They were apparently assigned an Overworld Scroll. Sasuke chose to interpret that as a good sign. Luck had favored them thus far, though Sasuke preferred the think it was the Amatsukami blessing them. Naruto's brashness had turned out to be the exactly right character flaw to get him through the first exam, though, as much as it pained him to even consider giving Clan secrets to an outborn, he probably should teach his bandmate how to use Tsukomo-Gami.
That was a thought for later, however, as now they had to go into the Forest and face who-knows-what. How many people actually get to increase in rank? he wondered. With the challenges laid out thus far, it was a wonder Exams frequently got enough participants to hold the tournament they ended in.
Pushing that thought to the side, he found himself instead trying to reign Naruto in when he heard some strange music coming from the left. The boy, of course, was curious, and wanted to check it out in spite of how obvious the trap was.
While Sakura was suspicious, she also pointed out that it might be a trap by a team with a different scroll, so they should try to take them out. Respecting their confidence, Sasuke admitted that they should try to take out whoever was making the music carefully; Naruto could pretend to have fallen for it while the others waited from the sidelines.
Naruto had the presence of mind to whine about the fact that he was the one being used as bait, but Sasuke assuaged his pride by pointing out that it was because Naruto had the best chance out of all of them at escaping. It was actually because Naruto was the most believable to have fallen for it, but Sasuke didn't feel that that would be diplomatic to say out loud.
So they slowly traversed through the woods, taking advantage of every hiding place they could find, and eventually came across a clearing where a beautiful woman was playing some unidentifiable instrument. Both Sasuke and Sakura found the scene weirdly familiar, but couldn't place it until after their bandmate had already moved into her sight.
--
"Hey, that music is pretty," Naruto shouted at her, "what are you playing?"
The woman giggled.
"So, anyway, we're looking for scrolls, I don't suppose you have any?"
She continued to giggle, then beckoned him to walk forward. Doing so without even thinking, feeling like his mind was in a haze, he stepped onto some white thread and suddenly found his foot unable to move. The music stopped as her giggling increased, human flesh being cast off as if a cheap costume and the form of an enormous spider coming straight for him.
Naruto tried to draw his knives, but more white threads flew from the ground and pulled his arms downward, sticking them against his torso and not letting him move. Just as it was about to bite into his flesh, a burst of flame issued into its right side just as a spear struck into its left.
Sakura managed to leap back before the white threads caught her, and Sasuke had managed his attack from outside the creature's range, so neither found themselves in immediate danger, but that wouldn't last long if the creature's very apparent rage was any indicator.
"Great, we found a Kumo. It's a Titanspawn, not another team, it won't have a scroll," Sasuke shouted as he cut at Naruto's bindings and freed him. "Let's retrea-"
it sent out more webs as he was speaking and bound all three of their legs. It was Naruto who had the presence of mind to shout "Darkness Purview: Shadow Bodies," as they all fell to the ground and the Kumo leapt at them.
While all five of the silhouettes he managed to create imitated him by falling down, the spider-thing's confusion when staring at his now pitch-black body was enough for him to concentrate and get them all attacking the beast at once.
Uncertain of how to react to this sudden horde of assailants, the goblin-spider simply stood there and struck at them randomly, giving Sakura the opportunity to reach for its leg and intone "Health Purview: Infect Wound."
As the burn, spear wound, and minor stabs from Naruto's Shadow Bodies' fake knives all expanded, the creature screeched in pain before finally succumbing and collapsing to the ground, giving them ample time to free themselves and finish it off together.
Once its twitching was done with, they all glanced toward one another, breathing heavily.
"Guys, we took out our first Titanspawn." With Sakura's proclamation, the three of them grinned. "I know it's a step down from the Demon and the Angel, but Kakashi wasn't here for this one, so I say this was a real victory-"
she continued before Sasuke interrupted, "there's no need to qualify it."
"Yeah," Naruto continued. "That thing was scary, and we were awesome!"
So excited were they by their recent victory, they didn't even notice the Vampire who had found the bag they were keeping their scroll in, even as he made off with it. Not until the Supernatural Man was a ways into the woods did they realize what was missing.
--
Shino, Kiba, and Hinata were all skilled in avoiding ambush. Their supernatural abilities were all guided toward it. So, when Shino's crows came back to warn them of impending danger, his other two bandmates had already begun to suspect something and were preparing accordingly.
Finding some bushes that would hopefully keep them concealed, they saw two groups of foreigners confronting one another. From their headbands, Hinata and Shino recognized that they were Mummies and Kue-jin, while Kiba just pretended that he definitely knew that. The three silently agreed to watch from a distance, then attack the winners, who would almost assuredly be significantly weakened.
"Demon Art: Black Wind!" A Kue-jin shouted before rushing forward at seemingly impossible speeds before striking his sword into the skinny-looking redheaded mummy.
Said redhead gave no reaction as what looked like scales made of flint-stone covered his body where the wound would have been.
"Landslide," the boy said, the earth beneath the Kue-jin opening up.
All three of them noticed that he hadn't categorized the technique, which was weird; saying the full name wasn't strictly necessary, but it helped channel the supernatural energy needed regardless of being. It was especially odd considering that he did do so with his next technique.
"Celestial Hekau: Sandstorm."
As the Kue-jin got up from their sudden fall, the dirt around them started to lift and gather, forming…was that flint? It certainly didn't look like sand when the gray mass burst from the ground and surrounded the Kue-jin.
"Interrment," the sickly one stated apathetically, once again not categorizing the ability. The flying flint in the air rushed into the cavern he had created, crushing the Kue-jin. The squishy sound was horrific to hear.
Both of the other Mummies were clearly terrified of the first one, and even as one sent what looked to be some sort of marble animal into the debris and let them know, "they only have one of the scrolls we need. The other is an Underworld Scroll."
"Kue-jin don't bleed when they die," the red-headed one noted, not having seemed to hear or care about his companion's words. "It is very unsatisfying."
His female companion, seeming to steel herself before commenting, asked him, "did you have to name your Titan powers after my specialty?"
Staring at her with unblinking eyes, the strange Mummy simply stated, "Temari, you're the one who told me to pretend to be a normal Mummy for the squawking gossips and obsessive eyes. Are you contradicting yourself because I offend you?" He reached out his hand to the much taller girl's throat.
"No, Gaara, it's just…"
The other Mummy interrupted them. "Hey, guys, let's just move forward with the mission. There's three, I think Scions, in the bushes over there that think they're being sneaky. Maybe they have the last scroll."
While training with Sakura, Hinata had managed to awaken her Athletics Arete. Getting into the theory to study a new one, plus her comments about her Guide believing Dexterity Knacks to be the most useful and trying to study something similar to that, and their physical training together already being about improving their mundane athletic abilities, it was only a matter of time.
Shino and Kiba both activated their Animal Aspects, Kiba's allowing him to run on all fours and Shino's applying the ability to fly as a metaphorical increase in speed. Their only plan at this point was to run.
"Celestial Hekau: Desert Wind," the female Mummy shouted, opening a piece of paper and letting out a burst of hot, searing wind that managed to knock Shino to the ground and had Kiba grunting in pain as he backtracked to grab his bandmate.
That backtrack was all the time the Mummy girl needed to shout "Celestial Hekau: Dust Storm," which was followed by the topsoil surrounding them rising from the ground and then swirling as if blown by a great wind.
This, thankfully, was not followed by the same fate that had befallen the earlier Kue-jin, and the flying dirt in the air merely served to block their vision and make them unable to find their way.
Of course, that was little better, as it meant that they were trapped. Shino's crows couldn't fly, the dirt would get in their noses if Kiba or Fionnadh Dearg tried to use their senses of smell, and they had no doubt the Mummies were prepared to get around their own abilities.
That was confirmed when the same marble animal from before, which looked like a cat now that they saw it up close, screeched to let its masters know where the Scions were. Kiba smashed it, his Strength Knacks making the matter simple, but doubted that that ended anything.
--
Hinata was not just terrified, but also envious. This Mummy girl had power over the wind, and more power than she herself felt she had. The daughter of Zeus was being upstaged in her own element by some upstart Egyptians, and not even children of Egyptian Gods!
As she saw the shifting in the dust that let her know her bandmates were stuck somewhere to her left and the Mummies were headed their way, she intoned "Sky Purview: Divine Threnody," and masked the sound she was creating as she shouted to Kiba and Shino, ensuring that it would come out loud and clear to their location while being muffled anywhere else.
She was proud of this ability, normally one first mastered by Lesser Demigods, and had put a lot of effort into fine-tuning it to this point. Let's see if your control of wind can match that, she allowed herself to think.
Her voice did as she had wanted, and Kiba and Shino soon found their way to her, all the while someone in the distance started shouting about one of his masterpieces being ruined.
"Can you screw up the sound waves enough to mask our leaving?" Shino asked her.
"To the Underworld with that, now that we have the element of surprise we should take them. Before you guys freak out, I've been readin' up since our fight with the Fae, and a lot of the texts agree that Mummies are stupid powerful when sending out supernatural energy, but aren't really better than mortals at physical stuff. If we can get them in close range…"
"Those Kue-jin tried that! Look what happened to them," Shino snapped back.
Hinata, not wanting to engage in the argument, quietly deferred to Shino and fine-tuned the ongoing threnody some more so that their feet would make no noise before they ran.
--
As the three personal apprentices to the Hem-Netjer-Tepi, they had trained together (well, as much as one could get Gaara to train with others, at least), and so Kankuro should be prepared and unhindered by her Dust Storm. And for the most part, he had been, sending out his Effigies and relying on his hearing as he had been taught, but then the sounds got all messed up. A girl shouted from a short ways to his right, then the same shout came from too far to hear it at all, then their movements stopped making sounds.
His Cat-Effigy had found them quickly enough, but the May-Apophis-Devour-Them Scions had smashed it! Did those bastards know how long he had spent fine-tuning each hair, giving it the right proportions, studying real cats so that he could size up everything just right until his Sekhem could make the thing move like it was made from flesh and blood instead of marble?
The Temple District had made him think that these people could appreciate art, but no, they were just like him in his Second Life, internally dull to the point of self-destruction. He felt nothing but shame on the thought of his Second Life, so the reminder only drove him into a deeper fury.
As the dust settled, Gaara gazed around apathetically. "They would have bled," he said, sounding a little disappointed. It was among the rare emotions he had expressed in a while.
"Well, they knew how to mess with sound, so taking away both our sights turned out to be a bad idea," Kankuro glared at his lone female Affiliation member, not ready to let this go. "Can't you do your star magic and find out where they are?"
"Yes, but it would take time better spent on finding the last scroll. We are on a mission, remember?" Before their argument could continue, Gaara started walking away. "Um, where are you going?"
"I sense others moving in this direction. I wish to kill them," he answered simply, which prompted the other two to follow along and hope that this next group had the right scroll.
--
Although she had no desire to defy the Hem-Netjer-Tepi, who was somewhat of a father to her, Temari did wonder what they were doing as Gaara ripped apart a band of Scions far more brutally than was necessary.
In her Second Life, she had been rather worthless; intelligent, talented, beautiful, with countless gifts to give to the world, and no desire to use any of them. She was an atheist, which she now considered to be a personal failing, but that wasn't the source of her old problems, no, that was the fact that she hadn't believed in anything.
Politics bored her, philosophy ignored her, and charity was beyond her interests. Anything that required thinking about more than tomorrow was beyond her ability to care. She put the bare minimum effort into various odd jobs to have enough money to live, and then she spent it on alcohol and gambling.
Though, she was good at the latter, being naturally inclined to mathematical calculation and being sneaky enough to cheat, she even beat out some of the Hexslingin' Cowboys that operated undercover from the Village Hidden in Tall-Tales; those men and their strange supernatural powers had always fascinated her, and she had no doubt there was a potential timeline where she asked one to introduce her to a Manitou and have her gamble with the Underworld for the benefit of the Weird West, but that would have required caring about things.
So, instead, she kept gambling to ease the boredom of life, cheated the wrong man, got shot dead, and found her last moments in a strange conversation with a being she genuinely believed to be Osiris asking her what she'd do with a second chance.
It was during that conversation that she realized that she had no desire to keep doing the same thing; she wanted a purpose, she wanted to believe in something greater than herself, and so Osiris put a spell into her and her rotting corpse started walking to the Village Hidden in Hekau.
Once the shattered soul from her first life had joined, once the bandages and frankincense had been prepared and removed to reveal her anew, she swore that she wouldn't be who she was ever again. She dove into her new religious education, into the Mummies' eternal quest of restoring Ma'at to this broken world.
Her devotion had been so pure, her talent so quickly apparent when properly applied, that the Hem-Netjer-Tepi himself had taken her under his wing. And now…she was escorting Apophis's Gatekeeper to where he could betray their Village's greatest ally in order to…get revenge? Stop the King of the Land of Resurrections from cutting their funds? Was this really what the Judges of Ma'at would look fondly upon?
It is not my place to question, only to obey the will of my betters, she insisted, though it felt hollow.
Looking at the headbands of the Scions that Gaara had just killed, she noticed that one of them was a Pesedjet. Would the Gods really smile upon her fighting their own children? Could they forgive her?
--
Dosu was rethinking the parameters of his mission. Get into the exams, test the capabilities of Sasuke "Amaterasu" Amatsukami, and get out. Hopefully with no one realizing what any of the three of them were, especially Kin.
The Akhmat girl, especially with Orochimaru's enhancements bringing her cannibal magic to new heights, would probably put a damper on their friendship with the Mummies if her identity were discovered, not that the Lasombra leading their little Band wouldn't cause a scandal if exposed.
The Mutant Zaku was the only one who had a place to stand, as the Village Hidden in Wastes had been a mistake from the start, and where else were the Mutants supposed to go when it collapsed? Not that they were worth much, as it was only through experimentation on how to give him more mutations than should have been possible without completely wrecking his sanity that he was able to compete with the other Supernatural Men. Of course, calling him 'sane' was a bit of a stretch, but he was functional enough to obey Dosu's orders.
And so, that was where he had been left, obeying the orders of some outcast Scion so he wasn't stuck as a Rogue from a Village he had never been to with two lunatics in the same boat, chasing after some other Scion, some sort of 'golden boy' among his Village, and damn it all, he was actually going to do it. He was Orochimaru's pawn, to be used and discarded, as much as he utterly despised the fact.
So, that was their next move, to find Sasuke Amatsukami and 'test' him, not kill him, though Dosu had the rather liberal interpretation that if said boy were to die under his hands, well then clearly he had failed the test and wasn't worthy of Lord Orochimaru's attentions. Was that not how it worked?
Zaku's freakish nose had found the boy, and the same man's wings were itching to jump into a fight, but Dosu advised caution. Even if he wasn't particularly inclined to fully go along with their lord and master's orders, for said master to take an interest in the boy probably meant that he was something special, and thus someone they should consider a threat. They needed to do this carefully.
Nodding to Kin to let her know that she could be open about her art here, she drew one of her skewers, dipped into the special bags with their seal of cold to stave off rot, and pulled up a human ear, which she promptly devoured with far too much gusto for either of her companions' comfort.
Cupping her hands over her own ears, she informed them that Sasuke was with two others, an apparently particularly whiny boy and a girl that wasn't inclined to listen to his whining. Dosu internally chuckled, thinking about Zaku. All chuckling ceased when she informed him that they were chasing another group.
"Well, I suppose that this is a good time as any to observe."
--
While the Scions had been distracted by the Spider-Thing, he had had the foresight to grab their scroll. It was an Overworld Scroll, the perfect addition to their own Middle World Scroll. Of course the Scions would get the one associated with their Gods, he thought somewhat bitterly, but let that idea be dismissed as 'irrelevant' when he heard them figure out what he had done and start shouting in frustration.
Luckily, the Obfuscation Discipline kept him safe from their eyes, so long as he didn't do anything to bring attention to…he tripped over a rock. And shouted before he thought. Because of course he did. His Coterie was going to let him have it later, if he lived.
Maybe, just maybe, he was lucky enough that they wouldn't notice him before he could channel his Vitae again. "Obfuscation Discipline: Unseen Pre-"
"There he is!" The Scion with the black hair shouted. Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. And he had been so certain, he was finally going to get the others' approval. Maybe he still could.
"Animalism Discipline: Beckoning Birds," he intoned, hoping that there were enough…yes! Several of the creatures flew towards him from nearby trees. "Animalism Discipline: Feral Whispers," he whispered, and then met the eyes of as many birds as he could, telling them that the Scions were predators who threatened their eggs, and that their eyes were vulnerable.
Enough of them were cawing angrily that when the pissed off Scions finally reached him, they had to contend with a flock of various birds going straight for the eyes. That was enough for him to make a run for it.
--
Sasuke was already annoyed at his triumph being interrupted by a thief, and he did not need this flock of birds from nowhere.
"Fire Purview: Bolster Flame," he shouted, flicking his lighter open and letting his Ichor do the rest. Whatever command the Vampire had given the birds wasn't enough to overcome their fear of fire, as they scattered in terror.
--
Something prompted him to look back when the orange light came from behind. He had no idea what that something was, but he fully intend to strangle it when he learned, as he saw the flames and then his Beast went crazy.
Hold it down, hold it down, hold it down, he insisted to himself futilely as he felt his arms start to shake and his legs start to move in the wrong direction. He needed to go ahead, circle back, and find his Coterie members' hideout.
The Rotshreckt had other ideas, as it needed to get as far away from the enormous flame as possible, and in spite of his repeated mental demands it was not held down. So he bolted, not to where he wanted to go but in the direction that looked furthest away, which, wouldn't you know it, led him straight into an earthen wall leading up to a plateau, and him stuck on the wrong side. Way to go, Rotschrekt, you stopped yourself from getting away.
--
The Scions finally found one of the ugliest creatures they had ever seen, covered in greenish blemishes and with a face that looked like it was rotting. It's headband had two masks on top, one concealing fangs, marking it as a Vampire, while on the bottom was another mask, this one crying. Nosferatu? Sakura tried to remember, but ultimately dismissed the thought as she joined her bandmates to interrogate the interloper.
"First off, you're going to give us the scroll back, and then you're going to lead us to your Coterie so we can get whatever scroll you have. Understand?"
The girl tried to take on her most intimidating stance as she said it, with Naruto switching his appearance to Epic Ugliness and matching the creature's repulsive aura, presumably in an attempt to intimidate, and Sasuke flicked his lighter open and closed.
As the Vampire looked back and forth, obviously terrified, he chose negotiation, "listen, I can give you back your scroll, there's no need for hasty decisions, but there's also no need to take ours. My Coterie has it anyway, but that's not the point, as what if we worked together? You can already see how I can help you get some more, so what about it, some Village-to-Village cooperation? Show that we are past the days of the old wars?"
It was a desperation ploy and he knew it, and none of the Scions looked particularly interested in buying it.
--
He had tossed out what seemed like his best hope, not expecting them to buy it, when he noticed something moving in the trees behind them. His Coterie had apparently come to investigate what was taking so long, and was now ready to ambush these Scions and save him. Investing all of his willpower into preventing a smirk, he did what he could to keep these godspawn from noticing.
"Oh, please take pity on a poor sewer rat, lost to the gutters and desperate for your kindness. Such a powerful group as yourselves shouldn't lower your standards to kill one as pathetic as I am, so, I ask, nay, I beg of you, don't do anymore than you have to…".
The Gangrel had grown claws and leapt at the taller boy. The Toreador had appeared behind the girl in a flash, holding a knife to her throat. Taking his cue, he charged the shorter boy.
--
Sakura had blocked the knife stabbing into her before realizing what had happened. Seizing on her opponent's surprise, she rammed the butt of the spear she was still holding from their earlier fight into the assailant's stomach, which did surprisingly little. Whomever she had just struck didn't seem prone to feeling pain, which after a millisecond she realized would be typical for Vampires.
Said Vampire had already taken advantage of her surprise to send the knife back for her throat, but, taking advantage of the Dexterity Knacks training Kakashi had given them, she rolled her neck out of the way and jumped off the ground to land on her assailant's shoulders, twirling the spear above her head to get a better angle and aiming straight for the man's heart.
That probably would have been the end of it, had the Vampire not looked up to her eyes and showed her…beauty? This creature was so beautiful, so wondrous, so friendly, how could she ever think of marring it? Sakura was almost ashamed of herself before the Vampire took the opportunity to stab her in the thigh and make her fall to the ground.
--
Sasuke felt the tips of the claws pierce his flesh before he dodged. Between Kakashi's training and his own, as he would say, quite impressive skills, he got out of the way before those claws could dig deeper, but even so he felt the downright unnatural pain they caused. These were things he did not want slicing him. Not that he would have been inclined to let them anyways, but the extra reminder helped.
Vaguely remembering the very brief Academy lectures on Vampires and fire, he sought to use Bolster Flame again but found his lighter frustratingly uncooperative. Of course, now would be the time for it to break down, and he had no time to ask its Kami what was wrong as the Vampire was not done with the assault.
Bringing his naginata out from its easy storage spell, he managed a strike into her stomach, which only seemed to annoy her, then found himself desperately blocking and dodging as she went on the full offensive, attacking like some sort of savage animal. There was little enough strategy that he should have been able to find an opening, but there was also enough speed that he couldn't exploit any at this rate.
--
"I'll be more vulnerable to your fingernails than your weapons," Naruto called out to the charging Nosferatu, who, with Naruto's suggestion empowered by his Charisma Knacks, stopped to consider it for half a second, just long enough for Izanami's son to toss multiple throwing knives into the thief, then look on in dismay when they didn't have nearly the impact they should have. They hit, and the hits bled, but he seemed completely unfazed, not even flinching at their impact.
Drawing two daggers, the hideous creature grinned, "never fought a Vampire before, huh, kid?" causng Naruto further dismay as his wounds closed themselves. "I almost wish I'd studied Potence so your statement could be true, but, uh!"
As the hideous Vampire got closer, Naruto pulled on his Appearance Knacks to make himself look more repulsive (as rude as it might be to say, his current opponent gave him the idea) in hopes of distracting the enemy long enough to think.
"Is this what people feel when they look at me?" Naruto's opponent stated in shock, trying to imitate the Scion by emphasizing his own deformities, which did in fact manage to make Naruto nauseous.
He responded by trying to put more emphasis into his Appearance Knacks, making him even more hideous.
The Vampire responded to that by dribbling some kind of rotten bile onto his torso, then flexing to show how disgusting he could look.
It was then that both realized that they had completely forgotten what they were doing and somehow gotten into a competition over who could be the most disgusting, which moderately embarrassed the two of them until they simultaneously had the sense of mind to intone "Darkness Purview: Shadow Bodies" and "Animalism Discipline: Beckoning squirrels," which would have led to further embarrassment on Naruto's part as his silhouettes did battle with a great army of squirrels had they not gotten their knives into the Vampire, over and over again, before he could give the animals who showed up proper orders.
As it was, only a few of them actually attacked as the Nosferatu cycled between fending off Naruto's attacks and trying to communicate why they should hurt the black things, something that was going badly as Naruto and his copies were launching way too many attacks.
Still, one squirrel managed to bite into the real one's head by more or less accident, causing the boy to run screaming in pain demanding that some unspecified party 'get it off of him,' and, losing concentration, leading the Bodies to do their thing and imitate him, but at that point the wounds that the Scion had inflicted were too much for even a Vampire's resilience and the creature in question slumped to the ground.
--
Sakura would never later admit that she won because of Naruto. In truth, the Vampire, Toreador if she understood the black rose symbol under the masks, was too fast for her, even if only in short bursts, and she couldn't get a hit in edgewise. It was only through the combination of Wits and Dexterity Knacks that she could dodge at all, and even then she was occasionally getting nicked by the handsome man's knives.
But then, her opponent found himself horrified, stunned by something causing him sheer terror, seeming to cause him to hold nothing but contempt for life itself, and sparing a glance at whatever he had staring at, Sakura saw that Naruto and the Nosferatu had somehow gotten it into themselves that now was the time for an ugliness contest.
The paralyzing disgust that her opponent felt was almost imitated by her, but she had the presence of mind to exploit this opportunity and drive her spear straight through his heart.
Once the wood behind the metal tip made contact, he stiffened and fell to the ground, unmoving and not breathing. Were he a mortal, he could definitively be proclaimed dead. Sakura knew better with this particular creature, but he had still been defeated, and so she moved to examine her bandmates' fights.
--
Sasuke would most definitely not admit that he won because of Sakura and Naruto. It was the realization that both of her companions had been taken down (before he could take down his own opponent, Sasuke realized with a frustration he forced himself to not feel at the moment) that distracted her, making her wonder what she should or shouldn't do.
This was enough time for him to jump away, not trusting her distraction in the event of a direct attack, and concentrate for four seconds. While that was enough time for her to decide to pursue the attack, it wasn't enough time for her to get him before he shouted "Sun Purview: Heavenly Flare," right when she was directly in front of him, her face inches from his neck.
He had hoped that a blinded opponent would be more manageable, but he had no idea just how useful his actions would turn out to be.
The girl was screaming in pain, rolling on the ground as if desperately trying to put out a fire, her face covered in what looked like third-degree burns and part of it turning to…ash?
Sasuke had been under the impression that Vampires had solved their weakness to the sun. After all, only being able to work at night was too crippling a weakness when competing with the other Villages, and they had been at war with the Scions in the past, which meant, well, while Sun wasn't the most common Purview, it was hardly rare either. That was on top of their vulnerability to fire.
So, Sasuke was indeed shocked at this revelation. Sakura and Naruto joined up with him, staring at the screaming Vampire.
"They have alchemical formulas for this. I guess she hadn't been taking them," Sakura noted.
--
They decided to negotiate, letting the Vampires live in exchange for their Middle-World Scroll. None of them had been in a state to respond, either screeching in pain or unconscious (in 'torpor,' as Sakura informed them) but Band 7 found agreement a reasonable assumption and took the scroll, leaving the three in a shaded area that would still be dark when the sun came up.
That could have been the end of it, that should have been the end of it, but then the area surrounding them turned pitch-black. Sakura and Sasuke were completely lost, while even Naruto was struggling to see, as their was some sort of wrongness to the darkness that made his normal abilities less effective. Thus, he didn't notice the first skewers until they had already struck him in the knees.
--
When they realized that the Cowboys hadn't noticed them, Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji kept to stealth. Not knowing offhand what their capabilities were, observing from a distance seemed to be the best bet for now. What they observed was the reddish skinned one kept sitting down, cutting and marking himself while chanting for several hours at a time, while his two companions, one dressed like what one would expect when they heard the word 'cowboy' and the other in some fancy black suit and top hat that seemed weirdly out of place in this setting, either sat still or argued with one another.
The two pale-skinned ones did not seem to like each other, but whenever the fighting started the one in the suit always proved too cowardly to push things and backed down, which gave Shikamaru a small inkling of an idea. Whenever the reddish one finished his odd meditation, he would get up and point, leading the other two Cowboys to follow along in whatever direction he indicated. The Band would follow, quietly.
The next time they stopped, Shikamaru intoned "Cheval Purview: Rada's Eyes," and hitched a ride on the one with the suit's vision, trusting his companions to look after his body, when something happened…while inside the Cowboy's head, he found himself looking through the man's eyes as expected but instead of just seeing the world around him he also saw some strange plane of existence, with some horrific mass of oddness, of wrongness, of death and despair, (and also, weirdly, somewhat resembling Baron Samedi, whom he guessed was technically his uncle), that was looking at him with both hatred and expectation, running what barely counted as its fingers over a set of…poker cards?
He barely had time to process this before he was expelled and thrown back into his own body.
"Dammit, some interloper just tried to poke around in my head!"
"Not that they'd find much," his companion snarked as he readied a metal object that two of the three Scions barely recognized as a gun.
Guns were strange to the Supernatural Men; most had been lost with the World-That-Was, and the stories about the Age of Myth were, as with all stories of that time, inconsistent.
Once the Age of Myth ended, Fate conspired to eliminate them; many people who tried to use one would find it breaking in their hands, unless 'personalized.'
There was no universal agreement as to what that meant, but from what they understood from their studies guns would only work if built by something for themselves or for a specific other person that the maker knew (and possibly if inherited from father to son, or from a best friend to another at the time of the user's death, or things like that), and that attempting to mass-produce them would inevitably lead to failure.
Something out there, possibly Fate itself, wanted to ensure they were rare and valuable.
There were a few in the Loa Clan's history, supposedly the remnants of what once belonged to individuals named 'Stephanie St. Claire' and 'Francois Duvalier' and some group known as the affranchis from the World-That-Was, but Shikamaru had never seen one. Ino knew the stories of the gun with a broken bit of Mjolnir for a hammer that one of Thor's Scions had wielded, but that was hardly a normal gun, and Choji had no idea what kind of weapon the Cowboy was wielding.
"I'm trying to concentrate," the meditating one said, "could you two deal with the matter?"
The other two nodded, staring out into the woods for potential threats, the one in the suit said, "I think I felt 'im flee that away," then made a weird flourish with a deck of cards, intoned "Hexslingin': Soul Blast," let his eyes flash a strange color for half a second, then grinned as his cards started to glow with an eery light before sending forth a bolt of strange, transparent energy that passed right through the bushes and trees without affecting them in the slightest before smacking right into Choji, drilling a bloodied hole in his torso.
"I think I got 'im," the hex slinger shouted excitedly. He tried to repeat the action, but cursed as his glowing cards faded.
"Those demons of yours are still useless, I see," the gunslinger smirked before firing off his weapon in the same general direction.
"Shut up, you worthless lout, why I oughta'…" the gunslinger's look shut the hex slinger up.
Instead, the man in the suit turned back in their direction and shouted, "why don't I give ya a taste of yer own medicine," and messed around with his cards again until they glowed once more, this time sending out a more generalized energy that they couldn't identify.
"Hexslingin': Eyeshot," he intoned, then started describing the exact location of Ino and Choji as well as their general appearances and apparent weapons. He had Shikamaru's location down, but not any details, which combined with the 'taste of yer own medicine' comment made the boy realize that the Cowboy was looking through his eyes.
Covering his face as he looked to the ground while they dodged around the increasingly accurate bullets, and biting back a screeching pain as one managed to ricochet off a rock to strike at his leg in a maneuver he suspected would be impossible without a Cowboy's talents, he said to his bandmates, "I've got a plan, but it's risky. Choji, using the three of us, can you send your trigrams back around to yourself to use 'Blessing of Bravery' at a range?"
"It's possible."
"Ino, do you see that partially rotten tree over there? Can you use the Fertility Purview to weaken it further from this distance?"
She nodded, though squealed when a flying bit of branch stabbed into her face when a bullet shattered part of the nearby tree.
"Okay, here goes."
--
"Taiyi Purview: Five-Cycle Augmentation." "War Purview: Blessing of Bravery."
Sending the trigrams to empower others' Purviews into his bandmates, who sent it back into him through the power's circular nature, and using his own enhancement he, at Shikamaru's request, used a different Boon on one of the Cowboys. It was an odd decision, as this was a Boon typically reserved for supporting one's allies, but Choji saw the advantage.
"Hey, you think you want to see through my eyes," Shikamaru said, not knowing if their Cowboy friend could hear them with this ability but deciding it was worth a short, "why don't you see how your friend is doing?"
In the clearing where their enemies resided, they all heard, "gunslinger, my ass, you'd be doing more damage if you actually did throw your guns over there!"
"Well, I don't see you doin' anythin' worthwhile, ya damn huckster!"
"Hah, I did more than you. I actually found the damn intruders, thank you very much, and I would like to say that I'm sick of you lookin' down on me all the time!"
"Where the hell has this come from?!"
"It comes from me realizing that I don't have to take any of yer crap anymore, that's where, and knowin' that yer gal's a whore…"
"Why, you sonnuva bitch!"
The gunslinger stopped shooting for long enough to leap at his companion and bring him to the ground in a friendly wrestling match. The 'friendly' part of that preceding sentence was an outright lie.
With them stuck in the same spot and no longer providing suppressing fire, Ino stood up, ran up far closer to the clearing than she would have been comfortable with not too long ago, and shouted "Fertility Purview: Blight," which in turn prompted an already rotting tree to tilt and ache until it collapsed into the clearing, falling right between them.
Shikamaru had assumed that the tree would either screw up their composure and give the Band cover to get up close while the Posse was disordered and distracted, or crush one of them. Pinning two of them like this went better than expected, and Choji secretly wondered if his bandmate somehow knew that exactly this would happen and made up his other stories to keep from sounding too sure of what would sound like an unpredictable coincidence.
His long-time friend would, of course, claim that he was being silly and thinking to such an extent would not only be impossible but a 'drag,' but wonder he did.
Of course, the other Cowboy had completely abandoned his meditation at this point, so caution was still warranted, but Choji liked their odds. The reddish Cowboy tapped some tattoo on his body, intoned "Favor: Speed of the Wolf," and the vague outline of some sort of spirit-wolf surrounded him. "Favor: Strength of the Bear," he continued, slicing into his own arm as he did so, and a transparent outline of some sort of ghost-bear surrounded him as he leapt toward the tree, far faster than expected, and lifted it up from the ground.
Such a feat would have been impossible for a mortal, though not for Choji, and the Cowboy struggled with it intensely. Even assuming that their foe now held superhuman speed and strength, he should still be within the range of something three Scions could fight with little issue.
Hoping that their opponent realized that and didn't try to prolong this fight unnecessarily, Choji shouted, "we have you surrounded and outnumbered! Show us your scroll and we'll leave you alone!"
The Cowboy seemed to consider it for a few seconds, but then tossed the tree to the side and charged at Ino. He was fast, and strong, and thus smacked her onto the ground before she could properly defend herself, but Choji, leaping to the aid of his friend, was able to barely block the man's swing with his Strength Knacks, and then engage the man in a a grapple that neither could escape, both of their supernaturally enhanced strengths pulling and pushing against one another.
Choji had no idea who ultimately would have won, for Ino intoned "Fertility Purview: Toxic Thorn," and took advantage of their standstill to ram the poisoned plant-like appendage growing from her hand into the Cowboy's back.
--
Two of them had an arm and a leg crushed. The other was suffering from poison. They would live with medical attention, but none of the three Scions knew if they were likely to get it anytime soon.
Reluctantly leaving them to their fate, the three took their Overworld Scroll, excited about the fact that it was different from their own Middle World Scroll, and left to continue the search. Assuming that the meditating Cowboy had been leading his Posse somewhere specific for a reason, the Band went on in that direction until they ran into a fight shrouded in unnatural darkness.
--
Techniques:
Demon Art: Black Wind-calls on the user's negative and 'bad' parts of their soul to risk sanity for speed
Celestial Hekau: Desert Wind-both heats the air and sends it bursting forth in a strong gust, requires a weather chart or other weather-forecasting device to use
Celestial Hekau: Dust Storm-loosens the topsoil and sends forth swirling air to send the loose dirt into the air, blocking out vision, same requirement as Desert Wind
Landslide-same as Earth Purview: Landslide, but uses Titan energy instead of Ichor
Sandstorm-same as dust storm, but turns dirt particles into sand or small rocks capable of hurting those within the storm (Gaara just uses Apophis's power, but Temari could learn a Celestial Hekau with the same name snd power in the future)
Internment-buries targets in the most dangerous source of nearby earth
Obfuscation Discipline: Unseen Presence-blocks the user from being noticed, so long as they do nothing to bring attention to themselves
Animalism Discipline: Beckoning X-attracts multiple animals of a specified type to the user's location
Animalism Discipline: Feral Whispers-allows one to speak to a single animal and be understood so long as your words are within its cognitive abilities, must be done one animal at a time
Appearance Knack: Visage Great and Terrible-changes the user from being beautiful to being ugly
Appearance Knack: Epic Ugliness-emphasizes the hideous parts of one's features to others
Presence Discipline: Awe-makes the target impressed or attracted to the user
Hexslingin': Soul Blast-sends a beam of energy that hurts humans (and those similar enough) but affects nothing else
Hexslingin': Eyeshot-user sees everything the target sees
Favor: Speed of the Wolf-user asks neutral Manitou to increase their speed
Favor: Strength of the Bear-user asks the neutral Manitou to increase their strength
Fertility Purview: Blight-sickens and rots targeted plant life