[saithor]

<<Take off the crown or whatever that the seer is wearing. It's the only thing keeping her under their control. Take it off, and this fight should be ah heck of a lot easier.>>

[adamu]

Dogmeat twisted his aluminum torso deftly away from the twin streams of incoming fire and resisted the temptation to shoot back. Instead, he directed himself and his pack toward what he considered a higher-priority target - the fallen Amerind-type whose heat signature was, unbelievably, getting stronger as the little girl ministered to him. Splashes of brighter color showed that all shots hit their marks, and he couldn't help but also notice that it was no longer a little girl kneeling next to his enemy, but a rapidly growing nightmare beast bristling with fangs and angry teeth.

Moreover,, even with the main gun from the T-bird pausing, the drones on both sides weren't the only ones shooting. There was heavy fire from multiple sources coming from the south, and it all seemed to be directed at the misshapen monster growing before their eyes - and still wearing the magical crown.

[saithor]

Alicia gulped quietly in the Astral. This was probably the most stupid thing she had ever tried, but it needed to be done. Moving towards the seer, she grabbed the crown and tried to lift it off.

[gradivus]

[Saturday September 14th, 2075; Ruins of Graham, Puyallup, Seattle]

Ichirō almost passed out from the pain. The only thing that kept him awake was sure willpower. Haste shall be my undoing. I should have seen that coward waiting in ambush. Slowly Ichirō crawled inch by painful inch toward the nearest tree to get some cover between himself and the gunfire that had knocked him down.

[gilga]

Dogmeat directed his drones to provide cover fire to the wounded man.
He also messaged cutter: <get over here we got a man down> including an exact coordinate.

[All4BigGuns]

Cutter swoops low to the ground, trusting the backwash from the vehicle's engines to 'clear' hostiles. <<@Team: Don't know how long I can stay this low, so anyone wanting aboard get up here now!>>

[gilga]

<< dogmeat[cutter] - you may need to grab him - I can pilot while you are out, he barely seems to be able to crawl>>

[adamu]

As hideous as the spirit now appeared, and as distressed as it obviously was, when it saw Alicia approach and sensed her intention, it quieted some and inclined its head.

Small arms fire was striking the spirit, and many of the misses were whizzing through Alicia's incorporeal form, but both were oblivious, completely unharmed, as Alicia reached gingerly for the crown. At its touch she could feel the power of it like a thousand pinprick shocks on her fingertips, but she tightened her grip and pulled.

Nothing. It might as well have been a part of the Seer-beast's skull.

Above them, Dogmeat's drones were laying down suppression on the firing positions to their south, while simultaneously dodging attacks from the hostile pair of rotodrones above them.

And then Dogmeat realized he and his pack were the only ones still firing. All at once the enemy fire had stopped. No more muzzle flashes to the south, and the guns on the other two drones - both still on station close above - had also become still.

The rain continued to pour down through the dark, and all sound remained overshadowed by the roaring whine of the LAV's engines.

[saithor]

Why can i not remove this Crown? Do you know why? Alicia asked the Free Spirit.

[adamu]

The creature wailed. It was an eery, soul-rending sound, reeking of despair.

As it spoke, images appeared in Alicia's mind, first of a human male dressed all in black, whispering quickly in the little girl's ear as he held her on the ground, and then of the dead man at her feet with the feathered headdress.

The man told me that only the one that placed it upon me could take it off. I was trying to save him, but now….

And the keening wail resumed.

[saithor]

Snake-like eyes widened in shock at the spirits words. There must be some other way to take it off. What exactly is it doing to you? Do you think that destroying the physical crown would help?

[gilga]

Why did they all stop?... so confusing, dogmeat started to question his sanity - what good is it to blow up stuff that do not fight back... could it all be a bad dream...? Is he at home swimming in nuyen, retired... perheaps starting a family ?

Nah... it will never happen - he thought as he scanned again the hideous spirit - this is what happens to naive people, she deserved it with all her super human intellect she couldn't even look out for herself. How can spirits be so weak and yet so strong? There is no place for weaklings in this world. He thought - maybe this new form is a positive thing- this time she will protect herself.

She should definitely keep that crown.

[gradivus]

[Saturday September 14th, 2075; Ruins of Graham, Puyallup, Seattle]

Ichirō makes it the tree.
I should be dead. The Okubyōmono should have easily finished me off. Perhaps, one of these others have finished him off. Or perhaps, most likely, he has run off. Why is that little girl wailing? It sounds almost inhuman.
Ichirō tries to sit up next to the tree to be able to see his surroundings better. The pain almost makes him pass out. Between the rain and the dust stirred up by the LAV, all seems but confusion to him.

[adamu]

With the wind and leaves the hovering T-bird was kicking up, Alicia knew that meat ears would never be able to hear the spirit's words, but all that was nothing in the astral, where the spirit's duality brought its message to her with the clarity of cut diamonds.

Though it's body retained its nightmarish shape, as it communicated with her, its face reverted to that of the little girl: It binds me, holds me, traps me in this shell of viscera and cartilage. Free me of this crown or I shall be doomed to waste away my years on this stunted plane.

The childlike face shimmered with energy from the crown and from the spirit's own tortured aura. But how? She looked down at the fallen man. Green tears ran down her porcelain cheeks. I'm sorry. I know only what the man told me.

[adamu]

[Saturday September 14th, 2075; Ruins of Graham, Puyallup, Seattle]

As his would-be captors plotted his destruction in ever more creative ways, Al followed the action as best he could through his earpiece. Comms were sporadic at best, and he definitely felt like he was listening to an action trid without the picture. He gathered that Cutter had somehow captured the T-bird. Ramming the RV with his bike had been a badass play, but damn if the kid hadn’t somehow topped it. Al knew he had to get out of this mess somehow, if only to hear the story.

And then someone named Dogmeat had apparently joined their side, along with some drones and injuns. Al was not one hundred percent certain how that worked. There’d been some negotiations, and then this Seer girl they were supposed to protect had tried to give herself up, and they were trying to get her back, and that was all he could follow.

He was trying to decide what to do, but at the same time enjoying just having a little break, when one of the surrounding circus voices rang out close to his ear. “Hey, I don’t think this faker is really out!”

Al kept his eyes shut - die with the lie, right? Well, no, he thought, as someone put a blade to his throat and threatened to cut it if he didn’t wake up. Opening his eyes, he saw a colorful array of athletic performer types, shaggy roadies, and an assortment of circus freaks - which was a label that said something in the Sixth World. They were all in their regular clothes, which stole something from their mystique. And they all looked fairly angry.

“There, he’s awake. Can we kill him now?”

“Well, I can see no reason not to.”

“So do we go with the flaying or the boiling?”

“Boiling won the vote!”

“But that was before the triplets showed up, so now we have to vote again.”

"Wait, why not flay, then boil? Everyone's happy, right?"

Interesting as it was, Al was dying for a smoke.

“Lissen, y’all,” he began in a small voice that nonetheless brought their argument to a halt. “Long as we got a few minutes while ya figure it out, reckon a feller could git a last cigarette?”