World Tree MUSH

    The sleepy township of Barrowdale rests in a quiet country on a quiet world leaning towards a more 'fantasy' persuasion. Though there are some more modern amenities, like the telephone and power wires that run through the town, and the houses seem to have electric lamps for light, the population consists of some thousand-ish folk of varying races. Humans, elves, dwarves, or the even rarer orc, goblinfolk, or kobolds, all living in a relatively peaceful society.
    Relatively.
    In the past month disappearances of people around the town have made things... Tense and strained. Neighbors have stopped talking to neighbors, friends now hide from one another, and by the time anyone realizes that something is wrong... It's kind of too late.
    See, the reason the town is named Barrowdale is rather apt; as the entire township was built over the dilapidated ruins of a massive series of crypts, sepulchres, and sprawling catacombs that spread out under the entire area.
    The local constables are at a loss to handle the disapperances, and the mayor is at his wits end. Which is why he has taken to the time honored tradition of going to the nearest Adventurer's Guild and calling for the aid of any adventurers willing to show up.
    The mayor himself, a squat dwarf with a greying beard stands at one of the many entrances to the crypts that dot the town, flashlight in hand, several of his officers with him; some brandishing swords, others guns, as they wait for a squad of intrepid adventurers to come to town.
    "... Who's car is this even, anyway?" He grumbles at the sight of a grey 2003 Ford Windstar parked by the catacomb entrance.
    "Shouldn't you be ticketing them?"
    "... It's legally parked, sir."
    "Bah!"

    "Sir, sir!" A tavern employee says, chasing after a white haired man with a red coat. "You can't take that with you, sir!"

    The man just glances at him mid-stride and shrugs, downing the entirety of his ale before tossing the tankard over his shoulder.

    Dante is here to play, or rather, he's here to hunt. THen again, work and play tend to be the same thing for the son of Sparda. Approaching the crypt, he cocks an eyebrow at the minivan parked up front. "Huh." He opens up his guitar case, fishing out Rebellion and Cerberus, stowing them on his back. "So I guess you guys are the clients. I take it the demons are in there?" He asks the dwarven mayor, thumbing towards the crypt entrance.

    It's been a little while since Yumi stepped offworld to do some proper Heroing. Wrangling events in her own world has taken up much of her recent time, with the incident on Rydia's world covering most of the rest. So when she hears word through the metaphorical grapevine that a town built over a massive catacomb network is having disappearances? Yeah,s he's off like a shot.

    "I'm more worried about the owner of that truck," the redhead says as she approaches the mayor and his officers. "It means someone's probably inside, and this might suddenly be a mission with a time limit." She takes a hand out of her pocket, then holds it out towards the mayor. "Yumi Tachibana. I'm... I guess a 'paladin' is the closest analogue." She blinks at the sound of a familiar voice, then offers Dante a wave. "Oh, hey Dante. Been a little while."

    In midair, the tankard vanishes. As abruptly as a video skipping ahead, it is suddenly in the hands of the young woman with the red streak in her black hair, who appeared equally-suddenly just ahead of the tavern employee.

    She casually turns around and hands it over to the employee. "Sorry about that," she says, in the sympathetic tone of someone who has been adjacent to the employee's exact situation before.

    She then follows after Dante a few inches above the ground. "Don't be a dick to the retail workers, Dante," she says dryly. She nods in greeting to Yumi, as if she hadn't run headfirst into one of her greatest fears the last time the two had met.

  As cicadas drone and crickets sing, a new noise joins the normal cacophony of a languid summer afternoon. At first the drone of the engine sounds like just another insect, but as it gets closer to the crypts, it roars. Its headlight is on, juddering through the trees over a road not tamped for modern vehicles.

  Incidentally, the bike is red. It swings into view around the trees, sprints seemingly without slowing towards the dwarven mayor. At the last second it slews to one side with a spray of dirt, the engine shuts off, and the headlight goes dark.

  Tohsaka Rin is already pulling off her helmet as she swings over the side of the bike, shaking her hair loose with a grimace and a sound of annoyance.

  At least it's parked legally.

  Folding her arms and leaning back against the bike, Rin casts a blue eye toward the knot of local authorities, before her gaze slides sideways to note the other arrivals. She pulls a few things out of a pocket, sorting through them: A lighter, a bottle of water pinned between her elbow and her ribs, and something that gleams.

  She hasn't bothered to greet the mayor as of yet.

  There comes from her the crisp flick of a cigarette lighter and a bloom of light. Satisfied, Rin drops it back into her pocket. (When did she fish out the cigarette, though?) Those blue eyes shift between local authorities and adventurers; eventually, she strides towards the gathering adventurers, settling her weight to one side and considering the tunnel entrance thoughtfully.

  "I guess I see why the Mage's Association sent me." Rin sighs smoke. Her expression is annoyed, but her voice is resigned. "Damn. Well, I guess there's nothing for it but to get this over with. I'm Tohsaka. Tohsaka Rin." Her mouth twists into a wry smile for those she'd already met -- but her attention strays back to the catacombs. "What can you tell us about what's down there, Mayor? The demons. Any information might be useful."

Misaki is coming too, right behind Yumi. "Misaki Sakai." She joins Yumi's introduction, "I guess gunner? I'm not sure about these things." She glances around, "Hello miss Delany. I hope you're doing b... well?" She asks.

    For a moment the mayor looks cranky at his subordinate about the minivan's legal status, but then his attention turns towards the arriving group.
    Needless to say, that tavern worker sheepishly thanks Serrah when she hands over the tankard. But on to business:
    "Well..." The dwarf begins, stroking his beard. "You all look like a capable lot. Hopefully this'll be handled then..." He says, pursing his lips.
    "We've been trying to keep it quiet so the commonfolk don't panic, but we're reason to believe a cult of the Dead Three have set up shop in the catacombs. We're searched as much of the place as we dared with our own men, but too many disappearances means we're beginning to lack manpower to go in there ourselves. That's where you lot come in."
    He motions at the mouth of the catacombs, a stone archway leading deeper into the ground.
    "The Dead Three are no joke. This is a little above our heads, especially if they start summoning demons down there..." Muttered as he reaches into a jacket.
    "This is a map of all the known parts of the catacombs. I marked off the places my men have already searched, which leaves just a few points of interest. If you can get down there, get rid of the cultists, and find out what happened to the missing townsfolk, we'd be willing to compensate you lot, steeply.
    He pauses, looking to the minivan again.
    "And if you drag out whoever owns this thing, tell them to park it somewhere else. Assuming they're still alive, anyway."
    The tunnel leads into the dark of the earth, and it's not long before the hewn stone is replaced by stacked skulls layered atop one another to hold the walls up. Yep, it's a crypt alright.

    "I tipped the dude, didn't I?" Dante says to Serrah, before he wiggles fingers at the mayor and his posse. "Sup. I'm Dante, half-demon. No, I'm not a tiefling or a warlock, I just shoot things and cut them to bits." He says breathlessly, before eyeing Rin's arrival. He remembers her from the spider infested London, that was...a thing, for sure. Plus Yumi and Misaki. What is it with him and adventuring with teenaged girls? God, he misses Lady.

    "Demon cult, gotcha." He says, before promptly heading for the crypt without much of a plan. Why bother when you're Dante, right?

    Serrah's there too? That's good to see. Misaki asks the question on her mind, so she just adds, "Yeah, sorry about that." Yumi's pretty worried about the dhampir after their last outing together, especially since it happened on her and Misaki's turf, but she's not going to put Serrah on the spot in public. Letting it stand at the simple question is fine.

    Especially with a newcomer here! No need to spread their business around. Yumi doesn't recognize Rin, but she seems to be all business at least. The magical girl gives a little nod, then shifts her attention back to the mayor. Her stance becomes more businesslike, arms folded behind her back, and she listens intently to the dwarven man's explanation. She'd like to ask more about these 'Dead Three', but there's probably not enough time. "Thank you, the map should save us some time." Something they don't have much of, if this is a rescue mission.

    As the group sets off, Yumi transforms, shifting from plainclothes to armored magical girl in the space of a stride. A rush of warmth and a shimmer of gold-white light, and she's moving up to the front, where her armor will be of good use. She probably ends up right alongside Dante.

    Serrah chortles at Dante. "Yeah, yeah ..." She turns to the mayor. "I'm Serrah Delany, and I stop time," she says, since they're greeting themselves. "Oh right, uh, I'm also a dhampir. Which ... in my case means a botched resurrection from 'vampire' to 'human'." She doesn't want to take any chances that it might work differently here.

    Ah, Rin. Who ... sort of owes Serrah a coffee, but whatever, Serrah had almost completely forgotten about that. She just nods in greeting to the mage.

    She glances over at Misaki and Yumi, shooting the two senshi a lopsided smirk. "I'm doin' fine, you two," she says firmly. And then she immediately tries and fails to stifle a yawn. ... which is pretty much par for the course with Serrah, but ...

    She strides into the crypt. "Gonna do the scouty thing," she says, and turns into a completely black silhouette, before rising up to the ceiling and gliding forward lengthwise like a snake. A mutter might be audible about the only thing she misses about being a vampire being turning into shadow.

Misaki looks away from Serrah to roll her eyes at the answer, and transforms, following in. "So what's the plan?" She asks out loud, getting an orb of light going above her head to make the crypt a lot brighter around her. "I'll do my best to do my part."

  While she waits for an answer to her question, Rin looks down, rummaging around in a pocket for a few seconds. She glances back up to the others as they speak, finally plucking what looks like an earbud headphone from her pocket, popping it into her left ear and holding a button on it until a tiny blue light winks to life on it.

  Most magi don't stand by technology, but Rin's laziness outweighs her pride as a thaumaturge. Modern technology is just so dang convenient, and as long as she treats it nice, it mostly works without blowing up in her face.

  Well. Mostly.

  Dante earns a raised hand. "Yo, Dante." Her gaze slides sideways just in time to catch Yumi's nod, and Rin lifts her chin in friendly enough-looking acknowledgement, holding it for a few seconds. She puffs smoke and frowns through the mayor's explanation, eyes hooding. The expression is almost feline. Much like a cat, she's interested, no matter how uninterested she might look.

  Her attention seems to skip a beat when she notices Serrah, and she slowly, deliberately finger-guns at the onetime barista. "...I owe you coffee when we're not walking into death again. We need to stop meeting like this." The second is tacked right on, but her tone is more one of amusement. She's joking.

  Exhaling in apparent exasperation, Rin turns slowly to face the entrance. "I hate my job," she intones serenely, smiling too sweetly as she starts forward.

  A hand drops into her pocket; comes up with her cigarette lighter. Rin lights it with a practised gesture and holds it up, frowning. That's way too dim to be any kind of useful, so she sighs, caps it, and tosses it back into her pocket, hanging back with the people who have actual light sources.

  What's the plan? "Presumably we go down here, we investigate, and we either find enough to report back with or we get jumped by mentally unstable cultists. Or the things they've been summoning." Rin pulls her cigarette, exhaling a jet of smoke. "Personally, I'm hoping that the cultists are the worst of our problems, but things never go that smoothly."

  Replacing the cigarette between her lips, Rin glances back to the others. "From here on we'd better keep our eyes forward. It sounds like we could be walking into anything. Mentally unstable cultists are one thing, but anything they've been summoning up are going to be playing for keeps."

  "...Geez. What a pain," Rin sighs.

    A paladin, a gunner, a magus, a dhampir, and a half-demon enter the crypts... This isn't a joke, there's no punchline; the mayor is just trying to work out how that kind of adventuring party would work, in his head, as the group forges on into the darkness. Now brightly lit thanks to Misaki.
    It certainly is a pain because Rin is right; the likelihood is very high that the group will encounter deranged cultists.
    Or something they have summoned.
    With Dante and Yumi taking the led the group shouldn't be caught by surprise, and with Serrah in her shadowy form scouting up even further, it's not long before the team comes across... Brown stains on the floor.
    Congealed blood. It's not fresh, but it's certainly not OLD either as they make their way through the crypts and sepulchres.
    Then. ... 
    Then they find the shinki.
    Just a little bit out of place, sure, the 12-inch tall helper robot decked out in plastic and metal armor in the form of what looks like mechanical tentacles doesn't seem to notice them at first as they come up behind it. The little thing is peeking around a corner, looking like she's trying to be sneaky- not too difficult considering her size, but she gets caught flat footed as she turns around and-
    "WEH! Don't sacrifice me! I don't wanna be a demon's chewtoy!"
    She squeals before pausing.
    "... You're not cultists are you?"
    A slow 'breath' heaves tiny ball-jointed shoulders as she rubs the back of her neck. "Oh, no no no, you're not cultists at all. You must be more adventurers. My Master went on ahead alone, she told me that if anyone came this way to point them down the left path, because that's where the cultists are doing their summoning ritual thingy." Another pause. "She also said to hurry because they wanna summon something nasty. Like. Tonight."

  The cherry at the end of Rin's cigarette is enough light to tell where the Tohsaka heiress is walking, but otherwise, she seems content to walk along in the darkness. Either she trusts her night vision or she's using some kind of cheating thaumaturgy to compensate for it. Or she's just waiting for somebody else to investigate more closely, while she keeps her senses tuned for the alleged demons.

  As they approach the blood stains, Rin glances down, sinking into a graceful crouch beside one. She reaches up with a forefinger toward her cigarette, murmuring something softly; a snippet of German she pronounces with confident precision. Rin turns her hand and cradles a tiny flame in her palm, holding it down towards the stained floor and narrowing her eyes at them. She stays there for a few silent moments as though in a trance, unresponsive to the others.

  Therefore, she's not the one to discover the shinki, but she jumps as the little thing squeals, whirling. For a brief instant Rin's blue eyes are icy cold, and something bright gleams between the fingers of her right hand. Oh. It's a bystander. The magus lowers her hand, frowning around her cigarette, awkwardly spilling her little ember-flame from floating over her left hand back to her right hand and holding it up to study the tiny robot.

  Rin glances down the tunnel, sighing.

  "Twenty yen says this is just a trap. Which way do we go, people?"

    Misaki is much better at the light thing than Yumi. Well, okay, Yumi could make pretty bright light if she put some effort into it, but Misaki can do it just as bright, probably a lot more efficiently, and definitely with much greater control. Best to leave it to the expert while she has a chance. The senshi watches Serrah glide ahead to scout for a second or two, but then turns her eyes back down to the path ahead.

    And oh look, there's bloodstains on the path ahead.

    Yumi crouches down a little to get a better look, and a faint grimace touches her features. She even summons a little bit of her own light, setting her hand aglow to examine the congealed blood more properly. But they can't afford much time, really. Dismissing the glow from her gauntlet, Yumi stands up again, pressing on ahead - and then stopping once more, once they all run into a... a shinki? Down here?

    Yumi blinks. "...yeah, no, definitely not cultists." She frowns softly, glancing down the left path, then back at Rin. "Could be a trap, yeah. But even if it is, we at least know something is down that way." It's more direction than they had. "I'm for it."

    Dante doesn't mind Yumi taking his side, she's been pretty chill for a paladin after all. No 'DIE DEMON, DIE HERETIC' bullshit that's usually stereotypical. THe sunlight however does tend to be pretty burn-y for Dante's poor pale ass. The demon slayer draws one of his pistols when he sees something up ahead.

    "Wait, a shinki?" He says in confusion when he sees the tiny robot. "Lemme guess, your master owned the van out in front?" He asks. "We're not with the cult, no."

Misaki holds up her hand and creates a series of thick cyan lines roughly matching the path they've taken, with little triangles matching paths not taken, and approaches the shinki. Green dots matching the members of the group, except for Serrah, show on the path and blue dot for the shinki. "Can you roughly show me what path on this map we'd need to take?" She asks, glancing to Yumi, "I've been practicing, what do you think?"

    Serrah snorts at Rin's comment. "Yeah, probably ..." Was that a flirt? Naw, can't be ...

    She frowns as she reaches the bloodstains. Welp, looks like they're on the right track! She's about to turn around and let people know when ... ah, a shinki.

    Serrah almost jumps down and makes herself known. Almost. But then Rin makes that comment, and she has to bite back the comment what, that small amount? Either way, she decides to scout ahead the other way she can do it.

    That is, by stopping time.

    She appears abruptly in that video-skipping-ahead matter a little ways down the indicated path, then shifts out of her black-silhouette form. "Nope, not a trap," she says without preamble. "Or at least, there genuinely are a bunch of cultists there working on some kind of ritual. No sign they were expecting any latecomers to the party, either." She smirks faintly. "So, the intel is good as far as that goes." Beat. "... Looks pretty good from where I'm standing, Sakai."

    Once the party has identified themselves firmly as not-cultists, the shinki heaves another sigh. Floating up to get a better view of the map as Misaki makes those lines, she traces a tiny finger along the various paths before settling on one.
    Though the shinki pouts massively at Rin, nose scrunching up. "T-twenty yen? You're cheap, lady!" She sniffs. Beofre she nods her head to Dante. "Yeah, that's Master's car. It's how we get around. --Anyway it's this path." She says tapping the map rapidly as-- Serrah returns from scouting ahead.
    "H-hmph. See? I told you." She says, folding arms across her chest.
    SO that leaves the party to move on. And as they progress down the indicated path, the party begins to hear voices. Chanting. A harsh and guttural language that makes teeth itch just to hear it as the cultists in the chamber beyond finish setting up a spell circle on the crypt floor.
    "Bring forth the sacrifice!" The lead cultist declares, prompting several others to drag out one of the town's residents, a young man, looking absolutely terrified by his situation.
    And just as the cultist brings a nasty looking knife to the youth's throat to slice it open and shed blood all over the spell circle... He pauses.
    The air hangs heavy in the room as the chanting slows to a confused stop. And the lead cultist twitches.
    The knife drops to the floor with a clatter and the man in black and gold robes falls to his knees, clutching his skull and screaming as he begins to bleed from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
    As a woman with wild black hair, dressed in black robes and studded leather armor steps out of an alcove.
    "Caaaaaan't let you do that!" She chirrups, making gestures with her hands, a wild look of sadistic glee on her face as the cult leader writhes on the ground in absolute agony.
    Looks like there's the distraction.

    Dante draws his second gun and snorts at the shinki, "Okay yeah, I like you already." he grins wide. "Seriously, twenty yen's nothing at all, if it were two thousand then we'd have a bet." Someone's clearly been to Japan.

    "Yeah this world's not what I expected, I've seen people on their phones and shit even though we got dwarves, elves and all that. I've even caught Pokemon out here!" He muses on their way, before he helps kick the door down, so to speak. They reach the sacrificial chambers, and Dante aims to blow the lead cultist's hand right off.

    BUT-

    "OI! This shinki yours?" He calls out, motioning to the tiny robot.

    Yumi watches for a moment as Misaki... conjures up a minimap with her magic? Blink. Blink blink. "Wow that's... that's actually really handy, good job." Even if it's only based on Misaki's knowledge and observation, the ability to summon up a barebones map of the area in the middle of a journey or mission would be incredibly useful.

    Meanwhile, Serrah flexes her scouting abilities, and confirms that the left-hand path is actually the way they want to be headed. Okay, so the shinki can be trusted. Probably.

    Once again, Yumi steps up to the fore of the group, and they arrive in the chamber just in time for a worrying scene - a sacrifice about to happen. "No-!" The armored senshi is about two steps into the room when the cultist suddenly stops and...

    And...

    Oh god, what the hell.

    Yumi looks back and forth between the cultist and the mystery woman, slipping into a deep frown. "Hey, knock it off, he's already stopped!" But there's no time for more than angry yelling, at least right now. That poor young man is still in danger. She dashes across the room, skidding to a stop right in front of the indended sacrifice, and in a flare of light and heat, calls forth the massive form of her runeblade Prominence. "I'm Yumi. We're here to rescue you. Stick close."

"Thank you." Misaki beams at the praise she's given. When action time comes, rushes to the front and uses the orb of light floating above her head to make an incredibly bright flash of light pointed forwards, aimed to blind every cultist and that creepy stranger. "You cultists, surrender." She yells, "And no being worse than the cultists, ma'am. Not allowed." She summons her guns, pointing Joyous at the cult leader and Marvelous at the warlock.

    Oh crap. Serrah frowns and reaches into her baseball bag, ready to hurl a couple of baseballs at the cultist with the knife ...

    ... only for that to prove unnecessary. "Damn, that's a nasty spell," she says, a mixture of horror, disgust, and admiration in her voice.

    (Briefly, the thought crosses her head that this would have been potentially appetizing about a year ago. Ye gods.)

    She flies over to Yumi and the young man at top speed, frowning. "Any idea where the other kidnappees are?" she asks the youth quietly, standing in a defensive position in case the remaining cultists start causing trouble. "I mean. Were they with you?"

  Unmoved by the pouting shinki, Rin folds her arms and trails after the rest of the party. As she walks along she slips her hands into her pockets, trailing smoke behind. Her eyes dart left and right, though, taking note of anything that looks out of place; any possible sign of human habitation. Or at least signs of recent passage.

  The closer they get to those voices, the more tense Rin looks. She draws the knife scabbarded at her hip once words are audible; once again, small shapes between the fingers of her right hand catch the light.

  "This probably won't be pret--"

  Blinking owlishly, Rin looks up as the lead cultist twitches, and suddenly begins to bleed from his everything. The magus' eyes widen; her pupils shrink to pinpricks, because seriously, what.

  One can almost hear the gears in Rin's brain slip as Yumi takes action. Her eyes can't seem to move away from the cult leader. By the time she does rip her gaze from the man, Misaki already has her weapons trained on Crazy Hair. Cult Leader isn't much of a threat, too busy writhing on the ground in agony. With a jerky shake of her head, Rin edges back towards Yumi and Serrah. She keeps her wrist cocked as though to throw something, though, tense.

  Every so often she glances at the bleeding cult leader, looking a little rattled, but it seems like she can shake it off. Lucky, this time, that something didn't come swinging at her while she forced her brain to refocus.

  "Any chance we can hurry things along a bit, hmmm?" Rin glances over her shoulder at the others. "I don't see any demons, yet, but luck's never been my strong suit." She gestures at the Intended Victim. "Is he okay?"

    "Oh you play, too? What Team are you on? Shinki are made in Japan, you know." The shinki asks Dante as she floats after the group. But pokemon choices aside, the party walks in on a disaster show.
    "Um?" The woman in black blinks as Yumi demands she cease her psionic torture of the cult leader.
    "No. If I do that he'll finish the ritual." She points out even with Marvelous levelled at her. "Anyway you all have something else to worry about right now."
    The cultists... Are not surrendering. Even with Joyous pointed their way.
    In fact, they're arming themselves with chain-flails tipped with skulls to try and rush the group!
    The flail wielding cultists heedlessly rush the party swinging with violent intent, snarling and growling. One, in fact, wings the warlock, who loses concentration on her spell with a grunt.
    "They kept us in cells-- down that way!" The youth says pointing down a path to where the rest of the disappeared townsfolk probably are, to Serrah and Yumi.
    But just as the witch had said, the head cultist starts to pick himself up.
    "THEN I SHALL BE THE SACRIFICE!" Declared with finality as he picks up the knife...
    And cuts his own throat.
    With the shedding of his lifeblood the spell circle flares to life.
    "Oh that's not good." The witch says, ducking her way to the party as the room fills with a dark light... And a foul stench.
    The huge lizard-like demon that steps through the freshly opened blood portal into the room roars, flexing monstrous claws as it starts indiscriminately swinging for cultists and adventurers alike.
    This is when Morrign sidles up behind Dante and sets her hands on his shoulders.
    "Thiiiiiis will probably make you feel sick for a while, but it'll be worth it, trust me!" She says, eyes glowing a vibrant green as... Dante will get a vision from far, far, far beyond the realm of mortal men... Something out there in the black depths of the dark of space, in the outer reaches of the Far Realm opens one of its many eyes...
    And it focuses right on him.
    Whispers... Whispers and nudges will reverberate through the hunter's mind, telling him where the next blow will come from, which way the cultists and demon will strike next- brief and fleeting glimpses of the direct and immediate future flash before his eyes before they happen, telling him how to change the tide of an already frantic fight.

    "Yeah I know, I've seen Shinki before." Dante grins, "And Team Valor, duh. Only heroes choose that one." He says with a chuckle.

    Of course, there's some stuff going on. Cultists! Dante doesn't waste time, opening fire on them with his pistols, the forty-five caliber demon slayers letting off loud barks of gunfire as he empties the mags and then some. Does he EVER reload?

    He's about to get hit by the big lizard demon when Morrigan does A THING, and casts some kind of spell. He keeps hearing chanting and muttering in his ears, "Does anybody else hear chanting? Sounds Japanese!" He says over the roar of combat. Whatever they're saying to him, Dante can instinctively tell they're probably best listened to. So, he dodges and leaps to avoid strikes as he opens fire upon the demon, focusing his attacks on it.

    It helps having superhuman reflexes, this is literally just giving him big loud prompts to press in order to dodge at the right times.

Misaki trusts the others can handle the demon and the cultists. She points both her guns at Morrigan and approaches, "What you're doing is not okay. It clearly didn't stop him from finishing the ritual, so stop lying. You're just looking to hurt people, and we don't need that." She glares at the woman, and uses a little light trickery to create a red glow over her eyes, "So if you want to help, behave. If not, just go."

    "Look at him!" Yumi yells. He's in no condition to finish the ritual! And we're here now-" Yumi's ire is abated by the fact they have flails to deal with now. Prominence whips around Yumi in a more dextrous movement than should be possible with such a massive blade; somehow, she manages to have the weapon between herself and a flail at any given moment, and then in the next instant she's smashing the attacker with the flat of the blade, or reaching out to yank on the flail and headbutt its owner, or any of a dozen other swift, controlled strikes.

    But then the cultist displays one thing Yumi hadn't counted on. The willingness to end his own life to complete the ritual. "Wait NO-!"

    Too late. Yumi grimaces, first at the sight of the dying cultist, then maintaining it at the foul stench. She steps into a cautious ready stance as the demon comes forth, watching it with gritted teeth. This debacle has gone from horrendous torture to suicide to murderous demon summoning in the space of just a few minutes.

    And Yumi decides she's had just about enough of this nonsense.

    One boot plants. The armored girl holds Prominence back behind her, angled up, a deep ready stance. And the ambient temperature of the room suddenly rises, as a shining gold-white light begins to suffuse the runeblade. A few faint tongues of fire dance up the weapon as she floods it with magical sunlight, her eyes locked on the demon while Dante moves in; watching, waiting, holding her strike until the moment the demon hunter is out of the way-

    "THERE!"

    Like a sudden flood, Yumi surges forward, swinging her massive sword in an arc of shining sunlight and faint wisps of flame. It's a brutal, powerful strike, and probably the most power anyone here has seen her put into an attack thus far.

    Uh-oh. Serrah frowns at Rin. "Hey, uh, you all right?" she says in a quiet voice.

    ... Just in time for the cultists to start attacking. Serrah shoots straight up into the air. "Senshi, get the prisoners!" she calls to Yumi and Misaki in Japanese (still translated by the World Tree's conventions), ducking and weaving with superhuman speed and shoving around the cultists that get too close as she tries to make her way over to the leader. Her nonkilling policy makes this slightly difficult, and so he has plenty of time to ...

    ... kill himself. "What the fuck," she mutters under her breath, flying up higher to get a better look at the opening portal.

    She furrows her brow at the monster. "Wait. Is that a ..." She snaps her fingers. "Damn it, I know I saw something like this in a book. An aboleth -- wait nonono, those are different, them I've fought in space." She winces as it attacks the cultists as well. "Nope, never mind, figuring that out later."

    She swoops around the demon to position herself in the opposite direction from Yumi's attack. She waves her hands in a wide sweeping gesture as if casting a spell, and shoves her hands forward with a cry of "PLAY BALL!" The next proverbial frame of animation, her position and location are ever-so-slightly different, if you look closely. On the other hand, you might be distracted by the dozen or so baseballs now flying through the air at speed towards the monster.

  Oh, that sure is a demon. So much for hurrying things along and getting out of Dodge before the nasty stuff showed up. Rin looks up with a frown, ignoring the chatter about shinkis and tournaments. As the woman in black points out that they have more to worry about, Rin realises what the cultists are doing. That is to say, they're arming themselves.

  Rin plucks her cigarette lighter, lights it, snaps her fingers, and lets the lighter fall. No dinky cigarette lighter should be able to produce that much flame, but suddenly Rin is weaving a serpentine length of flame between her hands as though she were handling ribbon. Her eyes never leave the group of cultists as they--

  "Damn it--!"

  She's just a little too slow looking away that time, and pretty sure she's going to have recurring nightmares over that one.

  Whirling, Rin casts her serpentine lengths of flame at the creature now charging them. There's no time to process things. All she knows is to defend herself from the large thing noisily charging the group. She wields the flames through graceful and sharp gestures, directing the lashes of flame and occasionally flicking her lighter to lend a little extra firepower. Literally.

  "Nooooooooooo I'm not all right, but I will be!" Rin's answer to Serrah is... distracted, to say the least. "Don't worry about me!"

    "It's a Hezrou!" The witch calls out to Serrah as she tries to identify the demon while chaos abounds. "It's one of the footsoldiers of the Abyss- they're as big and dumb as they look, but just as dangerous!"
    The cultists rush- only to be battered back by Yumi, before everyone focuses on the Hezrou. Dante's augmented reflexes combined with glimpses of the future make him a force to be reckoned with, but all the work is not on the demon hunter alone as Rin blasts the demon with fire, Serrah batters it with a dozen time-lobbed fastballs- and Yumi-
    Yumi cuts the beast down with finality, her sunlight blade unwaveringly cutting the beast down and sending it back to the Abyss from whence it came for the next hundred years before it can even think about being re-summoned into the mortal plane...
    Leaving the warlock to slowwwwwwly turn to face Misaki, who has both guns levelled right at her.
    "It didn't stop him because I lost concentration on my spell." She says with a huff before motioning to the dying Hezrou. "I didn't come here just to hurt people. I came here to hurt cultists, and to stop that." A pause. "And rescue the prisoners." She points out, nose scrunching as she kneels over a KO's cultist and starts searching him rudely.
    "Now ONE of these guys has to have the key to the cells, because I sure don't have a set of lockpicks."

    There's a distinct burning smell in the air, even after Yumi lets the sunlight fade from her sword. She dismisses the weapon, but retains her transformation, shooting a sharp glare straight across the room at the warlock. "Do you not have a way to just disable someone? Torture is a pretty awful way of keeping someone pinned down." There's a soft grumble in her voice as she turns, picking another cultist to start searching for keys as well. She knows it's futile with someone like that, but she can't help herself. At least she and Misaki are on the same wavelength.

    Serrah sighs softly at Rin. At this rate, she's gonna have to display full-on concern for her.

    "Hezrou! That was it!" she says. She nods in satisfaction as Yumi finishes off the monster, and pauses, regarding Misaki and the warlock. She ... really isn't sure how to answer that confrontation. Like, Misaki is at least correct insofar as this woman is Obviously Evil, but it still seems more ... complicated than that. Okay, good, Yumi's got a nice quick statement about it. "This is why I don't try to be a hero," she mutters under her breath, against all available evidence.

    She sighs, and shakes her head. "I mean, Dante could probably just smash the bars with his sword," she says, gesturing to her fellow demi-human. "He's done that with a full-on artifact of mind-controlly doom before."

Misaki just shakes her head and rolls her eyes at Morrigan's answer, "Don't bother looking for the key." And she heads into the room with the cells, puts both guns together, and forms beams with which to melt the locks on the cages so she can just open the doors without the key.

>> GAME >> Misaki Sakai spends an Edge for: Melting locks.

    After the demon and cultists are dead, Dante stows his pistols and grabs Rebellion from his shoulders. "Yeah, couldn't hurt to try unless it's somehow magic." He says in agreement with Serrah. "I DO have a history of severing tricky knots after all. Call me Alexander, 'cause this knot's gonna get split." Grinning over his own stupid joke, Dante nudges a cultist onto his back with his foot, not really showing much effort in searching bodies. He does however start smashing locks open on the cages that MIsaki isn't just melting away. "Alright, folks, we're here to get you guys outta here. Customary rescue service, paid for and everything!"

    Misaki handles the locks. Problem solved!
    Which is all well and good, considering the town's missing people are all looking worse for wear. Some have been down here for days and they're looking a little weak and undernourished.
    Leaving Morrigan to set her hands on her hips, the little shinki floating to land on her shoulder.
    "Uh hello, cultist." She says as though this makes her use of excessive force valid.
    It totally doesn't.
    Causing her to grumble and just lightly headpat her little mechanical companion. "At least you don't question my methods, Mary."
    "Never, Master Morrigan."
    "And that's why you're getting an extra jelly can tonight."

    Dante muses to himself, "Why is that name so familiar?"

    Yumi is midway through searching a pocket when Misaki just blasts open some locks.

    For a second time, the redhead is left blinking by the other senshi. "...yeah, that... that works."

    She straightens up, glances at Morrigan, and shoots over a last, snippy, "Still doesn't justify torture," before turning to head for the room with the prisoners.

    Serrah takes a deep breath. (She still draws a certain slight comfort from just the act of breathing.)

    And she just stops time to grab her thrown baseballs -- trying to avoid making it obvious to Morrigan that that's what she's doing, having learned her mistake from Chrollo -- then goes over to check on the prisoners Misaki and Dante are currently freeing. "Good grief," she mutters in Japanese as an aside to Yumi. "Where the hell did they dig this bozo up?"

"I figured, who's gonna complain if I break some locks? These guys?" Misaki answers Yumi with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes, before admitting, "And I could use something to take out my frustrations out on after ... after what she... did to him." She's sounding more than a little unsettled now that it's over and her focus on getting the job done fades.