World Tree MUSH

    Pandemonium may be a dying world, but its death comes slowly. Inch by inch, inexorable and unstoppable, a great black hole sits in the skies over Manhattan, devouring earth and sky indiscriminately... But that's farther to the east.
    Tonight, in the west Texas town of Scraggle Peak, the locals have been having... Problems. Engaged in a territory dispute with the local Apache tribe of Wood Elves, the miners and prospectors threaten violence against the Native Americans in their bid to push into the Apache's sacred lands which are rich with ore.
    The mayor of Scraggle Peak has proposed a more peaceful solution.
    He has turned to offworlders and outsiders in hopes of finding someone who can negotiate a more peaceful solution to the issue with the Apache tribe.
    The gathering place is the local saloon, and the sun is beginning to set, rosy red, in the western sky as dust and tumbleweeds blow through the sleepy little town. The saloon is rather somber, a tension hanging in the air, considering most of the men inside at the moment are disgruntled prospectors wanting to stake their claims.

    Negotiate a peaceful solution? Hell yes, sign Yumi right up.

    Granted, she's walking into a completely unknown situation on a completely unknown world. She'd love to have had a chance to do more reading-up on the place, but time has left her little of that. So the redhead will just have to do some very attentive listening. She's at least dressed nicely enough, wearing a fine dress that would have fit right in on the American frontier of her own world, though of course she's skipping any of the truly inconvenient parts of the fashion. However, she's probably a tad young-looking to be in a saloon under ordinary circumstances. She's hoping they won't mind overmuch, given that she's an offworlder.

    Besides, she's far too much the goody two-shoes to order booze anyway.

Mariam Highscribe is on the frontier of her home world. She has not been back to her home world for a little while, but some rumors, some hearsay from a few refugees she's run into off world and she's decided to come back for a visit. There's some sort of dispute going on, she hears here. But she isn't specifically here for that, as she steps into town and steps off her broom which- she was riding, and holds it in both hands, as she twists them around it's shaft.

"So the miners wanna push into others lands? Isn't that just ste-...." Hooty, a black owl with bright yellow eyes places a hand over her mouth and whispers something in her ear and she ahs! Yes. Good catch, Hooty, she thinks- Better not to speak her thoughts out loud at the moment. There's a saloon in the town. That's a good place to go first. People will be there, no doubt, and maybe the bartender knows where she can get a room on her travels. Or maybe she'll decide she wants to help figure out this situation. She isn't quite sure if this is a situation that could use her help, but thus far, she knows she'll probably only get one side of the story in this town. Still. She pushes towards the saloon!

Holly's been wondering why Pandemonium has been having such trouble with mining. Has Salome been stealing the mithril from everywhere she can? She's still curious to what she plans to do with it. She's accompanied by Servis and Lavaux as usual who are doing their best to try and keep her out of trouble despite their lack of physical bodies.

Of course Holly isn't very familar with America on any world, she's from Belgium after all. She notices Mariam as she approaches the saloon and has a bit confused look on her face.

"Is that Salome? She's wearing a different outfit than usual...maybe's she doing laundry," She asks the pair of ghosts."Her eyes are flipped though, I don't think it's her." Lavaux pointed out to the witch."Maybe she switched her contacts?" Holly tried to explain.

 "Or maybe you need glasses? That could explain why you have so many problems with your magic?" Servis suggested to her.

 "Nope, they did an eye test at Columbia! They said I had 20/20 vision!"

A staticky portal opens up, and out floats Emily in her usual form of a woman in her thirties with brown hair, glowing purple eyes, and four arms, except that she's added horns and a devil-tail. She's wearing a neon-pink crop top bearing the text "I'll Stop Wearing Pink When They Invent A Darker Color" in black letters, a pair of red booty shorts bearing some mad AI's paragraph-long rant about hating humanity on the backside, and pure white cowboy boots with fake spurs.

She strolls into the saloon right behind Holly, and interrupts her banter with her ghosts with, "I'm pretty sure Salome doesn't wear contacts, Holly." No comment on whether she's right or not, though! She wants to see how this plays out. This isn't the first time she's seen two of the same familiar face. For all she knows, this could be an alternate-universe counterpart of Salome.

She looks over at Yumi. Ah, someone who's clearly human. Must be someone else who answered the posting. She looks back to Holly and adds, "I'm no diplomat, by the way, but I have experience pretending to be an investigator, and I can at least watch the conversation for inconsistencies."

    Oh good people are arriving. The mayor, a robust elven man of High Elven descent has been waiting. So with Yumi already in the saloon, and Holly and Emily, and Mariam arriving, he clears his throat loudly for the whole room to quiet down.
    People are staring, though. Yumi, and Holly are getting funny looks because of their rounded ears, and Emily is just... ... She's Emily, and people are always going to stare. Mariam blends in a little better being an elf and a local to Pandemonium anyway. So no one seems to pay her much mind among the prospectors.
    "Well, now that we're all here. I was hoping we could reach a solution with the Apache that didn't require any bloodshed." He announces. "I know this is no small task to ask. The land is considered sacred by the Wood Elves, I thought that if we could convince them that we'd let them keep their land, and cause no trouble while investigating the ore rich parts- maybe even give them a cut- that we could make some headway--"
    The idea of giving the natives a cut of the profit is already turning the miners sour, earning boos and jeers. No one notices the new figures in the doorway until a harsh, guttural, cackling laugh resounds through the saloone.
    "Heeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhehehehehehe!"
    Mimsy cackles, apparently finding something hilarious as Salome Highscribe leans herself on the doorway, black cat slinking around her ankles lazily.
    "See that's nice and all," Pierce, the cat, announces. "But you're really going to have a hard sell."
    "Not to mention." Salome says, drumming fingers on the gun at her hip. "Anyone who sets foot on those lands is a dead man."
    There are murmurs of discontent. Some people start staring between Salome and Mariam, and then mismatched eyes blink slowly.
    "Well..."

By comparison, Salome is being nice. She's taking the door. But like with all these things, there's the good, and there's the bad cop. Crashing through the ceiling is a figure clad in black armour. Temulin's got her visor down, her eyes glow red behind it. A cloying blood red mist already surrounds her like an aura, and the big sword is pulled out of the ground and swung up to rest on shoulder, inky trails of black energy following. "Who wants to die first?"

    There's... a lot more people here. The miners and the Apache alone, Yumi could potentially deal with, but there's more offworlders here, which makes things... dicey. She has no idea where anyone's loyalties will lie. One side or the other? Their own ends? It's difficult to say. Miriam especially catches her eye, drawing a furrowed brow and a curious look. But before the mayor can properly call the meeting to order, someone drops in with a cackle, a talking cat, and a rather lethal ultimatum...

    ...whose enforcer drops through the ceiling. An enforcer whom Yumi knows distressingly all too well.

    A deep frown crosses Yumi's face, and she's out of her chair at once. She only takes a step or two forward, remaining untransformed for now; but her gaze meets the Dark Knight's directly, and there's not an ounce of hesitation in it. "...Temulin. I don't know what's going on, but please. Lower the sword. Let's not start a bloodbath here."

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> ...oh butts I know her. Please let this not turn into a fight.

Holly looks back and forth between Salome and Miriam, "If that's Salome then that must be the person she told me not to mention! Wait, I though she was trying to steal mithril...now I'm confused!" This was giving her a bit of a headache.

 "I'm assuming the Apache must have paid them for their assistance," Servis does her best to try and explain to her. "And I think it's going to be difficult not to mention her sister when we're standing in her presence."

"I'm getting to hexed with bad luck again aren't I? Oh that reminds me to ask, were you at my birth Salome? Rue said I always unlucky." Good luck getting Holly to stay on topic.

Emily snaps her fingers. "I was just about to say!" she says; she has the same voice as usual. "If there's trouble brewing on this world that's big enough to call in outworlders over, I bet you a hundred bucks Salome Highscribe is gonna be involved."

She bursts out laughing at Temulin's ... arrival. She grins her trademark amused and faintly smug smile. Her response to Temulin's 'greeting': "Releasing capacitor seals three and two." She's surrounded by three distinct auras, one gold, one silver, and one pearlescent; the first two shatter, and the third one fades. In a swirl of what appears to be silvery glitter, four large falchion swords appear on her back, and her hair turns black -- so black, it looks like a rip in space, or a graphical glitch.

She ruffles Holly's hair with her upper left hand. "Focus, Pinky!" she says, before turning back to Temulin. "I think we oughta take this outside, pardner," she says in a fake southern accent. If Temulin doesn't take her up on this offer ... well, Emily starts getting ready to open a staticky portal under the dark knight's feet.

Mariam Highscribe gets some 'does she look familiar?' style glances from... another sort of witch(?) And someone in a frontier dress. They seems to be headed towards the Saloon, too. But they look like offworlders. Why are they here? Maybe bussiness. Maybe this is a 'hive and scum and villainy' like she's heard some people call such places? Maybe she shouldn't go in there.

Sure it can't really be that bad though, right? She eventually gets to the door and pushes the doors open to adjust her hat. There we go. Perfect.

She'll just get something to dri----oh my stars it's Salome. Now. Really, Miriam should had known better than to come back home, go to the frontier and not expect to find Salome. But she was pretty sure Salome just vanished off world ages ago. She blinks at Salome! Bar patrons blinks between them two and she suddenly points....

And the strongest spell a sibling witch can ever utter to the other one pops out of her mouth. "Salome, I'm gonna tell mom and dad what you're doing!" pause. "Stop this right now, what are you even doing!?" she asks.

    And there's Temulin right on cue.
    Salome is already reaching for the revolver at her hip when she goes stock still for a moment. A tilt of her head is all it takes for that scowling hat to cast a dark shadow over her eyes. But it doesn't hide the manic fanged grin that spreads across her lips while Yumi tries to quell the Dark Knight's dark side.
    Salome Highscribe's gun hand trembles as a low, hissing, chuckle builds in her throat.
    "No, Holly, dear, I wasn't at your birth. Even I wouldn't hex a baby." She counters, looking like she's doing her level best to keep her cool. "Looks like you just made a hundred dollars, Emily."
    Slowly, stiffly, Salome turns. All of her attention and focus shift entirely when she hears such a familiar voice, sees such a familiar face.
    Why it's like looking in a mirror.
    Blue-red eyes lock on red-blue and Salome's grin only spreads wider.
    "... You always were a goody two-shoes, Mary. But I think you're old enough now to fight your own battles instead of calling mom and pop on me." Mused as she takes a slow step forward, the click~clink~ of heels and spurs sounding off as she saunters towards Mariam with the swaggering confidence of a supermodel with deadly intent.
    Her hand is on her gun now, thumbing back the hammer with a soft click as a chill wind blows through the the town.
    "You have no idea how long I've waited for this, Mariam." She spits.
    "Draw!"
    Fast as lightning her six-shooter clears the leather of her holster, and she aims from the hip in the blink of an eye, finger yanking the trigger. The gun jerks in her hand, loud as a crack of thunder as she fires off a hex; a spell of deadly intent and power.

"Tachibana." Temulin answers Yumi, there's a clear and unmistakable hostility in her voice, and zero hesitation. Her movements are swift and aggressive, to a degree that makes her usual speed an aggression look tame. The distinction between talented pupil and master of the same school of aggressive, dark swordighting. The only reason her blow is stopped without even having to force Yumi to block is because of an instinctual response to the portal that appears.

A jump to the side to dodge the portal, and an upwards curving swing of her blade to send a narrow shockwave of dark energy at the shapeshifter responsible for the portal. "These sacriligeous, thieving imperialist murderers chose to be here for this. They get to play with us." She answers Emily, "And if they can't keep up..." And to make her point, her blade swings towards one of the miners. She doesn't seem to care what's goin on with the three witches.

Holly doesn't get Emily's reference. "Well, that's ruled out," She's not sure if she should get involved with the duel between Salome and Mariam it seems rather personal. Her attention then turns towards the prospectors, "I think it would be good idea if everyone left!" She picks up one of the tables and smashes it against the wall to try and create a makeshift exit. She's trying avoid anyone getting killed if possible.

    Yumi's eyes go wide. Not out of panic - not even a momentary freeze of surprise. Her reflexes are too good for that; if the blow hadn't stopped short, she'd have been fully ready for it. No, what lights her face up with disbelief is the fact that Temulin swung. Without hesitating, without holding back. No regard for an acquaintance. That was a killing blow.

    Even before Temulin speaks again, Yumi's fingers are curling at her sides. And what the bloodthirsty woman says, sets the girl's jaw tightly. Disbelief and a hint of hurt quickly transform into a cold, determined sort of ire. By the time the Dark Knight is swinging her sword at a miner, Yumi is moving-

    And the clang of Temulin's sword halting against steel is accompanied by a bright flare of gold-white light.

    Cream-orange hair is barely settling by the time the armor is fully formed, and Temulin's blade is halted against the glowing runes of Prominence. Yumi's eyes are hard. "This was a NEGOTIATION! They chose to be here to STOP the killing, to find a way out of this WITHOUT bloodshed! And you're just going to march in here and start killing without so much as letting them try? You've got NO ROOM TO TALK!"

    The armored magical girl doesn't even wait for a response. She shoves with her arms, she shifts her weight, and she shoves forward past Temulin's sword with a full-tilt charge. At the last second, her shoulder drops; Yumi puts every ounce of her not-inconsiderable strength into an attempt to just... tackle Temulin outside. Possibly right through a wall.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> Moon, I Am Disappoint

Emily facepalms with one free hand and giggles when Mariam makes that pronouncement about parents. There are no surviving parents on the halcyon remnant, but she's picked up enough pop culture on other worlds to get the idea.

She sidesteps the attack that came her way, but she's just slow enough that it clips her leg, setting off a burst of glitter. "Ow! Ah, I see!" she says, nodding at Temulin's explanation, not seeming the least bit bothered by the sudden Advanced Darkness. "That makes things a little bit more complicated."

She does a double-take at Yumi's sudden transformation. But the magical girl is talking sense. "Welllll, dealing death directly to the defenseless, or at least the unarmed, isn't a 'good guy' thing to do," she says, "so I'm afraid I'm gonna have to demonstrate why I don't wanna fight on the bad 'guy side'." She jumps into the staticky portal that Temulin avoided.

And then, from just outside the saloon's doors, Emily's voice calls out, "THINK FAST!" And then five golden bolts of light shoot through the door, aimed to hit Temulin from behind and to the side as Yumi attacks from the front.

Mariam Highscribe says. "Nonsense! Everyone knows you should always obey your elders!" she says bluntly, as she places hands on her hips, her broom held firmly in one of her hands. Hooty face palms with a wing, he's still on her shoulder. Like this is a great time to have this discussion, he thinks. Totally a great time.

Regardless, she doesn't like where this is going. "Or, did you stop caring, WHEN YOU MESSED EVERYTHING UP!?" she calls out, as Salome gets ready to initiate a Duel. She twitches her hand and when Salome yells 'draw' she throws up her hand, and lighting crackles around her in a dome like shield, causing the hex to smack it directly--- which also causes it to fizz out. Well. That was stronger than she expected, but her shield still held in place.

There's others fighting around her. Someone--that Witch(?) from earlier, is trying to break a hole in the wall. That frontier girl just turned into a knight of some sort and is handling the more violent of the two. And... That woman is being strange still. She turns back to Salome, now that she has a read on the room.

Mariam Highscribe lifts her broom as she mutters something under her breath and the broom crackles with electricity as she hefts the handle and fires out a sharp bolt of lighting from the business, 'spout' like end of the broom into Salome. She isn't gonna fling her fire magic in here. Not against someone she knows might be able to deflect it into all the flammable things inside here.

"What are you even doing here!? This is a talk and you're like... talking about shooting people, right!? WHY IS IT ALWAYS SHOOTING PEOPLE WITH YOU!?" she asks. "Bullets aren't words you know!" she says.

    Salome... Leaves the others to Temulin. Her focus has shifted entirely now that she's encountered her twin after so long. And her grin only spreads when Mariam's spell counters her hex.
    The prospectors and mayor are caught in the middle of this fracas though and they sure as hell don't want to be. Which is why when Holly smashes a hole in the wall, they are quick to take the new exit the younger witch provides.
    But something Mariam says makes Salome's grin die on her lips.
    "... When I messed everything up...?" Murmured quietly. "Like you have room to talk!" She snaps back. So distracted by her fury that she almost forgets about the bolt of lightning headed her way.
    It slams her dead in the chest and puts the witch in red through the nearest wall, and there's silence for a moment. Before Salome's hand clutches the edge of the hole she was just shot through, smoldering faintly.
    "I got my reasons, sister dearest. Don't you think you can judge me. Do not judge my path. You haven't walked in my shoes or ridden my broom." She snarls, thumbing back the hammer on her revolver again to pull the trigger and launche a small fireball right back at her twin.

"A negotiation? Thal's Bleeding Balls, have you listened to these people? The very notion of paying for what they want got them jeering. I have seen how this goes. Every 'negotiation' these people will claim more, kill more, and leave their victims with less and worse land." Temulin answers Yumi, bracing herself for the charge and getting knocked through the wall.

And as she flies through the wall she's hit by Emily's bolts, and she lands, and that red mist grows thicker, and the glow of her eyes grows ever more intense. "Every last one of them is a serial murderer, and for what, pray tell? Simple greed." And then she moves, lightning fast with unreasonable precision. Another shockwave is sent towards Emily while she's rushing down Yumi, the aura that surrounds her unbearable, painful to be in.

>> SUMMARY[Temulin Dotharl] >> Edge of Darkness @ Emily, Plunge & Salted Earth @ Yumi

Emily hangs back. She's letting Yumi handle the melee, since she can clearly see that the girl is in a better condition to -- wait, no, she can just about tell that the aura around Temulin is a hazard. "Hmm --" She shoots straight up into the air to avoid the shockwave.

And then ... she doesn't fire back. "This isn't a fair fight," she mutters under her breath. But at the same time, she's tapping her chin thoughtfully. "I mean, they did jeer, like you said," she says. This isn't the first time she's dropped the stated mission in favor of siding with the Wood Elves. "And if someone wants to deal out bloody retribution, they could do with worse weapons than Salome Highscribe ..."

She pauses, listening in on Salome and Miriam's battle-banter. She can't hear it clearly from outside, of course, but the snippets of conversation she can make out catch her attention. "... except when she ... apparently completely forgets business for something personal?"

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> Fair Fighter To A Fault.

Once the mayor and the miners are save she makes her way back over to Salome and Mariam. "Look, I don't fully know what happened between you two but you're both really powerful. If you stopped fighting you could likely do something about the black hole!" Holly figures that nothing is going to get done by fighting.

"I know you're trying to help Holly, but I think it's going to take more than talking to get them to resolve matters," Servis believes it best if she doesn't get involved. "Knock them both out and then lock them in the same room!" Lavaux suggests a more direction approach to the matter.

 "Yes, two skilled witches are going to let her close enough to punch them. Brilliant," The other ghost's voice dripped with sarcasm.

Mariam scoffs angrily. "Yes! When you messed everything up! I followed every incantation, every ritual to the letter as it was written! I was perfect and the things you created we're not!" she insists. She's prefect! She has to be. If she wasn't....

Then what was the point of everything until this moment? She is lost in her thoughts long enough that the fireball launched by Salome smacks her square in the chest. Not because she couldn't had tried to block it or knock it out of the air but because it hitting her is a safer solution than both primarily because if it just hits her in it's fiery extascy, it can't hit much of anyone else and a mid air explosion might light stuff on fire otherwise.

Oh god this hurts, this hurts a lot and she has to call down water to wash over her, this just happens. Water appears about a foot above her and it seems to rain for a few seconds to put out the flames and soak her before treatable second degree burns becomes third degree burns.

Holly yells something out at her. She's in too much pain to process it exactly. "Can't you just stop and let the talks happen!?" she sputters. "We can fight some other time! On a featureless plane! WITHOUT ALL THESE INNOCENTS AROUND!" she yells. "They aren't involved in... this!" she says.

>> SUMMARY[Mariam] >> Putting herself on fire out, yelling at Salome!

    "You think I don't know that's a possibility?!" Yumi swings Prominence up into a guard, planting herself; in the face of Temulin's charge, she doesn't falter, but prepares herself to take it head-on. "You think I've never cracked open a history book?! Hell, I probably know it better than you do, because that's exactly what did happen to the Apache on my world!"

    Collision. Temulin slams down, and even Yumi's prodigious strength can't fend off the blow entirely. She takes the worst out of it, but it still slams down between her shoulder pauldron and her neck, biting in before she can start to push it back. Moreover, the magical girl finds herself in the midst of a haze of dark energy that burns just to stand in. Radiating pain from the wound, a biting corrosion from the au ra's dark power... and yet, she remains. She doesn't even flinch.

    In fact, she reaches out to grab Temulin by the wrist, locking the two of them there together, her very gaze filling with heated anger. "...I was here to stop it. I wanted to prevent a tragedy. You didn't even give me a chance. No, the first thing you did when you saw I was here was you tried to take my damn head off! And that's not even the part that ticks me off!"

    Wait... no. That's not just her gaze getting heated. The air around Yumi is starting to shimmer. There's a very faint glow starting to emit from her entire body. "What ticks me off is you'd have made it WORSE! What do you think's gonna happen if you walk in there and murder all the miners?! What do you think people are gonna do in retaliation? You're gonna set off a slaughter of the Apache that's ten times worse! But you didn't think about that, did you?!" By now, the air around her is positively rippling with heat - it's quickly approaching 'as uncomfortable for Temulin as the Salted Earth is for Yumi'. "...you just wanted a body count, didn't you?" The last comes out as a cold accusation.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> Taking the hits. Getting both metaphorically and quite literally heated.

    Emily's observation is astute. Salome has forgotten about business.
    This is now very, very, personal.
    he witch in red gives the cylinder of her revolver a spin while Mariam douses herself.
    "Stay out of this, Holly. Sally's busy." She snaps at the younger witch. "I haven't seen my sister-dearest in over fifty years and I've been wanting to strangle her somethin' fierce."
    "No." She hisses. "We fight now." Snarled at Mariam as she storms forward, scarley eye aglow as she draws another gun with her left hand.
    Innocents don't matter much to Salome Highscribe when her cherished sibling is right there, as Salome fans the hammer, revolver spitting six bullets in quick succession. "This is VERY much about you and me right now..."
    "MY CALCULATIONS WERE PERFECT!" She shouts, voice shrill and agitated. "You were the one that botched the rituals!" She shouts her blame.

"Don't fight the oppressor, you'll only make him mad." Temulin answers Yumi, "Are you really that dense?" She shakes her head, and then there's a bit of an odd statement. "Pick better friends, Temulin. Or at least smarter ones." Yumi's hands grab Temulin's wrist, and the dark knight blinks, and for a moment the glow in her eyes fade, "I know you mean well, but..."

The glow in her eyes comes back, "These kinds of people will only back down if the cost in bodies becomes too high to bear, and you share in their crimes by defending them." The heat burns, it hurts, but a dark knight thrives in struggle, and she does not back off, instead she brings her armoured forehead to bear, trying to crash straight into Yumi's nose.

With Emily stepping out, the Dark Knight sees no need to keep up any offense against her.

The accusation that Yumi levels towards Temulin catches Emily off-guard. "... heh. I'm being an idiot," she says. "That's an even better point!" As observant as she is of the small details, she's not really a bigger-picture sort of person. And suddenly, the broader context is changing her perspective on the fairness of this particular fight.

She clears her throat loudly. "Releasing final Capacitor Seal," she announces. The pearlescent glow fades into view, and then shatters. Her eyes glow brighter, and three concentric rings of golden (holographic) light appear over her head.

She descends towards the melee. "You're ignoring the point she's making," she says firmly, and suddenly several dozen bolts of light start raining down on Temulin, aimed to carefully avoid Yumi. And the attack is slightly more dense on the left; maybe she's trying to drive Temulin to the right? "You and Salome are only two people. Even if you did kill these specific assholes, there are far too many other oppressors for you to take them all out before they dealt out even more horrible retribution on the Apache elves. You'll need a more ... mmm ... elegant approach." Beat. "Or at least a more widespread one."

Then in a much gentler voice, "C'mon, Temulin, you're outnumbered, your targets have fled, and your employer isn't even on the job anymore. There's no further point in continuing this particular fight."

Mariam raises her hand and that staticy dome lighting shield blinks into existence. Bullets ping off it, and it doesn't fall this time... because those we're completely normal bullets it seems. Nothing hexful or magical. She scowls. "THEY WE'RE HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL AT BEST!" she yells out. In anger. She doesn't mean it, but she's angry because Salome is insistent to fight with these people around and not out at the town outskirts or some desert or some void or anywhere there isn't others.

She drops the shield and builds fire into her hand as she yells angrily and touches her broom again, storing it as she fires it off with a loud shuddering 'fwhoom' of highly compressed fire being shot out towards Salome like high compressed, accurate napalm from the hose as she moves to close the distance to try to mitigate any collateral damage.

She hates fighting like this so much- but she's pouring it on, her broom's sparking when she pushes it to it's limit.

"LEAVE! LEAVE NOW! STOP TESTING MY PATIENCE TODAY! YOU'VE DESTROYED ALL OF IT ANYWAYS!" she says. "DON'T MAKE ME MAKE MOM AND DAD CRY!" she yells.

"But..." Holly's about to step when Servis sneaks around behind her. The ghost slips into her body without the witch knowing what's going on. Her voice suddenly takes on a lot more masculine tone. "I know she wants to help, but for our own goals we need her to stay alive. Hopefully, you ladies can settle this without too much bloodshed," The ghost leads Holly out of the hole before sbe gets herself into more trouble. Lavaux looks a bit disappointed that there's not going to be a fight but he follows behind the possessed witch.

    WHAM. The armor slams into Yumi's face. She reels back, uttering a strangled noise of pain - but it's like headbutting a brick wall. And when she straightens back up, though there's blood streaming out of her nostrils, her nose isn't broken. It's telling. "You. Just. Wanted. A. Bodycount," she hisses, repeating the words. "You came here to slaughter. You're picking whatever justification you can find to just start swinging your blade and racking up kills. Listen to you! You know me better than that! I knocked you out cold because you might have hurt someone who didn't deserve it! But you're just going to stand there and say I 'share in their crimes' because I'm trying to keep this from turning into a bloodbath?!"

    Prominence drops out of Yumi's hand, clanging into the dirt. Her now-free hand lashes out to grab Temulin's other wrist, locking the two of them together. "I don't know if your eyes are glowing because you're bloothirsty, or you're bloodthirsty because your eyes are glowing, but you know what? Right now I don't care!" It's Yumi's turn to headbutt. She doesn't just swing her head, though - she puts her whole body into it, a forceful and swinging smash using her forehead like a club. "You're just as bad as the miners. You're a hypocrite! And I'm not gonna let you sate your bloodlust on a bunch of assholes in a tavern when I've got an opportunity to find a permanent solution."

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> piccolo_and_17_beating_the_crap_out_of_each_other.mp4

    "It was my thesis!" Salome snarls, eyes wide and wild as she drops her second gun and pulls a third, already aiming and ready to fire. She has lost all her composure now; the sultry southern belle act devolving into a shrieking, howling, wicked hellion of a witch scorned. "You wouldn't know anything about how hard I worked to put those calculations together. You'ce had everything handed to you since we were born. How easy it is for you to blame my calculations when all you did was plug them into a ritual and run them!"
    And then comes the fire spray. Salome fans the hammer on her Colt, Baba Yaga roars like thunder as it unleashes a torrent of ice spells with every time the hammer strikes the percussion cap of her magic storing cartridges, kicking up a wall of steam. Somewhere amid it all, the scent of burned hair and flesh says she didn't parry it perfectly, but when the steam clears, and the sound of a new explosion rocks the saloon, opening a new exit rather violently, Salome darts through it, holding her hat to her head. "Temulin-- we're leaving." Announced as she pulls her broom from her hat and hops on it.

The glow in Temulin's eyes fades again "Stop...fighting...Yumi." She states, hard to tell what the punctuation is supposed to be there. Regardless, a moment after the red aura around her fades, she drops her sword and her enhanced strength and endurance goes. ... all in the instant before Yumi's headbutt lands. Before Emily's bolts land. Her armour still helps, but those are squarely landed hits that she is not prepared to take. The two attacks combine to not just throw her off balance and to the side, but she's unconscious before she lands. Before Salome tells her that they're leaving.

>> SUMMARY[Temulin Dotharl] >> Turn off grit, click off rampart, click off shadow wall, click off blackest knight. Get hit, hard.

Emily rolls her eyes. "Y'know what, I'm just gonna leave the philosophizing and psychoanalysis to you, you're better at this than I am and you know Temulin better than I do," she says to Yumi. She descends back to the ground. "Reapplying all capacitor seals!" The three auras seem to reconstruct themselves, and then simply fade along with the halo, and her swords dematerialize as well.

She peers down at Temulin's unconscious form. "I'm Emily Nyx, by the way," she adds for Yumi's benefit. "I'm a magical robot who is actually three quintillion smaller machines in a trench coat, from a Blossom which is only mostly dead."

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> She is not wearing a trench coat.

    Down goes Temulin, and Yumi's scowl lightens, only a little - she's still angry, but even now a tinge of concern for the auri woman seeps in. But... no, she'll be fine. No serious injuries, just a hard beating. Already, that glow is fading from her body, the simmering heat dying out.

    The bloody magical girl turns to start walking out of town, but stops as Emily descends, turning to look at the other girl with curiosity. "...Nanomachines, huh. Alright." A little nod. "Yumi. Tachibana Yumi. I'm a senshi- er, a magical girl. No memories beyond a little under two years ago. Thanks for the backup. Someone who fights like she does isn't easy to take down." The irony of her saying that seems to be lost on her.

    Still transformed, the redhead begins the trek out of town... which stops about three steps later. She grits her teeth. She squeezes her eyes shut. No, no no no, she will not, she will not, she's angry, dammit.

    ...

    ...quietly, Yumi turns back around, marches over, and heaves Temulin up over her shoulder. "...I'm not apprehending her. I'm just taking her back to her home." There's an irritated grunt as she turns. As much at herself as at Temulin.