Lewascan2

Multiversal Discord: The Mass-Scale Crossover RP

Sup. Nice gif.

Multiversal Discord: The Mass-Scale Crossover RP

@Dead Cruiser Kira was already dead, but Cheap Trick is a fair argument (though it could be said that he was also sort of dead after killing his original User). Still, the ghosts of the alley are... pretty bullshit canonically, considering what they actually supposedly do to Kira.

That "special club" thing is kind-of a nonargument in the face of Merlin's magic (which no-one else has), Ben's hilariously versatile options, Danny's powers also being their own thing and extremely versatile/extensive besides, and Terra (who needs no further explanation). That said, as I generally tried to convey, I've no issue as long as it makes sense. Stands are a projection of the soul; by that logic, only things that can sense/affect the soul/spirit should be applicable, even if it isn't another Stand. That, at least, makes sense. And sure, poor Jason is kind of in a pickle... but that goes for nearly every other match-up he could have.

That aside, despite any possible illusion to the contrary, Bruno is not anywhere close to indomitable, especially if he's being played in-character and not OOC munchkinned (though he is very much a canonical munchkin with his ability). Unlike the rest of his compatriots, he is fully human with all the inherent weaknesses. He has no special defenses against exotic/unknown abilities. He cannot heal or breathe in space. He's not unageing or immortal by any definition of the word. His Stand is also not automatic or a passive defense, nor does he canonically demonstrate any notable proficiency for some of the more exploitable universal Stand abilities, like selective tangibility. Taking both his personality and the RP's location into account, he's actually fairly vulnerable by comparison. He can and has been caught off guard to lethal effect canonically, even if he was able to make a come-back.

Stands not being genetic? They kind of are, spiritually so sure, but that is definitely the case. The issue is that the only family we really interact with is the Joestars, Okayasu and his brother, and Pucci and his brother, so there's limited exposure to other examples. But I don't recall a case of siblings/family displayed where they didn't all have Stands if they were descended from someone with one. All of the above examples either got a Stand from an arrow directly or inherited it due to spiritual genetics. The Joestars aren't some exception to the rule even with Fate hounding them.

Multiversal Discord: The Mass-Scale Crossover RP

In theory, that's feasible canonically, but Stands are their own special thing. That is kind of the point, a core theme of them even.
As long as being able to see them doesn't translate to being able to actually hurt them however, I wouldn't be too fussed. Still means it should be invisible to the vast majority. I'm a bit of a stickler for canonical accuracy if I'm going to play a preexisting character, so I'd rather hope to not have the entire premise of Stands undermined, especially given the fact that we have Ben freaking 10 (who is actually nuts, given he should still have Way Big) and Terra (self-explanatory). Bruno is also the only hero so far, aside from Merlin, that cannot feasibly (within a reasonable time/with reasonable ease) destroy a city/army without some extreme liberties being taken, so in terms of "special club" stuff, I really don't see the issue in this area. Bruno has his areas of expertise, and he is most certainly vastly outclassed by his potential teammates in multiple areas of their own.

Oh, and on that thought, I think the Omnitrix may be able to scan Buccirati, given that Stands are genetic after exposure to the virus that grants them. Granted, the virus may also be more spiritual in nature (heavily implied by the core plot of Part 3), and Ben would only get a Stand unique to himself out of the deal. There's also the fact that he may have to actually pass the Test of Worthiness given by the virus, which should be no issue for someone like him honestly, but it's there.

Multiversal Discord: The Mass-Scale Crossover RP

Bruno Bucciarati

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"To complete my mission and protect my men. Having to do both at once is what makes being a capo so tough. Are you ready for this? I know I am."

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Name: Bruno Bucciarati

Nicknames/Titles: Passione Capo, Team Mom (from the fanbase)

Age: 20

Gender: Male

Affiliation: Anti-Hero/Hero.

Personality: Bucciarati's most important character traits are his righteousness and his natural kindness, and he is dedicated to taking the most honorable course of action, even if he puts his life at risk. Bucciarati is loyal to those he considers to be under his protection, being considerate with them, accepting their requests for help, and is generally nice to the people he meets.

Bucciarati respects and upholds several values such as having resolve, selflessness, and family loyalty. He believes that resolve involves risking one's own life for a just cause, a standard he constantly holds up to by putting himself in danger and betting on the enemy's lesser resolve to prevail, until his climactic self-sacrifice against Diavolo. He also readily admires this same resolve whenever it shows up in an opponent. Bucciarati believes in individual freedoms, and that people are free to die however they wish.

However, Bucciarati also particularly despises the drug trade, which caused his father's death and hurts the population on a large scale, especially children, thus any mention of it unnerves him. He doesn't hold the gangster life in high regard, and he also looks down on spiteful violence.

In contrast to his righteousness, Bucciarati has a violent and ruthless side. At the age of twelve, Bruno murdered his father's would-be aggressors in cold blood, and as a gangster, kept his tendency toward violence. Having worked for a gang for years, he is an experienced fighter, being able to discern whenever killing intent is genuine, is unfazed by empty threats, and is able to keep calm even during a desperate looking fight. Likewise, Bucciarati will often use lethal force against his enemies as demonstrated when he had some be run over by a train and dismembered, as well as deafened another with a popped car tire.

During a fight, Bucciarati is both brave and cautious. While he is ready to sacrifice himself in order to win, he will try tactical retreats and sneak attacks regularly; even when pitted against a weaker opponent, Bruno takes precautions. Nonetheless, when push comes to shove, he will recklessly risk his life if it enables him to win following his philosophy of resolve.

Biography: Growing up in an Italy threatened by the predations of a super-powered mob of gangsters called Passione, Bruno learned of the harshness of the world when his father was hospitalized for witnessing a drug trade. When two gangsters went to the hospital to finish the job, 12 year old Bruno killed both of them and afterwards joined Passione, knowing it was the only organization powerful enough to protect his father from retaliation. Bruno rose in the ranks and made a name for himself, only for his father's heart surgery to be sabotaged to lethal effect by the gang in a effort to sever his remaining outside ties. With his trust betrayed, it was around this time that he discovered the gang's secret drug trade and became infuriated, unable to do anything for the time being.

Putting together a personal team of trustworthy Stand Users, Bruno continued to rise in the ranks and made himself the most trusted subordinate of the local Capo while simultaneously turning the gang territory he managed into something of a safe haven compared to the others. After meeting and recruiting Giorno Giovanna and being convinced of the young man's plan to take over the gang and destroy the drug trade, Bruno helped him assassinate the local Capo, taking the position for himself. Giorno's plans were bigger than their little slice of Italy, however, and so he eventually helped convince the rest of his personal team to join them in betraying and defeating the leader of all Passione, a mysterious figure known only as "The Boss".

After an arduous and violent journey, filled with twists and turns and bloody duels with enemy gangsters -both loyalists and fellow traitors alike, Bruno's team eventually succeeded in killing the Boss and installing a new righteous order to the gang underworld, led by the man who'd given them the courage to move forward with that dream in the first place, Giorno. Unfortunately, the tight-knit team suffered several tragic casualties along the way, one of whom was Bruno himself, sacrificing himself at the final stretch and never seeing their better world become reality.

Powers/Skills:

• Lie Detection: Bruno can apparently identify a liar by the taste of someone's sweat, claiming it tastes sweeter than normal. It's unclear if this ability is a full-on power or merely sheer skill and him reading the target's body language when he does this. He also claims to be able to tell when someone is lying just by looking at them, claiming he can see when their skin glistens due to sweat.
• Inhuman Pain Tolerance/Willpower: Bucciarati has demonstrated the ability to consistently continue fighting even while suffering the most grievous wounds possible, able to continue to move even after being impaled twice with a large fist, along with having his heart partially severed in the same fight. After being only partially successfully healed, the man literally spends half his series afterwards as a slowly deteriorating corpse who continues to live by sheer willpower before finally sacrificing himself one last time in the final battle.
• Intellect: Bruno is a tactical and quick-witted individual, capable of using the highly versatile power of Sticky Fingers to manipulate the environment to his advantage, restrain his enemies, swiftly evade incoming attacks, and attack from blind spots. His natural selflessness means that survival is not among his priorities, thus his actions will easily surprise his opponents. Bucciarati is also a perceptive fighter, having been able to quickly deduce the weaknesses of King Crimson despite being fatally injured and proceed to take advantage of them. He is able to analyze his opponents' fighting styles and perceive their strengths and weaknesses.
• Athleticism: Those muscles aren't just for show. Bruno is a highly athletic and agile individual, far more so than one might expect.
• Empathic Communication/Soul Reading: During his time in a deteriorating body, he learned to compensate for his failing sight and hearing and became able to observe and feel what other souls thought. This ability isn't perfect at identification, as he is capable of mistaking someone for a relative of theirs due to the similarity between familial souls.
• Stand: A spiritual construct (usually but not always a humanoid) and extension of one's soul, a Stand cannot be seen or otherwise perceived by anyone without one, nor can the direct effects of its powers. A Stand that creates fire will only have onlookers detect the heat and feel the pain of being burned alive, for example. Stands cannot be harmed by anything but another Stand except in extremely rare circumstances with Stands with a very specific weakness/downside. Each Stand is completely unique to the User and typically exemplifies attributes of their User's character in either appearance or ability. Stands also exhibit a number of universal abilities, typically limited by the precision of the individual Stand, including: shrinking down to up to microscopic sizes, selective tangibility, and physically overlaying and enhancing/shielding the User.
  In this strange space station, however, Bruno finds himself in the awkward position of having his Stand visable to all and sundry... even if its immutability to attacks and other non-Stand effects remains.
• Sticky Fingers: Bruno's unique close-range Stand, which can only move up to 2 meters away from him. It has the ability to summon zippers upon any surface with a touch and can open or close them at will once created, dispelling only once he manually releases them or is incapacitated. The zippers can be created on literally anything that Sticky Fingers touches, even other Stands and metaphysical objects. Being that touch is the limit, it can only reasonably fail to open a zipper on something like the air. It can make them large enough to completely sever a target once opened (which can be lethal or not at Bruno's discretion), and Bruno can store objects inside voluminous targets he opens, using basically anything like a makeshift dimensional pocket. To some degree, the gap opened by his zippers actually seems to make a space that is bigger on the inside, as Bruno has been able to hide himself inside the body of another living person. Zippers can also be used to connect two objects together, allowing severed body parts and the like to be reattached and healed.
  Aside from its unique ability, Sticky Fingers is very physically imposing, strong enough to easily rip apart and punch through living beings even without its zippers. Its speed is absolutely monstrous, and it has demonstrated the ability to fight on equal terms with and surprise a Stand that has itself demonstrated both lightspeed capabilities and literal precognition.

Other: My favorite power is without question stopping/controlling time. Never gets less freaking awesome to me.

Multiversal Discord: The Mass-Scale Crossover RP

Coolio. Been working on Bruno's sheet intermittedly, so I'm almost done with it. Might still do Kira later, but I might have to rethink him, since I kinda wanted to play a post-canon Kira, after he'd suffered his ultimate defeat and then finds himself stuck in this situation. Perhaps he manages to activate Bites the Dust one final time and saves himself by jumping far enough back in his timeline that he loses that power? I dunno.

As for Bruno, I plan to play a post-canon version of him, complete with all the character growth and abilities involved, like his learned ability to sense souls in order to communicate with his failing body.

Multiversal Discord: The Mass-Scale Crossover RP

So, this looks interesting, and what I'm hearing here is that the main issue -if it can be called such- currently is that you need someone that can actually threaten Terra consistently? Because I have a couple character possibilities that could do the trick, a few villains and definitely one anti-hero (all of them from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure).

I'm currently leaning towards Diavolo (big maybe here, mostly only a threat to everyone else and really hard for her to hinder), Kira Yoshikage (huge threat to literally everyone) or Bruno Bucciarati (funni zippers go brrr). I'm mostly interested in Bruno, since his is the only powerset of the three that doesn't affect time in some manner, so he shouldn't suffer the likely innate nerfs the other two will, but I may drop more than one sheet and see anyway how much the former two will get hit.

Royal Rumble: Rumble over the Heavens

Chinami Nadakai

A darkened sky and intensifying downpour concealed her approach towards the structure, as Chinami vaulted across rooftops, propelled at least in part by a spectral gasp of her own making. Were it not for that same spectral hold, currently enveloping her whole body, she'd have been soaked to the bone by the rain, but as it was, the pale spectral figure that moved in unison with herself, overlapping her body and hair with its own equivalent shed the droplets from heaven off her form like water on a duck's back.

As she landed overhead and peeked over the lip of the adjacent rooftop, two sets of eyes -the azure one far more powerful than her crimson- scanned the grounds warily and found nothing of note... at least on a surface level. The downpour couldn't have been timed better for her purposes. She didn't know enough about the clinic to know if it had armed security patrolling outside, but if it did, they weren't present right now, nor was -for that matter- pretty much anyone else. The streets were remarkably bare aside from the occasional commuter with an umbrella and at least one unfortunate soul without.

One of those commuter's caught her eye, in large part because they were about to enter the clinic.

Blonde. Ostentatiously dressed. About her age at a glance.

Probably a student. Could be a noble. Even odds on both really. She didn't recognize them, so she (he? Chinami's second set of far sharper eyes caught sight of the jawline and what might have been an Adam's apple from this angle; that fucking pink twink had certainly sharpened her identification skills) wasn't from Kiburi's. He stood out rather too significantly to escape her memory, even accounting for her general apathy towards her fellow students.

Chinami's jaw clenched at the sight in consideration. If this clinic was screwing with people's minds... there was a lot of potential there. Unruly nobles could be pacified. Loyalties could be usurped. Frankly, it was easy to see that the religious fervor with which people referred to this institution indicated an unusual attachment -even loyalty- to the proprietors therein. She already knew that this damned clinic could inconvenience the Four Great Academies (or at least browbeat Kiburi's), so who was to say they didn't have ties to corruption in the government?

Assuming they were actually screwing with minds to begin with, of course, but Chinami was uncomfortably willing to bet the answer was, "yes".

Chinami shook her head free of such speculation. In the end, she didn't really know anything for absolute certain yet. All she had was perhaps well-placed suspicions, and what she needed was proof to back them up... Proof she could hopefully obtain before anyone else fell prey to the schemes within.

And if she actually found what she was looking for... or even something close enough? Well, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

However, one thing was certain: by the end of today, this clinic would no longer be Kiburi's -and more importantly, her- problem any longer... One way or another, her quiet life would be back on track, even if she had to reduce this place to rubble.

She waited until a rumbling peal of thunder sounded out, before leaping once more, clearing the space between rooftops along with the fence surrounding the destination. As soon as she landed, her pearly-white spectral palms splashed wetly onto the gravelly roof, and her vision expanded.

Before her eyes, an almost translucent kaleidoscope of rooftops bloomed all around her, the vast majority of which looked the same. There were outliers, some of wood and stone, others of steel and lightning, but she shoved these to the side in favor of the duplicates... or so one might assume at first glance. Though it was outside her current line of sight, as interconnected as it was, Chinami knew from experience that what she was seeing was not merely different versions of the rooftop, but the entire clinic, and she wanted a few in particular.

"Looped cameras." Underneath her spectral fingers, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of options were cast into the void, not that she was particularly counting as her options narrowed to those where the cameras would loop a whole two hours' worth of footage. In truth, what she physically saw was typically only ever what was "closest to reality", the "alternate presents" that had been most nearly avoided for the current. Honestly, the well she dipped into with this ability was so deep that she'd never dared to try and perceive the bottom, certain that she might go mad if she did. In fact, were it not for her interactions with the Pink One, she might not even be able to look as deeply as she did now. The way her powers had absolutely spazzed out daily at the merest sight of the Pink One had -of all things- actually exercised them in a way, flexed the "muscle" of her power in a way it hadn't been before. It was the equivalent of looking into the void and, miraculously, not having it stare back just long enough for you to look away, recover... and then stare again for even longer each subsequent time.

"Security record malfunction." An even larger portion of the options were stripped away, as she doubled down. As the security systems were surely plugged in, they were intrinsically connected enough to her original target -the clinic itself- to spread her power there. With this in place, even if the cameras miraculously returned to functionality, nothing they observed would be properly recorded. And then, once the transformation automatically faded away in about three to four hours, there would be no evidence, even if somehow both problems were solved, since the recording would fade away into the aether when being replaced by the return of the building's original form.

She could specify more, but she didn't want to commit too hard at this stage. Too much power and too many changes might gather attention before she was ready to exfiltrate. So, these alone would have to do.

"Otherwise unchanged." Closing her eyes, Chinami brushed away the remainder and took hold of her selection, pressing it down against reality. In much the same way her spectral second body currently overlayed her form, so too now did her choice begin to sink into the clinic with a light, barely perceptible vibration, the kind that only a dog might whimper at. Her power pressed into the building with it over the course of the next couple minutes, imposing the alternate present into taking its new rightful place.

A vein lightly bulging in her forehead from the effort, Chinami breathed deeply for several long moments afterwards, catching her second wind from the size of change. Honestly, she hadn't even been trying for much, but that had still almost felt like a gut punch. Overall, however, it should be worth it to keep anything that happened here from coming back to haunt her... hopefully.

Standing up, a thought occurred that might save some time. Striding over to the stairwell, she briefly tried the door.

Locked.

Giving a long-suffering exhale, Chinami's second body stepped away, and her primary near-immediately became soaked by rainwater in the wake of the lifted protections. Grumbling at the black hoodie and hair now clinging to her form, the Goth observed through her extended soul's eyes, as the pearly-white and electric-blue golem-like being phased through the door to the roof. On the other side, a short stairwell stood silently, as expected of a mere two-story building. Glancing around, her Spirit sighted the doors to both the second and first floors proper, searching for... an apparently absent directory of the premises. Instead, they were quite unhelpfully labeled "first floor" and "second floor".

"Wonderful," she drawled. It was strange. What was the point of even labeling something so obvious?

She retracted her Spirit back out into the rain with a frown, brows furrowed, before firming her shoulders and beginning to slowly walk a large ring around the center of rooftop. With a flex of will, the currently soaking girl's Spirit abruptly turned near-entirely invisible, as its selective tangibility rendered all but its glowing blue eyes capable of contacting light. Appropriately concealed, the projection of her soul slipped silently down into the roof as she walked, poking its eyes out to glance at the rooms below.

Soft beige and blue colors appropriate to the building's claimed purpose greeted her. The floors were tiled in the general walking areas along with what appeared to be some sort of customer service area... currently unstaffed. Frowning deeper, Chinami's stride took her over the areas with doors, offices. There were surprisingly few for the size of the building... shockingly few -only about four- for an operation that supposedly had the sway to push around the Great Four Academies. These too appeared to be barren of life, not a single doctor or patient in sight, nor so much as a janitor cleaning up whatever might have assumedly spilled to clear everyone out.

Assuming there was a spill... and assuming there were ever doctors and other staff to begin with. She couldn't speculate for certain on where everyone had gone or what might have happened to them... if, indeed, there had been anyone for something to happen to at all, but this area clearly wasn't well equipped for receiving patients. If whoever was responsible for this trap wanted to maintain even a thin veneer of legitimacy, they must have been keeping patients limited to the bottom floor. But...

The sound, even to her Spirit's vastly enhanced hearing, even with the low drone of the rain overhead and rushing in her first body's ears...

It was... quiet...

"Too quiet," Chinami murmured.

And almost too convenient. A barren empty floor with empty offices? This smelled so much like a trap that it felt like ants were crawling up her spine. Would she even be able to find anything of incriminating value up here at all? If there were no doctors... Or rather, if the likely fake doctors all kept their offices on the lower floor, then she might just be wasting precious time unlocking and searching empty filing cabinets. Speaking of which...

Irregardless of how few of them there were, several filing cabinets and drawers could be found in those few offices that did appear functional. Whether they were stocked at all, she couldn't say from her current position, but better she not waste the possibility that she'd strike paydirt.

Bringing her Spirit to a standing position atop the roof, Chinami walked into its space, rolling her shoulders in satisfaction, as the rainwater was all but leeched off of her body, sloshing into the large puddle on the rooftop. Settling for one of the offices that faced away from the main road outside, Chinami stepped over to the side of the roof, glancing around briefly for potential witnesses, none of which seemed to be forthcoming in this weather.

With a grunt, her fingers took purchase on the chain-link fence circling the roof and bore her upward. In a smooth, practiced motion, she hefted both legs over the top one at a time and clambered down till her feet found footing on the lip of the roof. Crouching, she took hold of the lowest rings of the fence and began lowering her legs, before switching her hand grip to merely the lip of the roof entirely. Glancing down unworried at the two-story drop that frankly paled in comparison to a fair few she'd faced in ruins so long ago, Chinami released her grip, going into free-fall for the split second it took her enhanced hands to snag the windowsill below.

Huffing, she held herself steady, as her Spirit relinquished its protection of her left arm to phase through the window and unlock it from the inside, before reaching down to smoothly slide it open and lift away the closed blinds. Chinami promptly hefted herself up, ducking, as she hooked one leg up and sat in the opening.

Crimson eyes narrowed warily, as she paused briefly, waiting to see if crossing the threshold triggered any sort of alarm or perhaps magical ward. After a long few moments, when none seemed forthcoming, she rolled her jaw and entered fully, her Spirit phasing the water from her once more soaked arm. She briefly considered closing the window behind her but decided it probably mattered little, given the circumstances. That said, she still closed it halfway and replaced the blinds to keep the rain from simply spilling in blatantly.

Striding over to the door, Chinami phased her Spirit's eyes through, making a final cautious glance around for any sign of incoming unwanted company. Seeing none, she closed her eyes and took a steadying breath, eying the filing cabinets and drawers in the room.

The more she saw, the more her unease grew. Some small part of her had actually thought she might be acting paranoid, that she was spitefully rejecting genuine -if misguided- good will from a concerned citizen... Well, that part of her was well and truly silent by this point. Cracking her knuckles, she stepped towards the cabinets, her Spirit preparing to phase any pesky lock tumblers into their rightful place.

@KillamriX88 @Letter Bee @Dezuel

Grimoiric Heart

@Lonewolf685 Sorry about the wait. Working on some other stuff, a large portion IRL work thingies. Camelot's next post thankfully shouldn't be a long one though; I do actually have enough control to avoid bogging down combat sequences. XD
Just need to find a good time to actually settle in and write it.

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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Hugh Caphazath Half-Elf, Monk (Way of Shadow), Level 3 HP: 24/24 Armor Class: 17 Conditions: N/A Location: Honey Barn –> Hayloft Barn Action: N/A Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

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The information regarding the silversmith was little… but hardly unexpected. That aside, boarded up within the past week? Coincidence? Possibly. But the timing just seemed to tickle his interest. That avenue would bare some additional investigation if he had anything to say about it.

The rest of the group’s efforts to socially shmooze with Madame Marcie were either quite effective… or the latter was acting just as opportunistically in return. Between all the nonsense trivialities, it seemed that the Madame claimed to have no grudge and already offered options to settle the debt. Aside from that, there was little else to note.

Upon arriving at the loft, Hugh was pleasantly surprised to find that the structure was not a former stable, but instead merely hay storage. Overall, it appeared much tidier and more secure than he had been resigned to putting up with. Cecily’s mention of a “Mr. Fields” prompted him to utter, “Fields? Isn’t that the guy we’re supposed to pass our loaned cart off to?”

While Kathryn and the Tiefling set about attempting to comfort the child, he chose to join the Bard in scouting out and setting up his possible positions in the upper hayloft, an area he expected would be much safer if they ever had any surprise unwelcome visitors. Not to mention, it would be warmer than the lower floor.

After the Bard returned to the lower floor to inquire about funerary rites, Hugh settled on making his bed in the northern half of the upper loft, a secure position that should keep him nicely untargetable by arrows while sleeping. As an extra measure, he shoved and rolled a couple hay bales over and left a space between them, creating a cozy little makeshift shelter against both attacks and the cold. It was nothing fancy, but hopefully, it would be better than nothing if it came down to it.

Royal Rumble: Rumble over the Heavens

Chinami Nadakai

The Nightman Therapy Clinic was a two-story, rectangular affair, sizable enough to be approximately a dozen rooms deep on the shorter width of said rectangle -if she had to guess at a distance... the distance in question being several hundred feet away atop a rooftop overlooking the detestable institution of her ire.

Chinami's crimson eyes narrowed at the building, a barely restrained snarl on her lips. Her blood was still curdling in rage from the letter she'd received at Kiburi's earlier that morning. Its contents... They were damning, but devoid of context, and once she had finished lying through her teeth with a straight face to the faculty, they had been robbed of credibility as well.

After all, who were the staff of Kiburi going to believe: one of their star, model students... or some crackpot letter filled with baseless accusations?

Obviously not the latter.

Unfortunately, the ease with which Kiburi's had accepted her lies had also been the same ease they foisted off the solving of this problem to her. The clinic -assuming it was legit- would unfortunately have enough sway that they might be able to threaten her enrollment. Certainly, they could make themselves enough of a nuisance that it might be more trouble for Kiburi's than it was worth to keep her around. That said, even if it was the incompetents at Kiburi's, it was plain to see that they were just as baffled by the letter as she was.

The Letter (and it deserved the fucking capitals) had made some shockingly accurate observations about her past. Objectively, she could see where her frankly abusive and negligent childhood could seem concerning. In fact, she could certainly see how the Final Tomb Event could be the straw that broke the camel's back. However...

That was 4 years ago!

It should be blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes that she had -quite possibly by divine or demonic providence- come away from those events remarkably mentally intact -if not flawless. While her athletic body may have been scarred beneath her baggy clothes, her mind was a stubborn iron trap. She had survived at half their age where many adults would have faltered. She had survived, conquered and prospered, overcome every obstacle, slain every enemy. And now, finally, she was ready to rest, had been resting for nearly half a decade, only for this... bullshit to come up now!

The first sign that these people were hacks was their blatant disregard for the most basic principle of psychology, something even she knew: you can't help someone who doesn't want to be. They will resent you. They will hate you. They will double down on their every issue and bite, scratch and claw the whole way down, doing themselves as much harm -if not more- than they are helped. To ignore this simple thing already, to ignore her firm and reasonable rejection of the initial invitation...

Already, that had her attention.

In psychology, you couldn't help someone who didn't trust you, and she most certainly did not trust them! They would have to be utter fools not to know that, and yet still, they persisted. So, that was issue number one.

The second problem began to crop up once she realized that she would inevitably have to go to the Clinic and started doing some research. What she found was... strange.

On the surface, the reviews for the institution seemed legit, positive even. Only... they were too positive. Frankly, the wording, the way the writers almost seemed to- to gush over the experience was just... People -real people- just didn't talk like that! Or rather, what she was reading sounded more like statements from people who had just found religion and were getting way too into it, and it was consistent, a constant litany of heaping flowery, purple prose praise!

And worse?

There were no negative reviews.

Not. A. Single. One.

There were a few ways to take that, and none of them were good. After all, the simple Law of Averages dictated that with the sheer volume of totaled reviews, the absence of even a single dissenting opinion should have been outright impossible. Moreover, every rating was marked as high as it could go, Five Stars across the board! A lukewarm opinion? Mere satisfaction? What were those? They certainly couldn't be found here! Every review might as well have been frothing at the mouth with joy, and that fucking terrified Chinami to her core.

The Goth girl couldn't help her gorge rising as she processed the number of... of victims laid out before her. Just... what had been done to these people? Could it be undone? She couldn't say until she had the opportunity to examine a victim personally. Even so, just how long had this operation been going on under the peoples' noses? How entrenched were they economically and politically? They seemed to have enough sway to inconvenience the Four Academies, literally some of -if not- the most integral institutions in the whole country.

Someone had discovered her past. Had they divined it? Had one of her former colleagues been too loose-lipped even after she got their oath of silence? It could be all too many things in this mad world, where the gods and demons alike bestowed absurd power upon irresponsible mortals. Someone wanted her here. That, or they wanted her specifically away from Kiburi's for a time. Given the odds on the latter, she was more inclined to think that this was a trap specifically targeting her, not the school. So, they wanted her at this so-called "clinic". They wanted her "treated" with whatever the fuck all these poor souls had been snorting. And they had access to information that no-one should have!

Something stank to high heaven, and she was going to have to get to the bottom of it... whether she wanted to or not.

That said...

Like hell she was walking into a trap.

If there was anything her years of spelunking in mysterious and cursed tombs and ruins had taught her, it was that you never resorted to tripping the trap to pass it if you could go around or simply disable it. More often than not, such mystical obstacles had fail-safes designed exactly for cheeky people who thought that tripping them was the way. In fact, most mystical traps were able to automatically reset anyway. Thus, disabling traps ahead of time was the only intelligent thing to do.

This was just another tomb.

It was time to fucking raid it.

@KillamriX88 @Letter Bee @Dezuel