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Nameless      It's always daytime here.

     The lights of Grand Dorado are as golden as can be. They never flicker. They never waver. The flood of darkness-crushing daylight serves only to drive the shadows deeper into the debt of the city's masters. It isn't a city that protects. It isn't a city of peace. It's a city with the shadows in its pocket. A city born on the ethos of the strong over the weak. It's repulsive. It's a place of power for a notion abhorrent, where the seed of self-righteous arrogance has taken root in fertile soil nourished with blood and coin.

     That's the reason.

     It's one part terrorism and one part vigilantism. It's one part a message and one part an execution. The dead stay buried. Evil deserves to die. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed simply because of a kind word and a promise to change. Some things can't change.

     Fingers tighten around the trigger of a gun unlike any other in the world. Some things can't change. This is one of them. Swift death to evil. A banishing cry from an age before his own.

     On a rooftop a mile away the Nameless Gunner sights his target. He doesn't need scopes. Scopes are unnecessary with two words.

     "Trace, on."

     Gold light circuits surge against dark skin. His eyes glow to match the city skyline. His eyes drink it in - the cracks on the pavement, the imperfections in the glass, the threads in the clothing of people walking by. Someone is probably going to get in the way of his shot. Someone probably won't deserve it.

     His finger twitches. That was life, right? Nobody deserved what they got. But one life to stop more evil being brought back was a small price to pay. That's what it was, right?

     The line of the gun moves along with his enemy.

     It'll be confusing, too. The target is arrogant enough to believe that everyone can be saved. Just the thought of it forces the Nameless gunner to admit that this might be a little bit personal, that his white teeth biting down on dark lip are more than frustration at the cruelty of a world where criminals can survive with 'I'm sorry.' Everyone can't be saved. But the target will probably try, and that will buy him time.

     "I am the bone of my sword."

     He slots a red bullet into the gun. It's sharp, with three ridges on the end. It's not meant to kill in the first shot. But it will slice through the cover like tissue paper.

     "Bang."

     The long rifle discharges.

     The brilliant gold of Grand Dorado is disrupted twice over. First it is the long red streak of light that punches through the shimmering gold like a dagger through a dollar bill. The red light glints off every window. People in office buildings notice it, turning to look and seeing nothing before returning to their every day lives. It carves through miles of city. It is an impossible shot.

     It plows straight through a bystander on its way to the target. This was unquestionably intentional. The red blood splatters across window and sidewalk. A woman screams.

     Then the second disruption lands. Dark skin. White hair. Eyes, glowing gold. A red cloth wrapped tight around one arm. A white gun with a wicked blade.

     The shooter.
Staren     Staren has grown fond of the pizza at this particular food court. They have really good chicken, and make pizzas combining it with onions and barbecue sauce, and another combining it with spinach, feta, and tomatoes. It's /really good/, but then, Grand Dorado has only the best.

    Staren's plate has a couple of slices on it. It's probably too many calories for a lunch, really, but with medical nanomachines and the time this body spends in a healing vat while he's off being a robot or something, he'll never get fat. To some eyes this is no doubt more evidence of the ridiculous excess and unfairness, no, /cheating/ of the Concord lifestyle. Staren sees it as using technology to bend reality to conform to human values.

    He sits down at a table. The pizza smells good. He reaches for a slice--

                                      BANG                                      

    It hurts.. Staren is surprised for a split-second that feels like several. There is pain that makes him cry out, a sharp "AAH!", a line of red light went through him, and he looks down to see a hole in his shirt and blood.

    Automated systems kick into gear. A distress beacon is activated. Medichines repair the most minor parts of the damage, slightly lessening blood loss, and dump keep-fighting drugs and pain relievers into his system.

    Someone else was hurt too. Hurt more. Staren stands, knocking over the table and chair and drawing his laser pistol. Nameless lands. Staren's forcefield turns on. It's much thinner than normal, not the heavier setup built into his armor.

    "YOU."

    The catman is mad. Not because of the attempt on his life -- well okay maybe a little bit -- but because this person stands for a world without redemption. A world where people can never get better. His eyes flick between Nameless and the fallen bystander. There will be time to save them later, and he'll make sure someone comes for them. His AI is already sending a note to emergency services as he thinks that. Staren swings his arm up with the pistol, aimed at Nameless, but hesitates. It's crowded here.

    He also has to draw this man out of the crowd before more people get hurt. And stall until help can arrive.

    Staren crouches, and leaps into the air, thrusters in his shoes letting him jump like a videogame character, and then his wings appear, an abstract-shaped, translucent orange affair that buzz like an insect's, as he hovers there long enough to take a double-barreled shot at Nameless (the field has to drop for a split second while he fires) and then he flies backwards towards a nearby rooftop.

    "So this is what you fight for. How many bystanders will you kill, just to prevent someone from being redeemed? What makes you any different from the girl I saved?"

    Man he is so glad for the medichines, because otherwise his dramatic speech would've been 'OW OW OW OH GOD YOU SHOT ME IT HURTS SO MUCH OW OW OW WHYYYYYYYY'.
Nameless      "Nothing."

     Nothing makes them different.

     Staren's nanomachines are working hard. But there's something wrong. The bullet's lodged in - firmly. The spikes have extended into his chest. The bullet is digging in. It isn't just a bullet. It's something else. A trap waiting to be sprung.

     The Nameless gunner doesn't just stand there waiting to be hit. He brings up his red-clad arm as he skids backwards. The red-clad arm takes the shot hard, absorbing most of the blow. What isn't absorbed splatters against his chest and shoulder. It tears into hardened skin. It tears into bone. Staren can already see tiny swords knitting the body back together, but the arm falls limply to the side. For the moment it's out of commission.

     That's probably not much celebration when the Nameless gunner is still coming right at him. Pain is temporary. Evil must be stopped.

     Staren's wings keep him up out of reach of the first sweeping axe-kick. But the kick stops on a table, and there's a muttered incantation Staren can't quite hear the instant the heel hits. The table doesn't go flying but rather stands stock still as gold light surges through it. The Nameless gunner backsprings out of his own axe-kick, jumping up to get above Staren for himself. It's like watching a John Woo movie come to life - a high-flying acrobatics trick a man can only perform with either wire frames or pure literal magic.

     Dark lips part.

     "Lost Bolg."

     The bullet that went through Staren and embedded itself in the concrete suddenly jumps to life. Another red streak, but this one aimed right for Staren's heart. As it comes flying out, the Nameless gunner swings up his own white gun and levels it in Staren's face.

     A gold light traces along its side.

     It's a shotgun, now, a wicked black-and-red-and-white shotgun with a monstrous axe protrusion under twin barrels.

     He returns a dose of what Staren delivered, a heavy blast directly to the face.
Staren     'Nothing.'

    "No." Staren replies. "She aspires to change, to do better."

    Medichines warn that the bullet is getting worse, somehow. Who knows what's in it? It might kill him, but it probably won't get his stack. He needs to stall for time, keep fighting so that Nameless doesn't go all-out to finish it if it's a bomb or something. In the meantime, his labcoat closes itself to provide better protection from outside attacks.

    Staren looks up in surprise as Nameless jumps OVER him. The shot comes in for his heart, digging into but not quite penetrating the labcoat. It HURTS, though. "AAGH!" He winces, reflexively, at the shotgun -- the forcefield comes up, has a large part of it blasted apart, Staren drops it to return fire, and /Priscilla is lecturing him about how he should be able to single-handedly beat down any attempted assassins/. What the FUCK, Concord?! He fires another full blast point-blank.

    Keep going. Stall for time. How could he win this fight? Overwhelming firepower, maybe? That means he needs to get to an open area. Staren tries flying towards the nearest park.
Nameless      "She told you what you wanted to hear so she could keep living."

     Nameless lands on the other side of Staren neatly, turning around to meet the return fire. He doesn't dodge. He just goes forward. His legs are covered in glowing gold spider-web circuitry. His feet dig into the pavement as if it was mud. He doesn't give Staren a chance to break away, doesn't give Staren a chance to get somewhere safe where he can just open up. No. He gets right up in Staren's face, taking the hit from the shotgun dead in the chest. It blows open his chest cavity. Blood splatters everywhere on the ground. His internal organs, briefly, are visible, his heart pumping, his lungs expanding and contracting.

     It's like fighting a robot. No, scratch that - robots have a sense of self-preservation. Robots have a sense of damage. Robots can stop fighting.

     It's like fighting a bullet.

     He doesn't let up. His axe-blade shotgun comes swinging at the force field. "And I told you what would happen if you did it." His voice is not breathless - it's emotionless, flat, apathetic. "You accepted responsibility for everything the moment you chose to bring her back."

     "What she did in the past. What she will do in the future. The lives I have to spend to stop you from saving any more monsters."

     That iron-hard foot smashes into the wounded man on the ground's head on the way through. It's an afterthought, and a deliberate one. Crushing the brain. An intentional provocation.

     The last of the tiny swords finishes knitting together the red-clad arm as Staren tries to break way.

     "A thousand blades wasted without purpose."

     It's an incantation for sure. But for what?

     A bullet manifests between red-bound fingers. It's slotted into the gun. It came out of nowhere. It's long and slender and shaped wrongly. It's like the bullet is too long for the gun, curved in a wrong manner. Like someone made a tiny katana out of a bullet, and then kept making it longer and longer, until it shouldn't possibly fit into the barrel.

     As Staren tries to go, the Nameless gunner kicks off the ground, leaving footprints in the concrete, keeping pace with him. No, more than keeping pace with him - the Nameless gunner is *faster*.

     He raises the gun.

     He fires.

     Staren's sensors go batshit. It's not one bullet, it's three. But it's not three bullets, it's three slashes. But it's not three slashes, it's a prison of blades, a prison of swords all coming at him at once from three sides, a restraining shot, to stop his counterattack cold, to stop his *attack* cold, to stop *him* cold. A prison of swords made of one bullet.

     What the hell is that and how does that make any sense at all?
Staren     "NO!" Stomping the man's brain gets the reaction Nameless wanted. It also means he's now alone in a wide and ever-widening circle free of civilians. Staren swaps the pistol to his other hand and draws another one. "Even if the world worked the way you think, I'd change it."

    This pistol shoots little pen-sized missiles that are basically explosive-tipped kinetic penetrator gyrojet rounds, but they're stopped because some kind of... sword... prison... bullshit happens? Swords are cutting into his clothes, into him. He struggles to pull forth a submachinegun, currently loaded with shock gel rounds, and fire a full-auto burst in Nameless's general direction. Can it stop them all?

    "You..." Staren struggles against the sword prison. "If you believe you're no better, then what do you fight for? Do you just kill people arbitrarily, for no higher purpose? A beast that needs to be put down?"
Nameless      Most of the gel rounds don't land.

     That gun that was a shotgun just falls forward. It splits in two as Staren is bringing his submachinegun to bear. One is white. One is red and black. They both look murderous. The two guns swing forward.

     He's shooting the caps out of the air.

     He's not reloading. He's not stopping. He's moving forward, picking gel sots out of the air with a disgustingly casual attitude. Each shot is stupendously accurate. Staren's sensors see bullets curving in mid-shot. Twisting in mid-shot. Missed bullets turn around and chased down others like angry dogs in the street. The whole affair is absurd to watch. What few gel shots do get past the advancing wall of iron don't seem to do much damage, with the worst of it being one that lodges inside his chest and smashes into his lungs as the tiny swords knit his open body shut like knitting needles. That takes the air out of his lungs for a brief second.

     Not long enough.

     He drops one of the guns, the red one. It hovers in the air, continuing its suppressive fire of its own accord, as Nameless produces another bullet. This one is...odd-looking. Like it's hewn out of stone, rough and unpleasant to look at. He slots it into the gun, unconcerned, continuing his slow, executioner's walk forward. His eyes are empty gold coins.

     "That's it, is it." The Nameless gunner's voice is calm as it ever is. "It must be arbitrary if it isn't what you believe in."

     He levels the gun. "I am a bullet. I am here to destroy evil. That's what I do. It's what I am."

     "Crimes aren't forgiven," his voice gets suddenly spiked, sharp with bitterness, "There's no forgiveness. You take a life, you do evil. You don't get to walk away from it because you said you wanted to change."

     "You pay the price, one way or the other. Criminal or executioner, in the end, lives all weigh the same."

     "Not that I expect you to understand that."

     "Nine Lives Lost Works."

     Bang.

     The bullet spirals out of the gun. No, wait. Nine bullets spiral out of the gun's single chamber, all at once. Or maybe one bullet becomes nine.

     What?

     Nine bullets. They arc through the hail of submachinegun fire, blowing aside pellets. They curve in impossible ways, zig-zagging through the air of their own accord before they come shooting downwards, zeroing in on Staren's arms, his legs, his head, his chest. It is an attack for killing mythical creatures, transformed into a modern-day tool for murder.
Staren     "No. I could almost respect your devotion to a world without forgiveness, but you killed that man just to annoy me, not to create a world that suits your vision."

    Nine bullets. Staren blinks out of existance for a split second... wait, no, there's a housecat falling out of the sword prison... and then he's back. Some of the bullets just scrape his coat, others lodge in it, others penetrate, and he winces and grunts in pain as he tries to slow his fall with the wings, flight unsteady. "That goes for you too."

    He drops the submachinegun, pulls out a... revolver? With a brace that he slips onto his arm in the same movement as he takes aim. It's almost too big for a human to use controllably, thus the brace. It's chrome-plated, and there's a triple-M monogram engraved on the barrel. He fires, six times, each shot some kind of round that explodes into a tight cone of shrapnel, as if he were using a much larger shotgun. A weapon for killing things that threaten men with ordinary weapons, designed to tear holes through the monsters of the Weird West.

    "WE CAN BOTH AGREE" Staren shouts over the gunshots, "THAT YOU ARE EVIL!"
Nameless      Gold eyes trace the revolver in Staren's hand. In another world inside a lost void of a soul, the revolver lands with a thump, burying itself in the endless dust under a rust-colored sky full of chains.

     In this world, however, the Nameless gunner raises the red-clad hand as the revolver comes up. The first shot goes off, and the Nameless gunner is struck in the shoulder, right clean through - almost fatally. An inch lower and it would've blown through his heart.

     The rest of the shots never get near him.

     Staren's own gun forms of gold in the gunner's hand. He meets the bullets dead-on with their own. The first shot breaks one, and they clash like meteors, splattering metal across the ground. The second shot breaks one, another spray of fragments. The third shot breaks one, a ballet of broken metal - but it's less broken than its opponent.

     The fourth shot breaks through two.

     It pierces straight through the bullets, cracking from the first and then fragmenting on the second. It turns them both to dust. The revolver in the Nameless gunner's hand shatters.

     "He died to take your life," the Nameless gunner says nonchalantly, "I didn't excuse it. But don't pretend like you don't understand."

     "All of these people are hostages."

     His guns appear in his hands, held like swords. His eyes are cold and cruel, though his voice is calm and even maybe a little cheerful. "I put you into a position where you had to make choices. I restrained your weapons. I restrained your ability to fight. I attacked your morality, your sense of safety, and your sense of self. Your ability to analyze. Your ability to think clearly. I took away your weapons one by one with the tools I had available. Do you think I'm stupid enough to walk into your home and try and kill you where you're strongest without taking the time to cut you down to size in every way I could?"

     "Don't act like I'm a mad dog." An ill-fitting laugh. "I don't wear enough blue."

     And then he launches himself forward. The concrete explodes at the force of it, dust beneath gold-glowing legs.

     "Crane wings, broken in flight."

     A pair of bladed guns come shooting past Staren, flying past him. "Wind, wear down the mountain."

     Another pair appears in the Nameless gunner's hand as the two behind Staren swing around and start firing. The Nameless gunner's charge turns into a charging shot, a storm of bullets from both directions. He casts the guns aside, and they hang at Staren's sides as two more appear in his hands.

     "Sword, dam the river."

     The guns from behind come swinging downwards, their blades spinning towards Staren as the Nameless gunner's own blades come swinging upwards. They meet in an explosion.

     "Infamy, ending in the void beyond hell."

     Another pair of cuts as the two at Staren's sides come swinging in - and another explosion. At last, the bladed guns appear - longer and more wicked and more horrible than before. The Nameless gunner raises them both.

     "Two worthless men die together."

                        CRANE FLIES ON BROKEN WINGS                          

     Those bladed guns look an awful lot like swords on the way down.
Staren     HE COPIED THE RATTLER. Seeing an imitation of one of Morg's creations used for evil pisses Staren off a little more. The Nameless Assassin describes exactly why that man had to die. "Fair enough. We both fight for our visions of the world. They cannot coexist."

    Then come the attacks. Staren attempts some aerobatic bullshit, jumping and trying to fly at an angle out of the incoming attacks like dodging the fire of a bullet hell boss. Is he just too slow, or is he off his game due to the pain, the frustration, the demands and stresses placed upon him? Does it matter, when those were mostly part of Nameless's plan?

    Sustained gunfire easily blows through the last of the forcefield and starts tearing into Staren's coat. Exploding bladeguns come in , tearing through his coat, opening bloody wounds as they knock him aside and into the path of the second pair, which blow his torso apart.

    For him, the time between now and waking up in an ego bridge, or at least in a computer, passes in an instant.

    Assuming that friends show up before Nameless finds and destroys his stack, that is.

    They'll be here any second now.

    Aaaaaaany second.

    Guys?
Nameless      The target is down.

     There is no way it's that easy. The Nameless gunner has killed *plenty* of people who couldn't die normally. It's part of the life of a magus and a servant of the Counter Force - most of the things he's had to kill (besides bystanders) are things that didn't die from being killed.

     It's too bad. That's the way it's supposed to be, but it never is, is it?

     He crouches down at Staren's body. A blade appears in his hand. He draws it along the back of the neck. He doesn't have much time and he doesn't have much mana. He peels the skin back as his eyes and fingers blaze gold. Trace. Searching. Looking. Find where the gimmick is. Find what it is he uses to back up brains. He said he backed up brains. There's no way he's stupid enough to leave himself unimmunized to the disease he cured. The first person he cured had to be himself.

     He's on a clock. Too many devices to scan. Which one?
Priscilla     With Staren down, the shooting, and the dialogue, over, with only a silent retrieval beacon flashing the network, and with the civilians fled to a safe distance, there is little sound left safe the Nameless Gunner's gruesome work. The wet sounds of fine dissection are almost gunshots in the quiet after that spectacle. There's probably less than a minute on the clock now. There'll be emergency responders, soldiers, Elites, here at any time. He should be able to hear them in the distance, gauge their approach, even in the background din that a heavily populated city entails. It's odd, come to think of it, that he still can't hear them.

    Actually, come to think of it, there's very little else to hear. It's . . . very, quiet. Not quiet after the battle quiet. Not quiet before the storm quiet. Dead, nowhere, midwinter midnight silence.

    That's wrong. Even after that spectacle, there should be footsteps. Distant sounds of panic. Personnel arriving to control the scene. The residual noise of things elsewhere that'd covered up the gunfire for the unaware. He'd taken out Staren in the middle of a crowded food court, taking refuge in audacity and hitting precisely in the most mundane place at the most mundane time to smother the spectacle of it in the bleak trappings of, anticlimactic, illusion-shattering, practical murder. So . . .

    That sheer mundanity provides just a little more refuge. The crude, run down, back alley image of him rummaging through Staren's gore is the last bit of shelter he gets. In that instant, his reinforced senses pick up the barest echo of someone drawing in a short, sharp breath, sounding as if muffled through a wall, but just a bit too sudden and unintentional to be fully covered. Used to them as he is, he can pick up the expected notes of revulsion --of shock and of anger.

    He can also feel the surface of a hate so deep and old and so transcendentally dark that it lies so very far beyond the usual notes of evil and monstrousness that he's used to. A chilling brush with a bottomless, endless, absolute zero of despair contemporaneous with every single thing to ever exist, with himself tugging on the curtain.

    The emotional content of that audible warning is normal. Pedestrian, even, for someone like him. The other thing is new and different, and easily the most horrifying one he's ever been in the proximity of.

    A frozen wind tears at his back, in a neat, perfectly curving sweep, following a flash of severing black --a streaking paintbrush arc of darkness with a razor ribbon of silver. A blade he can't see or hear, but only feel the heart-pounding proximity of, falls on his back to cleave him completely in half. The floor freezes over instantaneously in its wake.
Nobunaga     The dead silence of the cold. The fury of the First. And the growing smell of gunpowder. For who should round that alleyway into full view but -- another Servant. Trailing behind this dark-haired woman, rifles. Wood, iron, gold-accented Japanese arquebi floating along above and behind her. More wink into being with each step she takes, and when she turns to face down that alleyway, every weapon accompanying her swivels at once with the rapid clicking of levers locking back into firing position.

    "You've succeeded. Our dear comrade is broken at your feet. But now it's time to pay for the price of your success." Her gaze lifts, the brim of her hat keeping those eyes cast in shadow. Eyes that glow with an undeniable burning crimson. One hand raises, fingers splayed. More weapons wink in around her, crowding the air around the unmistakable silhouette of an infamous Sengoku warlord. Magic builds, her cape fluttering up around her as yet more weapons manifest.

    "Prostrate your corpse before Three Thousand Souls upon the Three Steps of Nagashino!"

    With the First lashing out immediately from stealth, the warlord Oda Nobunaga is using that shock and surprise to wind up her Noble Phantasm.
Rean Schwarzer Rean rushes to the scene as quickly as he can, hoping and praying that Staren can handle himself long enough before he gets there.

Unfortunately, the image of a man rooting around in Staren's shredded corpse proves otherwise.

"Wha-" Rean stammers. He's too late.

Shock gives way to rage and pain as Rean is engulfed in darkness. Staren was an important presence in his activities in the multiverse, and to lose that was just-

Too much.

Rean charges forward, blade drawn and eyes blazing crimson.

He would /pay/ for this.
Nameless      The silence is itself a warning.

     He's not a stupid man. No stupid man would be able to succeed like this. A stupid man would have charged in guns blazing, or tried to foolishly take out an Elite with a sniper rifle and trusted in that to work, or assumed Staren was dead from the moment his body hit the ground. No stupid man could have walked into Grand Dorado without notice and functionally come within a hair's breadth of killing a Hand of the Concord.

     So when the silence falls, the scalpel is abandoned. Cities aren't silent. Cities are living things. Silence is-

     -death.

     It's a micrometer's distance between life and death. It's that breath - that single shocked breath - that /single/ /echoed breath/ - that saves his life. If it hadn't been, if there had been no gasp, if there had been no shock, he would be dead right now.

     And it's only a micrometer because he tucked his head forward to roll over Staren's corpse when his enhanced sense of touch felt the air freeze just above him.

     Even then, it's not a clean getaway. No blood rolls down his back - it's frozen in the wound, crystals of red ice jutting out of his body.

     Darkness. Darkness that tastes like the Grail. Darkness that tastes like those eyes. Those purple eyes. Those twisted eyes. Darkness that tastes like her blood. Darkness that tastes like her blood on his hands. Her blood on his hands. Her blood on his hands!

     HER BLOOD ON HIS HANDS!

     He stands, his fingers shaking. It's the most visibly disturbed he's been the entire time. The cameras he was caught on would register everything he did as smooth and methodical, soulless and robotic. But this is proof that he is a living being, or at least, an excellent fascimile of one.

     The frozen blood crystals aren't healing. They're in the way. The swords are chipping away at the blood. If he hadn't moved it would've cleaved him in half; if he had moved slower it would've frozen his heart.

     He doesn't turn around. The arrival of Nobunaga is easier to predict - she's not subtle, she's not quiet. Gunpowder wind. The smell of fire and death. The taste of magic. Rean's stammer and hatred are just as loud, just as obvious. Neither of them is subtle. That's his benefit.

     Trace, on.

     He moves. He's fast - stupid fast, ridiculous fast. He's fast enough to leave footprints in concrete even with the quite literal seam of blood crystals down his back. He skids to the side, not out of the way of Nobunaga but placing the invisible attacker between Nobunaga and himself. He's drawing Rean in to limit their ability to attack, drawing Rean into the line of fire, drawing-

     -oh no.

     It's just one bullet. It's one, single bullet. It looks like an old musket crammed into a bullet shape, with a wooden butt and a metal front. It smells like Honnouji. It smells like burning traditions and dead gods.

     Rean charges forward in a straight line.

     The Nameless gunner raises the gun.

     "Lost Worlds."

     It's one shot.

     It's thirty shots.

     It's three hundred shots.

     It's three thousand shots.

     That one shot in an instant became three lines of bullets, three storms of a thousand shots each. It's even staggered. Every bullet smells like dying gods. Every bullet tastes like shredded wonders.

     "If you want to be angry," he says, calmly, unnaturally calmly, /eerily/ calmly, "Be angry at the person lying there on the ground. I told him what would happen. He chose the life of a criminal over his own."

     "It can't be helped."
Rean Schwarzer If Rean was in the state of mind to respond to Nameless, he'd probably say something like, "He chose right" or something naive like that.

Unfortunately, he's not. In fact, it's in this state of mind that he most agrees with Nameless. Evil must be destroyed with no exceptions. Unfortunately for Nameless, he IS evil. Anything that harmed what he cared about was evil with no exceptions.

And unfortunately for Rean, he's running headlong into the path of at least a thousand bullets. The bullets tear into skin, uniform, muscle and organs. He falls over - not dead, but not in any shape to fight properly.

That's not going to stop him, though. The dark aura around him only grows deeper as Rean drags himself towards Nameless with what little strength he has left.
Nobunaga     Subtle as a war, that Oda Nobunaga. And as furious as a battlefield. The nameless gunman's maneuver is noted, and the warlord stays her hand. She can't see Priscilla, but she knows the First is there, somewhere. And she presumes that somewhere is 'between the gunman and herself', because that is precisely what she would have done in that situation. A human shield.

    Commendable. If irritating. Were it anyone else, Nobunaga would shoot right through them and ask forgiveness later.

    That's kind of not an option when it's literally Your Boss. Even worse when Your Boss would survive the experience. No, Nobunaga is a warlord who's made a lot of gambles, but gambling on eternal dragon hate is not something she's willing to push her luck with.

    And so she stays her hand, even the Noble Phantasm chant ceases. Some of the guns disappear. Not all of them. She opens her mouth to speak up, when the nameless gunman does something extraordinary-- because that bullet is instantly recognizable.

    "Hooh~?"

    Nobunaga takes a step back and to the side, disappearing amidst her countless rifles, which are pummeled and destroyed by the gunfire. Nobunaga herself stands beside the alley entryway, waiting out the copied barrage with her chin cradled in one hand, thoughtful.
Priscilla     Rolling away, tactically repositioning, choosing the most immediately useful weapon in the room, planning out his firing arcs, executing his delaying tactics, maneuvering into an advantageous reach, catching his breath, preparing his escape --they're what the Nameless Gunner excels at, as a weapon who has thrown away everything else but the shot and how to fire it.

    Even then, though, through so much perfectly optimized, split second decisionmaking and execution, unhesitating and unerring, there is still the lingering impression of it all being done while ankle deep in an unspeakably cold and dark current, rising up through the flagstones, lowly spilling out and filling the room. He can picture it. Feel it sloshing under his feet. His cratered footprints are even filling in with it, collecting pools of immaterial pitch blackness, from something unknowable trickling into the court, congealing in lowest points he'd created.

    Brushing its grasp is all he needs to know the reason he is alive is that its source has yet to abandon what he has. The absolute Death that comes for him is flawed, even slightly, by the human element at the center all of it. Emotion and irrationality, etched into the firing mechanism, gives him that split second opening to escape. Were it as empty as he, perhaps not --but it is full. So very, very full. Overflowing with fathomless hate that he's somehow caused to leak out.

    He has his escape. There's nowhere in the room to go with so many bullets in the air. A wall of glittering ice, unnaturally luminous and opaque, rises ahead of the barrage, and is blown to pieces, renewed for the second wave, and shattered into so much shrapnel, and brought up a third time, thinned and weakened, to be blown through once again.

    The woman that stands on the other side, amidst a haze of burning frost, scattered points of red staining her dress, is unmistakable. She breathes out a plume of ghost-stuff like fogging breath. Her tail lashes the ground in uncontained fury. Her skin is ash and her eyes are eerie green-gold murder. The shadows warp and bend around her, flowing like liquid. The aura around her is irrepressibly unnatural, spilling uncontained, painting over the simple food court in heavy brush strokes of unreal dark and cold and frost and blood and old, old wounds. It's nothing like the PR photos or the dossiers he's no doubt seen. The colossal scythe in her hand, all one piece of twisted black and silver 'metal', dripping with his blood, sizzling away into black smoke, is somehow inherently, chillingly wrong. He knows a weapon when he sees one --he *is* a weapon-- and he can recognize when a weapon isn't a made thing. The blood on it isn't from his back. It's the blood on his hands. He just knows it. Dripping from the crescent moon curve.
Priscilla     "The boy on the ground . . . is mine." the crossbreed hisses, not in the sense of anger, but the hiss made by freezing water. "His life . . . is no longer his own to spend."

    "Thou believest that because of what thou art, there art no longer such things as choice or discretion left to thee. That it cannot be helped. Indeed, perhaps thou art so simple a thing."

    "That means nothing. Before there is justice, or evil, or right or wrong; before there is responsibility or choice or cause or effect, there is what is mine, and there is that from outside that wishes to take it. Always wishing to take from me, from the very beginning. Never satisfied. Always hungry. Ever so callously motivated."

    "This place is mine own. That dead man relied upon me. The boy on the ground believes in me. He couldst burn down the rest of the Multiverse and I wouldst care not at all for what consequences 'shouldst' befall him by any measure. Dost thou understandeth? Thou hast fired thineself at something that must never be shot. Morality is worthless, but safety and sense of self is everything. A life as worthless and without meaning as thine own is scarce payment. If *this* represents justice, if it is fighting evil, then I shalt purge it from the world and champion evil itself to keep what is mine."

    "If thou art not worth hating, then I shalt hate justice itself."

    Priscilla tilts forward and then disappears in the blink of an eye. The Nameless knows she can turn invisible. He can estimate her speed. He doesn't yet know that she can render that speed entirely irrelevant. She doesn't just turn invisible, but briefly ceases to exist. He's already running, far faster than she can keep up, but she uses that one, existential jump, to put a screaming, crescent vortex of Dark through him one more time, multiple arcs of violent mutilation splitting the air just around him. They'd take his head, ideally. Some sacrificial limb is more likely. A gesture of spite. Relentless.
Nameless      Rean charges through three thousand bullets. The Nameless gunner would be impressed if it was in his nature and he wasn't already moving away. Nobunaga gave him a chance, and he's not stupid enough to not take it. This isn't a cackling comic book villain convinced he can deal with three Elites on his own. This is a tactical, a planned, an intelligent attack. This is a man who had an escape plan, had it disrupted, and is now compensating as best he can.

     Priscilla says that she hates the concept of justice itself. She tells him that there are things that can't be fired upon. That because it belongs to her it is safe. That because it belongs to her nothing can be done.

     In another life he heard that once before. Not this one. Not even the one he lived. But it's a memory from another time, an echo of an echo of an echo. His lips twist upwards in a distasteful smile - the first real emotion he's shown besides the shaking hands.

     It reminds him of something unpleasant. Someone unpleasant and golden that he didn't ever meet, but still etched upon his mind through that damnable red arm.

     Nobunaga removes herself from the field. Rean is breaking down. Priscilla is the main threat here, until Nobunaga gathers her strength, and Nameless is out of it.

     Priscilla goes to cut the air. To carve the blade through him, the blade that isn't a blade, the blade that also reminds him of the person he was before he threw it all away, the blade that eats.

     Gold-glowing fingers spring one last trap.

     They brush across a parking meter as he dodges just slightly out of the way, just so close, so close, that it clips him in the arm.

     The parking meter explodes. Not violently, not in all directions - a focused, directed, pointed assault, a spray of coins like shuriken that are harder and more dangerous than any coin has any right to be. Mere coins couldn't harm Priscilla, but these are weapons made by a master smith.

     His dark arm sags. It isn't off, it isn't gone, but it's not pleasant to look at. It dangles on literal strings, blades emerging to try and sew it up against the frozen skin and failing miserably. Eventually it will work - he's nothing but a ghost, after all - but for now...

     His red-clad arm starts to bulge. It looks horrible. Unpleasant. Like something is poking its way out of his skin.

     He's almost out of mana.

     His eyes lock onto Priscilla's. They're a cold, emotionless, dead gold, the color of bullet casings.

     "Nothing evil can be called justice," he says, and his voice is flat, and neutral, and it clearly isn't talking about Priscilla.

     And then he's off, his movement stupendously fast, leaving footprints in buildings, shattering glass, and passing through buildings in most direct manner possible, heedless of his own destruction - and yet, despite that, in the footage later, he intentionally avoids harming anyone to slow them down.

     He only kills when it's necessary to kill evil, apparently.