2018-07-21: Caliban's War
- Log: Caliban's War
- Cast: Talia, Claude C. Kenny, Ethius Hesiod, Neriah Parringer (as Sister Domitia), Ida Everstead-Rey, Josephine Lovelace, Lydia Seren, Kaguya, Elhaym van Houten, Tabitha deVriese, Matilda Whitehead, Lily Keil
- Where: Pearloats Pasture
- Date: July 21st 2018
- Summary: Hyland's army has driven deep into Rolance, but the movements of some of Rolance's rearguard have cut it off from its main forces in Volgran Forest. Hyland's and Rolance's armies clash in a titanic battle in the Meadow of Triumph.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Recent events in Rolance had cooled, but not stopped the war.
The devastation of Lastonbell by the Saint of Sinners had forced both armies to regroup. Hyland's main force had already penetrated into Rolance, into the heartland of the empire, and it had taken time to establish resupply and gather all of the troops. Some Rolance forces had scouted out Lastonbell, but the severe damage to the city meant that holding it was a medium-term project; the walls were practically shattered. In the end, two armies danced around one another with a few skirmishes.
In recent days, this changed. For Rolance, it was an opportunity to strike at Hyland's army with the newfound strength of mercenary levies that, somewhat, made up for the loss of one of their field armies at Lastonbell. For Hyland, it was a chance to resume the march.
The result is, in Pearloats Pasture, two armies moving to collide.
-=-=-
The battlefield is a trio of rocky hills. Hyland's eastward advance has met the main Rolance force. Mercenaries on both sides joined with the main armies about two hours ago, and are in the center columns, which are meant to meet. The Hyland force arrives first, cresting the top of a hill, and looking down into the triangle-shaped depression that will soon be called the Battle of the Three Hills. Rolance's red-adorned forces are splayed out to the west.
There are a few tense moments; then, a loud horn splits the air, from the Hyland side, and Hyland's forces charge forward, with a clatter of steel and a roar across their lines.
OOC: For this scene, you need to be either on Hyland's or Rolance's side as a mercenary; this isn't one for someone trying to stop the fighting! Please note which side you're on in your pose and over +big. The scene will be split into smaller fights between people hired by Rolance and Hyland; there are also NPCs fighting in the background (but won't be receiving a lot of attention -- they're more for backdrops than a thing to interact with in detail). Boss HP is A-OK if we don't have even odds. We'll take stock of where people are at in their respective fights around 10:00 - 10:15 PM EST, and decide the outcome of the battle based upon that and what occurs!
DC: Kaguya switches forms to Alien Berserker Kaguya!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia hasn't fought in a war like this before.
Lastonbell was different; her role in Lastonbell was all before the proper fighting broke out, in a demolition mission. This is a war of lines of armored soldiers, hurtling themselves into battle. Talia runs, bolting along the edges, with her short sword already drawn. The temptation is to throw Mirage and close distance immediately, but then the skies darken.
Arrows rain from overhead, then slam down into the distant Hyland lines. Archers serve as a reminder to not get too far ahead. When the two lines of armored infantry meet, there is a thunderous clash -- a ring of steel upon steel.
Talia grits her teeth, then she throws a hand out.
An icicle appears; the ice lance rockets through the air, and spears through a spearman wearing Hyland blue.
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
When and if Claude C. Kenny ever makes it back to Federation space, he's probably going to leave 'signed up as a mercenary captain employed in a centuries-old medieval crusade-style war' out of his report. Despite the fact that it was better planned out (and better intentioned) than a lot of decisions he made on Filgaia, and despite the fact that every decision made mostly sense at the time, here he is, standing in the middle of an honest-to-God medieval army, staring across the field at another honest-to-God medieval army.
Claude - or rather Cless, as he is choosing to be known - checks the straps on his shield as he waits for the signal to advance. It comes from the Hyland side first, and a ripple of nervous energy passes through Rolance's lines. Cless takes a moment to survey the field, as a thousand swords sing their way out of their scabbards, jagged whispers echoing off the hills; despite a largely correct reputation for graduating through sheer nepotism, Claude had paid attention in military tactics classes, knowing the lessons could keep him - and a lot of other people - alive in the future. Surprisingly, a lot of it translates; the basic principles of infantry combat have held largely true throughout the centuries. Take away air support and armoured cavalry, and a fight is mostly the same whether on Thermopylae or Pyrax IV.
Well, mostly, Cless thinks as a handful of lightning and fire spells follow the arrows in toward the incoming charge. It won't be enough, he thinks as he sucks in a breath. "BRAAAAAAAAAAACE!" Cless roars; shields and polearms raise around him as he walks toward the front of the line, gathering power. The blonde swordsman gathers power, focusing energy into his right leg. Arrows and spells won't break the charge's momentum - they'll need something bigger to do the job. The ground around him begins to shiver, as the few earth mages with any strength prepare the ground, adding their power to the coming effort. Cless lifts his foot and screams, although with the oncoming battlecries, the exact words are lost.
Something about pears and peaches, possibly.
Whatever they were, the results are unmistakable - a wave of stone spikes begins flowing out from the earth in front of Brave Phantasia, forming jagged stalagmites pointing painfully forward toward the oncoming horde.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Ethius, dressed in the form of a hooded hoodlum as he usually does, is actually a fair bit deeper into the Hyland ranks than they realize. He greatly risks attracting friendly fire from Rolance - friendly in so much that he seems to be deliberately targeting Hyland soldiers, and is failing to wear proper identifying colors.
He is not worried about friendly fire. If caught, he could be dismissed and summarily executed as some opportunistic bandit hoodlum. That level of plausible deniability would work to be taken to the grave, of which he finds a comfort. Strange as that sounds.
His movements through the mounting hostilities are - were there anyone to witness and transcribe it - smooth in a way that seems otherworldly, detached from the anxieties and aggressions that mark those who are preapred to lay their lives in their finest - and maybe even final - hours.
Some will not live to even hear the horn that calls for them to move in.
His picks are brazen, and timed coinciding with any environmental noise that can overcome the inevitable sounds of rustling and struggling as he yanks a more lightly-armored rifleman down into a rocky outcropping. They don't get to yelp before a quickly-cast Symbological spell fills their lungs with choking dust. At the spell's completion, getting his hand down on their throat does the rest to ensure they suffocate.
The horn sounds in the middle of this dishonorably inflicted death, and Ethius goes still as he waits to see how the Hyland soldier ranks charge and move. He is already working out his next strategm for thinning the ranks while he may yet maintain that element of surprise.
<Pose Tracker> Sister Domitia has posed.
Somewhere behind the lines of Rolance, someone watches.
Wounded soldiers filter back to be treated; still more reinforcements pour past in the other direction. They flow around Sister Domitia, who stands among it all like a white pillar of salt, barely moving. She will offer quiet benedictions to those few who seem to need them.
But the power she has poured into battle after battle with Hellions is absent here, for one simple apparent reason: Sister Domitia is an abjuress whose spells banish evil forces. The men of Hyland are not Hellions and they are not demonic forces. They are just men - men who believe in Althena as much as any Rolancer. Domitia apparently cannot abjure men of Althena.
That said, among the soldiers of Rolance locked into battle on the front, there are some few who fight more bravely and with greater lethality than the others, as though the benediction of the Sister has emboldened and empowered them. Storming through a hail of arrows, a group of three men in particular is boldly leading a group of Rolance soldiers to challenge Hyland's left flank.
Those with good memories might recognize them from Lastonbell: Commander Oaks with a heavy battleaxe, and his cohorts, Corporals Trent (with longsword and proud shield) and Severn (with a two-handed warhammer). Whatever courage or blessing gave them the strength to confront the Saint of Sinners when any other generic soldier would've died instantly seems to still be with them; they've been among the most successful soldiers on the field today.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida wanted to do nothing more than return to the castle, curl up, and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. Unfortunately, there was a missive waiting for her back at port--Rolance needed the services of its mercenaries, and she had thrown her hat in the ring back when she was in a better frame of mind.
Malevolence is already building on the battlefield, dancing in the air as Hyland's forces charge. The Royal Hyland Rifles provide a considerable advantage, but Hyland's forces soon find out that they are not the only ones with ARMs on the battlefield. Someone whistles, sharply, and the first rank of Rolance soldiers parts, moving to the side to reinforce the column's flanks. In their place is a squad of a dozen humanoid figures--they look like armored soldiers at a distance, but up close they are clearly not. They're Hellion automatons, well-armored and built for survivability and modularity. They are human-sized metal dolls. Mannikins.
The Mannikins take a knee, as one. They raise their gunsmoke rifles--built similarly to one of the more common Everstead-Rey designs on Filgaia--and open fire.
Ida stands behind her Hellion troops, and forces herself to watch. Her coat blows gently in the breeze behind her. With her Malevolence gagged down, she looks like an easy target. The Mannikins and their strange weapons underscore the point.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie's never fought in a war before.
Not as a soldier, that is. Sure enough, she's run into her share of battlefields, dealt with her share of soldiers (from both sides of the conflict back home... and then some).
If she's being honest, neither side to this particular conflict matters to her very much at all. Not her circus, not her monkey, as the saying back home went.
And technically speaking, it was the OTHER side that had hired her and the rest of the company.
But that's all just fine. Leon had made a special request of her. And Hyland's paying for mercenary support.
She's not dressed in the Hyland colors. The only deference she makes to it is a blue strip of cloth tied about her upper right arm.
Playing sniper means it doesn't much matter anyway. There's a straggler, someone not quite in formation on the other side. Up in her perch behind a larger chunk of rocky outcropping, her lips quirk upwards in a sickle of a smile as she draws a bead on that figure in red.
They never do see the shot coming. To all outward viewers, the soldier simply drops.
Josie doesn't linger; she rolls back behind her cover and slips to peek around the other side.
A horn blares out across the field.
Her glance carries out towards the hills. Funny. She was certain there were other riflemen the last she looked.
Hm. Something's not right over there, but her angle's poor.
Moving quickly, she ducks low and races for the next outcropping.
Now she sees them -- a single unmarked man making his way through the ranks. Symbology, Josie realizes.
Now, aren't you familiar, runs the thought.
As she nonetheless raises her rifle, glances through the front site, and takes that shot; the crack of the gunsmoke arm rings out.
Better safe than sorry, right~?
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Front Sight! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod critically Guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Front Sight for 20 hit points! GS: Cripple and Jam! Statuses applied to Ethius Hesiod!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia, of course, would prefer to be stopping the fighting but look at that scene note! This isn't a scene for trying to stop the fighting! And frankly, Lydia isn't the kind of person to walk into the middle of a battlefield where people are already dying and sing about giving peace a chance. She's not that nuts. Lydia has already decided to help Hyland out in preference because, well, that's who Kaguya randomly decided to help but after what happened to Lastonbel, Lydia is only more determined to stick to the course.
If nothing else, like two of her crushes are on that side and--well, okay, Kaguya might be her sister since she officially accepted Riesenlied as a mom so maybe that would be a little weird to continue the whole crush thing but lydia doesn't like thinking about that because it means thinking about how she had a crush on somebody who is a sister now and that's kind of weird and it's not like adoption magically erased those complicated feelings even if well okay her having a girlfriend already is helping that out already.
Lydia's been supplying Hyland with weaponry rather than fighting personally, but she figures after a Hyland soldier gets speared by an icicle maybe she....should....try to stop that. More to the point, she sees Ida over there and she remembers what Cecilia said.
NOT LONG AGO, AND PARAPHRASED
Cecilia: Yeah we will probably have to beat the shit out of Ida in order to save her.
Lydia: Sweet.
NOW
Lydia grimaces and advances forward toward Rolance's lines, taking in a deep breath and singing her battlesong.
"My stuff's so cheap you won't believe how much you can save so swing on by!" A guy gets stabbed in the eye nearby. "And then purchase things til you're broke." A giant rock crushes a nearby Rolancer. "Prices so low that you'll need a great sword," A guy literally gets chopped in half nearby. "To slash them more!"
She is headed Idawards...but perhaps someone might ambush her first?! Surprisingly, Lydia has her own soldiers, including Amber the falconeer and Tadpole the uh. Fish beastman but they're likely occupying themselves with providing support rather than direct destruction.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Lastonbell was sure a thing. Kaguya remembers her part in it well, of course; get in behind 'enemy' lines, plant her amplifiers, set the charges, and blow the wall in a conflagration of strange, terrifying energies. It was a spectacle, like she'd been asked, and it went precisely as she'd hoped. ...However...
She wasn't expecting the dragon. Who expects a dragon? So she got with Matilda and drew up some alternate battle plans. And so the Oasis Free Company is prepared today for the unexpected, ready to finally go into proper battle.
And that means they need to be led by their Lady, of course. So it is that in the center column of Hyland's forces there is a small mercenary force in green trim, with a motley variety of weapons--including, for a number of them, long- and short- ARMs of peculiar make. They're irregulars for sure, and many of their styles are unfamiliar to Lunar armies. For some, mysterious reason.
At their head is a small young woman, less than five feet tall, with short blonde hair and pointed ears, sharp elongated canines like fangs. She's wearing a sleeveless vest of strange, segmented green armor, plates on her shoulders and plated gloves on her hands. Loose pants, boots of the strange metal... and at her hip is a holster for a strange, white-and-black ARM, something Filgaians might recognize as resembling a shotgun... more or less. She pulls it, cracks her neck, and crackles suddenly with power. "...Heh heh heh..."
The horn splits the air. "Oasis!" Kaguya's voice slashes out. "FORWARD!"
As the battle joins, Kaguya moves straight into the fray--the first soldier to swing a polearm at her has the bad luck for her to roll under his guard and punch straight through him--then use him as a shield as she starts popping off shots of horrifying green light from her ARM.
"Make them die before you do, men!"
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Josephine is one hell of a crack shot. She might've just caught a certain scoundrel completely unawares.
Not so. The man seems to be possessed of an awareness that simply should not be possible. Daylight off a lens? Catching the slightest movement from that other rocky outcropping? These are questions that are less interesting than what happens as the man crosses an arm inward as part of the gesticulation to the telltale lights of building sorcery. As if a mere forearm draped in cloth would stop a bullet. She might silence him before he completes that spell.
The rifle round screams through the air at incredible speed. There should be a pink cloud of blood.
There is instead a loud electric 'ping' and a bright flash to match at the point of impact around Ethius' skull, turning a gaping head wound into the equivalent of someone sharply jabbing a finger against it. The hood he wears has a hole in it now. His skull does not.
The rifle round is bent and warped to uselessness by the g-forces of its sudden deflection, flipping up into the air to be caught by Ethius' free hand and smoothly stashed somewhere on his person.
The presence of mind to survive what was technically a headshot, catching the unnaturally slowed and bent bullet, and stashing it away as though it were imperative to allow the expended round itself to be left on the ground.
Ethius turns his head towards the source of the sniper fire by the telltale gunsmoke. She doesn't see him pick back up the rifle of the fallen Hyland soldier he kneels over.
He might not even see her directly, if she's of the mind to quickly hide behind cover. He doesn't need to - he knows where that came from, and she may notice a big upswell of incredible heat that would turn her rocky cover molten to envelop her if she does not vacate her cover.
This is, in a sense, return fire. (Return heat.)
GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Return Heat! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Josephine Lovelace guards a hit from Ethius Hesiod's Return Heat for 65 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
After Uzda il-Jam, Talia is now far more sensitive to Malevolence. Before, she could see it, but it was hard; now, she can see it plainly, and she feels a pulse of concern at the way it raises up now. She forces that concern down. Her work with Lubov does not leave much room for worrying about Malevolence and corruption.
She repeats it to herself, in her mind, until it comes true.
Her eyes turn, though -- and sees the Mannikins. Her eyes widen; she recognizes the ARMs gripped by them. She throws a hand out. A magical circle flashes under her feet; white blue light erupts. Then, ice shoots up the feet of several Mannikins. It locks them into place -- and then Mirage flies, slamming into one's chest.
Talia bursts apart into shadowstuff. Strands of shadow move and twist across the battlefield, and reform, with Talia's hand gripping a blade buried into the chest of the Mannikin. She rips it out, then slashes out in a broad arc with Mirage.
The heads of the neighboring Hellions are shorn off with a single, circular strike.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
WAR!
War never changes.
War is HERE.
"Elly," mercenary warrioress, is totally different from all the other Ellies you have encountered who were similarly purple-eyed redheads with sanpaku eyes and the kind of strong teeth you get from having never missed dinner or lunch in your childhood. She is quantifiably different in a number of ways, such as:
* Hair in a braid
* Wearing a braided piece of cloth over her forehead to keep out sweat
* Long cotton robe with some leather-reinforced pants to deal with shrapnel
* Staff~ staff~ (The staff is just a long piece of shaped wood with some lead poured into the top end for added striking force. Shhh.)
* A red tabard over everything
* A ballistic insert in her undershirt (secret)
She has been pretty quiet when clumped up with the Brave Phantasia group. The stalagmites are thrown up like instant earthworks, and Elly tilts her head downwards. Even as green light is fired, there is a sudden tension in the air -
And now it is her turn to drop icicles among the forces of Kaguya.
She tries not to think of Josephine. Just survive, she tells herself, and watch, and...
...
WIN, says the memory of Dominia in her head. (The disgust in Dominia's voice is a key part of this.)
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Kaguya with Terra Lance! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from Elhaym van Houten's Terra Lance for 59 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie's the observant sort -- you don't make a living being a Badlands Drifter without keeping your wits about you.
Or, well, you don't make a living doing that for long.
She still has no idea she's been spotted. Most people, after all, if they clue to being spotted, they take evasive action. Find some cover, start moving a little more quickly. Return fire.
Instead, it looks like his intent is elsewhere when she cracks off that bullet.
In a flash, she realizes she's been had.
The round seemingly bounces off the back of his skull, with a sound that at the same instant suggests it wasn't his skull that deflected it.
Fengalon's whiskers, it was a spell. No mere mage, this one.
Not if he noticed and reacted that quickly.
She falls back behind her cover, watching and waiting for his next action. Did he notice where it had come from?
A glance downwards, a pair of heartbeats later, suggests the answer is YES.
Her lips move. Electricity rolls down her arm and chews outward in a scything blast into the heat and flame that rise around her, deflecting and diverting a portion of the spell away from her. The rest, she'll just have to live with as she races from the heart of the flames, her coattails smoldering.
There are times when a sniper-shot approach is best.
This is not one of those times. Trailing smoke, Josie beelines for Ethius; without warning or delay, she cracks off a shot for his midsection, barely even pausing in her flight.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Shoot the Breeze! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
Cless al'Vane continues to be as ignorant to the pulse of Malevolence as he has ever been, though the sharp, thin cracks of rifle rounds tell him quite clearly that there are some Filgaian units among the line.
Fortunately, stomped spikes in the face block small arms rounds just as effectively as they do charging bodies, and so he spends the first few moments of the clash mercifully free from contact. This gives him a few precious moments to think like a commander instead of a soldier, allowing him to scan the field for the most immediate threat. Or, more specifically, to allow his tricorder to do that, beam the resulting information to his contact-lens HUD, and flag high-energy areas with a pale green light.
Chief among them - some sort of tiny girl strolling idly through the middle of a war.
Pangalactic Federation training is big on breaking down its people's anthropomorphic biases, largely because it's hard to get anything done if your response to a Farunga* superior's presence was to scream incessantly. Hence, Cless's first reaction to a tiny girl waltzing through a battlefield looking like she's skipping through the daisies is to assume she is the sort of person who collects World Eater trading cards.** His second reaction is to make this someone else's problem. "FIRST ASSAULT UNIT---" he starts to shout, then turns to his right.
(cut to Zed, flailing about the Hyland lines wielding two Hyland soldiers as clubs)
"God damn it, fine," he snaps, taking several quick steps toward Kaguya. Icicles rain down around her like rain, only frozen, but Cless is insufficiently magical to have a damned clue where he came from. In any event, he is busy trying to target her with his mother's favourite magic spell, i.e., gratuitous violence to the face.
* - A highly pacifistic race with an advanced understanding of mathematics who unfortunately look like what would happen if you crossed Cthulhu with a Ken Griffey Jr. bobblehead that had been left sitting on a sidewalk in Las Vegas.
** - Not actually a thing.
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Kaguya with Face Kick No Jutsu! GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action. GS: Ethius Hesiod guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Shoot the Breeze for 85 hit points! GS: Kaguya critically Guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Face Kick No Jutsu for 19 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Chilly air washes back, across Ida. She takes a step back, her hand halfway to the shadows within her cloak as she scans the Hyland lines for the spellcaster. One of her Mannikins jerks backwards, violently, a blade stabbing clean through its chest. It pitches over, revealing Talia, hand around the offending sword. Ida steps back, twisting at the waist; somehow, she manages to keep her balance as Talia sweeps her blade in a circle, decapitating two of the nearby Mannikins and very nearly cutting Ida's stomach open. The thin, frail-looking Hellion snaps upright again, and smiles a joyless, bitter smile.
"You again," Ida says. Malevolence surges through her frame, revealing itself for the world to see. She looks down at Talia, then back at the Mannikins. "I'd thought I'd seen the end of you at Lastonbell, but that would've been disappointing. One moment."
Ida claps her hands. Two of the Mannikins twist towards their decapitated fellows, grip their arms, and pull. Metal joints pop free, just as they were designed to do. The Mannikins step back towards Ida, twist the disembodied metal arms, and then drive the ball-joints towards their mistress's back. Malevolence-saturated flesh tears, gives, and heals around the arms; Ida's face flashes through agony and satisfaction in quick succession. The Mannikins pick up the second pair of arms, repeat the process. Ida sags forwards at the waist, breathes, forces her Domain down and into the proxy limbs. Metal twists and reshapes itself, twisting the arms until they're exact copies of the ones Ida was born with. She stretches, twists her fingers, and all six arms respond in tandem.
"That's more like it," Ida says, the ghost of pain still lingering in her voice. She surges forwards, testing her control over the new limbs by driving two of them in quick succession at Talia's face and gut. A fourth arm rises up to parry a counterattack in advance.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Janus Cascade hasn't been seen since Lastonbell fell. He'd been holed up there - set up in his little underground bar. He worked for Hyland, for the job that saw Lastonbell fall. Shouldn't he be here, now - helping them push?
But no shock of blue hair is to be seen.
Instead, suddenly vaulting over the line of Rolance's fore, a single figure pierces the sky, bulleting heavensward on a long parabolic arc. Long, blonde hair, clean despite the dust; a cape flashing the icon of a church from another world; long boots and tights leading up to a pair of short shorts....in other words: Tabitha deVriese.
The Etone (Ordinand) (who is here for some reason!?) arcs down. Her job is to handle monsters, normally, not men - at least not this way - but...the scales must be balanced, right? That's definitely why she's here, to counteract Hyland's unfair Filgaian aggression.
Blasts from her outsized magic-firing ARM spatter the ground around Lydia, before the Etone lands just in front of her, smiling prettily. "Hello, dear!" she chimes. "It's been a while!"
Then she levels the weapon, thumbs a dial, and fires it directly into her, coming out not as slicing razor wind but a bolt of electric heat. "I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave the stage." She grins, wider. "Or you can dance with me. I'm not picky."
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lydia Seren with Ion Tag! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Devil Fist! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren critically Guards a hit from Tabitha deVriese's Ion Tag for 22 hit points! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Devil Fist for 65 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya can sense the Malevolence, all right. It makes her nose wrinkle. It's one of the ugly byproducts of these humans, so far as she knows. ...Really, the whole battlefield would be improved by a number of daisies, as far as she's concerned.
"Not bad, not bad," Kaguya starts as her soldiers get to doing what they do best, clashing with various soldiers (or, of course, hiding behind other soldiers and shooting others in the back--Drifters will be Drifters) which is exactly when she feels the sense of incoming magic. But there's magic everywhere so it really doesn't do her any good until she looks up to see a bunch of giant icicles crashing down towards her, and immediately whirls her armored shoulder into the way. They batter down against mostly but not entirely her armor, cutting her arm and blinding her for an instant before she can open her eyes. "You--"
She frowns, casts about for where the source might be, and extends her ARM. ...Elly and Claude, at this point, can recognize that the 'strange materials' it's made of are mostly 'hella advanced plastics', but before Kaguya gets to fire--
A foot crests perfectly across her face, jerking her head to the side but not actually knocking her over. Claude goes right past. "What the SHIT," Kaguya growls.
"That's my FACE!" Kaguya punctuates her sentence by slipping up, too fast for such a frail-looking girl, and slamming her forehead straight for his stomach with bone-crunching force.
Both hands slide to her ARM then as she pulls a strange, colorfully-gleaming cartridge from a pounch and, opening the chamber, jams it in for her next shot. "PLAY AMONG YOURSELVES, OASIS!"
She lifts it in the direction she's pretty sure the ice came from--that nice red-haired girl in the robes--and fires a shot that crackles with light.
GS: Kaguya has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Comet Strike! GS: Kaguya has spent 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Kaguya has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Prism Canister! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: Claude C. Kenny guards a hit from Kaguya's Comet Strike for 112 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Every day's a sale! Every day's a win! But stuff now or URRRK-"
The URRRK comes when the Etone (Ordinand) (who is here for some reason!?) drops down right in front of her and shoots her with a WEIRD electric gun. Lydia is knocked off her feet, the metal along her arm worbling precariously as she crashes to the ground in a heap, groaning. "Ughhh..." Lydia says. "The lights...darkening. The clouds...closing in. I just...wanted to...." Her eyes tear up. "Make a lot of money and alter the sociopolitical landscape for the better."
She then sits back up, flaking off bits of charred cloth and skin with her hand as she hops back up to her feet.
"Well, you're smug as fuck, so at least I won't have to feel too bad about it! What's your DEAL anyway??"
She reaches out with a hand, summoning a large rock shaped like Rigdobrite's head/Asteroid the Kid's head which she promptly flings at Tabitha. HOW PRIMITIVE but, uh, if that clobbers you it might give you some respect for primitive methods of violence.
"What do you have against entrepeneurship and science!?" Lydia shouts.
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Asteroid Ball! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Me," Talia confirms, "again."
She doesn't offer an explanation for her survival. All told, when facing down someone who -- to the best of her knowledge -- intends to kill her, it seems irrelevant. Besides that, she is left staring at the way that Ida grants herself six whole arms. Her head lowers, her jaw setting, and then her lips curl back into a scowl. She remembers what Lydia told her: she was affected by this Malevolence. Clearly, this meant making her that much more monstrous.
The first fist swings in, and connects with Talia's shoulder as she moves. The second tears through smoky, too-thick shadow, as Mirage -- tossed a moment before -- strikes deep into a crevasse on the nearest of the three hills. Talia hangs off it, feet against it, and holds a hand out towards Ida.
"Something something cold and ice something brr blah FREEZE LANCER!"
An icicle forms -- and then, a second layer, and a third layer of jagged ice compound upon it, making it larger with each iteration -- before the missile of solid ice screams down at the ground, hurtling towards Ida. Talia throws Mirage a moment later.
It slams into the ground, and Talia reforms, then yanks the blade from the ground. She looks at Ida. "If you expect things to get better, darling," she says, with a smile that is not kind, "then you should have picked someone else to tangle with, no?"
GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Freeze Lancer! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Lydia Seren's Asteroid Ball for 110 hit points! GS: Cripple, Jam, Mute, and Poison! Statuses applied to Tabitha deVriese!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Any one of those shots from Josie can, or should have, put down any other man. The brazen decision to run out the open towards him jeopardizes him. She's in 'friendly' territory. He is not. If someone catches wind of her running back and shooting, he will have to completely disengage.
Storms of arrows and cracks of rifles ahead of him at least ensure some level of fog of war to minimize the odds of an eagle-eyed soldier of sufficient command calling attention to the scene. The rifle blast is like a punch to the gut rather than a debilitating puncture wound, but a punch to the gut is a punch to the gut, and the angle she's coming from doesn't give him great cover from his own rocky outcropping. His protective spell is fast, but most the rest of his spells are simply not fast enough to beat her trigger finger.
He rolls back behind cover best he can as he drags the rifle of the fallen soldier with him. He taps a finger on the item in question a few times. Yes, he's already mentally catalogued this specific make a few times. Disassembled any number of them he's caught prior. She probably already knows that he just grabbed it, enabling her to prepare for the seeming inevitability that he's going to shoot her.
Malevolence builds to a purple crescendo ahead where soldiers clash. It is the furthest thing from his mind.
The rifle rests upon the rocky outcropping. The tell. He's going to shoot?
Under his breath, he chants a series of syllables as his free hand flitters fingers. He steps out from cover as a blinding sphere of hot light surrounds him, threatening to blind the approaching sharpshooter as he disperses the spherical heat (somehow not incinerating himself inside of it) in a wash of cosmic rays to roast her in his wake.
Is she willing to try and shoot him blind?
GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Coronal Shell! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Ethius Hesiod's Coronal Shell for 120 hit points! GS: Disrupt! Statuses applied to Josephine Lovelace! DC: MISS! Elhaym van Houten completely evades Prism Canister from Kaguya! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Talia's Freeze Lancer for 132 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
Claude C. Kenny kicks a little girl square in the face. He feels the impact travel all the way up his leg and into his hip, feels the light strain on his ankle ligaments, and feels not at all emotionally conflicted for having done so. As his first martial arts teacher (his mom) is wont to say, if people don't want to get kicked in the face, they shouldn't walk around with such kickable faces. Granted, she mostly said this about Claude rather than other people. Nevertheless, he twists as he lands, expecting to see a small girl lying on the ground, or perhaps trying to find her teeth.
Instead, for the second time in his brief existence on Cow Patty Planet (and its backwards cousin, Magical Cow Patty Planet), he has kicked someone in the face only to find they regard it as a mild inconvenience at best. "What the sh---" he manages to get out before Kaguya slams her face into his chest; metal screams in protest, and the blonde swordsman's chest plating actually bends inward with the force of the impact.
He had planned to follow up by pointing out the inherent hypocrisy in her complaining about face treatment and then slamming her face into his armour plate, but he is rather a bit too busy trying to catch his breath, which is hard with dented metal compressing your chest. Cless grits his teeth and puffs out his cheeks. His face starts to go a little purple. But then there is a loud metallic *twang* as the breastplate clasps give way, and the armour drops to the ground, revealing a slightly rumpled bodysuit underneath.
"Did that dude just flex out of his armour?" a nearby Hyland soldier asks the man at his side. He doesn't get a response, because by this point he is sprouting arrows.
It is a red-faced and visibly perturbed Cless al'Vane who (after mentally upgrading Kaguya a couple levels in his internal threat-o-mter) charges back into the fray, whispers of chi building as he accelerates. "Demon Fang!" Cless snaps, firing an Air Slash in Kaguya's general direction, gauging carefully to see which way she dodges. By the time she moves, Cless is surging forward, his shield hand enveloped in a ball of blistering fire. "RAGING BLAST!" he roars, dropping to one knee as he comes in, driving toward Kaguya's centre mass with everything he's got.
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Kaguya with Knuckle Burst! GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Cless al-Vane is speaking with authority and force. Elly wonders as she glances over to see some fool using unnatural strength to use other people as flails, if he is the only one in charge of this unit. Some part of her stomach knots over this. She could die here, after all. She knows it.
Why does that worry me more than it did before?
Elly has no time for mournful emotional introspection, because she can see a weapon in the hand of Kaguya. It glistens with the shape of artificial materials. Plastics! Her brow furrows. Heedless, perhaps, of the true nature of her momentary commanding officer, she stares dead ahead -
A bullet flies towards her. No, not a bullet -
Elly doesn't know what, exactly, that is, but it is coming right straight square at her and it is not faster than light. Prepared, she was already wary, and so what happens next is a lot flashier than it had been planned to be. Elly's original plan was to send a brief burst of Ether down the line of that weapon - enough that it would flash-melt any lead to vapor, but which, in theory, would have just looked like... it missed, or something.
Instead Kaguya shoots her developing Ether form and there is a titanic red flag of Ether arching up into the sky, the entire mostly-formed shape briefly illuminated. If you aren't watching it with high speed photography it is just a brief if towering flash of red, and afterwards Elly is taken aback.
"Captain!" she cries out. She means Claude.
A moment later there is another sizzling CRACK - this one in the air above the unit Kaguya leads. It's like lightning out of a clear blue sky! And in a sense it is, because Elly held close a 'handful' of air until it was heated - not to the semi-fusor temperatures and pressures she uses in other cases, but enough that it exploded ruthlessly, with the noise and sound of a solid artillery shell, which, Elly reasons, is going to be unfamiliar even to local gunner troops.
(She thought about a lot of this in advance.)
"We have to break past th--!"
Elly's mouth hangs open at the revelation of Claude and his bodysuit.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Kaguya with Thermo Barrage! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's metal fist drives through the cloud of shadow-stuff, trails of umbral smoke following the path her knuckles make. To her credit, she doesn't overextend--she twists out of the strike, and immediately glances about the melee for any trace of Talia. That sword, Ida realizes, anger twisting in her guts. It's like what she can do except it's baked into an artifact and not her. All she sees around her is a melee, a maze of swords and spears and people trying their best to kill each other--
Ida spots Talia a moment too late. The icicle is already in flight, screaming for her. Ida twists back, and the icy projectile tears down the junction of chest and shoulder, tearing into the glowing scar-furrow the Trial Knight gave her back in Lahan. Malevolence-laced blood splatters the ground. Ida bites back a scream. Her third left arm darts back into the shadows of her coat, and comes up with Peacemaker. The Dragonbone gun glows ominously as Ida takes aim, sighting for Talia's center of mass. The gun wavers and jitters a little in her hand--is it pain, or something else?--but she pulls the trigger anyway. "Can you see it, now?" Ida grates, in between shots.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Devil Bullet! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Devil Bullet for 72 hit points! GS: Kaguya guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Knuckle Burst for 34 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Kaguya! GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Barrage for 51 hit points! GS: Your next attack with the Sneak flag will display with the name Blind Shot.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Of course, that's assuming they can tell the minimally-colored Josie is on their side. The blue cloth tied about her upper arm is just about the only tell.
Mercenaries.
Still, the 'fog of war' as it were has both its blessings and its penalties. On one hand, there's little chance of support.
On the other, there's little chance of interference.
That's how she prefers it.
He's quick, though. Enough that what should have been a debilitating getting-a-little-close-to-point-blank shot is merely wounding. She'll probably have to wear him down at this rate -- that or punch through his shields.
Or get close enough that a knife should settle the matter.
Like the Black Wolf she is, she continues her pursuit. It's not every day she gets an interesting opportunity like this one.
...Interesting. He's taking the rifle. Perhaps he's no more a purist than she is. Though, that spell just now...
Malevolence blazes; she pays it no heed. Skidding over some rock, she makes her approach, pausing just long enough to sight what he's attempting before closing--
Heat washes out in a wave, unexpected and much to Josie's misfortune, all but unvoidable. The wave of burning force staggers her, costing her valuable seconds.
She can't see a thing. Her eyes water. She coughs; her lungs are burning. She squeezes her eyes shut.
But she remembers where he roughly was.
Good enough.
Emerging from the horrific haze, she unhesitatingly cracks off a shot in that direction, not even opening her eyes.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has spent 1 Combo on Gatling! GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Blind Shot! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Josephine Lovelace's attack becomes clear! GS: Ethius Hesiod critically Guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Ace in the Hole for 39 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
The way the gun in Ida's hand trembles and tremors makes it hard for Talia topredict where it will come from. She rushes, and she learned -- from working with Hyland's new riflemen -- to serpentine on the approach. That means the shot slams into her shoulder, instead, and clips it. Her pauldron has a piece blown out, and the gunshot wound leaves her skin blackened and burnt. But, she keeps rushing in, and she lets out a shout.
"I've seen it for a long damned time!" she yells, louder than she ought to, but the adrenaline behind her charge mkaes the shout feel necessary. Talia draws her parrying dagger from her belt, spinning it up into a grip. Lydia came here with a hope to save Ida.
Talia doesn't think that, after the people she has killed in Lubov's employ, she can be saved. She does not extend that hope to anyone else.
She tries to ram the dagger, brutally, into Ida's side. Then, she kicks off the ground, and her foot swings around. Chi dances across her boot, light glimmering so brilliantly that it threatens to blind -- and it releases in the moment of the kick, as she cartwheels off the ground and launches a roundhouse kick at Ida's jaw.
"But what I see is that you can bleed," she yells, "and if you can bleed, you can die like the rest of them!"
GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Demonic Swallow Kick! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"Did you just flex out of your armor?!" Kaguya stares for an instant at 'Cless', showing a completely unfair lack of being dazed from hitting him with her head. "That's so unfair--"
Kaguya's complaints are briefly interrupted as she spots what happens with her shot at Elly. Or what doesn't happen. Frankly the entire thing is kind of confusing, and, well:
LONG AGO, IN COMBAT ETHER CLASSES:
Kaguya plays a lovely plant-themed puzzle game on her tablet while an older Veruni is explaining the intricacies of Fire magic.
NOW:
"Whoa." But then the lightning strikes, and while Kaguya's unit is for the most part wisely getting away from their commander, one of them is hit by the shockwave and a number duck straight down because they've heard artillery shells before. Kaguya, for her part:
Elly's magic hits her straight in the chest, impacting on the bizarre metal of her breastplate, as Claude's charge comes at her. She can feel the burst of chi, vaguely, and starts to dodge left--which means Claude moves left, flames all over his shield hand. "What the--"
Kaguya slams her elbow straight down for Claude's incoming strike, derailing it--but the mass of the whole thing explodes, sends her stumbling back a few steps still slightly on fire. That... definitely mucked up her defensive stance.
"Okay. That's fine. Nice to meet you guys." She offers a conversational tone as she backsteps, pulling a green-glowing cartridge from a line about her belt. "You working for Rolland directly, or per job?" Open chamber, place cartridge, close--Cla-CLACK.
"I mean, it's fine either way." Holding the TK-38K in both hands, she aims straight for Elly, "Try THIS ONE!" and fires. It's a deafening report, sending waves of sonic energy crashing straight towards the red-haired woman.
Unload, reload a more conventional shot; Kaguya spins in place, and fires the next point-blank at Cless. "Ha!"
GS: Kaguya has spent 2 Combo on Gatling! GS: Kaguya has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Concussion Rounds! GS: Kaguya has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Riot Burst! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Claude C. Kenny takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Riot Burst for 219 hit points! GS: Jam! Statuses applied to Claude C. Kenny! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Concussion Rounds for 191 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Elhaym van Houten!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Ethius is unconcerned as to the battlefield instinct Josie has in which to determine his position as she keeps shooting. Once more, an electrical flash of light and sound. That at least tells her she hit (this time it bounces off his right elbow) - but that also says that the shield is still up, still working. That is one big ace in his hole he has - a fast-casting defensive spell that remains active for, potentially, an entire engagement.
His sorcerous shield against ARMs fire appears to be electrically-aligned, itself. Hmm... so long as he has that, he stands to nullify Josephine's greatest expertise.
Not at all suffering from the same level of debilitation, Ethius ruthlessly pursues the advantage by, at last, snapping up the rifle in question he fooled her into thinking he was going to shoot her with. For a man who does not carry his own ARMs, and generally seems to hold them only long enough to destroy them, the sight should be something of a surprise.
With zero wasted motion or time, he takes a shot from the rifle with no hesitation taken to aim but all the confidence of his ability to shoot - straight for her dominant hand. The sound report is identical to any of the other rank-and-file Hyland rifleman shots ringing ahead.
That's not a kill shot.
He might have other plans for her, if he's just trying for her hand.
GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Ethius Actually Shooting a Gun! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a glancing hit from Ethius Hesiod's Ethius Actually Shooting a Gun for 57 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
The metal...Tabitha's lips split in her pretty grin. "Well, I'm glad you're having fun, at least. What a peculiar look you have, too...I never did ask! What's--"
She stares blankly as Lydia summons a rock from the friggin' ether and clobbers her with it. She is surprised enough that she gets totally owned, send tumbling back and landing flat on her ass. She grumbles, hand running across her lip to check for blood. She glares at a little red stain.
And then, slowly, rises back up to her feet, splitting back up into her grin. "Nothing, dear! Nothing at all. In fact, I find science quite interesting," she says, sauntering up into Lydia's space. "For instance,"
Instead of finishing that sentence she abruptly thrusts her foot up, barely breaking her walk cycle to slam her foot into Lydia's jaw hard enough to send the girl flying. "Let us have a little lesson in gravitation!" she calls.
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lydia Seren with Gospel Sequence! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes 5 damage from Poison! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren guards a hit from Tabitha deVriese's Gospel Sequence for 78 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sister Domitia has posed.
Off among the regular soldiery, the battle continues.
The regular soldiers of Rolance don't have ARMs. But they have a little extra help. The unit led by Oaks, Trent and Severn in particular is rapidly accumulating a body pile, their individual strength and heroism enough to make them the equal of several regular Hyland soldiers. And here and there among the Rolance ranks, a handful of individual soldiers seem to be standing out more than others - whether driven by some blessing or sheer desperation, laying into their Hyland rivals with added vigor, prowess and power.
And yet, they don't have ARMs. All they can do is rely on individual bravery and leadership to try and even the odds should the Hyland Rifles begin to seriously come into play.
Behind the lines, Sister Domitia quietly prays over a couple of wounded Rolance soldiers. Another couple of soldiers are returning to the field, still bloodied, but seemingly more invigorated than ever.
Still she doesn't bring her powers into evidence. Apparently she's not going to decide the outcome of this thing - at least, not when the only obvious Hellion on the field is on her side. (Althena knows why she's letting that slide.)
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Talia's Demonic Swallow Kick for 69 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia says, "Oh cool me too, me too. I specialize in aerodynamics and astro...naut....physics? Is that's how it would go? Anyway, I don't wanna off you or anything, but your face won't like what I'm willin' to do all the same." She sees, of all people, Talia battling against Ida in the distance. She grimaces faintly but figures Talia will be able to fall back if she's gotta. Teleportation is a sweet skill as she should know.
Lydia knows by now that her head isn't quite as INVULN as it used to be. She brings her arm up too slowly but quick enough to partially deflect the strike. It still hits Lydia square on the face but perhaps with less force than it would've.
She is, indeed, sent flying but she says, "I'm not sure this is gravitation so much as a simple expression of one inertia overcoming the otheeeeer."
She hits the floor roughly and skids a few feet, groaning, rubbing at her head. "What were you talkin' 'bout before anyway?"
She hops to her feet and adds, "You wanna know what made me super cute and sly as fuck?"
That metal arm of her shifts form fluidly until it's the shape of a blade, glowing red hot with heat as she summons the power of Solais Emsu to enhance it. It's not fire heat either, it's more like SOLAR heater, like the sun just warmed it up super hot and now it burns to the touch. Hopefully Kalve's lessons have been paying off.
(Well if you want them to pay off send in that upgrade app already you dork)
Well Lydia doesn't do that but she does try to slice across Tabitha's chest in a less amateurish than normal swipe of that blade.
"It's a skin moisterizer made from confidence and love!"
Oh god that sounds so dorky how does Riesenlied talk like this all the time wow.
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Solar Slicer! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. DC: MISS! Tabitha deVriese completely evades Solar Slicer from Lydia Seren!
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
Kaguya should really be breathing through a sucking chest wound right now, Cless al'Vane thinks to himself, mentally upgrading her threat level again to 'okay, basically midget girl Zed.' The implications of her questions about whether he works on a per-job basis give the young man a fraction of a second of pause, as he tries to decide how Cless al'Vane would respond to such a thing. He eventually settles on 'attitude.'
"Ha!" he barks, clashing sword against shield, rotating quickly around Kaguya. He keeps his eye on the gun as she swaps ammunition - it's clear he's fought people who use guns before, as he keeps his weight on his toes, ready to shift out of the way in a heartbeat. "Brave Phantasia doesn't turn coat, lady! We---" A woman's voice cries out 'Captain', and Cless remembers that that's him. He turns to look, seeing a red-headed...
...wait, no, seeing the red-headed woman he saw in Lastonbell, as he fled the city. The one who was talking to him about an -Invisibility Screen- and thought he was something called a -Shevat-. A post-attack consultation with his tricorder's universal translator was unhelpful (he's pretty sure she didn't mean that he was the fifth month of the civil and eleventh of the religious Jewish calendars), but he is pretty sure that whatever one is, it's her enemy. He frowns and shakes his head. "No time for this!" he shouts. "We're on the same side tod---"
It is at this point that Kaguya (remember her?) places an energy weapon next to a distracted Cless al'Vane and pulls the trigger. Energy blazes, and the blonde swordsman goes flying backward, trailing greenish smoke and wisps of plasma. He hits the ground, and burns.
And rolls.
And...stands?
It is at this point that the suspicions Elly has receive their strongest corroboration to date. It is a decidedly angry Cless al'Vane who stands up, decidedly worse for wear but somehow still alive after taking a plasma blast full-on to the chest. Scorch marks have consumed almost the entire front part of his bodysuit, which hangs in wisps and tatters... revealing, underneath it, a tan-coloured jacket that both Elly and Kaguya will recognize as of futuristic make. An insignia of some kind - possibly military? - is emblazoned on one arm, barely even discoloured from the blast it just took.
Soldiers back away from the young man, his disguise literally burning away from him as he sucks in a steadying breath. His mouth opens and closes as he tries to think of a convenient explanation, an excuse. The first three fall apart before he can give them voice. The fourth gets to "I---" before he abandons it. He looks left, then right. Then, oddly, up at the sky. "Oh, hell with it," he says, his voice weary.
A wordless battle cry erupting from his body as he calls on every bit of strength he possesses, every bit of chi, every joule of energy. The blast hurt him badly, but he pushes that into the back of his mind, qigong flowing through his body, restoring the worst of the damage, holding the rest of it together just long enough to fight. Blue energy boils off of the young man, visible as a thin haze to those with any sort of mystical senses, as he sheds the skin of Cless al'Vane, lets the thousand lingering doubts and worries associated with maintaining the facade slough off of him as he lowers his gaze to Kaguya.
Claude C. Kenny advances forward.
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Victory Cry! GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action. GS: Claude C. Kenny heals Claude C. Kenny! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Idiot girl. What are you even doing here? Do you want to die? Is that it?
Ida does not have an answer to that question.
A Hyland infantryman gets too close, and charges in, sword raised. Ida pivots, trains the gun on the man's right knee, pulls the trigger before he can strike off an arm. The man collapses, bleeding into the dirt, but Ida does not finish him. (She's either confident someone else will kill him, or confident he's no longer a threat.)
Coward. All this self-pity about being a murderer, and what do you do? You leave the killing to your toys, and to others.
Talia charges as Ida hesitates. The big Hellion lets out a grunt of pain and surprise as Talia's knife slams into her stomach, burying itself to the hilt. Rather than try and tug it free, Ida twists to the side, the weapon still in her, trying to pull Talia's hand free of the hilt before she lets go. She sees the way the other woman moves, and--
A feint. Ida raises three arms--two flesh, one metal--to parry the strike. Talia's kick strikes home with a resounding clang, the force of it knocking Ida back a step. "I can," she grates, leaning into Talia's face. "But then what? Will you keep on killing until the force that took me takes you, too? Then what?" She balls up three fists, swings low at Talia's stomach, then high at her face, then straight for the throat. Each punch shows clear skill, but also a sort of manic unease.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
It's little more than a hazy glare for her. As she attempts to open her eyes, the world is blurry -- the sound in the end tells her more than anything about what's just happened.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. He's adept at deflecting bullets, isn't he?
This is going to make things difficult.
"Can't give a girl a break, can you?" she utters, shattering her own silence up to this point as she squints at him. "Oh well. I suppose it'd be dull if it were too easy."
Her feet grind into the gravel underfoot, she blinks away the lingering tears.
In the same instant, he snaps the rifle up.
She surges forward, diving to his off-hand side -- to his left.
His bullet grazes her left hand.
She hisses out a fouler oath than is really necessary and leaps, diving for cover behind one of those more pillarlike rocks.
Even with her good hand wounded, she can still reload a rifle in record time.
The rifle is not the one that snakes out from behind cover. Ethius will need a good eye to catch sight of sidearm she swings his way; she may be aiming rather blindly, but 'accurate' might not matter when what you're firing is a round of buckshot.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Raging Thunderbolt! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Silver Lining! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. DC: MISS! Talia completely evades Raging Thunderbolt from Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Silver Lining for 55 hit points! GS: Cripple and Jam! Statuses applied to Ethius Hesiod! GS: Mighty! Statuses applied to Josephine Lovelace!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Ida's face is close enough to Talia's that she can smell her breath. She can feel it on her lips and cheek, sense the anger and outrage, and the fear. She asks her question -- and, for a moment, her red eyes widen. Talia lets herself wonder, for just a moment, if she could end up like Ida. After seeing the creature she fought just last night, she must wonder. She is forced, finally, to a conclusion.
The fists come for her stomach, then her face, and then her throat. Talia is athletic and limber; with that limber movement, she is able to duck down backward -- and the fists slam into the air over her, right where she had been, and Talia falls to the ground. She doesn't fall prone.
She rolls, bouncing off the ground by punching off it, and then comes up. She throws Mirage. It doesn't slam into Ida -- it slams into the cranium of a Mannikin next to her and shatters it. Talia appears, now to the left of Ida. "Is that what you think, when you see me?" she asks, her voice a hiss and her breath a rasp. "Do you think I am someone who is scared of who they kill and who they hurt?"
She slashes her parrying dagger, hard, at Ida's midsection. "A child who grew up, huddling in the dark?"
GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Point-Warp Slash! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Talia's Point-Warp Slash for 41 hit points! GS: Riposte! Statuses applied to Talia!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly breathes heavily in the aftermath of her burst of force. She looks dead on at Kaguya and she seems to be agog here as well. She may not, ultimately, be the bantering sort. Her big blue eyes widen, the better to make Kaguya feel guilty about murdering her later.
BAM!
Murder...
... denied.
It sucks a fatty though. The burst of concussive force hits Elly square in the face and it feels like she had both ears clapped at once by a Gear. Her eardrums don't rupture but only due to dumb luck and, potentially, the subtle intervention of some kind of interior Ether upwelling. Either way she is knocked flat on her back, ears ringing horrifically. Temporarily deafened, she rolls over, clutching her staff.
Terror fills her guts!
She makes herself sit upright and--
-- Once again emotional whiplash, for Claude is revealed in all his tan bodysuited glory. The insignia he wears is new, alien, novel. Elly is thunderstruck. She is also still temporarily deaf. Claude is advancing once again on the diminutive imp of hell who has been menacing them.
Elly braces herself on her staff and pushes herself upright. Exhaling, she tries not to think about who might be shooting her. She knows two people out here probably wouldn't - although she would not be shocked if Tabitha lead something TO her.
The ice she's thrown around melts and drips into the soil unnaturally. Kaguya might notice things squelching under her feet for long moments even as she contends perhaps with Claude C Kenny; this is a trick that takes a minute or three to set up.
The water warms.
Heats...
And abruptly changes phase, along with the Earth beneath her feet. And possibly Claude's too. The implausible eruption of superheated steam and rock beneath Kaguya is going to make a new divot in the side of the hill. Whether or not this clash of arms creates history, it will, on this small but topographically significant point, make *geography.*
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Kaguya with Aqua Thermo Alloy! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Kaguya takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's Aqua Thermo Alloy for 138 hit points! GS: Kaguya enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
Matilda... is not well enough to personally take the field, after her recent experience in Uzda Il-jam. Well -- strictly speaking, she could, but it's better for her to avoid the risk. She's been focusing on strategy instead, thus... especially with the dispossessed Filgaians who make up the bulk of Oasis's mercenaries.
They don't have the numbers for volley fire, and regrettably, an irregular unit has irregular equipment. As a result, the small unit's been encouraged to stay mobile and create doctrine that painstakingly manages its shortcomings on a moment-to-moment basis. The team moves as a solid unit, with the local recruits using pikes to protect the gunners. Only muskets and rifles -- yes, muskets, everyone has what they came with and what they came with wasn't always... good -- fire unless a Rolance unit starts to close with them, at which point the revolvers open up and the pikes set themselves to deal with anyone who makes it through.
Heroism doesn't help Oasis, the way it helps Oaks, Trent, and Severn; no, this is just 'the best way Matilda can think to use a small, irregular force on a battlefield.' It seems to be working, though it's *very* vulnerable to longbows -- something Matilda could find no answer for except 'don't be where they're aiming.'
Matilda herself has popped out Freischütz's scope, watching from astride a horse at the rear. She looks... tired.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Josie's ruse seems like it should work. He's shown himself adept at identifying when he's in someone's sights. The way that empty stare of his tracks, as she goes to his left. She might notice that it's the left eye he seems to favor looking out of, which means--
Her side-arm is skillfully concealed and fired, but there's a preceding 'click' sound that seems to clue him in as she uses his former cover for herself. He has no further use for the rifle he holds as he positions it in the direction he is sure she's shooting from. It speaks to her skill - hers alone! - that his frighteningly calculated educated estimate is off just enough that the cone of buckshot is not fully stopped and contained within where he holds the rifle stock. It splinters spectacularly in a cloud of sharp, pointy wooden bits. A few even get the same shiny electrical 'pings' unto themselves, as pellets of buckshot bounce against his ribcage.
They're still hits, and he exhales loudly as the wind leaves him. At least she can recognize that - for his level of awareness - he's still fundamentally human. He's not teleporting or anything. He can't outrun bullets. He just has that cheaty Symbology-powered electrical shield. It might be possible to overcome him. That might give her the push she needs to really unload on him...
He leaps after her in her cover, stepping off the rocky outcropping as he drops the shattered rifle entirely and draws his quarterstaff at last, coming over her down to the other side in a kneel, thrusting it at her side -
She'll notice then that yes, it turns out he is actually left-handed, but moving on -
"Stinger." He says the technique name nonchalantly as he tries to jab deep into her abdomen, lift her up, and toss her further back down the hill, across the gravel, to maintain a higher vantage point over her.
So that's a 'no' for giving her a break. Unless that's a 'yes' for breaking her. There is an unsettlingly low amount of emotion in his movement, or in his eyes. Kind of like, no, exactly like that this sort of environ might be the one he is accustomed to.
GS: Ethius Hesiod enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Stinger! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Tabitha does a radical split kick to launch a child,and then just keeps on walking. "I believe the term is astrophysics," she says, because she's from the sky police and knows these things. "I can't say it's ever really interested me beyond the mechanical effects. Space is large, yes, but the people in front of me are so much more interesting."
Tabitha's chest is an extremely easy target, but even so the woman interrupts her sashay forward to throw herself back, leaving Lydia slicing the air. "Highly malleable..." she murmurs, face a mask of curiosity before her eyes cut back up and meet Lydia's. "Yes, something like that. You know you're a fascinating young woman! All that spunk! And the attitude, too!" With that entirely unnecessary joke, Tabitha whips her ARM up, firing at Lydia, one, two, three, four more times. These are also electric!
Except instead of a normal zot, they linger - small spines sticking into Lydia and firing off regular jolts that should - so the idea goes - make it much more difficult to defend herself.
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lydia Seren with Disruptor Tag! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes 5 damage from Poison! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a glancing hit from Ethius Hesiod's Stinger for 75 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida twists out of the punch, soft clouds of Malevolence puffing from her lips with every breath. The helm of the Mannikin to her left comes apart, and in its death, it provides her with a warning. Ida is already twisting towards it as Talia reforms, her metal hands twisting into some sort of convoluted attempt to guard herself. (It's something she's seen Kalve do, in practice, but it's a crude imitation.) Talia's knife slams through the palm of one of Ida's sub-arms with a solid whunk of steel punching through steel.
How does it feel to know she's seen right through you, you coward?
"No," Ida says. "It's what I think every time I look in the mirror." Ida drives one of her own hands towards the center of Talia's chest, somehow managing a precise open-palm strike even as she struggles against herself. "A monster so pathetic she doesn't even know if that's what she wishes to be."
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Open Palm! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Talia has activated a Force Action! DC: MISS! Talia completely evades Open Palm from Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
For a guy with a sword and shield leading an army, Cless sure does seem to know how to deal with guns. That's a point of interest to Kaguya, and it shows as she glances his way. When he answers--"...Oh, that's you?" she asks. The drama of Claude and Elly is... pretty much entirely lost on her. "Yeah Oasis isn't going to either, but they say the best friends are the one you make, right? Worth a shot!"
She doesn't intend for 'worth a shot' to be a pun, with shooting Cless near point-blank. But she's not going to complain about the happenstance, either. With Elly? Well, Elly has pretty big blue eyes, in more than one sense of the term, but Kaguya doesn't make a habit of feeling... bad about things. It's not really in her culture.
Assuming that Elly, while pretty, is also pretty done, Kaguya moves to focus on her other opponent. This will be a mistake later. But not yet. Instead: When she spots Cless standing back up, Kaguya lifts an eyebrow. She actually turns her head to fully face him as his disguise burns. The insignia is totally unfamiliar to her, but the materials--oh, the materials are obvious on such a blasted primitive set of rocks. Her pale eyes sparkle with something like delight. "Oh man, you are cool, aren't you? Not a normal human at all." The blue energy that boils off of him is visible to Kaguya, mystic senses honed by her closeness to death, and watches the man before her begin to advance. "...I'm really interested to see what you can do now," Kaguya remarks, something more hunger than curiousity in her expression.
As it turns out? She doesn't notice stuff squelching under her boots any more than usual as she starts to walk Claude's way. Mud is mud, and this planet is a big ball of the stuff, so who cares? She just keeps on moving forward, walking at about the same pace. "You know I've heard of your crew. You've got pretty good recruiting efforts. I'm willing to talk to the surviv--"
She pauses, and sniffs. "...Is something burning?"
The ground beneath Kaguya explodes abrubtly, superheated steam and rock launching the small Veruni into the sky and completely obliterating her position; as a matter of fact, where she was standing is no longer a place that is valid to stand, and the only sign that Kaguya still exists for a moment is the sound of her crashing to earth in a heap of her strange metal, rolling out from the debris still covered in boiling mud. ...Most of it is on her armor, but... not all. "W-whoa," she remarks, as she starts to pull herself up, head shifting around as she looks to figure out where she is, "What even--" Beat, "Was that YOU?" she calls to Elly. Luckily, her voice is loud and shrill enough that Matilda can probably pick it out on the battlefield. "That--" Kaguya stows her ARM in its holster for the moment and reaches forward, still on one knee. "Is fine," she says, and rips a chunk of rock and mud straight out of the ground, lifting it with a grunt and a strain of muscles that shouldn't be able to lift herself, let alone this. "Is something. But--"
She whirls in place, and hurls the projectile that's about the size of Kaguya herself straight for Elly, before hitting the ground, hand-springing up, and leaping to deliver a raw, metal-gloved punch straight for Claude's center mass.
With her free hand she pulls something from her things--a strange syringe with a blue liquid inside. One-handed she pops the cap off... and jams it into her skin after her swing, still in melee. "Haaaa--"
GS: Kaguya has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Meteor Stance! GS: Kaguya has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Meteor Stance! GS: Kaguya has attacked Kaguya with Strong Medicine! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Kaguya! GS: Kaguya heals Kaguya! She gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Kaguya's Meteor Stance for 108 hit points! GS: Claude C. Kenny takes a glancing hit from Kaguya's Meteor Stance for 59 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Tch--"
Something, deep within Talia, snaps. She remembers what Lydia told her -- or maybe, what she heard: that Ida was sick, that it wasn't really Ida that wanted to hurt or kill people, but the Malevolence that transformed her into this. Talia doesn't quite decide that Lydia is wrong. She doesn't know enough about Malevolence. She does, however, decide that she disagrees. She sees that hand coming for her chest, and she throws Mirage.
Ida's open palm, instead, strikes into the wisps and clouds of shadowstuff left behind -- which all twist and shoot around Ida. They do not, however, go far. They appear to the right of Ida, in the chest of another Mannikin. Her eyes blaze furiously, as she drags the weapon out of it. She thinks of the monsters that Lubov created; of the cold, angry warmth of a dark agate in her hand. The similarity between these Mannikins and those... things.
It bothers her because it is a coincidence. Her blade snaps up, and her hand reaches out, fingers bent into a clawed position.
"What you wish doesn't matter," she snaps. "You are what you do. And I know what I am!"
She summons ice; it shoots up, jagged and sharp, and then careens up around Ida's legs, and some rime biting and digging into the false arms, too. Blades of ice cut at skin and steel alike.
"I'm the last person you should ask for sympathy and understanding!"
GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Death's Grasp! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Talia's Death's Grasp for 77 hit points! GS: Shieldbreak! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
What's with this guy?
Thus more or less runs Josie's thoughts as her eye fleetingly falls upon him during her pass.
She's seen him before. Can't remember the name, but he's been in and around some of the ruins she's--
Right, that time at the Mystic Ruins.
--Now what was his deal--
Combat, as it were, prevents too much in the way of thought or contemplation.
If it doesn't just come to her, she'll have to wing it.
Just like always.
"...Not much of a talker, are ya?" she calls back after the hail of buckshot rattles its away along the hill. "Suits me fine. Some people just keep on rattling--"
She dives out from cover, rifle at the ready.
He drops like unannounced, staff end jabbing right for her abdomen.
Last-minute, she twists at the waist; the staff's end catches her in the hit. Her face twists in a wince. Driving a short sharp snap of a kick towards his legs, she bounds backwards down along the hillside.
Her hand's still bleeding.
"Heh heh... you've put me in a real bind, Owl," she voices, gesturing outwards with her wounded left hand. "What with what you did to my hand. That puts me right on up shit creek, you know?"
She straightens, hefting the rifle in her right hand.
"But. There's one thing you should know."
And she walks right back up that hill again towards him. The rifle dances upwards; without hesitation she fires right for him, right at the center of his mass.
Funny. Despite how stiffly her fingers move, she seems more 'at ease' with this hand. Like coming home.
GS: 2 Combo gained from Boost! GS: Josephine Lovelace has activated a Force Action! GS: Josephine Lovelace has spent 3 Combo on Headshot! GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ethius Hesiod with I Am Not Left-Handed! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's I Am Not Left-Handed for 107 hit points! GS: Cripple and Jam! Statuses applied to Ethius Hesiod! GS: Ethius Hesiod loses a Combo from Interrupt! GS: CRITICAL! Lydia Seren takes a solid hit from Tabitha deVriese's Disruptor Tag for 117 hit points! GS: Shieldbreak! Statuses applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Quick! Statuses applied to Tabitha deVriese!
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
Elly's Ether blazes across the sky and sends the earth rumbling, and while Claude C. Kenny can't see the weaves or flows of it, the effects are visible enough to tell him that Elly - whomever she is, or thinks he might be - is an exceptionally powerful sorceress. Someone good to have on your side, even for a short time. What happens later is a problem for later. Provided he has one.
Claude moves forward at a deliberate pace, advancing with the speed and inevitability of a lava flow. He's charged Kaguya twice already and got his face rearranged both times. More than enough reason to try something different this time, as far as he's concerned. He can feel the moments stretching out as he clears his mind of all distractions, focusing on the little alien girl---
(alien? why'd i think that?)
---who fights with the fury of the storm. She tears a chunk of stone free from the earth and hurls it at Elly; this isn't Claude's immediate problem, because she then starts turning toward him. He sees her hand pulling black, glowing like his did before, and his shield comes up to meet it. Claude shakes his left wrist without thinking, loosening the straps on the shield and releasing the handle, such that when Kaguya hits it, the shield tears away from the leather fastenings, spinning away into the crowd behind him. Claude hardly notices, because that hand is already on its way up to meet its partner on the hilt of his broadsword, held up over his left shoulder.
He's felt like this a few times before - most recently during the opening match of the Lacour Tournament of Arms, facing an opponent so far beyond his skill that he could throw everything he had without fear, without thought, without concern for others. With his mind totally focused on his target, in a way that his swordmaster described as the ideal for a fighter. To let your body simply move the way it is trained to move, forgetting every lesson but the first: Cut.
Claude pivots to his left as he brings the blade downward, carving a line of steel toward Kaguya's left shoulder, aimed to exist right around where here left hip would be. He steps forward as he completes the slash, right foot splintering the stone beneath him. Muscles bunch, tense under pressure.
Cut.
"YAAAAAAAH!" he roars, slicing a half-moon horizontal along his forward arc.
GS: Claude C. Kenny enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Kaguya with Twin Slash! GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action. GS: Kaguya takes a solid hit from Claude C. Kenny's Twin Slash for 134 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Too slow, again. Talia is no longer there, and a moment later, Ida hears the telltale metallic shriek of another Mannikin's destruction. For a few, desperate seconds, Ida wishes she'd never left Uzda il-Jam. Everything seemed so much more bearable there. Her thoughts skid sideways--would K.K. even take an interest in someone who has already made up their mind about being a murderer, or...?
Ida twists to face Talia, her right upper sub-arm already swinging for the woman's chest. Biting cold shoots up around her ankles as atmospheric moisture condenses around her in jagged, knife-like spines. Phantom pain spikes through her sub-arms, matching the actual pain in her legs. Ida bites back a scream. She looks at Talia, her eyes wet.
These people, Ida thinks. They've been given this paradise world with everything they could want and they murder each other anyway. Maybe the nuns were right. Maybe we really are all evil inside, all touched by Valmar, and there's nothing we can do to--
Ida levels Peacemaker again. She breathes out, and Malevolence carries that thought down to the gun's chamber, coiling around the bullet.
Helpless rage. Everything is falling apart. She's poison. Everything she does hurts someone.
Ida breathes out again, and the Malevolence carries the thoughts to join the first. Peacemaker starts to glow. Ida sights for Talia's center of mass, and this time, her hand does not waver. She pulls the trigger, and the resounding crack of the gun echoes through the battlefield. The bullet trails streamers of Malevolence like the tail of a comet, an emotional payload of pain and anguish to match the physical.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia says, "How do you mrrgrrrhr." She growls under her breath but it is honestly kind of adorable. SO adorable in fact, she does not get the joke. Lydia is too slow to dodge as well, clearly never so great at speaking Filgaia due to her growing hesitance at violence and murder. She is shot several times witg electrical spines and she goes down, convulsing.
From her mouth, that strange metal surges out from withim her body and tries to grab at Tabitha's legs and firmly grip them even as Lydia, who doesn't even seem to be doing this intentionally, continues to throw up metal. She isn't choking neitger.
"I...I used to think they were aliens...but now I know the truth....Thanks to my friend who knows...the truth...eeggh..."
She sits up, eyes glowing with a silver sheen.
"I won't be Solaris's experiment again!" Lydia screams. " And I won't be yours either!"
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has activated a Force Action! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has spent 4 Combo on Poison and Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Hell-Heart Furnace Shot! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Talia has activated a Force Action! DC: MISS! Talia completely evades Hell-Heart Furnace Shot from Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly's hearing is slowly returning, but she can't quite make out what Kaguya is saying. At least in fine detail. She does, however, grip her staff more tightly and give her a single nod. When Kaguya kneels down and holsters her iron, Elly sags in relief.
Maybe this will end it all. If this unit falls, it's an opening, Elly thinks. An opening can turn into a reverse, could divide the enemy's forces. But what would they do with Josie?
Elly had glanced away from Kaguya in this moment. That was a god damn mistake. The rock hits her dead on, only the relatively high surface area of rock to Elly to muddy, bloody battlefield soil preventing her from taking dire and crippling injuries. Sprawled out beneath the stone, she nonetheless rolls for a moment, probably now for certain definitely defeated and removed from action.
No.
Elly isn't even really thinking clearly but that anxiety and tension of battle, the thought of who she might not see again, runs through the complex layers of metaphorical micro-circuitry laid down in Jugend and Solaris and something comes out of that system, like a pachinko ball hitting several bright targets.
In this case the prize is lightning.
As Claude slashes down, a bolt of actual lightning snap-WHOMM's out of the sky towards Kaguya. Elly, grimly, pushes herself back up to hands and knees, now caked in mud.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Kaguya with Anemo Bolt! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Kaguya guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Anemo Bolt for 61 hit points! GS: Disrupt! Statuses applied to Kaguya! GS: Kaguya enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
There are inconsistencies and incongruencies to Talia's life and beliefs. They are things buried deep; things hidden underneath a lifetime that left no room for regret or doubt. If she regretted her choices or doubted herself, she knew, she would lose the one person in this world that made this life worthwhile. It is, perhaps, a powerful but flawed barrier.
There are no tears in her eyes. There are never tears in her eyes, when she steels herself to do what Lubov says she must do. She deadens her emotions through careful practice. There is no playful, empty smile to hide behind.
There is only the dead, cold certainty that she isn't better than this person. But since when has being better stayed her hand?
Peacemaker fires and comes closer, and closer, and closer. Red eyes widen, until the bullet is reflecting in them -- and then she vanishes again into coils and curls of shadowy smoke. The bullet leaves a round hole through them, and then Mirage appears -- thrown right for Ida's center of mass. Talia's free hand appears right around it, and she puts her face right into Ida's.
Her expression is as cold as she feels, inside, and betrays nothing.
GS: Talia has spent 4 Combo on Gatling! GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Point-Warp Slash! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Alien? Maybe. Kaguya could pass for a Beastwoman, if a young one, with her pointed ears, sharp fangs, too-thin body. ...She looks ill, and strange both, and her eyes are not a natural shade of green. But alien? Maybe.
Kaguya feels the shield clang against her glove, feels the way it gives way under her strike and spins satisfyingly away. Maybe it hits someone; she can't spare it more than a little glance, a wonder at the chaos it will cause, as she performs her maneuver. It means she's not expecting the change in fighting style. Facing Claude's freedom in adversity is Kaguya's raw curiousity, a scientific mind bent through terrible violence. And in the slow moments that come, Claude exercises his lesson: he pivots.
And he cuts. Stone splinters beneath them, and the first arc carves a terrible gouge down the bizarre green plating that seems to be green all the way down, flecked now with red as it becomes clear that his blade has torn open her arm. The ending arc hacks down towards her hip, and slices a strap that once held more medicine in place, crashing against metal to carve a furrow in her thigh.
Kaguya hisses in pain, and if she is alien, then her alien blood is also red.
"That--" A spike of pain flashes across her eyes that she recognizes only an instant later from the thunder the crackles from the sky, her gaze snapping towards Elly as the lightning blazes through her, briefly illuminating her teeth in ugly glory, shaking through her bones, and grounding at her feet. "...N-nice," she says, stuttering briefly from the lingering shock. "But--"
She moves to shoulder-check Claude, uncaring if it actually hurts him, and charges along the ground in a green blur towards Elly. She pulls her ARM as she does, starting to load a curiously dark cartridge, and CLACK it loads as she reaches Elly. She jumps--
Kaguya spins mid-air and swings her elbow down to attempt to crack it straight into Elly's stomach with blistering force. "How about we get close--"
She moves to try to pin Elly outright and, in motion, holds out her ARM to Claude, "And we get far!"
The blast that comes crackles black and white, changes colors as it goes, attacks life force directly, a clear violation of local technology--or just magic.
GS: Kaguya has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Don't Fear The! GS: Kaguya has spent 1 Combo on Poison and Disease! GS: Kaguya has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Inversion Cartridge! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
DC: MISS! Ida Everstead-Rey completely evades Point-Warp Slash from Talia!
<Pose Tracker> Sister Domitia has posed.
Off over there somewhere, the soldiers of Rolance are continuing to fight as valiantly as they very well can, despite the fact that Hyland has ARMs and they don't.
Sometime during the melee, Corporal Severn managed to get his hands on a musket, which he has no idea how to use. He's settling for using his huge shield to cover his compatriots. He, Trent and Oaks have been joined by one more person.
That person is an intrepid redheaded woman in a mail hauberk. Her name is Lance Corporal Rideau and she's carrying a longbow, which she's popping out from behind Trent's shield to fire into the ranks of the Hylanders, using the shield to soak up any bolts or musket balls that whistle their way in return. She's awfully quick about it. The shield is at least helping to keep the bullets and arrows off her.
A few Rolance soldiers - those with less individual heroism (let's be honest, it's 'less Domitia blessings') than Oaks, Trent, Severn and Rideau are beginning to try and replicate their individual unit tactics, with crossbowmen and longbowmen beginning to link up with the regular infantry to use shields as cover while they fire.
GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Don't Fear The for 77 hit points! GS: ! Statuses applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Claude C. Kenny takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Inversion Cartridge for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Toxin! Statuses applied to Claude C. Kenny! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Claude C. Kenny! GS: Claude C. Kenny has been weakened by Disease! They take 0 damage, and burn off their temporary hit points! GS: Claude C. Kenny has activated a Force Action! GS: Claude C. Kenny has activated a Force Action! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Metallurgic Entangle! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a solid hit from Lydia Seren's Metallurgic Entangle for 79 hit points! GS: Slow! Statuses applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Metallurgic Entangle! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Not much of a talker, he is. There's not much separating him from the faceless, nameless people that seem to exist as extras in one's life. As if almost a deliberate choice, the way he hides the lower half of his face. He's forced to a kneel by her defensive strike to his own legs as she gets distance on him. His eyes appraise her every movement. One hand goes behind his back as the other holds the quarterstaff like one might a walking stick. He could be preparing a nasty spell at any moment, at any time.
That's her rifle again. There's one thing he should know.
I already know all I need to, he might comment. That much is in his eyes. That he gives that much with his eyes is the closest thing to a true flinch she can get before she pulls the trigger.
She fires. The angle of the shot, dead center of mass - she might have as good a timing as one is going to figure out between bullet velocity, angle, and the universal weak points of the human body that if the bullet's going to be stopped before it goes all the way through, she's just going to need to pick the most uncomfortable way to jab someone with a finger.
She gets it.
Ethius falls to his seat as the rifle round's leftover momentum post-shielding shoves him down, and he clutches his free hand against it while the quarterstaff drops. Only a small trickle of blood, like a pin prick. Enough to get him to bleed. He remains flesh and blood, even under the sorcerous shielding. For a time, it is Josie whose shadow looms over him as the battle rages onward behind - even from further down the hill, the trick of the light makes it look like she's towering over him.
Through his ears, Ethius hears all the machinations of devices and weapons he knows are of Filgaian make. He knows not her stake in this. Little would stop her from just coming down and plunging a knife into him to end it there.
"None of this concerns you." Ethius remarks, surrendering those words as the fingers on the hand clutching the (admittedly minor but still painful) bleeding wound starts to flutter.
She's a Symbologist. That is a naked spell casting attempt. There are many crests, with many different meanings and accompanying spells - to say nothing of the minutae in regards to gesticulations or incantations involved.
She will notice that he's doing something weird with one specific chant - able to be heard even above the shouts and the war going on behind them. The gesticulations coming off of his right hand are smooth and continuous, but the incantation, he seems to be stumbling... almost intentionally?
It's not a 'stumble' in so much that it's an advanced casting trick that, done with precision in timing and diction - almost impossible under stress - it greatly expands the range of effect.
Even facing down probable death, he nails it, as he finishes off the gesticulations with the outward sweep of the hand.
"Recurrent current." All around, Josephine will see surges of electricity zoom in on her. If any of them make contact, she will quickly find that these shocks will not leave. A sensation not unlike being poisoned, except instead of organ-melting venom it's constant shocking. They will keep zapping her, keep electrifying her in short, painful bursts no matter how she might ground herself or otherwise coax them away - and she's got a lot of ground to cover, right now, if she's just going to run away from the area of effect.
GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated a Force Action! GS: Ethius Hesiod has spent 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Recurrent Current! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Ethius Hesiod's Recurrent Current for 130 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Josephine Lovelace!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Mirage flies. It flies right for Ida's center of mass, as if seeking out her heart. It could all end right here, and no one would ever find her body--her family would never know what became of her--
Training takes over, wrenching control from Ida's conscious thoughts. She steps to the side, her form blurring at the edges; it's like she's employing the same trick Talia is, used defensively, becoming less solid and more shadow. Those sub-arms, though, are still real enough to strike. One of them lashes out at the flying blade, even as it passes dangerously close to her chest. If she'd turned a second later, all she would've managed was changing its angle of entry. A sharp clang splits the air as Mirage strikes the back of Ida's hand, ricochets off, and buries itself in the ground. Talia reforms around it.
Ida is already reaching for her. A metal hand grabs for Talia's upper arm, trying to jerk her off-balance. Another metal hand arcs in for a right cross at Talia's face. Ida's flesh hands come down at the assassin's face in a double axe handle, and in the instant Talia sees Ida's face, it lights up with a look of frustrated rage.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Gleeful Cessation Of Restraint! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Gleeful Cessation Of Restraint for 180 hit points! GS: Talia loses a Combo from Interrupt! GS: Lydia Seren has canceled their attack on Tabitha deVriese.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Mirage slams into the ground, and Talia reforms. She yells in surprise, when the hand grabs her -- and she doesn't reappear where she expected. Her senses, when her body is broken down like that, are dulled and strange. She is thrown off balance -- and then her head snaps to the side, bloody spittle flying out from the vicious right hook.
The double axe handle blow slams down into her face and smashes into her nose. It snaps, with a sickening crunch, and she has blood running down her face then. She spits, and this time, her eyes are only wet with pain.
She screams, lunging forward. Mirage stabs, twice. It is a brutal, vicious, and uncontrolled strike -- though there is more guidance than she strictly lets on, as she stabs at the Hellion's midsection. It is an effort to ward her away, to regain her balance.
"You..." She spits. "Yes, I see what you are, now! You're raging at the world, wondering when your mother will return to save you from the monsters!"
GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Desperation Strike! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Saliva and blood flies out of Elly's mouth as Kaguya wedges her elbow into Elly's abdomen, hard enough to displace things. The resulting dizzying disorientation and systemic shock makes her try to curl up, which means that Kaguya's effort to hold her in place just adds to misery. Who is the real villain here? (It's K.K. K.K. did this. Somehow.)
The up side is that her hearing is coming back.
The down side is that what she's hearing is...
It isn't nice at all. Her eyes flick to CLaude for a moment, in utter misery. Then they close.
"I'll show you," she mumbles, voice weak and thready. "I'll show you"
how an Element dies!
The sudden surge of a sine-wave construct of screaming plasmic Ether is probably at least kind of a surprise to Kaguya. Maybe not? The Veruni know of Ether as well, after all, but the fact that it's actually on fire - that the plasmic here refers to the fourth state of matter, cognate to fire, rather than to, like, "ghosts," may be more of a surprise. Elly feels Kaguya on her and the screaming undulating dragon of white-hot flame pursues.
Elly is dizzy enough that she's aiming with her inner eye.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Kaguya with Thermo Dragon! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Dragon for 84 hit points! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Talia's attack becomes clear! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Talia's Mirage Edge for 74 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"But--"
Then, one thing becomes clear: Talia never lost control. Her desperate, wild slashes were strikes meant to force Ida's guard elsewhere, to focus on Mirage's assault instead of where Talia's offhand was positioned. The expression on the assassin's face becomes one of stone and steel; one of a calm that exists only to hide as much as a smile, in other times.
"I know what I am, too. I've always known."
Her offhand slams upward, for Ida's left arm -- her real, human arm -- and she tries to bury all eight inches of the steel of her parrying dagger into Ida's armpit. It is a brutal blow; it is not meant to disable. It is meant to kill.
"I am why mothers never come home."
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
Maybe she's not an alien after all, Claude C. Kenny thinks to himself when he sees Kaguya bleed good old-fashioned human red, unaware of just how many aliens also bleed red blood, viz., most of the ones that use blood to begin with. He actually tries a third slash since the first two work out so well, but the little young woman darts away before he can make it connect. He takes a step forward, then tastes the acrid tang of ozone in the back of his throat.
He jumps back before he can realize what he's doing, and the skies erupt with Elly's indignant rage.
"Holy---" he sputters, blinking his eyes open and closed, trying to get the actinic flare out of the right eye (the left having been protected by his HUD's super-advanced bullcrap flare protection. In between blinks twelve and thirteen, he sees Kaguya leap atop Elly. Blinks thirteen and fourteen reveal a gun aiming his way. Claude dives to his left, dropping his sword (rolling with a sword is a good way to end up with you insides out, Roddick's voice echoes in his memory) as he measures his length along the broken, bloodied earth. The blast passes through Federation armourweave entirely, biting away at lifeforce; Claude staggers for a moment, shaking his head to clear it of the grey haze.
Between shake two and three, he sees Kaguya still wrestling with Elly. Who Claude is pretty sure is a magician, and therefore squishy as crap.
Claude springs to his feet, slips, cracks his right knee down onto the earth, then comes up again. He sees the crimson-haired mage unleash a dragon forged of blazing flame as moves into a hobbling charge, a little hitch in his step. Taking his cue from Elly, Claude focuses on his right hand, trailing streams of blue energy that flow through the air and into his palm. They start coalescing into a physical form as Claude leaps into the air, clearing a dozen feet at least, waiting until Elly's fire dragon starts to dissipate.
At which point he throws another one - blue chi next to Elly's magic red - aimed to smash Kaguya into the turf.
<Pose Tracker> Sister Domitia has posed.
Across the field, Sister Domitia appears to be scrying on Talia and Ida a bit.
Her lips crook subtly upwards.
"Oh, I like her," she murmurs.
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Kaguya with Dragon's Howl! GS: Claude C. Kenny takes 8 damage from Toxin! GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action. GS: Kaguya critically Guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Dragon's Howl for 33 hit points! GS: Kaguya enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Firing with this hand is always costly. Even now her fingers scream in agony, microtears no doubt staining the bandages under her gloves.
It's fine. It's a problem for a future Josie to deal with.
She has but a moment to exult as he tumbles, breathing in the raw scent of gunpowder.
It doesn't last her long. Not when she notes that her attempt was... less than lethal.
"Spell's still holding, huh? Who taught you?"
No doubt, she won't be getting a reply. For one reason or another.
With her left hand, she has indeed drawn a knife.
"...You're right. It sure doesn't. But, that just means whatever happens to you doesn't concern me much, either." She gestures towards him with the knife. "Right?"
Before lunging. He's already casting -- and this fast --
"Pay attention, girl!" memory's ghost booms out in her mind.
He stumbles.
Her dark eyes widen. Shit, that's not a stumble--
Too late.
The surge of electrical force erupts beneath her feet; she spasms where she stands, dropping both rifle and knife as she becomes a living breathing relay for the cascading shocks.
"Girl. The nature of electricity. Tell me it now!" says the echo of a voice.
"T... to flow. To stop?"
"Theory, girl! I want the theory!"
With a snarl Josie plants one foot before her, urging herself forward against the shocks still riding her body. Not once does she stoop for her fallen ARM; instead she snares with her right hand -- slowly, jerkily -- the ARM holstered at her hip.
Rolls it -- not without pain -- in her hand. The mechanism clicks over.
"Owls... always were supposed to be hard to shoot down," she breathes out, legs buckling as she slowly takes one more step.
Her lips part; her teeth bared. "Heh... heh," she exhales next, hovering at the borders between feral and merely predatory. One eye squints shut.
"Let's dance."
With little forewarning, she jerks the sidearm up a degree or two, glances at Ethius, and pulls the trigger.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Snipe! GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Kick the Bucket! GS: Josephine Lovelace takes 11 damage from Toxin! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Lydia vomits some kind of horrible binding sludge on Tabitha. The woman tries to leap away, but it catches her, weights her legs in some horrible...stuff, and Tabitha finds her legs weighty and hard to move. She looks down at all this happening, and her lips...
SPlit wider.
"I wonder where you heard a word like that," she murmurs, reaching up and flicking a lock of disheveled hair behind her ear. Her eyes shine with fascination. "But don't worry, darling. I don't do experiments. I'm more of what you'd call a natural scientist. I'm more interested in what people are...a priestess should be concerned about such things, don't you think?"
And then - despite being weighed down by Lydia's sludge, despite having no mobilty in her legs below the knee - she slowly levers down into a crouch, the wind slowly whirling around her and gathering together into a tiny bead below her.
And then it explodes. Tabitha FLIES upward like she weighed NOTHING, vaulting dozens, hundreds of feet into the air with total confidence and control. She whirls around overhead, difficult to track amid the sky.
"Though I'm afraid we do have one problem!" she calls down. "I liked those boots, dear!"
And then - she falls. Impossibly fast, both feet down, aiming to slam into Lydia's midsection like a descending rocket and shatter her defenses completely. The impact, even if she only lands near Lydia, sends a rolling wave of dust kicked up by the sheer force, a shockwave strong enough to bowl over soldiers nearby.
GS: Ethius Hesiod guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Kick the Bucket for 56 hit points! GS: Ethius Hesiod enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: Tabitha deVriese has spent 4 Combo on Smite and Gatling! GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lydia Seren with Inversion Reversal! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes 8 damage from Poison! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren guards a hit from Tabitha deVriese's Inversion Reversal for 130 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
It's not kind, what Kaguya does. But it's a battlefield; Kaguya has known battlefields since that day outside the Temple, and to this day, whenever she's on one the scent of expended artillery and blood tickle her nostrils, where memory meets scent. The first day she started killing.
Kaguya holds Elly down, for the moment at least. She grins, like it's some kind of game, but then Elly says she'll show her--
"Show me what?" Kaguya starts to answer, but 'what' is overwritten by the explosion of the sudden construct of Ether. Oh, it surprises Kaguya; sure, she knows of Ether, she uses it casually, but she never expected something that doesn't occur on planets to be here, in her face, and the dragon rushes towards her. "Gah--"
She shoves herself back, starts to whirl in place, protecting her vitals and soft face from the sheer rush of heat. But it is not only the dragon; at the same time, Claude, having sprung to his feet, having charged, is focusing with his right hand--and the twin set of dragons is both launched at her, blue and red against her green, chasing her down into the hill and shattering the ground in a spray of rock all around her, leaving the Oasis Free Company's leader in a smoking pile of ruin for a moment, last seen shielding herself with her arms and ducking down into a ball to become a smaller target. And she's gone.
...A moment, before her foot twitches.
"...You did show me," Kaguya breathes, char coating her armor and burns all along her arms as she pushes herself up to her feet. Her breathing comes out in wheezes; the needle she discarded is who-knows-where. ...But her face--her face is clear, protected from the twin assaults. "You're good. I didn't expect to find anybody this talented here, but I got two of you." She coughs, and blood spatters her hand. "Lucky, right?" A beat, "But..." Her ARM is glowing. A faint aura is collecting near the end of the barrel, as she slides the chamber open again and this time slides in two cartridges. They each gleam brilliantly even in the darkness, pulsing with Etheric--not quite Ether, but like it--power. "I've... got something to show you, too."
She closes the barrel, lifts her shotgun. "It's why they call me 'milady.'"
Her expression twists into focus and in an instant, she aims--she fires, a shot first for Elly, then for Claude. The one for Claude radiates waves of force, pulverizing the ground--
The one for Elly is simply a column of blazing green light, horizontal but otherwise nearly identical to the colors and compounds that brought down Lastonbell's wall.
GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya has spent 3 Combo on Gatling! GS: Kaguya has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Genocide Shot!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia says, "Pfeh. There's nothin' natural about me, except my charisma." She is talking tough but the fact of the matter is, Tabitha is kicking her ass and she's not even entirely sure WHY. See, despite talking about this shit, Lydia has absolutely uh no idea what Tabitha is. Sure, she has blonde hair, but as Elly proved that doesn't mean much. She bets Solarians fuck surface people all the time and get kicks off of it.
Lydia's jumps away from Tabitha's strike but the shockwave itself is enough to send Lydia flying through several soldiers before crashing to the floor once more. She is slow to get up. How the hell are Etones so bullshit, Lydia thinks, as she rolls out of the eway of a guard who was knocked up so hard he went right into the air, catching him in a small buffet of wind before setting him to the ground. It wasn't even a Hyland soldier.
Lydia frowns as she watches the battle between Talia and Ida. She's not going to be able to help, she thinks. Even if she summons Rigdobrite--
--ahh, but Rigdobrite sure does make noise.
She draws out her medium and adds, "Elly told me all about it. She treated me like a person. She listened to everything and empathized."
Lydia grits her teeth as she focuses her power through the medium. If the tech doesn't work she'll stick to the power of the living Gods.
"More of a priest than you are. You think I couldn't tell? I could always tell! You see me as nothin' more than a specimen! You look at me just like they did. And that's...enough!!" She finishes her channeling with one hand and wipes stray silver strands from her chin, flicking them away where the machines within disassemble themselves into oblivion.
In the skies above, a particularly large meteor materializes in the air. Rigdobrite's range is pretty impressive, but luckily in this particular case everybody is spread out as such that unless Lydia wants to hit all her friends, well, she is best focusing this right on Tabitha.
After all, throwing a rock was the most useful thing Lydia has done in this fight. Rigdobrite is just a bigger rock.
And it's a bigger rock that is coming down fully intending to squish Tabitha under his own bulk.
DC: MISS! Elhaym van Houten completely evades Genocide Shot from Kaguya! GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Meteor Crash! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: Kaguya has spent 3 Combo on Gatling! GS: Kaguya has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Concussion Rounds! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Talia breaks. She bleeds. Something in the back of Ida's mind enjoys it--the part of her that feels vindicated when someone who hurt her is hurt in turn. At the same time, she feels sick. She's losing the upper hand, if she ever had it in the first place. Her legs are still frostbitten, and living flesh is replacing the dead flesh with agonizing slowness. The wound Talia put in her side has stopped bleeding, but it's still open, and the wrong move could rip open the delicate, temporary patchwork inside.
Talia suddenly recovers, and lunges. Ida twists back, her torso forming an awkward, sideways U-shape between her hips and shoulders. A metal arm snaps down to parry the second wild swing. Mother, Ida thinks. Whether she realizes it or not, Talia has opened a wound far more dangerous to Ida than the ones in her body. She remembers a woman with thin, fine-boned features and a litany of scars. She remembers that woman tucking her in and singing her to sleep, and that same woman shaking, staring right through her.
Ida does not respond with words. She draws one of her sub-arms back, and the metal of its fingers twists, groaning as it deforms into a crude spear-shape. Ida steps forwards, her whole body aligning behind a knife-fist strike as she drives that mangled hand towards Talia's chest.
GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Lydia Seren's Meteor Crash for 88 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Talia with Raging Thunderbolt! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Raging Thunderbolt for 119 hit points! GS: Claude C. Kenny has activated a Force Action! GS: Claude C. Kenny guards a hit from Kaguya's Concussion Rounds for 127 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Claude C. Kenny!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia grunts, sharply, when Ida's knife-hand slams into her chest. The leather armor rends and tears, and she feels more blood running from the punch. She shouts, hissing, and drops the parrying dagger -- still slick with blood -- to the ground. It lands there with a clatter, so that Talia can grab Mirage by both hands. She shouts her rage and defiance back into the other woman's face, a wordless cry that belies her adrenaline and a desperation that is growing genuine.
She charges Ida. She ducks back, as she does; that puts a slight spin to her movement, and that helps her, as she does a lunging jump.
Her blade flashes out. Chi explodes off it, leaving a trail of light after her -- in a spinning, spiral pattern that matches Mirage's cut. Which is when Talia reaches the apex of her jump, and swings in a final slash, set to throw Ida away from her bodily. "LIGHT SPEAR CANNON!"
GS: Talia has activated a Force Action! GS: Talia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Light Spear Cannon! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Predatory. Unfettered. Willing to kill. Stone cold silent.
...These two are a lot alike, aren't they? They even look like they might possibly be related, what with the striking similarities in skin tone and hair color. Well, okay, she's not stone cold silent. She's a wonderful conversation partner. He is terrible at that.
As the electrical force erupts, Josephine will notice, critically, that Ethius backs away - kind of like he is trying to ensure he's not too close to the electrical field he just conjured. Hmm.
The quarterstaff is held anew, but this seems a most curious choice. She could still shoot him. It might not work - in the sense that he won't fall down and die from it - but she could. That's a gosh darn stick. He's bringing a gosh darn stick to a gun fight. There's a hole in his clothing for every place a bullet or piece of buckshot went through. Clean hits.
He watches calmly as adrenaline guides her to take her ARM, to keep shooting.
BANG
KZZZ-OW
PING
That should've taken out his left shoulder. That should've crippled that arm for life. It doesn't do so much as make him flinch like he were still being poked by an insistent school-aged child wanting to annoy a peer. This man looks less like a man, for all his man-shaped man-ness. What must a man like that be, to any Hyland soldier that might have tried to engage him directly? The ARMs just don't seem to work against him.
The same ARMs that effortlessly punch through the plate mail of the modern Rolance military. The same ARMs that, just ahead, are still terrorizing and bewildering a people who do not know and remain unprepared for dealing with it beyond trying to win over the favor of those who already have them.
What adrenaline must be pumping through him, he is doing a remarkable job of not letting it show in the surface. His stare bears down upon her as he goes to a low crouch, quarterstaff in both hands...
"Cease your interference." These words have... more oomph to them than usual. Less spoken from the script, more from... does he have a heart?
"Far Point!" He calls the technique name, as he lunges from the present distance he has to the utmost maximum of his wingspan, stabbing the point of his quarterstaff straight into Josie's wrist.
It is no killing blow - but one that, should it land, speak of a singular and important truth to the archaeologist turned soldier of fortune.
This fight could be over - and that he's refraining from killing her where she stands for a reason.
GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated a Force Action! GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated a Force Action! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Far Point! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Talia's Light Spear Cannon for 85 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Ethius Hesiod's Far Point for 157 hit points! GS: Jam! Statuses applied to Josephine Lovelace! GS: Josephine Lovelace has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Blue. Red. Green. All of them contend and strive. Do they have any meanings? Is it a false choice? Is there no real option? Elly is let loose and for the fourth time pushes herself up to her feet rather than simply falling into a crater and pulling it in after her. (It's not the worst idea. She could make a rock coccoon and lay in it, with an air tube...)
But that is not, perhaps, her way.
After throwing up quietly for a moment, Elly feels better, and her eyes focus on Kaguya just in time to see yet another immense ray of Etheric force fly towards her. She stares at it dead on for a moment as if to think to herself with silent dismay: Really?
The light washes towards her...
And it breaks on a sudden ship's-prow of ice, which sublimates almost immediately yet constantly reforms as Elly stares dead ahead, face pale, eyes wide, jaw trembling a little as she pushes and pushes and pushes again. "... you're struggling so hard..." she says, her voice somehow carrying despite the din of a wizards' battle.
"... But this isn't any of our battle, is it? We're just guests on a stage made by others. It's vain of us to contend like this... but I suppose we don't have any choice. You're doing this because you have to, aren't you?"
The ice is losing. Elly raises a hand up as if to ward off the coming of the green death.
"Or is it because... it's your nature?"
A sparkling shape flies into the horrid green light.
A small
bright
shining
cube
It pivots down towards the ground. Elly goes for a near-miss, to try and knock Kaguya away, even now.
Something about her doesn't feel like 'that person,' or even a runaway monster. Then again, Elly could be misjduging things.
GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Kaguya with Thermo Cube! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Tabitha kicks the shattered detritus off her legs, strutting back out into the open. She's roughed up, sure, but she does her best to maintain her composure. "You've been through a lot, haven't you?" she murmurs, head tipping slowly and considering the girl.
"Such pain and sorrow...but you see, you're right about one thing. I am not, quite, the kind of priest who gently soothes the shattered hearts."
She draws up her weapon and idly pulls the slide back, adjusting some settings on the definitely-not-gunpowder ARM. Her eyes are drawn up as the sky splits. As a horrifying, magical force bears down on her with incredible power, crashing toward her with unstopppable force.
She stares at it, eyes slowly hardening...
And then, in the heartbeat before impact, she disappears - moving so quickly the eye can't track her.
And the next time anyone can find her, she hits the ground behind Lydia...barely making a sound, barely a hint of dust, like she were a ghost. Like she weighed nothing.
"I'm the kind that kills monsters," she breathes to Lydia's ear, and then drives her knee into the girl's back with such savage force that she can SEE the air distort like a spear - having presumably passed through her to do so.
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lydia Seren with Gospel Sequence! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren takes a solid hit from Tabitha deVriese's Gospel Sequence for 135 hit points! GS: Lydia Seren enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
It says something that Ida didn't question Talia's assertion about her nature. Doing so would be foolish. Talia's skill speaks for her; Ida has the raw power of Malevolence, but she's been largely unable to tap into its contradictions in ways that could shift the course of this fight. Her body is healing, but her spirit is shaken.
Ida stumbles back, almost tripping over the shattered body of one of her Mannikins in the process. She twists to the side, anticipating Talia coming at her with a downward stab, but the sudden surge of chi tells her she's been had. She feels it even before it erupts from Talia's blade, twists again. The blade carves into Ida's chest. She stumbles back, blood dripping from the wound. She coughs, wetly--
She falls. Her body seems to meld with her own shadow, becoming it. It races away from Talia, darting from shadow to shadow across the chaotic battlefield, moving to try and throw her off the scent.
She's failed.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
It's just not working. She's hitting him dead on -- the holes in his clothing are proof enough -- but it's as if she were taking potshots against the sea -- there's no evidence she's done anything to his body.
Is that magic? She had thought it a spell -- still thinks it a spell -- but it's not one she knows.
It's strange, the way he seems to shy away from his own spell just then--
There's no time to think on it.
He's advancing. She pulls back, boots sliding on the gravel as she moves to pull out of range from that strike--
Only to find that he's got more range than she'd thought.
The end of the quarterstaff slams into her wrist. She recoils, this ARM too dropping from her grasp as a raw sound better acquainted with a wounded animal slips her lips. Cradling that hand against her chest, she hunches in on herself, seething a breath for one, two, three--
Then she glances up at Ethius.
Without awareness of the degree of the unhealing wound hidden below glove and bandages, her reaction might seem out of proportion.
But this, this is agony. It was all she could do to not scream. All she can do now just to breath out, exhaling pain.
"This isn't over," she vows. Another breath follows. Her hand might as well be molten. Her arm might as well be wrapped in glass. All those ancient pains are awake again.
And she stoops, and with her wounded left hand, gathers what she had lost, as quickly as she can.
Her gaze lingers on Ethius once again as she stares him down.
The electrical bolt she hurls his way won't hit. It's gone far too wide for that. Still, it is what it is as she backs up and finally retreats under the smoke and chaos of the battlefield:
A sort of promise.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
God that's a cool line.
Lydia probably should leave at this point since there's little benefit for her to keep fighting here. Nevertheless, Lydia isn't thinking purely on logic here. If she did, she probably wouldn't have gone on about Elly. She is in pain and Tabitha is targeting the wounds that had healed. Lydia reads it as sadism.
Lydia is caught by surprise by Tabitha's sudden "increase in speed--even though she already kinda of knew about it. Tabitha drives her knee into Lydia's back and Lydia can't even scream, she just gags out goo. She doesn't go flying this time. She just sinks to one knee, panting for breath.
"A monster...? I..." Lydia says. "I'm...?" She looks at her hands, as if horrified. She calls out to her OTHER Guardian Friend this time, taking the time to let the Guardian ripple into the air as she's tormented and lock right onto Tabitha, charging up a laser with a star-shaped pattern signed behind it.
"I'm experienced enough to not fall for that psych trauma warfare garbage." Lydia says. "You gonna kill me? Better do your best." She grabs behind her for Tabitha's leg and shouts out loudly. "MATERIAL! SOLAIS! EMSU!!!"
A death laser of impressive proportions flashes down for Tabitha's upper body. It will not be a fun time for Tabitha if she's hit straight on, though this IS tabitha so she's had good luck in not being hit straight on, but then again...that's probably why Lydia grabbed at her legs isn't it? With the metal arm?
GS: Lydia Seren has activated a Force Action! GS: Lydia Seren has activated a Force Action! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Material - Solais Emsu! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Lydia Seren's Material - Solais Emsu for 82 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
Talented Claude C. Kenny is, powerful he may be, but thus far the young girl in the green armour is proving to be his superior in all these respects. She has taken his best shots, multiple times over, and he is desperately low on energy. He came here expecting a war, a battle of attrition and tactics, but it has turned into an out-and-out slugfest. This is not great, as Claude has lost most every slugfest he's entered since coming to this system.
But he made a promise - to Rena, Cecilia, and the jerks who run this world - and he'll be damned if he gives up on it now.
The downside of jumping to launch your attack is made manifest when he lands, i.e., that it's very hard to dodge the counter-attack in mid-air. Kaguya's concussive shot rattles Claude's skull, thundering his eardrums, vertigo threatening to send what's left of his lunch to the blood-soaked earth below. More worrying for Claude is that it disrupts the state of unthinking concentration he was in, disrupts the flow of qigong, and all his injuries come crashing back down on him in a single instant.
Grey haze swells around his vision, threatening to drag him under.
"N...ot yet," he sputters, and it's clear he's barely able to keep upright, knees nearly buckling as he takes a couple of steps toward Kaguya. Weaving and bobbing like a man on a three-day bender, he staggers toward her, abandoning all thought of defence. His eyes unfocus, the grey haze rises, and he nearly passes out on his feet. Claude snaps his jaw closed, biting his tongue; the copper taste gives him a few more seconds of awareness, and he uses it to target Kaguya---
(which one? the one in the middle, i guess)
---with a jelly-legged, floppy-armed punch, roughly strong enough to mash a mosquito in poor health. What little power momentum would put in Claude's favour is lost when the tide of fatigue and battle damage rushes up a third time, and this time he can't resist it, eyes rolling into the back of his head.
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Kaguya with Jab Punch! GS: Claude C. Kenny takes 9 damage from Toxin! GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action. GS: Kaguya critically Guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Cube for 33 hit points! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Claude C. Kenny's attack becomes clear! GS: Kaguya takes a solid hit from Claude C. Kenny's Freestyle Combat Arts for 157 hit points! GS: Kaguya has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.
and so you fail again
...
such is the worth of your promise
...I...bad luck, boy from Ea---
Claude's eyes snap open, his face contorting into a snarl as his right fist tightens, hardening, a pulse of energy flaring out from his body in a desperate, fluttering surge. Muscle and sinew strain to the edge of breaking as Claude's mouth opens in a wordless, desperate roar, blood-specked spittle staining teeth and lips with a nearly-transparent crimson. Right arm connects to shoulder connects to back connects to waist as Claude turns into the blow, rotating his hips to bring his legs to bear as well. Every muscle fiber he has in his body goes into the punch, along with every drop of energy he can muster.
It's all he has, in this time, in this place. It may not be enough. But he'll be damned if he leaves anything in the tank for those jerks to criticize. His mouth opens in a single, furious scream.
"SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!"
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia watches Ida fall. She takes a deep, shaking breath -- and then she steels herself. She doesn't have room to doubt; she doesn't have room to wonder if this is the right thing to do. What hope can she really offer against a Hellion?
Last night, she fought one. She saw its memories.
And she had to help kill it.
Her fingers tremble about the blade she holds; then, she stills her fingers, and takes a good look around.
She hesitates as she catches sight of something. Though Kaguya's mercenaries hold strong, there is a grim sight: the Royal Blue Rifles, the ARM-outfitted soldiers of the Hyland army, are fleeing in a terrified disarray -- rushing from the field in a route. Other pockets of Hyland troops are doing the same. Talia's eyes widen, as she realizes.
Hyland has lost.
She grits her teeth, then she nods, and starts ro fall back. "Move!" she yells, back to Lydia. "They're falling apart!"
Indeed, cries come up from Rolance's side. A horn blasts, and the ground rumbles -- as the floundering rifles are overtaken by a charge of knights on horseback. They begin to collapse under the crimson of Rolance, as it looks to carry the day.
<Pose Tracker> Sister Domitia has posed.
There are others involved in the charge. Following up the knights, some of the more successful Rolancer infantry units begin to filter in.
Among them is the unit led by Commander Oaks, with Trent, Severn and Rideau behind him. As the Hylanders flounder, Rideau's arrows begin to pelt confused riflemen, flying much faster than the Royal Blue Rifles can reload their ARMs. Archers add their own chaos, providing a window for the infantry to follow the knights and make an honest-to-god melee out of it.
Sister Domitia has begin to move forward from the rear of the lines. She's sitting on a white palfrey now as a knight-errant escorts her forward, the rear able to move now that the Rolance forces have simply advanced that far and the Hyland ones are beginning to retreat.
"Well done," the Sister murmurs as she rides into range of Claude and Elly and those others who came out to battle, folding her hands delicately. "It would seem that the enemy host has been routed."
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
'This isn't over,' comes Josie's promise as Ethius takes a step forward with a singular electrical bolt. They're thrown in desperation, to try and cover her one escape, but she will see something curious if she can keep grip of her pain and emotions to bear witness to something -
No matter where she aims the bolt, it jumps right into Ethius. His Symbology-activiated electrical shield, invisible to the naked eye, flashes visibly for an instant as the electrical power courses through him - into him - throwing him back against the other side of the hill and precariously that much closer to the Hyland camp.
This is what Josie needs to not only escape... that, alone, might just have been a key clue.
A distant horn sounds as Ethius comes to. He recognizes that as Roland's own - and he can hear the sounds and sights of those bearing blue coming his way.
He may have halted Josie from picking off Rolance soldiers, but his compromised positioning ensures he has lost the opportunity to move to eliminate key identified figures of the Hyland offensive. With no other choice, he activates and throws down a Powder Grenade to cover his own escape as he makes a precarious trek back into Rolance territory.
On the whole, Rolance holds. Of the less than ideal situation Glenwood is in by his reckoning, this is - for the time - what it needs to buy him some time.
...And by extension, buy Alisha and her allies time to continue researching their next move into how to best stop the war.
For now, he is in too deep, and too exposed thanks to Josie's escape - he will have to lay low again for some time.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
'You're doing this because you have to, aren't you?'
'Or is it because... it's your nature?'
Kaguya hasn't had the chance to drop all her amplifiers. But she's certain that the column of green fire her ARM has let loose can decimate most things this planet could offer. So it is that she stands, having blasted Claude away, and stares Elly down, waiting. Her blast is winning.
...Until it isn't. Claude says something about 'not yet', his knees buckling, and Kaguya's eyes widen as she sees Elly's counterattack, this time learning to recognize the blazing magic for what it is. She cannot, at the moment, response in kind, cannot make use of her own magic to block it. So she doesn't. She drops to crouching, blasts up at the thermal cube on its edge. It explodes, but the bulk of the blast rockets away from her, the heat of the sun itself redirected. ...And this is when she turns to look at Claude.
"...Dude, you're seriously going to die if you don't give it up--" He has no defenses. She could crush him, she's certain of it, so as he starts to fade, Kaguya simply begins to step out of the way of his punch.
It is not the first time that Veruni arrogance has led to trouble. For a few instants, it looks like it might be the last for Kaguya, though.
The pulse of energy flares outward, and Kaguya's eyes widen. "What the /fu--"
Claude turns into the blow, and this punch hits her straight on in the arm with an ugly noise, the resultant explosion offering a moment of silence before Kaguya rolls out of it, hitting the ground hard and tumbling end over end, ARM cradled protectively. Roll, roll, roll--
Thud. She lands face down in the dirt, hair a mess, blood and char covering her over. ...She's still, for a moment, and then--a breath. A cough. Kaguya pushes herself up, and blood splatters the ground where she coughs again. "...You..."
She glances up. She hears the horns. "...OASIS!" she calls. "FALL BACK!"
They did well, she thinks. They move with better discipline than the standard troops. But the girl in green pushes herself up to her knees, looks over at her opponents, not so far--and holds out her hand with a low, rattling laugh. The ARM goes into its holster. "You're..." She winces. She was frail before; now she's clearly injured, though somehow, despite all odds, the blows that would have killed a human many times over haven't ended her. "Real... interesting. But--" She holds up one finger, turns her strange, pale gaze to Elly, "...What you were saying..."
"You're wrong on... both counts. I don't have to be here. And my nature..." A smile, though her mouth is bloody and ruins the effect. "I just want to spread flowers across the deserts. Flowers... All over. Study the plants on this weird backwater..."
With a groan, Kaguya gets to her feet, and the hand that was out is now in front of her, defensively, in case a soldier gets cheeky. "...I'm gettin' paid real nice to be here. But that's not... why."
Her gaze is almost hollow for one instant, as she looks between the two, her voice possessed of a subtle chill even with her friendly demeanor. "...I want to see what you humans can do."
"That's all," she says, and turns, dragging herself off with the others. Three of the Oasis's elite troops immediately move to surround the 'Lady' Kaguya, as she goes.l
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Tabitha...does she not sense that Guardian? Or does she just let it form. "You really do take everything I say the worst way, don't you?" Tabitha quips, arcing an eyebrow. "I am no Christian missionary, girl. I am not obliged to turn the other cheek."
Solais Emsu's powers charge to their apex - blasting down on Tabitha again and again and again with annihilating power...!!
She leaps back, just barely escaping Lydia's grabm, the metal arm clutching once, twice, while Tabitha leaps back further and further - and the lasers annihilate the ground she was standing on.
Tabitha looks out across the distance, finding Lydia back where Tabitha left her. She raises her ARM, as all around, Rolance charges past, routing the Hyland soldiers. Her pretty lips part in a small smile; her too-clean hair drifts in the breeze. "I'm mostly obliged to punish yours, actually," she declares, and fires another shot. This one pulses with ominous magic, blasting toward Lydia and infecting her, infusing her.
Dragging her down like she weighed triple her usual.
"Wait there for a while," she says, and turns.
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lydia Seren with Graviton Tag! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren takes a solid hit from Tabitha deVriese's Graviton Tag for 98 hit points! GS: Slow! Statuses applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Lydia Seren has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"The fuck's a Christian?" Lydia asks (she's been to a SEED city like twice, and one of those times was to smash windows). "If you want to be nice to me be nice, but I'm not so dumb I can't recognize that look in your eyes!"
She turns around--hearing Talia's warning too late and gets clobbered by the shot. At first it seems like it does nothing.
But then Lydia crushes into the ground by like a solid foot. Lydia raises a foot up, and brings it down in front of her only for that piece of earth toe also be crushed beneath her feet.
She hates this person, Lydia thinks, that cocky ass attitude, that perfect hair forever, but most of all she hates that look in her eyes. Don't act on hate, she's told, managing a, "You ambushed me, did you forget that part?"
She gives up on moving after Tabitha. Gravity powers on someone who weighs more than normal thanks to the mysterious robots that infuse their body is pretty effective. Lydia's seen this from Catenna enough in HER battles against her to know that it's pretty high up on her many weaknesses.
"Tch..!" Lydia complains and just starts punching the ground in front of her and leaving the battlefield that way, gradually vanishing under the dirt.
Maybe she is kind of a monster.