It's around 8pm. The sun has been down for hours, at this time of year, but Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world- people say New York never sleeps, but that's doubly true for Tokyo. Street lights brighten the streets, cars drive by with barely any difference in traffic from midday, and the sidewalks are crowded with people. It's cold, at least cold for Tokyo, and most people are bundled up against the winter weather.
Kyouko has been at work for the past 8 hours, and is just now getting off of her shift. She exits the store, wrapped in the coat that Usagi had brought her from Paris last year. Her phone is in her hand, and she's peering at it, as she'd just been texting back and forth with Naru- the two were going to meet up for dinner. In fact, Naru is already on her way, and Kyouko spots her on the sidewalk a block or so away as she exits the store. Smiling and waving, she begins to walk over to the other girl.. when she suddenly pauses, her brows drawing together and her head turning. Her nostrils flare as she actually scents the air subtly. "Damn.." She mutters to herself, fang appearing to indent her lower lip briefly before she calls to the still-approaching Naru.
"Change of plans, babe. I smell a Witch. Been quite a while, and I'm not about to let this one get away. Grief Seeds are real valuable to us."
Even as she's talking, she's glancing back down at her cellphone again to shoot off another text.
Somewhere, Kazuo Takeba's cellphone chimes with a message: Witch downtown. First one in a while. Engaging.
Somewhere, he is passing this news on to someone else, and thumbing back: Not alone, you're not. Not that he expects her to catch that till after this is over. But the noise the phone makes will warn her to expect company, if nothing else.
Somewhere, inevitably, there is also a cape.
It's starting to become more common that Naru is arriving at the conbenie at the end of Kyouko's shifts so that the two of them can get food. Or at the very least, walk to one of their homes together to make food, provided Naru is cooking.
"Seriously?" Naru blinks at Kyouko as she literally starts sniffing the air around them. "You can literally smell them?" She looks surprised, as if she expected 'sniff them out' to be not quite so literal. She watches her text someone, who clearly isn't her and makes a guess as she approaches closer to try and keep up. "Kunzite?"
'Downtown' is not exactly a precise location. Still, with her tablet computer, Ami's able to get at least a slightly better picture of the area, from a Lunar perspective. "Got it," she says with a sigh. "That girl is way too aggressive," she notes. Leading Kunzite out of the pizza parlor, Ami finds an alleyway to duck into, then draws out her transformation pen.
Moments later, Sailor Mercury holds out her hand, drawing a bead of energy in the air as she manipulates space-time itself to create a tunnel that stretches through subspace. "Here we go," she says, opening the tunnel onto a rooftop only a short hop from the disturbance. "I'll follow you through," she suggests.
Kyouko quirks a brow at Naru as the girl questions her sniffing of Witches. "Well.." There may be just a faint blush. "It's not.. actually smelling I just.. sort of visualize it that way and so.. shut up." She hmphs, tossing her head slightly as she turns down a nearby alleyway. "C'mon, this way." She glances back down as her phone chimes. "Kunzite says to expect backup," She sighs faintly.
Seriously, Kyouko hunted Witches solo for years, she figures she can handle one now, even if she might be a bit rusty at it. It's not that she doesn't appreciate backup, she just reads a little 'they don't think I can handle it' into the message, even if that wasn't the intent at all. Fragile ego is fragile. It doesn't take them long to reach the spot. Kyouko's senses lead them unerringly, though when they arrive there isn't much to see. Just a blank building wall.
Looking closer though, Naru would be able to see a faint shimmer in the air- almost like heat coming off the pavement. A distortion. "I'd henshin if I were you." Kyouko warns, as she does so herself, a bright flash of red light enveloping her before revealing her in her Apatite henshin. Perhaps it's just the company she's in that makes her choose that version.
Spinning her spear around, she thrusts it into that distortion, and the blade sinks into the air. She pushes it down, and there's a weird, sickening tearing sound as a rent opens in the air in front of them, bleeding purple light and... weirdness. "Mmmm." Kyouko comments, seeming to bask in it. "Been a while."
"Right." Kunzite steps into the tunnel, unconcerned about any possibility that Mercury might collapse it partway -- even after significant Takashi exposure, she's not showing signs of being that kind of person, and besides, she put too much work into this body for that.
The flare of red is not visible directly, but the flash of it reflecting from a wall doesn't have the right characteristics for brake lights, and the purple that follows is ... definitely. He orients, and moves, keeping a sharp eye out for familiars to keep away from Mercury. Just in case.
"It's cute." Naru points out with a grin as she hurries to keep up with Kyouko down alleys and then up to that odd shimmer.
By the time Kyouko is suggesting it, it's really a rather quite and subtle step from Naru into Hyalite, the sound of her boots the main change, at least until the white of her dress stands out in the odd shimmer and purple light.
Hyalite isn't stupid enough to rush ahead, she's quite content to stand a pace back from where Apatite is rending reality with her spear. She quirks her head, a blink or two as she watches.
"Hunh." is her quiet commentary.
Mercury follows Kunzite through almost right on his heels, traversing kilometers with but a few steps. The tunnel closes behind her, and Sailor Mercury drops off the ledge after Kunzite. She lands but a few feet from the pair, and reaches up to activate her visor almost immediately. "Hi," she says. "Kunzite thought you could use backup."
"It's not cute!" Apatite snaps at Hyalite, "It's a mark of experience!" Then she sighs. "Stick close to me, alright? It's gonna be weird in there. I mean, it's always weird, but I can tell. This is a weird one."
Just then Kunzite and Sailor Mercury show up as well. Kunzite she had expected, but Mercury is a bit of a surprise. Apatite quirks a small smile. "Hey. C'mon.. door's open." And she steps through the rent, and into the Witch's Labyrinth.
It's like stepping into another world. Rather than a city, they seem to be standing in the middle of an open field. But it's not.. a normal field. Instead, the entire world seems to be... drawn. Like with ink on paper. The 'background', such as it is, is pure, almost blinding white, and the ground is a series of undulating 'hills' created from sribbled black lines. There are some trees and flowers too, but it all looks drawn, as if they are literally standing in a 3D representation of some child's sketchbook. Even the sun in the sky is a wobby, scribbled circle with lines coming out of it. The worst part is, the lines constantly squirm and move, as if they are standing in a kid's poorly-animated flipbook.
It's mildly naueseating, even if the footing appears to be firm, and Kyouko makes a faint 'nngh' sound. "Yep. A weird one." She mutters, glancing around. "Ah.. crap."
Already figures can be seen advancing over the poorly-rendered hills- animated stick-figures, wielding poorly-drawn swords, axes, and spears. SOme of them are human-like, others are just giant smiley-faces with arms and legs. There also appear to be skeletons, and at least one bird which is holding a halberd in its talons as it flies. They make look silly, but Kyouko knows from experience- Familiars are never to be underestimated. And there are a lot of them.
"Oh well.. suppose she's gotta be a strong one to still be around after the famine." Apatite mutters.. whirling her spear around.. and leaping straight towards the oncoming familiars a moment later, weapon flashing forward to impale the first few without hesitation. They explode into writhing scribbles that fall into the ground, but others are already closing in.
"Kunzite thought the White Flower is coming active," he amends, putting out a hand to call his sword into it before they cross into the gash Kyouko drew open. Best to have one's dimensions no more complicated than can be helped. "Sooner or later, for a while, not much is going to be guaranteed."
And then they're taking up a place in writhing spaghetti land. Or somewhere that demands a purple crayon, perhaps.
It does not get one from him. It gets his turning to watch for advances from another direction, with Naru and Ami loosely between the arcs he and Kyouko are covering. His sword brightens, glowing with that gold-pink dawn-color that's marked his attacks lately -- the most energy-conservative way he can take these things on, without risking getting the Labyrinth's own energy in him again -- and he moves to disarm the stick-figures. Also disleg and preferable dishead. The smiley-faces, if anything, he's most wary of. That's a lot of potential mouth.
There is the briefest flash of a smile at the protest, the sort of moment that speaks to the topic of 'cute' only being done for now, and not indefinitely. Still, neither the time nor the place as they step into the weird.
And how weird is it. Hyalite looks around with a quick glance at the crude drawings animated around them, pulling her sketchbook from the inside pocket of her jacket even as she does. "Not my preferred art style, I'm gonna say." She comments as she flips through a few pages. "Do they burn like paper dolls?"
Which really is a cue for one of Naru's old favourites, the flamethrower, to emerge from her sketchbook.
There is a glance to Kunzite as he and Mercury come to join them, her eyes settling on him at the mention of the White Flower and then Naru is finding a space on one of those arcs to test out how flammable familiars might be.
Magical Girl Clotho was not having a good day. Really, not having a good week. First she almost gets chopped in half. Then she gets humiliated by kyouko. Then she gets to feel really, really bad because the good guys are NICE and she, well, knows she has to fight them eventually and HAS fought them and got her butt kicked.
And then this. She'd been making another pretzel run, the vinegar and sea salt ones, when suddenly she'd gotten hit by... something. she didn't know what it was, or what she'd done, but then she'd appeared HERE of all places. She didn't know if she was having a fever dream or something had spiked her food.
Then pin had gone off. "GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" he'd yelled at her. Making her cringe.
But she didn't even know where here WAS! And then there had been... things. She'd transformed, of course... Which was why, moments after the group arrived, they'd hear the yelp and see arrows of ice sailing past them aimed at the creatures past them. Clotho was standing there a bit away, panting, looking very confused, with a green bow in her hands. when she drew the string back, arrows of ice formed in it and were sent flying forward a second later, splattering into the creatures before turning into very wet strings to try and bind them. She... had no idea who any of them were. Until her eyes fell on Kyouko and she eeped. "This isn't my fault I swear I didn't do this! No stabbing!" she said defensively, a hand moving to her stomach.
Mercury follows through into the crayn land with only the briefest bit of surprise. "It doesn't matter how many of these I wind up in, they always confuse me," she mumbles quietly as she scans the terrain. "But at least this one doesn't seem that much weirder than the last one I was in." Not that she's an expert on witch labyrinths.
While Kunzite and Apatite get to work with their weapons, Mercury just uses her bare hands--not to fight, but to draw forth the waters around her. "Frozen Barrage," she declares, sending dozens of tiny, piercing ice shards spraying outwards towards the familiars.
"Everything burns," Apatite comments to Naru over her shoulder, "If you use enough fire!" She's rather too busy to follow that up with any more witticism though, as the Familiars are swarimg in fairly alarming numbers. She whirls her spear, and it fragments into those familiar segments of haft connected by chain, whipping like a snake as it carves a path through the Familiars, erupting four or five at a time into scribbles- but it hardly seems to make a dent in their numbers.
Kunzite's sword is equally effective, cutting through the Familiars without too much effort, but their numbers are the real problem. And indeed, his fears about the smiley-faces turn out to be well-founded, as several of them near and open their smiling mouths to reveal rows of perfectly-triangular fangs. Pac-Men that could easily bite a human in two, and seem determined to do just that.
Naru will find out that yes, they do burn, and they also get shredded by ice splinters. Bizarrely, the colors of all the attacks, whether glowing sword, bright fire or blue-white ice, are as normal, standing out stark against the black-and-white world.
Snarling, Apatite is whipping her chain-spear through another half-dozen of the swaming Familiars when those arrows fly overhead.. and she hears a familiar (and unwelcome) voice. Turning her head, she spots Clotho, and groans. "Aw, c'mon. I do not have time for you right now!"
"Of course you didn't do this." Kunzite flings a shield between himself and the nearest of the smileys, and glances over his shoulder at Clotho. Exhales between his teeth. "Get over here before they come up behind you and eat you alive. Stay between the three other girls. Shoot any of them in the back and I'll forget I'm not Tsubasa and gut you myself."
Clotho: at least nominally human-based.
This place: not.
That familiar: crushing through the not-terribly-well-erected shield and chomping its way forward. Kunzite turns his attention back to it, fast, and releases the lightning bolt he's been saving for a couple of weeks. It's only a natural one, not one of Makoto's, but it's enough to fry that one and its friend behind it into scribble, and buy him time to back toward the girls. FOllowing the direction Apatite's movement is trending toward.
Mercury frowns when it becomes obvious that simple parlour tricks aren't going to do much. "Kunzite, I'm going to draw a blizzard. I need cover for a moment," she notes. If it were Jupiter she wouldn't even have to say it.
But it's not; her dearest friend isn't here, right now, and it's better to communicate than to take risks. With the message sent, Mercury begins drawing lal the vapor in the air, moisture from clouds and skies even beyond the labyrinth, to herself. The temperature plummets rapidly as Mercury takes hold of the weather, even in this weird and wacky place, and the wind begins to whip up with it, whirling around Sailor Mercury as she brings her control to bear.
Closing her eyes, Sailor Mercury envelops herself in that power for a few moments, trusting the others near her to keep her safe while she tries to clear out a massive swath of their foes on the way to the witch. And then at the right moment, she begins to release it with the quiet words, "Mercury Aqua Blizzard! Japan knows a thing or two about Blizzards, and this is one of the worst Sailor Mercury can bring to bear, whirling around them with a roar like a freight train, yet leaving the small area near her friends untouched.
Hyalite glances oh so very briefly towards that familiar voice, just as she roasts another familiar with a healthy WOOOSH of flame. Even if Clotho isn't going to recognize Hyalite.
"Oh dear." Hyalite shakes her head a little, about to provide effectively the same speech Kunzite just offered, save possibly for the pointed threat.
Instead she aims her flamethrower towards a group of smiley faces, twisting a little to engulf all three of them in red hot flames, to go with the icy blizzard just unleashed upon their companions.
Magical Girl Clotho raises her hands, shaking her head. "w-what? I don't even know what's going on here! I was just grocery shopping!" she said defensively. Of course, then Kunzite starts threatening her and she yelped. "W-wait, she's not here, is she? I think the evil munchy guys are less scary."
She didn't see her, at least. She did move between the girls and started shooting more of the arrows! They didn't deal a lot of damage, unfortunately. but whereever they'd hit, they'd splash into a puddle of wire, which would then try to coil around and bind up whatever was nearby. That's right, she was CC.
She then glanced to apetite. "I ummm, haven't done any youma. Scout's honor." ... Since when was she a girl scout?
Apatite is doing a pretty decent job of cutting swaths through the seemingly endless army of Familiars. Apparently growing impatient with their numbers, her body suddenly blurrs and divides, and then there are three of her, each a mirror image of the original, all fighting in opposite directions, carving through the Familiars at three times the speed.
Of course, then Mercury decides to call down a storm. Whirling winds and ice descend, and begin whipping the Familiars about. The winds and snow do destroy some of the Familiars on their own, but even those the blizzard itself is not enough to kill are much easier targets for the others, who can stab, burn, and zap with impunity as the Familiars attempt to retain their footing amidst the howling winds.
It all seems to be going quite well, when suddenly Kyouko jerks her head around. "Ah, shit." She curses. "Heads-up! Apparently she noticed we're here!" Moments after she says that, there's an immense, howling bellow, and the ground begins to split apart right beneath their feet in a huge crevice, the paper-white earth opening with jagged edges. Those present should be nimble enough to leap out of the way- and good thing too.
Four giant, spindly legs reach up out of the hole in the ground, each with several long, thin fingers, clamping into the edges of the opening as the Witch hauls itself out. Something like a cross between a human body and a spider, it only has those four limbs but they are jointed oddly, going up from the body, then altering direction at a sharp joint to head back to the ground. It moves on all four limbs, each with those spindly fingers that end in sharp-seeming claws, and its head, seated at the front of the body, has two brightly glowing yellow eyes. Those are its only features- the rest of the body is entirely comprised of the same writhing, squirming pen-lines as the rest of the world.
Oh, and it's approximately the size of two city busses stacked on top of each other.
It howls again, swiping out with one spindly, yet massive arm towards whomever it can reach. Disturbingly, it then grates something which definitely has the sound of language, although the sounds are distorted and bear little resemblance to any words anyone here could identify.
Cover Mercury: check. That was, indeed, the plan in the first place. He doesn't have the wide-area capability some of the others do, but he only has to extend his attention a little to keep Mercury untroubled for her blizzard.
... Almost a pity Clotho hasn't done any youma, though. They could use the reinforcements.
The ground cracks, and Kunzite leaps out of the way, and a bird arcs down for him. Fortunately, 'bird trying to spear him with a polearm' is, in a bizarre way, easier to deal with than the bird would be just trying to snatch him out ofthe air in his claws; Kunzite wraps his cape around himself and the point of the thing's spike skids off of the cloth.
... which leaves him landing in the wrong place, and fighting fairly desperately for a few seconds till he can hack a space clear. And, from there, see the Witch.
"At least this one's smaller than the last one," he mutters, not as under his breath as would probably reassure Clotho. Then lifts his voice. "Clotho, Hyalite -- keep the little ones off Mercury and Apatite if you can. And try not to get impaled --"
'Take any shots at the Witch you can get' is sort of implied. But mostly, what the rest of them can do best is give the experts a little breathing room.
Or maybe, in Hyalite's case, take over the labyrinth entirely ... but he's not about to suggest she open her mind and power up to that thing.
The advantage to summoning a blizzard is that you can summon a blizzard that tends to carve swathes through little guys. The disadvantage is it tends to be really noticable. Mercury shouldn't be surprised when Apatite calls out that they've been noticed, but she is. She opens her eyes in sharp surrpise, and leaps out of the way more on instinct than out of any planned reaction. "What?" she asks, looking around, only to meet a gigantic gross squigglemonster right in the face. "Uhhh." Yeah, this is an expert, honest.
"Crap."
Sailor Mercury ducks away from that swiping limb, then hunches her shoulders against the grating of its howl. Another swipe, and she raises her hand, drawing out a barrier of ice at the last instant to protect herself. Too close, too close and she tries to duck back, but close quarters combat with small buildings is not her forte, and she's losing ground rather than gaining it.
Magical Girl Clotho let out a shriek and leaped aside when the thing came down, narrowly avoiding being crushed by it. Her eyes went wide as it started taking swipes at them. She fell back, crawling backwards from the groups. "Ummmmm, Pin? Err, w-what--" Then blinked. Wait, DUH! She held out her right hand. Golden threads enveloped her, the bow disappearing in a puff of wind. Within a few moments her hair was golden and she jumped back up.
Then the strings began to come from her hands, as she shaped them one by one. The dream soldiers began to appear! Little tiny creatures made of ice threads, which charged out and threw themselves at the creatures.
Unfortunately, these one swere... well... last time they saw them, Kun likely would have remembered them coming up to his waist. These ones were just about up to the knees. She was able to make a bunch of them, but they would do little more than stall for a few seconds. But, again, strength in numbers. Hopefully they offered some help. Their little bindings strings probably helped more than they did, though.
*WOOOSH* For all that Hyalite claims to not be much of a combatant, she does know her way around a flamethrower at least, although to be fair, it's pretty much a point and shoot without a whole lot of need for detailed aiming.
At Kyouko's call, Naru turns and scrabbles away from the rift in the earth, glancing to ensure that Clotho doesn't fall and then taking another step or two back as a quartet of spindly legs emerge out and probably aren't super delighted to see them.
"Ew." would be Hyalite's first instinct on watching the creature hauling itself out to get them. She nods at the directions from Kunzite, she has no illusions about being in the expert catgegory here, but she's perfectly capable of sending gouts of flames at lingering familiars to keep them from getting too close to the group.
It's after a gout of flame that Naru reaches a hand out, frowning a little as she attempts to manipulate the lines of the world itself. It's art. It's a very familiar medium to her, and her magic. Kunzite doesn't need to ask, after all, she's experimenting!
Kunzite is managing to do a decent job keeping the lingering Familiars at bay, but most of them seem to be drawing back with the Witch's arrival, as if forming a circle around the arena of combat, like a poorly-drawn crowd to chant for their champion. The Witch itself grates out another sentance of un-language, its spindly limbs seeming to posess unnatural strength, smashing through Mercury's ice-barriers as she erects them, though not quite able to reach the Senshi herself.
Clotho's little soldiers swarm around one of its legs, trying to stick it to the ground, and the creature halts for a moment to try and shake them off..
Hyalite's attempts to control the Labyrinth are met with.. well, not success. But potential. As she reaches out her hand, the lines tremble, as if they want to respond- but the nature of a Witch's Labyrinth is that this is a pocket dimension, formed from and controlled by the Witch's consciousness. As Hyalite attempts to manipulate it, the Witch is instantly aware. And not very happy.
It howls out something else, unintelligable but with the obvious tone of a demand, spinning in place and raising one spindly-yet-massive hand, swiping it straight down towards her with enough force to crush a car into a pancake.
"Hyalite!!" Apatite shouts in sudden alarm, from where she had been attempting to drive her spear through one of the creature's limbs and had been displaced by its sudden turn. Snarling, fangs bared, she spins in a whirl of cape and throws herself between Hyalite and the blow, her hand snapping up and a lace-like red-and-black energy barrier springing into being between her and the onrushing arm.
The arm smashes into the barrier in a huge crackle of red lightning, and Apatite is thrown to her knees under the force, taking the blow head-on with her barrier, the paper-ground splintering with cracks underneath her. Already her barrier is starting to fragment.
"Get.. out of the way!" She snaps over her shoulder, clearly unable to move herself.
There is a moment of stillness in Hyalite, as she concentrates on the lines, the form of the Labyrinth around them, and just as it feels like she might almost have a connection...
Hyalite jerks her hand back as if she's been shocked and the full force of that awareness is centred upon her like a weight of a thousand pounds and there's a massive spindly hand coming to make that weight entirely less metaphorical and more smear into the paper-white earth.
Hyalite jumps back, as Apatite shouts at her, scrambling to get back behind the puella and the barrier, her arms instinctively coming up to sheild from that awful crack and crackle of lightning when the blow hits before scrambling some more to get further out of the way.
-- but if the barrier is starting to fragment, then the Witch is still --
-- no. Kunzite pulls back from the circle of mad things, and casts another barrier out -- one that lies behind and beneath Kyouko, red-and-black reinforced by black alone. Buying a little more time, and taking some of the pressure off Apatite. It won't last; he can't do any of the tricks he usually does with his shields, to reinforce them, to recharge himself. But it'll hold for the moment.
The problem is whether the ground will.
The thing smashes through Mercury's barriers as fast as she can raise them, and nothing really seems to buy her much space. Mercury lets out a hiss of frustration, then draws a quick, "Shabon Spray!" to bash at the thing. It's a really weak attack, but maybe, just maybe it will buy her room.
Mercury ducks back and sends her arms wide, leaping into the air as she pulls a pillar of water around herself. It bills up in a whirling vortex, ready to be unleashed at her command. Unreasonable riots of colour begin to swirl with that colour, as the freezing cold waters refract the light oddly.
"SHINE AQUA IL--hurk."
Sailor Mercury's attack is cut short as one of the witch's squiggle-line arms pierces straight through the water, piercing her in the stomach. The senshi is knocked backwards straight through her own column of water, which collapses to the ground without her direction.
Mercury stares up at the arm for a moment as it starts to smash down towards her. "Oh," she says, as recognition comes all too late, moments before darkness closes in.
No, she was not far enough away to try that.
Magical Girl Clotho was trying to make soldiers as fast as she could, but they just exploded and broke so quickly. She finally gave up with a sigh. Her left hand went out and, once again, her armor changed. This time from the golden peacock armor back into the blue pig armor. While the golden gems were very dim, the blue ones were sparkling bright. Well, she had been wallowing in her gluttony for a while, it was only natural that the emotion would get stronger in such a situation.
She held out her left hand, the strings spreading out to form a glaive, the blade long and carved seemingly of ice. She then stepped forward, slashing once at one of the legs. Blue threads flew from the blade as it went, turning to water and then ice a moment later, freezing the area around where she slashed. Surprisingly, despite her earlier... pathetic assaults, these strikes seemed to have a decent amount of oomph behind them, something more befitting a magical girl. Still nowhere near the force or power displayed by the veterans though. She saw the other girl get hitt and then... an arm started to slash down on the other girl. And so she directed that glaive force on THAT leg, gripping it in both hands and running to try and aid the fallen scout, slashing the glaive up at the limb.
Apatite's barrier is clearly straining under the force of the Witch's blow, as is Apatite herself, her fangs bared in a snarl as she pours magic into the shield at a dangerous pace, the Soul Gem mounted prominantly in the center of her chest beginning to show tendrils of black creeping in from its edges. Kunzite's reinforcement helps.. the barrier holds out long enough for Hyalite to scramble out of the way.
And then shatters with an explosive burst, the arm sweeping through to smash into the ground. Apatite had a bare moment to get out of the way- and didn't quite manage it. She's sent tumbling across the ground like a ragdoll. To her credit, she manages to spin around and slide to a stop in a half-kneeling position, quickly rising to her feet.. but her left arm is hanging by her side, apparently broken and unusable for the moment. Such a wound is not serious for a Puella, but she isn't Sayaka- it doesn't heal in seconds, and is obviously painful.
She sees Mercury go down, and curses as she summons her spear back into her good hand, but Clotho is there, raising her weapon and slashing at the leg that is descending on Mercury. The blow is enough to knock the arm askew, and it impacts the ground right beside the unconscious Senshi instead of directly on top of her.
The barrier shatters, and Kunzite snarls, not entirely under his breath; the impact of it echoes through him, setting up a resonance of pain in his skull, blurring his vision. Mercury's down. Apatite's injured. Hyalite's a target. Clotho is -- Clotho. And Kunzite is ...
Well. It's not that he lacks options. It's that he lacks the ability to use too many of those options. Most magical types build in power as they move through a fight, as their emotions become involved and fire up their ability. Kunzite is a battery. The more fighting he does, the less he can do, till he can recharge.
But someone needs to keep buying time.
The sword's point is driven into the not-ground, leaving it close by for a moment, and he lifts both hands.
And a coruscating beam of gold-tinged pink energy flares, aimed up and across the distance toward one of those glowing yellow eyes. Something he can make out even without his vision yet clear again.
-- then he's catching the blade in hand and moving, because if that did what it was supposed to, whether or not it hit, he'll have pulled attention back off Hyalite and Mercury.
There isn't a damn thing Hyalite can do to prevent the attack on Mercury, but she does make use of the cover provided by all three of the others, if only briefly to ensure that she's alive at the very least. Oh thank goodness.
"Kunzite! Can you use my colour energy?" Naru asks as she lifts her flamethrower again, aiming gouts of flame towards.. well honestly.. anything bit of witch that gets into flamey range. It was something they talked about experimenting with, and it seems like today is a helluva day for on the job training.
Magical Girl Clotho let out a shriek as the leg came down and... missed. She blinked a few times and... "Oh my gosh Pin did you see that? Oh my gosh! I-I totally made the glaive and it was all 'I'm going to smash you!' and I was like 'Not today!' and then bang! I totally knocked it aside! Did you see? Did you see?"
".... SHE'S AN ENEMY! You should have let her be smashed!"
"B-but we have a truce..."
"I said let her be smashed! Not back stab her! Letting her get smashed is fine!"
"N-no it's not. That wouldn't be nice. B-besides, we're all stuck in this picassion wet dream, if one of us fall, we all might fall. So I need to try my hardest, right? Besides she's a--" And then... Oh my gosh she let out the highest pitched shriek. "I-I think she's one of te sailor moons! I saw her on TV that one time! Oh my gosh I totally saved one of the sailor moons! Pin, look, look!"
Pin just... sighed. The sigh of a mascot that has just given up on life.
"Do you think she'll give me her autograph after?"
"... Why in the world did Clotho choose you? GIANT!! SPIDER!!!!"
"Oh! Right! Yes!" She then ran back at it and, now that the other girl wasn't going to get crushed(AND she had a nice little confidence booster), she held out her left hand. Threads formed little balls of water which she shot at the joints of the legs. Moments after hitting, if they hit, they'd start to freeze, an attempt to limit movement from the creature before she leaped up and tried to bring her blade down on the main body.
Kunzite fires beams of brilliant energy across the field of battle, the circular arena created by the swarming audience of Familiars. Those bolts slam directly into the Witch's face, causing it to rear back and howl in what appears to be agony- it's one eye left a smoking ruin. But he has indeed succeeded in drawing its attention.
The Witch turns, moving surprisingly fast on its four long, thin limbs, and scuttles towards Kunzite with alarming rapidity. Only to have a blast of fire from Hyalite turn it again. Seeming to notice her there, crouched above Mercury's unconscious body, the giant thing swipes at her with one of its arms, almost dismissively.
"Dammit!" Apatite is back on her feet, but one arm still hangs uselessly. She watches the creature turn towards Kunzite, and then attack Hyalite as well. Her snarl grits her teeth together. This damned thing. Her arm hurt, throbbed, but that was nothing to her. It was threatening her family. She might be a Shitennou, now, but she was also a Puella. Killing Witches is what Puella do.
Her eyes flashing scarlet, Apatite sucks in a deep breath. Her Soul Gem flares suddenly with brilliant light, and she crouches, slamming her palm into the ground.
Around the circle, five massive spears, each a replica of her normal-sized one, and jointed like it as well, rear from the ground like serpent's heads, each as tall as a tree and curving inward towards the scuttling Witch. It doesn't even have time to react before all five of them flash downwards, meeting in the middle with a tremendous 'crack' and impaling the creature through its body, the spears crossing over each other as they penetrate the monster and sink into the ground.
The Witch shrieks in agony, writhing, pinned in place. The perfect target for Clotho to ram her glaive straight through its body.
Whether the spears or Clotho's blow alone would have been enough isn't clear, but the two in combination certainly are. Another shriek, a writhing spasm, and the Witch explodes into squiggles, just like its Familiars. The entire paper-and-line world around them shimmers like a heat mirage.. and then fades away, leaving all of them standing (or laying) in the same alleyway in Tokyo they started out in.
A small black Grief Seeds falls to the ground with a tinkle.
Apatite groans, then collapses in a heap on the ground, arm limp and head lolling.
There was a moment, a brief moment where Kunzite had it's attention, probably a few moments, really. And then there was fire. Hyalite is really very fond of the flamethrower, it's well effective.
Possibly at the moment, a touch /too/ effective at catching the attention. Again.
Hyalite starts to move as the arm comes swiping towards her, to dodge out of the way. Her own momentum is added to, sending her in a brief interpreation of low flight, before she lands in an awkward and painful looking sprawl a little ways away.
As weird fades out to alley, Hyalite is just starting to push herself up to sitting again.
Magical Girl Clotho drifted to the ground, her eyes going wide. She then looked to Pin. "Oh my gosh that was AWESOME! Did you see that? she was all 'GIANT SPEARS!' and I was all 'Ice and stabby!' and then the thing was like all 'Nooooo!' and then it exploded and that was SO COOL!" she shrieked, practically hopping up and down in place. "I can't wait to--"
"Finish her," Pin said.
Clotho stared, her mouth falling open. "W-what?"
"GO! You barely expended any magic there! They're likely exhausted after that! Finish them!"
Magical Girl Clotho looks over at them, then down to Kyouko. She chewed on her lip for a moment before shaking her head. "No." She dropped her glaive to the ground. It hit the ground and, with a splash, turned to water. She then stared at them. "Besides. She has a flame thrower. And again, truce. You don't break a truce. Even if we ARE the bad guys." She was also pretty doubtful she could take two of them at once. Or three if Kyouko was any kind of able to move. "Besides... she could have killed me the other day. She didn't... so no."
However... her eyes did draw down to the seed and... slowly, she picked it up. "Wait. This is the thing Miss White told us about... isn't it?"
"I don't know. Wasn't there."
"..." She stared into it for a few moments. "I'm supposed to get these for her... aren't I?"
"... I! DON'T! KNOW! I! WASN'T! THERE!" Poor Pin. He suffered more than most mascots.
She then looked as if she was about to dart. Instead, though... she clutched the seed to her chest and looked to them and... finally... "White told me that... pools need these things. Is ummmm... she a pool?" she asked, motioning to Apatite. "... Because otherwise I'm taking it. But... if she needs it..."
Pin let out a sigh of infinite exasperation.
Two down. Not good. Kunzite draws a breath through his teeth, then says, "Hyalite, check her," and moves to Ami. The grief seed is valuable. But Mercury is, too, and maybe Clotho won't notice --
-- they never, in fact, get that lucky.
"She's a Puella," he agrees to Clotho, and his voice is quiet and level, and neither it nor his body language betray exactly how much he wants right now to be able to take Kyouko's spear and drive it through Clotho's mascot. Truce. Truce, yes. "And she may need it very much, right now."
Whether or not Apatite needs the Grief Seed right now, they are certainly valuable. It's hard to tell what sort of shape Apatite is in at the moment, but she certainly hasn't moved from where she landed on the asphalt in a heap.
Inspecting her will find her conscious, if barely, apparently dazed. Her arm is definitely broken. It'll heal, probably by morning (or faster with help from someone like Mamoru or Daisuke. Her Soul Gem is more black than red, though it's not at critical just yet.
As Kunzite heads for Mercury, Hyalite is headed for Apatite. It isn't the most elegant of movements, by no means did she come out of this unscathed herself, but she's at least conscious.
The settling of Hyalite next to the semi-conscious Apatite is not a graceful motion. The potential that her right leg had just about enough right about then his fairly high, but she leans in close to murmur something quietly to the dazed puella.
Magical Girl Clotho stared at them. Slowly she moved her hand from her chest, holding up the seed.
"Don't," Pin said.
"But--"
"If you do, I'll tell your handlers. Bad enough you're letting the girl go when she's helpless. Especially when you know she's a threat. What do you think they'll do to you, then? If they decide that you're not worth the effort? You've been failing your missions, almost died a couple of times. If you can't even do the job they assigned to you... then what's the point of them continuing to let you have your dream? They can take it away in a heart beat. All it would take is a single word."
She stared, slowly pulling the seed back to her chest. "I... I'm sorry, Kyouko. I... I can't..."
"That's right. We're leaving. She'll probably be fine."
Clotho chewed on her lip... She turned and started to walk away, hugging it to her chest and then... she stopped. "FINE! JUST TAKE IT! If she needs it, then just... just use it to help her!" she screamed, turning and chucking the thing at kunzite as hard as she could.
Pin stared and then... took a deep breath. "Very well, Unmei. If that's how you want to play it."
Clotho froze in place. "W-what are you--"
"There is no having your cake and eating it too. If you won't listen when I say they're the enemies, perhaps they can teach you. UNMEI!"
Clotho yelped and reached up, snatching pin from the air and then fleeing as fast as she could.
Help from Daisuke or Mamoru would be great.
Daisuke is in the hospital.
Mamoru may perhaps be preoccupied with the girl with the gut wound -- well. One of them.
Kunzite shifts Mercury where she lies, drawing her knees up and keeping them propped; there's a position he's far too familiar with, lately. But he can't do more for her, not on his own, not with Clotho and her 'friend' still there. Odds are calculated, any of a dozen ways. They don't pan out well --
Clotho moves, fast, and Kunzite reflexively draws up a barrier, and something small and black strikes it and rolls anticlimactically down its curve.
He blinks.
"Clotho!" His voice is sharp, cutting the air. "Tell Miss White I have information for her."
It doesn't matter if she listens. He'll reach her through Gull, if he has to. For now ... he leans, and catches up the seed as his barrier dissipates, and tosses it in turn to Hyalite. "I can't take all of us," he says, matter-of-fact. "I'll be back for you."
One more surge of darkness. This one carries him and the wounded Mercury away.
Left alone in the alleyway as Clotho flees and Kunzite evacs the more-seriously-wounded Mercury, Kyouko finally manages to draw herself up to a sitting position, her arm going around Naru's shoulder for support. Gritting her teeth as her broken arm shifts, damn that hurts, she shakes her head slightly.. "Ah.. just like.. nngh.. the good old days.."
"C'mon.. I want to at least be on my feet when he comes back." She mutters, as she struggles back to a standing position.. and eyeing the Grief Seed that Naru now holds. "But save that. I'll be fine.. and we need those for emergencies."
She helps her girlfriend back to her feet as well, offering whatever support Naru needs in return, hoping together at least the two of them can manage to stay upright.
"So.." She says after a moment, in the empty alleyway. "First Witch. What do you think of my hobby?" A tired grin.
There's murmured words from Naru to the still well busted, but the former looks up to keep an eye on the standoff between Clotho and Kunzite.. well and Pin.
Naru reaches up instinctively as Kunzite throws something at her and she catches it, drawing it down to look at more closely. She's only seen one grief seed before, and it was hanging around the neck of a psychopath who was trying to blow up a shopping plaza.
At least this one isn't talking to her.
Naru makes it to her feet, leaning on Kyouko as she does. There's a kick peck on the cheek. "Love. You need a new hobby."