2021-04-17: Verdant Wind

• Log: Verdant Wind
• Cast: Isaac Stone, Eika Zuse, Billy Lee Black, Cyre H. Lorentz, Lily Keil, Fei Fong Wong, Elhaym van Houten, Ida Everstead-Rey, Yulie Ahtreide, Lan Lilac, Seraphita, Loren Voss, Azoth, Seraph Ragnell, Ethius Hesiod
• Where: Zeboim Ruins
• Date: April 17, 2021
• Summary: Conflict arises within the Zeboim Ruins, as both parties in pursuit of what the past has left to present-day Filgaia engage one another.

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<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stone has posed.

It must have been quite recently that the Ethos had found something within the depths of the Zeboim Ruins they were in the process of excavating that had apparently incentivized them to accelerate their breakaway from Solaris. The reports on the Ethos computers had not gone into detail, or at least, according to what could be accessed and deciphered. With Solaris in pursuit of the object, time was of the essence-- everyone needed to get there first.

But the ruins were not precisely easy to navigate, for one thing. And for another, there was quite an obstacle standing in the way of the vault in question. Featuring a troublesome depressurization chamber, it's anyone's guess as to whether it been the fault of the ruins themselves or whether the Ethos excavators had set it as a form of 'insurance'.

The vault, once entered, contains something startling in this day and age: technology, specifically a wealth of still viable databases, from over five thousand years ago. While any one of these machines would promise an astonishing wealth of information -- if they could be accessed and deciphered without causing harm to the contents -- it's the databank at the center of the room that likely draws all eyes.

It's of Elw origin. There can be no mistaking it at a glance -- an organic, flowing design like that can only be of the Elw. How long has it rested in here, hidden from the rest of the world? And... there's more. The bulk of the components that attach to it are clearly of Zeboim make, but there are others: machinery of a more recent (but not modern) origin. Who was here before the Ethos?

There is but a moment to take all of this in.

"I must thank you for clearing the way for us," says a voice behind everyone.

Bishop Stone.

He stands in the door, his ARM leveled at the room. He's not alone: Solaris soldiers and assorted forces are close at hand, blocking the way out.

"Please, do not misunderstand me... We certainly could have breached the Vault." He pauses, his expression genial as long as one doesn't look him in the eye. "With enough time. However, you have saved us a great deal of time and effort, and that is quite commendable. Now then..."

He gestures with his free hand towards the Elw device.

"Hand over that machine. That key, our last inheritance from -Mimir-, belongs only in our honorable hands!" Even with his escorts, hes not content to leave it to just one of his ARMs leveled, flicking a sleeve to present a second. His asking that it be handed over appears a verbal formality, at best.

DC: Lan Lilac switches forms to Iron Butterfly!

<Pose Tracker> Eika Zuse has posed.

LAST TIME, IN A DIG

Eika, not alone, explores much of the ruined path. After being trapped in a malfunctioning (or, as she believes, intentionally modified) pressure chamber, they broke through into the core of the ruins.

"This is..."

Eika looks around. "This isn't what I thought it was. But - look." There's a piece of Elw machinery; Eika points at it. "That isn't Zeboim. And neither is that," her finger shifts to point at some other parts. "Maybe..." She goes to look. "This must be what they were looking for." It's so strange that it's here at all; it can't possibly be uninteresting.

Eika starts to walk toward it, to look, before: 'I must thank you for clearing the way for us.'

NOW

Eika has been fighting back anger, along with other emotions, for the whole exploration. She'd almost managed to put it aside while doing what she loves; there was a reason she was an Etone assigned to ruin exploration and study and not, as Billy was, hunting down Wels.

But as soon as Stone returns, everything comes back. Shame. Regret. And especially anger - over everything he's said, over everything he's done. Over everything she knows, now, about the Etones - and everything she can't do about it.

There is one thing she can do. And she decided she was going to do it what feels a lifetime ago, in the cockpit of a stolen Gear in the Ethos Headquarters.

She whirls as if shot, her hands balling into fists as she drops into a slight crouch, looking about to pounce. "YOU," she half-growls, half-roars. "This is 'Mimir'? That's what you want? You're not getting it!" No choice but to fight indeed - she would have fought even if there was a chance of avoiding it.

Eika sprints toward Stone. She is *fast*, taking great bounding steps even while she's being covered by Stone and his guards' ARMs; if she gets shot and nobody else can stop it, this is a risk she's accepted. She turns the last long step into a whirling leap. Her foot lashes out, high, with all the speed of her jump and all the momentum of her spin behind it, driving her heel at the side of Stone's head. It is meant to be a killing blow; if it cannot kill, she is at least hoping it will leave him dazed and unable to defend himself.

This does not solve the problem of Solaris agents. But it might deal with at least the mastermind.

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Billy Lee Black had a rough time getting down here; his tattered resolve tested by the very equipment he relied upon to clear the twisting challenges of ruined Zeboim, he was even briefly knocked unconscious by the pressure trap at the end.

He's taken a moment to rouse himself at least, helping the others check over the strange device. "This technology is Elw origin. No mistaking that." He chews his lip, thoughtfully. "But...not all of it."

Eika is a challenging presence, but in this moment a helpful one. Exile and excommunication are dire fates, but a veteran ruin explorer is a sublime help to work like this. "What is this...?"

He reacts before most; he knows the tricks an Etone uses to hide their presence, and to reveal it. He hears the latter approaching. He whips around to face the door, one of his gunsmokes up. The advantage of the tool; you can replace it easily. And the one that appears....

His jaw sets. "Bishop," he can't resist calling him. He sees the two escorts. Got to plan this carefully. Got to...to do what? Shoot? Shoot at Bishop Isaac Stone? He's a monster. He's practically his father. Anxiety tears at him again. He thought he'd be ready, but...!

Eika screams and runs at him, and the shock loosense Billy's arm. He snaps his free hand down, much like Stone did, and much like him, an ARM drops into his hand - one of his twin Ether guns. He snaps this up, level to Stone. He takes one, two, three short breaths, nearly hyperventilating.

"Sinner, find mercy in the dust," he whispers, a mantra Stone himself taught him.

Then he fires, a blast of sheering razorwind firing out of the barrel and toward Stone and his associates.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

An Elw ruin... How many times does this make now? The original keepers of this world were masters of technology both strange and dangerous. Their work was so mighty that it scarred the very world it was meant to save-- and now...

Now Solaris wants it for-- reasons?

Well, that clearly isn't going to fly. If nothing else, a certain adorable dog-eared girl would be very upset if she knew that Cyre didn't do something to keep her people's legacy out of Solarian hands.

And so, by hook or by crook, Cyre Lorentz steps out from behind what looks to be some kind of vine-ensconced computer terminal and gives the approaching Ethos a fierce glare. "And what's going to stop us from wrecking the place to keep you from getting your filthy mitts all over it, huh?"

If Lily is here... Cyre's pretty sure they could probably manage it.

<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.

Lily's hands are still hot from channeling the nuclear flames she used to bust back open the doors. Her circuit-patterns dim as she releases the spell, having managed not to cook the group along with their egress. She looks over the databases, just their visual cues--machines here. A wealth of information... and information that surely she could access, could understand. In a databank like this, maybe it would have something on--

"...Elw," she says with a blink, and then something more recent. "Who's..."

Stone. Lily turns immediately and shows her teeth, glaring immediately towards him and his ARM. Solaris soldiers, maybe others.

He calls their hands honorable, and the first thing Lily does is--

Actually the very first thing Lily does is snap her eyes to Eika, screaming, and lift her hand. A field of golden energy bursts around Eika as she charges forward, pressure sufficient to slow or deflect bullets--if only for long enough for her to reach her target. Lily doesn't really know Eika terribly well, but she knows a frontal assault when she sees it. She ducks down to become a smaller target next. Billy is shooting. Lily speaks up here.

"Your 'honor' is worth a smear on my shoe. And as much as I want a crack at what's in here--" Cyre speaks up. Lily nods. "I'm willing to blow this entire place sky high just to deny it to you."

<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei looks at Stone and the soldiers with him. He thinks for a moment and then says, distinctly. "Nah." He pauses a moment before adding, "I'd rather destroy it all then let someone like you hold onto something like this." He doesn't rush forward, though because well..

Because he sort of expected Billy to shoot at him and darting into melee in that scenario is--well, Fei is a little nervous around guns. As a general rule and he doesn't want to make things tougher on Billy besides.
"I'm still feeling pretty fresh." Fei says. "But what you did--neither me nor the other guy is really inclined to forgive you. So..."

His eyes narrow. "How 'bout you fuck off before something real bad happens."

Even now, Fei is always trying to put a stop to the fight in his own way. If he isn't being excellent at this, well, to be fair--the guy did betray one of Fei's close friends and seems to be a total dick.

A heart of STONE if you will!!

He nods to Lily, smiling faintly, glad they are on the same page here.

DC: Cyre H. Lorentz switches forms to Wind Shaman Cyre!

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly van Houten faces the Bishop and his men.

Something about this -

-- it's like she's watching a movie, but she's in the movie, Elly decides. She can hear what the Bishop is saying, his use of the surface language with a term or two here and there. His tone of voice is not familiar to her, not in any kind of specific. She has only met the man twice including now, and he did not make a good impression.

But...

For some reason she wants to cry.

What he says is cruel. Helpless. Hopeless. An inevitability, perhaps. They might fight here, they might struggle, but in the end, what would it avail them? Perhaps they could escape. Perhaps they could destroy the relic they seek. But all it is is a holding - a -

Elly looks at her hands. She can smell and taste blood but it isn't the same, is it, she tells herself. It's like a rhyme.

Is it the other people here? No, somehow. She loves them but she can only see and taste their bodies right now.

What is different is -- Elly has an eye bandage on, so she can only really see it with one eye, but she has her staff at her hip, still folded upwards. And in her other hand she has that peculiar folding device. That strange novelty with its weird little charming effect. The Ether Doubler.

"No," she answers the Bishop - and she actually smiles, looking towards Fei for a moment, but then back ahead towards Stone.

Her lips purse up as if she's saying goodbye to someone leaving on a five-year voyage, her visible eye welling with tears. Elly shakes her head a little, even as a glow collects in the Doubler. "No," Elly says. "Not today, thank you."

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Ida stands at Lily's side, peering into the room beyond. Awe and horror play across her face in equal measure; her mind reels as she considers the implications of what they've found. Elw technology, here--?

    A faint rustle from behind. Ida whips around. She doesn't so much draw her ARMs as extrude them, the flesh of her gauntleted palms opening with a noise that's both wet and metallic. Devil's Due and its unnamed Devil Arm twin drop into her hands. Ida levels them at the man's center of mass on instinct. Only then does she realize who she's aiming at.

    "Horseshit," she snarls. Her fingers slide into the trigger-wells. "Die unmourned, you parasite--"

    Eika leaps into the way.

    "Eika!" Ida cries, eyes widening. A moment later, Billy opens fire. Ida hesitates a crucial moment; Eika's in her direct line of fire, and while normally she'd trust her own marksmanship, these... are not normal circumstances.

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Yulie and the others had made their way through the ruins, and at the bottom, they find something strange and out of place. A machine, organic and flowing - so out of place compared to the designs of the machines all around it. Yulie isn't familiar enough with Elw technology yet to pinpoint its source. But she knows it's Important, which means it's all the more important for them to secure it.

...But then, she hears a voice that fills her with dread and makes her heart sink. Bishop Stone appears, flanked by Solaris soldiers. Yulie breathes in sharply... and then, moves to stand directly in front of the machine. She shakes her head.

"...N-no. No, I won't. You're just going to use it to... to do more terrible things. To further your terrible cycle of hurt and betrayal. I refuse." She says.

Others state their defiance, as well... and Eika and Billy attack Stone directly.

It's a distraction - a distraction she can use.

"Oh, Calucion, please lend us your strength..." Yulie murmurs. In a swift movement she draws a metal ring that splits into three, floating in a circle in front of her. At their center, a Crest Graph, which she concentrates on and invokes... and out from her position a soft white light emits, washing over them in healing light.

They're all tired from everything that's brought them to this point, but perhaps it will at least be enough to help them make their stand here.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Lan followed after the others, seeming lost in thought more often than not. Someone's got to carry water, someone's got to hand out snacks. Someone's got to encourage others. And Lan's certainly not the only person who can or does, but these things make her happy. And somehow, she didn't die to the dangers of a Zeboim-era ruin!! Not even the depressurization chamber.

    The databanks and monitors are more familiar to her now than they would have been a year ago. Even the one of Elw make is recognizable for what it is. Though Elly certainly speaks and reads Solarian better than Lan ever will, she was happy(?) to help translate when needed. If nothing else, it kept her busy.

    She doesn't know what she's going to do.

    She knows what she has to do.

    For the good of this world. For the good of...

    So when the bishop finds them, crowing about how they've all just done him a favor, there's something a bit routine about it. There isn't anything Lan has to worry about. There's only one action to be taken. After all...

    Isaac Stone isn't important to her, not really. He's just another monster.
    Just another (Solarian), right?

    She moves her body in between Stone and the Elw contraption, silently, and lifts both hands to form a circle with her fingertips. Silver wakes in her veins.

    "O you of endless starlight," Lan summons, and sets her 'sights' on Stone's skull.

<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stone has posed.

     Billy was taught well. No. He's learned even better than he was taught. Bishop Stone is faster on the draw of a trigger, but once Billy gets those breaths in, he's faster on the draw of his own resolve - and the roaring fire of his ARM discharges, striking the Bishop's arm before he can fire as much of the entourage find themselves hurled off their feet. That Billy still draws breath may take some time to register... but that's not all.
     Stone's own discharges moments after it's forced into a raise, and this seems it might put Eika into mortal danger. The shot merely grazes her as she lashes out with a foot, the heel finding purchase on the side of his head. The other ARM discharges loudly as its shot is pointed to the floor, where it impacts and fractures into irrelevance.
     Everyone hears something shear unnaturally. It doesn't sound like cloth. It sounds wet, squelchy. The Bishop, rebuked physically, skids back into a kneel as his left forearm goes over his face. Eika's kick was delivered like it could snap his neck - and the ARM in that sleeve collapsing on the ground broken.
     "Such impudence from the dregs of this world!" That's the Bishop's voice, but it doesn't sound like him any more. Familiar, but different, as he stands up. "You would say those words at me, Billy?"
     Eika may notice moments before the rest. There's something stuck to her foot. A lot of things - a wig, a crunched pair of spectacles, the... flesh attached? Wait. That's not human flesh on her foot.
     "How dare a monster like you lay any part of yourself on me," The Bishop lowers his sleeve, revealing behind it a grinning red skull that seems to have something wrapped around its contours other than flesh and blood. There are no eyelids. There's no nose. There's no ears. There's no lips. Just an intense, baleful gaze and a grin that has no right ever being called one.
     That's not a human sneering at all of them now.
     "Of course base savages like you would theaten to destroy what you do not understand," Stone sneers at Cyre and Lily alike as he takes a step back. Could he be afraid of that very idea?
     "Me, beg for forgiveness... me?" He's taking another step back from Fei, as if catching himself - barely - on whether or not it's a good idea to aggravate Fei, as if a part of him were expecting something worse to have come to pass that has yet to as those eyes flick to Elly's Ether Doubler glowing and growing in building strength.
     "A -lamb- would call me a parasite?" His belated reaction to Ida's invitation follows after Yulie continues to pray out to Calucion even now. He is not so bold as to assume he could condescend to Yulie now and encourage her back into a proper fold, after how she showed her resolve the last time.
     Lan points the power bestowed upon her by her faith and service to the Guardian of the Stars, and he is not about to stand around and see what she's about to unleash in all of this, as he hisses out. "The rest of you! Deal with them! I did not come without a backup plan for crushing bugs like you underfoot should you keep scurrying there," evidently he can still spit just fine, and spit he does, as the Bishop turns away and runs for it.
     ...The 'rest of you'? With Billy having helped take care of the immediate surrounding threats, and Eika having exposed Stone for what he is (beyond the surface), can the Drifters hold their claim of this find against whoever or whatever's coming for them?

<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.

Eika bounces off Stone's face with a backflip. There is indeed something stuck to her foot; at first she thinks it's just the glasses, but then -

She recoils. Her leg spasms as she kicks, not martially this time, to get all the disguise off of her foot. "You're going to call me a monster? After that? After *that*?" Eika clenches her fists. "No wonder you wanted me gone. You had to add hypocrisy to your list of sins!"

Eika lowers her body as Stone begins to run off, resting her weight on legs and one hand, and when he goes - she springs after him. It looks like she won't clear the guards for a moment, but Lily's barrier keeps her safe (for a few seconds) and Eika literally runs along the wall, her claws scraping across the metal with nails-on-chalkboard squeals.

"You won't get away, Stone! If I have to chase you down this whole ruin! I've been places like this before!!" An exaggeration at best, but Eika does seem to have at least a vague idea of how to follow him. A couple of the Solarian black-clad soldiers start to give chase of the two of them.

--

But as for here...

"Hi!"

Amongst the Solarian troopers - and kind of sticking out of them, honestly, between ears that raise inches over her head before flopping forward and the fact that she is dressed not in black but in red and white and pink - is a woman.

A rabbit beastwoman. With a suspiciously big smile, and a uniform that isn't uniform because it's different than everyone else's.

"I don't know what he did to make you *quite* this mad but! You have to keep your hands off Mr. Stein for now," Seraphita says, waggling her finger. More quietly, she adds, "Honestly he's kind of a jerk to everybody. But that doesn't mean we can ignore him! You can't just leave your team all by themselves. That's mean."

Seraphita makes a come-on gesture to the rest of the Solarians; a forward sweep of her arm with arm raised high. "So if you want to get through here, you get to go through us! Everybody spread out! Standard procedure! And..."

"...hey, is that Elhaym?" She seems slightly confused. Maybe she wasn't expecting her here.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    The other with the Fire Element is a little bit less enthusiastic about all this.

    "Let's get this over with," says Loren Voss, affecting some form of weariness, though he can't quite entirely maintain the proper expression. After all, Stein did just run past him with... out a face? He thinks?

    Shaking his head and drawing his blade from where it rests at his hip, Loren hesitates only a moment more as he takes in those assembled before him.

    Why is she... here, too...

    If it had been up to him to decide, Captain Voss would have left with his support team and returned to base after the operation had been concluded (which is to say, he'd been forced to retreat to the reserve forces, Azoth in tow). But it wasn't really his decision to make. There'd been a call for someone to assist in support capacity in the extraction attempt that 'Bishop Stone' was conducting in the ruins and...

    Well, he couldn't leave it to one of the newbies, frankly.

    What a pain.

    He'd patched himself up as best he'd could and headed on out, a choice of which he's now already beginning to regret.

    "What she said," he mutters, exhaling a sigh. Far more audibly, he calls out, "Right! Spreading out, ma'am!"

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

At Isaac Stone's command, and with Seraphita's instruction, the the faceless construct no one knows to be Azoth glides forward to confront the Drifters and block any further pursuit. He's the same as he was defending Stone at the church: transformed from anything they may recognize to this dark, skeletal-like chassis with exposed, mechanical innards barely draped from view by a tattered cloak.

This time he comes with an invisible passenger. As Azoth tried to warn Ragnell, operating in such circumstances causes a particular set of overrides to activate: limitations placed on his core are removed. Every critical error and warning this invites goes ignored. Left to operate long enough like this and he'll overheat at best and suffer hardware failure at worst. That itself, Azoth is coming to realize, isn't a well kept secret. Even without his face and his voice, there are still those among the Drifters who recognize the pain in his twitching movements and erratic lashes of energy.

But their sympathy for him does not change his objectives, even if they're right about keeping this from Solarian hands. Even if all the data, all the information, all the memories are worth destroying to do it.

He hovers, a few energy swords appearing to orbit behind him in a threatening gesture while he greets them with a glitched reverb of a sound, like a noisy motherboard crushed underwater.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    The Drifter community is largely in agreement that they'd rather destroy these ancient ruins and the power and knowledge they contain than let someone like Bishop Stone have it. Although from where she is inside of Azoth in spectral form, Ragnell doesn't have a head per se, she emits the emotional equivalent of a headshake all the same. Typical Drifters.
    
    Not that she dislikes that about them. Willful defiance in the face of a smug asshole is something this Seraph can respect.
    
    And, from within Azoth's chassis and observing with his sensory equipment, Ragnell regards Bishop Stone with disdain as he transforms into something monstrous (reveals his true form, perhaps) and then scuttles away, bleating insults while letting others do the actual fighting. Coward. But Ragnell can be patient. After all, everything to do with Azoth is a long game, and that includes dealing with the masters(monsters) on the other side of his chains.
    
    Once he scarpers and Eika springs after him with help from Lily's barrier, Seraphita steps forward. There's a face Ragnell hasn't seen in a while and isn't *especially* eager to see again, even if the two more or less got along. Loren steps forward with her, and of course Azoth is here in his alter form. It's not pleasant to be in. As he'd warned her, his overrides in this form are--special, and with that extra power comes an extra strain.
    
    Which is fine. Ragnell wanted to see this for herself. And as long as she's here, she can at least ensure he lasts a little longer than he did last time... though that might not be what he wants.
    
    As the energy swords orbit around him, a wave of heat bursts outward in a cloud around him. It does no damage, though it does make the environs slightly more uncomfortable for everyone else... and slightly *less* uncomfortable for Azoth, now that that heat has been vented from his body.
    
    Let's see how they do this time, then.

DC: Seraphita switches forms to Element of Fire Seraphita!

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Isaac Stone is literally revealed to be a two-faced horrorshow from some kind of freak science lab. Somehow Cyre Lorentz is not really all that surprised. Like, he's only really shocked that Stone was literally wearing a mask face and that his horrible, monstrous identity reveal wasn't accompanied by an outburst of etheric energy and the transformation into some kind of wel-amalgam-lich.

Well, it's good in any case. Now Billy doesn't have to feel bad about shooting a face he used to know and respect. But not today. Stone wouldn't give them the opportunity today, the coward. The way he flinched at the very thought of all of this knowledge being obliterated-- something Cyre is very glad he and the others are on the same page about-- rather than falling into his hands is... Telling.

But he is not here. Someone else is.

Someone...

...Else...

Cyre stares directly at this fluffy pink-red bunnygirl. The gears in his head begin to turn and whirr. Cyre Lorentz, cad that he is, never forgets a lady he has met before. His powerful neural circuitry (beastman-class) rapidly sorts through the card catalogue of ladies he has previously encountered, and finally manages to determine where he had met this one before and why she looked so familiar.

"Ahhhh!" Cyre points, suddenly, "It's the ditzy Cage Tower bunny!!"

This... Is kind of not the best description, admittedly, but still.

"Even back then, we were being watched by Solaris, huh?" Cyre snarls, a flash of green light @Emit Isaac Stone is literally revealed to be a two-faced horrorshow from some kind of freak science lab. Somehow Cyre Lorentz is not really all that surprised. Like, he's only really shocked that Stone was literally wearing a mask face and that his horrible, monstrous identity reveal wasn't accompanied by an outburst of etheric energy and the transformation into some kind of wel-amalgam-lich.

Well, it's good in any case. Now Billy doesn't have to feel bad about shooting a face he used to know and respect. But not today. Stone wouldn't give them the opportunity today, the coward. The way he flinched at the very thought of all of this knowledge being obliterated-- something Cyre is very glad he and the others are on the same page about-- rather than falling into his hands is... Telling.

But he is not here. Someone else is.

Someone...

...Else...

Cyre stares directly at this fluffy pink-red bunnygirl. The gears in his head begin to turn and whirr. Cyre Lorentz, cad that he is, never forgets a lady he has met before. His powerful neural circuitry (beastman-class) rapidly sorts through the card catalogue of ladies he has previously encountered, and finally manages to determine where he had met this one before and why she looked so familiar.

"Ahhhh!" Cyre points, suddenly, "It's the ditzy Cage Tower bunny!!"

This... Is kind of not the best description, admittedly, but still.

"Even back then, we were being watched by Solaris, huh?" Cyre snarls, a flash of green light twisting around his hands, quickening their movement. He scissors his arms together and launches a mighty SONIC BOOM at Seraphita, the air rippling with cutting force as it surges towards her...! "Do you really have to ask? The man attacked a bunch of kids just for the sake of ruining someone else's life! If that doesn't deserve getting bodied, then I don't know what does!"

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seraphita with Gale Slash!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.

Lily keeps concentration up on her barrier as Eika charges, putting extra power into it as bullets fly. She hears the strange noise and sees Stone's face. She watches, in something like fascination, for a half a second--but Eika is going, going out of Lily's sight lines. The barrier will last only a little while, let loose. And Lily looks to Stone ranting, inhuman. His inhumanity does not bother her. His words do.

"That's right," Lily says. "I'm savage. And I'll come for all of you one day." He runs...

Lily spots Seraphita and resists the urge to stare at her waggling her finger and talking about things being mean. The commander, clearly, and unusual among Solarians. The robot she faced before... that she may have to face again. And--

"I should've known you'd be here, Voss." Lily's golden eyes narrow at the Captain. "Your support could make the difference. ...I'd better make sure it doesn't."

In a flash, she has her knife in her hand, adopting a blade-out point-down stance with legs and arms bent. She stays light on her feet, beginning to advance. Her other hand snakes up, and a blast of dark energy bursts into being in the space between them, a point of darkness that expands into photonegative colors and gravitic force, meant to cover her approach or, if he's not paying attention, just take him out.

GS: Lily Keil has attacked Loren Voss with Etheric Pulse!
GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Lily Keil's Etheric Pulse for 99 hit points!
GS: Loren Voss activates Guard bonus!
GS: Seraphita takes a glancing hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Gale Slash for 59 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Silver builds between her hands, fueled by prayer and tightened into something pencil thin and deadly. At this range and concentration, Lan remembers absently, it'll feel like being shot with a gunsmoke bullet--

    So it's probably for the best, somehow, that Stone's human 'skin' is sloughed off with a well-aimed kick and he flees before Lan can try to commit murder.

    This leaves her with a charged meteorain and no immediate target, however. And when the Solarian reinforcements arrive, who should be with them but...

    She hesitates, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat.
    Even now?
    Even now.

    Lan grits her teeth and adjusts her aim by a fraction, a series of silver 'bullets' rifling towards that 'robot' thing that she's only seen once or twice. It's probably like the one at the fairground. It won't feel anything.

GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Azoth with Meteorain!
GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

When the face of the Bishop is revealed-- that's a scar, Elly thinks at first, and then she sees something in the thoroughness, the intactness, the *smoothness* of the degloved head that makes her say, "Who ???" to the Bishop. She isn't even sure where she was going with that. The rest of the conversation whirls onwards. Elly finishes 'loading' the Ether Doubler, breathes out -- and then Stone runs, Eika in pursuit, and moving forwards where he's moving backwards is...

"... Sera... phita? Oh no," Elly says, with a tone of subtle, almost sick dread. It is not terror at antics. If Fei or Lily in particular look at her face, they will see a form of anxiety that she has not shown against many other enemies.

Elly dry-swallows past the terror as Seraphita chides them, however lightly. "... He's more than a jerk," she tells Seraphita. "If... If you were over here and I was over there, you'd understand. He laughs at the suffering of others. I --" She pauses for a moment. They could stay here, couldn't they? Their back to the device, even if they can't get past Seraphita.

Oh, right, Elly thinks. Eventually we would need to go to the bathroom or eat. Failing that, they would probably bring up nerve gas or something. Elly's jaw tightens. And then in this moment, Cyre Lorentz earns himself a point of awkward thanks-- for he breaks the logjam with decisive action!

Something smashes: the glass of history. Elly says as she raises up the Doubler, "He's not exaggerating. You understand about purges, don't you? He didn't just try to suppress the Ethos' 'nerve center' as an organization -- which would have been bad enough -- he went after an orphanage! There wasn't anything there, other than a Gear bunker - the same as you can find anywhere - and he could have...!!"

Elly can't bring herself to finish the sentence. Flame rips out at Seraphita, a sharp lance followed by a more conventional fireball which detonates a yard or two short of her -- perhaps both in recognizition of Seraphita's own Ether power, as well as a desire to daunt her! "Don't take her lightly," Elly warns both Cyre and Fei. "She's strong...!!"

How strong? Elly doesn't articulate THAT part, not just yet.

GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seraphita with Thermo Calcinate!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Seraphita takes a glancing hit from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Calcinate for 57 hit points!
GS: Weaken applied to Seraphita!
GS: Seraphita activates Arcane Font!

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Eika kicks Bishop Stone right in the face... and Yulie backpedals away from him, clasping her hands over her mouth with her eyes wide in horror as his face comes right off - like a mask being forcibly removed.

"What... what happened to him...?" She asks, horrified. Stone retreats, pursued by Eika... but Stone did not come here alone, and his forces spread out to prevent further pursuit at the command of a rabbit beastwoman who really sticks out.

She's heard to miss... but there's someone else who catches Yulie's eye. A faceless, skeletal construct... she remembers seeing him at the Ethos Headquarters as well. She doesn't recognize him, of course... but she recognizes those moments for what they signify.

She winces a little at that horrible sound following his gesture... and looks upon him with sympathy.

"...You... must be hurting terribly, aren't you...?" Yulie murmurs, sadly. "...I'm sorry. Sorry that they'd make you fight, even though you must be in so much pain..."

...It's hard. She doesn't want to fight him, but is there really any other choice? There's only one way out of this room.

"Everyone... be strong! May the blessings of Calucion be with you...!" Yulie wraps around around her pendant, a holy symbol of Granas. A soft, pale golden light begins to emit, settling over those nearest to her position... but its actual effects are left up to chance.

GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Paladienne's Prayer!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with Paladienne's Prayer!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Lan Lilac with Paladienne's Prayer!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has completed her action.
GS: Yulie Ahtreide accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Paladienne's Prayer for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Burst, Lock State, and Surge applied to Yulie Ahtreide!
GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Lan Lilac's Meteorain for 137 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Eika's blow lands, and a horrible noise echoes through the chamber. Ida's heart tightens with vicarious satisfaction, but it's clear Stone isn't dead. She shifts her aim, bringing ARMs to bear as he crouches down. "Big words from a small man," Ida snarls. Her fingers slide back into place, ready to pull tight and unleash death at any moment. His sleeve lowers...

    Ida has seem many, many grotesqueries in her career. Hecatonchires still lingers in recent memory, as does the thing she and Azoth ran into back in the Far Lands. There are others.

    Ida's eyes widen. Her face pulls tight with horror and revulsion. That isn't mere scar tissue--it looks fresh, raw, like he's been flayed from the neck up. And he's still talking, spitting insults, calling for his guards. Ida discovers, in this moment, that she still has a threshold for such visceral horror: her stomach lurches, and she breathes deep to keep herself from vomiting.

    "EIKA!" she shouts, as the Etone takes off after Stone. But then Stone's reinforcements step in to cover him, and cold fury reasserts itself. Ida recognizes both Seraphita and Loren--they were there with her when Solaris tried to use her to destroy Wayside. Her breath hitches in her throat as she sees the construct with them, but anger overrides fear.

    "Indeed," she says, her voice tight, her eyes bright with anger. "Let's get this over with." She aims for Loren's center of mass and double-taps. Two gunsmoke rounds race downrange, propellant boiling off into a thick, dark cloud to obscure Ida from sight.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Loren Voss with Smoke Follows Fire Ignition!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Lan Lilac accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Paladienne's Prayer for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State and Quick applied to Lan Lilac!
GS: Ethius Hesiod accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Paladienne's Prayer for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Hyper, Lock State, and Shield applied to Ethius Hesiod!
GS: Loren Voss critically guards Ida Everstead-Rey's Smoke Follows Fire Ignition for 18 hit points!
GS: Riposte applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    That Symbologist guy has apparently been here all this time but has not had much cause to speak, which is for the best. He seems the sort of guy who seems content enough to exist outside of the frame of action, which means he might get along well with the likes of Rico should the two of them ever meet. (In reality it's because he was morbidly curious about a very small, minor thing in the databank room floor that had him knelt down and quietly keeping to himself while all the arguing and noise was going on. Did he glean anything useful? No, he did not. He at least did not set anything on fire prematurely, and sometimes that is all that can be asked of him.)
     He shows his face as the Bishop retreats, remembering seeing the strange construct at Ethos HQ but found himself a little too enamored with some other equally trivial detail of the Ethos workstations to give away his location and the chance to do... whatever it is he does, sometimes.
     His eyes narrow as he sees the energy blades emerge, and that wash of vented heat as his ears recoil at the sound that the android is making in their 'greeting' to the lot of them.
     "The ventilation is curious," he murmurs in the wash of the uncomfortable heat in the air, as if wise to the way the heat is escaping the body to be 'wrong' but not sure how that's being managed. The masked Symbologist approaches this the way he is known to as he emerges from behind his cover with a hand outstretched. It goes through a number of sorcerous, wavy gestures as he murmurs the syllables underneath the bandanna that covers the lower half of his face.
     "Fine Dust!" That's the spell's name as a wave of granular sand- and dust-like particles fly forth for the suffering construct.
     As if he were trying to test any number of theories about this heat ventilation, not at all in concern for their state of being (very obviously in pain) but mindful of the manifested energy blades that could come at him at any moment. ('Mindful' is one thing. 'Alert enough to do anything about them' may yet prove another.)
     This pragmatism, in some ways, may be its own brand of kindness on levels he may never know - he reveals himself in time for Yulie to give her blessings to him, which has him taking a step back from surprise as if he were taken more aback by Yulie catching his presence. (He doesn't yet give thanks because he's watching those energy blades like it could be life or death. The way the construct's movements are going, he can't easily read when they might target him.)

GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Azoth with Fine Dust!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Billy's shot disrupts Stone's stance. Eika's...

Eika's takes his face off. Not his head.

Billy's stomach turn, a look of horror across his face. "How long..." he rasps.

Stone doesn't answer that one. "...so this is what you are," he whispers, shivering. He shifts his arm, the ether blaster sliding back into his sleeve. Fortunately, a new force arrives. Solarian defense, he guesses. He doesn't know any of them. Amazing, how quickly Solaris has turned for him from a distant, vague concept to a force he actively detests. He picks one out - the one who seems the least invested, mostly, because he's not entirely sure how he'd handle a peppy bunny right now and Fei and Elly seem to have that in hand, he just whips a gunsmoke ARM up and points it directly at Loren.

"Move," he commands.

He gives him one second, and then shoots him.

GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Loren Voss with Colt M1873 Single Action Army!
GS: Billy Lee Black assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
GS: CRITICAL! Azoth guards a hit from Ethius Hesiod's Fine Dust for 76 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Jam applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Guard bonus and Sufferer!
GS: Loren Voss critically guards Billy Lee Black's Colt M1873 Single Action Army for 18 hit points!
GS: Quick applied to Billy Lee Black!

<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei glances towards Loren and his strong 'why did i come into work today' energy and throws... him a brief wave? Why'd he do that?!

Nevertheless, Fei ends up looking at the red skull of Bishop Stone and that seems to stun Fei enough. "...Where's your face?" Fei asks. "......How did nobody know you didn't have a face...?"

He feels bad for being stuck on this point because Billy is RIGHT THERE. "Maybe the no face thing is recent..." Fei murmurs to himself. He can't help but focus entirely on it that. "You... you guys know his face is a red skull right?" He looks to the other Solarians. In the words of Mitchell and Webb, the question of who the baddies are can't help but be prevalent here.

"But you're the one whose face is a skull," Fei says when he calls Eika a monster. "Does...that mean something for everybody else than it does for me? I mean, skulls aren't inherently bad and in fact they're actually pretty good for everyone but generally when it's out in the open like that it's a bad---it's a bad thing."

The red skull man then flees! "But... it's not just me right? It's a red skull. It's not even a friendly skull. Like Skeleton has. Am I being... a jerk about this?"

But then Seraphita arrives. Fei doesn't recognize her. He blinks a few times and looks towards Elly. "Her hair is...pink..? Did she get bullied in school?"

He remembers the whole thing about hair color for Solarians. "...Though she's also beastfolk. Is that common in Solaris?"

He looks back to Seraphita and then adds, "Oh. Well..." He thinks about htis. "Well, I guess that's true. But... his face is a red skull so I think there can be an exception for that--oh but Skeleton."

He thinks for a moment before nodding. "Alright, I guess I see where you're coming from but..."

He isn't sure to attack her or not but Elly unleashes her power so Fei shrugs a shoulder and darts in, throwing a quick series of palm strikes for the rabbit lady.

"Outside of the red skull, he's a backstabbing sociopath whom you can't trust. You shouldn't defend him on that front if nothing else!"

GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seraphita with Hagan!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
GS: Seraphita takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Hagan for 160 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Chaos erupts by turns within this space, soon after. It's almost a blessing that he's forced, soon, to focus on the battle at hand rather than... her.
    (...Why is Fei waving at him, he thinks, distantly, though at least he doesn't have to fight him too...)

    Loren doesn't move, as Billy requests. Instead in that split second before Billy fires, white hard-edged light, like crystals in the earth, joins with an upward swirl of water that dances about the young man. It's this barrier that the bullet impacts, evoking a frown from Loren. One moment slower and...

    "Damn," he remarks, before Lily forces the matter in a separate way.

    "Same to you. You always did nose around where it wasn't wanted, Keil," he reflects with an exaggerated sigh. "But I'm not going down like last time--"

    That burst of Etheric pressure tests the barrier he's just conjured, knifing away fragments of it in bursts of light-on-dark and oilslick rainbow. But it still holds, even if he's left with a grimace by the time the assault ends.

    "Your technique's a mess as usual--"

    'Let's get this over with,' Ida agrees. Can the barrier hold against something like that, after Lily's spell has taken a few bites out of it?

    The bullets come in as a one-two rain; at first the only thing that Ida will know, as the smoke roils and burns about her target, is that they hit something that sounds like it was flesh.

    But as the smoke clears, Loren there stands with one of the Devil ARMs extended. Orias the Unyielding takes the an arm-mounted shield, batwing-like around the purple stone at its center. It must be partially organic or something like it... because the bullets fall out of the webbing after a moment more, clinking onto the floor.

    "...Ugh," he remarks, shaking out that arm as the shield... folds back up again. "It's still creepy." What follows is no grand invocation as much as he takes in a breath, closes his eyes...

    And scoops up a bit of the ambient Ether in the air about him, drawing it out and down for Ida and Billy as so much frigid rain.

    At which he rushes Lily, blade lashing out for her. "I still owe you for last time, Keil!"

GS: Loren Voss has attacked Loren Voss with Guardian Factor!
GS: Loren Voss has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Loren Voss accepts Loren Voss's Guardian Factor for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Aqua Sequence!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Billy Lee Black with Aqua Sequence!
GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lily Keil with Extinction Rush!
GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Loren Voss assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Loren Voss has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Even the data Azoth's usually able use for direct communication with Ragnell comes out broken and glitched, utterly unreadable. The calculations are all there, but his processes are funneled to focus on combat, with everything else treated as noise. She may get the sense he tries, but the efforts so far only earn fragments of nonsense.

It's irrelevant. He launches himself straight into battle, his swords chasing him like familiars. Silver bullets strike directly into his form, piercing his chassis, but do not slow his advance. One hits his face where an eye should rightly be, puncturing a hole and spreading cracks across his visor. Maybe he doesn't feel pain with the way he continues straight for Lan. Or maybe he does, the way energy crackles over his body as if in place of blood, and a digital sound of warning strains from his body.

Lan Lilac, one Azoth had been instructed to retrieve. Safely. Loren had been clear on that, and Azoth had calculated the means to exploit that piece of the instruction. But Loren's orders do not supersede Azoth's current, overridden objectives. They do not supersede his calculation fly at her -- past her -- with his blades traveling in a deadly orbit around his body like a blender to slash into her.

His target is Ethius. Azoth's seen enough in their time together as Drifters to recognize him as a dangerous adversary. That's confirmed now in the fine dusts of sand that assault Azoth's systems, tearing into a number of delicate parts and obstructing operation. Not obstructing enough. Ethius has been a man with mixed stories and uncertain signals. But all the data Azoth's gathered concludes simply: Azoth enjoys his company. There's more he'd like to learn of Ethius, and not through extracting data by bringing down a crimson energy blade ruthessly against him.

Yulie Ahtreide, too kindhearted to be here. Fear pulses through his core at her presence. She'd reach out to him. She does, through her recognition of his pain and through her apology, and he knows what she'll do next, and what he'll do next in response. She offers aid to her allies, and her threat level skyrockets past the others. Azoth whirls to face her, firing off every sword he has in her direction to aim directly for her with explosive impact. The only mercy is that the effect of Ethius' dust seems to be forcing the blades along a more erratic flight path.

GS: Azoth has attacked Lan Lilac with exec.mec OVERWRITE!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Azoth has attacked Ethius Hesiod with exec.mec ERASE!
GS: Azoth has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Azoth spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Azoth has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with exec.mec DISCARD!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.
GS: Lily Keil critically guards Loren Voss's Extinction Rush for 20 hit points!
GS: Mighty applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Lan Lilac takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec OVERWRITE for 192 hit points!
GS: Ethius Hesiod guards a hit from Azoth's exec.mec ERASE for 104 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.

Some people may be made uncomfortable by Ragnell making Azoth release heat, but Seraphita doesn't seem to mind. It blows her hair a little bit. There's a lot of it.

"Hey!" Seraphita doesn't *quite* put her hands on her hips, but only because she is doing something else with them; having gestured for Solaris to advance (is she in charge??), she now is balancing a fireball on one finger as if preparing to do something with it. "*That's* rude, too. Just because we're fighting doesn't mean you have to be mean about it. And so what if I was? Digging is fun!"

Seraphita may be a ditz (according to Cyre) but she is also both extremely high-energy and actually good at this. She bounds up and backwards in a long jump as he sweeps the cutting waves at her, and fires a jet of flame downward to bounce herself up higher; she is still clipped by the edge of it, sending her spinning.

She lands on her feet anyhow, though off-balance, and the only thing she can do with Elly's incoming Ether is hold up one hand. A sphere of flame surrounds Elly's own fire, tearing into it and partially dispersing it. The blast that hits her is a more diffuse wave than intended, and it continues to shred apart, surrounding Seraphita with a brief heat haze with flickers of flame before it goes out.

"Oh, he wasn't supposed to do that!!" Seraphita's expression shows honest distaste and worry. "I'll have to report that. Because that's definitely not what we're here to do! We're here to - " She clamps her mouth shut, then, almost comedically. "No! I'm not going to tell you! But we're not here to hurt kids."

Spoiler: reporting Stone as a tremendous jackass will do absolutely nothing. Seraphita isn't really part of Intelligence, anyway. (And vice versa.)

"Why are you over there, anyway? You ran away! You should come back, I'm sure they'll be lenient if you do it all by yourself. I won't even say I did it," Seraphita offers, generously, before looking toward... Fei.

She doesn't recognize him. She would recognize Weltall. But Fei? She doesn't. "You need to stick with your team through thick and thin," she informs him. "...even if they are a jerk."

Where Seraphita seemed untouchable at range, Fei does much better in melee. The palm strikes strike home, though she tries to deflect them; she's not fast enough to catch more than the first, and they press her backwards, blow after blow.

So that's when Seraphita calls on her Ether. The area around Seraphita becomes blazing hot, light wavering as it passes through it - a heat haze, with her at the core and, unfortunately for him, Fei in the blast area. She raises both arms, sending flame toward Cyre and Elly, long flamethrower-like streamers that she sustains for a surprisingly long amount of time before closing her fists and letting them gutter out. "I'll fight you, anyway! It's my duty as an Element!"

GS: Seraphita has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Heat Haze!
GS: Seraphita has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Thermo Stream!
GS: Seraphita has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Thermo Stream!
GS: Seraphita has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraphita has completed her action.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Loren Voss's Aqua Sequence for 46 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Yulie Ahtreide critically guards Azoth's exec.mec DISCARD for 47 hit points!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide activates Guard bonus and Countermeasures!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz takes a glancing hit from Seraphita's Thermo Stream for 82 hit points!
GS: Elhaym van Houten fully evades Seraphita's Thermo Stream for 0 hit points!
GS: Elhaym van Houten activates Evade bonus!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    It's interesting, which doesn't make it not disturbing. Though she speaks to Azoth, his attempts at communicating back are... too broken to make out. All that he is, funneled towards battle, with even the slightest side conversation deemed irrelevant... Considering that Ragnell is acting as his support and ally, that's a miss on his overrides' parts, by her estimation. But then, she doubts Solaris cares about anything more than a perfectly obedient murder machine.
    
    So for now, she observes. She observes the way he holds back a bit at Lan, the way he doesn't at Ethius, the way he would outright annihilate Yulie if not for the dust and sand clogging his systems. Though Ragnell has an interest in Loren and Seraphita, she can't get much more than a peripheral read of their actions with Azoth in this state--so best to clear up the dust and sand.
    
    She flexes her power, that of lightning, within her vessel, and the flash of superhot heat instantly converts the sand into shards of glass. When Ragnell next vents Azoth's heat, she sends a pulse of healing power with it to repair his circuits and dump the glass shards from his busy. With his being unable to coordinate with her, she can't turn that into an *attack*, but... honestly, that's probably better for Azoth anyway.

GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Azoth with Life Surge!
GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action.
GS: Seraph Ragnell heals Azoth! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Jam removed!

<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.

"Brother, be careful. He's an experienced operative with advanced Ether." She doesn't have to give the same warning to Ida, who has dealt with him before, she's sure. She notices Ida's cold fury. Get it over with...

"And all your 'technique' can't do a thing against my power, Voss." She notes with satisfaction that her spell batters the shield... but it does hold. She'll have to do some more from here, then. Consider an alternate strategy; she can't unleash the most destructive of her abilities without destroying the database...

But she's still a soldier.

"Interesting shield," she comments, and then suddenly Ether is surging--Lily steps forward, and Loren instead of clashing magic to magic this time rushes her. He approaches with his sword and she swings out her knife to clash directly against his blade with a loud clang, the impact reverberating back up her arm. "You do. Let's get started on paying."

Shoving forward with a burst of strength, Lily moves to knock aside Loren's guard and then slashes straight up his chest diagonally as she tries to move too close for him to make full use of his sword.

"One drop at a time."

GS: Lily Keil has attacked Loren Voss with Jagged Edge!
GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lily Keil assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Fei Fong Wong critically guards Seraphita's Heat Haze for 31 hit points!
GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font!

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

"Beastfolk aren't common there," Elly answers Fei. "But..."

"Commander Ramses' ideals focus entirely on 'ability,' instead of on the 'situation of your birth,'" Elly continues answering. "And as the commander of the Gebler ground forces, he can make that determination on his own authority!"

That was probably more concise in the original Solarian.

And at this point Seraphita makes an offer, or at least a presentation towards her. She does not know Fei, but Elly looks towards Fei too, for a moment, and then back to Seraphita. There is another dry swallow.

"I can't," she answers Seraphita. "If everything changed... I might be able to visit; but it... isn't my home any more. You're kind to say so," Elly says with a deep dip of her head. "And I'm sorry about -" About WHAT, Elly. ABOUT WHAT.

She does not finish the sentence. She does tilt her head downwards and breathe out with sharp, deliberate force as Seraphita hurls fire towards her. Reaching out to touch her spell -- and to twist it to fly upwards, to ground itself harmlessly* in the roof! (* - We have no idea how flammable or inflammable Zeboim-era technology centers are. Perhaps today we will find out?)

So this is where Elly has to mix it up. The Ether Doubler is crammed back together and stuffed into a pocket; the tool is powerful but if she is not going to super-murder Bishop Stone with it and win the people's ovation, it is going to be more of an obstacle at this moment. What comes forth instead is her three section staff; Elly swings it round in a sharp strike, twist, STRIKE again towards Seraphita, keeping a body length away from her despite the blows!

GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seraphita with Double Shock!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Seraphita guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Double Shock for 82 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    The smoke curls around Ida in a thick, dark miasma, shrouding her form. Normally this would be a one-way ticket to suffocation, but the gunsmoke is infused with Ida's Breath--and it simply passes in and out without harming her lungs, or taking the place of vital oxygen. It doesn't obstruct her view, either; she sees Loren as a bright outline, illuminated by the alien quality of his Ether. It's... different than Lily's, but Ida doesn't know how, only that it is.

    Ida's lips curl in grim satisfaction as the bullets hit something. The cold grin fades as the smoke parts, and reveals...

    A shield. A shield with a strangely familiar aesthetic. The gun in Ida's left hand throbs dully in recognition.

    There's another of those wet, fleshy shlk noises as tendrils of flesh emerge from her her armored forearms. Ida's guns twist backwards, the safeties flicking on and locking in place. The tendrils pull them back, where they join seamlessly with flesh and bone.

GS: Loren Voss critically guards Lily Keil's Jagged Edge for 29 hit points!
GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst!
GS: Billy Lee Black takes a glancing hit from Loren Voss's Aqua Sequence for 49 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    The smoke curls around Ida in a thick, dark miasma, shrouding her form. Normally this would be a one-way ticket to suffocation, but the gunsmoke is infused with Ida's Breath--and it simply passes in and out without harming her lungs, or taking the place of vital oxygen. It doesn't obstruct her view, either; she sees Loren as a bright outline, illuminated by the alien quality of his Ether. It's... different than Lily's, but Ida doesn't know how, only that it is.

    Ida's lips curl in grim satisfaction as the bullets hit something. The cold grin fades as the smoke parts, and reveals...

    A shield. A shield with a strangely familiar aesthetic. The gun in Ida's left hand throbs dully in recognition.

    The air grows cold. Ida's breath condenses into a thick fog in front of her--her mind flicks back to when she fought him in his Gear, tries to remember what he used there. At the same time, her body moves of its own volition. She leaps to the side, twisting behind a pillar of insulated cabling; the freezing rain coats it with a thick layer of rime in seconds. Ida gives a full-body shiver, and not just because of the cold. He seems focused on Lily, she thinks. Maybe she can use this.

    There's another of those wet, fleshy shlk noises as biometal tendrils emerge from her her armored forearms. Ida's guns twist backwards, the safeties flicking on and locking in place. The tendrils pull them back, where they join seamlessly with flesh and bone.

    As Lily moves in, Ida is right beside her, throwing a right hook for Loren's temple as the former Kislevi operative tries to break his guard. She whirls around, top-like, circle-walking around him to throw a second punch at the back of his neck, and a third at his head. It's swift, efficient, and brutal--the sort of thing Fafnir learned when he was taught how to deal with enemy sorcerers.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Loren Voss with Muscle Memory!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Avenger stance ends.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

"So is the man who trained me, apparently," Billy says to Lily. It's almost a trance, a battle-focus that has him cut out of the sorrow and confusion he feels. This man is between him and Stone, the man he must truly stop. That is their only relationship. It troubles him how easily he can fall into the mask he so calmly wore in the field, mowing down eerily cunning Wels.

Stone really did train a murderer, didn't he?

Loren's reply of power forces Billy to move, and the Etone(?) shifts his posture to a lighter one, spiraling away in a whirl of coat-tails. But it's not quite enough to stop the deathly ether-rain from lacerating him, cutting him with the waters. He grimaces at the pain. And then he breaks into a run directly for Loren. "The trick to breaking a powerful enemy, is...!"

And then he sweeps down, a swift, sudden move. The speed and his long traveling coat makes it hard to see what he's doing until the sweeping foot catches the back of Loren's knees, hopefully toppling him backwards.

Right into the FLIP KICK meant to send him tumbling into the air, followed by Billy leveling both of his gunsmokes and emptying both cylinders into his back in an effort to shatter that defense of his!!

GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Loren Voss with Sky Walker!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
GS: Loren Voss takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Muscle Memory for 43 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mighty applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst!
GS: Loren Voss takes a solid hit from Billy Lee Black's Sky Walker for 93 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Break applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Loren Voss activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Golden light settles over Lan's shoulders like a blessing, like a warm sheet on laundry day, and she feels her body quicken with it. It was that girl - Lan doesn't know her name, but wasn't she at the last battle too? She's able to toss Yulie a nod of thanks, just as the robot begins to move--

    --it's fast--

    Lan stumbles to one side, a hand moving to clutch reflexively at her ribs. The blades are just as sharp as they look, which is dumb because of course blades look sharp, pay attention!

    If it's fast, then Lan just needs to be faster. With dust and heat rising around her, Lan watches Azoth double back for Yulie and rests all of her weight on her back leg before she just vanishes.

    One, twice, she rushes past Azoth, the speed of her passing buffeting at the robot's body before she lands a few feet away.

GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Azoth with Double Weave!
GS: Lan Lilac has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei says, "Oh." to Elly. On the one hand, he kind of is impressed by Ramses. Even going that far is probably against the grain of Solaris as he understands it. On the other hand, it's still a bit clinical and strangely cruel in its own right even if it's arguably 'fairer' than the way things are usually done there.

And Seraphita... seems pretty strange for a Solarian agent too. Not that most are particularly gung ho about child murder or anything but she did say he wasn't especially liked. And that you have to defend someone on your team even if they are a jerk.

"I guess I'm not one to talk about kicking jerks off a team but... be that as it may... I can't let him just get outta here scott free after what he did, knowingly and gleefully!"

Seraphita unleashes the power of FIRE upon Fei. Fei brings up his arms and unleashes a burst of his own flame against it. It isn't enough to dispel Seraphita's specialty away from him, but it is enough to prevent the bulk of it from burning him--it's thanks to Seraphita's own unique talent and power and focus that Fei gets burned at all.

"Element sounds familiar," Fei says, trying to recall as he drops down and unleashes a burst of ice out from his own ether, a huge iceberg erupting out from him as it attempts to collide against Seraphita and hopefully diminish her fire skills for a bit.

Is that how the weakness chain works, Fei wonders. Or is it the other way around? Well, he supposes he'll find out.

GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seraphita with Suikei!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
GS: CRITICAL! Azoth guards a hit from Lan Lilac's Double Weave for 111 hit points!
GS: Lan Lilac enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Seraphita critically guards Fei Fong Wong's Suikei for 34 hit points!
GS: Seraphita activates Guard bonus!

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

     The construct goes for him, past the young Star Shaman, and the odd man finds his positioning versus Azoth's impending warpath to not be in his favor as he's forced to stand atop a part of a terminal in order to clear it. His doom seems sealed as he swings a forearm inward with slurred syllables, those few visible inked glyphs on his body glowing as he completes a spell just before a crimson energy blade strikes him---
     There is a bright and loud electrical response. Ragnell can personally see the electrical power around him from that spell, usually invisible to the naked eye - a barrier spell that's been one of his best weapons against advanced weapons.
     Impact still sends Ethius ass-over-teakettle over the terminal and to the other side of it, as if the impact were blunt. It should have been a severing blow. It is not - but it is a solid blow even through that. That remains an object of curiosity for the databanks: he's not wearing protective gear to withstand that sort of weaponry. It's all cloth, leather, flesh, blood, and Symbological ink.
     Ethius picks up the sound of glass shards hitting the ground as they're dumped from Azoth's body, while he spends a critical two seconds sprawled over as the machine goes for Yulie. Something does not add up to his trained eye and Ragnell gets treated to a furrowed brow as to what that might be. (It could just be a standard 'I'm in a combat situation' furrowed brow, but his eyes did track to the glass shards.)
     He stands up as Lan zips on ahead after Azoth and helps give him cover to stand back up (his upper back hit that terminal wrong, he's got a hitch in a shoulder now). Already, his fingers are wiggling again as he draws nearer. He considers the space the construct is currently occupying and the likelihood they'll remain there. The incantation follows the movements as he crouches lower to avoid the potential of cross-fire disrupting him, and then...
     "Grave Dust."
     If Azoth is occupying the space he is targeting... what happens is something painful, even cruel. It isn't a matter of just throwing dust from point A to point B - he's trying to generate it from within Azoth, to once more gum him up from the inside.
     Is that something a 'friend' would do, even unknowingly? Would he still do that if he knew who that was?

GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Azoth with Grave Dust!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

"Nope, just trying to process everything that's immediately trying to kill me, but the skull thing freaks me out too," Cyre says to Fei Fong Wong, who is dealing with the fact that apparently someone with a literal red skull for a face is only considered a 'jerk' and not 'a sign that maybe this whole organization might be rotten to the core.' It boggles the mind, but maybe... Maybe it is a recent thing.

The question then is... Why? How? What drives a man to acquire a skeleton face...!?

There are many questions here. Many things which shall remained unanswered, and at least one that shall not.

Is Seraphita in charge!? Is Solaris the kind of place that puts someone like Seraphita in charge?!!? Clearly that cheerful, ditzy bunny exterior must be hiding a will of steel and a keen tactical mind, or at least tremendous, world-shaking power, or else... Elly's concern would be distinctly misplaced.

It is not. Tendrils of intense flame sweep outward from the hyperenergetic Element. Cyre hisses back a curse as he leaps up and over one, only for the flames to ignite his robes. With a sound of mild panic, he tosses the smoldering thing aside (how many of those does he go through? Clearly 'too many') and lands with a burst of rushing wind.

...And the sound of an ARM loading.

A very... old-fashioned ARM.

That is some kind of automatic crossbow, that is.

"'Rude?' You sky people have done nothing but give me and mine grief...!" Cyre growls, ley energies churning around and through the modified weapon. Channels around and behind the loaded bolt fill with emerald light as he takes aim...! "Kidnapping my sister, turning her into some kind of weapon, running rampant across the entire planet like you own the place, without caring about who gets hurt. And now I hear about... erasing the people they take, turning them into slaves! Either your spooks aren't watching closely enough, or they just don't care about whatever your 'righteous mission' is supposed to be!"

He pulls the trigger. The bowstring releases, launching a single bolt... Followed by another, and another, and another behind that. A ley-driven motor launches bolt after bolt of forged steel downrange, a veritable deluge of automatic crossbow fire...!

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seraphita with Vortex Blaster!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.
GS: Seraphita takes a glancing hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Vortex Blaster for 74 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Seraphita activates Evade bonus!
GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Ethius Hesiod's Grave Dust for 160 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple and Disease applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Yulie returns Lan's nod with a nod and a small smile. They're all in this together here... she's just glad she isn't fighting alone. She turns, then, back to Azoth.

"...Don't they realise what they're doing to you? Even in such a state, you still have to fight for them..." Yulie murmurs. ...It's heart-breaking. But all the sorrow in the world can't stop this. She flinches back a little as Azoth whirls to face her, and suddenly, everyone one of those floating blades is sent firing off at her. With a gasp of surprise Yulie throws her hands up to protect herself, generating a barrier of energy for protection. Thankfully, she receives help from a cloud of dust courtesy of Ethius, which helps throw off the blades' flight path... and, also, being nudged aside, just slightly, by an outside force.

The blades impact Yulie's barrier, which shatters with a loud cracking sound and sending Yulie reeling backward from the backlash. Thankfully, she managed to avoid direct contact... but it's made her acutely aware of what might have happened if she hadn't received help.

"Th-thank you, Mister Ethius... are you okay?" She asks, looking over toward where he's been sent reeling. She looks toward Lan, then.

"Let me give you a little help...!" Yulie says. She draws out another Crest Graph - this one a spell for speed. Lan will find herself able to attack more swiftly than before... and in return, Yulie's own pace for evasion quickens, as well.

GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Lan Lilac with Turn Shift!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.

"Right! Commander Ramses found me, and gave me the opportunity. But I qualified for Element on my own!" Seraphita puffs up with something like pride. "The Elements are elite Ether-users. The best at Jugend! She was a candidate," Seraphita says, jabbing one finger at Elly. "But... well, she's not *now*. - I mean, she's still good!" Seraphita is very clear on the fact that she's not trying to insult Elly.

You just can't have someone who isn't part of Solaris be an Element. That would be very weird.

Cyre's words agitate Seraphita. "The people on the surface are really bad at taking care of it! Of course we want to help! The leaders of Aveh and Kislev and stuff aren't any good at it, so why not? We don't want the -Lambs- to get hurt! We want to guide them! And maybe some people get hurt but it's better than it would have been otherwise! Less people get hurt! And maybe we can fix things!" She does not immediately respond to the slavery comment, because she's busy.

Flame, used by many sorcerers of various types, can sometimes be a bit of a one-note effect. Certainly it can be shaped; streams, balls, blasts, walls. Sometimes it can burn things that are not strictly physical, or be contrained in various ways. But fire acts like fire, usually.

Seraphita's doesn't do that.

Pressed in melee by Elly, Seraphita is suddenly wielding a rigid bar of flame. Not only rigid, but physical; Elly's staff hits it with an audible crack and a shock that travels up Seraphita's arm, as if it was an object as solid as stone.

She can't completely deflect the strikes - her weapon choice is designed to fight against Elly's usual combat baton, and she is clearly not as experienced against a three-section staff. But she does partially deflect some of the strikes, and Elly can feel her staff heating up. When she sees an opening, Seraphita strikes back, lunging with it before striking at Elly in a series of blows - and it is both focused-hot and still solid.

Throwing the bar, it sticks in the floor as if embedded, straight vertical, and begins to eject... 'napalm' isn't the right word. It looks like flame, but liquid; an erupting fountain that spreads flame across the ground in a puddle, plasma prominences lashing out like whips and cracking off pulses of heat and light before landing back in the 'puddle' with a 'splash' that scatters embers.

Some of the pulses strike against Fei's glacier. They don't melt the whole thing, but they do weaken it, breaking it into smaller pieces and helping deal with the cold. Others lash out at Fei himself; the kinetic impact is less than the bar Seraphita wielded against Elly, but it's not nothing, and it is a penetrating heat.

And as for Cyre, he's shooting at her. She brings up a wall of flame in front of her, burning the bolts but not the wind energy filling them, which pushes her back, back - until she's behind the flame puddle, which provides cover as the tendrils strike at further bolts. Seraphita takes advantage of the opening to gather her wall of flame into a point of light between her hands, squeeze it into non-existence - and cause a great explosion right under his feet, complete with wavering pyroclastic mushroom cloud. Sometimes the classics really *are* the best.

"It's wrong to lie," she informs him, afterwards. "My grandmother taught me that. Maybe you need to talk to your grandmother."

GS: Seraphita has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Fire Bar!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Plasma Flame!
GS: Seraphita has activated a Force Action!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Micro Flare!
GS: Seraphita has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seraphita has completed her action.
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Micro Flare for 188 hit points!
GS: Elhaym van Houten guards a hit from Seraphita's Fire Bar for 79 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elhaym van Houten gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Lan Lilac accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Turn Shift for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Lan Lilac!
GS: Riposte applied to Yulie Ahtreide!
GS: CRITICAL! Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Plasma Flame for 267 hit points!
GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font!
GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "He what...? An orphanage?" There are some things, it seems, that Loren is not particularly 'in the know' regarding -- he's combat support with a mere side in investigative/intelligence; things like Stein's particular vendettas or whatever this was, even, isn't information to which he's privy.

    But whatever Stein's done, it... doesn't matter. Yeah. He'll let Seraphita handle it, later. ...He has a job to do, and he'll be hanged before he lets down the team. On this, he and Seraphita are-- Right, he's supposed to be on support duty. Time to act like it--

    "Ma'am!" he calls out, exhaling a short breath as the Ether (crystalline fragments, a swirl of mist, and what might just be a small pulse of flame) gathers and wreathes itself about Seraphita. If he had only a moment more, he could have--

    He doesn't.

    "Shut it, Keil!" he spits back, shield still shimmering even if it's got holes in it like a piece of Nisan cheese. Blade meets blade in the next heartbeat: her knife parrying his thrusted blade. Just have to keep up the--
    She slips past him a moment, her knife coming in at an angle that he hadn't, to judge by his expression, expected. The barrier about him holds -- see now the way her blade scrapes across its surface -- but if it hadn't been there...

    He doesn't have the opportunity to see Ida. It's like she comes in out of nowhere, her fist hooking right for his head. He ducks; reflex, or perhaps experience after the sort of things he's dealt with. Wait, something's wrong with her,

    And this, when he half-rises, is when she catches him, her fist impacting the Etheric shielding around him at roughly neck-height. It still knocks him back a step and a half, putting space between both women. His gaze is for a moment unfocused, looking past the both of them.

    He breathes out.

    The air about him erupts with sand and dust, an explosion from multiple points as the earth-aligned Ether spews about Ida and Lily. Billy, further away, is not caught up in the sandstorm.

    Until he comes at a run right through the localized storm, at speed enough that Loren's expression is at first shocked to see him coming--

    Leah had said that 'fire' was a weakpoint of his when it came to practicing Solarian Blade Arts. Technically speaking, so is 'air', which is to say, flexibility. Billy's leg catches him right behind the knees, sending him reeling backwards, before Billy kicks him again before he can even right himself. He goes flying into the air for just the moment. And that's long enough for Billy to unload, sending the remainder of his barrier shattering about him like pieces of glass.

    But when Loren lands, he does land on his feet. Reeling for a moment, yes, but he lands all the same. This is the essence of 'earth' after all. Glasses askew, he gazes at Billy over the top of them. "...You want to do it like that? Fine," he says, and promptly opts to demonstrate what he knows of water, or 'flow'.

    He is no master, but if he's learned one thing in this world... it's that it's sometimes enough to be sufficient. Without ceasing -- and attempting to give Billy not even a moment's opportunity to counter his strikes -- he moves to lay into the young Etone.

GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Seraphita with Sigma Factor!
GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lily Keil with Terra Set!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Terra Set!
GS: Loren Voss spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Billy Lee Black with Meteor Break!
GS: Loren Voss has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Perhaps the trouble with the Solaris overrides is that they may not be designed under the idea Azoth should be communicating at all. Right now he's a weapon, not a spy. Shard of glass and heat eject from Azoth, and there's another effort inside him -- an attempt to communicate something. Not yet. But the overrides shift, however subtly. They've taken notice of Ragnell's actions and are reanalyzing accordingly.

And so have other parts of Azoth's core. But battle is all that's permitted to matter. Even with some of the clarity Ragnell may be affording Azoth, it gets redirected into combat.

Lan descends upon him with a newfound speed, and Azoth's knocked about in the air. He rights himself with a decidedly ungraceful aerial waver, several beams of red energy shoot off of his form, homing after Lan in an array that spiral after Lan to chase her down and strike. Still, he moves in his assault, and though they can personify his manner as pain, they couldn't be blamed writing it off as a machine's malfunctions, either.

Debris lift from the ground as Azoth commands them with a claw. Still, she Yulie aids them, so she remains a threat. She shouldn't be. It's the first clear thought Ragnell might be able to parse, if underscored by corrupted fragments. The overrides, again, dismiss this analysis.

The debris gather, forming a ring where energy gathers. Through this strange method of amplification (does it even work that way? is he just following a strange, compulsive protocol with no true function? -- yes), a massive beam of light fires for Yulie, destroying the ring and sending Azoth back with recoil. That he recovers from significantly more gracefully.

But something inside him begins to whine. A horrible, rattling screech grinds within. Azoth falls to the ground, staggered, and there's a loud crunch and snap. A few of the chords threaded through him like muscle pop free, spraying black, unusually viscous fluid that rapidly goes thin while frayed wires around it crackle red.

Inside, Ragnell may describe the feedback Azoth produces to be something akin to a feral scream.

Azoth shoots his gaze toward Ethius with awareness that this malfunction is his doing, but the only express Azoth has to give is that blank visor of a mask -- and the hole Lan put there, showing nothing but an empty void behind it. Would Ethius do this, even if he knew? More to the point... is this what Ethius would do the moment he knew, even with a face producing a fake display of distress? It doesn't matter either way.

With great effort, a blade of red forms above where Azoth calculates Ethius to be. It grows in size, throbbing and glitching with crimson pulses, then drops on Ethius' form.

GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action!
GS: Azoth spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Azoth has attacked Lan Lilac with exec.ohr COMPILE!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with exec.ohr NEUTRALIZE!
GS: Azoth spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Azoth has attacked Ethius Hesiod with exec.mec DELETE!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.
GS: Seraphita accepts Loren Voss's Sigma Factor for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst and Surge applied to Seraphita!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide takes a glancing hit from Azoth's exec.ohr NEUTRALIZE for 158 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yulie Ahtreide gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide activates Countermeasures!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Terra Set for 157 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cover applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a glancing hit from Azoth's exec.mec DELETE for 99 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod activates Evade bonus!
GS: Lily Keil takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Terra Set for 153 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cover applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Lily Keil activates Arcane Font!
GS: Lily Keil enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Billy Lee Black critically guards Loren Voss's Meteor Break for 28 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Billy Lee Black gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Lan Lilac takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.ohr COMPILE for 196 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lan Lilac gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Jam and Poison applied to Lan Lilac!

<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.

"So it seems." She notices that near-trance in Billy--she thinks it may be for the best. But then, she fights similarly as a rule. Maybe Lily approving isn't the best thing...

Lily keeps most of her focus on the battle at hand; she may be confident in her abilities, but she doesn't take Loren lightly. She does not have retorts for Seraphita, cannot spare the time to look in on those fighting the machine. Instead, she is up close with Loren. "They do Ether in a regimented, formalized way," she says to Ida lightly, the banter mostly a response to Loren spitting back to her. But she feels not flesh but barrier, and remarks, "Tch--" There's space as he moves back, and Lily immediately moves to get closer--before the earth-aligned Ether explodes around her, the sand impacting her like bricks with blades on them, slicing through sleeves and scraping away at flesh. "You're helping," Lily says. "We can't have that."

She ducks back, out of the sand, and breathes in, focusing. "...Or maybe we can. Brother--Ida!"

Lily folds her arms over her chest and gathers power, her eyes starting to cloud over black as she draws upon enough dark Ether. "Remember what I said about power, Voss?"

Shadows mist away from her, settling on the ground like a fog that draws up and around Ida and Billy, surrounding their weapons with cutting darkness, shielding them with the deep pressure of the void.

"Two can play that way."

GS: Lily Keil has attacked Lily Keil with Dark Aura!
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Dark Aura!
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Billy Lee Black with Dark Aura!
GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
GS: Lily Keil heals Lily Keil! She gains 200 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Lily Keil!
GS: Mighty applied to Lily Keil!

<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

"Well," Fei says to Cyre but leaves it at that. He is staring down Seraphita though.

"He isn't lying." He says, but avoids adding details because of the Eelectric Slide attack still giving him a headache. Cyre can go into it if he wants to but he does feel it important enough to provide some additional support to his claims. Seraphita doesn't seem all THAT bad, maybe she can be convinced the same way Elly was. They seem to know each other. She doesn't seem mean or cruel. He doesn't really WANT to hurt this one the way he REALLY WANTS to clobber the shit out of Stone, having a face or no.

Maybe he should focus a little more on surviving Seraphita though.

Fei isn't expecting Seraphita to be able to punch through the cold and because Fei is channeling COLD ether at this point, it cancels out most of his defense against flame. Seraphita's flame punches into Fei and sends him crashing to the ground as his clothes and skin burn to the intense heat.

"Nggh..." Fei manages, trying to toughen through it and push himself back up to his feet, looking at Seraphita with bloodshot eyes. "Don't want to... hurt you..."

Seraphita might be an Element, but Fei believes he can hurt most things. He stands himself up, focuses himself up and then channels some DARK ether into his hand, aiming to send a quick burst punching into Seraphita's gut. He's trying to hold back and unleash it at the same time. This is three elements he's just used today. He doesn't seem to know that should be improbable or impossible either.

"He's not worth it." Fei says.

GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seraphita with Infinite Darkness Ether Channel!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    It's also interesting that Ethius is able to generate such an electrical field to protect himself, but it's not new. More concerning is the way he squints at Azoth after the healing. Did he notice that wasn't a mechanical feature? As a Symbologist, he could well have detected some magic. Which doesn't worry Ragnell especially--Solarians have their own type of magic, so why shouldn't they equip a robot with some way of utilizing it too?--but it does make her a little more cautious.
    
    So when Ethius hits Azoth with a dust spell that creates dirt from within him, Ragnell first considers with new appreciation how Ethius's magic is especially effective against machinery even as Azoth emits a frankly alarming CRUNCH and SCREAM. Materials within him tear and shred and leak black fluid... Yeah. This is something to scream about, all right.
    
    So she opts to focus on doing something about it: namely, to increase ventilation. She may be a Lightning Seraph, but that doesn't mean other elements are beyond her--fire, wind, and water are all parts of the storm, and wind in particular is useful here in concentrated blasts. (Take *that* into account, overrides.) It's not exactly easy going, though. It'll take a moment for it all to get blown out, and in the meantime, it's still done damage.
    
    In the meantime, Ragnell considers Yulie and her show of sympathy for her opponent--maybe not just a show, even. After all, there's no benefit in it for her unless she truly does believe that this machine has feelings. That one coherent 'thought' of Azoth's agrees. It's a big difference from Lan, who merely takes care of business. The more sensible thing to do, really. Unless you have... inside information, as it were.

GS: Seraph Ragnell spends 1 Combo on Reload!
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Azoth with Indigo Current!
GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action.
GS: Azoth accepts Seraph Ragnell's Indigo Current for 0 hit points!
GS: Azoth activates Seraph Ragnell's Reload! and Sufferer!
GS: Lily Keil heals Billy Lee Black! He gains 200 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Billy Lee Black!
GS: Mighty applied to Lily Keil!

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

     "I am fine, Miss Yulie," Ethius remarks far too coolly for someone who just did - by any measure - a cruel thing to a being that is believably expressing and communicating pain and discomfort even as a marauding war machine. Compared to Lan and Yulie, this is a man who does not seem disturbed nor hesitant in the least about what he's doing as he reasserts something like an advantage.
     And yet, he does not stop to tell Yulie, 'your words are wasted' or 'this is not a person.'
     The empty void of Azoth's mask stares to him, and Ethius stares back. His body tenses up in anticipation, unaware of-- no, he becomes aware almost too late, when the red light of a forming blade glows against some of the more reflective surfaces of the room, matching the hue of the blade(s) that attacked him before. He has to guess as to whether or not the enemy has anticipated what way he might lean. He leaps to the right.
     The descending blade does catch him - but it is once again halted from cleaving through by the Symbological shield spell, in favor of bludgeoning him mid-leap to the ground. He catches himself in a crouch with his right hand planted, and a faint burning sensation going down his back.
     The odd ventilation continues, watching more flake out of the body. At last, he draws the quarterstaff after taking in another breath to soak the discomfort running down his back and the increasing heat in the air, coming up to a dash and lunging to make the most of his wingspan, pushing the limits of his flexibility as he goes to a kneel while stabbing the tip of the staff exactly where he thinks most of the dust is escaping.
     "Far Point," comes the habitual calling of technique names, stabbing a highly advanced war machine's suboptimal and incorrect but still highly dangerous weapons platform of a body... with a stick.
     A very good stick - but a stick, with all sincerity and confidence he's going to hit something vital or important. A tactic that does not read of a desperate person out of their depth against something they cannot grasp or ever hope to stand against.
     But of someone who, despite appearances, appears to know exactly what they're doing.

GS: Ethius Hesiod spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Azoth with Far Point!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Lock state expired!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
GS: Seraphita takes a glancing hit from Fei Fong Wong's Infinite Darkness Ether Channel for 87 hit points!
GS: Seraphita activates Evade bonus!
GS: Seraphita enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Weaken expired!
GS: Azoth takes a glancing hit from Ethius Hesiod's Far Point for 60 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Jam applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
GS: Lily Keil heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 200 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Mighty applied to Lily Keil!

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

"'Less people get hurt!?' Who the hell gave you all the right to decide that!? To choose who suffers and who doesn't, who dies and who lives-- who serves and who obeys!?" Cyre's fury only seems to build higher, apparently being even more hot-headed than the bunny whose essence seems fundamentally tied in some way to flame. So tied to it, in fact, that she can manipulate it in ways that Cyre has never seen before. How do you make a rod of solid fire...!? "You want to call me a liar!? Just ask your friends about Lydia Saren. Have them tell you exactly what they did to her. How they took her face, made her into a weapon with no choice but to kill everthing she loves!"

No. He's getting distracted. He doesn't notice when the ground underneath him abruptly *flashes* with heat...!

An explosion consumes him from below. Flame and smoke billow out from the spot where he had been standing only a moment ago. Now... Now he's nowhere to be seen. To have survived something like that is nearly unthinkable, but--

A burst of wind scatters the lingering embers. Cyre, burnt and smoldering, is hunched in a three-point crouch. "

"We don't want guidance from a bunch of kidnapping, child-soldier-making, sister-weaponizing high-and-mighty types. You wanna know what my grandmother taught me...?"

Anyone with keen memory of past events would know very well that, while this particular generation of Baskars do in fact have parents and grandparents by and large, they are nevertheless united in acknowledging one grandmother above all other grandmothers.

That grandmother is Elder Halle.

And she was very clear on many, many things.

Wind howls, surging to a fevered pitch. The abundant heat rippling through the archive only serves to fan the thermals higher, to give more strength to the screaming windstorm. "Grandma Halle taught us all kinds of things. Respect your elders. Be kind to one another. Always try to find ways to be a helper. The usual stuff. But her number one lesson, the thing we're never, ever supposed to forget--" Cyre staggers upright, gales screeching as they gather into his free hand, shining as they pool into a hyper-compressed sphere of storm. He thrusts his palm towards the rabbit-- and unleashes a pinpoint 'beam' of impossibly high-pressure wind. "'Talk shit, get hit.'"

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seraphita with Celestial Lore!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 4 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Seraphita's staff is made of Ether brought to rigid semi-physical life by the sheer power of her will.

Elly's staff is made out of three pieces of Spiran hardwood with lacquer coating and some chain business to link the three sticks together.

The good news is that Elly does not burn her hands off; the bad news is that a three section staff is now far more like a two and a half section staff as she sweeps backwards, leaping back as she does and crying out, "Look out!" as the living palpable Fire Ether strews iself around, flames leaping and laughing like living things--

Living things.

Elly tilts her head down, lets out a sound best rendered as 'hahhhhh--' and stamps the ground once while advancing a single decisive step towards Seraphita. The ground ripples for a moment before a rumble of Earth-etheric shapes, loosely bananoid or crescent depending on how you're looking, try to clutch and grip at her, no doubt disturbing and perhaps extinguishing her doom puddles in the process at least to a certain extent.

And then the final eruption; from behind, like a cresting wave. Or - or from a certain angle, the earthen shape with those stony crescents could be parsed as a *mole* - but that's just paredolia in action, of course; a characteristic energy-form looking like something else.

GS: Elhaym van Houten spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seraphita with Terra Charge!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Seraphita guards a hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Celestial Lore for 96 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Seraphita activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font!
GS: Seraphita takes a glancing hit from Elhaym van Houten's Terra Charge for 92 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Entangle applied to Seraphita!
GS: Seraphita activates Arcane Font!

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Billy's assault on Loren appears to annoy him, which he was somewhat expecting. That expectation is the main reason he doesn't get immediately crushed by it.

Whatever Stone was teaching Billy, it's got enough in common with Solarian combat arts that when Loren releases on him that way, Billy's able to, roughly, keep up. Not advance, but his hands snap up, his eyes stay focused. There are stiff portions within his coat that allows him to parry more effectively, perhaps the guiding rods for those sleeve-mounted ARMs he has. But Loren is moving faster and with greater fidelity, forcing him back with every strike.

Until Lily infuses Billy with that dark magic. It's a strange feeling, but the power coursing through him gives him a moment. He plucks something from a pocket, flicks it into the air with a sharp 'ping!' and then blocks the next strike, and then whirls away from the followup to that, landing hard, some distance away, with bent knees.

Buying himself just enough time to swing a gunsmoke up into Loren's face, just as the coin he flicked earlier tumbles back down.

He fires, boring a hole through the coin and, if Loren isn't quick, also Loren's forehead. Billy huffs for breath in the aftermath.

GS: Billy Lee Black has activated a Force Action!
GS: Billy Lee Black spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Loren Voss with Adam's Apple!
GS: Billy Lee Black has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Mighty expired!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    Even if she couldn't stop the robot, at least it didn't hurt either of the other two people fighting it. Lan prepares to dash back in - she'll focus on those swords first, because she learned at the fairgrounds that hitting robots with her bare feet and hands is painful - when Yulie says something strange. "...Wait, is it... alive?" It can't be. It's a kind of machine, right?

    Lan recalls Chauncey of Foxington. She isn't unfamiliar with animism, or at the very least spirit fetishes.

    She slows to a stop, pale eyes watching the way Azoth reacts. How something inside of it shudders.

    We don't want the -Lambs- to get hurt! We want to guide them! And maybe some people get hurt but it's better than it would have been otherwise!

    Her fingers curl into a loose fist, but Lan isn't seeing the Seraphita or Azoth or even Loren, pressing the attack against Lily and Ida and the young priest. She remembers Myyah Hawwa, and how the woman had gazed deeply into her eyes, and then--

    That was the start of it. The earliest she can remember. The last time Lan was herself for a long, long time.

    "It's not a lie," she raises her voice, calling out to Seraphita. "It's the truth, and you don't know it because they're keeping YOU blinded too--!!"

    Azoth takes matters into his own hands, the homing beams catching Lan solidly in the back and throwing her forward, where she tumbles across the ground into a heap. But she's not defeated yet, she can still fight. Lan pushes herself back onto her feet, though she's not moving nearly as fast as she was a few seconds ago. "Nnn..."

    Should she...?

    Her hands shake faintly as Lan straightens her back. She's hurt. She's not going to be able to do anything.

    If she falls here they will take her back to Etrenank.

    She can control it this time. She has to. She has to!

    And of her own volition, Lan calls out to that darkness, the void between stars--

    What crashes into Azoth elbow-first and then keeps hitting is still Lan. Mostly.

DC: Lan Lilac switches forms to Black Fairy!
GS: Lan Lilac spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Lan Lilac with Nam Myoho Renge Kyo!
GS: Lan Lilac has launched an attack Link!
GS: Lan Lilac heals Lan Lilac! She gains 200 temporary hit points!
GS: Mighty applied to Lan Lilac!
GS: Lan Lilac activates Sufferer! Lan Lilac enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Azoth with Certain Victory Lotus Sutra!
GS: Lan Lilac takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.
GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Lan Lilac's Certain Victory Lotus Sutra for 192 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hex applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Loren Voss takes a glancing hit from Billy Lee Black's Adam's Apple for 51 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Quick applied to Billy Lee Black!
GS: Loren Voss activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Ida remembers Loren as support personnel--a medic or doctor of some stripe. That he falls back to provide aid is expected, but the "Ma'am!" is not. For a brief moment, Ida stares at Seraphita, who insists she is the elite of the elite. As insane as the idea is, Ida has no reason to doubt her; she remembers the woman's terrifying power.

    Loren is no slouch, either. The moment Ida catches him, dust erupts from the very air, surrounding her in a stream of high-speed grit. It's like being dragged under one of those sandblasters they use for rough excavation work in the Boneyard--to everyone else, Ida disappears into the cloud, and there's a horrific grinding noise, like a machine trying to run while full of grit. (Hi, Azoth!)

    As the sand disperses, it takes with it most of Ida's smoke cloud. Her armor has been polished clean of paint, and the outermost layers have been reduced to a layer of fine dust on the floor. The exoskeleton covering both arms is likewise pitted and scoured. When Ida looks back at Loren, her face is striking in its aspect. Quicksilver nictitating membranes cover her eyes. The rest of her face is covered in pitted, abraded exoskeleton. Rivulets of two-toned blood seep out from the cracks. Some of Loren's Ether got through, despite Ida's best efforts.

    Loren moves on Billy. Ida recognizes the fluidity in the man's motions, realizes what likely inspired them. She can do that too. The surge of dark energy only bolsters her resolve; she knows where it came from, and gives Lily the most grateful smile she can with silvery eyes and a mostly-rigid, bleeding face. In a blur of motion, she's beside Loren again, reaching an arm out for his shoulders as if he were a good friend and she were leaning in to give him some support.

    "So," Ida says. That arm tightens, turning oddly fluid even as it tries to lock into place. Shadowy claws grow from its fingers, potentially digging into Loren's flesh. "Do you still want to get this over with?"

    Ida tries to hook her right foot around Loren's shin, and pulls. The movement is smooth, graceful, and deceptively powerful. It may in fact end up putting Loren on his ass if he's really unlucky. "Because Stone is escaping, and you're in the way."

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Loren Voss with Ripple Becomes Wave!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Riposte expired!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Debris gathers in front of Azoth. Yulie doesn't immediately recognize it for what it is... but she can feel it, as heat, light, and energy begin to build within. Her eyes open wide, and once more she prepares to defend herself... and yet, seeing the energy built within, comes to a realisation.

She is probably not going to be able to defend herself from energy of that magnitude, even with sorcerous assistance.

The great beam rushes in her direction and Yulie throws herself to the ground at the last second, shutting her eyes tight as it screams over head. Even just being near it without being struck directly is painful.

And then, she hears something horrible. A terrible screech emits from Azoth and Yulie looks up in time to see someting tear free from within him in a spray of black liquid. She shakes her head, horrified.

"Stop... stop this!" She shouts. "You're just... you're just tearing yourself apart!"

It's sickening to watch. Lan asks her a question, and Yulie pauses.

"I don't... I don't know for sure, but..." She shakes her head. "The way he moves... I'm not sure how else to read it..."

She doesn't even know for sure if he can feel pain, or experience emotions... but she can feel it just as if he did - no, maybe even if he doesn't. Someone has to feel for those who can't.

She breaks into a run - and it might seem like she's putting herself into a disadvantageous position, before...

"Replace...!" Yulie draws out a Crest Graph and invokes it. Suddenly, light erupts from beneath both herself and Azoth, and when it clears, they've suddenly swapped positions - something that may be incredibly jarring and require a moment to adapt to, for the unprepared.

She does, at least, wait until Lan and Ethius have finished their attacks, to avoid accidentally putting herself on the receiving end.

GS: Yulie Ahtreide spends 1 Combo on Interrupt!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Azoth with Replace!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide assumes the Stoic stance!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has completed her action.
GS: Azoth guards a hit from Yulie Ahtreide's Replace for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Delay applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
GS: Azoth has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!

<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.

Energy fills Seraphita from - "Thank you!" Seraphita calls to Loren, because she knows where that kind of power comes from. She'd wave, but her hands are really full right now - metaphorically if not physically, as she is technically bare-handed.

Fei comes in at her. He has shown the ability to manipulate a few elements but it's not the same way she does it; it's power, but it's not Ether quite the way she recognizes it. "If you don't want to hurt me you can stop," she offers. "We can just sit here for a while instead." She only needs to stop them from getting to Stone while he gets away, so it should be fine.

Of course then he hits her *anyway*, so so much for that. Seraphita darts behind her improbable pool of fire again, but not fast enough to entirely avoid Fei being able to chase her down. She makes a gesture, trying to stir the pool to strike him -

But Elly's surge of earth and stone churns, burying it. It gutters out, scorching the stone that made up the assault as it dies, and Emeralda herself staggers from the surge of moving mole-like earth right back into Fei's fist. "Hey..."

She doesn't *stay* there of course. Even now she has a lot of energy to go around - she's been bouncing on her feet for basically this whole time - and she hops back back back. She isn't out of room yet, but she's getting closer. She looks at Cyre, a surprised expression on her face that continues when she hears Lan.

"I know Lydia. She's my friend! If you know her, why don't you ask her, she'll tell you! I know she's from the surface but she's got a place in Solaris and if you try to hurt her I'll light *you* on fire." Seraphita seems extremely serious about that. Before, she said that you didn't have to hate someone you fought, but now she's dangerously intense about it. Nobody hurts Seraphita's friends, and everybody can be one.

And speaking of intense, how about that wind.

The stream of wind hits Seraphita - or hits something *around* Seraphita. It drives her back, literally sliding a yard before she catches herself. Energy starts acting a little weird around her, catching in a vortex, swirling around her -

Into her. She's draining the energy, converting it to Ether. The stone Elly caused to erupt stops moving. There's even a streamer from Fei's fist towards her.

Seraphita half-turns her body and smacks - there's no polite way to say it, she smacks her bottom as a taunt. "You can't beat me at Ether! Sorry Elhaym but you know you got disqualified," she adds hastily. Energy starts to build around her, a flame-coloured corona of excess power that simultaneously shields her and empowers her.

And then she forms three balls of bright flame in front of her and, with a forceful push, causes them to blast in highly intense beams of white-hot energy. The center mass is so bright and compressed it's barely flame, though it erupts *in* flame, a corona of fire around the central core of unleashed power. They make the shadows in the room do strange things.

"Sorry~" Seraphita's voice carries over the flame. She switches to Solarian for the last bit: <Hey! Prepare to - > She cuts herself off when she remembers Elly can understand perfectly well a call to get ready to retreat, but she really doesn't feel like helping 'Mr. Stein' for much longer.

GS: Seraphita has attacked Seraphita with Ether Shroud!
GS: Seraphita heals Seraphita! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Seraphita with Burning Heart!
GS: Seraphita accepts Seraphita's Burning Heart for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Entangle removed!
GS: Hyper and Surge applied to Seraphita!
GS: Seraphita has activated a Force Action!
GS: Seraphita spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Ether Drain!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Ether Drain!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Ether Drain!
GS: Seraphita has launched an attack Link!
GS: Seraphita spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Thermo Lance!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Thermo Lance!
GS: Seraphita has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Thermo Lance!
GS: Seraphita has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraphita has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Ether Drain for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elhaym van Houten gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Dispel! Mighty removed!
GS: Mute and Weaken applied to Elhaym van Houten!
GS: Elhaym van Houten activates Sufferer!
GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz fully evades Seraphita's Ether Drain for 0 hit points!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz activates Evade bonus!
GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Thermo Lance for 187 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elhaym van Houten gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten activates Sufferer!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Thermo Lance for 210 hit points!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Seraphita's Ether Drain for 0 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Mighty removed!
GS: Mute and Weaken applied to Fei Fong Wong!
GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font and Sufferer!
GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Seraphita's Thermo Lance for 118 hit points!
GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font and Sufferer!
GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Ripple Becomes Wave for 79 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Delay applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst and Sufferer!

DC: Free attacks can only have the flags Artillery, Bold, Cancel, Follow, Gamble, Gatling, Heal, Inspire, Pierce,
Prudent, Reload, Reserve, Rush, and Strike.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

"If I try to hurt her...?"

A beam of white-hot flame, as if disgorged from the corona of an absolutely livid star, races towards him. Cyre threatened to destroy this place and all the ancient knowledge it contained, but at this rate, they're going to do it with nothing but collateral damage. That their mission might be accomplished through completely incidental and accidental chaos does nothing to calm the fury boiling in the shaman's voice.

His hands tighten into fists. He stares into that angry supernova as if he were trying to part it with his own incandescent wrath. Cyre Lorentz is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, but even then, few things have ever gotten him this... This angry. "If I try to hurt her!? You! You monsters who took her from her family, from her home, from the person she loved! Who took her and turn her into a weapon and then have the gall to think occasionally sheathing her somehow makes it better..." He steps forward, lowering his stance. His fist draws back, wind surging against the torrent of sunfire. His body burns, arcs of angry red smoldering across his blistering skin as blood literally begins to boil from his veins. "Call me out for hurting her...!? You call her a 'friend,' but you don't even know what the word means!"

Cyre...

Charges into the blaze. Seraphita tugs at the elemental essence surging around him, but there's more. There's always more. It's as if trying to drain this man is to drink from an inexhaustible well. Fire can consume air, but there's always more, and right now...

Right now, a silver talisman shines with emerald light around the shaman's neck. Right now, Cyre is not relying on his strength alone.

His arm... changes. A pattern overlays ontop of it, the limb of a mere man briefly swallowed up by the arm and claw of a god of wind. Cyre roars as he plunges his arm forward, fingers drawn into a knife-hand as the wind howls and ensconces his limb like a horizontal tornado-- a drill of wind and wrath that bores through the wall of sunfire, towards the rabbit-woman at its source.

And, perhaps, with the aim of tearing through her as well.

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has activated a Force Action!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seraphita with Tornado Fang!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Keil! Shut up!" he snaps at Lily, not that it'll help. She'll spill everything she knows or thinks about his form of Ether, especially if she thinks it'll give them the advantage. Gritting his teeth, he then exhales a frustrated-sounding breath; that three-part swirl of elemental Ether forms about him, next, bolstering his own power while he has the moment open to him.

    "Yeah. I remember alright. I'm not done here yet, you know..."

    Speaking of power, and all. That power of hers just now...
    Sometimes he can't help but think how similar they are. It drives him nuts, if he's being honest.

    There's.. something weird about Ida. It rings a bell for him somehow, but in the heat of the moment, it's escaping him utterly. He does know what it reminds him of, though--

    Hyadean blood.

    Especially the more the change takes her. "What kind of trick is that?" he asks aloud, and perhaps if it weren't for Billy's assault upon his person in the moments following, he might have even--

    Loren knows... some things about Etones and the way they're trained.

    This is mostly through Tabitha, though, so some of the accuracy as this befalls surfacedweller trainees (oh, if only Loren knew the truth...) may be somewhat questionable. But the important is this:

    Billy moves like he's in a trance, and even if Loren were the type to rely on distractions, he would likely find they have no purchase against the young man now. As it is, Billy matches him nearly as he swings his blade, the edge of his sword finding again and again the weapons concealed in Billy's sleeves.

    Loren was trained in Jugend in particular arts. He's a soldier. He just never got any training in the sword there. Even his hand-to-hand had been a bit abbreviated: as a result, certain things that would have been beaten out of most young officers

    He glances up as something shining is flicked up into the air.

    are still present, even after so many years on the job. It's just reflex. It might not even be particularly bad reflex given the sorts of things that Billy might have tossed out. But it means Billy has the moment he needs to bring that ARM right up into Loren's face.

    Without that Ether shielding about him anymore, Loren has all of a moment to blink and jerk his head to the side. ...Something warm trickles down the side of his face; a quick touch with his free hand proves that it's only a glancing blow. If it had struck...

    He only gets that moment before Ida closes on him. He recoils, jerking his head away from her as she comes far, far too close into his personal space. And then she hooks her leg around his and in a smooth moment that even on reflection he can't quite put together properly, he finds himself on the floor, stunned. Normal hand-to-hand, he'd learned how to counter in a more-or-less basic sense, but what the hell... was that...

    "Tch," he hisses up at Ida. "That's... the point! Or are you an," and his gaze flits over to the both of his allies in this fight and he shakes his head. Dammit, he doesn't have the time to get caught up in this. They just have to do their job and--

    And so he breathes out, and when it comes, the breath carries with it a pulse of green light.

    With his bloody hand he reaches into his basic kit pack, half slung onto the floor at his current posture. It keeps happening like this, he thinks distantly, pressing his fingertips against the stony surface. He can feel it, the Guardian's pulse--

    "Material," Loren says, and that's enough to complete the pact. The ruins themselves shudder in Dinoginos' advent.

    It doesn't really happen, what comes next. Not in a sense that it impresses itself upon the physical space in which they're all present. But this is a good thing, because if it had happened like this everyone here would be dead.

    The earth itself rips open, revealing the heat that pulses in the depths, the blood of mountains itself. It rushes upwards in a roar, the ghostly image of the Guardian itself leading the flood.

    Loren meanwhile rises to his feet.

GS: Loren Voss has attacked Loren Voss with Sigma Factor!
GS: Loren Voss has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Loren Voss accepts Loren Voss's Sigma Factor for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst and Surge applied to Loren Voss!
GS: Loren Voss activates Sufferer!
GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action!
GS: Loren Voss spends 1 Combo on Reload!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Seraphita with Vital Fraction!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Azoth with Vital Fraction!
GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action!
GS: Loren Voss spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Billy Lee Black with Material - Hypogaean Pyre!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Material - Hypogaean Pyre!
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lily Keil with Material - Hypogaean Pyre!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Break expired!
GS: Loren Voss has completed his action.
GS: Seraphita takes a glancing hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Tornado Fang for 147 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Cyre H. Lorentz!
GS: Seraphita activates Arcane Font!
GS: Seraphita enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Seraphita accepts Loren Voss's Vital Fraction for 0 hit points!
GS: Seraphita activates Loren Voss's Reload!!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from Loren Voss's Material - Hypogaean Pyre for 109 hit points!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Lily Keil guards a hit from Loren Voss's Material - Hypogaean Pyre for 110 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Lily Keil activates Arcane Font!
GS: Lily Keil enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth sparks erratically. His body tries to lift, but fails, dropping back to the ground with an unsteady wobble as his twitching joints try to function the right way. The digits of his claw-like hand twitch uncannily.

Ethius comes at him. Panic surges. Azoth's body distorts as if he were to vanish from space, but he does not -- cannot -- before that stick strikes through him and anchors him still. It's a moment for that empty gaze to meet Ethius' confidence while something hisses under the force Ethius applies. More black fluid oozes to the ground.

It leaves him entirely prone for Lan's assault. She smashes into him, blow after blow, denting plates and forcing surges of sparking reactions. Ripped from Ethius' stick (and something else severs, and that's probably bad for Azoth but good for them), he collapses to the ground.

Yulie runs toward him, and merciless as ever, even in his pained kneel, Azoth forms a blade to prepare to run her through with it. Until, suddenly, he is where Yulie USED to be -- it's severely disorienting for a robot with his own means of teleportation. Had he malfunctioned and performed the act erroneously?! But no -- what's happening -- ? He gives a confused string of beeps in error, and while Azoth would be known to do such a thing, that would be more of a chirpy beep than the resonating warble this version of him has.

Calculations whirl to catch up. His position is wrong. His movement capabilities have been badly damaged. Ragnell's efforts clean out some of Ethius' agonizing spell work, but as she notes, the damage is done. What she can do is take the heat from him, which should, in theory, allow him to maintain operation for longer. It should allow him a more advantageous escape from a losing situation, especially as Seraphita seems to be preparing to initiate such a tactic.

In practice, the overrides do not deal in calculations of retreat, and the surge of power from Loren Voss stirs Azoth's battle code even further.

It's a brief window, with how battered he is, and with the relief Ragnell brings him, that Azoth is able to find his buried voice, however unnaturally deep, mechanical, and with its terrible reverb. "You are not -- authorized -- to input -- that command --" he says to Yulie. "-- eliminating -- targets." A brief calculation plays out, and not wanting Yulie to give up on that empathy wins out over trying to terrify her into regretting ever having it. Azoth's visor flashes red.

"Please run."

Swords begin to form in the air above Azoth. He vanishes, but the swords remain. They appear elsewhere, rapidly surrounding the group in a sea of blades. Azoth reappears. He grabs a crimson energy blade and brings it down upon Yulie. Gone again, so quick, that the strikes following for Ethius and Lan seem they may be coming from multiple opponents. But it's only one construct, blinking in and out of space to grab a new sword with each teleportation only to vanish again, each swing and slash more brutal than the one that came before until no swords remain.

But that wasn't the only voice Azoth found.

RAGNELL, PLEASE --

He can't finish those words before the overrides descend upon his output, trying desperately to tear the lower priority conclusions apart. But Ragnell's inside his system. Ragnell can see the data before the assault is made, even if she only has a fraction of a moment to do so:

-- ov$rl#1348d m% #ore!

GS: Azoth accepts Loren Voss's Vital Fraction for 0 hit points!
GS: Azoth activates Loren Voss's Reload! and Sufferer!
GS: Azoth has attacked Azoth with exec.bel TARGET ACQUIRED!
GS: Azoth accepts Azoth's exec.bel TARGET ACQUIRED for 0 hit points!
GS: Amplify and Hyper applied to Azoth!
GS: Mighty applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action!
GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action!
GS: Azoth has activated a Boss Action!
GS: Azoth spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Formation! Azoth has attacked Ethius Hesiod with exec.mec RUN!
GS: Formation! Azoth has attacked Lan Lilac with exec.mec RUN!
GS: Formation! Azoth has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with exec.mec RUN!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has launched an attack Link!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Formation! Azoth has attacked Ethius Hesiod with exec.mec END!
GS: Formation! Azoth has attacked Lan Lilac with exec.mec END!
GS: Formation! Azoth has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with exec.mec END!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.
GS: Mighty expired!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.
GS: Yulie Ahtreide takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec RUN for 229 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yulie Ahtreide gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide activates Countermeasures!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide guards a hit from Azoth's exec.mec END for 174 hit points!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide activates Countermeasures!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec RUN for 234 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec END for 285 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei says, "If you're protecting him, then I want to stop him more than I don't want to fight you! Who else will he torment if he's just allowed to leave..!" He seems startled to hear that but--it makes sense. If Ramses gave HER a place...

But he's not here for the beastfolk. He is here for Billy. He can't help but laugh a little at the horror of this world, that two people thinking that they are fighting for the same person have to hurt and maybe kill each other.

FEI PSYCHO UP

But he keeps his cool for now. He doesn't understand Solarian so he doesn't understand she's about to flee. The flame impacts against Fei, pushing past his defenses again--but not quite as powerfully as before. Fei burns, but he's now determined. He grits his teeth and approaches Seraphita. "No...! I'm sorry!"

He steadies his breath as he darts in with a crackling leg of electricity to try and kick Seraphita up into the air and then slam his foot down so that a jettison of rock erupts underneath her. It's pure and brutal and to the point rather than fancy. Fei already regrets doing it as soon as he does it. But regret doesn't stop him.

He's more desperate than he is regretful.

GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seraphita with Third Eye Sleepwalking!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
GS: Lan Lilac has activated a Force Action!
GS: Lan Lilac takes a glancing hit from Azoth's exec.mec RUN for 115 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lan Lilac gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Lan Lilac activates Sufferer!
GS: Lan Lilac takes a glancing hit from Azoth's exec.mec END for 149 hit points!
GS: Lan Lilac activates Sufferer!
GS: Lan Lilac enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Seraphita knows Lydia.

That's good, Elly thinks. She wonders, with a soupcon of self-pity (which she immediately feels jagged spikes of shame about), if Seraphita has had the same kind of 'personal conversations' with Lydia that she has. Likely not. That was before everything.

Seraphita does not stop. It may help that Seraphita probably got a good night's sleep while Elly's last twenty-four hours can be loosely summarized thus (with allowances for the miracle of hypertime - they don't keep track of the calendar down here):
* Find and fight a monstrous Wels bearing man-made bindings - by monstrous, read 'Elly was in Vierge'
* Go to the Ethos headquarters and discover horror and murder
* Fight a dreadful man
* Feel the relief of an orphanage not slaughtered, only attacked by a strike team
* Walk through the tomb-city of Zeboim wherein they are now
* Deal with Stone's banana oil again
* Just now.

But Elly does not care to put her fire against Seraphita's fire if she doesn't have to. She grimaces as she steps back, feeling the subtle ambient warmth that was around her simply -- draw off, breathing out as she tries to gather it up again. At this point she receives a taste of her own medicine, throwing both of her hands before her. A white-hot rail smashes against something invisible and instead 'just' explodes the air, 'just' throwing her a good three yards back, 'just' slamming her against the ancient wall, and 'just' leaving her reeling, tasting blood on the back of her tongue.

She lands on her feet.

But Fei echoes her thoughts, even if she doesn't know it. All of this is for Billy. Billy is a good man if anyone is. It is somehow a different, deeper, more painful tragedy - for he was not a victim, pure and simple, but an unknowing one. An agent of a darker force. Used. Forced, by a man who he trusted. A man who wasn't who he thought it was.

Elly grasps her staff's less burned end and lets the scorched and smouldered end of the three sections dangle. "... 'His' ideals don't run through this place. This was just a power play. Seraphita..."

"Tell Kelvena I said --"

Elly pauses.

"... you probably shouldn't."

Then comes that little personal noise of focus as she stares downwards, and for a moment she could swear that the bandage on her still-blood-filled eye just disappeared because it was perfect binocular vision. There is Ether pouring out of her and into the staff, forming some kind of a tight angle. What that means becomes a lot more obvious when she draws her arms back and runs forwards to swing the far end of the three-stick nunchuck at Seraphita's midsection: because as it reaches the free-electron intensity Fei is creating, there is a powerful sympathetic arc!

GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seraphita with Anemo Zap!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Seraphita guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Third Eye Sleepwalking for 176 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Seraphita has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Seraphita guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's Anemo Zap for 106 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Burst, Hyper, and Surge removed!
GS: Jam applied to Seraphita!
GS: Seraphita activates Arcane Font!
GS: Seraphita has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.

'Keil! Shut up!' "No."

While Lily is focused, she can't help but catch glimpses of the ways in which Seraphita uses fire. In the moment all that means is that she needs to press Loren so he can't support her so well. ...Particularly as she talks about Lydia. Lily remembers, after all.

And Elly was... disqualified?

"Aren't you?" Lily goads Loren, trying to get him to focus more on her and less on the others--particularly Ida at the moment, with the way she's bleeding. Stone, though... Lily prioritizes. If she can get a look at this archive... If she can see what's inside it--

"You don't need to know what kind of trick that is." Her breath catches for an instant as Billy nearly shoots him in the head right there--that heart-stopping instant where someone you know is about to be gone. But he isn't, and Lily is surprised enough at the fact that she cared that she doesn't follow up immediately on his weakness. Instead Ida gets close. That's the point--

Green light.

Lily's eyes narrow. She feels the power that's coming, feels the difference and the un-Ether. Dinoginos answers Loren's summoning, and Lily jumps back, reinforcing the barrier of shadow she's made with more power as the earth itself attacks, heat and power and crushing weight slamming hard enough into her that she's forced backward. This time she does not immediately quip at him--she hisses, instead, like a wild thing before narrowing her eyes.

They're still completely black.

"...So even you use the Guardians' power. And they answer you." She's frankly astounded. But there's no time to dwell. She remembers...

"All right. So you do have a few extra tricks." It would be poetic if she pulled a Medium and answered him. But she doesn't; she didn't bring any, doesn't rely on their powers. So instead, she breathes in, and the circuits beneath her sleeves shine through the holes in them, brilliant red-orange. That feeling melts away, along with many others, as she focuses. Her eyes glow darkly. She lifts her hands, bringing her hands together and facing her palms out. "-...Want... is irrelevant.-" She says it in an ancient language, like an incantation, though she does not require them. Flames build at her hands and them blast outward in a torrent as large as Loren's torso across, barreling straight towards him. The fire rushes out, and when it meets whatever barrier he has if any, it continues to press, to intensify, to batter at defenses.

"More..." She pushes, and a trickle of blood starts down her nose from what she channels. "I need--"

She closes her eyes, and shifts the flow of Ether. Where it was active and dynamic, it suddenly vibrates in place and compresses, turning into a concentrated beam of golden nuclear fire that hits with all the pressure of such an explosion.

The circuit patterns start to spread up her neck, up her face, out from her eyes. But she doesn't change yet.

"I... am power!" The blast implodes in a blinding flash.

GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action!
GS: Lily Keil spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Loren Voss with Flame Break!
GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lily Keil has launched an attack Link!
GS: Lily Keil spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Loren Voss with Catastrophe!
GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
GS: Loren Voss takes a solid hit from Lily Keil's Flame Break for 187 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Cover, Mighty, and Quick removed!
GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Loren Voss guards a hit from Lily Keil's Catastrophe for 189 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Charge!! You gain 55 FP!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

    One could argue that Ethius telling Yulie that her words are wasted on Azoth would be equally wasted words. He certainly isn't a man who's predisposed to expressing kindness--but then, kindness isn't always obvious.
    
    More obvious is Lan's strange transformation. Ragnell isn't really *shocked* to see that a former Solarian agent-after-being-forced-to-be was also experimented on--at least, she assumes that this darkness is the result of an experiment and not solely the power of Rigdobrite--but it's certainly unsettling. She seems to be catching on about Azoth too, although it doesn't stop her either... and Yulie continues to beg and plead, to try to tell Azoth to stop.
    
    As he says, though, she doesn't have the authority to make that command. However, she continues to listen to him, and even through that distortion, she understands what he wants.
    
    Overload him more. So he can stop. So Lan, Yulie, and Ethius can run away.
    
    There's only a split-second to act. Ragnell makes her decision and sends forth her power to join with Azoth's, to create a dangerous, crackling electric energy that sparks from his multiple swords, adding brutal amounts of force to each blow--but unlike how before, her power restored his circuits, these provide force at the cost of sparking along his injuries and making them yet more grievous.
    
    Ethius, Yulie, and Lan all suffer for it. But at least they'll have their chance when that electricity sweeps across the battlefield, then surges backwards in the overload Azoth desired and *explodes* along his legs, potentially rendering him partially immobile.
    
    If nothing else, it'll be cause for Solaris to maybe tone the combat overrides down a couple notches when they have to drag him back.

GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Azoth with Thunder Blade!
GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action.
GS: Azoth accepts Seraph Ragnell's Thunder Blade for 207 hit points!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! Azoth enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Billy Lee Black takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Material - Hypogaean Pyre for 185 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Billy Lee Black gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Loren's better than Ida gave him credit for. Engaged with him like this, she can see the way he dodges and weaves, how he uses his Ether to protect himself and attack simultaneously. It's so fluid, especially compared to what Ida knows of Symbology and Crest Sorcery. Elly and Lily so often seemed to sculpt elemental energy, rather than molding it into a specific, pre-determined form. It's another reminder that there's so much she doesn't know about Solaris and its methods.

    And then Billy damn near shoots Loren in the face. Good trick, she thinks. Dirty trick, but a good one.

    Loren sprawls onto the ground. "Am I a what?" Ida hisses, bringing her foot up to try and stomp him while he's down. The medic twists out of the way. Horror dawns on Ida's face as a ghostly shape appears, a demi-manifestation that she herself has summoned. Ida wasn't raised a Guardianist, but Dinoginos is one of a handful venerated openly by Galadians of the less rarefied classes. The horror gives way to white-hot rage. "Bastard--!"

    Ida becomes a dark silhouette against a roaring eruption of magma. This isn't just a nifty visual effect--Lily's sorcery flickers around her, an aura of anti-light surrounding her in cooling darkness. The heat meets that void, and is consumed; Ida feels the shield weakening as the Guardian's fury intensifies, but it holds. It barely holds.

    When it ends, Ida rises from her crouch--the awkward, off-balance stance she was forced into. She settles her heels on the solid ground. Motes of shadow fall from her eyes as their outer lids open, revealing those silvery nictitating membranes--almost, but not quite, a match for Lily's eyes. "Does that mean anything to you?" she hisses. Her hand is clenched around something--a hexagonal object roughly the size of a tea saucer, and made of something that isn't quite ceramic, or plastic. The symbol is clearly visible on the underside, marking it as a Medium of Dinoginos. "That power you stole?" She hears Lily say something that's familiar only because Solaris' construct also said it. Ida turns to look at her. The next few seconds remind her of the very illustrative demonstration K.K. gave her once--the distinction between power and strength. Then she's forced to look away, to shield her eyes from the nuclear cataclysm.

    That's all the reprieve Loren gets. When he looks again, Ida is no longer standing there, and the air is rippling with the force of a sudden shockwave. The woman lunges at him, her entire body aligned behind her right fist--a fist which is still clutching the Copy Artificial Medium. For a brief moment, those mirror-like eyes of hers reflect Loren, and then his face. Her fist comes down at him, surrounded by a billowing aura of gold-white, and an inner core of flame.

    The resulting punch has enough power to rip through Gear armor. Ida held back against Yvain. She's not holding back here.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Loren Voss with Unbroken Lotus Fist!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Loren Voss critically guards Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 34 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Loren Voss activates Guard bonus and Power Burst!

<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.

Seraphita's flame is remarkably controlled today, when she's fighting inside a ruin. She is more likely to punch a hole in the wall than burn the whole place down - and, fortunately, metal walls don't burn well, though there may be some melting involved.

Melting is an expected hazard. They took that under account when they brought her.

From Seraphita's perspective, she is having trouble understanding why Cyre is mad. She didn't meet Lydia until long after she joined ('joined') Solaris, and she really does consider her a friend. But Cyre is furious. She's going to have to talk to him under better circumstances, because 'being savaged by a tornado of wind' is about the worst circumstance possible for a friendly chat.

Fei's kick hammers into her, and that more than anything else makes Seraphita lose her focus. The flicker of flame around her dies down as she's smashed into the ground, hard enough to crunch, hard enough to daze her. She's missing a few seconds between that and when Elly swings her Ether-charged staff around in a mighty blow, sending Seraphita tumbling tail over teakettle to slam into a wall.

...

She stays down for about five seconds before pulling herself to her feet. Not quite literally - she has enough energy to bounce up, and enough pain to intensely regret doing so. Especially with what Lily is doing pressing at her slightly Ether-scorched brain in an unpleasant, throbbing manner. She has a headache. Honestly, she has an everything-ache. Any goodwill she had toward Stein is shot.

"-Hey!-" Seraphita calls again, in Solarian. "-Pull out when you can! Fighting retreat! We don't need to stay here all night and he's probably made good time by now!-"

And then Seraphita - does just that. She throws one last 'attack' into the room - a little flickering flame that explodes like a flashbang, minus the bang, to help anyone else who needs some cover too. Some of the black-armoured men are moving into the room rather than away to help secure important people and/or equipment (Loren, Azoth). You know. If they need it. Ordinarily Seraphita would do that herself, but her brain feels more than a little fried right now.

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Yulie does feel... a little bad, at the warbling beeps that erupt from Azoth. But it was the only way she could think of to slow him down without hurting him. And then, for the first time... he speaks.

"I-It's not... it's not a command. I'm just worried about you!" Yulie replies, shaking her head. ...But then the next words hit her.

'Please run.' Yulie gasps.

"You...?" She starts, surprised. He... actually tried to warn her - to warn her to get away. Does he have thoughts and feelings of his own after all...?

The warning comes too late, however. Azoth disappears, bringing a blade down toward her. With a gasp, Yulie raises another sorcerous barrier. Disappearing and reappearing, he attacks - there's no point to interrupt it, or to try to renew her barrier. Strike after strike impacts her barrier, and cracks slowly begin to form...

...until it shatters and one final strike sends Yulie to the ground with a cry. She looks up, then, to see... electricity erupts outwards from Azoth, but surges back into him...?

Was he malfunctioning? Or did he do that on purpose...? She's not aware of the friend helping him out, and she's not really in a position to think too deeply about it.

"I-I'm... sorry... it had to come to this..." She murmurs... and then, collapses. She doesn't really have the strength right now ot make good of the opportunity to escape and may need some help up... but, it seems like they're retreating anyway.

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    Ethius' technique is in itself a full commitment to the blow - and he finds himself blinded momentarily as something goes through Lan and expresses some great change in power, unable to track her rapid movements compared to the possibility of their opponent doing something equally erratic in terms of attack angles or movements themselves. It's a lot to process at once, and he stands back up as they whiff going through Yulie(?).
     "...They have lost their heading," Ethius says, as if thinking this a time to lay down a decisive blow. He glances over his shoulder to consider the servers and databases and all the power flying around before committing, starting to twist his hands in difficult positions as a strange voice comes out (almost) coherently.
     'Please run.'
     "Clear the area," Ethius parses this as the possibility that this room has no more tactical value to who they're trying to survive fighting. Swords form. He adopts a defensive posture - it's a solid one, but as was established when just one hit him, his shield isn't strong enough to fully overcome its striking force. It blunts it. One, he can withstand (but not keep standing). There's multiple, and when put together all at once, it's akin to several people descending on him and battering him with heavy maces.
     There's only a small break in the action where he has it in him to get up and get moving, where he catches himself on the periphery of Loren calling upon the power of a Guardian - the ground rumbling underneath him and voiding his footing. This sight means something important by his comprehension and how he has been operating, but he doesn't quite get to put that together. He doesn't escape the striking range of the constantly disappearing, reappearing mechanical warrior.
     He does see, in a flash, that there is a strange surging within them - the source he can't pinpoint and he does not have the headspace to put together beyond knowing something has been 'odd' all along. One of the teleporting blades catches him in the back of the head - turning into a requisite bludgeoning when tamped down by the Symbological shield stopping it from being a sure-fire cleaving blow.
     He tumbles out of consciousness across the chamber to be caught 'gently' by another terminal.

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Billy's dirtiest trick that isn't basically magic does not, successfully, send Loren to hell. His palms are sweaty, he thinks distantly. He nearly killed a man, there. Is that...

His breathing starts to accelerate at the sight of Loren's blood, but before whatever's burning up his stomach can ignite properly, Loren sets the universe on fire. A Material spell...a summoned Guardian. Billy knows little of the sorcery, but he feels it sear him, the heat blasting him worse than any day in the badlands. Even his lungs boil in the searing air...

And then, like that, it ends, and he's left panting. He falls to one knee, still dizzy from earlier. But...

He forces himself to rise, shakily, the healing from earlier helping greatly with keeping his control. He looks to Loren. "I believe that's enough," he says. "A man I must stop is leaving, and you are in my way. ....there is guidance, for men like you."

He throws his cape wide, fluttering it in the still air.

There is a tremendous THUNK as a gigantic ARM falls out of it, which Billy sweeps up by its offset handle, braces against his knee as the bristling rotating barrels start to spin.

And then Billy, who has produced a real-ass god-damn minigun, fills the air with thunder as he unleashes it on Loren!!

GS: Billy Lee Black spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Loren Voss with A Real-Ass God-Damn Minigun!
GS: Billy Lee Black has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

    That black fluid. She'd thought at first it was just oil. Robots use oil just like simpler machines do, Lan knows. So their parts don't wear away, and so that heat doesn't build up.

    But it's hard to see it pouring out of the robot like this without thinking of blood.

    Especially with how it seems to scream at times. It can't be alive, Lan wants to believe, because...

    Because?

    It tells them to run before reaching for that multitude of swords.

    ...Because, it seems like it's suffering. And Lan can't see suffering and look away.

    Azoth comes at them all with slashing blades and flashing lightning, moving in and out of space in a way that defies physics. Lan is fast but he's faster, cutting through her last reserves of strength - but there are still threads left unsevered, and Lan won't go back. Pushed back to a three-point crouch, bleeding from several places, the shaman huffs quietly and stares up at Azoth as what looks like his own electricity comes back to attack him. That's... not right...?

    There's only a little time left. And she can't stop to be merciful this time.

    Lan flashes forward, behind Azoth, and thrusts a single palm outward to smash into the middle of his back, ignoring armor and rattling him to the core if it hits. "hhhHAAA!"

GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Azoth with Ashen Palm!
GS: Lan Lilac takes 20 damage from Poison!
GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Azoth takes a solid hit from Lan Lilac's Ashen Palm for 250 hit points!
GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
GS: Azoth has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
GS: Loren Voss guards a hit from Billy Lee Black's A Real-Ass God-Damn Minigun for 105 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth can't stop himself. But the calculations that tell him to do this are made from himself. The overrides aren't complex enough to tell him how to complete the objectives they demand of him. Every painful calculation is from Azoth's own data, run through his own functions, telling him the best way to bring down a group of people, two he's adventured with and smiled with and tried to befriend, and one who has suffered in the same place he has, at risk of being drawn back to that nightmare.

Mercifully, the electricity begins to surge, then finally pulls back into him to ravage him inside and out. His body convulses, broken pieces rattling, until the final explosion destroys the joints of Azoth's legs. Stubbornly, he somehow remains standing -- if immobile -- violently sparking and with lights dimmed.

Something inside Azoth pulses, disconnected from the bulk of his code with hundreds of overrides to block the path. Without it hitting his main operation, there's no awareness of it. But there is, briefly, in the moments before the overvoltage forces a reboot: a directive holding a deeper gratitude for what Ragnell's done than even the rest of his active code. But a reset later, and the data doesn't save to Azoth's memory.

His awareness returns only seconds later, already calculating his next aggressive move because that's always what's being demanded, just in time to feel Lan's palm strike into him. Cracks form along the black metal of his chassis as it rattles his literal core.

A tiny, pitiful and digital beeping escapes from him before he hits the ground, lights out.

It will be up to the Solaris agents to collect him during Seraphita's flash of light to cover the escape.

Thank you.

Maybe it's a sentiment meant for Lan, too, if he could say it.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Don't I? I think I can guess, anyway," he tells Lily, her attempt at getting his attention a successful one (at least for now). Until, that is, he draws upon his own Medium's power.

    That's a Medium, he realizes in the aftermath, looking at the thing Ida holds in her grasp. It's a strange Medium but he's able to know it for what it is at a glance.

    "Does it... matter?" he replies to Ida, in those moments after he gets back up onto his feet. "It's... it's a..." 'It's a tool', he wants to say. He's the one using it after all -- the Guardian doesn't move through him. He doesn't want want anything to do with them like that, with them controlling him. With him acting according to their will. They bother him, in a way he's never been entirely sure of the roots regarding.

    Except... now he gets it, and he wishes he didn't.

    "...Why ...shouldn't they answer?" he asks Lily after a moment's pause, still mulling over his own personal revelation.

    Her answer comes in a language he doesn't speak. Her eyes glow dimly and though he brings up his sword as a sort of guard, her answer comes in the form of flame.

    There's something wrong with this fire. It burns, it consumes in a way that fire shouldn't: a flame that seems to reach beneath the skin under the bones into the infinitesimal places in the body. It takes much with it as it recedes like some parody of the tide, leaving him bereft and unprepared for the tsunami of it that comes.

    He brings the blade up as it bears down upon him, the only shield he has in the face of that force.

    Is it too much to say that there is no blade remaining when the golden fire recedes? He ways for a moment.

    Is this... power--

    There is no space between what Lily unleashes and what comes next. Ida simply isn't there anymore.

    The moment between the moments, he halfway thinks. Fire. Ephemerality--

    There is fire even under the mountain.

    It's a punch that has the power to tear through the armor of a Gear. Loren, like this, is hardly a Gear. Someone else would have been sent flying. Someone else might have been laid out flat. Loren... staggers back several steps, reeling from the strike. He didn't have enough time to...
    He shimmers, faintly, the ghost of a barrier limning his form. It's not a proper one, but it was good enough. It was sufficient. He takes a moment to gaze over at Ida, and ever so slightly, grins in spite of everything.

    In a 'ha ha, I should be dead or something' sort of way, that is. He knows what that ought to have done to him, unprotected. And even the fact that he sort of half-feels like passing out would be a real good option right now, that's... fine.

    This is of course when Billy pulls out a real-ass goddamn fucking mini-gun. The slight smile on Loren's face makes an abrupt retreat into oblivion.

    "What the f--"

    Alas, he never really got to know the Etones who used ARMs, did he.

    This succeeds in laying him out, the only solace he gets the fact that it's not terribly accurate. Oh, and his imperfect Etheric shield. It helps. Some.

    Bleeding from a dozen or more wounds as he contemplates the ceiling, it's in this moment that an angel intervenes. In... a manner of speaking. Seraphita suggests a retreat.

    ...Besides, she's right. The orders were 'buy time', not 'die down here, alone and unmourned'. They've done enough, and he's not in the mood to get shot like that again. "-Understood! Retreating now!-" he calls back to Seraphita, scrambling up and onto his feet. He has time enough to make a sweep of the room and, as the flame she summons bursts near enough at hand, he summons all the energy he has and makes a break for the fallen Azoth. He's got to get him to the support team and then...

    Even with cover, it's a likely near thing, getting out again the way he came in.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Maybe two people are fighting for stupid, pointless reasons. Maybe Cyre is blind to the fact that this person ostensibly cares about his sister too. But to him-- to him, there' no question about it. Whatever Seraphita claims, in his eyes, she is still gladly serving the force that has brought so much harm to him and his. The tornado he unleashes is a wild, violent thing, as much influenced by his own feelings as it is by the chaotic nature of storm and wind.

Maybe she would come to talk to him under different circumstances someday.

Maybe they might even come to some kind of understanding.

But her words today, either produced from a place of true, if naive and too freely-given, friendship-- or from a place of malice, with each phrase chosen specifically to drive the knife deeper into Cyre's heart-- have done little but to incite his rage. The winds scatter as the flames dwindle to embers. Cyre is left standing, exhausted and scorched raw, but with claws of wind still screaming around each of his fingertips.

He means to do something in the heat of the moment that he might regret later. This is a theme in Cyre's life. He doesn't get the chance, though.

Seraphita is gone in a flash. Cyre's eyes are already strained from the overwhelming light being thrown off by her fiery ether. In the wake of it, he sinks to a knee and gasps for breath, pain finally hitting him through the ebbing tide of adrenaline. "Damnit... I'll take them down, all of them, for what they've done. Them and their entire damn sky-city...!"

He probably won't.

But who knows if someone else in this room will...?

<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.

As her magic fades, that question remains. Why shouldn't they answer? It's a simple question, but it gives Lily some pause. She's spoken with Guardians, called upon Mediums before, but ever so slightly more the farther she goes, the more divorced she feels from normalcy. Loren is many things, but he's as far as she knows an ordinary sky man, one with power but not one who is fundamentally different. Aren't Solaris the enemy of the planet? Or...

He's still alive when he passes, and Lily has channeled more Ether than she should have in this form. She sinks to one knee, trying to catch her breath, and tastes the blood running from her nose. There's damage there, though of course it will heal. Even the gun there...

She doesn't have to understand Solarian to understand the retreat. She watches him go for the robot, and does not move to stop him amidst the flash of Seraphita's fiery distraction. She could send fire back, but...

Even aiming away from the sensitive material she's not sure she hasn't damaged something here.

She hears Cyre, though. "We will," she agrees with him. "...The enemy must be neutralized."

She starts to push herself to her feet again, eyes gold. The transformation doesn't take, the circuit patterns receding for the moment. She turns, to look at Ida, Billy... and back to the terminals. If anything remains...

She starts towards it, before worrying about things like 'wounds'.

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Solaris Etones are often pretty easy to track because they use weird shit like Tabitha does. Billy's so old-school he doesn't even use actual ARMs for his primary weapons.

Well, maybe that's yet another weird curse upon his training from Stone. With some effort, he slings the minigun away, watching Loren flee. There's something inscrutable in his eyes, contemplating the strange emotion of failure at letting a man leave alive.

He grits his teeth. "Stone's getting away!" he curses, and charges out of the room with nowhere near enough concern for his own safety.