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Owner	Pose
Priscilla	Cleaning up and dragging on from that fight isn't easy. Beyond that utterly ruined maze of catwalks over rambling vats of industrial plastic, there is only another, and then another, where the pounding of your feet on the metal starts to ring like a muddy gong throughout the unnecessarily labyrinthine pointlessness of walking from one end to the other, filled with obvious holes and drops without guard rails.     The only consolation to the exhausting post-battle pointless exercise, albeit it is a very good one, is a floating red cube, always seeming to announce the start and end of each Zone. Like the others, though, while its normal functions work, its teleportation feature is locked by an astrological key. One that the Director here no doubt has.     The hall beyond is strangely wide and unnecessarily tall for being what would otherwise be a dark and claustrophobic garage ramp of a corridor, making hairpin turns down and down over and over again, until you reach a poster slapped up along the way. It's another of the Director's memos:     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     You go about another two turns and find two more plastered together. Then about ten more on the next bend, then two bends down both walls and ceiling are covered in a thick, sticky wallpaper of overlapping 'memos', slapped on obsessively in multiple layers now inches thick, leaving few of them readable at all in the crumpled mess, though you don't need to read them to know what they say.     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     Executive suite's note: You must not be here.     Disregarding the Director's notes, there is finally only one last massive chamber, covered in rings of those warning tape markings painted on the green metal, with a floating block code entry puzzle like you haven't seen in a middle, laid out like a cheap calculator's 0-9 buttons but upside down, in a taped off section of the room, with 536258C written on the wall for easy reference. Though, it'd be easier if any block was marked, and the only way to tell if one has been activated twice is if it turns see-through. It's certainly not helpful enough to just be in order of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. left to right and up to down.     It won't take anyone tremendously long though. It's just nervous, sweaty busywork right before the last door. Time to stew about how You must not be here. Time to think about the sights burned in along the way and really decide how to feel about it all. It's the Director's personal door code, not meant to be guessed by the Elsens and their half-asleep brains. It's the last puzzle of the fourth Zone, and not an especially hard one compared to most of the others. Narratively, that usually means just one thing.
August Kohler	Last time, fighting Seft, August got his ass kicked. He could respect her heroic drive, even if she was their enemy, but she nearly knocked him out, and he couldn't fight anymore. After some rest, though, August has regenerated most of his wounds, recharged a bit (he's still drained, sore, and wounded, and should be resting more, but isn't), and is pushing forward. Dietrich currently isn't summoned, because August wants to conserve his energy. Instead, he has his hands near his side, ready to quickdraw a weapon if the Director has a way to ambush them. As they see the notes, August ignores the first one, and then frowns about the others. Was he expecting them? Probably, but it might also be generally for the Elsen, to scare them off. As they reach the puzzle with the code, August begins the busywork. He starts by testing the blocks the right way, which is wrong, and then tests them upside down, to see if that fixes it. "Did they really need to slow us down like this? It's not going to stop us. We took out two before, why couldn't we take out a third?"
Janine Liberi	Janine is here, but she seems... different. More at-ease, more confident, and less crabby. She strides down the hallway, taking note of the piles upon piles of memos plastered on the walls telling them that they shouldn't be here. "We're here anyway though," she mutters to herself, squeezing the grip on her sheathed saber.     But, just one more puzzle.     She sighs lightly, a little aggravated, but no tantrum-esque stomping about in response to the minor inconvenience. "It's a keypad," she notes, gesturing at the numbers on the wall ending in 'C.' "Kind of like a calculator, except the 'Clear' button is on the top, which you don't normally see. Hence, it's probably upside down." She looks at August and rolls her eyes lightly. "It's not meant for us, it's for the people who actually live here. Just one minor trick like that is probably enough to stump the Elsen. The world doesn't form in response to you, August."     She takes out her phone and brings up it's calculator to point August at what ones he needs to hit when he's actually trying. "If it's upside down, then the numbers on the left and right will be flipped too," she points out. "So 1, 4 and 7 will be on the right, 3, 6, 9 on the left."
August Kohler	"It should." August is absolutely joking as he responds to Janine, but she's not cursing at him, which is a bit of a surprise. He'll follow her directions on the calculator, since he doesn't have his out.
Doctor Strange	Strange has healed himself, but as a former friend of his is fond of saying, the bill comes due. Energy has to come from somewhere, work must be done to call it forth, and so on. He may be whole, but the Sorcerer Supreme is tired. He also doesn't particularly feel all that great about beating the shit out of someone with more or less the same goals as himself, just to keep a secret from someone who would otherwise be his enemy. It is therefore with great relief, and a sigh, that he observes the red guide-cube.      He helps with the puzzle, if he has to, by marking the cubes himself with illusion magic once August and Janine figure out the numbers. His eyes don't otherwise fixate anywhere else but straight ahead. He also doesn't have much to say. What remains to be said, anyway? With this being the last obstacle between them and the Director, Strange seems to think the time for talking amongst the others is over.
Zero Kiryu	Zero Kiryu is present, and he is unscathed because he decided not to take part in the last fight for mysterious reasons. He's also letting the more eager, aggressive members of the group address the puzzle at the end, unless somebody asks him to get involved. He's not going to put any /mental/ effort into it, though. He'll just fumble with the blocks as-instructed by somebody more interested in getting this done. In answer to August's question, he replies, "The purpose of a lock is not to keep you absolutely safe. The average door is made of wood, set into a wood frame, with limited metal components. A deadbolt, perhaps a bar. Numerous tools and sufficient brute force can penetrate all of these things. Institutions with more elaborate protective measures exist." "But," he continues, "a lock's worth is measured in the effort required to penetrate it. Someone who might be willing to open a lockless door and make off with something inside might not be willing to force open a door with a weak lock." "A lock cannot be created which stands as a viable defense against an intruder who has infinite-or-effectively-infinite determination to bypass it. In that case, the lock's ability to stall entry is the measure of its remaining worth. Wasting our time isn't useless." He concludes.
Yuuki Kuran	From the dramatic last stand of Seft - and Yuuki's Multiple Large Stupids, including throwing her immortal-killing weapon at Seft and daring her to use it (which she almost did) - the Kuran Princess had dragged the member of the Flotilla along over her shoulder, the beaten senseless (or to-sense) Seft carried with ease. It was not entirely difficult to traverse the pits and falls of the intervening ground - especially with Stephen Strange's portals (and her own unflappable grace, even after extending far too much into the heroic assbeatings Seft was handing out) - but the puzzle stopped Yuuki where the plastering of papers did not. Still, she snorts and adjusts Seft on her shoulder when Janine tells August the world isn't arranged for him. "You know, it always bothered me when people would make great pains to lock and bar every door, but have windows of glass." "People driven to theft wouldn't really care the door was locked. I guess it's about a bar, but..." Yuuki has only really dealt with people who have both the power and the will. "... I guess it's good that you're here, Janine. I'd be stumped for hours."
Thomas Alva Edison	Edison feels much of the same as Strange about the others.  Talking at this point was likely beyond pointless, everyone had their side.  Right now the only thing there was left to do was finish this zone and bring everything to an end.  The image of Seft still fresh in his mind, the one time he truly felt bad about having to push forward. However, it'd be for nothing if he stopped now.  So aid he does, and if necessary push forward.  This was the last obstacle of this zone...but not the end of this tale.   He takes a deep breath, steeling himself against what may come.
Priscilla	Being an upside down keypad is indeed the thing. Crucially, it's completely rotated that way too, being horizontally inverted, rather than just reading the keys reversed top to bottom. Walking back and forth and touching nondescript filler cubes sets their alien hovering into excited wobbling, and then turning them into ghostlike silhouettes. The last doors open. The Batter walks right through without a word. Of course, there's nowhere else to go at this point. Not for anyone who came all this way.     There's no transitional hallway. The giant door terminates immediately into a giant room --even bigger than the last one by half. The astute will notice that, for precisely the third time, there are non-cuboid or industrial or geometric shapes in here, where elaborate, if sloppily painted, floral designs are spread unfurling across the floor in a slightly darker shade of green. Small pools of distinctly off-coloured plastic sit in the far end, but it's the desk in the center that commands attention, being the sole sign of office in the 'executive suite'.     Specifically, the desk is longer and larger that multiple bar counters stacked end to end and one atop another. This is necessary so the Director can actually sit behind it, though even then it looks almost comical, as his utterly titanic silhouette looms over it to such a degree that his elbows touch its corners and his hands rest on it at almost waist level.     The Director is enormous. Gigantic. Monolithic. Surpassingly huge. A man of fantastically astounding girth. Even though he's just as pallidly dressed and shaded as everyone else seems to be here, and wearing the exact same starched shirt as an Elsen, along with an undersized black tie hanging from its bulging collar, the man radiates a palpable, even menacing, aura of the opposite sort of energy, as if every Elsen were so passive and 'nothing' because he had eaten all of their presence combined.     He also has that unnerving sort of round, bald head, and slight baby face that makes for an uncomfortable, children's storybook giant sort of leer. The ground quakes plaintively as he leans over his desk slightly to stare at you, his face in deep shadow, mouth fixed in a grin that is too wide past his leering eyes and utterly cold and unfriendly, a few shades past 'apathetic professional' and edging slightly into 'serial killer', even stranger with his oddly rosy cheeks. ". . . Who . . . Who are you?" the Director rumbles, certainly as if he were speaking through several bass amplifiers. "I'm the Batter, and I've come to purify you, mister Director." responds the Batter for his own part, so instantaneously it's as if he hadn't quite intended to wait. "Purify?" thunders the Director. "But that's ridiculous!" His shouting makes the plastic quiver and ripple like the steps of an approaching t-rex. "Nothing justifies this drastic measurement! The Queen's sent you hasn't she? Naturally, it's the Queen. It has got to be her. Whoever it was, I refuse!" "It's no question of choice. You're the monster that rules this horrible manufactory." says the Batter, intent on completely ignoring the five different inconsistencies dropped in that rant. "I'm here to make you atone for your sins."
Priscilla	"Monster? Horrible manufactory? This is my fortress of happiness! My wall against the spectres!" booms the Director. "The people here were happy before the phantoms came. Incidentally, I still don't understand why the dead won't just disappear." he adds. "The dead?" "Oh but of course. The ghosts, I mean. They are the souls of the dead . . . Has the thought never occurred to you? It's only logical . . ."     At that point, the Batter is finally lead to silence, only having left to add: "So . . . you have nothing to do with the phantoms?"     "Of course not." replies the Director, punctuating the end of the discourse with a weighty thump. "I'm Enoch, the guardian of Zone 3. My role consists, like one of the other guardians, of forming the energy sent by the Queen Mother into a solid context. I am the living engine of Zone 3. The Queen relies on our kind to make living spaces for men. We are a little like gods, drawing the infinite power of the sun to sculpt our worlds into the Nothingness."     The Director, Enoch, just then loses track of concluding the spoken business. "Ahaha, I love that metaphor. Yes, like gods . . . Precisely."
Janine Liberi	Janine was right, and the door opens. "No you wouldn't have. Your orbiter here would have figured it out," she says in response to Yuuki, gesturing her head towards Zero. Still a little rude, but her slight smirk indicates that she's only ribbing the girl carrying Seft. Through the door she goes, on the Batter's heels.     To be confronted by Enoch.     "Jesus CHRIST you're fat!" she exclaims. There's no malice to her words either. It's just one of those things where you're confronted by such an enormous (pardon the pun) definition of something, all you can do is label it as such. Like saying, 'this is a disaster' upon seeing a train derail into a puppy and kitten orphanage.     The big boy and the Batter have an exchange, Enoch boasting that he's done nothing to deserve purification. "Yeah about that chief," Janine says. "We saw where the sugar is coming from. And from the looks of you, you've been using your own supply." She draws her saber and points it at the colossal man. "And you wonder why the dead aren't leaving. If I was burned and turned into drugs, I'd be pissed enough to haunt someone."     "God? Man I'm really sick of people comparing themselves to gods around here. C'mon Batter, let's Hindenburg this blimp."
Thomas Alva Edison	Edison walks forward, surprised by the rotund (putting it mildly) man behind the desk.  Right off the rip, this encounter was already going swimmingly.  The Batter made his declaration, but...so many things were wrong here.  Why would he expect the Queen of being the one to send them?   He lets other people tackle the more obvious questions, the Specter's being the ghosts of the dead?  Well, in mythology and folklore that is how it goes.  However, when has this been anything but normal?  Taking a moment to gather his thoughts, he looks up towards Enoch.  "Is that why you were burning the bodies and turning the Elsen into sugar?  To stop them?" "More to the point...the Specter's bleed, as well as any of us, do.  I doubt they are as you say they are..." he muses, "Besides, while Occum's razor is an important mindset to have, you are also coming to a conclusion without evidence to support your hypothesis." Edison motions a hand to the room, "Gods?  No, you are not like gods, why would you want to be something as limited as a god?  Mankind has infinite potential, infinite possibility, and here you sit.  You drain the potential of others simply for safety.  The specter's did not ruin your plans, your plans were doomed from the first." "There still may be a better way to resolve this than the path we are heading.  I implore you to seek it."
Zero Kiryu	Zero glances sidelong at Janine, a spark of agitation materializing on his features. He shakes his head, "The nature of our relationship... is something that has been in question on many previous occasions, and which has never been popular with our peers. There was a time I would have said simply, 'She delayed my death, so she has a right to do what she wishes with my life.' But if I am being truthful, that's not the case any more, and hasn't been for a while." He inclines his head a little, "I would thank you not to misrepresent it, especially in such crude terms. Finding a good place to be with others has not come easily to me." "And yes. I would have solved it." He says nothing to Enoch, instead focusing on the giant of a person and attempting to skim his thoughts before things escalate too far to get anything useful out.
Priscilla	Simply put for Zero, Enoch's thoughts are already drifting far away after his 'like gods' analogy, settling on a lofty perch of cold, condescending, smug self-satisfaction, tinged with suspicion and a certain amount of Queen-directed bitterness. He somehow gets the feeling, or rather, a flash of perspective, that to Enoch, he and the rest of the group are even punier in relation to the Guardian than they actually are. Ants. Ants he vaguely considers squishing for the fun of it.
August Kohler	As they enter the room, August stares at the humongous man. A mix of disgust and just fascination with how someone gets that huge. But for now, August prepares. His mirrored bracelet is brought up to eye-level, ready to spot summon a Persona if the guy attacks first. August, for once... Is too tired to attack first, and also, Edison is attempting diplomacy, and August is curious if it'll work. If this guy hates the Queen, perhaps they can kill each other. Emphasis on both dying, because this Guardian does not deserve to live. And August's words make that clear. "If you think you're like a god, I'm willing to be a godslayer. We need to purify the zone. You're in the way. Unless you somehow have an alternative?" August doubts it. But, again, he wants to give the others a chance to enact their plans and discussions. Especially because every second not fighting is another blip of energy for him to gain back, his body repairing itself further and further.
Yuuki Kuran	There is an exchange of words. Words between The Party and A Heckin' Chonker. Yuuki doesn't really engage with the whole situation, moving to the side while still carrying Seft. Janine observes that Zero is her 'orbiter' - Zero replies. It's a good reply, but Janine's lack of sharpness is taken in stride. "I'm sure he would have. He was always tutoring me, before. I've never been the brains, but... I try to be the heart." "Hearts are important." Enoch's grand 'ho ho ho' (or perhaps Fi Fi Fo Fum) would be exasperating, or enraging, but Yuuki is tired from her last emotional breakdown, tired and thirsty and drained, so instead, she just waves to the enormous man. "Don't mind me. I'm just here with my friend, who almost had a very dangerous run-in with some plastic. Could you tell us about the Sugar? Why it's here?"
Doctor Strange	"Save your moralizing," says Strange to Enoch, holding up a scarred palm. He doesn't yell it, but his tone is far from polite. This isn't Stephen Strange, the guy from New York, this is Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. "No matter your intentions, your actions are those of a butcher. By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, you'll answer for them."      Strange clenches his fists and bright orange mandalas burn into place before them. "Answer first the questions of my allies. I'll allow you a moment to make peace with your fate." He hovers in the air, rising slowly until he's level with the Director's head. Slowly, Strange pulls a burning orange sword from the center of a third conjured mandala.
Priscilla	"Evidence?" quakes Enoch. "What other evidence need there be? Even you weasels can clearly see they're ghosts. Why would you call them spectres all this time if they weren't? Bleeding phantoms are the strangest thing you've seen so far? Ridiculous! The problem is that they won't go away. Of course they make certain there are lots of bodies for the ovens, but their numbers are have been swelling to an uncomfortable girth." he says.     "That's the only problem with my bastion of contentment! My palace of smiling workers! Why the sugar? Why else? No other Zone has such happiness! If it weren't for me, there'd be no sugar left in this entire world. It's hardly a wonder those people have gone stark raving mad! Yes, I am a benevolent god indeed. What should be gone, I create from nothing, and bestow upon the people! A miracle. If only one of engineering, and my own boundless power! A feat that only the Queen should be capable of is mine!"     When things turn to threats however, the way he responds feels like he'd already made up his mind to flatten you before you'd even leveled them. "Wahahaha! Very well! I'll squash you bugs like tubes of toothpaste and add you to the oven to bake!"     "It seems we all agree." the Batter says to Janine. "        feels that too." He turns to Enoch. "You demented child of evil. The last grain of sand has fallen through the hourglass of your life." "Certainly not! No matter how strong you are, you can't overcome my massive physique!" bellows Enoch. The entire room shudders as he stands to his feet, his head now brushing the ceiling as the metal groans under his black office shoes. "Ahahaha! Fear me like the menacing shadow of imminent extinction!"     He then crosses the room in precisely two massive steps, and slams both his truck-sized hands down on the ground amidst your number, creating massive shockwaves where his palms and fingers leave giant handprints in the solid metal surface, to say little of anyone caught beneath it.
Thomas Alva Edison	The massive figure's earth-shaking attack sends Thomas unexpectedly thrown to the ground.  Hitting the ground HARD from the surprising speed of Enoch, Edison is sent for a loop.  Not a good start to this, but back on his feet Thomas levels a gaze at Fat Bastard.  At least he's not screaming at them to get in his belly...yet. "To be fair, son.  I don't care that you are not taking the easy way out.  This is the one, and only time, I will not feel bad about purifying a Zone Guardian.  You are the only thing the Batter and I can agree on...you are an antithesis to the healing needing to take place." Edison takes a step forward, while the man can boast about his defense, so can Edison.  Thomas swings a fist out, aiming to drive it right into the man's gut, and what follows is a spark of pure DC POWER, aiming to try and electrify the gut of the man.  It might also make some hilarious animations if this was a JRPG. "I am Thomas Alva Edison, destroyer of Fake truths and deceitful 'so-called deities', the King of Inventors, and what will shine truth on this messed up reality you call a Zone."
Janine Liberi	Enoch's massive bulk may not be the most surprising thing to happen here today. Because when Zero asks that Janine not refer to his relationship with Yuuki as such, she gives him a look before shrugging with her good shoulder. "Okay, if it means so much to you. Sorry."     But, in regards to Enoch, she only has her usual disdain. "You're not a god. You're just a drug dealer, doping everyone so they don't notice the world crumbling around them. You don't have any real power or benevolence, your influence begins and ends with the sugar." She laughs at the Batter's words for him. "He's right. You're just a big child who thinks he's in charge because it's his birthday. But there's no more cake for you, or anyone."     She looks to the monochrome man as he mentions his seemingly-nameless master, and nods. "I'm glad," she says cryptically. Still not a fan of that particular patron. But the absolute unit is on the move, taking up as much space as possible before coming down on them. "Okay, how fast can I go?..." she mutters to herself, watching the hands come down before dashing. A fingertip brushes her shoulder on the way out, sending her rolling and skidding across the floor thanks to her own momentum. "Not that fast," she concludes with a groan.     But she's up, and looking into her sword's blade. "Lets go, Catherine." Rather than the usual vivid blue that accompanies a Persona summoning, Janine burns gold as a shackled bride arises from her form. Her fingers flex and bend, golden wires dancing between them before Janine moves in a blur.     In spite of his massive size, she appears before her face, brandishing her sword. His huge bulk ensures that any cut she opens on most of him would be akin to an insect bite at worse.     So she tries to gouge his eyes with her blade instead.
Doctor Strange	'No matter how strong you are, you can't overcome my massive physique.' It's quite a claim, but it might be true. Seft was, after all, just the bodyguard. And regrettably, in these parts the bodyguard is rarely stronger than the VIP. Still, it gives him an idea. He begins weaving a spell, his hands moving quickly.      He wasn't expecting the Director to move that quickly. That, combined with the sheer size of his hands, has Strange slapped out of the air like a noisome fly. He nearly strikes the ground, but the Cloak of Levitation tugs him into the air. There, he finishes his spell.      The Director claims they can't overcome his massive physique. "Neither can you," retorts Strange. He slides one palm across the other, striking the air towards the Director. There is no projectile. Not even a disturbance in the air. However, gravity around the Director increases exponentially, in an attempt to crush him under his own weight.
August Kohler	Enoch has no alternatives. He's ready to fight. Good, August thinks. They can get to business. As soon as the fight's about to start, and Enoch takes his first step, August shouts out, glancing into the bracelet. "Persona!" Dietrich is manifested in a cloud of grey and red, and August leaps onto his back as the shockwave slams into him. Dietrich is able to maintain footing, though armor is still chipped and August is strill frayed from psychic backlash. Regardless, as Edison begins his lightning beam... Dietrich boosts forward, running like a superhuman madman, and the dark knight suddenly leaps upwards, massive sword moving fast as it suddenly lights up with darkness. It slashes across Enoch's gut, sending corrosive energy through him to try and make the impact meaningful, as well as burn into him painfully. "I'm going to carve you like a hog. You hear that, Enoch?!" A man who turns corpses into drugs. A worthy kill. Every Guardian had been, and the Queen absolutely will be.
Zero Kiryu	"Thank you, it does." Zero replies to Janine. He hits the opposite wall especially roughly, sliding down against it and only just managing to catch himself from collapsing entirely. He rises from this awkward position with an aggravated grunt, rolling his neck and shoulders while the unpleasant sensation of broken bones knitting ripple through the bulk of his form. It's a good thing he wasn't in the last fight. This guy's rough enough without being injured already. He shakes his head blearily, and rather than springing forward to fight or dumping a deluge of vines onto the battlefield, he merely emanates a cloud of a soporific powder, which drifts through the air towards Enoch's massive bulk, seeking to coat his skin and invade his respiratory system.
Yuuki Kuran	Pleased with Janine's reaction, Yuuki flashes the young Persona user a little tired smile. "Thanks. We've come a long way since the start of this dream, I think. All of us." A glance is paid to Enoch, his immenseness growing with the room as he rises up. "Ah... Perhaps not 'all'." She admits, wryly. The palmsmash to the ground shakes, rattles, and rolls from the epicenter out, shattering office and sending damaging ripples hither and fro. On the outskirts of the office, Yuuki sweeps up a kinetic barrier of defensive force, shielding herself and her shouldered charge to break up the oncoming damage, not even staggering beneath the pressure as it rattles her bones. "It's tiring to hear the same thing every time. That you can't see, or truly hear, me. I was so annoyed at first, with being ignored. Then I was annoyed at what I percieved as being talked to, but with such violent derision." "I guess after Seft, I understand a little better about 'matters of perspective'. She couldn't see what was happening, wrapped up in the circumstances. Couldn't see the Sugar for what it was, the horrors of things." "She thought herself a hero." "You think yourself a god. But you can't see her. And you're not hearing me. I don't really know how to fix it, but we were never at the 'talking' stage." With a gesture, the debris from the palmsmash rise up and crash back into Enoch in a hail of powder and drywall and mortar (and probably plastic). "This office... You wouldn't happen to have a guest bar, would you?"
Priscilla	"The little robot? Yes, that one was useful. I'll be disappointed if you broke it too badly. I might've increased sugar production efficiency fivefold with that one!" Enoch responds to Yuuki with rolling waves of bass, completely without the slightest iota of care for who Seft is or what Seft stood for --a useful patsy for his means of control, motivated by her own beliefs conflated with Zone 3's propaganda, and nothing more. "Indeed! Gods don't have anything to listen to from tiny scurrying beetles scratching in the walls! Your ridiculous little crusade couldn't have ended any other way! It was decided the moment you thought you could Purify my manufactory!" Enoch laughs. It's almost enough to be a small attack in of itself. "What jokes! Cake, birthdays, happiness itself, exists at my whim!"     The Batter doesn't have the slightest thing to add, falling into his dead silent, baseball-themed, hyperefficient murder routine immediately with his holy trinity of low resolution iconography. He joins in the barrage of cutting, burning, zapping, blasting, and pummeling with his own bevy of strangely themed abstract baseball attacks and coding/photography/theatre related Add-Ons, intensifying the onslaught.     ---It does almost jack shit fuck. Dedan had a body of steel, and Japhet was an immortal firebird, but Enoch is just *too much Enoch*. It's as if he's so fat that he becomes a singularity of existing. The wounds are tiny cuts and scrapes, flicking spatially relative papercuts of blood from them as they hit prodigious layers of super condensed fat, and unfortunately, a massive mountain of genuine strongman muscle supporting it beneath.     It's actively preposterous. It defies logic. It's like bigness itself is his armour class, as if the bonus to hit him had hit a stack overflow and rolled into the negatives. It's perhaps as if he has greedily hoarded away the Zone's power, as its 'engine', as a man of his girth would pies. Of course, why not? All the Elsens are zombies anyways.     He actively laughs --cackles --guffaws out loud at the attempts, swatting and kicking casually side to side, as if deflecting a mob of tiny, ill-tempered, feral puppies away from a sandwich. "Mwahahaha! You see, I am exceptional! My mighty physicality is far beyond your puny means!"     Strange, finally collapses the floor completely. Rather, since the floor is solid metal, Enoch immediately plunges into an Enoch-shaped hole that shatters underneath him, briefly sticking him at the waist. He huffs and puffs and turns red in the face, sweating and grunting with the effort of working himself out of it. It's a prime opportunity, but even the Batter seems, for once, stymied.     "Damn, this lardass is beefier than expected." exclaims the Batter in uncharacteristically rude fashion. "He's monstrous. The option of the coward might be ours for once. We'll have to find another way to defeat him."
Thomas Alva Edison	"That is one way to put it, another would be that you need to go on the United States Dietary Needs management course headed by my department of health, also eat a salad," Edison says, probably a bit uncharacteristically mean.  "I can build you your own exercise robot, so you might enjoy your life beyond year forty." However, as Strange drops the floor, and the Batter seems like he wants to retreat, Edison is brought back to reality.  The attacks seemed to do little to nothing. Edison thinks for a moment, before speaking up again.   "The only thing I can think of is the furnace.  Well, assuming THAT works...hm..." Edison seems to be struggling to come up with an idea that might be able to overcome the lard.  However, he does agree to the retreat, for now.   A better position might be needed.
August Kohler	As his attacks fail to truly harm Enoch more than superficially, and the Batter says to pull back, Dietrich is swatted aside, and August thinks about what they could do, pulling back. "What if..." "We're above a factory of molten plastic, aren't we? Can we find a way to get him out into the catwalks and drop him? Doctor Strange! Can your portals take him out there?" August keeps on the ready to attack again, if they don't have another plan.
Janine Liberi	Janine swipes at Enoch's eye. A lot of things usually accompany such an injury. A scream, pained flailing, at the very least bringing a hand up to cover it. But this boy is so big, so conceptually Huge that he's done the impossible and armoured his eye. She drifts back down to the ground and examines her blade, looking for even a dash of blood or eye humours. Nothing.     And then the Batter calls for a retreat. And calls Enoch a lardass.     "Batter?!" she exclaims, clearly shocked. It's like when the quiet religious kid tells everyone to shut the 'F' up. And suggesting that they run from a foe? Has something gotten into him? "Is      telling you to do this?" she asks. But no matter what drove the Batter to this decision, it's a good decision. For whatever reason, Enoch seems more than the previous guardians, and a more tactical approach might be called for.     "We out!" she shouts, beating as hasty retreat. Thankfully, Strange has given an opening by dropping Enoch in a pit.
Zero Kiryu	"This place is, in part at least, a matter of perception in general. I suspect that we're not altogether seeing them, either. It's difficult to tell. His mind was quite muddied." Zero asides to Yuuki, joining the strategic retreat without hesitation. "Also... I really wouldn't drink anything that this guy is keeping in stock. It's probably got sugar in it. It's funny, that he thinks grinding /us/ up and making us a part of the production process would be helpful. It would just make everything worse." "Any chance you can hold out until we're done here? I have some tablets on me, if you're desperate." It strikes the hunter, in that moment, that it's probably the first time he's talked of the tablets openly instead of just sort of Quietly Having Them. It is, he decides, a strange step.
Doctor Strange	"Yeah," says Strange to August. The portals could move Enoch, certainly. It'd have to be a pretty big one, but it's nothing he can't manage. If that won't work, he's got another idea. Anything he does at this point is going to just be buying time, but that's his speciality. He pauses. Why do all the work of bringing Enoch to the plastic when he could just do the reverse?      Strange makes an escape portal. Then a second Strange appears, raising a wall from the floor to separate Enoch from everyone else. It won't hold him off for long once he gets out of the pit, but again, it's just buying time. Future!Strange, bearing the same bruises as the present version from being kicked and swatted by David Byrne Big Suit, opens a portal. Enoch's little holding cell begins to flood with plastic. Can you drown a god? Present!Strange steps through his retreat portal, traveling back in time to perform the actions his future self just did.
Yuuki Kuran	A retreat? A strategic... Ohhhhhh. Running away! As with any COWARDLY FOOLISH LETTING THINGS JUST PASSIVELY DOMINATE A--     --As with any good plan thought up by smart people, it takes Yuuki a second to grasp what's going on, but Strange making an escape portal (and 'escape portal good' being a thought she's had for a bit) making it simpler helps massively, and she leaps through the escape with the others, still carrying Seft. "Where's... Our old friend? He's usually good with plans on taking down the Directors, and this one..." Yuuki grimaces. "I've never seen 'big' being used as a defense, and I'm almost offended that sheer scale can stop us all." If she wasn't so tired, she'd be hopping mad! Mostly, now, she's just exasperated.
Priscilla	"I'm advising her too." the Batter replies to Janine. It's possibly one of the single most telling things he's said about their existence this entire time.     FIGHT:     AUTO:     >>FLEE:     Someone agrees. The Batter turns and begins running in his strangely unhurried way. Anyone else doing so leaves the way they came in, and then gets to remember 'oh right, the next three hundred meters are a shitty inefficient rambling maze basically designed to slow people down or make them fall down random holes into the plastic if they were trying to go fast'. Yeah. Strange raises a wall and begins filling it with plastic. He erects an escape portal towards the furnace complex an entire Area away, and people proceed towards it. Just as you get through it though, the geometrically warped wall of solid iron smashes outwards like a burst sheet of paper, and a moderately damp Enoch straight cookie monsters through it, his grin somehow even more tensely, maliciously too-wide, despite his red face from all of the exertion it'd taken such a fat man to extricate himself from that hole.     "Yaaaahahaha! In the valley of the shadow of death, you shall fear the apostle of darkness!" he bellows. "I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"     The room quakes, and concerningly, the portal, as Enoch thunders towards it, huffing and puffing, and at a noticeably reduced superspeed. He thrusts his giant, meaty paws into the human-sized gap, and then somehow *physically* stretches it wider, prying at the gap in space as he wiggles and squeezes and forces his gigantic girth through it in both an improbable constriction of his rotundity and an impossible deformation of how sling ring portals are supposed to work, until it physically tears like an old sock once he falls out of it. The spatial coordinates are all fucked up. You're on the station just outside the furnace itself. There's a bunch of track platforming, ladders, buildings and pipes between you and it, with the saving grace being that it's a varied obstacle course he can't chase you through all at once. There are probably plenty of places he'd struggle to actually interact with due to his towering, building+ size.     "Puf . . . Puf . . . you won't get away you pathetic little thugs! Prepare to join the ghosts!"     Enoch outstretches his arms and goes rumbling after you. It's like a mountain charging at you on top of a race car, moving with a ridiculous, jankily disjointed stride that makes his whole body jiggle and bounce like a water balloon. It's primitively, monkey-brained *absolutely terrifying* to see that coming at you, but at the same time it's side-splittingly hilarious. It's difficult to decide whether it's way too funny or pants-brickingly scary, but there's not a lot of time to think as the sweaty, grunting kaiju comes at you, damp spots already forming under his starched office shirt armpits.
Janine Liberi	Janine skips through the portal and looks over her shoulder just at Enoch Kool-Aid Man's out of his enclosure. "Oh no," she groans, calling out Catherine just as she was about to yell at Strange to close the portal. But the fat man gets his thick fingers through it and starts /making it wider./     "Jesus Christ!" she exclaims, backdashing away from it (literally hovering off the ground as she does), watching in horror as he squeezes through and comes at them, huffing and puffing with pools of sweat building in his shirt. She retches just from imagining the smell.     He's too big to hurt, but not very fast thankfully. Yuuki proposes over the radio drawing him into a more extended pursuit. She agrees, and Catherine waves her hand to create a blast of wind at Enoch. "Back off, fatty!" Janine yells. The wind, against a blob this bloated, probably does little. But with the winds came thin threads that spread, binding to the walls and ceiling of the furnace facility. When Enoch ploughs into them, the wires likely snap under his bulk. But they're so thin and sharp, that it hopefully sucks a lot when he does.     All the while, Janine pulls up the rear, dancing just outside the range of Enoch's arms, trying to keep him in pursuit, throwing out more wind and more wire traps. "C'mon 'God!' Smite my ass if you're so great!"
August Kohler	Enoch's breaking out of his prison. He's too strong. He bursts through and forces the portal open, and August's eyes widen in alarm. Dietrich starts dashing away, but he's not too fast. Yuuki has a plan, so... Dietrich starts rushing for the train, and then suddenly, lashes the sword out behind himself. The sword transforms into a whip, August trying to haphazardly lash Enoch back fast enough that he can't just grab the whip and pull August to his death, hopefully. "Guys, get whatever you plan together! We'll tire him out!" Hopefully, they can get into the train and not get smashed by Enoch in the process.
Yuuki Kuran	A chase. A running fight. But, without the fight. Just enough to string Enoch along. Just enough to keep him interested, to run him down. Like wolves stalking a deer. Or, more aptly... Like a human walking after its prey and causing it to run. At the end of the plastic day --         It was just another prey to take down, god or none. Yuuki had no fear of Enoch being able to shrug off attacks by sheer girth, but she was support for the Batter and having Enoch chase them was the best way to 'steal home base'. Jogging at an absurd anime rate that chews up ground far more than her steps would indicate, Yuuki weaves between the ways of Zone 3, as Janine draws attention, before getting out her phone and... Calling Stephen Strange. On the phone. "Stephen, hello, it's me, Yuuki. You used a plastic portal before, to freeze Seft. When Enoch tries to catch his breath... Drown him. Can you do that?"
Thomas Alva Edison	The first plan, was a bad idea in hindsight, and Yuuki's and Janine's counter arguments were sound.  Edison accepted the argument and decided to head down the tunnels to the train.  Edison leaps onto the trolley itself.   Immediately transforms a portion of the trolly into his lab, and immediately starts making modifications to the trolly itself, making sure that it was both stable, AND faster than it was before, powering it with DC ELECTRIC POWER...and producing good old fashion USA SMOG! After all, if it's harder to breathe...then it's more they can weaken him!   "Go go go!"
Zero Kiryu	Zero mouths the worlds 'apostle of darkness'. This entire incident, combined with what Enoch has said openly about what being a Guardian is, simply convinces him further of his prior hypothesis. This place is simply bad for a person, whatever the reason might be, and nobody comes out the other side intact. Had it been doing the same to the Flotilla members? If so, how much? He makes a mental note to check how Seft 'feels' outside of this context later. He retreats from the advancing Enoch, remaining alongside Yuuki. For the most part his vines do the mobility for him-- jutting out of his body at strange angles to string him along or act as additional limbs. The spread of his vegetation is what he weaponizes here as he passes, laying out difficult-to-traverse zones of control dense with a flourishing jungle brush, sowing it all with a steady outpouring of soporific dust so thick that it gradually starts to become a fog. "Yuuki." He's behind her, a little ways, at this pace. Zero is simply not as quick as she is. "Do you want me to take her?"
Doctor Strange	Strange doesn't really make a good decision after Enoch comes crashing through the wall. The Zone Guardian has shown tremendous speed already, but despite that, he seems to think he can just hold him off with another stalling tactic. The Sorcerer Supreme takes off, flying through a labyrinth of a different sort. He isn't really thinking of tiring him out, just trying to frustrate him. He can't really say why.      The floor beneath Enoch begins to elongate, essentially putting him on a treadmill. Strange hasn't considered Enoch's thus-far defining trait of just not giving a fuck--that he might, for example, jump, or just claw down the railing. Suddenly, his phone rings in the Sanctum Sanctorum. A simple spell alerts him of this fact. It's pulled across several worlds into his waiting palm. He hurriedly swipes right to answer. He listens, pulling a juke to avoid a low hanging pipe. Yuuki will hear the rush of wind, but when she's finished talking, the only response she gets is "I'll call you back."      As he flies past her, she gets a thumbs up.
Priscilla	The chase is on. Enoch thunders along the track like a ten trains of his own, causing the tram to rattle and bounce on its winding path through the last mile of rails. USA certified smog blows in his face and cause him to lapse into spluttering coughing, until he grows sick of it and bends down and rips the rails up himself, then whips them like airing out a carpet, sending shockwaves down the track that derail the super trolley that keeps eluding his reach entirely, and flings its occupants out.     Roaring in rage, then stopping to heave out a chimney stack's worth of soot, Enoch resumes trampling over the manufactory pathway after you. He comes swinging and swatting at Janine, trying to grab her out of the air like trying to clap a fly, tottering through layers of wire and tipping here and there as it snags his proportionately underdeveloped ankles.     The chase briefly goes indoors. The expected green is nowhere to be found. You're forced to run in eerie, echoing quiet in a world of dazzling white and bleached grey, kept company only by the identical doors and the growing, distant sound of clanking bells and someone banging on an iron door, calling out from the other side.     The chase advances back outside. Cracked away at by Dietrich's sword-whip, Enoch tries to simply grasp it in his hefty palms and shake Dietrich around on the end of it like a maracca, then ends up stumbling and bumbling into an appropriately giant patch of super sturdy rose thorns and comes out with his shirt all ripped up and his face and hands obnoxiously scratched.     "Puf . . . Puf . . . Slithering sidewinders! Skittering cockroaches! I'll twist you into taffee! Don't think you can run away from me in my castle! Puf . . . Puf . . ."     When Enoch starts to lag, and Strange immediately cheeses him frozen plastic, there's just enough time to crawl through the pipes, and navigate back to the hot, dim, eerie furnace room at the base of the smoke stack. The Elsen working there is already dead. His corpse is torn to pieces by spectres. The actual door into the oven is clearly far too small to squeeze even Enoch through, but you should be safe in here for a little while, given he can't possibly climb that incredibly tall and thin ladder, and the sugar processing sewer is only about eight feet-     The grated floor unsettles, its bolts snap and pull out, the whole thing squeals, rises, and then topples off the top of Enoch's emerging head. Most of the top half of his body ascends into the furnace room like a quivering mountain forming in fast forward. He somehow seems even bigger, with less than all of his torso filling up half the furnace room.     "Miserable runts! Cold water eels! I had to drag my body chock-full of fat substances through the pipes of my own domain . . . It was hard and humiliating, but I'll eat your hopes for survival like a block of sugar; with delight! (. . . puf . . .)     Though theoretically you're cornered in an awful spot, the impossibly menacing of Enoch's glowering face, made even more dramatically shadowed by the firelight, and the angry downturn of his gigantic smile into a scowl, the sweat drenching his collar and the way his bright red neck barely fits through it is far too telling.
Priscilla	"What an idiot. You've tired yourself, exhausting your strength without taking your poor endurance into account!" claims the Batter, slowly winding back up. Victory is now within our clairvoyant reach . . ."     Enoch wrenches up the rest of the floor on his side of the room, gruntingly pulling his arms through meters of solid metal like thick butter, so he can move them around the chamber. "Puf . . . puf . . . Look at how absurd this all is . . . Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah! You're just puny pests! I'll crush you in no time at all! Your game is nearing its end!"     The Batter used Wide Angle!     Enoch     Royal Guardian of Zone 3.     Third Boss.     Enoch rears back both gigantically mighty arms and brings them crashing down on the ground. Between where his fits hit, a tiny nuclear star erupts, and explodes into the group with white hot artificial fire.     Enoch used Trigger Element!
Doctor Strange	After trying to freeze Enoch, Strange thinks that he's tired the Zone Guardian out, between his efforts and everyone else's. He's not really surprised when Enoch's head comes crashing through the floor. He thinks that he's ready; that the Batter can just cave his head in and they can go home. How wrong he is.      The explosion is only just avoided. It smashes easily through the hastily conjured, complex barriers Strange attempts to weave. Even with them, he's left temporarily blinded, thrown back painfully into the side of the furnace. The Sorcerer Supreme gets to his feet as multiple images of his surroundings dance before his eyes, and a faint ringing sounds in his ears.      He stumbles forwards, nearly falling but for the assistance of the Cloak of Levitation. Strange shakes it off after a moment, frowning with determination. His hands make a motion like a low staff strike--or perhaps, stoking a furnace. The mandalas before his hands lock into place. A lance of fire jolts from each of his fingers, ten in all, each moving in a line like a bolt to both pierce and burn Enoch's body.
August Kohler	Dietrich is, in the end, grabbed by the whip and shaken around, August almost slipping off his mount and going flying off. He barely holds on in one hand, but the brute trauma batters away armor and causes August's mouth to bleed. August finally escapes when Zero's vines tear him up, and manages to pull back into the furnace with the rest. "Did we lose him?" Enoch breaks through the floor, even bigger, and is scowling at them. August isn't /afraid/, but he's a bit anxious at how they're going to defeat this absolute mountain of a man. But...he's exhausting himself, so perhaps they can push more effort out of him. And then, Batter uses Wide Angle, which gives August some hope since the Batter has confidence. And then nuclear fire erupts from a star. The flames wash against Dietrich and August, but the burns aren't as bad as they could be. Sure, it absolutely hurts, is debilitating, and blasts them backwards, but innate fire resistance allows August to regenerate it quicker, and keep on fighting against something that might have taken him out. "Let's make you sweat..." The sword lights ablaze, transforming from whip to blade, as Dietrich leaps upwards, August's burns peeling off and creating fresh skin, his eyes staring Enoch down. The bonfire blade is thrust straight into Enoch's face, attempting to slash it up and actually, hopefully, maybe do real injury to him this time. Or make him exert himself from heat. Either works.
Thomas Alva Edison	Edison is proud of his new baby, already flooding a new world with good old fashion SMOG.  As well as being DC powered, truly, it was a thing of beauty.  Unfortunately, for Edison, Enoch did not appreciate his creative design, and instead derails the train, but not before his work was done.  Hitting the ground after being ejected, and rolling to his feet, he bolts with the group indoors.   Once more the creepiness of the place grates on him, but with the chase being on... Finally, after some pipework, they finally get somewhere...safe?  Safe isn't really the right word, not in immediate danger is a better one.  However, their moment of peace is interrupted by the man literally bursting through the floor.  While it might look like they were trapped, it was true that Enoch had used a considerable portion of his strength to get this far. Even as the mighty arms smash down, Edison tries to move but forced to block as the massive figure's opulent form tries to smash him.  The force enough to knock the lion man back, but somehow EDI SON is seemingly more tough than even his lion-headed visage betrays. "We're not dead yet.  The only thing nearing its end is your workout, I give you a negative one out of ten, for your hate of AMERICAN TRAINS!" he booms... And this time the bulbs on either shoulder come to life, as he releases a massive DC CHARGE right towards the massive child-like face of the third guardian.
Janine Liberi	While Enoch's very existence seems to fly in the face of physics, Janine has become pretty adept in manipulating them as well. She flies down the tunnel, constantly staying out of reach of the Guardian's fignertips. Every now and again, her foot is clipped, and with that much bulk behind the swipe, she goes into tailspin, but rights herself and lays out another wire trap for the trouble.     "Come on lardo, I'd think a god would be more dignified than this! Look at you, puffing and sweating your way through these tunnels. You're a joke, Enoch! We left you for last because you're such a joke we couldn't help but laugh!" Elements of the nasty school bully arise in her words again as she baits her pursuer into chasing her.     She is silent as she flies through the corridors. Somehow, speaking, yelling, taunting... they seem like poor poor ideas here. Whatever is banging on the door might burst through.     Through the pipes and into the furnace. She looks on miserably at the dead Elsen, and catches her own breath as best she can within a smoke stack. "I think we-" she starts to reply to August, right before the white-suited whale erupts from underneath.     "How much bigger can he possibly get?!" she exclaims, looking upon Enoch as he huffs and puffs. He's tired, and the Batter seems confident that he might be beatable now. "All right, let's do this!" And then a star is thrown down. Within the flash of light, Janine moves to get out of the blast radius. Not quite fast enough to avoid what looks like a bad case of sunburn on her face, but at least fast enough to not get cooked.     "Need to catch a breath Enoch? Here, have all the breath you can handle! Catherine!" The bridal Persona arises from a flash of gold, and a strong hot wind kicks up, swirling about before blasting at Enoch's gaping, gasping maw. Forcing it's way down his throat and into his lungs. At worst, potentially choking him. At best, blowing out said lungs for massive internal damage.
Zero Kiryu	A star. A fucking star. Zero rapidly goes about the business of producing a wreath of protective vines that snake out around both himself and Yuuki, although his attention is so fixated on the newly-caught-up Enoch's ridiculous attack that he's not nearly as on-the-ball about her as he might otherwise be. The ensuing nuclear inferno still hurts like a bitch, scouring away his vines and reaching him underneath, scorching away patches of flesh where the vines are eradicated. His flesh is visibly knitting itself back together. The bramble that surrounds him expands abruptly, darting out along the ground beneath Enoch before abruptly expanding their thorns to create a great, bloody patch of murderous blood-drinking spikes.
Yuuki Kuran	Zero asks if she'd like him to carry Seft. Yuuki shakes her head, offering a simple thumbs-up in response. "And I'll be fine until later. Those tablets are... well, not what I'm craving. I'll fix it when we wake up, don't worry." She answers, the strange physics of the 'Batter's World' being a dream one she intends to 'abuse' later. When the group finally arrives at the Sugar Furnace, Yuuki's hands are taken up entirely - one to hold Seft, and one to cover her nose with a handkerchief. It doesn't help, but it makes her feel better. Seeing Enoch exude himself through the pipes, though is Something Else. "The spectres were never safe. And if they're just ghosts, then you created them with this furnace of yours." Waving with her kerchief hand, Yuuki's eyes narrow. "But, you know, you loved that sugar. It's your work, creating it through vile means. There's no 'tenderness' to it. And you twisted up my friend to help you. You've done so much. You should enjoy the fruit of your labor." With a raise up, and then chop down of her hand, the enormous piles of sand (that the wizards had created, and Enoch forced out through the pipes) stirring up into a srirocco that first consumed, and then poured into Enoch's eyes and throat. "Enjoy it! It's your life's work! See how it tastes, how it feels!"
Zero Kiryu	"There is no one in heaven or on earth who craves these tablets." Zero replies to Yuuki, without even looking at her.
Yuuki Kuran	"I don't see why anyone in heaven would want something like those tablets in the first place." Yuuki shrugs, replacing her kerchief over her nose.
Priscilla	emit     This time, things are considerably different. Exhausted halfway to his fatty limits, run on a chase he doesn't nearly have the stamina for and squished through all sorts of small spaces, Enoch's ability to channel whatever force he's been doing is severely compromised. When Dietrich's sword comes down on Enoch's face, it carves a horrid bloody furrow down his bald forehead and a baby cheek, causing him to shield his face ith both hands and a room-shaking "Agh! Miniscule miscreant! I'll pound you into paste first!"     It doesn't get any better for him from there. As if his formerly impervious corpulence were slowly softening in the heat like a blob of margarine that has yet to quite melt, Bloody Rose's thorns rip and tear into soft, pudgy flesh, spilling red blood reeking of saccharine cholesterol. Blasts of fire and electricity char and scorch him, until Enoch is sweating triply what he did before, big fat beads of excessively salty water splishing and splashing on the floor with every motion, sizzling away in the heat. He clutches his throat with several mighty heaves and coughs when Janine deprives him of the ability to breathe, and even goes from a magnificent red to blue in the face when Yuuki dumps the torrent of sand on him, but with a gigantic flex of the muscles buried underneath all that fat, he blows it aside with retching heaves of digging into negative stamina.     "The spectres were convenient, but as your enthusiast of running around in diamond-shaped circles has already determined, they were no invention of mine! This Zone is my work, and it was perfectly fine until they showed up, and it'll be perfectly fine with you wiped out! How the sugar is made doesn't matter! You don't ask to see where the meat comes from do you? As far as it matters to anyone, even to the Queen, that woman never disappeared! Everything is right and fine, and will be forever more behind these walls, no matter how many lesser minds reach the end of their rope! Yes, even the Queen shouldn't know just yet!"     "The words of a delusional fatso." states the Batter, all three halos aligning along his supercharged bat, which he then uses to crack Enoch's overheating face across the side of the jaw, jerking his neck with an ugly pop and knocking several teeth loose along with the blood.     "Punks! Thugs! Vandals! Delinquents! I'll pop you like greasy zits!" Enoch cries. He pounds his fists on the floor over and over again, like a giant manchild throwing a tantrum in a morbid high chair --that is until the floor and walls actually start wobbling and rippling like jelly. At some sort of hyper-resonant fluidity point, the roof starts dripping on you, filled with ash, crude sugar, hot coals, Burnt viscera, and molten metal, exploding like rockets wherever they land, until the room is consumed with a rain of toxic fire that builds into a dark, oily Elephant's Foot of slag.
August Kohler	Dietrich finally gets a good carve in. As the blood trickles down his enemy's face, August forces a grin. "Alright...let's finish this...!" And then, Enoch starts panicking, and the roof starts slamming onto Dietrich and August, and toxic fire melts into his armor. Dietrich dances around most of the debris, evading heavy damage, but it's enough to set back his exhaustion, as he wipes his own blood off his face with the back of his hand. August decides to swell all of his remaining combat energy together, shouting at Enoch as he does so. "As I said before...if you're a god, you can consider me a godslayer!" It oozes confidence, the confidence August wants to further build in himself, as the bonfire around the sword grows even brighter. And oozes black, darkness swirling around with the flames in an inferno of orange and black, stretching out farther than the blade reaches. "TAKE THIS!" Dietrich leaps upwards, and slashes the sword down directly the middle of Enoch's head. It probably won't carve through his muscle on its own, but with the combined effort of everyone, it should be able to truly injure him, and perhaps finish off the titantic Guardian together.
Thomas Alva Edison	As the room itself started to meltdown on them, making this very very trippy, Edison took to the air, aiming to keep himself from the worst of the slag that would come to eventually try and melt their legs off.  This was, somewhat successful, as the splash from the ceiling and walls was still enough to catch his body, burning him with that terrible, terrible smell. A smell Edison will never forget.   "Son, let me tell you about a place.  A real place that I helped build with my own two hands.  Sure, in some ways it's gone astray, but in others, it's become a bastion of the world it comes from.  It is built on the backs of hardworking people, who do so for a better stab at life.  Who put in honest to god hard work, so that they can have better lives, and their children can live even better than they do." "That place is called AMERICA." Edison says, in a dangerous way, "Your Zone, is anything but this place.  You sell false joy to the desperate, you rule the land like a self-appointed god.  You claim to do all of the work when it is your underlings that do the heavy lifting." Edison says both hands at his sides clenched into a fist.  "Let that spirit of these people, fill me now.  Let their cries for FREEDOM and THE RULE OF LAW FILL THE POWER I NEED RIGHT NOW..." he booms, "I! AM! THOMAS! ALVA! EDISON! And /I/ fight for those who wish for their own AMERICA!" And with that, a brilliant light burns in the chest of Edison, the colors of RED, WHITE, and BLUE shine bright as they gain momentum.  Then, without warning, the brilliant BEAM of energy surges out, aiming to scorch the battlefield, as it flies right towards the chest of the literal fat cat of this place. "AMERICAN BEAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"
Janine Liberi	'That woman.' Yet another statement heavy with meaning, and one with which Janine draws a connection.     "Oh god, this wasn't even your idea was it?!" Janine exclaims, letting out a cruel, mocking laugh. "Someone else came up with the sugar and you took the idea! Then you got rid of them or something and kept the supply flowing! You're no god, you're a pretender! A joke, a mime! A CLOWN!"     He starts doing something to the structure of this place, bringing down burning hot slag on everyone. Janine maneuvers about, moving faster than what is trackable to try and avoid this burning rain. A few splatters land on her head and shoulders, drawing hisses of pain from the Italian, but Catherine waves her crossed hands and a massive dome of wind kicks up, sucking the slag off the floor and out of the air. Whatever change her Persona has undergone has tightened her control, as while Enoch is buffeted, everyone else only feels the most gentle of zephyrs.     "But hey, you built this place up. Every bit of it is /all yours,/" she says, venom in her tone. The winds shift, tightening their spiral and clumping the burning slag into a tight lance that flips in the air to point at the ball of lard. "Here you go! Your rightful property!"     The burning semiliquid spear is launched as massive velocity, aiming to pierce the Guardian through the belly.
Zero Kiryu	"You're right," Zero agrees with Yuuki, "Heaven for people like us would be not feeling hungry all the time." The many brambles and vines that Zero has projected into the surroundings coil in on him in reaction to Enoch's fist-pounding, shrouding the man within within a bulb of plant matter. The rain of toxic slag that pours down around them has to go through this protective layer, and it doesn't die /easily/, slithering up and above the layer of oily sludge that settles onto the ground even as the room practically somes apart at the seams. A moment later the bulb is buried, bursting open with violent force as Zero Kiryu applies an enormous amount of strength to open it up around him, flinging slag in every direction as small to middling portions of it manage to worm their way down onto him. Cloth sizzles and burns, flesh yields to muscle and sinew and in some places bone. With a contemptuous brush of his hand Zero sweeps the lingering slag away, purple eyes yielding to a baleful, hungry red. "'You don't ask where the meat comes from do you?'." Zero echoes, icily. "You are grotesque, and you have no idea what it is to starve. Since you're so eager to teach us a lesson about the morals and ethics of where we get our food and don't even have the decency to appreciate the gravity of the food that you're making..." He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a paper packet of tablets, emptying it into his hand and discarding it off to the side. Innumerable thick, flat disks -- the kind you dissolve in water -- fill his fist. With his opposite hand he draws a clawed fingertip across the base of his thumb all the way across the bottom of his hand, and then down the length of his wrist. Rivulets of blood spill down the length of his arm, pooling within the tablets and dripping from his knuckles. He steps forward, vines surging up out of him not to attack but to give him a platform. It parts around the blows and ranged attacks of the others as it winds its way upwards. Zero jumps forward, finding momentary purchase against Enoch's colossal body as he swings his fist directly towards Enoch's mouth, attempting nothing so much as violently thrusting the whole length of his bloodied arm through Enoch's teeth (if any yet remain) and into his throat.
Yuuki Kuran	The battle with the Director is one that's draining, terrifying in a distant way, and disgusting in a direct sense. A foe that is too large to be hurt, too strong to be ignored, and too 'present' in the area to be avoided. One that must be killed. 'Purified'. Still carrying Seft, the room turning to jelly around her, Yuuki exists in an island of relative calm. Surrounded by metallic vines, a dias of thorned chrome and writhing argent, Kuran Yuuki is able to almost entirely ignore the world going to melting jelly, the molten walls and jelly detritus slopping off of her like water and leaving no marks beyond cosmetic clothing damage. It's not something that is efficient with her remaining strength, but she has spare power to 'flex'. To send a message. "I don't have to raise a finger to stop you. All your strength doesn't matter. You're a depressing mess who turned to a drug to 'fix' things. You're a poor god and poorer lord. You're not fit to wear the crown..." Yuuki turns her head to look at the still-insensate Seft. "And you're not fit to speak one word to me about addictions and monsters." A cloud of butterflies coalesces into a somewhat feminine silhouette above Yuuki, perhaps (certainly) inspired by Dietrich and Catherine, but instead of a persona -- it's just familiars. The phantom butterfly-Yuuki draws Artemis from its own hip - not Yuuki's - and flicks out the baton with an electrick crack, before settling into a thrusting stance, and, leading with a powerful leap, drives the killer metal pole right down into Enoch's face. With the descent, the butterflies lose just a hair of cohesion, leaving a path of white fluttering wings and a trail of aimless meandering - but all of it bears that lethal weapon down where the sand scoured. "This whole dream just sounds like a bunch of people being terrible to each other and failing their responsibilities." Yuuki muses as her butterfly-silhouette doppleganger goes for the Vicious Murder.
Doctor Strange	Strange notices that Enoch is having trouble breathing. All of this exertion... if he really, actually is human, if there is any kind of order to the way his body works, then he should be able to shut it down. If he can't do that, then he can at least get it as close as possible. He's already out of breath. So... Strange grimaces, and decides to make Enoch's heart work overtime.      He begins tracing a large mandala--one of the ones sorcerers use to conjure weapons. For his concentration, he's pummeled, beaten, burned. No place is safe to stand. No trick can get him free. That's fine. He couldn't really finesse his way out of Seft's gauntlet, either. If the bill has come due today, then he won't just pay it. He'll tip. Generously.      When he finally manages to catch a breather, stand up, pat out the fires and wipe the Burnt viscera from his eyes, there is a killing intent which flashes within them. He knows that only the Batter can do that honor, but he also knows that he can make Enoch /miserable./ He can make whatever the Batter will do seem like a mercy. Normally his mind doesn't venture to such dark places... but the butchery and atrocities of this world have brought him there. Having tangible evidence of Enoch's crimes literally raining down upon him has only strengthened his resolve.      Uncharacteristically of Strange, the next spell is simple. It's also brutal. His fists strike out at the air in a manner reminiscent of Wing Chun. It's a rapid flurry of lethal, close-range strikes. Rather, it would be, in close combat. Sorcery is, however, a martial art. His movements trigger an equally rapid series of blows... from heavy, solidified ball-and-chains which fly out from the mandala, heading straight towards Enoch's chest.
Priscilla	Even as Enoch finishes with his attack, the room doesn't stop quivering. It's not just melting, it's collapsing in on itself, as if drawn into some sort of colossal gravity well around him, collapsing into him like a swelling black hole at its center.     "Enough with you! It's time to perish, you measly verminous cretins!"     Enoch Used Cl-     All of (what's left of) the wind is driven out of Enoch in an instant as Strange magically punches him in the chest dozens of times in the blink of an eye. The corpulent, winded wheeze of an obese runner tripping and falling onto a rail fills the room with hot, melted sugar breath, just before Janine and Catherine slam a gigantic spike of concentrated awful Chernobyl slag straight through his ribs, serving as a lightning rod for the gigantic red white and blue beam of pure DC patriotism that Edison lets rip, concentrating it all into a single point and then diffusing into a million bolts that causes him to flash in vague approximation of cartoon electrocution, save the greater grotesquerie of burning flesh.     August and Dietrich leap up and come down on his head with the malevolent burning teeth of the buzzing greatsword, blocked by Enoch's forearm at the last moment, but then chewing through fat and flesh with a gratuitous horror movie level of resulting redecorating, screeching and smoking on bone, and then sawing the entire hand off at the wrist with a roar of pain. Zero swerves in on the vines, and Enoch reaches out to crush him, shortly before a tremendous whack of a sacred bat smashes the backside and breaks his knuckles, worsening matters even further.     Zero can feel his fist punch through the back of the giant's blistered, squishy, and convulsing throat, just before Enoch goes ahead and tries to bite him in half, if not swallow him whole for the effort, even while asphyxiating and internally bleeding, before, at last, Yuuki jumps from the top rope and severs his head clean off at the neck, hatcheting through his bus-width neck like a guillotine, with the sound of a snapping tree trunk.     Enoch's gargantuan body remains fixed in place for a moment, before rustling cloth and squelching sweat lead to it sloooowly sliding lower into the hole, and then finally falling through completely, crashing into the deep pipe space below. His decapitated head thunks to the ground heavily, still many times larger than any of you, and still glowering daggers.     "Hhh . . . hhh . . . So . . . the heroes have destroyed the beast . . . But do you know what you have just done?" Enoch manages to snarl without a body, still looming over and leering down at you despite only being a head. "This Zone, deprived of its guardian, is now destined to disappear . . . And the men who live here, whether they deserve it or not, will fall into nothingness, never to return."     But then the first person to answer him, with their existing foreknowledge of having seen a Purified Zone for themselves, is snarled off. "I'm not asking you. I'm talking to the last one to know."     The Batter taps his implement against his shoe to shake off the blood, then, puts it back over his shoulder. "You've been defeated, Enoch, Guardian of the third Zone. This land is now pure." With that, he kicks against the fat man's gigantic head, and rolls it into the furnace hatch. A second later, the world around you turns bright bloody red, and then pristine, blinding white. The sound of bells and hushed conversation briefly rushes to meet you, and then you're deposited right back at the Nothingness from whence you came.     Aquarius Card obtained!     Far away from the four white stars of Zones 0, 1, 2, and 3, a red light glimmers in the distance.