Breaking and Re-entering

[Whatevr89532]

Lyra looks at Fox, who shrugs apologetically. "Not all of my memories are there, so I didn't remember setting this up. This was mostly just the result of accident and impulse."
"Well, that sword has a very strong ward against anyone Crimson-touched, which includes both of us, so we can't even get close to the hilt. And it'd be a mess to try and untangle." Looking back at Fox: "Did you bring anyone else with you?"
"Just Raleigh; I needed his help to get inside. But--"
"Yeah, he has so much other legendary stuff he'd probably just throw the sword in a big pile, take what he wants for the same pile, and just ignore the house. Did he leave?"
"He went in that girl's dreams." Fox indicates the fox-girl about the time she starts whimpering.
"...Well that doesn't sound good." The witch walks up to the former-armor, kneeling over.
"It is pretty strange. I knocked her unconscious, I thought maybe for long enough to get you to come here and hopefully convince her not to attack me anymore, but then she just seemed to go into normal sleep instead."
"Hmph. Let's see if we can get him out anyway, maybe he has a suggestion." Lyra holds a hand over the girl's head, producing a soft bluish glow in the palm of the hand. She cats a spell which makes the target feel like they're being splashed by a bucket of cold water, but without actually making the target wet, in an effort to wake her.

[Raleigh]

*Raleigh's head pops up from inside the armor girl appearing similar to a spirit or ghost at the moment.* Hey Lyra. Welcome back. Did you guys know you have some sort of entity in this armor trying to drive it crazy? At least that is my assumption given the scenario it is making her live through. Anyway, did you need some advice on something?

[Whatevr89532]

Lyra pauses the casting of her spell on encountering a Raleigh head. She and Fox exchange a brief glance. "Well, which one was she?"
"Ahh, the..shadow-fighting one, with the naginata. I think you fought it once in combat training."
"Oh yeah.." She nods. "Well, anything unusual?"
"It was worn by a few legendary warriors on both sides of morality before I acquired it. Absorbed some of their essence, which is made it easier to give it some powers based on each of them. Since the blast of crimson seems to have combined its animacy and skills with its personality, maybe some of those essences didn't agree with the new personality?"
"It could be an unrelated incident that just happened to coincide with her first dream, too," says Lyra, shrugging. And then she casts the cold-water spell. "We're trying to figure out who to give the wishing stone sword and house to, since Goggles seems reluctant to take it and none of us can, but--no offense--not you, either."

[xGoggles]

"I see..." she looks back at the sword with the wishing stone, sure it still seems offbeat to be their master and that of the entire house... but still having felt the connection, it also felt partly like a responsibility now. Besides abandoning a given task didn't feel like a suitable option to take.

The fox-girl immediately wakes up, her eyes all teary, screaming "No! Oyoki stop!", before snapping out of it, realizing it was all a dream? (Now depending how much Fox still remembers of Wolf of travelling to the dimension where he received the dragon-armor from, and also depending on how much he learned from the history there, the name 'Oyoki', mind sound familiar, at least in tale sort of way)
Looking around in a panicked state, "No no noo! She is free, I have to go back, I have to stop her!"

Goggles confused by the former-armor's panic attack and all the jabbering, then looks over to Raleigh, "Did you say an entity? Other than yourself, right?"

[Whatevr89532]

Lyra stands up, seeing the girl's panicked state and naturally linking it to Raleigh's mention of a foreign entity. "Hey Wolf--"
"I'm..calling myself Fox, for...reasons."
"--Well, whoever. What universe ID was the armor from?"
"Ah..five-A-thirteen." He nods, remembering.
"Lexica." With a faint computer-like 'doo-ding' noise, a small hologram-looking depiction of a pair of blue eyes appears next to her. "Keyword search universe J-five-A-thirteen: name 'Oyoki', summarize for truth."
A female computer-generated-sounding voice says, "Searching," and the hologram disappears. Whatever Lexica is, it pores through anything and everything from the armor's home universe ever published in print--history, legends, poems, songs--and even any sufficiently established oral traditions, for information about a person named 'Oyoki', attempting to construct the most likely true story of a prominent being going by that name.

"J?" Fox asks.
"I made up my own organization system, more Darwinic than your journal's kinda Linnaean one. But I can't keep track of all the renames myself. Didn't you say this girl was trying to kill you earlier?"
The witch looks at the former-armor again. "Hey, look at me. You recognize me?" She would remember a girl much shorter and in just about every way smaller, same color hair but that also in a considerably shorter style. This woman's face, however, matches pretty much exactly with the Lyra the armor would remember.

((Sorry for the large block of self-RP in this, gonna try and cut back on that.))

[xGoggles]

(( It's fine really. And sorry for the delays... ))

After taking some time to cool off, trying to calm down and keep her mind in order, the fox-girl's animated shadow detaches itself from the surface and becomes semi-solid again. Still rather stressed she takes the time carefully look over Lyra and does eventually recognizes her as one of her former owners, "Yes, Mistress Lyra, I do remember you." She gets up slightly, to then put herself in kneeling position, giving Lyra a respectful bow, "Please forgive me for failing to withhold the intruders..."
She frowns and looks Lyra directly in the eyes giving a very concerned look, "Unfortunately there are more important matters at hand... It appears I'm under the effects of an ancient incurable curse, that should normally have no effect on me.." Giving a stern look at Fox for a moment then back to talking to Lyra, "This body, however, seems to be an adequate target for the curse, and I can already feel its influences taking over me..."
The shadow starts to move its naginata, "Even as I would have longed to fight this curse head-on, I can't risk the price of losing that battle... My duty is to protect you and this world..." the shadow-weapon lowers its blade near the fox-girls throat, "I can't allow myself to become a tool for her escape! Please allow me to stop my fate and so Oyoki's as well..." she begs Lyra.

((Check your PM for what info Lexica can find ;3 ))

[Whatevr89532]

Lyra holds up her hands in a 'stop' expression, looking a bit distressed at the thought of a new person killing themselves right in front of her. "Whoa there, let's not be hasty.." Fox keeps a close eye on the situation, but doesn't make a move just yet. He does glance back a couple of times to check on Goggles's state at the moment.
With a similar "doo-ding" noise to before, the holographic eyes appear near her. The same computerish female voice as before states, "Error: Some documents intentionally sealed against normal probing methods. Further authorization required to override these seals. Available information: Kitsune-equivalent race are extinct in relevant universe. Legends suggest one 'Oyoki', possessing one tail, was either powerful or clever enough to have caused extinction. Powers include dark ritual, summoning, talisman based abilities. High agility and speed suspected. Unknown origin and endpoint. Entity not likely present in relevant universe."
"Interesting..." Lyra taps her chin. "Please tell me everything you know about this curse. I already have a better idea than suicide, and your information will help."

[xGoggles]

Goggles carefully listening to what the former-armor had to say. Looking towards the sword, she thought maybe the wishing stone could help if everyone fully understood the issue they were dealing with.

"Back when I was the property of my third master, I was able to witness a military debriefing about the curse, the sensory elites of the nation were able to pick up this global curse that would effect anyone and anything with foxfolk blood in them. They ironically called it 'the black aura of forgiveness'. A curse of that magnitude could only be managed by a special dark ritual, which would have included a massive amount of life sacrifice and a seal of the divine. They said the only way to undo such a thing was to do a reverse ritual with the same amount of offering... ", She pauses for a moment, then continues with bit of sadness in her tone, "Back then we witnessed countless of kitsune refugees get corrupted, become empty shells to serve under her, without the need of turning them undead first... They turned against us, the strong ones kept on fighting, the weak were slain or she used them as offering for her evil schemes..."
She lowers her head in regret, "We were ordered to put down any kitsune we found, corrupted or not yet... We weren't going to let our people suffer for what the kitsune had done to themselves."
At this point, she wasn't even able to face Fox anymore, mostly because of shame and regret for what she had done; she wasn't even supposed to feel these emotions back as an armor.
"When great sage Ozakima was able to finally defeat her for the fourth time, while we destroyed any remaining revival charms and followers, her aura-curse ceased to exist and unable to influence any new fox people, even though there weren't any native ones left at that point... Only later on, when some of other dimension came along, we truly had proof that the curse wasn't effecting anyone new anymore. But... anyone that already came in touch with the aura still had the curse. It didn't take long for the law to forbid any type of resurrection of a kitsune, in fear of her finding a way back.", she sighs, "It appears that, since I came in contact with the aura back then, it remained dormant until it could find a body to do its effects on... Like a virus it infiltrated my being, slowly corrupting it. I can already feel parts of my memory slipping away and her control over me become stronger. Please, we have to hurry!"

[Whatevr89532]

Fox seems to relax a little as it seems self-harm becomes less imminent. "Thank you for telling me that," says Lyra with a smile. "Now we can start to do something about it. Lexica: Backup and restore, willpower upgrade."
"Commencing."
Lexica scans the armor-girl's mind at every point in time since she became a person, detecting any signs of Oyoki's having altered them, and from this point in time onwards it undoes those alterations: Destroyed memories return; changed memories are un-changed, fabricated memories are purged. It continues to work in real-time, fixing memories twice as fast as Oyoki can break them. It also provides a direct, massive boost to the girl's willpower, allowing her much more capacity to resist any attempts that Oyoki makes to influence her behavior or actions.

"Now, this is a temporary measure," Lyra explains as it starts to take effect. "It requires active upkeep, which means lots of processing power, and I need that processing power for other things. But it will give us time to make a good plan. This.." She holds up in her hand a seemingly ordinary sugar cookie. "..Is a splitting cookie. A Muffinville special; if there are two people in a person it pulls the entire extra person out into a separate body. Of course we don't want Oyoki running around free," she makes a motion and the cookie disappears; it was actually an illusory image of a cookie rather than a real one, just in case. "But--there's a chamber in this house inside of which nothing supernatural works. No magic, no superpowers, no reality bending, warping, or breaking. A person's physical capabilities in that chamber are restricted to what a perfectly normal human of their appearance would be. You could eat the cookie in that environment, Oyoki comes out, and I'll have a little chat with her." The way she says 'little chat' sounds very threatening. "The only problem is you'd still be in there with her. So...depending on what happens, risk of daeth instead of definite death."
"That won't work," says Fox, crossing his arms and looking slightly displeased.
"Oh? Why not?"
"At least two reasons. One: AI in a box problem. The other one's just obvious. I bet even Goggles knows what it is."

[xGoggles]

Feeling the effects to hold off the curse take action, the former-armor becomes very relieved, almost to the point to go into a hug, if the whole feeling wasn't all to foreign to her; so instead gives a respectful deep bow "Thank you Mistress Lyra, I'm forever grateful"
Her shadow retreats its weapon into its shadow-self, moves past the fox-girl and delivers the thankful hug instead, with or without full consent of its mistress.

Giving Fox a questioning look, Goggles stands up and says "I'm not sure how many of these reasons you'd define as 'just obvious' but I can come up with some issues of concern..."
She shows her hand and puts up one finger, "One... And forgive me for not knowing the magic and such that comes to play here; Would the cookie even work in that chamber?"
Pulling up the second finger, "This Oyoki already seems like a huge problem to deal with and--" Getting cut off by the fox-girl, "That won't be a problem, on equal-ground I'll put that monster to justice!" Goggles shakes her head, "My point; reason two: Miss honor-bound over here..."
The two former-objects starts exchanging angry looks at each other.

[Whatevr89532]

Fox nods at all the reasons Goggles gives. "The one I was thinking of was that the cookie won't work. It's magical in nature."
"Shoot, you're right." Lyra gently returns the shadow's hug with one arm. "Not really any way to make just the cookie work either, huh?"
"No. I erased my memory of how to create the chamber after it was built, and it's designed to self-destruct if anyone tries to tamper with it or reverse-engineer it. A zone of total mundanity is a very dangerous thing to have available, I just thought it was necessary to contain Feral if I ever caught him."
"..Which you never did," Lyra adds. "Hmm."

"...Well, I can't get as diverse or powerful of coverage as the chamber, but I believe I can set up a holding pen back in my dimension to negate magical and super-powers, stabilize reality, just with a bunch of wards and spells, and still allow the cookie to work in it." She crosses her arms, giving the fox-girl a slightly stern expression. "I'm sure this Oyoki is not gonna make any fight with you, or...any fight at all really, a fair one, though, so you'd better be ready to fight as dirty as she does if it comes to that."

[xGoggles]

Goggles still holding up her hand, lifting an other finger "Reason three, even locking her up... that still doesn't help with removing the curse, does it? Will you have enough power to manage your plan while your system is keeping her changing I rather don't want to deal with?..."
She looks down at the sword and so the wishing stone, "Do you think you could remove the curse if I wished for it?"

The former-armor stand up, feeling rather insulted that her mistress would suggest her to fight dirty, even though besides a small grimace on her face, she tries her best not to show it. Her shadow however quickly releases the hug and stands up while crossing its arms, then turns around to put its back to Lyra and stomps its foot on the ground holding its chin up high. "I won't lower myself to that level, I'll show her the strength of hard work, discipline and honor!"

[Whatevr89532]

"Oh, but it does help with the curse," Lyra explains. "The curse is Oyoki, after all, in the sense that it's tied intrinsically enough to her identity that she can control someone under it, so it gets split out of the victim and into the new Oyoki-body; depending on how it works it might turn back into free magical energy in her or something, I dunno. If you mean the larger curse back on the homeworld, I believe there's time to figure that out later. Lexica isn't me; she's more like a computer I built, if that helps, and her processing power isn't what I'd use for the wards. I'm much better off casting and maintaining those myself." Turning back to the naginata-weilding girl she shrugs, saying, "Well, I can't force you."

The sword responds: I certainly could, but it might take quite a large cost to just dispel the whole thing all at once. Easier if I were on the world itself, easier to channel it all into a single thing, for instance, or easier still to make something that absorbs the curse out of objects or people you use it on, though it could eventually get overloaded.

"So!" Lyra interjects again. "In case Oyoki gains power from eating memories or something despite the memories being replaced, we shouldn't delay on doing this any more than we have to. Do you need any help getting to the control room of this place to shut off the rest of the security before I head out?"
Fox starts to say no, then pauses, looking to Goggles to see if she'd prefer a convenient shortcut rather than whatever further tests lie between here and the "goal".

[xGoggles]

"You can Mistress... my loyalty is bigger than my sense of honor, but I'd respect you not abuse it.", she then looks towards Fox, a mix of hate, love and shame; quickly turning away, but vaguely speaks in his general direction, "So I can presume, this fox-male is allowed to stay here Mistress Lyra?"

She notices Fox looking at her, "Oh, of course, I'm the Heir here now... Let's see... Wishing Stone, I wish for the security system to not consider us as intruders anymore and go in the 'normal' mode it should be in when the.. owners are at home. Or at least show me to turn it off or register us or something." This whole 'Heir-thing was still weird, having property... At least she was more useful now with it, yeah, that is how she should think about it, it's an upgrade and extra feature to her kit. More in tone with her object-like logic, she gives Fox a happy smile and a thumbs up.

[Whatevr89532]

Hmm...I think I can achieve that in a cheap enough way to use just ambient mana. Hold me perfectly steady for a moment. In a visible swirl of space, a small section of the zone surrounding the blade of the Wishing Stone sword seems to be replaced by a section of metal and circuitry with a slot for that sword, in such a way that the sword is inserted into the slot. This is basically some sort of fourth-dimensional space folding being used to just put the "key" in the "keyhole" without anyone having to walk there. Once the section of space from the security control room makes an audible "powering-down" sort of noise and the floors in neighboring rooms stop glowing red, the warped space returns to normal, the house's security system off. But...Goggles may feel very slightly drained after this, like her link to her phylactery is temporarily not quite as strong as usual.

"Ooh, very clever," Lyra grins. Turning to the armor-girl: "Yes, he's allowed. Her too," she adds, pointing to Goggles. She thinks that clearing up the Fox = Wolf business can wait until this more important matter is resolved. "Now, let's go." She points to a spot near her and space seems to zipper itself open into an oval-shaped hole large enough for Lyra or anyone else in the room to step through; whatever's on the other side of the portal is obscured for the moment by a white glow. Gesturing to the new person, she says, "After you, please."

Fox takes a few steps away from the portal and toward Goggles, as if he plans to speak with her after the others leave.

((I'll produce a splinter thread and link to it with my next post after armor girl (I swear we'll name her soon!) steps through the portal.))