(Untitled)

[ofthedream]

WHO: Ysera and OPEN
WHERE: Central Park Reservoir
WHEN: Monday afternoon
WARNINGS: Piranha, ducks being eaten
SUMMARY: Chompey fish in Central park
FORMAT: Whatever

Comments

[ofthedream]

Ysera lifted her wings in slight surprise, and interest, at his near-druidic control of the plant. However, there was no mistaking the feel of magical energies from another plane... In fact, they felt more akin to the chaotic energies of the Twisting Nether and it's demonic denizens than to true druidic energy. She restrained her automatic distaste for demonic energies down to merely lashing her tailtip in displeasure.

This mortal child did not have the feel of the Burning Legion about him. And yet... there was something inhuman about him. It was enough to pique her interest. Especially as he was using apparently demonic plane energy as a substitute for druidic power.

She rumbled thoughtfully for a moment, eyeing the fish heads falling from her scaled leg. There was no need for him to know that she would have to be careful not to stay too long submerged, otherwise the fish might even manage to gnaw their way between her scales and burrow into her flesh in their madness.

She turned her attention back to Kurama, "I am looking for balance. These piranha have upset the natural order."

She tilted her massive, horned head to the side to regard Kurama. "And what do you seek, young one?"

[gardenerthief]

Young one? Oh there was something Kurama didn't often hear, outside of humans who didn't know better. All the better if this great monster underestimated him, anyway.

"Much the same. A number of us are attempting to study them - they seem to be multiplying faster than they can be killed, at least without an attack that would decimate everything else in the water as well."

"May I ask your name, Ryu-sama?"

[ofthedream]

For Ysera, everyone less than 10,000 years old counted as a young one. Though she wasn't quite sure what Kurama was, it was a safe bet that he was not older than she was. Few beings that were not Eternals were.

She switched off forelegs as the man talked, and dumped another pile of voracious fish onto the shore. She rumbled with displeasure and simply stepped on the floundering pile of fish to dispatch them. "They are unnatural creatures. None such could co-exist in the Balance."

She turned her head and lowered it down to hover just before the man on the shore. "I should hope no one is so foolish as to suggest unleashing poison or plague."

She tilted her head slightly. "You may. As shall I. What is your name?"

[gardenerthief]

He'd need a few more tails before he got to that point.

"Not to my knowledge, but now that they've invaded the city's plumbing, it's only a matter of time before people begin reacting in extremes. I'm becoming more and more interested in finding out where they came from - until we know what is causing this, we are only treating symptoms, not the sickness itself."

He smiled a little, acknowledging her conversational maneuver, but 'let the Wookie win' applied doubly to dragons.

"I am Kurama, though I go by Shuichi Minamino," he said, with a bow.

[ofthedream]

Ysera lifted her head away and shook out her wings for a moment before ridding the water of two more clawfuls of piranha. "That is an excellent question. Though we may be unlikely to learn the answer anytime soon, unless someone asks the piranha themselves. But you may have as many of these as you care to take."

And then she cocked her head to the side as she regarded him, still through closed eyes. "And which may I call you?"

"I am Ysera."

[gardenerthief]

"Shuichi is a human name. Please call me Kurama."

Kurama had assumed that she was blind, like Yomi, but he found that if he looked closely at her closed eyes, he could see them moving. Not the mindless rolling of blind men, but as if in a dream.

"I do not know if anyone in the City has that ability. Or how much such single-minded things as this would have to say... In this case, unless we can find where the fish are entering the reservoir and prevent it...well I suppose the scooping may be theraputic."

[ofthedream]

Ysera lashed her tail tip as she regarded Kurama. So, her suspicions were correct. He was not merely a human. Though, she could not claim certainty that he was a demon, either. It was more likely he was something she had not before encountered in Azeroth or the City. Though, if he proved a demon, she would have to decide on a course of action.

The Titans had not charged her with this world's protection from the evils outside it's bounds. Azeroth is the world the dragonflights were charged to guard. And yet, being here as she is, she cannot condone allowing the Burning Legion a foothold...

"I see. Has the construct Lachesis altered your body as it has others'?"

Ysera primly resettled her wings along her back before speaking. "Even creatures of little intelligence have something to say if you know how to listen. There are those that would argue plants lack intelligence, and yet, they speak in their own way."

She lifted each foreleg in turn to dump more fish on the shore. "I confess, therapeutic as it could be, I would much prefer a permanent solution. Armored against their teeth I may be, but I would not chance a swim to search for their entry underwater."

"Have you any ideas?"

[gardenerthief]

"Lachesis? ...Lachy!" Forgive him, he learned its name from Aphrodite. His hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose: he should have known better than to trust anything she said at face value.

"Yes. I was given no new powers, but an alteration was made. I know very well how eloquent plants can be. They-" He stopped for a moment, a thought occuring to him.

"Nothing with blood in its veins is safe from the teeth of these little monsters, and they've chewed through wood in the past, but what if..."

There was a small fence between the path that looped the reservoir and the water itself, and a thin strip of land populated by pebbles and reedy scrub (and tooth-scored bones), and, with a thoughtless vault, Kurama. He reached for a reed and once again started channeling demonic energy, causing the plant to grow into a net-like cage about a foot into the lake. He was then able to reach his hand in and, with another, larger burst of energy, strengthen the reed so that it stood strong against the immediate interest of the fish. A tiny, safe space.

For a moment, the victory filled him with grim satisfaction, but it faded as he looked across the vast, man-made lake. "No. The reservoir is too big, and I have no access to plants that can both survive underwater and withstand their teeth for more than a few minutes without my help."

For a moment, his mind wandered. He remembered a vast, wild forest, filled with strange and savage beasts, and an incalculable wealth of incredibly beautiful, often brutally vicious, otherworldly plants. His friends. Those he could have used, could have sent hunting down and trapping every last one of these piranha and leaving, at his bidding, everything else untouched, but alas...

The second he stopped channeling energy into the reed, the fish tore it to pieces, and one even jumped out of the water at Kurama as he withdrew, before he sliced it in half with a leaf-turned-blade. Its two halves fell back into the water and disappeared in a froth of its brethren's teeth.

"Such little monsters."

[ofthedream]

Ysera's tail lashed once as she felt the surge of demonic energy once more. She turned back toward the shoreline and swung her head around to watch Kurama's work closely. Her snout loomed over him as she cocked her head to the side and regarded him intently through closed eyes. It was definitely energy from another plane. But although it felt akin to the Twisting Nether, it did not taste of the corruption of the Burning Legion.

As distasteful as demonic energy was in general, this energy felt more balanced than chaotic... strangely, even, nearly akin to the familiar feel of Nature energy. She wasn't quite sure if it was a demonic perversion of nature energy, or something else. But her uncertainty cleared as the alien, primordial forest of his wandering dreams appeared in her dreamsight, surrounding them.

"So, then..." Ysera rumbled deep in her throat as she watched Kurama through the window of his dream. In his dream, he was more than the human that stood before her. She was not sure what he was, but she knew what he was not. He was not part of the Legion. The Legion was the chaos of destruction; not the chaotic pattern of thriving nature. And it was the power of nature he used. She was fairly certain now that he was not using the power of this Earth's nature, tainted with demonic energy. The feel of the forest showed where he drew his power from - the cycle of Nature of a demonic world. Likely a world naturally within the Twisting Nether.

She nearly laughed. A demonic druid. About as unlikely and preposterous a combination as one might ever imagine. And yet, unless she was greatly mistaken, that is what she was seeing at this moment.

She lowered her head further, to within fifteen feet of Kurama. "How did you come to have this power, Kurama?"

[gardenerthief]

It was an unexpected question, and it drew his full attention - to her dream-sight, he looked up at her with wide green eyes and narrow gold ones alike.

"...I inherited it. My mother had such skills." It was a true statement, but there was still a conflict in his heart when he said it.

"What is it you see, when you look at me through your closed eyes?"

[ofthedream]

Since the incessant biting was wearing thin on her patience, Ysera turned to step out of the water, shedding more piranha onto the grass. She shifted her weight to step on most of them before answering.

"I see you. As you are, and as you imagine yourself, Kurama." With dreamsight she could see both the material world and the Dream. She sat back on her haunches and curled her tail around her legs like a cat as she regarded Kurama before lowering her head and her voice to speak closely to him. "You are not human. Not wholly. It is not something the porter construct did, though. You see yourself as both."

[gardenerthief]

Once again, there was no trace of fear from Kurama as Ysera leaned toward him, though he'd make an easy mouthful in his curremt (or any!) form. In his mind's eye, there was a human woman (Mother), someone for whom he felt deep loyalty and concern. (And someone who was defenseless - who certainly could not command plants.)

"No, the porter isn't powerful enough to do this to me," he replied with a wry smile. "Though if it can steal a dragon for itself, iperhaps I shouldn't say such things aloud."

[ofthedream]

She cocked her head to the side, an expression on her reptilian features that was a mix between amused and annoyed. "It can do more than that, Kurama. I am still myself, yet I am less than I once was." If he should underestimate her and try to use it against her she would show him the error of his assumption. Even diminished in this world, and cut off from a large portion of her power, she was still the Mistress of the Dream.

Ysera shifted and resettled her wings as she considered him. She could see the mother of his heart - the one his thoughts turned toward when he mentioned his mother. But she was mortal and wholly human. He could not have inherited his demonic essence or strange power from her. Her curiosity was eating at her. Rarely did she - whom had guided the evolution of her world and nurtured the aspirations of it's sentient beings - come across such a paradox as Kurama presented. It was a curiosity she couldn't ignore. If he proved a danger to this world he would have to be dealt with. Though the more she spoke with him, the less inclined she was to believe he was truly a threat. Besides, the idea of druidism on a demonic world was an intriguing notion.

"It is alien to me that a being of the Nether planes should be raised by human mortals." She lowered her head closer to him. "As alien as one of demonic essence to have power over the cycles of Nature of any world. Demons of the Twisting Nether thrive on chaos and destruction rather than growth and balance. Such powers are - normally - anathema to each other."

[gardenerthief]

"The Demon World is not the Nether World, any more than the Spirit World is the Celestial Plane. It is a place for all supernatural beings, those who were not created with mortal limits, so that the Living World can be kept for mortals alone." He didn't seem offended by the confusion, but if this dragon was considering attacking him out of the assumption that his demonic past made him inherently evil, he would prefer to clarify.

"My first mother was a kitsune, a spirit fox. She was the servant of Inari Okami, god of agriculture, and I inherited that legacy. One the teleporter has also limited."

Which still doesn't explain how he has a human mother as well, but this is already more forthcoming than he tends to be with most people, much less recent acquaintances. His head finally tilted just slightly as he watched her massive jaws and horned face nearing him, and he reached whatever decision he had been forming in the meantime.

"My anger at its treatment seems childish in comparison with what a god must feel, kept from her world and her duties."

[ofthedream]

Ysera rumbled gently and dipped her snout slightly to acknowledge him. "I lay no claim to being a god, though there are those who have considered me as such. Do not belittle your feelings in comparison to any other's, Kurama. Your anger is as mine in being cut off from home, family, power, duty, domain, and life. As is the anger of any whom has been so ill-used."

She would not ask about his human mother. She did not need to. Fostering or adoption are not unknown to her. She herself had fostered the child of the Goddess Elune because Elune had been unable to be there for him as a mother on the material plane. It did not mean that Elune did not love Cenarius as a mother as much as Ysera herself did.

She could see no sign that he was lying to her about his ancestry. It was something of a relief because it settled her mind and her sense of responsibility. A spirit serving a god of agriculture - and the spirit's offspring - would be as much enemies of the Burning Legion as any of Azeroth's Eternals. The Legion's power was poison to growth and life, and would be opposed to Kurama's power despite his origins in a demon world. Though it sounded as though this Demon World had such a collection of non-mortal beings that 'demonic' as Ysera knew it was hardly a distinction that should be made. Indeed, it sounded as if this Demon World would have included a great number of the denizens of Ysera's own realm.

She flicked her tailtip. "So many worlds and planes are ordered differently than mine. If your Demon World is indeed made for those without mortal limits, then that is where me and mine would have been, though we vehemently deny being called 'demonic' as my world uses the term."

[gardenerthief]

"That may be true, but I do not think you'd like it there. Then again, it would certainly have been a very different place, if you and others like you lived there."" There was a flash, though, of something shifting. Nothing so narrative that it could be called a dream, but the image of Yusuke, and a feeling of great, positive change. The Demon world was already different.

He takes a moment to look around, and then leaps up into a nearby tree. Now that she was looking for it, there was the subtlest hint of power as he does so - apparently he could supplement his human form with demonic power. Another surge and he emerges, comfortably seated, at a height that won't oblige her to crane so much. (She was far too large for him to pretend to put himself at an equal eye-level.)

"I take it demons are inherently evil, in your world?"