Oguchi (C)

[Kodos]

There was a woman standing by the other side of the doors to the lavishly furnished mansion. She was clad in filthy robes and her long black hair obscured nearly all of her pale face. She reeked of death.

And she was making the strange sobbing sounds, although her arms hung low by her sides. And that's when Kai noticed that her hands terminated in long dagger-like claws. Then he noticed her tongue hanging down, and why her sobbing sounded so strange.

She had no lower jaw.

[zizi]

Kai sucked in a horrified breath, before moving to the end of the short entranceway, where it joined a long corridor that ran the width of the building before twisting off at right-angles at both ends, presumably running the circumference of the building. He could see three doors on either side of the hallway before the corners obstructed his view.

As he gazed, he wondered what kind of a zombie had claws.

Backing out of the entranceway, he returned to the others where he quickly explained what he'd seen. "Any of you have any idea what kind of undead that thing was, or what it can do?"

[Regantor]

Letting out a sign of relief, Shari gave Kai a quick check for injuries, but still remained regimented enough that she managed to make it at least look purely procedural.

"Heard of, but know little about, sorry." She then confessed, crossing her arms. Experience she might have, but booksmarts was another thing entirely. What she -had- heard from random old colleagues could easily have been exaggerated, too. "Alot of the legends I've heard surrounding undead in this region tend to talk about tortured souls unable to die, the usual sort of thing. The most I can gather is that they are a bit smarter than the average walking corpse, and alot more reason to be pissed off along with that."

Scratching her head for a moment, she tried to think of a more hasty method of getting inside the complex, or at least some sort of diversion.

"I've taken on oni before, at least the chump kind. Starting to think we might be better off knocking our way through, and just making sure we leave small tracks... Think you could check directly inside for a way up to the attic or something, Kai?..."

The look on her face wasn't massively hopeful, but it didn't seem right just letting the ninja do all the groundwork. They did have Yuan with them today, too, and that had to count for something...

"Think you could take the other one, ox legs?"

[Kodos]

"I can take the two Oni with ease, yes." Yuan said with the same sort of conviction and plainness that one had when they stated the sky was blue.

[Regantor]

"Oh, that's great, shall the rest of us just go home then?" Shari took on a sarcastically upbeat tone and threw her hands up, before quickly returning to her normal scowl. "It doesn't matter if you want to thrash your ego around, Yuanjun. My point was that we have to nail both of them before either has time to make noise."

[Kodos]

"Yes, I think I can manage." She shrugged. "You generally break limbs. I don't think you are strong enough to break an Oni's neck in one twist. Are you sure *you* can take one out before it calls for help?"

[Regantor]

"If I get it in a choke hold, should be enough to keep his pipe shut." She responded... civilly? "We will have to get right up to them before they notice, through. A distraction might be an idea."

[Kodos]

"What kind of distraction?" Yuanjun asked. "The last time we had to deal with these things walking right up to them seemed to work pretty well. The Bakeneko are gorgeous in their human forms, right? I could pass off as one." She shrugged. "You might be a problem, but it's not like people tend to notice you when I am around, anyway, and if nothing else we can paint you red and say you're an Oni. Oni have runts, right?"

[Regantor]

"Well you have tits, it seems. That's probably enough for an oni." Shari ignored the insult just for the sake of brevity. She wasn't admitting anything but the pure basics, through. "If you walk around from the right and can avoid their vision and arc around the left, easy. I don't think we should be taking any chances over them just stand there, and trying to walk past... I know most of them are dumb fuckers, but it only takes one house-broken one who can remember faces..."

"We still need a route after that, at any rate." She regarded Kai, desperately trying to avoid any more of Yuan's 'pleasant company'.

[zizi]

"Right," said Kai, "back into the funhouse I go." He looked awkward for a second, before lunging forward and kissing Shari. "With my luck, the next twist of that hallway will be full of incorporeal undead, and I will only be able to wound six of them before I die horribly. I promise to scream loudly and like a little girl, and only request that you refrain from doing anything really stupid should that happen. Because I love you."

With an uncomfortable nod, he got on with it.

He ran down the small hallway, ignoring his jawless friend, and turned right. At the corner he slowed, but only slightly, and said a very selfish prayer about not dying quite yet as the next corridor came into view.