savethecitydesu | (no subject)

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What: Ami and Asami sneak into the old school building! Others can join too!
When: 8:30PM, some night in June?
Where: Old School Building
Who: Ami, Asami, others!

People in school knew Ami as one person. Asami as Ami's only friend had begun to see a different side to her. And tonight it was almost as if a whole other side of Ami was coming out. A girl who had grown up playing fantasy games and wishing every single day that magic was real so that she could change her body and become who she wanted to be, she had grown up to be a little excited by adventure and the lure of possible mystery. Because if if something beyond explanation could exist at all, that meant there was a chance, no matter how small, that her dream could actually come true.

So when Asami found Ami crouched down by the fence outside the old school building, she'd see the young idol in all black, with plenty of adventuring supplies. She wore a pair of tight black jeans, sneakers, a black turtleneck, and her hair was put up in two buns on the side of her head out of the way. She had a smalls length of rope coiled and hanging from her shoulder, as well as a stack of ofuda she had made from designs online.

"Asami-chan, over here!" she whispered from her hidden spot, waving a short hand to her friend.

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What they "got into" was an abandoned school corridor. The hallway has a bit of a hostile air to it, and everyone entering it would get a sense of being unwanted at the spot.

Now, some things (say, clowns) it is very different seeing it in broad daylight than running into it in the dead of night. There was a sting of the night chill to it. There were no lights on, although some light from the outside still managed to slip inside to make the walls and floors differentiable, even if vaguely.

This building was like Ryuseki's new building. It stretched about three classrooms ahead until the staircase would come. Not that the kids could see that far ahead without the flashlight. All they could see was as far as the door right ahead of them...

Then, a metal bucket, such as the ones used for cleaning, rolled out into what limited sight they had, its source still thickly veiled by shadow.

Glasses fiddle. Well. Aren't we a collected group.

An observation from that distant part of him that rarely stopped thinking, even despite the nervous tension he didn't have to fake.

"Based on the window trick, I'd swear we were in an gag anime of some sort," Akito said, voice 'teasing'. However, he wasn't smiling. "But seriously...hopefully, somewhere we can get ourselves out of."

It was hard to miss that feeling as they stepped out into the hallway, whether it was nerves, some repressed fear of the darkness, or the reminder they shouldn't have been there. Akito adjusted the back-light on his phone, turning it into a makeshift flashlight.

It wasn't much light but he shone it around, starting with staring ahead and then when the bucket rolled out - a draft? Uneven floors? - where the source had been...

The light would travel up from the bucket, which... apparently, was full of dust. And up to a pair of boots, and higher, higher...

There it was.

A rat. A very large rat, though it was still half as big as a human. In fact, this big, black-furred rat had eyes that nicely reflected the light in the worst red-eye effect manner. It was also dressed like a security guard, with a badge that shined as much as its big teeth.

"Hiss"

Oh. This looked... a little less friendly than the previous guard. In fact, it looked decidedly less friendly than any of the youkai she'd encountered thus far. This was probably not saying much just yet, but the fact remained.

One hand hovered near her bag, while the other came up in a reasonable facsimile of a cheerful wave. "Ah, hello there..." She peered down at the cell-phone light flashing off the shiny, shiny badge (and also the white, white teeth). "Tarou-san! Do pardon us, we're just passing through." Hopefully it was capable of speech. Judging from that awful noise that had come from it, she wasn't entirely sure it was.

The horrifying creature was not only visible to everyone - including Keiichi and Akito - but it really didn't look friendly. However, it did answer when spoken by name:

By reaching into the shadows, and taking from it a large broomstick, so dust-ridden than the motion made a small cloud of dirt rain down from it. "YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. I AM BUSY GETTING THIS PLACE DUSTY, AND YOU COME AND MAKE TRACKS ON IT" it said, hoarsely. It hissed once more, drool and saliva dripping from its long teeth, and fire burning in its eyes. "YOU'RE THOSE KIDS THAT KEEP BREAKING IN AND RUINING MY DUSTWORK, AREN'T YOU? IT'S YOUR FAULT WE'RE NOW ON GUARD DUTY."

Akito just stared - body on the edge without his consent (or preference) while mind kept itself cheerfully detached.

So: windows literally pull themselves out of existence and horrifying rodents of unusual size apparently had jobs keeping a building dusty. This building was quickly becoming the place where logic comes to die.

On instinct, Akito's familiar smile came, ever-so-polite. "Our apologies, it wasn't our intent to get in your way. We really were just passing by. In fact, we were looking to leave."

Most monsters would just ignore these nice young people and their polite comebacks. The rat, still dripping a string of saliva that nearly reached the ground before he snorted it up, took a step forth - making its nasty features more visible in the light - and pointed his dusty broom at them.

"HOW DO I KNOW YOU'RE NOT LYIN' AND TRYING TO STEAL SOMETHING?" the rat asked, his confidence a bit shaken... "IF YOU TRY ANYTHING, I'LL BEAT ON YOU WITH THIS THING. KIDS NOWADAYS. YOU'RE MISSING A GOOD WHACKING, IF YOU ASK ME."

Solemnly, Keiichi snapped his fingers, and muttered a single word to himself. "Rats," he whispered, then looked at his companions. "Don't worry. I'll negotiate on our behalf."

Stepping forward (and ignoring potentially worried looks), Ito decided to engage the rat in conversation.

"This is a school," Keiichi offered, looking at the rat being with no small amount of side-eying. "We come here every day. Stealing from the school is in fact harmful to us, as it hurts the quality of the education that we can receive! Only a selfish dunderhead would dare steal anything from the protective chambers of his house of learning!"

By now, his companions were probably side-eying HIM, really, but Keiichi didn't seem to much care.

"So please, Rat-san, allow us to scurry away. You have my word as the Cooking Club President that we mean no ill."

Why exactly he thought an anthropomorphic rat would care about that was anyone's guess, really.

[PUN COUNTER 2]

The rat listened as attentively as a frothing rodent janitor-turned-guard can do, which is surprisingly a lot, given its boring job and necessity for mental stimulation. After Keiichi made his exposition, the rat began to nod slowly. "YES, YES... THAT IS ACTUALLY VERY SMART OF YOU. YOU'RE ALL VERY LEARNED, CLEVER YOUNG PEOPLE."

Then it pointed its broom at the kids again. "I HATE SMART, CLEVER KIDS. YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING AND LOOK DOWN AT PEOPLE WHO DROPPED OUT, LIKE ME, WHICH WASN'T MY FAULT BECAUSE REALLY, I WAS UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE! SO CLEARLY NOW I'M GOING TO TAN YOUR HIDES REAL HARD WITH THIS BROOM, HOW'S THAT? DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING HUH? RAT ATTACK."

Battle mode begins.

Battle order:
Mitsuya (speed 4)
Rat Guard (speed 4)
Keiichi (speed 3)
Akito (speed 2)

As per the rules of the universe, red letters appeared before the rat guard, announcing its name to the kids quite dramatically.

"..."

Mitsuya decided that in the future, it would be best to avoid having Keiichi do the negotiation.

"I suppose it can't be helped," Mitsuya sighed, and the hand that had been resting by the bag by her side now reached into it, coming up with a tiny brass object on a chain and--after a little more reaching around--a little matchbook. The match was lit, then lit in turn the incense already carefully placed within the thurible that was now held out before her.

A pleasant, all-too-soothing scent emerged, and before the effects could overwhelm her, she did her best to summon enough of a breeze to blow it in the right direction. It would be deeply unfortunate if this backfired on her.

It was clever of Mitsuya to use the incense like that. The creature ready to jump them and beat them around with a broomstick had a very sensitive nose, and even mid-trot, it stopped abruptly on its feet. A single whiff and its rage subsided, giving way to a cloudy look on its red eyes. The rat guard began to stumble a little, leaning side to side on the spot as if following the beat of an unseen pendulum.

"Uhhhhhh... what..." it drawled, lost in thought. Without his roaring, the hallway filled with distant sounds... sounds coming from below. Other footsteps, and even some scuffle... and, eventually, a shrill, horrible whinny, almost literally bone chilling, in that just hearing it would make anyone's spine feel like it had been replaced by blocks of ice. (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/savedacitydesu/4969.html?thread=156777#t156777)

Mitsuya had a very vivid imagination. After all, she was a writer; it was a requirement. In her delvings into the darker side of the world, she'd seen, read, and imagined, many fearful things.

But none of them were quite so thoroughly discomfiting as that... that sound. It was downright demonic, and it made it rather difficult to follow up on her successful stratagem, or even to do much of anything.

There's sayings about screams that could wake the dead or such; Akito wouldn't have considered anything close to that until about now. The whinny that sired through the halls was enough to make anyone freeze in terror.((Roll: 6)

However, Akito also wasn't one to throw away an opportunity. He shook off the effects of the sound long enough to register it. If that sound was enough to throw off most people then maybe the disoriented rat too-

He grabbed the bucket full of dust and threw it at the rat ((Roll: 8).

With the rat-man doubly stunned by the incense and the bone-chilling sound that filled the halls, he had no way of avoiding the bucket. And, as many fantasy movies from the 80s have taught us, taking a monster's main weapon and throwing it at them is reputable, if not the most adequate way to finish them once and for all.

That would be the moment when they would also be reintroduced to a bit of logic that many, many movies and series of popular culture have established: when you defeat a beast, it blows up. So, for no given reason, blunt force trauma led to the rat suddenly convulsing on the spot, inflating like a balloon, and bursting outwards, coating the whole room - and all three highschoolers - with dust, which is apparently what Dust Rats are made of.

[Mod post]
You just killed a sentient being. NOW IT'S TIME FOR LOOT. Roll 1-10 to determine which of these fine things you get:

1. bandaid
2. bandaid
3. bandaid
4. medical spray
5. medical spray
6. medical spray
7. muscle spray
8. mind bubblegum
9. awareness incense
10. scroll of level one spell

((-1 from Luck, Roll=9~~))

There's the iconic image in movies of some gobsmacked, glasses-wearing character in disbelief taking off their glasses to see if what they just saw really happened. Akito, however, was near blind without his glasses and that wouldn't erase the fact not only had there been a giant rodent talking and attacking them just now but that it blew up into a convenient dust cloud rather than just becoming a corpse.

Akito coughed, accidentally inhaling some of the dust, spreading more dust with every cough. "Is-" cough, "everyone alright?" Cough. He swiped at his glasses with his sleeves, trying to see.

In the rat explosion, however, a scroll hit the the dust covered floor, barely noticeable from the dust cloud and cushioned slightly from the dust.

Convenient for the group, then, that they had a wielder of the wind with them when dealing with dust-wielding rats. A few delicate coughs came from behind Akito, followed by a stiff breeze that managed to clear at least the worst of the cloud.

"Well done, Terumi-san!" Mitsuya couldn't quite hide the residual quaver in her voice from the unearthly effects of that awful sound, but the supernatural fear itself had largely passed, allowing her to pluck the scroll from the ground. She regarded it curiously, as well as the remnants of the dust pile where the rat itself had stood just moments ago.

"Curious..." she murmured, tapping it against her chin. "I do hope it didn't die. That would be a pity. Well, shall we move on, then?" she added, perhaps a bit more upbeat than the others might be entirely comfortable with.

(Exploration roll: 7.)

The kids could now advance, their rodent foe vanquished, and their path opened. The stairwell at the end of the hallway was getting closer, pale light coming from the lower story indicating that there were lights on below.

That's when the kids would feel a tremor across the building, and a loud sound, like thunder. (Ami has broken through the floor on this thread (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/savedacitydesu/4969.html?thread=190313#t190313) and landed on the treasure room below.)

(Time until reaching the staircase: two more turns on regular successes. One more turn if critical success. Any of the kids can roll for another exploration roll during their reaction to the loud noise.)

Oh dear. That couldn't possibly be a good sound.

Thinking of the unfriendly yet oddly fashion-conscious oni she'd previously met, Mitsuya continued to tread carefully, the meager illumination of her own penlight adding to what little light they had.

"My my. It would seem we're not alone after all," she murmured, even though it was clear that they likely needn't worry about detection at this point--whatever was downstairs would be attracting all the attention. "Perhaps some like-minded adventurers have found this place as well."

Well. Disappearing windows, exploding rats that dropped items, and sudden breezes that sent dust storms flying. None of it made sense but when faced with insanity, it was better to flow with it and adjust the plan and focus on the next goal. Getting out was a simple and important one right now.

So he was content (with a 'sheepish' smile and 'shaky' agreement) and to let the eerily upbeat Araragi lead the way...until that tremor ran through the building.

"Perhaps," Akito replied, 'nervously' glancing around. "Or maybe it's a monster show down somewhere? Nothing human could have made a sound like, I don't think..."

And even if it were 'human' means, it still made a useful distraction if it came down to it. Stepping ahead with his cellphone still leading that way, he said, "We should hurry either way.

((Exploration Roll: 10))

And hurry they did. Though probably not in any manner all that welcome, since the floor under them suddenly caved in. It was fortunate, (perhaps, too much) that it did in such a way that the ground became very, very diagonal, sending them speeding down a couple of stories at such a speed that they wouldn't be injured upon landing, but fast enough for them to have a brief rollercoaster of youthful excitement.

They dropped from the second story to that one basement room where the other kids are. And in the process, Akito and Mitsuya would spot someone, a split-second shot of a figure in... was that a suit? Wow, that looked like a really cheap suit, on the ground floor of the building.

It was hard to make out anything about the figure, other than a look of panic on his face.

[~*~THREADS MERGE~*~] (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/savedacitydesu/4969.html?thread=194921#t194921)

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