong doing something like this, like I've been contributing to the group. It feels as if I should never have left the stage, if the sum of my additions to the cause have been squabbling and cutting open an ally because of my own foolhardiness." She sighed again, her pace slowing to a stop now that they were a fair distance into the woods. "And now others suffer for my mistakes, while I walk free and unburdened by anything but my own conscience." She turned to the mage. "And how could you trust me? I could be acting right now, feigning guilt just to assuage your doubts."

Hiroki simply eyes the wall suspiciously and summons her armor once more, preparing for the proverbial and literal rocks to fall as she slowly floats back towards the exit.

"Actually, it's not just rural. Lady Yukari built the barrier a really really really long time ago, to keep all the weird stuff Outside." The emphasis was audible as Chen finally elected to chime in once again. "Lady Yukari also said not to say that, because she's um. . . I mean, right, she said to just say that Gensokyo has been cut off from Outside for a really long time, without mentioning that she was the one who did it that long ago.." A slight pause. "Gensokyo was cut off from Outside a really really really long time ago." The bakeneko seemed proud of following her instructions.

Thunderlord fires her namesake weapon with a Flickshot across the Deadites after Harry heals her, dealing 4d10+DEX (7) damage.