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- ===> COH <===> 7/5/2019, 9:19:32 PM <===
- QI LUNG: ONIGASHIMA!
- The story so far...
- When last our protagonists ventured into the nascent Yomi realm of Qi Lung to rescue Master Prem of the Poison Lotus monks from being sacrificed at the Cylinder (an act which would likely have destroyed the entire realm in the process), a vision of a scrap of a spell pertaining to the Cylinder flashed through everyone's mind's eye! The location of the said spell? ONIGASHIMA - the island of ogres!
- Now, our protagonists must undertake a journey down the Qi Lung river and out into the Sunless Sea until they reach the island realm of Onigashima. Only then can they seek the scrap of spell in question and keep hope alive of reclaiming the Qi Lung river valley realm from ruin. What dangers does the island of ogres hold? Will the scrap of spell be found? Only the intrepid and daring will find out!
- Danny has enacted the ritual that transported everyone to Qi Lung. The monks of the poison lotus has provided the sampan riverboat and some provisions. Now sailing upon the river that would eventually lead out onto the open emptiness of the Sunless Sea, the rest would be up to the small group undertaking the mission. Danny looked to Kurumi, then to Jin.
- Jin is lounging on the boat still undressed from the crossing. Taking advantage of the lack of rain for once to air dry. "We should have brought drinks I could go for a drink with an umbrella in it."
- Danny offers Jin a smile, then tosses over a yak skin filled with some sort of Chinese wine. Its not a daiquiri, but it is alcoholic. Then the boat surges forth, leaving the Qi Lung river behind and launching out onto the void of the infamous Sunless Sea!
- Likewise air drying, not particularly worried if anyone sees her unclothed when it comes down to it (nor worried anyone would get a chance to take advantage of her in Kurumi's presence) Asuka offers Jin a flask from her bag "Dark lager. Ain't got an umbrella but it's one of Fujiko's best microbrewed treats. There are advantages to owning a bar." She sighs, "Still. Fucking Oni-fucking-gashima. I just ain't the monkey, I'll tell you that now."
- It's always so wet coming here what with all the portal sites being connected by watery pools, but Kurumi wears the look well as she dries out lounging on the boat. She's brought a bottle of sake that the maker cleverly designed to look like an old fashioned gourd but still made of glass and her Kanabo. One does not simply go the island of the Oni, or as Kurumi's Bane would call it 'Home', without their giant spiked metal club. She glances around the boat from her lounging spot, "Will a river boat really let us cross the seas?" She wonders aloud but doesn't seem to be terribly concerned either way.
- Jin accepts both and drinks it is hardwired in to her genetic code. "Danny likes Monkeys." she comments absently between drinks. Eventually she hands them back much lighter but not empty.
- Danny looks over towards Kurumi, offer a grim smile. "And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing on the pink flood, and the frail soul steps out, into the house again filling the heart with peace. Swings the heart renewed with peace even of oblivion." A pause before continuing. "Oh build your ship of death, oh build it! for you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion awaits you." Well, the mao shan was the dramatic type, that was for certain.
- They don't call it the Sunless Sea for nothing! Out here, on the big empty, there is no sun that shines down on the little boat, nor the vast expanse of dark waters beneath it. Makes things easier for Wan Kuei and the like, at least. The air smells of salt and of death.
- "Try and not fall in. There is no end to the depths, and the experience is rather ... Harrowing," quips Danny, deadpan. "It'd be all I could do to locate and pull anyone out."
- Jin sighs and moves under the awning to get into something more suited for combat encase it comes. Once 'geared' up so to speak she moves back to sit beside Danny, "His favorite movie is Big Trouble in little China. I keep calling him Egg every halloween." Oh the stories Jin could tell....and getting her drunk is likely how you hear them.
- Danny sets out an hourglass on the table. "All journeys usually take an hour out here, give or take. With any luck, we won't hit any trouble until we hit the island itself." WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT, DANNY! NOW THEY'LL SURELY RUN INTO TROUBLE BEFORE THEN!
- "Listen to motherfucking Murasaki Shikibu over here," mutters Asuka. There's no venom to it, she just seems a little tired. Giving Danny a chin-up nod she does begin to dress, but it's fairly minimal and not in her usual clothes. tightly wrapping her already small chest in a long bandage-like cloth, she therefore foregoes a bra. She does put on a pair of simple unremarkable panties and then over that wheat colored kosode long enough to fall to mid-thigh. Then she slips into a pair of woven sandals. The only really modern looking piece she wears is her gortex bag of tools.
- "There are three types of dangers out here that we might face before we make land." Danny ticks them off on one hand, a finger for each. "Soul Pirates - the easiest of the three to deal with. Plasmics, which are the most varied and unpredictable of threats, given the gamut of types. And finally? Tempus Fugits, which in my opinion? Are the worst, being an environmental hazard."
- "With your luck Danny it will be all three." Jin teases though the transformation makes the voice deep and husky. A black scaled hands with tufted knuckles pats the sorcerer on the shoulder. Before then reaching out to take the wine skin from where he put it and chortles as she drinks it dry.
- "If I can burn it, cut it, or jump over it... I should be okay," says Asuka, "For everything else there's American Express." She rolls her eyes and ties her hair back with a simple piece of matte red ribbon. Looking to Jin, she offers the rest of her flask too. Maybe the lizard person runs on alcohol like the Oni?
- Kurumi drinks her sake from the gourd-like bottle, some of it escaping the corner of her mouth only to be lapped up by her tongue before it can truly escape. "Seems pretty empty. What's a Tempest Fidget? And do you mean Plasma like TVs?" The finer details of the Underworld were apparently missing from Kurumi's education, as she looks to Danny to perhaps enlighten her. Though her eyes also stray to watch Asuka changing and she licks her lips again.
- Danny looks to Kurumi. "A ... a time storm. Horrible thing, unless you're unaging or immortal, and even then, its not a good thing. They look like big silver bubbles on the dark sea. If we see one, we should do all we can to steer clear."
- The little boat bobs up and down on the swell of waves. The sands pass through the hourglass Danny had set up, indicating their position in the journey. "Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives," mutters Danny. Jin had caught him watching classic American soaps, one of the mao shan's few guilty pleasures.
- Then? A much larger ship appears out in front of the group. Flying a variation on the Jolly Roger, of all things.
- Massaging her temples, Asuka murmurs "Breathe, Asuka. Breathe. Remember your training. You aren't going to have your youth sucked away in the blink of an eye. You'll more likely end up a riblet platter for a red Oni or something... but... hey. Upsides. Also, priorities. I logged into FGO today right? Right. Okay. Login streak unbroken. Cool." She looks up, "And then, we wander onto the set of Time Pirates."
- "Lovely it's not captain Jack i'm sure." The monkey stretches and muscle loosen before a staff is lifted and the monkey readies itself for battle or maybe just to jump over the side and swim to shore. monkeys are capricious creatures after all.
- The bow of the ship bears a great swan carved into it as ornamentation. An ominous figure, cowled and wearing a laughing mask stands atop. Then various beings pull up behind, wielding what look to be strangely configured crossbows, and armed with cutlasses besides. The cowled laughing-masked captain raises his own cutlass high. "PREPARE TO BE BOARDED IN THE NAME OF THE LORD OF MISRULE!" - things look like they could grow dire, quickly.
- "So, votes... wait to see what the obvious pirate ship does, or should I see if I can set them on fire?" asks Asuka as she crowches low enough to look over the side of the boat but not present herself as an easy target. She blinks, "Yeah, fuck that. I'm lighting up their life... "
- Kurumi stretches and rises to her feet setting aside her lovely bottle of sake and picking up her kanabo, "The Lord of Misrule must be an idiot to interupt me while I'm drinking." Her voice sounds annoyed as she steps foreward towards the front of the boat and watches the larger ship come.
- Danny focuses on keeping the small boat steady on the choppy seas, for now. It would do no one any good if they were to capsize and fall into a group gestalt Harrowing!
- You paged Asuka with 'roll if/when you would like.'
- Danny sighs and looks to Jin, muttering. "You musn't let them ransack the bag of peaches. No matter what. Protect. The. Peaches."
- The soul pirate captain and his men make ready to loose a volley of crossbow bolts. But then? THE SAILS! THE SAILS ARE ON FIRE! (Wait - is that like ... the roof? The roof is on fire?!) And the volley of crossbow bolts comes, albeit erratic as the pirates make to deal with the fire. They're lit up on the otherwise sunless sea, a beacon of light! But why does that feel like a bad thing?!
- The volley of crossbow bolts comes fast and furious, like a dark cloud that would blot out the sun! Except that out here on the great big empty? There is NO sun. Just a wave of incoming projectiles. The crew of the sampan do their best to dodge the incoming. Well, all but Danny. he has the thankless task of keeping the boat steady.
- Asuka dodges like a champ, the bolts biting into the boat near her. The Monkey King's Avatar and the Oni? They dodge well, if less spectacularly. But all this dodging means that Danny is left to take the brunt of the errant bolts! Surely, the mao shan is doomed. But just as the swarm of projectiles threatens to engulf him like a pincushion? Not a scratch. All the bolts narrowly miss him, by a remarkable stroke of fortune! Or rather? A SHIELD of fortune. The mao shan smiles faintly as he steers the boat around the oncoming ship with the burning sails.
- It doesn't take her long to concentrate enough to set the sail on fire, and of course the psychic shows no other outward sign. Then as the arrows come in, she simply moves her head to one side and gives her body a side silhouette, letting the arrows effortlessly miss my mere millimeters. "Let's see how you little shits like light my fire time," she murmurs far too calmly for someone who has just weathered a storm of arrows with others biting into the wood deep enough to throw splinters.
- Less worried about her own safety Jin interjects herself between the arrows and the sorcerer as if she considers him breakable. The the body bunches up as if the creature plans to take flight or something then she grows still, "Whirlpool!" is exclaimed and pointed at.
- Kurumi's attention is drawn away from the pirate ship to the waters beneath them, the same waters Danny told them not to enter at all costs. She makes a face, "There is something happening beneath us, something big and I doubt it is friendly. Out of the hell of being skinned alive and into the hell of boiling oil as they say." It is a safe bet that nobody actually says that except perhaps demons of Yomi.
- The pirate ship Misrule is in chaos. The fire doesn't seem too severe to warrant such a reaction, but. People seem panicked. Extremely panicked. They don't call it the sunless sea for nothing. Out here? Anything on fire? STANDS OUT LIKE A SORE FUCKING THUMB! And ... then other shoe drops. or the water table drops, at least. And a gigantic kaiju level THING rises up out of a whirlpool. It looks like a Malfean, to anyone that had Lore Wyrm! To those that don't? It looks Call of Cthulhu. Ten stories tall, tentacles galore, and dripping all manner of oily looking slime.
- The pirate ship is the first to get grappled. Wrapped up. Pulled down into the whirlpool.
- Avatar of Sun Wukong loses one Magical Essence
- The screams of the pirate ship Misrule sound out above the din of the waves and whirling water!
- Down on the deck, knife out so that she has it's blade bitten into the wood, Asuka looks up to see the Cthuluoid rise from the whorlpool and and begins to laugh. "Ah...ahaha.... ahahaha... AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! WAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" Maybe she lost her sanity at seeing it? She flips it off with her free hand, "Burn, drown, be devoured, UWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!"
- Something is shedding its scales
- Crying from the heat of the light
- Or the empty shell on the stage
- And cash is a poor man's money
- And cash is a poor man's money
- You say "God" and I say "Say 10"
- You say "God" and I say "Say 10"
- Monkey flips off the back of the boat and amazingly does not sink beneath the waves. Clawed hands grab the back of the sanpan and she begins to run over the surface of the sea pushing the boat before her. Her movements are unnatural and so is the speed that begins to build as she trusts Danny to steer them towards the shore.
- An amused grin crossed Kurumi's face as she watches the Pirate Ship Misrule get summarily destroyed by the Kaiju. She fetches her sake in her other hand and takes another drink, "That's what you get." she comments dryly as if it was a consequence of them interupting her drinking, "We should probably sail away from that. If the sea has no bottom it's going to be really difficult to it." followed by moving up behind the laughing Asuka and circling her arms around her in what is less a hug and more groping as she continues to watch the monster.
- The pirate ship is slowly pulled apart, like some sticky snail innards being freed from its shell. The great beast takes its time. but its myriad eyes slowly, inexorably set their sights on the little sampan! A set of tentacles raise up, as if to beckon the departing sampan. or perhaps its waving ... goodbye?
- Danny will not squander the inspired effort by the Monkey King's Avatar, no he won't. One eye remains on the hourglass, the sands are almost done running their course. The other? That eye is firmly planted on the tenebrous horizon as he does his best to hold steady on their course! Waves rise and crash, battering the little riverboat. But when all is said and done? They strike land, the Avatar of Sun Wukong pushing them all up onto fine red sands. WELCOME TO ... ONIGASHIMA!
- "Nyaaaan!" protests, well meows, Asuka before continuing, "Stop sexually harassing me you freakishly strong Oni!" She pushes her way upwards, resheathing her knife and looking out over the water. "Seriously. To think I'm going to an island full of your kind. What the hell am I even thinking. Well. We've got Monkey. Now I kind of wonder who Pheasant and Dog are. Not to mention Momotaro."
- MOnkey flops over on the shore once the boat makes landfall. Legs and tail are pulled out of the water as the KJ rests. "I need a drink." is all she says for the moment and extends a hand towards danny.
- Danny lets out a subdued 'ooomph' as the little sampan boat is unceremoniously shoved up on a sandy bank by the grace of the Monkey King's representative. Then he looks around and counts heads, making sure no one fell overboard during their escape while handing Jin the skin full of liquor from before. "Everyone keep close to Kurumi," he offers.
- Asuka is given another playful squeeze, "I think there is only one candidate for Momoko here. Kurumi grins at her before stepping away and disembarking on to the island's red sandy beach. She inhales a deep breath, something about this place just feeling right to her. Once off the boat her form also begins to stretch and grow, a pair of red horns extending from her forehead and her skin taking on a slight reddish hue. Once she's done growing she's just shy of 17' tall, her monstrous Oni form that all present have witnessed before. Her kanabo grows with her and she grins. "Let's go."
- Danny reaches back behind him, and snatches a plain burlap sack from the boat. What's in the sack? Well, peaches, of course! "What she said," he offers, piping up once peaches are in hand.
- Jin guzzles some wine before getting to her feet, this time the flask is not returned she earned her drink. A grin cracks her lips as she looks up at the giant red Oni. "Yay her turn to take point." That said jin returns to drinking with a spring in her step.
- Danny hangs back, keeping near drunk uncl- er, drunken monkey style kung fu! The air is full of sweet seductions here. His aura hopefully mitigates the worst of the ... distractions. Up ahead, visible from the path the group takes? A structure! A temple? SOmething!
- "Geh," responds Asuka. She hops off the boat as well, looking around, "Maybe I can find some of those peaches that make you immortal. I wonder how much profit I could make off of them with mystics and apothecaries... " She does, however, stay close but pulls out a pair of IR goggles. She has them up on her forehead, though, not wearing them for the time being over her eyes. She's still taking the place in with the naked eye, "Now if I were profit... where would I hide... "
- "Profit is useless without power, all the money in the world won't stop you from being eaten in then end." Kurumi chides as she gives Asuka a toothy grinned wink. "What we're looking for is probably in the demon skull mountain caves at the center of the island if I had to guess." she tries to peer at whatever is coming into view in the distance.
- Jin wraps the stinger capped tail around the Sorcerer like this is some freaky kind of double date. "As long as I have money for booze i'm am content."
- Announcement: HoneyBadger shouts, "IC: There is a slight tremor in the ground. Glasses rattle, pictures go willynilly on the walls. A few more sensitive car alarms start to go off. No damage. Nothing bad. Just a brief shaking."
- Looking up at Kurumi, Asuka pushes her glasses up on the bridge of her nose with a flicker of light over the lenses that gives her a momentary case of four-eyes zero-soul, "Money IS power. And if you eat me, I'll give you heartburn all the way down. And you'll shit char for years."
- Danny smiles to Jin. "We've enough peaches with us to strike a few bargains yet." Then he makes sure to keep himself and her within radius of Kurumi as the quartet make their way up the winding path towards the middle of the island and the structure thereat! Its quiet. Eerily so. TOO QUIET, as the cliche goes!
- "Oi," says Asuka, "We have hinki paranormal shit up ahead in those caves." She pauses and pulls her IR goggles down over her eyes to take a closer look at the cave. They aren't magical, they aren't for any sort of effect the fledgling sorcerer might do. They are simply legitimate Infrared goggles to see in the dark (of the cave perhaps) or see anything like passive infrared.
- "Cave mouth is clear of heat signatures, maybe the paranormal shit is some sort of automatic defense? Like a motion sensor or alarm? I'm still learning how all that junk works," continues Asuka, "Of course that doesn't rule out something living further in either."
- Danny mutters an incantation in Mandarin, and a wave of calm will wash over the quartet, protecting them against external emotional manipulations as they approach the outh of the cavern
- The news of magical shenanigans ahead is greeted with a shrug by the massive female Aka Oni, "This island is full of magic, no sense troubling yourself over every little thing." Kurumi strides forward unphased, heading for the cave opening.
- As the quartet follow in the Oni's wake, they enter a cavern that is dark. Cold. Still. Impossibly so. Its so dark that its difficult to tell what all lies inside the cave!
- "Why are we going into a cave? Can't we ever go anywhere nice like a bar with sushi?" Jin ask Danny with a tired sounding tone likely she has asked this dozens of time before.
- "Yare yare," mutters Asuka as she cracks the knuckles on her slender hands and withdraws her knife. She keeps her IR goggles on. If it does nothing else for her, the passive IR sensing will let her see the others in pitch darkness. Not that she couldn't create fire, but she's not keen on announcing their prescence any more openly than they already are with a seventeen foot tall red Oni walking with them.
- Its pitch black in here. No heat signatures. Other than the party, of course.
- Jin mutters softly and suddenly light pours from her eyes and mouth. It makes a good substitute for a latern. Which just goes to prove Asian vampires are Jacks of all trades with it comes to freaky powers.
- Danny arches an eyebrow as the cavern is suddenly illuminated! "Well," he mutters. "I always said you had a face that lit up the room," he compliment-quips to Jin in his trademark deadpan style. Danny, his Dad Joke style fu is strong!!!
- Two small hitodama soul flames appear in the air on either side of Kurumi and follow her as she walks through the cavern.
- More seriously? The cavern is full of ... oni! Its like Kurumi stumbled onto some long lost family reunion! Except? No one is moving! Everyone is as still as ... as a statue! In the center of the cavern, an illuminated pit. In the pit? An altar. On the altar? A scroll! Beside the altar? Other as yet to be determined stuff!
- Sighing, Asuka simply removes her goggles and tucks them away in her gear bag before moving in line with one of Kurimi's advancing legs and then matching the rhthym of her stride to Danny's. When it comes down to it, the fledgling Akashayana is just a thief. A damned good thief, but little more. She doesn't even allow a gasp to pass at the room full of Oni 'statues'.
- This is not what Kurumi was expecting to say the least, she pauses and her eyes narrow when she see's the other Oni standing frozen. Now Oni love to fight at the best of times and Kurumi likely came here with the intention of beating the living hell out of most of the others here, but it's also sort of a family affair and dirty tricks like freezing them all do not seem to sit right with her as anger begins to smolder in her eyes. She walks over to one of the Oni and tries poking them, testing for a reaction, "This isn't right, they're not supposed to be this way."
- The oni are cool to the touch when their skin should feel hot. They seem to have been captured in a moment of surprise, like insects frozen in amber during the eruption of some sort of weird volcanic mojo. or something.
- Danny frowns ever so slightly. The Oni, the island - things are NOT in their natural state. Strange sorcery is afoot here! He peers at the scroll on the altar in the pit. Then motions the Monkey King's Avatar over and points.
- "Oh for fucks sake do you want me to go get it? If so this is costing you dinner, with drinks and dancing." Grumbling the entire time as she eyes the pit JIn sighs. Sure nothing suspicious here nope.
- Remaining where she is, Asuka pushes her glasses up on the bridge of her nose again. She looks over the room with what is, frankly, a thief's eye. She knows security, she knows traps, whether primitive or high tech. She may not have truly added mystic to that battery of nowledge yet but she has learned something of the lore of Sorcery and Magi...
- A large Oni fist slams into the wall of the cave, Kurumi is not happy about any of this. The predatory look in her eyes has been replaced with one of fire and bloodlust for whoever did this as she starts stalking deeper into the cave towards the altar and the scroll, perhaps they are the cause of all this or perhaps she can find the culprit further in.
- Danny gives Jin a nod, then takes a step back and makes ready to try and counter-measure any magical effects that might go off. Because as Asuka said, nothing says trap like a scroll containing a much needed spell sitting on an illuminated altar in a cavern full of frozen Oni!
- Jin bounds off then instead of dropping in to the pit tries to leap across it and grab the scoll as she passes it. Maybe beating the angry Oni there by inches maybe crashing into here is a crap shoot.
- "Kurumi," says Asuka, sharply but with a gentle tone, "Please, stand down. We are going to get to the bottom of this. Let Jin handle this part, we have no idea what will happen when she touches that scroll. I wouldn't be surprised if all these Oni lept back to life angry, though. So we will need you rational minded."
- And then, just like in the pulp adventure flicks - you know the type, Indiana Jones and all that - while the scroll has been obtained? A magical effect does indeed go off! The Oni furthest from the now liberated scroll slowly comes to life! "Get that thing off our island," screamed the red skinned ogre before he turned and ran towards the entrance to the cave, trying to get as far away as possible from the artifact.
- "Annnnnd... " says Asuka unhappily as she tries to look as little like a skewer of Dango as possible, "Called it."
- The building fury within Kurumi does abate somewhat when she see's the other Oni are returning to a more proper state but the Rage still bubbles beneath the surface like with most of her ilk it never truly fully goes away. "What happened here?" she calls after the other Red Oni.
- Danny quickly produces a box carved from black jade, motioning for Jin to place the scroll inside the container. "Too much Yin," explains the mao shan. Then he tosses the sack of peaches towards Kurumi and Asuka, "Take a peach to all the frozen Oni. It'll help once we get the scroll off the island."
- The long prehensile tail snags the scroll as the kung-fu action star monkey lands on the other side. Trotting back over to Danny she offers the scroll to him. "If you ever say go fetch and I am stinging you right in the ass."
- "I'd pay money to see that, Jin," says Asuka as she catches the bag of peaches. Despite being only five feet and four inches in height, she's no slouch in the athleticism department. "At least the scroll didn't set off a sessho-seki or something." She sighs, bringing the bag of peaches over to the next closest Oni to the one who first woke.
- As Danny shuts the box of black jade around the scroll? Another effect goes off. There's a sudden onrush of Yang that floods the cavern - hot, moist, fierce. Caught in the sudden flow of the Scarlet River? The quartet begin to disappear, but not before Asuka manages to shove one of the peaches into the mouth of an Oni, bringing them back to life. The sack is taken from Asuka's hands by the newly awoken Oni, who is clearly disoriented still but none too happy at having been imprisoned earlier. But by whom? And why? The party will have to return to the scene of the crime to solve that mystery as they find themselves transported across spiritual space, dumped out unceremoniously in one of the back rooms of the Green Bamboo! But they at least have the box of black jade and the scroll it contained!
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