2022-02-05: Befall
- Log: Befall
- Cast: Loren Voss, Tabitha deVriese, Lydia Seren, Ruth Pauling, Magilou, Rebecca Streisand, Lily Keil, Gwen Whitlock, Lan Lilac, Xantia
- Where: Guara Bobelo - The Drag
- Date: February 05, 2022
- Summary: Guara Bobelo is, by anyone's measure, a fallen city. A den of sin. Is it any surprise, then, that the eye of the heavens falls upon Guara Bobelo and finds it wanting? Of course, there are those who will not suffer such judgement lightly.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
MOMENTS AGO
It is nighttime in Guara Bobelo -- truly nighttime, for all that cycle of day and night has failed to have any meaning within the lawless city. A roar picks up within the coliseum, announcing another ferocious battle reaching its terrible climax.
HOURS AGO
"Then we have handed down our decision."
"Yes. So let it be done.
Such a den of iniquity can be tolerated no longer."
"Resting upon the works of their progenitors..."
"Intolerable... Unacceptable... Wretched..."
NOW
The cheering and howling from the coliseum almost drowns out the loud rolling boom that echoes through the streets. Almost, but not quite.
No warships hang in the sky. There are no signs of Solaris' distinctive Gears. But for the rapid descent of a bare handful of their dropships outside the dome, it would be hard to tell that a large-scale military operation was taking place here at all. But perhaps they must move quickly, and strike hard: it would hardly do for any of the nearby nations to have the time to muster any sort of defense. Their aim is to leave only the ruins behind, a tombstone for the nightless city.
And Loren wonders as he disembarks, gazing into the streets where Solarian soldiers have begun to move with purpose, what was it that Nusakan had found here.
If indeed the intelligence officer had found something.
And then there is the rebellious counter-thought, that he's really not even supposed to be here, that he's supposed to be sitting on the blessedly boring outpost that is Lake Macalania.
But orders are orders, unfortunately and especially when deVriese is the one giving them. He grimaces, in spite of himself and in spite of his current circumstances.
And then moves, working to keep up with his squad.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
One of the descending Solaris falls slower than the rest. That's not how falling is supposed to work, but there it is; as the others descend to the ground at the expected rate and open fire upon landing, one of them drifts, already opening fire with some kind of ARM releasing blasts of light that scorch the earth and punch holes in buildings. When she does land, she leaps back into the air, gracefully pirouetting into a firing pose and firing two more blasts from what appears to be her own hand, a jet-black prosthetic of an ARM buzzing and discharging precisely.
Tabitha deVriese smiles, her full lips curled in a smug grin as she touches down again, and now starts strutting down the street. "Honestly," she sighs. Someone dressed like a drifter, ie, in some kind of goofy Lamb clown-suit, charges at her with an axe. She twirls aside and backhands him, sending him tumbling. "'Remove the squatters over these ruins,'" she says to herself, examining the pink painted where nails would be on her prosthetic. "Well, it's a good enough reason to get out of the house, I guess."
She levels her hand at a Save Parrot and there's a high whine before a blast of condensed Ether fires.
DC: Tabitha deVriese switches forms to Ministry Agent Tabitha! DC: Lydia Seren switches forms to Project Baphomet Caution Level Amber!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia says, "Hey Tabs! Wait up!"
She jogs on back over to her only for her to step on a drifter's facein the process because she didn't see Tabitha just backhand the guy to the floor. "Oh sorry." She says the Drifter, pulling her foot off the poor guy. "Um, I'm just going to sort of..."
She channels CElesdue and sort of buries him up to his neck by pushing the earth around and then placing a wooden bucket over his head. "Just stay there okay?"
Tabitha takes aim at an innocent Save Parrot!
"W-why are you shooting at a bird...?" Lydia, who hasn't saved her game even once, asks.
"I mean it's a parrot. It's... not going to plot against Solaris."
"Plot against Solaris SQUAWK!"
"Oh maybe I'm wrong...?" Lydia rubs at her neck awkwardly.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Waxing Historical
Until 'that day' a quarter of a century ago (plus change), there was a time where the heavily urbanized city of Guara Bobelo enjoyed a reasonably healthy agricultural community around the outskirts of the reclaimed Zeboim-era city. While it could never boast the same density of foliage the land east of the mountains did, it looked like a place that could - and did - sustain life.
Then the oligarchy of Celesti launched its siege in 477 PC, which lasted a week. Somewhere in that timeframe, the city Guara Bobelo hid itself from the sky and never thought to peek out again. There is an entire generation of people there, many of whom have never even seen the sky. Outside the city...
Ruin. The artillery strikes were so thorough in the attempt to test the dome's defenses that one could be led to believe there never was anything outside of the developed city. So many years after the fact, Guara Bobelo is just so bleak and centralized a location there's no real desire for anyone to scour around the outer perimeter.
As It Pertains To Shortly Before The Present
A woman reminisces as she visits the ruins of one such farm. Nostalgia is not one engages in lightly for her kind of person. Ever since returning from her first journey to Lunar, she's felt the difference in the air's energy - or lack thereof. She knows her feelings on what she's going to find and see, and has decided this is a form of self care.
She is plainly overdressed for the climate and present temperature, hood up, with a distinctively large bayonet-fitted sniper rifle to her back and an exposed right forearm bearing a Granasian rosary. A shawl helps hide the number of bindings that allow her to wear an overcoat that is simply too big on her, and the less said about the quality of her boots (or how they don't match), the better. It's an entirely mirthless affair of standing around, occasionally praying, and letting a weight in her chest be comfort enough.
Of course she's complicit in all of that, she lets that gnawing in her mind have that snack. That's why it all happened to begin with, and after that, she looks up...
Looking to the skies, her mind dangerously drifts towards the day that... that...
Now
Forty-six year-old Ruth Pauling on the outside is currently being flooded by sharp, haunting memories of what roughly twenty-year-old Ruth Pauling saw and heard on the inside - a then-young woman well over her head, panicked, but at least with the clear idea she had to do something about it.
By and large, outside of those immediately in the vicinity, the greater crowds of Guara Bobelo can't care less about the sounds of fighting. Guara Bobelo is host to so many awful and sad things happening every day. Maybe it's more Guild Galad syndicate thugs flexing their muscles over someone owing them money, or another syndicate trying to get a slice of the rancid pie. Big whoop, whatever, keep their heads down get on with their miserable lives. They don't have much to lose any more that isn't already taken from them piecemeal - but they live.
That mindset will be sorely tested should Solaris get much foothold.
As Tabitha readies themselves to blast a Save Parrot, there's the sound of a gunsmoke ARM going off. A revolver shot, low-grade, nothing of great stopping power. Pathetic, really, compared to what the people of Solaris has over the violent, unruly, unworthy -Lambs-.
It's a shot well-placed to try and deflect her shot from striking the Save Parrot (if it is not mitigated or redirected), and Tabitha won't have to look far to see that hooded woman - or the glint of Granasian rosary beads on the exposed right forearm. This interloper looks all the part of someone deathly calm and still under all those layers of clothes.
On the inside, her heart is racing as she lifts her gaze to meet Tabitha and Lydia alike - enough to see that her eyes are closed and her facial expression pensive.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Basic Attack! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"YEAH! Get 'em, Pulveriser! Ha ha, I knew dragging this guy in was a great idea!" Magilou clutches some tickets as she punches the sky, just -- entirely embroiled in all these blood sports. She managed to sucker someone into signing up without getting voluntold into the arena by dear old Sally, this time, so she's having a great night (day? (night!)), tonight.
"Wait, what did you--" The rough fellow beside her hears her cheering, and turns to her, sceptical. Magilou is known to rig up Arena matches all the time, even when she's not going down there herself and destroying the competition.
"Oop!" Magilou chirps, slipping her winning tickets away and putting up her hands to cartwheel out of the stands.
Anyway, after winning big like that, there's only one obvious path forward.
That path... is saving her game.
So Magilou walks out of the arena stands, right --
And this one chick straight shoots a parrot.
There is also armed combat in the streets with an invading force, but this is not about that. A paper doll snakes out across the floor, to stretch up in front of the parrot, enlongated and stretched out like a shield to protect the parrot from any stray shrapnel-fire from Ruth's rescue. They didn't plan working together like that; it just, smoothly, happened. The memory bird fluffs up. "HEY!" Magilou yells, as she storms over. "What's the big idea?! I'm saving over here!"
She stops by the parrot, and says: "Yeah, yeah, would you mind saving my earnings, too? Thanks." And then she keeps walking --
Through a city plagued by Solaris soldiers --
With citizens whose bar-brawl experience really isn't enough to cover something like this --
"So, anyway," Magilou says, coming to a stop near Tabitha, still entirely too casual. She's dressed exactly as awfully as as Drifter would be, in her jester's hat and horrible clashing pink-black-lilac colours, detached sleeves which don't even match, a skirt made of books and a shirt which doesn't bother covering her belly. "What's up with the party? You can't just up and not invite me."
It's not a party, but she's about as relaxed as she would be in one, grin all hitched loosely by her ears. She waves a hand, a more normal-sized shikigami doll floating loosely beside her hand. "Lucky for you, here I am. Is it hot, or is it just me?" That sounds like a question -- which doesn't much make sense, it's nighttime, it's pretty chilly -- except that there's a Seraphic glyph at her feet, all a sudden. It is an invocation: "Crown Fire!"
GS: Magilou has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Crown Fire! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has entered Avenger Stance! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Magilou has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Rebecca wishes Avril were here to address this queer feeling twisting her gut. She always has a better sense just watching her of whether it's just her stomach cramping from the local cuisine or whether it's in fact 'a sign'. Despite begrudgingly accepting a closer connection to the Guardians, those spiritual senses hadn't developed at all.
Sometime during the matches she was observing, she just, gets up, and takes a walk out of the coliseum to get some air. She only has to slap away a hand hovering near the purse on her belt once and draw her ARM as a warning to a local pickpocket who retreats once on the way out.
Outside though, despite taking a walk, the feeling doesn't fade - if anything it just grows. The din of the Coliseum becomes a thrum of white noise, punctuated by another layer of roaring. Tinnitus in her ears. She starts jogging away from the arena... and, squints. against the shapes in the night, barely perceptible.
The ARM comes out. As she quietly moves up the street, to one point of cover to the next. At one point even doing a silent series of flips into a spot.
"Ah is that Solaris?" Ruth's shot goes off, and Rebecca winces, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead, "You're not even gonna consider taking this on by yourself. Not without them." She declares... deciding for a moment, until... she spies a shape near where Ruth fired the first shot.
"Wait... Lydie?"
Her head thumps against the crate she's currently against, in disbelief that she's gonna actually do this. The Ethos Headquarters was still fresh on the mind, but she had a lot of people at her back. "Alright." Slowly she brings up her Medium instead, and feels out the Local Ley as if assessing the scenario more closely. "You've got this you've got this you've-" And then she steps out of her cover, "Hey Lydie!"
It's the only warning she perhaps gets, a momentary distraction before the ground beneath her erupts into a pressurized blast of water.
"Don't know what you're up to - but I'm betting it's something I wouldn't want you to regret later!"
GS: Rebecca Streisand has attacked Lydia Seren with Ley Blast! GS: Rebecca Streisand has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren solidly guards Rebecca Streisand's Ley Blast for 53 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Rebecca Streisand!
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily Keil can appreciate Guara Bobelo. It reminds her of Nortune in a number of ways--though not the parts of Nortune that she was supposed to go. The eternal darkness of its shelter, the rogues all over... Yes, it's a good place to gather information, and a good place to be a mercenary.
Terrible place to be a person, though.
She wasn't expecting trouble any more than usual--which means that the witch Lily was expecting trouble anytime. Nevertheless, thanks to the shield over the city, she does not notice the dropships until it is far too late. She doesn't notice until the blasts of light scorch the earth, punch holes in buildings, and then Lily immediately dives for cover, taking up a safe position she'd scouted out moments ago in case of--well, she expected muggers. Not Solaris.
Dog is at her heels, and Lily looks up to see the ARMsfire, and there, the man backhanded away with so little seeming effort. Lily narrows her eyes at Tabitha as she goes down the street.
A cloud of dark magic erupts around Tabitha immediately; she will have an instant to react to an attempt at disintegrating her outright, the magic fraying away at her very being if she doesn't block it somehow with her own.
Lily rises from her cover. "You're not the only one with Ether."
She glances at Magilou, and back to Tabitha.
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Disintegrate! GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
If Gwen had known this was going to happen, she would have forgone the courtesy of having her chicken Gear be parked in a nice, relatively crime-free area and just brought the damn thing here, even if she risked it being stolen the moment she parked it someplace. If she even could find a parking space.
But no, the courier is here, getting some deliveries done, as always, figuring that if she was coming this far into Gaura Bobelo, maybe she could stop by the coliseum and see if a buddy of hers is free to go join her for some BBQ or something.
She's even making her way there, then considers, looking at her watch. "... Mn... Must be a good match if it's takin' this long." BOOM
When did they allow high-grade explosives in the coliseum? Or did they just never get around to making that rule?
And then, Gwen sees Loren. Her face falls. "Don't tell me you guys're--"
Then she sees several more, some of which are likely noticing how casually she, a freckle-faced, pale-haired Lamb, speaks to Loren, like she was nagging him for going to the bar with the guys instead of staying home for the night.
That's what it sounds like to Gwen, really. Who knows if Loren's squad even notices some Drifter being cheeky with a Solaris soldier.
Still, it's best to put up appearances, at the very least. Gwen points her right hand towards him, palm first, in a gesture that should be clear to anyone who's been among those with prosthetic ARMS. Like, oh, Tabitha, over yonder.
Aiming towards his dominant hand, she fires a plasma ball, trying to disarm him.
She'd rather not fight him, but maybe he'll take a hint and run off instead of fling his gift of fire at her.
though if she's shooting his hand wouldn't that make it more likely goddamn it gwen this is already going south
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Loren Voss with Comet Clip! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Loren Voss suffers a terrible blow from Gwen Whitlock's Comet Clip for 62 hit points! GS: Jam and Weaken applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss activates Sufferer! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Basic Attack for 78 hit points! GS: Gamble: Lowest! Tabitha deVriese takes a solid hit from Magilou's Crown Fire for 52 hit points! GS: Hyper and Mighty applied to Magilou! GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Lily Keil's Disintegrate for 62 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The arena isn't Lan's usual cup of tea, but there's something to be said for the opportunity to fight new opponents, when the stakes aren't quite as stressful as 'trying to save the world'. Sometimes it's okay to just want to make a little money and maybe get stronger!
And to be frank, it's not like there's anything outside of town for miles and miles...
Lan, unlike the locals, isn't inured to the sound of gunfire. In fact, she's also dumb enough to run towards it. Sandals pounding the pavement, she skids around the corner of a building--
--and right into the middle of a magical war zone. "What--" What is Solaris doing here?! And right in front of her... Lydia. The sight of the other shaman still fills Lan's gut with an uneasy kind of shame.
But if Gwen's got Loren, then maybe Lan can finally start to make up for all the times she didn't try to help Lydia.
Fire erupts beneath Lydia's feet and Lan leaps through it, leading with a sharp kick. "You don't want to be here, right?" What, not even a 'hello'?? "So let me help--" Is this 'helping'??
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Lydia Seren with Akashic Arts! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren solidly guards Lan Lilac's Akashic Arts for 59 hit points! GS: Cripple applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Lydia Seren activates Guard bonus, Power Burst, and Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia is one of those weirdos who actually likes to hang out in Guara Bobelo. But then, the way things work here is kind of her speed. Things are simple here. There's always fighting going on, and all you have to do is beat things up good for people to like you.
Usually she would prefer to be an active participant in any sort of fight, but she missed the window of opportunity to sign up for tonight's colosseum festivities. Not paying much attention to the passage of time has it downsides sometimes. Not having any better ideas on what to do instead, she went ahead and got herself a ticket for the stands instead.
Although she figured she'd find something to enjoy about watching the proceedings, rather than with any sort of visible enjoyment, she's been watching with uncharacteristic calm. She can't help it - looking at this just makes her wish she was down there, actually taking part. This is just kind of frustrating. As cheers erupt all around her with the current match drawing to a close, Xantia just quietly sighs, gets up, and makes her way out. If she's lucky, maybe there'll be a good street brawl going on somewhere?
The trouble she finds is quite unlike the trouble she was looking for. But she'll take it - all she needs is one glimpse of a Solaris uniform to max out her motivation to get involved. Doesn't matter what they have planned, this can't be good news. The first sound that heralds her arrival is the krack of her knuckles.
"You've got to the count of five to tell me what you're doing here."
Not one second later, an aura of lightning surrounds her as she rushes the squad she ran into - still unaware that Loren is among them - and throws a punch from a distance, sending electrocity dancing across the Solaris troopers.
"I count fast," she clarifies with a smile. This evening's a lot more interesting already.
GS: Xantia has attacked Loren Voss with Elemental Fury! GS: Xantia has entered Avenger Stance! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Loren Voss suffers a terrible blow from Xantia's Elemental Fury for 94 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Xantia! GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst and Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia waves to Ruth, seemingly unconcerned. Then Magilou happens and she asks if it's hot or if it's just her.
"No you're hot." Lydia tells her. "It's you. If you want to go out sometime, I'd be happy to though if you're flirting with Tabitha I don't know if she swings that way? I can do either just so you know, but you don't have to worry about it if you're not interested. I'm now a lady who is taking charge of her personal relationships and don't need someone to bat eyes with to be happy. I've learned that I can be just happy by myself, but that doesn't mean I'm against smooches, so don't you worry about that, and I'm a pretty good cuddler, I wouldn't say I'm S Rank but I'm probably A Rank at cuddling at least so, you know, if you're worried about not being hot enough don't worry you're pretty hot you're pretty lucky to be that hot, actually."
She spots Rebecca and brightens, "Oh hey Rebecca! Just another day, another gella. Well they don't actually pay me exactly though I guess maybe I get service credits and uh to be honest I'm not sure what we're up to either and--"
SPWOOSH. The ground underneath Lydia sprays out from underneath her feet, solidly subsuming her body before the water splooshes back down at her feet.
"--I'm mostly just here to make sure Tabitha's okay. We both have 'asshole parents' you see so I'm committed to being a good friend even though she's a little, well, bird-murder happy I guess."
Lydia hesitates. "So you're stopping me? I'm worried about hurting you, 'Becca, so like... we can do this but tell me whenever you want to stop and I can just, like, sit on you until this is over and I don't mean that in a girl on girl hot way I mean like physically sitting on you so you don't keep shooting dudes and then I can feel like I'm doing the job without like doing the murders, you see."
Fire bursts up from underneath Lydia's feet. Again, Lydia is subsumed by the flame--
--and when it fades... Lydia's face has largely melted off aside from her eyes and a metallic skull frame.
"Hey Lan," Lydia says. "Ouch."
She seems kinda detached from it by this point. It's amazing, Lydia thinks, what you can get used to.
"Well, I mean, probably not now that you mention it." Lydia admits. "But I used up all my sick days. Anyway I know I kinda yelled real bad that one time and I'm sorry about that, I'm going through a lot right now and I shouldn't lash out at someone else who is just trying to sort of make their way and I'm actually in a pretty good mood right now cause Ivan and I did a fun friend thing together and he was super sweet, I'm really in a great mood right now! So uh..."
"Sorry about this?" She asks.
She darts forward suddenly, and drops down towards Lan, intending to knock her away with an electric burst erupting out from her feet. She twists her hand around a bit, her right limb twisting into a series of sharp metal knives that jet outward and swing towards Rebecca's body.
"Are you like, still you know, how's your love life Rebecca? I hope it's going well."
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Lan Lilac with Electric Slide! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
PTANG!
Tabitha's arm diverts from the force of the bullet, enough that her blast fires off wildly into the sky, blooming on the dome above after some travel time. "Ah, someone interesting," Tabitha says, and her piercing blue eyes find Ruth. "Hello, dear," she says, and it's breathy and hungry. "That wasn't a half-bad shot," she cooes, then points at her with the hand. Faced directly it's clear there's some kind of blaster lens in the palm, which lights up and then fires a piercing shot at her.
Then, Magilou rocks up like the cool kid, and Tabitha laughs lightly. "Oh, don't worry about invites," she titters. "Everyone's invited to my parties."
Then the Seraphic glyph goes off directly under Tabitha's feet and she's engulfed in a PILLAR OF FIRE.
She coughs afterward, her short-cropped hair smoldering a bit, and she smacks her lips in surprise. Her own magic resistance kept that one from being too bad. Still. She knuckles her eyebrow, making sure it's still tight. "Not bad," she says, recovering gamely.
Then someone tries to vaporize her. That one forces her to react a little less like this is all a game, fingers clenching tightly into the space around her. What happens at first isn't entirely clear, as the darkness descends around her, but soon Tabitha leaps backward from it, pirouetting backward before her feet touch something in the air, a glyph in the sky. She leaps off of it, making a too-high arc.
In the space where Lily's disintegration spell was, a few rotten remains of something vaguely wooden collapes to the ground. A rocking chair on the saloon's porch is now missing.
She sweeps her human hand laterally, like she were tying two points together, and quite suddenly Magilou discovers a box full of cabbages flying at her from the greengrocer. As for Lily...
Tabitha suddenly falls out of the sky directly above her like she had rocks tied to her ankles. She SLAMS into the ground, hard enough that it cracks, and then grins up at her, full, painted lips peeled back to show white teeth. "Good evening," she cooes, and then thrusts forward with her metal hand to drill straight into Lily's kidney with way, WAY more than the strength of a person with her build.
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Ruth Pauling with Ether Buster! GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Magilou with Tracks of Midnight! GS: Tabitha deVriese has gained 1 Combo! GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lily Keil with Stellar Constant! GS: Tabitha deVriese has entered Avenger Stance! GS: Tabitha deVriese gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Rebecca Streisand with Hands Not Fit For Holding! GS: Lydia Seren has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Low! Magilou partially guards Tabitha deVriese's Tracks of Midnight for 85 hit points! GS: Hyper and Mighty applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font and Gleam! GS: Lily Keil suffers a terrible blow from Tabitha deVriese's Stellar Constant for 109 hit points! GS: Break applied to Lily Keil! GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Tabitha deVriese's Ether Buster for 38 hit points! GS: Riposte applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Lan Lilac partially guards Lydia Seren's Electric Slide for 72 hit points! GS: Rebecca Streisand takes a glancing hit from Lydia Seren's Hands Not Fit For Holding for 69 hit points! GS: Rebecca Streisand activates Evade bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Lydia greets her pretty cordially, on any other occasion other than a fight, she'd be smiling her way, "I figured. They don't seem like the type to care about employee morale-! Not when they're literally you know - forcing you to work for them."
Before her head cants to the side, "Bird murder happy!? I get that she's got parental problems but that's pretty disturbing!"
Rebecca imagines less save parrots and more a kid plucking feathers off still living birds. "Wait what!?" Rebecca gets taken aback by her suggestion, face suddenly aflame, "What exactly are you...!?" She sputters, even as Lydia indicates that whatever image she had isn't correct, but she needs a minute, "Look! Are you sure they wouldn't just order you to... you know? Slit my throat while I'm pinned?"
Rebecca doesn't sound too down for the offer for MULTIPLE reasons, but maybe she's trying to figure out the limits of Solaris' hold over here with the question.
Rebecca fortunately is not fighting this fight alone, grateful that Lan is here, and seems to be on the same page, "Got your back Lan. Let's try to do this fast!" Fast enough that they don't have time to order her to do something that she'd regret.
As Lydia darts towards Lan, Rebecca suddenly raises her ARM as if she's going to shoot her mid-run, but instead Lydia twists her right limb and knives jet towards her before she can pull the trigger. Her response to that is bending backwards quickly enough that the knives (mostly) avoid her body, the liquid metal instead grazing several small red gashes.
A hand reaches down behind her, inverting her body upside down her other hand reaching up to squeeze off a few shots in front of everyone, several shots hurtling out of a haze of gunsmoke from a low angle. Lydia's question though elicits a small squeak from her, "W-What!? You want me to talk about that in front of everyone? I ah- that's too embarrassing Lydie!" She certainly sounds mightily embarrassed at the idea of talking about her love life during some Solaris invasion, "Look can you ask me again some other time in private!?"
GS: Rebecca Streisand has attacked Lydia Seren with Round Beat! GS: Rebecca Streisand has gained 1 Combo! GS: Rebecca Streisand has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth's eyes start to lid open in the lull that follows her shot, an attempt to escape the images already burned in her mind. She sees Lydia wave friendly-like. She doesn't return it. She can make out Magilou being herself and she would have difficulty admitting it out loud, but Magilou being there and being herself is something of an emotional anchor to take her to the present. An anchor in a turbulent sea full of pain and panic that says, 'come swim, the water filled with tears is just right! It always is!' Magilou wasn't there, but she's here, so Ruth herself isn't there. The sight of the Congressional Knights trying to bear down on her sinks back down.
'That wasn't a half-bad shot,' comes Tabitha with that piercing blue eyes. The open palm fires before Ruth can get what bearings, and there is a flash where she finds herself trying to react in the way an ordinary person might to oncoming fire - an attempt to run to nearby cover that doesn't quite make it. What the Ether Buster lacks in out-and-out killing power on contact, it's enough to send her sliding against the dusty, grimy streets until a curb catches her. (It conveniently allows her to miss having to look at Lily's incredible sorcerous power head-on and have to parse what she's looking at.)
It blows her hood back. Copper hair, pointed ears - an elf. A hiss of pain escapes her as she feels a tightness in her gloves. A Crest Graph is held in her off-hand - her right - a regression into desperation of that day as she invokes a matched pair of Muse Crests as a heavy, short-lived rain tries to spray down upon Tabitha's back, as Ruth rises up to a stand. A slouchy stand, of someone emotionally defeated.
She's lucid enough to speak, as a surge of pain runs through her left shoulder. Enough she can't follow up the spell as she presses her right hand and crest against it, a sad smile. "Odessa, isn't it? ...I've not seen those colors... which unit? Which war are you still fighting?" A bitter laugh, that relieves the pressure as she fails to make eye contact. "What point is there left to make... Zoara suffers, because of..."
Me, a toxic feeling in her everything wants to force that out. She can't complete the sentence. The world around her is both a deeply upsetting, traumatic replay of a decisive point in her life... and an utterly irresistible, intoxicating smorgasboard of sensory overload that invites her.
Tabitha hereby gets the novelty of encountering someone who frankly does not understand what she is dealing with, in the moment seeming to be on the verge of disassociating as soldiers are pouring about everywhere.
"Magilou," her smile is starting to widen, and Lily can see a really dangerous glint in her eyes as she looks up, "are they really enjoying themselves...?"
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Tabitha deVriese with A Coming Storm! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Clear the city out, had been the order. Which meant there was still something important here, Loren figured -- or they would have simply pulled the bigger guns out, Guild Galad and Sylvaland or not. Given the number they'd tasked -- and the speed at which the operation was set to proceed -- this was already looking to be A Day ahead of him. But he'd already had time enough to mull over the needs and potential undercurrent all this had spoke to.
Now he's in it, and the mission here for him is a short and simple one: see that his squad pulls through and that he doesn't die.
...Though between Tabitha and Lydia's respective presences here on the ground, he's starting to get the feeling that they don't really need any more bigger guns.
They're already here.
He lingers for a half-second, long enough to thread water and earth both up from the world about him, using himself as the focal point. There is a swirl of crystal-clear water about Lydia and Tabitha both, one that hardens into a hard series of panels before vanishing utterly: the Etheric essence remains and it's all that's needed.
And he turns to catch up with the others, and it's then that he spots there in the crowd Gwen Whitlock.
'But Loren, if you'd killed Gwen...'
He pauses.
"--Get out of my way!" he shouts at her, in all those moments that are allotted before she shoots him in the hand. With a ball of plasma, to be sure. But it's still sufficient to cause him to drop his blade.
He hasn't even had time to lunge for it with his opposite when someone else calls out to him. Or perhaps, more accurately, to his squad, who have (miracle of miracles) dropped back to lend him some aid.
"Seriousl--"
He doesn't even get to finish his sentence, pulling up instead the trailing background Ether he'd previously worked on reflex to drop a makeshift shield. He's too far from his squad to cover them with it too. It only barely covers him, the eruptive force throwing him back against a nearby stack of street crates with a loud crash.
It outrights drops the rest of his squad.
Rising from where he fell, he rushes to retrieve his fallen with his 'offhand', and assumes a readied stance.
One thing that Gwen likely wasn't aware of: Loren is ambidextrous.
Not that it matters in this instance. Water rises about him in a coiling ring: he pulls from the air itself. It falls in a sharp staccatto shower, as if to clear the area about him.
GS: You cannot attack more than one target at a time with this attack. GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Guardian Factor! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lydia Seren with Guardian Factor! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has entered Sage Stance! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Aqua Sequence! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Xantia with Aqua Sequence! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. GS: Xantia solidly guards Loren Voss's Aqua Sequence for 34 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Loren Voss! GS: Xantia activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
There are so many things you can get used to. Maybe one day Lan will get used to seeing what Lydia can withstand. (If Lan were more paranoid, she'd wonder if Lydia does it just to mess with her. Does Solaris normally teach its conscripts psychological warfare?! They didn't teach Lan that!)
But Lydia apologizes. "...You were right though, kinda." Lan is quiet for a moment, weight shifting mindlessly from foot to foot. "Not about everything, but you had the right to be upset." It feels like a million words too few, but she knows she's bad at explaining things. And she hopes that Lydia will understand anyway.
Still... she feels a bit lighter for it.
So when Lydia basically electrdropkicks her, Lan manages to get her arms up just in time to keep from being totally knocked off of her feet. "Ngh!" And worse, she recognizes the shimmer of geometry that flickers over Lydia before vanishing. Thanks a LOT, Loren, Lydia is already really ridiculously strong!!
She's not alone though. Neither of them is. "I got your back too, Rebecca!" Because people are stronger together. Because Lan wants to be part of something, even if she doesn't know what that something could ever be.
The blonde somersaults backwards once, twice-- enough to put some distance between herself, and get the gunslinger girl in her field of vision. Lan takes a deep breath, forming a sign with her fingers. A halo of silver washes over Rebecca from the ground up, bringing with it a surge of clarity.
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Rebecca Streisand with Grace and Glory! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: Rebecca Streisand accepts Lan Lilac's Grace and Glory for 0 hit points! GS: Amplify, Burst, and Surge applied to Rebecca Streisand!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou laughs, hand to her cheek, at Lydia's intercession. "My, you have good taste! Give your approach a little more fine-tuning, and you're bound to get some hooks! You know," she wriggles her fingers, "leave your opening at 'no, you're hot,' and you've already opened the playing field." MAGILOU ARE YOU GIVING THIS TEENAGER ADVICE ON HER PICK-UP LINES IN THE MIDDLE OF A WARSITE
She has good cheer about it, but, well, it's not like she hasn't noticed just how young Lydia is, either.
"How terribly generous," Magilou titters, to Tabitha, in turn. And sets her on fire. Rude?
Lily's explosive entrance doesn't go unnoticed. Funny how she's trying to kill someon-- no, actually, that's not really that weird. Ether, though!
Magilou brings up another of those oversized shikigami shields to protect herself against the cabbage merchant's ultimate sorrow. Cabbages bounce off of the flat doll, pinging this way and that. One goes through a window which was bold enough to still have a glass pane. Lunar's most esteemed enmity witch cups a hand and yells to the occupant: "I'M NOT PAYING FOR THAT!"
They might be a hair busy with the... invasion, right now. But sometimes it's about sending a message.
"Anyway," Magilou says, hand to her hip as she watches Lily and Tabitha brawl it out. "I'm sure you're the very best manipulated woman this party has to offer -- now, what was this party, again?" She asides, more to get her to say it, than anything. "But honeybunch cutiesuckles cabbagelunch brassknuckles, you are tracking mud into my house."
She sighs, with a broad shrug, shaking her head. "Don't you know? The only sorceress who gets to mess with Guara Bobelo -- is me!" Here, Magilou pauses, turns to Lily Keil, points her fingers at her eyes, and points them squarely at the Etheric Witch. It is entirely silent. It still says an awful lot.
But the one she's focused on, right now, is Tabitha, and Magilou claps her hands together, one leg rising off the ground, toes tapping the path. "You're really very agile," Magilou says, that shikigami spinning by her hand again. She snatches it up, gesturing with it. "But did you know -- you're all about to get a lot closer!" There's another Seraphic glyph about her feet -- but this one, rather than red, is dark as shadow, as it collects around her. "Gravity Mine!" And a node of darkness erupts near Tabitha, threatening to crush her in together with a sign from a nearby pub torn off its hinges, a long-discarded motorcycle, one of those bounced cabbages, and who-knows-what-else.
"... damned if I know," she comments, lightly, to Ruth, tossing her voluminous pale hair behind her shoulder. (Her bangs flop right back onto her face.) "But when someone tells you who they are, you really ought to believe them. So what do you think about people having such a good time invading a hole in the ground, anyway?" Is this really the sort of area for philosophical questions..?
"By the way," she calls out, to Loren, OH GOD SHE HEARD HIS VOICE, "don't you think you're a lost in a place like this, little boy? I'd hate to think what would happen to you again, wandering around here at night." Again..?
GS: Magilou has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Gravity Mine! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Aqua Sequence for 86 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Loren Voss! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Guard bonus! GS: Lydia Seren accepts Loren Voss's Guardian Factor for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Lydia Seren solidly guards Rebecca Streisand's Round Beat for 56 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Lydia Seren activates Sufferer! GS: Tabitha deVriese accepts Loren Voss's Guardian Factor for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Tabitha deVriese takes a solid hit from Magilou's Gravity Mine for 178 hit points! GS: Cripple and Entangle applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Tabitha deVriese solidly guards Ruth Pauling's A Coming Storm for 23 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tabitha deVriese gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Tabitha deVriese activates Guard bonus and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily's eyes narrow as she feels the reaction to her spell--feels that it hits something different from her foe. When Tabitha leaps backward, Lily starts moving, preparing another spell--but it's interrupted, this time. Because abrubtly, Tabitha slams into the ground hard, and Lily loses her footing under the power of her approach. "Gh--"
'Good evening', and Tabitha's hand slams into Lily's jacket. The armored plating inside it shatters outright, driving into the wound created with enough force that she's sent flying backward with the force of the blow. The wall she hits acordingly cracks against her, and Lily sinks down to a crouch. Her side is bleeding, though the armor prevented Tabitha's hand from going all the way through.
She sees Magilou's look--it does say a lot, doesn't it? Don't mess with Guara Bobelo, is it...? Nevertheless--
The dangerous glint in Ruth's eye is enough. Lily can't parse out her feelings in the moment, can't tell hers apart from the fear and panic all around her, but there is a part of her that sees something like bloodlust and appreciates it. Lily's hand slowly curls into a fist as she works to gain control over herself. "You sure about that, Magilou?"
Lily lunges forward, blue lighting up at her collar where some skin is visible, and her eyes start to cloud over, glowing black. Ether whirls around her in a vortex of invisible power, and the prismatic circuitry abrubtly starts at her eyes and extends down her face as she invokes, "-Limiters released.-"
The Ancient Tongue is pretty versatile.
She extends both hands, and lifts them to the sky; from nothing, a great spear of ice begins to accumulate, chunks growing and growing until it's some eight feet long and a foot wide--and then she hurls it straight for Tabitha without touching it, the path it takes freezing along the ground as ice overtakes everything around her.
"Xantia! Let's push them back!"
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Tabitha deVriese with The Grief of the Snake! GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lily Keil has entered Hero Stance! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese suffers a terrible blow from Lily Keil's The Grief of the Snake for 140 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tabitha deVriese gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mute applied to Tabitha deVriese!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Oh okay, thanks mysterious elf lady, I'll keep that in mind." Lydia says. "Sort of a 'less is more' sort of deal."
She notices that Loren is throwing her some assistance. He might be a grouchy guy who was probably insane for more time than Lydia knew him than not, but he is at least a team player in her experience. She gives him a thumbsup and wonders if she should kinda be more into it for his sake? He's got a rough go of it honestly and he likes astronomy so he can't be that bad.
Lydia IS the kind of person to mess with Lan though. She did threaten to eat her hair the first time they met! But in this case, she is kinda trying to smush around with that skull a bit. Lan can see skin starting to rejuvenate already. Lydia's getting better at returning to a 'restored' state.
"Oh yeah I mean, I'm usually 'kinda' right, but that's not the same thing as being...right right, I geuss. And even if I was right, I shouldn't be a jerk to you about it. We're both shamans of Rigdobrite and you're my friend even if sometimes I get jealous because you were born human and like I had to deal with all this but it's not like it's your fault. Honestly I'm impressed you even tried to help him. I still think he'd be happier that way but ... It'd be a leap of faith."
She glances to REbecca. "WELL I WOULD but I only ever see you on the battlefield anymore! I want to have girl talk!!"
Would they just order hre to slit Rebecca's throat. "Nah Seraphita wouldn't say to do that. She seems like someone who likes to have girl talk too-- Maybe it'd be an arrest or something--"
"Anyway I'm still single." Lydia adds. "But I'm trying to be okay with myself as a 'single person' rather than needing a relationship but it's really hard because Seraphita basically has legs up to here--" She holds up her hand. "And I'm like 'sploosh'--"
Her face turns bright silver. "Th-that's just... It's not my fault!! Ahhhh!!"
Rebecca brings up her arms. Bullets detonate off her limbs and push her back, sending her limbs flinging back wildly from the concussive force. "Ahhhhhhhh!!! I didn't say anything!!"
She is so panicked by this that she becomes a glittering nano cloud, throwing herself against Rebecca before resolidifying on the other side, raising a hand and saying, "Optimized MAterial Solais Emsu Activate Program RESONANCE.EXE whatever that means AHH!!!"
She fires a LASER BEAM out of her hand towards Lan.
"Why can't I fight Odessa more?? It gives me anxiety fighting people I like!"
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Rebecca Streisand with Glittering Cloud! GS: Lydia Seren has entered Stoic Stance! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Lan Lilac with Optimized Material - Solais Emsu - RESONANCE.EXE! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Two people who have reasons not to kill each other are joined by a person who has no reasons to hold back against Solaris forces. In fact, Gwen thinks, Xantia'd have a deficit of reasons.
Gwen's face shifts to a momentary wince as Xantia lands in like a moth to a porchlight. A really, really hard-hitting moth. "Achchchch!" Gwen bounces back on one foot as Xantia lays down a punch of electricity, though, really, she was out of the line of fire as it was. "Xantia!"
Seeing Lan out of the corner of her eye, handling Lydia, Gwen likewise feels some sense of relief.
"... Okay, Lily's right. Let's push 'em back, let 'em all know they chose the wrong town t'mess with! ... Preferably, uh, alive, since, like... it'd... get the message across." She grins at Xantia. "That sound gu--"
A wall of rain throws Gwen back on her feet, interrupting her quick chat with Xantia. Definitely not a fatal blow, and it's preferable to fire.
It's probably just as difficult for Loren as it is for Gwen.
..... Maybe that'll make things easier.
Especially if she can manage to knock the poor guy out.
Gwen starts in for Loren, grabbing a running start to try to knock him into the air with an uppercut. As she gets close, Loren will hear one short, whispered, heartfelt sentence:
"Sorry for this!"
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Loren Voss with Shoryu-Gwen! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Rebecca Streisand takes a solid hit from Lydia Seren's Glittering Cloud for 52 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rebecca Streisand gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover and Riposte applied to Lydia Seren! GS: CRITICAL! Loren Voss critically guards Gwen Whitlock's Shoryu-Gwen for 30 hit points! GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst and Sufferer! GS: Lan Lilac suffers a terrible blow from Lydia Seren's Optimized Material - Solais Emsu - RESONANCE.EXE for 129 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lan Lilac gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
"Thank you, Loren!" Tabitha calls over, waving her fingers at him like he had given her a pack of gum. "Good work over there!"
She isn't actually looking but sometimes you give people praise to keep them motivated, you know?
"Hmmm," Tabitha hums toward Ruth. It's a bit of a strange outfit, actually, a black catsuit with reinforcing straps on her abdomen and a quite open window for her frankly voluminous chest. No real identifying marks. It's not much like a Solaris or Gebler uniform at all! Though, of course, the Gebler troops she's brought with her are probably a giveaway. "Mine, mostly," she answers to Ruth. It sounds light, but there's an honesty to it... "I like the ears! Cute."
She does not seem overly concerned by Ruth's extremely obvious mounting discomfort.
Before she can follow that exchange up with deadly powers, she first gets blasted by water, earning a surprised "blblblbl!!", before she's dealing with Magilou.
Magilou, who has the AUDACITY to USE HER TRICK. Tabitha snaps up with her flesh hand again, but Magilou has got her dead to rights, and Tabitha gets a taste of her own medicine as she gets summarily pelted by a road sign, a door, and a whole-ass motorcycle. Her own strange relationship with gravity leaves her tumbling through the air, flying too high . That, in turn, makes it pretty easy for Lily to blast her out of the sky. With a sharp cry she goes tumbling out of the air and slams into the ground--!
--like she had meant to do that!! She flips end-over-enad and her feet touch first, light as you please. She's sweating, but there's still a bright smile on her face. She smiles, standing up straighter, as magic swirls around her. "Looks like you've all got some decent tricks," she breathes. Something changes in her posture as the power fills her. Looking at her it's like she's not...growing, or changing, but becoming more central. Like the background were growing more and more irrelevant next to her existence. "Ahhh, better," she laughs.
Then she snaps her mechanical fingers and everything within ten meters of her lifts off the ground like gravity had no meaning to them, like the motion of the planet itself had unstuck them; and a moment after that, each one fires radially away from her, blasting into buildings and clattering into walls. "There we go!" she says with a bright smile, clapping her hands. "A lady does need to keep her boundaries clear, don't you think?"
GS: Tabitha deVriese has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Cosmic Constant! GS: Tabitha deVriese accepts Tabitha deVriese's Cosmic Constant for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Cripple, Entangle, and Mute removed! GS: Blitz and Surge applied to Tabitha deVriese!
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Rebecca shoots Loren an annoyed look as he gives Lydia some supporting magic, though should she really be annoyed someone has Lydia's back!?
YES? She absolutely finds that she is. "Stay out of this Voss!"
Though Rebecca finds herself looking between Lan and Lydia as Lan expresses that she has a right to be upset. Part of her wants to ask, though she gets the feeling it's about... Lan leaving. And decides it's none of her business.
Lan's halo of silver washes over her, and for the first time today she feels like things are puzzlingly clear. "Appreciate it! I won't waste it!" As she then somersaults in the opposite direction as Lan, because of course she wants to keep Lydia guessing with the two of them moving. As she listens to the back and forth, "It's a bad situation you're in-! I bet she doesn't blame you for being a little bit of a jerk Lydie!"
Lydia though offers that she wants girl talk rather than girl talk on the battlefield? "Well! Contact me by a memory cube sometime! Though is there any way you could make sure your handlers can't listen in when we do?"
Rebecca makes a little 'call me' gesture mid-flip by her ear, before landing. "Wait really? She would?" Pause, wait was she seriously considering it!? No of course not shut up. "... Well I can't take the chance I'd be arrested either!"
What is she gonna force Dean and Avril to come break her out of some Solaris megaprison just so she can have girl talk??? NAH!
"I mean... Lydie that's great about not defining yourself that way but... that sounds like... I don't know! Don't you think you're falling for your captors a little too much?"
Suddenly Lydia throws a glittering nanocloud at her, and Rebecca just gets caught so off guard it flows right through her, the cloud of nanoparticles shockingly dense as it casts her aside as she hits a mouldering barrel and reduces it to splinters. With a groan she looks back up in time to see Lydia activating...
"Sorry if I'm adding to that anxiety but - Rigdobrite!" As suddenly she grips another Stone Medium, and raises a hand high. There's a glittering blink out of Lydia's upper periphery, like a twinkling star, and then a beam of white light descends in a zig zag trail across the ground that tries to collide with Lydia, the magical laser light trying to strip away Loren's Etheric protection from her.
It feels mean to do that to Lydia but she doesn't really see any other good options for dealing with a well protected Lydia.
GS: Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lily Keil with Inert and Expel! GS: Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Ruth Pauling with Inert and Expel! GS: Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Magilou with Inert and Expel! GS: Tabitha deVriese has gained 1 Combo! GS: Rebecca Streisand has attacked Lydia Seren with Shooting Star! GS: Rebecca Streisand has gained 1 Combo! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Rebecca Streisand has completed her action. GS: Lily Keil takes a glancing hit from Tabitha deVriese's Inert and Expel for 51 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to Lily Keil! GS: Hyper applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Lily Keil activates Evade bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Lily Keil enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Delay expired! GS: Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from Tabitha deVriese's Inert and Expel for 98 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Hyper applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer! GS: Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Tabitha deVriese's Inert and Expel for 106 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to Magilou! GS: Hyper applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia's initial reaction to the result of her quick blitz is actually one of disappointment, looking about the fallen Solarian troopers. She was so eager for a fight that she ended it before it started! Stupid Solaris, this is all their fault. Why do they always make it so hard for her to hold back a little?
She sounds a little sheepish, calling back to Lily, "Uh... sure thing!" She's not sure if this counts as 'pushing them back', exactly. But it's close enough, right? She then waves cheerfully at her impromptu partner in battle. "Hiya, Gwen! Ehehe, sorry, I'll try to do more pushing and less knocking down."
One might expect that the lightning-wreathed Xantia would be in a bit of trouble when Loren violently interrupts the conversation. Water against electricity would normally be an electrocution hazard. Thankfully, where Ether's involved, it doesn't necessarily work that way. Especially not when Xantia notices the column of water that's about to fall on her in time, prompting her to raise her right arm overhead as if shielding herself. This actually does work, the water parting as if striking an invisible umbrella rather than landing on her directly. Her bracer glows faintly red as she does so, probably having something to do with this.
Looking around, it's not until now that she notices the perpetrator. She actually sounds a little happy in her initial reaction to Loren: "Oh hey, you're alive!" Which she quickly corrects to the proper level of indignance. "You see? Cheating won't do you any good. Now you'd better leave, or I'll make you!" She grins, her eyes briefly moving in Gwen's direction. "We'll make you."
She knows Gwen well enough to know what to expect - she moves when the courier does, but leaps up for her strike. If Loren does end up being launched, she'll be there with a straight punch to change his flight to a horizontal one. If not, she'll adjust to a diagonal downward hammer blow instead. Either way should count as 'pushing back', she's pretty sure.
No surreptitious whispers from her, mainly because she's not sorry for this at all.
GS: Xantia has attacked Loren Voss with Shatterstrike! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Loren Voss solidly guards Xantia's Shatterstrike for 56 hit points! GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst and Sufferer! GS: Lydia Seren suffers a terrible blow from Rebecca Streisand's Shooting Star for 127 hit points! GS: Dispel! Cover, Quick, Riposte, and Shield removed! GS: Lydia Seren activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"We are friends. And like I told Loren, sometimes friends fight. You don't have to be anxious about it." Lan has fought lots of her friends! Even Gwen! "I don't wish you were born human. I wish humans were less awful to Beastfolk. You, and Hicalu, and Seraphita... the world is cruel enough! Why does it have to be extra terrible for some people?!"
Most of the more descriptive stuff about Seraphita goes right over Lan's head, but even Lan can appreciate that the hyperkinetic rabbity Element has amazing legs. It's goals!! "If it makes you feel better I don't think Seraphita would arrest you or anything, Rebecca. I climbed a mountain with her once and she didn't try to drag me back either, even though she knew who I was." Sure, Lan was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs the whole time, but everything turned out pretty well in the end. "She lent me her hat and everything."
But Lydia's getting pretty worked up, and Lan is so busy being philosophical that she doesn't dodge right, and gets smoked pretty good by Lydia's hand laser. "Ow! Owowowow. --S-see, I'm okay though!" And yes, she's kinda smoky, but Lan is okay.
And if it's rude to use the power of Lydia's patron Guardian against her... well, it's not like Rigdobrite himself is mad at her. Lan lifts her arms into the air, channeling silver starlight into a shower of hailstone-sized meteors.
GS: Lan Lilac spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Lydia Seren with Meteorain! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Over elsewhere, Ruth catches the ghastly sight of the way Lydia deals with physical trauma and she may come to appreciate after all these years there are still sights that can move her like that. That time is not now.
'Mine, mostly,' Tabitha answers... and compliments her ears, breaking the sad little smile for another stab in her everything. A flaring of self-consciousness about having them, as Magilou dispenses ever-sage advice. The Crest Graph is stashed, the revolver is raised again. Why doesn't the woman take that rifle off her back? The revolver is a mere peashooter compared to what power is being flung about. Already, she's leveling her aim as she fights past the discomfort in her left shoulder - but she doesn't take the shot in time as Tabitha takes stage.
When she does, it's too late, and it goes wild as Ruth is taken off her feet with wide eyes as her flight path takes her up high. There's an explosion of aged, cheap construction and lumber. 'A lady does need to keep her boundaries clear, don't you think?' Even with only one good ear to hear coherently, Tabitha's bright words ring clear.
From where Ruth rests, out of sight, she can see her own blood - crimson, as would be 'normal'. There's a faint outline in her memories of someone tall, dressed in black, who came to her aid as she lied injured from a boot to the gut by a Congressional Knight-- no. I'm not that person, she tells herself. I'm not that monster, as a blackish-violet mist releases. A glove splits, the rosary constricts tighter around her right forearm, and blood droplets of violet stain the derelict attic...
A Dramatically Appropriate Amount Of Time Not Exceeding Thirty Seconds Later
Tabitha's power is contested - but not on the axis of Ether. Droplets of rain accumulate and accelerate like a roaring rainstorm, but... they're under the dome. It cannot rain here. It's chilling in temperature, but each raindrop is like a little tiny pinprick of emotion. Guilt. Shame. Regret. Despair. (If anyone's been to Siddim Canyon while it was a Malevolent Domain, guess what? Whoever Hellion that was, they're here! Thaaaaaaat's them!)
And with it, a rolling, massing fog that threatens to blind and obscure her.
There are four deafeningly loud sounds that follow, in rapid sequence. ARMs fire - which sound much like a door being pounded. One shot each, to a member of Tabitha's ground force escorts. Each one aimed with precision for somewhere fatal. Above, in the haze, something perches. It's large as a silhouette, with a single wing - but finer detail is hard to make out other than the glow of violet eyes, as the rolling fog bears down upon Tabitha.
For some among Guara Bobelo nearby, that sound has their attention. It was rumored when an illegal pit fighting ring (double-illegal by Guara Bobelo stnadards... that exists) was taken down that she was involved. The Four Knocks of Death's Door - the signature technique of one of the most feared markswomen of modern Filgaian military history, if not the most. The report of that sniper rifle is unmistakable.
Gwen over there may hope that they will leave alive and know not to mess with Guara Bobelo.
"Boundaries," a softer voice whispers, as that frightening shadowed visage looms over its perch, "yes... a lady should make those clear, shouldn't they."
"Their pain... their misery," Ruth intones, "they won't belong to you and yours. No. It's my shadow. You're not welcome there..."
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Rolling Fog! GS: Delay expired! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Don't mention it." No, really, don't, he can't help but think in spite of this display of team spirit from Tabitha -- don't draw any heat his way. The rest of his squad's out cold as far as he can tell -- probably not dead, though there's hardly any room to do more than he's already doing, which is hold his ground and stay alive. If he can deal with them, then, yes, he'll be in the clear but... if he drops, they're all hosed. This is great. This is going great!
'Stay out of this, Voss!' Rebecca shouts in his direction. Loren, ever mature and already generally pissed about the way this is going (seriously? his entire squad!) retorts with, "Make me!"
It's hardly the only shout thrown his way. A voice -- a familiar voice! -- calls out to him. Doesn't he think it's lost in place like...
Little boy. Little boy! Little boy!!
"S-Shut up!"
What does she mean by 'again'?!
"DeVriese!" Which is as much of a 'please, help me' as she might ever get from Loren -- well, aside from him begging her to leave him alone, too.
He soon has more immediate problems at hand. Like Xantia, who accuses him of cheating. "What are you talking about?" Or like Gwen, who appears to be dead-set on making it hard for him. "Go bother someone-- oh, damn!"
It's hard to miss her running right at him, after all. Light shines bright as he throws out his opposite hand: a shimmering barrier erupts into the space between her and him, and it's this construct that her fist impacts.
The barrier -- naught but Ether -- still splinters. But it holds firm.
It's a little less than great by contrast when Xantia comes in from above mere moments later. He hadn't seen her--
The best he can do is to twist his body, to try and buffet her aside with the flat of his sword. But his positioning is bad: he's awkwardly stanced as he tries to meet her descent. And so he's thrown back again, the trailing remnants of his Ether all that keeps him from more serious injury. Slowly, he eases out of his crouch.
Light, green and sparkling, erupts before Loren in spiderwebbing filaments, filtering through to gold at its furthest reaches. In a blink, it's gone. In a blink, it's lept from the place where Loren now stands to join Lydia, a mandala beneath her. It shines once, the green of a dancing aurora as it streams up about her, and then it's gone.
And just like that, he's for the both of them, Xantia and Gwen alike, swinging his blade in one long arc. "I said... get out of my way!"
GS: Loren Voss spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lydia Seren with Spirit Dynamic! GS: Loren Voss has gained 2 Combo! GS: Loren Voss has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Loren Voss spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Xantia with Meteor Break! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Meteor Break! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. GS: Lydia Seren accepts Loren Voss's Spirit Dynamic for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Cover applied to Loren Voss! GS: Lydia Seren activates Loren Voss's Reload! and Sufferer! GS: Lydia Seren enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lydia Seren solidly guards Lan Lilac's Meteorain for 71 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Lan Lilac! GS: Lydia Seren activates Guard bonus and Sufferer! GS: Xantia takes a glancing hit from Loren Voss's Meteor Break for 80 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Shield applied to Loren Voss! GS: Xantia activates Evade bonus and Power Burst! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Meteor Break for 150 hit points! GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: CRITICAL! Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Ruth Pauling's Rolling Fog for 38 hit points! GS: Blind applied to Tabitha deVriese!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"WHAT I DIDN'T MEAN IT LIKE THAT, You are making me sound like I'm controleld 100 percent by my hormones and I'm telling you that's not true, I don't even have hormones anymore, probably, CHECKMATE REBECCA."
She crosses her arms. "But she IS, like, nice to me and I don't think she's lying or being sneaky, she's just working for the bad guys like me, and she's also had a rough time of it because she's also a beastlady it's not like they were nice to her especially or anything I bet." Pause. "Rachiel won't listen I'll tell her to butt out!!! She's kind of ditzy and clumsy but she doesn't usually murder people so we can still girl talk!"
"Rigdo...Hey you can't use Rigdobrite against me! Rigdobrite's my buddy!"
But this declaration doesn't stop the magical laser from crashing down upon her. It burns, but not so much as the EMBARRASSMENT.
Lan assures her that there's nothing to worry about and friends just fight sometimes. "Oh thank Rigdobrite." Lydia says. "That makes me feel a lot better about this." She doesn't argue with her. "Yeah it doesn't make sense to me either." on the matter of racism. "I mean horns are actually pretty cool when you think about it except for putting on hats that's real awful--"
"OH NO LAN ARE YOU OKAY?"
Lan assures her she's okay.
"Oh okay good. Good. Yes. Okay. AHH WAIT...!?"
"Are you also rigdobriting me...!?"
She holds her hands above her head as she's pettled by tiny meteors. "Ahhh!!! I can't dodge Rigdobrite's magic he worked so hard on it...!"
She takes in a deep breath, her chin dislodging partially that she has to screw back into shape.
And Loren's lending a hand too, enfusing her with some ether power that makes her feel CHARGED UP. "Okay!" She says, gesturing with a hand as she extends Rigdobrite's power to enthuse Loren with some sauce--
But then adds, "Well if you're going to sho wyour Rigdobrite, I'm going to show you mine...!"
"OPTIMIZED MATERIAL - RIGDOBRITE! My medium is shinier so be careful????"
And indeed, the sky opens up and Rigdobrite's visage can briefly be seen.
It wiggles its adorable shrimp tail at Lan. It blinks it's big goopy yellow eyes at Rebecca.
And then it drops huge honking meteors towards them!!
"SORRY!!" She says.
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Loren Voss with I'm Still Here! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Rebecca Streisand with Optimized Material - Rigdobrite - METEOR SHOWER.EXE! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Lan Lilac with Optimized Material - Rigdobrite - METEOR SHOWER.EXE! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren heals Loren Voss! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Quick and Shield applied to Loren Voss! GS: Loren Voss activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"I'll have you know this is my favourite hole in the ground in your entire baffletastic Star," Magilou slings back, at Lily. "If you insist on transmogrifying it to slag we will have words, chili peel." The words might be magic. The words are PROBABLY magic.
Magilou is, in fact, the most rude about just stealing Tabitha's look. "Oh?" She asks, with rising tone, as Tabitha gathers more of HERSELF to herself. Her eyelids are curtains to her eyes, half-lowered; her grin flashes teeth. "My, my. The centre of the universe, are you? What Aristarchic heresy." Well, there's the aristarchy, of course, but it's Aristarchus who would weep.
Gebler forces, indeed. It seems like Magilou is used to not getting straight answers to her questions. What even is the point of those questions, anyway?
She doesn't really have a chance to explain (she wouldn't take it anyway) -- because gravity is playing favourites again. Magilou quick-steps away from a now empty cabbage crate, only to get absolutely clobbered in the side by a card table someone set up outside for one of those traditional Guara Bobelo dangerous poker games. "HEY!" Magilou yelps, wrestling with the legs of the table for a moment -- obviously, she's just getting absolutely bodied by this random environmental object -- before she manages to toss it to the side so it can get sucked into a gravity well somewhere else.
"Boundaries, smoundaries!" Magilou stomps her foot, as the rain starts pattering down. She supposes it would bring up a lot of emotions, if she had any of those. She still seems to be annoyed enough, as she re-adjusts her hat on her head, from where Tabitha's gravity had almost unseated it.
Magilou has A Moment, all foot-stomping and fuming, while Ruth properly collects herself for maximum brooding moment, but once she makes her declarations, Magilou has something to say, too. "As you can see, everything here is quite spoken for!" She insists, entirely ruffled. Still with that hint of pique, the question she leads into may well be disarmingly direct. "So what are you hoping to get out of this place? Seeming as you've brought so many friends and all. But say -- did you know you're not the only one with forces on call?"
Magilou lifts her shikigami, to the sky. "Now!" Lowering it down, she blows it towards Tabitha, with a lovely pink breeze of magic. "With a single breath, they appear!" If it hits, it will be explosive. But the magic which spools out from the ground summons another shikigami doll, large as Tabitha is -- "Here they come! There's no stopping them now!" -- as those paper dolls seek to knock her up in the air, a dozen or more denying her access to the ground. Magilou whirls, and points, summoning them all, "GOOD GRIP!" -- to launch at Tabitha, at once, in a vast explosion.
"Easy-peasy," she chirps, as she bounces on her feet.
As an aside, she yells, helpfully, to Lan and Lydia: "Don't get the wrong idea, bright eyes! Just because we keep fighting doesn't make us friends!" Thankfully, Rebecca, and not Dean, is the person representing Wayside Outreach today, so this might not immediately doom her. Of course, the fact that Magilou is fighting alongside Lan and not against her may just make Lan's point... even more convincing..?!
GS: Rebecca Streisand suffers a terrible blow from Lydia Seren's Optimized Material - Rigdobrite - METEOR SHOWER.EXE for 178 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rebecca Streisand gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Formation! Magilou has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Good Grip! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Tabitha deVriese partially guards Magilou's Good Grip for 64 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tabitha deVriese gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Tabitha deVriese gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Is it more like a one night stand--?" Lydia offhands.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
It counts for Lily, Xantia. It counts... for Lily. Particularly since someone has to keep Loren pinned down. Lily can't right now; she's quite occupied.
But Magilou slings back a statement, and the words--are magic. They are certainly magic. In that they have an effect on the world around them. "...Fine," Lily answers, and pushes down that feeling. "I'll try to limit collateral."
The Gebler troops are definitely a giveaway, but Lily almost ignores them in favor of the powerful operative leading them. She attempts to blast her straight out of the sky, and that sharp cry is encouraging--until Tabitha lands on her feet. Sure, she's sweating...
But she's doing something to the air--no, to the forces around her. Lily frowns harder than before. "Not neat enough, or you'd be dead," she starts--and then suddenly everything around her lifts! A chair batters towards her; a barrel. Part of a destroyed wall; a pile of rubble. A horse!
Lily shoots upward to evade it, and is only hit by some of the shrapnel as the debris explodes against the building beneath her, letting her rise into the air and siphon off some of that power for herself.
"All right," Lily answers Tabitha. "You've expressed your boundaries."
But as Lily looks for another opening, she senses it--Ruth's feelings. They are a beacon, something too hard to ignore, along with the Malevolence that comes with them. She wavers in the air for an instant. "Despair... Bloodlust... No, I--"
She curls her hands into fists again--her magic is hard to control in such an emotional state. And she hears.. the Four Knocks.
"...Magilou!" Lily shouts. "You might want to get your 'favorite people' out of here then!"
Nos topping them now! The paper dolls move to knock Tabitha around, and Lily throws off her jacket, revealing muscled arms covered in prismatic markings--and a sword underneath. She pulls it from its place at her belt and takes it up with both hands, the golden blade single-edged and curved forward. She lunges through the air, and at the last second, hacks across at Tabitha close-range with it, glowing with violet power.
"Hah!"
GS: Lily Keil spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Lily Keil has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Black Wolf's Claw! GS: Break expired! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese suffers a terrible blow from Lily Keil's Black Wolf's Claw for 208 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tabitha deVriese gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Tabitha deVriese activates Power Burst and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
"Challenge accepted-!" Rebecca retorts back at Loren's 'Make me'! quite maturely, as if it were some playground game not a deadly Solarian invasion.
"What!? No! It's not like that!" She sputters at Lydia obviously embarrassed, "I'm just worried the longer you're there the more sympathy you're feeling for the people who are literally MIND CONTROLLING you Lydia!"
A beat.
"SORRY! I'm not trying to be mean! It's just the only spell I have that can slow you down after what VOSS!" Another glare, "DID!"
YES LOREN THIS IS YOUR FAULT!
Rebecca gives Lan a sympathetic look as she pours out her heart on the wish that humans be less awful to Beastfolk, "Yeah. It shouldn't have to be that way for them... any of them." And after her experiences on Lunar, she knows it doesn't have to be this way, even if that world had had it's own prejudices in the past. Yet she doesn't say more on the plight of Beastfolk... it doesn't feel like it's her place. "Wait really!?" Rebecca looks Lan's way in shock as she describes Seraphita's attitude, "Wow. I'd heard she was one of the Elements-! Solaris' elite are way more lax than I expected." Maybe it's BECAUSE of being a Beastfolk that she's like that due to mistreatment? Rebecca keeps that to herself. "Still you know... I shouldn't take that kind of risk for girl talk!"
And then Lydia brings out her Rigdobrite. "Oh. Yeah I should have known that was gonna happen. Wait it's shinier what's that supposed to me-" Suddenly meteors. Rebecca tries to dive out of the way yet she still gets clipped REAL HARD by the giant magical summoned boulders, which knocks her down, forcing her to suck in a pained breath with her bruised ribs, "Ah - ow - ow. That's what that means. Okay." Magilou insists that they're not friends and... Rebecca says wryly, "Wish Dean would take that attitude every now and then."
Rebecca slips out her Original Medium, annoyed when Voss once again sends etheric enhancements Lydia's way. "Voss - didn't your mother ever tell you that you should stay out of it when women are having a heart to heart? Time to reap-" Rebecca appears supremely annoyed and suddenly there's a shift in the Ley Lines as she stands, ephemeral energy in the ground itself spreading out towards both him and Lydia. "-what you've sown."
Two emerald columns of swirling wind currents try to erupt over both Lydia and Loren as if to briefly contain them, as a roiling ball of condensed air descends from from the top of the column downward. A slashing counterforce that tries to cut them in numerous ways."
GS: Rebecca Streisand has activated a Force Action! GS: Rebecca Streisand spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Formation! Rebecca Streisand has attacked Loren Voss with Ley Eruption! GS: Formation! Rebecca Streisand has attacked Lydia Seren with Ley Eruption! GS: Rebecca Streisand has gained 1 Combo! GS: Rebecca Streisand has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Moderate! Loren Voss takes a solid hit from Rebecca Streisand's Ley Eruption for 196 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Loren Voss activates Evade bonus and Sufferer! GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jam and Weaken expired! GS: CRITICAL! Lan Lilac partially evades Lydia Seren's Optimized Material - Rigdobrite - METEOR SHOWER.EXE for 153 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Tabitha is busy dusting off her catsuit when she realizes something is going Extremely Wrong. She looks up at Lily, first, wondering what that mystery tongue was about. Then, up. Rain? Her eyes narrow a little, curious. The rain falls on her, stinging emotions she'd put fully beneath her. But...
She thinks of his face, when she put the gun in it. The release in her heart, when she fired. Maybe she's allowed herself to become a demon. But she has pride now. She'll make that trade.
The shots aren't aimed at her and she doesn't defend them. One, two, three, four men and women collapse. Dead in seconds. She should be afraid.
Her pretty lips part widely. "Oh. Are we taking our masks off?" she says.
She glances to Magilou, seeing her coming. "The center of mine, at least. And isn't that the trick to it? My world, everyone's...heh." Magilou's question, some seconds later: "What do I want? Hm, well, I'm just having a merry old day, aren't I? Kick over a few sandcastles, see what's in the clay beneath..." She flicks her metallic hand, like she's not interested. Then she gets uppercut by a doll, sent flying skyward. Again, her weight is low and she knocks up easily. But it changes. She's moving in ways that the planet's pull shouldn't allow, makign the full sequence difficult to land! She lands ahead of the final move and jams her hand down, disrupting the explosive finale with a wave of Ether.
Which leaves her poorly defended when Lily rakes across her with that golden blade. It leaves a red line down her front, not quite cutting through that reinforced armor.
But the way the debris Tabitha's been kicking up goes flying, the force of the blow is clear. Tabitha huffs, a welt forming on her exposed chest. "Not...bad," she coughs.
And then...Loren calls to her. She looks Lily in the eye. "Well, I suppose we are taking our masks off, then. Unfortunately, see..."
She brings her metal hand up and her thumb disjoints, revealing a mechanism beneath where it was. A single beeping light. A high-priority communicator? "Mine goes on," she says. Then she says, "Ashtoreth. Releasing."
Maybe Gwen remembers it - Tabitha looked different then, with longer hair and an outfit that didn't nearly accentuate her body as much, but she did used to have to do much similar, calling for release of some internal limiter, approved in scripture that sounded like a command to kill.
The reply from the communicator is audible.
"HAIL, VOID QUEEN! WE CHANT FOR EVERMORE TO THE PROUD AWOKEN QUEEN!"
She throws her mechanical arm to the sky. And snaps.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxLsI5AKLpE
A PORTAL opens in the air above her, a strange disc of anti-light, and her mechanical arm undocks from her hand and fires off into it. From it descend two things in exchange: One, another hand, more ornately crafted, with thicker fingers and thicker armor. This one isn't tactical black, but a more cathedral stone-like gray and brown. The other unit is a cloak and cowl, which she grabs out of the air and whips over her head and back. It turns out, however that worked, that inside the hood of the cloak is a silent black helmet, and a long, segmented cloak flowing behind her.
Then lights ignite on the face of that black helmet, displaying a simplified monocolor variant of the elaborate tree of circles and lines that forms the emblem of Solaris itself.
Tabitha...Ashtoreth, stands silently, space itself lensing around her in the wake of a sudden roaring Ether power.
She holds her hand up again, hand open.
"I know it's an imposition, but...Kindly, die."
The sky above her rips open, waves of portals a few meters wide blotting out the dome behind her.
Each one rains down something moving too fast - something pulled from somewhere else, moving so fast that when it impacts it explodes, chewing up the area around her, It's only a few seconds, but in moments, the terrain around her looks like it's been assaulted by artillery for hours. The portals wink out.
Ashtoreth's silent face remains.
DC: Tabitha deVriese switches forms to Ashtoreth - Who Tempts Even The Stars!
GS: Tabitha deVriese spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lily Keil with Hyperion Breach! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Magilou with Hyperion Breach! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Ruth Pauling with Hyperion Breach! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Hyperion Breach! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Xantia with Hyperion Breach! GS: Tabitha deVriese has entered Hero Stance! GS: Mighty and Riposte expired! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lily Keil solidly guards Tabitha deVriese's Hyperion Breach for 105 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Break applied to Lily Keil! GS: Lily Keil enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock solidly guards Tabitha deVriese's Hyperion Breach for 95 hit points! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Delay applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Countermeasures! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Lydia Seren solidly guards Rebecca Streisand's Ley Eruption for 73 hit points! GS: Lydia Seren activates Guard bonus! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards Tabitha deVriese's Hyperion Breach for 103 hit points! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Shieldbreak applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer! GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Tabitha deVriese's Hyperion Breach for 199 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Drowsy applied to Xantia! GS: Magilou solidly guards Tabitha deVriese's Hyperion Breach for 106 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Disease applied to Magilou! GS: Magilou activates Guard bonus and Gleam! GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Magilou loses 0 THP from Disease!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
At Xantia's apology, Gwen gives her a thumbs up with her left hand, the right hand being shaken out after hiding what felt like a suddenly manifested smooth rock wall. "Look, if they'll be up after a spell, I say it's th'same thing. Better to say you couldn't compete your mission 'cause you were knocked out than bein' pushed back."
The thumbs up feels premature when Gwen realizes that Xantia was able to capitalize on her attack earlier, smashing through what she weakened with her punch. "Holy cow.... nice one, Xantia!"
She really, really shouldn't be encouraging Xantia like this, as fun as it is to fight together with her. Loren is still a soldier of Solaris, and is likely holding back. How long will it take before he decides to throw caution aside and take the two of them on properly?
'DeVriese!'
--Or that.
That might become a problem, if Tabitha intercepts.
But first Gwen still needs to contend with Loren, who is still as much of a force to be reckoned with, especially now that he's irritated and having to teleport across the block to help his comrades *on top* of dealing with her and Xantia.
The blade clangs painfully against Gwen's right hand, its sharp edge slicing neatly through the thick leather of her glove. "Hrt!" She deserved that.
'Ashtoreth. Releasing.'
Xantia may be able to fully recognize the panicked look on Gwen's face as the courier manages to catch those words. "Xantia! Incoming! _His backup's coming now_!"
It feels like there was more time in the moments Tabitha took on her divine(?) garb, but that may have just been the shock from Gwen realizing a glimmer of what's coming next.
It seems paltry to just lift up her ARM against the Ether, but Elly's tutorial way back when has left Gwen with a few notes: Ether, in the end, is still energy.
And that is all she needs to know.
"Ngh!" Gwen's ARM glows white hot, steam and electricity seeping from it as it rattles outstretched in the air in front of her. She looks like she's about to throw up, but then the blessed hint of euphoria comes, the Mockingbird doing its magic.
Energy comes up through the courier's nerves in her shoulder, running up her neck and pooling in her right eye, then.... stopping.
Too much and her body'd likely not take kindly to it, if it even is going to with what she's doing now.
With an exhale, she staggers forward, shaking out her ARM, still red hot. "Y....... Yooou......." She'll try that quip again, when she remembers how to speak. Just give her a moment.
Gwen does take a moment to give Xantia a thumbs up.
It's not like that one time, in Luca. This is her glow, this time.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Bounding Flight! GS: Delay expired! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Gwen Whitlock accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bounding Flight for 0 hit points! GS: Amplify, Hyper, and Quick applied to Gwen Whitlock!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Knock, knock, knock, knock. Is it the sound of a devil, or the sound of meteorites falling to earth? Lan couldn't tell you if you asked. She gives her all to dodging - getting clipped a few times for her troubles. But Lan, like Lydia, is still here.
As is Magilou, who warns her not to get too comfortable with the idea of friendship. ...Are she and Magilou friends?! "Next time you're worried about someone, just say it! You don't have to bully other people into checking on them you know!" Lan calls out with an unusual amount of ire for her (that is, she sounds somewhat put out). "And stop trying to ship me and Gwen!" Is... is she still upset about that??
Lan takes a deep breath to center herself, glancing reflexively around the street. Gwen and Xantia are handling things on their side; Lily, Magilou, and Ruth are... holding their own, it seems, against Tabitha. Even when Lan had been turned to Solaris's cause, when she'd thought them all her comrades, Tabitha had still been an uneasy mystery. She wasn't paying attention, the time Tabitha had referred to her as Loren's pet.
Sure, Tabitha made Loren nervous - Lan notices these things - but she'd thought that was just because there was some aggressive flirting.
It occurs to her now, hearing Loren call out for aid and hearing Tabitha release her own limiters, that it wasn't just the flirting that made him nervous. It certainly wasn't what made Lan nervous about her.
It was also the barely-masked sense of something poorly-hidden, deep and dark and wrong and waiting to come out.
Her hands want to shake. Lan balls them up into fists instead, grits her teeth, and considers calling--
No. No, it's okay. The others have this. They aren't weak, either. But she'll have to pick up the pace as best she's able, because even with a skilled Drifter like Rebecca beside her, Lydia isn't the kind of threat she can afford to ignore. Bits of light lift off of the silver ribbon threaded in Lan's hair, flapping their wings, an eclipse of moths that crowd and cling and sing sweet lullabies...
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Lan Lilac has attacked Lydia Seren with Magic Lantern Butterfly Moth! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren takes a solid hit from Lan Lilac's Magic Lantern Butterfly Moth for 135 hit points! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Break, Delay, and Drowsy applied to Lydia Seren! GS: Lydia Seren activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia gives Loren an incredulous look when he doesn't seem to know what the cheating accusations are for. "How can you not know? You cheat all the time!"
That's all he gets before she charges him in tandem with Gwen. The results of their combined strike may not have been quite what she'd intended, but with Gwen giving praise, how could she not be pleased? "Heh heh. I'm just getting started!"
Looking towards the crouched Loren, she states, "...That's better. Use your own power. Drive is cheating. And bad for you." That's at least part of what that was about.
"...I hope you can change. For the sake of those who care about you." She drops back into a battle stance as Loren gets back to his feet. "I'm not one of them, so we're clear. Which is why--"
That sentence is left unfinished with Loren preemptively ignoring her impending 'advice' to leave before she gets to speak it aloud. She takes a little too long figuring out that the Ether that was employed has nothing to do with she has to worry about, forced into an awkward dodge roll to avoid the sword strike that comes after. Her shoulder is clipped in the process, but the sound of metal on metal gives away that it isn't likely to have hurt her much.
She does slip in her attempt to smoothly get up afterwards however, which could have cost her, had Rebecca not picked that moment to violently interrupt any designs Loren may have had on capitalizing. This allows Xantia to take her time in getting back on her feet, confused as she may be regarding what that could have been all about.
Any other plans she may have had are brought to an abrupt halt when Gwen warns her, prompting a confused look. "What...?" Only once a portal opens some distance away, and she senses the Ether building from that direction, does she realize that something dangerous is happening. Something that must be stopped. And that it's already too late for her to stop it. "No!"
Even knowing this, she takes off running in that direction. Even if it's a futile gesture, she could never just do nothing. She doesn't get far before additional portals open. A massive explosion almost directly in front of her soon nullifies the progress she made, sending her violently flying back. Xantia lands on her side, sliding painfully across the ground a short distance, before lying still.
She remains prone for a matter of seconds before picking herself up again. Though she must be in pain after that, her resolve hasn't diminished. If Solaris has a weapon like that, then it must be stopped, right away. Her expression has changed to grim determination as she resumes walking in the direction she just got tossed from, picking up speed as she goes. She ignores Gwen's thumbs-up. That's a bad sign.
Unfortunately for Loren, he finds himself positioned in between Xantia and Tabitha. Failing to read the signs of the change in Xantia would cost him, as she's quite prepared to go straight through him, closing the distance in no time flat and unleashing a rapid flurry of electrically-charged punches. Only one word can be heard from her now, and it's dripping with malice.
"Solaris... Solaris..."
GS: Xantia has activated a Force Action! GS: Xantia has attacked Loren Voss with Cardinal Impulse! GS: Xantia has gained 2 Combo! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Oh man," Lydia says. "Loren's not the one mind controlling me. Not even Seraphita's mind controlling me. I haven't even SEEN the guys mind controlling me since I got captured by Solaris! I bet Krelian's totally forgot about me! Haha...wow...that's super sad."
She glances to Loren before adding, "Hey he's not...uh...look, he's kinda a jerk but yeah okay he did grow on me a little and I mean he did save my life once but I guess he didn't because I wasn't in actual danger but I was in EMOTIONAL danger you see and I don't know. I mean I get it it's just..."
She sighs. "I'm tired of hating them. I just can't keep it in my head anymore. I don't know... I'm just kind of...sad about it now. I know it's silly, I don't expect either of you to get it but... The people really responsible for my situation, they control Tabitha and Loren just as much as they control me. Heck, if not more. The same people who tortured me...tortured Tabitha too."
"Can you save them too, Rebecca?" She asks, simply enough. "...I can't save anyone. I can't even help Kaguya. All the people I love I can't help them. So all I can really--"
She lets out a yelp as wind swirls around Lydia, ripping across her skin, gouging into her limbs viciously. She stumbles back--but she's already starting to recover. "Alright...no more miss nice riesenlied--I gotta give it my all--"
She blinks as a butterfly flaps onto her.
And then a full swarm of butterflies. "Ack!!! Butterflies!!"
She stumbles back as they sing sweet lullabies and--
A MEMORY
"Mom... I couldn't sleep..." Lydia says. "I just keep having the dream, trapped on that slab as he gets to work and--"
She remembers Riesenlied hugging her tightly, and singing--
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=levI42shC_c
NOW
A tear glistens in Lydia's eye--
--and her eyelids start drooping.
She sways unsteadily from side to side before she flops forward onto her face.
"zzzzzzzzzzzz...."
She dreams of being held by someone who loves her. That's one way to stop the indestructable at least.
GS: Delay expired! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'Oh. Are we taking our masks off?' The question is asked. From within the Malevolent haze, Ruth's response is silent as her rifle finds itself reloaded by the idle machinations of something else as she soaks in the emotional tenor of panic and worry - and in all this manages to catch fragments of talk about Beastfolk. What's in the fog is not as much consequence in the moment as Tabitha puts her mask on. The VOID QUEEN is hailed, a deafening snap that worsens the severe tinnitus in her left ear. And sights. Sights happen. Power rises, slowly moving about the Malevolent rain and its pooling byproducts to make way. Ruth's present perch is...
Demolished. In that span of a few seconds, complete and utter devastation. Looking from the outside in, it should be enough to have erased her from the equation entirely. On the last second of the waves of displaced things being forced through portals and space at ruinous velocities, one more time, there is a string of four shots to the coup de grace debris above. It is carved apart by these four shots into smaller chunks that still impact like meteorites - the fine difference between a decisive end and improbable survival as they further burst and impact into shrapnel.
The Malevolent haze is replaced by whatever colors Ashtoreth's power represents, as the silhouette gives way to something like a creature with a singular demonic wing fanned out in front of them - something that appears like it has the character of stone, its 'membrane' intact even with splotches of violet-tinged blood. It sweeps open to reveal what's beneath.
Her hair has gone from copper to a mossy green, four horns adorning her head - somewhat small and angled back behind her. Her build and height is unquestionably larger but that coat remains far too big. A long tail disengages from wrapping around a rifle that itself seems a struggle to wield even with her added frame, a naginata-like blade pointed in the air. Clawed feet find traction on the uneven, pock-marked ground. Her eyes open again to that violet glow, looking to her ungloved hands. They look entirely normal aside from the gray hue.
I'll always have the hands of a monster, she thinks as she rises up and flicks out a serpentine tongue once.
"No." Is her answer, eyes misty. "I do not deserve that peace."
It's as much fight as she can give in that moment. The despair gnaws. A see-saw of conflicting truths. She isn't the monster of the past as she has assumed the monster of the present made up of the worst of her past. She cannot be anything else but what she isn't. That tug of war doing the only thing she can, but that the only thing she can accomplishes nothing but it's what she must do. She's there, in her own despair. Like a carved grotesque (which her form basically is), set there.
It goes both ways - she's still there after that torrential display of power.
That alone might be statement enough.
GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Loren Voss solidly guards Xantia's Cardinal Impulse for 104 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to Xantia! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Lily suggests evacuation, and Magilou groans, a hand to her forehead. "Oh, come on! Do I look like their mother?!" Magilou, who doesn't look a day over twenty, doesn't really look like a motherly type in general. But then, her little ears are elfen-pointy, so perhaps it's misleading.
(She's not a mother any more, by virtue of the child she took into the fold being long-dead. Neither is she any more a grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother. The letter of her demands are true.)
"Surely not," Magilou asides to Tabitha's musing, on masks. "... since you're just taking off a mask to reveal another mask, after all." It's a thing which says as much about Magilou as it posits about Tabitha.
But she's having a merry day, and for all Magilou is paying attention to all the rest of the horrors being visited on the town, her eyes always come back to Tabitha, in the end. She thinks of the youngest Legate, from an era lost long ago. Well, if that girl hadn't failed...
Her friends did notice that person would be a ferociously unpredictable enemy, in the universe where they had to fight her.
Disgustingly nostalgic, isn't it? Put it down to the rain.
Magilou does see it, the way Tabitha makes demands on the world, forces gravity to listen. She notices; she's impressed. (It's a good thing, she thinks, that Lily promised to try and restrain herself. The three of them, together... and of course, there's Ruth, capitalising on what must be boiling underneath. That's a dangerous situation, too, even if she's positioned herself as a horrific sentinel.) But what she says, to Lily, is this: "Hey, sword isn't a magic element! If you keep mixing things up like that, my idiot friend is going to get way too many ideas!" Magilou is plagued by visions of Rokurou demanding she cast magic on his sword. What a terrible future!
But -- masks.
Magilou, who has been around the block a few (thousand) times, has the sense to bring her attention to Tabitha, at a title like 'Void Queen'. "Ashtoreth..." Her voice is lower, saying that; more evaluative, tied to earth, not a joke to be seen as her smile falls to a frown.
She backs up, in the face of the portal. It's not quite running away; it's giving herself space to calculate.
"Shit," Magilou says, as Ashtoreth's hand rises. "BUNKER!"
She throws her hand up, and -- it's not a shikigami, which forms her shield, this time. It is magic itself, all held in hexagonal glimmering light, of Earthpulse rather than Ether. It shines, translucent and powerful, and it expands out around her, around her position in the street, by that broken-windowed establishment and the Save Parrot.
It shudders, as the first explosion meets it. The translated force of that raining devastation chips at it in a thousand places, a million holes repaired in a declaration of absolute focus. Magilou shudders, with each impact. Her lips hang open, hungry breath heaving through her chest; her eyes wide with intent, that trace of purple pigment above the green which suggests just how deep the sins and magic tread. She cannot project her absolute defense nearly far enough. Outside its umbrella is the town's destruction; against that umbrella, her own.
Because every concentric barrier comes down to her, leads back to her, and the shield which blocked Melchior Mayvin in his path is one torn from her blood.
'Squarrwwwk...' Says the Memory Bird, wings flapping, as it looks up at eternity pelting against those hexagons. Can birds sound worried? That bird sounds worried. And this is Guara Bobelo's saving parrot, who sees people shooting each other at least once a week.
Crack, one series of hexagons fails.
Sparkling, another set of hexagons replaces them.
Her hair is not quite so bouncy, now; sweat has slicked that betrayal of her bangs to her face. It lasted only moments. It lasted for an era.
"Not... bad," she says, when finally the portals win out, all between those long-haul breaths which take so long to get from her throat to her lungs. The shield shimmers out of existence, too; Magilou straightens.
The Memory Bird is alive, still on its perch. Six feet away, there is a crater where a bar used to be. Well... Lily did warn her.
"If it's like that... heh... I'll show you a clever little trick."
Light bursts from Magilou, shimmering teal and violet, fluttering little flakes of colour which join with concentric circles of light around the star which is her.
"Spell Absorber."
It's a mandated suppression field, focused entirely on Tabitha. Magilou fully intends for the void inside her to consume the next spell she means to cast, bringing all her power down to nothing.
Absolute nullification, an echo of an age Magilou erased.
GS: Magilou has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Spell Absorber! GS: Magilou enters a Counter stance! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese's Mute Ward prevents an effect! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Magilou's Spell Absorber for 0 hit points! GS: Tabitha deVriese activates Evade bonus and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
What happens next on the other side of the battlefield causes her to turn her head, "What?" Rebecca's eyes go wide as a Portal opens in the sky from her snap. Her eyes growing wide as she sees the magnitude of Tabitha's transformation and the attack that follows, watching the portals drop down projectiles from elsewhere like raindrops on the others. Rebecca just looks sidelong at Lydia - slightly panicked, yet, as she explains it whatever anxiety she's feeling deescalates a peg.
"I don't entirely get it but... I think I understand enough." She says quietly. "I don't know. I don't know if I can Lydie. I can't promise it to a certainty that I can do it. Dean would be the one to tell you we will. Me? I'm the one worried about whether we'll all live to see tomorrow. All I know is..."
She takes a deep breath, "...The world is messed up, and I don't want it to be for any of you. I don't want any of you suffering. So... I want to try. I promise we'll try. And keep trying. And like I said before back when we fought at the Ethos Headquarters... if we're still standing at the end of this, we'll find a way to make it up to all of you for having to wait for us for so long."
And then Lan's attack strikes her and... Lydia has a tear in her eye... and... Rebecca holds her breath.
She's asleep?
Stunned, Rebecca looks Lan's way. "Amazing! I can't believe that worked but... you really did it!" She gives Tabitha a nervous look across the field as she asks Lan, "Help me move Lydie away from all this?" Rebecca tries to roll her over, which is... a struggle, "We've got big problems but... the least I can do for her is make sure she wakes up somewhere nicer than in the middle of this."
Rebecca tries to take Lydia by the arms while leaving the legs for Lan.
And then the two take off as fast as they can which isn't very fast at all - but somehow given the distractions on the field they probably make it without too many stray shots!
-=-=-
With frankly a LOT of effort as Lydia is very heavy, Lydia is taken away outside the town limits by Lan and Rebecca... and slipped into Rebecca's sleeping bag. It's just outside of town, as they couldn't wake her up much further...
... it's nicer than waking up in the middle of it. With a handkerchief she dabs away the tears, gently taking care not to wake them up. "Have good dreams Lydie. Wish Lan could give you a longer reprieve but..."
There's some hesitation, as if whatever words she was going to offer just... felt inadequate, then she stands up and whispers, "Sorry to keep you waiting again."
Looking sidelong at Lan, she gives her time herself before asking, "Ready to go back? Wouldn't be right to leave the job half-finished before she wakes back up."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
'Challenge accepted!' comes the call from Rebecca's corner of the field, and the shock plastered across Loren's expression, while fleeting, is the sort of look that just can't be faked. "What do you mean by--"
Power -- familiar, and not only because of him having experienced it at Lydia's hands before -- flows into him, bolstering him. It will be a boon for his own sake in short order, though he does not yet quite realize this.
He glances Lydia's way, and the fact that he's feeling a little weird about all of this doesn't diminish at all.
"What do you mean, I'm a cheater!? I don't cheat!" Loren says, getting more than a little heated about this. Has Xantia found some sort of weakspot?!
And then she clarifies just what she means. "...What? What are you talking about? That's-- that's using the resources you have, not--"
He wheels about suddenly, then, because he's really getting it from all sides tonight huh! "Leave me out of this!" he shoots back at Rebecca, despite the fact that the reason she's calling him out in the first place is sort of because he... intervened.
"And you! I told you, stay out of my way!!" he blurts out at Gwen, beyond frustrated. "Stop acting like we're-- we're enemies! Do you understand?!"
She will not, even at the point of a sword, it would seem. "At least she," and he makes a face like he can scarce believe he's saying his as he jerks his head in Xantia's direction, "she's got a damn brain! This is a battlefield, Whitlock!"
And then he undercuts his one statement when Rebecca shouts at him. "My mother? What's my mother have to do with this?!" he shouts back, incredulous. "What-- this is a battlefield, you, you stupid--"
If he cuts himself off after, it might be because he is currently being subjected to a rather localized Ley eruption. In a way, it's akin to a wash of the same forces that had infected him so long ago, if of a different 'color', a different 'character'.
Not this again, please, no-- It's no more than the memory of it that affects him so -- Rebecca's spell has none of the Primarch's force. Caught in that katabatic flow, he's thus locked in place by more than the force of the wind alone. But the stabilizing blessing of Rigdobrite remains a steady one within, and when the effect releases him, though he may stagger a moment, he is still upright.
He calls for aid, and receives a response.
"...Tabitha...?" Awe, it is said, had originally been meant in the sense of being struck dumb by someone's capacity: to be caught up with wonder and with fear. Has he ever called her by her given name before?
In an instant, the world is chewed up around him. In an instant, he is once again witness to power on a scope he'll never claim.
A snarl closer to home returns him from orbit: he wheels about in time to manage to parry aside one of those blows incoming from Xantia. She's...
Going to go right through him.
Going to tear him apart just to reach--?
One blow flies past him and his sword alike, slamming into the side of his head. The world swirls; he staggers, gripping the blade with both hands. "You-- what's with--" Even here he can barely keep her at bay, forced to at last give up ground just so he can buy time to drop back, set a barrier, and. And what?
Ah. One hand leaves the hilt of his blade, reaching for his kit and what's concealed there. Is it possible that once, this Medium turned the tide of that battle at the Photosphere? Can he think that?
"Material!"
He might as well.
"HYPOGAEAN PYRE!"
The world before him -- the world for Gwen and Xantia -- might seem as if it was torn in two, a rift torn down to the beating heart at the center of the world. This is the blood of mountains -- the very thing that permits them to be born, to grow. And sometimes, to explosively perish. There is heat, pressure as Dinoginos rises, before all at once it is -- for the world around them at least -- as if such had never happened.
"DeVriese! Watch out!"
Because is it even him Xantia's after right now? Can he be sure she's not after...
But there's no time for that. Loren has dropped to a knee in the wake of the summoning, green lines spreading along the ground and winding in an ever-increasing mandala. Line after line builds the pattern, radiating outwards, uncoiling as if it were a living thing.
Perhaps it is, when the light pours out of it, flowing from him to Tabitha. He needs to hold the line, one way or another.
Even if it means that all he can do is watch Lan and Rebecca carry Lydia away.
GS: Loren Voss spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Xantia with Material - Hypogaean Pyre! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Material - Hypogaean Pyre! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Loren Voss has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Restorative Arc! GS: Loren Voss has gained 1 Combo! GS: Loren Voss enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Loren Voss has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Xantia takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Material - Hypogaean Pyre for 227 hit points! GS: Loren Voss heals Tabitha deVriese! She gains 310 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Blind removed! GS: Lock State and Regen applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock suffers a terrible blow from Loren Voss's Material - Hypogaean Pyre for 225 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Not quite through the armor--not quite enough to kill. Lily's prismatic black eyes focus on Tabitha as she coughs, and she looks straight back at her, maintaining eye contact. She has no direct answer for her. Not at first. not until she notices that communicator, and then her eyes narrow once again, inhuman as ever.
VOID QUEEN.
Her eyes widen for a moment instead, s she feels the roar of Ether. Space shifts, and Lily is very close. She starts to swing her sword again immediately, hoping to forestall that set of blasts--but she is not fast enough.
Explosions rock the air, and Lily, floating in the air, can only throw up a barrier to defend herself. The golden light that surrounds her as a sphere erupts into being, and the blasts and impacts of Tabitha's spell rock into Lily's barrier, and in seconds, she is sent flying backward. Her barrier slams against a building and disintegrates a huge chunk of it outright, luckily hitting stone and not wood and thus not setting it ablaze. Regardless, the rest of the structure tumbles down in over the barrier, and then it winks out, leaving Lily crouched on one knee, gleaming with golden magical energy.
"...That level of Ether..."
Around her she sees fallen Solaris soldiers, their bodies knocked around by the sheer power in play. Her enemies. ...The enemies that she must destroy. But now, they're just fallen pieces, lost on the board.
...Lily's attention is drawn, for a moment, from the other side of the battle. "Xantia...?" Her eyes focus, and she sees her picking up speed. She hears that single word. "Xantia! No!"
The great, terrible form of a Hellion rises from where Ruth had stood, a single demonic wing and something of stone. Lily sees her--hears her answer--and that despair gnaws at her even as she worries over Xantia, seemingly berserk. "Damn--"
There's nothing she can do about the Lydia side of the battle, because she can barely even look at it. She only sees Loren channeling yet more power into Ashtoreth. It has to stop. This place...
This place can't survive much more of Ashtoreth's power anyway. So Lily rises to her feet again. "...Sorry, Magilou!" she calls out, and breathes in. Lily extends one hand to the air, and begins to float upward. Her arms gleam with prismatic circuitry; her eyes close. There is a sudden pressure, a heat that begins to build around her that becomes utter cold: ice begins to collect in a sphere at her person.
"...But I can't hold back..."
Ether channels towards her again, sucking out from the air, from the spells on display, from the heat and life in the ground itself. As it does, it moves up, up, up towards a central location: towards a point in the sky well above Tabitha. It becomes a glowing, golden bead.
It starts to grow.
As it builds, and builds, it collapses in on itself, and space swirls around it, nuclear forces suddenly igniting and fusing together. The sphere grows and grows as it detonates, twin columns of utter destruction slamming down towards Tabitha--and towards Loren, each some ten feet wide.
"THIS ENDS!"
GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Lily Keil has attacked Tabitha deVriese with The Swallower of the Sky! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Lily Keil has attacked Loren Voss with The Swallower of the Sky! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Loren Voss partially guards Lily Keil's The Swallower of the Sky for 224 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 65 FP! GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Lily Keil's The Swallower of the Sky for 98 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"...I got tired, too," Lan tells them. "I hated them all for a while, after I woke up." Even Loren - she'd been angry, so angry, so wounded, but she had seen enough of him for that hate to become pity to become sympathy to become... well, not love. Not like most people think of love. Sometimes people just become intertwined.
She still hates. But it's Solaris she hates, the sterile walls of Etrenank, the fake grass and the fake tree in the yard she couldn't leave. The bookseller who had insinuated she wasn't very bright, that it would be a waste of time to teach her to read. The system that made the Worker Bees.
It's a hate that Lan just can't shake off, a hate that brews heat beneath her solar plexus, that makes the Stranger's madness roil and bubble in her veins. She could tear it all away, tear that floating hell out of the sky--
Amazing, Rebecca says, and Lan comes back to herself.
Together they carry Lydia - she's heavy, but Lan is stronger than she looks - and find a safer place to put her. "Stay asleep a little longer, okay," Lan murmurs to her friend. "Have good dreams."
"Of course," she nods at Rebecca. "Can't let them have all the fun, right?" And Lan takes off running, because the sky has opened - and Loren is right there, in the maelstrom.
Her long legs eat up the ground, bringing her back to Gwen's side. "...You doing okay?" she asks the courier, with a worried glance after Xantia. "Loren, you too. Can't you, just, stand down?!"
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Ashtoreth's rain of light raises hell and razes buildings. The Void Queen stands silently by as this happens, the shots passing over her head by centimeters, even to ruffle the fabric of her cloak. Her shots pour down on the people assaulting Loren, but also on her own targets. She sees one of them grow furious, and smiles to herself beneath the helmet. Angry at her for just being here, huh? That's....probably fair. But that's fine.
She spots Ruth, down on her knees; but defiant, alive, declining the fate of death. She notices Lydia, too, and whips her hand around, firing several blasts from her palm. They're brighter, purer, searing white beams that scathe the ground, but they don't quite catch up before they're gone. She frowns under the mask. She doesn't particularly want to leave Lydia to that, but she can't distract herself that much. Something to follow up on, later.
But she has to be attentive now, with Magilou's mighty stance tying Tabitha down in mystic shackles that...shatter against her Ether. Ashtoreth doesn't even move. Her power ripples outward, space lensing, and the winding spell crumbles to motes.
"I decline," Ashtoreth says, her voice altered by the helmet. Still Tabitha's but projected and slightly modified. Then...then the big one. She looks up and she sees Lily preparing something ghastly. Unimaginable power. It feels like her soul is vibrating in her skull. Or maybe that's her teeth. She whirls around, her cloak trailing behind her, and LEAPS. It gets her out of the path of the worst of the erasing light, but the explosion still catches and throws her, sending her flying across the sky. She bounces off something up there - a platform made of the same gravitic antilight of those portals, which she touches long enough to bounce back into the air. She thrusts her arm down, pointed first at Lily. "Only when I say it does!" she calls, less cheer in her voice, and a SPEAR of pure-white light rips from her palm to unite heaven and earth, preferably via the medium of Lily Keil's abdomen.
Then she shifts her angle of descent, falling at an actual angle before crashing to the ground, heeled boots kicking up glass and dust from her landing. She holds forth her flesh hand and snaps.
Another gate opens. Just the one. Behind her, above her.
She turns that masked face to Magilou. She might be grinning under it, but the blank mask with nothing but Solaris' emblem for a face is an eerie stare, before a bolt of space matter rockets toward Magilou and detonates.
Then she clenches a fist, and the remains of a cart tumble toward Ruth. Her transformation is noted...but ultimately, for Ashtoreth, simply another body to destroy. She's good at bodies.
GS: Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Lily Keil with Hyperion Buster! GS: Tabitha deVriese has gained 1 Combo! GS: Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Ruth Pauling with Tracks of Midnight! GS: Tabitha deVriese has gained 1 Combo! GS: Blitz! Tabitha deVriese has attacked Magilou with Horizon Gate! GS: Tabitha deVriese gains 60 THP from Regen! GS: Tabitha deVriese has completed her action. GS: Lily Keil suffers a terrible blow from Tabitha deVriese's Hyperion Buster for 183 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt applied to Lily Keil! GS: Gamble: Low! Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from Tabitha deVriese's Tracks of Midnight for 133 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mighty applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: COUNTER! Magilou counterattacks Tabitha deVriese with ! GS: Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Tabitha deVriese's Horizon Gate for 204 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ruin! Disease and Hyper removed! GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Magilou! GS: CRITICAL! Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Magilou's for 124 hit points! GS: Tabitha deVriese activates Evade bonus and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
One thing is predominantly clear in the way that Xantia looks at Loren. Right now, she's not seeing him as anything more than an obstacle to be removed. It's precisely correct that in this state, she's not going to hesitate in taking him down as quickly and definitively as she can. Even if she may have been using her brain before, she certainly isn't doing so now. The way she just keeps wailing on his barrier after it's put in her way is more like a wild animal, seeking the most direct way to get at its prey.
With Xantia's level of brute strength, this won't hold her for long. If she hears Lily's words, they're falling on deaf ears. Only a drastic solution will be able to stop her now. And Loren has just the thing. There's only a brief moment of apparently awareness of the circumstances when Xantia stops her assault, just before she vanishes into the flames brought into being by Dinoginos. And with that... time slows down.
*******
'Ah, this is familiar', is the first thought that comes to Xantia's mind. Unlike most times where she experienced deja vu, she clearly recalls when this happened before. Back on Kattelox, at the battle over the Main Gate, Loren called upon Dinoginos as well, just like this. She got careless then. She got careless again now. Lost control of herself. In this lucid moment, it all seems so strange. How did she let it come to this, not once but twice?
Back then, Xenia saved her. Rushed straight through the flames to get her out before she could be burned to a crisp. After their falling out, would that happen again...?
No. This is no time to wonder about what-ifs. Besides, whether or not it would happen doesn't matter. She refuses to be saved by her. She'll handle this herself. If it's Fire, all she needs is the opposite. She knows she has the potential. She just hasn't been able to bring it out yet. But with the right tool...
*******
In real time, all that can seen within the flames is Xantia's silhouette making a quick movement. What exactly she does isn't visible, but whatever it is causes a bright blue light, quickly growing in size and intensity. She does not exit the flames, and the light within them does not die down. Not before the flames themselves do. And when they do...
Xantia stands there, her skin a light blue hue and still radiating that blue light, shining paler now. With the flames gone, the area directly around her quickly begins to significantly drop in temperature. In her outstretched right hand is the ice-infused clawed knuckle weapon from Spira, the Blizzaga Claw. Its formerly vibrant blue color has dulled to a light grey, which rapidly darkens, until the metal weapon falls apart completely, its fragments splintering apart as they hit the ground.
Quite the opposite from before, Xantia seems entirely calm now, briefly examining her discolored hands, before smiling at Loren.
"Thanks. I really needed to cool off a little. However..."
The hand that used to hold the weapon she drained of its magic now forms something new. A construct of ice grows out of her palm, quickly elongating into what at first seems to be a staff, until at the tip it branches out to the side and bends down into a sickle shape. In no time flat, Xantia is holding a scythe made of pure ice.
"...What was it she said to you just now? Something about reaping what you've sown?"
Even in this moment, Xantia's terrible habit of taking everything she hears literally is on full display. This will probably be the last of Loren's worries, as Xantia - way too calmly - swings that razor-sharp weapon at him. At least she isn't actually going for a killing blow anymore. That doesn't mean she won't still hurt him a lot, given half the chance.
GS: Xantia spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Xantia has attacked Loren Voss with Ethereal Weapon Construct! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
MEANWHILE...
"Can I have another hot cocoa mom...zzzzz..." Lydia snoozes.
Truly incredible super moves go off in the background.
GS: Loren Voss solidly guards Xantia's Ethereal Weapon Construct for 96 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Loren Voss gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to Xantia! GS: Loren Voss activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Tremendous power continues to well up around them. It's Lily's turn, again, to inspire feelings. There are pleas of people hurt even beyond those who wish dearly to see to Lydia's well-being. The way colors twist as those columns descend, the unrestrained anger and fury of Xantia over there, the mounting frustration from Loren over there. There is a time where the scope of horror is simply overwhelming and it touches upon difficult likenesses to when Guara Bobelo fell under siege so many years ago, and the Malevolence finds its hooks.
Incidentally, so does a flying, damaged cart. It's down to unsalvageable remains, but it's of enough size, enough speed, and enough just twisting the laws of space that even as Ruth finds herself trying to brace against it... it's not a winning clash.
The vitrol builds anew, and there's a shrieking hiss as Ruth muscles back against it and swats the cart with a wing... well after it has already embedded no small amount of shrapnel in her. A wildness in her eyes, screaming of 'IT ENDS' and 'only when I say it does.' The rain returns in force as her Domain expands, imparting her own will upon the world around her. Tabitha returning to the ground is a moment of vulnerability.
Vulnerability has ever been a tantalizing thing, as Magilou tries to set up a little trick to suppress Tabitha's power. Her vision swims, as images and sounds of that time surface in what's not going to be a whole lot of fun to watch.
Much less fun, when Ruth lunges the naginata-like blade into Tabitha's side. Should it find adequate enough purchase, it's a push that does not seem to care about anything Loren has done to assist her, or what second or third wind emboldens her to live up to her mask.
A part of Ruth can never let go of her own, and she reinforces it every day despite - and because of - everything.
"IT NEVER ENDSSSSSSSSS!" She screams it out... and just like that, another change in body language to someone deeply horrified of this but doing it anyway.
GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: Ruth Pauling spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Scars of Celesti! GS: Ruth Pauling has entered Hero Stance! GS: Shieldbreak expired! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
The magical weakening of Spell Absorber, Ashtoreth will soon discover, is only one part of nullification. Mute may not fall on her, but...
... when that space matter comes towards Magilou...
... Magilou takes it into herself, unresisting, welcoming.
And there is no explosion. There is simply nothing.
Neither, too, is there much explosion to Lily's Swallowing, where Ashtoreth leaps away from the horrific blow. The parts which would go wide are simply erased to nothing.
Nothing.
For that one, agonising moment, there is nothing around Magilou. The flames of those craters still. She does, too. She is not smiling; neither does she frown. Hers is the absence.
A thousand years ago, a man made a wish on an altar, twisted her to its shape and committed her to its thesis. A thousand years ago, a man discarded a doll. A thousand years ago, a woman made it her own, made it a mockery, made it his destruction.
This thesis which brought 'that boy' into the world also made...
Prototype of oblivion, Magilou replies, atonally: "Tetra Detonator."
Does Tabitha -- Ashtoreth -- understand the significance of those words, under Althena's Blessing?
It is not only fire which circles around Ashtoreth, a burning orb of all magma's memories. Nor is it only the ocean, all bound to a bead of power, growing, circling, speaking opposite to the sun. It is not just a tearing hurricane, clasped to a circle, swirling inside itself. Not just the earth, chthonic and buried, a tomb and a secret.
It is all these things -- together -- married as one.
In the end, Magilou was a failure.
She could not 'erase' those passions.
All she could do was make them her own.
Ashtoreth's magic, Lily's magic -- now consumed, she reflects them, curling in towards Ashtoreth, and where they meet her they explode in the light of a newborn star.
Magilou does not smile.
GS: Magilou has activated a Force Action! GS: Magilou has activated a Force Action! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Magilou has attacked Tabitha deVriese with Tetra Detonator! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese has activated a Force Action! GS: Tabitha deVriese partially evades Ruth Pauling's Scars of Celesti for 216 hit points! GS: Dispel! Lock State removed! GS: Disease, Disrupt, and Poison applied to Tabitha deVriese! GS: Tabitha deVriese activates Power Burst and Gleam! GS: Tabitha deVriese loses 30 THP from Disease! GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: High! Tabitha deVriese takes a glancing hit from Magilou's Tetra Detonator for 160 hit points! GS: Hyper removed!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
It still hurts a little, making her nearly as irritated as Loren is, even if she knows that, in some ways, he's right. And that's likely why it hurts as much as it does.
".... Xantia n I're both tryin' to stop this mess, Loren, so don't act like I'm worse! Like it or not, I know that if Solaris is ever gonna change for the better, it'll be because of y--!"
Her ability to speak had not been taken, just yet. Tabitha hadn't taken off/shifted her mask. She could still dress up that selfish part of her in noble ideas.
But noble ideas can't keep away the sins of Solaris, or the hubris. The suffering, the pain, the need for those connected to its painful legacy to try to rip their way free.
And when one makes its mark, another comes calling in answer.
When Lan finds Gwen collapsed on the ground, the Mockingbird's burning glow has cooled, the courier herself weakly shifting to shake off stone that should be there. One of the miracles of the Guardians, in that a mountain could rise in the heart of a city and then disappear as if it has never been. Rolling over, Gwen looks bewildered at Xantia as she strides confidently, in a way that doesn't echo the exuberance Xantia normally possessed.
At least Gwen can speak now.
"Shit... Lan, Xantia's..." She tries to get up, but grips her side. "Goddamn it, Loren, pull back!" What could make him pull back?
"Don't make me take a hit for you! 'Cause I will!!" Threaten him.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Shut up!" is his inelegant rejoinder to Gwen, as she tries again to reason with his better nature. "Just shut up!"
Xantia catches up to him swiftly after he falls back, slamming against his barrier again and again as if she were crazed. It's a far cry from the young woman he's come to know over the years, and almost as if it weren't just Tabitha she were trying to reach, but...
Desperation joins the emotional stew in those handfuls of moments before Dinoginos comes forth. It may be a potent, heady mix.
And even for all that, it seems that what has been wrought has been a temporary reprieve. He and Tabitha are still standing, but--
A Hellion, Loren realizes suddenly after, rising to his feet. Guara Bobelo not only has a half-dozen witches lurking about, but it's got a Hellion in its ranks. No wonder why the order had come to clear the table, so to speak. Is that what Nusakan had also learned -- what Loren had passed on to command once they'd been able to have that rendezvous?
It quickly becomes a secondary concern. A half-dozen witches, and of course, among them, the worst of them all. He can feel the pressure of Lily's Ether rising about him, and he can know that it's already too late to do much of anything except brace for what is to come.
It's bright.
His barrier lasts perhaps two seconds at most. It dissolves before his senses.
It's bright even with his eyes closed and everything hurts.
He's dropped back to his knees, upright perhaps only by the grace of his blade. He uses it almost as crutch to get back to his feet, swaying gently.
His gaze meets Lan's own in this instant and for one moment, perhaps what he cannot say to her will be writ plain across his face: he can't. As long as he's not alone on the battlefield, as long as he can still fight, as long as there's an enemy: to do otherwise is impossible. He has a duty, first to his people, his fellow soldiers...
And as always, Lan comes in last.
'Thanks', Xantia says to him then.
Her weapon is broken.
...She doesn't need a weapon.
His blade meets her own, locking with the icy scythe. His arm shakes; he braces his grip with both hands, for now only holding her at bay.
"DeVriese!" Loren calls out at last. Just as a single look can carry a thousand words, a single word can carry the weight of a dozen more.
And into this strained instant, Gwen too voices that he should stand down. That he's the one who should stand down, after all they've done. That he's the one they can reason with, because he's less of a--
Perhaps Ruth will be able to mark it well: the chaotic, toxic that erupts from within the young man. As for the rest, they may get one warning.
"I told you to SHUT UP!!"
He can't make the excuse that it's uncontrolled, not anymore. Not after what he learned from Seraphita. This is deliberate, in the same way someone might snatch up a weapon during an argument and take it somewhere it should not go. It's just that, Loren's brain is a weapon.
It doesn't look like fire. Orange, green, yellow. It's as if someone took the concept of fire and extrapolated a bit: the fractal swirl moves like flame. It burns like flame.
But it's nothing more than a riot of a mandala, uncoiling and rolling about him wildly.
GS: Loren Voss has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Atar Vandaka! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Xantia with Atar Vandaka! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lily Keil with Atar Vandaka! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Magilou with Atar Vandaka! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Ruth Pauling with Atar Vandaka! GS: Loren Voss has attacked Lan Lilac with Atar Vandaka! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Magilou takes a solid hit from Loren Voss's Atar Vandaka for 146 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Lily Keil solidly guards Loren Voss's Atar Vandaka for 23 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Lily Keil activates Arcane Font! GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Ruth Pauling solidly guards Loren Voss's Atar Vandaka for 71 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Guard bonus! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Gwen Whitlock solidly guards Loren Voss's Atar Vandaka for 72 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Moderate! Lan Lilac takes a glancing hit from Loren Voss's Atar Vandaka for 42 hit points! GS: Lan Lilac activates Evade bonus and Gleam! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Catastrophic! Xantia critically guards Loren Voss's Atar Vandaka for 54 hit points! GS: Xantia activates Guard bonus! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Ashtoreth... declines. She calls right back to Lily, who turns to face her blade of light. It sinks in--and slams into Lily, off-center but hard enough to pierce directly through the witch on the ground, who spits blood as a result and stumbles back. In the wake of the spell she used, dodging was a poor effort in the first place--it only meant that it didn't go through ehr spine.
That masked face, up there...
The gates keep opening. Xantia seems to calm. And Ruth... Ruth screams. Lily grits her teeth. What is the play here? This situation is much more dire than she'd hope. Even seeing magilou's incredible power, every one of those elements at once, does not particularly cheer her in the moment. She and Magilou could keep going, she thinks. ...Magilou definitely could; Lily herself has what should be a mortal wound. But will Magilou even want to? ...But what if the Hellion goes berserk? What if the city falls under the efforts of their defense? Because she's quite certain that Loren and Ashtoreth can keep going, too...
Loren surprises her. That sheer toxicity that comes from him--it's not uncontrolled at all. The strange fire is something she cannot manipulate, cannot change. The rioting mandala sees Lily throw out a barrier of pure darkness, which is able to absorb most of the spell, though not all of it--and it worsens Lily's wounds to make the effort. She bleeds more heavily than before, gritting her teeth. The power calls to her, as she does. She hears it--she thinks of Magilou. She thinks of Elly. ...And then she thinks of Leon.
"...Voss," Lily calls, and closes her eyes again. The sorceress begins to melt. Her form simply ebbs away, flowing into inky darkness as she becomes a pool of shadow, from which rises a humanoid silhouette--her silhouette, with prismatic eyes and circuitry faintly gleaming from inside.
"VOSS," Lily calls, not even trying to talk to Tabitha right now because--frankly--she doesn't think Ashtoreth cares enough about her comrades for it to matter.
Her voice, though, is strange--it echoes as if there are two voices, comes from multiple directions, as much from the mind as from the ears.
She puts out her hands, and from each outstretched palm shoots a beam of power, created by a sudden circle of machinery in the center of her hands. Each one rockets out towards one of the leaders of the Solarian contingent, and Lily's form gleams when they hit or miss, shifting, gaining in power and repairing damage.
"...If you pull out," she says, "That's the end of it. But if you don't, I will take every single soldier you've brought in here with me, no matter how many people I have to kill. You and your witch will probably live. ...But your friends and allies won't. I promise."
"That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
DC: Lily Keil switches forms to Omega - Synthesis!
GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: Lily Keil spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Loren Voss with DIRECTIVE - A D A P T -! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Tabitha deVriese with DIRECTIVE - A D A P T -! GS: Lily Keil has gained 2 Combo! GS: Recover! Break and Disrupt removed from Lily Keil! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: Tabitha deVriese suffers a terrible blow from Lily Keil's DIRECTIVE - A D A P T - for 175 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tabitha deVriese gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Recover! Blitz removed from Lily Keil! GS: Lily Keil drains Tabitha deVriese! Lily Keil gains 88 temporary hit points! GS: Loren Voss suffers a terrible blow from Lily Keil's DIRECTIVE - A D A P T - for 192 hit points! GS: Lily Keil drains Loren Voss! Lily Keil gains 96 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia at least doesn't seem to be out of control anymore. That may be cold comfort when she's still palpably radiating with Ether and swinging a sharp implement. The calm smile to go along with it probably just makes that more unsettling. It's hard to tell what she's thinking, locking blades with Loren like this. Though she may appear calm now, she's still not listening to anybody.
She does, however, react when Loren begins to invoke... something. Its nature feels vaguely distressing, if nothing else because she can't identify what it is exactly. Well, aside from 'burning'. Taking the better safe than sorry approach, she releases her weapon, causing it to disperse in motes of water-elemental Ether, and thrust both hands outward, conjuring a solid slab of ice to stand against the bizarre mandala. Standing right at ground zero, it's all that stands between her and a possibly gruesome end. It forces her back a significant distance... but in the end, the barrier holds.
Once the pressure ceases, she shatters the icy barrier, its fragments too dissolving into the air. She still looks calm, but the amusement has vanished from her expression. She takes two steps back in Loren's direction, when...
"...Ugh!"
Abruptly, Xantia drops to her knees. With a sizzling sound, the normal color of her skin rapidly returns, then turns a brighter red. Beads of sweat are quick to form on her brow, and her breath becomes labored. Quite the opposite of a few seconds ago, suddenly she's burning up. Not quite as literally - this doesn't affect the temperature around her. Only if someone were to touch her skin would they have a bit of an idea about how hot she feels.
None of what she did was as easy as she made it appear, for that short amount of time. It stands to reason, of course. Drawing ice magic out of a weapon and using it to force her own latent potential for using ice to manifest, all while standing in the middle of a fiery conflagration? None of that is normal. Xantia may never know why, in that crucial moment, she was so certain that this was the best course of action to save her life. And why she was so certain that it would work the way it did.
All she knows right now is that in doing so, she seriously overextended herself. This feels very much like previous instances of severe overexertion, except where that usually makes her feel extremely cold, now she feels hotter than she's ever felt before. Who knew that feeling hot could feel just as miserable as feeling cold? She didn't, not until this moment.
Long story short: it doesn't seem like she's about to go anywhere for a while. Not without someone else's help, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Tabitha deVriese has posed.
Ashtoreth has a lot to track here, between a Hellion, Satan If He Were Lily Keil, and whatever the damn-ass hell Magilou is. Her power surges thanks to Loren, but even she has limits, even fully released as she is.
The Hellion....woman, she decides to use, comes screaming at her, an unimaginable lament in that wailing voice. She surges to one side, but that slice of a naginata blade still cuts into her, tags her enough that the ripping and rippling it sets through her obliterates much of Loren's protection, scything away that shield of health slicing into her with affliction she feels on a spiritual level. She coughs, flesh hand coming to her chest as she breathes. "Alright, you're interesting," she quips. The mask doesn't erase her personality, just gives her something concrete to remind her to stand up straighter.
And then Magilou. What Magilou does is...impossible. The multi-elementalism is difficult for the best of mages; Tabitha deVriese knows that well. That many elements is near impossible even within Filgaian magic, let alone Lunarian. But even without that, the way Magilou seems to still everything to do it...
"What are you?" Ashtoreth breathes, and then explodes. The light of that impact sends her shooting backward so fast that it's impossible to clock other than that the first undetonated building behind her loses that status quickly, crumbling in on itself, collapsing. She groans, lying there for a moment or two. But she rises soon, shaking the dust off. Her legs aren't even shaking. Lily fires that annihilating light at her, and it slams into her full-on. She tries to wade into it, bat it aside, but it strikes true and there's another explosion as Ashtoreth's Ether barriers flare and erupt. She struggles. She thinks she can win this, but, is there any point?
Besides...Lily calls to Voss.
and Voss calls to her.
She hums, dusting herself off idly. Even with the cape on, there's a strut in her step, an unbroken sway to her movements as she draws back into the main arena, the glassed-over area that has been obliterated five or six times by now that used to be the epicenter of Main Street.
She looks around and hums. "...I think we've made our point, Loren," she finally says.
The lights on her helmet turn off, and she turns and waves. "Come along then, gentlemen, I believe they have quite a bit of dusting to do."
And she just...starts to walk off.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan hasn't seen Xantia fight more than once or twice. She knows the young woman is strong - she seems physically focused, with some kind of energy or magic to make her hits count for more. It's an amazing style, one that Lan would have liked to learn more about even if she could never mimic it. She's never seen anybody just... digest a whole weapon like that and then create a new one.
Lan kneels next to Gwen, checking her over quickly. Bruised ribs at the least, she thinks, and Lan can't fix those - not here, not in the time they have. Not before Tabitha deVriese and Lily and Magilou finish turning the streets to slag under their feet, not before--
Not before Lily carries through with what Lan is becoming increasingly sure is a promise.
Loren isn't standing down. He's angry, and hurt, and lashes out--
Flame washes over her - a strange fire, one that's all angles and refractions, but it burns like flame even if it doesn't look like it. Lan cries out in surprise, falling backwards, but doesn't go down. Instead, she pulls herself back to her feet.
"This isn't going to be another church massacre," she tells Loren, staring him down with her pale eyes. "Go home."
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"haha kaguya you look so healthy zzzzz..." Lydia snoozes. "You showed that stupidly named illness zzzz..."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
.... So it turns out that threatening to take a blow for Loren did not turn out the way Gwen expected. .... Or did she expect this?
Of course he'd get mad.
And then, the fire would come.
The kaleidoscope of colors somehow makes the fire bypass that initial panic button, but when the pain comes, Gwen is already rolling away from the force, landing somewhere close to Lan.
Lily is saying something, and... Tabitha. Is Tabitha still there?
Xantia.
Exhausted, Gwen looks up towards Lan, still standing, and relaxes, closing her eyes.
There's no need to add on; Lan's stance and words say everything.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"I'm Magilou," the witch tells that collapsed horror, and perhaps it's still 'what' she is, after all, "the millennium witch who has seen a hundred cities fall. I am all things best forgotten, and all things which should not be forgot. And right now -- primarily -- I am running out of patience." She doesn't sound irritated, though. She doesn't sound much of anything at all.
She stopped talking, somewhere along the line. All her ceaseless banter, gone to the wind.
It's not that she doesn't hear Loren's desperation, his anger, his boiling, horrific conflict. She hears it, just as much as she sees that thing which isn't quite fire, a mandala which ought to warp her mind more than it does. She is visitor to it, outside of it, outside of herself.
"Careful," Magilou says to Loren, tone still even as a tomb, when those flames fade.
"Going on as you are... you'll hit your limit."
She doesn't explain just how ominous that is, framed against Ruth and her anguish.
Tabitha walks away, and Magilou's gaze, hollow and vacuous, falls on Loren, to see if he'll follow suit.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Perhaps later, he'll be able to reflect on how strange it is, what Xantia has just accomplished. How familiar it was, too.
For now, all he can really reflect upon is the quiet relief that, once her barrier fades in the flames' wake, that she's stopped.
Loren has not stopped himself, though.
How long can he keep going? Without the use of something like a rosesol or going as far as Drive, there'll eventually be a limit to what even he as a First Class citizen can put out. But even so, the fact remains that he could theoretically keep himself and Tabitha going a good while yet.
To say nothing of his own less supportive-inclined abilities, as is currently on display. The flames pass and he almost feels vindication, satisfaction...
His gaze comes to rest on Lan. At Gwen.
... ah, but that never lasts, does it.
He has paused even before Lily calls to him, her voice resounding.
He doesn't look at her, instead throwing out a hand as that he feels her Ether intensify, come roaring back towards him again. It sizzles off the barrier he summons. It chews through it without ceasing. It rips something out from him and away, slicing neatly into his remaining reserves.
This time, he doesn't howl and scream at her -- there's no demand for his own satisfaction. Lily is still talking to him, and he has turned his head to gaze upon the ones of which she speaks.
In the scheme of things, it would be an acceptable loss: succeed in the mission, gain domination. Seize glory.
For himself, though...
"DeVriese," he says again. Slowly, deliberately, he's sheathed his blade. "...I am formally recommending retreat."
His shoulders slouch when she says they've made their point and quite simply turns about to walk off. As if slightly bewildered, he turns about himself, as if uncertain what it is he should do. He comes face to face with Lan.
'This isn't going to be another church massacre', she tells him.
Go home.
It'll be shameful, when he reflects later. But he turns from her and runs, Magilou's parting remarks seeing him off.
He'll hit his limit. Perhaps he already has.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Lily may be right to be worried. There's a wide-eyed wild quality to Ruth's eyes that, even with the ability to form reasonably coherent statements at ear-splitting volume, is one of many sure signs that this is a Hellion whose worst is currently taking them for a grand tour-de-force of unrestrained destructive emotion. She even chases Ashtoreth past the four-fold elemental explosion, a grinding noise as sparks fly from the bayonet blade dragging into the ground.
Only Loren's outburst stops her from making successful pursuit, her wing folding inward again in a protective gesture as the ambient Malevolence-fueled rain dampens it against stone-like flesh already battered and bruised. Lily carries threats of escalation to a natural terminus, and it speaks to more of the bile circulating through her wavering heart that continues to course more Malevolence through it.
In her guilt - a desire to atone for everything - she's not that keen on the idea of being upstaged on wronging Guara Bobelo. She was, in her own words, a heartless monster who never could have been capable of kindness to others. All of it sets the course for one of many contradiction-filled death spirals into self-fulfilled prophecy that goes nowhere good. For all the talk that the surface dwellers must be controlled under the thumb of Solaris, the historical Ruth Pauling... may be one of the few people who leads credence to that flimsy excuse to oppress.
There is a primal shriek that gives voice to some of the residual pain and anger of Emrys Mire as Ashtoreth takes their leave on a casual strut, and from that she can already taste and feel the heightened fear in the damaged streets of Guara Bobelo from that. The rain ceases, leaving Malevolence-filled puddles about.
Then comes motionless, for all of a handful of seconds. Her tongue flicks twice in succession, and it tugs at her. There's a small group huddled and frightened by what little cover remains, and like a ravenous beast aware of where their next meal is going to be, she starts in their direction. The attached blade of her rifle drags anew, and like putting seasoning on a favored treat, it brings out more of it.
They're scared. They're hurt. They're vulnerable.
...She comes down to a kneel before their hiding place, and it's like she's a completely different person. A gentle smile. No sudden movements.
A wing flares out, as if protective.
Can you really be a good person when it is the pain and suffering of others that emboldens and nourishes oneself?
Can you really be a heartless monster when one has a heart open to others' vulnerability?
Hellions are creatures of contradiction, and in the same span of time she may have just come within inches of brutally murdering the Void Queen and Lily with gleeful abandon and remorse is a woman now offering quiet prayer that the dead find their way to the Garden of Toldoka without suffering further.