Cross Effects 3.0 - October 21, 2015—June 23, 2016

[Elf]

Forest

It's still here, it's still here!  No vagabonds have stolen it or picked it clean.  Thank you, Morrigan, thank you! Forest almost did a dance as she saw her car unharmed other than where Kenzo stomped his foot through the floorboard.

She noticed Greyskull walking away from her towards another small group and address them,  "HOWDY! SALUTATIONS!! ERM, COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT THIS PLACE EXACTLY IS!?"

Shaking her head, she walked off to make sure he didn't scare anyone out of their skin, sort of unaware of the dark, shadowy aura around her.  As she approached, she heard the young woman say, "Uhh, hello. We're only tourists, we are in dark as much as you."

"Ah, this is the Emporium of Man, probably the biggest shopping center in all of Nexus," she said with a smile.

[Panda]

Annabeth

The Hunter sputtered once more as Ron licked her again, this time covering the only part of her face that neither of them had touched. Wiping her face off reflexively, Annabeth gave Ron an indignant look right before she registered Oren collapsing into smoke out of the corner of her eye.

As Oren shifted into that white stag once more, the Hunter found herself briefly tempted to not take any chances and tie Oren up right then and there. However, the temptation soon passed when she realized that, if Oren wanted to go running off to prove how fast she was, that was fine by her. With that in mind, the Hunter watched Oren with an unimpressed look, lightly placing a hand on Ron's lupine nose to advise him to not pursue.

[Umbra of Chaos]

Lumen

The divine being looked at the walking skeleton and his friend that seemed to be engulfed in shadow and wrapped an arm around Petra's waist before pulling them both back a step. This was getting a bit too overtly strange for her. She leaned over and began to whisper softly into the saint's ear. "Petra, I'm weird. You're weird. That's fine, but that skeleton is moving his mouth and speaking when he doesn't have vocal chords and his friend looks like she took a bath in shadow. People are watching."

[Kotomine_Rin]

Count George Greyskull

The skeleton tapped the palm of the palm of his hand with his fist in understanding. He thought this was a castle, but on closer inspection, this was clearly a marketplace! Haha, of course! How could he have missed it?

 "AAAAAH!! I SEE!! WELL, THAT'S NOT A PROBLEM! SINCE WE'RE ALL TOURISTS, WE CAN ALL BE FRIENDS!!" He yelled before holding his hand out to the two.

"MY NAME IS COUNT METATARSALS GREYSKULL TIBULA VIII! NICE TO MEET YOU TWO!! LET US GET ALONG!!"

[Aiden]

Ron

Ron savored the taste again, and the indignation of the red lady when she started wiping her face. If he had become some kind of giant wolf, and he could do this kind of thing, it would be quite-

red in the eyes, a full belly, scent of fresh meat

He shook his head again, fiercely this time, and turned his eyes away from Annabeth to his previous challenger. That's when he saw it.

So fast, graceful. The way in which the antler lady took to a new body looked much less cumbersome and painful than his own had felt before. Ron huffed as his mind registered the challenge implicit in the action. His legs tensed, his bones creaking in anticipation of a change to a form he knew would let him keep pace with horned prey runner and tear-

"Rrrn?" was the sound to escape his throat when Annabeth placed her hand on his big, cold, wet nose. Ron nudged at her palm with it a moment, before he got the message. Oh.

just let her run? that's pretty funny too

[Kat]

Petra

No, no, she wasn't weird, she just happened to be from another time. And almost perfectly adjusted for a former Servant! Only good thing about this borderline blasphemous fake Holy Grail War is that she didn't need to learn basics about the modern age. And Lumen just had tattooes. Those people were indeed on another level, and her new friend was right.

 "Uhh, sorry, we are busy! So we gotta go!" The saint awkwardly replied, wanting to further distance between those weirdoes as fast as she could without running. Wrapping her arm around Lumen's back, she waved in farewell, sweating a bit, walking away at steady pace.

[Elf]

Forest

Forest blinked as the two women made their escape as fast as possible from them.  She frowned then looked over at Greyskull and sighed.  Admittedly, she had been weirded out Greyskull's condition, but "weird" had been part of her existence since birth.

She rubbed the back of her head and then looked at Greyskull.  "I'm sorry, Greyskull," she said with a tiny, sad smile.

At least they didn't threaten to kill me like those people last night, she thought sadly.

[Thedoctor]

Shinobu

Turning back to Corbin, she answered his question. "Perhaps...I would like how they do it first though. There were no such organizations were I came from." 

[Kotomine_Rin]

Greyskull

Greyskull awaited a warm shake of hands but was taken aback by the sudden reaction. He simply stood there silently, dumbfounded, before looking down in a mixture of sadness and confusion. While he had been... whimsical thus far, Greyskull was no fool, and knew full well they had ran away from him.

He messed up. He totally messed it up, again. And the worst part is he did not know why. Was his breath bad? Were his clothes dirty? Maybe he had been to direct. It had been so long since he saw anyone living...

"H-hey. Wait."

[Elf]

Corbin

"They find people with," he made aerial quotes, "'Special abilities', see if they're up to it, run them through training for the most part, and if they don't was out they go smacking supernaturals down."

He slid back into his T-shirt and said, "They pay really well, but it's a high risk job."


Rin

Rin tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and said to herself, "Even Emiya-kun's ignoring me now." 

She turned and poured out the tea she ruined and rinsed out the teapot.  She found herself wanting to be back in England where she had all of her research and work to bury herself in.  Where she didn't have to worry about Rider oggling her, Sakura going crazy, Shirou apparently hating her, and even the happy return of Archer was tarnished because he wasn't her Archer but a Rin who had apparently screwed up even more than Rin could imagine.

[Umbra of Chaos]

Lumen

At the sudden shift in tone she could hear from the skeleton the Patchwork felt a bit bad. She turned back and moved a finger over her mouth to imply silence before motioning the pair to follow her. No one was really looking and he sounded pathetic. Like a kicked kitten. She didn't want that weighing on her conscience and it would be easier to get rid of like this.

But that did mean she needed to tell Petra what she just did to them. "I felt a bit bad so I may have implied that they should follow us. It should be fine. If he stays loud this place is pretty big and we can go somewhere else."

[Kat]

Petra

"Yeah, at worst we will lose them in the crowd..." Petra nodded. Indeed, she and Lumen had a soft enough heart to take some pity on that sad sounding guy. Maybe it wasn't his fault he wasn't sane. Anybody who looked like a walking skeleton dude would have his issues.

Fortunately, they had some money on them to go shopping. That barrel of fish enhanced by the spice sold so well that they could buy more than one pair of clothes each. She couldn't wait for rummaging through the clothes department.

[Thedoctor]

Shinobu

The vampire gave him a funny look as he made airal quotes while talking to her. After listening through it she responded. " Oh that sounds interesting...wait if they pay so much, why are you so concerned about that bike? Are you some vain person who cruises around in a golden bike?"

Archer

Archer followed Rin back to the kitchen where she poured out the ruined tea and rinsed out the tea pot. He noticed that her mood had soured and figured she was probably mentally beating herself up.

"Having two tea bags doesn't make for great tea now does it?"

[Elf]

Corbin

Corbin grinned at her look and said, "It can be interesting.  It's really fucking dangerous though, and you deal with some real assholes.  As for my bike, I loved it.  It's hard to find a Triumph here too."


Rin

"I prefer loose leaf anyway," she said as she started to wash the tea pot out.   Once it was clean, she put water in the kettle to boil again.  "However, I don't know if Sakura has loose leaf tea.  This isn't my kitchen, this isn't my house, this . . ."

She sighed and shook her head. 

[Cherry Lover]

Sakura and Shrou

With Togan gone, Sakura and Shirou continued to enjoy the delicious food without any interrupting, talking happily as they ate their fill, sampling all of the different foodstuffs on offer. Eventually, after remaining seated for a while to allow the food to go down, Sakura gave Shirou a lustful smile.

"Shi~rou, there's no-one else here", she said, forming several shadow tendrils, waving them around as she smiled seductively.

Excited by the prospect, Shirou's arousal began to grow, but he couldn't help but notice the leftover food and cutlery. Without Togan around, they would have to clean it up theirselves.

"Sakura, shouldn't we clean up first?" he asked.

Sakura thought for a moment, before sighing.

"Yes, I suppose so", she said, getting up out of her seat, still flushed with arousal. "Let's load up the cart, I'll show you where the kitchen is."

Agreeing to Sakura's suggestion, Shirou also got up, his trousers noticably bulging as he thought of what they would do afterwards. They loaded the plates onto the cart and then pushed it towards the kitchen, Sakura pushing it along whilst Shirou followed behind her. When they arrived, they cleaned the plates, placed the leftover food in the fridge and, leaving the cart where it was, returned to their room.

As they did so, however, they heard someone knocking at the door.

Eh, who's that? Sakura thought.

"Shirou, did you hear that?" she asked.

"Yes, should we answer it, though? This isn't our castle, after all", he replied.

Sakura pondered the situation for a moment, before coming to a decision.

"I think we should, yes. It would be rude otherwise", she replied.

With that, the two of them headed towards the sound of the knocking, eventually arriving at the door. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open, finding two people stood there, a man and a woman.

"Hello", she said, politely. "My name is Emiya Sakura, this is my husband Shirou. The owner of this castle is not home at the moment, but we are her guests."