Chapter Text
Of course, it didn't end there. For a moment it seemed like it would - everyone was in awe and fear of the "Phantom Devils" who made a corrupt god go in public and recant his entire scheme and crimes in public out of terror, and then left his unknowing conspirator a mutated shell of what he had once been, to corroborate everything. For a moment, it seemed like they'd have a peaceful life...
But literally none of their Exaltations were having it - Infernal blessings wanted to rage and rebel, Luna's gift was never satisfied with stagnancy, and who in their right mind expected the Second Breath made in the image of cats to not get into trouble. But really, it was Shido who provided the final impetus. Just having him...lord over the rest, confident that even with the power he smelled in them, they couldn't retaliate against his bullying without making their lives worse. A rotten adult to the core.
(They did not know he was the Solar that had so badly derailed Shinobu's life and Shido were one and the same then, only that he felt of power beyond a mortal frame - but really, they realized, they should have seen it coming. The force of narrative conventions demanded it.)
So, they made a website, and turned the Wyld reflection of LeBlanc, the cafe Shinobu was staying at, into their own little slice of Hell to run operations out of.
Morgana picked up sorcery in a past he didn't recall anymore - which made sense for the Exigent of a notoriously mystical animal. He had not discovered if he could access the Celestial Circle that was reserved for powerful gods and more naturally puissant Exalted yet (though he felt he could), but it was more than enough to perform some light workings, and to summon a tribe of marottes, the threadlike hopping puppeteers that served as the crew of most demonic building projects, to finish what he couldn't do. This resulted in an awkward moment where one tried to grab an errant baby as decoration, but Morgana was versed enough in summoning lore to know their odd obsession with infants as fashion statements - after having the concept of "infants belong to their mothers" explained to it, it put the slightly traumatized toddler back none the worse for wear, though the demon in question refused to work until it had a substitute, leading to a rather confused toy shop owner and a rather expensive (and realistic) doll in the possession of a living knot.
And from there, they started building something of a kingdom.
It wasn't much of one - Ann's Coadjutor dryly described it as the official, sponsored version of a Beggar's Rift, the villages of outcasts and exiles that would occasionally crop up in Malfeas in places the demon lords forgot about or couldn't reach, which existed mostly to be off-handedly bowled over when it became strategically convenient or absentmindedly crushed when a passing Yozi caused a natural disaster (when your continents were the ambulatory limbs of your god-emperor, you dreaded when he reached over to scratch an itch - asteroids had more care to their impact sites). Which to be fair, it was; a place in the Wyld for those fae cast out by capricious politics, mutants incapable of living among unblemished humans but still human within their changed flesh, rogue demons unable and unwilling to go back to Malfeas, and even the occasional unemployed god or otherwise patron of those same mutant tribes. An eclectic mix of peoples of Tokyo and its Wyld domains, bounded only by the fact they had nowhere else to go. But they made something of it - and more importantly, they were able to run a growing intelligence network to find people who were victimized by society. And really, the name wasn't a bad starting point - Morgana pointed out that the concept of "courts of miracles" weren't that different than a Beggar's Rift, so Shinobu decided to dub it the Rift of Wonders in tribute to the destitute slums bound together largely because polite society had decided to blame them for it failing them (and given the paucity of small-time grifters and masters of milking pity for enough money for food, was also a source of wonders like the "blind" being able to see just fine once they stopped panhandling).
How and why Yuuki Mishima became something of the ambassador was beyond even him, but his technical expertise was more than appreciated both by the Rifters who liked the internet, and the Phantoms who enjoyed his website as a quest bulletin. Which was how they met Natsuhiko Nakanohara and gave him a nice scare to stop stalking a girlfriend of his - and accidentally turned over a rock filled with more familial drama than they could shake a stick at.
Which was to be expected with Dragon-Blooded, but most Dragon-Blooded didn't actively sabotage their own cousins' wills so they could milk their sons for art.
Ichiriyusai Madarame, scion of the Madarame Lineage of Air-Aspected Dragon-Blooded, known for their abilities as painters, poets, and ability to serve, was probably the kind of person that would cause the Scarlet Empress' ghost to turn red as her distinct dress and disavow all knowledge of what he had done on the off-chance he was descended from her (which to be fair was not that unlikely). The worst part was, he was very good at hiding it - in fact, most people tended to be surprised, relieved, or both when they realized the man in a cheap kimono was a Dragon-Blood who didn't apparently lord over the fact his bloodline made him functionally better than most of humanity (made even more annoying by how it was because of actual superpowers combined with being able to lean on relatives who leveraged those superpowers for influence). In fact, he came off as a bit of a monk, given how he lived in a modest little shack with his apprentices rather than trading his power for money in some way.
Which made the fact that he was the kind of Dragon-Blood who lorded it even more screwed up, because not only did he not actually support his apprentices in a house worthy of the name despite owning a combination mansion in his lover's name (who to her credit honestly thought the students volunteered to help train their own internal Essence and focus on art), many of his apprentices were actually potential Dragon-Blooded, and often, from branch families of Madarame's own. Yusuke Kitagawa himself, a future Phantom, was actually Madarame's cousin a couple generations down - and given how he was more or less adopted by Madarame, thus more or less his grandson-in-all-but-genes.
Which didn't even get into how it turned out that a genetic ability to focus on abstract matters did not make you a better artist, given how it turned out Madarame actively claimed credit for pretty much every work his students made since his breakout piece, Sayuri - who in a somehow even more twisted event, was actually the last self-portrait of Yusuke's mother, Madarame's grand-niece. Which was meant to have the infant Yusuke in it, just had it painted over.
(When they had taken up the job, Ryuji had wondered if they were aiming a bit low to expose and break a plagiarist after the whole 'corrupt divine court protecting a rapist' thing. He had been answered to his satisfaction when he learned of the abuse, but that particular tidbit caused him to rate Madarame higher on his Internal Doucheometer directly between Azmodai and Kamoshida; Azmodai, at least, had something of a legitimate fear in that a loss of domain to a god was a loss in purpose of life and sanity, even if his fear of losing everything had twisted into a greed for more.)
Ironically, it was discovering how heartless his Sensei truly was that gave Madarame the monkey's paw truth to his claim that "frugal living" was more likely to cause latent Dragon-Blooded to Exalt - because Yusuke finally stood up for himself and went from victim to survivor, and Luna took the form of Sayuri to encourage him and embrace him as its painter would have should she still have lived. And the elemental goons Madarame had summoned were not expecting to fight two Lunars after they thought they isolated Ryuji. A fox couldn't climb like Ryuji's own spirit shape, but a mean bite and a better sense of smell helped with the more stealthy air elementals.
Of course...therein lied the problem. The area around Madarame's manse in the Wyld had twisted with the strange anomaly that echoed Madarame's distorted desires - and the one part of his Lineage's vaunted talents he seemed to be good at quickly became a problem.
Namely, he knew about the little court of petty gods who were supporting the parasocial subculture that made his Palace for their own gain too...and Dragon-Blooded were good at teamwork.
"DO YOU SEE NOW, YOU LITTLE VERMIN?!", he roared from the inside of the maelstrom of fire, wind, ice, and wood he and his elemental minions had constructed around himself. "DO YOU SEE HOW FOOLISH YOU WERE TO DEFAME ME?! THE GOD OF THE ART WORLD?!"
"If you had the humility claimed to be your station, you would know there are several dozen spirits with more claim to that title than you, even before one examines their responsibilities," Yusuke snarked back, crouching into a distinct stance. "Shall we see if your skills with Fire Dragon Style are as real as your supposed talents as a painter?"
Madarame scoffed as he gestured, the winds of his fully activated anima picking up a pair of bo staves, as he himself fell into a similar stance. "More than yours, you ungrateful little kit! You abandoned your birthright, and with it, your full capacity to use these forms, despite my hopes..."
Shinobu gawked. "Are...are you still claiming you're disappointed in him?!"
Whether or not Madarame heard him over his anima synced with his minions, nobody could tell. If he did, he certainly didn't care as he submerged himself in the distinct rhythm of Fire Dragon.
As a martial art, Fire Dragon Style was the artist's style, hence why Madarame used it for appearances if nothing else. Another part was, as he noted, it was an Immaculate Dragon Style, by Dragon-Bloods and for them - without an elemental anima, it could not be used to its full potential, even by a Solar, the pack rat masters-of-all. When Fire Dragons fought, they didn't so much strike as danced, with the attacks upon their enemies almost incidental to the steps of the beat they kept in their head.
And seeing Madarame dive in - Morgana, the martial arts fanatic among the Phantoms, quickly realized his lack of artistic success under his own work was due to a lack of motivation, not a lack of talent.
Whatever you could say about him, the long tongues of flame from his staffs flying like streamers as he struck and bobbed were sublime. Madarame's talent, so neglected in his written work, was beyond compare in his fighting style. There was passion there, and innocence. A sincere love of the lethal pavane that lacked any malevolence or sadism, just a simple passion for the performance that wished to share in its lethal joy.
This somehow failed to produce sympathy for Madarame given the state of his students and his treatment of his "crop."
But he wasn't wrong. While Dragon-Blooded were the best at the element of their inborn Aspect, the fundamental mystical forces of Creation were all the remit of the ancestors, the Immaculate Dragons, and even if it wasn't, they had all intermarried and diverged over thousands of generations; all had some ability with the other five elements from their basal ones. Certainly enough for Madarame to unleash the true power of Fire Dragon, fire-dancing, while for Yusuke, it was just immensely fancy if functional steps with a sword and/or claws of his hybrid form. It didn't help the young painter was a crafter, not a fighter - pretty soon, there was the distinct smell of burning vulpine fur.
Truly, Yusuke could not face his teacher alone. Not with the corrupt spirits and elementals backing him up.
But Yusuke was not alone. And none of his new friends believed in showing honor in combat to one who had none outside it.
It was Morgana who realized that, while he was attuned to the spirits, Madarame was no sorcerer. To open one's soul to the hidden knowledges of the world, required one to accept a level of change on a soul-deep level; humans were not meant to wield the power of the world's Essence the way even those with awakened Essence wielded their own life force, and while there was no moral judgement in it, to become a sorcerer was to become something a little other-than-human, even for the Exalted. Madarame, in his vainglory, disdained that, supposedly because he valued the purity of humanity too much, in reality because some part of him feared that the new perspective of a sorcerer would force him to confront his own rationalizations and find them wanting.
Which meant that none of his elemental helpers were actually bound to him - and thus, all of them were not products of magic, as normal elemental summoning actually wove new ones from the Essence of the world, but little gods with lives of their own...and blackmail material.
Such as for one particular rothopper - a hybridized wood and water elemental resembling a great dog-sized toad - who had once camped out in the dragon Green Frowning Bear's garden to feast on the collection of iuchemon heart-wasps that had taken residence there during an especially long absence by its owner. While nobody shed a tear for the giant bugs notorious for laying their eggs in the hearts of humans, she had stayed there so long that a significant portion of his collection had an unannounced shift into a swamp, killing a few less water-tolerant specimens. While she had fled long before he came back, the fun thing about being able to summon naneke, the readers of forbidden texts, was that the scholarly demons possessed some ability with postcognition, and one note later about politely informing the grumpy dragon about his accidental saboteur unless she provided a favor later...
Shinobu gave a distinct hand signal the rothopper recognized - and with that, Madarame was suddenly blindsided by an exhalation of poisonous, soporific vapors so thick they gathered on the ground around him in a purplish slime.
Purplish, and slippery.
It was fitting that someone who took pride only in his battle dance was defeated when he slipped ass over teakettle in front of the student he so abused.