A Game of Gods: Infinities

Skyla raised an eyebrow at the newcomer. Another one. Fine. Alright. Strength in numbers... but this guy doesn't seem all that bright.

"Truth be told, we just got here. So no." Skyla then noticed just how weird this world looked.

After taking a short break, Rey had left the alleyways, but now had apparently decided on a different course of action, clambering up a fire escape and jumping around a bit to make it to the rooftop of the office building he had been hiding behind. He walked to the edge, first one, then another, almost patrolling, still looking to try and keep an eye out for places.

He'd done some thinking on his location, and the fact that he...or the girl he currently was anyway...lived with Tio Rey Sr., and that he was the same age approximately that he had been during a certain week-long period in his youth. He'd spent the week skipping school, for reasons involving...well, a poorly done perm, he didn't care to think very much about that, even now the thought embarrassed him. But with the way his hair was and all that, he had put two and two together and made a wild guess that he could try to parallel his own childhood, and skipping school wouldn't have any more serious consequences than a forced head shave when he was eventually caught at it...and being a girl now, he didn't think it'd even be that bad.

It was funny to apply adult logic to a childhood situation like that, as at the time it had been the worst thing ever that could have happened to him...and now he barely even considered it an inconvenience.

The long and short of it was, he had no intentions on going to class, preferring instead to try and keep his eyes out for any more trouble out here in the city.

"Rooftops are no place for a little girl, especially one with such magical power. These are dangerous times," a cheerful, somewhat mocking voice said from above Reyna. Whilst she hadn't found trouble, trouble had found her—trouble in the form of a girl in a blank black mask, with rather uninspiring brown hair hanging to her shoulders. Those blue eyes were absolutely terrifying when you gazed into them, though.

If any more confirmation was needed that Fuuko wasn't here to guide the girl to school, it was the black-and silver dress, terrifying in its complexity and laciness, that she was wearing. No-one would be headed to school in an outfit like that.

Rey stayed still and silent for only a moment, then stepped away from the edge of the building, brandishing a small black device...it would almost look like a wand, completely black, with a vaguely watery-looking design to it, as though the whole thing were clear and instead simply filled with dark liquid.

"Normally, I'd wait to see if you were friend or foe, but something tells me that I already know what you are. The better question is, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, I'm just here to stop a demonic invasion. I've spent a long time working on it, though it did cost me the entirety of my prophetic abilities to find out. It's only a matter of days until they get free," Fuuko said cheerfully, holding her hand up and creating what appeared to be a model of the solar system (if not to scale) above her hand out of black light, "And you're going to help me. See, I need magic to heal someone, and using mine would be impossible because it would hurt the unfortunate girl too much. So, I'm going to need to take yours."

"Excuse me?" Rey held the wand at the ready, apparently fully prepared to fight, but he tried to keep a calm tone to his voice. "You could always just try asking nicely. Besides, my magic isn't exactly of the 'heal others' nature. But tell me more about this demonic invasion. I have some friends who I'm betting would be more than willing to help out."

"Oh, the normal. Hell itself will spill over and ravage the land and so on and so forth. There's not much that can be said to it. Now, who said you had a choice?" Fuuko asked, dropping to the roof and placing the orrery above her head, "I'm going to rip it from you body, alive or dead. The world is much more important than you are."

"I would tend to agree with you on that, actually, but how would ripping the magic from me do anything to help the world? Who do you need to heal that's so important? Why can't you just trust me and my friends to help?"

Rey was slowly backing up, keeping his eyes firmly on the other girl, trying to size up any opportunity to act.

"If this person isn't healed in time, the gate breaks. The circumstances are complicated, so I'm not going into it. And you can help: keep resisting," Fuuko answered jauntily, ceasing to suppress the amount of magic at her disposal. It was large, to say the least; the mask-wearing girl had more raw power than Chiko and Kami combined for some reason and it was almost overwhelming to be around. "Now, are you done talking or are you going to fight me off?"

Rey narrowed his eyes slightly, glancing around as much as he could without taking his eyes off the girl...then he turned, having been backing away slightly this whole time, and it was with a quick leap over the side of the building that brought him down and onto the fire escape he'd climbed up earlier, colliding hard on the top landing and letting out a grunt of pain at the impact, looking back up and aiming his wand upwards even as he scrambled to try and get to the ladder and start running back down into the alley, wishing like hell he were closer to the street.

Fuuko ran after him, leaping straight from the roof to the floor without pausing to consider that this was not normally in people's interests. This, however, didn't slow her in the slightest and she continued to chase after the wrestler with an evil, evil grin on her face behind that mask. Rey could run upwards and be trapped or downwards and try to pass his enemy... one that was now firing lasers at him. Or, more specifically, that orrery. The size and power of the laser was directly proportional to the planetary body's size; the speed to how long it took to orbit the sun. One orbit meant it fired... but everything was massively accelerated.

Needless to say, this meant that the largest laser of all was chasing a merry beam of death towards Rey.

"Fight back! I know that you can!" Fuuko called, breaking into laughter.

Rey would have been a little more mortified to hear the squeak of terror that escaped his female throat, but at the moment he was far more concerned with weighing his options. They weren't good. Going up, going down, they were both equally unpleasant and he had no time to try anything much fancier.

Out of as much a blind panic as anything else, instead Rey went sideways, jumping up and onto the rail of the escape, and jumping out sideways, towards a window. The sill was nearly impossible to grab, but he managed to with one hand, screaming at the pain of suddenly having his arm nearly wrenched out of socket, but he dangled there, and quickly used his other hand to aim the wand at his attacker, calling out as he did.

   "Encompassing Gloom!"    he shouted, sending a swirling mass of darkness at the girl, remarkably like his shadowstuff blasts, though directed through the wand. He honestly didn't expect the attack to hit, but hopefully it had bought him enough time as he tried to clamber down via the windows, though it was a hell of a lot harder than trying to climb a fence or a steel cage back home, and he was already regretting this idea.

"Darkness? I'll make sure to introduce you to Kami. Hmm... might have to trap you for Suiko," the girl mused, firing another laser out of the palm of her hand and cutting through the darkness like it was tissue paper. The orrery continued to fire, the monstrous beam from the sun cutting through the fire escape's supports as it traced its way to Rey. The other beams, however, just fired straight at her... leaving hanging from the window, incapable of running, as a fast track to incapacitation.

"Oh god DAMNIT," Rey muttered to himself...and, glancing down, again without any time to do much more than react...

"Screw you, lady!"

He just let go, trying as best he could to take a position so as to take a bump when he hit. He had just enough time to think that it was his older, well-trained, male body that had survived falls like this in the ring, but he didn't think he had any other option.

Fuuko leisurely strolled over to the girl as she let go, temporarily stopping the orrery and charging a large, ominous sphere in white lightning and indigo flame as she approached. Hopefully, the girl had immobilised herself for the mask-wearing magician... well, as far as Fuuko was concerned that was something to desire. For Rey? Not so much. In fact, his future looked very painful if he was incapable of fleeing.

Fortunately for Rey, his wrestling training was as much a state of mind as it was reliant on his body, and he hit in what would have been a perfect bump, protecting his head and taking the impact flat against his back and arms. Unfortunately, he didn't currently have the virtual splint of musculature built up that he normally did, and he screamed in pain from the hit. He couldn't tell yet if anything were broken, and didn't really feel like he had time to care, seeing the girl advancing on him, he raised the wand again.

"Stay away from me! I don't want to fight you! We can work together! We can save your friend and we can stop the invasion!"

"Oh, we will work together, I just need to do one little thing," Fuuko said reassuringly... just as the ball in her hand hit a critical mass and became a raging torrent of implausible flame and electricity, leaping for Rey. This left Fuuko completely open, though.

Rey winced, but with a scream of effort, flung himself to one side, crying out in pain at the jolts, but hopefully avoiding the worst of the attack...at the same time, his wand was up and gone again, and he shouted...loudly, as though trying to draw attention to himself...

   "ENCOMPASSING GLOOM!"   

Another massive swirl of shadows shot at Fuuko, nearly as quick as her own power.

Whilst Magical Amber was busy with other matters in the basement, Hisui had decided to clean their room. She had intended to clean the whole mansion out of habit, but her "parents" had stopped her, telling her that "the maid would do it".

Of course, that made sense. If in this world they were the children of Shiki-sama and Akiha-sama, they couldn't be their servants. That's the way things worked. Still, she had to help somehow, and they outright refused to let her prepare dinner, so the best she could do right now was clean the room. However, a few minutes after she began, she noticed something sitting on the bedside cabinet. Something that took her attention away from everything else.

It was a book. A fine leather bound volume, with a gold embossed sunflower spread across its cover, and two characters on the bottom left corner: "琥珀".

"...Ko... haku..."

Her sister had kept a diary in this world too, it seemed. Her fingers trembled as she traced the pattern on the cover, afraid of what might be inside. She'd seen Kohaku's diary in her world. It... She didn't want to even think about it. But maybe... Just maybe, things were better in this world. Of course, they had to be better. Nothing could be worse than that. Nothing could be worse than what her sister went through. Slowly, ever so slowly, she eased open the cover and began to read.

""Diary-chan, I'm so happy to meet you"," she read aloud in a quiet, subdued voice. ""Ojii-san said he had a surprise for my eighth birthday. I was very scared when he took me to his room, but he gave me you and told me to fill you up with happy memories! Ojii-san is weird, but at least he's always nice to me." Ojii-san... That would be..."

Ojii-san. Grandfather. With Akiha-sama and Shiki-sama as her parents in this world, there was only one person who that could be.

"...Ma... Makihisa-sama..."

Of course. In this world, he wouldn't have had his demon blood. And without that, he wouldn't have...

"...He wouldn't have used Nee-san like that..."

It took a moment for her to realise the diary was slowly getting wet. Was she... Was she crying? Yes, of course she was. But... Were these tears of sorrow, or was she happy, happy to know that at least somewhere, her sister hadn't suffered like that. That at least in this world, Kohaku's cheerful smile had always been genuine.

Gently, she closed the book, and stared off into the distance. She didn't know what to think right now.

Kohaku awoke to something rough and wet rubbing her cheek, and the sound of gentle mewing. Opening her eyes, she realised she'd spent the entire night in the basement and had fallen asleep at her workshop. With a low yawn, she groggily got to her feet, but not before giving the black cat who'd woken her a nice little earscratch.

"'Morning, Len..." she said, picking up the cat and walking towards the stairs. "Suppose I should feed you and Coulter-kun, ufu~"

After making sure the household pets were well nourished, she headed to the parlour and cheerfully greeted Hisui and her "parents". For some reason, her sister seemed to be avoiding eye contact with her. Well, Hisui-chan always was a little strange, ufu~

She had been operating at a somewhat sluggish pace this morning, but that all changed when she entered the kitchen and seemed to go into overdrive preparing lunches. She wanted to make sure there was enough for the whole class, after all. She wanted to gain their trust. She especially wanted to gain Chiko's trust. Because then she wouldn't be on guard around. Because then, she'd be an easier target.

I'll show you... No-one hurts Hisui-chan. No-one.

After quickly changing into her uniform, she gave Shiki and Akiha a quick bow before heading off. Hisui had been made to carry the lunches, as Kohaku was weighed down with not only the shinai bag containing her broom, but another large bag containing the fruits of the previous night's labours. Of course, she'd been sure to make them look as innocent as possible. She couldn't risk being found out before she got to Chiko, after all.

The journey to school was made without incident, and the twins arrived at class just in time.

"Good morning, Loli-senseeeiii~!" Kohaku shouted as soon as she entered, taking note of the teacher's weapon but choosing not to speak up about it.

"Good... Good morning, sensei," Hisui spoke for the first time that morning, bowing dutifully before heading off to her seat beside Kohaku.

edited 16th Dec '11 5:08:53 PM by Moerin

The flames followed Rey, not letting something as minor as a few feet get in the way of consuming her. Specifically, draining all magic from her body—more than could actually be taken without outright killing someone—and converting said body into a small, diamond prison to contain her soul. Why let a person go to waste?

Fuuko didn't seem overly concerned that the shadows ate one arm to the bone before the magic feeding them was cut off.

Rey struggled, trying his best to squirm away or otherwise escape, but the pain from both the fall and the intent of the flames left him unable to do much more than scream in pain, even as he was raising his wand to try and use it once more, it slipped from his grasp, the metal rod clattering to the ground as Rey seemed to vanish into the wash of fire.

When the energy dissipated, all that would remain was a small gem on the ground, what would have looked like a clear diamond, if not for the fact that holding it up to the light would reveal that it was shot through with the smallest bits of other colors...mostly red and yellow, but with a few tiny specks of black as well.

Casually, Fuuko walked up to the gem and pocketed it with her good arm, chanting under her breath. That had gone much better than expected; she had been half-expecting the girl to escape.

Matt was hoping that Skyla would give helpful hints about the location or give him a quest but she didn't even say something quirky.

He started walking off...maybe there would be some loot to find.

"Kendo?" Chun-Li asked the teacher, curious. "The art of Japanese swordsmanship?"

Chun-Li looked excited about the Kendo practice. Despite her many battles, she has never fought a weapon user before, let alone been trained in another martial art than what she currently uses. Too bad, she wasn't her normal size or had her normal ability to use chi. She would've loved to fight the teacher.

-DK finally makes it down safely. There were strange noises and flashes of light from one of the roofs, but for all he knows this is a perfectly normal occurence for this place of madmen. Now considerably hungry, he heads out in search of food.-