Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 68
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 Jan 25th 2010
So where’d I leave off last time? Oh yeah, dealing with the Japanese soldier ghosts Xi Wang Mu handed over to us, which, you might recall, caused some friction between Yi and me. Anyway, Xi Wang Mu’s little bit of malicious fun aside, we decided after we had defeated the titanspawn sent to capture the ghosts that we would have to judge the dead soldiers later. We still had an appointment at a club in Chengdu to make arrangements for our trip into Di Yu the next day. So Yi and I led the ghosts to a nearby abandoned mine where they would be safe for the time being, and I left Tabby and my other elite shikome to guard them until we returned.
With that done, we headed back to Chengdu and freshened up for our visit to The American, a sort of rock and roll club styled (rather poorly) after some sort of old-style American rock club. Fragrant Seabreeze, a Celestial Bureacracy water spirit we’d heard about, was performing, and I enjoyed listening to her. Actually, watching her was fun too, since to us she looked like a humanoid form made of water. ^_^ She sounds a bit like Joan Jett or the Pretenders, and she was pretty good, so while the others talked to the Chinese shojou (basically a type of youkai) about what we’d need for our mission in Di Yu, I slipped backstage to introduce myself to Fragrant Seabreeze.
It turns out she knew of me. ^_^ I complimented her and we chatted for awhile, and before I left, I gave her my card and told her to let me know if she wanted to work out some connections with agents or producers. During our conversation, I learned that she had been in a relationship with a dragon, but the two were kind of estranged at the moment because they’d gotten into trouble for their liaisons (and because Fragrant Seabreeze was moonlighting at the club and not doing her job watching the seas during a storm. Poor girl. She misses her boyfriend. I hope things work out for them. I’ll keep my eyes open to see if I can help.
Meanwhile, in a moment of caprice, Quinn apparently decided to take the lead in our dealings with the shojou. When he asked who was in charge of our group, she stepped forward and said she was. Adam, Charles, Elisa, Pierre, and T-Bone didn’t seem to mind (they found it more amusing than anything), so Quinn made the arrangements and explained what we’d need for the mission in Di Yu…mainly rocket launchers for Elisa (she does love those things…).
With arrangements being made, we headed back to the hotel to enjoy the night before heading to Di Yu at 10:00 the next morning. Yi and I spent most of the night cuddling and talking. I really love our deep conversations. I wanted to bring up the issues Echo mentioned, regarding marriage and the balance between Miko and Yi, not to mention my destiny in regard to Amaterasu. But Yi was pretty anxious about our mission the next day, so I didn’t want to give her anything else to worry about and did as much as I could to comfort her fears instead. ^_^ We talked a bit about names. She’d like me to adopt her surname, but I’m not so sure “Erika Feng” sounds right, and besides, my name, Erika Lacey, is kind of iconic in the goth-industrial-trance segement of the music industry, especially since I don’t go by DJ Yomi as much anymore. Fortunately, It’s not a sticking point, and I think we’ll both end up keeping our respective surnames when we’re wed.
The next day, we met Xi Wang Mu and she transported us to Di Yu, where we were briefed on our mission by Yi’s father, Yan Luo.
Speaking of which, Yi hasn’t mentioned to him her intention to marry me yet, so I didn’t say anything about it. I hope he doesn’t have a problem with it when we do tell him…
Anyway, here’s the mission briefing (wow, I sound all military ^_^). The titans have invaded the deepest parts of Di Yu beyond the Wailing Sea, a wall of specters that circles endlessly over the void. Huge chunks of rock float above the void, leading eventually to the 9th and 10th Courts of the Celestial Bureacracy, both of which are currently under siege. The minions of Aten are heavily committed to the assault alongside Hundun’s spawn, and among the titanspawn participating in the siege is the Great Cyclops of Aten, which is doing its best to break through the walls to the 10th Court.
If we can bring pressure to bear on the Cyclops, enough to threaten its destruction, then Aten will have no choice but to withdraw it, and with it his forces. So that’s our plan. I mean, if we find a way to destroy the beast, we’ll definitely do go for it, but I have a feeling it’s not going to happen. Not yet, anyway.
Our plan is to fight our way into the area beyond the Wailing Sea to rescue the 10th Court, which is ruled by Granny Ming (Yi says she’s very well-respected). Once we’ve relieved her forces, we hope to use them to move against Aten’s forces.
We really didn’t waste too much time once we had a plan. Yan Luo took us across the vast span of Di Yu’s hells (many of which we’d glimpsed before, when we were there the first time. I still remember it fondly, actually, because that’s where I first met Yi, and where the first sparks of love flared to life between us. *sigh* ^_^) I guess it seems like a weird place for that to happen, but then again, we are talking about me and Feng Yi. ^_^
Anyway, we eventually emerged from the chambers of the hells into a vast, dark, open space above a churning black void that sent a chill down my spine…though it was also strangely inviting… I could sense the darkness of Suko-no-kumi there, and within it the stirring of Erebus. Fortunately, though, were weren’t bound for the void. Instead, we rode majestic kirin (well, most of us did. Adam rode his wolf, Rommel), navigating from one floating chunk of rock to the next, ever closer to the Wailing Sea.
As we neared the wall, we encountered the first of the titan units that had cut off the courts from the rest of Di Yu. They were servants of Aten: two archangels, eight angels, and two small balls of light that Adam claimed were cherubim. The fight was vicious but brief. Most of us landed, knowing that if we were hit while flying above the void, we’d likely lose our mounts and go falling into that darkness forever. And while I intend to venture into those depths eventually, it was neither the time nor the place for such things. >_<
I tried to protect Yi, bolstering her stamina and remaining close to her throughout the fight while she pulled out a calligraphy brush and delicately, elegantly traced the Chinese characters for “bullet” in the air, the brush leaving a shadowy trail of ink that transformed into bullets of solid darkness, which she handed out to Charles, Adam, and Elisa. After all, the spawn of Aten, as beings of light, are quite vulnerable to the darkness. ^_^
The fight didn’t last long, and we emerged relatively unscathed, though there was a tense moment at the end when several of the angels erupted in explosions of light. Had Adam and T-Bone not moved quickly to shield Yi and Charles, things might have been bad, but as it was, we weathered the storm just fine. ^_^
The problem is, that wasn’t the end of the storm. Just as we were congratulating ourselves on a job well done, Adam spun around and fired a single bullet at an incoming missile, hitting it in mid-air and causing it to detonate prematurely. If he hadn’t been on his toes, we might have taken a pounding. >_< As the smoke cleared, we saw what had had fired the missile, and it made our hearts sink: one of Daitokuji’s Battlemover mecha was perched on a nearby chunk of rock, preparing to fire another missile at us. To make matters worse, five Daitokuji HDRs, five HKRs, and five shitidama flew up to surround us.
Great. Looks like Daitokuji’s back in the game. Some people just don’t know when to stay dead. >_<
We had to take out the Battlemover quickly, so Pierre grabbed T-Bone and threw him across the void onto the neighboring rock even while the mecha fired a second missile. Elisa shot this one down and T-Bone went sailing through the explosion, chaos protecting him from the fire and shrapnel. He landed gracefully on the Battlemover and with a touch made it malfunction. The pilot emerged to fix it, which was a bad idea. Even as T-Bone sprang away to disable the other robots, Charles finished off the pilot.
Natalia, who had come with us on behalf of her pantheon, used her powers of industry to help T-Bone eliminate more of the robots. The malfunctioning automatons went tumbling into the void, no doubt to rejoin their master, but at least they were out of the fight. Meanwhile, Adam, Charles, and Elisa made short work of the rest (I ended up giving Charles all my demon bullets, since I don’t really shoot things all that often). Meanwhile, I exorcised the shitidama, driving them back into the Wailing Sea so that they wouldn’t bother us anymore.
With our foes defeated, the way to the Wailing Sea was open, but our way through it was not…