RP [Phoenix Team] - Through The Cries

Southern Palms, Witchwood, A Circle in the Meadow
Trading some back and forth with Rumia, Luca "I'm only a spectator to revving magic, and from what I've seen it's one guy's way of showing off his ride, making dead engines sing, and animated paintjobs." He summarised with a double handwave, mimicking a rainbow - such a performer and mechanic wouldn't didn't strike him as EAD material, nor taking much notice of the workings behind the spectacle. "Otherwise, magic boils down to knowing it causes heaps of trouble if it isn't used right."

He saw fit to theorise with Shadowcat, noting the Feleaf she'd plucked and grabbing a handful for himself, pulling up a clump of dirt and roots too. "So you think they used a whole lot of these from this field to kickstart whatever spell, maybe-" He paused as he felt Ravnir stirring into motion - heavy footsteps shaking the ground. Luca's thought train hit brakes as he turned around - watching the Raiken dash in and strike the centre of the circle as he tried to mount a verbal protest.

Yttrium was dumbfounded with how straightforward the 'magician' of the group she knew was compared to the haughty cat-eared swordy lady. All those meandering thoughts and subtleties were dashed when Ravnir's scaly fist struck the magic circle with a colossal crush. Standing several paces away from the centre of impact, Luca could feel a tremor shoot up his legs from the force of the impact, dissipating around the torso region and making his teeth chatter - Rumia and Breyja would feel a similar shock to their systems.

Yttrium had leapt backwards in fright, wailing and flailing before slipping and falling on her backside with a plop. Being furthest away as they were purging sinuses and regaining bearings, Snuffles could feel a shake in their legs from afar. When the dirt settled, a deep indentation of compressed loam, flattened grass, arcane paints and spiderwebbings of molten spirit, Ravnir had crowned the middle of the glowing magic circle. Luca was standing with his legs apart and low to the ground to balance himself. He then shuffled a few paces back, watching the patterns in the circle's glow turn irregular, warping and distorting - clipping and clicking as a breeze begun to pick up.

Ravnir could feel a shift in his consciousness, as though he had just cast a spell, lending spirit to his actions. Rays of light begun to emerge from the paints and dyes in the circle - though disrupted and imperfected by the crude application and transfer of force and spirit, the circle had been flash-charged with Ravnir's application, and the spell begun to unfold before him. The erratically shaking and distorting rays of red and white soon begun to solidify into a sheet, layering itself over and over again by shooting up from the magic circle, pulsing hot pink.

As continuous layers of light and static built over each other in at about nine feet tall, doorway begun emerging from the TV static - awful racket easing off as the other side of the portal begun rendering into focus: A dusky alleyway somewhere in Sargasso's built up area with a view to the back door of some establishment. The spell was definitely Greaseheart magic - had all the hallmarks of being crude and tolerant of distortions and imperfections in the casting process, and a noisy process as the spell was kicking off.

"Huh!" Luca gawped, looking aside to Rumia with a hand pointing towards the portal and the Raiken as a chuckle begun to rise from his incredulity. "That'll work! We better use it fast before they realise what's going on."

Having reconstituted her worries and snapped out of her awe of watching the portal come together, Yttrium tilted her head at Luca's suggestion. "What if its a trap?" She asked, trying desperately to dissuade a head-on approach.

Luca shook his head at her assessment. "There's six of us, Blue - and this is as solid as a lead gets! Go! Run run!" With that, he was the first one to leap through the portal past Ravnir, pulling his lever shotgun off his shoulder as he leapt and rolled through, cradling his longarm as he hit the pavement on the other side.

The others could see him on the other side from behind, keeping his barrel trained at the door and looking up at the roofs and windows of the alley and behind the portal for any observers. The alley he was standing in curved somewhat before it reached the street, obscuring it from pedestrian view. Even so, he was listening over the sound of traffic on the end of the alley for any movement inside the building.

Luca made a signal for the others to come quick, beckoning them over while he kept the new area as secure as he could.

 

Rumia hissed and leapt back, flipping into midair rolls as she retreated from the activating circle.

"Idiot! That could have ripped a hole straight through to the Weald if you broke it wrong!" Rumia spat. She noted Luca's instructions and placed a hand on her blade's grip as a form coalesced into existence behind her. It became something akin to a cross between a cloak and a coat, long and flowing, open-breasted and topped with a hood with a silvery fabric that seemed to lack any actual shine but gave off the *feeling* of shining upon viewing it.

The form was hollow, but filled as if there were somebody wearing it, and it descended on Rumia. The moment it covered her shoulders, she vanished from view, and the coat fluttered through the portal.

 

Central View, Bay Grove, The Alley near Brigg's Gaming Parlour
After Ravnir, Snuffles, Rumia and Breyja had come through the portal without incident, Luca made a headcheck - he saw Yttrium on the other side of the portal out in the clearing with the magic circle at her feet. "Hey! Blue! C'mon!" Luca called out, causing the oily giant to suddenly snap to attention, blundering towards the other side.

Rumia and Ravnir could feel the portal's energy starting to wane and dissapate as it had carried five passengers through already. They could see the edges of the glassy backdrop to the portal back to the Witchwood clearing starting to crack and chip under its own being. As Yttrium was bounding towards the portal, it suddenly frayed at its edges as it collapsed back into naught, effectively leaving Yttrium behind before she could get through.

A couple of moments later as Luca was assessing the impact of losing a teammate, he got a phone call and a flurry of messages on the Phoenix Team's group chat. "Oh, phone's working again," he noted, taking a look at it.

Code:

FR: Yttrium
TO: PT-GroupChat
-MSG-
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LULUUUUUUUUUU! Open the portal again!

He grimmaced and answered the phone. The others in his team could overhear Yttrium's panicked cantering on the other side of his line. Luca calmly reminded her that she could follow the tracks the team had made to return home - and Ravnir's footprints and Yttrium's hydraulic heels left a noticeable pathway back. It'd be another hour's walk, and Yttrium complained. "Blue you don't have the properties necessary to build up lactic acid in your 'muscles' and get tired." Luca pointed out. "The quicker you get to a road and call a taxi, the quicker you get to where we are."

There was yet more pleading on the other side of the line, and Luca shook his head with a sigh, glancing aside to the rest of his team. "Sorry doll, gotta keep things moving. Bye." With a click, Luca's communicator returned to the home screen, he noticed it was receiving data as usual. It didn't take long for location information to trickle in too, identifying his and his team's location to be in Bay Grove.

A commercial hub for Sargasso because of its extensive spaceport and mall district stretching for storeys beneath the ground. Everyone else's devices were being brought up to date as well. "Well, we're one down, but we've still got our foothold here." Luca told his team as he leaned over and looked down the curve of the alley. He spotted an arrow-shaped sign hanging from the alleyway, pointing towards the front of the store - 'BRIGG'S GAMING PARLOUR' sequentially appeared, surrounded by flashing globes.

By contrast, the back alley Luca, Rumia, Ravnir, Breyja, and Snuffles was in had a long puddle running through it to a drain, ample crude tags were splattered against brick wall, spilling onto the concrete ground and onto the steps leading into the side entrance of the parlour. Layers of posters for underground rock concerts were paste-glued onto and above much of the graffiti - alien bands thrashing wildly.

Snuffles noticed some of the Graffiti taggings were written in Chelti - and given Bay Grove's proximity to the alien district of Redfield and its Chelti enclaves blending in with the other alien strangers. To Rumia and Ravnir, nothing stood out in particular and nothing here felt magical - merely material and quite mundane. Breyja recognised a couple of the bands in the posters, but also splots of tentacle-shaped alien graffiti for a gang called the 'Out-Of-Towners'. She'd heard bad things about them from her circle of Maidenhand contacts.

Luca stepped up to the door with his shotgun, and rolled his shoulders to release a breath of anticipation. "Right, I'll take point. All the windows on and above ground level are barred, so I can't do a second-storey welcome," he relayed his battle plan as he sized up his team. First, he looked up to the Raiken, figuring what to do with the walking tank. "Ravnir, once you hear gunshots, you have permission to breach through the wall however you like - element of surprise is on your side, but give us some warning."

Next, he turned his attention to his two immediate Phoenix Team members. "Snuffles, Breyja, fall in behind me and take the left and right. If anyone pulls a gun us, they're fair game. People who surrender can get knocked out for their troubles." He then addressed the former EAD. "Rumia." There was a connection between them from their professional lines of work, and there was a mutual understanding that however you got the job done, you did.

"You do you." He stated with a nod and a smile. He was rearing to put his boot through the door as the team took inventory and got into position, or had other tactical considerations to chip in.

 

The phantomlike cloak that was filled with shadow nodded at Luca's own acknowledgement, swooping upwards and shunting directly over the targeted parlour. Rumia dropped out of the hood, a silver thread following her descent and connecting her back to the hood's empty chest.

Rumia unhooked her scabbard from her belt with one hand, then flicked it once with her other hand. The scabbard went to its full, rather obscene length. Energies swirled around her and then released with a snap of her fingers, and then again twice more with the words "Enhance, Keen, Sturdy," as she weaved enchantments around herself.

Finally, she drew her blade, forcing the scabbard shorter with each inch taken away until the sword longer than she was was fully unleashed and the holder stashed away for safekeeping in a pocket.

With a steady heand, Rumia traced the tip around the roof in a circle around her. When everything began to go down, she would drop in from above and see who was waiting there.

 

Central View, Bay Grove, The Alley near Brigg's Gaming Parlour
"Okay, count of three." Luca announced, stepping back and eyeing the space just below the doorknob. "Two. One."

With the door swinging open as the doorknob remained locked in the doorframe, a layer of dust swept into the room, Luca found himself faced with the larger interior of the Gaming Parlour, with rows upon rows of machines clanging and vying for attention and tokens. Patrons' heads swivelled towards Luca's intrusion over the din of the falling bearings in each machine - they saw a guy bust in with shotgun in his hands. Cries of panic set in as the civilian patrons leapt out of their stools to head towards the exit as calmly as they could as Luca's eyes scanned the room.

Spotting who remained was a security guard standing by the exit, middle aged and reaching for his radio to report what was going on - but he seemed out of place amongst the remaining patrons. They hadn't moved from their machines, mostly young men in dark suits and sunglasses indoors - too . The man closest to Luca lifted a cigarette out of an ashtray and stood up. "Hey asshole, this is a legitimate establishment." He said, strutting up to Luca in expensive dress shoes devoid of taste. "Don't cause ruckus, aye?"

His similarly dressed friends also begun standing up and filling the four rows of machines, a murmur of anticipation growing amongst them. Their swagger was loose, confident and cocky. A steel bat could be heard ringing against the tiles as one man dropped its head. A pistol could also be heard cocking as the machines' jingling tones seemed to fade away as tension filled the air. "I'll give you and your friends the count of three to move along nicely."

Unperturbed, Luca counted three men in the row he was standing at the head of, including the dickhead addressing him, six in the next row over - most likely carrying weapons, then another five concentrated near the parlour's front doors - also distinctly, and the final row against the wall where a stairway lead up could have had another handful of men. To Luca's left was a counter, with a clerk hiding under the desk asking what the hell was happening. "Where's the witch?" He asked, tapping a finger against the trigger guard as he raised his shotgun. "I'm not here to beat around the bush. I'm here to take names and gamble - and I've no interest in gambling."

The suited man stepped closer, cigarette in hand as he pointed it towards Luca, and pushed it against the back of his left hand - ash and burning tobacco singing the leather. "Says the guy who's playing with his life like its chump change." The man in sunglasses got uncomfortably close - enough to smell the breath and see evidence of Prisma stains on his teeth. His two friends behind him had a wooden bat covered in nails and a pistol respectively, gearing up for a fight and leering towards the man in red with malice. "The witch is none of ya business, and you know it. There'll be no countdown now-"

Luca reached out and grabbed the man in black by his tie and lowered his left hand holding the shotgun. Leading with his right foot and lifting the man into him, he lunged inwards and smashed his forehead against the man's, breaking sunglasses against their eyes. Holding them close and raising his shotgun, Luca had taken a human shield against a pistol levelled at him.

♫ Yakuza 0 - t u s k ♫

Footsteps squeaking and scuffing against the tiled and carpeted portions of floor coupled with expletives of surprise and anger could be heard reacting to the first bubbling notes of a violent symphony, to be improvised by Luca. "I couldn't agree more." He replied, now putting his finger on the trigger - the man with the bat in his row charged ahead, darting to his companion's side and trying to flank Luca to break up the grab. Unable to get a decent bead on them as they used Luca's shield against them, he settled for blasting into one of the machines to his left side. Coins and bearings begun spilling out as lights flickered away.

Then all hell broke loose amongst the sound of falling and rattling coins and bouncing bearings danced across the tiled floor, tripping up the bat wielding man and forcing him to grab onto the wall to stay upright and block the pistol man's shot. Luca could hear someone running out into the aisle facing the door, and looking over his shoulder he saw a man charging at him with a knife over his head.

Luca responded by kicking a stool away from a machine and buying himself a moment to respond - Breyja and Snuffles saw the men in the second row over starting to spill out and run towards them down the aisle, and over the establishment's counter to use as cover or perhaps grab additional hardware. The man in red was in a bit of a bind with men on all side, but it meant they couldn't avoid him either. The first thing he did was dispose of the man in his grasp by slamming their face against the poker machine and ashtray.

Immediately afterwards, he lifted his Mark 8 out of its holster as he let his shotgun hang by a sling and fired two shots into the knife man's chest, they fell over with two burning spots of suit against their shoulder and solar plexus, causing him to fall to the ground in pain and drop the knife. Pivoting, Luca now had the man with the bat swinging wildly at him - ducking and weaving to throw Luca's aim off. Breyja and Snuffles could see another man from the second row leap-frogging over his row of machines to try and grab at Luca from behind in addition to the others mobilising in the back row.


A Few Moments Earlier...
A former bathroom clad in inoffensive beige tiles with mint accents near the top floor of the Briggs Building had a table and chairs with a quartet of ne'er do wells huddled around a flat bowl and three dice, while a lone individual wearing a battered and stained evening dress was lashed to a chair and facing the wall of this dark and run-down room which had no use for a gambling establishment. "Okay, I'm going for a triple-" one fellow with rainbow-stained snaggle teeth indicated, shaking the dice in his hands and releasing them into the bowl.

The cuboids danced and rolled in the bowl before coming to settle on a six, a four, and a three. This was an auspicious roll for the gangster, whose eyes lit up as he faced the banker for this round. "Hell yeah! Six times my stake! Gimme!" He insisted, fobbing for the notepad and calculator where everyone's scores were recorded. The banker (Eddy) for this round was very leery of what he was seeing though - his alleged friends had been known to cheat on occasion, and he wouldn't be able to pay out the winnings without going bust.

"Aw, come on, let me see those-" He requested as he reached in to grab at a die. The other players raised an 'ooh' of escalation as they figured Mickey got busted for swapping the dice out again. Mickey meanwhile tried defending himself from accusations and keeping Eddy's hand out of the bowl, and their mates Gordo and Will were jostling for him to come clean. The gambling they did while minding someone for a business contact was never serious or for cash, but they still believed in a fair game amongst friends.

The figure excluded from the activities, however, could feel a presence near her - another spellcaster, with a lineage written in a school the witch had seldom seen. She didn't recognise it as the one who had brought her to this shithole to stew and break down to divulge her business' innermost secrets. Stiffness in her neck and a cloying soreness throughout her body from the lack of sleep and certainty almost prevented her from raising her head, trying to triangulate the source. "Above... you..." She murmured.

"Hey, shut up witch. We're trying to enjoy a game here." Will responded quickly to their ward piping up, raising a hand in annoyance. A radio on the table begun buzzing; Something was happening downstairs. Trying to be a man worth his wage for the big end of town, he grabbed the radio. "This is the storage, what's going on down there?" The ward was unsure of whether this had something to do with the new presence, but she'd take it.

As Will was listening for an answer, tufts of dust and crumbling plaster begun falling from the ceiling, spilling the dice bowl and staining the table with detritus. Soon, it grabbed everyone's attention as they were trying to piece together what was happening. "What the hell's this?" Eddy asked, standing up from his chair and lifting a submachinegun out of his cheap suit jacket. A moment later, a circular portion of the ceiling fell into the middle of the table, flattening it and causing Gordo to fall over in fright, and Will to fish for his piece in the debris.

The prisoner in the chair tried looking over her shoulder, wondering what that commotion was.

"Ah, shit! I was winning!" Mickey cried out, fingertips against scalp in disbelief. Grunting and annoyed now, he grabbed a stickball bat resting beside his chair and looked up through the hole. "You! You motherfucker!" He addressed nobody in particular, unable to see clearly as daylight poured through the new hole, disrupting the darkness of the abandoned room.

 

Just barely, the thugs guarding Harumi could see a silver thread dangling in the light, connected to nothing.

Under a veil of invisibility, Rumia channeled a mass of energy in one hand and raised her sword, going through the motions of a complex spell. It was rare she got to use this, a weave that involved the motions of careful slicing within a set radius, so the opportunity was golden.

Rumia slammed her pommel into her channeling hand, overturning her invisibility and filling area with a hundred slices of blue light as all the clothing and accessories of the thugs facing her were diced into shreds - but only the front half. The splinters of the stickball bat clattered to the ground as Rumia haughtily stared down on Mikey from her position.

"Kneel, you dogs! Or else, I will use this on your hands next!" she spat, holding her sword high in its two-handed grip.

 

Brigg's Gaming Parlour, Ground Floor, Pachinko Machines
Snuffles' grenade landed in the third row, where deluge of bubbly, soapy water exploded from its plastic shell and splattered cleansing contents all over - soapy bearings upon a sodden stretch of carpet proved difficult to remain standing upon, and those who fell towards the walls and the machines for stability found themselves shocked lightly by short-circuiting electronics. The washed up screens and machines winked out to black - the electronic jingles slowed to a drawl and fizzled entirely as the machine's circuits gave out.

The soundscape was quickly supplanted with the muted bursts of Breyja's sub-machine gun and the grenade-like 'thoomp's of Snuffle's nets, with the chelti bagging two men who were running towards the counter, and Breyja grabbing her triple close up as men fell to the floor clutching their faces. In return, Breyja's shield absorbed a couple of pistol rounds as hostile attention was pointing towards her from behind some of the pachinko machines. From the very back row against the wall, four men had emerged with pistols, forcing Breyja and Snuffles to scurry down Luca's aisle for cover.

Nobody had come down the stairs. With the Maidenhand and the Chelti following the charge and grabbing the attention, Luca had dodged a pair of bat swings and counterattacked by kneeing the bat-wielding thug in the midsection, then smashing them in the back of the neck with his elbow and grabbing them in a headlock, charging down his aisle with his pistol in his other hand as the pistol-wielding thug hesitated to shoot his friend.

That hesitation allowed Luca to push the bat wielding man into his friend, and whip out his shotgun and rack a new round in - a spent shell marked 'NaCl - Rock Salt' popped out - he was firing chunks of hardened salt, labouring under the misapprehension that he'd be facing something that was weak towards it - like, maybe a ghost or demon something. Even so, it worked on people just fine too - stung like all hell.

With two men rolling on the ground in pain with salted wounds, Luca had reached the end of the aisle, and came face to face with a man who had a slender, Maidenhand-made sword - whom the others were making way for. The Man in Red decided to kneecap the swordsman to keep things simple, and his mates charged at him with a variety of handheld blunt objects in a shouty melee. Luca was happy to oblige the less-disciplined group.

A quartet of men from the far-back row who'd escaped the brunt of Breyja and Snuffles' attacks by letting their 'mates' take the brunt of it rolled for cover behind the counter - two of them continuing towards a backroom while another popped up with a two-barrelled shotgun in his hands. Breyja turned her riot shield to face them in reflex and felt two clouds of buckshot collide with it at close range - fistfuls of pellets denting the ballistic plate and searing the outer layer of fabric to reveal the scorched metal beneath.

The shotgun-wielding man ducked to reload, and another black-suited man popped up beside the first with a battered, kludge-custom Service Rifle with a big muzzle brake - firing above Breyja and Snuffles to suppress their position and pin them down. After a few bursts of fire, the man noticed the wall to his right glowing a little, and he turned around. His mate underneath the desk popped the shotgun closed and pointed it at the wall - just what sort of force were they dealing with for hanging onto some witch who owned a nightclub?

The wall bulged for a split second before the mortar holding all of the bricks and the veneer of plaster board and framing shattered and spilled forth into the counter area, followed by a shower of brick chunks, clay dust and tufts of insulation, marking entrance of Ravnir. "HOLY SHIT!" The shotgun wielding thug cried out as he'd never seen a Raiken in his life - scared shitless, he fired both barrels at Ravnir without aiming and scrambled to load another pair of rounds in.

The one with the assault rifle ducked and started firing at full auto until the gun went click, also taken off guard but responding more tacitly - even if the little human-sized bullets felt like firm pokes, or mere suggestions for the Raiken rather than a display of deadly force. The two men who Breyja and Snuffles had seen running for the backroom returned - one of them was carrying a straight-edged longsword approximately three feet in length while the other had a hand grenade - they were not expecting this sort of resistance, though.


Brigg's Gaming Parlour, Floor 5, A Disused Bathroom
As Mickey was twirling his bat in his hands, he noticed there was some dust that was refusing to settle correctly, dabbling itself in a minor outline at Rumia's feet. He stood there piecing what was going on together when the blue field of criss-crossed slashes started multiplying throughout his field of vision.

Will found his pistol and lifted it out of the remains of the table and right into the fluorescent slices and as he pointed it at Rumia and pulled the trigger. Unexpectedly to him, the gun fell apart in his hands, barrel falling down as the parted recoil springs and slide leapt out of the remains of the firearm. "Wh- what the?!" He gawped as a sense of dread washed over him, believing he wasn't being paid enough to look after such a valuable target. He then lifted his radio to notify the rest of the building that there was trouble upstairs, only to discover that it had been neatly cut diagonally.

Eddy was standing back when Rumia made her grandiose entrance, and his submachine gun fired a couple of wild shots past the blademage before the barrel, its shroud and the magazine fell apart in front of him, bolt assembly and loose bullets spilling onto the floor. He decided to step away from Rumia's reach, back against the wall as he put distance between himself and the long blade in her hands. "It's a damned mage!" He called out, palm furiously grabbing for something sharp on a beat-up dresser. "Watch out!"

Mickey - however, who was face to face with Rumia was so incensed that someone would just appear in the middle of the game he was winning and then cut up his favourite lucky shirt (the one with all the secret pockets). Growling in frustration through grinding teeth, the shirtless and still incredibly tacky Mickey lifted his stickball bat up and swung at Rumia, only to discover that he was swinging a handle at her while the remainder of the bat fell into splintered cubes behind him. He looked at the wooden handle left in his hands incredulously, but considered it no impediment as he lunged forward to grab her around the waist.

Gordo was laid out on the ground, unwilling to get up while Rumia loomed over him - a deliberate ploy as he discreetly fobbed for a dagger hiding behind his back - only the lightest noise of steel rasping against wood from behind him as his body tensed up to prepare to lunge at Rumia once Mickey was going to grab her - that was their usual one-two strategy and it worked most of the time. Most of the time.

As Gordo was to make his move, a rumble from down below shook the building's foundations, and he ended up dropping the knife - clatter unmistakable against the gritty tiles even as his ass muffled the sound. Everyone in the room was caught off guard by the sudden quake caused by a certain Raiken down below - Gordo was thankful his blade was parallel to the ground.

Harumi felt the tremor in the chair she was lashed to and the presence of yet more foreign magic deep below. It definitely wasn't the Twins, Paris, or the Imps - they weren't so overt, so it left her to wonder who was calling the shots here? Maybe it was that crooked-nosed, wart-faced, cackling traditionalist? No - it couldn't be - the signature wasn't right at all, this wasn't her style.

 

“Your pathetic genes weren’t edited to Vadrali perfection, the way mine were,” Rumia sighed as she kept her footing stable through the Raiken’s entrance below, noting the events around her. “That is why you will suffer.”

She pulled her sword to her side, gripping the handle as two pieces of the length separated, turning the remaining part into a shortsword. With a full body swing, the sword itself graced Mickey’s very exposed privates and a kick to the head followed, while the other two pieces swished behind her and met together over the hand Gordo dropped the dagger with, severing it.

The last goon, Eddy, was met with the hollow cloak of Rumia’s, which forced itself on him. He wasn’t seen again after that.

The cat hopped over the prone form of Mickey and next to Harumi as her sword-shards came back to her, cutting bindings and blinds before reforming her absurd straightedge.

“Phoenix, target secured,” she said over comms, eyeing the two men still in the room to make sure they were still in too mich pain to do anything.