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Akio and Fumi
Icelit Office — Morning

The summary of what was written was fairly straightforward, and all things considered, neither Akio nor Fumi had any reason to want to delay. The growing resentment and grief that would result from such a location would only serve to fester, and given how long those malignant feelings would have been piling on top of one another...

There was no way to really describe it than a bomb whose fuse was rapidly reaching it's end.

"The location itself isn't too far away, though it is a bit far from the current hotspot," the tengu noted, pointing at the building's location on the map relative to Umeda Park. "Not going to be able to provide support to the other team if they need it, I think, but given how many people went... They should be fine. Probably."

"Cleaning ten floors out is going to take us ages anyways," Akio remarked, standing up from his seat. "It'd be weird if we were able to finish early, especially if that place is as messed up as the brief said it was."

Ultimately, though, there was little room for discussion about the urgency of the matter, which meant that both of the Attuned were more that ready to head out the door and walk to location.

Despite the rather gruesome description of the circumstances surrounding it, the building that the group had arrived at looked rather modern, with nary a trace of all the circumstances surrounding it to be seen. Maybe that was the point, or so Akio thought; if the crimes and deaths were swept under the rug, then the people living here would have little reason to move out.

"...Maybe we should ask someone to look into the owner after this one's done..." Akio muttered to himself as he stepped into the lobby of the building. With all the lights out, the pristine lobby seemed far more unsettling than it should have—even with the light filtering in through the windows.

@SilverPaw@Vertigo

Umeda Park

While the rampant chaos continued to plague the streets, the unbound destructive prowess that Kyozan put forward did indeed stem the flow of Grudges to some extent—at least in the direction that Lily was guiding the fleeing civilans towards. The power of a succubus' charm—and a practiced one at that—meant that those fleeing were not left wholly without their senses. Standing by to ogle the seductress would have been the opposite of helpful in this situation, after all.

But as the chaotic street brawl-style slaughter continued, the Grudges showed no signs of stopping. The question as to what exactly was causing this overflow remained answerless, however—or, well, answerless until a set of beeps coming from the now-open laptop signaled a visual.

The footage from the drone, now being streamed directly to the laptop, showed an unusually large black mass near the center of the park itself. It seemed to be pulsating, writhing about every few seconds before spitting out another new bloblike entity to leave the area.

"It seems like that's the source," Nishida's voice remarked as the video zoomed in towards the apparent cause of the chaos. "I'd hazard a guess that taking this out might stop them from spreading, but no promises."

@Raineh Daze@Zeroth@Rune_Alchemist
Icelit Office — Morning
Akio and Fumi

Curiosity naturally overtook Akio as Suzume picked up her phone, but such whims were short-lived until the large youkai nearby shouted about Umeda Park. That, coupled with with Suzume's follow-up commentary once the call had ended, told the young man everything he really needed to know about the situation. Her prompt choice in taking the two pairs of newcomers made enough sense in context, of course, but that still left him waiting around for support staff to arrive anyways.

It was only after they had left, though, that he realized that both Kaeru and Nyoko were missing—the latter likely adding herself to the team on her own volition and bringing her partner along for the ride, or so he thought—which only left a scant four people in the office. After the initial rush of energy, a drop back down to 'saner' levels, though not necessarily unwelcome, was a bit disappointing.

It was at this point that a few more familiar faces came in to replace those that had left. One, a young woman who had her hair tied back in a ponytail in a blouse and skirt; the other, a slightly older man with slight stubble on his face and a jacket over his shoulder.

"I see that Takeda isn't here," the latter—a man by the name of Nishida Saito—said, hanging up his jacket taking a seat at his desk. "And there are less people here than expected. Would you mind filling me in?"

"I can do that," Fumi replied, straightening herself in her seat, "it seems that there was an incident at Umeda Park. The boss called Sato to bring help, and she chose to bring both of the newcomer pairs to location. Both Nakanishi and Nyoko chose to follow as well."

"Hm. That so?" he asked, booting up his computer and opening a slew a programs on the monitor in front of him. "Then I'll handle supporting them. Sakamori, do we have any jobs scheduled for today?"

To that, the young woman in question—one Sakamori Ayame—nodded and checked her own documents as her computer started up.

"Mmm... It looks like the big one was the apartment complex cleanup?" she said, glancing towards the two pairs remaining before looking back at the papers in front of her. "I think we should handle that since, well... Given the records we have on hand, putting it off for as long as the owners have might lead to some bigger problems down the line."

With that, Ayame handed a piece of paper to Fumi, who quickly skimmed it over before passing it towards Akio. A bunch of Grudges nesting within an old apartment complex was nothing new, but the fact that there was a string of murders inside before the residents who still lived there decided to move out or met less-than-savory fates...

Well, that was situation lifted right out of a horror movie.

"Mmm... Yeah, we should probably go clean this place up," Akio said before handing the paper off to Akane. "The sooner, the better."

@VitaVitaAR@RolePlayerRoxas
Umeda Park — Morning

Though somewhat far from the office on foot, a swift car ride towards the park before law enforcement had any time to set up any sorts of barricades meants that Suzume (and everyone with her) had easy enough access inside.

Well, as easy as it could be with all of the people attempting to swiftly leave the area by foot, at least.

Approaching the park would show what exactly it was that people were running from—black, formless creatures with vaguely humanoid shapes were slowing out from the park, striking out at whatever drew near enough. Most of the people seemed to be escaping well enough, but the danger of stampeding people was in and of itself a problem...

It was at this point that another call would quickly patch itself through to Suzume's phone, and Saito's voice on the other end—now on speaker—would speak up.

"Sato, this is Nishida. I've just sent a recon drone out to get you an aerial. Once it's in, I'll send the feed through to you; as usual, if you need anything else, let me know."

@Raineh Daze@VitaVitaAR@Zeroth@RolePlayerRoxas@Rune_Alchemist
@SilverPaw@Vertigo: Both accepted.
Icelit Office — Morning

Akio and Fumi

The next few minutes were spent in relative silence, with neither of the two present in the office really doing much beyond trying to kill time before the day started proper. Of course, that silence was not meant to last—not with the dialogue that the two could barely make out past the front door. The voices were all unfamiliar, but that only really meant that the aforementioned 'new hires' had likely arrived—and their subsequent entrance into the room turned that from simple assumption into fact. Three girls and a hulking beast of a youkai would most certainly make an impact upon entering, but given that they all seemed to be wrapped up in their introductions to one another, neither Akio nor Fumi really felt like interjecting quite yet.

Not that they really needed to, though—not with the resident succubus popping up and destroying any semblance of formality that the atmosphere in the room might have implied. Following after, of course, came a more familiar face to the two—one Suzume Sato—who, as usual, skipped the pleasantries and went straight towards talking about work.

"Morning to you, too," Akio replied, straightening his back as he turned to look towards the woman addressing him. "As for the plans today... I vaguely remember the boss saying that he was probably going to split us—"

Almost as if on cue, though, another more rambunctious pair sprang through the door, one following after the other in their usual routine. There was a brief pause as Akio stared at both Kaeru and Nyoko in mild annoyance before resuming.

"...Right. As I was saying, I vaguely remember the boss wanting to split us up—something about making sure that we could see how the newbies work in the field—but I think he should be here soon enough...?"

All the while, of course, Fumi had chosen to put her drink off to the side and stared quietly at the four newbies as they hovered about. There was something a bit off about the white-haired girl—though that was strictly her intuition speaking—to say nothing of the larger youkai and the girl sticking at his side.

Ultimately, though, they were going to be coworkers, which meant that introductions were most definitely in order.

"Well... Expect this sort of chaos to be the norm," she said after walking over to the pair and giving them all a slight bow. "Takenohara Fumi; my partner over there is Yatsujima Akio. Let's do our best together, hm?"




Now much more lively with the arrival of both the nekomata and her partner, time seemed to pass by a lot faster for Akio, who only realized the time once the final pair—and the only missing pair, at that—arrived with an apology about their lateness. The young man blinked for a moment as he glanced at the clock, only to see that they were only about ten minutes late.

Given how their boss tended to arrive precisely on time, though... That was an issue in and of itself.

"Well, for what it's worth, you didn't exactly miss anything yet?" Akio said, shrugging his shoulders as he gestured towards the newcomers. "Got new people here, though."

It was at this point, though, that a call would come through to Suzume's phone—one from their boss, Takeda Eiji. Once the Attuned picked up the call, though, Eiji's voice would begin to speak at a breakneck pace.

"Sato?" he asked once he heard a response from the other end, the sounds of running and screaming quite audible in the background. "There's been a Grudge outbreak at Umeda Park, and I need people here on the double. Leaving it to you to pick the team and come over; going to help evacuation in the meantime."

The park in question was a fair distance away, but being caught there would have indeed explained Eiji's absence. The matter of clearing the problem out in a timely manner, of course, was a different story.

@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze@Zeroth@RolePlayerRoxas@Rune_Alchemist
Icelit Office — Morning


With a yawn and pair of arms stretched out over his head, Yatsujima Akio leaned back in his chair. It hadn't been more than a few months since he had been hired to work here at the company, but frankly speaking, it was somewhat more relaxing to him than the last few years had been at school. With that said, the stakes were a bit higher now; it was one thing to butt heads with a bunch of delinquents, who would at least stay down if you hit them enough, but having to head out and kill whatever the heck Grudges were was a different story.

It wasn't bad work, though, given what he was already used to doing. Fighting Grudges was certainly a different experience from fighting people, but the young man was certain he would grow used to that much soon enough.

Probably.

The feeling of a cold bottle against his cheek, though, caused Akio to almost spring forward towards the table on front of him. Though he was still seated, the shock was more that enough to wake him up for the moment. The reaction elicited a bit of an amused reaction from the person responsible—one Takenohara Fumi, his partner and teacher in one—but no more.

"Never gets old," the tengu remarked with a smirk, taking a sip of her drink—a bottle of green tea—and taking a seat nearby. "Stay up late?"

"More or less," he responded, rubbing his cheek as he stared at the bottle in mild irritation. "I'm sure I'll be fine once we're outside, though."

With a shrug, Fumi glanced at the door before placing her bottle of tea down.

"Well, once the boss and the ground staff arrive, we should be able to head out. I think there was supposed to be a set of new hires coming in, though, so we might be stuck here a bit longer than usual," she said, pulling out her phone to look at the time. "Doesn't help that we're a bit early, though."

"Point taken. Wish we had a training room or something to kill time, though..."
@RolePlayerRoxas: Accepted.

@VitaVitaAR: Also accepted.
@Zeroth: Little of column A, little of column B. The early should be more mission-centric, but plot threads should tie together and form arcs here and there.

While I'm here, though...

@Vertigo@SilverPaw: How goes form generation? Obviously, we're a little ways off starting, but it'd be nice to check in to make sure things are going all right there.
@Zeroth: Yeah, I'd say both are fine now. Accepted.
@VitaVitaAR: Right, looking things over... Think the character is mostly fine? Assuming that the starting power level is about on par with the rest of the cast, at least. So long as that approximate level is maintained for the moment, vampy accepted.
@Zeroth: Once more unto the breach!

Mika first.
  • Re: Personality stuff (again):
    I feel like the way she probes people out should have been explained better in the form in this case. Her outward-facing mannerisms make sense when presented in this context, but at a glance they didn't really read as such.
    Next point: I feel like if you want to have information hidden from the rest of the cast in a character, you contact the GM and discuss matters privately. A form (as I see it) is a third-person omniscient 'summary' of a character that other people (not just the GM) should have access to in order to understand the character, which means that you want to have most of the cards you want to play on the table when putting it up, so to speak. If it IS public knowledge, though, I think that it's reasonable to expect players to not metagame and know information that shouldn't explicitly be "public knowledge" in-universe.
    Third part loops back to the first; it's a lot easier to make sense of things (and leave other traits to be developed further) if that first part is made clearer.
  • Honestly, names to differentiate them from the "standard" would be better in my opinion. You don't need to denote a barrier as something part of a "barrier style"; it's a barrier, and reiterating that fact would be redundant.
  • I think that onmyoji would generally grow by either expanding those reserves or becoming more efficient in it's usage, yeah, but that's a bit of a smaller point to make here. Translating magical energy into ether is probably fine, though, given how traditionally onmyoji would have shikigami (like, the non-paper familiar types) anyways, so that's probably an okay route to go down.


Re: Kyozan:
  • Levitation and airdashing is probably fine, but I'd definitely try to lean more into the 'skill/speed' over 'strength' relative to one another as a means of differentiation. Arrogance explanation is fine, though.
  • Both are problems here. A relative timeframe as to how long he lived would make it easier to judge, but hitting that cap in the assumed timeframe definitely gets you noticed.
    With regards to the Big Three and a bit more quantification: I'm obviously using Shuten-Douji as a point of reference towards Kyozan specifically, and in-universe he would've had the capability to, say, cleave giant holes in the land with a single swing sort of deal, or bash through fortifications without worry—that sort of power, more or less. A canyon by the end of the fight, especially if it was large enough to be called a canyon in the first place would definitely place you on that level of power imo.
    An acceptable level of power, though... If we're talking late Heian Japan? Probably sacked a few cities on his own. Mass murder, destruction, the works. Maybe even took out a small army or something in the process; something like that.
  • Regarding age: I'm using given age as a frame of reference. The closer we are to a proper number, the easier it is for me to gauge how strong or weak a youkai would/should be. Again, with 1000 years being late Heian Japan and the age being listed as 1000, things didn't exactly line up as well. The bigger problem in this isn't that he was sealed for all that time, but how strong he managed to get BEFORE being sealed... Which, like, we're sorta resolving anyways?
    I had initially mentioned the age not to argue the point that being older would make him stronger, but that he was way stronger than he should have been before being sealed. With the 150-year active lifespan as a point of reference (and a good chunk of that on the run from India all the way through China and into Japan, which sorta limits how much of a bloody trail he can afford to leave behind), he definitely had a higher floor than most of the cast (in his initial iteration, at least).
  • Re: Motivations: I think it works better, but again, need that in the history section. Wasn't present in the initial draft. Also probably more elaboration as to why things changed, but that can be done fairly easily with this in mind.


Uh... Yeah, think that's about it on my end.
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