2021-07-16: Stupid Soft Hearts
- Log: Stupid Soft Hearts
- Cast: Xander Lovell, Eleanor Klein, Zhang Xiumei, Magilou, Ruth Pauling, Riley Arwell
- Where: Zoara Badlands
- Date: July 16, 2021
- Summary: Eleanor is given a dire warning to stop the Fangs from orchestrating another tragedy -- from the Fangs themselves. With Xiumei, Ruth, and Magilou, they arrive to prevent the loss of innocent life... but it turns out Xander was not privy to Riley's plan, and does not take discovering this perceived betrayal well.
DC: You switch forms to Snarling Fang of Valmar! DC: Xander Lovell switches forms to Snarling Fang of Valmar! DC: Magilou switches forms to Lil Miss Witch Who Smiles Around You But Stabs You In The Back When You Are Not Looking! DC: Eleanor Klein switches forms to Crest Sorceress Eleanor! DC: Zhang Xiumei switches forms to Biometal Model AV!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Riley's encounter with Eleanor in Halim was brief. Just long enough to give her a note before he disappeared into the crowd.
The Fangs are planning to attack the settlement by the canyon tomorrow morning and wipe it out. Please stop us. You don't need to hold back. It might be time for this to end.
It was an extreme thing to say. Driven by a sense that their luck has been running out. That the universe had thrown so many obstacles in their path that it must have decided they were done with their blood-soaked second chance, and it was time to let go. Or at least if they were going to kill again, it shouldn't be like this. He was willing to let fate decide.
But his timing was off. Xander decided to spare him the danger, and went on ahead early without him in the night. Now Riley is racing to catch up, as daybreak nears. This has happened before. And the last time, Xander retreated into his own mind for weeks. If it happens again -- if he does this on purpose -- will he ever want to face the world again?
It's a grueling journey for Riley -- the curse of the Fangs manifested as thorns in his throat and it's been several days since he's been able to eat or drink properly, or to speak at all -- part of what drove Xander to this extreme. But the pain is also a message -- that the massacre hasn't started yet. That it isn't too late. As long as the thorns remain -- in his throat, in his scalp, in his hand -- there's still time to prevent another Cereza.
He almost makes it to Xander before the pain melts away, the thorns, roots, and flowers infesting his body crumbling to dust. It's wonderful. It's terrifying. His heart lifts with the freedom, the idea of getting his voice back -- at the same time his stomach drops. This relief means the Fangs have tasted blood. And as he rushes past the outskirts of the settlement and dawn begins to light the sky, he can already see the nightmarish garden Xander has made of it.
Red flowers bloom from the mudcracks along the road, creating a trail to the settlement shadowed by encroaching brambles. They cage it, growing inward like so many rows of teeth, cradling it in a nightmarish, thorny maw of a garden. What should be green is black, infested with red, eerie blossoms that perfume the world with death.
Blood drops onto the thirsty ground from a corpse strung up in a spiraling, thorned trunk. A village lookout, dead before he could ever cry out in warning.
Xander stands in the debris of a building collapsed under the strength of grasping vines. It only takes one sacrifice to stave off the symptoms of the Fangs' curse, yet the flowers sprawling from Xander's injured eye have completely overtaken that side of his face, flourishing instead of fading. Thorny vines seamlessly mingle with his hair, and his entire arm is coiled in branches as they form the long blade of a scythe directly on his arm.
He cleaves it down into his next victim. The body falls lifelessly, the warmth of blood splashed against his face.
Lindow, the settlement is called. Does it mean anything to remember it? To have walked its streets and etched it in his mind before committing to its destruction? No. It didn't stop him, and it won't absolve him. The horror of the slaughter is dulled by knowing who suffers if he hesitates. If he doesn't make corpses, one will be made for him. The last one he wants to see.
But Xander's only just begun. A handful of lives stolen, with a town of people left who could still escape the garden of death. There's time to stop him before this goes any further.
"Xander!" Riley calls his name as he clambers over the vegetation that rings the settlement like a wall. His eyes widen as he finds him still overgrown. More overgrown than he's ever seen him. And still killing. "Xander, you did it, it's over! We can run, we can just leave! Come with me!" Can he hear him? Or did he already give in to the power that overtook him back then?
Xander spins at the first sound of someone approaching, wild violence in his gaze. Only once Riley calls his name does awareness flicker over Xander's monstrous, bloodied features. "Riley...?" He looks back over the settlement, his nightmarish garden trembling with his arm. Any relief he gets from Riley speaking again drowns in hearing the fear in that same voice. There's no quieting the bloodlust, but Riley doesn't have to watch.
"Go back to camp."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Growing, grasping for whatever they can... But it's nighttime.
That image sticks with Eleanor as she takes the note, watches Riley disappear or the space where she thought he was. For a moment, she thinks to look for him, but pushing through people isn't enough to find him. The morning, then.
Eleanor no longer wonders why her luck and visions guided her to Halim.
At first, she hopes to save them. Maybe it's time for it to 'end', but maybe they can find a way, instead--Magilou might know something, from how she'd been talking, or she might not. Still, it's with some hope that Eleanor calls out to Magilou, whom she knows is nearby, and Xiumei, the one she'd always rely on. That persists for the night, and through much of the morning. It persists, despite the image playing in her mind...
Until this moment.
Eleanor steps into view first, dressed in traveling clothes in orange, and seeing the red flowers, the trail of brambles, the thorny maw of garden with red eerie blossoms--seeing the blood--
The blood drains from her face, and the young elf shivers. It reminds her. It reminds her too much--
It may surprise her companions that rather than calling out to stop, or calling out at all, Eleanor simply shoulders her great bronze rifle and aims--
And fires at Xander, center-mass. "No more!"
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Xander Lovell with Warning Shot! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Warning Shot for 105 hit points! GS: Quick applied to Eleanor Klein!
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Xiumei came to meet Eleanor when word came.
She didn't have time to alert ARMS. She regrets that as she gets closer to Lindow, and sees the grasping vines, the thorns, and the flowers. If she had, maybe--no, she doesn't know what might have happened. She only knows what she sees now, as she hurries in after Eleanor. At night, she stands out like a sore thumb.
Her armor has a glow to it -- gems and lit-up sections glow a bright aqua-green, and her eyes glow enough to give off light. She slows to a stop behind her friend, her breath coming up short as she sees the site of the massacre.
<Tch... this is--> Varius says, his voice hitched inside of Xiumei's mind.
She looks at Xander, eyes wide. "What--what have you done!?" she cries out after her friend. She holds a hand up -- and the short, blunt-ended hand cannon appears in a flash of cubes of data. Her fingers grip it, and after Eleanor fires her rifle, and shoots out a trio of energy pulses that hurtle at Xander.
GS: Zhang Xiumei has attacked Xander Lovell with Pulse Cannon - Triple Burst! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell guards a hit from Zhang Xiumei's Pulse Cannon - Triple Burst for 71 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Zhang Xiumei! GS: Xander Lovell activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
BGM: Kleerup -- Until We Bleed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYZjsVO1YFk
In fact, I think there's some growing nearby...
Magilou started a bar fight in Halim last night. Did you know? It was glorious. Everyone chased her all around town. It even attracted the attention of some people who knew what they were doing!
(This was the entire purpose of starting trouble in the first place. It attracted Eleanor, and it attracted Ruth, too. Funny how starting things draws out everyone with a portrait next to their name, isn't it?)
And once she and Ruth got to a position where they could actually talk, well...
"An awful lot of interesting things are growing around here, recently, don't you think?"
... it's not like Magilou ever came out and said something bad was going to happen. It's all a lot of implications, things half-said, and tortured, tortured metaphors. Maybe it's enough to get her to stick around. Or maybe keeping an eye on Magilou, known troublemaker, is reason enough. Somehow, the town doesn't burn her at the stake, but she's hardly popular by the next morning.
As it turns out, that morning, Magilou was just leaving. Eleanor had to call out to her again. All she got was a frustratingly vague: "Have you ever heard of a rose pruning its own thorns? As if it can't quite agree with itself? Poppycock!"
AND YET --It seems like Magilou has a particularly fine habit of following people even when she seems like she's washed her hands of the whole affair, because even after brushing Eleanor's concerns aside --
Well, for a good few moments, there's nothing more. Eleanor has Xiumei. Maybe Eleanor even has some more help! But where's Magilou? Where's Magilou? It's a more complicated question than it looks like. Who deserves it more, the biting bugs or the people they're draining?
And just what made Magilou act so proactively, seeing them backed into that corner like they were?
There's a spiralling, thorned trunk. There's a corpse. And finally there's a woman, surfing in on an elongated shikigami, smoothing sweeping past the obstacle and coming down on the debris. Dead people are much like alive people -- just a tougher crowd.
Magilou alights from her shikigami, much too close to Xander and his killing-knife.
She reaches closer to his face, and snaps her fingers.
"Oi! Murderbritches! You in there?" As if he'd been stunned by hitting his head, not cracking theirs open. Magilou puffs her cheeks out, and grasps her shikigami in her hands, stretching it out and spinning around. "Spin, spin~!" She warbles, as the paper doll sails for Xander's cheek, as if to wake him up by slapping him about.
GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Great Cycle! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Highest! Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Great Cycle for 160 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth was haunting Halim again, because of course she was. Even after the verbal dressing-down (and the physical beat-down), she still thought of the people there she knows are suffering. Then Magilou happened, and unfortunately that cutscene got skipped by accident but she's come along. (She has not filled in Eleanor nor Xiumei about her true nature, assuming the ARMS agents aren't already aware - by word of mouth of those of ARMS that know or... otherwise.)
The name 'Lindow' is faintly familiar to a certain over-dressed Drifter, currently traveling with the hood of her shawl over her head with a downcast expression. She would be hard-pressed to find a corner of Zoara she didn't... affect, personally or otherwise. Somehow they both all blend together into one guilt-filled morass and have painfully distinct unique qualities at the same time, which is sort of how her mind operates these days. The past, as much as it dredges itself up in unpleasant ways, has to make way for a harrowing present.
Prominently, around her otherwise exposed right forearm, a Granasian rosary, clutching at her chest as she's drawn out of Magilou's irreverent dialogue about roses as if wondering if she were speaking of someone else, but this...
This isn't the work of the Rose Queen. She would never.
ARMs fire goes off, Eleanor's rifle leaving a familiar and alarming sensation that sees the over-dressed hooded elf running towards cover habitually and drawing a revolver with speed that both does and does not respect the stiffness and immense pain in her left shoulder that flares up when she does that. Peeking out from over cover, there is uncharacteristic hesitation watching the afflicted young man covered in overgrowth and the ritualistically deceased nearby.
Her composure holds by a handful of frayed threads as she opens fire with two shots from said revolver.
A far cry from Magilou's bold, whirling entry.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Fleeting Mercy! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell guards a hit from Ruth Pauling's Fleeting Mercy for 46 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Distracted by Riley and urging him to go back, Xander never has any chance of sensing Eleanor's shot coming. He staggers back with a grimace, hand reflexively going to his chest where the bullet hit. He pulls back fingers smeared in blood, staring at them before whirling toward the voice that cried out.
"How?!" Xander grits his teeth. "How do you keep finding us?! Every single time!" They always find him. They always find them. And he doesn't even have the right to be mad about it.
He thrusts his arm up to summon a wall of thorns to absorb Xiumei's energy blasts, the first two shots burning through layers of thorns while the last splinters what remains in an explosion of harmless shrapnel. Two shots follow from Ruth's revolver, each striking into Xander's arm with force enough to convulse his body each time, but the overgrowth armoring him splinters instead of bloodied flesh.
Then Magilou has to soar in, so close, right there with her stupid pulse and veins filled with blood. Xander lurches, and it's only Riley right there, it's Riley's friends with Magilou that flashes in his thoughts that stills his quivering body as he sinks his nails into his scalp.
Only for her to slap him with a shikigami as if she were spinning a roulette wheel into his face. Xander's thrown with the force of it, barely keeping on his feet as he seethes, posture slumped, everything about his disheveled, and lips twitching with a snarl to expose a fang that's grown in length.
"...Stay behind me," Xander says, voice low, looking to Riley with desperation that quickly steels itself for violence as he looks back to the others. Brambles burst from the ground around him, sprawling out wildly. Only Magilou is close enough for them to scramble for as they bite at her with serrated thorns.
But as the garden blooms and bursts, two massive blossoms on long stalks bloom open to reveal saber-toothed maws. They dive at Xiumei and Eleanor like vipers, seeking to bite into them and spill their blood.
Xander grabs onto the splinters of his transformed arm, scanning for the one who did it. He can only estimate where Ruth is. He thrusts the scythe blade fused into his arm into the ground. Blossoms scattering through the garden perimeter pulse before bursting into whirlwinds of serrated leaves, hoping to happen upon and lacerate her.
GS: Xander Lovell has activated a Boss Action! GS: You have activated the Boss Action Extend! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Magilou with Thorn in the Flesh! GS: Delay expired! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Blood Meal! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Blood Meal! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Grasp the Nettle! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Riley Arwell with he doesn't yet know what you've done! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Grasp the Nettle for 72 hit points! GS: Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Blood Meal for 71 hit points! GS: Eleanor Klein activates Evade bonus! GS: Xander Lovell drains Eleanor Klein! Xander Lovell gains 36 temporary hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling used Defend! She takes Xander Lovell's Thorn in the Flesh attack on Magilou on herself! GS: Riley Arwell accepts Xander Lovell's he doesn't yet know what you've done for 0 hit points! GS: Riley Arwell activates Xander Lovell's Reload!! GS: Gamble: Low! Ruth Pauling critically guards Xander Lovell's Thorn in the Flesh for 12 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Guard bonus! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Blood Meal for 70 hit points! GS: Zhang Xiumei activates Evade bonus! GS: Xander Lovell drains Zhang Xiumei! Xander Lovell gains 35 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is nothing if not... mercurial. While the curse was squeezing the life from him, and so many people kept calling him to account for his crimes, there really did seem like there was little left to do but face the consequences of his actions. But now... having the pain lifted from him... seeing that spark of recognition in Xander's eyes... and then watching a group of Drifters actually arrive and start to fill Xander with bullets...
"I-- I appreciate the thought everyone, but I changed my mind and as you can see I've got this situation completely under control, so you can go, and we can go, and we'll all kill eachother some other time. Xander!" he rushes up to him, trying to seize the arm that isn't a thorny implement of death, though there's no telling if he'll be able to get close enough. He hisses, "Xander! Let's GO!"
But Xander has a lot of murder to do and is already very busy doing it.
Magilou is here too, and Riley honestly isn't sure what kind of energy she plans on bringing to the situation, but he entreats her nonetheless.
"You get it, don't you, Magilou?" One evil minion to another? But Riley, your actions are not as comprehensible as you think they are.
It was Eleanor's bullet that drew first blood, but Riley is still hanging onto some hope that maybe everyone here would be willing to just shrug this off and leave. And so, though he draws his bow and aims an arrow between her eyes, that arrow bursts into liquid in the air as it flies, becoming a sticky tar that splashes toward her face to mar her vision.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Blinding Arrow! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Eleanor Klein takes a solid hit from Riley Arwell's Blinding Arrow for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Blind and Delay applied to Eleanor Klein!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor at first isn't sure Magilou is coming; she doesn't know her very well, after all. She seems like she'd do just about anything. But she can't wait for her, not at what she sees. Xander whirls towards them, and he asks how--
So he doesn't know. ...It's not her place to say, is it? Eleanor is not so cruel as to use the truth against him. So she doesn't answer at all, at first.
But there is Magilou, and--another shooter. Eleanor looks around for Ruth, spots someone in cover. "A friend of Magilou's?" she calls, wondering. Assuming. When Xander's attack comes, Eleanor dives partway out of the way, only glanced by the razor-sharp maws. It bits, but only briefly, knocked off as she slams her rifle down on it and breaks the hold in a spray of blood. It's still enough to hurt, and to give just a little back.
But--Ah, there's Riley again. He appreciates the thought, but...
"I'm--" No. She's not sorry, is she? She has to stop this. "I can't," she says. She starts to aim again--
There's the arrow. Eleanor is alarmed to see it coming, and moves to get out of the way--but while she would've dodged an arrow, the liquid it becomes is another matter, splashing towards her face and cutting off her eyesight for the moment. "Aah--"
This. This starts to feel familiar. The sorceress reaches into her bag, not for a Crest, but for a bunch of Berries that she pulls out and holds up. "Xiu! Where are they?" She can't see a thing. But she doesn't have to see to feel out this magic, and the berries sparkle--and shimmer out of existence, becoming glittering light over the others.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Magilou with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Eleanor Klein with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Delay expired! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein heals Eleanor Klein! She gains 115 temporary hit points! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Magilou! She gains 115 temporary hit points! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Zhang Xiumei! She gains 115 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Xiumei makes a surprised noise when they get twice the backup they expected. Magilou isn't terribly familiar to her, but she knew she was a possibility from Eleanor. Ruth is an unknown -- but the hooded elf is certainly welcome, as is her revolver fire. She looks back at Xander, her teeth gritted, and preparing herself.
And looking for Riley, too. Is he in on this? Or is it something else?
Xander demands to know how they found them. Xiumei has enough experience and wherewithal to not blurt it out -- her eyes glance sideways to Eleanor, to get her input in one silent exchange. Two blossoms rise -- one striking at her, impacting into her side. It draws blood, piercing the mesh armor on her side, until she tears away from it before it can drain too much.
Then Riley talks. She stares at him -- her expression almost bemused, but the bodies around them makes her think better of it. "This--we can't just ignore this!" she calls out to him. Then, he looses an arrow at Eleanor, and she calls out sharply. "NORA!"
It turns to tar halfway through. She lets out a sigh of relief, then she turns her head, eyes on Xander. They narrow; then, she drops the handcannon. It vanishes in the blink of an eye -- and she rushes forward, blitzing at Xander. Her hand extended, a cylinder forms. Then, a blade of energy explodes out. She leaps, and comes down at Xander, blade slashing down with a mighty overhead strike for him.
"These people--none of them deserved this!"
GS: Zhang Xiumei has attacked Xander Lovell with Pulse Saber - Jump Slash! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 2 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth keeps seated behind cover for precious seconds that stretch on, as years of combat experience dance along with their resultant emotional scars. She can hear Magilou's prancing, even with only one good ear. That woman. That irritating... childish woman (who is roughly a thousand years her senior, not that she is mindful of that). She has no idea what it is she just saw up there. It's funny, isn't it - blood, death, and all the fear in the air. The buzzing in her mind quells from the latter, putting that weight into a heart that she appreciates feeling that way.
She looks up, her eye wandering. She only sees a blur, and blood, and Magilou's outline somewhere within all of that horror show.
There's a whiff in the air one knows to be familiar. That ambient emotional despair, as a thick foggy miasma of blackened purple roils from cover - and with it, a large silhouette emerging from it.
Serrated leaves scrape about something that sounds kind of like stone, droplets of purple in their wake as the silhouette barrels right through it. Something large. Monstrous, even - one could be forgiven for thinking the Fangs may have compelled a monster to their side.
This may even be true in a literal sense, as writhing overgrowth bursting from the ground around Xander finds harsh resistance from a (single) winged... demon? The wing unfurls and swings outward, exposing a raised right arm where a Granasian rosary clings taut for dear life around a well-muscled gray-skinned forearm, its hand holding the shaft of what looks like a warped naginata blade masquerading as a bayonet to a rifle--
It is one, as that blade is swung down towards the overgrowth-ridden Fang of Valmar. Glowing purple eyes shine through mossy, dark green hair bear down upon the accursed.
Followed by a wide, open-jawed baring of fanged teeth and a serpentine tongue with a threatening hiss.
They have a Hellion problem on their hands.
(It's currently Xander's problem. Is it going to stay that way, the uninitiated may wonder.)
GS: Eleanor Klein heals Ruth Pauling! She gains 115 temporary hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Martial Myopia! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
How do they find them, she hears Xander demanding on the approach, and an invective lances through Magilou's mind.
She hates being right, just, all the time.
"Okay," Magilou surmises, once Xander cops that slap. "So you're still here. Great! We can work with that." She looks to Riley, in that instant, as if to search for some confirmation --
Except, well, Magilou was the only one stupid (attached?) enough to get in Xander's face, after all. She knew this was coming.
"O-oop!" Magilou jets back, a characteristic tale of a quick-step, but it's not going put enough distance between her and those thorns. Except...
Between her and the plants...
Is it any wonder Magilou consorts with monsters? She's a witch. It's only natural for her to have unnatural friends, all getting in the way of those grasping, grasping thorns, getting in the way of the sunlight of her blood.
"H--hey! Don't steal my thunder to show off like that!" Magilou stomps a foot, with a most egregious pout, as the Hellion rises. "That looked so cool, that's so unfair!" You mean 'thank you', Magilou. The words you are looking for are 'thank you for saving me from the horrible death thorns'.
Really, Magilou huffs to herself, if anyone needs saving, right now, it's that kid elf! Listen to her go!
She straightens up, now behind a front line, as is good and proper for a high magus such as she. Eleanor's friend over there can't let the murders slide, and that's only reasonable; it's what a heroine would do. Magilou, who is much more questionable, raises her hands in a broad shrug.
"Geez... you're really something, you know that?" That's what she says to Riley, with casual regret. She looks over the corpses; she looks back to the two Fangs.
Magilou sighs, a hand to her hip, and for a moment -- this one, shining moment -- she watches the two of them without striking out. But she's watching Xander, now, not Riley. ... maybe there's a reason she hasn't said anything more.
GS: Magilou has attacked Riley Arwell with You Get One Chance! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Zhang Xiumei with Counter Attack! GS: Xander Lovell guards a hit from Zhang Xiumei's Pulse Saber - Jump Slash for 96 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Xander Lovell guards a hit from Ruth Pauling's Martial Myopia for 86 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Zhang Xiumei takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Counter Attack for 65 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zhang Xiumei gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Riley Arwell accepts Magilou's You Get One Chance for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Whether or not Xander was trying to hit Magilou goes unanswered. Is he relieved he didn't? The thorns are starving. Everything is hazy, but he still seems lucid -- and maybe that's worse. Aware. Fighting. Killing. Doing this again.
But nothing would hit harder than Cereza did. He broke then. He can't break further.
So he thinks.
Xander meets Ruth, not having the luxury to be shocked by her demonic(?) visage, one beast piercing into the other with overgrowth to cushion Xander from the blow. Blood still oozes down the length of a vine. She hisses at him, and Xander snarls back, fangs exposed, before Xiumei rapidly closes the distance between him and her.
Xander rushes Xiumei in turn. She cleaves into his shoulder, meeting the resistance of vines and thorns protecting him with alarming durability, and as they collide, he hacks at her with his own scythe of an arm.
I appreciate the thought everyone, but I changed my mind.
Xander stops. His arm isn't so difficult for Riley to grab, except that he his body is unyielding to the tug. He stares, unable to hear Riley's pleading or anything at all after that implication. "...What?" He glances around at everyone else, as if anyone present would be willing to clarify.
For a moment, it seems that could be it: Xander so stunned by the opposition brought before him that he's forced to confront the reality of what he's doing. They can't ignore this -- of course they can't. The people here didn't deserve this. They cry out for the people here, they cry out for each other, and he could still stop now. ... Right?
Riley hadn't wanted him to do it. Riley tried to stop him before. But then he understood -- he agreed -- the only reason they hadn't done it together is because Riley as practically dying --
Absently, Xander brings his hand over his infested eye, then breaks the calm with sudden, hypoxic laughter.
"That's where you were!" he says, and he can't figure out why he's laughing with this cold, sick knot in his stomach. "What you -- what you almost killed yourself to do. Meeting with them to bring them here." Tears sting his eye.
As abruptly as he started, Xander stops laughing. His hand slides down his face, leaving smeared streaks in the blood. He swallows, looking up at Riley.
"...You. You brought them here."
Xander brings an arm around himself, shaking. He presses further into his eye with the heel of his hand. A red haze blurs his vision. Every nearby heartbeat is so loud in his skull. Something slips. If he grabs onto it now -- what happens then? Was it ever there to grab onto?
The whole of the garden trembles with him. Growths bulge and grow, and new cracks form in the earth. Like heads of a hydra, dozens of flowering maws spring from the grown at an alarming rate, splitting into more and more and descending down onto everyone to tear into their flesh with frenzied, insatiable hunger.
GS: Xander Lovell has activated a Boss Action! GS: You have activated the Boss Action Extend! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Riley Arwell with Why?! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Xander Lovell has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Snipe! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Xander Lovell with Violent Impulse! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell accepts Xander Lovell's Violent Impulse for 0 hit points! GS: Surge applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Feast or Famine! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Feast or Famine! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Magilou with Feast or Famine! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Feast or Famine! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Zhang Xiumei takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Feast or Famine for 164 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zhang Xiumei gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Mighty removed! GS: Zhang Xiumei enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell drains Zhang Xiumei! Xander Lovell gains 82 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Catastrophic! Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Feast or Famine for 244 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Quick removed! GS: Eleanor Klein activates Evade bonus! GS: Xander Lovell drains Eleanor Klein! Xander Lovell gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Feast or Famine for 255 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Guard bonus! GS: Xander Lovell drains Ruth Pauling! Xander Lovell gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Riley Arwell accepts Xander Lovell's Why? for 0 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Magilou guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Feast or Famine for 284 hit points! GS: Magilou activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Xander Lovell drains Magilou! Xander Lovell gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Xiumei hisses sharply; Xander's scythe hits the steel mesh around her arm, and it doesn't break through, but the blow is hard enough to hurt to the bone. She stumbles backward.
Xiumei looks a little surprised when she she sees the winged-demon, grey-skinned forearm raised, and she wonders for a second if that is a monster summoned by the two Fangs of Valmar. She finds out, quickly, that she is wrong. She recognizes the Hellion intellectually, if not from much experience; ARMS has files and briefings on Hellions. Xiumei is resonant enough to recognize one.
"A Hellion--" She stammers out, but she sees the way that the Hellion turns on Xander. That gives her pause for a moment, before she calls back to Eleanor -- as the light of her Heal Berry washes over her. "Straight ahead! They're close together! There's a Hellion, too, but they appear to be fighting the two of them for the moment! Are you okay, Nora?"
Xiumei keeps a wary eye on Ruth.
And then she pays for it. Xander is laughing, and that's the first thing she notices. She turns her head, straight towards Xander, and stares -- and it dawns on her. Xander had no idea that Riley did it; they did not agree on that. It was a betrayal, even if Riley is now trying to backpedal. Vines and flowers explode out, and several bite into her. Xiumei screams, briefly dragged under by them.
Then petals, torn plantstuff, and blood flies out as a white, cross-shaped length of metal explodes out from them -- and Xiumei stands there, blood running down her armor from a wound the flowers left on her neck, her leg, and her side. The boomerang ignites, the cross-shaped piece of white metal surrounded by a nimbus of green plasma, as it hurtles on for Xander.
"He didn't want you to do this! Can't you see that!?"
GS: Zhang Xiumei spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Zhang Xiumei has attacked Xander Lovell with Barrier Cross - Whirling Throw! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The Hellion and the Fang snarl at one another for a bit. Maybe that is how corrupted creatures say 'hello.' Escalation appears inevitable, and for Ruth herself, she is holding onto the world outside of her own head even through the sensory overload that wants to compel her to look away from it. Every scent, every emotion, every color - people are hurt all around her.
The man with the infested eye stops, and the emotional 'blip' comes about the same time Magilou admonishes Ruth, and in doing so, the strange demonic(?) figure begins to demonstrate the vestiges of personhood. A pained, bitter, tired, breathy laugh, head bowing for a time as Xander laughs, gaze lowering from Xiumei's suspicion as she says a word that she's heard a handful of times... but she has no time to linger on that, for there is a very distinct feel to what his body language conveys that... something about it gives her pause. Something she does not want to attach to a familiar context.
The garden itself, under Xander's anger, produces a many-headed hydra of plant growths that bite and dig into Ruth with an inhuman (sort of bat-like) screech. Purple leaks where there should be crimson as it is siphoned from her. In it, nasty discordant feelings of despair, shame, guilt, regret that cannot 'stick' in one whose soul is claimed by a different malady.
Earthen power keeps the single-winged Hellion rooted in place as her lifeblood leaves her at an alarming rate. "...What are you..?" She asks of Xander. "These people... they're frightened. They're hurt." You hurt them and you scared them so long ago too, poisonous thoughts in her mind keep the conflict going, to offset the perilous blood loss underway. "So are you. Aren't you." Her voice is soft, as her tail - long of length - snakes about the bindings of the feasting flowers. She's having problems wrangling herself free.
Said tail finds itself going for the holster in which she placed the revolver shortly before letting herself out, somehow getting itself through the trigger guard despite it looking physically impossible to do so. Tears leave down her face. She could... go, here, another laugh devoid of sweetness behind it.
The tail wrests the revolver free. There is exactly two seconds of time available to 'appreciate' the image of a Hellion's tail holding a revolver before it becomes less quaint and more frightening, as it is pointed in Xander's direction...
Then, four rapid bangs and at least ten empty clicks, as the tail writhes and squeezes that trigger far more times than there can ever be bullets there, as a wild look in Ruth's eyes as she fights light-headedness and the sensory overload alike to stay conscious.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Six Mistakes! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Eleanor and Xiumei are clear. They can't overlook this. That's what he was hoping for, before... ... but now... now he has at least two more weeks left of life in him! And he wants to live them! And he doesn't want to watch people carving into Xander!
"Stop--! Would you stop?!" Riley is too slow to intervene as Xiumei and Xander clash. Magilou, at least, stays her hand, and he gives her a quick look of gratitude. But then -- who the hell is this new Drifter, an elf woman running over the hungry thorns like they're nothing and then baring her teeth like she thinks she's a dragon?! Somebody Eleanor and Xiumei brought?
"Who are you?! Can't you save some other town today?!"
Riley sees an ordinary--if strange--woman, not a Hellion, and someone he hasn't formed any attachment to yet. His expression hardens, and his dagger flashes out in a succession of wide, rapid slashes, trying to carve her open and drive her back. "All right, if we're doing this, we're doing this."
Riley doesn't realize that in all this chaos of violence, he's the one who just hurt Xander the most. But he turns with alarm at that change in Xander's tone. The sudden coldness and the strange laugh.
"...You weren't listening to me," he says. It has some of the lightness, the defiant flippancy Riley's words often carry. But there's a small shake of uncertainty in it too. Especially as Xander's garden begins to reflect the tumult of his emotions.
GS: Riley Arwell spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Carve You Up! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Riley Arwell's Carve You Up for 79 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst and Sufferer! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"I'm fine!" Eleanor calls out to Xiumei, and while this isn't precisely true, it's true enough--she can't see but she can move. This means that she doesn't recognize Ruth for what she is until Xiumei points her out, but she still seems to be on their side. Fair enough. But she 'feels' the fog...
"I just can't see!"
But she does have to see to understand--that sudden laughter. That talk of realization. She can hear the tears, even if she can't see them, and the laughter ends. The laughter ends. Eleanor dives out of the way as she feels the plants start to move, but she can't really get out of the way--when she hits the ground, she's briefly nowhere to be found at all until the vines retreat back and there she is with a scream that cuts off as she pushes herself off of the ground, still off her feet. She's bleeding from multiple places now, her arm, her leg, her side. She managed to cover her face and neck but that's about it. And she isn't sure where her weapon went...
"Xiu?" she wonders. "Everyone?" She doesn't know Ruth's name. But she reaches into her bag, still hanging from her side, and feels around past her Crests for... there. The flute.
"We can't stop," Eleanor says to Riley as she hears him. He says he wasn't listening--he sounds uncertain. The scene between the two of them...
Eleanor sits up, and pulls the instrument, setting it to her lips and beginning to play a strange, haunting melody that makes the air shimmer like it might on a too-hot day. Power begins to gather around the assembled Drifters.
Her eyes squeeze shut; she still can't see. It's impossible to tell if it's just ink there or tears too. But Ruth, too, Hellion or not, receives the benefit of her song.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Eleanor Klein with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Magilou with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein accepts Eleanor Klein's Shielding Melody for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Blind removed! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State and Shield applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: Magilou accepts Eleanor Klein's Shielding Melody for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State applied to Magilou!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Riley comes in with a knife, slashes wild and purposeful to a strange woman who - to the un-Resonant - is acting alarming. She's not wearing any shoes, and she also seems to be missing gloves which very few people in the region would go without wearing as there's just far too many hazardous materials and items strewn about the wastes from the Civil War.
She has a wild look in her gray eyes that doesn't abate - like a bloodlust that has overtaken her, something distinctly predatory. The dagger cuts through a few layers of cloth, but there's some sort of weird spatial relationship between what Riley sees and what he rakes that dagger against - but he's hit something. There's blood on that blade now. He did stab her, but it feels... wrong.
She's wounded and those flowers are draining her, she's going pale, but there's something coursing through her that's keeping her there, and that might be the most unsettling thing of all: that there are monsters above and beyond those that Valmar have touched.
Also, there is a revolver waving around in the air by itself? Sometimes it strikes at Riley's slashing hand, but this does not seem a purposeful defense maneuver so much as a consequence of something wildly waving around... a mystery.
GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Eleanor Klein's Shielding Melody for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Poison removed! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Amplify and Hyper applied to Ruth Pauling!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou places her palm delicately across her face. "Yup," she sighs, shaking her head. "There it is."
It's a deeply understated reaction to Xander's betrayal. She doesn't have much time to follow up on it; the garden is in bloom. All a sudden one of those hydra-vines crashes down on a shikigami, elongated out into a shield; the paper bends and shrinks as one magic surrenders to another, and the thorns bite into that beehive barrier Xander saw once before, instead.
The light of that shimmering barrier glinting -- reflecting -- and cracking --
"Ah," Magilou says, as she's forced to drop her barrier to avoid a horrific magical reaction, and finds vines lashed hungrily about her right arm. There's something pained to her grin, thrown out at Xander. "You just had to go for my dominant hand, didn't you?"
Magilou's playing it cool. It hurts like a mother, even with the glittering light of Eleanor's berries. (Which Magilou did not thank Eleanor for. The cheek!) She twirls with her shikigami, to break the plants from the earth, but they're still all dug in. It's a good thing most of her sleeve on that side is dark. Hides the evidence.
Doesn't much help her shoulder, fully exposed, fully vulnerable to thorns digging in. It's looking better, by the way. A bit pink, but there'll be no burn scars.
Not that that matters.
Magilou grins, all daggers, to Riley. "It's funny, right? The more you say 'stop', the more the horse bolts! And here you are, closing all the stable doors afterwards. Ha! We really should've listened to the experts, huh? Or maybe... your aim's just better when your target's closer." One might call to mind, here, the mental image of an arrow sailing over the head of a sleeping witch.
Just what is she telling him...?
She settles back, on her heels. "He can't see anything, right now," Magilou responds to Xiumei, cool under pressure, almost but not quite what Eleanor says. "I was worried he'd already gone -- but it looks like he's just slipped. He gets reaaal fussy when he's hungry." Magilou talks like she knows. She doesn't ascribe any blame to the dry statement, either.
She reaches up, fanning out her hair. "By the way, the gargoyle is the last thing you should be worrying about right now! This is entirely the wrong sort of garden for her to be a problem! We won't be controlled, so think of us as 'Temporary' party members, okay?" Magilou, what did the fourth wall ever do to you?
Magilou shifts from leg to leg, dancing along with Eleanor's tune. "All right, so here's my problem," Magilou says, lifting her one good hand. "I blow you up, and you're going to use all your delightful curse magic to survive, and this all circles around again. I don't blow you up, everyone dies, some kid crawls out of the rubble and grows up cursing your name..."
Her hand wags, from one side to the other, a hop skip and a jump. "You can't stop, you can't stop. Nobody stops! Is that about right? Man, what a pain. Ha-woop!" Here she grabs Eleanor by the elbow and spins with her, in a dance which just coincidentally takes her out of the path of a seeking vine.
She did say she couldn't see, after all.
"But it's not like I can let myself get shown up here. You want an escalation?" Magilou winks, and with that pain she takes her vine-clad arm, too, grasping a shikigami. "Now! Rise!" It extends up, past her head... "Arise!" ... past the skeletons of the eviscerated buildings ... "Ascending..." ... past the CLOUDS... "... ANGEL!"
And down comes that shikigami, ENTIRELY too long, right on Xander's poor noggin.
GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Ascending Angel! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Riley Arwell used Defend! He takes Ruth Pauling's Six Mistakes attack on Xander Lovell on himself! GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Zhang Xiumei with Counter Attack! GS: CRITICAL! Xander Lovell guards a hit from Zhang Xiumei's Barrier Cross - Whirling Throw for 132 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Gamble: Very High! Xander Lovell guards a hit from Magilou's Ascending Angel for 163 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 55 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Riley Arwell critically guards Ruth Pauling's Six Mistakes for 8 hit points! GS: Zhang Xiumei accepts Eleanor Klein's Shielding Melody for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Quick and Surge applied to Zhang Xiumei! GS: Zhang Xiumei takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Counter Attack for 69 hit points! GS: Zhang Xiumei activates Evade bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
The garden feeds. Blood spills, and like a nightmare, he can taste it all mingling on his own tongue, or maybe in his soul. Such is the overwhelming nature of Valmar's influence over him that even Ruth's Hellion blood is feasted on with no concern for its corruption. If he could taste her despair, if he could taste her shame and her guilt and her regret, would he even be able to tell it wasn't his own?
But life isn't sacrificed. This satisfies nothing. It only whets the appetite, the unending hunger of the Fangs demanding more.
Xander breathes hard, each gasp aching through the knot in his throat. Magilou's shikigami rises up and up and up and up... and BONK ~!
Right onto Xander's head, a solid, deceptively vicious blow... to an utterly unyielding Xander. He opens his eye to glare at her with terrifying clarity. His iris is longer grey like ashes. It's grey like a storm.
"I'm not in the mood, Magilou!" He stomps into the ground, a trunk of his own rising up into the air and swinging its thorned form around before collapsing to bonk upon her in turn. (It is not nearly as long.)
What are you? Ruth asks him.
"I'm just a hungry monster," he tells her, growling with her sympathy. "Don't over complicate it." And he swipes back out at her with a spin of his scythe, trying to catch into her flesh and rip it open superficially -- a heavily bleeding wound, not a deep one.
His attention snaps to Xiumei's incoming boomerang. It cleaves into him, tearing flesh with an arc of blood, vines falling to the ground while Xander, unfettered, yanks back as if on something invisible, trying to force the flowers to bloom in her further to erode her armor as he rushes her. Despite all his infestation, all his corrupt, he still has the sense of presence to grab a knife and try sinking into the crack he may or may not have just made.
"If he didn't want me to do this," Xander says, "Then why did he drag me into it?!" Xander growls, entirely inhuman and yet so completely lucid Xander in its anger. Once he disengages from Xiumei, he shoots a glare to Riley. "What, my life wasn't short enough for you? Needed to bring in your new Drifter friends to help destroy the monster you created?!" He rips a flower from his eye, hurling it to the ground to crush under his heel.
Eleanor's music plays, and his vision goes red in an entirely different way. He spins around, leaping at her with the speed of a feral animal and trying to seize hold of her flute with a snarl. From his palm, vines and sprouts burst forth, trying to slither into her instrument... and past that, into her flesh to burrow into her, spreading as they seek to bury roots deeper and deeper into her flesh in a contagious infestation. And more importantly, shut up that flute.
"You listen to me for once!" he snaps at Riley. "I told you -- I'm not letting us die. I don't care who I have to fight back against. Valmar. Granas. Drifters."
Xander brings up his hand, curling his fingers in, and in a mimic of the gesture, claw-like branches and roots emerge from the ground to try and cage Riley in a cocoon to entrap him.
"Even you."
GS: Xander Lovell spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Magilou with Bloodfrenzy! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Undaunted Hunter! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Trail of Blood! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Savage Infestation! GS: Xander Lovell has launched an attack Link! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Roots of all Evil! GS: You have finished a Link/Follow chain! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Riley Arwell with Traitor Jail! GS: Eleanor Klein guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Savage Infestation for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein critically guards Xander Lovell's Roots of all Evil for 54 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: Ruth Pauling guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Trail of Blood for 0 hit points! GS: Hex, Poison, and Reaper applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Guard bonus, Power Burst, and Sufferer! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ruth Pauling takes an additional 40 damage from Reaper! GS: Magilou fully evades Xander Lovell's Bloodfrenzy for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font! GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell drains Magilou! Xander Lovell gains 0 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Riley Arwell takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Traitor Jail for 0 hit points! GS: Entangle applied to Riley Arwell! GS: Riley Arwell activates Xander Lovell's Reload! and Sufferer! GS: Zhang Xiumei guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Undaunted Hunter for 89 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zhang Xiumei gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mighty applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Zhang Xiumei activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
What is this woman -- Riley's blade coming up bloody when it didn't hit her, her gun moving on its own?! Riley doesn't know what's happening, and he doesn't like it. And he doesn't want more bullets burying into Xander while he's got that hurt in his voice like Riley wanted this to happen to him.
Riley rakes the dagger quickly against his own skin, a burst of vines slithering out of the cut in his arm to form a shield of greenery dotted in red blooms, and then he puts himself in the path of the revolver, squeezing his eyes shut as the four bangs sound out. There's heat and pressure, and the smell of gunpowder, and the noise itself seems to shake him to his core... but the bullets embed in the thick tangle of thorns, rather than blasting through his arm or his chest. He slowly exhales.
Magilou has some words for him. We really should've listened to the experts, huh? Or maybe... your aim's just better when your target's closer.
"Experts...? What? Can you dumb down the riddles a little, I am having trouble concentrating because I think my life is falling apart..."
Case in point, Xander's accusation. What, my life wasn't short enough for you? Needed to bring in your new Drifter friends to help destroy the monster you created?!
"What?! It wasn't like that! You're the one who went off without me, I was trying to be with you for it--" He cringes in sympathy as Xander pulls the flower from his eye.
And then, the garden comes for Riley, branches erupting from beneath him to form what resembles a cage, with evenly spaced 'bars' around him that come together in a twist of greenery overhead. Riley balks at the prison, trying to pry his way out of it.
Even you.
"Xander --- I'm not against you! I'm a monster, too, we're supposed to be monsters together, I just didn't want you to do this, hunting down everyone in this town is going to shatter your stupid soft heart!" ...Soft things don't shatter? But again, very hard to concentrate under these circumstances!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor spins around another vine, and by the time her song finishes she can see again--see Ruth, see Riley... see Xander. And of course, see all the blood again. She feels a little dizzy for the spin, but shakes it off, finishing her mystical song. She says nothing in those few moment,s because she is busy--
But she listens. Oh, she listens all right.
She is already bloody when Xander leaps towards her, but the fact that she can see him doesn't help much. She breaks off the song and shoves at him, the desperate recourse of a mage in much too close of quarters, but the roots pass and sink into her shoulder, her arm, and Eleanor screams again as she feels a particularly awful touch of vines and sprouts. It hurts, clearly, enough that she starts to fall backward only to be partially supported by those vines. Her flute falls, too, but one of the amulets about her neck shines suddenly--and cracks, its power spent in a flash of light that stops the roots burrowing any farther. She hits the ground a moment later, dazed and nauseous and light-headed from all the blood, but her magical expertise helps her focus through it, reach down into her bag and pull one of her Crests. She feels the two uniform sigils raised on the Crest, and she swings it forward, practically swinging it into Xander as he turns to point at Riley.
"XIU!" accompanies the sudden flash of prismatic light as a windstorm bursts into being at her fingertips, golden blades of air twirling into a cyclone that hopefully gets Xander away from her.
Together. They wanted to be together, even in this. Eleanor lets herself feel a pang for that as she stumbles back in the recoil of her spell.
It hurts, and not just the wounds, though Eleanor cradles her other arm against herself with more than a little difficulty as she falls.
GS: Eleanor Klein has activated a Force Action! GS: Eleanor Klein spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Eleanor Klein has attacked Xander Lovell with Mistral Judgment! GS: Eleanor Klein's Stoic stance ends. She enters the Avenger stance! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
Xiumei winces, as the Hellion fires the revolver. She has a gun, Xiumei thinks. But, most Hellions are from Lunar. Then how--
She can't keep thinking about it. She looks at Riley and shakes her head, angrily, once. "You can't be serious!" she says. "We--we can't leave this town to be killed! Eleanor is right! We can't stop!"
Eleanor's melody plays, the eerie tune coming from the flute, and air shimmers around her as she rushes forward. She glances at Magilou -- and she blinks -- and then nods her head once. Don't question the 'gargoyle.' She can accept that. She grits her teeth, and then her eyes are back on Xander. She catches the boomerang as it comes back. She keeps hold of the weapon, and then meets with Xander.
The knife swings in, and it strikes at her -- but she parries with the barrier cross, pushing it back before it can stab all the way in. More blood runs down her, then. She hisses once, as he breaks away.
"Nora!" she calls out, as she sees the vines rushing at her. She breathes in sharply, until she sees Eleanor break free. She hears her friend call out. There is a sudden brilliant flash of light -- and then her Barrier Cross shoots out, riding the same wind that tries to knock Xander back. "GET AWAY FROM HER!"
In Xiumei's other hand, the beam saber appears. When she strikes out, it is a long, whipping blade of energy that snaps out through the air to lash out across Xander. Xiumei runs forward then. The Barrier Cross breaks apart into cubes of light, then reforms in her hand -- the handcannon taking form.
She fires, two bolts of energy firing at Xander. Xiumei throws the weapon aside -- it bursts into cubes of data before even hitting the ground -- and grabs the beam saber with both hands. The blade straightens, sword-lebgth again, as she positions herself between Eleanor and Xander.
Then she charges forward, and slams the blade at him in a diagonal, upward strike. "He's trying to help you!" she yells. "This--this can't be the answer, though! I don't know what it is, but it can't be killing a town! You'll just make more tragedies, doing this!"
GS: Zhang Xiumei has activated a Force Action! GS: Zhang Xiumei has activated a Force Action! GS: Zhang Xiumei spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Formation! Zhang Xiumei has attacked Xander Lovell with Soaring Cross Strike! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei has launched an attack Link! GS: Zhang Xiumei spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Zhang Xiumei has attacked Xander Lovell with Rushing Pulse Blitz! GS: Zhang Xiumei has gained 2 Combo! GS: Zhang Xiumei has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Eleanor Klein's Mistral Judgment for 208 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Zhang Xiumei's Soaring Cross Strike for 209 hit points! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: CRITICAL! Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Zhang Xiumei's Rushing Pulse Blitz for 308 hit points! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The Hellion - a gargoyle, as identified by Magilou which is an excellent descriptor with the stone-colored flesh and demonic visage - seems contained by the constraints of the feeding flowers that have yet to leave her. The other young man cuts at her with a dagger as her tail fails to understand at the height of conflict-filled emotion that a revolver stops shooting once its bullets are unloaded.
'I'm just a hungry monster,' is the answer she receives as Riley demands his from her. Ruth doesn't look Riley in the eyes.
She's barely clinging to lucidity when that question is asked, and even the wildly swinging, 'shooting' tail starts to go limp... until she hears a soothing melody from a flute, and her feelings wander.
APPROX. 492 PC - ST. HEIM PAPAL STATE, GRANAS CATHEDRAL
An Etone knelt in one of the pews before a service led by three Songstresses. Even His Holiness, Zera Innocentius, has blessed the faithful today. Her place was towards the back, distant. The warmth of the sunlight through stained glass... it feels as though the Light would not reach far enough to include her today. Sometimes, it felt well out of reach after... everything.
She knew the song, murmuring it under her breath as the Songstresses sand their hymns - but the voice never left her.
"Sister Ruth," a firm voice spoke, hand on her left shoulder. She flinched under the pressure, for it has been tender for a long time. A few of his words were hard to hear. "You were expected a bell ago." She didn't look up, despite the inconveniences provided of her worsening hearing. She knew who was speaking.
"You know where one of your soul's weight best serves the Light." He said, firmly. "The house of Granas is for the weak, the innocent... with hearts that yearn for the warmth of Light."
Sister Ruth bowed her head.
"Come. Your reach towards Granas is through your ARM, as you know."
She rose from the pew, and took the sight of the gathered. She could have sworn that His Holiness spared her a worried look from the corner of his eye. Even he would be burdened too, but... it was not her place to be, was it? She wanted to listen a while longer, as she felt a sting--
NOW
--across her upper torso, as a new wound is produced. Another oepning for hungry plant-mouths to feed, as tears leave the gargoyle Hellion's bowed head. 'I'm a monster, too,' yells the other. 'I don't care who I have to fight back against. Valmar. Granas. Drifters.'
Ruth's tired, tear-filled eyes, her fading vision falls upon the strained Granasian rosary around her right forearm. It's as if she flexed that arm hard enough, it could just explode off of her... and then there's laughter.
"Monsters...? I know monsters," she says in a softer voice. "I used to be a heartless monster... there was Darkness in place of one."
This is dogmatic nonsense to say in front of those cursed with Valmar. This is even garden variety nonsense. Her tail loosens the revolver and grips at the rifle she holds, constrained by the vines and the flowers.
"Everyone's... hurt... scared. I can't not feel it," raindrops start to fall around her from a... clear sky? They're laced with Malevolence, heavy with sorrow and despair. "Valmar. Is this... is this Valmar?" She sucks in a breath that never leaves. As she admits, people here are afraid and scared, even the person over there who just tried to carve her up with a knife. A part of her wants to do--
"They were right. There really was only one way I could serve the Light," the tail tightens its grip around the rifle, as she squeezes her grip, wriggles...
And bursts free of the bindings of the blood-sucking flowers with a monstrous hiss, flaring purple eyes. This is not the image of anything holy, let alone Granas, as the Malevolence flares up and the aura of rain intensifies, taking the rifle in both hands as her tail starts to coil around it for stabili--
Her right hand just yanks her tail right off of it, flinging it to the side.
"It's the only way I can atone. The... only good."
The rifle is leveled towards Xander, and it fires a deafening BANG.
The recoil is something else, but between the way she holds the stock to absorb far more shock than a shoulder ever should, and the deft way her right hand dances across the length of the rifle to reload it and re-steady it, another. And another. Then a final one, for four total shots.
The people of Lindow may not understand what it may mean when people are shouting and there are flowers and brambles spreading about the town - but those of Zoara know damn well the sound of that rifle going off four times.
Death's Door, nigh-merciless terror of the Aquvy Union. If anything can compel a people to get the hell out of there... it's that.
With her bloodloss as it is, she is running almost purely on heightened, conflicted emotion of the despair of someone who may never be anything else.
GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: Ruth Pauling spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Four Knocks On Death's Door! GS: Ruth Pauling takes an additional 15 damage from Reaper! GS: Ruth Pauling takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou knows better than most how useless alive blood is to Xander. But even if she likes him, she doesn't sacrifice-her-life-so-he-may-live like him! She's already paid all her sacrificial dues, thank you very much.
Xander doesn't yield to Ascending Angel, which is impressive in of itself. "Oop!" She yelps, as the shikigami shrinks down, and she immediately hops onto it, sailing out of the way of that vast thorned trunk by way of the paper doll express.
She lands by a hand, left half-curled. It leads to an empty auditorium, all the players gone, all the crowd dispersed. "But I wanna plaaay!" Magilou whines to Xander, entirely discordant with the blood she steps in. "You can't bring out all your nicest toys and then tell me I can't play! Unfair! Party foul!" She tries to cross her arms in demonstration, only for the vines to get in the way, which is just unfair, really.
Thus does Magilou proceed to hop around, trying to pry the vines from her arm with her other hand. And her teeth. And at one point, her foot, all hopping on one leg. Let's pay no attention to her.
Especially not when she calls out to Riley in the middle of that nonsense: "I'm saying you hurt him, stupid!! GEEZ! You'd better pay me for marriage counselling after this!" And then she makes a noise halfway between 'augh' and 'rrragh', but that's because she's got a vine in her teeth.
Finally, finally, she struggles free.
"Hey, you know the funny thing about sacrifices?" Magilou asks, tossing the wounded vines aside. "It's a lot like gambling, for the people who fall deep into it. At first you just kill one little person, and it's fiiine. Then you kill a couple. Then you maybe kill a whole lot, try and get it over and done with. And that feels good for a while, but it's still not enough. You gotta keep chasing those odds, putting more and more on the line..."
Magilou waves a hand, dismissively. "I knew you were backed into a corner, but even I didn't think you two would go at each other this soon. Maybe it's not as soon as I thought... oh, well. What do I know!" She issues, cheerfully. "Now you just have to ask -- can you keep going if you have to step over him?"
She issues this question to Riley, in his cage. Xander's already given his answer. Whether Magilou believes it is another thing entirely.
"As for you," she turns to Xander, "if you've decided to fight the world to survive, I'm not going to tell you lie down and die. I'm not in this to destroy you. I mean," she laughs, a shade ragged, "why would I? You remind me way too much of her." A hand to her forehead, she brushes her bangs from her face. It's a battle she can never win. They fall right back in place.
Her eyes slide to Ruth, green with that hint of purple, obscure. "... it's not like I'm looking for redemption here. Nothing so high-concept. I just remember a few other people who would object to something like this."
Magilou sighs, looking to the other elf, instead. "Man... her name was Eleanor, too... ugh, what a drag." Do all Eleanors act like this? Is this Magilou's Eternal Eleanor Curse? Can she trade it for Valmar's curse? Curse tradesies? C'mooon.
Is Magilou hurt? Is Magilou scared? It's news to her. The person who would inform her on how she's supposed to feel is currently hiding inside her because there's a terrible amount of violence going on. All she has to tell are her actions: she saw how desperate the Fangs were. She made so much trouble to make sure people would pay attention to them. She came out all this way.
Does that mean she's afraid for them?
Oh, well.
She kind of envies Xiumei, being able to yell such enthusiastic declarations. Maybe she's just getting old. She doesn't say anything about her own research, because she's old enough to know better. ... Xander said he'd fight Valmar, but Magilou can't be sure if he has the choice, yet. She doesn't really know Filgaia's dirty laundry from a stray dog.
"I just want you to know," Magilou says, with a huff, "I'm not setting you on fire as a personal favour. You had better thank me later!" But, that implies...
A Seraphic glyph -- blue, not red -- lights up at her feet. "Hope this works... Aqua Split!" Her shikigami spins as she points it to Xander, and an orb of water explodes, right in his face. As if that's not enough, the glyph is STILL LIT, as she goes on: "Better watch your step!" And this time, the water comes from underneath him, with her declaration: "Flood Wall!" Crashing up, eight feet of froth and torrent, it batter-splatter-soaks anything it touches.
GS: Magilou spends 2 Combo on Poison and Link! GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Aqua Split! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has launched an attack Link! GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Flood Wall! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Four Knocks On Death's Door for 165 hit points! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Magilou with Counter Attack! GS: Gamble: High! Xander Lovell guards a hit from Magilou's Aqua Split for 56 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Gamble: Moderate! Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Flood Wall for 177 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Cover applied to Magilou! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Xander Lovell has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"Since when have you ever wanted to work to do anything together, Riley?! No, your favorite option is to throw everything away!" The bite of Xander's anger starts to dwindle with the harsh words he's not sure are fair, and yet... Four years ago. A year ago. Now. How long has Xander been a fool for...? A lump catches in his throat like so many thorns. "Just -- stay there and stop trying to kill us."
He hasn't been Riley's stupid, softhearted Xander for a long time. If Riley hadn't clued into that before, he knows now.
Xander silences the song in his single minded rage, but Eleanor rewards him with a blast of powerful winds. Crimson, petals tear from the flowers infesting his body, swirling through the air. He would manage to spin and land on his feet, if not for the Barrier Cross joining with the winds, battering him and sending him tumbling to scramble upright instead. Get away from her, she cries, and the guilt doesn't stick, but instead of giving way to conviction there's a gnawing uncertainty forming in its place. He growls and throws himself at Xiumei, bladed arm poised to exchange blows, but her shots smash into his arm, throwing him off balance and leaving him open to her slash across his chest, burning a scar of flesh there as Xander staggers back.
"There's no happy ending to this," Xander says to Xiumei, tired, "Let's not pretend there is. I just... want to delay it ending at all." He readies himself for another fight, the nightmare quivering with his weakening body.
BANG.
Xander jerks himself around, feeling the vibration of the bullet traveling through the gardens as it cuts across his cheek. BANG. BANG. One hits his shoulder, the other his chest. He looks up at Ruth, this... demon of a creature, but not a monster like him, even thought she says it. Hurt and fear. Xander's bleeding it as much as anyone else, not that he'd ever claim it. He's not the one being murdered. ...Maybe he shouldn't be so sure of that.
BANG.
The chest again. Xander recoils back with it this time, breath caught. The garden is starting to wilt, including Riley's cage. This creates pathways to escape -- and the inspiration to do so with the piercing echo of her fourth shot.
It's too much exhaustion for all of Magilou's questions. Xander sucks in a breath, hissing with the pain of drawing it. He's not... done. He can't be done, not here, not yet. "If you understand," he says, "Then we don't need to keep talking."
But they're words he can't back up, the flash of a hidden knife useless when the force of the Aqua Splitter hits him. The force of the flood to follow knocks him off of his feet and washes him through his wilting garden. Xander, barely pushing himself upright, coughs out water and blood alike from his lungs. The flowers infesting him have been washed away with it, petals and vines scattered on the ground, his hair back to normal, and his eye... Well, that was always dead, and 'normal' is ragged and scarred over.
His balance wobbles, hand clutching a chest wound that bleeds more steadily with the blood haze dulled and his strength dwindling. Xander glances over his shoulder at the cliff's edge.
They think Riley's right. That Riley was doing the 'right thing'.
And Riley --
Xander slides his foot back to the edge of the cliff with another wet cough. It would only take one step backward to fall. He likes his chances with the river better than with any of them.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
No, your favorite option is to throw everything away!'
Riley's voice quiets as he inwardly recoils from that. "I'm sorry... I promise I don't want to kill us anymore, I just want to leave..."
Has he ever heard Xander this angry at him before? Not even when he dragged him into this nightmare.
Now you just have to ask -- can you keep going if you have to step over him?'
Riley squints at Magilou as if disbelieving the question. Does everybody think he'd throw Xander away? "I wouldn't want to try!?"
We--we can't leave this town to be killed! Eleanor is right! We can't stop!
"Can't you find a gentler way to stop us?!" Riley says 'us' even though he's in a cage. He asks them to be 'gentle' even though there's already corpses around them.
Riley hisses in frustration and pulls at the cage bars as he watches Eleanor and Xiumei pile on Xander. He can't get to them, but he could get an arrow through these bars, couldn't he? There's just barely enough room to draw the bow, but he manages it, loosing a single arrow upward that bursts into a chaotic flurry as it begins to fall, some of them whistling toward Eleanor and others racing for Xiumei.
While he's focused on that, he hears the four reports of Ruth's gun again, and turns with alarm. He couldn't stop it this time. "Xander..." He's so hurt.
The Aqua Splitter further batters him, driving him back toward the cliff's edge. Riley bursts from the ruined cage, trying to reach him before he ... slips? Leaps?
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Arrow Rain! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Arrow Rain! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Zhang Xiumei takes a solid hit from Riley Arwell's Arrow Rain for 162 hit points! GS: Zhang Xiumei has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Riley Arwell's Arrow Rain for 112 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Zhang Xiumei has posed.
"Valmar... I don't know much besides the teachings, but this seems real enough!" Xiumei calls out to Ruth, her voice hesitating. She looks briefly at Magilou -- a little surprised at her reasoning -- but it's a terrible time to ask about that. Or, for that matter, to ask about other Eleanors.
"That's not what you're doing!" Xiumei shouts back immediately, as she hits the ground and skids across it, armored boots digging into broken cobblestones and withered plants. "You're just choosing an ending for other people! This is--I don't know what can be done, but there has to be an answer! One that isn't... this!"
She motions with a hand, as she comes to a stop.
Gunshots. She grimaces as Ruth's shots slam into Xander, one after the other, and then the water blasts him. He is stumbling back towards the cliff, then. Wide-eyed, like he is considering jumping. For a second, Xiumei thinks she should let him. It might be kinder; even if they can find an answer, can they overlook so many dead? Is it justice to let them both go free?
She hesitates. She looks at Riley. "We can bring you back, but--not if you do this!" she says. "We can't just ignore this! We can talk, and--"
The bow looses. She didn't expect the arrow to split. A storm of arrows slams into her; four strike into the white armor, shattering apart into wood splinters. Three break through the steel mesh bodysuit -- one into her hip, one into her side, and one into her left arm. She makes a bloody, wet 'grrck' sound, and then falls over in a heap.
Her eyes shut.
But they continue glowing underneath her eyelids.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
BANG. Four times, Eleanor's ears ring as she tries to steady herself on the ground. She heard Xiumei coming to her rescue again, working in time with her attack. They know each other well--they aren't the only ones here who do. This argument, it could mean...
"He's right," Eleanor says with a wince, unhappily. She raises her voice a little so Xiumei can hear her. But she doesn't get to finish the thought at first. No, she hears Ruth talk about how to 'atone', and hears Magilou speak of...
'Her'? Eleanor wonders dizzily who Magilou could mean.
But there's the question. A gentler way. Eleanor finds nothing funny in it. Nothing funny in the arrows that whistle into a flurry, which she is able to dive out of the way of--mostly. One sinks into her arm, prompty a cry, before she sees Xiumei fall--
Xiumei's eyes are still glowing. She recognizes this. It doesn't particularly help. But in the end it is no choice at all; she pushes up with another cry of pain and rushes to Xiumei's side, stomping ruined vines along the way, and turns towards their foes to block any more attacks against her. She knows she can help her, if she can just get a moment--
But the roots and the vines are still enwrapped around her. Eleanor takes a brief moment, and pulls a small flower from her bag--that she crushes in her hand, letting it become a light that sparkles around her and the others.
She tries to think of something, anything to say, but all she can do is stare at the both of them, shielding Xiumei with her body as she does, eyes wide and wet.
"..."
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Eleanor Klein with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Zhang Xiumei with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Magilou with Mystic Cure! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein accepts Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Break, Cripple, and Jam removed! GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Hex removed! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer! GS: Ruth Pauling takes an additional 10 damage from Reaper! GS: Zhang Xiumei accepts Eleanor Klein's Mystic Cure for 0 hit points! GS: Zhang Xiumei enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Zhang Xiumei has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
To an ear that can no longer hear much else, the Malevolence-warped Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4's report is as loud and clear to her as the very first time she fired it back in the 480s. A nefarious nostalgic 'gift,' as the Hellion's heart races from the emotion in the air. The harm she's done, the fear she knows is mounting, the yelling from those desperate - that soul-wrenching ping-pong between it being a gleeful guilty pleasure, and a sobering self-fulfilling prophecy of all the things she's felt about who she was and what she'd do.
Exacerbated ever more by senses beyond most, as her serpentine tongue flicks between half-open lips. The scents, the colors. She can't turn away from the pain of others. In her own words, she never wanted to forget what it's like to have been that, in all senses of the statement. When there is satiation...
Horror soon follows, the buzz in her head draining right into her heart where it settles as the pangs of guilt drag a sense of reason back. She has trouble hearing the exact words, but that is both the boon and the curse of being one so attuned to despair - she can feel the frustration and horror of the one-eyed Xander at risk of dying by her hand. Only moments ago, she was like a different person, empowered by any excuse to just do as the 'heartless monster' did.
Riley desperately escapes his cage - just as she did hers - and she can see that same sorrow mounting on the fleeing archer towards the cliff's edge. The Hellion's strength is borrowed, a trail of blood behind her as she takes off into a jog... and stumbles, barely upright (accounting for the balance challenges of having a single large wing, it's a surprise she doesn't have more of them). Her left arm keeps hold of that large, unwieldy rifle as her right hand clutches at her chest, and feels the warm, damp presence of her own blood.
And yet, she is fixated upon the two of them.
"...Even they have loved ones," each other. A nervous laughter, and... more tears, as the rain picks up a bit around her. "What does that say," she mouths aloud. She looks over her left shoulder, the glow of those eyes - foolishly - looking away from the Fangs.
She can feel Eleanor's worry and fear, the desparation in which she comes to Xiumei's aid as the strangely-armored woman falls. The gargoyle Hellion stands up, seems to approach - and with her radiating the emotions she does her presence is never, by definition, reassuring.
She staggers down to a kneel about fifteen paces away from where Xiumei rests and Eleanor moves to protect her, back turned towards the cliffside as she fans out her wing to its massive, intimidating size and length to cast a shadow over Xiumei and Eleanor alike. One could believe she might be trying to scare Eleanor away from a potential 'victim'.
...
Downcast glowing eyes looking away from them and then trying (and failing) to once again look over her shoulder to the Fangs behind her as a sparkling energy washes through her to address her bleeding where her own discordant feelings aren't knotting some wounds back up.
Some.
As if the self-same guilt that compels her to do things dangerous and destructive in some vaguely-defined 'atomenet' is also an anchoring - if paralyzing and uncomfortably numbing - force for inaction. For Hellions, inaction is a hard-won thing, driven by will and emotion as they are. As it is, she sits in the way between the Fangs and the ARMS agents.
She waits for Magilou's pithy commentary.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Riley wouldn't want to try, would he..? "You're sure acting like it," Magilou points out, doesn't explain why it looks that way to her.
And so, Xander gets a bath! It would be so easy to just... boop a Spirit Drop onto his head and send him off into the river.
"Geez..." Magilou sighs, shaking her head with a broad shrug, instead. She's nice! She doesn't lecture Xander any more. For now.
"You can't expect people to treat you gently with so much blood on your hands," she reminds Riley, and it's not even terribly unkind. "That goes for Fussy Fangs over there, too. Good luck! You'll need it." Is she wishing Riley luck, or Xander?!
For that matter, is she saying that Xander won't be treated gently by the world, or is she saying that Xander won't treat Riley gently..?
Maybe it's both. Maybe Magilou is a terrible mentor with too many riddles.
It's not so surprising to Magilou that she doesn't get shot full of arrows, and that will certainly be something to explain later, but that's a problem for Future Magilou. (Besides, even Future Magilou doesn't care that much what Xiumei thinks about her. Rude!) They come down on Xiumei, instead.
Maybe it's a shade unfair. Magilou doesn't know what can be done, but she's looking for an answer which isn't this, too. She just happens to be doing it with a little more tact. Or maybe it's just lying! Hey, she's good at that, too.
"Ouch," she says, when Xiumei goes down. She sighs, and steps forward. She steps through a pool of someone's blood. It's cool. She doesn't wonder whether the bodies have been released from their ferns. Not much point, really. Dead is dead is dead. Not little miss positivity there, though. Wouldn't the glow go out?
"Well," she remarks, "looks like Eleanor's on it." And her! Literally! Is that why Magilou doesn't bother to help Xiumei..?
Oh, let's just say Eleanor isn't the only one who's studied forgotten magics. Some things raise too many questions.
And with Ruth taking a sentinel position like that...
Magilou shrugs, and turns away from the murderers, which is a novel all into itself. "Seems like no one's got an appetite any more," she shrugs, speaking away from Riley and Xander. "You may as well get out of here before someone else shows up."
She laces her hands behind her head, and rests a heel loosely against the cracked ground. There's blood on the ground.
"Biting bugs..."
That's more for herself than anyone else.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Taking endings from other people... Xander has nothing he can say to that. He steals lives to prolong his own. It's wrong. But he's chosen it. He never wants to let himself forget it was a choice, and because of that, he won't be shamed for it. He should be. But he won't be.
Xiumei's down. Eleanor tends to her. The mysterious, terrifying gargoyle stands vigil, and Xander wonders if he's hallucinating some of that, not for the first time. Magilou... is Magilou, as always. With so much more depth in everything she says than Xander has the strength to worry about.
None of them, he thinks, would interrupt his escape.
...Except one of them.
For the first time Xander can remember, his resolve is slipping away. And all that sits behind the barrier of conviction he's built around himself...
Is fear. Cold, paralyzing fear.
And that's the look he gives Riley, one hand at his injured eye, wincing without a patch to buffer the unthinking gesture. Even soaked to the bone, the way his face contorts can't obscure that tears are falling.
"Don't you dare make that face. This is what you wanted."
He tips back, letting his body plummet to the river below.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
You can't expect people to treat you gently with so much blood on your hands.
Riley is quiet as, in the wake of that comment, his arrows take down Xiumei. He was ready to accept the reality and consequences of his actions a short time ago. Now... now he wants more time, but everything's crashing down. ...Has he lost Xander?
Don't you dare make that face. This is what you wanted.
The fear in Xander's eye squeezes him with guilt, and his heart drops as Xander tips back and falls out of sight.
But he changed his mind. He doesn't want it anymore. Maybe that choice was never his to make. But he was telling the truth when he said he wanted to face it together.
Only a few beats pass after Xander's fall before Riley leaps after him.