009 | Where Your Demons Hide

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Emergency demon fighting
When: Late May 5-Early May 6
Where: Just outside of Tokyo
Summary: The demon from the school has reared its ugly head again and needs to be taken down.



On the evening of May 5, the Heavens suddenly receive an influx of prayers from people in and around a certain town just outside of Tokyo. There seem to be a lot of people in the area that have suddenly stopped responding normally (or at all). The situation continues to spread as the night goes on until not only is the whole town suffering from this malady, but the neighboring towns are starting to become affected as well.

With so many gods and shinki on hand - including new ones that have just appeared - the Heavens have issued a request for any available gods and shinki to go investigate what might be happening down on the Near Shore. New gods and shinki will be given the low-down on what's happening, but not much more than that.

The situation will continue to expand until just a little before dawn, when the demon finally has enough power to revive.



Drained Humans

Many humans in the affected areas are walking around despondently. Oftentimes, they are just walking into things or getting hit by things. There have been a few car-related incidents as well. Anyone who was present for the high school incident will recognize these symptoms as something that was happening to people in the school. The glazed looks, the spiritless responses and reactions. So this should be fairly familiar to some.

No One's Safe

Unfortunately, being in the town will start to wear on anyone who is there. Gods and shinki alike will find themselves growing more despondent the longer they spend in the town. All of their energy will be slowly sapped from their bodies, and shinki in particular will feel almost like their existence is draining away.

Hellish Circle

There is a large park in the center of the town. Drawn all around this park is a magic circle, large enough to encompass the whole park. There are candles around the edges of the circle, and in the center there is a cup filled with blood covered by a mask with a swirling eye pattern on it. Stepping into this circle will not only make you extremely tired and suddenly drained, but it will also bring bat-like ayakashi bearing down on you.

The Demon

The Demon itself rears its ugly head just a little before dawn, springing out from the center of the magic circle and looking right pleased with itself. It stands about 5'8" tall, so it is largely unimposing, but there is an aura about it that makes it undeniable that it is powerful. The demon will gladly fight anyone who comes at it, though most he will just shove out of the way without a second thought.



In Summary:

• Help the drained people
• Try not to get drained yourself
• Be careful about being corrupted
• Fight the demon
• Have fun~

Comments

[timeshields]

She has eight to twelve years of futile despair that are locked up and away from her. Now all she has are the echoes of those traumas, the feeling that whatever she does is futile and in the end nothing she ever attempted mattered. It was always going to end this way, with her death, with her not even being able to protect the one person closest to her heart.

The voice echoes in her mind and she latches on to it in her exhausted state. This was her first and maybe last attempt to help Souji... She just met him and already she's proven herself useless.

[volksdaemon]

Futility - that's a good one, easy to dig deeper into. A nihilistic sense that she's bound to die due to her own incompetence. There's no point in trying. He looks at the fresher memories of who this Souji is and gets an approximate height on him. Alright, then...

He finds a nearby guy with the right hair color and clouds his normal face to make her think that that's her god Souji. And then - whoopsie - he just so happens to be really close to one of those ayakashi now too. But he's so very far away from her! In her state now, there's no way she'll reach him in time - she's indeed useless because she didn't stay by his side and now he's about to die in the worst way, consumed into a mindless state of rage and destruction.

[timeshields]

There's nothing about her own death in her head. That she expects, that she doesn't care about- but when he sees the fake Souji her hand moves to her left arm- Why?

She has no idea. There's nothing she can do to stop him, even as she runs. "Souji!" Heartbroken and numb as she attempts to make it there, despite the impossible distance. No, that man is dead and she sinks to the ground. Worthless. Can't even protect one person.

[volksdaemon]

Such sweet sorrow. He enjoys every minute of it that he gets from her. He's amazed she hasn't broken down completely, though. Without her memories he can't understand why, except to notice without a shadow of a doubt that she's seen things - something vile or heart-wrenching before. Something even worse than this, if she hasn't been utterly crippled by her own depression. Most normal people simply break down at the sight of a loved one dying. Why not her...?

Time to experiment a bit more, before he literally goes into her mindscape.

Schuldig settles into the man's mind and puppets him to speak to her. "Homura - help..." His voice transforms into the strange echoing noise that ayakashi make when they speak as the ayakashi blight forms a half-mask over the lower face of 'Souji', all darkness from the nose down and normal skin above. Schuldig's familiar with the look and sound thanks to looking inside of the ayakashi Axel when he eventually turned. "Nismell - Nice Smell... Ho-mu-ra... Smells nice..."

[timeshields]

There's a pause as she watches him, a sense of horror, loss and uselessness all melded together. She failed. She just began and she's failed him already. There's something vague and familiar about the turn from a human to an ayakashi- kill it. Kill him so he's out of his misery, somebody like Souji would... he'd never want to hurt anyone. She's crying as she pulls her right hand to her left arm, a force of habit- there's nothing there, no shield no gun. Nothing.

She can't end this pain for him. Once again, she's left standing useless as she screams out, "Souji!" Heart-wrenching and full of sorrow.

[volksdaemon]

Yes she really is capable of something like that! This is so useful to know he can push this girl to that limit -- Homura? He has to remember her!

Since she's so determined to use a weapon that she doesn't have, he remembers what little he knows of the Shinki powers and pretends that she's invoked one of them - the simple Border power that runs an ayakashi off. This time though, he invokes a more powerful version that tears into the ayakashi-version of Souji and strips an arm clean off. From off-screen, he makes her own voice call out the word that would normally have come from Souji himself - her God - that a Shinki can't actually invoke: "REND!"

And the ayakashi is slain in strips of writhing body parts - eyes and star shapes and a screaming mouth. He knocks out the human who he'd been treating like the real Souji, making him fall to the ground and out of Homura's sight, to give her all of the visual cues he can that she was successful in spite of herself, for a given value of 'success.' She did kill him.

'Congratulations,' he calls in her mind before slipping away from directly controlling what she sees. He listens long enough to hear any cries of anger or frustration or despair, but feels content at what he's forced upon her today.

[timeshields]

She stares at the remains of her god, the place where he was- and collapses onto her hands and knees. 'Congratulations' certainly doesn't feel in order. She did what she had to but... it hurts. Not as much as she thinks it should though, there's a certain amount of distance between herself and the act. Almost like she's become numb to it.

She killed the one and only person she was sworn to protect. She hasn't even been here for a day and she's already failed him. Homura is silent as she lets her tears spill onto the ground.