Inari Omikami

All Sakurakamikaze forms begin the same way but manifest quite differently once the transformation is complete:

Base-line:

Nekoko produces a small slip of rice paper used to inscribe prayers. The prayer strip's kaja characters glow with intrinsic primal power. Anyone who even attempts to decipher the ideograms would fall to madness and fear. She flings the strip into the air above her head, whereupon it floats down slowly towards her feet, combusting mid-air until only ash remains.

But by then, the woman already begins to dance. She whirls and capers and the ancient spells weave pure energy around her figure. Nekoko springs up instantly to over eight feet tall. Her hair lengthens and grows wild. The darkness in her eyes only gleams more monstrously and she sticks out her tongue in a challenge to the abyss. Her human flesh darkens to a different hue, which contrasts against her pink tongue and that unwholesome nimbus that flares around her tall, demonic frame. Clothing vanishes and bares a perfect female form, shapely and lithe. Her only adornment is a garland of twelve polished human skulls wound around her neck down past her buxom to her navel. Two additional arms sprout from her sides within the first few moments. Her fingers twist and cavort in far more rapid cadence than her languid dance steps. They formulate complex trigram signs, capturing the essence of pure energy. Grace and puissance dynamically guide her every thought and action.

When her dance concludes, all of her hands stop and she synchronously snaps her fingers. Objects (varying upon form) appear in most of her hands. A shimmer of raw, annihilating power resonates in the air around her at all times. Those bloodthirsty eyes set upon her enemies and she lets loose a maniacle cackle that resonates across all planes at once. The Destroyer is upon the enemy, whose brazen inequities have earned the wrath of heaven.

Panna-Sapana:

Combining Omoikane and Matangi, her skin embraces the internalized pyrananium and becomes a vibrant emerald-green in hue. In her left upper hand, she clasps a okama (scythe), dripping blood. In her left lower arm, she clutches the scalp of a decapitated head, the severed neck oozing gore. The eyes of the decapitated man have rolled up entirely and his jaw falls slack in a silent scream. Yet, the humor of the head's skin indicates he was executed in the moment she transformed into this form, and that he is at least semi-conscious and suffering in acute agony still. Her right upper hand remains empty, free to cast spells or other weapons. The fingers remain perched in a Tantrick pose of reflection until such use is required. The lower right hand holds a skull-cup beneath the severed head, catching the dripping blood. Her eyes often flicker to the bowl's gruesome contents and seem to pour over the meaning of the collected ichors.

Nagana-Kunvari:

Combining Uzume and Shodashi, her skin darkens to a brick-red color like the classic images of the Devil. However, Nagana-Kunvari is not as imposing as other Blossoms, seemingly younger and more slender in manifestation. An enthralling smile tempers the destructive madness of Kali Ma. The entropic nimbus brightens into a warm and welcoming glow. She carries the okama in her upper left hand. In the upper right, she clutches a sodegarami, the three-pronged polearm designed for barbing and holding enemies. It represents purity, impurity, and the dynamic passions that forever transform between those states. Her lower arms remain empty and clasped together in contrasting Tantrick serenity.

Sona-Lomari:

Combining Inari and Kamala, her skin brightens to a lustrous golden hue. A great, furry white tail plumes from her behind and sways with every step of her dance. Her eyes brighten to a steely silver and her tongue withdraws into her mouth, leaving a disturbingly placid smile. Her upper left hand wields an okama while the left bears the sodegarami. This three-pronged polearm is designed for barbing and holding enemies. It represents purity, impurity, and the dynamic passions that forever transform between those states. Her lower arms each hold a curved ivory horn like the tusk of an elephant. It is unclear if she can and would employ them as weapons or if they represent the plenty of death that Sakurakamikaze brings upon her enemies.

Katane-Hathiyara:

Combining Takemikazuchi and Chintamani, Nekoko takes on the strangest and most terrifying form. Her skin pales to an ashen gray. The second the transformation completes, she promptly chops off her own head with a single deadly blow. In her left upper hand, she clasps the offending weapon, a nodachi (bastard sword-sized katana), dripping with her own blood. In her right upper arm, she clutches that very head by the hair! Yet, she is quite alive, and her severed head's expression blazes with even greater manic madness than usual. Her lower right arm holds a skull-cup to catch and collect the gore oozing from her neck. Endless blood fountains from the severed trunk atop her shoulders. Her lower left arm remains empty, the hand forming a Tantrick posture that disturbingly appears to be a beckoning movement to all who behold this frightening form. She is the death of all things, even herself.

Chandra-Nashta:

Combining Tsukuyomi and Dhumavita, this powerful form completes the first elemental cycle and merges with the black abyss of the deepest chasms of the sea. Her skin becomes jet-black. Though still terrifyingly beautiful, an age withers her looks. Slight wrinkles (crow's feet) appear at those striking, burning-black eyes. Smoke surrounds her at all times, generated from the ashes of the fallen souls she tramples in her wake. In her left upper hand, she clasps a okama (scythe), dripping blood. In her left lower arm, she clutches the scalp of a decapitated head, the severed neck oozing gore. And it is not a symbolic representation of a man. It is the head of Mark Howell, her twin soul and mentor. The eyes of the decapitated man have rolled up entirely and his jaw falls slack in a silent scream. Yet, the humor of the head's skin indicates he was executed in the moment she transformed into this form, and that he is at least semi-conscious and suffering in acute agony still. In her right upper hand, she clutches a sodegarami, the three-pronged polearm designed for barbing and holding enemies. It represents purity, impurity, and the dynamic passions that forever transform between those states. The lower right hand holds a skull-cup beneath the severed head, catching the dripping blood from Mark's severed head. She is the death of all things, even her mirror-self.

Chita-Hava:

Combining Fujin and Tara, a shade of frigid blue dominates her skin color. The power of wind cuts through her flesh and bones and empowers her destructive dance in this form. Feng Po has his say as part of this Blossom. The raw ferocity of the Chita-Hava represents with partial clothing in the form of a loincloth of tiger fur. Her upper left hand wields an okama while the left bears the sodegarami. This three-pronged polearm is designed for barbing and holding enemies. It represents purity, impurity, and the dynamic passions that forever transform between those states. Her lower left hand holds a burlap sack that billows with the four winds that it contains. Her lower right hand remains perched in Tantrick posture, ready to act as required, perhaps even reaching into the bag and casting a flesh-flaying, scourging wind upon her enemies.

Khuni-Andhi:

Combining Susano and Bhairava, her skin brightens to a bright cherry-red hue. It represents the fiery heat of her dance's ruthlessly stormy assault. A pale-white coral comb keeps her hair in fixed place, unusually for the Blossoms. Her upper left hand wields an okama while the left bears the sodegarami. This three-pronged polearm is designed for barbing and holding enemies. It represents purity, impurity, and the dynamic passions that forever transform between those states. In her lower left hand, she clutches a magatama necklace made of Tian-Yu jade. Her lower right hand remains empty and rapidly forms through a variety of Tantrick and trigram postures like a fidgeting unruly ghost. This form cannot be still, in fact, and blazes through all obstacles, physical or otherwise.

Yuddha-Devi:

Combining Hachiman and Vemasana, her skin glows like silver and bronze lacquer armor. Highly unusual for the Kali Ma, she does not sprout two additional arms and only grows one foot in height. Her tongue withdraws into her mouth and leaves an expression of austere determination. She seems almost human, were it not for that palpable nimbus of destructive energy always around her. She also continues to completely disregard standards of modesty. Her right hand wields a katana forged in Takamagahara, while the left brandishes a saihai, a tasseled baton. The baton is lacquered bamboo and the tassels formed from the hair of a sacrificial princess of prehistorical ancient Japan, gilded and preserved in gold. Though seemingly more contained than other Blossoms, the Yuddha-Devi reveals an unstoppable deadliness that slices through sin itself.

Sundara-Gaja:

Combining Raiden and Bagala, her skin pales almost alabaster-white, and yet she seems more starkly beautiful and frightening than any other Blossom form. Electricity crackles throughout that darksome nimbus and between her eyes and tongue. It surrounds her weapons, both the okama scythe and sodegarami in her left and right upper hands respectively. The three-pronged polearm is designed for barbing and holding enemies. It represents purity, impurity, and the dynamic passions that forever transform between those states. Lightning jumps between and surrounds both weapons, too. Her lower arms remain empty but swirl in mysterious Tantrick movements that stir up a divine storm underfoot. Every step carries a thunderous cannonade. The destructive madness of this form seals the fate of any demon who dares challenge the gods and their avatar champion.

Suri-Nerti:

Nekoko cannot yet assume this form, which would combine the mighty chief sun goddess, Amaterasu and the prime form of Kali, Adya.

Bagala Kali

The following advantages are available to Nekoko in her forms. The base-line powers automatically apply the moment she begins the transformation (with the prayer strip). The complete transformation that takes place during her initial dance requires four turns. At the end of those turns, she can (and typically will) unleash her form's specific main attack.

All of this is exceedingly vulgar magick, but the nature of the Mao'lung Exigency connects her and Mark's Twin Souls. This channels the Paradox through time and space to him, where he continues to dispose of it with mighty oracular Prime magick, just as he has been doing since Tess first arrived in this era. It's just a much greater strain than she usually invokes. However, it is only for the briefest of moments in the most specific context. She can only summon the Blossom when directly confronting that form's assigned enemy. (Thus does Tess rely on her Fragment allies to help her get that far!) Once the enemy is defeated, she reverts to her normal, mortal Tess form and collapses in unconscious exhaustion for 3 days straight.

Base-line:
1. She gains +4 Strength, +4 Dexterity, and +4 Stamina.
2. The pyrananium armor forces a +3 difficulty increase to all damage rolls made against her (assuming successful hits). She may soak all forms of damage with Stamina plus she gains +5 armor. (So, given her base stats, she'd have 14 dice to soak any form of damage.) Finally, it bestows 5 dice of counter-magic that is always rolled at difficulty 5 and works against any direct supernatural spell, attack, or Effect.
3. She gains access to her stash of Tass as a pool of Quintessence for any Effects or spells as needed.
4. She regenerates like a True Angel/Demon: one Health Level per turn (bashing/lethal) automatically. Aggravated damage can be healed by expending 1 Quintessence per wound level, one level per turn at most (a Stamina check, difficulty 7, is necessary to continue acting while regenerating).
4. She has the benefits of the following rotes (that she normally has hanging or triggered anyway): Prediction, Cyclone Blade, Faced With Honor, First Word-Last Word, One Step Ahead, and Might of the Celestial Dragon. All are effective as if cast with 10 successes. This means her Initiative bonus is +61. It means she has 18 bonus dice for Martial Arts or Melee/5 additional actions per turn (she may mix those up, too: e.g., have 4 extra actions and 6 bonus dice). Furthermore, all of her extra actions taken per turn occur at her Initiative, even before her opponents' first normal actions. Finally, her entropic nimbus doubles her effective defense by subtly deflecting all ranged attacks before they even hit her body (where they'd likely plink off her pyrananium skin anyway).
5. She radiates a terrifying aura at all times. All around her (including allies) must make a single Courage or Willpower roll (difficulty 7) or run screaming. A botch on this roll causes panicked flight and a permanent Derangement (mages enter Quiet, fae enter 2nd-stage Bedlam). Her Katane-Hathiyara form is even more frightening: the Courage/Willpower check is difficulty 9. Her forms' primary enemies are unaffected and, indeed, may become enraged by the manifestation.
6. Every form has a specific weakness and flaw, which will be detailed below. This weakness is significant but comparatively minor and isn't likely to impede the manifestation's very deliberate appearance and destructive power. (Meaning, it's mostly for roleplay value, like the entire Mao'lung Exigency is in the first place!)
7. She has all of these powers starting in the first turn of transformation. It takes four turns to complete the transformative dance. Then she may use her form's specific main power as described below:

Panna-Supana:

Mindscatter: A telepathic blast that sunders the target's mind and scatters it across every dimensional plane (10 levels of aggravated damage and disorientation).
Flaw: She suffers a +1 difficulty to focus on any specific task that takes more than one turn to complete.

Nagana-Kunvari:

Dance of Dawn: Her halo-like nimbus flares up as radiantly hot as true sunlight (5 levels of aggravated damage and blindness; shadow-effects are banished and vampires take an additional 5 levels of aggravated damage).
Flaw: She suffers a +1 difficulty to detect or discern lies and tricks.

Sona-Lomari:

Curse of Plenty: A victim bloats up with putrefaction factors as if dead (10 levels of aggravated damage and physical paralysis).
Flaw: She cannot help but lie; she must roll Willpower (difficulty 7) to tell the truth.

Katane-Hathiyara:

Deadly Slash: Vorpal attacks with her manifestation's weapons are exceptionally deadly (automatically inflict +3 levels of aggravated damage per strike).
Flaw: She feels particularly murderous in this form and must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) to stop her own killing spree, no matter who's in her way.

Chandra-Nashta:

Moonstrike: A blast of pure darkness fires from her mouth, inflicting entropic Oblivion-based damage (10 levels of aggravated damage that cannot be soaked without a Spirit-based defense or the equivalent).
Flaw: She is entirely nocturnal and sleeps like the dead while the sun is up. This flaw affects her as soon as she enters her target enemy's virtual proximity (100 mile-radius) even before manifesting the form.

Chita-Hava:

Windslash: Her manifested weapons can cut through body and soul, allowing her to strike past the Gauntlet/Shroud. Her weapons ignore all physical and metaphysical defenses (no soak).
Flaw: She must trust in her wind lord and cast no other spells or use any other weapons while in this form.

Khuni-Andhi:

Breath of Chaos: She may vomit forth a deluge-like flood of pure elemental fury (10 levels of aggravated damage per turn).
Flaw: She is susceptible to presentations of Christian faith, even without True Faith to bolster them. A common priest could "exorcise" her while the sign of the cross drives her back.

Yuddha-Devi:

Omni-Attack: Her sword can hit regardless of her enemy's own current state or form and adds +5 levels of aggravated damage per hit.
Flaw: To gain this power, her manifestation must conclude the dance with a human sacrifice: a Sleeper who is a virgin. She's aware of this when she nears her enemy (100 miles radius of the enemy's proximity), so may prepare by luring a hapless victim to the site of battle.

Sundara-Gaja:

Wrath of Storms: This powerful ability turns the lightning that surrounds her manifestation into weapons of their own. Each turn in which she is engaged with an enemy, the lightning around her crackles out over the foe, inflicting an additional 5 levels of aggravated damage. She can instead focus the power by taking no other actions and channel a bolt for 10 levels.
Flaw: If the fight lasts more than one round, she enters a state of quasi-frenzy in which she cannot stop herself from attacking anyone nearby (she must roll Willpower at difficulty 8 to stop herself).

Suri-Nerti:

Nekoko cannot yet assume this form, which would combine the mighty chief sun goddess, Amaterasu and the prime form of Kali, Adya. Its powers are unknown but presumably the strongest.


Chintamani Kali

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The Doomed

These are the nine great foes with which Nekoko has been tasked to eliminate with the power of the Sakurakamikaze. Without the Blossoms, most of them are too powerful for her alone. Even if she could defeat them without the Blossoms, she would risk the temporal backlash of meddling with time outside the extradimensional and celestial nature of the Mao'lung Exigency.

Included in each foe's description is mention of the Mao'lung ally, who is either a Fragment or Adjacent.

Pleat
Pleat is a Paradox-spirit afixed to the Sphere of Time. He is more rigid, less forgiving, and less wise than Wrinkle. Despite the nature of Mark Howell's magick, Pleat insists on investigating the temporal distortions anyway, and so must be eliminated first. He takes the form of a Man in Black who never seems to be quite real, like a hologram or projected image. He's haunting San Francisco in search of the source.

The ancient Amari Aliquid werespider, Lital Jerayesh, has agreed to help. Her unusual skill and power over Paradox itself would come in handy.

Louhi
Louhi, the ancient and mad Malkavian crone, still plans to use her vampiric witchcraft to "put out the sun". Temporal fluctuations may make her crazed scheme possible, so she's been slated for removal. Nekoko knows she lurks somewhere in frigid Oulu, Finland.

Amaya Lamb ni Scathach, an Old World Frankish Sidhe, helps the hunt.

Ettutu
Lital is not the only Anansi-ranked werespider, but Ettutu went bad and became Antara. He's in Manhattan seeking to infiltrate the Pentex Board of Directors and take up the seat of Fear, serving Foebok. And he is quite terrifying. Only Nekoko in her Blossom manifestation would be scarier.

Luckily, she has Deeandra Aponius to show her the ropes in the Big Apple, and the Golden Chalice is far from chopped liver herself.

Toji
Her old rival returns, in a matter of speaking. This Go Kamisori Gama barrabi of Clan Tenryu seeks to infiltrate her dreams and slay Tess there, in Kansas City. In the realm of the mind, she confronts the dangerous veteran assassin who knows all her old tricks. Fortunately, she has some new ones.

Gemma Calabrian is a powerful old Dream Lord who can lend her aid to the cause.

Petohtal'rayn
A Void Lord has reappeared in Durban, South Africa. A coven of Baali infernalists and others serve it. This misty nether-being derives from the depths of the Deep Umbra (the Void) and is on par with a demon lord. It is a kind of Qlippah. She will need all the power of the kami and Kali to vanquish him and his minions.

The Lilians, Kanika Tauaw and her childer, help her to do so.

Malaveyovo
The waygates through Umi into Nozomi pose a vulnerability that, if exploited, threaten all that Nekoko has worked for. The terrible Yama Queen, Malaveyovo, dark lady of Pueleko, brings her cannibal lust to Kure Atoll and the Court of the Banding Reef. Nekoko confronts the demon lord personally there.

But not alone: the Zhong Lung Regent of the new Beast-Court assigned to the waygate guardianship, Momoi Mego, fights at the Blossom's side.

Zyvas
A frightening Onceborn Malfean called Zyvas the All-Consuming haunts New Orleans' Shadowlands and seeks to devour all consciousness. As the ultimate anti-psychopomp, Kali Ma is opposed to this and helps Tess manifest the deadly manifestation needed to confront this terrifying "black angel" in the Underworld.

The old Mokolé can help transverse the Shroud and confront this monster. She looks like a mere girl but Esperanza Caballera Garcia has benefited from Helios' gifts of longevity for centuries.

Menuven
In Puebla, Mexico, an ancient Lasombra lurks in the catacombs and threatens the sanctity of Cholula and all that the Dominion of the Godhouse has been fighting to restore and preserve. This Abyssal Methuselah demands confrontation from a true killer.

The Olmec Tlazopilli princess, Alixel Xaqab'ic, offers her aid and magic to the cause to purify her homeland.

Haha-no-Fukami
Another Yama Queen endangers the world even before the Sixth Age! Haha-no-Fukami, queen of the Hell of the Seven Burning Seas, capitalizes on temporal arcane loopholes that could imbalance the continuum of the world. Nekoko travels to Macau to face this dark lady, the mistress of pirates and polluters in the South China Sea.

She has one of her most powerful allies to help confront the demon in its home turf. The Oracle, Jade LeMoine, joins the coming conflict.


Adya Kali

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"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
- Bhagadvita

The Mao'lung Fragments