Tower of sin

Aji listened to all of that stuff with great focus... okay that was a blatant lie. His eyes glazed over the moment she started talking about orbs and life forces and stuff. He didn't know really how to explain where he got his own strength. It was just there, like something he knew instinctively to pull out, and use his desire to call it. It was a strange difference... a lot of the teachers at the school had called it a difference between "wizardry" and "sorcery." He had no idea what any of that stuff meant really. Clueless to the situation and exhausted from continually finding ways to drain his energy, Aji gave no argument at all when Rujin signaled him over. In fact, as he stood there, he started snuggling against her leg, and finding sleep gripping him more and more. That of course was offset by his curiosity, as Rujin predicted, as well as a general shyness being around Kaycee, so at that point he simply attempted to stand there and stay out of the way.

Kaycee placed her hand on the orb and the red aura around her started to show itself even more. the aura now looked like a flame being blown around in the wind. Kaycee took one last deep breath before she tried to push the feeling she had into the orb. she was confused and did not know how to do this, but decided to try moving the energy so it would flow into the orb. The aura around her now moved towards the orb becoming more visible the more she focused on it.

The young female elf watched for another minute or so. "Hey," she thought, "That orb they have. Wonder if it is a gem..." She sneaked her way through the trees until she was right above the three individuals. Then, she reached into one of the many small pouches of her leather belt. "Hmm," she wondered silently, "What to do..." She stretched her mouth into a devious grin.

In a flash, Kaycee and the others were engulfed in an odorless, white smoke. Kaycee felt her hands shift for a second and the smooth perfection of the mana orb in her hands was now courser and fleshy. When the smoke cleared, Kaycee and Rujin discovered they had their hands on a cantaloupe.

The elf ranger did a somersault over them and landed roughly twenty feet away. She turned on her heel and looked back at the three half-dragons with a smile of triumph across her glamorous face. She put one hand behind her back, the other hand holding the mana orb beside her, as if displaying it to them. "You just got robbed by Tamerie the Nightingale. Remember that name, Witch Slaver!" She pulled her hand out from behind her back. Then, in a quick flourish, she threw a small seed at the ground below her feet...and a tiny puff of smoke came forth.

Tamerie blinked with surprise. "Uuuuh...CRAP! I got the mixture wrong again!" She then looked at the three nervously. "Eh...heheh, so, what'd you think of my little gag? Pretty funny, right?" Now, she laughed nervously.

Rujin smiles a bit to Aji and used her free arm to help comfort him against her leg.
Meanwhile, she payed attention to Kaycee. The orb was something that gave (or at least should've given) a sort of sensation that felt...unstable, representing the innately chaotic nature of the orb...but it also had a strange feeling that can be associated with many things, the variety of elements it held in it: fire, water, stone, wind, instability, cold, crystal, kenetic force, life, death, soul, flesh, a strange form of power, and a similiarly strange nullifier of it.
Although probably overwhelming to give much attention to directly, it seemed to suggestively signal at her lifeforce itself, as if pointing it to go in another 'direction', to point out where to tap into the natures that she felt in the orb.
...That signaled from her connection before it was suddenly stolen.

When the smoke exploded around herself, Rujin sharply backed up a brief distance as she looked around. She felt suddenly visually overwhelmed, and it made her panic. Aji probably felt a sensation, that from the calmer lifestyle, was rather rare. Similiar to how she used to be cold to the touch, Rujin instead got...wet, and a bit slimey feely too. (and let's not think of the scent of wet canine fur <.<; )
The transition from being someone that goes cold when angry to someone who got wet when angry was somewhat irritating to Rujin, but she tried to ignore that this time.

When the smoke clears up, she ignores the fact that she was holding cantaloupe, and glares towards Tamerie with a low growl as the thief spoke. Rujin completely turns to her, letting go of the meat to let Kaycee deal with it as she would see fit, when that seed was thrown.
Rujin quickly turned her eyes away: Even though the smoke was small, there was that unwelcome overwhelming visual that burned into her eyes. She shoke her head and glared at Tamerie again, lifting her head and pointing down her eyes to make an akward angle to avoid including the cloud. "Clearly. Now would you mind giving BACK the orb? Or do I have to make the spells that make the hurt? It's not a good idea to run away with that ANYWAY, it's very chaotic and unstable, and a severe reaction like movement at a fast speed will likely cause it to detonate: Many powers will explode and catch only your whole arm if lucky!"

Well despite all of his wishes, Aji was rapidly finding himself falling asleep against Rujin... that is, until that smoke cloud came, and Rujin started feeling slimy, to which point he actually pushed off of her lightly and said "Ewww... mother, you feel wet n slimy," pointing out the obvious. Naturally he was looking around trying to figure out what the heck was going on otherwise.

So when the voice of the elven lady started speaking, Aji blinked at her. A thief? Another one? Well okay, mother really didn't do that stuff anymore, but still... Aji took a step forward as if to say something, but Rujin actually said it before him. Aji may have been a novice at magic, but he knew a dangerous thing like that when he saw it (his mother seemed to have a knack for having dangerous items around). As if to drive the point home, Aji crossed his arms and tried to look as adult as possible (Failing miserably), "Yeah! Didn't your mother ever tell you it's not right to steal?"

The irony of that situation hit him as soon as he said it, and with a sheepish smile and a scratch to the back of the head, he looked to Rujin, "Eh heh... no offense, mother."

Tamerie looked at the gem for a few moments. "Hmm, well it does look different than most." She smirked, taking a few steps back. "Buuuut, I think it looks cool, so I'm going to hold onto it for a while."

Blink, blink, groan. Try to look out for someone and they run of anyway. Maybe she needed to work on her delivery...Was it supposed to be warning first THEN threat? Or was that threat part supposed to be when the warning part wasn't listened to? She directed her attention more...directly against the elf.

Taking about three steps forward, Rujin focuses on some spellcasting. "Your handicap. Now considering our mentioned knowledge, I feel pretty self-assured you'll be hard-pressed for being dodgy." She steps forward with her left foot, and outreaches with her left hand, generating a blob of water. She suddenly throws the blob up towards the sky, and releases the spell, causing clouds to accumulate extremely rapidly. "Rainfall!" she looks towards Tamerie, and says "I think I'll be taking that back now...
It wasn't really before long at all that from the heavy clouds, suddenly it...! Rained...Pretty decently hard...just rain, really. No thunderstorms or anything, just a very plain rainstorm.

((Edit: added. Forgot response to Aji -.-; ))

Without looking towards Aji, since she needed to make sure that elf wasn't about to escape, Rujin says "No offense taken. You used to nag me all the time, and I never had a mother anyway."

Tamerie held her palm out to catch a drop of rain. "Seriously? Well, I'm off. Seeya!" She turned and ran.

Kaycee was not happy when she found out that the orb was taken away from her, and as her blood started to boil her aura grew in size and in visibility until it seemed like it was swallowing her. her hair was dancing around in the nonexistent wind as if she were in the middle of a typhoon. Her mind was focused on one task and that was to get the orb back no matter who or what got in her way.

She slowly turned around to face the thief during the time it took for Rujin to cast her spell, and when she locked eyes with the thief the cantaloupe in Kaycee's hands burst into flames. The water from the rain did not seem to effect this flaming cantaloupe at all, in fact on closer inspection it did not seem to even come in contact with the fire as if there was a force field around it. Kaycee kept her eyes locked onto the thief as she ran away. then suddenly Kaycee vanished and appeared in front of Tamerie "If you dont want to die give it back" said the emotionless face that was immersed in a flame like aura holding a flaming cantaloupe.

Well, when Rujin took three steps forward, the Aji that was leaning on her fell into the dirt after losing his balance. He groaned and looked up. Rainclouds caught his eye, and he said, "Uh oh... looks like it's gonna be a storm guy!" Completely oblivious to the fact of any castings going on. Even when Kaycee disappeared and reappeared farther away, he couldn't help but sorta feel out of the loop (if not a bit jealous) on how everyone was suddenly doing all this fancy stuff. Then, with the now added rain, that left him squirming in the mud. All things really considered, he was content to lay there and let this scene play itself out... that, and he was still rather exhausted.

Tamerie smirked. "Well, aren't we the fiery personality. Sorry, kiddo, but finders keepers." The elf ranger leaped into the trees, landing on a sturdy branch.

Rujin winces a little at Aji falling, and says "Sorry about that.", giving him a slight moment of attention. "I'll be back in a second, and I won't kill, ok?"

Returning attention back to the thief, she almost laughed a little at Tamerie turning and running, as she started to focus on her next spell. It seemed to Rujin someone didn't do the research after all. Because of the rain, Rujin felt enhanced, by the environment advantage of the rainfall spell.
Resultingly, she was by all means ready to produce excessive force...Then Kaycee teleported. Rujin was caught on surprise at first, but she payed attention to the aura, and realized some estimations to make. Now wasn't the time to refer to them.

Rujin quickly produced both of her guns, strange looking pistols. The underside had fingerholes to 'wear' the gun itself from the back end like brass knuckles, and in front of that it seemed to have a water tank, with a single hole in the front end that was held shut by a stopper inside of its design. The gun itself rested upon this section. Most of its design was above the grip part, and was connected to the tank by the sides, and the barrel simply laid along the tank's length.
Clips were lined along the top of the pistol.
The stopper unplugged, but the water let a little blob emerge in the front, and black dots formed at the fronts of the blobs. The woman aimed both pistols at Tamerie, but used her powers as a water elemental instead of firing.

The portion of rain close to the thief suddenly stopped and thrusted itself harshly at her with an unusual strength, attempting to disrupt her jump for the branch. "Kaycee! Stand down! Thief! Let go of the orb!"

The orb, meanwhile, was somewhat disrupted by all the inconsistent and swift movement, started to vibrate a little, trying to hold together. It wasn't ready to suddenly explode or anything yet, though, fortunately.

Tamerie saw the droplets of rain thrusting at her, so she did what she was usually best out. She dodged what she could, but when she landed on the tree, she failed to get enough momentum to jump again before a bunch of the rain drops smacked into her back and she tumbled out of the tree, revolved once in the air, and landed in a low crouch with the orb still in her hand. Tamerie turned her head and looked back at Kaycee and Rujin, who now had two weapons trained on her. "Geez...what are you two?"

Kaycee said nothing as she tossed the ball of fire in her hand at Tamerie. About halfway to its target a extremely powerful wind shot out from behind the ball moving it at a incredible speed. when the ball got close to Tamerie it exploded around her, and the wind turned it into swirling vortex of fire that was slowly closing in on Tamerie. The Vortex did not take any prisoners when it came to the forest around Tamerie though, it seemed to set everything it touched on fire. Once the vortex was about to close in on the elf however it disappeared, and at the same time the child who summoned it fell face first into the ground and was out cold. The Elf was fine except she might have been close to getting some serious burns, but the forest was not so lucky it was now set ablaze.

Tamerie eyes widened when she saw the shot of spiraling fire coming at her. Instinctively. She did a one-handed backflip, keeping the orb in her arm, and jumped away to avoid it. When the vortex veered towards her, her forehead beaded with sweat when she realized she might not be able to avoid it, or it was just the severe heat of the spell. She landed on her feet and raised her gauntlet arm to defend herself...but when it disappeared she just lowered her arm and blinked in surprise. "Phew...well, that was close," she said with relief in her tone. Tamerie look at Kaycee. "Seems like your friend overdid it a little."

Rujin, personally, was rather angry at the outburst of wild magic, but ultimately did nothing. Besides the fact of finding out there was going to be a more effective method of magic than what she was planning to teach Kaycee, there was no point in trying to deal with it when she was unconcience. Through the duration of the spell, Rujin ended up having to upkeep an emergency 'spirit catcher' in case of a fatality.
Keeping her weapons up, she said "Indeed. Notheless, you still have a something of ours, now's a good call to drop it. Of whom you're dealing with, by the way, are three spellcasters, two of them potent offensively, between her, and myself who is still well awake. I think you took enough to not recieve punishment to any sort." Rujin started to use elemental powers to focus bursts of especially dense rain over the fires burning the surrounding trees and extinguish them.

"Any movement that doesn't release the orb's a shot on the respective limb. After that we're fair."

Tamerie just quirked an eyebrow. "Uh huh...so if thing is so much trouble to hold onto, why want it back? And I think you're bluffing with the energy surge. How could you have held onto it otherwise?"

Rujin groans to who's turning out to be the most unlikely student for lessons. She focuses for magic during her speech. "You yourself are holding it. I think that's proof enough that holding it alone isn't dangerous. I'm saying the maneuvering while holding it is dangerous. ---Speaking of which, it's not an energy surge. An energy surge implies that there's an input, and there's no input.
"It's a breakdown effect. The orb is sustained by strong exposures to incompatable magic elements, retained by strict internal manipulations of their presence. Strong influences that occur from it such as impact or from through it such as abnormal movement disrupts the structural design for retaining and results in a reaction of the release of the elements."
"The reaction will trigger a chain reaction and ultimately explode the orb into a massive occurance of raw forces, which mind you, are likely to occur in a state that isn't the least bit bothered by magic resistance much akin to that protection from fire does nothing for grenade shrapnel." She wasn't entirely sure about the magic resistance ignoring effect at all, and doubted it would happen in such a pure form of chaotic release, but it made things sound 'better' in her opinion, and she had the lying skills to make the bluff subtle and realistic.

"The orb itself serves a purpose for me better for me than what you seem to want it for, some stray coins to a purse I take it." Rujin releases a spell, inflicting an effect through the area that would disrupt teleporting and blink-of-an-eye/faster type spells. She wasn't going to take any chances about this one.

The downtime permitted...a new point of view to make for Tarnerie. It was easy for her to respect the nature of a thief, when she was one herself. It's just actively defending your own possessions gets...in the way of things.

Tamerie answered at first with a confused stare at Rujin as she was explaining what the orb really did. She blinked and laughed nervously. "So, what you're trying to say is, I shake this thing around and kablooey? I mean...I THINK that's what you're trying to say through all that mumbo jumbo, but not really sure." She looked at the orb, then looked back at her. "Sooooo, got any other gems?"

"That's pretty much it. Also moving with it at very high speeds too."
Rujin gives a sigh. She glanced off momentarly towards Kaycee's general direction, wondering how long she'd end up being stuck in the mud before all of this was finished. The woman looked back to Tamerie. "You only want me to answer that so you can think about if you want to steal them...don't you?"

Tamerie smiled. "Well, I dunno. I like gems and things but it's kind of boring if there is no challenge in acquiring them. Heh, but I DID swipe this clean from you. So, maybe just give me any other gem you have and I'll give this back to you. We'll call it even then."

Rujin mental-noted raising some home security...Not so much for Tamerie's fun, though. "Hmmm..." Rujin puts away her right hand's gun, and holds out her right hand, constructing a sapphire through her magic power. Once completed with the fist-sized crystal, she tosses it off to the side. The crystal stops just before hitting the ground, and stone starts to form around it, gradually shaping into a bulky, roughly humanoid figure, bigger than any of the four of them. "It has to be challenging, right? That sapphire's a golem core. If you want it, you have to break the golem WITHOUT damaging the core, and I'll just let you have it. Just drop the sphere you have right now or I won't let you take the core."

Tamerie could feel a sweat drop go down the side of her face. "Hey wait, I already took this from you. I was talking about an exchange. The blue crystal on the bracer of her right arm shined bright and a silver bow with gold weaving and crushed gemstone along its body formed into her hand from seemingly nothing.

Rujin giggles darkly, and then shakes her head "It was a pretty amazing the way you did it, but wasn't it easy prey?" she glances to the bow, noting that she at least had some kind of summoning magic available to her, or just plain magic items, which it looked more like. "I'm sure you can pull it off...If you want, I can help...But..." She tilts her head "The sphere...you know?"

Tamerie rolled her eyes. She set the orb down and jumped back a few steps while reaching behind her to draw an arrow with a bulb head from her quiver. She took her shot at the golem. The arrow spiraled through the air, the goose feather fletching twirling into a blur. Her shot struck true and the arrow exploded, covering the front of the golem in a ball of fire.