When she stepped through the hole in reality, Yuriko didn't really know what to expect. She posited that they would be like a Fysalli, which shaped itself around the visitor's perceptions while retaining their basic theme. But then again, the bridge she and the other Lunites—what the cast of Luvblooms were calling themselves now—entered didn't exhibit any kind of change and adaptation, even when she surreptitiously tried to change things around. It wasn't a major change at the time, simply a wish for a breeze to cool things down, but she felt a bit of resistance from the interstitial space, and since she wasn't alone and surrounded by mortals, or rather, freshly awakened people, she refrained from doing anything too drastic.
Through the hole in reality, the vista wasn't much different from the valley she came from. In fact, had she not been able to sense and keep track of the hole in reality, which was now slowly healing over, she might have been fooled into thinking she was still in the same place. A deeper and more stringent look, using both perception and physical senses, revealed that the concentration of varied energies was different. Thicker.
There was a higher percentage of ambient Chaos, not nearly as much as the Chaos Founts in Bresia, and nowhere close to even being classified as 1 iarvesh. A pity, that. Yuriko missed the ambient Chaos of home where she could extend her Intent and Will and reshape reality to her whims…
Or no, that wasn't her. That was Damien's memory, wasn't it? But didn't he live before the Great Shattering?
Of course, with the existence of the Primordial Chaos layer, the concept of Chaos would not have been foreign, simply rarer. Her thoughts skittered away from lingering on that matter, and her true body had returned to meditating, although the flashes of enlightenment were already fading. She didn't lose anything this time, thankfully, so it wasn't a waste.
Enlightenment and insight…what was the nature of such things? Yuriko wasn't quite sure, just that Damien used the terms almost interchangeably. However, there was always the sense that there was nuance between the two.
Insight…was a peek at the system? The flash of knowledge, the leap of logic, that allowed her to make connections when she pondered upon Truths and Ennoias? Enlightenment was a similar state, except she wasn't looking at how the world worked, but intuiting it on her own. With the idea that new Truths could be carved into the fabric of reality.
Yes, it was an important thought, but also, not quite. The act of carving the Truth into reality was not the hallmark of a mortal, or even an Ancient. It was probably something only a God-Monarch could do.
As in…once one was able to carve a Truth into the fabric of reality, one became a God-Monarch?
She shuddered at the thought, and shuddered even more when she felt the fabric of reality shift. She could feel it now, unlike several times before. She could feel the World reaching into her mind to wrest inappropriate Truths from her. Truths that were too heavy for her Anima to bear, and holding them would either weigh her down, or crush her.
But the enlightenment she received now…wasn't something taken from the World, but something she cobbled together on her own. And because it was her…it couldn't take it away. Not truly, and not completely. She felt knowledge seep out, but only for it to be balled and compressed, then stuffed back into her Anima core, deep within. She was left without the knowledge, but with the thought that it would return once she was strong enough. And with it came the feeling as if a light was being shown along her path. She could more easily see it now, and perhaps…she wouldn't become lost.
Yuriko blinked, then sighed as she examined herself. A step into interstitial space while her true body was pondering the mysteries of the world had given rise to something ridiculous, and her incarnation body had paused just past the threshold long enough to be dangerous. Thankfully, her Anima perception had been expanded and she didn't detect anything dangerous.
But she did see the wreckage of the buses once she turned around. They were nearly fifty paces from where she cut open the path, and her blood ran cold at the sight. Both buses were torn in half. Shattered glass, broken bits of metal, and spilled petrol were around the wrecks, as well as bloody mud.
A moment later, she was among the wreckage and her perception aura covered everything. There was blood and fragments of bone scattered near the bus seats, but thankfully, no actual bodies. She was unsure if anyone died, but in the past hour, she worried that some might have while she was delayed.
The connection with Scarlett was clearer now. She guessed her friend would be held where the others were as she didn't think she would be singled out. That was both good and bad, she supposed. What did the Unfettered want with civilians anyway?
She hurried towards Scarlett, opting to run rather than fly. With the latter, she could only use her Animakinesis to push, but with physically running, she could leverage physique and kinesis in the effort, essentially doubling her output, though thanks to wind resistance, not quite speed. She did take the effort to still the air so that she wouldn't create sonic booms, and it seemed the interstitial space made it easier to do so. In fact, the air around her bent easily to her Intent, as though it was meant to be controlled.
She had gone no further than a longstride when she found out why.
A blast of sound, so high pitched that it couldn't be heard by normal human senses. Though it was well within her range, she didn't normally listen for such frequencies. It shot towards her position. Her first impulse was to block the soundblast using her Anima, but she remembered a time when such an attack bypassed her Anima armour by using vibrations to transmit its payload, and this attack had the hallmarks of that method. She blasted herself out of the way and the earth behind her cratered. The blast was focused into a small circle no more than five paces wide, and she imagined this was what destroyed the buses.
Her eyes snapped towards where the attack came from, and she saw it was a young woman with bird wings and a long feathered tail, much like what the Ib'honara birdkin looked like in Bresia, though unlike those people, this woman didn't have taloned feet, nor did she look like she had a bird's head or a beak. Instead, she looked like a normal human woman with her arms replaced with wings, though upon a closer inspection, she could see human fingers half hidden by the feathers. The tail was a spectacular plume of multi-coloured feathers and was at least as long as she was tall. The woman's face was pretty, and she sported a feral and vicious expression.
Upon seeing Yuriko dodge the attack, the flying woman swooped closer and screamed as she created another soundblast. Unlike Soundwave, she didn't seem to be able to control the blast after she released it, but its potency was at least ten times higher.
Yuriko dodged to the side, though she interposed a condensed hexagon of Anima to test the waters. Yup, it went right through the plate with little trouble. Now, Yuriko would have been foolish if she didn't develop a counter to such attacks, so she hastily restructured her Anima armour. Aside from the hardened layer, she buffered it with a soft layer that should absorb the vibrations and divert it around the hard inner layer. She created five layers of hard and soft, then compressed as close to her body as she dared. Too tight a fit and the soft, baffling layers would be ineffective, but too wide a gap and it got in the way of her body's movements. She could simply hover and fly to avoid the problem, but she liked fighting on the ground so that she didn't have to create platforms to brace against. At her current level, anyway.
The bird woman screeched again, and this time, Yuriko dashed towards her foe. The bird flew about twenty paces above her, but because of the slope, she was actually farther from the ground by another couple of paces. Yuriko's Animakinesis could reach easily, and she only had to get within range.
The shockwave slammed into Yuriko's Anima armour and as she expected, the force was baffled by her layers. A tiny bit of it reached her body but her Radiant Physique was easily able to handle that much. Her stride stuttered for half a second, but that was it.
The bird woman's eyes widened as Yuriko tanked the blow, and she hastily flapped her wings to gain altitude. But it was too late. Yuriko got the woman within her reach, and she grabbed the woman's legs with her kinesis and simultaneously snapped her fingers, sending a couple of Invisible Edges to slice the wings. Not to sever, but to wound.
Somehow, the birdwoman intuited the threat to her limbs and coiled her arms to her chest. Yuriko's kinesis, when utilised to manipulate actual matter, materialised as golden light structures. She caught the legs and pulled, but the woman shrieked at the grasping light and somehow disrupted Yuriko's Animakinesis enough to slip her legs out of the vice. Yuriko winced as her Anima developed cracks, which told her how much power there was in the attack. Her incarnation's Anima was denser than normal by three times and yet the bird was able to damage it!
Even though the birdwoman managed to escape both Edges and the kinesis, Yuriko hadn't stopped her approach. She leaped towards the birdwoman, then sent another Invisible Edge to strike her side. She waffled over capture or kill, and her hesitation was a gap that the woman slipped through. The Invisible Edge wasn't aimed to cut vitals, which meant that with a slight twitch, the bird woman was able to avoid the attack entirely. Yuriko hummed. The birdwoman was able to sense the Edges otherwise she wouldn't have been able to avoid them with such a narrow margin.
Still, Yuriko managed to close in enough that with another leap, and a push off against the fabric of reality, she closed in enough to throw a punch. The birdwoman must not have expected that since Yuriko clocked her on the chin. Her jaw rocketed and there was a sharp crack. She fell from the air and would have slammed on the ground had Yuriko not caught her with kinesis.
Unconscious, it was easy enough for Yuriko to examine the other's body. She snapped the woman's neck.
"Rotter," Yuriko muttered, and she was wondering if a healing spell would work, except she wasn't well versed in those. Recovery using Animus was most likely to be effective, but before she could decide, she sensed that the birdwoman's torn muscles and broken bone were knitting themselves back together. There was some kind of opaque energy that came from the woman's torso which prompted the repair. Much as she wanted to examine it, she didn't want to actually kill the woman just yet. Maybe after she's wrung whatever information she could from her, then she might leave her to die.
As it was, she wrapped the woman into a cocoon with her kinesis then resumed running towards where she felt Scarlett was. Every step of the way, she felt her worries rise. Still unconscious, she hoped Scarlett was unharmed, and while running, she fantasised about what she would do to the Unfettered once she caught them.
She sported a grim smile. Nobody touched what was hers without paying for it. Maybe she had been too docile here in Astoria, though she knew that her reputation, and hence her plan to accumulate Quintessence, would be jeopardised if she was too brutal. But then again, her Mien would work even if the emotion it latched to was fear.