2020-06-12: Original Sin (Pt. 1)

• Log: Original Sin (Pt. 1)
• Cast: Seymour Guado, K.K., Catenna, Lunata Croze, Cyre H. Lorentz, Tipheria Aredor, Tidus, Jacqueline Barber, Venetia Vuong, Seraph Lanval, Josephine Lovelace, Lulu, Claude C. Kenny, Seraph Boudicca, Shalune Amira, Marivel Armitage, Gwen Whitlock, Dash Caskett, Rikku, Ivan, Xantia, Cecilia Adlehyde, Ida Everstead-Rey, Yuna, Seraph Nimue
• Where: Baskar Village
• Date: June 13, 2020
• Summary: Something is growing, inside of the now-blighted Baskar Sacrificial Grounds. Something is brewing in the Baskar Village: a new cult, led by a mysterious outsider named Baaj. Things come to a head.

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<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Baskar Village is quiet.

This may be a blessing, all things considered. The village has been disquieted of late. Stranger newcomers, with their rituals and their religion, have come and evaded the patrols of the city. Many of the youth, though, have found promise never quite discovered in the traditional beliefs -- and those beliefs have been rocked to their core, owing to the corruption of Malevolence that gripped their sacrificial grounds.

It is a quiet afternoon. People stay in their homes; Baskar keep their doors locked, and they seem nervous. Rumors have spread about individuals walking through the village, hoods up, and defying the local militia. A few nervous eyes glance outside, and some wonder even about the Drifters looking into the problems of the city.

So when that quiet is broken by a steady, rumbling drum beat, it is not a surprise, perhaps.

Some come quickly, particularly the younger. Others come slower and more hesitantly. It isn't long before a crowd has gathered in the center of the village. The town's militia seems ill-equipped to push them back. Many have been shoved aside, pushed to the periphery, as a crowd gathers around a wooden platform at the center. There are a dozen youths there, wearing traditional Baskar ritual garb: feather adornments in their hair, richly colored garments, and gems and stones on them. They stand around another figure, and a gleam of white is all they can see.

But the stranger, known only as Baaj, stands ahead of them. He wears a dark grey robe, which is over his lanky and tall frame. Under the robe is the hint of other garb, blue and red in color. His hands stretch out, to greet the crowd, and those hands end in claws. A hint of blue hair can be seen under the hood of the robe, as he starts to speak.

"People of the Baskar!" he calls out, in a voice that is a little higher than one might expect of a man of his height. A voice that, to those from Spira, may be unmistakably familiar and yet seemingly an impossibility. "I have traveled to many lands. I have walked among people, before I came to you. In each land, upon every star, I have found the same thing..."

And his left hand flickers. The fingers and half the palm become a swirl of prismatic lights, of Pyreflies, before they reform again into what might pass for flesh-and-blood.

"...all are trapped in a spiral of death. You have trapped yourselves in a spiral of death, through the Pillars. You sacrifice one, so that others may prosper and live. And yet, this weighs upon you," he says. "You look at your friends, your loved ones, your children, and ask the same question those from my land do: 'Will you be next? Will I be next?'"

He throws his hood back. The distinctive, well-combed yet wild hair of Seymour Guado spills out. Those pale eyes scan across the crowd, and for those who knew him in life, there is something far colder in them. "I have felt your desperation! And I have brought you the release you desire--a way to break this cycle!"

Seymour holds his arms aloft. There is another drum beat.
    TH-WOMMMM
        TH-WOMMMM
            TH-WOMMMM

And the voices of the Baskar youth begin to chant.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

The figure beside Seymour Guado is quiet.

It is a far different thing from the ominous kind of silence that has gripped Baskar Village of late. Where that is an unsteady thing, seized with a nervous energy that stands at the precipice of something desperate and terrible, this person is steady and unwavering. A bulwark of purpose that, by all appearances, looks like they could weather a hurricane unbowed through sheer force of will.

They shine in an armor of pure white that reflects the light of day. Faceless. Steady. There are some here who will recognize them on sight. There are some who might be unsurprised to see them here. Some others, who may be quite the opposite.

But there the so-called Trial Knight stands beside Seymour Guado, their white armor practically glowing against the reflection of the sun, still very much alive.

They are all but a statue in their lack of motion - not carrying any arms, hardly even shifting, saying not a word - but it is the feeling of them that is full of intent, that sheer, unmistakable weight to their presence that says one thing: they are here with purpose.

And that purpose is coming. Swiftly.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata Croze spoke with the Stranger known as 'Baaj' not long ago.

    It left her in an extremely conflicted state; she knew, now, in her heart, who was behind this entire incident. But her heart also told her that the very same reasons that drew her towards Seymour were still there.

    Something in his voice. When he speaks of how Spira is wrapped in a spiral of death...

    That was the voice of someone who was personally affected by it.

    And in not speaking up... in trying to believe in him, when he promised her that he would help her be free of her own unending, eternal punishment...

    Was she being monstrous?

    And what she has seen of the youth, she can't blame them either. Not agreeing in the traditional beliefs of the village, and wanting to rebel against the older generation... there was so much of her in them that she could see.

    She's standing somewhat close to the prophet-like figure as he approaches and makes a declaration.

    Trapped, in that spiral of death...

    Just... like her.

    Sacrificed, that others may live...

    Just like her.

    A way to break the cycle...

    "It... it is true," Lunata speaks up, feeling every ounce of her own morality start to drain from her body. She remembers Josephine berating her about being manipulated. She remembers Shalune and Jacqueline both shouting at her to come back, but...

    Am I... about to make the same mistake?

    "I was from this village! If I was not taken away as a baby... I would have become sacrificed as a Pillar as well!" Lunata shouts. "This can't keep continuing! We have to do something--"

    But then she notices K.K. standing next to Seymour.

    And suddenly the chain of logic completes itself.

    Malevolence ------> K.K.!

    Oh. Oh........... oh.

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

"Why am I utterly and completely unsurprised," Catenna says in the flattest tone imaginable.

Somewhere between a couple of houses, the Moon Shaman is looking on at all of this, keeping herself out of the immediate line of sight but at least giving herself a discreet view of the so-called stranger. The one actually speaking is familiar to her only in the most vague sense of the word; the affairs of the Spirans hadn't really drawn her in beyond a general intention to deal with their Clysmian problem.

The one in the white armour is far more familiar. She breathes a slow sigh and looks towards the large white owl on her shoulder. "Remember when I said that if it turned out to be K.K. and that bitch Seraph Ragnell, someone would have to call in a double homicide?"

<As an authority on matters Filgaian, I grant you clemency on the grounds of self-defence.> Saarda-Shanta's mental tone is similarly dry.

With a grimace, Catenna reaches over her shoulder and draws her bow, inching out of her hiding place just enough that she can begin to line up a shot.

She's as discreet about things as she can, but at the sound of Baskar youth beginning to chant in time with Seymour's raising of his arms, the Moon Shaman bites down to her lower lip. An arrow slips into her hand, and she draws her bow as she begins to take aim. Her eyes focus on the Trial Knight first.

She hesitates. Checks herself.

Not yet. We need to eliminate the figurehead first.

Catenna's aim shifts. She adjusts the set of her shoulders slightly, sighting down her arm and the haft of the arrow. Her skirt and hair ripple in a subtle breeze as she locks her aim on the alleged Baaj - or rather, Seymour.

She doesn't tae the shot yet. She waits for her moment. This may be a bad idea.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Cyre does take the shot, because honestly were you expecting anything different?

"Bastard's probably gonna catch it," the (understandably quite upset) shaman says from a few rooftops across from Catenna. It's a silent shot, at least. The kind of shot that gets fired out of a pneumatically-powered sniper rifle wielded by a priest of the winds. "Swear to Fengalon's fuzzy beard, I should have known. I should have known it was that guy again!"

KK, that is.

Also Seymour Guado, who is presently Cyre's target.

His history with the former is much more turbulent than the latter. After all, it was KK who almost turned the village of Wehaca into a festering pit of disease and spiritual miasma. So why is he sniping the Yevonite?

Well, because he's not wearing a goddamn helmet, that's why! TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY!!

<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.

Tipheria Aredor is equally a stranger here.

She has been to the Baskar village a handful of times, mostly when her work took her nearby. She always got the sense that she wasn't quite welcome, and always moved on without lingering.

But even she has heard of strange things in the shadows. And maybe there's not much of a profit in it, but it's worth looking into anyway. For reasons.

Tipheria was not able to get particularly close. She kind of stands out; her horns are more distinctive than freakish, but she can't just toss on a hooded cloak and sneak in with the youths.

So she is some distance away, in a tree, with a small, unusually-built pair of binoculars. She has remained as still as she could and is watching, wishing she could hear all the words. But she can at least hear the louder calls, and the drum is impossible to miss...

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Baskar Village is quiet, but Tidus is not.
    
    "SEEYYYMOOOOURRRRR!!!"
    
    Well, perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's rewind, just a bit.
    
    After investigating the Baskar Village and the Sacrificial Grounds with his friends, Tidus knew that the recent unease was due to someone named Baaj. A weirdly familiar name, he nonetheless couldn't put his finger on where he might have heard it before. Probably it just sounded familiar because it sounds vaguely Spiran. Many Spiran names have doubled letters in the middle! Rikku, Wakka, Chappu, so on and so forth; Baaj is in good company, there. But in investigating Baaj in turn, Tidus and his friends have found this congregation. As they watch and listen at the edge of the gathering, not quite part of it but not separate either, the mysterious youth pastor speaks... in an all-too-familiar voice.
    
    "Wait," he mutters, as much to himself as to Yuna and the others. "It can't be. It *can't*..." 'We killed him,' he doesn't say--it's a truth too harsh to speak aloud, much like another he doesn't yet know. But then Baaj's hand unforms and reforms with Pyreflies, and he pulls back his hood, and, well. Who on Filgaia would impersonate Seymour, of all people?
    
    Which brings us to now, Tidus leaping up and bellowing in sheer outrage, even though he only has part of an idea of what's going on with this talk about pillars and sacrifices and spirals of death. It's more Grade A Seymour nonsense, so who really cares!! Whether Tidus's yelling can be heard or not over the sudden drums and chanting is another story.
    
    Also K.K. is there but Tidus doesn't know who they are, so to his eyes they're just some tool in a suit of abnormally shiny armor. (Sorry, Trial Knight.)

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

There was much going on in the Kasutho Baskar Village. Jacqueline had heard about the Yevonites' intervention, and had seen what was brewing within the depths of the Sacrifical Altar. Everything is coming to a head - not in the least because of the arrival of a stranger named Baaj who has come to speak.

Jacqueline is... concerned. She doesn't know who he is or what he's after, but she can only assume he's the one who left the message she and the Kinship found. She wanted to know what she's going on, so she's in attendance, having found a heavy, hooded out to conceal her identity when she's ready.

But... she's a little surprised to see Lunata there, standing close to Baaj - no, Seymour Guado. Jacqueline's eyes lock onto her for a moment, breath caught in her throat.

On the one hand, she can't deny that Lunata's right - this can't keep continuing. They do have to do something. But... she doesn't trust Seymour. And she especially doesn't trust the Trial Knight standing next to him.

Distracted as she is, she doesn't notice Catenna readying an arrow, or Cyre firing his shot. ...This is probably a good thing.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Some people, faced with horror and dismay, curl up into themselves - they collapse, they implode. They may find the stability they need by becoming denser.

Some people bear up - their interior structure is such that they may be bent somewhat, bowed, but not fundamentally changed. They may break but they do not collapse.

And some people swell up and expand. It is a risk, in terms of strategy - though it is not something that one determines one day, like a Blitzball game plan or a tactical map. But those who expand are often the ones who make the biggest noises.

Witness Venetia Vuong, noted rockologist. After a momentary spell of rest in the warrens of the depths of the sacrificial grounds, enough time to place the terrible sense of that dark and dreadful EGG fulminating in the depths, she had begun to adapt, to compensate, to find the way to deal with problems that has worked for her throughout history. She got angry.

Anger has kept her going, despite having focused on muscle over cardio in her private workout routines. Emerging into the glare and uncomfortable winds of Filgaia's surface was daunting too, but then there was audible chanting.

"Slag and damnation, he's doing some kind of ritual -- thingy!" Venetia declaims. She then sucks in a huge breath and shouts out at the top of her lungs, "DON'T - LISTEN TO - WHOEVER'S DOWN THERE! YOU IGNORANT OVERDWELLERS, HE'S SELLING YOU A BILL OF GOODS!"

Someone shouts a name. "YES! DISREGARD - SEYMOUR!" Venetia shouts, before slumping momentarily against a rock.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    There is a growing presence of water. Not in the sense of it raining, but... that intangible quality that sort of says, 'it is mos def gonna rain at some point.' The sort of thing that follows the Oracle of Schturdark when their ire is sufficiently raised that they return to the surface from the corrupted Sacrifical Grounds after having had a problematic time purifying the statues that stood vigil before a great chain connected to a most ghastly sight. He has entrusted his Seers with the busywork of holding the line against the spread on the surface as he goes to confirm what he thought was a glimpse of that brilliant, shining white armor of the one who nearly corrupted the essence of Love.
     The Oracle does not yet speak, but he does not hide his presence as such as he walks (reasonably) upright into what would be full view of the gathered villagers... if any of them could see him.
     He takes a sip from his drinking gourd, heavy with but a piece of the very water of Filgaia within as many of the mortal acquaintances and friends he's made since Talise fatefully tripped over him in Meribia.
     They will know by his presence that they have the backing of the world's water in, accordingly, Dealing With This.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    The sacrificial grounds had been awash in Malevolence. That had been clear even from a casual observation, let alone the more in-depth view Josephine Lovelace had given the place, along with Tomamond.

    That had been the rumor that had brought her to this place; the troubles of the Baskar themselves were none of her concern.

    But it had become clear that something was amiss. Not just in the thing they'd found in the depths of the sacrificial grounds--

    --but the situation outside it.

    A drumming sound resonates from the village proper. She can catch enough of what's being said to get a good idea of the situation. Josie hesitates a moment, as if uncertain about her next action.

    Then she sighs, shakes her head, and rushes on towards the crowd.

    "Fengalon's blood, if Little Bear's messed up in this--"

    She gets her answer about five minutes after she gets close enough to see who is on the platform in town.

    All three of them.

    Her response is immediate: "...Goddammit!"

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu is not quick to orget the things she and the others saw in the depths of the Sacrificial Grounds, the chains and the egg and the spirits of the departed. She is not quick to forget the feelings that 'Malevolence' stirred. There is one thing she is quick to do now:

Return to the Baskar Village, heedless of the late hour.

She was a stranger here already before, but now she owns it, pressing in with the others towards the center of town, a dark feeling brewing. Her heavy skirt swirls which each step, her arms at her sides. She is not in the front of her group--

But she can hear that voice, and know it is impossible. She must be hearing incorrectly, or simply finding another voie like his. It is not possible--

Until his hand flickers. This, before his face, proves her to him. The Trial Knight is an unknown to this Guardian; Seymour Guado, however...

She blinks, turning to see Lunata speak up, recognizing her as well. Back to Seymour.

She does not ask 'how'. She knows how. There was no time...

"Protect Yuna," she says, and it is a mantra more than it is an instruction. She immediately moves to block the path to Yuna from the center with her body, looking to the other Guardians. She knows--they know--what happened, that day.

She has no explanation for Tidus this time, none save a word:

"The Unsent."

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

Claude C. Kenny missed a lot of what went down on Spira, largely because he got dropped onto the planet naked and things somehow managed to go downhill from there. He ended up spending a lot of time meditating and working on his blacksmithing - which was a surprisingly relevant skill on a world where machines more complicated than a hammer were anathema.

But when the Guardians say 'go,' then Claude doesn't have time to ask how high, because Cecilia's already out the door and he's got to chase her. Adlehyde's princess is commendably quick to act, but this makes her bloody hard to guard.

The big blonde coughs as he unlimbers a heavy greatsword from his back. The weapon is far from the usual light one-handed blades Claude prefers, and has an odd handle and guard that have been formed out of three heavy pieces of ironwood. He grounds the weapon at his feet and opens up a pouch on his weapons belt. He looks around at the others as he messes with his equipment a bit.

"Uh, I know I only skimmed the cliff notes for Magical Cow Patty Archipelago, but isn't the dude with the handlebar hair that Seymour Guadude?" Claude asks quietly. "I thought he was dead. Isn't he supposed to be dead?" As the big blonde speaks, he is busily swapping out his Federation-issue fingerless gloves for a pear of black leather ones with red stitching on the back. "He doesn't look all that dead to me. You guys probably should have killed him more."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Chains like umbilical cords; when is an egg not quite an egg? Horrors do not cleave to Filgaian design. These horrors are not of Filgaian design.

    Malevolence.

    The sun shines on the village square precisely the way it does not warm the depths of the sacrificial grounds. There is something warm to the crowd, at least, though less in the sense of a sunbeam and more a crackling fire, the sort which prompts any reasonable soul to turn their face away. They are come, Seer and Oracle, and the latter drawn to her full formidable height stares stony over the heads of the crowd.

    "The Trial Knight," is her first remark, quiet and acrid.

    "... Seymour," comes her second.

    She looks to Ida, the worn lines of worry and wrath in her eyes both, and she does not express surprise the both of them are here.

    Not now. She will not give them that.

<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    Shalune has never really thought of herself as the religious sort, which is a bit strange if she stops to look back. She used to go to the Granas church every weekend up until her mother died - not exactly devout, but at least principled. Now, with a Medium on her person at all times, she might just be one of the most pre-eminent summoners of Dinoginos around given the way in which Dinoginos seems to answer her call so readily and in such unusual ways.

    Mostly - despite the array of bizarre technology she now has at her fingertips - she'd like to think she's a grounded sort of person. And if the back-to-back experiences of Granas, Althena, Spira and the Baskars have taught her anything, it's to be wary around grandiose claims. She knows the extent to which some people cling to their faiths. The idea that there might be news of a new Guardian that doesn't require a Pillar... if it were true, it would be great news.

    Something tells her it's not true in any way, and the smell of Malevolence in the air only confirms that.

    Ever since their initial investigation she'd hung around the Baskar Village for a while, camping outside of it at night and trading during the day. Keeping her eyes and ears open for any other rumours or stories, for anyone acting suspiciously enough for her to take note. There is nothing to find - but it means she's there to hear Seymour's unmistakable voice over the huts, and her hands freeze on the countertop of her little stall before she vaults straight over it and breaks into a run.

    Seymour. She didn't realize just how far the image of Lunata's desperation and fear from the time at the Temple has lodged into the back of her mind - how much he used and abused her trust - but she can feel her fists squeezed tight enough on her staff to make her knuckles turn a bright white. She catches Lunata's words, but the pride that wells from them in the way her friend is taking a stance against the village's actions is too quickly overtaken by a wave of fear and concern.

    "Lunie," she starts to call above the crowd, but what is there to say? She doesn't disagree with what she's saying - she just disagrees with the presence of the man next to her. And--

    --what she'd mistaken for a ritual statue finally registers in her mind, and she bodily jolts forwards a step, recognizing the Trial Knight. That wave of fear rolls over her again, greater this time, and any other advice goes straight out the window as the chant rises up around her, filling her with an urgency. She doesn't know why, but she's sure there's only seconds to act. "Lunie! Get away from them! Quick!"

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

ELSEWHERE IN THE VILLAGE OUTSKIRTS

A young blonde man sits on a rooftop, looking out towards the center of town. His crimson eyes steady towards the center of town as a drum beat plays. A militiawoman passes by underfoot, making her way to the center of town. The young man's eyes slant down towards her.

"I wouldn't go that way if I were you." He says.

The woman looks up. "Wh--" She readies a spear, aiming it at the stranger. "What are you doing in our home? Get out or I'll make you get out."

"It's pathetic, isn't it? How easily the souls of your towns are slain and replaced with something monstrous. How all a stranger has to do is whisper sweet promises and there--the heart of your home is devoured in an instant. Even the pious baskar are easily swayed from their purpose. But at least it takes her eyes off of me."

He straightens up, stretches his arms past his head and shakes his hands out as he approaches the edge of the rooftop.

"Your people had the right idea. There is one good use for humans... So you will make a good beginning."

He smiles, fangs bared, as he bears down upon his first target of the night.

Marivel has come riding into the village via the Flutter alongside her pal DASH. It's just, frankly, easier. She hopes out near the center of town, opening up a parasol as she absconds and uses her parasol like mary poppins to float down t owards the center off town.

Her eyes focus on K.K at first. She quirks her head and exhales out a sigh, shaking her head as she lands, snapping the parasol closed.

"Hi I'm Police Chief Armitage and I want you to know that this isn't up to code. You need to have more skull pillars, I say, MORE SKULL PILLARS and this prayer needs to be about three times spookier for what you're trying to do."

She looks over to Tidus and says, "And there isn't even a virgin sacrifice?! I mean, okay, that's a bit OLDEN DAYS even for me, but if we're going to revert to base barbarism, we might as well go ALL THE WAY."

She looks at Seymour, pausing for a moment, then frowning, then saying, "Ah... so that's it. Anyway, sure, let's try to prove my kinsman wrong today by offering you a choice."

She points towards Seymour. "How about you cut this out before it gets any worse than it already is. This religion isn't yours to usurp. Or are we just going to go all Althena Guard because let me tell you... That won't end well, no sir."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    From afar, as benefitting a person that could, loosely, be considered a 'scout'. Binoculars held up to her eyes, Gwen adjusts the strap around her neck, concentrating on the

    Gwen's gut has been wrong many, many times, but in the times it had been right, it had always scored big. When she heard rumblings of several allies going to the Baskar village to investigate further, she had to find out. Her stance had been 'live and let live' before, concerning the village. A courier would not survive in her job if she were to intervene in every case of a cultural conflict. Especially since she didn't really know *what* a Pillar signified, just a general uneasiness she could not place her finger on. It's much easier to draw the line on someone trying to murder someone else, or a robbery, or something so cut and dry that Gwen could stupidly stick her nose in.

    But here she is, sticking her nose into this mess. And oh boy, is it ever more complicated than she gave it credit for.

    It's... that one guy, from the wedding, on Spira. And beside him, a very familiar knight.

    Somehow, this does not surprise the redhead, as she adjusts her binoculars. Ragnell had vaguely alluded as such, even if her answer to Gwen's question could have just as likely to be seen as a negative.

    What does surprise Gwen is the true identity of the Pillar.

    Of course.

    It comes to her then. There were grim stories, scattered among Frea's former library, though not of this tradition specifically. One of the stories that stuck out in Gwen's mind is of the man who, after building a castle, trapped the very architect in its foundations to avoid the castle's secrets being spread. Was it myth? Legend? A story told to entertain and frighten, rather than reality?

    Maybe it's better to ask the village the same questions.

    Gwen's lips grow thin, hearing Lunata's words.

    ".... If it was anyone other than this guy up there.... Damn it, what's his angle, and what's K.K.'s angle?"

    She says this, to her audience. Which, due to her comfortable distance (at least to her), is thankfully 'a rat and a crow, completely uninterested'. Maaaybe somebody else, but she's not looking.

<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.

Unrest in the Baskar tribes is definite cause for ARMS to investigate. The tribe is important in more ways than one.

As an ally to the Valerian cause, the Caskett family has prepped transport for ARMS members to get close to the towns under Baskar control via the Flutter. Not one to fly too close and draw attention, the company is dropped outside the town a ways, and begins to circle the outer skies of the region, listening for pickup. The vessel, while novel in its ability to fly, has little armor, and no weaponry.

"Wish us luck," Dash seys, sliding his two tone helmet and mask on. Choice of weaponry this time is the Active Buster. Drill Arm will have to sit out. No telling if this may turn ugly if the source of unrest is confronted.

Within the town, hooded figures are already calling to a cause. They seem ill in intent. "Huhhh... I don't like this." Now Dash Caskett is a literally walking armored person (construct) and isn't exactly stealthy in his approach. But does watch from afar for the time.

When the veil is lifted, and foe seen, he furrows his brow, the only thing visible of his face. "Its that guy from Spira! What's he doing here?!"

More surprising, several folks native fro mthere arrive as well, including that cool swimming guy.

Dash is glad that Blitzball concussion didn't kill him.

Who is that white armored fellow? He honestly looks more dangerous than Seymour.

Weapons systems are prepped mentally. He otherwise says nothing. Enough people are shouting him down as is. This is gonna get out of hand quickly.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku picks up the pace straight to the center of the town as she hears the drum beat, "Come on come on!" Quickfooting her way into the town square, she hastens to take her place at the back of the crowd. On her tip toes, hopping up and down to try to see. "Who's got them all in a tizzy? Is it that guy?"

They'd investigated, and heard a name, Baaj. The name had stuck out in Rikku's mind for some time - and now she only seems to realize why as the figure speaks, as she hurriedly pats Tidus' shoulder, trying to get his attention. "Oh gosh. Tidus - you remember that place I found you? That place - this guy! That's why it's so familiar!"

And then, the hood comes down. Rikku audibly gasps, stepping back, two hands over her mouth. "No way. It can't be him... he was dead. We took care of him." One hand drops, and Rikku utters a single word that sums up how she feels, "Scary...!"

Her eyes find Yuna, upon her, knowing how hard she had it, facing him. Keeping all of that to herself. "Yunie..." She tries to say something, but can't. Instead nodding to Lulu, a vow, "We will."

Adjusting a clawed gauntlet on one hand, then a target on the other. Tidus sounds his cry, and Rikku... "Hey don't just...!" Lulu though said something that sticks in her mind... the Unsent?

"That... that really happens?"

She's a skeptic by nature, but she has no explanation. No explanation but Lulu's.

Suddenly things are even more terrifying for her, as it feels like her heart is in her throat.

"I thought fiends were the worst that could happen." When she says it, she sounds small, like a kid that just got schooled on some terrible truth. Normally she'd be laughing at Marivel's appearance... but this is far too serious for once for her to do anything but tense up.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan came to this village a short while ago with the group calling itself Tomamond; they weren't able to address the source of the Malevolence, then, so it wasn't a surprise to hear the place was still having troubles...

But returning to find Seymour Guado here, calling out to the crowd, accompanied by Ragnell's extremely mysterious knight friend... ... is... well, puzzling. It feels like some fateful connecting of threads he hadn't even begun to untangle individually.

Regardless, there's something chilling in the energy here, and in the promise of that speech, and considering the things that had recently come to light about Seymour Guado the last he heard of him...

Well, Ivan may be willing to wait a moment longer to learn what in the world is going on, but the stirrings in the crowd suggest chaos is about to break loose, either way....

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Xantia was late to discover what was happening with this Basker village. Only once things had escalated to where the Sacrificial Grounds were showing obvious signs of turning into a Malevolent Domain did she go there to look into things. This being Xantia, 'look into things' means rushing in by herself to punch her way to the bottom of it. Luckily she had a little help from the Oracle of Schturdark and one of his seers, or that might not have gone so well.

Having done what damage they could there, Xantia immediately headed for the village proper to get some answers. They had to know something was happening there. What was it that they were trying to do? And who, exactly, is 'they' anyway?

NOT LONG AGO

Xantia regards the egg-shaped object covered in black ooze with narrow eyes. "So, all of this, it was done just for... whatever this is? That's exactly the kind of nonsense that K.K. would do."

NOW

"I knew it, I knew it, I just knew it!"

The voice comes from a distance, Xantia having already spotted that unmistakable white armor-clad figure from quite the ways off. Displaying her usual level of subtlety, she stretches her right arm to the side, activating her ARM, then holding the red energy blade in front of her as she continues her approach. Though not with the level of gusto that Tidus displays: hers is comparatively calm, yet purposeful.

Yes, there's a crowd between her and K.K.. She must have noticed that, but she's keeping her deathly serious eyes squarely on the Trial Knight. Whoever else is there is a distant secondary concern.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

This is not, strictly, a place for Cecilia Adlehyde. She is not Princess here, and though the Guardians may acknowledge her as Innocent One, and the Ignasian Baskar mostly accept that, she has not made the same connections with the Aquvy Tribe. It is not with the posture of a person with power that the traveling Shaman watches the gathering. But it is with a purpose. The Guardians do not speak clearly or much, these days, but still she hears the voice of the world calling her to attend to something direly wrong.

She glances to Claude beside her, fingers twitching as she palms the Crest that will call her staff to hand.

"If the planet weren't screaming I'd almost think the man had a point," she mutters to Claude, before forcing authority into the square of her stance and striding forward. "The Trial Knight isn't a great look either," she decides. "I had hoped they got destroyed in the Leyline."

The elders and militia have lost control of this, but she has seen her city burn and mountains scream with hatred. So when her Ark Scepter flashes into being in her hands and thumps firmly against the dirt, she barks an order, trying to assert some scrap of control. Hoping she can stop at least some of the bloodshed she can tell is coming: "Stop this at once!"

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    From afar, as benefitting a person that could, loosely, be considered a 'scout', is one Gwen Whitlock. Binoculars held up to her eyes, Gwen adjusts the strap around her neck, concentrating on the scene in front of her.

    Gwen's gut has been wrong many, many times, but in the times it had been right, it had always scored big. When she heard rumblings of several allies going to the Baskar village to investigate further, she had to find out. Her stance had been 'live and let live' before, concerning the village. A courier would not survive in her job if she were to intervene in every case of a cultural conflict. Especially since she didn't really know *what* a Pillar signified, just a general uneasiness she could not place her finger on. It's much easier to draw the line on someone trying to murder someone else, or a robbery, or something so cut and dry that Gwen could stupidly stick her nose in.

    But here she is, sticking her nose into this mess. And oh boy, is it ever more complicated than she gave it credit for.

    It's... that one guy, from the wedding, on Spira. And beside him, a very familiar knight.

    Somehow, this does not surprise the redhead, as she adjusts her binoculars. Ragnell had vaguely alluded as such, even if her answer to Gwen's question could have just as likely to be seen as a negative.

    What does surprise Gwen is the true identity of the Pillar.

    Of course.

    It comes to her then. There were grim stories, scattered among Frea's former library, though not of this tradition specifically. One of the stories that stuck out in Gwen's mind is of the man who, after building a castle, trapped the very architect in its foundations to avoid the castle's secrets being spread. Was it myth? Legend? A story told to entertain and frighten, rather than reality?

    Maybe it's better to ask the village the same questions.

    Gwen's lips grow thin, hearing Lunata's words.

    ".... If it was anyone other than this guy up there.... Damn it, what's his angle, and what's K.K.'s angle?"

    She says this, to her audience. Which, due to her comfortable distance (at least to her), is thankfully 'a rat and a crow, completely uninterested'. Maaaybe somebody else, but she's not looking.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

When Yuna was thrust from the remains of Macalania Temple, through a portal, to the distant and unknown realm of Filgaia, it was with new burdens. Her silences have gained another layer, one that has persisted through the gentle smiles that an unexpected detour and its many adventures provided. She has many regrets that go unspoken because they CANNOT be spoken, and these are heavy things.

Chief among them is Seymour's death, but even more profoundly than that, Yuna regrets not being able to Send him.

She has no idea how much more she's about to regret that.

For now, however, it lingers with her as a summoner, and speaker for the dead, and fiancee, and... friend. As Seymour's father was failed, so too was his son. The thought of his soul lingering in that icy, war-torn place, unable to find rest, is torturous to her. SHE did that. She did that to HIM. She failed him twice.

Originally she came to the Baskar village in the hopes of offering aid, and in return learning more of the cruel sorceries that bind the Fayth at Kilika, but quickly she became drawn into their deeper and more complex troubles; it was then, for the first time in a little while, that she thought of Seymour in life, rather than in death. Seeing Spiran script in this most unlikely place brought him swimming before her eyes. He's the opposite of home, but... its largest and most recent symbol, all the same.

Seymour isn't just a corpse in her heart, and he isn't ONLY a murderer and dark conspirator, either. He is soaring oratory and an amused smile. He's in a Lucan villa and on the deathly Crusader shores. He's gazing at her with unsettling but unmistakable intensity. He's a soft whisper in her ear.

Only minutes ago, she tried and failed to make up for her failure -- but whatever darkness powers the horror at the Sacrificial Altar is self-evidently something that cannot be Sent; or, at least, something SHE cannot Send. She tried and tried to free the malevolent spirits from their bondage. Even now her feet are swollen and bloody within her boots.

Perhaps this is why she trails behind her group.

When he speaks, long before he shows his face, she is stricken. By his words, and their layered meaning, some highly relevant to her personally, but mostly just by his voice. She wasn't ready to hear it again. Nor was she ready to hear the many comments of the other Drifters -- some grim, some humorous. Some of them cut her like knives.

Tidus' shout is like a clarion call, and it releases her from her -- let's not call it hesitation, rather she is overwrought -- reverie.

This doesn't have to be complicated.

She has a duty. A duty to the others, a duty to herself.

Most of all, a duty to him.

"Yes," she replies quietly to Rikku. This really happens.

She kicks off her boots while she retrieves and extends her summoner's wand, raising it above the crowd so that it is clearly visible to the platform and impossible to mistake in the intention of its angle:

The first position of the Sending.

Perhaps she cannot Send on Filgaia. Perhaps she's about to fail him yet again.

But she has to try.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Nimue has posed.

Nimue has absolutely no idea what's going on! She was taking a perfectly good nap in someone's bag, as she routinely does. Specifically Marivel's bag, because that's been a consistent source of comfort for her.

The gut feeling of the presence of Malevolence is what gets her to stop being in Marivel's bag; even though she consistently takes precautions and protects herself to the greatest extent she's able, she's... still afraid, fundamentally. She takes a few seconds to get her bearings, looking from side to side, blearily rubbing at her face. "What's with all the *chanting*?" she mumbles, stretching out --

-- and then she sees the Trial Knight. She isn't even sure where she stands with the imposing figure, but given the circumstances... that's a little secondary. What's happening here is *obviously* bad, and what's more, it's a type of bad she has an increasingly difficult time letting go of.

She has the same question Gwen does. However, the nature of her familiarity means...

"HEY! What's your angle here?!" she shouts to the Trial Knight, because... ... of course she does.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    The militia seem to be out of their depth--and they are, when faced with the combined forces of Seymour Guado, the Trial Knight, and a legion of righteously angry young people. Ida has told herself, repeatedly, that she is not here to solve the villagers' problem for them. What she saw in the depths of the Sacrificial Grounds is a horror, but Ida knows that kind of horror just doesn't spring into being on its own. As 'Baaj' speaks on the cycle, Ida feels that same righteous anger swelling within her own heart. The young people of this village have every right to act against a practice they view as an abomination.

    In raising himself up as their leader, Seymour has taken that hope, that dynamo of societal change, and twisted it to his own ends. Ida takes the ember of her anger, and kindles it.

    Ida steps out from between a pair of militiamen, her gait slow and confident. As others take aim, or make declarations, Ida is deceptively calm. She does not shout, or hurl accusations. She instead locks eyes on Lunata, there at Seymour's side, and offers her a sad, knowing smile. Then she turns to the Trial Knight. The fact that she is not surprised at K.K.'s sudden reappearance is telling. She looks back at Boudicca, answering her partner's worry with as reassuring a smile as she can manage.

    "Trial Knight," Ida says. "You know why we are here. Why Boudicca and I are here." Her gaze locks on K.K.'s, unflinching. There is no trace of the woman who saw the Trial Knight as a monster out to get her.

    "This will not stand." Ida does not have a scepter to plant dramatically like Cecilia does, but there's the faintest glimmer in her eyes. A flickering ember.

    Ida is afraid. But for once, that fear is fuel, and not fire.

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour looks across the crowd. His eyes seem to, with an almost eerie precision, find the ARMs trained on him. He doesn't even blink to find guns trained on him. He shifts his position, a little -- changes just so he puts himself between the crowd and the Baskar youths, so dressed for a ritual behind them. There is a flash of irritation, as he looks at Venetia, but his attention is on the situation.

But really, it is one shout that makes him look: his name. He looks at Tidus, yes -- but as he did in life, there is that callous disregard for the youth. He looks at him and regards him akin to a kitchen timer going off: time to get on with this.

He looks at Marivel. He doesn't, really, know what code is. "This is not religion. This is truth."

He turns to look at the youths behind him and nods.

"It is time!" Seymour calls out louder, this time, so that his voice carries over the entire square of the village. His voice is almost unnatural in its volume, and a Pyreflies swirl up around him, as his voice projects. "It is time to call upon your fate--upon that which will break this cycle! Call upon that which your hopelessness has created! Feel it!"

His clarion call becomes a shout. "SUMMON IT!"

"REK'GORA, THE CLYSMIAN OF DESPERATION!"

The chanting behind him grows stronger and louder. The drumming becomes more frenetic and more rapid, the beats hammering harder and faster than a heartbeat that Seymour now lacks. He steps forward, to the edge of the stage, and scans the crowd -- but his pale eyes search until he finds two faces. The first is Lunata standing next to him, and he keeps smiling, but there is something wild in that smile. And then, his eyes find Yuna, and there is something menacing.

"You," he says to those assembled, "will not interrupt their salvation!"

The Pyreflies around him explode outward. His body shakes and convulses, in a way that should seem painful, especially as his neck and back arch sharply. Seymour vanishes into a swirl of prismatic light that burns white at the center, while his body shifts. Flesh becomes pale, mottled, and hardened like stone. His robe seems to merge into his chest, and Seymour lifts off the ground -- feet hanging down, almost useless.

Behind him, a stone altar forms: a massive, circular thing, inscribed with Yevonite characters. It is white, save for where it is pale violet, his hair and the back of his head merge into it. The face is unmistakably Seymour's. His voice is the same.

"Come, Trial Knight!" he bellows. "Let us grant them the freedom that they so desperately crave!"

DC: Seymour Guado switches forms to Seymour Natus!

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

"Get of the blighted spiral."

It is the first and perhaps only thing K.K. has said since their arrival -- since the rushed arrival of -all- the Drifters from both the sacrificial grounds and the town proper. The steady silence that surrounds the knight is shattered by those five simple words, delivered like a condemnation.

"Cursed spawn of the unliving land."

Delivered precisely as Yuna and her companions arrive.

The so-called Adversary's head cants towards the right in an almost owlish tilt, as if curiously assessing the Spirans each in turn. Clawed, gauntleted fingers twitch once, twice, at K.K.'s sides.

But if they have more to say, it is interrupted by Marivel's arrival and subsequent soliloquy as to the dreary nature of their dreadful stage. The knight actually takes the time to look around them, in quiet assessment.

"... No," they decide, after a time,

"'Tis basest folly. Skulls would make for a shoddy pillar for any circumstance."

And with that utterly unerring assessment done, the weight of their stare moves past the parasol-porting personage of Marivel, to focus on--

"The Beast has shed its stony skin."

--Boudicca.

They recognize her immediately, even without the statue to hide her true form. The weight of their stare is a thing more felt than seen as it focuses upon the Seraph of Wind.

"But have you shed your cage, I wonder?"

And as more, familiar faces arrive, the knight's attention shifts. There is a subtle change in their demeanor. A steel that was not there a moment ago. A readiness. The slightest pivoting of their booted heels. The smallest sweep of their right hand. Their attention falls on Lanval, for a moment, thoughtful.

"'Tis a selfsame change in you too, Seraph," they muse, before their attention turns again, towards Nimue. Her question draws not even the slightest pause.

"'Tis the same as it ever has been. What has changed, Nimue, since last we encountered one another?"

It could be a rhetorical question. Should be. And yet the way the knight phrases it, the subtleties of the tinny tone behind it--

--almost demands an answer.

Once more, though, does their attention shift. Towards Josephine. Towards Xantia in the distance.

Towards Ida, as she makes her declaration.

Fingers curl towards a clench.

"Then stand not. Words are naught but air."

There is no change in K.K., this time; for those who fought them at Love's Cradle, that raw expulsion of power that they summoned forth is not here today. Their armor does not begin to glow as it did then. Althena's Blessing does not churn around them like a force of nature unto itself. For whatever reason, all that terrifying power they can bring to bear is not brought today.

"So be it."

But it does not make it any less dangerous as they stretch their right, clawed hand forward to summon forth a surge of coagulating white light, condensing into the shape of a graceful, dangerous spear. It does not make it any less dangerous as they point the tip of that spear at their chosen enemies, helmed face reflecting nothing but their stares as their gauntleted fingertips spasm along the shaft of their weapon.

"Strike, then," they intone.

"Break yourselves upon my body. We shall see how far you have come."

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Catenna doesn't have time to fire off an arrow. There are too many pyreflies whirling around Seymour for her to actually get her shot off cleanly. Lowering her bow, she clicks her teeth together and--

'REK'GORA, THE CLYSMIAN OF DESPERATION'

"Oh, for the love of," Catenna manages before clicking her teeth together with a hiss.

From Catenna's shoulder, Saarda-Shanta hoots with alarm and takes to the air with a startled beat of wings. <That thing should not be called forth! This can't-->

Pyreflies burst, and Seymour changes. The altar bursts into being, as if the man is somehow half-statue now. Catenna's teeth grind together. She can feel that in a way she'd normally feel more familiar and more friendly sensations from the spirits that guide her life.

This one is far less friendly. All she can do is dart forward, her hand dropping to the Silver Medium hanging firmly at her hip. It practically throbs in her hand, as if to let her share a little fragment of the planet's anguish at what's about to unfold.

For a moment, the urge to fire off some sort of sassy challenge strikes her. She opens her mouth a little.

Words don't come immediately. She grimaces, then just darts the rest of the way forward and snaps her hand out. Instead of a challenge, what she shouts is a word of power. It rings in the air, incomprehensible unless one speaks Zortroan.

Seymour will feel the force of what's happening immediately. There is no visual effect to the spell - merely a sudden sense of immense exhaustion. Everything begins to seem a little slower and heavier, as if something is trying to slow his world down. Gravitational forces do their work as Catenna keeps her hand extended, focusing not on crushing him, but on trying to slow his mind down.

Only then does she find the words she wants, and the cold, deflating tone to speak them in. "You're a fool. You should know from your people's dealings with Obsession that the path you're walking is insanity."

GS: Catenna has attacked Seymour Guado with Feeble Mind!
GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Catenna has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Catenna's Feeble Mind for 0 hit points!
GS: Mute! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Infect!! All debuffs' duration extended by 2 rounds!!

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    A LOT of things happen all at once.

    Cyre actually takes a shot at Seymour and if you haven't been standing next to someone when they get sniped at by a sniper rifle, whoamg! There's a lot of people that she knows who's turned up here! And it's all going to inevitably come to an armed conflict!

    Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!

    Josephine is there, Jacqueline and Shalune-- Shalune's calling out to her. Lunie! Get away from them! Quick!

    Lunata kind of darts to the ground in the wake of the shot, incredibly confused. Oh geez, oh geez!

    He continues to call -- call for... a Clysmian of Desperation?

    Clysmian...

    Suddenly it dawns upon her what he means by 'releasing her' with another spirit. Her face falls further as she looks towards Shalune again, then towards the Spiran gathering as well -- as Tidus, Lulu, Rikku and Yuna all speak up...

    Lady Yuna... killed him.

    She was in the right to, wasn't she?

    That is being... moral... righteous...

    "T-this... this isn't right... none of this is right," Lunata stammers weakly as she gets up off the ground again. She clenches her hand to her chest as she yells, "I just want the youths from this village to not have to suffer anymore! Why?!"

    Now more than ever, she feels the limitations of her body. She wants to cry, she wants to break down and sob...

    This isn't the time for that.

    "How is creating another Sin going to make anything better...?! You can't just..."

    She looks towards Shalune, towards Jacqueline, and Josephine. She might need some help. Some urging. Lest this become another Macalania.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    In truth, Tidus doesn't really need Lulu's glib explanation. Somehow, in his gut, he just knew. He doesn't even connect it the way that Lulu does, that Yuna had never gotten a chance to properly Send Seymour, that of course this was the result. As soon as Tidus saw the pyreflies, he just knew.
    
    Of course, that doesn't mean he knows how he knows, so Lulu's explanation is appreciated, on some level beneath the instant incandescent fury, all the same.
    
    "Why is he HERE, though?!" Tidus demands, as if any of them could answer that. "He died on Spira! How'd he end up on Filgaia?!" Rikku breaks him from his anger by patting him on the shoulder and reminding him of the temple where she found him, back when he'd first been expelled from Zanarkand. Tidus's eyes widen. "Wha--that place? Damn! You're right! But what's it got to do with *him*?" He shakes his head as Lulu reminds them all of their purpose. "Doesn't matter, doesn't matter! You're right, we gotta protect Yuna!" Instantly his sword is in hand, and he positions himself between her and Seymour as Yuna takes up the stance for Sending. Will it work? Who even knows!! But, as Yuna silently acknowledged, they have to try.
    
    No, she has to try, Tidus reminds himself. She's the only one who can. No matter how unfair that is.
    
    Meanwhile, Seymour looks at Tidus like one might a bug crawling up a window. In other news, Seymour's still an asshole!! Nice to know that there are some things even death can't change. And when he announces that this ritual is to summon a Clysmian, one of Desperation... "What?! What the heck is that?!" But, yet again, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, it's clearly bad news, and they've got to stop it. They've got to stop Seymour, who... just transformed into... a giant stone head...?! Tidus's eyes widen in a mental state that can be best summed up as ?!. Rikku said that she thought the worst the Unsent could become were fiends; is that what this is? Some horrible combination of human and fiend? ...and Guado, technically?
    
    If it is, then their objective is clear. "C'mon! We just gotta beat the crap out of him until Yuna can Send him!" he shouts to his fellow Guardians. "Let's get 'im!!"
    
    Despite his aggressive opening call, there's a lot of people between here and Seymour. Tidus thus opens not by trying to wade through the throng, but by casting a spell--specifically, Haste, on Yuna, so that she can get through the Sending dance twice as fast. Nobody's gonna cut them off first this time.

GS: Tidus has attacked Yuna with Haste!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Tidus's Haste for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst and Quick! applied to Yuna!

<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.

Tipheria isn't sure what she expected to see through her binoculars, but this wasn't it. The pyreflies hurt her eyes, though she doesn't know what they are - Tipheria has never been to Spira. She hasn't heard the word of Yevon, or the need to Send the dead and dying. She doesn't recognize K.K. either; to her, they're just someone in strange armour.

She says a bad word under her breath, hangs her ARM-binoculars on their strap, and leaps from the tree, vanishing.

A few moments later, a spear falls out of the sky, aimed directly at the stone altar with Seymour's face on it. Bare instants after *that*, Tipheria follows it, driving her weight down on the hopefully-embedded spear to make it penetrate, then kicks off with spear in hand, flipping to land behind him. It. Whichever.

"I've got no use for salvation," she says, "and definitely none for whatever you're pulling in this place. It stinks! I can smell it from here, and I recognize someone who's asking like a monster when I see one!"

"Why don't I free your FACE instead?"

GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Seymour Guado with Sky Diver!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

Claude C. Kenny has seen a lot of strange things in his time upon Cow Patty Planet, Magical Cow Patty Planet, and Magical Cow Patty Planet Again Only This Time It's Islands. He has fought all kinds of freakish monsters with equally freaky powers. As a member of the Pangalactic Federation, he has also had his anthropomorphic biases broken in all sorts of interesting and fascinating ways.

In all this time, he has never seen a transforming boss before. He stops tugging at his gloves and sort of... stares for a second. "Huh," he offers, thoughtfully.

The big blonde shakes his head and advances forward, right hand yanking his greatsword out of the earth as he charges. The tip of the heavy blade tears a furrow through the ground for several inches before Claude heaves the blade upward, shouldering it behind his body. He takes a short hop in the air, which allows him to drawing his sidearm from its holster in a smooth, practiced motion.

Claude lands without missing a beat, then lifts the heavy Lancaster pistol and aims it vaguely at Seymour's centre mass. With a target that size, even on the run, it's a bit like a turkey shoot. Claude fires all four barrels at once, the hand cannon discharging with a loud roar; he rides the momentum into another short turn-and-hop that allows him to reholster the weapon and keep moving forward.

GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Seymour Guado with Lancaster Pistol!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Venetia sees and hears other people explain things as she huffs for breath. Desperate breath. Come on, she tells herself, you can't call the damn Gear so you're going to have to do something about this. Her eyes flick towards Tidus, who recognized the man out there. Seymour, she thinks.

She spots Claude and straightens up, moving towards him. She pauses for a moment as something tickles at the edges of her perception, eyes flicking past the lace of her mask towards the lady Summoner, but then she has to get into her hip bag and bring out her rod of command and/or skull-staving.

"You saw this man die?" Venetia asks, half-shouts because that's just how she is. Seymour begins to sanctify himself --

"Enough of this," Venetia says, grabbing the first Crest Graph she can grab. FOR BETTER OR WORSE, it isn't Force Crusher, but definitely for the better: She doesn't drop it. She grasps the graph in one hand, raises the rod aloft, and with only a momentary struggle against fatigue, draws within...

Claude fires his weapon with sufficient force and vigor that Venetia does a double take, having heretofore not seen Claude draw iron. The spell fires nonetheless: A glittering gold-and-blue pattern forming in front of her, before it ruptures into shards of agate and turquoise, jagged and sparkling, aimed towards the metamorphising figure.

"That altar's not just rock shaping," Venetia reports, "though that's probably a smidge ****ing obvious right now, isn't it."

GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Seymour Guado with Faceter!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Rek'Gora, the Clysmian of Desperation. Jacqueline's eyes opens wide.

"N-no!" She shouts, shaking her head. She rushes forward through the crowd, pulling at her hood and throwing it off. No point in hiding her identity if she's about to make a move. "Is that what that egg is!? You're just going to summon another Sin! Why on earth would you want that!?"

Sure, Rek'Gora and Sin are probably not exactly the same - but it's the best comparison she can make that she's sure he'll understand.

But... as she moved forward, her eyes find Lunata, going through a crisis. She feels momentarily conflicted... but, then her priorities reassert themselves. She looks in Catenna's direction.

"Catenna! Stay safe, okay?" She requests, then rushes in Lunata's direction - keeping her stance low to avoid any errant attacks.

"Lunata... I know. I know, and I don't blame you..." She says, shaking her head. She looks to the side, then, toward Seymour.

"...You didn't tell her anything, did you? She trusts you! How could you...?" Jacqueline says. She doesn't attack him directly, but... there's a venom to her voice that's rarely present.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    The Trial Knight demonstrates with immediacy why Boudicca swallowed down her surprise, until it was only worry in her eyes.

    But...

    But there is Ida, beside her, and her smile brought a smile from the Seraph, too, even if it faded when she looked back up to Seymour and K.K. "Wonder as you like," she answers them, firm. "I owe you no answer."

    (She does not tell them they were wrong, and if there is a shade of discomfort in the shutdown, perhaps that's its own story.)

    With her denial she looks to Nimue, a wordless exchange.

    And then to Ida. "None but this --" the orange flecks in her green cape flare like embers lit alight, a click of her fingers like flint to stone and there is fire, the same thing K.K. used to bring her to her knees so long ago. It consumes oxygen; it flares; it curls out, from her hand to Ida's own armaments. "-- we stand in your path!"

GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Smoke Sigil!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraph Boudicca assumes the Stoic stance!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Smoke Sigil for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

"When someone dies an unclean death," Lulu explains, "Sometimes... they cling to life, after their death."

An unclean death; they would all remember it. But Lulu's eyes remain on Seymour, as she speaks; she has only so much explanation that she can give, for this is beyond even her experience.

She knows nothing of this 'Clysmian.' But she sees that wild look--and the menace in his gaze. The convlusions, the shift of pyreflies...

"Yuna!" Lulu calls. It is a warning; it is perhaps like a prayer itself, insofar as the black mage is one for them. Tidus has it; Yuna is the only one who can truly stop him, now.

But Lulu may be able to slow him. "Right," Lulu says. "I'm on it."

"Be careful," Lulu warns the others. "He was already a powerful mage in life." Venetia asks, and Lulu inclines her head. "We saw him die." She steps forward, at that. Her eyes scan only briefly to Lunata again and to the Trial Knight, taking account of their places; if they must be enemies, so be it. Focus and duty are what keep her in the moment--

Because how could she not be given pause by an Unsent Maester of Yevon, one for whom they are responsible?

"I don't know what you're trying to accomplish," Lulu says, raising her voice. "But we will do what we must." Lulu raises her hand, and power collects--before a burst of icy fury erupts from the ground near Seymour, a great frigid tower that exists only for the moment.

GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Blizzara!
GS: Lulu has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Lulu assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Sky Diver for 63 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Tipheria Aredor!

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

'REK'GORA, THE CLYSMIAN OF DESPERATION'

"You...!" Seymour is still alive, even after being shot. He should have known-- there's no way something like him would die so easily, even if it was killed! But is he really Unsent, or is he just some kind of stubborn undying tree-man?

But really, are they even very different?

As Seymour reveals, they're both monsters in the end.

The Guado transforms into some kind of hideous mockery of religious piety. Cyre curses under his breath as the raw wrongness of the thing he becomes roils across him, but it's not the Meister who he's here to fight.

"Do you think this is a joke, Trial Knight!?" Cyre shouts as he leaps from his rooftop perch. Wind swirls around his arms and legs as he descends, wrapping them like gauntlets of flesh-flaying armor. "First you try to kill the planet directly, now... Now this!? The amount of destruction that a Clysmian would inflict upon Filgaia is unthinkable! What do you even stand to gain here!?"

What had he... ever stood to gain?

Everything the Trial Knight does seems to breed suffering. Every goal causes pain. There is no time to think about it. This ritual must end before they can call that monster into the world. Cyre roars, launching a swift series of mid-air roundhouse kicks as he falls... That, instead of making physical contact, hurl sheets of stone-grinding wind at the Trial Knight.

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked K.K. with Stepping Wind!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna's grip on her summoner's rod adjusts even as she takes it through its first swing -- out of the dance of death, and into the... okay, Summoning is ALSO a dance of death. All of Yuna's dances are dances of death. Possibly not everything Seymour's been saying is COMPLETELY off-base.

In any case, despite Tidus' hopes and speed flowing through her, she can't Send Seymour until they subdue him, not after he evolves from a more quiescent and normal-looking appearance into something... more. And less. A Seymour whose outside matches an inside clearly even more bereft of humanity than it was in life... makes things easier, in the same way Tidus' shout made things easier. In the same way that Lunata screaming -- shockingly -- that Seymour is trying to create another Sin, makes things easier.

But it is also harder. It's hard, to see him this way. It's hard, to imagine him, a summoner, with such an intention.

...the egg...

!!!!!!!

Behind Yuna's polychromatic gaze, overflowing with alarm, another soul comes into soothing focus.

COMFORT
COURAGE
COMPANIONSHIP

 <SoundTracker> Valefor's Theme - Wings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTXDCh2YiA

Thrusting her arms towards the sky, a Yevonite sigil the equal of Seymour's altar for complexity inscribes itself, aglow, around her bare feet. It pulses four times, disgorging spheres of brilliant light, of purest energy, high into the air. They impact and detonate, and out of that explosion, the aeon of sky unfurls her glorious wings.

VALEFOR soars above Filgaia for the first time.

"Look out!" her summoner warns the group, a moment before she FLAPS those immensely beautiful creations. Though still on the ground, Yuna's heart flies with her.

And their souls thunder together, as sonic energy crashes downwards towards Seymour, loud enough to drown out the chanting and drumming, at least for a moment, leaving only ringing ears and the enforced silence of comparative quiet.

"I'm sorry," Yuna murmurs into that silence. It doesn't matter who she said it to. Nobody can hear her.

DC: Yuna switches forms to Valefor!

GS: Yuna spends 1 Combo on Interrupt!
GS: Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with Sonic Wings!
GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Lancaster Pistol for 61 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado's Force Guard activates!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"I don't know!" Rikku bleats at Tidus, "Maybe he came through the Shrine like us?!" That's a grim thought, that he followed them, but it feels like he's not here for them too. It's bigger "And well there's still a lot of that place we don't know about." She hedges, unwilling to say the real significance of that place right now. She's already betrayed her people, but that's like next level betrayal.

Yuna affirms it. Between Lulu and Yuna... she believes that this is possible. And it grows tight in her chest. And there is Yuna right there, stepping up to the fore - ready to send him. She's always watched Yuna in admiration during those times. It is a ritual she feels... apart from, as someone who grew up outside of Yevon. Now though, she must Guard her while she does it.

In some strange way, as frightened as she is; it makes her feel that much closer to Yuna.

"Oh gosh don't let him summon anything!" Rikku says, horrified at his call, starting to push through the crowd. She doesn't recognize Rek'Gora, or the word Clysmian, but she knows him summoning anything could destroy them.

Pyreflies burst forth, and Rikku gasps at his grey mottled skin. His inhuman appearance, like stone. Yet suddenly Yuna summons Valefor. And fear is replaced by awe. Then awe becomes anger, as a thought occurs to her.

"Hey Seymour - got something special for you!" Pitching back an arm, suddenly an object appears in her hand, and with a twitch of her finger she pulls the pin out of the grenade.

It hurls through the air, as Rikku suddenly brings forth a fingertip, pointing it like a gun. The object detonates, bursting into a quick spreading miasma of caustic azure, that makes it uncomfortable to breathe, uncomfortable to talk and uncomfortable to summon magical power. A simple Al Bhed trick to combat magic users and leave them open.

"What Lulu said! Though I just remembered - I'm not done being mad at you for the position you put Yunie in!"

Maybe he doesn't know it, and maybe she doesn't say it but Rikku can't stop thinking about how this patricidal jerk might have been one of her...

...in-laws.

Unacceptable.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Nimue has posed.

Nimue is taken aback by the question. She blinks once, twice, and then answers their question the only way she can:

"I stopped being tired of being alive, mostly!" That rings a little hollow to Nimue's ears, so she awkwardly appends, "Well. I'm. *Trying* to stop being tired of being alive. It's a process! But I guess nothing's changed for you, huh?"

Which means... they're on opposite sides now. Nimue's a little sad about that -- so long ago, she said she was committed to that path. ... then again -- has a wind Seraph ever REALLY committed to anything? Is it not their nature to change just as the wind does?

She looks back to Boudicca, lips slightly pursing for a moment. "... All right!" she says, nodding to herself. "I still don't really know what's going on -- but I'm pretty sure it's a problem so I'm just gonna follow my gut!"

With a loud snap of her fingers, she points at Marivel. A high-speed wind starts to gather around Marivel; it augments any movement she chooses to make, the wind quite literally at her back now. Nimue takes a split-second to give *herself* much the same treatment... because, frankly, magic takes a lot out of her in the short term and she's going to need a sec.

GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Use: Silence Grenade!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Seraph Nimue has attacked Marivel Armitage with Vigorous Shamal!
GS: Seraph Nimue has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraph Nimue has completed her action.
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Stepping Wind for 71 hit points!
GS: Riposte! applied to Cyre H. Lorentz!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    There's just not much Gwen can say to assess the true scope of what's going on, besides: 'this is unexpected'. It's taking a sacrificial pillar and replacing it with *a temple*.

    The youth behind Seymour may be at risk, but it's Seymour's words that draw Gwen's attention back to the Trial Knight.

    'Let us grant them the freedom that they so desperately crave!'

    With an automatic grace, Gwen loads a bullet into her ARM's chamber, twisting her ARM around with a smooth, practiced motion. She aims, a calm, blue-grey eye aligned with her straightened right arm, metallic palm exposed to open air.

    And in the process of aiming, she accounts for the armor, the chaotic mess that is now Seymour right by him, and the distance between K.K. and her hidden spot of choice.

    She. Is. Too. Far. Away.

    Leaping over the bundle of crates that accounted for Gwen's hiding spot onto the ground below, the courier makes a few choice swears, ending with, "_Damn it_! This is what I get for stayin' back!"

    A bit of running is needed. It will place her closer to harm's way, yes, but-! There.

    Steadying herself with one foot on a boulder, Gwen aims, mindful of the approach of her companions towards the Trial Knight.

    If she aims correctly, it could only take one bullet.

    ....

    Oh.

    Gwen would have rarely been this quick to shoot in this manner before, she dully realizes, as the bullet leaves her palm.

    ... But this is the Trial Knight, she then quickly rationalizes.

GS: Seymour Guado completely evades a hit from Venetia Vuong's Faceter!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked K.K. with Crackshot!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    Shalune ultimately has no idea what's happening as the cacophonous chant lifts higher and higher. Part of her wonders at the fact that it feels a little like a Material summon - the air is charged in the same sort of way, and she can almost feel a pulse beneath her if she doesn't think about it too far. But something about it is all wrong at the same time, and it's only when Seymour chants the name that she understands why.

    In the moments afterwards, Shalune stares in shock. From where she's standing, it isn't that Seymour wants to summon the Clysmian - it almost seems like he intends to become it, given the bulbous form he's undertaken. Her brain searches for a how and a why for a few moments, before she discards the thought entirely - there's more important things she needs to be doing than try to puzzle out what the Spiran just did to himself.

    "--the whole damn point was to find a way to let them live their life, not end it! Even if it was on their own terms - what the hell did you say to them?!" she yells - not over the din, but in the midst of it, her words more or less lost the moment they travel any distance. But that's fine - because When she shouts, it's more for her own benefit and Lunata's, tearing the words out to try to lessen the panic in her chest as she starts to claw her way forwards towards the dias.

    Scattered by immediate panic, she huffs out a couple of breaths to try to steady herself, her body running on automatic as she shoulders a confused villager aside and then gives them a shove away from the square, towards an alley. "Get clear already! Get as many people outside as you can!" she hears herself order, watching as Jacqueline takes Seymour to task.

    There's a relief that comes as the alchemist promises Lunata there's no blame here. Knowing the three of them are on the same page is a better feeling than she could hope - and it encourages her forwards as she flicks her shotstaff, the shaft of it glowing a pale blue as Shalune suddenly streaks past the rest of the crowd and almost straight off the back of the stage in a sudden burst of speed. Somewhere above her is Seymour's form, but there's no time to think about the potential danger as she whirls to grab for one of Lunata's hands. Jacqueline's said one important thing, so she says the other, solemn and urgent:

    "You're not wrong for wanting to help them. For wanting to stop this," she promises.

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Things Are Happening. It's a general way of putting it, but the exact way in which Xantia is perceiving the general situation right now. The impending summoning of another Clysmian, the other party involved in this undergoing some kind of disturbing transformation... they're certainly things that are happening, things that were hard to miss for anybody present. But they do not directly involve the Trial Knight. Xantia has made it quite obvious where her priorities lie, having not taking her eyes off of K.K. since she arrived here.

"You're still going on about that. Like you're here to judge us. Like you're still the Trial Knight."

With that, she's gone. As calm as her approach was until this point, she abruptly launches herself forward with intense speed, leaving blurs of motion in her wake. There's no attempt to mask her intentions - she's going straight at K.K., without subtlety or trickery. They'll know, they'll expect her. And that's fine. Facing them head-on is what she wants.

Even so, the attack is swift and brutal, an overhead swing with her energy blade aimed for the head. She doesn't follow up afterwards, instead hopping backwards into a defensive position.

"You're the Adversary of Mankind, aren't you?! So don't pretend that this just some dumb test! You're still trying to ruin Filgaia! At least admit that that's what this is all about!"

GS: Shalune Amira has attacked Shalune Amira with Flux Form!
GS: Shalune Amira has completed her action.
GS: Shalune Amira takes a solid hit from Shalune Amira's Flux Form for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick! applied to Shalune Amira!
GS: Riposte! applied to Shalune Amira!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Lanval's eyes flare open to a brilliant aquamarine color from the name being called out - or at least, the center word.
     A Clysmian. It wasn't lost to him that something terrible was gestating in the depths - only knowing from his deep connection to Filgaia's water now that it was something bad. No. Horrible. A presence that has not grown to the prominence of abominable horror that Obsession is, but can... and may well be about to.
     "'Tis by thy hand, Adversary...?" Lanval's voice booms as he lowers the drinking gourd from his lips, resting against his beard that flows like a magnificent waterfall. He remembers all too well how he plunged deep into Love's Cradle for the sake of stopping the terminal corruption of one of the most fundamental forces that sustain the very world, as the white-clad Trial Knight sizes up the change between the Beast of Lohgrin and himself - then and now.
     Of course their aim would have changed naught, he would say, were aspects of the question and/or statement regarding the idea not covered by others. Lanval is characterized by just how boorish and oafish he sounds and appears, most of the time. His manifestation still resembles that of a portly fellow who has enjoyed far, far too much food and drink and fun - but his manner in this moment has grown far sharper.
     The environs change to reflect this as K.K. declares words being naught but air, beckoning them to strike. To break themselves upon their body, as the surge of light turns into a spear that somehow simultaneously points at them both specifically and broadly as a whole, looking from the outside in.
     Moisture turns to rain, descending like a multitude of tiny lances of water as the surrounding area collectively receives a drizzle. A drizzle that, by laws of nature, improbably converges and sharpens into a more specific point until it is like an entire army's worth of archers loosening their arrows against a lone man.
     The area where K.K. stands will quickly turn to mud as the very earth is drowned underneath a ray-length flooding squall, summoned with what appears to be very little actual movement or expression of much of anything on Lanval's part.
     The Water Seraph everyone's known and befriended over the last year or two hardly seems like the sort to be capable of putting forth such a face of being, in the moment, an almost impersonal force of nature.

GS: Xantia has attacked K.K. with Crimson Flash!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
GS: Seraph Lanval spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked K.K. with Rain of Terror!
GS: Seraph Lanval assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    'SUMMON IT! REK'GORA, THE CLYSMIAN OF DESPERATION!'

    Ida's heart skips a beat. Can they do that, she thinks. Or is that what was in the egg in the heart of the labyrinth? Horror dawns in her eyes as Seymour's followers begin the ritual--as Seymour himself changes into something distinctly... fiendish. If nothing else, it explains why he's here, a cloud of Pyreflies that looks and acts like a man.

    So he changed, Ida reminds herself. You can do that, too.

    Ida looks back at Boudicca. A tongue of mystical flame curls out from the Seraph's person, settling onto her hands, and the holsters at her back. Reddish-silver metal flows from he pores on her hands, surging up her arms to encase them in Hyadean exoskeleton. When she last fought K.K., only the right arm, the Hyadean one, got that treatment.

    'Break yourselves upon my body. We shall see how far you have come.'

    "The tempered blade accepts your challenge," Ida says. In the next heartbeat, rushes the Trial Knight, her form blurring at the edges from raw speed. She leads with a body blow, a brutal, metal-knuckled strike to the sternum--and flows from that into a drumroll of punches. Her lifeforce buoys her up as she swings a leg, sweeping it around in a roundhouse kick straight for K.K.'s jaw.

    Her style is fast, forceful, and exquisitely-controlled: all hallmarks of the Demon Fist's methodology.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked K.K. with Relentless Combination !
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

YEAH, THAT'S LOTS OF CHAOS ALL RIGHT. As Seymour makes his terrifying transformation into some kind of fiend, and the threat of a horrendous-sounding summoning looms, Ivan readies for a fight, calling his sword to hand with a flash of light from his ring.

K.K. steps forward, making their own challenge, as though it's all yet another test.

...Why is that person even here!! If only Ivan had done a better job of getting someone to explain to him what K.K.'s deal is! Does anyone even know what K.K.'s deal is?!

Problem -- he's too far back in the crowd to draw any real attention to himself. Solution!!

He aims a fiery blast toward the ground, using it to catapault himself upward in an arc toward the Knight. He flips in the air before slicing downward, sending a second swirl of flame down the blade of his sword as he does.

"What do you have to do with all of this creepy shit?!" Ivan demands.

GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lulu's Blizzara for 78 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Ivan has attacked K.K. with Rocket Boosters!
GS: Ivan has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ivan has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's Sonic Wings for 0 hit points!
GS: Disrupt! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Seymour Guado has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Rikku's Use: Silence Grenade for 71 hit points!
GS: Mute! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

The words 'Clysmian of Desperation' prompt a roar from within her soul that makes Cecilia lean, just slightly, on her staff for strength. "This is no kind of salvation! All you do is wound Filgaia more deeply!" she declares. "You're making yourselves enemies of the world itself!" Her eyes cut to the Trial Knight. "Though perhaps that happened a while ago."

She reaches down to the Crest case strapped to her waist, wordlessly trusting in Claude to take the initial heat of the encounter as Seymour turns into...something, and others begin the battle in earnest. Cecilia for her part plucks out a familiar chit, one of her classic standbys; Muse and Wing united in Black Magic runes, which she thrusts forward. The circle expands outward, crackling blue light sparking forks of lightning off the flying crest icon a shining electric bolt cracks forward toward Seymour, scathing across him.

GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Seymour Guado with Spark!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    For once, it's not Josephine taking the shot.

    K.K., for a moment, looks right at Josie where she stands in the crowd.

    She is not in this moment looking back at them.

    Instead, she's looking right at Lunata.

    "LUNATA! What is this crap!"

    Before Seymour Guado calls for a Clysmian. "A what--"

    Before that man transforms into a stone statue.

    Before K.K. calls for them to break themselves upon their body.

    Her hand slides to, of all things, the Reaper's Hand holstered at her hip. Her gaze has since departed Seymour and Trial Knight alike, and rests instead on Lunata.

    "Pull yourself the hell together!" she shouts, as Lunata rises to her feet again. "Now's not the time!" She gently jerks the ARM in her grasp, feeling by weight alone that it's still or at least mostly loaded. After all, the Gear's arm was made of an incredibly lightweight alloy. She can tell the difference more easily with this one than others.

    A glance down at it tells her the rest of what she needs to know. Good, so she was thinking ahead for for a change--

    And now, she focuses on K.K. properly.

    "I'm only breakin' when I'm ready to," she remarks, breaking into a run for the knight. She veers hard to the right and cracks off a shot, dropping back behind a rather crooked signpost as if in anticipation of some sort of 'return fire' of their own.

GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked K.K. with Easy Does It!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.

Numerous faces appear from the sidelines. SPirans. ARMS members. Others seen in colficts. Seems the whole of Drifters weren't going to leave them be. Seems like they showed up at just the right time.

This Seymour person is awful, Dash has seen the atrocities they committed in the lands of the other celestial body. Of course they would try to do the same here! Why wouldn't they?

But the opposition has a glaring advantage. They are very far from home. And with potentially few allies. The fact they turned Baskar youth to his cause is worrying on just how silver that tongue of his is.

But first... "Marivel, that white armored guy... there's something about him. I think he's more dangerous than Seymour..."

Mental readings on that armored individual, Who looks like a paragon of justice incarnate, is reading all sorts of unknown levels of power. Diagnosing these readings is impossible however, as something blocks direct access. But klaxions are certainly present.

"Hey! HEY." Dash shouts, emerald eyes glare from beyond the facial mask as the free hand transforms into his trusty weapon of mysterious origin. "I dunno who you are, but the guy i nthe robes with the crazy hair has done some awful stuff! He's gotta be stopped!"

...Clysmian...? Wasn't that what Sin was called?

Other folks engage K.K. as well. The Mega lad just shrugs and takes aim. "I take it from their actions you aren't one to cooperate. A shame, you look the part of someone who would stop this."

The arm cannon primes, and orbs of solar plasma fly.

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

Marivel says, "Does being an Adversary of Man steal away your sense of humor? Tis more tragic than whatever fate could befall this town." She quirks her head to the side a it. "...No that's not quite it, you play the role of the--" She pauses a bit considering the odds of K.K confusing the term 'straight man' too so she just cuts herself off before she can even make it.

"Boudicca and Lanval are lovely. I'm not sure Filgaia deserves them quite yet, but the have both been indispensible pleasures for this old soul."

She then snaps her fingers and points towards K.K...

...summoning a pail to drop on his head from above!

"They have the noble seal of approval."

Her cape blows in the wind dramatically and Marivel poses as if it's her doing but it's actually Nimue's and she kind of quietly looks over to Nimue and gives her a v-sign because Marivel is anime as hell.

"Something tells me," She adds. "That if I bite you, I won't have to spit it out immediately. So doy ou mind if I have a little nibble?"

GS: Dash Caskett has attacked K.K. with Buster Salvo!
GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action.
GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Seraph Nimue's Vigorous Shamal for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Marivel Armitage!
GS: Mighty! applied to Seraph Nimue!
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked K.K. with Augmented Aport!
GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Cecilia Adlehyde's Spark for 92 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crackshot for 108 hit points!
GS: Cripple! applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Xantia's Crimson Flash for 67 hit points!
GS: Riposte! applied to Xantia!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Rain of Terror for 121 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Relentless Combination  for 25 hit points!
GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Catenna's spell grips Seymour, in his new form. Exhaustion grips at him; it is a cold, terrible feeling. It is one he fights off, with a slight growl, and then he looks towards Catenna. "A fool, you say?" His voice reverberates with the statement. "No... no, I am no fool. My eyes have been opened!"

He holds a hand out. Once, Seymour did the motions of his hands and words that marked the magic of the Blessing of Althena. Now, he produces a spell by simply snapping his fingers. Two fireballs explode into being, centered on Catenna and expanding outward.

His eyes turn, coolly, towards Tidus. "Discover the truth in the beyond!" he answers him, coldly.

And then the crowd is upon him. He is more mobile than expected -- and he lifts an arm up, which catches the spear that falls. It scrapes along that arm, sending up chips of stone that are torn off, before they waft into Pyreflies. Some recombine with Seymour; some waft away.

He snaps his fingers with his other hand. Lightning explodes out of the air -- two forks of electricity explode out of nothingness, before they converge upon Tipheria. Claude's shot catches him in the chest, striking where it seems to be bare, but the grey flesh is as stone. It leaves a divot in his chest, but little else.

And Seymour's hand thrusts out, open-palmed. Two large crystals of ice form in a blink of an eye, then drop down upon his head. His eyes turn, regarding Venetia for a moment, before her spell comes rushing in. Jade and turquoise; stone most exquisite. He hurls it aside with a motion of his hand and a series of fireballs that smash each from the air. Which is when two geysers of water explode under her feet, trying to throw her off balance.

He looks at Jacqueline. "Why do you ask me? Ask her--ask her if she is not the same as me. Tell her, Lunata! Or... would you lie to your friend?"

Rikku's grenade distracts him. He turns -- blinks, and the miasma roils over him. He snarls, as the cloudedness that Catenna put on his mind only seems to reinforce. He pushes through -- snaps his fingers -- and two huge bolts of lightning come crashing down for the top of Rikku's head.

"What would living their lives do? Why would I be so cruel, Shalune?" Seymour asks her, polite.

Cecilia's lightning strikes him. It drives his body backward, a few pyreflies wafting. Then, he straightens out, and he turns to look at her. It is without understanding that he snaps his fingers -- and two blasts of fire explode underneath the Shaman.

He is slammed into, ice smashing him backward. Lulu's ice impacts, but the ice tower cracks -- his body proving freakishly hardened. "What am I doing?"

He thrusts a hand out again. Two fireballs form, little pinpricks of light as appeared near Catenna, and then explode into two fiery bursts centered on the Black Mage. It distracts him, for a moment. He catches the swirl of the summoning a moment too late -- and Valefor takes to the skies. His winds slam into Seymour's form.

And he is pushed back, still hovering in the air. He looks at Valefor, balefully. Then, he holds out a hand, and snaps his fingers. "Begone from my sight!" he commands.

And a powerful light explodes out from the inside of Valefor. It expands -- and then contracts, further and further, and seems to pull the Aeon with it.

He turns, to look at Lulu, then at Yuna. "I have learned that Sin, somehow, has his origins in this world. I thought it impossible--and I had to know. They call him a Clysmian. And these people cry out, for their fate. So..."

He snaps his fingers. Two bolts of lightning crash down towards Tidus. "...I shall grant them that fate. I shall give them their own Sin -- and the Trial Knight has lent me splendid aid in this task!"

GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Catenna with Multi-Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Multi-Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Multi-Blizzara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Venetia Vuong with Multi-Watera!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado assumes the Stoic stance!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Multi-Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Multi-Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Multi-Fira!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Multi-Thundara!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Banish!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: Catenna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fira for 80 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Ivan's Rocket Boosters for 138 hit points!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Easy Does It for 26 hit points!
GS: Riposte! applied to Josephine Lovelace!
GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Dash Caskett's Buster Salvo for 21 hit points!
GS: Venetia Vuong takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Watera for 164 hit points!
GS: Claude C. Kenny completely evades a hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Blizzara!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Augmented Aport for 23 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Banish for 175 hit points!
GS: Mute and Poison! applied to Yuna!

DC: Yuna switches forms to Lady Summoner!

GS: Tipheria Aredor takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Thundara for 81 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to Tipheria Aredor!
GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Thundara for 161 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to Rikku!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde critically Guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fira for 33 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Thundara for 169 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to Tidus!
GS: CRITICAL! Lulu takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fira for 198 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Is that what that egg is?

    Jacqueline pointedly makes the conclusion that Lunata seems to be struggling to come up with, and her eyes widen further; her mouth gapes open as she exclaims, "To be free of the spiral of death..."

    A longer pause, as Jacqueline accuses Seymour of not telling her anything, and...

    That's true.

    Reflecting back upon it, she was told nothing.

    Promises, but without specifics.

    Then Seymour speaks up, in response to Jacqueline.

    Why do you ask me? Ask her--ask her if she is not the same as me. Tell her, Lunata! Or... would you lie to your friend?

    "... ... it's true. I--I'm just as guilty..." she stammers, in contradiction with what Jacqueline and Shalune are saying. Her voice cools, thick with the admission of guilt.

    "I knew. I knew it was him! I met with him, before this all happened! I could've stopped this all sooner if I told all of you, but..."

    Her fists twist and tighten, whitening even more than they already are as Shalune yanks at her and Josephine yells at her to get herself the hell together.

    "Hearing the pain in his voice... I still felt like I finally found someone who knew what I was going through. Someone who was the same! That's why..."

    Her hands trembles where Shalune is holding her.

    "That's why I'm just as guilty! This is the sin I committed... I don't deserve to fight alongside you..."

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Sin having its origins in Filgaia is a huge revelation; Seymour's twisted motivations... maaaaaarginally less of a surprise, though no less horrible. However, it's something ELSE that drowns out either of these truth-bombs...

DEATH

Yuna knows more than anyone that Besaid's fayth is dead, is a dead little girl. That the aeon Valefor herself is the twinned-in-the-mirror descendent of their resonance, being two dead little girls together; one of them is just still on her way to the other.

But she is not prepared for Seymour's will and power to just... RIP them apart, and rip the fayth away, further into death. Not ALL the way away, but... far. Her presence dwindles within Yuna's soul even as Valefor... ends.

She's gone.

Their aeon simply and entirely decomposes into pyreflies, countless as the stars themselves yet also... counted, very much counted, away from Spira. From a purely logistical perspective, Yuna has known that the number of times she can summon at all, upon this distant shore, is counted by the pyreflies inadvertantly brought within them from her world.

And that number has just dropped precipitously, as the pyreflies, rather than being drawn in a controlled way into her dance of dismissal, scatter to the four winds. The nearest supermass of spiritual gravity is CERTAINLY Seymour, and even as she gasps, a fist clutched over her heart, they begin to flow towards him.

But it isn't tactics and strategy that made her gasp.

The fayth is the dearest companion of her spirit, and...

...Death awaits her.

She staggers from the emptiness in her soul, the void left by the lack of Besaid's fayth, but for a single pinprick of potentate, the tiniest promise of return.

Holding onto that promise, she shifts her grip upon her rod yet again, drawing it vertically, until it bisects her face, and the streams of tears down her cheeks.

A white mage's stance, but it's a summoner's defiance that broadens her shoulders and lifts her chin.

Whatever she's starting to do is interrupted, at least visually, by a large and fast-moving blur of azure fur.

"NO," Kimahri objects at a low roar, while thrusting his halberd into Seymour Natus' bared but inhuman chest. "YOU FIRST."

GS: Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with L1!
GS: Yuna takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Yuna's L1 for 76 hit points!
GS: Quick! applied to Yuna!

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

More Drifters rush to try and head this incident off before it escalates any further. It gives Catenna just a moment's relief. The Kinship is far from the only band of wanderers with a stake in this world's fate.

But it won't be so simple as that. The transformed Seymour fights through the weight of exhaustion, even as Catenna tries to hold the spell and deepen it as much as she can. He rebukes her verbally, but she has no chance to respond before he hurls a pair of fireballs into existence.

A gasp bursts from the Moon Shaman as she hurls herself forward and to one side, hitting the ground and rolling. One of the fireballs screams over her. The other one crashes into the ground a few feet from her, detonating in a firespray of searing embers and sparks. They slash and scorch across her as she tumbles away, singing the edges of her skirt and the cuffs of her sleeves and leaving dark, painful scorches across areas of bare skin. The ache of burn wounds sears through her, and she suppresses the urge to cry out as she finishes her tumble, coming up on one knee.

As Seymour explains his aims, Catenna reaches back to take her bow in hand. A flash of irritation flickers in her eyes, but she doesn't want to betray too much anger just yet. The usual thought emerges.

The only way I can solve this is through grace and thought.

Her arrow snaps to her bowstring as she comes to her feet. "Yes, Obsession does come from this world! Your world began with people from this one! You know what a Clysmian has done to your people - why would you try to give birth to another? What can you possibly see in that?"

She starts forward, bursting into a run, then bounding up and taking to the air with a high flip. At the apex of her jump, her arm snaps out. Her bowstring reverberates with a vibrant twang as she unleashes one arrow, then another, before suddenly snapping one leg out.

Guardians only know how she does it, but she somehow manages to reverse her momentum in midair and flip back the way she came, firing off a third arrow. All three arrows sail towards Seymour from slightly different trajectories, trying to dig into him.

GS: Catenna has attacked Seymour Guado with Ascending Drawn Crescent!
GS: Catenna has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Catenna's Ascending Drawn Crescent for 65 hit points!
GS: Riposte! applied to Catenna!

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

"Yeah, I was hoping I imagined that," Claude asides to Venetia. "Or maybe that we were just stoned."

There is little further time for talk, as the twisted form of Seymour Natus unleashes a torrent of magical energy. The muscles along Claude's jawline tighten; he got from the cliff notes that the Guadude was a sorceror of some repute, but he didn't know the man was skilled enough to cast from multiple elements like that. Especially not at the same time. He mentally upgrades the man's threat level by another two notches.

Fortunately for Claude, however, Seymour has fired one of the two elements that he can actually muster a defence against. Between one step and the next, Claude pushes some of his folded chi down into his feet, unleashing a loud battle cry. As his foot connects with the earth, great shards of stone burst upward in front of him, forming a heavy barrier that the mystical ice crashes into. Ice and stone collide in a series of staccato blasts. Enough of the ice actually gets through that Claude has to break off his forward charge, jerking sideways as a stray chunk clips his left cheek, bringing a line of crimson blood weeping up to the surface of his skin.

Gritting his teeth, Claude rolls to one side to clear the obstacles, holding his sword low to the ground., He steps forward, sweeping the heavy blade around in a wide, upward arc. "AIR SLASH!" he roars, firing a golden blade outward, the energy blast streaking toward Seymour; Claude follows after it as quickly as he can, relieved by the sudden presence of Kimahri. This fight needed at least one other tank, and frankly that smaller blonde dude who forgot half his shorts doesn't seem big enough to qualify. He needs some protein or something.

GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Seymour Guado with Air Slash!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Maybe Seymour followed them through the Water Shrine. That *is* a grim thought. Fortunately, Tidus is too focused on the battle to notice how Rikku hedges her response. Even if he did notice, he has no reason to think that Rikku and her people know anything more about the connection between Seymour and Baaj Temple than he would.
    
    Tidus happens to overhear Venetia's question. Lulu answers it first, but still: "We didn't just see him die, we killed him!!" he shouts back, frustration and anger bringing voice to the truth he couldn't say before. Then, echoing Claude's earlier sentiment: "Obviously we didn't kill him enough!! But don't worry--we won't make the same mistake twice!"
    
    That's right! They'll make the same mistake approximately four times. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
    
    But even more importantly: Yuna does not Send, but Summons. Tidus holds his breath for an instant when Valefor appears in Filgaia's skies. It's not the first time he's seen the Aeon by any means, but it's been a while. He'd almost forgotten just how... majestic they were. Between Valefor's wings and Rikku's grenade, there's a BURST of sound, and then sudden silence. It's almost eerie.
    
    But still way better than the drumming and chanting.
    
    In that moment, Tidus races through whatever remains of the crowd--surely anyone not combat-capable has already scattered by now--to close the distance between himself and Seymour. He trusts Lulu to have his back with her magic, Rikku to have his sides with her tools and tricks, and Yuna to have his head with her Aeon. And they do! However, Seymour is at his front, and after yet another dismissive, pithy statement, he shoots lightning at him. Tidus tries to dodge to one side, but it's lightning--it hits him nearly dead on. He screams as he falls and tumbles forward into a spasmic roll, then falls still. He groans. Definitely... definitely worse than the Thunder Plains. That jolt still spasms through him, makes his movements jerky and erratic, even when he staggers up to his feet. Yet, when Seymour clarifies his purpose here, that he intends to create Filgaia's own Sin?
    
    "You're... freaking TWISTED!!" As Kimahri races past to stab Seymour outright, Tidus begins to cast another spell of his own--this time one to slow Seymour down, and quite significantly at that. "Who needs another Sin?! The one we've got already's bad enough!!" He grits his teeth, thinking of his own encounters with Sin... with Jecht. With how that, too, he had known somehow, even before Auron had told him outright. As much as he hates his father--as complicated as his feelings remain--to think that Seymour might not just summon another Sin but transform someone *into it*, somehow, as Jecht had? "*No one* deserves to go through that!!"
    
    As Slowga forcibly winds down the hands of the clock, it might just delay Seymour enough that Tidus can close the gap entirely and get in at least a basic sword slash, spasms or no spasms.

GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Slowga!
GS: Tidus enters a Counter stance!
GS: Tidus takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Claude C. Kenny's Air Slash for 100 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Venetia Vuong, if she survives, will have something poignant to write in her diary about how it is unfair that beauty happens all at once. She has this thought's seed get planted when Valefor flies over her head.

Right now, the dominant thought in her mind is: @!#(#1321)(!

Not least because the ground erupts and vomits its sweat outwards; the sullen waters of Filgaia, commanded, accelerated! The burst erupts and she throws herself right, which spares her one flesh-reaving blast; the other strikes her in the hip and thigh, sending her staggering before she recenters herself, pushing out breath through her teeth.

She is standing near Cecilia for a moment. A glance at the person that she only knows as a fellow mistress of the Crests, and she tells her, "go high," in a quiet and firm voice before her hand slides back into her Crest Pouch.

She pivots on her heel. Venetia is momentarily stunned when that gorgeous creature, just now and clearly called forth, dissipates. She feels that cold squirming feeling at the base of her spine, breathes out, and mumbles for a moment before she shouts, "You would give us our very own titanic monster to contend with? Filgaia ill needs a savior such as this!" Up with the Crest Graph.

A streak of the battlefield lets out a warm and cheerful scent: the scent of a field after a rain that comes rarely. Some of the dirt takes on a damper, yellow-loess cast. The effect rolls out like mist ahead of Venetia, the first part of the Crest Graph.

"Mud Flower," Venetia says. The dampened soil roils forwards, a sudden passing twist like the ripple in a fluttered cloth, passing (mostly) around Claude and Kimahri. Venetia's eyes flick towards Tidus after this. "What was the mistake!!"

GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Seymour Guado with Mud Flower!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Tidus's Slowga for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Seymour Guado takes a glancing hit from Venetia Vuong's Mud Flower for 34 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Entangle! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.

The stone chopping and dissolving into pyreflies, rather than letting her spear stick in enough to support her for an instant, surprises Tipheria. It makes her landing poor; she manages to land on her feet, but heavily, and off-balance.

It makes her an easy target for the lightning. Tipheria spins her spear in an arc, whirling it in front of her, perpendicular; she actually deflects one of the bolts, but the other one strikes her with a thunderclap, launching her away from Seymour for several yards in a tumble.

Tipheria rises up anyway, slightly weak-legged but still able to stand. "Don't know half of what you're talking about," Tipheria says, "but I've got opinions about someone who'd summon something by *that* title. I've been here. I can smell the corruption, don't try to hide it!"

"AIR RIPPER!" Tipheria sweeps her spear from the point down-right to up-left, sending a diagonal wash of bluish energy at Seymour. She's not *intentionally* trying to mirror Claude, but she does it anyway, the blast tearing up loose mud from Venetia's spell and splattering it wildly as the energy blade sweeps across the ground.

"Also, your altar thing looks really stupid," Tipheria adds. "Keep your Sin to yourself."

GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Seymour Guado with Air Ripper!
GS: Tipheria Aredor takes 25 damage from Poison!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Air Ripper for 63 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seymour Guado gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mute! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

Lulu finds herself afflicted by a sorcery different from what she's used to--different from the last time she fought Seymour, in fact. Two fiery bursts explode around Lulu and she's propelled backwards through the explosion, hitting the ground some distance back with a faint noise of impact. "Gh," she starts, and looks up--to see the Aeon pulled away. Her eyes widen. "Yuna--"

Lulu sets a hand down to the ground, and begins to push herself back up again, badly burned. "Sin... comes from this world?" she repeats, as if it doesn't all add up for her, because it is a revelation on its own. "That you would seek to spread Sin to another world... Monstrous doesn't begin to describe it."

She finishes standing, watching Tidus struck by lightning, Rikku struck by lightning. Her jaw sets.

Lulu raises her hand again, and this time the magic that comes is not elemental fury but the purple-black-green smoke of Bio, bubbling up around Seymour.

She's at least starting to get angry.

GS: Lulu spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Bio!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Lulu's Bio for 60 hit points!
GS: Disease and Poison! applied to Seymour Guado!

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Seymour snaps his fingers, and Rikku sees a flash.

The girl tries to shriek as the lightning strikes her once - but her muscles lock up as she's blasted asunder. Then another strikes her, and she's on the ground, twitching. Her mouth opens soundlessly, but after she gasps in a breath, her mouth opens again, "aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!" A muted shriek, that becomes a louder one as she writhes on the ground.

She needs a second to calm down. She doesn't have a moment.

"Why'd he have to bring the Thunder Plains with him to another world? She moans, as she forces herself to get up. Eyes blinking in disbelief as... he banishes... Valefor. "Yunie!" Fortunately Kimahri is there... but...

He's too strong. Rikku knows it, she's still shaking from that attack. She feels a dire, urgent need to protect herself and the others. And so, kneeling down, she starts stuffing the shining core of a bomb fiend she retrieved from this village into a phial of shimmering light. And mixes it up like a bartender, hastily adding a reagent into it.

Then the process stops suddenly, as she gawks. "Sin is!? And you're summoning another!? You're..."

...

...

"You're crazy! This isn't truth at all! Killing your own Dad wasn't enough for you - so now you're going to kill a LOT of people!?"

With family being so important to her, Seymour's whole twisted minset is an anathema for her. Rikku suddenly throws her phial in the air, and flicks something into it. It bursts in mid-air into an auroral shower of alchemical light. Descending upon each Guardian and Summoner, hastening movements and setting up shimmering barriers. "Tidus - Lulu - Kimahri! I've got you covered! Hit him with all you've got!"

She protects Yuna too, but with the shock of Valefor being banished... she doesn't expect her to go at him for a bit.

GS: Rikku has attacked Rikku with Mix: Mighty G!
GS: Rikku has attacked Tidus with Mix: Mighty G!
GS: Rikku has attacked Lulu with Mix: Mighty G!
GS: Rikku has attacked Yuna with Mix: Mighty G!
GS: Rikku takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

Claude C. Kenny spares half a second to glare in the general direction of whoever just stole his sweet moves. AGAIN. It's not clear who, because big stupid fight.

"Leo, if you did this, I am going to dislocate your ass," he whispers, half to himself.

GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Rikku's Mix: Mighty G for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Lulu!
GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Rikku's Mix: Mighty G for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Yuna!
GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Rikku's Mix: Mighty G for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Rikku!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Rikku's Mix: Mighty G for 0 hit points!
GS: Quick and Shield! applied to Tidus!

<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    Shalune hadn't expected an answer from Seymour - all she'd wanted to do was yell out her own anxiety in an attempt to clear her mind. But the Maester answers her with a serenity and a politeness she would never have expected, with words she would never have expected, and for a moment she actually pauses in complete confusion as the words sink in. Her mouth hinges open even if no words come out - and the most unexpected thing of all is the pity that bubbles up from inside of her.

    To not even see any worth in living, compared to dying-- "... I'm sorry. For whatever it was that happened to make you think that way," she mutters softly, but can't offer anything more towards the man right now, not when the feeling of Lunata trembling is overriding everything else. But it does plant a little seed of understanding in the back of her brain, something to make her wonder - would this be how Lunata would have turned out, faced with everything, were she left on her own?

    When she swallows it's thickly, and she carefully draws herself a little closer to Lunata. "... I think you're right. I think the two of you are pretty similar. But I don't think this is the way to go, you know?" she encourages gently. "I want to get you off that Wheel, too, but not like this. You just got together with Jay at last," she adds, trying to keep her voice light despite the way her heart is hammering, making a show of it. "I've gotta have a little more time to appreciate that."

    "But most of all," she adds, taking a second to gather yourself. "I don't think you're guilty. Not for being desperate. Not for wanting to give someone like you a second chance. Not for wanting to help the kids of this village, or speaking out against the elders. And everything about this plan - that's on him, not you. The way he used you is on him," she adds. She doesn't mean to growl the last part, but she does anyway, anger flashing across her eyes for a moment as she struggles to keep it in check.

    She allows herself a brief glance in Jay's direction, and then continues. "Whatever you think you deserve, we're gonna be at your side either way. Let's get everyone safe, and then we'll come back and make sure the elders understand exactly why this all happened. All of it. Okay?"

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"That's right. The sacrificing of Pillars... it needs to stop." Jacqueline says, nodding in agreement with Shalune. She looks around then - to Seymour, and to the Baskar youths. "But this isn't the way to do it. Summoning the Clysmian won't solve everything - it's just going to bring about more sorrow. Is that what you want? This isn't the salvation you think it is!"

Seymour turns her question back onto her, and Jacqueline frowns. She opens her mouth... but then, before she can say anything, Lunata speaks.

Jacqueline stares at her. She stands there, with a horrified look on her face, tears beading at the corner of her eyes... but, it isn't a feeling of betrayal on her face. Disregarding everything she rushes over to Lunata, looking to draw her into a tight hug unless rejected.

"Oh, Lunata... I'm... I'm so sorry..." She says, shaking her head in disbelief.

Lunata felt like she found someone who was the same as she was. Someone who knew what she was going through. ...But, it was all for this.

"Lunata... this isn't your fault. You wanted to prevent further sacrifices. You wanted to trust someone who knew what you've been going through. You didn't want a Clysmian. You didn't manipulate the Baskar youths. You're not the guilty one here." She whispers, shaking her head. Shalune adds her own comments, and Jacqueline nods in agreement. "We can still try to stop this. The truly guilty one here..."

Jacqueline turns, looking toward Seymour again.

"...is you, and your accomplice!" Jacqueline says, pointing directly at Seymour. "Maybe you two are the same in some ways. But you used and manipulated her, even knowing that!"

Her ire's getting worked up again - but Shalune's words bring it down a little. Jacqueline glances back to Lunata, and offers her a nod.

"...Yeah. We will be." She affirms.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Seymour responds to Cecilia by releasing blasts of fire beneath her, pillars of flame rushing up to engulf the princess and reduce her to dust and atoms.

Yet when the light clears there she stands, encased in interwoven layers of mystic light. She stares at him. "Ah. Perhaps you don't understand. Yes, I didn't make my presence felt much during my time on Spira. I thought your world's problems should be left to your world's people."

She notes Venetia's hissed guidance, and reaches down to her own case. It's larger - much too large, actually to store only Crests, even those fancy ones the size of a playing card that some choose to use. She doesn't pull anything out, just unclips it.

It opens on its own, though, a blast from inside forcing the lid up and sending a series of plate-sized stone tablets into the air. After the battle with the Metal Demons' hateful Mother, a number of Drifters have a Medium or two. Those who've known Cecilia for a while may recall when she brought somewhere around seven to bear in the purification of Jack and Ida.

Eleven now circle like the moons of a gas giant as she lays her eyes upon Seymour. "My name is Cecilia Lynn Adlehyde. I hold many titles to my name. Princess, and Innocent One, and Maiden. You only need to know that the Guardians have named me Shaman! And I swore!"

She slams her staff down, in front of her, and the circling of tablets stops, one snapping to face forward toward Seymour, an icon like a spinning planet in motion. "I swore to be the voice of this world! That I would speak, when this planet could not! So hear my words! I will not allow this madness! Material!"

Flickering into being behind Cecilia she forms, a ghostly figure shrouded in flying scarves and a pale dress. Familiar to many here, likely; familiar to Catenna, certainly. Celesdue motions toward Seymour, and then sweeps her arm up, and Seymour feels a sickening, wrenching feeling in his gut as the connection of gravity between him and the world comes undone, fit to send him soaring skyward.

At least, for a moment, before the Guardian of the Moon sweeps the other direction, and sends him CRASHING toward Venetia's mud trap.

"Merciless Queen!"

GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Seymour Guado with Material - Merciless Queen!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Cecilia Adlehyde's Material - Merciless Queen for 128 hit points!
GS: Disrupt! applied to Seymour Guado!

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

'I owe you no answer.'

The knight's head tilts.

'None but this --'

A Seraph of Wind conjures fire between the snap of her fingers. The Trial Knight's index finger twitches once against their spear.

"'Tis the only answer needed, in this moment."

It is like a calm before the storm, the stance that K.K. adopts. Unmoving, weapon called forth, they still do not push an offensive; whereas normally they would spring upon the attack once the opening had presented itself, here, the so-called Adversary seems all too content to wait.

To wait--

"Not near enough has."

-- and to speak.

The words are for Nimue. They are vague, of course, and yet still, in the knight's way, seems unerringly, ineffably earnest. Their right heel slides outward by two inches, as if in a ready stance against some unseen aggressor.

"But such things are a process. Are they not--"

'Do you think this is a joke, Trial Knight!?'

A foot ensconced in cutting wind drives towards the knight only to meet the fluid spin of a spear. Blade after blade of wind is met and carved into by the graceful motions of the knight's parrying slash; they deflect the first, the second, but the third and fourth drive the knight backward, churning deep furrows into the earth before they banish those winds with a powerful -swing- of their weapon.

"That you need ask questions with so obvious an answer tells me you are still yet unprepared, boy."

The spear swings towards K.K.'s right; the tip of it CRACKS against the ground.

"Does this seem a joke to you? Do these sad creatures' desperation seem somehow humorous?"

The blade glows.

"No. There is naught in the way of humor to be found here. Merely a tale told countless times before. A chant most timeless in its debased stasis.

"The forgotten and unheard pleas of a dying star, begging for an answer."

They lunge. They are a smear of white as they move with that practiced grace and inhuman speed. The spear arcs upward, churning rock as an expulsion of bluish white energy -rips- from the ground in a straight vertical line in front of it towards Cyre. The light of it is blinding --

--coverage, for K.K.'s forward lunge, a spear in two hands becoming a pair of short swords once belonging to Nimue --

-- and now brought to bear upon Cyre in twin horizontal slashes infused with blinding white light, creating a savage cross of might in its wake.

    "... Be it one way or the other, they shall have it."

It is Ivan upon them next; just as they circle around to follow up with a second blow upon Cyre, the fire-propelled Lunarian CRASHES into them with a flaming blade, carving an angry path across armor that leaves a lingering, scorched scar in its wake; metal sings a shriek of sparks as the knight tumbles backward, several steps. Their swords snap outward, each exploding into little fragments of light.

"I am providing an answer," is their cryptic response to Ivan's demands. They spring forward, charging Ivan; the motes of light that were once the knight's weapons chase desperately after them as they draw their right, gauntleted hand backward.

"And you, boy, have not the place nor ground to stand on here."

And it is reinforced knuckles that all that splintering light forges into as K.K. seeks to drive an open palm into Ivan's midsection in fluid flourish.

"So what, then, have you but the dark to fall into?"

Before a radiant, gaping dragon's maw EXPLODES out of that palm upon contact, aiming to consume Ivan in all its golden glory.

The sound of a fired shot. The knight turns around in a snap. That hand that had just attempted to strike Ivan snatches forward --

"Ever are your deceits as blatant as they are ceaseless. They merit not the energy of engagement."

-- and catches Josephine Lovelace's bullet between its index finger and thumb.

The gauntleted digits glow with excess heat. And yet, they hold fast to that bullet all the same. "You act as a pillar all your own, and yet you crumble more than anyone here. Do you wonder, girl, whether you are as transparent to them as you are to yourself? Desperation. Obsession."

And they, indeed, literally return that fire, -hurling- that bullet towards Josephine so hard that it will blow the signpost straight off the ground, a cannon's crack-BOOM inexplicably and illogically following in its wake.

"I've not words for how little place you have here amidst the vanguard instead of nestled within that egg yourself."

They march across whatever wreckage remains from that returned bullet. The gauntlet's reinforcements crackle away, light chasing them like fireflies as they reform within the knight's palms.

"Perhaps 'tis better that you find an end here and now," they utter, as a grand, double-bladed greatsword forms in their hands, held high like an executioner's axe. Their words for Josephine alone. "You are a tinder that will burn them fiercer than any--"

And it is just as the blade comes down that another bullet CRACKS across their helmet.

The blade SLAMS into the earth, harmless and diverted, as K.K. is sent reeling towards the right. Cracklines form in their helm. They do not stop. Do not hesitate. There is only the simple halt of their momentum to stall them, their footing briefly crippled as shadowy magics of Althena's Blessing rages around their palm.

No chants, this time. No incantations. Its dizzying and frightening how swiftly that blade of liquid shadow comes -- and how quickly it screams for Gwen Whitlock, as almost a kneejerk reaction.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

"... hm."

Now, though, they are prepared. Now, though, when Dash's blast of concentrated plasma assails them in a volley of superheated balls, the knight reacts immediately and ruthlessly. That great blade whirls around, the impossibly sharp edges of both ends intercepting orb after orb of plasma to literally -cut through each- in an almost instantaneous, maddening flurry for something with so much mass. Heat screams across their armor; the edges of their blade glow an impossibly bright orange red. But they stand there, as steam rises from their weapon, head cocked almost curiously.

"... 'Tis not my role," is their sole answer for Dash. As if it was the only possible way it could be.

It is Ida then who comes for them, with weapons enchanted by Boudicca's hand. Tempered, perhaps. She is fast -- but the knight, it seems, is faster. That leg sweeps up and around with violent force;

It meets the knight's armored forearm with a violent CLANG of impact, shivering across that staunch limb. The knight tilts towards their left.

"You have come far, Ida Everstead-Rey."

And that, too, is the only thing they say to Ida, for the longest time. No condemnation. No recrimination. No verbal assault.

Just those four, unambiguous words.

All punctuated by the knight -shoving- her away seconds before the ground turns to mud beneath Lanval's powerful squall. They do not mount a defense in time -- perhaps there IS no defense to be mounted in time. The mud grows slick beneath their feet, the force of the waterfall enough to -push- them back until the lack of footing sends them -cracking- against a nearby wall.

"... 'Tis just so," they answer Lanval's question as soon as they have recovered themself.

"By my hand will this blighted thing be made. They call it a 'Clysmian.' Everything that this star's Guardians are, they are not. A shade.

"A contradiction. How does such a thing become? Why does such a thing become?"

Questions, it seems, the Adversary does not see fit to answer; especially not when both Marivel and Xantia are pressing their defenses. First, the noble; her question as to the tragic state of their sense of humor (??) remains a mystery as she conjures up a portal from thin air; the pail that rapidly descends like the meteor of a great god (?!) falls for the knight's head -- only to be suddenly -caught- in both their hands. Apparently, that was a high velocity pail, if the way they lurch downward is any indication -- but they still catch and hold all the same.

"... They have changed, 'tis true," they acknowledge, in a way that feels, somehow, intimately familiar.

"But they have not my seal."

But further words cannot be spared when Xantia capitalizes on that brief opening with her frontal assault; it pays off for her, that energy blade CARVING into K.K.'s head. The pail crashes into the ground; bright red sparks fly.

A sliver of skin can be seen past the wound that Xantia has carved just seconds before the knight seeks to KNOCK her back.

"No. 'Tis not my intent," is their immediate response.

"This is naught but a diversion, girl. Should this blighted thing be born, this star has earned its fate.

"My interest lies now in Spira."

And whatever they might mean by that will have to wait; a tome is summoned above them, pages flipping as they slowly stand straight. Hand held against their chest, they murmur words, runic symbols of Althena's Blessing conjuring at their feet.

"... Let your ruination come, or not. There are no gods here that will spare you their mercy."

Before a great, massive blade of pure shadow forms with hideous, seething life above them -- swinging outward with sudden, impossible range to cleave into anything, or anyone, who gets too close.

GS: K.K. has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Obliteration Cross!
GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: K.K. has attacked Ivan with Dragon Ascendant!
GS: K.K. has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Return Fire!
GS: K.K. has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Lanval with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Nimue with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has attacked Marivel Armitage with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has gained 1 Combo!
GS: K.K. has attacked Xantia with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has attacked Dash Caskett with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Negative Blade!
GS: K.K. has gained 1 Combo!
GS: K.K. takes 22 damage from Poison!
GS: K.K. has completed their action.
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Obliteration Cross for 118 hit points!
GS: Gwen Whitlock critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 28 hit points!
GS: Gwen Whitlock's Force Guard activates!
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 216 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 191 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Kimahri's halberd slams into Seymour, as he finishes. The weapon's steel chips -- Seymour's stone-like flesh does. Even as the Pyreflies from Valefor's summoning are absorbed, stone chips fly free -- and then explode into Pyreflies. And some are absorbed, but some waft away.

Seymour looks at Kimahri, then scowls. Before he can answer the Ronso, though, Catenna speaks. "No--no, Sin does not come from this world. But his origins do! And I will know why! I will have these truths!"

Catenna comes down. Arrows slam into his stone like body. Two hit and shatter into pieces, but one chips some of his statue-like body away. Seymour snarls at that. Claude charges him -- and the blade of golden light slams into him, flecks of stone flying up into the air, and some pyreflies raining down.

"Twisted, am I?" Seymour says. "But you must see... that Sin serves a purpose. What would our world be without Sin? Ah, but... no. I would not wish it on just anyone--"

Seymour looks at Tidus, and smiles so coldly that it could freeze the world. "It is a gift to not be given lightly, child."

Seymour finds his movements slowing -- becoming languid and sluggish -- and then he breaks free, rising above them. He throws out both arms, even as soil from Venetia's spell assails him, and begins to bind him, and drag him down. This lets Tipheria comes in. Her spear sweeps out, and a blast of wind slams into him, smashing him backward.

He grunts -- and then some of the strange form around his torso and waist uncurls. It is, altogether, not unlike an insect. The Mortibody lashes out on an extending arm, and tries to smash itself bodily into Tipheria. When it does, an insectoid-like needle emerges... and tries to stab her with the stinger, and a pulse of burning poison.

It is poison, too, that bubbles up around Seymour. "The idea of Sin does, I think. I have read what little exists of these Clysmians -- beyond Sin, I believe that they are not yet called into being," he says. "But... they can be!"

The poison does seem to sink in. It does seem to slow him. Having dealt with one summoned beast, though, he does not expect another. His eyes turn -- he spots the lights circling Cecilia, and he draws in a sharp gasp. He feels surprise, as Celesdue erupts into existence, and then she slams into his arms. He crosses them, and chips of stone fly.

But Seymour is smashed into the ground, and he takes a moment to rise from it. "So be it," he says. "I will show your paltry gods... for what they truly are!"

It is the light of Rikku's defensive efforts, as her construct flashes, that gets his attention. He turns his head to look at Rikku, and there is a maddened gleam in his cold eyes. "Mortibody," he commands. "I choose you."

The Mortibody turns up, raising from where it struck Tipheria -- and opens an insectoid mandible, and then a beam of pale green light washes out, shooting over Yuna, then her Guardians in turn, and threatens to tear away those defenses in a moment.

Then, Seymour thrusts his hand out. As Catenna lands, a blast of fire explodes under her feet -- and then two jets of water smash towards her. Claude finds three jets of water, slamming in from each side, and then a fireball careening for his head. Two jets of water fly at Venetia from each side, before a fireball explodes underneath her feet. Then, two gouts of water scream in at Cecilia, before a fireball explodes behind her.

He turns to look at Jacqueline Barber -- and he cracks one of those cold, lucid smiles at her. "Is that... so?"

Seymour and K.K. have remained between the altar and the Drifters. By now, the citizens of the Baskar Village have scattered. But the youths in the ritual remain. They chant, but then one screams. She keels over, face ashen, and falls to the ground -- and then goes still, her breath shallow.

The chanting hesitates. "Continue!" Seymour commands. "Your salvation awaits!"

GS: Seymour Guado has activated a Force Action!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Catenna with Multi-Fire and Multi-Water!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Multi-Fire and Multi-Water!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Venetia Vuong with Multi-Fire and Multi-Water!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Multi-Fire and Multi-Water!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Headshot and Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Mortibcrasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Desperado!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Desperado!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Desperado!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Desperado!
GS: Seymour Guado takes 21 damage from Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: Claude C. Kenny critically Guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fire and Multi-Water for 100 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Claude C. Kenny gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Return Fire for 121 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Venetia Vuong takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fire and Multi-Water for 134 hit points!
GS: Catenna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fire and Multi-Water for 147 hit points!
GS: Catenna's Force Evade activates!
GS: CRITICAL! Tipheria Aredor guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibcrasher for 66 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tipheria Aredor gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Mute and Poison! applied to Tipheria Aredor!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Lulu guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Desperado for 0 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Quick and Shield removed!
GS: Disease and Hex! applied to Lulu!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Yuna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Desperado for 0 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Burst and Shield removed!
GS: Disease and Hex! applied to Yuna!
GS: Rikku takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Desperado for 0 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Quick and Shield removed!
GS: Disease and Hex! applied to Rikku!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde critically Guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Multi-Fire and Multi-Water for 93 hit points!
GS: Xantia guards a hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 84 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Lanval takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 91 hit points!
GS: Seraph Lanval's Force Evade activates!
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Nimue takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 195 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 120 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    There is an Aeon out there, no doubt because of Lady Yuna, and no less than -- two? Two?? Material summons at the moment; Air Slashes are flying, and to say that this is an insane place to talk at the moment is one hell of an understatement.

    What Shalune is thinking is definitely clear on Lunata's mind too.

    If she wasn't checked, nurtured by the friends she's had -- and at times, rejected in her own chaotic heart -- in the Carakin, in the Black Wolves, and the other Drifters she's met and worked with...

    Could she have been standing in his place right now, trying to summon another Sin to-- rid the world of the spiral of death... through the eradication of life itself.

    But Shalune helps her calm down as she works her through, with clear and fervent words.... and Jacqueline draws her into a hug as she offers her admission.

    Shalune's mention that she just got together with Jacqueline, she should be able to appreciate her time...

    "... w-will you... forgive me?" Lunata asks, leaning closer towards Shalune, towards Jacqueline.

    Not for being desperate... yes, desperation -- she shares the very emotion that now is being used to summon a Clysmian before their very eyes. Hopelessness and desperation... that was the very feeling that all the kids in this village are trying to fight. It makes sense, as they speak the words into her... why it is she was drawn to Seymour in the first place. She wanted to trust someone who knew what she was going through...

    and...

    That isn't going to change.

    "O-okay..." she answers to Jacqueline and Shalune, as she gives them both a tight squeeze in turn.

    Jacqueline continues to point the finger and say that the guilty one is... Seymour! And K.K.! 'Manipulate'... it's a strong word, but... that was what it is, is it not?

    She steps back... and turns.

    Turns, towards Baaj -- Seymour -- even as the Drifters' forces come down onto her. As Kimahri and Tidus square off, as Catenna and Cecilia bring forth the powers of the Guardian Celesdue down upon him... as Rikku protects, and Yuna continues to channel her power to the Aeon Valefor. As Claude and Venetia continue to combine their efforts together, blade and spell.

    There is a slight click, and before she even knows what she's doing, she's drawn her weapon to face him.

    One of the youths screams and drops.

    (BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTTUYRFc58 )

    "Stop this... I'm one of you!" Lunata shouts to the youths, hurrying to their side. "Don't you see?! You're only going to serve as a Pillar all over again!! Hurry and get out of here!!"

    There is a grimace, and finally-- finally-- she throws herself towards the hooded priest, towards Seymour, katana drawn--

    "Seymour, I...!"

    --as she strikes the strike of betrayal. And yet at that moment, it feels like her head's become all so clear, of the...

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    There is an Aeon out there, no doubt because of Lady Yuna, and no less than -- two? Two?? Material summons at the moment; Air Slashes are flying, and to say that this is an insane place to talk at the moment is one hell of an understatement.

    What Shalune is thinking is definitely clear on Lunata's mind too.

    If she wasn't checked, nurtured by the friends she's had -- and at times, rejected in her own chaotic heart -- in the Carakin, in the Black Wolves, and the other Drifters she's met and worked with...

    Could she have been standing in his place right now, trying to summon another Sin to-- rid the world of the spiral of death... through the eradication of life itself.

    But Shalune helps her calm down as she works her through, with clear and fervent words.... and Jacqueline draws her into a hug as she offers her admission.

    Shalune's mention that she just got together with Jacqueline, she should be able to appreciate her time...

    "... w-will you... forgive me?" Lunata asks, leaning closer towards Shalune, towards Jacqueline.

    Not for being desperate... yes, desperation -- she shares the very emotion that now is being used to summon a Clysmian before their very eyes. Hopelessness and desperation... that was the very feeling that all the kids in this village are trying to fight. It makes sense, as they speak the words into her... why it is she was drawn to Seymour in the first place. She wanted to trust someone who knew what she was going through...

    and...

    That isn't going to change.

    "O-okay..." she answers to Jacqueline and Shalune, as she gives them both a tight squeeze in turn.

    Jacqueline continues to point the finger and say that the guilty one is... Seymour! And K.K.! 'Manipulate'... it's a strong word, but... that was what it is, is it not?

    She steps back... and turns.

    Turns, towards Baaj -- Seymour -- even as the Drifters' forces come down onto her. As Kimahri and Tidus square off, as Catenna and Cecilia bring forth the powers of the Guardian Celesdue down upon him... as Rikku protects, and Yuna continues to channel her power to the Aeon Valefor. As Claude and Venetia continue to combine their efforts together, blade and spell.

    There is a slight click, and before she even knows what she's doing, she's drawn her weapon to face him.

    One of the youths screams and drops.

    (BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTTUYRFc58 )

    "Stop this... I'm one of you!" Lunata shouts to the youths, hurrying to their side. "Don't you see?! You're only going to serve as a Pillar all over again!! Hurry and get out of here!!"

    There is a grimace, and finally-- finally-- she throws herself towards the hooded priest, towards Seymour, katana drawn--

    "Seymour, I...!"

    --as she strikes the strike of betrayal. And yet at that moment, it feels like her head's become all so clear, of the...

GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seymour Guado with Errors of my Youth!
GS: Lunata Croze has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ivan critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 25 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
<SoundTracker> To Zanarkand - FFX Piano Collections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLU2xQ4nkk4

Behind Kimahri, Yuna casts a broad glance around the battlefield. She aches for Lunata's obvious suffering but is much too far away to hear more than every other word of that conversation, let alone join it and offer her unsolicited perspective; still, perhaps someday, the two of them can reckon with their shared past with Seymour, such as it is.

More immediately, he wielded the elements against them, and their allies, with his iconic skill and strength. Crushing water, icy shards. He set Lulu on FIRE. He shot Tidus and Rikku with lightning.

...he shot RIKKU. With LIGHTNING.

Agony twists in her gut.

The frigid walls of Macalania Temple breathe mist around her, and the ground is frozen beneath her feet. They're back again. All her hopes and prayers and, at last, pleas for him to turn himself in have been interrupted by her furious, ferocious family. She stepped out of the Chamber of the Fayth, filled with another's shared fierce fury, and they opposed him together...

...and he hurt them. How he wounded them, using the same elements Lulu has taught her to respect -- and to love. She prayed for their warding, but... it wasn't enough. It isn't ENOUGH to pray for nullification, and then be overwhelmed. White magic wasn't enough. SHE wasn't enough.

She couldn't stop him from harming them, even though that singular wish had driven every one of her actions that simple duty had not.

She couldn't stop his magic.

She was powerless against him... and had to rely on the strength of another. At cost to them both, to them all.

But time has passed since then. Time, and journey, and grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression.

Don't call it accceptance. There's nothing ACCEPTABLE about any of this.

Back in Baskar Village, resolve surrounds Yuna like an aura. And Rikku, Rikku facing her fears despite everything, Rikku's alchemic strength... does too.

Seymour rips it away with casual, dismissive power. But that isn't what matters. Rikku's might dwells within her still.

Her heart flowers.

And then her magic does too.

The opposite of war isn't peace.

"I won't!" she shouts, her breathy little soprano easily lost amid the din, but for its intensity. "I won't let you hurt them again!"

Something scintillating and mystical blossoms around them all. It is not the familiar, oft-cast force fields that have sheltered them from countless storms. This is something new.

It feels like Yuna, which is to say, right now, it feels like love and fear and pain and rage and most of all like protectiveness. It is an embrace from afar; it is a refuge, a place where mystic danger cannot dwell.

And if it tries...

Yuna's gaze meets Seymour's squarely at last. She cannot match him in menace; she could never. But her expression contains multitudes, both literally (the other fayth are, across various frequencies, PISSED) and figuratively (because her heart is a kaleidoscope, and she has a lot going on).

She left mere defiance behind a while ago. Apology is too far gone to be seen in the rear view mirror at all.

What Seymour faces now is danger.

A danger that is his opposite -- and, therefore, his equal.

Her grip is steady upon her weapon, but not as steady as her eyes, as her voice.

The voice of a girl who has learned again, and will forget and learn again and again and again, that SHE IS ENOUGH.

"I will stop you... I promise."

Her attention does not so much waver as expand, to engulf the Baskar Villagers performing Seymour's ritual behind him.

"We can stop him, together," she calls to them in Lunata's wake, to everyone, swelling with the revolution of hope. "The doom upon my world need not become the doom of yours!"

GS: Yuna has activated a Force Action!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lunata Croze's Errors of my Youth for 55 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has attacked Lulu with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has attacked Rikku with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has attacked Tidus with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has attacked Catenna with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has attacked Lunata Croze with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has attacked Venetia Vuong with Reflect!
GS: Yuna enters a Counter stance!
GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yuna's  stance ends. She enters the  stance!
GS: Yuna takes 25 damage from Poison!
GS: Quick expired!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Yuna heals Venetia Vuong! She gains 250 temporary hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Venetia Vuong!
GS: Yuna heals Catenna! She gains 250 temporary hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Catenna!
GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Yuna's Reflect for  hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Rikku!
GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Yuna's Reflect for  hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Lulu!
GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Yuna's Reflect for  hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Yuna!
GS: Yuna heals Lunata Croze! She gains 250 temporary hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Lunata Croze!
GS: Dash Caskett completely evades a hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade!
GS: Dash Caskett's Force Evade activates!
GS: COUNTER! Tidus counterattacks Seymour Guadowith Counter Attack!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Desperado for 0 hit points!
GS: Dispel! Quick and Shield removed!
GS: Disease and Hex! applied to Tidus!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Yuna's Reflect for  hit points!
GS: Surge! applied to Tidus!

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Catenna can feel that familiar resonance - one that echoes what she feels elsewhere. As Cecilia calls forth Celesdue, Saarda-Shanta sails lazily around the Moon Guardian's manifestation, as if the two were one for just a moment.

The feeling touches her heart for just a moment. It helps her to maintain that grace even when confronted with Seymour trying something monumentally insane.

And saying something that makes no sense. She blinks twice, then frowns, touching down in a kneeling posture. "What do you mean, Sin doesn't come from Filgaia?" she echoes, shooting a look towards the circling Great Owl.

Saarda-Shanta, lingering even as Celesdue herself vanishes, hoots once. <I don't understand. But even finding Obsession still extant was a surprise.>

The madman speaks of paltry gods - and then strikes. Catenna has little chance to move before fire and water explode around her. She can only muster a gasp as the blast of flame swallows her up, only the power of one of the water jets crashing into her sparing her from burning to death. Bits of fiery cloth trail behind her as she throws herself out of the water as best she can, blood trailing from a couple of ugly wounds along her side - shallow but deeply painful.

She hits the ground on her hip, grunts and rolls, managing to get back to her feet a bit inelegantly, but at least finding herself able to do it, even after the beating they've taken.

Yuna calls out with a call of hope and a swell of dreams. With a toss of thick dark hair, Catenna glances to the summoner from another world, flashing a faint, appreciative smile. The warmth of the woman's conviction shines through like a lighthouse beam slashing through stormclouds. Even the normally reserved High Priestess of Celesdue cannot help but be moved.

Drawing herself up, Catenna brings her hand forward and focuses her energies - but as one of the Baskar youths falls, her heart jerks in her chest with a stab of horror and pity. For a moment, her reserve breaks, the emotions contorting her lips and darkening her eyes.

Lunata herself turns and cries out, and Catenna begins to move forward, hand held out. "What this man offers you is nothing but more pain!" she calls out to the chanting youths. "There are two sides to every emotion! Don't give in to your desperation! Find the ray of light in the darkness... and find resolve!"

With a snap of her wrist, Catenna unleashes her spell. It strikes with a screech of tortured gravity and a horrific distortion of light, gravity impacting in a short, violent stab that tries to slam Seymour away from the altar and drill him brutally into the ground by multiplying his mass a hundredfold within the space of a second.

"As for you," she bites, "I will show you that Filgaia's spirits are anything but paltry."

GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Tidus's Counter Attack for 17 hit points!
GS: Catenna spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Catenna has attacked Seymour Guado with Quantum Spike!
GS: Catenna has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Catenna's Quantum Spike for 80 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Valefor flaps her broad wings; even Boudicca, not engaged with Seymour personally, is sure to step aside. There is a violence, there, but she has no time to linger on it - neither on the different shade of violence visited upon Lunata.

    The Trial Knight is come.

    Malevolence is not of Filgaian design but something else is, Sin born of barren soil. "Will you bring forth all the sorrows of all the worlds to this place?!" She demands, of K.K., and her anger, her frustration is a hot coal. "Filgaia is no cradle for you to foster destruction! I care not for whence it came - you will not bring the Clysmian forth, you will not forge another Sin for these shores! These fishermen and scoundrels do not think of annihilation when they set sail! They are not lashed to shallows! You would fill every hill and valley of every world's star with tears, Trial Knight, and I tell you they have cried enough!"

    She sweeps a hand to the side, and fire follows it, embers scattered to the earth. "You will not move from Filgaia to Spira! Your hunger for misfortune will never cease! You will tire of them and find another land to torment - and another - and another! I am Oracle and I see your thousand tears, K.K., I see the sorrows in your wake! I tell you, enough!"

    Perhaps whimsy is the heart of wind, and the contrast is no more plainer than to see Nimue and Boudicca beside each other on the battlefield. Because the Trial Knight comes and Boudicca does not even try to dodge aside - she stands, firm and stalwart, tonfa rising up to catch the negative space of a blade. No one ever told her what she was supposed to be like; is that why she is broad instead of wiry, metal plates of armour slung above the story of her skin?

    No one told her what she could do and no one told her what she could not do and now there is fire curled around her, the same fire which eats her essence, the consumption of conflagration. It is a firestorm against the force of their Blessing; her knees bend. The ground furrows grooves around her greaves, as that heavy metal sinks into the earth. The pain is a metaphor, too.

    She's still standing.

    The air blows out around her, Seraphic sigil aglow beneath her feet, and it is a sigil which finds their kin and Ida just the same. "ENOUGH!" Boudicca booms, a third time, and perhaps given her targets her anger is not only abstract.

GS: Seraph Boudicca has activated a Force Action!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Fortifying Tailwind!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seraph Nimue with Fortifying Tailwind!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seraph Lanval with Fortifying Tailwind!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

"...They caught the pail." Marivel says, looking towards the chanting youths--but she doesn't see a clear path to them and in circumstances like this. "Truly, you must be the greatest adversary of man that has ever been." She bows. It doesn't take much effort to see that despite her jokey behavior, her heart isn't really in it and it's not just because of the general horror of what is going on. She hears Yuna's words. She closes her eyes for a moment, screwing them tight, before reopening them--

--because in that moment of hesitation. K.K slams a blade of shadow into her body. It's... a shadow weapon, of course, and Marivel IS a shadow so what would normally be a deadly wound is simply a severe one as black smoky ichor expels from Marivel's body.

"Hm... you say that if this Clysmian is born, we deserve our fate? Do you hate human sacrifice that much? I might start liking you, K.K..."

She straightens up and her eyes glow crimson as she tosses aside the parasol.

"But today is not the day that Filgaia falls. The Day of Promise has yet to come. But rest assured that while we may not save Filgaia, Lunar will share its fate and your treacherous goddess will find a worse one so long as she continues her path."

She summons Guillotine, a red blade of blood into her hands and swings it to the side--darting forward towards K.K as if to swing it at them--

--only to vanish mid swing, appear behind K.K, and swing at them from behind with her hand--

--aiming to draw out a tiny little delicious portion of their spirit...and consume it! She is always ready to add new techniquees to her repertoire--and if she gains any insight as to K.K's nature? All the better.

"What is to come will find you just as tasty as the rest of us, friend."

DC: Marivel Armitage switches forms to Crimson Noble Marivel!

GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked K.K. with Skill Drain!
GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Skill Drain for 16 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Marivel Armitage drains K.K.! Marivel Armitage gains 8 temporary hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.

Other things Tipheria was not expecting: bugs.

Holding her spear forward, trying to keep Seymour at bay, would have worked pretty well on someone of normal human size and shape. It is much less effective against the extending, snapping arm of the Mortibody, which clips her as she rolls to the side; the stinger goes deep into her hip.

But she refuses to cry out. She makes no noise beyond a slight gasp, indrawn through her teeth, as she staggers back; spells cascade where she was, including the Medium of the Merciless Queen as it comes in. Tipheria knows better than to get too close to that magic.

It's unusual for Tipheria to keep her mouth shut. And, in fact, she doesn't - but something - perhaps the death of the Baskar youth, or something either Seymour or K.K. said - has enraged her.

She lets out a wordless roar as she goes back on the attack, using wide sweeping slashes rather than fast or extended thrusts, whirling arcs delivered with power as much as finesse.

Tipheria *does* speak once she gets some momentum going: "I don't know about Clysmians but I think your salvation sucks! You come here and order people to die for you - just like every other cult and church! Hey!" Tipheria calls this to the others fighting Seymour - Yuna and her Guardians, Catenna, Cecilia and Claude, all of them. "Let's keep kicking this freak's ass!"

The real reason Tipheria is using all extended sweeps is because she doesn't trust her poisoned leg to hold her if she tries to run on it. She's putting most of her weight on her other one, and her leg is already reddening. It trembles occasionally - but sheer willpower keeps her on it.

GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Seymour Guado with Spinning Edge!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Tipheria Aredor takes 24 damage from Poison!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Spinning Edge for 78 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"Of course." Jacqueline murmurs in response to Lunata, returning that squeeze with another one of her own. "...Always..."

And then, Lunata steps away. Jacqueline looks toward Seymour as he responds to her earlier statement. 'Is that so', he says, with that cold, lucid smile. It... kind of makes her want to punch him in the face.

"Yes, it is! Don't you see that!?" Jacqueline replies, shaking her head. But a scream from one of the youths distracts her. Jacqueline hurries after Lunata.

"Please, listen to her! The Clysmians - they only destroy!" Jacqueline pleads. Should she... try to use one of her potions to make them fall asleep? But seeing what happened to the one that fell, she's a little concerned that forcibly cutting off the chant might cause them more harm than if they stopped the chant purposefully...

And then, Lunata goes after Seymour herself.

"Lunata! We're with you!" Jacqueline says. With a gesture of her left hand Jacqueline invokes a Mage Weapon Crest Graph, lending her strength to Lunata and Shalune both!

GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Lunata Croze with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Shalune Amira with Mage Armory!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Seraph Lanval!

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

Water - yeah, that's one of the elements Claude's not able to do much about. He swings the greatsword around in front of his body and tries to angle it in a direction that sort of deflects the geyser away; it works all right for the first one, which streams out behind him. But the force of the blow blunts his charge, for which he tries to compensate by muscling through it.

This is a mistake; it slows him down, which means he doesn't quite get the blade into position for the second shot. The geyser clips Claude in the right hip, sending him spinning around. The third catches him square in the chest, sending him staggering backward, the water and torque forcing from his grip. Claude stutter-steps, emitting a choking cough, and barely manages to keep his feet. His eyes sweep up, looking for his sword - and see the fireball arcing toward his cranium.

There is no time to think. Which, for Claude, is a good thing.

Claude begins with a single, perfect step - the core of any martial art, according to the base principles his mother (occasionally literally) hammered into him from a young age. His right foot moves forward, angled slightly inward, and that single movement leads naturally into the next. Claude's hands rise up toward the dantian at the centre of his abdomen, a motion he's practiced thousands of times before. A faint blue flicker dances around his fingers as the fireball closes; Claude's arms reach up and outward, as if to embrace the flame. In the barest instant before it would connect - as the flames lick against the chi enfolding his fingers - Claude steps back in a whirling circle, his arms windmilling around his torso. Red and blue lines of power carving through the air as he spins twice, his feet dragging a furrow in the earth. He finally comes to a stop in the same position in which he began, left and right hands out to either side of his body. The after-trails of the spellfire hover in the air for a moment, forming a perfect circle with a sinuous line bisecting it, Claude's hands thrust into the meat of each circle. For those who know it, it looks like the yin-yang symbol seen in the religions of the Seed cities.

Except where the dots are normally seen in the centre of each other's halves, there lies instead two blazing balls of spellfire, caught by the young man's qigong. Claude C. Kenny exhales slowly, a faint blue mist escaping his lips.

And then he advances forward, moving in an ancient running style with both hands thrust behind him, still carrying Seymour's fire in tightly clawed grips. Claude takes five quick steps and then leaps upward, trails of fire marking his travel in a soaring leap. The big man twists left and then right, hurling each ball of flame back toward the man who sent it at him, then clenches his right hand into a tight fist.

"Da na NA na NA na," he hums the ancient mudra.

 Leather creaks as Claude falls down toward the form of Seymour Natus, brilliant blue and yellow motes flaring out from his clenched hand as he channels his power through an ancient and familiar focus - the one his mother instructed him to make the first time he crept into her room, complaining of phantoms under the bed. The leather glove blazes with a brilliant light, in which the red letters stitched into the back can barely be seen.

                                EFF U
                               GOESTS!

"DA NA NA NA NA NA!" Claude C. Kenny roars as he smashes the Ghost-Punching Glove toward Seymour Guado's precious little face.

GS: Claude C. Kenny has activated a Force Action!
GS: Formation! Claude C. Kenny has attacked Seymour Guado with I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghosts!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Seraph Nimue takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Seraph Nimue!
GS: Sneak! The true nature of Claude C. Kenny's attack becomes clear!
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Freestyle Combat Arts for 32 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

"'Providing an answer?!' Ivan echoes back, incredulous. "You're turning cartwheels not to answer anything!"

As K.K.'s hand drives forward toward Ivan, he sweeps into a crossed-arm block, just as the draconic flare of radiant energy burst forth. Fire bursts from Ivan in answer, and he flies backwards as the energies clash, landing in a crouch some distance away.

K.K. continues to trade blows with various and sundry assailants, leaving a trail of cryptic comments in their wake. Ivan looks desperately back and forth among those fighting alongside him.

"Are any of you following this?! Do any of you understand what they're saying?? Marivel... maybe??" No! Wait! What if Marivel's answer is even more cryptic than K.K.'s?!

What it feels like he's being told, at any rate, is that it's none of his business, and he doesn't belong here trying to stop it.

He sweeps out his hand in protest.

"They're saying it's another Sin!! This is everybody's business! Even mine!"

Even former assassins who don't have any business going around trying to identify what's wrong in the world have a stake in city-obliterating monsters, don't they?

Ivan waits for a moment when K.K. is clear of other assailants, then vanishes his sword and brings his hands upward, tracing them in a pattern overhead before pulling them downward as if dragging something down out of the sky.

Liquid fire begins to rain down from above K.K., hitting the ground and sizzling in heavy molten globs.

GS: Lunata Croze takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Lunata Croze!
GS: Ivan has attacked K.K. with Scorching Rain!
GS: Ivan has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ivan assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Ivan has completed his action.
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Ivan's Scorching Rain for 88 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    She's just as guilty, Lunata insists, after Seymour asks that she tell them exactly what she's done.

    Because she'd known. She'd met with him before. If she had told someone, anyone, what was about to happen, then this--

    "Bullshit," Josie says, the ARM in her hand still directed downwards, towards the dirt path beneath her feet. "This ain't over yet, for one. And for another--" Josie cuts herself off and shakes her head. She remains silent, nearly distant in this moment in spite of the chaos rapidly unfolding around them all. "...Forget it. We can hash this all out once we've handle this lot! Come on, now!"

    Maybe Shalune and Jacqueline can do the rest -- can pull her together before there's a repeat of what was before.
    There's nowhere to go under the Baskar Village but an early grave, after all.

    With that, she starts off running.
    The range on this ARM isn't as long as some others she has.

    The bullet rips through the air--

    And is simply caught, for Josie's pains. It seems to glint for a moment as she darts backwards, seeking what cover she can, brighter than any star in the sky.

    And they speak, then, to her.

    Her grip on the ARM tightens. Her mouth and throat feel as if they've gone dry. "You..."

    'Girl'. Somehow, of all the words the knight speaks, that one strikes her the hardest. The rest she knows. The rest -- well, let it be so!
    But girl, girl. As if she's small. As if she's still learning at her father's--

    The bullet is returned to her with the sound of a cannon's roar. The sign is flung from the earth in the blast; Josie herself is merely flung backwards and to the ground.
    The fragments of what had been a sign come raining down afterwards.

    She stirs and slowly begins to rise, a few droplets of blood staining the dirt path. "What are you... talking about--"

    Like the accused before the executioner, she's on her knees as the Trial Knight marches towards her. Gazing up at them as they state those words, she is in this moment frozen.
    The Reaper's Hand slips from her grasp to land in a sprawl by her side.
    Is what is on her face shock? Or is it horror?

    The sound of a bullet slamming into K.K. both what spares her and brings her around. The blade slams into the earth; snatching up her ARM, she rises shakily and and runs, putting real distance between her and K.K.

    "..."

    She leans a moment against a nearby house, breathing hard, then slams the Reaper's Hand into the holster at her hip. Mutely, the archaeologist shakes her head.

    "...You don't get to decide none o' that," she mutters, to no one in particular. Pushing off against the wall, she reaches for her oldest friend, still holstered against her back--

    The Gawain-series rifle. Modified by her.
    ...And thanks to a lucky find in Kislev's sewers, capable of putting a (rifle round-sized) hole in even a Gear.

    She aims it now, steadying it with her bad hand.

    "Eat shit," she says, and it might well be drowned out under the report of the rifle.

GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked K.K. with Go Down In Flames!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    The pink-haired girl shakes her head, a smile clear on her face as she joins in with Jacqueline, hugging Lunata hard enough to squeeze the life out of her were she actually alive. "There's nothing to forgive. I never blamed you in the first place. Just like I don't blame these kids," she stresses, relief clear in her voice. "But even if there were - of course we would. I can't know everything you've been through... but I've been at your side long enough to understand, at least a little."

    She looks towards Jacqueline again, nodding her head slowly as she speaks to both of them. Her heart is still hammering, but she's had a lot of practice at trying to keep a cool head during times like this, of doing what she can to provide moral and morale support. "Once this is over, we'll talk to the village. And if they won't listen, then-- then-- we'll talk to the kids instead. Get them somewhere safer, if we have to," she adds, her brain swirling a little at what she herself is suggesting.

    But when she bites her lip and hesitates, it's only on the subject of Seymour. She'd like to add to her promises, to suggest that they'll talk to the Maester as well, to offer him the same support they offer Lunata - but that feels too enormous to contemplate, and she has a nasty slithering feeling that he might be beyond that point already. Even as she thinks that, she's checking herself - it's not even her place to decide something like that, not without understanding the reasons behind it. That's something only Lunata can answer, she tells herself.

    So the light sound of Lunata unsheathing her sword rings out to her across the din of the battle; it spurs her into motion as well, her body acting before her brain has really caught up with her, as she drops down into the midst of the youths chanting and catches two of them by the shoulder. "I want you all to stay alive," she promises, putting as much sincerity into her voice as she can manage. "But you have to get clear and safe. After that, we'll help you as much as we can!"

    She snaps her head up, watching as Lunata strikes at Seymour. Something tells her it's important to witness this - important to Lunata, important to Seymour, even if the latter might not realize it for what it is, someone so similar to him trying their best to save him from his own mistakes. Desperation either way, she thinks to herself, swallowing the lump in her throat.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    At first it seems like it's going in a better direction. Rikku throws a device that sends a magical-ish shield swelling up before Tidus. He shoots her a thumbs up, twitchy as his body may still be right now. "Thanks a million!" he shouts her way. He shoots a glance to the skies just in time to see the last of the pyreflies sweep away, back towards Seymour's fiendish form. Being electrocuted had distracted him, so he hadn't noticed at first, but--did Seymour seriously just one-shot Yuna's Aeon?!
    
    "That's cheating!!" Tidus bellows. He does manage to get in a shallow slice before Seymour breaks free of his Slowga spell, but Tidus suffers for it: Seymour blasts him with a spell that immediately dispels Rikku's buffs, that prevent Yuna's healing from taking hold when she does her best to restore his and the others' health. As if Tidus didn't already hate Seymour enough.
    
    One of the chanters collapses, driving the others to hesitation. Seymour bellows them on. "Don't listen to him!" Tidus yells at the chanters. He thrusts a finger at Seymour, still glaring at them. "LOOK at him! You think he's really got your best interests at heart?! He doesn't care! He's just using you for his crazy power trip! You want to stop the sacrifices, right?! There's GOT to be a better way than this!"
    
    Later, it will occur to Tidus to wonder why sacrifice is something the Baskars and Spira have in common. Right now, he doesn't care about anything but punching Seymour in the face, metaphorically *and* literally.
    
    This is when Claude actually does literally punch Seymour in the face. Tidus doesn't know him, but already his respect for the other blond is through the roof.
    
    "You think it's a GIFT?! Do you even understand who Sin IS?!" Tidus yells back. In his anger, he doesn't notice the tears beading in the corners of his eyes, ripped away an instant later when he swings his sword in a rapid slash for the fiend, then nimbly leaps back out of immediate range. (Given that Seymour is a mage, this probably won't matter much, but still.) The fact that Tidus says 'who' and not 'what' might sound strange, but even he isn't thinking of that right now. He's not even angry at just Seymour now. It's all his hate and fury and resentment at his own father, riled up not just with all this talk of a second Sin but after his trip through the Sacrificial Grounds, rising up like a wave of bile and vomited all over the pernicious pastor.
    
    Just metaphorically, this time. Not literally.

GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Quick Hit!
GS: Tidus has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Tidus has launched an attack Link!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

"More, like Sin," Lulu answers. It disturbs her, to say the least--a part of her wants to read those same texts, to understand this threat. But the bulk of Lulu's focused mind must ensure that she--or at least, Yuna--survive to have that chance at all.

"That must not happen!" Lulu calls of bringing forth these others. But tht gleam in his eyes... Lulu sees it--and the green light washes over her, sickening and draining away Rikku's protective barrier. It is unfortunate--but they can only move onward. Onward, like...

'I won't let you hurt them again!'

It is new, but Lulu understands it immediately. SHe understands it because she understands Yuna, perhaps more than because she understands magic. "..."

"That's right," Lulu agrees with Yuna. "We won't allow the same thing to happen here."

She sets down the doll under her arm, and Mog starts to lift her arms as Lulu lifts her own--she focuses, the doll mirroring her movements, an the barriers Yuna has put up begin to glow--

As Lulu casts towards them, letting a powerful blast of water erupt and ricochet from all directions towards Seymour. The purest expression of aquatic force crashes towards Seymour in waves of blue and white.

GS: Lulu has activated a Force Action!
GS: Lulu spends 1 Combo on Interrupt!
GS: Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Waterga!
GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lulu's Avenger stance ends. She enters the Stoic stance!
GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Go Down In Flames for 17 hit points!
GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

In the heat of the moment, the adrenaline isn't letting Xantia immediately process what happened. Once she finishes speaking, though, her eyes widen. It's in that brief unguarded moment that K.K. knocks her back. Though she physically recovers quickly, the wide-eyed stare is still there when her focus returns to the Trial Knight. She wasn't expecting to slip past their defenses. Nor for her demands to be met with a denial. She has no reason to doubt those words. This isn't like it was in the Guardian Temple, K.K. isn't behaving the same way he did then. Much to her chagrin, she's once again forced to admit to herself that she may never fully understand K.K.'s motivations.

"...Spira?" she begins to question, but then shakes her head resolutely. "No - that doesn't make any difference. If anything, that makes it worse! You'd just casually doom this planet, and you don't even care! You're still every bit the threat to Filgaia that you've always been!"

The appearance of a book of some sort gives her pause, dropping back into a defensive stance. Not knowing what it is she's going to be defending against, she has limited preparation for the appearance of a sword of darkness. The first strike is intercepted by her energy blade, but the impact disperses the weapon into motes of red light, and causes her to become unbalanced. The second strike catches her in the left shoulder, prompting a yelp of pain.

Thankfully, she managed to avoid a deep cut. She can still fight. And under these circumstances, it feels like there's only one fitting way to do so.

No tome, no runes, nor words come from Xantia. She merely clasps her hands together and focuses a brief moment, summoning her most recently acquired power. In response, pure light bursts forth from her joined hands, coalescing into the form of a two-handed greatsword - facing the blade of shadow with its elemental opposite.

When the dark sword comes for her once more, she quite literally crosses blades with it, seeking to force it back - destroy it if possible, and keep right on going to strike a blow against the Trial Knight themselves. Raising the blade overhead, she remains poised to strike again in response to whatever K.K. might attempt next.

A diversion, they said. She won't let this be a mere diversion.

"...As you can see, I've learned a few things since last time. ...Well? Do I have your interest now?"

GS: Xantia spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Xantia has attacked K.K. with Radiant Blade!
GS: Xantia enters a Counter stance!
GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tidus's Quick Hit for 46 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lulu's Waterga for 94 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!
GS: Infect!! All debuffs' duration extended by 2 rounds!!

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

"I ask the questions because exasperation is a coping mechanism you armored assh--" Cyre is cut off by the federal kencorship komission. Or rather, by the jet of rock knocking the air right out of him. He hisses in surprise as blinding light and a geyser of stone occlude his vision... Moments before the radiant column becomes the central axis for an asterisk of shining pain.

But, at least this time, the blades do not find flesh.

They strike steel.

Cyre screams as he's sent flying, the sleeves of his robe shredded to tattered shreds where the Trial Knight's blades found purchase. Amidst a blizzard of fabric, there are a pair of gauntlets strapped to his arms: Demon Arms, quite literally. Perhaps it's foolish to bring them to battle the Trial Knight, but they saved the shaman's life. It feels as though his bones have been pulverized to so much dust under the armor, but--

He's alive.

He can still fight.

Cyre pulls himself out of the wreckage of what used to be a cabbage cart. He leaps back into the air, storm-winds raging all around him, even as his own blood paints the howling gales bright red. "You're taking advantage of people's suffering...! Their anxiety and their fear-- they need to be soothed, the wrong needs to be righted. You're right, they needed to be answered... But taking suffering and turning it into more suffering, enabling this cycle of self-destruction, all to satisfy your own twisted curiosity!?"

He completes his leap a bare foot away from the white knight, slamming a gauntleted fist into the ground. A wave of incredible pressure, like the blastwave of some small ICBM, explodes outward from the point of impact. It's almost deafening, but...! "Clysmians... Obsession, desperation, hatred, despair! Contradictions, because human hearts can have these things and also contain things like desire, hope, love and courage! Sometimes, they're indistinguishible! But to weaponize it, to kill people with the very stuff of people... It's disgusting! No matter the why of it, the how is something I can't ever forgive! Roar, storm! Rage, winds! Whatever else, we can't let the Clysmian manifest!"

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz spends 1 Combo on Poison!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked K.K. with Grand Pressure!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    The confirmation by the Trial Knight is, for an assumption already well made, no less harrowing to hear by their own words. The Oracle of Schturdark's brow furrows, relenting on his assault in brief as to internalize the truth laid bare about what he felt down there before that egg - and all the better to allow the melee combatants to be spared some potential cross-fire watery wrath in the process.
     "We shalt not suffer another like Obsession!" A bold declaration, for when thus far they have failed to address Sin/Obsession decisively - the declaration being his answer to those questions, in so much the Oracle believes not having the questions need ever be considered by having it cease to materialize.
     Which, in its own way, could be that tiniest iota of the newborn Clysmian's nature seeping into the very fabric of its birthplace.
     A pure shadow blade comes into being, and carves forth. Any of the lingering rain surrounding the waterfall that once came upon K.K. is cut in twain in its path, like a string. The water that still falls into where the blade touched just... ceases to be, improbably.
     Lanval's manifestation does not look the part, but he is an elemental of water - capable of moving with all the grace of a rolling wave as it arcs towards him. He finds himself having to over-correct as he barrels forward, twisting his arms to get the drinking gourd away from the path of the blade. He misses the cutting edge and makes the faintest possible contact with the 'flat' of the shadow sword.
     Even that faint contact is agonizing, just as searing as it would have been as a direct hit. Faint watery lights of Lanval's very essence trails where the blade strikes, as if any deeper a strike would have compromised his ability to maintain his projection as he tumbles and rolls with a pratfall-like character more readily associated to his usual manner before halting upright in a kneel.
     A warm but welcome wind blows behind him courtesy of his fellow Oracle, and helps him rise up as he hears Boudicca's pleas about stopping this filling ocean of tears, and listen in on Marivel's observations and assurances.
     "To whom would thou divert with this abomination?" The Oracle asks as Seraphic glyphs form underneath him, appropriate chants lost in some of the other outbursts surrounding him as he swings his gourd outward by the rope several times before swinging upward and keeping it tilted as it spills forth another large washing wave of water.

GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked K.K. with Incoming Wave!
GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"Anytime Tidus!"

Rikku's eyes grow wide, as if Seymour's explanation to Tidus simply validated all she said. It's upsetting. Her muscles are still twitching, and so many of her people died at Operation Mi'ihen, sacrificed themselves to bring Sin out of the world.

And now he'd bring another one into being.

Rikku feels like she's shriveling away as Seymour looks at her though. As he calls upon. The strange Insectoid moves towards her. And Rikku's hastened form sidesteps - though not quickly enough.

The terrible pale light strikes her alchemical protections, one simple strike, and the field appears a concave barrier of light. And shatters like he just threw a brick through a pane of glass. "You-! What was that!?"

It's so creepy, that Rikku finds that fear settling into herself. Holding back tears. It's so horrible. He's so horrible. Why? Why is he doing this to this world?

    Why?

Then Yuna speaks. And the intensity with which she does, draws Rikku's eye... her attention.

Maybe it doesn't matter why him. Maybe the only why that matters is her.

Yuna is why she's doing this.

A new shield shimmers over her from Yuna's power, though it wavers in the after effect of that awful insectoid light. It still stands, at a fraction of its power. "There's no way we will." Rikku agrees with Lulu as she watches her invoke her magic...

"I know you won't let him..." She says to Yuna, with a smile. Rikku palms a bomb core in her hand. "...hurt me."

Rikku faces Seymour and crushes the Bomb Core in her hand. And Yuna's protection flares to life. As all that erupting fiery energy from the core's explosion...

... is transferred outwards towards the towering Unsent. In a terrible fiery eruption of of power that zips over to crash into him.

Rikku pivots into a spin - and seems, oddly cheerful? "Ta-dah! That's for hitting us with some creepy insect ray you big Meanie! Hope you're ready for what comes next because we're about to send you somewhere where you'll never bother this world again!"

Yuna is why she's doing this. So even as she's faced with such power - even when her worst fears are crammed in her face. Even when faced with another world being tormented by something like Sin.

She'll do her best to keep smiling.

GS: Rikku spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Use: PeRiOdIc Table of Spiran Fiends!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Rikku's Use: PeRiOdIc Table of Spiran Fiends for 88 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Nimue has posed.

That giant, impossible blade swings down toward Nimue -- and it slams straight into her, despite her best efforts to get out of the way. She lets out a sharp, pained cry, before appending, "OK! OK! Back to being tired of being alive! Ow! No! Bad! My pain is real to me and that sucks actually!!" She's not dead, though, and despite her loud, insistent complaining, pries herself back off the ground, bruised and busted-up though she may be.

More seriously, she affirms, "... yeah. Everything in the world works that way, I guess." With a wry, self-deprecating smile, she adds, "Only bad things happen all at once." She unshoulders her sling-staff and considers the things in her pack with... if not care, at least a general sense of deliberation about the task before her. Raising her arms against the Trial Knight is scary; she's seen firsthand what they can do.

That bright sigil puts the wind at Nimue's back in just the same way that Nimue put it at Marivel's not so long ago, almost; despite the contrasts between them, Boudicca and Nimue are both creatures of the wind, at heart. Nimue starts to backpedal, moving *away* from K.K., trying to gain some space back.

A moment later, though, she reaches into her pack and withdraws one of her many, many bombs. Giving her staff a quick twirl, she tosses the bomb into the air; snagging it with the basket end, she whips it at K.K. at top speed, where the Trial Knight will be treated to a whole bunch of flying flechettes and shrapnel.

GS: Seraph Nimue has attacked K.K. with Razor Monsoon!
GS: Seraph Nimue has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

"I'm sorry you're who," Venetia says, parenthetically, as Cecilia reveals exactly who she is. Her eyes widen behind the lace of the mask even as she turns her attention back towards the looming form of their enemy, the man of the moon. His form is changing, Venetia thinks.

The incoming water blasts are something Venetia is used to. She is on the verge of saying 'hah!' when the fireball bursts beneath her.

It is a small thing in some ways. She had been incidentally soaked by the near occasion of that water. That water is briefly and hellaciously exposed to fire; fire intense enough to make that small amount of water burst to steam. Steam trapped close to the skin by adventuring gear intended to keep something OUT from getting IN; and thus, Venetia lets out a half-choked shriek of agony and staggers to the side, feeling pain rip up her legs and over her arms. She slumps to the side, the heat dissipating with damnable, agonizing slowness.

Or is it, Venetia thinks in momentary sick dread. Her head tilts upwards to look towards Seymour and past him towards - towards the mummery he is doing, towards this dark art. This Sin was born here, or originated on Filgaia, Venetia thinks as a strange sort of sweaty cold washes over her.

Venetia's eyes prick with tears and that is a layer of anger because she resents the betrayal of her eyes. Above that comes the other heavy leather strips of fury: not wanting to cry, or die, in front of Armitage; Everstead-Ray; Claude Kenny; the moon-people; the others. (And it is in fact in that order.)

She pushes herself upright, or at least into a squat. She stares at Seymour, reaches for her Crest pouch and--

Fate changes for a moment. A completely unfamiliar magical field constructs itself around Venetia. For a brief moment the anger disappears entirely as she blinks once. In this moment her mask slides down her face on the right side, and she curses and pushes it back up.

The anger comes back, but the train is more coherent. There is a whisper of frustration there, but her attention pours outwards. "Astonishing," she says. "If I see this right - it's directional, isn't it?"

"Then I don't have to get up," Venetia says, slouching downwards and sitting on her own heels.

She does not rest on her laurels, though. Out comes a battered bronze tile - a Crest Graph - and Venetia says to it, "It's been a while, hasn't it?" As she sweeps dust off of the front of it - or is that dirt - she intones, "The flame pours its soul into the stone..."

"The heat of ages, confined by stone, by weight, by mass..."
"The confinement of art..."
"And the confoundment of ages."
"The fires of Hell burn ever bright... light unseen, as stone becomes water, as water becomes air, as air builds until it overcomes stone!"

Venetia raises the Crest Graph. And, despite the pain, she finds herself rising upright too. She looks over the edge as she says, "O Kaminos: by the ancient strictures, speak your truth!"

"Deepest Art:"

Crystalline violet light spikes round her feet, rotating clockwise and shading abruptly into hotter shades: orange, red, the strange blue that comes from seeps of gas within the earth. Venetia tilts her head back, to look down her nose at Seymour.

And to wait for Claude to be, fractionally, clear, in order to conclude: "Force Crusher!"

The noise is not like thunder. There is almost no flame, only a brief hint of a bluish spark as the spiritual essence of twice-redoubled fire roll outwards. But it IS a lot like artillery exploding; directional bursts, always smashing DOWN, a wheel of bombarding force with a noise like an artillery strike!

Of course, it aims to roll over Seymour - and perhaps past him.

GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Seymour Guado with Deepest Art: Force Crusher!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

When Cecilia demands Seymour's attention, he gives it to her. This is as usual not terribly pleasant and a habit she needs to break herself of.

The gouts of water and fireball crash against her, requiring carefully aligned shielding or just lots of guts; Cecilia has become better at shielding since her friendship began with Asgard and when the light from Seymour fades, she's breathing heavily from within her bubble; the surface of the thing is scorched and sizzling, weakened from the on-the-spot tempering of cold water and blazing heat.

She hears the Summoner party from Spira calling their answer to all this, and sucks in a breaht to steady herself. She watches Claude pull out his old reliable ghost-punchin' gloves, and despite herself and the situation, can't quite suppress a smile. "Just so," she says, quietly. "Allow me to offer you a gift of my own. You Spirans had your own art of summoning. But this is mine! Material!"

Another of Cecilia's tablets careens toward her as she whirls her staff around her. She gathers the Ley around her, straightening out corruptions in the Leyline just by her presence, making pure what is not by the light of an oath sworn. With that power assembled, she jabs the Arc Scepter forward, and the icon of Grudiev flashes, stone-like clawmarks igniting into light before the power ruptures free of its stony prison.

Grudiev rises behind her again, the apparition of the Guardian screaming like plate subduction as the crystals on its shoulders ignite and then blast down, raking power across the ground around Seymour and sending up spikes of earth that fracture the ground, giving cover to duck behind - and stabbing into Seymour's twisted form.

GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Seymour Guado with Material - Magnetron Bomb!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde assumes the Stoic stance!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Venetia Vuong's Deepest Art: Force Crusher for 113 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.

The buster fire whisks toward the Trial Knight, only to be decimated before eve nreaching them. Dash is able to track the swings much easier than standard human vision, which makes the speed of the attacks all the more frightening. "Tch. So what, are you some guy who just gives people a hard time? Gonna just let them summon some freakish monstrosity thing like whatever is floating around Lunar?" he calls out.

It was difficult to ascertain any information about this person. Other than their armor, and their wicked looking weapon, they lack details in an unusual way. Perhaps on purpose.

That knight is not one to just take hits however, and vicious lashes of some kind of unknown energy ripple outward.

The anomlaous combat system found within once again reacts to a hostile report before Dash can think of it, and finds himself backflipping several times away, and then a final, higher time to avoid the dark crescent of energy, the ephemeral blade missing his helmet by the tiniest measurements imaginable.

He even sticks the landing, and blinks a few times. How does Dash do it? Even he is unsure. "What is the deal with this guy?" Dash shouts to the others engaging K.K. as it may be helpful knowing. "Look, anyone who wants to summon monsters isn't out for peoples best interest! Like, what if we start summoning good monsters to fight you huh! You wouldn't like that, right?!"

...He is pretty sure they can't do that. Monsters like Clysmians seem to be bad things. There aren't good ones. RIght?

"Look, you are trying to hurt people, and there's not a whole lot I know I am capable of, but if you are planning to help these people in any way, then I will do what I can to stop you!"

With that powerful an attack, taking a hit might be bad. A quick switch out as he runs forward, Active Buster for Shield Arm.

The Mega Buster lights up again, though with a spray of smaller, lime-colored plasma flares, as a hexagonal shield of similar energy sprouts of the nub that would be a hand on the opposite arm.

GS: Dash Caskett has attacked K.K. with Phalanx Fusillade!
GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Ida feels the impact travel up her leg, cross her hip, and settle at the base of her spine. She grits her teeth and pushes, but it's like K.K. is rooted to the spot. Ida is unsurprised. Even now, when they're not wielding the full extent of their power, the Trial Knight is a force of nature.

    'You have come far, Ida Everstead-Rey.'

    Ida's body stays tensed, locked in mid-kick, but her eyes widen in surprise. As Dean--and many others--observed, there was a tiny part of Ida that craved the Trial Knight's approval, as though it were a magical seal that marked her as Truly Strong. It's still there, but this time, it isn't in the driver's seat. K.K. knocks her away, and she spins with it, landing in a wide-legged stance.

    "I have," Ida murmurs. "But I cannot rest. I will not rest. I swore an oath. I will drag both our worlds back from the brink with my bare hands, if I must."

    Boudicca pours out her heart. Ida steps back, still in that stance--but now she's standing by her Oracle's side, ready to intervene at a moment's notice.

    The blade of shadow surges across the battlefield. It rips across Ida's chest, cutting through flesh, clothing, and armor in a single, mighty stroke. Crimson and quicksilver spray from the wound, tracing out a gory arc in the wake of K.K.'s blade. Ida reels back, staggers, presses a gauntleted hand to her chest--

    Pale quicksilver threads itself across the wound, as if an invisible surgeon were stitching it shut. Flesh hardens into exoskeletal plate, and slides down to protect the site of injury. It glimmers the same blue-and-gold of Ida's gauntlets, and her family crest. A moment later, the bright light of Boudicca's sigil rises up from beneath her feet. The wind pushes against her back, steadying her.

    "And I," Ida says, her voice pained but full of steel. "I am not alone." She glances back at the three Seraphim, and smiles.

    A shout rips free from Ida's throat, like a thunderclap underscoring Cyre's wave of pressure. As he rips into the Trial Knight with wind, Ida closes the gap between them. Gauntleted fingers press together, forming a single point. She drives that hand at the Trial Knight's throat, burning energy rippling across her fingertips. Ida's used this strike many times, but this time, there's more than just her personal might behind it. Boudicca has her back, and through Boudicca, the power of the the Flame that Sustains the World.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked K.K. with Burning Infusion!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Avenger stance ends.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Shalune Amira takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Shalune Amira!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Xantia's Radiant Blade for 35 hit points!
GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Grand Pressure for 27 hit points!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Seraph Lanval's Incoming Wave for 73 hit points!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Seraph Nimue's Razor Monsoon for 76 hit points!
GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: CRITICAL! K.K. critically Guards a hit from Dash Caskett's Phalanx Fusillade for 24 hit points!
GS: Cover! applied to Dash Caskett!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Burning Infusion for 0 hit points!
GS: Cripple and Disease! applied to K.K.!

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    "Josie!" The sound of footfalls close in behind Josie, their owner coming to an abrupt stop as K.K. retorts with a blade of liquid shadow.

    Gwen's ARM projects a field of glittering transparent gold the very moment the energy comes at her, and, momentum egging her forward, she drops into a desperate slide.

    "Gh--!"

    Where the energy was enough to dent many, what would usually be just as painful for Gwen, if not moreso, the main bulk of it instead ricochets off, smoke wafting in the bewildered Gwen's wake as her body slides to a slow stop.

    She has many questions, but one by one, the others around her ask them instead, and the Trial Knight delivers his answers. And, just as before, Gwen tries to grapple with the implications, and find the time needs to sort them out to be woefully short.

    It is, after all, a battlefield.

    "I 'spose you get points for stickin' to your guns." Gwen stands, shaking her right arm with a bland, almost tired smile on her face.

    'My interest lies now in Spira.'

    This manages to shock Gwen out of her slight malaise, the courier taking a step back as Xantia rushes forward. "I think the last thing Spira needs is more interest. We already did enough damage there, with our own meddling." Guilt rings in Gwen's voice. She shakes her head. "I'm always unable to figure out if there is some deeper reason for why you do what you do. But that, well, I guess it ain't somethin' you really gotta answer to me for."

    The digits of her right hand quiver from the collecting energy, the pulsing electricity crackling underneath the fabric of her sleeve and glove.

    "So, if all of this is just an act, a diversion, and your true purpose somehow happens to have a purpose beyond spreading chaos and mayhem, then..." Fog blue eyes widen in the display of Cyre and Ida's coordinated attacks, streaming past her.

    "I'll place myself on the side of those that foolishly misunderstood your true intentions." Her lips shake in a laugh. "But I suppose that's me holdin' onto my own guns, eh? In the end, Filgaia don't need mercy from any god."

    She holds her right palm up, and spreads her fingers wide, the same glittering energy projected out to spread across the ground in an expanding radius, around her area, to the parts of the battle beyond.

    "And Spira..." Her eyelids lower. "... doesn't need more saviors."

GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Seymour Guado with St. Elmo's Fire!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked K.K. with St. Elmo's Fire!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Cecilia Adlehyde's Material - Magnetron Bomb for 85 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's St. Elmo's Fire for 0 hit points!
GS: Jam! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

The youths on the altar look back at Lunata. Their eyes are wide; some with fear, some with exaltation, and all in an increasing amount of pain. Whatever the ritual, it comes with a cost. Another of them convulses, falling forward -- muscles seizing, back arching, and then collapsing, as the color drains from them. He becomes ashen-skinned, laying in a heap.

And Seymour is struck into, Lunata'a katana slamming into him. His eyes widen -- he turns to look at her -- and he is everything he never seemed to be to her. There is no understanding smile; no kindness in his gaze. There is that cold, dismissive hatred that has come to define him so.

"You... even you, Lunata..." he says, as chips of rock fall, become Pyreflies, and waft away. "...then so be it," he says. "I will free you from this miserable existence, and YOU WILL CALL IT KINDNESS!"

Light surges from his hand. A pinprick of it -- a spell that Lulu has heard only whispered about, but not seen. A spell that starts as a point, but then blooms into a white-hot starburst of nuclear fire, that slams at Lunata.

It might burn her away, except that it slams into that shield of light. The spell is held back, even as its power burns over the edges, but the vast majority slams into Seymour.

His own protective barrier explodes about him -- his own shield of light -- but it still batters the Unsent, throwing him back from the girl he once called friend.

"You--" Seymour turns, looking at Yuna, and it is with anger and bared teeth that he looks at her. "How dare you, Lady Yuna! Even in this... you would seek to defy me!? To deny me!?"

Gravitational force slams into him. He holds an arm up -- and layers of stone peel away into Pyreflies, but he keeps himself from being driven back by it. "No--" He growls the word. "NO! You do not command me!"

He throws a hand out. The air around Catenna grows thick -- and then stone begins to rise, inch by inch, covering her body. Her legs, then up to her waist, and if she doesn't break away free, it carries with it the risk of pinning her down. But, not for long--

As the Mortibody swings back, and then SLAMS down, trying to smash her out of the stone and cast her aside with that terrible blow. But Tipheria's spear, extended out, sweeps in -- smashing into his side. He snarls, looking up as Claude comes down -- and he raises a hand.

He catches Claude by the fist, and with a bellow, throws him to the ground. "Yes--yes, this form... this will allow me to contend with the likes of you!"

He shouts that even as Tidus approaches, crying out to the Baskar behind Seymour. He turns -- and snarls, before Tidus's blade slashes quickly into him, lines cutting into stone-flesh, and sparks and pyreflies flying free.

Seymour gives Tidus that look that Tidus knows so well, by now; like he is an insect; like he is a foolish boy, with no right to be here. "I know better than you what Sin is."

Lulu's blast of water bounces off her own shield. Then, it slams into Seymour, blasting him down. His own Shell spell shatters, shards of it raining down, and he stumbles, before he rises back into the air. Rikku's bomb strikes into him, the bomb core exploding in a fiery blast that rocks him backward.

A series of blasts hits him, slamming Seymour back again and again, which is then punctuated by rocks commanded by Grudiev. They slam into him, and Pyreflies explode away from him in a burst. "Gh... Filgaian summoning, is it--"

He knows well that he cannot banish a thing not made of Pyreflies. He holds a hand up, clutching a crystalline glass in his hand. The glass has a few stars floating through it, yet a small and nearly translucent cloth is over it. He crushes the Star Veil between his clawed fingers.

And a shield of prismatic light like the one Yuna made appears over him.

Gwen's device sends a rolling wave of light through him. It pierces that barrier; it makes the Unsent shudder, a few Pyreflies wafting from him. Seymour focuses, though, and he completes his spell.

And then a starburst appears, like the one he hurled for Lunata earlier. It flies at it -- then bounces off, and shoots back at the battlefield. It washes out with a massive, fiery explosion of nuclear force that explodes out into a cone. A Baskar house is smashed into kindling; grass blazes in an instance; the shockwave shatters every window on this half of the village.

GS: Seymour Guado spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lunata Croze with Flare!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Venetia Vuong with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Catenna with Break!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado has launched an attack Link!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Catenna with Shattering Claw!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado takes 20 damage from Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: Lunata Croze takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Flare for 268 hit points!
GS: Mute and Poison! applied to Lunata Croze!
GS: CRITICAL! Catenna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Break for 0 hit points!
GS: Entangle and Shieldbreak! applied to Catenna!
GS: Catenna enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Catenna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Shattering Claw for 102 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Claude C. Kenny takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 226 hit points!
GS: Lulu takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 218 hit points!
GS: Lulu enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
GS: COUNTER! Yuna counterattacks Seymour Guadowith Counter Attack!
GS: Yuna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 105 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's Counter Attack for 46 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Nuke!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 209 hit points!
GS: Rikku enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
GS: Tipheria Aredor takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 105 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tipheria Aredor gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Tipheria Aredor's Force Evade activates!
GS: Venetia Vuong takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 201 hit points!
GS: Tidus completely evades a hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde critically Guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Nuke for 41 hit points!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde enters CONDITION GREEN!!

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Catenna can't help experience a little surge of hope as Lunata makes her decision. The girl's beginning to see what Seymour is really made of.

The surge is brought down by an entirely different surge - one of stone and thickening air. The Moon Shaman darts back as quickly as she can, gasping - but it isn't quick enough. Stone crackles up her right leg, seizing her up to the knee. Straining, she gives the stone trap a kick with her other foot, but it doesn't give.

It gives the Mortibody the opening it needs. Throwing her arm up, Catenna tries to catch her hand against it and push herself off, hoping to deflect away from the massive blow.

Being stuck to the spot by one leg makes that somewhat futile. Stone smashes under the force of the impact, the blow hurling Catenna several metres. Screaming pain shoots through her midsection - her ribs aren't in good shape, and she knows it. Her head spins with pain, her senses blanking out for a few seconds as she hurtles through the air.

With a flicker of sudden consciousness, she comes to, still airborne. Groaning, she tries to twist in the air, flipping her legs up and trying to twist to a safe landing. It helps a little - she lands on her feet, but her right leg buckles, and she hits the ground roughly, a blitz of pain firing through her nerves like an electric arc. Her teeth click together; she can taste blood on the tip of her tongue. Something's hurting inside, and she's not quite sure what it is.

Breathing heavily, Catenna presses one hand to her ribs as she comes to her feet. "You aren't offering them kindness," she says, her voice still as reserved as ever despite her obvious pain. "You're asking them to wallow in your own ocean of desperation. They deserve more than that. I can see how desperate you are. Your desire to do this. I understand it. I have a desire too - to protect this world.

"But that desire comes not with desperation... but with conviction."

Raising her right hand, Catenna begins to gather energy. A blur of white feathers passes above her as Saarda-Shanta swoops upwards, vanishing into a growing swell of blue-white light.

The sudden feeling of PRESENCE can be felt as a pair of vast blue butterfly wings unfurl from that spark, high above. Seated atop her crescent moon, Celesdue appears once more, a golden bow drawn. She gazes down at Catenna for a moment.

    <Then do as you see fit, Shaman.>

A bolt of light appears in the Moon Guardian's hand. With a harplike shimmer, she fires it up in a glowing arc. It descends - and falls into Catenna's palm, extending into an arrow of light.

She draws it without a pause. "Moon's Grace!" she cries as she unleashes the arrow at Seymour - but it will not strike as a physical object. If it strikes, it will simply phase into him.

And with it, gravity will attempt to draw him up - to hoist him into the air and hang him there, like a big target.

GS: Formation! Catenna has attacked Seymour Guado with Material - Indomitable Empress!
GS: Catenna has completed her action.
GS: K.K. takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's St. Elmo's Fire for 0 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! K.K. gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Jam! applied to K.K.!
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Catenna's Material - Indomitable Empress for 0 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata hears so many people's voices -- Yuna's, as well, as she affirms along with her that they can stop him, together. As Shalune affirms once more that she isn't to blame, she isn't guilty... that they'll help the kids of the village find their way in life.

    It isn't just Yuna's reflect that grants her strength -- Jacqueline's now-familiar magic also washes over her like a magic vestment, and...

    It's enough, just well enough that she's protected, because--

    You... even you, Lunata...

    "... I want to believe. Maybe... Maybe some part of me still believes, in some way," Lunata answers, as they come close to combat.

    Then she gets to see what he has become. No kindness is there. No understanding. Just a cold, dismissive hatred...

    Yes...

    "... the way you look at me right now, Seymour ... I feel like I know so well what that's like. How someone could fall like that, into a bottomless abyss by themselves, knowing no one in the world will help them..."

    Then her voice is cut out, because--

    I will free you from this miserable existence -- and YOU WILL CALL IT KINDNESS!

    Light surges from Seymour's fingertip, and her eyes widen as she's thrown back and her mouth opens. "Seymour--"

    In another instance, in another moment, she could've been vaporised there and then. Turned into nothing more than cinders, and perhaps cursed to live the existence of ashes with a conscience.

    The starburst strikes her-- and yet both Jacqueline's armour and Yuna's reflective barrier saves her from the worst of it, even as she rolls backwards and collapses against the wall of a nearby hut that's not spared the devastating effect Seymour has visited upon the village.

    "Everyone... run...!" Lunata gasps out amidst the incendiary blaze that erupts around her. "I'm..."

    The ex-waitress rises once more, weak on her knees; there's a harrowed breath as she raises her sword again.

    "Even if it hurts... even if I'm not sure, even if I'm stumbling and have no idea what the heck I'm doing... I'm... gonna try it. Even if I can't fully believe in myself right now... I'll...!"

    She darts inwards once more -- she trusts Jacqueline and Shalune to have her back; bursts of maple leaves scatter ephemerally as she strikes and slashes, each blow from her blade coming with the transient nature of Autumn.

    "I'll believe in my friends!!"

GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seymour Guado with the Word for World is Forest!
GS: Lunata Croze has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lunata Croze's the Word for World is Forest for 87 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

Claude C. Kenny bites off a curse as he is thrown to the ground; he tucks instinctively into a roll and slides backward, preparing to get back to his feet. He starts approaching, then stops as the significance of the sorcerous exchange registers on him. "Holy shit," he breathes as flame crashes against an opalescent barrier and then streaks back for Seymour, who... raises a hand?

Claude doesn't know what a Star Veil is. But he sure as hell knows what a smug smile looks like. And he knows they're all in trouble.

The blast catches Claude more or less at ground zero - he barely has time to turn his back into it and hunch his shoulders, taking the worst of it on his uniform's armourweave - but as advanced as the Federation's technology is, it cannot blunt entirely the effects of nuclear flame. It simply prevents it from ending Claude's life entirely. So he crouches down, huddling inward, and screams as pain blazes through his body.

It goes on for five seconds, or an eternity.

As the flame blast washes away, it is a red and infuriated Claude - trailing smoke and the smouldering scent of his own burned hair - who leaps up toward Seymour from behind, his left hand snaking for the man's throat. "We haven't met," he says, his voice thick with gravel and the tang of his own blood. "My name is Claude. And I'm very stubborn."

The big blonde's right hand smashes forward again, striking Seymour's face with about enough strength to cripple a decrepit mosquito. But then, flesh pressed against pyreflies, a crackling energy begins to shine out from the contact. Claude starts to emit a low roar from his mouth as the energy rises into shimmering blue flames, as the young man manifests his attack after the punch has already connected. Flames burst out from Claude's right hand, swirling into spiraling trails that arc out behind him, twining rapidly together. Claude's wordless battlecry rises in pitch and volume as he summons the fires back into his fist, forging them into a screaming draconic maw, flames and fangs shrieking outward.

All the while, he just keeps driving his fist forward, howling in fury, until he's thrown off or Seymour goes down.

GS: Claude C. Kenny has activated a Force Action!
GS: Claude C. Kenny spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Seymour Guado with Dragon's Howl!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
<SoundTracker> Just The Two Of Us Are Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Than You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0w-UJkTVFU

There's a lot of THINGS being said by the Drifters of Filgaia. And Lunar. And... not-Spira. Things about murder; about death; about Sin; about sacrifice. Things about organized religion; about self-destruction; about salvation.

It is not always easy to be around.

But just because something is hard... does not make it wrong.

And the high summoner's daughter, surrounded by these righteous allies, does not stand alone among them, either.

J U S T I C E
S T R E N G T H
R A G E

She trusts in herself, and the magic of her heart, against the might of Seymour's magic as she twists at last into the first spin of the Sending. Not because she thinks it will WORK -- even on Spira, it's too soon.

But because she thinks it will draw his fire, exactly where she wants it to be.

As she dances, she wonders how many of them will leave her someday, when they find out the truth. Tears fly in Tidus' wake and she wonders what he'll do. It's well past a lie of omission at this point. It's deception; she's deceived them, even as she fights alongside them. Their judgment and rejection she can endure. And his... she'll have to.

D U T Y
H O N O R
F A I T H

She has to.

This is what she chose.

Not easy, but simple.

hope

They choose to hope... that this time, it will be different.

That this time will be the last time.

hope?
hope!
HOPE

It's not like she's doing any of this to HURT them, any of them.

It's very much the opposite.

Yuna can't help but smile as the four souls who ride along with hers overflow with the poignant yearning that the Sending dance always draws out in them. They yearn to join the pyreflies rising from her and from Seymour. But they won't. Because this is what THEY chose.

They all love the world so much.

Now it turns out that they love this world, too.

Blood grinds into the trampled mud of the village ground as Yuna spins. Then the fires of hell sublimate it instantly into the air; a fine mist follows every gesture of her dance. There are blisters on more than just her feet, now. He has burned her and the others, badly, despite her better efforts.

'You would seek to defy me!? To deny me!?'

Seymour's anger washes over Yuna, but it cannot shake her -- not now. And what washes over HIM, and his counter-barrier, is not anger at all.

She's made of something stronger than that.

"All I've ever wanted, Seymour, is to free you... not from life and death. But from misery... and guilt..."

Her expression is gentle as she gazes up at him.

"...but I was wrong. I can't do that for you."

LOVE

"So many people loved you when you were alive. I wish you had been one of them. But I can't bring you love..."

The magic of Dispel touches his Reflect with all the might of a kiss.

'I'll believe in my friends!!'

This, too, is something they can do together.

"...only peace."

GS: Formation! Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with I Am A Conversation!
GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Yuna takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

"Don't talk to her that way!" Rikku shouts at Seymour, upset that he's saying things that will make Yuna upset. Like it's her fault that she's opposing him, rather than his for how things are.

Rikku trusts Yuna to defend her, but right now she sees a starburst strike something. Ricochet. And Rikku cries out in alarm, trying to huddle down behind her shield. "Oh no!"

The fiery explosion blasts her off her feet, swatting her with the blast wave even as the fiery explosion scalds her skin. The next thing she knows she's waking up with shattered woodwork over her, and begins the slow process of picking herself up out of a broken Baskar home. "Oh... thought... I was... a goner...!"

Rikku shifts aside some broken boards and pulverized stone, panting the whole time in pained exertion.

She has to show Yuna that she's alright. Even if she doesn't feel alright. She hears, Yuna... offering him... wishing...

Her earnest sincerity is heart-breaking. She feels like he doesn't deserve it. Yet, it's not her place to decide anything for Yuna.

She learned that lesson already.

Yuna stripping his protections rallies her decisively to an idea. So as she staggers back onto the battlefield, she calls out from his flanks. "Hey Seymour ... Maesters ... supposed to be teachers right? So question!"

Rikku asks with a tone of flippant - albeit pained curiosity as she massages her burned throat. With her other arm she points her clawed gauntlet. Though Seymour might note, if he's deigned to pay attention to her that the design has changed. From a leather gauntlet and a claw to a metallic blue sheath encompassing her arm with two claws. As she grips her fist, a sudden shift causes a retracting barrel to slide out of a panel.

"How taboo is blowing up a dead Maester with Otherworldly Machina?"

A sleek projectile erupts out of it in a haze of smoke, the recoil driving Rikku back a pace or two. The ARM that she built from the blueprint those Reaverbots Guarded detonating on impact to create an explosion that puts her prior ones to shame. A launched grenade of ancient design that can shatter even the most reinforced stonework she's ever encountered.

Though she hopes in this case it works wonders on dispersing pyreflies. Even with her ears still ringing she manages to get out, "Scale of one to ten?"

GS: Rikku has activated a Force Action!
GS: Rikku has attacked Seymour Guado with Otherworld Special: Grand Grenade!
GS: Rikku has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Rikku takes 24 damage from Poison!
GS: Rikku has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.

Tipheria starts to follow up her sweeping strikes... and fails when her leg nearly slips out from under her. It isn't working right, and even her will only goes so far. But she still tries.

Tipheria is in a weird situation. She is a Lunarian, but she's never been to Spira, doesn't know much about it; she's spent years on Filgaia by now, but she doesn't know any more about Clysmians than she does about Seymour. She could be considered an outsider here.

But she's not going to leave. She's mad, and not just because she's been hurt. But because other people are, too. She might not like the Baskar faith, but she knows a monster when she sees one.

She wonders if the Magic Emperor was like this - if, once, that could have been a people like hers at the altar. The thought only makes her angrier. "We're done," she says. "Anyone who talks like that is someone who I bring in."

Tipheria raises her spear as the Star Veil cracks. Such a defense is effective against a *lot* of Lunarians, but to Tipheria it is meaningless. She has never been blessed by Althena or anyone else. She does not need it. She pushes herself, taking one step through the pain -

Until the starburst comes.

When the flame and light clears, Tipheria is simply missing. She is not to be seen, as if the blast vaporized her entire. There's not even a fragment of bone or horn or spear to mark where she previously was...

...unless you look up. Because, at the last moment, Tipheria *vaulted* - planting the butt of her spear on the ground and using her one good leg and both arms to throw herself upward. The blast did the rest, sending Tipheria rather higher than she'd ever intended to go.

She slowly rotates forward at the apex of her arc, high above, and thrusts her spear straight down, bracing it against her entire body. As Tipheria begins to descend, blue light - condensed wind and chi both - forms from the point and spreads backwards, in a corona. It extends, trailing behind her like a lightning bolt, sparks flying from her.

Tipheria lands with an impact sufficient to blast the aura out in a shockwave, no matter if she hits Seymour or the ground. She doesn't precisely leap from the strike but tumble end over end, fetching up against a scorched building with an audible crack of impact.

(She's fine, at least from that. She hit horns-first. They *do* serve a purpose!)

GS: Tipheria Aredor has activated a Force Action!
GS: Tipheria Aredor spends 2 Combo on Headshot!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Seymour Guado with Skyfall Dive !
GS: Tipheria Aredor takes 24 damage from Poison!
GS: Hyper expired!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Dragon's Howl for 31 hit points!
GS: Mighty! applied to Claude C. Kenny!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

The way Seymour's expression as Lunata strikes at him changes abruptly takes Jacqueline aback. She backpedals, but then gasps in surprise as Seymour casts a spell at her.

"N-no!" Jacqueline as Lunata is engulfed. She rushes after her, kneeling down by her side. She readies a spell to extinguish her... but even still, Lunata rises. She makes her declaration to believe in her friends, even if she isn't sure, even if she's stumbling.

She'd be lying if she said it didn't make her tear up a bit out of pride. She takes a step back as Lunata stands and goes for Seymour once more.

"It's okay, Lunata... because I believe in you, too!" And then, for the first time in what feels like a while to her, Jacqueline draws out a stone medium bearing the symbol of earth.

"Grudiev, please - I need you right now." Jacqueline whispers. And the Guardian answers - the translucent image of Grudiev appears behind her. Dust and debris is drawn into the vents on his back, and is expelled as a shimmering veil, settling over Lunata briefly before disappearing - offering her the protection of the earth.

In the distance, she sees the invocation of Celesdue. Catenna, her friend and sister, is still fighting hard, too. That thought gives her courage, too - courage enough to whirl on Seymour with a defiant look.

"I won't let you hurt her anymore!" Jacqueline states.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Lunata Croze with Material - Earthen Embrace!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Rikku's Otherworld Special: Grand Grenade for 102 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Skyfall Dive  for 148 hit points!
GS: Cripple! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Hyper! applied to Tipheria Aredor!

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Seymour conjures some manner of item, and Cecilia's a smart girl from one of them fancy schools that teaches you how Mystic works, so she knows to be very worried that she has absolutely no earthly idea what that horrible thing is.

Then she gets an idea, when he bounces a spell off the barrier and directly at the entire surrounding 12 or so acres. She thrusts her staff forward and her arm; she only needs the staff but some things are reflex, as her magic barrier flashes up. "CLAUDE!" she screams. "GET--!"

Not even close to enough time, as the blast washes the words away. She grits her teeth and struggles to keep her feet as the annihilating heat blasts her, singes her. But...at the end...

The Shaman endures. The sizzling barrier drops. There is a clear line in the dust where the bare dirt she's standing on gives way to molten glass.

She takes a breath. She checks that Claude's alive; yes. She'll give him a berry later. He looks a bit like if she distracted him his momentum would fall out from under him.

"Some kind of reflective barrier..." she mutters. "Got to be something I can do about that..."

She doesn't need to. Summoner Yuna rallies herself against it, and she finds some calm in her posture as she sets her feet again. Celesdue and Catenna's paired action gets her mind in motion, and she moves on it. "Material," she breathes, grasping another tablet from the air and thrusting forward an icon of churning waves.

The sky darkens as a tremendous form surges down from on high - but it isn't darkness, and it isn't some great carpet of feathers. The Sea Guardian Lucadia roars down, dragging the depths of the sea behind it. It curls around the entire scope of the battlefield, a massive wave cresting over the village, but crashing in only on Seymour, resolving as a vast, terrifying weight, and a deep, implacable darkness.

The unfathomable fathoms of the ceaseless depths.

GS: Cecilia Adlehyde enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Formation! Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Seymour Guado with Material - Ceaseless Deep!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's I Am A Conversation for 51 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    In the wake of everyone's combined attacks on Seymour arises a Star Veil to reflect everyone's attacks upon them. Perhaps here, Tidus is finally lucky to be a "mere" swordsman as opposed to a mage like so many others present; when the kinetic energy bounces back at him, he's able to dive to one side and avoid the equivalent of a swordstrike back, as opposed to the earlier lightning bolts. It helps that some of the numbing energy from that assault has faded by now. Tidus isn't given to arrogance, but he still sneers, "You're gonna have to do better than that, SEYMOUR!"
    
    So naturally the other man sneers back at him in that way he does so well, claims he knows better what Sin is.
    
    A hazy image of the dock where their houseboat had been moored. A tall man, humming the Song of the Hymn with great if off-key tenderness. A woman walks up behind him, and they both fade like the last stars before dawn.
    
    The dock is empty. So is the houseboat. All that remains is a palpable sense of losslonelinesslonging.
    
    "That's not your world anymore. You're Sin now, remember?" Tidus had told that alien and familiar presence. And then, as the presence had pulled away like low tide: "Be good, okay?"
    
    And then bubbles surge up/down, towards the Water Shrine of Lefay, and the tones of Shiva's Song of the Hymn persist even as the presence leaves, but the feeling doesn't. Then and now, it leaves Tidus feeling--
    
    "THE HELL YOU DO!!" he roars, bringing his blade down again on Seymour with swift ferocity. It mirrors that last strike of his during the battle at the Macalania Temple, when he'd cleaved Seymour's arm in half by accident. If Yuna is pushed onwards by hope, then right now, Tidus is fueled by pain.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

"How in the name of Dinoginos is this maniac standing up under this," Venetia exclaims in disbelief as the pain of her injury begins to fade somewhat. "Is he immune to PAIN? Does his insectoid armor grant him immunity to explosions?!"

Venetia would really like to be immune to pain right now. Swaying, she gets herself up to her full stance just in time to see something get broken and -

Flash!
Flash again!

THWUM -- the shockwave bursts past Venetia, who had put her arm over her eyes as her hair is whipped violently forth, the reflective magic around her permeated as the blast smashes through and over her hard enough to rip off what is left of her mask, to rip off her hairclip, to rip the hem of her dress to shreds where the shockwave catches the fabric faster than it can bend -

The storm fades. The spell around her, Venetia can tell, has faded too. Perhaps it helped, she thinks muzzily, but - ah, yes, she thinks further, of course, if this is part of the Spiran battles of Crests or something like that, of course they'd have countermeasures. She sways.

Rikku calls out. How does she stay so perky in these situations, Venetia wonders, her eyes swimming and -

She sees one of the Baskar fall over, at the same moment that she can feel the bare wind on her face, unfiltered. Her cheeks redden; the feelings conflict together, catalyze, and she sucks in a deep breath through her teeth again. Her eyes flick round the village, as best they can; it is hard to focus.

"Well," she mutters to herself, "if we're that far round." She reaches for the crest graph pouch again, and this time she unsnaps a subsidiary pouch inside of it...

There is nothing that different about the Crest Graph Venetia pulls out now, except that it seems less worn than the others. Venetia's eyes narrow as she raises it up in front of her face, as if to peer from beneath it, to shade her eyes. "Only a trefoil, he's too fast," Venetia mutters. Her eyes close; the rod is raised;

The flash baked muck of the ground somewhere behind Seymour cracks once. There's a noise, like someone just grumbled.

A second crack towards his right side; a calculated risk that he will be too busy looking past that side to strike his foes or to contend with Claude or Tipheria to notice it.

A third one on the remaining left side, forming a squattish acute triangle, and then another of those grumbling noises.

Venetia exhales.

The ground directly beneath Seymour slumps just an inch or two *AND THEN* begins to vibrate with a destructive intensity, a shift from magnitude nothing to magnitude perhaps uncountable as the very skin of Filgaia very fractionally twists -- and that particular "chunk" fractures several times and begins to contort, rock smashing against rock and throwing dust into the air as the ground violently, and with a veritable plethora of shattered stone in jagged shards, begins to destroy itself.

And perhaps Seymour too!

GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Spiral Cut!
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Seymour Guado with Tectonic!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

'I will not rest.'

There is silence, on the part of K.K., to Ida's answer.

But perhaps silence does not necessitate disapproval.

"'Tis not those questions I am interested in answering. 'Tis this star's. 'Tis our Lunar's. And they ask a most singular one."

Shadowy magic dies around K.K.; they tilt their horned helm, the unseen weight of their gaze focusing upon Ivan in the distance.

"'Do I deserve this life?'"

The Lunarian launches his attack, and K.K. is swift to answer; as if they had a weapon for all occasions cloistered in the unseen spaces of the world, the very moment that Ivan's sword vanishes, so too does the book floating above K.K.'s head. They fall to one knee, pointing hands upward in a position not unlike someone taking hold of an invisible bow.

Light coalesces at their palms.

And it is a greatbow, gargantuan in size, that forms in those waiting hands from the light; the Divine Arm flows from liquid light to solid metal as not an arrow, but an entire lance forms notched upon it. The string poles back --

-- and the lance is FIRED, exploding into a thousand different shards of light that ascend rapidly through the air to intercept that rain of fire. It is a spectacle of brilliant flashes and splattering magma that fills the air like fireworks as countless globs are obliterated.

... And countless more pierce past K.K.'s mystic volley, crashing into them with sizzling burst after sizzling -burst- of heat and force that hammers into the ground and begins to melt down through the very earth itself until thick plumes of steam encase everything.

"... I know what my answer to that question is. I wonder..."

From the steam, K.K. rises, their armor aglow. A pauldron is partially melted, their rightmost horn turned to dripping slag. Another lance notched and pointed towards Ivan as if intent to smite him from this entire plane of existence.

"... do you know yours, get of man?"

They draw back.

And the sound barrier shatters just as the sound of intense pressure being released goes off nearby go off in tandem. Together, they -are- deafening, and the havoc lasts barely a second, but is barely comprehensible in that discordant second until it passes. It feels like an eternity. One, single, tick.

And in that single tick, K.K. turns and looses their would-be arrow -just- as Cyre's unbelievable expulsion of pressure is set upon them. The tip of their fired lance strikes the unleashed tempest as if it could pierce a force of nature. What was intended to attempt to smite Ivan off the earth instead turns towards K.K.'s defense, and in that single second, their weapon and Cyre's raging storm strive against one another.

The second passes into the next with the tick of a clock.

And the lance is -BLOWN- away into a thousand thousand shattering points of light just as it punches a hole through the center of that blastwave; K.K.'s bow dissipates as their arms rise to block the remainder, and even -that- is enough to nearly bowl them over, recovering in a graceful sweep of white and gold fabric and an angry churn of metal boot heels dragging through solid earth. They remain unmoved.

Unmoved -- but Cyre's assault provides more than ample time, within that exchange, to find purchase upon that metal-wrapped throat. With all the heat the knight has endured, it sizzles merely to touch that glowing metal -- yet it is enough to infuse that energy, and enough to apply just the force needed to disrupt the knight's footing. They topple backwards, flowing fluidly into a crouch, head bowed.

And for a moment, there is silence, like standing in the eye of a storm.

"... I shall not deny it," they finally say, voice warped beyond any recognition. "'Tis debased and disgusting. Loathsome. I am not a thing to be forgiven.

"... I am not a thing to be helped."

Plasma flares to life once more. K.K.'s partially-melted helm snaps in Dash's direction. Their arm -thrusts- outward -- and there is an almost visible twisting in the Ley as blobs of plasma are intercepted one by one, compressed, and exploded in rapid succession. Several get too close, raw heat splattering across K.K.'s armor; but the ambient shift of spiritual energy does its work in muting much of the impact. Plasma sizzles, angrily trying to eat away at armor that should not naturally be able to withstand it as K.K. slowly stands.

"Yes," they finally answer Dash, fingers flexing open and closed as they rise.

"What if you did do that?"

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

For all the heat that they have endured, Lanval's watery rebuttal is a sharp relief to the cavalcade of conflagration; far from the beneficial kind, though, the contrast of cool waters crashing into superheated armor warps the knight's heat-glowing defenses in a way that should doubtless be a painful if not crippling exercise for anything or anyone even remotely normal. The Adversary's arms snap upward, intercepting the deluge with their palms; the force is enough to send them tearing backwards from where they stand several feet as steam bursts all around the impact points. Eventually, it grows too much even for them, and they are knocked aside by the force of it, heat hissing all around them as they lurch towards their left. Their hands clench towards fists.

"Those unable to answer that question most in need of answering," is their response to Lanval.

"Oracle of Schturdark," and they say that title as if they know it very well, that sightless gaze turning on the Seraph slowly. "Have you found your place in the world yet, Oracle? Is this the seat that suits?" They turn fully towards him, head tilt. They sound almost genuinely curious--

"Or are you but merely occupying it because it feels as though someone must?"

It is a simple question, at least. But one that feels like the distinction makes all the difference in the world.

And it is a question that the knight does not find opportunity to press. From their peripherals, they catch sight of Xantia's shining approach. The burning light of her blade reflects off of K.K.'s armor as they spin; shadow magic is brought to bear once more, the great blade of darkness conjuring forth and swinging downward to meet Xantia --

-- and the amnesiac girl simply -obliterates- it, cleaving through it in a resplendent explosion of light and dark straight on her path towards K.K.. Not stalled, not slowed.

Not diverted.

Does she have their attention now?

The answer comes in a flash of warmth, in a sing of light harmonizing in perfect tandem. It is a brief thing, the sound of the same element meeting in perfect unison -- before the solid edge of a double-bladed greatsword can be found, locked with Xantia's own.

"You have learned much and more," they concede without hesitation.

"The question, however, is moot."

And here, they -shove- -- intent to -knock- Xantia skywards with their rebuttal.

"Always have you held my interest. Perhaps for reasons you have yet to even discover yourself."

Perhaps their interest, however, is not a good nor healthy thing.

Another shot is fired. And this time, the Trial Knight is once more swift to respond. 'Eat shit' might get drowned out, but the intent rings through clearly from that powerful rifle report. This time, as K.K. swings about, the greatsword shifts -- and it is a massive warhammer that meets Josephine's bullet head on. The weapon can punch a hole through Gears.

It meets the broad side of K.K.'s great hammer in a second's worth of struggle before both it and the knight's hammer EXPLODE, a mist of white shooting all around them.

In that haze, they are scarcely a silhouette. Do they mean to press their assault? Are they coming upon Josephine now?

There is nothing but deafening silence to her words, as if there were no more arguing, no more discussing with the knight. Only an end.

An end that does not come. Not immediately. Instead, that haze provides Gwen the cover she needs to fire off that dazzling burst of energy; though the Trial Knight attempts to skirt past its radius, they do not manage it in time, the expulsion catching them and shocking its way through them in a way that disrupts their footing for a few, precious seconds, capitalized upon by Nimue's flechette grenades. Within the haze, that lobbed weapon goes off, riddling the knight with a thousand metal shards that dig into and chip away at armor. They stagger backwards, slowly. Their silhouette turns towards Nimue.

And as the light fades, the knight approaches the Seraph. Glinting metal juts out of their armor. There is a little cut, a fine line of bright red, in that spot of the helm that was chipped away earlier. They have no weapons. And yet that threat feels all too real.

But if not stopped, if not avoided, they will reach out --

-- and place a gauntleted hand on Nimue's shoulder. The knight leans in. And in that moment, words are exchanged, unheard beyond the din of battle.

"... Do not forget it, Seraph," is all they say, before they turn about--

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Enough.

It is what Boudicca roars in defiance of the Adversary's intentions when she bolstered her allies with that all-consuming flame, that seems to spread like a hellstorm of frustration. In the aftermath of their magical assault, the Trial Knight turns their unseen stare on Boudicca, their body language oddly considerate and pensive -- made all the more surreal by the simple fact that they see fit to distract themself with this in the midst of a pitched battle such as this.

Their fingers spasm in little, uncontrolled twitches at their sides.

"No."

Nimue, for now, is abandoned. The knight turns fully upon Boudicca, their stance unbending. Their right hand snaps outward.

"Your fury, child, is a paltry thing, signifying naught but an expulsion of hot air. You speak on things you know ill and you speak of them with zeal of one who has lived them every day of their life. You tell me enough?"

A spear forms at their palm, that weapon they seem to favor so very often. They march forward, unwavering.

"You tell me ENOUGH!, as if this is a thing that might be stopped by demands? You tell me enough, as if this was a thirst to be slaked? A hunger that needs must be sated? No. 'Tis none of these things."

They march. Their steps grow faster. The spear shines at its tip.

"And it. Is not. ENOUGH."

That voice BOOMS out the very second they LUNGE upon Boudicca. That spear -thrusts- with merciless intent to RUN her straight through her midsection and -heft- her into the air as a vortex of Ley sweeps up around them in dizzying colors of whites, blues, and purples.

"Spira is a land with no death nor life. 'Tis a curse worse than any calamity, stuck in a state of stasis in which naught can grow, not even -rot- for the maggots."

The energies build up higher, and higher.

"When my work here is finished, I will go to Spira." And despite the great gulf of space between them, the way the knight says this makes it seem like they can -- and will -- do just that. They seek to lift higher.

"And they will break their static state between life or death, progression or degradation. Or I will break it for them. Because it. Is not."

Higher --

"Enough."

Before all that accumulated power simply EXPLODES in a horrendous burst of light and cacophony.

And in the midst of it all, K.K. turns. Their tome summoned once more, they flip through the pages, snapping their hand towards their right.

"And for all who think it is, I invite you to prove it so, or be TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT!"

Blood red energies of Althena's Blessing coalesce at their hand. The skies swell with clouds as little crackles of crimson lightning etch across the sky. And it begins to rain.

Little, scarlet petals floating from the heavens towards the earth.

"Come--"

The incantation finishes the exact moment that Marivel springs upon the knight. They seek to defend themself; the spells go off.

And as riotous lightning of blood red CRACKS across the battlefield, as those petals of bright scarlet become a storm of sorcery-sharpened edges that seek to impale through anything in their path --

-- as a great, red blade descends from the heavens towards the earth to impale the ground and unleash a SHOCKWAVE of Althena's blessed carnage--

-- the Guillotine draws through armor and bites into what could be flesh, leaving a bright red line in its wake.

Does the Trial Knight bleed? It's an answer Marivel gets to discover herself as that bright red seeps into her blade even as bright red devastates the battlefield.

GS: Tidus takes 26 damage from Poison!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: K.K. has attacked K.K. with Savage Beckoning!
GS: K.K. assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Savage Beckoning for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to K.K.!
GS: Mighty! applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. has activated a Boss Action!
GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action!
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Cecilia Adlehyde's Material - Ceaseless Deep for 39 hit points!
GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action!
GS: K.K. spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Ancient Requiem!
GS: K.K. enters a Counter stance!
GS: K.K. has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Tidus's Spiral Cut for 87 hit points!
GS: Cripple! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: K.K. has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Deicide Saber!
GS: K.K. has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Deicide Saber!
GS: K.K. has attacked Ivan with Deicide Saber!
GS: K.K. has attacked Xantia with Deicide Saber!
GS: K.K. has attacked Marivel Armitage with Deicide Saber!
GS: K.K. has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Deicide Saber!
GS: K.K. has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Disaster Flash!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Nimue with Disaster Flash!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Lanval with Disaster Flash!
GS: K.K. has attacked Dash Caskett with Disaster Flash!
GS: K.K. has gained 1 Combo!
GS: K.K.'s Avenger stance ends. They enters the  stance!
GS: K.K. takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: K.K. has completed their action.

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

She has heard of this sort of magic, yes, but she hasn't seen it--Lulu's eyes widen as Seymour calls forth black magic on a level all but unknown to the living, all on Lunata. ...But soon enough she'll get a closer look at it. Soon enough.

First, Seymour slams down, a few times, until the Star Veil comes up--she narrows her eyes as she sees the effect. She recognizes what's about to happen too late to do much about it--

The sheer force of Seymour's spell knocks Lulu from her feet and into a house whose wall cracks under her impact. She disappears under the flames, and only after the smoke clears is she visible again. She's on the ground, ksitting up, but briefly dazed, having difficulty with keeping herself standing. She is wounded, from the flames and from the impact.

But her chin is up, and her lips form a thin line. "...I'm not done yet."

Lulu pushes herself upward again, and the creak is practically visible; she is unsteady on her feet, standing more out of will than anything else. Will, and...

"That someone such as you could become a Maester..." Her battered doll stands up, too. She looks to Rikku, notes her place--that smile. Innocence, even here. That question... Lulu shakes her head. She watches Tidus, and thinks of what he knows, what he doesn't. ...Pain is a powerful motivator, too. But it is when Yuna dispels Seymour's barrier that Lulu sees her time to strike.

Lulu's shoulders roll back, and she straightens her back. Taking a deep breath, Lulu reaches out to the forces around her, to the magic that is here on Filgaia, distinct but not alien. The earth, the water... Just like these Filgaians are unlike but also like them. Lulu reaches out to the heat in the air still present from that terrible magic.

"Enough."

That heat cools in an instant, and Lulu strikes forth with frigid rage. Mist gathers about Seymour, and abrubtly all at once becomes a bursting explosion of ice fragments. ...Then another--and another--and another. Lulu's furry of Blizzaga spells pours in all she has left in her to try to stop Seymour.

GS: Lulu spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Formation! Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with Get Down!
GS: Lulu has launched an attack Link!
GS: Formation! Lulu has attacked Seymour Guado with F U R Y!
GS: Lulu has gained 1 Combo!

<Pose Tracker> Shalune Amira has posed.

    "Lunie!" yells Shalune as her friend is momentarily subsumed by nuclear fire; it makes her heart lurch in her throat every time, even if she knows that Lunata is protected by her unique situation, and by the questionable providence of Ge Ramtos. That knowledge doesn't stop her from being terrified that every time might be the last time, as much she tries to remind herself that experience shows that's not the case.

    She bites it back this time, though, because she knows why her childhood friend is doing this. Her hands hesitate where they are, then slowly curl into determined fists as she nods to herself. Lunata is facing down Seymour because she trusts them both to do the right thing - for Jacqueline to back her up, and for Shalune herself to handle things in her stead. She doesn't need a moment longer to think about it, whirling back around to duck down and heave one of the youths of the village over her shoulder whether he likes it or not.

    "Come on," she urges to the others, gritting her teeth as she starts to haul the kid away. "You might think this is rude, but you'll be thanking me later! Lunie!" she calls out, her voice rising as best it can over the rest of the noise and din. "Stay--" 'Stay alive' isn't exactly right in her case. "--stay safe! Stay careful! We love you! We've got your back!" she decides instead.

GS: Lulu has completed her action.
GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 176 hit points!
GS: Marivel Armitage enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 181 hit points!
GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Ancient Requiem for 181 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

*Blu-ray
    
    "THE HELL YOU DO!!" he roars, bringing his blade down again on Seymour with swift ferocity. It mirrors that last strike of his during the battle at the Macalania Temple, when he'd cleaved Seymour's arm in half by accident. If Yuna is pushed onwards by hope, then right now, Tidus is fueled by pain.
    
    But even with this difference between them, they are linked. Tidus has his own lies of omission, after all. It might be because Auron told him not to, but there are truths that Tidus hasn't shared with Yuna, either. Perhaps in that way, they're even.
    
    But for now, the desperate battle continues.

GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 114 hit points!
GS: COUNTER! Xantia counterattacks K.K.with Counter Attack!
GS: CRITICAL! Xantia takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 276 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Venetia Vuong's Tectonic for 106 hit points!
GS: Entangle! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lulu's Get Down for 70 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lulu's F U R Y for 148 hit points!
GS: Dash Caskett guards a hit from K.K.'s Disaster Flash for 104 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dash Caskett gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Reaper! applied to Dash Caskett!
GS: Dash Caskett takes an additional 15 damage from Reaper!
GS: Ivan takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 90 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ivan gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Disaster Flash for 90 hit points!
GS: Reaper! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Force Evade activates!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes an additional 21 damage from Reaper!
GS: Seraph Nimue guards a hit from K.K.'s Disaster Flash for 110 hit points!
GS: Reaper! applied to Seraph Nimue!
GS: Seraph Nimue takes an additional 15 damage from Reaper!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 173 hit points!
GS: Seraph Lanval takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Disaster Flash for 88 hit points!
GS: Reaper! applied to Seraph Lanval!
GS: Seraph Lanval's Force Evade activates!
GS: Seraph Lanval takes an additional 21 damage from Reaper!

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

Seymour Natus is showing no small amount of damage. All across his statue-like body, including the altar connected to him, cracks can be seen. Pyreflies bleed away from them -- and it is difficult for the Unsent to stem the flow. His cold eyes flicker, as he looks at Catenna.

Conviction.

White feathers swirl; a sacred owl takes wing; and a great beam of light comes crashing down to pull him in, but he raises both hands. A shield of light explodes from those hands. The moonlit arrow slams into it, against the barrier, before both disperse.

But he has to look away from the battle, for even a moment. Lunata acts on that moment, and she darts. Maple leaves swirl, and Lunata's blade strikes out, again and again. Each strike leaves a gash -- a blast of Pyreflies, a rain of stone chips until they vanish.

"And what use have your friends been to you, Lunata? Have they, truly, saved you?" Seymour asks, though his voice has an edge to it. That changes when he grunts, sharply, when Claude punches him in the face. He sees the other hand, alight with flames--

--and he catches Claude's punch a second time. Flame billows from between the fingers, stone crackling, and then he throws Claude backward with it. Smoke wafts up from his hand. "And so we shall part, with your death--"

No. His head snaps, as he catches Yuna starting the Sending. He does not know if that will work on Filgaia. He does not mean to find out. "Any peace you would offer is a lie!"

He calls it back to her, even as some Pyreflies stop dancing about him and move to her. Rikku's rocket slams into him, chips flying and pyreflies doing the same -- cracks run up his chest. He grunts, and then bellows, and turns as Tipheria lands.

And she runs right for him. She strikes her horns and spear alike into him, slamming him backward, and cracks widen more and more. Pyreflies waft away. "Gh--"

Lucadia brings down a massive wave -- and the water crashes down for Seymour alone. It crashes down for him, but he slams a hand up -- and the wave breaks around him. He turns -- shocked at the sudden fury spoused by Tidus, and his blade chops down. He reaches up a hand--

--and this time catches the blade, stone like flesh curling around Brotherhood. Its blade bites into the rock, but it holds, as Pyreflies drift away. "No one," he says, and his voice turns into a snarl, "understands Sin better than I!"

The ground underneath him shakes -- and rock smashes up, striking into him. He snarls, body rocked by the blows, and then looks at Lulu. "But of course," he says. "To be a Maester... was a necessary step in my dream."

Ice spells slam into him, one after the other. They smash him backwards -- and strike him down into the midst of the ritual. Two Baskar youth stumble back; they cease their chanting, staring at him. They look at each other -- look at Lunata, then at Catenna -- and then turn and bolt.

Another two fall silent and step backward, nervously. A final one stares -- and she remembers. She remembers a little brother; a brother she lost, when he became the Pillar in a past year. She chants her heart out, tears running down her face, as Seymour rises with a shout.

He lashes out -- and the Mortibody's claw slashes out in front of him, a blackened arc left as it extends on an insectoid limb. It rakes across those facing him. Seymour yells...

...but something else shrieks.

The one Baskar still chanting looks up, a sob breaking her lips. And then she collapses, convulsing, as something rises into the sky. It is terrible -- and yet so small. Sin is a behemoth; Rek'gora is small, for it is newly born. Some viscous fluid drips off green and red plumage. Egg shell drops down, and a vulture-like head twists about -- with three eyes on it.

Worse, though, is that it is adorned in Baskar finery: in totems, in wood carvings, and in exquisite chains with Baskar characters written into them. It flies up over the village and shrieks.

And Seymour looks about -- his eyes widen -- and he hurtles up a quartet of fireballs. They slam into the freshly born proto-Clysmian. It shrieks, before it turns, wings beating on a path to the north.

"Go!" he calls out. "Find your roost... and bring these people the desperation they crave!"

GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Catenna with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lunata Croze with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Rikku with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Lulu with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Venetia Vuong with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Tidus with Mortibslasher!
GS: Seymour Guado has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seymour Guado takes 25 damage from Poison!
GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action.
GS: Pierce!! Seymour Guado's attack breaks through 90 temporary hit points! 58 remain!
GS: Catenna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 90 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Catenna enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Claude C. Kenny guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 111 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Rikku takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 88 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Rikku gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Rikku has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Lunata Croze! She gains 250 temporary hit points!
GS: Shield! applied to Lunata Croze!
GS: Pierce!! Seymour Guado's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 150 remain!
GS: Lunata Croze takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 207 hit points!
GS: Tidus takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 95 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Lulu takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 91 hit points!
GS: Lulu has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Pierce!! Seymour Guado's attack breaks through 49 temporary hit points! 0 remain!
GS: Venetia Vuong guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 108 hit points!
GS: Reaction switch bonus! Venetia Vuong gains 1 additional Combo!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Yuna guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 107 hit points!
GS: Yuna enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
GS: Tipheria Aredor takes a solid hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 180 hit points!
GS: Tipheria Aredor has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde guards a hit from Seymour Guado's Mortibslasher for 111 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Nimue has posed.

Nimue freezes as K.K. approaches, placing that hand on her shoulder; she blinks once as she listens to the Trial Knight's words. It takes her a few moments to even think of a response to their words, trying to come up with something to say to that.

Before she can, bright scarlet light descends again, this time letting loose a shockwave of pain. Nimue grits her teeth and brings her arms up to defend herself. It doesn't work as well as she'd hoped; after a few seconds, the shockwave blows her back, and when she gets up... it's slow, tentative, and more than a little painful.

"That's exactly what I'm trying to believe!" Nimue finally shouts, though she thinks to add, "But it's way harder to do that when I'm getting my ass beat!!" She reaches into her pack again, pauses...

... and withdraws a single, heavy-looking grenade. "Buuuuut... I'm gonna keep doing it anyway, because... well maybe because I'm kind of stupid but whatever!" she declares, before -- just as before -- tossing the grenade into the air, snagging it out of the air like a lacrosse ball, and hurling it at K.K. It's big enough that the actual *impact* hurts.

She's moving right along behind it, too. She hefts her stick high, giving K.K. a few good, solid whacks with it, before ultimately using the last of those good whacks to propel herself right back where she came...

... minus her bag. "A thousand years of desperation and self-pity... you know what? Didn't do much! Could have spent that time on activities!"

Her first grenade explodes. Then all the others do, amid a cry of, "Millennium Desperado!"

GS: Seraph Nimue has attacked K.K. with Millennium Desperado!
GS: Seraph Nimue takes an additional 15 damage from Reaper!
GS: Seraph Nimue assumes the Avenger stance!
GS: Mighty expired!
GS: Seraph Nimue has completed her action.
GS: Lunata Croze takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: Lunata Croze has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

More Guardians are called forth - and then some. Catenna lets her arm fall and looks on as punishment descends on Seymour from all sides. Perhaps there's hope yet.

The arrow of light does its job: It distracts Seymour for the moment that Lunata Croze needs. Both Catenna and Celesdue smile faintly before the Guardian vanishes in a beat of butterfly wings.

Again the Mortibody slashes out, carving through the ranks of the assembled Drifters like a monstrous scythe. Fighting through the pain, Catenna flips up into a high, arcing jump, but it's not quite fast enough to avoid a glancing blow that knocks her out of the air. She hits the ground on her right knee, gasping in pain as another jolt of agony shoots down her already injured leg, straining aching muscles and scraped skin. But she whirls and rises, reaching for her bow again.

And that's when something happens that should not happen.

The tiny Clysmian bursts into existence, so minute and yet so vile that Catenna can barely stand to look at it. As Rek'gora beats a retreat into the air, the Moon Shaman widens her eyes, her priorities instantly shifting. "Saarda-Shanta!" she calls out. "We can't let it get away from here!"

The snowy owl swoops down towards Catenna with wordless urgency. Even before reaching her, though, the avian has begun to swell and shift, bursting into light and expanding - and Catenna immediately jumps.

What she lands upon is not a normal-sized snowy owl anymore. Saarda-Shanta has expanded to roughly the size of a minivan, with an enormous white wingspan casting a long shadow over the field. With an echoing hoot that booms like a bass drum, the Great Owl sails skyward on heavy wingbeats.

"Jay!" Catenna calls down as she clutches her bow. "We're going after the Clysmian! If we're quick enough, we might be able to kill it before it can get very far!"

Her voice grows increasingly more faint as Saarda-Shanta gains altitude. The huge owl soars after Rek'gora as fast as her wingbeats will carry her as she pursues the newborn Clysmian hotly.

DC: Catenna switches forms to Great Owl Saarda-Shanta!

<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.

"We will expose what you have done," Lulu answers Seymour, breathing heavily as she finishes her casting. "The way you have used Yevon!" Her voice rises, as she stares back at him, and realizes--

How much of this was intended long before death warped him. She does not know all of his dream, but looking at this man--

Lulu is already trying to gather up more power, already moving forward again.

She can't, though--the Mortibody's claw slashes out, and Lulu is one of those it hits. She takes the strike on her side, partially moving out of the way... but even that much is too much. Already unsteady on her feet, the black mage sways. "Yuna," she starts, distantly, wavering on her feet.

The black mage falls, hitting her knees and then falling the rest of the way to the ground with a few thuds, unconscious.

<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.

Rikku is on barely on her feet. Even despite that, she tries to smile. One that's easily seen by Venetia, Lulu, Tidus... and especially Yuna. Seymour takes more and more damage. How much can he take? Whats his limit?

The Mortibody's claw lashes out in an arc. Rikku tries to dive into a desperate roll. Ultimately this is what saves her life.

The insectoid limb slices into her side, with a spray of red.

Rikku falls.

As her fading vision encompasses the rising horror that is Rek'gora, she whispers something.

"Not... your fault..."

She knows Yuna gave all she had.

Her lips move to try and say it again - to reaffirm it, and then she perhaps mercifully slips into unconsciousness.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    And they advance.

    The Oracle of Moor Gault is the Trial Knight's staunch foe; K.K. has never spoken lies, to Boudicca. In this contrast is written the air sucked between her teeth, the jerking back of her head, the statue-stiffness of her muscles.

    "I --"

    But they keep talking; they keep marching. Boudicca raises her tonfa and she does not lean into her elemental strengths; she does not try to flee, does not try to flow away.

    She is not afraid. She is not afraid! Chant it like a mantra and perhaps it will become true, facing down this person who would have consigned Filgaia to oblivion, with the will and drive to destroy all which is good in these worlds. She is not afraid.

    And in that contrast K.K. is swift in just the way the wind isn't, and in exquisite violence there was a spear before her and then there is a spear between her, haft at her belly and tip beyond. The short gasp she utters from this angle should not be possible; but then, she has never really needed her lungs, has she?

    They are a story; her flesh is a story. It's just a scary story, with monsters at the end.

    Maybe that's why there isn't much blood.

    For a long sick moment she falls slack.

    And then, there's a hand on the haft.

    "... tell you... enough. Does that bother you, Trial Knight?"

    There's a spark in those grey-green eyes, as her head rises. "You want my violence, do you not? You do not want me... to tell you. You do not want my words."

    All a sudden there is a burst of wind, another Seraphic sigil; Boudicca blows herself away from the Trial Knight's spear, and when she comes to settle on the earth she stands, still.

    And she does not move to attack.

    Perhaps that is something which could be mistranslated in the moment, though; because shortly thereafter something hatches, something dread and small, and Boudicca whirls, braids whipping about her. "NO!" She cries, as that girl falls, sacrificed, and from her comes the end of the world.

    Catenna - Catenna, who has taught her so much, who walks with the Guardians, who would never falter - leaps into action, and ashen-faced, Boudicca turns back to K.K. Now she does not speak words to them, grasping tonfa in hand; now she springs to life, closing into their space to crash into melee.

    It's not a question of getting something through any more.

    It's a question of making sure they can't get through to Catenna before she can stop this.

GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked K.K. with Rabid Lunge!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.

Horns protecting her head or not, Tipheria is a little dazed from being thrown by a huge explosion, landing on Seymour, and then rolling until she slammed into a building.

She pushes herself up with a grunt, leg trembling under her - but she manages it for a moment.

"Is your dream just to summon this monster? To bring terror into the world? Because, there are some things that I can't let people get away with! You - you - " Tipheria reaches for the worst word she can think of. "You cultist!"

Tipheria lunges. She lunges into the claw, trying to get past it before it snaps into her, but her leg fails her; she stumbles, and the arcing claw smacks into her stomach, launching her away from Seymour and into another, different wall.

This time she does not hit horns-first, but the crack is just as loud.

Tipheria's eyes glaze over as she looks up at the sky. She doesn't see the egg (?) crack, but she hears it, the scream as it takes off to the air. But her limbs don't seem to be cooperating with getting up; she tries again, pushing herself, and for a moment it looks like she'll make it. To her knees, and then to her feet, feeling both frozen and hot at the same time -

Tipheria collapses forward, unconscious. Her spear falls from her grasp, clattering against a rock, as she passes out.

<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.

Yuna will wonder, later, how someone who seems to passionately believe that killing others is 'releasing' them would claim that the peace of the final death is a lie.

Right now though she is mostly preoccupied by

BABY SIN

and, also

RIKKU AND LULU ALL SLASHED

She got slashed too, come to think. The blue of her skirts is turning purple. Hissing, she struggles to intake breath.

The fayth roar, collectively.

Yuna's roar is not as loud outside as she's feeling inside but it is still... something.

"Now!" she cries, still spinning, still twirling. Let Seymour gamble on a Clysmian's life. She will continue to gamble upon his Sending. "Together, everyone! It's too soon to give up! We can only fix this if we survive!"

The village.
Their wounds.
The second Sin.

You know, no pressure.

The smile of a summoner CAN be a lie; those who know her best, know that most. But she isn't smiling now.

And her belief in the others reaches out to embrace them, as surely as the pyreflies surround her in turn. For some it is as abstract as being on the same side of battle. For others it is deeply and profoundly personal.

Whether general or individual, her love for them is enough to die for.

Just not enough to live for.

GS: Yuna spends 2 Combo on Inspire and Reload!
GS: Yuna has attacked Tidus with Strength, Everyone!!
GS: Yuna has attacked Claude C. Kenny with Strength, Everyone!!
GS: Yuna has attacked Lunata Croze with Strength, Everyone!!
GS: Yuna has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Strength, Everyone!!
GS: Yuna has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Strength, Everyone!!
GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Yuna takes 23 damage from Poison!
GS: Hex expired!
GS: Yuna has completed her action.
GS: Lunata Croze takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Lunata Croze!
GS: Reload! Lunata Croze gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
GS: Lunata Croze gains a Combo from Inspire!
GS: Claude C. Kenny takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Claude C. Kenny!
GS: Reload! Claude C. Kenny gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
GS: Claude C. Kenny gains a Combo from Inspire!
GS: Tidus takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Tidus!
GS: Reload! Tidus gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
GS: Tidus gains a Combo from Inspire!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has activated a Force Action!

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    What use have your friends been to you, Lunata? Have they, truly, saved you?

    "Hey... you know, Seymour...?"

    The powerful plunge of Mortibody is horrific as its bony claw rends something inky and black across her; if she were any other human, she might not have been able to stay whole. But instead, the jet-black necromantic Stuff that looks like something Ethius might have cooked up in the oven oozes out instead.

    "... I never thought that of my friends. I never thought 'what can I use you for'?"

    She grimaces as she stumbles across, looking rather week in the knees.

    "I get it, though... when everyone in your life's just been looking to use you... you do the same in turn..."

    But even then, even there -- Jacqueline is proving that she'll protect her, with Grudiev's power; as Shalune starts hauling another Baskar kid up and--

    Stay safe!

    *beat*

    Stay careful.

    *beat*

    We love you.

    *beat*

    We've got your back.

    The Clysmian-- erupts as something rises into the sky; Rek'gora. Small, newly born, and yet... horrifying all at the same time.

    "But... this is gonna have to be where we're have to part ways."

    She's sniffling, sobbing even -- and it isn't tears that bleed from her eyes, but that black, inky stuff as her body begins to break down in the midst of Grudiev trying to sustain her together. As she hears Yuna's own plea; someone who knows perhaps even more than her about Seymour and... how he has to be stopped.

    "I'm gonna show you, Seymour... My own self-determination. I'm still figuring it out, but... as Josie would yell at me -- here's how I'll sort myself out!!"

GS: Lunata Croze spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Lunata Croze with I'll Show You What It Means to Self-Own!!!
GS: Lunata Croze has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Lunata Croze has launched an attack Link!
GS: Lunata Croze takes a solid hit from Lunata Croze's I'll Show You What It Means to Self-Own!! for 0 hit points!
GS: Burst and Hyper! applied to Lunata Croze!

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    (.... noooo, no one tell her in the midst of her self-triumphant moment what that means)

    What comes out -- isn't the ornate clapping of the taiko drums; that one noh player's call of 'iyoooooo--'. It is not the artful song of the Iroha, of the ephemeral and transcendent beauty of yesteryear.

    Because as beautiful and wonderful as it is to behold...

    That isn't me.

    What comes out -- is crude, self-learned; a flurry of movements barely above that of a swordswoman who's finally learning how to move in her own right, streams of shimmering maple leaves scattering as she delivers blow after blow, digging in teeth and fang and talon alike.

    "Here it is...!"

GS: Lunata Croze spends 4 Combo on Poison and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Lunata Croze has attacked Seymour Guado with Here's My Own... Maple Leaf Rag!!

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Ivan has never witnessed such a spectacle as someone summoning forth a magic bow to shoot his fiery rain right out of the sky. He gapes at this in disbelief, even as K.K. also fires back a query about whether he feels he deserves to exist. Ivan pales a bit and sputters back at K.K. "That is an intensely personal question from someone who covers their face and talks in riddles!"

But K.K.'s responses do turn less riddle-like, as they speak of being determined to free Spira from being caught between life and death.

"So you're like the Guard, then? Finding something that feels wrong to you and imposing your own new order onto it?"

That question is interrupted by the crash of a mystic blade into the earth, the shockwave filling the world with red light that sears into him and knocks him from his feet.

As the world comes back into focus, the shriek of the newly born creature sounds out -- Ivan bolts up, staring -- it was born? This new Sin to threaten Filgaia? They've already failed to stop it??r
Panic flares, and with it, a pulse of pain grips Ivan's chest and fire pours forth from his body, surging off of him in chaotic whirls that reach for K.K. -- reach for the sound, but fall far short of it. Reach for nothing or anything, just trying to grasp at something he can change.

GS: Lunata Croze takes 22 damage from Poison!
GS: Lunata Croze has completed her action.
GS: Jacqueline Barber takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Jacqueline Barber!
GS: Reload! Jacqueline Barber gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
GS: Jacqueline Barber gains a Combo from Inspire!
GS: Ivan spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Ivan has attacked K.K. with Inferno Heart!
GS: Ivan enters a Counter stance!
GS: Ivan has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

Marivel looks to Ivan. "Yes but if I say it out loud and tell you they'll immediately change it to something more complicated, so it's better if I keep quiet and don't say anything. If you figure it out, it's very important you don't tell them, okay?"

As she moves in to strike K.K, she admits, "Tis truly a shame that we are set against one another. I don't particularly disagree with your sentiments. A world that summons a clysmian--saying it deserves what it gets is scarcely a fallacy and I cannot judge you for being a gambler as I'm rolling the dice myself. But so long as our cards this close to our chest, we'll be neccessarily foes. I trust in Yuna's ability to end Spira's staticity, and I refuse to allow a world to exist that survives off sacrifices. And the time is fast approaching for both our worlds to decide whether to allow their heroes to live."
Shehe places her hand on K.K's wound and draws the blood and spirit in--not too much, as she's shortly blasted away by a crimson shockwave expelled from a similarly crimson blade. But it's enough. For a moment, they are both crimson in nature.

Marivel slams against a pillar and sinks to a crouch. Her eyes close. For a moment, it tastes incredible, amongst some of the best blood' she has ever had.

But then--then there's something that tastes..

Marivel throws up liquid blackness, hacking and coughing. She sinks to a knee, looking ill. Another close call. Assuming she escaped what she consumed. Maybe she didn't.

And she rises slowly. She exhales out a long breath. "Seraphs. They feel to me like my people. Spirits bound to reliquaries. Given purpose to their world. Very dangerous. Cataclysmically dangerous if corrupted."

Perhaps it is because K.K had JUST used it. Perhaps it is because Marivel had made her own vow to kill a god. Nevertheless, Marivel raises her hand to the sky. A great red blade crackles out from the heavens. Smoke drifts out from Marivel's nose and mouth. She is an illusion wearing skin much in the way a human puts on a shirt. The massive wounds upon Marivel's body reveal the crackling black darkness within, the little bits of true vampiric shadow creeping out from the elven body she has draped herself in.

"You are old. Maybe close to my age. The way you speak of Oracles, the way you speak of Lanval and Boudicca. That is confirmation isn't it?"

Her eyes narrow. "Seraphs belong to Filgaia, don't they? Althena stole them away, didn't she? That is what she was doing..."

Her teeth bare fangs as the darkness swirls around her.

"While we were DYING!!"

And with that the red blade slams towards K.K's direction, similarly unleashing a crimson shockwave around it.

She slams Guillotine in the ground to steady herself against her own shockwave.

"There is no future built on sacrifices. I won't allow there to be."

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Yuna's Strength, Everyone! for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes an additional 20 damage from Reaper!
GS: Reload! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 15 extra FP from Yuna!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey gains a Combo from Inspire!
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Lunata Croze's Here's My Own... Maple Leaf Rag! for 135 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked K.K. with I Carry The Hopes Of My People Within Me And Sing The Song Of The Extinct -
Armageddon!
GS: Marivel Armitage has launched an attack Link!

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    The bullet is met by the broadside of the hammer. For a second -- just a second -- it seems as if it will be flung away, meeting some uncertain end elsewhere in the center of the village.

    And then the hammer explodes into light, taking the bullet with it.

    Josie stares a fraction too long for someone on this end of a firefight, the sight of her ARM dipped that much lower in her grasp.

    She tenses, as if expecting to run.
    Or, perhaps, as if expecting the Trial Knight to say something more.

    There is but silence.

    "..."

    She shifts at last, shaking her head and trying to shake the sudden chill.

    "Can't," she says, to no one at all.

    Before taking off, as Gwen unloads that dazzling array unto the knight, drawing their attention perhaps towards other parties as the battle continues.

    She can only catch a glimpse of what is happening between Lunata and the others, and Seymour, and that end of the battle--

    But she sees the flash, she thinks, that might be the light reflecting off a katana.

    "Attagirl," she mutters even so, her attention ripping away from that tableau and turning about herself. Up on a roof? No, would take too long. Too far to run. Too hard to climb with just one hand. The battlefield is an ocean of debris. Nothing to use as cover. No trees here.

    No good.

    Then fine.

    She steadies that rifle again with her bad hand -- ignoring the slight protest from that hand as she does. Kick's worse than it was -- and she'd tested it after modding it again just a week ago. Damn, she'll have to take it apart again and see what's going when she's done here.

    Assuming, of course
    that she survives.

    It's an unfortunately-timed thought to have.

    Something shrieks. She looks to the sky.

    "What the--"

    K.K.'s spell goes off.

    The magus' daughter launches herself sidelong out of the way of that sorcerous descending blade, but even that isn't enough to see her free. Rifle cradled against her as if it were a child, she's flung hard, far, a crumpled heap against a nearby cart.

    It takes her a moment to rise. Then a moment to glance upwards at the newly-birthed Clysmian.

    "Shit," Josie remarks, eloquently.

    It takes her a moment more to debate attempting to shoot at it.
    And it takes her a moment to come to her own conclusion on the matter.

    In the heart of the chaos, Josie stands as if she were at the firing range. She steadies the rifle, takes one glance through the sight. One breath.

    One shot, for the Trial Knight.

GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked K.K. with Small Hopes Shall Slice Thy Destiny To Ribbons - Split The Atom MEGATON!
GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked K.K. with Getting Away With Murder!
GS: Riposte expired!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    The insectoid limb slashes forward, and this time catches Tidus, leaving a long slice of red along his torso. He manages to avoid the worst of it as he leaps to one side, but it hurts like hell. Seymour once again claims that no one understands Sin better than he does, and Tidus might get into another yelling contest with him about it, except--
    
    "Rikku! Lulu! YUNA!!" Tidus shouts, head whipping around so fast he nearly strains his neck. The first two fall, driven beyond their ability to endure. The last one--Yuna--she manages to stay standing, and guilt twists his guts for it, but he's intensely relieved that if any of the three remain standing, it's Yuna.
    
    Seymour launches fireballs in the air at the newly-hatched Clysmian. Tidus swivels to see it. "No!!" he utters, torn between going to his friends and stopping this newborn menace. But Yuna calls to everyone, sends out her strength to become their own, says that they can stop Seymour if they hang together. Tidus tightens his grip on his sword and nods once. Right. He's a Guardian; his job is to keep Yuna safe. Yuna's the healer. She can help Lulu and Rikku--but if, and only if, Tidus helps *her*.
    
    And he can help her by making sure this fight comes to an end. Take out Seymour, so they can focus next on that second Sin.
    
    "SEYMOUR! You don't know WHAT you're talking about!" Tidus roars, gripping Brotherhood's hilt. He leaps up, using his athletic ability to slice and backflip and slice and spring and slice and twirl and *slice*. He's done with this argument. He's got better things to do, more important people and things to worry about. So-- "So just SHUT UP ALREADY!!"

GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Spiral Cut!
GS: Tidus takes 21 damage from Poison!
GS: Tidus has completed his action.
GS: Tidus spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Tidus has attacked Seymour Guado with Quick Hit!
GS: Tidus has launched an attack Link!
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Tidus's Quick Hit for 15 hit points!
GS: Seymour Guado takes a solid hit from Tidus's Spiral Cut for 141 hit points!
GS: Cripple! applied to Seymour Guado!
GS: COUNTER! K.K. counterattacks Seraph Boudiccawith Counter Attack!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Rabid Lunge for 52 hit points!
GS: Shieldbreak! applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Xantia's Counter Attack for 114 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Seraph Nimue's Millennium Desperado for 148 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Ivan's Inferno Heart for 192 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's I Carry The Hopes Of My People Within Me And Sing The Song Of The
Extinct - Armageddon for 178 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Getting Away With Murder for 180 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's Small Hopes Shall Slice Thy Destiny To Ribbons - Split The Atom
MEGATON for 153 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

"And still you continue on!" Cyre yells, even as a rolling tide of swords, crimson as flowing blood, crashes into him. Sword after sword, Cyre meets killing blade with razor-sharp claws. Demonic steel clashes with razor-sharp magic. He catches the first and deflects it over his shoulder. He smashes the second into the ground. A fourth, fifth and sixth are turned into platforms to escape the seventh through fourteenth. The fifteenth is snatched out of the air and used to smash through the next five.

The twenty-first catches him in the shoulder. The twenty-second through twenty-ninth cut him to bloody shreds.

As that scream tears across the battlefield, and Cyre falls from the sky, he sees...

The advent... of Desperation.

The thing, a mockery of the Baskar faith, fills his vision with fire-red rage. The thirtieth comes for his throat.

And Cyre's voice explodes into a furious roar.

His left claw smashes the blade aside. His right snatches it out of the air. A platform of solidified sky-stuff hardens under his feet for him to leap from, and Cyre...

Races forth.

For K.K.

"This doesn't change things," Cyre snarls as he strikes, the crimson of the blade in his grasp turning to emerald green as the raw stuff of ley-wind. The Lunar magic sputters and shatters, replaced by a sword of screaming storm-wind. "One more Clysmian... All it means is that there's one more problem to deal with...!" But if Catenna can get to it before it can become a real problem, then--

That would be good.

But she needs to get that chance. Boudicca is of the same mind. Cyre dives forward, moving with furious, predatory alacrity. Every claw-swipe, every whirling slash, unleashes stronger and stronger winds. Progressively the power builds, the tempest gathers, a column of green-grey storm-clouds twists down out of the sky, lower and lower until the funnel cloud touches down...

Right on top of Cyre and the Trial Knight.

GS: Cyre H. Lorentz spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked K.K. with Sow the Storm!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has launched an attack Link!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz's  stance ends. He enters the Avenger stance!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has attacked K.K. with Reap the Whirlwind!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz enters a Counter stance!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Riposte expired!
GS: Cyre H. Lorentz has completed his action.

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Venetia reels back at the sweeping blade of the vast THING, the insectoid holiness that Seymour has forced himself into. Blood oozes from a half-dozen places in an arc across her upper body; the pain is sharp, dimmed mostly by the fact that she is doubtless full of interior chemicals of fury and rage, and by the fact that she is already suffering from the burns and pressure injuries from earlier.

By the time her vision clears, the egg has hatched -

- and the bird has flown.

Venetia's head swims as she briefly considers her course of action. She can see the gray and withered bodies of the dead in the distance as others speak, her ears ringing. Yuna encourages them.

Venetia had been thinking on what she could do with the spiritual benzine she had left in the proverbial tank. In so far as she was thinking at all. There is not much. She stares at Seymour from her knees and then, with a hup, kips up to her feet again, legs tucked together, arms spread apart.

She rises the rest of the way like an old woman, but after this she flips her hair back on the principle of the thing.

"We'll curse your name until this planet dies," Venetia says to Seymour.

Another Crest Graph is raised up. This one is more worn, familiar, and simple - as she raises up her rod a swirl of violet, however creaking and aching, twirls together, forming a coherent prismatic shape - a Venetia-sized crystal of amethyst. Venetia's eyes widen as she leans the rod back --

-- and hurls it towards Seymour's throat!

GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Seymour Guado with Stygian Amethyst!
GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Surge expired!
GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
GS: Seymour Guado critically Guards a hit from Venetia Vuong's Stygian Amethyst for 26 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

<Pose Tracker> Claude C. Kenny has posed.

Cecilia's assessment of Claude C. Kenny's mental state is incredibly accurate. He has been operating more or less on autopilot ever since Seymour threw a fireball at his face; at the moment, he is battered and burned and entirely target-focused. This is the sort of mindset that the Federation tries to actively train out of its combat officers - but in those situations, Claude would have a platoon of marines under his command, doing the bulk of the fighting. Here, he's just another fighter; his focus is on staying alive.

Which is difficult, because it's increasingly clear to him that they're losing this fight. Seymour sends him sprawling again, and this time Claude struggles to get back to his feet. A faint grey haze rises up at the corners of his vision, and he grits teeth stained pink with blood. It's a struggle to fight past it, but Claude powers through, barely dragging himself back from the brink. The assault from the Mortibody is almost a relief in that case; the insectoid creature's claw slams into Claude's shoulder, sending him sprawling backward again. Though the armourweave stiffens to prevent the strike from penetrating, the impact sends fresh waves of pain running through him. Good old, mind-focusing pain. Claude's vision clears, and for a second or two he acts like an officer instead of a brawler.

He sees several people breaking off after the... goober. (It's bad, Claude knows it's bad, but the people chasing it look fresher than he does right now.)

He sees Cecilia still up and fighting (thank God, he thinks with a fair amount of chagrin; he's not been the best bodyguard on this occasion). Venetia, too.

He sees a couple of the Lady Summoner's Guardians go down... with the notable exception of the skinny kid. Huh. Might be tougher than Claude thought.

And he sees Seymour Guado, still floating up there on his semidivine infernal ass, smirking smugly after having casually brushed away two of Claude's more serious shots.

It is this last point, more than anything else, that focuses Claude C. Kenny's mind in this moment. He has fought some tough opponents over the past three years, even some that were far, far in excess of his own strength. Every one of them, even the ones like Siegfried that managed to whip his butt, at least knew they had been in a fight. The young man draws in a steadying breath, and lets it out slowly. Calm. Focus. Determination. Things he can use. He feels it - even as Yuna sends her own power coursing outward, strengthening those few defenders she has remaining. Including him - weary though he might be. Unworthy though he knows he is.

Bad luck, Boy From Earth!

Claude raises a foot and stomps it down; a line of stone spikes cut across the battlefield, carefully aimed to rise up in front of Lulu and Rikku, offering them at least some protection from whatever assault may be coming. He takes another two steps to the left and picks up Tipheria's spear from where it has come to a stop. He hefts it experimentally. Not his favourite weapon - but it's a weapon, and one he's used at least a few times before. He'll have to put his faith in whatever meagre skill he can bring to bear.

Bad luck, bad luck!

Claude starts spinning the spear around his body, his face a mask of concentration. Blade and haft flicker in the fading light of the fires illuminating the village, golden fireflies dancing about the weapon as it starts to pick up speed. More and more begin to gather, until they are nearly a storm, whirling around the battered warrior in half a dozen separate streams. Claude - calmly and carefully - pushes the last of his reserves into generating as many golden sparks as he can manage, knowing he'll need every last one of them... and that even that might not be enough.

Bad l---

"Bite me," Claude C. Kenny snarls as he sweeps the spear upward, sending the golden streams of light flowing up into the air overhead. As they reach the peak of their arc, they shatter and scatter into dozens of brilliant shards of power - each of which hardens into a shimmering blade like the ones he fired so long ago, in the opening exchanges of the fight.

An Air Slash. Or, rather, fifty of them.

"FALL!" Claude shouts as he whips the spear downward, sending the concussive vacuum blades shrieking down toward Seymour, like an ocean of stars falling down upon him.

GS: Claude C. Kenny spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has attacked Seymour Guado with Air Raid!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Claude C. Kenny has completed his action.
GS: Seymour Guado guards a hit from Claude C. Kenny's Air Raid for 108 hit points!
GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Xantia was plenty angry already, but hearing K.K. speak of being deserving of life, as if they or anyone else had any right to deem anything unworthy of living, infuriates her all the more. Her furious strike is, however, intercepted not by a sword of darkness, but one of light. It isn't unexpected. If anything, using a similar weapon to one she knew K.K. to possess was a direct challenge to respond in kind.

It's not a particularly wise challenge. Mastery over the sword isn't an area that Xantia excels in - making this into a sword fight is putting herself at a severe disadvantage. It's a reckless way of making a point. But that's never stopped her before.

She's not sure what she was expecting the response would be. The fact that it's acknowledgement rather than dismissal is... unexpected. She even briefly feels pleased about that, before becoming disgusted with herself for having even the slightest bit of positive response to something K.K. said to her. That feels all kinds of wrong.

After being forced back, she makes an effort to strike again, but is quickly outmaneuvered and knocked into the air by an upward strike, her blade dispersing into motes of light soon after it leaves her hands. The strike itself was only enough to daze. It's the landing that follows that's the real unpleasant part. Xantia didn't manage to break her fall very well, it doesn't look nor sound great when she lands on her back.

There's no way she isn't in serious pain after that, and yet... through groans and gritting her teeth, Xantia forces herself to rise, and re-assume a combat stance. She still has to respond to what she was told just now. This is important enough to not do the wise thing and stay down in this condition.

"...Good."

That's all she says, at first. K.K.'s interest is something she wishes to have. She doesn't particularly care how healthy it is. She needs a moment to catch her breath and collect her thoughts before she can continue that line of thought.

"...Listen to me, K.K., Trial Knight, Adversary of Man, or whatever you want to call yourself. In the past, I didn't know what I was doing, what I even wanted to do. But that's different now. Now, more than anything, I want to protect Filgaia from those who would cause it harm. So if you still mean to test me... don't bother."

As she speaks these words, the air surrounding her ripples, then blasts outward. An invisible wall of force not unlike the level of force she can exert with her punches, except that she didn't move to actually throw one. She'd... really rather not move that much, giving how much her everything is hurting right now. It's a gesture of defiance more than anything else.

"You're not an obstacle to me anymore. I am an obstacle to you. You got that?!"

GS: Xantia has attacked K.K. with Massive Shockwave!
GS: Riposte expired!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Shalune is dragging people to safety. Jacqueline's glad for that - someone has to do it. It's a very important task! She's about to shout some encouragement here way, but then...

There is a shriek, and Jacqueline's eyes open wide. The Clysmian, it's here - not as large as Sin yet, but it's here. Somewhat horrifyingly, it's dressed in the garb of the Baskar. Jacqueline reacts quickly. With a gesture of her right hand she sends a bolt of lightning crashing down toward it - but Seymour's casting is faster, his fireballs sending the Clysmian into a retreat and out of the range of her spell.

Jacqueline grimaces and shakes her head. It's too late now. She looks in Catenna's direction, then, and hesitates for a moment. With how fast it's moving, she's not certain she'll be able to catch it in time... but, she's not going to tell her she shouldn't, either.

"...Right. Just be careful, okay? I can't follow you, so I'll take care of things back here!" Jacqueline calls back.

And then, she looks toward Yuna, as her voice cries out. Together. It's too soon to give up.

...Right. The Clysmian might be alive, but... they can still do something about it. For now, she'll trust in Catenna, and turn her attention to what she can do.

Jacqueline winces as more of that black substance leak from Lunata. It... looks like it really hurts. And she's afraid for her, of course. Quickly, she draws out a bottle. The liquid inside looks... different. Like it turns everything that passes through into its negative. It's one of her reverse healing potions, made especially for Lunata. With a Mystic touch the liquid evaporates into glimmers of negative light, settling over Lunata in hopes of keeping her just a bit longer.

And then, Lunata shows off her self-determination. The attack might not have that grace and elegance... but, it's Lunata's, purely and wholly. And to Jacqueline, it's just as beautiful for that - if not moreso.

GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Lunata Croze with Reverse Restorative!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Lunata Croze! She gains 125 temporary hit points!
GS: Quick! applied to Jacqueline Barber!

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

The scattering of the summoning line eases her heart, but....the Guardians are still ill at ease.

And soon she sees why. "NO!" she screamsa, as the horrible vulture-thing rises. She can hear it, distantly, a twisted voice.

She feels immediately its malice. She wonders if this is what people feel like when they decide a child is evil upon its birth, this horrible, twisting terror in her gut. "There's a Guardian for everything," she mutters to herself. "Did they create it...or did they corrupt it?"

Either one, horrifying.

She rises, shaking. "I never thought I'd need to ask even more of the Guardians. I'm sorry....to fail like this again..."

She shakes, but the call from Yuna lets her pull in a wavering breath. She can't reach it. Not now. But she can...

The dust at her feet burns as she brings forth another tablet.

"I have seen his crimes," she says, quietly. "We need say no more. COME FORTH! MATERIAL!"

The stone peels away to the golden light within, and it bursts across the sky. A much, MUCH louder shriek shatters the sound of the battlefield, as the great firebird Moor Gault roars across the sky, looming over the scene, flapping its mighty wings.

"You were a Maester once. A man of power. But you are on my planet now. And I've had just about enough of pleading for madmen to smarten up."

She turns to Moor Gault. "Turn him to dust."

The bird screams, and sets wide its wings, and Seymour finds himself at the epicenter of a tremendous, unimaginable heat.

GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has activated a Force Action!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Seymour Guado with Material - Vapor Blast!
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    "I'll say it again, K.K.- _Spira needs no saviors_. You want to change them? What right do you have?!"

    What right does she have, proclaiming these words, as they feel so hollow?

    She breathes through clenched teeth, anger burning hot in her chest. Ivan speaks, comparing K.K. to the Guard, and "No one even *knew* about Spira until some hotshot Mercenary King used his magic orb to throw the whole lot of us there! Now you get to jump in there and make yourself their judge?!"

    Scarlet paints in petals and blood red, cracks splintering the ground. The Blessing slices through Gwen's body like it promised to moments earlier, adding pain on top of pain. Gwen could never deal with sorcery well, a person about as far away from magic as any.

    Gripping her chest, the courier staggers back a step, pale red curls dipping over her downward angled head. Looking upwards, she's just in time to see the flying infant Clysmian fly away, scared by Seymour's magic.

    'When my work here is finished, I will go to Spira.'
    It wasn't enough.

    Of course K.K. is this. They never claimed to be anything but this. But they are connected to Ragnell still, in her mind. Could it be that Ragnell is much the same, and that, really, everything was just her warning Gwen away?

    And what Gwen feels--

    What use is this faith?

    It's an excuse. A way to think that the world's greys could be more varied than they actually are. That by holding back, she could be proving some small point.

    Maybe she could put aside that faith, just a little bit. Like a bit of armor, over her heart.

    Cyre's words realign Gwen. He's right, it's just another problem.

    This was her last chance to be true to her anger, instead of peddling it away with excuses. Like Xantia, Gwen, too, will be an obstacle.

    Willing the climbing power of her ARM into her body, the feeling of it similar to a crackling static, like sharp knives, climbing up her skin, Gwen follows after Xantia.

    "_This is your trial now, K.K._"

    The first part of the attack is a flash of dazzling light, like a bright explosion of firepowers far too close to the face to be comfortable.

    The second, a familiar blast of electricity, the same yellow gold that threatens to travel further up Gwen's nerves.

    The third, a high-pitched, angry scream.

GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked K.K. with Quasar Palm!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has launched an attack Link!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked K.K. with Corona Discharge!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    The Adversary's words have that peculiar quality to it where they are heard from almost anywhere, Lanval finds. Even when there's so much screaming, so much fire, so much raw emotion, and so much power going about - however a Seraph parses the various senses as mortals would label them - there is a quality that is persistent.
     No matter how softly or fiercely the Adversary speaks, when a name spoken is yours, that statement gets heard. Even above the natural inclination for those to try and stand against an unrelenting enemy who would by default command one's attention, it is like a perfect martial strike of flawless form - it cannot miss you, you cannot miss it.
     Lanval draws back the drinking gourd from its current momentum, whirling once with it as he spins not back, but to his left. It's an unwieldy thing, even for someone who by nature is used to teetering and tottering about as though at mercy of any and all outside forces (...like water itself) as he looks into the white helmet that only reflects him back.
     'My place is the wat--' Lanval is about to say to answer that first question, but K.K.'s spoken cadence is excellent at teasing the beginnings of an answer but ensuring one is pulled towards the full breadth of that inquiry. Is this the seat that suits? The tilt of the head. Lanval knows what he would say.
     Their timing interjects pre-emptively. Merely occupying it out of obligation - because someone must?
     Lanval looks so strange to those who know him in this time, when he isn't putting on that silly cat-like smile, or ambiently giggling and laughing. It is his very nature as a Seraph that his Domain is about the little joys, the small victories - usually when his power is at its peak, he is this uproarious, mirthful fellow whose unusual strength among Seraphim his age seems all but unflappable.
     Over yonder, Marivel shouts the idea that the Seraphim themselves were stolen from Filgaia, which seems to further lean into whether he is simply fulfilling an obligation.
     That ambient joy of his presently seems... muted, to the power of the world's water, now, as he speaks.
     "The seat doth not be one of idle comfort," Lanval speaks, which is almost humorous unto itself for the figure his projected body suggests (of one who over-indulges, which is absolutely true of him). His is Filgaia's water, and it is suffering. Water that has been wounded in ways he knows all too well, "but I would scarce take another. For I sit among where water falls ill," and that's a great way to summarize 'oh wow what the hell has life done to one of its most vital components for continuing to be life,' "...but also where an oasis form in the desert, for where the fresh water river flow,"
     There's that smile, small as it is - but that's going to be short-lived if the thundering shockwaves have anything to say about it, and Lanval is not particularly able to defend against the sheer power that courses where it strikes. He is launched clean, scattering across the line--

GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Sow the Storm for 151 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Cyre H. Lorentz's Reap the Whirlwind for 151 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    --and landing smoothly with his back against a sloped wall, like a hammock, mitigating at least some of the impact. It's chaos. It's worrisome. There is a final desperate bid to deal with Desperation...
     But also, through Catenna, a hope.
     "A place where happiness can still yet be - though water doth be taken, be changed, be wasted, even be cruel... 'tis itself a quiet joy to have." Lanval holds up the drinking gourd in a 'toast' like motion, and there is a dramatic 'splash!' A refreshing mist rolls about the field where K.K.'s opponents struggle to hold it together after so many tests of their bodies and wills alike. A small boon. A tiny benefit.
     "...A place of these small joys... be a good seat for me! Ha ha ha!" That... that sounds a lot more like him. Amplifying the little successes they've all made so far in getting here, figuring out what might be happening, acting to weaken the gestation process of the Clysmian...
     ...and having a cool splash of water, of course. Maybe a little too cool. Kind of chilly, even - but enough to wash away the worst.

GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Xantia's Massive Shockwave for 96 hit points!
GS: Disrupt! applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Quasar Palm for 0 hit points!
GS: Jam! applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Corona Discharge for 176 hit points!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Nimue with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Cyre H. Lorentz with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Lanval with Wake Up Splash!
GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Seraph Lanval takes an additional 25 damage from Reaper!
GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
GS: Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Wake Up Splash for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Reaper removed!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Wake Up Splash for 0 hit points!
GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Wake Up Splash for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Stagger removed!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Wake Up Splash for 0 hit points!
GS: Restore! Reaper removed!
GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Counter Attack for 124 hit points!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Wake Up Splash for 0 hit points!
GS: Seraph Boudicca has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.

"Ghh... I don't know! I would use it to help save people from the likes of those cultists! And you, for that matter! Not that I know if it can be done, but..." It was clearly an empty threat, Dash shooting his mouth off without knowing what he was saying.

Could such things be summoned?

The Buster fire makes its mark, but isn't enough to wholly pierce the defense of this strange individual. Such power they have, easily ten or more people fighting them-- their armor is worse off, but they flinch little in the onslaught. Fighting these odds is something they seem used to.

"The world will fall to pieces if one of those monsters appears here! Is that really what you want? You actions speak for you, you know! With that power you have, you could easily stop it..."

A blast of eldritch power screams out, reachest out, to everyone in the immediate vicinity of the Trial Knight. Dash raises his shield to block ,but it still blasts him off his feet. The shield gets thrown to the side mid-blast, and damaged striating patterns cover Dash's armor.

The blue remains. A stubborn color representative of something important. Something that should be known, but...

When the rubble clears, Dash is standing again, visible cracks on his faceplate, but it holds together, if by splinters. Concussive damage is registered within, and will have to be addressed later.

The other thing different is his offhand has swapped weapons again in the cloudy aftermath.

"Guess I am done trying to talk you out of it." He sees the condition Marivel is in ,retching something up. "Be careful!" he calls to her, worried.

He takes aim with the Active Buster. "This should pack a bit more punch."

The weapon unloads its entire clip of mini-missiles, packing enough explosives to level a house. They fly keenly in the air, homing toward whatever Dash locks eyes on.

"I don't enjoy fighting. But if I must, I will."

Despite his systems seeming to be geared for it, combat has been something Dash tries to avoid. Unless it is necessary. "Better to have friends than enemies, anyway."

<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.

"Get back here!" Seymour snarls after Catenna. He raises a hand -- and two fireballs careen away from the outstretched hand, snaking after. They explode before striking into Saarda-Shanta or Catenna, though. Streamers of flame rain down onto the ground.

And while Lulu and Tipheria fall, others still stand -- and Seymour is conscious that he must deal with them. He turns to look at Yuna, unable to perceive the roar of the Fayth, but he knows it must be there. He remembers when an Aeon roared in his mind.

But in death, he chose to sever that connection.

He must seek a new path, now -- a path that leads through them. Lunata speaks, and he looks at her. A flurry of strikes cuts into him. Inexpert, perhaps, but they do the job; rock cracks around him, Pyreflies stream away, and he can only stumble from her.

Tidus rushes in -- and he strikes, repeatedly, slamming Brotherhood into his body. Stone cracks; Pyreflies erupt, and Seymour's feet hit the ground. It may dawn on them, then. As an Unsent, he is made of Pyreflies. There are none to absorb.

His form begins to flicker. When Venetia's crystal flies, it slams into his throat and lodges there. "Hrk--" And Pyreflies leak about the entry and exit wound. And then, he looks up, and Claude C. Kenny sends waves of golden energy down. They slam into him. They slash through his statue-like body; through the stone altar affixed to his back.

"I do not answer to children of a dying star, little princess!" Seymour snarls at Cecilia, before fire scours him whole.

And Seymour's body explodes apart into the Pyreflies they are. The altar can scarcely crumble away before they become them. When he reforms, it is his human form -- but surrounded in a veritable sea of Pyreflies. Twisting, churning colors of the rainbow bend and move around him, and yet they hide what he truly is for a moment.

As they clear, as Seymour Guado steps forward, he is revealed to be a horror.

Half of his face ends in a jagged tear, running through the lips, and ending on a cheekbone. One eye and a quarter of his skull is gone. Holes riddle his body -- robes and flesh alike -- and the portion of his hand that Tidus took, before he died, is gone.

There is no blood, nor viscera. There is merely the gaping holes that exist in the form of an Unsent that lacks the Pyreflies to recreate his body. It is half a smile that greets Lunata and her tears. "We are not so different, Lunata. You may deny it... but see for yourself."

And then he looks at Yuna, and he feels that spike of fear. He sees her staff; he knows what she might do. His eyes track to the Trial Knight -- and the brutal assault they are under.

"HUMANS!"

And then Biggs Guado is suddenly there. The huge Guado slams down his shield, smashing into Claude's back. Wedge Guado leaps, lanky and fast, and when he grabs Seymour's cowl, the Maester's unnatural body lifting all too easily. "Gh--you're a wreck, Maester Seymour."

Seymour nods loosely -- and his one eye turns. It meets Yuna, cold as ever. "I shall see you soon, Lady Yuna," he says, with a raspy voice.

Biggs turns, eyes scanning, before he looks at Venetia. "Die under the hateful sun, human. It's all your kind deserve." He looks at Tidus, then Rikku. "Traitors."

He spits, before he bolts.

GS: Dash Caskett has activated a Force Action!
GS: Dash Caskett spends 4 Combo on Interrupt and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
GS: Dash Caskett has attacked K.K. with Cluster Missile!
GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Dash Caskett takes an additional 25 damage from Reaper!
GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action.
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Dash Caskett's Cluster Missile for 170 hit points!
GS: K.K. has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Heat lingers on Ida's fingertips as she ducks away from the Trial Knight, and settles back into a defensive stance. She waits for another opening, and Boudicca almost gives her one in the worst way possible. It all happens so fast.

    K.K. drives that spear forward, and Ida watches as it runs her Oracle through. "BOUDICCA!" she screams, her voice alive with horror. Bright fury ignites behind her eyes. Ida surges forwards, teeth bared as she makes ready to deck K.K., to wrench that spear from their hands, to do something that isn't sitting there helpless and watching something terrible happen. She's not even halfway there when that wave of Ley power erupts, blindingly brilliant. Ida throws up her arms to shield herself, and skids to a halt. The air grows thick with ozone. When Ida looks up, she sees a sky alive with blood-red lightning. A bolt rips free from the heavens, seeking her heart.

    Ida throws herself to the side, hitting the muddy earth and sliding. The bolt hits where she was standing, and arcs outwards, spitting fury in every direction. One sub-bolt slams into Ida's right arm, and from there, leaps to her back. Her whole body spasms. She throws up her head, and sees Boudicca free of that lance, but looking at something. Ida sees that something, too, and her jaw goes slack.

    The last of the chanting summoners collapses. Her body hits the ground with a sick thud, and in that moment, an all-too-familiar helplessness settles into Ida's heart.

    For all your posturing, you couldn't save them. You couldn't stop them from being used. All that mattered was you, 'hero'.

    Ida's jaw trembles. The newborn Clysmian takes wing, and Catenna takes off after it. A glance over at Seymour reveals Rikku and Lulu, lying in the mud. She looks back up at Rek'gora.

    Look at it. Your world now has its very own Sin, Seer. You couldn't dispel that Malevolence. It gorged on it.

    "Shut up," Ida spits. She's not looking at K.K., or Seymour--she's looking at nothing, pressing a hand to her temple as lightning rips through her again. It might be completely new to Seymour, but K.K. has seen it--one of those little moments where Ida's brain turns on itself. Panic swells within her chest.

    No. Breathe. In-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four, out-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight.

    You're scared, Ida thinks to herself. That treasonous little voice has fallen silent. It's all right to be scared. It's all right to be angry. You know what is unacceptable? Being perfect.

    To outside observers, Ida goes from 'about to panic' to 'back in control' over the course of roughly ten seconds. She rises, covered in mud and two kinds of blood.

    "I accept your challenge," Ida whispers. "But it is not us you should fear." Ida glances at Yuna. She wonders what's hiding behind that smile, and realizes she's just got to put her faith in her, like everyone else. To do what she can to help her bear the weight. To help her through her tempering, as Kalve and Boudicca and Dean and so many others helped her. Does Yuna even think of it as a tempering?

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    "Because, as you said," Ida says, the steel returning to her voice, "some are born flying, and Spira is lucky enough to have its share. And those of us who have taken wing at last will guide them on their way." She steps forwards, putting herself between Boudicca and the Trial Knight. "Your ally will repent his ways, or he will be given the true, final death he so deeply craves. As for you..." Ida takes a step. Motes of Ley-flame rise from her feet. The mud begins to solidify and crack as the water in it evaporates. The mud and blood on Ida's clothing dry, instantly. The one thing that doesn't evaporate is Lanval's cleansing water, which flows over her, leaving her clean and free of that lingering sorcerous electricity. She gives the Seraph a grateful look.

    Ida draws Devil's Due. A flaming mandala traces across the ground. Smoke pours off of it, scented of burning wood and incense. The armor on Ida's chest and arms shifts, growing distinctly avian in aspect. Her eyes ignite.

    "You taught me what it means to rise from the ashes. And in return, Adversary, allow me to honor you."

    Ida takes in a deep breath. Those sensitive to such things may note the Ley doing something--the force of Fray grows stronger, welling up within Ida's body. She takes aim at K.K., and pulls the trigger.

    Fire erupts from the ARM's barrel. It is not the searing force of Dragonfire, but something older, more primal. The flames flare out, forming wings, talons, blazing eyes--until they've taken on the visage of Moor Gault--as if reminding the pale imitation above what a real Guardian looks like.

    The firesurges across the battlefield, seeking to obliterate K.K. in its apocalyptic wrath.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 1 Combo on Link!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Inhalation!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has launched an attack Link!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's  stance ends. She enters the Avenger stance!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Inhalation for 0 hit points!
GS: Amplify! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 2 Combo on Poison and Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked K.K. with Breath Of The Fire Dragon!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    It seems like finally, finally it might be over. Seymour's form has cracked and fallen away, leaving behind rubble and holes and pyreflies. Now, Yuna might be able to Send him. But then Biggs and Wedge come in out of nowhere to whisk Seymour away before they can finally take him out once and for all. They even have the audacity to spit at him and Rikku and call them traitors, tell them and Venetia that they deserve to die under the hateful sun.
    
    "HE'S LITERALLY TRYING TO DESTROY THE WORLD! HOW ARE WE IN THE WRONG HERE?!" he yells at the Guados' backs. "GET BACK HERE, YOU--!" But as Tidus starts to chase after them, he stumbles and clutches at his wounds. He grits his teeth. He *could* keep running after them, but they're fresh and unwounded and able to run without getting tired. Meanwhile, Rikku and Lulu are both down, and Yuna's gravely injured. Plus, while this part of the battle might be over, the Trial Knight or whoever they are's still standing, still fighting. He can't afford to run off and leave Yuna alone. Tidus turns on his heel and hurries back to her, this time without stumbling.
    
    "Yuna! Yuna, are you okay? How're the others?" he calls, growing closer to conversational level the closer he gets, until he's finally back by her side. She might be the healer of the team, but he's the one who holds onto the restorative items--and, thank whoever happened to store them in a local cottage, he just recently found a bunch of Hi-Potions recently. Yuna doesn't have to be the only one healing this time.

<Pose Tracker> Tidus has posed.

    Once he's confirmed Yuna's okay and has at least started to get Lulu and Rikku healed, he turns towards the others who helped fight Seymour Wasn't there someone else who fell during the fight? They'll have to help her get back on her feet too. "Thanks a ton, you guys," he says. "I really--geez. I know you didn't do it for us, but I'm sure as heck glad you all were here to help."
    
    But probably none of them have the energy for a conversation at this point...

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

"I've been told that before," Cecilia says to Seymour, as he burns.

She relaxes, momentarily, as Seymour disperses into the pyrefly cloud. She killed enough Fiends to know what that means. The mechanics of it, she can ask Miss Summoner and the others about lat---er.

Once, Cecilia might have quailed or cowered before the grotesque sight of Seymour, half-formed but still entirely, furiously alive. And she sees it, this time - the way he looks to Yuna like she was the only one in the room with a gun. What...

The rest of it happens so fast. Cecilia doesn't react the way she should, perhaps. This is something her friends know about her; the girl is prone to strange bouts of distraction, spontaneous crippling headaches. Both of them, signs of the Guardians' presence in her. Her small body was not made for such grand attentions.

It's not until Biggs and Wedge make off with Seymour that she stumbles to the side and finds the ruins of what used to be a homestead, slumping against it and slipping to the ground, her hand pressed to her temples.

"The planet," she murmurs. "It's screaming again...."

<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.

Venetia is too wounded and weary to do more than glare at Biggs Guado as he comes, and then as he departs, almost as soon as that. The horror of what Seymour has done as well as what he IS has taken its toll, as if the journey into the depths of the sacrificial grounds and a first encounter with Malevolence were not enough.

When Tidus comes by to give her a potion, she drinks it immediately. This gives her the energy to stagger behind a piece of rubble, and to dig out another one of her masks, which she ties around her face. This seems to relieve her enough to actually lapse into semi-consciousness for a few moments.

Her eyes close and she tilts her head at Tidus's thanks, her face otherwise unexpressive. Several seconds later, she answers him, perhaps too quietly to be heard over what's left of the battle: "He's not wrong about the sun, you know. Awful thing."

GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Breath Of The Fire Dragon for 181 hit points!
GS: Poison! applied to K.K.!

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

"Maybe so... but not in the ways that matter." Jacqueline retorts, shaking her head at Seymour. But soon enough, with the protection of his Guado guards, Seymour's gone.

Jacqueline sighs, and then turns her eyes upon the fallen Baskar. There's still a fight going on, but... she rushes over to the side, kneeling down next to one them. They're... ashen, and grey... it's a little difficult to look at. Jacqueline very carefully feels for a pulse, and frowns.

"...Alive, but... I don't know if I have anything for this..." She mutters, standing up. She looks around, at everyone else left standing. "I'm going to go get Mariel - she might know what to do about this. She's... probably going to want to know about this new Clysmian business, anyway."

Assuming she didn't know about it already, that is.

For now, she just hopes they can solve this issue before things become serious...

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

A shriek, horrible and hellacious, fills the air. The horned helm of K.K. turns towards the sight of the small (relatively speaking) Clysmian, taking to the sky.

Light coalesces at their palms, into the form of that greatbow, notched with its lance of an arrow. It trains upon the flying sight, even as Seymour bids it to find its roost.

For all the world, it looks as though the Trial Knight is taking aim at Catenna as she takes flight. But there is a moment --

"... 'Tis incomplete, is it?"

-- where it could mean anything, when that subtle note of approval reaches their murmured words.

Regardless of the truth, their shot is never fired. Before the lance can be loosed, Cyre dives upon the knight, every blow colliding with a harmonic ring of claws upon metal and wind howling at armor. Each blow sheers off more and more chunks of armor as that funnel cloud descends further and further --

Until the storm is upon them both.

Even K.K. cannot hold fast forever, and even as they fend with Cyre, eventually they are swept up into the relentless winds. For one of the first times this fight, they are taken completely off their feet, flung about like a ragdoll until they -crash- into the ground so hard that they crater it. Earth bursts outward in chunks as they dent into it. They rise once more. Slowly, but surely.

"... And still, I continue on," they intone, metallic voice filling without hesitation.

But perhaps not with the horrific enthusiasm one might expect or demand from such a monster.

And more, they come. Nimue, with her words and her action, strikes the knight with loud CLANG, CLANG, CLANGS of stick-on-armor. It unsettles K.K.'s footing -- just enough so that they do not notice the satchel, until a second too late.

"... I am glad," is a statement that is muted within the deafening sound of cascading explosions and the roar of pouring fire as Ivan lashes out into the devastation.

When all the heat fades, there stands K.K., armor glowing so bright a hue of orange they should have rightly been cooked alive in that armor.

Still standing. Still moving.

"... There is something peculiar about you, boy," they utter to Ivan, approaching him, step by slow step. Their clawed hand reaches forward.

"Something in the nature of you--"

One shot, for the Trial Knight. One shot, sends that bullet ripping across the side of their helmed skull. One shot, sheers off a chunk of faceless helm. Josephine's bullet ricochets, but it leaves its mark.

The sight of a sliver of a mouth visible beneath that partially shattered helm, pulled tight.

It is Dash and Gwen next, in an overwhelming combination of firepower; missiles join a dazzling, blinding flashbang and that telltale discharge of electricity, ripping through the knight in an explosion that could level buildings. Rockets curve inward, every explosion engulfing the Adversary of Man in billowing fireballs that dance with arcing electricity. Through the flame, through the force, the knight -rips- through, electricity shuddering throughout them as they push on through the devastation.

"All must fight," they intone to Dash. "In their own ways. 'Tis unavoidable. There is but one thing we can choose in it."

That ravaged helm tilts towards Gwen. There is something in that visible sliver of a mouth hard to properly define in that moment. Or maybe simply unpleasant.

"Mayhap so," is all they allow.

It is a sentiment echoed powerfully by Xantia not seconds later, accompanied by that burst of force. It -slams- into K.K., launching them bodily upward.

'I am an obstacle to you. You got that?!'

There is something that could have been a smile, in the seconds that they soar.

Ida pulls that devil's trigger.

The ley flucuates. And from that barrel, Moor Gault emerges, the Seer harnessing the power gifted to her to consume mankind's enemy within a torrential, roaring gout of flame. It engulfs them, burns at them, sets them alight -- and they come crashing down like an angry meteor lit up by atmospheric entry into the ground below, just as the skies open up beyond them. Just as Lanval and Boudicca work their magic. Just as Marivel speaks.

For Lanval, their head tilts. A quiet acknowledgment. As if, perhaps, they accept his answer.

Or perhaps because they accept it as something to be tested.

Regardless, even as Ida seeks to interpose between them, Boudicca charges upon K.K.; and as they recover, the knight does not try to move away.

They crash -right- into her, headfirst.

"I do not," they confirm. She collides. Her tonfa beats into them.

They snap gauntleted fingers.

Something that was left embedded in Boudicca in their previous altercation glows.

And in the ensuing explosion, K.K. -knocks- Boudicca away from the descending saber above them, even as they lurch forward. Even as they turn their gaze towards Marivel.

Seraphs, from Filgaia?

"I know not."

And, if nothing else, K.K. has never been anything if not brutally honest.

"But the truth is rarely so simple a thing. Is it?" Their head tilts. And their voice sounds somehow -- warm, for a fleeting second.

"'Twould not be a bad thing, such a future. Would that we had time to properly speak. My apo--"

The words never finish, before the sword crashes down. It consumes in an explosion of blazing red. And in the aftermath...

... the knight is gone, even as what they have helped wrought takes desperately to the skies.

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

Marivel says, "K.K..." with bloody pained empathy. Since her little drink her demeanor changed--though whether it is the close(?) call with the poison--It's difficult for her to have sympathy for the monsters of these worlds when she is supposed to be the monster that kills monsters.

It's really too bad they didn't get to speak more. Maybe there is time. But there is never time. Filgaia has been on the razor's edge since Ana...

Maybe even beffore then. But still, maybe a lucky moment will come. She thinks of Ragnell, whom she is too much alike--whom reminds her of all her traumas and failures and how far she's been willing to go with her own desperation--a desperation she imagines can match that of any Clysmian's.

But when those eyes look up again, K.K is gone.

She grips her dress tightly near where her heart ought to be if she had one.

Then she lets her hand drop.

"Their spirit," Marivel tells Boudicca and Lanval. "T'was so pure...I almost missed the poison weaved into it, like a scar seen when the skin is pressed."

She straightens up, barely able to stand as she looks towards the death-like bodies lying g on the floor.

"A contradiction that does not belong. Yet inseperable. I too carry such a blemish. Even without poison, the spirit can twist and tear at itself. The truth is rarely so simple. I know this. Yet... I still cannot imagine forgiving her. Either the goddess she is now, or the woman she used to be. I pray I do not drag you into my damage."

And with that she walks away to go be by herself for a spell.

ELSEWHERE

And a recently fed kinsman carries one the body of one woman out of the town with him. It is all one needs for a beginning.

For he too resents those that scarred him.