2019-06-29: The Dreadful Fight
- Log: The Dreadful Fight
- Cast: Blue Master Lunn, Black Wizard Borgan, White Knight Leo, Red Priestess Mauri, Layna Manydays, Lulu, Gon Guado, Kamui, Ashton Anchors, Ines Colina, Elhaym van Houten, Dash Caskett, Hiro, Bera, Seraph Boudicca, Avril Vent Fleur, Lemina Ausa, Acacia Saitani, Gwen Whitlock, Yuna
- Where: Luca - Blitzball Stadium
- Date: 6/29/2019
- Summary: The battle enters Luca's walls, and the center of the city is advanced on... by the Four Heroes.
<Pose Tracker> Blue Master Lunn has posed.
The Battle of Luca has gone poorly for the Yevonite forces. The presence of the Guard Golems has driven them back into the city -- and the fleet landed, followed by a second wave. Forces led by Blue Master Lunn seized the docks, his Blue Dragon Fist acolytes establishing a perimeter -- and letting the bulk of the Althenan forces make their way in.
Now, it is an advancing wave of Rolance heavy infantry and Hyland heavy cavalry that are claiming sector after sector of the city. Many Lucans are fleeing; many other Lucans are wishing that they fled.
Forces have converged here, on the center of the city -- and the halls of Luca's government. In the great square there, banners are already flying: the red, black, and gold of Rolance; the blue and white of Hyland; the blue and green of Meribia; the violet and black of Neo-Vane. A handful of stragglers still fight -- until a final kick launches one Warrior Monk into the air, and scatters his fellows. Blue Master Lunn lowers his foot, then flicks his brow. Sweat drips down.
"We move onward!" he calls out. "If we take the northern gate, we can stop their retreat... and seal the city off!"
Which is when a hound sounds -- and the north end of the plaza has a few Guado rushing in, side-by-side with some Warrior Monks. A blast of flame from a Neo-Vane mage drops down, scattering those... but behind them are Drifters, converging here.
Lunn frowns. The old man turns, his eyes shifting to the other Four Heroes. Then, he cracks a smile. "It seems... we are to have a workout today?"
OOC: Welcome to the Battle Against the Four Heroes! Luca has fallen; however, the Four Heroes have to be delayed long enough for Lucans and the Warrior Monks (the actual target of the Heroes) in the north side of the city to escape. While defeating the Four Heroes and taking Luca back is not possible, you can hold them off long enough for a lot of people to escape the city!
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
Parts of Luca have been... *reshaped*.
Walls and barricades, both waist-high for cover and too high to easily climb as obstacles, have risen out of the stone. A different street is a morass of gloppy mud that the Lucan barricades have sunken into at crazy angles, as if fallen into quicksand. A plaza near the entrance has been coated in two inches of slowly melting slick ice, which has caused several chocobo carts to crash and cause additional chaos (the chocobos in question are long since gone).
Neo-Vane's contingent isn't here to exterminate. They're here to dominate.
The Black Wizard Borgan himself has been directing some mages and lending his own strength where it has been needed. He is still floating sedately near the knot of commanders and Heroes, banner-adorned staff held in one hand with the runed banner billowing and snapping out in the breeze. He has been busy.
His lips curl up into a slightly unpleasant smile as Lunn speaks. He tucks the staff under his arm, briefly, so he can lace his fingers together and stretch his arms with a series of pops and snaps as he loosens up. "I suppose they won't stop any other way," he says. "Let us bring down the might of the Heroes against them and show them *precisely* how badly they are overmatched."
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
The stone of the street ripples and crests as a wave travels through it--as if the earth were nothing more than an extension of the sea. The Warrior-Monks, already scattered by the blast of flame, are caught by the surge, and swept back, towards the gates. The sharp BANG of a misfiring ARM echoes down the street.
White Knight Leo--the source of the tectonic disturbance--regards them with a curled lip and narrowed eyes. Even mid-battle, he's an inspiring presence to those beneath the banner of Althena; his blade and uniform are bloodied, but he carries himself with nobility. With purpose. This is Althena's will, and he is Her hand.
"You HORNLESS COWARD!" bellows a voice from nearby, towards the edge of the Rolance lines. Leo whirls to face it, his cape fluttering. A Beastman stalks towards him, his densely-muscled body striated with bleeding wounds. The tip of his horn drips blood, as does the massive, cleaver-like blade in his hand. The muscles and veins in the Ronso's neck stick out like steel cables. A Rolance shield-bearer steps towards him, raises her shield to try and intercept him. The Ronso's blade races down at her, striking the shield like a falling meteor. Metal bends and snaps with a hideous groan; the shieldbearer falls, stunned by the impact. "I'm going to SNAP YOUR TINY NECK and NAIL YOUR HERETIC HIDE TO--"
Leo bares his fangs. He thrusts a hand at the Ronso--the man who looks eerily like so many of the people from back home--and the ground rises up beneath him, all jagged spikes. The Ronso's instincts save him from crippling injury. He takes to the air the moment the ground begins to warp, springing for the White Knight in a powerful leap. His blade drops like the edge of a guillotine, seeking Leo's blood. The Ronso's battle-cry splits the air.
Leo has seen this strike before. He's learned this strike before. He twists on a heel and steps back, moving in the space of heartbeats. His foe's blade misses his horn by inches. Leo plants a boot in the Ronso's gut, and slams his pommel into the man's brow. To the Ronso's credit, this only staggers him. Leo surges forwards, shoulder-checking him towards the Neo-Vane line. Someone gets off a sleep spell. The Ronso collapses.
Leo glances back at his sister once the man has been dispatched.
<Pose Tracker> Red Priestess Mauri has posed.
The Red Priestess surveys the destruction wrought throughout Luca, smiling faintly. Zirella (a tattooed elf samurai) stood by her side, stoic as ever. These weapons were impressive. Was this Veruni ingenuity at play? When she dreamed of nuclear fire, she often dreamed of such creatures wading through the destruction adding to the destruction. She used to fear such dreams. She laughs faintly as Lunn snapkicks a monk into the air and says, "I'm glad they are giving you enough of a fight to make you sweat... Or are our flames doing it?" She then smiles over to Leo briefly, sparing him a quick look of fondnes even in the war zone.
Her eyes scan over the incoming drifters, narrowing her eyes at the shroudless Marivel Armitage. She used to fear the creatures that lurked in the dark too. Her gaze then shifts towards the north. "The north gate, is it? Then allow me to provide a wall of flame that will scorch the heathens to the bone!" She fans out her staff and an eruption of flame lashes past the drifters towards the very path the fleeing Lucans are rushing down.
Marivel moves instantly, vanishing from her position and taking position between the flame and the fleeing Lucans. "Echoes of power, I command thee to quiet thyselves! ANTI-MAGIC!" An intricate barrier crackles between Marivel and the flame, resisting, resisting...
Marivel's grits her teeth as the concussive force leaks through the barrier and pushes her back.
Then Mauri taps her staff once against the ground and a second wave of flame SHATTERS the barrier into pieces and knocking Marivel flat onto her back and into the sun. Black smoke drifts off her face as she shifts back into a crouch. She glances back once and sees she has kept the path of escape clear and she smiles an exhausted smile.
Mauri snaps a finger and Marivel's hat combusts into ash in an instance. The vampire hisses in pain as the light sears through her body and she sinks back, edging towards the shadow of the buildings but it's hardly enough.
Mauri laughed. "Pathetic, pathetic! You fear Althena's light and yet you challenge her champions? The Power of Darkness is pitiable indeed!" She taps her staff once more against the ground and a circle of flames erupts around Marivel, flames hotter than hot, flames that burn relentlessly... Dragon fire.
"What an inconvenience this is," Marivel mutters, reaching behind her and tugging free the pouch she often keeps around her waist. "You fight a Crimson Noble well for one who has never met one. How did you know?"
"I know all about you, demon. Crimson Noble Marivel. Vampiric bloodsucker. Devourer of soul and spirit. Heretic. Althena knows you seek her throat and has sentenced you to burn as the rest of your people have. I suppose one could consider that a mercy. Nevertheless, her charity is ever extending and allows you this one moment to step away from Calamity's shadow and enjoy her blessings.." Mauri's smile softened just a touch. "You believed in her once. Cast aside your doubts. Cast off your pride. Where has it left you? Trapped in your hated sun, bereft of supplies, your power slowly dwindling away...your thirst unquenched....Yes, Althena whispered to me of your weaknesses, your failures, your secrets..."
"...Althena herself has asked me to burn? Knowing what she invokes?" Marivel quirks an eyebrow as she sees something in Mauri's face. "Your smile... tis rather twisted." She does not comment on the rest of it.
Mauri's grin grew sharper. "How could I not have a goofy smile when serving Althena's will? But you know... You seem surprised. Do you deny the charges...?"
Marivel can't help but laugh at that though there is no cruelty, simply an unexpected understanding. "...I have spent my time doubting myself, just as you say. Second guessing. I have talked with her servants within the Guard. I have talked with her Seraphim, those that still serve, and those that have been banished, and those who still perform their duties, and those that are actively rebelling against her will. Each one of them...all urged me to the same course of action, indirectly or otherwise."
<Pose Tracker> Red Priestess Mauri has posed.
Marivel looks back to the Red Priestess. She laughs softly at a joke only she knows.
"No. I do not deny I am after Althena's throat. If she kills which she loved, then I shall resuscitate it. If she fears song, drink, and dance, I will be song, drink, and dance. If she despises calamity, I shall be calamity, and if she wishes me to burn then I will devour her." Marivel's voice cracks unexpectedly at that last bit but then her eyes narrow and she speaks in a low growl, rage and hate infesting her words. "I will gladly tear apart her false sanctuary with my claws...!"
"You demon...!" Mauri seems surprised by the admission. "You would go so far for your selfish pitiable grudge?!"
Marivel looks up and grins even as smoke starts drifting from her neck.
"Don't give me that shit. Your sanctuary is naught but a gilded cage and its bars are rusting. I am so sick of you people looking down on Filgaia. Filgaia is my home! Filgaia is hard! But tis a world in which its people truly live and shine brighter than the sun! We fought back your malevolence and won, and we did it with songs in our hearts and dances in our steps! You act like you were blessed to be rescued from Filgaia, but all you actually did was run away! I would rather burn than suffer your 'blessing'!"
The Red Priestess frowns and shakes her head, "How sad...Then allow me to grant your wish and burn, demon!" and with a gesture of her staff she sends a wave of flame surging towards Marivel.
The vampire looks into the incoming wave of flame. In the inferno she sees her mother welcoming her, her father welcoming her, Professor Lumen welcoming her.
She sees Anastasia there, licks of flame licking out like embracing arms.
"Kamui, I..." Marivel begins but does not find the words.
I don't know what to say. It's not even the right time is it?
You won't ever know it's the right time but it will never be the right time if you don't try.
Heh. True. But all the words I think of seem insufficient.
Hee. Well, when words fail try singing them. Then she'll know what you mean even if the words aren't enough
You really think so?
I know so. Here, I'll teach you. We'll start with this simple exercise. No words.
Marivel raises her own arms and sings a gentle melody. It is a song for girls in love in all its forms and because of that, it is a word without songs. It is an ancient hymn, once for the faithful and now forbidden. "La, La la la la, La la la la la lalala, la la...la..."
The fire explodes around her and then fades away to smolders.
And of the woman who wished to prevent this war? She's gone.
Red Priestess Mauri turns to the Drifters. "Choose your mercy. The blessing or the flames!"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u_s-mTSTCc
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
An ominous wind blows in from the city center. Layna could feel it, blowing through her very core. Though she bore her usual confident grin, there was something off about it. Like she was forcing it on in the face of deep, life-threatening fear.
There was no questioning what awaited them all ahead. The Four Heroes themselves. Althena's Champions - the very executors of Her will.
Warriors and sorcerors that even her old man - no, Captain Bladewall - feared a confrontation with even a single one.
...And here she was, marching in against all four.
Layna can't help but chuckle despite herself. People were afraid. She had an image to maintain.
"...It'll be alright. Go ahead - get outta here. We'll hold 'em off, aye?" Layna says, casting a glance back toward the fleeing citizens of Luca.
And then, she turns and begins to walk toward the city center. As Layna walks, she pulls on a familiar blue coat - the coat of a pirate captain.
She didn't know what was going to happen. But whatever this day brought, she'd face it as Layna Manydays, Captain of the Ruby Empress. Notorious criminal, terror of the seas, and - her newest, but perhaps of her most treasured, title - Seer of Water.
"...So, this is the vaunted mercy of Althena, aye...? Burning civilians in their homes to spread the good word, an' all that?" Layna comments, taking a second to crack her neck and roll her shoulders. "If you want a workout, then fight me - I'm sure you all must be tired of slaughtering innocents by now."
With that said, even as all her instincts are screaming against her, she gestures toward Lunn.
He might be getting on in years, but that doesn't mean she's underestimating him for it. She'd heard all the stories - knew what he and his martial arts style were capable of.
This would possibly be her toughest fight yet - possibly too tough even for her.
But what was life without a little risk?
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
There are battles that can be avoided, and battles that must not. By the strict interpretation of Lulu's role, she should insist that Yuna--that all of them--leave the city immediately, move northward, away from matters of temporal power, towards the Pilgrimage. And yet...
Is a battle here any less a battle for Spira itself? Even aside from knowing she can't convince Yuna to avoid helping--could she, herself, stand by while Luca is sacked, and do nothing for a city that has seen so many changes of her life?
...No. Obviously not. And so, battered but healed, dusty but unbowed, the Guardian Lulu stands with the Drifters moving in from the north, red eyes intent upon their foes.
...On the wielder of flame; on the man floating there. On the one in blue, and on the White Knight himself, to whom she spoke, not so long ago. Doll on her arm, Lulu lifts her arm, and calls up all the fury of the storm onto the mage from Neo-Vane who scattered the Guado.
"Run while you can," she warns those before her.
-=-=-
...But she isn't the only one. A woman with green hair looks up at the heart of the devastation, cut and burned but unbroken, claws strapped to her arms and stance suffused with the grace of a dancer. There is no hate in her eyes--there is no anger, there is no malice.
"LUNN!"
BGM Interrupt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HJNAZoe5uI
Jean, Vile Fiend, Shadow Dancer, revealed in Meribia for what her past was, can only look upon the wreckage of Luca with grief. A place without war, a place of relief from the horrors of a land that seems to punish its people over, and over again. And now... In the name of the Goddess...
Lightly armored, light-stepped, she steps forward from the crowd, her skin nearly bronze in the firelight. "...This is the honor of a Hero? THIS is what Althena calls for? Death? Destruction!?"
"How are you any better than the invaders who came to your city all those years ago!? How can a good man stand by and be a part of this!? It's nothing but death and misery!"
The shock in her voice, the disbelief, are all clear--but so is the way she shifts into a battle stance, one all too familiar to those who were present for the Shadow Dragon invasion of Meribus long ago.
"...No more." She sets her jaw--and charges, shadow fluttering about her form, concealing her from the attacks of those who would otherwise be in her path. She dips down around the rubble of a broken street, spinning as she rises on her heel in what could as easily be a dance as a charge.
And from the air she sails straight for Blue Master Lunn, coiled to strike. "Haah--!"
<Pose Tracker> Gon Guado has posed.
"Lord Seymour!" Such were the panicked calls of those among the Guado who were present when the Guard brought their terrible weapons to bear upon Luca. No one could have expected them. No one could have prepared for them. What transpires is thus the logical conclusion - a total rout of Yevon's forces, stymied briefly only by outside intervention of those Otherworlders. The way things are in Spira stand to forever be changed. Fear, doubt, and uncertainty burn hotter than any fire, explode in a great force than any bomb, and weigh more than any crumbling monument.
An aging Guado Guardian faces the very embodiments of this inevitable outcome - the Four Heroes. Transcendent warriors of their fields. A swordsman without equal. A priestess of unshakable conviction. A wizard of powers vast. A master of one's own body as a weapon. The Warrior-Monks are rapidly falling before them and their forces.
A tall, spindly man with a veiny face steels himself out of sheer fury. "The audacity...! You would yet dare to disrupt our way of life...!" They wear long robes like any other Guardian among his people - foot soldiers, in their vernacular. Though advancing age has begun to erode his physical strength and reflexes, he steps forth with a confidence and fury befitting of one with decades of experience in taking up arms in the interest of his people. Large clawed metal gauntlets - a natural fit over hands proportionally so much larger than any other of the peoples that walk Spira - sway open-handed at their sides, one foot pointed forward.
Metaphorically, they clench at something they are desperate to keep hold of. They cast a sharp glance as Layna walks up to offer her assistance. It is not an approving glare. The arrogant gaze of one who knows not what boon it is that she would stand in Spira's defense.
"Otherworlders... begone! You have gone beyond mere impudence!" He has never had cause to think of any stronger words in all his years.
<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.
Kamui had a moment to speak to Marivel only moments ago. She was panicking. Her anxiety was running high. The Suffering Circuit flashed deep within the gem of her chest, as she frantically hurries forward, pushing past the Guards; the gleam of the emerald-green Saber of her soulbound carried in her hand.
"It's war... it's war all over again..." Kamui finds herself frantically mumbling. She tries to hold close to Marivel's words.
There'll come a time when they can save her. Until then... can she hang on until then? She must. For her. For Marivel.
An elderly woman sits at a far chair, overlooking a screen depicting a scene of the view outside. It is adorned with violet-tinged trees and ashen-white fields. She chuckles as she turns to the child and beckons closer. "Whatever are you doing outside your shelter? Come here."
She comes across the very scene in which the White Knight effortlessly overwhelms a larger Ronso, putting him down with the assistance of a sleep spell. Elsewhere, the entirety of the city has been changed to walls and barricades--
"Air Dash."
A flash accompanies the emergence of Lumen's Fourth Armour foot parts -- and Kamui frantically hurries as she blurs into a blue-white afterimage trail as she climbs her way up a wall. She can't worry about Borgan right now, even as she propels herself into the heart of danger.
She doesn't know who Lunn is. She doesn't know who Mauri is either. But she does know--
ANTI-MAGIC!
"Mari!!" Kamui screams, panting for breath as she watches the vampire get pushed back. She hurries-- and another wall erupts in her way. "Mari!!"
"You're stubborn. I like that about you, dear daughter. Let me tell you a tale, then..." the elderly woman lifts the child up and places her on her lap. "A tale about a machine that could think and feel..."
"Hurry... I have to get to Mari!" Kamui mumbles anxiously to herself. She frimaces further as she finds herself having to wall-kick another obstacle. She flips up to the top of the magically-created parapet. Marivel is burning. Marivel...
"You see, I was cocksure and full of myself. I could arrest the world's attention with my science and genius. And I made a daughter for myself. A daughter not of flesh and blood like your parents made you. But all the same, a daughter."
Kamui's eyes clench. It always feels this way. It's always too familiar. It's too familiar. She doesn't want it to become familiar. The Suffering Circuit is screaming.
Allow me to grant your wish and burn, demon!
"NO!!"
Kamui leaps from the top of the parapet; hot white-blue flame erupts from the verniers of her boots as she flies through the scene with her one good arm reached out--
"A wonderful daughter. She laughed and cried and got angry and frustrated and threw her toys and stuck paint chips in her mouth like any other child. And she would love stickers. Oh, she would collect gold stars and glittered hearts and all kinds of stickies and put them in a scrapbook."
Kamui, I...
And she's flung back by a devastating force of fire so large she can't maintain stride. And within that flame...
la la lalala, la la... la...
"Mari...?" Kamui pauses. To her, it was as if the noise and furor of war within Luca had all but evaporated into uncomfortable silence.
The reality of the situation was starting to trickle into her circuits. "Mari...??"
She kneels where the inferno had touched and consumed the Crimson Noble whole. She starts pawing at the broken, singed cobblestone. Soot and ash comes up to her palms.
"Mari....????"
Tears are trickling down her good, human eye. And if you look close enough... even the camera-eye is oozing out some kind of fluid.
"I... Mari... Marivel... Marivel..."
"And that was all made possible--" she taps her chest, "Because of the circuit inside. She could think and feel like you and I. I thought myself amazing back then. But time was not kind to her. There came a time, before the time you know now, you see..." A pause. "Where she had to fight. She chose to fight. Because her circuit gave her the freedom to do so."
"... wah... w-waaah..."
She scoops more of that ash up into her hands. Try as she might--
It passes through her fingers. She frantically grasps away at it. She wants to catch all of it. But she can't.
"But battle after battle, it seemed like something shifted inside of her. No longer was she as bursting with emotion, happy or sad and angry. As the barrel of that Buster of hers lit up once more... something dimmed inside in turn."
"W-waaah... Marriiiii... Mariiii...!!"
Kamui's voicebox erupts mid-scream. Her voice warbles electronically. The nanopaste repairs have failed.
"That is why I named my greatest and worst invention the Suffering Circuit. Oh, what a burden I have placed upon my very own daughter... I do not expect her to ever forgive me."
Pupils shrunk and tears flowing freely, the daughter of a family so long gone freshly feels that pain once again. Her mouth opens. It feels dry. Her blood is burning. Her heart is pounding. Her heart, which has so been designed to suffer. She clenches her hands to her head and starts spasming violently. Her screams have become so inhuman, warbling like that of a broken machine...
"...aaaaAAAAAaaaa....aaaAAAAAAaaa..."
<Pose Tracker> Ashton Anchors has posed.
It's been a long few hours since the first moments of battle. Long hours of running, fighting, falling back, regrouping... over and over. Block by block.
Ashton Anchors, the Symbological Swordsman, is tired. He's burned through every curative he had stored just to recover from the savage battle against the great golem Hashmal, and the constant back and forth since has worn him down badly.
A little voice in the back of his head scolds him for turning down Clarine's offer earlier.
But he's still standing. Still on the rear guard of the battle, even as so many flee. Ashton - a man who has cursed and sworn hatred for the petty wars of man - is still fighting for the moment.
He stops for a moment, catching his breath and wiping a bit of blood from the side of his mouth. It gives him a good opportunity to see the Four Heroes push the vanguard of Althena forward. It gives him a good opportunity to see Marivel appear to disintegrate. His teeth clench in anger - but no. He has to keep his priorities. Grief can come later, and the Crimson Noble knew what she was doing.
Hooked Spiran blades spin in Ashton's hands - just once, more as a nervous tic than anything else. His eyes lock onto the red, black and gold standard of Rolance. There.
An infantryman comes for the swordsman as he advances - Ashton swats him away with a fient at the face and then a low kick to the side of the knee. It's enough to get past. Ashton knows this fight can't be won (or as close to it as they can get) by fighting the rank and file.
Green eyes lock onto the White Knight - no longer in the protection of the golem.
Take the head from the snake.
One blade raises, pointing ahead.
ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO
Ashton Anchors appears on the fist of the great golem Hashmal in a fzzt of static. For a moment, Ashton stays still right there. Posed with swords drawn, dragons at attention, surrounded by the seaspray. In the distant background, someone plays a dramatic chord on a shamisen. A single blade rises, pointing at the head of the golem. The other stabs downwards into a knuckle, anchoring the sellsword into place. And Ashton says just one word.
"No."
NOW
Holding fast in the midst of the chaos of battle, Ashton points the same sword directly at Leo. Sellsword looks White Knight in the eyes. And he repeats himself.
"No."
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
"Come on, move it, that way!" A large Beastwoman waves those fleeing away from the city, even as she herself moves back towards the center. Ines had seen Luca in a state of panic and peril more times than she liked. A fiend attack was one thing, monster attacks were a fact of life. At least on Filgaia. A war, though? That's a whole different mess.
The geohound moves through the crowd, surveying the damage even as she runs towards it's source. The bodies that littered now littered Luca, those who couldn't retreat in time. She makes it there just in time to see a warrior monk kicked through the air like her was nothing. Her eyes lock onto the Blue Master, and she stops. Just in time for someone else familiar to echo a challenge. Well, that settles that, then. As Layna makes her way towards Lunn, Ines joins her.
"These people didn't sign up to your damn war. There're civilians here. Kids. And you don't give a damn, do you?" There is something that lights a fire in Ines, anger showing clearly on her face. "Hell, even if it's only buying time, I've gotta do something here." She stands tall against Lunn, looking at what is supposed to be a living legend of Lunar. Time to fight.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly van Houten had told her lover and one of her best friends, along with a cluster of hapless locals, that she would be back really soon. She had passed by the people of a burning apartment building and --
-- Got lost.
So she'd headed towards the northern gate because she has no other better plan on where to go. There's a sewer outlet at some point. She can avoid things in the near wilds of Spira, especially since (and wow, Elly thinks, I can make this guess, but even so:) the Fiends will be disrupted by the exodus, by battle.
Somewhere nearby she feels suddenly, as if through a numb-but-wakening-up palm, a great disturbance of magic. She turns down between an alley, leaping over what she dearly hopes is a stunned draft chocobo, and is there in time to see the end of...
The end of...
As she watches, something ends, perhaps. The burst of billowing heat stirs Elly's hair as she stares ahead.
Inside of her heart she feels a tremendous quiet, a deep and profound shock. In its wake there is a certain dread calm.
She can feel the calculations ticking in. The wish that Fei were here; or Bart Fatima; or Dr. Uzuki, or Riesenlied and Noeline, or Lily or Leon or Jude or Emeralda or Rudy or Cecilia, or for that matter Loren, Kelvena, Seraphita, even Dominia or Tolone; that she were not, more or less, alone here, still numb, still half-healed. She looks towards Mauri, blinking once.
She can see the White Knight, past Mauri, or she thinks she does.
But it's Mauri she looks at.
I wonder if this is how Loren felt whenever he looked at me, Elly thinks, before she sucks in a deep breath through her nose and raises her voice.
"The woman you killed was my friend," she says.
"If this is how you argue your religion... I might as well do this now," Elly concludes, as she draws the staff from the rope sling at her hip and snaps the three sections into place. As she feels the stout wood of the weapon, there is a sense of reassurance. But it's wood, she thinks. I'm flesh and bone. How can I stand against that fire?
A memory comes to her: Dam Dariam's satisfied, 'to be expected' face, and the profile-seen of Solais Emsu, the one time she called on that Guardian. That horrid dream world where she saw herself and was broken. But -
-
Elly's back stiffens as she realizes something she can't express in words. She can hear Kamui crying. So, she steps forwards.
"If... this is your faith..."
"Then I reject it!" Elly says, voice raising high and thin and a little nasal. "Even if every word your faith said is true... I reject it all the same. If god made us to hear our despair, then I'll learn to keep silent and deny him the satisfaction!" (In her fury, however banked, Elly lapses back into the religious habits of her childhood. She certainly isn't imagining a goddess right now.)
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
The fight had barely repelled the first contingent and giant robot things coming out o the waters by Luca. Dash had fought a tough customer by the name of Ambrosius, if he recalls. Or at least that is what the lady with the hauntingly familiar gaze said. It was not long after the engagement Dash Caskett was forced to retreat into the city.
From a small orange pack on his back he produced small blue canisters that seemed to be filled with some kind of energy, and pre-shaped plates of metal. Wincing, he looked at his right arm, a clean cut right through the armor, down the interior of his bicep and clipping his torso. It was attempting already to re-seal itself, though the interior damage was severe. It of course went deeper than the armor. exposed fibers and circuitry were shown far deeper than where flesh should have been. "I gotta get someoen to look at that later. I dont have a choice..." he dimly states. The canisters are hooked up, and pressure applied with that strange metal. It created its own seal, but was clearly a patch job.
This was dire, but if he was going to find a way to help, this was the time ot step up. A look to the giant weapon at his side. "Running out of missiles too... Why doesn't anyone sell missiles?!" Those technology guys have long since left after the waterball games. If only he could find more of them! Maybe they would have ammunition.
Explosions and shouts rock the nearby squares. They were close. "Dangit..." he grunts, standing up and slinging the Active buster on his back. A small domed nodule is placed on his right arm where a hand should be.
---
"Hey hold up!" Dash shouts, rounding a corner nearby a vicious exchange between those defending and... a group of four people? Huh. Well they might be no slouches then. A strike team consisting of just four means they are very formidable.
"Can you all just go fight something else instead of these people? For real? THere's a ton of other places which could benefit much better than here with a military invasion!"
No doubt this would fall on deaf ears, they were halfway inside the city, they weren't going to turn away now!
But what is that noise?! It sounds faimilar. Robotically familiar! Was that Kamui across the battlefield...?
Dash's left hand separates and segments, disappearing into his forearm. What is left is an arm mounted cannon, which already glows gold on the interior. He sighs under his mask attached to his helmet. "A shame your parents didn't teach you to play nice."
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
He's not a Summoner - Maester - or Warrior Monk. He doesn't follow the tenets of Yevon at all. Yet the civilians of the city still thanked them for their efforts to save their shattered and burning homes from giant Machina. He watched a little girl thank Gwen and Marivel for saving her father - and a wife hold up a husband - acting as a crutch while they limped out of the city.
Opposing Althena's Church - at first he felt it was all over a misunderstanding. That they'd find common ground in almost anything else.
Now though? Now it was different to him.
A horn sounds and Hiro doesn't answer it per se. Yet he does follow it. He's not in the charge of the Guado and Warrior Monks. He comes behind with the Drifters. He's dirty and bloodied, his clothes blackened and burnt from soot and fire. Sword drawn, shield strapped to his other arm. "I expected better of you Master Lunn." His eyes sweep past Black Wizard Borgan and Red Priestess Mauri. "All of you." And finally upon Leo as he checks that Ronso. "But especially y-"
And then Hiro's eyes fall upon Marivel - as Mauri confronts her, and burns down her barrier. "Marivel get out of there." He whispers, though it's mute. His defiance cut off as he listens to her cut off in that ring of flames. Hears her desire for revenge. Hears Althena's orders for her to burn. Hears her own desire... her desire for...
He stands stunned. Insensate as he listens to her account on what happened - what happened when they all left the Blue Star. Her true feelings. "MARIVEL GET OUT OF THERE!"
It is not a matter of believing in others, Hiro. It's a matter of understanding them. They will not make it easy. They never do because until you know the whole story. Everything. Everyone...
The boy watches a friend turn to ash, and all he can think of is one of the first things she said to him that made him truly think, "...is a lie by omission."
It has a hollow, stunned quality. Like he doesn't truly comprehend what is going on. His sword falling lax within his hands. As Mauri offers the Blessing or the flames to them all. The heat he can feel from here, it stings his eyes, but that is not why they are wating. "This isn't how it was supposed to go - Marivel."
He says it quietly, "We were supposed to see Althena together." And then what - have Marivel seek her throat? No. No none of this is how it was supposed to go. And even if he didn't understand her motivations, her ancient grudge. It makes her no less a friend.
"Then everything... we'd figure it out. We'd work it out together."
Suddenly his grip on his sword becomes taut again. As he advances forward on the Red Priestess. "I don't find her sad at all." He says quietly, I find you sad. For thinking those two choices are the extent of Althena's mercy. How dare you - pretend - that you were carrying out her will right now! Burning this city - killing a friend of mine-! If those are my two choices - then I pick- the flames! Ronfar-"
Holding up his blade, he takes up a stance that may seem familiar to Leo - far too familiar. As if he were a coiled spring ready to leap on his sister, as he shouts, "-WOULD BE ASHAMED OF WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME!"
GS: Hiro has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Poe Sword! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
From one of the side roads leading into the center of Luca, the sound of running water followed by the crackle of electric rings out along with cries of pain. A barricade leaning at a haphazardous angle creaks as something jumps on it, followed by a black clothed samuria with blond hair running up the barricade and jumping off clearing the soft, quicksand like ground as she lands heavily in a northern corner of the center, her blade coated in lightning that becomes swallowed by flame before she sheath it and straightens up.
Bera's cold blue eyes narrow as she surveys the area, and then she begins to walk calm right at the forces of the guard her left hand tightening it's grip on the sheath of her blade, her right hand hanging loose at her side with the air of a tightly wound spring waiting to be unleashed as she makes a beeline not for any warrior but the casters with the Guard. "
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Is there a certain irony to this?
The last time Boudicca - then the Beast of Lohgrin - and White Knight Leo were part of a siege, they were trying to defend the populace. They failed to turn that tide back.
Hearken now: another breaks upon the shore.
She has come now from the north, in desperate attempt to avert another tragedy. This time, she is not trying to help the citizens with Leo; this time, Leo strikes down the brave citizens who try to defend their city.
She has not found him since she left her vessel. Perhaps he can recognise the signs of a Seraph, anyway, the magic which eddies about her as if to betray her tumultuous emotions. Behind the Warrior Monks she comes, from the north, and not even fire turns her. There may be some echoes of what she once was: she is still clad in metal, still trimmed in green. (A little more orange, now, flecked on that cape.)
"Fall back," she says, to an injured Warrior Monk. "I will see to this." She wishes she could say the same to everyone screaming. They are heartbreaking sounds.
Instead she steps forward, and she wonders, deep pit in her core: can this truly be what she wants?
Voice booming on the wind, she cries. "Leo!" And miracle on miracle, it is anger on her face and in her voice. "Why, now, do you terrorise this city?! Do you not remember Lastonbell's cries?! Hear me and know!" Please know, she thinks; please realise what you have done. "This cannot be her will," Boudicca insists, more quietly, now, though the sounds still carry with clarity.
With the pain of a believer: "Tell me this is not Althena's will - Leo."
GS: Hiro has canceled their attack on Red Priestess Mauri.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Marivel, to all appearances, burns to ash.
One person here draws a tight hitch of a breath, her lips parting in shock.
Her jaw tightens. She looks away, as if to collect herself.
Before she speaks.
"Enough."
Avril can be difficult to read at times. Without question, she's friendly if politely so. She smiles when she's given cause to. She laughs and cries and dwells on regrets like anyone does. She can grow furious or experience embarrassment. But traveling with her -- or simply spending a few afternoons with the young lady -- one can get the impression that she has a distinctly private side, that she holds a card close to her chest at all times.
The demeanor of the woman standing atop the rubble here now is that of a woman who has laid all her cards on the table.
"I have seen enough today," Avril declares, drawing Absolute Zero's hilt from beneath her wrap. A twist of her arm is all that she needs to cause its blade to bloom, glittering orange-gold in the firelight. "I watched soldiers attempt to take an old man into custody. I watched homes collapse. I saw houses in flames. Is this what you wanted? Is this what was necessary?" Her tone is even, but taut with that particular control that one with a slipping rein over their emotions weilds.
This is what is necessary in a war, that darker part of her mind whispers in her ear. Raze their cities to the ground. Demonstrate what will happen to anyone who resists. The next conquest will be the easier for it.
Her expression tightens. Her lips thin.
Is that who I...
The wind whips up behind her. She, in this moment, directs her blade point-first for the Red Priestess, a formal stance to start a duel despite her place upon a battlefield. "I cannot stand by any longer."
Ines' statement, of all things, rings truest. She had turned away from the docks because it was a fruitless fight. But this is different. Even if it's just to buy time...
"Even if it is impossible, I will not let you do as you please any more."
She's gone cold. Her face is a mask, her demeanor a blade.
"Now. Face me."
...In an unknown land, the crack in the ice widens, exposing ever more of the abyss to the light...
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.
This is low even for the Guard, as far as Lemina's concerned. She didn't think that when she woke up this week she'd be on the opposite side of a crusade, but it's like that sometimes!
Naturally, her reflex is to go directly for Borgan, despite what she's just seen Mauri do; this is the sort of thing that might assuage her delicate ego after having to work *with* him not so long ago, besides. What, you think *principles* or *practicality* or *sentiment* are going to direct Lemina's hand here? No way -- it's spite, even in the face of obvious cruelty.
Lemina copes best with tragedy by being loud and obnoxious at the most acceptable available target, and Borgan is the *most* acceptable, *most* available target. She would much prefer to get emotional while *alone* -- though her grip on her staff is white-knuckled, and her body is quaking. ... but is it anger, or fear...?
"HEY!" she shouts, as she locks eyes with Borgan, trying to swallow her feelings for just a few moments. "What happened to all that cooperation stuff, huh? Or are you just here to raid the larder like usual?" Lemina can't resist the urge to openly goad Borgan.
When she hears Jean on approach to Lunn, there's equal parts a feeling of 'oh thank Althena, Jean is here, I feel much safer' and 'Jean, please be okay.' Maybe *that's* what's staying her hand for a second, as she circles slowly toward Borgan instead of just attacking him outright.
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
Acacia's covered wars, you know.
That's a lie. She actually hasn't. But she can't ignore the situation in Luca, and both her professional instincts and her own personal desires are calling her in that direction. Like it or not, this invasion from one isolated part of Lunar to another is likely to change both of them irrevocably, and so long as Filgaians are stuck on Spira, someone's got to be there to cover it. Besides, there's a little voice yelling at her that she should be there to help, and while Acacia's not generally used to listening to her conscience, sometimes she just can't help it.
And to cap it all, she caught wind of Marivel headed in that direction. Of course, she grumbles to herself as she pushes herself into a run through the streets.
The situation is Luca is chaotic, but it doesn't take a military mind to see what's going on, especially not when she catches glimpses of movement and the sound of orders over from several street over. "Nice," she mutters to herself. "Don't let the losers retreat - wipe them out, huh?" It shouldn't be a surprise that the Guard don't give much of a damn about playing fair, especially given the overwhelming force they've brought on Luca. Still, after becoming so used to watching the cautious politics between Kislev and Aveh as they snipe back and forth, it's quite a shift in perception to be witnessing a truly rampaging army at work.
Her step halts for a moment as she catches sight of the Crimson Noble in front of her, already facing down the front line of soldiers; the reporter swears softly under her breath, grimacing at herself as she feels her feet push her forwards. This is a terrible idea, she thinks--
--but that thought washes away at the sight of the wave of flame that envelops the Crimson Noble.
The power of it is enough that, even at her distance, Acacia can still feel the heat of it as she throws herself to one side, ignoring the way she stumbles over a disused and discarded cart to let it wash past. Her eyes still sting from it when she forces herself to look upwards, only to see... nothing. Slowly, her hands tighten on the wood of the cart, the knuckles turning brilliant white - then the wood creaks and nearly buckles as she hears the atonal scream go up above the din of war.
"Kamui," she mutters to herself in concern, then again and louder. "Kamui!" Mauri is forgotten, if only for a few moments, as her feet carry her forwards to skid to a halt next to the stricken girl. For just one instant, she's not sure if she should even touch the Reploid as she spasms, then the next she berates herself for that thought and drops to her knees.
There's bile in her stomach as she envelops the girl in a hug, pressing the sobbing Reploid to her chest; she looks up slowly to fix her gaze on the Red Priestess, feeling an unfamiliar anger rise and rise. "'Four Heroes', my ass," she snarls. "Just because you call yourself that, it doesn't make it true."
<Pose Tracker> Blue Master Lunn has posed.
Blue Master Lunn stands his ground, statue still and without hesitation as Marivel is dispatched so brutally. His eyes turn, briefly, towards Borgan. Then, with that same hardened gaze, he looks back at the Drifters surging through the breach. He reaches his hands out before him. Fingers interlace, together, and then he pops his knuckles.
And then, he begins to stride forward. A Warrior Monk rises up, swinging a machina rifle up -- and then Lunn is a blur. Blue light turns to man -- and a foot, smashing into his cheek, an elbow dropping into the middle of the rifle. The barrel cracks in half, one piece spinning up. Lunn catches it, bats the soldier down, then throws it.
It slams into the chest of a Guado, dropping him to the ground. Lunn keeps walking, until he stops. Dust blows by his feet; he takes in a breath, sucking it in. Then, he smiles. His feet spread; his knees bend; his arms lift, in a mimicry of the crane.
He raises two fingers out before himself.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd-4IuwMHUo
And he beckons the Drifters forward.
And Jean answers. She makes a claim about the righteousness of his cause -- and there is a microsecond where he sneers. Then, Jean comes in, and he shouts: "TOO SLOW!"
And his foot slams into her with a wet, furious clap, and the martial artist is punted across the battlefield. She flies, and Lunn looks up -- and his eyes find those of another old man's. Lunn sees Gon Guado -- and then he leaps. He jumps as high as he kicked Jean.
His hands clap together, and he does a mudra in midair -- his fingers tracing the pattern for Black, then for Red. There is a flash, and light hurtles out for each of the Four Heroes. Then, he slams down atop Gon, and throws an open-palmed punch right for his center of mass.
"HIYAAAAH!"
He bounces back -- lands doing a handstand, and then pushes himself back into the air -- and lands behind Ines Colina. He throws out a second open-palmed strike. "Justice... is brought by winds of despair and seas of change, girl! Those winds began to blow from here -- and now we blow back!"
GS: Blue Master Lunn has spent 1 Combo on Reload, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked White Knight Leo with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has gained 1 Combo! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gon Guado with Blue Dragon Fist! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Ines Colina with Blue Dragon Fist! GS: Blue Master Lunn has completed his action. GS: Blue Master Lunn has canceled their attack on Black Wizard Borgan. GS: Blue Master Lunn has canceled their attack on White Knight Leo. GS: Blue Master Lunn has spent 1 Combo on Reload, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked White Knight Leo with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Traveled Road for 0 hit points! GS: Reload! Red Priestess Mauri gains 15 extra FP from Blue Master Lunn! GS: White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Traveled Road for 0 hit points! GS: Reload! White Knight Leo gains 15 extra FP from Blue Master Lunn! GS: Blue Master Lunn has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
The mage that scattered the Guado is no match for Lulu. He tries to defend himself - to raise a barrier of some sort - but Lulu's lightning blast goes straight through it, shattering into a shower of sparks and sending him flying into a wall. He slams into it and slumps, unconcious.
Borgan finishes stretching his arms and cracking his fingers. He can feel the magic in the air, even if he's not watching it - Mauri, for instance, he is turned away from and paying little attention to, because Leo is watching her and he has already learned never to get between Leo and Mauri.
Instead, Borgan was covering Lunn; one warrior with magic support (or, as Borgan thinks of it, one magician with a warrior minion). He whirls his staff through arcs before pointing it directly at -
"Well if it isn't Lemina," Borgan rumbles. "I should have known you would show your face eventually. You seem to *delight* in finding yourself underfoot." He points the tip of the staff at her, the banner on it drifting lightly in the breeze.
"Let me explain something to you, *child*. We tried to cooperate - at great risk! I cast a greater spell than any of their Maesters would dare to for no reason other than to shelter people from Sin! And in exchange *they* call *me* the heretic, worthless! And if there is one thing I will not accept - "
Borgan's staff ripples with light before discharging a lightning bolt directly at Lemina, with a thunderous crack. The afterblast of wind radiates out from the bolt, striking at several others attacking his mages with a battering gale that threatens to bowl the lighter Drifters over. He has intentionally caused it to focus against other sources of magic, pushing against them more strongly and whirling around them dangerously.
" - it is being called WORTHLESS by someone who will not even SHOW HIS FACE!"
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Lemina Ausa with Voltaic Staff! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has activated a Boss Action! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Lulu with Neo Cyclone! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Bera with Neo Cyclone! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 2 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. GS: Bera guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Neo Cyclone for 81 hit points! GS: Jam! applied to Bera!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
One thing was made clear when the fiends (noncapitalized) attacked Kilika: the Guard has people who mean well, but their devotion could spell ruin for all of Spira. They may not be any better than those devoted to Yevon, who seemed almost resigned in their fate, but-
"The city's lost, but if we can get the people out, at least they won't be under the Guard's rule. Then, we'll just figure things out from there!" Gwen Whitlock, super courier, turned... well, she supposes she still is a super courier. She's just delivering a different sort of parcel.
Traveling beside Hiro, Gwen looks around as she hears the horn, and then the battle begins. "... Wait... are those all the Four Heroes?" She looks over the banners of lands beyond the ocean, of mud and ice, of a cityscape greatly transformed.
But it'll be okay. Everything will be alright. Everything-
'Your smile... tis rather twisted.'
will be-
'I will gladly tear apart her false sanctuary with my claws...!'
okay
'How sad...Then allow me to grant your wish and burn, demon!'
Fire is a terrible, terrible way to die. Even if you survived, the pain never truly went away. Skin and nerves rarely healed right, at least with Filgaia's best medical treatment, and if you grew, that tissue needed help to grow with you, leaving series of scars and skin graphs.
"... Marivel...?" But that pain couldn't compare to what Marivel felt, at that very moment.
And then, the triumphant Mauri. The blessing... or the flames?
Gwen looks aside to the deflated Hiro, sounding confused. "... This is the girl Ronfar was pinin' after...?" Her question is sounds empty as it sounds casual. Tiny, unsure. Nervous.
No wonder he was the way he was. But why would he love someone like this?
She looks helplessly to Leo, the one person she's felt any sort of likability towards. "... I thought Althena was the one who stopped the wars on your side of the planet. This is just starting another. How is anybody gonna look at Althena the same way you guys do if this is their first exposure to her?" She points at Mauri. "Flames, or blessings? Might as well be the same thing!!"
GS: Lemina Ausa guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Voltaic Staff for 98 hit points! GS: Ines Colina critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Fist for 33 hit points! GS: Lulu takes a glancing hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Neo Cyclone for 71 hit points! GS: Jam! applied to Lulu! GS: Gon Guado guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Fist for 94 hit points!
DC: Yuna switches forms to Lady Summoner! DC: Kamui switches forms to The Muiseying Ecks-SOLDER!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed. <SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-ge41hcQY
Yuna's late.
She's late because there are any number of refugees fleeing Luca who wouldn't have been able to, otherwise. A mother with a leg that had been crushed by debris, cradles her infant to her chest as she climbs the stairs by the North Gate. A child who had been concussed now shepherds his younger brothers. And others. Too many others.
Miracles.
She skids to a stop in the square, her skin already almost translucent with fatigue, just in time to see Marivel engulfed in flames.
Just in time to see another friend disappear.
Death, death, death. There's so much death in Spira and few are as personally, intimately familiar with it as Yuna. Summoner and daughter; woman and child; it isn't that she knows it as well as she knows herself, as much as she knows it well because it IS herself.
Yuna knows death by Sin, and death by sea. She knows death by disaster and death by disease.
She comes up behind Kamui, her skirts swishing softly, and she should be ready for this, she should be prepared, if by experience if nothing else. Life is so fleeting and fragile here, but memories are eternal. That's what she's been taught.
But until this moment, Yuna knew not death by war, at the hands of man.
Tears rim her eyes in a shimmer...
...and -- heedless of the danger, of the immediacy of the moment -- driven by the madness of the heart -- she opens her mouth, and sings.
"Ieyui -- nobomeno..."
It was always Marivel who sang, before, while Yuna sat quietly and blissfully and listened.
"Renmiri -- yojuyogo..."
Hers is not so golden a throat as the Crimson Noble's. She is untrained and unpracticed.
"Hasatekanae..."
But she is a girl who loves fiercely, who gives herself away so easily.
"...kutamae..."
It's enough. Her soprano carries over the battlefield, a descant to the melodies of war.
She should fight -- or she should flee.
But instead she just stands in the midst of everything, ash at her feet, grief dimming her eyes... and defiance brightening them...
And takes the time to mourn.
GS: Yuna has spent 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Yuna has attacked Lulu with Hymn of the Fayth! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Yuna's Hymn of the Fayth for 0 hit points! GS: Reload! Lulu gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
Bera strides relentlessly across the center, using her sheathed blade to deflect and push attackers past her as she moves straight forward. The tactic works most of the way, till a sudden magic driven gust of wind floods across the now field of battle. "Time and time again, it seems." she mutters as she uses her arms to guard her face from debris while dropping into a crouch that anyone familiar with swordsman will recognize as a quick draw stance. She slides back one a few feet, wind and debris buffeting her as she holds her ground eyes focusing on Borgan as she waits for it to die down enough.
Bera BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghHNnoyKqEI
Despite the distance, her arms drop right hand on the hilt of her blade and she blasts foward. Not fast enough to be a black blur, but quick enough she slips through the majority of the machines and Guard and mages between her and Borgan to unleash a drawn strike that sounds like a raging river as water sheets off her blade tracing it's path at the rotund mage as she comes to a stop infront of him with her attack.
GS: Bera has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with River Rush! GS: Bera has gained 1 Combo! GS: Bera has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.
Lemina slams her staff into the ground, in large part to steady herself against the blast; she doesn't *quite* have time to form the shield of ice that she'd like, but at the very least, she's able to stop herself from getting blown back. On the other hand, that's *all* she stops herself from doing. The initial blast itself still hits her juuuuust fine.
With a wince, she shoots back, "Yeah, that was mega-stupid -- but it doesn't justify *this!* Do you need that gut to hold your ego in?!" ... Granted, it's not as though Lemina herself is any stranger to doing things out of a sense she's been slighted, but...
... right now she wants to be the one who's right, darn it.
She circles cautiously closer to Borgan -- and then abruptly whirls her staff around, summoning a mighty icicle at the tip. One more quick twirl and it's *off* the staff -- and headed straight toward Borgan, as Lemina calls out, "Ice Lance!"
GS: Lemina Ausa has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Ice Lance! GS: Lemina Ausa has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
FIRST
Too slow. The former star pupil of the Shadow Dragon Cult is hit hard by a counterstrike, and all the momentum she'd gained forward seems to go straight into knocking her across the battlefield. Her landing sight isn't even visible at the moment, her path too fast to trace.
...But there's no time to interrupt a battle to go look for her now, is there? The Fiends may have to trust...
THEN
Lulu's eyes can catch Marivel's disappearance into flame, but eyes alone are not enough to understand it all. A level of flame unheard of, that seems to Lulu practically to tear through the world itself; an assault on such an ancient being...
She sets her jaw. Thoughts beyond the battle will lead to the death of her charge, and do not win the survivors time. To indulge in her own emotion is to consign more to death.
So instead, Lulu's red eyes snap towards the greatest source of magic she can see. And then--"Yuna," Lulu breathes, and of course--of course her wonderful, kind, heedless Yuna would think to heal this place now, in all of this. And at the same time that the quiet girl dancing, exposed, fills her with fear--
...It fills her more with love, and that hurts much, much more than fear ever could.
Her plan changes in an instant; the black mage shifts with deft footsteps, her long skirt shifting with all its leathery weight as she places herself between the Summoner Yuna and her foes, the very incarnation in that instand of the Guardian. Her braids, loosened by the strain of battle, show wisps of black hair; her shoulders are touched with light burns and scratches. ...But the rage that was in her for a moment melts into something else, as her hand rises. Magical power gathers around her once more, this time blue like the Star in the sky, like the sea stretching far beyond. ...But it is not only the sound of power that rises.
"...Ieyui..."
Lulu's lower, mournful alto rises to join Yuna's, as she directs her hand down--and closes it into a fist, causing an eruption not this time of lightning, but of water straight beneath his platform.
<Pose Tracker> Red Priestess Mauri has posed.
Not Long Ago, During the Battle
Marivel finds herself smiling at Yuna a lot. She has many kinds of smiles but this is just a quiet one of appreciation even as the tragedy unfolds around them. It is no false smile and it strangely matches the sorrow in her eyes.
"Thank you," She tells Yuna, placing the pouch she so often wears around her waist into her arms. "It was just like old times, sharing my travels with you. You..." She laughs, embarrassed. "You taught me how to love Spira. I suppose it may seem difficult to believe right now, but I know you will win."
She looks down at the pouch. "They're siblings."
Now
Something chirps frantically from within the pouch. It unzips itself and Nob pokes its head out, chirping noisily at Kamui or perhaps what Kamui is weeping at. Its head spins to look back at Yuna, chirping in an animalistic panic.
Mauri looks at Hiro, then tilts her head quizically as if she doesn't understand why he is mad. Or maybe she's simply distracted by, "Ronfar?" She asks. "But it was he who changed, he who left the priesthood... If he would return to my side...ahhh...but he is traveling with you now, isn't he?"
Mauri it's a fight what are you doing.
Elly approaches and speaks to her.
"Oh? I did not realize the demon had friends." Mauri says. "I gave her an opportunity for mercy and she said she would kill my Goddess. It's Althena's kindness that grants us a choice between bliss and pain. I gave her what she wished."
Avril asks her what is neccessary. "They make it neccessary...but I must admit, I do enjoy following the Goddess's will. It gives me a sense of purpose. What is yours? Do you even know what it is?"
She then approaches Kamui and Acacia due to their proximity to one another. She glances towards Gwen in this moment. "Hmm... I am certain Althena weeps, but to be a Goddess you must make difficult choices. I am certain The Lord of Calamity understands that. The vampire certainly seemed to."
And then she stops before Acacia, Kamui--and now Yuna.
"Kamui," Red Priestess Mauri somehow knows her name. "You need not follow her path... That demon could not save you, but Althena can. She can rebuild you the way you once were, she can restore you with her power for her power is without limit."
She crouches down and says to her. "That's right, Kamui..."
"Althena still remembers you. Do you remember her?"
And in this moment... Kamui realizes that she does, every so faintly, remember her.
Mauri looks to Yuna. Then she stands. "They say you are the hope of Spira."
Mauri smiles a kind smile despite all the cruelty behind it. "Perhaps they will learn if I extinguish it."
She then closes her eyes and fans out her arms, chanting quietly beffore slamming her staff into the ground once more--
--sending a wave of restoration, of Althena's power coursing through the veins of her allies.
And then she swings her own staff for YUNA'S face in a quick strike before snapping her fingers and sending a wave of flame coursing for Elly and Gwen! Acacia and Kamui, for the moment, are left alone for the moment even with Acacia's venom. "Hm, I can't deny that. But what are you implying?" She quips back to Acacia.
And then one last snap of her fingers, sending a wave of flame that starts to circle around her--another trap like that she contained Marivel within though it is unlikely to be nearly as effective against the Ice Queen.
GS: Lulu has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Watera! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan critically Guards a hit from Bera's River Rush for 17 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan critically Guards a hit from Lemina Ausa's Ice Lance for 23 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Lulu's Watera for 73 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Purity Litany! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Purity Litany! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked White Knight Leo with Purity Litany! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Purity Litany! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: Red Priestess Mauri heals Black Wizard Borgan! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri heals Red Priestess Mauri! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Yuna with YANDERE BONK! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Flamme Rouge! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Flamme Rouge! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Field of Fire! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: Red Priestess Mauri heals Blue Master Lunn! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Field of Fire for 0 hit points! GS: Avril Vent Fleur suffers an additional 23 from Poison's Combo effect! GS: Disrupt and Poison! applied to Avril Vent Fleur! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Flamme Rouge for 239 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Flamme Rouge for 85 hit points! GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Red Priestess Mauri's YANDERE BONK for 69 hit points! GS: Cover and Mighty! applied to Red Priestess Mauri!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'I know all about you, demon.'
Leo didn't catch the leadup, but he does hear his sister's accusations. His face stays in that twisted scowl as he looks back at Marivel. The Crimson Noble does not deny the accusations. Worse than that--she says things that Leo never dreamed she'd say, that he couldn't picture her saying even when during their confrontation. He steps forwards, and glances at Mauri. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. A look of hurt and betrayal glimmers in his eyes, and the fact that Leo's felt this way so often does nothing to dull it.
Marivel catches fire. She burns. She stepped into the sun, Leo thinks. Then he realizes, a moment later--Mauri did that. Marivel is dead--
A threat to Althena is dead. All that matters now is protecting Mauri, and dealing with the misguided fools and their grief and anger. He cannot doubt, not when everything is on the line.
Hiro shouts at Leo, at Mauri. Ashton says his simple denial. The air fills with equally-vehement words. "I am here," Leo says, "to carry out the will of She who created this world. I am here to keep safe my dear family. To all who would stand in our way, look inside yourselves, and ask--is your conviction so strong?!"
Leo's blade is a blur. He steps forwards, sweeps through two slashing strikes--the cobblestones crack and splinter as energy leaps from Leo's blade, once, twice. Twin Demon Fangs streak towards Ashton and Hiro, churning up the street as they speed along. "Show me your steel," Leo demands, "OR BE SWEPT ASIDE!" There is a tiny hint of the rage that was on the Ronso man's face. Or perhaps it's that they look so much alike. Is it coincidence?
Leo's fury abates a hair as #-1 FUNCTION (ANSI) EXPECTS 2 ARGUMENTS BUT GOT 1 Seraph Boudicca shows herself, and asks her question. It takes the White Knight a moment to recognize her voice, but when he does, he stops in his tracks, stares at her. "...Holy Seraph," Leo says. "I would bid you to stand aside." He already answered her question, though, didn't he?
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'I know all about you, demon.'
Leo didn't catch the leadup, but he does hear his sister's accusations. His face stays in that twisted scowl as he looks back at Marivel. The Crimson Noble does not deny the accusations. Worse than that--she says things that Leo never dreamed she'd say, that he couldn't picture her saying even when during their confrontation. He steps forwards, and glances at Mauri. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. A look of hurt and betrayal glimmers in his eyes, and the fact that Leo's felt this way so often does nothing to dull it.
Marivel catches fire. She burns. She stepped into the sun, Leo thinks. Then he realizes, a moment later--Mauri did that. Marivel is dead--
A threat to Althena is dead. All that matters now is protecting Mauri, and dealing with the misguided fools and their grief and anger. He cannot doubt, not when everything is on the line.
Hiro shouts at Leo, at Mauri. Ashton says his simple denial. The air fills with equally-vehement words. "I am here," Leo says, "to carry out the will of She who created this world. I am here to keep safe my dear family. To all who would stand in our way, look inside yourselves, and ask--is your conviction so strong?!"
Leo's blade is a blur. He steps forwards, sweeps through two slashing strikes--the cobblestones crack and splinter as energy leaps from Leo's blade, once, twice. Twin Demon Fangs streak towards Ashton and Hiro, churning up the street as they speed along. "Show me your steel," Leo demands, "OR BE SWEPT ASIDE!" There is a tiny hint of the rage that was on the Ronso man's face. Or perhaps it's that they look so much alike. Is it coincidence?
Leo's fury abates a hair as Seraph Boudicca shows herself, and asks her question. It takes the White Knight a moment to recognize her voice, but when he does, he stops in his tracks, stares at her. "...Holy Seraph," Leo says. "I would bid you to stand aside." He already answered her question, though, didn't he?
GS: Red Priestess Mauri heals White Knight Leo! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Ashton Anchors with Demon Fang! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 2 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Hiro with Demon Fang! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 3 Combo! GS: Hiro critically Guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Demon Fang for 31 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors critically Guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Demon Fang for 34 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gon Guado has posed.
For so many hundreds of years - at least a thousand - as far as anyone knows, Spira has been locked in a cycle as such as things have crystalized and stagnated. Paradoxically, in a life filled with peril and destruction without true end, there is some complacency. Even in the recent bid by the Guado to take in the tenets of Yevon no more than thirty or so years ago, there have not been great changes in their combative arts, for there have scarce been need.
The light-producing mudra briefly obscures the full character of Lunn's approach, such that Gon applies a more generalized defense of raising those overly large hands in the path of the Blue Master's descent.
Metal clangs loudly with the sound report of Lunn making contact. Gon tries to transition his right hand into an uppercut. He doesn't even get all the way through that when the punch intended for his center of mass is not intercepted... so much as his interception gets intercepted by Lunn's original intent. The force they bring to bear against the Guado's lighter frame...
To parse it as 'guards against' is more apt to say, 'it did not fell him in one blow,' for the aftermath does not seem anything less than injurious on Gon's part as he slides back on his heels, pain up one wrist and a duller ache in the other.
"That speed, that strength..." Those would be words of intimidation, of a crumbling confidence.
These are words of one so arrogant as to not believe he just saw Lunn effortlessly fight through the best-trained War Monks, or the most promising young warriors of his own people, and his brow furrows as if this haughtiness were enough to fight back this simple show of Lunn's strength and technique.
He has to back that with his own.
"Bite Bug!" A sharp call. Gon's stance grows more compact as he kneels lower to the ground, advancing with a series of downward hand-stabbing strikes - even as he is daring to strike against a great, protective power originating from the Red Priestess in which to shield the Four Heroes.
GS: Gon Guado has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Bite Bug Stance! GS: Gon Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gon Guado has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna watches as Jean makes her entrance. It's a surprise, but a pleasant one - and it seems like she has a personal beef with Lunn, too. It was a relief to see her, but the situation is such that she can't distract herself with more than a nod of acknowledgement in her direction.
She looks toward the tall, spindly Guado as he casts a sharp glance at her. She offers him a brief shrug in return.
"Save that energy for your real enemy, lad. You're gonna need every last bit of it." She says quietly, as he turns his words onto the Four Heroes.
And to Ines, who's been a reliable friend and ally, Layna sends her a nod of solidarity. They're in this hell together, it looks like.
And indeed, Lunn has plenty of time to demonstrate why he is so feared. In a flash, two of their allies are dispatched...and then he gestures two them.
Layna's grin twitches uncertainly - particularly as he brutally punts Jean away, then follows up a strike toward Gon and Ines.
But Layna herself isn't still during all this, of course.
"Justice? I don't want to hear the word 'justice' from any of you!" Layna shouts. "Do you think your strength lets you decide what 'justice' is? If that's the case...then let me try some for myself!"
Suddenly, she's behind him. She thrusts a hand coated in red energy toward him in a pin-point strike. But it isn't a physical attack - she's striking at his very strength, and looking to seize some of it and take it for her own.
It might be the equivalent of removing a small drop from a vast ocean, but right now they needed everything they could get.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Plunder Power! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
Ines can only watch as Lunn effortlessly dispatches Jean, sending the martial artist skyward. She'd seen Jean fight, and this only served as further proof that Lunn was the danger he seemed. Ines grits her teeth, and then-
Lunn is suddenly behind her, and it takes a concerted effort to turn on time. But turn she does, her right arm intercepting Lunn's open palm attack, saving her from shattered vertebrae. Even so, she can feel the force Lunn can throw behind his attack, doing all she can to stay on her feet. One thing becomes rapidly apparent: close up is not where you want to be.
"Nothing's just about this." She growls. The added insult of Lunn's dismissiveness doesn't help either. "As far as I can tell, you're just a bunch of murdering zealots!" She doesn't dare take her eyes off of Lunn now, he's too close, too dangerous. She can't see how the other victim of his attack took it. Ines slams her foot into the ground under Lunn and a tattoo on her calf activates. Suddenly jagged shards of rock fly upwards, aiming to provide a burst of cover to give herself some distance from Lunn.
ELSEWHERE IN LUCA
Someone watches from the shadows as Jean makes her attack on Lunn, and as she is consequently dispatched. They move through the darkness, to where the martial artist lands. They look down at her, and shake their head. "...Pathetic." They raise a hand, at it glows with dark purple ki, looking down at Jean's unconscious form.
And then they disperse it, and sigh. They reach down, and grab Jean, and haul her over their shoulder. The shadows cover both of them, and they are gone.
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Rock Spray! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.
She hears Dash -- or more precisely, hears the mechanical imprints of the Volnutt Armour. She hears Elly's fervent rejection of their faith, and even though she's not sure she's personally met her before, she was a friend of Marivel's. And that counts for a lot right now. She hears Hiro crying for Marivel to get out, but it was too late. She hears Avril, remembering her from that brief time on the beach. She looks much more ready this time. She hears so many more people, but--
Kamui!
She hears Master. She's calling out to her. Nob is chirping towards her. Nob is looking at Yuna.
She looks back towards Acacia.
"...mmMaster... Nob..."
And Yuna steps next to her, on her other side. And as the Summoner sings the chant of Yevon. Something shifts inside.
Ieyui -- nobomeno...
There is no trace of the girl who casually took long sunbathing naps with Seraph Clarine.
Renmiri -- yojuyogo...
There is no trace of the girl who got bribed by Rikku and inhaled Rin's employee appreciation cake in one go.
Hasatekanae...
There is no trace of the girl who was terribly happy to have her head be Scott and Tony's soccer ball in Meria Boule.
...kutamae...
There is no trace of the girl who play-fought with Creepy and Weepy on a Trask Floatie while Avril taught Dean how to swim.
There is ... no trace of Acacia Saitani's eager and exciteable assistant of the Meria Bouletin who really loved stickers.
But...
There is a trace, unwitnessed by those still breathing and living now, of the girl who lived in the Crimson Castle, who made a really important promise.
And as Mauri kneels down and starts to speak in religious capacity, telling her that Althena can save her...
Althena still remembers you. Do you remember her?
There is a faint memory. Why is there a faint memory? Kamui should not have any memories of a Lunarian goddess. That doesn't make sense. But she remembers her. Why? She doesn't know, but...
The Girl of the Crimson Castle does. And to that end, she rises quietly. What escapes from her mouth...
"<Battle routine -- set. Execute.>"
Ancient speech. And a beam of light from high above, manifesting around her within but an instant into a bubble. A humanoid figure emerges from within. First the outlines, then the inner frame and detailing...
"... your fire. I will... return it."
And a -wave- of flame erupts outward from within that bubble -- a scathing ancient flame saved for the scorching of battlefields.
The light fades.
The Girl of the Crimson Castle is encased in solid obsidian plating with gold highlights, pitted and broken in portions, wearing the marks of what seem to be centuries upon centuries of battleworn damage. This is no piecemeal part granted by a capsule. It is a full suit of Armour. One designed for war and no other.
/
_ _ _ _____ _____ __ _ _ __ _ ____ /
| | | /_____\ |_____| |\ | | |\ | / / ___
| | | | | | \ | \ | | | \ | | --*----
\_/ \_/ | | | | | \| | | \| \___/ \
___________________________________________ / \
/
( SFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdl99liD-L0 )
"... red PriestEss Maurii. ...iiI am a mmMaverIiick hHHunter...
...and yyyOOOuu... are a Maverick."
The broken red eye flashes.
"... and I ... ... will retire you."
( BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed9jkuczzRU )
DC: Kamui switches forms to Ultimate Armour Equipped - Maverick Hunter Kamui!
GS: Kamui has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Hunter Arte - Rising Fire! GS: Kamui has completed her action. GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Gon Guado's Bite Bug Stance for 60 hit points! GS: Gon Guado assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Layna Manydays's Plunder Power for 0 hit points! GS: Weaken! applied to Blue Master Lunn! GS: Mighty! applied to Layna Manydays!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"Jean - Lemina - be careful!" And then softer, "Noone else today..."
The way Mauri responds perhaps takes some of the fire and anger out of him, as he gives Gwen an uneasy look. "I never said anything about him returning - did I?" He says quietly, "He's not coming back." Hiro doesn't know the full extent of how Ronfar feels, he simply knows that much. "Your own Brother asked him and he turned him down - and now I can start making guesses why."
He's about to leap at her, when Leo interrupts him. Shouting at him, and as a Demon Fang streaks his way, his foot pivots, as his blade cuts down to intercept it with a speed and elegance that perhaps had been missing from his style until now. The impact against his blade knocking him back only a pace or two. His eyes boring into the White Hero of Althena's Guard.
BGM Change: The Archers Bows Have Broken - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKZkkBFCceY
"This isn't about conviction Leo." Hiro says quietly, "You're waging a war over an insult to the pride of Althena's Church. I watched your soldiers run down innocent people wielding sticks in these streets for the crime of protecting their home. I told the woman your sister just burned to death that you were a good man. That I always considered you a good man."
Whipping his blade up, he advances towards him, bringing his blade up to a higher guard.
"I told her that - I told everyone that - you never gave me any cause to doubt that."
And then planting his feet in the midst of this war zone, he lets his anger show with only two words. "Until now."
And then he moves, in an elegant flurry. His blade gliding across Leo one strike at a time in a series of feints and strikes at the gaps in his armor. Ending with a more powerful that he tries to draw across his mid-section as he moves past him.
"All your conviction seems to be good for is justifying all the hurt you're bringing upon these people!"
GS: Hiro has attacked White Knight Leo with Sword Dance! GS: Hiro has completed his action. GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Kamui's Hunter Arte - Rising Fire for 105 hit points! GS: Poison! applied to Red Priestess Mauri!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
In the corner of her eye Elly can see a young woman who begins to pray. It's a prayer to the dead. No, Elly thinks - she was there, at the aftermath of that battlefield. Yuna!
She's praying for Marivel, isn't she? Elly thinks, and that is where intuition ends.
... I feel so strongly, about her, Elly thinks. Is it because I'm holding her in special regard for who she was, what she did? Or...
Elly's eyes almost close for a moment. Or, she thinks, is it that... everybody...
Fei ??????? ?????-??? Kim ????? ??????
Everybody, that is, Elly thinks, is that, to
Lee ????? ???????? ?? ????? ?????? ????
somebody.
Elly feels a certain tight frustration at what Mauri says to her but she does not verbalize it. Her face stays tight, as might well be expected in these moments, and she grasps her staff firmly and when she sees Mauri kneel down near Kamui she does find her voice: "Get away from her--!!"
And then Mauri puts an extra scoop on top of things by looking at Yuna and speculating. This is when Elly makes her decision and marches forwards. When the wave of flame comes towards her she is briefly and completely hidden from view.
WAIT, DEAR READERS: Thin and tenuous though the gift is, Elly has summoned up what she can. The doctor told her to only do this sort of thing if it was a matter of life or death and she has heeded that warning, and yet, of course, this is exactly that manner of thing. A thin web of Ether was drawn about Elly, like a cool web around her skin and her body. The web of Ether snaps as she strides into the fire --
-- but it means, though her clothes are now gently aflame and so are both ends of the three-section staff, that Elly also strides OUT of the fire.
INSERT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WBzFoYwSVY
Kamui is rising. Good, Elly thinks, as she closes towards Mauri, feeling the blisters on her legs threaten to form. Elly pushes past this; she strides forwards. She swings the burning staff around ONCE! TWICE, with a twist! THREE times. She's too close to Mauri.
She is close enough to hear Leo. Elly looks towards him for a moment. "This isn't who you were at Adelhyde," she says, "but maybe this is the real you."
She looks back at Mauri then, grasps the middle of the staff, and twists into a spiralling nunchuck-esque strike at the Priestess's jaw. AND YET it is not over; despite the smoke rising from the leather straps of her sandals she leaps back, leaps UP, and aims to drive both feet into Mauri's chest!
GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a solid hit from Ines Colina's Rock Spray for 87 hit points! GS: Cover! applied to Ines Colina! GS: Ines Colina assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Double Shock! GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ashton Anchors has posed.
Ashton sees that very brief moment of hurt and betrayal that crosses Leo's face. Maybe there's hope here. Distant, but possible.
A challenge - and it is returned. The faint trace of a hopeful smile disappears. Maybe the hope's later rather than today.
Energy sears in. Ashton simply raises his blades, crossing them in front of himself. The Demon Fang clashes against them... and he pushes, tossing the energy aside. "If you wish to see steel, then you shall have it."
He glances to Hiro for a moment. Ashton doesn't know Boudicca, but he does know the Vile swordsman. At least a little. And he knows he can rely on the man. (Or at the very least that Ruby will give Hiro hell for not properly assisting Creepy and Weepy, but right now Ashton's not going to split hairs.)
"As he just said, White Knight, you will find it is not our conviction that falters here. You might be ready to stand and die for your Goddess, Leo... But are you ready to stand and die to burn people's homes and put unarmed innocents to the sword?"
Hiro charges in - Ashton stays back. Rather than come head on, he actually hurls his blades through the air at Leo in a sweeping side-arm toss. A moment later they reappear in his hands... and he does so again, unleashing a barrage of blades.
"We have the conviction to stand between you and the innocent - do you have the conviction to murder?"
GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked White Knight Leo with Piercing Blades! GS: Ashton Anchors has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
The blade in Avril's hand remains steady.
She does not, at first, speak. "I know it not, but the will that I follow is my own," she replies at last. "If this is truly your Goddess' will..."
Is this really the will of Althena? Is this the wish of the same Goddess she had heard stories about while she had spent her days exploring Lunar?
She's reminded, again, of what she had read in libaries on Filgaia. On Lunar.
Again and again. War, always war.
A necessity, the voice speaks.
Avril watches as the Priestess continues to speak.
This woman is the hope of Spira?
Avril watches as the Priestess smiles--
Ah. Even a smile can be horrible.
Fire rages thereafter.
Avril drops back as the flames begin to circle her, her intent to evade the coming inferno. But, alas, she is not nearly quick enough. Her lips part in shock and pain.
Her skirt catches fire, and one might expect the rest of the woman to soon follow, perhaps in a manner similar to Marivel.
A bluish haze rimes her figure. Anyone close to Avril would note that the temperature surrounding the woman has dropped precipitously. The fires are thus quenched; a rime is left behind on the stone which quickly too melts.
Blade born before her -- tip skyward, arm crooked, hilt at chest height -- in a guard, she fixes her attention on the priestess alone.
At first, that is. The wave of flame-- it's aftereffects--
She draws with her left arm something else, something she cradles against her stomach. An octagonal disc, metallic in nature.
"Lucadia..."
A glowing, metallic octagonal disc.
There is the scent of the sea. The distant feeling of a cool, gentle presence. It's powerful, as anything that would swim Filgaia's seas would have to be by nature. But the Sea Guardian has never used her power to harm.
Light as soft as sunlight filtering though the waves above drifts down upon Elly, a small piece of the Guardian's power.
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Ocean's Blessing! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has completed her action. GS: Avril Vent Fleur heals Elhaym van Houten! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Blue Master Lunn has posed.
Mauri's healing magic washes through Lunn. It is familiar to him; the way muscles loosen, the way little pains dull, the way that he feels already sharp senses become that much sharper. He raises his forearm -- hand in a knifehand, and his bare forearm catches the strikes that Gon looses upon him, one after the other, though he grunts with the exertion.
He spins, then, and sees that hand; his other arm lifts, catches it, and holds it at bay with a loud clap. He feels the red light sap at him. There is a long, low hiss from Lunn, before he thrusts both arms out to knock them away.
"One who thinks this is simple... shows the narrowness of their understanding!" he snaps back. And then, Lunn charges forward -- through the rocks that Ines calls, which slam into him and batter him. He slams a knife hand for her neck, then his left hand reaches out -- finger extended -- and pokes her in the solar plexus, twice on the side, and once under the left armpit. And then her nerves seem to freeze.
And then he takes a step--
--and Lunn appears directly in front of Gon. His left foot kicks into the air, followed by his right. He lifts twenty feet off the ground, bicycle kicking the huge Guado two dozen times, before doing a final double-footed kick to knock him away -- and then dive down for Layna. He lands, and swings his hands down in a massive hammerblow for the top of her head.
He takes another step -- and his fingers enact four mudras: Red, Black, Blue, and White. Then, power surges around him and the other three Heroes, in the color of their respective Dragons.
GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Ines Colina with Pressure Point! GS: Blue Master Lunn has gained 1 Combo! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gon Guado with Two Steps! Thousand Blows!! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Layna Manydays with Two Steps! Thousand Blows!! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked White Knight Leo with Blue Dragon Mantra! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Blue Dragon Mantra! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Blue Dragon Mantra! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Blue Dragon Mantra! GS: Blue Master Lunn has gained 1 Combo! GS: Blue Master Lunn has completed his action. GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Mantra for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Blue Master Lunn!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
Acacia doesn't really think of herself as a sentimental sort, and certainly not a religious one. Those edges have been worn off her over time, shaved off by her upbringing and her lifestyle and the blunt way she'd learned to look at the world after becoming a journalist. But she's not heartless, far from it - and with Kamui crying in her arms, she can suck in a shaky breath and feel some measure of solace in the Summoner's song as it echoes above them.
But she doesn't get close enough to Kamui in time to prevent the girl from going overboard, almost physically buffeted backwards by the sudden plume of light and heat and noise; the Reploid's name rips from her throat in concern, the sound of it lost. When it fades - feeling like an instant and an eternity at the same time - Kamui is dressed for war, and Acacia feels a lump in her throat at the sight of it.
Would Marivel have wanted this? she thinks, and how does she stop Kamui from tearing herself apart? Should she? Can she?
The next moment the real world has rushed back into place to leave her slumped in place on her knees with Mauri's infuriatingly smug tone, filled with excuses and rationalizations, sounding out from somewhere above her. But her instincts are still intact - and the moment the staff flicks for the Summoner, there is a sudden click. Acting on pure instinct, Acacia has caught the attack on her camera. Not all weapons need to be physical ones.
"They don't give a damn what people think," Acacia growls as she straightens up, pushes herself to her feet. She glances at Gwen, her expression drawn in a tight line. "Or at least, that's the only conclusion to draw from the way they're acting. They either don't give a damn, or they intend to burn any and all witnesses. That's their two options. They've made that choice. Holy war it is."
She feels her teeth clench; she fixes Mauri with a unwavering stare, feeling that bile in her stomach start to rise upwards. "I am implying, ma'am, that you're a bunch of petty dictators pissed off that someone told you to stop butting in. I am implying that you're so mad that people wouldn't treat you like the sun shines out your ass that you've decided to simply kill them all instead. I am implying that the Althenan faith isn't any faith at all. It's just a hammer, being swung as you like."
Perhaps she shouldn't, but she can't resist adding: "And all your proselytizing is a bunch of bullshit."
"You're no different than Odessa. Crush and kill and when someone challenges you on it, it's all 'show me your steel'," she mimics Leo's roar. "As if might is the only damn thing that makes right. As if you're immune to criticism until someone beats you down. Fuck that!--" she adds, gritting her teeth; she jukes backwards suddenly, shutter finger clicking as she catches the sight of Mauri summoning another wave of flame. "I'll show people the truth of Althena."
Can Kamui hear her, right now? She doesn't know. But she has to at least try. "Kamui-- be careful!" she calls as her free hand flicks for her coat - and she follows up on Kamui's gout of flame by drawing her pistol, squeezing a couple of shots off. For all intents and purposes, the thing looks average, normal - but the bullets that fire leave tracer lines hanging in the air behind them, as they twist and curl around the flame unnaturally as if to home in on the Priestess.
GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Snapshot! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: Layna Manydays completely evades a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Two Steps! Thousand Blows!! GS: Ines Colina guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Pressure Point for 0 hit points! GS: Break and Slow! applied to Ines Colina! GS: Gon Guado guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Two Steps! Thousand Blows! for 104 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Mantra for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Black Wizard Borgan!
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
Borgan's scowl deepens as Lemina speaks back to him.
"They don't use what power they have," Borgan rumbles, his volume increasing. "They do nothing but stay home in fear from Sin! They run, sending the only person on their entire Althena-blighted continent who is willing to use their power almost alone but for some Guardians! At least we fought - and if they will not fight, if we have to defend them, then what purpose do they serve?"
"I am Borgan, the Black Wizard, master of Neo-Vane and greatest wizard on Lunar! And I am better than any Yevonite! They fear their own history, their past and the future of 'machina' - I will master it! If you think you can do a better job than me, show me! Deliver unto me your magic!"
Borgan spreads his arms wide - and the incoming spells strike a barrier, a rippling dome of energy that appears out of nowhere and disperses water and ice with a crash. But he cast no spell; there is no feel of magic around the barrier. It is just, suddenly, *there* where it was not before. It wasn't Mauri either, though he feels her healing in his bones; nor was it Lunn, though the mantra reinforces him.
"Is that ice?" he asks, sounding somewhat amused. "An apprentice's effort. Let me show you how it is done! Consider it a ... free lesson from Neo-Vane."
Borgan sweeps his staff through a broad arc, but slowly. Icicles form repeatedly on the tip and launch off, fired with the speed of bullets; none are terribly large, but the speed and power is undeniable, and the very air between him and his targets begins to freeze, flickers of snow appearing out of thin air and drifting downward.
He hammers at Lemina with the blizzard for some time before dragging it toward Bera. Lulu, at a difficult angle to strike with the storm, has a different spell discharged in her direction; a rumbling rush, and then the very earth rises up under her, reaching not only to her but toward her ally Yuna. "Naughty, naughty," he says, before his eyes narrow - as he recognizes Yuna, having been interested enough in the strange magic of Spira to ask about it.
"You!"
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has activated a Boss Action! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Lemina Ausa with Ice Driver! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Bera with Ice Driver! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 2 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Lulu with Earth Fangs! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 2 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Yuna with Earth Fangs! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 1 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. GS: White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from Hiro's Sword Dance for 142 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to White Knight Leo! GS: Bera critically Guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Ice Driver for 28 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Ashton Anchors's Piercing Blades for 83 hit points! GS: Lulu takes a glancing hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Earth Fangs for 89 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Lulu! GS: Lulu used Defend! She takes Black Wizard Borgan's attack on Yuna on herself! GS: White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Mantra for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to White Knight Leo! GS: Lulu guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Earth Fangs for 106 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Lulu! GS: Lemina Ausa guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Ice Driver for 91 hit points! GS: Slow! applied to Lemina Ausa!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
There are songs, echoing through the battlefield. Songs, and the light of ancient conviction; indignation and uncertainty.
Perhaps Gwen's reaction is the most appreciable one, to the Seraph Boudicca. Leo is here to carry out Althena's will. It is a conviction bound in violence, as he bears down on his opposition. Here, more complications: Althena's will is clear in relation to the Vile Fiends, too.
Althena's will...
Althena's will, as they say, saw citizens armed with sticks ran down, homes burned. People, too.
Althena's will, which turned from Filgaia's torment.
Conviction is the strongest of foundations; atrocities and marvels alike are built upon it. It is the most beautiful, the most tragic, the most blinding of things. Devotion consumes.
Stand aside, Leo asks, and momentarily sorrow paints in grey-green eyes, the fall of her lips and the knit of her brow. Here is a man who strove to protect a mountain besieged by unnatural winter, who would not let any citizen suffer. Here is a man who fought to protect them.
It is complicated; she lets it complicate her.
"I will not."
The wind catches around Boudicca, as she steps forward, takes the tonfa from her hip to hoist them high. "I will not stand aside as you make these people suffer, Leo. Perhaps you think clearly - but falsely. These are not your enemies. Spira is part of our home, erst forgotten! If this be Althena's will --"
The first being to reach her in hundreds of years. The Goddess she loved.
"-- Althena hath erred!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked White Knight Leo with Insistent Headwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Red Priestess Mauri critically Guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Double Shock for 22 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Mantra for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Red Priestess Mauri!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'But it was he who changed, he who left the priesthood... If he would return to my side...ahhh...but he is traveling with you now, isn't he?'
"It sounds like both you two changed," Gwen says softly, to Mauri.
Gwen, still trying to process the events of the past few moments, remembers Ragnell's words.
'The Goddess Althena who's currently active, I don't actually think is the real Goddess--or if she is, there's something deeply wrong with her.'
These were the words of someone who later tried to destroy Filgaia. But what if these events were related? And what if they weren't?
What if it didn't matter what Ragnell did later, because these words were still as true as they rang to Gwen back then?
The priestess attacks, starting with the very hope of Spira, the summoner Yuna herself. A wave of fire courses towards Gwen, and the courier reflexively holds up a hand to shield herself, letting out a quick shriek of unbridled fear.
When the fire clears, Gwen still stands, hastily casting aside the burning mess of her jacket to the ground, her mismatched arms fully on display.
"... I'll be honest," Gwen begins, her voice raising to be heard over the rising whine of her right ARM. "This is kind of a real bad situation for someone like me t'be in. I'm pretty much a walkin' example of what the Yevon followers don't like in a person. But, I was kinda silly t'think I was the only one dealin' with that. Take it from me, Ms. Mauri." Gwen's breath falls to mask the shudder coursing through her body. "Fire's a terrible way to convince anybody of anything."
The ARM's pulsing quickens to a pure pyrite yellow, and Gwen straightens, confidence flooding her through the beat of her ARM.
"Y'got anythin' more convincin', or is that all that's in your bag of tricks?"
Leo will try to take on all of Mauri's attackers, but if Gwen could lure her away? "Or are you just burnt out?"
Hiro is a terrible influence.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Bounding Flight! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Bounding Flight for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Quick! applied to Gwen Whitlock!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna is cracked across the face by Mauri, and goes spinning to the ground. She comes up bloody -- but still, defiantly, gently, earnestly -- and maybe even a little bit beautifully -- singing.
"Ie, yui..."
She has to suck in a quick breath in the middle of the winced word, to give herself the power to find her feet again.
Once she does, her opposite number -- a priestess of Althena, and murderer of Marivel -- has her full attention long enough for Borgan to put her in grave peril. She gazes into her attacker's eyes searchingly. It's hard to say what she's looking for, there, but Yuna is hard to guard but easy to read: behind her own eyes, blue and green, is grief and horror, but also, even now, in a bizarre and almost unimaginable way -- hope.
"Nobo..."
Hope is a revolution.
"...meno--!"
Her voice rises in startled alarm as a column of light explodes from Kamui, separating the two priestesses (Yuna, for her part, flings up a hand to cover her eyes), and afterwards, the summoner isn't looking at the inquisitor anymore.
She's looking at her Guardian.
Her Guardian, who just suffered the wrath of the earth itself, as navigated by Black Wizard Borgan, and very likely saved her life.
Maybe her eyes should say I'm sorry but they don't.
"Renmiri," she sings, instead, but it really means I love you.
Borgan asked for the magic of Yevon, and in a way that isn't really Lulu's magic. Someday we'll know that Yuna's isn't really Yevon's either, but for now, it's an easy mistake to make.
She raises her staff, lets it bisect her face, then spins, her booted feet making small, tight circles. Nob manages to keep up, doing its very best impression of an ioun stone.
"...yojuyogo." I love Yevon.
It isn't a proper spell at all. These motions, these words, may have been taught by the Temple, to a very small girl from a very young age, but they aren't where the power is coming from.
"Ha-sa-te-ka-na-e..." I love Spira.
There's another explosion of light, this one smaller-scale -- it doesn't pierce the very sky -- but wider-reaching. Yuna, at the heart of the detonation, is wreathed in radiance. You can call it holy, or not; whatever her power is, it is pure white at its heart, then as it fades, it fades through pink and purple and blue, darkening.
It sweeps like a tsunami across Borgan's part of the battlefield, engulfing Lulu -- then Lemina and Bera, too. Whoever it -- she -- touches, knows immediately and obviously what it is that powers Yuna, really.
"...kutamae..."
They can feel her heart.
GS: Red Priestess Mauri guards a hit from Acacia Saitani's Snapshot for 69 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Insistent Headwind for 19 hit points! GS: Mighty! applied to Seraph Boudicca!
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
It seems more and more drifters show up fro mthe cracks to defend this place. It might be full of mean people, but that doesn't give anyone the right to kick their door down and take it. How could they? They were ruining countless people's lives. Where would they go? There are monsters out in the fields beyond!
It was four of them against a good dozen or so of everyone else. But they looked organized. Well-versed in fighting together. As Dash attempts to pick one to fight, the situation across the battlefield changes.
The distorted crying sound shifts, screeches, then for lack of a btter word, settles. There is a light that is...
Huh. He cannot recall ever having seen it, yet something is there. But when it recedes, Kamui is there, in similar armor to his, if not in just technological scope. Now that is all fine and dandy, but she sure doesn't sound herself, having only met a few times.
But there is a pull to her he cannot describe. She didn't look like she was in trouble. Quite the opposite, she looks like she is planning to run her targets over.
Perhaps that is the problem.
"Kamui!" he shouts, crossing the battlefield, trying his best to avoid slinging of attacks and spells. "You don't sound yourself!"
GS: Yuna has attacked Bera with Strength, Everyone!! GS: Yuna has attacked Lemina Ausa with Strength, Everyone!! GS: Yuna has attacked Lulu with Strength, Everyone!! GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Bera takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Bera! GS: Reload! Bera gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Bera gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Lemina Ausa takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Lemina Ausa! GS: Reload! Lemina Ausa gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Lemina Ausa gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Lulu! GS: Reload! Lulu gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Lulu gains a Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.
Lemina's not entirely ready for the barrage of icicles she gets, but she manages to throw up a quick shield this time; it doesn't do her a lot of good, though, and only accelerates the freezing of the air around her. Teeth chattering, she hisses out a, "... ssshhhhut up," as she rubs at a tear in the flesh along her arm. "You mega-arrogant *pig*! You don't have the right to come in and break things and hurt people just so they live the way you want them to!"
She takes a few halting steps back, continuing, "Even if you *are* right, you're a *jerk*, so it doesn't matter! And I'm going to show you what the *real* Magic Guild of Vane does to jerks!" (Besides 'promote them to Premier,' of course.) Lemina breathes in, feeling Yuna's love for Spira -- and for the world -- suffuse her. It's invigorating, against the cold -- and further steels her resolve.
Lemina starts a genuine spell chant -- quiet at first, but building in intensity. "Maiden of ice who sleepest in silent forest... grace my enemies with your pure smile... and offer them thy bosom!"
Lemina seems to have decided to get in an ice-off -- or at least, that's what it seems like at first blush. When the spire of ice erupts from beneath Borgan amid a cry of "Final Embrace!" though, there's something... distinctive, about it. The spire is cut half-through with dirt and wood -- reinforcing it, making it extra-solid and extra-durable.
GS: Lemina Ausa has activated a Force Action! GS: Lemina Ausa has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Final Embrace! GS: Lemina Ausa has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna feels some power flow into her from Lunn - good. Before she can steal too much from him he pushes her away with a thrust of his arms. She leaps back, lowering herself into a fighting stance.
"Tell that to all the families you lot just destroyed. You probably didn't even need half the force you used here. You didn't need Golems, you didn't need tanks...!" Layna retorts. "I might be a pirate and a criminal...but even I've got my limits."
Lunn attacks Ines, lifts Gon into the air with a rising attack - and then he's upon her. Layna can feel the attack before it comes - senses an imminent threat to her life. She steps to the side, the sheer force of it stealing the breath from her lungs.
She can feel it - the shockwave of force as he brings his arms down. If he had struck her, if she were a second slower...
...Well, she probably wouldn't be getting back up.
She doesn't spare a second, however - she rushes forward with a quick leg sweep in an attempt to compromise his footing followed by a lunging punch aimed right for his gut.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Swab the Decks! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action. GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Layna Manydays's Swab the Decks for 60 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
The floating droplets of water dispersed by Borgan's counter freeze over as he brings a blizzard forth in the area. Bera grits her teeth, and then says "Luke-warm." to the Black Wizard as she doesn't move from her spot in front of him.
The blade in her right sudden flares as flames wreath, and then she strikes out with a quick a double slash that ends in the enflamed blade quenched as it is sheathed. Her left foot is back, right side facing Borgan and the sheathed blade is held over her head in a strange looking draw stance.
"It's time for you to leave." as she says flatly, blue eyes staring coldly at the wizard as watches him intently for his next spell. "One way, or another."
GS: Bera enters a Counter stance! GS: Bera has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Burning Blade! GS: Bera has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
The beastwoman has no time to evade, as Lunn's hand slams straight into her neck and gills. She doesn't even have time to stumble back as Lunn launches his series of pokes, and then her strength is sapped and her body is slowed. Her nerves are frozen. She tries to turn her head to face Lunn, but she can barely move. "How the hell...?" Damnit, she can't fight if she can't move. She struggles against her own body, paralyzed in part by Lunn's attack.
Fine, if she's going to be slow and unmoving, she won't let herself be completely defenceless. Runes upon her skin glow, and then her skin turns to stone, while metal coats her fists. The spell is swift and, Ines moves ponderously, taking up a defensive stance.
She gazes to Layna, then to Gon, as she tries desperately to stay in the fight. She can't be out of the game already, there are too many people still in danger. "What can I say?" She manages, eventually. "I can't say I'm the type who wants to understand the thinking that lets you do this shit." Maybe her view of things is overly simplistic, and it's not like her past hasn't included shades of grey, but for Ines, this is a line too far.
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Ines Colina with Stone Skin Iron Fist! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action. GS: Ines Colina takes a solid hit from Ines Colina's Stone Skin Iron Fist for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield! applied to Ines Colina!
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
The floating droplets of water dispersed by Borgan's counter freeze over as he brings a blizzard forth in the area. Bera grits her teeth, and then says "Luke-warm." to the Black Wizard as she doesn't move from her spot in front of him.
As Yuna's song rises over the field, Bera closes her eyes for a moment nodding, her expression softening. Then her eyes open again, and the frozen droplets of water from her blade explode into small puffs of steam.
The blade itself in her right sudden flares as flames wreath, and then she strikes out with a quick a double slash that ends in the enflamed blade quenched as it is sheathed. Her left foot is back, right side facing Borgan and the sheathed blade is held over her head in a strange looking draw stance.
"It's time for you to leave." as she says flatly, blue eyes staring coldly at the wizard as watches him intently for his next spell. "One way, or another."
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Hiro's learned. It feels like an eternity since Leo first encountered him outside that ruin, but it's clear now that he's growing into a talented young man. It makes this all the more difficult. "Did you know, when you told her that, that she intended to break this world?" There's a hitch in his breath. The betrayal still feels raw. Leo twists to the side, grips his blade with both hands--Hiro launches into his flurry, and Leo's blade matches him strike for strike--
'But are you ready to stand and die to burn people's homes and put unarmed innocents to the sword?'
"SILENCE," Leo growls, and in that instant, Hiro siezes upon his distraction. His blade slashes across Leo's stomach, dragging through the chain and drawing blood. Hiro got him good. Leo redoubles his defense, his much larger sword flashing as he knocks one of Ashton's blades out of the air. Another clips off a lock of hair as Leo twists out of the way. A third grazes his thigh. A fourth almost slams into his shoulder. The fifth scores the cleanest hit, cutting a red line down Leo's upper arm.
The wind throws itself against him. Leo sets his heels, grits his teeth, and tries not to allow himself to feel betrayed again as the Holy Seraph makes her decision. Is the whole world going to turn against him--?
No. Mauri's power flows through him, staunching the flow of blood and infusing him with warm, red light. An aura of pearlescent white ignites around him a moment later, as the White Dragon Crest responds to Lunn's technique. Leo sees his sister engaging her own foes, and intervenes. The White Knight takes a single, surging step, turns, and puts his back to Mauri. His whole body blurs. His blade gleams as it flashes from strike to strike, splitting off sparks of chi with every slash. Ashton, Hiro, and Boudicca find themselves facing down a rush of impaling energy blades, and Elly and Kamui have to deal with more than a few, as well.
Leo's made one thing clear: attack his sister, and face him.
<Pose Tracker> Gon Guado has posed.
Gon digs away at that guarding forearm. The repeition of his strikes is well-practiced. It has, in the past, effortlessly dug through the defensive measures of countless Fiends that prowled the area surrounding Guadosalam. Overcome many of his own peers as per their training. Relentless and ensnaring as a sequence, it is a promise of further aggression to an enemy's end.
The Blue Master does not just withstand this maneuver - he is able to skillfully disengage, to deal with the Otherworlders bearing upon him.
Gon makes the mistake of blinking when he sees Lunn's counter-offensive against the larger Beastwoman Ines - larger than maybe even most of the native Ronso people.
The same mistake that sees Lunn aggress upon him again within the same breath. Gon's posture is less than ideal for dealing with an attack from the above, having to drag a foot back to catch his balance as he forcibly stands. Lunn's assault ensures he doesn't manage this fully. Two dozen bicycle kicks meet those two large gauntlets, and it catches the majority of them convincingly.
The final double-footed kick blows past them, taking the wind out of the aging Guado warrior. Both clawed gauntlets slam against the ground to grind the momentum to a halt. He gasps for any sort of indignant words to put these feelings into coherence... as Layna runs her mouth. That Otherworlder interloper whose assistance he did not ask for (but logistically needs). How can she possibly care for the people of Spira? What is her stake? He doesn't voice it out loud.
...
His expression hardens, grasping back at the more expected stoic outlook of his people as he rises and crosses his arms inward in a defensive gesture. There is a brief incantation in prayer, and the air around him takes a sharp chill - a drop in temperature. The element of ice.
"Protectga..." Gon finishes the spell as he positions himself at an angle that can charitably be considered 'safe.'
To use more blunt words, blatantly hiding behind Layna and Ines, alike, as he catches his wind and channels white magic into a protective aura - a brief icy shell of triangular plates arranged in a sphere surrounds him and dissipates, as he chooses to wait for his opening to strike upon Lunn.
If they will insist on standing on Spira's behalf for all the trouble they represent, by all means, throw yourselves at Lunn first - his unspoken venomous invitation to his selfless allies of convenience.
GS: Gon Guado has attacked Gon Guado with Protectga! GS: Gon Guado has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gon Guado has completed his action. GS: Gon Guado takes a solid hit from Gon Guado's Protectga for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Shield! applied to Gon Guado! GS: Cover! applied to Gon Guado! GS: Gon Guado's Avenger stance ends. He enters the Stoic stance! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: White Knight Leo has activated a Boss Action!
<Pose Tracker> Red Priestess Mauri has posed.
Mauri seems dissapointed by Kamui's answer. Can a reploid with faulty memories be faulted for heresy? Perhaps not, but there has only ever been one answer in the end. The flames wash over Mauri, subsuming her from view... But then with a wave of her hand, the fire disperses around her, singed mildly but--she is not called the Red Priestess because she is weak to her own weapon.
"Is Maverick just a term for people you dislike?" She asks. "Must be awfully convenient." She says this as if heathen and heretics aren't similar words--no, not exactly, there is just a hint of her knowing very well the similarities...and not caring. Such is the power of faith, perhaps. At the very least, the flame seems to have shattered the holy barrier she had erected around herself allowing for Elly to dive in with the staff and no doubt she WOULD have gotten Mauri good then but Lunn has empowered the Dragon Aura within her and a surge of heat erupts from Mauri, forcing Elly to back off before following through lest she burn her hands and feet to the bone. Simply approaching Mauri can be difficult. "You should be honored to fight all four of us simultaneously. It's so rarely neccessary." She says to Elly as she erupts a pillar of flame underneath her own feet and sends herself flying backward to open up space between herself and all the people she pissed off.
Like Acacia! Acacia, who reveals the power of GUN. It turns out GUN is a very powerful elemental tool because they slam right into the Priestess, puncturing through her heat barrier as if it wasn't even there.
Because they're bullets. Mauri is surprised by the potency of bullet and crouches down, reaching towards herself and touching one of the wounds. She lifts her fingers free and looks at the blood before giving it a faint lick.
Yuna. She sees her there. She stares at her with ever widening eyes.
She isn't fighting back.
She is just taking it. And praying.
TAKING IT AND PRAYING AND SINGING
It fills the Red Priestess with disgust. Disgust at that little flicker it gives rise to within herself
She wants to see Yuna's skin melt away leaving nothing but blood and bone behind. It has little to do with her being a priestess of an opposite faith. No, it has everything to do with seeing in Yuna that which she is determined to eradicate within herself.
"I've found it very convincing," She tells Gwen. "But some people just never learn. Very well. More fire. Let us see how long your convictions last against her flame!"
She fans out her hand, sending more fire pushing forward. Kamui and Acacia get the worst of it because Mauri has learned the power of bullet today and has learned to respect it. Unfortunately they stepped just enough out of the way that he isn't going to catch Yuna with that fire. It seems the situation is not going to let her do to Yuna what she did to Marivel.
And that does not make Mauri a happy priestess.
She sends more flame whistling towards Avril and Elly. Gwen is likely to get the worst of it, though, because that pillar of flame she is sending out has to pass THROUGH her to reach those two.
"I am certain Ronfar will see the light eventually, but I don't feel like I have changed. I believe. I believe. Why is following through on that belief so wrong?"
GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Crown Fire! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Buzz Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Ashton Anchors with Buzz Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Hiro with Buzz Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Kamui with Buzz Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Buzz Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: Kamui critically Guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Buzz Blade for 28 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Acacia Saitani with Crown Fire! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Buzz Blade for 152 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Hiro! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Kamui with Crown Fire! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Kamui guards a hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Crown Fire for 158 hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani critically Guards a hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Crown Fire for 36 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Boudicca critically Guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Buzz Blade for 51 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Flame Bomb! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Flame Bomb! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Buzz Blade for 171 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Flame Bomb for 76 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has completed her action. GS: Avril Vent Fleur completely evades a hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Flame Bomb!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu is not fast enough to shift her guard, to rush back towards Yuna where she'd set herself far enough away that blasts would not hit Yuna in turn, but it seems that Elly is there to defend against the threat on the other side. There is shame in that--that she couldn't do it herself--but mostly--
Lulu spares only an instant to look at Elly with gratitude in her eyes, but she spares that instant all the same as she draws in her focus again. It is the song, she things--the Hymn, that calms her, now. That steadies her, in the face of this alien world that has been made of her own. ...From Yuna, now. They are to be Spira's hope, after all.
But she can only keep up with the song herself for a verse, for a few words, at first. She has to focus--she has to look upon her opponent, cannot allow herself the true calm. And yet... It sustains her, still. She has the Black Wizard of Neo-Vane before her, and his assertions about the truth--about what he must show. About what they'll use...
"And will these machina weapons not turn on you, as they did once on us? I see no ambition, Wizard--I see foolish refusal to learn from the mistakes of your predecessors."
She narrows her eyes--there is no spell. There is a barrier, where there wasn't. ...It must be...
"So, you think to improve your magic through the power of machina," she observes. "But you're mistaken. We do not fear our history."
Words don't matter in the next moment. Lulu studies Borgan's use of the elements as he strikes, making her strategy, but all of her deliberations end instantly when she sees the line that will follow, the earth rumbling not just to her--but to Yuna. "Yuna!" Lulu calls immediately, and turns--sprinting to a backward point faster than she ought be able to move. At first, this means only some of the great rumbling of the terrible spell hits her--a gash of rock that erupts up her arm. But she suddenly turns in place, and then meets the Earth's power with Flame--Hitting a knee at a half-crouch, Lulu brings forth heat intense enough to explode around her to head off the spell before it can touch her Summoner, the explosion expending its force--but hitting her with it and her own spell in the process. When the smoke of it clears, however, she rises, burned but still standing.
"...Protect the Summoner," Lulu recites, "Even at the cost of one's life."
She doesn't ask for an apology, for doing what she chose to do. She doesn't ask for thanks, for fulfilling her purpose. She says I love you, too, without saying it, and lets that love fuel her as surely as the mystical power that allows her to shape the elements.
"Lemina," Lulu says, using the name that Borgan did. "Why don't we see what our magic looks like together?"
The Guardian straightens her soldiers. She remembers, learning; she remembers long ago. It was not just enough to learn how to strike out--she had to understand the fire. She had to feel the water, become part of the storm... and let that storm become a part of her.
So it is, now.
The storm, that will come as rain even to this ruined city of hope, the one place where trouble could be forgotten. The flames that rush within the city. The power crackling through the machina weapons the Guard have used. Lulu offers no incantation, no intricate gesture, but instead lets herself for an instant be a part of the flows of Spira. ...Black magic, they say, is inauspicious, and yet for her...
It was joy, once.
Red eyes narrow quickly on Borgan, and what was gentle flow abrubtly becomes something else. There is another side to love--one that is not gentle, one that is not kind, and it is this that flows through Lulu as the air around her suddenly shifts with power.
"You might want to back up," she suggests to Bera ahead. Then all the potential she'd gathered starts to explode freely. First, she used lightning; then, water. Then, flame. This time, it is a field of ice that erupts around her, putting out fires and freezing over the broken stone at her feet. "Since you asked," she says, and her voice is lighter than the palpable anger around her. Fueled by Yuna's love, Lulu's protective fury sees the air in a space near Borgan chill--and then erupt into a blast of ice. Another above--another nearby. Each turns from simple cold to fierce shards of ice exploding from a central point, bursting and bursting and bursting over the next few moments in a terrible display of raw magical power.
Lulu doesn't blink as she casts as long as she can manage.
GS: Lulu has spent 1 Combo on Link! GS: Lulu has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Get Down! GS: Lulu has launched an attack Link! GS: Lulu has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with F U R Y! GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashton Anchors guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Buzz Blade for 103 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Ashton Anchors! GS: Black Wizard Borgan critically Guards a hit from Lemina Ausa's Final Embrace for 303 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Bera's Burning Blade for 47 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan critically Guards a hit from Lulu's Get Down for 19 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan critically Guards a hit from Lulu's F U R Y for 48 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Blue Master Lunn has posed.
"Spira has come to accept such things," Lunn says. "A people bereft of hope can't have it taken from them, girl. If we have to hurt them, before we bring them salvation... so be it. The Maesters chose their lot!"
Lunn does not fall for a leg sweep. He catches it on his foot, and then he slams a hand at her -- and his fingers curl in. Blue light explodes off his fist, and it threatens to hurl Layna across the battlefield, much as he did to Jean earlier. She finds, at the same time, that her chi is sapped -- that everything, somehow, threatens to become sluggish unless she shakes it off immediately. Lunn does not rest -- he turns, rushing at Gon, and then swings his hand down in a hammerblow -- and there is a powerful shockwave, that rolls through all of his body -- and the spell he cast -- and tries to break its defenses down utterly.
Afterward, he looks at Ines, for a moment. He bows his head, once. "Then choose ignorance -- and all that comes with it."
Lunn's cool brown eyes look up, to regard Yuna for a moment. She might not see his gaze; across the battlefield, it may be hard to notice. And yet, he senses her -- senses the empathic power of her magic, despite having no sorcery of his own -- and he knows. He knows what love and hope are.
Though none here know it, Lunn knows what he must break and poison in a child.
There are ancient arts in the Shadow Dragon. Arts that have not been taught, save from master to master -- arts hoarded, until one is so old that they threaten to be lost if not shared. Lunn, alone, knows those arts; it gives him a powerful tool, as they are not like the arts taught to his acolytes. None alive--
--none that he knows of--
--are aware of such arts. His fingers form the mudras -- rapidly, this time, until they are near a blur, and then he slams his finger down to the ground. A pressure point -- but not on the body, but the land. Lunn touches an Earthpulse.
And he warps the very chi of the land.
It rolls out like an undulating shockwave -- a tremble of colorless light, a shifting in the air. But when it touches someone, there is a powerful jerk of pain -- a firing of the nerves, in their toes and their fingers, but more than anything, behind their eyes. Lunn's fingers twist, then, pulling up on the invisible threads that make everything up. Threads of every color.
And he snaps them.
In doing so, he takes the colors from the eyes of his foes, until all they see are shades of grey.
GS: Blue Master Lunn has activated a Force Action! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Layna Manydays with The Spider's Web! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gon Guado with Mountain to Dust! GS: Blue Master Lunn has spent 1 Combo on Interrupt, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Ines Colina with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Lemina Ausa with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Dash Caskett with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Yuna with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Acacia Saitani with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Ashton Anchors with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Hiro with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Kamui with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Lulu with Way of the Wavering Heart! GS: Blue Master Lunn has completed his action. GS: Kamui takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Kamui has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Kamui! GS: Ashton Anchors guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Ashton Anchors has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Ashton Anchors! GS: Layna Manydays completely evades a hit from Blue Master Lunn's The Spider's Web! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Avril Vent Fleur! GS: Acacia Saitani takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Acacia Saitani! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elhaym van Houten has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Elhaym van Houten! GS: Lulu guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Lulu has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Lulu! GS: Lemina Ausa takes a glancing hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Lemina Ausa has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Lemina Ausa! GS: Ines Colina critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Ines Colina has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Ines Colina! GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Yuna has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Yuna! GS: Seraph Boudicca critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Seraph Boudicca has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Seraph Boudicca! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Crown Fire for 91 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Gwen Whitlock has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gon Guado takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Mountain to Dust for 129 hit points! GS: Shieldbreak! applied to Gon Guado!
<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.
Kamui -- the Kamui of the Crimson Castle -- can't feel the compassion and empathy that Elly does. Or perhaps she does, she just can't show it...
Because the Kamui of the Crimson Castle has consigned herself to be a machine of war.
Elly suffers for her care for her, and that sparks a quiet rage within the machine. Avril summons the power of Lucadia, prompting a quiet flinch as she is cooled; then she follows up after Elly's attack within the flame as her three-section staff lashes out.
"I will assist."
It looks like something within her voice box shifted; within it, there is the intonation of someone as Dash points out -- is not the inflection Kamui uses.
Acacia's venom is doubled; if there is the indication that what she says make sense, it doesn't seem to register to her. She can't seem to work up her anger in the way her Master and senior reporter does. Perhaps the Suffering Circuit has turned off. Perhaps it refuses to look at fate in the eye.
But she does say...
"Master. It may be dangerous..."
Her system nearly freezes when she hears Dash pull up. He calls out to her. She doesn't sound herself. There is a look that, to him, seems to be more one of terror than someone on the warpath... then it fades. Just what inspired that kind of fear?
But she answers before long:
"... I ... am what I am required to be, Dash."
Gwen speaks of how fire is a terrible way to convert someone. In that way, perhaps she has a commonality with Acacia... but not her. She does respond to the super courier:
"She will not hear your words."
She's drawn Leo's ire; her expression doesn't change as she continues speeding, waves of chi flecking off the armour which seems to bounce off even as chunks of its obsidian-like guise is shorn off. And Lunn-- Lunn robs her of all colour within her eyes.
It distracts her enough... right into the path of Mauri's fire.
The armour turns ashen-white for a moment, like rock would when fire strikes it; embers fleck off off her as she endures through with a raise of her arms--
"Weapon Charge: Frost Tower."
--and another peal of light erupts from within Kamui as she reverses the temperature within her space and bursts out from within her own body. A bluish tinge envelopes her armour, in the way her hair typically does when changing weapons.
"You can steal my sight... but you cannot steal the colours of my Hunter Artes, Blue Master."
GS: Kamui has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Hunter Arte - Frost Tower! GS: Kamui has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kamui has completed her action. GS: Hiro critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Ruin purges all positive status! GS: Hiro has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Hiro! GS: CRITICAL! Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Kamui's Hunter Arte - Frost Tower for 151 hit points! GS: Cover! applied to Kamui!
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
Borgan watches Yuna. He's not sure what she's doing, not precisely. It's like a litany, but not quite - and not any kind he knows. Not that Borgan uses white magic, but he's at least studied the theory even if it's outside his grasp; like all of those blessed by Althena, he uses only one type, and that is clearly black magic.
"Why not?" Borgan's lips pull back into a snarl. "They do it to us. Or they would, if they could!"
The source of the barrier makes itself known as Borgan releases it - a sphere, perhaps the size of his head, concealed somewhere in the multiple layers of robes and trimmings he wears. It's a clearly mechanical thing; a metal sphere with a crystal set 'forward' on it, and a seam that is currently slightly open (making it a little less spherical) with a glow from inside the machine. It interposes itself between himself and Bera, catching the flame - it shoves backwards, pushing her away from him with a pulse of force.
"Do you not? Whenever you see it - machina, machina - you destroy it. Out of fear it will bring Sin, out of fear of what it can do!" Borgan focuses the barrier outward, hardening it as Lulu begins to strike at him, again and again. It's almost enough; the barrier stands, though Borgan rocks within the dome, which is now clearly visible, a gleaming white dome in the air around him. He tunes it specifically for that defense with a shift of his hands, focusing it on defense versus ice over all else.
Lemina's ice spear crumbles when it hits the barrier - or the ice does, shattering into pieces. But... the stone and wood pierces through, completely unimpeded - because Borgan was not aware Lemina could cast such a spell. It doesn't even slow down.
"You," Borgan gets out, before he pulls himself away from the spike, his flying platform dropping several inches and tilting dangerously backwards before regaining its former height and balance. "You - you IMPUDENT APPRENTICE!"
Borgan forgets his words. He doesn't use any at all when he releases his staff (it remains straight upright, balancing all by itself) and cups his hands around a point in space. The point begins to, impossibly, glow black-purple - a colour that should not radiate, and yet it does. It doesn't feel evil or corrupt. It's not that kind of blackness. It just feels... strong.
He concentrates, his arms straining to hold in the improbable light. "You are NOTHING! I will show you what power I have! What knowledge you can never hold!"
GS: CRITICAL! Dash Caskett takes a glancing hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Wavering Heart for 0 hit points! GS: Dash Caskett has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Dash Caskett! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield expired! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. Fei Fong Wong (Fei) pages Gwen Whitlock, Ida Everstead-Rey, and Zhang Xiumei: we are thinking two more rounds including this one yeah? Fei Fong Wong (Fei) pages Gwen Whitlock, Ida Everstead-Rey, and Zhang Xiumei: oop mav
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"There are a lot of things I didn't know about her." Hiro says quietly as he admits, "There are a lot of things I didn't understand. That I would have liked to understand - about how she felt." He moves with Ashton in the defensive, attempting to keep Leo guessing in which one is going to attack next, "And now we'll never know - if that was just defiance in the face of death - or how she really felt."
However - Leo proves himself that for all Hiro's grown, Leo has grown too - and Leo was always the Superior Swordsman. Imbued with Lunn's technique, Leo surges forward - engaging in a back to back fight with his sister, and Hiro initially advances to try to attack him. But then has to backpeddle against the rush of Chi from strike after strike.
It slams into him, past his parry attempt. The buzzing Chi ripping through his armor and drawing blood as the youth lets out a cry of pain, stumbling, staggering him into the ground, groaning as he holds his side. Needing time to recover. "If you won't open your ears. Then open your eyes at least. Look upon the city you just attacked. Really look - and tell me what you see?"
And that's before Lunn unleashes his arts. Touching an earthpulse threads that seem to tug at him. Try as he might to tug back. It finds purchase.
Paling, a bead of sweat appears on his forehead as the world moves into monochrome, the boy stabs his blade tip into the streets. "Umbral Light - Rise Up and Devour Bloody Iniquity -" It pools outwards into liquid shadow. As four sword shaped silhouettes rise out of the ground like he's unsheating multiple blades, "-Dark Sword!" Each one turns at a horizontal, then begins lancing at Leo with cleaving strikes of shadowy energy. Rippling through his protective spells in an attempt to ruin them before they can become a problem.
"Ashton - hit him now!"
GS: Hiro has attacked White Knight Leo with Dark Sword! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.
"... I do not ... freely use the term," Kamui responds to Mauri flatly. "Make of that what you will." It almost seems as if she is speaking beyond, but... perhaps that is just a quirk of the Girl of the Crimson Castle's tongue.
GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Hiro's Dark Sword for 75 hit points! GS: Dispel reduces positive status durations by 3 rounds each!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
"'Salvation', right. Yeah, Luca's looking pretty damn saved from where I'm standing right now." Layna remarks, eyes narrowing. "Pretty words don't hide the ugly truth for long, Blue Master, and it doesn't suit you. Why don't you call it what it really is?"
As expected, Lunn doesn't get caught up in her leg sweep. He punches outward in a fashion she recognizes from the way he struck Jean just before. There's no time to react, however. In a flash of blue light, Layna is sent flying. She feels drained. Her body refuses to listen to her.
But...
She can't let herself stop here.
She's got friends counting on her to hold them off long enough to get the civilians to safety.
Talise, Sephilia, Lanval, Tetra, Benedict...
Layna recites an incantation, and the wind begins to pick up - and she halts, in mid-air. She begins to emit a green glow as a storm surrounds her.
If her body wouldn't listen to her, then she would let the wind move her.
From there, she casts a glance downward. She sees Gon, retreating to cast a protective spell on himself. Layna frowns a little, but doesn't say anything. She looks toward Ines, then, and sends her a nod to let her know she's okay.
...And then, Lunn does... something. There is a shift of light, and she can feel something pulse through her. And where it goes, her vision fades.
Layna grimaces and shuts her eyes for a brief moment, covering them with a hand.
"...What the hell did you do...?" She hisses. When she opens her eyes...it's still gone, all of it. Layna curses...and then flies toward Lunn, rearing a fist back.
She aims to slam it into his face...but that's a feint. The real danger is a blade of wind that curves off of her fist, slicing like a pirate's cutlass.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Cutlass Gale! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ashton Anchors has posed.
They're scoring hits. Both physical and verbal.
It's a small solace for the Draconic Ceberus as he's skewered by a blade of energy.
That takes the wind out of Ashton's sails for a moment, staggering him. It's been a long day and he still feels the LAST beating Leo gave him.
But - there's an opening. And Ashton cracks a grin that's just slightly unhinged.
"You speak of conviction and yet demand silence? How fragile yours must be, White Knight. Methinks your demand for strong steel is to substitue for your stumbling heart."
The words are a dangerous game, and Ashton knows it. Maybe he'll make Leo stumble and hold back, or maybe he'll just goad him into being even more of a murderbeast than he already is. But at the moment, with everything that's going on? There's only so much to lose.
Quickly, Ashton swipes his blades in the air. Pale blue tattoos on his arms glow, leaving a trace of lines in the air behind the tips of the swords. The cross in the air rounds out to form a diamond - a shield between himself and Leo.
Even as it forms, Ashton is struck from the side by a snake-like thread of green. And it saps both the color from his eyes and from the world around him.
The magic being formed collapses as the power being drawn simply.. goes away. Ashton's heart stops for a moment. He gasps.
Then his eyes Light Up in brilliant crimson and blue. The swordsman loses control for a moment and is replaced by his boon companions. And they are able to do what their host cannot.
All three throats roar a defiant cry as Hiro calls out. The two dragons R I S E to their full size and tower over the field. Gyoro and Ururun take the Friend Of Ruby's words to heart - and unleash.
Perhaps the Drifters cannot win this battle. But dragon breath of fire and frost washing over the battlefield should dissuade the Four Heroes. And do much more to their gathered armies.
GS: Ashton Anchors has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
A reporter's instinct doesn't let up; Acacia's ears prick at the sound of Gwen's supposition, that perhaps the Althenan faith has changed or somehow worsened over time. By itself, this wouldn't exactly be a surprise - Acacia would be ready to suggest rather cynically that's how most religions end up, if she's honest - but it bears thinking about, especially given the way in which Mauri's beginning to--
--she can't really call it raving, can she? It's more like it's much too placid. Like genocide is just something that happens while you go down to the shops. Despite the way she's trying to keep up her bravado, Acacia still finds herself shivering at the thought. "You've got this," she mutters, half to herself, half to Kamui, half to Yuna as the summoner gets back up and redoubles her attempts to sing across the battle. Focusing on that means not having to think too deeply about the Priestess' mental state.
Kamui is still on the attack; Acacia can hear Dash's entreaties, but sucks in an uncertain breath herself, glancing to one side for just long enough to see whether they're working, whether her own words can reach the Reploid. To be honest, she's not really expecting an answer - so she sucks in an involuntary breath when she gets one, her eyes following Kamui and her ears picking out the difference in tone. That lump is back in her throat, but she tries her hardest to tamp it down. "... I'll be careful," she promises. "So, you too, okay?"
She dives to one side, skidding halfway into an alleyway as a hand plunges into her jacket, pulls out a fistful of bullets, slams a couple of spares into the magazing. She's learnt to reload when she can, especially in chaotic situations like this.
"You're one to talk about convenience, starting a holy war 'cause you got slapped on the wrist," she calls - but at the same time, wonders if it even matters for her to say anything, if there's any point. She's seen her fair share of people who won't listen - who'll insist that they're right, even as the world burns. Politicians, zealots, people in power. Guild Galad comes to mind, and she realizes she's grimacing.
A wave of power washes over her when she peeks out of her cover, bleeding the colour out of the world; she suddenly feels sluggish, like it's simply too much effort to move out of the way of the gout of monochrome flame that rushes towards her like treacle. Black and white fire provokes a muted curiosity; she'd take a photo, if she could raise her hand--
The world rushes back again, and her eyes widen as she flings herself back to one side. Her skin burns as she hisses with pain, but it's a lot worse than it could be, given how quickly she was able to react.
"If your belief involves other people having to die, I want no part of it," she hisses under her breath, more to herself than anything. As far back as she is, she can see the Four Heroes working in tandem - and in particular, the sight of one large man starting to focus for something that she can already sense will be overwhelming.
In turn, she grits her teeth and concentrates - and the barrel of her cheap gunsmoke pistol starts to vividly glow white-hot, the end of it shaking in place from the power stored in the shot. She's not religious - but she's prepared to whisper a tiny prayer when she sweeps out of her hidey-hole, braces herself, and squeezes the trigger. The lancing bolt it leaves behind is a white line scored in the air, the power of surprise behind it as it arcs.
GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Paparazzi! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a solid hit from Layna Manydays's Cutlass Gale for 118 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Ah, the flame - the flame is enough that Elly draws back, though her staff is truly on fire now, not just 'kind of smouldering'. She may want to do something about that at some point.
The touch of Lucadia eases her burns at the same time that it puts a little salt in them. Elly would thank the creature if her brain was not now working like an overburdened tactical processor in the subgunnery pits of the Tzadkiel. It reminds her even so, of Dam Dariam. Did he see that this would happen, as the Guardian of Time?
Maybe, Elly thinks.
She sees a pearly blade come towards her as she rebounds and she cannot do more than twist with it and raise her arm up. This at least prevents her from getting another gruesome and disabling injury; instead it merely is gruesome, blood spilling out as her smouldering dress rips. The blood, at least, helps put out the fire. Elly breathes in, and feels a winkle of relief that she can't hear a whistle from that -
By the time her focus has shifted fully back to Mauri, Mauri has leapt back.
Elly feels a cold clamp on her spine. She wishes wordlessly that she had Drive. It isn't that she would survive, she thinks, but she'd give them something to think about on the way out. The feeling touches something that she can't describe, a lingering sense of -- of frustration? Futility? It vanishes the moment it appears.
Mauri smashes against her with fire. Elly reels with a "nghk!" - Lucadia's blessing spares her further burn aggravation but the shock, the impact, still hurt. Her eyes blur and she curses them. She can hear Kamui invoke some kind of - of spell - a blessed burst of cool air, air that feels like she can really BREATHE it - for a moment Elly feels terribly thirsty but then she is presented with a question.
"Because... you're hurting people... for nothing!!" she answers Mauri.
She raises the staff, though her hand shakes, and points it at her. "You know full well... your brother protects you, but how many big brothers have YOU incinerated in this city alone...?? You've sent Gears against a barely fortified city full of innocents...!! I..."
The color seems to be draining out of the world.
Is this dying? Elly thinks. She thinks it might be what dying feels like. Maybe the cut was deeper than I thought. But...
I...
"I don't think believing something gives you the right to do something like this," Elly says, though her voice is reedier, wavering as she says it. "Maybe your faith teaches... that you have the right to kill other people. That you're better than everyone. Perhaps... it's even right, if what you claim is really the case."
Elly sways. For a moment she imagines something very clearly. A vague picture. Fei trying to tell Emeralda something--
-- her spine stiffens again. She makes herself breathe the incidentally-cooled air. Her eyes focus again and the tremble subsides. "... But... don't complain... when people you back in a corner strike back..."
One shot, Elly thinks. (She can vaguely feel some new terror on the fringes of her awareness but pain and dismay are already struggling at her.) Maybe I can weaken her for Kamui or Hiro or something. I don't know if it will work but I don't have anywhere else to go.
Elly leans back...
And then hurls herself forwards, both hands on her stick, swinging it at Mauri. If it were a sword this would look like an effort to decapitate her, and there is nothing special about the staff beyond it being 'kind of on fire'. Even so she aims to smash the blunt end of it against the throat of the Red Priestess.
Maybe it'll throw her off.
GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Three-Section Staff! GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked White Knight Leo with Dragon Breath! GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Dragon Breath! GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Dragon Breath! GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Dragon Breath! GS: Ashton Anchors has completed his action. GS: Red Priestess Mauri completely evades a hit from Ashton Anchors's Dragon Breath! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Ashton Anchors's Dragon Breath for 74 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
This is something that Ines had no defence against. Even as she brings her arms up to protect herself, she's not fighting something she can protect against. Colour fades from her eyes, and it's... well, it's terrifying. The world looks wrong, and everything is harder to see. This is what comes with ignorance, huh?
Ines shakes slightly, as her spells are washed away by Lunn cutting the threads. Her skin turns from stone to her normal gray. She stumbles backards, her movements still impeded by the pressure point strikes. "D-damn it..." Is the gulf between them so far? She thought she'd be able to buy more time than this. She notices Borgan start charging, and curses. She could close, but that would mean turning her back to Lunn, someone too dangerous to risk turning her back on. And it would mean leaving Layna and the Guado fighting alongside them to take on Lunn alone. He was already more than a match for the three of them.
Instead, Ines focuses on a spell, and the runes on her left arm glow. She punches in the ground, and a quake spreads out from her fist towards Lunn's feet. It's not an elegant or a well crafted spell. She's a brawler with both fists and magic, and the difference in power is obvious. But this isn't the time to turn and run.
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Tectonic Breaker! GS: Ines Colina has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action. GS: Blue Master Lunn completely evades a hit from Ines Colina's Tectonic Breaker!
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"I would not call it an honor," Avril says to Mauri, holding her ground. "Not after what has happened here today." It's hard to escape, still, that darker pulse, that echo that is, perhaps, herself. But she will try.
Her support for Elly is answered in turn by the Priestess' wrath. For an instant, Avril's eyes go wide. She twists her body, keeping her limbs and belongings and profile tight. She leaps, feeling only the passage of the inferno as it passes by her.
She lands, rising from the earth below, only to start as she senses the wrongness of the art that has been worked. "What are--"
Threads spill everywhere. Even wheeling away from one that strings too close to her, Avril only finds herself struck by another and gasps.
Color seems to bleed away from her vision, and with it, fragments of her power. No damage is done to her body -- she has slipped the Priestess' spell this time -- but the young woman still falls to a knee, bearing Lucadia's Medium against herself as if it were a protective talisman.
Upon rising, her gaze first lingers on the ruined stonework before her, then lifts to take in Mauri.
The rest of them.
Nothing is impossible, as long as you don't give up.
She can't win -- even if she continues to evade the Priestess' flames, there are the rest of them to contend with. But what she can do -- the one thing that Dean's favored saying still supports -- is buy some time. But...
The power rests heavy, tantalizingly so, in the back of her mind.
She can just take it.
Must I?
Should I?
She thinks again of the unconscious child she had born from the building.
She thinks of the look on the face of the man who had taken him from her. A father, uncle, brother?
The seal may break!
She tucks the Medium away. Her fingers grip the hilt of Absolute Zero ever more tightly.
Then let it be broken.
She breaks into a run for Mauri, lancing out once for the Priestess with the glittering blade.
...more ice falls in a rain along the deep spidering crack in the glacier...
Something about Avril changes.
BGM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb5kdLvTTzo
This time, the power is freely bidden. This time, perhaps, she holds the reins in her hand. Save for the chill and power that radiates from her -- save for the frost that is left where her feet touch ground -- the only obvious sign is the face she wears. She had been cold before. Now her face might as well have been carved from ancient ice for all the emotion riding there. Stepping away from the Priestess on the follow-through, she regards Mauri for a moment.
In a way it is the twin and inverse of Mauri's own. No smiles, no. But the rest of it...
She lifts her hand a few degrees, and one might get the impression that even this is unnecessary. From the ground about and below Priestess come tearing, engulfing crystals of ice -- the sort of ice that one might find in the heart of a glacier. Cold, so very cold.
And so very hungry for whatever warmth they might claim for their own.
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with White Blade! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has launched an attack Link!
DC: Avril Vent Fleur switches forms to The Ice Queen!
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Glace Bleue! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a glancing hit from Avril Vent Fleur's White Blade for 56 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Glace Bleue for 173 hit points! GS: Avril Vent Fleur drains Red Priestess Mauri! Avril Vent Fleur gains 86 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gon Guado has posed.
Gon withholds his words as Lunn voices any number of articulate arguments the Althena's Guard have made. (Some of this is because he is still catching his breath from that shot to the chest. Most of this is perhaps for a more nefarious reason.)
He watches as Lunn seems poised to overcome the brash wind-bearing pirate captain, and he thinks to step further towars the shadow of Ines in a calculated attempt t--
Lunn laces through the opening and he is down upon Gon. The hammerblow and where it goes is a humbling gesture - Gon relies on the gauntlets on his hands for the near-entirety of his defensive maneuvers. This hammer blow addresses this reality as the gauntlet on his left hand shatters into so many sharp metal fragments as he once more slides back on his heels, exposing the clawed hand underneath. It is large, and the nails are sharp.
But it is fragile.
"Nnnnghf!" Gon grimaces as Lunn punches through the near-perfection of his defensive stance and strips it utterly. No, a near-perfection of a defensive stance developed in a land where that has never been challenged by something like this.
Then, Lunn's finger goes to the ground, and a shocwave washes over him...
Color leaves his sight. Things are a blur - when color is gone, so much sensory information goes with it. Feelings of dread, of greatly building strength from over yonder...
"Enough with your vocal correspondence...!" Gon seethes. His gauntleted hand has less fine dexterity afforded to it but it's also the far less wounded hand, going into his clothes by some means to draw out a potion. Layna may recognize from that Protectga that this is a White Magic user. Her friend, the Seraph Lanval, gave the skinny that the people of Spira use Althena's Blessing. White Magic is the half of Althena's Blessing that governs healing and support. Perhaps this Yevonite defender, in recognition of Ines' and Layna's blood sacrifice, will impart some 'prayers' upon them - something that might do something about this loss of color to one's perception.
The bottle and its contents are instead consumed by himself, with no indication that he's sharing with them.
"Strike these Althena heathens down at once!" He says. The healing potion doesn't return his senses.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Leo growls for silence, but there is nothing silent, here. There is no silence to crackling flames; no silence to martial efforts; no silence to stone nor to song.
No silence to the tempest of Boudicca's betrayal.
She brings up her gauntlets, crossing them in front of herself as the energy blades barrage them. Now she has the facsimile of flesh, perhaps there is something a little more violent to the way she stands in the path of ruin. Perhaps it's a little more relatable. A little more human.
A Seraph is not, let us remind the world, human.
"Leo, will you not stop - and think now on what you do?!" She demands, as her hands and tonfa lower. "You are more than this! I have seen you help so many! You must see the truth before your eyes! You must now see the suffering you have wrought!" This suffering, which is Althena's will. Althena's will!
He is not the only one who stands betrayed.
And let us speak now on betrayal: Boudicca paid no attention to Blue Master Lunn, laying a finger to the earth, as she focused on an old friend. A mistake - a mistake she knows, feels screaming through something which is not quite bone, compressing in on herself like a spider at the end of its life. She realises a moment later it is her voice, her screams.
Flesh is one thing; it is another entirely to carve the spirit. One hurts so much more than the other.
"-- stop," the sounds become words, bowstring-tense: "Stop! What do you do?! You must not -- you cannot--! No!" Her impassioned denial is to naught; there is no colour in the world. It is a sickness which clenches anxiety around what Boudicca calls her heart, and there is no comfort in familiarity.
The wind swirls around her, a desperate storm, billowing out and out and out. To Leo - and his sister; to Lunn's wicked fingers, and Borgan's machinations. "Enough!" She screams, afraid again. "Enough!"
GS: Gon Guado has attacked Gon Guado with Auto-Potion! GS: Gon Guado has completed his action. GS: Gon Guado heals Gon Guado! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
Bera frowns fiercely at the appearance of the mechina like sphere even as she quickly analyzes it. At Lulu's warning she does a brief shuffle hop back, just in time to avoid both the spells thrown at the Black Wizard. The samurai then leans forward, braced to slam through a spell and strike but none come. With that realization, her stance shifts again as she see's Borgan starting to concentrate on a strange point of energy.
"Annoying." she states, and begins to move before stopping for a moment eyes widening as something changes. The world turns to scales of grey and she shakes her head quickly trying to cast it off before just closing her eyes. At this range her other sense work just well enough for her even as she tries to think of the cause and a remedy because it's not a solution.
The blond samurai then pushes forward focused on the swelling magic before her as she lashes out with a blade that's wrapped falling droplets of water in quick slash at Borgan's hands. Then her other hand comes up grabbing the hilt in a two hand style and blade gleams brightly as the water wraps around it pulling traces of flame, ice, and lightning into it also till it glows a white-pink light.
Bera twists the blade, and comes right back across with the holy imbued blade across the first slash she cut and then a dip and turn she slashes diagonally up and across Borgan aiming for the energy as much as his hands again as the white light traces an almost solid path of the blades movement for a second. During th strike, she yells in a clear voice "Midare Setsugekka!". Then the blade is sheath and she jumps back eyes opening as she tries to get her full bearings in the disconcerting greyscale that keeps her from tracking magic.
GS: Bera has activated a Force Action! GS: Bera has spent 1 Combo on Link, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Bera has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Falling Rain! GS: Bera has launched an attack Link! GS: Bera has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Midare Setsugekka! GS: Bera has gained 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from Acacia Saitani's Paparazzi for 0 hit points! GS: Disrupt, Entangle, and Shieldbreak! applied to Black Wizard Borgan! GS: Seraph Boudicca has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
There is no way, amid all the chaos, for Yuna to sense Lunn's look, or even Mauri's feeling. Perhaps a hair stirs on the back of her neck. DEFINITELY her stomach is twisting; beneath her too-pale pallor she is quite green, as her anxiety is prone to expressing itself through tummyache. But if you asked her, later, to identify Lunn's attention beyond his sudden and dramatic act of chi, or Mauri's expression beyond anger, she could not.
Not least because the magical battle going on right in front of her is so massive and terrifying that it renders her, momentarily, speechless. A moment later, Lunn renders her eyes colorless, too.
(For the first time in her life, they are the same.)
She stumbles forward, winding up more beside Lulu than behind her. Her throat pulses, then clears, and determinedly she tries again to sing.
"Ieyui..."
It's light, not sound, that's been twisted, but now her song seems so flat, so pointless, so futile.
Her tears for Marivel overflow, and the first of them finally makes a track in the soot across her cheekbone.
"..no, nobo, meno..."
Borgan's power waxes, even as Yuna's wanes.
But then--
"Wakka's back on the field!"
A blitzball soars at terminal velocity straight at Borgan's gut.
"Miss me?"
Brotherhood slams down from the other side, but it's Tidus' smile that slams Yuna. She smiles back, wetly. Gray or no, her eyes contain an answer.
And within her, voices that cannot be extinguished start to sing along.
RENMIRI A young girl.
YOJUYOGO A Crusasder.
HASATEKANAE A fisherman.
KUTAMA"...e..."
Her heart still wavers.
But she's not alone.
Even if it is pointless, even if it is futile--
--she won't stop.
She won't!
GS: Jam expired! GS: Bera has completed her action. GS: Yuna has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with L1! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: White Knight Leo used Defend! He takes Elhaym van Houten's attack on Red Priestess Mauri on himself! GS: White Knight Leo critically Guards a hit from Ashton Anchors's Dragon Breath for 30 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Three-Section Staff for 60 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Yuna's L1 for 52 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Ashton Anchors's Dragon Breath for 110 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Bera's Falling Rain for 58 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Bera's Midare Setsugekka for 123 hit points! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Desperate Tempest! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Desperate Tempest! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Desperate Tempest! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked White Knight Leo with Desperate Tempest! GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Desperate Tempest for 38 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.
The world turns grey, as Master Lunn plucks the color from it; Lemina doesn't panic, but she *does* start to worry. There's something about this kind of thing -- something that seems to affect the world, rather than just individuals -- that always sets her on edge in a big way.
She still ultimately focuses on Borgan, though. She sees that she's gotten a rise out of him in some way -- though she's not fully understanding *why*, because... well frankly, because she doesn't have the empathy for it. She can see that he's mad, though, even if the specific colors of the improbable light are a little lost on her due to Lunn's actions.
So naturally -- while she isn't conscious of it -- she picks the thing that will probably make him even madder! She gets that she has to stop him, which means it's time to bring out the big guns. Yet again, she starts up a chant -- she doesn't even spare words for Borgan at this point, since they seem to be... past that.
"Dance for me, bright flames, in a crimson storm..." She slams her staff into the ground, and the air around Borgan begins to whirl, first; only after a few moments does it become impossibly hot, building into a pillar of flame that spins like a tornado, roaring right along with Lemina's cry of, "Flare Vortex!"
GS: Lemina Ausa has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Flare Vortex! GS: Lemina Ausa has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
Kamui looks to part of a war-torn battle machine, something stronger than he himself is in that armor. The ominous jet color does not soothe the soul in its appearance. But then again, if made to fight, what else should it need to look like?
Part of him thinks if it was meant to do good, it would be colored as such. But he also could be wrong. Something deep inside tells him that it all depends who is in the armor, in the end.
A good feeling, at least.
"Look, I know you want to stop them, but you sound unwell!" Hearing her talk hurts, in some distant way. "You should be what makes you happy. ...You don't sound happy." He should be more concerned with the fight around him. Yet in this moment, he just wants to help this person. THe person, not just robot, that is the most like him out of anyone he has ever met.
It is difficult to say. Or even see for that matter, when a distortion of energy lashes both outwards and inwards, causing pain receptors to go haywire, and eyes to see monochrome. "Grah...! What was that?!" he calls out. One of the four has used something devastating agaisnt the group to debilitate them. "Can you cut that out?!" he shouts toward Lunn.
But more pressing matters await. The magic user of the group has begun to muster great forces within his grasp. An almost ebon purple wellspring. "Oh that's not good!" Dash comments, starting to sweat. The Mega Buster is pointed their direction. THe light shifts from gold to bright red in the barrel. Sular plasma condensed beyond any normal means. "This will stop you!"
A trio of shots fire out, each packing enough power to punch holes in most walls with relative ease. "Kamui, whatever you do, just be careful... okay?" he says afterward, as two panels open on the sides of the Mega Buster, belching out steam for a few moments, then quickly shutting.
GS: Dash Caskett has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Heavy Buster! GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action. GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a glancing hit from Elhaym van Houten's Three-Section Staff for 55 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri completely evades a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Desperate Tempest! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Lemina Ausa's Flare Vortex for 108 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Black Wizard Borgan! GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a glancing hit from Dash Caskett's Heavy Buster for 63 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
"Is it fear, when we put out the fire that approaches homes?" Lulu counters Borgan's statement. "Machina did bring Sin, and all your machina weapons have done is devastate a city. There are machina that can do better things--but it isn't those you choose, is it? It's the ones that give you power. ...Because man, when he has power, will seek to use it."
Lulu knows the scriptures of Yevon as well as any girl raised in temples, though she speaks them rarely. ...She speaks less, after her spells. Finally spent for the moment, down at one knee, Lulu can't quite break through the barrier, can't entirely charge past it with her single element. She tries to catch her breath an instant later, and grits her teeth. At least... another element could make it through. So maybe, maybe--
Lulu's eyes widen. And she feels it. She could not keep eyes on Lunn, had to trust others, but the way the land itself warps--the way its energy warps--she feels it almost before the colors fade out. Her rage was not enough, but the sudden tremble of air, Lulu feels it twice--when it begins, and when it hits her. Behind her eyes, in her body, Lulu stiffens visibly, and falls most of the way back to the ground, catching herself with both hands. "Nn--"
The energy to which she'd opened herself, in order to cast; the Spira to which she attunes, to understand and channel her magic. The threads twist, and Lulu sees darkness, gray, but feels as wrenched as the world must be.
"Not..." Struggling with the way it threatens to overwhelm her, Lulu murmurs withour realizing, "Not again..."
'Wakka's back on the field!' Lulu breathes in once. 'Miss me?' She breathes out, again. She does not smile back, but she opens her eyes... and stands.
"...We can't allow that spell to be finished," she says to the other Guardians, but with the rest of her that isn't words she says only relief at Yuna's presence still, and can't say what she feels for the reinforcement. Not alone...
"Sorry," Lulu allows. "I'm... fine, now," she says, and wills herself not to wince as she rises. "..."
She focuses, again. Despite the feeling that it's wrong, the world does not seem to be so twisted that it is made of something else. Maybe that even makes this spell easier...
Lulu swings out her hand, and another form of amgic erupts--not the four elements of before, but a vivid green gas that erupts into purpling, sick power around Borgan, to sap and sitract from charging... whatever it is.
"But it isn't over, yet."
GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Lulu has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Bio! GS: Jam expired! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Lulu's Bio for 28 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has been weakened by Disease! Temporary hit points tick down 1 round! GS: Disease and Poison! applied to Black Wizard Borgan!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"Y'can't smell if somethin' stinks if you're in the room too long." Gwen waves a finger at Mauri.
As if she had just forgotten what Mauri had done to Marivel, moments ago. Or was it longer? It's that far gone from Gwen's mind, shoved away in a corner, to be dealt with later.
The column of fire courses towards Gwen, and the courier makes a leap sideways, the corner of the blast, knocking her spinning through the air. Landing on the ground in a roll, she coughs, then stands onto her feet. Where did Hiro go? Oh, he's over there, and-
Something shifts. Strains. Like a thread from a tapestry, slowly being pulled out, unraveling the intricate weaving. Snapping connections, disrupting the organic flow of thread.
"... No... don't take it from me."
Lunn pulls. He snaps. And then, everything turns grey.
And Gwen cracks.
She didn't actually forget what happened to Marivel. It just took this long for everything to catch up with her, along with everything else. Every person that fell under someone's weapon, the fact that she had nearly died, over and over again, all the doubt, sadness, anger that she pushed aside or tried to ward away with a laugh and a quip. All the times she did the thing that seemed to make her friends keep going. The times she looked at her ARM, and wondered.
All she had to do was look towards the sky.
The sky is grey now. The ground is grey. Her hands are grey. Her friends are grey. Everything, everything is seeping down, through her fingers. She can't just loan out her strength like this. She's been warned.
Gwen's ARM shudders and clenches, attempting to reform some semblance of whatever thing that was taken, even if it was possibly insignificant in the context of everything else.. Her upper body wavers, almost to the point of falling. Cold seems to flood her from one side, but as she looks over, she realizes it's just- "... Avril..."
Avril would know best, when to let herself fly. Gwen will follow her.
"If they won't listen..."
There's a blinding surge of light, and the muddy ground quakes, expelling jagged cracks in the pavement, weaving towards various Heroes.
Their source: Gwen herself, pyrite color glowing against the grey, growing past the expanse of her ARM and into the map of her nerves, like the delicate branches of a tree.
I will take it back myself.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"Y'can't smell if somethin' stinks if you're in the room too long." Gwen waves a finger at Mauri.
As if she had just forgotten what Mauri had done to Marivel, moments ago. Or was it longer? It's that far gone from Gwen's mind, shoved away in a corner, to be dealt with later.
The column of fire courses towards Gwen, and the courier makes a leap sideways, the corner of the blast, knocking her spinning through the air. Landing on the ground in a roll, she coughs, then stands onto her feet. Where did Hiro go? Oh, he's over there, and-
Something shifts. Strains. Like a thread from a tapestry, slowly being pulled out, unraveling the intricate weaving. Snapping connections, disrupting the organic flow of thread.
"... No... don't take it from me."
Lunn pulls. He snaps. And then, everything turns grey.
And Gwen cracks.
She didn't actually forget what happened to Marivel. It just took this long for everything to catch up with her, along with everything else. Every person that fell under someone's weapon, the fact that she had nearly died, over and over again, all the doubt, sadness, anger that she pushed aside or tried to ward away with a laugh and a quip. All the times she did the thing that seemed to make her friends keep going. The times she looked at her ARM, and wondered.
All she had to do was look towards the sky.
The sky is grey now. The ground is grey. Her hands are grey. Her friends are grey. Everything, everything is seeping down, through her fingers. She can't just loan out her strength like this. She's been warned.
Gwen's ARM shudders and clenches, attempting to reform some semblance of whatever thing that was taken, even if it was possibly insignificant in the context of everything else.. Her upper body wavers, almost to the point of falling. Cold seems to flood her from one side, but as she looks over, she realizes it's just- "... Avril..."
Avril would know best, when to let herself fly. Gwen will follow her.
"If they won't listen..."
There's a blinding surge of light, and the muddy ground quakes, expelling jagged cracks in the pavement, weaving towards various Heroes.
Their source: Gwen herself, pyrite color glowing against the grey, growing past the expanse of her ARM and into the map of her nerves, like the delicate branches of a tree.
"I will take it back myself."
DC: You switch forms to Chrysopoeia! DC: Gwen Whitlock switches forms to Chrysopoeia!
GS: White Knight Leo critically Guards a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Desperate Tempest for 13 hit points! GS: That attack doesn't exist. [] GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Jarngreipr! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Jarngreipr! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Jarngreipr! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked White Knight Leo with Jarngreipr! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Jarngreipr for 207 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Jarngreipr for 110 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Jarngreipr for 96 hit points! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Seraph Boudicca's Desperate Tempest for 31 hit points! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Jarngreipr for 71 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Red Priestess Mauri has posed.
Mauri says, "Fascinating. But i really was just doing what the Goddess asked of me. I'm afraid I don't know what a 'Maverick' even is." She is caught by Kamui's ice and this actually shows significant palpable damage (like bullet) as it slams the Red Priestess back while simultaneously dampening that heat aura around herself and chilling the priestess to her bones. Her hands are shaking as she continues her backpedal, slowly making her way back towards Borgan. Is she up to something?
The power of two dragons and three throats unleash flame and ice towards Mauri. She rears back with her own head and breathes her OWN dragon flame into Ashton's. She does not say anything but rather her flame pushes onward towards Ashton, threatening to engulf him if he is not careful.
Elly sees an opportunity. She isn't protecting herself. Her attention is off of Elly. Her attention is off of Acacia even as she counters her own words. Elly strikes--
--but unfortunately, Mauri can take her attention off of Elly because she knows the White Knight of Althena is there to watch her back.
"Why would I complain about that?" Mauri asks of Elly. "It's my greatest joy, seeing the defiance. Seeing it fade as Althena's truth overcomes all resistance."
Boudicca's desperate storm ruffles her robes, jostles her hair, leaves her untidy and brightens her smle.
"I am truly blessed. I can't help but enjoy it. Even the wounds you inflict upon me, ahhh, it's like my own personal penance."
Speaking of personal penance, Avril changes. And she moves. It's enough of a sudden change, an unexpected change, that Mauri is caught completely unaware. the strike slices into her chest, nearly punching through for a fatal blow--but not quite, not quite! Mauri howls in pain and then laughs even as she spills blood on the floor, grinning ever wider. She always tended to go buck wild in a fight. But then...
A chill fills Mauri, it weakens her flame. She can't seem to get a fire starting. It's so cold. It's freezing. She can't get a spark going.
She is battered about by Gwen's quake, tumbling about and falling over as she bashes her head against the ground as if Spira itself is angry at her. She keeps going. She keeps going because she has faith. Because she believes.
She stalks backwards towards Borgan, panting for breath, struggling to get a fire going but...
...But she realizes it in this moment. "I am the Red Priestess... Yes.... But before that I am a Priestess."
She makes it to Borgan, smiling briefly at Leo, before her expression is full business.
"Show them the power of the greatest mage on Lunar," She tells him. "I will lend what power I have to your might! Althena!! Give your servants the power to finish this!" Mauri is smiling ever widely, like the wounds she's taking are just encouraging her. Like they are a pleasure to her.
Mauri is supporting Borgan! Next round she will unleash her full wrath! And she's eyeing Yuna over there!
Hopefully you clobbered Borgan enough.
GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Ashton Anchors with Flame Dragon! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Althena Wills It! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Divine Coil! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Divine Litany! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has gained 1 Combo! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Cover and Mighty expired! GS: Red Priestess Mauri has completed her action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Althena Wills It for 0 hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Cover! applied to Red Priestess Mauri! GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Divine Coil for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield! applied to Black Wizard Borgan! GS: Mighty! applied to Red Priestess Mauri! GS: Red Priestess Mauri heals Black Wizard Borgan! He gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Lock State! applied to Black Wizard Borgan! GS: Red Priestess Mauri assumes the Stoic stance!
<Pose Tracker> Blue Master Lunn has posed.
"Your chi is weak, if you succumb to that! And a weak chi... is a weak heart... and A WEAK RESOLVE!" Lunn shouts back at Layna, even as she rushes at him. He ducks past her fist -- and then the blade of wind slashes into him. It slashes his side open, and a spray of blood splashes down onto the ground.
"Hrk... good," he says. "Perhaps with that, you will measure up!"
He rolls, then. Lunn crosses both arms -- and fire and frost wash over him. He is lost underneath Ashton Anchors's attack for a moment, but then throws his arms to each side -- and his forearms are revealed to have taken the worst of it.
Then, he spins -- and sees the quake ripping across the ground for Ines. Lunn leaps over the chasm, high into the air, and comes crashing down with a drop kick, before he lands, and follows with a brutal right cross and then a mighty backhand. He hops, then, and leaps back towards Layna. He comes down in a crouch -- throwing out a spinning kick, and then he launches up in a powerful uppercut for her chin. He stumbles, Gwen's blast slamming into him -- knocking him forward. He spits, turning to glance at her. He back flips away, then--
--Gon quaffs his potion--
--and Lunn lands before him. He snatches the bottle from his hand, then swings it for Gon's temple, jabs it at his neck, and then launches a knife hand for his kidney. Then, Lunn slams his head for him. This sends Lunn backward, for him to do another backflip and launch into the air.
His hands remain above his head as he flips upward, and a bead of blue light gathers and grows over his hands.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--"
It swirls, larger and larger, and pulses with bits of white light. It casts a brilliant light over Lunn, obscuring all of him in shadow.
"--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--"
And flames of blue light appear. A roar of a dragon echoes outward, though it is dwarfed by Lunn's own immense roar. The ball swells outward in pulses, until it is a second sun of blue light.
"--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!"
And then Lunn hurls it down to the battlefield. It slams down into the middle -- and explodes in a titanic shockwave of blue light that throws stones and broken statuary about, leaving a crater in its wake.
GS: Blue Master Lunn has spent 4 Combo on Link and Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gon Guado with Blue Dragon Perfected Kata! GS: Blue Master Lunn has launched an attack Link! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Ines Colina with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Layna Manydays with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gon Guado with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Ashton Anchors with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Yuna with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Bera with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Lemina Ausa with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Dash Caskett with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Lulu with Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Blue Master Lunn has spent 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked White Knight Leo with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Way of the Traveled Road! GS: Blue Master Lunn has gained 1 Combo! GS: Blue Master Lunn has completed his action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Traveled Road for 0 hit points! GS: Reload! Black Wizard Borgan gains 15 extra FP from Blue Master Lunn! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Traveled Road for 0 hit points! GS: Reload! Red Priestess Mauri gains 15 extra FP from Blue Master Lunn! GS: Bera has activated a Force Action! GS: CRITICAL! Layna Manydays takes a glancing hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 112 hit points! GS: Bera critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 42 hit points! GS: Blue Master Lunn has attacked Layna Manydays with Blue Dragon Fist! GS: Dash Caskett completely evades a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb! GS: Layna Manydays takes a glancing hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Fist for 85 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 97 hit points! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 212 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield expired! GS: Blue Master Lunn has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
The energy builds in between Borgan's cupped hands, growing brighter and brighter as he focuses more and more power into it.
It's a spell, a gift of the Blessing; any magician of Lunar can tell that much. They might even be able to tell its element: Earth. But the spell itself is complex, almost impossibly so. Borgan has an ego... but in some ways, it's justified. It does stop him from responding to anybody in particular. This is taking all of his focus. Well, almost: "How little you know," he says to Lulu, sounding strained. "More important than power - is knowledge. And you turn away from it!"
The barrier he's put up returns to its more normal defense. No longer focused so tightly on ice, Borgan trusts it to protect him. It seems like it might, for a moment, the dome pulsing as it pushes things away from him - people, spells, shots.
But Acacia's piercing shot penetrates, dazzling him and overloading the barrier with an electrical crackle. It remains up, but perhaps not as strongly as he'd like when the LITERAL DRAGONS burn into it. Bera takes advantage (intentionally or not) to slip her blade in, as does Tidus - though honestly it's the blitzball that Borgan finds most offensive, judging by his expression when it slams into his gut, passing through the barrier.
Dash's shot slams into the barrier, causing the thing to flicker ominously, but it's Lemina's flame whirl that takes the barrier down entirely; it shatters, sending shards of white light in all directions, and the orb itself slowly drifts downward until Borgan catches it with a foot, rolling it back under his robes. He has no barrier left for Lulu - but hers will take a moment to work.
A moment too long. Despite all the damage, all the pain, Borgan manages to hold on just long enough to finish it. "DONE! Behold the might of the wizard of Neo-Vane!"
Borgan releases the spell.
The condensed sphere of energy lifts into the air, swelling as it rises toward the sky. The whole thing makes a violet-black orb like a second, inverted sun in the sky, a ball suspended about thirty feet above Luca's battlefield.
The sphere... turns inside-out.
And gravity reverses.
Everybody - everything - begins to lift toward the sky, except for Borgan (whose platform doesn't seem to be affected) and, about three seconds late, the other Four Heroes, pushed gently toward the ground by a violet ripple around them as Borgan uses the barrier spell on them.
But everything else. Loose masonry, discarded swords and spears, Drifters, an entire chocobo cart - it rises into the air, pulled in by the inverted gravity toward the center of the sphere. Objects slam into each other as they all 'fall' to the same point in the sky.
The sphere contracts. Things are pulled more strongly, and then more strongly again as it contracts a second time - and then, with a tearing sound, the whole thing falls apart. Some objects fall back to the ground with crashing and clattering, the heavy impacts rocking the plaza. Other things...
...are simply gone.
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Lulu with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Dash Caskett with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Lemina Ausa with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Yuna with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Bera with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Gon Guado with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Ines Colina with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Acacia Saitani with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Ashton Anchors with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Layna Manydays with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Kamui with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked Hiro with Black Dragon Grief! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. GS: Layna Manydays takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 121 hit points! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Layna Manydays receives 50 temporary hit points. GS: Layna Manydays enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hiro guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 95 hit points! GS: Bera critically Guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 69 hit points! GS: Elhaym van Houten guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 34 hit points! GS: Dash Caskett takes a glancing hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 175 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 90 hit points! GS: Ines Colina guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 118 hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 185 hit points! GS: Ines Colina guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 104 hit points! GS: Ines Colina enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Slow expired! GS: White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Way of the Traveled Road for 0 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Cripple expired! GS: Reload! White Knight Leo gains 15 extra FP from Blue Master Lunn! GS: Kamui takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 125 hit points! GS: Kamui enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 94 hit points! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 108 hit points! GS: Lulu critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 40 hit points! GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 219 hit points! GS: Lulu guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 79 hit points! GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: CRITICAL! Yuna takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 84 hit points! GS: Lemina Ausa critically Guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 44 hit points! GS: Lemina Ausa has activated a Force Action! GS: Lemina Ausa critically Guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 53 hit points! GS: Gon Guado takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Perfected Kata for 208 hit points! GS: Blue Master Lunn assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Gon Guado has activated a Force Action! GS: Gon Guado takes a solid hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 191 hit points! GS: Gon Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! GS: Gon Guado takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 1 hit points! GS: Gon Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! GS: Ashton Anchors guards a hit from Red Priestess Mauri's Flame Dragon for 108 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors guards a hit from Blue Master Lunn's Blue Dragon Spirit Bomb for 122 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors critically Guards a hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Black Dragon Grief for 26 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'Really look - and tell me what you see?'
Leo swallows, hard. He grits his teeth, and tries to present Hiro with a look of grim, knightly resolve, but all he can muster is anger. Anger is so much easier than looking at what he's done. Leo doesn't see Lunn's devastating technique, but he sees the effect it has on his foes. In that moment of weakness, Leo takes a risk. Elly's staff whips out for Mauri's neck, and Leo is suddenly there, standing in front of her, taking the blow for her. The staff slams into Leo's shoulder with an audible crack, but it isn't the strike Elly was likely hoping for. "Stay away," Leo growls, his voice cold, "from my sister."
Hiro's blades punch through Leo's wards like a needle through a soap bubble. The swords linger in the aura of chi for a moment before the barrier, overstressed, pops in a burst of white motes. One of the blades digs into the same shoulder Elly just hit. Leo whirls on Hiro, bares his fangs. The White Dragon Crest gleams around his neck, and a pearlescent barrier rises around him once again. "We, the Chosen of Althena, stand as one! WHITE DRAGON'S PROTECTION!
There are some here on the field who've been favored by this benediction, but today, they are not among them. Energy flows off Leo in waves, enshrouding Mauri, then Borgan, then Lunn in protective fields of purest white. His timing is impeccable. Creepy and Weepy--Gyoro and Ururun--unleash their true might, testing the White Dragon's power to its limit. The aura around Leo surges upwards, the phantasmal form of the White Dragon rearing in defiance, baring teeth at the White Knight's foes. Then the twin streams of flame and frost abate--half the ground around Leo is covered with rime, and the other half is blistered by heat. Leo himself stands between them, and glances back at Mauri to make sure she's all right.
Avril's blade slashes into Mauri, and in that moment, Leo sees red. "I said--" The wind roars up around him, shoving from all sides. Leo stands his ground, and shouts over it, as if his anger could somehow drown out Boudicca's power. "Don't you DARE TOUCH HER!" Gravity starts doing things it shouldn't, bent to the Black Wizard's will. Leo doesn't seem to notice. The White Knight slips into a defensive stance, stepping in front of Mauri to shield her with his body--and he raises his blade, which gleams in the light of the Aura. For the span of a few moments, Leo's blade isn't just a blade, but a manifestation of his will to cut. In those few moments, the White Knight executes a single, perfect strike, a slash from left to right, as if he could cut the entire battlefield.
The air is still. Then a wooden sign falls apart, cut in half. The head of a stone icon of Braska loses falls to the ground and shatters. Bits of scenery are suddenly cut, as if the world just realized the damage Leo did to it.
Those facing him aren't going to be any luckier.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with White Dragon's Protection! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Blue Master Lunn with White Dragon's Protection! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with White Dragon's Protection! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked White Knight Leo with White Dragon's Protection! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's White Dragon's Protection for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Blue Master Lunn! GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's White Dragon's Protection for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Black Wizard Borgan! GS: White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's White Dragon's Protection for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield! applied to White Knight Leo! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Hiro with Reaping Crescent! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Reaping Crescent! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Reaping Crescent! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Reaping Crescent! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Ashton Anchors with Reaping Crescent! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Reaping Crescent! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Ashton Anchors guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Reaping Crescent for 32 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elhaym van Houten critically Guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Reaping Crescent for 16 hit points! GS: Hiro guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Reaping Crescent for 66 hit points! GS: Hiro enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Reaping Crescent for 54 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Boudicca guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Reaping Crescent for 42 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's White Dragon's Protection for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Red Priestess Mauri! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Reaping Crescent for 99 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna makes Blue Master Lunn bleed. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless - but one she can't enjoy for long.
He attacks the others, but soon enough, he's upon her - first with a spinning kick that she just barely avoids, but then he reacts to her evasion with a powerful uppercut that sends her flying into the air, and leaves her seeing stars.
His physical prowess was not to be underestimated...but that is not the end of it. Still lifted from his uppercut, Lunn channels a powerful ball of chi. It grows, and grows, and then, with the roar of a dragon, it consumes everything, sending her slamming to the ground painfully.
If that were all waiting for her, it would be bad enough - but right as she slams into the ground, Borgan completes his spell, and she goes flying upward...and then slamming down roughly into the ground once more.
Layna lays there, still, on the ground. Her hat drifts slowly...
...and she reaches up, grasping it.
Coughing, Layna rises to her feet once more, affixing her hat to her head. She's bloodied, battered, and bruised...
...But not broken. Never broken. A wide grin crosses her face. It takes effort to keep standing. But even so, she takes one step toward Lunn. There's a slight limp.
"...Your words cut deep, Blue Master." She says. She stands up straight. "But if that's what you think...then I'll show you. I'll show you the strength of my resolve!"
And then, she recites an incantation. The howling of the wind grows even louder, and begins to spiral around Lunn. The storm grows into a raging cyclone, drawing in rubble in debris - and Lunn himself, if he does not escape it - and carrying them all upward, churning and battering everything within.
But, that is not the end of it.
Layna rushes toward Lunn, wherever he may be, her first hauled back...and then slams it forward, with enough force to dissipate the storm with a massive shockwave.
GS: Layna Manydays has activated a Force Action! GS: Layna Manydays has spent 1 Combo on Link, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Winds of Fortune! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays has launched an attack Link! GS: Layna Manydays has activated a Force Action! GS: Layna Manydays has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Stormbreaker! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
Acacia doesn't have time to concentrate on Borgan's spell any longer; she has just enough time to make sure that her shot hits home - feel her smile thin into a satisfied line, though one entirely without any humour to it - before the air explodes around them from the sheer force of Lunn's enormous attack and the magical followup that she'd tried to prevent.
The world lurches around her unnaturally, sending her back to her feet and then up into the air as she pinwheels for purchase; it's a minor miracle that she's hidden behind cover when she's slammed back down, because she feels her footing go out from under her, sending her tumbling to the ground in a heap.
Move, she yells at herself, muscles spasming, and then she's managed to find herself enough to push up to her feet, wincing from the effort of it. She's aware she didn't get the brunt of it - which leaves her wondering exactly what the brunt of it must have felt like.
When she looks up, Mauri is still taking on all comers, somehow. The slight girl in green exudes an icy force stronger than she'd ever have expected; nearby, Gwen explodes into a colour that stands vividly out against their muted surroundings, lighting up the air around her. Even if it's a wild attack, it's still something of a relief to see the flare of contrast against the grey all around her.
And still, the Priestess is talking so casually - that bile is back in her stomach before she even realizes it, but she simply can't find the words to say. It's obvious enough that there's no way to dissuade this army; the thought makes her suck in a breath of regret and one of cynical introspection, but she chases the sinking feeling away as best she can, feeling for her camera and hoping desperately that it isn't broken.
She's not got anything that can stand up to the power on display, not right now and not scattered as ARMS is. But what she can do is record as much of this as she can, remaining back in her hiding place with her finger hammering the shutter button as she tries to encompass the entirety of the fight in a rapid-fire set of photographs. What she can do is track Kamui, spotting the Reploid in the midst of the melee and starting to head towards her, using alleyways and cover to get closer.
Marivel may be gone - Acacia is not entirely sure, because it's not like she knows how Crimson Nobles work, and part of her expects the vampire to pop up again a week later as if nothing's happened - but she can at least make damn sure she keeps her promises to her.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
Lunn flies completely clear of her spell, and Ines once again has no time to react as Lunn hammers her with a dropkick, then a punch, then a backhand, sending the beastwoman stumbling back to the ground. It leaves her even more vulnerable to the sphere of destruction descending on the drifter and Yevon forces. She pulls up her arms to diffuse some of the blast, but it's still overwhelming. Then gravity inverts, and crushes. Ines cries out in pain as the attack crushes her. It takes her a few moments to get up. Blood drips from her mouth, and from a wound on her torso, making her white shirt red. She lands roughly
She looks to Layna, and and shakes her head a little. "You still standing?" She asks, checking in on her friend. The Guado is gone, routed or unconscious or dead, Ines can't even tell. Too much has happened. She shakes her head. This battle is already long lost. The sensible thing would be to retreat.
Ines has gotten real bad about doing the sensible thing.
A wind gusts around her, and shards of earth and steel are magicked into it. It's not as fierce a storm as Layna's, but it makes up for the sharp shrapnel inside it. Ines widens her arms, and then thrusts them forward, aiming to consume Lunn in the micro storm, and hopefully batter at him. It is a move of defiance more than anything else. But defiance is about all they have left.
GS: Ines Colina has activated a Force Action! GS: Ines Colina has activated a Force Action! GS: Ines Colina has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Shrapnel Twister! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.
As above, so below; both Borgan and Lunn bring the full power of one of the Four Heroes to bear, and Lemina knows better than to take chances. She decides to try something she hasn't tried before, and which is almost certainly ill-advised. But then -- what's the alternative, exactly?
Lemina starts casting two spells at once. One hand points straight up, meeting the shockwave of blue light with blue-white light of her own; it's scouring and forceful in its own way, and while it can't completely engulf Lunn's attack by a long shot, it *can* make it feel more like a punch to the face than a snapped neck.
Her other hand, meanwhile, points *down*; specifically, she starts freezing herself to the ground. It's a little painful... but it *does* much beat being thrown around by the whims of gravity under Borgan's command.
When all is said and done, Lemina's still standing -- and even looking like she's doing pretty okay, given what she's just been through.
Returning to ice, Lemina decides to go for... much the same tactic Borgan did earlier, actually. She's a little different in *how* she approaches it, though; she holds her staff forward in front of her, almost like a bow, and draws her other hand back. Dozens of arrows of ice conjure up, splaying out from that hand -- before, of course, lancing out toward Borgan.
<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.
A shift occurs in the white-haired girl who taught Dean how to swim. Something within the Girl from the Crimson Castle's eye narrows within that change. Something incredibly...
She can't remember...
Acacia is off to strike Borgan with the might of her pistol empowered with the strange power within her. She is silent for a moment as she murmurs to Acacia, "Affirmative, Master..."
So even now, she would still call her Master.
Elly pours her heart out about what gives them the right to do such a thing -- about big brothers that Mauri has incinerated alone. Something shifts within her heart, and yet...
Dash expresses that she should be what makes her happy. A lump in her throat seizes up, a trick of the mind given the mechanical construct of her mind.
"Marivel made me happy. She saw to me for all this time despite the pain in her own heart and the loss she has endured. And yet now..."
She looks up to the burning sky for a moment, which appears in black-white because of Lunn's power.
"I cannot even fulfill the promises I swore to her... ..."
This proves to be a bad moment to reminisce, because Borgan's spell finishes and she finds herself being drawn into that 'point' within the sky. There is a furrowed brow, and her eyes narrow for a moment further.
She collides against a chocobo cart, and for a moment is pushed through bales of hay and the wood alike--
"Hover."
And with a burst of power, perhaps the self-same Foot Parts within the Armour, she has mastered her own sensation of gravity; there are sparks from where she has collided, but other than that, she hovers in the air with white-hot flames erupting from her boots.
"... Red Priestess Mauri. I have to thank you. Thank you for making me remember..."
Her eye gleams again.
"I loved Marivel Armitage. No, I still do. It was a fog, much like everything else within my memory. But you have cruelly brought that memory to the shore of my mind..."
A pair of wings, once more obsidian and gold, erupt out of her back.
"You have the love of your brother, do you not? I cherish Marivel's love. As a sister. As a mother. As the person throughout my whole life who looked after, cared, maintained me through my years upon years of neglect and disrepair, even though she had no reason to. She wasted years of time, blood, energy, sweat, and put a cheerful and happy smile on her face for me."
She rises into the air.
"And you have taken that away from me. And for that..."
The armor reconstructs around herself-- and she has taken a vaguely avian form as she flies off into the distance. She is not so much human as she is a golden shooting star in the sky as she takes an incredibly big loop, houses erupting underneath her cruel and unrelenting stride.
"Within this machine powered by her soul..."
(BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dl_q1DSVws )
A glint in the sky. And then-- she comes after the Red Priestess.
"With her memory empowering me..."
The house closest to Mauri just explodes as she crashes through, with the sheer Gear-scale might of her attack, shrined within the golden cascade of annihilating energy.
And the beak-like tip of her form, crumbling under the intense heat of her own dive...
== WARNING! WARNING! ==
Kamui is a plane and she's flying straight for Mauri.
== WARNING! WARNING! ==
GS: Lemina Ausa has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Ice Arrows! GS: Lemina Ausa has gained 1 Combo! GS: Slow expired! GS: Lemina Ausa has completed her action. GS: Kamui has spent 1 Combo on Gatling, including 1 on Gatling! GS: Kamui has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Final Arte - Nova Strike! GS: Kamui has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"Whoa - wish Ruby had been here to see that." Hiro says in the wake of Ashton's attack. Though there's a flicker of grief there too. As he's glad that Ruby wasn't here to see Marivel die.
However - in that moment, he feels himself grow light. "What is happe-" And as he rises off the ground he realizes what's happening, "LEMINA! LEMINA DO YOU HAVE ANY SPELLS TH-" Impacting with debris he's suddenly interrupted from the stunning impact.
And at the mercy of one of the natural forces being turned against him, he turns to the winds instead. A wind current diverted here - another there. Trying to push away debris - to blunt the impact from him in mid-air. He can't really control his flight, he can just try to make it less deadly to him.
Fortunately when the sphere contracts, he's not one of those things that are gone. He hits the ground and feels wretchedly dizzy.
"Is that really your answer Leo? That you stand as one?"
Hiro seems almost stunned by the idea that Leo is sublimating his will to that of the others.
However he still sees him protecting his sister - left and right. That kind of loyalty would be praiseworthy in his eyes if it were disconnected from everything else.
Leo executes that single perfect slash, and Hiro hardly sees it coming. It rips through the shield he holds. Knocking him back in a tumble. End over end. Before he settles. His shield now sporting one long dent in it where his slash was barely fended off.
He casts that shield aside with a look of disgust. "Leo - your love for your sister is praiseworthy..."
Tremulously he holds up his blade. And there's something sad in his eyes. "But you said it yourself. You stand as one. That's your answer to this madness."
Running his opposite hand upon the length of the blade, he tries to steel himself for what's coming. "... butthat means you're responsible for Marivel's murder too." It is both equal parts angry and sad, how he pronounces that. Before the youth surges forward, his blade moving behind him. The wind at his back increasing his speed, the currents around his blade increasing the pressure and friction around it. Until suddenly, it ignites.
"And that means you can all- BURN-" Thundering forward, his feet stabbing at the broken pavement, he bends at the knees, and leaps forward swinging his swordarm into one titanic wave of flame that seeks to overcome his protectiveness over Mauri - to strike them both. Past them, he lands and tries to take a swing at Borgan with a flaming slash through his barriers, "-TO-"
Before he keeps rushing towards Lunn last of all. Who in his eyes has betrayed the trust they gave him in Meribia. With one final two handed slash that erupts like a fountain of flame across his position. "-GETHER!"
GS: Hiro has activated a Force Action! GS: Hiro has attacked White Knight Leo with Battalion Sword! GS: Hiro has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Battalion Sword! GS: Hiro has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Battalion Sword! GS: Hiro has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Battalion Sword! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna has three Guardians in the immediate environ, and not a one of them can save her from Lunn and Borgan.
They're forced to watch -- and forced to know how she feels, because they're experiencing it too -- as she's first flattened into a crater by the titanic blast of blue (gray) chi, then dragged upwards as helplessly as a doll, as a kitten taken at the scruff of the neck, and nearly ripped apart by gravitic forces.
She lands hard. Wakka and Tidus do too.
But then they come to understand the other side of that coin.
Yes, against the wrath of the Four Heroes, they failed to protect her.
But the look in her eyes is not one of suffering.
At least, not her own suffering.
It's the expression of a girl who failed to protect them.
Not anymore.
Radiance is rising off of her again. The grayscale of the world is irrelevant; first she's a candle, then she's a torch, and finally a beacon, glimmering, glowing, then blazing brilliant light in all directions.
It is white.
It isn't -- she isn't -- fire. She isn't water either, though the way that she overflows, sparkling, evokes a vessel too small to contain her own strength. As it flows across the square, it feels more like wind, like an island breeze. And Yuna herself, clearly beaten, clearly injured, stands at the center of it, arms upstretched, mouth opening, like a pillar herself, the tortured earth's response.
No more singing: now she speaks out.
Her voice, loud and strong and clear, is at least as dangerous as when it contained the hymn.
"Listen!" she cries. "You don't have to be afraid!"
Is she speaking to the Heroes, or to the Otherworlders, or to the Spirans?
Maybe all of them.
The light intensifies, dazzling, filling the space completely.
It's soft.
And... warm, so warm.
"Can't you feel it?" asks Yuna, her voice vibratto with belief, her promise earnest even further, beyond that belief. (Beyond belief, after all, is the realm of hope.) "It's waiting for us..."
Her eyes reopen, and there's something different about them.
Something restored, emerald and sapphire.
"...the future."
And her light -- her white light -- contains all the colors of the rainbow.
Of course it does.
But now, as the light fades, they're back. And they aren't just any reds and oranges and yellows and greens and blues and violets.
They're yours.
"A better world. The world Marivel believed in."
Yuna smiles, hands clasping before her loosely at waist-level, as though she's greeting that future, that world -- everyone.
And her eyes, at last, are dry.
"We can still make it... together!"
GS: CRITICAL! Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Layna Manydays's Winds of Fortune for 83 hit points! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Layna Manydays's Stormbreaker for 81 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ashton Anchors has posed.
Ashton - and Gyoro and Ururun - unleash all the power they can. And past events have shown one thing: Ashton Anchors is a Drifter who believes in honor, in kindness, in finding a better way.
The dragons on his shoulders have never shied away from the fact that they are monsters. Beasts without the same compulsions and quibbles as the man.
They hold nothing back.
Unfortunately, it isn't enough. The Four Heroes are blessed by dragons themselves, and stand quite prepared for an onlsaught. Though the battlefield is ravaged, none of them fall.
If only the same could be said for Ashton Anchors.
The Four Heroes give no mercy to the sellsword. The world first swims as gravity decides to stop caring for a few moments. Then - a crash down to earth. With a bright blue flame following him. A second wave of dragonfire washes across him. The sellsword is simply... invisible within the chaotic, chromatic maelstrom.
For a moment, there is the thought that he has joined Marivel.
Then - invisibly - a sword of pure will slashes across the flaming mass. And it splits the conflaguration wide.
Ashton Anchors steps out.
He's bloody. He's burned. Half his clothes are gone, what's left is dark with blood, he's limping and one of his eyes is pinched closed from a crushing blow to the side of his face.
But Ashton Anchors steps out of the fire.
He raises one of his short swords and points it at Leo.
"No."
And then he's a rocket. This is no time for half measures, and he never gives thought to one.
Blades sing through the air as the Sorcerous Swordsman dives at Leo with all the force he has left in his battered body. Symbological tattoos blaze across his body, coloring Ashton in a cacophony of blues, greens, reds and oranges.
He comes flying in the wake of Hiro's fountain of flame to give Leo a taste of the steel the White Knight begged for. Slash after slash after slash in a mad, desperate dance of blades.
GS: Ashton Anchors has activated a Force Action! GS: Ashton Anchors has spent 1 Combo on Link, including 1 on Gatling! GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked White Knight Leo with Cross Slash! GS: Ashton Anchors has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashton Anchors has launched an attack Link! GS: Ashton Anchors has activated a Force Action! GS: Ashton Anchors has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Ashton Anchors has attacked White Knight Leo with Sword Dance! GS: Ashton Anchors has gained 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Gon Guado has posed.
The Guado warrior does not take flattering actions within that designation, sneaking a selfish act as all struggle with the color being stolen from their sight. For all the trouble the Otherworlders have caused with this, he could have been moved to believe that sympathetic Otherworlders will deal with this issue and then remove themselves post-haste. Layna's seeming success in drawing blood might give him momentary confidence in this assertio--
There's Lunn again. How, Gon would think if he had the fractions of a second to mentally articulate Lunn's appearance versus aerial movement.
The bottle is stolen. (Lunn stole Potion!)
It is broken on Gon's face in an explosion of glass shards and medicinal liquid drops that do nothing to assuge the pain. The weave of his uniform is all that stops the stab into the neck from going so deep as to ensure a fatal end. The knife hand to the kidney picks up the slack in pain, doubling the taller man over and back once headbutted as he lie dazed on the ground. Lunn takes to the air as he gathers such incredible power of a discipline and means he's never seen.
"...What are you doing...!" Gon criticizes, spitting up blood. "Don't stand and watch him do it..."
Gon feels himself taking leave of the ground based on some other gathering force. He is of no ability to find his footing, or to cast a prayer in time, for there is also no space to do so. Detritus flies about and beyond him towards some gathered point, as a concussive force bears down upon him first. More things collapse and strike into the ground around him - but the whole of it overwhelms. The Guado body is not resilient against physical trauma, stripped of the certainty of his defensive technique and his sorcery. The veteran Guardian is launched across the ground among any number of other broken soldiers.
Taken of his consciousness - if not his life - he inwardly curses giving the Otherworlders that may yet stand to save Luca the time of day as Yuna starts to bring color - life - back into one's perceptions.
GS: Yuna has attacked Ashton Anchors with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Hiro with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Kamui with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Lemina Ausa with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Ines Colina with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Acacia Saitani with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Layna Manydays with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked White Knight Leo with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Blue Master Lunn with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Lulu with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Dash Caskett with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Bera with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Gon Guado with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Faith! GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Yuna heals Layna Manydays! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Layna Manydays gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Bera! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Bera gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Seraph Boudicca! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reload! Seraph Boudicca gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Gwen Whitlock! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reload! Gwen Whitlock gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Ashton Anchors! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Ashton Anchors gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Hiro! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reload! Hiro gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Ines Colina! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reload! Ines Colina gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Lulu! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Lulu gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Acacia Saitani! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reload! Acacia Saitani gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Elhaym van Houten! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Elhaym van Houten gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Dash Caskett! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reload! Dash Caskett gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Lemina Ausa! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Lemina Ausa enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Reload! Lemina Ausa gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Yuna heals Red Priestess Mauri! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Red Priestess Mauri gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a glancing hit from Hiro's Battalion Sword for 93 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Kamui's Final Arte - Nova Strike for 204 hit points! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a solid hit from Ines Colina's Shrapnel Twister for 152 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Blue Master Lunn! GS: Blue Master Lunn completely evades a hit from Hiro's Battalion Sword! GS: Yuna heals Blue Master Lunn! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Blue Master Lunn gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Hiro's Battalion Sword for 109 hit points! GS: Yuna heals Avril Vent Fleur! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Reload! Avril Vent Fleur gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: CRITICAL! White Knight Leo critically Guards a hit from Ashton Anchors's Cross Slash for 34 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors assumes the Avenger stance! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from Ashton Anchors's Sword Dance for 95 hit points! GS: Yuna heals White Knight Leo! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! White Knight Leo gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
Bera's face falters as she realize it wasn't enough yet. The Black Wizard was going to get his spell off, and her sense of danger was going off in several directions. With a grimace, she holds her sheathed blade tight and closes her eyes.
A small bubble of elemental power surrounds her as she does, the sheath glowing and with almost dance like kata movements, she moves her body and the blade to guard against the attacks that come her way. And when it's done, she remains standing with her haori and hakama ripped here and there while blood oozes slowly from swallow cuts.
But she's still standing even as she falls back a bit further closer to Yuna, Lulu, and the rest of the Lady Summoner's guardians.
GS: Bera has spent 1 Combo on Link, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Bera has attacked Bera with Trust in the Elements! GS: Hyper expired! GS: Bera has completed her action. GS: Bera takes a solid hit from Bera's Trust in the Elements for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield! applied to Bera!
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Gwen, a part of Avril thinks, floating against the tide that seems to have bundled up from the depths, a force she yet is able to steer. But that thought -- and the flicker of her gaze the courier's way, as she turns her attention away from the Red Priestess for the moment -- is as much as she can spare.
If Avril takes any joy in seeing the Priestess suffer so, she doesn't show it. Her expression remains as impassively cold as a carving of ice; she stands there watching as Mauri draws back to support the Black Wizard.
It's a strange thing. A personality that comes with the power, riding along on it like a remora on a larger fish -- or perhaps, instead, she is now the smaller riding on the greater? Is this how her control is meant to be, like riding a whirlwind? She can direct what she's doing, but--
Her blade is still stained with Mauri's blood, grey to her vision now. She advances, treading slowly on that space where Mauri now longers.
A space into which Leo intrudes. There is a shout, a warning. A flash. She lifts her blade to parry the incoming sword stroke.
It is not so much a blade as it is the White Knight's will. Even Avril, in her current state, stares at her sword as the greater length of Absolute Zero's blade clatters to the floor. She stumbles thereafter, red (grey to her eyes) blooming across her chest in a brilliant sash.
"Ah..." she utters; the remnant of the sword's broken blade vanishes, leaving her with but the hilt alone. Her free hand clutches at her wound. She sways for a moment.
The detonation unfolds just outside where she stands, the passage of the Blue Master unleashing his terrible power. Avril has enough time to turn her head to look--
Before energy unfolds about this spot in the city.
"No--"
Even Avril-as-she-was can break through Avril-as-she-is. For a blink of an eye, shocked realization scrawls across her expression, before she, too, is borne up into the air at speed.
She impacts a cart; the wind is forced from her lungs. She narrowly misses a discarded sword. She floats, impossibly.
And crashes back to earth.
When she rises, she does so slowly. One hand reaches for and finds Absolute Zero's hilt, another plants on the stone and levers her up. To the knees, and then painfully slowly, to the legs.
It's perhaps a blessing when the much-needed burst of energy from Yuna comes. Ice still spiders across the stonework, but it grows now, more than before. But
"I see," she says, brandishing the thing that is little more than a hilt. "You will not stop, until your very last breath."
Blue eyes rest on Mauri.
"Nor shall I. If it should cost me now all that I have--" She breaks into a run, a charge. One finger hooks the trigger, ready to pull it.
In her hands now is a hilt.
In her hands now is a blade of light.
With herself alone she traces the path in streamers of light, photons blooming and bursting with each stroke she delivers. She, alone, draws the gate itself, and at the very last moment, produces the key.
She drives Absolute Zero forward and for Mauri alone.
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has activated a Force Action! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Lemina Ausa's Ice Arrows for 93 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Hiro's Battalion Sword for 118 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Yuna heals Black Wizard Borgan! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Reload! Black Wizard Borgan gains 15 extra FP from Yuna! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has spent 2 Combo on Gatling, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters a Counter stance! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with Absolute Zero - Photon Gate! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has completed her action. GS: Yuna heals Kamui! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore reduces negative status durations by 3 rounds each! GS: Kamui enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Reload! Kamui gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
The Buster fire is strong, but not strong enough to take down Borgan's shield. Alone, anyway. Numerous people slam into it at once, to absolve it from manifesting. Punishment for such actions come swiftly however from the Blue Master. A powerful orb of energy is manifest and lanced into the ground, detonating like some kind of superweapon.
Dash quickly backflips and sidesteps quicker than anyone in fullplate armor (if that is what it is to these folk) has any right to be. He manages to avoid the explosion at least. However, the resultant spell works wonders drawing in all the debris made from it. Some of this crashes into Dash at painful speeds. A stagger forward, and a large section of loosened wall strikes him firm. A bending metal noise is discomfort to the ear, but moreso to its source.
"W... Where did Kamui go?" he asks upon standing. She was gone-- oh wait no, there she is. Divebombing the Red Priestess. Wait what?!
"Be careful...!" he shouts, but the odds of being heard are difficult to determine.
And yet, before his weapons can be turned on others, colors, and a kidn voice. He has heard that one before. On the Al Bhed ship. He knew her, if just in passing. Kind words, spiritual energy, and color, oh so much color. It made him idly wonder for a moment.
Did... Did he have spirit? This surely isn't the time for inward reflection, but it was one of those strange questions he came to know he would have to face one day.
Perhaps later. Now.
"Okay, no more spellcasting! Spellcasting is banned! It looks really cool and I wish I could do it but cut it out!" Dash points his right arm toward Borgan. At some point he switched out his weapon whilst taking cover from Lunn's attack. It is now a large missile launcher, Which fires off a salvo of mini-homing missiles, which seem to track the wizard quite well.
It isn't advised to touch them. Or be anywhere on the block with them, really.
GS: Dash Caskett has activated a Force Action! GS: Dash Caskett has spent 3 Combo on Interrupt and Gatling, including 2 on Gatling! GS: Dash Caskett has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Cluster Missile! GS: Dash Caskett has gained 2 Combo! GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Dash Caskett's Cluster Missile for 93 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
'It's my greatest joy, seeing the defiance. Seeing it fade.'
Elly pants as she looks at Leo, who is here. The staff doesn't make a great impact against the bulk of the White Knight. Elly pants more. Leo whirls away, and then she steps back, and then she pants again.
It's useless, she thinks for a moment. She tastes bile in the back of her mouth. That wellspring inside of her starts to feed her words, to say things. 'Is this what you like? Do you watch them die too?' They don't quite reach her mouth as she staggers backwards, the shaking come back as she looks at Mauri then.
There is a vast feeling inside of her that struggles to find some purchase.
Before anything can come of it, though, Gravity itself inverts and hurls her into the air along with the flagstones, the wreckage, the bodies, the fire, everything! The acceleration even does her a service - it puts out the lingering fire on her abundantly ruined but now not actively perilous clothing.
It reminds her too how much this hurts as she feels the waters of her body shift around. Soon enough she descends; she is not those who will not return from that gravitational singularity. She does topple, though, and on the way she feels something SLASH through the air towards her -
Yet -
Some kind of air strike? Elly thinks before she hits wreckage hard enough, flat on her back, to be dizzied and silent for a moment. There is a faint sheen of blue around her for a moment, and as she lays there, she can feel how much she hurts.
A vision comes to her. It is simple. There are only three figures on the play, though the air is thick with the smell of Lahan, the one time Elly went there. She sees Fei; she sees Fei throw a brutal kick towards Mauri; she sees Leo smash a sword into his leg; she hears Leo say what he said just now. There are screams. Am I screaming? Elly thinks.
She looks at her hands, nine and a half fingers. Her lips close. I'm not screaming, she thinks.
"... is this what it's like to have a sibling?" Elly says, quietly, to herself.
She reaches for her staff, but it's not to be found. Elly rolls on her side. She fumbles for a moment in the wreckage. What she finds is a bamboo pole. It isn't on fire, so there's an upside to everything.
Even as she pushes herself up to her knees, that feeling of futility comes back. It feels familiar - weirdly so, Elly almost thinks. Deja vu, almost. She has a stick and she can, if she isn't crippled with pain, move pretty well. She is against holy warriors following a goddess of cruelty. Her head tilts forwards.
And then, Yuna speaks.
You don't have to be afraid.
Can't you feel it?
It's waiting for us.
Elly lifts her head... and something in the pouch she has been wearing all this time gives way, probably from fire damage. Elly winces as the something inside of it falls out. It felt heavy. A bottle I forgot? she thinks, and looks down.
"... but... I thought it was...?" Elly says, as she reaches for the stone tablet. It was in her locker, wasn't it? It was there in the realm of Malevolence, wasn't it? Was it in her bag *all this time*?
Elly presses the piece of stone to her forehead. "I'm sorry," Elly says - perhaps to the far-distant Guardian. "I don't think this can be won. But..." And her eyes turn towards where others are diving in, assailing Leo, Borgan. Kamui is still striking inwards.
"... I guess the way of the sky can be deceptive."
Elly pushes herself to her feet, leaning on the bamboo staff, and raises the stone up in her left hand. She tries to will it. She prays, as far as she knows how to pray. And the moment is answered when in the chaos of war there is a rupture of a stonework water tank atop a damaged building that strikes the light just so and produces a rainbow above the wrecked street in which Elly came to light.
And it is light that forms a shape above where Elly is. It is light that makes that glyph; light that outlines the scholarly figure who appears, transient yet real. It is light that gathers in that sextuple-chambered revolver-gearwheel of a shape, and it is light that shines forwards, palpable, agonizingly bright. The packets travel with spiralling clarity, almost pleading for intervention.
And then they explode, bright and clear as a crisp noonday sun!!
Battlefields are always dimmer than you'd think.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated a Force Action! GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated a Force Action! GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated a Force Action! GS: Elhaym van Houten has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with May Solais Emsu Look Favorably Upon One Born In His Realm - Or - Sundog Flare??! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
It isn't over--that is what Lulu said, and it is what keeps her standing in that next instant. She cannot make the mistake of focusing on only one opponent again--and so it is that she looks to Lunn as he begins to call up the great energy of the Blue Dragon. It launches down. The flames of blue cast outward, and the shockwave of blue light that throws stones and statuary, that leaves a crater, erupts towards her, as well. Except, to her--it isn't blue. It's gray, like everything else. And it travels along the same paths that she saw before...
Lulu turns, and shapes magical power with her hands; having done it again once, her earlier fear that it might not work seems to have abated, and she meets gray fire with gray ice, shattering the stones before her in the annihilation of power that comes of opposite meeting opposite, though it strains her to do.
...And in the process she gains some understanding of the magic. Not raw dark pwoer, but earth. And his strained voice speaks of knowledge.
"...If this knowledge makes someone act like you," Lulu begins, but does not finish. She can tell--her magic could ahve worked--
But could have, would, all of that is elsewhere, and Lulu feels herself rising upward, towards the sphere in an instant. Earth, and its inversion, air, she reasons; she is not, however, practiced in air, so she will have to improvise. Unlike Lemina, Lulu chooses lightning instead of fire, the force that flows and redirects and charges used to attract her back towards the ground again, though the strain of it doesn't help any more than the debris that slams into her through the process. ...More to the point, however--
It is disturbingly reminiscient of Sin's mode of attack.
...And it's one Lulu couldn't hope to protect anyone from but herself. But when she lands, hard, she looks immediately--to Wakka, to Tidus... to Yuna.
And maybe there is something to the wind's call after all. In grayscale still, Lulu can see Yuna's light until she cannot see anytyhing else, and she does not have to see. And as colors return...
Lulu steps into place, beside Yuna again, battered, and inclines her head. The blood at her brow from a cut there is red. Her hair is black; a bruise at her shoulder is purpling. ...But they are real. They are true. They are not just pain, but represent the same as always; time later, talking over simple things like treating injuries, repairing clothes...
"...Yes," she says, as she looks to Yuna. "You're right. The future. The one we can make..."
She closes her eyes to focus, drawing in energy--not just the elements, this time, but something violet--something of simply life. "...No matter how dark the night," Lulu says, aware of fire and devastation all around then, "...Morning always comes."
Her eyes open--and purple energy exudes from her, from Yuna, from Wakka and Tidus and Lemina who is with them here, and Bera.
"But we won't see it if we don't get out of here. I think we've done all we can."
GS: Lulu has attacked Lulu with Reflex! GS: Lulu has attacked Yuna with Reflex! GS: Lulu has attacked Lemina Ausa with Reflex! GS: Lulu has attacked Bera with Reflex! GS: Stagger expired! GS: Lulu has completed her action. GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Lulu's Reflex for 0 hit points! GS: Quick! applied to Lulu! GS: Bera takes a solid hit from Lulu's Reflex for 0 hit points! GS: Quick! applied to Bera! GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Lulu's Reflex for 0 hit points! GS: Quick! applied to Yuna! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's May Solais Emsu Look Favorably Upon One Born In His Realm - Or - Sundog Flare?? for 47 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a solid hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Absolute Zero - Photon Gate for 184 hit points! GS: Lemina Ausa takes a solid hit from Lulu's Reflex for 0 hit points! GS: Quick! applied to Lemina Ausa!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Borgan's attack is released. Gwen darts forward, a jagged bolt of movement, arcing into the air as she is grasped by Borgan's magic. She falls into the grey sky, and is sent crashing through a cart, a wall, and eventually, the ground.
Lunn throws a pulsing, giant ball of chi, like a giant blue sun. Gwen is blown to the side.
Leo, feeling protective of his little sister, slashes towards all her attackers, leaving pain in his wake.
Blood seeps from a cut into her chest, staining the grass green Spiran tunic a morbid shade of dark red earth, if it was in color. But here in this space, it may as well be thick water, beyond Gwen's ability to truly notice.
There is just one thing that drives Gwen right now: the defeat of the Four Heroes.
To deviate past that would risk falling into the walls of noise that expand out beyond that, a thousand considerations, actions, sounds, impulses, a churning ocean of stimuli that her brain cannot process in the narrow space of time she can possibly perceive.
Her face is, in this instance, calm. She turns, casting her eyes, devoid of all color save for the beating silvery gold that begins to form in the back of her right iris, the artful spines that spring from her ARM, curving upwards like intricate gold jewelry, standing out against the grey.
All is well.
They will fall. Then, she... she will...
Why is she like this?
The colors seep back, hope and faith blooming under the banner of Yuna's wishes for the refugees.
"...." Gwen's breath speeds up, the redheaded courier squeezing her eyes shut against the beautiful assault. "... T-too much- I can't... I don't-"
Her sky is back, but why is her ARM like this? Why does it hurt? There are words, people talking, the sounds are loud and the colors are loud, the sky is so beautiful, the tapestry is back but where is her spot, her place, she needs to go back, but she plucked herself out, her thread is too large to fit back in, help. I'm sorry this was your sister this must be hard don't look like that i want you to laugh you knew this would happen, right Morning always comes, it's so bright and beautiful, will they listen?
(BGM Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue2ZsO-QTvY)
Beams of electricity streak outwards from a bent Gwen, bending outwards, an afterimage burnt in the air of jagged wings.
GS: That attack doesn't exist. [] GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Red Priestess Mauri with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Blue Master Lunn with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked White Knight Leo with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ashton Anchors with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Lulu with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Elhaym van Houten with The One is All! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's The One is All for 115 hit points! GS: Red Priestess Mauri takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's The One is All for 94 hit points! GS: Elhaym van Houten guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's The One is All for 119 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's The One is All for 207 hit points! GS: Ashton Anchors enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Blue Master Lunn takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's The One is All for 93 hit points! GS: Lulu completely evades a hit from Gwen Whitlock's The One is All! GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Fear is the sound a dragon makes.
Fear is a broken statue.
Fear is flight.
Boudicca leaps as if to flee the blue flames which hurtle down like a meteor, and she is the wind and she is too slow. The force of Lunn's might, announced in his scream, craters her; crafts a crater. She is left stunned, dazed, as gravity takes hold.
Like a leaf on the breeze Borgan's power picks her up, as if her plate and her silk weighed the same. She tries to reorient herself in the air, to correct her course - but there is only so much she can do, in the grip of gravity.
Especially when she has the core concept of carving to handle. She tightens her stance against Leo's blades, for what it is worth. It is not worth much. Something which plays at armor cannot fool an immaterial sword.
What goes up comes down, with a dull thud which suggests no wind magic softened the landing.
Boudicca does not, immediately, rise.
Leo will not turn away from this, she thinks; will not turn away from his sister, his Goddess. They will bring Luca misery, in the name of Althena. The earth screamed misery and it is grey, grey, grey.
That's when she hears a voice; when she sees a light. Boudicca does not know Yuna, only of her. But she sees, now, this light, this shining hope, the power of belief she brings forth.
"Beautiful," she says, voice hushed. It's the colour of vines woven into patterns - of a cowboy's hat - of skin struggling to humanity - the hilt of a knife, an owlet's feathers, a bottle half-full. These and more besides, the colours she knows so well.
She stands; she straightens.
She knows what's important to her.
It isn't defeating Leo.
It's keeping them safe.
And right now, the first thing she sees is Gwen, bent in pain. Gwen, who has always happily dove in first to protect those around her. "Gwen!" She yells, and the breeze curls around her, bulwark and support. "Gwen, you must focus! Please!" If she had the words, she thinks, she would be able to encourage her the way Gwen encourages everyone else, with casual ease and familiarity.
She does not have words, but she can at least try to see her safe.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Fortifying Tailwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Red Priestess Mauri has posed.
The white light hits Mauri. The light of faith. A small part of Mauri reaches out, struggling desperately to reach that light and to take it into herself. It's such a small part.
But it has a big effect. Mauri screams suddenly as the light hits her. She grabs at her head. Leo knows she has these attacks from time to time. Ever since she recovered from the plague, she'd always have episodes like this. She is no longer that sickly girl, but despite her power, despite everything she still gets these mental breakdowns. She has never pretended to be wholly stable.
Hiro unleashes his flame against Mauri while she has no defenses up. She has some resilience to it simply due to the Aura being within her but she's burning. Somehow, even with the aura, she is burning. She stumbles backwards and sees Kamui coming right for her. In this moment her eyes widen with bewilderment. She has no idea what she is looking at. Comprehension does not stop her from getting slammed into and splattered against one of the few buildings that hasn't been destroyed in the fighting. Her form CRACKS the wall as she drops into a pained crouch, just barely. She keeps smiling all the same. It must be very unpleasant for Leo to see this but his sister smiles through it all.
Avril sinks her blade into the priestess a second time. Mauri does not scream this time. She pants for breath, briefly, and then leans forward, looking the Ice Queen straight into the eyes.
"We're really similar, aren't we?" Mauri whispers for her and her alone. "Do you like casting away that weak side of yours? Does it turn you on?"
She pulls back, grimacing as the blade pulls out her, gesturing to herself as she blesses herself with Althena's power to seal her wounds shut.
Gwen shocks her over and over, but she endures it. She is sturdier than she looks, just like she told her brother. It's not her flesh that is strong, she'd say, but her fervor. That is why she can move through these wounds. That is why she can survive it. The truth, perhaps, is something else.
She raises a hand towards Yuna. Her hand is shaking though it isn't with fear, it's with the exhiliration of knowing that someone who keeps touching a sore wound is about to be incinerated into ash and smoke.
But then... Sundog Flare. Mauri shouts in alarm and is blinded! She backs away, howling in fury, but it's as good as any as a reason to get out of Luca. You've done your job and then some.
You're not the only ones.
???
Marivel feels a hand wiping away a tear she didn't know she had shed. She cracks open her eyelids.
Right in front of her is Anastasia. The Sword Magess smiles at the Crimson Noble. The vampire smiles back.
"Hey," Anastasia says. "Welcome back."
"Hey," Marivel says, bashful. "You can still smile at me like that? After everything I've done?"
"Of course." Anastasia says, pulling Marivel into a tight embrace. "I'm the one who put the burden on you."
Marivel leans into Ana. She doesn't dare close her eyes lest Anastasia vanish once more from her sight.
"Are you still worried about them?"
Marivel turns and sits to look at an image laid before her.
An image of Yuna unleashing not her fayth but her faith. She sees Hiro's trust nearby. Kamui's grief above her. Acacia's skepticism. Gwen and Elly's friendship. Avril's determination. Even as they struggle to surpass their limits, even as they look into their darkest selves and siphon off part of their power, Marivel can't bear to frown.
"Not in the slightest," Marivel says, touching the image with her hand. "They have shown me what it is to have faith, just as I always knew they would. Faith is not blind obedience to an ideology, to a belief, or even to a person. Faith is trust that a better world than what lies before you can come. Faith is not needing one another's secrets because you know your love for one another is real. It's coming together after a fight between friends. It's leaning against someone and closing your eyes. It lies in which is unsaid as much as what is spoken. To believe in the future. To not need heroes nor to rely on sacrifices."
Her gaze settles on another memory. Kamui saying she loves her. It's such a simple thing but the simple things are the hardest.
"You know, Ana." She laughs a bit. "I knew they would be the best friends I'd ever make and I waited for so long to meet them. I knew it would go like this but...Somehow..."
She rubs at her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut even though she and Ana both know that sometimes even a Crimson Noble needs to break down and sob. Sometimes true joy has that effect on a person. Even through this her smile is as bright as any sun.
"Somehow it was all still a surprise."
<Pose Tracker> Blue Master Lunn has posed.
Lunn lands in a three-point stance, fist punched into the ground.
And then winds rage about him. Layna's cyclone cuts and hurls him, but he controls that -- and then lands, skidding along. He raises his hand, blocking her fist. Arm skates against arm, and the block is enough to send a shudder of raw pain through him. He leaps back--
And Ines's wind catches him, pushing him backward further. He grits his teeth, and a couple more slashes are on his arms -- which, crossed, took the brunt of her spell. Hiro's blade comes at him next -- and with bloodied arms, he swings his hands together--
CLAP
--and catches Hiro's blade between them. Then, he throws the sword to the side, and lifts his chin. "...You don't understand, boy. You think this is cruelty? This is a kindness. This is reality. This is the sort of thing you have never had the courage to to make:"
He backhands Hiro away from him. "...A true decision. You follow her without asking why. That was what I saw, that day."
He feels Yuna's words and faith wash over him; he feels those emotions. Alien, strange things -- though the hardness in his eyes doesn't reveal that it disturbs him. He looks at her, and then echoes Ashton Anchors:
"No."
But the colors sweep back -- and Gwen fires beams of electricity. One catches Lunn, pitching him into the nearby wall of a building on the square. He grits his teeth.
And then there is a flash of white-blue light above him. A chunk of building crashes down before him -- obscuring Lunn. A massive roar echoes over the plaza, as a bound figure towers over: the Aeon, Anima, bound in bandages and chains. On her shoulder, Seymour Guado stands and looks down.
"GO!" he shouts. "Make for the north--flee the city! You've bought the time we need!"
<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.
Listen! You don't have to be afraid!
Kamui's optics start to flicker, and light starts to come back to her world. Yuna's words filter through her, attempting to reach a cold and broken heart... a heart that was not a heart in the first place. A faroff genius' simulacrum of a human heart. With all the limitations human technology entails, with all the woes and fears a human heart goes through...
The elderly woman chuckles as her daughter pumps her hands and asks a question. "Where is she? She is gone now, dear daughter. The survivors of this era do not remember her name. It is all lost, to the great fire. You know your history, don't you?"
Can't you feel it? It's waiting for us...
The great mechanical avian doesn't so much make a landing as just crashes through, and her camera-eye moves to Mauri for a moment longer. As she still smiles. How could she still smile? It further enrages her. That she can still...
Do you like casting away that weak side of yours?
It's not addressed to her. But she hears it none the same.
The Girl of the Crimson Castle's lips purse.
The Future.
"...I don't... belong in the future..." she whispers, as she uplifts and her Armour starts to furl towards its more humanoid form once more. It is shredded, bands of energy crackling and seizing about her. The attack is a costly one, it would seem.
"I'm..."
A better world. The world Marivel believed in.
She grasps her hands to her head again. Her red camera eye clenches and relaxes in rapid succession; she's spasming once more.
"But inevitably, one day, she will wake up again. And as much as I would like to believe otherwise... there will come a time when she must feel that pain again. Because the world demands so much from each of us..."
"I don't want to live in a world without her..."
She throws a look to Acacia. Towards Dash. Towards Elly and Gwen and Avril--
She hears Seymour's call. They have to flee. The enormous Aeon, Anima, emerges as another building collapses.
"I can't... anymore... Master, what should I..."
We can still make it... together!
"I can't... I can't...!!" she shouts in distress. "It's too much... it's too much..."
And then her form is engulfed in that same shell of light. And true to Seymour's word, she goes, as she teleports upwards into nothing more than a pillar of pure blue energy.
But...
But to where?
"Hmm. If I told you where she was buried, you'd go scurry out to the wasteland and find her. I know your type. You're very inquisitive. Heh heh."
"Maybe one day, one of your descendants will meet her, if fate allows..."
She pats her beloved red-haired granddaughter on the head.
"Dear Saitani."
GS: Kamui has left the party...
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
"Mauri," Leo says, as he glances over his shoulder at the younger woman there. He half-expected her to be on the ground already, and the fact that she isn't the relief he hoped it'd be. They did this to her. They did this to her in their anger because she dared--
dared kill--
Mauri told him she wasn't that sickly girl anymore, that he didn't have to worry. But that's all Leo can think of when he sees her, bleeding and battered, a woman he doesn't entirely recognize. It was Ronfar, Leo reminds himself, repeating one of the thoughts he uses to keep more uncomfortable thoughts at bay. It was Ronfar. Any deviation from the sweet, innocent girl he remembers is his fault.
He hears her scream. She's having another attack. She's having another attack, and there isn't a damned thing he can do about it.
"MAURI!" Leo screams, his eyes wide with sudden terror. He sees Ashton rush him out of the corner of his eye, twists to the side, sweeps his blade up to smash Ashton's away. The ringing sound of steel on steel echoes through the square, and the impact of the hasty strike reverberates up Leo's arm. It hurts. Heldalf would've chewed him out for making such a novice mistake. Hiro comes up from another angle, attacks in tandem with Ashton. Blades carve into Leo's flesh, and the only thing he can do is weather their assault. Fire licks across the White Knight's skin as he rushes for his sister. The White Dragon's power blunts the worst of it, but he's still bleeding when he kneels by a blinded, howling Mauri, puts a hand on her shoulder. "Mauri!" Leo shouts. "Mauri, it's--"
Warmth washes over his body. It isn't Mauri's. Leo looks across the field, sees Yuna, feels his guts twist. He remembers what Ashton and Hiro told him. Althena's orders were clear. Yevon would not tolerate their presence, nor would it allow them to hunt Sin.
The monstrosity from the stadium appears, looming over the battlefield. Leo rises, stands over Mauri, and draws his sword. "Stay behind me," Leo says. He has to protect her.
And yet, he can't shake the feeling he's already failed to.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna's grin becomes just that much more malicious when she can see a brief hint of pain out of Lunn. She leaps back...but nearly stumbles. She's reaching the limit of what her body can handle.
And just as she feels like she's about to collapse...she feels something wash over her. A rainbow of light and emotion, of belief, of faith, and the hope for a better future.
Layna's stance becomes that much more stable. She looks back, toward the Summoner Yuna. She offers her a grin and a tip of the hat.
"...You're right. Can't very well stumble now, aye...?" Layna comments. She lowers herself into a fighting stance...but just as she does, she hears a massive roar.
"What now...!?" Layna hisses...but when she looks up, it is not an enemy - as threatening as it may look.
It is the Aeon, Anima - and her Summoner, Seymour.
"...Right. You lot heard the man, let's get out of here!" Layna says. "Ines, you good?"
Upon receiving an answer, Layna recites an incantation. A wall of wind rises into existance to obscure and defend the movements of herself and the allies nearest to her to facilitate their safe escape and when it clears, she's gone - having brought as many wounded along with her as she could.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
Yuna's faith returns colour to sight and strength to exhausted limbs. It's an unusual feeling for Ines, one whose own faith is at best lapsed. "You're a better person than I..." Ines mutters, at the conviction to still hope and sue for peace. Still, there's no changing the fact that keeping this battle going is fruitless. In a battle of attrition, the four heroes will win. Ines can feel
The sudden shriek of the Red Priestess and the towering form of Anima signal a chance to escape. The time to flee a brutal battlefield. Ines grimaces, and backs away from Lunn, not taking her eyes off him until she's clear- she hopes- from his attacks.
Those who can't escape on their own find a helping hand. It's the least Ines can do here, as she retreats.
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
She's still moving between pieces of cover, trying to judge whether she should take another shot, when Acacia feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise. It seems obvious, at this point, that their battle is a running one - she knows she should really be retreating - but she can't leave well enough alone just yet. Not until the reporter knows for sure that Marivel is actually gone, or somehow through a miracle still there. If she can just slip through the battle a little more, just keep her head down, then perhaps she can glean that much.
It would be a terrifically cold comfort, given the state of destruction they're leaving Luca in, but it would at least be something.
But that sensation stops her cold, and forces her to look up into the air. It isn't Mauri's howl that does it, or Leo's answering roar - though she certainly derives no small amount of grim satisfaction from both - or the enormous sight of the Aeon Anima towering over Luca in a very unique sort of salvation, the sort of salvation that looks like a mummified corpse in bondage. (She should wonder about that, she thinks dimly, dazedly.)
Instead, it's the wail from Kamui as her armour starts to give way and shatter, reverting her to her previous, emotive form - but bringing back all those emotions at the same time. "Kamui!" she calls, her voice already hoarse with effort and pain; she grits her teeth, pushes down the swell of nausea and the fear of leaving her stealth, and tries again. "I'm over here! I--"
That's as far as she gets before the Reploid warps out in another burst of that blue light, leaving Acacia staring wide-eyed at the empty space - and then gritting her teeth hard enough that her head throbs with pain, nearly rounding on the pair of sibling Heroes.
Her body shaking, she glares at them both for a long moment, brow drawn tight, hissing air through her teeth. But the words don't come - there wouldn't be any point to them, she knows - and with an effort she turns her back on them both, pushing her feet into a run for the north gate, camera held securely in her hand.
<Pose Tracker> Ashton Anchors has posed.
The attack is desperate. It's almost all Ashton has left in him - beaten and bleeding, he's tapped out.
But it was enough. Enough to buy the time for... Seymour?
As Leo retreats to protect Mauri, Ashton doesn't pursue. Instead, he stares at Anima. For a few moments, only one thought runs through his mind: what is THAT.
Seymour's command snaps him out of it, however. And Ashton can't deny it - he's held back the Four and their forces as long as he could. Anything more is just going to get him hurt more (or worse).
Backpedaling, a terribly beaten Ashton takes one more parting shot. "You have seen our conviction and our steel, White Knight! Perhaps next time you'll put yours to a less foul cause!"
A little bit of Ashton is ashamed for saying that. He's jeering at the man while retreating under cover of... whatever in God's name Anima is. But right now, Ashton really wants four phials of heal berry tonic, a decent meal and a week in bed. He's a little grumpy.
Also a bit off-balance from blood loss, but he's not going to admit that.
Except in narration.
Elhaym van Houten (Elly) pages Gwen Whitlock, Hiro, and Seraph Boudicca: Okay I got it, we cut Gwen in half.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Yuna's call for a better world makes him ashamed on some level. He wishes he could be so strong as to say things like that. Make those calls for what Marivel believed. Unfortunately on some level he's angry, and knows it. And sometimes you just have to go with what you feel. The smartest thing would have been for them never to have been there in the first place.
But he's here because he understands that how he feels is important.
It's fortunate that Yuna's magic, that wondrous prismatic light touches him.
Because when Lunn catches his blade, he suddenly understands how close he was to death. This is where his anger has led him.
And Lunn's criticism dials that shame up to the nth degree. Backhanded away like a child, he hits the ground, his sword falling like a clatter. Struggling to get himself back upright. "You're... not the man I thought you were."
His accusation hit home on some level. He doesn't know much at all about Lucia... but... in his eyes he doesn't need to.
"... I know why I follow her."
Which is when he sees the wild electricity emanating from Gwen. And his eyes grow wide as he sees the ephemeral wings. "Gwen...?" It's quiet. Stunned.
It is the Aeon that saves them.
As it rises in the air, he picks up his blade, limping to Gwen and Boudicca like a whipped dog as quickly as his legs can carry him. Watching his friend burn herself out. "Ah Gwen - come on - please... we need you.
The injured youth says quietly, emotionally as he checks to make sure she's still breathing. He says that and means it, before eyeing Boudicca, "Can you help me carry her out of here?" There's desperation in his plea, like grief that he's only beginning to truly feel, "I don't want to lose anyone else today."
<Pose Tracker> Bera has posed.
Bera grimaces as she watches the field. The line is holding, but it's by no means ensured to last. Winning might be not be out of the question, but it's to slim a chance to hold out for. Specially as the samurai glances at the other's fighting to protect the city and notes most of them are much more seriously injured than her even with the Lady Summoner's and other's healing.
Then Anima appears, and the newest Maester on it's shoulder. Bera grimaces, her face screwed up in a look of distaste mingled with unwanted relief. The last thing she wanted was to be saved by a any of the Maesters, but now wasn't a good time to argue. She slips the sheathed Edge of Four Elements back into the loop at her waist and begins to retreats.
She stops long enough to gather Gon Guado up over her shoulder as she goes, unwilling to leave a fellow Yevonite. She doesn't stop for it, but she does look at Lulu to see if her and the other Guardians need a hand too with themselves or Lady Yuna as she goes.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
The sword of light cuts deep. And Avril in this moment gazes at Mauri, her expression impassive.
Until Mauri says those words.
'Do you like casting away that weak side of yours?'
Avril's eyes widen, her lips part. Shock blooms across her face like a frozen-over lake cracking open.
No answer comes to her. In this moment, she has no answer.
Accept it.
With enough power, nothing is impossible. Anything can be done.
Is that what... Dean's saying...
She draws back, freeing her blade simply by releasing the trigger. The light fades, she staggers backwards. Ice, brilliant and blue-white, spreads wildly for a moment.
And she shakes her head, defiant against even these crawling doubts, her weakening hold on herself. The blade -- whole, as before, as if it had never been cut down -- materializes from the hilt. Right now, she--
Light, glistening and brilliant shimmers in wheels across the air.
There is a roar close enough at hand. A familiar presence, weighty in the air. Avril's gaze snaps upwards.
Anima.
The Maester, Seymour Guado.
Something... something plucks at her mind. But right now she can't...
She struggles, visibly, then hauls tight on the metephorical tethers. It's hard, now, to stay in control -- the urge and promise to let go in either direction is a temptation almost too hard to resist, to either sink into unconsciousness or to let the power take over. Just a little more. Just a little more power. She needs to...
'You've bought the time we need!'
It cuts through everything, strings her flagging consciousness along a line she can follow.
She'd done enough. She can stop. She just needs to get out of here, first.
At a run, control and power slipping from her in rivulets, Avril races for the north gate.
That's right. That's right.
Didn't she promise... she'd go swimming with them again soon...?
I want to--
That thought buoys her, more than anything else can.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Mauri is screaming. She's having some kind of - of reaction. Maybe someone poisoned her, Elly thinks, or hurt her head.
There is a stillness within Elly for a moment as she lowers the Medium.
That tiny part, the crack down into some basement, thinks something cruel. It does not quite gel into a word. It feels guilty, somehow; dirty, Elly thinks, as she exhales and leans against the bamboo. The Blue Master, though. He's still fighting.
Elly wonders, though, if this means... they can flee. That terrible purpose is fading from her. Maybe it was just fatigue; perhaps it's that her back doesn't seem to be to the wall. Then something immense appears and ROARS, and Elly gazes up at the horrific form of Anima--
But it's a friend. That's one of the Maesters.
They're friends now, Elly thinks distantly, aren't they?
And then she is struck by lightning!
No, no; not that dramatic. The arc of the bolt that comes from Gwen reaches a piece of retaining metal and the spark jumps into the back of Elly's thigh, making her leg spasm hard enough for her to reel, letting out little pained noises to herself as she struggles for breath, to regain control. She curls her toes - she MAKES her toes curl - and then she looks up, and she looks ahead, and she walks towards Gwen.
It takes her a while. On the way she tucks her Medium into her hip pouch again. There is a hole in the bottom of the pouch; it will hold nothing. There is nothing in the bag next time Elly checks, but also nothing falls out. It takes her a while...
"... hi, Hiro," Elly says, weakly. "I see you beat me to it. Um -" She shuffles the salvaged stick a little, but then she kneels, if very carefully, on one side of Gwen. "I can..."
"... at least through the gates."
"I have to find Fei and everyone else," Elly says, with a sort of monotone that suggests she's talking to keep herself going. "They went out, through the sewers, I... Mostly I came back because we'd passed a collapsing building... that strange man, Ethius, he was with us. We took that route once before, it's a little funny when you think of it like that... is Ruby alright? Thank you," this towards Boudicca, though Elly doesn't so much 'finish the sentence' as 'stop talking in the middle, as if she reached the end of the page and didn't have another one to read.'
<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.
Color floods back, and Lemina feels the relief of feeling... well, connected to the world again. She doesn't really have time to appreciate it, though; it is most definitely time to leave. Having gotten her final parting shot in with Borgan, Lemina finds herself being shouted at to leave -- and she sees no reason to stay.
She does find herself just a little more purpose, though, as she retreats -- what has transpired has been a... chilling, reminder, of exactly what the Guard is capable of. In more ways than one.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Rise, rise Anima, the unconscious feminine, dark saviour. Seymour sounds the retreat.
A teleport-pillar pierces the sky. There's no time to focus on it.
Hiro rushes to Gwen, as well as he can; asks for help. Elhaym is come. It is a strange group, for Boudicca to find herself in. There is much could be said.
Instead, solemn: "You will lose no one else this day."
Boudicca weaves air about them, bolstering them, cushioning them; particularly, to try and offset the weight of Gwen's ARM. Secondarily, to give them the fleetness of foot to escape. She is more occupied with their flight than her own: air cannot be caged like flesh. These are the mortals she said she would defend.
If Althena does not care to protect humanity...
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Like notes from plucked strings, the charged souls fall, one by one, victims of their own pasts, memories, or burnt out, wanting to return to promises of better times.
Bodies, regardless if they're metal, something humanoid, or something inbetween, can't stay at this state forever. They need to rest. Only a select few... no.
But that's not a story for here.
Gwen doesn't drop to the ground, but the moment she feels that breeze from Boudicca, it's as if all strength leaves her at that moment, having the opposite effect than what Boudicca intended, but it's a good outcome either way. Gwen gives in, the outburst leaving her pleasantly hollow.
She doesn't have to think about all this static. She can go back to that skinny veneer of perception she had before, where she could actually focus.
But the colors were beautiful, in their own way-
Gwen's pulse is still there, thankfully, her eyes moving underneath closing eyelids as the three collaborate to lift her with their remaining strength.
She listens, to the pleas, to Elly's talking, to the rush of gentle wind.
"... cream rinse d'youse."
The fact that her eyes are gazing towards the sky and not to one of them specifically should make this question a little more confusing.
"Tomorrow. 'lluse it. Rest."