2021-05-08: The Stains of Time

• Log: The Stains of Time
• Cast: Ruth Pauling, Ida Everstead-Rey, Yue Rohay, Yulie Ahtreide, Magilou, Azoth, Dean Stark, Ashley Winchester, Kaguya
• Where: Halim - New Town
• Date: May 08, 2021
• Summary: Siddim Canyon's Malevolent Domain has been quelled... but the Hellion who created it remains at large. Those who braved the Domain know that they've had designs on Halim, a long-suffering mining town on the frontier. A trap is sprung, exposing a notorious figure of the Celesti Civil War - Ruth Pauling, a.k.a. Death's Door - as the Hellion in question. Stopping her ambitions is one thing, but can the stains of time yet be cleansed from her heart? (Does she want them to be?)

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=============================<* Halim - New Town *>=============================

Halim's New Town is the result of an uneasy alliance between the town's original citizens and the Everstead-Rey ARMs and Munitions Company. After leasing mining rights, the Galadian company constructed an on-site headquarters, and rebuilt the mine's infrastructure. Unlike many other corporate landlords, Everstead-Rey has kept its presence subdued. The company headquarters is a modest two-story affair, and the nearby shops are independently-owned.

Nevertheless, the arrangement is far from ideal. New Town is built to cater to miners -- it offers cheap lodging, cheap entertainment, and cheap liquor. The newly-formed Miners' Union does its best to keep its members safe and healthy, but it's yet-untested, and the Fossil trade is as dangerous as it is lucrative. New Town is a haven for fortune-seekers, but it can also be a haven for those who prey on them.

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    It's mid-afternoon in Halim, and the overcast skies reek of something to come that hasn't. They've all been on high alert for an attack by wildlife, but such has not materialized. The mobilized defenses of the town are all concentrated on Old Town, acting as a bulwark from a believed imminent assault.
 
     Wei and Anaheim - bitter corporate enemies - joined their 'security forces' (read: hired thugs) together to deal with the problem at Port Rosalia when wildlife attacks got too bad to ignore. If those two could find common ground for that long... that's serious, and such an event continues to have ripples across the surviving communities of the fallen nation of Celesti.
 
     For Halim... that attack never comes this day, but they can never know they're in the clear. The fear, anticipation, and tension remains.
 
     New Town... is a bit different.
 
     A lone elven woman, overdressed in the colors of an overcast sky on a verdant earth, strides up towards the Dragon Fossil Mines seemingly unopposed. Everyone here is still working today, in the face the apparent danger. She only gives the Everstead-Rey corporate HQ a once-over, head bowed.
 
     "They're all scared," she murmurs, looking down to the Granasian rosary around her right arm, "and... they only care to keep the gella flowing." Her right hand gently scratches at the fabric over her heart, as if something were itchy. "Everyone's... living in terror. Barely out of squalor."
 
     She's no stranger to having to move carefully. She makes use of the terrain to move as close to undetected as possible. Gray eyes focus on the lay of the land... it's not the first time she's been here. Her path takes her up perilously close to the wooden scaffolding of the Dragon Fossil Mines, where countless construction Gears and other useful equipment dot the landscape... unattended? They must be very busy inside its caverns, today.
 
     She takes her perch in an elevated position. Her left shoulder surges with pain from having to go up a ladder... along with the promise of eventual rainfall. There's a reason for this place: from here, she can make out what she's sure is a buried shell. The Civil War saw so many of them fly - and not all of them have been safely disarmed.
 
     An ache in her chest, a weight, as her mind buzzes.
 
     The worried older woman who obsessively keeps testing the toxin content of fresh rain. The hard-working man who wants to keep building and developing Old Town through thick and thin. The melancholy young lady who lost everything to an explosion that was not the fault of her old home. The retiree who fears for everything they've all worked for. And to say nothing about the first person she spoke with, weeks before now...
 
     "...I'm helping them. I'm freeing them." People like her often have difficulty asking themselves questions. They often have to make due with talking themselves through difficult thoughts. Her voice gets shaky. "...They'll all be running scared out of there. The air, the water, the ground... they might get sick if it's one of those kinds." It's a terrible thing to visualize. "It might have too great a blast radius." Her right hand clenches tightly at her chest. "There might not... be a Halim after long, if... if..."
 
     Both hands come together in the sign of Granas to calm herself, with... some success.
 
     "They trusted me with their fears. Their dreams. I can... I can make amends for the likes of... of that heartless monster." Emphasis on some. "They're all suffering... and I care."
 
     A gentle smile. "I care. That's... what people with hearts, people with anything good about them... do. They care."
 
     That smile spreads to something far less gentle. "I have the heart for it."
 
     Another surge of pain runs through her left shoulder as she rears back and prepares to take the grip of the rifle kept to her back - a rifle that seems far too large, too heavy, for someone like her to carry.
 
     "The heart to see her dream bloom in a place where none could grow before, for everyone who's suffering!" She cluthces onto her reason along her will with a pained hiss, preparing to carry ever more on her shoulders... with only her inner demons to keep her company.

GS: Ruth Pauling has adjusted their boss level for 8 opponents!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    "That's far enough."

    The voice comes from behind--from the yawning tunnel mouth that leads deeper into the mines. An oil lamp hangs from a chain, swaying in the wind. Its light plays across the form of a woman as she emerges from the darkness. Ida Everstead-Rey is dressed for combat, wearing refurbished light body armor beneath a dark leather-like trenchcoat. Both are Hyadean in make, though one would be hard-pressed to identify the latter as anything out of the ordinary.

    She fixes a steely gaze on Ruth, the very picture of determination--but her hands are empty, and Ruth is reaching for her gun. This close, she might not be able to shoot effectively, but that bayonet could cut clean through her.

    "I don't think we introduced ourselves properly," Ida says. "Ida Everstead-Rey, of the Everstead-Rey family. I know what you're trying to do." She glances further down the cliff, at the shell poking out of the cliff like shrapnel in a half-healed wound. "Shut down the mines, and we pull up stakes and abandon Halim. All it takes is a single shell, in the right place. Something that looks like an accident."

    "I won't make apologies for what we've done here," Ida continues. She steps closer to Ruth, face tightening. "Aunt Anna did what she felt was right--what was necessary to keep these people from being exploited by someone else. But we..." Her breath hitches in her throat. "At best--at absolute best--all we've done is keep things from growing worse. But what you're doing here endangers everyone." Ida throws out a hand, encompassing the whole of Halim, huddled at the foot of the mountain. "Set off that shell--and then what happens? A landslide? Poison gas? You don't even know what's inside."

    Another step closer. All it would take is a quick lunge, and Ruth could bury that bayonet in Ida's chest. "I know what you are. What you did to Port Rosalia, whether you realize it or not. And I know who you are." Ida's face twists into a grim smile. "You and Aunt Anna were comrades during the war, even if you never once met. She left home against her father's wishes, and she fought and killed for the Union because she believed in its cause. Identifying you was a challenge at first, but once we knew your tell, we had what we needed. She told me a lot about you, Ruth Pauling."

    "What did they call you, back then--Death's Door?"

    Ida raises a hand. That's the signal. She isn't the only one here--Ruth isn't the one performing the ambush today, try as she might. "Surrender," Ida says. "or this will end poorly for you."

<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.

    There are times when Yue wishes she had more vices, and was a smoker or a drinker. Despite Josephine Lovelace's best attempts, she's still a teetotaler, alas. The whole situation in Halim is miserable, and it's made more miserable because it's hardly the first time she's seen this kind of situation; a war-torn region left to fend for itself, digging up for scraps, exposed to everyday danger... exploited by various corporate interests from people who've never been down on the ground.

    It's also not hard when you're a former spy and also inadvertently on the pulse of things to figure out what's going on; the Drifters are going to set up an ambush to stop her from setting off a shell that'll bring the whole mine down.

    Yue should just stay home today. She shouldn't even be here.

    She has nothing to do with the ambush, the evacuation plan; she's a Veruni and a member of Odessa. But... she feels compelled to be here, to see how this all plays out in the end.

    As someone too scarred by far too numerous wars, she knows very well how it could've come down for her. She could be there, right there, at that very spot.

    "You feel compelled to take a sacrifice to make a revolution happen, because you're just an individual, a lone actor fighting against a horrific system..." she mutters, even just to herself. Maybe letting her thoughts out are making her feel better. "But in the end, the big money, the state is there to make sure you're beaten down in the name of the status quo."

    A despondent puff of breath.

    "Nothing's changed... one way or another, it's the little people that get caught inbetween."

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

They had discovered plans to do something to the city of Halim. Yulie is concerned for the people, of course. With the Domain Master's Hellion army purified, they may have lost one avenue of attack... but someone so focused, whose soul is wrapped up in so much turmoil and strife, is unlikely to give up after a single bump in their plans.

No - Halim still isn't safe, and so they need to address the matter directly. Yulie volunteered to join the effort, and so when Ida approaches the woman Yulie is there too, stepping out from behind her with her hands clasped in front of her. But... Ida says something Yulie did not expect. Eyes wide, Yulie looks between Ida and the woman in front of them.

"...Miss Ruth...? You're..." Yulie remarks.

...She didn't know. But... there were signs. She can't deny that. Still... it's hard to connect the Ruth she had seen and spoken with, who had said such kind words, to the sniper coldly and ruthlessly firing on the people of Siddim...

For a moment, she feels conflicted, the world spinning around her... but then, she takes a deep breath to clear her head before taking another step forward.

"Please, Miss Ruth... can't you see? This will only cause more suffering - tear more scars on this land, and your heart... There has to be another way. Please, reconsider..." Yulie pleads.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    There's one woman who wasn't at the cleansing of Siddim Canyon; who had nothing to say. Certainly she knew the Domain was creeping out from the fortification, but...

    ... when they came to find the structure...

    ... she just lifted her hand in an easy wave, and left, no help at all.

    She has attended to the memories. The past suffers 'Ten of Swords'.

    The High Priestess attends the present, in all her mystery.

    ...

    "This place is such a dump."

    That's Magilou's assessment of New Halim, and she doesn't sound like she's talking to herself, though it's a mystery who she could be talking to. Strolling through that tense atmosphere, this elf does the distaff opposite of blending in; all dressed in jester's garb, hot pink and midnight blue starkly contasting, it is impossible not to know Magilou is right there at all times.

    Someone like her could never be sneaky - right?

    So why would she notice someone else sneaking around?

    Ida has some well-laid plans, but there's someone here who wasn't involved in the slightest. No -- here's Magilou, who has been a gadfly around Halim for the past few days, and who everyone, by now, is well and truly sick of. (Is the defence of Drifters really worth this?)

    She's just kind of ambled up to the scaffolding, one heel kicking out into the sky as she leans back against the wood, hands at the back of her head. listening to the outer inner monologue of one Ruth Pauling...

    ... and the justifications of one Ida Everstead-Rey.

    "Lights, camera..." That's what she's muttering to herself --

    -- before she starts heading up the scaffolding, and positively cartwheels up behind Ruth. This may well seem like a pincir attack, given what Ida just said.

    "Hey, little miss too-big-for-your-britches!" Except --

    Magilou is pointing at Ida.

    Hand to her hip, her trunk cocks one way, and her smile cocks the other. "You've got some nerve telling people 'what' they are. But hey! Everstead-Rey! You're in a great position to negotiate with this chick. You've done the bare minimum, so that makes you a good boss, right? And you might say, 'Miss Magilou! It's hardly fair to blame me for what my family did!' But hey --"

    She throws her hands up, and subsequently motions the both of them to Ruth, with jazz-hands. "You think she's gonna stop and think about that sort of thing? Anyway,"

    Here Magilou strolls up beside Ruth. Check her palms: if she has any weapons, she's done a disappearing act on them. It's not entirely clear whether Magilou could be a combatant at all. "Loving the evil plan. Ruth, right? Magilou, wicked witch and demon consultant. I'd shake your hand, buuut, you know... personal space, right? You're at about that stage, right?" Instead, she clasps her hand to her chest. "All it takes is one little ka-blammo, and everything changes!"

    She rocks back on her heels, hands looping in behind her head. "I mean, it's not like the losers around here have ever just abandoned a place because it's on too much of a hair trigger. Just look at Celesti, right? Great for parties."

    The one thing Magilou doesn't say, saying so much, is why on earth she's here.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Hope is believing they can stop the owner of the now purified domain from making a mistake. Pragmatism is ensuring the workers of the mine are safe before they try. This task done, Azoth waits for Ida's signal before making his own approach toward them at the mines from his hiding place.

He doesn't appear armed, as he never does, wearing only an uneasy frown as he grips his hand at his chest. Keeping tabs on Malevolence in Filgaia has become important to him, but something in Ruth's actions touches on more personal memories.

Azoth nods with Yulie's words. "She's right. Please don't push this," he implores of Ruth. "There is suffering, but something like this... it's only going to hurt more. Them and you. Don't do something that you can't take back."

As he speaks, he keeps close observation of her, trying to understand the data as he analyzes it. Ruth Pauling. Someone taken by Malevolence...? But not wildlife, nor a Seraph. Someone who is, herself, suffering, for all the harm that may have resulted from her hand.

There's no going back to change that. But there's now and there's this in front of him.

<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    Dean is a simple, straightforward person with simple, straightforward views. That doesn't necessarily mean he's stupid--just that he thinks a little differently from most other folks. Although he went with several others to purify Siddim, and saw the vision of the woman gunning down innocents in the town, it's only just now, as he and Ida and the others confront Ruth, that he realizes this woman and that one are the same.
    
    ...She'd wept, back then. Dean can't excuse what she's done, but he does feel sorry for her.
    
    Once the evacuation is complete, he emerges from his hiding spot. He, too, appears unarmed. He opens his mouth to chime in after Yulie and Azoth--and then Magilou Magilou's her way onto the scene.
    
    "????" is Dean's general opinion of this development.

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

Everything about confronting a Hellion when your name is Ashley Winchester is a bad idea. The very prospect of coming face to face with a walking embodiment of negative emotion is for him the equivalent of holding a tasty piece of bacon directly over the nose of a very hungry, very vicious junkyard dog. Even without drawing on even the barest motes of His power, Ashley feels the seething hunger roiling at the fringes of his consciousness. Everything about being in Halim is like steeping a piece of bread in a thick, juicy gravy, but this-- this specifically-- is an especially bad idea.

But he is here. He has to be here. Everything that he saw in Siddim Canyon-- the pain of an old soldier blaming herself for the countless dead in a long-past war singed into the very landscape-- is demanding that he come and confront it.

"You're... taking on the suffering of all these people. Whether you have the strength to carry it or not-- doesn't matter. It's not something you should do alone. It's not something anyone should do alone. Sharing their burden is one thing, but this-- deciding for these people what's best for them, that's the same attitude that creates these situations to begin with."

Ashley lifts his bayonet. His enormous ARM-sword, a weapon so similar to the gun-blade that the woman carries over her shoulder. "I understand you blame yourself for their circumstances... And I understand that you aren't going to stand down just because we act nicely. Nobody who really believes in <<Their Own Justice>> ever does, but we can't let you pull that trigger."

"Miss Sniper-- what happened during the war was truly awful... But this won't help anything. If you do have to do <<something>> to satisfy that grief, then come at me. I'm a soldier too, walking a very similar path to the one you once trod-- so come and stop me! Put down that detonator and pick up your sword!"

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

Kaguya is not part of the ambush. Kaguya had her own agenda here, and her own plans. Tracking down the shooter in all this business had not been particularly easy, particularly since she was entirely bullshitting about malevons, but she did it all the same. And here, and now...

Kaguya steps out of the shadows, where she'd been hidden before, to stand next to Yue. "Is that what she's after?" Kaguya asks. "Hm. Death's Door..."

"Hey, you!" Kaguya calls out to Magilou. "You can't sit here and crash the ambush! That was MY plan!"

She rolls her eyes, stepping forward, her ARM at her side but not currently out. She seems entirely unconcerned with the danger in play here, despite being a very small young woman who seems fairly scrawny at best.

"You know, though. The suffering people won't thank you for bringing them more suffering to fix it."

She smiles, and shows teeth. "Ida, I dunno why you're being so nice. You're here to take her out, right? Why pretend that you aren't out for blood?" She tilts her head Magilou's way. "The old lady's not wrong. There was a reason I got away so long with saying I was from Slayheim. People don't want to think about this stuff."

"The secret is," Kaguya says, "You can't take anything back. Is this what you want to stake your life on?"

DC: Kaguya switches forms to Damsel of Distress Kaguya!

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    She is accosted - an ambush, arranged against her. When Ida stares at her, she doesn't meet that gaze - but she doesn't go further for the rifle, as introductions are made at a range dangerous to Ida. It's a calculated risk. Tactically, she could draw it on the spot and run her through, but... she doesn't. She's too quiet, a bundle of nerves through the introduction and dressing down of her plans. The grins, the smiles, they're not met in turn by anything like that. That head is bowed, looking away, as in... shame.
 
     Why wouldn't there be? She's Ruth Pauling, of the Aquvy Union. The side of the Celesti Civil War that lost shortly before the Congressional Knights. No one won that war, in the end, when the surviving government collapsed from its own corruption.
 
     Hers is a name history does not look upon kindly. There is a reason when people around Zoara knock on doors, they don't do it four times (the doorbell industry has flourished, incidentally). Many don't even do it at all. That lingering echo of the four shots of the Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4 has traumatized many who survived her presence. She was not something of fantastical origin like the Hyadeans enslaved by Mother. She was just another person. Just another person who fought in the war, who turned out to be someone exceptional in that field.
 
     Too exceptional. Like they awakened something best left sleeping. Whose deeds - such as they could be called that, and not crimes - should paint her as someone looming and monstrous, like... Berserk.
 
     Instead, this slouching, mumbling, overdressed elf who sometimes looks like she's about to topple over carrying that rifle. Another pained hiss from holding her shoulder in that position. The shooter in the vision had a weakening shoulder. This one seems even worse off.
 
     Can she still do so?
 
     Her plan is dressed down in excruciating detail, almost to the letter. What she did to Port Rosalia (she turns her head up a little here). The accusations. The demand she surrender.
 
     The silence that follows. The near-motionlessness of someone who is known to be just one push away from something.
 
     Then Magilou, by accident(?), appears from Ruth's left in the way that... witches happen, startled. (It is, to everyone's benefit, not the button pushed. But that thumb may be rubbing it. Scraping at all the crud that's accumulated in that circular crack, with Magilou's words.)
 
     An angry hiss, as the shoulder slouches, as if defeated at mention of Celesti. She's not going for the rifle. They might get it. The remorse in her Domain. It might be enough. She may have just enough reason to cling to, to listen.
 
     "Yulie," she says, softer, not looking her in the eyes (or anyone), lips pursed together. "Young man," who is she speaking to? There's a few here, though her head turning more towards Dean's confused direction likely means him and not Ashley. "And you too," that one's more unambiguously to Azoth. These are the first words she's spoken since everyone has spoken to her.
 
     With lidded eyes, she looks down, right forearm bent inward slowly and deliberately - unarmed. She's a woman of faith, isn't she? Hypocritical as it might be for someone of her bloodstained history to think herself worthy of hearing 'Granas.'
 
     "Don't let her drag you into this!" A snarl, and even if it's her off-hand, her right hand is fast - drawing a Crest and quickly casting a spell that unleashes a cascading wave of rainwater to try and keep Azoth, Dean, and Yulie out of the way. The moisture is universal enough in nature that it might disrupt anyone prepared to pull a fast one on her.
 
     She moves with alarming speed for her manner of dress and physical burdens, threatening (and actually intending to) shove Magilou aside as she runs for the nearest cover she can. She fights another twinge in her left shoulder to draw the revolver at her holster and open fire.
 
     She is slow on the draw for someone who, in her day, was an all-but legendary markswoman. Handling a handgun and handling a rifle are not the exact same, but her skill with the former is almost as storied the few times it's mentioned - the rifle is just that infamous.
 
     "Everything's changed for the worse," some retort to Yue as a revolver slug - oh wow, she's not shooting directly at her, it's a ricochet, going for the midsection.
 
     "Were you there for it?" She scowls in presumably Ashley's direction, this next shot is going for him at about shoulder-level. "I can't take anything back... but I can give something back!" IT seems like a bad idea to match retorts to targets, doesn't it, but Kaguya has a revolver shot ricocheting for a leg.
 
     "To do nothing... that ends poorly for everyone," the emotions start to spill - but there isn't that familiar, horrid sensation of Malevolence yet. "You, of all people... of course someone benefitting from their suffering would try to talk me down," firing one last revolver round her way.
 
     She is completely outgunned. Even if she drew the rifle and opened fire, she could only get four of them at once. She's outgunned, outnumbered, and in a logical corner about how much trouble is going to come from this.
 
     On the other hand... professional strike teams have tried, at her peak. They had to file for unemployment in the hereafter - but that was then.
 
     She's at her worst... and you can't decide who gets to be there for you at your worst.

GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Boss Action!
GS: You have activated the Boss Action Extend!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Dean Stark with Cascading Rain!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with Cascading Rain!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with Cascading Rain!
GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Magilou with All It Takes Is One Push - Wait This Is Not How It Goes!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Ashley Winchester with The Revolving Cycle of Despair!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Yue Rohay with The Revolving Cycle of Despair!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Kaguya with The Revolving Cycle of Despair!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with The Revolving Cycle of Despair!
GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
GS: Yue Rohay takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's The Revolving Cycle of Despair for 100 hit points!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide guards a hit from Ruth Pauling's Cascading Rain for 52 hit points!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide activates Guard bonus!
GS: Azoth guards a hit from Ruth Pauling's Cascading Rain for 49 hit points!
GS: Magilou takes a glancing hit from Ruth Pauling's All It Takes Is One Push - Wait This Is Not How It Goes for 45 hit
points!
GS: Ashley Winchester takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's The Revolving Cycle of Despair for 114 hit points!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Ruth Pauling's The Revolving Cycle of Despair for 53 hit points!
GS: Dean Stark critically guards Ruth Pauling's Cascading Rain for 17 hit points!
GS: Dean Stark activates Guard bonus!
GS: Kaguya fully evades Ruth Pauling's The Revolving Cycle of Despair for 0 hit points!
GS: Kaguya activates Evade bonus!

<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.

    Yue does feel rather comforted to have Kaguya alongside her -- she's not certain what the other Veruni's stake in this is, but (oh, she wanted to make her own ambush? Yue wasn't sure. ... she should've guessed, though.)

    "I think so. To make some kind of change -- any change -- happen..." A pause. "It's what happens when you put people to the brink..."

    The Veruni listens to the entreaties from the more empathic people -- Yulie's, Azoth's, Ashley's... she has no doubt Dean would too. Suffering won't bring more suffering. They're certainly not wrong... but what can they do?

    But then-- someone EXTREMELY bombastic appears. A witch? A pierrot? Both? But below the extravagant jukes, she's dropping kernels of truth. ... she kinda hopes the witch's words will land, if she's being perfectly honest.

    "Yes... it all changed for the worse," Yue remarks, not even disagreeing -- and that moroseness keeps her from effectively avoiding the bullet coming her way. Ruth's a good shot, and even she can't twist entirely out of the way, and her black jacket rips with a line of blood flowing out of the side of her abdomen.

    "You know... the worst part is that I can't even disagree with her. You've seen what happens to 'bloodless' revolutions. It's a fantasy concocted by the upper class to try to dissuade the disaffected from change."

    Her shoulders slump.

    "I feel like fighting even less now... oh well. Guess we're getting involved, Kaguya?"

    Yue lifts her head up, and then is a faint blur as she makes her way up in elevation, one rusted drum can, precarious wooden ledge, and corrugated iron rooftop to the next--

    --until she finds herself in adequate range of Ruth.

    "I don't blame you, you know. Wanting to change the world... I thought like that once upon a time."

    She's another blur, because she's darted down low to execute a technique meant for swords and hands in an impossible manner using her feet and her heels: a flurry of scything and whirling kicks each devouring the previous' momentum in one smooth motion.

    This is a Filgaian problem, so she's responding to it as a Filgaian: with her Fast Draws.

GS: Yue Rohay has attacked Ruth Pauling with Fast Draw - Psycho Crack!
GS: Yue Rohay has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Yue Rohay has completed her action.
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a glancing hit from Yue Rohay's Fast Draw - Psycho Crack for 58 hit points!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Weaken applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    '...Miss Ruth... You're?'

    Ida glances sidelong at Yulie, heartbreak darkening her eyes. She's about to explain further...

    And then a woman in a clown's motley points at her, and begins mocking her. For a few seconds, Ida is caught flat-footed, the deer in the proverbial headlights; her chest tightens with anger, and it takes effort to keep the emotion out of her eyes. It's so much worse because it's so close to the truth, or at least the curdled version that feeds Ida's inner doubts.

    Idiot girl. You know she's right. The only reason you're here is because your family is milking these people for everything they're worth.

    Ida takes a deep, steadying breath, despite the fact that Ruth could gut her at any time.

    Nothing's changed. You're going to go home and Mother and Father will tell you how brave you are, but in the end, they don't care. They don't care about these people. You don't care about these people.

    The fate of an entire settlement is at stake. Ida should be the grim-faced enforcer, the one who jumps on the grenade to save civilians from the actions of a lone murderer.

    The hero.

    The hero, like Ruth is trying to be. The one who dies to make a statement. The one who gives of their own flesh and blood to make amends for past crimes.

    In that moment, enlightenment strikes her between the eyes. Ida takes another breath. She lets it out in two soft, determined words: "Fuck that." The Church is rotten. The Master is rotten, too. For the first time in what feels like forever, Ida's heart slips free of the chains around it.

    The martial artist reaches into her pocket, pulls out a flask, takes a long swig. Azoth's chemosensors can detect ethyl alcohol in solution with aromatics derived from juniper. To everyone else, it's merely the faintest whiff of gin.

    "Threatening her," Ida says, blandly. She gestures at Magilou with the flask. "That was the plan, at least. Got to make it clear we're not going to tolerate this, or Irving's veins will do distressing things. But he's not here, is he?" Ida takes another swig, feels the gin burn its way down her throat as she puts the cap back on. "Don't have to act like he is." Doctor's appointment on Monday, she reminds herself. Talk about this. She glances at Kaguya. "That's true," Ida says. "But I'm sure you remember a time when I was desperate enough to do what she's doing now. That's a soft-hearted idiot thing to say, but maybe I was one all along."

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    "Well, Ruth?" Ida asks. She still hasn't drawn a weapon. She watches, listens, waiting for the woman's reaction--observing how she pulls into herself. In Ida's deeply personal experience, that's usually prelude to an outburst. She's right. "Move!" Ida shouts, twisting to the side to make herself a smaller target. She's still expecting to be attacked first, and fear grips her guts with both hands as Ruth goes after her allies instead.

    Then the revolver comes up, and old, well-honed instincts take over. Ida's boot traces a furrow in the grit as she twirls on a heel, and throws herself behind one of the thick metal cross-beams supporting the mine entrance. The bullet clips her side with a sharp SPANG, before her coat catches it, arresting the rest of its momentum. It falls to the ground at her feet, and Ida stares at it a moment; it's identical to the ones they retrieved from Siddim.

    "Have you considered," she says, between gritted teeth, "that jumping on the grenade will solve nothing, in the end? Do you have any idea how deep the rot here goes?" A pause. Ida raises her voice, even as she huddles behind the crossbeam. "Kaguya, who's your friend? Does she need someone to talk to?" Ida's tone is tense, but almost conversational. A heartbeat later, she whips out from behind the pillar, the momentum from her torso whipping down her arm as she executes a wide sidearm throw. A small metal object flies directly for Ruth's head, glinting in the lantern-light, its fuse burning rapidly.

    BOOM.

    The flashbang detonates with a thunderous roar, and a stunning magnesium flash.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ruth Pauling with Flare Grenade!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Unfortunately, things can never quite be simple. In this situation, that takes the form of a certain witch appearing out of nowhere, gesturing at Ida. Yulie pauses, taken aback at... well, everything about Magilou. It takes a while for her to comme up with a response.

"...H-hey... that isn't very nice..." She retorts, coming to Ida's defense.

...Yulie is doing her best.

But there's a familiar face here, too. Yulie isn't too surprised to see her, as she was one of those who helped her through Siddim Canyon in the first place, but she is pleased to see her.

"Miss Yue... are you here to help?" Yulie asks. ...This is just going to make it harder and harder for Yulie to see you as a villain, Yue.

There are other people here, as well, but soon Ruth's response forces her to put her attention onto her.

"No one... no one 'dragged me into this'. I'm here... because I want to help!" Yulie calls back. "It... it isn't too late to turn back."

But Ruth does not turn back. Yulie lets out a cry of surprise as a surge of rainwater is sent rushing her way, to push her back and out of the way. With a quick gesture Yulie draws out three rings of spiraled metal. They float in front of her, forming a barrier of magic to intercept the flow of water. Even so, Yulie finds herself pushed back. If Ruth had seriously intended to injure her, she would have not held up nearly as well against it.

"...Please, everyone... hold strong. For the sake of this village, we must endure..." Yulie murmurs. She draws out her own symbol of Granas, holding it tightly to herself. As she murmurs a soft prayer it begins to glow with a pale golden light, settling over a few people.

"Miss Ruth... we aren't here from positions of hate. Please..." Yulie entreats again.

GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Paladienne's Prayer!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Ashley Winchester with Paladienne's Prayer!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Yue Rohay with Paladienne's Prayer!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has completed her action.
GS: Yue Rohay accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Paladienne's Prayer for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Burst, Lock State, and Shield applied to Yue Rohay!
GS: Ashley Winchester accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Paladienne's Prayer for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Hyper, Lock State, and Surge applied to Ashley Winchester!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "True, though!" Magilou chirps to Yulie's pale defence of Ida, cheerfully ignoring the pain she's dealt.

    Magilou points accusation at Kaguya, and by extension, Yue. "Get your own plan, you pale brats!" It is important to note here that Magilou looks like she'd burn within five minutes of sprawling on the beach. She smooths a hand back over her hat, with a deep sigh. "But they're right, you know. Especially that girl with the choice bangles." Is... is that what Magilou thinks of the shackles? "Sacrifice is a really dumb thing to pin a revolution on, because no one's gonna care once you're gone."

    Apparently Magilou is not addressing claims that she's 'old'.

    Her hands stretch up, over the back of her head. "And, you know, even once you hit your limit..." Magilou yawns a mighty yawn, and doesn't follow up on what Yulie and Azoth were saying in the slightest.

    (OR DOES SHE?)

    Down her chassis comes with her sinking arms, and she claps her hands together and winks to poor, speechless Dean. It may seem very much like she's actively ignoring Ida's quiet torment, especially with the way she deliberately turns to grin to Ashley: "Don't you think you're threatening her with a good time?"

    But then Ida pulls out some good ol' booze, and Magilou's grin splits her face like a knife. "See? We're all being totally straight with each other here. Or, you know," she points two finger-guns in Kaguya and Yue's direction, plus a wink, "some rough equivalent, am I right?" Why Magilou would pin those two as not being totally straight with everyone is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, don't worry about it.

    Ruth finally finds her words, demands a lack of dragging into trouble, and Magilou crows: "You wouldn't believe how often I hea--"

    That sharp cut-off of sound is the precise noise an extremely smug witch makes when a slouched-down sniper shoves past. The words are replaced by something which can be expressed, with a completely straight face, as a squark. She rocks back on one elegant jester's boot, the other leg flailing in the air as her arms pinwheel wildly to stop herself from falling down the scaffolding to her ultimate doom.

    (Okay, no. It's not that easy to get rid of Magilou. Like a bad smell or an unlucky cat or crushing debt, she just keeps coming back.)

    She comes down on that flailing foot, and now it supports her weight, as she hop-skip-hops back to the middle of the wood slats. "Geez," Magilou reaches up, adjusting her hat. "And here I'm on your side and everything! Fine, fine, let's do this..." Apparently, Yue isn't the only one who doesn't want to fight today.

    Tucked away somewhere in those voluminous four corners of that very large and impressive hat must have been a paper doll, because when Magilou lowers her hands, there's a shikigami in one of them.

    Professional strike teams have tried and failed to bring down the formidable Ruth Pauling, but Magilou, who is not any of those things, prances right up to the woman with a gun. She starts spinning on the approach, and the shikigami in her hands extends out into a broad rug as she singsongs: "Spin, spin~!"

    Around and around, and that giant shikigami might just knock Ruth about, but what sort of deadly attack is that?

GS: Magilou has attacked Ruth Pauling with Great Cycle!
GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Magilou assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: Ruth Pauling critically guards Ida Everstead-Rey's Flare Grenade for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Guard bonus and Sufferer!
GS: Gamble: Low! Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Magilou's Great Cycle for 79 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Delay applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    Magilou winks at Dean, and all he can do is shake his head in bewilderment at her bombastic her-ness. When she addresses Kaguya and Yue, Dean half-turns to blink their way too--but it seems like they're here to help so that's good? He gives them both a nod--they can all figure out what they're doing later.
    
    'Young man,' Ruth calls him, and while she might mean a couple different people, Dean notes that she's looking his way. He blinks back at her. "Hm?" But then Ruth calls up a cascade of water forming a wall between him, Azoth, and Yulie and the other Drifters present. "We're not getting dragged into anything! We're here because we chose to come!" he shouts, even as he instinctively calls up Twin Fenrir into a defensive position. The water wall splashes into his crossed arms, soaking him thoroughly but fortunately not doing much real harm--no doubt she's pulling her punches, though it's beyond Dean *why*. She doesn't even know his and Azoth's names; why try to separate them from the fight?
    
    "No one says you have to do nothing! But that doesn't mean you should try do something that'll hurt a lot of people, either!" Dean protests. "If you really need to fight it out, then okay, let's fight. But is this really what you want to do? Back then--you were crying!"
    
    A strange thing to say, considering he only saw that in a vision... but those who made their way through Siddim might know what he's talking about anyway. If Ruth really was the Domain Master, then she ought to know what he means. For now, though, he attempts to discourage Ruth from attacking the others by getting in her face and swiping at her a couple times with his combat rods, aimed for his best guess at her weak points in an attempt to weaken her armor. If she doesn't want him getting involved for some reason, then maybe he can get her to stand down.

GS: Dean Stark has attacked Ruth Pauling with Assault Battery!
GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

There's little time for Azoth to consider the unexpected variables of the gesture mage and Kaguya in the ambush before the wave of rainwater descends upon him. It crashes into him with brutal force, his heel slamming back and digging into the ground to anchor him against the tide. He's heavier than he looks, and it's a merciful boon to keep him from being thrown aside entirely, even if the water soaks through his cloaks and forces its way between his seams.

He tries to speak, and it sounds like someone's projecting a sound from underwater. With a smack to the side of his head, excess water pours out of his ears. There's a little spark from his left eye.

Then he tries again, voice restored: "They didn't ask for this. This won't end their suffering."

Azoth forms light at its side. It doesn't quite take shape into a proper blade before he lunges toward Ruth and thrusts it forward, aiming an explosive detonation into her rifle to disrupt its function. But Azoth's energy has become chaotic enough that even he can't accurately calculate what disruption that will be.

"...And it's not going to be how you end yours...!"

GS: Azoth has attacked Ruth Pauling with Crosstalk!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Yeah," Kaguya says. "But she did a lot of pushing herself already. And change..." 'It changed for the worse.' "Yeah," Kaguya says. "I get it." Kaguya steps with inhuman speed out of the way of where the gun is pointing, such that she's gone before the bullet hits the ground. "Giving something back... That's important. It's good. But what are you giving back?"

Ida has a retort. She glances back, too. "Hmmmm," the small Veruni says. "I guess that's true. It is a pretty soft-hearted idiot thing to say," she agrees, "But I guess if you can make it work, go for it. But I'm not as optimistic."

She nods to Yue. "Looks like we are. Think of it as..." Pause. "Well, probably less crappy than most of the missions you get sent on, anyway."

"But she's a good shot. Try not to get banged up too much, Yue."

Kaguya may speak casually, but she saw the precision with which the sniper worked in the vision; she isn't going to treat her lightly.
Shehe is totally going to treat Magilou lightly, though. "Of course I'm right! I'm a genius!" Pause. "Whoa, though. Harsh. I wasn't even gonna be that mean, I was just gonna shoot her." Pause. "Heh heh. Yeah some rough equivalent. Something like that."

Kaguya considers her gun--and doesn't pull it for now. She keeps that in reserve, instead rolling her shoulders and flexing her gloved fingers. "Hey if she wants to end it here, why not let her?" Kaguya asks Azoth. "Just saying."

Kaguya then shifts forward and pulls back a hand, driving it ahead of herself palm-out to deliver a beam of white life energy slamming towards Ruth.

"You should watch out for the 'young man', though." Kaguya warns Ruth of Dean. "If you listen to him once it'll be 'eh, fine Dean,' for ages!"

GS: Kaguya has attacked Ruth Pauling with Reaper's Toll!
GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
GS: Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Dean Stark's Assault Battery for 93 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    "Huh?! Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Dean complains at Kaguya. "Just because I expect better out of you!"

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

"I wasn't," Ashley answers quietly, "But I've seen war too. I've killed people. Taken lives that didn't belong to me. If murder is a sin, then we're both guilty!"
    "We're not saying that you have to do nothing," Ashley shouts through gritted teeth, even as a bloody wound is carved into his shoulder, barely missing becoming a fatal wound by the sheer instinct of a soldier in combat. "Just... That you don't have to do it alone. These people whose pain you're taking onto your own shoulders-- do they want you to take it from them? Do they want you to just whisk their suffering away? Instead of doing this all on your own... Why don't you ask them how you can help? But I guess saying that is assuming a lot about you too..."

A soft golden light radiates from on high, gently soothing some of the awful, aching pain. Ashley takes in a breath and... charges, surging forward with his bayonet swinging forth in a heavy blow... Right up until he pulls the trigger, and a gunsmoke cartridge discharges and accelerates the strike at the last moment. "But I can understand-- the desire to take the weight of the world on your own shoulders, to use the <<Power>> you have to try and make a difference. I wonder if we would have been alike if I didn't have the others to help guide me, miss Ruth. I wonder if I would be doing the same things. But--"

"Sometimes... sometimes power just isn't worth the sacrifice...!"

GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Ruth Pauling with Bolt Action!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou looks over at Dean, still a little rattly from her spinning. "Ugh, you expect better of people? What a drag. Hey, you! Come hang out with me, I'm way less of a buzzkill!" kaguya no don't do it

GS: Gamble: Very High! Ruth Pauling takes a glancing hit from Azoth's Crosstalk for 64 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Cripple applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Reaper's Toll for 105 hit points!
GS: Mute applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer!
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Ashley Winchester's Bolt Action for 134 hit points!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    Yue's the first one to accost the elf, and she can see for herself that despite the shouting, she's doing an all right job physically composing herself. Her hands aren't shaking. The revolver cylinder is opened, new slugs are being stuck in. Even though everyone's seen her move behind where she has, she's leaning in a way that the rifle isn't sticking out to give away her position further... but she hasn't drawn the rifle yet. It's heavy. If one lugs around equipment like that without using it, it's just a burden.
 
     It's when Yue opens her mouth she gives Ruth the opening to pick up and move that she does so, getting clipped in the back. The harness around the rifle rattles, pieces of cloth flitting free from the Fast Draw.
 
     From the corner of her eye, she catches just enough sight of Ida from behind the pillar that she understands what's being thrown at her. She thinks quickly. There's a pail there. Right hand picks it up by the handle, deftly catches it inside the pail, and flings it off to a lower elevation level before it goes off. Will this solve nothing? She doesn't have an answer for Ida in the moment. She did not technically jump on the grenade. (It's a strange thing to fixate on in the heat of the moment, but Ida of all people knows the strange directions a Hellion's mind can go in going between ideas and problems.)
 
     "If you're on my side," she clings to some words, half of which she misses because several people are one way and several people are another, "then--" bonk. Ruth gets slapped in the back of the head, though a lot of that force gets blunted by the rifle being jostled some more. Looser and looser the restraints go.
 
     Dean goes up the side she can't hear from, though she catches enough of the 'we're not being dragged into anything' and reminding him that she was crying. She successfully butts the end of her revolver against one of the rods. Once. She's holding the revolver in her weaker arm (though her main hand), and the surge of pain is enough to push through and strike at her some more. "Young man," there's a tired smile. "I'm... always crying, somewhere." Her composure holds for being bludgeoned several times, not looking him in the eye, staying on her feet even though she's overpowered.. "It's... I don't want to burden you children with this." There's something about his conviction, choosing to be here, that he says with such ferocity and earnest that... her chest feels it. She usually likes that feeling.
 
     Azoth capitalizes. They have the numbers. She crouches as his ARM slices, striking across her left side and managing to slip up to the back of her left shoulder with a resultant cry of pain... and jostling the rifle some more. "They didn't ask for this either," she tries to keep her voice level through the pain. She was a professional soldier. Keeping frosty is not completely beyond her, despite her clear emotional attachments (and subsequent detachments, because... Hellions). He seems sure about how her suffering won't end, and... that placid smile's back. It shouldn't be. This is not a place to smile.
 
     What is she giving back, Kaguya asks? She doesn't answer. She's surrounded. There's not much of an answer she has in this situation. An attempt to avoid the beam of energy strikes her center-of-mass and throws her off her feet, sending her tumbling a dangerous length. She rolls across some overturned equipment and collapses. "...I don't want to end it here," she says, closing her eyes and sucking in breath. Her ribs hurt. That alone might be enough injury to stop her.
 
     Almost any one of them here is a match for the strike teams that tried to get her in the past.
 
     Yulie, though... she speaks loud and clear, and her eyes widen. She can't fully get up yet, and Ashley... has a clear bead on her. Yulie's here, because... she wants to help. "You... you help so many people," it's not clear she's intending to be heard, but she's shut her eyes, hands clasped together. "I could feel your despair, your discomfort... you've seen so much hurt. You... someone like you only ever knew hurt, and... you kept your sadness within you because you felt like... you had to... clean up after..."
 
     Her teeth clench. "A heartless monster, and... everyone they hurt." Yulie entreats her. It isn't too late to turn back. They aren't here from positions of hate. "I know... you want to help everyone. Just," she can't form it in her mind. Like she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to give someone that benefit of the doubt. "Please," she tries to entreat back.
 
     Ashley, with his own advice, comes in with his own words. She gathers enough hold of herself (while leaving enough spilling behind her) to stand up and move, but she doesn't clear it as Ashley strikes true, grazing across her back for another bloody wound.
 
     The rifle, freed of its constraints, is loose before she can weigh in.

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    The rifle spirals into the air, and comes down into the earth bayonet-first further away from everyone. The same gunsmoke sniper rifle seen in the hands of the heartless monster that did the unforgivable - a Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4. A weapon blackened with blood, as if out of mythical legend. Malevolence rises from it. Guilt, shame, regret, despair. The same as the Domain cleansed from Siddim Canyon - but a scene looking like the beginnings of Wehaca.
 
     "Do you not feel it?" Ruth's expression grows more exasperated as she takes several steps back, facing the gathered but moving towards the rifle - grasping onto the first subject in mind. "The fear these people have! They're frightened. They're... powerless, before everything going on around them," more concerned about that than her own wounds. She is only one woman, years out from her combat prime - slowed elven aging don't slow the rigors of war. "They need my help... in the only ways I can ever do anything!" She snaps, a growing anger as she fights the pain in her arm to draw a Crest Graph.
 
     (FMV Cue 1) With a flourish, the elf casts a spell that floods the area in a rapid flash flood of water, pooling at your feet and threatening to sweep you off - and there's still plenty more coming to drench you. It's a coincidental likeness of the late Cardinal Runette Forton's Domain in its ferocity.
 
     She doesn't like the idea of the rifle being there (if for different reasons than the rest), moving to kneel down and grasp the rifle under the cover of this spell. She pulls with an angry, anguished cry... and fails. Her face paler, she rests her forehead against the stock, lifting up her right arm as if to peer at the rosary. Her hair spills down a bit further. "I'm sorry," she says as if defeated... and then, a bitter laugh, as the dull copper of her hair looks duller... and maybe greener? "Look at me. Look at me!!" The bitter laughter continues, angrily, insistently, punitively. "Can you imagine? 'Sorry,' from someone like... that."
 
     Malevolent vapors rise in greater quantity - but not from her weapon, exhaling as the rosary beads rattle while it tightens, the flesh on that arm ever paler. "All that pain... that comes with that name." She grips the rifle tighter, but it doesn't budge. "you can't... bury that. The past. Or... the memories of it." Bindings once hidden underneath her shawl snap, allowing her sleeves and overcoat to droop - but gradually lift up again. Difficult feelings - conflict - leads to more Malevolence.
 
     (FMV Cue 2) The Malevolence intensifies, greater in pressure than Siddim Canyon, for its former Domain Master is here. It weighs heavy, emotionally, surrounding and all-consuming. But you can't let it keep you there, and while you can't look away... you can't stay rooted in its tragedies.
 
     "I hate that heartless monster as much as anyone else," the voice seems too calm within the intensified fog of that spiritual venom as... something like one emerges. Four horns about her head. A single leathery demonic wing out the back. A rapidly lengthening tail with a barbed end (it looks exactly like a thorny hollowed out heart), "and I want to keep everything about her close." There is no writhing or outward physical discomfort, even as too-worn boots disintegrate to taloned feet of a graying skin tone and declares her inner demons are no longer 'inner.' "Her greatest crime... refusing to stop." Her gloves clench tighter. "She couldn't, she wouldn't... there's enough sorrow on Filgaia."
 
     They burst, revealing... entirely normal hands (graying aside)? She flinches at their emergence, as if pained. "By these blood-stained monstrous hands!" Her tail, having achieved its impressive full length, coils around the rifle. "So... I won't stop, either," she turns that into something resembling an impetus, a will. "I'll be there for their suffering... for them! No matter how much suffering I leave, I'll be there for theirs." Finding some sort of emotional equilibrium as her tone of voice levels, the oppression of the Malevolence fades... and the entrapped rifle is withdrawn with a resonant 'shing,' like a freshly-drawn sword from its scabbard, taken in her left hand with her tail still coiled around it. The rifle... is changed. It's longer. It's larger. The bayonet blade is twisted to a jagged spear blade like a naginata.
 
     (FMV Cue 3) She points it at some scenery above everyone and opens fire. Her tail stabilizes the rifle and handles the motions necessary to chamber the next round. It sounds exactly like it did at Siddim Canyon - four shots, with unerring accuracy and great speed. They dislodge heavy objects, threatening to crush you - like what (almost) happened to 'Uncle' Abe.
 
     In its wake, she's obscured by an opaque gunsmoke powder cloud that clears - she's taller, much larger. (Her clothes remain too big, it seems only a comfortable fit for an owlbear.) "All the burdens of guilt and sorrow... it's like I ran off and burdened myself with it," she says as she rests the rifle on her shoulder, held in that one arm like it were nothing (beyond a brief roll of it), head bowed with long mossy green hair. Her rosary and necklace are both pulled taut around right forearm and neck respectively, as if constricting. Down the left side of her neck, a crack along the jugular - like in stone, with two chips along it. She works up a smile. "I'll carry that. I... never want to forget how it feels to hurt others." The voice, softer, gentler. "Pain, fear, despair... all terrible things to leave anyone. So... I won't forget."
 
     She throws her head back, whipping mossy hair aside and fanning out that single wing (it's big! If she ever dreamed of flight, though, that's well out of reach as she is). A fanged, wicked smile on (comparatively) softer facial features, flicking out a forked tongue once. Glowing eyes, a Malevolent violet, highlight streaks of tears that were on her face moments before. Those eyes are alight with predatory enthusiasm, as if the resolve may have seeped deeply enough to get into her bones - like she can't be persuaded to give up now. To never want to forget how it feels to hurt others, a thing of empathy... those same words, a thing of cruelty if she's to also remind herself by continuing to do /just that/. (Hellions are, as always, creatures of contradiction.)
 
     "No... I won't stop. There might be more than one person this world would be better off without. I could name one I'd never put in a loving cradle," the obvious self-deprecation that might hit someone so close to home it might be breaking into their bedroom and helping themselves to an umbral mirror, lowering the elongated rifle's blade against the ground. "...But someone saw value in her. Where there... shouldn't ever have been, after everything..." She's running towards the lot of them after all of that, moving into engagement range. "It's either this or throw myself far away from a world... that I've done nothing but hurt..." She works up a more confident smile, barreling down the lot of them, droplets of blood hued purple from those wounds who haven't closed.
 
     "Who am I to deny a chance to make amends?"

GS: Delay expired!
GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.

    In the middle of their combat exchange, Yue catches Ida asking who she is; there's a pause before she answers, "Yue, professional sad sack. And... no, no, I'll be fine, thank you..."

    A pause, as Yulie asks if she's here to help. A sigh, as she drops down onto a nearby barrel after her testing of Ruth's defences. "I... could not leave you well and truly alone to deal with this mess, could I? You are still a person of interest, after all," Yue finds her incredibly lame excuses coming back to the fore. It's like she's been blasted back a few decades in life.

    Yulie's power washes over her, and there's a faint grimace for a moment as she feels the magic knot over her wound, leaving her better-defended for it.

    Magilou accuses them to get their own plan, and calls her pale-- well, okay, fair enough, she's spent how long in prison now? Solitary doesn't do great for your complexion. At least she calls her bangles choice.

    "They do try to outfit me well," Yue answers back, in an attempt to be sarcastic, but it just sounds flatly earnest. She needs to work on her delivery.

    Kaguya does, at the least, offer that this must be less crappy than most of the missions she gets sent on. "That much... is actually very true, yes." A pause, as Kaguya warns Ruth about Dean. She looks to the young boy. "... should I be on the lookout too?"

    In the midst of this, she gets a lot of perspectives -- Azoth and Ashley both expressing if these people asked her for help, how this won't end their suffering...

    "... that's part of how the oppressed class forms," Yue finds herself speaking. "If everyone were so energised that they could ask for help, if they could ask questions, if they could all rise up..."

    A pause. "That helplessness has been utterly ingrained in them by those above them. So what's one to do when someone does finally rise up...?"

    The rifle's come loose; that's the danger. She's seen it before, once, in the Celesti Wastelands when she first met Ruth and Yulie. That was how it all started, wasn't it?

    But she's given pause, since Ruth speaks much the same words -- such that it distracts her from effectively evading the water; it knocks her off her feet and sends her rolling on the ground, but she's quick to recover--

    "Even right now, fighting you like this..."

    There's that Malevolence again. Yue dislikes it. Maybe she dislikes it more than the fact that it causes her to feel awful, because... the very idea of something affecting you being a blight that can be removed, just like that...

    It's like the very idea of someone's concept of depression who's never been depressed before.

    Ruth's hair turns duller and greener, as she clutches at the rosary... what's happening to her? More. Horns on her head. A leathery wing... is she seeing this? Is she hallucinating this? No, this is real.

    "...those very same people who made you a soldier, who made you a killer... those people above are quietly laughing in a cruel mockery, in how easily they've discarded you after the battle is over..."

    The legendary rifle fires -- four shots. The number of death. The meaning isn't lost on Yue; four's always been that kind of number, even all the way back to her time.

    It doesn't quite strike her, though -- they've dislodged heavy objects, which threaten to fall on her; with great exertion, she's run up one side of an enormous water canister to hop off off it before it crushes the ground she was just on.

    She lands, a three (four?) point landing as she pauses to peer towards the Hellion Ruth for a moment longer. She wipes her mouth quietly, spitting fresh blood and refuse to the ground.

    "It's difficult, isn't it. Grappling with what you've become, because of a heartless military-industrial complex that chews people and spits them out broken... Even now, I still feel like this battle is meaningless. But..."

    Yue's head droops, but then she's disappeared once more -- because she's rounded upon the Hellion Ruth to deliver another swarm of slicing kicks, each aimed at various portions of her body, as if to test and prod and slice away at her defences.

    "It turns out, I've gotten pretty good at fighting meaningless battles."

GS: Yue Rohay has attacked Ruth Pauling with Fast Draw - Slash Rave!
GS: Yue Rohay has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yue Rohay has completed her action.
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Gamble: Lowest! Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Yue Rohay's Fast Draw - Slash Rave for 51 hit
points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Charge!! You gain 30 FP!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Eh, fine Dean," Kaguya retorts to Dean with a terrible grin. She knows what she's doing. It's fine. But to Magilou, "I bet he expects better of you, too!" A beat, "You do seem like more fun. But I'm hanging out with Yue right now!" Pause. "You should definitely be on the lookout for him."

<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    "Ehhh?!" Dean utters at Magilou, who continues to be an existence completely outside his understanding of anything ever. He turns a worried frown Kaguya's way. "Kaguya..." Then he shakes his head, and his expression steels. "No, I know you'll be fine. Because we're friends!" Does he mean that Kaguya won't go hang out with Magilou, or that Kaguya will be find even if she hangs out with Magilou? Either way, he has ~*faith*~ in his friend. She can see it shining in his eyes!
    
    ...this might be exactly the kind of thing Kaguya was talking about, though. Maybe Yue *should* be worried, too. Either way, when Kaguya teases him, he makes a face and sticks a tongue out at her.
    
    Antics aside, though. Ruth tells Dean that she's always crying somewhere, that she doesn't want to burden children with this. Dean, who is weak to people's tears, clenches his jaw for a moment. "...You're a kind person. You say you're heartless, but if that were really true, you wouldn't worry so much about who got involved or who you hurt--let alone doing what you can to help the people you hurt," he observes quietly. "So I don't get it. Why did you shoot all those villagers in the first place?"
    
    Ruth is disarmed--and Malevolence rises from her rifle. Dean looks over at it, then back at her, in time for her to cast a water spell to flash-flood the area. Dean braces himself against it, digging in his heels to keep from getting knocked over. Ruth cries out in deep self-hatred, bidding them all look at her--and he does look, unsmiling. As she transforms with her Malevolence, he walks evenly towards her. The noxious Malevolence is thick and choking, but he keeps his back straight and his eyes clear as he approaches her. And though she might open fire to bring down heavy objects, Dean manages to avoid getting hit by any--though maybe, in his case, that was on purpose on Ruth's part.
    
    He stops in front of her, Original Mountain Medium in hand.
    
    "You really are a kind person. That's how you ended up a Hellion, isn't it? Because of the contradiction between who you are and the horrible things you did," he says, channeling Dinoginos' power to send up defensive magic around himself, Ida, Yulie--and Magilou, because apparently he *does* expect better out of her, a total stranger. "I've never been a soldier, so I can't understand what it's like to fight in a war--of how that must mess you up inside. But you're better than this. You can still start over and make amends for what you've done. If it's too much for you to deal with on your own..." He offers her a smile. "We can help you."

GS: Dean Stark has attacked Dean Stark with Protect Crag!
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Protect Crag!
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with Protect Crag!
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Magilou with Protect Crag!
GS: Dean Stark has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
GS: Yulie Ahtreide accepts Dean Stark's Protect Crag for 0 hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Yulie Ahtreide!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Paladienne's Prayer for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Burst, Lock State, and Surge applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Dean Stark's Protect Crag for 0 hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Magilou accepts Dean Stark's Protect Crag for 0 hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Magilou!
GS: Dean Stark accepts Dean Stark's Protect Crag for 0 hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Dean Stark!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "Just 'cause I'm on your side doesn't mean I'm not gonna hit ya," Magilou reminds Ruth, breezily. "You almost knocked me off the railings! I could have DIED! Do you know how much the world would mourn if I were gone?!"

    Don't answer that, world, Magilou is speaking for you.

    "If you always stop and worry about burdening the kids," she wags a finger, "you'll never get anything done. They're tough! They'll get over it!" This, implicitly, implies Magilou is not a child. Well... she has those pointy ears, too, after all.

    She skips back, spinning on a heel. "Man," Magilou remarks, looking from Yulie to Ruth, "everyone thinks they're a heartless monster until they have to look at the suffering they've wrought, huh? But not me!" She flashes a V-sign to Kaguya, for victory. "If you ask me, anyone who doesn't rub salt in an open wound is just being too nice!"

    Is it possible there is a woman out there who is even meaner than Kaguya..?

    ... didn't she just offer to hang out with her?

    Magilou should probably fear Dean much more than she does.

    Luckily, there's no time to worry about the clear conflux of terror looming on the horizon, because the rifle's jostled free.

    Ruth poses a dire question to them, and Magilou shrugs with her whole body, palms rising to the sky, chest heaving and falling. "Ask a stupid question..." She doesn't feel it, and perhaps that's how she can prance about so close to this horror without any worsening strain on her expression.

    Or, perhaps...

    She's terrifying, of course, objectively speaking. Magilou isn't that much taller than five feet -- Ruth's got over a foot on her, and does that even count the horns? But Magilou doesn't look even a little phased, as she brings her flattened, lengthened shikigami over her head to ward away the battering rain. Somehow, even that riptide doesn't manage to unseat her footing.

    "Huh," she chuffs, deep in her throat, as Yue talks about how Ruth's superiors are laughing at her. The syllable lands flat, and the smile on her face is its own ill mockery, as her tone grows incisive. "Don't go speaking from experience, now." How does Magilou know that's Yue's experience..?

    (Maybe she doesn't.)

    The cheer infests her with the next eyeblink, as she hears Ruth bid them to look at her. "Oh, I'm looking!" Magilou declares, hands cupped to circles around her eyes like little binoculars. "So, what am I looking for?" She seems strikingly casual about all the Malevolence seeping through the air. It's almost like... Magilou is used to it. But Magilou isn't Malevolent...

    No, not even as the pressure of the Malevolence grows deeper by degrees. Laughter rips itself from her chest like a knife for the stabbing, and Magilou tosses her hair behind her, striding forward. "You're gonna have to try harder than that." A hand reaches out, fingers curling up towards the palm, in a gesture of expectation.

    Her hand comes up to her chin, rubbing it thoughtfully. "You're assuming an awful lot about me here," she says. "Who said I hate heartless monsters? Heartless monsters are great fun. Say, if I'm a heartless monster, will you keep me close, too?" Her hand cups her cheek, as her head cants to the side with a beaming grin and a scandalous wink.

    Caring that much about all their suffering...

    Magilou grins and grins and grins, and isn't bothered by the Malevolence at all, even as it finds a balance in Ruth's resolution.

    Here's four shots.

    Althena has outlawed dancing, but Magilou doesn't care a whit; she dances from one point of the scaffolding to the next, pirouetting out of the way of a boulder which crashes past one railing and then the other. "Geez!" She exclaims, all a-huff. "You could just politely decline, you know!!"

    Magilou, that was probably not about you.

    Coming back to balance, she brushes herself off, and looks over her shoulder to where Ruth is now behind her. "Say," she asks, light as a feather, "how does it feel, anyway?"

    Dean stops in front of Ruth, but Magilou is hopping back away from her charge. "Good question! Who are you? Like, are you really just some boring do-gooder who regrets killing some people? Just ask this guy," she jerks a thumb at Ashley, "apparently that's something people do all the time. Not a fan, personally, but hey! Different strokes."

    This is the terrible statement which ends with Dean lending Dinoginos's power to defend Magilou. "What?!" Magilou stomps a foot. "Hey! Who said you could protect me! I'm not your friend, pal!" Magilou, you're supposed to say 'thank you'.

    She puffs out a breath, folding her arms, before she produces her shikigami again -- and Seraphic power gathers green around her. "Is it hot, or is it just me? Crown Fire!" Wind gathers around Ruth, sparked by flame, as a tornado of fire swirls around her.

GS: Magilou has attacked Ruth Pauling with Crown Fire!
GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: Gamble: Very High! Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Magilou's Crown Fire for 251 hit points!
GS: Disrupt applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Mighty applied to Magilou!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Oh, no? All right then." Kaguya accepts Ruth's answer, seeming to recognize something in her statement. She talks about people who hurt... people who did the hurting. Kaguya narrows her eyes a little. "People don't usually ask for what they get."

Kaguya quickly moves when there's water, leaping out of the way of most of the deluge backward where there'll be more time for it to dissipate first; The past, though. What they can't bury--the Malevolence intensifies, and Kaguya steps right into it as if daring its strange force to actually try to get through her. It doesn't in the way that one would worry, but it weakens, it harms all the same. And four shots... Four. That number. Kaguya remembers.

She also has to catch a heavy rock that could've crushed her, bending at the knee under the impact and hurling it away rather than being smashed. It wrenches her arms in the doing, though.

"...Yeah," Kaguya says. "There are people the world is better off without. Is that your purpose, then? Is that what you're going to do?"

Kaguya looks over the changed form of the Hellion. Greener. Vaporous. Pale. "...No," she says, "I don't think it is. But whether that's true or not..."

Kaguya pulls herself up again, looks at Yue, talking about a meaningless fihgt. Then she looks back at Ruth. "Yeah, actually. You're right. You shouldn't forget any of that. Remember every face you can, because they bleed together, don't they? No matter how you actually want to think of it. You can't name all the people you hurt, can you?"

"You can talk about making amends. But you can't. Not really. That's not how it works."

Kaguya brings a fist back, and starts to charge power, force channeling into her fist. "Hot, huh? Well... it's definitely not you," Kaguya quips to Magilou, a joke that doesn't really much conceal her focus on Ruth now.

"Sure. Let's hang out. After..."

"If you want to suffer--C'mon, Yue. Let's show her she's not thrown away yet. If you want to suffer, Hellion..."

Kaguya leaps into the air and there's a glint of light at her metallic glove, a lensflare as she suddenly rushes back down again, slamming that single fist from high above straight for Ruth's Hellion form's center mass.

"THEN LET'S REMEMBER!"

Hit or miss, the blow will leave a shockwave that cracks the ground around them.

GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action!
GS: Kaguya has attacked Ruth Pauling with Falling Star!
GS: Kaguya has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

This is not the first Hellion that Ashley has encountered. The tortured monster at the heart of the Water Shrine came first, then there were the creatures in the teleporter station under the desert of the Al Bhed. But in neither case was he submerged in emotional detritus as he is now. "You... have no idea how keenly I feel it," Ashley answers as the crushing waters flood around him, threatening to sweep him off his feet and pull him under a tide of inner turmoil. "Fear... Yes, but right now, it's not their circumstances that are scaring them." It paralyzes them, look how they tremble, look how impotent they become before something as simple and primal as 'fear'
Ruth... unfolds. She transforms, morphing into a twisted mockery of a one-winged angel. It brings to mind an image of the statues that are so celebrated in the Nissan cathedral, but... broken and corrupted. The waters continue to rage, but Ashley holds fast. The Malevolence intensifies, and he can feel... Him stirring, slavering against the walls of his prison, reaching out to feed on the rising tide of emotional turmoil like a primordial drought-god thirsts for the seas themselves. Let us show her what a true monster looks like. Let us consume her, sorrow and all!
"Ruth... The person that you hate... Well. Maybe she feels like she doesn't deserve forgiveness. Maybe she never will. But... Whatever you were before, that's clearly not who you are now. Look around you. Your heart is overflowing-- and it's filled with guilt and self-loathing. That's not the heart of a monster!" Ashley shouts, the emotional poison seeming to *recoil* from the space around him, as if... afraid. "You... you're a person, underneath it all. The pain you feel is obvious... And nobody with who can feel this kind of guilt, nobody who can feel this kind of pain, deserves to repent forever." They all deserve eternal oblivion
"I don't believe in a god... I don't believe in a world that cruel!"

A building collapses on top of him... And Ashley darts out of the way. The waters rise around him, twining around the barrel of the Bayonet, drawn there by a beckoning pulse of elemental magic. He swings the weapon in an overhead chop, the gathered water erupting as a blade of ultra-high-pressure fluid, cleaving the building in twain and sweeping down to hew into the Hellion made manifest. "Even if you can't forgive yourself... Anyone with a heart can see that you don't deserve to suffer like this!"

GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Ruth Pauling with Aqua Spiral!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Magilou's response gets an annoyed frown from Yulie before she looks back over to Yue.

Because she's still a 'person of interest', is it...? Well... unlike other members of Odessa Yue has yet to make an attempt at her capture, so Yulie can still offer her a smile.

"...Well, I appreciate it, even so..." She replies.

Yulie flinches a little at Ruth's assessment. It's mostly... no, entirely accurate, honestly. Ruth has her completely figured out.

"...I'm... I'm sorry." Yulie murmurs in response. She hesitates... and then looks up, as Ruth's weapon goes spiraling away from her. Yulie shakes her head.

"I know. I know, but... I don't... I don't think this will help the way you think it does." Yulie says. This is the only way Ruth can do anything...? Yulie shakes her head, at that. "I don't... think that's true. Even if you don't believe it yourself..."

A flash flood is conjured, then, whipping her about. It becomes overwhelming, and it's all she can do to brace herself against the flow... even as she can feel the oppressive weight of Malevolence intensifying. She has to force herself through it, and is only just barely able to throw herself out of the way as debris falls from the ceiling. With a wince of effort, Yulie pulls herself up to her feet... where she gasps, clasping her hands over her mouth as she sees what's become of Ruth - as she looks upon her form.

It's... a little overwhelming. But... it makes her feel a little more determined, too.

"...Miss Ruth... do you remember? When we met in that settlement... you told me that I shouldn't let myself become so 'strong' that I can't let my own feelings out..." Yulie comments. "After everything that's happened lately... keeping that in mind, it's been helpful. You've been lead to think that hurting is the only way you can help others... but, that isn't true. Even if it might seem small and insignificant at first... there are other ways you can help."

And then, she feels a power surrounding her, as Dean draws upon the power of the mountain. It's feels protective, supportive, and she sends him a grateful smile before nodding in Ruth's direction.

"Yes. We're... we're here for you, okay...?" Yulie says. But... for right now, they need to do what they can to stop here.

"Azoth... let me help a little." Yulie calls out. She draws out a Crest Graph, invoking it. Suddenly, golden light shines around the two of them. It's like a mutual sharing of agility - Azoth will find his attacks quicker and more effective, while Yulie will be able to use the provided speed to evade more effectively.

GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Azoth with Turn Shift!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has completed her action.
GS: Azoth accepts Yulie Ahtreide's Turn Shift for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Azoth!
GS: Riposte applied to Yulie Ahtreide!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Once she's thrown the grenade, Ida whips back behind her cover and presses herself against it--but she hears a metallic clang, and it's too early, and when the BANG happens, it's distant. Pebbles jump and skitter on the floor of the mineshaft. Ida chances a look out, and sees Ruth in action, doing her best to fend off her attackers despite old injuries. There's something in it that reminds Ida of when her mother trained her, when Aunt Anna helped her defend the Master. It's deeply familiar, but it's still nowhere near as familiar as the pain, the pleas, the self-hatred dripping from every word. The rifle goes flying, and Ida watches as it embeds itself in the rock bayonet-first.

    Yue answers her, and Ida remembers where she's heard that voice. "Oh," she says, her voice softening. "I'd thought it might be you. I'm sorry, your name was on the tip of my tongue." She glances at the 'sad sack' in an unguarded moment, smiles faintly. It doesn't last long.

    Ruth rushes to reclaim her fallen ARM. "I thought so," Ida says, her voice an odd point of calm in the brewing emotional tempest. She doesn't call Ruth a liar, doesn't question her sincerity. Instead, she smiles, sad and knowing, as intimately familiar corruption wafts up from the fallen weapon. "Of course it's soaked in it. It's the same gun you used at Siddim, isn't it? I'm... surprised you've kept it so well-hidden."

    'Do you not feel it? The fear these people have! They're frightened. They're... powerless, before everything going on around them...'

    "I do," Ida says. She breathes in, eyes hooding as she takes the scent of the Malevolence. It 'should' feel gut-twistingly awful, and it is, but it's like she just put her baby blanket to her nose, and breathed in. It's like the smell of her favorite biscuits, baking. It's the bitter bite of a gin and tonic in the Guild office in November. Her eyes open. She looks at Ruth, unguarded; her expression is almost a mirror of the older woman's, but tempered. The self-hatred doesn't bite as deep. The empathy and compassion are brighter, even as tears glimmer in her eyes.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Again, Ruth thrusts out that Crest Graph. Ida raises her right arm, clenches her fist; a thin biometal tendril streaks through the air, attaches with a splck to the solid iron of the cross-beam above her. The Seer reels herself upwards, above the rushing, surging floodwaters. Some of them flow past her--they have emergency pumps, Ida thinks, reminding herself that the miners are prepared. The moment the flood abates, Ida detaches the cable, which slithers back into her sleeve. If one didn't know better, one would mistake it for a perfectly normal ARM.

    Ida walks into the tempest of Malevolence as though it were a cool, pleasant breeze. It isn't, of course, but she's still smiling. "Feels good to let it out, doesn't it?" Ida says, as Ruth's form begins to change. Her heart hammers against her ribs. Adrenaline sends spikes of fear and alertness down her spine, even as she remembers her first change, and odd nostalgia floods back. "It hurt, sometimes, when I had to swallow it down. I was so well-trained by my gilded cage--I made a cage of my body, forced it to curl inwards and coil around my heart."

    Ruth shoulders the rifle. Ida throws herself to the ground, but she's not what Ruth's aiming at--instead, a bullet ricochets off the mountainside, sends debris pouring down. Ida hears the rumble of the small landslide, and rolls out of the way, but she doesn't notice the second ricochet, the one that sends a rock the size of a softball flying at her. It glances off her shoulder with a sharp metallic clang. Armor bends inward from the force. Ida yelps in pain.

    But Dean and Yulie have her back, even as she sways to her feet. Where would she be without them? Warm, bright energy flows into her body, washing away the pain and reinvigorating her muscles. A more intimately familiar power settles into her skin, and the marrow of her bones, granting her solidity, stability. "The Mountain still stands," Ida breathes. "Come on," she says, to Ruth. "Let it out. Let it out." And she rushes Ruth, seemingly undaunted by both bayonet and those fearsome-looking horns. She launches into a drumroll of punches, flicks, and open-palm strikes, flowing back and forth to keep her stance unpredictable.

    Ruth is both huge and intimidating--and while this is neither the time nor the place to admit it, she's got style in her warped self-image. But Ida was all of those things, and she was a wreck inside. Is Ruth?

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ruth Pauling with Endless Deluge!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Kaguya asks him why Azoth doesn't let her end it here. "Because her heart hurts for a reason, and I don't believe it's to end her life."

His attack cuts through, hitting Ruth in the shoulder, and she gives him that smile that's entirely wrong -- the wrong place, the wrong time. But her smiles aren't like Azoth's. This isn't a poorly calculated display. It's a genuine emotion that crosses her face, and all the more haunting for it. He's still in close, fixated on trying to understand that strange smile, when the floods pool under him.

This time it does knock him off of his feet, washing him away in a violent tumble. He's only pushed himself up on one arm before Malevolence overwhelms. Even if Malevolence can't take root inside him emotionally, it's still something that can be measured -- something he's learned to measure -- and capable of ravaging his systems. Azoth strains out a glitched, warped sound, rooted in place by wildly crackling arcs of black and violet. Ruth makes her shots, and the scenery falls.

One the dust settles, half of Azoth's body is left pinned under the weight of the debris as he lies face first, lightless on the ground. With the light of Yulie's Crest Graph, a soft 'whir' sounds from his body and he pushes himself up, eyes gold to match that light.

"Th -- Thank you, Yulie," he manages, voice glitched, as he frees himself with a strong yank and pulls himself to his feet.

He looks to Ruth. "Then -- don't forget. You don't have to forget. You can tell us everything, okay? Stop with this, please, and start with that."

The golden light runs through Azoth's circuits. His next conjured blade is the same color, flickering only faintly with the usual blue before he flings it toward Ruth in all of her transformed glory, trying to aim for a precise strike against her while reading her new reactions and movements carefully. There's little in his database that prepares him for a form like this one...!

GS: Azoth spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Azoth has attacked Ruth Pauling with Critical Process!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.
GS: Ruth Pauling critically guards Kaguya's Falling Star for 41 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!
GS: You do not have any attacks from that person in queue.
GS: Ruth Pauling critically guards Ashley Winchester's Aqua Spiral for 35 hit points!
GS: Cover applied to Ashley Winchester!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!
GS: Ashley Winchester drains Ruth Pauling! Ashley Winchester gains 18 temporary hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Highest! Ruth Pauling critically guards Azoth's Critical Process for 37 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Azoth!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!
GS: Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Endless Deluge for 90 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    Yue takes the brunt of discovering one of the Hellion's advantages. She only has the one wing. She can't fly - but she sure as hell can drape it around herself and use it as a shield, plowing into those rapid kicks. Nobody has a point of reference for everything Ruth's inner discordance does when it's given a place to exist. The novelty of her ferocity blunts the rapid array. "Don't you dare, don't you DARE," she's shy of screaming now, "blame anyone elsssse," this stops because of some choking noises on her part - as if something she said just set her off, breaking her defensive formation to slam the butt of her rifle into her and knock her over - but she overcommits to it in a way that does not speak of the strength to keep swinging the rifle. As if there were a sense of futility, somehwere, in the despair.
 
     Her wing remains raised in front of her as some of Dean's words come through after working out her offense to Yue's words. It starts to fold back, her tongue flicking the air as if to check and see if it's him (it is). The 'answer' to her conflict seems easy enough to discern, almost trivially so by anyone's reckoning about the rules of Malevolene. "I don't want to say why," she's not hissing, that's good(?), "a heartless monster did that to Siddim... no. That doesn't deserve a defense..." Dean brings up something undeniable. The contradiction that has a hold of her seems almost trivially easy to address. A slam dunk. You're not a monster because you care. You have a heart because you're concerned for others. He is such a wholesome pure-hearted young man that he seems poised to reach out and grasp the heart of someone so troubled... and with it, a sad smile. "I am already better than that. I have a heart now."
 
     It's only a slam dunk if you can find the basket it needs to go to, or, worse yet... well, we'll get to that in a bit because that is a 'worse' that Dean might just have revealed, as Magilou prances and asks how it feels.
 
     "...It feels." It feels what? Maybe it just feels. Is she really just a boring do-gooder. "...I would keep you close if you w--" She is set on fire, and there is a terrible hissing shriek as the wing is flung open, removing (for the moment) her capacity for throwing herself wing-first at Yues as the fire tornado immolates her. Stone does not typically catch fire like that. (Witches do not care about elemental resistance!!)
 
     Kaguya leaps up and takes advantage of the moment to strike, asking if she wants to suffer. An incredible force bears down upon her, which sees Ruth thrust up her rifle like it were everything about her, for better or for worse, that she has to carry. The way the shockwave carries through the ground and rocks the room, she carries it... eyes shut with tears. "I'm stuck with her," voice muted as the pain of that catches up, falling to a kneel, "no one should want her," and she gets up, there shoe goes - whirling with the blade to try and cut into the more diminutive Kaguya, several times, trying to bowl past her, towards Ashley.
 
     "Stop trying to redeem her." There's that level of dissasciation that keeps cropping up - she calls and sees herself as 'better than that' and having a heart 'now.' That's not how any of this works.
 
     The problem just got a whole lot more layered. The slam dunk can't happen because the basket's not in sight, or there is a failure to understand the exact game they're playing.
 
     Which means... no one was around to tell her what she was.
 
     With a burst of emotion, the high-pressure water finds itself assaulted by high concentrations of rainwater. (...Evidently, both her legitimate Crest Sorcery and Hellion Powers of Darkness are almost the exact same. That is a heck of a coincidence. She could have easily ended up with rock powers or something.) Somehow that blunts the conjured blade strike as she raises the rifle and fires a shot at him. One of the four famed knocks.
 
     Stop, and just talk. Her still-burning wing flinches, but she swings her bayonet blade at it, and emotion overruns the logical precision. Hellions are illogical emotion creatures and sometimes nothing makes sense, or too many things make sense that shouldn't together and then that happens. "You ask me to stop with caring... stop it," she fires again - but she's pulling her shot at the last moment, because that's someone she doesn't want mixed up. Her eyes widen at this, and the conflict in her heart reasserts itself.

     The Mountain still stands. Let it out. Let it out. Ida rushes to Ruth to encourage this with such kindness and understanding, and she responds by taking her flaming wing (her only wing she has) and ramming into it, never looking her in the eyes. Her emotional walls, figurative and physical, seem too great to fully overcome... but there is a quality Ida may find interesting. She is significantly heavier like this, but every strike seems to push more of her back than it normally would against targets of that size and momentum. A sign of her commitment to face these emotions head on but also not be overrun by them. Her spiritual strength exceeds most the grasp of Ruth's Malevolence in a direct contest... but as Ruth described the heartless monster, she never stopped.

     A chilling rain starts to build in ambience for those who otherwise have been spared direct assault.
 
     "Yulie," she starts to choke. "So long ago... that heartless monster let herself become so strong. So strong she could hurt anyone... and hurt everyone. She didn't stop... she never did. If you're... if you're here for me, not her," it's churning in there, "then... help me."
 
     That could be the opening, but the Malevolence there is churning too strong, and the eyes flare up to a violent violet, "help me help them."
 
     The rain washes over her, and she spits out something deeply unpleasant on the ground that... might be a manifestation of a whole lot of yuck in clearing her throat to make room for a completely different kind of bile. The rifle - the tool in which so much harm has been done, is hefted forth anew, running head long into Ida blade-first. "Help me help them be free of these parasssssites she gave Celessssti to!!"
 
     Ida is about to be run through her heart.
 
     There may not be time for them to sit down and have a rational discussion about what's going on.

GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Ruth Pauling with Wash It Away!
GS: Recover! Cripple, Mute, and Weaken removed from Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Ruth Pauling's Wash It Away for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Recover! Disrupt removed from Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Yue Rohay with Break Down!
GS: Ruth Pauling spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Kaguya with Bloodletter!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Ashley Winchester with One Knock!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with Fleeting Mercy!
GS: Ruth Pauling assumes the Stoic stance!
GS: Ashley Winchester takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's One Knock for 153 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Yulie Ahtreide with Cold Shower!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Dean Stark with Cold Shower!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Magilou with Cold Shower!
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Become Heartless!
GS: Yue Rohay takes a glancing hit from Ruth Pauling's Break Down for 59 hit points!
GS: Yue Rohay activates Evade bonus!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Cold Shower for 128 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yulie Ahtreide gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Fleeting Mercy for 82 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple applied to Azoth!
GS: Azoth activates Countermeasures!
GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Kaguya critically guards Ruth Pauling's Bloodletter for 23 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kaguya gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Become Heartless for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Dean Stark takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Cold Shower for 129 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Magilou takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Cold Shower for 131 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font!

<Pose Tracker> Yue Rohay has posed.

    Magilou cautions Yue to not speak from experience; there's a quiet chuckle, as she remarks, "... everything about me is projection. That isn't even a secret."

    Ida mentions that she now remembers -- and Yue does too. That one refugee camp back in Spira... it's been a long time. "Fancy meeting again like this, hmm?"

    Yulie remarks that she appreciates it -- even so... will there come a time when she does have to try to capture her? She pushes that prospect out of her mind. Don't do more work than you need to, Yue, you might strain yourself.

    Dean and Azoth speak closer to the heart, as do Yulie; Yue feels a little deficient, for a moment. She's never been great at speaking from the heart, and she ends up always having to speak about circumstance. Is the heartfelt method better, however, for reaching a Hellion?

    Ashley doesn't believe in a world that cruel. A part of her... wants to say that she's seen a world that cruel, lives in a world that cruel-- but she doesn't want to distract him right now.

    Kaguya calls upon her, urging her to show her that she's not thrown away yet. She's right, again -- this is pretty good, compared to some of the missions she has to do. That she has something in common with who she's fighting--

    --ahem, excepting a certain reporter she keeps ending up tangling with--

    --is pretty rare for her.

    "Yeah... we're speaking a little from experience ourselves, aren't we, Kaguya."

    Before she can follow up on Kaguya's assault, however, Ruth's reaction to her is perhaps more than she expected; but then again, she's somewhat used to her words washing off people without effect, if they even listen to her. (Professional sad sack, indeed.)

    Don't you DARE blame anyone elsssssse.

    Yue is silent for a while longer; she's silent even as she takes the brunt of Ruth's onslaught, the butt of her rifle CRASHING hard against her shackles -- the only form of defence she has on her arms -- over and over and over again.

    It's not until she overcommits, and she's released and distracted by Dean, that she peels up and rolls to one side to gather herself. Her arms are sore, bleeding; her head's dizzy, with close contact to that substance, that Malevolence.

    Yulie's words seem to have some effect, so she murmurs, "Keep it up... speaking from the heart does seem to work, doesn't it?"

    The Veruni, tired and at the end of her rope, exhales. "Ruth... how could I not blame someone else? We've been so trained to look inwards, think that everything that's gone wrong with our lives are our own fault, that there can't -possibly- be something like social circumstance at play... but... no, I've never been able to save someone else in my life."

    A pause, as she shakes her head.

    "You have better people to listen to. Listen to them. All I can do--"

    One exhale, and--

    A sudden BURST as a kind of spiritual release blasts out of her body, whipping her battered jacket tailcoat and hair every which way with stupendous force.

    Ascending into a liminal state where observers are hard-pressed to tell whether she's still solid or not, she turns into light as she streaks across once--

    No, twice--
      Three--
        Four
          Fivesixseveneightnine
            Twentyonetwentytwotwentythree
              Oneohfouroneohfive
                Foursixtyfoursixtyone
                  Sevenseventysevenseventyonesevenseventytwo
                    Nineninefournineninefivenineninesix

   In what feels like thousand strikes in one instant, light finds the shortest
    path; Yue scrapes and collides against the floor with the conclusion of her
                secret arte, clumsy and exhausted after an impossible exertion.

GS: Yue Rohay spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Yue Rohay has attacked Yue Rohay with -Over Limit!- Mystic Arte Unlocked!
GS: Yue Rohay has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yue Rohay has launched an attack Link!
GS: Yue Rohay accepts Yue Rohay's -Over Limit!- Mystic Arte Unlocked for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Burst, Hyper, and Lock State applied to Yue Rohay!
GS: Yue Rohay spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Yue Rohay has attacked Ruth Pauling with Fast Draw - Laser Silhouette!
GS: Yue Rohay has completed her action.
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Yue Rohay's Fast Draw - Laser Silhouette for 217 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst!

<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    Magilou shouts at Dean that she's not his friend. He looks over at her. "But we could be," he points out. "My name's Dean! What's yours?"
    
    His expression flickers into concern when Kaguya tells Ruth that she can't atone--not in any way that's meaningful. That's right; *she'd* been a soldier for a while, fighting a war with high technology in the hopes she could end it early, only to end up exacerbating it. If there's anyone here who'd understand how Ruth feels, it must be Kaguya. (And Yue, but Dean isn't aware of her background beyond what bits of it she hints at now.)
    
    But if there's anyone who understands the *experience* of being a Hellion, it's Ida. He smiles warmly over at her and Yulie, then nods firmly as the former encourages Ruth to let her pain out--as Ashley says that she's still a person and she doesn't deserve to suffer eternally. However... Ruth herself clearly doesn't agree. But therein, too, lies a contradiction.
    
    "It definitely doesn't deserve defending," he tells her firmly. "You killed a lot of defenseless people. There's no changing that fact. But if you're doing this because you want to make up for what you did--if you don't want to forget what you did, and you don't want to put the blame on anyone else--why do you keep talking about yourself like you're a second other person?"
    
    Rain washes down. Dean doesn't do anything to try to avoid it; he's already soaked, so what's another shower? (If he catches a cold later because of this, Rebecca's going to give him *such* a scolding.) But then Ruth turns her bayonet to Ida and aims that blade directly for her chest. "Ida!!" Dean shouts in alarm--and charges Ruth full-body to attempt to knock her off-balance, to keep that strike from being so potentially lethal. Ida's physiology is sturdier than most, even before that defensive spell he cast on her, but still.

GS: Dean Stark has attacked Ruth Pauling with Violence Vice!
GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Dean Stark's Violence Vice for 117 hit points!
GS: Break applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

Maybe Yue has lived in a world that cruel. But...

It's a matter of what we reach for, isn't it? To change anything for the better, it helps to have a vision to pursue.

And yet, it's almost as if talking to the Hellion is not unlike talking to a brick wall split down the middle into two different brick walls. "It's that bad, huh...? I can only imagine what that must be like. At least in my case... Well, no. I guess it's not really comparable."

Ashley frowns and loads a crystalline cartridge into his rifle. Pale, blue light spills from the gaps in the Bayonet's construction, lancing through the swirling miasma--

A bullet slams into the Musketeer's shoulder, splitting bone and spilling blood. Pain lances through his world as he feels that terrible pulse race through his awareness again. Just let go and consume it all-- devour all this darkness and use it as fuel to set the world on fire. Erase all this weakness in a firestorm of all-consuming, lightless desolation.

Ashley sucks in a breath. He takes aim...

And unleashes a wave of destructive, crystal-blue radiance straight at the Hellion. She might have stabbed Ida, but--

Well, Ida's sturdy. She'll probably be okay, right? Right.

GS: Ashley Winchester spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Ruth Pauling with Rising Nova!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lock state expired!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Ashley Winchester's Rising Nova for 191 hit points!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Yulie Ahtreide has posed.

Yulie sends Yue a nod as she suggests to keep it up - that it's having some effect. She'd like to, but... Yulie pauses, unsure. She takes a hesitant step back as Ruth speaks to her.

"I don't... understand..." Yulie replies, shaking her head. "Why are you... talking about yourself like that...? But, I-"

She starts to say something... but then Ruth's eyes flare violently and Yulie backpedals, concerned. Especially when speaks of helping these people be free of 'parasites'.

"This isn't... this isn't the way to go about it!" She pleads... and then clasps her hands over her mouth as Ruth lunges to impale Ida.

"Ida...!" Yulie gasps, worried. And all the while, the rain falls - cold and unyielding. It crashes down, and forces her to her knees. Everyone's hurting, but... there's something she can do to help.

"Linking to the Material...!" Yulie intones. The device on her wrist unfolds into its true form. "Let's activate - Code O!"

And then, there is light as a presence begins to flood into the area, constructing itself piece by digital piece in the skies above. The sensation is similar to Odoryuk, and yet not Odoryuk at the same time. It feels different - wrong, almost. And as the light clears and the summoned being takes form, it is not the majestic unicorn they may be familiar with... but instead a large serpent, bearing a horn glowing with purple light. It flies in the skies above, flying around them, before dipping its head down briefly.

The glowing horn emits light that washes over everyone - light that shines with both life and vigor, so that they can make one final push back...

GS: Yulie Ahtreide spends 1 Combo on Reload!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Dean Stark with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Yue Rohay with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Azoth with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Ashley Winchester with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Kaguya with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has attacked Magilou with Material Drive - Code O!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide has completed her action.
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Ashley Winchester! He gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Ashley Winchester activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Kaguya! She gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Kaguya activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Dean Stark! He gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Dean Stark activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Magilou! She gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Magilou activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Yue Rohay! She gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Yue Rohay activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Yulie Ahtreide heals Azoth! He gains 210 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Cripple removed!
GS: Azoth activates Yulie Ahtreide's Reload!!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has activated a Force Action!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Under calmer circumstances, it would be interesting to compare Yue's response with Ruth's--or so Ida thinks, as the Hellion begins to rage in earnest. Fear shoots down her spine, but there's still that strange, comforting familiarity behind it. The understanding smile never leaves Ida's face, though it does tighten as she engages Ruth in close combat.

    And as Ruth engages her in turn.

    Ida is already twisting on her heels, stepping back in anticipation of a crushing bull-rush that never quite happens. Ruth comes at her, but Ida does notice that she's less massive--or metaphysically massive--than her frame would suggest. "They say the past is a different country," Ida grates out, as she looks the Hellion in the eye. "Wouldn't it be something if we could leave our sins there?" Is she dissociating? Does she literally think she's become a different person? Or is she unable to bear the weight of her crimes despite assertions to the contrary?

    "You are her," and Ida points at Ruth's chest, where her heart should be. She remembers the bright, Malevolent sun that once consumed her own heart. "Just as I am the monster that nearly poisoned a world."

    Ruth's anger comes to a head. Ida takes her eyes off the Hellion for a moment, to look at Yulie, and in that moment, Ruth charges.

    The rain-slick blade of the bayonet gleams in the lantern-light.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Ida meets Ruth's gaze, defiance and empathy mingling in on her face. Her eyes gleam, despite her tears, despite the rain slicking her hair against her scalp. She twists to the side, slightly, and sucks in a deep breath. For an instant, phantasmal flame flickers in her irises, surrounded by a brighter core of golden-white.

    The rifle's bayonet drives through her breastplate like an industrial press through solid steel. The impact rips a fist-sized hole into the armor; it knocks Ida back, but Ruth's follow-through is nothing if not determined. There's a horrific crunching noise, but it's like nothing Ruth has ever heard before. The blade slides and grinds against something, but it's not bone, because bone doesn't make a horrid metallic shriek when ground that way. Ida hears Dean and Yulie screaming her name, grits her teeth until her jaw creaks. Ruth's momentum finally comes to a halt.

    Beneath the armor is something else, something far more solid than fragile human flesh. It's bright gold and blue, and flush with Ida's skin, moving in and out with each breath. When she meets Ruth's eyes, veins of blue-tinted quicksilver interlace with human capillaries.

    "Forgive me," Ida says, "for not baring my heart to you. But you aren't the only here one who regrets what they've done."

    Ida feels Code O's energies as they flow into her. Yulie is taking a great, terrible risk using her Material in the open, and there is no time to gawk at the nanomachine Guardian--only time to use its power to best effect. Her aura ignites, a blazing sun of golden-white engulfing a fainter core of inner flame. She shifts her weight, slipping to the side and setting her feet. She twists her torso, pulls back her right arm. Undifferentiated tissue boils from beneath her bodysuit and sleeve, covering her armor in yet another layer--a fighting gauntlet the same colors as the spot on her torso.

    "Let's see," Ida says, "if you'll let go."

    Moor Gault's fire ENGULFS her hand, and she drives it forwards with terrible, crushing force. The air itself seems to yield as she strikes, feeding the flames.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ruth Pauling with Unbroken Lotus Fist!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 213 hit points!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

From experience, Yue says. Kaguya shrugs. It is a way of saying 'yes' without having to actually say it. But Kaguya thinks she has come to understand this Hellion some. Not completely, not entirely, but some. She doesn't have the same kind of self-dissociation. But Dean is right--she does understand quite a bit more than sokme might.

But in the end...

Ruth's blade slashes through Kaguya's shirt, bouncing off of armor under her clothes, of superior Veruni technology rather than frail human flesh. But what she says--stuck with her... tears. The tears hit some more.

"I want her," Kaguya says suddenly, eyes bright and practically burning. "That monster you're stuck with--I want to see her. I thought I was here just to kill that monster, to do away with something for the good of everybody, to feel like I got to do a nice thing too. But no. Now..."

"Now I just want to see you face her. Now I just want--"

Rain washes over. Yue, tired, speaks of saving...

"Now I want to save this one out of spite," Kaguya admits to her, watching her incredible strikes before she hits the floor. Kaguya moves immediately to shield the fallen Veruni, in time to give a stare at Yulie's Ordoryuk. A stare, and an uncomfortable twitch at the shining light that washes over her.

"I told you," Kaguya says. "They won't thank you for 'freeing' them. They won't see it as a favor. Upending peoples' lives... No matter what a good reason you have, it's going to hurt."

Still standing over Yue, Kaguya turns to face Ruth. "All right then. Try one of these!" Kaguya pulls not her gun--she's kept that holstered, that particular weapon of destruction--but a small, blinking orb. It has purple and green lights on it, and a switch on the side. It looks very much like a rounded grenade... and she hurls it straight at Ruth, whereupon it will burst into green powder that burns with purple flame.

GS: Kaguya has attacked Ruth Pauling with Malevon Breaker!
GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
GS: Sneak! The true nature of Kaguya's attack becomes clear!
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Untested Prototype for 210 hit points!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Disease applied to Ruth Pauling!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou shoots her own attempts in the foot. With fire! That is how a Magilou do.

    "Not like me!" She chirps, chipper again, to Yue. "I don't even know what a project is!"

    Dean Deans at Magilou, and Magilou fixes him with a sceptical expression for a moment, before she effortlessly recovers. "I'm the magnificent witch, Magilou! Scourge of pure hearts, and defender of the wicked! Until they throw rocks at me," she asides, to Ruth. "Who does that? That's SO rude!"

    But Ruth is having a few Ruth problems and may not have time to reflect on Magilou's astounding banter. Magilou will just have to reflect on her, instead.

    "So," she concludes, after listening to all her despair, "that's your game, huh? Draw a line between 'then' and 'now'. 'That girl isn't me!'... or something like that." She twirls her bangs about a finger, glancing sidelong to her own motion. "When it's been a long, long time..."

    Her smile is a gash along her face, as her gaze falls on Ruth again. "You're right, of course. Why would anyone want to help a sorry little girl like that? This way is much better." Her words cut, too, with all the acid of someone too, too used to abandoning the needy.

    ... but, the woman in the memories was grown.

    Maybe Magilou is mocking her. It does seem to be her gift.

    She watches Ruth charge Ida, and her face here is impassive, too. Of course, it doesn't work. Magilou writes the sins of the world in her tomes; she knows the reputation of Ida Everstead-Rey. As for the measure of the woman, well, Magilou really couldn't care less, but regardless of what it means she's quite good at being stabbed. "So," she remarks, suddenly dour as Ida pulls out her purification, "it's really not silver, huh? ... still, you should be careful with something that hot."

    The rain's still coming down, and a beehive-barrier of magic covers Magilou like an umbrella, each drop hissing into the hexagons like sick acid.

    -- and all a sudden Magilou's turned to Yulie, and she looks fascinated when the thing much like a Guardian (the Filgaian ones) drops in to give them its blessing. "Whoa! Whoa! What was that?! Do it again!" When she turns back to find Ashley doing what he does, she looks plenty jazzed about that, too. "Check this out!" She declares, chipper. "Look! A shooting star!" And with a bounce of her heels, an icy meteorite crashes down -- right for poor Ruth's head, as Magilou keeps on smiling.

    Well, she looks happy, anyway.

    There's something which rings a shade hollow to it, though, like the sound of rain on a barrier. "You hit your limit back then," Magilou supposes, back stretching as her hands loop behind her head. "And if you don't come to terms with the differences, you'll go mad, one day. But it doesn't have to be like that."

    One leg stretches out in front of her, heel to the ground as her toes stretch into the air. "Hell, I know guy so thick-headed he's kept himself together for a thousand years. But the kids these days... they're so reactive, any little thing'll set them off."

    Streeetch, and finally her hands come to rest on her hips.

    "I'll ask one more time," Magilou says.

    "Who are you?"

GS: Magilou has activated a Force Action!
GS: Magilou has activated a Force Action!
GS: Magilou has attacked Ruth Pauling with Spirit Drop!
GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: High! Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Magilou's Spirit Drop for 291 hit points!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth, unfortunately for Ruth, is as stubborn about not getting 'mixed up' as the others have been. She thinks him younger than he is -- more human than he is, most likely -- and for now, cruel as it is, that's useful. Later, being someone who was once a tool of war may be more useful. He charges her shot, even as she pulls it back, letting it cruelly rip through his shoulder as he winces and jerks back from it, letting her see that. (But he does put a hand over the wound, masking it's not flesh and blood for the moment.)

"I won't stop," he says. "And I'm not the only one who won't. Because you're hurting, and because he could have been you -- or you could have been him." Azoth's circuitry crackles under his synthetic flesh, bright and glowing. Even the purple light of Code O does not quell it. "Not everyone gets a choice, and some choices are barely choices at all, but right now, I want to give you the option to not have done this to yourself again...!

He channels the wild energy coursing through him into an explosive, unshaped burst of chaos, crackling bright blue and fuchsia in a neon storm. Azoth recoils from his own blast, smoking from his damaged shoulder.

GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action!
GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action!
GS: Azoth has attacked Ruth Pauling with Volatile Memory!
GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Azoth has completed his action.
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Catastrophic! Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Azoth's Volatile Memory for 267 hit points!
GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer!

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    Those emotions and feelings start going in weird places, in multiple directions. Hellions tend to unravel in spectacular ways when confronted and challenged. As Malevolence feeds on conflict, something confronting or being confronted with is inevitable. It's only a matter of time. Walking, hollow shells, stuck in certain thought patterns and beliefs - but conflicts exist to be resolved, in a more rational space.
 
     She does not find Ida's heart. Pain surges through her arms as something stops, even though she is channeling rejection of someone who didn't, and a part of her whole just doesn't know how to deal with it. How to talk to someone... who went through much the same feelings as she has. She saw bits of Ida move strangely back when she was worried for the flying raging Fell Drake, but not like this, and that both captivates and horrifies. It's in this moment everyone else attacks, and her emotions try to redouble their efforts to be complicated.
 
     There is a raging seething, even tears streaming from the gargoyle's eyes as Yue keeps trying to find any sort of mitigating factor for her situation. So many blows combine into one instant, and the wing is thrown open. An opening, as Yue struggles with her own depression. Malevolence is something that can be removed, in the right circumstances - but what is Ruth like underneath all of that? Could the two have that much in common?
 
     Dean tackles the disassociative part. She is going back and forth on that, and all the problems there - of which there are many. Dean rams into her, throwing her off-balance with the questions and the motion and she doesn't have an answer.
 
     Unaware of what beats within Ashley's heart, an off-balance Ruth takes a shot of crystalline radiance that washes over her with another brief shriek. Her head bows as she doubles over, hiding her eyes, trying to bring down her wing to cover herself again.
 
     She wants to, when Yulie is confused. She's not sure what to say to her, like there's something she should say to her. She isn't in the radius of the Odoryuk-like figure's power, but she flinches from it as if knowing it's some sort of warmth and kindness. Yulie is someone who deals exclusively in that.
 
     Kaguya, in spite, wants to see 'the monster.' It's strange, isn't it? Could someone really look in the mirror, see their Hellionized self, and go 'I don't look or feel like a monster any more?' To do away with that monster. That monster who still had value to someone and she doesn't know why. (She knows what the little blinky orb might do, it looks like a grenade - yes, it is one, and it blows her wing guard open again.)
 
     Azoth speaks like someone a whole lot older than he looks (a distinction he's not alone with, more on that in a bit) - and when she can look, there is something distinctly wrong and her heart simultaneously feels a bit heavier in the way she likes, and awful in the way that she doesn't like as much but doesn't hate, and the wild energy explodes out.
 
     Magilou is not done. The only reason Azoth's blast does not send her too far away is because that shooting star just misses Ruth's head, strikes behind her, but has enough carry-through in its momentum that it just plows forth and carries her forward through Azoth's beam, with a piercing question for her to hear and listen to as Ida simultaneously asks if she'll let go.
 
     'Who are you?' 'Let's see if you'll let go.'
 
     The flame that sustains the world washes over her, as Ida strikes with enough fury that even the comet built with INCREDIBLE WITCH MIGHT just disintegrates as a smoldering wreck lies face down out in the open.
 
     Where it rains... naturally, to someone covered in smoldering, obscuring steam. Inside, when it clears...

<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.

    It doesn't, at first, because there's more Malevolence rising. That purification... it didn't stick.
 
     An uptick in the ambient emanations, which is weird given her Domain in Siddim... no, it shrinks after another moment, as Ruth comes up to a kneel and faces upward with a pensive look on her face that fades, just letting the natural rain wash through her. The greater calm. Something like pacifying. It seems more like a reaction that should set something off, but somehow, her own will takes a different interpretation of what goes through her. Sometimes they just define things for themselves.
 
     "...So many terrible things happened in the rain," a change in subject in an extraordinarily pensive moment. "It's... refreshing. Putting all of it together. How horrible it all was... every drop of the rain, I... just feel. I didn't even know it was warm today." She approaches something conversational, if not yet answering the important question. "It's like it's all happening at once... reliving all of it," almost girlish laughter. It feels. <2" She repeats.
 
     She sits up, trying to wrap her legs together with her tail while hugging the rifle. The end of her tail slaps a nearby puddle pooling a few times. It is very unlike the kind of person that was about ready to bear down on all of them in a big ball of violence. She still might, looking vulnerable.
 
     "...I have her name. Her memories. Her history. Her face." Lidded eyes. "Her hands. Her ears." She's not happy to say that. "Her... sins. Just... everything." She needs to say it. She's her. That would be one facet of the ball of twine taken care of. She's gone back and forth on 'I' and 'she,' that's a contradiction. This is not a multiple, this is someone who doesn't have the strength to reconcile with something difficult.
 
     "The problem is... I feel like I have a heart now." She is lying to herself. For how long as she lied to herself? The case was laid bare to her. "I can't make sense of that... you can't be a heartless monster with a heart," she laughs, "and... you can't say I had one before. History hasn't lied. I hurt everyone around me, that's... does it matter how or why... that's how it ended up."
 
     She staggers up, tail unbinding her legs. Is she still going to fight? She's battered, weak. Her tongue flicks aren't as animated.
 
     "...My name is... it's still Ruth Pauling." That's progress? The rain starts picking up, but that's not the natural rain now. She lowers the rifle down, her tail grabbing it as her right hand clutches her heart. "...I can't help but be where people are suffering. It's just... I'm there. I want to be there. In it. In all of it, and... sometimes... I make more, and then... I just feel. Other times... others' suffering just fades because I'm there for them, and... then I feel like, I want more of that, and... it's been that way. It felt. <2"
 
     She shakes her head. "...No, it... it can't be about me. Not when I've seen a way to find out... for sure, if there was ever anything good about... before. Someone did." She's about to cry. Nope, too late, she's crying. "...Someone else who was suffering. She... she has a dream. It... it felt close to something. I don't know how to put it," or she can't admit what it felt close to, given what she's been going through. "I want to know. It's the first time I've felt like I could go beyond just... being there. Like I just might, in a way that... maybe everyone's suffering will go away. Maybe I'll see how."
 
     Silence follows.
 
     "Elise... just wait a while longer. I want to be there for them, too," she's not looking at them any more, starting to retreat into her own emotions, as the rain intensifies and the fog kicks up, "if they'll let me... hatred is for heartless monsters, isn't it. I'm not one..."
 
     ...
 
     She's gone, but there is one important question worth asking: if a heart set on justice is what is generating Malevolence... how should it be stopped?

<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.

    Yulie summons the healing power of Code O--an un-Guardian-like Guardian summoning--and Dean's eyes widen with wonder as the horned snake slithers through the air and bestows healing upon everyone, including him. It's strange, though... It doesn't feel quite the same as a regular Guardian. What's the difference? ... ...Does it matter what the difference is? "Thanks, Yulie!" he cheers, waving over to his friend.
    
    Magilou Magilous back at Dean. He gives her a blank stare. "Wait, is that why you're here?" he wonders, confused. This confusion changes to concern, and then to thoughtfulness, and Magilou then turns her Magilouness onto Ruth, ultimately asking again: 'Who are you?'
    
    "You talk mean, but deep down you're actually really nice too, huh? You're doing your best to help her figure out who she is and all," Dean comments to Magilou about Ruth. A broad, sincere smile spreads across his face. "Hehe, you're just like Kaguya. No wonder you wanted her to hang out with you!"
    
    But... while Dean may have solved Magilou's witchy puzzle (probably), Ruth is still hurting. But she's also processing while she's hurting, and that's progress, right? He turns a sympathetic frown her way, watching and listening as the rain intensifies into a deep fog, until Ruth has vanished into it.
    
    ...
    
    Dean sneezes. This really is a chilly rain...