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In the Depths of Winter...; [Open to respondents to the thread "Emergency."]
Topic Started: Feb 3 2014, 09:44 AM (1,440 Views)
Czernobog
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Best Influence.
Shin corrected his course when he saw Daichi's flare of hama magic shoot upward, he ducked around a tree, and found what looked like a game trail, following it toward the edge of the camp.

---

Shortly before the flare went upward, the lightning bug drooped in the air. It oriented itself more horizontal in regard to the ground, dropping lower. It gently butted Chika's hand with its head, as if trying to get her to do something.

On the other hand, it no longer seemed to be trying to bar her from moving forward.

---

The rope loosened as the tension lessened, remaining about his neck as he dropped. He fell first to his knees, then plunged forward, face-first into the cold ashes of the fire pit. One of his arms flopped out, and the band around it struck one of the stones that surrounded the fire pit, producing a high, clear note. A band of bruised flesh was visible around his neck, and he gasped and coughed.

He remained absolutely still for a moment, then started shaking. His shoulders shook, and he rolled to the side, raising his arms -- with great difficulty -- up to his head.

"D...No...goddammit. No, I don' want 't 'n' I don' want t' take it. I was almost free 'f it, but...shit...'S comin'...'n' I don't..."

He tried to continue, but there was a hitch in his voice. He put his hands under the hat -- the knit blue-and-white hat that Chika had made for him, with the aum symbol on the brow -- and pulled it off, running his hand over the bristly, short hair there. His face was an ugly mid-sob grimace, as if he was holding back a horrible wail. Tears sprang from his eyes, and his cheeks opened in their path, bringing blood from beneath the ashen skin.

But after just a second or two of this, it stopped, and he fell silent. Shin Imoto got out of the trees at roughly this moment, and breathed heavily, hands on his knees. He looked up and frowned at the sight in front of him: the rope around his nephew's neck, and the length hanging from the tree branch were somewhat worrying.

Naoya blinked, and his eyes turnedyellow. Naoya was gone. The shadow was back.

The shadow coughed once, clearing out the apparent blockage in the body's throat, and took stock of the situation.

"Welp. Shit," it said. "That's that, then...good job."

It wadded up the hat and tossed it toward Kyo.

"Here, take this. Keep it safe for a moment. Also, you're going to want to get back a bit."

A dull red light splashed across the foliage to Naoya's left, and the shadow took a deep breath, then turned the body's head in the direction of Hanako's descent -- when it did, Kyo and Daichi would clearly be able to see that the light was coming out of the scar on the side of his head.

"Five...four...three..." the shadow began, sounding more bored than anything else.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Kyo let out a sharp gasp of relief when Naoya landed safely. Daichi's healing magic had to be enough to handle a bit of choking, right? Right. Had to be. Even if it wasn't, Kaede wouldn't be far away. The girl moved to approach Naoya, ready to tell him off for trying to run like that, ready catch him in a back-breaking hug, ready to--

But he said something that gave her pause, and she watched him take off the hat he wore. Chika had said she made it for him. It was a nice hat, simple but, nice. For the first time Kyo thought to ask what had driven Naoya to this.

"...Dude, what--"

But now she knew that it wasn't Naoya who was talking. She caught the had wordlessly, staring at the Shadow. Keep it safe...? Was the Shadow trying to help? She recalled the conversation that her previous Persona had engaged the Shadow in. And though she wanted to burst across the Shadow's words with demands that it explain itself, she suddenly felt a chill jolt her spine. Something bad was about to happen.

She closed her right eye. Naoya was still alive, right? His Shadow wasn't riding--

And her Left Eye showed her something she hadn't expected to see. His ghost? His--?!

No. No. The ghosts she saw were always transparent, insubstantial. The Naoya she could see in the air about them was strangely solid, and yet, not. Like a projection. Its movements were erratic, jittery, like flashes of something occurring out-of-sync with the flow of time. The line between herself and him led not to his body, but to that.

"...What the--?!"

She couldn't hear anything. It looked like Naoya was having some sort of argument, but the other side of the argument was invisible. Was she witnessing some shred of the illusions he saw when he was under the influence of his Shadow...?

The red light drew her gaze away, and the Left Eye of the World snapped off, her attention back on Naoya's physical body. His Shadow was counting down, light was coming out of his scar. "Hang on, what the fuck's happening, you--!" she blurted out in a panic. But that feeling. What she was seeing above. Kaede's prediction. Everything Naoya had told her about his visions up to this point--

"Daichi, get back!" she yelled. "Everyone! Stay back! Don't get close!"

---

Chika saw the lightning bug starting to droop, and looked puzzled for a few moments. It nudged against her hand, and all she could think to do was cup both of them below the BeeZector, giving it leave to land on her gloved palms. When Hanako indicated what path they could take to get to the camp below, Chika turned sharply in that direction, regardless of whether the BeeZector landed or not.

The phone was stowed away safely in her pocket again. The Hama spell lit up the sky and she paused in her steps, then quickened them--someone had found Naoya. She hoped he wouldn't be angry that they'd come.

But then she heard shouting. She wasn't sure what the voice was saying, but it sounded like... Kyo?
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Prince Arjuna
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-insert something witty here-

Kakeru saw the Hama spell lit up in the sky, indicating something might have happened at the other side. Perhaps they did find Naoya. But after hearing a shouting voice which clearly was from a certain green-haired girl, Kakeru had a bad feeling about this. Something had to happen over there, and whatever it was, it had to be rather bad to cause Kyo to shout like that.

What should they do? Should they go and take a look? Or should they wait? He looked at the other girls to see their reactions. At this time, Kakeru didn't think that it would be safe to act on his own.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
The signal light at least confirmed that they were heading in the right direction. She looked back to make sure that no one was straying from the path when she heard Kyo's warning.

She had just a good enough look at the situation to see the yellow eyes. She stopped cold and held up her arm to stop the others. "No, stop, don't get any closer!"

The last time she interfered…well, that's how things came to this, wasn't it? She shouldn't…she really shouldn't. It'd just make things worse, wouldn't it?
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Exodin
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MAHHA
It was odd, Jiro felt an strange sense of serenity up in the air. Like he finally away from it all. The air sailing around him felt like a bit of a strange rush. Judging from the flare, his path needed to be altered slightly. The boy landed, and took the final leap. The sailing noise returned, along with a vague screaming noise. What the hell was going on down there?

The boy landed a little roughly, and on the opposite side of Naoya from the others. The boy shook his head and stopped for a moment to regain his breath. The screaming and the hugging could wait for a moment. Wait, why the hell were Nakamura and Charinko red?

---

Daichi did as told, and gained some distance away from Naoya. The boy's...what was it a scar? Seemed to be shining red for some odd reason. The tall young man was confused, what was going to happen? Why was he shining and...oh no.

"Takenaka, get back!"

The only thing he saw was the boy look up at them and his expression twist into one of confusion.
Edited by Exodin, Feb 18 2014, 11:29 AM.
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Czernobog
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Best Influence.
The lightning bug settled into Chika's hands, and she could feel the ticking inside its casing grow slower and fainter. Its wings shuddered a bit, but remained mostly still. It clung gently to her wrist, but seemed to be going inert.

---

The Shadow grinned wider, stretching Naoya's mouth further than the boy ever would in an expression of joy: "Two...one!"

The fire began by emerging from the scar in the side of his head, a streamer of flame two meters long that began as red, but quickly shifted -- orange, yellow, green, finally to the dark blue that was characteristic of Naoya's magic -- and spread. Flickering light emerged from his mouth and nose, from his ears, and streamers of fire joined them.

His skin looked like it was cracking, like the energy being released inside was too much for his weakened flesh to contain. From these wounds in his skin, more tongues of flame emerged. The fire spread across his skin, and the air around him began to circulate and rise, whipping violently around him. His dirty clothes puffed up with in the updraft, and his eyes -- still the baleful yellow of the shadow -- were wide and laughing.

Shin didn't retreat, but remained frozen. He was filled with two contradictory impulses: to rush forward and do something to stop what was happening and to flee, preserving life and limb.

The column of flame that encircled him reached upward, and slowly began to spread outward. It was as tall as the trees around him. The one beneath which he had sat, and from which he had hung, caught flame.

There was a flash of white light in front of the boy. It flickered once. Twice. Thrice. Each flash lasting longer and being brighter. His eyes had changed.

The shadow was gone.

The color shift spread to the column of flame around him, and he was visible inside as a black silhouette against the white flame. Another shape appeared in the column above him, flickering in like a video artifact: the four-armed figure of Krishna. The shape warped and shifted, and around and beneath the sound of the roaring flame was another one, a sound like breaking glass.

The heat around it was incredible, and Shin felt his eyes begin to water from being so close, could smell something like burning hair and cloth. Finally, he retreated, moving back several steps and shielding his eyes with his outstretched hand, which had begun to blister.

The flame narrowed and shrank back, revealing the boy. His body was uninjured, and his scars seemed to have faded, but his clothes were blackened and smoking. Naoya wore a mask of hammered gold that covered his whole face, covering it from crown to jaw in an unadorned sheet of solid metal. Over his eyes were mesh screens of bronze wires, and covering his whole head was a cowl of some red cloth.

The campsite was destroyed: the tarps had melted together on the side closest to him, and the sleeping bag he had sat beneath to contemplate his face was reduced to a state indistinguishable from the ash that had once been grass. The trees around them were blazing brightly, their dry branches burning, putting off clouds of gritty woodsmoke.

Above Naoya hovered his new persona. A massive figure in red and white silk, face covered by a mask that mirrored the features of the departed Krishna, eyes behind screens of bronze wire just as Naoya's own was. It had four arms: two hands clutched the reins of its monstrous horse -- with its dead white pelt, its lab-rat red eyes, its teeth and hooves both made of gleaming metal -- and in the other two it carried a torch and a wicked curved sword.

The persona pulled the reins, and raised the torch, which flared brightly. The horse -- what had it called it? Devadatta? -- rose up on its hind legs, pawing at the air with its forelegs and screaming to the heavens. The shriek was inhuman and impossibly loud, and Naoya fell to one knee, clutching his head.

The boy pulled the mask free and the Persona vanished. He was breathing heavily and his head was bowed.

The skin on the back of his neck had healed, only the faintest tracing of scars remaining visible. He shook his head, and ran his hand through his hair, calling attention to the scar upon the side of his head: it was still there, but it was no longer a gouge taken out of his skull. It was a tracework of branching pink lines through his sun-darkened flesh, and from it seemed to sprout a handful fine white hairs.

He coughed once and spoke: "Oh...what fuckin' bullshit did I cause this time?"

Of course, now was hardly the time for conversation: Naoya's ascension -- which had coincided with the all-too-literal "explosion" that his shadow had predicted -- had apparently set off a forest fire. Perhaps the winter storm would solve it, but there was no guarantee of that.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Fire! Explosion! Of course it was fire and a fucking explosion! OF COURSE IT WAS FIRE AND A FUCKING EXPLOSION AND OF COURSE SOME DUMBASS HAD TO JUMP STRAIGHT INTO IT--

"GET BACK! GET BACK NOW!"

Kyo reacted without thinking, on pure instinct, and if there was ever any doubt after this that she was not, in fact, a horrible person, Kyo's Persona would always remind her of what she did that day. She wasn't fast enough on her feet to do anything herself and she probably would have been worse off if she had.

But in the thrill of panic, she wasn't about to stop and contemplate that. Cereza appeared and rushed forward, a flipping jump and a flap of those butterfly wings closing distance between summoner and Jiro just in time. She landed in a crouch between Naoya and Jiro, and Jiro would have an instant to look into the Umbra Witch's glasses as the fire blaze behind her.

And then it was a series of three point-blank punches that did it. One to the jaw, to get Jiro to his feet, followed by two to the chest, both accompanied by a gunshot. The damage to Jiro's shirt would be a pair of small bullet-holes, the damage to his body would be nonexistent thanks to his immunity, which Kyo's mother had made mention of when she'd recounted the story of Daichi's near-death encounter with Jiro.

Immunity didn't translate to immobility, though, especially if one was off-balance already. The aim wasn't to hurt Jiro--it was to push him away from the fire, away from harm, to force him back and back and just in the general direction that was further away from Naoya--

And then the Umbra Witch was engulfed in flames and the pain she felt from the other side of mental connection was so blinding that Kyo couldn't think, and her vocal chords locked up in her throat. She opened her mouth, her back arched, her eyes widened. Small red flames sprouted up, one on her left arm, one on her right leg, the other at the collar of her shirt, and began to spread over her clothing--the weakness to flame, which she had been so worried about in the first place, the reason she had requested to go with Shin specifically for the utility of healing, had rendered her body quite flamable in the face of second-tier fire magic.

"A-Aaah--" she managed to choke out. But that was when Chika moved.

Chika was no stranger to heat. She was no stranger to the feeling of burning. She was a bit of a stranger to feeling it everywhere at once, but what she was also not a stranger to willingly enduring pain if it meant protecting the life of a loved one. She saw what Kyo was doing, and bit back a scream. No, she couldn't lose her head. Not like last time. Not like before--

But--

The mask, the sunken-skinned horror with bleeding eye sockets and barbed-wire coating, appeared in her hand, and she pressed it to her face. That Kakeru hadn't seen it yet, that Daichi and Jiro hadn't seen it yet, that Shin Imoto hadn't seen it yet either, these things didn't matter. Tisiphone appeared in all her tortured glory and swept into the air, flying out and ahead, above Hanako and Kakeru, rushing to the scene. Blood seeped out of the puncture wounds all over her body, the snakes that continued to bite her all simultaneously releasing their hold on the Persona's body. Droplets of blood surrounded the Persona and grew luminous red, and then, light-blue.

Kyo glanced up at the form sweeping down upon her. Her nerves were on fire, too overpowering for Kyo to register anything but blank revulsion at the sight, not even comprehending what it was, whether it was friend or foe.

And then the Persona descended on her, wrapping its arms around Kyo in a hug from behind, preventing her from toppling backwards or collapsing. The serpents entwined around Tisiphone's body coiled around the limbs that had ignited, smothering the flames; behind Hanako, Chika flinched, feeling small searing reactions from her own body's pain receptors, though the intensity of the fire was far beneath that of a direct Maragion spell and unlike Kyo, no actual fire magic crossed the connection--only the pain.

And then, Chika braced herself. The gathered healing magic of Pain Siphon flashed bright blue around Kyo, and Chika cried out in pain. Tisiphone vanished; Cereza had already flickered out. Kyo swayed in place on her feet, feeling only residual pain from the fire spell.

Chika Nakadachi's knees buckled and she fell to the ground, catching herself with her gloved hands, feeling a stray twig tear a small nick in her palm through the right glove. She shook lightly, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes, trying to will her body to stop hurting. But the nerves all along her limbs, her torso, even her face, they all stung, and with the passing of moments, only faded so far that the all-encompassing sting became and all-encompassing "dull ache," showing no signs of diminishing further. The BeeZector hung loosely off her wrist, clinging there, ignored for the moment. She couldn't even feel its metal limbs through the pain...
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Prince Arjuna
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-insert something witty here-

And then there was an explosion. And fire. Kakeru should've expected this kind of thing to happen already, but it didn't really matter. Everything happened just too fast and Kakeru wasn't able to do anything as a lot of things happened in just a brief period of time.

Thanks to his resistance against fire, Kakeru could withstand the searing heat, but it was kind of bothersome he had to cover his face with his arm. While he was tempted to do something, he just followed Hanako's instruction to not get any closer until they could figure out what kind of situation they were currently in at the moment.

Then Kakeru saw Chika summoning her Persona, and because it was his first time seeing her using her Persona, he was somehow surprised to see the unusual shape of her mask and her Persona. Perhaps it had something to do with her own personal problem, but that's not the problem right now. She seemed to be in pain after she's done doing something to Kyo using her Persona. Concerned, he conjured his own crescent-visored mask, preparing to summon his Persona so that he could cast Diarahan on the girl.

"Hey, you alright?" he asked. While looking at Chika, he glanced at the direction where the fire came from. Then he realized how stupid his question was. Of course she wasn't alright! It was obvious that she had done something to Kyo to take her injures that were caused by the fire to herself. Shaking his head, he cast Diarahan on Chika.

While doing that, he was also concerned by what happened to Naoya. He sure hoped that others could deal with that.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
It was exactly as Naoya had feared, but at least they were far away from town. That meant he didn't have to worry about that prediction coming true: They all had to worry about themselves though.

She covered her face with her arm instinctively. If they were too close, there wasn't much she could do. Throw herself over Chika's especially flammable body, and that was it. But it stopped as soon as it began: Abruptly and dramatically. That Persona above Naoya wasn't Krishna, and that wasn't his normal mask.

The realization was secondary, with the smell of char and smoke in the air the smoke and the heat and there were others far closer to them: Including Jiro and Kyo. Likewise, both of them were weak to fire. "Kyo! Takenaka-san!" Feebly she called out while the others had already acted. She braved the smoldering crater that was the campsite without a second thought.

Everyone was alright, right? "St-stay with her, Kakeru, I'm counting on you! Keep her safe!" The last she saw before that, Daichi was with Inspector Imoto. He kept him back, away from the fire, right? No one was seriously injured by that.

"Daichi! Are you there? Everyone! Answer me!" The forest was on fire too. Not surprising after that, but in light of everything else. That detail was an afterthought in the face of everyone's condition."
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Exodin
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MAHHA
The sweltering heat was too much for him. What the hell was happening to his friend? He began to cough violently, his eyes watering. He tried to shake his head to free up his own thoughts but the sheer intensity of the fire was preventative of that. Then suddenly...glasses? Jiro's two thoughts as to someone helping him could be summed up in two words. What and why. It made no sense. Why would Charinko actually help Jiro, when he'd been the one to try and kill Nakamura? What was with her and her mother insisting on helping?

The blows did their intended job, and sent the boy careening backwards from the towering inferno his friend had become. Dazed, the boy fell back and scrambled to his feet in time to see the new persona. Had Naoya just ascended?! Okay, well that was great and all but the forest fire was just a tiny bit more important than gawking and congratulating him.

"Naoya i'm happy for you but not everyone else around here nulls fire! So we really need to get the fuck out of here!"

---

Daichi couldn't lock up now. Someone had to take charge. Shin was being quiet and someone had to do something. So Daichi began to belt out orders to the other teenagers.

"Hanako, I need you to use water magic on the trees! Everyone else, use some sort of ice or water magic on the trees if you have it! We need to be sure and contain this fire!"

With that he went to grab Kyo and pull her away. She, along with Jiro was weak to fire. He'd be damned if something was going to happen to her. He may not be able to do many things, and he may even fail at the things he did try to do.

"Everyone that can't aid in extinguishing the fire, we need to get away from here as fast as possible! All we'll do is get in the way of those who are attempting to douse the flames!"
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