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Priscilla     There's only really one place left to go, on this perplexing perigrination of pepto pink parks and palisades punctuated by paler pink pedestrial pathways, perfectly pointless to both purifying purposes and its perpertually pathetic people permeated with pressurized poison.

    To the final cardinal direction that the city of Bismark seems to think so important, the east, you run across the tall, heavyset, single piece arches of modern construction without any real modern sensibilities, where giant blocky pink buildings have been arranged and 'voxel sculpted' in very low resolution to look moderately fancier than the other various rectangles of buildings so far. The weirdly old-timey (plastic) wooden sign marks it as the Residential District, but accordingly, due to nobody here being a resident, the thick arches are blocked off by obnoxious, hyperreal cubes and their incongruously massive borders, mysteriously blocking progress in their manner of being tremendously obnoxious to circumvent.

    There are a couple of people outside. The exact same people as a few hours(?) ago actually. They're still muttering to each other about how safe the Residential District is, and 'could you just imagine what it'd be like if someone who isn't a resident got inside our homes?', but they don't seem to actually pay any attention in the slightest to the people who *blatantly don't belong*, either trusting their stupid progress-gating cubes a hell of a lot, or somehow not noticing that you stick out.

    It's cool though. The Batter walks up to the cubes, tapping his bat on his shoulder, and closes his eyes and looks up at the sky. After a moment, he says "Yes, I can put the tie on here. Good idea." and ties up the boring black tie you'd won as the shittiest carnival prize ever. Now that he has a proper *tie*, same as everyone else's, that's . . . apparently enough to open the gates. *cachick*.

    That's the security process.
Aoko Aozaki     "Are you serious," says Aoko, as the gates open for the tie-wearing Batter. She looks at him, then at the gates. Then back at him.

    "Has this world EVER heard of the phrase 'the habit does not make the monk'?" she asks, specifically of the Batter, before resigning herself to the truth maybe these people really are dumb as bricks.

    "Should've looted Dedan's clothes, we could have dressed you up like him and have you claim to be the Zone 1 Guardian, might have saved us a whole lot of trouble getting to the Queen."

    Then again, presuming the logic of this world is consistent seems like a mistake. Aoko crosses her arms, looking at what's beyond the gates.

    "So, what's our gameplan? Go into people's houses and break their pots for valuables? Because I'm totally down."
Gilgamesh      The King of Heroes *always* stands out. It's simply his nature as an exceedingly pretty, exceedingly perfect demigod. He bleeds 'sexy' and 'attention-grabbing' and 'oh my god that guy looks like such a smug asshole but i kinda wanna hit that' regardless of paltry concerns like state of dress or where he is or where he's going. It's not something he just *turns off*.

     So he's only the slightest bit put-out when, despite all of that, the weird Residential People utterly ignore him.

     It's probably the worst thing Gilgamesh feels on any kind of regular basis. With arguments with mongrels he can shut them down, mock them, or talk circles around them. But just being *ignored* like he doesn't exist? Awful. Absolutely awful.

     When the gates open because of the Batter's tie, Gilgamesh snaps his fingers, and the Gate of Babylon rains clothing on the King. In an instant he's gone from wearing his lazy day clothes to an impeccably fine gold suit and red silk tie. By the gods if people are just going to ignore him then he's going to be as gaudy and obnoxious as possible until everyone around him has no choice *but* to pay attention to him! That's exactly the mature way to resolve this.

     Yeah he might be perfect but he tends to gloss over his own perfectly massive flaws.

     "Hmph. It may be a worthless place but even so, I will not permit something like that," Gilgamesh tells Aoko, "I am the law, and so I will not look aside for those who break it, no matter how much I may like that."
Aoko Aozaki     "I'm pretty sure we've been breaking the law the moment we showed up and just straight up murdered the guy in charge of Zone 1," Aoko laughs, though she quickly adds: "As much of a jerk as he was. But I'm not sure I'd take this place's laws seriously if a guy like that kept his position."
Tina Natsumi Tina can sympathize with not wanting strangers in her house. Who wouldn't? That doesn't stop her from wanting to get in, anyway, especially with the security being so lame and bypassed by a freaking TIE. Scurrying in behind the Batter, she pauses to take a closer look at the awfully colored buildings and whatever might pass for a lawn here.

"Does sound like the easiest way to go about it, but..." She offers Aoko a sympathetic smile at Gilgamesh's own counter-proposal. "Maybe there's somethin' or someone hangin' around outside. Like one o' these folks!" Hedging her bets on the locals trusting their cubes more than their ability to notice something wrong, Tina straightens her hat and buttons her shirt's top button while putting on her most boring office drone voice possible.

     "Evening. How about that local gathering place? I heard things were happening there. Are you interested in those things... Uh. Happening?"
Gilgamesh      "Don't be foolish. Execution is within the right of the King," Gilgamesh says idly, "But stealing like a common criminal is below me."
Zero Kiryu Zero glances towards Aoko from his usual position at Yuuki's side. He's looking a little more middling than last time-- like he's still trying, but not quite as good at it as he'd really like to be. He doesn't look like a total mess, at any rate. Perhaps just a little disheveled. He looks between the Batter, and Aoko, and then replies, "I don't... think this place came into being from an entity with enough understanding of complexity for it to be anything but like this. It's not a surface-level shallowness. Even inside, the people here are lacking."

The only reason he even presumes they're people is to err on the side of caution. In every other respect the impression he gets of them is more along the lines of scripted automatons. Not being a video game person, he wouldn't describe them as NPCs.
Yuuki Kuran The security to the Residential district is extremely tight. Literally! The hypercubes block progress by making it really inconvenient to get in. Super inconvenient! But it makes sense, if a strange sort of sense. To get into the Residential District, one must be a resident. That clearly moved from A to B.

And, the batter produces their HARD WON PRIZE - a tie - and that's that, they're in. Genius. This also followed, from A to B.

Yuuki turns to Zero, drawing close and getting up on her tiptoes, her hands reaching up for his neck to... Steal his necktie, hooking it over his head and reversing it so she can slide it around her own head, having to pull her long hair through it before cinching it back up. "Perfect. Now I'm a resident too!" She grins, before grabbing her de-tied bodyguard, dragging him towards the opened cubes.

"Try not to show off the picture, though. Peoples head's could go-" She hooks her index finger into her cheek before snapping it out making a soft 'pop!'-ping sound.
August Kohler August Kohler walks behind the Batter, dressed in a button-up, jeans, and a jacket that he only wears to hold his revolver and knife, but looks nice on him regardless. The redhead asks the Batter a simple question. "Do you think there's spectres over here?"

And then, after he asks, he starts walking up to houses, looking through windows if there are any to see if there's spectres. He has so little respect for these 'people' that he's okay with prying into their personal business, expecting their houses to be poorly furnished and completely bland. If there's no windows, he opens up a door, expecting all doors to be unlocked because of the gate, and peers inside for spectres. But he doesn't step inside unless he sees either a chest or aforementioned horrible spectres.

August is polite like that.
Thomas Alva Edison The Batter puts on the tie, which seems to open up the entryway into the residential zone for them.  Slowly, he puts a hand to his face and shakes his great head for a few moments.  This is the stupidest system literally ever devised ever.  It is so offensive to him it makes him want to scream!

He does not scream, but he DOES complain.  "No electronic diodes?  No retina scans?  No biometric scans?  Just a tie?  This is the worst security ever, and anyone thinking this would keep anyone out is simply sticking their head in the sand."

When Aoko mentions breaking pots and streaming items he shakes his head at her but approves of Gilgamesh's non-starter of that.  "We are not thieves, we are trying to help these people and remove the spectres," Even if he does not wholly agree with the second point.  It's one of those weird areas where he's not COMPLETELY WRONG, but Edison himself just does not like the act of taking a life.

He considers Yuuki for a moment.  No, he thinks, she is not plain enough to be a resident here.  
Janine Liberi     Janine looks about read for a nap at this point. She's very much dragging her feet in that sullen teen way, hanging out at the back of the group as they approach the gate of blocks that bar their path. "Aw shucks guess we can't go visit where these lame assholes live, adventure over."

    But then the Batter procures that tie and puts it on and... that... works? Janine's frown deepens, and she looks about ready to go on a tirade about how it's symbolic that you're only accepted by society when you put on the chains of the establishment etcetera etcetera. But eventually, she just throws her hand up and declares. "Cool, fine, whatever, at least we don't have to go hunting for the stupid thing."

    And with that, she immediately marches into the area and conducts herself like a sullen teen. Loitering in public places, kicking the ground and throwing dirty looks about.
Starbound Flotilla     George isn't smoking this time. He's got his hands jammed into the utility-pockets of his hardsuit, regarding the unlocked gate contemplatively. He was already on the other side, somehow! What the hell. "Yeah," He says to Aoko. "This place hasn't heard of most things. Honestly, pretty defining feature that this whole world doesn't really care what the rest of the multiverse has to say about reality." He also laughs, briefly, to Zero. "Man," He says. "You say that like there was some kind of god that made this on purpose. You gotta understand, this world is a torture chamber. For /everyone/, even the one it came from."

    He heads further in. Looks like he hasn't been looking around very much. He peers critically around, looking for the first and most obvious thing to search for, which is the signs of safety's severe failure.
Priscilla     "No." the Batter says immediately to Aoko, and with absolute certainty. "This impure world forgot faith a long time ago. They wouldn't recognize a monk without his habit. A batter without his bat. A person without his tie." The Batter struts forward, with divine confidence, into the streets. "Laws written by impure creatures are pointless. They write them however they want. You can't outlaw righteous judgement."

    It's the most talkative he's been in a while, albeit it seems like the rate of him saying anything that isn't 'Okay.' or 'No.' has gone up gradually over time. "This place was different when it came into being." he says to Zero. "It's tainted." To Edison, though, he insists slowly and firmly "It's Elsen's tie."

    To August, he says "Probably." August's peering through windows mostly shows him that the great majority of the houses are empty, both probably because the people are out during the day, and because someone had clearly built far too many, either expecting to house a great multiplication of population that never really happened, or that there used to be a lot more people in this excessively safe and nervous place. Actually, when Janine goes skulking about, she finds that the streets are overwhelmingly empty too. For being a residential district, there sure don't seem to be a lot of people residing here, it takes a little while to figure out why, having to march around many winding corners and up and down zigzagged streets to get a glimpse of a town square, where a good two score people are gathered together, and hear the sound of a yowling cat.

    It doesn't really take long to figure out which cat it is, when it perches atop a set of steps over the crowd and yells "Crave my pardon immediately, or I will send you back to limbo this instant!"

"Did you hear something?"
"Poor cretins!! I am here, right in front of you, ready to send you to hell!! So? Are you ready to apologize to your father and protector, you band of wimps?"
"There's nothing but an old cat, up there." "It could be a dangerous cat . . . It has sharp claws." "Yes, and it can spread disease . . ." "Have you heard the story of the guy who got scratched by a cat?"
"Aaarrggghh!! I hate you! I hate you all!"

    Yeah, that's about where George would expect to find a lack of safety.

"But where's that voice coming from?" one of the oblivious, neurotic townsfolk adds. "Must be someone who's in a bad mood . . ." "Yes, he should take the time to relax and enjoy this place . . . So flat and quiet. Here, we're safe."
"But that was me! It was I who made it all like that for you! Are you all so blinded by your pathetic fear of living?"
"This is all rather strange, isn't it?" they aren't even paying attention to the cat, just talking to each other.
"That is it!! I am going to teach you to respect me . . ." growls the cat. With a sound like the clicking of a button, he disappears, and a ring of hollow-eyed ghosts appears floating around the gathering.

    The terrified screaming begins immediately.

    "Let's purge these impurse beasts . . ." says the Batter, predictably. ". . . and fast."

    For no particular reason, there is a timer. Five minutes begins counting down, somewhere vaguely in view. There is no indication what happens if it reaches zero, or how a timer . . . got there. It's like it's in the corner of your 'screen'.
Gilgamesh      "Well," Gilgamesh says idly at the Batter's speech, "*I* could outlaw righteous judgement, but that would simply be self-restraint."

     He watches the farce play out with the self-satisfied smirk of realization. They aren't ignoring *him*. They can't ignore *him*. They're ignoring *everything*. It isn't a matter of *him*; no matter how glorious he is, they're all blind and stupid madmen in an asylum for lunatics. Of course. That makes perfect sense. Obviously. Why didn't he think of that before?

     There is absolutely nothing ironic about this thought process.

     The spectres appear, and Gilgamesh leans back a bit, thinking. The cat said that it was a father and protector, was it? A god, perhaps. He had heard that tone so often before. That humans should bow down and apologize to the gods. That humans should kneel before the deities who made them and sheltered them.

     It actually pisses him off. Visibly. The look on Gilgamesh's face twists from divine beauty to divine wrath. He snaps his fingers only a moment before the cat disappears, and the Gate of Babylon's eruption of magical force takes off the roof of the building where the cat was moments ago.

     "Worthless," Gilgamesh says in a tone quite unlike most people have heard him take before, a tone roiling with unpleasant, actual anger rather than irritation or mild distaste or anything like that. He raises his hand again, and the Gate turns to focus on the spectres, pouring violence upon them like the fist of, well, an angry demigod. Which it sort of is.

     "Worthless, worthless, worthless, worthless!"

     He repeats it furiously, slamming more of the Gate's flurry of treasures into the crowd of spectres. He's probably done more damage to the surroundings than to the spectres at this point, considering that he's not bothering to do things like 'aim' or 'target' or even 'restrain himself.'
Zero Kiryu Zero looks down at Yuuki as she moves towards him. He's used enough to handling and being handled by her that it's hardly alarming to him that she's invading his space this way. Even so, when he realizes what she's doing he can't help but give her a flat little look that can say nothing more than, 'Really?'

He gets dragged along by Yuuki, following after with that dull look lingering on his face. That is, until George addresses him. Zero nods at him, "That's the impression I got. That this place was 'made'. Whether it was made on purpose or not..."

He shrugs.

"But... I believe you." He adds.

The Batter's words just sort of reinforce George's point, in a way. Zero listens to him for several moments, and at first the idea of saying much to him slips his mind. Then, "What was it when it wasn't impure?"

The whole train of thought is interrupted, though. By the cat, and the spectres it makes. By the Batter's inclination to purge them.

His hand disappears into his jacket, emerging in a great tide of vines sliding over his hand and the rest of his body. It twines about him and flows into the surroundings, extending outwards into the Town Square.

It snakes through, growing ever larger, and eventually it becomes evident that Bloody Rose's vines are turning themselves into a great, ablative barrier for the local Elsen.

Ordinarily, it might be for the purposes of actually protecting them, but...

In this case it's just so they don't become a part of the problem. Zero has seen what happens when these useless lumps get too stressed out about what's going on around them. On the upshot, if that /does/ happen he can turn the defensive action on its head immediately.
Aoko Aozaki     "Yeah, it's creeping me out too," Aoko replies to Zero, with regards to people here being ~empty~. The Batter reinforces the idea, proposing it's a matter of faith and recognition. She defers to his judgment on the matter, since he'd know better.

    "And yeah, no kidding, Batter had to come help us put down the guy manning the balloon game booth because he couldn't deal with the fact we'd won," she adds towards Yuuki. "These people aren't just shallow, they don't seem able to operate outside their given roles without their heads popping right off."

    It's, again, weird.

    But all that will have to wait, because a cat is screaming and people are ignoring it. Then the cat summons angry goasts to handle that.

    Aoko looks towards Gilgamesh, ponderous. "Worthless?" Hm. "Say, King. How would you react if, after everything you've done for humanity, they ignored you? Didn't so much as acknowledge you exist. Just kept talking like you weren't there? Wouldn't you be angry, too?"

    An array of blue orbs appear and float amidst the golden rings of the Gate, firing beams of light along the blades of the king to help solve this before the timer runs out, with only a snap of Aoko's fingers.

    "Maybe we shouldn't be looking for a way to purify specters, so much as we should be looking for a way to restore people's... peopleness. Make them able to care again. You know?"
Tina Natsumi      What odd people. Do they even know Tina's there? She's about to try waving a hand in their faces when she notices that she's not the only person being ignored. August poking into the homes, Edison going on about security, Yuuki and Zero messing with ties, and even that cat screaming at them...

Nothing. Scoffing lightly, Tina adjusts her hat as she starts towards where that cat is yelling. "Got half a mind to give 'em a little push to see what's goin' on. But.. Meh. If they're just stuck in those patterns, ain't much we can-"

And then actual screaming. Looking over towards the noise, Tina already has her hand on her phone and another held out as she turns the front camera on. "More of these ghosts so soon? I ain't gonna complain about lettin' off some steam. Uncle Sam, let's get to work!"

An explosion of light erupts behind Tina, and the American-motif robot appears behind the faux-cowgirl. It's shouldering a massive cannon as Tina raises a hand, holding it there dramatically as the machine charges its cannon. "Freedom cannons... Fire!" The light finishes gathering, then erupts out of the single cannon into the spectres, blasting eradicating light all over the place to make sure that whatever dies stays dead.
Thomas Alva Edison Edison turns towards the batter, the words were there but what does it all mean exactly.  Something can only be considered impure when compared to something else.  "Who is Elsen anyway?" He asks, not sure about that one.  "What was this world like when it came into being?"

However, the cat appears, causing Edison to consider the situation.

"Fear of living huh.." Edison says, hooking on what the cat is screaming about.  Strange, why is this cat, who looks so much like the Judge acting like this.  Also that the person who created this place is a bird, a rather large one too.  

He's trying to figure out what could be going on, of course, he realizes that it might be impossible for him.  There is an internal logic here that don't always agree with reality, and for the moment without a vital piece of the puzzle, he would just be grasping at straws.  

However, the Spectre's appear, which causes Edison's eyes to narrow.  Towards the Batter, he nods, "Right..." until the Gilgamesh goes out of control.  Frowning, he releases a blast of electrical energy at the wave of spectres, aiming to try and hinder their movements so the people could get away from them.

"Gilgamesh, calm down!  You are likely to do more damage to the city than the spectres.  That is likely what that cat creature wants.."  Though Aoko has a novel idea that causes Edison to pause.  "I wonder if it is possible, and if it would stem the tide of spectres..?"
Janine Liberi     Janine stumbles across the town square in her adolescent stalking, and sees Japhet upon the roof, raining down angry declarations on the ignorant populace. He demands attention and respect, and they just ignore him. By now, Janine is familiar enough with these weirdos that she can tell they're not doing it deliberately, that something is keeping them from actually understanding what the cat is saying.

    But it's still really fucking funny.

    She charges in, pointing up at Japhet and laughing. "Hahahahah! You stupid ass! They literally can't pay less attention to your bitching! Some god you are! Can't command spectres, can't get a bunch of blank-eyed weirdos to respect you! Curl up and die somewhere you flea-bitten tag, you fucking suck!"

    Only for said cat to explode into a bunch of spectres. Well, so much for that. She flinches at Gilgamesh rips off the roof he was standing on, and summons Biancabella to take to another roof. "Fucking watch it, Galo Sengen!" she barks at him, before noticing the 'timer.' "Wait, what?" She tries to grab at it in the corner of her vision, but that doesn't seem to do it. "Fucking great, I'm hallucinating now."

    She kicks up a cyclone that moves about, trying to suck up as many spectres as she can, before launching them from it towards the Batter to purify them.
August Kohler Luckily, August doesn't have to enter anyone's houses today! Unluckily, Japhet is back and is sending a horde of spectres after the 'townsfolk'. Bringing up his mirrored bracelet he always wears to eye level, August shouts out. "Persona!"

In a flash of grey and red, Dietrich appears, and August quickly climbs onto the powered armor knight's back, massive sword being turned into a chainsaw whip as it clinks out, and then launching into the fray of the spectres.

The whip goes flying, moving to lash into spectres, wrap around them, and tear them to bits with the chainsaw blades, before throwing them in the Batter's direction with a tug of the arm to purify. As this is happening, August replies to Aoko. "We know that purifying the spectres gets rid of the spectres. That's the best course of action to go on, especially since it's our mission. Besides, who even said we can make these things into 'people' again? Can we?"

This philosophical considering is briefly interrupted by more gory chainsaw-whip murder. What a fun Persona.
Starbound Flotilla     George is just about to give Thomas a sort of answer about Elsen. "Well, spread things thin enough and--" But something has interrupted him. A fresh flood of ghosts. He would normally dive in and get to work. But at the moment? Everything's a little too explosive for his peasant blood. He has to keep some distance. He keeps at the perimeter of the rain of raw artifacts, fire, and death. All he can do is step to the perimeter, draw a shotgun, and blast away. It's a bit more Tina's approach than the others. He briefly considers grappling-hooking some of the damaged ones and bringing them to the Batter, but he gets the impression that the Batter doesn't need direct melee access, just setup.

    As he does, though, he speaks to Aoko. "Elsen's just as human as you or me. That's part of the problem. You can only spread so thin before there's not much there anymore. And you can only get so much of a shitty torture universe before all the rest of you besides the part that's getting the torture goes ahead and peaces out. You don't want 'em to be people again. Doesn't matter how 'people' you are to start, you go just the same way as Damien, Pentel, Shachihata, and Alma. Fixing the world's the best bet. S'why you're here on that purifying mission, right?"
Aoko Aozaki     "Yeah, maybe the only way to fix this is to fix the world somehow. I don't know. But if fixing the world fixes the people in it, it's a start," Aoko asides to George, musing on the matter. "I'm just curious how static these people are. Maybe not at all! Maybe beyond saving. That'll be good to confirm, either way!"

    And she adds: "Plus, plus! No offense, but that's something I want to see for myself. You've been cagey about what you know, you're about as trustworthy as your crewmates."
Yuuki Kuran Hearing that the Elsen were once people 'spread thin' and that the world was a fucked up torture reality from George, An Entirely Trustworthy Person, is weird. Seeing the cat bellow in the square and the people simply incapable of understanding what the Cat is - the cat that could control shadows! - is confusing, but largely because Yuuki can't really imagine the state the Elsen are in that they can't see the cat.

"Is it like Dedan, where they can't 'get' to their patrons? Or..."

Spectres appear in a cloud, causing mass panic. "Well, I guess it's a moot point. If it's like George says, and they're spread thin - you can't scrape back up butter off toast or toothpaste off a brush. It doesn't go back. If they just pop when confronted, maybe it's better to just clean everything up."

The floating cloud of terror-causing Spectres are largely ignored, if the Batter hasn't engaged them.
Priscilla     "You read the books." the Batter replies to the last questions, winding back to minimum verbosity now that it seems to be a subject he cares less about. "This is the final version." A pause. "I didn't see it then. I wasn't the Batter. Rather, the Batter didn't exist until         came here, and you responded to her call."

    Zero has . . . probably done the smart thing. When the vines erupt, the citizens immediately become even more panicked, running around in circles hollering and panicking in their enclosure, screaming "Nooo! Bismark is way too quiet for this!" "Help! Help! I'm in a jam!" "The adrenaline is pumping so fast! It's going to drown my nervous system! I'm going to die!" and other such hysteric nonsense. One is banging at the wall while yelling "I can't see anything! Help! It's so horrible!" Granted it's a lot more raw, visibly violent fear than what they've seen turn people into Burnt before. They're absolutely losing their shit, but nobody's head has popped off (yet, at least).

    The buildings are, of course, all made of metal. That's how you know they're safe and sturdy in the event of an attack. Just like the fliers in the shopping mall said. The one owned by Zacharie. Like the theme park. Unfortunately that doesn't really help when Gilgamesh is actually pissed off and dropping strategic Babylon bombs on the place.

    It really *does* take Zero's shield to prevent the townsfolk from being wiped out in the barrage as well. The hollow-eyed, gape-mouthed ghosts crowd around it, as if smelling their prey inside, starting to phase through the walls to get at their trapped marks, but when Gilgamesh drops indiscriminate fire on the whole square, Bloody Rose can tolerate enough of it to keep the people safe for a while, but the spectres being on the outside are skewered, sliced, and pinned against it straight away, and then repeatedly blasted and pulverized halfway to uselessness by the additional magic barrage

    Huge and fat as these ones are especially, they're easily sucked up into Biancabella's cyclone and made into an easy group target. Where George blasts them full of buckshot and Edison pumps them full of electricity, rather than ripping open like weightless papier mache however, their spectral flesh bubbles and boils, erupting into clusters of dancing pustules with little grinning ghost faces of their own, quivering eagerly. When Dietrich's chainsaw-sword-whip wraps around them, the big spectres squeeze like a tube of toothpaste, extruding more tiny, giggling halloween ghost heads with uncanny human teeth, like squeezing a zit, rather than actually being shredded up. Uncle Sam's cannon lands a direct hit on the whole bunch, about eight in total, and when the flash goes off, it seems like she'd purged them all caught in Biancabella's whirlwind.
Priscilla     Except when that blast clears up, there are now *thousands* of teeny tiny phantoms, like baby spiders erupting from a paralyzed caterpillar, swirling around in great shoals of cackling, toothy, ghost-tailed evil. They swarm around the buildings and pour down the streets, forgetting the petrified townsfolk for a moment and coming straight after you. Where they flood through, the few residents remaining flee their houses in terror, and rush to a number of big, thick, reinforced looking doors that look like they belong to nuclear bunkers, barely hidden around various corners, and looking completely ludicrous in such a flat, boring, pastel little babyproofed town. It certainly looks like George's claims of 'security theatre', when they begin fighting over codes they've never actually used before.

    Just as in keeping with the mall spectres being tougher than Zone 1, these horrid abominations are quicker and more vicious as well. It's an established pattern now that somehow this Zone's corruption is 'worse'. Golf ball-sized mini spectres take clean hits suitable for a human target to splat properly, and instead of just passing through you and coming away with quantities of blood, their ectoplasmic teeth at palpably bite and savage your flesh and gear, with the exact individual smallness but collective terror of amazon piranhas.

    The timer had felt pretty generous at four minutes left after blowing up the lot. Now it seems like not enough. Both of the Batter's Add-On halos are already hard at work, whizzing and cutting through the swarm, warping perspective and crunching strings to blast mini-spectres out of the air while he takes his place and starts literally batting a thousand, tanking the little shits that he can't hit all of and taking out ten at a time that he can. "Salvation can only come from striking the impurity at its source." he says, with absolute unshakeable calm despite the damage he's taking, as if he's already seen this battle play out. "Three and a half minutes." he says. So *he* can see it too?
Gilgamesh      Damn.

     Gilgamesh really needed to stop letting his hormones *and* his own words beat him at an argument.

     The pure, unrelenting rain of the Gate of Babylon eases up as Aoko points out that he, of all people, can't claim to want to destroy something just because of the circumstances of its birth. That he, of all people, can't act in that manner. The lapse in his own judgment may be understandable but it's still a lapse - a moment of self-reflection. Imperfection? No. Not exactly. A perfect lapse. A point he could not have forseen.

     It's a human lapse.

     Instead of infuriating him further, the idea of it calms him. The Gate closes, the furious rain mercifully coming to an end. It's a human lapse. It's a reaffirmation that...well, that even despite being the King, he is still, in some ways, a human. That even though he is forced to stand outside the human race, he is still capable of leading them, even if he can never really be one of them. It's a pleasant failure. A perfect failure. As befits a perfect king.

     Even his /errors/ reinforce his Ego EX Skill.

     "So find the cat," Gilgamesh says at the batter as the swarm of pirhanas comes flying in. Gil doesn't bat them away, this time - in a shocking show of self-control and even empathy, when the Gate opens this time, it's pinpoint targetting, playing entirely defensively. He's shooting down the enemies as they come rather than simply overwhelming them with force, blocking attacks on the rest of his party (except Janine, whom he quite conspicuously leaves a defensive hole for), and otherwise playing defensive. "I don't have time to root around in the Gate for something that can see the invisible or touch the untouchable. I'll leave that to the rest of you. I'll make them target me."

     The Gate is herding the little monsters towards Gilgamesh. His skin can take it. His body is flawless, beyond human. He can deal with the bites, the aches, the pains, the tearing in ways the rest of the group cannot. And, also, he regenerates faster than most of them, so there's that, too.
Thomas Alva Edison Edison is swarmed in the barrage of tiny ghosts, all of them trying to take chunks of flesh and blood with them.  It's like being in the Amazon, he muses to himself, but a whole lot more nonsensical.  Growling, with the number of tiny ghosts there is, he is forced to do something to try and stem the tide in their favor.  

With a flash of mana, the area itself changes for the moment.  The ghosts are no longer in a city, but rather in Edison's lab.  Here, he is master and a tiny group of what looks like overworked scientists and robots chuck lightbulbs into the group of spectres, aiming to blind them, but when they burst they also leave the glass behind, aiming to cause them cuts and dangerous terrain to traverse.  

However, Edison is not done.  A huge Jacob's ladder appears, before releasing a burst of electrical energy through the lab itself, aiming to use the metal bits left behind from the bulbs before to streak in all directions, aiming to fry the spectres as they try and get through, making makeshift electric fences, aiming to funnel them in weird and nonsensical patterns to slow their advance.

This is all to give the batter time to swing, the funnel attempts to push them towards the man himself so he can purify them.
August Kohler On one hand, the whip is working. On the other, not the way August wants it to, since the monsters are...strange, stronger than usual. As they turn into a horde of /thousands/ of the things, Dietrich and August are both overwhelmed, flesh and armor torn into, ripped apart, blood spraying.

Luckily, August can regenerate, flesh knitting back together, but there's still too many of them. So the chainsaw whip is swung again at the horde in a large sweeping motion, moving to saw through them, but with an added bonus. Fire. Lots of it. Flames explode from the whip, wreathing it and trying to drown the spectres in it and burn them to ash, though at the same time, August still has Dietrich lift as many as it can and toss them in the direction of the Batter to purify, yelling out as he does.

"Here, Batter, Batter!"

As the Persona darts around, though, it's getting worse for wear. They need to thin their numbers. "Any idea why there's so goddamn many of them, George?!" George is the 'expert' here, he might know.
Zero Kiryu It's not impenetrable. Everything going on around Bloody Rose's vines wear it down-- and when the people inside begin to panic, Zero begins to reshape it again. He follows the movements of the 'free' residents, and makes himself more of a hedge maze than a protective field. It winds away from the spectres, dumping out near one of the bunker-looking structures located alongside the numerous buildings in the surroundings.

"Really?" Comes Zero's voice in answer to Yuuki's meanderings, "You've made a practice of doing just that, even when people have mocked you for it. And at times, the results are not what you wanted. But sometimes..."

He allows Yuuki to fill in the rest. Ghirapur certainly comes to mind.

Zero shifts the muzzle of Bloody Rose, buried in brambles, and fires into the cloud of tiny spectres swarming over him. He can't actually execute an all-out attack while funneling and defending the Elsen, but a stream of splitting lasers that go chasing after the Swarm enemy is still a stream of splitting lasers going after a Swarm enemy. Every little bit counts.

Violet eyes flick towards the timer in the corner of his vision. Is it a 'finish this before then' timer, or a 'survive this long' timer, or a 'this is how long you have to protect these idiots' timer? There are a lot of possibilities.

The least convenient option is the one to plan around, he supposes.
Tina Natsumi "Maybe y'all wouldn't be in so much danger if you didn't have your heads up your behinds!" Tina shouts at the panicking citizens as she pulls a tommy gun out of Uncle Sam's leg, adding some more focused gunfire to the mix as her Persona blasts away with that bigass laser. She squints slighgtly as the BAtter speaks of his role not existing, an amused chuckle escaping her moments later.

"Guess that makes us your moms an' daddies, then, huh?" She laughs, but it only lasts for a moment as she notices that the phantoms have gone from two digits to four, and she grimaces when they start surging forward. "Dang. It's just like that video with the broom!"

She doesn't sound nearly as amused as she did before, and she backs up to start laying down some suppressing fire. Uncle Sam, meanwhile, busts out different cannon with a flared opening at the end, and Tina grabs it by one end even as those ghosts leave all sorts of nasty cuts, tears, and dents along her legs and Uncle Sam's armor. "Dang, this is really somethin' else... Come on, everybody! Just keep your cool, and don't stop shootin' or swingin'!"

That cannon she's holding projects her voice even louder than it normally would go, thanks to the cannon being a combination sonic cannon and loudspeaker. The Persona's magic kicks in, bolstering her allies through the power of all American PEP TALKS.

No cheerleading yet. Maybe another time.

As Tina speaks up again, her voice sounds a little more stilted like she's trying to signal something. "But even heroes like us can't cover everyone. These people sure are in danger, huh? If only there was a PROTECTOR around to save them!"

Tina glances around briefly. "Someone like a PARENTAL FIGURE?" She can't make it more obvious than that, but she kind of has to, what with the timer ticking down and all. Having Edison and Gilgamesh working to mitigate the size of the swarm certainly helps her focus, and Tina can even afford to batter some of them away with the butt of her gun, but she's largely focusing on supporting the others and yelling.
Janine Liberi     Janine is left opened and exposed to the horde of tinier spectres left after the inital batch is dealt with. They rip and bite and gnaw at her, tearing at the straps on her sling and leaving her cussing up a storm. "Ow! Fuckin' get off m-OW! GET! OFF!" Another cyclone is kicked up by Biancabella to clear the air about Janine. Her bad arm is left to hang free now, and it's agonising based on the look on her face.

    She overhears what the Batter says down below. 'Find the source.' "On it!" she growls, winds kicking up to lanch her through the air and back down to the street, whereupon she blows herself from junction to junction between the buildings, yelling up a storm all the while.

    "JAPHET! Get your flea-bitten mangy ass out here this fucking instant! You piss-stained mop of fur, you're nothing, you hear me?! These people forgot you for a good reason, you gnat of a god! Who would ever want to worship you? A big crybaby who demands respect without cause! You say you did everything for them, gave up everything, and they're still miserable wretches! I guess your 'everything' wasn't good enough huh? Or maybe you were holding back, because you always hated them! Nice to get it all out there, isn't it? You're! Just! Like! Me!"

    It got a little personal at the end there, but if there's one thing Janine has learned in the multiverse, it's that no one likes here. Hence, comparing someone to herself has gotta be a massive insult.
Aoko Aozaki     Why are these so many more specters here than everywhere else they've been so far? And it's not by a factor of ten, it's a factor of a hundred! Maybe a thousand! Although, they're a lot smaller, so, that's... better?

    No, they're spiders, it's worse.

    Aoko's bitten and gnawed at by dozens of tiny, angry spiders. It sucks! It sucks a lot. Her clothes seem unusually impervious to harm, today, because she actually remembered to take precautions, but it's doing nothing to attenuate the pain.

    There's too many specters to take them out one by one. They'd need something big! Something like... a vector cannon.

    And since Aoko is such a responsible, archetypical wizard, you can rest assured she's left vector cannons lying around for people to find.

    MEANWHILE, AT THE LIBRARY

    The Bounded Field left on the upper level, whose entire purpose was to collect energy for later discharge, was left in place when the group left, because you can't convince Aoko to be responsible about what she leaves laying around even if you try. It has been collecting energy this whole time, and may have remained undisturbed if Aoko didn't suddenly remember she did that. The entire floor it was on suddenly lights up like a brilliant cyan star.

    BACK TO RESIDENTIAL:

    "Incoming!" Aoko shouts.

    If the library is visible, it suddenly shines brighter than the sun. If it isn't, the 'incoming' is going to be all the more surprising, as a massive beam of blue light suddenly cuts across the entire length of the street, right into the ground, from above.

    And then a pause.

    Only a few seconds later do blue flames surge up from below, like a dramatic explosion that was set off by the beam. It's pointless, reckless collateral, but it probably looks really cool!
Yuuki Kuran "Reconciling, repairing... Mmm. I've done that a lot. Even if it was foolish, too, because it felt right. But trying to scrape these Elsen back into humans, it doesn't feel right. It always felt right to help who I helepd. The people who wanted help, or needed it, or deserved it, or pled for it." Yuuki replies, hurrying along with Zero as the Hunter defends the Elsen with Bloody Rose. "Three and a half minutes, to find the source? Well, the cat said it was the source of the Spectres, right?"

Gilgamesh's blast and defensive pinpoint attacks, and Aoko's vectoring Tracer Laser blast turn the large ghost-tailed monsters into a matroyshka doll of awful spider babies that require the pinpoint suppression and full attention of the King of Heroes. Thankfully, Yuuki's protected.

"We need to find that cat, so we can beat the timer, right? The batter's counting on us! So, I guess-!"

Yuuki crouches, and from her cast shadow on the metal buildings, a trio of large all-black wolves (or, doggy dog doggos) emerge smoking from her silhouette, dashing through the square hunting down the cat in the absolute hysteria.

"King Gilgamesh, how long can you do that?"
Priscilla     It seems that, after enough cajoling and fussing, the people at the bunker doors manage to figure out the code and squeeze themselves inside, slamming it shut and spinning the wheel from within. One additional figure runs out of his house, pounding on the door, yelling "Someone closed the door from the inside! Let me in! It's dangerous out here! I can't get in! The spectres will hurt me! Aaaaah! AAAaaaah!"

    It results in a handful more running into the streets as well, which Zero has to work overtime to protect. The spectres take notice of them now, homing in on the source of "Aaaaaah! Aaaaaaah! I'll soon have no more saliva to shout with!" and "Where are the leaders?? Who's responsible for all this??", forcing him to divert walls to protect the screaming idiots when the swarm turns on them as well, only bouncing off Bloody Rose's vines like little creepy-smiled pingpong balls, apparently either lacking some of the insubstantiality, or some of the smarts, of their bigger, porter forms.

    The sheer density of them does make for a targe rich environment though. It makes saturation attacks, normally designed to catch scattered targets without escape, ridiculously effective when hitting the whole of multiple streets. When Gilgamesh opens the gates to all hoard them into the same place at once, they condense into something of a cackling white and black tide, which makes for the optimal moment to strike.

    They pour through Edison's electrical fence apparatus like a pressurized tide, frying by the hundreds and collapsing ino little cartoonishly blackened piles. The flaming whip cleaves through them with the approximate effect of a flamethrower rather than a cleaving implement, sending red hot bits of lightbulb into the mass too. Uncle Sam's GUNS basically can't miss; it's like shooting into a solid wall of pure target, each and every bullet taking something out of the air.

    Tina's HINT HINT yelling falls on deaf ears, however. Japhet is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it's like he's completely evapourated into thin air, nowhere he could possibly be watching what's going on, never mind giving any kind of direct commands. Janine floating out of the morass can spot where he's likely gone pretty easily though, as the giant library spire, visible from just about anywhere in town, now has its roof cloaked under a thick layer of swirling black clouds, seemingly condensing out of the atmospheric 'smoke' into churning vortex of the real deal, blocking it off from below.

    When the doggos go hunting through the square 'for the source', the main thing they bumble on is one of the townsfolk crouched shuddering in a corner by a decorative waterfall of plastic. Unlike the others, he isn't running around screaming his head off. He feverishly mutters to himself, clutching the top of his head. "Th . . . This is too much agitation for my brain . . . I think it might . . . KABLOOOOSH!" he screams.

    His head then does exactly that, spraying a pressurized fountain of black corruption from his neck like a wild garden hose, quickly shambling out of the corner and running down the street, completely ignored by the spectres rather than assaulted. The Batter glances his way, and then suddenly zips through the crowd, his form blurring into an almost liquid streak of white that winds through the spectres, stopping just before the Burnt to smash his top half off his bottom in a tremendously brutal spray of blood. The Burnt's head lands wetly at his feet from its airborne jaunt, staring dimly up at him, and whimpering "Please tell me you pity me . . ." before going silent and dead.
Priscilla     Things get simpler to finish when the gigantic turbo laser building up power for the entire time the group has been poking around Bismark finally reaches critical mass and fires. The side of the library's fourth floor explodes outwards into metal fragments, and the colossal beam skewers through a couple of the taller high rises at downwards angle to then obliterate the mass of mini-spectres that had wormed their way through the first, second, third, and fourth lines of defense, engulfing them in a blaze of concentrated magic, and leaving behind a charred wasteland at the foot of several other charred wastelands.

    These ones seem to be very slow to get back up. After dispatching the Burnt, the Batter comes back along and has the casual time to begin stomping on them and smashing them with his bat like bugs, Alpha and Omega whizzing about to gather incinerate the burnt ghost corpses into white nothingness. "No." he finally says to Tina. "You were brought into this world the same way I was." The timer blinks at forty-five seconds left, and vanishes.

    When it starts to go quiet, some of the townspeople begin nervously crawling out of their various holes (but not the bunker), and assembling again in the square, around where the first batch has started poking out of the damaged sections of their vine fortress. The Batter turns to look, and says "We've purified this place, but this Zone has not yet been freed of its true pest." to the crowd. "Where can I find Japhet."

    The suit-and-ties look at the lot of you dumbly, and say
"Japhet? Who's Japhet?" as if they don't remember a single thing about not only the preceding episode, but their own city's supposed creator.

"The cat who claims to direct the spectres"
"Uh . . . the cat? Um . . . I don't know . . . A , , , Anyway, we thank you for helping us. But, uh . . . That thing you have there . . ."
"My bat?"
"Yes . . . your . . . bat . . . That's an awfully dangerous object." The rest of the crowd begins fussing and fidgeting too, pointing to the swords dropped by Gilgamesh, and Tina's and Zero's guns especially, not so much pointing out their inherent danger, as actually whispering "What are those?" "I don't know, but they look awfully unsafe." at the weapons.

"I'll have to ask you all to leave the Residential Area." ". . . and give us your tie . . ." "You . . . you should understand, of course . . . it's a measure of security . . ."

    Outside, past the barrier, Janine runs into the other cat. The one she wasn't looking for. The one who is at least vaguely helpful. Sort of. The judge has already plopped his feline butt outside the gate, right in her path when she exits, staring acutely at her. "I am embarrassed, I admit, but it appears that I need you and your friends' purifying intentions." he says. "Valerie, my beloved brother I spoke to you of, appears to have fallen off the rails of consciousness and into the depths of uncontrollable madness."

    "He calls himself Japhet, and, in addition to being the royal agent he has never been, proclaims himself chief of the spectres. Two roles he has usurped, no doubt. Nobody in this world, I assure you, has any control over the ectoplasms . . . Except perhaps the Queen, but I have yet to find any concrete evidence or testimony to prove this hypothesis."

    "Anyway, Valerie settled on the roof of the library, and, although I suppose this could have been just a coincidence, it seems that the ghosts are swarming the corridors of the same building. I believe this is a perfect mission for you and your friends, full of all that gratuitous violence with you seem to revel with glee."
August Kohler As the spectres are cleared, and the suit-and-ties have no idea who Japhet is, August remains on top of Dietrich, since it seems they still have a mission left. As he stands on the Persona, his apathy for these 'people' grows to distaste when they demand everyone leave and request, of all things, the Batter's tie. That's...that's so stupid. He's solidified by their reactions, by their lack of understanding of /anything/.

These aren't people. They're like automatons, or emotions, or hell, Shadows. They're not worth killing meaninglessly, but August sees no reason to listen to them. Whether or not the Batter gives them his tie is up to him, but August speaks to him. "Batter, you don't have to give them your tie, but we should probably continue onwards either way. We have purifying to do for these ungrateful bastards. Hell, are they even the reason we're purifying the Zones in the first place?"

When the Batter leaves, so does August, moving out the entrance, presumably in the direction of the library once they have information from Janine, unless the Judge is still there when he gets there. August is in a sour mood. Taking out these spectres will probably cheer him up.
Tina Natsumi "Aw. You ain't too good with the jokes and batter, huh?" Tina smirks at the Batter briefly while twisting and turning every now and then to work with Uncle Sam in firing sonic blasts at the remaining spectres. She tries not moving too much as she does so, wincing each time she's forced to with the mounting injuries. As the threat of the spectres starts to wind down, she switches gears to finishing them off alongside the Batter with concentrated bursts of vaguely cloudy laser death.

Alas, the cat is nowhere to be seen, and Tina seems just a little disappointed about that. "Gave him the perfect opening and everything, too. A shame." She shrugs, then turns to the crowd gathering around the Elites. She glances at her guns, then grins while facing the crowd with her arms crossed. "That's right. These are dangerous! That's why things like these should only be used responsibly by heroes like us."

She refrains from mentioning pesky licenses and things like that.

"But you know your 'security' ain't worth shit if you don't pay attention, yeah?" Tapping on the side of Uncle Sam's leg, a compartment opens for her to toss the gun back into before the Persona just vanishes into the ether. "Just about any kinda person could come in, and you didn't do a dang thing. Y'all'd've been screwed if we were here to raise hell instead of helpin' you out with your spectre problem. The least you could do is give us open passage through, yeah?"
Gilgamesh      The blades Gilgamesh scattered are already vanishing, retrieved back to the Gate of Babylon by automatic processes. Indeed, Gilgamesh was speaking truth - he needs to do very little to just crush an opponent and then clean up after himself. The Gate does most of the work for him. Maybe the Gate is the actual king...?

     "Those are the treasures of the King, you mongrels," Gilgamesh declares as he walks past the group of people. There's a moment, when he's ordered to leave, that it looks like he might actually execute someone, and indeed, the Gate of Babylon appears in front of them, blades protruding forth from within it. He doesn't look over his shoulder. There is, however, a sneer on his face. "Giving orders to the King is punishable by death."

     The dark, cruel smile, the smile not of the fun King or the King who jokes around but of the wrathful despot who rules all things, does not leave his face. The tension is palpable; as his scars and damages are slowly healing, his face slicked in his own blood, strangely beautiful and yet terrible as the dawn, it genuinely seems like the King might simply unleash his power and end the town entirely. It might even be a kindness, according to George.

     Then he turns. He walks forward. His eyes flash. The red light in his eyes is more than menacing - it's magical, the first REAL expenditure of mana he's used. His magical circuits are *on*, racing down his body, the red tattoos glowing on his arms. Rather than simply skewer the offender, he grabs the creature by the neck, raises it up, and crushes the throat with his bare hands. Then he discards the thing, as if killing it was no more interesting to him than killing a cockroach.

     It isn't.

     This is the side of the King that people forget. This is the side of the King that proves that he is not a kind-hearted dictator or a well-meaning monarch but a despot. He may be a despot who tries to do what's best for the people, but individuals are almost wholly worn out of this process.

     The grim task done, the King repeats it on the next offender. This time it's the face. Whatever passes for blood rolls down his hand. He's much stronger than a skull. His fingers punch through like nothing.

     "You," he says as he turns on the third one, "Have no purpose. No worth. No right. You, cowards. You, worthless, insignificant insects. You have no drive to better yourselves. You are living dead and nothing more."

     "And yet you dare," his voice is cold and strong, lacking the impetuousness of his youth, an imperious voice, "To give orders to your betters? You dare to proclaim that your sanctuary is inviolable to those who bleed on your behalf?"

     The third one he grabs by the face and simply rams it into the wall as hard as he can. Hard enough to probably splatter it entirely, unless it's built of very stern stuff. "You are that which I most despise. You are that which I most loathe. You are modernity, the sickness of it, waiting for others to solve your problems."

     He turns to the next one, assuming any still live. "If even one of you has the courage to step up and strike me, I will leave this town. Otherwise, I will kill every last one of you. I hope you decide quickly. I am an impatient monarch."
August Kohler As Gilgamesh goes and just /murders/ several of the suit-and-ties, August stops. His face twists slightly at the violence...but that's the only reason it does. They look human, but he thinks to himself. They're not. And then, August watches the crowd, his face growing impassive. Are they able to attack Gilgamesh? Can they change his mind? Because August doubts them. He doubts them in their entirety. For the leader of the Watch...

He doesn't care about these 'things' at all.
Tina Natsumi      And then Gilgamesh up and crushes some of these people into varying levels of paste. Unlike August's brief hitch, Tina's fear remains. She's heard Gilgamesh speak of his disdain for mongrels, certainly, but seeing it up close is rather terrifying. She can't even come up with a witty quip to take some of the edge off. The cowgirl has no idea how to react to any of it.

     So she doesn't. She just stares at him, at the suits and ies, and she just stands there.
Aoko Aozaki     In the chaos of it, it seems some heads popped off.
    Aoko frowns, ever agitated by how easily that seems to happen.

    She looks at August, shaking her head. "Sounds like a symptom to me. Like Yuuki and George said, if you spread minds thin, they get... like this. But you need someone to spread them thin, or at least a reason. That's what we need to solve. Otherwise we're just solving symptoms." And that's only useful short-term.

    But if she had anything else to say, she falls silent at the sight of Gilgamesh becoming Japhet, for all intents and purposes. She's torn; on one hand, she dislikes seeing pointless death. On the other, these people are only barely people, and it's not like she's the one killing them.

    Really, Aoko had stood aside as much worse creatures and monsters than the King preyed on whole cities. She had no interest in stopping the mundane deaths. Only the anomalies. And Gilgamesh is no anomaly, nor is this her world anyway.

    Actually, she's rather curious to see what they do.

    He's doing what she asked him to, technically.
    More brutally than she asked, but still!

    She crosses her arms, watching with interest, and making an effort to stay out of the splash zone.
Janine Liberi     Sadly, it seems that Japhet is not around to hear Janine's bait-filled tirade. But everyone else does a good enough job of mopping up the mini-spectres. She comes back, having used her school blazer to create a makeshift sling to secure her arm. Just in time for everyone to get unceremoniously thrown out. "Fine, whatever. You're welcome for saving your lives, cucks. Fuck you." She flips them all off, individually, before storming out.

    Only to start hearing the sounds of Gilgamesh throwing a tantrum and starting to snap some necks and make petty bratty remarks about how they're not the boss of him. Daring them to square up, to throw a swing. She hovers at the exit looking back and forward, gnawing on her lower lip until blood spills. Who cares? Who even cares, certainly not her. They're useless masses, wastes of space. Like her. Like her...

    She draws her sword, comes up behind Gilgamesh, and slaps him on the back of the head with the flat of it. Hard enough to sting, maybe draw blood with the edge, but nothing serious. "There, someone hit you. Leave 'em alone you baby bitch bully. They're not worth the effort." Now she stalks out, leaving her back open.

    And runs into The Better Cat, who launces into a barrage of loquacious exposition. "Wait, what? That's not Japhet, but your brother?" Has she been screaming at some mentally ill cat, the equivalent of those guys in asylums who think they're Napoleon or Jesus or something? Man, she almost feels bad. "The tower huh? Fine. Batter will probably want to go anyway. I'm not much for talking sense, but I'll try to talk some into him." She gives the strange cat a pat before walking off.
Zero Kiryu "And why... is that?" Zero asks Yuuki, bluntly.

He doesn't have an investment in this place, really. What he's doing is simply the strategically appropriate thing to do, and he continues to do it even as the parameters of the situation change until there is no more danger of these hollowed-out beings going pop and turning themselves into a bigger problem than they already were.

Even so...

It's strange to him that Yuuki would have no sympathy at all for the description of their situation. Maybe it's a combination of personal detachment with just how far gone they are. What would it even take to piece them back into functioning entities anymore?

He doesn't know. Even a Level E has something functioning inside. It only has a single goal, but it can use its mind in service to that goal just fine. It has to, after all.

Bloody Rose's influence retracts once it is no longer needed, but Zero doesn't put it away. It seems likely to be needed again in short order.

The smell of one of the Elsen's blood reaches his nostrils, and in part at least it reinforces the notion of just how far gone these things are. He remembers the first time he smelled it, and the first time he asked Yuuki about it. It's not empty, exactly. But there is no attraction to it, no appetizing elements. Although he has no desire for the blood of almost anyone here, Zero could describe the ups and downs of what their blood smells like to him with ease.

There are no ups and downs with these people.

It's like smelling a barrel full of liquid hard tack.

Zero holsters Bloody Rose and meanders towards the corpse Gilgamesh has produced, rifling through his pocket as he goes. He draws out a paper packet that he upends in his pocket, and scoops up a bit of 'blood'. He folds it up carefully, producing a hankerchief to wrap it in and folding it up.

Something in the back of his mind has its hackles raised by all of this, but Zero is so used to brushing it off that he does so again just now.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh does not even dignify turning around.

     Instead Janine is suddenly staring down the barrel of countless weapons. Swords, axes, spears, blades. They point at her out of the Gate of Babylon like, well, blades of Damocles. They thrum with magical energy.

     "Mongrel," he says, and his voice is hard and edged, "The only reason I do not kill you here and now for striking the King without permission is that you are necessary for this mission to be completed."

     "If you ever do this again, I will kill you. I am not Lezard Valeth. I do not make threats. I do not play games." As the blades hang there, he tears another of the creatures apart with his bare hands, casting halves of it aside in the street like tissue paper. "And it is not your self-righteous impertinence that I am interested in."

     "I will find out if there is a human among them, or they will all die. It is as simple as that."

     "Something that lives just because it draws breath is not worth keeping alive."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison lets out a sigh of relief as the threat is finally over.  Slowly his wounds healing as mana is drawn from his reserves, but it'll be a bit before he's fully back to one hundred percent.  Things are looking good for a bit until they all come out.  They start asking them to leave, even though they were saved by these instruments of death.  

Edison was not a man of violence by nature, while he helped America during world war one, he avoided making weapons directly.  He did not believe in violence as an answer, and he hated killing even more.  Death was a tragedy, a definite end to something already so dangerously short.  Not all of the other presidents agreed with him on this, but he was the one in control.

"That is not your right to decide, King of Heros," Edison says, firmly.  "If you are looking to discover this answer for furthering of knowledge, it is a poor example, and would only serve to reinforce your point of view, and not actually find an answer.  For a normal human to even consider striking you is nearly impossible.  More than that, desperation is something even an animal can produce."

"There are other, better ways to find your answer.  You are frustrated at something else and you are taking your temper out on them.  Let us not be dishonest."

Towards Janine he narrows his eyes, "Striking an ally is a poor life choice.  I suggest you stand back."
Janine Liberi     Janine stares down the barrel of a metaphorical gun as an array of magical weapons appears before her. She stares them down and offers a shrug. "You posed a challenge to the so-called useless masses that if any of them struck you, you would leave. So I did. You evidentially think I'm useless, after all. Don't think I didn't notice you covered everyone but me before."

    She takes a deep deep sniff to produce a loogie and spits it up on one of the hovering weapons. "But you killed another one anyway. Going back on your word there, King." She strides right past the weapons.
Tina Natsumi Tina takes a step forward. In her mind, she knows what needs to be done as tensions start flaring between Janine and Gilgamesh: Separate them, keep them from escalating, make sure nobody else dies pointlessly here.

That one step is all she manages to take.
Starbound Flotilla     Things are devolving fast. "The thing you gotta realize with security theater," George says, lighting up a cigarette. "Is that it ends like this. Everything boils over. Nothing is as safe as the theatricality said it was." He looks to Aoko. "Spread thin. Yeah, someone had to do it. Elsen wasn't ever meant to be like this. Unnatural in one way, natural in the other ways. Complicated, ain't it? But you're seeing the problem. These people are stuck. They're stuck being what they are, and what they are is in pain. They make it for themselves. They live it because they /are/ it."

    He looks to Edison. "But it's not 'nearly impossible'. Get thin enough, and something breaks through. S'like pulling fabric taut before you rip it." He looks to the dead men and the soon-to-be-dead, then gestures particularly at the bisected Burnt. "The moment you try to make 'em be what they're not... They are. In all the wrong ways. You're not gonna find what you're after with these people, because the second you find what you're after, they're not these people anymore. They're burnt, or they're dead, or they're like the others."

    "This is what this world does to you. It makes being what you are something that gets you miserable, not happy. Even for a king, see? He's being what he is, he's his best self right about now. And it sure as hell makes him feel pretty bad, don't it?" He isn't stopping Gil, he seems more like he's explaining the world's role in what Gil is doing. He takes a pretty intense burst of whatever hospital-smelling chemical nightmare is in his cigarette, as some sort of emotional or mental preparation.
Priscilla     It doesn't quite seem that the sickly looking tie-wearing samefaces really comprehend that Gilgamesh can hurt them. Of course, they seem perfectly capable of feeling fear and nervousness about the presence of a mere baseball bat, never mind the rest, but when he grabs one by the throat, it suddenly seems more like a fear of the unknown than anything else, remembering those sorts of things are 'dangerous' without knowing why. The beady eyed, safety-drunk simpleton stares at him blankly and anxiously, before he snaps his neck and drops the corpse on the floor.

    The rest of them panic instantly, running for their lives once again. He grabs a second one and crushes him too, his bones cracking and snapping like twigs, feeling like killing an anaemic child rather than a man old enough to work in an office. The third one he grabs screams "No! No! I have done nothing, by pity!" blubbering in terror as he realizes he's about to die.

    He realizes he's going to die. Something clicks, and for an instant, Gilgamesh can spot a hint of conscious, intelligent thought in his black, beady, exhausted-looking eyes. Some inkling of comprehension, like waking from a nightmare, blinking blearily into the room while still halfway between figuring out what's real and what isn't.

    Black pitch bubbles from his eyes and mouth, his hands clutching at Gilgamesh's wrist and becoming dark, sharp claws. His skin goes from a merely asthmatic to a corpse hue, and he trembles with adrenaline and rage. He swings out to try and swipe Gilgamesh across the face, smacking him with the kind of surprising strength that comes out when the survival instinct kicks in, kicking and clawing at him in a savage panic. Even as he does, however, the bizarre dreamcatcher pattern begins to glow around his head, presaging the transformation into the 'Valzong' variant of Burnt, the heavy sedatives of safety wearing off and allowing some sickness to go out of control for the few moments of lucidity the pathetic worker seems to gain.

    The Batter steps up. Rather, he was already stepping up, but he accelerates when he sees the signs of Burning. "No, no . . . Go away, Masque of the Red Death . . ." he burbles in the Batter's direction, struggling to keep his head on, but losing." After a few seconds of trying to get out of Gilgamesh's grip by fucking up his face and wrist, thrashing in semi-conscious panic, the corrupted goo leaking out of his face begins to gush out tenfold, and then the Batter takes his head off with a single, classic wooden crack. The head rolls over the floor, staring weakly up at the sky, oh so very briefly lucid enough to say "Tell me that you pity me . . ." before expiring.

    "Enough." the Batter interjects into Gil's and Janine's squabble. "If you care about the affliction of these children, then you already know the culprit. The one who coddled them into insanity."
Yuuki Kuran Oh. It wasn't Japhelt at all. Yuuki feels properly stupid even as her hunting wolves find the real threat and, like a fox smoked out of a forest, expose the prey for 'sport'.

Even if the sport is baseball.

With that wrapped up, the Elsen people reveal how thin of people they really are, spread like a single slice of butter across a hundred slices of toast. There's something lacking, there, just like the blood. An unreality that leaves her bored and unengaged.

And Zero asks her why.

"Well, Zero..." Gilgamesh executes citizens with brutality and things come to a terrible head, and Zero just watches it with a dreamy and sleepy gaze.

"Because they don't live. They don't ask for help. You can't offer it to them. We don't understand why they're like this, and to help someone you need to know how. A safety like this, where everything is the same, and nothing is dangerous - it's a world where nobody can grow. Nothing can be exciting. But they don't want to leave that world. They don't even want to consider a better one. We're here as the Choir, in this dream. To help the Batter, remember? All this is just..."

She gestures at the shuddering necktie people and their security culture, and the viscera of the Burnt.

"If you want to help them, then tell me you want me to fix them, for their own sake. But I won't do it on my own - It's not what they want."
Gilgamesh      When the one dies, when it scratches, when it claws, when it *fights*, in that instant, Gilgamesh is satisfied. He sets it down, surprisingly gently. The creature asks if it's pitied. The King's voice takes on a tone that is probably completely unimagined by anyone in the area who just watched that brutal, unbelievable show.

     "I do not pity you. I love you. You die a human, and you save the rest of them. You are the proof I sought."

     "Thank you."

     His fingers close the eyes gently. A gold coin is placed under the poor thing's tongue. Then he rises, wiping his hands like it's nothing, like blood and bile is nothing to him. The red of his power dies. The Gate of Babylon vanishes. His hands sink into his pockets.

     And he turns and walks away, without a hint of emotion or interest on his face, past Janine and all the rest.
Zero Kiryu "No." Zero says to Yuuki, buttoning his pocket to keep the bloodied contents secure as he re-assumes his place at her side. He doesn't look or sound terribly emotionally invested in the situation. Neither does he look pleased when Gilgamesh provokes one to fight back, prompting the Batter to get involved.

"About this place... I don't know that I have any wants, yet. I'm curious. And I wanted your perspective. That's all."