2023-05-24 - The Trouble With Telluns 2
| The Trouble With Telluns 2 | |
|---|---|
| Summary: The thrilling conclusion of Tellu's repotting event. She does not survive the experience... | |
| Who: Hotaru Tomoe, Lera Camry, Usagi Tsukino, Raiko Takashima, Haruka Tenoh, Chibi-Usa Tsukino, Michiru Kaioh | |
| Where: Jindai Botanical Gardens | |
| OOC - IC Date: 5/24/2023 - 03/11/16 | |
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
"Foul purposes? Ha!" Tellu's voice says from a different flower, as the first one is now occupied sucking down Levin's sparkshower. She pours and pours lightning into it, and it seems to have an infinite capacity to collect and consume it... and is bulging larger than it was. "Your friends aren't the only ones fighting for a new age!" Sailor Neptune, the friend in question, has similarly poor luck; her water blast is similarly swallowed by a blossom, a blossom that grows.
Lera blasts at the vines encroaching on her personal space, and after the first shot, they start dragging and slithering out of her path, like so many prehensile tails. Or fingers, which is kind of worse. Now she has a little space to move. And Sailor Moon requires no introduction to her power for the daimonplant to want to vacate her immediate premises when she invokes a greater power of the heart; she and Lera wind up back to back in a wide-open space.
A space that begins to fill with vines moving at whipcrack-speed. None of them want to slow down long enough to be destroyed. And with velocity comes danger, both from the sheer mass of them and from their thorns... the tellun did not have spikes, but the monster is growing them by the second, long and thin and thirsty for blood.
Tellu does not dignify 'arts and crafts time is sacred' with a verbal reply, but on their way into (ideally...) her flesh, Sailor Moon can clearly see the vines on track to smash their way right through those hand-decorated pots. Including the one she made.
Having grown engorged to the point that it's taller than Levin entirely, the first bloom licks its petal lips and... explodes forward, petals gaping widely, spiked teeth shaped like Pure Heart Crystals (or maybe they really are, those things are SHARP) closing around the Witch from every direction. If it can, it will swallow her whole!
And a second one does the same to Neptune. At least while she's up close and personal in there she can ascertain that no, those aren't real Crystals. For the best, since getting the two of them out is liable to chip a tooth or two.
Sailor Uranus, who has already borne the brunt of the enemy for Chibi-Usa's sake, slices cleanly forward with her multitude of airspheres, and is the first to see the peril of Levin and Neptune. But with the sort of cylindrical, chlorophyll-oozing path she's prepared for herself gooey at best, she discovers that while the daimon may be hungry for hearts' blood, its own blood might as well be made of high-octane fertilizer. Any plant that it touches becomes supersized in an instant, like the grass beneath their feet, which becomes malicious in an instant, twisting and twining at feet and arms like a sentient spiderweb. It feels sharp and somehow both slick and sticky at once; all the very worst attributes of straying off the beaten path on a hike in mid-August.
It smells like blood.
If they're not careful, the two of them will become lost in a creature that is rapidly becoming more hedge maze than combatant.
"Come in, pretty soldier," to Uranus, to everyone, Tellu's voice echoes from everywhere -- nowhere -- and most especially, from all around Levin and Neptune. Dozens of buds, all speaking in unison and two of them with their mouths full. "My garden hungers for you all."
COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Venus Girl-Trap! on Witch of Wise Levin. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Venus Girl-Trap! on Sailor Neptune. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Thirsty Thornwhips on Lera Camry. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Thirsty Thornwhips on Sailor Moon. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Entangling Vines! on Chibi-Usa Tsukino. COMBAT: Sailor Moon neatly dodges 32 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Thirsty Thornwhips, taking 8 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Sailor Moon's Fade and Flash abilities activate! COMBAT: Sailor Neptune fails to dodge Hotaru Tomoe's Venus Girl-Trap!, taking 30 Fatigue damage! Stun and Trap applied to Sailor Neptune! COMBAT: Sailor Moon covers Chibi-Usa Tsukino for Hotaru Tomoe's attack, Entangling Vines!, taking it upon herself instead! COMBAT: Sailor Moon fails to brace Hotaru Tomoe's Entangling Vines!, taking 12 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Tangle applied to Sailor Moon! COMBAT: Lera Camry dodges 11 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Thirsty Thornwhips, taking 17 Fatigue damage! Lera Camry's Fade and Flash abilities activate! COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin decisively counters 27 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Venus Girl-Trap!, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Witch of Wise Levin's Tactician ability activates! Stun and Trap applied to Witch of Wise Levin! COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin's counterattack, Storm Guard, interrupts, doing 0 Fatigue damage to Hotaru Tomoe!
<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.
Lera has a little space to move, which is tremendously grateful for. She hesitates only a moment as she takes in the vines -- seeing several of them sweeping in towards her and Sailor Moon. She glances back at her friend, for a moment, and then she nods.
"I'll try to clear you a path!" she says to her, before she holds Soaring Sky out. The blade splits in two, down the middle, and a few arcs of golden energy crackle up the Device like lightning.
She has to leap away -- just getting over one of those newly thorn-tipped vines -- and then points Sky down for the cluster of vines. A large group of them, as it happens.
<Aurora...>
The blade has more arcs of golden lightning flash over it. It glows brighter and brighter -- a large, brilliant glow accumulating at the center of the split sword-halves -- as Lera lands.
<Burst...>
Then, a trio of spinning rings -- the edges filled with runs -- appear in front of the sword-cannon. The light grows brighter, before it explodes out as a beam, which then sweeps across the lot of the vine.
"RAAAAAAAAAY!"
COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Aurora Burst Ray on Hotaru Tomoe. COMBAT: Haruka Tenoh transforms into Sailor Uranus! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to brace Lera Camry's Aurora Burst Ray, taking 76 Fatigue damage! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Entangling Vines! on Sailor Uranus. COMBAT: Sailor Uranus dodges 4 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Entangling Vines!, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Sailor Uranus's Flash ability activates! Tangle and Trap applied to Sailor Uranus!
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Moon [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
With a flash of crowd clearing magic, she's nearby Lera, who gets a wink of camaraderie, as if to say 'I've got this' and in fact Sailor Moon might have actually vocalized something similar. Only she finds the space being rapidly REFILLED with Vines and finding she doesn't got this. "I'm leaving this to you Lera-chan!" Leaping like a gymnast, she darts past some vines a little too close, getting a trace of a cut across her legs.
There is a moment, where Sailor Moon can see the handcrafted pots being smashed, and the one she made threatened. It is soon after crowded out in her vision by the idea that the plants are growing AWFULLY close to Chibi-Usa. A decision needs to be made and...
... it's never really a decision is it? "CHIBI-USA!"
Sailor Moon dives towards the growing hedgemaze of sticky plants. Hands outstretched just as the last bit of safe floor is disappearing. It's unpleasant what she suffers next, prodded sharply from several directions, feeling like she's slipping from another, then being snagged but she manages to hoist Chibi-Usa to the safest place in their space.
Atop her shoulders. "Got you! Now just hold on!"
As Tellu pronounces that Uranus should come into her garden, Moon replies, "Haaaa!? Your Garden is awful!? Who would want to walk around in it?"
Sailor Moon complains, even as she repeatedly kicks at the vines. Which is more like half kicks, half flails, half hops, half tugs, because her leg just got caught in a hedge. A pretty moonboot just thrashing about, "Oh come on!? Why'd you have to give Uranus the hedge trimmer if you had one?!" She complains to the girl on her shoulders who's probably precariously wobbling about it from her repeated attempts to get free.
COMBAT: Sailor Moon has used Sailor Moon Kick on Hotaru Tomoe.
<Pose Tracker> Witch of Wise Levin [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
Lera comments that the vines don't play around. Levin glances over and shouts, "I think they're drawing power from the gardens! If we could cut them off--ack!" She dances around another grasping vine as she sprays her attack. "--but this isn't my domain! If Ivy were here..."
Levin isn't sure that arts and crafts time is sacred, but she does like working with her hands, so is still inclined to think that Sailor Moon's line was kinda cool. (She's in total agreement about the promotion part, though--that is Not Okay.)
There's a little girl imperiled, but those other magical girls seem to be watching her. She summons a pair of hedge clippers--that gives her an idea, but first--
Oh crud. Her attack has been absorbed by a flower, causing it to--grow? Neptune seems to be in a similar predicament, though in her case since she used water... "Wait how does a plant benefit from electrical--woah!" That flower lunges for her, and she holds a hand up at it. Roiling dark storm clouds begin to form at her hand. They burst outward inside the plant's maw right as it reaches her, gagging it and only letting its teeth clamp down around her arm. Levin tugs desparately on it. "Dangit! Let go!"
"You... are... a terrible gift!" Raiko raises her staff, which is in her free hand, electricity dancing up and down its length. It gathers at the crystal on top, sparking furiously as a matching ball of lightning forms overhead. She gestures down sharply with the staff, and the ball resolves a lance of electricity, spearing downwards at the petal holding her arm.
COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin has used Smite on Hotaru Tomoe. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to brace Sailor Moon's Sailor Moon Kick, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Sailor Moon is Psyched! Stagger and Stun applied to Hotaru Tomoe! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to dodge Witch of Wise Levin's Smite, taking 41 Fatigue damage!
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Uranus [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
Grasping the 'hilt' of what Neptune refers to as a sword, Uranus looks back at Chibi-Usa in pleased surprise. "Handy," she says, seeming to refer more to the little rabbit than the new weapon.
As she proceeds through a path cut by her own air spheres, Sailor Uranus's nose wrinkles at the scent of what ought to be plant ichor, but smells unfortunately... redder. With high stride, she at first avoids what is so rapidly growing within, but it begins to get harder as she goes, until finally, her boot is snagged by a tendril. "You shouldn't let people in so easily," she husks in reply to Tellu's invitation. When she moves to grasp the other handle of the mechanical hedge trimmers, her glove is grasped as well, but Uranus's expression doesn't changed. Holding just one handle, she jerks the tool upward hard, letting the free handle swing up as its momentum arrests abruptly, the gleaming scissor blades on the other end parting. Releasing the trimmer, Uranus allows it to fall, taking the brief moment this gives her a free hand to rip the vine off her glove, her reflexes such that the passage of the blade downward feels leisurely. By the time the scissor blades have almost fallen, they are helped down by the heel of Uranus's boot, which wedges into the mechanism to slam the blades through the vine on her foot.
"You'll always get hurt," she concludes, reaching down to rip the clipper from the ground by one handle.
Uranus faces her foe courageously, but there may also be an element of bravado. If she were to turn around, the puncture wounds from shielding Chibi-Usa just now would undercut the menace she is projecting. As she advances, chomping approaching tendrils with Luna-P's trimmers, she seems at first impossible to deter for even a moment. But first a fleeing Sailor Moon is snagged before she can safely stow Chibi-Usa, and then an enormous plant maw swallows up Uranus's partner. Curling her lip in umbrage, Uranus snaps the trimmers wide open again, holding them in one hand like a tonfa, the other handle held open by her elbow.
"Sailor Moon!" she shouts. "Hold still!"
With a crouch and a spring, Uranus shows that the Outer Senshi are by no means lacking the graceful jumping ability of the Inner, so recently displayed by Sailor Moon. As she leaps past Sailor Moon's recently (and hopefully no longer) wildly struggling boot, Uranus slices her forearm into the vines grasping the smaller blonde, hacking through with the Luna-blades. The reason for her unorthodox grip on the tool becomes clear right after, as she hits the nearby wall, collapsing her legs to disperse momentum until her free hand can touch down to stabilize her--and aim her body once more.
Uranus's second leap carries her through the garden, to land just below the girl-trap that has her counterpart. Grimacing preemptively at the possible ichor about to fall, she grabs up the clippers in a more conventional grip, avoids the part of the plant-awning above her where a darker shadow suggests a human form within, and stabs them, closed, into the Venus trap. A few biting open-close chomps of the trimmers later, and she rips them free, just in time to spread her arms expectantly in case any beautiful girls fall down.
COMBAT: Sailor Uranus has used Outervention on Sailor Uranus. COMBAT: Sailor Uranus has used Outervention on Sailor Moon. COMBAT: Sailor Uranus has used Outervention on Sailor Neptune. COMBAT: Sailor Moon accepts Sailor Uranus's Outervention, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Cleanse! All of Sailor Moon's debuffs are cleared! COMBAT: Sailor Uranus accepts Sailor Uranus's Outervention, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Cleanse! All of Sailor Uranus's debuffs are cleared!
<Pose Tracker> Chibi-Usa Tsukino [Juuban Public School (5)] has posed.
"Take good care of her!!" Chibi-Usa insists to Uranus, but she seems delighted at the compliment all the same. Her eyes sparkle as she looks to her helper. Ad then, well--there is the matter of Tellu again. But then Chibi-Usa has more vines coming straight for her and--
"Aaa!" Chibi-Usa says again, wobbling. Sailor Moon saves her!! Sailor Moon picks her up in fact. "Sailor Moon!" she says. "Aaaa, I'm holding!!" Then--
"Oh, come on!" she complains, as if giving Uranus the 'sword' wasn't the most natural thing in the world.
She clings on, though, as hard as she can, watching everyone. Lera's brilliant runes, and Levin's electric lances, and Neptune's grace...
"You can all do it!!" she calls out to them, even as her fear is obvious from where she wobbles on Moon's shoulders. There are so many vines...
COMBAT: Sailor Neptune accepts Sailor Uranus's Outervention, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Cleanse! All of Sailor Neptune's debuffs are cleared!
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Neptune [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
The plant swells and blooms as Sailor Neptune finds herself faced with an enormous blossom that simply swallows her wave and swells up immensely. One must always face a question with any sort of an overloading strategy: Can you truly overload the foe?
Perhaps she gambled poorly. Her lips thin in the face of this, and when the great mouth comes towards her, she raises her arms as if to guard her face, curling them inwards perhaps in thought for her hands. Someone at her side - or Uranus, certainly - could tell that it is not fear, even if there might be some echoes.
It might not be the first time she's had to deal with something like this.
She sweeps her arms apart at the last minute as if to make herself the least swallowable morsel possible, and there is a moment of complete revelation of her face - eyes half-shut, a tight grimace in her elegant jaw, a tense anticipation of what is to come. Then the mouth engulfs her --
-- and there is no final bite, or suck, or pain. No dark horrof battle! Instead, as it rends apart, Neptune is seized by Earth's gravity, falling into arms - slightly damper than she began, her hair plastered against her face. She turns her head to look at Uranus and, in a secret sort of way, smirks as she puts an arm round her partner's neck. ("I can stand, don't worry. I wouldn't be in a rush, but...")
As she takes a moment to toss her hair with one hand and favor Uranus with a smile, she says for more public consumption, "Just as I'd expect. And I see you've found an ally, too."
Sailor Neptune looks at Chibi-Usa with an unknowable, but superficially benign, expression...
Before turning round to subject the trap that had reached for her to a brutal low kick aimed to dislodge it from its 'roots' entirely! Or perhaps to dislodge its roots from whatever mixture of soil and sin it is feeding upon. And without blasting it with water. "Those teeth aren't the Pure Hearts," she advises Uranus, "but this thing seems unwilling to reach its right size and stay there. I may have to rely upon you for the grand finale..."
COMBAT: Sailor Neptune has used Aquatic Allemande on Hotaru Tomoe. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to brace Sailor Neptune's Aquatic Allemande, taking 19 Fatigue damage! Sailor Neptune is Psyched!
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
The tides are turning, perhaps.
Lera's Aurora Burst Ray, once the signature of many villains' end, roars down the length of the maze, creating a crispy horizontal column by which Sailor Moon might pass through easily, and rescue Chibi-Usa from those grasping vines in the nick of time.
Then herself -- at least in part, as she kicks away the vine on her leg. Sailor Uranus gets the rest, brandishing the scissors that are also a toy that is also a cat with style and grace... and brutal efficiency. By the time her snicker-snacking is done, she is free, and Sailor Moon is free, and Sailor Neptune is free, too.
Free to deliver a magnificent kick to the rooty base of the plant.
It shudders from this, much as it did from the Midchildan's plasmic vivisection; and, too, from Levin's lightning, which finds purchase at last, burning the petal-lips right off her arm. The soft shape collapses into ash, and the voice finally stops.
At least for a moment.
<SoundTracker> Kaolinite - Sailor Moon OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWO6C04Hhfg
Sailor Moon is ignored no longer, it seems.
'Who would want to walk around in it?'
Burnt and chopped, the brambles of the united tellun, surely a single organism rather than a hundred, swirl, then spiral, becoming for a moment one contiguous trunk.
"Who indeed?" ask the witch's lips -- made of two meaty vines, this time, instead of petals.
It is to the sound of her terrible laughter; a sound made more terrible for how it is not the sound of madness, but of advantage; the sound of intent; the sound of someone who cares not at all for the lives and deaths of others;
It is to that symphony of contempt that the great trunk writhes
and splits
and suddenly, five rutiled figures are revealed.
People. Victims. Their bodies had been left behind by their Pure Heart Crystals like so much discarded wrapping.
But they were still... there.
And they still matter...
Not a scrap of flesh can be seen; each is a silhouette of wooden humanity; they have been entirely engulfed by root and bark and vine. Yet, artfully, certain details are replicated by this floral sculptor. The sun-seeking salaryman's briefcase is recognizable in sharp-cornered leaves at waist-height. The tired mother, who bought her tellun for herself, to appreciate herself, when no one else would, her hair ornament, a handmade comb that might have been handed down within her family for generations, is a series of smaller tellun blossoms, opening and closing their tiny mouths. The Infinity jock, known to Haruka and Lera both and perhaps the others also, is leanly muscled in a denser hardwood than the others. The little child who could have been Hotaru -- but wasn't, due to the suspiciously good timing of Principal-General Kishi spiriting her away -- has pigtails just like Chibi-Usa and Usagi's, which fall limply from her head in little vines. And finally the old man, someone's grandfather if he's lucky, has a crooked back even in his current state, as though his desperate need for chiropracty (or the fountain of youth) comes through even the demon plant that has consumed him.
Laughing -- all of them are laughing, laughing with Tellu's voice -- she hurls her victims forward, human shields and chlorophyllic swords, to swing and chop and tangle at her foes. The salaryman at Lera. The mother at Raiko. The jock at Neptune. The child at Uranus. The old man at Sailor Moon.
COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Salaryman's Strangle on Lera Camry. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Mother's Kiss on Witch of Wise Levin. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Athlete's Clinch on Sailor Neptune. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Child's Play on Sailor Uranus. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Grandfather's Claws on Sailor Moon. COMBAT: Sailor Moon fails to brace Hotaru Tomoe's Grandfather's Claws, taking 38 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Stagger and Trap applied to Sailor Moon! COMBAT: Lera Camry cleanly braces 34 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Salaryman's Strangle, taking 6 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Lera Camry's Block and Parry abilities activate! Stagger and Tangle applied to Lera Camry!
<Pose Tracker> Lera Camry [Infinity Institute (11)] has posed.
"That's a problem!" Lera calls out to Levin. "I don't want to destroy the garden if we can help it..."
Lera tenses as she sees exactly what Tellu has done to the people whose Pure Hearts she stole. She looks at the people engulfed in treestuff; a mimicry of what they used to be, even if it is a well done one.
"What--how could you!?" she calls out to Tellu, even as she swings up Broken Ground. <Protection!>
A barrier of interlocked green hexagons appears, and the briefcase smashes into those; they ripple and break apart, and Lera only just darts to the side before the briefcase smashes into the ground. The shield ripples.
<Terra Breaker!>
With that chime, several flashes of gold light appear -- and then a jagged line of sorcerous conjured stone appears, erupting across the ground and hurtling for the salaryman, before rising around him in a ring.
COMBAT: Lera Camry has used Terra Breaker on Hotaru Tomoe. COMBAT: Sailor Neptune fails to dodge Hotaru Tomoe's Athlete's Clinch, taking 30 Fatigue damage! Stagger, Tangle, and Trap applied to Sailor Neptune! COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin cleanly braces 28 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Mother's Kiss, taking 5 Fatigue damage! Witch of Wise Levin's Block and Parry abilities activate! Tangle applied to Witch of Wise Levin! COMBAT: Sailor Uranus neatly dodges 32 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Child's Play, taking 8 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Sailor Uranus's Flash ability activates! Stagger, Tangle, and Trap applied to Sailor Uranus!
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Moon [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
Chibi-Usa's frantic tone indicates she has trouble and Moon reaches up in that moment to grab ahold of her arms to steady her for a moment. "Aaa aa gotcha! It'll be okay! I've got you!" However, she's rapidly getting all tangled up by the fearsome foliage around her. Then...!
'Sailor Moon! Hold still!'
With a blink blink, she suddenly goes rigid save the wobble of balance being mostly held up by one leg, the other off, but Uranus suddenly springs at her and slices away at the dark plant life with Luna blades-
-Sailor Moon slowly puts a foot down in relief, watching Uranus as she goes with her second leap. A faint flush hits her cheeks, "Okay, I admit that maybe that was the right call." She tells Chibi-Usa with a giggle, rubbing her cheek as she continues to hold Chibi-Usa up. Her attention drawn over to Neptune at her remark, as she gestures up, then at herself as if to indicate 'me'?
Tellu however reveals the true occupants of the garden, as the witch reveals- "Are those-!?" She doesn't quite get it at first, wondering if they're just weird sculptures in her garden, but she does in a moment, "It's not right-!" Sailor Moon says as she takes a step back, apparently a bit spooked, "I can't believe you'd do this to these people!"
And yet the laughter is spooking her, more and more. Even as that bent old man is launched at her, swinging and chopping.
With Chibi-Usa on her shoulders she can't flee without exposing her, and thus, she's put in the position of shrieking as she rapidly backs up, waving her rod, and missing her attempts to parry the attacks more often than not as she gets chopped from one direction, and sliced from another even as she stumbles backwards in her not so rapid get away.
"Ojiisan wait - wait stop! That can't be good for your back!" She calls out to him, even though he's in a way more dire position than just back pain right now.
Suddenly as she stumble steps, she pivots, and moves into a sort of half jog, carrying around Chibi-Usa, as she runs by Wise Levin, "Even without Ivy here you're doing great! We'll figure this out, don't worr-AAAAAAAAAAA!" Her words of encouragement cut off as she suddenly ducks the old man's enthusiastic pursuit, trying to shield Chibi-Usa.
COMBAT: Sailor Moon has used Sailor Moon Says AAAAA!? on Witch of Wise Levin. COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin accepts Sailor Moon's Sailor Moon Says AAAAA!?, taking 0 Fatigue damage! Witch of Wise Levin is Cheered!
<Pose Tracker> Witch of Wise Levin [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
Levin really wishes she had time to stop and admire what all of the other magical girls are doing. Lera seems to be using--an Intelligent Device! At least, that sounds like one, she thinks, but she's only ever seen the one. Sailor Moon makes a daring rescue of that little girl, Uranus commits much plant brutality (using the transformed Luna-P, no less) but there's such skill there as she does. And Neptune has such poise and composure despite nearly being eaten.
But she has to focus on freeing herself, burning off the oversized fly trap with a lightning bolt, and looking around to see what else can be done.
Lera suggests destroying the garden, which would be extreme, but there's another problem-- "That might have worked before, but they've got the pure hearts now. We need to take the problem out at the root."
There seems to be a momentary lull. She takes advantage of the moment to try and see if she can find a source they can go after--but all too quickly the evil witch has revealed a new ploy--transformed bodies of victims missing their pure hearts, rendered in vine and bark.
Stunned horror. "Oh no..." Then, a moment later, angrily. "You fiend!"
The mother with the hair comb comes after here, and Levin raises a hand, a brief, shimmering field of electricity flaring up to deflect the attack. But she dare not counter too agressively, wary of hurting the victim and what that might mean afterwards if they win. She is forced back, step by step as the flora automaton redoubles her attacks, deflecting each one with a deftly timed field. "I'm sorry, I don't want to hurt you, but..."
And then Sailor Moon comes running past her with words of encouragement. She's pinned in place for a moment, the mother pounding at her shield as she tries to process that. She smiles and calls after her, "Thank you!" Right. She is a magical girl. She can think her way out of this. She casts her gaze around and spies...
Ropes. Perfect.
Levin keeps her staff hand held up to reinforce her barrier, and then reaches with her free hand to summon the ropes to her with her telekinesis. They come flying towards her, loops forming to grasp at the hands, another around the legs as she tries to bind up the mother... and if she can manage that, she turns her attention to the grandfather chasing Sailor Moon, manipulating some more rope to attempt the same trick.
COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin has used All Tied Up on Hotaru Tomoe.
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Uranus [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
("At the moment I'm wondering if I can fight with just my legs," Uranus confesses in return. She feigns a moment of thought, before sighing and depositing Neptune on the ground.)
"Right," she acknowledges Neptune's advice on the teeth not being Pure Hearts. It doubles as acknowledging a return to seriousness. "Then where are they?"
It turns out that question does not require the mystical foresight of Neptune to answer.
Uranus's eyes flicker with anger as Tellu presents civilian bodies as their next foes, but they are resolute. To those who have seen the End, a mountain of such bodies rests on the other side of the scale. If an innocent dies who does not bear a Pure Heart, that is a cost of the most vital of all missions. If an innocent dies who DOES bear a Pure Heart, that is not a cost at all: it is the mission itself.
That is Uranus's resolve, her decision, until the foe that lands before her is a little child.
"Tellu," Uranus seethes aloud, animus darkening to personal hatred. She will not forgive this.
Uranus's foe is probably the weakest, though she would trade in a heartbeat. The bodily strength of a victim is not what creates a powerful monster, but these are built around the literal, physical bodies of the victims, and this one is simply... smaller. Its reach is shorter, its legs take more steps to achieve the same distance. Uranus dodges its blows with relative ease at first, feeling guilty for leaving Neptune to the larger athlete-monster, but at the same time not wanting to shirk the moral stain this fight will leave upon her to anyone else. The improvisational energy of play makes the pigtailed girl unpredictable, however, and Uranus ends up having to sacrifice footing to avoid the swing of that viny hair, scrambling to roll back to her feet after, the momentum lost.
"Tch." Uranus bares the scissorblades of her borrowed clipper, and ducks the swung twintails this time, sweeping the girl's legs. Pouncing, she brings the trimmers above her head, screams out miserably, and swings, burying them down hard. But her arms betray her, widening the blades even as she cheats her own momentum. The clippers end up around the girl's neck, only barely touching the wooden plant matter.
She could still do it though. All she would have to do is close the clippers.
The pink clippers.
"Damn it!" Uranus wrenches through her teeth. Ripping the clippers free, she lets the little plant monster surge joyfully upward, wrapping itself around her, trying to climb her like a jungle gym. She grapples on with one arm, unable to even consider adding her legs because her enemy is so tiny. Doing her best to keep it in a clinch, where its ability to hurt her is limited and yet also inevitable, Uranus much more carefully slides the clipper blades into the bark, and begins to peel the monster like a particularly recalictrant orange, sawing and scraping.
She cannot even see Neptune, like this; she hopes she is doing better than this. The little girl, rather than trying to kill Uranus, seems to be trying to bind her thoroughly, which will do the same job in the end, at the hands of Tellu's other minions. Uranus fights her for every limb, but it's all a delaying tactic for the only one that really matters: her cutting arm.
"Come on, kid," she pleads, when finally her grappling arm gets peeled off and strapped tightly to her side. Her other arm keeps sawing, scraping. "There's no time."
COMBAT: Sailor Uranus has used What Price Innocence? on Hotaru Tomoe.
<Pose Tracker> Chibi-Usa Tsukino [Juuban Public School (5)] has posed.
"See?" Chibi-Usa answers Usagi. "I told you!"
Chibi-Usa, perhaps, has an instinctive young understanding of the language to which she will grow, the language of the Femme. And so, when Neptune looks at her with that unknowable expression... She smiles awkwardly back, and is suddenly glad she's on Sailor Moon's shoulders instead of Sailor Uranus's. For. Some reason.
Who indeed?
Chibi-Usa shrieks in alarm and dismay when she sees the splitting of the trunk, the five figures revealed. Outlines of wood, engulfed by plant matter,and horrible to looki upon. Chibi-Usa looks to the little girl who could've been Hotaru and quails in distress. "Sailor Moon!" she calls, alarmed. "We--we have to--"
"Aaa--" Chibi-Usa wobbles on Sailor Moon's shoulders, shrieking with her in the moment. "Aaa!!!" Then Moon calls out to him, and Chibi-Usa continues to flail around, suddenly holding onto Usagi's odango to try to avod falling off. "Aaaaaaaaa--"
But she watches Uranus, as they fight. SHe watches, as she nearly chops the head of that little girl.. and as she doesn't do it.
As she keeps fighting. "Uranus!" Chibi-Usa calls in misery, tearing up as she watches her in such danger.
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Neptune [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
It is said that there is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without effect. Sailor Neptune could certainly take the contrary position, that it is not encouraging to be shot at with excellent effect.
Sailor Neptune is unmoved, superficially, at the sight of the captured figures, still so heartbreakingly recognizable. She does not spot out all of them, but several? Yes. Innocent persons. And perhaps the bearer of the Pure Heart Crystal they seek - but which? Whom is whom? It's impossible to tell in the moment as the split trunk and its enwrapped victims are used, not as puppets, but as *bludgeons.*
Sailor Neptune dodges the first swing of the athletic woman. She could probably have struck it and broken it asunder (and done what, exactly, to the occupant within? freed her? perhaps, but let's not be too certain on that, shall we?) but she did not; she pops up then and steps nearer, and that's when the back-swing smashes into her.
It would be bad enough to simply be clobbered but this is something worse; the athletic girl had turned, or been turned, partway through. She swings into Neptune with force and outspread arms, which try to curl slightly as Neptune puts a hand on her shoulder and struggles to pull free, the encircling grasp - mindless mockery? A search for liberation, for hope? A silent, wordless plea? Or simple cunning tactics? - growing painfully tight even as she drags herself outwards.
The grasp started as if it were a desperate hug, a drowning woman's cling, and only Sailor Neptune having raised one arm up in semi-anticipation is making escape feasible at all. She pushes herself upwards, dragging and squeezing with an expression of pain as she grinds her knee into the wood-sheathed belly of the captive. She pulls and she grimaces in agony as she finally, finally slips free after long seconds, even as she hears the dismay and screaming of the others. The witch, the Device-user, and Sailor Moon are stymied. Even Uranus, as well. So is she, if she will be honest. And yet -
Whether by a quirk of elbows or of angle, she's pulled most of herself upwards. The top of her body, anyway. A glance downwards reveals that that loss of tightness is from the relative space now that the 'hug' is embracing around her abdomen rather than her shoulders.
Has she died? Neptune wonders, but either way, she puts her other hand atop the captive's head - "Beg your pardon," she murmurs, with only a leavening of irony - and flips herself free... while levering round to come down BEHIND the captive, clasping her gloved arm round the stout tellun-sheathing around the poor jock and using the momentum to force her into the restless earth!
COMBAT: Sailor Neptune has used Acting With Elegance on Hotaru Tomoe. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe partially dodges 9 Fatigue damage from Lera Camry's Terra Breaker, taking 36 Fatigue damage! Hotaru Tomoe's Fade and Flash abilities activate! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe braces 0 Fatigue damage from Witch of Wise Levin's All Tied Up, taking 0 Fatigue damage! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe partially dodges 2 Fatigue damage from Sailor Neptune's Acting With Elegance, taking 9 Fatigue damage! Hotaru Tomoe's Fade and Flash abilities activate! Bind Break! All of Sailor Neptune's debuffs are cleared! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to brace Sailor Uranus's What Price Innocence?, taking 19 Fatigue damage!
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
Different girls have different approaches. Lera temporarily entombs her foe, while Levin wields a rope, Uranus (carefully) the clippers, Neptune her elegant body, and Sailor Moon just freaks out.
Four out of five of these eventually accomplish some combination of freeing the magical girl and entrapping the opposition, though it varies; the little girl-shaped plant is still on the loose, though Uranus has pried herself free; the jock-shaped plant will get up all too soon from Neptune's flip, though it was certainly effective.
Sailor Moon's old man, though, is still hobbling after her, arms outstretched.
None of them are responsive, or even conscious; talking avails no one of anything but, perhaps, the senshi and their allies of guilt. Or maybe not that either.
The chief thing that all this accomplished...
...was the buying of time.
The ground shakes -- then buckles.
And the tellun-monster... stands up.
Whatever its shape was before, whatever its nature, now, those roots digging through the ground are only calves, attached to unfurling knees. Her knees; it is recognizably Tellu in there, with the daimon-wood around her like so much power armor. Though the concept of an interior is itself, perhaps, missing the point. There is no place where daimon ends and witch begins. They have truly become one.
She rips through what's left of the tent canopy as she rises and rises.
"Glory," she crows, "To the Witches 5! Glory to the Death Busters!"
And as she slams her vine-arms together into a shockwave more arcane than organic, a titanic pulse of mystical power, poison green -- as that geyser coruscates towards the most persistent and dangerous of her organization's foes -- she concludes:
"Glory to the Dark Messiah!"
COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Deadfall Drop! on Witch of Wise Levin. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Deadfall Drop! on Sailor Moon. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe has used Deadfall Drop! on Chibi-Usa Tsukino. COMBAT: FINISHER! Hotaru Tomoe has used Tellu Buster on Sailor Neptune. COMBAT: FINISHER! Hotaru Tomoe has used Tellu Buster on Sailor Uranus. COMBAT: Sailor Moon partially dodges 2 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Deadfall Drop!, taking 10 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Sailor Moon's Fade and Flash abilities activate! Cripple and Stun applied to Sailor Moon! COMBAT: Sailor Uranus neatly dodges 60 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Finisher, Tellu Buster, taking 15 Fatigue damage! Sailor Uranus's Flash ability activates! COMBAT: Witch of Wise Levin fails to dodge Hotaru Tomoe's Deadfall Drop!, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Cripple and Stun applied to Witch of Wise Levin! COMBAT: Chibi-Usa Tsukino fails to dodge Hotaru Tomoe's Deadfall Drop!, taking 11 Fatigue damage! Chibi-Usa Tsukino is Taunted! Cripple and Stun applied to Chibi-Usa Tsukino! COMBAT: Sailor Neptune braces 28 Fatigue damage from Hotaru Tomoe's Finisher, Tellu Buster, taking 19 Fatigue damage! Sailor Neptune's Block and Parry abilities activate!
<Pose Tracker> Chibi-Usa Tsukino [Juuban Public School (5)] has posed.
Sailor Moon's old man is still after her, and Chibi-Usa continues her cry. But the ground shakes, and buckles, and suddenly--
"W-what!?" Chibi-Usa exlcaims as she tumbles back off of Usagi's shoulders and onto the ground, as the vine-arm rise and rise and she falls and falls instead. Glory, she says.
"B-but you--You'll--"
She is fast. She scrambles up, behind the ruins of a table, and shakes there.
"Everyone..."
But she hasn't given up yet.
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Moon [Juuban Public School (10)] has posed.
"AAAAAA-!" ROPE! "Oh thank you!" She asides to Levin before her voice hits an octave higher, "HE'S STILL COMING-!"
Slowly though!? She'll take that as a win. As she runs, she looks up to her partner in shrieking at the moment, Chibi-Usa, with hands full of Odango, "Ow- that hurts! Ow ow ow- they're not handholds you know!" Uranus is... Moon sees it. She's had enough time with her to feel like she understands the conflict right now between her and the child binding her arms. She'd like to think she's trying her hardest to spare her.
She likes to think she always sees that in her.
Tellu's monster however rises, as suddenly it brings down the vines in a titanic slap, and Moon loses her footing outright, "AAAAA-!" As she hits the ground however, she realizes she's lost her passenger- and that sobering thought quickens her recovery, "CHIBI-USA!" Quickly rising up, she realizes in a hurry, she needs to finish this now, even seeing that she's alright, behind a table. Even seeing Neptune and Uranus survived the horrid assault
'Glory to the Dark Messiah!'
Rising up, she brandishes her rod, "I don't know who this Dark Messiah is, but there's no glory to be had doing this!" There is a chime above, a distant look within the tiny adornment, that window into a glimmer of the Silver Millenium's majesty. Twirling it as in the choreography as if twirling it as a baton with the magic within marching to her beat, "I'll definitely make sure there's punishment! MOOONNNNNN-"
And beginning to spin, trailing a gleaming line of stardust, she twirls faster and faster as if building momentum, "-SPIRALLLLLLLLL HEARTTTTTTT-" She moves from high to low, in a faster spin, before finishing on her knees, holding it up high, "-ATTACK!"
Tolling that majesty, lines of stardust and hearts twirl out, in a pinwheel like spiral, encompassing the room within it as the hearts form into one enormous one that seems much larger than the sum of its parts, a wave of sacred energy that tries to crash right into the Tellun monster to oppose the dark glory of its creation.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Sailor Moon has used Moon Spiral Heart Attack! on Hotaru Tomoe.
<Pose Tracker> Witch of Wise Levin [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
It's hard work, getting the transformed woman pinned down, but eventually she gets the knots tied just tight enough to manage it. She looks to the others to see how they have fared...
Uranus seems to have come perilously close to... Levin frowns at that. Just a little bit more, and... But the others have dealt with theirs in their own way. Lera seems of the same mind as her, entrapping the foe, Naptune uses some graceful moves, and Sailor Moon...
Well, she kept that girl out of danger, at least.
Levin starts to look around, trying to discern where their enemy is and... Roots emerge from the ground, causing it to rumble. She tries to take flight, but the moment's hesitation it takes her to form the air currents instead see her feet thrown out from underneath her, sending her toppling to the ground. "Ack! Oof! Oww..." She's back on her feet in a moment, rubbing at her shoulder that she landed on wrong, only to view...
The creature touts their glory, and praises... File that name away for later.
She grips her staff tightly for a moment, connecting to it, drawing upon its wisdom as power wells within herself. "You have turned your back on the good work of a proper Witch..." She releases her staff as she starts to gesture, a magic circle appearing at her feet. Winds start to whip ferociously around her as she gestures.
"... and distorted the power of nature to foul ends..." It was a perfect day. But overhead, a tangled snarl of dark storm clouds spring into existence, quickly growing and churning faster and faster. They rumble with potential, tendrils of electricity lashing out.
"... to steal the Pure Hearts of innocents! For this, I deliver unto you..." She grasps her staff and raises her hands to the sky. Her voice echos with shared power as she intones, "Retribution!" Her upraised hand slams downwards, and the clouds unleash their fury. Not a single bolt, but a volley, crashing downwards with a tremendous roar of thunder from the heavens.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Witch of Wise Levin has used Levin's Retribution on Hotaru Tomoe.
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Uranus [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
Uranus has to be so careful when cutting near the little girl's body. But the twintails are one of her primary weapons, and Uranus realizes, belatedly, that while there might be some tears later, that weapon can be attacked directly with little fear. So when the twintails start wrapping Uranus's head to try and strangle her, Uranus finishes sawing at the bark section she was working on, then...
SNIP
It seems to upset the monster. Now she just has one twintail. Not really a twin at all.
Freed, Uranus hastens to her feet, assessing the battlefield. Lera Camry seems to have reacted with typical force. Sailor Moon is fleeing like some teen detective through an abandoned theme park, and though the danger is far more real than that metaphor would imply, Uranus lets the unwitting princess deal with that as she may; they cannot remain on the back foot any longer. Neptune is being crushed by the jock's powerful arms in a way that alarms Uranus and sets her briefly heading that direction, but when Neptune manages to flip free, Uranus trusts her partner with the rest. A trust well-justified by her subsequent martial arts display.
"There you are," Uranus says beneath her breath, as the roots begin to rise, as the Tellun plant reveals itself at full height and full power. The hatred appears mutual. As the churning green power builds, Uranus realizes quickly who it is intended for, as her body and that of her partner begins to glow that selfsame color, as though illuminated by giant flashlights.
For just a split second, Uranus closes her eyes. Feels her weight and its distribution, resting high on the balls of her feet. When the attack comes, there will be a way to move, an action she can perform with her body, that will keep her alive, and she will only have an instant to execute it. She needs to recognize it and move at the same time. Helping Neptune is out of the question; saving herself is all she can do. She trusts that Neptune will be there waiting when she does.
Uranus opens her eyes, and Tellu unloads her full dark power, a geyser of burning-dark energy blasting directly at her. Uranus's thigh muscles go off, shoving, launching her to the right instantly. Her calf lights up with green flame for a moment and Uranus hisses, falling into a roll that ends with her gloved hand covering a burn on that leg. But the attack expends itself mostly on the wall of the building (and probably the street beyond, though Uranus does not spare a moment to look), and Uranus rises, still in the fight despite the accumulated burden of injuries. Her back, in particular, carries the weight of many blows taken willingly for Chibi-Usagi. Her eyes drift to the little girl, then, belatedly recognizing the cry Chibi-Usa thought she had not heard, back when the monstrous child was grappling her. She gives Chibi-Usa a reassuring, if weary, thumbs-up. Then she is off to Sailor Neptune's side.
Neptune took worse just now, and Uranus helps her up in an unsentimental way this time, boosting her elbow. "Both of us," she disagrees with Neptune, though Neptune has said nothing yet; they know one another's thoughts. "She won't absorb this one." Then, with nothing but a steadying breath to prepare her, Uranus draws her arms above her head and begins gathering to her palms the gilded energy of heaven.
"Beneath the cloud-wreathed crown of the sky!" Uranus shouts commandingly.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Sailor Uranus has started a combo targeting Hotaru Tomoe!
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Neptune [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
You don't always have to knock them dead, just get enough room to consider what to do next. A case in point; a bought moment, and then the great monster raises upwards. And as Sailor Neptune turns her attention towards it she can see the synchronicity. Is she daunted?
Perhaps, she must admit, a little. Just for a moment, as Tellu rises. As she brings her arms together with titanic force. But such huge arms are not hard to see coming and Sailor Neptune is able to draw backwards one step, two steps, nearer to her partner, before the poison-green flood washes down over her.
Over them.
A poison that would leave nothing behind. Nothing but...
The sea, and the sky.
And so as it fades, the truth is revealed. Sailor Neptune lowers her arms from the cross-wise block that she had performed; there is a faint scent of sea-salt in the air, but whatever guardian magicks she performed were hidden beneath the torrent. There is fatigue in her eyes as she gazes towards Uranus, pain in sympathy at the glance at her back. But she takes a breath as she's borne up.
"There are limits to everything," Sailor Neptune agrees, before her face sets and she looks towards Tellu instead of Uranus. (Her eyes flick for a moment as if to account for the rabbit, the soldier of the moon, and the witch of the thunder -- well and good --)
"Above the dreaming churn of the sea!" Sailor Neptune declaims as her hands raise upwards above her head, light gathering - teal light, aqua light, an infinite variation in subtle hues, an aquamarine jasper forming in rotary speed between her palms as if in echo of her guardian star.
COMBAT: FINISHER! Sailor Neptune has joined the combo started by Sailor Uranus!
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Uranus [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
Uranus extends high, on her toes, in a complementary pose with Neptune, almost but not quite floating due to the winds swirling about her athletic form. "Together, go forth!" she calls, and casts forth a gleaming torrent of hurricane magic.
<Pose Tracker> Sailor Neptune [Infinity Institute (12)] has posed.
Turning, perfectly in synchronicity, the sphere of watery force dancing on her fingertips, Sailor Neptune turns:
"To the Infinite Horizon!"
And so the torrents fly, storming, rising, dancing with one another as they pour towards the center of the great Daimon-witch!
COMBAT: COMBO! FINISHER! Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune have used Infinite Horizon on Hotaru Tomoe. COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe braces 117 Fatigue damage from Sailor Moon's Finisher, Moon Spiral Heart Attack!, taking 96 Fatigue damage! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to brace Witch of Wise Levin's Finisher, Levin's Retribution, taking 103 Fatigue damage! Hotaru Tomoe is unable to keep fighting! COMBAT: Hotaru Tomoe fails to brace Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune's Finisher, Combo: Infinite Horizon, taking 357 Fatigue damage! Critical Hit! Hotaru Tomoe is unable to keep fighting!
<Pose Tracker> Hotaru Tomoe [Infinity Institute (7)] has posed.
The final moments of the fight are chaos.
Each one of those bud-lips is set to screaming when Sailor Moon's hearts start falling like so many stardust sakura. Where they land -- not delicately at all, the cherry blossom falls apart here -- they plow into branches and leaves and vines like a consecrated freight train. It isn't velocity and mass that creates that force, though. It's more like matter and antimatter. The daimons -- and they are plural, surely, in a way every single potted plant was a daimon, before they woke up and unified -- wither on contact, crumbling at the stalk.
But there are so many -- and incredibly, they are still regrowing. How is that possible?
No one knows more than a magical girl that anything is possible... if you believe in yourself. And if you're willing to pay the price for your wish.
A particularly large vine crumbles and reveals Tellu at the very heart of the plant. The power armor analogy has melted away from relevance like winter yielding to spring.
Her eyebrows have flown to her hairline, which is now a widow's peak formed from countless tiny vines, almost like a chlorophyllic medusa. Her eyes are wide and wondrous... but there are no eyeballs inside, only blank tellun bark, from the woody part of the plant. Her jaw and neck are hidden by leaves, but there's a pretty clear sense of absence there, of empty space; that perhaps she was speaking through buds not because she wanted to, but because she had to.
It is impossible to tell which of the halo of branches emenating from her trunk were once her outflung arms. All twitch and writhe, terminating in more vines, prehensile enough, and green and slimy enough, to fairly describe as tentacles.
Lulu Teruno, student and instructor, gymnast and botanist, entrepeneur, may have been many things but one of them was at least nominally human. She had two legs and two arms and two eyes and (probably) two kidneys. But though it's easy to imagine, from the rapture in what's left of her face, that she feels she's ascended to a greater state of being--
--she definitely isn't a human being anymore.
She wasn't hiding inside the plant monster -- she has merged with it, body and soul.
And perhaps this was only temporary; there's nothing to guarantee this was intended as a one-way trip. Perhaps this is just another tool in her arsenal. Perhaps she might have gone home at the end of the day to sit at the bar with the other four Witches and complain about their boss. 'With friends like that, who needs senshi, am I right?'
But no matter what, right now she is the telluns and the telluns are her.
And the telluns... are burning.
Smoke curls from the tender shoots, crisping into nothingness beneath the thundrous power Wise Levin has called from the sky. Her bolts strike one after the next, and the sillhouette of Tellu, when it turns black and white, does not seem to have a skeleton inside -- veins for carrying water, perhaps, but not blood.
The buds scream more shrilly. And eyes -- Lulu's eyes, that pretty green now missing from her sockets -- open along the length of her tentacles, rolling in agony, in misery.
Except for the eyes that are protodaimon red. Those have no pupils, and they do not roll at all. They glare, they glare a slitted, distant alien rage at those that would assail them.
With what's left of her strength Tellu tries to tap her roots -- to summon them back up from the ground -- they are the hardiest part of her, the last and best defense now that her vines are so much charcoal and moondust. And they come at her call, they surround her, abandoning the people they had cruelly animated, who fall to either side -- still in the coma of the Pure Heart-stolen, but otherwise largely unharmed. Surging, the tellun roots spiral her higher. Her face rises to six feet in the air, then eight, above a trunk being created in real time, growing thick and massive and stout.
Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune turn it into so much damp sawdust.
It had previously absorbed so much of Neptune's essence that it might as well have been kelp instead of earthborne flower, but the merged orb of sky and sea, burning with the puissance of the partnership that has summoned it, grows along its shining path, as things do when you approach the horizon.
By the time it impacts Tellu and the telluns -- the Telulu -- it was easily six feet in diameter. Perhaps more. And it just...
...it just goes through her. Through the roots; then through what's left of the vines, crossed in front of her protectively; and finally through her core.
Tellu's scream reached its climax in that moment of resistance, but the moment is over and so is the scream.
She bisects, though not in a neat slice. It's just that the ball was wider than she is, and now there is nothing to connect what was above and below.
Tellu's half of a face, where the flesh might as well have been the domino mask, flops unceremoniously onto the grass. She stares with those sightless eyesockets at nothing, just for a heartbeat. And then her skull is silver stardust. And then it is nothing at all.
The rest of the plant is ceasing to exist in much the same way. And, absent both Tellu's flesh and the telluns' flora to inhabit, daimon eggs are appearing amid the disintegrating compost. One. Two. A dozen.
With the same uncanny unison with which their flowers bloomed, the eggs all split in half along exactly the same fissure, at exactly the sametime.
A black mist -- a spirit -- is born; dies instantly in the warm spring sunlight of the day; and fades away.
All that is left behind are the Crystals. A vast constellation of sparkling spikes, red and pink and white. And with a certain ineffable law of natural attraction, they are already floating gently towards their owners. All of them are normal, whatever that means. All of them are extraordinary.
Any single heart has enough power to change the world.
What would the Death Busters have done with all of these?
These might have been enough...
...to end it.
