World Tree MUSH

Even though October just began, it's still a fairly hot evening in Brighton, Massachusetts. People are still dressed exactly as they would for summer, and there still seems to be a fair bit of humidity as the sun's rays begin to fade from orange to red and the first stars begin to appear in the east.

However, that alone doesn't seem to account for the gloomy atmosphere in the city at the moment. Everyone's just a little tired, a little irritable, and ironically a little bit ... subdued. Those of a more magical persuasion might sense that there's something wrong going on -- something wrong in a few specific places, in fact.

The majority of the Vines leading to this world seem to land in one small region within Brighton. There's a park area, a few stalls with pamphlets and other information, a few food vendors who seem to be a bit worried and furtive in the evening's atmosphere, and a couple of signs pointing down the street to the official money changers.

Spiral, in her preferred form as a golden-furred catlike creature (her ears are a little too pointy, her tail is the wrong kind of fluffy), is sitting by the edge of the park area, looking somewhat nervous and fidgety, and glowing with a golden light. For some reason, none of the terse and irritable passers-by seem to notice that she's there at all.

To be honest? Ash wasn't sure if this weather was normal or not, but hishaving essentially come from a place such as the Mushroom Kingdom that seemed to be a physical manifestation of Joy made the gloom and malaise even more noticable. As he ran laps around town, either doing small errends, or just to get out for a run, the atmosphere felt more like those places that were owned and paid for by the souless corporate overlords rather than some off-beat eastern-us town.

This is why he was perched in a tree in the park area with his warframe. "Alright Ordis, think you can call Anna, ask her what we should be looking for?"

Anna's phone would ping with a text message notifying her of Ash's position in the park, along with pictures of just how... beat down everyone was. 'operator Ash seems sure something's coming and would like your advice on the matter.'

They may notice Scraps, who steps up to the park armed with what appears to be a jury-rigged techno-rifle. The weapon is covered in cables and the end glows and sparks with a faint red light. She pauses to inspect it while she waits to be instructed on the emergency, examining the laser weapon's battery, and she peers down at Spiral for a moment in recognition of the creature. They had met only the once, back in the Mushroom Kingdom, and there's a mild bob of her head in greeting.

"Scribe Scrapclaw reporting for combat duty," the creature dully recites, as if has done so before dozens of times.

Temulin is irritable. What else is new? She's coming through on sheer accident, exploring this world much like any other for any hint of maybe finding her way back home. The bird she's riding is flying in the sky and looking around, and it's not really the atmosphere that draws her attention, it's a pair of familiar faces. Ash and Spiral, thus, she heads down towards Ash. "Hey." She greets when that bird hits the ground, "What's up?"

    Justine isn't called here by any particular person, only by her own curiosity... and her empathic abilities that draw her toward strong emotions. That at least puts her in the ballpark. A magical beast though? Now she's really starting to pay attention. Something is up...

    ... yes, definitely, when a huge lizard appears armed to the teeth. Isn't that illegal or something? Justinne isn't the type to report that though. And, wearing actual modern clothes this time(if about a decade out of style), the gleaming chrome and brass of her clockwork prosthetics is more than evident. Walking right up toward Spiral, she tsks, "Something going on?"

    Oh hey. A familiar bird. Justine narrows eyes at Temulin, but hasn't really made a call about the Dark Knight yet.

    Luke was not new to this world... nor to Spiral, so seeing the odd cat creature just there in the open, is not a good sign!. That and the familiar feeling in the air from the last... incident are enough to get the boy to approach critter. He only notices Scraps, being that Ash is staking out from a tree, and Temulin was talking to him.

    The boy seems momentarily surprised to see Scraps, but thankfully, he met the tall reptile person before, even if seeing the weapon is new. "Hi." he says, making sure Scraps does not get surprised by his arrival, and glancing back at Spiral, "Guess something bad is happening?" he asks outloud.

The reply to Ordis from Anna's phone is instant: "AUTO-RESPONSE: In a test at the moment!" followed by a spiral-emoji and an eyes-emoji which seems to be peering at the spiral. Which is likely to be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't know that there's someone named "Spiral." Look for Spiral!

Spiral perks up and floats up as Scraps, Temulin, and Justine approach. "Hi there!" she says. "Yes there is, Mr. Luke! Got another case of 'more Distortions than we know how to deal with.'" She looks to the others. "This Blossom is beset by monsters called Curse Phantoms, which seem to be born from negative emotions. They make their nests in these dimensional spaces called Distortions. Most people cannot see them, and they're kept a secret from the general population, but those who know about them are pretty sure that the secret is going to break reasonably soon. I'm currently invisible to them, too, but if all of you can see me, that means that you can all fight Curse Phantoms."

She looks to each of them in turn, her eyes flickering with pearlescent light as she tries to gauge magical aptitude, or destiny-aptitude, or whatever is being "translated" in such a way that they can see her. "And this very minute, we've got a sudden spate of Distortions. There's five of them active in the city right now, when it's supposed to be rare that there are more than two of them at once, and we don't have anyone to spare to deal with the most recent one." She says this big sentence all in one breath. "So ... would any of you be willing to participate in destroying the Curse Phantom?"

Ash spotted Temulin from his perch in a tree who's type he never bothered learning and waved. "Came here after everything with my boss was settled, and... well just look at the place." He gestured about to the locals. Then he spotted Scraps. His hand instinctivlywent to his pistol but, through effort of will, he checked the ingrained response when he saw the creature's demanor, not to mention the fact she was talking to Spiral. 

"Something's got everyone on edge Temulin. I'm just camped out here since whatever governs the vines between worlds seems to like spitting people out here and those holesseem to open up at 'important' locations." He sounded thoughtful as he looked the dark knight over. "Really wish Ordis could patch me into whatever it is you use to communicate. Getting an ariel view in real time would perhaps be helpful." A shrug as he studied the lizard being that was Scraps before letting out a sigh. "I really hate this whole ambiguous field of battle business where everyone is liable to be a civilian. It's gonna make whenever things pop off that much messier."

Then he looked to Spiral and smiled from within his ship's somatic pod in spite of the gesture not carrying across, "OK, I mean you know me well enough by now to know i'm all in on this hunt. I just don't have any idea what I'm looking for."

"Hey Luke?" Ash looked about after hopping out of his perch to look the pokemon trainer over. "I guess now's a good time to see how your team does when fighting things from other worlds. You feeling up to this?"

Ash himself wasn't sure what these phantom things evenwere much less how to bring it down or even if his weapons could. Didn't mean he wasn't gonna try though.

"What's in it for me?" Temulin asks Spiral calmly. "I'm running low on funds, for some reason I haven't been able to get a lot of work done lately." That statement is delivered completely deadpan, and she turns towards Ash. "If I get compensation for my efforts, I could be your eyes in the sky." There's an emphasis on the if there.

    "Mm." Justine crosses her arms - they're very detailed and complex - while listening to the explanation. She's seen Spiral before, and yes, she does have magic. Actually quite a lot of it, though it's probably something weird-looking. She's gotten the idea though, and relaxes a little when she hears the squabbling about payment. This, she can understand... though she isn't a mercenary herself. Not that she wouldn't mind a bit of extra cash, she can't live on inheritance forever.

    "This isn't really my problem, but I'm willing to tag along." Justine taps a finger on her elbow. "It's interesting anyway, and it's not like I mind saving lives against natural disasters. Or unnatural in this case."

    Scraps blinks slowly, and her head turns, instinctively resting on Ash's figure. She saw the movement, and her whole body froze in preparation for violence... but then the movement went back to neutral, and she resumed examining her weapon for any egregious flaws. It doesn't look like something that should even work, put together like a mad scientist's ray gun, made of parts taken from modern appliances and jammed together in such a way that it'd just barely function the way she needs it to. She doesn't have access to a proper laser rifle, so she had to craft one from scratch, it seems.

    "Point me at it and I will attempt to neutralize the aberration," she answers Spiral.

    She looks at Luke, and stares for second. "Hello, Luke," she greets, her tail tip flicking in cat-like friendliness.

    Luke certainly does not seem very startled when the cat thing casually begins to speak to him, simply nodding to the 'creature' and rubbing the back of his head, "That bad eh?" he asks softly. He seems slightly nervous about Scraps, but amusingly Ash suddenly talking to him from an unseen spot seems to startle the boy more than anything so far, blinking and turning to glance at the tree bound person, "Ash?" he asks, hearing the familiar voice before nodding, "I think so!, I helped Anna once, those things can really mess with your mind." he muses. He shudders at the memory of... the feelings messing with his own. Thankfully Scraps talking gets his mind back to things, "I am glad you are doing well Scraps.. that's a neat weapon." he says with a grin, "Did you build it?" he asks curiously.

Spiral nods to each of them in turn. "Compensation is ... possible," she says cautiously to Temulin. "However, we don't have any human hands to spare at the moment, so it'll have to wait until after the job is complete."

She floats back and addresses the group as a whole, since there seems to be a general consensus of agreement. "If you can all see me, I don't think there's any reason why you won't be able to damage it," she says, turning to float down the street. "I'll lead you right to the entrance to the Distortion, it's ... well, it'll be kind of impossible to miss once we get there. Mr. Ash, I don't know if you or Ordis can detect them directly, but I'll lead you to the new one."

She looks ahead, leading them towards a relatively seedy part of the city. "Each Distortion contains exactly one Curse Phantom," she says as she goes along. "They are measured in threat levels from one to six, with six being the most dangerous. Above threat level one, the Curse Phantoms also produce much smaller creatures, called Curse Imps, which attack in swarms and are defeated in swarms. There are two ways they attack: physically, and by way of psychic attacks which target your emotions. I wanna say the threat level of the one we're up against is at least two or three."

She glances at to Luke. "Speaking of which, Mr. Luke, are you sure you're going to be all right? You were hit the hardest of all of us the last time you visited a Distortion."

They near a rundown church right next to an overpass. There's a strange rippling sensation coming from the building, as if there was a faintly-visible vortex around it. The oppressive atmosphere actually seems to emanate directly from the building. "Oh, it's inside a building," says Spiral, a note of surprise in he voice, but she decides to just rolls with it. "Um ... okay."

A grumble towards Temulin's hard sell on her services. "Fine. Standard rate, will cover any equipment you have to have repaired on top of that." Ash disliked paing th mercenary but he had money. Anna didn't, and he was pretty sure none of the others could cover her rates either, so the burdin fell to him. Maybe Spiral did? What resources did the cat-like thing have?

The lighs of hiswarframe, perticularly the trio at theframe's 'face' that might be considered eyes dimmed when he looked to Scraps. "

Well at least he and Spiral could split Temulin's fees if it came down to it. So there was that consolation as Spiral lead him along with others to this Distortion thing.

"Alright," He looked to Spiral. "I'm tempted to just dive in and say Hi, but at the same time...." He glanced around at everyone else. "Do we wanna pair off and each go after a distortion, or pile in and curbstomp each one at a time?"

    "I think just the one," Justine replies, already checking her arms. Literally. "Come on, let's not dally." No-nonsense? "If we're going to do this, let's do it right." She stops and glances.

    "Justine Lawson, by the way. I've met some of you briefly, but we never had introductions," she replies. "And somehow I keep ending up around where Luke here is. I'd say he's following me, but the latter would be much more likely. Got your murderpets ready?"

"Let's go then." Temulin seals the deal, compensation promised she has no reason not to go along. She listens to Spira's explanation of the problem, and looks towards the others. "I'm really tough, and I can deal with crowds fairly well. Stay behind me if you're worried about getting hurt." She recommends, and adds, "And if anyone has combat healing or support, keep an eye out for me, I can last a lot longer with even a little bit of that."

    Scraps nods and attentively soaks in what Spiral is saying. Not that she comprehends some of it, but a system of threat measurement is very good for hero triage. She wiggles her tail in reptile approval, and then thumps it once before they get underway, turning to follow the others to the church in question.

    The others stall outside the church, and Spiral indicates it's inside the building. So... Scraps sprints up to the door and shoulder charges the doors open like some kind of space marine, giving zero damns about planning or anything like that when the threat is right in front of her.

>> SUMMARY[Scraps] >> Leeroooooy Jenkins

    The boy rubs the back of his head, "I still want to help... and I was kinda taken by surprise that time, I don't think I might do so bad this time." he says softly, listening to the explanation of the 'mission' and keeping near the talkign critter. Of course he is happy to wave to Ash and the others, especially when Ash mentions basically the thing in his mind, tactics.

    Justine gets a polite wave, recognizing the person from that statue mess not that long ago, "Not following anyone!" he says, shaking his head, before blinking at the talk of 'murder pets'. "They are not murderpets, they are just pokemon, normally we don't quite... battle to the death.". He will speak with Scraps later. Temulin makes a good question, "Well, my pokemon are good at that too, unfortunately, I don't have much support, beyond some temporary defense abilities." he muses. He barely has time to react to Scraps just running into the church, blinking a few times, "S-should we follow?"

Spiral nods to Ash as he talks about the fees. That'll be at least some load off the Starbringers' account, at least. "We'll split the bill, then." She shakes her head at the suggestion of pairing off. "The other Distortions have people covering them," she says. She looks like she's about to respond to Temulin's comments about healing, but then ... Scraps just barges right in.

Right in the middle of the cathedral is a spiraling vortex, made of all the colors of the rainbow. It's ... unpleasant to look at, as if the mere sight of it bypasses your eyes and goes straight to the part of your brain that says "unpleasant."

"Okay, yeah, at this point we might as well just jump right in," says Spiral. "I think there's an even chance this is gonna turn out to be either threat level three or four, but even if it's four, we should be able to scrape by with a group this size."

And inside the Distortion itself?

It's a cavern with white walls of glass that emit a pale gray glow, but if you look at it long enough, you might start to notice faint colors. The floor is made out of cracked marble columns, concrete with gibberish graffiti, and what appears to be vague religious iconography, as if someone photographed a church and fed it into a neural network. There are dozens of large gray passageways. And one black one, larger than the rest, which seems to emit an even more unpleasant sensation. The way out seems to have disappeared, too.

There's also a metallic buzzing sound audible from the passageways. Something is coming.

Ash let out an exasperated sigh when he saw Scraps rush headlong in while muttering running headlong into what could get everyone killed was HIS job thankyouverymuch.

Then a glance to Temulin. "OK I guess you and scraps are on aggro control and tank." A glance to Luke. "Guess that puts me in at DPS while Luke there's looking like the closest we have to an off-DPS." A look to Justine and a headshake. "Not looking like we've got any trinity or oberon in this raid, just rhinos, a nekros, and me." Then he would trott in after, drawing a small pistol in his right hand and with a flickof his wrist causing a disc-like weapon to expand out to fill his palm before a series of nearly forearm length blades grew from that central point.

Before he ran into th church proper he would disappear, leaving a thin trail of smoke in his wake as he crossed the front entrance.

While the vortex was unpleasant Ash forced himself to remain eyes forward on target. He's seen worse. To be blunt he /WAS/ worse. What was on the other side at the very least was substance and existance rather than the raw Nothingness that was Void.

Once on the other side of the distortion he would searchfor cover t oget behind before his invisibility ran out. That is when he would notice the way was shut. If no cover presented itself he would try crouching, mantain a low profile as he kept eyes and ears open for what was coming.

Scraps has a hard time processing the shift in perspective. She wasn't expecting a whole other dimensional rift, and she lifts her head to look around the pseudo-religious landscape she just sprinted into.

Her mouth cracked open and her tail lashed side to side, her laser weapon lifted to aim for... any sort of viable target. She looked pretty on-edge about this completely alien situation.

With Scraps rushing in, so does Temulin. She draws her sword, and calls upon the darkness within her to clad the weapon in its energy. She stops rushing ahead when she's near Scraps, her tail lowering and sticking near her leg. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" She yells, trying to induce whatever targets there may be to come to her.

>> SUMMARY[Temulin Dotharl] >> Temulin uses Provoke.

    "That is... impressive," Justine admits, watching the spiralling entrance. "And the lizard sure is impulsive." Says the girl who is following right after without question. "Dee Pee Ess? What's that supposed to mean?" She's from dawn of the 20th century, give her a break! She does flex her hand and glance at it. "I'm not one for tactics. Usually work alone," she admits.

    Once they are inside though, she kneels down. Somehow those clockwork hands seem to have feeling, as she presses at the floor to stroke over it curiously. "What an odd place," she murmurs. Standing up, she flexes her hand again, a short hiss flaring as a spark of a plasma blade extends from the wrist. "Sounds like we already have a problem."

    Luke appreciates tactical talk, at least to a sense, he has some fighting knowledge, given his position, even if usually the largest team he ever handled was controling two pokemon at once. "Ok, so want me to help you?" he asks, nodding a bit. He seems more than a bit uneasy about that rainbow vortex, shaking his head, reaching for his pokeballs, "Should I go close range or from a distance?" he mumbles, watcing the others, trying to figure what might be more useful. Ash seems to be more of an hybrid combattant from what he remembers seeing!. 

    The boy follows the others inside the vortex, deciding to start with ranged... he can always change his mind if it fails to work!. There is a flash of red light coming from one side of his belt, and a very round looking tiger with a brown lighting bolt on it's chest appears, the feline splaying his ears and growling loudly, the place bringing back memories from the last time they were in a distortion. Luke actually tries to explain something quietly to the pokemon, before moving to join the group, paying attention for the... upcoming creature.

Spiral settles down to land on Luke's shoulder. "Get ready!" she says. "Looks like the Curse Imps are coming in full force. We're gonna want to push into the darkest passage, that's where the Curse Phantom is always in!"

And then a few dozen Curse Imps fly in from the passages. They all look like perfect golden spheres, with black triangular wings and claws made out of yellow light. Heedless of any sort of threat, they start swooping down towards Scraps, Justine, Temulin, and Luke's pokemon; Luke himself and Ash seem to go entirely unnoticed except for two stragglers that move uncertainly towards Luke, and Temulin's shout seems to earn her more than her share.

"Ranged sounds like a good idea for starters," says Spiral. "Curse Imps tend to be melee fighters, but ..."

>> SUMMARY[Anna Freeman] >> Aaaaaand ... action!

Fliers! Well at least these weren't spping ospreys that drop blue pulsating mines of pure hatrid.. .OK they were just mines, but the blue bird poops were a bane of many Tenno's existance.

Ash was trying to mark each Imp, his frame preparing and then when he again made himself invisible and started running he let go, causing insubstantial smokey clones of himself to briefly appear before several of the imps to slash at each with a wrist mounted blade before the smoke disappated. Each of these apperitions were only in existance for a moment, but if their blows connected that would be quite real.

It also hopefully would keep the Imps focused AWAY from where Ash was running, which was behind the imp formation. Question is would his invisibility last long enough for him to make it behind all the annoying attacky things undetected?

>> SUMMARY[Ash] >> Ninja Vanish! Ninja Smoke Clones! Ninja Sneak! Pay no attention to Ninja!

As soon as the Curse Imps fly in, Temulin jumps towards some of them, magic augmenting her leap and her sword is held up with both hands, above her head and the tip trailing behind her until she gets in close, when the weapon is swung forwards with force, then immediately goes into a full rotation swing augmented with dark magic to catch as many of them as possible in it. She no doubt gets some claws digging into her armour for her trouble, but she just clenches her teeth and strengthens her armour and flesh to minimize the impact of further attacks.

    Fliers? Scraps groans in annoyance at the swarm of bats, and lifts her weapon with one hand to aim at the strange bats as they approach. Rays of red light tint the battlefield, and lance toward the bats with a surprising concussive force, projecting palpable heat onto her allies. Imagine how it feels to get hit by it! There's a satisfying ZAP noise with each shot! Any bats that get past the gun find a faceful of claws to deal with from Scraps' off hand, batting them away or impaling them on her claw tips for their trouble.

    "Yes," she answers Spiral's words in affirmation, seeking out the tunnels in question. The bats came from somewhere, so she waits for an opening and leaps for one of the spots the Imps are pouring out of, if there are any big enough to investigate. 'Bwwwwwoooo~ooo!' goes her laser rifle as it lights the way.

>> SUMMARY[Scraps] >> Scraps demonstrates calm combat experience and shoots the bad things, but keeps from being swarmed with her claws on her offhand. She seeks the dark tunnel and tries to advance.

    The plasma torch in Justine's arm flicks toward one of the fliers, and now people can actually see her fight. The girl is moving swiftly... an agile, harrier-type fighter. The Curse Imps make her twitch, and though her retaliation is swift, she is still going to rely on Temulin to tank for her. Another weapon in her other arm, a sharp and long needle, fires out to try to tether one of the flying Imps.

    "So is this a normal set of-" Justine starts to quip when one of the Imps gets lucky, slashing her shoulder and earning a slice with the plasma blade. Frown. "Maybe I should stick to working alone..." She'll just... dart behind the big lizard.

    Luke has barely any time to be awed by Ash's crazy space/future ninja powers, and Dynamo quickly glances back at every oen of those things, ears swiveling to try to find the real one!. Of course, he is quick to get his attention back to the approaching 'imps' while the electric type growls and starts to build up power. 

     Luke nods to the critter on his shoulder, "Dynamo, Discharge!". The round tiger suddenly is wrapped in bright, blue energy, focusing it's gaze on the targets and releasing a dozen of electric bolts, each apparently targetting a different imp, apparently going for the ones closest to it and Luke (and Spyral).

>> SUMMARY[Luke Gray] >> Dynamo uses Discharge!

The Curse Imps attack in a swarm ... and, as Spiral predicted, they die in a swarm, usually getting taken out in one hit. They are utterly confused by Ash's ninja techniques, and none of them successfully strike against the real one. Temulin's dark magic is more than effective. Scraps and Justine are more-or-less a successful duo, and Dynamo is able to clear multiple of them at once; Electric beats Flying, after all.

"Whew!" Spiral looks around. "Okay, we need to hurry through that darker passage." She pauses, glancing over at Justine from her perch on Luke's shoulder. "In terms of appearance and specifics, no two sets are alike for the most part, but this is a reasonably representative sample of fliers, yes."

The passage is long and twisty, but before too long it becomes wide enough that they could all stand next to each other. The walls keeps getting lighter and darker at random intervals, and sometimes the weirdly chaotic floor extends to the walls, or even the ceiling. They haven't gotten very far, however, before the buzzing resumes, and more Curse Imps of the same variety start flying in -- from both ahead and behind! There's a fork in the path right ahead, too, and one of the paths turns completely black once again; more of the Curse Imps seem to be approaching from the black path.

Ash allowed Temulin or Scraps to take point. His warframe was fairly durible, but his role in hthe party was harassment and exploiter of openings caused by not being focused on. Emotionally he was in a shakey bubble of nothingness. His mind was purely on finding the asassination target, closing this rift, and getting out. In that order.

Then they have to deal with a pincer attack. He immediately started hopping up a wall to get a better vantage point. Physically this hopping away then bouncing towards the wall should be impossible, yet Ash was doing it all as he again cloaked.

This time his assault rifle fired. The Braton wasa very plain gun, but it was considered a workhorse weapon for a reason. He would slowly slide down along the wall as he fired, each controlled short burst comming slightly lower than the last as he tried to quickly shift between targets.

"They're trying to make us panick and scatter," He yelled. "Don't let them seperate us!"

    Scraps takes a moment to reload her weapon, taking a battery from it with a soft click and a hiss of steam from ambient moisture touching the hot end of the battery. She stuffs that battery away -- did that say 'radioactive material' on the side??? -- and loads a full one, just in time for another swarm of Imps. She fires into the crowd as it approaches, trying to use their clustering to her advantage. If she fires rapidly enough, the ambient heat will torch them in a big fireball! Blam blam blam!
    Her nose catches a whiff of Justine's injury, and her head turns to get a look at the slice on her shoulder. "Pay attention to your surroundings," she tells Justine, gruffly.

    Then she grabs an Imp out of the air and crushes it in her hand, advancing toward the darker tunnel. She's taking up the vanguard position, not bothering with the rear threats, instead cutting a swath ahead.

>> SUMMARY[Scraps] >> Scraps plays vanguard, pushing forward to their objective single-mindedly.

>> SUMMARY[Ash] >> Ash is using the fact he can wall hop to get a higher perch to fire at the attacking imps, and makes color commentary on their tactics.

    Justine shrugs, then winces. "Got a little sloppy," She admits. And she did. Not being invested as much in this fight probably isn't helping, either. But she swaps to that needle and thread in her other hand, doing a few quick rapier-like thrusts while taking in the surroundings.

    She has the same idea as Scraps. "Spiral said the darker path!" Yeah, she was paying attention. A blur of speed carries her forward and toward the tunnel, before she scythes down the middle with a quick slice of her plasma blade to see if she can clear some room to step in. "I like you, lizard."

    Luke has memories of the last confrontation, so he is not very surprised when more of those imp things appear as they go deeper into the.... cavern thing. The pincer attack takes him a bit by surprise, but he quickly turns Dynamo to attack the creatures trying to get at them from behind, "We need to advance and destroy the big monster thing!, that's the only way to stop the little ones for real.". He realizes he never offered proper assistance, "If any of you want to get some kind of cover, stay close to me, Dynamo can take care of the things before they get too close, but can't do taht and attack too far at the same time!"

Once again, the swarm is relatively ineffective. They're starting to catch on to Ash, sort of, and a few keep getting in close to him instead of none of them, but Scraps and Justine are making a relatively effective push.

"Mr. Luke is correct!" says Spiral. "Shouldn't be too much longer! The threat-level may be growing obscenely fast, but the physical interior space grows at a fixed rate, and I wasn't waiting that long."

The number of Curse Imps from in front of them is starting to deplete. It soon becomes clear why: there's a choke point up ahead, an opening which is barely wide enough for Dynamo and Scraps to go through side by side. Curse Imps are clustered around it, getting in each other's way for the most part, but enough of them get through all the same.

Behind them is a massive cavern with black walls; the far wall isn't visible, nor is the ceiling. A low thudding noise is audible in the distance, like massive footsteps. The oppressive sensation is intensifying, and is now accompanied by feelings of despair, anger, hatred, sorrow, basically every negative emotion at once. And unlike the kind of emotion which occurs inside your head, they seem to be coming from the depths of the cavern.

The calm of Ash's bubble actually seemed to solidify rather than shatter when confronted by this new threat. He shouldered the braton in favor of falling back on the pistol and glaive. "Spiral. Weakpoints? Should I go for rate of fire?" His voice was steady as he kept his eyes to the depths of the cavern.

Within his somatic pod Ash's hands clenched as he started breathing harder. The thing that made those idiot fiers were coming from. He wasn't sure what to expect.

    Luke shudders as the sudden increase of the pressure and those foreign negative thoughts, but he keeps his composture far better than last time. Still, Spiral can feel the teen sense, frowing in the direction of the cave and pushing forward with the others. "Dynamo, we need to keep moving forward." Meanwhile, the electric pokemon seems to get angrier under the mental assault, the electricity around it intensifying, while the electric bolts grow brighter, more jagged in shape, the tiger's attention towards the source of the feelings.

    Justine slows as the group comes into the room, clutching her nose. Blood is in her hand when she pulls it away, wincing. "Strong emotions, but..." She looks disappointed for some reason, shaking her head and then reigniting her plasma blade. "Right... I don't think this is helpful to me at all either, so where do I stab it?"

    She grumbles under her breath at something, then brightens up at a thought.

Oh yeah, Temulin knows those emotions very well. She grins when she feels them, not out of joy or excitement or any positive emotion. Out of sheer defiance, "Let's go." She heads forwards, taking point, blade held firm as she pushes onwards towards the unpleasant emotions. "Pray tell, who do you think you are to defy me?" She yells at the darkness

Spiral shakes her head. "Nothing's ever consistent enough to make predictions on weak points," she says, slightly tersely, but then she takes a deep breath to steady herself. She glances at Temulin. "... Except that psychological warfare won't work," she adds. "We've proven that they don't have any kind of intelligence. They're just ... residue, almost. Just 'shoot at it until it dies', kind of thing, unless another weakpoint shows itself."

She pauses, and glances at Luke. "Don't assume you've missed its weakpoint the first time, either," she adds. "Some of them ... seem to have a delayed reaction from certain attacks."

The thud of footsteps starts to come closer. "And most importantly," Spiral shouts, "hold onto your own feelings. These negative feelings aren't you. They're coming from ... from ..."

At this point, the source of the thudding comes into view. Maybe there's some sort of black haze, or maybe it's simply too dark to see through, but as it draws closer, it becomes clear that it's a massive humanoid the size of a city block, and it's ... a statue. Sort of. Dozens of different statues, different types of statues, have been Frankensteined together -- an arm from a Roman goddess, a leg which seems to be wearing pants, its other leg seemingly half of a someone wearing robes ... It's all cut into flat surfaces, rather than curving in many places, but its head seems to be an approximation of Michelangelo's David.

"... this humanoid-shaped Goliath-size Threat Level Four Curse Phantom," Spiral finishes. "Get ready! Level Four is where it starts to get lethal if we don't do something about it!"

The monster starts babbling in vaguely Latin-sounding gibberish in what sounds like three different voices at once. A couple dozen Curse Imps seem to come out from its legs, and it ponderously raises a massive hand, before letting it drop -- slowly at first, but increasing to terminal velocity, in an attempt to crush ... some of them? Part of the group? Its aim isn't that great, really.

>> SUMMARY[Anna Freeman] >> Engage: Boss Battle.

Funny how all of this felt familiar to Ash. Huge ragemonster that were 'proven' to be unintelligant yet seemed to behave in scarily competent ways. Yep, sounded like technocyte infestation and the larger war-forms that got produced over the centuries.

When the frankenstinian gieger-esque thing became visible Ash remained in his bubble of calmness. That was not a result of his connection to Void, nor was it something special to the Tenno. It was simply years beyond remembering of fighting giving him a sort of deep.. .Nothing. An emotional emptyness as his warframe moved.

Again he became invisible. This time he couldn't use Smoke-Clones as the thing's physiology read so uttelry alien that his warframe recognized nothing to target. So while he had a few secondsof invisibility he threw the bladed disc that was his Glaive. It was a weapon that could bury into thick armor plating, or bounce between surfaces, or fly past an enemy only to collide on the return. That last is what Ash hoped to achive, throw past where he thought the thing's head was in hopes it would collide with the back of what looked like a neck as he unloaded his pistol into what would be eyes if it were human.

Of course being some sort of lovecraftian monster? It probably didn't have eyes in the traditional sense.

    Ponderous and slow is good, because Justine's empathy is making it harder for her to focus. She's still very fast though, and dashing out of the way is at least something she can do without much thought. Her nosebleed isn't stopping. "Just raw emotion? No wonder..." With a frustrated hiss, the girl's plasma blade ignites again.

    Justine is a blur, whipping forward to slash down and across. She isn't trying for deep cuts though? Her slices are quick, shallow, and decisive... but trying to snip off small chunks of the 'creature' here, before she has to back off to retreat from the surge of Curse Imps. "Try to cut off some pieces for me to use!"

Temulin recognizes that this thing is trying to crush the group with a hand swinging down, so she does the only thing she can think of on short notice and rushes over towards the estimated point of impact, steeling herself for a blow, magically reinforcing her armour and flesh, bracing herself on the ground, and putting absolutely massive amounts of wrath and fury into her magic, funneling that into a dark aura that makes her upwards raised sword all the more deadly, preparing for impact.

    Both Dynamo and Luke pause for a moment at the sight of the giant statue collection, but thankfully snap out of the awe as the giant 'hand' is brought down towards them!. The two try to get out of the way, with Dynamo actually pushing Luke to move faster, clearly waiting for a chance to attack, why did it have to be some sort of statues!. "Dynamo!, Zap cannon at the legs!" he calls.

    The tiger once again builds up power, this time gathering it in a growing orb of electric power, looking more like one of those plasma globes, an energy wall containing a red core with electric arcing from it towards the walls of the sphere. It fluctuates in size as it seems to reach a limit, before the tiger launches it as soon as Justine retreats back. It flies quickly, in a somewhat erratic pattern, clearly not the most accurate attack, but thankfully, the target(s) is large!. 

     On impact, it 'explodes', flooding the area around those legs with electricity for a moment, bright white bolts surgign from the impact point in all directions before dissipating, hopefully destroying all those imps, even if the electric discharge likely does not have much effect on the statue. The electric type seems quite worn out fter the blast.

>> SUMMARY[Luke Gray] >> Dynamo just nukes all the tings around the legs of the monster with excessive electric power.

In a world where magic is directly affected by emotions ... Ash would find his vision dimming, flickering from time to time. For a split second, he sees the interior of the church, empty of all signs of the supernatural.

The monster, on the other hand, ignores him completely. So do the Curse Imps that continue swarming out of it. It's as if it doesn't even know he's there. There's no discernible reaction to the gunfire, even as it chips at the statue's "eyes", and ignores the thrown glaive.

Temulin, on the other hand? She has all the monster's attention, attracted by her intense negative emotions. She has a lion's share of attention from the Curse Imps, too, compared to Luke, Dynamo, and Justine, though they're having a hard time getting under the hand Temulin is successfully holding up. But then the hand attempts to crush her further, pressing down harder ... and immediately just sort of falls apart, the shattered fragments crackling with the power she put into it.

Dynamo's assault and Justine chipping away don't have any effect for a moment, until the Curse Phantom suddenly just falls over with a mighty crash, away from the group, supported on its other elbow and its knee on that side.

"... Oh great, it's about to start moving really weirdly," says Spiral. "That always happens with the humanoid ones!

Ash shook his head at the flickering. He knew this world's magic both positive and otherwise was reliant on and manipulated emotion. He also knew he would retreat into an almost if not wholly empty state in cases like this. 

He noted that he was ignored, so recalled the glaive to his hand and started climbing the wall, jumping, bouncing, and otherwise attempting to get at the creature's head before attempting to resume hispart in the fight.

HE could not afford to let emotion in. This place was full of what did not belong to him and would try dragging him down if he could not keep his little bubble of emptiness.

Of course with it about to move, Ash would pull hiss glaive out and sink it into the thing's neck, or at least try to. Plan was to use that to hold on as he continuedfiring.

Recognizing that these things seem attracted by the negative emotions that fuel her power, Temulin just lets loose, letting power fly wildly to attract more of the Curse Imps, and to try to keep the attention of the Curse Phantom. She hacks away at the Imps and sends an orb of magical energy from the same origin as the rest of her powers towards the main threat. "I'll try to keep its attention, you lot beat it down. We must needs get this dealt with quickly, we can't last forever."

    It's funny that Justine is powered by emotion herself... but she isn't letting herself feel as much as she should. Not because she's holding it in, but because she's going through the motions. Yet... she's still feeling a smug satisfaction and eagerness now that she's chipped some away.

    Dashing back over to Spiral and Luke, Justine's blade vanishes. "There. Now let's see..." A smirk passes over her lips before she... claps her hands. The shards sliced free swirl up and gather together, forming a tiny lurching thing that hurls itself at its 'mother' now.

    "What do you mean by weird?" she asks, frowning. Maybe she should be more concerned. And that nosebleed hasn't gone away...

    Luke reaches for the tired Dynamo, the feline panting heavily, snarling as the giant statue seems to collapse, or at least, falls down and away from them. The young teen reaches for his belt and producing a pokeball, forcing the stubborn feline back to rest. He seems a bit unsure on what to do, the thing clearly seems to be ignoring Ash or even Dynamo's previous attack, but he has to continue to help!. 

     He ends up picking a different pokeball, a similar flash of light, reveal a much larger creature this time, orange/red, black and cream furred!. First notion is bear, dyed grizzly bear, and it is not too far away from the situation, Agni growling in surprise as the weird mix of emotions produced by the thing just hitting it. "Agni, we need your help." he murmurs, "Are you ok?" eh asks to Justine noticing the nosebleed.

Spiral nods enthusiastically to Temulin. "Okay, I think ... yeah, that might actually work, given that your magic works so differently from that of this world!" She laughs. "I don't think anyone ever thought to exploit that kind of difference before!" She turns to answer Justine's question, then frowns at her nosebleed. "Whoa!" She nods to Luke as he asks the same question she was about to. "Hey, don't overexert yourself, all right?"

The Curse Phantom starts ... lurching sideways. It's using its elbow and knee as if they were legs. Its hand just ... flails, as if it thought it was upright, slamming into the ground but never anywhere near where its targets were. They aren't really targeted, it's just really not a good idea to be right next to it on the ground at the moment.

And all the attacks are starting to wear down on the monster. Ash's glaive and gunfire, Dynamo's attacks before Luke returned him, Temulin's orb of darkness, the kamikaze from Justine's "doll" ... It's showing obvious cracks now.

As the giant chunk of negative emotional monster thrashed, Ash held on, paying attention only to the cycle of reload and fire. Then his gun ran empty. Since he couldn't hang on and fire his assault rifle? He begain throwing shuriken made from his suit's energy. Each only did a little damage, but he would keep throwing again and again. His target was large and right next to him, so there was almost no way he could miss, even as he clung for dear life to the weapon embedded into its neck.

Luke Gray shakes his head as he reaches to pet Spiral, "I'm fine, and Dynamo will be fine too." he says, "I figured at least Agni might help if the thing tries to get close to hit us again." he says, glancing at the large pokemon before it begins to move closer to the giant statue, taking advantage of the apparent confusion and charging right at it, "Hammer arm!" calls the boy. The bear takes a leap, forearms glowing white as he slams both of them against the side of the giant enemy with a resounding crash.

    Justine glances down at her hand, the mechanical digits whrring as the blood glistens on them. "I'm an empath. This entire place is giving me a splitting headache," she says dully. Strange, she doesn't seem to be... reacting much, at first glance, but she has to be in intense pain. Maybe that's why she's not moving as much, and is trying to fight with the animated doll.

    She is pretty good at that, though.

    Gesturing doesn't seem to be necessary, but concentration is, as the golem-thing stumbles and loses a few pieces. The animated attack reels for a moment, then lunges again, clumsy thanks to her lack of focus. It's still made of the same stuff though, and when it throws a punch she winces. "... creating something out of solid emotions isn't the best idea for me, is it? I should have stuck with my plasma torch."

The Curse Phantom's neck crumples up under Ash's assault, and its head falls off and shatters.

It continues flailing around, though. Seems the head was just there for the sake of appearances.

Justine's clumsy control weakens it further, and Agni's assault shatters its torso. And that, really, is when it gets to be too much. Its movements become more and more sluggish, and then ... it falls apart.

After another moment, everything fades, and they find themselves in the abandoned church. The oppressive atmosphere has vanished from the area. It's still there when they step out, but here and now, they've successfully solved the problem.

"Okay," says Spiral, smiling brightly. "Let's see ..." She gets a look of concentration. "... Ah, yeah, Anna just finished her test, and this world's warriors are just finishing up with one of the others. Two down ..." And then she sighs. "... three to go. But still!" She looks around. "Who wants to go get some chocolate? The good stuff, I mean. 's one of the best ways to recover from the negative-emotion onslaught from a Curse Phantom."

At that moment, Ordis gets a response-text from Anna: "Just finished the test! Think I did well, btw. (Spiral emoji) says you did just fine without me!"

A slow nod to Spiral from Ash as he holstered his weapons. A deep breath and the little bubble of zen popped. His frame kinda just flopped on the floor. "OK... who'shurt and how do we patch you up?"

H'd then lay back regardless on how comfortable it might or might not be. "I'm just gonna hang out here for a minute, then go have Ordis collect this thing for diagnostics, and yea... Chocolate soundsgood." Weariness crept into his voice. "Temulin you looked like you were taking the worst of it.. Anything we can do other than leave you alone?"

Temulin stretches some to cool her body down, and glances towards Ash in the middle of that. "I'll be fine. I took a beating, but taking a beating so you don't need to get hurt as much is what you pay me for." She smirks and turns towards Spiral, "I'll take you up on that; but that doesn't count as compensation. I'll write up the bill and hand it to Ash and you guys can figure out how to split up the payment."

    "Chocolate sounds good," Justine says with a mumble. She tugs out a handkerchief to dab her nose, then looks at her shoulder. "My shoulder should heal quickly if it didn't tag the joint where the prosthetic is fused. I'll... have to look." She feels tenderly and winces. "It's fine, wing mount is intact, too."

    Hmn. "You're a very mercenary woman... and the rest of you aren't." She sighs, wiping off her hand. "I should get back after we eat. I booked a flight to Titan in the morning."

Spiral nods to Temulin. "Yeah, the chocolate is basically complimentary medical treatment," she says cheerfully. "Don't worry, Miss Dotharl, Ash and I will settle your bill." She nods to the others. "And we'll have to see about what other medical treatment we can give, too, but after that, the slightly-less-urgent medical stuff ..."