World Tree MUSH

    Westview, New Jersey is a quiet little country town in a realm right near the borders between the relatively peaceful Upper Trunk zones of the tree and the more troubled ones of the Shifting Branches. Population can't be more than a couple thousand, and it's one of those places where everyone knows everyone--well, almost. Despite its proximity to some of the more chaotic areas of the Tree, nothing strange ever really happened there. This Earth had already seen a number of planet-wide crises (a number of them nuclear) even before the integration, that nearly threw its people all the way back into the Stone Age. But somehow, some way, life always seemed to find a way to persist. Humanity always managed to move on, to get back up and keep trudging down the path, even if it seemed all was lost. 

    Thanks to this rather chaotic history, and probably in some part to the difficulties of the stranger areas of the World Tree itself, finding something to faze the citizens of Westview isn't as easy as one might think. But the past few weeks have been...something else. People have been going missing by the dozens, and the local police can't seem to find any real leads on any of them. 'Dozens' may not seem like a lot, but when you're a town of less than 2000, people notice. Normally they wouldn't ask for outsiders' help, but this was unprecedented. It wasn't even just that, but there was this...inexplicable sense of dread that seemed to have fallen on everyone ever since this had all started. So the call had gone out to the general community of the World Tree--anyone who was willing and able to help should report to chief Sam Everett at the at the only police station in town.

    Upon approaching the polity, those who would have made their way here might have noticed an old abandoned-looking cathedral on the edge of town, only barely visible from the main highway. There are piles of gravel and scaffolding around it as if someone had started on a renovation project or something, but had bailed on it halfway through.

    Oftentimes, Lian Kamoya will find her way to a crisis by pure happenstance; following her instincts, following the Force, and ending up in the right place at the right time. Once in a while, though, the intervention is more deliberate. She'll catch wind of a problem, and her own nature will urge her towards it even if the Force itself doesn't.

    People going missing in a peaceful, small town? That's exactly the kind of thing to draw her attention.

    It isn't hard to tell she's an offworlder, really, not with that adventuring outfit. But the people here seem to know the Tree well enough, so she's not concerned about fitting in. Right this moment, the only thing really concerning her is getting to the police station. Tap, tap, tap goes her staff; while her eyes settle on the cathedral, interest briefly piqued, she doesn't slow her path or change course. It's straight to the police station for her, where she peeks in the door, looking around.

    "Hello? I'm here to see a Chief Everett about a missing persons case."

    Strange happenings, disappearances and a general sense of unease from an otherwise stoic populace? How could something like that not attract the attention of a known meddler? Li-Ming makes good speed navigating the web of interconnected worlds, though it seems unlikely that she'll be well ahead of anyone else who may deign to offer aid. No matter!

    Of course, on the trek through the town toward the municipalities seat of authority, she'll do her level best to be visible while she sniffs about for any sort of metaphysical sign, familiar or otherwise, that may have had a hand here. More and more, her efforts to suss out the influence of magic seem to fall flat in the face of less mystically inclined hazards, threats and suchlike. Somewhat distracted by stretching her perception so far and wide, she may not immediately notice anyone else arriving to greet the locals. Or even the locals themselves.

    The sight of the ominous church does stir memories and emotions in her, though she's only staring through it. Not at it! Surely anything going wrong here has nothing to do with an old place of worship. Surely. Sorry if her unconscious worry boils out into any kind of menacing vibe.

    Oh, someone else is here! She brightens and moves to approach the station, content to let this other woman speak up for now.

    A staticky portal opens up and turns black from the inside out, and out comes a lavender-skinned demoness with six glowing purple eyes in two vertical rows, hair so black it looks like a rip in space or a graphical glitch, and four arms; she's wearing a bright pink crop top with the text "I'll Stop Wearing Pink When They Invent A Darker Color", red booty shorts with an AI's rant about hating humanity on the backside, and running shoes.

    She glides towards the polity an inch above the ground, but then pauses, glancing over at the church for a moment. An amused and faintly smug smile forms, and she resumes on her journey, coming up right behind Lian and ... Li-Ming. Her expression falters, but quickly returns. "Correction!" she says in a relatively chipper tone. "We are here for that reason!"

Misaki hadn't heard of the problem until she wandered into a nearby town every bit the tourist and she overheard rumors. One hour later, and she's here. She's wearing a lime green jacket on top of a white shirt, with a pleated cyan skirt and long white socks. For now. "Hello, miss Emily." She recognizes the voice this time, "You're here for the missing persons case, too?"

    Rydia of mist is normally not one to stick her nose where it doesn't belong.
    That is how people lose noses.
    But she couldn't help but overhear the town's plight when she had been stopping by to make a routine supply run in the area.
    Missing people, however, sounds like a problem that needs looking into, and perhaps there might even be a reward for it. Heaving a soft sigh as she makes her decision to stick her nose where it absolutely does not belong, soon enough the green-clad young lady is riding up to the police station on her yellow-feathered chocobo steed.
    "I suppose I'm here for the same reason as the others."

    Upon entering the town, the outsiders might also feel that odd sense of dread hanging in the air as well. Maybe it's the way the locals look, or maybe it's the grey clouds that have gathered in the sky overhead. Or maybe a little bit of both. Li-Ming's search for the metaphysical isn't fruitless--there's definitely some kind of magic in play around here somewhere, but exactly where would likely require more digging to be done. But aside from that, everything seems...more or less normal. Locals go about their daily business. Walking, driving, biking--whatever it may be as they make their way to errands or whatever. There is one suspicious looking man, though, who stares at the group of outsiders as they head toward the station. Not in curiosity, but it seems much more menacing. But he simply turns away, slipping into an old Ford F150 parking along the other side of the road and driving off.

    Upon entering the station, the group is escorted to Chief Everett's office. He looks up tiredly at them, though he appears relieved at their presence. The officer stands up and offers a handshake to each of them, not really appearing fazed at some of their strange appearances. "Sam Everett, you probably already know. Thanks for being willing to help us out with this, I know we're not exactly big shots, but..." he shrugs and sits back down at his computer. "Names and where you're from, then we'll get down to business."

    Emily's arrival is certainly a spectacle, and Lian regards her with obvious curiosity. But that doesn't mean she misses Li-Ming, Misaki or Rydia, no sir. Each of them is noted in turn, receiving at least a brief nod of greeting.

    And of course, that suspicious man isn't really missed either - she turns, briefly, to look him straight in the eye, as if to say, 'I see you,' before he drives off.

    But she's content to do little further speaking, at least until they're guided to the police chief. Just tap-tapping away with her staff as she walks, and then giving Everett a nod of greeting when they finally meet him. "Lian. Seer by talent and training, adventurer by trade. I don't really have a home to speak of. I'm happy to help with cases like this, though."

    Quite used to getting 'looks' from people, Li-Ming remains more distracted by the pervasive magical vibe of the place. The man with his pickup, Emily's distaste; both of those can await a later moment to address.

    Somewhat impressed by the compliment of folks here to render aid, she lightens up just a little. Wouldn't do to seem overly harsh right away, right? We'll save that for later too. Introductions are requested, so of course she steps forward to add her own.

     "Li-Ming of Caldeum. Wizard, monster slayer and fledgeling sage. I have some experience with troubles that, at least at their face, appear similar." She steps back and keeps quiet for everyone else's introduction to the town's chief law enforcement agent, inspecting each of her comrades as they speak up in turn.

    Once that's done, she tips her head up to indicate Lian. "You saw something or someone outside? I've detected something myself, though I can't narrow down it's source. It's spread far too thin."

    Emily grins. "Hey, Lian!" she says; she has the same voice she did at the tomb (and, well, that she always has, really). She notices the suspicious man, following the seer's gaze, but she lets Lian give him the hairy eyeball, and just smiles and nods to Misaki, putting a hand on her back to guide her in. "Just so!" she says. "Man, you're really just jumpin' right into the hero stuff, huh!" She can't help but shoot Rydia a cheeky grin.

    She follows the group in, and nods to Chief Everett. "And I'm Emily, Nyx-model MLE0, a Eudaemon of the halcyon remnant," she says in a somewhat formal tone. "And this situation seems like it's really gonna be interesting!" She grins.

    She pauses as Li-Ming speaks, her smile briefly disappearing. And then she says, "Yeah, this guy." She projects a hologram of the man's stare, one of his truck, and a closeup of the license plate. "This familiar to anyone?"

"Misaki Sakai. I don't think my parents would agree if I tell you where I'm from, can we skip that?" The teenager turns to the others and bows, "Nice to meet you." She giggles when Emily speaks to her, "Just trying to help,"

    All in all it seems like an ordinary town... If not for the aura of unease hanging over it. Rydia can feel that perfectly well enough just from the little city's atmosphere as she makes her way into the station with the others.
    "Rydia of Mist." She gives her name. ... Pause. "... From Mist."
    That is where she is from, after all.
    Misaki gets a sidelong look for a short beat.
    "I don't think I had the chance to thank you properly for covering for me, last time." She says to the senshi, before folding her arms together across her chest at Emily's grin.
    "It's not my fault I can hear Yumi nagging me in my head to check this out, you know."

    Everett nods at each of the introductions, his gaze flitting back and forth from the person talking to the screen he's sitting in front of as he taps away at his keyboard taking notes about each person on the 'external assistance' roster. He doesn't seem to mind those who don't appear comfortable telling him where they're from. When Emily shows that hologram though, he fronts, standing up and leaning forward a little bit as he examines it. "That's Jeff Lecky. Twenty-two years old, unemployed, lives in his parents' basement. Been here his whole life. I hear he's a bit of a nerd, loves urban legends and 'creepypasta' stuff and has ever since middle school." he does airquotes at the creepypasta part. "Seen him sneaking off to that old cathedral outside of town in the middle of the night with a group of his friends, but that's been going on since high school."

    He opens a drawer in his desk and pulls out a stack of papers. "Everyone who's gone missing since this all started a couple of months ago." he tells them as he plops it down in front of them. "It's been several people per week. All under the age of 50, peak of health. Makes you wonder if someone's doing some crazy science experiment or something but there's no one here with that kind of genius."

    "Hello, Emily," the jedi greets, her tone warm. "It's good to see you well." At Li-Ming's question, Lian turns, nodding slightly. "A man, watching us, with ill intentions." Emily helpfully provides a hologram, and the Jedi gestures to it, faintly amused. "I don't think I can sense the same thing you're sensing, but I do feel a pall about this town. A darkness, pressing down. Everyone can feel it, even if they don't realize it." She shifts her stance, lapsing back into silence, but Misaki's mention of parents draws her eyes. One so young that she has to worry about parents, out and throwing herself into danger? She'll have to watch over the girl.

    The police chief provides them with their mystery watcher's identity, and Lian frowns faintly. "I see..." She turns as if to look over her shoulder, in the general direction of the church, then back to Everett. "I can't say what Jeff Lecky was thinking, but I could feel even at that distance that he wasn't happy about us." She considers for a moment, looking at the stack of papers. "...I sense that the cathedral is related to this matter. But so is Lecky. Perhaps I'll investigate him, first." She glances up at Everett, and asks, "Could you direct me to his parents' house?"

    Glancing to the displayed hologram and then to the stack of papers, Li-Ming does her best to take it all in. She'll even go so far as to take up the stack of files and start leafing through, making sure she can put a name to every face at the very least. She'll leave connecting occupations and places of residency to someone else with more of an investigator's mindset. As if the local agency hasn't already.

    Satisfied, she'll hand the files off to whomever else may be interested or place them back on the desk otherwise. "The cathedral?" She does well to keep from sighing. "Perhaps that's where we begin. Unless someone wishes to seek out that young man from earlier?" She sidles back toward a wall, trying not to bang into anyone or anything in her eagerness to get on with things.

    Misaki gets a look. She can hardly judge someone young for wanting to strike out and begin adventuring early. She certainly wouldn't suggest it but all the same, she trusts that the girl is capable enough to be trustworthy. No fuss forthcoming, she does offer, "Once we've all decided what we'll attend to, shall we follow a timeframe and then reconvene to compare findings?"

>> SUMMARY[Li-Ming] >> Betting shit isn't instantly going to hit the fan!

    Emily furrows her brow, and smirks down at Misaki as she mentions parental disapproval. "I don't think you're supposed to say that part out loud," she says dryly. "I mean ... Eudaemons don't have parents, so I might be totally off-base, that's just my gut." Rydia's words get a snicker out of her. "Yeah, yeah," she says. "Tachibana'll make a hero out of you yet, probably!"

    She considers Everett's description, both of Jeff Lecky and the situation, and looks over Li-Ming's shoulder as she goes through the papers. "Hmm ... anyone you know of in general who'd have that kind of genius?" she asks. "Maybe they've wandered over, sight unseen ... I mean, it's what I'd do if I was a supervillain and wasn't ready to show off yet."

    (Lian, once again, might sense Emily's undercurrent of worries and general nervousness in the Force. Her antipathy towards Li-Ming would be more obvious, of course ...)

    Emily grins. "Yeah, the atmosphere here is fairly obvious," she asides to Lian. "The cathedral certainly caught my eye, too. Hmm ..."

    She pauses a moment, and glances over to Misaki, then Rydia, then back to Li-Ming and Lian. "I 'unno," she says. "Anyone got a radio or a phone? I could get in touch, if we split up."

"You say that like you don't want to be here, miss Mist. Yumi-senpai told me she really wants to be a hero, I don't think you should risk yourself if you're not feeling it." Misaki turns towards Rydia, "And no need to thank me, glad to help, and you know I still owed you for saving me." She looks at the files for a bit, but can't quite get anything useful out of them. "I got a phone." She answers Emily, "Shall I go with miss Kamoya so we can get n touch?"

    "What kind of dish is creepypasta?"
    Rydia is... ... She is not from this time period. The internet is not very well known to her.
    As far as she knows, it's some kind of food.
    Briefly she looks over the files. At least she knows how to read.
    "I don't have a phone." She says matter of factly when Emily raises the issue of communication.
    "Just 'Rydia' is fine." She does note to Misaki. "It's fine, I'm used to being dragged into situations like this, way too often. I can help explore the cathedral if it comes down to it."
    She'd probably just be super awkward talking to some menacing kid's mom anyway.

    "Certainly." Officer Everett says with a nod at the request to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Lecky. "Amelia and James Lecky, 108 Devon Street." he says, writing down the address and handing it over to Lian.

    He shrugs at Emily's question. "I mean hell if I know, I'm sure there's plenty around but I'm not the kind of person to be the judge of whether someone's smart enough to do some crazy science thing or not. If anyone like that came here I'd know about it, anyway." Maybe he's a little overconfident, but this -is- a pretty small town. Hard to miss things like that.

    "Heh, yeah that place is a little weird." He says with regard to the cathedral. "Used to be Our Lady Queen of the Universe or some shit like that before the Third Crisis. Chamber of Commerce wanted to restore it and make it into a museum but ran out of funding. Rumor has it there's some kind of old bunker under there, one of the types that kept people alive until the fallout faded away. Be careful if you're gonna head out there, definitely not a safe place. But you all look like you can handle yourselves."

    The chief officer chuckles at Rydia. "Uh, it's not a food, sorry about that. It's just a generic term we use to refer to um....horror fics and such. Urban legends, ghost stories, demon stories, macabre paranormal stuff."

    "I think that'd be the most efficient way," Lian replies to both Li-Ming and Emily, nodding; Misaki receives a pleased smile from the older woman. "That would be wonderful, thank you." Sadly, an offworlder like her has no answer for Rydia's question, so she chooses to just remain silent on the matter, letting Officer Everett answer. There, now she's learned something, too.

    She takes the address from Everett, and gives him a polite nod. "Thank you very much." After a second or two looking at it, the Jedi turns to Misaki. "Shall we go?" They have a destination and a goal - might as well get moving.

    Once they're outside the police station, she'll reach over and offer up the adress to Misaki, asking, "Could I convince you to navigate for me? I'm still a little unfamiliar with how worlds like this lay their cities out." She could suss it out, but leaving it to someone who knows Earthlike cities better than her will probably be a lot faster.

    Li-Ming isn't so guarded that her own emotions are difficult to read but there's a whole lot to unpack. She doesn't feel negatively toward anyone present in particular! There's a lot going on in that head but nothing that dispels any good reason for Emily to feel the way she does! At least the situation with the parents seems handled, so her thoughts turn toward the cathedral.

    "A bunker? Similar to catacombs and such, of course." What she'd been hoping against comes out as true and she does well not to laugh at herself for vainly hoping otherwise. "I believe that will work. We should be able to communicate as needed and retain the ability to meet wherever we like if needed."

    She takes a breath, then looks to Rydia and Emily. "The three of us, then. Shall we?" She offers Chief Everett a parting raise of her hand before starting for the door as well.

    Emily pauses as Misaki seems to jump to the conclusion that Emily is headed towards the cathedral (with Li-Ming, ugh), but she simply shrugs. "Sure," she says. "I'll be in touch betimes! And also I'm getting at the map with my own GPS, in case we need to get from point A to point B in a hurry."

    She ... does a half-chortle at Rydia's question, but makes no comment. "Handling ourselves is something we are definitely good at, yes," she agrees. "Hold up a sec, Li-Ming."

    She concentrates for a moment, and then at a gesture, opens up a staticky portal which leads to a spot directly in front of the cathedral; on this side, it turns black almost immediately (kind of like if the black effect had been something added which had to go through the portal ...) "Let's-a go!" she says, and floats right through.

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> Emily is always thinking with portals.

"Sure, I can navigate." Misaki uses the local wi-fi to download an up to date navigation app for the area, types in the address, and lets her phone do all the hard work of navigating. "Call you if I come across anything important, miss Emily. Good luck, miss Rydia, miss Li-Ming." She puts in one earbud so she can hear her phone's directions, "This way, miss Kamoya."

    Rydia is not blushing when she gets her answer as to what creepypasta is.
    You're blushing!
    Clearing her throat, the last Summoner of Mist rallies well enough though as the group decides how they're going to split up.
    "Alright. Stay safe; I don't need to tell you how off this town feels." She says to Lian and Misaki before following through Emily's portal.

    Everett raises a brow at Li-Ming. "Catacombs? Uhhh...well, I guess--kinda..." he mutters, then shrugs. "Good luck out there, anyway. And thanks again for your help. We normally can deal with issues around here without hassling off-worlders. But I just have a feeling this sort of thing might just be above our paygrade but not quite big enough to get the FBI's attention..."

    Misaki and Lian wouldn't have any trouble locating 108 Devon Street, where the Leckys' home is. It appears to be an average middle-upper class house in a nice neighborhood of the same level. Green lawns, flower beds, quaint little mailboxes. The house itself is covered mostly in light yellow vinyl siding with white corners and white doors. There is a 2-car garage driveway that slopes down to the street, with a mid-sized SUV parked on the right side of it. It is evening by now, and the sun has just set, so it does appear someone is home as they can see lights in some of the windows.

    Emily's portal pops the rest of the group immediately over to the old cathedral they had seen earlier on the edge of town. It is every bit as creepy as Chief Everett had made it sound, especially now that it was getting dark. A set of double doors are immediately visible at the front of the building, cracked and hanging partially open. A large stained glass window right above the doors is also cracked in many places and even has holes in it. Moss and vines are growing up the side all around the structure, and old, abandoned construction equipment litters the grounds. Li-Ming and anyone else who has magical prowess can definitely sense that presence much more strongly here than earlier at the police station. And it's coming from underground.

    With Misaki leading the way, Lian is content to settle into an almost meditative state of mind; submerging herself in the Force, just a bit, to feel the general vibe of the town as they walk. An old habit, simply letting it guide her, speak to her. She's not unaware of her surroundings, though, and as they approach the Lecky household, she gives the place an appraising, careful lookover. "Mm. Nice and clean, at least." She'll lead the way up to the front door and knock; assuming there's an answer, the woman greets them with a polite bow of her head. "Good evening, my apologies if we're interrupting. My name is Lian Kamoya. We're offworlders, and we're investigating recent disappearances on behalf of Officer Everett. I think you might be able to help us."

    Oh. Fair enough then. Li-Ming turns and waits for Emily, looking on as that portal is set. She takes a moment to look at it really hard, more out of curiosity than anything as Emily and then Rydia file through. "Pardon us." Again, she offers a parting gesture before stepping through to Emily's chosen destination.

    The Cathedral gets a wary eye as her perception of the latent magic spikes. She focuses on it, trying to get a more definitive read before simply gesturing with her right hand. "I suppose the first order is getting inside and finding a way down. Everything I'm sensing seems to be below us."

    That said, she'll start forward. She doesn't bother with a weapon for now, opting to proceed carefully. She may be confident of her own resilience but being smashed or getting someone else crushed beneath the debris of a rickety old building isn't on her to-do. "Whatever it is, despite thus far being somewhat obfuscated, I can tell this magic is malign in nature. Be on guard, both of you."

    As darkness draws near, she prepares a bead of magical light and begins to shine it about in search of a path down.

    Emily nods as if in approval. "I can just about sense something," she says. "My sensors aren't all that detailed, but now that you've said that ... yeah, that conclusion makes sense."

    She floats off the ground and hovers forward alongside Li-Ming. "I won't have a handle on teleporting around, though, unless it's obvious what the destination looks like," she adds. "I can't teleport through a wall if I don't know what's on the other side. You got anything, Rydia?"

As it begins to get dark, Misaki gets out a bright torch to make sure has ample light to see where she's going. When they arrive, she stands next and slightly behind Lian, and if anyone opens the door, follows the introduction with, "And I am Misaki Sakai. Can we come in?"

    "Nothing solid. It's just... Here. Below us." Rydia replies to Emily as they emerge at the cathedral, the mists that linger around the green-haired young lady swirl as though agitated, before calming vaguely, as she follows alongside Li-Ming and Emily.
    "And it's bad."

    A woman, who is likely Amelia Lecky, answers the door. She looks to be in her late forties. She smiles politely as the two strangers explain the reason for their presence, although Lian might be able to detect a growing sense of unease when the topic of the odd disappearances comes up. "Sure, of course. Come in, please. Amelia Lecky." She says, offering a handshake before stepping aside to allow them in, and invites them over to have a seat in the living room, where a man who looks maybe slightly older than her is sitting watching a football game. "This is my husband, James." The man looks up and turns off the TV as the introduction is made. He nods. "Please, have a seat. Anything to drink?" he offers.

    The sunset indeed goes quickly, and by the time Emily, Rydia, and Li have ventured inside, it is mostly dark out. But the magical light provided by Li does help. The group would find themselves in a large sanctuary with a vaulted ceiling and stained glass on both sides. The room is lined with old wooden pews that are partially rotted, and on far wall is a series of pipes that must have once been part of a large organ, though many of them are falling off now. In a corner of the room near the pipe organ is a trapdoor that leads to stairs going down. However, they'd suddenly hear some noise and lights from outside. Headlights from an approaching vehicle, the sound of the engines rumbling up and then cutting. Voices of indistinct conversation, too.

    Lian takes the handshake, and then steps aside herself so that Misaki can enter first. She follows behind, politely leaving her staff, cloak and bag at the door; her outfit is sleeveless, relatively simple and rugged, well-suited to someone who spends time on the road. "James, Amelia, a pleasure to meet you both. Water would be fine, thank you." She settles in, seated comfortably, but without a slouch or other overly-informal posture, one elbow brushing against a cylinder clipped to her belt on the right side.

    "To allay any of your concerns, we're not here because we suspect anyone. More a matter of gathering information. It's my personal belief that the cathedral may be involved in whatever business is going on; Everett recalled that your son tends to visit there on occasion. Of course, if either of you have seen anyone or anything suspicious around there, that would be helpful as well."

Misaki prepares to take off her shoes before she remembers this is a western place and people don't do that here, and awkwardly puts her foot back down. "A pleasure. Green tea if you have it, water if you don't." She sits down, and takes out her phone. "I hope you don't mind if I take notes while we talk?"

    Seems like your typical old structure so far. Of course, upon evidence of the trap door she calls attention to it by lowering her light until it's almost touching the spot. "Of course it's just out in the open. Not as obvious as a glowing crater but I'll take it."

    As she moves to examine the door, though, the rumble and lights of an approaching vehicle draw her attention. "Of course." So, she steps back and quenches her light, stepping carefully to avoid standing directly on the trap door while regarding the way in thoughtfully.

    "That could be the boy the local marshall spoke of." Or anyone else. She might MIGHT recognize the engine note of the pickup from before but she's really not well versed with combustion engines in general. A quick look to her two companions, "Well then. It's up to us now how this plays out. Do we remain out in the open or try to avoid notice and a likely confrontation?"

    Even she would rather know more of what's happening before she wades in with all unrestrained fury and violence at her disposal. She's not a monster! Right?

    Rydia at least knows what a car is. And when one pulls up outside the cathedral and more than one voice on approach, she brings a finger to her lips in response to Li-Ming and a 'cut the light' gesture..
    "Whyt!" She whispers in a hiss...
    Causing the unnatural fog that lingers around her to condense and thicken and spread across the inside of the cathedral as she...
    Ducks under a pew and hopes the thick mist will help keep the group from being spotted.
    Creepy churches always have strange mist anyway, right?
    Right?

    Emily nods. "Yeah, that's a pretty obvious way to go in," she says. "I mean, the Chief told us that there was stuff underground, and you two corroborated ... shit." She turns around as they hear the approach of the others.

    And then in a swirl of silvery nanomachines, a falchion sword appears in her hands, and she moves it to Li-Ming's neck. "We're gonna do this quietly, without direct confrontation if we can avoid it," she says in a quiet voice, her body transforming into a perfectly black silhouette. "Especially without your characteristic form of violence. Got it? Cut the light, and let's scoot over to the side where it's more shadowy, and I'll ..." Ah, Rydia is already hiding. "... hide both of us."

    ... She leaves out the fact that she has all of her Capacitor Seals enabled at the moment, and thus doesn't necessarily have the strength to swing a sword very hard if Li-Ming decides to turn this into a real fight.

    "Certainly." James gets up momentarily to go over to the kitchen and fetch a glass of water for Lian and green tea for Misaki, which is just a few feet away in this open-concept living area. "Ice or no ice?" he asks as he gets out the glasses from a cabinet.

    Amelia nods, still seated on the sofa across from the two of them. "Of course, of course." she says, although that sense of unease only increases when Lian mentions Jeff. There is also a bit of frustration added in as well. "Well..." she begins, sighing a little. "I can only assume you're talking about Jeff. Yes, he's always been a bit of a loner. But when he was in 6th grade he started hanging out with these kids who loved urban legends." she shrugs. "We were happy for it, to be honest--we'd been trying to get him to find some friends his age for the longest time. Or even to get out of the house at all other than going to school. And it all seemed pretty harmless. But then they started sneaking out to that cathedral at night, and no matter how much we grounded him he'd always find a way to get out there." she frowns. "I'm worried about him, to be honest. We thought he'd have college plans or something, but lately it seems like going out there with his friends is all he even cares about anymore."
    Over in the kitchen, James is working on the green tea. "Yeah, seems to care a whole lot about it but won't tell us what exactly it is that's out there that he's so obsessed with. I mean, I've heard the rumors about the old bunkers and lost technology in them and all, but those are -centuries- old, can't imagine how they could still be functional." he adds.

    Meanwhile, at the cathedral, the group decides just in time to go with the stealthy approach, filling the room with a magical mist to obscure their presence. The voices come closer, and the door creaks open. Sure enough, in the lead is the man they saw earlier, Jeff Lecky. But he is also accompanied by a group of at least ten others, who all appear to be around his age. He stops though, frowning at the odd mist.
    "Wait, something's off." he says.
    "What, cuz it's foggy? I mean creepy abandoned church. Of course it's foggy. And not like it hasn't been foggy before." Another member of the group says, it seems to be a young woman.
    Regardless, Jeff flips a flashlight on, and starts searching for the intruders. But that mist really makes a flashlight kind of useless, so he just keeps frowning and moves to the trapdoor, opening it and heading down, the rest filing after him.

    Lian listens to the parental duo attentively, her expression remaining relaxed and neutral. She sips idly at her water, mulling over the information as it's given. It sounds a lot like the typical 'troubled young man', perhaps getting into something over his head... except that there's something about rumors, and lost technology. "You'd be surprised how long a well-built piece of tech can be functional. Tell me more about these rumors?" she asks, deciding to pursue that venue.

    Just when she's learning to trust! To leave others to their devices and do the smartest possible thing, Li-Ming is rewarded with a conjured sword to her neck. Her jaw muscles tighten and she speaks quietly in a clearly angered hiss, "Were I so inclined there's unlikely to be anything either of you could do to prevent it." That said, she turns, inviting the touch of that blade against her neck while bodily pushing toward Emily, amethyst fire in her eyes. "I would ask no less of you should I raise a hand in such a manner against the innocent."

    Less angered by the clear threat than the questioning of her own somewhat off-color morality, she hisses through bared teeth, "Be certain that I would do the same for you." Now it's time to shut up and let the tension hang in the air while a gaggle of teenagers come in and start looking around as if they already suspect intruders.

    At least being uncomfortably close to someone makes it easier to be hidden by them when they decide to shift focus and provide concealment. They'll have to have a conversation later.

    Rydia's mist gets a soft, grateful sight. Between Emily's disguise and Rydia's shroud of mist, it seems even their flashlights are ineffective. Now to sit still long enough.

    One of the reasons they couldn't find Emily and Li-Ming: they were up against a wall, and Emily had shapeshifted some camouflage to cover the two of them.

    As soon as Jeff's group is all down the trapdoor, the camouflage fades, and Emily is still in that black silhouette form. "I'll hold you to that, if I ever commit gruesome murder," she says, in a voice like poisoned honey. She lowers the sword. "Releasing Capacitor Seals 3 and 2." Three auras appear around her: one gold, one silver, and one pearlescent. "... and 1," she adds quickly, and all three shatter.

    ... If Lian were here, she'd be able to sense it easily: what Emily feels for Li-Ming is nothing short of hatred.

    She then regards the trapdoor. "Shall we?"

"I've seen people affected by mind-altering environmental effects before. Have you noticed anything else about his behavior that has changed since he started going to this cathedral?" Misaki asks, "Did he say anything about why he was going to the cathedral?"

    With the group passing through- albeit somewhat suspiciously, Rydia rises to her feet once Jeff and his crew have passed, the mist thinning out and returning to lazily float around her.
    "Will you two quit it." She hisses at Emily and Li-Ming. "We should be following them." She motions for the trapdoor.
    She'll let the other two head down first, though.

    "Between the wars that used to plague this world, bunkers designed to withstand a nuclear warhead or two were constructed deep underground, because people were afraid that the entire surface would become uninhabitable due to the fallout. Of course, there's the problem of resources, so the facilities were equipped with some kind of stasis field technology." James explains, coming back over with Misaki's green tea and setting it before her on the coffee table. "At least we think, but with how many times over everything civilized was destroyed, the technology has been lost for the most part."
    At the question about Jeff, Amelia sighs again. "Well, that's just the thing. He never seems to want to tell us anything about why's so obsessed with that place, other than just wanting to hang out with his friends. Ever since he started going out there, he's become increasingly closed off to us. Hardly even eats with us any more..." she tells them, looking sad.

    On the other side of the trapdoor, grey stone steps descend toward a door at the bottom. It seems rather out of place, in this old cathedral, but it seems to be glass double doors into a small, circular room that is, oddly, brightly lit in contrast to the rest of this place. Those who come from more modern worlds would probably recognize that this is an elevator. A holographic image of what looks like a woman appears in front of them as they approach, the light coming out from a panel in the side wall. "Greetings! I am Avina, and welcome to Vault 209A-1. An authorization code is required to access this facility."

    So now that that's out in the air, now that the kids have crept past and we've collectively let out a breath, Li-Ming is still uncomfortably close to Emily. She disengages as carefully as she needs to, dipping her head in silent apology to Rydia. Far as she's aware, this is coming out of nowhere when there's something far more critical at hand.

    "Let the others know where we are and what's happening. We may not be able to once we go below."

    With that out of the way, after giving the gang of kids some time to get further ahead, she steps forth and plunges into the trap door, suspending herself with a quiet pulse of levitation magic before touching down. She reveals her light again, enough to wink up at the other two and give them a glimpse of the depth of that first step downward.

    The approach to the room, the holographic helper.. This all just sours her mood further. "You're hardly what I thought we'd encounter here." She stands aside, allowing Emily or Rydia a shot at dealing with... That.

    The prospect of a nuclear holocaust is the first thing to get a reaction out of Lian. The thought of a world where humanity would blow themselves to oblivion before ever reaching the stars is... troubling, to say the least. It's only a faint little look of disquiet, but it probably speaks volumes.

    The troubled look is gone almost as soon as it appears, though, and she's focusing on the information about technology that might be found down in one of those bunkers. "I see. So pre-war people or machines might be found down there? Are any countries from these wars perhaps known to use bioweapons?" She gives Misaki a silent look, then nods towards the girl's phone - this might be worth passing on.

    Emily takes a deep breath, even though she's a robot and it doesn't actually do anything. "Right," she mutters back to Rydia, genuinely embarrassed. She transforms into an auburn-haired woman with one pair of eyes, wearing a midnight-blue business dress, and her sword is gone now. "Uh. Let's, uh ... let's go." She opens and closes her mouth a few times, and then in a low voice, she mutters, "Sorry."

    She texts Misaki: << Jeff came by. We're about to head underground. Dunno if we'll get a signal once we're down there. >>

    She pauses at the elevator as the hologram appears. "Hey, Avina!" she says, with what is really obviously a failed attempt to sound cheerful. "How's it going? Did you know that in the world I'm from, it's the year 3521, but the technology took a completely different track from what this world looks like?" She's trying to figure out whether Avina is a fully sapient AI like Emily herself, which could be useful as far as persuasion goes if they can persuade her that Jeff is pulling shenanigans, or if she's relatively simple and literal, which would make it easier to fool her.

    Such as by extending a shadowy mass out to the wall in order to hopefully obscure Avina's vision, and opening a staticky portal a dozen feet below the floor of the elevator, directly into the elevator shaft.

"In my world, around seventy five years ago, my country was bombed by the United States of America. Two bombs. Two cities gone." Misaki tells Lian, "In the period that followed, the United States and its great rival, the Soviet Union, built enough of these bombs to destroy mankind several times over and have a radioactive ash cloud covering the entire planet for years. Fortunately, it didn't happen, but we came close a few times."

The girl looks around, "Seems like this world got part of the way there,." The girl begins to compose a text to Emily.

M: upd8 place is nuke bunker
M: mebbe old weps, b careful

Right as she sends those texts, she gets Emily's text and whispers to Lian. "He's there, they're going in. Think we should follow?"

    With Li-Ming and Emily properly wrangled, Rydia proceeds into the trapdoor with them.
    Only to be greeted by the hologram of a woman.
    "..."
    She looks to the mage and to the Eudaemon.
    "I have no clue what the code is." She says bluntly.
    Don't look at Rydia for this one, folks.

    James shrugs. "I've no idea, on bioweapons honestly. A lot of historical records were destroyed in the Crises. But yes, there could be technology or even people from all those years ago down there. The facilities were left in the care of a VI that was supposed to wake everyone up once radiation levels had fallen to a safe quantity on the surface. How it monitored all that I've not a clue. But I assume that's how we managed not to go extinct through all of that."
    Amelia nods, listening to Misaki's story. "Well I'm glad your world managed to avoid all that, but it seems not all of us were as fortunate." she says with a sigh. She kind of noticed them whispering about 'him' but doesn't want to be rude even though she has a feeling about it...

    Avina seems to be quite simple. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. An authorization code is required to access this facility." she repeats. "Would you like me to tell you about Vault Safehouse program?" Emily's trick works like a charm, as the VI doesn't seem to even be aware that she just bypassed the elevator entirely.

    Lian leans a little to look at the screen of Misaki's phone, and frowns. After a second or two, she says, "You go. I'm going to head to the police station and tell Officer Everett what's going on." She finishes her water, then smoothly slides up to her feet. "My apologies for leaving so suddenly, Mr. and Mrs. Lecky. The information you gave us was quite helpful." She'll collect her things and be off, headed back to the police station.

    So this holographic machine person doesn't seem particularly aware if she's not picking up on what Emily's up to. Or maybe it is? She's not really the one to judge that. So, boldly, she makes for the portal. Seeking to simply step through, fall through or otherwise change locations according to the will and capability of someone that potentially wants to kill her. What could possibly go wrong?!

    Whatever the case may be, she's demonstrating a frankly shocking degree of trust or she's about as cavalier about her own life as she is about any given villain's.

    Greeted by nothing but empty space and rushing air, she hisses in annoyance and again suspends herself with levitation magic. She drifts to one side of the portail, waiting patiently for one of her two companions to come through. Something will need doing after that quiet moment of treachery.

"Thank you for your time." Misaki nods to the couple, quickly drinks her tea so as to not be rude, and sends a text.

M: omw

As soon as she's outside, she transforms and runs towards the cathedral at top speed, making it there quite quickly, generating an orb of light above her head to banish the darkness as she looks for where people are.

    Emily, not knowing how fast Misaki is moving, texts back: << Holy crap. Need a lift? Step outside, I'll open a portal in front of the house in a moment. >>

    She pauses. "... Now that's a thing," she says, retracting the shadows and glancing over to Rydia and Li-Ming. "Just got a text from Misaki, this -- Li-Ming, no! That's --" Her voice is surprisingly urgent and she leans into the portal, hand outstretched. "-- oh. You can fly." She ... actually looks relieved, in a trying-to-play-it-off-as-annoyance sort of way.

    She glances back out to Rydia, then back into the portal. "Anyway, like I was saying, this place is a nuclear bunker." She remembers who she's talking to. "A haven against bombs which are individually capable of destroying an entire city, and leaving an ... effect ... over the region which would make it dangerous just to go there for quite some time, if you have any amount of flesh and aren't protected. And there may still be weapons here. I'm gonna try to get Misaki and Lian over here, once we literally get to the bottom of this."

    She gives the hologram a thumbs-up. "Tell us about it in excruciating detail, Avina!" she says, and then transforms in a swirl of nanomachines into a small hovercar and slips through the portal, hovering on the other side for Rydia to get on. "BYE!"

    Emily opens a portal.
    Nothing new there, but Li-Ming walks on through and nearly falls. Rydia winces when the mage steps through and even Emily sounds urgent but... Well it's a problem solved when it turns out Li-Ming can fly.
    The only problem is Rydia of Mist can NOT fly.
    It is a problem solved when it turns out Emily can... Turn into a hover car.
    "Huh."
    Rydia steps on through. Between Li-Ming and Emily she should make it down safely.
    In theory.

    Amelia and James nod as Lian and Misaki take their leave. "Thank you for helping out with this, I just hope you can bring Jeff back to us. And I mean back to his old self..." Amelia says as they make their way out.

    Misaki gets to the cathedral site whether by sprinting top speed or via portal courtesy of Emily, and would find herself greeted by much the same scene as the others were, only it is much darker by now and the moon is out. Also, there is a Ford F150 and a few other cars parked outside the building.

    Emily, Rydia, and Li would indeed find themselves falling down a shaft once they travel through the portal. Avina starts droning on at the elevator, not even appearing to be aware that her audience had left. Down they go into the bunker Emily was talking about. And that sense of foreboding magic would become stronger and stronger the farther they went. Finally, they'd reach the bottom. In front of them now are the closed doors to the elevator, and they can hear what sounds like some kind of chanting coming through from the other side. Now it's just a matter of getting these doors open, which shouldn't be a problem...only the question is whether they'll decide to attempt keeping up the stealth, or just bust in guns blazing.

    Hovering takes relatively little effort. Hovering and supporting someone else as they pop through the portal is a bit more but Emily's convenient ability to take on the form of a hovercar? Perfect. She'll help Rydia into that vehicle before she drifts back.

    "So, is the remainder of our entourage on the way?" Of course, she notes the momentary concern that was expressed when she initially stepped through to risk falling or whatever other mechanisms may have been in the way but she's hardly going to goad about it. More important matters.

    "The level of magic is intensifying." She hopes it's only because we're getting closer and not because the teens from earlier are involved in a ritual of some sort.

    Although, nearing the bottom and drifting into ear shot of the chanting beyond the elevator's external doors dashes her hopes. "So then. How shall we proceed? Quietly may work for a time though I have no illusions that it will continue to work long." In her experience, chanting has meant cults. Which has meant conjured horrors and death. Her demeanor is grim; all she can do is hope to be wrong.

Misaki is quick, so by the time she notices Emily's text she's already nearly at the Cathedral.

M: @church, alone. Miss Lian bck 2 cop

The portal is a bit disorienting, but once she's with the group she notices. "Okay, I don't know what's causing it, but this feels a lot like the distortions caused by a youma. Let me focus a bit and I think I should be able to trace the source."

    Emily opens up a staticky portal from the cathedral to their current location, letting Misaki in. "Yes," her voice answers Li-Ming from the hovercar, a headlight blinking in time to her words.

    She pauses. "Yeah, I got a bad feeling about this," she says. "I ... can just portal us in, probably. I mean I could say 'what's the worst thing that can happen', but we just established that this is a bunker which may in fact contain the very weapons it was created to defend against, and now there's chanting and stuff like that, soooooo I am a li'l bit more inclined towards caution at the moment ..."

    "Mmmmm..."
    Reaching the bottom of the elevator shaft doesn't have Rydia feeling any better. Especially when Misaki rejoins the party and announces that she's feeling something way too similar to a youma.
    "They sounded like a bunch of kids." She points out, which is why she hasn't reached for her dagger once this whole time. "What could they be doing down here? ... Aside from something they probably don't understand completely." She mutters. "Continuing quietly is probably for the best, for now." Uttered as she attempts to quietly open the door.

    The room on the other side of the doors is much different from the half-crumbling cathedral topside. Instead of stone and marble and brick, they are instead surrounded by walls of titanium steel alloy. Along the far wall is what looks like a large energy field of some kind (Misaki could figure this is the stasis field tech the Leckys had been talking about) and inside of it is...something glowing very brightly. Actually, it looks sort of like a person. A being? Anyway, it's just floating there, motionless. Li-Ming probably can tell this is an angel. Not just any angel but specifically an angel either from her world or one very similar to it! 
    As for the rest of the area, it is full of machinery, especially around the field. There is some kind of hatch that must have been used for putting things--or likely people--into the field or pulling them out. There is also a panel similar to the one they saw in front of the elevator with a little projector for the Avina hologram. The technologically-inclined might be able to also identify a power generator that appears to be built into the ceiling in front of the field. 
    Finally, what the group had feared the most is revealed. On the floor in front of the stasis field, Jeff Lecky and his group of friends are kneeling in a circle, chanting a strange demonic rhythm. Inside this circle is another circle--this one is made of the people who had gone missing from the town. Those who had examined the missing persons reports at the police station would likely recognize them from the the photos. They are clamped to metal berths, alive and terrified. A mist swirls around them, not the one that Rydia had used earlier to obscure the group's presence, but a red and black vile thing that seems to have a life of its own. 
    As the chanting grows louder and more aggressive, the mist seems to solidify in places, ethereal looking blades suddenly jumping out and slashing the victims and causing their blood to flow freely. They gasp in pain and horror, some of them screaming. But instead of just falling to the floor, the blood floats out of them, mixing into the mist and rising up above their heads. It seems to be coalescing into a single sphere, growing larger and larger. The reality warping magic is definitely real now!
    It should be noted that despite this some of the chanters are actually starting to look a little apprehensive as their victims begin to wail in agony, as if beginning to think maybe this has gone a bit too far. But they continue on despite this. Lecky, however...he looks...utterly possessed. Almost inhuman. It's rather disturbing, really. 
    

    Rather than sit and listen to the chanting, she watches Rydia go for the door. Just a few moments of that and she prepares her own measure to meet that goal of stealth. As Rydia leans into the door, she lets fly with a little spell to dampen any noise or light that might creep through the gap as the doors slide apart.

    What she sees as the doors edge apart almost makes her magic falter altogether. An angel? Here?

    Recognizing the threat to the trapped people, even to the fools in their chanting circle, she waits only as long as it takes for the doors to be open far enough to permit entry. With that, she storms the room and releases her light spell again. It flashes as it spends all of it's energy in a single pulse, then she's circling at a trot and taking aim at the mist.

    The spell she lets fly with next is decisively less harmless, though against a barely corporeal form it may only be a half measure; a dark beam of hissing cold stabs from her outstretched fingertip, staining the alloy walls and whatever else it touches with rime and frost. The rain of frozen blood crystals may be enough to bother the chanting out of the youth ritualists but of course more help would be warranted.

    Especially if we want any of the people here to leave alive.

    In a swirl of nanomachines, Emily transforms back to her lavender-skinned demoness form, and frowns at the situation before her.

    "Hmmmm." She frowns, and glances between Rydia and Misaki. "... you guys see that generator in front of the field suspending that angel? Uh, this thing." She projects a small hologram of the generator. "Go after that. I've got a hilarious idea for distracting them." She slips back out into the elevator shaft and starts to open a small staticky portal directly above her head.

    The other end? Directly in the center of the magic circle, from which glowing white Lunar Tear petals begin to waft. They're accompanied by the intro to Caramelldansen. Doot doo-oooo, yeah yeah yeah yeahhhhh ...

This is a problem. Misaki really wants to save those people. She has no clue how. She glances towards the others, her inexperience showing on her face. Emily helpfully provides instruction, and she gets her guns out, putting the barrels together to fire two weak, thin lasers until they land on the generator, at which point she ups the intensity. A lot. The strongest she's ever made her lasers. She wants this to end now. Not in ten minutes.

>> GAME >> Misaki Sakai spends an Edge for: Overcharging my laz0rs

    Into the next room and it's a horror show. Even with Li-Ming's muffling spell, Rydia gasps quite loudly. But it looks like Lecky and his cohorts haven't noticed the group just yet. Which is all well and good, but... Whatever this ritual is clearly must be stopped. And fast.
    It's as Misaki goes for the target Emily points out, Rydia bites her lip.
    A distraction is all well and good but something a little more concrete may be necessary here as she reaches out... Channeling her strength and magic, she calls for something...
    And somewhere... Somewhere deep, deep, in the depths of the Feymarch... Something listens...

    "MINDFLAYER!" Rydia calls its name sharply. "Rend them insensate with your otherworldly wrath!"

    And it comes.

    The floor in front of Rydia splits suddenly- a pillar of non-euclidean design rises from the earth, etched with runes, sigils and symbology that strain the mind and blur the vision to look at, as a ceature with purple skin and milky white eyes shifts where it stands atop the pillar. Facial tentacles twitch briefly as it turns its hideous gaze upon the chanters and declares in a booming, guttural voice...

    "Ia ia Cthulhu ftagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

    A wave if its staff and a flash of stunning, sickening, green light floods the room to render any who stand against Rydia and her allies stunned and disoriented.

    All at once, the scene erupts into chaos. First, Li-Ming charges in with a brilliant flash of light, momentarily startling the cultists and victims alike. However, before they even get a chance to recover from that, she starts in with freezing bolts of magic at the bloody mist, causing the liquid parts of it to crystalize and fall to the floor, disrupting the odd sphere that had been in the process of coalescing in the air. 
    Then, Emily simply teleports into the middle of it all, some kind of glowing energy coming out of her. With all of this going on, the cultists don't even notice Misaki shooting at the generator. At first, nothing seems to happen, but as she increases the intensity of her blaster bolts, it begins to spark and smoke. Avina's voice suddenly comes out of the panel near the stasis field. 

    "Warning: Core reactor coolant chambers breached. Critical temperature in 5 minutes, 14 seconds. Initiating evacuation procedures." 

    At this point, hopefully no one is still in the elevator shaft, because the elevator suddenly shoots down to the bottom as fast as it can without damaging itself. And the stasis field suddenly shuts down, the being inside slumping to the floor as the thing previously keeping him afloat disappears.
    
    ...And then there was the Mind-Flayer. Which makes quite the entrance. Another light fills the room, this one green, and it renders all the cultists stunned. They flop to the floor, and don't get up.
    Well, that is, except for Jeff Lecky. After a few seconds, he actually gets up with an inhumane level of speed, his eyes glowing a malicious red. If he -almost- looked like a monster before, he's definitely looking more and more monstrous and less human now. He gasps and doubles over, grunting and groaning until he finally lets loose with a guttural roar, spikes sprouting from his skin and claws from his fingers and toes. His skin turns a brackish red, and bat-like wings burst out of his back. In the end, he has transformed into a rather hideous looking thing, on par even with that Mind Flayer that just came out of the ground.
    Transformation complete, he immediately leaps up and charges at the biggest target--the thing on top of that pillar!
    

    Perfect. All Hell breaks loose as soon as she's through and it seems to have pitched firmly into the favor of the right side for a change. She's about to rake the crowd with a stinging lash of her beam when Rydia's conjuration draws her eyes.

    She scowls at the thing, it's foul speech and even fouler appearance but the effect is a net positive so she opts to focus elsewhere. The lad from before, who she remembers from the hologram. Changing. Becoming a monster. Demon.

    She's seen the effect before. From someone she rather enjoyed being around. Someone who didn't deserve to die; especially not like that. "No!" Maybe it's not too late? Her demeanor is fixed and stoic but inside she's screaming.

    When the youth turned demon lunges for the mind flayer, she attempts to snatch the monster out of the air with a sphere shaped blast of raw arcane energy - enough jolt to knock it off course and perhaps well clear of the victims still strapped down.

    Perhaps she can beat the thing out of the child? Is that possible? She sprints forth, heedless of anything ELSE going wrong in the room and leads her charge with a blast of electricity. Is she really going to try and tackle it? Or grapple with it?!

>> SUMMARY[Li-Ming] >> Seeing red. Can a wizard really go berserk?!

Misaki gulps when Rydia summons that thing and looks away. When she looks again, there's a demon. She doesn't know what to do about them, and runs towards the crowd instead, trying to see if any of the victims of the ritual can still be saved.

    With Caramelldansen still blaring, the portal widens, and out rises a stripper pole, with Emily ... suddenly realizing that there's a fourteen-year-old present, and hopping off it to do the Charleston around it instead as she becomes visible.

    She suddenly comes to a stop as she hears that announcement, and furrows her brow as the song slows down and stops. "... Okay, that ... might not have been the best idea," she says flatly. "We have to get everyone outta here right now! Uh ... yeah, Li-Ming, you hold that guy off for now." She concentrates, and opens a ten-foot-wide staticky portal which leads some ways away from the cathedral, then runs over, conjures a few more pairs of arms, and starts picking up people and carrying them out. "This way!" she calls out to Misaki.

    ... She can't move very fast encumbered like this, but whatever!

    The cultists drop, stunned. This is good, as the Mindflayer and its pilar begin to recede back into the ground from whence it came. By the time Lecky is upon the Mindflayer, the summoned monster is already gone...
    Which means Rydia is forced to tumble aside lest she be assaulted in its place.
    Rolling away with a grunt, the mists that swirl around her shift and coalesce... Gathering into the form of a great white dragon made of mist-- which lashes its scything talon claws at the youth-turned-monster.

    Jeff Lecky-turned-demon was on its way to attack the mind flayer when Li-Ming blasts it out of the air with a bolt of arcane magic. It howls and hits the floor, rolling a couple of times. It starts to get back up, only to be met by a faceful of electricity. It staggers and jerks about as the jolts course through its body, but it actually recovers fairly quickly as it finds Li-Ming actually on top of itself. It lashes out at her with everything it has--which is mostly teeth and claws. And it's -strong-. But it's a good thing Rydia has Li's back, as it falters again when that white misty dragon tears at its back, ripping fleshing and sending black demon blood spilling onto the floor.

    Misaki and Emily would find that the victims are indeed still alive, although not for very long if they don't get medical attention soon as they are bleeding badly. Getting them out of their restraints shouldn't be a difficult matter, but it will take some time. Good thing Rydia and Li seem to have the demon well occupied for now. There's also the matter of the other cultists--fortunately, they are still human, if shocked and traumatized. It's up to the two of them to decide whether or not to save them.
        

Misaki begins helping with the shackles and getting people out, but she takes one brief break once out with the first batch to call the officer they met earlier. She's just saying what's going on and hanging up once he's got the message, "Found the victims, they're alive but seriously hurt. Send medical help."

Then back in, using her guns to help break the shackles where it's safe. She prioritizes the victims over the other cultists, but if she can manage, she will get each and every one of them out.

    Emily conjures up blades -- blades which aren't even connected to her body, they hover around her -- and simply cuts through the restraints of the prisoners. She transforms into a hovering robot bristling with platforms and stretchers with which to pick up the prisoners -- and, after only a brief hesitation, the cultists as well -- before trundling back over to the portal.

    "Ugh I am way over my carrying capacityyyyy!" she whines, before carefully depositing them on the ground. She then dives back in for the next batch.

    Another round of this, before she pauses, and then floats over to the unconscious angel. "Hey," she says, poking him with a platform. "Are you dead?"

    Hardly a physical match for a demon of just about any class, Li-Ming heedlessly charges in and hurls herself bodily into the thing even as Whyt rakes the creature and sends it reeling. Her right hand seemingly begins to sprout a crystalline layer about it that she drives for the thing's face even while grasping at the monster's throat with her harshly gauntleted left. "Someone revive the angel! It-" Another harsh blow, some of the conjured diamond skin already chipping away from her fist. "It can save the boy. NOW."

    To help herself and ultimately the host of the demon, she hopes, she follows her initial assault up with a floor-hugging blast of frost. If it works, it might anchor the thing in place for a few seconds. She keeps trying to pile on blows before she focuses on the demon's face, her own twisted with rage. "Coward! Wretched filth! You prey upon children? I curse the toss pot you were spawned in! Leave the child!" Another blow. This time, the mineral carapice protecting her hand fails and she drips blood from torn knuckles.

    Rydia will... Let Li-Ming handle the demon.
    "Whyt!" She calls out to the dragon and motions at the still-stunned cultists.
    Whom the dragon starts gathering up as best he can before making a break for the exit!

    Misaki's call to emergency services is as effective as it gets. Within minutes, sirens can be heard as several ambulances and police cars arrive on the scene to pick up the injured townspeople--and even some of the cultists who need help as well. Everett is with them, and is sure to quickly show his gratitude before she heads back down into the chaos. If the group makes it out of this, he's definitely going to see to it they are rewarded.

    Emily's poking doesn't seem to do anything for the time being, as the angel remains motionless on the floor. It has a lot of armor on, maybe that wasn't hard enough?

    The demon cackles at Li-Ming as she blasts it with ice, temporarily pinning it to down as she just continues to wail on it. Breaking the ice, it jumps to its feet. "You still hold on to hope for the pitiful creature? Ha! No, it is far too late for him! Not even the Archangel can save him now." With that, it swings its clawed tail at her, attempting to send her off of her feet. 

    With all of the victims from the town accounted for, Whyt is able to grab most of the other young cultists and whisk them out the portal... but there is one last young woman, still cowering in a corner behind some of the machinery. She's the youngest of them all, it seems. She can't be more than seventeen. Avina's voice emits from the panel again. "Warning: Critical temperature reached. Reactor overload in 10, 9, 8..."
    
    It is made quite clear that any of them could easily jump through the portal in time, saving themselves, but grab the girl and -then- jump through? That's another question entirely.

    Emily hovers there indecisively for the first two seconds of the countdown. I am a Greater Eudaemon, she thinks. I have more power than anyone else here. I can solve this problem!."

    In a swirl of nanomachines, her platforms are replaced with ... robotic tentacles? They seem to be kind of stretchy as one of them wraps around the angel. "Misaki! Rydia!" she calls out, charging towards the portal. "Grab the girl! Just shove her forward!"

    And with that, she wraps the tentacles around Li-Ming and the demon, pulling them along like bungee cords, and leaps through the portal and closes it. The next instant, she opens another one directly behind the girl and ahead of Rydia, prepared to close it the second they're through.

>> GAME >> Emily Nyx spends an Edge for: Grabbing people and then rearranging portals in a VERY short amount of time.

Misaki is very quick. As soon as Emily calls out for that, she rushes towards the girl to push her through. No hesitation, no thinking. Get everyone out of here.

    The tail? Right, this thing has other appendages to attack with. She takes the blow and tumbles, responding with a swipe of her hand that conjures a criss-crossing cloud of slicing spectral blades to possibly remove that particular problem. Along with anything else that the former teen cultist might risk against it.

    That blow also serves to uncloud her awareness. Right, the facility seems to he experiencing some kind of malfunction like caused by- she can only speculate that it's the generator-device-thing that Misaki damaged before. "Foolish creature."

    Then she's grabbed. She thinks nothing of gripping the appendage wrapped around her and only stops shy of sending a crashing jolt of electricity through it in response. On her way out, she glances aside and gestures for the generator. They said it would make the area uninhabitable if allowed to explode, right? So, she conjures an effect very much like a black hole upon it. Likely horribly damaging for the surrounding structures but almost none of the device should survive the crushing grip of her spell's effect until it's expended whatever energy it might have held. Her spell should allow all of that violence to be expelled elsewhere.

    The smile she levels on the demon is vicious.

    "You've failed, fledgeling monster. Now we'll have all the time together that I need."

>> SUMMARY[Li-Ming] >> Oh, that thing there is a problem? Delete.

    Emily is really pushing it. Reconfiguring, communicating to Misaki, grabbing Li, Jeff demon, and angel all at once and trying to get through the portal all in 7 seconds or less. Misaki pushes the girl through the portal, getting the final cultist to the safety. Now it's just them, the demon, and the angel. 

    Then, Li's spell goes off, the black hole doing as black holes do and pulling everything toward it--which unfortunately also means everyone still in the room as well, greatly hindering their movement toward the exit! Avina's definitely gone, machinery flies up and metal panels even start peeling off of the walls, warping and folding under the extreme strain as they fly up towards it. 
    
    Now, if Li's magic had fully accomplished its intended effect, the side-effects wouldn't have mattered. However, as it is, the black hole only manages to absorb some of the hot, rapidly-expanding burning gases before it is depleted, disappearing and allowing the rest of the blazing inferno to wreak havoc on Vault 209A-1. The blast is quite spectacular, blowing the entire place sky high. The earth itself gives way to the force of the explosion, rocks and dirt and flame and smoke shooting up into the cathedral above and toppling it down onto itself. It seems this bunker had only been built to withstand explosions from the -outside-. 

    Outside and a ways off, Sam Everett watches, shaking his head sadly. He had earnestly hoped they'd all make it out alive, but it seems that had been too much to ask for...

    Little does he know that underneath the rubble from the destroyed cathedral and bunker, Li, Misaki, Emily, Rydia, the demon and the angel are still standing untouched by the flames in a bubble of light. Well, except the demon, who had finally be knocked out by Li's spectral blades. Yes, when Emily grabbed him with tentacles, it seemed that had gotten the archangel up just in the nick of time.
    
    
    
    
    

    Emily pauses as Li-Ming fires that black hole thingy.

    "Oh right," she says. "You can do that. I forgot because the only thing on my mind is the thing where you teleported to the same location as a living WHOA GOD!"

    Kaboom.

    There's a pause.

    "... I really wish I'd taken a form with fingers," she says, transforming back into her auburn-haired-woman form -- only now, she's wearing a signet ring glowing with glitchy, flickering runes. "Stopping time would've been useful as hell there."

    Well. She hadn't meant meant to put quite so much energy behind it but that spell almost caused a bit of a problem. Li-Ming laughs aloud, watching the inferno through her eyelids as death once again fails to claim her. "Splendid."

    So that begs the question. Emily gets a look, a raised eyebrow. "Ah. That's what this is about. I apologize. I suppose death is something I've grown accustomed to." She grips the demon by a spike and hauls it up surprisingly easily, exhibiting far more strength than someone her size should have, though hardly any insane degree. "This is a far worse fate than death; I've seen it more than I'd like." She scoffs, "You fool, you could have at least delayed this long enough for us all to escape!"

    She holds up a hand and sighs, "I suppose I could have done something similar as well." Finally, she stops squinting enough to regard the angel.

    For her own sake, she takes a step back and really looks. "Eldruin? Tyrael? The demon said archangel but- You're no longer mortal?" The notion that this could be a totally different version than the one she knows only creeps in after she speaks.

    "We should be going. I imagine it's going to remain quite warm down here and-" Another look at the demon. "Perhaps we still have another life to save." There, happy? She didn't even kill anyone today!

    When the smoke clears, Everett sighs and instructs rescue teams to start digging through the rubble, you know just in case. Even though he doesn't think he'll find anything...

    Speaking of getting out of here, the angel (yes, Li is right, it's Tyrael) begins to use the bubble to lift them all out of there. As he flies up, it goes with him, and since they're inside, they do too. Finally he sets everyone down a slight distance away from the now-destroyed cathedral before the shield finally dissolves away. "Thank you mortals, for what you've done here. I am in your debt." He turns to Li when she addresses him by name. "I know not what you speak of."

    Emily ... is actually startled by Li-Ming's apology. "... yeah," she mutters. "Well, uh ... yeah. Sorry." It comes more easily than her last apology.

    "Well, I wasn't expecting it to just fucking explode," she says. "What the hell are they making generators out of in this world." She looks between Tyrael and Li-Ming. "Someone from your world? Or ... an alternate counterpart thereof?"

    She turns around and opens a portal, muttering, "... why didn't I even remember having the coolest power ever ..." The other end opens ... right in front of Everett. "... Oh. Hi."

    Well. This has been an adventure so far. Li-Ming spends a few moments trying to blink the spots from her eyes. She'll let the matter with Emily rest for the moment, though she still reckons they'll have to have an actual conversation about it.

    "Yes, someone quite important. A friend, of the mortal world and to my former teacher. As well as myself, though more and more I'm convinced. You're so different." Her attention returns fully to the archangel.

    "Though you do not yet know me, I'm sure we'll have a lot to speak of in time. For now..." 

    She gestures bluntly to the demon.