"Like, if you step off this branch and off the next one down and so on and so on, you don't actually get to the ground. I got lost for a while in one of these trying that."

Blink. 

"Where do you get to instead? Or does it just keep going forever?"

"Well, it keeps going for a long time. It's only like ten minutes if you get to the trunk first."

"...wild. Alright, lead the way."

"Mm-hm."

It smells really strongly of cherry blossom in here. It smells like real flower petals, not like extracts and perfumes and artificial fragrances, but it smells like it a lot, so much that a biological person, were any of those to wander through here, might feel faint. But Junko, making a line in the wood behind her with her dragging sword except when she lifts it to react to a feint from one of the momonga that's hiding in the pink flowers, isn't impaired at all by the thickness in the air.

The petals are so pink, but the sky isn't a far away optical phenomenon, it's all around them. They're in a tree and the tree is in the sky and the sky is blue and they're breathing the sky and it smells like flowers.

Yutaka does not vibe with shrieking whenever something surprises him so he holds it in but he feels the impulse a lot more often than he cares to admit. And it doesn't help that this place is so weird and creepy; it feels like he's in some kind of dream that shifts between dream and nightmare and it's fucking him up.

"Petals'll start swarming any minute now," says Yamanaka as they come within sight of the tree trunk.

And indeed, just as they jump down to a lower branch, a susurrus kicks up and there are petals, swirling together and coming at them with sharp edges. Yamanaka avoids them but only casually; she picks up shallow cuts in her costume and arm.

Aaaaaaaaaaaa! The very first time he's cut he stops time in a panic.

Yamanaka is poised in midair. A crowd of petals hangs before him.

Okay since he's stopped he'll, uh. Walk around a bit? See if there are any important features of the environment he was too busy freaking out to notice? Like, uh, how many petals are there, is a specific edge of theirs sharp or are they sharp everywhere, what happens if he touches one, are they coming from anywhere in particular? How about other monsters, what are they like, where are they coming from? Is there anything else obvious?

There's about a hundred petals in this swarm. If he touches one it comes to life again and slices his finger; it seems like they're sharp on all their edges. There are squirrels about every twenty meters and they hide in not-yet-swarming petals, unharmed - if he touches a petal that's still attached to the tree, it's soft.

What if he pulls the petal from the tree, does it suddenly grow sharps? How are the squirrels unharmed, are they immune to the sharp or does the sharp just not harm them? What are the squirrels' main weapons?

If he pulls a petal off the tree it remains soft in his hand. The squirrels have pretty thick fur, which might be sufficient to protect them? They've got claws; he can't see their teeth because they have their mouths closed at the moment.

Hmm... so maybe the sharp petals aren't the same ones as the ones directly attached to the tree?

If he pinches a sharp petal between his fingers, will it still try to move? If so, can he overpower it without being cut or is the telekinesis too strong? And if he can, can he cut one of the squirrels with it?

A pinched sharp petal will struggle but can't escape. He can cut a squirrel nose with it but not anything covered with fur.

Is that just because the fur is thick or is it otherwise resistant to cutting?

If he wants to shave a squirrel with a flower petal he can.

Okay. Noted. He'd hoped the petals were avoiding squirrels or becoming unsharp around them, then he could use them as a shield, but alas.

Can he determine where the razor petals are coming from? And actually, what happens if he grabs a razor petal and, like, tries to squish it? Like steps on it or something, tries to destroy it?

Like one of those power tools with the little disks, they're only strong from the cutting edge; he can shred one from the center with his fingernails and it'll flutter inert to the ground. It looks like over thataway a swarm is extracting itself from some on the tree; any that are still attached that he plucks himself are soft, any that he catches in midair are sharp.

...huh. And there are only about a hundred petals in this swarm? A hundred is doable. He can destroy that hundred easily.

Next question: are the squirrels so strong that he can't grab one by the waist, maybe pinning its arms, and prevent it from harming him? And perhaps more relevantly, are they so strong that he can't do that quickly enough to throw them over the edge without getting hurt?

They're flying squirrels, so while he can pick one up and hold it tightly enough that it can't claw or bite him, throwing it off a branch may not have the desired effect.

Ah. Damn. Okay.

Well, he can at least get rid of all of the petals and then unpause.

Yamanaka completes her landing onto the next branch down, and the next, and the next.

Yutaka follows, keeping track of the darkening of his gem as he pauses to kill the petals.