2023-07-15: Stranger of Paradise

• Log: Stranger of Paradise
• Cast: Xenobia, Omega Weapon, Ethius Hesiod, Rixia, Magilou, Ida Everstead-Rey, Yuna, Kaguya, Jacqueline Barber, Venetia Vuong, Kanon, Rikku, Cirea, Ashley Winchester, Hannah Curie, Holly, Paine
• Where: Omega Ruins
• Date: July 15, 2023
• Summary: At the heart of the Omega Ruins, Xenobia and Omega Weapon await. Some of the final embers of Sin must still be extinguished.

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<Pose Tracker> Xenobia has posed.

The heart of the Omega Ruins is an ancient amphitheater. Long-buried, it was once a Yevonite site -- maybe an ancient Blitzball stadium or a place where performances were held -- but the sheer concentration of pyreflies has altered it. Statues on it are simultaneously weathered and grotesque, in ways that weather alone could not do.

Those who came here, at the call of Phacia of the Vile Tribe, had to make their way through the Ruins. They were no mean feat, and the end of the Ruins involved a flight over a bridge while under attack from some massive Fiend.

Now, though, they rush through the doors into this place...

...and see a larger version of that Fiend. It is centaur-like, armored with insectoid chitin, but hard to get a good look at because of a barrier of shimmering energy all around it. A dome of pulsing green light.

Xenobia stands before it.

She is a tall woman, with a revealing black garment and a long cape. Her torso has violet, red, and golden tattoos -- in the same style as the other members of the Vile Tribe, seen in Kilika -- and she has long blonde hair, voluminous and wavy. Her red eyes are not kind, though, and she thrusts a hand out.

The barrier around the Fiend shatters, exploding into glass-like fragments of prismatic light. Those, too, wink away.

In her thousand years of life, Xenobia learned to do the monologue after accomplishing her task. She turns, then.

"You!" she shouts. "You are too late! I will not accept a world where humanity's sin doesn't endlessly punish it. If I cannot bring back Sin... then I will at least bring this miserable, worthless world the ruin it so craves!"

She shouts, then: "OMEGA! HEED MY COMMAND!"

DC: Xenobia switches forms to Vile Tribe Sorceress Xenobia!
DC: Yuna switches forms to The High Summoner!

<Pose Tracker> Omega Weapon has posed.

    There is, first, an absence of sound. The void is deafening in its totality.

    That which had been beneath the seal breaks the silence, unfolding itself slowly with chitinous clicks. It moves for the first time in eons.

    Was this once a man? It is true that many Fiends bear little resemblance to the people they had once been. But this... this is a monstrosity. Covered in large, jagged scales of glossy beetle-black and lit by a glow that seems to eat the light, it calls at once to mind insect, centaur, machine... and demon. The only trace of anything 'human' about it anymore are the long-taloned hands at the ends of the arms that emerge from its upper torso.

    Step by step, Omega emerges from its ancient prison. The room trembles to meet it.

    Parts of its body shift and fold open, revealing an array of what looks to be weaponry most wicked.

    'Heed my command!' the witch of the Vile Tribe had proclaimed.

    Omega opens its maw wide and screams.

    BGM: FFX - Challenge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_FuOkcwPjc

DC: Omega Weapon switches forms to The Undying Grudge - Omega Weapon!

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    Ethius has yet another near-miss with falling to one's death. His decision to pitch himself from the mountain ranges of Lacour in order to avoid Gebler discovery had... many years' worth of consequences not worth repeating, even if a fall in this place would have decisively shaved off the rest. But enough of that. Elly's climbing gear saved them all from that, and...
 
     Ethius joins up with the rest about the ancient amphitheater, wounded and wound up but not down, as Xenobia makes clear her intent anew and Omega Weapon weighs in eloquently with a deafening scream that even has the normally stoic Ethius covering his ears and (visibly! he's not hiding his face!) wincing.
 
     "Based on our singular encounter," in which nearly all of them died but enough of that, speaking as his hearing returns while he draws his quarterstaff, "Omega Weapon here seems primed for blanket destruction against any size or shape of opponent."
 
     What manner of machina did they have access to? How much of these pyreflies mimic or empower what they have to bear? Ethius narrows his eyes, as he looks to those who might be focusing their own attention to one of the mightiest of Fiends to ever... Fiend.
 
     "I may be able to buy us some wiggle room," as he cuts himself off from 'but even then.' He has decided 'may' is warning enough of their odds, taking in a breath within these caverns that feel like a cleft, or rift, in space and history for this world, free hand extending and already 'chambering' the beginnings of a complicated Symbological spell that will form the basis of the wiggle room in which he speaks.

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    Rixia's been having quite the time through the Omega Ruins, what with the everpersistent presence of Malboro (who are Great; sometimes, even Awesome); last we saw her, she's being chased down a bridge that's collapsing due to the sheer force of Ultima Weapon's Shimmering Rain. Such destruction was its intention, apparently, since it cuts off her escape and leads her deeper into the Ruins where...

    ... another version of that same Fiend awaits. Rixia's a bit bloodied, a bit scufffed, but she's still standing -- staring at the giant insectoid chitin. And... Xenobia.

    She's not talking to them. She instead unleashes the Fiend, then--

    A world where humanity's sin doesn't endlessly punish it...

    "... I wanted to see, with my own eyes," she murmurs, strangely sedate. "The woman who's been branded the enemy of the world..."

    The young foxgirl grips her hand to her heart. "'Consumed by hate,' they all call you. I want to see... what you were really like."

    But she's not speaking from a position of defiance or righteousness. No, from the enormous shroud of Malevolence surrounding her -- the Pyreflies trying to reject her existence... she's trying to see just how far off she is, herself.

    Because the time might come, sooner than later, where she'll become an enemy of the world too.

    She brandishes her gunblade. "The world decided you had to die today..."

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    The fool danced on in, pranced on in, and it is easy to say she is above it all -- but her hat is askew, and her hair is askance. The book at the back of her is all popped open with a dove's wings sweeping out, as if she had some old-style fluffy hoop skirt instead of the skirt made of books she evidently has.

    Magilou Mayvin, as Xenobia may know her, cartwheels into the room and points an accusing finger at her fellow witch. (Her shoulderless sleeves are a little tattered. Don't worry about it.)

    "If you want humanity to suffer... there's only one path! You've got to get out there and make them regret it with your own words! Hahaha... I've made THOUSANDS more people miserable than you, you ground-up has-been witch!"

    Why is she taunting her? Perhaps -- it has something to do with the fox-eared girl who wanted to see.

    "Xenobia!" She flings her arms wide, as her shikigami dances beside her hand. "I've never been fashionably early once in my life! One last time -- let's dance!"

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Xenobia has reached her goal. But she's about to have company.

    There is a horrible cracking noise, like a crystalline avalanche tumbling downhill, and then a spray of dust and shattered quartz. Figures--two human-sized, two miniscule--come rushing through. Ida sprints ahead, the wind at her feet blazing a trail of clear air through the hazardous particulates. She stops at the uppermost tier of the amphitheater, cranes her neck, and shouts to someone behind her.

    "Keep them off us, Zed!" Ida shouts. And, knowing precisely what motivates him, she adds: "I bet we can Send Omega before you can deal with the rest of those Fiends!"

    Once the reckless challenge is done, she sprints down the stairs, to the grand auditorium floor. Ida is bruised and battered and bloodied, but she still makes good time...

    Which means she's right on time to see Omega as it ROARS, and breaks free of its ancient bonds. "Damnation," Ida hisses. "I'll hold you to that, Hesiod."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna has not had many opportunities to face peril since Sin. This is mostly by design; as much her friends' as her own. After all...

...well, an after-game superdungeon would have been a really, really, really nice place to have the aeons. But Spira's final High Summoner is a summoner no more. It is fair to assume that that would make Yuna a liability to any team. And she herself hasn't resisted encouragement towards retirement, or at least towards an extended R&R in her tropical island home.

But the world called her, and she answered. And throughout the ruins, to make it to this point -- to where she needs to be, where she must be -- though her friends have encouraged her to stay in the back row, she has been far from useless there.

Mostly, her contributions so far have been through the use and abuse of her leftover endgame inventory, which is considerable. A Grenade here, a Bomb Core there; she has been swift and decisive to reinforce the others with elixirs and Al Bhed Potions. She's even Stolen a few times, to occasionally spectacular results -- this is a heck of a place to farm items.

In other words, she's traversed the Omega Ruins as a less versatile, less powerful version of her cousin. But even her detour down the very beginning of Rikku's Sphere Grid (encouraged thoroughly by said cousin back when they first met, over a year ago now -- said cousin who wanted very much for the Yevon-raised girl to learn more of her heritage; and Yuna herself, dearly wishing to connect with her cousin, to learn about her passions, was an eager learner) is reasonably potent. An apprentice-level Al Bhed engineer slash medic is still both of those things.

But when the group unites at the amphitheater -- having just emerged from the colossal assault of countless thousands of Omega Weapon's blasts -- and very much the worse for wear -- that isn't enough anymore.

Omega Weapon is free -- and Xenobia is the one who freed him.

"Xenobia!" she calls across the room, smoking a little from the barrage; her long white-and-pink sleeves are tattered, her pretty yellow obi scorched.

But her eyes, Al Bhed green and Yevonite blue, are filled with resolve.

"You're wrong -- it's never too late! Not too late for us to protect this world that we love! And not too late for you to know that... your sister sent us. Your pain is not forgotten. But your pain is also not an excuse to hurt anyone, let alone everyone."

Her hands are empty of weapons. She didn't bring a rod, let alone THE rod. What use the implement of a summoner to someone with no one to summon?

But they are full of history. HERETIC branded on her right palm, a scarred rune of a wound, an old wound now, old enough to ache, but still new enough to sting every time it reminds her of where she's been. Calluses on her fingers, from hauling herself up mountains and down chasms, from taking machina apart and putting people back together.

"Everyone... we've given too much to let the Eternal Calm end as soon as it was born! Please... help me protect everyone, one more time."

Her lips keep moving, after, but her last words are lost to the chaos. They might not have been for anyone else.

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

Kaguya is here.

Rushing across the bridge through the Ultima Weapon's firepower, the small Veruni dashes up to look--to see that barrier, and Xenobia at it. She recognizes her immediately if only by description, and she sees that barrier...

"Xenobia!" Kaguya calls, skidding to a stop as she sees the barrier shatter. They are 'too late', it would seem. But Kaguya isn't so sure of that. In her experience, these people are really good at killing monsters.

"I am Kaguya, of the Veruni! What's your grudge against humanity, anyway?" She hefts the Zeikfried, unholstering it from her side and undoing the safety on the ancient ARM, narrowing her eyes at Fiend and sorceress both. "I know we have some common ground. I used to hate humans, myself. Hate them, for being this world's 'favorites'. The ones who get everything, and did nothing for it. While we 'superior' people were rejected. Hated. Destroyed."

"...I've had some time to think about it." She focuses, and loads the ancient ARM with magic, rolling her shoulders and taking aim--not at Xenobia, but Omega. "And I've done enough to hurt Spira already. I came here with my war machines to fight Sin, and instead I fought the people of Spira. Destroyed their homes, as surely as Sin did."

Kaguya bends at the knee--and LEAPS, landing with a thud and a shockwave of dust beside Yuna. "...You've got shields already, Lady Yuna."

"But this time, let me help you, instead."

Her green eyes settle on the Omega Weapon, with a barest glance to Ethius before she adopts a battle stance, loose and limber. "We'll tear this thing apart!"

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

The Omega Ruins have been an ordeal worthy of their reputation. Even experienced Drifters find it difficulty to get through unscathed - Jacqueline included. She's worn down and exhausted... but there's no time to rest.

There's no time at all, in fact, for as they make their way to the heart of the Omega Ruins, the ancient ampitheater... they find Xenobia in front of a shimmering green dome - a dome that she shatters with a thrust of her hand.

Omega is free. Jacqueline grits her teeth and, despite her weary body, steps forward as Xenobia addresses all of them.

"Xenobia, please... let the humanity of today stand on our own. We don't deserve to suffer for the sins of ages past - sins committed before even our families had formed." Jacqueline entreats. "I know you must've suffered, but this isn't going to ease that pain - it's only going to compound it. We can figure something out if we just... talk."

...She doesn't expect it to work. But she has to try at least once. As an aside, she nods toward Ethius.

"...Alright. Be careful, okay? His power is on a different level entirely..." She replies.

<Pose Tracker> Kanon has posed.

The high electric buzzing of Kanon's motorized skates comes to a stop as Kanon spins herself to a halt, then the skates retract into her feet. Xenobia makes her declarations and Kanon marches forward despite it, her eye fixed on the Fiend she commands. It moves, and for all the metal in her body, she can still feel those pyreflies as it feels like the world between them itself lenses at that awesome strength.

Her left arm, seemingly made of flesh, flips open; seams around her elbow opening, lowering her forearm under it so a huge sword can eject from her elbow.

"We'll get to you," is her only promise to Xenobia, but her single eye stays steady on the demon looming high.

She can't quite hide a small grin. "You're going to struggle, right?" she asks the thing, but low and mostly to herself, rhetorical.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku was pretty out of breath within the Amphitheater of the post game superdungeon (Though ultra proud at Yuna's newfound skills in cutpursery), and more than a little scorched as that Lunar Curtain she used against Omega's hail of white light shimmered out of existence. And that was before the barrier even shattered, "Ho- Hooooo boy." Rikku panted, still out of breath, "Second- need a second-!"
 
As she gives the Blitzball signal for timeout, before holding up a palm. Taking a stamina tonic, she lets it seep in and help take care of the fatigue, before rolling her shoulders and bouncing on her feet, "Okay. Wow. Youuuuu- have seesawed all the way from Devout Yevonite to Full Seymour in no time flat!" As Omega roars, Rikku's tone grows a touch high pitched, "Don't suppose you'd be up for talking about it before this goes too far? Your sister came calling- she's worried about you!"
 
And she holds up a finger, "It's in my experience with family that if they come calling from all that way for an intervention, that really time to sit up and listen! Usually means you're about to blow yourself up!"
 
That's at least how Al Bhed familial interventions tend to go.
 
It is perhaps a distraction in the end, if she's going to be mad, she'd rather she be mad at her for her irreverence then mad at Yuna for her ideals. Also, she's beat, setting up a discreet alchemical mix is taking more time than she's hoping.
 
"Don't worry Yunie, we just started down this path- we're not gonna let anyone ruin it for us when we've just begun!"

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Venetia Vuong is not a gorgeously tattooed woman in a slinky black dress. At the moment she enters the heart of the Omega Ruins, she is in fact sweaty, disheveled, with the clinging dirt of gunsmoke upon her.

And even so.

"We pay the debts of the past each day," Venetia states to Xenobia. "Every morning we rise in the world that our forefathers left us. Are you so eager to redouble the troubles that this world faces? When already, truth has been revealed? Is your rage so great? Your arrogance, so profound?"

"I reject it!" Venetia concludes with a sweep of her hand -- and then Omega Weapon begins to rise. Venetia's head turns to look towards it.

Venetia remarks to Ashley, "Of all the times to leave the ultimate devastation magic at home, eh? Well, we have to make do." With that, Venetia's stance straightens up; one deep breath, let it out...

A Crest Graph is brought with a flourish, held in the palm towards Omega Weapon. Venetia does not quite invoke it, just yet - taking the thing's measure, perhaps.

Please have actually weakened in your long imprisonment, Mr. Weapon, Venetia prays, inside her mind, where nobody can see you sweat. Then her eyes turn towards an unfamiliar voice. "I mean, historically, yes," Venetia tells Kanon.

<Pose Tracker> Cirea has posed.

Cirea has had like 50% of a good day.

Getting to explore a brand new ruin - well, newly opened anyway, since by definition it isn't new - is pretty great. Cirea always wanted to explore new places, to find ancient magics - to have an adventure, in other words.

But the circumstances (threat) weren't great, and neither had her adventure been particularly safe. Cirea is both sore and looks a little bedraggled from being caught in a wind explosion and rolling across the ground until she hit the wall, and she's managed to get a collection of nicks and tears on her leather forearm guards from reaching past sharp blades. She really needs new ones. At least her dress is mostly intact, though the dangling ribbon is pretty shredded.

This does not stop her from flying in at approximately the speed of a fast human's run, though she occasionally spins around in flight (and only loses a bit of speed) to make sure the others aren't falling behind. "Come oooon!" she calls, before she whirls around again -

Those are definitely Vile Tribe markings. She recognizes them; she even recognizes Xenobia, sort of, from a sketch in a book. (The sketch wasn't very good. She mostly knows it's Xenobia because, well, Phacia told her.)

"Xenobia! That's really a mistake!" Cirea calls, though she really doesn't expect to be listened to. "Anyway, that happened a long time ago and almost nobody alive then is even around now! I don't think hardly anyone even KNOWS about the Vile Tribe anymore as anything but a little story! It's not THEIR fault!"

Cirea finally slows down to a more sedate forward movement, wings still moving. "Anyway, we WILL stop you if we have to. But I don't think Omega's going to listen to you, because I listened to that story, too!"

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

It was some sort of miracle that Ashley (and friends, hi Venetia!!) managed to negotiate the ruins without being utterly destroyed by the myriad traps and dangers lurking within relatively unscathed. Unfortunately, they were too late-- by the time they reach the amphitheater, Xenobia has already achieved her goal. Omega's prison had been... broken.

And the reason-- the reason why she wanted it free, WHY she decided to release destruction upon a world that only so very recently rediscovered hope--

Is not something that can be overlooked.

"XENOBIAAA!" Ashley's voice breaks into distinctly metallic overtones as he crests the lip of the aphitheater, not as a mere man, an ordinary musketeer, but... As a living comet, a meteor of baleful light that brooks no shadow to stand before it and offers no warmth to those who seek it. The rising embers of the Blaze of Disaster barely flicker into reality, a mirage of inevitable calamity manifesting in a heat-haze mirage, before fading to reveal--

A knight, clad in black and red.

A knight, every bit as demonic as the Omega Weapon itself-- perhaps, some might say, even more so.

Before a threat to not only Spira, but the whole of Lunar and possibly Filgaia beyond, Knight Blazer has manifested. This, some might say, is what it was created for. To be a monster that slays monsters, possessing the heart of a kindly soul.

"All of this, just to cause people to suffer? I don't know why you've done what you've done, but your plans can't be allowed to succeed!" The blaze within him throbs and pulses, feasting on righteous indignation as greedily as it does all else. Pale sustenance, perhaps, but... perhaps, this close, Xenobia might even sense it feeding on her through the visage of that terrible knight.

The Blazer gestures, a blade of blue-white flame igniting in its hand. An ominous omen of what's to come. "Stand down...! Your sister wouldn't want you to throw your life away like this!"

DC: Ashley Winchester switches forms to Knight Blazer!

<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.

Hannah's group... did not fare well. They encountered numerous setbacks--and it shows. Hannah's denim jacket--previously brand new--has been torn to shreds. (She'd rather not talk about it.) But she's charging along right behind Ida, following in that wake of fresh air from her boots--and a red-tailed hawk is right at her side, keeping pace with the other members of their group.

"We're too late."

"Cirea, Holly, I've got your backs. Zephyr?" The hawk squawks and takes off into the air to survey the battlefield.

Hannah pulls a crest graph out, preparing for a fight. "You can't unleash that thing on the world, Xenobia. I don't know what happened in your past to make you want to do this, but all the knowledge you've accumulated can't be put to such ruinous ends!"

<Pose Tracker> Holly has posed.

They didn't have the easiest of times getting through the various strongarm traps the ruins tried to force in their way. Battered, but unbeaten, Holly's floating ahead, motes of ink and water floating around her almost at random. Her already improvised outfit has certainly seen better days, but the paintbrush pen spear she's so fond of made it through in better condition.
 
 Breaching the chamber in a cascade of broken.. everything. She's floating in the air, she does actually balk at the appearance and size of.. well. All of it.
 
 However, when you're trying to take down a big monster, going for the weak point is always the preferred method. That means in this case, the controller, right?
 
 There's some hesitation, but eventually she just mentally decides, 'hell with it' and after adjusting the grip on her brush, darts forward ahead of the others, clearly intending to keep the others of her small group safe. Even the problem child..
 
 As she floats to a stop near the sorceress, the water swirling, the ink flowing the opposite direction, almost trailing after the brush.
 
 For once, she's not running at the mouth. The idea of destroying everything and flipping the table because you feel like people need to suffer somehow strikes the fairy who found cursing people funny as too far.
 
 Spinning back, brandishing the brush like a spear behind her, the ink all trailing to the brush head briefly, she nods to Hannah, "I'll keep all of you safe." Fully meaning it. As she twists back, her grip changes and the ink takes on the appearance of something lurking. Ready, even battered as she is.

<Pose Tracker> Xenobia has posed.

"Yes... YES!" Xenobia shouts -- laughs -- as Omega screams. Even as she faces the gathered Drifters, that triumph is what she seizes upon. She notices Ethius and Ida -- but doesn't say anything to them, quite yet.

"The world has decided I have to die many times before," Xenobia answers Rixia, barking out a humorless laugh. "The world, girl, is a poor shot. It always seems to miss me. All the better, because I won't miss it!"

Then, her eyes narrow. "Magilou... even now, you oppose me? I doubt you can hold even a candle to me!" she snaps. "I'll show them the meaning of suffering! But you're right about one thing--this is the last time you'll trouble me, gnat!"

Then, she looks to Yuna. "You... the girl who brought about this FOOLISHNESS!" she snaps, snarls, screams at her. "My sister completes her betrayal, then? Fine. FINE! This world has given over completely to madness--what it deserves! Eternal Calm... you don't deserve a NANOSECOND OF IT!"

Then, she turns towards Kaguya for a moment. "Some time? Child, I've had a millennium to consider it. Don't speak to me as if you know what justice is. You sip it. I drink deep! This is what they deserve, after the desolation my people are reduced to!"

Then, she looks to Jacqueline Barber -- and she scowls. "What is there to talk about? Why should I speak with you? You're just enjoying the fruits of my people's suffering--" She spits, then. "And you do deserve to suffer. For what you were born to, what you were born with. I'm making up for lost time!"

Then, her eyes turn towards Venetia. "A hundred thousand days' debts are due, then!" she says. "And my arrogance is earned, my rage deserved!"

Xenobia looks at Rikku, next, and cranes her head. "There's nothing to say. You Al Bhed... you should understand, but unfortunately--" And then she shouts, again. "YOU'RE ONLY HUMAN!"

Her eyes widen, as she looks at Ashley Winchester -- at Knight Blazer -- and her eyes widen for a moment. Is that recognition?

But then, they narrow.

"I've unleashed this Fiend!" she says. "And my sister... it's her life that she has thrown away! I'll be sure she's one of the first to be fed to Omega! After all of you!"

She snaps her head to Hannah. "I can," she says, "AND I WILL!"

When Cirea appears, though, her expression briefly softens -- and then her lips curl back into a snarl. "YOU! You... came--did you come because he sent you!? Is this one last betrayal of--of me, of his own people!?"

BGM: Lunar Silver Star Story Complete - Stand and Fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZfzTTP-Kpg

Xenobia throws a hand up in the air. A magical circle, filled with Althenan runes, flashes into existence underneath her. Around Rixia, Rikku, Cirea, and Holly, a bubbling green miasma rises. It burns at the senses; it leaves a feeling of sickness, of weakness, in its wake. A classic poison spell, if there ever was one.

Then, Xenobia spins. She sets her eyes upon Magilou, Jacqueline, and Hannah. Then, she puts both hands together, making a triangle shape with her fingers. Another magical circle flashes underneath her feet -- and it explodes outward, as a cloud of pink light explodes upon that next group. When it comes near, those caught in it feel a stark sluggishness -- a dulling of their senses.

"Come at me, then!" Xenobia shouts. "If you want your precious future... then pry it from my COLD, DEAD HANDS!"

GS: Xenobia spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rixia with Poison!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rikku with Poison!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Cirea with Poison!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Holly with Poison!
GS: Xenobia has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Magilou with Sleep!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Sleep!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Hannah Curie with Sleep!
GS: Xenobia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xenobia has completed her action.
GS: Rikku takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Poison for 43 hit points!
GS: Poison applied to Rikku!
GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Xenobia's Sleep for 0 hit points!
GS: Drowsy applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!

<Pose Tracker> Omega Weapon has posed.

    Does it understand anything of what is happening now? Or does it only understand one thing now -- that these are opponents. That this world is in need of being torn down to its foundations and that these few are what stand between it and that most holy task?

    Perhaps that is enough, for what is about to happen.

    The Omega Weapon hardly needs further encouragement as Xenobia steps into the fray. Looming above the lot of them, its long talonlike fingers slowly opening and closing, turrets clack into position along its torso and back. Their barrels flash, once.

    Light, hard and merciless, falls like a rain upon those who have risen to meet the long-sealed Fiend. Yuna, Ida, and Ethius receive their formal welcome.

    It wastes no time continuing the onslaught: something clicks within those parodies of hands and a previously unseen barrel of an ARM makes itself apparent. A round of munitions are unloaded upon Kanon's general location.

    Neither is it finished, here: its maw parts, an inhuman -- inorganic -- hiss emanating from some internal point.

    Here, a stone shines at about Omega Weapon's upper chest level, growing in intensity to become a shimmering blue -- deeper than the skies or seas of Spira. Something within the mimetic mechanical monstrosity that is this Fiend spools up; within Omega weapon there is a hissing whine as several vents in its sides open to release clouds of steam.

    These are followed by the nozzles that erupt from its flanks to unleash a blazing barrage upon Hannah, Venetia, and Ashley's general location -- the bombardment flies as fast and as furious as any fist.

GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Shimmering Rain!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Yuna with Shimmering Rain!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Shimmering Rain!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kanon with Barrage!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Omega Weapon with Core Energy!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has launched an attack Link!
GS: Omega Weapon accepts Omega Weapon's Core Energy for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Hannah Curie with Rising Phoenix!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Venetia Vuong with Rising Phoenix!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ashley Winchester with Rising Phoenix!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester takes a solid hit from Omega Weapon's Rising Phoenix for 166 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Countermeasures activated!
GS: Ashley Winchester enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Sleep for 0 hit points!
GS: Drowsy applied to Magilou!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Venetia Vuong solidly guards Omega Weapon's Rising Phoenix for 149 hit points!
GS: Ethius Hesiod partially guards Omega Weapon's Shimmering Rain for 66 hit points!
GS: Blind applied to Ethius Hesiod!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: FP up! Countermeasures activated!
GS: Holly solidly guards Xenobia's Poison for 41 hit points!
GS: Poison applied to Holly!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Cirea takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Poison for 49 hit points!
GS: Poison applied to Cirea!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Yuna solidly guards Omega Weapon's Shimmering Rain for 93 hit points!
GS: Blind applied to Yuna!
GS: Kanon takes a solid hit from Omega Weapon's Barrage for 126 hit points!
GS: Rixia takes a solid hit from Xenobia's Poison for 80 hit points!
GS: Poison applied to Rixia!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kaguya with Barrage!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey solidly guards Omega Weapon's Shimmering Rain for 48 hit points!
GS: Blind applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Kaguya solidly guards Omega Weapon's Barrage for 115 hit points!
GS: Omega Weapon has completed its action.

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    Ethius can hear the sheer indignation of centuries-long (at least a millennia, actually, but he can be forgiven for having greater concerns) grudge being unfulfilled, put on back order, and out for delivery anew. He can't cast judgment on that much, but he's already long worked out the extent of threat range Sin had (in the thankful past tense) and is already plenty internally gun-shy about giving anything that has the possibility of comparable devastation free reign.
 
     To hear Jay and Ida place their faith in him is momentarily a thing of fright. It was one thing, in the past, to know one was standing between a vulnerable population of a world that needed to be left alone and something terrible to keep him going on a given mission.
 
     It's another when individual people are directly counting on you to not let them down.
 
     Omega Weapon's hand-barrel forms, and Ethius cancels the spellcast to sweep an arm inward to slurred syllables to a Symbological shielding spell that prevents him from being, well, taken care of on the spot. The way the light diffuses off the blinding, deafening shielding deflection is its own sensory overload to him, to say nothing of the POWER of Blazer's presence over yonder.
 
     Even with sight and sound momentarily overtaken, he doesn't specifically need the accuracy on his part to do what comes next as he falls into the comfort zone of 'doing,' deeply ingrained gesticulation and chanting even as uncomfortable burning ambient temperatures make movement painful.
 
     "Mirage Haze!" Ethius calls at the end of all that, as Omega Weapon will soon find there are a countless number of heat signatures and movements, myriad - designed to distract and defeat so many layered measures and countermeasures for targeting and seeking with advanced weapons, but even he knows at best that he's just buying time and wiggle room.
 
     He suspects Omega Weapon has nothing stopping them from filling the entire space with light if they so choose, but any moment they take their rage on the mirages is a moment they're not shooting the others.

GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Omega Weapon with Mirage Haze!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

As Xenobia and Omega Weapon unleash hell, it might be fair to gripe, deep in your heart, just once:

'sure would be nice to have a Zanmato right about now'

---

("Everyone... we've given too much to let the Eternal Calm end as soon as it was born! Please... help me protect everyone, one more time.")

And then Yuna's lips shaped the words,

'...and I will protect you.'

Omega Weapon's rain falls all around her, but she does not dive out of the way from it. No, she flings her arms open wide, and it's like a bomb goes off.

'Curaga' is not an unfamiliar spell to anyone who's adventured with Yuna before. But this, this is not -- this is not what a mere Curaga, even from Yuna, is normally like. Even at Sin, it was not like this at all.

The pretty sparkles that explode first out of her, and then from the chests of everyone the light touches, leave streaky afterimages behind the eyelid. Normally they shimmer with deep violets and fierce indigos as well as white, but these are so intense that it's impossible to put a color to them at all. Neither a positive rainbow nor a negative one, whatever this spell is using for ignition is so high octane that it might as well be off the charts. Even a Megaelixir wouldn't explain it.

Before Yuna was ever a summoner... she was a white mage.

And apparently she is not fucking around.

("Eternal Calm... you don't deserve a NANOSECOND OF IT!")

This, this astonishing warmth that soothes the flesh, warms the heart, and stirs the soul; this is what YUNA thinks the world deserves.

This is her answer.

This is the only answer she has...

"Right!" she tells Rikku, her eyes reopening after the flash. Sweat has sprouted at her temples, and it is pearly, somehow, like it contains a vestige of the power she just invoked.

Then, as easily lost to the battlefield as her earlier murmur, there comes a second tiny silence.

This one is caused because normally, after Rikku made a declaration like that, and Yuna agreed with her... there'd be a third-times-the-charm affirmation... by someone else.

It's such a small silence.

Maybe only Yuna can hear this one, too.

GS: Yuna has attacked Holly with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Hannah Curie with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ashley Winchester with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Cirea with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Venetia Vuong with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rikku with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Kanon with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Kaguya with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Magilou with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rixia with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Curaga!
GS: Yuna has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Yuna's stances have changed to Sage!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna heals Magilou! She gains 235 temporary hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna heals Ashley Winchester! He gains 229 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna heals Ethius Hesiod! He gains 180 temporary hit points!
GS: Quick applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna heals Jacqueline Barber! She gains 182 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna heals Kaguya! She gains 178 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna heals Rikku! She gains 183 temporary hit points!
GS: Yuna heals Cirea! She gains 181 temporary hit points!
GS: Yuna heals Rixia! She gains 180 temporary hit points!
GS: Yuna heals Venetia Vuong! She gains 181 temporary hit points!
GS: Yuna heals Holly! She gains 182 temporary hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 177 temporary hit points!
GS: Omega Weapon suffers a terrible blow from Ethius Hesiod's Mirage Haze for 0 hit points!
GS: Blind, Drowsy, Hex, and Jam applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    Rixia doesn't miss that Magilou's goading Xenobia on so that she can see with her own eyes, and she quietly appreciates it -- though she has a feeling that there's a lot pent up in her that she'll tell her, regardless. Kaguya also provides insight, of how she used to hate humans, the world's 'favourites'... and where that brought her instead.

    "... it doesn't always go to plan, huh..." she murmurs to the Veruni.

    Yuna implores them to not let the Eternal Calm end. ... is that all that she'll ever amount to? To threaten a hard-earned peace, no matter how embittered and alienated she feels by the world?

    Rixia doesn't miss each of the Drifters' declarations. Jacqueline wishing to talk and sort this out; Venetia having a more forceful approach, challenging her to not undo the work other generations have done. In the distance is Ida and Ethius, who're more focused on Omega. Hannah and Holly is here too, the former telling her that knowledge can't be put to such ruinous ends. And Cirea points out the folly of the memory of the short-lived.

    ... is this what she's going to experience too, eventually?

    She dares imagine it, for a moment. Being in Xenobia's shoes, herself. Standing by that prismatic barrier, shattering it with her own magic to the aghast looks of those that've gathered before her... Being told 'you're wrong', to varying degrees of kindness to harshness. Being hated, being yelled at, being pitied...

    ...

    It scares her.

    It scares her a whole lot, it turns out.

    She puts on a brave face to being judged, but... she hates it. ... but she can't turn back now. If she does -- if she lets go of all this -- then she puts her father's suffering in vain. All for nothing.

    Xenobia tells her that the world's decided she had to die many times before. She instinctively feels how mirthless that laugh is. How... there's an unmissable emptiness there -- an emptiness that doesn't feel foreign to her. "I understand. When I talked to your sister... it felt too convenient to say 'you'd given yourself to your hatred'. Maybe you have. But even so..."

    Bubbling miasma rises around her -- poison! -- and she's not fast enough to Junction or evade it; the poison starts to seep through her system, forcing some violent coughs out of her.

    "... it's not like you stop becoming a person, no matter how much I think she wishes that. Because maybe it's otherwise too painful for her. But I don't know you or her well, so it's not like I can do anything but make shallow observations."

    Yuna's spell washes over her, healing wounds and making her body lighter. The intensity of it.

    Rixia lunges to the vanguard, Sleeping Lion held in two hands as she lands to Xenobia's flank and carves a circular arc -- setting fiery glyphs tinged with Malevolence in her wake. The moment she forms a complete circle, she squeezes the trigger and--

    "Erupt!"

    --the glyphs detonate.

GS: Rixia has attacked Xenobia with Fated Circle!
GS: Rixia takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: Rixia has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia solidly guards Rixia's Fated Circle for 108 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Rixia drains Xenobia! Rixia gains 66 temporary hit points!
GS: Hannah Curie suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Sleep for 0 hit points!
GS: Drowsy applied to Hannah Curie!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Hannah Curie has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Hannah Curie solidly guards Omega Weapon's Rising Phoenix for 82 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Yuna heals Hannah Curie! She gains 185 temporary hit points!
GS: Yuna heals Kanon! She gains 178 temporary hit points!
GS: Quick applied to Yuna!

<Pose Tracker> Holly has posed.

Holly glances back to Cirea when Xenobia assumes she's been sent by someone. A note for later tallied in the back of the cluttered mess of papers that represents her mind.
 
 She doesn't get taunted. On the one hand, you know, it's fine. On the other hand she's a bit incensed. Especially as she begins drawing through the water, that ink floating in place and that cloud of poison drifts past. A spin of her brush and an attempt to push it away with the bubble of water didn't quite catch it all in time and she coughs into her arm.
 
 She slashes her hand through the ink, erasing the spell she had been preparing, a spiteful look on her face as the water and ink are intermingled. Murky and miserable. It vanishes into the air and a sickly haze carrying a smell a delta, brine and swamp intermingled. Her own take on a poison spell. "All those years and that's what you bring? It's amateur hour." She may or may not be trying to do exactly what she told the others she'd do. Keep them safe. She's confident in her own magic and the ability to mostly absorb the damage on a buoy of magic. Right? What could go wrong.
 
 "You could have spent those millenia learning. Coming back and making a better world-" That's her goal at least. Admittedly she hasn't kicked around quite that long. She rambles a bit. Distracted only by Yuna sending a rather impressive heal over everyone. She bobs up into the air, briefly forgetting she should probably focus on the sorceress even if she was underwhelmed by the opening salvo to call out cheerfully, "Thanks!" before ducking back into position and remembering.. you know, serious fight.
 
 Either way, she's drifted closer to the sorceress, bobbing back and forth in the air.

GS: Holly has attacked Xenobia with Undertow!
GS: Holly has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Holly takes 27 damage from Poison!
GS: Holly has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku would give anything even for a Daigoro right now...
 
... she loved that little dog.

The vitriole of Xenobia's reaction to Phacia just takes Rikku off guard, "And I thought our family feuds were bad." Rikku distinctly remembers the mechanical Shoopuf with profanity graffiti'd on it coming at her.
 
This is next level though, as Xenobia shouts, "I don't understand what I'm supposed to UNDERSTAND! All our lives we wanted to be free of - Sin - and being blamed for something from thousands of years ago so we could live as we choose!"
 
Unfortunately, it's not so simple as trying to talk her down, as the bubbling green miasma comes her way, and while she does a quick turn and pivot out of the way, it brushes against her, and all it takes is a touch to feel the poison coursing through her system.
 
The Fiend looms high, and she has to keep an eye on it at all times, but fortunately it looks positively busy. Yuna's protection comes in the form of a healing spell. A rainbow of curative color that tries to dispel the wear.
 
It would be great, if a third affirmation came, wouldn't it? Rikku doesn't notice in this moment, but later perhaps, later she will feel the silence in her memory.
 
Instead, she finishes the mixture, and suddenly raises the sphere, knocking it on her knee, to her foot, as it suddenly is launched high. Then with a fingergun- it bursts, as if she shot it, but no it was simply that volatile. The mixture falls, as fractalized alchemical shields form over them all one by one.
 
"Only human!? Guilty! Now leave us alone so we can finally get to LIVE as humans!"

GS: CRITICAL! Xenobia partially evades Holly's Undertow for 85 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Xenobia's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Drowsy, Mute, and Poison applied to Xenobia!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!

<Pose Tracker> Cirea has posed.

When Xenobia addresses her, an unexpected expression crosses Cirea's face. (And really her whole body, because if there's anything she does it's overemote.)

She looks... guilty. Her shoulders hunch up and she actually drops a few inches in the air. "No! No no, he doesn't know at all! Actually I'd probably be in trouble if I was here - not because of you, but just because I'm not supposed to be out at all. He wants to keep us safe, but..."

Cirea bobs back up. "...but it's boring inside. To be in a place where nothing changes, month after month, year after year... I read the stories about outside, and I wanted to go there. To do something! To be someone! To see everything! So now I'm Cirea, the adventurer, and I'm going to be a sorceress as good as *he* was some day. I'm going to go everywhere and see everything and learn as much as I can!"

"...Because this world is better than you think! Every day is wondrous and new if you just look at it that way! Maybe someone hurt you way back when but they can do better now. You can do better now. You're trapped in the past, where every day is the same... don't you want to make it different? But if you're going to use something like Omega..."

Cirea brings her hands up. "I'll stop you too. So that the world keeps getting better days than any before!"

The Omega Weapon's blasts backlight Cirea as she moves, darting forward and to the side. The miasma surrounds her and causes her to recoil, pulling up more than back, but Yuna's blessing reaches her moments later in another pulse of light, and she raises her hand, waving at the former Summoner.

She turns her wave into a more complex movement of her hands as she reaches downward, then pulls up. "Storm Plume!" she calls, and the ground around Xenobia has a magic circle in a yellowish green appear, with her at the center.

A moment later, a vertical blast of air erupts upward, sustained before dying away - like a geyser, but made of faintly luminous wind.

GS: Cirea has attacked Xenobia with Storm Plume!
GS: Cirea has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Cirea takes 25 damage from Poison!
GS: Cirea has completed her action.
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Magilou with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Kaguya with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Rixia with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G!!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 22 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Ethius Hesiod accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Ethius Hesiod!
GS: CRITICAL! Kaguya accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Kaguya!
GS: CRITICAL! Rixia accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Rixia!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna heals Yuna! She gains 239 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
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: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Magilou accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Magilou!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Xenobia takes a solid hit from Cirea's Storm Plume for 108 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Xenobia's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Xenobia laughs as Omega screams, and Jacqueline grimaces. ...This won't be easy. And she asks a question - what is there to talk about?

"The path forward." Jacqueline replies. "The people of today aren't the people of a thousand years ago. Most of us don't carry that hate, that grudge. We can figure out a way to move forward together."

She frowns, though.

"...No one deserves to suffer for the circumstances of their birth. Not us, and not your people. That's why I think we should talk this out." She replies.

But, Xenobia's intentions are still clear - her will and resolution holding fast like iron. Jacqueline exhales.

And so, Xenobia works her sorcery. Jacqueline backpedals, throwing out a hand to put forth a sorcerous barrier. Not fast enough, it seems - the cloud of pink light surrounds her. It's a sensation she's familiar with - a drowsiness that tugs at her senses and makes her body feel heavy. She grimaces - but it isn't a moment later that a healing light, surpassing any she's experienced, suffuses her. She looks toward Yuna's way, sending her a grateful nod.

The drowsiness still clings to her, but the aches and pains of the trials that brought her here have faded, affording her a bit more clarity. That's enough.

"Xenobia. If you're going to hold our future hostage, then we'll take it from you. It's up to you if you'll still be there to see it with us!" Jacqueline declares. She rummages through her bag, drawing out a bottle of light purple liquid. With a Mystic touch, the contents evaporate into a glimmering, lavender-scented cloud as Jacqueline fights sluggishness with sluggishness - looking to visit that same dulling of the senses right back on Xenobia in her own way.

GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Xenobia laughs as Omega screams, and Jacqueline grimaces. ...This won't be easy. And she asks a question - what is there to talk about?

"The path forward." Jacqueline replies. "The people of today aren't the people of a thousand years ago. Most of us don't carry that hate, that grudge. We can figure out a way to move forward together."

She frowns, though.

"...No one deserves to suffer for the circumstances of their birth. Not us, and not your people. That's why I think we should talk this out." She replies.

But, Xenobia's intentions are still clear - her will and resolution holding fast like iron. Jacqueline exhales.

And so, Xenobia works her sorcery. Jacqueline backpedals, throwing out a hand to put forth a sorcerous barrier. Not fast enough, it seems - the cloud of pink light surrounds her. It's a sensation she's familiar with - a drowsiness that tugs at her senses and makes her body feel heavy. She grimaces - but it isn't a moment later that a healing light, surpassing any she's experienced, suffuses her. This is soon joined by an alchemical shield courtesy of Rikku. As an alchemist herself, she's always appreciated her mixtures. She approaches things in a different direction than she'd ever had considered - and that, she thinks, is the beauty of alchemy. She looks toward Yuna and Rikku's way, sending them both a grateful nod.

The drowsiness still clings to her, but the aches and pains of the trials that brought her here have faded, affording her a bit more clarity - and the protection offered by Rikku offers some peace of mind. That's enough.

"Xenobia. If you're going to hold our future hostage, then we'll take it from you. It's up to you if you'll still be there to see it with us!" Jacqueline declares. She rummages through her bag, drawing out a bottle of light purple liquid. With a Mystic touch, the contents evaporate into a glimmering, lavender-scented cloud as Jacqueline fights sluggishness with sluggishness - looking to visit that same dulling of the senses right back on Xenobia in her own way.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Xenobia with Slumber Solution!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia takes a glancing hit from Jacqueline Barber's Slumber Solution for 23 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Delay and Drowsy applied to Xenobia!
GS: Poison blocked!
GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

"Is it?" Kaguya wonders of Xenobia, and for a moment her eyes flicker, as she considers her own grudges. It's not long--but the pyreflies avoid her in that moment, even so. "Is it what they deserve, for being weaker than us? For being lesser? ...For taking the things that should rightfully belong to the 'strong'?"

"Or," Kaguya wonders, sickle-sharp, "Or are your people like mine?" She knows Magilou told her about hate--about how she might have to learn from Xenobia. But...

The strikes come. Munitions crash towards Kaguya's location, and she steps in, throwing her arms forward to block and disappearing in the explosion for a moment. But in the next moment, Yuna's healing magic surges through her, and it's--

"Whoa," Kaguya notes to Yuna. "You uh, have some serious charge in there." She can feel it. It's strange, even. But she's not going to complain. "But if you'll even protect someone like me, then..."

Kaguya stows the Zeikfried. "Then I'll get in there."

The small Veruni rushes forward, dodging further blasts of light and munitions and spells to close the distance with the Omega Weapon. "Haaaaah--!"

She hits the ground, hard, and springs up in a towering spiral of a strike, aiming to punch circles straight up the Omega Weapon on her way to its 'head'. "It sure doesn't!" Kaguya calls back to Rixia. "Nothing like this goes to plan! And that's good, because those plans SUCKED!"

Kaguya feels Rikku's shield, too. It's complicated, how she feels about her. But...

Rikku just wants to live 'as human' after all. Maybe that's how it should be.

Regrdless, Kaguya is going to stay up in Omega's business if she can.

<Pose Tracker> Kanon has posed.

He's here.

For a moment, Kanon completely forgets about Omega, because HE'S HERE. "Winchester," she says, low, half-turning as the Knight Blazer advents. She rounds on him, a glow growing in the depth of her eye. Is she going to launch herself at him immediately?

No, because Omega shoots her with her body volume in bullets. She disappears in a wave of a dust cloud, fragmented tile and shattered bullets obscuring her from view.

...Hold up, shattered bullets? Yes; for all that she's hurt, not one of those bullets actually penetrated.

"...fine. Priorities."

Soon the dust cloud parts as Kanon FIRES out of it, racing downrange with an eye-watering speed. She feels the touch from Yuna's healing grace, but all she acknowledges it with is a grunt and a leap into the air, her long cloak sweeping behind her, the slender body in her minidress easier to see now that the cloak she hides it with has gone all but horizontal.

There's a high keen inside her body and then she grabs her cloak and whirls it around her, refining her whole silhouette into a drill-like shape, before she comes out of it propelled downward, striking toward Omega with leg extended and arcs of lightning and coils of wind whirling around her outstretched foot.

GS: Kaguya has attacked Omega Weapon with Satellite Break!
GS: Kaguya has gained 5 Combo!
GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
GS: Kanon has attacked Omega Weapon with Pike Kick!
GS: Kanon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Kanon has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Rikku's Al-Bhed Tested Rikku-Approved: Mighty G! for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

"That right?" Venetia answers Xenobia, insolently. She does not feel enough fury to go further. Her attention remains on the Omega Weapon even as Xenobia brings her hands up and begins to draw upon magic--

Her attention flicks towards Ashley. His fury is such that Lord Blazer has emerged. Well, that die is cast, Venetia thinks: maybe it won't matter even if the Fiend has retained its strength. Maybe. Her attention turns down-range as hissing steam - "Steam powered?" Venetia says, narrowing her eyes.

"Yes, that's him," Venetia tells Kanon, "do you -- argh!" The attack is upon them!

If it truly is, the barrage must be merely a portent; and perhaps the steam is not the steam Venetia is familiar with. Afflicted, she puts her head down and runs forwards, weaving as she goes, daring to put herself NEARER to the great Thing, even as one blast knocks her over.

Venetia rolls -- and that is when the enchantments of the former high-summoner and the one who appeals to heaven's justice washes upon her. The roll continues forwards, and at the end of it, Venetia vaults herself back up to her feet, shakes her head, and shouts at the great beast, "The stone that endures the frost; return to the cycles of the cosmos! AMETHYST--" The air seems to breathe in around Venetia as the Crest Graph, *narrowly held*, surges with sorcerous power.

As violet stones form above and behind her, they begin to fling themselves towards the Omega Weapon like projectiles from a catapult: "SIGN!"

GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Omega Weapon with Amethyst Sign ~Second Month's Decision~!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.

Xenobia, it seems, is deadset on using her accumlated knoweldge and wisdom to bring ruin to those enjoying their Eternal Calm.

Normally she respects librarians--it pains her, on many levels, to see that fighting is the only solution here.

"Then so be it."

But all at once, everything's happening. Hannah sees that pink fog coming, can guess at its purpose--but as she tries to dance back out of the way, to avoid its effects, she stumbles, and the fog overtakes her. (Her woulds may have been healed along the way, but the bruses still sting, sadly.) She staggers back, bringing a hand to her head as everything grows hazy.

A screech of a hawk cuts through the air, and Hannah blinks in time to see Omega unleash a furious blaze--Zephyr's signal (and the panic shared over their empathic link), combined with the adrenaline rush of the incoming flames. She forces herself through the daze, pulling out a crest graph and invoking its magic to shield herself, wrapping herself in a protective cocoon of energy, gritting as the flames wash over her. Even with the protection, the heat is intense.

The flames pass, and she staggers out, letting the spell drop. Healing magic comes her way next, Yuna's Curaga spell brings with it relief, though her head is still fuzzy. "Thank you!" she calls.

Well, two can play with fire. Out comes another crest graph, this one blazing bright red, firey mana as she channels into it. She brings it up to her mouth, inhales deeply... and spits out a huge gout of flame at Xenobia. The flames are angry and bright red, seemingly barely contained into a roughly ball shape but straining at their mana-induced confines all the while.

GS: Hannah Curie spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Hannah Curie has attacked Xenobia with Fireball!
GS: Hannah Curie has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia solidly guards Hannah Curie's Fireball for 123 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Xenobia's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "Yah-huh! Even now!" Magilou flashes a V-sign, one leg tilting up. "But you know, I'm not the devastatingly powerful sorceress you knew, back then! I'm not just the Host of Forty-Nine, these days--!!"

    Magilou laughs, as if it's a great time, and insists: "That scrap of a gnat who kept snapping... she's a mother, now! A mother to mothers and mothers and mothers...!! It's MY duty to educate them on the wretchedness of this world -- and I don't much appreciate you muscling in!" Her hands reach out, in a broad circle, before they land firmly on her hips. "Witness the thousand candles of worldly experience I will light, this day!" Imagine getting up and living every day, for a thousand years, amongst the people of this world...

    Why, why is Magilou taunting Xenobia so much? ... well, she's not officially Rixia's mother, but she's making some effort, maybe.

    She shakes her head, though, when Xenobia demands something of Cirea. And Cirea's hopes for the world... interesting, aren't they? "Sorry," Magilou cuts in, once the fairy's made her declarations, "but I just wasn't able to find the opportunity to bring him in here for a good reunion. Apparently he's busy... and Rokurou, too! Arrrgh, can you BELIEVE those men?!" Magilou stomps her foot, gesturing with a sharp hand. "Totally unreliable! It's no wonder the women have to do everything!! Oh well -- at least you don't have to settle," she grins, all too sharp, "because I came for you, Xenobia. Hell, I would have come even if Phacia hadn't asked! But bonus, now she owes me twice over...!"

    She can't spend too long on her taunts, though. Xenobia was an arch-sorceress before Magilou was even grown; even knowing what's coming for her, with that cloud of pink light, she's not really able to hop away. One quick-step, two, and...

    Leaaan...

    And Magilou topples down, with a little 'Z' above her head. "Snnnrrrr... zzz... mrrrm..."

    A little black cat-like creature glimmers, as he resolves from a light which sparkles from her chest. "Miss Magilouuuu!" Bienfu whines, as he shoves at her shoulder. "Wake up! Wake uuuup!! Madam Xenobia's going to -- YEEP!!!" He yelps, as he catches her gaze, and jumps over to the other side of the sleeping Magilou to hide behind her. "Waaahhhhhh...!!!!! Miss Magilouuuuu!! ... huh?"

    The sparkling light of CURAGA -- from such a peerless White Mage -- has him quieting, in his very loud crying, to look over to Yuna. "Woooow..." He gasps, his eyes shining. "... if I'd met you a thousand years ago..."

    "ALRIGHT, PACK IT IN," that's Magilou, who woke up as soon as she heard her Normin getting a bit weird about it. She reaches over, fumble, fumble, grab, and shoves Bienfu back into her chest -- just kind of grasps him and shoves him at herself and he dissipates, he's fine -- and picks herself up with a roll and a tumble.

    "So, breaking news," she asides, to Xenobia, with a thumbs-up to Rikku and her talk about living as humans, "I'm not human, actually. Weird, huh? Apparently people back then were real bad at identifying spontaneous elven births! Even so --" she steps forward, gesturing to Xenobia -- "I'm gonna have to side with the humans, here. Bet you've never seen this."

    And she hasn't -- but only because Magilou needed a few more centuries to develop it, after her path last crossed with Xenobia. "Super Absorber!" With a flash of white light, lilac-blue and lavender butterflies, the pink on Magilou's outfit goes red -- the purple to white -- the blue to black. Her books take on a green hue, and that light keeps pulsing, around her, in constant passive absorption.

    "Come on, Xenobia! Explode!" And it's not just a command but a truncated invocation, as a red Seraphic glyph alights at her feet, and an explosion echoes out soon after. It's a deeply high-level Arte -- and she executes it so easily.

DC: Magilou switches forms to Scourge of the Self-Righteous ~ Face the Wrath of Magilou Mayvin!!

GS: Magilou has attacked Xenobia with Explode!
GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: Access! Magilou takes 45 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Xenobia screams out her rage, and Ida listens to as much as she can without distracting herself. Defensive anger swells in her breast, even as her heart starts to ache. It feels like there's a chunk of history that's simply missing, to her, a chunk of history where the 'Vile Tribe' suffered, greatly. But Ida's fellows' response matters just as much. Phacia may have given them a kill order, but that's simply not their first option. In the face of this latest horror, Ida feels... steady. Frightened, but in a way that drives her, rather than confines her.

    "Ghh--!" The heiress hits the dirt as light rains from above. Hyadean exoskeleton flows down her arms, forming paired circular shields; she rises to a crouch and holds them above her head. Stinging pain shoots through her as the bright energy melts through, and the wash of brilliance dazzles her. She rises, her vision filled with spots, her ears ringing. This is... absolutely how it feels to be on the receiving end of a flash grenade, she thinks. Omega looms over her, ready to follow that up--

    Brilliant sparkles erupt fron Ida's chest, and the pain fades. Some of the cuts and bruises from her trip in heal in an instant, leaving only faint smears of blood on fresh skin. A prismatic barrier ignites around her as Al Bhed alchemy does its thing. Ida takes a deep, steadying breath, flashes Yuna and Rikku the 'OK' hand-signal, and focuses solely on the Fiend before her.

    "I'm sorry," she says, even though part of her knows Omega can't hear or understand her. "You tried. They didn't listen. We... remembered you. We will remember."

    Ida breathes in, and out, and her Breath erupts from her, into a shimmering haze that surrounds Omega. "Kaguya!" she shouts, "Ashley! Right behind you!" Literally. A half-dozen Ida duplicates materialize within the energized fog, dropping attacks on Omega from a half-dozen angles: Elbow drop, rolling axe kick, stomp, a smash with both fists, a haymaker, a whirling backfist. The rolling axe kick--the one next to Kaguya--is the real Ida. But can Omega pick it out in time?

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Omega Weapon with Coils of the Water Dragon!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

Hatred. So much hatred. Hatred, spite and anger. They were warned; Phacia did say that her sister was... likely lost. Xenobia's heart is filled with so much rage, too much for mere words to overcome. Perhaps, for anything to overcome.

Not without destroying it utterly, anyway.

Knight Blazer's expressionless mask seems downcast at her response. It glances back to Venetia, glowing eyes brightening by a handful of lumens. "Good thing we've got some Ultimate Devastation right here then, huh?" Ashley's voice reverberates. They're familiar with this by now, ARMS is. Whatever is animating the armor, it's still mostly Ashley. That's good.

What's not good: being bombarded by a cavalcade of thermal energy. Omega unleashes a bombardment that feels oddly reminiscent to a battleship's full broadside. Ashley lifts a hand to shield himself-- too late. The explosion rocks into him, sending him sprawling back, armor cracking from the impact.

But not broken.

Especially not when Yuna's magic washes over him. Inner light-- such as it is-- mends the cracks before they can spread. Ashley rises slowly, offering Kanon a glance and a shrug in the process-- as if he's saying 'it is what it is' without speaking a single word.

Priorities. Indeed.

The Blazer braces himself, sword held at the ready. The next instant, he's gone, disappeared as if vanishing into a heat haze. The next moment, the sound barrier shatters, he's suddenly there, at the Weapon's flank. His sword lashes out, shining with blinding flames that seem stoked by Xenobia's own wrath as it goes to bury itself deep into the Fiend--

To gnaw upon the pyreflies, and the lingering malice and grudges that they still carry.

GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Omega Weapon with Disaster Impulse!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 3 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.
GS: Access! Ashley Winchester takes 45 damage!
GS: Omega Weapon takes a glancing hit from Kaguya's Satellite Break for 61 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Hyper applied to Kaguya!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Kanon's Pike Kick for 57 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Omega Weapon suffers a terrible blow from Venetia Vuong's Amethyst Sign ~Second Month's Decision~ for 144 hit
points!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Omega Weapon solidly guards Ida Everstead-Rey's Coils of the Water Dragon for 152 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Delay applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! (That's 25 more than usual!)
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Ashley Winchester's Disaster Impulse for 156 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Xenobia has posed.

Xenobia, of course, can understand how Curaga is a retort to her. A rejection of her; of all she is. She scowls in Yuna's direction -- it's an icy, furious glare.

That ice is Xenobia's answer to Yuna's warmth.

"Being a person is hating," Xenobia says to Rixia. "And anyone who tells you different is an idiot that's going to end up absborbing Daemonblight."

She scowls at her, and then she throws a hand out. A barrier of green light explodes, Rixia's Gunblade slamming into it -- and then shatters it when the glyphs detonate, the blast slamming Xenobia backward. "I don't care what illusions my sister steeps herself in!"

She scowls. "She made her choice, and she made it long ago. She accepts where the Vile Tribe lives--what they're tasked with!" Her eyes dart, for a moment, to Ashley. Then, back to Rixia. "My eyes are open."

She swings a hand up -- and then Rixia feels it. Shadow that starts to crawl up over her eyes -- trying to shroud her vision from the world, for just a moment. "But yours aren't, are they?"

She looks at Holly -- and scowls at her. "Amateur hour? Please. Are you--no, something different about you..." She scowls deeper. "I did learn. And I learned to destroy things like you!"

Then, she glares in Rikku's direction. "And why would I permit that?" she snaps, before she looks towards Cirea. "Keep you safe... HA! You think that!? He only cares as long as you're useful--and once you're not--"

She glowers at her. "You're thrown out like trash. That's what you'll be, then! Cirea, THE TRASH!"

Holly sends forth a briny, poisoned spell -- which sends Xenobia reeling backward from her. Then, a blast of air from Cirea slams into her -- and forces her to jump aside. She is clearly rattled. "Take THIS!"

She slams a hand downward. A massive bolt of lightning slams down between Holly, Rikku, and Cirea -- and explodes with a ring of lightning that shoots out for all three of them.

"No one deserves to suffer? Don't make me laugh!" Xenobia snaps back at Jay. "There isn't a new path forward--NOTHING has changed! Nothing will ever change!"

She is caught in that cloud of pink gas -- and one exhale, and she feels that same sluggishness creeping in. Xenobia steps back from it, her eyes narrowing.

Her eyes cut to Kaguya. "Of course it is," she says. "They don't appreciate what the Vile Tribe has done for them--what they had that we never did!"

The fire spell that Hannah sends out comes rushing in for Xenobia; it washes over her, though her magical wards flare to life, and beat back the worst of it. She glowers and turns -- and then throws a hand out.

A magical circle erupts under her feet. A moment later, a circular wall of fire explodes, shooting out in an arc that rushes across Jay and Hannah in turn.

"A mother... don't think that will grant you an ounce of mercy!" Xenobia snaps. "This... you can't tell me that my side isn't where Velvet would stand! She would have wanted this to, if she saw the MOCKERY that Ghaleon, the humans, that ALL of them made of this world!"

She glares -- but her eyes register something else: surprise. Concern. She has not seen Super Absorber before.

"New tricks--gh!" Xenobia spits, as she gets an explosion erupting underneath her feet. It sends her hurtling backward, though she also flies up and moves with it so she isn't consumed. "I'll show a FEW OF MY OWN!"

She throws a hand out. A magical circle flashes underneath Magilou's feet. Then, a trio of fireballs comes crashing down towards her, before each of them explodes in a singular large fiery blast.

She looks, as the flames clear, towards Knight Blazer. And she hesitates, visibly, at his words.

GS: Xenobia takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Xenobia has completed her action.
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Gamble: High! Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Magilou's Explode for 250 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rixia with Blind!
GS: Xenobia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Holly with Thunder Thrust!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Cirea with Thunder Thrust!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rikku with Thunder Thrust!
GS: Xenobia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Flame Circle!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Hannah Curie with Flame Circle!
GS: Xenobia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xenobia spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Magilou with Flame Bomb!
GS: Xenobia takes 28 damage from Poison!
GS: Xenobia has completed her action.
GS: Rixia takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Blind for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rixia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Blind and Weaken applied to Rixia!
GS: FP up! Evade bonus and Gleam activated!
GS: Rikku solidly guards Xenobia's Thunder Thrust for 54 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mute and Poison applied to Rikku!
GS: CRITICAL! Cirea takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Thunder Thrust for 99 hit points!
GS: Cirea's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Poison applied to Cirea!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Evade bonus activated!
GS: Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Flame Bomb for 193 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Holly solidly guards Xenobia's Thunder Thrust for 79 hit points!
GS: Holly's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Poison applied to Holly!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Xenobia's Flame Circle for 45 hit points!
GS: Disrupt, Mute, and Poison applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    Being lectured of spending a millenia to make a better world--

    A better world. A better world... the words twist inside her, wrenching at her heart. What shape would a better world even take? So many times now she's seen, those who try to make a better world have it be twisted as the hands who'd take advantage of it...

    Ashley -- no, a demon -- erupts into the scene, and her blood curdles for a moment at the sight peeling around her. Who is that...? She vaguely knows of the kind baker of Meria Boule, but she wouldn't have been able to put two and two together. And Kaguya--

    "... what would you do differently, next time?" she has to ask Kaguya. Maybe now's not the time. Maybe the answer is what she already is doing now.

    Rikku's logic is rock-solid to her, though. She's short-lived herself; it's difficult to understand why someone whose gripe is with Althena, ultimately, should have to afflict Spira with her grudge. "Being human... being allowed to be human..."

    Cirea tells Xenobia the world is better than she thinks. It makes her shiver, at how alien she feels that sentiment is. The world is better than she thinks... the world is better than she thinks... and Jacqueline speaks of the path forward. Of not carrying hatred or a grudge. Of not being shackled by the woes of generations past.

    Magilou's words, though, sink in -- a reminder that though she's busied herself with the task of carrying her father's agony, she still has... a mother, looking after her -- even if she might not admit it directly -- and how it's her job to educate her, not Xenobia's.

    "... I get it!" Rixia huffs in that exact way a teenage daughter does to her mom. "I had the best to learn from already! I don't have to look to this woman and her schemes." Magilou's power is overwhelming, however, that ever-familiar presence of Super Absorber drastically changing the flow of magic in the area, and Explode coming in; a high-level Arte, executed well.

    Being a person is hating. Five simple words, and yet... it speaks volumes to how she feels about the world. Daemonblight. The term is different, but somehow, she has an inkling, even if she's wrong--

    "You're looking at one idiot right now!"

    Xenobia gets the better of her, blinding her and shrouding her eyes in darkness and weakening her power all the same. "... I still need to open my eyes, you're right. There'll come a time when this Malevolence-stained idiot needs to let herself out. But..."

    "Grievie! Aid me!"

    >> assessing situation...
    >> user visuals compromised, altering solution
    >> estimating best line of sight to target...

    She might be blinded, but she has the Sleeping Lion -- 'Grievie' -- to assist her with targetting; what she can't physically see, the ancient device is beaming into her brain immediately, and even then--

    >> error correction applied, best-fit solution selected

    "I don't need to aim well with this one!"

    Rixia teleports, an artefact of the powers the Sleeping Lion has synthesised within her, to a relatively clear path unobstructed by the other Drifters; when she reappears, she has an enormous sphere of energy already charged within her hand, threatening to erupt harshly upon Xenobia if she doesn't counter it.

    She lobs the sphere in a manner not akin to that of a softball throw, and it lands not on Xenobia, but the ground -- and the sphere erupts into a localised force, visually evoking the birth of a new star, and carrying shockingly severe and pure force along with it.

    Maybe Magilou going all out has her wanting to show off what she can do to mom, too.

GS: Rixia has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Rixia spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Rixia has attacked Xenobia with Shockwave Pulsar!
GS: Rixia takes 35 damage from Poison!
GS: Rixia has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia solidly guards Rixia's Shockwave Pulsar for 204 hit points!
GS: Mute and Poison removed!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!

<Pose Tracker> Omega Weapon has posed.

    A low hiss follows the many turrets and barrels that have bristled from the Omega Weapon's chitinous exterior retreating within. If it were truly a machine, perhaps one would think of it as 'calculating' now -- but there can be no mistaking that it is a Fiend. Everything about its aura tells the tale of its true nature, to those open to it. This is a Fiend, and when it is slain and its malice dispersed, it will be no more than Pyreflies once more.

    Into this moment, just after it has unloaded upon the lot of them arrayed before it, Ethius completes his spell.

    There is heat, and there is light. The Omega Weapon seems to stall for a crucial moment, perhaps trying to 'calculate' the number and positions of those against it anew... and struggle in its attempt to do so. There are too many. This does not follow from what had been seen before.

    Into this moment comes Kanon, cracking against the Fiend's shell with force: she will be rewarded for a moment with a hairline fracture in the plating, before this wicks away as if it had never been. But this distracts the Omega Weapon, and a distraction may just be what Venetia needs to finish her spell, before the Fiend does what Ethius fears it might.

    Here comes the flurry of stone, battering against the monstrosity with force. Even at its size it is buffeted back a step, such is the power and fury of the land.

    'I'm sorry', Ida expresses to what the monk Omega has become in death, telling whatever still might remain sensate among its lingering grudge that he hasn't been forgotten. A reminder that he tried.

    There is no change to the Fiend -- no sense that such a plea has been heard. But who can say what does and does not matter, in the scheme of things?

    She comes for it in the same moment as Kaguya and Ashley, as all their hazy heat signatures read and tell incorrect tales to the Fiend who would see them all slain. Then Ida adds her own set of doppelgangers to the pot.

    Perhaps Ethius is correct on his supposition that even if it reads there being 'too many' it will still procede with violence.

    Which it does: light tears through a series of signatures in the haze, and perhaps may even tear through him. But the beams of light that attempt to deflect the attack from the three of them do no such thing and find only lies.

    Of the three, only Kaguya's strike does not quite hit the point at which she was aiming: it shifts its bulk as her true self strikes and she clips it, denting its exterior plating.

    Ashley and Ida strike in sequence and shatter its plating outright. It might embolden them--

    For a moment. Here, the black beetle shell of the Fiend simply regenerates, reforming itself from the stuff of which it is made. But can it keep this up forever?

    Light is not the sole tool the Fiend has at its disposal: its talons crackle with plasma as they grasp against empty space. It senses many. Perhaps it even thinks there are many -- as incongruous as such an addition might be from what was here before. But to it, a being that exists to destroy, this does not matter. Stretching its hands wide, electricity lances from its palms to cross the empty space; it will strike several false heat signatures and prove them to be nothing at all, but it may also strike Kaguya and Yuna in the course of this proof.

    The finger of its right hand twitches. Shards of rock form from noting about the spot where Kanon stands and here they coalesce, with her as the nucleus of the spell.

    This is a Fiend: it is a master of whatever its form dictates it must master. But it does not obey the rules that the rest of the world would follow. It may mimic a machine in form and power. But it may also cast such magics freely. Its hands spread wide once again.

    There is a haze in the room courtesy of Ethius' spell. The heat only grows in the points where Ashley, Venetia, and Ida stand, as flame roars up from the ground below them to kiss the vault of the ceiling above.

GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Piercing Laser!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Yuna with Lightning!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kaguya with Lightning!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kanon with Break!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ashley Winchester with Flame!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Venetia Vuong with Flame!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Flame!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has completed its action.
GS: Gamble: Low! Yuna takes a glancing hit from Omega Weapon's Lightning for 76 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Yuna gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Hannah Curie takes a solid hit from Xenobia's Flame Circle for 162 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hannah Curie's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Disrupt and Poison applied to Hannah Curie!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Evade bonus activated!
GS: Gamble: Very High! Kaguya suffers a terrible blow from Omega Weapon's Lightning for 214 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kaguya gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Blind applied to Kaguya!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Ashley Winchester solidly guards Omega Weapon's Flame for 67 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

The cricket chorus of Besaid Island's nightfall sing in endless counterpoint. The village bonfire pops as a log splits, sending brilliant orange sparks into the sky. They cannot outshine the stars, so many and so brilliant here, far from artificial lights.

Almost everyone has gone to bed, but a few people linger around the courtyard. They don't really need the fire for warmth. Even a cool island breeze is still plenty warm. But the glow is nice, and so is the company.

"Yo..."

Wakka had to leave the fire to find Yuna; almost just to be able to see her at all. She's leaned against a tree, in deep shadow, far from those mild conversations.

He places a big, brotherly hand on her shoulder.

"...Yuna."

"Hi Wakka," she says, as sweetly, as amicably as anyone could hope. But without lifting her eyes from the distant fire.

His hand tightens into a soft squeeze.

"I know things, things feel a little hard right now, ya? Like Chappu all over again..."

Now Yuna looks at him, but when their eyes meet, it isn't only difficult for her. Whatever Wakka sees in her is painful for him to bear.

She closes them outright.

"It's okay, Wakka..."

"Listen," he interrupts, with the urgency of a deep emotion. "I know why you're going back out there. And I know that I can't stop you. I don't even wanna, not really." His other hand scratches at the back of his headband awkwardly. "But... it won't be like it was before. No aeons, no nothing..."

Yuna starts to frown, and he squeezes her shoulder again, "I know!" he yelps, before she can protest. "I know. A lot more than nothing. But still... I want you to take this. Take it for me. I'll sleep betta knowing it's with you."

And he fills her hand with something small and round.

Yuna's eyes flutter open, and she examines it, though she hardly needed to see it to understand; her fingertips know the details of a Teleport Sphere exceedingly well, she having been the custodian of the party's first one since the moment it came out of its chest.

"Wakka..." she protests quietly. It's a precious thing. They're so damn rare.

"Don' use it to run away," he clarifies firmly. "I want you to use it now. Before you go. I want you to have... whatever you want. Whatever you need. Even though it hurts my stomach to imagine you of all people triple fouling anyone, it's okay now. You've gotta have an arsenal."

Yuna blinks at him.

"Think about it," he finishes, and leaves her to it.

---

The relief of her allies pours through Yuna's veins -- she can feel their burns fading, their flesh mending, even as Rikku's Mighty G reinforces her own. She can also feel some amazement, and some gratitude too, but that's less important. She is the one who must be astonished and grateful, and she is, down to her very core. Here they are again already, the Otherworlders and her Guardians. Already, after everyone gave so much, putting everything on the line to defend her home from yet another omnicidal maniac.

Every blow they suffer strengthens her resolve... and her fear.

She wants this to end without regrets. She wants this fight to go faster. She wants...

A tear rolls down her cheek as Time Magic gathers in her extended hand. It leaves a faint pearlescent track behind it, as the sweat did.

Yuna looks back over at Xenobia.

"How dare you say," she sniffs at the tear as it passes her nose, "That nothing has changed. The only one... making a mockery of those we've lost... is you."

Brilliant orange clocks explode around many of her friends, and accelerate. Tick-tick-tickticktick.

Exactly like someone else used to cast, Hastega picks people up, sliiiiiiiiiides them along the order, and drops them off an action -- or three -- ahead of where they would be otherwise. Identically like, courtesy of the tutelage of the Teleport Sphere that has now placed her at the end of his track, ready to turn around and journey back towards the beginning.

There's only so much she can do on her own, no matter how much she heals.

But -- this was his story, his lesson, his gift to her and to the whole world: What they can do together is unlimited. So, let this extra time, this stolen time, help make more miracles possible.

The sooner the better, as far as Yuna's concerned.

She wants... to get this over with... before...

GS: Yuna spends 2 Combo on Inspire and Reload!
GS: Yuna has attacked Holly with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Hannah Curie with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ashley Winchester with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Cirea with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Venetia Vuong with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rikku with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Kanon with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Kaguya with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Magilou with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rixia with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Hastega!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Kanon solidly guards Omega Weapon's Break for 65 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kanon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Cirea accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Cirea enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Cirea gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Magilou accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Magilou gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: CRITICAL! Kanon accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Kanon gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Yuna gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Hannah Curie accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Hannah Curie gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Jacqueline Barber gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Kaguya accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Kaguya enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Kaguya gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a solid hit from Omega Weapon's Piercing Laser for 236 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Holly accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Holly gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Venetia Vuong partially guards Omega Weapon's Flame for 106 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Venetia Vuong gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Venetia Vuong accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Venetia Vuong gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Rikku gains 2 Combo from Inspire!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Velvet would have wanted this too, huh...?

    Magilou doesn't have time to comment immediately, though -- because Xenobia has some tricks up her sleeve, too. Magilou's defence against them, at least, isn't new: she throws her shikigami up to absorb the blast, extending the paper doll out into a greatshield. (There's a minor spirit inside the paper, so it doesn't burn.) "Heh... they're not bad," she says, at the smoke which rises even after she pulls her shikigami back.

    She looks up to Rixia -- with Grievie's aid -- and grins. "You know," she adds, to Xenobia, "this current age has some talented up-and-coming sorceresses, too. Even a few people worth watching who don't have unimaginable magic power!" Did she look over to Kaguya, when she said that? Surely not. With another look to the fox girl, Magilou orients back on Xenobia again. "But Rixia's got a lot to learn from you... so you'd better make it worth her time!"

    Magilou doesn't particularly want mercy. And she's not going to ask for it for anyone else, either. These people can stand on their own two feet.

    Like Yuna. Magilou feels the time magic, ticking at her back, and she looks back to her with a grin. "Everything changes," she assures her. "Looks like you have, too." Hastega... has she ever seen Yuna cast that, before? Surely not.

    "But hey, speaking of enforcing our will on the present day, I'm the one who speaks for Velvet!" Magilou laughs, turning back to Xenobia, and if it's a shade more forced -- maybe that's just Magilou. "I do it all the time! See, it's like this: 'ARTORIUUUUUUSSSS!!!!!'" Magilou screams, shaking her fist to the sky. "Bam! Speaking for Velvet is easy where I'm standing! And I'm gonna say -- okay, so like, just pretend I absolutely shredded my costume before I said this -- that Velvet wouldn't have given a crap about the whole world, so long as the people she cared about were okay!"

    Magilou scowls, her hand coming to rest on her hip again. "Take some responsibility for your own wishes, Xenobia. You're the one who wants this. You've always wanted this." She gestures, with an open palm. "Well, not that we ever really stopped you... and don't get me wrong, I'm not regretting that. I don't regret our journey one bit."

    Did they ever try? Or, instead, were they...

    Magilou doesn't say. Instead, she says this, as lightning unerringly crackles in the sky and into Xenobia's space: "Lightning Blast--!"

GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Snipe!
GS: Magilou has attacked Xenobia with Lightning Blast!
GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Drowsy expired!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: Access! Magilou takes 45 damage!
GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Lowest! Xenobia takes a glancing hit from Magilou's Lightning Blast for 84 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Break and Jam blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey solidly guards Omega Weapon's Flame for 69 hit points!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey gains 2 Combo from Inspire!

<Pose Tracker> Holly has posed.

Adopting a sing-song voice, Holly calls out, "Amateur hour may have been too optimistic." The bolt of lightining arching, striking the barrier and while she's sent spinning away, a surprising amount of the current was caught with a swing of her brush. The ink catching the lightning and burning away. Only to be replaced as she drags the brush through the water.
 
 "I'm older." Figure that's what Xenobia was talking about. Also, you know, not Lunarian, but eh. "Should I question you or your teacher?" Taunting again.
 
 On a more serious note though, part of her rant. "Nothing will change if you drag everyone else down around you." She gestures with her brush, almost like she wants to paint the picture, but this is the wrong place or time to literally do so. "I want to make people's lives better. Suffering's going to happen, but you can alleviate it. Help teach from it." She uh, continues on for a few minutes. She had been quiet before now, but this one's a bit close to home. And maybe a bit of guilt seeing as how she broke a bunch of things back home without even finding out why she'd been abandoned.
 
 She points to Cirea with her free hand, "See, that's the right attitude." She was paying attention even while running at the mouth. It's a learned skill. Probably.
 
 Either way, as she's talking, she's been drifting closer. Clearly trying to put herself between the others and herself. Protective, slightly separated now that Xenobia's clearly trying to catch all of them in blasts. Maybe even trying to split her focus. Eyes on me.. right?
 
 She does keep glancing occasionally, trying to make sure she's not about to get caught by Omega weapon's own attacks. Split focus mentioned.
 
 "If it's about feeling alone, I get it." That's less mocking. Not even close. "I get lashing out at things. You shouldn't burn all of it down around you though. Just ask for help." A lesson she had to learn. Mostly by wreckage.
 
 Yuna is once again, helping out despite everything going around. "Again!" she calls her way. Making a note to figure out how to get her a book or.. something. She's kind of straight forward in her thoughts sometimes. That's later though.
 
 At this point though, there needs to be more. Maybe she can keep the pressure up. Keep her off balance. That same cursed water begins to coalesce again. Holly writes the curses in ink, spreading it through the water. Infusing it with practiced nastiness. The water bursts, trying to drench Xenobia in the stuff. She's not sure they can talk the sorceress out of it at this point. Removing the desire to fight's a good next step.

GS: Holly has attacked Xenobia with Deluge!
GS: Holly has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Holly takes 31 damage from Poison!
GS: Holly has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"Well, because I asked nicely!" Did she really ask nicely? "But since you won't! I'm just going to make you! Given what you're doing this is basically just preemptive self-defense!" Would that actually hold up in a court of law?
 
Anyway, lightning explodes, and Rikku throws up another Lunar Curtain at that moment, as the electricity detonates in a ring. Watch Rikku's expression in slow motion, you'll see the horror dawning and rising until, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!" She gets a lot of volume on that scream as the Lightning burns away the Lunar Curtain she put up and shocks her, but the psychological damage is perhaps more severe. "H-Huh- ah- H-How does everyone always know!?"
 
(Probably because she keeps screaming whenever it happens.)
 
"That's it! I'm- I'm taking care of that!"
 
Taking care of her Phobia? Is it really so easy...
 
In the end, she can feel Yuna's anger, her sorrow. It's in her tone, in that sniff, and it's upsetting, because she can understand why she feels that way, "Yunie..." More and more does she resent this woman for just, dragging Yuna back into this, blaming her.
 
Her spell surges through her, and Rikku suddenly rushes right up near Xenobia, just out of staff swatting range..
 
"If you're so UPSET about how the oldtimers have left the world-" Does it- is she just trying to get up in her face to lecture her?
 
Oh wait no, there sure is a Silence Grenade she just dropped right there, and then with a little kick she lobs it right at her. As it detonates into an explosion of Alchemical Anti-Magic.
 
"-then how about you just LEAVE IT TO US-!"
 
And then she totally just runs away, grateful for the haste spell because she feels like it's likely that Xenobia is going to be quite upset with her.

GS: Rikku has attacked Xenobia with Use: Silence Grenade !
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 28 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Ashley Winchester accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick applied to Yuna!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Ashley Winchester gains 2 Combo from Inspire!

<Pose Tracker> Kanon has posed.

Kanon pushes away from that crack - her enhanced senses see the damage healing immediately, but she still got the hit, which is critical to know. She flips away from Omega - but as soon as she lands, shards of rock drill toward her, collapsing toward her in a cloud of rock and stone.

"We've met," is her answer to Venetia.

Then light bursts out of her body, piercing spears casting out of the dust cloud. Invisible seams in her flesh ignite and fill with radiance as her systems charge and surge. In her shoulders, in the long, more obviously cybernetic arm, in her legs, in her face...

Just how much woman is left, of Kanon? The high whine of capacitors simultaneously dumping and charging everywhere in her body suggests: Not much at all.

GS: Kanon has attacked Kanon with Bionic Spark!
GS: Kanon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Kanon has completed her action.
GS: Kanon accepts Kanon's Bionic Spark for 0 hit points!
GS: Amplify, Burst, Hyper, and Quick applied to Kanon!
GS: Xenobia solidly guards Holly's Deluge for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Xenobia's Weaken Ward may block the effect!
GS: Break, Disease, Shieldbreak, and Weaken applied to Xenobia!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated!
GS: Xenobia takes a solid hit from Rikku's Use: Silence Grenade  for 118 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Xenobia's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Ethius Hesiod gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
GS: Rixia accepts Yuna's Hastega for 0 hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Rixia gains 2 Combo from Inspire!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"It's that kind of thinking that forestalls change in the first place." Jacqueline relies, shaking her head. "'Nothing has changed, nothing will ever change'... of course it won't, if you convince yourself it won't. Before change can happen, you have to accept the possibility of change - and be ready to take the responsibility of making it into your own two hands."

Jacqueline pauses as she catches the tell-tale signs of a spell being worked, and braces herself as a wall of fire erupts toward her. She winces - she can feel the heat even through her barrier, pressing down on her. She stumbles a little as it finally passes over her.

...And then, clocks spring into existence around her. Her sluggishness returns to normal - and she picks up the pace!

"Back where I'm from... There are people we called 'demons'. They weren't, of course... but we told all kinds of stories about them, because of things that happened in the distant past. Now, though? Now, we know better. We have a tight bond of friendship, and things are being done little by little to improve their lot. So, change can happen." Jacqueline insists. "But there were people who stood in the way of that change, and when that happened - we fought them, to protect our future together!"

And Jacqueline fights now, making two quick gestures with her right hand. The earth shoots up from beneath Xenobia's feet like hungry teeth - before soon being followed by lightning crashing down from above!

GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Formation! Jacqueline Barber has attacked Xenobia with Dualcasting Sequence!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber takes 27 damage from Poison!
GS: Drowsy expired!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Cirea has posed.

...? "You know where he is??" Magilou has managed to completely surprise Cirea. "Don't tell him where I am! Or that I'm here at all! It would get really awkward..."

That is an understatement. Cirea really wasn't expecting to have to think about that today!

Xenobia is giving her enough to think about, honestly. Cirea bristles, still holding magical energies in her hands - her fingers are glimmering with the residue of whatever light magic she's using. "He's never made any of us do anything! Or used any of us! But even if I don't like how he's done it, he's always kept us safe... for hundreds of years, even, before I was born! So I don't think you know him well at all, if you think he'd do that!"

Cirea once again rushes. She's moving fast - and soon she's moving faster as Yuna's blessing touches her. Cirea, when she's sped up, is very nearly a blur; she's not actually flying all that much faster on average than a running human, but she moves in darting rushes that leave streaks of light and wind behind as she goes.

The thunder clips her while she's moving, sending her tumbling until she catches herself, wings spread wide. "If it's new magic you want to see, I've got something you'll never have seen before! I've been working on this for YEARS and you get to see it first... so I guess you get to see what we can do if you leave the world to us!" She glances over toward the other sorceresses, mostly to see if any of them are looking, because Cirea apparently likes an audience. She gives Holly in particular a grin before she turns back.

"Power of the greatest light, grant unto me a halo of mine spirit! Shine Silhouette!"

Cirea is right. It's not a spell anyone has seen before, because she's never cast it, and despite the short chant is it hellaciously complex; she wouldn't have tried to get it out at anything near this speed without Yuna having sped herself up. Her fingers move faster than can be easily seen but leave glowing symbols in the air around her, and the secondary chant under her breath is nearly inaudible.

A sphere of light forms next to Cirea. Just a shapeless ball, but it slowly shifts, stretching and distorting. It's wavery at first - a sphere, then a vertically stretched oval, then it seems to swell and fill out to a perfect silhouette in purest white light...

...a perfect duplicate silhouette of Cirea. Except the silhouette's belt-like ribbon on her dress isn't ripped yet. There's no shading in the silhouette, no difference in brightness anywhere on it; it is pure shining silvery-white from edge to edge, but exactly Cirea's shape and size.

Cirea pumps her fist and lets out a very quiet "Yessss," because she wasn't sure it was going to work at all. She gives her own image a high-five (it returns it) and then both of them turn toward Xenobia. There's only one voice, though, from the real one: "I'll show you my own magic, too!"

GS: Cirea enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Cirea has attacked Cirea with Shine Silhouette!
GS: Cirea has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Cirea's stances have changed to Hero!
GS: Cirea enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Cirea takes 25 damage from Poison!
GS: Cirea has completed her action.
GS: Cirea accepts Cirea's Shine Silhouette for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Poison removed!
GS: Blitz and Surge applied to Cirea!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

Kaguya's listening along to Magilou and Xenobia. But there are many names she doesn't know. ANd she doesn't know, really, waht the Vile Tribe has 'done'. It makes her smile, but not pleasantly, to hear it.

Ida apologizes to the Fiend, and then shouts at her--and Kaguya nods sharply. "With you!"

Rixia has a question for her, though. What would she do differently? Kaguya opens her mouth and closes it in the midst of the melee, weaving in and out of position to avoid attacks as she finds she doesn't have a ready answer for it.

"I'd listen to people," Kaguya decides. "Instead of assuming I just knew best. What people had to say, about their own lives... and what people had to say about mine."

"I underestimated everyone. I thought I could convince humans to do the 'smart' thing easy, but they were using me, too. And I think that's the key."

"Don't just 'use' people as things! Your own pain doesn't justify visiting in on other people!"

So maybe that drives her to say to Xenobia, "I chose this world, Lunar, you know. I didn't have to. It didn't want me in the first place! Neither of these worlds did!"

"But Magilou's got a point, you know? Speaking for what you want..."

"What I want is to keep this world going, stupid humans and all. And I'm going to stake that I want it enough to take out your toy."

Kaguya feels speed.

The Fiend Omega cotinues to strike, and Kaguya can't thus far break through its armor enough; electricity lances from its palms, and Kaguya indeed is hit hard by it, blasted back violently until she can't actually see straight as a result. "Gh--"

She doesn't pull the ARM. Instead, Kaguya stumbles back, and then thinks better of her approach. She suddenly lunges away from the Omega Weapon, instead reaching for the walls of the structure around them--and pulling a pillar that helps to support it. Her hands clasp around it, fingers digging into the pyrefly-infested stone, nd there is a terrible CRACK as Kaguya, straining with effort, begins to break off a chunk of that wall--

ANd then she spins, and spins, and spins, and leaps. She swings a huge chunk of wall straight down at Omega's face, in an effort to slam it down where it stands. "GRAAAH!"

GS: Kaguya has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Kaguya has activated Force Action: Lock On!
GS: Kaguya has attacked Omega Weapon with Falling Star!
GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Falling Star for 250 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Dispel! Hyper removed!
GS: Charge!! You gain 50 FP! (That's 35 more than usual!)
GS: Strain! Kaguya takes 42 damage!
GS: Xenobia solidly guards Jacqueline Barber's Dualcasting Sequence for 95 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated!

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

Heat. Flame. A torrential geyser of raw, thermal energy blasts up from below. But--

This is Knight Blazer, after all. It'd be a shame if fire alone could bring it to heel. With the power of DEFENSIVE TYPE ADVANTAGE on his side, Ashley braves the flames, armor gleaming and glistening with the glint of firelight. Perhaps with time, even something as monstrous as the Blazer might have been burnt by the conflagration, but--

Thanks to Yuna, time is immaterial.

"She called me out to a cliff near Meria Boule at sundown and tried to kill me," Ashley says of Kanon, as Hastega abruptly causes him to reappear at a new point in space and time. "Pretty sure she was raisd by Marivel? Though I guess that was obvious with how she set everything up so... cinematically..." As if that answers how terribly awful that is!! YOUR ASSASSIN IS RIGHT THERE WINCHESTER, THIS ISN'T THE TIME TO JOKE.

There is a Fiend of ancient and truly prodigious power to defeat. Perhaps it is not the equal of Sin, but it doesn't have to be. They had help from within Sin, then. This time... They are unlikely to be so lucky.

It's the hard way, then.

"You were... abandoned, huh? I can't imagine how much that must have hurt, to be abandoned by someone you love." It'd ruin him, if Marina would turn her back. How painful that would be, for someone so close to his heart to close themselves off from him. That's always been a fear, but with the Blazer within, it's one now more than ever. It... almost reached a breaking point. If Ashley Winchester were not so blessed with comrades who, step by step, taught him the lessons of life, maybe he would have kept the fear buried, allowed it to fester and consume him and their love.

...But instead, he's engaged. Marina knows of the monster inside of him, and loves him even so. And that-- that is powerful. It's an emotion that the Blazer CANNOT consume.

He won't let it.

"I understand. But we still can't let you take away Spira's hope, or its people's chance of finally finding happiness!" Yuna got him where he needed to be, now it's time to execute. Knight Blazer braces, drawing back a fist. Armor at its wrist folds back, exposing cylinders like the barrels of a gun. Each of the three begins to shine and blaze, glowing with light as his black arm shines pure gold. Ancient stone shatters underfoot as he races forward, delivering a supersonic punch--

And in the same instant, he discharges the accumulated energy in a point-blank blast of pure, destructive power...!

GS: Ashley Winchester spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Omega Weapon with Incandescent Strike!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.
GS: Access! Ashley Winchester takes 45 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

"Oh good," Venetia answers Kanon. "Good fellow really. Likes baking." She answers Ashley's update about Kanon with: "I'm sorry?"

Their light and their blows fall upon the creature even as Xenobia speaks her rancor. Her grudge may be eternal and so too many be that of the Omega Weapon, because Venetia would have hoped that their blows would have struck something deeper -

Ah, it's recovering, but -

It's recovering more quickly than Venetia hoped. And more thoroughly.

Ah, fire, Venetia might think but it is instead an erupting flame that makes her shout in dismay; she shouts, indeed, because she does not wish to scream. Her robes are professionally made, and they resist ignition, but for a moment they smoulder, and Venetia has to sweep away even as she sweeps at her garb.

"If only we could hold discourse as peers," Venetia breathes to the Omega Weapon. She is contemplating what to do and trying very hard to not curse herself for hanging up the ol' Star Blazer because of a lack of very good targets, but that's always the way: the moment you don't have it, you regret it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chs1K04Eo88&t=299s

Even Lord Blazer's might, as well as the power of Ida's strange kungfu and enhanced body and the curiously similar new stranger who has just come out of nowhere to join them, is quailing. What more can she -

There is a sudden quickening as Venetia finds herself electric. She glances over her shoulder towards Yuna for a moment, sorceress's instinct having instantly pegged her as the source of that spell. Then back towards the Fiend.

"Of course," Venetia says. "That's it. For this one, we just have to keep ahead of it," Venetia continues, striding forwards. The Crest Graph is pocketed and another drawn outwards. Venetia invokes it as she strides directly towards Omega Weapon: "Shape of my soul, reveal thyself and breach the gates to the stars. I call you forth --" The Crest Graph gleams violet, and the violet flickers around Venetia for a moment. Rising:

"Simulacrum Sign!"

- and then taking a shape. Like those shadows of great beasts that get written about in the more turgid fiction, rising up over great warriors or generals or gunfighters. This one is a lot more concrete. Something like a nine foot tall woman with muscles worthy of the finest athletes of Aquvy and bronze-clad fists, one of which smashes at and hopefully *THROUGH* one of those regenerated shells!

<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.

The bad run of luck continues for Hannah--as she unleashes with her flames, Xenobia seems to shrug them off, and she retaliates with a ring and a wall of flame. She modes to dodge, but her head's still foggy and she trips, letting out a pained cry as she stumbles and the flames overtake her.

No, not just flames--something courses through her veins, and she grits her teeth. Poison. This... this won't bode well for her. She staggers trying to focus, to pull deep. Yuna's Hastaga helps, bringing energy and focus, but she's still reeling, and the urge to attack, to keep pressing the offensive, is driving within her--the only thing pushing her through the haze at the moment.

And though she is loathe to do it, there is something she can reach for to back her up. She taps into that darker part of her magic, pulling out a new crest graph--it's glowing a steady, strong orange, form and solid. Hannah activates it, lifts a foot, and slams it into the ground. Tremors shake the ground in her immediate vicinity, but they don't stay there--they travel quickly forward, kicking up a trail of dust and pebbles--until several stone spikes explode at Xenobia's feet. No mere stalagmites or chunks of broken earth, but perfectly smooth, and very pointy spikes that feel just a bit off--just like the girl's aura is starting to feel a bit off as she taps into that power more.

GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Omega Weapon with Simulacrum Sign ~Velvet Underground~!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong's stances have changed to Hero!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
GS: Hannah Curie has attacked Xenobia with Tremor Spike!
GS: Hannah Curie has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Hannah Curie takes 33 damage from Poison!
GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    Ethius can only assume success on the grace of being able to feel himself breathe and cough, as sight and hearing try to recover from being at ground zero of that collision of an ancient perpetual memory-desire of light and cutting-edge personal Symbological spell protection. He can't easily track the movements of the melee fighters closing in on Omega Weapon, and the shouting of values and retorts to and from Xenobia are its own challenge.
 
     Rikku's mixture and a sense of quickening familiar of a certain someone leads to an uncomfortable sensation of being deeply aware of his own pulse (none of the immediate warning signs of heart issues, which he knows to recognize, but still a bit of a jolt) and - most importantly - still alive.
 
     A laser strikes, to challenge this supposition and reinforce the sensory overload. Ethius' shielding makes it more concussive in impact than scything and melting, but it's a journey that sends him through some ancient structure, knocking him over flat on his back and squeezing him against whatever of this enchanted structure is able to hold, and in the seconds that follow crush syndrome starts to fill the gap.
 
     A quarterstaff taps on the ground as he finds it in him to stand, breathe, cough, bleed, blink, shake his head, and...
 
     Fight.
 
     "Smokescreen," Ethius remarks, but he's a bit far off, trying to muscle a ways past behind Xenobia (in a moment of background humor, stumbling past half the climactic battle) as he closes back in towards engagement range of Omega Weapon.
 
     "Smokescreen," Ethius repeats again, a bit more clearly. Subtly, he seems to weave carefully around Kaguya's movements with care, flittering fingers and finishing the spellcast to the call of...
 
     "Ashen Veil!"
 
     As advertised, it is a Symbologically conjured wave of ash and soot to further muddy up Omega's opponent locating problems.

GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Omega Weapon with Ashen Veil!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Ashley Winchester's Incandescent Strike for 247 hit points!
GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! (That's 25 more than usual!)
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Venetia Vuong's Simulacrum Sign ~Velvet Underground~ for 82 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Ethius Hesiod's Ashen Veil for 88 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Delay applied to Omega Weapon!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Whatever happened between Xenobia and Magilou, it reads to Ida like a rift between former comrades that was never healed. "And what are they tasked with?" Ida asks, keeping Omega in sight while she turns to its master. "All I've heard is myth--and the name they've given you speaks about what you've suffered!" Her gaze flicks to Rikku, mild alarm in her eyes as she very nearly eats that lightning bolt, but she recovers. "Why were you cast out? It can't simply be 'we didn't listen to the Goddess!'

    Sorcery is not Ida's strong suit, but she's gotten a good feel for sorcerous tells: the spread of Omega's hands, the collection of the haze. She hits the amphitheater floor, and skids from the momentum of bouncing off Omega's carapace. The dust of ages stirs up at her heels. As the heat builds, Ida moves, she leaps, tucks, and rolls. The fire singes her arm, leaving a patch of red, but it isn't the devastating hit it could've been.

    Yuna's sorcery wells up, again, and this time it feels familiar in a different way. ...Tidus? Ida thinks, and her heart pangs.

    Then, Ashley explains that someone tried to murder him. "Wait, WHO?" Ida demands, as silvery-blue biometal wicks over her burns with lightning speed. Another momentary distraction. Ida's left palm erupts in threads of Hyadean flesh, ejecting a weapon--a pistol that looks like the twisted mirror of Devil's Due. She takes aim at Omega's center of mass, and opens fire; slivers of her own biometal strafe the whole length of the thing's body, trying to burrow in and keep it from regenerating.

    The fact that every one of those slivers contains just a tiny hint of Malevolence... might help, given its nature as a Fiend.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Omega Weapon with Burning Quicksilver !
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia solidly guards Hannah Curie's Tremor Spike for 76 hit points!
GS: Cripple applied to Xenobia!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
GS: Xenobia enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Xenobia has posed.

A wicked grin stays on Xenobia's face, as she sees the tremendous number of weapons that the Fiend brings to bear. The Omega Weapon is all she hoped it would be; all she hoped that it would become.

Xenobia leaps back -- and it's not fast enough because Rixia teleports, then looses that sphere of energy. It explodes, the blast of raw energy slamming into her and the barrier she erupts. As it fades, energy crackles over her hands, and there's some scorch marks across her skin and garment.

"Don't think you can just call yourself an idiot and think that makes it okay!" Xenobia snaps back at her. Then, she throws a hand out.

A crimson magic circle erupts under her feet. Then, three huge bolts of lightning come crashing down from above, and smash down for Rixia from above.

"When you lose track of how many you've lost," Xenobia snaps back at Yuna, "then you'll understand. When you lose them even though they're still there."

Xenobia's eyes turn back towards Magilou, and they narrow when she speaks for Velvet (in more ways than one). "You... you insufferable woman!" she spits. "I do want this... but it's where EVERYONE has pushed me to! It's the only choice left to make this world RIGHT!"

Lightning crashes down -- but this time, Xenobia teleports, and it only just catches her before she vanishes from the blast of electricity. "Oh, yes, ask for help. Silly me. Pardon, would you help me KILL ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS?!" she shouts at Holly. "What's that? No? Look! Asking for help fails, once again! How shocking!"

She throws up another barrier -- cursed water smashes into it, splitting about the barrier, but it still drives her back. She can't get away from Rikku's grenade, left right there. It explodes, blasting into her, and leaving a gash on her side.

She hisses. "I don't care about those 'old timers,'" she says. "They abandoned me. I'm doing what they couldn't."

She moves quickly -- stepping and then teleporting a short distance to get away from the snapping earth that Jacqueline summons. The lightning, though, can't be escaped; it smashes down into her, and she glowers.

"Oh, I'll make a change -- I'll make sure that humanity's under the thumb of something like Sin! As it SHOULD BE!" she snaps at Jay. "And I doubt your demons all agreed with you! What about the ones who aren't your friends?"

Then, she throws her hands up.

A sickly white light flashes up around Magilou, Holly, Rikku, and Jay. It makes them slower, as if they can't move as fast as they should. As if time iteself isn't moving right.

Then, Xenobia slams her hands down. Grey stone begins to rise up, over their feet -- over their legs -- and gradually rise. A petrification spell.

Xenobia's eyes blaze with fury as she looks to Cirea, then -- and she does so twice as she sees the silhouette duplicate. "You...! Don't presume you know him better than me! You haven't seen the real person!"

Then, her eyes narrow as she looks to Kaguya. "My pain is greater than any of yours, you miserable little worms!" she spits at her. "And you--" She looks at Knight Blazer. "What right do you have to speak of such things!?"

She is distracted, which is bad -- because the ground under her trembles, and then stone spikes explode from the earth at Hannah's command. They slash into her, before she quickly hops back.

She throws a hand out -- and several blue-white blades of energy form, then hurl for Hannah, Cirea, and her silhouette.

"We were cast out because we rejected her divinity! Because we stood with her enemy!" Xenobia's eyes narrow. "But even the peace she offered was a prison! We should be the masters of this world, not its wardens! Something my sister will never accept!"

GS: Xenobia spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rixia with Thundaga!
GS: Xenobia has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Cirea with Sonic!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Hannah Curie with Sonic!
GS: Xenobia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Magilou with Slowga!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Holly with Slowga!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rikku with Slowga!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Slowga!
GS: Xenobia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xenobia spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Magilou with Break!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Holly with Break!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rikku with Break!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Break!
GS: Xenobia has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Xenobia has launched an attack Link!
GS: Drowsy expired!
GS: Xenobia has completed her action.
GS: Rikku suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Slowga for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Break, Disrupt, and Slow applied to Rikku!
GS: Rikku solidly guards Xenobia's Break for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hex and Weaken applied to Rikku!
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!
GS: Rixia suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Thundaga for 434 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rixia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mute and Poison applied to Rixia!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Rixia enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Cirea has activated Force Action: Accelerate!
GS: Cirea takes a solid hit from Xenobia's Sonic for 173 hit points!
GS: Disease applied to Cirea!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Evade bonus, and Gleam activated!
GS: Cirea enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Burning Quicksilver  for 81 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Shieldbreak blocked!
GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! (That's 20 more than usual!)
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber takes a solid hit from Xenobia's Slowga for 0 hit points!
GS: Break, Disrupt, and Slow applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Xenobia's Break for 0 hit points!
GS: Hex and Weaken applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Magilou takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Slowga for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Break, Disrupt, and Slow applied to Magilou!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Evade bonus, and Gleam activated!
GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Break for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hex and Weaken applied to Magilou!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Omega Weapon has posed.

    Dodging the strikes the Omega Weapon unloads upon her and others (and illusions besides), Kaguya races to sieze an opportunistic weapon: a chunk of one the walls within this place. The wall cracks and splits, giving up after a moment more of Kaguya's struggle, and this is what she leaps to deliver to the Omega Weapon's own face. Shattered pieces of black plating (or shell, or whatever one might call it) rain to the ground to evaporate into single Pyreflies. For a moment, Kaguya's reward will be the Fiend's broken face.

    Until this, too, reforms. Attrition. This will be a battle of attrition.

    Regeneration however will cost it. Stone itself shatters under the advance of Knight Blazer, intruding into this most vulnerable of moments with a fist lifted and brimming with a terrible power. Here, that fist cracks against the Omega Weapon's shell, shattering ridged plate across its upper torso, and here, in the wake of that singular blow, pieces black shell rain down around Knight Blazer like some fell rain. They dissolve into Pyreflies again, again-- it regrows its shell. The cycle repeats.

    But it can't sustain this. Everything cannot come from nothing: there will be a cost to pay. All the while, even a Fiend of this elevated power will eventually enter a spiral from which there is no return.

    Still, they must first survive.

    Its core has again begun to shine, now in a pale brilliant blue that cannot be found in the waking world. Light--
    Energy--

    Both come forth in a raging torrent, threatening to swallow up the spot Kaguya now occupies.

    Even as the light fades, the fist of Venetia's tulpa comes to crack against the place where Knight Blazer had struck. Cracks marr the armor-plating -- the chitinous exoskeleton -- and retrace old wounds, but in this moment she receives no similar showering of shells.
    But, how strange.

    How strange, the cracks do not vanish this time.

    They all may have a moment to consider this and what it might mean. Ethius, for one, does not hesitate: he summons forth again a haze, again a method to muddy the sensors (eyes?) of the Fiend -- to further frustrate its aim and help them to evade its blows. It is good timing for many of them: those taloned hands of it have again begun to twitch in the air, the only sure sign that another of its terrible spells is being wrought. Again, it pulls forth the element of flame, of heat: a roaring splash of liquid fire splits and rolls towards Ethius, towards Yuna, towards Kanon.

    Cutting through the heat and haze and flame comes a salvo from Ida's very own biometal: the needle-like projectiles slide through the burn as if it had been so much water and pepper the Omega Weapon's length to leave behind two score pockmarks and holes in its shell. They, too, do not heal away.

    At once, something within the Fiend clacks and clicks violently. Erupting from its lower torso come a series of missiles, speeding towards various points which happen to include the places occupied by Ida and Ashley -- Knight Blazer -- in sequence.

    With a room shaking-step, the Omega Weapon lunges forward. Impossibly, the Fiend unhings its jaw. Few living things could do this without serious injury -- but can one call a Fiend 'alive'? In concert with this movement something begins to emerge from its gullet. Looming over those who would stand before it, it seems to set its sights on one spot and one spot in particular. The barrel flashes with a fell light--

    And then... it disgorges the shot as a singular violet beam in Venetia's direction, the beam crackling with dark energies.

GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kaguya with Aura Cannon!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Meltdown!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Yuna with Meltdown!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kanon with Meltdown!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Delay expired!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ashley Winchester with Guided Missile!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Guided Missile!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Venetia Vuong with Stigma Cannon!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: CRITICAL! Hannah Curie takes a solid hit from Xenobia's Sonic for 214 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Disease applied to Hannah Curie!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Hannah Curie enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Drowsy expired!
GS: Omega Weapon has completed its action.
GS: CRITICAL! Venetia Vuong solidly guards Omega Weapon's Stigma Cannon for 137 hit points!
GS: Blind applied to Venetia Vuong!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Ashley Winchester takes a glancing hit from Omega Weapon's Guided Missile for 79 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: FP up! Countermeasures and Evade bonus activated!
GS: Ashley Winchester enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Kaguya takes a solid hit from Omega Weapon's Aura Cannon for 148 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kaguya gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Omega Weapon's Meltdown for 164 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: Yuna enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Blind expired!
GS: Holly solidly guards Xenobia's Slowga for 0 hit points!
GS: Break, Disrupt, and Slow applied to Holly!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Holly enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Holly suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Break for 0 hit points!
GS: Hex and Weaken applied to Holly!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Omega Weapon's Guided Missile for 106 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Blind expired!
GS: CRITICAL! Kanon takes a glancing hit from Omega Weapon's Meltdown for 95 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kanon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Hyper applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Kanon enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod solidly guards Omega Weapon's Meltdown for 82 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    'Because we stood with her enemy! ...We should be the masters of this world, not its wardens!'

    "I'm sorry," Ida says. "Anyone who presumes themselves a Master will only cause this world further misery." Seditious words, coming from someone of her birth, but Ida is presently out of fucks to give for the present world order. Please try again later.

    Omega, meanwhile, proves that it could do a pretty good Sin impression--even a better one, if Xenobia somehow managed to strengthen it. Ida's eyes widen as Kaguya SMASHES ITS FACE IN WITH A WALL, only to watch it regenerate moments later. "It's like that thing Gon made," she mutters. "But..." It's weakening. Those cracks are lingering, even if Ida's vision is still a little blurry--she still sees them. She's about to charge again, when what are very obviously missile launchers open along the Fiend's body, and Ida leaps to the side again. She handsprings off the ground as a missile rips up the rock where she'd stood. A second shoots wide, and slams into the seats, reducing ancient stone to rubble. The third barely misses, and the shockwave slams into Ida as she cartwheels. Knocked off-balance, she hits ground hard, and skids across the floor. She leaves a smear of blood in her wake from the cuts made by shrapnel.

    "Everyone!" Ida shouts, "I'm going to try and immobilize it!" How? How is she going to immobilize something this massive and angry? Ida's wounds start to patch over as she charges the beast from the side, drops to her knees, and slides beneath it. She gets her feet beneath her, springs up, and tries to wrap her arms around Omega's quadrupedal lower body. Breath ignites around her as a visible golden-white aura. Her whole body strains. She lets out a most unladylike grunt that turns into a bellowing roar.

    And in a single, massive surge, she tries to

    S U P L E X

    the massive Fiend into a prone position.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Omega Weapon with Overturn the Black Tortoise!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

What right does he have?

What right does he have to speak of the suffering she's endured? Of the scars on her heart? Somewhere beneath the mask of the Blazer, Ashley smiles sadly. "I mean. I'm in love with a pretty great girl too, you know? I get it. And for a little bit there, I thought I'd have to say goodbye to her forever. I still might, with this monster inside me. It hurts. I know how much love can hurt. To be cast away after enduring so much must be an incredible pain."

Also an incredible pain: The threat posed by the terrible deluge of missiles unleashed by the Omega Weapon. Knight Blazer steadies himself, bracing against the ground for stability, then--

Unfolds both wrists to reveal a series of cannons.

Apocalyptic missile fire meets bombardment of cataclysmic flame. Explosions tear a shining scar across the space between Knight and Weapon. Shrapnel pits and hammers the Blazer's armor, tearing scars across his body, but never truly making solid impact. Connection-- was not in the cards.

And so Ashley stands to continue being A Problem for the ancient fiend.

"Yeah. So if you'd please make sure she doesn't stab me when we beat this thing?" It's an honest and perfectly practical ask. Kanon does pose a threat, even if she's not the most immediate threat. "And don't blame Marivel. Every family's got a couple of rebels in it, right?"

The last of the missiles vanishes in a puff of smoke and flame and shrapnel. Knight Blazer's arms snap back into something more closely resembling human limbs. Again he takes up his sword, but this time--

He raises it high. Lightless flame gathers, spiraling in like the arms of a vast, fiery galaxy into the gullet of a hungry supermassive black hole. The event horizon that is the blazer's blade shines with the light of dying stars, disgorging a cone of pure force-- perhaps even fundamental force-- in a revolving whirlwind of cosmic energy, as if to pin the Omega Weapon in place. He takes a step forward, then another. Every moment, the blade grows larger, more massive. Destruction, total and complete, feels briefly utterly and completely unavoidable, and then--

Finally, he swings the executioner's blade, a charged sword slash now meters in length, down into the Omega Weapon's center of mass. Finally, promised destruction has come, like a breath coming unheld. But what comes afterwards...? Chaos? Tranquility...?

GS: Ashley Winchester spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Omega Weapon with Incendiary Omen!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester has launched an attack Link!
GS: Ashley Winchester spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Omega Weapon with Cataclysm!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.
GS: Access! Ashley Winchester takes 45 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    Rixia's receiving a lot of aid in this battle, not just from Grievie. Yuna's powerful healing, from before; Rikku's Mighty G mix is still washing over her, reinforcing her own defences, and now...

    Time.

    Time is being introduced into her systems, from Yuna's end. As she points out that the only one making a mockery of those lost is her. ... of course, that hurts to hear, always. She can sense the grief flowing over her, which is why...

    She'll harness this time, because it won't wait for anyone. She'll just have to twist time to her own ends.

    Leave it to the new generation, Rikku is saying. ... her star is still rising. But is she already being too weighed down by the sins of the past? She doesn't feel like them; she doesn't feel strong, and brave, even knowing what people like Yuna and Rikku have lost.

    But... but the weak needs a champion too, right?

    Magilou speaks of talented up-and-coming sorceresses, and she looks flustered for a second. But she's right -- she still has things and truths she wants to learn from her. Artorius. That name's come up before. Artorius' Throne... and 'Velvet'. There's so many things still about Magilou's past she doesn't know -- and might not have a right to know -- but she understands the scars run deep.

    She listens in some awe to Jacqueline's story, of how they changed their relationship with the people known as 'demons' -- the Hyadeans, she pieces together. ... it was that same sort of energy that allowed the Eternal Calm to happen. Clearly, better things are possible. The world isn't as bleak as it feels on some days.

    She stops to register what Kaguya's told her. That she'd listen to people. Instead of assume she knows best. What people had to say... and what they had to say about her own. ... Rixia would like to believe she's listening. There's some push, sure, but she doesn't want to be a completely open heart either.

    ... so why does she still feel so much hurt in her heart?

    When... is she allowed to enjoy this better world?

    Those are the thoughts that distract her when she's consumed by Xenobia's lightning, and her defences fall far and short even as she tries to absorb it and it just completely craters her for a moment, forcing a rather revulsive cough as she struggles to keep upright and alive afterwards.

    "It's not okay," Rixia grumbles in turn, stabbing her gunblade to try to pull herself back up.

    "I've not been okay. Even with all the love and care that by some formula someone figured out should equate me to 'okay'... even with someone who's looked after me all this time..."

    The Malevolence is rising again. The Pyreflies are swimming even harder around her, tryimg hard to reject and exile her from this place.

    "... I can't disappear yet. Not while I'm carrying this burden. This is father's burden, the one he carried to his death. This is Ruth's, too. This is Leo's. This is everyone betrayed by that Althena in Pentagulia..."

    The shroud of purple-blackness rises further, until it's a cloying, unpleasant shroud around her, almost possessing the appearance of a vague Lion. Maybe. She's grimacing as blood trickles down from her mouth, like she's not in control for a moment.

    The fox girl is back on her feet. She draws her gunblade level to her, placing a hand on the broad of its blade as she focuses and starts to Draw errant magics that've been flung around; Xenobia's had no shortage of it, from the discharge of her spells. From Yuna and Magilou and Cirea and Hannah and Venetia and so many other mages using their powers, there's enough for her to absorb it all in--

    "I know you understand pain brought about by Althena all too well."

    --she disappears again, after saying that; this time, she's hovering in midair, junctioned in place by short-lived Float paramagic that 'Grievie' is sustaining. An intricate and ancient glyph of forbidden magic, the kind she's brought once against Leo (and regretted it, to this day), against Kaguya (and forgot about), against Josie...

    >> accessing synthetic Symbology routine
    >> warning: user condition in severe status
    >> compensating in junctions...

    The glyph is wide enough that an evasion is ill-advised; but Xenobia is a far greater mage than she is right now, and she has barriers in place. Regardless, as the glyph activates--

    "Disappear into the sea of memories! I invoke Time's own end-- Apocalypse!"

    --and flooding from every single intricate line and curl, every single detail in the ancient mandala, are rays of apocalyptic energy erupting ceiling-wards, bringing with its own echo ill-remembered fragments and shards of time that are barely remembered, and have yet to be remembered... and time that never will be.

GS: Rixia has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Formation! Rixia has attacked Xenobia with End of Heart!
GS: Rixia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rixia takes 31 damage from Poison!
GS: Blind and Weaken expired!
GS: Rixia has completed her action.
GS: Cirea has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Xenobia takes a solid hit from Rixia's End of Heart for 336 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple, Disease, Shieldbreak, and Weaken removed!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Charge bonus activated!
GS: Strain! Rixia takes 25 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

The Omega Weapon is struck. It is struck and it remains struck; the blow seems to have done SOMETHING. Venetia would feel triumph except, like, she doesn't want to stand still while Lord Blazer and this new chick are doing intense stage martial arts moves. That's bad. Venetia is ultimately just a woman, with a woman's courage, and a woman's flesh, which is notably not immune to energy blasts.

Ethius surrounds it with a haze; Xenobia, over there, screams. Ida strikes a blow (Venetia has more faith that Ida would avoid side-swiping her but why take the risk) and the Fiend begins to make a terrible mechanical noise. Missiles erupt outwards and then a sudden turn towards her as -

A barrel flashes.

Venetia stares at it for a moment. There is a blast of light and her eyes are dazzled but her senses are otherwise sharp. This is a matter that only total mastery can survive. The beam flies towards Venetia, a column of violet light notably taller than her, and inside of that light a shadow moves--

The light fades.

And that same manifest image is fading, having been in a half-curled forearms-forwards blocking posture. Venetia, having still been in its leewards wake, is singed and breathing heavily, and her vision is returning damnably slowly, but... notably... she is there, moving, holding objects, and is neither a liquid nor a vapor.

"Heh," Venetia says. Then, "Ehehe," and then "HAHAHAHAHAHAhAAAAA!" as her eyes widen behind her mask, even as it slips a little on the left hand side. Her right hand, the one not holding the Crest Graph, comes up and she wags her finger in the general direction of Omega Weapon. "Tsk - tsk - tsk~!"

"Did you know!" Venetia says, to Omega Weapon, but really to Xenobia. "The fastest a human can react to something is close enough to one tenth of a second that we can take that as granted. That's the narrowest you can hope to get something. Because even seconds are divisible! Every second has ten tenths-of-a-second, a hundred hundredths, why, even a million millionths!"

"So much of martial training is to train things so you don't even have to think," Venetia continues, "And when I perfected this spell and blessed it with my starry wisdom" (i.e.: the space metal she found in a dead guy's tomb - even so, even so) "I realized it had a great deal of flexibility. Limits, certainly - many of them - but I learned that a proper invocation would last about TWO POINT FIVE seconds. But the hell of it is that I could never quite get those last few tenths of a second off of TIMING it," Venetia continues, eyes widening it, "and the best I could do was just, narrowly, two point FOUR!"

"Two point four seconds for something two and a HALF seconds long," Venetia says. "Maybe less if I had a head start or was holding it in my mind. But that opened a possibility to me, and thanks to Miss Yuna there and her own sorceries, I think that possibility can become a reality! A possibility of a glorious new future for the world!" Yeah, she definitely isn't saying this in a happy voice. Well, no: She is pretty happy. Angry happy.

"And so," Venetia says. "I hear you Fiends are made of these glamorous little pyreflies I see hanging about. I trust that means you'll live on in some future form..."

Then she grins, even as Ida moves to tackle the thing and the Knight Blazer makes his move. "If I break that shell to fragments!! COME FORTH! CONSECUTIVE SIMULACRA SIGN!" And that shape forms again and Venetia sweeps her hand in a curiously ritualized manner - almost exactly every two seconds - as the shadowy purple shape surges forwards and leads with a single enormous left hook at Omega Weapon's face --

A good half dozen pounding blows at the abdomen -

And then hands on the thing's shoulders as the violet-and-bronze SHAPE sweeps over Ida, strangely enough not really seeming to stir the air in order to get into a mounting position and fold hands behind Omega Weapon's head while gripping its long back with knees and pushing forwards, aiming to apply crushing counter pressure to the spine.

Sometime around round #4 Venetia starts laughing, which is probably going to continue until she runs out of Hastega or energy, whichever may come first.

GS: Venetia Vuong has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Venetia Vuong has activated Force Action: Fury Shot!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Venetia Vuong has attacked Omega Weapon with Ally of Justice Sign ~AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH~!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Omega Weapon solidly guards Ida Everstead-Rey's Overturn the Black Tortoise for 83 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Omega Weapon partially guards Ashley Winchester's Incendiary Omen for 0 hit points!
GS: Shieldbreak applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Entangle blocked!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Ashley Winchester's Cataclysm for 108 hit points!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Venetia Vuong's Ally of Justice Sign ~AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH~ for 254 hit
points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon's Break Ward may block the effect!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Weaken applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Break and Cripple blocked!
GS: Charge!! You gain 60 FP! (That's 45 more than usual!)

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Magilou is right. There have been good changes, too. Just look at Kaguya... and at Rikku. Look at everybody, old friends and new acquaintances. Look at what they're doing. The power they're wielding.

The damage they're taking...

Yuna has taken her share, of course. The violence of the endless white bladerain would be enough on its own. The lightning she avoided the worst brunt of, but now she is burned, losing about a foot of skirt and a layer of skin on her calves. The top portion of her beloved pilgrimage boots are crumbling into ash.

And all of this she can endure. It isn't that she's been through worse -- there is little point in comparing the supreme might of Xenobia and the ultimate Fiend to Sin or to Seymour or Yunalesca or even to the sensation of having thirteen children destroyed by your friends before your very eyes, inside your very soul, even if it was their own wish -- all of them inflicted enormous suffering, enormous damage. But she has learned... how to be, in fights like these, the big ones, the ones where the world is on the line. She has learned how to last. She has learned, at least, how to accept that she has to last.

But the least sonic-singed hair on Hannah Curie, a person she never even met until that day in the Kilika Inn, is wounding her more than all of Omega Weapon's biggest hits combined. The impact of Rixia's electrocution is unspeakable.

The blood, flame, or ichor seeping out of the others? A missile exploding against Ida's gruesomely opened hand, Ashley's brutally reforced self? Time itself sucking away at Rikku's limbs, stealing exactly what Yuna had sought to grant her?

"No," Yuna tells the ancient sorceress. She doesn't scream. She doesn't shout. She just states facts. "I won't. I won't ever understand. And that... it isn't a weakness, or a failure, or a mistake, Xenobia."

Her head snaps back on her neck.

"Hope..."

A pillar of pure white light so intense that it might as well be solid stone slams down from nowhere. From everywhere. From the heavens? From the Ley?

From the heart...

 <SoundTracker> In The Blood - Hades OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojx8dyes__8

Yuna disappears inside of it.

And then everyone else disappears too, as it expands, churning outwards through the cavernous amphitheatre.

It felt wonderful, the blessing of Curaga. But the High Summoner is known for... alternative expressions of her white magic. Greater ones. Ones that cannot so easily be captured by a simple name, no matter how potent.

This explosion is silent, at first.

And then, it sounds like... wings, as radiant feathers, celestial and fiery, like and unlike the phoenix, like and unlike the angel, adorn the brows of everyone Yuna dares to love. Like imperial laurels, they linger at the temple -- which is not normal. She anoints them with the oil of her soul.

And then it feels like life -- like life and life and life. Life overflowing. Life everlasting.

Life like a candle burning at both ends...

Kaguya wondered what fueled Yuna's wondrous Curaga. But there's little need to wonder now. It is possible to see the burn patterns of Rixia's electrocution grow in ungentle reprise across Yuna's skin in real time, even as the other girl is mended. To see the slag of her legs double down as Ethius' burns are added to her own. To see Kaguya's wound from the Aura Cannon crumple against her abdomen, beneath the fabric of her shirt, and the sonic torture eased from Hannah and Cirea's ears inflicted upon her own, which start to bleed.

They start to bleed... light. First in her sweat, and then in her tears.

Now...

                                   Loves
                                In your life
                                Live ever on

                                    Home
                           Is not where you live
                       But who cares when you're gone

                           They'll follow you to
                                 The beyond

                                 It's in...

Whatever is going on with her unimaginably strong white magic is... it doesn't just feel miraculous.

It feels dangerous.

Something is very wrong.

"...is a CHOICE!" Yuna screams. "And I choose not to lose anyone... EVER AGAIN!"

For someone who claims to be making a choice, she doesn't seem to realize that she's screaming; doesn't seem to notice the tears running down both cheeks. Doesn't seem to realize the wounds flowering on her person, not at all.

She only knows one thing:

She's not going to lose anyone else.

Not ever again.

They're not going to die.

She won't let them.

<Pose Tracker> Kanon has posed.

Ashley rather succinctly explains his and Kanon's relationship.

Kanon answers Venetia's incredulity by repeating: "We've met."

Then there's another explosion of light. The searing flame from the Omega Weapon's magic erupts around her, and she SURGES. Much like Knight Blazer himself, the cyborg Merc strains the eye to perceive as she charges around the room, zipping this way and that. A few scorches get her cloak, and it catches, but the wind of her travel soon puts it out. She arcs toward Omega suddenly, soon after, the tile cracking with the force of each foot impact as Kanon blazes onward. Her left arm undocks; the wrist spins, faster and faster...

Then she CHARGES toward Omega, leaping high to get at that incandescent chest, and drives her rapidly spiraling claws into his chest to DRILL OUT the Fiend's center. A Fiend isn't made of flesh, and has no heart to tear free. But even gods die if you drill through their sternum enough times. That's the hypothesis, anyway.

GS: Kanon spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Kanon has attacked Omega Weapon with Vortex Strike!
GS: Kanon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Kanon's stances have changed to Hero!
GS: Kanon has completed her action.
GS: Yuna spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rixia with Full-Life!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Full-Life!
GS: Yuna has attacked Hannah Curie with Full-Life!
GS: Yuna has attacked Kaguya with Full-Life!
GS: Yuna has attacked Cirea with Full-Life!
GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Full-Life!
GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Yuna heals Rixia! She gains 281 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Mute and Poison removed!
GS: Protect applied to Rixia!
GS: Rixia is now being protected by Yuna!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Yuna heals Yuna! She gains 285 temporary hit points!
GS: Protect applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna is now being protected by Yuna!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Yuna heals Cirea! She gains 72 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Disease removed!
GS: Protect applied to Cirea!
GS: Cirea is now being protected by Yuna!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Yuna heals Ethius Hesiod! He gains 291 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Blind removed!
GS: Protect applied to Ethius Hesiod!
GS: Ethius Hesiod is now being protected by Yuna!

<Pose Tracker> Holly has posed.

Holly looks at Xenobia, eyebrow cocked briefly. "Ah. I know what you need." She begins to paint a complex curse into the air, slowed down, weakened or not. She's powering through it. Precise, sharp. Malicious.
 
 "I know some of those thoughts. Not the exact way you do, but I get it. I want to help everyone else. Partially out of spite admittedly." The water begins to fade to black. Fully changed over to that ink "Sometimes you just have to close the book on a problem though." The ink swirling in her hand. A sphere of darkness counter to Cirea's. When she lifts it, the ink splashes away from her and rains down on Xenobia. A downpour of infused magic. Unrelenting in its brief intensity.
 
 She turns her head as Cirea gets to work too, curious what she's got up her sleeve. She had mentioned something of a blessing right? They'd joked about it even! She smiles in return. There's something darkly amusing about both wielding spheres. Albeit one light and one dark.
 
 She doesn't have a great answer for the petrification spell. All, but trying to force it away with her own magic. Keeping it at bay. Sapping her ability to fight, making everything feel stiff, tough to move.
 
 Regardless, with the others being onslaughted too, she moves forward, determined to protect them. She's not just preaching to the choir, right?
 
 She had looked back at Rikku's scream. Making sure she was okay.
 
 She affirms Magilou's assessment, "I've seen it myself in my brief time back out in the world." Nothing more. She's actually focusing. It's reminding her of old times in a way.
 
 Finally, a concerned look is given to Rixia, partially from the miasma, partially out of genuine concern. "Hey kid-" she calls out. Then pauses, she knew her name. Dredged from the depths of her memory. Trying to think of something more affirming to say. She comes up short. She's a librarian, there's concern anything would sound rote and routine rather than from the heart. "You won't disappear." That's.. not quite what she wanted and faults briefly. She'll try again later. This was bad and it's reminding her just how out of reach she's gotten.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou looks to Cirea, and ziiiips her lips, tossing the metaphorical key over her shoulder. "Mmfphl!" She says, only to pause, turn, grab the 'key' from behind her, and unzip her lips to say, "Secret's safe with me!!"

    But didn't she unzip her lips to say that...?

    It's okay, she claps at Shine Silhouette, she's probably trustworthy. It's an impressive spell!

    She notices Hannah's Crests, as well -- the strange little feeling, beneath them. "Oho!" She exclaims, a hand to her chest. "Another evil sorceress in the making, mm..?" Does she have to say it like that?!

    Magilou orients back to Xenobia quickly enough, though. "Yeah, yeah, it's your only choice! No other option is left to you! Do you want to excuse your feelings even more? Shall I go on?" Her gaze veils, lips thinning with scorn. "If you're an evil witch -- be an evil witch! Do not hide behind 'I had no choice!' Are you really so witless and will-less, Xenobia? I don't mind that you want to end the world -- you're hardly my first friend who's tried. But evading responsibility for what you want like this... you know what?" She sighs, fingers pressed to her temple. "I'm just going to steal Velvet's oeuvre a little more... to say it really pisses me off!"

    A beat of a pause, and she glances in Kaguya's direction, to ask: "What do you think? Too crass?" Of course she approves of Kaguya's conclusions, but she knew that Kaguya would have interesting things to say, coming here. It's why she asked for her help, after all.

    "... hey, it worked that one time," Magilou throws out, when Xenobia 'asks' for 'help'. She offers no further context for her statement.

    Sluggishness saps at Magilou's limbs, even as she hops back, from the spell. (Her arms windmill, as all a sudden she has to pay more attention to her footing, but she stays upright this time.) Stone begins to creep up her legs, and her lips curl, in a moment's grimace. "Oh, that's hardly fashionable," she says, which isn't quite the comment one would expect under threat of death, but this is Magilou.

    (Make no mistake: she knows Xenobia will kill her, and this stone could well be her real gravestone, unlike the fake tomb she left the world. She knows; she is flippant, anyway.)

    She reflects, looking to Rixia, that maybe she's a lion. And perhaps a more responsible mother-figure might stop her from such a thing, but... well, Magilou's best friend is a Hellion, did you know? If this is where she's going, if this is what's true to herself, Magilou won't stop her.

    But all that magic seeping into Magilou -- Magilou's been absorbing it, processing it, passively and constantly. The power runs through her veins, hot as fire. And so Magilou thrusts a hand out towards Xenobia, and invokes, with the short of Arteistic shortcut which is deeply powerful from someone like her: "Hydrostorm!" The funnel of water which rises up under her feet threatens to capture her in a whirlpool of crushing oceanic rage...

    ... and one way or another, Magilou's hand settles on her hip. "What's so bad about being a warden, really?" She asks, chin jerking with a sharp tilt of her head. "Even an insufferable woman like me can be bothered to look out for the world, sometimes. When you get old, you look out for the young."

    Her gaze moves from Xenobia, here, to Yuna. "As they burn themselves to cinders..." She adds, all left to implication.

    She'll have to talk with more than one woman, later, she's sure.

    That is... if she doesn't break her oath today.

GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Holly has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Magilou has attacked Xenobia with Hydrostorm!
GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: Access! Magilou takes 45 damage!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Holly has attacked Xenobia with Pitiless Rain!
GS: Holly has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Holly takes 32 damage from Poison!
GS: Holly has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"No, they didn't." Jacqueline confirms, shaking her head. "Some of them fought against us, in the name of securing the world for themselves and their goddess. And others decided to set out on their own. ...That happens. It's fine if we're not friends, as long as we can share the world."

She shakes her head.

"...But if the changes you want and the changes I want are incompatible, if you want to make us live on in fear of yet another monster... then I guess that's that." She says.

Xenobia throws her hands up, and white light flashes around Jacqueline. In contrast to Yuna's previous spell, this one causes everything to slow drastically. She can't move as quickly. Even performing a spell is that much harder - which means she's unable to defend herself or perform any sort of counter-spell as Xenobia casts once more - this time, a petrification spell. Jacqueline grimaces, gritting her teeth at the stone slowly climbing up her body.

...This battle's on a timer, then.

"...Alright, everyone! Time to pool our strength!" Jacqueline declares. She draws a Crest Graph from her deck, slotting it into her gauntlet. With a gesture, light begins to settle over over those she's able to reach with her spell(and Jacqueline herself) empowering and invigorating as she reinforces them with her sorcery.

GS: Yuna heals Kaguya! She gains 290 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Blind removed!
GS: Protect applied to Kaguya!
GS: Kaguya is now being protected by Yuna!

<Pose Tracker> Cirea has posed.

Cirea is momentarily distracted by Hannah's magic, which is - well, okay. It's always of a type that Cirea is always pretty unfamiliar with, being a Lunarian who has never yet had time to study Filgaian magic (though she really wants to).

But this feels *particularly* weird. Maybe she's getting it confused with Lord Blazer...?

It's not like she has time to investigate. Or ask. Not with Xenobia right there. "Maybe I don't! He wasn't around for most of my life... but he never hurt us. And I read all his books, and everything... that's where I learned about the Vile Tribe."

"...I think you care a lot even if you say you don't care," Cirea says. "And that's the problem. It's very sad! But... I don't even know how to say it, but I know that we can't be afraid of the past OR the future."

The sonic blast doesn't miss Cirea. It hits - but it hits a barrier that she's holding up, a complex array of swirling wind that seems to be the beginnings of an offensive spell rather than a defensive one. It breaks apart, but takes the sonic spell with it with a cacophony, somewhere between a hellacious ringing of bells and torn-air screaming. There's nothing she can do to stop the petrification, though it isn't aimed at her - still, she's worried. She'll have to pick this up. It's mostly Yuna, if she's being honest, that is *keeping* her up at this point; she doesn't look in great shape despite her eagerness to continue.

Cirea orbits in a tight circle, her silhouette mirroring her; the two of them, sparkling green from Cirea and silver-white from the silhouette, draw a circle in the air, which spreads, expands, begins to form runes - another magic circle, similar to the ones used in Vane and Neo-Vane.

Similar, but not identical. Cirea read Ghaleon's books, and she has a very good grounding in magic. More, she had detailed information about wind magic... but Ghaleon does not cast with light, and that's what this is. It is distinctly Cirea in its feel, active and unrestrained and a little spontaneous.

"A thousand thousand lights in the sky above - name one and call it forth! From night to day, a star touched by another - "

"TWINKLE STAR!"

A sphere of silvery light bursts into existance near Xenobia. That alone is enough to be an assault, but there's the sense of impending *something*, a tension in the magical energy that suggests it isn't actually done yet.

And then it's visible. A second comet-shape of light, this one gold instead of silver, is descending, aimed directly at the heart of the first starry sphere. And it hits, directly, with nothing to impede it - star and comet together explode in an enormous flood of silver-white light, shot through with streamers of shining gold that themselves burst like bright fireworks.

And, just to add insult to injury, a moment later a second (much smaller) comet called by the silhouette of Cirea makes the power surge again, if not nearly as effectively or brightly.

GS: Blitz! Cirea has attacked Xenobia with Twinkle Star!
GS: Cirea has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cirea has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Holly's Pitiless Rain for 218 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Magilou with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Rikku with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Holly with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Ashley Winchester with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Venetia Vuong with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Kanon with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Jacqueline Barber takes 28 damage from Poison!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Hex removed!
GS: Hyper applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Magilou accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Hex removed!
GS: Hyper applied to Magilou!
GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Venetia Vuong accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Blind removed!
GS: Hyper applied to Venetia Vuong!
GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Holly accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Hex removed!
GS: Hyper applied to Holly!
GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: Ashley Winchester accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Ashley Winchester!
GS: Quick and Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: CRITICAL! Rikku accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Hex removed!
GS: Hyper applied to Rikku!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"You don't? So wait - you were with Yunalesca to punish this world for its Sins - committed by Althena, because you're upset about being cast out and? Uhhhhhhh-" Rikku just recounts this in her head to make certain she has her facts straight, "-honestly, you're just driving home how bad the old timer problem is? And you're part of it?"
 
She really should stop running her mouth, and perhaps what happens next is representative, as that pulse of energy washes over her, at first slowing her down, and then - the follow up starting a slow process of petrification, as Rikku whimpers suddenly, at the beginning of what once happened to her with Seymour yet again.
 
The pillar of white light, blinding that engulfs from Yuna moves outwards, as she speaks of Hope as a choice. Again, she proves herself as inspirational as the day she met her. Again and again and again.
 
Rikku feels a swell with pride that pushes back at the fear of these spells on her state.
 
"Well..."
 
It's a difficult proposition with stiffening limbs to mix up one of her better concoctions, but she pushes herself even as she loses feeling.
 
"...I know what choice I'm making."
 
Eventually she completes it, and with a deep breath hurls it, as it erupts into a pulsing Inferno of Abaddon Flame that rises in arcing gouts off the floor, again and again through Xenobia.
 
The process of petrification starts to halt with Jay's Twinkle Star, and she breathes easier. It doesn't progress further at least, and she proves it by moving a stony finger to give her a thumb's up. Then with a smile, Rikku tells Xenobia her position, "I'll always bet it all on Yunie's hope."

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Rikku spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Rikku has attacked Xenobia with Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise!!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 35 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Yuna heals Hannah Curie! She gains 72 temporary hit points!
GS: Restore! Disease, Disrupt, and Poison removed!
GS: Protect applied to Hannah Curie!
GS: Hannah Curie is now being protected by Yuna!
GS: Gamble: Moderate! Xenobia solidly guards Magilou's Hydrostorm for 96 hit points!
GS: Xenobia's Disrupt Ward may block the effect!
GS: Disrupt and Slow blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Xenobia enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    "Wardens against what," Ethius muses aloud to (barely) be heard, a cough as he has to step back from the growing cloud of blinding, aggravating ash as he ducks his head from some flying debris from any number of frightening displays of physical strength far exceeding the apparent limitations of one's form. (Whose? That one has to ask illustrates the whole of what's being brought to bear.)
 
     "Liquid flame!" Ethius calls for those on the ground near him, once again casting up that Symbological spell to catch it from completely engulfing him. Napalm-like substance nips at the edges of his outfit and stays at a far lower degree of burn than it would be otherwise, stepping back as Ida announces her intent to suplex.
 
     In that moment, he catches sight of what's fueling Yuna's sorcery while making a cursory check for the others nearby, and his eyes widen noticing what she's taking into her, what she chooses. No matter how 'dangerous,' or 'wrong' it feels... it is her right, and it's a right hard-fought, hard-won, and... ever harder to keep.
 
     The quick feeling of his pulse, how he is a part of what Yuna wishes to protect - of those who in turn protected her and her land, even now. Even someone whose ultimate destiny is to be so very far removed from their continued lives once his work is done, Yuna's willing to take into her the recent, resultant pain of it all.
 
     Trying to navigate some other high-speed maneuvers (like Kanon's, which is more noise but some very distinct noise to him), Ethius moves to try to leap to mount Omega weapon in far less spectacular a display of immediate violence and power. This is a Fiend, he recognizes, and they've all had plenty of time to recognize how they form, and...
 
     Where they go.
 
     "Sin has taken leave for the Farplane. You will not find them here...!" Ethius struggles to shout, just managing the exclamation point as he tries to find enough footing to take his staff in both hands. It's as far as he can delve into the cultural funerary rites of the people of Spira.
 
     The rest is in his quarterstaff, as he lunges to stab it as deep into the powerful Fiend as he can.
 
     "Far Point!"
 
     It may not be a Thundaga-infused Spellblade of the time of a Dragonmaster whose name rhymes with something unfortunate, nor is it two of them being swung a total of eight times between them - but he's sure swinging like he doesn't fear a Rocket Punching or a sudden encircling of amnesia.

GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Ethius Hesiod spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Omega Weapon with Far Point!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

Kaguya answers Magilou, "It's not quite your vibe, but I think it sounds good anyway." Kaguya makes her pronouncement on Magilou stealing Velvet's style. But then there is the matter of surviving. Light comes forth in a raging torrent with energy, and Kaguya throws forth her arms, blocking with a pulse of life energy of her own, an invisible shield that causes the energy to part around her--but leaves her on one knee in its aftermath. "Gh--You're a strong bastard, aren't you?"

Hope... is a choice. And Yuna heals Kaguya. Kaguya feels it--but she is attuned in more ways to magic than she used to be, because she feels how dangerous it is. "Yuna," she starts, "That's not--"

That scream. ...No, Kaguya won't tell Yuna not to hope for that. Not to fight for it.

The 'burden' Rixia mentions--Kaguya wants to tell her it's not hers. But she can't in the moment, in all of tis. Instead, "Rixia--it's fine, if you're not okay!"

That magic...

well, there's another magic charging that Kaguya has to try to head off if she can manage it. She has questions, too--but all of those take a back seat as Kaguya pulls the Zeikfried and suddeny points it up at the Omega Weapon as Ida tries to immobilize it. "Power of twin worlds," she invokes, "Bind in the shining name!"

She puts both hands on the ARM and great magical circles burst from its barrel, "NOW!"

A gigantic blast cascades out towards the Omega--

GS: Kaguya has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Kaguya spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Kaguya has attacked Omega Weapon with Greater Binding Shot!
GS: Kaguya has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
GS: Gamble: High! Xenobia partially evades Cirea's Twinkle Star for 185 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mighty applied to Cirea!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Xenobia solidly guards Rikku's Souped Up Ouch-Ouch Surprise! for 127 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Kanon's Vortex Strike for 222 hit points!
GS: Charge!! You gain 50 FP! (That's 35 more than usual!)
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Ethius Hesiod's Far Point for 51 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple and Jam applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Omega Weapon enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Omega Weapon takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Greater Binding Shot for 202 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Poison applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Hex blocked!
GS: Charge!! You gain 50 FP! (That's 35 more than usual!)
GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated!

<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.

Hannah's head is still reeling--the hastaga helps a little, but with the drowziness and poison coursing through her veins, even her hasty actions are imprecise, and just as she's about to pull a crest graph to defend herself from the incoming blade, when Magilou comments on her magic. She tenses, wincing, pained even before the attack hits. "I'm not--it's not--" It's complicated, and now is hardly the time to explain it.

And that's all the opening the attack needs to slam into her, to send her stumbling several steps back, the protective crest graph dropped on the ground in her shock. The mage drops to one knee as she clutches at her body. "Nnngg..." Her eyes are squeezed shut, and there are a few tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

It takes her a moment to recover--her head is a little clearer now, but poison is still coursing through her veins, and she doesn't have time to both tend to that and keep up the offensive. She's hurting, and it's getting harder and harder not to fall back on the untapped potential that is brewing just under the surface of her magic. "Zephyr..." she mutters.

She feels like she's at her limit. There's so much going on, and if there run through the ruins wasn't bad enough, that last hit... but then, a silent explosion of miraculous white life engulfs her, and all at once she feels all of her aches and pains drain away.

She struggles to her feet, finding new strength, but for some reason, her thoughts turn to home, to those who are waiting for her to return, even if they are unaware that she is still out there, or think she has forgotten them... but they have never left her thoughts. There are fresh tears streaming down her face for a moment as she blinks them out, then sets her gaze on Xenobia.

This is not her world, but she won't let Xenobia destroy the homes of those who live here.

"I've seen your library, Xenobia. It's astoundin', and I wish you could've seen the value of bringing those talents to the world. Maybe then you could've shown people what you went through, to teach insteada just retaliatin'. These ain't the same people who hurt you. But if you're still dead set on this..."

She pulls out two crest graphs from her pouch. One glowing a whispy gray, and the other glowing a crackling, sparking yellow. That onerous energy swells within her as she reaches, calls it forth, lets it drive her magic.

"Then I'm sorry to add to your pain."

High overhead, the red-tailed hawk is still keeping watch, staying well out of the fight, but watching the ebb and flow of battle, where everyone is, finding--there, the right moment to strike.

One crest graph goes up, and she slashes at the air with it. The motion stirs into life a furious wind. It creates a small cyclone, tightly contained, somehow (thanks to Zephyr) avoiding her allies, though it's a narrow margin. The circling winds create an odd, eerie wailing, which is hopefully just some sort of an a feedback loop of sound bouncing back and forth inside the contained form as it picks up speed. The winds are sharp and cut like blades, as they pick up speed (and debris.)

And almost in the same instant, Hannah has the second crest graph in her other hand. Three fingers hold it to her palm, with her thumb and pointer free. As the cyclone starts to surge towards Xenobia like a whirling dervish, Hannah snaps her fingers. Lightning springs into life within the cyclone, wild arms of electricity lashing out wildly for anything nearby that they might arc to--and around and around both go, coming perilously close to lashing out at the assembled allies but never quite doing so.

And that choatic, churning offness within Hannah is blazing all the more as she channels everything she has into the attack.

GS: Hannah Curie has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Hannah Curie has activated Force Action: Lock On!
GS: Hannah Curie spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Hannah Curie has attacked Xenobia with Elemental Combo!
GS: Hannah Curie has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia takes a solid hit from Hannah Curie's Elemental Combo for 301 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Xenobia's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: Hyper applied to Hannah Curie!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!

<Pose Tracker> Xenobia has posed.

"Gh--what have you done to yourself!?" Xenobia snaps, as that pillar of Malevolence rises up around Rixia. She knows what that is. She has fought it before; she has fought beside it before. "You--!"

Her eyes widen sharply.

Rixia's great magic comes for her. Xenobia's great barriers rise to meet them. Rays of light slam into them. Some hold them at bay; some pierce through, slamming into her, and there is a titanic explosion, as she is hurled backward.

"That thing in Pentagulia... don't make me laugh! That's no Goddess!" Xenobia spits back at her. "Althena gave us this planet. She welcomed the Vile Tribe... even after we swore allegiance to the things that destroyed the Blue Star, if only we would change allegiance to her. We would not!"

Xenobia screams, then. "I swore the ancient oath! TO SEE THE WORLD BURN, BEFORE I SERVE HER LIKE!"

Her eyes still blaze as she looks to Yuna. "You--you don't get choices like that! If you don't understand that... then you're a fool!" she spits, before a droplet of black ink -- then another, and another -- splashes across her cheek. It's a driving rain of infused magic that Holly summons, slamming into her, and beating her back.

"No--I won't accept that!" she shouts at Holly. Magilou's spell blasts into her, slamming her backward; the water hits hard enough to smash her back against the wall of the amphitheater, cracking it. She pushes off, shooting an angry glare Magilou.

"Shut up, Magilou," she snaps. "If you can't see how I was forced into this... then you're a blind fool. And if it's the only choice I have--then it's one I'll do well. Which is better than I can say for you!"

She looks to Jay, her teeth gritting. "We were never compatible. And I won't be as weak as these 'friends' you speak of!"

Her eyes snap back to Cirea, and then she shakes her head. "He used me! Us! His own people!" she snaps. "And I don't think for a second that Ghaleon regrets that! He--that man--there's everything to fear from the past!"

Silvery light bursts apart when the golden light hits hit, a huge burst of energy slamming Xenobia to the side. Before she topples, she teleports -- and then gets jerked backward by the silhouette's follow-up blast of energy.

"Gh..!"

Then she looks back at Rikku. "Don't you see? The Goddess made this world for you humans and--" Xenobia laughs, and there's a hint of something unhinged. "You made a monster, to rip yourselves apart, in an endless cycle! Sin was the MOST BEAUTIFUL thing I have EVER SEEN!"

A blast of flame explodes up from Rikku's concoction; the fiery blast slams her to the side, her barrier crackling across it. This time, she stumbles, feet hitting the ground.

"That library is for me," Xenobia snaps back at Hannah. "You lot are meddlers--intruders! You have no right to it!"

She rather misses the point.

The two Crest Graphs send a cyclone and a massive arc of lightning for her. Those smash into Xenobia, slamming her back again, and she only barely doesn't fall over.

Xenobia is battered. Her barriers crackle; some flicker out of existence. Her clothing is torn and burnt, in places. Blood runs down her side. Her hair is filled with soot and ash, in places. She still stands, though, and she floats upward.

Lightning crackles over her, as another magical circle erupts underneath her feet. Then, she swings both hands down, palms outward.

"Ancient light, heed my call! Shatter the unworthy!" Xenobia cries out, before her crimson eyes widen. "AURA SHOT!"

And a colossal beam of blue white lght explodes off her hands -- and sweeps across the battlefield and those opposing her, shattering stone wherever it strikes.

GS: Xenobia has activated a Boss Action!
GS: Xenobia has activated Force Action: Lock On!
GS: Xenobia has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Xenobia spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Hannah Curie with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rixia with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Holly with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Magilou with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Cirea with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has attacked Rikku with Aura Shot!
GS: Xenobia has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Omega Weapon has posed.

    But it's weakening.

    It's just a matter of who is dashed against the proverbial rocks first: will it be them? Or will the legendary fiend, born from an undying grudge, at last meet its peace today?

    Perhaps realizing the stakes -- realizing that what they need is time (and more time than Yuna's Hastega -- as fortutiously sent as it was -- might grant them) Ida lunges forward even as the ex-Summoner's latest benediction might reach her. Four legs mean that Omega is rather well-balanced; it isn't something that can be knocked down as handily as as a biped. But, by the same token, it cannot move particularly quickly even in spite of its essential nature, and thus cannot catch her before she races about to grasp it where it cannot reach.

    This, too, is another shortcoming of its form, and one that -- with her strength -- Ida takes advantage of as she heaves and

    slams the Fiend to the ground. The whole of the place shudders and quakes; rock and stone rains down worryingly from the ceiling above for several seconds but that, for now, is all that it is.
    For now, the foundation holds. And for now, the Omega Weapon has found itself in a position from which it cannot easily extricate itself.

    Particularly not when Knight Blazer brings to bear some essential foundation of the universe and there pins the Fiend to the floor. It struggles; it bellows. But in this moment, it cannot rise. And it cannot escape the great blade that is brought against it now. Against such a force--

    Armor (shell) shatters, cracks, splits. The pieces of the Omega Weapon, even as Venetia prepares her next spell, evaporate into a cloud of Pyreflies and are away. Perhaps she will meet them again in some form. It may be so as she -- as her phantom doubles -- swing and strike and pummel the Fiend's plating, rendering it into so many shards and dust and Pyreflies. Its armor is broken in so many places and it does not return. Not this time. Twitching, what is within the Omega Weapon can be seen clearly.

    Nothing. Inside, there is nothing. It is its shell. It is hatred wrought purely, a force of destruction with no will -- no anything -- behind it. And it will continue to fight and destroy until there is nothing left.

    Of itself, or of the world.

    With a long low hiss and eruption of steam, the Fiend twitches, beginning to right itself, to peel itself free of that which binds it. This is a slow process, leaving it open to the further attacks to come.

    Of Kanon, who cleaves in towards its chest before it even gets its front feet solidly on the ground beneath it, a strike rewarded with a rattling rain of black armor as it's cleaved away. Yet, that core flashes bright and still it moves: even were it but reduced to half of its being, one feels, it might yet persevere to attempt to bring the world to its knees.

    'Sin has taken leave for the Farplane.' It will not find them here.
    Just once, the core flashes. Did it understand? Or is it beyond understanding anything but destruction -- does such an event mean nothing at all?

    Regardless, into this moment Ethius strikes true, snapping another segment of armor plating off to never again be so joined with a bold thrust of his quarterstaff. Bit by bit. Perhaps this may be how they win.

    But it's still rising. It has gotten its feet under itself again and shakily -- as several sections of its underbelly and chest no longer functionally exist -- rises.

    Rises to meet the burst of light that erupts from Zeikfried's barrel.

    Through the hole in its abdomen one can see the other side of the room. Pyreflies swell and disappear.

    And the Omega Weapon screams loudly enough to rattle even foundations of stone.

    A series of barrels bristle from its 'hide', just as it had at the start of hostilities. Again, the weaponry flashes, but--

    Brighter this time. More. Like rain, the light had fallen before. Here there is no such gentleness: the blasts howl like a gale and strike like lightning. All around there are flashes of light, sniping at illusion and flesh-and-blood targets alike. Perhaps some blows will find those those who are unfortunate enough to be so struck by the barrage.

    They may even consider themselves the fortunate, even if they cannot escape, against what is to come.

    Slowly, it extends its hands, that same click announcing the eruption of barrels from within its palms. Just as in the beginning, again: here there comes a barrage of projectiles, but this is not where it ends. They are echoed by phantoms of the same lighting out from the middle of the air, from out of nothing at all. Here they come falling not as a rain, not as a storm, but with no less as overwhelming and inexorable a force as a tsunami. Missile or magic, should they find flesh, in the end the results remain the same.

GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kanon with Nova!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Nova!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Kaguya with Nova!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: You cannot attack more than one target at a time with this attack.
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Phantom Rush!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Venetia Vuong with Phantom Rush!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Yuna with Phantom Rush!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon has attacked Ashley Winchester with Phantom Rush!
GS: Omega Weapon has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Omega Weapon takes 27 damage from Poison!
GS: Omega Weapon has completed its action.
GS: CRITICAL! Cirea suffers a terrible blow from Xenobia's Aura Shot for 254 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Cirea gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: Cirea enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 64 damage!
GS: Rikku takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Aura Shot for 128 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mute removed!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Kaguya has activated Force Action: Accelerate!
GS: Rixia has activated Force Action: Accelerate!
GS: Rixia takes a glancing hit from Xenobia's Aura Shot for 94 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rixia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 24 damage!
GS: Kaguya suffers a terrible blow from Omega Weapon's Nova for 183 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kaguya gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 46 damage!
GS: Kaguya has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Jacqueline Barber critically guards Xenobia's Aura Shot for 78 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated!
GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Venetia Vuong partially guards Omega Weapon's Phantom Rush for 149 hit points!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Magilou solidly guards Xenobia's Aura Shot for 119 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Gleam activated!
GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna takes a glancing hit from Omega Weapon's Phantom Rush for 137 hit points!
GS: FP up! Evade bonus and Gleam activated!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 35 damage!
GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod takes a glancing hit from Omega Weapon's Nova for 99 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Countermeasures activated!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 25 damage!
GS: CRITICAL! Ashley Winchester solidly guards Omega Weapon's Phantom Rush for 107 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Countermeasures activated!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey solidly guards Omega Weapon's Phantom Rush for 90 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
GS: Hannah Curie has activated Force Action: Guard!
GS: Hannah Curie partially guards Xenobia's Aura Shot for 129 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 33 damage!
GS: Kanon accepts Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper applied to Kanon!
GS: Quick applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: Kanon suffers a terrible blow from Omega Weapon's Nova for 209 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kanon gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    As Rixia alights softly from the discharge of the apex of her power, she feels Yuna's blessing. It is life, in all its forms; it is the downs of the phoenix, and yet not; it comes from a place deep in her soul. And she can see it-- her burns, upon Yuna's own skin; as she seemingly takes in all the wounds of the world, and--

    And...

    And it frightens her.

    "You... you say you don't want to lose anyone again... but what if you lose yourself doing so? What about us, then? What happens to those left behind who are saved by that hope...?" Rixia finds herself more confrontational than she probably even wants to be, to the woman who just saved her life with her own, in the middle of a pitched battle.

    "I'm scared. The world only has attention span enough for the departed, not those scarred by their departure. The world cares about heroic sacrifices, not those cast in the shadow of the glow of that act. I don't ever want to feel that again. Please, never again...!"

    Holly reaffirms to her that she won't disappear. A panic attack is a bad thing to have in the middle of a battle. Magilou's been mum (moms being mum and all) about the topic of her possibly coming Hellionisation... is she truly being 'true' to herself, though? Or is she just carrying everyone's burdens? But if she let go, then what happens to those...

    Kaguya centres her by telling her it's fine to not be okay. She's staring at her for two seconds (the length of which Venetia uses to pummel a Fiend silly with her shadow) as the Veruni draws Zeikfried and evokes the power of the two worlds.

    Jacqueline speaks of changes in the world, and how Xenobia wants them to live in fear of another monster. Fear...

    Hannah draws on the depths of her power, and it's just as shocking to her as that of Magilou's, as she listens in to the eerie wailing; the wind feels... malevolent (but not Malevolent), somehow, and lightning follows up with it. "That power of yours..."

    Xenobia questions what she's done to herself. "This isn't something I've done to myself. This is something the world's done to me, through the only language it knows -- violence," she remarks, quietly and uncharacteristically lucid.

    "I know. I know that wasn't Althena. But it doesn't make the betrayal any less real to me. It doesn't make the blood that's been spilled any less real to me, both mine, and the blood I've spilled, and everything that's been done under her name."

    Xenobia's Aura Shot comes next, her palms outward -- and she feels shattered by the beam for a moment; however, her body is being knit again and again by the strength of Yuna's hope, even though it brings her fear; Grievie is working in overdrive to sustain her too, and she twists out of the way, collapsing against a nearby pillar and taking two seconds to take a deep breath.

    The fox girl continues to rise, though, and rise she does, along with her gunblade; she's out of Drawn magic, which means the only resource she has left is her very own Blessing of Light, courtesy of Althena. The irony isn't lost with her, even as she gathers that blessing, the Malevolent curtain billowing around her form as she raises gunblade heavensward--

    And a blade of light rises proud and tall, a somehow pale and ill light that threatens to choke and constrain those in its way. Light is so often spoken of as a beacon, a hope, illumination against the darkness, of radiance and sacredness and all that is holy...

    Her Light....

    (BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKR5lSKeZxk )

    Her Light is not so pleasant.

    "I don't know if I want to watch the world burn, now that I've had this conversation with you. I can't deny what all these people are saying. But at the same time, I've never felt brave and strong like them; I always feel like the victim being sheltered by the hero, even as the world exacts its price on such heroes..."

    FOR A MOMENT

    The Blade of Light goes out to Outer Space. It's fine. It's a PS2-era cutscene attack. No one is surprised.

    OMEGA RUINS

    "Are you going to avoid this shot the world takes? You and I... we can't help but be part of the world, no matter how cruel, no matter how much we hate it, no matter how much we want to resist it... so as my Light descends--"

    The foxgirl not so much brings the Blade of Light down so much as she lets it fall and get carried by its severe mass, as if she's carrying hundreds and hundreds of kilograms of weight and loosing it upon her. It threatens to descend with a loud and imploring 'THOOOOOOM' that seeks to bury all in its wake.

GS: Rixia has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Rixia spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Rixia has attacked Xenobia with Blasting Zone!
GS: Rixia has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Rixia's Blasting Zone for 291 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xenobia gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Quick applied to Rixia!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Xenobia enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: CRITICAL! Holly solidly guards Xenobia's Aura Shot for 166 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Rikku believes in Yuna, and from within the center of the column of light -- which has shrunk back to only engulfing her person, but continues to do so, burning like magnesium -- Yuna smiles, smiles in a way that is only for her.

Magilou makes a different kind fo comment, and Kaguya and Rixia call out to Yuna directly, and she turns that smile upon them like a double-barreled flak cannon.

"I'm okay!" she reassures them, shining with the same brightness she gave Wakka before she left Besaid. That she gave Spira, before Zanarkand. And after, too, in Luca Stadium, not long ago.

 <SoundTracker> Mezame - Yuki Kajiura - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxnf5uaeRDE

The tears on her cheeks, the sweat at her temples, even the liquid trailing out of her nose... it is becoming impossible to differentiate them. They are shining too brightly. And too similarly. Even beneath her delicate, close-cut fingernails (worn practically short since she was young, though she quietly admires longer ones on others), light is dripping out... and it shouldn't be that liquid. It just feels wrong.

Stars burst into ignition above everyone, transforming the cavern ceiling into a night sky. This has been happening throughout the fight -- before it even started, or at least before the Drifters were close enough to engage. And for a moment it is possible to believe that it is just another shimmering rain of Omega Weapon's endless suffering, his, its, vengeance against Yevon ensouled into deadly blades.

But it isn't blades, and it isn't water either.

They almost seem like pyreflies... there is something of the will-o-the-wisp to each, how they do not so much plunge downwards as flit; as they do not so much fall as tumble gently downwards. But they do not cry softly, as those ghostlights do. They are not ghosts at all. They are, if anything, the opposite.

Stars, petals, tears, pearls, call them what you will; it does not change what they do. One at a time and a thousand at once, they connect heaven and earth; past and present; everyone and Yuna. They lance into bodies like neutrinos, penetrating so effortlessly that one might well feel the ghost in this equation; but then they stay. They stay within, and Yuna's feelings do too, blooming endlessly, fractal in nature. The lotus flowers that grow, twining through the spirits of those she cares for, embracing their limbs from the inside out, are a single blossom as much as a multitude, self-similar no matter how far you zoom out -- the entire cavern, one massive lotus -- or in -- to see that same lotus inside every human heart (despite some who might question that humanity).

Aura Shot and Nova engulf the room, and Yuna's rain keeps on falling. Omega Weapon shoots her, and she heals faster than phantom bullets can rend her flesh.

But not faster than Xenobia and the fiend can rend everyone's.

She can feel Kaguya starting to break.

Yuna screams again, and the light falls more furiously than ever. It thunders down in between the seemingly infinite blades worked by Omega Weapon. It pours into people large and small, people close to her and far away. People who know what they're fighting for and people who aren't sure.

It doesn't sound like feathers. It doesn't sound like anything.

But it feels warm, almost hot.

The flare that is Yuna is beginning to sputter. Every time that happens, the transcendent radiance simply vanishes entirely from existence, and then turns back on, like someone flicking a lightswitch. The first time she falters, she plunges the room into comparable darkness for a full two seconds.

Then she turns into more of a strobe.

And then the light goes out.

GS: Yuna spends 1 Combo on Reload!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rikku with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Jacqueline Barber with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Magilou with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Holly with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Kanon with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Venetia Vuong with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ashley Winchester with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with And I Will Do It Without False Hope!
GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Yuna heals Magilou! She gains 346 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 32 damage!
GS: Yuna heals Rikku! She gains 350 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Rikku enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Break, Disrupt, and Slow expired!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 28 damage!
GS: CRITICAL! Yuna heals Venetia Vuong! She gains 447 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 25 damage!
GS: Yuna heals Ashley Winchester! He gains 352 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Ashley Winchester enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 25 damage!
GS: Yuna heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 347 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 25 damage!
GS: Yuna heals Kanon! She gains 346 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Kanon enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 25 damage!
GS: Cirea has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Cirea has activated Force Action: Lock On!
GS: Yuna heals Jacqueline Barber! She gains 345 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! and Gleam activated!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 25 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Cirea has posed.

"Hey!" Rixia is absorbing ambient energy, but some of that is Cirea's! "Get your own! I was going to use that!" Still, she can't really argue with results.

Cirea turns back to Xenobia. "Well maybe there shouldn't be!"

She stands strong(ish) in midair. "You weren't forced into anything if you swore the oath instead of follow! The world can be a good place - it is!" She doesn't think she's convincing Xenobia of this, and it's almost futile to try. "And anyway, I'm not human, and I don't want to be - but there's a place for me in this world! There could be one for you too, if you weren't so focused on breaking it!"

She pauses for a moment. "No offense!" Cirea calls, to the humans here.

Xenobia gathers power. But here it's different - it's light. And Cirea understands light. She gathers every defensive technique she knows, everything scavenged from Ghaleon's library and from half-pieced together ideas and the few new books she's been able to read since she left; it is a hodgepodge defense that has no business working.

It almost works anyway. The light blasts over Cirea, and she lets out a yell of sudden pain - but she remains flying rather than blown away.

When the light clears, her silhouette is wavering and faint, almost vanished, though it's still there. Cirea herself is looking a little scorchy around the edges and she tends to bob up and down rather than be able to hold a steady level; she's exhausted, barely upright. Everything hurts. But she's holding a double handful of wind and her silhouette, faded as it is, is doing the same.

"Howling Gale!"

Wind picks up; a breeze at first, then a gale, shot through with streamers of green-yellow energy - pure Wind, collected elemental energy. It makes a noise, too, shaking the very air around it with a rumble that turns into a deafening roar. Cirea puts her hands over her ears about halfway through as it continues to intensify, going from 'deafening' to 'actively painful', at least if you have large and sharp ears like she does. She starts to descend, having nearly exhausted herself beyond her ability to continue.

Nearly. Not entirely.

GS: Cirea spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Blitz! Cirea has attacked Xenobia with Howling Gale!
GS: Cirea has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cirea has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Cirea's Howling Gale for 258 hit points!
GS: Riposte applied to Cirea!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Yuna has been knocked out!

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    "Name one time I've ever shut up when someone asked," Magilou lobbies back to Xenobia, dryly. "I can see just fine -- and I see that you have power enough to choose your own destiny. If this is the destiny you've chosen..."

    She sighs, spreading her hands. "... I guess Phacia's conscience is clear, huh?" It's not that Magilou can't guess it was complicated, sending people to kill her sister. She can intuit that much, even with a broken heart.

    Whether it was complicated in exactly the way the gathered heroes would expect it to be -- that's another thing entirely.

    But it was important to make sure, in her way.

    Her grin is lazy, despite the situation. "Of course I'm not doing well," she adds. "I'm exceptional. Shall I show you?"

    The first way she has to demonstrate that, though -- it's not through any assault of her own. First, she has to survive Aura Shot, and perhaps it's no wonder that she throws up a hand and summons a shimmering white beehive barrier to absorb that blue-white light.

    (A thousand years ago, Bienfu met a girl born under a lucky star. And her greatest capacity was in...)

    Magilou's white-light barrier can't absorb all the power of Aura Shot -- but when it fractures and the light blasts through, it's lessened, in intensity. Magilou's able to free herself from her creeping stony prison without being killed while she can't run away. Quietly, she admires the setup. It's rather a good way to kill a lot of people, really, she thinks. "Not bad," She says, in turn. "Unfortunately for you... I am Magilou! Scourge of the self-righteous! And I --"

    She turns, to look to the radiance of Yuna, as those stars settle on her shoulders. "I didn't come alone," she says. She says, and says again, to everyone and to one woman spent: "Neither did you. Looks like we'd better end this quick!" It's awfully a cheerful thing to say, with Rixia learning so many things, and Kaguya facing up against Omega Weapon.

    Hands to her hips, she plants her feet again, and points brazenly to Xenobia. "Now, bear witness! Tetra Detonator!" Her most powerful magic Arte, her synthesis --

    Four orbs descend, around Xenobia. One is blue as the ocean's depths; one is red as a city-claiming pyre. One is yellow as ancient sand, old enough to welcome Althena's footsteps, and one is green as the wind through leaves, scouring the branches with a hurricane to leave naught in its wake. They are mystery, and strength, and longevity, and they twirl around Xenobia, and where they meet it is Light as the birth of a universe.

    So too the explosion.

GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Snipe!
GS: Magilou has attacked Xenobia with Tetra Detonator!
GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Quick expired!
GS: Magilou has completed her action.
GS: Access! Magilou takes 45 damage!
GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Very High! Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Magilou's Tetra Detonator for 359 hit points!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
GS: Xenobia has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.

Kaguya thinks two things, in the next few moments. The first is... She really doesn't like Xenobia much at all.

The second is that she should really have remade that armor.

The Omega Weapon screams, and the very firmament rattles. Light and light and light crash towards Kaguya, and even with Yuna's great power protecting her, it scythes throughher dfenses, reminds her that she is yet vulnerable to some things.

"Gh..."

Kaguya stumbles back. "Heheheh..." It's dizzying, frankly. She stows away her weapon. "Sorry, but..."

"Guess I'll owe you for this one," she murmurs, and sways on her feet before hitting the floor.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Omega Weapon's inside...

There isn't an inside. It's a hollow space, holding perhaps nothing but vengeance and rage, perhaps containing some other subtle potential unrealized. At least that potential remains a potential, even if Venetia's calling forth of the shadow of the Simulacrum is fading. Her eyes swim. And Omega is beginning a barrage.

The last several seconds of the last calling of the Simulacrum sees it turn round and surge forwards, grasping Venetia in one hand and smashing a divot into the ground which Venetia ends up falling into.

And that, perhaps, saves Venetia, even if she is, in the resulting barrage, buried underneath several feet of rubble and flinders -- hopefully not parts of anybody that she knows. When the storm has faded, Venetia, body screaming, takes a moment to assert which way she's facing and then begins to push upwards... choked in dust, she sits upright, reaching behind her head to recenter her mask as she looks towards the Omega Weapon.

Her head swims... it's unpleasant, to say the absolute least. And yet...

And yet she has at least one more card yet to play. The art of another Crest Sorceress heartens her, and gives her the will to do more than stare in knowing, well-educated despair.

Pushing herself up to her feet, Venetia feels for her Crest Pouch - the strap is damaged but the pouch itself remains there - and returns the Simulacrum to its velvet-lined resting space, work well done. Hand resting on another one, she looks upwards. It seems that Venetia has gone beyond her smart remarks, instead narrowing her eyes for a moment and drawing up the Crest.

The room brightens -- begins to flicker -- power is pouring into her. Venetia glances over her shoulder for a moment with wonder. "Such faith," Venetia says. Her shoulders square.

There's weight on them, but it is weight she put there of her own free will. And so, the self-proclaimed Filgaia's greatest magician takes a breath:

"Be buried beneath the pathways of old," Venetia intones towards the Omega Weapon as the Crest Graph gleams. The air around her breathes inwards as the Ley rises inwards and then seems to gather and twist and then

THOOM

Down it smashes like a drumbeat, an invisible blow of an invisible mallet to the ground before Venetia. The stone of the world bears fruit, rising up according to its kind; great basaltic pillars bursting upwards, fracturing in hexagonal patterns that pour forwards like a crashing wave of stone to try and engulf the Weapon -- to pour clean stone INTO that gaping cavity --

"If you're holding anything back," Venetia calls as she stands there, doubtless channelling some aspect of this storm, "THIS IS THE HOUR--"

GS: Venetia Vuong spends 4 Combo on Interrupt and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Omega Weapon with Hexagonal Prism Sign ~Giant's Causeway~!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Holly has posed.

Holly does the one thing she thinks might.. actually keep the attention on herself. She doesn't keep taunting Xenobia as she clearly begins to unravel. There's a look of pity there. It's sincere, for what its worth. A reminder of what she could have become herself, isolated, frustrated, left alone without family.
 
 It wasn't directed at her, but she answers it, "You always had a choice." Short, simple. To the point. Though there is a dirty look as Xenobia points that it was made for just the humans. Looking from Cirea to herself, back to Rixia, then over to Magilou even. "Nah." Is her response to that, still short and simple. Maybe seeing a potential outcome has spooked her, she's quiet. The next looks are to the humans of the group, trying to stop her. To save the others. "Definitely not right."
 
 The attack sent her way is met head on by Holly's magic. A crossed X of ink, then a second and a third against the water barrier deflecting all, but the worst of it. Deflected to the side along the black surface. She's knocked back a few feet by the power of course. She's tiny and spinning, but orients quickly enough. That look of pity is still there. Only interrupted briefly by a look of concern for both Cirea and Rixia. Both are hurt, but she's not.. really the healing sort, feeling like she doesn't have the power really for it. A mental block of sorts. A minor heal would go some way, but stopping the threat would go further right? "Hold on, just.. just stay safe you two." Repositioning to take the next hit for either of them if needs be.
 
 In retaliation, she focuses though. A serious look on her face. She winds up her brush, bobbing in the air, looking like she's about to swing for the fences. That gathered ink forming up around the brush head. "For now though, I think it's time for the lights to go out." She tilts forward, darting in far faster than she had been. A yoyo maneuver, the evidence of a practiced flyer! Kind of. At the lowest point of her dip, she twists back further and swings with all of her might. Which normally would be comical. It's a paint brush and ink. That ink is infused with magic and.. you know, on impact splashes in all directions. To add insult to injury, she tries to use the sorceress' head as a launching pad to gain extra height again.
 
 There's a brief moment of realization, listening to Rixia. Maybe she needs to stand? You can't learn if you're dead though and she holds firm where she is if at all possible. Even as she at least makes space for that terrible blade.

GS: Yuna heals Holly! She gains 346 temporary hit points!
GS: FP up! Yuna's Reload! activated!
GS: Holly enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Strain! Yuna takes 25 damage!
GS: Holly has attacked Xenobia with Ink Hammer!
GS: Holly has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Holly takes 28 damage from Poison!
GS: Break, Disrupt, and Slow expired!
GS: Holly has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Holly's Ink Hammer for 154 hit points!
GS: Cover applied to Holly!
GS: Xenobia has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Omega Weapon suffers a terrible blow from Venetia Vuong's Hexagonal Prism Sign ~Giant's Causeway~ for 248 hit
points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Interrupt blocked!
GS: Omega Weapon enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Omega Weapon has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku, just gawks at Xenobia's reply, thoughtful, then, "Wow- I- Wow-" Long pause, then, "You are a SPECIAL KIND OF NUTS! I guess anyone spending that much time with Yunalesca would have to be- but geez!" Xenobia's incantation causes a sweeping beam of white light to come her way, and Rikku has to make a choice and risk her partially petrified body breaking by diving out of the way. She takes that chance by just DIVING headlong and trying to land on the still fleshy bits.
 
Yuna smiles, she tells her she's okay, the light burning bright, like an inferno unto itself, a star, falling as petals, and healing energy, it's warm beyond counting.
 
The first time she falters, Rikku doesn't catch it, too marveled, despite the two seconds of darkness. Then the light becomes a strobe, something wild, uncontained. She doesn't realize the danger. Not yet. Not until the moment that the light goes out-
 
"YUNIE!" Plunged into darkness, she can't see. She can't really know. Her eyes are still adjusting, and then she sees the outline, a silhouette, and runs the rest of the way rushing up to her as she tries to assess how bad it is.
 
"Some Guardian I am." She whispers to herself, before she almost casually chucks something over her shoulder, "Satisfied?" She asks Xenobia, harshly.
 
When the detonation goes off, it's one that might give the Amphitheater more cracks, the concussive force of the blast wave enough to strike both Xenobia and her fiend.
 
"Because I'm not."
 
It feels like everyone keeps trying to drag them back, again and again and again. They helped Spira move forward, and everyone keeps dragging them back. And it feels like Yuna is paying the price from Xenobia's madness. Sometimes the Merriest is just done.
 
This may be one of those times.
 
Right now though, she's focused on trying to figure out what just happened with Yuna, and making sure if she's paying a price, it's not a fatal one.

GS: Rikku has activated Force Action: Extend!
GS: Rikku has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Rikku spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Rikku has attacked Xenobia with Rikku-Grade BOOM!!
GS: Rikku has attacked Omega Weapon with Rikku-Grade BOOM!!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 35 damage from Poison!
GS: Poison expired!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

They served the power that set the Blue Star ablaze.

"You... You mean that the Vile Tribe-- served Lord Blazer...?" Althena was their foe, even in the time before. But even then she extended a hand to their kind. She was... kind. Truly kind. No wonder Marivel felt so betrayed by her apparent abandonment. No wonder Ana felt so close to her. "...So even back then, you were trying to burn the world down...? Why...?"

Is it important? That they served me was immaterial. They are still kindling.
"If your sister and the others chose a different path... Then it's only right for me as the one who carries the Blazer--" The Omega Weapon rises. A hollow, empty thing. A thing that is nothing more than its shell and the enormous armory it carries. Is there anything left of the hero it once was, or is it nothing more than Fiend now? Even with its purpose gone from the world, it fights on... And so will he. "--to protect them!"

Another responsibility on his shoulders. But-- this time--

This time, something about it feels right. To connect the hearts of those who had been abandoned... feels correct in a way that is so completely opposite to wielding Lord Blazer's catastrophic might.

But he can't be distracted. Even as Jacqueline's bolstering magic imbues his own armor with power. He knows that, if he slips up here, he can easily become like that monster-- nothing but an empty shell of armor, carrying naught but destruction in its wake. The Ultima Weapon unleashes into so many copies of itself, each firing a barrage of firepower that, in aggregate, could level cities. But--

He is not moving. He cannot move. He must stand his ground, or else--

He might miss.

Ashley grasps at his chestplate, wrenching it open with clawed fingertips. An impossibly bright star shines within, boiling with the power that sterilizes existence. This is the fruit of the Blazer's power, a kernel of destruction which has crystallized at Ashley Winchester's heart. Drawing on its power sends microfractures racing across his armored form. Pain overwhelms, but as does singularity of purpose. And--

Then it abates.

Starlight... falls from above. No. Liquid light? What? It falls through him, a rain of positive energy washing into the tide of the Blazer's grotesque, baleful radiance. The cracks begin to mend as he turns the Banisher upon the Omega Weapon, its light swallowing up the fiend's bombardment even as it breaks his body, only for the fractures to mend again. "That's... Yuna--"

Her light fades.

His light explodes.

Banisher fires, a beam of light that gouges canyons into cliff-faces, directly at the gap in the Omega Weapon's Armor-- as if to fill it with that destructive essence and annihilate it entirely.

Ashley's voice is lost in the thunderclap that follows in its wake.

GS: Omega Weapon partially guards Rikku's Rikku-Grade BOOM! for 117 hit points!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Mute and Poison applied to Omega Weapon!
GS: Hex blocked!
GS: Ashley Winchester has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Ashley Winchester has activated Force Action: Snipe!
GS: Ashley Winchester spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Ashley Winchester has attacked Omega Weapon with Banisher!
GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action.
GS: Access! Ashley Winchester takes 45 damage!
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Ashley Winchester's Banisher for 122 hit points!
GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Ida's voice echoes off the walls. She stays prone herself, back bent in a C-shape, for as long as she can handle--she knows she has to make this count, to ensure the others can take full advantage. She is in the perfect position to witness and feel every blow rained down upon Omega until she extracts herself, swinging upright with a motion of the spine that's a little too fluid to be fully human.

    Ida slips back, and twists into a fighting stance. Nothing inside. Was there nothing inside Sin, too? (It sounded like that was not the case.) Ida raises her arms, and tucks her body beneath them. Great, broad shields spread out from the Hyadean exoskeleton on her forearms, and long, thin tendrils spear into the stone on either flank. Grounding lines. Ida grits her teeth, and braces for impact. The light SLAMS into her with enough force to shake her whole body, but the barrier holds. It regenerates. She's using Omega's own trick against it.

    But regardless, she is only mortal; when the barrage ends, and her arms and hands return to armored normal, she's shaky. She's covered in minor burns. She takes a moment to just gasp for breath, survey the others. "Dammit. Kaguya! Ashley, keep it busy, I'm--"

    Yuna screams, and fear races down Ida's spine. Warm, healing light pours through her, but this is the opposite of what happened earlier. Yuna's burning herself out.

    "YUNA!"

    'And I choose not to lose anyone... EVER AGAIN!'

    Kaguya falling was bad enough, and she's seen the Veruni take worse hits than that. Yuna pouring herself out to keep everyone alive is too much. "No. DON'T YOU DARE!" But she can't turn her anger on Yuna, now, and wouldn't; whatever made her do this wasn't a rational impulse. Ida knows the desperation fights like this can cause. Instead, she very deliberately turns on her heel, feels the earth beneath her, positions herself right where she knows Venetia's pillar will appear. There's a gut-wrenching LAUNCH as the columnar basalt erupts in its lovely hexagonal glory, and then, as it reaches its apex, Ida leaps--

    Within a second, her Breath has flared into a bright gold-limned white aura. Her fist glows like a tiny sun. She drops out of the air onto Omega's back, with enough force behind it that the forewarning shockwave might stagger the Fiend.

    The thunderous roar of the explosive detonation sends small stones dropping to the floor.

    Ida's momentum carries her through. Maybe through Omega's body, maybe through the air. But she skids to a halt just as the Banisher hits.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Omega Weapon with Unbroken Lotus Fist!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's stances have changed to Avenger!
GS: Quick and Shield expired!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Kanon has posed.

Kanon's spear of a spinning drill punch strikes well and true...but even she's not enough to tear through Omega's might just yet. When she feels like she's done the best she can with it, she skips back, and then...sees the light expanding from Omega's new assault. "HGNH!" she grunts, gutteral, and thrusts that cybernetic hand out in a brute-force attempt to block the expanding beams of light.

Back toward the door, Kanon falls out of one of those blasts, feet hitting hard against the tile of the amphitheater this place once was. Her cyborg arm is smoking, but functional. She sways a little as she balances back up on both feet, but the humming inside her suggests her power is not nearly spent. She takes one step, two, her legs emitting a NOISE that sounds like nothing so much as a massive motor being operated, despite the small size. A metallic rattling sounds from her body like an entire Gear frame humming with power.

She emits a sound like a wet chuckle. "He's got spunk," she muses. "I'll give him that."

Yuna's light sustains her even as her body makes noises that suggest imminent failure. And then it goes dark. Does it worry her, this heroic woman offering everything of herself for them?

No. Kanon expects to be on that pile soon enough.

"That'll be our cue, then."

Kanon shifts her weight and then she roars forward, disappearing from view entirely for a moment with the air crackling around her, arms crossed in front of her. She's allowed herself to neglect Knight Blazer and his backup. Omega is her prey today.

...Omega is her prey, for the moment.

GS: CRITICAL! Omega Weapon partially evades Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 232 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Kanon has activated Force Action: Full Clip!

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    With that loud, earth-rattling scream, Ethius once more falls off the armor plating. The shape of the amphitheater and gravity dictates that he tumbles back towards a range where he can be more easily shot at. (this is a problem)
 
     Something the newly raised series of barrels takes advantage of, as Ethius brings his forearm up again in a familiar spell... but wait.
 
     "Yuna." He remembers what she was using to take the edge off everyone's wounds.
 
     He makes the conscious decision to minimize that as he takes off running, flashes of screaming light thundering all around him. No direct hits are scored, but the residual wash of heat alone is enough to fell any organic target (i.e. virtually everyone here). He grits his teeth, blinks out the excess searing humidity, and holds fast to whatever training of his civilization he's acting on behalf of has imparted to allow him to skirt the hard biological limits of one's ability to withstand heat of that magnitude.
 
     A brief look at the weapon Rixia's holding is a reminder he's got way more to deal with later. He doesn't have the time to look back and see whether he's succeeded in lessening the burden Yuna's taken upon herself, but he can hear the scream.
 
     "Whatever happens," Ethius says, remembering the grim moments where he might have believed Mother was going to kill all of them in the depths of the Photosphere as partially-remembered knowledges of the time saw him disarm her final spiteful gesture against her slayers, "Omega Weapon cannot leave this chamber."
 
     (He doesn't want Omega idly wandering around the caves and admiring any possible waterfalls either. If Omega wanted to just hide in a box and just spew a Tidal Wave at the first people to open it, that's almost fine, but this? No.)
 
     He takes stock of how the others are holding, or aren't. He has to navigate increasingly precarious footing (some of it's molten, obviously no stepping there). Around him, perhaps in the lingering throes of Hastega, it feels the world dims around him as he swings his off-hand up high in a forceful gesture as sorcerous power exudes from him.
 
     "I call to a star that enables the patterns of life itself, its existence itself an unstable, unsustainable chaos..." Something of a beacon, in this cave, operating under the same lack of care for the concept of 'a ceiling' that some have already shown successful circumvention.
 
     "Relieve your ceaseless pressure at my call, and bathe them in the unrestrained maelstrom of your prominence...!" He swings that hand down towards the earth in a crouch, his fingers spread out as far as they possibly can be, to a final shout that brings forth the--
 
     "Solar Storm...!"
 
     Further description would only dilute the application of a blast of immense heat that tends to not play nice with nearby technology (*your stuff will be fine, a weird sputter at best) as any residing dust is hurled clear anew.

GS: Ethius Hesiod spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Ethius Hesiod has attacked Omega Weapon with Symbological Alpha Strike - Solar Storm!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Quick and Shield expired!
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
GS: Kanon has attacked Omega Weapon with Eagle Claw!
GS: Kanon has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Kanon has completed her action.
GS: Omega Weapon solidly guards Ethius Hesiod's Symbological Alpha Strike - Solar Storm for 96 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Cripple and Jam blocked!
GS: Omega Weapon suffers a terrible blow from Kanon's Eagle Claw for 251 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Omega Weapon gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Strain! Kanon takes 25 damage!
GS: Omega Weapon has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Rikku's Rikku-Grade BOOM! for 213 hit points!
GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!!
GS: Xenobia's Mute Ward may block the effect!
GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Entangle and Poison applied to Xenobia!
GS: Mute blocked!
GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
GS: Xenobia has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"Maybe, maybe not. But it was worth a try. And sometimes, it takes time and work for that compatibility to form." Jacqueline replies, then shakes her head. "...It isn't weakness. And if you can't see that... Maybe that's your own weakness."

Xenobia prepares a powerul spell - and Jacqueline finds a massive beam of light sweeping toward her. She holds a hand out, fortifying the barrier projected by her gauntlets. She winces as she braces against the beam. The barrier starts to give way and, with some effort, she gestures with her left hand. A pillar of earth rises and Jacqueline braces both her hands against it, wrapping the barrier around it for cover.

...Even still, she finds herself getting overwhelmed... but soon, she finds her reserves of energy getting bolstered. A rain of stars... Jacqueline breathes in and pushes back against the spell.

It makes the difference... but at the same time, as someone in tune with the flows of sorcerous energy, she can feel the way Yuna's power sputters.

"...Yuna...?" Jacqueline murmurs - and then, grits her teeth.

She lets the stone pillar fall away as the beam subsides.

...Looks like it's time to make this last one count. She exhales, and from her deck, she draws four Crest Graphs. Each Crest is invoked in turn, and around Jacqueline four wells of elemental power form - one for each of the building blocks of Crest Sorcery.

The gestures she performs are more akin to the conduction of a symphony - coaxing fire, water, earth and wind from each well in turn, and sending them crashing down toward Xenobia.

...And for the symphony's final movement, the elements converge on Jacqueline next, swirling around her and gathering into a bright light of raw elemental force in her hands.

"Here goes... Watch me, Xenobiaaa!" Jacqueline shouts - and thrusts her hands forward, sending her own concentrated beam of power Xenobia's way.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Full Clip!
GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Formation! Jacqueline Barber has attacked Xenobia with Elemental Symphony!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber takes 25 damage from Poison!
GS: Mute and Poison expired!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Jacqueline Barber's Elemental Symphony for 238 hit points!
GS: Delay applied to Xenobia!
GS: Poison blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
GS: Xenobia has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.

She reached far too deep, dug too much into that power to cast that pair of spells, but--she is still standing. She's panting hard, crest graphs held in their just-cast positions, but she's still standing.

But Hannah catches Rixia's eye as she notices, says something unfinished about her power. Hannah... does not look particularly cruel, or malicious, or triumphant in that moment after casting that spell. In fact, she looks rather upset, and she quickly looks away to focus on Xenobia.

Xenobia shouts that they are intruders--and meddlers. Which is fair, to a point. "I know it's yours! You have such amazin' things you could share! All those books, all that knowledge, but... you're lettin' your past control you! You're givin' more power to those who wronged you!"

She's thinking of her mentor now--a scared young girl who could have given into her despair, but who seems to have found a way to move forward.

It's doubtful she can reach Xenobia at this point, but.. she has to try.

A beam of blue-white light is called forth to sweep through the battlefield. Hannah is ready this time, or at least more ready, as she snatches up her dropped crest graph and forces power into it. A barrier of shimmering light calls forth to fight against the blast. It breaks through, sends her reeling back--but this time, she remains standing.

Bright blue-white light shines, letting off little fractal wisps as she pulls out the next crest graph. She holds it aloft, as a frigid magic forms high overhead. And then she slams the crest graph downward, launching the lance at Xenobia.

GS: Hannah Curie has attacked Xenobia with Frigid Lance!
GS: Hannah Curie has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action.
GS: Xenobia suffers a terrible blow from Hannah Curie's Frigid Lance for 188 hit points!
GS: Slow blocked!
GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
GS: Xenobia has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Xenobia has posed.

"I'll break this world if I have to!" Xenobia shouts back at Rixia. A final piece of defiance, before her blade of light descends. It slams into her barriers -- and they crackle, lightning arcing off them. Then, they shatter, and explode.

Xenobia's hurled backward. Her eyes look towards Cirea. "A choice between servitude and pride... isn't a choice at all!" she shouts back to her. "I--I wouldn't accept it! And I wouldn't watch the seal for her, either, I--"

She's frantic. Panicked. Omega is collapsing; she is collapsing. Cirea's wind magic roars, over her words and her worries, and it makes her shriek (inaudibly), then cover her ears.

Holly's paint brush strikes into her a moment later -- slamming into her, and leaves ink on her that burns. She stumbles backward, wiping it away, even as some steam rises her. "Gh..!"

She looks to Ashley. "We served a master... who served you, Blazer!" Xenobia scowls. "But I serve no god--I would not serve our ancient master, you, or the Goddess Althena! And nor should our people! But you are--YOU ARE OUR GREATEST BURDEN!"

She screams that at Ashley. And yet, what she said -- perhaps something of Blazer lingers in the Vile Tribe. Perhaps it is more complicated than she knows. Then she turns, at Rikku's scream, and sees Yuna.

And she smiles at Rikku. Is she satisfied?

"Yes," she says.

The bomb explodes -- and it lacerates her face and side, the explosion knocking her backward. Her feet stumble. Jay tells her to watch her -- and then fire, water, earth, and wind rush forth. They slam into her, one after her, before a blast of brilliant energy slams into her chest.

It throws her back against the amphitheater's wall. She hits it with another crack, and stumbles away bloodily.

Then, Hannah's lance of ice fires free. It hurtles for Xenobia -- and slams through her midsection. It tears out the other side, and she makes a loud 'HRK' sound, before crumpling over.

Blood pools underneath her body.

She looks up, blood running down her face. "You... you were always so... damn... persistent," she spits towards Magilou. "If you see anything worthwhile in this world, then--then I never understood you, Magilou!"

But they weren't, really, friends. Xenobia never had friends; she had her comrades and companions. She had her allies.

And she had her rage.

Crumpled as she is, she doesn't rise. She isn't sure she could, with the lance of ice pierced through her. The four orbs descend around her; brilliant light in four colors, shining off her face. Xenobia's eyes close, as they come together, and there is a brilliant burst of light that she is at the center of.

"Phacia, Royce... is this all life was?"

The light expands outward -- and she vanishes inward. An outline of her body; and then it burns away, into nothing but ash. The light fades, and that ash is dusted across the floor.

<Pose Tracker> Omega Weapon has posed.

    If they're holding anything back, this is the hour.

    Never have more true words been spoken. Kaguya falls; Yuna soon joins her, overcome by the strain of the healing magic she sends forth to keep their allies alive and in the game. With their forces split between the Fiend and the witch, those who stand against the Omega Weapon have been struck a cruel turn. There are less of them to keep fighting now, and sure to be less still with Yuna incapacitated. And this Fiend will not stop until it is reduced to Pyreflies.

    In the aftermath of such bombardment, it is Venetia who strikes the first blow. Here, into the rend torn into the Fiend, there is introduced a pillar of stone, ripping through straight to the otherside and tearing the hole Kaguya had created ever wider. It shudders, stumbles, but does not fall.

    Ashley is the first to join her call. Yuna's light fades, yes, but his continues to shine -- to erupt forth. To tear.

    Such light very nearly tears the Omega Weapon into two pieces. It should not still be standing with its hide in such a state. And yet, a Fiend obeys its own laws and the Omega Weapon understands only the nature of the unending grudge.

    It's Ida who finishes this particular job, coming in for the badly damaged Fiend mere seconds after Banisher nearly clove it in two. She rips into it, her aura guiding her down the path she requires. By the time her feet touch the stone floor of the chamber, she will be standing between both halves of the Omega Weapon, its upper body torn from its lower legs.

    It is, and this is the important part, not dead. Not even as its lower half erupts into a storm of Pyreflies. This part of the Fiend lives on, its mouth agape in a long, loud shriek. Its hands twitch, spasm. Even in extremis, the Omega Weapon will not go gently at all. Light has begun to coalesce between its hands, a hazy pearl-like sphere that grows brighter by the second. Steam vents from every point on the Fiend that it can vent from: it is putting everything it has into this moment. It will destroy that which stands before them, whatever this might cost it.

    This is the nature of a grudge. This is the nature of hatred.

    It cannot leave this chamber, as Ethius states, and to that end, as more radiance erupts from the sphere it continues to bring forth at its chest -- as everything begins to be bathed in pale light -- here he intrudes with the majesty and terror of a star. There is a greater light.

    There is heat.

    And there, in the heart of it all, is Kanon.

    Kanon, who shatters the core.

    Pyreflies flood the room in their wake. Nothing remains but the marks the battle against the Fiend had rent into the chamber's walls and floor...

    ...nothing remains but the final regrets of a witch.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Before she dies (again, dies more), Xenobia is satisfied by the state of Yuna.

Yuna, were she conscious to see what just happened, would not be, not even by the ash that this threat has become, the dust that this sister has returned to. Not until the Sending. That's one mistake she never wants to make ever, ever again.

Unfortunately...

 <SoundTracker> Yuna's Ballad - FFX-2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Znkkk7dWw

Absent the light of her white magic, it is most certainly confirmed that Yuna, at some point in all this, started sweating, started crying, started choking on something that very much is not the sacred radiance of her loving heart but the CONTENTS of her loving heart. It's crusting to her nostrils and beneath her fingernails. And that's before one even begins to discuss the damage she transferred in from everyone else. She may even have been mirroring wounds as bruises as early as that Curaga; as the fight grew more desperate and so did she, the effect magnified on both sides. It was never one to one -- pushed to an unsustainable extreme, Yuna's magic has a terrible efficiency to it, the efficiency of a heart wholly overcommitted to a singular, traumatized purpose. But it didn't have to be. Once she carried thirteen souls inside her own. Today, she carried thirteen bodies instead.

She is lying in a puddle of her own blood. Yuna took countless body blows during her pilgrimage -- not because her Guardians failed at their task but because their task was insurmountably difficult, and made moreso at times by more deliberate sacrifices than these. She's always been impossible to guard, really.

She's always been impossible.

But this is worse, even, than when they found her alone and battered, having been tortured and left to die in the Via Purifico. Yevon did much more that day than burn the mark that will brand her palm forever.

Rikku reaches her first.

Yuna is very still. And very, very pale, even for her moonlight complexion.

She's not breathing...

Her slender wrist, deceptively strong, the fulcrum of so much of the movement of the Sending ritual and summoning rite alike, still has that pretty silver bracelet.

But not a pulse.

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    'I'm okay!'

    How could two words that're meant to reassure send so much of a shiver down her spine? She's okay. She's okay. For a moment, Rixia believes she'll keep saying that as she marches to her death. It's not okay... no one's okay. Kaguya said as much. It's fine to not be okay...

    "I'm not strong enough to endure..." Rixia whispers, desperately, as the stars fall upon her. Several penetrate her, and the feelings and the flowers that blossom from them do as well. It's scary. It's far too scary...

    They're going to talk, those that hear what happened here today, and Rixia already can picture it: the heroes who defeated Sin have done it again! They've rescued Spira from yet another crisis! There's no difference! It's just the same anguish she felt when she defeated Georg Heldalf. No one understands what they're all going through here!

    All they can do... is savour the outcome... and no one can tell them they're wrong for enjoying it.

    Yuna is guttering out; what's happening to her? She doesn't understand. There's so many powers she doesn't understand at work here; Hannah's, Yuna's...

    She doesn't even hear Cirea's admonishment. She witnesses Magilou's most powerful arte, something she's seen before, but never is used to. Four orbs, each at the peak of magical essence each, crashing against each other, with Light at the centre of it all.

    "It's happening all over again... it doesn't change..."

    But then--

    "Kaguya...!" Rixia has suddenly more pressing concerns, though Ida and Ethius and Ashley are far closer to her. But then Ethius brings another unexplicable power, and--

    >> warning! warning!
    >> detecting extreme heat source-- incompatible essence--kmh#Q$Hgg!#f
       Nakano - Koenji - Asagaya - Ogikubo - Nishi-Ogikubo - Kichijoji - Mitaka - Musashi-Sakai
       as$#DzChicken Karaage with Mayonnaise - 749 yen#!!##1013!#Hers_$FSFFEA#$##0xFFFFFFFFF
       The fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), also known as the eastern fox squirrel or Bryant's fox squirrel is the largest species of tree squirrel native to
       #!#()#*$!#G^!EAF^!#::define->!!EAF##GEFFF#!!include standards.h!$!!!#####
       HP 8157-8277 MP 999 Strength 31-32 Defence 24-26 EXP 3380-3484
       Known Technicks Lunge - Cloying Breath - Bad Breath -
       Drops Earth Crystal 40 percent$$#$^#^#^^
    >> ... ... rebooted successfully

    Rixia barely grasps hold of herself and the irregularities running through her, given the true form of the Sleeping Lion is nanomachines running through her, to watch Xenobia... she speaks of ancient masters, who served Lord Blazer, and how she wishes to serve no god or master. Is she satisfied, by this end The horrific way in which the spells, and attacks are slamming onto her body -- of which she had a hand in--

    Is this all life was...?

    Rixia's expression is still and rigid as she watches her vanish, burning away into nothing but ash. She can't help but crumple into herself, embracing herself in her arms. This doesn't feel good. Nothing feels good.

    This was Georg Heldalf again. This was the pain she felt with Maotelus and Sorey's choice, all over again.

    Why does this have to keep happening...?

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"Yunie!?" Rikku makes it to Yuna's side, kneeling beside her, frantically putting two fingers to her neck. Feeling for, looking for signs. Seeing none. Her pupils dilate with a sudden panic. "She's-! HELP-! SHE- SHE'S NOT-!"

She hears Xenobia's words echo, she sees her smile again and again and again. But she also sees Yuna's. Her smile. How many times forced? How many times genuine? Always precious. Perhaps never to smile again. To laugh.

Rikku's heart pounds. Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. This has ever been her worst fear for Yuna since before she even met her. That she'd die young, on her pilgrimage. And even now with her pilgrimage ended, it's like she's still the Summoner - no High Summoner.
 
A living embodiment. The first that had ever lived.
 
The beginning of a new era. So of course, Spira would try to take her away from them. The clock is ticking Rikku. What are you gonna do?
 
Make the most powerful healing cocoction she has? No- no Yuna may not have much time for her to mix it. Each passing second.
 
She feels Xenobia's satisfaction. She feels Yunalesca's revenge for an end to her system. A thought occurs to her though despite the panic. She knows what makes a heart beat. And so instead she rips off her gloves, and puts her palms to her chest over Yuna's heart. No time for even a deep breath.
 
She becomes a lightning rod in this moment. A buffer to the circuit she completes between herself and her cousin made of flesh, but in this moment something sturdier. It ripples off of her like static electricity, even before lightning drops into Rikku.
 
And passes right into Yuna's heart.
 
It hurts. It hurts her a lot. Her teeth clench down, as every muscle in her body locks up, unable to scream... but for once, she's not scared.
 
It's for her. She's suffered lightning bolt after lightning bolt since she became Yuna's Guardian.
 
What's one more?
 
Once her teeth release and her muscles relax, eyes watering, she moves to check again with a finger, as she murmurs, "Come on Yunie-!" She says, words charged with emotion, eyes blurring, "Come on-!"
 
It may be supposed to end like this, but she refuses to allow a future where Yuna isn't a part of it. Supposed to- that idea that ancient people created can leave Yuna alone, can leave this world, forever.

GS: Rikku has activated Force Action: Extend!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with For Her!
GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with For Her!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Rikku accepts Rikku's For Her for 90 hit points!
GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: Yuna accepts Rikku's For Her for 69 hit points!
GS: FP up! SOS Overdrive and Gleam activated!
GS: Protect! Yuna takes 18 damage!
GS: Yuna has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Yuna has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Holly has posed.

Holly doesn't have a smart comment for any of this. She'd have preferred a different outcome. Most of her magic wasn't actually lethal for a reason. She floats there quietly. Then flicks her brush, clearing some of the ink from it and leaving a line beneath her. The ash looks wrong though. Not what she expected, not at all.
 
 Her first concern is 'her own group'. Cirea and Rixia in particular, especially as Rixia's having a bad time again. She might be socially inept, but she's not that far gone. She thinks.
 
 Yuna's hurt too though and while she's not a healer and she has some hangups on it, she's also in a bad spot. Maybe some aid and comfort?
 
 She spins back and forth for a moment. A bit overwhelmed. Too much too soon, but she flicks the brush again and drifts towards Rixia. Trailing green motes of light. Lingering motes in droplets of water. No words though. She's just there if she's needed. Though there are a few concerned looks given to the others. If there's something she can do, she'll jump to it.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

...It's over. Jacqueline stares at where Xenobia had laid a moment before. Xenobia is gone... and so, too, is Omega Weapon.

"...Stubborn. I wish this could have gone differently. You..." Jacqueline mutters. And then she exhales, removes her glasses, and massages her eyes for a moment before slipping them back on as she resets herself. "Well... we did what we came here to do."

...She doesn't feel good about it. But the peace they created will remain safe, at least for a little while. And it wasn't without cost.

"...Yuna." Jacqueline murmurs, as Rikku pleads with her. She takes a step forward. "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

For right now... she can only hope.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    But Magilou can't regret it.

    "Yeah," Magilou agrees, as the magic fades, and Xenobia burns. "You, too."

    She folds her arms, and leans on the wall, with a glance to Kaguya where she's fallen. She sees Rixia's own concern, there. ... she's a good kid. And Yuna...

    "... too bad," Magilou shrugs, all light fled from her eyes.

    Once she's done mourning Xenobia, she supposes she'll get to Yuna, just the same.

<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.

The light of Banisher fades, and with it...

So is the Blazer.

... But Ashley is right there, now, flopped right on his front side and utterly exhausted. Omega is gone. Xenobia too. What she said...

They served one who served the Blazer.

That, then, is... Zophar, isn't it...?

...Even so.

Even so, he has something he needs to talk to Phacia about now, doesn't he...?

(Also, he promptly passes out. Someone please keep Kanon's knives away from his back)

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

    A terrifying cost of the likes one would never wish to have paid befalls the gathered in the aftermath of the seeming demise of Xenobia and the Omega Weapon. Though he is of no greater sensitivity or awareness of its greater inner workings, the strange man from beyond the stars is watching all of the erupting pyreflies for even the faintest, smallest sign of anything left behind that simply shouldn't be.
 
     It seems callous in the moment that Ethius keeps his back turned to a dying young woman who kept giving up far more than anyone should've ever been asked for, that deserves so much more than what was given, but -
 
     He comes down to a kneel not far off from where Kaguya and Ashley are, eyes watching the way all the pyreflies stir as if to be absolutely certain they aren't about to manifest into a new Fiend. His thoroughness in making sure no new threat or element poaches kills or near-kills, in silent acknowledgement of their present location, is what he can offer as succor in the moment and little more.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Nothing is left, but pyreflies and ash. Venetia breathes heavily for a few moments in the sudden silence as blasts finish echoing and light fades...

"So much for revenge," Venetia comments, not loudly. Then she hears a loud electrical noise, which makes her turn around. And finally see Cirea!! Who she goggles at briefly and gives a single sharp nod, before her attention returns to Yuna. She steps forwards, wavers -

GUT IT UP, WOMAN, Venetia says inside of Venetia. THIS IS WHAT YOU BOUGHT. THIS IS THE PRICE OF THE PEAK

- and plays it off as a stumble before resuming a somewhat less brisk march over. "The lady summoner," Venetia says, "is she--?"

<Pose Tracker> Cirea has posed.

'A choice between servitude and pride... isn't a choice at all!'

"Well, yeah, it is," is Cirea's response. "But - there are different ways of showing both of them!" Cirea, too, has pride - but her pride is different. Pride in something well-learned; pride in something mastered; pride in something new and wonderful seen and shown. Not in pride in dominance and superiority.

Xenobia falls, and Cirea does too; her wings have finally given out, and she drops the rest of the way, flopping onto her back, entirely dazed and gasping for breath before that slowly steadies. Now that she's no longer under direct threat, she's going to be out for a while from all the energy she burned and all the battering she's taken.

Fortunately, she is not difficult to wrangle (or carry) when everyone else is in a state to... though she is going to feel guilty for not being able to help those worse off than she is, later.

<Pose Tracker> Kanon has posed.

Kanon feels the core crack against her arms...and shifts her cyborg arm just enough that she can project the spike in its elbow straight into it.

Being in the middle of an exploding Fiend is an unusual sensation, as spirit and color roars around and through her. She is not numb to it, despite her artificial body. She can practically taste it, so thick in the air...

When the colors fade, there Kanon stands...in front of Knight Blazer, her body still humming with the fullness of her strength.

She stares the demon in the eye. Her right arm turns into a sword again.

...her eye flicks to the side, as people break off to attend to the fallen priestess Yuna.

Her eye flicks back as Ashley collapses, staring down with something akin to blood in her ears.

"It's the fate of a hero, Ashley Winchester," she says, low. "To do their work...and vanish from this world. That was the fate of the Sword Magess. That is the fate you must bear, as the one who harbors the Blazing Demon."

She steps toward him...one....two...

....and over him, her sword sliding back into her arm and her forearm back over its slot.

"And mine, as the one who will kill you both," she says, once she's past him. "...I'll leave you a chance to grieve your friend, this time. Watch your back, Winchester."

She silently walks for the doors, heedless of the sorrows near the High Summoner's body.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    It takes Ida a few moments to recover from that landing, and in those moments, she steps back, drawing in her Breath to protect her from Omega's reprisal. She grits her teeth, readies her exoskeleton--

    Ethius Hesiod invokes the spell that wrecked an Elw superweapon in one blow. Ida averts her eyes, and the afterimage of Kanon diving through is cast against her eyelids. She opens them just in time to see Xenobia's face among the energies that immolate her. Ida sucks in a hitch of breath, turns to Magilou. Two more images etched into her memory. Ethius takes up vigil near Kaguya and Ashley, and Ida--again, in what must be a record for her--trusts him.

    "Yuna," Ida whispers, and she falls to her knees beside her, heedless of the blood she's getting all over her. She heard Rikku's voice, and that zap, but is there anything she can do? Ida's hand rummages through her packs, robotically. "Yuna, please. Please don't--"

    As if her pleas could keep her alive.

<Pose Tracker> Paine has posed.

As part of a group holding back the endless tide of Fiends, Paine had been pushed to her limit. Though she is a veteran of both Operation Mi'ihen the last and greatest Pilgrimage, even Paine has rarely seen Fiends of this power, nor in such number. By the time Omega Weapon and Xenobia fall away from serving as the pillar supporting the Fiends, Paine is bloodied and exhausted... and yet not bruised or cut. A dirty cloth is tied over a wound which no longer exists. Her scalp-hair is pinkened from blood that has no obvious source anymore.

And as Rikku rushes to Yuna's side, Paine shows her own franticness in her own, quieter ways, her eyes flicking back and forth fearfully between Rikku and Yuna. She knows Rikku is not much for healing magic; is that even what Yuna needs? She knows already who can answer that question.

"I'll get Lulu," she promises breathlessly. Is there even time? Yuna does not appear to even be breathing.

But right as she is turning away, Rikku does something Paine never thought she would do. Paine halts in her tracks, turned only halfway away, her own breath now halted as well.

"Come on," she echoes Rikku, softly.

<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.

Hannah is panting, crest graph still gripped tightly as she watches the lance fly forth---watches as it impales Xenobia in place. She forces the unrest that thretens to bubble up in her stomach downwards. This isn't how she likes to use her magic. Injury is one thing, maim is quite another altogether, and to kill...

She desperately hopes it won't feed into whatever is twisting her magic.

All that, and the regret of losing someone who could have done such good, had she chosen to. No words were ever going to reach her but she still felt compelled to try, even... even if it failed, in the end.

Xenobia is finished off, and Hannah finally straightens up, puts her crest graph away, and closes her eyes. She is breathing long and deep, trying to quell the unease within her, to get her magic under control. Slowly, little by little, the unease she radiates recedes. (Whatever it is, it' snot Malevolence, at least. Whether that's a relief or not is a matter of interpretation.)

Zephyr lands on her shoulder finally, and chirps at her inquisitively.

Hannah shakes her head. "I don't know. I'm glad we stopped her at least, but..."

It was easier when she didn't get involved in things, that's for sure.

But after a few moments of wallowing... she notices Cirea has fallen, and rushes over to check on her. She can see that others have fallen, but aside from basic aid, they're much better off with real healing magic, but that's not something she can provide. But she can at least look after someone who needs less extensive help than the others. "I got ya, Cirea."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna's whole body arches from the shock of Rikku's first ever intentional and controlled Thunder spell, which is awful to see. But as she sinks back down, her chest shudders back into the motion of, at least, shallow breaths, and that is wonderful to see instead.

She's still in poor shape, but it's nothing that can't be cured now that she's back.

Probably it would be a good idea to make sure said Cures, spell, alchemy, herbal or otherwise, are administered by literally anyone else. Or, possibly, everyone else, at least of those who have the ability and wish to help. Fair's fair. Anyone who looks can easily spot the ghastly, accumulated lesser version of their own consequences from this battle. There were over a dozen of them and one of her, and as such there is little of her indeed left unscathed. There's even a little wound on her scalp.

Beneath her hands, Rikku can feel Yuna's heart growing steady and strong.

Evidently, too strong for her own good.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku doubts her senses at first. The first time she feels that little thump against her fingers. There's a gasp. And then her face cracks, and it becomes a sob of joy as she looks at Paine. "She's- She's alive-! It's-! She's-!"
 
Overwhelmed, she immediately sets to making a healing potion. The best she's got.
 
"Heals- need! Heal-" She hiccups into a sob, "Yu-Yunie needs healing-!"
 
Presumably, 9999 points of healing later on Yuna from everyone present, or more! You healed Yuna if you wanted to, yes you!
 
"Aaahhh-" She rubs one eye, then another, "-aaahhhh." More sounds, more emotions, not quite words at this point, as she cracks a smile, and sniffs, "Scaring- me- like that."
 
Yuna's not conscious certainly, so she then looks towards Paine, "Come on- Miss Muscles." Rikku says, still emotional, but more cheerfully as she pats Paine on the shoulder, "You're exactly what she needs right now."
 
She's not letting Yuna spend one moment longer in this horrible place than she needs to, especially in this state.