2020-07-11: Metal Impure
- Log: Metal Impure
- Cast: Ida Everstead-Rey, Eleanor Klein, Yuna, Seraph Lanval, Zhang Xiumei, Zed, Seraph Boudicca, Fei Fong Wong, Avril Vent Fleur, Gwen Whitlock, Seraph Ragnell, Erzebet Lefanu
- Where: Great Sea
- Date: July 11, 2020
- Summary: As the Primarch of Fray broke free from their prison, Astrid of the Method made off with the arm she risked everything to obtain. Unfortunately for everyone else, this arm was--and is--attached to one Ida Everstead-Rey. Having languished in an ancient Hyadean facility for almost a week, Ida initiates a daring gambit, transmitting her location to ARMS, and to her other Drifter friends. It's up to them to rescue Ida before the rest of Odessa gets their hands on her.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
THE JOTUNN CRUCIBLE, NORTHERN AQUVY
SIX HOURS AGO
Ida lies on a surgical cot, blinking blearily as reality drips back into place. The tang of chemical disinfectant has become a familiar companion, as has the pitiless gleam of the sampling bay's lights. When they return to her, they bring a sense of relief. She's alive. She's still here, but she's alive. Ida clings to these points of contact as further sensation returns. She's been stripped to her undergarments, and the chill air has raised gooseflesh on her bare skin. A dull, prickling pain rests between her shoulderblades. Her whole body feels like it's made of lead.
With great effort, she manages to raise her head, and look around the room. Her cot sits next to one of the sampling machines--its long, thin needle-arms gleam in the light. Some of them are missing, now. Her clothes and gear lie in a neat pile next to one of the room's terminals. The doors, as usual, are locked. She doesn't see Astrid anywhere.
Panic surges in Ida's chest. The last thing she remembers is Astrid putting her under. What happened? Why does she ache all over? Then Astrid's words come back to her, and she remembers.
'All I need from you is a tissue sample.'
She must've done it, then, Ida realizes. Astrid now has no excuse to keep the rest of Odessa from claiming her as a hostage--using her against ARMS, her friends, and her family. She remembers what happened to Riesenlied, and to Xiumei, and the panic grows. Ida grips the sides of her cot, and feels the cold metal beneath her hands. She starts to breathe, just as Lily taught her. Slowly, the panic begins to fade. One thing at a time, Ida reminds herself. First she needs to get dressed.
Her clothes are still dirty, but Ida puts them on, anyway. By the time she's buttoning up her shirt, she's turned it into a meditative exercise. Her gear is still missing, but by the time she's fully-dressed, she feels more prepared. Only then does Ida glance at the nearby terminal.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The device has been powered off since she first arrived, but Ida has been tinkering with it every chance she's gotten. Centuries of neglect had taken their toll on its components, but with a little jury-rigging, she's managed to fix the worst of it. She hasn't risked turning it on, for fear of alerting Odessa--but now, she has no choice. Ida steels herself. She reaches out, and presses a finger to an indentation in the machine's side. A moment passes, and nothing happens.
Panic flares again, and Ida breathes deep to try and still it. Then a low, ragged rattling emanates from within the computer, growing stronger and steadier until it's a comforting hum. The touchscreen flares to life, static-spangled but familiar. The interface is just like the ones she'd used in the Photosphere. Just like the ones she'd used to create the Voice, and broadcast its impassioned call to action to the entirety of the structure's inhabitants. The directory setup is probably different here, but she can learn it as she goes. She has to.
Ida pages through the ancient Hyadean system, using what she knows of runic script to find her way. It takes a few minutes, but she finds the base's communications system. A few runes indicate the presence of a node in the Hyadean communications network--an old radio tower. It needs a biometric signature.
Ida's right arm begins to stretch and flow, returning to the shape it had taken in the aftermath of the graft's intrusion. Long, lean, and muscular, with bronze-tinted skin and bright red tattoos--it's Fafnir's, but Ida maneuvers it as deftly as her own, because it is. She presses a thumb to the scanner, and waits until the scan completes. Warmth wells up beneath the little touchpad, and is gone. The notification text disappears as Fafnir's biometrics override what little security remains intact. For the first time in almost a thousand years, the facility's radio tower crackles to life.
BIOMETRICS ACKNOWLEDGED - BEGIN PRIORITY TRANSMISSION
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida takes her lip between her teeth, and remembers what her family's clerks taught her about the telegram. Keep it short, sweet, and efficient--longwindedness is for Memory Cubes and their infinite storage space. She doesn't have much time. This demands efficiency.
"SOS," Ida says. "Hyadean facility, East Blackrock Island, Odessa forces present. Astrid present. Requesting immediate extraction." She pauses for a moment, and that moment stretches out until it feels like forever. Who, besides the operators at the Chateau, would be listening? "Calling Valeria Chateau, Karlsefni, and any anti-Odessa irregulars. SOS, Hyadean facility, East Blackrock Island. Expect heavy--"
Ida hears the clunk of the door's deadbolt, and trails off in mid-sentence. She looks up from the computer, even though she knows what she's going to see. Astrid steps into room, her spear in hand, her officer's cloak swirling around her. For a long moment, her face is completely expressionless. Ida's heart all but leaps into her throat. Is this it? she thinks. Is this where--
Astrid manages a smile, strained but genuine. "Resourceful of you," she says. "Good."
Ida looks down at the computer. PRIORITY TRANSMISSION SENT, says the screen.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
THE JOTUNN CRUCIBLE, NORTHERN AQUVY
NOW
East Blackrock Island is as foreboding as it ever was. A thick layer of clouds blankets the night sky, and the waves lash against the rocky coast. The layers of security around the Hyadean facility were weakened by both Odessa and the Drifters who followed them inside during the first incursion--but they're still there. It takes time, focus, and luck to navigate the maze of mines, turrets, sensors, and other defensive measures. But Ida's in there, and God knows what Odessa is doing with her.
Working together, the team has found a route inside. It leads through one of the outdoor JOTUNN proving grounds--a wide field tiled with Living Metal plates. At any moment, it could turn into an ever-shifting obstacle course, but for now, it is silent and still. On the far side, a set of hangar doors lead into the Crucible proper.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
ARMS received the message, and so Eleanor Klein received it as well. Odessa forces present--Astrid present. Requesting immediate evacuation...
The operators at the Chateau naturally passed the message along, and the Crest Sorceress quickly readied herself for battle and for travel. Picking up her rifle, she checked over Bright Ascalon and packed up the rifle and some ammunition to take with her along with her Crests and some sturdier shoes than her usual. Inside--
"Ah, this way," Eleanor says, pointing out the open passageway ahead of them, rifle on her back and satchel at her side. She has already done a lot of work getting here, but the real danger is yet to come.
Shifting orange hair back behind a pointed ear, Eleanor starts near the rear of the group towards the hangar doors.
DC: Eleanor Klein switches forms to Crest Sorceress Eleanor!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed. <SoundTracker> Yuna's Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJvFCkT10uc
"Kimahri not like this place," grunts the Ronso.
Yuna peers up at him a little quizzically, more confused than anything; it's very unlike him to complain, enough so that she can't help but read into it. Leaning in for a big blue hug, she whispers in his ear -- well, below his ear, even on tip-tip-tiptoes.
"Don't worry about me, Kimahri! I'm really okay."
"No aeons," Kimahri rumbles back, cutting to the chase. "Yuna in danger."
Yuna holds on more tightly. "I know things are different now, but... in a way it's much more like how we used to be, right?"
Kimahri, sensing an oncoming critical hit to his feelings like Indiana Jones' neckhair-trigger acumen for giant boulders, narrows his eyes a little at his ward.
She is undeterred in her affections. "It's you and me, together," the girl insists. "I've never been safer since the very first day we met."
Kimahri's nose twitches.
"I promise to be careful," Yuna presses. "But this is important... Ida needs help."
Kimahri closes his eyes.
He can no more stop her from rescuing her friends than he can stop her from rescuing Spira. And -- even knowing it was coming -- he can't stop his heart from warming, either. She's inexorable.
They go ashore, and join the landing party.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Lanval's hanging around Meria Boule for his own reasons (most of which are probably related to Oracle duties, some of which appear completely indistinguishable from the concept of 'lounging around and sponging booze') when suddenly there's a lot of mobilizing from Drifter types he recognizes are a) close to Ida, b) are suddenly mobilizng, and c) overhears someone mention aloud that they got a lead.
He's not sure how (he didn't ask), but he's glad someone found a way to her - to East Blackrock Island. However easy it might be to criticize his ineffectual attempts to locate Ida prior, he helps take point in getting through a lot of the traps and defenses because most of them can't really sense him (with emphasis of 'most').
Old Hyadean architecture will never fail to be unsettling for him to traverse through. Any injuries incurred on the expedition, he'll tend to swiftly with healing waters - but nonetheless, at the present he's out there with the rest in that inactive JOTUNN testing field.
"...Nothin'sh movin'." Lanval remarks, holding his ever-heavy drinking gourd in both hands close to him defensively, standing far more upright than he typically manages, one eye opening half-way as if suspicious of his own assertion.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Xiumei knows the very basics of what happened. If ARMS is good at anything, it is reports and paperwork. She looked over the paperwork; she might not know the specifics of what a Primarch is.
But when the SOS came, it was simple enough: time to move out.
Xiumei walks along, in her armored form. Model AV has that slight glow to it, from the portions that are lit up -- and her eyes. She doesn't walk behind Eleanor, though, but ahead. She looks at the hangar doors, and then she nods her head. She holds a hand out to her side.
Cubes of data swirl up, take form, and become a cylinder. Then, a beam of light erupts from it. The pale green beam saber is a flashlight as much as anything else. She slows to a stop.
Then she glances over her shoulder, back at the summoner who came with them. Marivel's friend; someone that she would be very sad, if she had a problem. "Thank you for coming, Lady Yuna," she says, with a smile, and polite dip of her head.
Someone to keep an eye out for. Xiumei looks back ahead, takes a deep breath -- feels her back start to go rigid -- and then there is a gentle, less familiar voice in her mind.
<<Relax. You've got this.>>
"...thank you, Miss Avile," Xiumei says, with a smile, and then her shoulders stop being so tense.
DC: Zhang Xiumei switches forms to Biometal Model AV!
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
'The perfect pose is both artful... and swift!!!' - Some smart person, possibly Wandering Swordsman Gilgamesh, or maybe just Phantom Thief Siegfried, or maybe just... the wind...
Like the wind.
Wind...
The wind goes 'WOOSH' as something mossy-haired and battlesuited drops out of the sky. A great shadow soars across the beach as a red and gold giant cuts through the clouds and hovers ominously over the distant hills. A cloud of sand blasts into the air as the dark figure smashes into the ground... But as it disperses, he's already nowhere to be found!
Well. Kind of.
Like the wind, he's already running. Like the wind, he's already far off in the distance. Very much unlike the wind, he is screaming at the top of his lungs--
"HOLD ON IDA," Zed, Ultimate Dark Metal Hero, shouts as he races fast as his legs can carry, "IIIII'M COMIN'! BELIEVE... BELIEVE IN THE SIGN OF--"
Zed--ta
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
THEN
"I do not understand why the fliers have been ineffective," Boudicca says, to her new friend Gwen Whitlock, and she's been walking in circles around her this whole time but that's probably fine? It's probably fine. "I think I was very clear! Did I truly not capture her likeness? Or, perhaps, have communication standards changed so much..?"
This is the precise moment a PRIORITY TRANSMISSION rolls through - which, if anything, answers that question, though perhaps not in the temporal direction she was indicating.
NOW
The Seraph Boudicca doesn't have much technology to help the infiltration effort, but she is the Seraph Boudicca, and Hyadean facilities really don't have much capacity to deal with her personally. It's not so hard for her to sneak ahead and sabotage systems so everyone else can get through.
"Ah - this is... Living Metal? We must be cautious," Boudicca says, quietly, she has spoken quietly this whole time. "But that is surely the way inside..."
She has a light step, which is one way to describe not stepping on the ground at all, floating an inch or two above the ground. Looking back to everyone who has come to save Ida - her Seer - her first human friend, she asks: "... are we prepared?"
(This may be an unnecessary preparation in the wake of the immutable mark of ZED.)
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Ida is one of Fei's closest friends. He is not likely to get the transmission, not being a member of ARMS, but he does have a piece of empathite on him and when
AMY FAIRCHILD: HEY GUYS! WE FOUND IDA!!
KATE LINDBERG: She sent out a message out from the Jotunn Crucible requesting extraction.
Fei blinks several times in confusion. He turns his empathite over in his hand.
"...Hello?" He asks.
AMY FAIRCHILD: AHHH!! Get off the line you jerk!
KATE LINDBERG: Ah--can we help you?
Fei squints for a long moment and shakes the empathite a few more times. "Hey. Where'd you say Ida was?"
Marivel Armitage wanted to come today but has ultimately given the job to Eleanor Klein because, in her words, 'If she needs field repairs, I'm probably the only one who can do it! So keep her in good condition until you make it to the extraction point! Ugh!!' so you won't be having her wonderful leadership today, instead Eleanor gets to work it on her own with Xiumei.
Instead you've got Fei, who has put away his shard of empathite and seems to be following behind--slowing down to look at Yuna whom he has tried to kidnap more than once and kind of awkwardly waves at her.
"Hey." He says. He puts both hands in his pockets. "Um. After having my friend kidnapped I am starting to reconsider the effect that kidnappings have on others, so basically I'm sorry for trying to kidnap you but Leon picked up the job, and I really owe him a lot, so I probably would do it again, but I would still feel bad about it, uh, man I'm not doing great here, but no hard feelings? I don't have any um reason to do kidnappings today. And uh. Maybe I should not do the future kidnappings anyway, I mean, Leon's the best but I think--like--maybe not kidnapping someone who is helping our friends is something we can do starting now?"
He kind of adds, "A..anyway. Um. I don't...want to hurt Astrid I think I can talk her down maybe? I don't know. Um. But--I don't want Ida kidnapped either. Ahhh...Is this karma for doing kidnappings???"
He places his hands on his head. "That's not fair! Ida didn't do the kidnappings, if anybody should be kidnapped it should be me! What kind of karmic retribution is this???"
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
The message had reached far and wide, as it happened. Among those who had received it--
Of course Avril, Rebecca, and Dean had caught the transmission. Coordinating with some of the other groups that had rushed to the rescue, they had arrived at Blackrock, in Gears.
But they had quickly decided that they could not all head in -- not with the forces at hand. Not without knowing how many of Odessa they should be expecting. Rebecca had been the first to make the suggestion, and had tagged Dean to assist her -- they needed to secure an escape route. If all was in their favor, they would be able to get in, rescue Ida, and get out again...
After extracting a promise from Avril that she would retreat if things became too dangerous, Rebecca had let her go.
She has already long since recovered from her exertions within the rift, against the Primarch. Even if there is still something...
...
But she pushes on and past for now the gap within herself, moving along with those others who have gathered to attempt a desperate rescue mission within.
She comes to a stop, alongside Boudicca.
"You are... Boudicca, correct? ...We have met, though I have not formally introduced myself. My name is Avril Vent Fleur."
She does not extend a hand, though, instead turning her head slowly at that moment as if to gaze at some distant point.
Her eyes slowly widen.
"Something is... ...something is not right," she says, frowning. "Are we... in danger?"
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
What does a girl do after groggily waking up from what feels like a hangover and the day after overeating at a gourmet feast of boiling hot lava?
She will continue to sleep, for a few days, pausing to take in the arduous task of stomaching something, stretching, and doing all the things a body would wake up for before demanding sleep again.
And after all of that is done, she delivers packages. Because of course she does. The mail never stops. Not ever. Not even when the courier has a bounty on her, not even when her hunger is through the roof, not even when, by all logic, she should really get a check-up, or something, instead of just throwing herself back into her mundane work because it beats worrying about Ida, and herself, and all the things that have happened up until now--
'SOS.'
Gwen dislodges herself from her conversation with Boudicca. "... Wh?" Because a courier has a radio installed in her gear. Because of course she does.
'Hyadean facility--'
Gwen's already climbing into her Gear and adjusting her seat, her hands then spreading over the controls of the Kingfisher. It doesn't take very many guesses to know the person behind that voice.
"Maybe she felt her cheeks burnin'. I think it's Ida," she says aloud, to Boudicca. "We're going there."
-----NOW-----
Now inside with her companions, Gwen itches her head. "Maybe we could chat with Astrid. I'd be okay with it, really, if it's a possibility. But I think with the amount of time that's past... maybe it ain't gonna be easy..." She shrugs. "I'm still achey from last week, so I'd *really* like t'not... uh... do a lot? I practically ate through my backup cache of food, n' on top of that, my funds're strapped, though at least I got some money in from a few deliveries..."
She just talks on, walking across the Living Metal, without a care in the world.
She pauses, turning to look back at Avril. "Mm? Maybe."
DC: Heal Berry switches forms to Astrid of the Method! DC: Zed switches forms to Manic Blade Master Zed!
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
Avril's suspicion is correct.
Flickering, strobing light cuts through the darkness as long-dormant spotlights shudder to life. The Living Metal plates that make up the floor start to heave and buckle, a dull grinding underscoring every move. High above the hangar doors, lights turn on in the darkened observation booth overlooking the Proving Grounds.
The woman who once called herself Polynya stands within, hands clasped behind her back. Astrid of the Method is taller and harder-featured than her alias, but there's more than a little resemblance--for those who saw Polynya without her mask. She wears a make of armor that hasn't seen active service in centuries, and her heavy officer's cloak is care-worn. Her spear rests in her hand.
Ida sits next to her. The heiress has been chained to her seat, and from the way her head lolls, she might well have been drugged or ensorcelled into a state of compliance. She's still wearing the outfit she wore in the Scar, but otherwise it's difficult to tell what kind of state she's in.
"So," Astrid says. "How does it feel to know that your dear friends live, and would do anything to help you?" She's addressing Ida, even though she's in no position to answer--and some sort of intercom carries her voice outside. It's tinged with equal parts empathy, bitterness, and dark despair. The flicker of emotion is gone as quickly as it appears.
The Hyadean turns to her allies behind her, her gaze lingering on Erzebet for a moment longer than it does on Ragnell. "This way," she says. And without another word, Astrid steps forwards, and hurls herself through the window. The glass shatters on impact, raining down around her in countless dazzling shards. Boudicca, who stands beneath the door, suddenly has to contend with a woman about her size plunging from above, spear-first. She drives the weapon for Boudicca's shoulder, using her body weight to try and bury it as deep as she can. Astrid hits the ground in front of the Seraph, and it ripples like a pond, dispersing the impact; it doesn't seem to slow her down any.
"Warriors," Astrid says. Fei might recognize this as the beginning of a formal challenge. "You face Astrid of the Method, once known as the Sky-Strider--she who bears the guilt and ghosts of thousands on her shoulders." She whips something out of her right bracer. The glyph of Muse glitters on it, clear as day. Frost erupts from nowhere, its icicle claws racing for Eleanor and Gwen. "Ally of those who would fight an entire world!" Her voice is deep and calm and stoic, but it's as if she's swallowing a seething storm of emotion.
"COME!" Astrid barks. "You who would save that warrior--earn it!" Some of that bitterness creeps back in, despite everything. Astrid leaps through the hailstorm she just conjured, swinging for Fei's temple with the butt of her spear. She doesn't take her eyes off him as she does it, and he can see something in them--
She doesn't want to be here, either. She doesn't know if she can keep going. But she has to.
"Zed!" Astrid becomes a blur. In another swift leap, she descends on Zed, driving her spear at him in a half-dozen thrusts--trying to force him on the back foot so she can settle into a less aggressive stance. "You, who claim to be our hope. Prove it to me!"
GS: Heal Berry has attacked Eleanor Klein with Cryogenesis! GS: Heal Berry assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Hi-Freeze! GS: Heal Berry has gained 2 Combo! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Third Method - Cold-Forged Fury! GS: Heal Berry has gained 1 Combo! GS: Heal Berry spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Zed with Second Method - Implacable Sky-Strider's Challenge! GS: Heal Berry has canceled their attack on Zed. GS: Heal Berry spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Second Method - Implacable Sky-Strider's Challenge! GS: Heal Berry has gained 1 Combo! GS: Heal Berry has completed her action. GS: Heal Berry has attacked Zed with Second Method Shifting the Fulcrum! GS: Heal Berry has gained 2 Combo! GS: Heal Berry's Avenger stance ends. GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Heal Berry's Hi-Freeze for 89 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Second Method Shifting the Fulcrum for 141 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Zed! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a glancing hit from Heal Berry's Second Method - Implacable Sky-Strider's Challenge for 60 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Hyper! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Seraph Boudicca's Force Evade activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Heal Berry's Cryogenesis for 48 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: Mighty! applied to Heal Berry!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
THEN:
Ragnell leans, arms folded, on the doorway behind Astrid as the Hyadean enters what is functionally Ida's prison cell. There are definitely better cells she could have had, all considered, if only for exactly what just happened. (Ragnell may have watched the whole thing go down. If she did, she did absolutely nothing to interfere, no more than she interfered with what was done to Ida as she slept.)
"So, what d'you want to do now, Astrid?" she asks her companion, tone neutral, crimson eyes taking in both women.
NOW:
Ragnell still eyes the two women as Astrid asks Ida a question she cannot possibly answer in her condition. It's probably really for those incoming to Ida's rescue. Arms uncrossing, she nods curtly at Astrid's direction, glances briefly at Erzebet, and follows after her. Astrid kindly does the hard work of actually shattering that glass, so Ragnell doesn't need to phase through it; she merely hops down nimbly, landing somewhere at Astrid's back. She rises as Astrid issues her challenge and casts her gaze across the assembled warriors. It lands on Yuna. Ragnell smiles.
"Yuna," she drawls, tipping her hat to the young Summoner. "Nice seein' you again." Her eyes flick up to Kimahri. "An' you were one o' her Guardians, right? Guess we'll be rumblin' a bit before y'all cart Ida away." She cricks her neck back and forth, then draws her twin pistols. "But hey, like the lady said: gotta earn your happy ending. Right?"
With that, the Lightning Seraph fires off a quick one-two shot of electric bullets at Yuna--or at her giant furry Guardian, if Kimahri's quick enough.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Yuna with Twin Bullet! GS: Yuna completely evades a hit from Seraph Ragnell's Twin Bullet! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna has mastered the art of bowing while walking, and bobs politely back at the ARMS agent. It's a deep one, the kind of gesture she makes to any Otherworlder who helped her save Besaid Village from invasion (and Besaid Temple from being sealed) at the grasping hands of Althena's Guard.
"It is good to see you again, Miss Xiumei," she replies quietly. "I wish it were under better circumstances, but then, that's why we're here." To better them.
Kimahri is similarly grateful (it's his home too), and inclines his head while raising his unslung halberd a little, a silent acknowledgement of respect.
But he lowers it across Yuna when Fei approaches. She pushes the haft gently aside (okay, for accuracy's sake, she lightly rests her hand on it and that gesture causes Kimahri to lift it like the crossing guard after a train's gone by).
She hears him out with solemn green-blue eyes, fixed patiently upon his own. "Thank you for sharing your feelings," she says gently. "I never took it badly." In a way, those kidnappings -- unlike the attempts by every other faction she's ever heard of, and some she hasn't -- are an expression of love, both familial and otherwise.
And then: interruption!!
Yuna gasps at Ida's poor state, and her whole body vibrates with the need to fly to her side. But her small, booted feet must stay firmly on the ground for the time being -- she's lost her wings.
Though not the second half of Valefor's soul. Besaid's fayth is still with her, if smaller-voiced, smaller-feelingsed than usual, as though she is connected across an extraordinary distance.
friend
Yes. Friend. She may not be able to reach her immediately, but there's one thing she can do for Ida before a single second is allowed to tick further past: let her know that she is not alone.
"IDA!!" Yuna's not a big screamer, and this is about as loud as anyone's heard her. From volume alone she's a little shrill, though her tone is more determined than frantic. "PLEASE HANG ON, WE'RE COMING!" Even at a time like this she says please...
Ragnell leaps down; there's no time to bow, but, paradoxically under the circumstances, Yuna smiles a little right back. Introductions are in order. "This is Kimahri, my very first Guardian," she explains, rolling her shoulders as she does, like a boxer loosening up before a match. "And," her smile dials up to positively toasty with affection, "Knowing Ida, she'll be leaving on her own two feet, no matter what."
Kimahri is a little less casual. He doesn't cover Yuna, however; it says something about their relationship, the way that he trusts her to dive out of the path of the bullets -- and use that surprising choice to close the distance to the Seraph instead. Before she's even popped back up from her roll, still a swirl of pink-white sleeves and blue-white skirts, he's squarely in Ragnell's face.
Halberd-first, because he's like that...
GS: Yuna has attacked Seraph Ragnell with L1! GS: Yuna has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
"So do they hate you for it?" Erzebet asked Ida, smiling, from the other side of a medically isolating window. There is a ventilation space, so she isn't being transmitted, but she is separated from her - was separated from her, when they spoke.
"I meant it when I spoke to you in Spira, you know," Erzebet said then: "It's funny how things develop. How they get away from you. There are so many long periods of boredom, of relative quiet, of silence... and then," her hands clap together with emphatic force, "pow! A disaster! You're changed forever. The people you love, the people you know, even the people they hate. Gone, or changed."
"But it's thrilling, too, isn't it? I wonder which feeling is stronger in the human races of this world," Erzebet muses, "or of Lunar, for that matter. The desire to have things remain steady, or calm, or safe - or to return there, if they have changed - or the desire to upset them, to disrupt them?"
"Sometimes," Erzebet says with a laugh, "I think the answer is neither of them. What people really want is --"
THAT WAS THEN
THIS IS NOW
Erzebet's eyes are hidden behind the orange gleam of Haborym's lenses as Astrid looks at her. She smiles at the glance, and then she reaches over to give Ida's cheek a little pinchy-pinchy. "Oh you're so lucky to have so many friends," she tells Ida. "Though you know, you get the wrong impression from most stories, about fortresses." Her hand comes up to pat-pat on Ida's head.
"It's all very dramatic when the fortress falls to the heroes who seize it through guile and courage and passion," and Erzebet concludes with a hair ruffle. "But it's like they say in the press; Man Bites Dog -- THAT'S news."
And soon after that, a woman in a cloth coat hops down after Astrid of the Method. Erzebet adjusts her glittering glasses with one hand, takes a deep breath, brushes off her head, unfastens something on her hip, and then she cocks her head for a moment.
She calls from across the open space, "Yes!" But to who?
DANCE REMIX (Don't tell me about it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbUTyGfolX0
Erzebet leans back against the wall and sets one foot against it, peering forwards, and then she KICKS off with enough force that it leaves a dimple in the living metal wall. She is propelling herself at a speed that is cognitively difficult to parse in a world without reliable motor transportation directly at Avril, aiming to sack her and smash her against the ground, tumbling as she does and whipping out her long-barrel pistol as she goes.
"How d'you do," Erzebet says to Avril as her glasses gleam. She points the gun in a seemingly arbitrary direction. "I'm Erzebet. I'm here for the violence." The gun BANGS with a greasy plume of gunsmoke, aimed dead-on straight at Lanval despite Erzebet's indirect facing.
She raises her voice. "I can SEE you saucy lads and sassy lassies now, you know! You aren't SAFE!"
GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Requiem for the Guardians! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Seraph Lanval with I'm Burning 4 U! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Perhaps it was somewhat unwise to rush over this way after a week of nonstop searching following a deadly encounter with an elemental force of living flame. Or maybe it's just that Zed is still RUNNING UP A WALL at a certain captive gunsmith when Astrid descends upon him with a flurry of impaling blows. Zed's defense is sluggish, and three of the six strikes carve silvery gashes into his body. He dodges his head around the sixth, and--
Grabs the spear haft in his teeth.
He whips around, snapping his neck like a cracking whip to hurl the other Hyadean away.
His momentum stolen, he can't help but to leap from the wall after her, but... Zed's blade glints-- and then the glint inverts. Doom Bringer's razor edge becomes a crease of hungry void, swallowing in all light as if it were a gash in the world itself. "I was hoping to just snag her and get out of here, but whatever! You're on!"
Zed strikes, carving a yawning, sucking void into space along the line of his slash. He somersaults and kicks into it, falling at his opponent like a comet of raw voidstuff. "I swear, it's like this every other time! Fine! Even if I have to kick every metal ass from here to Hyades, I will blaze this trail!"
GS: Zed has attacked Heal Berry with Saint Arts - Voidwalker's Resolve! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zed assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Zed has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"You, too," Xiumei says to Yuna. "It's not really the best chance to catch up, is it?"
She smiles apologetically. Of course, the last time -- at Besaid -- was one of Xiumei's lower moments. She feels that wave of embarrassment, at some of the things she told Yue. But, she seems grateful...
And, really, that's enough to lift a weight from her shoulders. Just a little.
Xiumei stares at Fei for a moment -- blinks her eyes once -- and then sighs, before she looks ahead. He seems genuine, at least, she thinks.
But she catches sight of Ida and Astrid. She feels a flicker of worry and panic, seeing Ida chained up; this could quickly go terribly awry. Her fingers tighten, by fractions, around the hilt of the Pulse Saber.
Then Astrid comes crashing down on them. She seems ready to leap, but then Varius calls his warning to just her: <<It's her. The one who fought Kamui.>>
"Ah--"
Two electric bullets whizz by. Sparks and afterimages of lightning trail through Xiumei's eyes -- which turn, looking at Ragnell. They have a slight glow; a slightly technicolor aspect, as they're a brighter green than they are when she isn't using her Biometal. Her Pulse Saber vanishes, in a blink.
Cubes of light form, swirl together, and become a short handcannon, which Xiumei aims at Ragnell. "We don't need to file a requisition with you for that ending, though...!"
The barrel blazes. Three pulses of light explode out from the barrel, shooting past the charging Ronso and onward, towards the Lightning Seraph.
Her eyes glance at Yuna. She nods once. Get Ida back.
GS: Zhang Xiumei has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Pulse Cannon - Triple Burst! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action. GS: Seraph Lanval takes a glancing hit from Erzebet Lefanu's I'm Burning 4 U for 55 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison! applied to Seraph Lanval!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"We're definitely in danger," Eleanor says to Avril and everyone else. She smiles at Xiumei as she looks back, and then looks to Yuna herself, inclining her head with Xiumei. "I'm glad you're with us," she says to Yuna and Kimahri warmly, because it's true. But things won't be warm for very long--
"Ida!" Eleanor calls up to her, eyes darting next to Astrid with a frown. She quickly decides Ida's condition is poor, and straightens her shoulders. Astrid challenges them--and Eleanor recognizes it, as well--she hears bitterness, but she sees ice, and quickly steps to the side, recognizing the distortion of incoming Muse power enough that it slashes at her arm instead of cutting through her torso. "You--"
She looks with surprise at Ragnell, and with obvious anger and worry at Erzebet--but she knows her mission, and she knows the enemy who's already struck out at her. So Eleanor advances towards Astrid.
"Very well, Astrid of the Method! I am Eleanor, of the House of Klein! I am a student of Sielje, a member of ARMS, and one day will protect the border of Meria! This day... These people are under my protection!"
The power of Geo shines in combination with Wing as Eleanor pulls a crest and begins to focus its power, golden light sparkling as if raining down her shoulders. "Even the mountain must one day give way to the wind! Dust Veil!"
A rain of stony particles erupts around Fei, enhancing his attacks, preventing blows from raining into him. This at least is where Eleanor is going to start--and then she looks to Gwen. "Gwen, I've got you!"
She feels cold, still--but her sword-arm was never her asset in this fight.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Dust Veil! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Heal Berry's Third Method - Cold-Forged Fury for 96 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Fei Fong Wong! He gains 125 temporary hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from Erzebet Lefanu's Requiem for the Guardians for 134 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Avril Vent Fleur! GS: Seraph Ragnell takes a solid hit from Yuna's L1 for 81 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Yuna! GS: Seraph Ragnell takes a solid hit from Zhang Xiumei's Pulse Cannon - Triple Burst for 136 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Ragnell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mighty! applied to Zhang Xiumei!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Yes," Boudicca confirms, to Avril, and she can't quite smile in this place but her head dips in recognition regardless. "Well met. I... am glad you are with me, Avril." She may not know much of the icy warrior - but she knows she is Dean's dear friend, and that is reason enough for Boudicca to rely on her.
The way she looks to the others, she might have extended that gratitude to everyone, but --
But they're in danger, and this time it isn't a danger which Boudicca can try to ameliorate with trail mix, like with Gwen's danger of running out of food. (Trail mix, it turns out... is not a very nice dinner. It's emergency food for a reason.)
No: this is a danger written in strobe lighting, a revealed observation deck, the grinding of Living Metal. It is -- "Ida!" Boudicca's voice raises, for the first time since they've come here, all stealth forgotten. There's Ragnell - of course - and there, in old regalia --
Astrid's greeting to Boudicca is spear-first, at speed: at speed, Boudicca answers, stepping aside. What should have carved through the tale of her flesh instead grinds a furrowed line down her faulds, angry jagged metal, like the split of a daring skirt except of course there is more silk beneath.
"Astrid of the Method..."
The wind picks up around her, coiling until it blasts out, a headwind to strip her momentum from her. And yes, certainly Boudicca sounds angry - but it is a muted thing, leashed to ground, as she turns to her. "You have taken Ida; you have done her harm. This, I do not accept. And yet this is true: you whisked her from Setanta's gaze, when they would have done their own harm."
Earn it - prove it --
Empty-handed, Boudicca asks: "Is this not an interesting study in contrasts?"
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Heal Berry with Buffeting Headwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Heal Berry guards a hit from Zed's Saint Arts - Voidwalker's Resolve for 85 hit points! GS: Heal Berry completely evades a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Buffeting Headwind! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"...Really?" Fei asks, blinking like he isn't sure he heard what he just heard.
...something wrong with someone who doesn't get mad at you for that
"Ssh," Fei tells himself. "She's just really nice." He realizes he said that out loud. "Oh uh. sorry. ... Radio?"
She probably doesn't know what a radio is you idiot she's from Spira
"...Talk...box?"
He looks at Xiumei with a quizzical look of his own before--Erzebet...?
Fuck is that?
He shakes his head and reminds himself why he is here. He looks back to Astrid and, then up towards Ida. He frowns and looks to Astrid. "Astrid--"
ASTRID JUMPS THROUGH A WINDOW.
"Holy shit why didn't you just meet us down here??" He stumbles backwards and looks to the bracer. He sees the glyph. "!?" He steps back a bit and adds, "Astrid--!" He barely brings his fists up in time to block the strike for his head. Not the point, perhaps, but it's still a bit heavy object that could cave his skull in. He slides back and sinks to one knee.
"...Haven't fully recovered yet." He murmurs as an aura of stone particles ripples around him. He blinks, he looks towards Eleanor.
"...Thanks!" He says. "Please don't hurt her too bad! She's...had a real bad millenia!"
He then takes in a deep breath and darts in for Astrid, throwing a quick series of palm thrusts at her!
"I'm trying to rescue you too! Why do we still have to fight? Haven't we done enough of that??"
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Heal Berry with Hagan! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Yuna introduces Kimahri. Ragnell nods to the Ronso, though the lion's share (so to speak) of her attention remains on the Summoner. She half-smiles with seeming sincerity when Yuna expresses her faith that Ida will be okay and back on her feet in no time. "Yeah, I think so too," she replies.
She catches the look Eleanor gives her, but doesn't return it; between Kimahri and Xiumei, she's got plenty to pay attention to right in front of her. Kimahri rakes the end of his halberd up the Seraph; Xiumei blasts her with a crackling beam of energy. Both make a direct hit, slashing a red line across her and then knocking her over. Ragnell tumbles, comes to a stop--but isn't down just yet.
She coughs, spouting out a burnt cloud, as she sways back to her feet. "Why would I want you to file a requisition? That's so boring," she tells Xiumei, Seraphic glyph forming at her feet. Golden light swirls, and she casts a pair of the same arte in quick succession: small localized stormclouds over Xiumei and Yuna's heads that send down a single small but decisive lightning bolt.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Yuna with Blitzstrahl! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Blitzstrahl! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: Zhang Xiumei takes a solid hit from Seraph Ragnell's Blitzstrahl for 111 hit points! GS: Break! applied to Zhang Xiumei!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
As the Living Metal Plates buckle underneath her, Gwen falls backwards, grunting as her back hits the floor with a subdued 'thud'. "I said _we'd like t'talk_! Didn't you hear Fei?!"
Spouting out a few choice Badland cursewords, Gwen gets up, a hand nursing her aching back as her eyes are attracted to the suddenly lit observation booth.
Sharp eyes note Astrid's appearance, Gwen remembering back to Astrid's reveal of her true identity. She wonders, with the proper clues, if she would have realized the actual story sooner.
... Most likely not. The only twists the courier can predict are the ones that occur in one-gella novels. Real life's far more complicated.
Something in her expression darkens when her gaze travels over to the the chained heiress, and the way her head lolls, unresponsive to everything, even Yuna's empathetic cry.
"What did they do to her...?" The idea that Ida could be seriously hurt is not completely out of Gwen's list of concerns, but the notion that they might have tampered with Ida's graft is further up there. Ida's strong.
That's what can be a problem, if things go awry.
Gwen chances a look towards the entering Ragnell and Erzebet, which ends up being a mistake. Ice travels up Gwen's side, but Eleanor's shout snaps Gwen back towards Astrid's magic just in time. "Gh!" Holding her ARM up against
Boudicca makes a good point, and Gwen hopes Ragnell's way of justifying their battle is the real reason. "Alright, then, if it's a fight, then..." Gwen's left hand deftly snags a bullet from a pouch, which she loads into the Mockingbird, eyes looking for the right spot to aim. "You're free t'say when at any time, Astrid!"
A recoil of energy passes through her straightened ARM, and Gwen shoots at Astrid, aiming for a stray shin or thigh to slow the Hyadean down. "I'm more concentrated on Ida right now than a proper battle, so y'ain't gettin' my best."
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Heal Berry with Crackshot! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Seraph Ragnell's Blitzstrahl for 95 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yuna gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break! applied to Yuna!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Nothing's moving until it does - Avril's instincts ring true, and Lanval's steady stand staggers under the Living Metal underneath transforming. When he falls to his seat less-than-gracefully to see the emergence of Poynya- no, Astrid - emerge in that observation booth, that mocking voice being heard through the intercom.
Glass shatters as the Odessa agents emerge. Introductions are made, and Lanval stands up again. The ambient energies of the water of the world start to intensify around him as that glyph of Muse shines. Wordy banter, and a familiar Lightning Seraph moving to inter the displaced Spiran Summoner and one of her dearest friends.
It's something of a wonder that Lanval, who technically does not have a brain, retains some presence of mind to recognize when the business end of what he used to consider 'fire wands' is pointing in his way, leaning wildly to the right and throwing his leg up to counterbalance the silly-looking stance as that bullet just misses going through his manifestation's head. With the speed Erzebet exhibits now, that's no mean feat. (It's a conversationally polite feat!)
It grazes a shoulder, visually. Splashes of liquid - some of it looking particularly foul in an 'eww, gross' way - strike the Living Metal battlefield as his face grimaces in an exaggerated cringe.
'I can SEE you saucy lads and sassy ladies now, you know!' Those words might be just as deadly a bullet! 'You aren't SAFE!'
"...Sho ya cannnn," Lanval's words trail from a wince of pain as he clutches that shoulder, as if that bullet felt a lot more real against him than it normally would. The other has to hold the drinking gourd very close - as if guarded. As if much more realistic a reaction to someone being shot than the usual.
"...Mmmm. Hey, I remember ya. Ya shaid... shomethin' 'bout people marchin' to the shwamp, 'n lettin' 'em." He had fun quoting that without comprehending the underlying philosophies, way back when. "...Well, I shupposhe I oughtta reintroduce myshelf, thennnnn...."
Once more, water builds in intensity from energies both native to his Seraphic nature and to the world of Filgaia itself. Seraph Lanval, in his some-decades-off-from-600 years of life, has born several titles, and clearly, this is the time to start with the one most relevant to their shared interests as he gauges Avril's positioning and well-being after Erzebet's initial assault.
"It'sh me...!" Lanval says as he unleashes a rushing wave of water across the plates of Living Metal towards Erzebet's position. "The one 'n only...!"
*imagine a drumroll*
"...The Barrel That Peed Itshelf! Ha ha ha!!"
"...Mmmph."
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with The Most Noble Title Of Them All! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 19 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Maybe they're in danger.
No, without question they are.
Avril draws forth Absolute Zero's hilt mere fractions of a second before the lights snap on, turning her face away from the penetrating beams. "Then... this was a trap," she says simply, lifting her single blade in a guard to bear before herself, her gaze turned up at Polynya--
Or rather, Astrid.
"Release her, Astrid," is Avril's sole declaration on the subject.
Before Astrid descends, glass descending in a rain as she plummets.
And before, quite suddenly, Avril has something rather more immediate to which to attend.
Erzebet descends at a pace quickly enough that the queen of the Veruni simply cannot keep up. It puts her in mind of Lydia's -- now Rebecca's -- portal guns. It's as if first she's in one place, and then she is in--
--oh.
no.
It's like getting hit by a freight train. Avril screams out, laid out flat against the cold steel flooring. Absolute Zero skitters mere inches from her grasp, but mercifully -- for now -- Erzebet moves on, turning her attention to another corner of the room. Avril's heart skips a beat once she realizes who Erzebet has targetted.
Lanval.
Standing in a hurry, she crouches long enough to pluck her fallen ARM from the floor.
And then she stands and delivers her blade, as if at the start of a formal duel.
"So your name is Erzebet. My name is Avril Vent Fleur. I am here to rescue Ida. If you are here for 'violence' then I will stop you. Prepare yourself!"
With that she advances, surging forward in a surprisingly formal lunge with her blade. Perhaps, now, her only goal is to distract, though--
Particularly when Lanval launches his own attack.
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Innocent Saber! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
When Yuna comes up from her roll she's in a defensive crouch -- and her summoner's rod is drawn. Aeons or no aeons, it's her weapon of choice. Today she holds it in a reverse grip, the haft flowing backwards parallel to her forearm, its triple crown well past her elbow, its tassel, at the butt, descending towards her bent knee.
Her eyes lock with Xiumei's for a single moment, but she does not return the nod. Did she receive the message?
It's unclear.
Straightening, she gives Ragnell her full attention. The way her cough burns... Yuna's free hand lifts to her throat, a gesture of both amazement and sympathy. Then it clenches in pain, when she takes a thunderbolt right to the head.
Her earring is the only thing on her head still succumbing to gravity. Each of her soft brown hairs is standing on end, perpendicular to her scalp, like a field of dandelion fluff with Yuna's face in the center. And she smiles again, fondness for Rikku briefly crossing her eyes. Good thing she isn't here for this one.
"I didn't know you were with Odessa, Ragnell," she admits openly, and somewhat sweetly. "Forgive my impertinence, but... do you know a man named Gatta?"
Twisting her body to the side, the rod spins. It's too graceful to be magic -- it's so graceful that it must be magic -- both are true at once in Yuna's hands.
"Odessa recruited our friend from Besaid Island, where I'm from," she explains. "Gatta. He was a Crusader, at Mi'ihen..."
Her expression is too well-composed to be haunted, but one gets the feeling Yuna both hopes he will be here, and hopes that he will not.
"He was distraught, we all were," she concludes. "Maybe now he'll be willing to talk... if he's still okay?"
This is the least effective spell ever. Maybe Yuna really is just doing cheerleader drills, because not a single sparkle of white magic is in evidence...
...at ground level.
Esuna, the restorative magic of Yevon, traditionally is contextualized in the cleansing of sin. It is often associated with the Blessing element of water.
But the motes of radiance that wink into existence around Ida are wholly and entirely composed of the more unofficial element of heart. They swirl around her shoulders, then sink into her from all directions, feeling like a warm hug, like a kiss to the cheek, to the brow. Feeling like a resolute determination for her to BE OKAY. Feeling like Yuna...
What a minx; Xiumei's message was DEFINITELY received. She's not skilled at deception, though, and blows it at the end, when she rises on her tiptoes and glances up hopefully at the observation tower.
GS: Yuna has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Esuna! GS: Yuna assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Erzebet Lefanu takes a glancing hit from Seraph Lanval's The Most Noble Title Of Them All for 78 hit points! GS: Mute and Poison! applied to Erzebet Lefanu! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Xiumei can only keep an eye on Eleanor briefly. Brief glances -- and hoping the Drifters with her will keep her safe -- because she needs to focus on Ragnell.
Her hand tosses the Pulse Cannon to the side. The gun flies through the air, turning about, and makes it about a meter away from Xiumei before vanishing into cubes of light. The same cubes reform, becoming a cylinder again.
Xiumei grips it tightly -- then her expression screws up into an irritated look. "Boring?" she says. "They--"
Zhang Xiumei might have a Biometal, an ancient artifact from the Zeboim era, that lets her use the abilities of two ancient Reploids and carry their souls with her. She is, however, something else entirely: a clerk.
"Requisition forms are wonderful!" she whines. "A well-designed one tells you so much! The neatly laid out columns! And the information they have, and the dates, and--and you don't know what you're talking about!"
Then, she reembers where she is. The lightning bolt slams into her, throwing her to the side -- and Yuna's words bring her back. There is a glance, and understanding, at the bit of white light from the observation tower.
She does spare a brief glance at Yuna. There is a hint of a smile; it's gone again by the time that Xiumei looks back at Ragnell.
She sets her jaw, and strikes out. Her beam sword becomes a beam whip -- a long, curving blade of white-green light that slashes down in a long arc across Ragnell's midsection.
GS: Zhang Xiumei has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Pulse Whip - Extend-Slash! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a solid hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Innocent Saber for 140 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell takes a solid hit from Zhang Xiumei's Pulse Whip - Extend-Slash for 138 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Seraph Ragnell!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
"Gwen, she's a Hyadean. You didn't really think she was gonna choose talk over fight, did ya?" Ragnell calls over to the super courier when she yells at Astrid about ignoring Fei.
Lanval introduces himself to the room at large as The Barrel That Peed Itself. Even Ragnell, who knows Lanval as an expert at getting people to underestimate him, winces at that one.
Yuna remarks on Ragnell. "I'm not generally forthcomin' about myself. An' Drifters in general, I've come to find, are bad about freely sharin' information," she replies, amused. "Gatta? Doesn't sound familiar. Not surprised t' hear that, though. Odessa poached a bunch o' survivors from Operation Mi'ihen." She shrugs. "I kinda do my own thing, though, so there's a lot of Odessans I haven't met." So, basically, just because Ragnell doesn't know him, doesn't mean he's not in Odessa. "Whether he's willin' to talk or not, though, sounds like it's between you two."
Magic stirs the air--but not at ground level. Ragnell senses it even before Yuna makes her tell, though it's that that prompts her to look up and over her shoulder where Yuna's Esuna settles onto Ida. She smirks, but once again, she doesn't do anything to stop it. Of course, Xiumei's laser sword then whips into her with concussive force, so that might have something to do with it. It would certainly look like it to anyone looking on.
Ragnell staggers upright, several wounds sizzling across her chest and torso. Xiumei goes on and on about how awesome requisition forms. Ragnell makes a face like she'd bitten into a rotten lemon. "Oh my goddess. What are you even doin' here? Get out, you fuckin' nerd." To make this happen, she lashes a booted heel up and forward towards Xiumei's midsection, rapidly and multiple times, to attempt to kick her halfway across the room. She then opens fire several times with both guns, and the bullets arc around and converge towards Yuna to spark upon impact--if they do indeed hit.
GS: Seraph Ragnell spends 1 Combo on Interrupt! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Pummel Kick! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Yuna with Storm Runner! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: Yuna completely evades a hit from Seraph Ragnell's Storm Runner! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yuna gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Zhang Xiumei takes a glancing hit from Seraph Ragnell's Pummel Kick for 52 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zhang Xiumei gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Zhang Xiumei has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: Heal Berry critically Guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Hagan for 21 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crackshot for 100 hit points! GS: Cripple and Jam! applied to Heal Berry!
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
EARLIER, AT THE WINDOW:
Ida sits on the other side of that glass, trying her best to keep the fear from coming loose. There is no doubt in her mind that if she wanted to, Erzebet could tear through that glass like it wasn't even there. "I don't know," she says.
EARLIER, AFTER THE TRANSMISSION:
Astrid looks back at Ragnell, her lips twisting in a thoughtful frown. "It's been far too long since I had an honest fight," she says. "Let's welcome them. If they make it through the perimeter, they've earned it."
NOW, IN THE OBSERVATION BOOTH:
'IDA!! PLEASE HANG ON, WE'RE COMING!'
Yuna's voice pierces through the sorcerous sleep-fog in Ida's mind. She raises her head, doing her best to try and focus. It isn't easy. Erzebet's right there, and touching her face, but then she suddenly isn't anymore. Ida allows herself to breathe.
'Ida!' Boudicca, Ida thinks. Everything is fuzzy. She can see the broken window, and hear the soft crackling of the glass as its crystalline metastructure regenerates.
NOW, ON THE BATTLEFIELD:
Astrid's eyes widen as Zed catches her weapon, redirecting her momentum. She rolls with it, and in the instant he lets go, she meets his eyes. That icy bitterness there is all but palpable. "Proving Grounds! Execute pattern one-four secondary, authorization Sub-Commander Astrid!"
The Living Metal plates shift and change. A veritable column of metal rises from the ground, right in Astrid's flight path; she reaches out, and her fingers warp into hooked talons as she digs in. "Do you expect it to stop, boy?" Astrid shoots back, at Zed. "Because it never will--not until the day you die, and perhaps not even then!" Zed's yawning void flies after her, forcing her to scramble onto the top of the column. She sets her feet, raises her spear up to guard, and stands firm as the younger Hyadean's might slams into her. The sound of screeching steel splits the air. Astrid skids back a good three inches. The swirling void-gash traces a cut across her eyebrow.
Boudicca presses the attack. The wind itself turns on Astrid, rushing at her in a ferocious, momentum-killing headwind. Astrid leaps from her perch and dives right through it, the glyph of Wing igniting and whipping free from her bracer. An equally-violent tailwind rushes out from behind Astrid, brute-forcing the headwind into irrelevance. It is a clumsy, ugly display of Crest Sorcery, but the fact that she can still use it is nothing short of remarkable. She shifts in mid-flight to face Zed, as if daring him to follow her. Then she throws an arm wide, revealing something mounted beneath her forearm--a personnel-scale flechette thrower. Aerodynamic metal darts sail across the intervening distance, Her eyes narrow in the face of the wind as she looks down at Eleanor and Boudicca in mid-fall. "I acknowledge you, Eleanor of Klein! Fight with nothing less than your all, and die a warrior's death!"
Astrid lands in a three-point crouch, spear held at her side. "That's what I said to her, more or less," Astrid says to Fei, as she rises. For a moment, the stoic warrior demeanor falters and fades. "Luisa. I still remember the time she almost killed me."
'Haven't fully recovered yet.'
"Neither have I. And I have had enough. But it never--"
Gwen's shot slams into Astrid's thigh, punching a quicksilver hole in the metal there. She turns to Gwen, a snarl on her face. "Ever--" Fei attacks, and Astrid steps back, favoring the leg that wasn't just shot. Swinging her spear into her back, she meets Fei's palm-strikes with characteristic Method handwork: circular blocks and redirecting motions. She throws her own strikes back, swift jabs and flicks and palm-strikes like Ida and Kalve use. "--ends."
"I'm so tired, Fei," "And--knowing that everything we suffered through was in vain... It's so much worse."
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
Astrid turns to Boudicca. Her arm-mounted launcher barks again, spraying another cluster of flechettes at the Seraph. "I thought I would have to restrain myself from ending her," she says. "She's so much like the woman who hated me--who hated him. Who would've cut her own throat if it meant we would all drown in her blood. ...Or so I thought. Or so I thought."
Astrid's body moves with trained precision. She whirls on Eleanor, executing a perfect stab at the young magus' center of mass. Pivoting on her heel, she turns to Gwen again, and--
And her eyes go almost perfectly round as she scents the power coiled within Gwen's body. "You fool," Astrid breathes, her eyes alive with horror. "What have you done. What have you done?!"
Astrid's hand whips through the air, her aura shimmering and solidifying. A half-dozen 'blades' of her lifeforce race at Gwen, trying to slam into key meridians--to disrupt both her ARM and her life energy. "WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT THAT THING here?!"
GS: Heal Berry has activated a Boss Action! GS: Heal Berry spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Zed with Third Method - Rain of Sundered Steel ! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Third Method - Rain of Sundered Steel ! GS: Heal Berry has gained 1 Combo! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Gwen Whitlock with First Method - Meditations on Wholeness! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Eleanor Klein with Third Method - Cold-Forged Fury! GS: Heal Berry has gained 1 Combo! GS: Heal Berry has completed her action. GS: Heal Berry has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Fourth Method - Meditations on Defiance! GS: Heal Berry has gained 2 Combo! GS: Heal Berry assumes the Stoic stance! GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein completely evades a hit from Heal Berry's Third Method - Cold-Forged Fury! GS: Eleanor Klein's Force Evade activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
Erzebet's head turns to look towards Lanval as he speaks. He gathers power that Erzebet does not really detect, but she can see warning lights - she can't see it but Haborym can. She tilts her head back and pronounces a word to him:
"Gross,"
a moment before the water is upon her. The surging tide smashes into her hard enough to send her reeling, her cloth coat soaked, her boot soles skittering on the plating in a way that would be absurd, IS absurd, and would perhaps be comical if it wasn't for the fact that she had just thrown herself across the room like a human rocket. "Oo hoo hoooooohhhh magic is really quite SOMETHING, I was always a little jealous I never had much of a talent for it b u t it all worked out, so -"
Her head snaps up to look at Avril. Avril surges forwards and Erzebet steps forwards to meet her. Yes, steps forwards into the lunge. The blade slides in between her ribs and THROUGH her and her forehead briefly rests against Avril's and when she lets out a whistling breath like a sad flute, Avril may feel a sense of anticlimax.
It doesn't last. "Pick it up," Erzebet tells Avril.
She says it again. "Pick it up!!"
And then she throws herself backwards, arms snapping around Avril in an immense hug - immense in its grappling, squeezing force. Her head snaps down at the same time to bite at Avril's neck while her gun, held akimbo in her hand on Avril's back, pivots around. It doesn't so much aim AT Lanval as in his general arc - the gun sways like a dowsing rod as Erzebet fires it, and it should be jerking way more than it is, but she's holding it in an iron grip while laying down a cannonade up towards him. He may get a sight of a dipping, biting needle in the trigger guard that sticks itself into Erzebet's pale fingers every time it fires, but it seems to leave no mark.
This may complicate Lanval's next move, unless Avril can rip free??
GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Third Method - Rain of Sundered Steel for 139 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zed gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple and Poison! applied to Zed! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with The Feast of Blood! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Seraph Lanval with Crystal Teardrops! GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's First Method - Meditations on Wholeness for 72 hit points! GS: Cripple and Jam! applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Heal Berry's Fourth Method - Meditations on Defiance for 100 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong's Force Guard activates! GS: Seraph Boudicca guards a hit from Heal Berry's Third Method - Rain of Sundered Steel for 90 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple and Poison! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Seraph Boudicca's Force Guard activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
IN THE OBSERVATION BOOTH:
Ida slumps forwards, then twists back. The padlocked chains rattle around her. If she could just get a hand free, she might be able to do something other than sit there while her friends risk everything for her. Hot, raw frustration boils up inside her. She twists her hands, feels her fingers lengthen bonelessly--but the graft doesn't want to obey her any more than the rest of her body does. Tears slide down Ida's cheeks. She's close enough to the window to see everything that's happening. She wants to feel heartened, instead, she just feels so very alone.
friend
White motes of light settle on her. At first, Ida wonders if this is a hallucination, but as they sink in, she feels the fog leave her mind. Her body no longer feels like it's made of lead.
Astrid's sorcery unravels in the face of something far, far greater--the power of friendship, as embodied by a selfless young summoner.
"Yuna," Ida whispers. "Eleanor, Xiumei, Zed..." Her hand twists. The inner surfaces of her thumb and forefinger sharpen into cutting shears. Ida grips one of the chains and squeezes.
"I won't waste this."
The chain gives way with a sharp clink. Ida grips another length, and repeats the process.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna looks a little disappointed (at Ragnell's words; she doesn't have a good angle to see Ida, just too darn short and the tower, too darn tall). Her concern for Gatta's whereabouts and well-being is obviously sincere, even if her motive for keeping the conversation going was more complex. "Oh," she exhales, her lips forming the sound in a perfect little tiny circle. "Thanks anyway."
The skin between her eyebrows wrinkles a little at Xiumei's passionate defense of bureaucracy... then moreso at Ragnell's counter-insult. "Hey!" she fires back, her offended face extra cute when it's at the middle of a doe-brown koosh ball. "My best friend is a scholar! There's nothing wrong with liking scrollwork!"
<SoundTracker> Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hwiCkU73NA
Now the battle is really joined in earnest; no more feinting. Yuna takes a quick two-step forward, passing the bullets at an angle. When that isn't enough to shake them, she turns it into a three-step, then a fourth, then more. Her skirt's hem rises to her ankles, then above her knees, as she spins inward towards Ragnell, directly along the bullets' arcs.
She winds up almost nose to nose with the Seraph by the time she's free and clear. Not a chance that she was also casting at the same time -- she isn't THAT skilled -- but... she has two hands. One's been holding the implement of her chosen path--
--and the other drops a Silver Hourglass she'd secreted out of her pocket as she'd been turning, right at Ragnell's feet. It bursts like a grenade, the sands of time following Yuna's feet in little swirls as she continues to move past, never once stopping. They'll give the Seraph a little extra moment to think about her question, as she's catching up to the present from this Delay.
"Your actions are forthcoming in place of your words, Ragnell," she suggests lightly. "But perhaps I can surprise you. I'm happy to tell you anything..."
Her lost smile lingers after all, in her voice instead of on her lips. "What would you like to know?"
GS: Avril Vent Fleur completely evades a hit from Erzebet Lefanu's The Feast of Blood! GS: Mighty! applied to Erzebet Lefanu! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Yuna has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Use: Rikku's Goodie Bag of Swag! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Mighty expired! GS: Heal Berry has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"I-I am not a nerd!" Xiumei answers, face reddening now. "I am--"
Ragnell rushes in -- and her booted foot kicks out, but she manages to slip to the side. It hits the black fabric of her bodysuit, impacting on the waist, and Ragnell finds the fabric is metallic and strong stuff -- but it still takes some of the air out of her.
She gasps, stumbling backward. Varius speaks, in her mind:
<<You need to work on the comebacks, kid. Whenever I tell somone they're a nerd, and they say that they're not a nerd, I know that-->>
"Varius," Xiumei seems to say to nothing at all, "you are not helping right now!"
But Yuna has her back, both verbally and in the fight itself. She rushes back in, and Pulse Whip retracts, back into the one-handed saber. Xiumei charges at the Lightning Seraph's side, leaping at the last minute.
And when she comes down, there is a green blur -- a crackle of energy -- and the brilliant afterimage of her Pulse Saber's downward arc, slashing down for the Seraph as she lands.
GS: Zhang Xiumei has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Pulse Saber - Jump Slash! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 1 Combo! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action. GS: Seraph Lanval takes a glancing hit from Erzebet Lefanu's Crystal Teardrops for 81 hit points! GS: Seraph Ragnell takes a glancing hit from Yuna's Use: Rikku's Goodie Bag of Swag for 0 hit points! GS: Cripple and Mute! applied to Seraph Ragnell! GS: Seraph Ragnell completely evades a hit from Zhang Xiumei's Pulse Saber - Jump Slash! GS: Seraph Ragnell enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor can't keep track of Xiumei anymore, either. This doesn't stop her from periodically trying to steal glances towards that part of the fight, though it probably should. Eleanor is more scholar than warrior... for all that that may be changing.
'Please don't hurt her too bad! She's...had a real bad millenia!' "Luckily, pain isn't my primary specialty," Eleanor offers wryly, as she processes that apparently Astrid has some friends among them too. She is kind of holding Ida's condition against her, but she was honest about her own capabilities.
Eleanor is already thinking ahead to what she might do for Ida above, but the battle brings her back to the present. "I'll give it all I have--we won't leave Ida behind!"
But what she says all about that... Boudicca's words, the talk of Ida... And Fei's words. Not to mention--
"Your sorcery is impressive," Eleanor says, and when Astrid's body moves, Eleanor's eyes seem almost to shine. She recognizes this moment, this time, and so before Astrid reaches her, Eleanor is already moving. It's as if she saw her movements before they happened; Eleanor is not the most graceful of elves, but she nevertheless completly dodges a perfect strike.
She doesn't have words to reach out to Astrid well enough. She just looks at her, and perhaps that one look of sadness is worse. But she pulls a small flower from her bag next, and closes her eyes, channeling its power. The white, sparkling blossom glows--
"Everyone--be strong!" Sparkling light washes over Zed, Gwen, Boudicca, and Fei and soothes the crippling wounds and terrible impacts.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Zed with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Poison removed! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Jam removed! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Poison removed!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell laughs when both Yuna and Xiumei protest her accusations of nerdery, albeit in two very different ways. "Sure. If you say so," she tells them both.
Then Xiumei talks to, seemingly, nothing and no one. Ragnell, who is a Seraph with some experience with this sort of thing, gives her a searching look. "Talking t'your invisible friends?" she guesses archly.
Astrid, meanwhile, loses her shit over Gwen's arm ARM. Ragnell shoots her an alarmed look. She of course knows about Gwen's... condition, probably to a greater extent than most, but she has no idea why the Hyadean is reacting the way she is. "Astrid! What's wrong?!" she thus calls her way.
Yuna pulls off some truly impressive legwork in avoiding Ragnell's attack, and in doing so gets close enough to drop a Silver Hourglass at her feet. Ragnell moves back, but not far enough, not realizing the danger that the silvery dust represents; it settles over her, and she grimaces, feeling her movements grow more sluggish.
When Xiumei charges in with, not a whip now but a sword, and slashes with the energy saber towards Ragnell, the Seraph thus knows she can't evade it using normal movements. She thus vanishes for a split-second in a crackle of lightning and reappears maybe a foot or two backwards--just long enough and just fast enough to get out of the way of that hit.
Once reappeared, Ragnell casts another Seraphic arte, this one taking the form of a crackling lightning spear parallel to the ground. "Pierce through! Shock Lancer!" she calls, right before it darts for Xiumei. Her next attack doesn't come immediately--it can't, not with the effects of that silver dust--and so Yuna has plenty of time to get a word in.
"Wait. What?" Ragnell utters at Yuna, momentarily thrown. "Wait. Are you--are you offering to answer whatever question I have because I said most Drifters are bad at communication??" Ragnell has to outright *guffaw* at that one. "That wasn't *at all* what I was talkin' about, Yuna, but okay!" She winks outrageously, grins wolfishly, and purrs, "What're your three sizes~?"
Then she points a gun at the air, charges a shot, and fires. A second or two later, it comes down in the form of a torrential downpour with needle-like lightning rain, hailing down in a wide berth around Ragnell. It may catch Yuna as it comes down.
GS: Seraph Ragnell spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Seraph Ragnell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Shock Lancer! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Yuna with Squall Shot! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Zhang Xiumei takes a glancing hit from Seraph Ragnell's Shock Lancer for 83 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Yuna guards a hit from Seraph Ragnell's Squall Shot for 80 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yuna gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover! applied to Seraph Ragnell! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Yuna enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Break expired!
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Avril realizes that something is wrong.
This happens precisely at the second that Erzebet steps into the attack. But at that point, it is far too late to do anything except continue along the path laid before her.
Absolute Zero sinks deeply into Erzebet, and Avril knows that something is wrong. Except then Erzebet speaks.
And enfolds herself around the young woman.
Two things happen, near-instantaneously:
First, the blade is no longer jabbed through Erzebet. But not because Avril has pulled it out. Because the blade has ceased to exist.
And secondly, as Erzebet lunges for her bared neck, light, sparkling like the sun on fresh-fallen snow, shining brilliantly and most importantly, /consisting of entirely localized concussive force/, erupts from about the young woman. It may be enough to provoke/persuade Erzebet to release her, if just for the moment.
Long enough for Avril to twist free and step backwards, the empty hilt leveled at Erzebet.
Her blue eyes narrow.
"Do not," she says, "touch me."
She holds that stance for all the span of a heartbeat, before the blade reappears in the blink of an eye.
She comes in hard for Erzebet's left, blade born low and at her side before she lunges in the last instant, slashing upwards as if to attempt to 'disarm' the Odessa operative.
"Lanval!" she calls, at the last moment possible.
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Spirit Saber! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"You are a terribly old thing," says a terribly young thing, "are you not?"
"You have seen it happen so many times," but not so young as this, "and in the end the present is only connections to the past, are they not?"
"You know,"
the seraph Boudicca still does not bear a weapon,
"I tried to depict Ida while I searched for her. I did not succeed. It is not so long ago I saw plagued souls in the hollow of her cheeks; old references made new. She is stronger, now, of noble bearing, and yet... how would I describe such a thing? These details... over centuries, do they not seem... small?"
Boudicca sighs, once more, and shakes her head. "... this problem, I think, it is a thing which only grows stronger given time, as yours eclipses mine. Luisa, you say. Luisa Rey!"
There is some frustration in her voice as she repeats the name, but then: she is a Seraph, and has little attachment to the ideal of sins and obligations connected to a dynasty. But there is light and it is strength, and Eleanor's magics centre her anew.
"But she is Everstead as much as she is Rey, Astrid. She is Ida, not Luisa. The centuries have passed and the wars are different now, and the people different now, and of course it ends!" Now - now her voice raises, now she speaks loudly and firmly and sure. "Everything ends, Astrid! The trees end, the men end, the kingdoms and the pain ends! It ends and it is the nature of all things to fight their ending and your pain will fight for its place in your heart until you make the choice to challenge it, Astrid!"
Empty-handed she is the wind and in the fury of compassion it whirls, a storm to blow her away.
GS: Seraph Boudicca spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Heal Berry with Howling Gale! GS: Cripple expired! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a solid hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Spirit Saber for 136 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"There's nothing wrong with being a nerd!" Fei shouts. "Probably!" Come on Fei.
Nevertheless, he does glance to Xiumei with a thoughtful frown for a moment but shakes his head. He must be imagining things.
He looks up over to Ida--he sees that she seems to be recovering and he lets out a relieved breath which Astrid takes advantage of, probably without even having to think about it, by catching him upside the head. He stumbles from the blow before steadying his guard. He does not apologize for his distractioon. If you want a real test of skill against someone you don't kidnap their friends. You have a proper spar. It's not like adding to the murder adds much beyond force to that equation.
"Me too, that's why I don't understand why you're picking this fight. Because the only way it's all for nothing...if we keep repeating the same fight! There's no reason for us to be fighting for each other. Tell me honestly... do you really think Vinsfeld is gonna be the one to stop it? He starts fights as easily as I eat cereal, with great frequency and usually in the morning!"
Don't lie to her man
"Okay, sometimes in the morning but sometimes I just eat it in the middle of the day or for dinner because I'm not feeling like cooking...but that only proves my point even more!"
He steadies himself, focusing his chi and sending two palm strikes simultaneously for Astrid's midsection!
"Ida's a good person! She understands what it's like to be desperate, and to hurt others out of desperation, and to lose herself to a corruptive force. If you talk to her, more than anyone--! I'm sure she'd understand how you feel! She understood how I felt...! If you need to fight me to prove that a different way is possible...then okay! But I'm holding you to it!"
GS: Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Heal Berry with Yin Yang Strike! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 2 Combo! GS: Cripple expired! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
"Who's Varius?" Yuna asks Xiumei, earnestly, while the Seraph is recovering her Delay. People are always talking about invisible friends, especially around Ragnell... maybe this is one of them??
A big question mark bobs along Yuna's head at Ragnell's laughing reaction. "It... wasn't...?" she repeats softly. Then the Seraph pops The Big Question, and two more question marks pop up and swivel on their axis, just like the summoner's head, canting curiously to one side. They're three different sizes, but obviously that isn't quite what's meant.
"Um, three sizes?" She thrusts a palm in the air to try to block the rain, which is about as effective as one might expect. Promptly soaked to the skin, Ragnell may have just gotten an INDIRECT answer to her question. "Like... sewing? I'm sorry," she actually is, oh no, "I don't really know, Lulu's made all my clothes for years... you'd have to ask her."
The water weighs her hair back down, slicking it to her head, and her skirts also, which are now too heavy to swirl. But Yuna, even now, refuses to stop spinning. Game recognizes game; from across the battlefield, she sensed the profound strength of Eleanor's healing magic.
It felt good... it feels good. Even without her aeons, she can still help--!
Light overflows from her dance, rushing bodily into the wounds of those she cares for in this small corner of battle like an abruptly detonated grenade of hi-octane compassion.
When she notices it surging towards Ragnell as well -- NOW she blushes.
"I guess I owe you another answer, next time."
GS: Yuna spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Yuna has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Faith! GS: Yuna has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Faith! GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo! GS: Yuna has completed her action. GS: Yuna heals Yuna! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Yuna's Reload flag cannot target herself! GS: Yuna heals Zhang Xiumei! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Break removed! GS: Zhang Xiumei enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Reload! Zhang Xiumei gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
'Gross,'
"Yeeaaaaah, kinda," Lanval replies as he brings that outstretched hand back to his shoulder. "But ya know, the resht of the titlesh I'd give ya, I know ya don't believe in--" She's taking off like a human rocket and he has to blink that one half-open eye a few times to confirm that - even though she is distinctly not quite human any more - she really is going that fast, and he realizes his conversational speed is woefully inadequate.
He looks up to the observation deck window with that one half-open eye, and starts to take a step towards that way as Erzebet and Avril are momentarily embroiled in a madcap melee between one another. And another, as there's yelling about 'pick it up!!'
The gun goes off somewhere in his general direction and he retracts that further step to a moderate helping of avail - in so much that the shot(s) do not rip all the way through his center of mass but gets a deep enough blood-drawing graze (most notably around the bulbous gut region) that more water-like 'blood' falls out of him as Avril calls his name.
Water that characterizes all the things that happen to water - the way it is used and abused. As a reflection of the median health of Filgaia, it defaults to 'yuck.'
Lanval leans back until he's balanced both by one leg and also his head, contorted and strange in his movements, albeit far more fluid and loose.
"...'m all right." For someone whose wounds feel a lot more 'real' than they usually do, as he twists, flops onto the ground belly-first, rolls forward onto his back, looks up, kicks legs up once (to no avail, not until he pays back his debt in avail from earlier), and then again to hurl himself back up. Once, that half-open eye looks at the weird sharp... trigger-thing? He doesn't comment on it immediately.
Once on his feet, he just goes... walkin' forward. His idea of 'walking' is weird. It is like his existence, sometimes, is stealth Octodad theme integration. Compared to the deadly dance in which Avril forcefully avoids being fed upon by a young woman hungry for violence and also blood, the way he walks over towards the hyperactive Odessa radical is... strangely casual, for someone shot up a few times.
"Maybe there'sh shomethin' I could show ya, if ya wanna look." Is it the gourd? He doesn't show Erzebet the gourd. He just keeps ambling on towards her - and his path seems to take himself into her in what amounts to little more than a rude shove, on the surface.
Also his eyes are both closed now. He's sure not looking!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Carefree Stroll! GS: Seraph Lanval enters a Counter stance! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu completely evades a hit from Seraph Lanval's Carefree Stroll! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Yuna heals Seraph Ragnell! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Cripple and Mute removed! GS: Reload! Seraph Ragnell gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"Sort of," Xiumei answers, honestly. "One of them isn't very happy with you. Varius is--um--one of the people, who--" She answers Yuna by motioning to herself and her armor, like the answer might be obvious (when it likely anything but).
She may not be able to explain that well iin the middle of a fight.
Xiumei makes a surprised hiss, when her beam saber slashes through thin air and then the stones of the island below. The rock melts -- a dull red glow, before it rapidly begins to cool -- and she looks up in alarm, as the spear of lightning explodes across the ground.
It catches her, before she can leap fully away; she starts the jump, but the lightning spear catches her foot. That sends Xiumei flying into a spin -- and she comes down onto the ground, cheek and the side of her head hitting the ground with a bad landing. There is a loud, heavy SMACK when her head hits the ground.
Her eyes are unfocused for a second. The fact that she just got knocked unconscious might be recognizable to Ragnell; the blank stare is tell-tale, and the sudden slackness to her limbs, except that her breath is still apparent.
And then her eyes blink -- and when her body speaks again, it may be the same vocal chords, but it is not the same voice. It is, in an instant, much rougher than before. "You have no idea how annoying that is--"
Xiumei's body moves faster than before. It is granted that speed and agility by the sudden flow of energy and light from Yuna, which grants Xiumei a reprieve from the headache that came with that impact -- and the disorientation that came with the blow.
But, this speed and movement is not a newfound strength; it is with experience, training, and instinct that makes her hop up with a one-handed push, then land on the ground. Boots crunch, and Xiumei runs in a blur, Pulse Saber held out.
It's a sudden, violent blur of motion. And when Xiumei shouts, the intonation is all wrong: "--you LITTLE SHIT!"
GS: Varius enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Varius has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Pulse Saber - Charge Slash! GS: Varius has gained 1 Combo! GS: Varius has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Ragnell takes a solid hit from Varius's Pulse Saber - Charge Slash for 193 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
"You don't get it--" The world shifts again. Sometimes, Zed wishes that his authorizations went further than that one podunk backup teleporter station out in the middle of nowhere. Living metal shifts and changes in uncomfortable and dizzying ways. Zed growls and tries to leap through it, chasing after the other Metal Demon like a hound on the chase.
...Only to get a fletchette burst right in the face.
Rivulets of silvery blood drip from a hundred different wounds. His eye squeezes shut to keep his own blood from leaking through, but even so-- he pushes onward.
"I don't know if I expect it to end, Astrid. But..." Doom Bringer glimmers in its own tenebrous dark. The murky void yawns wide as Zed pours his heart and soul into the hungry rift. It grows like a shadow at dusk, its fringes becoming shaggy and jagged with roiling tendrils of blue-red-black as infalling photons undergo simultaneous blueshift and redshift. "It has to end. That's not just fact, it's not just time I'm talking about! It has to end. I believe it will end! All this fighting, all this bloodshed, at the end of it all, there will be peace! You called me the one who would bring hope-- maybe I am! But it's only because I want to share it, more than anything else. I can see a world where we can accept one another for what we are, and it is beautiful! Beautiful enough to fight for! To bleed for! No matter how long this path is...!"
A wave of refreshing energy beats against him. The ley, no longer exclusively poison, but something that shows he too can be considered as a creature of this world, wipes away the pain. Zed grips his blade with renewed strength, "It isn't endless! And that 'end' doesn't have to mean oblivion!" He swings, cutting a crescent-shaped singularity into the empty air to drag Astrid back in, and then-- "I believe that happiness exists, that peace exists, and that I will live to see it! With this blade in hand, I'll trace a path to the future I believe in! That is what it means to hope!"
A second slash forms a cross, and goes to hew right into the ancient, long-suffering dragon.
GS: Zed spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Zed has attacked Heal Berry with RayBlade - Zed Saber! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Cripple expired! GS: Zed has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'Gwen, she's a Hyadean. You didn't really think she was gonna choose talk over fight, did ya?'
Gwen lifts her head towards Ragnell, and grins. "Can you blame me for tryin'? Besides, we're now talking *over* our fighting, so, in a sense--"
The courier frowns, silently cursing Hiro's influence on her sense of humor.
The trade of comments is natural enough, so much that when she places her focus back on Astrid, like Ragnell, Gwen is visibly alarmed.
"--Eh?"
Shimmering blades of energy pierce into Gwen, knocking her backwards. The upper half of her body slumps forward, the pale red-haired courier momentairely stunned into silence.
No, Gwen knows exactly what Astrid is referring to, or, at least, can take an educated guess. It'd have to be about Setanta, and not about a certain someone else with cornflower blue eyes. She never really considered that his energy could linger in her after this long, but maybe--
Anger flares up in her chest as Eleanor's magic soothes the effects of Astrid's technique. "How 'bout takin' a look in the mirror, eh? We had to face Setanta because of your actions, y'know! N' now, we're here because instead of just gettin' Ida to safety, you _took Ida to Odessa_."
Gwen races towards Astrid, closing the distance as she speaks. As she nears the Hyadean, her right ARM held back, fingers clenched in a fist.
Right before she closes that final few steps, Gwen jerks that fist forward, aiming it straight at Astrid's face for an old-fashioned punch across the cheek.
"So cut the BS and listen to what my friends are tryin' to tell you, will ya?!"
GS: Gwen Whitlock spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Gwen Whitlock has attacked Heal Berry with Special Delivery! GS: Cripple expired! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Yuna ???s at Ragnell with innocent so absolute and complete she wraps around to actually giving her the answer she was looking for, in a fashion. Too bad she doesn't actually know her three sizes. Yet at the same time-- "Lulu's the one in furs and belts, right? So you're sayin' if I talk to her, I can get her AND your measurements. Sounds like a win all around t' me!" --it's really not so bad.
Especially when Yuna gets soaked and ends up with a good bit of cling. That hadn't been Ragnell's intent, but she'll admire the benefits all the same. Particularly the literal benefits when Yuna dances healing in several directions, including her own. Ragnell blinks down at herself as her wounds knit shut; then she gives Yuna a wry but amused smile. "You're a bit of a disaster, aren't ya?" she comments. But then, not unkindly: "Sure. Next time."
*Splat*, goes Xiumei. Ragnell blinks at her too. Then she clucks her tongue, shakes her head, and sighs as she holsters her guns. To her, this fight is basically over. That Astrid and Erzebet aren't done aren't really her concern; Astrid wanted a fair fight, so it's not Ragnell's place to interfere with her side of things, and Erzebet is fucking crazy, so she's not going anywhere near her. But then--
But then Someone Else arises and charges at a speed far greater than before, and if Ragnell had been a human she would die the next instant, when Varius runs her through while her guard is down. He even calls her a little shit.
Ragnell chokes, and blood that's not blood splatters out of her mouth onto the armored warrior. She gives him (her? them?) an incredulous look, before snarling and *ramming* her knee up into them, hard and fast, before kicking them away. She pants hard, clutching her wound. It's a good thing Yuna had just healed her, considering the kind of damage Ragnell just took.
"Wait. You're Varius, then?" she growls, pistols returning to her gloved hands. "So, what, you're jus' takin' an unconscious lady's body and doin' whatever you want with it? I'm not sure I'm the one who should be gettin' cussed out, here!!"
GS: Heal Berry guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Yin Yang Strike for 79 hit points! GS: Heal Berry's Force Guard activates! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Varius with Heartbreaker! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell assumes the Avenger stance! GS: CRITICAL! Varius takes a glancing hit from Seraph Ragnell's Heartbreaker for 81 hit points! GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Howling Gale for 143 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Zed's RayBlade - Zed Saber for 153 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Special Delivery for 120 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Jam! applied to Heal Berry!
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
A burst of force smashes Erzebet back hard enough to crack her skull on the living metal behind her - though her hair, generous as it is, adds some cushioning. She blinks once, hugely, her eyes struggling queasily to focus on Avril - then snapping backwards. "Oooo," she says. "Why not, then? I understand, of course, why you'd want that," and here she rolls over onto her belly, head raised up a little too far to gaze at Avril.
She kips upwards and is ALMOST back on her feet when Avril lunges inwards with that blade and there is a bite of steel that sinks through cloth and a distinct lack of armor and through flesh and bone and then there is a THUMP and Erzebet shrieks and staggers back, clutching her foreshortened arm to her chest. Her eyes widen and she gasps hard and hot enough to make visible steam.
She puts a foot on her hand, the polished nails gleaming. Her expression is agony... it fades into a moment of tearful neutrality, as if she might have passed out -
Erzebet asks Lanval, "Do you want to see a trick?"
And then she brings out her hand! Her fingers wiggle.
Why, it looks exactly the same.
"Do you want to know how I did it?" she asks Avril with the voice of the abyss.
Not quite the scene. The skin is a little pinkish and completely free of dirt. There's a bracelet of blood, slightly oblong, beneath the wrist. The nails are a little funky-looking and not painted.
"Immortality," Erzebet says, and then her outline stops making sense.
Lanval may make better sense of it. For a few fleeting moments Erzebet is moving fast enough that she might not actually register on film - the ancient technology, maybe, but the crude cartoonish chained photography that manages a mere fifteen or so frames to each 'second' of motion? Not nearly as much. She brings her unregenerated hand round into a clenched fist to try to pop Avril in the mouth, to strike her in the cheek on the backhand; she steps forwards with a knee upwards, two downwards jabs, and a final straight punch from that newborn hand, all in a moment. There is an immense force there; a feeling of profound if unnatural strength, as if seven blows in less than a second weren't enough.
After this Erzebet kicks her gun up in the air and catches it by the barrel, letting it slide downwards for a moment and looking down its length towards Lanval, as she has all this time.
"Do you want to see a second trick?" Erzebet asks him.
The trick, as it turns out, is another of those shrieks and lunges, accompanied by a rippling little giggle.
<Pose Tracker> Varius has posed.
Ragnell's knee slams into Xiumei's solar plexus. The armored fabric of her outfit keeps any bones from breaking, but Varius makes a raspy noise as a result, and stumbles backward.
"Fuck you!" Varius answers, which looks a little ridiculous considering that Xiumei is a somewhat short woman with purple hair, and doesn't really have the six foot plus imposing frame that he had in (robotic) life. "I have a headache! I was a robot, we don't get headaches!"
His expression screws up more. "And I don't just--possess her, or whatever, whenever I want! It's a fight! You knocked her unconscious! Then me or Avile has to take over! And she's laughing too hard at all this so it's my job!"
He rolls Xiumei's neck and pops it. Then, he holds his hand out -- and the Pulse Cannon reappears. He fires again, a trio of energy blasts hurtling off towards Ragnell again. This might be a tactical decision--
No, this is so he stand around like a grouchy old person and complain.
"Uuuuugh, you gave me a headache while you flirted with Mousey over there," Varius groans. "This is such bullshit. Why do humans get headaches? Biology is bullshit. Ugh--"
GS: Varius has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Pulse Cannon - Triple Burst! GS: Varius has completed his action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Wanderer of Atonement! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has launched an attack Link! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Our ways are not your ways - and there will be to you many strange things.! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes 26 damage from Poison! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has completed her action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Seraph Lanval with The All-Deluxe Starfall Saloon Feast of Blood! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell completely evades a hit from Varius's Pulse Cannon - Triple Burst! GS: Mighty! applied to Varius! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Avril Vent Fleur critically Guards a hit from Erzebet Lefanu's Wanderer of Atonement for 21 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Avril Vent Fleur gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from Erzebet Lefanu's Our ways are not your ways - and there will be to you many strange things. for 200 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Avril Vent Fleur gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Cripple expired!
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
The change in Eleanor's stance is so sudden it catches Astrid off-guard. One moment, she's perfectly on-target, and the next, the elf is reading her like an open book. "A glyphic trick?!" Astrid says, as if expecting Eleanor to confirm her suspicion. Of course, Eleanor inadvertently reminds Astrid of her own adopted role, as alien as it is. She glances downrange, singling out Ragnell and Erzebet; she pulls a third Crest Graph free of her bracer, and flings it into the air. It seems to catch the moonlight, bathing in it before returning it tenfold--raining it upon Ragnell and Erzebet in a healing wave.
"He won't," Astrid says, to Fei. "But is it wrong, to seek out those who know what that loss means?! It never ends! Enkidu! Siegfried! Even Maekir! All gone!" For a moment, she meets Fei's eyes, as if pleading with him to tell her she's wrong--that at least one of them yet lives. The silence stretches out into a long moment. Fei lunges at her, thrusts both palms at her midsection. Her flesh seems to harden beneath the impact, but he has enough momentum to knock her back. "I know," Astrid says, as she meets Fei's eyes again. "She is."
'You are a terribly old thing.'
Astrid laughs. It's too sharp and manic to be a sound of joy. "One could say that," she says. Her jaw trembles as Boudicca speaks, as Gwen blames her for starting this whole thing. "Do I deserve mercy, after what that thing led me to do? Do I deserve anything, after what--what Mother--"
For a crucial second, Astrid's guard falters. Gwen, Zed, and Boudicca strike as one. Boudicca's winds circle around Astrid, trapping her in a buffeting howling, shredding gale that somehow doesn't drown out the Seraph's words of wisdom. Zed's eruption hits home as Gwen's fist does. Astrid flies back, quicksilver trailing from the wound Zed carved into her--and then Gwen's fist slams into her jaw.
*clink*
*clinkclinkclink*
Something unspools from up above--a jury-rigged rope, made of cables, chains, wire. Anything its maker could find at a moment's notice. Ida clambers down, hand over hand, as fast as she dares. She's exhausted. She's moving largely on reflex.
But she's free. She drops the last five feet, her boots touching ground.
Astrid's head turns to face her.
"Well done," says the senior practicioner of the Method. "And now..." Astrid reacts with blinding speed. She whips her hand forwards, tendrils of Living Metal unspooling from her wrist. Ida half-leaps, half-stumbles to the side, but they follow her, wrapping around her arm. Astrid whips her own arm back, ripping Ida off her feet in a single gesture. The heiress hits the ground shoulder-first, and tumbles.
"Tell me, Ida," Astrid says, as she drags the other woman closer. There's a dangerous gleam in the Hyadean's eyes, tempered by respect. "Were they correct when they said you adored Dragons?"
Ida's eyes go wide, the pupils dilating ever-so-slightly.
Astrid clenches a fist. A brilliant flash of blue-white light erupts from her as her aura ignites like a bonfire. An arc of power races upwards, like lightning in reverse.
Hyadean flesh boils off Astrid's body, growing impossibly-fast. It threads itself outwards, forming a spine, ribs, a hollow-eyed skull with blazing blue eyes. A mixture of Hyadean tissue and machinery weaves in and around the skeleton, forming limbs, a broad, deep chest, and wings. Flesh solidifies into plates strong enough to stop anti-Gear rounds. Those who braved the Hadal Temple encountered this Dragon, in a withered, emaciated, half-disintegrated state. Now, Astrid's Dragon has returned to its full glory...
And there is no sign of Ida. Did she end up inside it, too, or--?!
The Dragon rears back, and opens her mouth, showing the supercoolant coils lining her throat. There's a brilliant blue flash, and then an eruption of light, and everything that light touches starts to freeze, as if all the heat were sucked out of it.
GS: Heal Berry has activated a Boss Action! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Paraselene! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Paraselene! GS: Heal Berry has gained 2 Combo! GS: Heal Berry's Stoic stance ends. DC: Heal Berry switches forms to The Cold-Forged Dragon! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Rime Breath! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Rime Breath! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Zed with Rime Breath! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Rime Breath! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Eleanor Klein with Rime Breath! GS: Heal Berry heals Seraph Ragnell! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Heal Berry's Rime Breath for 80 hit points! GS: Slow! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Heal Berry heals Erzebet Lefanu! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Mute and Poison removed! GS: Eleanor Klein guards a hit from Heal Berry's Rime Breath for 64 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow! applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: Eleanor Klein's Force Guard activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Rime Breath for 121 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: COUNTER! Seraph Lanval counterattacks Erzebet Lefanuwith Counter Attack! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Erzebet Lefanu's The All-Deluxe Starfall Saloon Feast of Blood for 189 hit points! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Seraph Lanval receives 50 temporary hit points. GS: Seraph Lanval enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Disease and Poison expired! GS: Erzebet Lefanu critically Guards a hit from Seraph Lanval's Counter Attack for 24 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"I..." Fei begins. "No but...this whole world knows that loss!"
Enkidu! Siegfried!
Fei lowers his head, hands pulling inward as he's struggling with something. He looks towards Varius--
"..." He blinks once again and then turns to look at her once more. "I don't know Maekir. Maybe he is! It's too late to give up on hope! And...Varius..." It sounds familiar.
"...He's a comrade of yours too isn't ..." He pauses again to take a look at Xiumei. "OH--! You ... have ... three people?? That's so many. How do you handle it? It's so hard with even two! It happens when I get knocked out too--we've got so much to talk about! Like, how do you get along so well??? My head-person keeps yelling at people saying he's going to kill them and then sometimes he tries to kill them!!"
Is this the time to be distracted??
Astrid lunges for Ida. "Aw c'mon."
He drags Ida closer and speaks of dragons. "Aw geeze."
Astrid starts transforming.
"I WAS REALLY TRYING TO AVOID THIS!!" Fei cries out. Astrid in full dragon form is no laughing matter, even for Fei. He stumbles back and says, "Can we not do the dragon fight?? I don't know how to safely punch dragons ahhh--!"
My turn
Fei blinks, and his posture suddenly goes slack as ice mist ripples around him... And then a red aura ripples around him as he leaps for the dragon--
--and aims to grab Astrid by the leg. It should be impossible for a man to lift up a dragon like that.
And yet he does. He leaps up into the sky, wholly intent on carrying Astrid with him--
--and then aiming to SUPLEX her into the ground as if he was doing the same to a man. Or a train.
Wait no not a train! That doesn't make any sense!
GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Rime Breath for 114 hit points! GS: Slow! applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Fei Fong Wong has activated a Force Action! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Heal Berry with Suplex! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell is not exactly scandalized at tiny little Xiumei yelling 'fuck you!' since she already knows it's someone else at the steering wheel, but her eyebrows do go up. He was a *robot*? And now he's in a flesh human being? How does that even work?? And there's an 'Avile' in there too, apparently. Is that also a robot? WHY ARE THERE TWO ROBOTS IN A HUMAN BODY?
Aloud, she replies, "How the fuck is that *my* problem?? And if she's unconscious, shouldn't you be, I dunno, tryin' to take her meat body outta here? If she's unconscious, doesn't that mean she's reached her limits? Do you not care if she gets ripped to shreds under the strain of the power you're usin'? Or are you too busy bitching about minor pains to care??"
He opens fire on Ragnell with the Pulse Cannon. The moment it takes him to summon it, though, Astrid sends out another wave of healing energy, which this time not only heals Ragnell's wounds but casts away the last lingering effects of the Silver Hourglass. She darts back and forth with renewed strength, the sizzling energy blasts each coming close enough to singe the fringe of her poncho but not enough to do damage. Which is good, because Ragnell has no illusions about the kind of damage those blasts would cause.
"'Mousey'? Wow, is that your way of tryin' to defend Nerd Girl's honor 'cuz I flirted with Yuna but not with her? That jus' makes your host look even *more* pathetic, I hope you know--actually, no, I hope you *don't* know, otherwise I might just throw up in my mouth--"
Astrid loses it on an exponentially larger scale. The Metal Dragon comes forth. Ragnell looks up at her and the waves of anti-heat she breathes out. It's been a fair while since she saw the seemingly zombified version of this creature, and seeing it again in this form is no less awe-inspiring. Ragnell listens to her speak, listens to her mourn, listens to her wonder if she even deserves mercy. She doesn't even react to Ragnell's earlier call in regards to Gwen, though that's no surprise; she has her own battle to attend to, after all. Ida too has disappeared... Did she escape? Or did she become component parts...? She frowns, thinking fast. Then she looks back at Not-Xiumei.
"You know what? You've ruined this entire fight for me," she announces. "The thought o' facin' a gross old man pervin' around in a little girl's body--" Ragnell is perfectly aware that Xiumei is not a little girl but she figures it might annoy Varius that much more "--makes me sick to my stomach. I'm outta here."
Then she turns and runs and leaps for the pane of broken glass where Ida once was, taking a moment to pull herself up. Varius could always chase after her if he prefers; there's time enough for him to manage. But that, of course, assumes he doesn't decide certain other targets aren't more deserving.
JUST KIDDING who's more deserving of giant plasma bullets than Ragnell??
GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"I have many talents," Eleanor answers Astrid. But Astrid is busy in the next few moments and so is Eleanor because--
When Xiumei flies through the air, Eleanor looks over to her immediately, her gaze snapping in that direction. She sees as much as hears the SMACK and cries out, "XIU!" in sudden shock and worry. But Varius brings her up, and while that isn't great, it at least shows she's not dead.
Eleanor whips back to look at Astrid again. "It's not wrong to look for meaning," she says, but she cannot really answer on the matter of loss. The others though go in quickly--before Ida climbs down. Eleanor blinks and looks to her quickl. "You--"
"..Oh, hell," the elf murmurs, looking up, up, up s the Dragon gros impossibly quickly, becomes plates and glory. And Ida is gone. The blue flash comes--
Eleanor calls out in shock and moves to shield herself, taking cover behind a construct of Living Metal and nevertheless feeling a chill down to her bones as a result. There's frost lingering on her sleeves, from her hair, as she rises. She looks to Zed, and his world; she looks to Gwen, who was shouting. Boudicca, and Fei.
She lifts a Crest again, Wing and Geo reversed from her last. "Astrid!" Eleanor calls. "You will give her back!"
Then, light begins to sparkle around her again, golden fragments of radiance spilling abot her person. "In the great expanse of darkness, a falling light shines... Burst! WAKEFUL SIGN!"
Alertness, inspiration, certainty--all of these things shine out from Eleanor's person as multicolored light shines down over her immediate allies, a rain of wind fortifying each against the glacier before them.
"Keep at it! If you give up here, do your words have any meaning to begin with!?"
...SHe stays well, well behind Fei as he does something that really ought to be impossible. She feels like explaining Varius might need to wait on explaining that.
GS: Eleanor Klein spends 2 Combo on Inspire and Reload! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Wakeful Sign! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Wakeful Sign! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Zed with Wakeful Sign! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Wakeful Sign! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Cripple expired! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Wakeful Sign for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Reload! Gwen Whitlock gains 15 extra FP from Eleanor Klein! GS: Gwen Whitlock gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Wakeful Sign for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Reload! Seraph Boudicca gains 15 extra FP from Eleanor Klein! GS: Seraph Boudicca gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Zed guards a hit from Heal Berry's Rime Breath for 66 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zed gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow! applied to Zed! GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Wakeful Sign for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Zed! GS: Zed enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Reload! Zed gains 15 extra FP from Eleanor Klein! GS: Zed gains a Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Varius has posed.
"Not the time for questions, pal!" Varius yells. "Ask her later--" He turns, spots Fei, and Xiumei's face makes an 'O' with her mouth of surprise. "The hell? Shouldn't you be dead? Or... maybe... a descendant?"
He looks back at Ragnell, and he gives her a flat look, before he lowers his gun. "The kid's taken but too stupid to realize it! I'm not gonna defend her honor! She can defend her own honor!"
Xiumei's eyebrow twitches. "And--and don't talk to me about priorities! I'm four thousand years old! I know exactly what I can do! I'm not gonna get her killed and this is important! I--"
His eyebrow twitches. First, at the fact that a Metal Dragon has appeared. Varius looks up at that, and flexes his fingers. "Damned Metal Demons," he mutters. "Always taking this too far."
Then, he looks at Ragnell, and starts shouting again. "Yeah, you run away! You--uhhhh--"
Xiumei's eyes unfocus, then focus again.
And then when Xiumei sighs, she sounds irritated. "Varius," she says, "you are in time out. And... and Avile, please, stop laughing, there is a Metal Dragon--"
She makes a face. "Y-You two! Both of you! This is serious!!"
GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
'Do you want to see a trick?' Lanval opens one eye and turns his head. For all the ways he seems to have problems comprehending how to properly mimic mortal locmotion - given the way 'joints' seem to be a suggestion to his manifestation at best - he at least seems to comprehend the usual rotary limitations of a human neck that would necessitate he turns his head. (But he didn't when there was shrieking!! Priorities are weird!)
Erzebet's hand is shown. Why, it looks exactly the same as before, thereabouts. "Immor-- yep." He keeps walking, out and about Erzebet moving quickly. He chooses not to visually follow her as he continues strolling along, strolling along. "Immortality... in termsh of livin' forever, huh." He is speaking awful casually as the Nosferatu is busy going at Avril with a flurry of blows which sometimes look like there is a punch and a kick and who knows what else with no 'in between' motion. He feels a building, chilling feel in the air as the heat of the immediate area starts to rush away. Both eyes open and widen. He only has the two eyes, so he has to tilt his head back and start to undercut the previous assertion about his understanding of what a neck properly is from how much he has to lean back as Erzebet asks if he wants to see a 'second trick.'
There is some distraction he deals with as the blue-white light sweeps the room from a re-emerging, regenerating Metal Dragon. He comes just shy of dropping everything to try and deal with it as Erzebet just lays right into him. He pivots and swings the gourd, clumsily, by the rope it is tied to like a mace far larger and heavier than its humble appearance suggests, as if to try and shatter some of the growing, budding ice forming with the total removal of heat - if Erzebet gets bonked by any part of that swing, it is only collateral.
There is also something of a dance involved when it comes to the 'being Erzebet'd' part. It is a reinvention of an old classic, that one may call it the 'writhe' and 'flail'! The Oracle of Schturdark twists and contorts with every forceful strike and blow Erzebet puts against him, but there is a sense of a softer 'give' that typical mortal bodies don't have. There is more weird water-blood splattering with every rupturing blow. Sometimes it feels like punching a puddle. Sometimes the puddle feels sludgy or muddy.
He gets knocked down somewhere in that sequence that he may well be one, and that the flurry of blows will have to adjust themselves accordingly but aside from this angular inconvenience things can proceed as desired on Erzebet's part.
He can't fight the warmth-stealing light occuring near or around him. (Also he is being battered.) He mutters things that are lost in the middle of the beating, until he can get out the last of the Seraphic Arte incantation.
"Hallowed Tides!"
There is a growing whirlpool of water coalescing around Erzebet's position as Lanval tries to 'flow' himself a bit away from it all. As the terrible warmth-stealing light continues to consume, it should freeze that very water - and maybe some of Erzebet - with it.
"I don't wanna shee a third trick," Lanval wheeze-slurs, still lying down. "I wanna shee ya happy 'bout shomethin' elshe 'n... that." He kicks a leg or two out to stave off the environmental freezing as to not get himself locked up within the icy wake either.
GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Hallowed Tides! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Fei Fong Wong's attack becomes clear! GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Ultra Idstinct for 179 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Ida..!" Boudicca calls, to her - any stealth gifted to this wind Seraph is entirely undeserved - and there's real joy in her voice, to see her escape. How she managed to free herself when she looked so overcast, up there --
She doesn't have any time for gratitude over the hows or the whys, though.
Because Astrid is as fast as the wind, and Boudicca though she staggers forward is not fast enough: slower still, stumbling as Astrid asks that question of her.
"Wait--!!" The word is ragged from her throat, and Boudicca springs forward to try and catch the Hyadean and she is met with an explosion of aura; like a leaf on a breeze she is flung back, slamming into the strange Living Metal of the ground.
A hand to the metal she pushes herself up, head, chest, upper arms; only to look up, and up, and up, and in this moment she sinks back in against the ground, flinching back as the dragon rises.
There is metal in her scales and gears in her claws and it is not the same, it is not the same, it is not the same and tell that to Boudicca's immediate threat response.
She springs up as the ice rolls in; she cannot run far enough or fast enough, cannot outmatch the speed of light. There are embers in her cloak and in her chest and nevertheless Moor Gault's fire feels distant and dimmed, all the warmth sucked from a summer breeze.
Her fear freezes, too.
This is Astrid's magic; this is Astrid's method. This is Astrid, and for all her faults she is not fell. She is... metal.
Boudicca staggers straight again, but she is frozen: perhaps silk burns easily, but metal bears rigidity. It's not until light and wind swirls around her, Wing-Geo, that the Seraph tears her greaves from the rime which has rooted them to metal ground.
There are crystals on her face, lines down her cheeks like harlequin paint; it's an achievement. Salt is harder to freeze.
"Return her," Boudicca finds her voice, through the frozen folds which make up her throat. At first it is quiet and then it is not, howling like a gale as the wind picks up around her. "GIVE IDA BACK TO ME!"
Her hand is not unlike a gun as she points, as she reaches, as she grasps for something high above. The same spell: the same spell, but more, greater than itself, greater than it could be, drawing on that wellspring inside her unpolished and unpracticed. "IDA...!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Boudicca spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Heal Berry with Howling Gale! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Howling Gale for 155 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple and Hyper expired! GS: Heal Berry has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Zed remembers. All those months ago, when life was simpler than it is today, he was there to fight the dragon in the frigid depths of Hadal Temple. Witnessing the transformation of a Metal Demon into a Metal Dragon is always an awe-inspiring sight, and the sight of that spine-chilling transformation is not at all tainted by the fact that the dragon Astrid becomes is about to try and destroy all of them.
Part of that may be that Zed is too busy leaping for Ida to really process the fine details of what he's seeing, but there's no denying the gelid radiance pouring from the dragon's maw. The brilliance sweeps him up entirely. For a long, terrible instant, Zed seems to disintegrate into so many monochromatic speedlines. Water vapor flash-condenses into a cloud of impenetrable steam. In the moment and amidst the chaos, it seems Zed truly has met his end...
...
A mighty golden blade stands, tip buried in the frozen ground. A pair of blazing eyes burn through the cloud of diamond dust. A dozen exhaust ports open simultaneously, ejecting a quantity of heat so massive that it could only have been born in the heart of a nuclear forge. The crystalline air suddenly warms, the living metal ground heats so quickly that it fractures from the strain. A colossus of white and orange and red and gold rises, lifting its massive, burning blade into a ready stance.
"Miss Eleanor, thank you. I wouldn't have made it into the cockpit without that pick-me up. And you--" Zed's voice reverberates through the roiling climatological disaster that was a battlefield. The Fire Giant, Muspell-01 Surtr, stands in stark, burning opposition to the Frost Dragon that Astrid has become. "You deserve to live, Astrid of the Method! You deserve a future. To hope! After everything you've suffered, you deserve life!"
Surtr surges forward, bringing its tide of sweltering heat along in its wake. Its blade shines with a light to rival the sun-- and unleashes that heat in a fiery torrent as it swings, launching arcs of stellar fire with each heavy blow. "Just like the rest of us. The world might not have been kind to you, or to Siegfried, or to Enkidu, but somehow, that old man-- Maekir--!" Zed smiles as he touches at his jaw, finding there an old, nostalgic ache long faded. "Maekir of the Method is still kicking! Somehow! He kicked my ass, literally! Threw us in a cage of liquid metal and almost murdered us with it! But he's alive. I know he is! I can still feel the impact of his strikes like it was just yesterday!"
DC: Zed switches forms to Musou Kojin - DaiZedGear! GS: Zed has attacked Heal Berry with Sword Beams!!! GS: Zed has gained 2 Combo! GS: Zed's Stoic stance ends. He enters the Avenger stance! GS: Zed has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Her blade cuts quite deeply, in that very same moment she calls out for Lanval.
Her gaze drops. Her lips part. For a moment there, Avril, previously of one mind, finds herself divided.
A part of her: press the attack! Ida's life is in the balance.
A part of her: what have I done?
She takes one step back, horror overtaking a previously imperious expression.
And then, and then, and then: Erzebet stands, wiggling a hand that had been missing only moments before.
A different sort of horror overtakes her expression then. "Who-- what are you?" she asks, bearing her blade before her hip to shoulder, her body twisted so as to narrow her profile.
She feels as if
for a moment
she has seen this before.
She feels like she's moving through water. Her blade seems to move so slowly as she bats aside that first strike, as if she had seen this before and was ready for it.
But she's not ready for the rest. Time seems to accelerate. She isn't even aware of what direction the other strikes are coming from, anymore, aware of them as little more than bursts of pain. Stomach, chest, shoulder--
She reels as Erzebet turns from her at last, staggering backwards first one then another step, Absolute Zero slack in her hand. Her shoulders sag, her breath is for a moment ragged.
How can she hope to keep up with that? Immortality...
She's aware of the wordless beckoning from the old thing in the dark, and jerks her head aside. No. Not again, not yet. Not if she can help it. She feels too fragile, too much like something important will crack itself wide open too soon. No. This has to come from her, from her 'self' that's still 'a work in progress'...
...if she's going to make good on her promise, and come back to Rebecca -- and Dean -- safe and sound.
She straightens, and she's just in time to watch on as Astrid...
Melts away. Reforms. Is reborn, a dragon.
--And where is Ida, who was at Astrid's side just moments ago?
"...No!"
For a moment, her intent vascillates. For a moment--
No. She must finish what she started. "Lanval," she says, bearing her blade before her as if she were a statue. "If I should... please make certain to see me to safety. I made a promise."
And then, she runs at Erzebet.
She swipes her sword in a single horizontal line.
And then there is no blade. And then the hilt twists in her grip. And then her finger slides over the trigger.
And then there is light. Once, twice, thrice -- she lays in at Erzebet with the photonic lash, barely permitting room for little else. Until the end, when she draws back, the ARM's hilt seemingly devoid of blade or beam. As if she's daring Erzebet, perhaps--?
GS: You do not have that Force Action. [full] GS: Avril Vent Fleur has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Avril Vent Fleur spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with White Blade! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has launched an attack Link! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Absolute Zero - Plasma Arc! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters a Counter stance! GS: You have finished a Link/Follow chain. Remember to +round! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has completed her action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a glancing hit from Seraph Lanval's Hallowed Tides for 46 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Entangle, Mute, and Poison! applied to Erzebet Lefanu! GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a glancing hit from Avril Vent Fleur's White Blade for 48 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Erzebet Lefanu guards a hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Absolute Zero - Plasma Arc for 108 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Erzebet Lefanu enters CONDITION RED!! GS: Heal Berry guards a hit from Zed's Sword Beams!! for 165 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"Maekir? He's alive."
Gwen itches the side of her curly hair. "I mean, it wasn't too long ago that I met him, unless something happened since then. Did something happen recently?"
Could this be Rahab's influence, or did something happen that Gwen was not aware of? Either could be true. Gwen looks towards Zed for a moment, hoping he would have more information that she would.
'Do I deserve mercy, after what that thing led me to do?'
Gwen's attention snaps back to Astrid. She balks, then waves her hands in front of her chest. "W-wait, that's not what I meant at all! You need to listen to..."
Ida. Gwen's face lights up as Ida scales down the rope. "Ida, hold on, we'll get over there!"
Unfortunately, Astrid *also* saw Ida.
Speed was something Gwen had, in her other form. In this one, her footsteps fall heavy, precious seconds passing as she watches tendrils drag Ida towards the Hyadean.
'Were they correct when they said you adored Dragons?'
"... _No_!" Gwen screams, her voice rising higher with each syllable. "Nonono_no_!"
The sight of a Hyadean transforming into a Metal Dragon would usually fill Gwen with awe and fear.
All Gwen feels now, as her throat runs dry from her screaming, is a thudding, hollow anger, frost icing the light red curls of her hair and burning her cheeks. Her mechanical heart vibrates in her chest, echoed in the strengthening pulse of energy thrumming in her right hand.
This would be easier with a Gear, she dully realizes. Her left hand snakes into her pocket and activates her remote control, which she does indeed have, since it's a headache to have to lug around a heavy crate.
It will be a while before it comes. Her Gear wasn't meant for a proper battle.
"... I don't know where I stand in the way of Metal Dragons," Gwen says quietly. "For all Ida and I are alike in that regard, it's strange how differently our abilities manifest. Since I can't show you the full extent of that, I'm just gonna show you one tiny piece."
She narrows her eyes, and lifts her hand, pyrite gold energy issuing from her palm.
"Quasar Palm!"
Bright golden light breaks from Gwen, directly placed in Astrid's face. In its wake, another blast, this one more direct- a shining ray of gold.
"_Corona Discharge_!!"
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Heal Berry with Quasar Palm! GS: Gwen Whitlock has launched an attack Link! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Heal Berry with Corona Discharge! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Heal Berry takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Quasar Palm for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Jam! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Heal Berry guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Corona Discharge for 114 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Jam! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
A luminous wave of moonlight washes over Erzebet.
Does it inspire her? Give her strength? It's hard to say. What is certain is that the filtered and reflected light of Lunar - the rays of the Moon, true or false - do not imperil her, do not harm her. Strength flows into this latecome daughter of the night.
The air begins to freeze... perhaps it really is like the Moon. Or like a moon, somewhere. A moon that is an eternal graveyard, where there are realms of eternal sun from the quirk of the landscape... as well as realms of eternal night.
As Astrid regenerates into something greater, vaster, Erzebet says, "It seems like playtime is over," even as she raises her gun and -- her arm doesn't move right. "Eeh?" she says, because she turns her head and THERE, there was Lanval's water, there was Lanval's power! Her arm is frozen to her side and the chill is sufficient that for all the dread biometabolic force and drive in the Nosferatu body, she struggles to crack loose.
It gives Avril the chance to regain her poise. The chance to see Erzebet's pale skin turning grayish through the ice -- which, well, you probably don't have to feel guilty about, and is likely a good sign because maybe that means it won't just spring back to life -- and then Avril says something and Erzebet's lips curl back.
"A promise?" she says.
"A promise? Don't make me laugh. You're not the kind of a person who makes a true promise," Erzebet says, "because you're here, now, you're doing things. The kind of person who makes promises and intends to keep it doesn't go on adventures, they don't throw around their swords, they don't make desperately flashy stands, they don't do these sorts of things. That kind of person is bound by chains before they get hair on their armpits. That kind of person dies in the ditch."
Erzebet sways to the side. "So who did you make a PROMISE to, your mommy? Your little brother? You'll break it soon enough, unless I kill you, or Astrid does; you'll find something you want MORE, something that means more to you than that. Maybe you'll work it out, maybe you'll tell mother that you don't WANT to fight to protect snivelling little cyborgs, you want to get into opera instead, and maybe nobody will MIND, but that isn't the same thing as KEEPING that promise, is it?"
"Is it any different to you, Seraphs? You're like shadows, you've got incredible powers... do you just end up being what happens to the kind of people who try to HONOR THEIR PROMISES? Do they become spirits like you, Seraph? Do they DIE? Is that your REWARD? Because I think none of you mean a single damn moment of this," Erzebet continues, as she pivots round -- ah, good, she can't talk forever -- "you're here for Everstead-Ray's MONEY, or for her METAL DEMON WEAPONS, or to get through to her BOYFRIEND, or to make yourself FEEL GOOD--"
Avril strikes.
Erzebet is damn fast even half-frozen. She pivots to lead with the frozen portion and the blow puts a massive crack in the ice - and in her bicep but that seals up again like boiling wax - and she is able to flex herself loose of it. Even so she takes an immense lash round the front; she takes a second while moving to the side; the third falls short but it's a near thing, as Erzebet ducks and rolls -- the motion more reflex than training.
Avril draws back -
Erzebet wags one fingertip at her. "I'm learning a lot from you, you know... these moments are better than any studying could be. I never really understood what they meant when they always kept prattling on about 'use your enemy's strength against her,' 'use your opponent's motion against him'... like, what does that even MEAN, right? But let me ask you, Avril Vent Fleur..."
Erzebet takes a step back. She holsters her gun.
"Just how dedicated are you to this so-called promise? Will you satisfy it even if --"
Erzebet kicks off to the side with that same blurring force. Her hands come up to grasp at Lanval, back of the neck and seat of the pants, to grasp him as she continues to kick, to run forwards with rolling-thunder footfalls. Over the Seraph's shoulders, her glasses blaze orange as she finishes her thought:
"YOU HAVE TO STRIKE ME THROUGH THIS SERAPH'S CORPUS?! Make your choice, and live with it!!"
If not stopped, Erzebet will then use Lanval's body as a blunt slamming object to see which one of them breaks first.
GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Avril Vent Fleur with Good-bye Used-goods World!! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Seraph Lanval with Good-bye Used-goods World!! GS: COUNTER! Avril Vent Fleur counterattacks Erzebet Lefanuwith Counter Attack! GS: Avril Vent Fleur takes a solid hit from Erzebet Lefanu's Good-bye Used-goods World! for 58 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 20 FP! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters Critical health and gains 25 FP! GS: Avril Vent Fleur enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Lanval critically Guards a hit from Erzebet Lefanu's Good-bye Used-goods World! for 25 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Lanval gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
Ida's world snaps back into focus. Her first thought is that Astrid somehow teleported her back into the tissue-sampling lab--she feels so cold, and she's enveloped in something strange and spongy from the neck down. She has just enough room to move her head, and as she looks around she sees cold metal walls laced with strands of tissue. Ida's heart skips a beat. She recognizes it instantly, because she's seen lithographs of the innards of well-preserved Dragon Fossils. It's a mixture of several kinds of tissue, an inner latticework seen in some Dragons, but not others--a supportive membrane surrounding what the researchers thought were...
...Dragon-riders. But they weren't. Because while taphonomy distorts skeletal remains, why would a rider's body always lie within a Dragon's ribcage?
A Dragon, Ida realizes, with a dull, sickening dread. I'm inside a Dragon. She doesn't have to wrack her brain to figure out which one.
She feels the world shudder violently--
Because Fei(?) reacts with sudden, decisive violence, grabbing hold of Astrid's leg and wrenching her off the ground. He leaps into the air, in blatant defiance of the laws of physics and common sense, Astrid over his shoulder like the world's largest sack of potatoes. He rises up, up, up--
And then SLAMS her down into the earth, raising a thunderous shockwave. Living Metal bends and buckles beneath the blow, distorting from the sheer force Fei(?) unleashed. The wind itself becomes an instrument of Boudicca's anger, descending on Astrid with hurricane force. Metal shrieks as scales and plates bend inwards, twisted and hammered by the relentless onslaught. Astrid digs in her claws, scrabbles upright.
She roars. It sounds halfway between the howl of some great beast and the boom of a jet engine. It trails off into a steady, electrical hum, and then--
CRACK
A metal slug tears free from between her jaws, accelerated past the speed of sound by supercooled electromagnets. It races towards Boudicca--it's easily the size of a human hand, and even a glancing hit could wreak terrible damage. Zed intervenes before Astrid can do anything more. For a moment, the Dragon's anger seems to falter--Maekir, alive?--but then the wave of energy washes over her, along with fresh despair. Astrid fires a second round at Surtr, targeting the machine's leg. In her moment of focus, she loses track of Gwen...
A wave of electromagnetic energy slams into the Dragon. Lightning uncoils across her frame.
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
INSIDE...
Ida hears the others, distantly. She grits her teeth, struggles against the tissue holding her in place, but she can barely move her limbs. All she can do is lie there while astrid tears into her friends, and Fei's probably losing it, and she can't help him, and astrid, what are you doing, it's--
His dearest companion is in danger. She barely knows her, but what little she's learned of her is heartbreaking. The two minds in Ida's patchwork nervous system reach an accord without even realizing it.
OUTSIDE...
Astrid roars again. A third slug rips free, racing at Gwen at breakneck speed. Her jaws gape wider. Nitrogen begins to condense out of the air in the recesses of her throat. Pumps draw it in, routing some to the coolant system, and the rest to weaponry. Astrid rears up, and breathes a stream of superchilled fluid at Eleanor. Plumes of white streak through the air as it hits the ground; Astrid rakes the weapon to the side, targeting Fei next.
INSIDE...
Ida's thoughts run in parallel with Fafnir's. Distantly, she hears another voice, outside.
'to protect snivelling little cyborgs'
'I oughtta feed you to the recycler! Maybe then you'll be worth something!'
'money or her metal demon weapons or'
'What are you going to do about it?! Lie there and bleed some more?'
'to her boyfriend'
Ida's eyes gleam. Neural tissue erupts from her spine, punching through the flesh holding her in place. It arcs upwards, threading through Astrid's body, feeling its way along paths Ida studied since she was a child. It finds the Dragon's spine, and goes in for the kill. Ida has done this in her Gear several times before, but this is her first time using this power for its intended purpose.
About a dozen feet away, Astrid actual feels something grafting itself to her siege-form--something that isn't her. Her blood runs cold.
GS: Heal Berry has activated a Boss Action! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Supercoolant Breath! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Eleanor Klein with Supercoolant Breath! GS: Heal Berry has gained 1 Combo! GS: Heal Berry spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Zed with Siegebreaker Round! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Siegebreaker Round! GS: Heal Berry has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Siegebreaker Round! GS: Heal Berry has gained 1 Combo! GS: Heal Berry has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Supercoolant Breath for 271 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow! applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Siegebreaker Round for 178 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Heal Berry has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Zed takes a solid hit from Heal Berry's Siegebreaker Round for 498 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Heal Berry's Siegebreaker Round for 103 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Wakeful Sign for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Reload! Fei Fong Wong gains 15 extra FP from Eleanor Klein! GS: Fei Fong Wong gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Heal Berry's Supercoolant Breath for 131 hit points! GS: Slow! applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong's Force Guard activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
"Mmm?" Lanval looks up, from where he is currently lies. "...'ll do what I can," he says, feeling that dread of knowing that Ida is in incredible mortal peril of a nature he can't quite make out due to a wall of opaque ice but Boudicca is practically radiating worry and fear for. "...Mmm. If it'sh a promishe ya made, though," he starts to wobble up.
He's cut off by Erzebet's ranting and raving. Frantic, loud. It only gives him the momentary opening to do something like standing up. He makes the mistake of engaging her on that specific front in timing. "...I washn't ever a mortal... wouldn't know what ta tell ya 'bout how that--" He can't answer in full before the accusation. That none of them mean a single damn moment of this. He takes a meditative sip from the drinking gourd in all of it, as if somehow his patience might finally be forced to take a proper pop quiz for once.
This moment costs him, because Erzebet is out there like she might give Ragnell's lightning nature a run for their money, and she's got a hold of him. He looks about as captive as can be - even though his bulk makes him look hella heavy by mortal standards, he seems lightweight and easy enough to hold, if damp. (He is a water spirit.) It's a solid enough hold in which for Erzebet to make her challenge.
Where he is used as a (damp) blunt object, over and over and over, like something from a proper animated physical comedy. Both of his arms are clutching his drinking gourd as if to keep it from jostling loose as he is swung around like he were a third arm for Erzebet.
"'tsh alright," he works up a smile to Avril. "Ya made a promis--" He's being a blunt object. This is not good for uninterrupted monologues, but there is the quiet, implicit trust. He doesn't make any attempt to move or escape from his fate...
Until Avril makes their move to attack, at which point, somewhere within Erzebet's swinging and grasp, he braces himself and kicks his legs up and out of her grasp, to try and brace one arm against one of hers in a temporary handstand, and then do the ultimate conterattack...
He opens up both of his eyes, shining a bright aquamarine, and somehow, in the seriousness of it all...
Blows raspberries. Divine raspberries.
The water droplets are miniscule droplet snapshots of water in all of its forms, good and not. But the fact that they are blown raspberries supercedes the element of water, to inflict the rare and deadly RUDE ELEMENTAL DAMAGE while allowing Avril the space she needs.
GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with pbbbbt! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Erzebet Lefanu takes a solid hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Counter Attack for 208 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's pbbbbt for 0 hit points! GS: Mute and Poison! applied to Erzebet Lefanu!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei's probably losing it
This is a safe bet, though he hasn't had the kind of wild oscillations as normal all too often, it's more like a tag team right now which is probably as good as it's going to get...right? RIGHT?
Fei(?) doesn't usually get a support pal buffing him about to this extent. The power is absorbed by the Fei(?) and he kind of looks back towards her for a moment. Then blinks and l ooks around a bit more intently. He sees that....he doesn't see Ida.
"..."
He looks towards Astrid. He feels two voices in there.
No.
He feels three.
Astrid. Ida. And...
...It can only be one other.
"No...no no..." Fei(?) says as he pulls back. "Not again. Don't make me do it again..." He mutters as he sinks to one knee. The breath pulses around him and fans around him. He should be frozen solid--
--but he isn't. He endures it, though the frost is clearly flicking about his skin. He grabs at his head with both hands, covering his eyes as he pants for breath.
"Astrid... Doing this...Won't bring Fafnir back."
He slowly straightens up, struggling under the power of that breath. It's not Id, really, it's more like he has one hand on the joystick and Fei is pushing the buttons. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe they're fighting over the arcade machine.
"Fafnir's already there. Hell if I know how they did it. But you promised him...after the war..."
He runs forward, stumbling part of the way as he throws a fist for the dragon--trying to reach for Ida all the while.
"Didja give up on that too?!"
He keeps striking, trying to get 'in' there.
"Goddamn Astrid you're so high maintenance you know that??" That one was probably the other guy.
GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Tenbu! GS: Hyper expired! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Did Eleanor really expect Zed to turn into a giant robot? No. No, she did not. Does she appreciate knowing that she helped?
"You're welcome, Zed!" Eleanor calls back. "Go, go!"
She doesn't know where Ida is--she can't tell. But she can see Fei overturning the Dragon and her eyes widen as that actually works. But abrubtly the dragon is breathing enemies, with lightning inside. Another roar...
Eleanor finds that the cover she'd used before has disappeared again, and as she watches the battle of titans before her and waits for an opportunity. Sure, she's small...
But she has to do something. Something other than freeze to death, which appears to be the plan as Astrid roars.
Eleanor starts to move when Astrid rears back, but there's no time. There's a heartbeat before she's hit by the wave of supercooled fluid and the sheer pressure of it is perhaps the saving grace, because it knocks her off her feet where she shoots backward in its wake. When she hits the ground, she's so cold that her jacket is stiff with ice and it breaks as she puts down her arms. "...Uhn," she vocalizes, and stirs. It was a nasty blow indeed; she's almost out of the battle entirely, and from distance, she certainly is. Her bag, containing her Crests, is frozen shut. But there is one thing...
Eleanor pushes herself up just a little bit, enough that she can pull the rifle from her back. Bright Ascalon is a fine example of Veruni gunsmithing--pale, shining, elegant.. She sets it down in front of herself and, still laying down, supports herself on an arm and her elbow as she begins to aim her weapon.
She looks carefully through the sights. In a moment, she will have to tend to herself. That's another moment. In this one, she looks down the barrel at the titanic form of a dragon.
She fires.
GS: Eleanor Klein has activated a Force Action! GS: Eleanor Klein spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Abundance! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
'You're not the kind of person who makes a true promise,' says Erzebet.
Something barely perceptable flickers about Avril's expression. Her grip on Absolute Zero's hilt tightens. She exhales sharply, and she's aware of it being so, so cold.
No. No, I cannot, runs the reminder.
"That is true," she says instead, outwardly the picture of poise in spite of the situation. In spite of her injuries. "Many people fail to keep their promises. But a promise, once made, must not be broken," she reiterates. "I intend to keep mine."
So who did she make a promise to?
"A dear friend of mine," she says simply. "I promised to return safely to her side. I do not intend to break this promise, Erzebet. I have come here to see Ida home."
She looks like a statue now. She barely moves. She barely breathes.
"I am not interested in any of those things," Avril responds. And then she is motion.
And then--
And then Erzebet snatches up Lanval and hauls him in front of herself as if he were a Seraphic shield.
There is, for a brief moment, a standoff of a sort. She looks upon Lanval, and nods the once.
"I apologize," she says to him. Because while Avril may have a gentle heart--
--she also has a pragmatic heart. On this divide within herself she stands no longer, pushing off both metaphorically... and physically, as she runs towards Erzebet and Lanval.
She pulls the trigger, once, firing off a short beam of light as she reaches for Erzebet's shoulder and flips herself upwards like a gymnast, the ends of her skirt wrapping about her legs. In one hand is Absolute Zero's hilt.
In the other is a Medium. No, not the Original--
But a stone tablet. "Material!" she calls out, as she whirls still through the air.
The temperature in the air makes a steady, precipituous drop.
"PRIMEVAL FROST!"
Improbably -- impossibly -- there is a blizzard, the air about the three of them nearly white with falling snow. In the distance, there is a silhouette. It throws its head back and howls, slamming its mighty claws to the surface below it.
At speed, a wave of jagged ice comes at a run for Erzebet--
Followed rapidly by Aru Solatu itself as the Ice Guardian barrels directly for her.
GS: Avril Vent Fleur has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Eleanor Klein has canceled their attack on Ida Everstead-Rey. GS: Avril Vent Fleur spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Material - Primeval Frost! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has gained 1 Combo! GS: Avril Vent Fleur has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein has activated a Force Action! GS: Eleanor Klein spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Heal Berry with Abundance! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Fei Fong Wong has canceled their attack on Ida Everstead-Rey. GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Heal Berry with Tenbu! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hyper expired! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a solid hit from Avril Vent Fleur's Material - Primeval Frost for 186 hit points! GS: Disease, Disrupt, and Poison! applied to Erzebet Lefanu! GS: Erzebet Lefanu enters CONDITION RED!! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: CRITICAL! Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Abundance for 156 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Tenbu for 225 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
CRACK.
That's the sound of the wind in pain, don't you know? When something breaks the sound barrier, for just an instant, you can hear the air scream. There's a wound left in the breeze, where something should be and is not.
CRACK.
That's the sound of the speed of sound overwhelming the speed of wind, don't you know? Boudicca pulls to the side and for this reason she is not vaporised, as a bullet designed to pierce a Gear forces its way past her back. The kinetic force rips through regardless: a near dodge is so much less merciful. The thing she calls her spine snaps instantly. A puppet with strings cut, she falls the rest of the way.
CRACK.
"One day," groans Boudicca, who is more worried about the ribbon in her braids, "things like this will catch up with me." A glance to the side, and they're fine. Good.
She kind of goes... a little wibbly, for a moment. A little less like a person, a little more like green light. That ribbon's still there. It's the realest part of her.
She doesn't really have time to fix her metaphor properly. She could. She could tell the story, just the way people tell it, with another layer of miraculousness laid on top.
It would take time.
They're all out of time.
And then Boudicca's lying there, and she pushes her arms underneath her as if she was always able to, straightens standing again.
"ASTRID OF THE METHOD,"
Boudicca is yelling, now, voice booming on the wind, and she may not have the volume of lightning or the treble of earth but it pierces.
"IF THOU REQUERER FORGIVENESS, THY FIRST STEP--"
She leaps.
No: that's not the word. The high jump is a sport measured in feet; this accelerates past that in an instant.
"-- IS TO CEASE THY HARMFUL ACTS!"
Up and up and she will be caught in Astrid's metal jaws --
-- no.
That is precisely where Boudicca aims to be.
Not for the first time and this time she is precisely where she means to be, as she grasps her tonfa in hand and springs up, dragging the mechanisms with her to the roof of its mouth - brings them down, in crushing motion.
... to clear a path.
To dig through the mechanisms of these bullets, and down.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Heal Berry with Cerberus Strike! GS: Seraph Boudicca has launched an attack Link! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Heal Berry with Soaring Blast! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
Seraph Lanval provides sacred disrespect. Erzebet's face is, from the angle he can see, not human in its response to that; the shape is human, but it is contorted fit to split that soft complexion, now stained with soot and blood. The eyes seem wet, at least. Wet enough to
freeze.
Avril makes an upwards rise. Erzebet throws Lanval aside with force sufficient to kill a human (he will most likely comically bounce) and turns her head upwards as she sucks in a deep breath as if to scream something to her. Her lips form the words
'i don't believe you'
but they don't make any sound. Her mouth struggles to move but the lips steam and crack as bafflement washes over her face. She realizes what has happened perhaps too late, the differences in intensity of cold not washing through whatever parahuman high she is rising. The ice comes towards her, jagged. Erzebet turns, feeling the skin of her legs crack beneath her rigid garments, and -
And the ice is upon her, and the Guardian behind it, and when the storm has passed, she has skidded out, leaving a red trail on the frost-shrouded Living Metal of the floor. Erzebet lays on her back, with no passing comment for Avril's emphatic remark. It seems Aru Solatu's word, in the end, was final.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Zed did not turn into a giant robot! I mean, he CAN turn into a giant robot, but that is not what he did here.
What he did here... Was SUMMON a giant robot.
Unaware of the strange alchemy underway within the frost dragon, Zed is forced to contend with only what is immediately in front of him. Fortunately, enough is actually going on that he's... Not exactly wanting for things to deal with. As far as he knows, any given solution to this problem must begin first and foremost with 'defeating the giant frost wyrm.' Unfortunately, said giant frost wyrm is armed with a similarly upsized railcannon.
As it turns out, the relative rarity of high-temperature superconductors doesn't matter even one whit when your internal temperature is approaching zero Kelvin.
The ultrasonic projectile explodes through the fire giant's left thigh, transforming its internal mechanisms into a useless hodgepodge of twisted metal. Zed grits his teeth as a cacophony of alarms and alerts flash in his peripheral vision. He swats them all away, because who even listens to alarms? They go off all the time anyway. "Surtr, come on. We just need one good strike! Power through it!"
The Muspell's eyes blaze with light as a sinuous spiderweb of living metal knits the obliterated limb back together. Cables of artificial, metal musculature rebuild what used to be pistons and servo motors. The Fire Giant's breath fills the air with a sweltering warmth, a full-body heat-haze rippling like an aurora of pure thermal energy all around it. "Astrid... Answer me this one question."
"After everything you've been through, after everything you've suffered, and all that the Mother did to our people, tell me," Surtr's stance shifts, its sword now held at its side, parallel to the ground. All along its length, the weapon seems to hinge open, unfolding seven fin-like branches along its blade. Plasma emitters and electromagnetic containment fields ignite across its surface, surrounding it with a vast column of white-hot nuclear fusion. "...Are you going to give them the satisfaction of destroying you? I want to see you come out of this alive. I want justice for everything that's been done to you. I know the future must seem bleak, but... I can't just give up on you. None of us can! But the solution doesn't involve eating our friend!"
A voice that is not Zed's reverberates across the battlefield. "I will give you one more strike. After that, self-repair systems will not be able sustain combat readiness. Metal Dragon Astrid--" Surtr, the Jotunn core at the heart of Zed's blazing gear, takes on a tone far too full of sympathy to belong to a mere machine, "--I wish to ask you of my creators. Please refrain from dying."
"Let's go, Surtr! One last blow!" Surtr rockets forward, "Severing Divine Blade--!"
It swings once. Twice. Three times. 'One more strike' was more of a suggestion it seems, because apparently Zed and Surtr consider carving a massive flaming 'Z' into the frost wyrm 'one last blow.'
And that mechanical voice roars with a voice that scorches the clouds themselves...!
ABSOLUTE ULTIMATE!
...
...Maybe Zed... has not been the best influence for this relatively young giant robot AI.
GS: Zed has activated a Force Action! GS: Zed has activated a Force Action! GS: Zed has activated a Force Action! GS: Zed spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Zed has attacked Heal Berry with Zettou Shinai - Zettai Zettou! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Slow expired! GS: Zed has completed his action. GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Cerberus Strike for 141 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt! applied to Heal Berry! GS: Heal Berry enters Critical health and gains 25 FP! GS: Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Soaring Blast for 50 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow! applied to Heal Berry! GS: CRITICAL! Heal Berry takes a solid hit from Zed's Zettou Shinai - Zettai Zettou for 594 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Heal Berry gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Heal Berry has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
---SOMEWHERE---
A pilotless Gear tries to enter a building. The side of it lighting scrapes against a door. It politely backs up.
It tries to enter a building. It scrapes the side, and politely backs up.
It tries again.
----HERE----
Gwen knows she's pressed that button. She does it again for good measure, her left hand reaching into her pocket one more time as she backs up.
A slug hits deep into Gwen's left shoulder, causing Gwen to cry out and clutch at it with her right hand.
She'll just have to go for it; she can't wait around for a Gear that may not be able to even get in here.
Fei, meanwhile, who is full of great ideas, gives Gwen an idea. It's a very, very lousy one, and one that usually fails, because it's not much of an attack at all. It's just a survival mechanism, and a lousy one, when forced, like forcing yourself to drink a bottle of warm water when you're already drank your fill.
"Astrid, you wanna see how I got that Primarch's..." Gwen hesitates, trying to remember enough to find a word that would count. "... e-energy?!" Like drinking from a lava pool, when you are so severely parched. Like wondering what exactly Astrid sees when she looks at you, when you don't feel all that different at all.
But, would you?
At some point, Gwen is there by Fei's side, tugging her leather glove off her right hand. Boudicca's disturbing tactic hopefully will distract Astrid. She's a Seraph, so she'll be fine, right...? please boudicca, be alright
That, or maybe Zed will help. Zed please be alright
".... hopefully this'll go better than the time I tried to drain your Gear a while back, Fei." Gwen pauses, letting out a self-depricating chuckle under her breath. "It felt really, really weird."
Gwen's bare right hand grabs onto a patch of metal surface on Astrid's skin, the rounded fingers of her currently humanoid hand clenching on as hard as they are able in their current state.
Maybe, if she imbibes of Astrid's current form, a part of her might sense Ida.
If Ida is, indeed, in there at all.
If there's any possibility that some sign could come through such an act.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Avril lands as the Guardian's snowstorm ceases, and it it seems nearly an afterthought. "Lanval! Are you--"
Her knees buckle then, and she drops down to them, breathing hard as her exertions and injuries catch up to her for the moment.
"Please... be alright," the Veruni queen exhales, and it is an uncertain thing whether she means Lanval, Ida, or the both of them.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
'Thrown hard enough to kill a man' is... still not very high up on the list of exciting and entertaining experiences for a Seraphim, but Lanval is discarded at an angle where he hits some of the iced-over Living Metal where it's less a 'crash' and more of a 'slide.' The real fun is when there's a whole lot of inertia and momentum from being Erzebet-pitched, meaning he now has a crazy hellfrozenoverride across impromptu alien loop-de-loops and bends and turns, even managing several horizontal whirls off an impromptu half-pipe before he spills out face-downand slides to a stop not long from where Avril is.
He is quiet for a bit. Is he--
"...That face." Lanval murmurs. "...That look in thoshe eyesh..." He seems a tad spooked. Just a tad. Not enough to disincorporate himself and go inside his vessel to rest it off or anything of the sort, but...
He looks up to see Avril dropping down. Even with the faint breeze of a good, healthy snow from Aru Solatu's presence, Lanval struggles to rise back up, for he is further losing ground in his assertion to Ceimglace that 'water' and 'ice' are absolutely not the same thing ever. He inhales and exhales, as he does as a personal hobby of his, leaning forward precariously like he seems ready to take up the idea of walking on all fours - that's how battered he is as so much light and emotion is happening not that far in front of them.
"...Ida... she'sh made a lotta good friendsh," he says as he looks over to the kneeling Avril. "...not ta shay ya aren't one of 'em..."
He has to take that contemplative, calming sip from his drinking gourd. That look on Erzebet's face when he delivered RUDE. "...Ya made a promishe, didn't ya...? If ya think yer on the verge of..."
He doesn't finish that thought. He's watching one of the many scars of the tail end of that great war between Mother's misguided Metal DEmons and the people of Filgaia, and how the remnants have formed that fragile, temporary accord for peace, if not full-on acceptance.
He's battered too, and his Seers aren't with him. The most he can do now is keep to Avril and himself, reflecting on the residual giggling of when Erzebet stomped the ever-living everything out of him.
<Pose Tracker> Heal Berry has posed.
'Astrid... Doing this... Won't bring Fafnir back.'
The Dragon's head whips towards Fei, plumes of evaporating nitrogen trickling from between her bared teeth. She snarls, as if issuing a wordless, enraged rebuttal--
BANG
Eleanor's shot hits home. It punches through Astrid's armor, tearing into plates weakened by Fei and Boudicca and Zed. It passes through nearly two meters of flesh before embedding itself in the armor protecting Astrid's actual body. She hears the dull thump, and a cold shiver works its way down her spine. It's a distraction she doesn't need. The Dragon's gaze goes distant, as if the woman controlling it were focusing on something other than puppeteering her siege-form--
--Which is exactly the case.
Astrid's jaw falls open. It shuts tight. Her wings snap out, and the integral ramjets within them hum ominously. Her head jerks in Boudicca's direction, her eyes snapping back into focus as she sees the full extent of Boudicca's wounds--
INSIDE...
Two minds compete for control over Astrid's Dragon, and one of them has backup. What Ida lacks in training, grace, and subtlety she makes up for with dogged determination. Fafnir is a shade of his old self, but he knows this like the back of his hand. Astrid is finding herself overwhelmed. The signals she's sending are being drowned out by the sheer volume of input coming from her passenger.
Boudicca leaps towards her as her mouth opens, dodging teeth the size of railroad spikes as she homes in on her quarry. Her tonfa slam into the railgun's mechanisms, smashing through them in a series of violent blows. Fei drives a fist into the Dragon's neck. Armor buckles and breaks, revealing the flesh beneath. Astrid thrashes, tail whipping back and forth; she could easily crush Gwen, but the courier walks up to her, fearless. She rests a hand on her...
INSIDE...
They could struggle like this forever. It would solve nothing. Ida takes her lip between her teeth, and reaches out across the neural bridge--not for Astrid's siege-form, but for Astrid herself.
Astrid.
It takes her a moment to respond. It feels like forever.
What--what are you--?!
Please. Listen to Fei. Listen to Zed. I can only imagine how you've suffered, but--but you deserve a chance to live, to take back what Mother stole from you. To make amends for what you've done. Connected like this, one mind to another, there is no way to hide one's feelings. Ida feels Astrid's despair as keenly as Astrid can feel her empathy, her care.
Another long moment of silence. Outside, Astrid's Dragon has gone completely still. Surtr's blade rises high and then falls like a great, burning guillotine, cleaving through flesh and armor and bone in a single swing. It buries itself in the Living Metal plating. In one stroke, Zed has cut deep into the Dragon's torso, and exposed what passes for its cockpit. Blinding agony interrupts the conversation. Astrid realizes that her siege-form is lethally compromised, and cuts her losses. A minor exertion of will disconnects her from the link, and a wrenching tug rips her free from the neural conduits. Deprived of its 'pilot', the Dragon's body begins to degrade.
The inner armor around the 'cockpit' falls apart. Astrid stumbles out, and falls to the ground, coated in evaporating quicksilver. Tendrils of flesh still dangle from her body. There are bright silvery-blue markings on her face from where the sensory links were pressed to her eyes.
A moment later, the flesh further back ripples, and a second figure breaks the surface. Ida is still connected by thin, silvery lines, and she's gasping for breath--but she's alive.