Soul Merger

Alissa sighed and added teacher to the list of professions she wasn't sorry about missing out on. Even with Fili's help her 'lesson plan' was a bunch of scribbled ideas. Actually 'a bunch' was being far too kind. It was 6 notes, and three of them were questions.

1 - Horrors can be blinded easily by light.

2 - Can Raiel blind them without affecting us or do we need tinted glasses?

3 - Giant Hawks hate owls.

4 - Rocs hate jackdaws

5 - Can Kotori throw her voice? (We want the birds to go away, not attack and kill us.)

6 - Are there other bird noises that will work?

And then there was her students. A harpy that was currently looking very bored and an angel that was hovering over the harpy like a mother hen. At least they'd hashed out a proper practice area at the Malamute Tower. She didn't want to add 'explaining what was going on to worried passersby' to her list of impossible tasks.

Alissa sighed and put away the paper. "Alright. Well let's start with the simple stuff. Raiel apparently armored horrors don't have eyelids so it's easy to burn their eyes out. How good is your light manipulation?"

"Hm, not that great, but if they're that weak perhaps I can place a bright flare above us. It will cause odd lighting, but it should grant us the advantage," Raiel replied.

"We'd have to stick together then, but that's probably a good plan anyway. Since we're going to be deaf," Alissa said. Siren song was a constant threat. "Why don't we try it out a few times?"

"Hey Raiel," Kotori interrupted. "Why don't you use that trick you used on past me to keep the monsters from hurting us? That should be a lot easier than this whole 'fight everyone' plan right?" Alissa blinked. That was actually a good question.

Raiel shook her head. "It's easier to calm monsters when there isn't a human present. With a group of humans accompanying us I'll only be able to exert influence on low intelligence and distracted monsters. Fey, angels, and perhaps demons can be negotiated with, but normal monsters have too much bloodlust."

"So much for an easy option," Alissa sighed. "Well maybe we can use the distraction bit. Because all the info I have for Kotori is designed to make giant birds absolutely furious. Which isn't going to keep them from killing us."

"Yeah that seems pretty dumb," Kotori said. "Why not use something annoying? Something that'll make the other birds leave us alone or confuse them long enough for Raiel to shoo them off. They're all solitary hunters so it shouldn't be a big issue."

Alissa folded her arms. "If I knew a sound that did something like that, I'd be telling you it. You're the bird. Well closer to a bird than I am. You'd know more sounds that confuse and annoy birds."

"Uh..." Kotori ruffled her feathers and looked pensive. "I suppose so. But most of what scares birds are birds of prey. And the birds we need to worry about are giant birds of prey so they aren't gonna be scared of themselves."

Alissa grimaced. "Fair. Well let's test how Raiel's flare will affect fighting while you think of ideas."

A quick walk to the training dummies and Alissa was ready. "Right. Stand about 10 feet behind me, then summon the flare."

"Very well." There was a shuffling behind as the angel repositioned herself, then an incredibly bright light flashed on.

Alissa grimaced, but after a second her eyes adjusted. The colors were washed out, and it was hard to see anything in the shadows, but she could recognized the figures in front of her. And she imagined she'd be able to notice an attack flying in. "Right. Hold it there for a bit."

She started some quick target practice, stabbing towards the heads of the dumies, and dancing between the five in front of her. The bright light impeded her full movement, but she had to hope it would be far worse for her foes. "Okay turn it off."

The light faded and Alissa blinked a few times as her eyes recovered. She then looked over the wounds she'd given the dummies. Decent accuracy if not up to her usual finesse. "That worked really well, Raiel. I think we can use that to get through layer 5."

Raiel smiled briefly. "Thank you. It's nice to know I can help out here."

"Ugh." Kotori shook her wings. "And meanwhile I can't think of anything that'll help us."

Alissa shrugged, resheathing her sword. "Don't blame yourself. I don't know why they thought you had some magic bird repelling charms. Harpies usually band together because other monsters are trouble for them. If you had some giant bird control trick you'd use that instead."

"I suppose." Kotori frowned. "I can't help but think I should know something though. It's weird."

"Perhaps it's something your tamer gave you?"

Alissa looked up to see two people approaching. The werewolf Bryan and serpantfolk Sally, along with Sally's tamed kyuubi. She waved to the duo while doing her best to straighten up as much as she could while fully cloaked. She didn't want to look bad in front of Fili's friends. "Hey. Fili send you over to help?"

"She asked, and it seemed worthwhile," Bryan said, pushing his glasses up. "That light trick should be quite useful against armored horrors. I'll have to make a few notes in the monsterpedia."

"Assuming there's space. You always forget we have page limits," Sally said giving her friend a side eye. She turned back to Kotori. "More importantly I might be able to help you. Your trainer Akari is from the East, yes? She tied you to a youkai?"

Kotori nodded happily. "Yep! A Moh Shuuvu." Alissa had a hard time understanding how you could be happy about being magically tied to someone, but Kotori seemed proud of it.

Sally gave her fox a pat. "That makes sense. My Osabe here is similarly influenced by the pre Fall tales of the kitsune. More importantly, while that Akari girl has no real skill as a tamer, she's quite powerful. She should have accessed some of your magic and helped develop innate powers."

"Wait, are you saying tamers can make their monster more magical?" Alissa asked. That seemed like a pretty big deal. Something that would get out.

"Somewhat," Sally replied. "They allow their monsters to access skills that would normally be unavailable. Osabe has the magic potential to use a number of spells. But if she'd been stuck in the generic kyuubi mold she'd never have unlocked them."

The fox gave a dismissive huff, but Bryan nodded enthusiastically. "Monsters innately have caps on what they can learn and accomplish due to having only partial souls. When balanced out they easily exceed those limits, allowing them to develop new skills."

Kotori cocked her head. "So I can make up new magic or something? How will that help us?"

"That magic will be heavily tied to the trainer's views on what you can do," Sally replied. "And in this case it specifically means you'll have a youkai's power over natural animals of similar type. Osabe only has power over normal foxes, because dogs and wolves are considered to be natural enemies of the fox. But Kotori should have some power over birds as a bird youkai."

Alissa frowned as she considered it. The idea seemed like a hell of a stretch. "Doesn't make sense to me, but I suppose we can try it. There's a bunch of pigeons waiting to see if we drop any breadcrumbs. See if you can get them to land around that fox, Kotori." Getting the birds to ignore a predator would be a good hurdle to overcome.

"Uh, yeah! Let's see...." Kotori stared at the pigeons and started moving her head around, trying to get a good angle or something.

Sally poked her fox. "Don't eat them if she succeeds." The fox looked annoyed but stayed sitting, tails slowly flopping about.

Alissa waited for a few minutes as Kotori stuck her tongue out, stared, and shifted around trying to call the birds with her mind powers. She was about to consider the whole thing a flop, when the harpy blinked and stood up straight. "Oh. Duh." Kotori took a deep breath and then cooed out "Come over here you guys."

The pigeons took wind as one, then flew in an arc over to land on the grass around the kyuubi, cooing and strutting around as if they were looking for something. Kotori shook her head. "What, I didn't say there was any bread. What are you talking about? Don't put words in my mouth!"

With that the pigeons took wing again, leaving a few presents on the ground as they retreated. "Huh." Alissa looked as the flock left. "That was actually kind of impressive. But it seems less like control and more of a suggestion."

"Yeah they're kinda dumb," Kotori said with a shrug.

Bryan had pulled out a notepad. "Interesting. Actual communication with animals. That would make sense with a youkai mindset, as well as harpy's innate vocal manipulation. The path of least resistance perhaps?"

"Oh clever!" Sally turned to her friend. "That fits with previous findings. I wonder if there's comparative evidence for eyesight based monsters. We should check-"

Alissa tuned them out and turned to the harpy. "So do you think you could keep that up with a giant monster bird interested in eating our livers?"

Kotori frowned. "I... don't know. I bet it'd be confused and hesitant. But I don't know if it'll stick. Probably depends on the individual. The monster thing doesn't matter. They're still a bird."

"Ah!" Raiel perked up. "That confusion could work though! If they're distracted my own skills should allow me to give them that last little push to leave."

"Right." Alissa nodded. "I think we have a plan. But we're going to need to test it. I don't want to find out if we're wrong about monsters being different when a Roc grabs one of us for a snack. Let's try it on the murderbirds in the Spotted Menagerie labyrinth. That'll prove things one way or another."

Bryon cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, we'd like to accompany you as well. It would be great to see the interaction first hand."

Alissa considered it a moment. "Sure. It'll be good having people watching out back just in case. And you'll take better notes than me so Fili won't need to question me for two hours."

"I thought you enjoyed that~," Kotori asked with a wide grin.

She swatted at the annoying harpy. "I like talking with her, but we've got more interesting things to go over."

Sally hissed in amusement. "Ah that explains why Fili was so happy. Well I wish the two of you the best. I'll have to tell you some fun stories about her younger years someday."

"Someday," Alissa replied with her own smile. It'd nice to be on the receiving end of embarrassing info for once. And also Fili was cute when embarrassed.