Eld let out a large sigh of relief when their descent stopped being "falling" so much as "floating." If he stopped to think about it, he may have been a little embarrassed to be clinging so desperately to a girl half his size, but he was too busy trying to get his heart to slow down by telling it that he wasn't going to die after all.

But as they got within a safe distance to drop to the ground, he realized something was wrong; apparently it was taking for more out of Kaze to support them than he would have thought. Just two feet off the ground she collapsed; Eld quickly got his legs under him...

...but whether because of exhaustion or just leftover fear they felt like jelly, and he simply collapsed as well, his back hitting the sand and Kaze falling on top of him. It wasn't graceful, but they were both safe, and that was what mattered.

"Are you...alright?" he asked between breaths.

It was probably for the best that Eld got his footing before they fell. They tumbled and fell, with Akizets lying on top of Eld. Fortunately, she didn't weigh too much, and she had a fairly soft body, albeit soaking wet.

Nonetheless, she thought about her own condition and realized that Eld actually broke her fall. Had it been the other way around, and Eld fell on her, she might have actually been crying right about now.

"M-mn," Akizetsumei nodded.

She was relieved to be alive-- and just as relieved that Eld was alive and well, too. She couldn't help but smile; relief lead to happiness, after all. As she already had her arms around him, she need only to squeeze him slightly to embrace him. Akizets released him, though, and placed her hands upon his chest, to push herself up so she could get a good look at his face.

Akizets was all smiles again, but that soon faded to an expression of worry. She tilted her head to the side and observed Eld with a slight pout of her lips.

"What about you . . .?" she asked with genuine concern. Eld didn't look so well when he was falling, and he still didn't look like he was feeling too well, either.

Were Eld to look past Akizetsumei's face, though, he'd see that something was above them, something was casting a shadow upon them. It was creeping up to them at a slow pace, but not intentionally slow-- slow, because it couldn't move much faster than this. Almost a second after Akizetsumei's question, he might even see its form, tall, lanky, featureless, and composed of a murky blue, was standing above them with an object lifted to the sky, a murky blue blade reflecting a twilight sun, set upon the end of a long pole, and lifted over the figure's head . . .

That was good to know. Eld would have felt incredibly guilty if she went through the trouble to save him only to get hurt in the process, especially as he already had enough of a reason to feel guilty around her.

But despite that, he couldn't help but smile back up at her. He liked it much better when she was smiling at him, even if he didn't deserve it.

"I'll be...fine...just need...to catch-look out!" he shouted suddenly, seeing the figure poised above them. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled to the side with her in a desperate attempt to avoid the attack.

She was surprised when Eld suddenly squeezed her tightly and rolled to the side. She was briefly upon the ground under him, but just as quickly on top of him again. By that point, a murky scythe implanted itself into the ground. Akizetsumei looked up, and upon seeing this, felt a heavy dread tugging at the bottom of her heart.

Akizets scrambled to her feet. She'd have the opportunity to take care of the enemy before Eld did, and as soon as she was on her feet, she took that opportunity. Eld would see no sign of her in that instant, until the figure of heavily murky water burst like explosion shrapnel, soaking the ground about them more than it already had been. Only then would he see Akizetsumei standing behind it, her body bent over slightly as if she'd just lunged, with her right arm straight out; she was facing her right profile to where the muddled clone once stood.

The water that soaked her this time, though, was remarkably dirty. Mud smudged upon the side of her body, collected upon her cheek and in her hair, dirtying her dress which had, up to this point, only gotten wet. Though there were many more important things than hygiene to worry about at the moment, she was still tremendously put off by the layer of wet mud the was suddenly attached to her cheek and the bottom of her chin. Akizets wiped it off with the back of her hand, before checking her hair. What was usually long, bleach white hair now looked wet and dirty.

"What the heck?" she whined, "They weren't muddy before."

Eld climbed to his feet shortly after Kaze got off of him, prepared to fight, but he needn't have worried; by the time he'd gathered himself, the enemy was destroyed and Kaze was fine, if dirty. Which was for the best, because he was still catching his breath.

"Since the rain's gone, I suppose they can only come from the lake or the ground." Though, given that they were on a beach, it really should have been a sandy clone, he figured.

At least they no longer had clones appearing rapid-fire. He would have been very disheartened if after all that he hadn't actually slowed Oboreru down. They obviously weren't done yet, though.

"Here." Eld pulled the fans out of his belt where he'd stuck them, and offered them back to Kaze. He hadn't really ended up using them; all his concentration had gone into controlling his Qi. "Any idea what to do now?"

He could only think of draining the lake, but he didn't have any idea how to actually go about doing that.

Well . . . it was sort of sand. The only real sand were on the beaches of oceans. This was pseudo-sand. It could hold nutrients, as per the various blades of grass scattered all-- all of which were now completely smothered.

"Thanks . . ." she replied as she took the fans. These were going to come in handy; she'd nearly forgotten she owned them, too.

Akizets looked for the quarterstaff, first and foremost. Eld was probably going to need a weapon too, right? She found it near where they first landed upon the earth and motioned towards it. Akizets wasn't even going to try and lift it up again, and as she was too busy wondering where the last form even came from, she didn't think to retrieve it for Eld.

Indeed, the obvious solution was to clear the entire lake of water, but Akizets couldn't think of how. All the rain, in such volume, served to partially fill it again. Now, it was at sixty percent. That was a lot of water to be rid of. The arm was still extended out of the lake, too, with its palm flat upon the surface of the opposite beach. The situation didn't look good. They didn't have to deal with rapid fire spawning, but the battle was far from over it seemed, and their opponent's source of life wasn't even close to dry.

The only way this could get worse was--

Akizetsumei hadn't even the opportunity to think of it. Before she knew it, she was seeing hands crawling from the most moist sections of sand. She passed a glance behind her, as well-- and as feared, they were there, too. They looked like holes in the ground, where the most moisture had collected, where two hands each crawled up, leading to arms, and finally to heads poking out of the earth. Dirty, mud ridden heads, more earth than water, but very clearly held together by a bond of lake and rainwater. It took them a moment to crawl forward and stand, but in the end, there they were: a full total of eight murky images, five before them, three behind them.

Eld quickly trotted over and grabbed the quarterstaff. Normally he wouldn't worry too much, but with his Qi levels low for the moment he'd need it to defend himself. He desperately needed to find some way to get Kageko back from Oboreru, but couldn't yet think of how.

And again, it seemed he wouldn't have time to. Oboreru seemed to be making up for the fact that he could no longer rapidly spawn clones by spawning several simultaneously. Holding his staff at the ready, he retreated back to near Kaze so that they could cover each other.

He was currently facing the five, though given their relative conditions, he should maybe have been taking the three instead...

Akizets didn't think that she should turn and switch places with Eld. Truth be told, she didn't know he was out of the weird energy he used to create wind. All she knew was that on her side, she had three forms to deal with, and on Eld's, he had five. She could barely recall the time they fought the rain silhouettes, but she felt that she knew these things enough to consider them weak. Her attack on the first one a moment ago was a bit of overkill; she stabbed her hand through it, then put out wind all around it, destroying it from the inside out.

These ones couldn't be too tough, though. Akizetsumei swiped an open fan out for the body of the one closest to her, which was already in the process of lifting its muddy azure scythe.

Murky water burst from the shadow's body, spraying behind it, littering the ground with mud and water. Much to her surprise, however, this provided a minimal result. Rather than detonating at practically the slightest touch, the murky form she struck merely stumbled back. Half of it was gone, half from the chest up, but half of its chest was there, and that half was connected to a shoulder, and that shoulder an arm, and that arm a scythe, and that was all that mattered. The scythe was lifted into the air as it began to walk for her again.

Eld was about to experience the same difficulty, as two descended upon him, one with scythe overhead, the other with it brought back for a horizontal swing . . .

Eld sidestepped the vertical swing, at the same time bringing the quarterstaff down on the horizontal swing, pushing the blow low enough to the ground that he could hop over it.

He countered by swinging his own staff horizontally, attempting to take out both clones at once, but much to his dismay found as Kaze did that one hit was no longer bringing them down; the mud was keeping them together a bit more. But he doesn't control dirt, so shouldn't it slow them down?

Still needing to finish them off, he followed with a leg sweep with the staff, hoping that if they were forced to the ground they'd be unable to maintain their form.

Akizetsumei, seeing the form with half of a torso coming her way first again, swung at it again. A second blow spread the murky water out as she hoped it would originally, casting it back and away.

It was the same success that Eld experienced simultaneously. He took down the two shadows before him, but it required a full total of at least two blows. It was unlikely that these ones were going to be taken out by anything less than two blows. Unfortunately, this left them at a massive disadvantage, which Eld would notice, as focusing on any opponent for more than a single strike allowed the others to get a jump on him. Two more were at his sides, both with horizontal strikes, both already in the middle of their swings. As they were at his sides, though, if he were to focus on one and leave the other be, it would likely get him in the back before he could finish the other . . .

On the other side, Akizetsumei experienced that same problem. Before her was the other two, upon her as soon as she'd taken down the first one. They spawned slowly, but they weren't slow when walking. In fact, it seemed like they could run. To Akizetsumei, that wasn't a problem. To Eld, though, who wasn't nearly as fast as his partner in this battle, that would be an enormous problem.

The woman disappeared as she had many times before, appearing first next to one on the right, and letting forth a strike from an open fan-- then, next to the left, the same. She repeated the same pattern, until both of them were nothing but smears of mud upon the ground. They didn't have any amount of speed advantage on her, and as she wasn't standing back to back to Eld, with no room to move at all, she had no reason to hold back.

While he didn't have his scythe, Eld tended to wield the staff in a similar style. It served to his advantage here, as in his initial training he'd focused on fighting off multiple opponents at once.

He dropped low, ducking under the horizontal swings, and came out in a full circle leg sweep with the quarterstaff, taking the legs of both attackers out from under them. With a brief step towards one he raised the pole and smashed it down to finish it off.

Then he turned and prepared to defend himself; there was still one more approaching him, and another on the ground he hadn't finished off just yet.

Fortunately, Eld hadn't any need to worry about the fifth shadow. That silhouette of Oboreru would stumble back before Eld's eyes, with not but a pair of legs attached to its hips, but only for a split second, as that, too, was destroyed quickly. Akizets landed just a half second later, upon the ground where the shadow once stood, both fans open, both fans ready. It seemed she had an extra edge that Eld did not. With two fans, both used in succession, she could destroy a silhouette at a much faster pace than Eld could.

She'd taken it out from a distance, too-- all four of the ones that she personally dispatched. Eld was having the problem of range, though. Close as he was, whenever he defeated one, it exploded, littering him with a murky mess. Some portions of mud were full chunks of moist earth, too, ones that stuck to anything with the utmost reluctance to be removed. By that point, Eld would be phenomenally dirtier than Akizetsumei, who'd only been in range for one of the explosions.

Nonetheless, by the time Akizets dispatched that silhouette, the shadow upon the ground, behind Eld's back, would already be in the midst of a swing, with arms up off the ground, scythe bound horizontally-- a swing that was very near completion. It wasn't aimed well, but . . .

Fortunately, Kaze was having much less trouble than he was, largely thanks to the fact that she could still use wind just fine, whereas he had temporarily drained himself. At least he hoped it was temporary. In any case she easily dispatched the one fully functional clone left for him.

Having stepped away from it and towards its partner earlier, Eld was only just in range of the one on the ground, so all it took was a quick step back to make the swing whiff--though admittedly that was cutting it closer than he liked. He felt the air displace from the swing.

While it recovered from that, he stepped forward and brought the staff down on it, making the last one erupt in a muddy explosion.

"Ick," he couldn't help but say; he had to resist the suicidal impulse to jump in the lake and clean himself off. He hated being dirty. I'm definitely going to have to take another bath after this.

"We have to figure something out, or this will never end," he noted to Kaze. While there wasn't the imminent danger of the rapidly appearing ones anymore, they'd run out of steam long before Oboreru ran out of water to work with.

In the time that it took them to dispatch eight, there came another problem. Not only was the arm on the other side of the water twitching more than before, but Akizets could see more pairs of hands popping out of the earth, many in spots that had already been opened. Already, holes were beginning to appear upon the beach, deep, human sized trenches, most with hands emerging from them-- then arms, heads, and finally torsos dragging themselves from murky graves.

"I-- I," Akizets started shakily, "I have no idea."

Eight was fine. But this? Twenty four? Maybe even more than that? After much of this fight, Akizetsumei wasn't terribly intimidated by this, but-- well-- she didn't know how she felt about it, just that it wasn't good.

She did all she could do: stand by Eld's side, facing the opposite direction as he, and hope for the best.

"Do . . . do you have a plan?" she asked quickly. That was it, right there, her hoping for the best. So far, Eld was the one that came up with these plans.

The more they fell, the more rose to take their place. He was reminded of the legend of the Hydra, who grew two more heads for every one cut off. Even with them sacrificing speed for durability, they were still dangerous.

To the side, he could see the giant water hand twitching, and paused for a moment. It hadn't attacked them yet; why? There was only one reason he could think of--because Oboreru didn't want it getting attacked itself.

"Kaze, the hand--I think that's our real target. Or at least it might provide a clue." He put his attention back to the surrounding clones; if they had to fight their way there, they'd never make it. But...

"Go to it and see if you can do something to it," he said. "I can hold these guys off." Kaze was quick enough to get over there before Oboreru realized it was in danger.