2021-04-24: Crimson Moon
- Log: Crimson Moon
- Cast: Isaac Stein, Leon Albus, Eika Zuse, Lily Keil, Riesenlied, Fei Fong Wong, Jacqueline Barber, Catenna, Elhaym van Houten, Citan Uzuki, Noeline, Xantia, Ida Everstead-Rey, Billy Lee Black, Gwen Whitlock
- Where: The Crater Sea
- Date: April 24, 2021
- Summary: Old grudges come to a head in a most horrific way. With the involvement of a third party, the situation quickly turns for the dire.
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
Fighting the ones that Solaris had left behind takes time. Getting back out of the Zeboim ruins takes time. If Stone -- no, Stein -- had been so inclined, it would have been possible for him to have returned with what he had retrieved from the ruin and vanished into the security that Solaris' forces can provide.
But only half of that statement is true.
A massive white Gear catches the light of the sun as it descends from some point in the heavens. Even at a distance there can be no mistaking it -- few Gears would be able to fly without interference from Solaris, but more than that, it bears their colors.
There is enough time before it reaches the dig site to call upon Gears. There is enough time to call for aid from others with Gears close at hand. It does not begin hostilities immediately once it makes its arrival just outside the dig site, but its menace is palpable.
There can be little doubt about the intent of such a Gear -- particularly a Gear of that size. Or piloted by a man like Isaac Stein, confirmed when he speaks.
"Do not think me patient enough to merely sit and watch the enemies of the chosen decide whether or not they will repent." A vile man who, even unmasked, would continue to parade about as if he were one to speak with righteous indignation. A man - no, a monster - who enjoys using that voice to toy with those faithful hearts frayed and torn by well-embedded lies.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
ZNS KARLSEFNI
A long distance away, the sleek and black form of the Karlsefni has risen above the surface. It is low to the water; it might well go missed in the choppy ocean waves. The top of the warship is flat, though, with a trio of long rows -- a single channel down the middle of each -- and a trio of hangar doors at the end of them.
"This is Argus," comes the voice of the former Althenan cleric that doubles as a healer and, sometimes, communications officer for the Wolves. "Hammer says you're all loaded. Good luck, everyone. I'll have some drinks ready when you're back."
"Thanks, Argus," Leon Albus says. He looks up, then; across his screen, several warnings flash in the Zeboim language:
ABORT CATAPULT
ABORT CATAPULT
ABORT THROTTLE
Leon's eyes close. He takes a deep breath; his thumb flicks a switch. The single camera-eye of the Weglaff Custom lights up; the cockpit rattles, as it hefts up the gatling cannon. Leon's eyes open back up. His expression is stern; silver-eyed and focused. Citan asked him to help a friend's son.
It's enough reason. His hand grips the throttle, slides it forward, and the engine's thrusters begin to roar to life. A steady rumble fills the whole cockpit.
Argus's voice echoes again over the transmitter. "Hammer's confirmed a sighting of Stone's Gear. Catapult 1, approved to launch! Catapult 2, approved to launch! Catapult 3, approved to launch!"
LAUNCH CLEAR
LAUNCH CLEAR
LAUNCH CLEAR
Leon is slammed back into his seat as the Weglaff rockets out, through the opening hangar doors, and into the brilliant sun. "Weglaff Custom!" Leon shouts. "Launching!"
NEAR THE RUINS
There is a brilliant flash of blue on the horizon. It grows larger and larger, changing from a dot to a hazy humanoid figure. Then, a flash of red, as the sensor-eye swivels, and locks onto stone. It comes in fast.
<Pose Tracker> Eika Zuse has posed.
Eika Zuse chased Stein partway out of the Zeboim ruins but lost him eventually, when his path went through a group of Solarians going the other way. Much as she hated it then, she had to back off herself, retreat - but she figured his plan enough to realize he must be preparing to leave, with Gear support, and she knew where she had to go.
A Gear - Eika's Gear, repossessed from the Etones after she had left it, in her original departure from the Order - is on the move. It is not a Gear that most have ever seen before, except perhaps to those who investigated the Etone Headquarters' garage and saw the shutdown Gear slumped in a corner. But here it is, active, apparently mostly complete - and definitely not on Stein's side despite its Ethos origin and the horned cross painted on each shield, judging by the direction it is pointed.
Eika's Gear is huge; the machine is on the tall side and has a shield mounted on each arm that is almost as tall as it is and probably each weigh more than a standard humanoid Gear. They appear to be discs of solid metal, with a raised and slightly spiked front (the 'spikes' are more bludgeoning tools than piercing weapons) and with four backwards-pointing 'teeth' that make the whole thing look faintly gear-like. These are connected to the backs of the fists of the Gear; it does have hands but they're mostly used to carry the shields, at least in the current configuration.
The actual torso of the Gear consists of a blunt wedge-shaped upper body with several cameras and ports pointing forward, solid legs with three industrial-looking 'toes' (two back, one forward) and a surprisingly slender central column. It looks almost incomplete in that section. Parts of the machine are steely silver, but other parts are an unknown brassy or copper-like metal - patchwork and not entirely by design, but functional.
All the weight means it is a slow and somewhat ponderous Gear. Eika is picking her way across the rocky terrain toward a flatter part of it, closer to Stein's landing point, but the giant hulk of a machine is not quick on its feet. Eika could run the boosters, but she doesn't want to spend the next few minutes pinballing over every rock on this foothill.
"If you're chosen," Eika says, her voice a growl, "it's by someone more like Valmar than Granas. Not that you believe, but you're closer to Hell than Heaven." And I'd know, she thinks to herself, but does not say. "If you want to kill us for not bowing down to your masters, come on! Try it! But I swore to be a shield for the innocent and, God willing, Firewheel and I will be that one more time!"
DC: Eika Zuse switches forms to Shield Gear Firewheel!
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily is a little dazed, frankly--after everything that happened--but she can put that aside when it comes time for action... which it does. Lily watches the great Gear descending from the sky, and narrows her eyes from where she'd been at the archive. Whatever she was able to get out of it, if anything, she quickly reaches into a pocket and pulls a device of her own.
She calls on her Gear; she needs recovery time, frankly... but she isn't going to get it yet.
Angular of silhouette and long of limb, Hellerune is a tall Gear, painted in dark colors. Its design is, to those who can recognize it, Solarian--but its colors are not. A stealth machine, it also carries a gigantic lance, usually back-mounted, as well as a great deal of monitoring equipment. The most powerful offense it carries, of course, is enabled by the Ether Booster installed within. But plated armor and powerful joints gleam in the light as Hellerune touches down, astrange gear for a strange woman. In short order, she's scaled the thing, and--
The cockpit of Hellerune is extremely simple. Much of the safety equipment someone else might use is replaced by more machinery, the language of the system edited from Solarian to a different, much older tongue. The Gear rumbles into being, smaller than the one Stein uses, perhaps, but already humming to life.
"If opposing you and your masters is 'sin'..." Lily's voice crackles over the radio as she finishes strapping in.
"Then I'll be the devil that brings you down. I repent nothing but the time I wasted hiding."
Over another frequency she sees the Wolves coming in, and sets her jaw, reaching up to brush aside some of the dried blood at her upper lip. "Captain. Ready for combat."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied is currently at the entrance to the Ruins, looking exhausted and weary; she has tried to go through the Zeboim Ruins. Operative word: tried.
Sometimes, it's just too much for her. The Hyadean has received another fever pitch from the world dragging her one way, then the other, and her already-ailing body just can't keep up with it.
It got very dangerous in the Ruins themselves, and she had to evacuate; fortunately, she had help and assistance with her, and could communicate with the Black Wolves for aid...
She sees the Weglaff and Hellerune incoming, and the others must be close by. The Hyadean doesn't have a wheelchair at the moment, but likely has Strife instead close by in case she needs to actually be mobile.
"Leon, Lily...!" Riesenlied calls through the communication device. She looks to Noeline. "Sorry.... it was really too much."
She pauses, and winces as she clutches her chest; she's familiar with that heartbeat, and Noeline is too, through the link in their rings. Something is coming. The word is just at the tip of her throat.
Is it urging her... to fight further?
"How many more people must you hurt before you are satisfied? To believe you are chosen for such a purpose, I..."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Weltall--" Fei begins.
"WELTALL CUSTOM." Hammer interrupts over the comms.
"But is it really custom--"
"It's the Weltall Hammer Custom Mk 6!" Hammer cries out again.
"...Weltall Hammer Custom Mk 6 launching...?" Feo says.
Weltall is flanking the Weglaff Custom. It's keeping pace mostly because Fei thinks that's what he should be doing. He doesn't have too many gear missions surprisingly enough, under his belt because he generally flinches away from them except when they're really neccessary but if there's anybody he's accustomed to fighting in a gear with, it's Leon Albus.
"Don't worry about it, Riese. Yuo shouldn't have to carry anything else." Fei says, which might not sound like much but means a LOT between the two of them.
"The one who should repent is you. After everything you've done, you THREATENED children...!" Fei says. "Give up and this will be quick. Otherwise you'll die screaming 'No...! No! That's ... that's impossible...! Arrrggghhh...!'."
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
The Caravan Kinship is among the groups that arrived to try and stop Solaris from getting their hands on whatever they sought in the Zeboim ruins. They're here now, as well, making their escape from their depths in hope of pursuing that man.
...But, it seems that he has returned from them, and with a massive white Gear that can only come from Solaris.
"Well, he's certainly eager to get this business over with... Fortunately, I came prepared." Jacqueline says with a sigh, rushing out of the elevator. With a gesture of her left hand, the earth in front of her begins to shake and shudder. And then, with a crack and a flash, the earth itself opens up, revealing a blue Gear in a crouching position, its cockpit open and waiting - the CK-01 Jaeger, concealed here just in case Solaris brought their Gear forces to bear.
Jacqueline leaps, drawing out her Copy Sea Medium... and a Jump lands her right in the open cockpit. With that, the CK-01 Jaeger stands to its full height... though not before extending a hand out as a platform to help give a certain friend a lift. Despite its earthen shelter, it bears no sign of dust or debris.
"You don't have to worry - we aren't going to make you wait for our answer. I'm sure you'll find that we're all in agreement. We've done nothing that requires repentance - at least, not in regards to you and your masters." Jacqueline replies, switching on her speakers. "You, however... How much blood is on your hands - Stein, is it? How many have you sent to their deaths - or their erasure, under the thumb of your Solaris masters? Your own sins are immeasurable. Ours, if they exist, don't even begin to compare."
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Catenna's hair and skirt billow out with the passage of the wind as she holds on tight to the shoulder of Jacqueline's Jaeger. She's not in her element for battles like these: As much as she wants to help, she does not know how to fly a mechanoid, and she never will, given her abysmal level of technical proficiency.
But coming along is important nevertheless, if only for principle. She dips her right hand to her hip, where she's firmly strapped her Silver Medium, before looking up.
"Oh, stop your blather," she mutters as she pushes her hair back with a rake of her free hand before returning it to the structure of the Gear, holding on firmly. A thundercloud scowl darkens her expression as she looks past the machine's head towards the other Gear - the big white machine dropping down from the heavens, in flight and in the colours of the sky people who made a mockery of her star sister's existence. Catenna clicks her tongue once, taking stock of Stein and his machine as best she can without the aid of sensors, radars or any understanding of how technology actually works.
It's Catenna's usual impulse to stay out of religious affairs like this - in her mind, one white-dominated church hierarchy oppresses Baskar and Zortroa as much as any other. The discovery of Zeboim changed the calculus, as did the exposure of the Ethos as something more sinister than they appeared.
<I wouldn't have expected you to be invested in this,> comes a mental pressure - Saarda-Shanta, the snowy owl circling slowly around Jay's machine. <Has your parochialism finally softened?>
Catenna huffs with a bleak scowl. "No. But there are a lot of innocents these people manipulated and hurt - not just Lydia."
Oddly enough, the name on Catenna's tongue is Rosaline Calice.
MEANWHILE, A SHORT DISTANCE AWAY...
"Alexander, do NOT do this to me!" Talise Gianfair shouts at her Gear's forward monitor. "These motherfuckers manipulated Rosaline! Damn itall, I've gotta help Eika and you want to--"
The screen just blinks impassively back at her.
KISLESOFT WINDOWS
Installing Update 1 of 178,498,212
0.0002% complete - 237hr remaining
Please don't turn off your Gear
Talise sags in her seat helplessly. "Althena's high-cut thong, I hate robots," she sighs. "Please kick his ass, Eika."
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Stagger. Chase. Flee, flee again. The only ease is that the path back is simpler, and that there are fewer deadly traps - there are even ways left by incoming Diggers. In the lift back up (there would be no other choice for ascension), Elly had sat on the floor in sheer exhaustion, slumped back against the railing.
And yet...
Up here, in the fresh air, and *he even has a Gear*. Of course he has a Gear, Elly thinks with a bleak resignation at the amplified statement from the anti-bishop. The Ethos were the main provisioners of Gears in Aveh, weren't they? And of course, they'd keep the best for...
... but it's not as hopeless as all that, now is it?
Because Elly sees something else has changed. The ship is here.
SOON ENOUGH:
"Bishop," Elly transmits.
"You should power down your Gear," she continues, from the seat of Vierge. There is, all the gods and guardians be praised, a *coffee mug* in the arm rest storage place. Elly wept a little when her elbow bumped it. Who put it there? She doesn't know, but perhaps that's the point. Hammer is the likely culprit, but *someone* had put it there.
Someone had taken the pains to do a small and kind thing. They were not compelled; it was nothing for which they gained credit. (And Elly genuinely needed the drink.)
"I don't expect you to listen," Elly says. "I'm saying this because you didn't appear on this planet out of nothing. There are people out there who remember you. And... I want to be able to say, that we gave you the chance. That you weren't forced. That it... wasn't an accident."
"But," Elly says, "if you power down the Gear, then... Even now, things can change."
Vierge is still holding its battle rod. (In the cockpit, Elly glances towards Weltall, then back towards Wiglaff, before turning up the condenser throttle another notch.)
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
Fortunately, Doctor Uzuki had left well enough alone this week and not attempted to tinker with yet more of his long-suffering Gear's internals. This means that the machine is in working order when the message comes through.
"I am ready, Argus."
There wasn't any question of whether or not he should accompany the others from the Karlsefni. After all, Billy was the son of an old friend. And... Fei had become deeply involved in this.
"None of your funny business, now," he murmurs, to his Gear rather than any living person. "I will need you to be on your best behavior...!"
The ancient Gear, while fairly reliable, is prone to its own eccentricities. Perhaps that's one of the reasons Sigurd had barely argued when Citan had ended up borrowing the machine indefinitely. ...Of course, he had also said that they had suited one another, which...
The cockpit rumbles, courtesy of the thrusters coming online. Any moment now.
It's been a while since he's used a catapult-style launch. It's a little exciting, he must admit--
"Heimdall, launching!"
And then, that's it. He's airborne, flanking the others as he comes in quickly to the outskirts of the targetted site.
"Oh dear... I had thought as much from the preliminary report, but I had hoped it was not the case," he informs the rest. "A Gear of that size and make... that is, I believe, the 'Alkenshel'! It was still under construction during my time..."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei Fong Wong is immediately embarrassed by Elly's goodness and genuine kindness.
"Y.yeah. What she said." Fei manages in what is somehow a mumble despite being projected out of a giant gear via on board loudspeakers.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
"It's alright," promises Noeline quietly, her hand in her partner's as she helps steady the other Hyadean atop the little pod that has become a second occasional seat to her.
Like Riesenlied, she waits at the entrance to the ruins, stuck somewhere between exhaustion and the steely certainty there's probably more fighting to be done. Her eyes pick out the Gear as it descends - it's hard to miss - but then she turns to watch the collection of lights soar in from the far-off distance of the Karlsfeni.
She pauses to give Riese a smile. It's a little wan, but still meant as encouraging; she knows from experience that it's better to offer something like that rather than dwell on things too hard, even if the pulse she can feel over their connection is starting to grow strong enough that it's difficult to ignore.
So rather than ignore it, she instead holds her position as Gear after Gear begin to converge on their location. Part of her wants to cut and run, to take the eminently sensible option and get a weary Riesenlied out of harm's way in a fight they may not be able to contribute to. Part of her stares up at the hulk descending towards them, and petulantly thinks: 'Sin's still bigger'.
But most of her draws in a slow breath and lets her enormous sword form into her hands, planting it into the ground as a bulwark for them both to brace against. Firming her expression up into something just a little more solemn, she offers a reassurance to Riesenlied, a physical touch of support to go along with her mental presence.
It's both a wordless question - 'what do you want to do' - and a promise that whatever the answer, she'll be there.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
It's been a while since the last time Xantia's seen any Gear action. She excused herself the last time she was going to because of Concerns, but those have now been dealt with. More or less. To the point where she's able to keep her mind on the task at hand again, anyway. And with the Black Wolves moving out in force, she was absolutely not about to stay behind this time. Doubly so given the circumstances.
And so, the skeletal quadruped Gear known as Silvestris has been readied upon Catapult #3 of the Karlsefni in a haunched down position. This is a new one on Xantia - her Gear hasn't needed to be deployed in this way before. Not being in full control of her own locomotion for the trip over makes her just a tiny bit nervous.
She focuses the camera on the gigantic Gear in the distance. Xantia's eyes narrow. Merely seeing the identifying marks of Solaris on the machine does much to calm herself, all other emotions taking a backseat to a simmering anger. She's stopped actively wondering over how much of those feelings are her own and how much stem from her her past self. It doesn't matter anymore. Even if it wasn't Solaris, for everything he did, this man in particular has to pay.
Launch approval is soon announced, and Xantia snaps back into the here and now. "Uh, yes! Let's see, um... how did it go again...?" Leon launched first, then she nods to herself. "Alright, I've got this." Gripping the controls, she focuses her attention on her machine. She briefly closes her eyes... then they fly open.
"Xantia and Silvestris, launching now!"
A flash a silver is soon seen following not far behind Weglaff and Weltall. With its legs spread forward and back, Xantia's vaguely feline Gear looks as if it's simply taken a giant leap across the water, which isn't entirely inaccurate, it just wasn't a leap under its own power. Its pilot is a little taken aback by how little time it takes to arrive, but reacts appropriate upon reaching solid ground. It seems it's true what they say about cats landing on their feet - in spite of the speed and distance, Silvestris seems no worse for wear as it impacts the ground, leaving a small crater.
"Y-yeah well... we'll see who'll be repenting in a minute!"
Xantia's retort is a little shaky, all the same. That was... quite a ride.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida emerges from the ruins bloodied and weakened. Loren's sorcery ground her exoskeleton down like a sandblaster. Her temples and forehead are mess of hardened silver, and two-tone blood has coagulated in her hair. She feels more than hears something massive approaching--the beast of a Gear Stone is wielding is the sort of thing that makes the earth tremble with every move. Ida whirls around, her face creasing in a frown beneath exoskeletal plates. "I knew it," she whispers, her voice low and dark. This would be the perfect time for Stone to ambush his foes with superior firepower.
But Ida saw that hangar deep beneath the Order's headquarters, and saw that there were many Gears missing. Likely, Solaris wanted to reclaim its assets, or redeploy them--and Ida put a contingency plan in place.
JUST OFF THE COAST, SEVERAL KILOMETERS AWAY
One of the Thames' smaller transports cuts across the waves, moving as fast as its refurbished diesel engine will allow. Its deck is broad and flat, and something sits atop it, thoroughly-secured and covered with a desert-pattern camo tarp. On the deck, Isabel Eco clings to one of the lines holding the massive object in place. She squints into the distance, her eyes narrowing; her eyespots mimic the expression as best as they can. She bares fangs in a grimace. "Valmar's bleeding balls," she snarls. "They deployed it. They--" She leans into the walkie-talkie attached to her coveralls, and speaks. "Marco, we're there!"
"Yeah, I can tell!" says Marco--Isabel's husband, Ida's uncle, and the transport's pilot. "Just waiting on that signal...!"
THE DIG SITE
Ida backpedals. Stone's machine looms, a mountain in the shape of a war machine. "Oh," Ida says, raising her voice. "That's a lovely little toy you have. You must feel so secure in there--why, you could crush us all like ants." Part of her throat begins to shift, extruding biometal circuitry and a makeshift amplifier into her voice box. Ida focuses--she's never done this before--and transmits a simple signal to the other end of this setup.
Call Gear
THE TRANSPORT
The transport has stopped; Isabel backs towards the bridge, lifts a panel.
"This is for everyone who believed, you bastard," she snarls. She slams her fist into the button beneath.
The stakes securing the lines split apart, one after another. The camo tarp comes loose, and the thing beneath rises to its feet. The Dust Dragoon stands on the transport's deck, its paint gleaming in the sun--Isabel scrambles to safety as the single-use rocket boosters ignite beneath it.
Another Gear appears on Stone's radar, and it's coming in fast.
The Dragoon arcs across the field like a guided missile, its autopilot deftly avoiding the other machines coming in from the Karlsefni. It even jukes a little to avoid possible fire, but as the rockets burn down, it comes in for a landing proper. Explosive bolts ignite, blasting them free to gouge fresh furrows in the landscape. The Dragoon itself comes in high over Ida's head... and with a thunderous crash, slams into the ground behind her.
Ida not only stays on her feet, she puts her hands on her hips. "You coward," Ida growls. "Billy, Eika--you won't even look them in the eye, will you?"
The Dragoon takes a step forwards, its cockpit armor sliding open. The ladder unrolls. Ida takes it, and scrambles up into the machine's cockpit.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida emerges from the ruins bloodied and weakened. Loren's sorcery ground her exoskeleton down like a sandblaster. Her temples and forehead are mess of hardened silver, and two-tone blood has coagulated in her hair. She feels more than hears something massive approaching--the beast of a Gear Stone is wielding is the sort of thing that makes the earth tremble with every move. Ida whirls around, her face creasing in a frown beneath exoskeletal plates. "I knew it," she whispers, her voice low and dark. This would be the perfect time for Stone to ambush his foes with superior firepower.
But Ida saw that hangar deep beneath the Order's headquarters, and saw that there were many Gears missing. Likely, Solaris wanted to reclaim its assets, or redeploy them--and Ida put a contingency plan in place.
JUST OFF THE COAST, SEVERAL KILOMETERS AWAY
One of the Thames' smaller transports cuts across the waves, moving as fast as its refurbished diesel engine will allow. Its deck is broad and flat, and something sits atop it, thoroughly-secured and covered with a desert-pattern camo tarp. On the deck, Isabel Eco clings to one of the lines holding the massive object in place. She squints into the distance, her eyes narrowing; her eyespots mimic the expression as best as they can. She bares fangs in a grimace. "Valmar's bleeding balls," she snarls. "They deployed it. They--" She leans into the walkie-talkie attached to her coveralls, and speaks. "Marco, we're there!"
"Yeah, I can tell!" says Marco--Isabel's husband, Ida's uncle, and the transport's pilot. "Just waiting on that signal...!"
THE DIG SITE
Ida backpedals. Stone's machine looms, a mountain in the shape of a war machine. "Oh," Ida says, raising her voice. "That's a lovely little toy you have. You must feel so secure in there--why, you could crush us all like ants." Part of her throat begins to shift, extruding biometal circuitry and a makeshift amplifier into her voice box. Ida focuses--she's never done this before--and transmits a simple signal to the other end of this setup.
Call Gear
THE TRANSPORT
The transport has stopped; Isabel backs towards the bridge, lifts a panel.
"This is for everyone who believed, you bastard," she snarls. She slams her fist into the button beneath.
The stakes securing the lines split apart, one after another. The camo tarp comes loose, and the thing beneath rises to its feet. The Dust Dragoon stands on the transport's deck, its paint gleaming in the sun--Isabel scrambles to safety as the single-use rocket boosters ignite beneath it.
Another Gear appears on Stone's radar, and it's coming in fast.
THE DIG SITE
The Dragoon arcs across the field like a guided missile, its autopilot deftly avoiding the other machines coming in from the Karlsefni. It even jukes a little to avoid possible fire, but as the rockets burn down, it comes in for a landing proper. Explosive bolts ignite, blasting them free to gouge fresh furrows in the landscape. The Dragoon itself comes in high over Ida's head... and with a thunderous crash, slams into the ground behind her.
Ida not only stays on her feet, she puts her hands on her hips. "You coward," Ida growls. "Billy, Eika--you won't even look them in the eye, will you?"
The Dragoon takes a step forwards, its cockpit armor sliding open. The ladder unrolls. Ida takes it, and scrambles up into the machine's cockpit.
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
Billy took a bit of a beating fighting down below, and indeed, between sending Loren packing, healing himself up, and stumbling their way out of the depths of the Ruin, Billy has well and truly lost sight of Stein. He should be as slumped over as Elly is as they ride the elevator up. He forces his legs to a balanced position, his hands at his sides, his face set as sternly as they've ever seen it. This, at least, he can focus on. The man who betrayed him at every level. He has his prize. If he gets away, he might just vanish into Solaris' depths and never emerge again.
FORTUNATELY:
Billy looks up as the tremendous machine looms in the distance, approaching...actually quite slowly. "...ah," he says. "Perhaps not an issue, then."
And then he pulls out a flare gun and fires it into the sky. Normal flares don't travel so far nor burn so bright, but this one ignites into a stellar blue as it blasts high, high into the air, igniting like a second sun for a few precious seconds.
FAR AWAY:
"I see the signal!" shouts a child atop the roof of The Orphanage Billy Takes Care Of. "Everyone, wake up! It's Shift G!"
Another child, off near the weathervane, is rapidly scribbling coordinates into a small notebook. "X3078...Z, 105! Correction for wind, 13!"
The girl running the numbers trips her paper out of the notebook, folds it neatly, and drops it into a tube, where it tumbles into darkness.
"Catapult!" yells the boy near the belltower, as the bell rings out, startling chickens off the large metal hatch in the front yard. "Make ready!"
On the playground, the see-saws run in triple time as the kids on them push and pull, pulling the mechanisms against some tremendous resistance. They cheer each other on, excitedly, as the devices screech in protest.
And in the middle of the yard, the great hatch opens, and mighty Renmazuo, the blue-and-white gear with the yellow cape, an icon of hope to children far and wide, rises from the depths, internal mechanisms whirring and whizzing as they run preflight tests.
"Autopilot?"
"Ready!" comes a shout from within the machine. "All systems green!" A little dark-skinned girl emerges from the machine, pulling goggles up off her eyes.
She runs fast to leap off the Gear and land on the rooftop, as the boy on the roof yells, "Launch ready! Standby, OK! Ready!?"
They all draw in an impatient breath before Renmazuo's thrusters ignite, blasting the Gear into the sky, as the children all scream: "GO GET 'IM!!"
AND SOON:
A streak splits the sky, soaring in from far away. A flash of heroic blue and white, messianic yellow, which lands hard, kicking up dust within a hundred feet of Billy's position. The wave of its landing flutters his habit, but he barely reacts. He stares at the great white titan for several seconds longer, his jaw set and teeth grinding. "...Was he always so pompous?" he breathes, and turns on his heels, stalking toward Renmazuo and grabbing the small handle-bar elevator that winches him up toward the cockpit.
It seals behind him. The seat is where he always likes it. They've done well, today.
He can't get them Sister Agnes' cookies, anymore, he thinks.
DC: Billy Lee Black switches forms to Friend To All Children Renmazuo!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
--EARLIER--
It was through the miracle of healing ether that Gwen managed to walk away from her and Lan's encounter with Loren underneath the church of Granas. Burns that would likely have led to months, if not years, of therapy come a matter of days, with plenty of liquids and rest on the Thames.
The trauma is another matter. It savagely dug into the still fresh scabs on her psyche from the events that happened months ago, which in themselves ripped scars from decades beyond that.
Still, as time began to settle, another memory surfaced: one of Ragnell's face, her lips joking, but her eyes serious as a grave. 'Get your shit together, Gwen, 'fore I sic the Trial Knight on ya.'
Which is why, seeing Ida's Dragoon beginning to be assembled, Gwen climbs up into the pilot seat of the Halcyone, giving a nod to the swinging carnival plushie. "It's just you n' me, Halcyone." She pats the dashboard for her Gear. "We can't let friends like them down, can we?"
-- NOW-- (BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUaVZN2ttw )
"Hey, don't worry, guys, the cavalry's here!" This is Gwen's announcement, over the intercom, once she is in range. "Heard there was some trouble here, but wowee!"
The 'cavalry' is a medium-sized pod-shaped gear with a pair of digitigrade legs and arms, with a nice blue-green paint job, looking like it's enroute to a delivery, something far overshadowed by the energy presented by the Dragoon that has already landed. "I need to get a few more upgrades- that thing is fast!"
The Halcyone lands, brandishing its two spear... guns. It was once a fishing vessel, after all. "... I'll ask for updates later; I'm just gonna hope Bish- er, Mr. Stone relents n' we all go out for a pint as he gets carted off to some karma jail for helping make a mockery of the Granas faith." Her light-hearted tone fails to keep out a thread of ice in it as she continues. ".... Because one way or another, he and his ilk will frickin' pay."
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
Everyone arrives. Isaac Stein betrays his words, and proves patient enough to sit and watch these enemies assemble within the thus-identified 'Alkenshel.' There are many coming in - at least fourteen capable combatants - all of them drawn from some of the best Gear pilots to be found anywhere. This many might be enough to give the 'Alkenshel' a run for its money. This many might be enough to ensure this weapon will be Stein's tomb.
Might. Despite offers and suggestions, a small handful kinder than others in their wording, the 'Alkenshel' shows no sign of powering down or backing away, as power thrums between the prongs at the end of its arms.
"-Lambs-, their sympathizers, these uninvited invaders... and their pithy bleating!" Stein dismisses all of the metaphors and the threats, and the offers and the dares, some of which contain a level of irony he should take some time to appreciate. He can see a handful of those approaching without Gears (and one hitching a ride on the outside of one). "At least you all have the sense to gather to the slaughter, yes... now tremble, and repent before the might of--"
A different voice rings out through the air, loud and cutting Stein off with a direct question.
"Do you... want the power?"
Then there descends a black Gear, appearing as if it were a bolt from the blue. Another Gear, sent by Solaris? That might be a reasonable supposition.
But it turns towards the white Gear instead.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn2AY8QxVaU
"I am Grahf, the seeker of power," announces the pilot of that black Gear, addressing Stein and Stein alone. "Doth thou desire the power?"
"Power?" Stein asks, as if incredulous. "Pah! Are you asleep? Awaken your eyes and see... Krelian has bestowed me with this powerful body!"
The pilot of the black Gear openly scoffs at this claim. "A fake body. A fake awakening! All of it is useless! Come, I will give you the power!"
A shimmering red blaze surges around the Gear's arm, a flame in 'name' only. If one were to approach it, after all, it would not emit heat.
"My fist is the divine breath!" Grahf intones, opening the hand of that Gear to permit that blasphemous illumination to there dance. "Blossom, o fallen seed, and draw upon thy hidden powers!"
It would not emit heat because to come in contact with that flame, that light from the darkness, would instead simply obliterate someone's form.
"Grant unto thee the power of the glorious 'Mother of Destruction'!"
And rebuild them into something else entirely.
The light leaps from the hand of Grahf's Gear towards Stein's own. It consumes him and the Gear, wreathes him in that brilliant red glow.
Inside that Gear, Stein howls in agony. To receive the power -- to be rebuilt and reborn is a painful, terrible process. It slows to raspier, pained breathing - and then one last snarl of anger. Of hatred.
The radiance pours off of the enormous white Gear, peeling upwards in dancing motes towards the heavens. At a glance, it seems no different than it had been before. But the earth near to it begins to crumble away. The air shimmers, catching the light strangely.
They're only the warning signs.
Any part of the ground near Stein's Gear buckles suddenly under some unseen force, as if parts of it were resisted and repelled by some great force - an aura that flares every so often to the naked eye. A barrier, Etheric in its current expression but generated by something else entirely.
Everything else that touches it, however incidentally, disintegrates as if the barrier itself hated all existence that had the nerve to touch it... and then it expands outward with a concussive force that sets the metaphorical hard red line that nothing will cross.
Its potency lessens from disintegration to turbulent, but that turbulence is felt across the entire battlefield.
Steins howling fury crests coherent speech upon the one closest to the focal point of his hatred. "Ha ha ha... son of Jesiah, are you suffering?" Stein sneers. "Four years ago, I took you under my wing as a 'favor' to a dear old 'friend.' The same 'friend' who took command of Gebler, which we both fought tooth and nail for! The same 'friend' who threw that away... nooooo," that turbulence builds and pulses again. "Jesiah! You were no 'friend'! You were a slavering BEAST," the comms become so filled with static this word is almost missed entirely, "that went even so far as to steal the Raquel I loved! You took everything I valued, everything I worked for, everything that was MINE," static again, with one last collective pulse of Etheric turbulence.
"And you HID from us like the avaricious, capricious, unworthy..." He's too angry to finish that sentence - but that anger, every time it waxes, that shimmering air makes itself known. A shimmering air so filled with power that its very presence would deny you your own righteous anger for Stein's crimes... but will it stop you?
OOC NOTE: This is a timed fight! Attacks against Stein will represent the struggle to break through his barrier. Unlike game canon, critical hits will ICly get through, so your attacks are not pointless! A solution to this problem will eventually present itself, but until then, fight your best!
DC: Isaac Stein switches forms to The Recipient of The Power!
GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Xantia with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Lily Keil with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Citan Uzuki with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Billy Lee Black with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Riesenlied with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Leon Albus with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Noeline with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Catenna with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Eika Zuse with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Catenna takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 48 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Catenna! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Ether Eruption! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has completed his action. GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 105 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: CRITICAL! Lily Keil takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 130 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Lily Keil! GS: Eika Zuse takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 196 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Eika Zuse! GS: Citan Uzuki takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 176 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Citan Uzuki! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 109 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Fei Fong Wong critically guards Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 36 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font! GS: Leon Albus takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 85 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Leon Albus! GS: CRITICAL! Riesenlied takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 112 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Riesenlied! GS: Xantia fully evades Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 0 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 105 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Billy Lee Black takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 99 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Billy Lee Black! GS: Noeline critically guards Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 17 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
"Riesenlied. I'm glad you're all right," Leon says, with a nod inside his cockpit. He is quiet, as the others accuse the Bishop. They can put it better than he can. They can offer a mercy he has no inclination to do so, as Elly does.
He glances at Weltall, for a moment. Then, he looks back at Isaac Stone's Gear. "You know this machine, Doctor Uzuki?"
Leon is quiet after that. He grits his teeth -- eyes narrowing as Stein begins to insult them. He glances at Renmazuo, but he looks back in time for words to cut the air. Leon tenses, for a moment. "That's--"
Grahf. The Seeker of Power. Someone who could very well kill everyone here.
But it isn't them that Grahf targets. It is Stein's Gear, and the ground under its feet buckles -- a barrier explodes outward. Stein's voice crackles over the radio, as the blast slams hard into Weglaff. It is knocked backward by the shockwave.
"We need to break through this barrier! Does anyone know what happened to him?" Leon shouts. Weglaff hefts up its gatling cannon.
The weapon rumbles to life, barrels turning over each other, and then a steady burst of slugs hurtles at the barrier.
GS: Leon Albus has attacked Isaac Stein with Gatling Burst! GS: Leon Albus has completed his action. GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Leon Albus's Gatling Burst for 162 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Eruption for 252 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied clutches Noeline's hand as she hears Fei's reassurance; hears her own partner's, that it'll be all right. She nods quietly to Noeline as she breathes further aloud, pondering wordlessly what it is she must do. The heartbeat is impossible to ignore. Thump. Thump. Thump.
The other Wolves come; Elly speaks words to kindness, Xantia arrives alongside the others. Others, too, that she knows briefly like Billy, though she hasn't seen his Gear. And Ida, when she contacts her Gear-- and Riesenlied feels a twinge in her head. And consoling her heart when she sees Jacqueline, Gwen and Catenna here... she wonders for a moment where Yulie is, but she is glad Eika is here. It's personal for her.
Then, the worst happens--
A familiar Gear, a familiar voice--
"Grahf... no! You must not listen to him-- his is not a deal you should--" Riesenlied gasps, but it is too late.
A blast erupts through the battlefield, and she clings to Noeline to try to hide behind that enormous sword of hers. It takes Strife to prevent her from being thrown back to a wall.
There is a pause, as everything becomes more clear.
"All of this suffering... all of this death -- all to fulfill your own feeling..." Riesenlied murmurs.
The topic of the barrier comes up, but she's not an expert on it, despite being a barrier maiden herself. "Perhaps the doctor..."
Noeline had a question hanging wordlessly in the air, and she nods to her. Her feelings are quite clear.
They can't leave this alone.
The Dragon's Tear shimmers -- and an initial burst of relief and healing flows through her partner. "Give... give me a moment..."
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
That black Gear--Lily recognizes it immediately. It is not sent by Solaris, not so far as she knows, and it is more important in the moment than his refusal of their statements. Lily is already angry--but now something else sparks in her eyes. Power...
"Grahf," Lily says over the radio. She feels it--it's enough that it practically nauseates her already, even from here, the sheer force of that power, of that hatred in Stein. It's almost too much... and this is why what happens next happens as badly as it does.
Turbulence crashes through Lily's Gear, Hellerune battered backward by the sheer force of it even while dodging; it clips a limb, and that is more than enough to send force cascading through its systems, red and brutal. Hellerune tips backwards and Lily barely keeps the Gear upright under that force, staring forward to the radiant barrier ahead. "Riesenlied!" Lily calls in concern, knowing the other woman's empathic power.
Hellerune jumps into action again, rising up into the air and putting its great hands together. "Diverting power to the Ether Booster. I'll get through that barrier, Captain. One way or another."
"Damn you, Grahf! This isn't over!"
Lily switches on the Booster and it hums to life, power surging through the Gear's systems at an overwhelming degree. A red burst of light surges at Hellerune's palms, and turns into a beam that Lily tries to use to punch straight through the barrier, crashing against it in seething radiance.
But it's not enough. Not yet.
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Isaac Stein with Ruby Negation! GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Lily Keil's Ruby Negation for 164 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly looks sheepish towards Fei. She expects them to decline - she does not expect Bishop Stone in whatever form to live to see the end of the night. This Gear is powerful, sure, but it is a single Gear. She has faith in their combined arms, especially if Solaris is not providing further support. Even the mightiest lion can be brought low by a pack of wolves.
And then he comes.
Elly's mouth hangs open in astonishment. Particularly when this figure interrupts Stein. For a single heart-stopping moment of total innocence, Elly wonders -- has this figure, the seeker of power, *come to help them kill Stone?* The evidence is decidedly mixed for the first few moments, but then she wonders if he's *going to kill Stone himself*, and then...
The screams don't stop... The Ether readings don't start to fall off...
The storm comes. It washes over Vierge even as Elly cries out, engaging the flight drive as Vierge rises upwards, struggling on flares of Ether-thrust against the storm - FORCED down again before the wave front moves past the Gear, the strike rod held out as an improvised shield. "This - Ether pressure is--"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvmWsWHaR1k *!!*
Stone speaks again, but it isn't Stone, somehow, Elly thinks with a sinking pit in her stomach. He's trying to get his revenge on Billy. He's going to kill Billy, Elly thinks with a surge of alarm. Her hand snaps over, palm shoving all the co-booster throttles up to full maximum and then leaning back slightly to grasp the AEROD control launcher. "I'll try to set up an E-Breach, but-- This is--!!"
Vierge's dynamic pose almost conceals the glittering darts of the AERODs, snapping down, back, looping upwards and forming jitteringly tight geometries, emanating silvery pencils of light towards the barrier, flashing momentary and hopeful glyphs against that horrid boundary!
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Isaac Stein with This Is Probably A Boosted SOR 7 In Normal Circumstances! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Elhaym van Houten's This Is Probably A Boosted SOR 7 In Normal Circumstances for 118 hit points! GS: Quick applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Uninvited invaders?!" Fei says. "Are you crazy??"
But then he sees it. He sees the black gear. Fei hears familiar words ring out from the gear.
FEI PSYCHO GAIN MAXIMIZED
FEI PSYCHO UP
"Stop it...!" Fei shouts. "Just...shutup!" Weltall's fists clench. He then turns towards his friends. His heart is pounding. He feels an ache in his heart that won't go away. He feels terror. He sees flashes of a corpse in his arms. He grabs at his head. He had lowered his mental guard. He hadn't seen Grahf in so long.
FEI PSYCHO UP
But here he is, offering more power to the powerful. Except, as Grahf always says... Even that power is fake power. Even that power is false.
Fei has seen the limits of power, and for a moment--he almost understands Grahf, understands that he too has grown to understand the limits of power--at least, the power so far within the grasp of even the most powerful. A power beyond power. A power that cannot be resisted.
Stein's voice breaks Fei' out of it. "Krelian... made you that body...?"
He swallows faintly, lowering his head. But why would Krelian...
His eyes widen faintly as he remembers the kid--
He sees his own hands, drenched in blood. Blood in his hair. Blood on his face. A woman who surely hates him--
"I said stop...!"
There is so much power from Stein, but even that isn't enough to do much beyond slightly slow down Weltall's charge.
"GRAHF!! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!" Fei shouts. The barrier, does, however, stop Weltall cold once he reaches it. He throws his fist repeatedly. "Why did you work with Siegfried only to destroy this world!? You hurt Lombardia!! She was my friend!"
His head lowers. "How are you even still alive? What are you... what are you after? With your power, what can there even be that remains out of your ready reach??"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTE51FwEH0M
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Isaac Stein with Raigo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 3 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Eika Zuse has posed.
The offer of mercy makes Eika grit her teeth. She knows she should offer it, too, but she cannot bring herself to do so. He's done too much, gone too far.
Other Gears arrive. Eika sees them come - she recognizes a bare fraction of them, but at least she recognizes Renmazuo. It's a single point of familiarity in the mass of... not familiarity.
She keeps Firewheel's shields raised as she walks the Gear in a curved path, circling around 'Alkenshel' to avoid giving it a straight shot. She isn't familiar with it; she doesn't know what it can do.
It turns out 'what it can do' is summon Grahf.
"You - " Eika's own rage builds. It's not hate from her but hot fury; always short-tempered, Stone's actions have only made it worse the past while. She has never seen Grahf before, but she knows who he is anyway. Reports from Lacour's tournament years ago gave her the name, and he has helpfully identified himself beyond that.
"You work with *him*? Seeker of Power? Not only a sinner but a hypocrite - making a deal with the devil - " Not that Stone believes, but Eika does, and that's kind of exactly what the Granasite faith says NOT to do. Apparently, if you just did everything Stone didn't you'd probably be following it pretty well.
Eika covers Firewheel's upper torso from the eruption of power. Which is not enough; it blasts low, making the heavy Gear stagger for balance; Eika recovers by planting Firewheel's shields and hunching forward, gorilla-like, to withstand the blast.
Every word Stein says makes her more angry. She doesn't have the personal background with Stein and Jesiah and Raquel - she only recognizes some of the names - but she can get the gist even if she is almost certainly missing several small but significant details.
That's the reason he did everything? Anger at being passed over? Anger at being the one less chosen - and for that, he destroyed the Etones, shattered everything they stood for, is here, right now, trying to kill her and anyone else who stood up to him -
Eika sees red. She pushes Firewheel's knuckles (well, the shields over them) off the ground and starts to run forward, lumbering at first before the Gear picks up speed. It is not agile, and not really fast, but once it gets going it has momentum on its side; the enormous weight of the shields added to the oversized build means that once Firewheel starts to move, it's hard to stop.
And Eika takes advantage of that, slamming one of the horned-cross painted shields forwards in a punch, trying to simply break through the Etheric barrier by raw force and momentum. She feels the jar of impact run through Firewheel's entire frame, but that does not stop her from trying to shove through, as if just a little more force would let her *push* right through.
She should probably deal with Grahf, but, well, one problem at a time. And deal with the problems she is probably physically capable of handling first.
GS: Eika Zuse has attacked Isaac Stein with Heavy Impact! GS: Eika Zuse has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
There's no time to suit up. As the cockpit seals shut, Ida straps herself in, hoping what's left of her armor will be enough. A familiar voice crackles through the Dragoon's short-range radio, soothing her fear.
"Give him hell," says Aunt Isabel.
"I will," Ida says. Her voice is as hard and steely as the machine she's piloting. The Dragoon's stylized 'eyes' ignite, blazing with golden light.
And then everything goes to hell. Ida does not recognize the black Gear, but she recognizes the speaker--and her blood runs cold. She remembers him from that day in Lacour, where he empowered two competitors with unholy might. Her jaw falls open. Her eyes dart about, moving from camera to long-distance radar to thermal to ultraviolet to broad-spectrum--but none of them return anything useful, beyond the fact that the Thames' transport is fleeing the area at top speed...
And Noeline and Riesenlied are on the ground. Shit.
"GET BACK!" Ida bellows, flicking on the external transmitter. The Dragoon shifts into a defensive stance, turning at an angle to stop a direct hit. But the attack--whatever it is, the Dragoon's sensors only spit out garbage--comes in the form of an eruption. The Gear sways back and forth like a sapling in the breeze--the blast races outwards like the winds of a hurricane and for a few moments, Ida wonders if she's going to have to activate the emergency self-righting protocols.
The Dragoon is standing when it's over--barely. "Damnation," Ida growls. Her voice could freeze the sea. "You hateful little parasite. All this--because someone dared not to fall in love with you?!" As she speaks, the Dragoon draws the Three-Dragon Cannon from its mount, bracing the massive gun against its left shoulder. A moment later, a sharp CRACK splits the air as a rail slug races towards Stone's machine.
All the while, Ida keeps her sensors active. If the computer can't figure out how the barrier itself works, she can at least see what happens to energy and matter that contact it.
But that's not the only danger. Fei's distress is clear and plain. "Fei," Ida says, "breathe. You're here. You're here, with Leon, and Lily, and everyone."
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
"Everything okay out there? Let me know right away if you need to get out of the open - there's plenty of room in here." Jacqueline asks from within the cockpit, directed at Catenna. "I'll try to keep the moving around to a minimum."
Her attention soon turns toward Stein as he speaks - as he dismisses all of their words as mere bleating. Jacqueline frowns, but a part of her expected that. His type... there's only one thing they listen to.
"...Fine. If that's how you're going to be." Jacqueline starts... but then, a black Gear drops from the heavens. Jacqueline stares... and then gasps in surprise.
"That Gear... that's the same Gear that appeared at the Tournament of Arms in Lacour...!" She remarks. She had almost forgotten about it. But seeing it again here, even after so long... She feels a similar sense of fear.
This time, it's Stein that receives the power... and soon, a barrier takes form over his Gear, disintegrating everything that makes contact with it. Warning signs erupt all over Jacqueline's console, making one thing very, immediately clear - this is Very Bad. Jacqueline grimaces.
"Don't get too close! I'm not sure what that'll do..." She warns. Will attacks even be able to get through...?
...Only one way to find out.
"...It's worth a try...!" Jacqueline says. The Jaeger draws its side-arm, takes aim, and fires - unleashing a shell designed to weaken and restrict a Gear's capabilities.
GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Raigo for 199 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein critically guards Eika Zuse's Heavy Impact for 53 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Isaac Stein with Pacifying Shell! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Jacqueline Barber's Pacifying Shell for 0 hit points! GS: Drowsy and Weaken applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Isaac Stein with Rail Accelerator! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Rail Accelerator for 182 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Catenna scratches her cheek as another Gear shows up and offers Stone THE POWER. "Why does everything have to be needlessly complicated with these people," she murmurs with a glance towards the Jaeger's head.
Things change in an instant as some immense force is unleashed - something Catenna can't fully comprehend. The outwash of ether slams across the field, and Catenna raises her arm with a gasp to try and shield herself as best she can, having about as much luck with it as one might expect from an unarmoured person on a battlefield full of giants. The force nearly knocks her off the Jaeger's shoulder - indeed, her right foot slips as the magical force roils her, but she manages to grasp the Gear's armour and hold on, boosting herself nimbly back up as the worst of the turbulence abates.
Stein howls at someone she doesn't fully understand. Catenna sets her jaw, then exhales with a slow rush through her nose, momentarily realizing that, once again, she's in the middle of a situation that has nothing to do with her.
But there are principles at stake, she reminds herself. And allowing these people access to more secrets of the ancients is a bad idea.
"Jay, I'll be alright out here, but that power field is going to cause a lot of problems," she says, really hoping Jaeger's external comms pick her up. "I do not think it is purely technological. Not anymore, anyway. I will try and do something to it but I cannot make any promises."
Drawing herself up on the Gear's shoulder, Catenna flicks her hair back a snap of her head. The billowing elements of her dancer's outfit stream in the passage of the wind as Jay moves. It would be dramatic if she weren't so small as to be beneath notice for most on the field.
Holding her hand out, Catenna utters something quiet in Zortroan, almost inaudible over the sounds of combat and indeed inaudible more than a few feet past the Jaeger's head. But the effects are visible as she channels the power of the Moon.
The force that presses against the field around Stein's Gear is visible mainly in its effects. It warps and distorts the field, bending light and magic and reorienting gravity itself to affect both matter and magic. The spell would normally be used to dull the mind - but here, Catenna repurposes it, trying to drain off the ether flowing through Stein's barrier, bit by bit.
Catenna's gravity spells work far better on large targets. But the barrier makes things... troubling.
Saying nothing of Grahf. She has no idea what his paradigm is, but it cannot possibly help the situation.
GS: Catenna has attacked Isaac Stein with Feeble Mind! GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Catenna has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein guards a hit from Catenna's Feeble Mind for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Drowsy applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"Yes," Citan answers Leon. "It had only begun construction when I had left. I believe... ah, yes, the intent was for it to be used by the Ethos..." He trails off for the moment, as if to size up that floating fortress of a Gear. "...Wait, that cannon...? Surely that is not--"
Any further explanation is cut short as a black Gear intrudes.
Citan has seen it before. "No, this cannot... Stein, you must not--"
It is for naught. The transformation is underway, culminating in...
"Wh, what is this..." the doctor utters, perhaps perceiving something about the Gear after it has received that 'benediction' from the man in the black Gear. "This feeling-- look out!"
The shockwave comes in a shuddering pulse, ripping across the place where they all now stand. Despite the attempt to shield against it, Heimdall is flung back a short distance, leaving gouges in the earth as a mark of the struggle.
"That... Ether!" shouts the doctor, as Heimdall rights itself. "It is... Elly, Lily, Riesenlied! Can you feel it?"
It is nearly palpable to the sensitive, after all.
"That hatred... he has transformed his hatred into Ether, forming a barrier! Perhaps if we were to counter it with our own will, we might be able to puncture it... Fei, everyone! I will lend you what support I can from here!"
The air around Heimdall shifts slightly, as if the clouds above were clearing: the quality of light in this space becomes that much brighter. It's a subtle effect, easily overlooked perhaps.
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Citan Uzuki with Kouga! GS: Citan Uzuki assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action. GS: Citan Uzuki accepts Citan Uzuki's Kouga for 0 hit points! GS: Cover and Riposte applied to Citan Uzuki!
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Stein's first cry to the Drifter's entreaties is a familiar one. Solaris' all-too-narrow viewpoint once more reasserts itself in the way their pleas are completely disregarded, declared as the words of lesser beings, and once again it leaves a nasty, unpleasant feeling in the back of Noeline's mind - a kind of cold certainty that at some point, she will ground that flying city and force each and every one of its inhabitants to actually see what is in front of their eyes.
It isn't their fault, she's sure. You don't get such complete and total fervour by using particularly pleasant methods, and Citan has all but confirmed that to her, shying just short of saying it out loud. It's harder to remember that, faced with it in person.
And when Grahf appears-- to be honest, it's actually a surprise to Noeline that Stein does not immediately accept. Perhaps hubris is good for one thing, she thinks without humour - but the unknown man forces the point anyway, forcing the Power onto Stein in a way that makes the Hyadean stumble in surprise and almost bark with laughter. She had almost thought, once, that Grahf might at least stick to his own rules. Now, she knows that was giving him too much credit.
The wave of heat and promised destruction washes over her, and she would have let it simply do so were it not for Riesenlied's presence. When she moves to try to cover her partner and shield her from the blast, the other Hyadean is the only thought on her mind - because as far as she is concerned, the wash of power crackling against her is
"Nothing but sound and fury," she mutters to herself in a low tone, then summons her flagging spirit together as she looks to Riesenlied in her arms, concern overwriting the rest of her thoughts in record time. She knows full well what Riese is about to try, even without their link, and it takes her a few moments to look over the other Hyadean, wordlessly reassuring both of them once more that it will be alright - that she will be there, to help as best she can.
Citan's shout is reassuring - a plan, one hugely suited to the two of them. "--we are joining the fight," she informs over their radio and to the open air with a quiet confidence and certainty, meeting the shimmer of the Dragon's Tear with a resonance from her Medium, her form shifting slightly as the light begins to curve around them in a protective barrier of her own.
GS: Noeline spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Noeline has attacked Riesenlied with When I'm With You...! GS: Noeline has completed her action. GS: Riesenlied accepts Noeline's When I'm With You... for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Riesenlied! GS: Riesenlied activates Noeline's Reload!! GS: Riesenlied spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Riesenlied has attacked Noeline with I don't have to be Afraid...! GS: Riesenlied has gained 2 Combo! GS: Riesenlied has launched an attack Link! GS: Riesenlied heals Noeline! She gains 115 temporary hit points! GS: Shield applied to Noeline! GS: Riesenlied has attacked Riesenlied with Let's See a New World Together! GS: Riesenlied has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riesenlied has completed her action. GS: Riesenlied heals Riesenlied! She gains 115 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
This is the first time that Xantia's seen this Gear that she could hear Citan identify as 'Alkenshel'. She has no idea what it might be capable of. It doesn't really matter though. No matter how big it is, it has to go down, plain and simple. Surely with all those gathered here, they should be able to overwhelm it.
So she was confident in believing, right up until someone else makes an appearance. That unmistakable voice...!
"You... Grahf!"
She isn't able to keep the dismay out of her voice. Not many opponents make her uncomfortable about her chances, but Grahf... in previous encounters, Grahf seemed to have a counter for absolutely everything she can do. And that was outside of a Gear. She's even less confident about the odds in Gear combat.
Fortunately, his interest seems to be squarely in Stein today. Wait, no, that's not fortunate at all! She's seen this before...!
There's no way this can end well. Which leaves her with only one choice. Stop this from happening somehow. But with how far away she is, there's not much she can do except break into a run. Silvestris's land speed is extremely fast, but... not quite fast enough to stop that barrier of pure hatred to come into being. And as the barrier begins to form... Xantia's Gear halts, recoils, and flees the other way.
Xantia is operating purely on instinct. Every fiber of her being tells her that barrier is Bad News. Now her Gear's speed serves her quite well, able to get clear of it and escape the destructive Ether in the nick of time. "Ugh... too late..." She can hear Fei express himself clearly - of course he would be upset, to put it mildly. If she spoke to him now, would he listen? She feels that she has to at least try.
"Fei, please! Try to calm yourself, we can't fight Grahf right now! We need to deal with the Alkenshel, or it's going to be bad for everyone here!" She lets out a deep breath. "...We'll get him one day, Fei. We'll make him pay for everything. I promise."
That important step done, the problem is how to break through this barrier. Questioning whether physical means are the best answer, she instead emits a focused sonic attack mixed in with distorted roar emitted by her Gear in an attempt to destabilize it. "You don't know it yet, but you've made a big mistake... accepting 'the power' isn't going to end well!"
GS: Xantia has attacked Isaac Stein with Hypersonic Screech! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein critically guards Xantia's Hypersonic Screech for 36 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
Billy watches as Stein accepts a deal from the devil. "What...dark magic is this...?" he whispers. "Malevolence...? No. Malice...no, not that either! What is this!?"
Fei seems to know him; the dragon-woman, Riesenlied, as well. All he knows is...Stone has changed. Again. The skeletal beast he had become, mutated yet further. "Stone!" he yells. "BISHOP!"
The screaming tells him his words amount to nothing. He...he can't bring himself to shoot first. He just can't. Renmazuo's hand hovers near the thigh where his ether blaster hides. This serves him little; the ERUPTION of power blasts out, and Renmazuo is forced to juke backwards under Billy's hand. The blast wave still scores the armor, but not enough to stop Billy here.
'Son of Jesiah.' The only thing Stone can think to call him. Billy's teeth clench further. Somehow...that galls the most. "That's...all I am to you. Yes. Yes, I'm suffering! You've had your victory, Stone!"
He grabs for his guns. His sensors all agree with Hyuuga's assessment; unbreachable barrier. But...he shakes at the thought. "But you yourself taught me that a single victory does not win the war. Father isn't here, Stone! I am the one in front of you!" Billy cries, and pulls both guns, opening fire with Ether-infused shells.
AND FAR AWAY:
"Today's launch was...pretty good! Nice work, everyone!" The kids begin to clap and cheer. "Everyone get a juice box and we'll go over--"
A man in a heavy coat steps into the yard, his platinum-white hair gleaming in the sunlight. "Actually, kids," the man with the rough face says, with the grin of a man about to cause problems on purpose. "Wanna play another round, first?"
GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Isaac Stein with Gun Blaze! GS: Billy Lee Black assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"Huh, who's that?" Gwen sits up slightly in her seat, squinting at the ominous black Gear. "Wait, Grahf? Wasn't that-"
The resulting eruption of power sways the Halcyone about like a sparrow in a hailstorm, throwing it bottom over teakettle a fair distance.
"... s-shit, I knew I should've concentrated my budget on the upgrades instead of the paint job...." Gwen's voice crackles over her com. "I don't know how long my Gear'll last, but leseee... Ah."
The hexagon glow of a minor shield shimmers into existence. "This'll buy me some time. Also, I've been on my duff for a week, so. Y'know. If you need a power-up."
She clears her throat.
"What I'm sayin' is... I'll stand here with you guys to the last."
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Neither Rain Nor Sleet! GS: Gwen Whitlock assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock accepts Gwen Whitlock's Neither Rain Nor Sleet for 258 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Sufferer! GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Billy Lee Black's Gun Blaze for 146 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
The pilot of the black Gear's outward composure does not change, as Fei's fury screams through. Their voice, too, betrays no infirmity in their statement as they float up and away:
"Because... the world must be destroyed." They retreat to admire it from afar, as the situation has grown exponetially more complicated - never answering Fei's questions, leaving him to his emotions. (Xantia has the right of this issue - they have bigger problems.)
Leon is the quickest to the draw when the Etheric barrier pulses, and aptly demonstrates the problem - it shimmers as the gatling cannon's slugs dissipate into nothingness. Lily moves to reinforce with a beam, as if to test a different form of weaponry... and it meets the same problem, even with the Ether Booster bolstering the red ray. Even the Vierge's AERODs - some of the very best Gear-scale weaponry, have trouble getting through - the glyphs do not stick or stay coherent against that barrier, as within the cockpit Stein glowers at the very idea. "This power...!" He is elated, horrified, or both. (Also angry.)
Fei strikes rapidly at that barrier, over and over, each time met with a hatred that has somehow found enough depth within a mortal shell to match multiple lifetimes of anguish, if just in the moment. A railgun spike from the Dust Dragoon sticks in the barrier, moving like molasses through it until it too dissipates.
Eika's attempt to circle around and attack from a novel angle meets a similar problem - an all-consuming hatred given form as Ether seems to not care where anything is coming from. Stein hates. He hates it all, and the frustration of the Firewheel's pilot, for the moment, is impotent. "This power... it is beyond your... morals! Beliefs!"
Jay's attempt to get the Jaeger's weakening shell to go through or into that barrier does not find much purchase, but that is not the only thing the Jaeger has on board. Catenna holds her focus through the waves of Ethric pressure, even without the protection of a Gear, and finds that her specialty has some purchase - the power of the Moon through her exerts its force and pulls the field and the Gear alike downward in Catenna's attempt to drain it. There is no fully 'draining' it, but there is compelling its movement to a point. The 'Alkanshel' tilts violently as it turns to face Jay's Gear and its external occupant. "Youuu," Stein's voice hisses, "how dare you touch this... you gnat...!"
The sonic waves from Xantia's Gear distorts and vibrates harmlessly against the machine, as the 'Alkanshel' looks below to see the protective light and barriers of hope and love and peace and everything between Riesenlied and Noeline, and there is somehow an extra bearing of Etheric noise as if in quiet yet deafening defiance of the very idea of these feelings, snapping up as soon as the pilot of the Heimdall speaks and Gwen voices her desire to stand with any of them. "What can any of you hope to do against power? There is none! None! None," sound and fury. So far.
Billy shoots. He does not score, as the barrier mockingly halts the Etheric blasts of a young man in the middle of his life continuing to crumble.
"No... not enough yet," Stein hisses over all of that. "Four years ago! Four years ago he wasn't here or THERE... and yet he left a single, suffering soul..." Catenna's grasp of the entire 'body' of the barrier starts to slip as the hatred refuels the barrier, reinforcing something that so far no one has been able to get much of anything through. "Sweet Raquel," Billy's mother, "...dirtied by Jesiah. Abandoned by Jesiah! Pestilent with the likes of you and your sister," the anger gives way to a sickening glee that might be the only emotion that dares to reach towards the hatred in its volume. "With the Wels, thanks to Krelian... I relieved her of her shame. Her pain. Her burdens... she was beyond saving from all but the one who truly loved her..."
The Ether pulse that happens through all of this is debilitating to anyone who is not in a Gear - Noeline, Riesenlied, and Catenna. One arm rises, the three prongs at the end of it firing alike for Citan, Gwen, and Ida. A fiery cross-like seal pulses from the 'Alkanshel,' splitting and descending upon Fei, Xantia, and Eika. The other arm charges with electrical power and showers Jay (at an angle that somehow misses Catenna), Elly, Lily, and Leon.
Another missle from somewhere within the Power-filled Gear snakes out for Billy, as if to punctuate the next hate-filled words.
"With the Wels, I made sure no one could sully Raquel ever again!!"
GS: Isaac Stein has activated a Boss Action! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Riesenlied with Ether Pulse! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Noeline with Ether Pulse! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Catenna with Ether Pulse! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Catenna takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Pulse for 133 hit points! GS: Disease applied to Catenna! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Ether Bolt! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Xantia with Ether Bolt! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Eika Zuse with Ether Bolt! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Citan Uzuki with Power Shot! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Power Shot! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Power Shot! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Annihilator Blast! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Annihilator Blast! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Lily Keil with Annihilator Blast! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Leon Albus with Annihilator Blast! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riesenlied takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Pulse for 82 hit points! GS: Disease applied to Riesenlied! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Billy Lee Black with Seeker Missile! GS: Isaac Stein has completed his action. GS: Lily Keil critically guards Isaac Stein's Annihilator Blast for 52 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Annihilator Blast for 152 hit points! GS: Weaken applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Annihilator Blast for 168 hit points! GS: Weaken applied to Jacqueline Barber!
DC: 1 turn has elapsed in the battle against Isaac Stein! 4 turns remain!
GS: Noeline guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Pulse for 51 hit points! GS: Disease applied to Noeline! GS: Noeline activates Guard bonus!
DC: 2 turns have elapsed in the battle against Isaac Stein! 3 turns remain!
GS: Eika Zuse guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Bolt for 137 hit points! GS: Delay applied to Eika Zuse! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey fully evades Isaac Stein's Power Shot for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Xantia takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Bolt for 89 hit points! GS: Delay applied to Xantia! GS: Xantia activates Evade bonus! GS: Citan Uzuki takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Power Shot for 156 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Citan Uzuki gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Leon Albus takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Annihilator Blast for 272 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Leon Albus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Weaken applied to Leon Albus! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock critically guards Isaac Stein's Power Shot for 84 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
"Good," Leon says. He glances at Grahf -- grits his teeth -- and then looks back at Stone's Gear. He tries to keep his eye on everyone; Riesenlied, Noeline, and the Dragon's Tear are altogether quite small in the view of one of the Weglaff's cameras.
His eyes are drawn to Fei, though. "Fei... those are all good questions, but... we have to focus on Stein, right now! If we want answers, we need to live to get them!"
He scowls, as Citan explains. An experimental Gear -- and hate turned to Ether, and into the very barrier that they fight. Leon needs no further explanation. He takes stock of where Renmazuo is -- that would be Jessie's son.
Keep an eye on him, Leon thinks.
"You've lost yourself. If you even had that, in the first place," Leon says. He frowns at how their attacks dissipate over the Ether barrier. "And judging by what you've said... we do the world a mercy to rid Filgaia of you."
The Alkanshel's blast of electricity slams into Weglaff. That kicsk the machine backward, sparks exploding -- and parts of the armor blackening. Leon draws in a sharp gasp, then lifts up the gatling cannon. "Keep shooting!" he yells. "Riesenlied, Noeline! Are you all right?"
He keeps firing. The gatling cannon roars to life -- and this time, it doesn't stop. The Weglaff walks, strafing the huge Gear all the while.
GS: Leon Albus spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Leon Albus has attacked Isaac Stein with Gatling Lock! GS: Leon Albus enters a Counter stance! GS: Leon Albus has gained 2 Combo! GS: Leon Albus has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Catenna narrows her eyes slightly as she holds her focus on the Alkanshel - if it is in fact still the Alkanshel, or if it's something else. There's only so much she can do against the power of sheer hatred, amplified as it is by whatever the hell Grahf did. The Moon Shaman clicks her tongue and tries to both concentrate and listen to Stein's ranting at the same time.
The talk of the Wels leaves her biting down to her lower lip. The implications are too grim for her to even put into words.
Ether pulses violently, the sheer force of it enough to bring her to her knees. Doing her best to shield herself by ducking behind the Jaeger's head, she simply doesn't have much luck against this kind of attack. It feels, for a moment, like someone's just flogging her with hate over and over. She recoils and sags against Jay's machine, slouching to a knee and pressing her hands to her forehead, her hair spilling to either side of her face to conceal her expression.
It's for the best. She'd rather others not see how much pain she's in right now.
When Catenna looks up again, it's with a slow, pained rush of breath through her nose, lines etched beneath her eyes reflecting the sheer weight of the pain she's fighting through.
"Can I ask you an honest question?" she says, her voice carrying only by virtue of the fact that she's just close enough to be picked up by the Jaeger's comm system. Her eyes spark a little, then soften inexplicably.
"Who hurt you? To make you this way."
With a small, pained sound, Catenna pulls herself back to her feet, bracing in the face of the sheer magnitude of hate roiling across the battlefield. She raises her hand again, her muscles straining against the force of ether - but once again she brings power to bear, channeling lunar energy through her Medium and spilling it forth into a heavy, crushing pull of gravity. Boulders and chunks of debris rise rapidly off the ground around Stein's Gear, then reverse themselves in the air and snap downwards again, then up, then to the side, then down, then twisting into bizarre orbits as gravity reorients again and again, trying to bleed off not just power from the Alkanshel's barrier, but power from the attacks it's hurling outwards. Catenna grips Jaeger's head with her other hand to steady herself.
"...Are you afraid?" she asks, her voice quiet over the comline.
"Do you desire the power because you didn't have it when it mattered?"
GS: Catenna has attacked Isaac Stein with Grav! GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Catenna has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein guards a hit from Leon Albus's Gatling Lock for 78 hit points! GS: Corrode applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
"Fei... Fei, please, listen to Ida-- listen to us," Riesenlied whispers, clutching the communicator with both her hands. "Listen to Elly... you are not alone. You will not be alone. We can resist those with 'power'..."
She hears him question why he's doing this -- why he worked with Father, why he hurt Lombardia...
Billy asks what this power is -- "I am not... certain, Mister Billy. Something occurred in the past between him and my father -- Siegfried, that is all I know." It's one of those outstanding mysteries, that's for certain.
Jacqueline and Leon both ask if everyone's okay -- "We-- we are h-hanging in there. Please give me a moment. I... I intend -- I intend to transform!" she calls out, though she isn't sure if the alchemist can hear her in the Gear.
Ida is defending them, using the Dragoon to cover them; she breathes erratically as she answers, "I can feel it, doctor. An aura created entirely out of hatred..."
A pause.
"Perhaps... perhaps if it feeds on his hate, distracting him is one method? If we are able to disrupt his feelings or cause him to feel another..." But is that even possible, with someone who's so single-handedly entrenched in his hatred at the moment?
She feels Noeline's feelings -- and for once, she isn't about to disagree with her. She promised Lydia that she will bring the House down, after all. But it is also after meeting people like Elly and Citan that she's certain... a lot of people just need a little encouragement. She's sure.
She's seen it with the Hyadeans, after all.
The Hyadean takes a moment to breathe through their synchronicity -- feeling the power of Duras Drum's medium as the illusory nature of his Ley comes through Noeline's own power, feeling the power of the emotions gathered here, resisting the power of hatred that has centred well upon the Alkanshel...
Grahf speaks to the world's destruction. Was that...truly all of it? They have other issues right now...
The pulse continues to work away at them, and there's a strained gasp from the Hyadean as she falters -- and she feels her
...heart...
...beating...
...harder...
Her blood runs hot.
Her senses run sharp.
Her limbs ache, stretch, scream.
Her body threatens to twist.
"I know... I know you cannot listen, right now," Riesenlied speaks. "But listen to yourself...! Nothing that Krelian has done to you is good... as it has for me."
A grimace, as she hangs on just a little longer -- "Leon--! I wish to try a trick I once tried with Hellerune..."
She focuses, and suddenly the Ley opens underneath the space the Weglaff is occupying; a RUSH of power surges through and starts to strengthen and enhance the Gear, hardening its frame.
A trick she picked up when she was with Lily's Gear, once. Literally.
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Riesenlied receives 50 temporary hit points. GS: Riesenlied enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Riesenlied has attacked Leon Albus with Ley Channeling - Border of Life! GS: Riesenlied has gained 2 Combo! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Riesenlied has completed her action. GS: Riesenlied heals Leon Albus! He gains 440 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein guards a hit from Catenna's Grav for 164 hit points! GS: Delay applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Fortunately, Jacqueline's external communications can pick up Catenna and Riesenlied just fine! It seems as if she'd made accomodations for the fact that she might need to listen to people not in a Gear.
"Not technological...?" Jacqueline replies with a frown, as Catenna makes a guess as to the nature of the barrier. Has the power he'd been given increased his own that much...? "Hmm, that's...troubling."
With that, Jacqueline shakes her head. It wouldn't do to keep thinking like that.
"Still, just do what you can. I believe in you, Catenna!" Jacqueline encourages. They had to do everything they could - she doesn't even want to imagine what he intends to do with that kind of power.
As for Riesenlied...
"Are you sure...? Okay... but be careful!" Jacqueline calls back.
Fortunately, it seems like even if Jacqueline's own attack didn't take hold, Catenna was able to have an effect.
"Good job! Keep it up!" Jacqueline says. ...And it seems like Stein noticed, too. "...Ah. I think you made him angry."
Jacqueline sounds pleased by that, in fact. If he's angry about it, it must have had an appreciable effect.
Stein has a lot more to say, too, on a different subject. Jacqueline pauses, struck silent. Her expression is... indescribable. She finds herself very glad there's no one here in the cockpit with her right now.
"...By the Guardians, I think I'm going to be sick listening to you." She says, shaking her head in disbelief at Stein's words. "Are you for real?"
It's hard to work up any sympathy for him, after that... but she's glad that Catenna and Riesenlied try, at least. This is further amplified by the current of electrical power that is discharged at the Jaeger. Jacqueline braces herself and the Gear braces itself, adjusting its defenses to accomodate Catenna and ensure none of the splash reaches her. The beam strikes her Gear and pushes back. It's powerful... she's not sure how much more of that they can take. The Jaeger holsters its side-arm briefly - in the process, swapping out ammunition for a different type of shell before drawing it and taking aim at the Alkanshel again.
"Alright... let's try this one!" She says, opening fire. At this point, the best thing she can do is keep trying out different shells in hopes that one of them will be able to make it through.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Isaac Stein with Perpetuating Shell! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 2 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Ether Bolt for 108 hit points! GS: Delay applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font and Sufferer! GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein guards a hit from Jacqueline Barber's Perpetuating Shell for 86 hit points! GS: Hex applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Eika Zuse has posed.
"Damn you!" Eika yells out as Grahf vanishes. Not that it matters. She's not going to chase him. She can't, really.
Eika slams Firewheel's weight behind the shield, and it doesn't penetrate. Red energy arcs along the surface of the shield and, after a few long moments of that, the machine is shoved backwards when the aura around Alkanshel flares up again. Firewheel recoils as if guard-crushed, its arms knocked out of line offensively... or defensively.
Eika pays for that. She manages to drop them fast enough to guard herself from the cross-shaped blast, sort of; more energy crackles along the painted shields of Firewheel, sparking where it interacts with some of Firewheel's equipment. The metal is remarkably pristine despite its battering, though judging by the way Firewheel moves, not all the internals are - but those shields are tough, and the metal they're made of, exposed where the paint is burning away, do not quite look like normal Gear materials.
"You - " Again, Eika is missing some data, but not so much that she can't put some of the things Stone is saying into some kind of order. He killed someone, with Wels. How? Doesn't matter. He killed someone with Wels because they went with someone else, because they made a choice that did not include him, because -
"You're sick. You did all you did to the Ethos, to the people in the Ethos, because of THAT? Because you were hurt? You disgust me!" There is a reason that Eika, despite being (technically) a priestess, worked as a ruin-hunter and a wrecker rather than a preacher. She is mad, and she can't hide it.
Firewheel stomps away from Alkanshel, backing up. She's heading toward - Billy, of all people, shields raised. Stein hates Billy. He wants to kill him. Therefore, she won't let him. It's a simple thought process and one she doesn't even really consider consciously. It just happens.
As she repositions, Firewheel winds up. It spins in place, picking up momentum, before literally throwing the entire right shield - a mass of metal bigger than some Gears and certainly heavier, if it is solid metal - at Alkanshel. It bounces - whether off the shield or the Gear, either way - and then hits the ground, rolling slightly wobbily away.
But Firewheel's now-bare arm is raised, and a crackling, electric-looking grappling beam lances out from it, grabbing the shield out of the air and yanking it back, snapping it into protective place with an audible metal-on-metal slam and a click that Eika feels through her whole body as the Gear connects with its shield.
GS: Eika Zuse has attacked Isaac Stein with Snap Return! GS: Delay expired! GS: Eika Zuse has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"I feel it!" Lily answers Citan, Hellerune still crackling with remnants of the red force that came through it. The world, must... That is what Grahf says. But this power--Lily can't pierce through with her initial blast, and while that makes sense, it's frustrating all the same. Is it a matter of the right wavelength? Or is it sheer force? No...
"Hatred," Lily repeats. "...So if we can channel enough will..."
"You act like this power is yours!" Lily snaps at him. "Like it's part of you instead of just borrowed!"
But there is worse than that--that is a personal matter, but what he says of Raquel... Dirtied. Pestilent. The things he says--
"You--"
Horror does not make much for will. Lily begins to understand some of the depths of this man's hate, and she stares through her displays at it. It is almost on autopilot thus that she reacts to the blast rushing towards her Gear. Hellerune cannot easily move out of the way of this one, so instead she meets power with power, the Ether Booster pulsing as darkness crackles along the Gear, absorbing much of the force. It's easier to defend than to break through, it seems. But it's still too powerful--Lily can't see a way through...
"Fei, I want to focus on him, too. But we can't. If we don't contain this right now..."
She trails off, and closes her eyes. Hellerune's systems are already compromised; she could try to take control directly... but she'd need more power. So she reaches out to that place she remembers going, against the robotic defender Stein hid behind before. She reaches towards it, and...
From Hellerune's joints and seams suddenly shines a violet light, as if coming through the cracks in the machine.
Hellerune's hand shifts jerkily, as if a puppet on strings, and extends towards the barrier again. A surge of darkness rushes the shield and the Gear behind it if it can get through, thundering through the air as it destroys matter in the process.
DC: Lily Keil switches forms to Omega - Synthesis! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Isaac Stein with Unmaker! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Eika Zuse's Snap Return for 116 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Eika Zuse! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus! GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein critically guards Lily Keil's Unmaker for 59 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Billy Lee Black takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Seeker Missile for 268 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Billy Lee Black gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida thumbs the radio over to tightband. "...Transformed his /hatred/ into Ether?" It's... odd, she realizes, but hasn't Lily described her own Ether as anger-fueled? "How much hatred does he /have?" Enough to produce a barrier that causes the Dragoon's sensors to freak out just by existing.
It's the kind of power that Grahf can deploy casually. For the sake of her own sanity, Ida is assuming he won't step in. She'r praying he won't step in.
Riesenlied announces her intent. "Worth trying," Ida says, "but--be careful." Stone--Stein--keeps on talking. Ranting, really, as Billy tries in vain to punch through his barrier.
Ida opens the mic to try and talk, but she doesn't get the chance. What Stein says next chills Ida to her core.
"What," Ida breathes. "The... the Reapers--?" Her throat constricts. The faint taste of bile washes up into the back of her mouth. Her heart, already pounding against her ribs, begins to race.
"You..." An atrocity. An abomination. But Stone gives her no further time to meditate on his crimes--a beam of energy washes across the field, and she slams her foot onto the floor pedal, igniting the jumpjets. The Dragoon leaps into the air as the beam burns its way across the landscape; the horrible ray of Ether passes below it, missing it by less than a meter. The machine twists in the air, lands in a crouch fifty meters away. The cannon is still aimed at the Alkanshel's center of mass. "Monster," Ida says. Her hands are shaking on the controls. "Butcher. Parasite."
Ida forces herself to reach out, to highlight the Renmazuo in the display. "Billy," Ida says. Her voice is tight and cold. "I'm covering you." Data from the Dragoon's sensors floods into Renmazuo's computer. Ida's machine can only estimate the power levels involved, but it's already identified multiple attack vectors, and it can detect surges of POWER just fine. It might just be enough to keep him alive.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Billy Lee Black with Early Warning! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly burns through most of the thoughts in her head, and the standard anti-barrier patterns in Vierge's library. Is it outdated? Maybe - but then, it probably wasn't intended for the *purpose* of blasting through 'that barrier'.
Fei is suffering. Elly can feel it. Vierge shifts itself nearer to Weltall, almost close enough to touch as the spent AERODs flit back to sup at the powerful supplies of Ether-condensate within Vierge. "Fei," Elly transmits, voice a little crackling over the radio. "I don't understand this either... why that man showed up, why he's done ALL of this. I can't track him. Stone will know something, or..."
Elly takes in a deep breath, because, she thinks, she really isn't nearly as nice as Fei might be thinking. "Or his body's going to have evidence, of what it is that 'He' did."
"... I'll be with you, whatever you decide," she concludes, in this private-ish comment, her eyes closing for a moment in resolution.
Elly's eyes flit towards the barrier. She can hear the Bishop's words, his shouts. The story he is telling. "... this power... it seems like it releases your built-up antipathy."
"... Then, all of this was a romantic disagreement...?" Elly says. She isn't speaking to Stone; Fei, maybe, or the other Wolves. "But..." The enormity of it, the enormity of what Stone has *done* and what seems to be the reason *why* echoes outwards. She can comprehend it and it is that that disturbs her. Validate? Justify? Forgive? Perhaps not - but somehow, she thinks, that level of a - an anger, a despair, an agony sufficient to drive one to such cruelty.
"... like a wound that never heals," Elly says, and a moment later, "Hold on: I think if..."
Vierge moves back a moment, Elly signalling 'pause a second' to the team. The Ether Amp inside of Vierge powers up, shifts into a tri-lateral overdrive with a visible exterior effect, and then:
KRA-KRASHOOOM
Lightning, out of the relatively clear sky, a visible sustained arc of it lasting over half a second, blinding in its force and tooth-rattling in its aftermath! The strike draws in part from what Stone himself did, but arcs crackle over Vierge, forcing it down to the ground momentarily again.
Elly is briefly buried in static by this.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Isaac Stein with Anemo Bolt! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein critically guards Elhaym van Houten's Anemo Bolt for 41 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein activates Arcane Font! GS: Billy Lee Black accepts Ida Everstead-Rey's Early Warning for 0 hit points! GS: Quick applied to Billy Lee Black! GS: Riposte applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei, please! Try to calm yourself, we can't fight Grahf right now!
"But...!" Fei protests. "But he's right there..." Ida tells him to breathe. "...But he's...he's right in front of me." Riesenlied begs him to listen to her.
Fei takes in a deep breath, he lets it out slowly. "Okay," He says. "You're--"
Grahf chooses this time to give his answer. It's a more horrifying answer than he even expected. He thought it was incidental not his AIM. And that flare up happens again almost immediately.
"Get back here...!!" Fei shouts, briefly forgetting that he just told all his best and greatest friends and family that they were right--
--and then Elly tells him that she'll be with him no matter what he chooses and Fei realizes then that not just that everybody was right--but he really can't do this. He'd be dragging Elly along wiht him.
"...Right." Fei manages, exhaling slowly. "Okay. Later. Later. Just... be careful. The power that that man gives...is no joke!"
Casse in point, a seal SLAAAMS into Weltall and sends it flying backwards, almost flat onto its back but Fei managed to brace Weltall just in time.
"Guh...!" Fei shouts before darting back forwad, leaping into the air, and trying to repeatedly stomp onto the mech repeatedly with his feet by jumping high up into the air and mario stomping at it repeatedly.
"That's enough! Hurting a child because you don't like their father is madness...!"
But then Stein explains even more. Fei's eyes widen dramatically.
"You..." Pause. "You're.... You're a monster...! Krelian helped you...do that?!"
More flashes of that corpse hanging off of him. Fei shakes his head. he refuses to see it. Not now. It's not the time!
"Fuck you!" He can only imagine how this is affecting Billy.
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Isaac Stein with Hazan! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 2 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"Fei... I am sorry. We must focus on the situation at hand!" is what Citan says to Fei. "We cannot leave Billy to handle this by himself!"
"Distraction... That may suffice, if we are able to distact him!" is Citan's response to Riesenlied's suggestion. "Whether we undermine it or overpower it, we must remove that barrier! Otherwise...!"
Suddenly, Stein's attention turns towards Billy, towards his father. And he speaks of Raquel.
She had been... an extremely kind and giving woman. It is difficult for him to think of her as being dead and gone.
It makes what Stein is starting to say all the more jarring. "Why are you speaking of..."
It's not a question that Citan has the chance to press; Stein's Ether resonates outwards in a rippling pulse for him and the others.
Heimdall veers hard to the left as that edge of the Ether pulse rockets out towards it; Citan thus avoids what could have been a truly debilitating strike if only by inches. It's taken off an entire layer of the Gear's shielding as it is -- something the plating was meant to absorb as a matter of course, but one that means he's that much less prepared for the next strike.
It's as he's taking stock of the Gear's damage report and reviewing the status of the others that the meaning of what Stein has said sinks in for the doctor.
"Then... what happened to Raquel was...?" He lets the question hang heavy in the air for all of a moment before addressing it far more bluntly.
"...You killed her."
Citan is, for the moment, silent after.
He puts his attention where it is needed, instead of on Stein. Even on a smaller scale, the presence of this power as it washes out from the Heimdall would have been barely noticable. Who takes stock of a slight spray of moisture wafting in the air? At this scale, perhaps it's even less so...
But for the slightly cool, calming touch within the cockpits as it takes effect, that is, like visting a spring on a warm summer day. The Gears themselves receive a slight but meaningful readjustment of their internal heat; as with all machines, the distribution of heat is the most important thing.
All Citan been able to do was notice which among them appeared to be moving that much more slowly after the last volley and hazard a guess. ...And of course, he knows of Heimdall's own situation.
GS: Citan Uzuki has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Sazanami! GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Eika Zuse with Sazanami! GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Citan Uzuki with Sazanami! GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 1 Combo! GS: Citan Uzuki's Stoic stance ends. GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action. GS: Citan Uzuki heals Citan Uzuki! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Isaac Stein critically guards Fei Fong Wong's Hazan for 55 hit points! GS: Citan Uzuki heals Eika Zuse! She gains 200 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
In her Gear's cockpit, Xantia frowns as she's not reading any weakness in the Alkanshel's shielding at all following her attack. Several attacks launched by others similarly have much less of an effect than one would expect. Just as she feared, there's something Wrong about this Ether barrier. It doesn't seem like it can be expected to react in the way that it logically should. This must the influence of 'the Power', however that actually works.
It's not unexpected that its influence is negatively affecting Stein's mental state, too. It's happening just as before. She doesn't fully understand his words and motivations, but it's easy enough to tell how warped his hatred has become. All she feels sure enough about to say is, "You won't win! Not with that power!"
It takes Citan's more blunt summary of Stein said for her to finally get the depths of what this man has done to Billy. Now she's at the proper anger level. "You...! How dare you ruin people's lives like that! Don't think you're getting away with this! This stupid barrier isn't going to stop me!"
A blast of what is almost certainly Ether is sent her way in retaliation, prompting Silvestris to leap aside... a fraction too late, the quadruped Gear getting caught in the blast as it impacts the ground. However, when the smoke clears, Silvestris is still there, having avoided a good deal of the damage by means of a (non-hate-filled) Etheric barrier of its own. "...glad that worked," Xantia sighs in the cockpit. That feature is still relatively new, she hadn't gotten to test it against an actual attack yet. Avoiding direct hits still seems like the wiser course of action, all the same.
Fei has... sort of calmed down, meanwhile. Good enough for her to stop worrying for now. Now she can focus on finding some way to actually damage this giant machine.
"Fine... if what makes sense won't work, then I guess it's time to try something a little more stupid! What do you say, Silvy?" Silvestris lets out a roar in affirmation. "Yeah, let's do it!"
...Xantia does know that she's making her machine 'respond' herself, right?
And just what is 'something a little more stupid'? That's simple: Xantia is going to take her giant skeleton cat Gear, and have it pounce directly into the barrier.
There is some thought behind this, even though it may not look it. She is after all surrounded by an Ether-based shield of her own, there might be some interaction between the two. She's prepared for just kind of bouncing off, but on the off chance that something more will happen... well, it's not like she has any better ideas than 'fight Ether Barrier with Ether Barrier' at the moment.
GS: Xantia has attacked Isaac Stein with Dynamic Charge! GS: Xantia assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Delay expired! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Stein screams with rage and anger, manically recounting a tale of jealousy and hatred and much, much worse. Noeline's attention is only half on the man; it has to be, as she begins to share her senses with Riesenlied. It's too overwhelming to try to hold on to every sensation she can right now, split between two awarenesses, and the rising nausea of the ether exhaust in the air is only making it more difficult, as much as she does her best to push forwards through it.
Besides, she doesn't want to credit the man with any of her attention, not if she can help it. Stein's tale is not for her, and when you cut past the hatred and fear within it, a deeply personal one to some of the Drifters present. It hardly seems right to commit it to her memory, and better to let it lie in someone else's. But she does allow herself a moment to look up with a humourless smile, reaching the same conclusion that Elly does.
She nearly says something more - her first instinct is usually to rile her opponent up, and there's a half-dozen responses she could draw upon to compare Stein to the surface-dwellers he so despises. But she checks herself, and thinks better of it. Whatever else may be true, they have a shield of hatred to pierce through, and bolstering it further will not help matters.
She draws in a breath instead, feeling something shift within the power welling between her and Riesenlied. "We're alright," she reports to Leon, her voice more even than she expected. She's not completely sure if it's calmness or anger, but it doesn't matter so long as she's thinking clearly enough, and able to support her partner properly. "Though we may need a little more cover yet."
The feeling of the other Hyadean's form starting to shift and change is a familiar one, and yet one she might never get used to. It takes a moment for her to partition the two, to mentally draw enough of a line between her senses and Riesenlied's while still acting as her eyes and ears. She furrows her brow and focuses through it, letting the flow and shape of her Medium direct the shifts of Ley.
There is a tipping point - and then something eases, leaving her gasping for a lungful of air as something stabilizes. Even as Riesenlied's body creaks, one hand stays securely around her partner's, holding on as long as she can. Her other takes up her sword, and she slowly stares up towards the massive Gear. "... let's go," she encourages.
GS: Noeline has attacked Noeline with Memory of a Promise! GS: Noeline has completed her action. GS: Noeline accepts Noeline's Memory of a Promise for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Disease removed! GS: Burst and Hyper applied to Noeline! GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Isaac Stein critically guards Xantia's Dynamic Charge for 38 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Xantia!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
Billy listens, because you listen to madmen. They will tell you how they think. Things you can use against them later.
What a fool. Every part of this man, down to the very core of his soul, is a weapon pointed at the Black family.
"Four years ago?" Billy mutters, confused. Father had left by then; been gone for years, by then. What happened four years ago...
Wait. Only one thing in his life happened four years ago.
Billy's line goes dead earlier than others. The pieces slot into place before Stone says them, or rather, the terrifying silhouette of an inconceivable horror is plain to him, and Stone cheerfully pours poison into the gap.
"You," Billy rasps.
"You killed her."
Eika runs to protect him from Stone's attacks; Ida shares her sensor's data. Tries to offer him something like calm.
Billy screams.
"STONE!!!!"
Renmazuo's thrusters flare magnesium-bright, whiting-out sensors for a second before the Gear surges forward. Billy thrusts both wrist blasters forward and unloads round after round of Ether-charged cannonade down on the Alkanshel. He slams it with his shoulder. When he recoils off, he fires the thrusters again, driving his fist into it, firing; then recoils off, drives his other in, fires again.
Billy's line is an incoherent scream.
GS: Billy Lee Black spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Isaac Stein with Impact Gun! GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein critically guards Billy Lee Black's Impact Gun for 76 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
How much hatred can one man have, Ida asks.
"Solaris was enough to produce the Stranger, I imagine, or at least contribute to whatever makes him him," Gwen theorizes over the intercom, quietly. "I imagine there will always be good people that come from there, but for every Elly, there's at least as many Stones." Her hand reaches for the canteen, the cap of which she unscrews hastily and drinks, a dribble of liquid coming down one cheek. Capping it, she says, belatedly, ".... I apologize if I'm makin; you look bad for mentionin' you in the same sentence as Stone, Elly."
What hope could Gwen have, of standing up against such power? Halcyone's arms jitter, its pilot trying to indicate disagreement, though it may instead look comical. "... That statement wasn't for you, Stone!"
The barrier that was erected comes in handy as Stone's bolt hits through it, Gwen cursing as its power runs jagged lines down her frame.
And then, Stein opens up the barest parts of his history with the Etone Billy. She doesn't know Billy. She can't imagine what he might be feeling; she has trouble parsing through the implications. To have a man of God be the one responsible for the worst moments of your life...? "... Wels... the very thing Etones go out t'kill... you used them as a weapon to kill someone in cold blood?! Shit... Can't believe Silas was gonna be one of you guys... I'm *glad* he didn't go through with it. I'm glad I didn't have to see him dying in those hallways. He's safe, and even if he'll be sad when he hears about all this, at least I'll be the one to break it to him gently. People like you, who used your power to hurt others for your own gain... you're the weak ones, not people like him!"
A blue ray shoots from one of the Halcyone's arms, waiting for the moment Billy strikes to wedge her own strike.
"Riese..." Gwen hesitates, looking in the direction of where she thinks Riesenlied is, even if her Gear doesn't
do the same. "You don't intend on doin' somethin' that might open you up to this whole damage more than you already are,
right? I mean..." She clears her throat, her next words lacking her usual twang. "Just... please be careful, okay? I'm
powering up. Next move, I'm gonna use my Gear t'broadcast a field over you guys. I think it should give everyone
receptive enough a good boost."
GS: Citan Uzuki heals Gwen Whitlock! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Sufferer! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isaac Stein with Sting Jet! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Sting Jet for 102 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
The barrier has intensified - but already, Leon has a potential solution as the Weglaff keeps shooting, shooting, shooting - concentrating against a single point in the barrier. This may be short term, for if Stein's hatred somehow finds a way to change its focus... one can see the bullets nonetheless impact the 'Alkanshel.' There are dents, sparks. Damages. There is, for a moment, hope.
"Jesiah! JESIAH! JESIAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!" It's not certain if this is in response to Catenna's questions or just general hatred being reinforced by the irritating chain fire from Leon's Gear, but it is a very honest answer by the reckoning of a man (...a monster) who has lived deceiving so many. Catenna uses the various objects of the scenery to twist and pull the barrier's more active reactions to being touched, adding to the stress as at least one large tree pushes through and strikes. "Fear? No, no, with this power... finally... only now will their suffering matter!!" He screams over Riesenlied's words of advice in simultaneous answer to Catenna's words.
The Jaeger's pilot shows her level of trust in Catenna's abilties by firing all the shells at the points of stress - and at least three punch through. Could they all have found a weakness? Has the hatred hit a limit? The Hellerune sends darkness that manages to get through all of that, leaving discolored imprints before the darkness is expunged. Vulnerabilities.
"Your weakness disgusts me! From the likes of you," There's another burst of that. The Firewheel's shield does not get through the barrier, but there is some backward movement as the 'Alkanshel' corrects its orientation with the Etheric barrier. "you could never understand what it means to give EVERYTHING about yourself to... to...!"
He sees that several are moving to protect Billy. Eika's repositioning, some vaguely defined technical reason he can pick up the Dust Dragoon feeding intel to the Renmazuo, as more (well-deserved) insults flow to Elly's and Fei's own exasperations and conclusions. Lightning surges vigorously across the surface area of the Etheric field as it strikes, as the Weltall bounces against it over and over. "Blame Jesiah!! Blame Jesiah for all of it!! If he hadn't done... all of this... blame Jesiah!" He deflects. (His Gear does not seem to have a mirror inside the cockpit.)
"I saved her!!" He retorts to Citan, not calling him by name. This is fair. He only has one name on his mind,
and sometimes one other that hangs onto that one word. It's a wonder he hasn't mixed those two names up yet, as his view
is temporarily blinded by Xantia's Etheric barrier clashing up against his. It doesn't punch through - no, the stress
will be enormous on Xantia's machine, as Gwen noisily admonishes him. "You do not understand the nature of /power/!"
This... may be as deep an answer on the subject he can give to Gwen as the blue ray washes about the field.
'You,' comes Billy's words. They can't see Stein's face but they can feel him smile. The Renmazuo keeps bouncing
off of it, time and time again, with seemingly impotent rage...
And then that final round pierces through, slamming visibly into one shoulder of the 'Alkanshel.'
"Billy... Billy, Billy, Billy," that chilling voice finds the ability to go quieter with that seething rage, "I
already told you who the Reapers were... so here's something even better. The people sent by the Ethos, they became
them." Laughter. "No trace. No record. No care... and then those self-same Ethos would send them to their graves... ha
ha ha...! A wretched son for a wretched father, surrounded by wretched fools! Knowing you participated in such
HYPCRITICAL CRUELTY! Ha ha ha...!"
The barrier flares anew again with greater intensity. Just as it seemed like they might have started to exhaust
it, it's back again. "Come, Billy, confess to me! Pay for your sins!!" A breath passes. "...No, no, even better...
Jesiah!! Look upon your blood-stained sinful spawn and suffer! Look at how all the lives he has /touched/ are just as
complicit! Sinners! Sinners, all of you...!"
The readings go off the charts. The Ether output... well. New records seem to be broken in every engagement, and
this isn't ending the streak, as both arms jut out to strike at the Jaeger and its pilot, and at the ramping up power of
a Riesenlied about to transform (and her dearest love), flailing with equal parts the barrier and the electrical Etheric
power gathered at the prongs.
"Traitors, irritations, anomalies...!!" Stein screams as he sweeps those arms outward, firing off shots at all
sorts of strange angles that all seem to curve themselves into inconvenient positions around Lily's and Leon's Gears -
with special attention given to the Vierge and Weltall. It's only a matter of time before /they/ get their upper hand,
their advantage, to work with what others have managed.
"You won't get in the way!!" Stein screams as a single shell launches from the back of the power-infused Gear,
exploding on the ground as an expanding wave of windy Ether threatening to tear them apart and disorient them, to throw
them all aside from being anywhere in the vicinity of Billy (or the thought of being anywhere in the vicinity of Billy).
Billy, in this equation, seems to have an understated barrage thrown at him as an extended arm just blasts
something from between the three prongs to center-of-mass, as if the equivalent of a hard shove from a schoolyard bully.
As if he wants to push him further, toy with him, before finally annihilating him.
GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Isaac Stein with Awakening! GS: Isaac Stein accepts Isaac Stein's Awakening for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State and Surge applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Mighty applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein has activated a Boss Action! GS: Isaac Stein has activated a Force Action! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Noeline with Blood Frenzy! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Catenna with Blood Frenzy! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Riesenlied with Blood Frenzy! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Blood Frenzy! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Lily Keil with Paragon Trick! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Paragon Trick! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Leon Albus with Paragon Trick! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Paragon Trick! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Eika Zuse with Maelstrom Shell! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Maelstrom Shell! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Citan Uzuki with Maelstrom Shell! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Riesenlied guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Blood Frenzy for 76 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Billy Lee Black with Execution Shot! GS: Isaac Stein takes 36 damage from Corrode! GS: Isaac Stein has completed his action. GS: Catenna takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Blood Frenzy for 152 hit points! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Eika Zuse takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Maelstrom Shell for 210 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eika Zuse gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Cover removed!
DC: 3 turns have elapsed in the battle against Isaac Stein! 2 turns remain!
GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Blood Frenzy for 235 hit points! GS: Gamble: Highest! Citan Uzuki takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Maelstrom Shell for 308 hit points! GS: Dispel! Cover and Riposte removed! GS: Elhaym van Houten guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Paragon Trick for 180 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elhaym van Houten gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Noeline guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Blood Frenzy for 83 hit points! GS: Lily Keil takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Paragon Trick for 69 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow applied to Lily Keil! GS: Eika Zuse used Defend! She takes Isaac Stein's Execution Shot attack on Billy Lee Black on herself! GS: Eika Zuse has activated a Force Action! GS: CRITICAL! Eika Zuse takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Execution Shot for 405 hit points! GS: Eika Zuse has gained 1 Combo! GS: COUNTER! Leon Albus counterattacks Isaac Stein with Counter Attack! GS: Leon Albus takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Paragon Trick for 260 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Leon Albus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow applied to Leon Albus! GS: Gamble: High! Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Maelstrom Shell for 136 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Riposte removed!
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
"Be careful, Riesenlied!" Leon says. He nods -- and he sees several meters and screens on the Weglaff change, meters filling and indications flashing on the HUD as Riesenlied's magic pours into the Gear. The Weglaff is hardened; it shines all the brighter, blue armor gleaming.
He tenses, as Citan points out Raquel's fate. Stein killed her. Leon's silver eyes narrow. Billy's scream confirms his suspicions.
"You gave yourself over to a monster for power--and the sad thing is, you sold your soul years before!" Leon shouts back at Stein. "Don't blame others for your choice to mislead them--and accept the death they'll grant you with the dignity that your life never had!"
Shots slam into the Weglaff. The gatling cannon keeps firing, pouring more rounds into it, even as a few beams slash into the armor. Riesenlied's magic makes the armor hardened against it, but some bounce off -- and a few dig in, still. Armor heats and blackens.
The gatling cannon is stowed, finally. Weglaff pulls out a one-handed sword, blade glinting -- but darkened. Weglaff storms forward, then SLAMS the blade down, one-handed, at the barrier. Then, again. And again.
GS: Leon Albus has attacked Isaac Stein with Armor Slasher! GS: Leon Albus has gained 2 Combo! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Leon Albus has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
How much hatred does one man have? Ample, it would seem... and amplified further through what both Krelian and Grahf have done.
Under normal circumstances, Riesenlied perhaps would have had more words for him. How inexcusable it is to murder someone to satisfy the twisted feeling of no longer 'sullying' them... and yet... she understands all too well how one gets so deep and toxic they reach that point. She fully understands Noeline's own conclusion, and it isn't one that she diverges from. And she hears Elly's own thoughts, and how she can understand how he got here, yet...
...
Right now, hearing him try to hurt Billy further... Stein reminds her of 'him'. Of Alhazred. That despicable scientist, that twisted creature whose hatred not even a mask can cover. Who would simply continue to impose himself upon others, and continue to twist them to cover for his own weaknesses and mistakes--
*beat*
"...!"
Riesenlied doubles over as the Gear's arms threaten to crush her -- but Noeline's barrier stands strong, clashing against the etheric wave of Hatred, against the electricity threatening to crisp them.
She clutches her chest as a familiar trace of lightning starts to course through her entire body, the Ley visibly running through her scales to illuminate her very form. A faint tremor accomodates the coming change, rippling and echoing through.
Gwen's voice cuts through to her. Is she going to do something that's going to hurt her more?
"... I am sorry ... I am."
But... she knows she will be all right. Noeline's very presence and words encourage and empower her. Let's go, she says. She also hears Ida and Jacqueline telling her to be careful. They believe in her, and... she will believe in them, so...!
"Yes... let us go--"
...Her heart burns
Her pulse uncontrollable
Fire consumes her throat
Everything blurs
Out of sound and sight
At the critical moment, she thinks that despicable word imposed upon her, forced upon her:
-Accession-
A SHATTERING plume of lightning strikes the very spot where the Hyadean sits, cocconing her in darkness; a jet-black sphere where everything happens all too rapidly, extremities stretching and mutating, her face distending, her horns sprouting--
"eeeeaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH-----!!!!"
The heated, ear-piercing scream distorts, becoming less and less Riesenlied, until it is little more than a dragon's ROAR.
The darkness fades, blown away by fierce winds.
Where Riesenlied once was, the enormous Ley Dragon stands, on two stout and scaled feet, the flow of the Ley full and saturated within her veins. Yet, Riesenlied is still present; her senses fully stripped of borders and leaking through, drowned into the very nature of the world around her, she relies on her partner to be there. To be her eyes, to be her ears... to be her guide.
The Dragon kneels, to let Noeline climb aboard. Rising into the air on majestic white wings, the Hyadean couple join the battle, better late than never.
She settles her eyes on the enormous Gear Alkanshel, far larger than even her enlarged form, and nevertheless opens her mouth--
[ 5 ]
--and a countdown to disaster is suddenly very readily present, an ominous glow building within her throat.
DC: Riesenlied switches forms to -Accession- Ring-Promised Dragon!
GS: Riesenlied has attacked Riesenlied with the Dragon's Countdown! GS: Riesenlied assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Disease expired! GS: Riesenlied has completed her action. GS: Riesenlied accepts Riesenlied's the Dragon's Countdown for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Surge applied to Riesenlied!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
Billy's furious barrage, endless punches and shots, has to abate eventually. Gears aren't perfect devices; eventually, runningthe thrusters hard enough to counteract the recoil of his own attacks means they overheat, and fail to ignite at the last. His training guides his muscles; he fires different thrusters, moving him away from the Alkanshel. Renmazuo's heels slam into the dirt of the dig site, digging up a trench with its skidding, its heroic cape dirtied and dragged behind him. "You..." Billy rasps, his voice raw, his emotions run ragged. "You...you changed them? Into those things!?" Billy says, trying to heat himself up again.
But the Gear and the man are both tired...and neither is positioned to evade when Stone next turns his ire upon him.
GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Paragon Trick for 172 hit points! GS: Slow applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Guard bonus and Sufferer! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Undermine or overpower--Lily has been trying to overpower, but it's a losing game to do more than pierce through now and then. Even that is difficult. She's pretty much with Fei on this matter, but she has a certain distance, can tell Billy is rushing forward and snaps her attention and her displays to focus on him. But others are defending him--and so she considers the barrier again. Hatred...
Is this where it leads?
"Stop it," Lily says over the radio. "You..."
Lily winces at the sheer power on display, her own internal sense for Ether and emotion both blasted with this amount of force and rage. Her Gear takes yet more damage; even Lily's effort to move the Gear out of range, without even touching the controls, is not quite enough; the Gear is heavier now, heavy with bullets and deteroriation. It's not quite enough.
But Lily isn't finished either; even as Riesenlied's great draonic form comes into being, Lily rushes forward again, extending no hands this time but instead just staring at the massive Gear before them--and aiming for the heart of that hatred. "You..."
She shakes her head. "...You're just something that needs to be excised from this world. You are nothing but a festering wound."
There is something to be done with rot. Lily extends a hand within the cockpit and closes her eyes again, focusing, her shadowed form invisible inside the Gear. Ether flares, though even this much Ether is hard to sense against the sheer magnitude of the barrier of hatred. She reaches out, and focuses for the heart of that hatred, as she started to a moment ago. A massive blast of flame bursts into being around Stein's Gear, heat screaming off of it and eating up the air itself around.
Maybe it can hold him in place, even if it doesn't get through... Maybe.
GS: Lily Keil has attacked Isaac Stein with Infernal Gate! GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eika Zuse has posed.
Citan uses heat manipulation to help cool off the Firewheel. This is a good thing - Firewheel runs hot, and Eika was starting to get the first alerts on the shields from where she was blocking the Ether shots. She looks left and right, trying to figure out which Gear is doing that.
She eventually spots Heimdall, though she isn't sure whose Gear that *is*. She raises one hand in the cockpit in a vague salute, which Firewheel doesn't actually show, so Citan may never know. (sorry Citan)
And then Billy tears past her. After she tried to get into position to defend him, assuming Stein was going after him specifically -
Biting back something she would regret saying later, Eika stomps on the accelerator, the bulky, heavy frame of Firewheel accelerating as fast as it can after Renmazuo. It can't keep up, even at as close to a dead sprint as Firewheel is capable of managing. She can't even blame him. After what Stone just said, she wants to pummel him into the ground too.
If it wasn't for Billy pulling back, she'd never make it. As is it's a close thing; she has to effectively dive through a storm of Ether that tears at Firewheel, plant her feet, raise her shield - and every bit of it has Firewheel's mass working against it.
The shot from Alkanshel doesn't hit Renmazuo. It hits Firewheel, slamming into that central column with a horrific squeal and a spray of sparks and metal; whatever near-invincible ancient alloy makes up the shields does not cover the rest of the Gear's frame. Alarms blare in Eika's ears as the cockpit is suddenly lit in shades of red, and she feels the kick through the Gear, slamming her around. And if it was enough to do that to *Firewheel*, one of the toughest Gears the Etones had... Renmazuo wouldn't stand a chance, Eika thinks.
"Hey, Billy," Eika gets out, roughly. "Watch it. You can't stop anyone if you're dead." Damn, she thinks, feeling the pain of a cracked rib as she breathes. They need to stop this thing sooner rather than later. She can't keep going like this. "If you can give me some covering fire, that would be fantastic." Here she is, working with an Etone. Like she was part of a team. Like she used to.
Shame about the circumstances, really.
Reaching out, Eika flips some switches and then pulls something like a parking brake up with a powerful pull. It is difficult for her to pull, even transformed; it was not meant to be casually moved. Then, in the cockpit, she braces her feet against the floor, pushing herself back into the seat as hard as she can.
And Firewheel... rolls up.
The upper torso pulls itself downward, locking against the slim central column of the torso, the legs pulled up on the hips. One of the shields rotates forty-five degrees, so that the giant 'teeth' on the outside of the shields are aligned with the gaps in the other one, and then they pull in, the shields locking against each other with a faint hiss of expelled gas.
Now nothing more than a barrel-like cylinder, Firewheel rolls downhill. And it begins to accelerate far faster than it can run; thrusters on the central axle of the ... wheels? shields? fire, sending it bouncing and rolling faster and faster. Eika, braced in the cockpit, does not spin - it's gyroscopically stable - but she can feel every bump and bounce, and she's being shoved back by its constant acceleration. The worst part is that she can't *see* anything. She just has to hope... and pray.
Firewheel begins to expel flaming gas from its sides, wreathing the entire machine in flame, wisps trailing behind it like a comet-tail - directly at Alkanshel. The shields can't get through that Ether aura - not struck, not thrown like a discus. But maybe - just maybe - she can slam through it entirely if she just doesn't stop for anything.
GS: Eika Zuse has activated a Force Action! GS: Eika Zuse has attacked Isaac Stein with Fire Wheel! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Eika Zuse has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein guards a hit from Leon Albus's Counter Attack for 122 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Leon Albus's Armor Slasher for 206 hit points! GS: Dispel! Lock State removed! GS: Break applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus! GS: Gamble: Low! Isaac Stein critically guards Lily Keil's Infernal Gate for 73 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein activates Arcane Font! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Eika Zuse's Fire Wheel for 446 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Isaac Stein!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"You're right Doc." Fei says but he can't really be calm about mom murder. It's the one thing Fei absolutely can't forgive. Damn it, why is everybody always right?!
But he is able to keep it down. Isaac is enough of a monster that Fei feels he is, essentially, comparable to Grahf himself. That keeps him more inclined to keep clobbering.And Isaac keeps on PRESSING his buttons. There is something beyond what simply breathing carefully and calming down can do for Fei. He wants to kill Isaac Stein. He wants it to be quick, not out of kindness, but because he simply can't stand the ERROR that is Isaac Stein existing in this world. He must be eliminated. He must be torn free from this realm of existence to make a better world. The world is better without Isaac Stein in it. It's even better for Isaac Stein. He has to be removed, eliminated, cut out.
The Psycho Counter doesn't tick up. Sometimes, the two of them are just in agreement.
Crackling red aura erupts from Weltall's fist as it aims to impact rapidly against Stein's machine. Bullets curve around and slam into Weltall, tearing off vast sheathes of extra armoring Hammer plastered on just to be safe.
He doesn't shout anything else. Some crimes are beyond words. Beyond thought.
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Isaac Stein with Sympathetic Host Of The Slayer! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
"'Weakness'... it's funny you say that. Because in my eyes... you're the weakest one here." Jacqueline replies, shaking her head at Stein's words - as he speaks of weakness, and how it disgusts him. "You might have 'the Power', and a big Gear... but inside that Gear is just a small, pathetic man, lashing out at the world around him."
Unfortunately for her, though, her words don't go unpunished. With terrifying speed the Alkanshel rushes at her, thrusting its arms - and by extension - its barrier and Etheric power - at the Jaeger. The power crashes against her. Metal is sheared away, and a large tear is torn across one of its shoulders - thankfully, the one that isn't currently carrying an occupant. The Jaeger is forced back and falls to one knee. It's taken heavy damage in the attack, with skillful pilot preventing a more direct hit.
"Th-that was a close one... Catenna, are you okay?" Jacqueline asks, looking in her direction. And then she looks out, scanning the area to see how the others fare - and spots Riesenlied. That scream... it hurts. It's a little painful to watch her transform... but, it's a sign of the seriousness of the situation.
"...Don't push yourself too far..." Jacqueline murmurs in concern. And then, she forces the Jaeger into a standing position.
"...We can still do this. We can't let a man like him run free to do as he pleases." Jacqueline says, shaking her head. "He might have 'the Power', and his hatred might shield him from everything... but we've seen that we can make him hurt if we work together. We'll show him just how wrong he is - about us, and about this world."
Shehe manages a small smile.
"We can do this." She repeats, encouragingly. Being physically on her machine, Catenna is probably the closest one able to hear this speech.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Catenna with We Can Do This!! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Catenna accepts Jacqueline Barber's We Can Do This! for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Disease and Disrupt removed!
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Things are more than grim for half the participants in the battle. Through the pain and ambient hatred, a large part of Catenna's consciousness swims in guilt. She cannot feel the anguish of all this as keenly as Billy Lee Black and his friends, but she can hear it in the way the young man screams.
Not for the first time, she feels like an outsider, looking at all of this from ten thousand feet up, simultaneously in the thick of the fight and distant from it. In her heart, even though Billy's a total stranger to her, she wishes she could give him a hug.
Stein's screaming at her though it all, hurling hate and venom into the open air, but all she can muster in response is a small dip of her head and a sigh. The barrier rebuilds, and the Moon Shaman shakes her head, letting her hand fall again.
"It's everyone's fault but yours, isn't it," she murmurs.
Ether explodes outwards - there's far more of it than a human should be expected to face even in a Gear. Catenna does not have that advantage. Once again she tries to hide behind the Jaeger's head.
It proves completely useless, once again. This time the ether hits Catenna hard enough that only a flick of her hand to call forth a burst of defensive water from her seldom-used Sea Medium keeps her from being vapourized on the spot. The quick touch of Lucadia's magic reduces the impact to a sledgehammer of hate and pain that sends her flying off the Jaeger's shoulder.
Her senses wink out like a flicked switch. For a moment, Catenna arcs through the air completely insensate, streaming smoke and tatters of the skirt of her dancing outfit. It takes what seems like an eternity for thoughts to begin to intrude on the empty space her mind has been plunged into.
It feels windy.
And I don't feel so great.
I feel like I'm falling.
Then she opens her eyes and gasps in pain and sudden awareness as she realizes she is, in fact, falling. She strains to try and move her body, but pressure is building as she plummets.
Until something white arcs beneath her. With a thump, Catenna lands on something fluffy.
<You're taking a lot of risk out there.> Beneath Catenna, Saarda-Shanta sails upwards, huge rounded wings spread. The Great Owl has pushed herself to her natural size, about the size of small bushplane, just big enough for Catenna and a friend to ride. <Are you alright?>
Wincing, Catenna pushes her hair back with a hand and rolls to her knees on Saarda-Shanta's back. "I'll... I'll be alright. He's very noisy." Wincing, she shakes herself to try and push through the worst of the pain. "...And very sad. Saarda-Shanta, he's small. All of this is a small man acting out, isn't it?"
<Does it matter?> With a couple of ponderous wingbeats, the giant owl sails high above the battlefield to give Catenna a moment. <Dear heart, the fact that a man is pitiable does not mean that he can be saved. You do not want to be as hateful as this. I understand that. But you as well as any should understand that one can be just without hatred, fair without prejudice.>
Catenna closes her eyes and bows her head. "Maybe so," she murmurs. "Perhaps I make too much of my own distance from things. Am I trying so hard to look at him from above that I have lost sight of the actual sins? Of the pain of this man's victims?"
<Are you?>
The ensuing silence is long and heavily laden.
Rising up on Saarda-Shanta's back, Catenna holds one hand high, her Sea Medium in her palm. She bows her head and murmurs a prayer - and not far away, the tide comes in.
It comes in farther than it has any right to - and for just a moment, a huge serpentine shape can be seen rising from the depths before disappearing once more, driving the wave further ashore. Coils of sea water trail through the air, breaking down into droplets and glimmers. They dance into whirling spirals, diverging to swirl around the machines of Eika and Billy, mingling with the flames pouring from the Firewheel. Wherever they touch, the droplets of clear ocean water mend steel and restore weakening energy fields - and they filter into the machines to try and soothe aching bodies and straining minds.
They swirl around Catenna, too, knitting wounds, easing pain. The Moon Shaman lowers her head and hands to Saarda-Shanta's back.
"Maybe the support of someone like me means nothing to you," she says, her voice quiet, but carrying on the dancing light to reach the Etone pair. "But I will try to help you. Your pain... let the Sea at least ease the simplest of it."
Saarda-Shanta swoops past the Jaeger - close enough that Catenna can hear Jay's encouragement. The Great Owl tilts a wing in acknowledgment, and Catenna tilts to offer up a faint smile. "Yes... yes, I know that we can, Jay."
DC: Catenna switches forms to Great Owl Saarda-Shanta!
GS: Catenna spends 1 Combo on Inspire! GS: Catenna has attacked Catenna with Material - Sovereign of the Deep! GS: Catenna has attacked Eika Zuse with Material - Sovereign of the Deep! GS: Catenna has attacked Billy Lee Black with Material - Sovereign of the Deep! GS: Catenna has completed her action. GS: Catenna heals Catenna! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Catenna gains a Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
"For what it is worth," when Noeline speaks, her voice has a tinge of good humour to it. Countless Drifters have called for Riesenlied to be careful, and... well, neither of them can exactly promise that as a general thing, and she's the first one to joke about it most of the time. "I will do my best to keep her safe." Her voice echoes slightly with itself, before Riesenlied's accession tears across and around whatever else she says afterwards.
The flare of her own power clashes against Stein's etheric field; it is not exactly a battle of wills so much as it is just two forces meeting each other. The man's ravings and his attacks are too indiscriminate to cow Noeline, and at the same time she couldn't move if she tried, caught up in her partner's transformation. Both wash over her; for a moment it is too much to process, and then she's dragged out of it just in time to register a pair of gigantic arms, swinging in their direction.
It takes an effort - her arms don't fully quite feel like her own, and she's not sure exactly which way she should be bracing her legs - but she's just in time to bring her sword up to bear. For a few instants, there is the improbable sight of a young woman straining to block a Gear's punch, her sword pressed flat against a giant fist. A long-drawn out hiss of pain, and then she's summoned her strength to wrench it aside, feeling the weight of it slide past her.
Even as occupied as her mind is, split between perspectives and sensations, she can recognize it as a chance that she can't afford to miss; her form blurs for an instant as she takes a little of their shared power for herself, and raises her sword. By all rights, the idea of a person cutting through a Gear's armor is a nonsensical one, let alone with her weapon - a solid slab of metal, thick and wide, it was hardly made for cutting and piercing.
But caught in the midst of the Ley and a Guardian's power, the idea of physicality doesn't mean terribly much, and this is to someone who could already reduce her component metal to whatever shape she wants. Her blade bends and twists, tearing through the Gear's armor as it seems to simply pour into every available crack and joint - and then explode outwards in a blaze of confusing, shadowy light.
She doesn't dare linger too long, however. She doesn't need to see Riesenlied's transformation into the Ley Dragon to understand that it is happening; the feeling rips through her entire body, whiting out her vision. Her partner's presence is never far from her mind, but now the sensation is like a roaring beacon, and she places her trust in it as her form blurs again, reappearing atop the dragon as it begins to climb for height.
Her hand is on Riesenlied's back. The ring on her finger shines with a steady light, its pulse attuned to their heartbeats. "I have you," she says privately, quietly, and knows that it will be heard even over the din of battle.
GS: Noeline has attacked Isaac Stein with Material Adept - Sky Splitter! GS: Noeline has gained 1 Combo! GS: Noeline assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Noeline has completed her action. GS: Catenna heals Eika Zuse! She gains 400 temporary hit points! GS: Eika Zuse gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Catenna heals Billy Lee Black! He gains 400 temporary hit points! GS: Billy Lee Black gains a Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Welp, Xantia did call her own idea stupid. And crashing her own, much weaker Ether barrier into a stronger one turns out to be even more stupid than she realized. Rather than simply bounce off, it threatens to engulf her machine outright, and it's a struggle just to pull the Gear back out of the force of the barrier's grasp. A considerable amount of nervous sweating happens in the cockpit as Xantia attempts to do just that, seeing various warnings flashing by that she can't even identify.
Lucky for her she does succeed in wrenching Silvestris free eventually, but that took un unexpectedly large amount of energy. If the energy reserves of her units weren't unusually large, that may not have worked at all. As it is, she's able to retain her mobility, it's just her machine's barrier that flickers and shorts out. "...okay, that didn't work," she states the obvious.
If Ether is absorbed that easily, she doubt a blast of it would do much either. This doesn't leave her with a ton of options. Thankfully others appear to be having a bit more luck in that regard, but it still doesn't seem to be slowing the Alkanshel down much, if at all. On top of everything, her head is really starting to hurt. It's that Ether, she's sure of it. It's not good to be so close to for this long. But she won't back down now. Giving up is not in her vocabulary. "There's got to be something that can get unbalance it..."
If she can't go through it... maybe she can get around it. This is her thought pattern as she has Silvestris move up to higher ground, briefly landing on a rock formation, before leaping straight down. Electricity crackles around the Gear's body, rapidly gaining in intensity, until it all discharges into the ground upon landing. The point of this shows itself about one second later, when the electric charge bursts back upwards some distance ahead, causing the earth to shake, shift and erupt directly underneath the Alkanshel.
Xantia hesitates to approach to try and further follow up on this. Instead, Silvestris cranes its head upwards as Xantia beholds Riesenlied in a form that gives her mixed feelings. "I hope you know what you're doing, Riese..."
GS: Xantia has attacked Isaac Stein with Wave Quake! GS: Xantia has gained 2 Combo! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Sympathetic Host Of The Slayer for 465 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Noeline's Material Adept - Sky Splitter for 136 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein activates Guard bonus! GS: Isaac Stein guards a hit from Xantia's Wave Quake for 194 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Stein keeps ranting. Ida keeps talking over him, her rage cold and controlled--a sharp contrast with the frothing former Bishop. "Bullshit," she says. "Blame him all you want, it changes nothing." The Dragoon sets its feet. Power begins to surge deep within the machine's core, feeding through its hands into the Three-Dragon Cannon. "You're going to die here. You're going to die screaming for what you've done." In its own way, though, Stone's madness is comforting. Even at her lowest, Ida wouldn't have even considered committing such grotesque crimes, no matter how badly she wanted others to suffer with her.
But Solaris--
The memory returns, sharp and hot. They used her. They used her, just like they used her mother, her aunt.
Billy finally tumbles over the edge. "BILLY!" Ida shouts--not 'Brother Black', just 'Billy', the name his father gave him. Her fingers dance over the control panels, sliding touchscreen elements into position and pressing buttons. She knows better than to chastise him for his anger. Were she confronted with her own Stein, she'd want to make their death as slow and painful as she could. That deep need for vindication, to prove she's not helpless, still lingers, resonates...
He sees a young comrade swallowed alive by anger, by the burning need for vengeance.
"They died because you used them," Ida says. "Because you betrayed them. Because the only thing Solaris brings into this world is cruelty." Her face is tight; her teeth are bared. The Dragoon circles around, drawing its cannon to the shoulder for another blast...
Stein's shell slams into the ground, and erupts in a typhoon of Wind Ether. It slams into Ida's machine, forcing the once-Trooper to its knees. Metal groans beneath the shearing strain of air pressure. Plates groan as they bend inwards, but nothing gives. Aunt Isabel does good work. In a strange way, it's like she's here with Ida, fighting the man who used her--who betrayed and murdered her former colleagues. Billy, though, gets the worse of it. "LOOK OUT!" Ida screams--
And Eika is suddenly right there, between Billy and Stein. Ida breathes again, and makes a note to thank her later. For now, she focuses on the hot, angry presence in the back of her mind. "...Finally woke up again?" she says, even though she knows he can't hear her. "Let's go."
He watches as a sickly-looking runt takes the alien Ley into herself, and ascends.
"Let's kill us a monster." Just like Flora would've wanted.
Lily isn't the only one who can take more direct control of her machine. Riesenlied isn't the only one with the power of a Metal Dragon at her disposal. Ida focuses, breathes, and lets the changes come.
Bony biometal spines erupt bloodlesly from her skin, trailing their way from the base of her skull to her lowermost thoracic vertebra. Hyadean nervous tissue coils around them, growing at lightning speed--forming cables that thread their way into the Dragoon's computer systems. More tendrils surge into its head, torso, limbs, forming a shadow nervous system inside. It's like what some Dragon-Shifters use to control their draconic siege-forms--identical, in fact.
An electronic howl erupts from deep within the Dust Dragoon's shell, mirroring Riesenlied's roar. When Ida can see again, she's looking at the world from a giant's perspective, holding the Three-Dragon Cannon to her shoulder. Every inch of her body buzzes with power.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with First Method - Steel Colossus Synchronization! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Stoic stance ends. She enters the Avenger stance! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly had meant every word. She had even developed a brief sketch of the break-off maneuver (it involved the AERODs because that is pretty much every advanced tactic with Vierge). The thought remains, a glittering glass-bead in the net of Elly's mind. It will be there when the day comes. That is the beauty of moving forwards: you don't lose anything, even if you're afraid you would.
Of course, much as fermentation can transform food, or decay can produce a vile poison, staying still has its own power as well.
The situation feels, somehow, NOVEL to Elly. In her desperate half-exhausted half-excited state, a liminal neurological zone, she can even almost quantify it. Despite the barrage that comes in from Stone - which Vierge reels back from, flits away from others, back-smashes one or two, and dissolves one etheric bullet by sheer countermanding will - the terror here is not for *Elly herself* - which feels somehow interior, like the feeling of your teeth or tongue - or for *Fei* - which has sat with her like something precious held close in the hand.
They're both in flying armored machines. Stone would probably ignore them if they left. They could ditch out in the ocean. There is peril but there is control. It is, somehow, "Elly van Houten" who is afraid for Billy. For the world. This is a specific and baroque cruelty that seems to press against some part of her. He is so dedicated to this, Elly thinks. What made him this way? Did something happen in Jugend? Are people like this? Is this, truly, part of the nature of the human soul - even if it may be the nadir?
AND MORE TO THE POINT, Elly tells Elly, ISN'T HE GOING TO DESTROY BILLY, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER?
Elly has a strange feeling in the back of her head, like she's trying to wiggle her ears. That's the best she can put her finger on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKpXpNLs9H0
Oh, Elly thinks, I launched the AERODs again--
-- Externally the six needles of scintillant light flick out, sparkling in the burning chaos that tends to surround any Gear battle. As flame ripples out from Eika, throwing herself before the attacks, Elly feels her eyes saccade, especially in the lefthand one, the place where Stone put blood in her eye.
Yeah, Elly thinks. It's an attack run. I shouldn't worry about - it - ah, Riesenlied's changing her form again -
Elly's awareness swims. Fortunately, something else happens. The AERODs sweep behind Weltall and seem to snap past the terrifying Gear's forearm, whicking away the shed armor plating. Are they going to put them back...? This is something Elly would probably like to think of, but you have to compromise some things somewhere.
The AERODs emanate electrical Ether, grasping the shards as they loop round. They form a sinuous S-curve, moving round at almost impossible angles -- until the point where the Bishop's rage works outwards, through the barrier. Because whether the Barrier around the machine are both offense or defense, the point remains that something has to emanate - there must be a point of junctional incompletion.
That's when the charge dissipates and the shrapnel goes BANG with a superheating emanating ray behind it, and the AERODS all but backflip their way back to Vierge. Elly will see it later, when she has another dream. She will probably not remember the dream once she awakens.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated a Force Action! GS: Elhaym van Houten spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Isaac Stein with AERODS! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's AERODS for 342 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Isaac Stein!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
Stein insists, again, that he 'saved' her.
The doctor's abject silence in the moments following may speak volumes for his opinion on that.
"...We must break that barrier," is his almost glacial remark to the others. No, he isn't even speaking to Stein as if he's there anymore. "If we are to defeat him, it must come down!"
He doesn't even remark on the subject of the fate of those who had been sent by the Ethos -- transformed by Krelian -- and sent back to be purged by the Ethos. It's an actual fact of the matter that something else that happens soon after that steals his attention.
Riesenlied screams, the transformation taking her over. He remembers, suddenly, what she had said about Krelian, his hand in her 'alteration' through Alhazred.
Then it is he who reaps the whirlwind.
Wind was never an area of expertise for him -- it was always an element with which Kahr had more affinity. It's common to think of fire as opposing water; this is not incorrect (nor is the other way around) but isn't it also the case that wind causes evaporation--
It's strange, sometimes, the things that comes to mind even as the body -- as the rest of his conscious awareness -- attempts to do what it can to prevent catastrophic damage from befalling his Gear.
That power... is no laughing matter, Citan thinks, his gaze skimming the damage reports as Heimdall rises, smoking from the damage rent across several points. Most of the others have had more fortune than himself, it seems. Yet, if this state of attrition continues...
Surely luck cannot hold forever.
And there are a few who seem to be far the worse for wear. Among them is...
Gwen's machine.
"Gwen! Here...!"
The very dust seems to dance about her Gear, gaining mass and solidity as it completes each revolution. A solid sheet of rock floats before her in the end, before sinking -- had it ever been real in a tangible sense -- into the body of her Gear, strengthening it.
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Gensoseii! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
The Firewheel intervenes. Billy releases a shuddering, ragged breath.
She rebukes him, correctly, but the tears still stream down his face. "...yes," he says, through gritted teeth. "Right." He grips the controls, his fingers firming up. Catenna's magic sooths his machine and his heart both; though, the net effect is he has enough energy left to be mad again. Ida calls out to him, and he grits his teeth, tension running through his body like a live wire. He pulls his twin handguns out of their holsters and levels both. He tries to form some thought, some retort, but they die in his throat. This man...
This man warped his entire life. Destroyed everything he was, and rebuilt something with poison in its heart. Fortunately, his shaking hands don't traverse into Renmazuo as he grasps the triggers.
And then: A streak of white in the sky, far off yet. "STEIN! You sick son of a bitch!"
AT THE ORPHANAGE:
Mamoru and the team stare off into the sky, watching the contrails of a machine now well on its way. "You think he'll be OK?" the brunette who handles the weathervane asks, fiddling with her glasses nervously.
Mamoru puffs up. "Of course! Today's launches...were perfect!"
But the dark-skinned girl who ran the systems check is chewing on her lip, and murmurs, "...I hope I'm wrong about what that Gear does, though..."
BACK AT THE FIGHT:
Jesiah Black grips the controls in the cockpit of an actually rather tiny, white and gold machine. Some kind of support Gear? It has no obvious special equipment. "I knew you were a motherfucker, but this is too much!"
GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Isaac Stein with Gear-Caliber Ether Magnum! GS: Disrupt expired! GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action. GS: Citan Uzuki heals Gwen Whitlock! She gains 400 temporary hit points! GS: Surge applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Sufferer! GS: Isaac Stein critically guards Billy Lee Black's Gear-Caliber Ether Magnum for 34 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'... I am sorry ... I am.'
"Wait, Riese! Noeline, can't you stop her?! I know I'm the biggest frickin' hypocrite but that's why I'm freaking out here!!" Gwen looks helplessly towards the transforming Riesenlied, in awe, but equally as scared for Riesenlied.
Somehow, seeing Noeline climb aboard her soothes Gwen's worries, finding Noeline's bond a sense of safety. ".... .... I should have trusted you from the beginning. I'm sorry," she says softly, a smile in her voice. In a normal circumstance, it would still be alarming, what with the glow in Riesenlied's throat and all, but Stein is far more worrisome in scale.
"....." 'They become them'.
--- OVER A DECADE AGO ---
"Why don't you come with me, Gwen? I could see if they'll take you too." Silas was packing his belongings into the black suitcase that was given to him, laying everything out for what felt like the fiftieth time on the small cot as the short Gwen watched.
She didn't want Silas to know she had been counting. With the duststorm outside it wasn't as if she could go out, even if she wanted to. "I told you, I ain't nun material. Besides, why would they take me in? You're the one with the ether gift."
The boy's eyes lit up. "They got stuff there, like, giant Gears, and technology! Stuff, like in November City, but instead of just bein' limited, it's everywhere! That's what the representative told me. I bet they'd have doctors that could cure your heart, just like she said they'd be able to cure my asthma! They'll get you a prosthetic, n' get your scars fixed. You wouldn't have to wear a scarf anymore!"
"..." Something tempts the girl in the beginning of the young boy's enthusiastic offer, but it hardens, in the end. "... I don't need to be fixed." Without another word, she stomps out- if there was a door to slam, she would have done it, just to show how angry she was. Even Silas....!
They made up later, of course, as childhood friends do. Silas went off, and tried to become an Etone. His 'gift', while impressive in the context of a tiny blip of a town that was better forgotten than encouraged, was weak compared to his mates. He was weak. He hated ARMs, he hated killing things. He cried. By the time Silas came back to Little Twister, Gwen was gone, having gone on her own journey.
When they would finally reconnect face to face, Silas was a big-bodied priest that was content to play with the orphans. Gwen would have gotten taller, would have survived beyond her years, all with the help of one of the same ARMs attached to her. Silas would bite his tongue, trying to keep from voicing his worry, afraid of what demons may attempt to reach into Gwen's very soul.
They came to grips eventually.
As friends do.
--- NOW ---
The words are meant for Billy, not Gwen. They're to rip into him and his sense of himself and his connections to everything, to snap shut this trail of revenge, all done by one man who was continually enabled by the actions of those who saw a benefit in what they would receive from him in return. There was no telling where someone like Gwen would end up.
But she's here now, a fact that is strengthened by Citan's healing.
"Billy, dunno who you are, but here! Everyone else, too!" Gwen latches a glowing ARM onto a wire in the Gear's dashboard, and the Gear carries it like a microphone, dispersing a gold glow over the field. "KICK HIS ASS!"
GS: Gwen Whitlock spends 1 Combo on Inspire! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Billy Lee Black with Bullets and Boons for All!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Riesenlied with Bullets and Boons for All!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Noeline with Bullets and Boons for All!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Bullets and Boons for All!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Catenna with Bullets and Boons for All!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Bullets and Boons for All!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Cover and Disrupt expired! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Catenna accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bullets and Boons for All! for 0 hit points! GS: Catenna activates Gwen Whitlock's Reload!! GS: Catenna gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bullets and Boons for All! for 0 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber activates Gwen Whitlock's Reload!! GS: Jacqueline Barber gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bullets and Boons for All! for 0 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Gwen Whitlock's Reload!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Ida Everstead-Rey's First Method - Steel Colossus Synchronization for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Lock State, and Shield applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Noeline accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bullets and Boons for All! for 0 hit points! GS: Noeline activates Gwen Whitlock's Reload!! GS: Noeline gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Billy Lee Black accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bullets and Boons for All! for 0 hit points! GS: Billy Lee Black activates Gwen Whitlock's Reload!! GS: Billy Lee Black gains a Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
The escalation continues. Were Isaac Stein a man in full grasp of his senses (...the senses other than 'angry'), he would better appreciate the mortal danger he's in.
The emergence of the Ley Dragon guided by a hand they love. The straightforward but effective technique of a tired but resolute mercenary. The ire of a woman whose power at her fingertips can already unmake so much within a flash of heat. The fury and righteousness of a determined woman with a virtuous soul to fight and protect no matter what form her heart makes her take. The depth of pain from a man who has had many lives' worth of it. The patient kindness of an encouraging alchemist. The tranquil serenity of a priestess with clarity of purpose and vision. The hungry amnesiac who nonetheless grasps at greater purpose with incredible strength. A woman whose existence walks between two worlds towards a shared path of something better for both. A kind soul who has never lost that part of herself across so many difficult lives and circumstances that challenged this. Also, a super courier.
Their struggles to fight, to support one another. With every issue one runs into trying to push through that barrier, Each one a greater whole that this man has... never been able to see, not in favor of--
That voice. Everything pauses in Stein's world just hearing that voice.
"Jesiah... is that you?" So deep in his rage, it nearly troubles him to think to ask. Nearly. How would he forget the sound of the voice of everything his tiny little world revolves around? Maybe he is just that much angrier that the real thing can't even live up to that picture. That he might hate the idea even more than-- "No. It's never enough," a pulse runs through the area, catching the Heimdall in a timely EMP wave. Citan and this monster are not strangers - this may be one of the few calculated actions left available to a man so lost to his feelings. And then, that feral howling. The rage of feeling something unfulfilled, even when everything he is fixated upon is right there.
The air shimmers, shakes, distorts... as light twists and bends, gravitic forces pulsing and threatening to tear so much inside out, rippling, twisting, crushing - as if a perversion of the forces Catenna herself has the ear of, hitting some soft limit of a physical law as everything grows heavier within the span of several seconds, and then not. This, combined with the pressure of the Etheric barrier...
Something has to give, and soon.
GS: Isaac Stein spends 1 Combo on Interrupt! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Citan Uzuki with EMP Burst! GS: Isaac Stein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Billy Lee Black with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Xantia with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Noeline with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Catenna with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Eika Zuse with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Lily Keil with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Riesenlied with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Leon Albus with Mass Limit! GS: Isaac Stein has attacked Isaac Stein with Mass Limit! DC: 4 turns have elapsed in the battle against Isaac Stein! 1 turns remain! GS: Catenna fully evades Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 0 hit points! GS: Catenna activates Arcane Font! GS: Catenna enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Isaac Stein accepts Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 39192 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 303 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lily Keil critically guards Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 49 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lily Keil gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Lily Keil activates Arcane Font! GS: Lily Keil enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 147 hit points! GS: Eika Zuse critically guards Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 50 hit points! GS: Eika Zuse activates Guard bonus! GS: Citan Uzuki takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's EMP Burst for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Citan Uzuki gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay and Jam applied to Citan Uzuki! GS: Citan Uzuki has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: Leon Albus fully evades Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Leon Albus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Leon Albus enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Weaken expired! GS: Riesenlied accepts Gwen Whitlock's Bullets and Boons for All! for 0 hit points! GS: Riesenlied activates Gwen Whitlock's Reload!! GS: Riesenlied gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Riesenlied guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 103 hit points! GS: Xantia fully evades Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 0 hit points! GS: Xantia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 195 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elhaym van Houten gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Riesenlied has activated a Force Action! GS: Noeline critically guards Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 92 hit points! GS: Noeline enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock critically guards Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 81 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Guard bonus! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 205 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font and Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
"Father!?" Billy yelps, as Jesiah's gear cruises in.
"Billy! I heard everything! ...one sec."
The Gear surges forward. If this were Jesiah himself, he'd be firing away with his shotgun by now, but instead, the small support machine makes a bee line for the battlefield, looping at a wide radius as it calculates its trajectory. "Stein, you miserable waste of carbon! You say you and Raquel were in love!? That anything you've ever done has any kind of purity to it!? You narcisistic bastard!"
Then, the small Gear shifts positions, its trajectory chosen. "Billy! Use this cannon! It'll rip right through the barrier if we sync the Ether accumulators! I'm gonna borrow your shoulder for a moment! Start aiming now!"
"Father...." Billy murmurs. He flicks a switch. Renmazuo has already received the mass and telemetry data for the docking. Now all he has to do is couple that into his aim. He swings the aiming mechanism in front of him.
"Billy..." Jessie says, suddenly intent, as the Gears crunch numbers. "You know by now, right? Everything Stein taught you was a lie. The Ethos...maybe even Granas itself, were comfortable lies meant to calm the hearts of the people. But that doesn't mean it was worthless. Faith and God aren't things others give you, Billy. You know that even better than I do. You taught me, after all. Faith...God...they're things you find within yourself, for yourself."
"....Father..." Billy breathes. Why...is he saying these things...
"Heh. Hell of a time for a pep talk, but hear me out. The reason I taught you to use a gun all those years ago, it was to save people. Have you ever looked at the face of a Reaper you've killed?"
Billy shuts his eyes briefly. Remembering.
"Being a Reaper is agony, Billy. Everything they do, they do to ease that pain. You and I both know that. And it's never enough. They eat people. Drink blood. And I guarantee you...every one of them looked like they were finally free. You brought those people peace, and you did it with that faith of yours. I don't know if I'd be strong enough to keep doing it. But you...you set them free. With that faith of yours. So don't let this numbnuts tell you it's not worth something!"
In his cockpit, Billy's eyes flutter open. "...Father. I understand. Although, uhm...the timing..."
Jessie laughs. "Hah! Maybe I had a few too many shots! Let's send this skeleton bastard to Hell! And Stein!"
The small machine slams down in front of Renmazuo. It's tiny, actually; next to Renmazuo, it looks like a child, and nearly totally unadorned. But its frame begins to shift, parrts realigning and limbs shifting until it is no longer a humanoid machine anymore.
It's a CANNON, a revolver-cylinder emerging from the stomach of the thing (...isn't that where the pilot would have to be...?) which interlocks onto the Renmazuo, and the larger Gear's arms swing up to support it, and grab a trigger mechanism sticking out from one side. "You keep my wife's name out of your mouth, you son of a bitch. Don't you dare forget! I'll burn it into your soul! You weren't ever even second best to Jesiah Blanc, leader of the Elements!"
Buntline's entire FRAME starts to glow a blazing, eye-searing white-gold. The barrel shines bright enough that flash protection dims the screens of Gears looking directly at the display.
"NOW!" Jessie roars. "Billy! You know what to do!"
Billy breathes: "Sinner...I return your hateful body to dust. May you find peace at God's side."
Just before the audio cuts out, Jessie cackles, "THOUGH I WOULDN'T BET ON IT!"
And then a bullet of raw Ether, condensed nearly beyond measurement, blasts out of the Buntline's cannon and soars to rip into the Alkanshel's barrier, clashing lights blotting out the sky.
GS: Billy Lee Black takes a solid hit from Isaac Stein's Mass Limit for 253 hit points! GS: Billy Lee Black enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Billy Lee Black has activated a Force Action! GS: Billy Lee Black spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Billy Lee Black has attacked Isaac Stein with Forbidden Ether Hyperaccumulation Gear Buntline - Jessie Cannon! GS: Billy Lee Black has gained 1 Combo! GS: Billy Lee Black has completed his action. GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Billy Lee Black's Forbidden Ether Hyperaccumulation Gear Buntline - Jessie Cannon for 336 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
There is a blinding, explosive force upon impact - the Alkanshel buckles as it makes impact. There is only silence beyond this explosion. No angry screaming, no cursing words - and then the air shimmers blue hues four times, each one with a noisy reverb of the air itself inverting and twisting... and releasing.
The Etheric readings disappear. The barrier is gone, and without that hatred...
What is there left of Isaac Stein beyond a withered husk sitting in wait for his end?
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"Is... that..." Citan utters as he catches sight of the Gear that alights on Renmazuo. "They... they actually built it. I... cannot believe-- Billy! While that Gear will likely allow you to break the barrier, you must--"
He never gets a chance to utter the rest of that sentence, which would have contained very important information. The EMP burst rips through the rather-less-than-shielded Heimdall, shorting out several critical systems. The Gear outright slumps, dropping to a knee.
But most essential of all: it completely shorts out Heimdall's communications.
"Billy! Billy, can you hear me!?"
It's no use. He can tell that there's nothing getting through: he can't transmit or receive transmissions. Which means that he's going to have to sit here and watch Billy--
"...No, if I can diagnose and route it around the damaged sectors..."
He unstraps himself from his seat. He's good, yes. But is he good enough to manage it in whatever little time he has available?
Sometimes, you have to try even so.
Judging from the systems that went down, the places where the shielding had been damaged, the overall wiring within the Gear... he has a good idea of what he can attempt (and hope he's right about it). He works quickly: there's no time to lose.
But... even so.
He can only watch as Renmazuo engages the support Gear, mere seconds after his communication regains function.
"....No! Billy! That Gear... it functions as an Ether Multiplier! But... but when pressed to its limit like that... it... consumes the life force of its pilot..."
GS: Delay expired! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Looking out over Saarda-Shanta's head and shoulders, Catenna watches as Jessie comes stomping onto the field. In a heartbeat, the focus of things shifts. Stein's hatred finds its focus, and the Moon Shaman can only close her eyes for a moment, shoulders sagging as she breathes a slow sigh.
Her instinct is to pity a sad, weak man. But it's misdirected.
She shifts her focus. Looks out towards Eika, towards Billy's machines, then up towards the open sky. Thinks for a moment about the likes of Rosaline Calice, of the thousands - more - whose lives have been shaped by the lies wrought by the sky people, by this man specifically.
The sheer force of Stein's hatred wreaks a physical toll on reality. The world ripples as gravity itself begins to distort. As the wave encroaches on Catenna, she doesn't change her expression, nor even Saarda-Shanta's course. All she says is a simple phrase.
"You have erred." She raises a hand.
A moment before the force of gravity collides with her, it's intercepted - and another wave pushes outward. It is not a wave of hate, but a wave of serenity. The power rolling from Stein's machine pushes back as the second wave of gravity radiates from Catenna, spilling across the landscape, settling things, stilling vibrating rocks and debris, settling churning terrain. The sky darkens wherever the wave passes, taking on the deep blue cast of a moonlit midnight, studded with a glittering canvas of stars.
Behind the spread wings of the Great Owl, another pair of wings open - a pair of enormous butterfly wings composed entirely of blue light. They part to expose a golden crescent moon, the spilling train of a dress.
<So you've made your decision, Shaman.> From her perch upon the arch of the moon, Celesdue holds her hand out behind Catenna and Saarda-Shanta, splayed fingers framing the pair. The voice is more felt than heard, and it radiates from two places: From the Guardian herself, and from the owl.
Catenna says nothing. She merely rises, balancing expertly atop Saarda-Shanta's back. The light shimmering from Celesdue pours forth in glittering blue-white motes, swirling around herself and the enormous white owl. Some of that light engulfs her hand even as she unshoulders her bow - a seemingly laughable weapon against something as huge and powerful as Stein's Gear.
The light distends and warps, taking the shape of a shining arrow. But still more dances outward. Sparks of it whirl and broaden and take the shape of floating crystals, hanging in the air around Alkanshel in utter defiance of gravity.
Catenna sets the arrow of light to her bowstring and tosses her hair back with a dramatic spill of curls. "You come into HER domain with nothing but your hatred," she says, her voice ringing. "But this is a domain of serenity - and it is not a place for someone who has done so much evil."
"Face the consequence of your poor coping mechanisms," she states, and moves her arm with a sharp snap.
A bolt of light flies from her bow - then another, then another, then another. Owl and rider soar through the midnight field as Catenna fires shot after shot through the hovering crystals, shattering each into blasts of light that rain towards Stein's machine. In the wake of Buntline's powerful shot, there's no barrier to tear down anymore. The attack comes as a wave of pure magical dispellation, a force that seeks to break down and whittle away what ether remains within Alkanshel and Stein himself.
Catenna glances towards Billy and bites down to her lower lip.
She fires her last arrow with a snap of her arm - and this one seems far more solid than the others, a ray of moonlight that slashes across the sky. It knifes towards Stein's machine, aimed at slashing through its bulk...
...and into its thruster assembly, to try and pin it in place.
Catenna closes her eyes, then opens them and looks to Eika. Then to Billy.
This justice is not hers to deliver.
GS: Catenna spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Catenna has attacked Isaac Stein with Material - Graceful Composer's Melody! GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Catenna has launched an attack Link! GS: Catenna enters the Avenger stance! GS: Catenna spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Catenna has attacked Isaac Stein with Butterflies Dance in the Moonlight! GS: Catenna has gained 2 Combo! GS: Catenna's Avenger stance ends. GS: Catenna has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Catenna's Material - Graceful Composer's Melody for 0 hit points! GS: Entangle applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Catenna's Butterflies Dance in the Moonlight for 303 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Leon Albus has posed.
Leon looks at Riesenlied -- and he feels more than a little worried to see the Ley Dragon. It takes a lot from her. But Noeline is there, with her, and he has faith that she will at least keep a close eye on her. His breath catches, for a moment, and he looks ahead.
Citan sounds icy. He can only guess to why.
The air shimmers -- and gravitational force slams outward, blowing Weglaff back once more. Leon grunts sharply, as he hits the ground, the Gear skidding over it. He shakes his head; the Gear stands back up. He watches the barrier come down, as that titanic shot hits the barrier -- and he glances at Citan's Gear. His eyes narrow, then widen. "Then--"
He swallows. "We have to make it count."
Weglaff hefts up the gatling cannon. He fires, shooting another long burst of rounds until the barrels rotate to an empty clacking noise. Weglaff throws the gatling cannon to the side, and the weapon rolls over the ground. The sword is gripped in both hands.
Weglaff charges forward -- and then slams its blade down, just as it ignites to a burning bright red-hot color, and tries to carve into the Gear.
GS: Leon Albus spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Leon Albus enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Formation! Leon Albus has attacked Isaac Stein with Lawnmower! GS: Leon Albus has launched an attack Link! GS: Leon Albus enters the Avenger stance! GS: Riesenlied has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
[ 4 ]
Riesenlied hears Jacqueline's voice through the distance, but feels her concern more than anything. She isn't certain, to be honest to herself, when she's in this form. When the Ley is rippling through her body, and she's using herself as a battery...
Such a form was not meant to be.
She does not have to see it, either, when Catenna bears the power of Lucadia to assist Eika and Billy; does her support mean nothing? It means a lot, she believes. It's a moment like this that people of disparate faith need to come together...
[ 3 ]
Xantia expresses her concern for her; does she know what she's doing? Sometimes, she isn't sure. She fears that she is like Stein, in a way -- who clearly grapples with a form that preys and amplifies upon his worst instincts.
Is she the same, the shadow of Krelian looming over them?
She hears something electronic yet familiar from within Ida's machine, she feels something familiar shifting and forming. Is someone there? She feels a pulse, a pulse alien yet familiar. The howl of a Cannon whose roar she has felt for a time...
And Elly has deployed those awe-inspiring weapons of hers, the AERODs, reminding her of when she first saw them shortly after their escape from the first Wayside. The enormous power the AERODs -- no, Elly herself -- exudes tingles, entwines around her for a moment... then escapes, out towards them. It is powerful.
[ 2 ]
Citan's urgent call to break the barrier reaches her -- the battle is lost if they are unable to do so. Leon's caution centers her, as he calls Stein out on selling his soul. Billy's anger ripples through her, as revelation comes after revelation... no one soul should have to stand up to this alone. But he doesn't, because Eika is here, knowing full well his pain.
Riesenlied doesn't really need to be in this heightened state to sense Lily's own flare of power; there is always something about that form, 'Omega' -- she hasn't ever seen her utilise it with Hellerune, but of course... she understands well the feeling of something primal flowing through her.
[ 1 ]
She senses Gwen's fear at what's happening, and struggles with her inability to soothe her directly; but it's Noeline who brings reassurance to Gwen, when she climbs aboard her. She focuses, but for a moment--
Thank you.
It's a powerful, empathic message; while she can't directly communicate that at the moment through her jaw, she tries her best. And in turn... she feels that ARM of Gwen's as the gold glow shrouds over her.
There's an awful -crunch- as the Alkanshel's power overflows and threatens to crumple them; but now protected, in this form, Riesenlied is able to better hold and even protect Noeline as she repels against that gravitic force with her own inner field.
But Jessie arrives on the scene, with a solution -- and a speech that reflects how she feels, too. Faith isn't something others give the people -- it's something that, as she once expressed to Yulie, originates from the people... for the people.
Then, a miracle happens-- the Buntline transforms, and a shot RIPS through the barrier and shreds through, the Etheric readings disappearing.
But Citan comes with bad news -- the Ether consumes the life force of its pilot. Then... then Billy's father?
... she has to sense him. She has to try. But right now... they have something to finish...
In the interstice of their consciousnesses, she feels Noeline's own assault upon the Gear more than she sees it, as her partner's form flickers out and she starts to track her through her mind's eye instead.
There's a strangely comforting feeling, she thinks for a moment, when their consciousnesses are melding, when physicality isn't exactly defined through rigid means for them, when she can hear Noeline telling her
I have you
and realise she's hearing it from her heart, from the sensations all over her, rather than have to rely on her ears.
She embraces her, and her in turn; and that empowers her.
She arches her draconic head forward, descending next to the Hellerune where she can sense Lily through the black, customised Gear she's grown to know over time.
Lily... Noeline... I will... combine my power with you.
[ 0 ]
-Unleash-
AT first, there is little but a gentle streak of light. Beautiful white light, indistinguishable from a ray of invigorating sunlight. quiet and gentle, it heralds a calm before the storm--
-tttTHHHOOOOMMMMmmm-
--the light EXPANDS with a deafening, plosive thunderclap. The white-hot Anima Flare explodes outward from the Dragon's jaw, coning outward with inexorable force! around the Gear's very vicinity, a chain of smaller, blue spherical Ley-explosions setting each other one after the other.
It's not easy to sustain such force, the Dragon visibly recoiling and losing altitude mid-flight from her own exertion. The Ley was never meant to be expelled outward in one foul burst such as this. In her exhaustion, she ponders if those exploiting her are smirking somewhere, seeing their handiwork fight each other...
... but what of Billy's father, Jessie? Rendered weak from the Ley emanation, all she can do is set her expanded consciousness adrift to find them ... she does not want to lose another soul today.
GS: Riesenlied spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Riesenlied has attacked Isaac Stein with Shimmer! Our Anima Flare! GS: Shield and Stagger expired! GS: Riesenlied has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Leon Albus's Lawnmower for 400 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Riesenlied's Shimmer! Our Anima Flare for 340 hit points! GS: Leon Albus spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Leon Albus has attacked Isaac Stein with Superheated Blade! GS: Slow expired! GS: Leon Albus has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Hellerune slows, and slows. The black Gear comes to a total stop, as gravitic force creaks all around it. Plates begin to buckle, its form to hunch over, but within, Lily opens her dark eyes. There is a shimmering force that extends from all around her, and a violet aura surrounds Hellerune, counteracting the gravity that acts on the Gear. The barrier is still too much, though--the Gear is clearly disabled, only spared through raw magical force on the part of its pilot.
But Jessie... Lily doesn't know him that well, but she can see a father talking to his son like a son.
The barrier disappears. Lily feels the oppressive pressure drop in an instant. But a different kind of pressure beckons; Citan's words about what that Gear does... "Right," she echoes Leon. "We have to make it count."
Riesenlied's voice reaches out to her, and it is easy for her feelings to reach Lily in this state; the sorceress closes her eyes, and focuses. "Right. I'll go with you."
There--an orb of magical force coalesces out of the air, purple and gray and white. Another, and another, each starting to shimmer darkly with Etheric power. Each rises, floating around the gathering force that the Ley Dragon channels, chaining together. The air around each goes quiet and still, despite the raging forces all around this particular battlefield. There is nothing of the Ley in this power, though; magic crackles through it, volatile and barely contained.
Riesenlied's anima flare erupts outward, and this sets off a chain reaction with the dark power Lily has gathered. Each of those orbs of force expands and contracts suddenly, imploding in photonegative colors and then exploding with sorcerous might, warping ground and ending air. It is as if the Ley Dragon's power casts a colossal shadow over the land, and over Stein's Gear--dark and all-consuming.
GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: Lily Keil spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Isaac Stein with Gloomhammer! GS: Slow expired! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
And now Fei only feels pity. The rage couldn't outlast it, however mighty the rage must be. He sees Isaac for what he is. Not just a man who lost his way to jealousy and spite, but a man whose grudge was fed over and over and over again by Solaris. Not strictly any single Solarian, maybe not even Krelian himself, but the very bloody system of what makes Solaris Solaris. The entitlement, the understanding that you deserve what you are owed, all blessings should be handed to those of the Gazel. Power. Power beyond everything. Power beyond power itself. And no matter how powerful you are--
--you simply are a small cog, or a big cog. But a cog all the same. And Fei understands that even the way Ramses would like to do things, in this case, however much more fair it might seem.
All it will do is make more cogs.
The one blessing behind all this is that maybe Billy and Jessie can reunite properly once more, that maybe they can at least begin to repair the damage this man has done to their family. Perhaps one day. One day.
The barrier is gone. Power crashes against Fei Fong Wong but it is not a power beyond Fei Fong Wong. Not yet. Whatever Grahf gave this man, it is not enough. Not yet. The demon isn't drawn out just yet. They aren't unified just yet. Not today.
But even so he gestures forward with Weltall's hand, as silent as space and punches forward.
And a black hole erupts out of Fei's fist. Bursts of open space crackle around the impact of Fei's fist with each strike, more little holes to nowhere that light cannot escape. They fade quickly before swallowing the mech hole, but the gravitational pull no doubt does terrible things to the contents of the machine.
"Is this what I'm like... when I'm him...?" Fei murmurs. "Am I so... pathetic... as this?"
GS: Fei Fong Wong has activated a Force Action! GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Isaac Stein with Hand of the Event Horizon! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Slow expired! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Eika Zuse has posed.
Water showers down around the (rolling, currently-flaming-thrustering) Firewheel. Eika cannot see the source, and if it was natural water she probably would not even notice it at all.
Catenna's water is different. It doesn't steam; it mixes with the flame somehow, blending in. It can't repair the hole in Firewheel's side but it can maintain the power levels that were dropping moments ago; it can stabilize the heat output from the side thrusters; Eika can even feel it inside. She thinks it is some kind of Ether. Foreign religion doesn't occur to her.
But curled up in Firewheel she is blind. She feels Firewheel hit *something*, feels it start to give as it grinds against it; she pushes harder with her feet to hold herself still in the cockpit seat, bracing. Firewheel spins against the shield, vibrating more intensely and setting the whole cockpit to bouncing.
The shockwave - pressure, non-pressure, pressure again - is enough for Eika to put Firewheel in reverse. She backs off from Alkanshel, just in time for a massive bolt of Ether (courtesy Buntline) and a dragonblast from Riese to go over her... well, it's not really a 'head' on Firewheel, but above it while it's rolled up. She hears Citan's words, but they don't make sense, not for a moment. What support unit? She needs to *see*.
That is enough to convince Eika to unroll, to get Firewheel back to its feet. Able to see again, Eika immediately goes back on the attack; she drives one shield up toward Alkanshel's front, still superheated around the edges from the venting thrusters.
It vents again, discharging plasma at close range, a sudden gout of flame and pressure. That alone would be a reasonable attack, but Eika follows it up with a series of rapid-fire strikes. There is no grace. There is no finesse. There is mostly just pummeling as Eika uses the immense weight of Firewheel's shields like bludgeons, crushing and smashing her way through.
She does not give Stone any kind of last rites or even a last word. He doesn't deserve it, she thinks, and even if he did Billy handled it. He deserves nothing but death. After everything he did - to the Etones, to Billy's family, to everybody else - she can't bring herself to feel anything but intense satisfaction.
Eika might feel guilt for that satisfaction, later. But right now she only feels that the world will be, somehow, improved by this.
GS: Eika Zuse spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Eika Zuse has attacked Eika Zuse with Inferno Vent! GS: Eika Zuse has launched an attack Link! GS: Eika Zuse enters the Avenger stance! GS: Eika Zuse accepts Eika Zuse's Inferno Vent for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Eika Zuse! GS: Eika Zuse has activated a Force Action! GS: Eika Zuse spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Eika Zuse has attacked Isaac Stein with Steel Storm! GS: Eika Zuse has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Leon Albus's Superheated Blade for 480 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Lily Keil's Gloomhammer for 474 hit points! GS: Dispel! Mighty and Surge removed! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Hand of the Event Horizon for 486 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Eika Zuse's Steel Storm for 510 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia missed much of what went on behind her, but it tends to be rather hard to miss when Jessie Black starts yelling. Or... Jesiah Blanche, is it...? She frowns to herself and isn't completely sure why.
This almost immediately stops mattering. Because whatever it is that Billy and Jessie's combined Gears just fired... it's down. The barrier is down. It only takes a second to process, and Xantia needs no further prompting. Silvestris's tail crackles dangerously as energy is redirected to the most powerful weapon in its arsenal. Xantia felt pretty sure that this would be useless against the barrier, but now that there's an open and clear shot--
"...I'd say something like 'it's over', but everything was already over for you long ago, when you decided to only live for hate's sake. So why even say anything except... Hi-Voltage Cannon, fire!"
On command, a massive amount of electricity is focused into a single concentrated beam, lancing out from the emitter at the tip of the skeletal Gear's tail. Xantia isn't quite sure where to aim in order to do the most damage... but that won't matter if she hits most of it, will it? It only takes a subtle adjustment to move the beam's targeted position from the bottom-left to the top-right as it's firing, dragging searing heat across the Alkanshel's surface in the process.
And in doing so, while watching her own handiwork as well as others', she feels... absolutely nothing. She doesn't realize it in the moment. But at some point in the future, she may think back to this as yet another one of those disturbing instances in which her emotions just... stopped.
GS: Xantia has activated a Force Action! GS: Xantia has activated a Force Action! GS: Xantia spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Xantia has attacked Isaac Stein with Hi-Voltage Cannon! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
It would be easy to miss something as small as a human falling from one's Gear. They are small, and a Gear is very big - from this height, it's easy to overlook them. But Jacqueline is, as ever, attentive. Which means she is keenly aware the moment Catenna falls.
"Catenna!" Jacqueline shouts, surprised. The Jaeger turns, and Jacqueline quickly goes over a series of moves in her head, trying to think of a way to catch her safely...
...but thankfully, in the end, she doesn't need to, because there is someone there for her. Jacqueline lets out a relieved sigh and leans back in her chair, a smile crossing her face.
"Nice save." She says.
And someone arrives on the scene - someone that makes Stein rage even further. In his rage power rips through the battle field, manifesting in the form of gravitic forces that threaten that threaten to condense the Jaeger into nothing. With a grimace, Jacqueline flips all the switches she can, hits every button.
"Come on...! Hang in there, just a little longer...!" Jacqueline entreats the machine. There is the whining of stressed steel... but soon enough, it relents, as someone makes their move. Billy fires, and the barrier is torn apart, and with it gone the Jaeger is able to stand once more.
"Nice shot!" Jacqueline compliments. And Catenna! Bringing the power of Celesdue down upon the Alkanshel - piercing it with an arrow, to render it vulnerable. "Good work! I won't let this opportunity you've given us go to waste. Everyone - let's put an end to this!"
With that the Jaeger puts away its side-arm, drawing out its combat rod. Within the cockpit, Jacqueline draws out a Crest Graph and slots it into the console in front of her. The screen ahead of her lights up, displaying the symbols of Wing and Muse as electricity courses down the rod.
Like a conductor's baton, the Jaeger swings the rod. With its motions, lightning bursts into existence around the Alkanshel follow the gesture, gradually forming a web of electricity that surges around the machine. And then, with one final thrust of the rod a single bolt of lightning erupts forth, detonating all of it in a powerful burst.
GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Isaac Stein with Dynamic Sorcery! GS: Weaken expired! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Noeline has posed.
Noeline can feel the clamour of voices around them - Stein's most of all, his screeching like a set of claws scraping across the chalkboard of her attention span. To her mind, currently shared with Riesenlied and not totally able to pick out the different sensations she can feel, the rest of the world is in varying shades of light - but the man piloting the massive Gear is like a discordant note and a burst of static, hazy and dissonant.
She hangs onto the Ley Dragon, even if she doesn't strictly need to. She knows full well that Riesenlied would never let her fall, but remaining in contact helps her maintain their link, while also providing her a physical sensation to focus on, to be better able to tell where one of them ends and the other begins while keeping them together.
Around her like a corona, the shimmering of the Ley is shot through and tinged with blisters of shadowy off-colour, the edges of it peeling away like smoke and then reforming as she marshals her power. It twists for a moment as Citan reveals the secret of the Buntline, and there's a low, drawn-out, wordless noise of quiet and controlled anger at everything they've witnessed.
There is no more than that, though; she marshals it down, too absorbed in acting as Riesenlied's anchor to want to jeopardise that with some unnecessary anger. "No," she says instead. It takes her a little while to answer Fei, having to pick apart her voice and Riesenlied's, to not respond with a roar of a Dragon. There is a lot more she could say to add to that, that much is clear - but perhaps, for the time being, the note of certainty in her voice will be enough.
She chuckles afterwards. "It's alright," she adds to Gwen, even if her attention is only half-there. "I am fairly guilty of the same thing, after all."
Riesenlied rears in the Hellerune's direction as the countdown nears its climax, and Noeline automatically reaches forwards with her power. She's done this before; synchronized with Riesenlied to direct the both of their power, to combine it into the twin stars of ley and sorcery. The whole idea is to try to do so again--
--but working with the force of Riesenlied's anima flare is like trying to direct a raging waterfall, and she grimaces with the effort of trying to do so, nearly pitching sideways before she manages to summon enough control. The power of Duras Drum ripples outwards, tearing at the barrier, the fundamentally indirect sorcery trying to tear open a path for the attack.
Then Lily's power adds to the cacophony, and the surge is enough that all she can do is let the energies combine, loosing the energy to let it twist and surge around the paired assault.
GS: Noeline spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Formation! Noeline has attacked Isaac Stein with Hesperos - The Evening Star! GS: Noeline has gained 1 Combo! GS: Noeline has launched an attack Link! GS: Noeline spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Noeline has attacked Isaac Stein with Let the Two Stars now Gather! GS: Noeline has gained 1 Combo! GS: Noeline has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The AERODs dock again and Elly has the faint feeling that perhaps she shot too early. It is subtle, of course - and perhaps cued by the arrival of the Buntline. Her eyes widen as she draws Vierge up to gain altitude, face flushing with both acceleration and with subtle embarrassment at this argument.
And yet, somehow - - somehow it's a warm feeling.
For all his grimness and forboding and many, many cusses, Jesiah cares for his son, and for his wife's memory.
So much, in fact, that -- "That's even possible?" Elly answers Citan in a small voice, before-- the entire world flashes white, so white that Vierge's camera software adapts, reducing everything to a blurry, staticky low-resolution gray frame of radar-indicated polygons before slowly returning color... this is when Leon gives his instruction, clear and unambigious. When Riesenlied and the others take their stab. Can she do less? Can she live with herself if she did.
Elly swings down the rod, gathering Ether into the amplifier even as the AERODS gather their force anew, in case there is a final effort, or a surprise assault... Vierge hovers, more or less still, because it can only hold so much power. She hears a question from Fei, and she adjusts her comms to answer him.
"No," Elly transmits to Fei:
Even as a cube one meter square on each side flies forwards, tumbling through the air, a simple platonic solid which starts out as a faint red transparency and is burning like a tiny sun once it reaches Stone's Gear. (Elly aims low, in case, perhaps, they can learn things from the cockpit. Who knows.)
As the cube ruptures, and the fire is released, Elly finishes her thought:
"... just, hurt."
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Isaac Stein with Thermo Cube! GS: Weaken expired! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Xantia's Hi-Voltage Cannon for 503 hit points! GS: Jam applied to Isaac Stein! GS: Quick applied to Xantia! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Dynamic Sorcery for 386 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Noeline's Hesperos - The Evening Star for 362 hit points! GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Noeline's Let the Two Stars now Gather for 371 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Cube for 475 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The Dragoon's head cranes up as Jessie Black makes his dynamic entrance. Its cameras track the tiny Gear, and Ida immediately becomes tremendously worried for both Jessie's safety and Billy's stability. She feels it distantly, a dull tightening around a tiny heart in the center of her chest. "Mister Black," Ida says. Her voice is equal parts synthesized purity and throaty rasp. "Your timing is impeccable."
He's not here for no reason. Ida might not be able to pull Stein's attention from his mortal enemy, but she damn well tries. The Dragoon darts in between Alkanshel and the tiny form of Buntline, raising its cannon again. If he looks down the barrel, Stein can see a blue-white glow emanating from deep within the gun, like a tiny star kept in a bottle.
Predictably, Stein goes utterly berserk. "Doctor!" Ida shouts, as Heimdall eats that EMP blast--but then Stein gives her something else to worry about. Thanks to the Dragon-Spine Uplink and its nervous tissue, the Dragoon is functioning as an extension--an expansion--of Ida's own body. As gravitic pressure builds, and the machine's damage sensors scream warnings, Ida feels like she's being crushed. The Dragoon sinks to a crouch, then takes a knee, its whole frame groaning as it struggles against the gravitic wavefront. Some of the damaged plates pull free, and crumple instantly into rough-hewn spheres. With what little control she has over her own body, Ida bites the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. It feels like she's being skinned.
But she's still standing when the storm abates. She rises, shakily, growing steadier as the golden glow builds around her machine. "Gwen," Ida chokes out, her voice still that odd raspy-synthesized duet. It's like two Idas are speaking at once. "Thanks." The Dragoon regains its sense of balance as it rushes across the field, moving to try and cover the fallen Heimdall. While she can't help but worry a little about Citan, she knows he's resourceful enough to get out of this one. As she takes aim, she listens to father and son as they take the first steps towards reconciliation. Jessie's words reach more than just his son--Ida thinks back to what she told Liath, not that long ago.
She doesn't know if she believes in God. She certainly doesn't believe in the same God she believed in as a child. But she knows that despite all the horror and cruelty in the world, she still has her faith. "Jessie," she says, one-half of her voice choking up. "Thank you."
Buntline fires. Ida's vision dulls as the Dragoon's flash-protection sensors kick in; she feels the rush of Ether as a hot screeching in the back of her mind. Citan switches back on, panicked. "What--?!" Horror creeps into Ida's voices. Oh. Oh no. That was why he was so distressed. The Dragoon's eyes flash again, the glow intensifying. Horror meets with grim, determined resolve, and loses. "Then we'll simply have to make it count."
The Dragoon's power systems haven't been idle this entire time. Deep within the Three-Dragon Cannon's firing chamber, three types of Dragon Filaments work in tandem. Pyro Filaments superheat the air until gas becomes ionized plasma. Electro Filaments form a tight magnetic bottle around that plasma, keeping it from pouring free prematurely. Cryo Filaments act as a cooling system, keeping the gun from melting itself to slag. Ida raises the gun to her shoulder like an oversized rifle. She takes aim at center-mass, like her mother taught her.
"Die alone, afraid, and unmourned," Ida whispers. She pulls the trigger.
One part of the magnetic bottle extends, stopping just beyond the Three-Dragon Cannon's muzzle. That end weakens to nothingness, creating an opening for the plasma--which roars out of the weapon, a brilliant torrent of blue-white radiance. Ida focuses, as she does, the flame grows brighter, hotter. A feverish heat grows in her belly as more systems scream about everything overheating. Ida ignores the sensation.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Isaac Stein with Three Dragon Cannon - Breath Of The Sun! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Three Dragon Cannon - Breath Of The Sun for 414 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"I owe you that and more," Gwen says, at Ida's thanks. "I'm just glad we're back to fighting on the same side, as it should be."
She still feels guilt, even now, even after they've gone through a hell dimension on a train, even.
The barrier and Citan's armor enhancement catches the brunt of Stein's next attack, Gwen weathering through it with a few nervous glances to her dashboard. "Doin' a lot better than I thought I'd be, thank goodness."
Gwen doesn't hear Riesenlied's message as much as feels it; the fact that Riesenlied can convey it is evidence enough that she's not lost to whatever negative emotion might be present. "Riese, you can thank me when we're done. I figure I might need to thank you guys anyway. And yeah, I guess there's worse things to be guilty of, haha."
It's when Gwen realizes that she doesn't hear her voice on the intercom, or anyone else's, that the EMP blast had temporarily damaged her communication link.
She does something else, to compensate: the Halcyone's trio of fingers used their limited dexterity to create a facsimile of a thumbs up to Noeline and Riesenlied.
She's not the only one that is affected by it, it seems. "...... Guardians.... That..."
Leon's words and tone carry the weight better than anything Gwen could say, while keeping them on track. "Copy that, Leon," Gwen coms in, solemnly, in solidarity with Lily. There's a breath on the channel, as the courier tries to think of some pithy quip to say. She just takes her finger off the com trigger instead, leaving her next sentence for her benefit alone. "Let's hope that guy's badass enough to tell the Grim Reaper to screw off."
With the barrier down and a full-on charge in play, Gwen joins in, brandishing two spears, the attaching chains of which she swings around, once, building momentum to crash them down on the Alkanshel. It's an awkward tactic, but it definitely works as the Halcyone twirls in that midair 'leap'.
Gwen has enough sense to not even say what name she's given to it, not even ironically.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isaac Stein with Gwen Reaper! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Isaac Stein takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Gwen Reaper for 368 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isaac Stein has posed.
When the barrier falls, so too does the wrath of all those who carry their own indignation for this man and everything he stands for. If he could hear, if he could listen, he might have gotten all he could want even with his hated enemy's seeming last words he could not respond to. He is here to bear witness to the man he hates so much, dash himself against his hatred and be unmade.
He can no longer suffer, if he is gone. If Stein won, he has lost. He has not uttered a peep since the Buntline fired - but does he have anything of value to say?
Catenna's mastery of the force of gravity, even from something as small in comparison as the human body, stands equal - or greater - than the waves expressed by the emotional tantrum of Stein, where even his machine starts to buckle from the stresses. The serenity of the moon stabilizes these forces, overcoming a grisly, crushing end that could have awaited - and as Catenna takes the power of the moon itself in hand, in a way casting a shadow, a presence nearly as great to behold even in subtlety. Moonlight cleanses.. and one last arrow tears forth through the machine, motes of blue flitting from entry and exit.
Leon takes stock of it and acts accordingly - they have to make it count. The red-hot gatling cannon does not let up until it has nothing more to give. Thrown aside, it clatters off the bulbous lower half of the unprotected giant Gear as he takes the sword in hand. Burning bright and re-dhot, he cleaves a path into the Gear with an explosion where it cleaves.
Having prepared herself for the inevitable from the countdown from five, Riesenlied combines her power with those she truly trusts, white light of the purest Ley pouring forth from the Ley Dragon's jaw to the trail of blue explosive lights, testing one of Krelian's finest experimental works up against yet another project - her inner thoughts on the irony and utterly twisted idea that those responsible for these horrors are just... all for watching an irreplaceable experiment take on another, as if both were expendable. But no, she herself beyond the alterations of her shell is not.
Lily moves in with Riesenlied and Leon, the Hellerune bringing forth their own force, their own colors to stand against the almost-infrared hatred that has since disappeared. The dark power she commands, however strange it is against the backdrop of reality, need not play nice with any of it in the pursuit of utterly annihilating the 'Alkanshel' in its moment of vulnerability. Working with the Ley Dragon's light, the conflicting forces expand and envelop in inverted light to consume. Several layers of armor plating disintegrate.
Fei has a moment of self-reflection about the nature of being so consumed by rage when another part of himself gets to be out there and be eaten by said rage (and then do the eating). A fist snaps forth to create a vacuum, shearing forth further weakness from the hull of the rapidly collapsing 'Alkanshel.' Fei can watch it unravel, bit by bit, piece by piece. Big cogs, small cogs. They were metaphors in his mind, but here, all the pieces of this thing within reach of his fist... they're being torn out. Turn out like it should. This is a terrible machine, made by a terrible machine.
Eika foregoes any fanciness, any compassion. The Firewheel vents as the representative of her personal feelings through the language of Gear-to-Gear combat, and just goes at it. Sometimes, there needs no further ceremony - no matter what form her feelings may take, or what form she takes when her heartbeat responds to these feelings, she earns that satisfaction by knowing she is living up to the stated mission of the Etones. An atoner of sin, to deal with the greatest of sinners the gathered here may ever know. The Firewheel makes the 'Alkanshel' look a lot less like itself with every moment.
Why even say anything except... Hi-Voltage Cannon, fire? The Hi-Voltage Cannon sure has plenty to say (mostly buzzing) as it beams and cuts through diagonally, bottom-left to top-right, cleaving out a clean opening for further tearing, further destroying. It should be a relieving thing, to be able to take that straightforward sledgehammer of overbearing strength where one can do good, and achieve good... but no matter how she feels, it's not an effort that will come up empty in this bid to do away with Stein.
Jay is a woman of incredible compassion and patience, for all she has experienced and seen in her short life - and she has never lost any iota of it. Even now, it is not 'kill Stein' or 'make him suffer.' It is 'end this,' and it is a chapter that needs ending - putting forth her Crest Sorcery mastery through the novel technology that gives it power at greater scale, lightning wraps around the machine and sets sparks surging through where there are already multiple weaknesses within the deadly machine. It erupts, and so much shorts out and explodes.
Noeline joins the power of a Guardian who has continued to go along with all of this, Duras Dram's power stripping away any residual power that might yet stand to resist all of this as she addresses this not with the grim understanding of the need to put something to an end, but good humor with Gwen about what she's doing alongside those she trusts most. Together, she combines powers to even greater, more explosive effect that defy color and sound.
Elly directs the cubic expression of fiery Ether down towards the base of the great floating weapon, its internal temperature enough to send warnings running through the sensors of any nearby Gears as to what lies within when it goes off and expands within, melting and disintegrating so much of the onboard weapons or whatever's left under there. It is unthinkable to believe it could remain airborne after that.
The Dust Dragoon combines the three Dragon Filaments together to a single, common shared purpose by its master - to make it count. Too many have given their lives just for the satisfaction of a monster that can never find it, or have it. Flame burning white-hot power threatens to consume before it even leaves where it is coming from, discharging and consuming Stein's Gear with further fury to match what once was there.
Gwen delivers prompty when the opportunity arrives, as the Halcyon takes to the air with the help of swinging around by two chains, working with some of the previous damages - such as the lacerations made by Xantia's Gear - in order to start pulling apart what hasn't been melted, unmade, or otherwise deeply inconveniened with a voided warranty (all of it is void now).
Together, even being given the news by Citan about the cost this last gambit has, none of them let Jesiah's name be anything but that of a man who gave his all through difficult circumstances, to do what he could to make things right that could not be accomplished easily. (He might have stood do have found somewhat gentler ways to do this, but now is not the time to criticize.)
Stein does not even so much have a voice to speak, scream, or wail any more as the 'Alkanshel' explodes and falls apart, bit by bit, until nothing is left. (Fei will never be able to say whether or not he got his final screaming death throes correct.)
A hateful body has been returned to dust. Whether peace will be found at anyone's side... that is no longer any of their concerns, as only the open air, smoke, and flame remain in a quieting battlefield.
GS: Isaac Stein has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! DC: 5 turns have elapsed in the battle against Isaac Stein! No turns remain! Time has expired! The battle is over!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
Ida's Dragoon interposes between the incapacited Heimdall and Stein's monstrosity, a fact of which Citan is silently grateful as he struggles to get his Gear into a reasonably functional state again--
Though truth be told, he's focusing more on the communications system than he is on anything else... for reasons that quickly become terribly apparent.
In the end, it seems he's too late, but it is at least a sacrifice that isn't made in vain: the rest of them give Stein everything he's got and eventually, the machine and pilot alike are rendered into so much dust.
Citan is hardly sorry to see either of them go.
"Billy... I am sorry. If only I had never designed such a thing..." he says at length, setting aside his tools within the cockpit. The rest of the repairs can wait. Today he's lost an old friend.
<Pose Tracker> Billy Lee Black has posed.
Billy gets Citan's transmission AFTER he pulls the trigger.
He watches, something horrible choked in his throat as the Alkanshel, shucked of its invincible shell, is revealed and then almost as swiftly, annihilated. He watches it burn.
Buntline unceremoniously decouples from Renmazuo and then falls to the ground with a clatter. "FATHER!!" Billy screams, scrabbling at the harness holding him into his seat.
And then the hatch on Buntline's side pops open, and an extremely alive Jessie Black tumbles out, slumping roughly against the side of the sizzling machine.
"Hyuga Ricdeau!" he yells, shaking his fist in the direction of Heimdall. "Your damn machine saved my boy's ass, so you get off this time! THIS time!" He reaches into his jacket, produces a flask, and proceeds to swig it for, like, literally twenty seconds.
"Ether Centupler, my bright red ass," he grouses afterward. "Had to limit the damn thing so it didn't suck out my whole damn soul!"
Billy...collapses back in his chair, laughing near-hysterically. "I think..." he manages, putting a hand to his head as it throbs from stress.
"I think it's alright, now, Doctor."
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
There is a very, very long moment of silence from Citan after these events transpire.
Then:
"It... it certainly seems so..."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Why... did Doc invent something like that?
Fei is about ten percent the way there thinking there might be more to Citan than meets the eye (that Citan didn't already tell them) but don't worry, 9 or so more instances of this and Fei might start to wonder about Citan. As it is now, he just sort of lets the thought float off untethered to anything.
Instead both Noeline and Elly have the same answer: No. And he tries to foucs on that. And the follow up from Elly.
He exhales out a long soft sigh.
"It's over." Fei says.
"...Elly, let's... not destroy an entire religion again."
Weltall flumps over on its butt but good luck sticking to that promise Fei.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Vierge - which has managed to exhaust 86% of its fuel desperately throwing everything at this damnable enemy Gear - lands again.
And sinks into a crouch.
Elly slumps in her seat, heartsick for a moment. That weapon... is such a thing possible? Did *DR. UZUKI* make it? Surely he must have just... been on the team, Elly thinks, desperately. A spinoff or something, not...
And then the voice speaks up on the intermech transmitters.
Elly lets her forehead rest on the Gear's front panel. (Some lights flash on and off
harmlessly, but they don't put the gun buttons there for exactly this reason.)
"... yes... I think that's a good idea... though, I suppose this one's hardly our doing..."
"... Fei... I think we need to rest, but... when you're ready, I meant what I said."
Elly doesn't follow up on that, thinking for moments of the Wolves, the Caravan Kinship, of Noeline and Riesenlied, of Eika, of owls, and of Billy.
"..." But then she falls asleep, quietly, for a few desperately needed minutes.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The Halcyone lands messily in the after math, one digitigrade leg nearly giving way as the rest of the Gear's body presses its weight against it. Managing to settle it into a stable position, the cockpit's shield flips up, revealing Gwen's concerned face. "Everyone okay?!" She scans everyone's faces, then settles on Jessie's face.
".... Well, you certainly look the part of a man who'd tell the grim reaper to screw off," she says, a smile snaking on her lips. "It'd be a bad ending to this story if you died along with Bi- I mean, Stone."
She slumps back in her chair, closing her eyes as she hears Fei's words to Elly. "I wonder... The Etones were not the entirety of the Granas religion, so I don't think you guys killed anything. Just a parasite feedin' off of it." She opens her eyes and rises from her seat. "To think, that so much..." She trails off, seeing Elly has fallen asleep. "I forgot, you guys went through all those ruins. I got a stash of energy bars n' the like for anyone not conked out. Ain't much, but maybe it's enough."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida watches Stein and his machine burn, her lips curled in a grim, satisfied smile. It doesn't show on the Dragoon's face, of course, but it does in its body language--the machine visibly sags, which Gears are not known to do. Steam rises from the Dragoon's vents, which have flared wide open to relieve the strain on the Gear's systems.
That odd, humanlike quality stays in the Dragoon's movements as it turns to Renmazuo, and takes a knee. It sets its smoking cannon to the side, clenches its right fist, presses it to its chest. Citan's words are like a knife in its pilot's heart. "Billy." Again, half of Ida's voice is choked, the other half synthetic. "God, I'm sorry--" He screams for his father. In the cockpit, tears slide down Ida's cheeks.
And then Buntline's hatch pops open, and out pops Jessie Black, very alive and drinking and cursing out Citan. The Dragoon slumps forwards, catching itself with both hands. Damaged plating groans. Ida laughs, the sound raspy and streaked with static. "You bastard," she whispers. "Let me--" Pause. "...Damnation. Gwen, I... I think you might need to cut me out. Don't worry, I have bolt cutters."
...Bolt cutters?
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"...." Gwen blinks. ".... did you meld with your Gear or somethin', Ida? That's... okay, I'm not gonna lie, that's pretty cool! Let's see if I can get you out, then."