Empiricist

Sasha [Now Playing: Nothing] Around Aiko cherry blossoms scatter. Golden petals of flame, golden petals aflame, rising into the air. From their midst, he emerges. He looks, like a greek god. If greek gods did steroids, and were egyptian. His hulking shirtless form towers, above even the luchadores, his golden flesh radiant with energy, a smile, viscious, confident, beneath the nemes. "OZYMANDIAS! OBLITERATE!" Yeah uh, needless to say, between your bike, Lucia's bloodlust, and Aiko summoning offbrand Exodia, the remaining luchadores are dead. Like, really fucking dead.

Sasha [Now Playing: It Has To Be This Way] Space begins to shift, twist, distort. Distances change, trajectories alter. For a split second, the path to B, the path through the bus, the path to A, it all becomes a straight line. A split second, that, is all you need. Re-engaging your thrusters, throttling the throttle, you launch forwards crashing straight into B, and crashing B straight into the bus. Talismans explode from its back, at first like an avalanche, and then as a raging stream, great tendrils of paper tearing outwards and shifting, binding, shielding. A frontal shield, half a cocoon, a shield between you and the mustard gas. You explode out the bus, explode towards A. A rises to meet your challenge, its entire body darkening as it draws its fist back and brings forwards. It tears through storm of talismans, it tears towards you, and it tears right the fuck away. Space manipulation, bitch. Bike goes into their chest. Bolt goes into their spine. You blow the bullet and all of a sudden, there's whole load more plasma to worry about. When it's all over, all that remains is dust and debris, well, that and you, now careening through the damn air. A's dead. B's dead. E's firing a grappling hook at Aiko reeling her into D's lariat, and Lucia's accelerating forwards aiming to drive her heel right through E's chest. The way things are looking, you guys got this in the bag. Talismans gather before Aiko as an almost palpable aura explodes around her. Her eyes look as if they were aflame, and as she gestures, everything burns gold.

Sasha Your bolt crashes down, soon followed by a storm of talismans. E, the poor bastard trying to escape into the cloud is basically hurled out as soon as they came in, their upper body now missing a fairly large chunk of its funky cube flesh. A, seems mostly unscathed though. Barrier's gone, mask's slightly chipped, cloud's parted for now. But their body is in remarkable shape given what they just experienced. And as the avalanche of paper crashes down you start getting an idea of why. Whenever its struck, the point of impact changes, blackens, and the talisman shatters against it. Reactive armor, likely from the Nixon mask, it hardens in response to physical trauma. C meanwhile takes this time to try and shank Lucia. Good plan, slight problem though, "BREAK!" It's hard to run when your legs have just shattered. Its sprint turns into a stumble, the stumble into a fall, and the fall? "ACCELERATE!" Brings it right in contact with it Lucia's fist. So the batarang just breaks into against its target, sorta like how C's body breaks everywhere when the android puts her hand through said body and grabbed hold of its spine. B meanwhile kinda just, looks around. Kinda hard to find your target when your target just up and left all of a sudden. Good job B. You get a gold star for effort. Anyway as it stands, of your foes, one of them is dead, like really really dead, another is basically dead seeing as they're just a walking timebomb at this point, and two more are kinda fucked up. Oh? What's this? The ground's shaking? The air's starting to smell sweet again? That's just the other guy. The guy you didn't fuck up. You know, the guy lifting a bus into the air in preparation to crush you like a Spanish announcer's table? Yeah. That guy. [Now Playing: It Has To Be This Way] So here's how things are going down. A is leaping into the air and hurling a bus at you like a spear, a bus that you notice that, while once empty, is now filled with an awful lot of that magical mustard gas they've been releasing. It is going to follow that up with a flying elbow drop. B is strafing at Aiko, trying to suppress her, trying to stop her from interfering. E is trying to picking itself back up off the floor, and D is marching around the side readying to intercept any would-be escape attempts. Lucia's thrusters burn brighter as she moves to join your fight. Aiko meanwhile just stands her ground and focuses.

Sasha Well, first thing's first, a rift in reality tears open right next to E, their attempts to attack quickly turning into panicked flailing as they find themselves assailed by murderous bees. It's, not the deadliest attack, not against a being of living stone, but it does still harm it, shallow wounds stinging into its form. Now With only one asshole firing on her, Sasha finds herself free to just rev her engine and rush out of the way of the incoming beam, the pavement exploding away behind her and straight into A. Or well, close to A. Hitting them proves to be a little trickier, their retro space magic telekinesis proving powerful enough to hold her and Aiko's recently reclaimed missile at bay, at least, for now. Redirecting either right now seems to be a bit beyond them however. Aiko simply summons more talismans, the rapidly growing cloud slowly but surely overwhelming the luchador's defenses. Light fills the air. The Nixon mask. The gas mask. They are glowing. A grabs both out of the air, bringing both against its face as it crouches down low, its form impossibly flat against the ground. The Vader mask is detaching, the telekinesis is fading. It's trying to turn their attacks against them, the missile against Sasha, the bike against Aiko. Cracks tear across the ground below, and a yellow haze rises, scents sweet and spicy, soon to be choking. E begins running towards A, B readies its weapons trying to identify the source of the rift, and D steadies itself biding its time. C has managed to dodge Lucia's onslaught for now, and seeing an opening, rushes forwards, batarang at hand, the android however seems to have other ideas in mind, dropping low and pressing a hand against the ground.

Marina In dreams you see it. Six kings derelict in duty. Seven crowns forged by the dead man's hammer. The ritual is broken. Rain and gunsmoke. The girl who will wish her life away. The boy who will reign eternal. A broken throne waits for the new heir. It is pre-ordained. The route changes, the ending remains the same. The soldier waiting for an accursed man he can barely recognize. The grandmaster waiting to see his successor. Across the shore the cherry blossoms are in bloom. In deepest midnight a lotus rises from still ocean. From deepest depths the Kingmaker has returned. Rejoice for you are chosen. Rejoice for you are- aimai san-SENCHI sorya puni tte koto kai? cho! RAPPINGU ga seifuku... daaa furi tte kotanai puu. ganbaccha yacchacha sonto KYAACCHI & Release gyo ase (Fuu) ase (Fuu) no tanima ni Darlin' Darlin' FREEZE!! You awaken to Remi's alarm. Okay, now here, here's one of the downsides of being Awakened - the world's crazy and prophetic dreams exist. What this means is, what you just had could be a crucial piece of information... but it just as well could be random bullshit dredged up from the depths of your subconscious, and unfortunately, the Awakened World being what it is, it's pretty fucking hard telling the two apart. Like, when you live knowing that Hitler had a moonbase filled with magical racist forklifts, your dreams of cake and posh victorian velociraptors from Rigel B wind up sounding terrifyingly reasonable. Sure, statistically speaking it could be nothing, but it still could and hell the hell are you supposed to figure out which one's the one? Yeah, it's not easy. Faznie It takes a while, but eventually you find your way. You arrive at Sasha's garage a couple minutes past noon, quickly finding that Sasha herself is currently busy fighting shirtless luchador batman and his ensemble of other assorted masked wrestlers with the help of two teenagers.

Marina You blast your prison but to no avail, your shots just pass through, it's immaterial. Could try disabling it with a wish but, looking at the scope and firepower leveled against you right now, you've the feeling you won't make it in time. Gonna have to do this hard way it seems. Raising your shield, you fly up, pushing right against that indistinct boundary, there's no physical force, no force field halting your movement, no sudden pull yanking you back, no this, this was something else - some kinda asymptotic wall. No matter how much you move, the edge of the barrier, the world outside, it always seems just out of grasp. The blades are rushing in now, the stars in this false sky seeming to bloom brighter and brighter until you see them for what they are, and what they are is sharp and stabby. Very stabby. Skimming around the edge of your prison you do what you can to avoid the blades, focusing your shield to face outwards. It protects you from the first hit. It protects you from the second. But then comes the third. And the fourth. And the fifth. Blades slamming down against it again and again until it shatters, until one goes through your chest, until another goes through your armor, until you're launched back towards the mound of blades at the very center. Okay, that, really hurt. But that being said, at the end of all of this, you remain uninjured. Hurt yes, but again it's just cuts and scrapes and bruises, nothing time and wishes won't heal. Your opponent meanwhile. Well, put it this way, the sphere was centered on them, every single blade was heading towards the center, and they had nowhere to run. Yeah. If it were an actual person it'd have been fucking brutal, but instead as the blades fade and you inspect the hole, you find little more than broken membranes, spilt slime, and those nebulaic tendrils all curled up back into that cloud-like form. How convenient. You're about to pull out your phone, use the Cleaner app to mark the damage for cleanup, but something catches your eye. There's, something else down there, in the broken form of your foe, it's a card? It looks like one of the ones that Tor guy and those assassins were using.

Sasha Lucia's street sign cleaves through the air, just missing the diving Rooster-masked C who has now summoned a jacket, yellow with white sleeves. Without missing a beat, follows up with a thrust on her recovering foe, who, demonstrating substantially increased speed, quickly leans out of the way, snatching a passing batarang out of the air as it staggers backwards. You meanwhile show off your next trick, warping your bike straight into incoming car. The missile rushes forth, halting just before Aiko's face, chained by numerous glowing talismans, without so much as a pause, she picks it out of the air while you discharge bolt of plasma right into D's head as they ineffectually smash the floor, their mask beginning to crack as they're sent staggering backwards. E moves to cover them, tossing batarangs your way, while B starts strafing you with a repulsor beam. A meanwhile launches themselves towards Aiko who is now brandishing the captured missile in talisman cocoon.

Marina With an attack like that it's, pretty hard to really assess how much damage it's dealt, mainly since your opponent is in a hole being continuously bombarded with meteors, but judging by the flickering swords just visible beneath all the chaos, it's still alive. Incredibly fucked up no doubt, but still alive. Barely. Ringing fills you ears, and the world around you seems to ripple. This isn't quite the same kind of attack it opened with, no, it's similar, but far far larger. A spherical prison enclosing an extensive area centered around itself, a starry globe with its own night sky filled with stars, stars that are rapidly shifting into blades, innumerable blades all crashing down at once. A final desperate bid to strike you down at the cost of their own life.

Marina You know how according to anime magical girls are supposed to only use their most powerful attack as a finisher? Fuck that noise. Marina von Siemens is gonna give it to a motherfucker right now, right fucking now. You ain't got not time for this bullshit, you were planning on having a nice dinner, maybe reading a light novel or catching a rom-com. But nope, this thing decided to just jump you outta nowhere. But you know what, you will be having dinner on time, because this floaty asshole just fucked with the wrong magical loli. Wormholes tear open right above it, and the just start bombarding it with blazing space rocks. There's another screech of metal as it begins shielding itself with the blade ring, but it's not quick enough, the first handful of impacts managing to blast away some of its tubular... tube thingies, and slam it into the pavement below. Its tendrils retract as the continuous barrage just strikes it over and over again, not really breaking its guard, but pushing it backwards until its forced to start just tearing a hole into the ground as to not get crushed against it.

Sasha C slams straight into Lucia, the sheer force of the impact sending the android skidding the backwards, heels tearing tracks into the asphalt. What it doesn't do however, is harm her. Lucia's, tough, you know that pretty well, and Lucia has a shield. Well, she now has a shield. Some random lady she dragged in front of the attack, before casually tossing aside, confused but unharmed. She makes a step forwards, driving her fist towards her assailant, who is now the one on the defensive, stepping back just out of reach and switching to a rooster mask as Lucia's hand closes around a nearby street sign, the ground beneath it exploding as spirit energy is sent coursing through its form. E responds to this by tossing a volley of batarangs at her. Yeah that, that's really not gonna do much. You meanwhile summon your bike, blazing forwards and crashing straight into D, your raw speed surprising both your assailants. Still not everything's coming up Sasha today because rather than being sent flying, or tumbling, or turning into the bastard lovechild of a piece of roadkill and a modern art installation, D just digs their heels in, barrier shattering as their body ripples from the impact. Cracks are spreading across their exterior, but it's not enough, not nearly enough. Their mask detaches, flying off as a new one takes its place - a bloodstained hockey mask. They seem to grow markedly larger as they bring their fist, and most of their body weight down, aiming for the front of your bike, aiming to slam into into the ground and catapult you upwards into a grab with their other hand. B meanwhile decides that it's better served just helping A beat on Aiko, and boy is A beating on Aiko. It's fucking choking her, and slamming her into the ground, into walls, just, one slight problem - it, doesn't seem to be doing that much. The uh, slamming seems to mostly consist of just, pushing and prodding her around and generally just doing a pretty bad of stopping her from continuing to spray out talismans at everyone nearby. Having decided that repeated chokeslams really aren't helping, it just hurls a fucking car at her, B readying a missile for good measure.

Sasha "It was going for the baby. I couldn't let it succeed, so I parried it." "Using the baby." Aiko clarifies. A trails of talismans rises up around the shrine maiden, spiralling into a cylinder, spinning and shrinking before exploding forwards as a hail of paper. Your enemies, honestly don't react that much, just blocking with their forearms and soldiering on with their opening, unphased by the attack. Lucia for her part meanwhile just walks over to a nearby man and dumps the baby in his hands "Hold this for me." It is your bullet that commences the hostilities. A single shot pointed towards a wall and warped right into B's spine. It catches them by surprise, nailing them right there, though you've a feeling they're onto you, seeing as one of their own just got shot and you're the only one holding a gun here, even if it is pointed completely off target. B swings C around, sending them hurtling towards Lucia, the helmeted luchador swooping down for a flying elbow drop while its ally tries to crash down onto you as payback. A switches to its Vader mask going for a Force chokeslam on Aiko while D uses their grappling hook for a long ranged dropkick against you, E preparing to cover them with their batarangs.

Marina Well... the good news is, with its ring crumpled into a defensive position, the Aetherbell isn't able to quickly shift to the offensive quickly enough to catch you. Unfortunately, in this catching you means less landing the first hit, and more not being able to follow up and rail you as one of the many swords drives itself straight into your chest, which not only happens to sting quite a bit, but also hitconfirms the next imprisonment spell, catching you're sent reeling and then bashing you with a few more blades of light. Your foe launches forwards to capitalize on this, but well, judging by the angle of its release, it got a bit too zealous about it and released too late, so it's currently not so much heading towards you so much as it's heading sorta in your vague direction out of reach of its blades for now at least. Though it is compensating for this by unweaving its shield and spinning its tendrils outwards, the filaments almost singing as they tighten and relax over and over again, scything through the air around it in a web of attempted murder..

Marina There's a metallic screech as you start blasting it, less the noise it makes and more its ring of blades scraping together as they lock together to block your spellfire, the tendrils halting and going slack once more. You're keeping it at bay for now but but one by one, the constellation of weapons behind it line up and fire forwards towards you, a storm of blades streaking forwards as your ears begin to ring once more. The tendrils around its body sweep outwards, glistening before snapping backwards, filaments weaving together into a rectangular nebula, a shield. You hear the tension return to the anchored tendrils. It's making another charge now, and it's levying an awful lot of firepower behind it this time.

Marina Weaving through the air, you blast away a handful of tendrils as the air behind you fills with more of those sphere prisons each proving to be just as ineffective as the first. You actually didn't have to deal with too many of those tendrils either - the wide spread and distance meant that most of them only served to try and restrict your movement or missed entirely, burying themselves only a couple inches into the edifices of nearby buildings. Soon enough most of them retract, fruitless. But not all of them. A few, a few buried just behind you in buildings remain and stretch taut with a high pitched whine. And then, your foe reels itself in, rapidly dragging itself forwards, a ring of swords appearing around its body like the world's least inviting hula-hoop, and as it streaks towards you, more blades join it, an entire constellation of murder growing behind its back.

Marina You're a kilometer out from Remi's house when you hear it. Ringing. A faint melodic ringing in your ears. It reverberates once, twice, three times, growing ever louder. Instinct tells you to swerve. Instinct was right. The space where you were about to occupy shifts, radiant ripples racing across the spherical region as half a dozen blades of starlight appear at once around it and pierce inwards, shattering the prison. The ringing continues, and you accelerate, more and more imprisoning spheres blooming and breaking in your wake. They don't even lead you, just continuing to fire, continuing to miss. Descending into view, just at the center of the next intersection, is the culprit. It takes the form of an enormous rhizophysa easily twice the size of a person, its tubular body pellucid and glowing a faint blue inside what first appears to be a nebula. One that quickly untangles into an array of thin filaments of stars and stardust. As the ringing in your ears begin anew, it fires these piercing tendrils forwards in a wide shotgun-like scatter towards you.

Sasha The scene you come to is one of chaos, so y'know, the usual. So here's the situation - at the very center of the street a car has had bonnet smashed, couple more have been overturned. Civilians are running throughout the road, some running away, some running towards, and at the very center of this all are the perpetrators, five figures, standing spread out in an x-shaped formation. They resemble statues, physiques barrel-chested and impossibly well-built, their alabaster forms almost mannequin-like, smooth, lacking in detail beyond the general curve of their musculature, and assembled from dozens of vaguely carved cubes that undulate in sync with the pulses of the faintly luminous skeleton within. Floating around each of them is are noh masks. The one in the center, let's call them A, has five masks. The others, which we'll call B through to E each have three. Menreikis, from the Night Parade of One Thousand Smackdowns. You've heard of them, biological weapons developed back in the days of the war. Ones left without a purpose at its end, going feral and becoming what you see before you now, drifters without purpose, wreaking havoc and chaos in search for a fight, for it is in besting others that they develop new masks, new powers. They say the masks you recognize are the safe ones, ones that they were came loaded with, the ones you don't recognize, those are the problem ones, the ones they took during the war, trouble when they appear, and trouble too when they don't, because as long as their collective remains, the data's still out there somewhere, just waiting to return. Also they're y'know, luchadores. They don't react to your entry, it's basically impossible to figure out if someone's Awakened unless they y'know, start doing something supernatural, so right now they're just waiting for someone to give them a fight. Would be a good chance to plan out a surprise attack, would be but well... Something crashes out, no crashes though a building, slamming into the asphalt below. A hulking beast, somewhere between canine and humanoid in layout, a blend of bleeding fur and sparking metal, with an alligator's maw lined with teeth and with slit-like lights that serve as eyes. The maw hangs open, the jaw broken unable to close, its eyes burning bright red with otherworldly rage, the few still working at least. Screaming thrusters driving it down, its spine snapping from the impact, tearing out of its abdomen. It howls the world around it seeming to burn with its rage, blue flames dancing higher and higher into the air around it, but to no avail. "I AM THE FUCK TRAIN. THERE ARE NO BRAKES." Lucia TALLEYRAND brings her weapon down once more. The first blow silence the howls. The second crushes the beast's head, dust and debris exploding upwards, smothering out the last vestiges of the Aramitama's flames. Her weapon cries, it is the cry of a newborn baby. ...It is a newborn baby. Aiko turns the corner casually sipping a healing potion, pace leisurely and talismans readied in hand. You don't see their markings, but you already know they're those of mahjong tiles, her specialty. It is at this point, that the Menreiki react, donning their masks and readying for battle. Luchador A immediately dons a Phantom of the Opera mask, bombastic orchestral music blaring out as glowing musical staves wreath its allies. Luchador B dons an Iron Man mask and begins to start flying upwards with its new energy thrusters, C takes a mask modeled after a pilot's helmet, while D and E equip Batman masks readying batarangs for interception as they begin to develop shirtless batsuits.

Sasha You've just about finished lunch when you hear a crash outside, one followed by a few softer impacts. Car alarms go off, civilians start shouting about something.

Sasha "Very well, I wish you the best of luck with your work."

Sasha "A besieged Sanctuary, the battle is winding down now-" "I AM THE FUCK TRAIN. THERE ARE NO BRAKES." Guess Lucia's there too. The gunfire seems to peter out. "As I was saying, everything has been resolved. I can have some talismans delivered this evening, as always, please take care with them. They're meant for binding not building. Is there anything else I may do for you?"

Sasha The first thing you hear is an explosion, soon followed by the chatter of gunfire and the crash of bolts arcane and eldritch. Finally Aiko speaks, her voice calm, serene-almost "Hello Sasha, do you need something?"

Sasha "I see. Saturday it is then."

Sasha "Saturday morning, 9 am, your garage. If possible. I can work on it alone after I inspect everything if you have any appointments."

Sasha "Hmm. Yes. I have everything needed. What time?"

Sasha "I see." A pause. "I can do that. What do you need them to do? What are you binding it to?"

Immanuel