593/Birds Are Real

Birds Are Real
Date of Scene:	14 October 2023
Location:	Juuban Ward
Synopsis:	An enormous emu with energy-draining feathers and a beak inside its beak and glowing red eyes terrorizes Juuban! But not for long.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Kazuo Saitou, Madoka Kaname, Niji Dasshu, Makoto Kino, Cho Konishi, Zoisite, Pyrite

---

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
It's a beautiful bright sunny Saturday in Juuban, and the streets are as bustling as usual for the time and day! This particular flavor of bustling, however, is a strange mixture of slightly more frazzled and a little more foot-draggy, and it seems like maybe someone accidentally ripped open a down pillow or something because there are very fluffy feathers drifting around everywhere.

A flock of pigeons suddenly lifts off out of an alleyway and scatters, and more feathers follow them out. Maybe the pigeons are molting. (If anyone knows anything about birds, the feathers are not pigeon feathers, or goosefeathers, or even chicken feathers. They're rather larger.)

Above the busy street, on which there are cars and bicycles and lots of pedestrians, there's a long-black-haired boy in grey on a roof, leaning with his elbows on the facade of a two-storey building, eating anpan and looking like he's trying not to laugh.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
It's a beautiful bright Saturday, which means that Kazuo, who gets out by preference more in the evening to late night and early morning, finds Juuban just a little of an alien experience right now. But normal businesses keep normal hours, so sometimes, you have to do what you have to do.

He was, granted, not expecting what he had to do today to involve feathers.

A duck around a couple of arguing pedestrians (someone's shopping bag brushed someone else's and this was not to be borne today, apparently) gives him a good look at scattering pigeons. And ... over-large feathers. Kazuo slows and pulls to the side out of the worst of the foot traffic, still at quite some distance from the alleyway, and gives a slow, slow look around at street level.

Huh. Osaka's not here. That's a little weird.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Floating a few stories about the ground is Madoka's stray X-Chara, Gretchen. Her circle mask covers her face, and little beige clouds float around her. Her arms are crossed as she looks down at the people going this way and that. What is she doing? What is she looking for? Good question. Wish she knew.

    There are birds nearby, and a lot of feathers. Something doesn't add up. Someone seems to think this is funny. Gretchen doesn't like to be left out of the joke, so she flies over to investigate. She settles on a corner of the roof and looks down into the alleyway and looks down.

    Other people seem to be looking, too. Gretchen would probably hide from them, but she's pretty sure she's invisible. You can't really see Chara unless you can see magic. Mascot privilege.

Niji Dasshu has posed:
Niji does not know much about birds. Or pretty much anything that you cannot kick, swing, wear, or otherwise utilize in some sort of competitve endeavor. What she does, however, is notice things. You take any opening no matter how small in a match, and therefore, you're always on the lookout for things that are out of place. Today, as she's walking through the streets of Juban throwing a softball up in the air and catching it repeatedly... the feathers are out of place. This is not a spectacular feat of observation, but it does, at least, warrant some degree of attention. The fact that the feathers are larger than any she'd otherwise encountered was notable too.

    Speaking of notable, Niji's hair - it's not hard for anyone who attends RHA, particularly but not exclusively in her grade level, to pick her in particular out of any given crowd, even a busy Juuban crossing crowd. She starts to look around, moving closer to the source of the featherstorm - mostly because she's curious. It hasn't occured to her that the issue could be of the magical kind. She's been a magical girl for about as long as it takes a cup of coffee to cool down. In a fridge. She's keeping an eye out for more things out of the ordinary - she half expects to find, she doesn't know, a fight between two kids in a pillow factory? Okay she's not sure what she's expecting, but that's part of the fun of curiosity, right? Finding the unexpected?

Makoto Kino has posed:
A bit down the sidewalk from where Kazuo has stepped clear of the main walkway to observe, Makoto Kino strolls with no particular hurry past the storefronts. She has an empty canvas shopping tote tucked under her arm and a shopping list in her pocket, but mostly she's been content to admire window displays and wish more clothes came in her size.

At least, until the breeze scuds a feather across the pavement in front of her feet, and something in the air makes her pause and tilt her head.

She couldn't even say for sure what stopped her. Something in the turn of the breeze that tugs at her. Something feels... off. And the longer she stands in uncertainty, the more she notices little things - tired faces, sagging shoulders and trudging steps, impatient words exchanged, The uneasiness uncurls in her gut.

Frowning, she starts to bend, reaching for the feather - which is about when she notices the distinctive white hair down the way. Immediately she straightens up, hurrying towards Kazuo. "Saitou-kun?"

Cho Konishi has posed:
Cho Konishi just stared at the feathers. Kneeling by a pile of feathers, she... "I wonder if you could make a pillow with these," she mumbled softly, not daring to touch one though. Who knew what kind of terrible, awful diseases they could have? She didn't.

They looked so comfy and nice and she wondered if she could gather enough of them and just take the most pleasant, wonderful of naps...

Cho yelped and lightly tapped her cheeks. Nope! Bad! Bad Cho! You had things to do today! She PROMISED Wuwu she'd get him some of those dried banana chips and some of the dried peaches today if he helped her with the chores. Sure, he hadn't been the best help, but he HAD helped. That meant it was up to--

"Are you daydreaming?" Wuwu asked from her bag, making her jump and shriek.

"What are you doing here? I told you to stay at home, I can't go shopping with you," Cho snapped.

"Why not? I'm an excellent shopping partner," Wuwu said, objecting to the unsaid accusations.

"... You steal things," Cho said, in a flat tone.

"I prefer accepting payment for services rendered. You could afford to take some payment as well," Wuwu said.

"you don't get to just determine something is payment without telling the other person. Or after you've done something," Cho said.

"I mean, when you say it like that you make anything sound bad," Wuwu said with a shrug.

Cho groaned and lifted a hand to her forehead. She could already FEEL a headache. At least it wasn't like there was something--

"You know there's definitely some dark energy thing going on, right?" Wuwu asked.

"Yesssss," Cho said, groaning. "But I'm trying to be in denial..."

"I mean, you don't have to get involved," Wuwu said. "Could always go and take a--" He was cut off by her slamming the bag shut. Right.

Bunch of oddly sized feathers everywhere, everyone being testy? This just SCREAMED magical something. So time to go find who she needed to punch... And maybe... she wouldn't... rush in this time. Let someone else be--

Wow. Was that girl's head a rainbow? She wondered how long it took to do THAT. She wished she had the courage to have hair like that.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The moment that any of the feathers touches anyone familiar with energy drain, the energy drain is evident: miniscule, but present. It's the same level of tired that, say, an adult gets the instant a jury duty summons is found in the mailbox, or you try to take a raw egg from the carton and it's stuck and breaks and makes a little mess that you have to deal with right away.

Across from the alley, Kazuo will see... a shadow first. It's the shadow of something extremely tall. Then, o then dear readers, he will see what is casting the shadow, and so will Gretchen.

It's a exceptionally large emu, molting, watching with beady little glowing red eyes. It tilts back and eyes Kazuo, raising its head -- the thing is fully four meters tall. It makes a sound.

The boy on the rooftop looks up at the little floating fairy-girl with the round mask and blinks. "Oh hey," he says casually, crooked grin starting to pull at the side of his face, and then he looks down at the street again and blinks. "Oh. RIP. I'm collecting combative non-combatants. I hope your magical girl is here to fight this thing too."

There's another SOUND from the alley, like someone knocking on a very organic compressed-cardboard box. And then a hiss, and what did its mouth do??

It steps out of the alley, and there are immediately shrieks of startled alarm -- at least in its normal not-standing-straight-up posture it's only about nine feet tall? People also immediately back away, crowding away from the thing, and people are also immediately getting on their phones or taking them out to film. A HUGE EMU. It must have escaped from the zoo! Are they usually that size?

It hisses again, dino mouth opened wide enough to see a smaller wide-open beak come out of its throat and also hiss.

Cho Konishi has posed:
Cho Konishi froze when suddenly... screaming. Yelling. Running. There was--

"Wow," Wuwu said, popping his head out from the bag to see the bird. "Cho, you should try and ride that."

"I'm not going to ride the youma," Cho said before looking towards it... and... +_+ "Oh my gosh I wonder if I could ride that," she said in a low, barely suppressed excited tone. She then shook her head and started running. NO! Behave. She had to BEHAVE! This was WAR! Sailor Moon told her. It was war. People could die. It...

Ohhhh, it was just a youmaaaa! Just a monster! Just a big bad thing of rawr and grrrrr and bite your face off! YAY! It was weird, she knew, to be excited about this. BUT SHE WAS! IT WAS JUST A YOUMA!

Of course, it was a few moments later that she dipped into an alleyway and henshined...

And a few moments later that the spirit of Wukong won out and there was a pink and orange blur leaping across rooftops, flying up and then... crashing down at the youma. Arms out... and... "I am Pretty Cure Wukong! AND I AM GOING TO RIDE YOU, YOU GIANT MURDER BIRD!"

What did anyone expect?

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    People are chatting. People are fighting. It makes Gretchen sad, but it's not her problem. Or more accurately, there's nothing really she can do about it. Not without doing something she shouldn't. Someone is arguing with a tiny mascot.

    Wait a minute. Someone is arguing with a mascot. That person could probably see Gretchen.

    The tiny X-Chara gets shy and ducks behind the rooftop. The spooky thing about being invisible to the vast majority of people is not knowing who can see you. Those who can likely want to drain her, corrupt her, or purify her; and any of those would be a Problem.

    Oh crap, the boy can see her too.

    Gretchen, for her part, does not yelp or make a cute spooked noise. Her mask hides whatever her expression would be. When she looks at the boy, his response to her is... curious.

    "My magical girl... isn't here. It'd take too long for her to show up."

    In theory, Gretchen could call Madoka, or rather she could call Brai who'd tell Madoka, but she's probably in Mitakihara. She's not sure where Homura is at the moment, either.

    Gretchen stares down at the Emu. Does... that thing's beak have a smaller beak inside of it? "What the cuddle is that thing? Is it a youma? Did you make that?"

    Someone wants to ride the youma. Gretchen just rubs the side of her tiny forehead with her tiny hands. "That one isn't mine."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
That wasn't a voice Kazuo expected to hear call his name. He looks over toward Definitely Not Naru. And ... Makoto Kino is even taller than the last time he saw her. He should be accustomed to that by now. He is not. A startled blink gives way to a pleased expression, hint of smile, mostly around his eyes. "Kino-san." What to say next? 'Something may have just bloodlessly exploded a few pigeons' does not seem a good summary.

... and then there is a shadow. And that is taller than Makoto. And that is taller than him.

And that is an ... emu?

"-- what the actual --" He manages to squelch the next word, and also most of the urge to facepalm, and turns it into shoving his hair back out of his face instead. "Kino, I think that thing has longer reach than we do. -- HEY!" he calls to the nearest people, as the people crowding away from the thing start passing the closest optimists and making them more visible. "STOP FILMING AND GET BACK, ANIMAL CONTROL IS GOING TO NEED SPACE!"

He is also going to need space. Between him and that thing. It doesn't think his hair is some kind of crest, does it? ... well, if it does, the sudden other person yelling is going to be a distraction. He wasn't figuring 'animal control' was going to summon a magical monkey girl, but if that's what fate gives him right now, he's not going to argue.

Niji Dasshu has posed:
There is no appropriate response to what Niji sees stumbling out of the alleyway. There is no correct response. It's hardly even a rational response. The noise that comes out of her mouth is certainly not one made by language. Unlike the civlians around her, Niji is now fortunate/unfortunate enough to process magic, which means she sees the full horror of the giant fluffy dinosaur rather than just a really big bird. Finally, she gets a word out of her throat. "Nope!" is that word. And she turns and just starts to bolt.

    At least, until she feels some sort of warmth radiating from the pendant around her neck. And she knows what she's expected to do, what she's supposed to do. She steps down an alley and grasps it. "Awww, man." she says dejectedly.

    "Somebody else better come help me with this. I wonder if I should call Adora..." she mumbles to herself, but then she hears Cho. Well, there's a somebody else. And she doesn't know that Adora is... ready... to face, frankly, being out of bed. "Fiiiine." she says to nobody in particular.

    There's a surge of multicolored light that's visible from outside of the alley and she steps out, incredibly rad winged boots, starry leggings, super-long rainbow hair, blue skin, awesome literal wings - Geode Girl Loyalty, though she hadn't actually had reason to say the name, walks towards the giant bird with a sense of foreboding. "I hope you have this under control." she says to the Pretty Cure. There's not even anyone to score her (that she has noticed, yet) if she was to ride the emu better than the Pretty Cure. Laaaaame. "How do we make it stop... doing... that?" she asks. Not just Cure Wukong but pretty much anybody around who can hear and help.

Makoto Kino has posed:
That is Saitou! Makoto gets a second or so to look pleased before all hell breaks loose in the form of a velociraptor's feathery cousin looming out of the alleyway. Makoto's head tilts back, eyes going very wide. "What in the--?!"

RIGHT, okay, there is a monkey girl trying to wrangle the bird-thing, and a girl with wings, and Kazuo probably has the right idea. Makoto quickly moves to put her stature to use, physically blocking a couple of people who can't seem to put down their cell phones and get the heck out of the way. "You guys need to get back, unless you wanna get famous on the internet for getting the shit kicked out of you by an ostrich!"

And then, in a slightly wild aside to Kazuo: "--is that an ostrich? I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to do--that."

Zoisite has posed:
    Zoisite is standing on a rooftop, looking down atall the chaos, and yelling out, "Fake news! Birds aren't real!" with hands cupped around his mouth. He has perhaps consumed more than a strictly healthy amount of diet coke because he doesn't look very stable. More so than usual, I mean. "That isn't a real dinosaur! Dinosaurs don't have feathers! That's just a big chicken! Rip off!" It appears that a Dark Kingdom General is tripping more balls than a drunken tanuki.

    From diet coke.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The youma gets a magical girl to the back, and first grunt-grunts, then HISSES and bucks up and shakes, and turns to peck its head at the girl--

--its feathers drain energy. They are draining Cure Wukong's energy. Not hard, not fast, but fast enough to be troublesome. What a comfortable bucking pecking dark-energy-smelling murderbird! That's still trying to throw her off-- there's a particularly epic hop-and-shake that should do the trick, and then it kicks out at Geode Girl Loyalty with another HISS.

"It's a youma, yeah, I made it. Hang on a second," Hematite tells Gretchen, then leans down over the facade of his two-storey building and yells, "You can kick its ass without hurting a real emu, it just looks like one! This was as close as I could get!" Then he grins at Gretchen, and then he goes back to watching. "Oh good, there's some transformed people showing up. I usually get a decent showing in Juuban. Oh man, emu rodeo, check it out--"

SOME of the sidewalk people are starting to realize that Kazuo's yelling might actually be communicating a good idea, and start backing away from what's clearly a trained stunt performer dealing with oh dear its legs are dinosaur legs and they kick giant-- ostrich? It doesn't have pretty enough feathers to be an ostrich, does it? It's rather like a murder muppet honestly.

The feathers continue to fly, and the more the emu objects to its treatment, the more feathers it sheds! The tussling is, in fact, kicking up the ones that were already on the street, even, just by breeze alone. Wherever they land, they steal a little more energy, make people a little more cranky. Some of that seems to be helping get people away.

Oddly enough, so do the public nuisances on the rooftops heckling at top volume. "ZOI! God, get over here, you're contradicting yourself! If birds aren't real why is that a giant chicken?!"

Pyrite has posed:
    In the long, long existence of Himeko Soryuu, it is fair to say there has been much more than the typical amount of trauma a ten-year old experiences. Also they are generally not ten-years old for quite as long as Himeko has been. However, in happier times, there was an event that added another tic mark to the trauma bingo card, now on round 4242564. Join us now for a tale of yesteryear, or maybe a couple months ago, when Pyrite, first and best apprentice of Lord Hematite, was experiencing the joys of Television for the first time in her existence.
    Pyrite was lying on the floor on her belly, head propped up on her hands, smiling and watching television. Shiro was at her side, also watching television.
    "Fufufufufu~!" she laughed at whatever she was watching. Shiro was licking his tail.
    Suddenly! Pyrite's eyes got wide as she started to get up, and Shiro started chuffing loudly! 'Mew mew mew mew!' he went!
    Pyrite ran out to hide in the hallway and peek inside from there, while Shiro looked back at her, ears alert with concern.
    A few minutes later, there was Pyrite looking up tearfully at Zoisite-senpai.
    "Big Bird is a man in a costume." he explained.
    "His hand is its head." he explained further to the uncomprhending ghost.
    Pyrite started tearing up, looking absolutely destroyed by this knowledge.
    Then she wailed and rubbed her eyes as tears spilled forth.
    Suffice to say, she has some Questions for the government about birds.
    From the opposite side of the street, on a different rooftop, Pyrite is standing there yelling.
    "Birds are not real! I am onto you!" D:<

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Gretchen continues watching the Bird Situation unfold down below. People are talking about animal control. Someone wants to ride the bird. Someone wisely flees the scene, and someone 20% cooler shows up. Looks like the start of a magic fight, or at the very least a magic Incident.

    Gretchen grumbles, before looking back at Hematite. "So like... is this a joke? I mean, if it is, it's kinda funny. Unless someone gets mauled. I feel like someone's going to get mauled at this rate."

    Someone is saying birds aren't real. What? It's hard for her to tell what about this whole fiasco is escalating faster: the danger, or the ridiculousness.

    Well, it's a little late for Gretchen to avoid calling attention to herself, so this time she's not shy about loudly commenting. "Of course birds are real! Don't be a silly!"

    Gretchen, despite wearing a mask that covers her whole face, is clearly frowning. It's just something about her body language, her raised shoulders, and her general vibe that just exudes frown energy. She decides to get involved. There's a ripple in space next to her, and a circular set of runes that both does and does not look and feel like the entrance to the world's smallest Labyrinth, and two tiny... things fly out of it.

    They look like a bow has sprouted wings, with weighing scales on each end of the bow, and other weird eldritch things. The pair of tiny biblically accurate angel things fly down to the Monster Emu and start flying around its head, harassing it by getting way too dang close to its eyes before flying quickly away.

    "Those things aren't birds," clarifies Gretchen. Because for some reason she felt like that needed to be said. "Birds are still real, though!"

Cho Konishi has posed:
Cure Wukong actually landed. Holy crud. She didn't think she'd get this far. She-- "Ow! Ow! Quidit!" she yelled, holding on as she got pecked. "Stop! Bad bird! Bad giant emu, bad--"

And then she was flung off. She hit the wall... Splat. And just... kind of laid there a second. Upside down. Before glowing pink for a moment.

Then falling off with a groan. "Ow... I'm OKAY!" she yelled, holding a thumbs up. "Worth!" No it wasn't. It so wasn't. Was fun, though. "Someone better have gotten a picture of that!" she yelled before slowly getting to her feet and looking up at the bird and... "Oh. Ohhhh you're big. Well, you're in luck!" She reached behind her ear and pulled out her toothpick. She gave it another spin before planting it on the ground. "Ahem. PROPER introductions this time! I am Pretty Cure Wukong, the monkey king! And I'm going to NOT let you keep throwing feathers at people, no matter how comfortable they are! ALSO!"

She then turned towards the yelling Hematite and... "Thanks for this, by the way! I really needed something I could just hit like a pinata today!"

Sure, it was 'war', but it was only really 'war' if they lost!

She then glanced back to Loyalty and... "Wow... your hair is AMAZING! I saw another girl with those kinds of colors a bit ago, fan of yours? What's your name?" she asked... Before running at the giant bird and swinging her staff. as it went, the staff grew MUCH bigger, until it was about the size of a tree, before trying to send the bird pinballing down the alleyway.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Monkey girl. Wing girl. Flightless bird. Mental note, try to grab a feather for Naru, but later. At least one of the rooftop people just answered Makoto's question. "Evil ostrich monster, not real ostrich," Kazuo confirms to Mako. Differentiation between ratite species can be made when no murder attempts are in process.

Speaking of rooftop people. He tilts his head back. "WE DID NOT NEED ANOTHER GODDAMN EMU, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!" he yells back up toward Hematite. Because clearly that will help. Also because 'when no murder attempts are in process' was apparently a lie.

The yell of Zoisite's name, though, prompts him to glance toward a different rooftop. And blink. And then add another yell back to Hematite. "AND IF ANYBODY FALLS DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS NONSENSE I AM KICKING YOUR ASS MYSELF."

Likelihood of success at this moment: zero. Also Mako may need to herd him away from the emu rodeo at this point.

Niji Dasshu has posed:
"I'm preeeeeetty sure it's an Emu." Loyalty calls back to the question about birds. Why does she know about Emus? Because one of the heroines in her adventure books that she totally doesn't read because books are for nerds was chased by a pack of Emus. Honestly, that chapter (if she read it) was going to be a lot more intense than before after today. Wait, were the emus particularly evil or was that just an assumption one makes about Emus generally?

    This is what is going through GGLoyalty's mind right before an Emu tries to put it's foot through her mind - or at least her head - instead. Her hand moves quickly, reflexively, to block it, so instead she just goes skidding back a bit. It's the first hit she's truly taken in Henshin.

    "Did that bird... just kick me?" she asked, bewildered. One of those feathers fell onto her and she could feel it. "And the feathers are evil, too?" she asks. "Great."

    She turns to Wukong when asked her name. Why does she know the name of... whoever she is? Being a magical girl is truly weird. Isn't she supposed to get a mascot or something? "Geode... Girl... Loyalty?" she says, unsure of it. "Just call me Loyalty, 's faster. Or awesome. I do accept being called awesome." she notes.

    Okay, feathers. Feathers and fluff. Draining energy. Giant bird monster. But the Party Cute says that they can just hit it, right?

    So she suddenly hunkers down into a sprinting pose, and suddenly takes off - and she is fast. Really fast. It's easer to follow the trail of rainbow-blur behind her than it is to get your eyes to actually track the girl, blue skin and all. And she starts basically trying to harass the bird to death. Her strikes are not more vicious than your standard magical girls (so they're still notable) but she's running around the bird in a circle, trying to hit it from all possible directions - and equally importantly a small enough windstorm that the feathers get caught it in and stay with the stupid bird, rather than getting blown all over (and onto her). Or at least, that's her idea. In practice... there's some left to be seen.

    "Can you go up there and just kick their ass now? I'm a little busy or I'd do it." Kazuo hears, in multiple pitches because of her movement speed and the doppler effect causing her to sound close and far away. at different points.

Makoto Kino has posed:
People are clearing off, sort of. Progress? Also there is shouting from rooftops. It's all a bit much for Makoto to track, but at least the main question has been definitively answered.

Of course, some further questions have also been raised. Namely: "There was another of these things??"

Now might possibly not be quite the time for a full explanation of the background. It's definitely not the time to quibble over the exact taxonomy of the hissing, kicking, pecking offense against reality currently battling Cure Wukong and Geode Girl Loyalty down the alley. "LISTEN--" unlike Kazuo, Makoto's raised voice is for the few holdouts still determined to catch the shenanigans for posterity and/or follower count boosts. "This is your last chance to get back, before I start grabbing phones and throwing them!"

Zoisite has posed:
    Zoisite teleports over to join Hematite. "Listen," he begins. "Listen, it's bad enough that someone looted a window display from a Bloomingdale's or Men's Weahouse or something and crashed my party the other day -- okay technically it was a child's party, but I invited myself so it counts -- now you're over here... Making effing..." He gestures down to the street. "Chocobos or whatever and claiming they're dinosaurs. So listen." One hand goes to jab Hematite in the chest, while the other desperately hangs onto Hematite's shoulder as Zoisite looks like he's on the verge of turning into a semi-solid and oozing down ontothe rooftop if he doesn't maintain his grip.

    "I am a purist, okay! I know what I'm talking about!" Clearly.

    Also, is that the ghost yelling from the next roof over? He tries to snap point but can't figure out how to do that without letting go of Hematite or stopping his chest poking. "Look, Phoney Phantom over there even knows it! So, like." He finally decides that the poking is the thing to stop as he flourishes his hand in Hematite's face. Then he appears to forget what he was going to say as he decides to start staring at his own hand, holding it up to the light, etcetera.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"KICK ZOISITE'S ASS FOR TELLING PYRITE BIRDS AREN'T REAL!" Hematite yells down in Kazuo and Makoto's direction, then adds, "I'M GLAD YOU TWO ARE ON CROWD CONTROL!"

More people do, in fact, listen to an incredibly tall boy and an incredibly tall girl who sound like they know what they're talking about-- mostly-- at least when telling people what to do-- and the street is clearing out nicely, and cars have Driven Away or are abandoned up the street and blocking more traffic. The police will probably be here soonish.

Suddenly the little mascot next to him is unsure if funny or dangerous, and starts letting dollhouse-sized biblically accurate angel things flutter from what looks like a device user's thingy, and Hematite looks approving. "Nah, people are too tired to stampede-- I was pretty careful about that. And I don't think anyone's gonna get mauled. But good job, keep it up!"

It's even working! Except for the fact that now the hissing beakbeak is protruding further and trying to snap the buzzing angel-things out of the air and EAT THEM. It's very distracting.

Hematite flashes Cure Wukong a big thumbs-up, and then watches the stick with interest-- and the very large stick definitely crashes into the bird, because it's distracted as all get-out and can't just twinkdodge the thing. It doesn't actually go down the alley, angles mean it bounces off the side of the alley and comes back making the sound of a REALLY LARGE DRUM, hurtling with fiery glowing red eyes and a beak in a beak and stubby not-really-wings right back at Cure Wukong!

That's when Loyalty starts doing a whole Sands of Mu thing all around the bird and running in circles, because running in circles solves most problems -- this is a great idea in theory! But it also makes a tornado of feathers and a lot of counter-wind brushing off and also more mess. Hopefully she will not also actually hit Cure Wukong since that's gonna be a whole mess. At least there's a tree-stick to hold onto? THE BIRD HISSES LIKE A FIREHOSE and starts hopping, kicking and kicking at random, clearly hoping to get at Loyalty again. It's starting to weaken, though. Or maybe it's getting dizzy, it absolutely cannot tell what's going on and that is making it MAD.

The last of the stragglers give Makoto very very cranky looks, and do, indeed, clear off. So the street's now nothing but the feathery fury, abandoned or parked cars, and people watching through windows.

Straggling feathers keep brushing up against Niji and Cho, and Niji punching means that she keeps touching feathers over and over again, but the giant monster has in fact begun to slowly turn like laundry in an agitating washing machine.

Hematite gets grabbed and jabbed at, and he gives Zoisite a flat look. "You crashed some kid's birthday party? For crying out loud, that's low. I want you to find the ~silver crystal~, that's what the boss is agitating abou--ow! Staaaahp," he says, rubbing his chest. "Why don't you find one of those windsock dudes and fight it? It's an EMU." He yells down into the street again, "I IMPROVED THE EMU. IT'S NOT ANOTHER. IT'S IMPROVED."

Pyrite has posed:
    Pyrite cups her hands around her mouth and yells from the adjacent rooftop. "WHAT? ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ME, HEMATITE-SENPAI? I CANNOT HEAR YOU FROM OVER HERE! ZOISITE-SENPAI, PLEASE TELL HEMATITE-SENPAI I CANNOT HEAR HIM FROM OVER HERE! ZOISITE-SENPAI! PLEASE TELL HIM--!"

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Everybody is yelling. People are yelling about birds not being real. People are yelling about creating Emus. People are yelling about how dangerous this actually is, and how you shouldn't just gawk and take pictures. Someone is yelling about how she hopes someone got a picture of her. Gretchen is getting into it too, yelling at people to stop being wrong! There's a lot of wrong to yell at.

    One of the tiny angel things gets bitten in the wing. It tastes like sadness. It falls to the ground, and the other angel floats down to check up on it and/or mourne it. It's hard to tell. These things don't have expressions or emote normally.

    "Oh for the love of my fluffy Bearer, walk it off! Stop being dramatic!" yells Gretchen, flailing her tiny arms at her minions. The wounded angel-thing starts flapping its wings again. Apparently it's fine?! It must have regenerated or something.

    Suddenly there's another boy here, and someone is yelling at them, and the tiny X-Chara who wanted to hide is suddenly finding herself in the middle of a mess. "Just get over here! It's easier than yelling!" squeaks Gretchen at the top of her lungs. Is she even audible to Pyrite from here?

    The two angel things flutter away from the rampaging emu and the tornado that's surrounding it. Apparently they are fleeing the field, and their master hasn't yet noticed their misbehavior.

Cho Konishi has posed:
Cure Wukong blinked a few times as the... Emu... came back. "Oh cr--" BANG! And she is ran over, tumbling away.... and flashing pink for a moment before rolling to her feet. "STILL OKAY!" she yelled. You know. Just in case anyone was curious.

Her stick had shrunk back to regular size, too! And... Oh... Ohhhhh. As Loyalty was making a tornado... she finally noticed the biblical bow. Retreating. Okay then. "Keep doing that!" she yelled to Loyalty. "I got an idea!" she said before...

She started leaping from side of alley to side of alley, quickly making her way up... up... Onto the roof... Then, once there, she called out. "Hey, general guy, is this a purify monster thing of beat it down thing?" she called before leaping up, up, up, uppppp! And then spinning, aiming her stick down towards the youma in Loyalty's tornado...

Then growing it once more to the size of a nice, big, massive tree. Before kicking it down towards the youma!

As bad as the mountain of a staff might be for the youma... She then, a moment later, came down and drop kicked the stick even more onto it.

"Okay, do whatever you need to do Loyalty!" she said... now on top of a multi-story tall stick. She paused. Looked to Hematite... and finger gunned him. "Sup."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Can Kazuo go up there and just kick Hematite's ass now? Well, there are several problems with that course of action, but the most obvious one: "Sorry, short on wings," Kazuo says in the general direction of the blur.

Mako gets a very clear 'long story' gesture and an apologetic look - then a gleefully feral grin as she starts threatening to throw phones. And as the threat works. "Nice job." He eyes the angel things past her, but does not attempt anything stupid like putting up a hand and letting one land on it. Instead, he moves a foot to trap an abandoned and empty shopping bag skidding down the street in the vortex-adjacent wind system, and leans down to grab it and start kicking stray feathers into it. As an attempt to clean up the mess, it's pretty much like tackling the Atlantic with a teaspoon, but that is probably not the actual goal. "EMUS DO NOT NEED IMPROVING! AND ZOISITE'S ASS IS ALREADY KICKED!" By something. Something that has him staring at his hand and possibly melting down Hematite's side. Well, anyway, if tiny mascot things can yell, clearly he can keep up with it.

A breath, and a glance to Mako. "-- you see anything safe for us to do?" Note: yelling up at Dark Generals, not generally recognized as safe.

Niji Dasshu has posed:
Well, it's not working quite the way Niji hoped. In fact, instead of turning the feathers into a nice compact vortex column, it's having more of an affect on the bird than the feathers. It's mostly out of stubbornness that she doesn't stop sooner. That she even gets to the point of turning the bird. But at least she's annoying the bird. Good. The bird should be annoyed. And then when she's done with the bird maybe she'll fly up there and deal with the peanut gallery because she doesn't know how bad an idea that is, strictly speaking.

    Also she feels like if she could only manage to go faster somehow, she'd be closer to solving her problem and... she's honestly not entirely sure how in the heck that's supposed to work anyways but with the feathers constantly sapping her energy, going any faster than 'blur' is out of the question. She's atheltic, but not so much so that she can brush off constant energy drain and go for broke.

    So she stops circling. "I can't keep doing that forever!" she retorts to Cure Wukong, and stops the moment she drops the stick on it. "It's making me too tired cause it's stupid and drains energy!" Coming to a stop a good distance away from the bird, she's trying to decide what to do, tilting her head and very visibly thinking.

    "So if I touch it I get drained but if I get drained I can't knock it out. And if I can't knock it out I'm gonna be here all day. If Adora was here she'd have her sword, but I don't have a..." Pause. Blink.

    Loyalty zips off into the retail sector suddenly.

    Somehwere in a sports shop, a blur shoots through, the words 'HiSorryThankYouBye' are yammeered, money appears on the desk and something is gone from the store's selection.

    A few moments later, that same blur is flying (literally and figuratively) towards the bird with an aluminum baseball bat over her shoulder intending to swing it at the thing when she gets within range. She has not yet considered what that kind of kinetic energy traveling through the bat is going to do to her own arm. That's Future Loyalty's problem.

Makoto Kino has posed:
Makoto looks at Kazuo, then up towards the yelling from the rooftops, then towards the fight. And up... up...

......up at Cure Wukong.

Then back to Kazuo. "Not even a little bit," she tells him. "We should also be getting back, I think. Pick up trash after." She goes so far as to try to herd him away, though much more politely and less physically than she dealt with the onlookers a moment ago.

Zoisite has posed:
    Someone is yelling his name from below. Zoisite lets go of Hemnatite and immediately falls on his face on the rooftop. He drags himself over to the edge, and gets one arm over it to squint down at Kazuo. "WHAT? WHO SAID MY NAME? WHY ARE YOU YELLING? IS IT THE HOT GUY? WHY ARE YOU DOWN THERE ANYWAY?" He then turns to look up at Hematite. "Oh my Gods, is she still on about the silver whatsit. Hasn't someone found that yet? Listen, what Her Majesty really needs is for us to help her figure out how to sign up on one of those dating websites. Get her a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or whatever she's into, and then we can just..." Another hand flourish. "...Do whatever we effing want."

    His head snaps around to yell back at the persist repetition of 'Zoisite-senpai! Zoisite-senpai! Zoisite-senpai!' that he was ignoring. "WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU FROM OVER HERE! ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ME? HEY, YOU PALTRY POLTERGEIST! I CAN'T HEAR YOU FROM OVER HERE!" Then he turns to look up at Hematite, forgetting he's in close proximity as he yells, "TELL HER THAT I CAN'T HEAR HER FROM OVER HERE!"

    Then he looks back down at Kazuo. "HEY! HEY, CAN YOU TELL SOMEONE I CAN'T HEAR HER FROM OVER HERE?"

    He looks over to Gretchen, and asks, "Also, can you recommend a keyboard that doesn't just randomly die? That's, like, really inconvenient."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"COME HERE PYRITE! I'M LOOKING FOR YOU!" yells Hematite, arms flailing. This was easy chaos to keep track of until one of his best friends and his apprentice showed up. He loves to see them but holy shit.

Nope. No. No, this is-- he looks at the feather tornado down there, and remembers, and slings an arm around Zoisite. "I'm making comedy," he says, and starts giggling. "You missed the emu rodeo." And then he's beaming at Gretchen. "You're so cute! Your yelling is so cute too! Thank you for trying to explain things to my apprentice~" He looks over to Cure Wukong, then, up at their level. "Either/or!" he calls back. "I mean punch it enough and it'll come apart, but purifying it would be faster--? Oh, sick move--"

That's some really impressively iffy stuff to do with that stick there. It lands on the bird for sure, but it's also in the middle of a tornado, so the tree-sized stick now with added Pretty Cure on it is also spinning. Hematite, possibly some kind of awed, slowly fingerguns Cure Wukong back.

Future Loyalty has arrived!! When she arrives from legit out of NOWHERE and swings the baseball bat like Ace Versus the Daleks, combined with the smack and the spinning weight of the tree-stick and Wukong,

    PAHFFF

it explodes into feathers!! And both dark energy and glittering life energy spill out of it wispily, the life energy swinging its way back home and the dark energy dissipating.

Hematite's ears are ringing from all the shouting in proximity to them, so he rubs at the one closest to Zoisite as he moves away. "Anyway I can't follow what you're talking about when you're drunk, but agree, getting her -- the boss I mean -- to shut up would be great. Also we should probably go now." He leans over the edge again and waves. "Bye! Come on, Py-tan--!" and he grabs Zoisite by the sleeve and teleports.

There are still feathers EVERYWHERE, but they are no longer draining energy. They're just a mess.

Madoka Kaname has posed:
    Gretchen flails at the rooftop people yelling at each other and gets visibly exasperated, and then suddenly she's being asked about keyboards. "Keyboards? I mean... well, hold on."

    A tiny black egg with a white X appears on it, and it cracks open. Gretcen leans in and starts digging through the hoard of tiny supplies she apparently keeps in here. Small plushies, an itty bitty smartphone. Eventually she pulls out a black keyboard that's probably smaller than Zoi's finger. "I just use this generic thing."

    Suddenly she's being called cute, and she says, "U-um... thanks, you're cute too, in like a boyish way." Of course a dark energy user would think she was cute, she supposes.

    Then she looks down at the alleyway to see-- "What the cuddle?! HEY! WHO SAID YOU COULD SLACK OFF?!"

    The tiny weird angel things suddenly start fluttering faster, trying to get away. Gretchen flies after them, "Oh no you don't! If I let you run away you'll like... gorge yourself on ice cream or something and then turn into... I don't actually know what! And I don't want to know! Get back here! I'm your mommy and you have to listen to me!"

    The angel things disagree with Gretchen's assessment of the situation, and are indeed flying away even faster. The tiny X-Chara gets mad and flies after them, quickly as she can. "I'm a lot faster than you!" she threatens. "Come back or I'll be really mad!"

    And thus it was that the tiny X-Chara Gretchen, the not-Witch, went chasing after two not-Familiars in order to get them back into her not-Labyrinth.

    A moment later, the black X-Egg closes up and starts floating after its owner.

Niji Dasshu has posed:
"Wait, you're just gonna leave?" Loyalty asks. "I didn't buy this bat to only swing it once..." she says, her wings extending as she gets ready to jump up and keep going, but they're teleporting. "Ugh, really." she says, tapping the bat against her shoe.

    She looks around. "I... am not cleaning this up." Loyalty notes. Like in her mind someone is probably responsible for that? She knows it's not her, at least. "See you around though, Party Cute." she says, before she's just gone. She doesn't know how long she gets to stay a magical girl yet but she doesn't want her henshin to drop while she's surrounded by what looks like the aftermath of a serial pillow murder that she might in some way be responsible for cleaning up.

Pyrite has posed:
    "WHAT?" Pyrite yells back to Gretchen. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU! YOUR VOICE IS TOO CUTE! CAN YOU SPEAK LOUDER? ZOISITE-SENPAI! CAN YOU TELL HER TO TALK LOUDER! ZOISITE-SENPAI! ZOISITE-SENPAI! ZOISITE-SENPAI!" Then Hematite calls for her and Pyrite bumps into Hematite from behind, breathing heavily, as though she just ran over. "I couldn't hear you from over there. What were you saying?"
    Then Hematite is grabbing Zoisite and teleporting away, and Pyrite is chasing after him, "Wait, Hematite-senpai! Don't leave me with the man in the costume!" As J. Jonah Jameson says, Big Bird is a menace! She runs and just kind of disappears after jumping off the edge of the roof on the far side from where everyone else is. She'll be wherever Hematite and Zoisite wind up, it's fine, don't worry about it.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo accepts herding; a handful of feathers in the bag is apparently sufficient, since he accepts herding starting with Mako's 'not even a little bit,' in fact, not waiting around for her to need to apply more deliberate measures. Which gets them out of the way of featherstorm and light show.

Okay, most of the light show. Some of the random people's energy streaks by them on its way back where it belongs.

Kazuo exhales slowly as the generals also vanish, ghost included, and Gretchen goes chasing her ... entities. "Thanks. I think wing girl over there has a good point, on the cleaning up." And the not wanting to trying to explain to the police, who might possibly recognize one or the other of them. He lifts the bag. "I'll explain this if we can get out of here? Or do you have errands left?"

Makoto Kino has posed:
"Getting out of here sounds like a great idea," Makoto tells Kazuo, very wryly. "Errands can wait for later." Her head turns instinctively as a mote of stolen energy drifts close to her face on its way back to its proper owner. "This was, uh, a lot... and I don't think either of us needs to still be hanging around if anyone official decides to turn up. Do you?"

Cho Konishi has posed:
Cure Wukong had not thought this through, it seems. The staff spun, with her on it... but hey, she finger gunned the general and he finger gunned her back. Not gunned. FINGER gunned. That was important. It was--

And then the bird was plucked, as it were. Sending feathers everywhere. And also making the staff teeter precariously. The monstrously large staff. She yelped, quickly shrinking it down so she didn't take out a building--

Meaning now she fell. See, that was the difference between 'jumping' and 'falling'. Jumping was great. Falling? Not so much...

And she landed in a big pile of feathers, that was... actually... pretty great. It made her giggle and hey, they didn't drain her! Still, she did flash pink for a minute. She fell pretty hard.

Loyalty's objection caught her ear. "Oh, they always run away, I wouldn't worry about it." But when the girl said 'Party Cute', well... "Wa--" She was too slow. The other girl was already gone. "Wait... It's... pretty cure..." she mumbled. "Would you like to exchange numbers?" she asked, the other girl already gone.

"We should go too," Wuwu said, popping out from her bag which had been left in the alley. "I'm not cleaning this up."

"Shouldn't we help? I mean, we did... kind of make this mess. I mean..."

"Nah, we fought the thing making the mess. Leave the clean up to the people who aren't amazing," Wuwu said with a shrug.

"... fine," Wukong said before lightly getting up, creaking slightly. "Ow... I... rode it, though. Did you see? Was I cool? Did I look awesome? Wukongy?"

Wuwu opened his mouth to say something a little teasing... paused... then sighed. "Yeah. Couldn't have done it better myself."

"Really?"

"Well, okay, no. I can always do things better. But you did pretty good, Wukong. Let's go get my shopping done."

"Fine, but NO! STEALING!"

"Not theft," Wuwu said, entirely ignoring Wukong's objections to the contrary.