A Splitting Decision

[Whatevr89532]

((Following events in this thread...))

In a pocket dimension belonging to a powerful witch named Lyra, a girl who used to be an animated suit of armor appears. She appears, specifically, in a small rectangular room: Concrete walls, floor, ceiling, no windows or doors to speak of. The magically attuned would also notice a large number of wards against magic, superpowers, so on so forth placed just outside those walls, which are almost certainly strong enough to make it very hard for said girl to manifest her shadow as more than a normal shadow or use any other magic-like powers. The only thing in the room besides her is a small square wooden table near its center, on which sits a paper plate with what looks like a sugar cookie on it.

Lyra is not in the room, but her voice soon echoes in it: "Hey, don't panic. To expedite things, I had the portal send you straight to the pen, and send me where I am now. The cookie's on the table in front of you, please make whatever mental preparations you feel you need to and then eat it."

[xGoggles]

The fox-girl frowns a little, "I see... I trust you have everything prepared already? May I ask though, how come you were able to have this put up so quickly?", she doesn't wait for an answer however and starts moving towards the table. The sooner she does this the less time Oyoki has to prepare herself. She can't wait to finally face this witch without her magic and tricks; even without her own infused powers, her combat experience and technique will be sufficient enough to put Oyoki to justice.
She closes her eyes and takes a few low and deep breaths, something she knew her former masters always did before preparing for battle. Focusing herself to be clear of mind and act with no hesitation.
Her eyes open, her determination as powerful as the might of a dragon; she was ready! Grabbing the cookie puts it in her mouth in one go, chucking it to pieces with her teeth as if the battle has already started.

[AmbushCat]

((OOC: There's going to be a lot of ham and cheese in this conflict, I just know it. ))

[Whatevr89532]

Lyra explains: "I went back in time to do it. Or, more precisely, your portal sent you to a time a while after when my portal sent me, so I had time to set everything up."

The table and plate disappear when she takes the cookie, just as if they'd never been there in the first place. The cookie itself--well, for a person who's been an object's first taste of food it isn't bad. It tastes sweet and soft and warm like a freshly-baked sugar cookie should, but it also has the small complexity of some sort of cherry flavoring throughout, which only seems to enhance the normal sweetness of the cookie. On swallowing the whole thing, it starts to take effect.
First, Oyoki and everything that is her or hers--magic, influence, the curse, identity, mental or psychic effects on the girl, so on so forth--gets pulled out of her and into a small sphere of light a foot off to her side. Then the sphere expands up and down and outward, to Oyoki's normal shape, and in a small shimmer of light becomes Oyoki in her usual body and clothes. From the newly-split fox-girl's perspective it feels like one instant she was inside of the girl wherever, and then the very next instant she's standing there in the room.

Oyoki will undoubtedly sense all of the wards surrounding the room, and find it oppressively difficult to do any sort of magic or supernatural actions at all; even things like written charms and seals become just ordinary words on paper. There is a particularly strong seal specifically against her using her curse or dark aura to attempt to re-create an influence on the other girl in the room, which seems impossible to do anything about while all the other wards and seals are active. But...there are a few wards seemingly upholding the ban on magic use that seem a touch weak or have flaws in them that could be exploited, as if they were a bit carelessly put together. If Oyoki is powerful enough to exert some magic even under all the wards, she may be able to overpower or subvert some of those with some work.

What both girls may not immediately notice, especially with the newly-split one concentrating on all those wards and seals, is that from the instant Oyoki appears, both of them are beginning to lose just a tiny bit of height...

[xGoggles]

And so indeed the fox-girl know and Oyoki appears. Having heard about the plan, from the former-armor's memory, however. She didn't have much time to prepare anything specific for this, and given that the wards were disrupting any form of magic or supernatural, her options were very limited.

As soon Oyoki's body was fully assembled the former-armor didn't hesitate to use her naginata, to try to strike down the trickster. Because Oyoki had no ways to magically quell or repel the attack, she instead dodges it by jumping in the air, then uses her feet to push herself off on the former-armor's face, landing on her hands and doing an extra flip to create some distance. Even when there was no magic around to enhance her speed, she was still rather agile from her body alone.
"Thanks for releasing me, saved myself a lot of power than doing it on my own. But don't think a silly trap like this can stop me, I have been in worse~ " she lets out a small giggle, "And rookie witch, next time, don't tell your plan in advance, you two are as predictable as an honest saint."

Getting heavily annoyed the former-armor starts to catch up to Oyoki, who answers with a spit?... Regardless, the former-armor pushes herself back using the pole of the naginata just in time to avoid it. Considering her reputation, even a spit of her's seems like a likely threat to be cautious of.
"So this place is not very magical, good thing I have a friend that just adores that~ Please welcome our 'Little Bonsii', be gentle, it is a bit shy", what appears out of the spit, a little seed starts to rapidly grow and spread around. Besides the cute nickname that Oyoki gave for it, this was no laughing matter. This particular plant-like entity was only known in ancient myths and correctly called 'The Roots of Evil', a being very dangerous for its existing qualities could even threaten likes of gods if not careful. The plant's dark like charcoal branches and roots, grew out rapidly, being made of a strange void with anti-magical effects. its use was simple to understand, however, being immune to magic itself, it's seemingly endless void-like properties would in a way gravitational pull on most existing surrounding magic towards it, usually meaning draining the magical energies, changing targeting spell's trajectory towards it or simply make magical effect go overcharge just to maintain little effect. The less magic there eventually comes, the easier it is for its inner void to grow and so does the plant.
Good thing the former-armor was able to dodge the seed, because when it came to touching, any type of energy, including life, can easily be drained away as well by it.

The room was very small, however, as the animated roots grew like wooden tentacles begin to find the walls and bring cracks by force on it likely already damaging a few wards if they were close or in the walls; the former-armor tries to knock back those going in her direction with her naginata. Even Oyoki was especially careful to stay away as far as possible from her 'friend'; given the pace, it was growing, she likely had a plan to stop this creature before it would become too big to handle.

[Whatevr89532]

Oyoki will find it requires quite a lot of energy to summon the tree-creature, some fifteen times the usual amount required to perform the trick, thanks to some strong anti-summoning, anti-minion, etcetera wards, but summon it she does anyway. It will, however, find it rather difficult to get to the wards past the walls, as their thick concrete extends several feet out, followed by several layers of increasingly more difficult-to-break but mundane materials, ending in an outright adamantium shell.
"Oh dear, a plant, whatever shall I do~." Lyra...doesn't sound particularly worried. Within seconds of the plant-thing appearing, some liquid appears directly touching every inch of its surface. Said liquid is like a souped up weed-B-gone, scientifically formulated in some futuristic world to poison and choke out even the most resilient of plants and/or plant monsters on contact. If the thing has anything resembling the physiology of a plant, those parts of it will rapidly wither and die without help.

Meanwhile, the shrinking of both girls continues and starts to speed up. One inch, two inches, three, four...and it's not just height. Their respective busts start to get smaller, their curves diminishing slowly; more importantly, physical capabilities like strength and agility take a tiny hit, and all kinds of magic or special powers, including Oyoki's ability to summon things or imitate techniques, start to get intrinsically harder for them to perform. And already, that which is causing these changes has started to root itself deeply in their beings, enough to taint any magic-based attempt at stemming or reversing them to instead accelerate the effects.

[xGoggles]

Providing the seed, wasn't part of any summoning that would require magic to do so; she just always kept a seed of it in the back of her mouth in case she found herself incapable of doing anything else. The seed that grew after her command was able to grow on its own inner source of null-void-energy.
The entity's plant-like structure was more an outer layer that got intentionally translated this way to fit the reality of this dimension, as it's true shape is too abstract to work by reality's rules. Even though it was scientific and not magic, the liquid wasn't very effective either, the already dark charred bark might have a few chunks falling off of it before just an other layers grow to replace it.
The chamber did become very crowded at this point, as the creature wasn't even close to breaking the walls apart to create more room or escape.
But that wasn't the reason it was brought here, no, all the magic strain it caused on the surrounding wards, gave Oyoki an opening to use her magic little less restrained. She gestures her hand and snatch up and already fully written talisman from the air. "Just a little time stop and I'll have enough time to crack this box open-- ", but before the talisman could take in effect, it was ripped and pulled out of her hand to against the wall behind her, all by naginata that was thrown from the former-armor, just in time. But having no weapon to defend herself anymore a root pinned her down, pulling out her life-force. Oyoki didn't have much time to complain as the entity was already so big, there was no place to stand without touching it.

Quickly Oyoki spoke up "Bonsii Harvest!", suddenly all movement stops from the creature, fully frozen, a purple spark travels from every branch simultaneously towards a certain point near her; producing was looks like a dark purple peach but like a miniaturized version of it. What happened was, the entity went back to its seed-like containment, leaving behind the charred wood exterior; only a small fragment of magic not pulled in its inner void was instead bundled up into a single eatable energy source of corrupted magic. After she plucks it off, the roots just dissolve in a pile of ashes that slowly vanish into thin air, leaving no trail like it was all an illusion. Well besides the destruction that it caused from the force on the wall and draining of energies around. The former-armor still had some energy to stand up, but looked severely drained from just touching the creature for a few seconds.
The fruit, unlike Muffinville's fruit, shouldn't have any transformative elements to it. All it contained was the seed from before and a healthy dose of corrupt magic with a signature unrecognizable for the wards to counter, giving the one to eats it a small pool of energy for special types of casting. Not giving anyone the chance to steal this from her she instantly put it in her mouth the moment she plucked it off. Chewing and placing the seed back to where it was earlier.

Noticing that she was shrinking, but not in general size, but more like a reverse-age fashion. "Age magic.. really? Look, this might work on a nine-tails to shrink off some tails, but using it on me is just pathetic... tush, tush" she says shaking her head very disappointed. Producing an other talisman but this time with her dark corrupted energy, unrecognized by the wards, the writing on it roughly translated to 'Errodd', "Watch all your hard work just wither away, hahaha~", laughs out and waits... and waits... "Hm... Hmmm!... HUH?! Why why isn't it working?!", she looks at her talisman, besides the writings on it are misspelled, it looked as if someone had drawn a smiley-face on the sun symbol! Something messed with the talisman's creation before it could be used in action?

[Whatevr89532]

"Ah ah ah~." Before Oyoki gets a chance to eat the fruit, it disappears from her hand and from the room, taken away by the same effect which removed the table and plate, and which produced the super weed-B-gone earlier--which is, in fact, technological rather than magical in nature; the timing of the disappearance is such that she bites down on air. But she probably still has enough magic to attempt the talisman thing anyway. On top of that, every time Oyoki uses something that the wards don't initially recognize, they adjust themselves to prevent her from using any magic resembling it again, at least not without a significantly higher cost. Perhaps they're a little cleverer than they first seemed.

Suddenly, the room floods with the light of a bright red glow, for of course the fruity flavors in the cookie the combined person ate earlier was concentrated Che-Cherry juice, and this new glow is an overwhelming amount of supplemental red energy to help along its effects. If the changes were getting faster before, they're really speeding up now, and resisting is that much harder. It doesn't seem either source of color energy is affecting the girls' clothes, either, causing them to start getting a little too big on them as they shrink smaller. Curiously enough, the naginata against the wall starts shrinking too, its pole getting shorter and its blade smaller, as if it's trying to stay usable by its smaller-sized owner. The effect on Oyoki's most recent talisman is the first hint of the energy's effect on the girls' powers in general: Rapidly, one ability after another starts either failing to work or changing to a cute, utterly harmless version of itself.

Also, a senzu bean appears inside the former-armor's mouth, quickly revitalizing all of her lost energy. The wards seem to allow it to function just for her, for this brief moment.

((Hopefully the fruit disappearing isn't too godmodish. It's something Lyra would definitely do, and should be within her control of the room as far as I'm aware.))

[xGoggles]

The former-armor all revitalized couldn't help but notice that she was shrinking too, figuring this was more Oyoki's doing than the room's. She didn't hesitate when as soon the plant creature's wooden frame disappeared, to charge up towards Oyoki; her speed fairly diminished and the baggy clothes were also making moving around in them slightly more difficult, giving her opponent enough time to gather enough energy to try a counter.
Oyoki finding that even her next following talisman wasn't made properly either; she throws them both in the air and says "Paper-piece offering; Summon: Jade Feather Tengu cloak!", two pins from out of nowhere pierce into the paper talismans and violently discharge both in a small burst of flames, using this conversion to summon a more advanced magical item. This cloak, when worn, was supposed to remove all senses of the surrounding on the wearer, rendering them fully undetectable to anything, magic included. Even the use of true sight will likely only see a big smudge in the place the person would be. Though given Lyra's smart ward, they'll likely find a way around it given enough time. But.. the feathers on the cloak weren't supposed to be small chicken feathers either... Maybe the cloak isn't having the intended effect it was supposed to have?
Oyoki jumps out of the way of the former-armor's attack, even if she was invisible, moving around was still her best option. "Oyoki, stop running, you coward!", the former-armor yells as her opponent dodged her punch; and since it was back in reach, she tries to pull her naginata back out of the wall, bit taken back that it somehow shrunk too.
Meanwhile, Oyoki maintains an hand-seal, to focus her chi to repel any foreign magical influences from her own body.

(( No worries, it's fine, with that just needed an excuse to still summon up a talisman~ Also SENZU BEAN~! ))

[Whatevr89532]

The armor-girl has no trouble getting the smaller naginata out of the wall, as it seems to certainly be sized, balanced, and weighted perfectly for her smaller, weaker self, and perhaps the blade's shrinkage made it a bit less buried in there at the same time. But it doesn't seem like it'll be much longer until there's no blade left at all. The girl with the naginata is actually shrinking slower than her opponent now, making her the taller of the two at least for the moment.

Oyoki's chi is already deeply tainted by the red energy from the consumed Che-Cherry* from now, and so focusing it has the unexpected effect of shrinking and depowering her faster; the attempt to repel foreign magic works against the red glow of the room but the red in her just lacks the property of being foreign anymore. Between powering up the red in her and repelling the red from outside, the end result is basically a wash. The cloak works mostly as intended at first but as the red energy's effects continue it rapidly loses effectiveness and starts becoming too big for her just like her regular clothes are, making movement without tripping more difficult.

((*Chi-Cherry? Hah.))

[xGoggles]

Realizing now that it wasn't just her, but also Oyoki that was shrinking; her opponent even worse than herself, it becomes more apparent to the former-armor that this was likely an area of effect influence of the room rather than a curse cast on her. Thought she wouldn't really agree with the method to turn them both younger, it was obvious now her opponent had the short end of the stick; given that Oyoki's cloak now wasn't making her invisible but more like a blurry silhouette that was very easy to trace.
With a look at the blade of her naginata, she hurries after Oyoki, as the time was limited for her weapon to still be effective, "It is over Oyoki, You have nowhere left to hide!"

Oyoki trips on her own clothes, losing focus as she was not used to any of these effects; disregarding the wards it made no sense at all for her magic to mess up like that, even curses of misfortune would be easily deflected by her dark chi alone. For some reasons she started to feel small and weak, nothing she wanted went her way and now with the former-armor running at her again, clearly able to see her even though she was supposed to be undetectable... She started to feel something she hadn't felt for over a millennium... Panic~
"No! Stay back! Be gone!", even though this wouldn't really help her get out of the room, just getting rid of the of the former-armor could relieve some stress to think; so she charged up one of her few innate forms of magic, the fox-fire, and attempts to fire a burst of destructive flames that could easily put ablaze a room nine-thousand times larger than this, if she was still in her original form.
Lucky Oyoki herself had inborn immunity to any fire-magic.

[Whatevr89532]

And...there is a big puff of pink smoke out from Oyoki's position! It smells flowery and sweet, has no heat to it, and doesn't even seem to choke someone up if they breathe it in. But...perhaps to Oyoki's surprise, when the smoke clears the other girl is...gone? It seems like she's finally stopped shrinking, her powers totally converted to cute red-ized versions of themselves, her body physically nine, maybe ten years old at most, her voice high and squeaky and immature. In a brief blur of motion around her, her clothes suddenly get replaced, any items or equipment hidden within them taken along with, and she finds herself wearing a cute little kimono-dress thing and a new fox mask accessory that vaguely resembles the style of the one she wore before, but is decidedly mundane and unenchanted. After a bit longer, something resembling a full-length mirror, but which is totally intangible, appears in front of her, showing the new look.

--

On the other end, the former-armor sees the puff of smoke and maybe strikes at the center of it...but Oyoki is gone! Gone from the room, her senses, everything. Her clothes rearrange in a small motion of cloth into a slightly differently-styled dress that fits her new body, which is maybe twelve years old or so? The naginata's lost its edge and become something like a kiddie version of a quarterstaff in her hands; clothing and body-wise she looks like so without any glasses.

--

Lyra has pushed a button back in her control room to create a dimensional split. In one dimension, Oyoki; in the other dimension, the other girl. And then she moves on to having Lexica do a quick, deep scan of both girls' mind, body and soul, which doesn't actually read any specific information from the mind or soul but makes absolutely certain that Oyoki is Oyoki and the other girl is herself, one hundred percent. Just in case. Her waiting for this scan gives both of them a moment to react to what's just happened.

((Hopefully this isn't too quick for you, I felt like the changes had probably gone enough posts.))

[xGoggles]

"Huhh? Did I just evapowate her? Eh, this voice is annoying...", she pouts and gets up to looks herself over, just then her clothes also change. "Really, stopping here? Not even trying to make me unborn? What kind of witch are you?", she speaks up, still acting as full of herself as ever, partly trying to mask how frustrated she is for her powers not working properly.
When the mirror showed up it did strike a nerve though, how dare Lyra mock her in this state! She points her fingers towards the mirror and prepares another fire-bolt. Puff, pink smoke again. Now she was really getting mad!
Puff. Puff! Puff~! Over and over again, like she was trying to fire a barrage of blasts but nothing came out, but pink, flowery and sweet fumes.
Enough was enough, she will blow this place to bits and make Lyra regret this, even if it took all her chi, all her summons, and all her tricks and tools to do so. Sadly pretty much all of her attempts in this frustration were rendered rather ineffective at this point.

Oyoki is herself (well her adjusted self), and without her special seed or soul-bound connections to darker realms anymore, nothing else but her is still left in the room.

--

The little former-armor looks around surprised. Wondering where Oyoki went. She didn't blow herself up, did she? No.. if she wanted to do that it would likely take half the continent with her, the fox-girl assumed.
But that still didn't explain where her opponent was, however. She frowns, and starts to talk up hoping that Lyra would hear her, "Mistress Lyra, if you can hear me, may I ask what happened? Did we put an end to Oyoki?"
The former-armor not really bothered by her new appearance, she trusts if this was Lyra's doing, they'll know a way to let them return to their former self.

This fox-girl appears to be fully cleared of Oyoki's curse, however, the curse did leave what could be described as a big cavity in her mind and soul, which would make it relatively easy for any evil spirit or demon to try to fill in the absence of the curse. Other than that she looks fine and in good condition.

[Whatevr89532]

In Oyoki's chamber, after a moment, a comfy-looking couch appears next to her. Lyra's voice echoes within it: "Young lady..." Her ears perk up automatically at this phrase, and she finds brought to her mind the view of Lyra she'd seen back in the other girl's mind: Tall, full-figured, and more than anything else, an adult. And with this knowledge, and the tone of voice the witch uses now, it feels like she must obey the adult. It won't completely overwhelm her, but it takes a lot of will and energy and stubbornness to not at least pretend to obey a little bit. "Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about."

--

"Phew, okay." The older girl hears Lyra's voice, and then her surroundings sort of blur...and reshape themselves as a living room that might be in any ordinary house, complete with a comfy chair and couches and a wide-screen TV that's off just now. Lyra is standing in front of her. "She won't threaten anyone for a long while," she says with a generous smile. "I didn't expect her to do something that drained you, it looks like it picked up a little of the red from the fruit you ate." Her expression turns to a concerned frown. "It seems like she left behind some scars on the way out of you, which isn't ideal...but at least you're free now."

[xGoggles]

Oyoki panting and feeling exhausted as she pretty much unloaded any destructive ability she had available, just to see if she could break anything at all still at this point. The attempts were ineffective besides maybe doing a small crack to her ego.
As the couch appeared; wasting her energy wasn't going to help if her abilities weren't working like they should, so she might as well hear Lyra out, maybe strike a deal to get her powers back... and then make that witch regret ever crossing her!
Though the commanding way the adult told her to, did spark a fury in her, how dare she treat her like a child. Oyoki pouts and crosses her arms, reluctantly moving over and take a seat on the couch. Trap or not, it would barely make her situation any worse than it was now anyway.
After a brief moment of silence, she speaks up, "What do you want?"

--

Regardless of her body now, the former-armor does what she is used to and gives a thankful bow to her mistress, "You have my greatest gratitude, Mistress Lyra. I hope you have put her to a justified end."
Standing up again, looking over her new body and mostly her weapon, "I don't recall eating any fruit, nor do I see any battle-scars either... Is this 'body alteration' your doing or was it hers somehow?"