[center][h3]The Lady in White[/h3]
Location: Kno One
[@Lazo][/center]

Another chuckle resonated through the restaurant in reply to Pithy's barb.  “Forgive me.  I won't bore you with any more details.”  The sensation of predatory eyes, peering from every shadow and every surface, bored into Pithy as she drew near the kitchen.  For now, the hallway had turned silent; perhaps her evasion of the lethal fanblades sufficed to demonstrate her mastery over this area.  Far from content to keep that quiet intact, however, the Lady in White addressed her omnipresent adversary once again.

“And here I thought we weren't stating the obvious,” the voice chided.  Without any obstacle on the way, Pithy could enter the kitchen freely.  When she did, she could see that the checker-tiled floor proceeded normally about halfway down the room's length, then promptly turned upward.  Appearance-wise, the floor looked like it had been lifted up like a sheet of paper and the end attached to the ceiling.  Various facets of cooking equipment kept the fringes of the floor anchored to the ground, but in the openings left but such a phenomenon, hard-packed walls of miscellaneous kitchen items barred the way around.  No other mode of entry or exit could be glimpsed in the area that Pithy could access, save the doorway she came in by.  The way, it seemed, was shut.  “Of course!  Though since this is not a lecture, you'll have to figure things out for yourself.  Feel free to think of Kno One as an ordinary ghost, if it helps you understand that you cannot harm or interact with it.  Now, take a look at this.  You've figured out the building itself is invincible, but does that still apply to parts of it I've moved?  The tile was part of the floor, after all.”  The nearest stoves, which were on, bore pots of water whose bubbles were audible.  After the voice grew silent, their lids floated off, and from their sputtering contents stands of pasta began to rise.  They slithered through the air like sea snakes through the ocean, moving about in great numbers but in an aimless fashion.

[center][h3]Inari[/h3]
Location: What Lies Beneath – Toward the Underground City
[@Kapuchu][/center]

Content to be patient with the pair's cautiousness, Emile waited with relaxed posture and wide-open ears on the chance that Lily elected to respond.  When she started speaking, he listened with bated breath.  Even with his face masked, he seemed visibly surprised when the kitsune admitted a  knowledge of Disney—as taken aback as Lily had been moments before.  His shock shifted to a shaking with laughter that he worked hard to suppress when she gave voice to disbelief in the idea that planets could be round.  Just before he started to twitch, the faintest whisper of [i]”Flat earth!”[/i] escaped his feathery lips only to be buried beneath his acquaintance's speech.  Her next few statements, however, dispelled whatever mirth possessed him in the blink of an eye.  Emile sat bolt-upright at the mention of 'isekai', sitting stock-still as though he'd been discovered doing something wrong.  After she sighed, seated herself, and explained what isekai was, the owlman gave a nervous laugh.  “Heheh...sounds like some super cliché trash, good thing I don't know anything about anything like that...” When it became clear Lily was studying him, he sobered up hastily.

Still focused despite the less-than-concealed emotional roller-coaster Lily put him through, he remained attentive as she gave her own story.  At the motion of disks, one of his arms moved into a thinker's position, its elbow resting on the other while its fist lay across the section of his helmet that occluded his mouth.  Nothing that she told of rang any bells for him.  During her pause, he vocalized what little he could come up with.  “Hmm.  I've heard of something called Discworld, but I don't know anything about it.  Probably not what you're talking about.  I'd assumed you were from the past, but you're actually from the future, huh?”

Afterward she proceeded into answering the critical part of his inquiry: the workings of the tournament, of which he harbored only a basic knowledge.  He mulled over the information as it was presented, turning his head to gaze off into the middle ground.  When Brucie began to speak, however, he glanced his way just in time to watch Lily silence him with a jolt of lightning.  With as many beans spilled as she deemed appropriate, then, she posed him another question.  Flashy as the fiery feather was, the gears racing in his mind occupied him for another few moments.  Only after another “hmm...” did he allow his attention, once eagerly given, return to her.

“I cannot be sure, but the most well-known fictional feather in my homeworld is called 'Phoenix Down'.  I believe it revives a near-death ally it is used on.”  Something in his tone had changed, growing more serious and a touch slower.  Contractions disappeared, and his slouch gave way to proper, straight-backed posture.  “Let us rewind for a moment, however.  Were you about to say 'phylactery', hammerhead?”  Holding his right hand up and open for a moment to make it clear he was going to use it, Emile reached into his pocket and withdrew a palm-sized object.  Dark red, or perhaps black, in color, it resembled a heart drained of all life.  He span it on one finger, a sudden current of air keeping it aloft and rotating.  “When the scouting party found the corpse of my friend Clotho, this was on her.  Afterward, she told us what little she knew about it, and the tournament.  If we find where poor Verrine died, I'm guessing she will have one of these, too.”  Sighing, Emile let the inert phylactery fall into his palm before stashing it in his pocket.  When his eyes reopened, they locked with Lily's.  “As you might have gathered, two of my friends were brought to this tournament to fight, and both were killed.  It has left me hurt, but it is not healthy to dwell on such pain.”  He placed his hands by his legs, their palms on his stone seat.  “Not that I blame you two.  Unless you have traveled a very long way, there is no reason to believe either of you were the killers.”

As if trying looking for some sort of help from above, he tilted his head back and stared into the darkness between him and the cavern roof.  “So, the winner of this tournament gets one wish.  Maybe it is a blessing that Clotho dropped out, heh.  She is an ambitious one.  I dread what Verrine might have wished for...”  He shivered, then shook his head with a chuckle.  His composure seemed to relax, suggesting that something in the back of his mind that had been needling him had been resolved.   His manner of speaking, not unlike rambling meant to fill time, returned to normal.   “Hmph, what am I talking about?  Knowing her, she would've wanted me to be happy.  Anyway!”  Emile clapped his hands together, looking between Brucie and Lily.  “From my calculations, you're ready for the semifinals.  Eight souls under your belt, is it?  That's one-fourth of a wish.  A heavy burden to bear.  And when the load gets heavy, it's a good idea to have a lot of friends.”

Emile disappeared.

His practically-instant displacement sent a blast of wind in the direction of Lily and Brucie.  It lasted only a split second, but it was blistering in its speed and power.  More a screech than a howl, it blew into them and faded away almost as suddenly as its maker, who now stood on top of the pillar with arms crossed.  Though the whole thing happened so fast as to leave pretty much anyone flustered if not tumbling, what happened could be pieces together: though Emile's departure was invisible to the human eye, he had not teleported.  Instead, it was his physical movement from a sitting position to his current pillar-top perch that created the surprise gale—unintentionally, a mere byproduct of natural locomotion, like the wake of a boat that might sweep away of school of minnows.  In the alcove where he sat previously, [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/41/5f/fa415f8dce4bcfcdc34eadf0dec50d6f.jpg]two intricate sabers[/url] lay against the wall, unused and abandoned by the man they had been hidden behind throughout the whole exchange.  When the owlman spoke, his voice came louder and stronger than before.  “On behalf of the guild Air Rave, I offer you our services.”  He indicated the citadel-backed raven with a dramatic flick of his wrist.  “With our help, you can win the tournament no problem.  All I ask in exchange is what we work together to amend your wish, whatever it is, to help us out, too.  After all, the wish has no limits.  There's no reason we can't all get what we want.”  To punctuate his words, he held up his left hand.  On the appropriate finger a ring began to glow bright white, the crest of interlocking wings on its face visible in the radiance.  

[center][h3]The Cereal Killer and the Book Keeper[/h3]
Location: Flooded Historical District
[@Propro][@BCTheEntity][/center]

Evan as Motley launched himself into the air, preparing a final attack to ensure its fatality, Aralynn gave no sign of being aware of it.  For a brief moment her struggle grew more feverish, but the pain that even the slightest movement brought upon her stung her back into stillness, wherein she could get as close as possible to relief.  Around her the Boys of Summer stood, noiseless and resolute as frontline soldiers before a cavalry charge.  

It wasn't long before the vampire's chemical assault, carefully articulated, blasted forth.  A deluge of caustic stomach acid accompanied piercing spurts of pressurized blood, all fixated on the sitting duck at water's edge.  Her brother's small army of grim specters went to work, dutifully sliding in front of each incoming blast one after another.  The vile liquids' speed necessitated the Boys of Summer to cluster together to prevent any getting through, and for a brief instant the onslaught hung in the air, thick enough to make the sunlight dapple; then, the first target made contact with the first projectile.  Together the pair fizzled out of existence, more speedy and anticlimactic than the feed on a turned-off television.  After that, the interceptions came hard and fast.  When the blood beams vanished, they left behind a trace of negation that continued to erase any blood that followed, which could be said to count as the same attack by whatever bizarre and ephemeral rules governed Boys of Summer's usage.  With one beam gone after another, the acid shower began to coalesce, but well in advance of the entire acid attack's negation, the silent protectorate was depleted.  Faint, strangled gasps of true agony could heard over the sound of melting flesh.  For a few, fleeting moments, a mechanical shape could be seen to be hovering over Aralynn's body, but it soon faded away into vapor along with the aura that surrounded her.  After forty seconds, only a smoldering ooze and acid-scarred bones gave evidence that she ever existed.