Cross Effects 3.0 - June 23, 2016—April 02, 2018

[Aiden]

Gadreel

It was fortunate that the moment his companion Forest was making her assertions of superiority over their captives was also the moment the exiled angel returned. He held up the cord, and passed some of it along to her and Sir Julius. "This should be sufficient to hold them," Gadreel said, nodding in satisfaction as he demonstrated on the man beneath the secret vampire's boot. "It is quite fascinating how far we have come, that such things-"

"Man, I don't see nothin' fascinating 'bout you tying my arms up!" the man objected despite the overwhelming force arrayed against him.

"It does require a certain perspective to appreciate, I admit," the angel said with a thin smile.

[Umbra of Chaos]

Erica

"I do not think that we are poor imitations. Perhaps we were before we achieved sentience, but no being that has the capacity to choose contains a purpose they must achieve." Her eyes traced the gaze of the boy and she began to steer them towards the shop. She cared for nothing material but indulging him was within her interests.

"They are not necessarily warring. They are rebels of a sort. Going against the established order and refusing to be absorbed. The chaos that they cause cannot be allowed, so I force them to scatter like rats."

[Break]

Coppelius
"What if their purpose has already been achieved? My creators- they made me merely to prove a point. To prove that a beeing like me is possible. The only purpose i had was to live in itself, but i never knew how."

The doll turned around to face his peer, floating centimetres above the ground.

"If there is chaos here, is
hall root it out; that is how i was given purpose before. However, to fight, i require materials; let us enter this place."

[Aiden]

Muramasa Katase

Her previous hesitation was warring with her nature. It was simple, natural, to just go along with this, to let Kenzo lead Katase along to battle. The sword felt like a maiden being led through a maze to a surprise by her betrothed - at least, what she imagined that would feel like. She held his hand tightly enough that a mere human's bones would have been crushed, but which was merely a pleasant pressure to someone as strong as this giant - this oni.

So much blood

That is what he clearly was. The thought made her vicious excitement even harder to contain, for oni were sincere and simple and violent creatures from what she had heard of them in her travels. Katase never had the fortune to actually meet one before, and she doubted they would be so insightful as Sakagami Kenzo was about her.

She ignored their surroundings until he stopped, but then came out of her thoughts and she surveyed the spot herself. A grin spread across her shell's face, and she tasted its lips with its tongue. She detached herself from its nerves so that the unnatural pain to come wouldn't distract her.

"This is perfect, Kenzo," she said to him, turning her shell's grinning face to his. "You really do know how to treat this Muramasa well. Thank you."

There would be no pain for her here. Only him.

She moved away from him so that they could begin on opposite sides of the dojo.

"As part of this thanks," she continued to say, "Muramasa Katase will not insult you by holding back."

Her thumb pressed up on the guard of her blade, allowing just a sliver of her steel to be exposed to the air outside. The difference hit her immediately. Her puppet's lips pulled back to expose teeth.

Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cutcutcutcutcutcutcut

Her shell's eyes began to glimmer a demonic red.

[Kotomine_Rin]

Sakagami Kenzo

A glad, happy laughter could be barely contained from Kenzo's mouth. Indeed, the oni could not be any happier to have met such a wonderful blade, a true Muramasa! It almost made him want to make her scream and tear and ravage and slash through her body with that little blade of hers until there was nothing left of either fight him with all he had.

"Hoho! Well then..." The oni brought his hand to his beautiful benizakura, but did not feel the need to unsheathe it.

He bore no stance and was full of openings, but even within the mask that concealed him one could tell that his eyes were of a different light, pulsating with a crimson hue in synchronisation with her own. No matter how you looked at it, it was insulting for one to face a duel with such casual unreadiness.

That is, if it had been anyone but Sakagami Kenzo. Such a man hardly needed a stance, all Katase needed was to take a glimpre at his sword to understand it. Whether she came from above, from below, from the sides, charged directly or struck from behind, the result would be the same. The moment one entered his sword's range, his life was already forfeit. There were no openings or blind spots to his blade, thus there was no need for a stance. If it came to him, he would cut it. No human could avoid a blade of sure death, however...

Muramasa Katase was no human.

"Come whenever you are ready." He said kindly.

[Aiden]

Muramasa Katase

Ah. There was one thing missing. Her puppet sent an adoring and murderous look to Kenzo's covered face. "Ara ara, still going to wear that mask are we? It's not fair if this Muramasa is the only one ready to bear it all, Kenzo-kun."

She wanted to see him. She wanted to see him cut him kill him the way no one else ever could or would.

[Kat]

Rikuyo

"Sunlight? The vampire I know walks around in bright light. And if you are talking about weird tastes, I think she didn't have any peculiar taste. Though it looked as if she hit on me. I hunted some werewolves together with her, so she has good taste otherwise. Though to be honest, I don't really understand why vampires mostly drink blood. Not eating meat of your prey is pretty wasteful..." Yeah, blood was fine, but meat was even better.

"Oh, you are tired after eatin' so much? Okay. Speakin' of the forest, how about I take ya there this night? Maybe you fancy eating another werewolf, or maybe there will be a tasty spirit for ya to hunt down. Hmmm, maybe we will take yer teacher there too?" That would be also occassion to see his teacher in action. Though she didn't know if she fancied werewolf meat too. If she didn't want her share, then would just have more to eat.

[Kotomine_Rin]

Sakagami Kenzo

"Oh! That's right, of course. Forgive my rudeness." He said with a polite bow, as cheerful as ever. If it had been anyone else, he would have refused outright. However, because it was her, it was okay. It was okay if it was Muramasa Katase, he could show himself as long as it was her. Here, with her, he could show the true him .

He didn't need to pretend to love anymore, because just this once, his love was real!

And as soon as Katase said those words, something triggered in Kenzo's mind. As if it was sorcery, something in him changed and he looked like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. 

Because he loved her, he grabbed hold of his mask and laid it on the ground.

Because he loved her, he revealed his ugly, gruesome face, or rather the piece of meat that had once been covered by one.

Because he loved her, he smiled gently and revealed a full set of moon white fangs gleaming over his red head like the moon.

Because he loved her, she should love him too and accept his love to the fullest.

Because he loved her, she should hurry up and dissappear into a smear of blood and broken steel that could never become whole again.

"I love you. If Katase does not hurry though, Kenzo-kun might do something dirty. ♪" He purred lovingly with the same cheerfulness as before.

[Kat]

Julius

The ruffians were now all tied, and they would stay like that until the town guard arrived to seize them. As usual, Lady Forest and Sir Gadre dealt with them skillfully.

"Dojo?" Julius reacted to what Lady Forest uttered. "Ah, then it explains why your movements seemed unusual. You have been to Far Orient, right? I never trained in oriental martial arts, but I studied Lichtenauer's and Dardi's styles of fencing. I also learned as much as remained of the ancient art of pankration, from ancient texts I had chance to read." Greek language was not only useful for reading about philosophy and mathematics.

"Now that the situation is under control, please lead me to the point of destination." He politely asked his companions.

[SINIB]

Mitsuba

Oh, dear, what it has to be me... The Unchained had honestly quite a bad day and didn't feel up to the task of explaining what this abominable city was, but basic manners demanded that she wouldn't ignore her question. So she at least tried to give her a decent answer:

"I honestly don't have any clue about the supernatural." The demon lied. "But I ended up here pulled away by some mysterious force just like many residents of the city, though some of them seems to be born here. I don't know, it just like pulls people from many different places into one single place."

Misaka

"Huh…" Misaka said. "That seems far fetched, but…" She couldn't really think of a good reason for this place to so obviously not be Academy city. And, without an alternative hypothesis, she decided to just accept this as true until shown otherwise.

"Well, have you ever heard of magic or espers in this city? And um, do you think they'll accept my money? I'll need to find a place to stay for now, until I figure out what's going on."

[Panda]

Dante

The half-demon cocked an eyebrow at Petra's reply to the cute raven-haired girl, then at Rin when she responded, growing somewhat perplexed. It was odd, he hadn't detected a hint of any kind of demonic taint on her, and yet...

"Whoa, so magic is a common thing where you're from?" Dante noted, "Doesn't sound like most mages are fun people to be around, though, from what you're saying."

[Kat]

Mitsuba

"This sounds pretty crazy, I know, but I don't think there is better explanation. Maybe unless you time travelled like in one of those sci fi novels they sell in bookstores." To be honest Mitsuba knew that wasn't the case as she knew this dimension was smaller than Earth. It was likely expanding the more people came here, but it couldn't yet match the size of a planet. Sailing away from the city's port only made people mysteriously reach the same shores. Thus, only boats that were here belonged to a fishing industry.

"You mean people with supernatural powers? Honestly there is not too few of them here, and some are real troublemakers, so maybe you should be careful here." Though this girl sounded as if she was one of those folks herself. Just great. She really didn't want any trouble, and abnormal people were like a trouble magnet.

"As for currency, the economy here is kind of messy and there is no common currency yet. They should likely accept your money as the government didn't establish any consensus yet in this matter.
Though American dollars, Swiss franks, Euros and Japanese Yen are most popular ones." For unknown reason, British pound lost its popularity recently. "And if you look for apartments, I recommend those near Golden Rule district. That part of town is relatively safe." 

[Umbra of Chaos]

Liseth

The gamer shook her head at the other girl's statement. It was really weird having Rin worry about her. Even if they were just throwaway lines, that was more concern than people usually give her. Almost against her will she felt her ears heating up and she shoved her face back into the sundae. In a few moments she stopped and said, ""Nah. I usually stay up a lot longer than this. This is nothing."

Even if she stopped talking and didn't look really invested into the conversation she was definitely listening to what was being said. Magic. She always liked settings that had magic in them. She wouldn't miss the chance to hear any information about what magic and its practitioners were like in the real world.

[Kat]

Petra

It was obvious that she attracted Rin's curiosity and that maybe if she didn't indulge herself to go through her boundary field for the heck of it, she wouldn't have to adress that curiosity. Just ignoring her wouldn't help and she couldn't exactly say Hey, I was a Servant straight to the face. Who knows what could happen if she was entirely honest. So she gave her another answer.

"I'm not a magus, just like I said. But I'm an exorcist, freelance one. There are magi who are interested in spirits and demons, so I picked enough knowledge about guys like you. I guess any of you can ask me for help with any problem related to spirits, but I have my needs, so it's not free of charge."

[Elf]

Forest

"Both China and Japan.  Dabbled in some Korean styles, but I find myself more fond of Chinese martial arts," Forest said with a shrug, not bothering to list the myriad of martial arts she'd studied in her travels.

She smiled at Gadreel as he tied up the douchebag under her foot before reaching down and patting the wanker's cheek.  "Come on, some men would pay handsomely for a pretty girl in black to put their boot on them while getting tied up, and you're getting the very same treatment for free."

Beaming, she turned back to Gadreel and Julius and said, "Yeah, let's get out of here.  I think after dealing with these nuggets I think a good stiff drink would be a nice reward."


Gabriel

"Well, I have made a bit of a mess of you, but I wager this feels good," Gabriel said with a smile as he moved his finger to trace around the nub at the apex of her folds.


Rin

The raven haired magus eyed Dante with a smile and said, "You're really not wrong there.  I enjoy magecraft, but I really don't enjoy magus practices, if that makes any sense."

She did see Liseth blushing at the corner of her eye and sink deeper into her sundae.  She smiled and said, "Well, from what I've been told this place is very dangerous and full of unsavory elements.  I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I didn't help someone when I could."

Then she nodded at Petra and said, "Okay, that makes more sense.  My guardian was a member of the Burial Group, as for payment . . ."  She held up the pink diamond out to Petra and Dante with a smile.

"I think this will fund your drinking contest if you could could escort Liseth and myself back to my sister's place.  Make sure we get home okay."


Corbin

Apparently their medic was at one of the local police stations due to the fact that some nut went full bloodlust and tried to off everyone there.  He made a call though and medical attention should hopefully be on his way.  He went back to the training room to find Mordred and Kuro hugging each other and shook his head with a laugh.

"Women," he said with a chuckle.