Lucky Lulu

"No, no," Masako said, floating on down next to Empi to examine the gate, having long since lost interest in lecturing the lump of stone that was the lizard faunus. "There's only really one gate guard, and she's normally supposed to be bad at her job here. I usually see her sleeping out in front of the gate when I fly by on a case. Curious, not to have her around." Masako flew closer, until she could peer through the iron bars at the mansion. It almost seemed more foreboding than usual. "Well, if she DID end up with something like that rock, maybe the maid finally decided to kill her f

"Don't interrupt me!" She snapped, puffing out her cheeks a bit and glaring between the two of them, newly-freed hand resting on her hip as she continued to jab her kiseru into Rory's face. "I just said I couldn't be distracted, and I meant it. Now keep quiet; I need to finish listing your many mistakes before I deal with the evidence for whatever it was. Now, let's see... Ah, of course! Your next problem was your inability to stand still when someone's trying to use you to rest her wings while getting a decent view of things, which is yet another example of your staggering lack of good

She didn't. She was still ranting at him, either totally unaware or totally indifferent to the bag being gone. And it didn't look like she was running out of air any time soon.

"A foot-" Masako paused in her half-mad rambling, spinning on Rory. "Really? Really? A footprint! As though that is enough to distract me from the prospect of ultimate (investigative) power? Well, I never! As though I, the most insightful detective in Gensokyo, would fall for such a cheap scam!" The tengu huffed, glaring at the faunus and poking at her face with her pipe. Given that, and the way she was waving the bag around wildly behind her, it seemed she was rather incensed by his crummy attempt to distract her. She may have been a curious sort, but that didn't mean she wasn't foc

"Precisely!" said the bird, who hadn't actually been aware of that. She wasn't entirely sure if it was true, either, though she wasn't really bothering to check right now. She was too busy puffing on her pipe and musing to herself, by this point. "Hmm. Then I would have gotten to see what it could really do in a properly controlled environment, of course. After all, even if this sort of thing isn't normally worth my time, if we gave it a boost..." Masako waved the bag containing the rock around, ignoring Walmond's perfectly reasonable request. "Well, perhaps THEN I could thin

"Nope!" Masako yoinked the hat back at the last moment, inadvertently bonking herself with the stone in the crown. She did her best to ignore this and pretend no one else noticed as she hopped a few feet further back, beyond the witch's grasp. "I'm afraid not. As I said, it's evidence-adjacent, and thus mine until the case is resolved. I'll give it back when I don't have a use for it anymore. Still-" The tengu snatched the proffered bag from Isobel, not bothering with more than the most perfunctory nods of thanks... and proceeded to stuff the whole darn hat in there before zipping it

"Sorry, no can do. It's not a hat, now." Masako hopped back to stand beside the fallen witch. Smug as the tengu's grin was, she at least opted not to use her most recent suspect as a perch. For now. "It's a bag. An evidence bag. An evidence bag with evidence in it. Which, given the ongoing investigation, means it can only be trusted to the hands of Gensoyko's finest detective-" The chattery sleuth paused for a moment, glancing down to make sure the stone was still secure in its temporary container. She snapped it shut soon enough. Even looking at it or holding it like this

"She does that to a lot of girls around here," Masako said offhandedly, hovering down now that the danmaku had finished flying. "Though the gap hag is more the freight train railing sort, from my experience. Not that trains are really relevant here. They don't have anything to do with this, so far as I can tell." The tengu flipped herself over, peering down at the witch's face. She gave the black-white's cheeks a few none-too-gentle pokes, confirming that she was indeed alive (and awake, given her complaints), before flipping herself upright and landing on her feet beside Mari

Masako darted back after her last attack, eyeing the un-ordinarily crazed witch. She was starting to lag a bit, so far as the tengu could tell; about time, after the amount of danmaku they'd been tossing. But while Marisa was on the verge of getting forced to eat whatever grass was left in the craters that were the local battlefield, that just meant she was plotting to use a big, last-ditch spell card. One which, by all the logic (!) inherent in danmaku, would be going off whether they attacked now or tried to wait down the timer. Still, with the others already pulling back on d

As a free action, Masako uses Swift Scan on Marisa! As a free action, target one enemy. Reduce that enemy's flat DR by (3/4 INT), and reduce percentile-based resistances to all effects and debuffs by (INT*3) percentile, to a minimum of zero, for 1 turn. Masako uses a basic danmaku attack on Marisa, dealing 1d4+Int(19) damage.

Masako uses Swift Scan on Marisa. Masako uses a basic danmaku attack on Marisa, dealing 1d4+Int(19) damage.

Well. This wasn't good. Masako winced and did her best to weave through the danmaku, sending a burst of her own back at Marisa. Better fight through this quickly before they could slip up more and get knocked down. As a free action, Masako uses Swift Scan on Marisa! As a free action, target one enemy. Reduce that enemy's flat DR by (3/4 INT), and reduce percentile-based resistances to all effects and debuffs by (INT*3) percentile, to a minimum of zero, for 1 turn. Masako uses a basic danmaku attack on Marisa, dealing 1d4+Int(12) damage.

"Hm. I'd suspected as much, but that confirms it." Masako adjusted her glasses with the bit of her pipe, just as Marisa finished flailing against the tengu's distraction. The glass reflected the light of the danmaku that began to spread amongst the field, forming a familiar network. "That whatsit she's holding is definitely messing with her brain, if not controlling her outright. Ergo..." The detective spread her wings. And once more, lightning-flashes burst the danmaku into a dazzling hailstorm of insight, drowning the witch beneath them. "We need to get it away

Masako flipped like a pinwheel in midair, somehow managing to catch her hat while upside-down and place it primly upon her head, using her wings to steady herself upright after another circle around. It took her a moment more for her head to stop spinning. When it finally did, she gave herself a little shake, and tried to focus on Marisa again. "Well," she huffed, "as I was saying..." The tengu paused. Very slowly, she reached up to pat herself on the head. Nothing. No fairy, at the very least. Masako pulled a face and gave the shady witch a good glare. One whic

As they began to approach the clearing, a thousand warning bells went off at once in Masako's mind. Not the craters and smoldering remnants of trees--those were common enough, even if it looked like there were far more of them than usual--so much as the witch who hovered before them. Not that her presence didn't raise warning bells a good fifty percent of the times they'd actually run into each other, given how often the human decided to steal other people's stuff. But this time was different. This time, something was very, very wrong. "Lotus..." She pulled the fair

Masako had to admit, despite some continuing queasiness in her stomach, that she was mostly feeling better. Even if her mouth currently tasted pretty darn weird and her attempts to share analyses with Lotus or suggest points of inquiry were rather muffled as she continued chewing on the flower she'd, naturally, shoved in her mouth at Isobel's suggestion. The tengu gulped, then poked at a petal that had managed to sneak its way out, idly nibbling on it as she observed the remaining fairies. Not, it seemed, terribly many of them remaining. A good thing, as it lead to only one (wel

If she was surprised by the detail and accuracy of Lotus's assessments--which she, quite frankly, was--Masako didn't bother to mention it. Not because she was focused on more important things, no. Rather, it was a result of the fungal poison, and the suspicion that if she tried to speak overmuch, she'd just throw up. Instead, the tengu took a breath of fresh(er) air, letting the provided data feed her own deductive insight. Rather than letting the spellcard end and fade away, Masako spread the network of danmaku further and wider with each of the tiny fairy's whispered observati

Masako tsked on seeing the incoming streams of danmaku, her obvious routes out of the way cut off by clouds of poisoned gas. This sort of nonsense was precisely why a lot of people avoided going here. Granted, parts of the forest were terrific for when you hit a mental block and needed a change in perspective to work out the really tricky sorts of puzzles, but beyond that? Rarely worth the time. Still, a few fairies and mushrooms were hardly that much of a deterrent. Particularly when there was a trail to follow and a mystery to solve. Masako gave her hand lens a li

"There, you see?" Masako dusted her hand on her coat, apparently rather pleased with herself as her spellcard ended. "It's all very-" THONK. Masako crashed head-over-heels through the branches of the nearby trees, coming to rest upon the upper boughs only with a loud THUMP and a weak pichuun~ as she slammed into the trunk. And there she lay, her head swimming and dazed until she gave herself a good shake. At which point she carefully extracted the impromptu missile which had sent her careening out of the sky from beneath her and held it up before her badly-askew glasses to exami

"Isn't part of-" Masako gave Empi a look of pure bemusement as she floated above a stray bullet. "Nonsense. Have you been flying too close to the mushrooms? Any half-decent romance should involve at least a spellcard duel or two. That's trivial." "Still!" The tengu flipped herself upright, adjusting her glasses in the process. If they were supposed to be looking for that black-white as Chen implied, it was probably better to introduce them to this stuff QUICKLY. Before they got themselves blown out of the sky or something. "This is, too." "Now..." A faint, glowing sigil began t

"Well, there's no need to be offended. I don't know what you got it for either." Masako mentally added a tick to the probability of the group descending into a danmaku free-for-all before the mystery was solved. Not that this was necessarily uncommon for investigations. "Not that I know what it is, exactly, either. You make it sound like they didn't even teach you to beat things up properly, which is plainly absurd. That should be part of any legitimate degree path. Everything involves it, sooner or later. Investigations especially." Fortunately, Masako was already flying,

"I'm sure you'll all figure it out eventually," Masako absently replied, peering down at the map in her hand. "Especially if we do this investigation by the book. It's really quite easy, so long as you're fast enough to dodge bullets and creative enough to express intricate and thematic patterns consisting of hundreds to thousands of bullets in any number of variants. Knowing how to fly is a good idea, too. Even fairies can manage it. Not that many are all that impressive in spellcard duels, what with the easy blind spots, but..." There were a few seconds before she paused, looking up

"Oh, she'll be fine. It's not like anyone's in danger of dying or anything. Even if we do have to beat them up to solve this case." Masako, for her part, didn't seem particularly concerned. Though it helped that Chen was adorable and would make a way better sidekick than any of this bunch. "Besides, it doesn't take a detective to know she can kick your butt. Though I can deduce how one-sided you going up against a Yakumo shikigami would be, if you want to know-"

"Oh," said Masako, overhearing. "That's a good point." Taking the map back from Rory--and giving her a brief glare--she turned to Yukari and promptly continued. "We need to discuss my fees-"

No. This was a MYSTERY. An actual, honest-to-goodness mystery wrapped up in an incident wrapped up in an enigma. But, on the other hand.... It was an Incident. With a capital 'I.' And Yukari HAD been screwing with her earlier. "I do not, on principle, make a habit of those who preface attempting to hire me by interrupting a delicate case and throwing me into an otherworldly castle where I might well have been kidnapped by evil aliens." Puff, puff. "Or being pulled to her manor while attempting to explore it. However..." The tengu lowered her kiseru, matching Yukari's gaze with