The blonde esper continued to quietly eat her meal for the night, quietly waiting off to the side for that scout of hers to report back with any new information. A small net, of course, wouldn't return much, but that simply meant that she'd just have to worm her way deeper into this whole state of affairs.
Via proxy, of course. She, of all people, knew how utterly suicidal it was to attempt to dive into a mess like this without ample barriers to hide behind, and that was all the more important considering how her abilities seemed to...
Well, not be
completely usable here. It wasn't like with that certain spiky-haired young man, where the abilities were negated, after all; in the end, all it really meant was that she needed better proxies. Preferably ones she could assume direct control of, obviously, but the likelihood of any of
those appearing was more a coin toss than anything else.
Just as she began to finish her meal, though, the person she had... "Chosen" to act as her eyes and ears sent some more intriguing news to her. Aside from an absurd lightshow that she was inclined to stay as far away from as possible, the news of more incidents happening around the Ikebukuroko area—where that Miku girl had come from earlier, no less—seemed to point to that being a possible place of interest. The talk of a giant wolf and black bike... While sending in her scout to go poke around the area would likely get them outed fairly fast, it didn't seem as if it'd be too difficult to go and explore the situation in person.
Maybe not tonight, though; sooner or later, it'd become late, and it'd be much easier to slip around in the morning than it would be in the middle of the day (where she assumed most of the people in this place would end up waking up).
With that in mind, Misaki finished whatever she had left in front of her and, with a single graceful movement, threw the container into the garbage before walking back over to the other two near the tent. They seemed to be making full use of the water the had gotten, at least.
"I'm going to go rest now, you two. As much as I don't like the idea of walking headfirst into danger, I don't think I have much of a choice... So tomorrow, we're going to be checking out Ikebukuro. I know that you just came from there from something... Dangerous, I presume, but we probably won't learn anything from loitering around."
With that, the young woman quietly slipped into the tent and attempted to lie down.
"This... Is far more uncomfortable than I expected it to be."
Miku looked at Misaki for a moment as she entered the tent before sighing, nervously rubbing her hands together as she took those half-commands into her mind. She had heard nothing other than rumors about what had been there, but 'giant wolf' and 'black bike' were ominous regardless of how it was stated. But now that she knew Hibiki was here, even that didn't seem as dangerous.
...
No, well, it still looked and sounded fairly dangerous, but at the very least with Hibiki there it wasn't as if it would be impossible for them to overcome whatever stood in their way.
"Hibiki... Are we going to go with Misaki tomorrow? The buildings in the area seemed to be getting damaged even as I was leaving with the rest of those policemen earlier, and it didn't look like they'd stop any time soon..." she trailed off before looking at her companion straight in the eyes. "I know that you have your Gear to help you fight, but please, if you're going to go, don't push yourself too hard."
"Hm? None of your usual bravado, Ms. Hinanawi? It's rather unlike you to be so cowardly," Yukari taunted, smirking at the Celestial as she continued to let loose a barrage of bullets at her opponents. "Airsick, maybe?"
The blue-haired young woman simply glared back in return as she focused wholeheartedly on dodging the incoming bullets, trying her hardest to judge where the heck everything was coming from as she moved about. it wouldn't be an understatement to say that she'd taken multiple blows all across the body, but luckily for her it wasn't as if they had worn her down any. A benefit to all of this insanity, at the very least, was that her sense of pain seemed to be dulled... If only a little.
Yukari smiled for a moment as she watched the overenthusiastic young lady with the hammer rush after for a follow-up attack, only to smile in return and casually slip off to the side to dodge the blow.
"Haven't you figured out that your eyes will betray you?" she asked, smiling as she fired a few barrages of bullets at her back before the rays of light from the other side of the fight caught her eye. It took only a moment for Yukari to spin around and barely dive out of the way of the two that were targeted at her. Her dress was a bit worse for the wear after the fact, but that could be repaired later. What "mistake" she had, made, though, was that she had allowed Nanoha to launch an attack straight at her at point blank.
"Hmph. Not so different from that little witch, then?" she asked as she dodged to the side in attempt to avoid the giant laser of energy that had been fired right in front of her. Said attempt, of course, only half-worked; unlike the Master Spark that she had become somewhat used to seeing, this blast was a tad larger than expected, which in turn caused Yukari to immediately cancel her attack and pull out another Spellcard to block.
"「Quadruple Barrier」!"
Just as the blast ran right through the left side of the youkai's body, a multi-layered array of magical circles appeared and temporarily put some space between the two. The recoil, of course, pushed her a fair deal back, and though she didn't seem anywhere near defeated, her clothes seemed to say otherwise.
"Ah... Careless, careless. It's been a while since I'd had to deal with that degree of firepower," she chastised herself before smiling at Nanoha. "Well done. Of course, this is only the introductory course. You can ask that hot-headed child over there about what's in store, but I think we should conclude our match for tonight with this next attack."
With that comment, the youkai pulled one more card out of her sleeve as the bullets lingering from her earlier attacks seemed to fade away into the dark of night.
"Think of this as... 'Training', though I am certainly not one to ask for much of that. Boundary 「Balance of Motion and Stillness」."
At once, the sounds of the night seemed to disappear, as did every other apparent sound that was being made. The manipulation of the senses of all the combatants were gone, of course, but when Tenshi attempted to speak, not a noise came out. When she swung her blade, not even the sound of the wind being cut was there.
"Come now, don't stop moving. Or do. Hopefully, you know how to fly without knowing what may lie behind," Yukari's voice echoed through the sky as she began to fire out magic circles behind each of the combatants, occasionally slipping into and out of her gaps to fire another blast at someone else. "You can't hope to win if you stay in place forever, you know."
The second that Mordred's blade met the creature's core, a white light seemed to break out of the sludge, sending out a shockwave that blew all the remaining detritus (crystals included) away from itself. That, in turn, revealed the item at the core of it all—a large glowing ball of what seemed to be concentrated energy, surrounded by high-pressure water that seemed to continually spin around it. As soon as the sludge was clear, the ball paused in place for a moment, the water around itself spinning around faster and faster until it felt as if the winds could reach the other side of the sewer. In an instant, the ball seemed to turn around, revealing a pair of glowing white eyes on the creature, before it seemed to look around for a moment. The apparent lack of sludge on its body now seemed to be acknowledged, but instead of opting to go further into the sewers, the thing blasted the sludge-crystal mixture on the ground with a whip of howling wind before blasting its way through the ground above its head. In a manner not unlike a drill, the ball began to bore through the ground, and it didn't take long before it had carved its way back to the surface.
It took a moment for it to find its bearings, of course, but after a few seconds of looking around, the ball began to hover off towards the city's center through the streets. Despite being faster than it had been whilst covered in muck, the object still seemed to be moving at a relatively slow pace as it moved on ahead.
Maybe that had something to do with the crystal fragments that had, for some reason or another, managed to remain attached to its body and were slowly growing. The pressurized water was constantly chopping off anything that grew past a certain point, of course, but the trail it left behind would be quite obvious to follow.
"Ah! Youmu! You're here, too?" the woman at the table asked as the person in question came over, clapping her hands together as she turned to look. "Ah, but first, you should take a seat and eat, no? It's not often that we get to visit anything like a restaurant, after all."
The forced smile on the face of the waiter who was catering to the ghost at the table seemed to be screaming for help on the inside, but the job that he was left to do had not changed a bit, and so he offered the swordswoman, Sanaki, and Meteora a seat at a nearby table (given the dangerous stack of plates that was being dismantled by some of the other staff) before returning to take even more of Yuyuko's orders.
"Mmm... Oh, right, your question! Sorry, I was just wondering to myself if I had tried everything on the menu yet. Let's see..." the woman wondered for a moment before turning towards Meteora and nodding. "Hm... Oh, right, right! Yukari said that she had some things to do and invited me out for a meal, but all of a sudden she disappeared in the middle of our walk around town! So I took it on myself to explore a little more around here, and before long I found myself here. As for the food... Hm... I can't say it's the
best I've had, but the novelty of a place offering all that you can eat certainly piqued my interest~!"
With a smile, Yuyuko turned to look at the rest of the group before looking at Youmu with a quizzical look.
"Actually, Youmu, how
did you get here? And who are these people that you've brought along? Don't tell me—did you make some new friends this morning?" she asked, a smile on her face as she cleaned up her mouth with a napkin.
Leo simply gave an awkward stare towards the group before taking a seat as well, quietly thumbing through his wallet to make sure he had enough money to pay for all of...
That. It was a buffet, so there was obviously a set price, but...
Well, hopefully the people from the UN could help him foot the bill or something later...
Maybe Meteora or Klaus had some cash to spare?
The moment that some of the men caught a glimpse of a forklift running full speed ahead at their truck, the firearms that they held in hand were pointed at the vehicle's driver in haste. When they saw it wasn't going to stop any time soon, of course, there was a bit of hesitation before one of the "newer" members of the group let his trigger finger get the best of him. Before anyone else in the entourage could chastise him, though, the sudden impact of that ton of metal crashing into their transport caused the truck's container to open up, revealing the goods inside.
"Ugh... You idiot! Din't you realize shooting someone ain't gonna make 'em stop any faster?" one of the men shouted, slapping the culprit upside the head before slowly looking over to the wreckage. "You know how much time body disposal takes? Coverup is always annoying..."
@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze@Dezuel@KoL@Rin@TheFake@Crusader Lord
