Scene #6903: OFF - Secret Zone

Owner	Pose
Priscilla	You reappear in the room you started in. A small, cubic room, on an island of metal, surrounded by luminous liquid. A narrow corridor ahead of you leads into a familiar room, with a wide, empty communal area to the right, a storage crevice to the left and a single bedroom in the middle, sheltered on both sides. The layout is just the same, but the fuzzy tinge of the abstract, falls away. The confabulations and vagueries of memory, with details fudged and forgotten, remembered later but never quite the same, have no place here. The muted hues of solely dark and light disappear. The walls are red. The floor is red. The ceiling is red. What should be the pool of plastic is instead a well of saturated, too-red redness. The redness sears into your eyes even when you close your eyelids. It smells so strongly of blood and antiseptic that the two scents mingle together into something acerbic and vile. Space quivers with the vibrations of some field of energy of immensity beyond description, yet completely inpalpable, save the way the air skitters on your skin and crawls in your lungs. There are no boxes. There are no chairs. There are no desks. There are no computers. There are no windows. Chapter 0 The Batter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b3Ff84GobY
Starbound Flotilla	'George' is exhausted. His armor shattered, his body in profound pain, he stumbles tiredly forward. As he goes, he sheds shattered outer armor and leaves only the smoother crimson strength-enhancing frameworks over his gray jumpsuit. It gives him room to give attention to his wounds, however abstract they often are, with nanobandages. He's chain-smoking hard. "And that's all she wrote. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen." He says, in a tone that somehow manages to be both positive and somber, hopeful and bittersweet. 'George' stops just outside the bedroom, trying to give particularly more attention to his wounds. "We're just about done, kids. But the climax ain't the ending. If you want closure for a story, there's always a little more business to deal with at the end. Be... careful, though. Never know how off-rails everything is."
August Kohler	August is not in a good place, but he's here regardless. He has to see this through, even as everything is collapsing for him. The redhead is sullen and unsmiling, revolver and knife visible at his side. As they approach, though, the two mixing scents cause him to repulse, covering his nose, as he glances around the room. There's nothing to be seen, but the air is weird and there's certainly an energy field. August just turns to everyone else as they approach. "This is the final stretch. Are we ready to do whatever it is we're going to do?" George gets a solemn nod. Dietrich is then summoned, waiting next to August, tall and towering. In preparation for what will likely be a fight. If it's not a fight...they acn deal with that later.
Janine Liberi	Janine dry-heaves. The stink of blood and antiseptic makes her head spin. "There's still more?!" she exclaims. "We barely managed to beat the Queen." She lets out an exhausted sigh, but grips her sabre and pulls it from its sheath. "Fine, whatever," she says in an unconvinced tone. "Gotta give the story an ending, right? Let's go." And with that, she strides through the door.
Starbound Flotilla	"Don't worry. Anything after the climax, it all ought'a be... What's the word?" 'George' ponders aloud as he replies to Janine. "Right, that's the one. Falling action. Just be ready."
Doctor Strange	At present, the Sorcerer Supreme is in two places. He is in the Sanctum, sleeping off his fight with the Queen. He is also in the room they started in, post-recuperation. Both there and here, dark bruises still marr his hands and neck, reminders of the Queen's dramatic final attack. The Strange from the future, now standing amidst his allies, hasn't bothered to clean the dried blood from the places where her charging pieces split his skin. His short hair is slightly askew--he hasn't hidden the signs of his own exertion in that battle. Despite the injuries, he is at peace. He might even be content, were it not for the strong scent of the room. "This is the way it really is," guesses Strange, murmuring quietly to himself. He silently floats straight ahead. The bedroom was important before--arguably the whole point of this space. He supposes it might have equal importance here.
Yuuki Kuran	The battle was pitched and long, but beyond the dramatic shredding of her outerwear, Yuuki had remained unflappably 'fine'. Outwardly. Stripping the tatters of her classic winter coat to reveal her only mildly battle damaged white collared shirt underneath, adjusting her ripped scarf to lay over her shoulders rather than being bundled around her neck. From the pocket of her coat, she retrieves the single piece of Candy From The Past she had retrieved that had remained with her, holding the single wrapped treat between thumb and forefinger. "Falling action? That sounds a bit dangerous. I thought we all got to bow at the end and get a standing ovation." Yuuki muses, the tiniest hint of amusement in her voice. "Is everyone alright? George, you look... Not good." She offers him the candy. "Candy?"
Starbound Flotilla	'George' takes the offered candy and smiles in a kind, grateful way. "Even a little sugar can make the most bitter kind of pill go down. Really appreciate it, Yuuki. You're a hell of a Director, girl." He seems put at a kind of ease by the gesture of comfort, though only a fraction of his unease abates.
Zero Kiryu	The smell of the surroundings isn't noxious to Zero Kiryu, but it's only because he's already lived the sort of life that these smells tell a tale of. It's not a pleasant reminder, of course, but it isn't unfamiliar at all. His own injuries are visibly knitting, his body pulling itself back together from the variety of hurts inflicted on it previously. His eyes gleam an unpleasant red that washes out in the surroundings. His expression is not one of disgust or revulsion, but of utmost sympathy. He remembers the world peeling apart at the peripheries, distant echoes of his own deterioration. "He's already told you what to expect." He advises August, dully. Zero moves to take a position at Yuuki's side once again, raising a hand to rest lightly against her shoulder.
Priscilla	Strange advances. Appropriately enough, despite their polar opposites, the only other one to do so is the Batter, and so they march forward side by side. Down red halls with red floors, away from that pool --that vat-- of supersaturated, spiritual 'blood', a more vivid shade of scarlet than could ever really exist. The bedroom . . . =========================The Race of a Thousand Ants========================== There is a room with only one exit. It is square and small, with hard metal floors and walls of bright scarlet and crimson, patterned with grainy bloodred flowers and crosses of abstract quality. It is well lit, even without windows or electricity, and it is bare, without a single piece of furniture, other than a soft red rug laid in the center of the hard red floor. There are no shadows here. No dark. No doors or windows or lights. Just a little red room with only one exit, secreted away. A child sits on the corner of the rug. He only just old enough to walk, still bald and babyfaced, with huge, restless round eyes. A leg of ham, almost as big as he, lays at rest in his tiny lap, over which he fusses nervously. All alone in his little red room with only one exit, he suddenly coughs, the pale boy seized by weak, hacking wheezes. He looks up. ". . . I'm here." says the Batter, without elaboration. The little boy goes bug-eyed. His tiny fingertips dig into the inexplicable hunk of meat, nails scraping the skin and somehow drawing fresh, oozing blood. Here, in this tiny room, with its strange designs, you know you are at the very center of the world. A world nested within a world, or rather, the last bit of an old one with the new world wrapped all around it, buried at its very core. The Bedroom of the present day, without even the bed of its namesake left, writhes with power. The humming air vibrates around you. The warmth is stifling and intolerable, like the inside of a body. A locus of power beyond description, without magnificence, holiness, natural beauty or arcane energy, strange, unsettling, and off-kilter as the rest of this world. Stale, smoky bunker air, slightly turning meat, hard, unyielding metal, and ceramic plastics are the only things here. It radiates from the child. It pours from him as if his tiny, sickly frame were a fathomless dam, and the very structure of the room were so many invisible flood hoses allowing it to pour through. The discharge of raw Power is ceaseless. Never ending. Infinite. The boy, perhaps only three years old, effortlessly sustains the entire existence of this fabricated land of strange ideas. The Guardians spoke of 'the infinite power of the Sun' that shapes this world. That may have been misheard. The stench of the Burnt lingers here. The chemical taste of burnt plastic. The reek of carbonized flesh. The bitter sizzle of hot metal. The acrid taste of electric smoke. The maddening illness that afflicts the Elsen isn't theirs. It's His, and it trickles down. The Batter used Wide Angle! Hugo A little boy. HP: ???, CP: 99999/99999 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBmXQcJuhI
Janine Liberi	Janine follows after the two men to stand in a bedroom. No, not a bedroom, like the ones before. THE bedroom. The very core of this whole messed up world. Every single hair on her body stands on end, goose flesh raising from the sheer power radiating out from here. From him. "Wait... this is Hugo?" she asks aloud. "I mean... yeah those bedrooms had a real kid feel but... /time passed,/ right? Are you telling me he never got older?"She stares incredulously at the sickly child, before breaking off from the group and kneeling down before him. "Hey, kiddo," she says, grimacing a little as he claws at the slab of meat he clings to like it were a soft toy. "Wouldn't you rather eat this instead?" Her hand dips into a pocket, and produces that piece of candy she found under the bed. "Here, all yours," she says with a strained smile. The Batter used Wide Angle! Janine turns her head to stare, long and hard at the figure in white. "What are you doing?" she asks in a hollow tone.
August Kohler	They enter the room. A child with a ham. Hugo. The power of this world. The son with all the energy. The creator of the spectres. Hugo. Three years old. August exhales, sharply. He immediately asks George if /they/ have to kill him. He gets an affirmative. Three...just a child. But there's no alternative for the boy. Dietrich steps forward, towards him. August is having trouble. He's a brutal killer, but...this boy doesn't even deserve it. He's not evil, He's just a child. Yet. They have to purify the world. They have to complete the mission, and end the suffering once and for all. They can't stop here. "Janine. Move away. I'm sorry, but...I...I chooseth this fate of mine own free will." And then, Dietrich rushes forward. His massive sword moves to slice down on the child with the power of a trailer truck, even after a moment of hesitation. August doesn't expect to cut him down in one strike. This will be brutal.
Doctor Strange	"He's a god," explains Strange to Janine. He must be, for all the power here to originate from him. "Or a... Titan..." She can hear the capital T--a reference to Greek mythology. "...or something like one. No more a kid than you or me." He doesn't sound pleased with this discovery, but neither does he sound surprised. "He looks like a kid because it's part of his domain. He's the Son," continues the Sorcerer Supreme, realizing now the 'infinite power' comes from the 'son' and not the 'sun.' "A thousand years could pass, and he might still look like this." His original plan--before placing the others in the Judge's bunker--was to use the Grands to avoid having to make a choice like this. He couldn't have known it would be so dire a choice then. He sighs through his nose as Janine raises her objection. The hiss of his magic is now in the room--one hand holds a blade conjured from dimensional energy, burning brightly. "Stop," he says quietly to Janine. The sword may be a silent promise that he will attempt to halt any efforts to frustrate this. "Listen. Look." He extends one finger, tracing the infinite, invisible lines of power emanating from Hugo. "Do you feel it? The source of everything. It's him. He's the off switch."
Yuuki Kuran	Following the two men, the Batter - the 'person' who embodied purity, the quest for ending - and Doctor Strange - the person who among all the others had been the one most for alternatives and avoiding the fate before them - Yuuki is quiet. She's braced, and it shows in her neck, the tension in her shoulders, the labor of her breaths. She's expecting something awful. She smells it first - the smell of the Burnt, and the power of the Sun^5^5on, the sight of the bloody hock of meat. Stepping ahead of George, in front of George, Yuuki draws the baton from her side and saps open the weapon with an electric crackle and a sweep of metallic bats that fade like embers from a flame, leaving the head of a scythe at the cap of her weapon. "It's a perspective. We know this has gone on, over and over. For years. The Flotilla have been here for gosh-knows-how-long. This is the ending." "This is what George asked us to do."
Starbound Flotilla	George is back outside the door. His hands are shaking. He's sweating, feeling sick. A grin is forced over his face like locked manacles, wrinkled cheeks pulled up around grinding teeth. Throughout all his long life of wrongs, in spite of everything, he's never killed a child, and he's always stuck to that. In some way, he gets to stick to it still. It's a small blessing to not have to look, or pull the trigger. Little sugar for a bitter pill.
Janine Liberi	Janine looks from the Batter to everyone else. Everyone... advocating for this. "No," she says to August, drawing her sabre once more. "Fuck your free will. This is just you grandstanding again. 'Big bad August gotta make the hard choices.' You've never made a hard choice when you get like this, you just make the most destructive one so that people will 'take you seriously.' But fine. I'll take you seriously." She spits her words like a venomous snake, regressing to how she used to be. She turns on Strange next. "Shut the fuck up. If it looks like a kid, acts like a kid, cringes away from threatening adults like a kid, it's a kid! The fact that you're ever trying to muddy it shows that you know this is wrong!" Now she's glaring at Yuuki. "I have never once in my life done what he wanted and I'm not about to fucking start! He led you here too! He knew this kid was here, he wants us to kill him, and he didn't tell us! He didn't tell /you!/ Probably worried we would reject him, like normal-thinking people." She takes a moment to spit at George also. "You're scum. You're less than shit. Fuck you." Catherine arises behind Janine in a flash of gold. "I'm not gonna stand idly by and let people murder a child. I resolved to become a better person than I was. This seems like a good start for that."
Zero Kiryu	Zero moves with Yuuki, his hand remaining at her shoulder throughout. He's known that this isn't going to be an outcome that anyone would find acceptable for a while, and for a little less time he's started to resent George for dragging Yuuki in particular through it. So when they come to the sight of the final stretch, the child, the feeling around him, the power emanating from him. The sheer infancy of his apparent existence-- He releases Yuuki's shoulder for a moment to walk around behind her, the sound of Artemis extending and transforming into a scythe sharp in the back of his mind. As casually as if they were merely practicing-- or if he was redirecting her weapon in a moment of novice inexperience a near-decade past, he slips his arms around hers. His hands close around Artemis atop Yuuki's hands, a light crackle emanating where his fingers brush the metal directly. He inclines his head a little and murmurs into her ear.
Doctor Strange	Strange's nostrils flare in irritation. His face is like stone. "He's the source of suffering for an entire world. It wasn't always like this, but it is now. Yeah." Strange shrugs flatly. "He looks like a kid. Ever think maybe that's intentional? To make his controller," says Strange, pointing at the Batter, "Think twice about what she's doing? You think the 'launch missile' button on a nuclear submarine is just out there, where any dick on board can press it?" He shakes his head. "No. It's intentional. And even if it isn't..." Strange rests both hands on the pommel of his conjured weapon, the tip of the blade currently pressed into the ground. "If he was some jackass in plate mail with a huge hammer, some... habitual mustache-twirler, we'd have already killed him. Zone 3 would have sealed the deal for anyone in here." George chimes in, mentioning that 'God knows how long this has been going.' Strange gestures to the older man with both hands, looking slowly from Janine to George, and back. "We have no idea," he agrees. "How long this has been going, or how old he really is. So no, I don't think he's a child." "And /even/... even if he was... I'm not going to let countless other people eat each other alive just to prolong one life."
Zero Kiryu	//Are you alright with this? If you are, I'll swing with you.// //Forever is too long to suffer. Too long to torment. A child or no, you can't defend something with that much power as something simultaneously above consequence. And... yeah. It's awful. But we've long since stepped apart from saving everyone. I want to save George.// Zero straightens up, nodding in assent towards Yuuki, his loose grip tightening. He doesn't try to take the lead, but he's clearly coiled up and ready to assist in the blow that she was clearly preparing for simply by activating the scythe in this particular form.
Priscilla	"No." the Batter replies to Janine, simply and icily. "Not really." "His mother wouldn't allow that." Then, he walks past her. A god --a titan-- isn't a far off mark. The pressure approaching Hugo multiplies exponentially. It's as if you're a negatively charged magnet walking straight towards another negative pole. Your feet physically slide back almost as far as you can step foward. The spartan red room, bare of all but its frame, derives such absurd, abstract power from Hugo as a catalyst that it's like being at the heart of a reactor --one that inexhaustibly, bottomlessly, churns out raw reality. August brings out Dietrich, and in that brief moment of sickening tonal vertigo, where the the moment of resolution after the climax is so perversely offbeat that it can't feel anything but profoundly, deeply unwholesome, the pressure at the heart of the Room contracts all to one point. The chainblade meets an impossibly hard, solid, invisible barrier, wrapped around Hugo. August can feel his damage metaphorically reduced to 1, because . . . Huge used Defend! That's all there is, though. That's all that need be done. The child shrinks away from the shadow of the Batter cast over him, clutching the haunch of inexplicable meat as if attempting to disappear behind it, now face to face with the figment he'd created, but not expected to see --not like this. Even the Batter draws back slowly --so slowly, slower than he ever has before, wrapped up in the sick, slow, dying tempo of the Room. When he strikes, the metaphysical bond of the bat reacts with its creator, and the barrier bursts. Dietrich strikes through, and there is a great, horrible spray of spirit-bright luminous scarlet, like that belonging to the Queen and Batter, mixed with the foul black ichor of the Burnt. The tiny little boy collapses ingloriously. Wide eyed in numb disbelief, he coughs up a whooping cough spittle of tarry blackness, then so painfully, slowly, weakly, lifts his oversized head up. "I'm . . . scared of the dark . . ." the little boy wheezes. "From now on, there will be no more darkness." says the Batter. The scene fades away like nothing. Like a red stain washed out of white cloth. Like a mere transition in a slideshow. Dreamlike. A vanishing mirage. You're left in a bare, square chamber of purest white, and here, you can't hear the strange clamour of the Pure Zones. There's nothing left but a door filled with white light ahead of you, and the corridor that once lead outside. Sterile white floors and sterile white pillars lead to a sterile white room, large and empty and perfectly flat, glowing reflected white from every featureless surface, save for, at the end of the room, a single switch. The original switch. A great big electrical breaker on the wall, like you've seen dozens of times before. The Batter trudges towards it. Gradually. Purposefully. The switch is set to ON. Yet before he reaches, a familiar, coarsely purring dialect reaches your ears from behind. "Stop right there, you impostor." says the Judge, entering through the door behind you.
Starbound Flotilla	'George''s eyes are shut as the world shifts around him, from crimson to white. It goes from matching him to making him stand out completely. A weight goes off his shoulders, but painfully, in that way that makes a sore muscle seize up painfully. It hurt, in the past tense, and lingers in his bones. "Alright." He says, as he walks in, and then onward. "That was it. That was the last of it. Th--... Thanks for doing that. I couldn't, I couldn't, I dunno. I guess I'm not cut out for this heroism biz. Guess that's why I never could get signed on for the Choir." He presses on. "Nothing left but roll credits." But he stops the moment he hears that familiar voice. His blood runs cold as ice.
Starbound Flotilla	'George' clenches his teeth in a stressed way. "Judge. Wait." He whips around. "Don't. Don't. Please. If you're here-- Listen. Please. Walk back. Let the credits roll. It's gotta end one way, but it don't gotta be a tragedy when it does." He sounds nervous in the extreme, like the cat is someone holding a gun to his head.
August Kohler	Janine calls August out. She's...right. He realizes she's right. He's just a stubborn young man trying to impress and be taken seriously, because he never was when he was younger. He was bullied, so he became the bully. But despite that, he still strikes. He knows, deep inside, this will destroy his friendship with Janine irrevocably. But he can't let this keep going on. He has to be direct, make a conscious, active choice. He has to be a part of this. He needs to be involved. The blade is stopped by the barrier, up until the Batter strikes. The blade slices into the child, diseased, and finishes him. His last words ring out into August. August slumps to a crouch, barely keeping himself moving, overwhelmed by sheer guilt. He allows the Batter to approach the switch. He doesn't look towards Janine or the Judge, though his eyes widen as the Judge calls presumably the Batter an impostor. "Judge...?"
Doctor Strange	Strange's back is to Hugo, when it happens. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean he can't hear the impact. It doesn't make him less aware of what's been done--especially not when everything fades to white. Their positions are reset, in a way. Strange remains standing, his shimmering sword still resting upright against the ground, hands resting likewise upon the pommel. It's fairly evident what will come next. When the Batter is stopped in his tracks by the Judge, Strange turns to face him. One hand holds the sword at his side. He doesn't bother to hide it, but neither does he raise it against the Judge. As George makes his plea, Strange shakes his head. He doesn't think this is something you say 'please' for. "If you've come here for a fight, it'll be a fight in service of nothing. Speak, and then be gone, Judge."
Priscilla	"Walk back into what, I should ask." the Judge says. "What you've wrought would already be quite rightly be considered a tragedy by seemingly even the least discerning eyes but yours. I had taken you for a mere misfit, a leftover whom neither the Queen or the Mission could find a purpose for, but I see now I was mistaken." "The manner of man it takes to do what you've done for no reason but being here. The most damning mark of this old cat's arrogance of age must be that I didn't see through you from the start." says the cat.
Janine Liberi	"She's dead. I'll allow it." Janine retorts to the Batter. But she can't. Too many people are against her. Strange bars the way with magical blade as August and the Batter advance on Hugo, pressing against the wall of force the child produces. "Get out of my way!" she shouts at the wizard, looking around the room. It's too small to outmanoeuvre him with speed. As the two get closer, she throws all caution to the wind and moves, trying to slip past everyone to interject, to save the child, even if she takes a hit. But even as fast as she is, she's too slow. As Hugo's lifeblood is spilled, Janine tumbles, slamming hard against the wall as she neglects to put on the breaks. She falls back, and stares at the roof with wide eyes. She is slow to get up, and slower still to move after everyone. "He didn't even get to eat the candy," she mutters to herself. A room. A switch. And the Judge, coming to judge them as he should. "Let him talk," she says, her voice gaining a bit of strength back. "We deserve to hear whatever he has to say to us."
Yuuki Kuran	It starts. It ends. Yuuki looks on, imagining there having to have been more. But there isn't. "Oh." She begins, and then ends. It's strange, when familiar cardinal is replaced by stark white and she has to close her eyes against the harsh shift, the area being purified. "This is it... Mmn." Yuuki begins, as Janine observes he never even got the candy. She had given hers to George. The wince that tightens her face into her shut eyes is palpable. Then, the Judge. "George I..." "I thought that was the thing I'd hate you for."
Starbound Flotilla	'George' is... trembling a little. "Everything's like that. It's perspective. You live here, you know what perspective is about. We hit that switch as-is, it's a bittersweet ending. You... you do this, and it's only worse. It's only worse. Don't do this. Please, Judge. /Pablo/. Please." The grin on his face is forced like hooks are in his cheeks. "Just let me have this lil' bit of sugar for the bitter pill. Don't do this." He says to the Judge.
Starbound Flotilla	'George' turns to Yuuki. His voice shifts awkwardly, like a radio trying to find its frequency. "It was. I... had to make it happen, but I can't do that to someone like that. This is-- This isn't something anyone needs to hear. We're off-rails." Even now, he can muster a joke. "Going off-rails always tends to sound a little like a wreck, but if you close your eyes and don't worry about the noise, sometimes you can still get a ways to where you're going!"
Starbound Flotilla	For Janine, 'George' actually shakes briefly at what she says. "Nobody deserves to hear what he's got to say. All it'll do is make things worse." He seems focused on that part.
Zero Kiryu	Zero doesn't look away, but as Yuuki doesn't participate in the murder or mercy killing, neither does he. His grip on Artemis relaxes a little, but he doesn't back away, either. Nothing about what happened just now seems to have surprised him too terribly much. It's not the first time he's seen it. It's not the first time he's smelled it. It was the end that he had envisioned for himself, one way or the other. For denying that, he isn't really surprised that Yuuki hesitated. It's not easy, even with level Es, sometimes. "That depends on your point of view," he answers Yuuki, "but you're a vampire. Killing isn't so hateful a thing to you. It can't be. Even so, if you..." His grip tightens ever-so-slightly, "Hadn't hesitated, even a little, I would have been disappointed." Violet eyes rise from the back of Yuuki's head towards George. "There are things we can do, and things we can't do. But just because you only loaded the gun," Zero says, "doesn't mean you didn't kill Hugo. You did. So did we."
Priscilla	"Perspective." the Judge repeats, pacing his way about the room like only a cat can do, and sitting himself directly between you and that last switch --the last thing real left in this world. "Perspective is another word for what you want to see. It seems mine was all askew from the start. To say that I had placed the blindest confidence, the solidest hope, the sincerest belief in you all . . . We can well say that I was led terribly astray." "Even to the last, the one that lies beyond the eye of the cat has truly betrayed us. Kohler. Kuran. Kiryu. Strange. George. §çæ¶¡£¤." "What have you done?" "Do you even understand? That mission was never meant to go so far. Do you think a entity only able to enter this world in spirit, given form solely by the whim and imagination of its demiurge, should be able to turn his hand on his very creator in cold-blooded murder? To strike down the very woman he was meant to be reunited with, and exterminate their child? What use would a Batter have for a Choir if he is able to destroy Spectres as he pleases already? It was your actions that brought that deranged creature this far, and it was §çæ¶¡£¤'s hand that allowed him to strike the final, murderous blow." "You only ever intended to fly off the rails. Such is the only way you know how to live." the Judge judges George. "You've been puppeteered by the puppet." the Judge judges the Puppeteer. "Is the obscuring mist of the narrative really your excuse for killing a mother and child? You have not purified this place; you have destroyed --eradicated it. You have plunged it into a sterile nothingness." the Judge judges the Choir. "It's better like that." says the Batter, not lacking the slightest iota of frigid, vacuous conviction. The Judge. bristles from neck to tail tip. "I should never have lent you my hand; From the beginning of the piece, I should have detected the black flame that consumes your soul." says Pablo. He turns to look at you directly. August, Yuuki, Zero, Janine, Steven. All of you, join me. §çæ¶¡£¤, let us expiate the sins of which we are guilty by preventing this monster from completing his work." "Don't do that, I need you in order to purify this world." says the Batter. The Judge doesn't look away. "By pulling that switch, you cast everything into oblivion. The time has come now to render your final and futile verdict."
Janine Liberi	Janine listens. The Judge lays it all out. And now, she understands. Maybe this is just blindly believing what she is told again. That's what triggered this whole catastrophic chain of events, isn't it? But right now, she's mad, quite possibly the maddest she's ever been, and she needs an outlet. And the Judge is presenting a very convenient one. "Fine," she says, crossing the room to stand beside Pablo. "Let's do this shit. Let's kill The Batter." She is saying this only to the Judge. She spares not a word for anyone else. She is more than willing to fight them all if she has to.
Starbound Flotilla	"...I thought, just maybe," 'George' speaks softly. "If I could just do it right, with the positivity, with the friendship, with the jokes and... I thought I could make this bitter pill one to swallow. Even killing a kid, if I had to make that happen." He glances to Zero and Yuuki with a look that can only be described as... shame? But he locks his eyes back on Pablo. "This place is a torture chamber. You can only clean up so much blood before it stains, all the way through to the bones of the earth. It needs... it still needs to be put out of its misery. I can't let you stop this, Pablo. I can't. Sorry, cool-cat." He looks nearly on the verge of tears or vomiting with the stress he's going through, but he's not without a joke. "Can't teach an old dog new tricks. You should know just the same way I do."
Starbound Flotilla	Janine abandons the Choir. George looks like he's been wounded in just the way he expected. "You don't deserve this, kid. It's going to-- You're going to hurt more for making that choice. You deserve less pain, not more. You..." He trails off, with a sense of pain and anxiousness in his voice. "I don't blame ya for stickin' it to a shitty old liar. But the least you can do is take care of yourself."
Yuuki Kuran	Held onto, and halting in her advance - a biding time, a last little moment where she escapes being the one to make the swing, Yuuki doesn't swing. Doesn't ready. She was ready, of course, but to react. A terrible habit, and a more telling pause: She was expecting a fight. She was expecting the grand reveal, where after being attacked, Hugo would grow to a massive size, attack them with crying, and heave Burnt at them. That it would be like all the Guardians. A trick of perspective. It isn't, though. Not in the way she expected - that she hoped. Her fingers slacken around the shaft of her scythe, her free hand coming up to her mouth to gasp as the Batter swings for the fences in slow motion. "George..." She looks to George. She looks to the Batter. George's hesitance, his pain. "It's the hooks. They won't let you have a happy ending. A clean break. It has to tear. It wants to leave a scar." "If it's a futile choice, between you and the Batter, then it's simple. I choose George. Either way, it's all done here."
August Kohler	The Judge speaks. He says many things. August latches onto a few of them. He spins them. His guilty mind thinks it realizes something. The Choir has been misled. He's been misled. His faith in the Batter, in George, was for nothing. August starts to rise to his feet. He's angry. Dietrich rises, and raises his sword. He's readying for an attack, but not striking yet. "Fuck your perspective." "The Choir has been bullshit from day 1, hasn't it? We were never saving anyone. This was never righteous. This was true oblivion. You fed us lies, manipulated us, gaslit us. Didn't you?" August is shaking. "I killed Hugo. For that, I'm a monster. But at the very least, I can end this. I never wanted to end everything, everyone. I never wanted it all to cease." August joins the Judge. "Call me a hypocrite, wishy-washy, whatever you want to do. But at the very least, I can right my wrongs and stop you, now and at the end.
Doctor Strange	'Other people are just as bad, so I did nothing wrong, huh?' Janine's assessment of Strange's statement draws no immediate discernible reaction. No deepening of his usual frown, no twitch of the mouth, no flaring of the nostrils, no furrowing of the brow. "Yep," says Strange flatly. "That's what I'm saying." He says this after Zero's attempt to defend their argument. His position would take too long to explain, anyway. After the Judge's condemnation, Strange runs a bruised hand over his face, wincing slightly as it brushes against an injury from the Queen. "All you guys ever do is point the finger," says Strange to the Judge. He sounds tired. "But I haven't sinned. I have nothing to be guilty for. I came into a world broken by habitual neglect and selfish delusion, and I made the best choices I could within that framework. If you don't like the choice I made, examine the /countless/ cycles you had to prepare for this moment. George is right. This /is/ a torture chamber. But we didn't design it. We didn't supervise it. We just pulled the plug." He lifts off of the ground and touches down, taking a stand alongside the Batter. "Well, almost. We almost pulled the plug on Hell. Then you had to come by and tell us that, actually, all this suffering was just... what, exactly? A temporary inconvenience?" He scoffs bitterly at the Judge. "You just wanted us to do your dirty work. We killed the Zone Guardians so the Queen could replace them, and their replacements could all get back to work ignoring Hugo in service of some pipe dream that was never gonna happen. And hey, while that goes on, who cares if Elsen is eating himself alive? He's just little people." Strange shakes his head. "George manipulated me, too... but at least he sees this for what it is." The Sorcerer Supreme flicks his sword, and under his will the energy changes shape. As he swings the weapon in a demonstration, it warps. The blade elongates, the hilt melting into it until it's no longar a straight sword, but a length of burning orange whip. Holding his weapon ready, he makes an aside to George. "I will help you today--but know this, George," says Strange in the Sorcerer Supreme Voice. No slang, no dryness. Grave certainty. "I do so only because the Grands present an uncertainty I can't allow."
Starbound Flotilla	George looks to Yuuki and seems... surprised. Genuinely surprised. For a moment, his grin shifts. A baffled, wondering look overtakes it. Maybe she will stay with his side of things? To the end? That... blows his mind, a little. "...Yeah. You're right. In a lot of ways. Always have been, always will be, right. Really can trust you to choose the good way forward." He says. His voice is full of something almost never heard before from him, maybe only barely seen by August. A sense of connection, a sense of positivity and support, and, for just a moment, a small spark of willingness to be supported in turn.
Starbound Flotilla	August is the one that hurts the most. He hadn't expected Yuuki's support. He sure hadn't expected Strange's support. But August breaking away from him, that seems unexpected. His grin breaks briefly into a tense, pained clenching of teeth, a distraught look. August had always been intended to be the prodigy. The inheritor of who George is and what George believes. The next generation of those who would go past certain silvery shores in ways George's generation was always too messed up to. But August breaks away, and he breaks away hard. Every word is a punch to the gut. "..." He's silent for a while, before gently, softly whispering, "Please, you don't need to--" But it's done. Nothing that the shifty fun uncle can say will do any good anymore. There's only more pain in more words from here on out.
Zero Kiryu	"Mislead? Perspective? Bullshit?" Zero Kiryu looks towards August, his expression one of utter bafflement. He heaves a great, heavy sigh and shuts his eyes, leaning forward against Yuuki. "I told you all where this was going a long time ago. If you were going to stop this, you should have done it two steps back, maybe more. You've had so many chances to kill the Batter while George was still checked by other members of the Flotilla. I expected it to happen every time he was weakened by battle past a certain point of this mess, but it never did."
Starbound Flotilla	Doctor Strange somehow coming to George's side is-- well, to say the least, it's unexpected. George had always assumed Strange would seek something else, some better solution. But here he is, now, understanding George. Somehow seeing a truth that George keeps buried under lies, piles and piles of lies. George starts out wordless. But affirming. He eventually musters words. "Smarter than I gave ya credit for, Strange. Don't you let me start underestimating you again." He says. The compliment isn't intended as stroking the ego, every bit of his tone is surely authentic in saying that Strange has exceeded George's expectations in every way. It's only not being celebrated because of the weight on George's soul now.
August Kohler	August ignores George. It's Zero who gets a response, and it's full of guilt. "I thought we still had a chance. I thought the Elsen would survive in their bunker. I had faith." "And now I'm learning that faith was for nothing. I /should/ have done this earlier. But I misled myself, as well. And for that, I only have myself to blame."
Starbound Flotilla	George, for his part, has yet to speak to one more who he suspects is making a decision here. "You're here for the story, ain'tcha?" He looks... up? What? He speaks to... 'GEORGE': I know this is tough stuff, kiddo. 'GEORGE': Believe me. I've been there before. It ain't pretty. But this don't gotta be ruination. It don't gotta be end of the sweet in the bittersweet. Could just be part of all this. Could just be... 'GEORGE': Kid. I know I lied. I'll own that. But you, you're not just here to find out what happens next. You're here for a story, kid. You're here for a tale. It's gotta have closure. A nice ending. Timeline snaps off at the end, sure, but-- Does this gotta be an unhappy ending for you? 'GEORGE': Tide's coming in fast. You don't gotta ditch us. We can finish this together. Give it /closure/. I wanted it to be bittersweet, but you can still at least make it a story. Not just a bunch'a fractured moments in time. 'GEORGE': Kid... Whatever you do, at least don't stop this. This thing you do. Stay with it, won'tcha? I don't care what Judge says. I know you wanted to see the end for a good reason. Just wanted closure. That's what things should have. You're good. I lied, maybe made you do something you'll regret, but you, you're good. He's appealing, through speech here and text there, direct to the Puppeteer. But in a way... he's also comforting her. Doing his best to help her ease some probable stress. He has no doubt she's panicking, hurting at her workstation. Even now, he wants to preserve the shattered fragments of his deceptive happy ending.
Tina Natsumi	Everything's spinning for Tina. Figuratively, of course, since she's just standing there, staring awkwardly at the people she had been fighting alongside as the only representatives of normalcy she could rely on here. With lines being drawn in the sand with no clear correct answer, though, she places a hand on her hat to keep it busy while she tries to sort through the myriad thoughts in her head. "We really got played for dumbasses, huh? And now this... The hell is even left after all this stuff we've been dealing with?" She grimaces, drawing her revolver and loading it, one bullet at a time. "Maybe it'd be better to just finish the job and wipe it all out. More... Merciful. Better than letting the rest of it languish, yeah?" Tina raises her gun, then takes aim at the Batter. She looks displeased, her aim is shaky, but her tone is deadpan. "But you used us. Even if all that shit already happened, letting it go doesn't sit right with me. If we're letting off steam, we might as well get it all out."
Starbound Flotilla	..."Every happily every after always had ever after, and after and after." George speaks to Tina sorrowfully. "Won't blame ya, kid. For siding with what you know. The friends you got. It's all some of us have. All I have, kid. For a while, anyway." "It don't sit right, that's for sure. It's never, ever gonna sit right. Not for all our lives, kid. Won't blame you for choosing that. But--" He starts, but... no. No, there's no swaying Tina. Just an explanation. It's all he's got.
Janine Liberi	Janine stands poised, sabre held out in a fencing pose and an infuriated, tear-streaked look on her face. She grits her teeth and glowers at it all. At the Batter, and those that stand with him even now, past them at the door behind which a battered child was killed. Even out past that, a world left sterile. A world she helped sterilize. She looks again at the Batter... no. She looks past him, at the one holding the reins. "Hey," she says. "Remember what I said way back at the start of all this? I said that if you screw us in some way, I'd come for you." She lets out a bitter laugh. "Should have been directing that at the Batter, huh? Well... the choice is still yours. I don't know what 'switching sides' would entail for you, but my words still stand. If you're still going along with all of this shit, I'll find you and I'll make you pay." Her tone is like ice, lacking any of the fire and venom she normally injects her words with. She's just... tired.
Tina Natsumi	George, at least, gets a light chuckle from Tina. It's a pained one, but at least it's not just deadpan frowning. "Right? Pretty sure I told y'all a while back... I ain't the smart one. Never have been, never will be. I've just been stickin' with everyone here because I figured you'd all know what the right thing was. But now that we know someone screwed us?" She makes a flicking gesture with her revolver at the Batter once more. "He's not getting away scot free. And... Yeah, I known these folks way longer than the rest of you, so it's nothin' personal against you. Just personal for... At them?" She shrugs, glancing over at briefly Janine and August. "... Even if it does make more sense to wipe it out, I ain't turning on those two. Not for this. Maybe when we're done."
Zero Kiryu	"Hey." Zero interjects towards the Puppeteer, glancing upwards as George attempts to coerce her to action. He shakes his head, "Even though I come down on that guy's side this time, you shouldn't pick the side that can make the best argument to you, or the side that can threaten you the most severely." "This isn't about what's been done or the consequences thereof anymore. This is about can or can't, will or won't. The consequences of this world continuing to exist are an unacceptable liability to me at this stage. But for YOU..." "You need to decide what you can live with, in the end." "The Judge, or the Batter?" "It's a heart thing, not a head thing."
Starbound Flotilla	Whatever happens next, the man called George, with a grin and a flick of a cigarette to his lips, approaches the switch. August has locked him out -- and forced him to lose many of the people supporting the Mission, the Choir. His protege is protege no more. The Hanged Man shall not sway, but The Tower shall not crumble. Not so easily. He'll freeze, but only if challenged. If someone stands ahead of him. Where shall you stand, August Kohler? Ahead, or aside?
Doctor Strange	"Shut up, George," says Strange quietly, hollowly, after George tries comforting Tina. He shakes his head. Leaving this world as-is would make it a mausoleum, at best. A permanent, silent, sterile reminder of how disparate people with good intentions were tricked into... He can't think about it. He can't think those words. Not now. He just... needs this to be over. "I've had enough of the sad old man act. The hand wringing. Just get it over with." It comes just as George is walking off to the switch. This, at least, is reprieve. Action. He nods. Strange takes to the air, and his mandalas burst into being before either hand. He hovers above George, keeping his eye on the others, preparing to fend off an attack.
August Kohler	Silently, August pushes ahead. He does not talk to the Puppeteer. Instead, as George moves for that switch, August approaches. Strange is going to move to fend off an attack. So August doesn't move to strike George physically, yet, though Dietrich's sword catches on fire in preparation. Instead, August shouts out to him. "You couldn't kill Hugo, but you can just pull the switch? You're a coward, George. You're a coward, and a liar, and so am I. If you're going to end this...at least give me a fight first! At least show me with action that this, that our friendship that they're over." Perhaps, moving to stand ahead, moving to outright challenge George, will get George to fight him.
Priscilla	In that moment, in the white void of the last room, at the core of the world, behind and predating its ailing demiurge, the air bubbles and boils. Black froth spills from the sheer whiteness between the two sides finally drawn in the sand, the Nothingness spilling in through the paper thin walls that remain, holding this world together. The Spill hovers off the ground, bubbling in eerie silence, until a pair of splattered black puddles paint themselves vertically across the middle of the room, standing up as if thrown against glass. In the center of each, a glaring X is drawn in broad, fevered strokes. One sits before the Batter, another before the Judge. The former flares up with light, seething with pale white resonance, its twin darkening and fading. Then, it's the latter that does, the light jumping from the one to the other, filling its sibling vessel. Then the former. The latter. Back and forth, with long, irregular pauses. The light is torn between the two panes of Nothingness. Finally, the X before the old cat burns brightest, and the breaches rupture into globules of scattered blackness, sizzling away. The Batter's Add-Ons lose a great deal of their glow, appearing as surrealist paper circles, more than proper halos. Pablo coruscates with a sparkling aura, briefly casting off little white stars like a streamer. "That choice was, even though pathetically useless, I think, the right one." says the Judge. "Your demanded crusade ends here. Die, Batter, with the eternal souvenir of not having conducted your sad scheme to its end." The Batter's eyes disappear into the shadow of his cap. "It's too late. Everything is lost." he says. "I know, but I prefer this over your victory." replies the Judge. AUGUST, JANINE, TINA, §çæ¶¡£¤: The Batter's form shudders. His outline wavers like a reflection on water. It breaks like TV static. The Perspective of the room warps wide and tall. The cramped bunker grows into a gargantuan cathedral of sterility, or you shrink and shrink as the walls race away from you on all sides; it's impossible to tell. The Batter looms taller by the second. Distorting. Spilling out of the confines of his image. You no longer look upon something familiar and sportive, but wild and hideous. Something with blank, piercing white eyes, an inhuman maw of razor teeth, massive, reaching arms with fingers tipped by shredding claws, lengthened legs that distort his posture, until right in front of you, there is something exactly like a demon, looking every bit like what Hugo must have feared. GEORGE, YUUKI, ZERO, STRANGE: The Judge's form shudders. His outline wavers like a reflection on water. It breaks like TV static. The Perspective of the room warps wide and tall. The cramped bunker grows into a gargantuan cathedral of sterility, or you shrink and shrink as the walls race away from you on all sides; it's impossible to tell. The Judge slides across the floor without moving, never abandoning his iconic, cat-like posture. The old housecat grows to a ferocious size, now something like a sitting panther, watching maliciously from the dark of a tree branch. His eyes glow searing white. His grin elongates from merely quirky, to an intimidating wall of powerful fangs, cracked into a wide smile of final, cathartic satisfaction. Pitch black claws spring from his paws. His wordless, purring voice rises to a constant, echoing rumble, like the churning of some violent and feral engine. BATTLE TIME... The Batter used Wide Angle! The Judge used Verdict! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7A7uhuxcyA
Starbound Flotilla	"...Do you believe the worst kind of act, just the most horrible things you have to do... can be good? No, we know that's true. Can they feel alright? Maybe the most horrible necessary evils can feel bittersweet? Leave ya unburdened with guilt?" "Here's a better question...You want to learn the last lesson I got for ya?" He takes another step forward, because he knows August isn't going to move. "That's how this is, kid. That's how this is going to be. Well, I did my best to make a happy ending." You can hear a tide rising. Something is wrong.
Starbound Flotilla	George's stance shifts. His hands clench oddly. You can hear a tide rising. The red in his eyes is getting harder to see. Something is wrong. George grins wide. He says, "This is gonna be something special. I'm gonna show you my special move. Ain't never seen a man dodge it. Where I came from, we have something-- we call it the Grey Tide. It's Pure, kid." "Batter. With me." George's voice sounds unnerving. Pure. Devoid of humanity. If the Puppeteer will abandon him, George will not. You can hear a tide rising. Something is wrong. He will have the Batter stride to his side. He will draw a bat that matches his. "Sorry. I'm so, so sorry. But the last lesson is this." "TRAITORS ALWAYS GET WHAT THEY DESERVE" He swings. It is impossible to guard or to dodge. You can hear a tide rising. Nobody has ever attacked August from this angle before. You can hear a tide rising. It is hard to see. It is impossible to describe. You can hear a tide rising. You can hear a tide rising. You can hear a tide rising. Something is wrong. =========================<* #-1 TIDE RISEN - Stats *>========================= \| Heavy #-1 ARCHETYPE Terrible Consequences \| Quirks \| \| HP: << >> 0/1009 (0%) \| Dedan's Hate \| \| Drive: << >> 0/100 (IMPURE) \| Japhet's Sorrow \| \| Hype: << >> 0/10 (IMPURE) \| Enoch's Love \| ============================================================================== \| POW: ############## ###PRE: #### ###### \| Signature \| \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 \| \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING \| TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE \| \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING \| RISING #-1 TIDE RISING \| \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 \| \| #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE RISING \| TIDE RISING #-1 TIDE \| ################################################################################ George impacts and shatters something completely.
Yuuki Kuran	"It's a very simple choice, for me. And it should be, for you." Yuuki points at the switch, while looking at August. "You're choosing. This is no trolley problem. You are choosing. There is only choosing, there only ever is choosing, and if you lie to yourself and go 'oh I'm not choosing, I'm not responsible', then you will be as guilty of sin as this eleventh hour cat." "You're not weighing 'end it' or 'let it limp along'. You are choosing two lives over six. Six saveable lives versus two damned ones. That's the only math that matters." "And there's only one right choice for you, August Kohler."
Starbound Flotilla	'George' says, "Now, let's see, let's see, let's see... Which one was it, which one..."
Starbound Flotilla	"Now, who gets to go first...?" George says, tilting his head. "How about... /me/." His flicks a welder to his cigarette. It gleams light something from a nightmare. George moves fast. His bat moves faster -- the Batter is hard to see. Both swing for the fences. August can see the angles now, despite the shattered pieces of... something broken. Something broken badly nearby. He can see this one at least. Better move fast.
Janine Liberi	Janine exhales as the burning light fades from the Batter's Add-Ons, and flows into the Judge. "Glad you can see sense," she says lightly as she widens her stance. "Judge, if you have some tricks you didn't show off that time we fought you, now's the time to use them." Her eyes slide from left to right, taking in those who chose this side. "I'm still pissed at you," she says to August. "But no more than you're pissed at yourself. Let's sort things out once this is all over." Next, she considers Tina. "I guess you're too dumb to get caught up in their moralizing bullshit. Thank heavens for small mercies." And then things go wrong. Janine can scarcely wrap her head around it, but she supposes... George became the new Puppeteer for the Batter? And he's zeroed in on August, that's not good. But, that does tie things up. Yuuki, Zero, Strange, and the Batter versus herself, Pablo, August, and Tina. Fine, that makes it easy. "It's easier when things come down to a fight. You just pick your target and swing." She takes a step, and moves in a flurry, to stand before her target. "Hey fucker," she says, looking up at Zero as she goes toe to toe with him. "I'm really sick of your 'cold as ice' act. And since you have experience dealing with the whims of a teenage girl, you get to deal with me and my bullshit today." Catherine arises behind Janine, looming over the both of them as golden threads dance between her fingers. "Let's go." The Persona swipes its arms, causing the threads to lash out like a whip, aiming to score the man across the chest.
Doctor Strange	Strange pauses, looking at George incredulously. It's not the attack that impresses him, though he knows now to respect it should it ever be used against him. No... it's what he said to August prior. "You... did your best? To make it a happy ending?" Above the din of the fight, there is the sound of loud, mocking applause. Strange's mandalas chime as the energy of the constructs brushes against itself with his clapping. "Great job, asshole! Your 'best' gave us a choice between nothingness and a sterile tomb world." "You keep talking about spoonfuls of sugar," says Strange, as he plucks a straight sword from the energy of this dimension It's a blade of burning orange matter similar to his mandalas. He holds it ready in one hand, while the other prepares a spell. "But every thing that comes out of your mouth just makes it worse. Your sugar is the same as Enoch's." "Tina--" He addresses his fellow Paladin. Lightning arcs between his fingers. "It's you and me."
Tina Natsumi	The lines continue being dug in. George, heading towards the switch. August, pursuing George. Yuuki, confronting August. Strange, defending George. Tina, getting ready to shoot her slightly-less friends to defend her more-friends. "Hey, I ain't /that/ dumb. Just... Y'know. Not smart enough to hang with the smart folks here." She flashes a grin at Janine, then adjusts her hat once more before tossing it aside. "But.. Nah. I know what I want and what makes objective sense. I just trust my gut more than my head." And then she turns to George. "Guilt's somethin' that'll last even if it was the objectively best choice. If someone doesn't feel guilty at all, that just makes 'em an asshole." She answers George, raising an eyebrow slgihtly as something feels off. She's not sure what, and she tries to dismiss it in favor of turning towards the Batter. There's a hitch in her breathing when he transforms into something significantly more demonic, the pile of teeth holding her stare for several moments as she struggles to comprehend what's just happened. It takes a few moments before she lets out another bitter laugh, wiping her face quickly while raising her gun once more. "... You jackass. You just had to try makin' it easier for us, didn't you?" Except George makes it harder once more. There's something intensely wrong with the old man, and it's not just him calling his attack. It's incomprehensible, but it's terrible enough that she can realize that without completely understanding it. "On guard, Kohler! Dammit, George...!" Things are coming to a head, and she turns to Strange. She laughs that bitter laugh again. "Right? It ain't as simple as a math problem. I mean... Yeah, if you look at it from a distance, it makes more sense you guys' way, but..." Gritting her teeth, she fires one shot into the air before taking aim at the sorceror. One hand goes to her pocket to snap a quick picture of herself, and Uncle Sam explodes into existence with relatively little fanfare or special effects. It just has several machine guns readied. "That doesn't change anythin' about leaving us all in the dark. About turning this whole place into a goddamn mess with us doing the dirty work. We still stuck our fingers in the crapper in the end." She sighs, then nods slowly as Strange turns her way, readying for combat. "Doc. No hard feelings?" She's not so pissed off that she's going to attack before he answers, at least, giving him whatever time he needs to answer or speak further. The Persona shoves the cowgirl behind an oversized leg as that lightning comes blasting into it, the electricity crackling through it all while Tina shudders at the shock hitting her system as well. Afterwards, the Persona begins firing at the sorceror, spraying bullets in a wide arc while its user retaliates with a few actually-aimed shots of her own.
Starbound Flotilla	"Ain't wrong, Doc. But it's all I got. Only thing I can give. This-- The tide's coming in. Can't you hear it?" George responds to Strange amid the combat. His voice is soft, yet somehow clearly quite audible. "This is all I got. I'm nearly out. Nearly out of what George has. I'm holdin' on tight, trying to make it sweet as it can be. But the moment I walked in here, I... I can't hold on much." "I was washing away in the tide the moment you stepped foot in here, Doc. I'm sorry."
August Kohler	Words slam into August as he approaches. Yuuki hits him with cold hard facts, cold moral calculus, completely correct. August stops. He swallows. He's trying to figure out a rational, logical reason to oppose her. But his words come up empty, at first. Until he looks back, and sees the Judge, Janine, and Tina all fighting. And then August just, sadly, speaks. "You're right. There's only one right choice. But I can't make that 'right' choice anymore. I can't do this. I can't destroy, and destroy, and destroy. I can't take out this world. I can't be the arbiter of destruction once again, of an entire universe, even if's corrupted." The sheer sight of the Batter causes August to flinch, as George changes things. "So I'll be wrong, because...I'll side with Janine. When I don't know what I want to do, how to do the choice that feels so wrong even if it's logically right, I'll side with the person who, no matter how much I've fucked her over, has been there since the beginning. So I'll take my faith from George, and put it in her." George and the Batter slam straight into August, sending him reeling back, Dietrich's armor shattered and repairing itself, but in pain. "I can't always make the right choice. I'm learning that. But I'm so close to a decision, one's that a big change. And so, I just have to do this. I can't play moral calculus. Hate me all you want! I /made my choice/, and I'll be a hypocrite until the day I die, goddamnit!" Dietrich suddenly swoops forward, and the flaming sword blazes brilliantly, as August leaps onto his back in a running jump. The sword sweeps rapidly, moving to strike into both George and the Batter and send them flying backwards, trying to crack bones with the force of a train and break beasts. "How far gone are you, George? Are you even still in there? If you consider me a traitor, that's fine...but I can't let you do this. This is probably how you've been forever - and I was too dumb and too angry to see it!"
Zero Kiryu	Zero Kiryu observes the change of the Puppeteer's allegiance with an expression of muted approval. He doesn't know if his words had anything to do with it-- maybe they did, or maybe they didn't. Either way, he's not really paying much attention when Janine calls him out. Whips crack across his chest uncontested, drawing a line of blood that flows briefly and then begins to recede again. He regards her dully, the 'cool-as-ice' act not appearing to break at first. Then he smiles. "It's not her," Zero jerks a thumb towards Yuuki, "that you're alike to. It's me. I don't mind my own problems from years ago being reflected back at me." Perhaps seeking to underscore the similarity, a vine lanced out from Zero's back, extending abruptly in a sweeping, cutting motion not that dis-similar to the whiplike slash of Catherine's threads. Further vines begin to unfurl from him, though they remain reserved-- close at hand.
Starbound Flotilla	George moves. He's in pain, a deeper, emotional pain. "Always thought, kid, I could have made this sweeter. That's why. Making the right choice hurts. It doesn't make sense. You do everything you can, and the pain sticks to you anyway. I thought... You know, I thought maybe because it was you're alone." The blade impacts him. All of his crimson armor peels at once, burned away, but George's flesh stays, bleeding, but firm. The Batter reels, a monstrous/humanoid form shifting in pain. "I thought... you know? Maybe some bad jokes, some good times, some simple issues to solve... I thought it could all make sense. It could be easy. Nice, simple... even a little fun sometimes. That's what George is. The chance to do what you have to, the awful things, and... Not hurt. Not so much. You know?" "I was wrong, wasn't I? Ain't much use for 'George' for you."
Janine Liberi	Janine fumes as Zero's chest heals over from her lashing cut. "Oh I'm so fucking sick of talk about mirrors and reflections, even h-" The vines lash out, and even though Janine had seen them before, they move far too fast to avoid. She is slammed hard in the chest, and does not regenerate. There's a snap as a rib breaks. She takes a knee, breathing hard, her face obscured by her hair. "Hahah... I guess we all want to beat up our past selves, huh?" Using her sword as a prop, she finds her footing again. "Okay big man. Let's both have a tantrum. George keeps talking about sugar, but I think catharsis is much sweeter." Catherine's threads spool out, threading along the ground and walls of the room to create a cage of barely-visible wire around the two. Janine begins hovering off the ground, before blasting off at high speeds, bouncing between the threads above Zero's head. By keeping his gaze turned up, she aims to sneak a thread between his vines and yank his left foot out from under him, disorienting him long enough to plunge down and bury her sabre into his chest up to the hilt.
Starbound Flotilla	George shifts his cigarette in his mouth. The burning Batter forms up near him as if they were drawn in by the smoke. His crimson eyes are getting darker. Where the Batter's eyes are more visible to some, now George's are getting... less so. His movements make his eyes harder to track. His motions make his face harder to see. Shame? No-- a kind of key inhumanity. The same as the Batter had. George breathes deep from his cigarette. He flicks his bat in an even harder way to track. Somehow, the Batter's twisted mouth gushes smoke, as if they shared lungs. The lunge inflicts a brutal sense of pain and exhaustion. You can hear the tide coming in. Something is wrong.
Doctor Strange	George receives no further barbs from Strange, or any rebuttal at all. He merely turns his gaze away from George, as if he can no longer bear to look at him. Even when George is struck by August's attack, he doesn't move to defend. "None," he finally says, to Tina. He won't begrudge her the decision. He scarcely seems invested in his own decision. In fact... As he flies across the battlefield, his motions are graceful, but his face is without its usual determination. He looks tired. Graceful though they are, his evasive manuevers even seem listless, if that's possible. His sword scrapes the ground as he comes back around for an attack. Rushing towards Tina, he pulls back and swings with his sword arm in one motion. The blade ignites, suddenly awash in broiling flames. Strange attacks Tina directly, rather than her persona, trying to end the fight quickly with a quick sword strike. The sorcerer's face is dispassionate. Tired.
Yuuki Kuran	Perspective. It's all this world is. How you think about it. How you see it. How something approaches you. How you approach it. And August manages to do the most infuriating thing possible. It's a talent he has. "It's a lesson I learned long time ago, I suppose. One you choose not to." Yuuki sighs, turning towards the Judge. "But you, Cat, are not allowed to choose. You gave up your right. Even if you learn in the end you want to change something, you're too late. You failed to forsee. It's over." It's still the Same Old Yuuki, staring down the Feline Avenger. Her coat discarded. Her candy, given away. At her hip, clipped to her belt, rests Artemis, as she crosses her arms. "I don't care about your spite. I don't place one speck of comraderie in your cause. At the end of all things, you're not here to spite the Batter. And you, --" Yuuki's mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Her tongue pronounces wordless syllables. The Puppeteer's name, which she had seen a few times. The mind of the girl in the chair, that she had seen on the screen and felt tug the strings of the Sacred Hero. "-- you're no better. If you're a hero of justice, then you should know each life you're hurting." "You've met them before." "Moonfin, the knight." "Biteblade, the Hunter." "Pavo, the Deity." "Seft, the Hero." "Albert, the Pilot." Her eyes glance sideways at August. "George, my Friend." She emphasizes 'my'. August made his choice. "The friends August and you all have given up on, all of them, to a fate worse than death - being the Guardians of this bloated and rotting corpse, plagued by the hooks forever, the ghosts from the outside that shouldn't be, the ones who stood against YOU ALL in the quest, because THEY know what was going on. Who is the liar here? George?" "No." "It's you all. Liars and traitors. Lunatics, who think that saving two corpses is better than six vibrant, wonderful people! THAT is what I'm here to do!" "And none of you will stop me without a fight. The world ends here. Bittersweet or simply bitter. The hooks come out, even if it hurts." Yuuki draws her hand back as if to strike backhandedly at the air, and sweeps it wide, sending a focused wave of air that detonates into a sonic boom of popping, impossibly energetic and cutting force. "It's exactly as George said. Traitors get what they deserve."
Zero Kiryu	"Is that what you think? I haven't hated myself in a long time, now. I suppose there are things I wish I could say to myself to change the course of events, but... that's how things go, I suppose." Zero replies to Janine, his tone still mild. His eyes drift up towards threads. The ploy works-- sort of. There's no sense that he wasn't /aware/ of Janine's approach. He is tripped up and successfully stabbed, but he doesn't offer a gasp of shock or a cry of surprise. He looks up at her as blood seeps out around her blade, held from an arterial spray only by virtue of still being buried properly in his chest. The damage is dreadful, and if he were an ordinary man it would have done him in at once. There was a time, when he was a little less developed, that it would've killed him outright. But a moment passes and his form dematerializes, re-appearing from the face of a nearby vine with a gaping hole through his heart. Crystallizing dust flakes off of his skin as plant matter shapes itself into a functioning heart within the ruinous wound, beginning to pump earnestly and allowing his ordinary healing to take over instead of descending into further fatal crystallization of matter. The vines that have spread, few though they are, burst alive with sudden new growth, thorny rose-covered vines crashing down towards Janine in a great, lacerating, crushing torrent. "The only thing I wish I could tell the me of yesteryear is to be softer. I don't think that advice applies to you, and I'm not about to psychoanalyze you even more inaccurately to try to condescend to you." The hunter adds, gently.
Tina Natsumi	Tina groans as Janine makes that pun about sweetness and sugar. "Oh, come on. Even you're doin' it now?" A moment later, though, she chuckels again and turns her attention back to Strange. "Good. Gotta burn off some of this energy somehow, right?" And as she says that, she notices his sword bursting into flames. She'd groan about that inadvertent pun as well if he wasn't coming directly for her. Uncle Sam's a bit too slow on the reaction, forcing the cowgirl to face it herself with naught but her revolver to try and deflet the blow. Her revolver does not deflect the blow at all. The blade slices deep, burning through her jacket and drawing a pained howl as she jerks back to not lose her arm to the swing. The pain certainly helps focus her on the fight, if nothing else, and Tina hops off Uncle Sam as she takes a few more shots at the Doctor in passing. "Doesn't look like you really need to let off as much steam as the rest of us, though. But you're... Hm. You're a doc, right? So tell me..." She fires off another volley of shots, circling around the Persona to use it as cover while trying to let that pain in her arm subside. "You think we could've changed any of this if we had known all this stuff that we know now?" There's a distinct lack of passion in her own voice. Part of her doesn't even know if it's worth fighting. Then again, she can't just let her friends do it alone. Besides, she still needs to get that steam off.
Priscilla	"To choose. A perfectly strange and fantastically irrelevant thing, at this stage." the Judge purrs to Yuuki. It rumbles like the revving of a saw. "This is indeed already the end. Nothing remains but our regrets. You will find no hide nor hair of meaningful choice in this barren landscape of things that never were." "However, by our appointed roles, I am the Judge. If would be nothing were I not to deliberate and deliver a verdict. If this must be a retrial, then so be it, since you've thoughtfully wiped clean anyone that might be my jury, but the ultimate outcome changes not a lick. Your demented ideal of purifying the world of malice by destroying it entirely, your actions of murdering woman and child, and your fiendish persistence in executing strangers; I pronounce it evil. Whatever good you hope you've accomplished in your narrative-addled delirium, not one iota of it has been for the world you were tasked to save." "Did you never think upon this old cat should be called a Judge? What is his purpose? Why, to pass judgement on the guilty, should their quest stray from the light, of course." The cat, the Feline Avenger, leaps clear of the sweep of Yuuki's hand at the last possible instant, suddenly far more spy and fluid of motion than those hours? ago. As cats are wont to do, he rotates uncannily through the air when carried by the edge of the shockwave, landing on his feet, and scoring black gouges through the white nothing-floor. Simply glimpsing at Yuuki, his eyes, set above that terribly fanged grin, flash white, with the reflective iris of a cat's. A twin glimmer, followed by the red hot pain of claws tearing through space. A special attack that rips through the body and severs the nerves, injuring the spine with deep, festering cuts. The Judge used Staggering Sclerosis!
August Kohler	Yuuki's words sting. But August can't - won't - change his path. As George comes in with the smoke, August is hit by it, coughing and bleeding. His nose bleeds. His mouth bleeds. His skin tears, and can only slowly regenerate itself. But the smoke is bypassing his speedy regeneration, so the only option... Is to jump Weakened and bloodied, Dietrich's boosters fire up, and launch August into the air. He's about to come back down on top of the Persona, and as he does, that massive sword turns into a chainsaw whip. It lashes at George and the Batter in one-two strikes, darkness and fire roiling off them. "Are you even George? Were you ever George? That was just a friendly face, right? Whatever. You're her friend...not mine, as she said. Who you are doesn't matter to me!"
Doctor Strange	Closing the gap on a ranged combatant is always dangerous. As he lands, he attempts to mitigate that danger. Green light bathes him, and his motions are fast enough as to look unnatural. With his sword held behind his back in a style resembling the oft-seen Wudang sword school, he does a lateral somersault to try and evade her fire. He's quick enough to get past the first volley, but he miscalculates. When he lands, he misjudges his distance and springs forward. Tina's attacks zip straight through his clothes--they look arcane and mysterious enough, but whatever protections have been woven into them are insufficient to stop her from drawing blood, if they exist at all. The knowledge that he's been shot doesn't distress him, nor do the growing, warm patches of blood now staining his tunic. In close combat with her, he offers an answer. "Yes," he says, wearily, before delivering a leg sweep to try and knock her off balance. Whether the sweep is successful or not, his assault continues, a flurry of listless yet expert strikes. It's like watching a machine paint--there's simply no energy left to burn off. "We could have saved them all, if we had known. Really saved them--not lied to them and let them down like everyone else has."
Starbound Flotilla	George is here. But he's also -- he's also not. Not quite. A shift. There's the sound of the ocean. The tide is coming in. Something is wrong. Like someone had just peeled George and the Batter off of a page, then placed them back down when the blades were past. Whatever he's doing, this world and the Moeran Eternity are each in their own way speaking to it -- or perhaps they're torn by it. "Smart kid. Nothin' gets past you. George-- George is a kind of a practical joke. The kind of mask that hurts to wear, but it stays on. Kid, I've been clinging for years. Years and years. It hurts. But I'm real in a way. I'm as real as Dietrich. As real as the boy who has it together, who can stand the boundaries and barriers. I'm as real as it gets. I used to be fake, sure, I used to be... a trick. But I got better. And eventually, I learned to lie to me. Lie to what isn't 'George' -- I learned to be everything to the world that all this ol' meat could be." "'George' is a Persona." "But, sometimes the tides come in."
Janine Liberi	"Luxury for some," Janine says bitterly as she runs Zero through. For a second, she thinks she's done it. But the body disappears, and the man emerges from a vine, the gaping hole filled in with plant matter. "God," she mutters, looking a little nauseous from the display. "What the hell are you anyway?!" Unfortunately, the answer comes in a rain of thorns, bearing down on her position. For a moment, it seems she is through, the spikes coming closer and closer, piercing flesh and drawing blood from all over her. But they stop after only just breaking the skin. A lattice of golden thread has surrounded Janine and closed around each and every one, bringing them to a halt. However, the amount of small wounds inflicted have drawn a lot of blood, leaving her looking woozy. "Ugh... lemme lean on you for a second," she mutters, staggering back. Is she falling apart again? No. Instead, another thread loops around her waist, it's length stretching across to try and snag Zero too, before it begins contracting rapidly, yanking the girl towards him like a bullet. For a second, it looks like she's just trying to tackle him, but a burst of wind diverts her course at the last second, flipping her over his head. The thread slackens, forming a loop that tries to close itself around Zero's neck as Janine lands and pushes her sabre behind her, poised to stab through his lungs. And then she just stays there for a second. Seems she really does need a second.
Starbound Flotilla	George flicks his cigarette, stomps on it. There's fire in that motion. Metal curls underfoot. George does something indescribable, beyond words. The Batter matches him, as if they were born together as brothers. The bat swings hard, and sparks of steel being cut are heard. It's painful. There's a noise like sawing before it's done.
Zero Kiryu	Zero Kiryu doesn't answer Janine at first, outside of his own initial retaliation. There's a part of him, inside, that hesitates. But then-- no, there isn't, is there? He remembers the hesitation, he can almost taste it. Wrap his hands around it. It's a phantom buzzing in the back of his mind, because the mental 'limb' that was his own self-loathing had been cleaved from him. All it is now is a vague hum, a palpable absence in a manner not at all dis-similar to a true phantom limb. A flicker of concern crosses his features when Janine starts to waver. He's not really interested in doing any more real damage than he has to, here. It doesn't take a genius to look at Janine Liberi and know that she has a chance, eventually-- and that eventually is the thing. His vines slacken and draw back, though they continue to spread through the area like an infectious disease. The girl's presence is easy enough to sense in his mind, but the threads-- that's less obvious. The noose catches him by surprise, draws him in. The blade pierces through his body on target, passing through at a grotesque angle that is enough to pierce through his wounds. There's not a noise of /pain/, though there is a moment where he tries to breathe and it just doesn't work. It's a sensation that he isn't used to, but pain-- real pain. He's lived with that his entire life. It made him aggressive, cranky. Awful. His hand rises to the loop around his neck and he pulls it loose. The amount of strength he can exert is absurd-- unthinkable. Especially in his condition. All the same, he is able to loose himself and throw the noose aside. Then he pushes himself up and sideways, stepping off of the blade in a single powerful stride. Blood scatters the ground beneath Janine's sword, along the path of his step. His heart beats uneasily in the still-opened cavity. Plant matter creeps closed around the spot slowly, and-- the same effect seems to enforce itself around his lungs. It's only once one of them has healed enough to be halfway functional that he speaks. "A vampire bit me when I was a little boy. It made me sick, and feral. In short, I'm..." He gazes out into the surroundings, "Someone who gets the need for a mercy kill, when a miracle isn't available." A torrent of powder begins to pour off of the foliage he's produced, drifting about with a benign sort of half-menace.
Tina Natsumi	Strange's answer has Tina frowning. "Dangit. I was hoping you'd say no. That just makes this whole thing even more screwed up." It's a frustrating situation all around. She can't even blame him, Yuuki, and Zero for sticking to their guns. She can't blame August and Janine for being angry. She could lay the blame at the feet of the Batter, the Judge, and George to an extent, but at the end of the day... "We did this ourselves., so if it would've been bad regardless, at least-ugh!" She's taken off her feet by that sudden sweep, and it's only a combination of blocking with her arms and having Uncle Sam rush at Strange whole-body that she doesn't get pummeled too badly with her lack of close-combat training. Her burnt arm is still in a bad state, leaving the wielder of gleaming robot to rely on said robot to do the heavy lifting here. "I won't say I've never had to make the most of a bad situation, but this... Nnh. Pickin' one of two piles of shit is still pickin' shit in the end." Scurrying to her feet, Tina swings the butt of her revolver at Strange before taking a few more quick shots center mass while her Persona follows up with another burst of bullets right after to try and get the cowgirl some much needed breathing room.
August Kohler	The indescribable strike of bats slices through Dietrich's metal armor, sawing into it. It can't repair, too overwhelmed, and August's bleeding increases. Yuuki's tearing into him over the radio, but...Janine has his back. August tunes everything out. He inhales. He's the Destroyer, here, right? He's not the Hero. Yuuki's right in that he always wanted to be the Hero, but right now, he's not. He accepted that, he tells himself. But he won't be the villain, either. He won't be the Destroyer. He'll simply be August Kohler, a sad, broken young man who has had enough. 99 percent. He just needs to actualize on the decision, and he'll make it. Dietrich's whip slices into George again, and blocks the Batter's bat. He could try to destroy it. He won't. Instead, the whip is pulled back, and spun, after that initial strike. It spins like a lasso, a whirlwind of fire and darkness forming, before it strikes again, letting off that whole blast into the duo. "I don't have much left in me. Janine, if he kills me, get my parents somewhere safe."
Yuuki Kuran	"I've never said I was good at puzzles." Yuuki admits to the Judge. "So no, Judge. Mostly I took you to be a cat. There's a rather large one that prowls where my friend lives. You could have been friends." Yuuki's chilly smile lacks most of the hallmarks of an actual smile, but it softens her - provides perspective - on how she takes this whole event. She's not worked up, though she is frustrated. It's draining, being in pain. It's exasperating, when people are so venomously wrong in front of you. The tightness around her brow, in her eyes, increases exponentially as the Judge flays her at the nerve level. Searing, racking pain tears at her spine, sets her limbs ablaze... And the damage rights itself. Pain, and the tepid fatigue it leaves in its wake, ebbs down as she rights herself, her staggered posture most of the 'tell' of the damage she had taken and her body had addressed. "But, you do know-" She addresses both Janine and the Judge equally. "That I've been here for every fight. I was mad, before. At the Guardians. At every one of my friends fighting me. It's not about the people, the world, the little lives that come and go, the endless churn of meaningless noise forever, and ever, and eeee-ver that carries on. I came here in a dream, thinking it was a pleasant time. I learned my friends were here, and that's when I took on my own 'sacred' mission. The Batter was always a means to my end." "The end where all my friends are happy, and home, and safe. So you see, Judge." "You have no right to Judge me with anything other than your own will. This corpse of a world, this spiked collection of barbed hooks, started as torture, has no claim to a court that can lay sentence on me." With a start, Yuuki lurches forward, her hands claw-like (and, her nails literal claws, for those keeping score) as she becomes a red and black blur. Her hands close around the Judge's neck - not to crush, but to lift, by the scruff, digging in tightly. Before she Yeets Pablo as far as she can hurl him into the middle-distance.
Priscilla	The Judge's grin remains fixed. Immutable. It is the iconic mark of who he is, even hoised by Yuuki. The once-quirky Cheshire fangs now fixed in a vicious smile, even just before being thrown, spinning wildly off into the distance, moments away from crashing into the floor at bone breaking speed. Instead, he crashes through several layers of white glyphs. Diamonds. Hearts. Clubs. Then he stops on spades, absorbing the impact in all four legs, and lopes back to ground. "The hypocrisy that gnaws at your brain is an incorrigible tumour in your reasoning." Pablo purr-growls back to Yuuki. "What then, should an old cat wish for, other than to protect his few remaining friends? A perfect stranger is never welcome in the ward of the terminally ill, never the more to pull on wires and declare it for the best to the friends and family at the bedside." "I think you've noticed by now that you are in foreign lands, head-in-the-clouds. As they say, Ignorantia Juris non Excusat." The Judge takes off towards her at an absurd pace, growing in perspective as much like a trick of background to foreground as it is sheer feline speed. Just as he closes into arm's reach, his vector warps sideways, and he lunges right past her, trailing triple ragged lines of bloody red through the air. Pure claws that rip through 'circulation', disrupting the heart, swelling veins, bursting arteries, flooding the brain with crushing fluid pressure. The Judge used Critical Aneurysm!
Starbound Flotilla	A whirlwind of fire and darkness reaches The Smiling Man Once Called George. But he moves. As he does, he shifts the Batter between him and the impact. It burns away the last of a crimson armor-suit, revealing only a gray jumpsuit. The Batter takes the hit and fades, hard. Dead? Retreated? His body... has disconnected, like someone pulled a plug on him. But George moves through the flame. It burns him. By the time he reaches August, he's limp. The crack of his bat is all velocity, no acceleration. He has to trust that his friends will do it. Before, that was the Flotilla. Now...? Well. Now it's Yuuki, maybe. But can he kill August? Like this? Here? That depends; the two are likely to come out of this final strike completely exhausted. George has a hand in a pocket -- but it's not moving as he falls near August, having closed all distance and kept him at close range. Does he intend to kill August? Even now? At this last stalemate? It feels final. It feels mutual, in a sense. In the last moments, George's motions seem as a mirror, falling in time with August, and matching each move. Should August wish to kill him for his betrayal, there's a sense of finality hanging in the air -- the sense that if August decided to kill the smiling traitor for his crimes, it would stick. George would die here -- and attempt to kill August in turn, perhaps by drawing the hidden gun kept in reserve. There's also the feeling that George's motion is instinctual, that Personas move within mirrors, and that ultimately, if August should choose, he could stay his hand -- and George would in turn. It is the only truth that a living lie, a mask, a Persona such as George could truly guarantee -- the truth of an imitation. August finds himself before a mirror and a Persona. As it began, so does it now end. George's crimson eyes are absent, his face seeming almost blank, but August can likely simply feel the stare bore into him.
Doctor Strange	That just makes the whole situation even more screwed up. "It does," says Strange to Tina. Picking between two piles of shit is still picking shit. "It is," he agrees solemnly. One of his strikes is stopped in its tracks when Uncle Sam appears in front of his field of vision. As he brings his sword around to try and impale it, he is struck in the temple by the butt of Tina's revolver. The flaming sword clatters to the ground. There, it dissolves--Strange has no further use for it. The Cloak of Levitation swoops in and affixes its mantle upon him once more. He is carried up and away from Tina's shots, but a few of them still strike true, wounding him. He flies a rapid, tight circle around Tina and her persona. Warm light radiates from his palm, and the bleeding slows. Weaving in and out of the way of the last of her volley, He touches down once more, wrapped boots sliding across the floor of the arena. Just as his momentum ends, he strikes--but not at Tina. He seems to attack an invisible opponent on the ground. When his fist makes contact with it, the ground beneath them ripples. At first, it's like the ripple of a pond, but Strange strikes it again and it becomes more like an earthquake. Unaffected by the rapid fluctuations in the ground beneath him, Strange launches into a second flurry of punches--but as before, he looks as though he's striking an unseen enemy. The orange mandalas before his hands are commanded by these motions. They dart away from his grasp, attempting to batter Uncle Sam and capitalize on the unsteady ground. His face remains dispassionate as his assault goes on. "I just wanted to save these people," he says. "These people who are constantly abused, punished, commodified by their own gods." As the mandalas zip back and forth, Strange begins to weave more complex spells. The mandalas are guided into casting spells now, as well as being weapons unto themselves. Blasts of freezing cold, tendrils of lightning, great pyroclastic displays. "These people never had a chance to live out from under the Guardians." Afterimages of Strange begin to appear, tracing his movements. Stranges begin to appear from the future, some bearing new wounds, others with completely clean robes. More mandalas join in. They add to the swarm blasts of energy drawn from worlds the Multiverse over, painting the black and white room in a dramatic swath of vibrant, deadly color. "Now," he says, as they all pause. "They never will." The earth stops shaking beneath them, the mandalas all orient themselves towards Uncle Sam. One final blast--a wall of invisible, concussive force, channeled through each individual mandala in the swarm of orange.
Janine Liberi	Janine staggers forward at Zero snaps the thread around his neck, pulling her sword back as he yanks himself off it in a single, mighty lurch. "Jesus," she curses, looking at his regeneration. It's slower now. She's dealing real damage to him. But she's tired, aching both physically and mentally. She can't endure a protracted fight. So she takes a moment to close her eyes and centre herself. Her mind is erratic, frenzied. She can't bring all of her actualized Will to bear like this. August is asking her to save his family should he die. "Dumbass, you don't get to die before I yell at you," she says. Yuuki aims some barbs at her and the Judge both. "A happy ending that you decide right? Anyone who doesn't want it gets ostracised. But they deserve it, they should have just gone along with you, isn't that so? Grow up. This isn't high school anymoreee..." She nearly falls asleep. In that moment, Zero deployed those spores, the ones that put her in a weird headspace back in the Purified Zone 1. She jerks back to full consciousness and says, "Oh no you don't, not this time. Catherine!" She invokes her Persona once more, but the word carries much more metaphysical weight to it. No longer simply a call for a help, but a declaration of imposed Will. Winds spring up and surround Janine and Zero. A mighty cyclone that carves grooves into the ground and roof of the featureless room. Over the shrieking winds, Janine speaks. "You know, you're not such a bad guy. Wasted on her though." She jerks her head in Yuuki's general direction. "Sorry for calling you a fucker." She disappears, and the curtains of wind close on the eye. The almighty force tries to rip Zero off his feet and yank him into the air. The vortex of wind becomes golden as threads fill it, binding themselves to the walls outside it and anchoring themselves down. Within the whirlwind, they stand firm, becoming blades on which Zero is dashed and carved. Detritus such as the broken thorns covered in Janine's blood join him in the maelstrom, battering him as he ascends, higher and higher through the maze of threads. And at the top is Janine, with her sabre poised. As he flies up, she flies down, bringing the blade to bear, carving through him, the threads, and the winds in a single, clean strike.
August Kohler	August makes his strike. He almost falls to his knees afterwards, Dietrich dying down, August out of energy. They're both staring at each other. They're both exhausted. August could kill him, but he'd die in turn. Woudln't that be okay? Stop this threat, this monster, once and for all? No. August refuses. But not for the reason Yuuki pegged him as. He doesn't refuse because it makes him virtuous or heroic. He refuses because he doesn't want to kill any longer. It hurts too much. The candy doesn't make the sting go away for him. August desummons Dietrich. He won't be able to stop anyone else going for the lever, but in turn, George won't be able to flip it. "I wanted to be like you. Confident and strong. But it's difficult, isn't it? You've been hurting and just hiding it. Well, I can't keep killing and trying to compartmentalize the pain." "That's how it's going to end, it seems. We're at a stalemate. Let's see what our allies can do." And then, August starts coughing up blood again, and goes quiet. He's done fighting.
Tina Natsumi	Watching Strange is starting to make Tina somewhatdizzy, and not just from the numbness that she's feeling in several parts of her body. She does't quite have that same bleeding-stopping power that the Sorceror Supreme has, and themounting wounds are only staved off somewhat by her own natural toughness and stubbornness. Plus, using the Persona as a mobile shield helps a lot. She does look somewhat confused when he starts attacking the ground, but she's not letting her guard down just yet. Considering what she's seen of Strange, she doesn't even question it. The shaking ground throws her off balance considerably, though, and his followup attacks with those mandalas prove to be quite impossible for Tina to dodge! So she doesn't. Instead, she jumps up against Uncle Sam as the Persona withstands blast after blast after blast, shielding its wielder from direct harm even as all those mounting injuries appear as scorches across her skin, frost forming arund her limbs, and crackling of electricity reflecting from the Persona onto her directly. "Ggh... You're not the only one. I was just followin' along thinking it would work out, and it's not like I can see the future, but that's... That's no excuse, is it? " Tina's finding it hard to speak as those blasts keep coming, feeling her strength draining as the coldness makes it all too tempting to just pass out. It'd help her ignore the pain from the constant burns, at least, and it's not like she'd need much motivation not to move with her limbs seizing up. "So if that's the case, then... We just gotta learn from this." As the element assault ceases, Tina peeks out from Uncle Sam looking fired up! Figuratively, since she's still partially frozen, and that sets her up to get hit by the wall of force as it slams her into Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam into the ground, and her between Uncle Sam and the ground. Tina pushes Uncle Sam off, but she emerges with a missile launcher courtesy of Uncle Sam, complete with a stars and stripes motif. "We'll know better for the next time this sorta thing happens. And the next time it does... Can we agree to just shoot the person givin' orders?" She pauses for dramatic effect, then fires off a comically oversized missile that appears to be tracking Doctor Strange's position!
Zero Kiryu	"For what it's worth, I don't think that we can die here any more than we visited here through a normal means." Zero's voice advises Janine, echoing outwards from the foliage. He's not completely confident of that, but he imagines that the dreamlike nature of the place matches it in this regard. If they die here, he simply expects them to wake up. Even if it hurts a hell of a lot-- even if it makes them irrelevant actors on the stage of this world from there on out. This time the blow doesn't quite hit him squarely. The screaming vortex catches him in the air and he is hurled up through it-- and the thorns that are cast at him from his own matter are sucked back into him, providing a sudden sustenance that he ought not have had. It's only a little, but it's enough to make the slightest difference. "It's fine. But... you're wrong, about her. I didn't really care for what we did to that boy, though I don't think he's been a boy for a long time. But Yuuki, she's... the sort of person who has extended an unwanted helping hand forth many, many times and been rebuked for it. The truth is that the idea of suffering, forever, is abhorrent to her because she knows what forever looks like." "Right now she's doing it because a friend asked her to. But once, she extended an offer to all of vampire-kind: If you want to die, come to me and I'll do it for you. There's no need to play an inventive game of forcing others to do you in." "And for this she was beaten, bloodied, and threatened with death. Because the Batter existed, we can know for a certainty that this place was trying to do the same simultaneous with trying to survive." Finally, as Janine descends, Zero's blade-- makes contact with his body, and then he is suddenly gone, her airborne battering buffeting and bludgeoning him in time with restoring bits of himself, but the final coup de grace evaded at the last moment. "I asked him, probed, questioned. In the end he said that sometimes the truth doesn't help, can't make things better." A flak blast of thorns emanates abruptly from all of the many vines, scattering into the surroundings like loose shrapnel propelled from a grenade. A ragged and sagging Zero steps back out at 'ground level', kneeling against the mass of vines adjacent to him. "But a long time ago, when I felt filthy beyond measure, when I clawed at my own skin to get the taint out, when my only plan was to get my revenge and die, that woman took care of me. Refused to kill me. Kept me holding on by a single straining thread until, finally..." "There was a miracle for me." "She doesn't swing her scythe lightly, and she's not doing this to be cruel. It's just the only ending left that doesn't hurt people she cares about, who asked her -- ASKED her, did not need to be cajoled -- for help."
Yuuki Kuran	The Judge speaks of Tumors. Of Friends. The Judge looms tall, taller, tallest, perspective shifting ever in Pablo's favor. In the background, Janine slings barbs. Both - Pablo and Janine - blend together. Head in the clouds. Ignorant. Who- Ok, not that one. That one's all Janine. "I believe that you want to help your friends. That you've taken a stand for your morals. That's fine." Her voice reaches Jaine as her body is rent into thirds, sliding apart slowly as blood gouted from her split parts, and from the exposed bundles of nerves torn from her corpus like christmas lights that only blinked in pulsing and throbbing agony. Like wax, she half-melts, movements of fur and leather and gossamer, pulling herself back together as her abused nerves are pulled back into her like spaghetti. Skin mends, blood that drained from nose and eyes and ears reverses its flow, and as she spins about to ready herself, she's right back to where she was before. Mostly. Almost. Tiny flutters and needlepoint teeth hold the thirds of her clothes together, a set across her collar down her left side like a scarf, and a set around her hips like a jaunty belt. "I'm sure I'll say this many more times... But I'm bad at puzzles. I see people, but not things. And, oh, don't get me started on numbers. Sometimes I think they're squiggly lines sent to torment me. And you're right, of course. This isn't high school." "Which is why I'm a little annoyed at you, Janine, for forgetting all those fights that I finished for you. When Thomas was laid low. When Strange couldn't continue. When August was beaten down - oh, quite a few times. I was there. I fought not one fight, not two fights: Every fight. And, sometimes, I fought for you." "I really don't know how to answer you calling me a whore, though. I think it's enviable, though, that trait of yours. You built yourself up, and expelled your vulgarity on the inside. Of course, now it's still on the outside, but that's still enviable. Mine won't ever go, can't be torn out or forced away. Trying almost killed me." Yuuki's smile is a few degrees warmer to Janine than it was to Pablo. "But that was high school. I think I was very clear. I'm here for George, and I'd request that you acknowledge my actions up to this point: In helping get you here." Pablo's looming cat-shape finally gets a look, tenseness returning to her brow and her eyes and her shoulders, the needle-teeth holding her clothes together tightening like clenched jaws, the fluttering growing more fevered. "It's convenient for you to echo someone with more conviction. You're allowed to fight for your friends: It's very consistent. But I'd have you as well acknowledge what transpired: I fought my friends at your beckon. I fought the Guardians that you did not swerve away from. You had time to render your judgement, your verdict, long before. One thing that my tutor taught me - if you don't exercise your rights, they go away." Yuuki's shadow lengthens, growing darker, filling out, two legs splitting into four, hair spilling out into a furry back, as a midnight black wolf reshapes itself behind her. Besides her. With a squint and a turn of the head, it gains mass and shape, not any more real than a shadow, but far more than the absence of cast light. No eyes gaze forth to respond to Pablo, but the black wolf-shape Sees, and it moves. Like any wolf, it prowls, it pads, and then it lunges, an abyssal maw aimed to tear out the immense cat's throat.
Priscilla	"Conviction is a thing that comes and goes. For any that believe it a trait of the soul, look no further than this sad, sorry play, for all the times it has surged and wavered with your lot's understandably lacking comprehension of the prosaic scenery of the narrative around you." Says the Judge. "If the terminus of choice and destinations be the theme for this moment's nihilistic passion play, where the fate of the world is already decided regardless of which way the penny falls, then I think I shall take liberty in that lack of meaning, and do what a cat is meant to do." The grin becomes, suddenly, somehow, several shades more predatory. Yuuki sends out a wolf against a panther. Dog against cat. Black against white. Shadow against light. The two mutually hate one another, rejecting the others' existence. Pablo rears up then, and throws himself against the oncoming wolf, teeth bloodying the vague fur of his collarbone just below the jugular, and in return, shining claws of Purification, rip through the creature's essence, dissecting it at crossing angles, in a few short, frenzied, snarling moments like a battle between lions. The Judge leaps from the shadow of the wolf then, and zigzags startlingly across the corners of Yuuki's vision, moving without fully moving, sliding without a change of posture not unlike the Batter had before. This time, from out of the whiteness, it's a feeling of fangs biting down on the back of her neck, puncturing vertebrae without damaging them, and severing the column of critical nerves and ganglions within, like an impossible expert facsimile of a jaguar executing its prey. The Judge used Purulent Sclerosis!
Starbound Flotilla	"Always allies, in the end." George says. "I wanted to make you like me, kinda. That way. With a Flotilla of your own, just like that, just like them. I wanted to make it so you live like I do, but without the... pain. It comes down to allies, at the end. The bad jokes, the good friends, they help make it bearable -- and it's all that's left at the end." "... The logic was to make that into the way things are. There's not many people, you know -- people with the tide at their shores, like you. People like that don't build for long, and they don't build much, if the sea level rises too far. The idea was always people, friends, allies. Wolves gorge outside 'what is right', but when do they ever teach? Maybe once, but it might have been wrong. Never been a sailing architect like ol' George. Maybe for good reason." George says. Or is it George? His face seems more visible, but that crimson in his eyes seems absent by some trick of the light, and old, grey eyes instead drift over what comes next in the battle. "It hurts to be like me. Figured you could do it without the pain. A third option. But no... Maybe that's just part of the kind of torture chamber I always said to bomb. Pulling people in. Trying to chain yourself to a third option. This place is like me, kid." "Just a couple jokes stapled onto painful moments in time." "You're not wrong to not want to be like that." "Seeya, kid. And sorry. Smoke for the road?" This is ending soon, too soon. He offers one of those horrid little cigarettes that smell like a hospital. A symbolic gesture. Wherever August goes, whatever he does -- will he keep the Grey Tide in his mind? Or shall he reject a bad habit that sears away what's inside?
Janine Liberi	Janine put her all into that. The threads, the wind, the sword. The core three aspects of her fighting style, together as one. And yet, in the end, she can't cut deep enough, can't go fast enough. She touches down, and so does Zero. Not dead, not even wounded enough to stop fighting. She's breathing hard, and slumps to a knee, Catherine evaporating into golden sparks. "No," she says. It takes a moment for her to clarify by turning her head towards Yuuki. "I'm not doing this 'for my friends' are you kidding me? For August, who killed a kid? For Tina, who I barely know? Forget that." She spits up some blood and keeps talking in a ragged voice. "It's not fair that those of you with the will to make the choice are so unaffected by it. Hugo wasn't your friend, so you don't care, and neither does tall and handsome here. Moustache Wizard over there looks at the Grand Plan, and not everyone he needs to step on to fulfil it. George is a psychotic who thinks people who need to kill a kid deserve to make that easier on themselves. And the Batter... it was always about the mission." The thorns come in, and Janine gets out the core of the matter. "I just wanted to make you all hurt as much as Hugo did, to balance the scales." Her body is struck and she slumps forward, choking out one more thing. "Sorry f'r calling you a whore. Uncalled for." She hits the ground, and stays quiet.
August Kohler	"Sorry..." August lightly laughs, though it's more sad than amused. He's in pain. "I don't smoke." He rejects the cigarette, and everything it symbolizes. And then, he collapses on his back. George won't execute him. Neither, likely, will Yuuki or Zero or Strange. This is all going to end one way or another. He can get up once he's regained his energy.
Doctor Strange	It's true, what Yuuki says--every time he was forced to retreat, every time he couldn't continue, he'd spy her, fighting. If only it had been in service of something more noble than a cosmic shrug. He doesn't even know if he can continue now. Looking across the battlefield at Tina, he spies the rocket launcher and closes his eyes, sighing. He must avoid it, of course he must. He must, somehow, find a way to get that switch to the OFF position. He can't lie to himself as well as he can lie to these people. At this point, he expects the Judge will be killed, whether the switch is flipped or not. He has a Grand, and it is under lock and key in a magical fortress. It's highly unlikely anyone could rebuild this torment dimension. He wants to end it, not because he fears its return, but because he's tired. Because he's ashamed, and wants no more reminders of his sin than are absolutely necessary. Strange attempts to evade the rocket in the usual way. It doesn't work, he finds, gaining on him until he can hear the hiss of its propulsion, the whine of the air sloughing off of its casing. He tries a portal, aimed behind him. Even when redirected, the missile rights itself. With no choice for evasion, the sorcerer tries to lessen its impact. He calls up a thick slab of the floor, creating a wall. The missile explodes against it, and chunks of matter fly towards him. With no time to react, he's struck in the stomach. The Cloak of Levitation gently lowers him to the ground as he recovers from that strike. It looks at first as though he's given up. He's breathing, but not standing from that kneeling position. "By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth..." Strange rises. Blood trickles from a gash in the side of his head. "There won't be a next time." His master used the Stone to see the future, a practice he has shied away from. No more. When he is gone from this place--whether it stays or dies, he will devote himself to further study of the stone. If it makes him seem as cold as his Master was, if it drives away his friends, he will learn to see the branching paths of the future, and prevent this from happening ever again. Strange beckons more of his glowing mandalas. They dot the air around him, and with a haggard, staggering strike, they spit blunt weapons from their cores, aiming to pummel Uncle Sam and Tina into submission. The attack seems weaker--almost as if Strange doesn't have the will to fight any more.
Yuuki Kuran	There's a split, a moment in time that kaleidoscopes out. This is Janine's. 'Yuuki' steps over to Janine, a soft smile on her face. "Oh. That makes more sense." She continues stepping, towards the burned, poisoned, thorned, downed Janine. She kneels there, tender, as she softly takes Janine's hand in hers. "To be honest, I thought it was another trick. And even still, I couldn't do it. Four guardians before this, each the same. Someone normal, something simple, each time twisted and awful. Painful. Five Captains before this, each a chariacture. Each raised their hand against me, because they had to. It hurt, and it hurt, and it hurt." The smile brightens a bit. "But if it's a little more pain that will put you at ease, too, I suppose you may rest easy. Then again, you think Zero's a pretty good guy now, so..." Her smile dims, but the warmth remains. "I don't really believe the ugly on the outside. If you want some friends you can depend on, if who you've got is frustrating, there could be a place for you." She laughs, and it's as light as a windchime. "This is my monster, Janine, but it's monsters that I find myself most in common with. This world hurt my friends, hurt its occupants, and hurt us. Look how much pain it caused." "This is my revenge, too. For all that pain. For Dedan, Japhelt, Valerie, the Queen, for Albert, Moonfin, Seft, Pavo and Biteblade. The hooks." "I hope they come out of you cleaner than they do me." 'Yuuki' remains at Janine's side. Meanwhile...
Zero Kiryu	Breathing heavily, Zero Kiryu rises from a kneel. His body is falling apart but, slowly, unsteadily, it is knitting back together. He replies to Janine, "It's not that... I'm unaffected. Killing those who cannot and will not ever receive their miracle is my job. Because they will maim, and kill, even if it their prey is somebody they love dearly. I attacked Yuuki, once, a long time ago. I wanted to die for it. And I, in my turn, have killed other feral vampires who had no hope of recovery." "More of them than you want to hear about, wear the faces of children. Will always wear the faces of children. Will never be anything but a child. And let me tell you from experience-- you're still in there. You're just not in the driver's seat anymore." "I'm not unaffected," Zero continues, "and I know the fear that they experience inside when they finally go." He turns, spreading his vines as he goes, heading towards the fight between Strange and Tina. "In light of your friend's defeat," He says to Tina, won't you please return to the Choir? This isn't what anybody but George really wanted, but it is the only outcome now that does not result in a world a quarter-filled with the last remaining angry ghosts, and a legion of Pure entities that we already know are capable of exiting this world to be exploited by others." "And if he lied to you," Zero says, "then I at least have been truthful this whole time, and warned you of the desolation to come."
Yuuki Kuran	There's a split, a moment in time that kaleidoscopes out. This is That Damn Cat's. Dog, and cat. Wolf, and panther. They bite, and claw, and for a long moment, the midnight wolf of Yuuki's shadow disappears in a haze of smoke and bats and black wolfstuff as its very being - the shadow - is prowled by Pablo. Yuuki stands, a bit emptily, as she was before - rather helplessly motionless as she's bit into, her spine being yanked at and bitten down on. It's not Pablo's throat that was torn out, but hers -- at least, from behind. But, like a kitten, she just sort of stands there, even as she hunches down and over with her spine disconnected from the rest of her. Nerves begin to knit back together, and blood smeared across hair and clothes, sticky with cat slobber, but it takes time. Time that Yuuki crumples into a heap of clothes and long brown hair and listless, empty eyes. A 'Yuuki' stands, dressed in her snow coat (the one she had discarded previously) and rocks back and forth on her feet, arms clasped behind her. "Stephen... I thought this was the best way too. Even through the Captains. Each Guardian was so much worse off. And those Secretaries... When you went to prove us all wrong, I was certain you'd keep going. During Moonfin? But you saw those Secretaries. They can't be let out." A look, as Snow Coat 'Yuuki' does a finger wave at Tina. "Hi! We've not talked much. Sorry, I'm a little distracted. I'm glad you know what you're doing, though." Snow Coat 'Yuuki' remains rocking by Strange. Caring, Clothes-Not-Ripped 'Yuuki' kneels besides Janine. It's not a kaleidoscope of time at all. The Black Wolf reforms, split into a dozen, pacing about Pablo before lunging - biting at legs and YANKING with incongrouous strength. Hanging off ears, clawing at flanks, hanging off chunks of chest. Anything and everything, to bear Pablo down. Perspective, ever perspective, may be Pablo's only defense. Yuuki - the one who had been among the Wolf, who had been bitten, shudders a bit. "Zero. I think that practice in the Apex at least paid a little dividend, even if it was foolish." She turns, standing. "I'm sure we could go back and forth for days, Pablo. But you only want to cause pain. Janine wanted to hurt us. We've been hurt. Has it been enough?"
Tina Natsumi	Tina squints as she tracks Strange's movements to the ground and gets back up slowly, tossing the spent missile launcher aside. She takes a few steps forward only to stop when he rises as well, the Persona looming beside her. She makes no effort to avoid the weapons launched towards her, letting Uncle Sam brace around her once more as those things batter the utter crap out of the Persona. She lurches as those bruises continue to mount, feeling her knees buckling a little more each time. One of them lands square against her leg, and she topples over with a pained yelp at getting banged right in the shin. Somehow, that's what sets her off. Maybe it wasn't about winning the fight or even stopping Strange in the first place. Maybe it was just to show herself that she still had that fight in her. That she could fight if she set her mind to it. Unlike Strange, however... Tina's will to fight hasn't waned yet. Staggering up again, she glances sideways as Janine and August go down, then at Zero when he approaches. "No... Yeah, no, I get you. Logically, it's the least crappy option with how screwed up this whole thing is." Yuuki, meanwhile, gets a gentle shrug and smirk in return. "Heh, I hope so. Pretty good at improv, if you don't mind me tootin' my own horn." She picks her hat up off the ground, dusts it off, then turns to Strange again. "... But I still got some business with him." She tips her hat towards Zero and Yuuki, then breaks into a run at Strange, throwing herself whole-body into a lunging haymaker. "Get up!" She actually sounds angry for the first time today. Not at the Batter, not at Judge, not even at Zero or Yuuki or George of all people. It's directed specifically at Strange. "You're a magic doctor guy, ain'tcha? You're better than this!" It's very likely she'll just topple right over onto him from the momentum, but she doesn't really care. "I mean, yeah, I might not be as close to you as I am with Kohler or Liberi-" Janine distinctly does not get looked at for that 'barely know' comment earlier. Instead, she just starts throwing wild punches at Strange. "-but you said it yourself. You wanted to save these people. So what if we screwed up this time? If you're trying to save people, then you gotta look like you're gonna do it so everyone believes it!" It made more sense in her head than it did coming out, but it does make her feel better belting that out.
Priscilla	"Has it been enough? I daresay you've already decided such a question in that thoroughly two-minded brain of yours before asking. If preventing you from reaching the end of your distorted scheme and erasing the only things that are left causes pain, then I will oblige. However, your humane execution will only elude you so long as you persist in this farce." The cat must break off from mangling Yuuki whence the pack multiplies. Cats cannot abide dogs, after all. Their mere presence causes fur to rankle and claws to come out, though where the domestic variety would only hiss and spit, the bizarrely powerful creature the cat has become rumbles with a distinctly ominous, electronic distortion, and leaps between them. A scene of carnage no nature documentary could ever hope to capture, the Judge takes each of the wolves in sequence, sinuously twisting and ducking between them, scraping free of claws and fangs that scratch and nip at his sides and tail, making their paper tearing noises and painting spots of the immaculate white ground with scarlet red. For each bite and rake, however, he reprises with blinding speed, paws swatting out with a boxer's fury, less clawing the phantasms as smiting them apart, writhing through the pack and cutting down dog after dog, here and there and there. He comes out of it unnaturally close to Yuuki again --almost before the last sound of battle is done. "What pointlessness. Do those eyes really see nothing at all but what they prefer? If there's no point, then there is certainly no point in my stopping. What a thoroughly embarrassing and unworthy end it would be for a Judge to idly stand by with nary a peep." The Judge used Unknown Sclerosis! The tearing heat again. Three hits of it. Severing connection to the hands and feet, then inward to the elbows and knees, and then to the shoulders and thighs, eating inward, spilling blood, mangling flesh.
Doctor Strange	Yuuki is right. The Secretaries can't be let out. He sighs. She's absolutely right. This is just another in a long line of fights that he doesn't want to fight. And just like all of those others, he nevertheless has to fight it. Tina's fist strikes his jaw and knocks him off balance. That, or Yuuki, or both of them together, seem to snap him out of the haze. Recriminations later. Fight now--if nothing else, fight to keep the evil of this place from creeping out into the Multiverse. Passion and determination are ablaze in his emerald eyes when he recovers from the strike. Tina's next attacks are blocked, Strange bringing up his forearms, deflecting with his scarred palms, and flowing around her blows like the martial artist he is. These people are lost--but there are others who still live. He bides his time until she gives him an opening. Then, there's no acting. Strange turns one of her blows aside, then yanks her arm out of the way, tucking it under his in a sort of standing joint lock--but only for one second. He strikes with his fingers extended, and closes his fist just as it strikes her center of gravity. At that point, he releases her arm, leaps into the air, and strikes again with a spinning back kick.
Janine Liberi	Janine pulls away from Yuuki's touch. Not out of a desire to not hold it, but more so she can roll over and talk. "If you're hurting, show it goddamn it. That goes for you too!" she shouts at Zero's back as he approaches Tina to parley. "I hate the concept of noble, quiet suffering. When you're happy, laugh. When you're sad, cry. We can do those things for a reason you know. It's communication" She gives Yuuki a side-eye and scoffs. "It's not ugliness. At least, I'm trying not to let it be, not any more. I just don't want to leave behind any regrets when I go. If that means I butt heads with people, so be it. I've got a reputation, I know, but I'm not about to go around and bow my head to people who don't deserve an apology." Staring at the roof, she drums her fingers on her stomach and says, "Honestly, I was probably gonna pull the switch anyway if we won, while everyone was distracted. You're all right, this world is a hellhole, and I'm not comfortable with just asking the Judge to hunker down with Sucre and Zacharie until the sugar runs out. August is too torn up about making the destructive decisions and Tina's too soft. I wouldn't have minded doing it. But not to 'tear out the hooks' or anything. Mine are artisan, homemade. They didn't come from here."
Tina Natsumi	It's back. She can see it in Strange's movements, in his eyes, his hands. What anger was held in Tina's voice disappears rapidly as she smirks in satisfaction when Strange goes right back on the offensive. The smirk fades just as quickly when reality sinks in and she remembers that she doesn't really have any sort of close-combat training. Also, leaving Uncle Sam behind to try and inspire Strange was probably a bad idea considering that the Persona is not in range to take any of those hits for her. Tough as the cowgirl-poser is, being winded to begin with just means that she gets the wind knocked out of her between getting slamned in the gut and kicked in the chest. "Hurghk... F-feelin' better, then?" Landing on her back, Tina coughs out painfully as she just lays there for the time being, tilting her head up to get a better look at Strange before coughing again. "Better finish thejob now before... Oh. Wait." Tina turns to Janine with an incredulous look. "Wait. So... Couldn't we just have done that and kicked the Batter's ass afterwards? And what's this about me bein' soft?!" She attempts to sound offended, but she doesn't really have her acting voice on right now.
Zero Kiryu	Zero is rebuked -- lightly -- by Tina. He blinks, watching her move away. He turns away from her, striding back 'round to where Janine and a copy of Yuuki are lingering. Knowing that speaking to one is no different from speaking to the others, he replies to her first, "You're doing a good job with this. My splitting isn't nearly as comprehensive, but I should have practiced it more before now. I was too concerned about keeping it secret as opposed to actually becoming good at it. I suppose that you were the wiser one, in this instance." Then, his attention turns back to Janine. "That's... difficult for me. For a number of reasons, but I think the greatest reason is that I am fundamentally a predator. My psychology was altered and demonstrating weakness became a tic that I am fiercely against indulging. And I was already an insufferably independent little shit." "I wondered if I could have given that boy a fruit, or if Yuuki could have bitten him. It's not a solution I would've tried before, but it passed my mind. But I think... he would just end up some gradient of doubly-deified, eternal and still sick. Sick forever." "I wish I could have made it easier for him. He didn't deserve it." With a rather disgusted look, he concludes, "Those are my regrets, Janine Liberi. They'll be there when I have kids of my own."
Yuuki Kuran	Gentle 'Yuuki' slides away from Janine, a little 'unreal' from how cheery she is. "Pain is..." Her look is apologetic. "It's different for me. Temporary. It's... a high school thing. I don't feel it any more... except for times like these. The battles, the yelling, the hard choices. But it's not fair for me to wince when I'm cut, is it? It's not fair to you, for me to complain. So I don't. It's not about suffering silently... But balancing a scale." Then she laughs, and she laughs, and she laughs. The truth at the end. The Yuuki that fights Pablo, as he talks, as he bites, as nerves are split and cut and torn and flayed, she laughs too. "I can't believe it! I was so stupid! So uselessly stupid!" Yuuki runs a hand through her slightly matted hair, for no amount of regeneration and blood control can keep the amount of hair Kuran Yuuki has clean during a fight, sliding long brown bangs up and back and over the crest of her head, clearing the way for her eyes to shine out in dumbstruck mirth. "I can't believe I fell for it! Again!" All three Yuukis chortle a bit, and aside: "Not you, Janine, though that is quite like you. It's good!" The 'real' Yuuki spins her elbow back into Pablo's nose as he moves to bite, the nerve flaying finding so little purchase in her as she hooks her arm and shoulder under the neckbone of the large cat and rotates her body fully forward, judo throwing the cat over -- while it no-dobut retains its immovable position in the air. "You're just another Guardian! One last stab, but this time with some shred of reason, some real barbed and subtle hooks to dig into me!" "It won't work, Guardian. You're the same as all the rest. You show up, show your true nature, and show that there's no amount of words that will change it, no amount of reason that will acquit. Most of all, you won't." Now, and finally, Yuuki snaps Artemis into her hand from her belt with a rattle of telekinetic force, snapping the scythe to full form with a thunderbolt that channels through the white ground and fizzles out there. "Hugo... Hugo was the trick. Hugo was the twist of the knife. The one that hurt. The one I tried to, and could not, lift my Artemis against. But you? You're just another Guardian. If the Tide won't wash you away, I will. Just like Dedan. Japhelt. Valerie. Enoch. The Queen!"
Priscilla	"The last train reaches the station, long after the platform has closed and all its hopeful visitors have left, dissatisfied." the Judge says to Yuuki. "When other would the Guardian of Zone Zero arrive than when Zone Zero is itself in danger? Though it pains me that I won't be there to see it, I will at least derive some divinely inspired satisfaction from ending this here." Then Artemis comes out. For the first time, Yuuki finds real purchase when the Judge leaps for her neck, to crush it and ragdoll her no doubt, like a cat killing the same bird over and over again, batting it around, shredding it up, biting and shaking it. The Guardian reels and skids across the floor, spinning one full revolution around, legs splayed out and claws dug in, bleeding from the nose. "Let this rattle around in the empty part of your skull cleared away for moral calculus, then. Fourteen residents die for your six compatriots. Though you've only realized it after the fact, rationalizing away the choice of the moment, what you've already done, even misled as you may have been, as have I, weighs precisely the same. Reflect deeply upon the way that you've gotten here, in the time you have left." "The Judge used Conniving Aneurysm!" Claws like sickles ridged with curling needles rip back and forth across the air, shallow cuts without any real substance, which hook into the flesh like porcupine barbs, burrowing deeper and deeper. Little stabs of pain that fall gradually towards the core and suspended in the blood, as if held by the inescapable pull of the ocean, lingering.
Janine Liberi	"No," Janine says with a stern tone that makes her cough in reply to Tina. "The Batter dies unfulfilled. If he got to throw the switch, he'd be gone too. Isn't that right?" she asks George. "So he had to die, thinking his mission ended in failure. That's what he gets for playing us all, Puppeteer included." She lifts her head to give Zero a Look. "Even wolves and snakes rest sometimes. Even bears appreciate the world around them. Don't give me that 'I'm a predator' shit." Her head flops back down and she concedes "But I don't blame you for not wanting to show your feelings around this lot. Around me." Yuuki pulls a tired sigh from Janine. "That I get, trust me. 'Don't let it show' 'Don't inflict yourself on others.'" She gestures at her enslinged arm. "But it's bullshit, it's all bullshit. Society demands we don't make a fuss even when we're hurting, and if we do, we're 'being disruptive.' Fuck that, that isn't society, that's a prison. I won't tolerate it, and if I won't, you big-dick Concordians shouldn't either."
Yuuki Kuran	Little pains. Pinpricks. Words that bury into her mind like the teeth that bury in her blood. She feels them, each, keenly. The shape of every tooth. The number of every life. "Fourteen, then. I'm sorry." Rolling the scythe in her hands to a ready stance, two-handed, she adjust it to crook the haft and tap her chin. "Fourteen. That is a much higher number. But then... I was only counting the Captains." "Myself. One. Zero. Two. Janine, Tina, August - Five. Thomas, Six. Stephen, Seven. I won't add those that only showed up for a little bit - Aoko, and Gilgamesh, and Majima - so... No, I suppose you've got me beat - Fourteen to thirteen." She shrugs - exacly as it rang in Strange's head. She smiles through the pain, the teeth in her blood, exactly as Janine told her she resented. She couldn't help it. "But there's how many ghosts? How many Secretaries? How many problems? Japhelt, be silent. Neither of us will reach each other." Lunging, Yuuki uncrooks her scythe, leaving a trail of butterflies as she cleaves it through the air, the fluttering white wings drowned out by the white of the room. With a crackle, and a red-black blur of speed, she closes from multiple angles - shadow familiars with shadow Artemis all attacking from every angle.
Priscilla	"At the end, in all fairness, my brother wasn't your fault." Those are the last things Pablo says to Yuuki, with the last catlike purr he is able to make, before the rumbling of the engine overtakes it. When the vampire rushes to meet him, he hunches down, bends his leg, arches his back, and then bursts forwards all at once; a fanged and clawed white arrow launched from a crossbow, streaking through the air across her. Artemis slashes into his side, spraying familiar arcs of candy red blood almost artfully across the blank plane of the void. His claws snicker snack behind her, and the million tiny barbs in her blood are called to action. A million rending cuts in every direction, sliding against each other like broken glass. The Judge used Aneurysm Rupture!"
Zero Kiryu	"The Batter's a last gasp. A desire for release that happened to include death as its possibility, and chose that in particular. But... he already accomplished his primary goal. His charge is gone. This isn't the mission, really. It's... cleaning off the tables, putting up the chairs, and locking up the universe on the way out." Zero replies to Janine, inclining his head a little to look at the ground. "Even he is a tragedy. And I doubt satisfaction is something that exists for him." He takes a moment to peer into the Batter's head, looking to see what's there right now-- if anything. Absent the Puppeteer's influence, he expects the being to be a creaky machine that's barely functioning on its sole impulse again. One last look. He makes a vague affirmative noise towards Janine, "I... suppose. I'm still learning how to live. I'm five years and so many days past my expiration date, and I've only come to terms with it within the last few months. You live differently, when tomorrow probably won't come." "One moment." Zero Kiryu raises a hand to gesture towards his many plants, now a dominant feature of the area. A powder begins to drift out of them, thin, fine, and white. It's like snow, after a fashion. It's a soporific-- in small, measured doses. Not an attack this time, like it was on Janine. It's apparently just intended to make this whole experience less unpleasant for Pablo. In the end, even though they're enemies, Zero doesn't see the monstrous panther-like thing that the Judge became. He just sees a cat. Distantly, he thinks of Ichiru. Finally, his attention turns towards the sky. "I'm sorry. I know it's not pretty. I know you probably feel badly for having a hand in it. That's the natural way to feel. If you're out there somewhere that you can reach us, and you need help, we'll be awaiting your contact. "Thank you for choosing what you could live with."
Yuuki Kuran	It's a moment of Candy Red that explodes into the sky. An arrow of white, a lightning bolt of silver. But Yuuki's voice is entirely calm. It helps, that there's two other copies of her standing around as extra sets of eyes, extra talking mouths. "I appreciate that, truly." Comes Soft 'Yuuki', near Janine. "I hope this is satisfying for you, too, Puppeteer." There's a shower of gore, of red, of bits of fangs, scraps of cloth, and bits of flesh. It's a complete explosion. Neither are left, at first. But from it, as Artemis falls in a bloodless 'k-tang!' apart from Yuuki, the Snow Coat 'Yuuki' slides off her coat and tosses it into a large, dripping pool of viscera. About thirty seconds later, a pale hand slides through one sleeve, then another, as the blood draws itself in. A few seconds after that, Yuuki's brown-haired head and glowing red eyes pop out of the top, and she draws the fake cloth around her. Really, it's mostly bats. Sitting there, in the pool of blood, she reaches a hand out in the blood, touching a bit of fur in an odd way. "Was this satisfying as an end? Maybe you can take that thing off and get some sleep. Maybe drink some water." Sheepish, dressed in 'not much' and trying very hard to ignore the fact that she's just wearing her own familiars, Yuuki scooches towards Artemis to retrieve it.
Doctor Strange	There. The split second passes, and Strange lands on both feet after the kick. He isn't doing well, but he's standing. The defeat of the Judge brings some small measure of vindication. But there is more to be done... that Grand Plan that Janine mentioned. It's time to make another one. One that will prevent this from happening ever again. He watches Zero's plants produce the sleeping agent, clenching his fists slightly. Perhaps he believes that's more than the Judge deserves, but he doesn't say anything. He ponders, then. Is there anything he /could/ say? His eyes drift from person to person. He could say 'I told you so.' But it wouldn't matter. He could condemn George. If he's even still alive, it still wouldn't do any good. He could apologize to Janine, to Tina, to August. It would just be words--better served by actions. He decides to heal the others--friend and foe alike. It won't wash the blood off his hands, but it's something he can do. As Zero's plants ease the Judge's pain, Strange calls forth dimensional energy from another world. Warm, soothing rain pours in. For those with fond memories of summer, it is especially pleasant. Where the rains touch open wounds, the pain lessens, and they knit closed--just enough to stop the bleeding. Anger still burns within him, though his final mission in this place is complete. With nothing left to say or do, he leaves, stepping through a portal to the Sanctum Sanctorum. It closes behind him.
Starbound Flotilla	George lights a cigarette in the rain, as men like him often do. A lucky lighter finally works only under a summer shower. The one he offered to share such a thing with has rejected it. For one who burns so much, it is ironic to never smoke, isn't it? In so many ways... George is the only one to smoke. With a soft flick, George marks his last moments in the world. The plastic of a lighter. The metal of its sparking components. The smoke of what it has lit. And the meat of what that smoke sustains. No sugar; there is nothing to make this pain more bearable.
Priscilla	In the last few seconds of Yuuki reforming from the puddle of gore she was just reduced to, in one final act of violence somehow exceeding any of the other Guardians, a thin tendril of weak, white light --a winding beam of nothing in particular-- gathers up from the scarlet floor like smoke, and leaps to George like a static spark. There's a sudden, almost correctively loud BZZT, and a flash that would be blinding were it not so quick that it's already in memory by the time you notice. "It's over." says the Batter. "Escaping from your purpose . . . " "Is . . ." "Impossible." Turning around, passing the way of the Switch, stepping past Yuuki, Zero, August, Strange, Janine, Tina, George --the places they've been-- even while his body slowly fades, dissipating into the final whiteness of the Room, the Batter reaches up and grips the bill of his hat between his fingers. Tilting it over his eyes, he nods, just slightly. The switch is currently on ON. Flip the switch »Do nothing. Zero looks into the last remains of Batter's conscience, but the haphazard and jilted assembly of strange, conceptualized gears, is oddly silent. Without Hugo, only one thought stands out at him, in that moment, eerily clear. "I'm glad I made it back in time to see them both one last time." The switch is currently on ON. »Flip the switch Do nothing. .----------. \| ON \| \| ____ \| \| \|.--.\| \| \| \|\| \|\| \| \| \|\|__\|\| \| \| \|\|\ \\| \| \| \|\ \_\ \| \| \|_\[_] \| \| \| \| OFF \| '----------' The switch is set to OFF