thenearshore | KINYOBI is open for business!

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KINYOBI is open for business!

Who: Gojyo and anyone!
What: Drinking, fighting, insulting this disgusting bar...
When: Any time from August 9th through the end of August
Where: KINYOBI, in Musashino, Tokyo, Japan
Warnings: Please put warnings in the headers of your comments as they become relevant.

1. Friday nights at Friday's
Kinyobi is a small, dark bar, located on a street that was never nice, not even when the plant across town was open. This is an industrial area, and this used to be a blue-collar, industrial bar -- the floors are permanently sticky, there's dents and gouges and names carved in every wooden surface, the restroom is a horror movie, and the booze is either watered down or rotgut, depending on the day of the week and the mood of the bartender.

Still. It's home.

2. Shinki Sundays
Gojyo looks up when the bell on the door chimes, and smiles broadly at the newcomer. "Hey, come on in!" he calls. "You're shinki, right? Lemme see your mark."

3. Wildcard?

And some images to give an idea of what the inside of Kinyobi looks like:

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Edit as of October 6th, in-game: there is now a bar dog.

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Sharak ignores Tsuzuki- sorry, Tsuzuki- in favour of grabbing Gojyo by the arm to pull herself back up to her feet. She fires a shot at an ayakashi that makes a move for her leg, but while that's enough to make it jump back, it isn't enough to kill it. She can't quite assess how many of them there are in the dark nor what the best, fastest solution is.

"Shaki." She growls, tightening her grip on Gojyo's arm. It's one less body in the room, at least.

He can help with the darkness issue, at least. Shakujyo and Gojyo both vanish, and Goyjo reforms in Sharak's hand as a broken -- and glowing -- sword. And if Tsuzuki laughs, he'll find out just how sharp that stumpy little sword is.

Really, he's not much more than a knife, his blade hardly as long as Sharak's hand. But at least his glow is soothing?

He's good at borderlines, if you want to split the pack.

There's one wolf -- the leader, the biggest, with far too much intelligence in all its rolling eyes -- in the doorway, and at least three more out in the bar. Any minute now, that front door is going to chime as the afternoon crowd wakes up and stumbles inside. They don't have much time.

But he's hurt, too.

Gojyo vanishes and reforms as a knife -- sword? His blade's broken halfway down, and Tsuzuki's immediate reaction is a flash of concern. Is he hurt? Is he blighted? What makes a shinki into something broken --

But there's nothing in that glow that looks sickly or damaged, so Tsuzuki swallows back his worry and turns his attention back to the wolves. They're still close, and he lets his borderline fall again, looking out past the doorway. There are still more out in the bar. They're going to have to get out.

"What's the plan?" he asks Sharak, his voice a bit uneven. His shoulder is killing him. "I can keep them off with borderlines..."

Or split the group up, and distract them so she doesn't have to fight them all at once. Gojyo looks wickedly sharp, but she'll have to get up close to fight with him.

Ah, wonderful. She can see. She also has Gojyo's commentary in her head, which helps catch her up on what she's missed so far and the various things to worry about. Three wolves out in the bar, endangering civilians. The leader here watching them. Tsuzuki hurt and their only support.

"Stop them from grouping up. Keep them off my back, if you can, and try not to move around too much." Sharak holds Shaki's hilt in both hands, linking her fingers around him as she raises him up. The glow lights up her face eerily. "We'll cut them down."

She can't just run up to them all and stab them, that'll get her blighted to hell and she can't afford to be immobilised from pain.

"On marishiei sowaka-" A wolf leaps at Sharak, tired of waiting, when the spell cuts into it in midair. A few others are hit as well, cut apart by an invisible strike. It doesn't so much more lasting damage than shakujyo, but it's enough to knock them down and make them yelp with pain while Sharak drives Shaki's blade into the head of the nearest wolf. "Rend."

He doesn't spend much time in his weapon form, not with Sharak and not with Ekko, back when the kid was still here. But for all that it's a rare experience, it's still a bit unsettling just how comfortable it is to be a thing. He can see everything, all around him -- Tsuzuki isn't a blur in the corner of his eye but rather in just as much focus as Sharak is, and the wolves, and all the rest of the room (and, for that matter, the dark blur where her hand is wrapped around him). It should be disorienting, but it's anything but.

He might not be able to cast a borderline in his human form, but his rend is clean and sharp as you please. The wolf thing shudders as its head splits -- there's just enough time for the wolf to make a kind of pained howl before it falls away into first a wet puddle, and then nothing. One down.

The other three go mad when their leader falls. Two throw themselves into the doorway, teeth snapping at Tsuzuki and Sharak both. The third slinks around to the side of the bar and disappears from sight.

Tsuzuki might not be much use as a weapon, but the concentration and precision that comes with casting a borderline come naturally to him. When the two wolves come snarling and snapping through the doorway, his hand lashes out.

"Line!"

He half-sags, free hand going to his shoulder, but the borderline stays up, and the two ayakashi veer off to either side. Their howls of pain are eerily human.

One of them goes after Sharak, and the other, frustrated by the barrier, whirls and jumps for Tsuzuki. His back, as he jolts away, hits the wall he's leaning against, and that's it: there's nowhere to go.

He does manage to get his arm up to shove its snapping teeth away from his throat and face, but he doesn't have the strength to shove it away. He's had better plans.

Sharak lashes out at the wolf attacking her with Shaki, managing a thin scratch across the thing's muzzle that has more effect than the sandled foot that follows it. Sharak curses under her breath at the small distance that manages to put between her and the creature before she's quickly distracted by the sight of it's companion leaping at Tsuzuki.

There's not much time for thinking. Her hand snaps out and grabs the wolf by the scruff of it's neck and she sharply yanks it away from the shinki. The wolf and Sharak both yelp in unison as she immediately lets go because- ow! That hand is basically useless now, stained with blight, Shaki still tightly gripped in the other.

"For... fucks sake-" Sharak puts herself between Tsuzuki and the growling wolves, sword out in front of her. "Keep that barrier by the door up!"

Eventually she'll manage to just stab them both, so long as they can't move too much. Crushing them between a rock and a hard place- in this case, a borderline and a Sanzo- isn't even the worst idea anyone's had today.

His size is a problem, Gojyo realizes. In order to get close enough to do any damage, Sharak needs to put herself at risk of blight. He's immune, in this form anyway, but at this rate she's going to be too blighted to take out the other two wolves.

...Weren't there three, a minute ago? Where'd the third one go?

Throw me. He's got a little control over his orientation, and he's pretty sure that if she can fling him hard enough, he can keep his blade pointed at the nearest wolf's head. Can she cast Rend when he's not in her hand? He doesn't know. Guess they'll find out. The one on the right, I can take him!

"Yes ma'am!" Tsuzuki gasps, straightening up. The borderline had fallen when the wolf had jumped him, and his arm is killing him, but he casts again, and this one stays bright and solid. Two wolves in the room with them. One borderline blocking the door.

He's still catching his breath against the brand-new blight ache in his arm, and Sharak must be in pain too -- she'd grabbed it with her bare hand to throw it back. Still, after a moment, something registers as wrong. There's just two wolves in this confined little space with them.

Hadn't there been three?

"Where's the other one?" he manages between pants, watching the wolves advance by Gojyo's eerie light.

"Throw you?" Does Gojyo really think he's a throwing knife? He's a fucking sword. A broken sword. At least Tsuzuki gets a small insight into the conversation between god and shinki there.

At least he's doing what he's told. Two wolves trapped with them, the third... "These two first, that one next."

One problem at a time, boys. One wolf growls and snaps it's teeth at Sharak and she just about growls back at it. She can't afford touching it again. She could keep casting her own magic, but it's a temporary solution that won't cause any real damage and gives the creature outside more time to escape. She doesn't have time to cast spells in close quarters like this.

Apparently it's a day for dumb fucking ideas. She pulls back her arm with a huff and throws Gojyo at a wolf's neck.

It's a brilliant idea, and it's going to work! Gojyo keeps his tip aimed right at the wolf as Sharak hauls back and flings him... but he's not at all aerodynamic, and keeping himself aligned is harder than he'd anticipated. He strikes the wolf in the neck, because Sharak's throw was true, but it's his handle, not his blade, that hits.

He manages to scratch the wolf-thing as he falls to the ground, but that's a pretty pathetic success. ]

Shit.

[ The ayakashi laughs, a shudder-inducing wet kind of sound, and it steps deliberately over him, heading for the now unarmed Sharak. With a deep breath (metaphorically -- not having lungs is weird) Gojyo twists himself about and lunges forward, burying his blade in the wolf's underbelly all the way to the hilt. The wolf shrieks, lunging to the side, but Gojyo uses all his strength and twists the opposite direction. He falls to the floor again, having nearly gutted the creature. It's alive, but barely.

Gojyo laughs, breathlessly. ]

Told you it was a good idea.

"Nice!"

Throwing Gojyo had sounded crazy, but even if the throw itself didn't land, Gojyo'd managed it after all; Tsuzuki's open-mouthed and genuinely impressed. That's one down. There's just one ayakashi left on its feet in the storeroom, and it's howling its rage at the damage to its comrade as it lunges at Sharak and Tsuzuki.

He lets the borderline at the doorway fall, and casts another, fast, right in front of them for the wolf to bounce off of. This'd be easier if he could keep more than one up at a time, but the concentration it takes means he can't quite get it to work that way.

Still -- he's not the only one hurt. Sharak's hand is purple-stained and she's starting to move like it aches: with both of them vulnerable, protecting them is more important than keeping the wolf from getting away, just now.

Sharak wants to scold Tsuzuki for leaving the doorway open, after she told him to keep it sealed. There's a reason she's standing in front of him, damn it- she's his shield for the moment. But the wolf being thrown gives her an opening, one she's used to picking out and taking advantage of in fights like this.

"Shaki!" Gojyo is summoned back into Sharak's hands and she brings both back up in a complicated pose. "On marishiei sowaka!"

From her hands and the glow of the snapped sword comes a dozen invisible blades, hitting both wolves dead on and cutting down the one just about to escape. With that, Sharak steps forward, kneels and drives Gojyo into the skull of the gutted wolf to finish off his work.

"Rend."

The wolf's flesh and bone isn't really flesh and bone -- and Gojyo doesn't really know what it's like to stab himself into something's skull -- but the sure feels like it's real, solid. And then it's not, and the wolf dissolves away.

The other one, the one that had been trying to escape, is bleeding ooze from a dozen cuts. It's healing, but nobody here had better have any doubt as to the outcome.

She's fucking amazing! he thinks, forgetting once again about the connection between god and shinki. And then, louder, Do you need to stab him to rend him, or can you cast it from a distance like with that spell just now?

The barrier in front of them only lasts for as long as it takes for the wolf to go down under the force of Sharak's spell. Tsuzuki lets it fall, and re-casts, holding the door against any other wolves sneaking in while she finishes the gutted one off.

The other's down, too, and it shouldn't take long for her to rend it as well. He pushes himself away from the wall, grimacing: it's mostly blight he's feeling now, not actual injuries, but man, it still stings.

"We've got to go after that other one," he says, nodding towards the storeroom door. "Are you okay to?"

Thank you very much, Sharak thinks politely back. You gotta watch those thoughts, Gojyo. I don't know, that spell didn't have anything to do with you. We'd have to try channeling it through you first.

It sure would make this a hell of a lot easier if they could make that work. Between her entrance and grabbing the wolf before, Sharak is rather heavily blighted. Nothing she can't fight through, but the pain in her free hand is a problem. Shooting is no longer a good option, even for as little damage as it does. The accuracy of the mudras used for her spells is less important than the focus they give her, but the pain is still an issue there.

Still. She moves to the next move and quietly finishes it off with another rending, face impassive.

"I'm fine. Let's move."

The other one. That's right, there'd been another one, hadn't there? Good thing Tsuzuki remembered -- Gojyo'd lost track.

When we find the next one, try it? He couldn't hide his concern if he wanted to. That's a lot of blight.

The other side of the door is the bar itself -- the store room is at the far end of the building, between the restrooms and the access point to the barback area. The bar is deserted, chairs waiting at empty tables and the lights low in anticipation of the evening crowd.

There's no sign of the final ayakashi.

"Shit," Tsuzuki mutters under his breath as he limps out into the bar after her, looking around. There's no sign of the other ayakashi. "Think it's hiding in another bottle?"

There are a lot of open bottles in this room, but none of them are bright purple, or blinking any eyes. Or moving. So maybe not; he winces again as he shifts and pats his pockets. He'd tried a serious summoning, and he'd knocked himself flat, but something small, maybe. Something that's not going to wear him out, that he won't screw up because of the distraction from his own blight....

And he does have some of the papers he'd prepared for practicing after work. He pulls one out, thin paper closely written with brush-calligraphy script, and extends his first two fingers, focusing.

The blight is really distracting. The paper flutters between his fingers, twists, and finally settles into the ghostly form of a long-winged dove.

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KINYOBI is open for business!

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