Time Period 1: One Month In
[QUOTE=Sub-Zero MKA;5397735]In only a month's time, the Lookout had been restore to its former glory, with only minimal differences. A testament to the resilience of the Guardian and all parties involved. With eleven months remaining until Eva's vision came to pass, having this off the minds of their human allies would go a long way toward allowing them to prepare unhindered.
She landed on the Lookout plaza and immediately headed inside. She could feel Ochazuke's energy deeper within and closed in on it. Funnily, she found him in the same place where they first met, the West Wing Library. She couldn't recall the subject matter or the back and forth involved with that conversation. Regardless, it was something, she was sure.
She stepped inside, where he acknowledge her. She saw he was writing something with what looked like a paint brush... for some reason. "A month later, as I said," she responded as she stepped in further. "I see the Lookout has been restored. Very good. How are things on Earth?"[/QUOTE]
With the paper set to dry, Ochazuke responded with a short grunt.
"I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, however, that my world has remained largely in the dark of these matters," he said. Reaching across the desk, his hand gathered a seal bottomed with red ink. Pressed deeply into the paper was a red-crowned crane.
"Of course, the price of such an existence is that we are not ready should something come. For whatever impression of guile and wit carried by a man like Pantaloon, most of humanity are simply content to live out their lives. Alakazah in his own manner had allowed them that much, even as he wiped away all dissention."
His expression darkened as he moved the paper onto a stack. "I'd thought he'd sown division, seeded thorns between us throughout our history. What he'd done is more akin to him salting the land. To prepare in full, it will take time we do not have."
So it was. Without further comment, he produced Auroc's journal.
"Here is the original. I've made copies for ourselves so that our allies might prepare."
Time Period 3: Some Months In
[QUOTE=Sub-Zero MKA;5406543]"Thank you," Parsley said with a courteous nod. It must have been unorthodox for living people to just show up and ask to speak to one of the higher ups. Then again, it was an unorthodox conundrum she found herself thrust into. Out of the entire afterlife, one would naturally assume that Hell would be the most secure. And yet, after Stine and Hammer, and with so many powerful souls being sent there, there must have been a strain somewhere. Perhaps Sihn knew what was going on.
And while they were there, some questions needed to be asked about certain parties like Sakin, Genesis, and Eldfen. The latter of which wasn't dead and needed to be finished off once and for all.
She stepped inside his office. "Hello again, Sihn. I hope the past few months have treated you well."[/QUOTE]
Ochazuke followed behind Parsley as she strolled in. and at a rather noticeable distance at that. When she had approached him concerning the matters of the afterlife and members of a higher order of cosmic being, he'd been prepared to brace for the worst.
The realm of the dead, departed souls, the site of the last judgement before being cast forth to heaven or to hell.
Despite the undeniable expanse that stretched across golden clouds and silver skies...he had not expected it to look quite this clerical.
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;5408406]He nods.
“Well enough. What brings you here?”[/QUOTE]
"A matter of the living and the dead. Souls are escaping from Hell. We'd encountered a couple that possessed a friend of ours."
Unspecified Training Period
"Are you sure about this?"
Zaofan stood near the entrance of the Room of Spirit and Time, chambering capsules into a container like bullets, before setting them into a stack. He counted them off from the top, one to twelve, as he carried them behind his counterpart.
Green granules seeped hastily from the great ornamental glass timer. To Ochazuke's eyes, they fell swifter than gravity should have allowed, as if they sped forward to catch up, keeping its time to the rhythm of an entirely separate passage altogether.
"The last time we'd left Earth, for a single victory we almost lost everything," he replied to the chef, "I'll not have that happen so long as I live."
One year was hardly enough time to fortify this world, and any change they'd enact on the Earth below would have to be done gradually. Though cultivation of a world without That Man would have to come from a place besides force and might, the Ulthan's plot had no room for weakness.
Moreover, even on Reshlan and Darkle it was plain to see the difference in condition between themselves, the Saiyans...and the Oni. Would they rise to the challenges of the universe, or be broken and discarded like the generations of dead men in their shared martial legacy?
"We'll get a year's worth of training out of the way now, by our own means. Only then will we chase after the memory of the Master."
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Stepping through the heavy door they found a place frozen in perpetuity. In some respects it was perhaps similar to Vaikuntha, though it was drained of colour and life. Zaofan tested his footing, as he swore something felt off, and then he [I]definitely[/I] knew something was off when a blast of air hit him.
"...brrr, it's worse than stepping into a meat locker," he said, "Feeling a little heavier, too."
"Evangeline and Etrina mentioned the gravity. Suppose it's a side effect of the time compression, an expanded moment, perhaps."
Zaofan shaded his eyes as he shivered, scanning the horizon and pacing about the living quarteres. "...sure is an expanse, that much is for sure," he said, "...so! Uh...are we going to just spar for a year or wha-"
Ochazuke pulled out two capsules. The first he cast down produced an earthenware jug of such shadowy make it could only have come from Darkle.
Its mouth was sealed by an etched stone.
"Oh no. Bad idea. [I]Horrible [/I]idea."
Loosing his broad shoulders from his dogi, Ochazuke took a breath and focused. "I'll be with you shortly. Prepare lunch, and I'll get the next meal."
Grimacing, Zaofan neatly paced out of the yawning void and into the roofed area, out of the blistering cold. When he was out of range, Ochazuke plucked the stone off the top of the jug. Immediately, lightning loosed from the heart of the earthenware, striking into the sky and darkening the mist into fog and darkness. Within the expanse which held no weather but burning or freezing, the captured storm took possession of it and turned the place as dark as sack-cloth.
Then heralded upon the skeletal specters of countless souls, she arrived.
The Witch of the Dark Moon, she who had lost her name long ago, but the fearful spoke her new moniker in hushed whispers.
[B]Widow's Strife; Kevi the Stalker.[/B]
Her eyes, cleared to the whites, gazed hatefully down upon Ochazuke, and wordlessly, she cast her hand out to him and began draining his ki. The Martial Artist, in response, merely stood still in his rooted stance of [B]Sanchin[/B], even as wave after wave of her cursed spell wicked away at his reserves...he seemed far more concerned with staying upright than making a move.
"Yes...yes...!" Slowly her form became less ethereal, a phantom no longer, as she descended over him, setting foot on the chamber floor. "You've made a foolish mistake releasing me, you should have-"
Five fingers sculpt in the beak of a Crane struck her in the throat, and a foot gilded in the neutralization energies of [B]Kongosho [/B]struck Kevi in the midsection. The burst of ki...it had only a middling effect as it pushed her back a short distance.
"...impudent whelp. No matter. It is dull if we cannot make it a game-"
She reached out to pull more energy from him, but her eyes flared wide as she cast a view to her wrist. The most ordinary bracelet...coursing with Hozon. A gift from Hilda, Ochazuke held the other on his own wrist, curling and rolling his wrist as he made a fist. Subtley, he began to power up, and felt the range of this limiter...and so did Kevi as she siphoned it across the link.
"You'd presumed to capture me again?! Had you more sense than fear, I may have considered letting you live to sate my appetites as my slave."
Crouching low like some feral beast, summoning the storm around her Kevi leapt toward her prey, and Ochazuke fell on guard as she spread her wicked claws.
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[RIGHT][URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWZuKuiHqk8"]BGM - Chris Classic - Here We Go[/URL][/RIGHT]
It was a clash that stretched seconds to minutes, minutes to be hours. How far had they come since Kevi had heralded the arrival of Fife, the storm that shrouded the falling skies? Hailstones the size of fists fell, arcs of lightning fell their wrath, marking the featureless chamber floor, as unearthly blue fire danced over the great hourglasses behind them. It should have been unthinkable, but much to the Witch of the Moon's consternation, they were evenly matched. At least that's what she thought before she summoned a spire of dark magma which Ochazuke countered by channeling the [B]Dragon's Fire[/B] into a [B]Ryuuka Dodonpa[/B] that immolated her lower half.
Dark laughter shook the chamber, as from the ashen remains she regenerated herself seamlessly from the waist down and continued her pursuit. Ochazuke raised an eyebrow.
[I]Interesting.[/I]
Ravenously she swept in, slashing out at him in arcing strikes. How unfortunate that her usual choice of opponents were children and the bereaved.
Each swipe was countered cleanly, bones shattered, ground, and tissues distended, warped and collapsed, and Ochazuke finished with a combination, sliding under her thrusting hand with [B]Irimi[/B], striking her clean in the jaw, and loosing [B]Kiai [/B]with [B]Zanshin Touki[/B] as [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgnKpq4PwEk"]he sent her careening off.[/URL] In the space of a single blow, he'd struck her with a technique that was swifter than the wind of her storms and it was as if it had fallen fourfold.
Levitating from her back on the ground and standing tall, her porcelain face cackled. The Witch's bloody grin stretched, her eyes widened with a darkness, as if the ages of depraved rituals had bled the humanity out of her.
"Do you understand yet? [I]I can't die![/I] I'm as far beyond mortal ken as the true demons and endless ones!" Her laughter fell from bloody gurgles as she twist shattered limbs back into place. "You can't kill me, subcreature!"
"Is that so," Ochazuke smirked, cracking his knuckles. "Unluckily for you, [I]Immortal[/I], I have all [I]year [/I]to figure out [I]how[/I]."
"You dare-" suddenly Kevi's expression curdled and stretched in a manner horrid and uncanny, and with a wailing, soul-curdling scream she took off for the endlessly misted expanse, carrying the dervish and darkness with her.
Zaofan blinked and scratched the back of his head with his free hand.
"...thought it was a bad time, but I wasn't sure if there was a place to plug this in, eh-heh," he shrugged as he set down the electric rice cooker before him.
"Cheh. She'll be back," Ochazuke said, propping up his second capsule revealing the suite of Kobudo weapons. "She knows without us she'll starve."
Snapping a pair of nunchaku from the weapons rack, he turned his attention to refining its complex method as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as Zaofan perused the magical stores of food in the living cloister near the entrance.
"Though, her methodical appetites may work in our favour. She'll only ever become as strong as we do, enabling us to train at critical condition."
"...really, man?!"
"Besides, there will be no telling what we'll encounter in the wider universe. Be on your guard for when she returns."
Sighing, Zaofan filled a kettle.
"Got it. Watch my back and I'll watch yours," he replied, setting something on the counter. "And you hold the fort, right Little Green?"
[I]God, I miss her already...hope that magical index is doing you well, Etrina...[/I]
To defend the blue planet as it silently turned, for all their efforts they'd lost long days and the lives of their friends in an instant.
Now, even if for only a day, they would now make time work for them in their a quest to secure a safe tomorrow from the scores of ravenous immortals.