When Haruka, Michiru and Makoto reached Mugen academy, it was in an uproar; The kidnapping of a student brought out panic amongst the faculty at any school.
At Mugen academy, if it was the kidnapping of a student by a small horde of Unseelie fae - small monsters led by evil looking elves, and if it was Tomoe Hotaru, the somewhat-famous daughter of the Late Professor Tomoe, it brought out a special kind of panic. School was out for the day - the students were being sent home en-masse, mainly for the purpose of getting them out of the danger zone.
The last time there had been monsters on campus, most of the school had been blown up; Sailor Senshi arriving on Campus did nothing to quiet the fears of the Faculty or the other students, as they had also been present for the previous disaster. That they seemed to be rather short handed - three rather than the now-usual nine - was cause for actual alarm; Some of those present began to thing not in terms of evacuating the school, but of getting out of the city instead.
Into the chaos of the evacuation, Uranus and Neptune lead Makoto straight to Hotaru's classroom, where her communicator and cell-phone were still sitting in her bag, and looked at the signs of panic in this room: overturned desks, all around Hotaru's, but not including it, scratches on the floor from obviously clawed feet, and a low-level aura of dark enchantment hung around the place.
Haruka cursed and punched a wall, Shouting, "Dammit! Not 'Taru too!" not even noticing when her hand slashed through brick as if it were air in her anger; Michiru was already concentrating on her Mirror desperately, trying to find a glimpse of Hotaru in it.
"They got Hotaru, too..no...Who did this?! Who's taking us, what are they doing with us?!" Makoto had started out whispering in horror, but as her upset had broken out of control, that horror had rapidly become a rising shriek - a shriek that startled the Unseelie sorcerer maintaining the Gateway to Makai on this side into flight.
His name was Kyron and he wasn't the most experienced or powerful Unseelie mage left by a long shot - his power was bearly sufficient to hold the gate open - nor was he the prettiest.
An atypical Unseelie mage, in that he was a Red Cap, Kyron had a slim and delicate of build, but he was nevertheless wry and as tough as stone. With backslant, pointed ears and clawed hands that made him look like some sort of demonic thug.
A cap died red in Vampires blood not so long ago might have given him a respectable, military air - if it weren’t for his smile, which reached the bottom of those ears, seeming to split his head in half and gleaming as it was filled with a legion of razor-pointed teeth. His species were usually fighters rather than mages, but Kyron shared some tiny amount of Noble Unseelie blood in his veins that gave him sorcery as well as the normal gifts of fear and hunger that were the Red-Cap's peculiar hallmark.
Faced with what looked to be a demonic Elf fleeing the scene, Jupiter drew what was the obvious conclusion to her at the time - that he was one of those responsible (which was correct) and that he had done something horrible to Hotaru (which wasn't) and screamed, "There's one! You won't get away!" as she gave chase.
Kyron spun a web of misdirecting illusions behind him as fast as his diminished magic’s could work them, and ran faster- the girl practically glowed with power of both dark and light, and she was running like she had wings, or maybe lightning for blood.
It half worked: When Uranus plunged through the door Makoto had chased him through, the hallway was empty of both Redcap and Senshi in both directions, and in accordance with the magic Kyron had spun, Sailor Uranus picked the wrong direction to search for them in.
B.B. Hood slipped into the building from the other side at approximately the same instant.
Getting a large number of guns through customs into a foreign country could be done one of two ways: The Quick and highly illegal, or the slow and tedious rout of actually admitting you had them and getting permits.
B.B. Preferred the latter, and in the last few hours had been asking around about sites of monster attacks - a line of questioning that had already born fruit. Juuban high had been a bust - nothing there - but this school was *reeking* of Darkstalker.
The Slayer checked her guns and the high explosives in her picnic basket and plunged into the open school gates.
From the Rooftop of the building, Donovan Baine stretched his senses down into the building, chanting the continuous mantra of aesthetic sorcery which allowed him to sense the others within, as he tried to unwrap the enigma of the Darkstalkers in human form, wielding powers of light and order, and prepared his soul to rid the world of such abominations.
The Pa crackled and began playing a raucous American song as Kyron ran and Jupiter chased him through blackened corridors - not even noticing that she was seeing with perfect clarity even in near total darkness.
The vocals started as Donovan Baine tore open the rooftop access Doors, the song, in one of the little irony's the gods are fond of, somewhat prophetic to what was to come.
~o Schoool's out for summer! o~
They continued as Uranus nearly ran down B.B. Hood, and snapped, "Go Home little girl! It's dangerous here!" on her frantic search of the halls.
The singer reached a crescendo as Kyron rounded a corner and nearly ran into Donovan.
~o School's out ForEVER! o~
Donovan Baine. The murderer of Darkstalkers. Caught between a two terrors, Kyron attempted to open his own gate back to Makai in desperate haste, with concentration so total that he did not even see Dhylec as Donovan's blade swept down, intent on ending his life.
Sailor Jupiter, however, had been mere steps behind him, and very certainly did notice. And Recognize the man who had tried to kill her. Who was now trying to kill her only lead to what was happening to her friends.
"No - you - Don't!"
Her reaction was well practiced: a low diving jump slammed into Kyron at the waist, knocking him out of the path of the sword and rolling both of them into a wall, where Jupiter threw the smaller Fae clear and scrambled to get back to her feet in time to fight the harsh faced Monk.
But she simply did not have enough time; Dark energy that saturated the school had mixed with the lighting within her body and thrown off her reflexes and as Dhylec Swept down again along with Donovan's remark of 'Pathetic' Makoto realized that she had landed in a corner, and there was nowhere to dodge.
In the Makai, the Kumo - Earthspiders, or mountainspiders, as they were called - were believed extinct; Theirs had been a species teetering on the edge of extinction for generations, kept alive only by binding themselves in symbiosis with spirits of the earth and of the trees, mixing their blood with other insect spirits as little as necessary while trying to maintain their own bloodlines - and every nation of Makai hunted them.
Not because of their prowess in battle, though they could be very fearsome if they cared to - but because the Kumo were assassins. The Venom of an Earthspider was a horrible thing - a crawling black-green liquid that could lay all but the very strongest Darkstalkers low with a single tiny spider bite - which the Kumo, who could shatter their bodies into thousands of tiny spiders at a whim, could deliver with ease. Because of this ability, the rulers of Makai Kingdoms hunted the species to extinction; Even the greatest Darkstalker would be weakened by the poison - and a large enough dose could kill even a King. As had been proven to Morrigan's Father.
Of the Earthspiders, there were many types: The commoners, who were of flesh, or dirt had forms somewhere between spider and human, and were easily found and hunted. Those who were more noble, the spiders of stone were next on the totem and could assume a human-like form - or that of a great spider of stone, nearly the size of a house, or a swarm of tiny spiderlings.
But the very greatest of the Kumo had been the Jade Queens, spiders who's forms were always exquisite; Their human forms were perfect, nigh unto undetectable, and their spider forms - both their great war-form and their lesser host forms - were like jewels, great masses of jade or tiny hosts of gem-spiders. The Jade Queens could assume any form they chose between spider and Human, and as a host, had the ability to leave some of their bodies aside so that even if their main body were slain - they would still survive.
It was partly this ability that had allowed Makoto's mother to survive as long as she had - The other part had been The powers she had inherited from Makoto's grandparents and theirs, for the Kumo were no longer purebloods: Now the blood of many plant and insect spirits had been added to the greater part of the Kumo blood, letting her have considerable power over many living and growing things - living things of the Makai, that is.
Makoto had inherited all of these powers. Though she had been limited to human form by a potion of her mother's making, and given to human parents to raise, that potion had long since worn off. Only the fact that Makoto did not know that she *could* do so, prevented her from beginning to use her full powers.
Donovan Baine's sword swept down and Jupiter had nowhere to dodge, but tried anyway, and the sword tore into the concrete wall with a hollow ripping sound.
And Donovan froze.
The hallway was awash in jewels. Thousands upon thousands of tiny spiders of jade - some green, some brown, some bright yellow or red, some with delicate crystal wings that did not belong on jewel like spiders - and many with tiny flowers growing from their backs. They had flashed up the walls like a wave of water struck by a great rock, in an insane hurry to get out-of-the-way of Dhylec's hunger.
A Kumo Swarm form.
Eight times thousands of eyes oriented on the person trying to kill them, and spider instinct acted while Makoto was still trying to realize that she had *changed*: They launched themselves at opposite walls, at the man, at the floor - invisibly fast and trailing nigh-unbreakable webbing behind them as Donovan began a chant of power to ward them off, not wishing to try his constitution against their venom -
And then the lines were done, wrapping around the monk hundreds of times and even as his sword was slashing them away the chorus voice of a thousand spiders whispered, "Supreme Thunder."
As the startled form of Kyron fled the crackle of lighting like a rabbit chased by wolves, Donovan Baine screamed.
An entire floor of the buildings windows exploded outward at the force of that lighting and the sound of that scream. Both Makoto - desperately trying to draw herself back together now - and Donovan, burned along hundred of little lines and twitching spasmodically from the lightning - lost each other in the flare of smoke and dust that accompanied the lights above them bursting.
For Makoto, it was alarming; she had gathered together and returned to her human form...mostly.
Some of her didn't - or possibly couldn't, leaving many small Jade Spider Jewels to scuttle across her skin while she staggered away, trying to figure out weather she was walking on eight legs or two.
Unbeknownst to her, the increase of her Senshi powers to her body had made it impossible for all of her spider forms to join together - had she awakened while not transformed, likely, it would never have been an issue, but having gone from being Sailor Jupiter, to spider-swarm-Jupiter, she had supercharged her Darkstalker life energy with magical energy, which she had spontaneously transmuted to life force using her plant-control and earth magic’s.
Life force which created her lesser spider forms, of which she now had an excess - so when her body was fully reformed, she had many small selves left over to act as satellites, whom she simply could not pack into her human body. An instinct said she should be able to bring them all together in a larger form, but rationality - what part of it was not going into hysterics - said now was not the time to ponder that.
There was still a dangerous murderer after her, and a kidnapper to chase.
As Makoto tried to regain control of herself -
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(Posted Sat, 15 Feb 2003 07:22)
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