World Tree MUSH

    It starts as a faint, distant feeling in mid-afternoon, like a subtle background noise so low as to blend in with the din, or a vibration so weak that only the subconscious picks it up. It might go unnoticed at first. But slowly, ever so slowly, the sensation builds. The feeling that 'something is wrong' begins to rise up bit by bit from the emotional background, until it reaches a point where the conscious mind can't help but notice it. It's around that time that a quick trio of texts come in on Misaki's phone, from Yumi.

Y: You feeling this? It's a youma.
Y: Follow the feeling, I'll meet you there. Gonna call in some help.
Y: Shouldn't be too long. See if you can find the entrance while you wait.

    The source of that unsettling feeling is all the way across the city. Following it leads eventually to Natsuto Big Breeze Convention Hall, where a doujinshi convention is in full swing. It's not as big as the more famous Tokyo Comiket, but there's a steady number of people, even with all this summer heat.

    The first sign of something wrong is probably the ambulance parked near one entrance; on the surface, it doesn't look /too/ out of place, just paramedics treating a few people for heat exhaustion. But none of the people being treated appear to be in costume, or wearing any other kind of idiotic too-hot outfit, and there's quite a few water bottles around, in various states of fullness or emptiness. Anyone close by might hear soft mutters to the effect of, "Don't understand it, I wasn't outside that long..." or "Just started feeling exhausted, maybe I didn't sleep well..."

    More than that, though, the usual bustling atmosphere of such events is... muted. People seem less enthusiastic. Cosplayers don't seem to have much energy to put into their photo posing, and fewer attendees seem to be bothering with photos. Normally-brisk sales within the hall are slow, and those hawking their comics or games seem to be putting less effort into drawing in customers. Maybe it's the reason the event seems to feel so forlorn, somehow. Or maybe that dismal atmosphere is what's sapping everyone's enthusiasm. Whatever the case, it definitely doesn't feel like a proper convention.

    True to her word, Yumi arrives a little while after, having gone to put out the call to a few people she knows. A fully-armored trip across the city rooftops is the fastest way she could think of to arrive; she's concerned about how to detransform and get in closer, right up until she sees the venue. There's a moment's deadpan stare, and then the redhead just... quietly hops down into an alleyway, and steps out to head towards the convention in full armor. First step, though - 'find Misaki'.

Y: I'm here

Misaki noticed the feeling before she got the text. She was already curiously wandering in the direction of the feeling when she got the text.

M: k omw

Misaki transformed right then. She's fast in that state, and so she made it just a bit before Yumi. She begins looking for the entrance as Yumi suggested, and like her, taking advantage of the venue to not worry about dropping her transformation. When she gets that last text, she sends another text.

M: k me2

No attempt is made to find Yumi. She's looking for the entrance as she was told.

    Rydia of Mist arrives on the back of her trusty chocobo as soon as Yumi put the word out to her. The yellow-feathered avian steed comes tromping along the street careless of things like 'not sticking out' and 'crossing laws'.
    Just who, praytell, is exactly going to stop a massive yellow riding bird anyway?
    So when yumi comes... Stepping out of a nearby alley, Rydia tugs on the reins to slow her bird down.
    "... What are you doing untransformed? Isn't there some kind of thing about secrecy that--"
    In spite of the dour mood, a camera flash goes off, blinding the poor Summoner instantly.
    "Oh man, who is she supposed to be?"

    "Look at that bird- is it animatronic?"
    "The details are amazing-- whoahhh it just blinked at me!"
    "Maybe she's some kind of fantasy RPG character?"

    "Wh..." The poor Summoner is dazzled by the repeated flashes tht go off, her bird getting visibly agitated as she hops off, rubbing her eyes.

    "Amazing! It moves on its own!"
    "K-kweh? Wark wark!" Chocobo twitters, scurrying off as Rydia shoos him to come get her later before things get too crazy.

    "Yumi who are all these people and why won't they stop taking my pho-to-graph...?"

    Ah. Rydia's first encounter with the legendary creatures known as Otaku.

    Uni, and her Shinki, arrive at the convention venue not long after Yumi does. They're on foot, or at least Uni herself is. Bravette is perched on a shoulder, coordinating the text messages through her holodisplay which she's got open with the accompanying keyboard, tapping away rapidly.

    Uni for her part is wearing a different outfit today than normal, the black dress forgone for a pair of shorts, and bustier top, shoulder-length gloves and a berret with a modified Lunar Tear set into the band. She's also wearing thigh-high laced boots, and in all is showing more skin than normal, but that's likely to help beat the heat.

    She's kept her weapons in Inventory for now, she doesn't want to spook any of the locals by walking around armed, though the camera flashes get her to stop and mug a little for the attention. Seems she's comfortable in front of a camera... "A shame Noire isn't here... I think she'd like this place for some reason."

    Serrah made a point of heading back home for a few days, but she returned because she happened to catch wind of the convention itself.

    She arrives wearing a full gothic lolita costume, and carrying her umbrella; it's in the black form it was in the last time she came here, and her legs are shadowed as well. She's ... well, she hasn't slept that badly -- the umbrella is fulfilling its purpose of making her sleep-schedule less disastrous by removing the temptation to try to skip the sunlight hours -- but it's still nowhere near perfect.

    Nevertheless, upon her arrival, she furrows her brow; she can't exactly sense the dimensional distortion, but the atmosphere is obvious. "Well these are a bunch of live ones," she mutters.

    She quickly spots Rydia, however, and makes her way over, quickly finding Yumi as well. Okay, yeah, if these guys are gathering, then Something Is Up. "Uh, hi guys," she says awkwardly, not sure how to approach either of them. "What's ... uh." She stops as she sees Rydia's reaction to the photographers, and grimaces. "Y'know what, I'll let you guys take the lead, and I'll, I'll figure everything out as I go."

    "It's, uh..." Yumi struggles to come up with a way to explain things for Rydia. "...it's a gathering for people who love comics and games enough that they make their own. Lots of people come in costumes. We blend right in." In fact, one or two people seem to want them to stop and pose for photo ops; but Yumi gives them a somewhat rushed, "Sorry, we're looking for someone, maybe another time," and they seem to leave it at that.

    The senshi starts looking for Misaki, only to catch a glimpse of a certain goddess; she quickly raises a hand and calls out, "Uni! Bravette! Over here!" before heading in their direction - and there's Serrah as well. "-oh! Serrah, hey." There's a glance further in the convention, then Yumi explains, "There's a youma here, somewhere. It's... it's what Misaki and I are empowered to fight. Pocket reality monsters powered by emotions. It's... it's not gonna be pleasant." She looks left, looks right, running a gloved hand through her hair, then says, "...this way, I think." She'll lead the way for Uni, Bravette, Serrah, and Rydia.

    For Misaki, it's like following a foul scent in the air - except it's not physical. That sense of wrongness is all over the place, but if she follows it, there's directions where it seems to get a little stronger. Just a few minutes' work will lead towards a room in the back of the convention hall, a stockroom where sellers are keeping extra boxes of whatever wares they might be hawking. The sensation is strongest here, over in one corner, and it looks like people are subconsciously avoiding the room, for the most part.

    Of course, as a fellow senshi, Yumi has the same senses; it probably won't be more than a minute or two after Misaki arrives that the armored senshi is peeking in the door herself. "This it?"

"I think so." Misaki answers. "This is my first time, you're the expert." The magical girl steps aside to let Yumi take the lead, bowing to the others, "Thank you for coming to help." She turns towards Yumi, "We need to talk. Not now, but soon. Just the two of us. I need to be able to trust you if we're going to be working together."

    Uni glances as Yumi calls out to her, she waves back, then with the energetic excitedness of a cosplayer in her element, she smoothly excuses herself from the group and trots over, only dropping the genki girl facade once they're inside. "Whew, thanks for the save there Yumi... I thought they'd never leave me alone." she remarks, glancing at Bravette who just shrugs. The shinki then says. "Estimate 93.2115%likelyhood of successful extraction from situation within three minutes regardless of intervention." Uni just frowns at her partner. "Correcting, 99.99999% with a face like that."

    Uni rolls her eyes, then nods to Yumi's explanation. "Pocketmonsters, got it, lets go shoot it a bunch and make it stop hurting people." Once they're out of general view, the Goddess summons a bullpup-style rifle, and racks the slide, causing a pulse of red light to run along the seams in the metal. Once they reach the source of the feeling the magical girls are sensing, and find Misaki, the CPU Candidate nods to the newer magical girl and then waits for the locals to take point.

    Comics and games and costumes... It's so bizarre and foriegn to the last Summoner that she can only numbly nod her head to Yumi's explanation while trying to get the camera flash spots out of her eyes.
    I... See..." Mumbled while rubbing her eyes a bit more while Yumi fends off the photographers.
    "Hello, Serrah." She says levelly in spite of what is about to be a very high stress situation while following the group.
    "This place feels like a tomb." She points out when the find the back room. "Even I can tell this is probably it."

    "Uhh ..." Serrah frowns, and starts following. "So, what ... it's not just weirdos with, with powers named after mythological figures that the senshi of this world have to deal with?" she says in Japanese. "See, every time I blunder into these things, I always end up only half-understanding what's going on, heh ... least I'm not half-asleep this time," she adds under her breath in English.

    She frowns, glancing between Misaki and Yumi, but ... no, Misaki emphasized that she wanted the conversation to be private, so Serrah doesn't pry. She hesitates, realizing she's somehow gotten swept up into the group and is likely at the precipice of actually joining, but ... nah, it'd be too awkward to back out now. In a swirl of shadow, her umbrella is back to being pink with red hearts, and she's wearing a black tank top, the same skyblue-pink-white-pink-skyblue skort she had last time, and her sports bag is back at her hip, apparently having been hidden under her voluminous dress until now. "I ... guess I ... can help," she says uncertainly.

    To Serrah, Yumi nods faintly. "Yeah, the crazy senshi are something I only just found out about myself. I've never had to deal with one before. The youma are what senshi like me exist to fight... as far as I know, anyway. Could still be plenty Vulpes isn't telling me."

    When Misaki suggests they need to talk, Yumi blinks in faint surprise. "I... wow, you beat me to it." There's a soft note of chagrin there. "I was gonna ask exactly that." She steps into the room more fully, looking around for a moment, then nods once. "Yeah, this is it."

    She'll take a few steps over towards the back corner. "It's not hard to get in, just walk in and... I guess push with your mind. You'll be able to feel like there's another direction you can go - you just have to want to go that way." She glances over her shoulder at the others, with a faint grimace. "Feels awful, though. Like walking through cobwebs. Be ready." She gives the dhampir among their number a softer look. "I don't think anyone here would blame you if you wanted to back out," she offers Serrah, before turning to head in herself.

    She's not lying - either about simply 'wanting' to go through, or about the awful sensation of stepping through a spider's home. It's almost as if one walked into the wall itself, only to find that the wall was made of nothing but spiderweb, tugging at hair, tickling across skin in an utterly unsettling way. Fortunately, the trip is not long.

    Less fortunate is what's on the other side. Before the landscape even comes into view, there is cold. Bitter, unforgiving cold. A chill, driving wind blows, whipping snow up into furious flurries. The driving blizzard doesn't just leach the cold from their bodies, either. It feels as if it's sucking the joy out of everyone's soul. The dour atmosphere from outside is a hundred times worse here, a frigid, forlorn desperation that weighs down heavily. There is no hope here. There is no warmth.

    A voice on the wind utters a soft, broken, 'It's useless.'

    Yumi frowns, instinctively rubbing at her arms. After a second or two, her entire body begins to radiate a soft, gentle light, gold-white, filling the air near her with a welcome warmth. But the warmth is only physical, doing nothing to drive back the dejection in the air. It does, at least, serve to faintly illuminate the snowscape around them. They almost seem to be on some sort of mesa, covered in snow, the size of a large warehouse.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> Mood Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl69hWalCbI

Misaki bites back a comment in response to Yumi complaining about Vulpes not telling things, and walks through. She shivers as she makes it to the other side, and she joins Yumi's light by manifesting a fairly bright white orb above her head to help with illumination. "This place is awful. What's next?"

    Uni steels herself as she follows Yumi and Misaki through. Never let it be said that a Goddess shrinks from a challenge, and the entry into the beasts domain is no exception. Once she's through and that wind comes biting at her, she frowns and pulls a smaller gun-shaped item from inventory, lifting it skyward and firing straight up. The projectile lets off a soft hiss, trailing smoke until it reaches its altitude and suddenly blossoms into a close, bright 'star' that very gently begins to fall back down to the ground. It casts light all around, complimenting Yumi's aura with a flickering red. "Star Shell, useful for this kind of situation.

    Then, that voice whispers across the wind, and she brings her weapon up. "Show yourself and I'll teach you exactly how useless it is!" she bites back. Bravette also summons her Gattling and armour, lifting off of Uni's shoulder and hovering on her jetpack, visor snapping closed and turning this way and that looking for targets. <<TacNet going up.>> transmits the Shinki, offering holographic screens that show her vision in thermal for each, panning and showing the others in various states of heat emission.

    Serrah nods along with Yumi's explanation on how to enter. "Ah, one of those magical doorways," she says she says, as if this was just common sense. Her response to Yumi's concern, however, is to double down: "N-no, it's fine, I'm, I'm in this now," she says hurriedly. "I'm, uh ... yeah."

    And so she follows the group in, frowning all the while. Partway through the journey, she closes her eyes as if trying to concentrate ...

    And lets out an androgynous squawk of surprise at the sudden cold. "Okay, I was not expecting this to be how things ended up," she says, scooting over to Yumi's and Uni's warmth. "I thought it'd be some sort of distorted version of the convention. Dunno why I thought that, but still." She reconfigures her clothing again, this time into long sleeves and long pants under a skirt; it doesn't work that great, though, because again, it's more form than function. "Good grief ..."

    She stows her umbrella in her sports bag and pulls out a couple of baseballs, looking around. "... I'm gonna have to restock on baseballs after this, aren't I."

>> SUMMARY[Serrah Delany] >> 'Yare yare da wa.'

    It's not the first time Rydia has entered a youma's lair. But to her it's been well over ten years since that last happened.
    "Euuuughhhh..."
    Needless to say the walking-through-a-spiderweb sensation is not something one gets used to after ten years.
    And then the temperature plummets.
    "G-g-g-goodness, it's as cold as Lady Shiva's embrace." The Summoner grumbles, hugging her arms to her chest on pure instinct.
    That whisper though has the green-haired Caller biting on her lip.
    It brings back memories of the first time Rydia had entered one of these youma lairs.
    It is not a pleasant memory.
    "... Let's be quick about this and leave this place as soon as we can." She mutters grimly.

    "Now, we find the youma," Yumi replies. Her eyes track across the snowscape, straining to see anything through the blizzard that might help... but frankly, it's Uni and Misaki's more radiant light that finally makes that possible. Even thermal imaging seems useless here, but the shine of a Star Shell and the light of a heart's magic combine to pierce the gloom such that more can easily be seen. The mesa on which they stand is just one of many, extending off into the distance, off to infinity. Endless, snowy plateaus, just barely visible.

    Among these plateaus wander shadowy titans, vaguely human in shape, but without definition. Just vague silhouettes. Some of those grand plateaus have a shadowy titan seated at them, seemingly in wait. When one of the wandering titans stops before a plateau, the seated titan waves a hand, and conjures forth something... beautiful. A vague, dancing shape, of shimmering colors and graceful turns. A phantom of splendid beauty, dancing upon the mesa for a moment before disappearing. A rare moment of joy and light in this despondent place. The wandering titans seem to approve of these displays.

    The voice doesn't reply to Uni. But some seconds later, after one of those beautiful displays, it speaks again, a soft mutter of hopelessness.

    'I'll never measure up.'

    The air absolutely thrums with the defeat in that voice. There is no direction to it. It seems to come from everywhere, from the world itself. But some ways away, on one of the more distant tables, there's a curious display. A table with no seated titan seems to develop one of those dancing phantoms as well, in response to a passing titan - but as soon as the display appears, it warps and sputters, twisting itself back out of existence. A wisp of the twisted display seems to pass through that shadowy passerby... and draw something out of it, some kind of essence that flows into the spot where the twisted phantom was.

    Yumi misses the display; she's looking off in another direction, sticking close to Rydia to share some of her magical warmth with the summoner. She doesn't miss the whisper on the wind, though.

    'Please, just give it a chance...'

    The voice has Yumi frowning again. "Anyone see anything?"

"I think it's over there." Misaki creates an arrow of green light pointing towards the table without the titan and the twisted phantom. She doesn't do anything else, waiting for Yumi to tell her what to do. She does get her guns ready, though.

    Bravette disables her thermal, since it's only showing her allies and nothing useful. She's luckily staring straight at the display on the empoty mesa, and speaks up, poiinting her gattling in that direction. "Possible target, estimate three... four hundred meters. Dancing phantom, no shadow titan, glitchy... facinating." her voice deadpan, clipped and rapid.

    Uni is watching the various displays around the mesa, red eyes transfixed on the phantoms for brief moments, before she frowns... "Some kind of... dancer? Are these Youma the souls of people?" she asks, glancing at Yumi until Bravette and Misaki point out the anomaly.

    Serrah frowns, looking around at the strange shapes around them. "No argument here," she answers Rydia.

    She shudders slightly at the sound of the voice, shifting her grip on the baseballs in her hand. She turns at Misaki and Bravette's announcements, and squints, narrowing her eyes at the source. "Yeah, that might be our destination," she says.

    And then Uni had to go and ask that question, and Serrah actually starts to look nervous. "Oh god ..." she mutters in English. The next several seconds are spent trying really hard not to say 'I really wish you hadn't said that ...'

    It's so... Bleak. So desolate. If anything, the titanic figures that wander in the distance only instill an ominous sense of foreboding and dread, in spite of the colorful display. A feeling of being infinitesimally small in comparison to the blurry and vague greatness of something far larger. Larger and, in a place such as this? More menacing.
    Needless to say, Rydia lingers close to Yumi and it's not just for the warmth as she does her best to not show that...
    For once...
    Rydia is more than just creeped out.
    Her hand lingers close to the whip belted at her waist, even if it probably will be of little use here, just having it close is a small consolation to the Summoner.

    Misaki and Bravette draw Yumi's attention, and after a second or two spent squinting in the indicated direction, she nods. "Pretty sure you're right." The armored girl starts to walk in that direction, and as she walks, the familiar form of Prominence appears in her hand. Resting the runeblade on her shoulder, she pauses, Uni's question catching her off-guard. Rydia's been through it before, and Misaki's heard the basic spiel already, so it's easy to forget that not everyone here knows about youma already. Stupid, Yumi, stupid. "...yeah. Youma used to be people. Whatever magic was in them went out of control, twisted their form. 'Like magical cancer,' to use Vulpes' phrasing."

    She sweeps the weapon around, pointing at the shadows wandering between, and sitting near, the infinite plateaus. "Those are people, outside, in the real world. This is the convention hall. Youma build their 'web' on top of reality, then feed off people. There's not really anything we can do but destroy them." It's a grim tone in her voice. Those who know Yumi even a little, can probably guess how unhappy she is that there's no way to save the youma. She advances again, in no small part for the sake of keeping up momentum before this youma's web robs her of her will to fight, but-

    -one of those beautiful phantoms appears on the mesa they're all standing on. There is no shadow titan standing there. It just appears, as if of its own volition. And one of those rainbow wisps lashes out and downward, slamming at the table in their general area, before the phantom disappears entirely.

    Yumi just barely leaps out of the way in time, nearly going ass over teakettle in the process. "...I think we better hurry. I feel like it noticed us." Indeed, all along the tables, those breathtaking shimmers begin to appear and dance and disappear more frequently, completely unconnected to whether a person is standing before any given table. And any time one of them appears on the same table as the group, it lashes out at them, an unpredictable hazard.

    But despite her own urging to hurry, Yumi doesn't advance. Not yet. She's hanging back, sticking near Serrah. "You okay?" she asks the dhampir, concerned.

Misaki knows what they are, roughly, but doesn't answer Uni's question. She's focused on Serrah for a moment, and instinctively extends a metaphysical hand. An offer that if it reaches Serrah, would make sense. 'Please, allow me to take on some of that fear.' That offer remains open while Misaki takes her guns and points them at the shimmers, sending beams of flashing light at them while moving quickly to try to get out of the way of their attacks.

    "It's for the best they be destroyed if there's no means of returning them to their former selves, Yumi." Rydia notes with a gentleness that's only reserved for her friends.
    hen. The pretty phantom appears.
    'I feel like it noticed us' Yumi says after having to leap out of the way of a blatant attack.
    Rydia, herself, is forced to tumble roll through the snow to avoid a sudden assault, but quickly rises to her feet.
    "How exactly are we supposed to fight this, Yumi?!"

    Uni nods solemnly, glancing at Serrah with a look that says 'I'm sorry.' as she moves off in Yumi's wake. The attack from the phantom makes the Goddess wince. "I hear that. Skyeye, Option Mode, sync tyargetting with my scope." she says, turning to take point as Yumi hangs back. She runs off, as Bravette flits over and takes position over the goddess' left shoulder, her gattling spooling up and holding at porefire spin.

    Serrah lets out a hollow laugh at Yumi's answer, coming to a complete stop. "Wellllll, uh ... kuso," she says. (Roughly Japanese for "crap".) "I guess we're doing this, huh!" She grimaces. "I mean, if I'm honest, I kinda WHOA GOD!"

    Between two proverbial frames of animation, she's hovering in midair and a dozen feet away from where the wisp slammed down. (Now Misaki gets to see Stop the World from outside!)

    She sighs softly, glancing between Yumi and Uni. "Probably not," she says. "but if it's attacking us, we kinda ... don't have a choice. Damn it ..."

    Rydia is asking a very good question, but Serrah's head jerks around towards Misaki. "Uh ..." She impulsively allows it to work --

    (Serrah's emotions right now: Fear. Not of death in general -- Serrah can take care of herself. It's a fear of losing herself. Of becoming something or someone she is not. A brief ... body dysphoria? Something-dysphoria? It's gone quickly; she seems to have processed that to her satisfaction, and all that remains are lingering fragments. But connected to the general here-and-now fear is the sensation of taking a breath and finding no relief tied to the action. The feeling of her humanity dwindling to the point that she no longer minded losing it before it was recovered. Underneath it all, the horror of fact that this complete loss of self has already happened to someone, someone who they now have no choice but to mercy-kill. A sudden annoyed realization, embarrassment at having someone else see this directly --)

    -- but then almost immediately cuts the connection. "Uh, kid, you should warn people before you do that," she says weakly, hefting her baseballs again. "... did you ... not know that you could do that?"

    The next time an attack comes towards Yumi, she's ready for it; and with time to brace herself, the senshi is able to swing her massive runeblade around and parry the hit, outright, a show of brute force and precision both. As soon as the blow glances off Prominence, the phantom disperses outright. Misaki has similar luck; perhaps even better. If she can hit one of the phantoms before it unleashes its attack, it's dispersed harmlessly, and with the greater range on her pistols, she has a pretty solid shot at it.

    But every time one is dissolved, it returns again later, once more launching a single strike before coming apart yet again. Skirmishing with shimmering wisps that endlessly disperse and reform is going to get them nowhere. "We have to get to the real body," she calls out to Rydia. Already, her parries and dodges are carrying her in that direction, but she doesn't really start to move until it becomes clear that Serrah is... alright? She's not sure. There's a glance between Misaki and the dhampir. But it seems to be resolved? At least Serrah's recovered herself.

    "I'll take point. Cover me." It's a general request - most of the firepower here is ranged, after all. Uni and Bravette in particular have solid battlefield intel. And Yumi herself is built for vanguard work.

    It's hard to call the progression towards the misshapen phantom a 'fight' when none of the other, more beautiful apparitions stick around for very long. It's more like a charge through environmental hazards. But hitting them early can disperse them, Yumi is capable enough of deflecting the ones that get through, and enough effort between all of them suffices to thin the attacks. As a result, closing the distance is... actually easier than it ought to be. Despite how distant it looked, they draw closer surprisingly fast, as if space itself is warped here. It doesn't take long to reach the table on which the more unique phantom danced... but it's empty.

    Until, of course, it's not.

    Yumi practically skids to a stop, bringing Prominence up into a guarded stance. She sweeps left, sweeps right, waiting for it... so of course, it takes shape behind her and to one side. One arm of shimmering, beautiful light whips upward, twists into a grotesque, eye-twisting limb, and then lashes downward at the armored senshi. She spots it too late, turning just in time to be hit full force and slammed back like a soccer ball.

    She manages to skid to a halt and stand back up, and the runes along Prominence begin to glow.

    'Why bother?'

    It's a quiet, wretched utterance, but the way the phantom writhes and twists, shifting from beauty to ugliness and back again, suggests that it's the closest this thing will come to a battle cry. It's not dispersing. It's sticking around.

Misaki stumbles as those emotions flood into her, she pales as she processes them, and is relieved when it stops. "Sorry." She mumbles. "I didn't know." She recovers quickly from that unpleasant experience. She focuses on helping clear the path, and when they get there, she acts.

Joyous is aimed at the phantom, a near continuous beam of purple light. Misaki moves quickly, trying to keep a health distance. With her reflexes and speed, she uses Marvelous for quick red bursts of light aimed at whatever the phantom uses to try to attack anyone, whether herself or others.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> Boss Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwFA2VdCGcY

    "Shifting to Overwatch." confirms Uni, her rifle coming up and snapping shots off at the phantoms as the pop up, pulses of energy rippling out in three shot bursts, Bravette's Gattling link-firing bursts of ten shots with a sound like tearing paper.

    Once they finally fight through and reach the main body, she comes up short and drops to a knee, sighting along her rifle. "Sorry, I don't have time to go easy on you." she says, the barrel of her rifle splitting along the length and cracking open with a blue electrical jacob's ladder. "EX Multi Blaster!" she intones, firing a focussed beam of blue-white energy at the glitching, wretched Phantom, accompanied by a sustained scything burst from Bravette's gattling, the small rotary autocannon going BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT.

>> SUMMARY[Uni] >> Hur hur, beam go PEW, minigun go BRRT.

    Serrah takes a deep breath. "Right, then," she mutters, following the group. "Let's ... just ... ... deal with this."

    She doesn't try to attack the phantoms that strike on the way over; she only has a limited number of baseballs, after all, and she doesn't want to waste them on what appear to be small fry.

    But now they have a more solid enemy. "LOOK OUT!" she exclaims -- a split second too late, as Yumi gets knocked back. Okay, okay, good, Yumi landed on her feet, she's still in the fight. Misaki is ... firing on her own, no need to worry about her.

    So, Serrah just jumps right in. A split second after Uni starts firing, Serrah uses Stop the World, and then she's a bit further away from the phantom, with a half-dozen baseballs flying towards it -- all carefully aimed so as not to get caught in anyone else's attacks.

    'Cover me' Yumi says...
    And then the group has to go through an ordeal worth of environmental hazard phantoms. Rydiia can hardly cast her spells in time when they appear, so she instead opts to keep on her toes; dodging and weaving while remaining to the group's back row, throwing herself to the ground under attacks, rolling aside from apparating phantoms, and leaping away when she can...
    The only thing to pause her even briefly is to set a hand gently on Misaki's shoulder when she spies how pale the girl looks.
    "Come on, we have to keep going." She urges in a soft tone...
    Until they finally reach the 'main body' of the youma.
    For an instant it's so pretty.
    And then it's not.
    This creature, both beauteous and baleful to behold enraptures the Summoner for a heart's beat, unable to tell if she's entranced or if she's horrified.
    This confusion quickly turns to horror when Yumi is struck.
    "YUMI!" The Summoner calls a beat too late, heart leaping into her throat. At least until the senshi stands herself up and readies Prominence.
    There's no time to dally, now.
    The Summoner draws a breath, eyes falling half-lidded as she begins to utter words of power, the air taking on a tingling quality around her as a charge begins to build...
    "Thundara!" The Last Summoner declares.
    Just as a great plume of lightning streaks down from the sky, called by her bidding, upon the youma.

    It twists, it morphs. Like it's trying to become something beautiful, to emulate the more beautiful phantoms. But the youma can never seem to quite reach that beauty, faltering and becoming almost a mockery. It's hard to tell whether it's just lashing out at whatever's in reach, or genuinely trying to protect itself from them, but every time it shifts its shape or position, it lashes out with a tendril, an ephemeral fist, a grotesque claw. The first shot from Misaki sends it into a pained, squirming whirl, a macabre dance that leads to several more lashing, amorphous attacks. The red shots from her other weapon are able to shoot down some of them, but not all - at least two or three more get through, striking out at the newer senshi.

    More tendrils- arms- serpents- appendages lash out, only to shred apart under Uni's barrage fire. It seems to acknowledge her as the foremost threat in that moment, and with little warning the youma abruptly surges forward, pulling and prancing and lunging and oozing its way towards her, a shimmer of light becoming a hammer that it attempts to bring down upon the goddess. In the process, it's hammered by several seemingly impossible baseballs, blasting mass off the creature with nothing but a soft utterance of 'I'm useless' carried on the arctic winds. Rather than shift around and lash out at Serrah itself, it seems to almost casually fling an appendage - and a beautiful phantom takes shape right beside her, just long enough to strike out with another vicious attack on the dhampir.

    "I'm alright!" Yumi calls out to Rydia - the little trickle of blood down her cheek probably belies that insistence, but she's exceptionally tough, so perhaps not? Regardless, when Rydia starts to cast, the youma seems to notice something amiss, whirling around to... stand upright? Rear back? The correct word changes from one moment to the next. The only consistency is that, whether beautiful or horrid, it's winding up to attack her. Yumi's blade erupts in searing solar flames, and she hurls herself forward, lashing out at whatever passes the thing's abdomen; it's distracted just long enough that, before it can launch its attack, a crackling bolt of lightning strikes it hard.

    'I don't even care anymore!'

    Yumi is forced to plant her feet and weather a beating. It lashes downward, again and again and again, and she can't deflect them all. One, two, three get through, and for a second time she's knocked back; this time, she rights herself in the air for a steady landing, but it's too late to stop the followup attack. It's a beautiful siren, bending in to embrace Rydia. It's a hideous medusa, lunging forward to crush her. The form shifts, but the attack on the summoner is unchanging.

Misaki is quick so she can dodge most of the attacks, but one of them clips her and injures her side. She's not nearly as tough as Yumi, and she winces at the pain. She doesn't stop, though, not when it seems someone else might be in trouble. She rushes to place herself between the Youma and Rydia, she keeps up the constant beam from Joyous, but she touches Joyous' barrel with Marvelous, and the red beam from Marvelous grows as constant.

She's also not sturdy enough for her to be trying to play tank to be anything but a bad idea.

    As that hammerblow comes crashing down, Uni takes a hand off her rifle and holds it up, palm flat towards the incoming strike. An interlocking dome of blue hexagonal panels erects and absorbs the impact, crushing the Goddess down a few inches into the floor beneath her. The panels buckle and crack, but don't fail as the Youma is distracted to someone else.

    The goddess grunts softly, standing up once she's out of direct fire and goes to shoot again... seeing Rydia being bourne down on by the Youma...

    Misaki interjects, and Uni instead darts forward, aiming to close the gap as she fires a high impact shot, aiming to knock it up into the air. "I'll end this gracefully! By unloading my entire clip into your face!" She surges past, regardless of if the shots do what she expected and instead adapts the followup.

    Once she's gotten past, she skids to a stop, planting a hand to turn and then braces as energy lines suck into the barrel of her rifle, before it splits open and lances out a brilliant blue beam of energy once more. "Even if you cry, I'll never forgive you! DISAPPEAR!"

    The beam impacts, explodes, and then Uni leaps skyward, aiming down onto the Youma as a golden light grows in between the railgun tines of her rifle. "Disappear into the Light!" she intones as the beam lances out, and aims to engulf the Youma entirely.

>> SUMMARY[Uni] >> EXE Skill 1: NGP.

    Hmm. Getting hectic, but when doesn't it in these kinds of situations? The cold horror is still there, of course, but Serrah tries to maintain her composure nevertheless.

    "GAH!" Still in the cooldown of her timestop, she simply has to fly straight up to avoid the phantom's attack. A split-second's pause, and she hurls a baseball back down at the phantom. "... did it know I sent them?" she mutters under her breath. "Did it see me while time was stopped ...?"

    No time to worry about that, though. She turns around. "Crap, it's going after Rydia!" she exclaims needlessly, and flies around it. "I'm sorry," she calls out to the Youma. "But hopefully ... we can at least give you peace! STOP the WORLD!"

    And then there's an entire dozen baseballs flying towards the youma, from exactly the opposite direction from Uni's EXE-attack.

    Yumi's alright... This is all well and good, but as the party unleashes their assault on the youma... Of course it's bound to retaliate. It wouldn't simply welcome death and let that be the end of it, of course not.
    Jade eyes dart, watching the monstrous, beautiful, thing lash out in reprisal at the others, Rydia curses to herself as it begins to wail on Yumi, but then... Then...
    It turns its attention upon her.
    Rare and far between are the moments Rydia of Mist hesitates. The girl is normally swift and decisive in everything she does... But this... This thing that is both gorgeous and hideous to behold is now focused upon her.
    "Ah... ... Ah...!"
    It bears down on her. It's coming for her. And all she can do is watch in a moment of abject horror.
    Until the figure of Misaki Sakai interjects herself between the Caller and the beast.
    Rydia rallies- just barely in the nick of time to fling herself away from the crushing assault, rolling in a wild and uncontrolled tumble in the snow before she rights herself to her hands and knees, scrambling to the rear of the party once more, away from the heart-racing terror that is the youma.
    It is at her heart races that the Summoner reaches out; calling out to something, anything that will listen to her plea.
    Somewhere out there... Something listens.
    "UNICORN!"
    No sooner than she calls its name, something appears in the distant horizon- something that approaches in a rapid, full sprinting gallop on all fours. A sleek creature of pure beauty- something that could never be as heinous or hideous as this youma.
    Running on cloven hooves and slim legs, the creature is smaller than a horse, too slim, slender, and graceful to be anything close to a horse, but graceful in its every elegant stride, it bears down on the youma with a great spiralling ivory horn- leaping, lunging, lancing to stab that selfsame horn into the beast Rydia has called it against.

    The youma's ferocious attack on Rydia is stymied outright by Misaki's intervention. If the creature can even be said to get caught off-guard, she's definitely done it; the twin beams of Joyous and Marvelous drive it back, writhing and lashing out at the air as more of its mass is burned away by the powerful double blast. It gathers itself again and shifts out of the way of the beams, preparing to lunge forward towards the senshi, when all of a sudden, it jerks to a stop, halting in place.

    Yumi's gotten hold of it, casting Prominence aside to grab it by... a part that changes from one moment to the next. It's impossible to define. But she's got a solid hold, and after a second or two, she hauls around and bodily slams the youma downward, stunning it. She doesn't even reach to grab her sword; instead, her fist erupts with radiant solar fire, and she drives one punch into the monster's body, another, another.

    Before it can gather itself and try to wrench free of her grasp, Uni unleaches a high-impact shot that slams it upward. Yumi breaks her grip and dives backwards, while the youma suffers a tremendous energy blast- no, two, one from below, one from above, blasting it up higher and then smashing it back to the ground. More and more of the thing's mass is peeling off with each attack. But it's still not yet done, and it has at least enough energy left to turn - it almost seems to notice the moment Serrah stops time, perhaps owing to this being its personal pocket dimension. But just noticing the stopped time doesn't protect it from the barrage of baseballs. More and more of it comes loose.

    The youma's transformations are growing lackluster - less beautiful, less horrid. It's more amorphous light than anything else. It utters a feeble, 'I give up,' but the words don't seem to match the behavior, as it's rather tenaciously still trying to move on the attack. Of all people here, Misaki still seems to hold most of its attention, and it seems intent on lashing out at her one last time-

    Something truly beautiful takes the field.

    It freezes, outright.

    There is not the faintest movement until it's far, far too late. The youma finally seems to recover itself, but not nearly in time to avoid the final, fatal charge of Rydia's summon. Unicorn's horn buries deep, and the whole web seems to shudder. It turns, it twists, it folds in on itself, all that mass dissolving away until nothing remains. Nothing, that is, save for a dark purple gemstone, that drops to the ground not far from Misaki.

    It's at that point that the entire frigid otherspace begins to ripple and come apart around them - depositing all of them out on the convention floor among the tables, with some very surprised vendors trying to figure out what the hell just happened. The gemstone remains, right near Misaki.

Misaki seems surprised she doesn't get hit in response for her bravery, and when it's done, she dismisses the twin guns. She notices the gem, and picks it up. "Do you mind if I take this?" She asks Yumi, it doesn't even seem to be a consideration to her whether anyone else might have anything to say about it. She glances to the others, "Thanks for the assist. Seems I owe you all, again."

    Uni lands after her attack animation ends, and... appears right above someone's doujinshi stall, smashing down into it with an unceremonious CRACK, of the table under her. "Oooow..."

    Bravette floats down gently, landing on the back of the facedown Goddess' head. "Master, people are staring at you." she announces idly, looking around at various confused faces. "Estimating damage at approximately 50,000yen, plus another 20,000 for destroyed merchandise."

    Uni grumbles, grabs Bravette, who doesn't resist, and stands up. "Sorry for the mess. I'll work for your stall to pay back the damage... I don't exactly have any money... I was hoping to make some doing photoshoots here." she offers as a coverstory.

    Bravette sends a quick <No Problem> message to Misaki in response, as the CPU Candidate tries to stifle the ire of an Otaku.

    Serrah ... is still floating in midair, and thus doesn't actually fall anywhere. A few baseballs come crashing noisily down, though. She stares blankly for a moment, and then one timestop later, she's on the ground, and the baseballs are gone and her sports bag is full again. This surprises several more people.

    "... No charge," she answers Misaki in a quiet voice. "Ahaha. Crap ..." She can't meet anyone's gaze.

    ... A part of her wants to ask 'did we do the right thing? Was there nothing we could've done?' But she really doesn't want to say that aloud, because she's not really the sort of person who desperately asks that sort of thing -- or at least, she likes to think she's built herself up as that sort of person -- and she practically doesn't want to feel like there was anything they could've done to save ... whoever it was.

    Just like that... It's over.
    The youma is brought low by the group's collective effort and Rydia takes a moment to catch her breath as the horrifying and frigid otherspace of the monster's lair begins to dissipate.
    "Th... Thanks..." She asides to Misaki for saving her ass in that moment of terror from earlier, just as the unicorn comes trotting back to her--
    And then they're back in the convention hall so very suddenly.
    "Ah... I-"
    FLASH goes a nearby camera, blinding both the Summoner and her unicorn, giving the otaku all around her ample time to start snapping photos of 'the green RPG cosplay girl and her unicorn'.

    "Wow! First a bird now a unicorn!"
    "This girl goes all out!"
    "She's good..."

    Poor Rydia and the unicorn can only stand like a pair of deer trapped in the headlights as the predatory otaku photographers scent fresh photo-opportunites like sharks smelling blood in the water.

    "Whuh... I... But..." Rydia stammers.

    Yumi... Haaaaalp.

    "It's all yours," Yumi replies to Misaki. "Spoils of victory, your first Oblivion Crystal." She turns around to check on Uni, who has... indebted herself to some poor amateur manga-ka. The very confused guy is so flabbergasted by the sudden appearance of several costumed people - one of whom just smashed his table - that all he can do is sort of give a numb nod of agreement. "Y-yeah."

    To be fair, if she uses her costume to direct people his way, that... might actually help his sales?

    Most of Yumi's attention right now is reserved for Serrah, though. She heads over towards the dhampir with worry obvious on her face. "Hey, you alright? I'm, uh..." She rubs the back of her head, frowning. "...If you need somewhere to stay for a couple days, I can figure something out." She looks like she has more to say, but that's kind of interrupted by the otaku horde descending on poor Rydia.

    "Right, uh. We probably all ought to get out of here." She quickly skitters over to the green-haired girl's side, inserting herself as best she can between the girl and the photographers. "Right, right, thank you all for your attention, but we're done for the night~. No more photo opportunities, we're all exhausted, thank you..."