1037/A lazy encounter in a painted sea

A lazy encounter in a painted sea
Date of Scene:	14 January 2024
Location:	Plot Room 1
Synopsis:	Cure Fortune and Trager des Blauer Greif investigate some worrying rumours, but their good intentions are quickly put to a stop when Namakelder shows up with a Terribad out of one of the abductees. Despite being able to stop the General of the Phantom Empire, their attacks upset the magic enough to get them kicked out. Better have a plan for a second tentative.
Cast of Characters:	Iona Hikawa, Hannah Steiner

---

Iona Hikawa has posed:
It is the 14th of January, 2 days before a crew of mahous will successfully find a way to break the curse of the sea painting. A bit of an obstacle occurred. Not just mahous have an eye on cursed items, so it seems.

But everything in order. Rumours about people disappearing plague an art gallery in Tokyo, and it is following this trail that Iona has decided to check the place out, as she does whenever something wrong is afoot. She has just entered the gallery, and besides the occasional guard, the place is completely deserted. It seems like the rumours have chased people away. For now, Iona is peeking at the various rooms, trying to ascertain what could be the cause of the disappearances.

Hannah Steiner has posed:
Now, normally Hannah only haunts the halls of Fine Art when she's trying to make friends with the sophisticated and likely, rich and connected of the world that so often love to haunt these things! But rumors of people going missing? Well, the Steiner Heiress isn't above sticking her nose into strange happenings.

Thus, Lyra leading the way in Big Ol Fluffball disguise, the young woman cordially greets the guards she passes on the way. Relying on the big murderlizard to help her find the more painting-esque area.

Which is exactly how, after a bark and a tilt of her head, she comes across a certain fellow investigator. She'd vaguely pondered doing an Area Search, but between the guards and now an ostensible 'civilian', she'll have to work off good old magical girl senses.

"Acht, guten tag mein freund! Quite the empty art gallery, ja? Thank the Sankt it isn't night, or it would be as a horror movie, hm?" Comes Hannah in her typical aggressive friendliness!

Iona Hikawa has posed:
Iona doesn't have any useful spell herself, the way Hannah is choosing to follow is actually her only solution for finding magic. That, and she could employ Glasan's highly attuned senses, but letting out the fairy when an enemy may be hiding away in what could very well be their base isn't prudent, so she is faking to be a plushie in Iona's bag.

The purple-haired turns around confused when an unfamiliar voice addresses her with such cordiality. Some of the words may be in another language, but she isn't top of her class both academically and in PE for nothing. She leaves a friendly smile to the girl that is greeting her, even if a bit stiff, and says "Good day to you too. This place doesn't seem to be doing too good", she agrees still looking around at any anomalous indicator.

She looks at Lyra like that and she reserves a smile at the big doggo, asking Hannah if she can give the pet a few good scritches. That's what she does, if she gets an affirmative reply.

"Those rumours are too odd, which is a shame, because the paintings looks good." Well, that's an obvious reason to be there, even if she doesn't have a special interest for the arts. "Those whale sounds especially. Why would an abductor care about that?" she confides one of the things puzzling her to the other girl.

Though, chatting with her shouldn't be a priority now. She needs to find out what's going on. "Please excuse me, but I need to go now. If you are a student at RHA, you may meet me there." With that she starts walking away after bowing, resuming her search. It is in another room, when she approaches the painting known as the shining deep that she finds out something, ready or not, because Iona suddenly disappears from the art gallery, no trace of her left behind.

Hannah Steiner has posed:
Lyra scritches are for everyone, and the cheerful space german is magnanimous with them, especially when people ask. She finds herself liking the polite if stiff young woman already, not that doing so is particularly hard for one so unreasonably outgoing.

"Ridiculous, hmm? Und no suspicious individuals lurking about? Too odd by thirds mein freund! Bauchjagd, oh intrepid detective!" Comes Hannah as the other girl wanders off. She weighs her options, especially with a seemingly fellow determined hunter of mysteries in the area.

It takes all of two seconds for the Belkan to properly conclude that stealth and subtlety is for Mid Childans and Royal Functions, there's neither here.

"Blauer Greif! Aufwachen!"

<Linker Core Online>

<Sensoren Online>

<Zauberspruche Online>

<Alle Systeme Nominal>

<Bereit meine Herrin>

In a flash, the young woman supported by a Belkan magical crest and floating in the air, Träger des Blauen Greif tilts her hat, adjusts her golden glasses even as Lyra flexes her massive claws, beautiful feathers fanning and tail whipping behind her aggressively.

Holding out her Device, yet to draw the blade from Blauer Greif's sheath, she concentrates.

<Weitflächige Suche>

Comes Hannah with the Belkan version of the classic Wide Area Search. Her senses fan out along with her Device coming the local area, the pair in near perfect synch as that spacial map is built in her head.

Which is exactly why she notices the absence of the girl she just met. Any pretenses to caution left are immediately thrown out the window as she narrows the Search into a tighter band around her, before activating a second spell.

<Fluss: Aufhellen>

Glowing in a vaguely blue aura as she fully detaches herself from the grip of gravity, she points herself horizontally, and then with a hiss Lyra leaps up and kicks her back Razorhound paws to Hannah's, sending her /rocketing/ along like some kind of human missile through the next rooms. Lyra comes along for the ride with a bit of residual magic and a good grip on her leash, using a gravity tether or two along the way to avoid obstacles even as most of her attention is for signs of strangeness or magic.

Intuition as much as BG's mental map-scan readings has her arriving at the Shining Deep. Immediately, she uses the same trick that brought her here from the other rooms to launch herself at the painting, heedless of what damage she might cause to it should she turn out to be wrong.

She's a Steiner after all, and 'being wrong' isn't high up on possibilities that flit through her mind all that often, especially when there's a life seemingly on the line!

With that, she too is gone!

Iona Hikawa has posed:
Darkness surrounds Iona at first, leaving Iona to freeze slightly at the phenomenon that is happening to her. The last thing she did was approach a painting, was that really the cause for the disappearances?

"Glasan, can you hear me?", she says, trying to understand if at least the fairy was still at her side, but she receives no reply. Before she can do anything else though, the shroud of darkness is lifted and Iona's first instinct is to hold her breath when she sees she is now underwater somehow.

'Where is this?', she asks herself as she looks around with sudden worry, because wherever she is, it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the surface. It is then she notices a few things: one, she is wearing a seashell bikini, two, she has a purple bilayered skirt now, and third, where her legs used to be, there is a single long, purple fish tail as smooth looking as a dolphin that leaves a single word in her mind: mermaid.

'Am I a mermaid? Why? How? And does that mean I can breathe?' Ignoring all instincts telling her otherwise, she stops holding her breath and lets in water, relief filling her as she finds out she actually can breathe. And now that she isn't as alarmed, she notices she is apparently in her Cure Fortune form, judging by the all too familiar ribbon in her hair. Another mystery for the pile.

Though at least Glasan's location is going to get answered soon, because a polip with the fairy's upper body comes swimming towards her, still sporting her sunglasses even underwater and her backpack. "Glasan, is that really you?" she asks, incredulous. Uh, apparently she can talk too.

"For sure, Iona! I think this is how people disappear!", the fairy exclaims. Well, Iona got that much, so she just says "Come then, we need to find a way out", commencing to swim around with a few practice kicks first. It feels weird at first, but the more she tries, the more it feels freeing with how much more suited a mermaid is to moving underwater compared to her body. Though, here is hoping this doesn't stick when she finds a way to go back.

Hannah Steiner has posed:
Plunged directly through the painting into the ocean is an experience. The shock of suddenly being surrounded by water, her relative speed on entry in her haste to catch up with the other girl, and that innate human terror of drowning hitting her all at once.

Hannah Steiner has been scared before like anyone else, but outright bone-cutting, mind-spiking terror is something that she's felt very rarely, and it doesn't help that the most vivid time was during the Coup. But this time it's in a completely different context. And Lyra. By the Sankt Kaiser, not Lyra with her!

That's the thought that keeps her head even vaguely functioning as she slams her mouth shut. Intrusive thoughts of someone very much thinking they're going to die in such an ignoble way has her heart pounding.

She and Lyra are going to die. All of those she loves will be gripped with the worry and fear of someone disappearing and presumed dead. Her girlfriends, the many allies and close friends of so many stripes she's made since coming to this benighted little dirtball. Their faces lit with regret when it becomes clear she's died in some mishap, magical or mundane and crying into the night.

She knows exactly who it would wound the most deeply, the girl who hates killing and loss, who feels /so/ openly and so greatly for others with a love that's given her some /sense/ of a familial connection, whose family threw their doors open for her and so many others that had lost so much on a beautiful new years night.

Usagi. Sailor Moon.

Hannah's seen Sailor Moon fighting, being scared of it all, and yet never quitting an obligation thrust on her unwillingly. The thing that first impressed the Belkan, so different though they might be.

She can't die here. She has to be like Sailor Moon.

Pushing down all that fear, her mind clears, and her heart swells with determination.

Sailor Moon. The /moon/! That which controls the tides, the crushing depths of the ocean despite being just a tiny heavenly body with its' gravity!

Hannah sweeps Blauer Greif in a wide arc as her magic flares, jaw set and ready to fight the whole ocean if she has to for everyone in her heart.

Spheres of her gravity magic span out from around her, forming first one circle of attractive wells, followed by an inner set of repelling ones.

It's then that her air runs out. With a gasp that's nearly a roar, the inner wells activate, arresting her motion as well as ensuring both Lyra and Hannah remain floating in place within the depths, just about to rip away the waters around her. It's exactly at that moment she discovers she can /breathe/. The painting's blessing, has given her that much, and now with her spell? The more hidden threat of crushing ocean pressure averted as gravity does its' work.

<Fluss: Mondgriff>

"I shan't let a little sister outdo me! Come, Lyra, BG!" Thankfully breathing comes with speaking. Her area search spell flares up again.

Blauer Greif's inner workings and core tick and turn, her ancient database updated with the first new spell to be added in a generation, all thanks to the one called Sailor Moon.

Manipulating the inner repulsive fields of her new work and kicking her legs, she begins to swim towards the ping of two others in the oceans. Some kind of...fish and girl, and she has /no/ idea what Glasan is even less than Iona.

"Hail! Nomen your House und...what you are!" Then her Device helpfully slips that word telepathically into her head.

Right! "Acht...mer...maid?" She tries.

Iona Hikawa has posed:
Iona is swimming around trying to find a solution to this problem they are in. Ok, she is doing that, but she is surprisingly having fun, looking around the corals and playing with the whales and admiring all the colourful fishes. It is a bit of a distraction, despite herself.

All of a sudden though she is yet surprised by another voice, for the second time this afternoon. The new mermaid turns around expecting to see someone in an armored dress swimming towards her accompanied by a lizard creature Iona doesn't recognise, but somehow this one is completely human still, unlike her. How curious.

"I am Cure Fortune, and this is my fairy Glasan. I am a Precure fighting the Phantom Empire. Who am I talking with?" She asks back.

Then all of a sudden mold starts spreading around them. That can only mean... "Namakelder!" Cure Fortune shouts as she turns around.

True enough, the general of the phantom empire is there too, a pleased smirk on his face. Even he has been altered by the magic of the paintings, the lower body of a crustacean replacing his own. And he is not alone, Kindabads and a Diver Terribad looming behind him, a mirror coffin not too far away. "Oya oya, who do we have here? Cure Fortune and one of her friends. Seems like this is an unexpected encounter indeed."

The joyous atmosphere is very much unilateral as Iona reserves a glare to the elegant man. "What are you doing here? Are you behind the abductions?" He raises his cane, holding it with both hands. "What makes you think that? My task is to understand what's up with the painting we are in and report back", he yawns.

He shakes his head. "Though, look around yourself! Why should this place have so little of my mold? No, this is a mistake that has to be fixed, and one I won't let you oppose. So, get them, Kindabads!" he exclaims.

He just has to say that the Kindabads starts throwing themselves onto the Precure and the Device Mage. In all response, Fortune is already ready to fight, using her new body's agility in water, punching and administering strong slaps with her tail to the Kindabads that are sent towards her specifically, sending them k.o.

Hannah Steiner has posed:
Hannah floats before the merCure and fairy, and having a Pretty Cure in this place isn't something she's going to turn down! "Trager des Blauer Greif und mein beloved companion, Lyra! Belkan, if the accent escapes you mein freund."

Before she can elaborate, Hannah finds a fellow cane user! That already has her fired up alongside her early panick. One of the gravity wells spins her and Lyra towards Namakelder and his kindabads! The admittedly spotty control has her using both her swimming skills, thankfully seemingly augmented by the painting itself, and her spell to let her turn and zip nearly as well as Iona, though its' clear she's adapting to her environment.

She lashes out with her cane, countering blows, and elegantly smacking skulls in a flurry before spinning in the waters for a rotating kick at the last of her Kindabads, sending them flying, unconscious!

Then /she/ points her cane at Namakelder! "By the Sankt, und we could have been freunds! But I won't tolerate a mold-covered seafloor, even one created by someone with such fine fashion sense!" She sounds both outraged /and/ impressed by this Phantom General!

Iona Hikawa has posed:
Iona has never heard of Belkans before now, so the term understandably does nothing for her. "I am sorry, but I don't know what you are talking about. I don't mean to be rude, but what is this Belkan accent you speak of?"

"Friends? My dear girl, are you even aware what the Phantom Empire is?" Namakelder says to Hannah. "There won't be such a thing as friendship when we have spread misfortune and sadness all over the world. Terribad, if you would."

"Terribad!" the figure exclaims, throwing jets of air towards Hannah. At the same time it starts going towards the merCure, administering punches Cure Fortune manages to avoid before with a few shows of agility before punching back hard on her own, sending the Terribad way back against some sea rocks.

"Be careful", Iona tells Hannah. "The Phantom Empire will stop at nothing to see sadness spread anywhere, and they will resort to any underhanded means to do so."

Hannah Steiner has posed:
"A style of Device Magic und...acht, long story! Later!" Comes Hannah, before it's her turn to glare at Namakelder!

"In that case, you shall simply have to be stopped! Losing ties of the heart is..." She can barely find words, it irritates her so much at such callousness from this Phantom General! Also he's chucking air jets, and Hannah doesn't have time to consider what /that/ might do underwater. And so using her magic to align herself, she kicks for some momentum, and jets away, turning her gravity wells to make sure she can mostly avoid the jet blasts, though one clips an arm!

"Nnngh! Hm, strong!" Comes the young woman, barely arresting herself from a spin given the force, as her Barrier Jacket shimmers.

"Good to know we've such a terrible opponent! Let us show him Justice!" Encourages Hannah to Iona, before coming around for a swimming attack run. In her mind, she imagines it like space flight, and that helps matters.

She comes in for a trio of blows, drawing the blade from her cane, and using both to stab towards Namakelder before zipping past, her Device relaying her new fighting partner's position. She tries to swim-grav to not let the lazy dapper General have any time to rest in time with Fortune's own attacks!

Iona Hikawa has posed:
Namakelder doesn't move when Hannah tries to strike at him with her blade. Instead the Terribad does an unexpected recovery, coming between them and taking the brunt of the Device Mage's attacks. Unfortunately for the General, those hits prove too much for the Terribad, who collapses in a prone position, unable to do anything anymore.

"Tch, that is no good", Namakelder complains. "Really, nobody even lives here, why would you have to be so rude and prevent me from spreading my beautiful mold?"

"Like she said, we are going to get you to Justice, Namakelder! One day, we will defeat the Phantom Empire, and until that day we are going to purify every single Terribad you create out of people!" Iona tells him.

Bringing her arm vertically in front of her, Cure Fortune starts spinning the dial on her wrist.

"Light of the stars, turn into sacred power! Love PreBrace!" Energy starts swirling around her fists as she rotates them, before turning into a star above her head as she raises her arms high.

"PreCure Stardust Shoot!" With a complete 360° circular movement, the merCure throws her attack, the star flying at speed towards the Terribad, catching the youma into itself and purifying it. "Soooo relaxing!" it says before the purification does its job. "Stars, return to the Heavens!" finishes yelling Iona, raising her arm upwards as she gives her back to the Terribad.

"Tch, you may have won this time, but it won't go like this forever. You are sorely mistaken if you think the Phantom Empire can be defeated." And with that, he duskports away, not even the painting stopping it from working right.

The half-polip Glasan swims over to Iona in a state of agitation now that the fight is over, "I feel the effortless swimming power of a mermaid!", the purple fairy exclaims, poking her nose forward. "Rub it please!" Well, ain't that awkward, receiving the mermaid Precards when she currently is one.

"Rub-rub", Iona says as she complies, causing Glasan to laugh and sneeze as PreCards appear out of her backpack. "You are one step closer to your great hope!", the fairy announces happily before putting them in the PreCard Decor.

Meanwhile, the space around them seems to have become unstable due to the purification attack, and it's threatening to kick them out for it, the unconscious person that was trapped to make the Terribad included. They probably don't have much longer in here.

Cure Fortune swims over to Hannah and gladly smiles to her. "Thanks for the help with taking care of the Terribad. Whenever you want to explain that long story, you can tell me if I happen to be nearby", she kindly proposes.

Iona Hikawa has posed:
When they finally get out of the painting, Cure Fortune gazes down at herself, then at Glasan: they actually got back to normal. Looking back at the painting to remember it, she makes a note to come back later unless a group of magicals get there first.

"See you", she waves at Trager, before quickly getting away to return to the dorm. She is not going in again without a thorough, foolproof plan.