World Tree MUSH

Kiyohime's purpose is to help humanity somehow, but she's been vague on that. She did ask Shin and Aloy for help, though... because finding help is why she is off her world at all. Anyone willing to lend a hand is welcome to join her in... approaching the metropolis. This is harder than it seems, because a ragtag military checkpoint has been set up, keeping a quarantine. The only reason the group is let through is because of the presence of someone else, who seems to be willing to let Kiyohime through with little argument.

On the way toward the city, Kiyohime explains, "A Chaldea representative... they must not be able to deploy their own forces here." This has some expression of annoyance on her face, but it passes when the city - and technically suburbs - come into view.

Choked with massive black vines, thorns covering most of it, the city is unrecognizeable. Here, Kiyohime explains. "These vines are growing, and they can puppet animals - and humans - that they kill. The military has found what they believe to be the center stalk, and since the organism's natural repulsion field prevents missiles from working with any accuracy, they are... hm... attempting to send a small squad to blow it up." She snaps open a fan as she eyes the vine-choked road ahead. "My task is to kill the team before it reaches the center. I do not know why, I can only presume that for some reason they will make things worse. So why don't we find out, hmm?"

    "People live in such a..." Harley begins, adjusting her glasses as she walks in the rear of the group, still staring on and off at the metropolis around them. "Isn't this... too large and... how would you... the food needed would..." she mutters, and mumbles, trying to assemble the logistics in her head. Needless to say it isn't working out, trying to apply what she knows to a city this size.

    She shakes her head, turning to Kiyohime and frowning a bit. "I'd like to see this central stalk for myself. Perhaps we can beat this team to it and convince them not to do anything dangerous? But why would it make it worse..." Killing a tree ends any sort of threat its hypothetical appendages might pose... unless the tree isn't the main body at all.

    The scholar reaches for her large bag, retrieving one of her large compendiums from it. As she flips it open - it all looks to be in her own handwriting - she starts looking through the wildlife of the Blue Planet, stopping on similar-looking vines and invasive flora to ponder.

    "Usually, these tend to grow in such patterns... judging by... height and spread... this way, I think this way."

    Well, now she's curious. For better or worse.

    TokuyamaS: Yo! ^_^/ I am here. Where u at? ?_? 

    Shin arrives, looking around curiously as he slips his phone into his pockets. He raises his hand to wave at her, "Yo yo! K-dawg! The K-Dizzle! The K-homes! What up girl?" He asks as he jogs over towards her, "Wandering Protagonist Shin Tokuyama, here to save the day and fix yo problems. Watchu need? These vines fucked up? Gimme just a sec." 

    He coils his hand back, "SHIN PUNCH!" The hand wreaths with ki and he slams it into the side of one of the clusters of Thorns with an echoing impact. And then... a few moments later he withdraws his hand, "Ow damnit! OW! OW!" He cradles his hand against himself.

    One member of the group is walking along in quick, businesslike silence, taking in the whole briefing with steady, sharp attention. She's not sure she likes the idea that they have to /kill/ the team, but that can be addressed later. For now, the most important part is either finding the team, or getting ahead of them; and to that end, the orange-haired girl is already looking around as best she can for any signs of passage by several well-trained soldiers. As she looks, though, there's a soft frown on her face, and she leans over close to her companion.

    "Hey, Rydia," Yumi murmurs. "Ah... who is that girl, anyway? And where exactly are we?"

    Raylene is more curious than anything else, but once she hears the issue, she frowns deeply. "That is... odd. Perhaps they are using a biological weapon or something." That might be a problem. Raylene already knows that Kiyohime is some sort of magical being, so has been staring at her for most of the trip.

    "Hmm... and we should avoid any of the creatures that have been puppetted then. Very well, I will see what I can do about that." She adjusts the dress she is wearing - very nice-looking but far less formal than her usual wear - and murmurs softly. A gentle mist rises around the group, far enough away that it doesn't impede their progress, but it should mask their presence.

    "Well, if it needs done, then I can help with that, but I suspect many here would prefer not to kill them," she points out to Kiyohime.

    Magilou has shown up, and without even being asked directly! This was probably an oversight, instead of an intentional decision. No doubt.

    She hasn't been too noisy, at least by her usual standard, as she watches Shin work with her hands curled up behind her head, giving a sharp laugh at his seeming not total effectiveness. "Do you make a habit of punching everything? I've heard of only seeing nails when you have a hammer, but when your hammer is your hand you'll give yourself a nasty infection that way." With that metaphor metaforgotten, the witch will lift her hand up and.. actually show a bit of magic, a bolt of fire coming into her hands and shooting towards that thorn.

    She's actually helping today, it seems. Assuming Shin doesn't try to punch the bits of thorn that are on fire.

    Aloy frowns as well. "I agree with Harley," she says, finally. "Hunting down and killing humans is... I've done it before, but they were criminals and murderers. These are soldiers." She taps at her Focus, but before she can really start to get a lead on the team, Harley is already pointing to another direction. Hmm. Yumi is looking for the team, so...

    Aloy tries to decide which she can do, or which she SHOULD do, when Shin interrupts with the punching of vines. Oh well. She falls back on her hunter's instincts and dashes on ahead, to climb up higher and get a better perspective of the vine pattern. She'll call this down to Harley, so the scholar can make a better call on directions.

    Rydia had thought it best to leave her chocobo back just a little bit before reaching the checkpoint. This, she muses, was perhaps the best idea when Kiyohime details the vines deadly puppeteering qualities over the things they kill. Leaving her favorite chocobo out of harm's way, and away from potentially curious military types is, probably, among her better ideas.
    "You still haven't told me what this 'Pocky' is, you know." She huffs to Yumi, "Let alone how you let us get dragged into this because someone said they needed help."
    To answer Yumi's question though: "That's Kiyohime. I met her in the desert with Cecil, Aloy, and Shin. She was fighting some machines from Aloy's world." She pauses though. "--Wait I'm supposed to know where we are?"
    Oh, but there are OTHER people she knows here. Like Magilou- who she avoids and Raylene too... And soon enough the girl is on the tips of her toes, trying to peer around Harley and at her book.
    "Did you write all that yourself, Harley? You really put a lot of work into studying um... Plants."
    Right though, moving on. There is a little frown at the objective of killing the military team, and the girl purses her lips. "Maybe instead we can convince them it's a bad idea?" She suggests, as she makes a 'shooing' motion at the thin mist lingering around her before she bends just a little to... Talk at it.
    "Go ahead of us and keep me posted if you catch any sight of them."
    The mist's... 'Response' is silence, but it swirls on itself in acknowledgement before floating on ahead of her to scout.

Kiyohime continues talking, but a little more quietly now. "This is Seattle, Washington. In the United States, or what used to be it," she rubs at one of her horns, and summons a naginata to carry while she helps look, wandering toward Yumi. This is because Yumi has found the remnants of some burned vines, and heavy, fresh boot prints. Whyt is able to report some signs ahead of similar burns, on a slightly different path from the way Harley and Aloy have determined they should go.

Shin hurls a punch at one of the curling black vines, and it lashes right back out at him! Fortunately Magilou burns it, but even with the fire and the flailing of the ki-damaged vine, this is just causing the city to stir. It's cleared a way to walk, that's about it... the entire CITY is full of this stuff. The fire bolt gets some surprise from Kiyohime, and a flash of... something else. She restrains it for now but, for some reason, she's eying Magilou warily now.

"Hm... well for now we are moving in the same direction no matter which way we go," she concludes. "Ah... I always wanted to see this city, but I really would have liked it to be more... scenic?" She hops atop a fallen wall. "This way, then! Thank you for finding their trail, I'm quite good at following them!"

And she is, though advancing also means the vines and thorns are getting harder and harder to avoid. They twist and writhe in slow motion, shivering now and then, and the mist Raylene has summoned shows shambling, staggering figures, some two-legged and some four, blindly searching. They haven't found the group yet, but they're getting more and more common as the group approaches downtoan.

    "I promise you'll like it," is the only reply Rydia gets. "Ah, but this, well... I-I mean, they needed help, so-"

    Yumi jumps when Kiyohime speaks. 'Oh god she heard me.' Looking embarrassed, she turns to the Heroic Spirit and offers a polite bow. "Aheh, sorry, um. I'm Yumi, Tachibana Yumi. I don't mean to barge in or anything, I just... I heard something about help needed, and I have a hard time not offering when I can." She frowns, and leans in to nudge at the burnt vines. "...I think they might have gone this way." That seems to be enough for Kiyohime to start looking, so for now she'll just try to keep up - though she's certainly not going to stop looking for signs of the team's passage.

    ...Well, maybe a moment or two. She's probably going to be sticking a little closer to Rydia (and, by extension, Harley) with those vines getting to be more of a concern.

    "No! Maybe! I dunno!" Shin shouts to Magilou as he cradles the injured hand, which is dripping a bit of blood to the ground, "Girls were totally watching! I wanted to look like a cool guy!" It backfired, admittedly, and now he looks like a less cool guy with a blood-dripping hand. The opposite of his goal. 

    "Hey so like, the ethical ramifications of killin' people is kinda fucked up for a first-season arc. Maybe we should grapple with that in a couple of seasons during a dramatic moment when the series needs to establish a more adult tone." The karate hobo comments, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he follows after the group. Fortunately, with the arm-flailing nature of the martial artist, it's flingin' blood in all directions and might throw off any predators that are tracking them. 

    "Can't we just nebulously beat them up and then they run off shouting about how they were thwarted? Seems more uh..." He jerks a thumb towards Rydia, "Child friendly."

    "M-mmph... They're burning their way through." Rydia murmurs more to herself than anyone else. But then she motions, "I think they went that w-... a-ah..."
    Whyt's reports are helpful, and Rydia even starts pointing in a direction but...
    The sudden bolt of fire from Magilou distracts her instantly. And in that same instant, she's suddenly latched onto Harley, burying her face against the scholar's side.
    Whyt, without further instruction from his Summoner, will continue to scout onward.

    "It's not complete yet... I set out from Troia wanting to write about the whole world," Harley explains, idly, as she walks without looking where she's going, reorienting herself on Aloy's call-outs, "But there's so much to see and study, it'll take me a lifetime to know everything. And when I can't explore, maybe I'll teach. I don't know yet. Ah..." Now that she thinks about it...

    "I had wanted to write about Mist and the Summoners. Maybe sometime you can tell me about your culture. I think it'd be awful if it was lost because of some overzealous nation." Baron. Bleh.

    At least for now their paths are the same. It makes sense. The team was headed for the center. But Harley, of course, she's not comfortable with this kill order. She'd rather study these plants and see why they think the central stalk is so important.

    Shin brings up a good point though. "I would prefer that, too. I am... not used to violence. Not against people." Monsters are easier to deal with. She notices the summoner's sudden cling, and Harley shares her discomfort. Was it the flames? ... that'd make sense.

    From the corner of her eyes she catches something - and she takes Rydia for a ride with her. "Wait, Rydia, here, help me. Have you ever seen a Malboro's nesting grounds? Look, here. The patterns are similar." She indicates in her book, for the small child to see, the plant patterns. "I think it's a clue. Let's stray a bit, just don't lose sight of the others."

    Putting distance between Rydia and Magilou might be for the best.

    Magilou will put her hands back behind her head, watching the thorns as they start to react, seemingly oblivious to the reactions she gets both from Kiyohime and from Rydia. Though she'll shoot a glance briefly out of the corner of her eye at Rydia, at least.

    "Well, that didn't seem very productive, unless you could get entire teams of witches as powerful and wonderful as myself out here doing this. Which you can't, because there's just me. I guess we should find these people we're here to murder, instead!" She'll say, chipperly.

    She'll start to wonder with the group to try and find them, anyway. Magilou is apparently not part of the anti-murder clique of the party.

>> SUMMARY[Harley] >> EDGE: finding a similarily to something she knows to follow up on

    Hmm. Raylene isn't paying much attention to the ethical debate, instead trying to figure out how dangerous the beings are in the mist. Narrowing her eyes, she squints ahead and invokes her Sight, trying to see if she can track the magical impressions.

    "We should bear left if we want to avoid a fight," she murmurs. "I'm in no mood to get bloodied again..." Some thought is put into Rydia as well, but now that she's had time to consider everything, she notes softly, "Is this all over the world, or just this city? Why hasn't the military taken care of it?"

    Aloy frowns in concern at Rydia's reaction. She was a headstrong and stubborn girl at that age, too, and can understand wanting to come with them... but she's now able to see why Rost didn't like that idea of her exploring alone. Harley's idea seems good though, and Aloy takes out her bow when Raylene talks about avoiding the fight. "That's a good idea. And Shin..."

    What to say to Shin? "I'm not going to kill them in cold blood, let's see if we can even find them first. Maybe we can get information from them and beat them to the center that way." Aloy doesn't like killing for no reason, but she isn't above using someone for information. Especially if it's for their own good.

    In the meantime, she watches Harley, and absently rubs the fletching of the arrow she has ready. "If we can climb that fallen building, we might be able to avoid the vines and it'd take us right toward where you are leading us, I think."

Flinging blood about DOES actually help, though Shin is getting a look of fretfulness from Kiyohime. The young girl scoots over, grabbing at his arm, and takes a look at it with some concern. Once she realizes it isn't serious, though, the doting stops. At least that strange angry look has passed. "If you don't want me to kill them," she says plainly, "Then you need to make sure they do not get to the center some other way. You'll need to decide soon, because I think they're on the other side of this wall." She taps at it, then smiles politely to Yumi. "I am Kiyohime, the spirit of an ancient being given form to help our world." She sighs.

This is as good a time as any to talk to Raylene about it. The girl seems pretty good about avoiding the enemies, because she can spot the entwining magics animating them, not that Kiyohime knows exactly how she's doing it. Though Kiyohime can also know that Raylene has 'help' with her. "No, and yes. This is the only city with this plague, but there are other problems throughout the world. Dozens of different otherworldly threats are attacking our world. You're fortunate that Chaldea was here to vouch for us, or they might have been less trusting of offworlders."

Aloy and Harley are making good progress in pinpointing the center, but the others have, indeed, found the team! Kiyohime looks toward where the wall is broken and allows access to rendezvousing with the team, and then says, "If you want to find a way to spare them, do it quickly. I will go distract some of the creatures. When I return, have some reason to keep them alive then."

The team is there! About a dozen people in fatigues, with rifles at the ready. Approaching too aggressively may have them attacking! They appear to have stopped for a few minutes while one consults a map, and three more are checking out a small mobile cart on wheels, which appears to be radio controlled. Military, definitely, but their appearance is ragtag and mismatched. Some of them don't even have standard issue rifles! They do have US Military markings though. Looks like Army, with one inexplicably being a Marine.

The leader is older, with officer stripes, and is quietly discussing with another, scrawnier guy in glasses.

    Kiyohime gives her name. Rydia already told her once, but for some reason it's only now that the coin drops. They're in 'Seattle'. That's a city in America. That means this is an Earth world. And /that/ means...

    "...wait, are you /that/ Kiyohime?!" Yumi doesn't sound worried - mostly just surprised. Perhaps even just a touch awed to meet a mythical figure. "Oh wow, somehow it never occurred to me, I might meet... wow." But the fangirling will have to wait. They've found the team. If this turns into a fight, she'll be a liability. So the others get to go first, However, she does reach down into her purse to pull something out...

    ...but with Kiyohime veering off, she stops. Looks down at her purse.

    "...hang on, I have something that might help with that." Out of that purse comes a canister of pepper spray. She scrambles back along their path several meters, and then begins spraying it, all over the place. This is unfortunately going to probably use most of it; she's also got to be both liberal and careful about her spraying; it comes out in a jet rather than a cloud, after all. But the sheer nose-melting intensity of it should be at least helpful in masking their scent. And maybe even making it so the encroaching beast-puppets can't smell /anything/ for a little while.

    "... climb?" Harley looks ahead, as Aloy points that out. Oh that's... kind of tall. And she's not exactly the most agile of climbers, nor is she an explorer born. But if that's the way to go...

    Her compendium snaps shut and gets stuffed into her bag along the other books and supplies in there. She pulls from it rope and a metal hook, affixed to one end of the rope. Never leave the house without some rope if you're planning to go out!

    She lobs it up, to try and get a good hold onto a chunk of the fallen building. She tugs on it a few times, to make sure nothing's going to collapse on her head when she tries to climb. "Come on, Rydia. Let's leave the soldiers to the others. We may well need your magic to handle whatever this central stalk is. Perhaps..." Titan. She recalls it far too well. "We could collapse the area around it and make it impossible to access, or..." Or who knows. They'll see when they reach it. She'd certainly like to sample this stalk before they do anything to it, and judging by Kiyohime's purpose, 'blowing it up' isn't the way to go. Probably for the best, given Rydia's presence.

    Shin whines when Kiyohime dotes on him and checks his injury, but it's easy for her to use her housekeeping skills to bandage the minor wound and handle it so that it stops being so dramatic looking. And he doesn't actually resist it so much as whinge dramatically like a wounded hero would. 

    Luckily, people better than him are tracking the team! Instead, he just gives Yumi a thumbs up, "Hell yeah. K-dawg's the original yandere. The prototype. All the rest are copycats." 

    But hey, that's the enemy team! 

    "HEY FUCKASSES! WE'RE OVER HERE AND WE ARE TOTALLY GONNA INTERFERE." 

    Shin wants to stop them, so he's making them actually engage new targets. With a dash, he's moving towards them, grabbing one of the soldiers around the waist, "Oh my god! He's going in for that BIG GERMAN SUPLEX!" Shin says, throwing his weight backwards and actually trying to suplex a spec-ops soldier. 

    "AND THE CROWD GOES WILD! Shin Tokuyama has entered the royal rumble! The man! The Myth! The LEGEND!"

    While Magilou is not anti-murder, she's also not necessarily super-pro-murder, so she's going to be way more subtle and sneaky than Shin is. His entrance will undoubtedly confuse and draw attention from all of the soldiers, and potentially get him shot.

    That last part is firmly in the category of 'not Magilou's problem.'

    The witch, instead, will from a distance wait for the guy looking at the map and trying to figure out where they're going to look at Shin. Then.. well, his map will change. Specifically, though of the same style, it'll be a map of an entirely different city in an entirely different world. He'll PROBABLY notice this, but it still will not help them with the navigation, certainly. If he doesn't notice it and tries to follow it, all the better! Or worse.

    "Aloy," Raylene says quietly. "Perhaps you should talk to them if you want to find out if they know anything. They are not likely to take me seriously due to my youth." She sighs, then mutters, "Even if I'm possibly the oldest here." She shakes her head and starts toward the others when-

    Shin.

    "On second thought, perhaps you should just wing it, as they say," the girl sighs, lifting her skirts to hurriedly run off. "Judging by the distribution of magical energies, you're slightly off and need to lean more eastward," she's saying toward Harley.

    Well the spec-ops team has been found. Whyt's job done, the Eidolon returns to his place floating like an eerie mist around Rydia. Yet Rydia is too preoccupied to welcome him back and praise his hard work.
    She's trembling against Harley's side. It takes a little gentle coaxing from the scholar before the Summoner finally looks up, rubbing at damp eyes. "Mm..."
    A Marlboro's nesting grounds. The distraction is what she needs, and just thinking about the horrible plant monsters makes Rydia's nose scrunch. "There was one in the valley once. Mom's dragon chased it away though. Its breath smelled so bad, I thought I was going to die just being downwind of it." She mumbles while jade eyes scan the pages of the book.
    Shin goes for the soldiers.
    "... Should he be doing that?"
    No, no he should not, but Rydia has a task to do as she pores over Harley's notes and tries to recall the details of that one malboro.
    "Um. I'm not sure I can summon Titan again." She notes. "I never exactly beat him in combat. I mean I can try but I was really scared and angry at the time and I think he responded more to that." She says while adjusting her meandering a little eastward as per Raylene. "Ah... How about that cluster there?" She motions for a series of vines "They're a little thicker than the rest, maybe follow them?"

    Aloy starts to nod to Raylene, when Shin just throws a monkey wrench into the 'talk to them' plan. She winces, and the huntress just... palms her face with a heavy sigh. That's going to spoil any chances of actually- wait. Maybe not. These soldiers have computerized equipment, which makes this group different from the fantasy-esque places Aloy has been so far.

    While Shin distracts them, Aloy creeps a little closer and tries to stay unseen enough to... tap her Focus. "Download..." she whispers, attempting to tap into their various phones and tablets to see if she can snag the navigational data that she needs.

Before she dashes, Kiyohime does flash a smile to Yumi. "Oh, you've heard of me! Mmmhmm, the one and the same~ Well, her ghost, I guess." She seems solid enough, though. Then she's gone, at least for a while, while Yumi gets to spraying. The shambling things are thus getting quite the distraction, but they're starting to get pretty... clustered around. Partly because of how close to the center the group is getting!

The others will have very little trouble skittering off to climb and head toward the center, which is... one of several buildings. Not large buildings, surprisingly! But they're very close, aren't they? The occult knowledge and the others helping Harley's navigation have narrowed it down a lot, but getting there without stumbling onto the vines is... harder.

The team is getting distracted all right though! "What the-?" "Who-?" "Hold your fire he's human!" Well, a lot of confusion, but they don't seem to want to shoot Shin on sight. He has managed to grab hold and crash one into the ground, with a grunt from the fortunately-helmeted man. Unfortunately about a dozen barrels are lowered toward him now. "Who are you and what are you doing out here?"

"Soldier, we don't have time for this," the officer interrupts. "Knock him out or shoot him if you have to, we need to move." The one navigating is shaking his tablet though, then turning it off, muttering about magical interference. Thanks, Magilou. Too bad the map data was not easy to read by people not trained in modern cartography, though. Aloy can download SOMETHING but it's difficult to make any heads or tails of it.

Also, who knew shambling monsters could sneeze?

Kiyohime returns to see... a dust up of sorts, but the soldiers trying to extract themselves. She darts in to speak, "Ara ara... just a misunderstanding. You should all turn around, we're going to take care of this city, mmhmm."

Whether or not this works depends on the others, though.

    "Their breath is quite poisonous, yes. I've always wanted a bottle of Malboro saliva or one of their vines to experiment on, but the thought of getting close enough to get one..." Something tells her it's not worth the hassle.

    Well, no Titan is fine too. She doesn't make a fuss. "We'll figure something out." Then Rydia - and Raylene for that matter - gesture eastward, towards thicker vines, and Harley adjusts their climb, to try to keep up with the infinitely more agile Aloy, who can probably race them to their destination several times over.

    "And no, I don't... I don't think he should be doing that, but it is certainly... effective... at keeping the soldiers occupied, from the sounds of it." Her hands are too full of rope to facepalm right now, that's Shin's saving grace really.

    "We shouldn't be too far now, I think," she says, sliding down the rope once they've reached the top, switched it around, and adjusted their heading. Going down, much easier than going up.

    There is a brief moment where Yumi is staring at Shin. That moment comes right after he says the word 'yandere'. Then she slowly turns her head to stare at Kiyohime.

    Then she very quickly goes about her business.

    And once she's done all she can with her pepper spray, the orange-haired girl comes running back towards the group, only to find the group almost exactly where she left them. Almost. It's not hard to get a quick read on the situation - but then Yumi surprises herself, by speaking quickly and confidently towards the soldiers. Far moreso than she actually appears. "I'm sorry, we don't have a lot of time to explain, and-" A pause, and a glance at Shin. "-and I apologize again for him, he's kind of... well, he's crazy, but he means well! But we've got a plan that'll be much safer for dealing with this. But we need your help holding off the creatures these thorns are sending after us. If you can keep them off our backs, we can get this done and go home."

    "Who am I?! WHO AM I?! I'm SHIN, THE HITMAN, TOKUYAMA. AND I'm not gonna stop until I'm the WWF Champion! SO YOU BETTER BE READY FOR SOME SHINSANITY TO RUN WILD ALL OVER Y'ALL BITCHES!" 

    Despite the dozen or so assault rifle barrels pointing at him, Shin doesn't show fear or hesitation, "Get those fucking guns out of my face. The only guns I'M afraid are these fucking 24 inch pythons I'm packin', brother!" 

    To prove his point, Shin stiff-kicks one of the soldiers in front of him hard enough to bend him over. And then Shin hooks an arm around his leg and hoists the soldier up over one of his shoulders, "My god! Tokuyama's gonna do it! HE'S GONNA DO IT! It's coming! The Attitude Adjustment is coming!" 

    Shin then hoists the man and slams him back to the ground with a huge thud, walking away and flexing, "It's an attitude adjustment! My god, that man is broken in half! Shin, The Hitman, The SHINSANE IN THE MEMBRANE. Truly this man understands Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect."

    Damn. Not that Aloy curses like that, but she can see Shin is in trouble... maybe. But then he does something incredibly stupid in a way that is... well. Useful. Distraction done. It lets Aloy slink away and bring up the map on her Focus display, tapping quickly through to rotate it and try to match it up with what she's mapped of the city so far. "Come on, come on..."

    She's trying to align it so she can account for the discrepancies, and overlay it with the changed features she can see from up higher. That way when she rejoins the others, maybe they can pinpoint where this is.

    Now that Shin seemed to have the whole soldier situation nice and handled, Magilou certainly won't add to the confusion. That would be rude.

    That's totally untrue, of course. She's going to continue to try and help from a distance, without getting shot at. And what Shin clearly needs right now is something to make it rather more dramatic. There's only one thing his wrestling is missing now, and it's a ring.

    And so the soldiers and Shin will start to be surrounded by a ring of flames, though it's one that'll be short lived - Magilou doesn't have such fine control as to keep a large circle burning for long. Still, it's the thought that counts.

    At least she's not actually spelling out 'Hi Rydia' or anything...

    Tsk. Everyone is making so much noise, they're going to draw the monsters toward them! With all that fire and shouting... that might be why the men haven't shot, either. Which leaves Raylene to handle the monsters somehow. Well... she does have one more trick up her sleeve. A small gesture, and she turns away from the others. "I'll catch up, don't wait for me. We need a distraction for the OTHER things."

    The ripple of /wrongness/ that emits from her comes with a low, gutteral snarl from midair, the invisible beast manifesting once more. Dust is kicked up and the breeze stirs leaves before the sound of the Horror tearing through the creatures nearby is heard. It isn't trying to engage, just a hit and run to draw their attention before doubling around. "This would be easier if we'd just killed them."

    Following Harley, Rydia is led away enough to miss the flash and pomp of Magilou's fire ring.
    But it also means she misses Saturday Night Pay Per View Tokuyama Smackdown 2018.
    It's okay though, it's probably not kid friendly with all that violence.
    Finally calmed enough to think straight, she is presented with a conundrum. She can either keep following Harley, or do something about the encroaching monsters in the shadows and mist. "Just keep going." She says to the scholar and stands her ground.
    Rydia draws a breath, the air around her crackling with energy as she focuses. And lets out a sharp call.
    "Goblins! Come here *now*!"
    It's a second or so before, as though on command, several piles of earth rise up, a small gang of four squat figures with pointed ears, green skin, and fangy teeth crawl out of the earth.
    Almost immediately Rydia and the boss goblin engage in a violent, bickering, arguement. Fingers are pointed, curses are flung from both sides in hushed hissed voices, before Rydia gets fed up and simply rests her hand on the handle of the whip coiled on her belt.
    The goblins get the picture, immediately break ranks, and run in all four cardinal directions at top speed, spitting and scowling, and presenting a prime distraction forthe encroaching beasts.

Shouts of alarm, and a single shot is fired. A warning shot, which is not even close to hitting because one of the other soldiers shoves the gun down. Spec ops? These guys are amatuers! "Don't shoot, you'll draw them right to us! Remember the mission!"

"Screw the mission!" the other one is saying. "Look what he did to- JESUS CHRIST!" A ring of flame causes more shouting, and the officer is struggling to keep order, shouting about how they'll draw the monsters to their location. It's utter chaos over there and would likely have been a good distraction anyway, allowing the group to get to the central stalk with nooo trouble whatsoever. At the cost of the team getting torn apart anyway.

Instead, the focused efforts of summoned monsters and an invisible horror team up to tear apart some of the thorn-ridden zombies, causing confusion in THOSE ranks as well. Or, well, not so much confusion as chaotic shambling. It's enough to keep them off the group's back, though, long enough for Harley to slide down the edge toward the crumbling buildings. With fewer choices, Aloy can narrow it down pretty quickly to what she can understand on the map with the help of her Focus.

Kiyohime scowls, and uses the chaos to yank Shin away, pulling him toward the others. "We need to go, now, dear." Dear? Uh oh. Either way the group has managed to find the central stalk... and Harley, Raylene, and possibly Aloy can guess why they needed to stop the team.

The stalk is pulsing, massive, and filling the room. It might be possible to see how it's absorbing energy somehow, which means that something like a nuclear detonation might tear it apart... but would also blast the spore sacs in the ceiling area, that are looking almost ripe, into the atmosphere.

    "YEAH! YEAH!" Shin's strutting around his briefly-lived ring of fire, flexing and posturing, "Y'all can't handle this! Y'all can't hand-" 

    And then someone handles Shin. Kiyohime grabs him by the collor and starts to drag him off! That doesn't exactly stop him, though! Instead, it just makes him shout different amounts of discouragement, "Y'all're fucked now! FUCKED!" He shouts. 

    "I'm like a Nightcore Remix! You saw me once on accident, now I'm gonna fuck with your search results for the REST OF YOUR LIVES." Shin shouts, even as he's dragged away from the chaos-riddled soldiers.

    Hmm. As Raylene rejoins the others, panting heavily and looking more worn out, she flicks her braid over one shoulder and peers at the thing they've found. "Goodness..." Her Sight lets her analyze it, and after a lengthy time peering at the pulsating trunk, she purses her lips.

    "This isn't a simple plant," she states. "It's more like a curse. No wonder they couldn't simply chop it up. It has numerous protections, but I believe that I can weaken them with effort, for someone else to take advantage. I will try to do that."

    Harley has bested the climbing minigame.
    And she didn't break any of her limbs either!

    Now she reaches the stalk, along with others, and doesn't need magical eyes to tell why blowing it up is a bad idea. Raylene confirms it. She fidgets in place - reaches for her books, doesn't reach for her books, reaches for her books again, stops again. She wants to take notes very badly, but also wants to act very badly. She must look very silly as she agonizes between the choices.

    She finally settles on reaching into her bag and pulling out a large vial of... mist. White, blue-ish, purple fog. There's condendation on the bottle. "... well, I knew I couldn't keep that bagged forever. I suppose I'll replace it with samples from this plant." She's rather leave with both, but this is more important.

    "Rydia, please do not be offended."

    Harley chucks the vial at the stalk, as soon as Raylene gives the signal. It shatters on the plant, and the mist spreads quickly from it. There's almost the image of a great dragon in the mist, breathing ice and holy energy at the entire plant like a momentary blizzard.

    It might be something Rydia can build up on, even.

    Things are rapidly going from bad to worse. And, of course, Shin is going from... well, Shin, to Shin-er. Even Yumi can only stop and stare for a minute or so. But in that minute, the strange /things/ following them are attacked hardcore, the team is thrown into chaos, and a way is found. Yumi looks that way, then turns to run. But her footsteps slow, then stop, as she hears the panicked voices of the soldiers.

    She turns to look over her shoulder. Then back at the way down. Then back to the soldiers again.

    Yumi turns, and runs back to the troops in utter chaos. "ALL OF YOU! HEY! Hold your fire a moment, please! I know we don't have a right to ask anything from you after all that, but please, just hear me out. Those things are already coming. At this point that can't be stopped. But my- my allies here, they've already taken care of a lot of them. And you're trained soldiers, and well-armed besides. Please. We need you to stay and hold them off. The way they are now, you can do it. Just give us some time. I promise you we'll take care of your original objective, and we'll do it safely." If they don't agree, she can't really spare any more time, but she has to at least try this much. It's not like she can actually help with whatever the 'core' of all this growth is.

    Well that sure is a thing. Aloy stares at the giant stalk and listens to the chatter explaining the problems. She can quickly puzzle out what this is, and... wishes she'd brought some of her overriden machines. Their abilities would be useful here. But she doesn't, and can only help in a small way...

    Oh.

    Pulling out her bow, Aloy nocks a few of her special arrows. Chillwater arrows. Taking aim at the sacs of spores, she fires those up for a burst of freezing liquid, trying to do a small but less broad part to help. "You think this will work?"

    Speaking the language of goblin-kind is easy. It's all just emphatic hand gestures, spitting, cursing, and the proper application of a little threats or violence.
    Rydia of Mist is fluent in goblin.
    And once the summoned monsters are on their way, the green haird girl has some rope to deal with. But she's a spry young thing and that means in no time she's done with some clambering and is in the chamber of the stalk with Raylene and Harley.
    "Don't be offended-..." She begins to speak.
    Harley produces the vial. Jade eyes instantly recognize the contents for what it is.
    "At..."
    The vial is thrown, it shatters and the brief glimps of the great dragon holds her attention.
    "...What..." She finishes her sentance too late.
    It's not so much offense as it is the child is staring at Harley like an injured kitten. Both Rydia and Whyt, in the next moment as the mist hovering by Rydia shifts into hatchling form, the pair both giving the scholar painfully injured looks for a beat, before Rydia regains her wits.
    "Whyt. Help them."
    There's a keening, almost mournful, noise from the dragon as it draws in air, only to unleash it in that frigidly divine breath upon the plant as well.

    "Fire can burn plantlife, but the displacement of air caused by the heat, the rising smoke, the falling ash, it will spread remaining plant matter far and wide - worse yet in the case of a magical, possibly highly resistant plant. That is assuredly why our host was so intent on stopping this," Harley says, adjusting her glasses like the nerd she is, answering Aloy.

    "By freezing it, the expansion of water crystals inside it will destroy the body, and the weight of the ice will cause the spores and pollen to fall to the ground here rather than fly off. At least, that's the theory."

    This moment of nerdery allows Harley to avoid Rydia's crippling injured kitten look. She still feels bad about it, but in her defense, she bottled the mist BEFORE learning the dragon was... you know.

    "I'm sorry. I did not know at the time. But, I could think of no better send-off than to have her prevent a catastrophe here, even indirectly." That probably won't help much.

    It's still a little hard to swallow. But Rydia purses her lips, one hand clutching at the elbow of her other arm and rubbing slightly to ward off the rapidly dropping temperatures.
    "I know." She says softly. "It's fine."

AT THE SOLDIERS: Chaos is reigning as Shin shouts his curses at the men. Profound, dangerous curses! It's horrifying to them, at least until Yumi comes shouting about that. At first, they're disbelieving and one even raises a pistol to her... but the officer keeps them in check. "Men! Form up! Look at who these people are! What would a girl like that be doing in this place, with these sorts of people? We aren't going to be reaching the objective before getting overrun, we'll have to dig in and hope we can hold out!"

Reasonable advice that they take, showing more professionalism... or perhaps it's simply that they know how to survive, and that's why they were chosen. They quickly dart for defensive positions, with one of them even gesturing for a place for Yumi, before the first shambling dogs and humans, covered in ichor and thorns erupting from their bodies, begin to emerge from the mist that Raylene created. Gunfire begins in earnest then...

But not for long, as at the stalk, the freezing holy breath pours over the strange plant. The spore sacs are frozen by Aloy, and the main stalk pulses, trying to resist. With Raylene tearing down those resistances, and the focus of so many working toward trying to freeze or kill it, the massive vines begin to wither.

It isn't killed. Not by this one encounter. The city begins to 'die' though, as the trunk folds in upon itself and crumbles, the still wet and glistening core vanishing under the earth. The spores are frozen and the plant is retreating to heal, not fully beaten but driven back and into hibernation... where hopefully, with more time, it can be dug up and destroyed for good later.

    Yumi gives the man a brief, businesslike nod - and promptly moves to the indicated spot, where she will be out of their way so they can work. She'll hunker down, but she noticeably doesn't cower. Just keeps her ears plugged, so the gunfire isn't a problem. And there she stays, huddled and watching them work, until the moment the core is driven off and the zombies start to re-die. Once she's sure it's over, she rises to her feet, and gives the men a grateful look - particularly the officer. "Thank you. All of you. I wish I could stick around, but..." A glance in her allies' direction. "...well, alright. I'll be back some day. We all owe you big, and I'll find a way to repay you. Or you can find a way for me to, I guess."

    That's about all she can spare for now. She's going to head down and rejoin her allies. At least in part because she wants to know what they actually did!