Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM): In the Shadows of the City - Chapter Six: Rage of the Demon Lords

[Justin OOC]

The Heads had become more active, attacking in the daylight hours now, halting all efforts to discontinue the quaratine were halted. Kiyohime alone destroyed nine blocks in Shinjuku before vanishing.

The Deathtoll was well over ten thousand, and growing, as The heads stepped up their activities. There were reports of thousands of people, now in a mindless zombie-like state going on murderous rampages, and causing anarchy and mayhem. The remains of the JSDF were called out to suppress riots, and proved effective, but the Serpent Demons arrived, and military might was nothing against them.

Clearly, Alexander and Shizuru meant their comments to the Lunar priestess, now there could be no peace.

It was only through the holiness of the shrine and the presence of the Old Man and the priestesses that it remained a haven, and undefiled.

All across the city fires burned, and a wail of despair seemed to rise.

The school had been destroyed, It simly ceased to exist one morning, though no one was within.

(OOC, Everyone is at the Shrine, in one of the only areas that doesn't reek of destruction.))

[Victor]

Although the shrine was intact, he didn´t want to get caught by surprise, so everyday he make turn to see how the enemy is moving over the city, specially the demons. Hoping to tracking those down, he kept with that for some time.

Passing those days with them was not tough, it was better them stay alone hiding from every shadow, now he is re-discovering how is to live together with people.

“I hope my family is ok…” His parents were even more powerful and skilled them him, so they might be ok. The sad was the ones who didn´t have such luck and lived with him. He remembers of one girl that liked him once, they hang out but it was nothing serious. Isamu could only wish she was well.

[z-Skye]

Skye sat on a bench and stared at the ground. She hadn't said much, but it was clear she'd seen action the night before. She was bruised and hurt and had the distant look of someone who had seen something awful. Keiko hovered near her, concern in her dark eyes.

At Isamu's words, Skye flinched. They also seemed to break her out of her fugue. She looked up at her companions and fellow demon hunters. Swallowing hard, she said, "We have to fight with them, don't we? So let's go and fight them. Let's find one and kill and seal it." Her voice was soft, but it was also hard. "I think number four, Henry is next?"

[Victor]

Isamu pondered on her words. As many demons they slay better, but are so much useless demons around here that the effort won’t be satisfactory.

“Skye-san… This is a difficult type of group to deal with. We can destroy more them 90% of them and still this Hell will keep going…but if we strike the right 10%, everything will come back to normal…”

He didn´t took out his eyes from the demons movement closer to the Shire.

“Do you know who we need to attack? I can try track them down…”

[Kenichi]

"She is right Isamu. So far we have sealed 4 out of 8 heads, and we know the names of 3 of the ones that are left over." Kenichi thinks about the Orochi heads left over, the 1st head, snake lady, sword ogre and Henry.

"If we are going for the weakest among them, we are looking at Henry, probably with backup. I don´t think we can truly handle the snake lady and the first head in our current situation." Kenichi remembered that the church he was working so hard to build had already been run over earlier during the week. "We are gonna need the full group again if we are going to do this."

[Victor]

Isamu nods to Kenichi. He was right and now it´s better he told him that they need just 4 left.

“Are you sure it´s just 8 heads?” He wanted to make sure about it.

“And, you can describe me that one you just talked about?”

[z-Skye]

"The eight heads want to summon the Orochi, the head demon," Skye said. "His power when summoned is related to how many of the heads are unbound. So far, he's at half strength. To win, we need more of the heads bound, though.

"Henry's..." Skye stopped, looking suddenly ill. "His human form, which is all we've seen... it's like he's a high school student like us. Brown hair, hazel eyes. He's..." Her voice trailed off as she held herself still.

After a moment, she looked at Isamu. "What do you want to know? I don't know what you're looking for here."

[SalmonMax]

"Maybe he's in the yearbook from last year," Keiko abruptly said. "They were all human before Orochi woke them. I'll be right back!" The miko scurried off to her room where she began dumping all the books from her shelf to the floor as she searched for the right one.

After a couple of minutes she came back, socks skidding on the hardwood floor of the temple. She socked down the yearbook and opened it.

"What's his family name?" Keiko asked as she flipped the book to the student photos.

[Kaori Aoyama]

"Grandfather says," The raven haired beauty stepped into the conversation. Still in her school uniform, perfectly pressed and with a series of ribbons tied neatly in her hair, Kaori Aoyama was a vision of Heaven on Earth... if Heaven was clueless. She raised up one finger in a sweet, yet preachy manner. "Someone's hindsight can become your foresight."

When everybody looked at her as if she had absolutely nothing worthwhile to add to the conversation (or did she?), she just beamed them all a smile a bright smile, giggled and shrugged. "Whatever that means."

"Ill make lunch! You guys look for Henry..." She scampered off, not far from the group but still off in her own little world.

[z-Skye]

"I... I don't know," Skye said softly. "And he was a new transfer. He won't be in there." She swallowed, staring at nothing, until Kaori's arrival jarred her out of whatever place she was dwelling in. She listened, but couldn't make sense of what was being said.

Swallowing, she stared at the spot again. A moment later, she said, "I know where they live."

[Kaori Aoyama]

"Well, that makes it easy." Kaori said cheerfully, clasping her hands together and bowing slightly. "We can just invite him over for dinner and hopefully we won't have to obliterate his soul. Find out his favorite dish and I'll be happy to make it Skye, I'm an excellent cook and would be happy to entertain Henry for a visit."

[SalmonMax]

"That...may actually not be a bad idea," Keiko said. "I mean, the shrine's protected from demons, so normally they can't come in...but if we invite one, then that one could. Of course, they'd figure we were setting a trap, so they'd probably set an even worse one, and it would all be incredibly risky...but it would move things forward. We might lose the shrine...but we might get a head or two too. It's probably a better idea than just going out and hoping to get ambushed."

[z-Skye]

"No!" Skye said, as Keiko's words snapped her out of her funk. "No, we can't lose the shrine," she said, her voice shaking. Skye literally felt like vomiting at the thought. Without the shrine, where would they be safe? She barely held it together now, knowing that they had one place where Henry couldn't come to, where he couldn't get her again. The nightmares were bad enough now - what would they be like when she couldn't sleep in safety?

"No," she said again. "I'd rather be bait for Henry first." She looked ill at the thought of him touching her but it was still better than losing home base.

[Kenichi]

"I don´t know about that. Allowing one of the head´s into the shrine could end up causing a world of trouble." Kenichi spoke to Keiko. "A cornered beast is at it´s most dangerous, and nothing would be more dangerous for a Orochi head than going into the shrine where help won't be easy to arrive."

Getting up from where he was sitting and walking up to Skye "I don't want us inviting one, and then that one summoning the rest. We had a hard enough time defeating Kiyohime once, It's not something I want to repeat so soon." putting his hand on her shoulder he looked at Keiko again. "This are the last four heads, we can't go any big gambles right now without seriously risking our mission. If somebody should be bait it should be me. I killed two of the heads already, or at least dealt some significant blows to them, they might come for me if they see me alone."

[Kaori Aoyama]

"If all we're doing is looking for ways to lure out the Heads, that's easy too." Kaori nonchalantly continued her simple task of preparing a small meal for them but took the time to reach towards her pack and remove her prized family blade from it's special scabbed on her school pack. She presented it to her allies.

"See?" It was a blade they all knew well, the center of her power, the culmination of all her bloodline's worldly strength compressed into a single edge of a perfectly folded unknown metal. The very same blade, unknown to her friends, that currently held her Warrior's Spirit trapped within it, yet even with out the blade or her Warrior's Spirit... Keiko could still feel the immense power of the Ki within her... suppressed as it was.

"All we have to do is offer up Onimaru to them. Trust me, one of the heads is dying to get his hands on this thing." The very fact that she just referred to her ancestral blade as a 'thing' told every one (except maybe Victor), that Kaori was sick. Or maybe the demons got her, there were far worse fates than death. "When they come for it, you guys get em'. If it goes bad, it's no biggie, it's not like I have a use for it anymore anyway..."

"...It's just a sword." Never had words so unlike her ever been spoken. This was not Kaori, this was someone else... a husk, a shell... something that must have been wearing her skin! Kaori would never even refer to her training bokken as 'just a bokken'.

"So, that's one option, and we might even lure out Henry."

[z-Skye]

Skye fought the urge to shrink away from Kenichi's hand. That made no sense to her; she'd clung to Keiko and Kazuo, other demon hunters, last night. Why did she feel so defensive when Kenichi or even Izamu just looked, much less touched her?

She wouldn't be afraid of the others, she told herself. So she held herself still under the massive, gentle hand and waited for the fear to pass. It would pass, she knew it would.

Then a far more troubling issue reared its head. Kaori's changes had been a concern, but had gotten pushed back by Skye's own issues. This was a jarring reminder that she'd let her own concerns fail another. "Kaori, we can't do that," Skye said tensely, at a loss how to combat this enemy. "That's your family's sword, and you... how can you fight without it?" She rose to her feet, Kenichi's hand sliding off of her shoulder. "What's wrong with you!? We don't need ficken Kaori Home-maker now! We need bitchy, angry, shove-a-sword-up-a-demon's-arsch Kaori!"

[Kaori Aoyama]

"That's the thing about needs, Skye." Kaori remained pleasant, despite Skye losing her composure... again. The poor girl was a big ball of stress and was probably going to die of an aneurysm before she was thirty if she didn't learn some kind breathing exercises or maybe get a stress ball. "Sometimes when you get them met, you don't need them anymore."

"All my life I worked to be the best, simply because I was a woman and wanted my father to respect me and honor me as an equal. It won me no more respect in his eyes than it did with any of you." She explained calmly while slicing up small bits of foreign food this author couldn't begin to recognize or pronounce. She still possessed a flair for the blade, her hands continued to move in perfectly calculated movements, like even slicing food was an act or strategic dueling; ever cut perfectly made at an equal measurement. "All you know is Kaori the Warrior, but that was not me. I needed to prove something to the world so I became the very best at my art. Now that I've achieved it, I no longer need it."

"Grandfather offered me a final test of my abilities, and I accepted." She sighed in relief and rolled her eyes as she scooped up the sliced what-ever-it-was and added it to the rest of the dish she was preparing. "There was no way to pass the test, or fail the test... I can't explain, but it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Finally I can just be... Kaori. Y'know? No fighting, no sparring, no 1,000 cuts or having to master those really long technique names! I mean seriously... who cares what it's called and why do I have to scream out 'Prancing Princess Pony's Precarious Perch of Peril'! at the top of my lungs? Why can't I just say 'Hey, I'm jumping really high, I'll be up there' or even better, why say anything at all!? It's like announcing our presence but bad guys still somehow get taken by surprise... why is that?"

Shaking her head in confusion she went back to slicing veggies...

[Kenichi]

Kenichi did his best to hold back his laughter, if he laughed Skye would probably snap and try to freeze him solid, or start talking in German again and stomp off to god knows where until they would need bloodhounds to find her, so he instead decided to do something less useful with his mouth and walking over to the make-shift kitchen that Kaori had prepared took some raw veggies and started chewing on them while inspecting the situation.

"I always figured the screaming was to make them hesitate. Either because you are crazy enough to jump from a third floor with an overhead slice, or because he is too shocked to realize he is fighting a person who screams their next action at the top of their lungs." Kenichi looked at the rest of the crew. "What? Wrong time for a joke? You guys are a tough crowd."

Cleaning up his hands with a near-by napkin, Kenichi looked at the crew. "At this point we can´t give up our only haven away from them, and we can´t ask Kaori to use her family blade as a bait for the third head. Now, Skye mentioned knowing where they live, we can do an all out attack in there, the problem there is that we don´t know if they STILL live there. The good thing, is that Isamu here is an accomplished tracker, I hope that even if they are not there, Isamu would be able to track them down from any clues we have."

Taking a can of juice from...somewhere, it was not very clear when he actually got the can on his hands to be honest "We need to crush them as quickly as possible, but getting ahead of us will only end up hurting us further, reckless is good in battle, but not when making a plan."

[SalmonMax]

Keiko nodded. "I guess we should check out the place they live...even if they're not there, they may have left clues."

She gave Skye a look of mingled curiosity and embarrassment. "Is it that place that I...rode my bike to that one time?"

[Victor]

Isamu nodded to them.

“I can use my powers to detect them.... So we can plan our next move, as faster as we can we must stop this.”

He point to the city.

[Justin OOC]

"Then you should all get going."

It was Keiko's grandfather. "You must stop this madness before Orochi rises."

[z-Skye]

"Wait," Skye asked, her blue eyes going wide. "Is this it? Is this when Orochi comes?" They weren't ready. They hadn't taken out enough of the heads. And it didn't matter. They'd still go and fight; the unfairness of having their lives ripped away by forces beyond their control wouldn't matter at all.

[Justin OOC]

"It could be, they're operating openly now."

[z-Skye]

Skye tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry. "Alright," she said hoarsely. "Isamu... you said you can track them? You should probably start doing that." She looked a little sick, but she stood up and looked at the others. She wasn't sure what to say, so she didn't say anything. She just waited for Isamu to start.

[Victor]

Isamu nods to Skye. He start to close his eyes and concentrate trying to see or hearing the demons walking around and detect their positions.

Quote:

Roll(2d6)+10: Hearing

6,6,+10

Total:22

Roll(2d6)+7: Sight

6,1,+7

Total:14

[Justin OOC]

There were no demons around visible, but thanks to his enhanced hearing he could hear some a ways off. The words heard, weren't good.

"The masters are ready, he'll be coming back soon, everything is ready. We have all been called back to their home."

[Victor]

Isamu was with his eyes closed trying to hear more as he says.

"They are summoning the demon... everything is set.. they are speaking of a house they have to return..."

[z-Skye]

Skye shivered. She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to go out today and fight the demons again. The urge came over her to go find a police officer and turn herself in; to tell them that she was here illegally.

With effort, Skye pushed that desire away. "I know where that is," she said softly. "Let's go."

Even if she died, she'd be at peace.

[Justin OOC]

The trek to the building was uneventuful, but once they actually got where they could see the building, dozens of serpents from six feet in length to massive ones fifty feet in length surrounded the building. It would be a fight going in.

[Kenichi]

"It would be naive of me to say I did not expect any opposition, but this appears to be a bit excessive, Kaori? Skye? Can you cut open a path for us?"

[Victor]

Isamu get his bow ready.

"I´ll be covering you guys."

[Justin OOC]

(Okay guys what's the hold up here?)

[Victor]

(where is everyone?)

[Kultra_DM]

(Well, Kenichi can`t really just run in and hit stuff, he would get overwhelmed fast, and if we are going to fight heads, then Kenichi needs to keep the Ogre available for later)

[SalmonMax]

Keiko surveys the array of demons before them and hesitates for a moment. Then she takes a deep breath and looks up.

"Bless us today, great lady of the day. Shield us from our foes, and lend your strength to our arms. Make us warriors one last time, so the world may continue."

Then she glances at everyone present, with an unusual reckless glint in her eye.

"Follow me, and stay inside the light!"

With that, Keiko was off and running towards the massive throng of demons. As the priestess drew close, she made a sweeping gesture with her hand, and something like a golden comet hurtled up from her and burst in the air like a flare. Unlike a flare though, it stayed in the air above her, a miniature sun shining bright enough to banish every shadow in a radius around her.

[Justin OOC]

It was amazing but her Invocation was just perfect, and positioning just right, Keiko's attack actually managed to first halt, then banish all the demons present, giving them a clear path into the tower. One thing was sure though, the lords now knew they were coming.

[z-Skye]

"Kenichi, please go first," Skye said, her little voice shaking from fear. "You're the toughest." With a soft murmur, her silver Forcefield enveloped her, protecting her.

Click to reveal..

She'll be following Kenichi. Kult, can you lead us in?

[Kenichi]

Kenichi stepped forward "Good, lets bring the fight to them." Stepping forward, Kenichi opened the doors to the building, taking long strides inside trying as he might to keep everyone behind him.

Under his breath, Kenichi was praying in latin like his father taught him since he had been very little, a ridiculous thing once thought out through, but one that helped him keep his cool and keep The Ogre in check. "We are going to need to win this one all together, to get rid of as many of them as we can. I hope you girls are ready."