Chevaleresse

Tsubasa nodded briefly at Edmond's question, though she had the distinct feeling that this was going to happen regardless of her consent with how quickly it happened after she did so. The speed at which she was hurled at the temple was enough to make even her uncomfortable, but she quickly adapted to it. Around the apex of her trajectory, she spread her limbs out, slowing her fall. Close to the ground, she tucked her limbs back in slightly to rotate herself such that her feet were pointed at the ground, relaxing to allow her legs to absorb the shock rather than fight it. She breathed deeply as she flew, feeling the strength suffuse her limbs - she hit the ground hard, but managed to avoid hurting anything important. Tsubasa goes to place the stones in the altar after she lands.

Mitsurugi was quiet for a moment, considering the youkai's words. Youkai were dark creatures, yes, but at least where she was from, they were keen on oaths and contracts. It was unlikely this woman was lying. . . but not impossible. "And just as you are deeply connected, as you say, I, too, cannot disobey my nature. It is my purpose, among other things, to protect humans from youkai." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "I will ask you another question: why should I believe that a place such as this run by vengeful spirits would not mean ill towards the humans tempted into resting here? You may have no intention of harming them directly, but it is the nature of a youkai to hunt humans. It will happen."

"I don't know if this will help you, but. . ." Heidrun held her hand out towards the ghost, allowing the energy to flow in her direction. "I have to help if I can, and it might. So please, take this." The feeling in her guts wasn't helping her maintain much control, anyway, and she wasn't exactly fond of the pollution that Heidrun had just picked up. Still, Heidrun was a a healer: it was her job to ease suffering, even if it was too late to do anything but that.

"Don't worry, you'll get to see plenty. I won't lose another one of these challenges." J4, explode Fiend C

Youkai Mountain Momiji shot Masako an irritable look at her continued insistence on the usage of that particular term. "Almost entirely isn't entirely." "So you really are from another universe? That makes sense to me. Well, it doesn't, but that's why it does." Sanae cut off whatever Momiji was about to say next, though the wolf tengu seemed to be polite enough to not cut her off back. "That would explain why you don't know about fairies. Around here they're just nature spirits, and not very bright ones. Kind of annoying, but you can blow them up and not feel bad, so it kinda shakes out to even anyway." "Well, either way, don't go wandering around the mountain. Even if Yakumo sent you. Especially so, even. Some people aren't smart enough to avoid annoying her, and since you're Outsiders, there are youkai who'd be happy to snack on you." "Do you mean Rumia? She's kind of harmless. Where has she been, anyway. . . ?" "It doesn't really matter." Momiji gestured broadly at the group. "Even if you came in some weird way, I'm going to have to ask you to stay off the mountain unless you're on the path to the shrine. This is tengu land and we don't like trespassers. Though, speaking of. . . the ones you mentioned seem important. Chichimura, have you been taking notes on them?" Sanae elbowed Osada, gesturing between him and Momiji. "Are you going to ask, or what?" The Palace of Earth Spirits A few moments after Rory knocked, he heard a meow from behind him. The cat from the window was here. Now that he had a better view, he could see that it had a ribbon tied to one ear, and perhaps more notably, two tails. A glance upward answered the question of how it got there, at least in part: the window was now open. The Netherworld The meister-weapon pair found themselves seeing a fairly calm landscape. It was deathly silent, and animals were rare, but it was mostly serene rather than creepy. A large mansion atop a hill dominated one direction, with a path heading directly away from the river leading past it.

"Yeah. I think it is something with how she's built, and Law looked at her a little bit, but I still haven't figured out what the actual problem is. If it is just one problem." Lucine sighed. "She's kind of a disaster. I don't think it's the changes I made to her, at least. She hasn't done anything really bad, either. Opal is just mean for no reason and she's not supposed to be." Lucine kicked at the ground a bit as they continued toward Asgore's house. "She keeps getting worse, too. It's almost like she's trying to make me hate her or something."

"Our purpose should be clear, youkai." Mitsurugi maintained an even tone as she spoke, despite her inner turmoil. "This is a place of refuge for humans, and I intend to ensure it stays one." She did not draw her weapon yet; even in this, there were certain formalities to observe. "I will offer this one chance to leave this place and renounce your connection to Yamata-no-Orochi."

The River Sanzu Komachi shrugged. "Things have been weird lately. The yamas have all been wound up by something. Makes Eiki look like a patron saint of kindness next to them." She pursed her lips. "Not that she isn't kind in her own way. . . she just goes about it in the most annoying way possible. Anyway." A slight bump sounded as the rowboat hit the other side of the river. "Try not to get killed too messily. Or, if you do, do it somewhere else, ghosts with organs hanging out are annoying. Just keep going that way and it should lead out of the Netherworld." She waited for the two to disembark, then gave them a wave before pushing off and floating off towards Higan once more. The Palace of Earth Spirits The trip over to the palace is fairly uneventful, or at least as uneventful as traveling through a lava-streaked hellscape could be. There was no gate guard, but the gate itself did look rather large and imposing. Now that he was closer, he could tell it was in a Western style much like the Scarlet Devil Mansion, though the relative ages of the structures were impossible to guess. He could, however, see a two-tailed cat watching him through one window. Former Hell "That's a little disappointing, I was hoping for something interesting to happen." Behind IP and UB-65, with no ready explanation available, was a woman in a white shirt and long, but somewhat sheer blue skirt. More notable was the red horn jutting from her head and the fact that she looked to be over six feet tall and quite muscular. "You're not oni, not evil spirits, and probably not someone's pets, so what exactly are you doing down here?" The stranger's tone was curious, not accusatory, though it did hold a faint note of suspicion.

"Out of my way!" Her anger was reaching a boiling point as Korinna stomped forward. Tension was visible in every single muscle on her body as she whipped her axe at the skeleton with a thunderous crack. The undead creature practically exploded on impact, becoming nothing but a spray of dust and bones. She moved up to yank it out of where it had embedded itself partway into the stone. "Anybody else want some? I'm not playing any more!"

Kusuke goes looking for Satomi.

Youkai Mountain "Eh? Slipped by?" She glanced over her shoulder, then back at Masako, then whipped her head around to Osada. "How did you get there?" Momiji gave Sanae an accusatory glance. "A random outsider human somehow gets past all the patrols on Youkai Mountain without any of them noticing at all? Sounds like a miracle to me." "Hey, I'm just as confused as you are. He doesn't know how he got here, either. Maybe it was the gap h-" "No no, don't call her that, not with me standing right here. Go fulfill your death wish somewhere else." She waggled a finger at Sanae for emphasis. "Speaking of, Chichimura, you better not have upset her somehow. Do you have any idea how long it took to clean up the last time she decided to express her displeasure with the tengu?" The wolf girl made a face. "I swear, I still smell it in my dreams." "Aaaaanyway. . . so yeah, have you not seen the other fairies around? They're tiny." Both the shrine maiden and the guard looked at Empi strangely. "I know you're from Outside, but you haven't seen fairies anywhere yet? Especially if you've been with this weirdo and the bigger weirdo that sent her." "What did you do to get her attention, anyway? I'd think Yakumo Yukari of all people wouldn't have much need for a detective, no offense." "Maybe she's just a fan of film noir." ". . . What?" Former Hell The landscape had quite a bit of variation, and it seemed the village was located in the lower parts of the enormous cavern. It wasn't hard for the pair to get a view of the town. It seemed worn down, but not in a way that made it seem totally abandoned; nobody seemed to be out and about right now (or IP hadn't managed to get close enough to see,) but the paths seemed well-worn, and there were a few loose bottles that didn't look dusty or cracked left about. . . Actually, that's a lot of bottles. And barrels. And what looked like the occasional busted table. The surest sign that this was all fairly recent were the bits of food that had been left out, like there was a huge party here recently and nobody had gotten around to cleaning yet.

Lucine looked for a moment like she was going to reject Nader's words. She relented, though, apparently accepting that it wasn't actually her fault. Not completely, anyway. "Okay." Her voice came up slightly as she continued. "You owe me something big, though." She almost insisted that she be allowed to fire the Horsekiller, but recent events had left her rather less willing to approach and handle the thing. "Like. . . ice cream, or something. Lots of ice cream." The girl frowned, looking up slightly in thought. "Or maybe you can hit Opal for me. I still haven't really figured out why she's. . . like that." Her gaze refocused ahead. "Anyway, do you wanna go see Asgore now?"

"Phoenix, I can take it from here." She interposed herself between Lucy and the man, drawing Joyeuse and preparing her own parry. "Knight, this is not you. The most stalwart and honorable among us, and you're attacking someone who won't even defend themselves." She shook her head. "I won't pretend to understand what you're feeling, but this is wrong. No person should be turned away if they are truly willing to atone for their previous mistakes." She didn't speak any more, but the look she gave Ferdiad said all she needed to and more.

Thunderlord just sort of stared at their enemies for a moment. She hadn't the faintest idea of how to respond to that. As a result, she fell to her default method of problem solving. Shoot the Necrodancer with Thunderlord. Use Akimbo to throw a knife as well.

Kusuke side-eyed Francis. "I can usually take care of that kind of thing myself. . . anyway, there's a job board around here somewhere. A few of the others have been going through them to check if there's something else going on. I don't know where everyone went, but most people here are. . . distinctive."

"You can go ask him yourself, if you want. He's 'helping' his wife bake." The inflection on the word was subtle, but impossible to miss. Her cheery tone turned to one that was a touch more serious as she continued. The whole incident left her with a mix of emotions that she wasn't entirely certain how to untangle. Guilt about what had happened to Nader, but relief that he was back. Happiness that they'd freed the denizens of the underground without losing anyone in the end, but regret that she wasn't able to use anything but her abilities as a vessel to help. "I, um. . . I think everything is okay, now." She took a couple steps closer to Nader, looking down and away awkwardly once more. "I'm sorry about everything that happened."

probably new tert

"Something like that. We're going around and making sure different worlds are in better shape to hold up against invasion." He had pried his hand back earlier with a small flash of irritation, but didn't say anything about it quite yet. "The last place we were. . . well, I'm not actually sure it was a world at all, but we're here now. Something usually comes along to point us in the right direction." Kusuke took a moment of his own to ponder the possibilities. His own universe would be a prime candidate - assuming the Black Beast wasn't already a Trespasser - but there were a lot of forces at play. "And I don't think you fell. It seems most of us were selected somehow."

Kusuke happened to be loitering in the area, trying to decide whether he should track down Satomi and stop her from killing herself from pushing too hard, or find a place to take a nap so he didn't kill himself from pushing too hard. A lost and rather sketchy-looking man had appeared and introduced himself, providing a distraction from his current conundrum. "I think this place was called Traverse Town? It's a place between worlds, according to the one guy who's been here before. Not sure where he went off to, I assume he had some errands to take care of." He turned to fully face the man and stretched out one hand towards him, offering a handshake. "Kigane Kusuke. I'm assuming you got dragged into this Trespasser business?"

Lucine approached Nader almost hesitantly. It didn't exactly look like the man she knew, but then she'd only seen Nader's face one time. The strangeness of being attached to someone that was essentially faceless to her briefly skated across her thoughts before sliding off into the void of irrelevance. Part of her wanted to run up and hug him, part of her recalled what had happened earlier and shied away. The girl eventually opted for an awkward, small wave in his direction. "Um. . . hi, Nader." She couldn't decide what else to say, so she simply looked around awkwardly as she waited for him to respond.

Dani & Joan "Cozy as death itself." Komachi laughed as she undid the rope and pushed off the dock, sending the boat lazily sliding into the river. The water was almost eerily silent; if it hadn't been for the shifting beneath the surface, it could have been confused for a placid lake. "I can't remember the last time I actually took someone this direction. . . still not really sure how you ended up in Higan, but that's life. Well, not usually life if you mean Higan, but you know what I mean." Rory That's definitely a stab wound. Not a deep one; it mostly looked like someone stabbed him just to say they did.

"Hey, um, Asgore? I kinda want to see where this goes." She wasn't entirely sure why she said it like that, as if she were beginning to ask permission. "If I don't get back before this stuff is done, can you save me a slice of pie?" After receiving an answer to her question, Lucine headed in the direction Arminius had gone, both curious and apprehensive about what she might find.

"I'm not actually sure I can help," Heidrun admitted. "She isn't malevolent like that. . . thing." She almost shuddered at the thought of it. "I'm trying to. . . how do I put it? There is a flow of life that runs through us all and the earth itself. . . at least where I'm from. This place doesn't seem to have a Lifestream like my home, but the same ideas might apply. I want to see if I can clean the corruption out of that energy here, and bring her back into the cycle of life and death."

"Well, I don't think this is a dream. At least, not mine." A strange emotion ran through her as she watched Asgore's wondrous reaction to seeing his children again. She almost wished she could be one of them, for a moment; things like this were starting to make her realize what she had been missing for most of her life. "If you think you'll wake up when you touch them, there's only one way to find out, right?" Lucine tried to sound cheery, and to a certain extent she was. She was happy that they'd really managed to make a difference here, freeing the monsters from their imprisonment and helping reunite this family. The homunculus couldn't shake a feeling of sadness and regret, however. She knew that they would find a way to bring Nader back, but he was gone because she did something impulsive. Thinking about one of her favorite pastimes was starting to take on a rather less pleasant cast, too; that gunshot still echoed in her mind. The girl sighed, trying to focus on the happy scene in front of her. She could go back to being sad and anxious later, right?

J6, violently hatchet skeleton