Scion – Rada Campaign Guest Appearance – Part 2
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on July 13th 2008
You know, I’m really getting along well with my new friends. The band of scions I’ve been helping out are very friendly and easygoing, much more so than the guys I usually work with. I mean, I love my group. Really, I do. But as tight as we are, there’s a lot of tension and conflict in the group. Anna and I don’t get along at all, and even though we’ve nominally made peace, we still verbally snipe at each other all the time. T-Bone and I used to get along well, but a distance has grown between us. And Ray…well, I know he likes (…loves…) me and cares about me, we see things very differently, and I know that my moral outlook makes him uncomfortable, just as his overbearing righteousness sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable and…threatened, I guess. To some degree I think the tensions between us make us stronger. But it can be stressful working together.
At least I get along well with Adam, Pierre, and Elisa.
Anyway, Storm’s group of scions is much more laid back. I’m sure they have their own little dysfunctional quirks, but overall they seem to get along very well, and they’ve certainly accepted me into their midst with open arms. I do think they were a little disturbed by my shikome, though. ^_^
I guess I should start with that. Having slain the oni and the Daitokuji robots, we had to take care of the corrupt mortals who were working the site. So I called in the shikome and let them go to town. When they first arrived, Kaori was ready to go, but Tabby grabbed her hair and forced her to the ground so that she was kneeling before her. Then she smacked the back of her head before letting her rise. Tabby is so abusive toward Kaori! >_< It’s actually quite unpleasant, even though she never really hurts Kaori. I used to think she treated her that way because Kaori is more of a troublemaker than the other shikome, and so needs more reminders to keep her in line. But I’ve recently realized that the real reason is because Tabby really likes Kaori, and I guess that’s her way of showing it. That’s shikome for you, I suppose.
Tabby also gave Sophie a brief beating when Sophie (eager as always for human flesh) tried to beat the others to the tasty mortals. Tabby’s in charge, so she gets first choice, not Sophie. Its like the behavior of some animals, like lions. Anyway, once Tabby was done asserting her dominance over the others, they all got to kill and eat the mortals. It was…brutal…but they’ve been very well-behaved recently and deserved a treat. And Cesar was right there with them, cutting out hearts to sacrifice to his father.
While that was going on, I tried to summon the local kami while Helena drenched the hungry dead in the pit with alcohol and lit them on fire. Carina and Sam checked out some of the nearby buildings, and I think Storm kept watch. First off, when I summoned the kami, I saw the ground and trees bulging as though it was trying to manifest from them, but it couldn’t. Something was keeping it trapped. We soon found out what when Carina came dashing out of one of the site’s shacks to get me and Helena.
Inside the shack was a huge sphere of roiling blackness. It stank of taint and corruption, and reminded me a lot of the foul concoction Hinako was tricked into drinking. Surrounding the incarnated corruption were a bunch of profane majinai (mystical Shinto paper charms). I was at a loss as to how the whole set-up worked, though it was obvious that it was doing terrible things to the landscape. Helena, however, quickly surmised that the majinai were both containing the corruption and amplifying its effects. Sort of transmitting them throughout the nearby land, I guess. Not good. >_<
Oh, Carina also found a bit of the liquid inside a small bottle, and I think we kept that for further investigation. And while we were discussing what to do about the locus of corruption (hey, that’s a pretty cool name for it!), Cesar and Storm discovered that the barrels and canisters the workers were moving around were full of rotting body parts, blood, and other foulness…stuff that’s very offensive to the purity of Shinto. They’d been feeding the stuff to the locus of corruption to increase its size and power. Good thing we stopped them when we did.
We determined that the place could be cleansed, but only through an intensive and time-consuming Shinto purification ritual. I set Keiko and Sera to the task of performing the ritual, and so they went out to retrieve the implements they’d need from the local shrine and got started. The ritual was pretty demanding on them. Helena didn’t really say anything about it, but I could tell she was unhappy with the time the ritual would take. And she had a right to be…it gave our enemies time to send reinforcement to the site.
About two and half hours into the ritual, we heard the sound of a car approaching, and we barely had time to fan out into defensive positions before a Daitokuji jeep mounting a big machine gun crashed through the gate. Aside from the driver, a Daitokuji security guard in riot gear manned the machine gun and another carried an assault rifle in the passenger seat. Three more robots flew in behind the jeep and to make matters worse, a gashadokuro rose up and lumbered in, assuming its full gigantic stature.
We had only a few moments to prepare. I ordered my shikome to protect Keiko and Sera and told Tabby to help me deal with the guys in the jeep while the others dealt with the robots and gashadokuro. Before she leapt into the fray, I kissed her forehead and bolstered her ability to take damage so that she’d (hopefully) be pretty safe. It’s a trick I learned in my reflections on life and death while we were in Ireland. It’s amazing how the power of one’s divine status creeps up on you like that! ^_^
The ensuing fight was grueling. These Daitokuji guys don’t hold back! Carina and Tabby dashed forward to meet the jeep head on. Carina leapt onto the back and eviscerated the guy manning the machine gun before he could squeeze off more than a short burst, and then she turned the gun on the gashadokuro, which, sadly, didn’t really do much. Meanwhile, Tabby tore the guy from the passenger seat and literally ripped his head off with her bare hands. Grisly. I took care of the driver (and the jeep) with a toss of my hair and a coy wink. He couldn’t take his eyes off me and the jeep drove straight into the burning zombie pit. End of story.
Jacob. Storm, and Helena rushed up to attack the gashadokuro, and were joined by Carina after she sprung from the doomed jeep. At first they had a hard time hurting it until Storm wrapped his massive arms around its neck and collar bone and I began calling out orders to coordinate their attacks. The others were able to chip away at it then, and its bones shattered in Storm’s grasp. Carina delivered the killing blow, bringing the beast down for good.
Meanwhile, Cesar and Sam engaged in an intensive shootout with the robots. I don’t think Cesar was hit, but Sam got shot up pretty badly. His movie-styled one-liners must have gotten the robots’ attention. ^_^ Carina did what she could to heal him once the gashadokuro was dead, closing his bullet wounds, but he was still badly bruised and battered, so I dodged through the combat to him and seized upon a momentary lull in the gunfire to flirtatiously pop one of Amaterasu’s chocolates into his mouth to heal him the rest of the way (fortunately, Carina wasn’t mad at me. In fact, she seemed happy that I healed her boyfriend).
By this time, Cesar and Sam had taken down one of the robots each and had the other on the ropes. Storm bounded into the air and grappled the remaining robot. Somehow he managed to wreck its thrusters and it came crashing to the ground, where he quickly finished crushing it while Cesar dropped down beside it and trash talked the hell out of it while it died. It was really funny, actually. ^_^ I like Cesar. And by the way, Storm is strong. Oh, and I healed him with a chocolate too, after the fight was over. ^_^
Shortly afterward, Keiko and Sera finished the ritual, and the place was purified…mostly. I was able to summon the kami, and it said that it was feeling much better, but that things in the area couldn’t return to normal until all the taint was cleansed. And that meant taking care of Daitokuji’s other facilities as well. I was just glad the kami wasn’t badly harmed, and asked him to keep an eye on things and let me know if Daitokuji did anything else to the site.
Before we left, I also took a group shot of my new friends. The picture turned out well. I’ll have to show it to Ray, Pierre, and Elisa when I get back. They’ll get a kick out of it. ^_^
With one of our objectives accomplished, we briefly discussed what to do next. Cesar was all for heading on to the largest of Daitkuji’s facilities. It was a half-finished building of some sort, currently just a collection of girders, but it was the most heavily guarded of the three sites. Cesar said that we should do what they least expected. Instead of working our way up from smallest to largest, we should go for the gold. Daitokuji was probably already reinforcing the second site with forces from the main one, so Cesar’s idea made sense. I don’t think Helena agreed (she seems to disapprove of a lot), and I think her reservations are justified. But even so, we decided to take on the most heavily defended site next.
Before that, though, we headed back to Maneki’s house to regroup and check on her and Cesar’s followers (who reminded me a little of Ray’s followers, except for a scary Mexican guy named Machete). I also needed some time to sunbathe and recharge some of my divine power, which is what I’m doing right now. ^_^ Storm had to leave the area (I think I’m too much for him, lol), so he took a walk with Tabby. Is Tabby going to score with a son of Zeus? I can’t wait to find out! ^_^
Maneki was cute. She really comes across like a sort of Japanese cat girl in the way she behaves and present herself. Makes sense since she’s a daughter of Bast. She and Carina seem to have become quite close, and from what Carina tells me, Maneki doesn’t really know any other scions she can rely on, just the local youkai. So I gave her Hinako’s card and told her she should get in touch. After all, Hinako has really begun to come into her own as a demigod. To be honest, from what I saw when visiting her recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s as strong as Storm. Anyway, Maneki was thrilled for the introduction. She’s a apparently a big fan of Hinako and Sayrui’s manga, Flowers for Boys. I think Carina was rather touched by the gesture. She seemed really grateful. ^_^ I’m glad. I’d like to do what I can to help these guys out, because they’re obviously doing as good a job as my group is in fighting the titans. And Maneki and Hinako seem like they need all the help they can get.
I also talked more extensively with Jacob. Somehow satyrs and nymphs came up, and I commented that my wife was a nymph. Next thing you know the pictures come out. I’m showing off pics of Echo and Jacob’s showing off pics of his kids, both of us as proud as can be. I also showed off pics of my other friends, including Ray throwing pants into Grundy’s grave and Adam killing the harpy. You know, I really like Jacob, even if he is appallingly middle-American. I bet Echo would like him too. I need to drag him off to a goth club someday to broaden his horizons. ^_^
Anyway, we’re getting ready to head to the main Daitokuji site in just a few minutes so that we can take care of it before nightfall. Wish us luck!