...Guys...I think I'm...sick or something. I'm freezing cold. It's not even frost-breath. I don't know...

[Utsuho clicks on the camera. Her eyelids are baggy, and her lips and skin are tinged the blue of hypothermia. Her arms are shrunken and bony, and her wings have lost much of their feathers. She's dragging the arm cannon, as if it's too heavy for her to sling around anymore. All in all, she is withering away into a cold oblivion...]

...Naoi, Rory, anyone...I'm scared.

[She clicks off the video, but it seems like it's still going...the great sun-bird is now sniffling, and between her despaired breaths, she starts vaguely singing to herself, as if to calm herself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LunIlH-gtPw

"Lullaby of Deserted Hell."

She's not very good at singing, with her croaky raven voice, but it seems to contain the crying at least a bit.]






(OOC notes:

What symptoms will they have?: Utsuho is basically fading away, losing her fire an feathers, and overall looking like she's going to wither up and die. She also feels very cold to the touch, and her lips are turning blue, like she's hypothermic.
What will their essence rite will be?: Since she's fueled by a sun god, she needs some sort of very intense flame to be constructed and then herself thrown into it.
What is the dream hinting (or outright telling) helpers about the essence rite like?: Some sort of dream involving a boiling sun, a phoenix, people dancing around an impossibly white-hot bonfire, all of the above, have fun with it! But she needs something really hot, like molten metal or lava or something, to bring her back.
Are you open to anyone performing the essence rite?: Yes!

[The video feed starts with a dizzying blur of colour, a black clad arm flapping uselessly.]

Unhand me, trash! How dare you manhandle your—

Wah!

[And out of the well-lit interior of the office building out into the considerably brighter City. Naoi's being shoved outside, hauled out by security.

The communicator he's swinging so carelessly, seemingly unaware of the fact that it's recording, shows a familiar raven-haired girl likewise being taken outside.

Evidently, they were trying to snoop around the Deities' office building, when through one fault or another (good bets on "ruckus and mayhem"), they were caught.]

Okay, guys? About this whole "we need to get rid of the gods here so they quit sucking?" Can we get on that?

Because I have a fusion gun and hellfire and I'm ready to quit with this curse routine. Who's wanting to kick some tail feathers too? I still owe them a beatdown from when they locked me up, and I have a spell card with their names on it!

Who's with me?!

(Utsuho is paying little attention to the device, which is watching her as she sits shivering on the side of a fence. Very birdlike, perched on the post, her feathers are exuding a cold mist instead of fire, and steam is puffing from her nose with each breath, as the City's ice neutralizes her fire. She's just a big sauna steam-bird today! You could probably get the wrinkles out of clothes just by hanging them over her, and whenever she's in an enclosed space, she fills it with fog.]

WHY AM I COLD

WHY IS MY BREATH COLD

WHY AM I FREEZING

WHERE'S MY FIRE

(Every line results in her blowing a cloud of water vapor out her mouth, like a big steam gun. Her cannon is gathering a thin layer of frost. Her wings, if they're still, gather a little bit of ice too, and every so often she flaps them and shakes it off.)

You guys, it's freaking cold! Take the ice away! I'm fine in this weather.

(She jumps off the post and starts a lazy flight into the City proper, leaving a huge and obvious plume of mist behind her.)

Finally figured out this voice-to-writing thing. Neat.

Any other demons here in the City?  Anyone who likes fire? Anyone who can use fire magic? Anyone who knows anything about nuclear fusion and what I can do with it here?

Drop in and say hi.

[Utsuho is beating the snot out of a mob of zombie guards as they drag her toward a prison cell door. The room is so hot that the air is rippling, and her eyes are burning red-orange like the demon she is. She thrashes and cracks a skull against the wall, splattering ichor over its surface and splintering bone. She's awfully strong for someone who just looks like an athletic young woman, not to mention she's spraying fire from her mouth so hot that it scorches into the walls. Her wings are beating around, flailing in the cramped hallway, shed feathers flying.

LET ME -- GO!

[She blasts one in the face with her cannon, melting its head off, but then there are three more to replace it. It's just all too much, and she can't get to her spell cards because one of the other guards has them in hand, and there are four of the monsters melting their hands off as they rip the big orange cannon right off. There's an arm under there, but it's a little softer and weaker-looking than the left arm, a result of her never really using it. She gets a big mask over her face, hiding the firebreathing and the nasty jaw that she apparently can use pretty well, and her arms are behind her back now. Too reckless and dangerous to be left with the other prisoners, she's taken to the back of the hall...

And thrown in solitary confinement. Clang goes the door.]

Augh! Get back here, you freaking-- ugh! I'll melt your faces off! I'll fry your bones into charcoal! I'll squash you into torch tips! WHERE DI YOU GO?

[She hurls herself about in the cell, but she's chained now, the zombie guards have secured her to the wall. She reaches the end of her leads and falls flat on her face. She can move around, but she's chained into the cell, just in case the guards need to come in and deal with her. Her cannon is what she uses to make coherent suns...but they've taken that and sealed up her magic with these manacles, which are emitting a sickly dark glow. All she can do is flick a few flames off her body. Her strength is still there, but it's restrained with these heavy-duty chains and the mask. She can't turn into a bird with these; they'll still lock her down, and the mask will damage her face if it turns into a beak. She takes a long time to breathe, her chest heaving under the red eye.]

...Guys? Anyone? Rory? Nobori? What the hell is going on?!

I've got to get out of here...

You're going to finish reading this.

Why?

Because you know very little about the world around you, and you need to learn something.

I can't read half of this, and I don't need to.

Keep your voice down. We're in a library.


[Utsuho and her "better half" are sitting behind a dusty table, books piled high. Despite looking almost identical, it's clear which one is which. Utsuho the original is perched in the chair with her feet on the cushion and her arms folded around her knees and looking sullen; Utsuho the copy is sitting upright, one leg crossed over the other, back straight, looking down her nose with pity on her face. In stark contrast to the near-yelling volume that the raven normally has, this intruder speaks softly, calmly, and folds her wings nicely.

Judging by the scientific texts laid neatly on the table, she's also a bloody genius. Several notebooks seem to have been filled with her work already; she is talking and writing complicated equations at the same time.

The copy looks over at the video feed, now facing the City audience.]


Yes, the device is on. You still haven't learned to type on it, have you? It's about time you do. Here, let's check your spelling, try this.

[She lays down a sheet of paper in front of Utsuho; the raven tries to get up, but her copy forces her back into her chair.]

Look, this is stu--

Sit. Down.

[Despite all her calm, the copy's eyes gleam a deep and unnerving red, controlled power exuding quite the magical aura. Utsuho sits down, hard, as instructed. Now that she's better facing the camera, it's apparent how tired she is. Has the copy been keeping her here all night? Her eyelids are drooping and she has dark circles under them and her shoulders are slumped. The copy sighs.]

City, it is so difficult to educate fools.

[There is a rainstorm on the edge of the Temple, hissing into steam as it meets an orange slab of metal. Utsuho's device is tilted, as if it has been dropped, and it hovers in her blind spot and records as a storm pours down around her. It's a small and localized thing, but nonetheless she would be drenched except that she keeps vaporizing the rain. Ikari, her little black-and-fiery Asian dragon, is angrily curled up under one of her wings and grumbling about the rain in snarling noises. Utsuho seems to be talking to the little dragon despite its inability to reply, and though Ikari is peeved about the whole ordeal, she sympathizes enough to duck her head under Utsuho's open left hand.]

The City is really quiet, and cold, and lonely, and I don't like it. I miss my old job. I miss Orin and Miss Satori. I don't like the rain, and I don't like being lost, and...

I don't know what to do. And it won't stop raining, even when I'm inside the Temple, so I figured I"d leave before everything got really wet. Not that it isn't. I can't keep this up forever...

I want to go home.

[She ducks her head and folds her wings around herself and sniffles.]


[ooc: Open to action if anyone wants to drop in on her and her miserable Grab Bag curse rainstorm.]

Hey!

Back off!

[A pair of huge toothy jaws and a pair of black long feelers fills the camera. They snap shut, and Utsuho bops the dragon on the nose with her arm cannon.]

Bad! You aren't supposed to eat me!

[The camera tilts back for a conveniently wide shot as the Asian dragon rears back, back, uncurling its long body into the air, and blasts a stream of seething red magma like a stream of water down onto Utsuho. She shrugs it off -- fire is her specialty and immunity after all -- and pulls a card-shaped thing out of a pocket on her skirt. The card has some odd bright yellow-white patterns on a black background.]

Spell card, Heaven and Hell Meltdown!

[The card gleams, and a massive energy spray flies out from her arm gun and forms two enormous suns that trap the dragon between them and sear it with fusion fire. The dragon roars and thrashes, finally falling to its slender talons when the spell ends. Everything in the vicinity of the battle has now turned to ash, glass, and embers.]

There. Sit down! You're not a bird, but I'm going to teach you anyway! So shut up and listen, because I can kick your ass!

[The dragon looks kind of wary, since she did just out-flame it. It's big, though, way bigger than Utsuho, with fiery magma-like glows under its shiny black scales. Fire leaks out between them, forming the ruffles and mane that stream off its body. As she waves her cannon at it, it snarls and weaves back and forth, ducking its head in irritation.]

Your name is Reiuji Ikari. You listen to me. Now. Look at the orb over there!

[She grabs its feelers and yanks its head around; it slashes at her and knocks her down, but she doesn't let go. Stubborn dragon, equally stubborn raven.]

Say hi to Ikari, everyone! She's kind of big, so I'm going to have to figure out something, but we'll make it work!

...Hmmm, maybe pressure from a sun can shrink her a little...

[Utsuho pulls out another card, this one with a brighter glow and more complicated pattern.]

Spell card, Subterranean Sun!

[Ikari's length is balled up in a 100' sun now, the flames doing some damage as the pressure inside the star crushes against her and her magic. The dragon thrashes and snarls and roars, but the sun begins to shrink her, ever so slowly...

Then it bursts as one of her talons pierces the edge of the star with a flaring prominence that lights a few nearby trees on fire.]

Hey, that was working! Okay, trying again...

Out of the way!

[Utsuho blasts past a couple of people taking a walk, nearly bowling them over. She is running around like a maniac from place to place, the scenery zipping by as the device records her actions.]

Rocks, I need rocks. Here's a good one.

[She snatches up a bucketful of sand.]

Sand will work...ash, I need ash.

[With a roaring blast from her cannon, she pulses fusion fire all over a few trees in the forest, reducing them to little charred piles in an instant. This, she gathers into the bucket also, and zips off...towards the Temple, it seems. She does this a few more times, collecting buckets of ash, then rocks, then sand, and after a while, it becomes apparent that her mission is to build some kind of big nest-mound in one of the Temple's rooms. The place seems to be vacated. For all that she seems a little flighty, she clearly knows what she's doing here -- instinct is powerful, after all.]

More ash...these pebbles will work for the underlayer...there, okay.

[Once she has this rough mound, she makes a deep dent, heats up the rocks to a nice glow, and places on it...an egg, maybe a foot long, bronze with a fiery orange sheen to its shell. A spiral of smoke twists off the surface every so often.]

There.

[She gleams gold and shifts into her raven form, then perches herself over the egg and gently leans atop it.]



Not going anywhere until this thing hatches. It seems pretty far along...but who was taking care of it before? Who just dumps an egg on the sidewalk like that?
...
...
...
.......Okay, I'm not sure I'm ready for this.

City, uh, er...what do you do with chicks? I guess I feed it or something. But...but...but what else? Do I try to make it smarter so it becomes a youkai like me? I don't have a flock, so I guess it can be the start of one? Do I just let it do what it wants?

I don't know anything about raising chicks!

(A blazing meteor streams down through the sky, brilliant white-gold; anything near it hears the roaring of fusion fire as it blasts down through the clouds. Utsuho has entered the City, and she hurtles to earth in a bright fireball...but before she can land, she suddenly sprawls in the air and heads straight for the wall of a building. If you happen to be really close, you'll hear the shouting as the meteor wobbles about and thrashes heavy black wings in an attempt to slow its trajectory. It manages to scoot aside from smacking headlong into the wall, as it blasts down an alleyway and leaves scorch marks across the ground, melting the sand into a strip of glass and igniting any trash or debris that happens to be there. Smoke billows up from the alleyway.

Utsuho stands up, dizzied, a 5'8" woman who looks around 20 years old, has large black wings, and carries a big gold cannon around her right arm. She shakes out her shaggy brown hair and looks around.)

"Uh...Orin? Miss Satori? Anyone?"

(She takes a few seconds before an utterly shocked expression crosses her face. Her brown eyes have an otherworldly red-orange shine to them as she glances around.)

"What...where..."

(She looks over her shoulder, as if expecting something, then furrows her brows, shrugs, and rearranges a couple feathers on her wings as she thinks.)

"....It's so cold up here. Is this the surface world? Hey, I made it! What's this thing?" (She's staring straight at the device now. The video is unclear what the object actually looks like, but her hands cover the view for a while as she pokes randomly at it.) "Looks magical, I guess. I'll give it to Orin later. She likes round things."

(Utsuho sets off out of the alley, only to realize she's standing near a window...so she rises into the air and peeks inside. Look, it's a hotel lobby! She's looking in the window of Oh Aces, in the lounge, right next to... a fireplace, which she fixates on almost immediately.)

"Fire!"

(She doesn't have a second thought as she bashes in the window with her arm cannon, sweeping the glass away haphazardly and climbing inside. There's no one in the lounge when she enters, so she scoots over to the fireplace, drops the screen aside so that it falls away from the fire, and climbs onto the wood. The fire seems to have no effect other than to put a pleased smile on her face, and in a moment's golden gleam, she transforms into a four-foot-high raven with a large red slitted eye in its chest. The raven pats at the burning wood for a few seconds, arranging it a little more nicely before nestling down for a nap.)




(OOC: Utsuho is snoozing in the Oh Aces fireplace, totally uninvited. Feel free to not have seen her coming in, or this video, and just walk in on her, or to reply via her device, which she has no idea how to work, but she'll totally talk to you!)