Undercover [Takeda, Mission]

[Seiji Dalton]

"And in another moment, down went Alice after it, never once wondering how in the world she was to get out again." Seiji recited as he looked down into the deep darkness of the recently uncovered catacombs. He'd been looking for work recently and, well, he found it. At last there seemed to be a point to his explorations. Things were moving forward and he felt confident about his skills now that the first major shadow had been defeated. He also had enough money to fund some new equipment for the nights when both Takeda and him explored or did Persona related stuff together. Part of him was excited, he hadn't yet seen his brother in action in any kind of one on one setting.

Smiling at the thought of getting to see his brother whoop some ass, he turned back towards the old beat up junker with its lights still on in the parking lot and pressed down on the red button of his walkie talkie. "Red cobra, this is the python reporting in. I've found the entrance to the catacombs and it's time for us to go down there and find an underground colony of molemen." He was joking of course, but his anger with his brother after being forced to watch that one cheap Superman movie with the mole people was through the roof. Ironically, they were looking for a shadow that was digging for something. A shadow with a purpose other than just terrorizing people around it...now that was a scary though, especially since the last one like that had nearly killed fifteen people pooling their efforts to kill it.

When his brother finally got there, he turned his attention to the catacombs entrance and stepped over the chain with a 'do not enter' sign. They were disturbing the dead but...better them than some kind of weird shadow. Seiji stuck to Takeda like super glue, hand gripping his sword and ready to attack in case they found any small fry shadows on their way to the digging shadow.

[Takeda]

"Yeah, yeah, red pill, blue pill, let's go down the rabbit hole and shit."

Finally, it seemed like that board chock full of post-it notes in the Junk Dealer's shop had paid off with something other than numbers to shadow phone-sex lines. Ever since the giant shadow in the cemetery had went down, things looked to be on the up and up for the the duo. Takeda had found some drinking buddies to make things more tolerable, he had finally figured out how to best guide Faust's attacks without the need of an aiming peripheral, and even better, they somehow had a plasma screen television hanging in the living room, though the two had no idea how in the hell it had got there. Clutching his browning tightly in his right hand, Takeda pointed the gun down into the darkness, taking a flashlight from one of his pockets.

Now, bullets didn't seem to be doing much in the way of well...anything, to shadows as of late. Literally the only times his pistol had come in handy had been situations wherein lesser shadows had attacked him, or when he needed to blast away at an old 90's computer that was more sturdy than a block of solid concrete. Jesus Christ, every time he thought back to fighting that thing, he was only ever reminded of how much he hated DOS. With the colony of the mole-men, err...shadow tunnels dead ahead of them, Takeda looked back at Seiji, speaking in Japanese to him. "First we find out they can heal themselves from being shot sometimes, then we learn they can talk, what's next? Are we going to have to start worrying about the shadow terminator?" Humor was always a good way to ease the tension before going on little raids like this, so it nearly was constant to hear a little laughable banter here and there. Somehow he doubted that the shadows would need Rosetta Stone to understand him, but there was just a bit more comfort in speaking in english.

Alright, so the entire job revolved around finding a particular shadow that had been digging around for something in this den of the dead that laid beneath the streets of Mosaic East. "Seiji, got to thinking...you know how it just ripped itself up from the ground here? Maybe they got tunnels leading all the way out to the outer circle from here...could probably benefit from sealing it up while we're here." Whatever this thing was looking for had to be important to somebody, maybe they didn't want it found, maybe the junk lady wanted it on her shelf, or hell, maybe she was just trying to see who was the first person she could get killed. With his gun held aloft, and the flashlight in one hand, Takeda started to whistle a tune, which turned into him whispering the words back to Seiji...they were in the catacombs after all.

"Spooky scary skeletons, send shivers down your spine..."

[ChromaticTruthsayer]

You go down the path of the catacombs that you were told to go down. You were supposed to be looking for some sort of drilling shadow as you recall. And funnily enough, you can hear the distant sound of drilling. As you more closer to it, you finally encounter some shadows. They look tough, though.

Blood Tank

• Power Charge
• Gigantic Fist

Absorb: Repel: Null: Strike Rs: Wk: Elec
Steel Gigas

• Gigantic Fist
• Revolution

Absorb: Repel: Strike Null: Rs: Wk: Fire

[Seiji Dalton]

...shadows. Powerful shadows. Uncharacteristically powerful shadows given how most of the others were just weaklings and mayas. "Something's up here. And these are just the minions. Alright Takeda, you take Hulk Hogan and I'll take the t-" it shot a gigantic fist out of its cannon that took Seiji totally by surprise. Landing against a wall, the hit managed to do one thing very well: It pissed him off to the high heavens. Drawing his sword and watching it whizz with electricity, he charged right at a bloody tank, swinging wildly with his sword and cutting through it. Luckily for him, something he was doing worked, because the tank seemed to writhe in electrical pain. A tank writhing in pain...huh. Seiji didn't think he'd ever see that one. Focusing and not allowing the tank to get in another hit, he brought Sir Gareth out and the Persona bathed both it and the other shadow on bright light that seared them.

Not wasting any time, Sir Gareth followed this up with a burst of red energy, empowering both Seiji and Takeda with Tarukaja. Energized by his Persona, he roughly hacked at the tank again, his sword tearing deep into it. From his position atop the thing as its turret spun around, he saw it shoot a blast of something off. Seeing no attack afterword, Seiji worried that perhaps something big was coming. Whenever a shadow attacked but no one was hurt, it was prepping for something big. "Stop it, stop it no matter what you have to do, Gareth." He wasn't in the business of talking to his Persona often since it was, well, obviously just another side of himself, but he wanted to get the point across both for the knight and for Takeda. The turret turned with Seiji on top of it and faced Takeda.

Seeing no other choice, Sir Gareth jumped in front of the tank and took the full brunt of the attack. The pain brought Seiji to his knees but he fought through it. He wouldn't let the damn thing get another attack in. With Seiji on top and Gareth taking the sides, he began viciously attacking the tank. Its sturdy walls kept it from seeming affected for a while, but eventually Seiji's electric blade broke through and struck the thing's core. A whole mass of shadows jumped out of the thing and scurried away, too weak to fight now that their shell was gone.

Turning to Takeda and seeing how his own battle was going, Seiji listened and heard the ominous sound of the drilling.

[Takeda]

"Don't think they liked my singing, Seiji."

Now holy shit, here was something you didn't see every day. After having taken down the god damned tentacle monster from the black mass of the catacombs, what laid within the depths wasn't some eldritch abomination, no monstrous zombies...it was Hulk-motherfucking-Hogan a masked luchadore, and a tank. A. Tank. Whelp, at least now Takeda could say that he had seen it all. Seiji didn't even have to say a word, Takeda was going to be the one to kill the wrestler, and that was that, after all, it took up valuable air-time that could've been spent on something much more entertaining. Before he could even manage to summon up Faust to deal with the shadowmania that was running wild, the gigantic shadow wrestler threw a punch that would've cracked almost all of Takeda's ribs, as well as the air, if he hadn't  ducked beneath the blow and slid along the ground to get behind the wrestler. Like clockwork, his card materialized and started to descend, only to be shot by Takeda's browning. Nobody had time for the theatrics, killing these things was likely going to net them enough money to eat for a day or two, and on top of that, prevent the shadows from finding whatever it was that they hoped to discover in the catacombs, for a while at least. The bullet flew through the card, shattering it like little pieces of glass, going through towards the wrestler.  Now it went without saying that good old fashioned lead hadn't exactly been putting in work like Takeda hoped it would, only seeming to cause minor discomfort to most shadows at best, and heal them at their worst. The bullet headed on it's merry way to the bare-chested brawler, whilst a flash  light, followed by wisps of smoke signaled the arrival of Faust over Takeda's shoulder. Through the gunsmoke, a fireball soon joined the bullet, heating up the metal as it dove straight into the macho man's body.

Hunched over in pain, the shadow wrestler looked as if it was about to put the smackdown on Takeda for that, brother. Ironically enough for something that had absolutely no armor on it's body, the bullet seemed to have only sunk into the creature's rock hard pecs, not even hitting anything vital, but the fire? Now Agilao was really starting to pay off these days. With a strange gesture to both of it's ears, and pointing towards the ceiling in some sort of weird shadow casting ritual, the creature had enveloped itself in a strange sort of aura that seemed to affect Takeda as well. With no clue as to what the creature had done to him, or itself, Takeda readied himself to launch another combination of fire with some lead on the side, before seeing that the luchadore was coming at him like a wrecking ball freight train. Definitely a freight train. Had he been caught in the attack, it probably would've been the end for him, as the muscle man's sheer force from the charge was enough to leave a hole in the wall of the catacomb's stone walls, leading to a maze-like infrastructure that seemed to run on for ages...how long had this been here? Takeda found himself wondering just how deep the catacombs went, how far they stretched out...what if these two weren't digging for an object...what if they were digging to further enable shadows to emerge into the city?

A sense of renewed vigor hit the red-haired asian, as he went through the hole in the wall, seeing that Seiji was going to be holding his own...fire hurt that bitch pretty bad, so hopefully he'd get the drop on it. Having dropped the flashlight in the room with Seiji during his initial dodging of the beast's attack, he lifted his gun up, focusing intently in order to have Faust conjure up another ball of flame, only, this time, he didn't focus enough to have the spectral mage release it. Clad in it's dark robes, letting out agonized, visible breaths, and dripping what appeared to be coagulated blood, his persona was definitely the kind of thing that one would expect to see in a place like this. With a deep breath, Takeda examined each area, not saying a word whilst in the dark reaches of the catacomb. However bizarre it was, killing these things actually seemed important now, and no matter how goofy they were, they were still a threat. Still didn't mean that it wasn't hilarious that Takeda was now playing hide and seek with the shadow equivalent of a god damned wrestler though. The labyrinth had a minotaur, the catacombs had a dude running around in spandex looking to pile drive people. From the darkness, the shadster ended up  breaking through a wall whilst holding Takeda by his throat.

It was a stupid move to follow the thing out into the darkness, but hell, now at least he could get a hit on it, even though it now was holding him up by his neck, trying to crack his spinal column. The fireball was finally cast, and hit the shadow right on it's mask, forcing it to drop Takeda, and clutch it's face in sheer pain. Now that certainly hurt a whole lot worse than his last hit...maybe the thing had become stronger whilst making him stronger. A wave of energy hit Takeda, as he coughed, feeling absolute pain from the force of being choke slammed through a thin stone wall. Cuts riddled his  shoulders from the stone, and  he looked up at the shadow with contempt upon recovering his breath. "Pyromania's runnin' wild, bitch!" Now things were about to get interesting indeed, because the stupid shadow had done something a lot worse than he had...it'd buffed him, and he was now empowered by Seiji's spell.

Lifting it's head up after writhing in pain, the shadow wrestler caught a full glimpse of a fireball slamming right through it's head. Beheading the beast, Takeda grinned, though you wouldn't be able to tell for the slight bit of pain his face showed. Stumbling back through the hole in the wall, he peeked his head around to see that Seiji had just beat some ass, before speaking to him. "Well...that hurt like a bitch. You alri-" Oh fuck. There was a drilling sound in the background.

[ChromaticTruthsayer]

You decide to head towards the drilling noise, using the sound to guide you there. It didn't take you more than a minute to find a "tunnel" in the hallway. "Tunnel," being something that clearly wasn't a part of the catacomb's original design. Freshly churned dirt and rocks were strewn about the large tunnel. It was dark, but the tunnel was clearly what was housing the noise.

Going in a bit deeper, you finally find what seemed to be the drilling! It wasn't one, but two large drill-shaped shadows digging through the ground, out of the catacombs. They haven't spotted you yet, but you should probably take care of them.

Drill Shadow

• Rainy Death
• Zionga
• Sukukaja

Absorb: Repel: Null: Elec Rs: Wk: Wind
Drill Shadow

• Rainy Death
• Agilao
• Tarukaja

Absorb: Repel: Null: Fire Rs: Wk: Elec

[Seiji Dalton]

Leading the way after the defeat of the two shadows that were either cohorts or creatures from the lower levels that just so happened to be in the way, Seiji nodded at his brother's statement. "The shadows don't really like singing too much, I've found. I guess we could bring down some bad musicians and the city's crisis would be solved in no time." The notion of jazz singers somehow being the city's salvation amused Seiji to the point where a smile almost sneaked onto his face. Turning the corner, he saw something that was out of place. Within the immaculately designed catacombs, a messy tunnel with debris strewn about was definitely a strange sight. "Stay behind me, stay back, and know you're a good fighter and an awesome brother." Seiji didn't expect anything to actually happen considering his own budding power and Takeda's budding powers. The incessant drilling grew louder as Seiji walked down the tunnel. It was large, large enough for a full party to walk side by side with room to spare. Just how big were these drill things? Sword at the ready, he kept going as two large shadows grew ever larger. If they weren't what was causing the problem, then he was a fat baby's uncle.

"We'll take these ones together. I'll gain their attention and weaken them, you finish them off." Running and facing his problems head on was something Seiji kinda just...did. There wasn't some great philosophical or deep reason behind it, his Persona was just more physically inclined than that of other people and he was in pretty darn good shape. Summoning Sir Gareth again, his Persona went for the one on the left while Seiji furiously hacked at the one on the right. Thank the heavens that neither drill was either immune to or (god forbid) healed by their furious attacks. The electric blade even seemed to short circuit one of the drills for a moment. The actions of these two shadows were strange. What were they drilling towards, the surface or something big? Why did the tunnel seem so relatively short for how big the drills were? The shadows wasted no time at all buffing one another. Green light spread across both shadows as well as the usual red light. Great, an unknown effect was added and the darn things were better equipped to attack them. Seiji and Gareth pressed onto the offensive with the one that seemed weakened by the electric sword. Surprisingly, the thing was too quick for either of them and it dodged the attack. The drills both giggled incessantly at the struggles of the brothers to hit them and dear lord was it infuriating.

He wasn't going to waste time thinking about things or angsting over his inability to hit them. Instead, Seiji charged once again only to be blocked by a large blast of fire that knocked him flat onto the ground. Momentarily dazed, things only got worse when both shadows drilled into one another, sending a massive barrage of rainy sparks down onto both brothers. It hurt like a bitch and Seiji wasn't going to take that laying down. Both attacks had hurt like a bad bitch but he wasn't going to let that stop him or keep him down. His electric sword slashed wildly across both shadows, dazing one just enough for Sir Gareth to move in and roughly hack it with Getsu-Ei. At least neither attacks were wasted tonight. Standing his ground between the brothers and the drills, Sir Gareth buffed them both with his own Tarukaja and then unleashed a blast of Mahama on the shadows. Neither one seemed to be particularly affected by the skill but a hit was a hit. Seeing an opening, Seiji stayed between both drills, clashing with the point of their drills and holding them back. Hopefully Takeda would have his opening. "Bro, I hope you have some master plan to beat these things, 'cause otherwise we'll be lucky to escape with our lives, much less a paycheck." And oh man did that paycheck sound nice.

[Takeda]

"Either way you go, we'd be doing the city a service." Takeda responded to his brother, as they delved ever deeper into the dark catacombs of the city. With the questions still racing through his mind as to whether or not these tunnels were somehow connected to the outer circle, he turned and began to speak to his brother on their trek. "Gotta be honest with 'ya. These things are getting silly as fuck in how they look. I mean...think about it. You told me about fighting cupid, heard from some people about shadow Tables, a computer, and now we end up fighting a tank, and a wrestler I could've sworn was dead. This shit's just getting too damn laughable." He was joking of course, well, not really. While all of the shadows seemed to be getting sillier and sillier as time went along, he knew too well how hard they could hit. As he contemplated as to why the shadows would take the form of a wrestler, he soon saw the same sight as his brother, a tunnel laden with debris. Looking over at Seiji, he removed his pistol from his waistband, and pointed it down the hallway. Hopefully the old handgun could put in some work for once, but he highly doubted it...more often than not, whacking the things over the head seemed to be much more easier. Whilst looking down the hallway, he took a deep breath, and spoke over to Seiji. "Yeah yeah...don't get all touchy feely until after after we blow shit up, m'kay? But yeah, let's run damage control. You're the control, I'm the damage."

Jesus Christ was that line cheesy, but hell, Takeda had been saving that one up for one of these situations where Seiji tanked, and he served as a dps...maybe he had been playing too many rpgs.  Now somewhere down the line, two large shadows seemed to be coming at them from the distance. What horrid burrowing creatures could rip through this place? What abominations could possibly rend stone and dirt aside like this? When the two drills neared close, Takeda seemed oddly disappointed. Drills. He had heard the noise, yeah, but...drills. Fucking. Drills. "I'm done. They just keep getting dumber and dumber." he said as his card floated down before his head. Shattering it with another pistol bullet, he kept  his aim steady whilst the dark mage Faust appeared over his back, ready to play.  It was about at this moment that Takeda noticed the two creatures were buffing each other, which wasn't going to make this fight any easier at all. Whilst his brother tanked and tried to rip them asunder with the bastard sword, alongside his mighty knight persona, Takeda focused intently, having Faust create a swirling vortex of flame in his hand. Singling out one of the targets wasn't going to be easy, but it was the strongest attack that Takeda knew...within the span of an instant, he chose to attack one of the two that his brother couldn't hit, that were taunting both of them. The creature took the blast like a damned champ,  being unphased completely by the hit. "Shit, he's immune!" Then just like that, as if things couldn't get worse, the two drills decided to slam into one another, sending down a wave of sparks on both of them. Feeling the cinders from the sparks burn into his skin, Takeda gritted his teeth, only to be struck with lightning for the first time in his life.

Staying back wasn't probably the best idea, as now he was convulsing on the ground in pain. Now that had hurt like a motherfucker...slowly standing up, Takeda glared at the shadows with utter ferocity, but didn't lose himself in the anger...the one he had hit with the blast had been on the right from what he remembered. God, he hoped he was guessing right. But then, Seiji and Gareth had made it a lot easier for him to detect. Before, the creatures had different reactions to the actual electric current of the blade smacking against them. The one on the right had been the one who took his fire blast like a champion, and it was the one hit the hardest by Seiji's sword. The getsu-ei  had marked up the one weakest to Seiji, but the most resistant to him. Grinning like a madman,  he gazed at the creature with hate swirling in his eyes, as Faust charged up an attack it had not used in ages...Mudo. Dark energy collected in the mage's outstretched hand, flooding from the monochromatic fluid that coursed through it's very veins. In an instant, a beam of dark purple energy slammed into the side of the creature, apparently rusting, corroding it whilst it was in it's weakened state. The screaming faces on the beam didn't lie, that fucking thing had taken it's last hit. Though it wasn't his strongest blow, it did enough...now for the other. With his pistol out, Takeda launched a volley of lead at the drill tip of the shadow, and whilst they did occasionally just bounce off of it, one appeared to penetrate the metal coating, as black fluid dripped out from it's chassis. Turning it's attention away from Sir Gareth and Seiji, the metal clunker made it's way at Takeda full blast.

Though he was only narrowly able to dodge the drill that had pierced through the tunnel, Takeda turned to face it like an old time matador, only in this case, his hair could be argued as being a suitable replacement for the cape. As it readied to go for him again, apparently enraged by the bullet that had went through, the older of the two bastard siblings knelt down, bringing Faust to head level with the beast, as he launched a potent agilao blast straight into the hole he had made on it. Igniting the innards, the drill simply flew to the side,  scorched and apparently squealing in some sort of pain. With it's burnt out husk lying on the ground, Takeda stood, kicked it, and then turned to look back at Seiji. "Damn...these things were annoying as hell. You alright?" Moving next to Seiji, he looked up at the knightly persona his brother had, as his own faded..."Gotta tell you, yours is pretty badass." Looking down the tunnel, he holstered his pistol in his waistband...that'd do pig, that'd do. "Now...let's find out whatever these things were going after." Walking down the tunnel, he lifted up the flashlight, speaking back to him, "Hey...am I the only one that thinks blondie is a bit cute? I mean, I'm not usually into white chicks...but damn."

[ChromaticTruthsayer]

You managed to take down the two shadows after a long battle. You took care of the threat and are now out of danger it seems. Oh, no wait, you aren't.

The tunnel begins to crumble with bits of debris falling down around you. To make matters worse, it would seem that a lot of tiny shadows are beginning to enter the tunnel to swarm you! Normally you would have an option here, but I think there's only one option left at this point.

[X] Get the hell out.

[Seiji Dalton]

Things being normal at first made Seiji feel reassured. Maybe their work was done, maybe they could go home and have a nice cold drink. Instead, the tunnel started collapsing. "This is why we can't have nice things. Takeda, let's get out of here." Given that he was stating the obvious, he expected some smart quip from his brother. Rushing down the tunnel as fast as he could, the younger brother found himself cursing his luck as he realized he would be just as likely to fall on his weapon in the collapsing tunnel as he would be to actually kill a shadow.

A maya jumped up at him, causing him to jump forward out of instinct. Whether it was intentional or not, the little maya saved his life from a very large chunk of falling ceiling. Huh, it was a shadow that had actually proved helpful. An arrow whizzed past Seiji's head as he tried to run farther down the tunnel. Some tiny cupids at the end of the tunnel were trying their best to block their progress with barrages of arrows. Oh that was just great. Slashing calmly as he paced his advance to be able to swipe aside the arrows, he advanced down the tunnel faster.

For the love of the lord, the shadows sure knew how to make a tunnel unstable. If the shadows were the reincarnations of humans, those drills certainly hadn't been architects in life. Ahead of the advancing debris as the tunnel collapsed a horde of small shadows advanced ever onwards towards Seiji. There was no way they'd beat them to the tunnel entrance.

An idea popped into Seiji's head, a reckless one.

Quickly summoning his Persona, Sir Gareth's sword hovered behind him as he picked up both brothers, flying ahead of the debris and eventually flying them out of the tunnel. The cupids scattered and the shadows crowding near the entrance scurried. Their instincts probably kicked in and they realized fighting the two humans, even tired as they were, would be a pointless endeavor ending only with their own deaths.

"Hey Takeda, wanna make a bet? There's gonna be more shadows waiting for us on our way back to the car. Or in the car, knowing our luck." Despite being a bit fatigued from the sudden burst of action that weaseled its way into their otherwise boring lives, Seiji wasn't actually as disgruntled as he sounded.

[Takeda]

Well now it appeared as if it was time for the two to make an Indiana Jones style getaway, because the tunnel was collapsing all around them. Booking it down the corridor like Zhang running from child support, he didn't even have enough time to pull out his pistol to blast at the little mayas, cupids, and other assorted shadows that had started to impede their progress. Leaping over the occasional maya that tried to clutch at his leg, he was already too out of breath to even smart off to Seiji. Running like a bat out of hell luckily was one of those things that you get used to after having to outrun a few cops on drunk and disorderly charges...thankfully, the shadows didn't have tasers. 

To tell the truth there had been very few moments in his life wherein the Indiana Jones theme had played in Takeda's head, and this one was earning the distinct honor of being one of those times. With arrows whizzing past his head, shadows trying to grab at his feet, all they needed was a big fucking boulder to roll on down the tunnel right at them. Unholstering his pistol mid-run, Takeda shot a few bullets in the direction of a couple of mayas that were decidedly in his and Seiji's way, and as the brass echoed on the ground behind him, the tumbling of earth grew ever nearer...now just as things had appeared to be at their worst, Seiji did something truly worthy of calling him a magnificent bastard. Gareth lifted both of the boys up by the scruff of their necks, and whisked them away to the magical land of "Get the fuck out of hereville".

Breathing heavily, holding onto a pistol that was now completely out of ammunition, and hunched over catching his breath, it was at that moment Takeda realized it probably wasn't a good idea for him to be smoking cigarettes anymore, especially with all the exertion that hunting shadows had put on the two. Looking over at Seiji, he gave him a playful punch to the shoulder, speaking out, "You fucking idiot...now you just gave 'em ideas. Next thing you know, we're gonna get to the car, it won't start, and there'll be a shadow in the back seat with a knife. Horror movie rules, retard!" If there was one in the car, Takeda was going to be pissed off to high hell...walking back with his brother to the surface, he checked under the car, in the seat...hell, everywhere was fine, as he leaned over the metal hood, and put his face against the cold steel. "Never thought I'd be so glad to see this piece of shit...you did good, Seiji." standing back up, he went over to the driver's side, and sat down in his seat, speaking over to him. "...didn't  answer my question though. You think blondie is hot?"

[ChromaticTruthsayer]

Mission accomplished!

You each received your reward: 500 FP and Level 2 Armor