2023-03-11: Persona

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<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

For those who entered Sin, it has been many long hours of exploration. Sin has never made anything easy for Spira or Spirans, and that holds true.

It has been a trek through a misty landscape; through paths of stone that end abruptly; through fiends on the prowl, seeking prey. Eventually, though, they made their way to a place where the mists clear. They came to a grand staircase of ancient stone, leading down into darkness.

Everyone gathered before pressing on.

Now, one by one, they come down the stairwell. Step after step, they descend to a stone pavilion hovering atop a sea of pyreflies. The pyreflies form streams, which flow into the form at the center of the pavilion.

It's Seymour.

He has transformed himself. He is statue-like -- like almost all of his forms, perhaps his mind's commentary on how he has become petrified in his thinking in unlife -- but stranger than before. He stands taller than any human would, perhaps twice their height. His skin is stone, though a strangely shimmering violet and grey that seems to be pearlescent. A stone altar rises from his hair and his back -- fused to them -- and it is connected to four huge stone wheels.

The wheels are intricate. Stone platforms, but with rings underneath that allow them to rotate. On each are four colored orbs -- red, violet, blue, yellow -- with a glyph upon each.

As the first people step down, Seymour's eyes open.

"So," he says. His voice booming unnaturally. "You come. I knew you would. It is appropriate... that you are here to see the moment of my final ascension."

The four great discs spin as Seymour speaks -- and click into place, with two of the violet orbs -- one east, a second west -- on each side of Seymour's head. "I shall be part of Sin. I shall become the Clysmian. Forever... immortal... the the power that corrupts this world!"

DC: Seymour Guado switches forms to Seymour Omnis!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seymour Guado with Two Orbs!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado heals Seymour Guado! He gains 85 temporary hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu has gone along the long hours without complaint. She has traveled through the mist, her heavy skirt tracing through, and has fought many a Fiend along the way. It is another leg of their journey, to her, even if there are others along for this one. Others, who have fought for Spira--who she at least will never forget, even if Spira does not know who they are.

Allies worthy of fighting beside. Even when they baffle her or get on her nerves.

Against Sin.

So finally, she comes to a stop at this stone pavilion, and looks to Seymour, in his statue form. His strange altar, the stone wheels...

"...The elements..."

But she looks towards his eyes. "..."

Lulu turns from him, towards Yuna.

All this way. All this time. Lulu remembers the girl who she met in Bevelle, the girl who she grew up with in Besaid.. But Yuna is not that girl any longer. She does not need to remember the woman Yuna has become. She is there; she is here. Lulu regards her, and does not have to summon up her feelings for her Summoner.

Yuna, who has come so far. Yuna, for whom she would have become the Final Aeon herself... and who refused that deal.

Yuna, who it always feels like is leaving her behind. And so, perhaps one last time...

BOSS ACTION!
    >Talk

"Yuna," Lulu says. "...This is it."

"Go, Yuna. End him."

GS: Lulu has attacked Yuna with Go, Yuna.!
GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado has adjusted their boss level for 16 opponents!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu has gone along the long hours without complaint. She has traveled through the mist, her heavy skirt tracing through, and has fought many a Fiend along the way. It is another leg of their journey, to her, even if there are others along for this one. Others, who have fought for Spira--who she at least will never forget, even if Spira does not know who they are.

Allies worthy of fighting beside. Even when they baffle her or get on her nerves.

Against Sin.

So finally, she comes to a stop at this stone pavilion, and looks to Seymour, in his statue form. His strange altar, the stone wheels...

"...The elements..."

But she looks towards his eyes. "..."

Lulu turns from him, towards Yuna.

All this way. All this time. Lulu remembers the girl who she met in Bevelle, the girl who she grew up with in Besaid.. But Yuna is not that girl any longer. She does not need to remember the woman Yuna has become. She is there; she is here. Lulu regards her, and does not have to summon up her feelings for her Summoner.

Yuna, who has come so far. Yuna, for whom she would have become the Final Aeon herself... and who refused that deal.

Yuna, who it almost feels like is leaving her behind. Not because she ever would--but because she has come so far, and Lulu does not know that she can follow. And so, perhaps one last time...

BOSS ACTION!
>Talk

"Yuna," Lulu says. "...This is it."

"Go, Yuna. End him."

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    If Seymour looks like stone, then Tidus's expression is stony as he and everyone make that last descent to the pavilion amid a sea of pyreflies.
    
    "You just don't give up, do you," he comments. "I'd almost respect that if you weren't such a *piece of*--"
    
    So naturally, Seymour cuts him off with his booming welcome. Tidus rolls his eyes and draws Cadalbolg, his grip firm on its braided hilt.
    
    "Ascension, nothing. We're here to see you finally get the Send-off you deserve! There's nowhere left to run, Seymour! You're going DOWN!" he shouts, voice rising sharply at the last word. Everything he's upset about--everything he's been stewing on lately; Jecht, the Faythe, the dream that is Zanarkand, and the way he's been lying to Yuna and the others--this, *this* is the target to vent all of that on.
    
    And so Tidus charges right in, and never mind caution, never mind even boosting his strength or his defenses. He gets right in on that pavilion as the wheels turn and the orbs click into place to stab Seymour right in his dumb--maybe not his face, with how tall his his now--but he's stabbing SOMETHING, and he's stabbin' it good.
    
    Though he doesn't say so to Yuna, getting right up in his face means that he'll have to focus on him over her. Pretty soon Yuna will be unavoidably a target, but Tidus will do whatever it takes to delay that moment. To whit: at the last second before he strikes, rings of dark power circle the glimmering blue blade. If he strikes true, he'll perhaps be able to slow Seymour and his reactions, and thus make it easier for the others to avoid his strikes.

GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Delay Buster!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Tidus's Delay Buster for 104 hit points!
GS: Blind blocked!
DC: Pearl switches forms to Six Seas Style Martial Artist Pearl!
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata's had a... to call it 'easy' would be underestimating it, but definitely had an *easier* time of exploration within Sin than perhaps her allies; the unnatural, death-like nature of the place was actually beneficial to her strange undead biology, and as such, she's been the one to offer standing out front and risking herself when the path gets perilous.

    (This also means she's the one who's gotten owned by Great Malboros and Demonoliths, because eff those things.)

    That was then, though, and this is now, and Lunata's...

    She can't help but think of how stone is a common theme with Seymour's forms. And how stone carries with it a lot of meaning in Spira. Much of its langauge is engraved in its temples, unchanging, unmoving... and what are those orbs? Surely they're nothing good. Perhaps when they go blue-yellow-red, he'll blast these SeeDs with many magic, fu-shu-ru-ru-ru.

    "Hey," is what Lunata answers with, looking up towards Seymour as he grandly welcomes them.

    She lowers her head.

    "I thought a lot about what I was gonna say to you, on our way here. I thought I already had everything in mind, but when it came time to it, it turns out I don't really know what to say..."

    A deep, centered breath, even as the discs spin. "I've got a lot of valid reasons to just really hate you. You endangered my village, you tried to make a Clysmian out of their fear, you turned me into goo, you threatened and harmed Yuna and her entourage and all of Spira and want to destroy everyone, and you also even nearly hurt Jay that one time in Zanarkand..."

    There's a sad, tired kinda smile.

    "But it turns out I'm not amazing at that. I'm better at feeling sad than angry. But it doesn't really change how this is gonna go. You need to go, Seymour. Do you feel it? Spira's ready to move on to a future outside of this spiral of death you talked so much of..."

    She draws Orochi-Agito, and stoops into a low stance with her blade horizontal to her.

    "I owe you this much, as someone stuck in one cycle, to another. Hope you have a good rest--"

    Lunata disappears, in a shower of ephemeral cherry blossom petals!! And then she's reappeared near some of the orbs, trying to just jam her steel into one of them to pop them off with a violent motion.

    "--my first friend in Spira."

GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seymour Guado with Cherry Ronde!
GS: Lunata Croze has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Lunata Croze's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Lunata Croze gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Lunata Croze has completed her action.
GS: Yuna accepts Lulu's Go, Yuna. for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Lulu's Reload! activated!
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Lunata Croze's Cherry Ronde for 55 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cover applied to Lunata Croze!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku's been a touch on edge throughout the misty path. Even though she'd been in countless strange places before, inside Sin counted as the strangest of them. "Alright, now we face our greatest challenge yet." Rikku announces solemnly as she points to the top of the stairwell, "Stairs!"
 
As if it were a minor joke just to break the tension because well this place is freaking her out a bit. "Anyhow, down we go!" She charges straight down into the stone pavilion and...
 
"Uh guys? I promise you I was kidding! It was a joke! Seymour you didn't have to prove me right you meanie!"
 
Pyreflies stream down, and Rikku backsteps quickly, more alarmed as Seymour coalesces into this almost statue like thing, the stone wheels ones her eyes dart from side to side as if suddenly freaked out by what the implications might be of his new levels of power.
 
Rikku calms herself by looking to Yuna, and Lulu. And despite how freaked she is, she smiles, "Your final ascension? Yeesh, read the room Seymour. The only thing its time for is your family reunion. Show him Yunie-!"
 
Rikku then flicks something at Seymour from afar, it looks insignificant, but upon making contact, it suddenly erupts into a gout of poison and disease, meant to penetrate even his stone exterior and soften him up for what's coming soon.

GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Use: Poison Fang!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Rikku's Use: Poison Fang for 33 hit points!
GS: Cripple, Disease, and Poison applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Finally.

Finally, they are able to make their way into the proverbial belly of the beast. The Heart of Sin. Cyre proceeds ever deeper downwards, the Clysmian's twisted corpus throbbing all around him. It may not have blood or a 'heart' like a traditional sort of giant cetacean, but he can feel it even still. The weight it impresses upon the ley is a tangible thing for him-- An awful heaviness that squashes in all around him, threatening to suffocate him where he stands.

The feeling of helplessness is alleviated somewhat by the recognition that a sizable part of that fear is Fengalon's-- and by the elation of finally making meaningful progress against what seemed an implacable foe.

But.

Then.

Who would appear... but Seymour Guado.

"I should have known that Desperation was nothing but a warm-up for you," Cyre mutters, the spite and disgust absolutely dripping from his voice like a warm, unpleasant syrup. At least he's not completely alone in his animosity-- Tidus and many of the other Guardians seem to share a similar sentiment, "But to be honest, I'm kind of glad that you saved us the trouble of tracking you down in this maze of a whale."

The High Priest of Fengalon levels his staff at the monster that once was (and regrettably, still IS) Seymour Guado, leans back, and--

Hucks it at his face with all his might.

Air screams around the simple wooden staff, surrounding it with a shell of impossible pressure. It smashes into the barrier of Spiran magic, and, Fengalon willing--

Straight through, shattering it into a million pieces...!

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seymour Guado with Grand Pressure!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Grand Pressure for 127 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Purge! Cripple, Disease, Poison, and Shield removed!
GS: Purge explodes for 54 damage!!


<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.

There's a lot of Sin in here.

That's probably a metaphor. Emeralda doesn't really do that kind of metaphor, though.

Emeralda has been moving through Sin in the company of her peers (not that kind of metaphor either). She's stayed close to Fei and Elly, mostly, because the interior of Sin makes her uncomfortable. Even she's not sure if it's because she's in the giantest monster she's ever seen or because of the weird blending of biology and not-biology, alive and dead, Pyrefly and physical - but it's not a place she feels particularly at home in.

Which, well, she's not alone. Honestly the surprise is more that Emeralda feels comfortable so many *more* places than other people.

Eventually - past Fiends, paths, and who knows what else - there are, as Rikku puts it and Emeralda echoes, "Stairs!" It seems to amuse her, at least, and Emeralda hustles after Rikku in a way that makes it look like she's going to fall down the stairs.

She doesn't. She never does. It's the most infuriating part.

They go down the stairs, and see: Seymour. Once again. "...why would you want that?!" Emeralda replies, voice strident. "That's a horrible thing to want to be! You shouldn't *want* to corrupt things! We've fought you before and we can do it again!"

Emeralda looks at the wheels with their symbols of the elements. She draws in energy of her own, and expels it - Ether magic, not local sorcery, a relatively simple but also relatively powerful effort. Emeralda has no sorcerous finesse, but she has power behind it that feels close to Elly's.

But having seen the wheels, she goes with the option that's not on them: a rock lifts from beneath Seymour, angled to slam him on the way up before reaching the top of its ballistic arc and then dropping right back down on his head several seconds later.

"Wait, he turned you into goo?" Emeralda calls to Lunata, afterwards. Her tone implies she thinks this is more cool than gross, but then again she can turn into a puddle, too, so she may be biased.

GS: Emeralda Kasim has attacked Seymour Guado with Terra Feist!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    As Tidus remarked at one point, Ethius can occasionally be rather optimistic about the odds on some fronts. He thought that the 'loose' emergence of Fiends was a good sign for Sin's weakness. For all the pyreflies involved in maintaining it, any that fail to go right back into the massive beast means that it may at present lack the capability to renew itself.
 
     This did not change that the 'loose' Fiends remained deadly threats that made those hours of exploration stretch out ever further. (He has offered to burn befouled items by Great Malboro breath.)
 
     As he sees pyreflies stream to a central point into the stone pavillion, there is a part of him inside that goes 'oh.' In all the logistics and risks in weighing what everyone was doing, he forgot about at least one other possibility looking upon Seymour's form. Some of those Fiends might have been summoned forth by him - whether by cause of their Guado lineage, being a powerful Unsent, or some combination thereof.
 
     "I suppose my observations were premature as regards the Fiends within Sin," he'll voice out that much, but then he takes special care not to talk over the Spirans who address Seymour and his aims. He stands further back from that platform, tapping the butt of his staff loudly as a small gaffe.
 
     "Seymour's ambition would not stop at being the power that corrupts 'this' world. Having seen what Sin is capable of withstanding... Sin is a threat to anything it can reach."
 
     Of this, Ethius is certain as he sets his unyielding stare, going through the Symbological casting motions through chanting and gesticulating as his Symbological tattoos - not terribly well-covered in his current manner of dress - light up and betray the otherwise simple and quickly-completed nature of the spell in question.
 
     "Optic Flare!" A streak of a disruptively hot and bright mass of heat rushes out towards the Unsent that would Ascend, but Ethius is at best making a guess as to how Unsent perception of the world around them works.

GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Seymour Guado with Optic Flare!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Emeralda Kasim's Terra Feist for 64 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Shield applied to Emeralda Kasim!
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly walked without --

No, she walked with a lot.

With people who she loves, who she trusts, and who she has come together with. No one here is her enemy, even if some of them are closer than others.

And she also walked with a sort of stark terror which she was able to keep from driving her into turning around and running right back to Winnipeg, in large part, because of those people and a little help from bedrock training.

Here they are, at the stage of an ascension.

"You don't have to do this," Elly says. Her head hangs, a little.

"I won't claim your life... whatever led you here... didn't happen. Or that it wasn't real. But there is good in this country, too. To throw away good for the sake of the bad will only..."

"You'll just make certain that the good can never grow," Elly concludes.

Exhaling, Elly thinks to herself: I didn't think he'd listen, but I feel better to say that. She raises her hands before herself, clasping them together. Her fingers interlace (if with a quick single-eye opening glance towards what Emeralda says, and past that, to Lunata, but never mind--)

Emeralda draws on the Earth; Elly, naturally perhaps, goes with Fire. A burst of shrieking flame, intense enough to be more like blue-white than the familiar cherry-and-orange colors of hearth and home. A streak of it. A test, perhaps. How hard is that shell?

GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seymour Guado with Thermo Calcinate!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Ethius Hesiod's Optic Flare for 31 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Interrupt applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Sin's interior has been... a strange, otherworldly experience. Jacqueline has been a lot of unusual places, but few match the strangeness she's experienced today. She's glad Lunata is here - she's had to rely on her strength more than once. And now, finally, she, and everyone else, is here.

Seymour, too, has become strange. This new form of his... she takes in every detail, looking for any hints at what he might be capable of now.

"That's right." She replies with a nod, as he says he knew they'd come. She shakes her head, then. "...Nothing lasts forever, Seymour. Not even you. You could have had longer. ...But one way or another, this ends."

Her eyes are drawn to Lunata, as she pours out her honest feelings. She can only offer her a sad smile. ...It's a shame it had to come to this.

She looks toward Ethius, too, offering him a nod and a frown.

"...Yes. We have to stop this now." She says.

She reaches into her bags, drawing out a bottle of strange liquid. She hurls it at him - and with a snap of her fingers it detonates right in front of him, sending its contents splashing outward in a cone to avoid catching any of her allies in the splash. Where it touches, everything action feels just a little bit more difficult to accomplish.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seymour Guado with Trouble Bottle!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Calcinate for 109 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado's Weaken Ward may block the effect!
GS: Weaken blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

During the journey within Sin so far, Xantia has tried to keep her distance from Others, in general, as much as possible. Fights were fine, but conversations... well, she quite obviously hasn't felt comfortable, and who wouldn't feel on edge venturing directly into this ancient scourge. Usually the first to rally her fellows into optimism at times like this, it could be reasoned that perhaps she preferred to stay in the background, rather than letting people notice that even she didn't have a good feeling about all this.

It's certainly a part of it, but not the whole story. Mostly she just wanted to avoid Questions. About her current thoughts and feelings. About the notable absence of her recently recovered left bracer on her arm. About how she's been visibly sweating, which in Xantia's case rarely seems to happen except at times of extreme overexertion. She's been able to bluff a little bit, but everybody knows she's virtually incapable of outright lies. At a time like this she felt it was best to just... not have the conversation, not yet. Ultimately, this is stalling matters, but with luck, perhaps it might be possible to stall until their business here has concluded.

And then, of course, there's the one standing in the way of that business. They all knew this would be happen, given what they learned before. Xantia silently reaches into one of the pouches dangling from her waist, to retrieve the domino mask, reapplying it for purposes of symbolism, and conviction. Seymour may not be the target of her vengeance in the name of the Crusaders, but he got in the way of it, so it feels only right. She takes a deep breath, then extends an arm forward.

"Seymour Guado! You proclaim your wish for an existence solely bent on causing others suffering? This will not stand! Your lingering presence will be cleansed from this world, so says Mystery Crusader X!"

She exhales, seeming to deflate a little. "...Talking like that is actually really tiring, so that's all you get, you're not even worth the effort. Instead, how about this--!" Flames erupt as an aura of fire flares to life around her, and she charges straight for Seymour, heedless of whatever he might planning with those weird discs of his.

"You want to ascend? Here, let me help you with that!" Naturally, this is followed by a powerful flaming uppercut.

GS: Xantia has attacked Seymour Guado with Elemental Fury!
GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xantia's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    Ever since learning exactly who exactly is at Sin's controls, Shalune's mood has been ebbing. She's been trying to keep people's spirits up - especially given this space is absolutely full of them - but the trip downwards into the depths gives her a lot of time to reflect on topics she's been quietly shying away from the whole time, and she's nowhere near immune to feeling uncertain about their chances.

    It comes to a head in the only way it can, as whatever is left of Seymour gazes down upon them. Shalune's not sure if there's contempt in his eyes or just some assured sense of inevitability - but something tells her it really doesn't matter. Her knuckles grip the shaft of her staff until white edges through them as the Praetor reaches a crescendo, and she's forced to stop as she sucks in a long, slow breath.

    She'd like to think that she tries to find the best in people. Optimism and realism don't exactly go hand in hand on Filgaia, but somehow she's managed to make it work this far. It got her the members of the Carakin at her back, even if she's following a different path. It's let her forge effortless friendships amongst the Veruni and the Hyadeans. It's given her Lunata and Jay, against all odds. ... what feels like a lifetime ago, it gave her a guide when she was lost in a whole new world, and Lunata a hope that ultimately got dashed in front of her, time and time again.

    She's silent as Lunata speaks, her head slightly bowed as she waits for her childhood friend to sort out her feelings. The mechanic wouldn't dare get in the way of that, especially when Lunata covers so much ground a lot more eloquently than she feels she could manage. It's only afterwards that she lifts her head enough to stare through a fringe of pink, her lips set in a thin line, and sums up her own thoughts in the only way she can find. "... I really wish it hadn't come to this," she mutters under her breath. "And I really hope you're ready."

    The seams between the segments of her metal staff thrum in a tone remarkably similar to that of Big Shal under effort. There's a soft green glow from whatever makes up the core of the rod, drawn up its length - and Shalune spins the weapon once in her hands before grounding her feet with it squarely aimed at Seymour's torso. There's no recoil as it fires, but it's hard to say it does anything - a ball of energy just hangs in midair in front of her, bobbing forwards almost lazily.

    Then Shalune slips sideways as she spins her staff again - laterally this time, as her grip shifts to rather unceremoniously hammer the projectile forwards, the ball crackling and splitting apart with the strike into a shotgun blast of miniature lasers. She races forwards in their wake, almost chasing Lunata in. "She is grounded if she lets that happen again," she somehow manages to call back to Emeralda while also sounding deathly serious about it.

GS: Shalune Amira has attacked Seymour Guado with Star Scatter!
GS: Shalune Amira has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Shalune Amira has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Trouble Bottle for 0 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Cripple and Jam applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Xantia's Elemental Fury for 131 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mighty applied to Xantia!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Shalune Amira's Star Scatter for 163 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.

"Be serious," Paine chides a stairs-fearing Rikku, though she knows there's no use in it. She's kept her hand on her sword hilt, though it is heavy enough for its size that she did shoulder it for now, letting it rest on its flat. As she follows down a few paces after Rikku, she lets her babble about Seymour go half-ignored, like a spherecast in the background, her own reaction an up-down flicker of a white eyebrow. She looks back to Yuna, intending to give her a short nod, a last affirmation of her service before it is tried. But when Tidus goes roaring off ahead, audibly enough that Paine need not glance to notice, Paine instead decides on a jerk of her head in his direction, and a brief thump of her palm on her chest: 'I'll take care of him.'

Turning around, Paine drops the blade from her shoulder, her arm muscles tightening to catch its weight around her waist level, the dark grey blade held wide at her side. Walking forward, she reaches out and catches a gil's worth of Rikku's arm between thumb and forefinger, giving her a brief but sharp pinch.

"Just a polite reminder that you can get hurt," she tells the blonde sardonically, already breaking into a run.

She's no match for Tidus in a footrace, but her goal is not to catch up, but to fill in: when Tidus's dark magic is disappearing, Paine leaps through it, whirling her sword overhead like a bolas in order to strike a hard, diagonal downslash. Seymour looks tougher to cut than ever before; she'd like to test that out.

GS: Paine has attacked Seymour Guado with Gravestone!
GS: Paine has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Paine's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Paine has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Paine's Gravestone for 66 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Slow applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei Fong Wong looks right up at Seymour. He marvels in absolute disbelief at him for a moment. He isn't sure what to say--though he does stay close to Emeralda. He reflects on just how far Seymour is going to destroy himself. Destroy everything. Really, how far he is going to destroy himself to destroy everything.

Some part of him is strangely sympathetic to this, though maybe not strangely considering what Fei knows about those sides of 'himself'. Could he even understand if he tried to? He doesn't think he could consciously, only in the deepest and dreadest parts of himself.

He swallows and then darts forward, deciding to go all out from the getgo here because no matter what happens, SEymour CANNOT remain in control of Sin.

Dark ether suffuses his being as he gets to swinging his fists wildly and rapidly at Seymour, his posture becoming more and more wild and brutal with every strike.

He screams as if he hopes to eradicate his own inner darkness with every strike, his inner self.

So he could just be what the world needs him to be, what HE needs himself to be.

And also it's just frankly a relief to go off and just punch this guy who has caused so much grief and pain. Finally, some part of Fei thinks, he can finally make things better.

Correct.

GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seymour Guado with Infinite Darkness Ether Channel!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado critically guards Fei Fong Wong's Infinite Darkness Ether Channel for 41 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.

    Once the path into Sin had been opened, Pearl had spent her time preparing herself. Readying herself for the battle to come. Alone.

    Now she walks with those arrayed against the embodiment of death and obsession. To put an end to the first of many threats that lie within. To put an end to Seymour Guado.

    "It is strange, is it not?" She murmurs to Lunata. "That someone so bent on cruelty and hate can be instrumental in turning away from it." She looks up at the statuesque being. "But your part is done. The dead have no place is the story now. This world is for the living."

    And then Pearl starts to dance. A slow dance that grows faster, emulating the furious waves of high tide, channeling chi and her water blessing towards Lunata. Another outsider who had sought something- and found something. "Let us see him out."

GS: Pearl has attacked Lunata Croze with Torrent Dance!
GS: Pearl has completed her action.
GS: Lunata Croze accepts Pearl's Torrent Dance for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst, Hyper, and Surge applied to Lunata Croze!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Boudcca travels through the horrors of Sin as a visiting ghost -- though even she is horrified by the hulking Behemoths and the fiends like it who lurk here.

    If only they were the most dangerous thing they would face, here.

    Boudicca at least bought water to pass out to people, after those grievous battles. (Lunata definitely got one.)

    And now, facing up to...

    "Seymour," Boudicca says, and her voice is cold to his offers. "You would become the Clysmian... I see your will is unassailable."

    She grasps her tonfa in hand.

    "Nevertheless, I will assail it."

    Boudicca leaps forward, to strike at that horrific statue with her blunted weapons -- too martial to be a healer's staff, but perhaps not so removed from the genesis. She draws strength and guidance from Tidus, in this moment, and his own sword-blows. "... because there are so many people who still love life in this world!"

GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seymour Guado with Rabid Lunge!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.

    They had waited long enough to transmit a message. And then they had walked on.

    The path onwards had wound them deeper, deeper into the depths of Sin. There had been dead ends and there had been Fiends, both lurking to ambush them from within the mists. But they had found their way forward, and in time, they came across the stairwell.

    There are more Pyreflies in here than any other place -- perhaps excluding the 'other world' of the Farplane -- that Citan has seen in his time in Spira. Yet, it is hardly unexpected--

    Nor is the form that emerges from the Pyreflies.

    "...So, you claim that this is your ascension?"

    The air around Citan fleetingly brightens, the light rippling through the mists. Seymour cannot be permitted to remain in control of Sin.
    No, Sin cannot be permitted to exist, any longer.

    "I can see that you are determined... and that you are beyond reason. Nevertheless... I shall not allow you to continue."

    So he says, as he readies himself for the fight that is to come.

GS: That attack doesn't exist. []
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Citan Uzuki with Kouga!
GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Citan Uzuki's stances have changed from Counter to Counter and Stoic!
GS: Citan Uzuki gains 24 THP from his Cautious!
GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
GS: Citan Uzuki accepts Citan Uzuki's Kouga for 0 hit points!
GS: Cover and Riposte applied to Citan Uzuki!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Here, now, at the end of the world, Yuna and Seymour meet for the final time.

He claims the power that corrupts this world.

Lulu looks to her encouragingly, and Yuna thinks of every time the two of them have been parted on their journey, and how enormous the agony; how she struggled without her Guardian. Her Lulu, who thinks of her now, at the moment of truth, not because she's worried for her but because... she can. Because she loves her. And Yuna loves her, too. Her and Rikku, who encourages her to do the obvious. But of course she was going to. After all: Yuna made a promise. It is time to fulfill it.

Tidus is upset; Yuna cannot argue with the use of Seymour as an outlet. He has it coming, and even if he hadn't personally caused so much destruction, violence against a fiend is ultimately grace. He leaves her behind, to Guard her; and she loves him, too, but not because he's putting his body on the line to buy her the time she needs to do what she must. She loves him because of the lake, and the ocean; because of spring flowers and autumn leaves. And Paine, too, she loves. Yuna loves so easily and so thoroughly. Even someone as prickly as the dark swordswoman cannot escape her feelings. Though that silent oath, at a time like this, didn't hurt, either.

"Yes," Yuna says, simply, softly. She doesn't disagree with Seymour's words. What he's said is indeed exactly what he is so desperate to claim. The power of a death that is both corruptive and corrupt; that swallows the world in suffering; needless, without meaning. Yes to him, and yes to Lulu and Rikku and Paine.

Lunata speaks at length; Yuna does not. Not yet. She both shares and honors the other girl's sadness, and wants to give it the space and time it deserves. There is still a little of that left, time. Just a little. Just enough. Time enough for everyone to talk to the monster that was once a man that was once their friend.

---

Yuna's summons have gotten more elaborate over time. Outside of Sin, the matter of invoking the tri-aeon Magus Sisters was absurdly long and complex, with many spins and flourishes and a whole lot of sparkles and rainbows.

What she does now is the opposite.

And yet, for all of that, each motion she makes -- bare, stark, unalloyed -- captures a purity of intention that translates into perfection of movement, all the same. Sometimes that is all a dance is: a single -- singular -- gesture.

With Nirvana held loosely at her side, its phoenician head downward, towards the earth, she takes a single step forwards, towards the one who once saved her life.

She raises her hand to the ceiling without ever losing eye contact with the one who once tried to murder her. Then twice. Now, she's lost count.

The lights go out.

She can be felt long before she is seen.

A presence of phenomenal power.

And that of phenomenal grief.

---

 <SoundTracker> Cruel Dilemme - Shiro Sagisu - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvyVhbqFqDE

It's the strangest thing. How can something so familiar be so unfamiliar?

Not that anyone ever had enough familiarity with this aeon to breed contempt; Yuna is only the second person in history to ever summon her. But, She has been seen before. Many had the opportunity at Luca, when Maester Seymour, hale, hardy, the living embodiment of the future of Yevon, led the defense of the blitzball stadium and then the city itself, against the invasion of Althena's Guard.

Others had the opportunity at Macalania. Where the aeon was defeated at the hands of the very summoner calling her now. Where that fayth's original dream was extinguished forever, along with the life of her son.

And it is the same, theoretically. The explosion, high above, which draws the eye and restores a dim emergency-light pallor to the chamber, is that dying-star red. At the portal's center, a massive chain emerges, links thicker around than a man. It plunges downwards like a titanic, industrial strength fishing line -- into the ground, which ripples silently on impact.

Sin is the largest embodiment of Death on Spira...

...but he's not the ONLY embodiment of Death.

The chain sinks into an Underworld. Around it, darkness expands -- widely -- then more widely still, like a gaping mouth, groaning, unhinged by the size requirement of what must pass through it.

And then the chain begins to retract, bringing a shower of hellfire with it, bubbling and gouting up at the plane where Spira, where Sin, becomes somewhere else, as though matter and antimatter interact with spectacular results. There is a very heavy weight on the end.

A weight so enormous that three more chains have to slam in like harpoons to support its rise.

To Yuna, it is the weight of the whole world. Of choices made and consequences suffered. Of too many endings and not nearly enough beginnings. She is holding very still; even paler than usual, like the fading memory of the moon behind deep, dense cloud. She is trembling.

She is trembling, but; she is strong. And so the chain is strong, too.

The portal undulates with reds, blues, indigos. And, lifted by the chin from the spiky anchor, She is drawn out at last.

Bound in all directions by chains and shackles; a dark and fallen angel, with tightly enfolded wings that shimmer with blood; a corrupted and rising demon, with spikes on every surface and a great and hungry, many-fanged mouth; and bandages, bandages that cover all of her flesh but her immense and bony hands, folded over her chest as though she lies in an upright coffin, which is apt;

and her eyes--

--those white-hot, battle-mad eyes.

Anima is not bound for the protection of Seymour.

She is bound for everyone else.

But for all that she is absurdly massive -- only her upper half can even emerge from the portal, which remains at her base, undulating shadow -- she is... different.

The aeon is the child of fayth and summoner; the symbol of their unity. Seymour's Anima was angry, terrifying; rage embodied.

Yuna's Anima possesses the strange, horrible beauty of the corpse, and, not strange at all, is enormously sad. Her relationship to the concept of death is entirely different.

Her relationship to the fayth is entirely different as well, of course. The fayth, who, rare for an aeon, is captured in an icon at the aeon's neck, hanging from the heavy metal collar at her neck. A woman, angelic also in repose, in halo.

A woman who, in some small ways -- the arch of her nose, perhaps, or the set of her eyes -- in death, she bears a particular resemblance to someone Seymour Omnis used to be in life.

The lighting finally normalizes, but a miasma of pain remains.

Yuna is an unwavering, tiny figure at the aeon's base.

"I will share your pain with you," she promises gently, and not to Seymour. She has no more gentle promises for him left.

Anima SCREAMS; the whole room shakes; her chains CLINK with the retort of point-blank gunshots;

soon everyone will share her pain...

GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Grand Summon!
GS: Yuna has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Yuna has launched an attack Link!
GS: Yuna's stances have changed from Counter to Counter and Hero!
DC: Yuna switches forms to Anima!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Yuna accepts Yuna's Grand Summon for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: Seymour Guado partially guards Seraph Boudicca's Rabid Lunge for 41 hit points!
GS: Shieldbreak applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Quick applied to Seraph Boudicca!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

In the end, it must end inside of Sin. There's poetry to that. Billy Lee Black has seen - sometimes at remove - the evils wound tight around Sin, both by its own structures and by the people who have built their tents around it. Fighting through the epicenter of it all with what feels like nothing at all, but joined by the people he has come to trust on this journey, with Fei and Elly and their child, he can come through.

By some miracle, he still has ammunition for his gunsmokes, silently loading with quick fingers as they descend the final stairs. The ocean of spirits, a sea of pyreflies, silently leaping in impossible whirls. He claps his gun shut and then signs the cross against his forehead, a silent prayer for benediction and meditative act of centering, both.

He looks up and watches as the creature that Seymour has become. He remembers the smiling, distant, but affable man he'd met elsewhere on the journey.

He remembers another, too, and it takes him a moment to realize Seymour doesn't have a red skull.

"I can't say I don't understand the thought that righteousness is a myth used to stop people from screaming," he says, quietly. "But I've found that is mostly an excuse used to hold together a broken heart."

The pale-haired boy brings up his gun, daring to seek for Seymour's eyes. "The kind of heart that becomes a monster all too often, I think."

"Your absolution comes at the end of this dream, creature," he says, and fires.

GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Seymour Guado with Aim With Your Eye!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Billy Lee Black's Aim With Your Eye for 114 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

"So eager to kill me, Tidus?" Seymour asks, with a harsh laugh. He sees Tidus charge right in -- his blade strikes into his body, and it really is like stone. Tidus's sword hits, sparks flying off, and leaves a light glowing gash there. "So be it. Consider this a favor -- for your death means your father's life!"

His eyes turn towards Lunata, then. He looks at her friend -- and it is an alien thing, the way he does. His face is the same, but there is something hardened within him.

He hears her words. But he cannot understand them; he cannot hear what Lunata actually tells him. He listens, and then his face becomes a rictus.

"Then, my friend..." A rictus of rage, as he screams at her. "YOU DARE PITY ME!?"

Her blade slams into the orb. It strikes in an explosion of sparks -- not destroying it, but a gash is left across it. It glows, too.

The flask explodes when it strikes near him. The miasma that erupts around Seymour makes him hack and cough, and it lingers around him.

Seymour throws out one of his hands. The first offensive action he takes is to summon up a storm of ice. Icicles explode out of the ground in a wave in front of him. Several stab for Lulu; one rams at Tidus, trying to hurl him backward; another explodes from the ground and flies up to catch Lunata mid-leap, after her slash; one last one slams up for Rikku's midsection after she throws her flask.

"Desperation was but one step in the process!" he tells Cyre. The High Priest of Fengalon rushes forth; the staff slams into him, and the barrier he erected a moment before shatters into nothingness. "And I will not be deterred by your like!"

Flame swirls -- it forms into a fireball, over Seymour's shoulder, and then it crashes down and slams towards Cyre. Whether it impacts him or the floor, it explodes in a fiery blast.

"This world is a horrible place. An endless spiral of misery and death, unending," Seymour says. "To corrupt it -- to destroy it -- is noble!"

Another fireball hurls from him, and comes slamming down for Emeralda. This happens even as the rock that Emeralda sends at him slams into his statue-like form, smashing and shattering against him.

"It is just so!" Seymour tells Ethius. "I intend to end the cycle upon Filgaia, once I have finished with Lunar!"

A brilliant and hot blast of heat explodes in front of Seymour, scorching him. He grunts in pain -- and responds with flame of his own, as a third fireball explodes down towards Ethius.

Then, another blast of flame explodes up -- Elly sends blue-white fire of Ether, smashing into his statue-like form. Seymour grunts, sharply. "The good... I honor that, I preserve it, BY ENDING IT!"

Another fireball swirls into being -- it swings around in an arc, like a missile, and comes crashing down for Elly.

"Then try to end it," Seymour says, looking to Jay. "And I shall finally end you. You, who have opposed me at every step... you will be among the first dead to pave my way into becoming Sin!"

Her bottle flies. It smashes about him, caustic contents exploding over him -- and his body seems to stiffen more. Seymour snarls; then, he summons up several spheres of water. They swirl about him -- and one hurtles down towards Jay with speed.

"You will not cleanse me!" Seymour shouts down to Xantia. He looks at her for a moment, his eyes narrowed, even as she lunges in. She charges across the ground -- then launches an uppercut, her fiery fist slamming into him.

A moment later, another of those watery orbs explodes down, and tries to slam into her bodily.

"Ready, Shalune?" Seymour says. "Yes--yes, I am ready! To destroy this world! To free YOU AND LUNATA BOTH!"

Her staff swings out, the ball shooting out numerous beams. They slash and cut into Seymour's body, leaving prismatic gashes across it. He screams, and another orb of water hurtles down, and tries to slam into the pink-haired Drifter.

Paine leaps in a moment later. Seymour's eyes narrow at her -- this Guardian of Yuna's that he hadn't met. A sign, living and breathing, of how their worlds diverged. He grunts sharply, as her blade bites into his stone-like flesh.

He is, indeed, tougher.

His final orb of water flies down, hurtling in towards Paine, then sweeping low across the stone platform, to slam in for her legs.

Fei leaps in for him. Darkness surrounds him, and he screams at Seymour -- and his fists slam in for him, repeatedly. Each blow sends out motes of darkness, leaving prismatic cracks across his body. Seymour throws a hand up.

And a bolt of lightning explodes down from the void of Sin above, then crashes down towards Fei's head.

He looks to Pearl -- a Summoner, too, and a former assassin who attempted to kill him. Seymour's eyes narrow, then a second bolt of lightning comes crashing down for Pearl's head, with a thunderclap to join it.

"Assail it if you like," Seymour says. "I will shatter you -- as I shall shatter your understanding of this world!"

Her staff slams into him -- smashing his midsection, with a burst of light where it hits. He motions with a flick of his hand -- and there is a flash of sparks, a smell of ozone, and then a bolt of lightning drops down for Boudicca's head.

"You will not allow me? And who are you, to permit or forbid me? You are but a human!" Seymour shouts down to Citan. "I have become more!"

Another blast of lightning crashes down for Citan, with that brilliant gold-white flash that accompanies it. As it clears, he hears the crack of a gun. Billy's pistol shot hits him, slams into his stone-like chest, and sends up chips of stone and pyreflies.

"This is no dream... this is my will, made manifest!" Seymour retorts. "You will not end me! BEGONE!"

Lightning crashes down, one last time, for Billy.

As the afterimages of his lightning onslaught fades, Seymour's eyes turn -- towards Yuna. A person who, once, he thought understood him. If he were still alive -- in truth and in heart, able to grow and learn -- he might understand what he squandered. Not love, which he never wanted, but friendship and understanding. From Yuna; from Lunata; from Belize.

She is proof of the failures he can scarcely admit to, and he can't suffer her presence.

But it's another presence that forces him to stare for a moment. There is shock written on his statue-like face. It is terribly human, and terribly pained, as he sees Anima rise up. He breathes out, softly, as his mother comes before him. "No..."

He remembers her Aeon. Her Fayth. Both were lost to him.

"...so even you, in the end, stand against me," he says. "So it shall be. All turned against me. All incapable of understanding me..."

He throws his hand out. Anima screams, and that scream rattles the many spears of ice that explode out from the floor. Several shatter; the ones that don't stab through ice dust, as they all slash and strike up for Anima's bound and chained body.

GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lunata Croze with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Interrupt expired!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Emeralda Kasim with Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Watera!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Xantia with Watera!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Shalune Amira with Watera!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Paine with Watera!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 145 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod critically guards Seymour Guado's Fira for 74 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Pearl with Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Citan Uzuki with Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Billy Lee Black with Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: COUNTER! Yuna counterattacks Seymour Guado with Counter Attack!
GS: Yuna partially guards Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 130 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Yuna's Counter Attack for 71 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 156 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Seymour Guado's Watera for 65 hit points!
GS: Disease applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Emeralda Kasim suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Fira for 254 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz partially evades Seymour Guado's Fira for 149 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Shalune Amira takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Watera for 79 hit points!
GS: Disease blocked!
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Boudicca takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Thundara for 95 hit points!
GS: Hyper, Shield, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: COUNTER! Citan Uzuki counterattacks Seymour Guado with Mufuu!
GS: CRITICAL! Citan Uzuki solidly guards Seymour Guado's Thundara for 118 hit points!
GS: Hyper, Hyper, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado solidly guards Citan Uzuki's Mufuu for 65 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Tidus takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 229 hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Xantia takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Watera for 197 hit points!
GS: Disease applied to Xantia!
GS: CRITICAL! Fei Fong Wong suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Thundara for 220 hit points!
GS: Hyper, Hyper, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Lunata Croze takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 153 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Pearl partially evades Seymour Guado's Thundara for 109 hit points!
GS: Hyper, Shield, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Fira for 142 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Evade bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu listens to many. But it is only Yuna she watches, for now. Yuna, and the awesome power of her Aeon. She remembers Anima well, from when Seymour summoned her. But this is altogether different. it is not the first time she has seen Aeon from different Summoners. It may be the last.

"No more time for jokes," Lulu assures Rikku.

Ethius is right. Sin could spell the doom of more than Spira, now. "...Yes. But we'll stop him here."

And Paine... Pine has Rikku covered. Lulu finally spares a look for her, and nods to the other woman, sharply, as she charges in. While Paine goes into melee... Lulu will hang back.

Boudicca speaks of unassailable will that she will assail. "...I," she says, "Am one of those people, even now."

It is a brief statement of emotion, but it is one. The people who loves this world...

But Anima comes. Anima, enormous, drawn out from terrible agony, by chain. Bound in all directions...

Yuna will share her pain. Because she will. She has. And Lulu... Lulu hears that scream. It reverberates in her bones. ...And it gives her inspiration.

Lulu whirls then, with motion, Onion Knight copying her motions. "Seymour," she intones. "...I will grant you one courtesy, for all we've been through."

Pause. "...I won't pity you."

"It would seem I'm one of the few, though."

She lifts up one hand, and an aura of black magic surrounds her.

Abrubtly, out of the air spins a ghostly reaper, with a terrible scythe in its cloaked hands. It hovers, and then sails towards Seymour, where it begins to slash over and over again with that weapon. "You will never touch Spira again!"

GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Double-Death!
GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lulu's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Lulu's Double-Death for 51 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    While Paine might chide Rikku for her joke, it gets a laugh out of Tidus, if a brief one. He's still glaring by the time they reach the bottom, and he still charges forward at Seymour.
    
    "Whatever, Seymour," he shoots back as he lands from his opening attack. "Don't go talking about my old man's life when you're planning on kicking him out of the only body he's got left!"
    
    Paine's at his back, and when he falls back a step away from the shallow shining gash in Seymour in time for her to heave her own sword into the group's longtime enemy, he gives her a sharp nod and a grim smirk.
    
    Paine isn't the only one, either. Though he might have charged in headlong, there's so many people offering their own last words to Seymour, like Lunata and Elly and Boudicca, and others focus on inflicting violence, like Fei and Ethius and even Lulu in her way, encouraging Yuna to do what must be done.
    
    Anima arises, and she SHRIEKS. Tidus knows she would be there--knows that Yuna would summon her--but he stumbles back a step all the same. Having met the fayth that forms her, and seeing the shock and pain that mars the stone that would be Seymour, Tidus... for just a second... feels sorry for Seymour. A flitting sentiment that nonetheless is clear on his face as open dismay.
    
    ("YOU DARE PITY ME?!" he screams, if actually to Lunata, and yes: Tidus dares. As Lulu implies by explicitly not, it is its own discourtesy, even if he doesn't mean it that way.)
    
    It lasts precisely as long as it takes for those massive crystals of ice to tear through the battlefield, and, specifically, through him. Charging right up to a entity like this means you reap what you sow. Tidus snarls as the frigid attack bites through him, lashing at his bronzed skin and sending blood flying in their wake. Cold has always been a good way to get someone to focus up, and he focuses hard now--more than enough to overhear something that runs through to the core of him:
    
    Your absolution comes at the end of this dream.
    
    "...ha," Tidus breathes, flat and humorless. "You can say that again, Billy."
    
    It would be wise, after getting blasted the way he did, for Tidus to fall back. He has zero plans of that, instead only doubling down on the attack as he leaps forward into acrobatic rolls and jumps to give him height and leverage. At the apex of his leaps, he brings that sword *down* on Seymour, as if intending to bury it deep within him.
    
    In fairness, it probably won't. But it conveys Tidus's intent, and in particular his hatred of Seymour, loud and clear.

GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Spiral Cut!
GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Tidus's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Tidus's Spiral Cut for 68 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"I can't be serious!" She tells Paine, "This place has met its serious quota! Any more and it'll turn all of us into you." Lulu however, "Awww... you're right." Wait so she's gonna listen to Lulu and not Paine?
 
Actually that's pretty fair.
 
Rikku pointed at Emeralda as the two raced down the stairs, but in the end, Seymour stands there. He's always made her feel so small. It's so strange that it's not even anything personal. Killing her people, killing Keyakku. It wasn't even personal.
 
What is personal to him however? Is it Tidus? Yunie? Or perhaps it is... what Yuna brings to life in that presence of phenomenal grief. Swimming in the sorrow of the moment, even Rikku can't keep a smile on her face. She watches an embodiment of death erupt as she's seen before when Seymour summoned her, and ANIMA comes into the world.
 
Ice crashes down upon her, and despite her best efforts to dodge, it bursts upon her, flecking all over her skin.
 
"There's nothing noble about what you're doing Seymour." Rikku says to him, in this moment where grief is affecting her, "There's not. What you did to my people, to Keyakku? It's all ugly."
 
Rikku grabs two objects, and mixes them like a Bartender shaking a drink, before tossing it in the air, as it bursts, magical fractals appearing over Anima, Yuna, and all of her Guardians.
 
"Just like what you've become! I won't pity you. You? You've just got to go, before you inflict that ugliness on anyone else!"

GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Paine with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Tidus with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Lulu with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Rikku accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Rikku!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Lulu accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Lulu!
GS: Lulu enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Tidus accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Tidus!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Yuna!
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Yuna receives 200 temporary hit points.
GS: Yuna enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    (Lunata enthusiastically accepted a bottle of water from Boudicca and looked SO HAPPY to hydrate, after getting squished by a Behemoth's Meteor attack. Lunata, you should maybe use a few more cooldowns in these fights.)

    "Yeah!" Lunata says to Emeralda. "I got squished so hard I turned into this black goo that Shalune had to scrape off a rock and put back in my Gear to regenerate me, it was icky!"

    Maybe Lunata and Emeralda have a little more in common. Goo buddies! Then Shalune warns that she's grounded if she does that again. "I mean, I'm certainly not flying as a pile of goo," she tries to joke.

    Her eyes light up at Ethius' assessment, and Jay's as well. "If Sin ever finds a way to Filgaia, it'd be a disaster. We've got to make sure he doesn't find his way to anything else he can grab onto!"

    She smiles weakly at Pearl, as she performs a dance; it's still very awe-inspiring, and it filles her with the strength of water, her movements seemingly more fluid and forceful at the same time. "Yeah.... that desire to turn away from it was in Spira's heart all this time -- in a way, Seymour not being a part of the old guard's whole narrative of helplessness helped tipped that over. And with Spira... because of Spira... we've both changed too, huh? Let's do this, Pearl."

    The world turns dark for a moment, and it's with a gasp that Lunata turns to the visage of Anima being raised from darkness; she quietly nods, though, turning towards Seymour and leaping -- and then the Unsent has her number, because she can't evade the icicles fully in her movement and she's forced to join her knees and elbows in brace and is sent flying onto the stone floor, where she kips up in turn in short order with a forced grin.

    "Pity you? I dunno... I'm not sure if it's pity that's in my heart. Maybe it's just me being honest, because I don't want to work in absolutes. That our relationship wasn't just 'I liked you until you betrayed me'. That's not the story I want to tell. Even when you're gone, even when Spira's moved on, I want to make sure the world knows the schemes that made you, and never forget it, or else they'll be back at it in five hundred years or whatever."

    She lands near Shalune, and grins and looks at her. "I'm okay. Just letting everything I want in my heart out while I fight before it's too late. I'll guard you, so give him your all, okay?"

    To that end, she's moving again towards that damaged orb, seemingly thinking there's a game plan there if she finishes it off; she disappears again, and this time--

    It's a bamboo forest! Taiko drums are hitting a stick beat in the background. The deep beat of otsuzumi is heard, raising the tension as something lurks within and...

     S L A S H !!!

    Was it really necessary for all the smoke and illusions and music to hit a relatively immobile target, Lunata? (Yes, yes it is.)

GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seymour Guado with the Word for World is Forest!
GS: Lunata Croze gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Lunata Croze has completed her action.
GS: Billy Lee Black takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Thundara for 143 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Lunata Croze's the Word for World is Forest for 89 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Delay applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Charge bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    "As you have stated, then," Ethius is keeping years of well-trained, hard-won calm through Seymour's clarification of how much danger Filgaia is in, because he knows it may not stop there. There may yet be means for certain parties to take their leave beyond Filgaia, at that, and he holds his discipline to not state the possibility outright of Sin getting to go visit and play in these other worlds beyond.
 
     It's a faint possibility derived from the execution a chain of contrivances, but some chances should never be anything higher than zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero repeating.
 
     There's not much space for him to manevuer with everyone here - this platform feels like it was meant for up to a party of three to fight comfortably - so he musters a dramatic defense by hurrying through another heat-aligned Symbological spell to disperse the fireball coming for him. It fans out above and past most everyone else rather than endangering them, only a swelteringly hot, sclading breeze getting to him. A visible wince passes for a second.
 
     This almost supernatural level of composure is further challenged when Yuna calls forth an Aeon consumed by pain, and that SCREAMing unsettles Ethius' balance that he has to hold onto his staff with both hands.
 
     His ears ring too much to make out the words of Seymour's lingering dismay and disappointment, but he sees just enough of the emotion of his movements to know it means something. The ringing dies down soon after.
 
     "It is true that societies are prone to grievous mistakes," Ethius picks up from earlier talking points elsewhere, "but the future you have chosen... it does not appear to be of Spira's will or decision."
 
     Spira - through Yuna, her entourage, and Otherworlder friends - already has the means. He just has to help see that through, as he goes about the Symbological spellcast again, coming up towards Seymour's right along the crowd present.
 
     "Recurrent Current!" Ethius finishes the chanting and gesticulating, firing off an electircal current set to try and course through the Unsent's mass repeatedly.

GS: Ethius Hesiod spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Seymour Guado with Recurrent Current!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Ethius Hesiod's Recurrent Current for 79 hit points!
GS: Poison applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Charge bonus and Sufferer activated!
GS: Paine partially guards Seymour Guado's Watera for 98 hit points!
GS: Disease applied to Paine!
GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Paine accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Paine!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

This all got very messy, very quickly. From Yuna summoning a corpsey divinity, to a wealth of magic transforming the air into a chaotic hodgepodge of dangerous elemental energies. "To think anyone could be so arrogant as to believe that they could single-handedly dominate a Clysmian," Cyre mutters, his staff remaining in the exact spot into which it was hurled. It's not like he can just will it back to his hand or anything like that, after all. "Though I admit Sin is a unique case, and it irks me to think that you might actually stand a chance at pulling it off. But even so."

A globe of impossibly hot flame races towards him. With a curse on his lips, Cyre leaps out of the way-- but not quickly enough. The fireball erupts in a column of infernal heat, scalding the shaman by mere proximity.

"Tch... I don't know what annoys me more, that, or the fact that you're doing all of this out of some misguided messiah complex," Cyre sneers, his feet and fingertips sliding across the strange stone-flesh of the cetacean Clysmian's interior as he pivots into a three-point landing. "...Seymour, you had friends. You had people who cared about you. You had the privilege of a position of power, one where you could make truly meaningful change for the betterment of the world if you were so inclined. Your world-- your life was in no way one that was bereft of warmth. Maybe you've forgotten in this twisted unlife. But then, I suppose one who resonates so strongly with Desperation and Obsession would only become twisted by them in death."

"To be so driven to despair by the state of the world that all you could think of was sparing others from the hopelessness you felt on their behalf is, on reflection, perhaps something that can be called 'noble.' But this 'dream' of yours is not. Not at all!" Wind gathers, surging around the shaman's limbs. He surges forward with a roar as a stony talisman seems to glow around his neck. The power of Fengalon resonates with the radiance of the heavens themselves, invisible gales glowing suddenly with a prismatic multitude of colors.

"Ethius is right!" He thrusts one hand forward, driving a punch into Seymour's grotesque, unsent form. The chromatic winds surge forward in the same instant, driving forth a torrential aurora of sacred, purifying energies! "To make a decision on behalf of two entire worlds... Is the height of arrogance!"

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seymour Guado with Celestial Lore!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado partially guards Cyre H. Lorentz's Celestial Lore for 90 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Delay blocked!
GS: Quick applied to Cyre H. Lorentz!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.

"That's the bad kind of goo," Emeralda replies to Lunata. It isn't the answer she expected. "But I guess that's because he's kind of a jerk about that, too." She looks at him again, her face setting into determination. She doesn't have anything clever to say to him; she's not good at this kind of philosophy. But she knows that he has to be stopped.

Anima's scream practically deafens Emeralda; she hunkers down even though it isn't 'aimed' at her, clapping her hands over her ears and then a second set of hands made out of several particularly large locks of hair over her hands.

A huge fireball comes straight at Emeralda! Her eyes widen as it barrels down on her, still hunched down as if to withstand it, and then she is shrouded from view by an enormous explosion and a cloud of smoke. When it clears, Emeralda isn't there!

No, she's fine (for certain values of fine), she just scuttled forward under cover of explosion. Her back is still silvery for several long seconds before it ripples back to the green of her hair, the black and red of her clothes, the brown of her skin. It hurts a lot more than she will ever let on in front of Fei and Elly, not to mention everyone else; she has to be brave and strong!

So Emeralda leaps into the air, jumping toward Seymour. She won't get there on one jump; her legs meld together, forming something like a pogo stick as she springs off the ground, getting a *lot* more height on the second. Midair this time, her legs start to twist and spin, dragging the rest of her body behind as she rotates feet-first, her legs coming to a point with the distinctive edge of a drill bit, fading from the waist down into grey, as her entire body spins to drill through!

GS: Emeralda Kasim has attacked Seymour Guado with Leg Spin!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

 
"If you put a butterfly in a glass case on the end of a pin," Elly answers Seymour - at least, it's something Elly says - "then the butterfly is still dead..."

And she is momentarily surprised at herself. She would glance at Fei in worry at herself but Fei, of course, is already making HIS move -- as are Dr. Uzuki, Billy. Oh! Elly worries momentarily for Billy. But she has bigger things to worry about.

Flame surges outwards from Seymour. Fire redoubled. Fire QUADRUPLED, perhaps. Difficult to quantify. Elly reaches outwards, an invisible war between Ether training and Seymour's terrible strength.

The fact that Elly screams in momentary, if at least clearly *endured*, pain shows who is the mightier. Staggering for a moment, singed, she hisses through her teeth. Her eyes turn upwards for a moment afterwards as Anima appears -- perhaps this is going to be short and bloody, but

No. It's different. Elly glances downwards, along the enormity of its shell, towards... Yuna. Of course, Elly thinks. I should never have doubted. It is another thing in Elly's life that she turns away with relief from the titanic creature of torment. To look towards the man who claims he cannot be understood.

Elly doesn't have more to say. (Frankly she isn't sure where the first part came from. Inspiration, maybe. Perhaps she heard it somewhere.) A Her hands clasp again together as she draws on another aspect of the Ether -- this time, even as Emeralda surges inwards to join Fei in the terrifying near proximity of the creature, her prayers call up a traditional source of God's disapproval:

A thunderbolt of her own.

GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seymour Guado with Anemo Zap!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Emeralda Kasim's Leg Spin for 124 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Shield applied to Emeralda Kasim!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Elhaym van Houten's Anemo Zap for 150 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Dispel! Hyper removed!
GS: Jam blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Hm, Xantia thinks as she uppercuts Seymour's stone-like facade, that didn't make him ascend as much as it should have. Still, she attempts to persist in the art of the taunt. "Afraid of being cleansed? That explains the smell!"

Ha, that was a good one, she mentally compliments herself. Right before she's flattened and drenched by a big ball of water. Sputtering, she complains, "Hey, I'm not the one who needs a bath!" Wait, no, she's getting lost in this whole taunting business. She needs to refocus here. And get back to her feet, which she quickly does following a backwards roll.

Briefly, she glances aside to Fei, going on the attack with fervor exceeding her own. She'd have to admit to a slight bit of concern since this isn't exactly his usual MO, but she can't exactly find fault with it. Perfectly valid response to the situation. She can't afford to get any more distracted than she already is, anyway. Besides, Citan'll be looking out for him, she's sure. The Doc's always watching him very closely in these sorts of situations. Yes, of course she noticed that. Isn't it obvious?

Trying to make her aura flare up, she only now realizes that, dangit, of course the water put out the fire. Instead, she switches over to a protective aura of Light before charging in again. "If you want to be understood, maybe you should rethink this whole 'corrupt the world' thing? Of course nobody's gonna understand that!"

This time, when she swings, twinkling motes of light follow in the wake of her fists, launching a rapid combo that ends in a brilliantly sparkling kick. No pity from her either - no reason for pity where it comes to threats to the entire world.

GS: Xantia has attacked Seymour Guado with Lustrous Aura!
GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Recover! Disease removed from Xantia!
GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei is blasted by an electrical blast that hits him dead on. In his focus to try and BREAK DOWN Seymour, he is not in a position to really defend himself. He is blasted off heis feet and hits a far Sinwall which is both worse and better than hitting a normal wall. It's kind of squishier! That's good. It's also SQUISHIER. That's bad. Fei pulls himself free, rubbing at his forehead. He looks up at Elly and frets for a moment but--she seems...okay? It's hard for him to tell with all her strange abilities.

"Okay." He says, stepping himself up and gritting his teeth.

"Elly... Going to ... try and do that trick back with Lombardia." Fei says. He tries to stabilize, focus his inner self and--

--yeah that's not happening. It's not easy to cool off once you go in hard and Fei ultimately gives up--

"You...good, sis?" Fei manages before he darts in,spinning around as he kicks the ground and unleashes a swath of ice that erupts out from his feet and tries to engulf Seymour!

"World... Isn't so easy to destroy. Even if you wipe it clean now, it'll regrow..."

GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seymour Guado with Suikei!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    "It's easy to be scared of death. Especially on Spira, I think," Shalune mumbles almost to herself in the wake of Pearl's thoughts. There's no judgment in that statement - she's been through a ruin full of it multiple times, stared its pretty butterflies in the face, and recorded and deciphered entire lessons on the nature of the Wheel. Even then, being faced with the prospect of what might wait Lunata even if they succeed at breaking her contract isn't easy. Part of her is sure that those same fears that contributed towards everything that has led them here.

    Her run towards Seymour is less of a run and more of a scramble. She's not really agile so much as she's just good at catching herself. Anima's appearance and the scream that follows actually does sends her bolting sideways in a reflexive dodge, and it's a couple of panicked moments before she registers that the sensation of it has changed - a couple of moments that send her tumbling forwards and nearly onto her hands and knees, shotstaff scraping against the platform beneath them before she stubbornly kicks off the floor in a runner's start.

    Seymour's raving is a world apart from the gentle figure that introduced them to this land. Was it an act even then?... she'd like to think not. Something tells her that fear and uncertainty are a large part of the rage that sears through the Praetor's face - the anger of someone finally challenging your path. Still, it isn't the way he challenges her that makes her hackles rise, but the scream of rage he delivers towards Lunata's feelings laid bare. Her lips thin again, unused to feeling so upset. "... sorry," she mutters back to Lulu. "But I'm gonna pity him all day long. Especially if it makes him that angry."

    Something slams into her back and nearly forces her back down to the ground, and it's only the way she instantly collapses her staff into a hard rod pressed against the ground that allows her to brace herself and not instantly be flat on the floor. The moment she feels the pressure of the blast subside she's rising again - especially as Lunata lands next to her with a grin on her face, and sends Shalune blinking out of sheer surprise at what she says.

    "That goes for you too!" she blurts abruptly. "You're the one with more to say, so don't hold back just 'cause you're guarding me! No, wait, more than that, do you even need to guard me? I feel like I'm a lot better at staying alive than you--" she starts to add, but Lunata's already moving - and Shalune, feeling rather lighter, huffs softly in her throat as she feels some of the tension leave her shoulders.

    "I don't know if you can even call it ambition anymore," she adds to Ethius with a thoughtful frown, bracing herself as she watches Lunata's approach. "It feels like it's just-- the nature of whatever he is now." There's a soaring slash - and Shalune rams her shotstaff into the ground at the same time, lifted up from the floor as she turns a point-blank blast into a means to propel herself forwards towards another of the orbs.

    In plain contrast to the displays of magic and sorcery and preternatural swordplay around her, Shalune's attack is very down-to-earth - she simply uses the momentum of her movement to twist in mid-air and bring the shotstaff down on the elemental orb. The physicality of her target is kind of in question, but it's solid enough for her to ram the end of her staff against the orb for purchase, giving her just enough time for the thrum of her weapon to abruptly pick up. A second detonation sends Shalune rocketing back off the orb - and rocks the sorcerous globe with a point-blank explosion.

GS: Shalune Amira has attacked Seymour Guado with Sudden Impact!
GS: Shalune Amira has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Shalune Amira's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Shalune Amira has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Crackling lightning spears down across Billy and the Etone seizes briefly, gritting teeth and crying out before he falls to one knee. "Your will...your obsession...I guess that makes you a perfect fit for Sin, after all."

"This is the world you'd build...flaming, screams, and ruins. That is the will you would manifest? No God would endorse it, so you found a devil to gobble you up." He forces himself to his feet, swaying as he does. One gun goes into its holster, reaching for something in his pocket.

Eyes cutting around. He meets Elly's eyes and nods, assuring, before he looks back up at Seymour. "I understand you fine," he says. "That pain, that determination. That feeling in your gut, twisting you and poisoning you, that maybe nothing ever was right. How can you be a good man in an evil world? Is there anything for a good man to do, in a world full of wickedness? Yes, I know it."

"You've made the mistake many men make. It's such an easy one to overlook," he says, and his empty hand lashes from his pocket, flicking a coin twirling into the air.

"Understanding you doesn't mean agreeing with you!" Billy snaps, and in the space of a heartbeat, brings up his gunsmoke and fires a shot off the coin, which ricochets the bullet with stunning force.

GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Seymour Guado with Adam's Apple!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Shalune is here, as well, and Jacqueline's glad to see her. She, too, is a friend that she's always relied on - and here now together, she feels that they can stand against anything.

She turns her attention back to Seymour and, after a moment, nods.

"For the last time, then." She says. "But I have reasons to keep going. Someone to live for. So we'll see - whether your will to corrupt is greater than my will to survive."

Seymour conjures spheres of water and sends one hurling her way. Jacqueline grimaces and braces herself. Her gauntlets flash and a barrier flickers to life over her body as the water crashes into her with a splash. It's difficult, but she manages to retain her footing. She takes a couple of steps back before making a quick gesture with her left hand. She stirs up a strange wind and then sends it rushing through Seymour. This wind chills not on a physical level, but a spiritual one.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seymour Guado with Mysterious Wind!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Xantia's Lustrous Aura for 123 hit points!
GS: Cover applied to Xantia!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.

Almost every Spiran spends a lot of time on the beach, and Paine, despite her complexion, is no exception. She knows very well what a threat even a natural wave can be, and how impossible it is to keep one's footing with the ocean rushing across it. Rather than risk getting caught unbalanced while trying to dodge it, Paine plants her feet, swivels her sword to block downward across her upper arm, and braces herself. It catches her a little lower than she expected, but at least she was expecting to be knocked over. Tumbling shoulder over shoulder, she keeps her sword rolling ahead of her, avoiding cutting herself to pieces before the spell passes through. She ends up next to Tidus, on one knee, and squirts water out of the side of her mouth furthest from him.

In the time it takes her to look up at the sparkling fractals above her head, Tidus rushes forward again, and Paine sighs. She's no plodding brute herself, but keeping up with the acrobatic blitzball striker looks like it will be taxing again today. Lunging off the ground, she follows him with her eyes. Taking a curving path around Seymour, Paine discards the pin from a grenade as she goes, and her stride bounces twice before she serves the heavier business half of the weapon, tossing it towards Seymour just before she judges Tidus to be at the apex of his jump. It seems to move in slow motion, with so much distance to cover compared to the distance covered by Tidus's slashing blade; much occurs before it reaches where he had been, and if anything Paine ends up wishing she threw it a little sooner. But it goes off, nonetheless, during the time Seymour might like to be exacting his reprisal against Yuna's lover.

Paine meets Tidus again on the other side of Seymour. "Don't commit too hard," she chides, but that emphasis has a subtle note of approval. "This one's not going to be decided by this," she lifts her sword to indicate it, "or that," she points that sword to indicate his.

There's no need to indicate the terrifying titan Yuna has Summoned this time, or the raw, boiling shadow that Lulu has sent along with it like hell's answer to a packed lunch.

"Those two," she says philosophically, though what her philosophy is, she has little time or inclination to share today.

GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Suikei for 154 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Paine spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Paine has attacked Seymour Guado with Grenade!
GS: Paine has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Paine has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Shalune Amira's Sudden Impact for 80 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    "I will not break!" Boudicca cries, as she quick-steps back from the lightning. Still it catches at her; the storm so loves the sky.

    A Seraphic glyph erupts beneath her feet, as Boudicca, too, prays for the safety of the Summoner: "Thousand Sky!"

    Though Anima is in such pain...

    Though Seymour is so cruel...

    She is here to support them.

GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Yuna with Thousand Sky!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
GS: Yuna accepts Seraph Boudicca's Thousand Sky for 0 hit points!
GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock state and Shield applied to Yuna!
GS: Quick applied to Seraph Boudicca!
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.

    The lightning comes for Pearl, and it's a matter of speed and luck that she isn't struck dead on and dead. Instead, the lightining scores a burn across her chest and her robes- the lightning shrine was not one she traveled to.

    "True," She replies to Shalune. "But it is different to fear something... and submit to it as he has." Her gray eyes bore into Seymour's. "Indeed. Let him see the changes he wrought." As Lunata moves with distraction and flash, Pearl instead charges straight in with a whirling roundhouse carrying her forward, watery chi encasing her foot as she oves to drive it into Seymour's rictus flesh.

    She hears a cry behind her, and sees the bullet pass through the air in front of her. An impressive shot, and more so... "...Well said." She calls to Billy behind her.

GS: Pearl has attacked Seymour Guado with Flow!
GS: Pearl has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Pearl has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Billy Lee Black's Adam's Apple for 130 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.

    The lights go out, if only for a time. He turns as if feeling the presence of the Aeon before she rises, emerging from the depths as if crawling from the grave of all that lives. Anima.

    It is still something that catches him -- fleetingly -- by surprise. But of course: there is not an Aeon that is 'solely' the purview of a single Summoner, by his understanding of the art. Through the correct rites, then, it is possible for Yuna to attain a bond with Anima.
    'Seymour's' Aeon.

    It is Billy who speaks up in the wake of Anima's rise, and Yuna's own promise. Though Citan says not a word, he glances in the direction of the son of one of his oldest friends.

    Understanding breaks briefly across his face. ...So it is like that. It could be no other way.

    This is the nature of the world, speaks Seymour: to live, to suffer, to die. It is not false. But neither is it true. He remembers something Yui had once told him, about life, death, and a stone.

    "If we lived eternal, perfect lives... no, I would not consider it 'living'. Perhaps you would think it 'pity', but suffering and pain... these permit us to understand and have compassion for one another. ...Nevertheless, if this is where your ambitions have brought you..."

    Then the time for pity and compassion is now over.

    Who is Citan, to permit or deny Seymour this? Seymour will find or receive no answer as Citan gazes back at him, his expression as still as a pond's surface on a windless day.

    It is not for him to know.

    It is only when Seymour claims that he has become 'more' that Citan speaks again. "I disagree. I believe that you have not become 'more than human' at all," he says, in the face of the monstrosity that Seymour has become. "I would say you have become instead 'unhuman'."

    Lightning splits through the air after. Citan does not move to attempt to evade it but rather, moves through it, crossing the distance from this point to another far closer to Seymour. A flurry of blows follow, even as the lingering charge from the spell disspates from his body.

    "Fei, wait--" He falls back, calling on ether and all the lingering mists within Sin. Fortunately, it does not seem that he's able to attempt the same here. "Here, now...!"

    How fortuitous, the aspect of his elemental focus in which he has such skill is in such quantity here...!

    He throws out a hand as the mists surge away from him, in search of a few of his allies. It is superfluous, and yet...

GS: Citan Uzuki has activated Force Action: Extend!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend!
GS: Citan Uzuki spends 2 Combo on Inspire and Reload!
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Lulu with Reishou!
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Yuna with Reishou!
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Billy Lee Black with Reishou!
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Reishou!
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Rikku with Reishou!
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Reishou!
GS: Citan Uzuki gains 18 THP from his Cautious!
GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
GS: Lulu accepts Citan Uzuki's Reishou for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Citan Uzuki's Reload! activated!
GS: Lulu gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Rikku accepts Citan Uzuki's Reishou for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Citan Uzuki's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Rikku gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Yuna accepts Citan Uzuki's Reishou for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Citan Uzuki's Reload! activated!
GS: Yuna gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Jacqueline Barber's Mysterious Wind for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Hex applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Yuna has activated Force Action: Snipe!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

@emit
The problem with summoning is that then Yuna can't heal. And it IS a problem -- in retrospect, maybe she should have gone down the white mage Yevonite priesthood career track instead of the summoner path -- because she feels all that pain so very terribly. The monstrous force of the expanding water. The blazing shriek of atoms rent from atoms by the coruscating lightning. The crisp of hair and flesh by fire's touch. The blizzard shards that rip and tear at her Guardians' bodies, and at Anima's.

All she's ever wanted to do is ease pain.

The ultimate tragedy of Yuna's life, perhaps, is that she ever believed the best way to do so was by dying.

But then, she isn't the only one here who's made that mistake.

Anima allows the ice to thud into her like so many lances. There is a symmetry here. It was Shiva, once, who inflicted wounds just like this upon Anima -- exactly like this -- one through the back of a carapaceous palm, pinning it to her chest; one jutting like a thorn from her side; one deflects off the collar at her neck.

The collar at her neck, by the way, is made of arms. Gigantic, very human, silvery arms, which have the aeon in a metallic headlock. It is an open question whose arms they are. There is something feminine to them, but the remnant of Seymour's mother, within the aeon, is so clearly represented. Yuna is exactly the kind of person to restrain someone by hugging them, though.

And -- while others were partying (in dungeons), Yuna studied the pain. In a way she's prepared her whole life for this moment; to become the summoner of the Dark Aeon; and to be able to wield that power with the kind of unimaginable skill that comes only from deep knowledge. From self-knowledge.

So although she can't mass-Curaga the room right now, she's okay. Anima's pain is so much more than all of that, and it is her pain too. The pain of someone who knows that she must die, and wishes to spend that death on helping those that she loves. The pain of loving someone so much that the only thing you can do for them is leave. Leave them behind. Go on.

It would be so easy... to be carried away.

A single tear beads at Yuna's blue eye -- the Yevonite eye -- and, overflowing, leaves a slow and shining path down her journey-gaunt cheek.

"Seymour," she says. And she almost wonders why she says it. He can't be reached; she of all people truly, truly understands that, bone-deep, soul-deep. "I do understand you."

But then -- funerals aren't for the dead. They're for those that survive them.

"What your mother did to you... was wrong."

To pity or not to pity? Yuna has always had some sympathy for Seymour. They are the dark reflection of one another. If Tidus is the Sun to her Moon, Seymour is the shadow of the world -- Yuna in eclipse.

"You were a child," she says, her voice breaking with a bitter sorrow. "She brought you to Zanarkand. She told you that the only way you would ever be loved was to die in battle against Sin. And, to help you die, she killed herself, right in front of you, with Yunalesca's help. You were a child, and... I think, you never got to grow up."

Seymour is still a child. What's come since then is one long tantrum.

"Even she agreed, when I visited her in Baaj. She was supposed to protect you, but she hurt you instead. She was wrong, Seymour. You should know, that she knows she was wrong."

A second tear joins the first, more quickly. It meets the first tear halfway down, and then the two unite and fall off of her face.

"But that doesn't make you right," Yuna concludes.

And Anima cries too, at that moment that the two tears meet.

Only her tear is a single, blinding white light, which has been growing and growing and growing out of her left socket, until her head is barely visible from the sheer brutal radiance of it; and she's howling again, she is screaming--

--and now, with a terrible abruptness, acceleration so total that it is almost teleportation, the power lances out from her eyeball -- passes straight through Lulu's terrifying apparition -- and explodes onto him and only him, high above the melee in which he is encased.

It is, as Rikku says, all ugly.

Again, Anima's four chains creak. Rikku has strengthened her, and Citan and Boudicca also...

...how much longer can those chains hold? One of the anchors is already beginning to pull loose from the puddle of darkness on the floor.

GS: Blitz! Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with P A I N!
GS: Yuna has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Yuna's stances have changed from Hero to Avenger!
GS: Yuna gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Fei Fong Wong accepts Citan Uzuki's Reishou for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Citan Uzuki's Reload! activated!
GS: Fei Fong Wong gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Paine's Grenade for 142 hit points!
GS: Poison blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Pearl's Flow for 120 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Elhaym van Houten accepts Citan Uzuki's Reishou for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Citan Uzuki's Reload! activated!
GS: Elhaym van Houten gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Yuna's P A I N for 357 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 100 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

"Then I shall pity you... and free you from this misery!" Seymour cries out to Lulu.

The reaper's scythe strikes him twice. It phases through his form -- leaving gashes in its wake, pyreflies drifting off -- but he is not pulled into a state of (further) death. Then, he throws his hand out. Lightning explodes through the reaper.

It continues onward, hurtling towards Lulu, with a burst of sparks upon impact.

Tidus slashes, blade slamming down into Seymour's hand. Like he once did -- though this time it hits stone, and the blade is repulsed, though pyreflies burst out of it. Seymour's eyes narrow, balefully.

And the bolt of lightning that shot off at Lulu bounces away from her, arcing through the air, and strikes at Tidus's back. With another burst of sparks, it bounces again -- and hurtles towards Rikku.

"What I did was a mercy!" Seymour calls to Rikku. "I bore the Al Bhed no ill will. I granted them death. As I will -- as I have -- to all others."

He looks down at Lunata, then, and his teeth are bared. "And why should I allow it to move on, Lunata? Why should I permit something so terrible? This world -- both of our worlds -- deserve to die! After all they have done! After all we have both seen!"

There is the image of bamboo about them. Seymour's eyes turn, until he catches Lunata. She sweeps through -- and Orochi-Agito bites into the orb again, leaving another gash upon it.

As the bamboo fades, the lightning bounces off it, and explodes away from Rikku to arc one last time, and crash down for Lunata's back.

"And how often do people choose their future wisely?" Seymour asks Ethius.

Electricity explodes from Ethius to him. The current shoots through him, arcing over his body; sparks pop and fly.

"Friends, power... dreams," Seymour tells Cyre. "These things do not change what is within one's soul. They do not eliminate the pain that the world brings. Do not speak to me of warmth! It is a lie -- a distraction -- a meaningless thing!"

His punch slams into Seymour. Cyre sends him rocking backward, another crack on his statue-like body. And another, as Emeralda comes striking down as a drill (quite literally), and slams into him for a moment. Then, Elly sends out a bolt of lightning.

It crashes down from above -- sparks flying into the air with pyreflies, ozone rich about him for a moment -- and Seymour makes a pained gasp.

"I do not require understanding -- because people cannot be understood!" Seymour says to Xantia. "We are always alone. I can end that suffering!"

Her fists, aglow with light, slam into him -- followed by a kick. Each burst of light smashes into Seymour's body, one after the other. Fei sends up ice, slamming into and encasing him -- though it shatters a moment later.

"Then I shall proceed and persist!" Seymour tells Fei. "Until it is done!"

Seymour hurls out a hand, then. A massive wave of water forms, exploding off his hand. It shoots out, washing through a swath of the battlefield with intense force. It crashes down into Ethius, Cyre, Emeralda, Elly, Xantia, and Fei, and threatens to hurl them back to the very edge of the platform.

Shalune moves in, with force, and her staff slams into another elemental orb. It has a crack across it after she strikes -- though it's made of sterner stuff, it would seem. A moment later, though, there is a sudden wave of heat.

Then, a fireball erupts high around her, an explosion blasting through the air.

"If you do not agree, then you do not understand -- FOR THERE IS BUT ONE ANSWER!" Seymour calls out to Billy. Then, his pistol shot -- bounced off a coin -- slams into his head, sending up chips of stone and breaking away a strand of stone-frozen hair. It collapses, then bursts into pyreflies.

Then, fire explodes, erupting high around Billy and shooting into the air with a titanic explosion.

"Someone... there is no one worth living for. Do not lie to yourself!" Seymour snaps to Jacqueline Barber -- and then wind rushes through him, seeping into him. It chills him to the -- well, he doesn't have bones.

It chills him, but it's warmth that grows around her. The air turns searing -- and then another explosion blasts out near Jay.

Paine's grenade flies in close -- just after Tidus -- and it explodes in a fiery blast, slamming into his statue-like form. He is hurled to the side, then turns his head. He looks at her with those baleful, glowing eyes.

The Unsent flicks a hand out. First, it was water; now it's fire, as another explosion erupts behind her. The thunderous boom of the fire spell slams at her, with fire washing around behind her.

"A challenge, then," Seymour spits at Boudicca. "Never let it be said I do not rise to meet them!"

Another explosion erupts -- this one underneath the Seraph's feet, just as her spell is unleashed to support her allies. It scars the ground black underneath Boudicca.

Pearl comes crashing down -- her roundhouse kick slamming into his midsection. Water bursts off him, from where it hits, and her heel drives in. Glowing cracks appear where she struck.

"Gh...!"

He throws a hand out. This time, spikes of ice appear in the air about Pearl. Three of them drive down, stabbing rapidly, and trying to catch her between them.

"Then you would judge me?" he asks Citan.

He says what he thinks about that with a spell -- huge sharp blades of ice erupt, several of them slash and striking rapidly at the doctor, just a moment after he sends the mists hurtling out to his allies.

Ice hasn't deterred Anima. But ice is what Seymour has for Anima -- and Yuna -- in this moment. He sees how Anima's familiar form rises against him. His eyes, glowing and baleful, turn; from Anima, to Yuna. As she confirms that she understands him.

And there is a flicker of humanity there. The man he could have been; the person who could have come to regret the path he chose and stayed from it. It shows in his pained eyes.

"No... no--I will not accept--" And it's gone, then. His face becomes a rictus of anger, of hatred, and contempt. "I will not accept that my pain is the reason behind this! It is SPIRA! IT IS THE WORLD!"

He screams. White light engulfs him. A lance of energy shoots dwn into him, smashing into him, and explodes with brilliant. Seymour screams in anguish and pain, as it blazes through him, and his body shakes. Stone chips away; the discs creak behind him, cracks widening in the orbs; his eyes widen, as pyreflies lift away from him.

"AAAAAH!"

All that Seymour has for her is ice. So he summons it -- huge spikes of ice, which come crashing down. Two, then four; four, then sixteen. They smash at Anima, trying to pierce through the chained Aeon, like a pin cushion.

Then, grinding against Lunata's blade and Shalune's staff, the wheels turn. They slid into place with thunderous CLICKS and north, west, and east of Seymour, the violet orbs of ice lock into place.

GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Thundaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Thundaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Thundaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lunata Croze with Thundaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Emeralda Kasim with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Xantia with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Shalune Amira with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Billy Lee Black with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Paine with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Pearl with Blizzaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Citan Uzuki with Blizzaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Blizzaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seymour Guado with Three Orbs!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado heals Seymour Guado! He gains 268 temporary hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado takes 28 damage from Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: Fei Fong Wong solidly guards Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 82 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Guard bonus activated!
GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Lunata Croze has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Moderate! Lunata Croze critically guards Seymour Guado's Thundaga for 87 hit points!
GS: Poison blocked!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Low! Rikku partially guards Seymour Guado's Thundaga for 147 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Poison applied to Rikku!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 84 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Gamble: Low! Lulu takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Thundaga for 178 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lulu gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Poison blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 226 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: CRITICAL! Emeralda Kasim suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 221 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Emeralda Kasim gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Seymour Guado's Firaga for 104 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna solidly guards Seymour Guado's Blizzaga for 156 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yuna gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper, Mighty, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Yuna enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Firaga for 237 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Shalune Amira partially evades Seymour Guado's Firaga for 265 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Paine fully evades Seymour Guado's Firaga for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Paine gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Citan Uzuki fully evades Seymour Guado's Blizzaga for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Citan Uzuki gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper, Mighty, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Gamble: High! Tidus suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Thundaga for 255 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tidus gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Poison applied to Tidus!
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Tidus receives 100 temporary hit points.
GS: Tidus enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Xantia takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 92 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

The lightning crashes towards Lulu, and explodes around her, shattering the stones at her feet as it lances through her body. She smokes with it as it passes, despite the enchantments on her bangle, and she has to lift herself back up with grit.

"I'll keep my misery," Lulu says. "It's mine. ...Mine, and mine alone."

Shalune's apology gets an arched eyebrow. "...Then pity him as hard as you can," she suggests to her. But Rikku of course listens to her. Lulu nods without looking at her, as that magic fractal appears over her, too. Nothing noble...

"All right, then."

She notices Paine's words, from afar; she happens to be paying close attention. Not only to her, of course--but including her.

And she has more to go.

Suffering and pain... Citan's words strike a chord with Lulu. She believes the same. And in point of fact:

"...It is because we can face that suffering and pain, and look forward, rather than only back--it is this that allows us to be strong."

"You, Seymour, are obsessed with what has come before... and can only think to make more of it."

The mists empower her. Yuna's words ring in her ears. The pain... The tears. She narrows her eyes. "...If I get my wish... Those will be the last tears Yuna ever sheds for you."

"No," she says. "This is not only for me. 'My' misery... it belonged to Luzzu, too. To all the crusaders who died to your manipulations, even before you became this."

"...And you will feel that pain!"

Lulu lifts both hands over her head and gathers up the power that surges around her--and throws it out at Seymour.

A horrible blotch of green energy explodes into being--then another, and another, until a horrid mist explodes all around Seymour's terrible form, an organic expression of Darkness itself.

"...The world strikes at all of us, Seymour. It's you who are too weak to endure it."

GS: Lulu spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Scourge!
GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Pearl solidly guards Seymour Guado's Blizzaga for 134 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Pearl gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper, Mighty, and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Lulu's Scourge for 269 hit points!
GS: Drowsy applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Poison blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    It *is* all ugly, just like Rikku says. And it *is* the height of arrogance, as Ethius and Cyre say. But as far as Tidus is concerned, Seymour's always been ugly and arrogant, and he's only gotten more so as time goes on, so them saying so is just stating the obvious. If one to which he shouts an emphatic, "Yeah!!"
    
    Xantia's wisecrack does get a snort of derisive laughter from him, though. But he adds, "Seymour doesn't want to be understood. He couldn't spend all his time feeling like a martyr if he were!"
    
    More important is that burst of magical fractals that rains down over him and Yuna and the other Guardians--he can feel it strengthening his defenses, bolstering his speed.
    
    "Thanks, Rikku! We can always count on you!" he calls her way.
    
    He can count on Paine, too, who might not match his speed but definitely matches his attack pattern, backing him up with a grenade thrown, if not precisely, then precise enough to give him momentum to backflip off and away from Seymour and land next to her.
    
    "Says the heavy blade," he quips to her chastising, but it's with a quirk of a smile.
    
    Then the lightning that rebounded off Lulu ZORCHES him, and bounces again towards Rikku. It lays Tidus out flat, a moment that might cause considerable alarm until he groans and peels himself up off the floor. It's probably only the sheer *number* of people fighting Seymour that he has the time to do that, and he sure as hell looks like he could use some healing.
    
    Still, he endures. Yuna is wielding Anima now, and he's not down for the count yet. Sheer stubbornness will see him forward for now. And so, he nods to Paine. They're all fighting with conviction, and some of them are even fighting with compassion, but it's Yuna that he and Paine are here for.
    
    Yuna, who would show Seymour compassion even now. But as much as he doesn't like this specific instance of it, Tidus loves that part of her all the same. What he hates is knowing that Seymour won't appreciate it, just like he's never, ever appreciated her the way she deserves.
    
    Anima's screech reverberates again, just before her light flashes and sears against their mutual enemy. As the pain from all fades, Tidus adds to Paine, "You're right. But as long as we're buying them time, we may as well give it all we got!"
    
    Though the force of his sorcery isn't anywhere near Lulu's level, nor does he express himself to Seymour with even an ounce of her eloquence, Tidus still has some considerable tricks of his own. "Say whatever you want, Seymour. You never listened to anyone else, anyway!" he shouts as light flows around him.
    
    From the magical energies he weaves, he calls up an orb of water, growing, growing, growing, until it is a massive pool over Seymour's stony body. It CRASHES down upon him as if it might erode him away--or as if it might set up a different trick in just another moment.

GS: Tidus spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Waterga!
GS: Tidus takes 32 damage from Poison!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Elhaym van Houten suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 166 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elhaym van Houten gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Tidus's Waterga for 198 hit points!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Poison applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Paine's correct, that's always been Rikku's philosophy in a way. She knows who will truly resolve this. She knows it. That's why she's just as willing to support as she is to dole out death. Whatever they need to take him down.
 
Citan however offers power in the form of his elemental focus, in that chi that courses through her, and Citan gets a big thumbs up, even in the middle of the serious battle before she flashes a big ol' grin at Tidus, "More where that came from!!"
 
She listens to what Yuna says, she listens, and indeed Yuna's right, her grief, her tears. Seymour though? As he calls it a mercy and Rikku, "You think bearing us no ill will makes it BETTER? It just means you regarded us as something you could more easily STEP ON than the others! You did it because it was convenient! But we've started to find our footing in the world! You know what our revenge will be Seymour?" She says as she points at him, "... Living well, hundreds of years from now."
 
Maybe she shouldn't have said anything because Seymour's revenge in the moment is lightning lashing down on her heard. Rikku screams as she tries to take cover, but there is no cover, her barriers having to deflect the majority of the charge.
 
Taking in one breath after another rapidly, as if trying to abate a panic attack she tries to bite back tears, before, she takes one last breath "Know what? No. You? You don't get the satisfaction of seeing me cry too. Because in the end, you enjoy this don't you? From the moment we met you, you were planning to kill everyone with that smug look on your face."
 
Mixing up another concoction, she throws it and this too shines down, "So Chin Up everyone! Eyes forward! We're taking him down!"

GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with Chin Up! Eyes Forward! Ultra-Cure!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with Chin Up! Eyes Forward! Ultra-Cure!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Paine with Chin Up! Eyes Forward! Ultra-Cure!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Tidus with Chin Up! Eyes Forward! Ultra-Cure!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Lulu with Chin Up! Eyes Forward! Ultra-Cure!!
GS: Rikku has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 29 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku heals Lulu! She gains 352 temporary hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku heals Rikku! She gains 355 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Poison removed!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku heals Yuna! She gains 718 temporary hit points!
GS: Rikku heals Tidus! He gains 276 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Poison removed!
GS: Tidus enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.

"Nobody wants to die!" Emeralda's voice sounds, suddenly, from somewhere inside the drill. She pauses. "Well, maybe you do, but most people don't! They want to live! And you said you rise to a challenge - "

Emeralda springs off. No choice; her drill was getting jammed. Her legs return to being legs as she pushes off of Seymour, ending up performing a very awkward-looking flip before somehow managing to land on her feet anyway by changing her center of gravity.

"If you're so good at rising to a challenge how come you gave up when it was about living? The past is important," Emeralda says, thinking about her own. "But so is the future..." She looks around, toward Fei, toward Elly, toward some others.

And then back as the water starts to build. It rises in front of her, and Emeralda's first instinct is to withstand it; she digs her feet in. But when it actually comes it's too much; the flow pulls at her body, stretching it as Seymour comes close to dislodging her. Her feet, clamping against the front, start to lift, pulling away -

And then up she goes!

Emeralda lands in a pile halfway across the rocky interior. It's a pile, and not a puddle; she's mostly human-shaped, though her legs are long and her feet twisted from where she tried and failed to hold onto a rock with her toes. All at once, as she rises, Emeralda's legs snap back to their normal shape, her body tensing as Emeralda consciously rebuilds it, reinforcing what passes for her structure. From the outside, there's nothing visible beyond the momenetary snap back, but it's quite a lot of effort and attention on the inside.

GS: Emeralda Kasim has attacked Emeralda Kasim with Solid Flow!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Emeralda Kasim's stances have changed to Stoic!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Emeralda says that that's the bad kind of goo. "Ehhhhhhhh?" Lunata whines, looking comically sad for a moment. "Come on, my goo is kinda cool too... isn't it? Tell her my goo is cool, Shalune."

    Sorry, Lunata, you'll never become a Goo King at this rate. Maybe in a different timeline.

    There's an even bigger pout as she complains, "What! Just because that puffer vest of yours is really bouncy doesn't mean I'm not the tough one of us, okay?! That's supposed to be my gimmick! Tell me that's my gimmick, Jaaaaaay!" Lunata whines, almost puppy-eyed at the alchemist.

    She snarls, though, as lightning bounces off off the orb and she's forced on the defensive -- she can't block something like lightning the same way she can a solid block of ice, so she's only left with one option--

    "Ge Ramda!!"

    Anima isn't the only skeletal, undead manifestation present; in a shroud of violet miasma, the lightning dances around Lunata's form, until it is channeled and starts to weave around the visage of a lich in ancient bridal regalia, her wedding veil billowing behind her, a tattered shroud that may have once been silken and beautiful.

    Her guard stable, she processes Seymour's words and breathes shallowly, in a bit of pain.

    She listens well to Yuna's tale of what happened with Seymour's mother, because she wasn't privy to that before. She listens well to Billy's words, because he has firm words for what she's felt before. And she nods and grins to Pearl, as their attacks resolve in tandem.

    "'Why should I allow it to move on?' you said. I've said the exact same things myself. Do you remember Macalania, Seymour? Inside the Chamber of the Fayth, Yuna and the Guardians confronted you, and you died there. Outside... something inside me died on that day too. I couldn't accept that the rest of the world was moving on without me. Me, I said, I was forever trapped inside this unchanging, unceasing body, with a ticking clock that I can only hasten to eternal punishment. You even tried to destroy it, and it didn't work!"

    There's a vivid smile to Jay and Shalune and says, "I had people who stuck with me through thick and thin, and pulled me back from the darkest and dankest pit I'd dug for myself. Also, also, it turns out I was romantically interested in them this whole time and things worked out so that was a plus too! Okay, it sounds like I'm undermining my own point when I'm telling you that I realised I wanted to keep living because I wanted to smooch someone but that was the TRUTH."

    "..."

    Damn, she lost her place now. Why can't she keep her cool when she's making big important speeches?

    "Uh-- I mean, look, it's like Jay said, she has someone to live for, I have someone to un-live for too! And that meanssss Ge Ramda please take over the attacking for a moment, I've lost my train of thought. ... train. Like the ghost train."

    Ge Ramda, hovering a bit above and to the left of Lunata, shakes her skull and draws her massive, elongated fingers together and ROARS, red lightning crackling through her form--

    A dark glyph that the sharp-eyed may recognise as the symbol of Ge Ramtos appears underneath Seymour Omnis' whole form, and ONE, TWO, THREEFOURFIVE--

    Twelve! Twelve ghostly evil swords appear in clock orientation to attempt to pierce through him!

GS: Emeralda Kasim heals Emeralda Kasim! She gains 164 temporary hit points!
GS: Regen applied to Emeralda Kasim!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Lunata Croze has activated Force Action: Lock On!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seymour Guado with the Start of Heavenly Demise!
GS: Lunata Croze has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Lunata Croze gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Cover expired!
GS: Lunata Croze has completed her action.
GS: Rikku heals Paine! She gains 68 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Disease removed!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Lunata Croze's the Start of Heavenly Demise for 184 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Lunata Croze drains Seymour Guado! Lunata Croze gains 91 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Boudicca is air. She feeds flame. This is the basic truth of her pact with Moor Gault; this remains the basic fact of her existence. No matter her relationship with fire, still it consumes her.

    Here, as well.

    Firaga is one of the most powerful fire spells Spira has to offer, and Boudicca tries -- tries to flee it, as the eruption breaks and blackens the earth beneath her. But the very breeze which carries her up is a bridge for the flame, and Firaga FOLLOWS her, and she flares, and burns, and falls.

    It is moments before she rises again. Her green silks smoulder. (Silk burns easily.)

    "You are... so disconnected from yourself, you cannot even see your pain in your work," she says, and she does not mourn for him. "I have seen the complications of many monsters..."

    Boudicca frowns.

    "You are not so complicated, now, I think."

    And it is the worst condemnation she can offer him, in all the simplicity of oblivion.

    "Blow, storm, and stopper misery!" She cries, as another green glyph alights at her feet. "Howling Gale!"

GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seymour Guado with Howling Gale!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Boudicca's Howling Gale for 150 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

 
A sense of stillness on the watery lake at morningtide washes over Elly. It washes over and interacts with the stark terror of Fei's plan - to 'do what he did before.' A subtle maneuver, a one in a million chance, and he doesn't seem to be carrying it off.

He's staying in there, but for a silent imploring moment Elly wishes more than anything that she had spells of succor and ease in her internal toolkit. But she was trained differently, to match her talents. And those were her talents. As the Trial Knight told her, long ago, she is a 'destroyer'.

A surging smash of water comes down. Water, true water - not the ice that Elly learned to make. Would it be possible for her to learn otherwise? A moot question; the seaspawned force smashes her against the ground with an "uughh!" of dismay, though she struggles her way back upwards.

The earlier blast was telling, Elly thinks, even as her vision swims - not from the water, either. Maybe that's it? Back and forth? Her hands clasp together again. Maybe I should rush in there, but -- But what would --

Elly's eyes close for a moment. She takes in a breath ("haa--h")

(Is that true? she wonders, hearing Emeralda's words. Somehow the thought gives her a push--)

Elly throws out her right hand.

Flame comes. Not just any flame, either; it's the sort of surging flame she'd used before, a taste of something that makes a sort of fiery ring towards the flank of the great shape of Seymour. It flickers for a moment and then ERUPTS --

And the great thing is that it isn't a burst. It's sustained, and it's at least somewhat linked to the form itself; screaming, blue-white, ashing force and heat rising upwards. And hopefully not where anyone else is, either.

GS: Elhaym van Houten spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seymour Guado with Thermo Incinerate!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Incinerate for 105 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: Hyper applied to Elhaym van Houten!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei looks back to Citan and, for once, says, "Wait what? What do you want me to wait for, Doc?" He's still kind of channeling that spooky shit, he's breathing heavily and is clearly more living the closed fist life than the open palm, but he hasn't completely lost himself. And maybe he's not going to just yet--It is a sad truth that if they do kill Seymour here today, Fei will only feel a reasonable amount of bad about that rather than completely destroyed due to the aforementioned Seymour representing, to him, a part of himself that he has to push down, keep down, and deny.

"Even without your parents, your life could have been wondrous, incredible, you could've helped save this world. You had a whole people who loved you, trusted you... They were willing to do terrible things just because of how much they trusted you! And you threw it away!"

He steps backward. He feels Citan's aid making breathing easier, loosening his movements. It isn't a transcendent instant of enlightenment--but it's the next best thing.

He smiles at Citan. "Thanks Doc."

He stamps his foot into the ground, another iceberg forming as water erupts underneath his feet, sending him soaring up into the air.

Is this him, he thinks of Seymour, is this what he looks like to others when he's the Demon?

Rather than rely on more water, Fei shifts his attention to unleashing flame. He leaps off the rising iceberg and comes crashing down to Seymour, feet first as explosions erupt underneath him, erupting moments before impact.

"Em..." Fei says, looking to his daughter from another life, someone he sees as his own daughter too. "A long time from now, if you ever feel like this... Feeling this is okay, just--don't close your heart off to others, alright?"

His cheeks pinken. "Not...that I'm expecting it or anything just..."

He doesn't want to pass that down to the future. And he sees it in her, the way she just holds onto her pain--keeps it to herself.

It's certainly in him.

Emeralda's own words resonate with him. But he knows deep down that part of him--just seems stuck. He doesn't know what to do, but--it is nice to hear.

He still can't reach it. What was it about that moment, he wonders, that made everything seem so...

(Oh god the word he thinks of unsettles him with the narrative symmetry)

...Calm?

GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seymour Guado with Kakei!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado critically guards Fei Fong Wong's Kakei for 54 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

"Don't presume that other people share your flaws!" Cyre hisses in reply. "Just because you couldn't understand others-- just becaue others couldn't understand you-- doesn't make it universal! That's just solipsism! Of course you could never understand anyone-- if you could never imagine another perspective outside your own!" A wave of tidal proportions bears down upon him. Cyre grits his teeth and leaps, narrowly avoiding being swept fully away by the tide. His parachute is thrown open to catch a sudden breeze at the last, lifting him out of the way just in time...!

"Regardless of your misperceptions, you had a blessed life, Seymour Guado. That you couldn't get outside your own head long enough to share those blessings with others is a tragedy, but you did have the power to help soothe the world's pain!" And yet he did not. Was it because he was blinded by the tragedy of his youth? Was it because he just... a catastrophic self-inflicted failure of empathy?

Only Seymour could say.

And as he is now... He may not have the self-awareness to do it.

"Desperation... Obsession... Yes, these things suit you, Ghost of Seymour Guado," Cyre mutters as he lands, parachute folding back into its compartment like magic (it's probably symbology of some kind, Jay is a friend!!). "Desperation to try and ease the pain in your own heart-- one that you projected over all the world. Obsession with that self-same pain, and all of your twisted goals, preventing you from seeing the good that you had in your life. The good you could have *done* with your life. Yeah. That all makes sense."

Even Tidus agrees!

Wind has gathered around his limbs again. It swirls and surges up over his torso, knitting into something like a secondary musculature. He braces against the ground, settles himself there, and then--

Rushes forward again, fists and legs launching into a flurry of blows. Every strike sheds a lingering, razor-sharp eddy, the wind in the strange chamber whipping into a bigger and more chaotic frenzy with every punch and every kick...! "Seymour Guado, I can't deny that I absolutely hate your guts. But more than that, I think I just pity you."

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seymour Guado with Gathering Storm!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz's stances have changed to Hero!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.

    The spikes of ice close off her escape, and piece her shoulder and leg, the third stopping shy of her throat- where her own ice coated hands push back against it, stopping their course.

    When then spell fades, Pearl drops to her feet, and her stance closes. Those familiar with the fighting style of the Veruni known as Kaguya would see it. A closed, tight stance- preparing for the strike to come. She channels her chi to soften the next magical blow.

    Lulu's words hit her and Pearl is... ever the contrarian. "The world strikes at all, but not at all equally or with an even pace. Even a feeble blow can kill the young or the weak." She glares forward at Seymour.

    "Your strikes were struck at birth, and in youth- but any strikes past then were imagined. But by then they didn't matter... In your vanity and pridefulness, you became so convinced that only your pain was worthy. All that mattered. What was done to you is not your fault- but all that you did of your own accord was." She has no pity for the undead in her heart. Not now. "We have both been shaped by our scars, Seymour Guado. They both guided us to murder, cruelty and selfishness. Need for power. To seek revenge against those that wronged us- for that is all this is."

    She reaches up with one hand, and grabs the front of her robe, just above the emblem on it's front. "...But I broke free of the path my scars gave me, with aid. You whereas you reopened yours and let the blood blind you to any other option. Your scars are a cage, Seymour Guado..." With one swift movement, she yanks the front of her robe and throws it into the air.

    "Mine became a map to freedom!"

    With the robe gone, Pearl is shirtless but for a simple chest binding to hold things in pace. Her body is a map of scars, old and new, most healed badly. Just off center from her spine is a scorch that would be a killing blow. A map of her life so far. A map of the path not to walk.

    She resumes her stance, her silvered fang glinting. "Show me the scars you bear, Seymour Guado- and I will show you where your life's path became a closed spiral!"

GS: Pearl has attacked Pearl with Swallow Shell!
GS: Pearl enters a Counter stance!
GS: Pearl has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Pearl has completed her action.
GS: Pearl heals Pearl! She gains 88 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    "Jay! You'd better stay safe too! You're allowed to save the world today, but I'll be very cross if you do a pyrrhic victory!" Shalune calls as she--

    --isn't close enough to meet Seymour's rage directly, face-to-face, but she's certainly much nearer than she was before given that she's midway through arcing back from her strike. The sheer force of the anger behind it is something she kind of expects, but it's still another thing entirely to actually meet that fervor this close, to see it in his eyes. For just an instant she hesitates - but that's still enough for the orb she just struck to glow in retribution, and she's barely able to yelp and bring her sleeves up to cover her face as she balls up and disappears into an explosion.

    So much for the graceful landing she was hoping for - when she lands at all it's by bouncing off the ground, swallowing an embarrassed noise of pain as she manages to pinwheel her way to a skidding stop. The only thing that stops her pitching back over and vaguely saves it is her combination shotstaff-walking stick, planted against the ground to catch the rest of her momentum.

    "... yeah," she adds, her pensiveness coming back for just a moment as Pearl neatly picks out the problem - being scared doesn't mean you can do what you like. She grimaces, looking rather singed as her beloved coat faintly smoulders; she pats the worst of it down, but it's not the first fire she's faced, and she turns her expression back towards Seymour. "I know. I'm not about to try to claim that it was our fault it got this far, or anything like that. But we're the ones who are here to try to knock some sense into him, I guess."

    "Lunata's goo is kinda cool, Emerelda," she adds, stone-faced despite the amusement dancing in her eyes. She's starting to cultivate a really good patient tone; if combined with her granny accent, it might spell the end for Filgaia. Against all expectations, she doesn't try to argue the point of who's better at toughness with Lunata, not least because she just completely failed to block or dodge an explosion to the face.

    What she does instead is visibly soften into a warm smile back to Lunata, utterly buoyed by the surety and confidence behind Lunata's speech. The mechanic doesn't even blink when she summons Ge Ramda in the middle of what was probably supposed to be hopeful and mildly romantic, but some things you just get used to. "That's how it is," she follows it as she fishes in a pocket of her bag, ejecting the spent fuel cell from her staff and ramming another home. "It doesn't matter what it is, or how important it is to anyone else, so long as you find your own thing to live for. I'm sorry you never did."

GS: Shalune Amira has attacked Shalune Amira with Still Fighting!
GS: Shalune Amira has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Shalune Amira has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Shalune Amira heals Shalune Amira! She gains 257 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Shalune Amira!
GS: CRITICAL! Billy Lee Black solidly guards Seymour Guado's Firaga for 138 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Right before launching into her light-empowered combo, Xantia takes a moment to give Fei a quick thumbs-up when he asks if she's good. She doesn't ask him the same. She feels the answer would be similar to her own: merely a sign of being 'good enough', in lieu of explaining the full extent of the way she feels right now. Suboptimal, but good enough to fight, which is all that matters at the moment. And not wanting anyone else to worry about it overmuch. It's like that, she's pretty sure.

Again, the answer comes in the form of water - more of it this time, and in the form of a wave - which she deals with in the best way she can. By diving through it, opting to take some damage to avoid getting swept away by it. "Ngh, seriously...?" she complains as she picks herself up from another thorough drenching. Her protective aura, while still intact, only lessened the impact, not doing much to prevent the secondary effects.

Shaking it off as best she can, she's quick to reassume a combat stance... but something else catches her attention then. While she's not one to bat much of an eye at the sudden appearance of friendly coffin monsters, Yuna's following words do catch her attention, prompting Xantia to look back over her shoulder. "Wait, what?" His mother did what?? Granted, she's far from an expert on what mothers are supposed to be like, but she's pretty sure it doesn't involve any of that!

Here she was all ready to not feel any pity for this guy with a grudge against the entire world, but that was before she had any idea about the reasons. Putting that together with what he said to her just now, about people always being alone... well, Tidus may be right as well, but she's starting to see the tragic way in which things got to this point.

"...I used to feel like I was alone, even when surrounded by friends. That I couldn't understand anybody, and nobody could understand me. But, you know what the difference is?" Light flares up in her right hand as she abruptly leaps towards Seymour.

"I never gave up!!"

Even if there's some measure of understanding, there will be no pity, no respect, for those who choose not to seek happiness, but instead make everyone else as miserable as themselves. And Xantia will show that in the most fitting way she knows: a full-force punch that holds nothing back, causing a massive explosion of light at the point of impact.

GS: Xantia spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Xantia has attacked Seymour Guado with Exploding Fist!
GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Mighty expired!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Gathering Storm for 162 hit points!
GS: Mighty and Quick applied to Cyre H. Lorentz!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
GS: Billy Lee Black accepts Citan Uzuki's Reishou for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Citan Uzuki's Reload! activated!
GS: Billy Lee Black gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.

    He shakes his head. "Please... Fei, you must not attempt such a thing, in a place such as this."

    Within Sin, where memories and the pulse of Spira swell.

    "I am not your judge," Citan says, quite plainly. It is true: he is not Seymour's judge.

    He is merely the enforcer. An order has already been handed down.

    Huge blades of ice cleave rip through the space between them: time enough for a pair of heartbeats to pass and be gone. Then and only then does Citan move. Too soon, and he would have likely received another deadly spell cast in his direction for his pains. Too late, and... well. But here, while he can feel the breath of winter's chill along his left arm and then his back as he slips past the oncoming storm of ice, he is yet unscathed.

    A quick survey determines the general status of the others; it gives him also time to receive a few remarks his way. "You are quite welcome, Fei. And-- ah, I suppose I shall see what I might do, Miss Rikku?" In another circumstance, he might have paired that remark with a quick smile. Here and now, though...

    "She is correct. We cannot neglect our past, but neither may we permit it to define us," he says, chiming in soon after Lulu makes her own statement on the matter. "Whether or not you accept it, look around you, and see the evidence for yourself! The only one who remains defined by your pain is...!"

    Must he finish the pronouncement, for it to become clear?

    Water ether -- so easily borrowed from the mists within Sin -- swells invisibly about him as he shifts his stance. Closing his eyes, Citan focuses within, preparing for what may yet come. Slowly, he takes a breath; slowly, he exhales. No, it had not mere sophistry, what he had said before.

    At times, he has learned, the only way out is through.

    And at times, he has learned, stillness is a deception, one which he seeks to utilize now.

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    Ethius isn't able to answer in time before a sorcerous wave of water stands to take half a dozen of them out of the picture.
 
     As the water comes crashing down, the Symbologist from beyond the stars makes a play to leap to his own right, but the way the waves crash catch him, engulf him, and carry him about. Ethius nearly gets flung off the platform within that crashing tidal wave, like a ragdoll. (This does not bode well for when the party all finds Shiryu in a chest somewhere later on.)
 
     His staff grinds against the ground as he comes that close to flying off, staring down into the misty depths of oblivion with a side of colorful sorcerous wheels and at least one Lunie moving above him to deal with those elemental orbs.
 
     "Pardon," he says with some humility as a drenched Ethius rises and staggers back away from the front lines from the likes of Xantia and Tidus, knowing the space up in melee range is at significant premium. He has to run a hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes.
 
     He clears his throat. "It is their right to choose unwisely - and it is their right to rectify it." It is also his right to stand a bit further back from Anima, which he is also going to do. He respects the various cultural disciplines of Spira from variable distances as apporpriate.
 
     He gives consideration to Lunata's own resolve. "Whatever life and death means... and how one comes to grip with that, that is for them to--" Ge Ramda roars over what Ethius has to say, and perhaps that's all right. He's having a hard time pontificating at length when he's drenched.
 
     (He's standing a little closer to Cyre so that the whipping wind can help dry him off a bit faster.)
 
     He catches enough of what Pearl has to say, and internally considers in the moment where his own emotional scars led him across the years - or perhaps where it led him away from. He knows what he gave up to be here.
 
     "Though the Otherworlders have come and left their mark on Spira," to put it mildly, "Spira is making its own way."
 
     Another Symbological spellcasting ritual, cutting off the dialogue on his part for a short while as he waves his fingers and calls to some of the dust and debris lingering in the space. "Dust Compress!"
 
     He channels it all to rush and compact at a point at one of the discs above Seymour, out of the reach of most, to try and follow that particular gameplan.
 
     "That way goes through you."

GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Seymour Guado with Dust Compress!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Citan Uzuki with Shinsuisei -Mu-!
GS: Citan Uzuki enters a Counter stance!
GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Citan Uzuki gains 16 THP from his Cautious!
GS: Cover and Riposte expired!
GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
GS: Citan Uzuki accepts Citan Uzuki's Shinsuisei -Mu- for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst and Lock state applied to Citan Uzuki!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Shalune says she'll be very cross if she tries to go for a pyrrhic victory. Jacqueline offers her a smile.

"...Don't worry. It's like I said - I have reasons I want to survive. I don't plan on going anywhere today." She assures.

And then... she is put into a difficult situation, as Lunata whines for her to defend her from Shalune's accusations. ...She visibly sweats for a moment.

"You're... very good at coming back from things." Jacqueline replies diplomatically after a moment. Seymour soon demands her attention again, however, and she looks to him with a frown.

"...It's no lie." Jacqueline replies defiantly, with a shake of her head. Lunata has her own words to say - how she had people sticking with her(who she was also romantically interested in).

"...I think that's a wonderful thing to live for, actually." Jacqueline admits to Lunata with a smile, before looking back toward Seymour. Shalune has her own additions, too, and Jacqueline nods.

There's no one worth living for, Seymour said. She shakes her head.

"...It's a shame you never met anyone who could prove you wrong about that, Seymour. Or, maybe you never let anyone try - not really." Jacqueline concludes, with a shake of her head.

First came water, and now it's fire - Jacqueline can feel the air heating up before it actually happens. Thinking quickly, she gestures with her left hand and braces herself. A wall of earth rises just as the air immediately next to her explodes. The explosion sends her flying, but thanks to her quick thinking she's able to at least land on her feet.

She gestures with her right hand, now. The air above Seymour begins to crackle fiercely - and with a sharp swing of her arm downwards, lightning crashes toward him from above.

GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seymour Guado with Lightning Strike!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Disease expired!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Xantia's Exploding Fist for 252 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Hyper applied to Xantia!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado solidly guards Ethius Hesiod's Dust Compress for 85 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

Billy finds in Seymour a funhouse mirror, a horrible glimpse of a man he could have been. Pale eyes flash to Citan, and he nods in gratitude at his father's friend.think @emit Billy finds in Seymour a funhouse mirror, a horrible glimpse of a man he could have been. Pale eyes flash to Citan, but there's no time for moments here. Billy throws his arms up, bracing his Etone defenses, sorcerous and armored, against the roaring fury of Seymour Omnis. The flames score him, leave char on the ground around him, but when the burn clears, Billy can throw his arms open and have little more than scuff on his robes. An Etone is a warrior, first, after all. A hunter of beasts.

Yuna reveals the truth of it all, and Billy lowers his head quietly, a troubled thought knotting in his brows. The Yevonite woman catches his eye - he doesn't know Pearl's name, but the flight of her robe flying away, the mapping of scars across her body, forces more strength into his legs. "Scars," he says, quietly, and whirls his gunsmoke back into its holster.

Then he charges. He leaps up, this time, actually covering the distance to Seymour Omnis. He kicks down hard, one, two, three, and then pushes away on the third, flipping away - but as he rotates around himself, he flicks his Ether guns out of his sleeves, blasts of fire and wind roaring down to score him! "You couldn't be more wrong!" Billy calls. "There are as many answers as there are souls! To raise your own above all others is the height of this weakness!"

"A god with such a cowardly heart is no God of mine!"

GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Seymour Guado with Sky Walker!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Jacqueline Barber's Lightning Strike for 258 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Billy Lee Black's Sky Walker for 109 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Break applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Quick applied to Billy Lee Black!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.

"Rikku!" Paine shouts, knowing well what a lightning spell means to her. From the knees up she moves to go to the thief, but her feet refuse, glued to the spot, because Tidus has just taken a bad hit as well. Before she has to resolve these two maximum priorities, however, she sees something remarkable: Rikku comforts herself.

"Damn right," she breathes, with a small smile, before turning her attention back. And not a moment too soon.

There is a moment, just one, where Seymour has gestured at Paine, but she can see no mystical reaction, no oncoming projectile. She does not wonder, she does not think. She just dives forward, tucking as she goes. And, as it happens, the massive burst of howling fire behind her gives her an extra push to help her through the front roll. She expels a breath, relief flooding her despite herself. She wouldn't have liked Lulu to see her die like that, she thinks, also despite herself. It would not impress her.

Paine arrived late enough that she never tortured herself over what Yuna might have to see. She understood who she was protecting, and what her fate was. She understood that dying in front of Yuna was the duty of a Guardian if need be. The grief she feels at Yuna's tears is an old one that never really goes away fully. Even now, when so much about what she understood this journey to be about has changed, she hasn't let it go away.

Walking up to Tidus as he recovers, Paine does not offer him a hand up, just a ready sword in case something happens while he's doing it himself. "Hm? We're not buying anything. Not from him," she tells him. She's getting some of that eerie enthusiasm she has in combat going again; it's visible in her eyes, in the corner of her hard white teeth as she loops that heavy sword a few times. "We're TAKING time."

As Tidus summons up his spell, Paine storms forward. This is hard-going; even Lulu, even Anima is only doing so much. But even as she goes, the one who healed herself, now heals Paine, Rikku filling in for Yuna in protecting her comrades today. Paine looks back and gives her that same corner of her teeth she gave Tidus. Her test of Seymour's resilience earlier was not conclusive.

"Yuna, Lulu! You can hit him harder than that!" she roars. And on her own scale, she demonstrates, Gravestone coming down in deep, heavy gouges. It is not so odd that her blows remain precise, that her engagement remains measured rather than feral. She is not, after all, berserk.

Just enjoying herself.

GS: Paine has attacked Seymour Guado with Hard Break!
GS: Paine has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Paine has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Paine's Hard Break for 0 hit points!
GS: Break, Cripple, and Shieldbreak applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

 <SoundTracker> The Beast - Shiro Sagisu - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KKkdIODSok

Yuna's words have hit home, if just for an instant.

Seymour's counterattack is unfortunately somewhat longer-lasting in its consequences. He hits home, and home, and home. Ice through Anima's shoulder. More through Anima's gut. A piece flies straight at her left eye, the one that launched that enormous attack, and if it were not for the still-fading power there disintegrating the shard even as it approaches, he would have gone straight through, surely. So much ice that it's like a second cage. Rime is growing along the ground around her, like Jack Frost painting the surface of the underworld, and every whorl and swirl is shaped like a screaming skull.

As though not in paradox but in direct response, his action causing her reaction, Yuna is... heated.

"THE WORLD didn't slaughter Rikku's family -- MY family!"

A third tear, this one out of her green, Al Bhed eye. Being abandoned by parents fulfilling the Yevonite pilgrimage is the first thing they have in common. Being children of two peoples, and reviled for it, is the second. But she and Rikku have spoken of this slaughter, and recently. It was never Yuna's crime, but it was Yevon's. Absolution, surely, was Rikku's to give. But not Seymour's to ever receive.

It's such an unforgivable crime.

Lulu makes a wish, and Yuna sucks that tear up her nose with a little sniff -- and no more come after that. Not even when Tidus is momentarily laid out by lightning. She WILL grant Lulu's wish. And she is not surprised when he gets up, though of course she is relieved. Rikku is pivotal to both of these outcomes; her not crying, and Tidus still standing.

Yuna clears the last of her tears out of her throat, then raises her voice again. "THE WORLD didn't try to do the same to the Ronso!" A genocide that would have succeeded if not for all the Drifters that are fighting Seymour alongside them even now. And, through Kimahri, they are no less her people. All of Spira's people are hers, it feels like. The Yevonites and Al Bhed by birth. The Ronso by adoption.

The Guado...

"THE WORLD didn't..."

Yuna's voice breaks again.

But the word is so powerful. And the crime is capital.

She will not cry.

"K-kiss me," gulps Yuna.

...by marriage.

And from the depths of Sin she is transported to the top of the Ten Thousand Steps.

 <SoundTracker> silence

Her tearless eyes are faraway as she remembers. The feeling of the summoner's rod as it left her fingertips. The feeling of betrayal, as Grand Maester Mika revealed his undeath and, more importantly, his cruelty. The feeling of surrendering to Seymour at the altar, the price of saving her friends' lives. The feeling of those cold, dead lips against her. HIS cold, dead lips. The first kiss she ever received, even if it can't be said to be one that she gave. You still never get it back, a first like that.

She has never spoken of it to him since, or at all, mostly.

But funerals are for the living.

And Anima's fayth didn't raise her son to be like THAT.

Yuna's stance is wavering slightly, and within her cage of chain and ice, Anima wavers in unison with her.

They exhale as one. Ice emerges from between Anima's fangy jaws... and from between Yuna's lips, too.

As Yuna gathers herself... wiping phantom saliva from her lips with the back of her palm, exactly how she once did while standing upon the precipice at the edge of Bevelle's tallest tower...

Invisible power falls far more heavily than gravity, upon the son of Guado and Yevon.

Anima bestows her most severe curse upon her fayth's most deserving son.

'Yuna, Lulu! You can hit him harder than that!'

Yuna tries her hardest to further augment Anima's cursing.

"...poopie." She exhales the last of her shakiness with the VERY MOST SEVERE SWEAR WORD she's ever been taught by her cousin.

Her eyes are hard, now.

She's back.

GS: Blitz! Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with C U R S E!
GS: Yuna gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Yuna's C U R S E for 0 hit points!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Break, Delay, Disrupt, Entangle, and Shieldbreak applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour is more a creature of rage than words, now. Oh, he hears Lulu -- but his anger has consumed him. He shouts, a wordless and enraged cry, at her as she throws the pain of betrayal from the Crusaders at him. Green energy explodes around him, blasting into his stone body at Lulu's command.

Tidus sends up his own orb of magical water. It explodes up into the air, then smashes into him. Stone chips away; pyreflies burst out, as some pieces of stone are broken off to the point that they dissolve. Seymour's scream continues as the water breaks across him.

He looks at Rikku and then Emeralda -- and the anger in his eyes reveals the truth. Maybe it wasn't personal, but it wasn't just a kindness. It wasn't just about overcoming challenges. There is an anger in him that consumes him.

Even if he were to speak, though, his words wouldn't reach. Boudicca's winds howl and tear over him; stone dust flies free, cracks enlarge, and pyreflies dance over those winds. Elly's surging flame flies in, consistent, a moment later. It slams into him, fire burning brighter and brighter.

The stone superheats; portions begin to crack, pop, and BURST with pyreflies.

He brings a hand up. Fei crashes down, with his feet, and Seymour catches his feet -- cracks exploding across the stone in his hands -- and he shoves the martial artist away from him, bodily.

Cyre tells him of his privilege -- of what he could have brought into the world. And Seymour heard him, for his eyes meet the shaman's with a flash of anger. But he has no words for him -- no retort, now. Only his anger; his desire to see everything end.

Would he have understood, if things happened differently? Would he have shared those blessings? Or is it only now that he is too far gone?

Cyre's flurry of blows assails him. Seymour howls with rage at the word pity -- each blow striking him, sending up chips of tone and bursts of pyreflies. And then Pearl shows her scars -- and he does look.

His eyes are on hers for a moment.

"I have dispensed," he spits, "with scars. I am remade. REBORN!"

Indeed, perhaps it is notable; an Unsent chooses their form. To age, or not; to take the form in life or different. And Seymour, no matter how monstrous, was always a figure of physical perfection. His scars were never shown.

But there.

He turns, then, to Shalune. His eyes blaze at her -- and there is anger there. But there isn't denial. After all, he has said it himself.

What is there to live for? For anyone, but for him?

And, as Xantia points out, he gave up. He can't -- won't -- answer her with words. Her punch slams into his chest. It cracks like stone; light erupts from those cracks. It is as Citan says: he is defined by his pain.

The glare he gives Ethius says all he has to say about Spirans and the right to choose. Dust rushes in on his spheres -- compresses -- and the orbs and discus around Seymour begin to crack. They begin to break, under the terrible weight.

The same weight that Jay puts on him. His eyes blaze with anger -- his mouth opens -- and he is...

He is dumbfounded. He never found that. He never wanted it. He never knew to want it.

So Seymour howls anger in Jacqueline's face, the air crackles -- static leaps across his for -- and lightning smashes down into him, brilliantly. Billy rejects his godhood, not a moment later -- and fire and wind scour across him, sending chips of stone flying into the air. They are joined by pyreflies.

Gravestone crashes down into him. Paine strikes; the heavy blow hits, and the cracks across his body shine, then EXPLODE with light. A wave of pyreflies blasts out, rushing around her with a wind that blows back her garb and hair alike.

He slumps, as Yuna speaks to him. His eyes find hers, and he hears what she whispers.

"...I didn't want it, Yuna," he says, his voice quiet. It's a simple truth; it's a little bit of his remaining humanity. "Can't you see? You would have died. I hurt you. I knew I would hurt you. I knew I would hurt myself. Everyone. But... did you not learn from your father's--" His voice catches. "Your father's passing?"

And then his eyes widen, more manic. Wilder. Because this world -- his world -- can't withstand the revelation he was on the verge of having.

"DID YOU NOT LEARN FROM YOUR FATHER!?" he screams. "PAIN DIES WITH YOU! IT DOESN'T MATT--"

Anima's curse flays him. Power slams into him, crushes him. He sags, his body slumping. He is, for a moment, still.

Lunata speaks to him. He lifts his head; he looks at her, as she comes rushing in. Red lightning crackles through Lunata -- and then it rackles through him, as the glyph erupts under him.

He screams, his entire body thrashing under its weight, and she drains energy from him. Light floods Lunata; pyreflies dance around her.

"No," he says. "NO! How... how do you find an answer!? How did you find one that I could not!? ANSWER ME! LUNATA!"

Seymour throws his right hand out. A tidal wave of ice shoots out, at his command -- it explodes, growing upon itself, in a cone across the battlefield. Ice dust wafts across the stone platform, and jagged blades of ice dig at Rikku, Lunata, Elly, Shalune, and Jay.

Seymour throws his left hand out. Motes of light leap off it, swirl together, and then a tidal wave erupts from his hand. It shoots across the stones; parts scarred black from flame and lightning are washed clean, dust and debris caught up in it. The wave crashes down atop the heads of Lulu, Boudicca, Pearl, Xantia, and Citan.

Finally, Seymour brings both hands together. He claps them together -- with a loud, resounding SMACK -- and then a shockwave of flame explodes away from him. It scorches the ground black again, where waters cleared it; it flash-melts ice dust lingering in the air. The flame roils out towards Tidus, Emeralda, Fei, Ethius, Billy, and Anima.

Because now, for his mother, he has fire as well.

Then, finally, Seymour throws both his arms wide open. His face becomes the all-knowing, vicious, and detached mask that he has so often worn. But now, all know it to be a mask.

"Let darkness take you!"

Strands of light flow out from around him. They shimmer from green to blue; from blue to violet; from violet to searing white. They flow across the platform. Where they come, there are massive -- titanic -- explosions of white brilliance. It is a spell like no other; huge flashes of light, superheating in an instant, and exploding amongst them all.

GS: Seymour Guado has become ENRAGED!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lunata Croze with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Shalune Amira with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Pearl with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Xantia with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Citan Uzuki with Wateraga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Emeralda Kasim with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Billy Lee Black with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Firaga!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Lunata Croze with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Shalune Amira with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Pearl with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Xantia with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Citan Uzuki with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Emeralda Kasim with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Billy Lee Black with Ultima!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Ultima!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS:  Enrage purges all positive status!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: Lunata Croze has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Lunata Croze solidly guards Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 71 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Lunata Croze solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 163 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Lunata Croze enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Rikku solidly guards Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 69 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Ultima for 347 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Emeralda Kasim takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Firaga for 206 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Emeralda Kasim gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: CRITICAL! Emeralda Kasim solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 131 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Ethius Hesiod solidly guards Seymour Guado's Firaga for 109 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 141 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Elhaym van Houten suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 147 hit points!
GS: Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Elhaym van Houten solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 110 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Shalune Amira suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 180 hit points!
GS: Fei Fong Wong solidly guards Seymour Guado's Firaga for 110 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Shalune Amira takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Ultima for 188 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Shalune Amira enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Lulu suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 386 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Fei Fong Wong solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 163 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Lulu has activated Force Action: Accelerate!
GS: Lulu partially evades Seymour Guado's Ultima for 191 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Yuna solidly guards Seymour Guado's Firaga for 118 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 154 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Seymour Guado's Blizzara for 66 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 103 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Gleam activated!
GS: COUNTER! Citan Uzuki counterattacks Seymour Guado with Mufuu!
GS: Citan Uzuki suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 203 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Citan Uzuki gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Charge!! You gain 55 FP!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Citan Uzuki receives 100 temporary hit points.
GS: Citan Uzuki enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Citan Uzuki's Mufuu for 167 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Tidus solidly guards Seymour Guado's Firaga for 211 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tidus gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!
GS: Tidus suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Ultima for 273 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tidus gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Billy Lee Black takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Firaga for 120 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Billy Lee Black gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: CRITICAL! Billy Lee Black solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 153 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Billy Lee Black gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Billy Lee Black enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Xantia critically guards Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 52 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Xantia solidly guards Seymour Guado's Ultima for 118 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Xantia receives 100 temporary hit points.
GS: Xantia enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Citan Uzuki has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Guard!
GS: Citan Uzuki suffers a terrible blow from Seymour Guado's Ultima for 221 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Citan Uzuki gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Citan Uzuki enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Pearl has activated Force Action: Accelerate!
GS: COUNTER! Pearl counterattacks Seymour Guado with Counter Attack!
GS: Pearl partially guards Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 225 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Pearl gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Pearl enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Pearl's Counter Attack for 277 hit points!
GS: Quick applied to Pearl!
GS: CRITICAL! Pearl takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Ultima for 154 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Pearl gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated!
GS: Seraph Boudicca partially guards Seymour Guado's Wateraga for 107 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Ultima for 240 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper and Shield applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated!
GS: Seraph Boudicca enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Tidus's sorcery may not be his focus as it is Lulu's, but she gives grim appreciation to his effort there. And to his words. "Your technique has improved," she comments to Tidus, in the middle of battle.

It must be serious, if she's giving compliments. And to Rikku...

"We are," she agrees with Rikku as that ultra cure gives her so much energy. The earlier wounds are gone. She is strong, now.

But it's true. Paine's death would not impress Lulu in the least, in a moment like that.

But Paine calls out to her. She can hit harder than that, the other woman roars, and Lulu gives her a grim look, almost a smile if it weren't so very serious.

"You're right," she says. "I can." Then a pause, as she lifts n eyebrow at Yuna. Such language. ...But she sees it in Yuna's eyes. She's there. She's back. And the things she said...

No, Lulu wll not chide her for her language in the face of that 'first', or any of the rest of it.

Instead she looks to Paine, and says, "...Nice cut."

And then, Seymour calls out his rage, his screaming, his despair... and a wave threatens to overwhelm Lulu. It slams into her and sends her sailin across the platform, where she skids there trying to stop herself and only barely avoids falling off completely. She is drenched, and the pressure is already causing bruises. Even her magic armoring does not do away with the sheer force of such a spell. ANd then... the greatest of black magic.

The lights shimmer, and Lulu knows this spell. She knows it intimately well. Perhaps that is the reason that it does not destroy her; she moves within heartbeats, weaves a shimmering wall of power about herself, and absorbs some of the spell. Not all. There is too much for that. But she knows its weft and weave, and so she uses it.

She can no longer stand straight, with the sheer weight of the water, of her injuries. She is on one knee, drawing breath with difficulty.

But she is not through yet.

Lulu closes her eyes, and remembers transcendence. That an Unsent mage could use this magic makes sense to her; his great power breaks the rules. For her it is not so simple; she must draw upon all the power here... and the power here is great indeed. Lulu begins to push herself to her feet. Despite the pain--no, because of the pain--she places her hands before herself, and pushes them together. Even here, within Sin, the elements persist. Lulu grew up with fire and water, lightning and ice. She has known the storm since she was a child, from the frigid snows of northern Spira to the heat of Besaid.

She has known darkness and earth nearly as long. The deep, dark earth of the cavern of the Stolen Fayth, that stole her innocence from her too. ...The darkness of the sky itself, stretching out forward, while she and Chappu looked up at it.

The wind on her face, at sea once again, with Father Zuke. And the Light she saw in Yuna...

All come together, as motes of energy float through the air towards Lulu.

"Seymour," she says.

"...Let me show you the power of a true black mage."

One hand rises into the air, and the other holds the point of light that begins to collapse in on itself--

Until there is a sudden explosion about Seymour, and another, and another, all in white energy. Then there is a flash of green, that begins to expand outward, the birth of a star. It expands, rings around it rotating, before suddenly it shunts back inward--and explodes. Purple and green and cyan all dominate the eye as the explosions rush outward.

"...Pain lives, Seymour. And I will not give up mine."

GS: Lulu has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Lulu spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Formation! Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Ultima!
GS: Lulu has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Lulu's Ultima for 283 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Cripple applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Tidus never would've expected to get a compliment from Lulu mid-battle, but he can't help but grin when he gets it all the same. "Hey, I learned from the best!" he counters, and it isn't even a joke or flattery. There are few in the world more learned in magic than Lulu is.
    
    Meanwhile, Rikku says there's more where that came from, and she's right in spades: the concoction she tosses into the air rains down soothing, healing energy that brings a breath of fresh air to Tidus's lungs and knits together several of his burns and cuts. "Yeah! You said it, Rikku!" he cheers, lifting his chin up.
    
    Because it's not just that she's cheering on everyone else. She's pushing through her own pain, pushing through her own trauma, a living contradiction of everything Seymour stands for. And Paine might not offer him a hand up, but she represents something just as good: a sword to defend him if he needs it. For the moment, Tidus staggers to his feet, steadying more and more as Rikku's healing potion works its... technically not magic.
    
    "Hey, it's cool," Tidus reassures Ethius as he moves away from the front lines. Then he smirks at Paine. "Man, do you work at coming up with all these cool one-liners or are you just a natural?" he teases. "You're right again, though. Let's take everything he's got from 'im!!"
    
    Except for that last bit of unlife. That--that is all Yuna's to take, after what Seymour took from *her*. And the reminder of it only makes his grip on Caladbolg that much tighter. He looks back at Yuna, grimacing in sympathetic anger. That anger only intensifies as Seymour toes the line of actually having some redeeming humanity in him--a humanity that he then violently rejects, and with that violence brings more upon her and all of them.
    
    Tidus is prepared for the first wave of magic, and when Seymour claps his hands together, he bends his sword before him as a makeshift shield to eat up some of the heat of the Firaga that explodes all around him. It only eats up *some* of that Firaga, though, and Tidus screams through the searing heat that eats at his skin, that threatens to cook him alive. That scream is as much defiance as it is pain--
    
    Until the Ultima hits.
    
    The light that threads out from Seymour phases through colors as if phasing through gradations of heat and power before finally exploding, harder and hotter than even the Firaga from before.
    
    When that power wanes, it seems as though Tidus might have been overcome. Reduced, perhaps, to a smear of ash and melted fat, with nothing but Caladbolg as his memorial. But the pearlescent blue blade quivers--Tidus's hands squeeze on the hilt--and he wavers up back onto his feet. Again. Always again.
    
    "It's not... taking me... anywhere," he pants, lungs heaving like bellows desperately sucking in air that should have been burnt away. "I'm--still standing--SEYMOUR!!"
    
    Though much of it has been reduced to steam, the remains of the Watergas from earlier, both his and Seymour's, remain on the floor around them. As he sweeps the tip of his blade down and around in a circle, that water follows (flows) with it.
    
    "Paine, gimme a boost!" he rasps. When she offers him either her hands or her sword or something else entirely as a platform, he runs--ignoring the scream of his skin and muscle--and leaps up off of her, perhaps getting an extra boost if she outright tosses him into the air. Either way, the streams of water follow the edge of Caladbolg as he spins in midair, forming streams in a sphere around him. As he circles his legs in midair, he raises his blade high, and light of a different sort of brilliance reflects off of it.
    
    It's different from firelight--different even from Ultimalight. This is the light of the Sun, of life-giving warmth that sustains the world, and it shines in rainbow colors through the water droplets that encircle Tidus.
    
    "THIS ONE'S FOR YUNA!!" he roars, and sweeps Caladbolg down. Following the aerial stroke of his sword, water and light both pour down in a ferocious rain to batter Seymour--to chip away his ugliness with beauty.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Pearl casts her robe aside and Lunata can just feel the heat radiating off off her; the very verve of her lifeforce, of one who's sought her freedom. And Lunata listens to Shalune's own words too -- of how it doesn't matter what it is, or how small it is, or how insignificant others might find it... so long as it's something one would live for -- it's valid. It's all valid.

    "In finding its way, Spira has started to leave its mark upon other worlds," Lunata says to Ethius. "It can share its story, its wounds, and its joy with Filgaia, and with the greater boundary of Lunar too."

    Lunata would blush for Jacqueline if she could, but she still can't -- and she scratches her cheek to say, "Of course it is! You know I'd stand by your side till the end of time!" Whether it's her time, or Jay's time, or Shalune's time, she doesn't know, but she's here and she's going to be LOUD and PROUD of her desire to be part of the living world.

    It's like Lulu advised to her before. The tormented dead are those that have lost their connection to the living. In deciding to stand with everyone... she's alive, no matter how dead her body is!!

    Yuna unsheathes her anger with a most darning word, but beyond that, she can feel the anger from those that've been lost. And Lunata can't forget that either. But Lunata is questioned, as Seymour roars even as light surrounds her, the pyreflies she steals bolstering her--

    How did she find an answer?

    "... it's going to sound really, really, really lame, but it really, really, really--"

    Oh no, ice! She suspends her words for now and Ge Ramda takes hold of her again, her bony fingers forming a skeletal shield with which she weathers the storm; however, that's not the end, as Seymour calls upon that most violent and titanic of spells, of which she's only seen once before at Lulu's command--

    ULTIMA!

    ...

    ...

    Ge Ramda is smouldering and withering, when the light subsides; the very inky black ooze that she's made of evaporates in the air around her, and Lunata's not looking so great either. But she's got a grin through her scuffed face as she very gently and calmly advises:

    "Step one! I got beaten up!"
    "Step two! I woke up and Shalune bonked me in the head for being stupid!"
    "Step three! Jay expressed how sad she was if she lost me forever!"
    "Step four! I told Jay I wanted to kiss her!"
    "Step five! I didn't get duuuuuuumped on the spot!!"
    "Step six! Love feels good, actually!!!!"

    She breathes deep and stretches her arms out. "I feel the power of Death within this domain... and I, as wielder of the Artificial Medium of Death, do beseech thee!"

    Orochi-Agito is raised, and a black cloud seems to surround the group -- but what feels ominous is actually empowering, as she channels the very aura of stillness and inevitability into Death in its most progressive, positive, upright form:

    Death as a Rebirth.

    "Seymour! This is farewell!"

GS: Tidus spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Formation! Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Sunshower Strike!
GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Jacqueline Barber used Force Action: Mystic on Lunata Croze! FP up!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Yuna with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Paine with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Billy Lee Black with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Jacqueline Barber with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Citan Uzuki with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Ethius Hesiod with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Xantia with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Shalune Amira with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Pearl with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Fei Fong Wong with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Elhaym van Houten with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seraph Boudicca with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Emeralda Kasim with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Rikku with the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka!
GS: Lunata Croze gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Lunata Croze has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Tidus's Sunshower Strike for 284 hit points!
GS: FP up! SOS Overdrive and Sufferer activated!
GS: Elhaym van Houten accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Elhaym van Houten!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Ethius Hesiod!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Cyre H. Lorentz!
GS: Emeralda Kasim accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Emeralda Kasim!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Emeralda Kasim enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Seraph Boudicca accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Seraph Boudicca!
GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Fei Fong Wong accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Fei Fong Wong!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

'Damn right,' and Rikku's head actually turns as she looks to Paine like a puppy that just got praise. With a giggle, and a look forward she says, "Sometimes I surprise even myself."
 
The high still hasn't left her as she tells Citan. "Bet you can do a lot!" As if in sincere expression of faith to the simple country Doctor.
 
However that high fades as Yuna chokes out those words, that answer. That grief, for a moment she almost goes over there to comfort her and then... '... poopie.'
 
Rikku is stunned, in the contrast for a moment, and then in the most aghast tone ever where it's not even clear whether Rikku is teasing or SUPER SERIOUS, "Yunie! Language!"
 
Maybe jolting her out of it and trying to help her find higher spirits in all this resounding grief is the best she can give her. Seymour however, won't wait for those high spirits, shards of ice rain down, and Rikku's Godhand smashes against it, as the hydraulics burst it into so much icy dust.
 
Ultima is a different matter. Little bit of a different matter. Darkness nearly does take her as light scintillates and detonates in huge flashes that she'd seen from Lulu before.
 
Erected magical barriers crack, and part of her wonders if bones did too. In the end she's on the ground, vision blurring, and she forgets where she is, "Oh right... we're..." Rikku suddenly just, hops up, "Hup hup!" Despite every bone aching.
 
"That all... you got?" Rikku asks, as she offers perhaps the first step of her revenge by saying the words very similar to Tidus' perhaps, "Still alive." And giving Seymour the biggest smile. Even as she cheers, perhaps not as energetically as she might have, "Get him Tidus! Paine!"
 
There's a quick mix with her hands, of a concoction, strands of shadow dripping off her hands, as she then looks towards him, "Don't worry Seymour. Maybe I keep my memories on the inside..." Rikku tosses it, and there is a sudden Inferno, that bursts across him as if he were lit aflame by some weird Al Bhed Napalm.
 
"...but I'll definitely always remember you."

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Pain dies with you.

An interesting proposition. Elly, worrying and worrying as she gathers herself again, sees Seymour scream in the fury of one pressed to the edge. It is all or nothing, now; perhaps they will prevail, Yuna and her Guardians and the Drifters, or else this singular figure.

How many times have there been moments like this?

And does that mean they will prevail?

The surging ice. That's bad enough. Elly's gathered fire is able to smash against it, reducing it to water, and not water that is tied with tender knots of subtle spellcraft. But something is coming up behind it, the follow-on, the avalanche behind the snow, the backdraft behind the flame, the tsunami behind the receding tide.

Elly gibbers internally. Maybe all her anxiety and worrying has finally cracked, but as that green light rises, phases to blue, violet, to blinding, searing white, Elly runs forwards...

And when the light fades...

Bruised, one eye squinched shut, hair in disarray, dress ripped, blood oozing from pressure-and-ice injuries on her arm, Elly is a lot closer than she was when the spell started. And upright. Her left hand, the one with the finger Mother clipped, is held palm forwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9XMSQFOVVU

"It doesn't die with you," Elly says. "The pain; it changes, but those who survive are left with the burden..." Her head rolls a few degrees to the side. "I understand."

Then a phoenix cries.

Not literally, of course. That would be very interesting to have happen here, but the scream is instead the shriek of air being abruptly superheated as an Ether-weaving that had been curled up into Elly's palm and around most of her upper back unfurls, sending searing flame rising above her and a single enormous wave of flame, an aviform streak of the superheated plasma that constitutes much of the scientific conception of FIRE ITSELF, washes outwards and forwards and Elly staggers, reels, wheels herself away.

The bird has flown, and it persists; long, searing seconds as the effect dissipates along the thinner axis, as if great wings were spreading...

GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Shalune Amira accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Shalune Amira!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Rikku!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Rikku spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Blitz! Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise!!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Blitz! Elhaym van Houten has attacked Seymour Guado with Thermo Phoenix!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
GS: Yuna accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: Billy Lee Black accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Billy Lee Black!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Rikku's Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise! for 321 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Phoenix for 232 hit points!
GS: Shieldbreak blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Pearl accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Pearl!
GS: Xantia accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Xantia!
<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    Pearl rips off her robe to reveal a mass of scars, a living history of a life spent fighting - and for all that Shalune is slowly having to come to terms with the fact that she's an adult now, she is still a Lunie. Even now, and likely forever more, she has it in her to pause and think: that's rad. What if she did that? She could do that real good. It probably wouldn't end with her getting her hand caught in her jacket sleeve, right? Does it count if a whole lot of her nicks and scrapes are self-inflicted from the rather slipshod way she learnt to be a mechanic?

    "... no, but I bet you'd find some way to get beat up regardless," Shalune notes towards Jay, before leaving a half-lidded stare at the way the alchemist wriggles out of the situation she's found herself in. Her eyebrows slowly raise; the mechanic's wise to Jay's nature, after all, and has been for a very long time.

    Yuna swears! Gasp! Shalune can feel the emotion in her voice, and there's a connection there. Even as Anima rages around them, she finds it within herself to quirk a faint smile, and tilt her head in a slight nod. Sometimes you just have to push those feelings out, however you can - there's no point in holding back. "You tell 'em," she grins - and then smirks. "Now you gotta say after me: 'damn you!'" Shlalune, no!

    Seymour turns to her. He has given up on words, it seems, and so the pink-haired girl just finds herself turning to meet that gaze, her own held steady back at him. There's a dim, private moment where she wonders if she ever really did that before. When they first met him, and for a long time afterwards, she put him on a pedestal - one which he abruptly cast himself off with disastrous consequences. Maybe if she'd not been quite so star-struck at first there could have been a connection there, too - but that's a very big if, and one that'll never come about now.

    But maybe she can just accept this much. Against all common sense she plants her feet, and stands her ground despite Seymour's thrashing, her staff braced against the ground as she prepares for impact. The blizzard makes her grimace in pain, but if there's one thing that Shalune is protected against, it's the cold. It's what comes after that makes her stiffen and start to regret her plan, and she almost disappears amongst a conflagration of heat and noise and raw power.

    But it's still just 'almost'.

    Several bolts of opposing light - a pale soft green as opposed to the raw, bright white - pierce straight through the explosion, hammering into Seymour's centre mass in a blast that is less coordinated and more carpet-bombing. Wisps of remaining light trail behind Shalune as she rockets out of the blast zone on her flying scooter, distending the last of the explosion as she almost drags it behind her. Her vision is blurred and she's rasping a little for breath, but piloting the Little Dipper is second nature to her now.

    Unlike Lunata she can still blush, and it takes a moment to identify that the way she's got her sleeve in front of her face is not because she's severely injured but because she's currently coping with Lunata's newfound openness and love of life by turning rapidly into a tomato. Black goo or no black goo, no matter how impressive it might or might not be, Shalune's well aware she wouldn't trade that for this or any world.

    And in service of that though, and because she's a little beat up to do anything more fancy - she pushes the engine of the scooter forwards. A corona of energy begins to envelop the front curve of the craft; through all her fixes of the vehicle, the shape of it has been honed into a point. As she blows past Seymour's shoulder, she can spare him one last glance - before ramming that spike of power straight into one of the discs at Seymour's back. She already intends to break one Wheel.

    So what's four more?

GS: Shalune Amira spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Formation! Blitz! Shalune Amira has attacked Seymour Guado with Storm on the Wind!
GS: Shalune Amira has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Shalune Amira has launched an attack Link!
GS: Shalune Amira spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Formation! Blitz! Shalune Amira has attacked Seymour Guado with Soaring Clouds!
GS: Shalune Amira has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Shalune Amira has completed her action.
GS: Citan Uzuki accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Citan Uzuki!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.

"Well, if you don't want to be goo," Emeralda says, "then it probably wasn't great..." She has never had to consider this before. Wait, yes she has. The time she worried people about turning into a puddle. Is time a great circle, as people have said? Has history repeated itself? Well, maybe a little.

Seymour speaks. Emeralda actually has less levity in her voice when she responds. "Pain..."

a distant memory

figures through a curved wall of glass, one with their back to her, long hair trailing behind; others, with guns, raising them at the first

a single sharp sound

but now is not the time to remember

Emeralda trails off. A moment of pain that survived through thousands of years, one of her lives but dozens of someone else's, strikes her, and she doesn't entirely know why. It's enough to cause her to freeze up for a moment.

but you have to live anyway

"Shut up!" Emeralda raises her voice, sounding like the twelve-year-old she appears to be: sudden fury for no clear reason. "You don't even care! You don't care about anyone else! You don't care about Yuna or anyone! Even if it hurts, you have to keep trying! Because the people who came before gave you their hope... and you have to carry it into the future!" Where did THAT come from? It's something she's been thinking about lately... prompted by Xantia, prompted by Fei and Elly (though they probably don't realize it), even Lily (though she *definitely* won't realize it).

Emeralda throws herself at Seymour. By that point the fire is coming at her again; it washes over her, and her body goes shiny-silver, colourless but still holding its shape. It takes the Ultima to change that, shattering Emeralda into a hundred thousand pieces, a million tiny particles of metallic dust, clinging together with an electromagnetic charge.

The wave of dust smashes into Seymour. It looks like nothing, but it's still two hundred pounds of metal, just spread out; less like being hit with a hammer, and more like falling stone, pressing down, with electrical sparks occasionally lashing out of it with no pattern. It condenses, compressing, reforming into Emeralda, who kicks once before jumping off. Parts of her skin are still streaked with silver, especially on her face, under her eyes.

GS: Emeralda Kasim has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has activated Force Action: Lock On!
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

There is little humanity left in the monster that used to be Seymour Guado. His only response is rage. Not impotent rage, either-- but rage powered by the enormous mass of pyreflies that make up... everything here. Everything. The ground. The walls. Seymour too. Electricity arcs through the air. Cyre hisses a curse and dances through the bolts-- this, at least, is something he's familiar with. It was a childhood passtime, of a sort--

Though that was more because he was kind of a jerk to his brother growing up. And he got zapped for his trouble! Justice!

But this-- is not all that Seymour has left to unleash. The ultimate weapon-- the ULTIMATE magic. A catastrophic wave of light washes out, all but swallowing the world up entirely. How much did that take out of Sin itself? Does it matter? There is nothing but white hot pain. Pain so intense that all else fades before it. Cyre screams as he's thrown clear, his robes turned to smoldering ash-- and his skin singed raw. He hits the ground once, twice, and for a moment lays still there.

But--

This isn't the worst Cyre has endured. He grits his teeth, pressing up on unsteady knuckles. "Not... yet. You won't stop us here, Seymour Guado. Like it or not, you're not our ultimate target here. You're just... a stepping stone." The shaman lifts his hand high-- as the power of death itself gives way to life. To rebirth. Power surges through his veins, through his bones. The scattered winds gather in, drawing towards his upheld hand. Rings of divine scripture etch themselves into being from shoulder to wrist, binding the whirling cyclone of power tight to the shaman's limb.

"Lunata! Never let me catch you getting embarassed about love again! Love is great!" Cyre shouts, winding up one more punch. "Love is the best! It's what makes the world worth living in! So don't be ashamed of it! Shout your love for Jay to the sky! But more importantly-- thanks for the boost. I needed that." He smiles, then-- kicks off the ground.

...Throws a punch...

And in that instant, channels the raw power of the Guardian of the Winds to fulfill its oath.

The Power that Sustains the World must overcome that which would corrupt it...!

GS: Emeralda Kasim spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Formation! Blitz! Emeralda Kasim has attacked Seymour Guado with Reycount!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Emeralda Kasim gains 64 THP from Regen!
GS: Emeralda Kasim has completed her action.
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked Seymour Guado with Tornado Fang!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.

    "Then you have removed your past- and thus you are lost." Pearl's rebuke is simple- and then the water crashes against Pearl and she launches into it, driving forward throw the tidal wave with grace, letting the water crush her so that she can slip through it fast her. She focuses her chi into one hand-

    Her existing movement is all that saves her from taking a full blast from Ultima- instead the light sears and burns her back as she drives a knifehand into Seymour's form- and it is enough.

    The aura of death embraces Pearl- it's familiar... but not the same. The grasp of death had never felt... warm. Hopeful. It is a touch unnerving- and she is reluctant to accept her once companion- but this is not the death the Shadow Dragon cultivated. The fact that it comes from god and not man is... different as well.

    "Today I put down my unfinished business- and mark the final stop on your map."

    And then Pearl flows, punmches, kicks, open palm strikes, knife hands, knees, elbows all flow into one unending attack before the final blow- a crashing wave of an axe kick, drives into the center of an imagined 'X' on Seymour's corpselike form.

    "The path that none can follow is a lonely one. Tell me- was ending here and alone worth it?"

GS: Pearl has activated Force Action: Lock On!
GS: Pearl spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Pearl has attacked Seymour Guado with Six Waters Kata!
GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Pearl has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Fei listens to Citan. Not here? Do not attempt such a thing? Fei thought he was reaching for a moment of clarity, relaxation, peace and oneness--but was he actually reaching for the other side of it? Is perhaps even enlightenment dangerous within the belly of Sin?

Maybe it is, he thinks dismally. In a fight like this, maybe a certain--normality is best. Don't get too deep into the rage, don't seek the peace, just...Fight.

"Alright, Doc. I trust you."

Then, well, the world is pain. Firaga itself isn't so bad--Fei is somewhat resilient to fire due to the power of his medium. It hurts. It washes over him. It's bad. It's not great. But though he is burned, he endures, hands pressed forward as if he had tried to block it.

It's the Ultima that's the real problem. Fei, impossibly, presses his hands against it, pushes, pushes, PUSHES

But Fei is not enlightened--or fallen--enough to overpower an ultimate magic such as ultima. It explodes across him and his body fades into its light. He hears a phoenix cry and he, too, is closely affiliated with such imagery.

"Pain... Does not die with you." He agrees with Elly. "It follows you through your karmic cycle. It infests you, if you let it. And it is only once you let go, do you find peace. I know that," He murmurs. "But living that, understanding it, accepting it so effortlessly... I have such a long way to go. To accept my pain, to let it go so I can move on..."

He bleeds, heavily, he is battered and bruised, but it's more than Lunata's magic that helps him. The Cycle of Death is something that weighs on him rather than helps push him forward, even in understanding it, even in accepting it.

But Lunata shares a familiar story.

Step one. She got beaten up. I remember what they shouted at you when you tried to save them
Step two. Shalune bonked her in the head for being stupid. I remember when Elly told me off for being a coward, for being cruel.
Step three. Elly expressed how sad she'd be if she lost me forever.
Step four. She told Jay she wanted to kiss her. You said she was the most beautiful woman in the world
Step five. She didn't get dumped on the spot. CENSORED
Step six. Love feels good actually.

"...Love..." He repeats, softly, more hesitant like it's an idea that he hadn't really grasped before despite loving so hard. "Feels good actually."

He laughs like a madman, though maybe in this case it won't worry Citan. "Love feels great!"

The pain, the broken bones, the bruises--they don't hurt so much anymore.

Not as he darts in, shifting to an empty palm style as he takes several quick strikes for Seymour. Smooth. Fluid. Ceaseless.

Honestly though it barely feels like he's fighting. Oh Seymour might feel the pain but to any other onlooker--

--it's like he's dancing.

GS: Fei Fong Wong has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Blitz! Fei Fong Wong has attacked Seymour Guado with Third Eye Sleepwalking!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Shalune Amira's Storm on the Wind for 228 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Shalune Amira's Soaring Clouds for 261 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Emeralda Kasim's Reycount for 227 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Cyre H. Lorentz's Tornado Fang for 290 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Strain! Cyre H. Lorentz takes 62 damage!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Pearl's Six Waters Kata for 325 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Pearl!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Fei Fong Wong's Third Eye Sleepwalking for 394 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

While Seymour is staggered, Billy ejects the Cartridges from one of his Ether guns, swapping one for lightning and one for Earth, to let the Fire and Wind Cartridges recuperate. Quick, focused, determined. An Etone has to be able to maintain his equipment even in the heat of a fight, must make sure every maneuver works as intended.

Seymour's rage bursts at Yuna. "No," Billy says to nobody, quiet, at Seymour's roar. "That's the awesome power God gave to Mankind. We scar our pain into everything we can reach, and then it scars others in time. It'll scar itself into the stones themselves, into the very flesh of Filgaia and the bones of God."

Billy stands upright, hands falling to his gunsmokes, as Seymour releases the full height of his power. He surges to one side, flame scorching his coat, and whips his weapons up. But he's not expecting the second blast, and the all-annihilating light washes over him, and all he can do is scream in surprise.

But when it clears, he's still there. Though, he has switched weapons. He's holding his longbarrel rifle, now, sighting down it with blood leaking from a fresh cut over his eye. "An Etone sees the pain as it surges through every life. It is our job to know it, and set all free of it." He fires, once, twice, blasts of Ether-charged shot blasting toward Seymour. Then he THROWS the longbarrel into the air, and charges straight at the impending Clysmian, He leaps into the air, steps on his chest and leaps off it, firing one, two, three, four, five, six different shots, alternating blasts from his Ether guns, lightning and stone crashing down to crack against Seymour's chest. Then he whips his hand up and CATCHES his falling shotgun.

First he works a slide, spins it behind him and FIRES, a beam of light firing off into the distance while the recoil sends him at Seymour.

He slams down on him, both feet firm on his shoulders, and levels the longbarrel against Seymour's head directly.

"GO TO GOD'S SIDE, AND SUFFER NO MORE!" he roars, and fires.

GS: Formation! Blitz! Billy Lee Black has attacked Seymour Guado with Banfrau!
GS: Billy Lee Black has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Billy Lee Black's Banfrau for 201 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    That glare Ethius is given stills him, for a moment. He has stated before that he's camera shy to the gathered when they were going inside Sin. Being observed is as much a professional worry as it is a personal one. The decision to stop hiding his own face wasn't done lightly. (Not that there was much to hide, looking from the outside in, he's... kind of an ordinary man, with the beginnings of a decent beard.)
 
     He can only brace when that wave of flame washes out, pushing him back with a pained his as flame nips at his borrowed maroon robes and burns the ends of the sleeves and tips away. He quietly reasserts to himself that he's used to working around high temperatures, near flames, and lowers his arms.
 
     Then Seymour calls for darkness to take everyone, and he throws his hand across him with slurred syllables. He's not sure if he tripped over his tongue when he does so, before he's blinded by the Ultima.
 
     Ultima is not something withstood by a single person. His defensive posture achieves virtually nothing against the composition, volume, and velocity of Seymour's masterful casting. Ultima is the greatest expression of Spira's unique sorcerous disciplines building off of the Black spectrum of the Blessing of Althena. The Blessing itself already something foreign to a greater pangalactic space whose entire knowledge of sorcery - with astoundingly few exceptions as to be unknown - follows the various expressions of Symbology.
 
     Ultima is not being withstood by a single person.
 
     It's being withstood by everyone here. With his forearm in front of his face, he can't ever know the minutae of whose power is building off of what, to help disperse the overall force, the burden...
 
     Or rather, the pain.
 
     But it is being held, by all those here who stand here - and not just the living. Likewise, Ethius can't be sure if his Symbological shield might have helped blunt any of that adjacent to him. The sudden sting of cool air against where the Firaga singed him signals - as soon as sight returns - that he's alive, he's still there.
 
     He is, despite his attempts, still A Part Of This, but there's a moment where he seems fragile and frayed before the likes of those whose very homes and lives are in the balance, who shout their resolve, their love, and their meanings for bearing this pain.
 
     A bit more soberly, Ethius stands up again and finally has something to say, in all this.
 
     "Sin itself, and its recurrence... is evidence that the pain you seek to erase does not disappear on death." That's about as much as he can get in before another shouts their resolve, as if still not yet fully over having survived Ultima (or witnessing a second in such short order). Nonetheless... he's putting his thumb on the scale before it proves impossible to balance ever again, closing his eyes as he draws his focus inward.
 
     Symbological patterns form about the ground around him as the precursor to the scale of spell he's summoning, swinging his right hand up in a forceful gesture as light rises like a beacon.
 
     "I call to a star that enables the patterns of life itself, its existence itself an unstable, unsustainable chaos..." The intensity of it builds. "Relieve your ceaseless pressure at my call, and bathe them in the unrestrained maelstrom of your prominence...!"
 
     The spell's name is shouted, and lost because someone else is shouting louder in the moment - but everyone has a reason to be shouting and he doesn't really have a stake in that being heard over anyone else.
 
     A tongue of flame lashes out from above, the sourcerous equivalent of a sun's flare splashing down upon the bulk of Seymour's form.
 
     In the wake of it, Ethius speaks again. "The pain of Sin itself, what it can and will inflict in perpetuity wherever it can reach..."
 
     "It does not belong anywhere."

GS: Ethius Hesiod spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Ethius Hesiod has attacked Seymour Guado with Symbological Alpha Strike - Solar Storm!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"And I'll stand by yours." Jacqueline replies to Lunata with a nod and a small laugh. There's nowhere else she'd rather be, after all. Shalune... calls her bluff, though.

"H-hey, come on, it's been a while since that happened..." Jacqueline protests. ...They both know it'll probably be far from the last time that happens, though.

Seymour is... dumbfounded. She meets his anger with a sad look as he howls. And he has power - great and terrible power. Jacqueline braces herself as a tidal wave of ice rushes toward her. She winces as it bites into her - and pins her in place for what comes next.

Ultima.

Perhaps the most powerful expression of Spiran black magic and it comes for her now - strands of multi-colored light and white explosions. Everything they touch is devastated. The ice around her is shattered - and Jacqueline is hurled back, slamming roughly into the stone platform.

...She promised there wouldn't be any pyrhhic victories today, though. With that promise in mind she begins to force herself to her feet - and as she does, she hears Lunata begin to list out her steps.

"Lunata..." Jacqueline murmurs. ...It's a lot. It's... really good to hear. She's tearing up, but this isn't really the time to be crying...

...No, actually.

Maybe this is the perfect time. To shed tears for love, in the face of all-consuming death.

But Death, too, comes to her aid. Jacqueline is surrounded by a dark cloud. Though ominous... it is, indeed, empowering. That Lunata can draw upon that side of her power...

Bolstered, Jacqueline stands to her full height. She lets her tears flow freely, but takes a moment to remove her glasses and dry them.

"...You see, Seymour? Because I have love, someone to live for... It doesn't matter how many times you strike me down. I'll keep getting back up." Jacqueline says, with a shake of her head. "You can't stop me as you are now. ...Now, see where it's lead me!"

In one swift motion, four Crest Graphs are drawn and cast. Jacqueline, too, can draw on the elements - and one by one, wells of elemental power appear around her. Earth, fire, wind, water - the base elements of Crest Sorcery. They appear, each in turn. Tears still flowing, Jacqueline raises her hands... and with a series of gestures, like a conductor's symphony, the elements are drawn from each well and rush toward Seymour. Scorching flames, crashing waves, turbulent winds, and indomitable earth... she brings all four of them down upon him.

And for the symphony's final movement - the elements converge on Jacqueline instead. She gathers them all into a single point - struggling for a moment to contain them - and then unleashes them toward Seymour in a beam of raw, combined elemental power.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Formation! Blitz! Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seymour Guado with Elemental Symphony!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Ethius Hesiod's Symbological Alpha Strike - Solar Storm for 278
hit points!
GS: Purge! Cripple removed!
GS: Purge explodes for 17 damage!!
GS: Cripple and Jam applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Boudicca watches, as Yuna issues Seymour that final -- essential -- condemnation.

    "Do not speak of not wanting this," she glares at Seymour, "when you were the one to do it. Do not declaim your responsibility! How dare you?!"

    She throws up her tonfa and squares her stance against the tides. They wash over her, through her, and the wound is written on her soul more than her flesh. Her flesh is a story she tells the world; there's something, inside, which fuels it.

    Darkness, next, is come.

    A darkness which is formed from every colour. Ultima -- the ultimate magic of this land, Boudicca marvels, outside herself -- courses through the battlefield and her body. There is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.

    She falls. She rises, again.

    "'Tis not darkness which has taken me," she says, grim, as she finds her tonfa -- they scattered about the uneven ground -- and grasps them anew.

    She thinks of Tidus, again.

    And she springs forward, to crash those tonfa up along the length of the Fiend Seymour is, before she comes DOWN -- slamming the both of them down onto him.

    "You can't hide in your statue forever," she issues him, and there is venom, there.

GS: Seraph Boudicca spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Blitz! Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seymour Guado with Cerberus Strike!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has launched an attack Link!
GS: Blitz! Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seymour Guado with Soaring Blast!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Boudicca's Cerberus Strike for 175 hit points!
GS: Disrupt blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Jacqueline Barber's Elemental Symphony for 234 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Hyper and Shield removed!
GS: Delay and Poison applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.

    Not here, the look on Citan's face emphasizes. There is much and more he doesn't know about Fei and the powers to which he is heir. Perhaps he is in error. Perhaps it would not be such a terrible thing. But it is also possible he is correct, and that is the thought that begs him to ask Fei stay his hand.

    But Fei acquiesces in that moment, at the least, and for the moment, Citan has one less thing to worry about.

    With a single remark, Rikku achieves the otherwise impossible in a moment like this: evoke a slight and fleeting smile from Citan Uzuki. "You might be surprised," he's given to remark, before the gravity of the situation they're in forces him to be otherwise.

    Almost. He can see Seymour almost realize it -- the gift that death and loss present.

    But Seymour's reality cannot permit it.

    "No," he tells Seymour, after Anima has dealt her due. "It does not die with you. It becomes another's to bear."

    Down roars the deluge as if in response. There may well be no place where one could seek to run in refuge, and no means by which they could forestall the tide. Citan does neither of those things. Gazing at the tidal wall as it comes crashing for them, he seeks to neither boster his defenses nor to escape the storm but instead weathers it.

     Water was ever his element. He rises through the tide that seeks to swallow him and emerges from the other side.

    A short flurry of blows are dealt for Seymour, and perhaps more might have followed. But Seymour, defined by his pain, is more than willing to share his suffering with the rest of them.

    There is light.

    Before Citan can lay another hand on him, he is witness to the power that Seymour possesses. Dropping back, Citan throws up an arm in self-defense and averts his eyes: there is nowhere to escape as the light seems to flow and sear all creation about them. Even with his eyes tightly closed, he can see -- and feel -- every bright burst about him.

    He's forced down to a knee by the time the light finally fades. Slowly, he gets to his feet, looking about as well off as many of those here after such a demonstration of sorcerous might.

    Death, Lunata says, dwells mightily in this place: what is Sin but a 'god' of destruction and demise, the bearer of an eternal cycle of suffering born from one man's obssession?

    But death is necessary. Death teaches those who die to care for one another in the ever-fleeting now... and from the inevitability of death there is Rebirth.

    Citan flexes the fingers of his right hand: much like Elly has chosen, he too opts for for the fire. In the the palm of his hand is a small flame.

    "Yes," he says to Seymour. "This is the end."

    And that is all that he has left to say to what is left of the man as he runs for him, flame coiling up and around his arm as if it were merely an old friend. It trails after him, follows him as if it were the tail of a comet. And perhaps, in that moment as he delivers a flame-wreathed strike for Seymour, it might even resemble the edge of a blade.

GS: Citan Uzuki has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip!
GS: Citan Uzuki spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Blitz! Citan Uzuki has attacked Seymour Guado with Kasei -Goku-!
GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Citan Uzuki gains 22 THP from his Cautious!
GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Seymour's silence to her accusation tells Xantia all she needs to know. No denial, but also, no remorse. Whenever he does speak, he seems incapable of it without putting the blame back on others. Her understanding can't go any further than the circumstances. The refusal to believe in others, and to decide instead that all must suffer equally... sometimes, things really are as black and white as she used to think. Sometimes, bad guys are just bad guys, plain and simple. Which makes the proper response plain and simple, as well. She can't help but smile, hearing Emeralda's outburst. That's it, that's exactly it. There's no need for her to add anything more to that.

And yet, seeing the clear and visible effects of the assault on Seymour's body, part of her wonders. How could anyone be so blind, as to still not see the way things are going to end? To yet persist in a foolish, futile struggle, rather than consider another path? To consider the existence of a third option, to reach out and have faith that with the help of others, more may be possible than anyone can accomplish on their own?

That's how this fight ought to end. It's how all conflict should end. And yet, she knows from experience... these things so rarely end the way they should, according to her logic. She knows what will happen instead. And in that moment, she hears the voice of Lily Keil in her mind, recalling the theory regarding her other bracer.

It's a shield.

In a flash, her hand disappears in the waistpouch holding the bracer she had removed, clasping it back around her left arm. Without the slighest bit of hesitation, she stands before Seymour, and crosses both arms in front of her. There are no visual cues, no indication that anything special is happening. And yet, the tidal wave sent her way shatters, striking an invisible barrier, fracturing and breaking down the summoned torrent into base energy, denying its existence - effectively smashing a hole through it, water flowing around Xantia without touching her.

Xantia stumbles, momentarily. She still felt that, on some level. However this actually works, it doesn't function without taking some kind of toll on her. She needs a moment to recover, but she doesn't get the opportunity. What can she do but resolutely cross her arms once more, persist and hope for the best?

The next spell is far more powerful, far more destructive. And yet it's still working, to degree. Even these strands of superheated destruction shrink when they approach Xantia. They shrink... but they don't disappear. They detonate, all the same. Xantia can't keep her footing, and is flung away, landing hard on her back. Surely a painful experience... but one that should have been far more painful still. She knows well that she managed to escape the worst of something extremely dangerous just now.

And she finds herself... laughing. Laughing, even as she struggles back to her feet. "...You see? You see how much stronger you are, when you trust in your friends?" Seymour may not understand what she means, but that's fine. Those words were important for herself, to validate her own point of view.

Her expresssion abruptly twists into anger, as her aura of light burns bright, mirroring her emotions. "If you carry any memories with you, let them be of all those who trusted you, who could have saved you-- but you chose to betray instead!"

Her hands move to her sides, and everything becomes a blur. In an instant, Xantia is upon Seymour, first slicing at the discs at his sides with blades of pure light. It takes but a moment for her to shift to an aura of fire, forming and then hurling a massive lance of fire at center mass. Finally, a gigantic hammer forged of pure lightning is created, brought down in an explosion of sparks as it detonates upon impact.

GS: Xantia has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Xantia spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Xantia has attacked Seymour Guado with Transcendent Etherforger!
GS: Xantia has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Citan Uzuki's Kasei -Goku- for 240 hit points!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.

"Nice," Paine drolls back to Lulu, looking back to her self-satisfied, "was not what I was going for."

The blows Paine deals out grow more vigorous as Yuna recounts the many crimes of the man she is striking. She's cracking him open, like the sea crustacean he is. Spared the goal of finishing him, she can lay in on dealing more superficial damage, on shattering his outer layer. And she feels good for Yuna, right now. She approves. Avenge Rikku's family. Avenge yours. Avenge the Ronso. Build that momentum. More, more!

And Yuna's voice breaks as she remembers her first kiss.

No. Not like that.

Paine falters in her own violence. This isn't purging anymore. This isn't good. Perhaps it will work; Paine would not be surprised if it worked better than everything else, despite mattering the least to the world. But she does not wish that sort of rage on Yuna, does not think there is a good answer to a grieving like that.

But there are definitely bad answers. Like Seymour's. Unfortunately, he leaves her no chance to respond. With his left, the tsunami. With his right, the flame. With both, death itself.

Her friends are suffering, crying out, struggling. Paine, panting, is disoriented by the devastation, by the sheer number of people who need help. She feels smaller, younger. Once again, a cause is falling apart around her. Once again, she is spared in body. Pain does not die with her.

But Lulu, barely able to stand, draws herself up as best she can, and delivers pure, acidic defiance. Paine stands in awe as the injuries do nothing to shackle that obscene power. A true black mage, indeed. And quite a woman at that.

Swallowing, Paine feels herself undammed again, anger flowing freely once more. She nods sharply to Tidus. "Come on then," she encourages him, stabbing her sword and turning her back to Seymour for now, letting the others distract him this time. Bending her knees, she braces, offering Tidus her cupped hands.

"You wanted to know," she says, with the air of a comrade offering a hasty confession before charging the breach. "About my one-liners?" He's already running. "The truth is..."

She catches his foot. "I've been wondering the same..." She heaves, her remaining words shouted through the strain of throwing Tidus upward with all her strength.

"About your HAIR!"

Whirling around, Paine rips Gravestone out of the ground again. "Come on!" she shouts at Seymour. It is the first time she's really spoken to him during all of this, unlike the others. "You WANTED it. You wanted ALL of this. And there's nothing you wanted more than death, so COME ON," she catches her charge on her front foot, bounding twice, building momentum for a deep, full-force sweep of a blow, "and DIE!"

GS: Paine accepts Lunata Croze's the Path to Yomotsu Hirasaka for 0 hit points!
GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Paine!
GS: Paine spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Blitz! Paine has attacked Seymour Guado with Swordplay!
GS: Paine has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Paine has launched an attack Link!
GS: Paine spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Blitz! Paine has attacked Seymour Guado with Swordplay!
GS: Paine has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Paine has launched an attack Link!
GS: Quick and Shield expired!
GS: Paine has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Xantia's Transcendent Etherforger for 302 hit points!
GS: Purge! Cripple, Delay, Jam, and Poison removed!
GS: Purge explodes for 80 damage!!
GS: Hyper applied to Xantia!
GS: Strain! Xantia takes 35 damage!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Boudicca's Soaring Blast for 91 hit points!
GS: Slow applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Paine's Swordplay for 195 hit points!
GS: Cripple blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Paine's Swordplay for 183 hit points!
GS: Cripple applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
<SoundTracker> Soul's Refrain - Yoko Takahashi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjWeMg7kr0Q

He turned her first kiss into an assault, and he didn't even want it?

There are a lot of things Yuna could call that truth but 'simple' is not one of them. And she finds that this glimpse of Seymour's humanity, here at the end, is not a victory. It both stings all the harder, and yet is almost, horribly, a relief, when the switch flips back on, and he starts screaming about Braska.

Yuna asks the obvious question that, to her, is at the core of his story; in life, but in death too. ESPECIALLY in death, really.

"If pain dies with you, then why do you hurt so much?"

But Seymour can't learn anything anymore.

There is only one thing to be done.

She knew that from the moment she laid him out on the icy Macalania floor. If only they hadn't been interrupted... all of this could have been over. So much suffering, prevented before it had ever begun.

Flame licks at Anima, and she SCREAMS, she SCREAMS a scream to live in everyone's dreams for far too long, but she does not burn, or at least, does not burn enough. She has, in fact, withstood quite a bit more damage than Seymour's Anima did, in life. If his Anima then had been like Yuna's is now, he might still be alive today. Of course, then they would all be dead. And it's a bit unfair to compare them as summoners. Yuna's pilgrimage was far longer than Seymour's, in the end.

She saw to that...

His sightless corpse, laid out on the floor -- at her hands, at Shiva's -- is perhaps the greatest trauma of all. One that she's bourne up under, all this time. He never wanted to kiss her; and she never wanted to kill him. No one got what they wanted, it seems.

Only recently has Yuna seen Ultima for the very first time. She wishes she were cool like Paine or Rikku, and could say, 'Lulu's was scarier.' But it wasn't, because it wasn't directed at her. And even with Anima out, she can't be fully protected from this, though the aeon does her best to shelter her beneath increasingly loosely chained wings.

CLANK.

They both scream, this time. And afterwards, Yuna resembles Anima more than ever: she is much-blackened, with some blood-red parts as well.

But she is not shaken. That scream was not fear. It was pain, but she endured it. It's just as Lulu says: pain lives.

She found her equilibrium before, and it stays with her now.

Just like her friends and family have stayed with her:

Until the end.

Lunata's power washes over her, a reminder of what death could be, SHOULD be, in places that aren't Spira, and therefore, what Spira can become. And, more importantly, her words. Yuna, inevitably, looks over at Tidus in response to this tale of love and non-dumping, and watches, heart in her throat, as he leaps -- she isn't a vengeful sort but said throat-heart definitely skips a beat when he strikes FOR HER. As Lulu Ultimas that Ultima right back like it's nothing at all, never mind that she already managed the spell once already today. As Rikku delivers a promise napalm first, and Elly her understanding, writ large in plasma. Shalune encourages her in an extremely troubling and wonderful direction. Emeralda drops some truth and, also, two hundred pounds of metal, her whole self. Xantia discovers her own strength and hammers it home. Cyre and Fei celebrate love with their fists, while Pearl celebrates endings with her feet. Billy doesn't celebrate anything: he commands, longbarrel-first, as Citan does, in fire and blade. Ethius invokes Sin, and the sun. Jay sheds the kind of tears Lulu might not complain about so much -- which makes it hard for Yuna to resist beading up again herself, but she holds fast to granting that wish. Even when Boudicca gives voice to some of her complex and painful feelings. Especially when Paine does.

But Paine's anger, her shouting, gives her the push she needs.

To stop watching...

...and start living.

Not for Paine or for Tidus or for any of them. Not to spite Seymour.

To start living for herself.

Just a little further...

Yuna exhales smoke instead of frost, and looks up, up, up at Anima. The great aeon cannot bend down, can barely even incline her head on her collared neck, but their eyes meet somehow, green and blue and white and white.

Then they both look down at Seymour. It doesn't seem to matter anymore that Yuna is half his height.

She towers over him in spirit.

"I learned... I learned from my father, what you should have learned from your mother," Yuna tells him. "That... he was wrong. He did what she did, and what you're doing: continuing the only cycle you've ever known."

And the black portal to Hell opens beneath Seymour and threatens to swallow him whole.

In the Underworld... Anima is her own dark reflection.

Above, where everyone's still standing, they can't see what happens. They can only hear.

They hear the enormous sound of shattering chains. Like a thousand discordant bells. Like the story of freedom told by scars. It is not the sound of triumph. It is the sound of something that, once done, can never be undone.

They hear the first blow -- like a huge, bony fist striking rock -- and the second. And the tenth. And the hundredth.

By the time there's a final explosion, which turns the whole world white in the same way it all turned black when the aeon first appeared, Yuna is ready.

Anima swirls into pyreflies -- so many, and so thickly, like an unraveling cyclone. Even inside Sin, she was a truly extraordinary density of power. And her summoner is holding Nirvana balanced perfectly on both palms. Holding herself, balanced perfectly on the balls of both feet.

"I know that it's hard. It's so hard. Doing something else, something new... But we're doing it for Spira. And with Spira." The many thousands outside who raised their voices in song are with her, in this moment. "And we're doing it for you..."

There is something of Anima's dangerous nature still lingering in her eyes. Or maybe of Anima's fayth. She is not precisely motherly in this moment, and certainly not wifely either. But she is in pain. She is hurt and she is angry and she is sad. And she is all of those things in part because -- because of the union of her soul with Baaj's fayth -- because of who she is, who she always was, really -- he COULD hurt her, and he DID hurt her, more, and more deeply, than anyone else.

But at the same time, because of who she is, she really does mean it, when she says that breaking the cycle is for him too. She means every word.

She means these words too:

"...without you."

And Yuna, in a graceful rotation, shifts the rod to the vertical position, that it bisects her face.

The first gesture of the Sending.

GS: Yuna has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Yuna spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with O B L I V I O N!
GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yuna gains 10 FP from her Daredevil!
GS: Lock state expired!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado suffers a terrible blow from Yuna's O B L I V I O N for 308 hit points!
GS: Cripple applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

"That... how can that be enough?" Seymour says to Lunata, his lips working -- the words leaving -- and none of it making sense. He stares at her for a moment longer, as the attack begins.

It begins with Lulu unleashing his own spell back against him. The full fury of it slams into him, strike after strike. The explosions rock him -- hurling Seymour backward. He can see her pain, then. "Your... pain..."

He stammers it out, and then he looks up -- staring at Tidus, as he comes in. Caladbolg sweeps down -- water and light pours off it. Tidus is more than standing. He strikes into -- and through -- Seymour. Pyreflies erupt out from his side, as Tidus's blow cleaves through.

Rikku's Al Bhed flame washes over him. The inferno sweeps over, blue flame dancing up his body. One of the huge wheels cracks as the fires rise over it -- and then it falls, in a shattered heap. Elly's firebird strikes then, too; red and blue flame mix together, and a second wheeel shatters into pieces.

The stone falls, but vanishes into pyreflies, as it does. Not a single piece falls down to the stone floor of the platform.

Shalune flies in, striking another of the stone discs. Her blow strikes into it -- with a glance from Seymour -- and there is a large, loud, and resounding CRACK before another disc crumples away into pyreflies.

Emeralda soars in, shouting at him; Seymour can feel her fury. It's as a cloud of dust, but that cloud still has force and mass. It slams into him, scouring him, and breaking apart much of his statue-like form. Pyreflies are swirling all around now, and the cracks are shining brightly.

Those cracks only grow when Cyre's fist impact him, the channeled power of the Guardian of the Winds thrust into Seymour. He is slammed backward, with the full might of that impact.

"I--I will not end--"

It's a final bit of defiance to Pearl, to all of them, which is cut short. Pearl's repeated punches and kicks slam into Seymour. They drive into him, repeatedly, and the final axe kick smashes him backward with a blast of ki. Her blow cuts that defiance short.

Fei rushes in, too -- telling him of love -- and Fei's palm strikes batter him backward, each blow sending off bursts of pyreflies. The final strike knocks him backward -- and Billy's shots come down. Lightning and stone rain down, lancing trough him, before a beam of light shreds through his left arm -- which burns to ash and pyreflies alike.

Ethius summons flame down. It crashes into Seymour, blowing him backward. More of his statue-like body chips away; a crack shoots up, running up the middle of his face. It begins to glow with brilliant light. It is followed by flame, wind, earth, and water crashing into him at Jay's command.

And then a beam, which slams into his stomach and bursts out the back. Pyreflies explode out of the entrance and exit wounds, when they hit.

The statue is crumbling about him -- and moreso, as Boudicca descends. Her tonfas smash into Seymour, pummeling him down further. He screams at her impacts; at her observation. For, he knows, she is right.

Citan's flame, wreathed about his fist, slams into Seymour. He is battered by it, fires leaping up and down across his form, in the wake of the doctor's strike.

Xantia soars in, slashing at the remaining disc. She cuts through it -- and then swings down her gigantic hammer of lightning. It smashes the last one into pieces -- it explodes apart -- and those pieces turn into pyreflies as they rain down.

"I only want death after--HRRK--"

Paine's blade sweeps up. Gravestone cuts into his midsection, and pyreflies erupt around the blow. It cleaves through, and he starts to crumple forward. Stone falls away, in chunks; he cannot hide in a statue forever.

Anima draws him down. He is pulled down by Yuna's words, his response a rasp -- because his words fail him. He is torn into; chains tear and break him, blows assail him, and his mother finishes it.

At the final explosion, it is not the statue-like Fiend that arrives. It is Seymour Guado, in tattered blue robes, who collapses down to his knees on the stone floor. Then, he falls over onto his back.

He stares up at the ground. He turns his head, slightly, to look at Yuna. He registers the movement of Nirvana. He knows what it is. Then, his eyes shift. He catches Lunata's eyes.

"Lunata..." He coughs, once. "...It was fun. Tell Belize... that I said that."

He looks across them -- Drifters, Guardians, and Yuna -- and he looks at Yuna. "So... you. You will be the one to Send me, after all." He looks up, then, his eyes on none of theirs. Pyreflies begin to lift away from him, his body growing translucent -- and lighter.

"I... believe that only despair awaits," he says. "But what of obsession? Perhaps... perhaps I could give that up..."

His eyes close as another pyrefly lifts. And another.

And another.

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

"So it wasn't," Lulu remarks to Paine. But she does not any longer have quips in her. After unleashing Ultima for the second time today, after surviving it from Seymour, Lulu hits one knee again, unable to fully stand. There is so much that they have not done. So much that is not done.

But they are doing this for, and with, Spira. And not with him.

The wheels shatter, and turn to pyreflies...

Lulu watches each. She watches every attack slam downward. She then sees him appear once again. As he was.

It was 'fun', he says. Perhaps some can appreciate that he found some humanity,k in the moment. ...But not her. The pyreflies lift from his body...

But Lulu feels a dull, hollow sensation as she regards the man who was once a Master. She thinks of many times she has faced him. She thinks of the things he has done. And she thinks that little boy, that she once knew...

And of Father Zuke.

"Your burdens are at an end," Lulu says, without pity, just as she promised.

"...Ours, we will take with us."

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata can see Shalune flushing up like a tomato, but she can't help but throw her a wink and let her know she's just as important to her, because love is one of those things that doesn't need arbitrary boundaries when you've shared your entire life together and gone literally to death and back together and then some.

    And Jacqueline... Jacqueline also affirms it. Cyre chastises her for being embarrassed about it. Fei also shouts that love feels good, actually! The energy in this place is starting to feel good. Like the very spark of life is lit, like a candle against the darkness.

    "I could say so many things about why you don't find it enough. And to be fair, it's not like *I* thought a simple thing like that could be enough too. I could go at length about how everything was robbed from you at a formative time of your life, like Yuna said. When you're constantly getting everything stolen from you by an unfair system that doesn't care about you... how could you feel like something so simple, something that was right in front of you could be enough? How could that be, when you're being made to feel like if you don't hoard everything, if you don't greedily take everything for yourself, you could lose it?"

    Lunata places Orochi-Agito back in its sheath, and looks to Seymour's eyes.

    He tells her it was fun. Tell Belize... it was fun.

    "... ... aagh, darnit ... you know, that's why this stinky body sucks sometimes... I want to cry! Crying would be so honest now! But I can't! My tear ducts don't work anymore...!"

    His eyes close. Pyreflies exude from his body. It's time... to Send him.

    She shouldn't be here.

    "... I'll tell them," Lunata answers Seymour. "And I will tell your story, and I won't embellish any bit of it. Everything bad you've done. All the people you've killed, threatened and harmed. I'll tell them where your hatred and despair came from, who was responsible for it, and how if we don't individually do everything in our power to keep those things in check, if we just complacently think 'that doesn't affect me, I don't need to care about it'..."

    She breathes a bit lighter, then grins to Yuna and the Guardians.

    "... gonna go scout on ahead. Don't wanna be in range of the Sending, y'know?" It's a half-truth, because she feels like she could scream at a quietly understanding Great Malboro ahead too.

    She looks back, one last time.

    "Farewell, Seymour."

<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    It might be the very first time that Shalune hasn't thrown herself off the Little Dipper as part of that attack, be it early or much too late to avoid the usual destruction afterwards. This time, she shears straight through the disc, hanging on for dear life to the handlebars of her scooter as she ducks through the breaking substance. She doesn't know what it's made of - if it's really made of anything - but her mind screams 'glass' at her, shortly before it also screams 'don't look down'.

    There's a dizzying moment where she's accelerating out into the 'distance' and where she really has no idea what that term might mean when it comes to the Sinscape they're in, but then she catches herself and banks on a dime, throttling back towards the group just in time to see the will to fight leave Seymour, to see the man fall backwards to the ground.

    She immediately lapses into silence at the sight; when she touches down to ground next to Lunata, she can't find the words to say. It's too much to try to sum everything up; all she can do is shake her head, and recognize that she should be here at the end to watch the Sending. There's just a long breath from her as the first of the pyreflies drifts upwards - more than anything, to her, that is what signals the end of the battle.

    Shalune's mind drifts back to a Spiran beach, to a long night's vigil. To what felt like a much younger version of herself watching pensively on towards the horizon, too scared of what might happen to Lunata but also too scared to imagine speaking up. Once, she'd thought that was her role in all of this - to carefully avoid chaining her childhood friend down with too many regrets and hopes, just in case everything worked out for 'the best'.

    These days she's a bit wiser, which is why she reaches out to grab Lunata before she can fully slip away. She's still blushing a little, which makes her grump to herself, but she's got it in her to squeeze onto the other Lunie's hand for a moment, regardless of how solid her body is right now. "Just take care," she nods, and puffs up bigger than she really feels she ought to for feeling so beat up. "And if you start to feel bad, run back here. We'll anchor you down," she promises, with a nod towards Jay.

    She leaves it at that - but drifts towards the alchemist in the meantime, her eyes fixed on the fallen man in front of them.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

And so it has come to an end.

The twisted mockery of a temple has dissolved into pyreflies, leaving only the broken man at its core behind.

He has the audacity to claim that all of 'this' was 'fun.' Cyre wonders if he means it, or if it's all just a fucked up way of saving face. Nothing about what that man did was 'fun.' Not from a personal, or a theological perspective.

But he is also a dying man, for the second time in his life, so perhaps some insanity is to be expected.

Cyre exhales slowly, staring down at the fading form of the man who almost shattered the delicate balance that the Guardians struggle to maintain on Filgaia. "It's not for the dead or the dying to speak of the hope of the living," Cyre says, reclaiming his staff from where it had fallen. He leans on it to rest his... everything. This is only the halfway point, too. Somehow there's still the matter of the Last Aeon to resolve, and everything between here and there.

Lunata slip away. She needs time. Somehow, she still has affection for this... person. That's the human heart, he supposes. Even if her tear ducts have run dry, that heart is still as human as any. He watches her go, then turns his eyes back to the fading Guado.

Is there anything he'd like to say to the man who caused two worlds so much grief...?

"If Desperation and Obsession didn't come so naturally to people, perhaps you wouldn't have even gotten this far," the shaman murmurs. "Maybe the world wouldn't have driven you to such ends. So, in the end, you get to end your story as a 'human being,' not a monster."

"That's about as much mercy as you're going to get, I think. Goodbye for the last time, Seymour Guado. The world will live to see a brighter future without you, but I doubt anyone will forget you any time soon, either."

Because like it or not, this kind of awfulness is... immortal.

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

When Seymour's eyes briefly meet hers, Xantia is determined not to show emotion, one way or another. She can't entirely put the story of how things got to this point out of her mind. But even if the sequence of events to led to this may have been tragic, that's not enough - should not be enough to feel sympathy now. Seymour could have done much to earn it, and chose not to. She's not about to show that any respect, not even at the very end. Soon after, she turns away, and moves to depart of what is to be the site of the Sending, well before it concludes. Her business there is already over. She'd rather focus on the business yet to come.

That, and try to recompose herself into more of a presentable state. At least after this, it should be questioned less if she appears tired, or otherwise in suboptimal condition. With luck, no one will suspect that she was like that from the start.

She freezes, when she hears Lunata's words. Crying, huh... she wouldn't know what that's like. But she does know the other feeling. That feeling of dishonesty, by being unable to cry at times when it feels like she should be. ...Well, regardless. This is not one of those times.

Her pace resumes, a little quicker this time, away from the gathering, and in a different direction from Lunata.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    About--his hair? Is Paine complimenting him??
    
    Will wonders never cease!
    
    It doesn't even register to Tidus at first. When it does, he barks out a laugh, pleasantly surprised. Rebounding off the momentum of his own attack, he lands nimbly on his feet nearby her. When he stops wanting to scream in agony from all his burns, he manages to give her a grin.
    
    But no one-liner. He's in too much pain for that, far too exhausted. And... as he looks back at Seymour, raising his sword to prepare himself for a counter-attack... he realizes that he's reached the end of his rope. As pyreflies whorl through the air, he realizes that finally, finally, Yuna is getting the chance to Send him once and for all.
    
    It's over.
    
    He sags, letting out a sigh of relief as he leans on the Caladbolg for support. He offers Yuna a small smile of support and love as she delivers her last message to Seymour--as she raises Nirvana to begin the Sending. That smile fades as he looks back at Seymour, who delivers his own final message back to Yuna, to Lunata, and Lunata as she responds.
    
    It's a kindness she offers: to promise to tell the truth of Seymour, of exactly who he was in life and in death. Tidus doesn't say anything as she leaves, though he does give her a sober nod. He looks around at everyone--Rikku, Fei, Elly, Lulu, everyone--and through his eyes conveys his gratitude that they were all here, that they all helped pluck out this perennial thorn in their sides.
    
    Then he looks at Seymour.
    
    It feels to Tidus like he should say something. He can't think of what. For a moment, he simply bears witness to the very end of he who would have replaced his father as Sin. To someone he'd met peaceably once--if in a dream.
    
    And then it comes to him.
    
    "The dream will end," he tells Seymour softly. "You're not gonna be alone."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Seymour cannot hide forever -- and he doesn't.

    Boudicca steps back, and her hands are empty, again, as they clasp in front of her.

    He would release Obsession...

    "... goodbye, Seymour," she says, muted, and has no final barbs for him.

    Instead, her eyes find Yuna, grey-green as clouds across that sky.

    "We are with you, Yuna."

    She will make sure nothing interrupts the Sending, too.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

...It's done. The intimidating form of the Fiend is destroyed, and within the shell is a man. Seymour, once more. Her eyes meet his as he looks across those gathered.

"...Farewell, Seymour. We'll be writing a better future for these worlds - I promise you that. ...I just wish you could see it for yourself." Jacqueline says. She looks toward Lunata as she expresses her honest feelings, and wishes she could cry - and, makes a promise.

A part of her wants to run off after her... but, she knows that it's important sometime, too, to spend time alone in a time like this.

"Don't go too far. But, yeah - we'll be right here for you when you need us." Jacqueline says with a nod and a smile toward Lunata, agreeing with Shalune. She watches her go and then meets Shalune halfway, resting a hand on her shoulder - whether its to steady herself, reassurance, or both.

Her eyes, now, are on Seymour. She owes it to him to watch his Sending - they are connected, in a way. And she does owe him a great deal - for Lunata's sake, and her own.

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Chaos, mayhem. Panting after the exertion of that spell, Elly feels another of her familiar terrors. Emeralda's doing such a strange maneuver. Something perhaps only she can do. It's glorious, in its way. And terrifying -- though now, Elly is only afraid something will go wrong.

And yet, for a blessing, nothing does. Not for Emeralda, at least!

Elly thinks of a phrase to herself, about the surrender of pain.

He will not end; he only wants death after--

And that's the thing, isn't it? Elly thinks to herself as she pants for breath in the aftermath, staggering away from the conflict. Moving nearer, as if drawn by a magnet, to Emeralda; to Fei. Perhaps to Dr. Uzuki. Nothing feels critically injured, but -

Seymour speaks a moment of humanity at the end. He looks at all of them. An easing for Lunata, perhaps.

"... Goodbye," Elly says to Seymour Guado; and maybe that is all that there is for her to say. There is another look upwards, towards Yuna, as she begins to start her own cycle - a ritual to end an endless circle, in one sense, and to renew it in another.

She sees Tidus look at her. Elly smiles despite the burns and contusions and the slightly swollen eye. She raises her hands, clasps them together, and bows her head to him-- and she turns, then, towards her family.

A job well done?

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    Ethius feels the calorie debt keenly as the minutes pass following the Solar Storm. (He has several vials of Fake Snack, which is... merely adequate and only if you decide you hate your tongue and everything it represents as a gateway to a specific sense. Or decide salt is great in places where it ought to be sugar.)
 
     He still has a palm held out anyway as some share their feelings - the sorcerous equivalent of a drawn gun, just in case, only to slowly relax it as Seymour's form starts to slowly disincorporate into the pyreflies that constituted the perpetuity of Seymour's ambitions beyond his natural end.
 
     'But what of obsession?'
 
     "...Hm." Ethius looks away at the mention of it. "For years, I chased after something I could only remember in the faintest terms. Only that it was important that it was found," and ultimately destroyed. He speaks of none other than Demetrioi, and that entire mess - something largely unknown to the people of Filgaia's most verdant satellite. He eschewed virtually anyone and everything in pursuit of it, even to his detriment. Perhaps on the scale of awareness of the world around him, being a vaguely defined but disliked individual and element was a small price to pay to ensuring creation wouldn't have to lose another planet to an accidental apocalyptic device born from less destructive desires.
 
     "..."
 
     "No." Ethius shakes his head. "I won't trouble you with that. You do not need to carry any of that with you." He supposes most everyone else here already knows where it all came from, that surprising origin point between himself a man he truly hated that eventually led to this point.
 
     "You were troubled enough."
 
     He moves to stand aside and allow everyone what they need to do in order to stand clear - or near - Yuna for the all-important Sending.

<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.

The statue breaks and the man falls. Billy returns to the ground himself. He quietly cycles his weapon, preparing it to be used again. He has moments for that, now. Then he slips it back into his robe, and pulls something else out:

His Etone cross. The order is shattered, but...symbols have great powers of their own, right?

Seymour, bested, finally begins attempting to make something like amends. Billy presses his cross to his chest and breathes.

"My God is not yours," he says. "...He's barely mine, anyway, now. But I'll offer a prayer for your peace. A blessing, to ease the way."

<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.

    All things end.

    This is a fact that he has come to know well over the course of his life. They end, yes, and it is true that an ending often blurs its way into a new beginning. That the fact of the ending allows others to have compassion and understanding -- yes, as he and so many others here had said. That an ending does not define a person's life.

    And yet, that is one of the riddles of existence: to begin is to one day end.

    When Seymour falls, Citan can at least grant him the dignity of observing his passing: his end.

    Pyreflies stream and peel away from the man's form as Yuna begins the right of Sending and he glances but the once at Fei, at Elly, at Emeralda, at Billy, and for Xantia, as if to quickly confirm that they are more or less hale and whole. Yes, even in this moment, he is a doctor.

    "Farewell," he says, as the end draws nearer, for while he sought this outcome he bore Seymour no true lasting animus. He closes his eyes, inclines his head. "May you find peace."

<Pose Tracker> Emeralda Kasim has posed.

Emeralda practically falls away from Seymour. As she recovers, her flesh returns to its normal colour, no longer streaking with metallic silver; she's hurt, but she's better at hiding it.

Maybe that's true for more than one of them, she thinks, as Xantia and Lunata both leave in different directions. (It's thoughts like this that make her realize she's more mature than she used to be.)

Emeralda wipes her hand across her skirt as if wiping something off it, though there is nothing there. She doesn't know what to say to Seymour, and so doesn't. Nor does she turn her back on him, though, even while Yuna is Sending him to the beyond.

Instead, she stays near Elly and, right now, especially Fei. She hunches down, her shoulders rounded as she splits her attention between Seymour and the ground.

<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.

Sympathy. Fei can't just manage it. So he is glad that Billy and the others can.

He exhales out a long sigh. Tidus says that the dream will end and Fei can only hope.

He can only hope?

He looks back to Elly and Emeralda and...

Maybe he doesn't hope. Some dreams don't end. Maybe his won't. Maybe he doesn't need to and can simply accept if it does.

Emeralda is still young and enduring something harsh for any gentle soul.

He rests a hand gently on Emeralda's shoulder. Maybe though her he can empathize that death drive. ... Maybe not. Maybe he is scared to.

He nods to Citan and hugs Emeralda.

Goodbye, Elly says. He is so tired of goodbyes. But he will live them for as long as it takes.

Maybe all of them.

<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.

Perhaps holding her tongue until she had something she truly wished to say to Seymour elicited a more serious response from him, because Paine is surprised, somewhere beneath the licking edges of fury, that her words reached him, that he in fact wishes to correct some nobody guard dog as one of the last acts of his legendary life. For that is, suddenly, what this seems to be, given the battering he has already taken and the sheer power Yuna is marshalling, just seconds away from arrival.

But to say Paine is surprised is not to say that she feels honored. In fact, her eyes have an owlish blankness and size when he protests, though what was he clarifying?

"Don't worry," she says coldly, just before Anima hits with a power that, ironic though it is, Paine was raised to associated only with Sin. "She doesn't want to do this."

When it's over, Paine stands numbly, her sword drooping until its half-blunt tip sticks into the ground like a spade. Seymour's life is fading, and Paine, the sphere recorder, ought to be rushing for her camera, ought to be capturing it. But she cannot focus on him. Slowly, she turns her red eyes to Yuna, who still stands. An old grief, a grief she has healed around like an arrow sticking out of her chest, seems ready to be torn out. This still feels like the end for Yuna, and Paine's heart hangs in the balance, as if at any moment, the price for this victory will be exacted right before her eyes.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Sometimes it isn't easier to just let yourself get carried away.

Yuna SHOULD dance. And she should want to dance. This is the right thing to do and the necessary thing -- the most sacred duty as a summoner -- so it should be the easy thing, right?

But when Seymour looks at her, then past her -- when he invokes Belize, who she also made a promise to, which she has not forgotten -- she is carrying so many promises into Sin, so many hopes, not all of them happy ones -- what she REALLY wants to do is walk away.

Say 'damn you,' like Shalune suggested. And leave him to his despair.

Because it's hard to dance for him. And it's hard to make it for herself instead, to invert the act somehow, to be empowered. It doesn't feel like victory.

It just feels like duty.

And she's done enough duty for Seymour. For Yevon. For hungry ghosts and their hierarchies, their carefully crafted world of eternal despair and/or omnicide.

It doesn't make her better than Seymour, that when he was faced with the wedding of duty and tragedy, he broke and decided to break the whole world. But it does make her different. Their similarities... half-breeds who lost parents to pilgrimages... in the end, they really are superficial.

He responded by craving power for its own sake.

She is fighting to end that power, forever.

And that means taking another single, perfect step. Towards the true core of Sin. Towards Yu Yevon. And past a Seymour who is no longer present to enact his vile plans.

That step was the second gesture of the dance, taken once Lunata is at a safe distance.

It leads into the third. She is not perfunctory. Yuna dances her heart out; she is not the sort of person to commit to a course of action without committing to it fully. She is graceful and strong; she is in control; and -- as the Sending truly is for her -- she is...

...she is letting him in.

Just like she did with the dead on the Djose shore. And so many other times.

Though they numbered in the thousands, the slaughtered Crusaders were less painful, in a way.

These pyreflies... carrying all of Seymour's grief, his pain, and his rage... opening herself to that, to him -- to his feelings...

She will not cry.

She does not cry.

Her Sending's path of catharsis is worn so deeply into her soul now, like the inside of her own Besaid boots. She knows, with clinical levels of experience, how to face and transform that hostility into an acceptance of death, and in so doing, get his pyreflies, resonant with her soul, to do the same.

To move... onwards.

Even then, it takes something extra. Because it's him. His soul is so powerful. And so personal. And... because it's her.

Because, thanks to Tidus, she's not quite as good at accepting death as she used to be.

She remembers... Zanarkand. She remembers the boy. She remembers his sadness, his panic. She remembers her own. She remembers how Lulu and Wakka and Chappu, how all of them were left alone.

And she thinks, When this is over, there will be no more children who lose their parents to Sin.

She finds that she can dance for that, after all, and mean it enough for the ritual to work. Because it wouldn't have, otherwise. For other summoners, perhaps it would. But Yuna does not have that luxury. There is zero separation when the medium is empathy. Her greatest strength is also her greatest weakness: vulnerability.

For those who understand her, and what it means for her to perform a Sending, the dance, though inexpressibly lovely, may be very difficult to watch.

Afterwards, she struggles to find the right words. Yuna is prone to long silences, made longer by her determination to express herself perfectly; this pause starts getting awkward.

Tidus fills it. Yuna's eyes widen, huge in her face, as she remembers the flat, humorless expression on his face -- just a quick moment, in the midst of battle, when he reinforced Billy's idea about a dream ending. And now, again.

She knows he is keeping something from her.

She finds that the others have said enough to Seymour. Kind things and harsh things. Farewells across the spectrum.

She doesn't have to give him any more words at all.

"Let's go," she says, not loudly, but with the same adamant will once recognized at the base of Mt. Gagazet with the oath to someday erect a statue in her honor -- with 'great horn on head.' "It's past time to keep our promise."

To Seymour. To Belize. To the fayth.

And to the living, too.

To two worlds worth of people who deserve -- as the little boy deserved -- as everyone deserves -- to live a life that is free from Sin.