soul_campaign | February 3, 2010 [Noon]

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February 3, 2010 [Noon]

[Spirit appears, fixing the camera angle, zooming in and out of his somewhat dirty and dusty self. It's smudged brown in a corner and he scrapes it off with an equally dirty fingernail, whispering something to an unseen man next to him.]

You sure this is secure only to our agents? [There's a 'Yes, sir!' and Spirit nods, and clears his throat.]

Our scouts tracked down the witches to their new hide out, where they've taken our people. It's the... Grand Canyon, in one of the cave networks there. The scouts reported that the prisoners are alive for now, but they can't get into the caves to check what's going on in there.

[deep breath] We're launching a rescue mission on the fifth -- the day after tomorrow. That's the shortest time we can be underway, because our scouts have to set up our transportation mirror there and we need to recover here. Sign up with the guys if you want to come -- we'll take unpartnered fighters, too, as long as you promise not to take on kishin egg on your own in case there are any.

And... [hesitates for a moment, and then reluctantly:] The witches didn't just come here to pick up random people. They were specifically targeting the Meisters and Weapons among us, but we don't know why yet. Be triple careful in the mission, all right?

They were also after our witch prisoner, who's been giving us some tips on her sisters' activity. Cybele gave us the info on the transmitters in Europe that last time, among other things. Seems the witches weren't happy with how we ruined their big project and we barely managed to save her from, well, death. [shrugs, as if he deals with witch assassinations all the time. Actually, he does.] She's pretty much on our side now after what they tried to do, so don't be too surprised if a lion lady takes a walk around town once in a while. Don't worry, we're keeping a good lock down on her magic until we're sure she can be trusted. [tiredly] Not the first time we've had witches on our side, at least...

[clears his throat] A bunch of us guys are still trying to identify and bury the undead. We've dragged the whole lot of them to the southeast side of the city to keep the smell away, though. Uuh, just don't wander over there for a few days.

[Private to Clovis]

Our movie will have to wait a few more days. How are you... doing?

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I don't mind. [blinks again, looking a little confused. Why is she talking about critiques?]

This isn't the first rescue mission we've done, and it probably won't be the last. Better than leaving them to die or get experimented on, if we have a chance of saving them.

It's all right if you don't want to sign up for it, though. You're one of our newer arrivals, right?

[because she was criticizing it, really]

I don't mean dangerous only to those who go on the mission. I'm including the ones who stay behind. After an attack to the city, defenses weakened and everyone still feeling quite shaky, you will be taking part of the defense forces in order to walk right into a Witch lair.

Is that prudent?

[she didn't answer that last question. It was obvious she was a new arrival]

[shakes his head] We're asking the other bases to lend us some agents to stay in the city while we're gone. [Australians again... Marie's going to complain.]

We could just send them to do the work for us, but I don't think some of these guys will take that sitting down. A lot of their friends were taken, too. So were our students.

I see.

You have done this before, correct? Rescue missions.

A few times... [looks uneasy] The witches didn't use to do operations like this before. Mass kidnapping, I mean.

What changed?

The things that they do changed. Before, we rarely fought with the Witches because they kept mostly to themselves, and we kept mostly to eliminating kishin eggs. [Does she know about kishin eggs?] The war started eight centuries ago, but it was always on and off, and neither us or the witches like kishin eggs.

But ever since that one Witch decided to unleash the kishin, everything's been a mess. They're banding together and doing experiments on people and kishin eggs. I don't know if their leader is scaring them or not into doing this, or why they're turning to science instead of just magic.

You have a Witch, don't you? Doesn't she know?

[Demona shrugs softly] Mixing magic and science is something difficult to do, but can be deadly. Why don't you use the same? If you aren't already using, of course.

[shakes his head] She worked on one of the experiments once. But she doesn't know about the others.

Yeah... [exhale] It's dangerous to them and to us, though. As for magic, we use a bit of it. The communicator, for example, and the mirrors Shibusen uses for transport. Weapons actually started from a Witch experiment.

[oho, this is interesting] Are people born Weapon and Meisters, or is it an ability you implant on someone or teach, somehow?

And who can use magic? Can it be learned?

Being a weapon is a matter of blood now, so it runs in families. There's maybe one weapon in every five thousand people around the world. [he thinks for a moment, on how to explain this.] Eight hundred years ago, the heretic Witch, Arachnophobia, created the first Weapon by fusing the soul of a Witch and the soul of a human being with a weapon.

Meisters are humans with a large amount of soul wavelength. There's a bit more of them than Weapons, since they're actually normal human beings to begin with.

Only Witches can use magic. You need to be born a Witch to be able to, so...

[Blood, hm? How unfortunate] The people the Witches experiment on, what sort of experiments they do? Curse them? [because that's the wort of magic she knows]

There was one time when they put fear gas in then. [counts on his fingers] And then another time when they altered their souls a bit to be like Witches, but it made the victims a bit mad, too. And then there was that time when the agents had bits of Witch magic in them that controlled them for a while. I don't know what they're doing this time, their ideas get pretty diverse.

[It always came down to souls, in a way. She isn't particularly curious about them for now - more like, she can't seem to interested]

Can they make the guests capable of using magic? It'd be bothersome, no?

They had to mutilate them the last time it happened. A lot of their victims died.

[aha, but they can.]

I see. They are quite dangerous indeed.

This... Kishin. What exactly is it?

[scratches his cheek with a dirty finger] Kishin eggs are what happens when a person eats a human soul and becomes corrupted. They might have done it out of madness or greed for power, but the taint changes them into monsters, and it's irreversible.

This corruption makes them want to eat more human souls, and they eat and hunt and eat and hunt until they get strong and become a kishin.

"Human soul" as actual humans? I am not a human obviously, so would I be considered to have a "human soul"?

If the BREW gave the ten-foot alien and the sixteen-foot robot human souls, I don't see why you wouldn't have one, too. [looks puzzled] The only other ones we have are witch and kishin egg souls.

[WELLP. Yeah. That. Makes Demona extremely pissed.

And she can't hide it that well. She frowns and closes her eyes before they turn red.] You humans are so...

Nevermind.

Human souls give one more power. What about Witch souls? And Kishin souls?

Only weapons can eat those. If a meister or ordinary human eats those... well, it's not an easy death. Weapons eat kishin eggs to gain power, and top it off with a witch soul after their ninety ninth kishin egg. That's how they become a deathscythe.

So the Meister has no way of becoming more powerful, like the Weapon does?

It comes naturally as the meister helps his or her weapon on the path to becoming a Deathscythe. Their souls become stronger and stronger. We have rankings for meisters, too.

[That means she needs a Weapon.]

Very well, then.

February 3, 2010 [Noon]

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