Radioactive Lunch Time Ayeka/Jiyu

517 words
Jiyu’s nose was incredibly sensitive, likely the best sense she had! Something smelled strange and that was the first thing that drew her back towards the waking world. The scent of fear? Was one she knew very well she had spent years bathing in her own fear scent as she struggled against bondage and cried out for help that would not come for years. Considering those dark days, she was very capable of picking up even the slightest trace of fear in the air and it was instantly something that tried to lure her body into a waking state. Most times? Fear meant Danger and the dog demon was unwilling to be placed in danger against her own will again, she wanted the time to get out if she decided the risk was not worth the pay out.

The second best sense the female possessed was her hearing, and it was the next thing that tipped her off. Humans had very distinctive sniffles, they weren’t like those of any other species and if the mortals were being subjected to harsh times, it was best for supernatural beings to clear out because it would get worse or the humans could persecute those with different bodies. Her dog tail? Was a clear sign she was not human.

Opening her eyes which were not her best assets in the least, nothing instantly stood out to the girl from within the confines of her room, considering how poor her vision was. At the very least? Her room would be a safe place for Makoto to hide while the wind mage investigated. “Crap.” and her lights went out, bad karama having seemed to follow her since she was in the gardens with leila. Next? Her dresser drawers flew open and all her clothing spewed to the floor, which was where she picked her outfit from because she couldn’t be bothered to pick any of it up right now. Once she managed to get dressed, which was sometimes difficult with her tail in the way, Jiyu headed downstairs, half wondering if there would be time to eat before she helped with whatever crisis was taking place.

Instantly upon ending up downstairs, Kazehime realized she was late to some sort of party, not a single mage she could recognize was in the Silvermoon, instead it was cowering and shivering people. Actually it looked as if they were sheltering from something, it kind of alarmed her considering this was a city that housed a guild, normally they took care of problems swiftly. Had she woken up just after this started, or had it been going on for a while? Either way the wind user intended to find out, odd eyes narrowing slightly.

“What’s going on?” Her voice was firm and breezy, almost a sigh as she crouched down in front of the shivering people who were hiding under tables and such, anywhere so they didn’t have to look outside the window. For what reason would they not want to look outsider? Well she was about to find out cause the wind mage neared the window.

Magic was a wondrous tool. There was virtually nobody who could deny that magic brought a lot of possibilities to the table which would otherwise only exist in dreams. Hell, there were quite a lot of creatures which simply couldn't exist if it wasn't for magic. Dragons would be nothing more than a fantasy, unicorns would be even more elusive than they already were due to not actually existing... Magic allowed an already diverse and large world to become even more intriguing and filled with possibilities. Nearly everyone wanted to possess magic, and those who didn't tended to hate it a lot and tried to make it stop existing entirely. There was almost nobody who looked upon magic and who didn't feel either intrigue, curiosity, fear or hatred. The only ones who could even come close to being indifferent were those who were so used to magic being present that they simply couldn't see it as something strange and fantastic, couldn't imagine a world where magic didn't exist. It also was a great subject to study, trying to make sense out of that lively, energetic and chaotic mess that was mess. Try to figure out how it worked, how it affected the world and how one could learn its rules to use it for their own purposes and goals.

However it wasn't without its dangers either. With everything that could be created with magic there were also a lot of dangers that would not have existed if it weren't for magic. Without magic it would be nigh impossible to pull a trick as nasty and devious as replacing someone's blood with molten lead without actually killing them beforehand or during the process. Even if you tried to carefully cut them open they'd die of either blood loss or shock, and the process of putting the molten metal inside of them would kill them anyway. And that was just one of many examples of how magic opened the door to many strange and unusual disasters that could make one see magic for what it truly was: a gateway to many possibilities, both mundane and unique, marvellous and terrifying.

In this case the danger wasn't exactly an intentional malicious act. Instead it was a result of magic not being handled with enough caution. Someone had left some crystals filled with raw, unshaped magic lying around without the right type of barriers and other protective measures. And now Rose Garden was filled with all kinds of creatures which had been absorbing the raw magic which had slowly saturated the place. Rose Garden always was filled with lots of magic, but usually it was just thick with the passive background magic that could be found nearly anywhere in the world. While that magic could be used for for many things, and would affect the world, it was a lot easier to predict and control, and it happened a lot slower. In this case the magic had been a lot more focused, a lot more raw and a lot more messy. So all the creatures which had been absorbing this magic had quickly turned into giant monsters, who were now making a mess of the place while all the people either hid inside the buildings or left the city as soon as possible.

Except for those who had been tasked to help get rid of the pests instead. Akeya flew high above the city, looking down at what did count as one of her most favourite places in the world. As a creature of magic herself the unusually high saturation of magic in Rose Garden felt similar to how humans appreciated being in a warm place with no drafts to keep them shivering. Which was why she wasn't too happy about the idea of the place being turned into a mess because of some overgrown insects becoming a nuisance. Fortunately it shouldn't be too difficult to get rid of them, the dragoness not having much trouble with elimination wither physically or mentally. However first priority was to see if there were people who needed saving. That wasn't Akeya's idea, but the description of the job she would have to fulfil was very clear that making sure that the mutated creatures didn't harm too many people was the highest priority. Which made sense, since the Magic Council could hardly prevent losing face if not only such a fiasco born from carelessness made the entirety of Rose Garden a threat as long as it wasn't resolved, but it also actually led to many injured or even worse, loss of life.

Diving down Akeya headed straight for the centre of the city, having no reason to waste time approaching it from the edge. Being able to fly made a lot of missions a lot easier, since there weren't actually that many things which naturally were difficult to approach from above, and even if malicious intent was involved they usually expected their adversaries to come from the ground. Someone like Akeya who could fly high up in the sky and basically dive-bomb to whatever location she felt like was unusual, and for Akeya herself that unusual ability was extremely effective and pragmatic. Bandits holding hostages? Land behind their frontlines and disable the ones guarding the hostages first. Finding a single person in a large crowd? Hover above and search for the person who fitted the description before descending to have a heart to heart chat with them. Or just take them down and bring them in.

Descending rapidly Akeya changed her course when she sensed a source of magic. Another mage. From the looks of it one who was inside one of the buildings. Protecting some civilians who had shored themselves up in there? Most likely, but Akeya would have to make whoever was in there realize that it was better to get rid of the threat than to just stay there and wait.

While Jiyu looked out of the window to see many of those mutated creatures walk and fly about Akeya slipped inside through the shadows, finding a good dark empty spot where nobody would notice her as she stepped out of the shadows, reforming her physical body and looking around. Quite a few people cowering in fear as they hoped that the mutated pests outside wouldn't find them, with the mage being the one to look outside in case something approached the building. About what Akeya expected.

The dragoness walked towards Jiyu, coughing to draw her attention before speaking, ignoring the worried looks she got from the civilians. Once you surprised people often enough and were seen as a monster often enough you began to stop caring.

"Someone left raw magic lying about and the creatures moving about outside are the result of that. All mages in the area are tasked with helping protect the civilians and get rid of the threats through any means necessary. The creatures aren't going to enter this building if we don't give them reason to think there's anything important in here, so it'd be better if you came with me and helped me find a way to get rid of all the creatures."

1543 words total.

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      Magic was something very important to the wind mage, but that was to be expected considering the fact she was a high ranked elemental user. However instead of enjoying the power or the mystery and feel of magic? Her center reason for adoring being a mage was something entirely different, while she did enjoy the above things, the sole reason she loved her magic was the fact it was inherited, from her mother. A realm that would otherwise be sealed off from her was wide open for exploring thanks to magic. Without magic? Jiyu would likely be a stay at home mother by now, because there was no way she could overcome her fear of fire to be a black smith like her father and she had no extraordinary skills like how astrid could play the violin, she only had her magic. Considering she spent so long working on honing it? The wind witch was exceedingly good at using it, when she was fully awake, but for now she was content staying inside and questioning people due to the fact that she didn't have enough information to work things out and she had only recently stumbled down the stairs in her sloppily applied armor, which she would need to fix eventually.

       Even if Ayeka had been careful and successful at sneaking in at first? The second she made a single foot step in the closed space, the elfin ears of the mage she was trying to approach twitched suddenly, as if they had heard even that light foot step. Clearly? The mage that the dragon slayer was attempting to communicate with happened to be far from human herself, especially given how she squinted in the direction of the footstep, when everyone else could clearly see the shadow shrouded magic user. Having the vision of a dog could really suck sometimes, it prevented her from seeing the new appearance, but they clearly smelled like a dragon slayer, so Jiyu just hopped they were here because the magic council sent them. Being required to fight someone so early in the morning? Could be extremely taxing when one had a weak body like she did, so it was something she tended to avoid as often as possible. In spite of being an incredibly powerful mage, the wind user stayed out of fights when she could, and being able to stay out of a fight depended both on her temper and the surrounding conditions. Anyway's, it was way too early for her to be getting into anything and she felt as if something was about to start right in front of her anyways, against her wishes. The canine realized something as she half ignored what the dragon was saying to her, because her growling stomach made itself known, stating that she had not even eaten yet this morning. "Geeze, trying to get me to take on horrendous monster's when I haven't even had breakfast yet?" the wind mage scoffed it out as she crossed her arms and sighed taking a few steps forward and stretching her arms out in front of her. Jiyu could already tell this was going to be a fun day.

       "What idiot leaves Raw magic just laying around." she grumbled it as she undid the tie holding her armor to her halter top and straightened it out before reapplying that portion of her armor. "Well I guess belonging to the towns guild qualifies me as in the area, doesn't it?" she could not just ignore this, which she would really like to do since she wanted to go back to sleep. Heck maybe she would check to see if her boyfriend was back and cuddle up with him if the feline was in his room. A day snuggling with Marschal and maybe making out if she could scrounge up the nerve, a day surrounded in his heavenly scent, that sounded way better than going to battle against unknown beasts! However she didn't smell the cat so she knew she was fooling herself if she tried to convince herself that could happen today. "Well since my Boyfriend isn't around I guess it wouldn't hurt to help you, my only other job is in this inn and clearly no one is buying anything while these thing's creep around." and it also didn't hurt that her love was a lower rank mage who might not be allowed inside the danger zone to get back to her, so logically she had to clear this up before she could spend a lazy day in bed again. Finally Jiyu moved onto fixing the armor around her skirt and the equipment for her hands. "Let me go fetch my weapon's real quick, to be safe." the female spoke those words before rushing up the stairs and vanishing to the upper floor, some shuffling could be heard before she descended with a bow and arrow, though she also had a fan hidden alongside a knife.

     "Why don't we try the peaceful approach first alright- What's your name anyways?" she just realized she had been casually speaking to the dragon slayer as if everything was normal, when in fact, they didn't even know each other. Honestly? The things being half asleep could make people so sometimes. "You said they were mutated by the magical energy right? Has anyone tried to undo the process, drain it from them?" if not they were almost sunk on her desire to resolve all of this without any fighting, which really did kind of suck. "If that's not possible maybe we should see if the mutation gave them intelligence before we attack, it will at least give me time to wake up fully." because fighting with your partner half in dream land? Was not a recipe for success, it was the formula to kill one of the mages fighting and Jiyu had no desire to die. Even when she was tortured day in and out not too horribly long ago? Even back than in those bleek conditions, she had wished for rescue instead of death. So if Ayeka wanted to go on a suicide mission, she was doing it alone.

Akeya ignored the reactions from any of the non-mages that were in the room. As usually she wasn't the most comforting of presences, since... well, she was a half dragon, and one who didn't really bother to look very friendly or calming. At least these people were familiar enough with the risks and results of magic, living in Rose Garden and all, that they didn't shoot into a complete panic at her appearance. Instead they just kept a clear distance from her, which worked in her favour since she didn't have any business with them and didn't want them to get in her way.

On the other hand, the attention of the other mage in the room was somewhat important. Akeya could probably find a way to deal with this crisis without any direct support. Probably. It was a big area that was affected, so there could be something more troublesome out there. Unfortunately it looked like this mage in question hadn't really noticed anything and had been sleeping until just now, looking at how she in generally reacted to the situation. While she had noticed Akeya's presence rather quickly she seemed to have trouble actually locating the half dragon, and beyond that she just gave the impression of someone who still had to go through the process of firmly separating her dreams from reality. Which annoyed Akeya just a tad, since she'd rather get a move on and deal with this.

However, becoming too aggressive towards this... non-human mage (Akeya didn't really care whether she was human or not. She wasn't a dragon, which meant that there was little reason to differentiate between her and other humanoids) would make cooperation more difficult, so Akeya tried to gauge how long it would take before the woman in front of her would wake up properly. From the looks of it she had been awoken rather rudely, so that'd still take a while. It was a good thing that Akeya as an assassin was used to waiting as well, otherwise she might have gotten genuinely impatient and said something stupid.

"Fortunately it doesn't seem like the mutated creatures are too eager finding prey to attack, and with almost everyone having found shelter already we should be able to afford you going through whatever morning rituals you have. As for how raw magic came to be just lying about, the exact reason is unclear." Raw magic was a pretty common material here in Rose Garden, where magic practically seeped out from the earth anyway. It was also a very important material for all the magic items that the magical town produced. "So far there's no reason to believe that there was any malicious intent, given the uncontrolled and ineffective results." If someone had been planning to wreak havoc they could have done it a lot more successfully than this. Not that this wasn't a bother as well, but because the creatures weren't actually that hostile and didn't seem to be hell-bent on making life hard for the inhabitants it was still a bit half-assed.

"Most likely it was just negligence. Humans aren't particularly good at being careful after all. And yes, being here means that the Magic Council would expect you to help." Unless she belonged to a dark guild, in which case Akeya had more pressing matters to deal with.

The woman herself seemed to have a bit of a loose attitude, not really bothered by Akeya's sudden appearance or her draconic nature as she instead seemed to only decide to help get rid of the mutated creatures because she didn't have anything else to do. Akeya's initial guess that the mage in the inn was protecting the civilians seemed to have been off. Rather, it looked like the mage was only here by coincidence. Most likely a guildless or independent mage then. The former tended to be loners who didn't care much for what happened around them as long as they weren't bothered themselves, and the latter just liked messing about themselves. Not as troublesome as dark mages since they didn't seem to have any real malicious intent, but still more likely to cause trouble than to help solve it unless it was something really big where they realized they couldn't just feign indifference.

Regardless, as long as she helped out Akeya wasn't going to go all judgemental on her regarding her motivation or motives. As Jiyu went to collect her weapons Akeya stood in front of the window, watching the world outside. As she had stated already the mutated creatures didn't actually seem to interested in causing any harm. She could see several moving about, but they didn't really seem to have any specific purpose. If anything their movements were rather human in how they seemed to be moving in the moment rather than being controlled.

Akeya raised an eyebrow when Jiyu came back and asked for her name. The girl hadn't introduced herself either... "I'm Akeya. As for draining the mana, actually drawing mana out of living beings is a very specialized ability. Beyond that with how their new bodies have been formed with that mana drawing it out could just as easily kill them. If you want to try the peaceful method first I don't think it'd be a good idea to risk that." At the proposal of trying to see whether the mutated creatures were intelligent Akeya frowned, then nodded. "I'll go outside and see if I can talk to one of them. Although I hope you finish waking up soon." With that she went back outside, turning into a shadow and disappearing before reforming outside of the inn and looking around.

On the inside, however, she was mildly annoyed. While she agreed that it might be easier to resolve the problem if they could just persuade the creatures to go away, she was finding Jiyu's nonchalant half-sleeping behaviour to be somewhat grating. Akeya herself was a very serious and focused person, so someone like Jiyu who was more laid back didn't go well with her. Personally she just hoped that the non-human girl would become more serious once she was fully awake.

The member 'Akeya' has done the following action : Dice Rolls

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'Monster Dice' :

2613 words total.

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Jiyu did not seem disturbed at all by the half dragon appearance of the girl standing in the cafe, in fact she was treating it as if this was something commonplace. Also as a side note? Those who resided in the town and frequented the area inhabited by Black Rose also did not seem very disturbed by the clearly not human features. The town could not really afford to be terrified at the slightest sight of something non-human when the Guild that called their city home was filled to the brim with being’s that were anything but human. So most of the room was more comforted by the presence of two clearly not human creatures who did not look to be part insect, because that meant to them that the guild whose hall they were hiding in would be getting to work on the problem very soon. Of course no one yet realized that Kazehime had no intentions to rush this morning, black surrounded eyes still hazy from sleep as she stared across the room at who she guessed she would end up working with in not too long. It was very good that the creatures were not intent hunters because otherwise everyone in the room would be doomed, because Jiyu could barely collect herself at the moment. The only thing she wanted to do was go back up to her bedroom and grab a swift nap, maybe see if her boyfriend had gotten back from his last job yet and curl up with him if the male had returned. “Makoto~” the female made a whistling sound, as if she was calling for some pet or something as she sat in one of the bar stools, yawning large as she started adjusting the straps on her armor, fixing it so that everything would actually function correctly. The woman was somewhat aware this was important, but nothing was quiet working perfectly this morning considering the stimuli overload she had woken up to, it would take a few more minutes before her sense’s functioned correctly.  

“Breakfast Jiyu!” the person to speak was young, looked as if they were a toddler with short cut purple hair and a white kimono. As she spoke her words in a voice that sounded more befitting of a fox than a human? The girl stumbled slightly, trying not to drop the two plates she had brought with her. Once the little girl came close enough, Jiyu took both plates and put them on the bar, taking the cups of water off them. “Eat quick Maka, we can’t play around much this morning.” and yes Kazehime was listening to the other girl, she just was not acting like it because she had to care for Makoto before anything else, sitting the little girl on the bar she motioned for her to begin eating. Finally Jiyu picked up a piece of meat, chewing on it as she twitched her ears to show the first sign that she could actually hear the dragoness, thinking between bites and glances over to make sure the child was eating properly with a fork and knife, even if Jiyu herself refused to do so.

“Well whoever left it laying around is an idiot. I don’t have very many morning rituals, I just can’t function well without food and I was over stimulated.” after all her senses were extremely powerful, just her ability to scent things was forty two more times sensitive than normal humans at the least. One of her legs kicked as she crossed them, holding a cup of water and sipping from it as she started to feel her senses return to normal and managed to look directly at the dragoness. However Jiyu could still not see the other girl, due to the distance between them and how poor her vision was. “It’s kind of a drag I really wanted to have a quiet, or maybe not so quiet morning in today.” the female chuckled as she finally finished off the glass of water, scraping her foot against the ground wood, accidently leaving claw marks on the floor. Shit Iza was going to kill her for damaging the cafe again. Jiyu honestly did not care this time, she was a bit sore that she could not just check for Marschal and spend the day with him, let Maka go out today.

Jiyu was still adjusting a few of her weapons and such when her partner for this task decided to go out ahead of her. For some reason she could not figure? Jiyu let the girl go, searching the bar for  hair ties she had left there a few days before. Once she had pulled her long locks into a ponytail? Kazehime motioned for the little girl to follow after her, which resulted in the child morphing into a roughly five foot tall kitsune, following behind the short mage. “Since they seem sentient due to their movements I guess we should pick a direction and start looking for who's in charge.” the comment was off hand as she came out, but now she looked a lot more serious about what was going on, as if stepping out of the inn switched some flip inside of her, serious expression set on her black marked face.

“What are you two trying to add to the freak show.” the comment was made by a giant centipede who was curled around one of the nearby buildings. After she spoke? The human half with medium length purple hair suddenly started laughing, leaning back to look at the two mages, tightening her lower half around the building. If they did not do something about the mutated female she would clearly end up crushing the structure she was wrapped around and likely move onto another. However it was interesting to note she was glancing into a sunroof, fixing her rather messy hair. So this apparently was some sort of mutated girl with a concern about her appearance. “Stupid man, I just can’t see why he said I’m an ugly creature.” she chuckled to herself, and it was than very clear she was concerned about her appearance, but also that she was getting angrier as her hair refused to listen to her, she was totally going to splinter the building!  

Of course there was also the problem of the arachnid’s creeping up behind them, which Jiyu had yet to notice.

Akeya had noticed that the people here weren't fleeing on sight, in contrast to some villages she had been at before where an exotic sight like her would cause quite the ruckus. However just because they were familiar enough with people who weren't fully human didn't mean that a half dragon didn't result in a certain amount of wariness. Dragons had always been amongst the most powerful and most dangerous of creatures, so a dragonkin could still cause trouble even if other non-humans were also commonplace, especially since dragons in general didn't have much reason to think favourably of humans. Add to that the fact that the story of Acnologia had become more widespread these years, of the human who had turned into the most powerful and dangerous dragon mankind could recall, and seeing a humanoid who was developing dragon traits could still make one be on guard, familiarity with non-humans or not.

And beyond that there was the fact that Akeya personally had a tendency to give a rather cold and potentially hostile impression. Where other people simply gazed when not concentrating Akeya was pretty much glaring all the time, giving the impression when she looked at you that she was staring straight through your skin and figuring the best way to turn you into a meal if you bothered her too much. An expression of constant focus and mild annoyance, combined with a body language which made it clear that she didn't care much for people getting close, and certainly not casually. A half dragon, reminiscent of the dreaded Acnologia's transformation, with a cold, calculating and passively hostile aura, might not make people disturbed or shocked, but it was certainly not something you'd just treat as nothing to worry about unless you were notably strong. A trait which most people didn't possess.

Said half dragon was still waiting for the other non-human to finish waking up and get serious. The mutants outside weren't likely to attack this place since they were lacking in actual killing intent, but Akeya didn't want to spend all day waiting around before getting to work. Honestly at least if one of those insect things invaded this place she'd have something to kill, and maybe having a corpse in the inn would wake the... canine woman up (Akeya wasn't too sure what kind of creature Jiyu exactly was, but her traits were distinctly canine-like).

And then the woman called another canine girl, although this one was more blatantly fox-like. The half dragon watched as the two had breakfast, then looked outside herself to study the situation. Pretty much the same as before, so it wasn't like they didn't have the time, but Akeya was used to moving and acting decisively. Working together with someone who took a much more leisurely approach was going to force her to alter her approach, at least if she actually wanted to cooperate with this Jiyu instead of solving the issue on her own. Which would be a hassle, since there were a lot of mutants out there to take care of, no matter the approach taken.

"Humans tend to be sloppy and idiotic yes. At least, the majority." She refrained from commenting about the food or the over stimulation, instead just heading outside while she left Jiyu and the small fox to finish their impromptu breakfast. The world outside the inn was rather messy, as these mutants used to be small animals and thus didn't really have much experience with seeing the world from a much bigger perspective, and to make it worse they didn't know anything about human customs or such complex thoughts either, so for the most part they were exploring everything physically... and with their new forms they were strong enough that this hands-on exploration left a lot of things messed up and broken. Fortunately the raw magic seemed to have left most of the plants alone, otherwise Rose Garden would have turned into a miniature jungle. Granted Akeya might've felt more comfortable in the jungle, but it would've been a pain to clean up and she doubted either the people of Rose Garden or the Magic Council would agree with one of the biggest and most prosperous of cities in the country remaining a jungle.

While Akeya was still looking around Jiyu came out of the cafe with that little girl in tow, who now also looked like a fox. The half dragon narrowed her eyes slightly, but it seemed that now that she had eaten and had time to evaluate the situation her temporary ally had become a bit more focused on the task. Good. "Given how chaotically they've behaved up until now there's no guarantee of there being anyone in charge, but maybe if we deal with the stronger ones first the weaker ones will follow." Intimidation was an approach to problems that Akeya was well versed with. However before they moved very far at all suddenly a large... centipede girl showed up, who immediately insulted the two of them only to then become focused on trying to fix her own hair. From Akeya's opinion, that hair wasn't going to play nice unless the centipede girl put a lot more effort into it than merely messing it up further with her hands.

"Most humans have trouble with intelligent creatures which aren't fully human." Akeya shrugged. Of course, for an insect girl it was a bit harder than most, since humans didn't care for normal insects either. Better not to say that out loud though. "Better to ignore that guy and try to find one with a bit more of an open mind." With that Akeya turned around as she heard a lot of skittering, her fin-like ears spreading out before folding back up. Behind them there was a whole lot of spiders, the half dragon blinking as she realized that it was a very good thing that she wasn't an arachnophobe. She was pretty sure that someone with a fear for spiders would have fainted on the spot, because there was a lot of them, they were large and they certainly didn't hide themselves very well.

"Will you play with us miss?" Asked one of them, making Akeya blink once again. They sounded more like children than actual monsters... odd. However she was already shaking her head."I'm busy, so I'm afraid not. However in that direction you should be able to find a big forest in which you'd be able to play with each other all day." She pointed south, after which all the spiders first chittered amongst each other before nodding collectively, followed by them all skittering southwards to find that forest Akeya had just suggested to them. The half dragon suppressed a sigh as the spiders were taken care of that easily. A child could have taken care of that... She looked around to see how Jiyu had been doing with the centipede girl.

The member 'Akeya' has done the following action : Dice Rolls

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'Monster Dice' :

3667 words total

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The dragonkin was correct in assuming that Kazehime was something close to, related to a canine, once she had been a demon demon, now however she was something known as an Inugami. In short? They were dogs who had been starved of food and water, tormented and then murdered who came back for revenge and thus turned into something of evil vengeance gods. However Kazehime’s kind were made complicated by the fact they could carry four faces, and Jiyu did indeed have four personalities residing in one body, all aware of each other and shockingly agreeing to work together even though the needs and desires of each were vastly different. Anyways her status as an Inugami was not all that important right now, there was nothing that made it relevant right now, in this situation she was just another legal mage who was present and could potentially help deal with the problem. Besides the female still called herself a normal dog demon to anyone who had no way to know she was kind of lying to them, considering she could still not control numerous powers that came with the status of an existence like her own, because she had trouble accepting herself for what she was.

Jiyu seemed care free but this was only because she was a woman with too much on her mind, if she actively tried to think about everything all of the time? She would shatter beneath her own meager weight, so she was reckless, brash and seemingly illogical at times. However all of that hid someone who did their research, took measured risks and was actually a very cautious person, independent and very good at her job. One could say she was not serious, but the truth was she took everything so seriously that she decided to simply do what seemed the best to her at the time, yet relying on her emotions had already screwed her over multiple times. Oh well someone could not change their ways very easily, it was just not something that really happened with any degree of ease after-all. Kazehime would just keep going through life trying her best to help those she could, suppress her urge to take revenge on every living being she saw, oh wait that simply meant not letting her assertive face take control, easy enough.


The centipede girl was very large, her insect part was around the size of a person across, and the length of her was somewhere near twenty feet or so. All of that? Was not including the fact she had a humanoid part of this creature, which was bigger than a normal woman. Obviously an average man might not be able to find it insanely attractive, Jiyu did not think anyone could unless it was there fetish, maybe someone with a leg fetish because of all those damn centipede legs. However she understood the need to have someone love you, it was something the young girl knew very well from numerous experiences in life and afterwards. Even as she was doing this job, her lover was in her head with that sinful purring and the immense safety, comfort she felt settled in his arms. Even further back? She recalled lying between her parents happily in a warm place before flames had taken it all away from her. Thus there was some sympathy for the centipede woman, but one could not force the affections of others they had to be earned in some way which could be as simple as a glance or as risky and grand as saving someone’s life. “They were thrust into a new existence they did not even know was possible yesterday, give them some slack.” the woman looked very sympathetic now sighing out slightly as she chuckled remembering when that had been done to her. Most of her life? Jiyu had thought she was a human, possessed no canine features, until one day everything just happened and she found out that she had never been human from the start and that had kind of hurt. Beyond the pain thought? Was the confusion and fear, not knowing what to do and the days she tried to act like life was normal. Eventually everything evened out, but she could remember the panic. Without a mirror these creatures might not even know they had transformed and were simply going about their business, though this was clearly not the purple haired girls case. “No One Has An Open Mind!” the girl was throwing a fit at Aya’s suggestion, but Jiyu knew what to do here, she had one trick up her sleeve and she was sure it would work. “Can a dog love a cat, can a cat love a dog?” the centipede looked confused at her, settling down slightly aand crawling to look down at Jiyu with a scowl. “Impossible, they’re enemies.” in the minds of most people, since often dogs were bigger than felines and the species were different. “I’m a dog, and guess what my boyfriend is~” the canine spoke as she laughed and put her hands behind her back, the creature recoiling as she got a hopeful look. “It just takes time, anyone can love anybody.” of course she was not going to mention that her boyfriend had also saved her from a roughly two year torturous imprisonment!

The wind user turned around now that the purple haired beast was calmed down, on the ground and not crushing a building, to see what her partner was doing. However? The wind user never should have glanced. “JIYU!” it was a shout by makoto, thick with concern as the large fox moved to catch the suddenly falling figure. One glance? Would reveal the witch had passed out upon seeing the spider’s skittering away, it might have been wise to tell the other girl she was afraid of spiders earlier. Maka laid Jiyu down gently, pawing at the girl and whining, before looking to the dragon. “What’s wrong with that chick.” the next set of beasts to appear? Were clearly not insects but rather snakes of some sort, slithering across the ground with their human halves barely held up. Actually? It looked like they were hunting the group of three, which was bad with one mage disable and Maka trying to wake her up.

There was a good reason for Akeya to leave the centipede to Jiyu. Akeya herself was no strange to the side effects of being unusual: even if non-humans had steadily increased in numbers over the years, an actual dragonkin was still nearly unique, with only two, maybe three of them having been sighted in recent times. Dragons and humans very rarely mixed, and even when they did the odds of it resulting in offspring was even less likely. Akeya hadn't even been born the way she was: she merely had the blood of dragons and had managed to awaken her draconic heritage by taking in the magic of a dragon as well. However this still meant that for the majority of people she was unusual, strange, or even just monstrous or disgusting for being inhuman. Those who knew she had chosen this willingly had a tendency to approve even less. So it wasn't like she didn't understand the centipede's plight in that she wanted to be seen as beautiful, but because of her nature would have a hard time having everyone accept that.

However Akeya's reason wasn't discomfort. It was a lack of caring herself. Even if she understood why the centipede might find it important, Akeya herself was aware that she was beautiful, and she didn't require others to confirm it for her. Granted she did prefer it if people showed enough intelligence to realize that she was in fact beautiful, but if they tried to imply otherwise that just showed their own flawed minds. Annoying, but nothing for Akeya to get too angry about. And beyond that she also just wasn't the most sympathetic of people, so even if the centipede's issue was understandable Akeya wasn't really the type to try and comfort her and show her how to feel better about the situation. She was blunt, arrogant, rather cold and honestly just didn't really care for the centipede's well-being. She wanted to get the centipede out of here because the mutant was being problematic for the city and as long as she was being a problem Akeya wouldn't be able to finish the job. So far as she was concerned whether the centipede survived or not was at best a secondary concern.

Jiyu on the other hand seemed to be a bit more of the sympathetic type. Which meant she would be better at convincing the centipede, because she would be able to show that she actually cared for the centipede and wanted to help her. Akeya could try but she would first have to think of what to say, and even then the centipede would probably be able to tell that the dragonkin wasn't too genuine with her concern, not even talking about how Akeya was always rather cold and harsh, which didn't make strangers more inclined to be convinced by what she had to say or feel like trusting her. So all things considered, leaving the centipede to Jiyu was a decision made entirely based on what would work better. The spiders on the other hand had been very easy to deal with: they didn't really need sympathy or concern, they just wanted to know where they could play. Like little children, although honestly Akeya wasn't the biggest fan of small children either, with them being so extremely noisy and hyper-active.

When she looked around Akeya was in time to see Jiyu collapse on the ground. Huh. Apparently Jiyu was one of those arachnophobes. Rather ironic, since Akeya had just now been thinking how she was glad she wasn't afraid of spiders while dealing with the rather childish overgrown spiders. The irony almost made her smirk, but she instead frowned as she realized that meant that she now had to both take care of the mutants and try to wake her current partner up. She doubted that slapping the girl awake would work, if only because if it did work she'd have to deal with the canine girl being angry at her, which in turn would slow down dealing with the mutants because she doubted Jiyu would just let the matter be if she learned that the dragonkin had rather coldly slapped her awake.

Fortunately the fox was already taking care of Jiyu, which meant there was one less worry for Akeya. She would just have to make sure nothing got to Jiyu and the fox while the fox woke Jiyu up, which was relatively easy. Akeya's tail twitched when she heard a new voice, one with a somewhat slithery quality to it. Looking around again she saw that a group of snakes had approached them, looking a bit less friendly than the spiders before. Akeya glared at them, not feeling in the mood to actually fight them. The snakes didn't look like the type to attack because of sheer anger or something. Rather it more looked like because they were now bigger than humans there was no reason for them to not treat humanoids as prey as well. Unfortunately, Akeya really didn't care for that. She wasn't about to have a fight with a couple of overgrown snakes, especially with the other girl on the job just having passed out.

"She doesn't like spiders. Now..."

Akeya's emerald eyes appeared to glow as she narrowed them, looking pretty damn pissed at this point as... suddenly the scenery seemed to change. Most of it was still the same, but where Akeya had been standing there was now a large dark dragon, glaring at the snakes with ferocity, anger and a complete lack of patience. The dragon's presence was overbearing, cold and relentless as she studied the snakes as if deciding which one to eat first. The snakes in the meantime weren't very happy. They thought they had found two humanoids and a fox to eat, but instead they were now having a face off with a giant dragon whose sheer intimidating presence was nearly suffocating, and whose emerald eyes were drilling into them as if trying to squash them into the ground with sheer intensity and focus.

"What do you want."

Akeya's voice, now much deeper and with a rumbling undertone, came from the dragon's mouth. The snakes quickly conversed before looking back up at the angry dragon.

"Uhm... I-if you can tell us where to f-find a source of warmth... w-we'll leave you be. Th-this large body... l-loses warmth quickly."

The dragon snorted, black smoke coming out of her nostrils. If someone paid close attention they'd notice that the dragon, large as she was, wasn't actually colliding with any of the buildings or people nearby. She somehow was huge without actually taking up any more space than Akeya herself had been occupying. The dragon, of course, not actually being real: one of Akeya's non-shadow based abilities was to let her intimidating nature and draconic heritage combine in an illusion based off of superiority and might, making lesser creatures believe they were facing off with an actual pissed off dragon.

"There's a desert to the south, which means that direction." She pointed towards the south with a large talon. "It's largely left alone by the humans, so you will be able to take full advantage of the sun there without bothering anyone. Which is good, because if I learned that you were eating travellers I would come visit and eat you in return." She lowered her head until it was somewhat face to face with the snakes, who after a couple of seconds of nervous staring quickly began to slither away.

Akeya kept up the glare a bit longer before letting the intimidation-based illusion disappear, once again turning back towards the fox and Jiyu. "How long before she will be awake?"

5170 of 10,000

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Jiyu had been raised to believe she was human and thus once carried the ideals most mortals did of what was alright and not alright. When she first joined Black Rose she had honestly been slightly put off by all the non humans, and pissed off every time someone called her something canine related. The biggest receiver of her out bursts back then? Had been her now boyfriend who could smell the canine on her, Marschal would often mention it and unlike what most suspected of him the drunk was a nice guy and often tried to help her out, which only pissed her off even more. Those days were one’s that had ended maybe a little too soon, all because she decided to sleep on a bench beneath the star’s one night and some jerks had taken it as their invitation to kidnap her, sadly.  For the longest time after that the wind user had actually needed someone to tell her she was beautiful because her body was left riddled with bruises that didn’t go away, scars and scarred burns, a truly ugly site for most. Yet? The feline had convinced her she was still unchanged in spite of her new appearance, than Black Rose and her kitty kept doing that as her life changed rapidly. Now she did not carry the scars from her slightly horrific past physically, but sadly the mental scars were there and it caused a very large amount of sympathy, intense understanding of the need to be told things were going to be okay and you weren’t as ugly as others or yourself thought. It was for those reasons she had chosen to quell the centiwoman the way she did, convincing her that love could overcome anything given enough time. For the wind user? That had certainly been the case, since she was held captive for three years, thinking of the little time she’d had in Black Rose before that until finally the man who had opened it all up to her came and saved her life. Prior to joining a guild she had not held much sympathy as a ship rat, worrying about someone could get her killed. In Black Rose thought, the female was beyond sympathetic now, and while part of her was still dark, that side almost got to show itself.  

Being out cold was like the least fun thing in the world and also one of the most distressing things that existed as well. Unconsciousness? Was different from normal slumber, it was far different, the realms between them were something that could never be crossed, one could never be mistaken for the other. When one was asleep, things were peaceful even serene and one could have the most pleasant of dreams or the worst of horrid nightmares, possibility abounded as someone went towards the land of dreams, slumber and mostly willful sleep. One was often aware they had fallen to drift! Yet when one fainted, passed out, got knocked out, fell unconscious, it was not so rainbows and unicorns as that, no it was very different and much more frightening than nightmares. Instead of the sense of awareness that one had when they fell asleep to rest their head at the end of a long day or simply to day dream, one had no awareness when they were knocked out. Having your awareness of the world ripped away like that? Was alarming, it left you churning for any foot hold in a world where there was nothing but an eternal freefall that you could be trapped in forever if nothing ever awoke you from it. Jiyu would prefer being tortured to being knocked out, but she had not gotten so lucky this time, actually she would prefer neither, but at least if someone was trying to torment her she had the chance to fight back against them. Under current conditions? She never got the chance to fight back or even truly be aware of what was happening and she truly hated that, it was despicable and there was nothing to be mad at this time expect her own fear, so she was the subject of her own disgust, which made it worse. This was a never ending cycle and would be until there was some reason or why for her to wake up, she could not even remember what had caused her to go out, truly disgusting. How could this even be? It annoyed her, and that only get rising with every given second, somehow she had to break this cycle, but none of her senses were working, nothing responded and it was just like her brain shut down on her. Suddenly she was wondering if she had passed on again, and silently prayed that was not the case as she had no idea how long regeneration took in her realm. Jiyu would rather not have to take another death, so waking up would be a very good thing, she felt like wherever she happened to passed out was not exactly the most safe of locations. Yet the word was not actually with her wishes right now, so the wind user would remain out cold for now, struggling within her own head for any ledge she could grasp to get a foothold back in her own brain. Even one tiny nook or cranny? Would be enough to allow her to return to the land of the waking, but right now that was just not coming to her, it fought against her wishes and evaded her grasp.  

The dragon was correct in not taking the action of slapping Jiyu into a state of being awake, because like she thought the young sorceress would not react to that well whatsoever! Being struck? Was something that she really hated, and it dealt more damage to her than it would a normal person, because even if her body looked normal now it was still incredibly weak as if she had just been tormented yesterday. Makoto could not just shake her mistress away from that reason as well, if Jiyu’s skin was forced to move against the cement, there would be a pool of blood beneath the wind user, and that was the last thing they needed. Nothing could be done without risking Jiyu’s health and safety, at least that was the way Maka was seeing it right now. Anything she could do to wake up the passed out girl? Could hurt her, but it was also dangerous for her to remain unconscious as well, since this town was basically an active combat zone right now, it was a major dilemma. However a decision had to be reached, and so the fox nudged her adoptive mother, flinching when the scent of blood entered the air. The simple act of the skin of her back scraping softly against the ground? Had been enough to slice the flesh there open and leak her red essence onto the ground. “Jiyu” the fox sounded regretful as she shifted around. Their ally? Was expecting her to wake up Kazehime, but nudging her which was all the little fox could think of, was only going to hurt Jiyu every single time she did it! “I don’t know.” the kitsune sighed it out, sliding Jiyu onto her back motioning for the dragon to follow, down an alley beside them, hoping it would be safer than the middle of street. Once they were in the alley way, Maka shifted herself to gently despite her owner back onto the ground, bending down and licking her cheek, but this moved her head against the ground and caused the other cheek to get scraped up. Koto stopped and sighed audibly, shifting her paws as she tried to figure out what she was going to do, shifting into her child like form and starting to push on Jiyu’s chest, shaking her with less force due to her body switch. Now? The wind witch was not getting scraped up, but it also did not seem she was waking up either.

Eventually Jiyu got a foot hold in her brain, saw some semblance of light that she could sprint towards and try to grasp. Once she had this small hand hold? The girl fought her way back to consciousness, but it took several more minutes to accomplish this task, during which she showed no signs of being near waking up. “Huh? What happened?” the girl groggily sat up, looking faint with her head between her knees, breathing slightly disjointed as she grew adjusted to being awake once more. At least now they could continue on making the city safe again, but Jiyu would be embarrassed to know one of her fears slipped against her will. Finding out she passed out because of children spider people? Would likely not be good for her self esteem as a mage, it would actually be rather depressing, can one shot a monster, but a spider makes you faint. What type of mage would that even be?

Akeya, unaware of Jiyu's past, couldn't really do anything but wait for the small fox to somehow wake the dog girl up. She found it mildly annoying that the fox seemed to refuse using any harsher methods to force her awake... until she noticed that Jiyu's skin was getting torn and scraped even by the small movements her body was forced to make against the cold and hard ground. Considering that Akeya always was barefoot and she had the blood of dragons flowing through her, her body was unusually resilient, and it looked like that made her a very sharp contrast with her current job partner. Akeya wondered what kind of body Jiyu must have if the small attempts the fox made at waking her were already enough to cause that kind of damage. Sure, the damage wasn't too severe, but on the other hand with how careful and gentle Maka was being any kind of wound at all was already strange.

"You have a strange mother." Akeya commented. Of course, she didn't actually believe that the two were related by blood, since she could smell that kind of thing (granted, she hadn't had the opportunity to test it out on a demon dog and a fox before, so their smells could be different enough to confuse her), but the way the two had been behaving so far, especially in the inn, was enough for Akeya to make that comment. Although she doubted that the fox would mind anyway, and either way she didn't really care too much herself, being of the rather blunt type.

When the fox brought Jiyu to an alley where she would be safe from the mutants prowling the streets Akeya followed, albeit with some reluctance. She would rather just go out and keep at it, seeing how these mutants were rather easy to get rid of once you figured out the how. She had expected having to fight them all, but it turned out that by and large the mutants were rather mundane in their wants, so as long as you could fulfil those wants they wouldn't oppose you in your attempts to make them leave the city they were terrorizing (most likely unknowingly in most cases).

Unfortunately Akeya had been taught that if you were working together with someone you had to stick with them unless you actually agreed to split up, or if the situation left no other choice. Jiyu was incapacitated, so it was impossible to form an agreement of the sort, and at the same time the non-hostile nature of the mutants also meant that dealing with them wasn't the highest priority after all. Akeya would have preferred to just move as fast as possible, but she had to admit that in the current situation they could afford to wait for Jiyu to recover, which meant that she would have to oblige and stay with the two canines until the bigger one showed signs of consciousness again. She just hoped that it wouldn't take too long: as an assassin Akeya knew patience, but at the same time she still was a bit of an impatient assassin, being capable of waiting but rather avoiding it when possible.

Fortunately it looked like the girl was already beginning to wake up, Akeya watching the two while also looking out of the alley to see if anything was coming towards them. It looked like Rose Garden was big enough that even with all those mutants moving about there was still plenty of areas where they weren't crowding the streets, and having chased off the snakes and the spiders, not to mention the giant centipede, meant that currently the three of them were in a clear area. Which most likely wouldn't last, but one had to count their blessings rather than only focusing on the downsides. The dragon's tail went from side to side behind her as she watched Jiyu wake up, before her gaze went outwards to the street again. The canine seemed to not remember what had happened... but unfortunately for her self-esteem Akeya wasn't the kind of person to not answer that kind of question as bluntly as usual.

"You fainted after you saw a group of mutated spiders." The dragoness shrugged, not looking particularly bothered or annoyed by it, but also not having much sympathy. It was an observation, pure and simple. "It seems the mutants are almost exclusively insects and those that hunt insects: I dealt with a bunch of snakes as well while you were out. If you're afraid of those kind of critters you might have to sit this one out after all, unless you think you can manage to avoid dealing with the ones that actually bother you. Since you seemed to have no problem with the centipede I'm assuming you're not just afraid of all insects." For Akeya the mission was the most important thing, so she was primarily thinking of how this would affect the mission. It would make her appear to be callous and cold, but Akeya had never claimed to be a nice person, with as only real upside that she didn't actually go out of her way to be a jerk usually.

"Regardless, we're in luck. It seems that the mutants aren't so numerous that we'll run into them with every step we take, and they aren't actually hostile either unless provoked. We can take our time dealing with them, so you can take your time recovering. Passing out can have lingering effects, so don't overdo it for now." With that the dragoness stepped outside the alley again, staying in sight of the two canines as she looked around, widening her fin ears to increase her hearing range. Since they had the time she'd wait for Jiyu to recover, but at the same time she'd try to figure out where the closest bunch of mutants are so they could be on their way once the canine girl was ready for it. Although she had to admit, this mission wasn't entirely to her liking... but as a professional she'd have to can her internal complaining and just get on with it.

The member 'Akeya' has done the following action : Dice Rolls

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'Monster Dice' :

6053 of 10,000

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At one point in time it would have been very possible for Jiyu to have a body that was much stronger than her current one, maybe even somewhere close to the strength of her job partners enhanced dragon form. However conditions that happened in one’s life could change how thick of a skin they had so to speak, their physical strength was constantly reliant on the things one endured in their life. Kazehime had encountered a very difficult experience under a year before, an event that had changed the course of her life more then she often cared to admit due to how traumatizing it was. Not even a full year ago the wind user had been shackled so tightly it had once left permanent bruising on her flesh, flame had been brought to her skin daily for the purpose of force feeding her or for the sadistic delight of her captors, among the other unspeakable things they had done to her! Starvation, lack of sunlight, dehydration, beatings, brutalization it all took it’s toll on her body before she could be rescued, scars littered her skin for so long after that date. Eventually sher had awoken her demon side and the marks on her body proving such horrid things happened, those faded. However no one and nothing could erase the damage that had been done, not completely, so her body remained weak despite looking normal at first glance. Jiyu was barely even capable of holding an infant or the trays she carried around the dinner for work, she had no physical strength left despite looking normal. Blood puddled beneath where her back had been laying as she sat up? Was further proof of her weakness, the blood was bright red against the ground, extending two inches further than where her back had contacted it, proving she had lost a good amount of the blood from the tiny scratches visible on her back. “Jiyu, Blood.” the kitsune beside her nudged the wind user and glanced down at the puddle beneath her, the woman looking a bit paler than normal, sighing when she glanced back to see the puddle for herself, realizing she would likely have to rest and recover after this mission. “I see it Maka, I’ll have someone patch it up after we’re done this and then take the week off missions, alright?” the child honestly wanted to get right back to doing things and taking jobs, but if she went too hard she would ruin her body and that would not be any bit of a good thing. If she ran her body into the ground? It would take too long to regenerate for her comfort, she didn’t want to be stuck in that place with just three more of herself for company, the wind user liked living. “Alright.” however it was clearly the fox was still concerned as she rumbled and nudged the wing user once more, helping the frail witch stand back to her feet. Pale finger’s twined in Maka’s fur, using the five foot tall kitsune to pull herself up without making her back even more sore than it already was.

“You fainted after you saw a couple of mutant spiders.” had she? Jiyu didn’t even remember seeing them but she did recall her father once telling her she had that response to every little innocent house spider that came into her sight. However she never actually believed her parents about it! Looked like that was probably a fact and it was damning she’d done it in front of a stranger, her odd optics narrowing slightly as she sighed and turned her head down at an angle. Damn she must be thought of as one of the weakest mages around after that, but she couldn’t exactly help what had happened, it was depressing but it had taken place. “No, I didn’t even know I really had that response to spiders.” she was still shaky as she took a few steps to meet up with the dragon kin, blood dripping down her back to the ground, drenching into her black cloth skirt. “I should be fine, I’ll admit passing out isn’t fun but even if they are not aggressive the creatures are still dangerous they have no control over their new bodies and for all we know they could have powers they have no control over. Getting them away from a populated city comes before my stupid weak body.” she really did think the weakness her body displayed was stupid to be honest. Once she spoke the canine started walking forward towards the exit of the alley, not really caring that she was still bleeding and likely to make it worse if she didn’t wrap it soon. If her boyfriend saw her doing this? He was going to kill her for neglecting herself, but he wasn’t in right now to do such things so no one was going to tell her she needed to take a break then potentially accuse her of slacking.

“Blood.” it was a voice that nearly dripped with honey, girls that looked like they were made from plants or such walking over, one’s hand reaching out as the other two licked their lips. Clearly they could smell Jiyu’s injury and were intent on hunting the inugami.

Jiyu claimed to be unaware of her weakness towards spiders, which Akeya found a bit odd. Considering how common spiders were if you were afraid of them it wasn't really something you wouldn't ever face in your daily life. Which meant that either Jiyu was trying to save face by pretending she didn't usually react like that, or maybe it wasn't so much spiders as those giant spiders which did something to her. Which was a bit of a stretch, but Akeya could imagine that someone who usually was only somewhat bothered by the small spiders could have a much stronger reaction to an enlarged version, where they would be able to see all the hairs on the legs and every detail of the chitin. The question was, did she find that more likely than that the canine girl was trying to pretend to be completely caught by surprise by her own reaction to the spiders? The dragoness didn't think for too long about that before mentally shrugging. It wasn't really too important, and she might as well give the girl the benefit of the doubt. Whether she had been aware of her fear of spiders or not, in the end the result was the same, and that was that they would have to make sure Akeya would be dealing with any other spider girls they might encounter while they were busy clearing the city out. Given how common spiders were, that was very likely to happen.

"I see. Well, we should still proceed with more care. It wouldn't be good if you passed out again, although I appreciate your desire to continue with the job. The sooner we're finished with this the better." Although the thick scent of Jiyu's blood was filling Akeya's nose, and as a dragonkin (which, in extension, meant that she was a predator) that meant that it was occupying her mind. She was forcing it into the back of her mind, and it wasn't like she was on the verge of losing it, but the sooner they wrapped this up and the sooner Akeya could get away from the scent of fresh blood the better. Akeya had too much self-control to actually let that particular temptation get to her, but no reason to prolong it either. Although she had to wonder how Jiyu got around if she was so easily wounded: her entire back was already scraped open, and the only thing that happened was that she passed out and was then carried into the alley. Puzzling, but as long as they kept the approach of not actually fighting the mutants it should be fine, and beyond that it wasn't Akeya's problem.

Unfortunately it looked like they might not be so lucky with the next group of mutants. For one thing, instead of insects or reptiles they were plants. How a bunch of venus fly traps ended up inside the city, close enough to the raw unrestrained magic to be affected by it, Akeya didn't know, but the fact was that they were here, and very much mutated. They also seemed to be attracted by the same blood that Akeya was busy ignoring, which meant that they were most likely going to be quite a bit more hostile than the other monsters they had dealt with up until now. The centipede girl had been vain and wanted to be complimented and reassured, the spider girls had, quite honestly, been rather innocent and only asked Akeya to play with them before she sent them away. Even the spiders had only wanted a good source of heat after Akeya had dissuaded them of the notion that Jiyu was their next snack. The plants girls, however, might be a bit more difficult to deal with.

"No." Was all Akeya said as she stood before Jiyu, her eyes narrowing as she once again let her rather intimidating nature show itself. She stood in the middle between Jiyu and the plant girls, enough space that she'd be able to react to either side of they decided to do something. The plant girls frowned as the dragoness now stood in their way, but it didn't seem like they were as easily scared off as the snakes. Instead they spread out, trying to go around Akeya until the dragoness struck the pavement with her tail, using enough force to crack the stones. "We're hungry." One of the plants spoke out, glaring back at Akeya as they still slowly spread out to surround her. Akeya spread her wings slightly, glancing behind her to make sure that Jiyu was still there before turning back to the plants. "I don't care. If you try to eat her I'll kill you." As usual with Akeya that wasn't a threat filled with anger of hatred, but a threat filled with certainty and killing intent. Akeya didn't kill because of dislike. She killed because it worked in her favour, the target was a threat or there just wasn't any reason to keep them alive and keeping them alive would take more effort than just finishing them off.

"We're hungry and we need to eat something. Why shouldn't we just eat you both?" Akeya was slowly moving backwards so she could keep her eyes on the plant girls, who were slowly advancing and trying to surround her. It looked like they were dead-set on this unless she and Jiyu could think of a way to deal with them. Akeya was pretty sure she could take care of the plant girls if it actually came down to violence... although she couldn't say she was entirely sure, especially since as Jiyu had mentioned before they could have abilities they themselves weren't even fully aware of. Akeya frowned, flexing her claws. "Maybe you'd rather have a meal which doesn't come with its own claws and fangs."

The plant girls paused at that, seeming to consider it. "But you're right here. Where would we find better food?" Akeya once again glanced back at Jiyu. She didn't really have a bunch of meat at hand, so she hoped the canine girl had an idea. "Got an idea what we could feed them?"

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Everyone had those sort of thing’s they did not want to admit about themselves, something that made them uncomfortable or caused them to feel as if they were super weak. When someone did not want to accept something about their own existence? They tended to drown it out and douse water onto the flames of it until they could no longer hear it screaming. Spider’s were something that existed pretty much everywhere, next to impossible to avoid them in day to day life. However since the beasts were also often times very small? People may not notice that they happened to have that fear until later in life when they saw them. Jiyu would never really know of her acrophobia because it was much easier for her brain to try and erase it from her memories than it was for her mind to process where in the world such an innocent fear could have from. Jiyu lived in the world preferring to forget the things that caused her strife, push them aside somehow, most of the time this was by working and keeping on a mission objective, but sometimes her own head would help the woman protect herself. Jiyu wasn’t even thinking about how they were likely to encounter more spiders, mental capacity fuzzy as her hand gripped Makoto’s neck to remain on her feet because of the blood she had lost. Right now they were just lucky that Kazehime was not a normal person because any mortal being that lost the amount of blood she had left on the ground would have trouble just standing. Jiyu would be fine shortly, her wounds just needed to clot so her blood could return to a normal level and take away the extra paleness that had taken over her features.

“Yeah definitely the sooner the better.” even if it was her own blood filling the air? Jiyu could feel aggression rising within her own body negative emotions she was not used to due to her other side stealing them away. Early on after her transformation the wind user had found that when she was exposed to an excess amount of life’s essence she could become rather uncontrollable and seem to turn into someone entirely different from who she normally seemed to be. Prior to becoming this she had eaten meat raw, but even consuming that amount of blood could induce rage after she awoke. Jiyu had not tested the effect blood had on her in recent time and it was not something she wanted to start experimenting with right now, she would rather never have another reaction if possible. Getting this done soon would let her find someone to patch her up sooner, it was not right to ask another predator to do it and she certainly could not ask Marschal, it was too much with how cut up she likely was and besides he would lick her to do it and that would lead to things she didn’t have time for today. The female was intent on taking more small missions today or one large task where she could fight long distance. Today was just simply not going her way and she could accept that very easily, but it did not make it suck any less.

The plant girls showed up and the the dog figured out quickly enough that they were after her, but the dragonkin stepped between before the canine could get upset and attack them. While Kazehime did not like people feeling as if they had to protect her because of the fact she had been weak for so long? Jiyu knew the venus girls would likely not listen to her as she was basically a slab of meat to them right now, as long as they could smell her blood and see it dripping to the ground from her back, soaking into her skirt. So long as she looked as if she was food for them, the little brats were going to likely treat her as a nonessential sort of creature, the feeling of sticky blood matting into her tail making her uncomfortable. Even if she really wanted to keep going on this mission, it was hard to focus past the scent of her own blood, beyond the light headedness caused by the blood loss. In fact she missed most of the exchange between her partner and the plant girls.

“Uh-” she registered when she was spoken to and looked right at the dragon, her eyes narrowing as if she couldn’t see her clearly anymore, which was likely the case since her vision was shit to begin with. “The silver moon has lots of raw meat.” it was kind of a food establish in the first floor after all! The inu sighed out and took a step forward. “And there is a first aid kit behind the bar so we can at least wrap my wounds so that we’re less likely to encounter this again.” of course if they went back there, Jiyu taking a shower and changing swiftly would also likely be a good idea, but no choices had been made quite yet. The wind user motioned to be followed as Makoto helped her walk along the sidewalk, moving slowly as they went back the way they had come which luckily was not far. Kazehime glanced behind her once more to see if miss dragonkin and the venus fly traps were following her. "you could go to the kitchen and get them food, while I find the first aid kit.” although it was clear someone else was going to have to treat her injuries because she couldn’t patch up her own back, it would be annoying but maybe if she asked super nicely the dragon would potentially help.

Akeya was already planning the best way to deal with the plant girls should it come to a fight, not trusting them to be sensible and turn around unless they were actually given something to placate them. Since Jiyu wouldn't be able to protect herself Akeya would have to first take down the plant girl closest to the canine girl, giving the both of them some breathing space while the dragoness focused on the other two. From the looks of it their forms were similar enough to that of humans that cutting off their head should work or at least keep them busy for a while, the assassin having trained quite a lot in targeting the neck and thus having a strong preference for aiming for it. Beyond the necks she'd have to be wary of the weapons that the venus fly trap girls might have. Their mouths looked like the kind which could cause some nasty damage if they clamped down on you, but it didn't seem like they actually had claws or anything like that, so most of their bodies shouldn't be too much of a threat... unless those vines of theirs were strong and prehensile enough to wrap Akeya up. She could deal with that, but it would make the fight more of a hassle. More importantly she wasn't actually sure whether venus fly traps used spores or anything and whether these girls had any abilities like that. If they caught her with some kind of airborne spore which made her drowsy... things could get really dangerous.

Fortunately when she asked her partner whether she could think of anything they could give the plant girls Jiyu did note that the inn they had just left had some raw meat. The humans wouldn't be happy if some of their supplies were taken for the sake of placating the mutants, but Akeya was pretty sure that stealing some meat was better than having to fight these girls whose abilities she wasn't too sure off. Akeya nodded towards Jiyu, then looked towards the venus fly trap girls again.

"I suggest you take the offer of the raw meat in that building over there. At least that way you won't have to risk your life to get a meal."

The plant girls looked at one another, holding a silent conversation, before collectively nodding, after which they began to follow after Jiyu. Akeya walked after the entire group, keeping her eyes on the three potential threats. It might be a bit risky to allow them to be positioned in between herself and the weakened canine girl, but at least this way Akeya could see what they were doing and hopefully react in time. While she always tried to keep a good eye on her surroundings regardless, she didn't have eyes in the back of her head.

As they walked Akeya also studied Jiyu some more, noting that she still hadn't completely recovered... and that she really needed to clean herself up. Finding the first aid kit was a good start, but if the girl didn't change her clothes as well she'd keep reeking of blood regardless. Of course, since they didn't have healing magic available the wounds would still give off some scent, but no reason to be completely neglectful because of that.

"I would suggest finding yourself some new clothes as well. The blood has seeped into them and I doubt you want to keep walking around like that." Akeya herself would have been more worried about potential diseases than her appearance, but the end result was the same. "Since I'll have to keep an eye on our acquaintances I can't help you with your wounds, unless you think you can wait until after they've eaten and left."

The plant girls turned around at that, frowning at the dragoness who glared right back at them. Akeya still wasn't very happy with these three. "Leave? What do you mean leave?" Akeya used one clawed hand to indicate their surroundings, namely the city. "You were willing to attack someone in broad daylight in the middle of town to sate your hunger. Unless you think you can control yourself in the future you'd be too big a threat to the people in this place if you stayed, especially since most of them aren't as good at defending themselves as the two of us are." Indicating herself and Jiyu with her tail. "My partner would prefer it if we did our best to avoid any bloodshed in this mission, since technically you aren't guilty of anything, but in the end we are still here to ensure the safety of the people living here in this town. If you want to stay here you'll have to follow the rules here, which means no eating humans or their pets. The next group trying to protect this town might not be inclined towards avoiding bloodshed."

The venus fly trap girls looked both annoyed and unsettled at that. They didn't want to leave this place, but on the other hand the dragon girl didn't give any indication of lying or exaggerating. They had some trouble understanding why, but apparently if they wanted to live here they'd have to adapt, and it might be easier to just find a place where there wouldn't be any humans to bother them... "And where would you suggest we go then?" Akeya shrugged, pointing south again (Rose Garden was located on a piece of land which stuck out on the north side of Fiore, so nearly every path out of Rose Garden was south). "There's forests, swamps and jungles out there where you could most likely live comfortable lives eating things without humans bothering you. Of course if you did encounter a human there occasionally I'd ask you to show restraint, because otherwise people might still come hunting for you." Not that Akeya really cared on a personal level, but if they were going to try and avoid bloodshed she'd be miffed if the creatures she was knowingly not killing got themselves offed later on through carelessness.

The plant girls looked a bit more worried as they kept following Jiyu towards the inn, where they'd at least get some food and more opportunity to think about what to do next.

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Relatively considering her original and current goal of avoiding bloodshed on this mission? Things were going well with the single flaw of her own blood coating the backside of her body and leaving a small dripped trail behind her as she walked, of course, she had never said she was not willing to shed her own blood on this task, so Jiyu guessed they could still consider the mission as going well for them. Akeya spoke and luckily due to her sensitive hearing the canine heard every single word in spite of her injuries, though as she stumbled along slightly the girl did not make any attempt to respond, propping herself against the bar with a sigh as they entered the Silver Moon once more. Kazehime could feel her back trying to scab over, but since her skin was weak it was hard for it do so while she was still moving about, so she would likely bleed for a while longer until the wounds were properly dressed. As the plant girls busied themselves in the kitchen consuming some of the raw meat back there, Jiyu finally glanced at her partner with a deep breath straightening herself up painfully. “I can wait, it's somewhat difficult for one to dress their own wounds when those injuries are located primarily on their back.” the wind user explained this fact as she stiffly finally sat down on the chair she had been leaning on, flinching as she gripped her ponytail and slowly pulled it from her bloodied flesh as the hair had started to get caked in her blood. Washing that out later? Would not be fun, especially because washing hair long as Jiyu’s was a chore, to begin with.

It was around the time their plant girl ‘opponents’ finished with the meat and left towards another destination when Jiyu came to realize her injured state was causing concern among those hiding in the cafe and it might not be wise to let them keep staring at her prone form. If civilians panicked because they thought the mages were losing? It could end very badly. “I think we should head upstairs Akeya.” the wind user muttered the words gritting her teeth as she forced herself to stand up once more, heading to the staircase that lead to the Inn portion of this establishment, gripping the railing to stabilize herself as she limped up the steps, bracing herself against the wall as she moved down the hallway towards the room she shared with Marschal, having mostly passed off her own room to Makoto in an effort to encourage the fox girls wish to start growing up like a normal mage. By the way, the Kitsune had been told to go back to her room when they got back, considering Jiyu did not want the pup burning herself out on a mission she now was sure could be accomplished without combat. This was diplomatic adult stuff and the child was simply a child. “This is mine, everything we need is in the cabinet beneath the sink it’s a first aid kit and a few towels there.” saying that made her realize how often this sort of thing really did happen to her, though it was not normally a complete stranger patching her up. Briefly, Kazehime wondered how Marschal would deal with the fact Akeya had been in their room, their personal space, but it wasn’t important right now, she had to make sure her wounds didn’t get infected and that she could continue the mission. “If you could get those out, I’m just going to pick something new to put on after we get this cared for, since we obviously can’t wait for me to wash and dry my clothing before we get back to our job.” with that statement the wind user pulled the ties holding her armor in place, removing it before she started rooting through the drawers of a dresser for something she could wear after they treated her injuries.

Before long Jiyu did manage to settle on an outfit, one which involved stealing one of her boyfriends red jacket's once more to pair with a skimpy skirt and crop tank top. While the latter two articles would do nothing to protect her? The jacket once zipped would hide her injuries from any possible enemies. Normally the wind would tear any jacket she tried to clad herself in, but it accepted the fact she liked wearing her lover’s red jacket from time to time. “Alright, can you help get the stuff on my dorsal side off while I wash it out of my hair so there is nothing to lure those fly traps to us when we go back out?” with that she undid her hair from its ponytail and draped over her shoulder started trying to soak the blood out of it.

As soon as they entered the establishment the plant girls headed for where they could smell more food, leaving Akeya little choice but to follow them. The venus fly trap girls seemed to have decided that it was better to try and ignore the people in the inn as fully as they could, probably to avoid being tempted by the more fresh source of meat that they could serve as. Which was good, because now that they were in a smaller and enclosed space Akeya would have an easier time dealing with them than out there in the open, where shadows weren't quite as widely spread. At least there was the stroke of good fortune that the kitchen was nearly fully stocked, so the plant girls should have no issue feeding themselves at all, although they seemed to be somewhat bothered by the fact that Akeya was sticking around, glaring at them with her emerald reptilian eyes which seemed intent to drill a hole right through them through sheer focused glaring.

When Jiyu addressed her Akeya acknowledged the canine girl with a twitch of her tail and a nod of her head, not taking her eyes off of the potential threat that the plant girls still posed.

"Understood. We'll get to work on that after they've left then." The unspoken part was that she wasn't going to let the venus fly trap girls out of her sight until they were well and away from the inn. Inviting them into the building was already a somewhat suspicious move, since it meant leading them right to where there were humans and thus potential prey. Letting them escape her sight would only make matters worse, since even if the plant girls seemed to be more focused on eating their fill and then getting out of there, they could change their mind if they weren't given adequate reason to believe that any attempts at attacking the civilians would backfire horribly. At least the thick scent of Jiyu's blood became a bit fainter as the blood dried and caked, no longer warm and fresh. A relief both for Akeya and the plant girls, since it meant that Jiyu no longer give the strong impression of being wounded prey and thus an easy kill and source of meat.

Meanwhile any humans in the room weren't too happy about the fact that some of the mutant creatures had been led into the building. They all stayed a good distance away from the kitchen where the plant girls were eating their bellies round, glancing towards the kitchen with clear discomfort and fear while also giving Jiyu and Akeya glances. They might not be complete strangers to non-humans, but when the non-humans which were supposed to help get rid of the mutants infesting the city instead guided some of those mutants into an inn to let them freely eat as much meat as they wanted... it was hard for the humans to not be somewhat annoyed and bothered by that, staying a good distance away from Jiyu and Akeya as well, some of them whispering amongst one another about what the hell was going on and why the mages weren't just eliminating the threat. Not all of them were eager for bloodshed, but there were only very few who weren't somewhat put off by this development of events. Akeya ignored them, mostly because she was more focused on the two things which actually mattered right now: her partner who would need help with her wounds later, and the plant girls which had to be kept an eye on.

Eventually the plant girls left, quickly leaving the inn while looking at Jiyu and Akeya one last time before the door closed behind them, the plant girls quickly heading towards the edge of town as they decided to take the warning to heart of it being better if they didn't bother the humans. Which meant that Akeya could finally get to helping Jiyu, who definitely needed someone who could get at her back. Akeya had to admit that even for her, with her prehensile tail, the back was still a bit of a pain to reach. The dragoness nodded again and followed as the canine girl headed upstairs, where the civilians wouldn't be constantly gawking at them and asking themselves questions about why Jiyu was wounded, and what the deal with the plant girls was. Well, they probably wouldn't immediately stop talking amongst one another but at least they wouldn't be gawking. Stepping into the room behind Jiyu Akeya could already smell that this room belonged to more than one person. The other person didn't seem to be present though, so that wasn't cause for concern. Instead she just followed Jiyu's instructions and headed for the sink, reaching underneath to fish out the first aid kit and some towels. With some more searching she also found a bucket and a sponge, filling the bucket with water so she'd be able to get the blood off of Jiyu's back before she took care of the wounds.

By the time the bucket was full Jiyu had already removed the clothes which would have gotten in the way otherwise, so as soon as Jiyu pulled her hair aside to try and get the blood out Akeya could get to work. Considering the fact that Jiyu's skin had proven itself to be notably frail Akeya had to get to work carefully, letting the sponge absorb some water before she began to gently remove as much as she could without further damaging the canine girl's skin. It was tricky business, and not something Akeya was actually very used to: her own body was unusually tough thanks to the dragon blood, so even if she got wounded it was easier for her to just either ignore it or treat it, since it would take some doing to make matters worse even if a wound was already there. It was probably a good thing that Akeya was someone who put a lot of effort into control and precision rather than raw strength, or she'd just have given Jiyu a whole new bunch of wounds to deal with. As it was it already took a while before Akeya could get to bandaging the wounds, which was a bit easier and also didn't take as long. Still, to be sure that the wounds would be properly protected she took her time carefully wrapping the bandages around Jiyu's torso, tying them in place until finally her partner's wounds were properly hidden and given the opportunity to recover.

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Washing the blood out of her thick hair was more difficult than the Inugami had predicted it being, honestly it was annoyingly taxing having to run the cloth over her hair over and over again. Jiyu thought there had to be some sort of easier way but it was not something that was coming to her brain so she simply kept doing what she had been doing, wrapping her hair with the damp down to soak the blood and than washing it out into the tub, repeating each and every time. Soon enough the tub had a faint pink tint to it from the female’s blood being rinsed off into it. In situations like this she cursed herself repeatedly for being so unassuming of the world that night two years ago, if she had been more alert she would not be like this right now unable to regain physical strength that abuse had taken from her. She did not remember how difficult everyday tasks were until she actually had to do them but even a small amount of weight pressing against her felt like a pile of rocks trying to crush her and the rag that would feel light to anyone else even wet was a solid weight for her. Each movement she made with the soaked item? Was slightly slow as if she had to be careful how she moved it or risk hurting herself, it made one wonder how she carried around the weapons she did and wore the armor she did. Honestly much of it was too much for her and Akeya able to see so much of the wind user would easily be able to see the signs of this strain the sorceress placed onto herself. Mostly the fact her muscles in spite of the clear weakness she sported were coiled like snakes ready to strike but frozen unable to, reliably it may make moving hard sometimes and explained why she took breaks between mission sets, it was because she absolutely had to at a certain point, she reached total exhaustion quicker than most other creatures even humans.

Clearly since Akeya was not experienced in dealing with a body frail and delicate as Jiyu’s happened to be? Likely not super informed about a canine species body as well? Some mistakes were bound to be made and considering the help was something not required of the dragonkin the canine was unlikely to tell her when she was messing up. No matter how gentle the blue haired girl tried to be, it was still a fact that dragons were very powerful and without having the need to frequently dilute that strength down to the level of someone so weak it would be impossible to do perfectly as it was a practiced thing. Hand’s larger than Jiyu’s own but smaller than Marschal’s created a foreign feel on her flesh, something rougher than how she was used to being handled and her body told her brain to run, yet she stayed firm, still for the other girl who was working on her. Even if the pressure was almost agony? She knew Akeya would stop if she suspected herself to be doing more damage, the dragon was just a bit heavy handed making the canine pant from the exertion of staying still at each jolt through her body only sometimes moving her head or lashing her tail. However, part of the pain was largely caused by the wind user’s nerves having already been flared up and sensitive when they started. When the blood was washed away, except for the gruesome wounds her flesh was unmarred the worst effect was the fact it was a little pinker than normal, but that could be explained by the stress the process had put on Jiyu a flush from the pain stemming out of the wounds.

“I’m surprised you didn’t shut me down. You have some damn good control over your strength.” sitting slightly sideways as the other girl started the wrappings the canine made the comment her own hand lightly touching the place where her tail met her spine. Pressing that? Normally rendered her helpless and entirely limp, but if akeya had touched it she had not pressed hard enough to trigger the reaction which was impressive to Jiyu since even when dealing with herself she had to be super careful of it. “Thanks again for that, it normally takes a lot longer when I have to do it myself.” or when marschal decided to be even more careful with her than she was with herself, or resort to licking her wounds closed which while it got her back in working condition faster also had a secondary effect on her body and ended up taking more time in the end. Thus this was one of the shortest downtimes Jiyu had to endure due to her weakened physical form. ‘I just have to get redressed than we can go back out there.” leaving most of the things where they had been the female stood up checking in the mirror exactly how the wrappings were tied.

Since the bandages covered her chest as well she walked to the closest taking out a plain purple jacket, zipping it up part way so the bandages simply looked as if they should be there like some sort of alternative mesh top. Afterward she easily picked out a pair of short black shorts before beginning the search for a hair tie she did not have to cleanse of blood, eventually, she found it and pulled her damp locks into a low pony tail. “I should be good now, so lead the way.” Jiyu would let Akeya take the helm right now because she was still unsure her recently injured body could endure and if they had to dodge something now that she had seen the dragonkin somewhat the wind user trusted her to see it coming in time to warn her. A little trust could go a long way, and especially since she had just left her two biggest blind spots bare to the dragon, Jiyu had to decide she trusted her otherwise why had she let the risk of her tail being grabbed or her spine being pressed be presented.

The stench of blood was thick in the air as the canine girl washed it out of her own hair and the dragon girl washed most of it off of Jiyu's back. Her nostrils were flaring, drinking up the scent greedily even as the dragoness refused to let her more dangerous instincts gain any foothold. Control was her forte, so her instincts would just have to endure being in the presence of blood spilled so freely and freshly without reacting to it in any way. Akeya had better things to do than deal with the instincts of a mighty predator. She could try and finish this job on her own, since it honestly wasn't that difficult once you realized that most of the mutants weren't even remotely hostile or otherwise easily dealt with. However Akeya, as sneaky and uncaring as she was, still had some sense of... not exactly honour, but a tendency to remain fair whenever that actually benefited her or at the very least didn't hinder her too much. The canine girl had agreed to help deal with the mutants (although at first she hadn't shown a lot of enthusiasm for it) and she was the one who had suggested that they try convincing the mutants instead of writing them off as enemies and eliminating them the usual way. If Akeya had been alone she would have ended up killing them all through sneak attacks and while that wasn't exactly something she disliked doing, there was still a lot to be said for completing the mission without taking a single life. What you could say for that is that it would impress people and show them that there's more to your abilities and talents than just blowing something up.

No, Akeya would stick around and help Jiyu recover before the two of them would go on with the mission.

That said she had to admit that she was honestly baffled by just how fragile Jiyu's skin appeared to be. She was being very careful, far more careful than you'd expect from some dragonkin who had no personal experience with a frail and fragile body, but still she could feel that even as she washed the blood away and treated the canine girl's wounds as much as possible she was still damaging the skin, most of them time merely bruising it but occasionally actually breaking it. The only saving grace for that was that the wounds were small so they didn't bleed a lot. What kind of life had this girl gone through that she had skin fragile enough to fall apart if she happened to stumble and fall over? Akeya couldn't imagine it being genetic, because otherwise Jiyu wouldn't have become a mage in the first place. People born with these kind of defects wouldn't become adventurers or take other professions which included a lot of physical exertion and moving about, not even mentioning danger and fighting.

But if it wasn't genetic, there weren't a lot of things which would leave one's body this frail. Some kind of voodoo curse was most likely: voodoo was a very strange and unusual kind of magic, and Akeya had to admit she wasn't really sure what it could and couldn't do. However what she did know (just like everyone else) was that it specialized in curses and inflicting harm to others without actually directly attacking them. Maybe Jiyu encountered some kind of witch doctor who decided to mess with her and curse her with a frail body? The dragoness shook her head as she just kept doing her thing in helping Jiyu, her scaled hands slowly and carefully moving across the girl's back. She could ask her current partner about it, but she doubted that it was actually something very important in the situation. And if Jiyu hadn't gotten rid of it yet it was either very recent (which Akeya doubted) or it wasn't easy to mess with (in which case Akeya wouldn't be able to do a lot with it either: she held arcane theorists in high regard.

"Only a fool would think that strength is merely your upper limit. It isn't true strength unless you can control it as you see fit." Akeya didn't mention that for her profession it was simply better to have high amounts of control rather than sheer uncontrolled power. The less she reminded people of her profession the easier it would be to have them treat her with at least some amount of cooperativeness and maybe even obedience, so while she didn't exactly make an issue out of hiding it she wasn't going to just throw it in their face at every turn either.

Learning about the weak spot on Jiyu's body (namely the base of her tail) Akeya's eyebrows rose as the dragoness tried to wrap her head around that. She knew that different creatures had different sensual spots or body parts which had some interesting purposes and traits. Her confusion was more on why the canine girl would actually draw attention to a weakness of hers. Now that Akeya knew about that she could disable Jiyu a lot easier than if she had to rely on knocking her out while she was still capable of defending herself. Maybe she didn't think Akeya enough of a trait to keep it hidden? Was she trying to be friendly?

The dragoness didn't reply, instead watching Jiyu as the other woman got herself dressed in fresh clothes. Akeya meanwhile was glad that the scent of blood wouldn't stick with them the entire day, so it would be a bit easier to focus. Once Jiyu was finished dressing herself Akeya gave her a once over before heading back outside, motioning for the other mage to follow her as she did her best to find traces of other mutants that they could chase out of town without senselessly killing them. For a given value of the term 'senselessly killing'... Akeya idly wondered why for others murder was such a difficult thing to do. The cold blooded nature of a reptile really must be making it a lot easier for her.

WC COMPLETE

Simply allowing the dragon kin to wash her extremely vulnerable body considering its normally exceedingly frail state and the two major weak spots it possessed on top of her hypersensitive senses and the fact it was dangerous to let someone get so close even for someone who didn’t have her hindrances? Even simply permitting the dragoness to aid in treating her wounds had been an enormous risk within itself, Jiyu was someone who could be ended extremely easily by another person all it would take was being thrown to the ground hard enough. Thus allowing someone so powerful near her was a massive show of how in spite of how much she had been through, the wind user still wanted to believe she could potentially one day actually trust the people around her, save Marschal as she already trusted him absolutely. That man was her entire world and the Inugami knew she would be unable to continue living without the feline, it was not as if they spent every single moment of the day together, but often as she could keep herself curled up beside him, Jiyu did so. Honestly she was reluctant to leave the room quiet yet, Kazehime liked the scents drifting around her, they all made her incredibly happy

As Akeya made her comment about the true meaning of strength being how well one could control their own strength? Kazehime lifted one of her own hands into her own vision, the wind flowing through the room and nearly displacing several items. Sometimes it frightened her how far the power of her magical strength was rising. “The reason I wanted to keep combat out of this so badly, well it is actually because I do not have the same control you do, my magic is extremely potent and I can not control it beyond casting, I foolishly invested everything in increasing the strength of my magic and now it is almost an entity of its own. If I was to fight inside the town, I would destroy a good portion of it.” she did not want to cause harm to Rose Garden and Jiyu knew that she could not properly control her strength to fight multiple monsters within such a confined space, it was why she tended to take missions that landed her places like spooky forest where no one truly noticed if a few meters of land suddenly were in ruins. The wind user kept her gaze averted for several long moments after the admission of the reasoning behind the calm ideal that had gotten them this far, nearly allowed them to clear the whole mission without causing any damage to the mutated bugs. In the end it showed her reason was both selfish and selfless, because they would have been done by now if they had fought through, but they would have a trail of bodies and destruction behind them. Considering she did not need to protect anyone right now? Jiyu did not mind the peaceful resolution. Actually this solution did make her happier than the alternative, considering the creatures they were ousting from the town did not ask to be turned into monsters, it just kind of happened. “I’m sorry, I know I should have mentioned sooner that I can’t actually fight in the town, but..” it wasn’t easy admitting she could not control her own magic that she had given up so much to obtain. The only other person who knew how little control she had besides for Akeya would be her boyfriend, but she had seen why she wanted the strength she had obtained.

Of course there was also another factor around, which was the fact Jiyu was no where near as warm blooded as the shadow dragon could come to believe she was. Honestly? She may just be darker, beneath the gentle smile and friendly attitude the canine had displayed so far was a woman who was maddened by her own emotions, namely love and affection. The reason Jiyu tended to work with people she did not truly know was because once she became close and attached to someone, she just could not damn well control herself! A good deal of Jiyu knew the if she saw a loved one endangered that she would not even try to hold back, she’d unleash all her power with the brutal intent to kill and then mutilate the body afterwards, without any care for collateral unless that collateral was someone she cared about to an almost equal value, or someone who could help protect what she was trying to protect. Sometimes it was the one’s with the sweetest smiles who would throw you under the gun without even being sorry about it, then forget they had ever done so, that was the kind of person Jiyu actually was. However she preferred to exist in this even, friendly state that was filled with fun days instead of bloodshed.

“There does not seem to be many of them left around, we haven’t seen anything in a bit, yet I can still hear one of them scurrying around.” yet with the fact that the town had not been evacuated she was having trouble pinpointing the insect over the sounds of racing hearts and heavy breaths triggered by fear. If she could not managed to hear over top of those sounds? They may never find this seemingly final opponent! Jiyu let her body crouch down slightly, sniffing closer to the ground. “This way!” finally she picked up a trail and the canine nearly went darting off in the direction of what she had found, though she was not quite sure what the creature would be she figured it may be just as sociable as the other beasts they had calmed down so far.

Eventually Kazehime would lead them to a small bookstore where there was a small roach girl reading something that seemed to be a small child's book, kicking her legs as she chuckled at the pictures. “Who are you guys?” Jiyu suddenly seemed to want to stick closer to Akeya and this was not because she feared roaches. Actually? It was rather clear from her flaring nose and twitching ears, how her head moved around that she could not see the two inch tall roach girl. “Is she alright?” the sound of the voice was what kazehime needed and she finally managed to look directly at the roach girl, focusing her gaze easily. “I’m alright.” she could now pretend that she could see the new mutant they had found, even thought since she was standing more than five feet away Jiyu could not see even the faint fuzzy outline of the roach girl. “Are you guys friends?!” the small thing sounded like it was the same as all the other mutants, given human notions by the transformation, lonely because everyone ran away from them.

With Jiyu fully patched up and cleaned up they could get back to finishing the job, the dragoness wondering how many mutants there were left in the city. All things considered they hadn't actually encountered a lot of them, but judging by how much time had passed by most of them must have left by now, either by their own devices or because of other mages driving them out. Since this was a city-wide disaster it would've been very self-absorbed to believe that the two of them were the only mages involved in cleaning up Rose Garden: it would take too long, and even if some mages might feel offended at the idea of there being other mages toiling away on the same task Rose Garden was too important a place to leave it in its current state just so some mages could feel a bit better about themselves. They hadn't encountered any of those other mages yet, but with an entire city's worth of surface area that wasn't too surprising.

While Akeya was considering how much work there might be left Jiyu began a rather extensive reply towards Akeya's comment that strength wasn't about the raw output, but about the level of control and skill. The shadow dragoness frowned slightly when the canine girl explained that, while the dragoness had invested most of her time into mastering her abilities and powers fully and honing her skills, her current partner had been more focused on just increasing the amount of raw power she could put out if necessary. That was a risky way to approach the path of becoming stronger, and as Jiyu herself admitted that training had the problematic drawback that even if she had the strength she didn't have the control needed to avoid causing a lot of collateral damage or even friendly fire. If Akeya was ever put in a situation where raw power was needed she would not be as good at it as some others who had been training for as long as she, but Jiyu was on the other side of the spectrum, someone who would do well with any task which required overwhelming power but who couldn't use her abilities often because of the threat they presented.

"That's something you should fix by training. So far we've been fortunate that all the mutants could be persuaded, but if you really can't fight without damaging the city you'll have to try and stay out of my way if the next mutants we encounter are more hostile." Cold words without sympathy, but that was Akeya's personality.

Akeya nodded when Jiyu mentioned that there didn't seem to be a lot of the mutants left to deal with. It was true that she hadn't picked up on any traces or tracks of mutants for a while now, and since she had pretty sharp senses that meant that there most likely weren't any in a decently large area. If they truly had all disappeared already they'd have to do a couple of rounds throughout the city to make sure before reporting that the job had been finished... Not exactly the most exciting of things, but it was all part of the job description. However Jiyu then mentioned that she was still hearing some skittering, making the dragoness raise her eyebrows. She hadn't been picking up on anything, which meant that Jiyu's hearing had to be even better than her own. While that wasn't too strange, given the fact that Akeya's senses were enhanced by her draconic nature but her focus wasn't exactly on sharp hearing in comparison to Jiyu's canine features which most likely were strongly focused on hearing and smell, she still hadn't actually expected that to come into play here. However there was little reason for Jiyu to lie to her right now, so Akeya followed her companion without complaint or questions, until she could hear the skittering as well.

The two of them walked quite a bit before they encountered the latest mutant, who surprisingly wasn't actually very big. All the other mutants had been human sized or larger, but the only reason why this one could have been considered as having gained any height at all was because cockroaches had next to no height to begin with. She didn't show any aggressive tendencies either: she was behaving like a child, happily swinging her legs while reading some children's book. Compared to some of the other creatures that the two of them had encountered so far this one was rather underwhelming, Akeya finding her a bit boring in comparison. Well, a job was still a job, and given this mutant's behaviour keeping her from causing trouble as she left shouldn't be a real challenge. Although Jiyu was showing some form of discomfort... it took until the cockroach spoke up and Jiyu suddenly looked straight at her before Akeya connected the dots and realized that, unlike her own senses, Jiyu's hearing and sense of smell which exceeded even Akeya's had come at the price of hampered sight. Given how Jiyu had been moving and acting so far her ears and nose must be doing a good job of picking up the slack, but it was still strange to think that the canine girl couldn't actually see the cockroach girl and had, most likely, not been able to see most of the mutant girls with much accuracy either.

"We're working together for the moment." Was Akeya's blunt answer to the cockroach's excited question. The insect girl looked a bit surprised by the answer, but then regained her enthusiasm and nodded while smiling widely. "I see! And what job are you doing then?" Akeya regarded the cockroach. She really behaved a lot like the more bubbly type of young girl, eager to keep learning more and talking to people. "Some of the other mutants which appeared overnight just like you have been causing trouble, so we're convincing all of you newcomers to gather up and find a place where you can do as you like without the humans getting worried or upset." Akeya wasn't exactly lying, and aside from that she was pretty good at not telling the whole truth by virtue of not feeling like she was beholden to either the truth or being honest to others.

The cockroach girl seemed to think about this for a moment, then replied slowly. "Can't we just stay here with you guys? I want to be friends with the people here!" The shadow dragoness shook her head. "You can come back and try to befriend people, but it would be safer if you joined the others in another place and made your home there. They've all headed to a forest to the south of here, so there should be plenty of people for you to be friends there."

The cockroach girl looked a bit disappointed, but then nodded her head. "I see! So we'll make our home outside in the forest and come back to visit! Okay! Thanks for telling me where my friends went!" With that the small creature put the children's book back where she found it, then skittered off at surprisingly high speed. Akeya watched her leave, then scratched her head while letting out a small sigh. "I'll make some more rounds to make sure all the mutants are gone, but so far as I can tell that was the last of them. You go back to that inn and see if your mate is back." Akeya's sense of smell was sharp enough that she could tell that whoever had been in Jiyu's room, it was a male and they had a very close bond with Jiyu.