2307/Into the Neon Labyrinth

Into the Neon Labyrinth
Date of Scene:	08 February 2025
Location:	Plot Room 1
Synopsis:	With Emi out of commission between her injury and Hinoiri's threats, other Mahou have been left to pick up the slack from the Oneiric Guardian's incapacity. One such example is an urban legend about a particular alley in Shinjuku
Cast of Characters:	Emi Hoshino, Taro Yamada, Amanda Faust, Ikiko Hisakata, Mamoru Chiba, Usagi Tsukino
Tinyplot:	The Five Nightmares

---

Emi Hoshino has posed:
Observing alleyways in Shinjuku at midnight. Alleys filthy with the day's activities. Dirty. Foreboding. All on the say so of one particular girl who has recently only checked in with Amy and Mamoru while laying in bed, eating flaming hot Cheetos with chopsticks. It's the only way to be. She is clearly bored out of her skull. *Bored*.

Five minutes to midnight, Amy gets a push notification on her phone. 'Popular' streamer Ren Tachibana and his friends, Mika Tanabe and Shun Morizawa are going live with a 'Labyrinth Challenge'.

Problem is, they can see the alley way. There's no one there. Did Emi get the wrong alleyway? It;s possible. Fortunately they have a video to work off, and it can't be too far away if she did. Either way, it's a problem that they can't solve within the five minutes they've got to do so.

11:58.

"Yo, what's up, Hauntheads? Ren here, and welcome back to Tokyo Phantasm, your number-one stop for the weirdest, creepiest, and most haunted places in Tokyo. Tonight, we're taking on a challenge that's been showing up online---The Neon Labyrinth. Midnight, a shifting alley, and a mysterious woman at the end of it. Sounds like BS, right? Well, we're about to find out."

Ren smiles big in to the camera, flashes a V, and looks down the alleyway. The stream turns off a moment before flipping back on for the countdown to midnight, there's some off camera cheering.

"FIVE. FOUR. THREE. TWO. O-"

SIGNAL LOST.
ATTEMPTING TO RECONNECT...

Taro Yamada has posed:
Taro stares at the LOST SIGNAL screen over Amy's shoulder.

"Ok, so, as bad omens go, this is BAD, right? But is this antigravity spaceship bad or doll explosion bad?"

He's been busy at his part time job over the holidays, and still a little shaken from the incident with the dollhouse witch to boot. So. He's ready to fight, twitching with it, but a little warier than usual. "Is this reinforcements time?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Watching the alleyway isn't so bad.

    For one, Amy's comfortably warm despite the weather, with a red sweatshirt and black slacks under her oversized off-white winter coat.

    And second of all... she's not alone! Taro is here! Ikiko too. Amy is a little clingy towards the former, or perhaps a lot, especially if they can find someplace to sit. She's still making up for the memory of decades of touch starvation, and Taro's... There's nothing romantic there, and an orientation mismatch, but he's a very special friend nonetheless.

    Amy is just taking a moment to try and relax, her attention wandering from the alley. And then there's a notification on her phone, so she pulls it out. And then looks between the alley and her phone in confusion, fiddling with it a moment to make sure she hasn't misunderstood and this is a recorded stream and not live or something. But no...

    As the streamers talk, she explains to Taro, "I guess it could be a recording, or we've got the wrong alley, but it says it's live..."

    Signal lost.

    How bad of an omen is this? "...I don't know." Amy admits, leaning back against him. "But we'd better update the others."

TXT to GROUP: A stream went live <link> but there's no one here, and then the signal went dead. Trying to verify the location.

    She seeks back to before the stream went out and takes a screenshot, then compares the alleys to see if they match. If not, she starts hunting through woogle street view nearby.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Ikiko is somewhat familiar with the alleys of Tokyo from helping the various strays, although generally not at this time of night -- or at night at all, to be honest! And when she's on patrol as Cute Wolf Tsukiko, it's usually along the rooftops, which doesn't help with ground-level views.

When the livestream has a countdown with cheering, she tries focusing on what she can hear -- it's not as helpful out of henshin as it might have been in henshin, but spur-of-the-moment problems call for spur-of-the-moment efforts, and she does have better-than-average hearing.

But the livestreamers are apparently distant enough to not be heard with nonmagical ears. "Probably not close, then," she murmurs to the other two, glancing around in various directions (including up, just in case there's trouble overhead).

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Amy's text alert echoes down the subway tunnel that Tuxedo Mask has just entered, and he stops right in the middle of the tracks to take out his phone and read it. There's skittering just out of the light of the Tuxedophone, and Mamoru ignores it in favor of grimacing and re-pocketing his phone. Today's teleport looks like walking through a blank wall.

He does it once to get to Usagi's window, which he taps on and then silently opens. He holds a hand out and says, "Spooky stuff, but it's Emi-san's. Let's go it's more fun than the BMC."

Once Usagi's ready to go, they walk through the dorm wall into the space right in front of the alley that the other three are watching. "Hello??" he calls with no subtlety.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Usagi is awake - Chibiusa and Naru are not. It's midnight, after all, and between the three students, she's the night owl. When Mamoru appears at the window, she opens it and grins at his hand - only for her face to fall. "Uwah, it just had to be something scary! Why aren't any of our friends ever ask us to watch a cute situation, like too many kittens in a caboodle or something. Veronica-chan got to be a kitten, why couldn't these ghost hunters turn into kitties instead of spooky stuff?"

Yes, the one and only Sailor Moon is absolutely whining. Luna, stretched out on Chibiusa's bunk, rolls her eyes.

"Oh, be serious, Usagi-chan. Whatever you're going to see, you've already handled worse. Just go take care of it, and then you can get late night snacks or something."

Well, that's true. On both accounts.

"Fiiiiine."

A henshin later, and she and Mamoru walk through the dorm wall into the alley, Sailor Moon slightly hiding behind Tuxedo Kamen.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
It's dark down here.

The alleyway is one they can't even see to the other end of in the night time and is illuminated only by the long sodium lights behind them, and the shadows cast by Shinjuku's colorful (and yes neon) luminescence. As they make their way further in, the air's chill becomes heavier, the darkness more intense, and the stars and even the light of the moon seemingly fade away. As the gathered pass underneath a single light beside them over a door -- probably not THE door -- there's a loud *pop* as the light bulb explodes and suddenly even that luminescence is gone, not just dark, but sounndless.

Beside them, a single shifting light begins to grow, a neon shadow that seems to distort and dance beside them. Up ahead of them, more begin to fade into view, splitting off into seemingly endless directions. It hurts to look at.

It would appear that they are not in the alley... so where were the influencers?

Taro Yamada has posed:
Taro leans close to Amy. It's cold, and there's good chances this fight is going to suck, and Amy is his friend. (maybe more than a friend? He was an onlyc hild, but his cousins were like sisters to him. Was that. Was that the same thing?) And it's good to be close to his friend, working out the odds, how to tackle this stupid bullshit alley maze.

"Hey, Moonmoon, Tuxedo Guy," Taro says, waving a hand up as the two of them join their little party. (He's using stuipd names for them. He is allowed. That's - the friend thing, right? Right! )

His transformation ripples over him - his vampire body tall, his kimono the bright yellow that one can see in the dark with pink oleandor decorating it, his horns curling red from his forehead. "It's rare I get the chance to fight another creepypasta," he says, all nonchalance.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Sailor Moon," says Tuxedo Mask in the sudden silence, his voice suppressing excitement, "the only thing that can dispel the darkness is a great light."

He's holding her hand lightly (it can easily be let go of), and his voice comes from lower, then, after a rustle of silk cape, and his other hand, gloved, is on the surface they're standing on. There's a glow from it, fingers splayed wide, and his blue eyes are closed.

He's looking for the influencers, he's asking the ground where they are in this alley, where there are people in this alley. There's everyone he came in with-- is it life these nightmares have, or just dark energy? But it's the three streamers he seeks.

And then he opens his eyes an they're being surrounded by lots and lots of neon. And it sucks. "Okay we're sort of in a dream. This is sort of someone else's dream. The last time we had to find the nightmare and we did it by just keeping walking. So let's go."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Can't see the other end? "Wait, how long is this alley supposed to be?" Amy checks woogle maps before pocketing her phone, and shines a flashlight into the darkness, before turning it off as it proves ineffective. She henshins and walks in, tense...

    *POP!* Amy jumps, and reaches out to grab Taro's arm, confirming that not all senses are gone, and her sigh of relief and the others' shouting proves that no, their senses were not all cut off, nor were they split up into seperate darkness... and just a bit of light is visible ahead.

    Pink sparkles wash over Amy; she's back in civilian wear, an anchor of normality in the weirdness -- Although there are subtle differences from what she was just wearing. Her t-shirt and pants -- now cargo pants -- are looser fit, the sweatshirt is missing, and the coat is also sized for her now.

    "We'd better not split up." Amy advises, and Tuxedo Mask has advice, too. "So it really is kind of like a Witch, then: She's bending space every which way, but if we just keep going, we'll run into her..."

As they walk, she stays right next to Taro and starts checking if she's dreaming now by seeing if her watch and phone operate as expected.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"Oh great, Emi-chan had to find the really spooky shit," Sailor Moon complains as the light bulb above their heads bursts, casting them into darkness. "I mean! Really!"

There's a neon light in the distance. It hurts to look at, and it's splitting into endless directions, and there's the Labyrinth part of this whole thing, and -

Yes, she's grabbed Mamoru's arm and has not let go.

"Taro-kun, Amy-chan, Tsikuko-chan, let's all stay together, okay? This looks like exactly the kind of spooky place where we all get separated and hunted down one by one and oh I regret saying that out loud-"

She has so many regrets. But Mamoru has offered a tactful suggestion, and she nods sharply, "Right, of course, and I happen to have one, and I'm gonna just... throw a little light. Down the alley. To see if that helps like... even a little bit."

And then? She reaches up, to her tiara, and calls an attack that of those gathered here, only Mamoru will have scene. Specializing in targeting ghosts, spirits, and the disembodied, it just hasn't been very necessary.

"Moon Twilight Flash!"

Pale light gathers at the jewel of her tiara, shining from the Moon far above, and then blazes out, in a pale beam of light that blazes forth.

The Moon might not be a part of this nightmare, but it's light is always with its daughter.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Ikiko nods to Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon as they arrive, then she touches the locket around her neck and murmurs "Lycan Locket!" One silvery glow later, Cute Wolf Tsukiko is walking with the others into the alleyway.

She gives Kuiper Belt Cape an odd look, but the magical boy is apparently known to Usagi and Mamoru, so the wolfgirl just shrugs slightly and focuses on the weirdness of the terrain.

The exploding lightbulb startles her a bit, but it's the neon shadows that really grab her attention. Shadows formed of light? Where did that light came from, and why from there?

    ...and possibly more importantly: shadows of what?

Tuxedo Mask's explanation helps, at least a little. "Still not sure how much I trust these weird shapes, but as long as they leave us alone, I'll leave them alone," Tsukiko murmurs, still watching the 'shadows'. "And as long as they don't hurt the influencers," she adds, followed by a nod to Amy and Sailor Moon -- definitely don't split up in here!

Emi Hoshino has posed:
Meanwhile...

Emi stretches out in bed with a wince and then has another cheeto. She may be bored, but the cheetos are good and there's a great movie on her TV.

Back in the alleyway -- if one can still call it that -- there are sparkles aplenty and flashes of light pushing back the darkness. There's the tangible sense of it recoiling and neon shadow-lights sseem to dissipate for a moment before returning with doubled intensity -- but light can push back this darkness, it seems.

Then: voices. Calls for help. Shouts of terror, begging you to rush towards them... but all coming from different directions. People shouting that they're lost, that need someone, anyone. Someone help me! Please!

If this be a nightmare, their terror certainky sounds real enough. Could it be the influencers? Maybe,

... then again, maybe they're not the only ones lost in here.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The darkness rebels against the light, the neon shadow-lights and coiling darkness recoiling and fighting back with doubled intensity, and Sailor Moon grits her teeth and calls again, for the light of the moon, as screams of terror ring out.

"Moon Twilight Flash!"

Again, the beam of light, shining ahead, illuminating the many paths before them, and there are so many screams, but none seem to be coming from the same place -

"We have to pick one of them and start there," she says, pragmatic, but she's absolutely clinging to Tuxedo Kamen as she says it. This is so much worse than Silent Hill on Halloween.

Taro Yamada has posed:
Taro eyes Ikiko in turn - a wolfgirl? A werewolf? An inugami?? Amy trusts her given that she was invited to this hunt, obviously, but Taro's still working on how to say 'hello, fellow Monster Pal, I like your scary claws' and that kind of thing. "Nice locket," is what he tells her, eventually, becaues that's inoffensive and concrete and one step at a time??

Sailor Moon's light opens up the alleyway before them. He flicks open one of the coffin-shaped boxes hanging from his waist; Jack the doll in his little suit and top hat crawls onto his shoulder. "I can go first and you all can shoot at anything that looks at me funny," he offers, steppig a little forward - not enough to get seperated, but enough to take the lead and possibly be bait for any trouble afoot.

Jack the doll tilts forward on Taro's shoulder, his blank face chiascuro from the bright light and dark shadows of the dream. "The screams are real. But there's nothing behind them," he tells the other mahou, his voice alight with amusement.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
"Start with the closest one, and go from there?" Tsukiko shrugs to Sailor Moon and Kuiper Belt Cape. "Assuming 'closest' actually means something in this place, anyway."

She starts humming a wordless little tune -- not the full strength of a Soulful Howl, but still an emotion-powered song, focusing on finding one's way home through the face of adversity. It might not help much, but at least she feels better from humming it.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Amy-chan, what you said earlier-- it is like a Labyrinth like that. Where we're swimming in the nightmare's labyrinth, and there are things that will swarm us. But... any damage we do here will also be in the real world. That's why they said the library was vandalized. So RIP this alley."

Tuxedo Kamen feels really helpful right now-- and then Jack speaks up while Sailor Moon's clinging to him, and the magical boy's eyes narrow behind his mask, in the dark.

"Good," he says. "If it doesn't work, then let's literally just walk in a straight line and see what happens. And yeah, Kuiper-kun, you can go first, just do it," he adds, going first, taking the path suggested by the Cute Wolf.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy takes Kuper Belt Cape's hand with her left as they keep walking on into the alley. She holds their hands up as she looks at her watch, looks away, looks back at it and it's already [41:70 PM]

    She double-takes. [RO:CK &M]. Taro feels her grip tighten. She looks away and looks again. It'a [ 8:00 AM] and she knows she's not late for school, it's actually after midnight, they were just outside the alley, her memory is clear.

    "It's a dream. But I can recognize that and think clearly... I guess we're lucid dreaming?"

    Before she can proceed to testing trying to fly or something, there are screams, and Taro feels her grip tighten again. The instinct to split up and help them is strong. She starts to step away. But Usagi is the voice of reason.

    Amy nods at Sailor Moon's words, and pushes her half-frame glasses up on her nose. "You're right. We'll stick together, and we'll find them..."

    But Jack says that though the screams are real, the locations, the directions they're hearing them, are fake. She's loathe to let go of Kuiper Belt Cape but does, falling behind him but staying close to the others.

    She nervously checks her belt from left: Phone holster, belt pouch with binoculars, to right: Swiss army knife, flashlight, belt pouch with grief seeds. Everything is accounted for, she's not forgetting anything, right?

    In a poof of pink sparkles, she summons a gyrojet rifle and checks that, removing and checking the magazine, putting it back in, opening the bolt and chambering the first round.

    She's in a nightmare. Of course she's tense!

Emi Hoshino has posed:
It's not their dream, after all, it's someone else's. Or a living nightmare in and of itself, right? The rules are different, but still the same in certain ways. Or at least that's what Emi would tell them if she was there. Instead, she's playing Honkai: Star Rail on her phone for lack of anything to do. Sadly, her gacha rolls are the worst.

Back in the alleyway, the Mahou make their way further in, guided by the blazing light of Sailor Moon and the inner lights of the others. The darkness seems less ominous as they progress, as if its oppression can not extinguish the inner light which threatens it.

The neon shadows dance in their unearthly light and beckon you towards them. Upon reaching the first, it extinguishes suddenly -- and suddenly too the alleyway has reset and shifted all over again. More lights are out there to go to, seemingly in random and impossible trajectories that you feel you can yet move to. Above, Below. Encircling, stretching, dancing lights that nevertheless do little to help you see.

Beside you is a trio of figures. Not the influencers, it would seem, but three men in desperately out of date clothing, looking like alley toughs straight out of b-roll action movie. Laughing. Drinking.

They turn to look at you. "Be careful, children," says one, abruptly changing tone. He has no eyes. Just empty sockets that threatened to swallow you whole.

"It's easy to get lost in here," says the other, though in his eyes reflect the neon lights, and you can see something in them as he holds your attention. There's something behind you -- but then nothing, when you look -- its gone, and then so are they.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy relaxes slightly as the darkness gets less threatening...

    And then... "Ugh, it's a will-o-wisp and we're in some kinda Lost Woods puzzle?! I always hated these... Okay, uh, maybe if we leave a trail to mark where we've been... but will that be persistant in a dream?" Beat. "Does it even matter?!" She pushes her glasses up again.

    Alley toughs. Amy turns towards them, but keeps her weapon muzzle down, finger off the trigger... and then she sees those eyes. "Aah!" She startles and jumps slightly. And then she's checking behind her and they're gone--

    Amy groans. "I hate these dreams! Getting endlessly lost... Everyone says they want to go to their dream school, but personally I hate being perpetually late for my next class because I'm stuck in an endless maze..." Yes, humor is a coping mechanism!

    She twirls her hair around her finger nervously. "Do we just... keep going until we wake up? Will they wake up? I've never found another way out of these dreams..."

Taro Yamada has posed:
Amy's relying on him, her hand gripping him tightly until he takes the lead. He is NOT screwing up in front of Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen, who graciously let him borrow their theme naming. And even if Ikiko isn't the same kind of monster he is, she's at least adjacent, and he's not screwing up in front of her either.

So into the light goes Kuiper Belt Cape - making sure not to go so far ahead as to lose the other mahou, but also taking the lead enough to take everything's attention. Being a hulking seven feet tall and wearing a neon yellow kimono does a LOT to catch the eye.

He eyes the trio of toughs in the alley as they laugh, and stare at him with strange eyes, and make ominous comments. "They're trying too hard," Kuiper reports. "This isn't a Hammer Horror production."

"It's a start," Jack adds. "People see meaning in everything. Reflecting the horrors they see will let them build into something truly disgusting."

"Don't YOU start, Jack," Kuiper Belt Cape snorts. "Amy, we'll either fight our way out or I'll find a way to slash our way out." He can't fuck up in front of so many people!! He will MAKE a way out!!

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
"...how old is this urban legend?" Tsukiko asks somewhat rhetorically as she blinks at where the trio of figures had been. The wolfgirl is still wary, but while this place is unnerving, it doesn't seem to be threatening.

    Yet.

"Maybe if we find the underlying cause of the nightmare, we could soothe it into restful sleep?" she suggests. "Or make it seem ridiculous, so that it stops being a frightening dream and instead becomes a silly one."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"It's not our nightmare," Sailor Moon reminds the others. "So I don't think waking us up will fix it. When Mamochan and I fought in the library, it was an artist's nightmare, and we had to like, reach her to solve it."

They had to do a lot of other stuff, too, but this doesn't seem like the moment for a step-by-step guide, especially not as they come across three people, and -

"ACK!" Oh that was scary, empty sockets, drowning empty spaces, and eyes full of neon lights, and warning them off - "Th-thank you for the warning, ojisan!"

And then theyre gone, of course. She puts her head in her hands and screams a little. Just a little, not a full scream, and definitely not a Super Sonic Scream.

"We have to figure out whose having this nightmare. Or if a bunch of people are all having the same one? I don't know, I wish Emi-chan was here..."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"We're not really-- we're not lucid dreaming, we're awake. Dreamstuff is intersecting with, with... awake-stuff. This is a liminal space that connects to an interstitial space that it shouldn't," Mamoru says to Amy, apologetically. "I think we should start breaking stuff."

He glances at the toughs, his lips purse, and he looks behind him, and they're gone when he looks back, and he just accepts it. He looks to Tsukiko, and he smiles a little. "It's infected with dark energy and spilling itself into our reality. It might have something, when we find it, that we can break, which will break its strength. So let's just-- let's just go straight until there's something big to aim at."

And that's when Mamoru squeezes Usagi's hand and starts jogging ahead. "Hey, cast Moon Healing Escalation at the darkness?" he calls back.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Ikiko proposes making the dream less frightening. "You know. I heard that generations that grew up playing videogames have some kinds of nightmares less frequently, because we've been trained to see weird and confusing situations as levels we're supposed to figure out, and monsters as something to fight -- and have the subconscious assumption we can fight them." She slightly lifts up the hand holding the rifle for emphasis. "A monster is less scary when you know anything can be beaten if you find a powerful weapon and shoot it enough times."

    Moon points out again that it's not their nightmare. "But whose is it? It's not the influencers' either, right? Because it's this labyrinth thing every time. It's like it's someone else's dream that they and we have all wandered into, right?" She says, at the same time as Usagi comes to a similar conclusion.

    Mamoru says: Break shit. Amy considers how to do this.

    First she tries holding up her hand and sweeping it across her view, imagining the alley being replaced by a neighborhood street near her childhood home. But it's not her dream, so that probably doesn't work.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
Amy's supposition is correct. It does not work that way. It's not her dream.

As thoughts turn to breaking things to disrupt the nightmare, moving forward remains the only thing to do. There's no clues as to the 'correct' way to navigate the labyrinth and one can surely presume that's partially the point. There's a palpable anxiety in the air, and the sounds of others remain omnipresent, shapes looming in the darkness, echoes of souls long lost, certainly far longer than this 'challenge' has existed. Could they just be a manifestation of the nightmare, or is there something ... older here? Who can say? And does it matter when the light of the moon functions just as well as either way. The darkness recoils, as it surely must under the fury of the One Called Sailor Moon, and it provides fleeting glimpses of narrow walkways hovering amongst other passages and chasms one can fall into on either side of them, as if this alley that they're in is merely a great piece of a larger puzzle. It surely can't be true, just another phantasmal, impossible vista, right?

Still, at the end of it, there's a glimpse of something -- an ending that the Mahou are drawing closer to -- a door in the middle of nowhere that leads ... somewhere.

Each flash of Moonlight illuminating the darkness and they are growing closer to that door.

Flash!

Closer still.

Flash!

... and then there's something, a twisted, misshapen, skeletal figure, emaciated with and encrusted with blood and filthm, in front of Usagi, amongst you, screaming in her face. "NO WAY OUT! NO WAY OUT," he cries. Skeletal hands reach for the Princess.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
They walk through the darkness, the light unravelling it for them, creating a path. It's.... not great. It's spooky, in fact, the screams, the calls, the nightmare that someone made, and Sailor Moon does listen to Mamoru - does alternate Twilight Flash with Healing Escalation, purifying light and illuminating light in turn, trying to break the darkness -

But it's not their nightmare.

But they are getting closer. Closer. Closer.

And they reach a door in the middle of nowhere, flashes of light showing it getting closer, and closer, and Sailor Moon grows tense, and still yet more tense - "Everyone, we're getting close to something," she calls, unnecessary. "Be ready!"

If she says it, maybe she won't be so scared?

HA!

A misshapen, twisted, skeletal thing, crusted in blood and filth leaps for her, screaming and howling, and Sailor Moon herself is -

Well, she's strong in many ways, but not strong against fear, let's it put that way. The monster lunges for her face, and she shrieks.

"NOOOOO!!!! NO NO NO GET AWAY, GET AWAY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MAMOCHAN SAVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

It's very, very fortunate that Sailor Moon is probably the person most in front - as her odango caps gleam red and concentrate the soundwaves into that hellish force.

The shriek is strong enough to shatter glass. To crack stone. To burst the eardrums of anyone in the direct path.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Tsukiko yelps and reflexively kicks at the skeletal figure, then leaps back to get some maneuvering room, landing somewhat off-balance due to the ringing in her ears. "Owww," the wolfgirl whines, clutching her ears. 'Counter-attack and evade' is generally a good immediate instinct when fighting a youma that suddenly appears right there, but when the youma is extra scary and Sailor Moon is directly faced with the youma, well...

    ...sometimes the normal best option, isn't.

She staggers back, trying to keep an eye on both the apparation and the doorway... and making sure to stay not-in-front of Sailor Moon, just in case something else decides to jumpscare her! Peripheral damage was bad enough for her canine ears...

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Tuxedo Kamen is sensitive to loud noises, it's not a secret, and it's not uncommon for people to see him at both parties and fights wearing the red rose earplugs that Usagi got him not terribly long after he 'quit' Obsidian.

That's why he only winces and squints, hand up and glowing, as Sailor Moon screams and screams and SCREAMS. And his attack callout is completely drowned out by the strength and breadth of Usagi's Canary Cry--

"Tuxedo," he starts, then flings his glowing fist out in front of him.

"La Smoking," he continues, voice growing more strident, and then he opens that glowing hand and a growing ball of energy forms in front of it again--

--and then he yells out, the force of the laser blast enough to kick him back a half step, "Bomber!"

In its face.

Mamoru's eyes are very wide.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "Ooh, I think you're on to something!" Amy says, excitedly, when she sees distant paths illuminated by their lights. She changes her weapon to a flare gun and fires it ahead of them!

    Be ready for what, exactly? But isn't that the mood, of dealing with all this: Try your best to be ready for... something.

    She wasn't expecting the scream. Fortunately Amy is very good at regenerating even the slightest ear damage, for some reason. Poor Taro though, that looked like it hurt.

    "GET DOWN!" she shouts, the gyrojet rifle in her hands again, butt pressed against the padding on her mil-surplus fleece jacket as she sights on the apparition.

    If Moon doesn't duck within a second, she remembers it's a magical gyrojet and just aims to the side and makes her shots curve at the thing.

Taro Yamada has posed:
Oh no oh no oh no - he can deal with scary stuff most of hte time, he IS a scary stuff - but this is a dream. A dream cuts through the defenses of logic and experience - and with the creature screaming before him, a mirror of the mortality he's mostly put off, Taro yelps and jumps back. He prepares an attack, trying to steel himself against the monster -

Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen have made their way in front and -

MAMOCHAN SAVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

He staggers back, hands over his ears, the light infused noise drilling into him -

Jack, looking a little melty at the edges, immediately dives for the tiny coffin worn on Taro's hip, slamming the lid shut before the light starts burning him.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
A scream, a rocket, and a blast of energy from Tuxedo Kamen to boot -- not to mention the attack being readied by Taro. It's enough to make shrot work of the phantasm. It explodes into neon shards, swirling and then dissipating in the midst.

The lights turn off again.

... and then return again and the Mahou are table to make their way again, passing by the exhausted shadows of those who've fallen prey to the labyrinth, fading echoes that calls out to them without stretched hands, but see,ingly are too far away to receive them. They're so tired, so lost, so alone...

... and now so are they. Where did their friends go? How did they suddenly become so isolated, like they're on different points on that glimpse of passages they saw a little while ago? Walking one moment, alone the next.

The darkness feels like its closing in, and now they're all alone.

... for a moment. An illusory moment. Each Mahou knows, after all, that they are *not* alone, and that the light theyr bear within is brighter than any darkness, don't they? And even though they are perceptively seperate, each can *feel*, with just a little focus, the presence of the other. Maybe they just need to shine together?

Call it a test of unity. It would be a great life lesson for Emi.

... if she as here.

"FINALLY," says Emi in her room, "A five star!"

Taro Yamada has posed:
And it's just him and the darkness and the many shadows of those who came before.

Taro is the Back Street Slasher. He was the terror of Japan for a long time. This shouldn't scare him. He's the strong one here. The scary one. Wasn't he being strong before this? Being unaffected?

There's so many people in here. All he's capable of is clawing at the walls - his powers are only good for hurting others. He can't free anyone in here. He can't save them.

The tiny coffin on his hip opens up and Jack peeks out. "What are you standing there shaking for? You're scared of THIS?"

"I'm not scared!"

"Look at you," Jack says. "Big bad monster, and you're scared by some shadows on the wall. You're a fool. If you HAVE to get out of here, the answer is simple - go drain them." He gestures at the agonized shadows.

"What - no!! They probably don't have enough energy to do much, they're helpless!"

"But there's so many of them," says Jack. "Think of how much stronger you could get. It'd be so easy."

Taro slams the coffin shut. He can barely see his hand in the dark, but he CAN feel it shaking. He CAN feel his knees twitching. This was so much easier most of the time - How had he fought alone for so many years? How could he stand this, going on without anyone to catch him if he fell? He doesn't want to fight alone again.

He doesn't want to be alone again.

(This shouldn't scare him so much. It's just shadows. He can deal with shadows. But in every agonized echo writhing in the distance, he sees what could have happened to him - is it the nightmare or his own mind making him see his own face in every corner - )

"AMY!!! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!"

This is foolish. He's making himself look weak. He's going to lead the monsters straight to him. But the idea of being here alone is terrifying enough to tear the armor off his heart - and open himself up to light.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Did Sailor Moon duck? Well, only if by duck Amy meant fall backwards, still shrieking hysterically, flailing in horror and terror while the attacks flew overhead!

Oh, that counted? Well, great! Then she ducked. When the attacks are over and the monster defeated, neon shards swirling about, she breathes a sigh of relief -

And then the lights cut out.

"Oh come on!!!"

They come back after that petulant shriek, this time not of the supersonic variety, and she scrambles to her feet, plastering herself to Mamoru's side. Anywhere their bare skin touches he gets the brief feeling of 'Scary, I am so scaredy, so scaryyyy, I have only Mamo to save meeeeeee'.
Yes, it's to the tone of Lonely by Akon. Yes, that meme is ancient.

But they progress, through the darkness, and despite the fact that she's plastered to him, she feels - alone. Drifting. Walking by those collapsed and left to the shadows, those alone, those forgotten, and she's forgetting, forgotten, left behind, where did everyone go?

Weren't they all going to stick together? Why is she all alone?

...no. She's not... alone. She knows she's not alone. Deep down, in her heart of hearts, she can be sure that her friends would never leave her in this awful place. And she can feel their presence, when she reminds herself of that - can feel the warm golden glow of Mamoru's bedrock presence, the earthy-brown of Ikiko's calm surety, the bright red of Amy's explosive presence - and oh yep, as she reaches out to everyone, she can't just feel Taro, she can hear him, too.

And he's as scared as she is.

"You... horrible nightmare - leave my friends... no! Leave everyone, alone!"

And the silver crystal shines at her chest.

"Moon Crystal Power!"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Is this the fear of being lost and alone in the dark?" Tuxedo Kamen asks the nightmare, stopping walking. His voice sounds so small to him, distorted in the darkness where space is strange and the acoustics change unnervingly. He's alone. Nothing's there. Something's there but silent, watching him.

He turns around, his dress shoes tapping the surface he's standing on, but the next step isn't a tap, it's the squeak of hospital slippers on linoleum, and when he speaks again, his voice is smaller and younger, and it trembles.

"The primal fear in humanity's unconscious? Because--" and then his voice is older like a young teen, and it's boots on asphalt and the sound is awful, "once upon a time I was afraid of the dark, and that's what made it so easy to catch me. I thought I should embrace my fears and did it, rip."

Finally the sound is clear, and Endymion's warmth can reach Serenity because of course it can; part of their thread will never sever, even past death. His hand seeks hers too. He pulls on his connection with Earth, his connections to his friends, his connections to his Shitennou, to Kazuo, to Chibiusa, to Usagi. And then--

Then he feels the others. "I'll never be truly alone again, and I know someone's always in the dark, watching me, but that's just Kunzite."

He breathes, and then he smiles and lifts his hand to glow bright white-gold. "I'll never choose the wrong darkness again. Not when I'm surrounded by light to live up to. Earth Prism Power!"

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Her ears still ringing from the scream, it takes Tsukiko a moment to realize that the neon labyrinth has seemingly separated her from the others. She tenses up, trying to get her bearings, but between her headache and the warped nature of the nightmare, she can't trust her sense of direction, and she's not sure she can trust her sense of hearing, either.

But she knows she can trust her friends.

Taking a deep breath, the wolfgirl howls a wordless (and somewhat offkey) song, using emotions to reassure the others that she is okay, and that they will all find each other...

    ...or at least, that's the intent. How accurately the message actually comes across when she's having problems carrying a tune in a bucket is unknown, but at least her heart is fully in in the attempt -- and isn't that what matters?

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "Taro, are you okay?!" Amy asks after all that, and moves to walk closer with him.

    She feels for the shades of those trapped here. Is it too late for them? Will they be saved when the nightmare ends?

    And then she realizes that while her attention was on the shades, everyone else disappeared.

    "Uh, guys?"

    Her words are swallowed up by the darkness. She's alone. Alone, in the dark alley. They left her. She must've been slow, or messed up somehow, and no one noticed.

    Maybe a parent or teacher will find her -- something's not quite right with the shape of that thought -- and chastise him for getting separated from the group. He's always messing up like this, he doesn't mean to!

    Or worse, no one will find him, and he'll become like those specters.

    No no no no no there has to be a way out. A way home. The little boy closes his eyes and wishes really hard to go home--

    "AMY!!! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!"

    She opens her eyes. A dear friend needs her. She's already in flight mode, and she takes off straight for him, the heck with staying on the walkways! "I'M COMING! KEEP TALKING!"

    She burns bright, flying across the darkness, as other lights appear in the distance ahead.

    Maybe her real home is her friends.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
The darkness holds ... for a moment.

And then there's a sense of disorientation, of movement, like the world is spinning before the mahou stumble into a space in the alleyway. There is a door here, yes, set into the wall. The alley is dirty, shadow, and still abnormally disorienting. There's graffiti everywhere, which is odd for Tokyo, even a Tokyo alleyway. It looks out of place, like a movie somewhere... else.

There's a vibration coming from beyond that door and a little bit of focus reveals it to be ... music of some kind. More felt than heard. Loud, but not audible. Not yet.

The urban legend says to knock on the door and then 'a woman' will appear with a voice 'like a lullaby' and that she'll infesst your dreams ever after.

Time to find out, isn't it?

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
They are faced with the doom. The doom which, like, being real, they are all teenagers (or close enough at any rate), they allll know from urban legends and stories of ghosts, of yokai, of the things that get you.

Tuxedo Kamen steps up and a wild impulse seizes him and there's a moment where he hangs on the precipice of being responsible and respectful, and being seventeen and lying about not being scared, and then he just-- just bangs on the door.

"Open up, it's the police!"

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The darkness holds - and then it breaks, and there's an alley, dirty and full of graffiti and not quite like any place in Tokyo, and Usagi remembers the legend and squeaks,

"Not it!"

Just as Mamoru embraces being seventeen. What is there to do, after that, but giggle? The darkness of a nightmare probably won't enjoy it, but doesn't everyone need to laugh, now and then, after all that stress?

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Tsukiko looks around at the 'wrong place' alley, then nods to Sailor Moon and giggles at Tuxedo Kamen's shenanigans. Things are looking less stressful at this point, so the wolfgirl takes a moment to relax.

...well, mostly relax. She's keeping her hands around shoulder level in case another spooky thing tries to jumpscare Usagi.

Taro Yamada has posed:
he's not scared hes not scared hes not scared -

When Amy comes flying in, Taro shrieks and grabs her. Which is a feat given that he's shrunk down to his regular height of almost six feet tall, not so much feeding on fear as exuding it, his face even more bone white than usual.

"This is not like one of the movies," he mutters to her, his hair frizzling up like a startled cat. "We're letting Tuxedo Kamen tank this one. And then we move with Ikiko and Sailor Moon."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Magical Rocket Girl Red, Amanda Faust flies across the darkness of nightmare towards her friend--

    And about a split-second before impact, realizes that she is so focused on flying towards him there wasn't really any sort of plan of what to do when she got there, so she shifts back to civilian clothes -- that soft red sweatshirt and matching skirt, so there won't be any hard or pointy armor bits -- a split-second before impact, turning it into a high-speed flying tacklehug, smiling and hugging him and laughing in relief and just enjoying good feelings of relief and joy and closeness and being together with friends and safe, a moment's reprieve from the darkness of nightmare.

    And then it's time to continue, and Tuxedo Mask just said they're cops?!

    Amy is suddenly also in front of the door, sounding appropriately offended. "We're not cops!" she reassures whoever might hear on the other side of the door, "I'm a gay communist, that's like the opposite of a cop." She's now in all black, field jacket over shirt and pants with a bandana covering her face below the eyes, her weapon having reshaped to a molotov in her hand.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
Perhaps someday, Amy will get to visit the dreamscape and locate the dream of Fully Automated Gay Space Communism, but today is not that day. In fairness, most days are not going to be that day, either. It'll instead just be Disco Elyisum posting about how capitalism subsumes all critiqyes and ...

Anyway, that day is not today.

The door sloooooowly creaks open and in its frame looms a tall woman whose beauty is like the fading light of a sunset over ocean waves, a thing of ephemera and endings that washes out everything else around it.

She casts her eyes down upon you -- somehow making everyone -- even Tuxedo Mask -- feel smaller than they should. Just by her presence. There's a smile and her voice is indeed like the lullaby described the legend. Each of you feel oddly drowsy on hearing it, like she's just saying 'relax, you're here now' even as she speaks entirely different words.

"Are you here to join the party?" she asks, all warm, "Join, then. Come insid and wile away the night. Or nights, if you prefer. Here, nothing has to ever end."

She steps aside, leaving the door open for the mahou. The legend doesn't go this way. She's supposed to vanish, to infest your dreams... right? There was a legend? So tired. And that party looks like so much fun, sirling crowds of dancers and showers of vibrant color that seek to enrapture and entrance, washing aay the almost monochromatic exterior of the dream now.

Regardless, the effect is broken as each of the mahou have their eyes drawn to something within that swirling dance party: three figures lost within it, the color of them seemingly draining out and fading into black and white.

The cast of Tokyo Phantasm, lost within, and they are not alone.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Tsukiko is a bit less affected by the lullaby voice, due to the ringing in her ears, but the phrasing of the woman makes her wary. "Do not eat anything in there," she hisses to the other mahou, recalling some folklore. "Don't drink anything, either -- I have no idea if she is a fae, or even if the fae are real, but I really don't want to find out the hard way."

The wolfgirl looks at the cast of Tokyo Phantasm, then warily glances at the crowd. "Dash in, grab them, and run for the exit?" she asks the others. "I can try running interference on anyone who tries to intercept us."

Taro Yamada has posed:
"Dash in, grab them and run for the exit," Taro agrees, setting Amy down so she can henshin back properly. "I'm strong enough to carry one of them if we've got to."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru literally takes off his mask and throws it over his shoulder specifically to look annoyed at Amy. "It's the quickest way to make a party stop being loud!" he complains, then brightens. "Oh good, when the door opens throw it at the nightmare's f--"

And that can't be the nightmare, can it? She's too gentle (she was so gentle) to be a nightmare (with a quiet and soothing voice), too safe, too nice (until he said no)-- no, no way, this one isn't her, so he feels almost ashamed for a moment, from having lied--

That's so incredibly incorrect (lie, lie, lie!) that it stops Mamoru and he focuses on the three figures. He focuses, and squints, and puts his mask back on and focuses better (shut up) and then he breathes and centers himself on his connections again. "I hate parties, haha."

"No eating anything... and we can't just leave the nightmare here, everyone. We can't. It'll keep stealing people. But I can tell who's real in a moment."

The black-haired boy in the white tie and tails crouches, then puts one knee and his hand on the ground outside the door, and it's an ALLEY, they are in an alley, and he looks through the floor in there, to see who's real and what needs shooting.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The woman is tall and lovely and ephemeral, exuding such an aura of comfort and ends and the last gasp of the sunlight, the reflection into moonlight, that for a moment, with her looking down at them from high above, with her lullaby of a voice, warm and serene, a part of Usagi thinks -

Mother?

It's such a lonely, wrenching thing, the sudden gasp, the sudden hope, an illusion of everything wonderful and soothing, a sweetness that invites her to let the weight off her shoulders, to let her mind be at ease, and oh, Serenity wants for it to be true -

But it's not, and Usagi knows that. She's not on the Moon, her mother isn't encouraging her to go along and play and enjoy the endless joy and fun of being an eternal child of the Moon, and this -

This is still a nightmare.

"We can't just take those three and run, this is - a nightmare. And more people than them have had it. We have to find a way to stop this for good, and wake up the dreamer."

And if she's clenching her jaw a little and swallowing around the words, that's no one else's business.

Grief too, is a nightmare.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Someday, but not today. u_u

    Today, Amy feels something like--

    --Hannah lifting her up at the dance--

    --No Witch can threaten them now that Terezia's here--

    --Sailor Eclipse standing right behind her, she's in danger but--

    She is kind of sleepy and she's so, so tired.

    The party looks like -- people are having fun, and -- isn't that the kind of thing she used to dream of one day understanding? If she lived to the future, to getting a body of her choice and didn't feel so repulsive anymore, then maybe she'd get to finally get a life, and understand what it was everyone else did while she spent every night on a computer or occasionally at a tabletop RPG group.

    Is this her chance?

    She's so tired, she can rest for a bit, she steps forward--

    And the spell breaks as she sees people trapped. She shakes her head a little, then turns her head back to the others and nods, before dashing in with purpose, her weapon desummoning as her clothes become brightly colored, yellow with pinkish-purple panels and black trim and the bandana and some accents a violet-tinged light blue that looks almost fluorescent, like she's invading from some cyberpunk anime scene next door, using her small size to quickly dart through the crowd to retrieve one of the streamers.

    It's incomplete, Mamoru and Usagi see that, but right now Amy clings to the objective suggested, single-mindedness and focus her defense against falling into... whatever the hell it was the party just tried to do to her.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
She's smiling, that lady. It's so inviting, so beautiful. She watches them, watches as they individually start to falter, feel the weariness in their bones, see it in their expressions. She has them, doesn't she? She holds her hand out, gloved up to the forearm like an electro-swing starlet and then they ... don't.

There's disappointment. Then anger. And then *rage*. "Why don't you join us, /friends/?" Her sweet voice now dripping with venom like the poisoned tongue of the snake in garden, "I promise you such a good time."

She's holding their attention, now, such a sweet voice that's so vaguely threatening, now.

... but that's how she gets them, isn't it? The neon shadows that grow behind them, such a mix of darkness and yet light, emerge from nothing to seize them, to force them into the building at her bidding. Her command. Her smile is hungry, now. So much energy. So delicious.

She looks fully like she intends to eat well.

Taro Yamada has posed:
They can't just take them and run. Not when the nightmare will just take more people. They're going to have to defeat this dream.

She sounds like his Ma. Soft and soothing and sweet. He should just run in there, but it's nice to stand and listen. Just for a little while.

And then she's sneering, sarcastic, and his mother never talked like that -

And Amy's run into the party where the lights kaleidescope madly, and if that woman's angry, then, then -

Taro snarls, trying to hype himself up before he runs into the party after Amy, because if he can't purify, he can damn well help get the three civilians out of there before Usagi and Ikiko make this dream collapse!

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The sweet voice turns venomous. Invitation turned disappointment turned rage, the dream disrupted, the nightmare again revealed in truth, like when they defied the story written for them by the dreaming author.

She gets them, with that sweet, threatening voice, luring them in with these neon shadows, light and dark and hungry, devouring.

She wants their energy? She wants to keep them trapped here, in her poisonous web?

Sailor Moon smiles, with all her teeth, and maybe, there's a shadow of grief in her heart, but there's nothing of her mother in this twisted woman, and she won't back.

This is a dream.

The Spiral Heart Moon Rod is pointed at the woman. Sailor Moon spins, as Amy flees into the party, and as she does, she carves not a circle, but a heart.

A pink heart, in the air.

"Moon Spiral And more hearts, filling the air between them and the woman, and each of them silver as the Moon herself, each of them shedding light, purifying and soft, and they spin with Sailor Moon -

Healing Escalation!"

And the pink heart flies for - and through - the kind lady turned cruel, the hungry party maker, the woman who keeps and eats with all the force of a thrown brick. Light fills the room, silver and gentle and cooling, refreshing, purifying, burning shadows away and softening neon hues.

It's a dream. So she can try new things.

But oh... that was a lot. She's been lighting the way, and now, she's trying to put out the monster, and... surely that was enough, right?

Surely she can just... take a minute, now, to put her head down.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's a long moment his hand is on the ground, seeking-- and finding-- the dreamers. And then Usagi SLAMS the nightmare with WHAAAASFSKJLTTT??? was that?? and Mamoru laughs.

"I'll play your game, you rogue!" Tuxedo Mask declares, getting to his feet in one motion with a dramatic sweep of his cape. He leans to kiss Sailor Moon, makes contact, reminds her and himself with warmth and happiness who they are, nothing can stop them when they're together -- and also his plan to find and touch every one of those twelve people he found in the crowd, trying to see who's the dreamer!

"I'm going in to find the dreamer. There are twelve real people and damage carries over to waking life, even for these people," the boy says to Tsukiko and-- and Taro just god damned went in. Okay. "The nightmare needs to go, though--"

He runs in and aims for the first of the twelve sources of connection he could be sure of, then makes his way through the crowd for the second, goes on to touch the third -- pick up where their mind is at with his empathy...where are you?

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Well. Grabbing the streamers was the plan, but Usagi and Mamoru had good points, and that voice dripping with venom demands her attention.

    Amy's powers are generally limited to weapons that either involve rockets, explosive shells, or explosions too big to contain in a firearm barrel, but something deep inside her isn't and in this particular moment of unreality and dream, her mindset thinks she's in another genre, and she does the most natural thing in the world:

    She turns, drawing her shard pistols from nowhere -- others can see the laser sights sweep across the wall and out the door before coming to rest on the Nightmare lady's back

    which is suddenly being shot with two unending streams of tiny crystal needles, glinting in the moonlight. Just so many. They're sharp and pointy and they go so fast and cut and there are so many, a death of two thousand cuts!

    Amy flashes a smile to Taro as he passes. Kicking ass with her friends! A good time to be had by all! (Except the nightmare lady.)

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Well, this looks like a core piece of the dream! Kuiper Belt Cape is rushing in to extract the influencers, Tuxedo Kamen is tracking down the real people, and Sailor Moon and Amy have caught the nightmare lady in an attack sandwich. Given what needs to be done, and what is already being done, and what she's best able to do...

Cute Wolf Tsukiko dashes in on the tail of the attacks, staying out of the Puella's literal blast radius before leaping in and kicking the nightmare lady right in the ear with a snort of righteous indignation!

Petty? Sure... but the wolfgirl's own ears do feel a little better after that bit of retribution.

Emi Hoshino has posed:
A blast of light washes over her, and the interior. The music -- the music you KNOW is there but you cannot HEAR because it does not exist -- abruptly ceases and then starts again a moment later. She's so tall, reaching out to snatch at Sailor Moon, taking advantage of her moment of fatigue ...

... only to be kicked in the ear and shot in the back, staggering forward. There is rage in those eyes, now, eyes which swirl madly in their sockets with strange, indescribable light, like all the color drained out of the people present. Their energy, no doubt.

And then she with lightning speed grabs Ikiko by the foot before she can pull and throws her directly at Amy. She is outnumbered by their strength in unity, but that doesn't mean she can't hurt them. And she *wants* to hurt them.

"Bouncers! Get them!"

Pale figures emerge from the crowd. Unlike the guests, they still have color to them, and they're closing in on Tuxedo Kamen, Amy and Taro. Much like the lady of the 'club', they look more like they belong to a different era, out of synch with the flashing lights of the interior and the other more modern feeling things. Then again, what about this has particularly felt of the right time and place? It just adds to the unsettling vibe, something timeless and nightmarish about that too. But the lady is already smarting. Between Usagi's blast ad the two other assaults, she is already weakened. Still deadly, thpough, and those impacts don't hurt any of the less for being a dream. No wonder Emi got her broken.

Even as the bouncers close in, Tuxedo Kamen can sense something. His eyes finally lock on the vaguest shadow of a man. Asleep against the wall. Just *barely* still there, more shadow than anything. On his face is a smile, and he clutches something tightly in his hands.

"I love you so much," he's repeating again and again, dreaming something within a dream.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Sailor Moon is exhausted. That double blow had been like an awakening, a realization - that she has limits, which she knew, but hadn't been feeling. Mamoru's kiss roused her - reminded her that together they can do anything - but her energy is running low, and dropping out of henshin in a nightmare sounds like a recipe for becoming a victim.

So rather than try another magical attack, she pulls a trick from Emi's book - and when the nearest bouncer gets close, swings her rod like a baseball bat, one that gleams with an edge of light.

"Moon Swing!"

There's something in the corner, by Mamoru - is that the dreamer, maybe?

If it is -

"Happy Marriage Swing!"

Another one!

"You can't scare me, not anymore, than you already have anyway! We're going to end this nightmare, and go home!"

Oh but she's so tired. Her swings hurt, but not as much as Cure Tsukiko's kicks do.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Tsukiko yelps as she's grabbed and tossed like a track&field hammer. The wolfgirl flails as she flies, but manages to get enough control to turn the collision with Amy into a tumbling glomp.

Disentangling herself from the Puella and rolling to her feet, Tsukiko starts darting from one bouncer to the next, pinballing off of each one as they get closer to her friends. It might not be the most organized attack, nor the most powerful, but it's buying time for the others to recover and do what they need to do.

    (But she's still keeping an eye on the nightmare lady, in case an opportunity arises to kick her in the other ear.)

Taro Yamada has posed:
Taro hauls the three influencers to a corner, one slung over his shoulder and hauling the other two by the shoulders - and there's more enemies showing up? Dammit, his heart's going to beat out of his chest at this rate!! Yeah, Mamoru can heal, but that freaky monster lady and her neon freaks do not need an excuse to chug one of these poor youtubers like an energy drink!! Forget it!!

He lashes out at any bouncers who come near with his blades. Maybe this is stupid and useless! But! Fuck it! He can't purify, he can't fight, this situation is well out of his control, ehs' going to do something!!

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Why did Amy think that would end the fight? Her morale is a rollercoaster, soaring one moment and plummeting the next. She stops shooting so as not to hit Ikiko, and then she's being hit with a wolfgirl and ending up in a pile on the floor as CHEESE IT, THE FUZZ wait no bouncers are technically supposed to be on the side of the partygoers? But the party runner is evil... Anyway, they're bad guys! And they're probably toughs towering over her as she scrambles to get back to her feet. Her weapons could too easily hit innocent victims... run!

    She starts to grab Ikiko's hand, then realizes a wolf-girl can probably fight in melee just fine, and so can someone else:

    "Taro! You ate it all, they can't catch us!"

    As he turns to fight, she climbs up on Kuiper Belt Cape's shoulders like a gremlin and bashes thugs over the head with a rocket launcher. This is normal, sensible, and sane behavior and not at all influenced by being a bit dream-delirious!

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
They're closing in on him, and this place is taking everyone's energy, but-- but there's-- ohhhhh, that's the edge case he'd not been sure he'd sensed, isn't it! He has to hurry, they may be closing in on him but Mamoru can hear Usagi's tired voice an it sends a spike of sharp worry through him.
He literally jumps out from between them by going over the one's head, hoping they'll crash into each other, and then gets one-- ONE-- blessedly clear shot. He can see what it is. He can hear, in that flash of a moment out of time, what the dreamer is saying, and he can see the Go Pro in the man's hands.

Mamoru shuts his eyes. He's not going to reach the dreamer in time but he knows what can.

A red rose leaves a lightning trail behind it, flying true: it's aimed at the videocamera the shadow of a man is cuddling. "Sorry," he says a little uselessly, then someone else is in his way and the bouncers are on his heels and he jumps again, away, and he yells, "Forget it, kill her! Kill her and we'll be in the alley and they'll wake up!"

Emi Hoshino has posed:
The bouncers do surge for the Usagi and they do eat the 'moon swing' and 'happy marriage swing'. The lady, herself, takes a moment to recover, but is soon distracted by the opportunity he presented to get kicked in her other ear, which buys enough time for Usagi to get in a good her with her scepter again. She's looking angry, but undeterred, about to do ... something, when she sees Amy and Taro's efforts to keep the bouncers away...

...from Tuxedo Mask, who has a rose raised up getting ready to throw and she seems to realize that this is bad. She lashes out, quickly, grabbing at USagi's throat with hands and fingers far too long for logic. She's about to raise her up, to hold her hostage, to force submission, but then she's .... tackled by Tsukiko (and probably kicked in the ear yet again, really). It delays her. A costly delay, for her, because...

... the rose strikes true. The video camera goes out of his hands. It's a go pro of all things..

"No!" She yells, but its too late. The dream dissolves.

The Mahou are not exactly sure how long they've been out of it, as they're coming to rather groggily and wearily within the alley, along with a dozen other people. The Veil is *already* doing its work.
"And... cut! We're done!"
A man -- tje dreaer -- stands with camera in hand, filming some kind of scene. The others, present, actors finishing a shot, the influencers looking on with vague, confused smiles. What was going on again?

"That's a wrap everybody," says the former dreamer. He moves over to Ren of Tokyo Phantasm, and shakes his hand.

"Thanks, man. I really mean it. Playing along with me once the 'challenge' went viral is gonna be great guerilla marketing for the movie. We've still got a lot to do, so..."

Meanwhile, to the eyes of the Mahou and the Mahou alone, there sits a forgotten. ignored pulsing orb of neon light on the alley floor, no bigger than a particularly large marble.
"All right, everybody! Remember! Into the Neon Labyrinth, on a streaming service near you in later this year!"

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Sailor Moon is so distracted with her tired swings, just trying to make it through the battle, that she doesn't realize the danger until the nightmare is almost upon her, hands too long, fingers reaching farther than they should, and they brush her throat when Tsukiko's Silver Wolf Tackle takes her out, takes her away.

"Uwahhhhh," Sailor Moon still wails, but not at supersonic volumes. "Mamochan - "

And the red rose flies. The camera breaks.

There are a dozen people in the alley, way more than just those three livestreamers, and all of this is for -

"A movie?! Was his bad dream really about a movie?! Oh I'm going to tell Emi-chan all about this -"

Poor Emi is going to wake up from her nap to find a load of texts about the inconsiderate nature of filmmakers and their mean nightmares.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Tsukiko glances around, making sure the video crew is distracted with what they're doing, then pulls out one of her purified silk handkerchefs and carefully picks up the neon marble. "I'll get this where it needs to go, and then I think I'm gonna sleep in 'til lunch," she whispers wearily to the other mahoujin. "Um... anything I should tell her in person?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Tuxedo Mask straightens up, letting out a ragged breath. "Right, now we know more for next time." He goes over and let's be real he's there to help his girlfriend up. He nods to Tsukiko. "Tell her I said she's annoying, then tell me her reaction."

Taro Yamada has posed:
Taro is just. Going to drape over Amy like an exhausted cloak.

"Wanna go see what restaurants are still open this late at night? My treat. My nerves feel like they got squeaked on like a violin."

He flashes a peace sign to Tsukiko. "Tell her you kicked a nightmare in the ear, that was super cool."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    And they're... waking up in the alley. Amy's back in her normal henshin. How much of that actually even happened? "It was... it was all because of that guy's movie?" Amy squints, sleepily. "I'm not sure I understand. Whatever, the day is saved, right?" She leans against the nearby Kuiper Belt Cape, struggling against sleep. "Maybe this'll make more sense tomorrow... for now--" She yawns.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"Please tell her to get well soon," Usagi says with a little weariness and clings to Mamoru. "Every nightmare needs another season of romance to make better."