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((I might as well do a little post to explain Ryutsume's current status.))

Drenched and frustrated, Ryutsume clamboured out of the rain barrel. After shaking himself clean like a wet dog, he took time to regain his bearings. Ryutsume held Edge at his side, staring up...and promptly freaked out.

"Oh crap! I launched myself outside!"

Then another realization hit him.

"Oh crap! Kokuza's taking on hordes of flesh golems by himself and Valda's wide open!"

Ryutsume then took notice of the hoards of golems beating on the doors to Valda's home...and Geck/Kurio wailing through them.

"Oh crap! There's more down here! Hey, wait, is that Kurio?" his free hand covered his eyes so he could focus on his old teammate, assaulting the flesh golems. "That is him! I think. And he's not crazy! I better go help him!"

With a mighty swing, Ryutsume brought up Edge steadfast and pointed it at the enemy, "Onward!" he cried.

...and then Edge broke in half.

It took a while for it to sink in. Obviously the force of Bash Rocketting so many times or performing ludicrous attacks caused it to finally break, for the third time in Ryutsume's life. As the blade and its pieces hit the ground, Ryutsume's face was still. His eye twitched...and then Ryutsume screamed, and tore at his hair in the loudest, most childish temper tantrum he could possibly make.

((Now to wait for Kokuza to stop being beaten up by the man, or possibly for Geck to respond.))

The Hokuten-man was getting tired, as would be expected from having to deal with such an unrelenting assault from both the out and the in. The golems never knew when to say die, and that resilience was wearing upon Kokuza's reserves, even so early in the fight. The wind-wall had been a desperate maneuver on Hokuten's part to knock out the opposition, but, with the golems still capable of movement, the man was left with few reserves, and fewer options.

The curse, and the Machinai, both wanted out.

"Huk... tnn!" the creatures choked out as their fleshy arms entangled the man, reaching to bind his arms and pull him to the floor with the dead weight of their broken bodies. The whipchain staff was the first thing to be pulled away by one of the meaty appendages before the creatures were upon him; swinging their limbs like clubs in the only fashion they knew how to use them.

(( Mmm... Should have built that one with a brain, Cletus. domokun ))

((yeesh, where'd everyone go?))

((Bam, here we are.))

Valda did not care for the wave of wind screeching towards her, nor for the golems that ravaged her shop. There was only the chant. It was her main concern, and all that occupied her mind.

While she did her concentrating, however, Heidern and Spiegel were more concerned with what was happening around them. With a great swipe, Heidern's fan collided with Kokuza's air wave. Sweat fell from his forehead and his eyes shut tight, making sure the wave did not disturb the Mistress.

Spiegel took this time to scratch a magic symbol in the ground with his claws hastily. From the eyes of one unversed in magic, it resembled a cave-drawing of an ox swirling. Only time would tell what manner of mayhem Spiegel would unleash.

Electricity began to coarse through the Mistress as she droned on with her chant, forming her hands in a cup-shape and raising them to her front. Slowly and surely, as if moving a great boulder, her arms moved and arched back. She had a lock on the cursed blade, and there was no stopping her now. For Kokuza's...no, the world's sake, this had to succeed.

((That would be me. I'm a just check Ryu's post here and then I'll get right on it.))

Valda's magic was wrought with care and prescision, and under better times might have extracted a single hair from a moving fly without its knowledge, but removing the Machinai proved nigh impossible.

At first, Valda could feel the hilt as it slowly withdrew from Hokuten's body. It was just at the base of the blade when everything went dreadfully wrong.

Downstairs, the combatands heard a deep THUD that shook Valda's house to its foundations. An evil wind swept down the stairs and chilled everyone to their core.

Valda was repelled against the wall. When she regained her wits, the crumpled and shattered husks of the golems lay strewn around the floor, two wholly imbedded in the timber walls, and an unclear number simply torn to shreds.

Hokuten, or a shadow of what he was minutes prior stood awkwardly, his had lolled back. Protruding from a raw gouge in his chest was the dark, crimson-stained length of the machinai, wrenching itself out inch by horrific inch.

Hokuten's armoured hand reached out limply and siezed the blade at its hilt, drawing it out with an earsplitting scrape of bone and iron. Dark blood spilled freely from his wound, but his mind was dead to its body.

He lurched forward, his head thrown sickeningly to and fro, limp arm dragging the wet blade through a lake of red. A quiet burbling could be faintly heard coming from the sword as it fed from the blood-slicked floor.

Comatose! blaugh

(( gonk ))