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[syvarris]

((Uh, I'm sorry for being a bit unclear, but by "non-crippled" I meant the one that had legs - I figured "legless" = "crippled". My original post had been going for the legless one, but I had edited it after it was pointed out that it was less of a threat well before you posted.

That said, things have apparently worked out fine anyway, so no big deal. I will try to be more clear in the future))

((Sorry.  The mistake there was because I copied Mina's action--and the others--early, but didn't think to check for edits when I actually wrote things out, so I ended up using the older version.  My bad, I'll try to avoid doing that in the future.))

[Devastator]

Pin my soul gem to the working body, like I did last time, and say a quick bye to Sasha, saying I need to check on the others now, and we're going to fight the witch.  Take the copy of Asha's ribbon off the arm wound of the dead body.  Ask if Sasha's okay, and if she'd like her gun back.  Try to carefully put the gun down... I might break it handling it, I get strong when I'm wounded.

Help Tooru out with the clay bits.  Use that ribbon to try and gently get under the stuck clay, and lift it away from her while avoiding touching it.

[Egan_BW]

You know, it's not going to be often that you use Triage without the added minor cost, and both the healing and the hurting on the same target are helpful.
I have never been so happy with turning what's usually a downside into an advantage~

[randomgenericusername]

Jump at Alida and hug her!

"Alida! You're alive! Oh, don't worry about me. I just saw you... I thought you had... You know..."

"...I'm so sorry! It was an accident! I was trying to be helpful, but I just made things worse for everyone! I know I'm just a load to team and I didn't want to be useless..."

After that, take the gun and activate the safety. Don't keep my finger on the trigger either, just in case.

[Chevaleresse]

"Asha. . . please, help me, why aren't you helping?" Tooru whimpered, barely able to form words through the pain. Asha was supposed to be her friend, why was she just standing there and watching her writhe and suffer? This place was horrible enough, she could barely hear herself and wasn't sure Asha could, not that it made her feel any better about the lack of help she was receiving. <Please, I, I don't have that much magic left and it hurts, why are you leaving me like this?>

Try to hold still while I get cleaned up, and hope Asha actually does something for me.

[Egan_BW]

((I've been told that I should give mina an action, and as such I will do so. If Twin still wants to post an action, that one obviously supersedes this one.))

...We're kind of useless here. We will keep an eye on Mina, even though we can't really help her in any way.

<Asha... What are you waiting for?
I don't want to see her die like this.>

[Twinwolf]

((AAaaah, sorry. I wasn't really sure what Mina could do, so I kinda... just forgot to post. I'm really sorry about that. This has been too persistent a problem for me and I'll try to post more in the future.))

Mina walks back to the others, after making sure nobody's in immediate danger, and looks at Tooru's injuries, and winced. "Are you ok" would be out of place, to say the least. Instead, she turned to Asha...

"Asha, c-can you help? Like you did last time? I think she needs it now... please..." Mina stammered. It didn't look good, no not at all, b-but it'd be all right, right? Right?

[syvarris]

"Asha. . . please, help me, why aren't you helping?" Tooru whimpered, barely able to form words through the pain. Asha was supposed to be her friend, why was she just standing there and watching her writhe and suffer? This place was horrible enough, she could barely hear herself and wasn't sure Asha could, not that it made her feel any better about the lack of help she was receiving. <Please, I, I don't have that much magic left and it hurts, why are you leaving me like this?>

Try to hold still while I get cleaned up, and hope Asha actually does something for me.

((AAaaah, sorry. I wasn't really sure what Mina could do, so I kinda... just forgot to post. I'm really sorry about that. This has been too persistent a problem for me and I'll try to post more in the future.))

Mina walks back to the others, after making sure nobody's in immediate danger, and looks at Tooru's injuries, and winced. "Are you ok" would be out of place, to say the least. Instead, she turned to Asha...

"Asha, c-can you help? Like you did last time? I think she needs it now... please..." Mina stammered. It didn't look good, no not at all, b-but it'd be all right, right? Right?

Use flagellate and then Soothe on Tooru.

Asha stays still even as Tooru implores her to help, the ashen-haired girl holding her hands awkwardly up in front of her as she stares down at Tooru's injuries.  She looks scared, but doesn't move until Mina walks over to her, and says something after she draw's Asha's gaze.  It's impossible for Asha to make out what Mina says, over the deafening music, but her meaning is obvious; when Asha looks back down at Tooru, she closes her eyes and roughly grabs the girl's shoulder.  Tooru immediately shrieks in reaction, Asha's grip digging into her wound and causing fresh waves of agony.  She weakly struggles with Asha, instinctually trying to get away, or loosen the girl's grip, but she's in too much pain to manage, and Mina kneels down next to them and restrains her while Asha works.

Asha doesn't seem to take note of Tooru's distress at all; she looks serene, and is actually smiling slightly as Tooru screams and struggles below her.  She's like that for a short while, Tooru wearing herself out, before the redhead suddenly goes still, and Asha opens her eyes to look down at her.  As expected, the girl's arm is fully healed, but in addition her clothes look clean and new, the clay that had been on her all gone, something which even puzzles Mina, who was watching the entire time.  Asha nods in satisfaction before standing up, pulling Tooru with her.  Tooru, for her part, is distracted with inspecting her shoulder--it's a little disturbing how much it had been hurting just a moment ago, and hbow the pain disappeared so quickly.  Mina pokes her shoulder as well, only for her finger to be batted away.

Jump at Alida and hug her!

"Alida! You're alive! Oh, don't worry about me. I just saw you... I thought you had... You know..."

"...I'm so sorry! It was an accident! I was trying to be helpful, but I just made things worse for everyone! I know I'm just a load to team and I didn't want to be useless..."

After that, take the gun and activate the safety. Don't keep my finger on the trigger either, just in case.

You quickly jump up and fling your arms around Alida, hugging her tightly, relieved to see her okay.  She laughs a little, patting you on the head, before pushing you away and holding your grandfather's rifle in front of you.  You carefully take it while standing up, looking it over to ensure it's unharmed, and once you're satisfied you slide the fire selector up to safe.  Then you nod to Alida, and follow her to the exit... and stop just inside, watching as she walks over to her corpse, then squats next to it and starts to pull away at her body's bandages.  Your eyes are drawn to the red, matted hole in the back of her corpse's head, but you squeeze them shut before you can let yourself get a good look.  You did shoot her, she just has multiple bodies, somehow.  It's still horrifying to think that you killed her, even if she doesn't stay dead.

Eventually, when you do open your eyes, Alida is standing up again and looking over at Tooru and the others.  Alida's corpse is gone, but you focus very hard on not thinking about where it went.

Pin my soul gem to the working body, like I did last time, and say a quick bye to Sasha, saying I need to check on the others now, and we're going to fight the witch.  Take the copy of Asha's ribbon off the arm wound of the dead body.  Ask if Sasha's okay, and if she'd like her gun back.  Try to carefully put the gun down... I might break it handling it, I get strong when I'm wounded.

Help Tooru out with the clay bits.  Use that ribbon to try and gently get under the stuck clay, and lift it away from her while avoiding touching it.

[Purity]

Aleksandra tackles you before you can do anything, wrapping her arms around you and squeezing tightly.  You can't help but chuckle a little at her exuberance, it reminds you of your younger siblings.  You treat her about the same, patting her on the head for a moment, before lightly pushing her away and holding her gun between the two of you.  She stands up and takes the weapon gingerly, looking over it intensely, turning it over in her hands.  You think it looks a little strange, the weapon looking far too big and brutal for her small, immature hands, but don't say anything.  Eventually she nods to you, apparently satisfied with the state of her weapon, and you get up, walking towards your body.

You flinch a little as you step outside, the deafening music returning in an instant and hitting you like a wall of sound.  Everything looks a little different now, you feel like the ashen landscape is familiar--of course it is, you walked through it thirty seconds ago--but it also feels alien, more hostile than it did before.  You shake your head and look down at your own corpse.  You avoid looking at the head wound, squatting down at your body's side and focusing on untying Asha's ribbon from your arm.  It's bloody, and wants to stick both to itself and your dead flesh, but it comes away eventually.  Then you work on your backpack, pulling it off and frowning at the blood soaked into it.  Nothing to be done for that.  You sigh and look back down at your body, figuring there might be something else you should retrieve, but to your surprise, it's... gone?  There's just a few craters in the ash, where your body had been laying before, and the club it had been holding off to one side.  You blink a couple times, trying to process what just happened, but decide against thinking about it to hard and just pick up the club.  Your wounded arm complains a little as you pick it up, an ache setting in below the makeshift bandages.  The makeshift bandages, which you now have an extra two copies of...  Huh.

You turn to look over at Tooru and the others helping her, but she's already back on her feet, completely unharmed and her clothes clean.  Well, looks like the others actually can solve their own problems sometimes.


((Next update Thursday the 10th.  Current labyrinth track is still The Beatles - A Day in the Life (Instrumental), but is very close to the end.  The source, as always, is on the other side of the wall that the magical teleportation door is set into.  I'll assume Asha telepathically keeps Aleksandra aware of anything the others say, since otherwise she's pretty much unable to communicate until the others come back inside.))

Spoiler: Alida Larsen (Devastator) (click to show/hide)

Soul Gem: Glowing with a fading light.
   ^{Form and location: Medallion, pinned to her left breast.}

Age: 14
Hair Color: Salt-stained blonde.
Health: Completely drenched, with a bunch of deep cuts in her left shoulder, bandaged with two bright blue ribbons.  The ribbons are soaked through with blood.  Mentally, still a bit loopy, but much better off than she has been.
Inventory: A magically-lengthened club, and a boxed pair of new (if wet) shoes in her bloodied backpack.  Two of Asha's bloodsoaked ribbons are held in her hand with the club.

Totem: A fishing club.

Stats:
   Bravery:  Talented~
   Joy:  Skilled!
   Innocence:  Amateur...
   Purity:  Amateur...
   Mercy:  Skilled!
   Creativity:  Cursed ;-;
   Love:  Cursed ;-;

Abilities:
   Mobility Lvl2
   Close Combat Lvl3+1
   Totem Manipulation Lvl2

   Berzerker Lvl3 Active; Bloodied! (Cheap discount to power use)
   Painless Lvl2
   Effigy Lvl1

Spoiler: Asha Tia (Nakéen) (click to show/hide)

Soul Gem: Glowing with a Bright light.
   ^{Form and location: Ring, worn on her left ring finger.}

Age: 13
Hair color: Ashen
Health: Wet, ashy, and with a bunch of glass and gashes in her right hand.  Has a fair bit of living clay on her, mostly her clothes and right arm.
Inventory: One ribbon.  And a short rusty metal shiv, broken off from a longer piece.

Totem: A Ribbon. The one her late sister wore.

Stats:
   Bravery:  Skilled!
   Joy:  Cursed ;-;
   Innocence:  Cursed ;-;
   Purity:  Amateur...
   Mercy:  Talented~
   Creativity:  Amateur...
   Love:  Skilled!

Abilities:
   Mobility: Level 3
   Close Combat: Level 2 
   Totem Manipulation: Level 1 (+1)

   Heal and Steel: Level 2 (Active; Next attack rolls on Mercy)
   Soothe: Level 3
   Flagellation: Level 3

   Memento: Level 1 (Given to Aleksandra) 

Spoiler: Mina Ross (TwinWolf) (click to show/hide)

Soul Gem: Glowing with a warm light.
   ^{Form and location: Ring, worn on her right index finger.}

Age: 14.
Hair Color:  Bright green.
Health: Dazed, a bit bruised, and covered in ash.
Inventory: A halberd, which I simply cannot see as anything aside from a Black Knight Glaive.  I blame Dark Souls.

Totem: A halberd.

Stats:
   Bravery:  Amateur...
   Joy:  Skilled!
   Innocence:  Amateur...
   Purity:  Skilled!
   Mercy: Cursed ;-;
   Creativity:  Talented~
   Love:  Cursed ;-;     

Abilities:
   Mobility: Level 2
   Close-Combat: Level 2 (+1)
   Regeneration: Level 2

   Sixth Sense: Level 3
   Semblance: Level 2
   Projection: Level 2

Spoiler: Tamazaki Tooru (KingMurdoc) (click to show/hide)

Soul Gem: Glowing with a shadowed light.
   ^{Form and location: Necklace, worn around her... neck...}

Age: 13
Hair Color:  Bright scarlet.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: Four paper talismans

Totem: Ofuda talismans, primarily thrown as manabolts.

Stats:
   Bravery:  Cursed ;-;
   Joy:  Talented~
   Innocence:  Skilled!
   Purity:  Amateur...
   Mercy:  Cursed ;-;
   Creativity:  Amateur...
   Love:  Skilled!
   
Abilities:
   Mobility II
   Mana Bolt III (+I)
   Regeneration I
   Totem Manipulation II

   Invigorating Passion I
   Outburst II
   Duet with Reality II

Spoiler: Aleksandra "Sasha" Chernov (RandomGenericUsername) (click to show/hide)

Ward: Glowing with a foolish light!

Age: 12
Hair Color: Black.
Health: Awake, but very cold and wet, and probably a little traumatized.
Inventory: A cute blue ribbon tied into her hair.  She's wearing Alida's coat, now soaked with water, and wielding her grandfather's AK-47.

Stats:
   Bravery:  Skilled!
   Joy:  Skilled!
   Innocence:  Talented~
   Purity:  Amateur...
   Mercy:  Cursed ;-;
   Creativity:  Cursed ;-;
   Love:  Amateur...

[Egan_BW]

Congrats, you managed to narrowly avoid grisly death! Now lets see if you can keep that going as you fight the boss~

[Devastator]

<I did see the witch.  It was way up there, where the flying car went.  Anyone got any ideas as to how we can get up there?>

[Devastator]

<Well.. I've got an idea.  I've got these extra ribbons of yours, Asha.  Could you make it a bit longer.. and stretchy?  I think we could shoot ourselves up into the air if we have a rubber ribbon, and that'll let us get in the air if we have to.  Just gotta make like a slingshot.>

<But.. I'm not quite sure where the witch is..>

Look around and try to scrounge up pieces for the human slingshot.  All I really need is two long straight objects.  I suppose in a pinch I can use a couple more clubs, but better to find something and save that magic.

If someone does cry out for assistance, or spots the witch, run to them.

<Did any of you see where the witch was?  I can't really see it in the sky now.>

...

<Or.. maybe.. two of us could just bury ourselves halfway in the ground..>

That's crazy, Alida, don't think that.

[syvarris]

((Okay, so Dev pointed out that the environment you're in was described awhile ago, and very quickly, so here's a recap and a map to show what your surroundings are like.))

Spoiler: Inside this fun, interactive spoiler!  Yay! (click to show/hide)

Everything gray here is ash, generally deep ash, ankle height at the shallowest.  The black outlines are walls of destroyed buildings, most of which do have interior walls (they'd just be far too time-consuming to draw).  No buildings have ceilings, and all have ash inside, as the map depicts.  The dark blue is, of course, water; there's three rivers flowing into the central lake.  Each river has a small rail-less bridge, which contrary to the map would be covered in ash and difficult to distinguish from the surroundings, but they're there.  Each of the red dots is a horned pegasus skeleton, mummified with ribbons, virtually identical to the one that walked into view in this update.  Their exact numbers and locations are not accurate; I just dropped a bunch of red marks everywhere to illustrate that there's a ton of them.  Of note, little motes of colorful light float around pretty much everywhere, alighting on everything that isn't the girls, and especially crowd around the skeleton familiars.

The gold star, unsurprisingly, is where the characters are currently gathered.  Out in front of you, there's an ash-covered pier leading out onto the lake.  Behind you is a large mansion's front wall, taller than all the other ruined buildings, and largely more intact; it doesn't extend above the first story, but no part of the mansion's wall on this side is below head height, while most other intact walls that are around this place at the very least have crumbling sections.  The music is coming from the other side of the wall, and not the magic door you all walked out of.  All doors and windows that you've passed through, as Mina could see, are actually spatial portals which lead somewhere else entirely.  The mansion does have a collapsed wall on the opposite side, which some of you saw past, but the internal walls are also pretty intact, so you could only see a couple of the rear rooms before.

There are no other familiars visible.  The skeletons waltz around, but seem completely uninterested in anything around them; not one has taken note of any of you, even as you fought with the clay people, and Alida rode the taxi full of victims into the sky.

Said sky is currently fairly bright, notably brighter than when the labyrinth was entered--it looks like it's almost dawn, like the sun is about to come up, but no sides of the sky are any brighter, making it impossible to determine which direction the sun would come from.  There's a few clouds left, but again, there's a lot fewer than there were when you entered.  Just a few small patches which barely obscure the sky.  Massive stars hang in the air above, too close, and almost stylized in their shape, completely unlike *real* stars.  No witch is visible, though Alida was absolutely certain that she saw it up there earlier.  The taxi which flew into the sky, before being heavily injured by Alida, is also not visible.





...Since I felt like it, here's an example of how Mina's sixth sense works, and detects the doors as behaving weird.  It allows her to sense pretty much everything and anything within about ten feet of her soul gem.  Everything gray in that picture, on both sides of the opaque black wall of the mansion, is normal ground covered by ash.  Everything blue is the interior of the partially flooded space that you all went adventuring through.  The red door is the door you walked through earlier.  Green dot, of course, is Mina.

Whether the red door is open or closed, Mina's sense detects anything directly on the other side of it to be the fancy underground flooded area; if she moves off to the side, she sees that space instead as more ashen ground identical to the environment she's standing in.  If she stepped back through the door, and then off to the side, she'd sense the two green spaces here as being occupied by solid rock, and the door as being set into an impassible wall.

((Also, Asha is capable of what Alida is asking for, and if Nak doesn't post something saying not to, Asha will automatically comply.))

[Parisbre56]

<Or.. maybe.. two of us could just bury ourselves halfway in the ground..>

((You know what that'll make you look like? A couple of ash holes!
...
I'll let myself out.))

[Twinwolf]

"I don't think I did... gimme a minute. Where did you see it exactly? That might be a good place to start looking." Mina said, after mouthing an apology to Tooru for the poking.

After Alida replies, Mina would try to extend her senses with the goal of finding the witch. Now that they had some breathing room and were all together again, it was probably time to get back on task, and this was what she was good at...

Try to sense the witch's location - was there maybe some kind of trail left behind?

[Devastator]

<All I know is that it was up there.. and was all hot, like the sun.  I really wasn't seeing things right there for a time.>

<Also, it might be her making the music.>