Scion - Petro Campaign - Session 101
Okay, so if there's one thing I've learned from our adventures in 1943 Hong Kong, it's that I can totally rock being a damsel in distress. Seriously. Sometimes you've just got to go with the flow and let yourself be captured. It can really make things like tracking down the enemy headquarters or drawing out big, vicious titanspawn much easier. ^_^
So, anyway, I left off last time with Elisa and me planning disguise ourselves as the commanders of the divine forces in Hong Kong: a daughter of Marishiten named Yuzuka and her perky kitsune adjutant, Ruka. Masquerading as those two, we were to go investigate the predations of a renegade jorougumo (youkai spider woman) whose handler had disappeared. We assumed she was being used by the moon beasts to draw out Yuzuka and Ruka, and therefore expected the moon beasts to attempt to capture us.
Fortunately, Yuzuka fell for me hard. I couldn't help being a bit flirtatious, though of course I have no intention of indulging her interest (yeah, I'm bad >_<). But the important thing was that she was wrapped around my finger so tightly that when T-Bone became visible and introduced himself, she didn't freak out too badly and accepted the fact that he was there to help us disguise Elisa as Yuzuka with his illusions. Meanwhile, I used my own powers to look and act just like Ruka, and had altogether too much fun double-teaming Yuzuka and Elisa with Ruka's super-perky antics. Watching Yuzuka struggle not to tell me that she'd have me whipped (which she constantly tells Ruka) was hilarious!
Anyway, once we were disguised, we left Yuzuka and Ruka safely in the HQ while Elisa (as Yuzuka) and I (as Ruka) rode out in a jeep to check out the slums area allegedly inhabited by the escaped jorougumo. We told them they could pray to us if they needed help, and that we would hear them. So Ruka prayed for all the cotton candy in America. She's adorable. But she's also a seven-tailed fox spirit, so I'm sure she nowhere near as vapid as her perkiness makes her seem. ^_^
The jorougumo's lair wasn't hard to identify. The alleys were festooned with nearly invisible webs, making the entire area a deathtrap for the homeless and anyone else unfortunate enough to wander through. Several corpses hung in the webs, cocooned in webbing, and tiny goblin spiders swarmed over them, eating each other in a deadly game to determine which would survive to grow into adulthood. As we watched, one of the bodies swelled and its belly ruptured, disgorging another swarm of the small spiders. I like spiders and all, but still. >_< Eeew.
The mother jorougumo was nowhere to be seen, but we knew she was there, somewhere, waiting. Getting to her was the problem. Elisa could see the webs well enough to navigate them and search the area, but it wasn't a good idea for her to go in alone. I was bound to get stuck if I tried infiltrating the place, and our friends would have a tough time when they teleported in to help us out too. We didn't want to burn the webs away until we had killed the mother spider because we feared doing so might drive her away instead of driving her out. So I did the only thing I could. I tossed myself onto the webs and began to struggle and scream like I was stuck, hoping that the jorougumo would come to investigate.
Actually, I really was stuck. So I was really hoping that Elisa and the others could deal with the jorougumo before she ate me. ^_^
Of course, the jorougumo emerged in short order and came crawling toward me with far more grace and speed than her truck-sized body would imply. But about then, Charles teleported in with Pierre, and Elisa began pumping rifle shots into the spider woman. I happily announced to Charles and Pierre that I was bait. ^_^ I'm not sure where Adam was, exactly...but I think he remained in wasp form during the fight. T-Bone stood nearby ready to protect me if anything got too close.
The jorougumo was accompanied by a couple of her daughters, smaller, roughly dog-sized jorougumo that came skittering my way. I didn't really want them trying to suck out my vital fluids (only Suchette...and Tabby...and sometimes Amelia...are allowed to drink my blood), so when they got close, I sent a blight of deathly corruption arcing through the webs around me, rotting the spiders from the inside out and killing them.
Of course, the mother jorougumo was still a big problem, but I didn't actually get to see the rest of that fight. I'm sure it was really cool, though, with Pierre throwing the spider woman around through buildings and Elisa breaking free of webbing to unleash Aztlanti hell on the titanspawn! But, uh...yeah, I kinda got kidnapped.
See, just after I killed the smaller jorougumo, I was snatched from the webbing by a strong, flying, impish creature with rubbery, pitch-black skin and no face. Another one tried to grab Elisa but she rolled out of the way just in time. I realized immediately that the thing that grabbed me was a nightgaunt. I mean, hello? I've read my Lovecraft. ^_^ Yummy, yummy Lovecraft. ^___^. And by this point, what with the moon-beasts and gugs and such, I'd figured out that Lovecraft based a lot of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath on these moon-beast things we were fighting. So I guess I wasn't all that surprised to see nightgaunts showing up.
Anyway, Charles reacted instantly and shot down the nightgaunt that had tried to catch Elisa. But before he could shoot mine down, I prayed to him to let it take me. After all, it was serving the moon-beasts, and so it was no doubt taking me to their hideout. Elisa could just track me there, so this was our best shot at finding the place!
So I was spirited off to over a cove on one of Hong Kong's islands. The nightgaunt kept tickling me the whole damn way! I was exasperating! So I was completely drained by the time we plunged into the waters of the cove and emerged through a slimy membrane into the moon-beasts lair, which was completely made of a kinda of slick, rubbery material...something like jellyfish flesh, I guess. >_< Eeeew.
The nightgaunt thrust me into a membranous cell that already held a kabe (animate wall) youkai named Gozu (not the same Gozu that was a son of Ryujin and commanded the divine forces in Hong Kong before he was captured by the Celestial Bureaucracy). Gozu had been there for a few days, and told me that there were two other captives in a neighboring cell: a three-tailed kitsune named Rio and a karasu-tengu girl named Kazumi (karasu-tengu are half-crow tengu, as opposed to the somewhat more human dai-tengu like Hondo). I was kinda shocked to hear that Kazumi was a tengu girl. I didn't think there were female tengu, but I guess it's just the dai-tengu who are all male. I guess you learn something new every day! ^_^
Anyway, I prayed to the others to let them know where I was. By that point they'd finished off the jorougumo and Elisa was in the process of burning away the webs and baby spiders without setting the whole neighborhood ablaze (though I know she wanted to ^_^). Once they'd finished the cleanup, Elisa began tracking me to the moon-beasts' HQ.
It wasn't a terribly long wait, but still long enough to be a bit unpleasant. I was able to chat with Gozu for a bit, until some of the moon-beasts' satyr guards decided to have a little fun with us. They opened up the cell and started playing their pan pipes, hoping to see how a hot woman girl (I'd dropped my disguise by this point) and a wall would make out under the pipes' influence. I was totally unaffected by the music, though, and entranced Gozu to keep him from doing anything foolish, so the satyrs got bored and left us alone.
But that wasn't the only thing that happened while I was stuck in the cell. Ahrimane showed up again, this time to strike a deal with me and me alone. Time stopped around us as he appeared, and he was very charming and cordial. He offered to take me to Nanking so that I could save Yi's grandmother from being raped and tortured there. After all, that's the main reason Yi harbors such a hostile grudge against the Japanese, and eliminating that would eliminate the main sticking point in our relationship, and the main reason that she and Amaterasu hate one another. In exchange, I just had to stick around long enough for Ahrimane and his titanspawn to unearth something from the cemetery in Nanking. He wouldn't tell me what it was, but assured me that it would not alter the present as I know it.
I got the sense that he was being completely honest with me. After all, honesty serves his purpose, and makes the deal more enticing. I must admit that I was tempted, as I knew I would be. I'd been dreading this encounter with Ahrimane since we learned it was a possibility. My problems with Yi have been weighing on me for months now, and I just want to get over it all and return our relationship to the way it was. The way it's supposed to be. I had an opportunity to do that, right? And we could always find out what Ahrimane dug up and deal with it in the future. Well maybe.
But I didn't make the deal. It wasn't because of what Ahrimane might dig up in Nanking. It was because agreeing to his deal, and stopping the rape of Yi's grandmother, would change Yi. She wouldn't be the same person. I've been going on and on about how much the Celestial Bureaucracy's brainwashing and identity switching pisses me off; and if I agreed to Ahrimane's deal, I'd be doing essentially the same thing to Yi. Sure, she might be better off. WE might be better off. But I don't know that. She wouldn't be the Yi I know and love then. I mean, her flaws are part of who she is, and if I'm not willing to take the whole package, then I don't deserve her.
Somehow, realizing that made all the bitterness of the past months seem petty and insignificant. All I wanted right then was to go and find Yi and be with her again. But I had to content myself with planning to go let her know exactly how I feel as soon as all this is over, or maybe even before then, if I can go to her when we're done in Hong Kong but before we move on to our next objective.
Ahrimane did not seem upset when I denied his deal. He was quite friendly, in fact, and I got the distinct impression that he likes me. Not like most people...he's not crushing on me or anything...but he sees something that he LIKES in me. Maybe it's the fact that I'm willing to bend the rules a bit, even if I decided not to in this case. In any event, I have a feeling I'll be seeing him again. Before he left, though, he did promise to drop the walls of my cell when my friends arrived. There was no price for doing that, he just felt like helping out, no doubt to build a bit of goodwill between us. It's all very intriguing...
Anyway, shortly after Ahrimane disappeared, Charles, Pierre, Elisa, Adam, and T-Bone arrived. As soon as they did, the door to my cell warped open and I happily rendered the satyr guards unconscious with a touch of illness. Apparently the doors to the other cells opened as well, because the tengu girl, Kazumi, charged out with a sword made fire and attacked the downed satyrs, hacking them into bits. I was going to stop her until the other prisoner, the smarmy kitsune named Rio, told me that she needed some payback. The satyrs had apparently had their way with poor Kazumi, and so she was due a little vengeance. A lot of vengeance, actually.
With the immediate guards defeated, we made our way through the HQ, looking for the rest of the moon-beasts and their servants. Most were gathered in a large communal chamber that held four moon-beasts, a couple of gigantic gugs, five more satyrs, and two night gaunts. The nightgaunts tried to grab Elisa and me again (even though we no longer looked like Yuzuka and Ruka), but I acted first and drained their vitality in an instant, killing them both. Kazumi charged the satyrs and tore into them with all the fury she was due, and what she didn't kill, T-Bone and I finished off. Meanwhile, Elisa took on the moon-beasts and Charles faced the gugs. I'm not sure what Pierre, T-Bone and Adam did in the fight, because, for the third time in as many hours, I got captured. Several more nightgaunts flew in and tried to grab all the prisoners again, plus Elisa. Of course, only Elisa was able to evade their snatching, tickling claws.
Actually, I'd been watching the way Charles dodged attacks, and I could have copied him and avoided the clutching claws of the nightgaunts, but when I realized they were going to make off with Rio, Kazumi and Gozu, I figured I'd better go along to help save them, so I let the nightgaunts grab me too. After all, once we emerged from the ocean, I could just kill the nightgaunts with my power over life and death and we'd be home free, right?
And that's pretty much exactly what happened. Only...the Celestial Bureaucracy was waiting for us just above the waters outside to moon-beast HQ, so after I killed the nightgaunts we ended up in the drink staring up at the very people I was hoping to avoid. Wang Dang, Xi Ci and Da Ji were all there, hovering over the waters on the backs of undulating Chinese dragons. Da Ji seemed miffed, Xi Ci seemed triumphant, and Wang Dang seemed...tranquil? Bored? Smug? Eh, whatever.
The Bureaucracy gods summoned a gigantic sea tortoise beneath Rio, Kazumi, Gozu and I, lifting us out of the water. And then I began negotiating. I assumed that the Bureaucracy had located us by following the ripples of our time anomalies, so I leveled with them. But not before giving Da Ji the password provided by Nuwa: "I'm sent by the one who tugs your little tail." This left Da Ji flustered, Xi Ci scandalized, and gave me a bit of an edge in the discussion that ensued.
I told them that I and my associates were not from this time, and had been sent back to eliminate the influence of forces that were trying to take captives in the past. I assured them we were trying to avoid altering the timestream any more than strictly necessary, and that once we'd eliminated the moon-beasts, we would let them get back to what they were doing.
They were a bit confused (except for Wang Dang, who was just tranquil), but given our connections to Nuwa, they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. But, you know, I just can't help being a bit naughty, and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to make them face the horror of what they're doing to the Japanese agents. So when Da Ji assured me that the Japanese agents would be returned when the war was over, I informed them that wasn't the case. Not only that, I told them how the Celestial Bureaucracy was trying to cover things up because they lacked the courage to take responsibility for what they had done, albeit out of some degree of spiteful (if justified) anger toward the Japanese. And, to top things off I told them that when all was said and done, both Wang Wang and Xi Ci would also be turned into some sort of lesser gods and shuffled off to an innocuous corner of Tien to be forgotten so that the Bureaucracy wouldn't have to acknowledge their sins.
Wang Dang was frustratingly cool with this. "Well, if it's for the greater good..." he said in his tranquil, pot-high voice. Seriously? He's willing to go along with is just because the Bureaucracy doesn't want to be embarrassed? The guy's so at peace that he can't even think for himself anymore! Well, maybe it's his dharma to be a tool. >_<
Xi Ci, on the other hand, was not happy to learn any of this, and she was even more pissed off at Wang Dang's attitude than I was. She very nearly attacked him, which would have been pretty entertaining too, but perhaps a bit more than I was ready to take responsibility for. Fortunately, the rest of my comrades emerged from the ocean, having finished off the remaining moon-beasts and their servants, and Charles, lord of mediation, helped to calm things down.
Charles managed to talk Wang Dang into sharing with us the records on which Japanese agents were captured and what they were turned into. After all, those records no longer exist in our present, and they'll make it much easier to set things straight in the future. Way to go Charles! Sera's such a lucky gal. ^_^
So, it looks like we're in good shape with the local Bureaucracy right now. It's frustrating that we're going to have to leave Kazumi, Rio, Gozu, Ruka and Yuzuka to be spirit-wapred by Wang Dang and Xi Ci, but we can't risk any more deviation from the time stream. I've already caused a big enough ripple by letting Xi Ci and Wang Dang know what their fates would be. On the one hand, I hope that Xi Ci at least acts on the information and changes things for the better. That might empower Zvran more than we'd like, though. And if I ever find out Wang Dang acted preemptively to spirit-warp Xi Ci before she was ready for it so that she wouldn't cause any trouble later on, his ass is mine. t O_O t
So, anyway, I left off last time with Elisa and me planning disguise ourselves as the commanders of the divine forces in Hong Kong: a daughter of Marishiten named Yuzuka and her perky kitsune adjutant, Ruka. Masquerading as those two, we were to go investigate the predations of a renegade jorougumo (youkai spider woman) whose handler had disappeared. We assumed she was being used by the moon beasts to draw out Yuzuka and Ruka, and therefore expected the moon beasts to attempt to capture us.
Fortunately, Yuzuka fell for me hard. I couldn't help being a bit flirtatious, though of course I have no intention of indulging her interest (yeah, I'm bad >_<). But the important thing was that she was wrapped around my finger so tightly that when T-Bone became visible and introduced himself, she didn't freak out too badly and accepted the fact that he was there to help us disguise Elisa as Yuzuka with his illusions. Meanwhile, I used my own powers to look and act just like Ruka, and had altogether too much fun double-teaming Yuzuka and Elisa with Ruka's super-perky antics. Watching Yuzuka struggle not to tell me that she'd have me whipped (which she constantly tells Ruka) was hilarious!
Anyway, once we were disguised, we left Yuzuka and Ruka safely in the HQ while Elisa (as Yuzuka) and I (as Ruka) rode out in a jeep to check out the slums area allegedly inhabited by the escaped jorougumo. We told them they could pray to us if they needed help, and that we would hear them. So Ruka prayed for all the cotton candy in America. She's adorable. But she's also a seven-tailed fox spirit, so I'm sure she nowhere near as vapid as her perkiness makes her seem. ^_^
The jorougumo's lair wasn't hard to identify. The alleys were festooned with nearly invisible webs, making the entire area a deathtrap for the homeless and anyone else unfortunate enough to wander through. Several corpses hung in the webs, cocooned in webbing, and tiny goblin spiders swarmed over them, eating each other in a deadly game to determine which would survive to grow into adulthood. As we watched, one of the bodies swelled and its belly ruptured, disgorging another swarm of the small spiders. I like spiders and all, but still. >_< Eeew.
The mother jorougumo was nowhere to be seen, but we knew she was there, somewhere, waiting. Getting to her was the problem. Elisa could see the webs well enough to navigate them and search the area, but it wasn't a good idea for her to go in alone. I was bound to get stuck if I tried infiltrating the place, and our friends would have a tough time when they teleported in to help us out too. We didn't want to burn the webs away until we had killed the mother spider because we feared doing so might drive her away instead of driving her out. So I did the only thing I could. I tossed myself onto the webs and began to struggle and scream like I was stuck, hoping that the jorougumo would come to investigate.
Actually, I really was stuck. So I was really hoping that Elisa and the others could deal with the jorougumo before she ate me. ^_^
Of course, the jorougumo emerged in short order and came crawling toward me with far more grace and speed than her truck-sized body would imply. But about then, Charles teleported in with Pierre, and Elisa began pumping rifle shots into the spider woman. I happily announced to Charles and Pierre that I was bait. ^_^ I'm not sure where Adam was, exactly...but I think he remained in wasp form during the fight. T-Bone stood nearby ready to protect me if anything got too close.
The jorougumo was accompanied by a couple of her daughters, smaller, roughly dog-sized jorougumo that came skittering my way. I didn't really want them trying to suck out my vital fluids (only Suchette...and Tabby...and sometimes Amelia...are allowed to drink my blood), so when they got close, I sent a blight of deathly corruption arcing through the webs around me, rotting the spiders from the inside out and killing them.
Of course, the mother jorougumo was still a big problem, but I didn't actually get to see the rest of that fight. I'm sure it was really cool, though, with Pierre throwing the spider woman around through buildings and Elisa breaking free of webbing to unleash Aztlanti hell on the titanspawn! But, uh...yeah, I kinda got kidnapped.
See, just after I killed the smaller jorougumo, I was snatched from the webbing by a strong, flying, impish creature with rubbery, pitch-black skin and no face. Another one tried to grab Elisa but she rolled out of the way just in time. I realized immediately that the thing that grabbed me was a nightgaunt. I mean, hello? I've read my Lovecraft. ^_^ Yummy, yummy Lovecraft. ^___^. And by this point, what with the moon-beasts and gugs and such, I'd figured out that Lovecraft based a lot of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath on these moon-beast things we were fighting. So I guess I wasn't all that surprised to see nightgaunts showing up.
Anyway, Charles reacted instantly and shot down the nightgaunt that had tried to catch Elisa. But before he could shoot mine down, I prayed to him to let it take me. After all, it was serving the moon-beasts, and so it was no doubt taking me to their hideout. Elisa could just track me there, so this was our best shot at finding the place!
So I was spirited off to over a cove on one of Hong Kong's islands. The nightgaunt kept tickling me the whole damn way! I was exasperating! So I was completely drained by the time we plunged into the waters of the cove and emerged through a slimy membrane into the moon-beasts lair, which was completely made of a kinda of slick, rubbery material...something like jellyfish flesh, I guess. >_< Eeeew.
The nightgaunt thrust me into a membranous cell that already held a kabe (animate wall) youkai named Gozu (not the same Gozu that was a son of Ryujin and commanded the divine forces in Hong Kong before he was captured by the Celestial Bureaucracy). Gozu had been there for a few days, and told me that there were two other captives in a neighboring cell: a three-tailed kitsune named Rio and a karasu-tengu girl named Kazumi (karasu-tengu are half-crow tengu, as opposed to the somewhat more human dai-tengu like Hondo). I was kinda shocked to hear that Kazumi was a tengu girl. I didn't think there were female tengu, but I guess it's just the dai-tengu who are all male. I guess you learn something new every day! ^_^
Anyway, I prayed to the others to let them know where I was. By that point they'd finished off the jorougumo and Elisa was in the process of burning away the webs and baby spiders without setting the whole neighborhood ablaze (though I know she wanted to ^_^). Once they'd finished the cleanup, Elisa began tracking me to the moon-beasts' HQ.
It wasn't a terribly long wait, but still long enough to be a bit unpleasant. I was able to chat with Gozu for a bit, until some of the moon-beasts' satyr guards decided to have a little fun with us. They opened up the cell and started playing their pan pipes, hoping to see how a hot woman girl (I'd dropped my disguise by this point) and a wall would make out under the pipes' influence. I was totally unaffected by the music, though, and entranced Gozu to keep him from doing anything foolish, so the satyrs got bored and left us alone.
But that wasn't the only thing that happened while I was stuck in the cell. Ahrimane showed up again, this time to strike a deal with me and me alone. Time stopped around us as he appeared, and he was very charming and cordial. He offered to take me to Nanking so that I could save Yi's grandmother from being raped and tortured there. After all, that's the main reason Yi harbors such a hostile grudge against the Japanese, and eliminating that would eliminate the main sticking point in our relationship, and the main reason that she and Amaterasu hate one another. In exchange, I just had to stick around long enough for Ahrimane and his titanspawn to unearth something from the cemetery in Nanking. He wouldn't tell me what it was, but assured me that it would not alter the present as I know it.
I got the sense that he was being completely honest with me. After all, honesty serves his purpose, and makes the deal more enticing. I must admit that I was tempted, as I knew I would be. I'd been dreading this encounter with Ahrimane since we learned it was a possibility. My problems with Yi have been weighing on me for months now, and I just want to get over it all and return our relationship to the way it was. The way it's supposed to be. I had an opportunity to do that, right? And we could always find out what Ahrimane dug up and deal with it in the future. Well maybe.
But I didn't make the deal. It wasn't because of what Ahrimane might dig up in Nanking. It was because agreeing to his deal, and stopping the rape of Yi's grandmother, would change Yi. She wouldn't be the same person. I've been going on and on about how much the Celestial Bureaucracy's brainwashing and identity switching pisses me off; and if I agreed to Ahrimane's deal, I'd be doing essentially the same thing to Yi. Sure, she might be better off. WE might be better off. But I don't know that. She wouldn't be the Yi I know and love then. I mean, her flaws are part of who she is, and if I'm not willing to take the whole package, then I don't deserve her.
Somehow, realizing that made all the bitterness of the past months seem petty and insignificant. All I wanted right then was to go and find Yi and be with her again. But I had to content myself with planning to go let her know exactly how I feel as soon as all this is over, or maybe even before then, if I can go to her when we're done in Hong Kong but before we move on to our next objective.
Ahrimane did not seem upset when I denied his deal. He was quite friendly, in fact, and I got the distinct impression that he likes me. Not like most people...he's not crushing on me or anything...but he sees something that he LIKES in me. Maybe it's the fact that I'm willing to bend the rules a bit, even if I decided not to in this case. In any event, I have a feeling I'll be seeing him again. Before he left, though, he did promise to drop the walls of my cell when my friends arrived. There was no price for doing that, he just felt like helping out, no doubt to build a bit of goodwill between us. It's all very intriguing...
Anyway, shortly after Ahrimane disappeared, Charles, Pierre, Elisa, Adam, and T-Bone arrived. As soon as they did, the door to my cell warped open and I happily rendered the satyr guards unconscious with a touch of illness. Apparently the doors to the other cells opened as well, because the tengu girl, Kazumi, charged out with a sword made fire and attacked the downed satyrs, hacking them into bits. I was going to stop her until the other prisoner, the smarmy kitsune named Rio, told me that she needed some payback. The satyrs had apparently had their way with poor Kazumi, and so she was due a little vengeance. A lot of vengeance, actually.
With the immediate guards defeated, we made our way through the HQ, looking for the rest of the moon-beasts and their servants. Most were gathered in a large communal chamber that held four moon-beasts, a couple of gigantic gugs, five more satyrs, and two night gaunts. The nightgaunts tried to grab Elisa and me again (even though we no longer looked like Yuzuka and Ruka), but I acted first and drained their vitality in an instant, killing them both. Kazumi charged the satyrs and tore into them with all the fury she was due, and what she didn't kill, T-Bone and I finished off. Meanwhile, Elisa took on the moon-beasts and Charles faced the gugs. I'm not sure what Pierre, T-Bone and Adam did in the fight, because, for the third time in as many hours, I got captured. Several more nightgaunts flew in and tried to grab all the prisoners again, plus Elisa. Of course, only Elisa was able to evade their snatching, tickling claws.
Actually, I'd been watching the way Charles dodged attacks, and I could have copied him and avoided the clutching claws of the nightgaunts, but when I realized they were going to make off with Rio, Kazumi and Gozu, I figured I'd better go along to help save them, so I let the nightgaunts grab me too. After all, once we emerged from the ocean, I could just kill the nightgaunts with my power over life and death and we'd be home free, right?
And that's pretty much exactly what happened. Only...the Celestial Bureaucracy was waiting for us just above the waters outside to moon-beast HQ, so after I killed the nightgaunts we ended up in the drink staring up at the very people I was hoping to avoid. Wang Dang, Xi Ci and Da Ji were all there, hovering over the waters on the backs of undulating Chinese dragons. Da Ji seemed miffed, Xi Ci seemed triumphant, and Wang Dang seemed...tranquil? Bored? Smug? Eh, whatever.
The Bureaucracy gods summoned a gigantic sea tortoise beneath Rio, Kazumi, Gozu and I, lifting us out of the water. And then I began negotiating. I assumed that the Bureaucracy had located us by following the ripples of our time anomalies, so I leveled with them. But not before giving Da Ji the password provided by Nuwa: "I'm sent by the one who tugs your little tail." This left Da Ji flustered, Xi Ci scandalized, and gave me a bit of an edge in the discussion that ensued.
I told them that I and my associates were not from this time, and had been sent back to eliminate the influence of forces that were trying to take captives in the past. I assured them we were trying to avoid altering the timestream any more than strictly necessary, and that once we'd eliminated the moon-beasts, we would let them get back to what they were doing.
They were a bit confused (except for Wang Dang, who was just tranquil), but given our connections to Nuwa, they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. But, you know, I just can't help being a bit naughty, and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to make them face the horror of what they're doing to the Japanese agents. So when Da Ji assured me that the Japanese agents would be returned when the war was over, I informed them that wasn't the case. Not only that, I told them how the Celestial Bureaucracy was trying to cover things up because they lacked the courage to take responsibility for what they had done, albeit out of some degree of spiteful (if justified) anger toward the Japanese. And, to top things off I told them that when all was said and done, both Wang Wang and Xi Ci would also be turned into some sort of lesser gods and shuffled off to an innocuous corner of Tien to be forgotten so that the Bureaucracy wouldn't have to acknowledge their sins.
Wang Dang was frustratingly cool with this. "Well, if it's for the greater good..." he said in his tranquil, pot-high voice. Seriously? He's willing to go along with is just because the Bureaucracy doesn't want to be embarrassed? The guy's so at peace that he can't even think for himself anymore! Well, maybe it's his dharma to be a tool. >_<
Xi Ci, on the other hand, was not happy to learn any of this, and she was even more pissed off at Wang Dang's attitude than I was. She very nearly attacked him, which would have been pretty entertaining too, but perhaps a bit more than I was ready to take responsibility for. Fortunately, the rest of my comrades emerged from the ocean, having finished off the remaining moon-beasts and their servants, and Charles, lord of mediation, helped to calm things down.
Charles managed to talk Wang Dang into sharing with us the records on which Japanese agents were captured and what they were turned into. After all, those records no longer exist in our present, and they'll make it much easier to set things straight in the future. Way to go Charles! Sera's such a lucky gal. ^_^
So, it looks like we're in good shape with the local Bureaucracy right now. It's frustrating that we're going to have to leave Kazumi, Rio, Gozu, Ruka and Yuzuka to be spirit-wapred by Wang Dang and Xi Ci, but we can't risk any more deviation from the time stream. I've already caused a big enough ripple by letting Xi Ci and Wang Dang know what their fates would be. On the one hand, I hope that Xi Ci at least acts on the information and changes things for the better. That might empower Zvran more than we'd like, though. And if I ever find out Wang Dang acted preemptively to spirit-warp Xi Ci before she was ready for it so that she wouldn't cause any trouble later on, his ass is mine. t O_O t