2904/Ex-Egg

Ex-Egg
Date of Scene:	11 January 2026
Location:	Riverside Path
Synopsis:	A confession goes wrong makes the Ex-Egg X-Egg. It gets set straight by Pulp Noir, Puella Amy and Cute Wolf Tsukiko!
Cast of Characters:	Hinote Kagari, Amanda Faust, Ikiko Hisakata

---

Hinote Kagari has posed:
It started out with a simple scene, a boy, a girl. Flowers and a confession from a girl to a boy. The Boy... did not reciprocate. And just like that, a heart is broken and a dream is crushed! A heart egg darkens when the dream of being together falters and soon, there's an X-Egg on the loose, causing chaos.

The Ex-Egg, as this one will thus be called, is a black egg with an X-sigil over a broken heart, firing out blasts of dark energy beams from it's central point, the beam when it hits couples on the Riverside path, seems to be causing fights and disorder in people as it darkens their hearts and own X-eggs.

And Thusly, Pulp Noir shall close this case! Hinote Kagari was walking actually, to Juuban Ward, when the chaos broke out so was close by when Tracy sensed the X-egg.

This means he's already shooting a semi-automatic looking pistol at the Ex-Egg, a jet of water emanating from it as he pushes it back momentarily to get it's attention.

Well, he has it's attention. It's stopped firing on couples and is now firing on him, causing him to comical dance on his feet and step backwards a little.

"Yowzers. Well then. Guess it's on my tail now." he says, as he draws his fedora down a little ominously, for some reason.

Welcome to the hub-bub, bub!

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy happened to be patrolling when there's a change in the air, and she starts seeing a lot of fighting couples, and feels a dark presence.

    Homing rocket-propelled bullets join the water in trying to knock the egg aside "HEY! Pick on somebody your own... uh... roundness?"

    Amy leaps from elsewhere to atop a nearby lamppost, smiling to Tracy. "Need a little help cracking this case?"

    She looks from him to the egg. "...Seriously, why is it an egg, though...?"

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Over in one set of evergreen shrubs, Ikiko is busy feeding one of the local packs of strays. Pretty calm day, at least so far...

    ...whoops, spoke too soon!

The sounds of chaos and the sense of darkness are familiar enough, although this 'flavor' of darkness doesn't seem familiar to Ikiko. Well, what better time to learn than now? One murmured phrase and a silvery glow later, Cute Wolf Tsukiko goes bounding towards the source of the noise.

The wolfgirl arrives in time to do some darting feints to keep the Ex-Egg distracted. "Okay, I don't think I've ever seen one of these before," she remarks, waving to the familiar Puella and the unfamiliar... detective? Well, Red seems to know him, so he's obviously a mahoujin.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Tracy is currently merged with Hinote to form Pulp Noir, but Pulp Noir answers anyways because Tracy's inside him. "Hey Red. This is an X-Egg. It means someone's heart egg up and vamoosed and darkened. We gotta purify it or browbeat it enough to calm it down." he says as he raises the pistol again as he aims down the sights of the Ex-Egg as it reels from the shots of bullets and water, soaking wet and looking comically dented before undenting itself. "Useless..." it suddenly intones outloud.

It shoots waves of dark energy from it's form at the two attackers, leaving Cute Wolf Tsukiko unharmed at the moment as Pulp Noir raises an arm and tries to weather the attack, griting his teeth and eating the dark energy head on. Well that was a bad idea. He's unharmed, but he feels...

Well he doesn't feel very well, shaking his head as he deals with the rush of negative emotions and bad thoughts that come with eating a lot of dark energy at once. "That was... a bad idea. Avoid that in the future." he says tersely, as he fires another jet of powerful water at the Ex-Egg quickly.

His eyes trace down to...

The dog girl? Is that a dog girl? Is the dark energy making him see things?

Luckily, the darting feints do keep the Ex-Egg distracted as it tries to shoot that couple-destroying beam at her everytime she moves, each time missing.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks. "So this is... someone's dream, that left them and got corrupted?! Why would it leave them???"

    She jumps, startled, at the noise as it undents itself, and then diving out of the way of the dark wave and landing in a roll that leaves her sitting on the ground. "Oof... You OK? You don't have to take hits for us."

    Pow pow! pow! She resumes firing and kips up, "Can we really just... beat up someone's dream, though?"

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
"So, we have a darkened heart's egg on the loose? And it's related to dreams?" Tsukiko asks, still dodging the dark blasts (and occasionally dashing forward to flick the X-Egg on the back of its shell when it tries to ignore her long enough to snipe at the others). "I might be able to help purify it, but, uh... do you happen to know why we're dealing with a corrupted dream?"

Because, honestly, Red has a point: beating up someone's dream just doesn't feel right. And if the wolfgirl is going to try to soothe the, well, heart of this heart's egg, it'd help to know what needs the soothing.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir's blast of water sends it flying again and the blasts from Amy cause it to spin on it's axis around and make it get dizzy, it spins there in place intoning "Im..Impossible." it goes. "...Useless." it says again as it reseats itself and gets flicked from the back for it's trouble. It's being treated like a common ping pong ball and this angers it.

Pulp Noir and Amy ask a question. He answers Amy's first. "Honestly it's best if we purify it, but I don't exactly have the ki---" and then Cute Wolf Tsukiko speaks up, and says she can purify it, or help with that and he grips the edge of his fedora. "Well then that's better." he says. "We DO have the kit then. As for... the reasons. Hrmmmmmmgh.." he goes. He uh.. he didn't see the X-egg's birth. He doesn't know the reason. But what does he know?

He saw it destroying and messing with couples earlier. Okay. So it likes to cause tension in romance. But that could mean any number of things.

What else can he know? Okay. That thing has the normal 'X' insigna, but is inset with a heart as well...

Pulp Noir answer Cute Wolf Tsukiko. "Broken Heart." he says confidently.

He avoids taking the hit from a beam of darkness as he steps to the side and grips the edge of his fedora. "Not wanting to beat the crap out of someone's dream is why I'm using the water. Hey Red, you got nonlethal stuff in your kit? How about a flashbang?" he asks.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "You're not useless!" Amy shouts at the egg, while also switching to a bigger gun -- two-handed -- and continuing to shoot it with higher-caliber rocket bullets.

    "Somebody had a broken heart?" Amy blinks. "Well, some kid or teen did... huh. Does that happen a lot to people who like... get to do much of the romance thing?"

    Pulp Noir asks for nonlethal and she dismisses the gun and hands him a flashbang. "Uh, yeah, sure..."

    She spins and waves her arm, fireworks conjuring around her and launching, exploding around the dream and... they're not harmless, but it's a lot more noise and light than explosion.

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
"Broken heart, huh?" Tsukiko muses, adding a bit of distance between her and the Ex-Egg to stay out of explosion range. "Might be a bit of a challenge, but I think I can work with that."

Okay, so the available purifier, whose main purification works on wordlessly speaking to emotions, needs to soothe broken romantic feelings... when she's not particularly familiar with them on a first-hand basis.

...well, nobody's ever said being a mahoujin was easy work.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir has a flashbang. He huhs and considers... he doesn't know how it works personally but he's seen movies, you pull the pin and throw right? So that's what he does, pull the pin and throw---

The flashbang explodes in the air near the Ex-egg and Pulp Noir watches as the fireworks and flashbang do the job and flash the Ex-egg, making it currently 'blind' (Does it even have eyes? Well it worked anyways!) and causes it to spin around and try to see. It'll need a moment to readjust and is no longer attacking, giving Pulp Noir some breathing space.

"Sorry, that's all I can gather from the available information." is all he says.

"Impossible!" it finally intones at Amy and fires a beam of dark energy off kilter into Amy's general direction as she talks. It isn't very well aimed. Aiming at her voice as she tries to talk sense into it.

"Talking sense ain't gonna work. This thing is senseless." he says. "We gotta handle it. And I dunno, honestly." he answer Amy. "Someone's dream must have hinged on that relationship. Given it's an X-egg now. So..." he looks at Tsukiko. "Can you really do it uh..."

"W..what's your name. I wanna call you some stupid nickname and I'm trying REALLY hard no to." he says with an internal cringe. 'Dogface' would have gotten him SUCH A LOOK he'd imagine.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    The X-Egg is apparently blinded and possibly deafened? "...Huh. How did that... does it even have eyes? Or ears? Magic is weird... Woah!"

    She nearly dodges into the beam. "Dreams that hinge on other people are often doomed to failure. And people are so confused about relationships! Maybe a bit less here at Radiant Heart, but still... like, your first one ever is hardly ever gonna work out... and like... some people may not figure stuff out for decades..."

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
"I'm Cute Wolf Tsukiko!" the wolfgirl grins at Pulp Noir, a fanglie slightly obvious but not particularly threatening. "And I can at least give it a try. Hopefully heartfelt-ness and sympathy will be enough, since I'm not particularly suited for giving romantic advice."

She takes a moment to take advantage of the Ex-Egg's disorientation (and current lack of explosions) to dart forward and flick the egg on the back of its shell again, then resumes darting to avoid the beams, making sure she can tell where the beam is going before trying to dodge. Harder to do, but the disoriented beams are likewise getting harder to predict, so it balances out.

Hinote Kagari has posed:
Pulp Noir raises his pistol and with a more proper aim, fires a beam of magic energy from the pistol rather than water this time, ramping up his attacks, the beam smacking into the disoriented Ex-Egg to look back to Amy. "Oh it can hear and see. It just doesn't care I think. Yes. Magic is weird. But weird is in the eye of the beholder. For example. my poster boards in the shed!? NOT WEIRD!" he announces, throwing his arms out.

The Ex-Egg rewards his fervor with a blast at his feet that causes him to jump backwards again as he looks to Cute Wolf Tsukiko and nods. "Pulp Noir." he say. "Detective." he says matter of factly.

Amy keeps talking and the egg replies. "USELESS!" and focuses one of those earlier dark energy blasts on Amy, the same kind that hit Pulp Noir earlier. "Watch out!" calls out Noir.

Cute Wolf Tsukiko's flick makes the egg turn around to fire a beam behind itself, hoping to catch the Cute Wolf before she can run away or feint again.

"Red. We need to knock this thing to the ground so our friend here can do her thing then!" he says as he leaps into the air finally and draws his hand back, drawing it back...

Before he punches the thing in it's insignia with a massive bar-room brawl style haymaker.

"THE BIG GOODBYE!" he calls out, the fist connecting with the egg with a black flash as he knocks it downwards. Hopefully Amy is also helping!

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy giggles a bit at Pulp Noir's assertion that the boards aren't weird. "It's fine. You found out Molly wasn't dead, remember?"

    But when he says to go on the attack, she flings another flashbang, then leaps into the air, an artillery cannon briefly manifesting on her shoulder as she fires downward

    BOOM!

    a point-blank explosion to try and smash it down to the ground!

    "Sorry, dream... may you be made into an omelet of something better!"

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
Tsukiko yelps as she dives out of the way of the quick-retort beam, the dark energy grazing her. "Oof, that does feel terrible," she mutters, shaking her head to help clear out the Ex-Egg's influence. The wolfgirl darts clear to let the other two soften up the Ex-Egg, then takes a deep breath--

    --and howls.

Her wordless song speaks to the X-Egg, reassuring it with purifying energy that the best person for that person's dream is the one that enjoys being with them as much as they enjoy being with that person, and that their friends might have some insight as to who that might be for the person whose dream this is.

    (okay, so Tsukiko's having to crib some notes in order to come up with something that's more encouraging than trite, but at least she has notes to crib!)

Hinote Kagari has posed:
The Ex-egg, along with The Big Goodbye, and the Cannon Blast, is smacked into the ground into a small tiny crater. The Ex-Egg is knocked senseless as it mutters a weak.. "'impossssssible.'" and seems to be dizzy again. It probably sees spots now! Good!

Because in it's now weakened state, it's no match for the power of Cute Wolf Tsukiko's song, even if...it's not one hundred percent on point... it does the trick, the Ex-egg spinning up as purifying energy causes the egg to become white again! The broken heart insignia changing to the default star that many nameless people have and it whews. "Thank you...!" it intones before it spins into the air and away, back to it's owner, all healthy again.

It's owner will remember advice it never remembers actually being told now. That'll be weird for her. Still. It's a good outcome. and Pulp Noir fixes his fedora as he whews and then falls backwards onto his keister.

"Aha... that X-energy is no joke. I need a moment, kapesh?" he says.

Amanda Faust has posed:
Amy Faust dismisses the cannon and lands, turning to watch the Egg go and then looking at Pulp Noir and nodding, miming tipping a hat. "Another case closed for Pulp Noir! And I hope the dream's creator... figures things out, I guess."

Ikiko Hisakata has posed:
"Dark energy's no joke, but this stuff's even harder than most on the emotions," Tsukiko agrees, brushing at where that one beam had grazed her. "Makes sense, since it's a corrupted dream, but still!"

The wolfgirl nods to Red and Pulp Noir, then remarks, "I should probably get back to tending to my canine friends. They weren't particularly close to this area, so they should be fine, but I need to make sure they all get their snacks."