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Petra Soroka	At this point, you've either had to figure out some way to sleep, or you've been awake for a day and a half since entering the facility.     Angela's allies claim Asiyah and the attached agent dormitory, but the comfort of actually having rooms and beds for themselves is largely neutered by the stress and constant threat of Lilian and Rita looming over them. The other two layers land in the hands of the Sephirah, and everyone equally has to deal with the dismal state of the facility in its final straggling days. For people unfamiliar with navigating the facility, it could take up to an hour just to find a shower that works properly, and even then, there might not be any supplies to use with it. Lilian and the agents allied with her can scrounge up enough salvageable food in the ruined Welfare cafeteria for the day, but for the other Elites, Kukuru and Sarracenia's stocks of meat and snacks can't last forever. No one was prepared, upon showing up for Ayin's Meltdown, for a week-long war trapped within a postapocalyptic Lobotomy Corporation headquarters.     Petra helps with that, somewhat. She of all people was ready for this, though she didn't expect the duration of it, and she knows practically every inch of the facility. As much as she's the de-facto commander of the Elites on Angela's side, though, the past thirty six hundred hours haven't been easy on her. For every couple hours she spends directing the other Elites-- search for supplies here, seal up that door there, check on this Abnormality-- there's another hour that she spends frustratedly useless; avoiding talking to people entirely or disappearing to go throw up in the bathroom.     Tactically, the initial push Rita made put Angela's allies on the back foot, but not unrecoverably so. Now that it's begun to radiate out to the City, the Tree of Light is incredible to behold: a massive column of light sprouts up from the Well through the entire central pillar of the facility, fractalizing nexuses of branches coming off of it terminating in each Department, each one feeding into the subtly flowing radiant trunk. It's impossible to know what effect it's having on the City as the war goes on inside the concrete walls of Lobotomy Corporation, but even passively being near it makes a sensation of psychological wellness wash off of the Light, stirring up feelings of satisfaction, fulfilment, and motivation. Obviously, being near Petra makes the pleasantness of the Light coldly 'switch off', replaced with the stinging feeling of her aura.     For either side, the Central Command Department is an absolutely critical capture point, as the largest department, centrally located, with elevators and stairways linking it to all the rest of Briah while connecting it to both Atziluth and Asiyah. The main chamber of Central is the tallest in the facility, and the segment of the Tree of Light that erupts through the middle of it to continue on upwards is tree-height on its own, casting a nearly fluorescent-pure glow over the wrecked room below its branches. One of the grand marble and gold pillars that supported the ceiling crumbled into rubble when the facility shifted, the crimson embroidered curtains draped over the walls coated in grey dust, all the more grimly apocalyptic for how the Tree casts it in sharp relief.
Petra Soroka	"Alright. So, we need to split Kukuru and Xion up to reduce the risk of either group getting pinned down by Lilian and Rita." Petra flatly recounts strategy by counting off on her fingers, while leading the others down a confusing tangle of maintenance tunnels to avoid predictably popping out of the elevator shaft in Central. "Kukuru, you go to Rita, because you'll be better able to deal if she starts dropping Abnormalities on people, or whatever. From what I've gathered, she's going to be pretty much fine at dealing with a bunch of people spread out separately, so it's more important for the people fighting her to coordinate and focus attacks together."     "And then Xion, you're with me against, Lilian." It's a bad day to be Petra Soroka; the second one in a row. "I don't really have any confidence in actually beating her in a direct fight. You'd do better than me, but... it's not like today's going to be the last fight either way. So my goal's to force her to spend as much time on us as possible, to limit what she can pull later. Distancing, hitting and fading, big area threats, stuff like that. Besides her, they've got no way of getting around the facility quickly, either, so she can't afford to just stock up and use it all versus us each time."     Petra sighs and rests her hand on the access panel that'll open up into Central Command. "Please don't be fucking stupid. Any of you. Just try not to be stupid for one day-- one week. I'm being so good. Just give me one fucking week, okay?"
Rita Ma	On top of the occasional drips of ominous magenta goop, a new type of monster scuttles the halls of Lobotomy Corporation. Every so often, the group encounters dark-shelled, dog-sized 'insects' with iridescent shimmering spots at their seams. They're dog-sized, alien.      The Cycle of Tears, an Antegent transplanted from Lilian's world. God knows how Rita got them here.      They can be glimpsed down parallel hallways, skittering in elevator shafts; prowling, scouting. Flickering lights gleam off their dark shells and pulses of color reveal them in the dark. At one point, two can be seen communicating with each other via little flashes.      Their senses could be keener. As long as the group keeps their voices down and moves quickly, none of them 'aggro'.      Not long after Kukuru and her gang split off from Petra's, though, their concentration gets denser. One emerges from a pile of rubble where it was nesting in a side room, arches up in an alarm posture, and strobes familiar blue no matter how quickly it's killed. It's a silent 'scream', but an effective one nonetheless.      The rattle of chitin-on-metal taps out from a dozen directions.
Riku Asakura	It has been a long night for Riku, who did manage to catch some sleep. He's used to roughing it because he lost his home after a Kaiju attack a while back and had to make do with living on the streets before he found Nebula's house.  He wakes up in the post-apocalyptic version of Lobotomy Corp, and not sure if he prefers this version or the previous version as he fights through sleep to wake up.   Later on, while traveling with Petra through the maintenance tunnel.  He listens to Petra's strategy and her plea for them not to be stupid for one week.  He laughs uneasily at that, thinking it to be some sort of joke, but this entire situation is stressful.  The strain is already starting to show on some of them.   "Alright, I'll stick with Kukuru," Riku says, making good on his promise from the previous night.  Riku draws the Fusion Riser to his chest and begins the transformation sequence.  "You go!" he says, activating the Ultraman Hikari capsule, and the image of the Ultraman appears beside him.  "I go!" he says again, activating and inserting the Ultraman Cosmos capsule.  The image of Ultraman Cosmos appears next to him.   "Here we go!" he brings the Fusion Riser down to scan both capsules, as the light on the DNA image of the Fusion Riser becomes blue and gold.  "I'll show you something shocking!" he says, before pulling the trigger.  "GEEEEEED!" ULTRAMAN HIKAIRI ULTRAMAN COSMOS ULTRAMAN GEED ARCO SMASHER The blue light covers Riku before he transforms into a blue version of Ultraman Geed.  His body is silver and blue, as he stands up and splits off with Kukuru's group.   When facing down the Cycle of Tears, or rather the one that discovered the group, he attempts to dash at the creature and attempt to destroy it with the Geed Claw before it can get a warning off.  Unfortunately for them, it glows with that familiar blue light before any of them can get to it.  Which means something is coming to stop them.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's not had a chance to do anything about himself since the encounters with Ayin. His look has gone from immaculate, the bloodied, to shabby, to horrid. But by now he's had a chance to wipe blood off, change out of the suit and into a Psychonauts field-ops jumpsuit, and force some updates through his own skull. Are there... sparks? And why do his telekinetic hands seem to no longer be vanishing so easily? Besides the rare times when he's invisibile, they're always drifting nearby...     Still. He's focused. "I'm on Rita! Lilian's psychic immunities are way too heavy for me, and you know how it went the last time I broke through. Rita's my better matchup -- I might be able to get to her through hivemind links, fight her in the psychic space!" He's even force-reset his mood. It's affecting his motor movements. Unnerving motions... The Tree of Light is the only reason he's still operating right now. It's the reason he isn't curled up on the floor and sobbing incessantly. It's the reason he can vanish when Rita's insect calls in violence.     The single alarm-caller, or its broken remains, gets a lashed-out hand telekinetic hand, trying to pin it. Then a heavy psychic force tries to disassemble whatever amounts to a mind inside, searching for options. Systems to cancel the alarm? Implausible. Systems to override the control? Not implausible, but unlikely. Systems that lead back to Rita? More likely. She's invisible, but to exert a Queen-like influence, the insects should at least be able to identify a vague area commands come from. Invisible-versus-invisible combat, psychic-versus-hivequeen, it'll be unconventional.     Flamel flickers into visibility just above the creature to try to help pin it and extract everything he needs. Around him, the swarm of hands fan out, aiming their 'handguns' at every source of chitin sounds and blasting without hesitation. It'll sure help a lot if he can tune into their internal hivemind and pin down locations.
Rita Ma	PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Rita." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "Ms. Rook." PHONE: Lilian Rook takes a deep breath. PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "If we don't finish them off today, we have to break them." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "... I know, Ms. Rook. Thank you." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "I'll be as hard as I can." PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "I just want to be sure." PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "I can't afford you looking at me that way when I start doing what we need to do." PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Whatever happens here, stays here." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "... I won't. I promise." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "I've had to hurt you before. Hurting them won't be any harder than that." PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "And... I know you won't look at me differently, either." PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "I won't. I promise."      Rita, crouching two stories above in an empty-containment-cell-turned-weird-bug-hive, takes a deep breath through her respirator. The cartridges are six hours past their filter life. She can taste old blood in the air, soaking through them.      Her stomach's a pit. Her mind's smeared across a hundred bodies, directing skittering limbs and gribbly jaws. Sweat sticks to her skin. At least Lilian won't be revolted. EVen when I don't like myself... I really do believe her.      Flamel can make out the vague shape of the swarm closing in, not quite from all sides- there's a plausible escape route east, a few dozen bodies in range of his perception. He can also make out Rita, just above.      That gives him a second of warning before a blast of light pierces down through the ceiling, breaching a vertical shaft through the intervening floor. Immediately more Cycle of Tears insects pour down from above, almost like a viscous fluid in their sheer mass, strobing blue as they bite and slice with sharp forelimbs. Rita stares down from the vertical tunnel's edge, expression hard to read.      PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "Got them, Ms. Rook."
Kukuru	This is the sort of situation Kukuru should be perfect for. A war within an enclosed-enough facility in familiar territory against an opposing force with plenty intel and past combat experience to draw from? This should be straightforward, but it's not quite so easy for her to throw herself wholesale into another fight. For starters, Rita and Lilian are on the opposite side of whatever battles may/will happen here. She's not surprised in the slightest by the choices either of them have made in opposing Angela's plan, but it doesn't take any of the aching out of her heart as her mind keeps replaying everything they had said to her the night before. The Agents loyal to each side of the looming conflict make it even more painful to bear. She can only imagine how terrible it must be for them to fight their own co-workers of so many years, the Elites that had fought alongside them for so long, and possibly even the SEphirah they had followed this entire time. If it was anyone else, Kukuru herself would even be engaging in guerrilla and terror-tactics against them, but right now? She looks over at Petra, and she already wants to start crying. If nothing else, though, she had gotten plenty of sleep the night after the exhaustion and excitement from so many consecutive battles that passing out over the remains of a couch was simply a given. It had taken a lot of work just to get some meals together with whatever stuff she still has stocked away in her fridge, too, having put filling-enough things together to distract herself from everything she had heard the night before. She hasn't resorted to just slapping bottles of condiments into people's hands yet, at least. "If we keep moving... Hnn. There's still only two of them, at least, but... Nn. I don't think RIta would do that, would she? She knows we could handle the Abnormalities, but any Agents nearby could..." Kukuru starts, trailing off by the end as she listens to Petra's reasoning. "This really is going to come to a... A fight against them, isn't it?" Her teeth chatter briefly, and she presses her glasses back into her face with her palm. The lenses are already missing. "Rita's... Super slippery. If we can wear her down and tire her out, it might be a little easier to buy some more time. And if we can make her come to us instead of chasing after her..." Another shiver, and she rests her head against a wall while following Petra through those tunnels. "I'll be... I'll be fine. No stupid. Angela's counting on us not to be. And then after she's free, we can..." Another chatter. "Do you think... We'll be able to make up after all this?"
Sarracenia	Sarracenia is having a bad day herself! Not only was she unable to get proper beauty sleep, but -then- she realized there was no bath and could not find an adequate shower! And when she finally did...it was cold!      "How is a princess supposed to maintain her appearance in such a place!!" can be heard echoing through the halls at one point.      Sarra usually has a small army of servants to help with her appearance as well, so when she does finally emerge to start the day she looks quite disheveled. Her hair has been done, but because of how frizzy it is after the 36 hour stretch she has put it up in a thick braid that reaches to nearly her waist.      Despite the mess of the facility, Sarra emerges in a sparkly clean dress thanks to that purse of hers. She offers others changes of clothes as well since she knows perhaps better than anyone that a proper appearance goes a long way to preserving one's self-confidence. She has plenty to spare. Any clothes taken will be of a fairly high class design, suitable for nobles.      She listens to Petra's briefing without saying much, but when she hears Rita's team needs coordination and Xion is going to be on Lilian's team...she moves to join that team. "I am sure having me with you will get her to spend plenty of time on us." she says with a confident smile. Which is mostly for Xion's benefit, since Xion has seemed particularly withered ever since the fight with Adam and what happened with Cinder.
Lilian Rook	Out of all the issues that Lilian will have over this week of hell, sleeping isn't one of them. It never has been, after all. It's the easiest thing in the world; changing nothing, disturbing nothing, affecting nothing else. Stuck in this nightmare, without anyone to share a bed with, she has absolutely no reason not to revert to her old tricks, where at two points she claims she'll take a fifteen minute break, and then returns feeling both refreshed and at least somewhat stiff.     Furthermore, despite her attitude, appearance, upbringing, and the stereotype she plays into on purpose, day two is a sobering reminder that, unlike any other Multiversal in the facility, Lilian is a professional soldier. With six years in the Immune corps, a couch is far and away better than what she's prepared for; the leaking pipes and broken floors are almost inconsequential hazards, and pre-packaged company meals don't strike her as a desperate last supply line at all. Her command experience is used to rally the Sefirah and inspire the Departments under them into action, vastly outnumbering the Elites in actual personnel, but then she's perfectly content to organize 'combat shifts'.     Combat shifts. How many days did she spend on the Japan operation again? How many weeks training day and night under Scáthach?     What Angela can get through the cameras while she controls them isn't encouraging. Lilian obviously thinks at least one of you is stupid enough to take a main access route in a moment of exhaustion or laziness, but she isn't so cocky that she actually lets Angela see her place traps. She leaves the surveillance system intact on purpose, for ostensibly no reason but to take it for herself later; or rather, soon. The Sefirah already have the majority of it.     The number of random explosives and nastily concealed magical traps constitutes psychological warfare on its own. The ruined state of the facility makes it even more difficult than usual to actually spot them. She freely trespasses into Asiyah to lay some of them in your home turf, or at least she must have, just to rattle and injure your people. It's cold hope that she might run out of them any time soon; she laid out five times more than was actually used in the end just to lay the widest net for Gebura possible, and apparently lied about removing it. It is presumable that the fact your infrastructure still works means she's confident in taking it too. PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Rita Ma says, "Got them, Ms. Rook." PHONE: Phoning Rita Ma, Lilian Rook says, "Engage at your discretion." PHONE: Phoning Rita Ma, Lilian Rook says, "Ping me the meat's coordinates."
Angela	Angela has been awake for a day and a half in the facility. Also, discounting meltdowns, like a million years. She could, of course, just wander around executing Agents while everybody was asleep but she wasn't really sure if she wanted to encourage that kind of war since she's pretty sure Lilian would do it better and it would also alienate all the people helping her except MAYBE Petra? Yes, there are practical reasons for this. It is not because she would feel guilty and gross about it, even though she would. Binah is still fighting Gebura. Her goal is to keep fighting Gebura and not stop until victory is achieved. While Binah is definitely trying to win--she has her pride after all--her true goal is to just bide some time. Lilian, Rita, most of the Agents, Sephirah, AND Gebura against the Elites? Yeah, she's hoping that doesn't happen. Angela, of course, has made herself quite difficult to find but the Control Team (and Parker)...the only Agents overtly working WITH the Elites...have an Angelapad with them, though she isn't always available. She's using her own facility knowledge to try and sabotage the other departments and make them easier to take. Parker has her Apocalypse EGO Gear on. With that EGO she was able to hold off both Shajo and Tweed alone--she's one of the toughest Agents in the facility if you don't count Elites. Disciplinary has been able to make it back to Rita and Lilian's side. Shajo still has his Smile EGO Gear (a giant hammer, with faces and teeth on it), and dried decaying-vibe armor to go with it. Tweed is using the Judgement Bird's EGO--Justitia--which involve a large zweihander wrapped in bandages and a bandaged black suit to go with it. Both are labeled as ALEPH EGO Gear, though Tweed's on the lower end of it since it did come from a WAW Abnormality. Other agents are battling each other already, but these are the two teams most likely to crash against each other--being the ones most loyal to either side. "We'll try to keep Disciplinary from backing up Lilian," Justin says. He hasn't said as much but it's widely believed he changed his path here due to Cinder's sacrifice and his pull with the former members of Control lured the rest in to help Petra. This includes Ya-Boy, sure, but he's been acting as a 'guard' for Angela so he's not helping today. "That should keep them off of you...so make it count." Random added. Parker is silent for now. Malkuth, meanwhile, has been acting as a supporting commander for Team Lilian, largely directing Sephirah in trying to counteract Angela's own efforts. It's taking most of them to hold off Angela. She just thinks faster than them and Hod is an Anxiety Lump right now and Netzach has no helpful skills! Sougo was able to talk to Fox. Fox agreed to help any Agents that came in for treatment and suggested that once there's a clear winner in the conflict he'll use his pull with the Agents to make them surrender quickly. "Dame Commander, they're gonna try to swarm you, tire you out and wear you down like what happened with Gebura. We'll keep as much off you as we can." Shajo says. "But I think we have the advantage in a protracted conflict. Every Abnormality that comes out is one Rita can seize control over." "We'll make it fuckin' work. Sending half our team away to limit how much we can help her, fucking cowards." "Justin better hope I never get my hands on him..." Malkuth growls over comms.
Kukuru	Some of the dire aching in Kukuru's heart eases up once the groups split off for their own tasks, bathed in the light of the Tree of Light. Of course things will be better. They have to be. Angela will be free, Rita and Lilian will understand why everyone chose the side they did just as they'll understand Lilian and Rita, and the Sephirah will even be fine! Somehow! Kukuru wishes she could believe in that completely, but even she can't hold onto that feeling for long no matter how much she wants to. Seeing those strange light things in the distance gives Kukuru as much of a lead as any to follow. She tries to keep to a stealthy approach at first, shuffling instead of taking her usual big and carelessly stomping steps, squinting at them from down long hallways to see... To try and figure out what she's actually looking at. There's more in her periphery before long, and there's not a lot of room to move without knowing that it's inevitable that they'll all be detected. "If they're going to see us, then..." She nods at Riku as he transforms, and she holds her hands down to open up a portal in the ground in front of herself. "We should.. Take out as many as we can at once, right?" She really hopes thse isn't Rita's pet. She can't recall her ever speaking about them before, at least, but... No. No more distractions. Kukuru waits until Geed and Flamel set upon the first creature before dropping in herself, falling through the floor portal to throw herself right into the fray as well. She hisses sharply as the Cycle of Tears start falling all over her right around that same time, too, instinctively grabbing at those closest to her first to tear them off and slam them against the ground and walls with her claws. As she cycles her nanites through her body to mitigate the worst of the bleeding, Kukuru starts wading through the swarm towards her companions to offer them her healing aid as well. "Stay close, everyone...! Ow, that's.. Mmn. If the clear path is to the east..." Kukuru's teeth keep sliding back and forth against each other as she tries not to screech from the cutting wounds contending for territory with her nanites sitching them back together. As she thrashes about with her claws, however, she starts trying to think despite Petra's orders. "Then they want us to go east. That'd be too easy of a path to escape to, so we should go... West?"
Xion	Xion had come to Lobotomy Corporation at a sprint to respond to a meltdown and fulfil a promise. She could have carried a whole supermarket into Lobotomy Corporation if she had known, but she hated cluttering up her internal universe of things with a hundred useless extra piles. The spaces she could reach weren't garbage cans! It worked out that she had more functionally identical swords or pipes with slightly different bends and deformities in neat stacks of ninety-nine and debris sorted into size than sandwiches. She did have candy - whole bottles of pure chocolate syrup, bags of lollipops, and tubs of off-brand Moogle jellybean candy. That the trimmings of spacecraft were so delicious wasn't relevant, as they were not nutritious or filling. Retreating from Binah confused, she hadn't really improved her mood when learning the fuller span of the truth. Petra had tried to explain, and Xion had found enough over the radio to shoulder her weapon, but Sougo's plan and Petra's deployments through the facility didn't bring her joy. Xion had gotten 'rest', but not sleep. Able to provide perhaps a few of her allies the peace of mind of a well-locked resting area, the noirette herself just sets with her back against a wall, leaning against her weapons and closing her eyes. The leaking wellness in the air can't undo the knot that's still being tied in her. Then, sullen, Xion fights a quiet war, punctuated by the detonation of traps she falls for in her motion through the facility. Who would have thought that it might be easier to cage in and spring traps on a teleporting enigma with a magic key inside a facility designed for such resistance? With Petra's guidance, and her own suddenly-appearing Corridors, the Nobody's magic key still made hell of all sorts of path. Disinterested in engaging in combat with Agents, she would simply break contact to go around locking things. She didn't have the smart words of a resisting hero, and she didn't have the unyielding resolve of someone with love or life on the line. Vulture that she was, she fought because she had to. 'Now, instead, it'll keep about a dozen people alive.' She had thought she had given up being a hero for 'everyone'. She finally learned that if you weren't everyone's hero, you were someone's monster. 'And then Xion, you're with me against, Lilian.' Traversing the maintenance area with the same Player 2 perfect poise after Petra even with her silent zone of psychic influence, Xion shifts the key she's carrying around to not klonk it on every passing bar during the briefing and when the ceiling opens up she shoulders Starlight across her shoulder and frowns. "Yeah." The noirette is dull at being with Petra on this mine. "We can't focus on winning with both of us together. Kukuru can't win this without both of us, and we probably can't save ourselves for a retreat and win." It simply didn't make sense. Rotating past the door to be ready behind it, Xion looks across the closed doorframe at Petra. "Don't lose in your head, though." An affected smile hangs on the Nobody's cheek. It takes no empath to know the little lie she tries to pass off. "We still have to take as many moves as possible before check."
Petra Soroka	"How is a princess supposed to maintain her appearance in such a place!!"     In response, no one actually hears Petra's acidic mumbled complaints to herself, because she doesn't place herself close enough to anyone to allow that. Petra Soroka is not a professional soldier. In many ways, she wishes she was; and in some others, she's gradually becoming grateful she isn't. Here, it's entirely the former: her discipline comes from a psychotic tolerance for self-harm and dogged determination in service of weaponizing herself for a cause, which are wonderful qualities for the kind of soldier that isn't actually real. She is not, in any sense, 'trained' for this. "Alright, I'll stick with Kukuru,"     The mildly unpleasant look Petra gives at Riku, the kaiju-fighter, immediately choosing to go after Rita, flickers across her face and then vanishes. Two years of friendship don't disappear over the course of a single conversation in the radio, but Rita's words are still a great motivator for Petra to get over her gut revulsion at putting kaiju targets on Rita's back. "Yeah. That's a really good matchup. I'll grill you for tips about her habits and weaknesses afterwards." "Don't lose in your head, though."     Of all the people on Angela's side, including Angela herself, Xion is the only one that really makes Petra feel more sane rather than less. That's probably why she had such gasping relief at having Xion alongside her for Gebura, and keeping Xion alongside her for the first step into the most difficult part now-- it's greedy, clawing a bit, projecting ideological certainty onto Xion that she wouldn't otherwise necessarily have, but Petra can't do anything else right now.     She smiles back, wobbly. "I won't. I mean, when have I ever lost to Lilian before?"     Dropping out of the access panel, Petra cracks her compact mirror between her thumbs, causing the Beauty of Ash to unfold and click into a million disparate hardlight shards around her. The fairylike weightlessness of the mech as it slows to a hovering halt in the open air of Central Command makes her almost the opposite kind of target as Gebura-- massive compared to a human, but flighty and nimble; even when its feet touch the ground, the infinitely-thin razor points just tik-tak on the concrete as she prowls around for Lilian. When she does finally move towards Lilian, it's sudden and lightning fast, accelerating from cautiously stalking around to a full streaking, shattering sprint in an instant, almost certainly setting off traps in her wake as the Beauty of Ash launches itself at Lilian as a stream of sharp-edged glass.
Timespace Riders	<Q-Conversation> Sarracenia says, "I am still holding out hope for this 'Golden Ending'. A way to share the Seed with the City and still keep the Sephirah alive." <Q-Conversation> Petra Soroka says to Sarracenia, "That's not real. That's not how the world works." <Q-Conversation> Sarracenia hmphs. "That is only not how the world works if we accept that is not how the world works." <Q-Conversation> Petra Soroka blinks, then, dully, "Sure." <Q-Conversation> Petra Soroka says, "Do you have a plan for that, then." <Q-Conversation> Petra Soroka says, "'Cause you can go ahead and fucking tell me about it, if you do. I mean, it'd make this whole fucking war a hell of a lot easier." <Q-Conversation> Xion says, "Sougo is cooking some sort of plan, but, I don't think it's going to be better than war."
Timespace Riders	During the first fight, Sougo had split off a future self to go with Woz. The future Sougo would search for Fox and protect Woz along the way. The retainer, meanwhile, would work on developing a script.     The Sougo of the present nearly didn't have a chance in where and when he'd sleep. The Sephirot armor, with the unlikely future it presents and the breadth of difference between the stories it binds together, takes a toll on him. He'd kept up with Rita's assault, and even peered into her past-- Don't act like a child.     You're acting like a harpoonist. The kind that wears uniforms. But if I say that now, you won't listen to anything I say later.     --but the bill came due not long after. The moment he'd shed the armor, he felt the warm trickle of blood crawling from his nose before his legs gave out from under him.     He'd stumbled to relative safety with the last of his strength, and has only just now woken up. There's little rest to be had--he completes the time loop now lest its length present an unacceptable tax. Elsewhere in the facility, the other Sougo switches from the Sephirot form to the speed-oriented Drive form. Angela had asked that he pace himself, and he knows he'll need to besides. To have your way and kill no one to get it-- You need power! You have to be so unbelievably, unbearably powerful, that you can't even stand it! So strong that nobody will look at you like a human being ever again!     When it's laid out like that... I don't think I'm scared of that any more. What does it matter if people look at me that way, as long as I look at *them* the right way? What's that, compared to something like this never, ever happening again?     "I can stand not standing it."     "Sire?"     "It's nothing," says the now-present and for the moment, only Zi-O. "Look--we're here."     Both Riders stop by Welfare in their speed forms (Zi-O in Drive, Woz in Shinobi) to have a word with Fox ahead of the anticipated meeting with Lilian. Which is to say Zi-O does, and Woz sticks to the book, searching desperately for a way to give the Seed to the city without killing Angela and the Sephirah.     Thankfully, Fox is amenable to at least some kind of surrender. Better than he expected, worse than he could have hoped for.     "Okay," he says after a sharp sigh. "We have to go. Bye, and good luck."     The two disappear in a flutter of Woz's iridescent purple scarf.     ...reappearing in the worst possible place. <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Incoming most directions but east. Queen is... Above. Approaching. Approaching? Ahh-- Crap!"     "LOOK OUT!" Zi-O's greatsword deflects an Antegent's scything appendage away from Woz, at the cost of taking a hit himself. The Drive armor strikes up sparks from redirecting the blow as he stumbles out of position. West?     "No. She wasn't expecting to find us here," says Woz, closing the book. "It's too late for us to escape. East. Once we're through, she'll attempt to surround us. Ultraman, form up on the entrance with me and we'll handle the monsters. The rest of you, rally to my Demon King and focus on Rita. Go!"
Rufus Shinra	Rufus sleeps as well as he's able. Having some medications of unknown legality helps with the nerves. (His stash is not shared.) Everyone on Team Angela gets, at some point, him dropping by to check in. "Right, how are you holding up?" "Are you staying hydrated?" "Need a snack bar? Need a break?" He has taken the issue of morale upon himself. Also: "Here, have two hundred dollars." Money is much less useful right here and now when there's nothing to *buy* but if random cash disbursements helps with morale then it helps with morale. Beyond morale improvement, Rufus is on area denial. ----------------------------- |ENEMY SKILL: SUMMON HELLTRAIN| ----------------------------- He's making an *effort* to not kill any agents. This comes in the form of being *very clear* that the train's on its way before it plows through a room, so they should be elsewhere very quickly. This sort of big telegraphed attack is one of his few (arguably) nonlethal options - he has a mental note made to look into acquiring something new for the next time this comes up. > "Please don't be fucking stupid. Any of you." "... Alright." "No goofing around, no selfish plays. I'm taking this seriously, I promise. " No fingerguns. That's how you know he's dead serious. "I'll back up Kukuru." "All I ask... Is that once this is all said and done..." Rufus looks pleading. "Please, please give me a play by play of how you versus Miss Rook went?" > The Cycle of Tears Rufus keeps his distance. He keeps his voice down. He's not going to be the one who causes aggro here. ... Well, okay, despite everything he *is* being a *little* bit goofy. Kukuru's the VIP here so he's playing bodyguard, aping some of the things he's seen *his* bodyguards(/babysitters) do. Hovering around her, putting a finger up to his earpiece radio when someone talks, responding in formal radio codes, slowly reaching towards his weapon when someone's doing something suspicious, etcetera. "10-4, got eyes on the bogey. 10-77 on the Kilo Uniform. Over and out." All that goes out the window, though, when Rita blasts down, followed by the swarm coming through. "Fuck!" It takes a moment for Rufus to get his composure back. "Right - yes, any direction but east," he says. "And I gotta..." He focuses. "Bust out the big guns, here. Whatever the rest of you do, don't listen." Something he's been holding onto for ages, just for a moment like this when it'd be most needed. ... Or, honestly, when the need surpassed his reluctance to use it. < I'm scared, more than a bit, more than I'd ever admit out loud, of committing this much. < I'm scared about caring so much that I'm willing to put my chips on the table like this. < ... But... "Face the fear..." A baton appears in his hand. ----------------------------- |ENEMY SKILL: SILENT ORCHESTRA| |        MOVEMENT ONE         | -----------------------------
Rufus Shinra	"Build the future." He knows the song. He stopped to listen to it one day, as the world was ending around him, and he's never forgotten it. He's tried, but his dreams remind him of it. He starts conducting. Soft, ghostly music starts flowing through the room. Across the swarm, and also echoing up through the new tunnel, towards Rita, if she's making the mistake of listening in. And why shouldn't she listen? It's beautiful, after all. It's so beautiful, it hurts. This is the song that ends the world - or at least, the world as you know it. As Rufus conducts, ghostly singers in his image start emerging from the ground, one by one, to join the chorus.
Riku Asakura	The explosion from above catches Riku by surprise, even with Flamel's warning.  Sparks rain out from where the light touched and smashed Geed to the ground with a loud thud.  Rolling to his feet, he attempts to regain his footing and attempt to push forward through the bugs.  Even as they swarm over him, he won't falter in the face of insurmountable odds.   'Ultraman, form up on the entrance with me and we'll handle the monsters.' "Right!" he says through his pain and moves with Woz to try and form a choke point with him.  Geed will start to grow larger, just enough to be an obstruction in the room to let others get east and toward Rita.  He draws the Geed Claw, a handheld weapon, and strikes down the bugs with it.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel can't move in time to avoid the impact. Or doesn't? He's the one who recognizes it first, why does he stay still when the beam breaches from above? It shears through layers of barriers, but Flamel is sticking to the pinned creature... Finalizing something. Extracting something. Some frequency, some energy. The hands intercede as well -- and one yanks him and the battered creature away from the column, as if against his will. His bright, friendly face flashes in the flickering lights, as he's wielded by his own telekinesis.     Hands lash out to more bugs. Isn't he supposed to be attacking Rita? Wasn't that the orders he received? Wait -- something is conducting along them. Something sickly-orange, something violent, something trying to lash back through the network and spark its way to Rita like a conducted jolt of electricity. It burns through neural structures at rapid speed, a psychic attack meant to strike Rita in response, or else force her to shed more of her psychic connection to mitigate the risk. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Am I just 'the Queen' now?" <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, brightly, in some pain, "It's what the monsters think of you, isn't it? But since you're the heroic one here, maybe 'Princess' fits more?"     He's vanished. But any time he can get his hands on those bugs, that bolt of lightning zaps along the psychic links, coursing through any brain it needs to on its path to bounce towards Rita's own brain. And they're getting more and more intense, more and more brutal, each time he can get a grapple. After a while, they'll start burning out bug neural systems on their way to strike Rita. All probing for a gap where he can attack her will directly.     It seems like the telekinetic hands do more than he does -- grabbing, moving, attacking. The man himself seems more like a support than a participant.
Timespace Riders	With the sound of a supercar's engine roaring down the opening, Zi-O is clear to the other side, and Woz fast behind him.      The Demon King engages Rita as he is, but Woz shifts forms--                  Dekai! Hakai! Gokai! Futurering Kikai! KIKAI!                       --into the brute force-oriented Kikai armor. Four articulated mechanical arms sprout from his back with a motorized whine, each ending in thick, powerful clamps. Turning to face the mouth of the opening, he snares the limbs of the rushing Antegent with powerful, crushing strength, lifting those he's caught and smashing them into their fellows to make passage through as difficult as he can.      "Remember Dohu?" asks Zi-O, fighting not so much to harm Rita as to obstruct her, his strikes meant to corral and keep her attention on him. He's fast enough to match her speed in this form, though not her equal in force or hardiness. "I hate guys like that. I think that when they see people like you, they feel a little threatened. Because they realize that they could have been like you, or Kana, if they'd just cared enough. So, suddenly, you're a threat."      "And whatever else you are, they can just... bury. If he lived long enough to see you and Bota grow up... what do you think he'd say about your chances at beating the Queen?"
Sarracenia	Sarra follows after Petra and Xion...without her hammer drawn. She doesn't intend to bash any Agents, and they are supposed to keep Lilian chasing them if possible which means in Sarra's mind running away and throwing things.      Sarra is sure to trigger some of those traps at some point. There is no doubt an explosion every now and then or a yelp as some magic goes off. Despite her work to get her appearance back under control before, by the time they reach Central she has an annoyed flat expression on her face thanks to her dress being a bit tattered already.      'Don't lose in your head, though.'      'I won't. I mean, when have I ever lost to Lilian before?'      Even as Petra drops down, Sarra is both wide-eyed and skeptical. "You have fought -Lilian- and -won-? More than once?" Sarra does not really expect an answer as she drops down after, watching the Beauty of Ash unfold.      As the Beauty of Ash attacks, Sarra takes the time to pull out a cloud and hops on, then starts flying about the room while throwing Bob-ombs. Usually she would say something, but...words just seem hollow right now. The battle of words was done yesterday. Even Sarra looks somber as she attacks instead of angry or maniacal like she usually might.
Hibiki Tachibana	Throw Hibiki in the 'figured out some way to sleep' camp. If only from sheer and overwhelming exhaustion more than anything else. With the kind of fights waiting ahead of them, it'd be awfully hard to get any rest otherwise. Lilian and Rita alone are enough on their own. But with Abnormalities under Rita's control, the Sephirah coordinating in the background, Lilian's well-laid plans, Gebura being Gebura, the Agents who might side against them...     ...it's a lot.     In the awake hours, she makes the decision to stay transformed. There's too much passive danger to risk getting caught out and disabled as an entirely ordinary girl. Lilian, she has absolutely zero doubt in her mind, would seize the opportunity and call her a moron after she'd laid her out faster than she could blink.     So it's clad in her Symphogear, idly adjusting her scarf and mildly hungry after foregoing breakfast to stretch their rations out for as long as possible, after volunteering for yet another sweep of the halls to check for explosives or traps that might risk injuring someone less sturdy-- that Tachibana Hibiki now trails after Petra and Xion.     "...If it's about wasting her time, I can help manage that." She speaks quietly, trduging along step by step, eyes past the pair and aimed straight ahead. "I'm not going to pretend I can make a huge difference when it comes to beating her or not. But that much... ..."     It only sounds unsure at a glance, trailing off as she usually does. But in reality, her focus and thoughts seem like they're somewhere far off from here. Is she losing in her head, or something else completely?     I won't. I mean, when have I ever lost to Lilian before?     Come to think of it, Hibiki has always been on the opposite end of that spectrum, herself. Whether a real fight, or training. That very first one, a fight she couldn't afford to lose, but still lost...     It can't go like that a second time.     "...Alright. Let's do it."     Out they go. She just has to trust that Kukuru's group will be able to handle Rita-- because she can't afford to even not be wary of where she steps. No sooner does the Beauty of Ash unfurl itself within Central that Hibiki closes her eyes. She's less hunting and more trying to 'feel' Lilian's presence out, keeping her senses on lock...     ...and when they find her, and the glass machine streaks off to open up the attack, Hibiki ducks low and uses that to make a large leap that sends her in a high arc through the expansive chamber, momentarily just far enough from Petra that she can feel a bit of the Light's warmth...     ...before she comes down to try and descend on Lilian from overhead, boot first.
Rita Ma	It all happens so fast. Before anyone can move more than a dozen paces since the breach, Rita drops down through the hole, kicks off Woz, lands in the center of the ruined room's melee, and sculpts false wings from her tentacles as she straightens from her crouch.      Wait. Don't they look a little like White Night's--          - - - - die. - - - -      With the shockwave of a wingbeat, that exact same ego-shredding pulse washes over Elites and Antegent alike, blacking vision and wracking souls with the agony of dissolution. Flamel's psychic infiltration is crush-countered as the links he was relying on are snuffed out. Rufus's ghostly singers are extinguished and his song interrupted.      A brief reprieve: every Antegent within fifty feet is extinguished too. Their lights go dark and their bodies drop. For a good ten seconds, there aren't any more; but as the next wave starts to trickle in, they're uniformly heavier-armored in an attempt to rebuff Kukuru and Geed's blows, bulkier and wolflike, with six legs instead of four.      Each time the Cycle of Tears is mowed down, the next generation becomes stronger.      "Everyone else gets the picture, Mr. Sougo. Even Mr. Flamel isn't trying to convince me anymore," Rita says, in the after-shockwave lull, though the tetchy grimace behind her respirator shows she is listening.      Her wings unweave themselves, becoming those bladelike tentacles that parry and riposte viciously against anyone in thirty feet- which is everyone who hasn't fled back out into the corridor already. "I'm not here to have my mind changed, you know. I'm here to mangle you until you give up." The room is a blizzard of whipcracks and harrowingly close-to-ear whistling slices; she doesn't bother to cloak them, 'a dozen' is simply too many weapons for a human being to track.      "I think you should stop prying into my past. It's rude. If you'll say I'm just like the cop who beat my brother, for trying to protect billions of people, you're too far gone to listen to."      She steps towards Kukuru in the reeling-moment, grabs Kukuru's wrist, and looks over at Sougo one more time: "And if you can't make hard choices, hold still, and I'll take the burden from your shoulders."      Then, back to Kukuru, with just a bit of hesitation in her eyes: "Sorry. You're the only person here I can eat. Can you give me this?"      A tentacle tries to sever Kukuru's extended arm at the elbow.
Petra Soroka	"Please, please give me a play by play of how you versus Miss Rook went?"     Petra is preparing to tell Rufus to fuck off and die, as is her habit, when she stalls for a moment. Her heinous levels of emotional strain aren't something she can stably sustain, and because she isn't focusing on processing that stress-- she's got more important things to do, like avoiding doing that!-- the fluctuating manifestation of it is unpredictable and kind of unhinged. Instead of getting angry, after a strange pause, she giggles with the back of her hand pressed up to her mouth.     "Oh, sure. This'll be one for the fucking battleboarders. Yeah, I'll give you a fucking play by play, but you know this shit's gonna happen another dozen fucking times over the week too, right? I bet it'll only get better." "You have fought -Lilian- and -won-? More than once?"     "Oh, yeah. Don't you remember a couple years back?" Petra has, in fact, fought Lilian with hostile intent *multiple* times. She's fought with her a dozen more times in more structured ways, for training, but it's impossible to really claim any of those as wins, especially since she didn't win them. Each time she's really fought Lilian, she's won in the end-- but never, a single time, actually within the scope of the fight itself. Petra just always wins the long game with Lilian.     "I'm probably even better at fighting Lilian than I am helping her, anyways." "...If it's about wasting her time, I can help manage that."     Just before dropping off to start the battle, Petra pats Hibiki on the shoulder, still buoyed by the unnerving sarcastic cheer that Rufus and Sarracenia gave her. "I know you can, Hibiki, especially since you've still got both hands. That'll definitely draw her attention. It's funny that it's you and me fighting together against Lilian this time, huh?"
Angela	The Agents clash. Mikey runs around screaming in the foreground while being partly on fire. Parker clashes directly with Shajo as they rail on each other with their EGO weapons. Shajo is slightly more skilled as a warrior, but it's tough to beat Parker's EGO Gear and she's agile. Random and Tweed go after one another. Justin tries to lend Random a hand but is beaten back by Chewie whose EGO takes a bite out of his left arm. Shajo sees an opportunity and throws himself at Justin, bashing him hard enough that he collapses to a knee and is stunned with a followup kick to the face, Justin is floored. Shajo spits on him. "So much for Rook Office." Shajo says. Justin's not knocked out, but he's gonna need a minute but that one-two combo from Team Lilian is not great. Rook's defenses are specialized around White Damage but Shajo's weapon does Black and he resists White fairly well too. He sees Petra and starts running towards her, swinging Smile at her, the weapon attempting to clamp down on her arm and chomp. There is a flicker of regret in his eyes that he smothers down. He doesn't engage in banter. Hibiki isn't so lucky. Nikki and Carol see Hibiki going after Lilian, boot first. Nikki raises her staff up and raises a hot pink laser at her. "You should've brought Rose with ya! Then you might've stood a chance...!" Carol follows up the pink laser with her own swarm of swords, chasing after Hibiki. Her sorrow lets her EGO gear worm its way into her mind, tears flowing freely from her face, pitch black. "I know you won't let us win but if we beat you down fast, you'll finally accept the situation, right?" "AHHHHH! I'M STILL ON FIRE!" Mikey shouts.
Lilian Rook	'Dame Commander, they're gonna try to swarm you, tire you out and wear you down like what happened with Gebura. We'll keep as much off you as we can.'     "I'm aware." Lilian replies to Shajo, neutral as can be. While it irritates her that Petra has practically all of her available cosmetics, a cold shower and blandly practical clothes don't do much to bother her, nor downgrade her appearance rating by more than a point and a half. A war of attrition is exactly the opposite of what she wants, but . . .     "That might work, if I take my time with each of them, and I'm careful to mind my use of force." she says, double checking her holographic map of the facility and adding live markers. "But if that's their plan, they're desperate already or they're underestimating me. They've loaded everyone who could tax my stamina into one team."     'We'll make it fuckin' work. Sending half our team away to limit how much we can help her, fucking cowards.'     "That they may be, but a cornered animal will do whatever it takes to survive. Don't be surprised by it." Lilian says, closing her map. "You should be prepared to do the same. We aren't on a leisurely little hunt in the woods where we get to go back home after. We're backed into a corner as well."     'Justin better hope I never get my hands on him...'     "I'll tell you if there's anything left of him after I'm done."     . . . . . . . .     '...If it's about wasting her time, I can help manage that.'     "Oh I don't think so. You're well and truly fucked this time, Tachibana."     Lilian's tone in dealing with the Elites and the Agents is completely, totally different. Not that this group would know. Instead, they have the target they're out hunting simply appearing in front of-- behind them in plain sight. Rather than blocking their advance, she's cutting off their retreat.     "Do you have any idea how many hours, every single day, I spend using my power for silly little things?" Armoured up, she's holding Night Mist in one hand and tapping the flat across the other, as if she intends to smack the back of Hibiki's head for falling asleep in class. "Putting on makeup. Eating breakfast. Catching up on paperwork. Day trading. Work commute. Studying. Meditation. Exercise. Now what else do I have to do with it but use it on you?"     Petra is probably right to think of it as psychological warfare. It likely is. It's also cold comfort to the bone-chilling feeling of seeing Lilian swing her sword in a lazy circle, plant it in the floor, and lean on the handle. "You fucking imbecile. How are you going to waste something I have infinitely more of than you? Especially seeing as yours is about to run out."     'It's funny that it's you and me fighting together against Lilian this time, huh?'     "Is it? You're not going to go easily, you know."     'We still have to take as many moves as possible before check.'     Lilian internally swallows a flinch. It doesn't make it to her eyes.     "Not even you, Xion."
Riku Asakura	The pale damage tears through Ultraman Geed like wet tissue paper.  Groaning in agony, he falls to the ground as sparks fly off of his chest and arms.  He's unable to resist the sting of the White Night's wings, and even less so than her tentacles.  Geed is severely hurt already, and the gem on his chest is already flashing red. Regardless, he chose to fight for the Serphirm and Angela.  He can't back down now from it, no matter how frightening Rita is right now, and no matter how devastating her minions become.  He has to fight through them, he has to fight to give Angela the time she needs to do what she needs to do.   Drawing himself back to his feet, he raises the Geed Claw into the air.  Inside Geed, Riku makes a motion with a facsimile of the claw.  Drawing his fingers upon it to open and close the claw at regular intervals.  "DIFFUSION SHOWER!" he shouts, and draws the claw into the sky again, causing bright lights to appear in the sky around them. They rain down on the monsters that Rita has deployed, attempting to impale them with the beams of light from the sky, spreading out across the battlefield in the hopes of stopping them, or at least slowing them down.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's sense of self, his personhood, is already a tremendously weak thing. This is already an object, a tool. Remember? He's not a person to begin with! So the Pale shockwave disperses even his attack method, knocks him back, and leaves him convulsing painfully. The swirling tentacles whip-cracking and slices along his body is nothing compared to the the wave, which leaves his sounds garbled. The massive telekinetic hands wrench him away from the worst, but they can't get everything. And they certainly can't do anything about that pale wave.     "Even Mr. Flamel isn't trying to convince me anymore."     "I don't think. I don't. I don't think that's what we can do." He laughs. "The villain never convinces the hero. The hero. The hero. Even trying to, is just embarrassing, isn't it? You're right." Psychokinetic hands hoist Flamel up onto his feet, limp and twitching and smiling as friendly as he can. "'Right' in the moral sense -- you're on the correct side." He heaves some heavy breaths. "Which is probably part of why I can't win against you. But you're going to wind up where I am someday too. At some limit you never thought you'd see. It'll be longer for you, though. You're a person."     Armor works on telepathy better than you'd think. He'd better abandon the hivemind approach and go after her directly, especially since Geed is so kind as to cover him. He tries to lock onto that Pale frequency and route a psychic attack through it -- massive converging beams of white light that try to land in the wings, infest the ganglia, and stop that Pale pulse from happening again by attacking the regions of Rita's motor centers that control them.
Lilian Rook	The Beauty of Ash charges through a storm-lived storm of explosives and thunderbolts. The combined pressure blows back Lilian's hair from the sustained rush of scalding air. Leaning against her sword sword, her reaction to the threatening slipstream of jagged glass doesn't make it to her face either.     §Petra is stressed and low on energy. She's buckled in for the long fight before seriously hoping for a quick engagement. Sundew doesn't have any of her usual energy. Xion's mental game is in shambles. Even Tachibana seems more worn down than usual. I suppose I was overestimating their stamina.§     Lilian's eyes zigzag from them, to Hibiki's charge, to the falling bob-ombs, as if she were watching them in slow motion. The faint light trail is visible from too many too-fast saccades to be natural.     §She didn't split their forces to account for me, so we have the luxury of sending Rita to counter their healer, and with the half-exception of Xion, everyone here is susceptible to being stabbed in the throat. Does she have a plan? Or could she only not get them to coordinate at all? Parsons' invisibility would give me trouble, and I'd wear out my energy hitting Geed. Woz's precognition and time magic resistance is a problem, and Kukuru's regeneration goes without saying. But this group . . .§     Lilian sighs.     Bisected bob-ombs fall around her and explode in         shattered glass splatters against the walls like blood      drawn from sparking wounds in the air where           boot clangs against unyielding steel, angled to deflect      blast wave throws up a wall of dust and    glass shards swirl in a lagging wind vortex behind her at                the opposite end of the hall way from where you started.     It's all stop and no motion. Audiovisual disjoint and continuity vomit that does more harm than help to make sense of. Glass and concrete and steel debris swirls through the corridor, sharply diverts, rapidly embeds, thunderously dislodges, then disintegrates in five directions. A black ribbon of afterimages is broken up in dozens of places between white hot flashes of sword-wound pain and hanging black-gold embers of time magic.     §Don't hold back on them, but don't aim to knock them out straight away. Kukuru will pick them back up before long, unless Rita devours her. Demoralize them. Break them. Make them shiver at the thought of getting back up again. They need days to win.§     Lilian leans her head back over her shoulder, and sing-song-says "Is that it? You're practically done for already. I mean, look at you." The places that have been cut by a blade and successfully touched by time magic are hemorrhaging at a ridiculous rate already. "Of course, Kukuru will only put that blood back in you, so perhaps I should make extra sure?"     §Start with the weak link. Break their coordination before they can form it. Their morale is rock bottom from yesterday.§     "For instance . . ." Lilian's gaze tracks to Sarracenia. "I doubt she could reverse it if I aged you into a withered old hag first."
Rufus Shinra	> "... you know this shit's gonna happen another dozen fucking times over the week too, right?I bet it'll only get better." "... I know you're just being sarcastic, but - you know, you're right." "Does your phone have enough juice left in it to maybe video-record the whole thing or - yeah, okay, nevermind." --- > die < I've thrown my chips on the table but the cards aren't coming up my way. Rufus's non-inner monologue is a lot less poetic and a lot more blunt. "THAT, is Rita Ma? That monster?" "How?! She was just, just this little girl before!" His song is interrupted, and the room fills up with blades. Retreat is, honestly, the only option, and Rufus doesn't get clear unscathed. > "The villain never convinces the hero. The hero. The hero. Even trying to, is just embarrassing, isn't it? You're right." "We're past the point of convincing, I think," calls Rufus, clutching his arm where blood is seeping through the expensive jacket he's wearing. "Right now - stick to your guns, keep fighting. If you're really on Team Freedom, then fight like you mean it, and don't think about what else is going on. Whatever we're missing out on, we can make up, and then some. You can hold me to that, alright?" Rufus turns to each of his allies in turn, as well. > "DIFFUSION SHOWER!" "Yeah! More lasers! Keep saturating the battlefield!" Then to Woz. "Focus on the kind of celebration we'll have, once all this is over!" And to Sougo. "Come on, let's see what kind of king you really can be, now that the chips are down!" And to Kukuru- oh. Kukuru's getting eaten. That's mission critical. All cards on the table. Rufus digs into his pocket, and throws coins at - past, actually, past Rita. He's missed. What would coins have done, anyway? In nearly the same motion, he draws, and he fires - also firing right past her. She doesn't even need to dodge. The shot impacts the coins - and with a spark, the shot ignites them, bursting them into a focused laser-like beam, burning an afterimage in the retinas of anyone looking that way. Not normal coins, then. And more than that, the supercharged laser coins are firing backwards, back *towards* Rita, from a hopefully unexpected angle. Wherever the lasers hit, they lose coherence, and thus all of the energy radiates outwards from there - explosively.
Kukuru	EARLIER "Kukuru can't win this without both of us, and we probably can't save ourselves for a retreat and win. Don't lose in your head, though." "If it was a regular fight, I... No, I don't think I could ever win against anyone here in a regular fight." Kukuru chuckles lightly and dejectedly, then sighs and rubs her face. "They know a lot more about fighting, they have the experience, and... They're still my precious friends and..." No, they wouldn't consider her family after this. "... Even if I'm a monster to them. But if it comes to drawing things out and wasting as muuuuch time as I can..." "I'd win." A LITTLE LATER "10-4, got eyes on the bogey. 10-77 on the Kilo Uniform. Over and out." Rufus' antics get quiet little giggles from Kukuru as she moves along with everyone. She'd enjoy the feeling of being treated this way if not for the circumstances, but having a bit of levity does help her heart recover just a little more next ot the Tree of Light giving her that intensified sense of hope. "You're quite good at this, Rufus... You must care a lot for the people that do this for you, too. Never change that." NOW "The rest of you, rally to my Demon King and focus on Rita." Kukuru doesn't need to be told twice to stick close to anyone in the group. "If we need to escape for real, I can always send you all back. Just don't ignore your own safety, okaaay? It'll be easier if we're all grouped up, anyway." She hopes it won't come to that, of course, but she's got some inklings of what the real goal is here. She just needs to take as much time as possible, just like the other group is doing with Lilian. She knows Xion's got that team's back for escaping danger, too, so if they can all get through this without any casualties...
Kukuru	- - - - die. - - - - Kukuru feels Rita's White Nightly presence before she sees her, and that moment of blindness and soul searing bring her mind back even further than before. She remembers the station. She remembers the promise she made. She remembers holding that dying woman in her arms, feeling her life leaving her body, feeling her yanked right out of her grip, seeing... Right. Rita was there that time, too. Is this what it's going to be like if she fails again? If Rita gets to Angela... Kukuru would have to feel that all over again, both by and for someone she truly loves rather than someone she only just met. The mere idea of it is enough to get her to start screaming, and not just from all those whipping tentacles carving into her and splattering blood all over the place. The slicing certainly doesn't help any, however, and she's just barely about to start swinging back on reflex when Rita catches her wrist. "My...? Why now, and not when...?" Kukuru's forearm goes flying, heavy steel claw and all going with it as the blade tentacle sweeps right through it. She screams as the shock doesn't quite kick in soon enough to stop the pain from rocketing through the rest of her arm, glowing at the end with those familiar nanites to keep her blood in instead of letting her bleed out from that grievous wound. She screams again, dragging her other claw along the ground to tear it up and hurl a whole slab of tile and broken architecture at Rita. "I can't... Rita, I... I can't let you take Angie, too! I won't!" She shouts in a wholly out-of-character tone for herself, sounding more desperate than she has in quite some time. Kukuru stumbles back at first as her footing betrays her, fighting both the instinct to run away and her growing desire to keep her precious AI safe from harm. The latter wins out sooner rather than later, and she lunges towards Rita with her remaining arm reared back, ready to ram her entire claw through... Rita can see the hesitation in her eyes, too. "IF you're hungry... Please ask. You know I'll always have enough for you." She can see the pain, too, and the shock starting to kick in some as the nanites go into overdrive inside Kukuru, shimmering blue around her as she starts growing rapidly. The claw finally comes down after that, trying to imaple several of those tentacles at once with those battering ram-like digits, to try and get a proper hold on them all at once to start swinging Rita herself around.
Rufus Shinra	THEN: > "You're quite good at this, Rufus... You must care a lot for the people that do this for you, too. Never change that." "Hah, yeah, maybe I should give them bonuses when all this is over," he says. NOW: "Forget bonuses, they're getting fucking raises when all this is over, believe me!" yells Rufus, who's finding the job of 'bodyguard' harder than it looks.
Xion	"There's no formula for beating Lilian." Xion explains, key-sword dropping to tip-tap against the floor. "If it's ever happened one way, ever gotten close - she's fixed it. Her whole profession, life, has been removing weaknesses. She doesn't have to 'hold back' to not kill you. She'll just break you a different way." The answers are quick and decisive and knowing. The Nobody had watched Lilian for a long, long time. "Figure out what you want to do. Figure out how you're going to do it. Keep trying even if it gets hard. If you lose in your head, you've lost completely, because she doesn't stop trying to win." It might just sound like Xion gassing up their foe. It's, more morosely, the reality of their fight. "And, Hibiki?" Xion is on the blonde's other side, patting the other shoulder - pulling a golden medallion like a coin from behind the other woman's ear. "I'm borrowing this." She declares, not a question in the moment. Bikki powers off, intentionally going for the first drive, but then there's... Lilian, before her. And Xion has to stop. There's Lilian, behind her, and the noirette turns. Looking over shoulder, rotating in a daze like the armored knight had just jogged past in slow motion. 'It's funny that it's you and me fighting together against Lilian this time, huh?' 'Is it? You're not going to go easily, you know.' "No." Xion rasps. Starlight, which had been with her since she had first met Lilian, rustles as her grip shifts, the keychain dangling off the down-pointed blade and swaying an empty stay. "It's not funny. 'Funny' is just what people say when they mean it's sicker than it's ever been inside of them. 'Funny' is permission to scream while you smile. 'Funny' is..." The star-toothed bladetip, and her eyes, come up. Her lips purse and are bit from within. Her eyes flash wet. Exhaling, she gets it out. "How proud I am to have offered you a pristine coat before this. So that can be that." Her other hand takes Keyblade hilt and brings the blade up in a high stance. "And this can be this." A golden spring - Hibiki's power, native to Xion since long ago - tightens about Xion's feet like golden sandals and she leaps. As she sourly lunges trailing pale sparkles, the unstoppable force wrapped about her ankles and heels drives her sword faster than she normally teleports about, rotating into a swing as she shouts. "And you're *right*," That same miserable devotion leaks into every syllable. "I won't go easily!" Once Lilian commits her first blade, though, the knight must contend with her second, immediately switching from single blade to dual blade flurrying as the black twist and glass-red nerve toothed Antegent-themed Keyblade joins the swinging Starlight in her press. If Starlight shoots and expresses and expels all sorts of soft pale lights every swing, Twist Pylon does the opposite, twisting space around it and complicating guard-locks. It's art in the snapshots between bisected bob-ombs as Xion is forced to weather a whole ribbon of afterimages, fighting phantoms and making split-second corrections to her pattern by skipping all the intervening frames. A dozen clashes happen in a heartbeat, and Xion doesn't have the weapons or hands to stop all of them. Marked on shoulder, side, across the back in shallow ways, she catches Night Mist on the spring of her boot wrapped in the coil of Gungnir and bounces a kick down and away from just another momentary presence through some of the bomb-smoke to land a few steps closer to Lilian. "Because there's a whole beating heart in me that needs to know why you didn't ask me to help you. Why did you give me that medicine? If you were going to throw that away, why did we go half-ways on that, and all-the-ways on this?!" Carving through the smoke with a set of of vacuum wave and pale starlight slashes from both blades, Xion tries to close. She can't ask Lilian's mask, and she can't hear her heart, but she can feel her blade.
Timespace Riders	Woz is like a rock in the Kikai armor. Physically. The story of a kindly robot who will one day protect humans after coming to understand them does nothing to protect against the flensing of the self. When it comes to stopping the oncoming wave of reformed Antegent, he is ill-prepared, driven to one knee by psychic anguish. Everyone else gets the picture, Mr. Sougo. Even Mr. Flamel isn't trying to convince me anymore.     Zi-O is a different story--in this moment, he's found a piece of emotional flotsam sturdy enough to carry his weight, and he clings to it for dear life against the storm. He dips above the waves of Pale to catch his breath:     "You said that an evil king only cares about the people who are in front of him."     He isn't trying to strike her; but in this form his speed and his precognition are enough to scrape by. The room is a blizzard, but he's a mote of snow amidst hail--he doesn't have to track all of them when he can see which future's he's hit in and brute-force work out which ones he'll take the least damage from. And if you can't make hard choices, hold still, and I'll take the burden from your shoulders.     "The Rita who's in front of me right now makes me sad, and anxious, and desperate, but she isn't the only Rita who exists. I knew a few others, and I wanted to see as many as I could. More than her, I wanted to see the people in her life. This Rita's just the one in the driver's seat now because that's what ends this fight the fastest. Even she admits this is a 'difficult decision.'"     "There's no Rita Ma that's like Dohu at all, and I think that's a good thing." He is still, but for the way his chest heaves from the exertion and his body struggles not to slump over the greatsword. "I *don't* think it's fair for you to say that it's childish of me to want to save everyone. You know as well as I do he would have called even the victory you eventually did manage to get 'unrealistic.' "     "It isn't. It wasn't childish of you to want to save everyone, either. And as much as it hurt me, to hear, it wasn't childish of you to ask why you didn't get that. Why didn't you? It's a good question."     "I know now that it was because there are too few of you, too few of Lilian, and too many of us, who are almost-but-not-quite. To many of us who can't stand the kind of power that changes you just by having it--that changes the way people look at you and sets you apart from them."     "Woz hasn't finished reading. He might not find an answer at all. But whether he does or doesn't, from today there's one less person afraid to take that plunge. I'm sorry that I wasn't strong enough for the Union Busan."      "Woz," he says, looking over his shoulder.      "Yes, sire?"      "You're worse off than me. Retreat to a safe distance and get back to looking for ways forward." It's a generous description of events. Still, Woz switches back into the Shinobi armor and retreats via teleport.
Timespace Riders	That just leaves Zi-O. "If I'm not strong enough for the City, I want it to be because I tried and failed. Not because I 'held still' when you asked me to. No one who has that kind of strength ever found it sitting down, or by beating up training dummies or reading self help books. "      "...Did they, Rita? I'm far from that right now. But if I don't reach for it, I'll never have it."      Zi-O's sword is like lightning striking--a sudden bolt from an otherwise placid moment. It bats aside Rita's tentacle with the same speed she's accustomed to moving them in. Rather than close in, he interposes himself between them. Much as her appendages had been like blenders, his greatsword is, too. Its much shorter reach is remedied by the fact that the sword itself isn't the attack vector--it's the oppressive grid of curving red lasers, each exploding with the blunt force of a Kamen Rider's fist, spilling forth as if he himself were an automatic weapon.
Hibiki Tachibana	It's funny that it's you and me fighting together against Lilian this time, huh?     "It sort of is. I'd rather not go home with any missing body parts this time, though..." Her flat tone and expression makes it /so/ hard to tell if she's serious or intentionally playing into the unnerving casualness of the back and forth.     I'm borrowing this.     "Xion..." She opens her mouth... just to close it and nod. "...Let's get in there."     Down they go.     ...     Oh I don't think so. You're well and truly fucked this time, Tachibana.     Hibiki doesn't get to reply to that right away; courtesy of Nikki's blast intercepting her the instant her boot meets the steel of Lilian's blade. She uses the flat of it to launch back and thrusts a second kick out towards the laser itself - diffusing it into a spread of pink beams that arc around her before she somehow rebounds off of raw energy into a backflip.     As she careens back down through the air, she whirls into a spinning punch that sends one barrage of Carol's swords flying, then shifts her position to drop faster back down to Central's golden flooring to avoid the rest. For now. "...Sorry, Carol. Not being able to accept what'd happen is why I'm here in the first place. I can't-- ...let them die just like that."     Her mouth draws tight beneath her scarf - and then she's sprinting straight ahead to outpace the rest of the swords giving chase after her.     Her lagging mind only catches onto, once she's in motion, the always-dizzying array of impossible actions that accompany fighting Lilian. She has to adjust her angle to shift past and beyond the mess of fading images. The searing ache of wounds she doesn't recall getting finally bleeds in.     But they don't slow her down. She's exhausted, in more ways than one. But among the few things she's good at, stubbornly pushing herself past reasonable limits is one of them.     You fucking imbecile. How are you going to waste something I have infinitely more of than you? Especially seeing as yours is about to run out.     "It won't--" The sharp trail-off isn't because of hesitation, but rather because she turns her momentum into another meters-high leap through the air. Closing the distance with Lilian in one go, with the same exact method? ...No, she won't even make it the whole way.     "--because I have plenty of reasons to stay standing as long as I have to...!"     The spiked jacks in her leg armor eject forward - and just like the trademark pistons of her gauntlets, they slam back into their moorings the instant her heel comes down on the ground, a shockwave ripping up the already-cracked tiling of central in a rise of debris and stopping the rest of Carol's blades in their tracks.     And also giving her a great big, abrupt boost to close the distance between 'there' and 'here' almost instantly, aiming to drive her fist into Lilian's gut.     None of this is easy for her. She's tired. But the reason she's doing this in the first place is keeping her going.
Petra Soroka	"Do you have any idea how many hours, every single day, I spend using my power for silly little things?"     <y,d> Petra's first attempt at telepathic speech from inside the Beauty of Ash flickers past at an incomprehensible hundred times speed, just a blip of tingling non-sound that vanishes before it even registers. She reels it back around a moment later to repeat herself, the Beauty of Ash splintering and reforming in a ripple down its body like a deep breath. <Yeah, I do, actually. You're really, really practiced with it, I understand that better than anyone, probably.>     <But I've seen you on days you've prepared for, too. I've seen you on the Union Busan, and during Walpurgisnacht, and you're not *invincible*. You have limits. Woz can get an idea of how often you're using your power to fuck with us upstairs,> That might be a bald-faced lie, but it's reasonably probable, at least. <And no matter how much you save, that'll wear you down.> "You fucking imbecile. How are you going to waste something I have infinitely more of than you?"     <You're wrong, Lilian. We might not be a million sea monsters, but we can still wear you down. That math only works if you assume Hibiki's time is as *valuable* as yours.>     If that's really her plan, it's a stunningly grim one. A preemptive acquiesence to the necessity of Kukuru picking each of them up again, before even the first proper engagement, explaining her insistence on keeping Kukuru in the care of people she can rely on; in order to enable the relentless disposability of her own allies to burn down Lilian's resources as if they're an interchangeable wave of meat like the Queen's hordes. It's no wonder, that Lilian's widely-aimed emotional warfare doesn't slow her down.     Unlike a human body, the Beauty of Ash isn't so suffused with fluid that a single gash from Lilian can make its luminous orange hydraulics hemorrhage away. The arc of Night Mist is preserved as a static spray of glass shards suspended in space around the wound, catching the Light off the Tree and turning it into a scattering of rainbows on its body. Soot and concrete dust cling to it, but Lilian is aware twice over how frustrating it is to gouge a deep enough scar into the Beauty of Ash to get at the meat within it, with its passive retaliation of a clinging freeze-frame explosion of glass at each attack.
Petra Soroka	Not even Petra can react to Lilian in stopped time, but within the Beauty of Ash, on this specific battlefield, she can do the next best thing. As long as Lilian unfreezes her in the instant before the attack, the mech has a dozen ways to dodge, from hummingbird-perfect momentum control even when going at full speed, with a one hundred times faster perception to take advantage of it, to her unconscious, gut-instinct precognition that crunches the hardlight out of Lilian's path before her sword can make contact. Reliably, she can hit the Beauty of Ash when it's static and lifeless, but that's more precious seconds spent.     When Shajo comes for the Beauty of Ash, he's met with the single-eyed stare from deep within the crack on the twelve-foot machine's head, and a snapping quickness in its torso. Glass shatters around the impact of Smile and tears into his own weapon, and then a stabbing sensation tears the rotting flesh of his EGO suit when the Beauty of Ash's snoutlike crystal rips into it to lift him up by his scruff and shake him around like a dog snapping a rabbit's neck. The frosted-glass color splotch of Petra inside of its chest radiates disdain at him.     <Creep. If you're going to treat Justin like that, let's see how you like it in return.>     The Beauty of Ash slams Shajo into the ground and then whips him away like a ragdoll, flinging him through the air for him to crash against the wall. A single sliver of glass cracks and shoots off of its face to stab through Shajo, like a 'spit'.     Turning to Lilian, the Beauty of Ash shatters its arms up to the elbow, bipedally hunched over with the amorphous shape of razor sharp clouds of shards hovering to either side. Knowing a story of a particular weakness of Lilian's, the dense whirlwind of shrapnel flows out and engulfs her, creating a zone of dangerous glass exactly in the way she used the morphmetal several times when Silvered, with free spaces small enough that Lilian has to either sweatily squeeze between them or eat the damage.
Sarracenia	'AHHHHH! I'M STILL ON FIRE!'      Despite everything else, Sarra pulls out an ice flower power-up and flies over to Mikey. "Honestly..." she mutters before blowing across the surface of the flower. Ice breath flows over Mikey like a fire extinguisher. Just enough to cool the fire and maybe frost him a bit before she moves on. "If you are on fire stop drop and roll or something! Do not just run around shouting about it!" she calls to him as she flies off on her cloud again.      'Is it? You're not going to go easily, you know.'      "We are not going to go down easily, perhaps!" Sarra calls out. "You must know by now that no matter how many times I get beaten down...I get back up and keep going!! It is why you like having me around!"      Sarra might have added that last part just to annoy Lilian, even though she is pretty sure it is actually true. "Besides, we all know you get tired. Tired of fighting, tired of seeing things in that dreary way of yours. I bet you are tired right now! You should just help us with the Seed! Once Angela and the Sephirah are free of this place we can figure out how to use it to help the City, too!"      Even as she talks, Sarra has covered her arms in her meager amount of morphmetal and is firing silver flechettes at Lilian. She doubts they will do much, but since she knows she has little hope of beating Lilian it seems like a good way to waste Lilian's energy without wasting much of her own.      Fighting Lilian is something Sarra did not actually think she would ever do. Despite all their hatred, they somehow never ended up fighting and even ended up in an association together. So, seeing Lilian in action is a mixture of awe and fear for Sarra. She knows of course that Lilian is powerful, but those pieces of debris being disintegrated like that, that black ribbon of afterimages and sword-swings, those hanging black-gold embers...      The awe is tempered quickly by the cuts and time touches. Sarra yelps, getting knocked off her cloud. It hovers there, ready to accept another rider as she falls and lands with an 'oof'. She lies there, trembling for a moment as she realizes just how hurt she was from all of that. She reaches a trembling hand into her purse and pulls out a green mushroom, staunching most of the bleeding. Sure, Sarra's healing seems more like band-aids compared to Kukuru's, but it might be a mistake to just ignore it.      'For instance . . .I doubt she could reverse it if I aged you into a withered old hag first.'
Sarracenia	Sarra's eyes widen and her teeth clench in a worried grimace at the idea. Her hands go to her face as if she fears it is already happening, but when it turns out it isn't yet she mmphs and fixes an angry frown on Lilian. "E-even if she could not, if time can be spun one way it can be spun back the other! It would only be temporary! Terrible, but temporary!" she declares stubbornly and possibly in denial about how successful a magical anti-aging treatment might be.      'That math only works if you assume Hibiki's time is as *valuable* as yours.'      "And let us also be realistic! Even if you make that assumption, that is four times the time you have to waste compared to us!" Sarra adds in, perhaps not thinking about the implications of what Petra said until it is too late.
Rita Ma	Rita effortlessly weaves around area attacks, seeming to barely even notice them; targeted attacks that ought to hit dead-center turn out to have only struck some sort of decoy that was seamlessly shellgamed-in, unraveling in tendrils as the real Rita chromatophore-decloaks elsewhere.      The rest of the world seems like it moves in slow motion compared to her. Kukuru closes and grabs a tentacle- Rita pivots, slashes through her own limb to sever it, and gashes across Kukuru's chest in the twist. Flamel gears up for a psychic attack- she darts in, seeming like hse's teleported except for the shockwave, and slams his head against a wall repeatedly until forced to dodge a Riku bolt.      "It's sick of you-" crnch- "to tell me you're not a person," she punctuates the slams with, while tilting her head at Rufus's accusation. "I don't-" crnch- "-hate you for hitting your limit. I hate you for hitting it so late."      Shwshhh, dash back. "Cinder was okay, but Angela is the limit? You're disgusting."      All the while the Cycle of Tears begins to amass at junctures, clog hallways, and physically obstruct the room with their corpses. It's practically knee-deep in iridescent 'blood' and ruined chitin; not that that slows Rita in the least.      She's too in-the-flow to pay any mind to Rufus's gambit, though. The beam ricochets off the coins, totally ignored by her, and then slams into Rita's face to shatter off her respirator protecting her from the smell of blood. She flies backwards, briefly buried under rubble from one of Riku's beam-barrages.      Then Rita rises, gashed along her face, bleeding from a couple of ruined tentacles-      ksshhhhhhh.      -and regenerates them seemingly perfectly, with a glow of stolen essence, bubbling flesh, and hissing metabolic steam. All that effort, for what?      "I have the City to fight for. I have Apple Tree Island making me strong." Rita sighs, stretching her neck to readjust her anatomy. With the mask destroyed, it's easy to see her sharklike teeth revealed by a bitterly focused wince. "You only have each other. Where's your community? Flamel, Zi-O? Just the Concord? Bonds like that can't win."      Right then, when everyone's more and more hemmed in by the flooding Cycle, she steps back and lets the Yin-Yang Dragon roar through the room like a ghostly freight train again. Beyond threatening to shred anyone who doesn't press themselves against a wall- which Geed can't without shrinking- it parts the melee for long enough for her to address Zi-O through its slightly ghostly body.
Rita Ma	"I'm no-one special, really," says the horrid tentacled monster-woman. "But if you don't have a Busan to fight for, you're further from me than I am from Dohu. If you want to really become reliable to me, you'll get one."      "In the meantime, I'll let you try your hardest, and destroy you."      Woz teleports out. Rita picks up Kukuru's sevreed arm from the floor, bites down, jerks it back to shred all the flesh from its bone in one pull, gulps, and vanishes.      Elsewhere, a Cycle bug spots Woz. Rita materializes from a dark cloud just like Kukuru's and slams into him, grappling.      Back in this room half a second later, Rita reappears and hurls Woz against the wall.      "You're not understanding," she intones tonelessly, blood dripping from her chin. "I can't pretend I'm okay with killing you for good. But why would I let you run? If you'll try your hardest as long as you draw breath, I'm going to trap you and butcher you all right here."      "Miss Kukuru, there is one thing you can do for me. At the end of all of this, bring them back to life, okay?"
Angela	Thanks to timely aid from Sarracenia, MIkey is now shivering and cold--but not longer on fire. He takes a moment to consider his life options. Team Lilian: By his understanding, she's tortured him with some kind of weird flower petal thing and froze an entire town?? She's as scary as Gebura and she froze an entire town! Team Petra: Sarracenia seems willing to make him NO LONGER be on fire, has Angela--who he's sure will actually kill him if he's too annoying, and Petra--whom he's sure will absolutely kill him if he's too annoying. Rita probably wouldn't eat HIM right? Right?? Gebura and Binah seem to be a wash so... "Running over here!" Mikey shouts as he runs towards the rear of Team Petra's side. MIKEY HAS DEFECTED! This gives Team Petra....! BUFFS: He'll draw super cool fanart of you if he doesn't get too murdered? DEBUFFS: It's Mikey, the least competent Agent in Lobotomy Corp. He might just make things worse! Nikki shouts to Hibiki, "Hold still!" Nikki complains, firing little cartoon stars at Hibiki. "Don't worry, the stars feel good--they're even tasty! You should try biting one and see!" Carol swings her hand back and a sword flies back into her hand, hesitating, "But it's what they want..." Tweed pulls away from Random long enough to throw herself at Sarracenia, "Hey you fucking piece of shit you dogshit mushroom choking flower bitch princess! Gonna rip you apart and--" It only gets worse from there. Tweed is physically incapable of not having at least one swear word every three words. ONe swipe at her, then two with the giant sword. "Coward, loser, show your real side huh?? We know how fucking much you fucking love violence fucking!" Shajo is hit by the radiating disdain almost as if it was an actual psychic assault, but her grits his teeth. "Petra, he ain't just a traitor. He was the one who shouted for the project all the damn time, and now he wants to give up on it? You saying that shit to Rita..." His own resolve buoyed, he gets hefted up and slammed into the ground, roughly and smashed into the wall. And then a mirror spike through his chest! He grits his teeth and reaches out with his hand, trying to crush the rest of it into dust with his hand. He doesn't know how the Beauty of Ash works, really, aside from the obvious element but... He throws himself back at the Beauty of Ash, trying to smash pieces of glass away from each other, trying to find a way to shatter Petra's control of the mech through sheer physical force. Or at least endure it through sheer physical determination.
Lilian Rook	'It sort of is. I'd rather not go home with any missing body parts this time, though...'     It becomes a question how long Lilian was listening. Why did both of your opponents have to be stealth operatives?     "It's going to be much worse than that Tachibana. Last time I took your hand because you made it the least violent way to get what I needed from you. I left the rest of you because I had no use for it." The rolling disdain of "And I thought you'd grow wiser for the experience." comes too easily. But this isn't a fight, or a day, or a week, where Lilian can be surprised by herself.     "But all you've done since then is deteriorate. Back then, you may have been an especially nasty teenager. But at least you tried to cleave to your 'idiot with a heart of gold . . ." Lilian twists her hand at the wrist. "'Thing'. Now you hang your head everywhere like you're going to the gallows. You barely say a word even amongst company. Nearly every drop of sunshine has been kicked and beaten out of you already. This week is going to disabuse of you of the very last."     "I'm going to send you home a stranger so different that Miku can't bear to look at you. When you limp back through that door, your eyes will be so hollow that she locks herself in the bathroom and cries."     ''Funny' is just what people say when they mean it's sicker than it's ever been inside of them. 'Funny' is permission to scream while you smile.'     "So if you put it like that, then I suppose I'm feeling pretty funny right now?" Lilian says. Her heart skips a beat just after the period.     First contact against Xion's blade is loose. The flat of Night Mist turns too easily against the keyblade's head, sending it not quite away. Lilian compensates with an instant half-step back and slams the heel of her palm to the pommel in an overcompensatory way, pivoting the blade into Xion's neck even as she voids space. Dragging it up to hang the strong against the overhead, her second parry is white-knuckled firm, cold then hot, and the shock goes through both their hands. Then the sword slides frictionlessly under the teeth and whirls back around on its long axis to bite at Xion's shoulder from the other side. The third stroke from the other blade stops dead just ahead of Lilian, where she pulls Night Mist back far enough away to catch it against the crossguard, and twist with her wrist to pull it past her face.     'Because there's a whole beating heart in me that needs to know why you didn't ask me to help you. Why did you give me that medicine? If you were going to throw that away, why did we go half-ways on that, and all-the-ways on this?!'     "When it came it to hearts, I suppose you were never very good at mine." says Lilian.     §I'm sorry. I don't mean that. But--§     She presses the quillion of her sword with the inside of her thumb to twist it along the axis of Pylon and out of blade-lock with Xion, and uses the momentum of the bind to thrust forward into center mass. She stands sideways past the streaking of the second sword as she does. "Someone very wise once said to me that the bill always comes due. This is it. The culmination of choosing something to decide what's right and wrong, come hell or high water, and only being willing to bend it so far."
Riku Asakura	Rita was unlike anything Geed had ever fought before.  Even with everything they had done, she had just regenerated it like it was nothing.  They were delaying her though, hopefully, the other side was fairing better with Lilian.  They were not fairing good at all, especially with what Rita had just done to Kukuru.   Geed goes down again.  The light on his chest blinks faster as the Yin-Yang Dragon comes crashing through.  He's unable to get out of the way in time, and he goes down hard.  Claws and bites shred Ultraman Geed, sending him flat onto the ground.   'In the meantime, I'll let you try your hardest, and destroy you.' Geed slowly brings himself to his feet, trying to push himself back there.  Even while Rita waits patiently for them to rise again so she can knock them down again.  This fight was tougher than anything Riku had been forced through before.  It wasn't like he'd never lost before, but he'd never been mulched like this.  This was a manhandling by someone far more competent in the multiverse than he was.   <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "...Alright. Get ready to fall back. If you can weaken Lilian's base of supporters feel free, but there is no benefit to getting wiped out in one fight. Do what you have to so Rita can't follow us." Alright, Angela was done with whatever she was trying to do today, so they just had to get out.  Others try to be the last one behind but Riku knows they can't all stay behind and be the last one to escape.  He knew his limits, and he was on his last legs.  With this knowledge, he shrinks back down to normal man size and grabs the Geed Claw again. This time, he aims at damaged walls and weakened ceilings.  His goal is to cause the place to collapse enough to force Rita to have to dig herself out and give them a way out.  He dashes like a man possessed, trying to zip around the battlefield and make enough of a cave-in that they can get out without being followed.
Lilian Rook	"Maybe it's been too many years, and you've all just forgotten, but this is all because my heart is too sick to listen to. And it's going to be broken, too, when I take Angela's head from her neck because you all thought you had me figured out. Just because I was a little bit nice to you for a while."     Then Lilian blips out of swordfighting Xion, and stands beside Hibiki, hilt braced against her body with hands in opposite places on its length to hold it, so that her flying punch slams her right into the extended edge at the waist. Lilian snaps her fingers and an amber-gold array collapses into an unstable point that then erupts into white hot flames all over Hibiki's body. "You're faster than before, but what does it matter? It's still the same head-on approach as always. Do you get off on charging at people until you pass out and punching the floor in frustration?"     'You must know by now that no matter how many times I get beaten down...I get back up and keep going!! It is why you like having me around!'     Lilian makes a sound that is almost a sigh, but is more of a single dragged-out 'a' tone that modulates up and down in keeping with her shaking her head. "That was about words, not blows. We've never actually fought before, remember?" she says. Turning around she snaps her fingers a second time to fire a fresh jolt of agonizing magic into Hibiki, like she's trying to peel off her skin and melt her eyeballs out of her skull on purpose. A detonator pops into her hand as if dropped there by an accommodating butler-- the kind that Sarracenia doesn't have right now-- and a dainty double tap bursts the floor between them (with Xion in the way) and sends the silver flechtette fire scattering into the thick cloud of smoke and rebar. "Did you think it'd be fun when we did?"     The moment Sarracenia goes for her green mushroom; her moment of reassurance, when she is most focused on her own safety, expecting the pain to fade; Lilian lunges out of the smog with the sickening stop-motion pacing of a jump scare, bracing her sword against herself to ram it through Sarracenia's middle, hoist up up off her feet, impale her against the wall, and then slam her hand over her face, already glowing with a nimbus of black-gold bubbling embers.     §This is fucking sick. What's wrong with me.§     Even a graze from her fingers is enough to wither and age her skin. Actually getting firm contact on Sarracenia sucks the stamina right out of her body, causing a crushing onset of exhaustion, followed by thirst, followed by famine, followed by brittling bones and thinning hair and-- <I've seen you on the Union Busan, and during Walpurgisnacht, and you're not *invincible*.>     "It seems you've forgotten that you only ever made me bleed because I was afraid of hurting a scared little civilian girl, Petra."     §I see. So she's already decided that she's going to use everyone else as her disposable tools from the start. She's given up all hope of winning early and simply assumes she can command them until they break. That's almost sort of threatening.§     Lilian presses her elbow to the crossguard of Night Mist to keep it in place and drawsfires Winter Crow at maximum yield into the Beauty of Ash, spewing smoking hot gold casings into Sarracenia while sending delayed detonation alchemical slugs into the mech, aiming to rip up its insides and fracture its surface with as many tiny seams as she can.
Lilian Rook	<Creep. If you're going to treat Justin like that, let's see how you like it in return.>     "For siding against me, he deserves the guillotine. You used to know that." Lilian's eyes narrow at the razor glass encirclement, but her mind is still working the problem. She fills the air with White Damage from her lips, pointed for mostly meaning them.     "What do you get for treating Cinder that way? That poor idiot girl gave her heart to you, threw away everything for you, and died for you, and what? You'll ruin everything in her honour? Protect her as long as you were having fun, then throw away her memory now that it bores you? Perhaps she should have seen it coming from the way you screamed at her to mind her own business while you drooled over my boot in your mouth, but still. Out of all the Agents in this godforsaken place, you'd think at least she would deserve some closure. Not being treated like yesterday's fling."     'Running over here!'     "And she'll do it to you too. All of you."     Lilian is done reasoning out the problem. The glass shards are weapons, but they're also part of the Beauty of Ash itself, and the Beauty of Ash is part of Petra, in a psychic and pseudo-physical sense. Thus . . .     "Slais Gearradh Fola!"     Her sword scythes through as much of the glass as possible, transmitting the same sympathetic attack broken up through a hundred tiny windows.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel smiles in a helpless, sheepish way, dazed and reeling as he's slammed into the wall. There's yelps of pain as it happens, but they don't change his mood. He must be forcibly locked into one, from the look of it. Weak artificial flesh gives way. Chunks of purple crystal are growing through a metal skull. It looks like his structure has been decaying and regrowing in the stress and overexposure to the Seed of Light.     And he speaks while it happens too. "Awful, isn't it? Aren't I?" He says, in a cheery tone, smiling while ever-growing crystal slowly seeps ahead through the deep wound. "The only thing worse than a knife that cuts through you is one that breaks halfway through. It's horrible. It's *horrible*. And for Cinder most of all. The *pain* I've made by not following through. As if Petra doesn't find enough causes for suffering. You should--" One of those slams pounds his head so thoroughly into the wall that it embeds, provoking a soft cry of pain. It cuts him off, and he goes limp at least for a moment. Thank goodness that's a sort of pressed-against-the-wall.     When he regains consciousness, the telekinetic hands yank him out of the wall, crumbling metal scattering around him. He looks to Rita, that horrible wound still exposing mechanical eye articulation and segments of his skull, where crystals seep through. Less and less human each moment. A dozen thought-bubbles pop up around him, entirely without gesture. They fill with dense clusters of "...", and all those elipses spill out and tumble into the hall abruptly, the smokescreen component of his confusion bombs flooding the hallway without the disorientation component. Sweeping telekinetic blasts scream along the corridor walls, working in tandem with Geed's cave-in to try to plink Rita in the last moments before he zips away.     One of the telekinetic hands reaches through the building cloud of obfuscation, grabs him around the torso, and yanks him firmly away, pulling him back in the retreat.
Rufus Shinra	The ying-yang dragon tears through. Rufus doesn't get against a wall fast enough. More blood, dripping through his fancy clothes. Something broken or at least heavily bruised, somewhere in his chest. >"You only have each other. Where's your community? Flamel, Zi-O? Just the Concord? Bonds like that can't win." "..." "Yeah. I've got, what, some fanboying and my Concord membership card and my promise to Angela? That's the stuff sterling bonds are made out of." This is said more to the others than to Rita. "I gotta throw all my chips down, then. Can you believe in bonds like that?" Rufus racks his shotgun. "Get going. I'm going to try to slow her down a bit. Kukuru, I know you want to help, but you're the VIP right now. Okay? Go." "Hey! Over here!" He waves a bloodied arm Rita-ward, delays as long as he thinks he can risk it, and then gets moving. No copied abilities. No fancy magic tricks. Rufus has played two of his trump cards already, and neither purchased enough ante at the table. But he's still a very good shot. He aims at whatever tentacle or monster Rita is sending after them next, and fires. ... And the force of the shot sends him flying backwards. He's a very good shot, with a *very* good shotgun. He lands, reasonably gracefully, and re-aims, and fires. This time a regular shot, but he's running backwards as he does so. Another shot - this one angled downwards, sending him up and backwards, letting him hurdle over the debris that's rapidly piling up on the floor. This isn't intended as a heroic last stand, it's merely being the last one out during a fighting retreat - it's still him effectively taking the whole room on for the last few moments of the fight, and trying desperately to stay ahead of everything.
Timespace Riders	Cinder was okay, but Angela is the limit? You're disgusting.     "What did you say?"The question is shudderingly asked, quiet even as Antegent flood the room.     Zi-O's demeanor changes like a wave washed the last of his calm resolve away. The wasted effort of his attacks might as well have been a daydream, for all it seems to affect him--nothing does, but those words, in this moment. If you'll try your hardest as long as you draw breath, I'm going to trap you and butcher you all right here.     "...That's nice of you," says Zi-O with a calm that is chilling rather than desperately hopeful. "When I have my own Busan to fight for, I'll remember you offered me that... even if it hurts you wouldn't ask her to do the same for Angela and the Sephirah. Today, though... you're mistaken. Not just about your ability to 'trap and butcher us...'"     Zi-O holds up a cracked Ridewatch. The face is grey, the once vibrant streaks of vermillion faded and lifeless, as if deliberately scoured from the watch. Too fast, he inserts it into the side of the Timespace Driver, mashes the stop, and spins the Driver.                          A-A-A-ARM-MM-M-OR T-T-T-TIME!                               Something is wrong with this one. The Driver never makes that noise. It's struggling to pull a story from that broken thing. But Sougo forces it to, with whatever nascent powers he's developing. A knightly silhouette appears, a suit of armor crackling in and out of an etherial, staticky-pink state. Zi-O howls in anguish and kicks it.                   Striking! Brilliant! Steadfast! VERMILLION!                       As if to punish him for retelling a story that's been erased, vermillion lightning crawls agonizingly across his body, sparks flying from the armor and setting off convulsions as they travel. He forces himself to stand upright.     "*Meika* was my limit. *M.O.M.* was my limit! Sal, going on without the most important person in their life, was my limit! The Agent I saw on my *first* day here, covered in Melting Love, THAT WAS MY LIMIT!" Zi-O yells at Rita until his throat is hoarse.     Another one joins him from a pink portal, limbs jerkily moving as he fights the story that refuses to be told.     "I was even weaker then than I am now--and Angela told me that 'I couldn't save everyone' like that was supposed to make me feel better. I thought I could work around it, I thought I'd have more time, and now look where we are," says the other Zi-O. "I'm disgusting. Yeah... YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?!" <J-IC-Scene> Sougo Tokiwa as Kamen Rider Zi-O says, "Woz, find us someplace she doesn't have eyes on and get us there. Then message Kukuru so she can get the others there too." <J-IC-Scene> Another Sougo Tokiwa as Another Kamen Rider Zi-O says, "Me and the other me can give you enough time, but you'd better speedread."     The two Zi-Os bombard Rita with a double assault of the same tactic from before. But this time, it's not the energy that's the dangerous part. After each strike lands, there is a piercing sonic shriek, like a dagger in the ears. No matter where she moves, no matter how fluidly she evades the lasers, the sound of it, like fingernails on the brain, nauseating in its chest-rattling persistence, haunts her.     Woz does exactly as he's told, without question and without response. The purple scarf envelops himself and both Zi-Os mid-swing, leaving Rufus to take up the rear and Kukuru to get the others out.
Kukuru	Trading a limb for a limb, Kukuru staggers back as Rita slices open another gash in her chest and only narrowly catches the severed tentacle in her mouth. She hisses again as the pain in her chest forces her to redirect more of those nanites to close it up and keep her from fainting, although the mounting injuries and frequent nanite use already have her vision blurring somewhat. She starts to say something, gets it muffled, then realizes she's still got Rita's tentacle between rows of jagged teeth. Kukuru reaches up briefly to take out, stares at it, then looks back towards Rita as she sees her eating the lower arm that was just removed entirely. Without skipping a beat, she brings Rita's severed tentacle back up, takes a big bite out of that, and chews a bit before swallowing. Seconds later, she starts laughing. "It... Really is better raw, isn't it?" She half-asks half-states, yet again somehow able to find a brief moment of levity even while surrounded by her friends and family fighting each other, ready to kill each other, ready to... Are they really willing to kill each other? She knows Sougo well enough to figure that he wouldn't bring himself to do that except in the most dire of circumstances and with some kind of backup plan to fix everything, and Flamel strikes her as far too much of a Nice Boy(TM) to ever kill someone directly. Riku's still something of an unknown factor, though, and she couldn't bank on Rufus not going for a kill shot if he was given the opportunity to do so. Rita, though? She's definitely seen Rita kill before, and right in front of her. She sees Anita's face again when she sees Rita going after woz with her own teleportation abilities, and the mirth goes as quickly as it came. "At the end of all of this, bring them back to life, okay?" She knows Rita could do it if she really tried, too, and that makes the threat so much realer, even if Kukuru still doesn't fully believe it coming out of Rita's mouth. She opens her mouth, closes it, then gets slammed against the wall with a painful crack against the surface when the Yin Yang Dragon sweeps on through. While she waits for it to pass from the ground, she swallows down enough of the pain to finishes off the tentacle she was biting into before wiping her face off with her sleeve so at least that little bit of her can still look clean. "Mrph... Of course, dear. That's... Those ARE our roles here. Mine, to save Angela and her friends here even if people in the City have to die for it. Yours, to save the City even if Angela has to die for it. So..." They need more time to get out, but what can she do to actually buy time for everyone? Rufus calls her the VIP for reasons she can only barely fathom, and Petra's orders not to do anything stupid still reverberate in her mind. Without being able to do anything that could be called stupid, though, Kukuru doesn't have a lot to work with! She does, however, have the knowledge that Lobotomy Corporation itself probably won't be needed much longer. At the very least, the structure of the building won't be needed much longer, and Riku's already ahead of her with targeting the walls and ceilings of the facility. With Petra and Angela calling for everyone to escape and Sougo sorting out the plan, she starts running in a completely different direction from where Riku is headed while Rufus runs interference. "Nobody in here can die too soon. There's too much at stake to just fight until someone dies. We'll... We'll be seeing each other again soon, Rita. I love you." Kukuru calls out even as she falls back, sliding her remaining claw and arm through the wall to tear chunks out of it. With a heavy sweep around herself to build momentum, she hurls an entire section of wall at Rita, support structures and all, to try and pin her against the other side and buy enough time to keep moving, to reach them in time with judicious teleporting to round them all up and escape with them in tow once she gets word from Woz on where to go.
Petra Soroka	"Maybe it's been too many years, and you've all just forgotten, but this is all because my heart is too sick to listen to."     <Mine too, Lilian. But do you remember why I got close to Angela in the first place? Why she, at that specific time, was one of the only people I could trust in the entire universe?>     Petra has her own form of psychic warfare too, though hers has a decidedly more heroic slant than Lilian's. It's hard to say why, exactly, when she's so worn down and miserable, stressed to the brink of her psychological tensile strength, fighting a grim battle against someone she loves for the sake of someone else she loves. It's easy to imagine her lapsing back into bitter digs at Lilian's history and well-being, a tool that she's used before to staggering effect. For mocking Cinder's death to Petra's face before even a day had passed, Lilian might even deserve it.     But whatever it is, the dread of an impending fight against Lilian is significantly more than the misery of actually doing it. *Petra's* psychic warfare consists of reminding Lilian that she's fighting for the death of one of four people in the world who loved her enough to materially help her at her very lowest. "And it's going to be broken, too, when I take Angela's head from her neck because you all thought you had me figured out."     <So you rely on the Code, and *I* rely on *you*.> The Beauty of Ash takes an alchemical slug to the upper arm, punching a splintered hole half a foot into the glass. <Why do you *think* I'm doing this, anyways? It's what you would do.>     The slug detonates and blows the mech's remaining half an arm to pieces, luminescent hyperorange fluid spattering around the room. There's a nonverbal, and nontelepathic, creaking groan from the mech over top of the dull thud and glass crunch, and the glass shards stay buried in the concrete where they land. The next round of shots are flickered away from, the Beauty of Ash landing on its three functional limbs to gouge shallow lines in the floor where it steps. Head turned to Lilian while some of the loose hardlight shards pepper her incessently, the orbital glow buried inside of it uncannily makes eye contact better than most people.     <The only reason I ended up as anything at all is because of looking up to you. So at the end of this, if we end up winning... that's your receipt on the quality of Elites, I guess.> "It seems you've forgotten that you only ever made me bleed because I was afraid of hurting a scared little civilian girl, Petra."     Petra's earnestly near-saccharine wartime declaration can only swing just as hard in the opposite direction when pressed on her unstable emotional state. It's genuinely stomach-turning to see Sarracenia, even Sarracenia, be attacked like *that*, and, in a tactical sense if not empathetic, Petra feels a pang of horror at the result. Having been on the receiving end of the worst torment that Lilian and Exigent Serenity have ever inflicted intensifies that feeling rather than allowing her to shrug it off. The intrusive thought that she might have lost her edge against Lilian from back when she was that scared little civilian girl mixes in her gut with the resurfacing terror of the end result if they *do* lose to Lilian this week.     <Well. I'm not really that girl anymore, am I.> For a lot of reasons. One of which...
Petra Soroka	"Out of all the Agents in this godforsaken place, you'd think at least she would deserve some closure. Not being treated like yesterday's fling."     Petra flinches so hard that there's a moment where her often absent aura conducts through the storm of psychic glass around the field, a shudder of chromatic aberration that lenses diagonally through the third dimension. The Beauty of Ash squeals like stepped-on ice and nails on chalkboard, drowning out any telepathic retort for a while.     And when it does come, it's stiff and prickly like fiberglass cutting on a layer beneath your skin. <... Okay. Kill Angela and get back to me. You and I both don't trust our hearts that way.> "And she'll do it to you too. All of you."     <She's right, though. I have my priorities, and--> <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "...Alright. Get ready to fall back. If you can weaken Lilian's base of supporters feel free, but there is no benefit to getting wiped out in one fight. Do what you have to so Rita can't follow us." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "... Already?" <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "You all get away, I can help from over here too."     The Beauty of Ash pounces on Shajo without warning, skewering him through the center with the Beauty of Ash's remaining arm. In the catching-edge of the crack in its snout, she pushes him down to the floor and grips his neck with it as if it's a jaw, poised to rip his head off with another sudden motion. The fact that its 'mouth' is full doesn't hinder her saying anything in the radio. <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Rita." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma pants, "Yeah." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "I have Shajo here, and I'm going to tear him in half. Let them go." "Petra, he ain't just a traitor. He was the one who shouted for the project all the damn time, and now he wants to give up on it?"     <See. That's something you people could never understand about me. I like Justin in the same way I like you, Shajo. It end when I have higher priorities.>
Xion	'I suppose I'm feeling pretty funny right now?' Xion doesn't have the chance to even breathe before the dance. The first step brings Starlight down, and like a trifle it slides aside. Xion is brought close, turned outside, and looks over shoulder while black pair-blade swings horizontal. Lilian adjusts back. Xion's eyes follow across to find Lilian's. "Oh." She spends a little bit from her lungs just at how terrible that sounds. Her eyes gentle, untense by a quarterstep. "That's miserable too." The second sees the high parry clash, and Night Mist coming up. Like a scythe Lilian's blade reaps the tall fringe of the noirette's bangs a she leans back in a hard reverse and dip. Lilian always did have the height advantage on her - and so she was now palpably fighting up-hill. Wide eyes track the blade over her, and Xion reacts knowing if she doesn't adjust her footing Lilian can still take her neck. Starlight disappears completely, released from grip in the swayback, and in its place is empty glove as she adjusts the angle of her wrist. The keyblade is back in place with metal-tone for the third step and the advance of its dark-spun pair brushes past Lilian's face as it is also guided away. 'I suppose you were never very good at mine.' Xion is frozen by that. Perhaps Lilian expected it. Driving those words, that knife into Xion pins the butterfly to the case and as the superior time manipulator can watch the faint dilation of her eyes as she is inside herself thinking, going back over her whole life instead of thinking about the fight. Pylon is slid out of lock and Xion can't check Night Mist with Starlight fast enough. Three steps, and Xion is driven away from Lilian with a burst-thrust, her own counterstrike stepped away from. Turning the comedically broad guard-inside of Starlight into the thrust catches the leading tip of Lilian's weapon and drives the blunt end of her weapon into her gut. Fading back a step and a half and cough-gacking, Xion's and not able to contest Lilian's teleport-away. She has to think of something, doesn't she? Turning to find Lilian-- This isn't going to work out. Xion understands, seeing Sarra knocked off her cloud. Moving forward at a jog that drops into a kinetic slide on the slanted floor of Control, Xion starts across to Sarracenia. "Borrowing this!" She shouts as she touches the princess' shoulder and comes away with a grapefruit-colored medallion. Reaching deeper into herself for inspiration, for something to burn for more heat, Xion mentally consults her available abilities. Some of them tap emotions she isn't feeling, won't use on Lilian. Jenane's black flame works on anything that takes damage, but the force relied on hate to work. Xion had an infinite well of hate to draw on, understood hate more than any other emotion, but, She didn't hate Lilian. She just hated 'this'. Whatever 'this' was. 'This' that seemed impossible, and Lilian was across from her couldn't be explained as anything-- Tepid. She knew why this was happening. She just had to see it through. "Petra, Sarra, stay close!" Xion insists, already starting off again at a sprint with only her dark helix-twist sword in off-hand. "Hibiki, don't get pinned down!" Buried in explosions as Lilian sets off her prepared traps right after talking about being pinned down, Xion stews in the danger, and realizes she either needs do something, or leave. And since she's still here -- since she knows why she's still here -- she draws on the nearby form of Beauty in Ash. A single flake of glass, swept up in a pale silver light, seeks Xion's hand to join Sarracenia's medal in palm. Choked by smoke, Xion thumbs the tokens in hand - one that shows a proud princess, and the other, silver-backed glass, reflects her own bruised face with the faint signs of an unwanated haircut, before resolving to instead regretfully be Petra.
Xion	"I can do all together then." The Nobody mutters, and clenches her fist tighter. Breaking from the smoke mid hurling a spear of hawthorne and moonlit silver that hyperaccellerates with a gravity lensed Demi-slingshot as it leaves her hand, it's not quite-- not *just* Xion. Wrapped from chin to toe in silver-backed glass that would be quite reflective were it not for the grapefruit skin-orange and flesh-red getup that has replaced her black-on-black, Xion evokes a Sting Silver of Glass dressed in a cross between Sarracenia's colorscape and an otome gameified version of Xion's usual outfit - now, pithwhite tights and orangeskin skirt with the flesh-red sleeveless jacket add to the armored boots and gauntlets. It looks like a Symphogear, really. If Xion made it the most roundabout way possible -- and she's got the signature weapon to prove it: a giant golden hammer with mechanical adaptations. "The bill always does come due!" Grapefruit Sympho-Xion shouts in agreement, a sound in her throat like crying and singing both. "You told me about Angela, and you wanted me to help her!" Swinging her colossal hammer early, two-handed, the first impact creates an incredible eruption of syrupy fizz as (Grapefruit) sodapop explodes in a geyser and both shoots Xion back into the air and gives her a lot more explosive momentum. "We both talked about Binah! I made a friend! I made a promise, Lilian, just like the ones I've made to you!" Ditching hammer momentarily, Xion's hands fill with Starlight and Twist Pylon again as her hammer jump-in becomes a forceful X-slash. Landing, Xion ducks her shoulder and does a hard sidestep to compensate when. . . WON WON goes the Hammer, and a Chomp-head emerges from one of the two flat ends. Trailing a massive keychain, the huge hammer-monster tries to take a cartoonish bite out of Lilian even as Xion harries with slashes low with Pylon, crossing high with Starlight, and then pivoting into a mirrorslick flurry of spring-effect super kicks! "Did I miss something?!" She shouts, voice ragged. "I can't see a reason why you're trying to make yourself the monster too, with me! I get, now, why this gift being turned at the end is wrong for 'everyone' -- but you seem to have forgotten, I'm not Everyone's Hero any more!!!"
Hibiki Tachibana	Nearly every drop of sunshine has been kicked and beaten out of you already. This week is going to disabuse of you of the very last.     "..."     I'm going to send you home a stranger so different that Miku can't bear to look at you. When you limp back through that door, your eyes will be so hollow that she locks herself in the bathroom and cries.     ". . ."     You're faster than before, but what does it matter? It's still the same head-on approach as always.     She doesn't get to reply before burning hot flames wash over her body, obscuring her form in the bright and blazing radiance. It makes her unable to right herself right away, lurching forward in a stumble as she grits her teeth through the searing pain running from head to toe.     The follow-up, done so casually without even looking at her, almost makes her collapse forward. Almost. "...You can... try..." Her hands clench tight enough that they'd draw blood from their partially-healed injuries, if it wouldn't all burn up as soon as it left her body. She opens her mouth to speak again--     --which is when Nikki's starbursts hit her, certainly holding still, and for a moment, she's totally vanished in fire and magical explosions as Lilian moves on to attack the others.     But it's what they want...     That math only works if you assume Hibiki's time is as *valuable* as yours.     "I might have turned out for the worst. I might not be able to measure up, or win..."     The ground beneath her feet suddenly indents inward two whole feet into a crater, as she drives her fist down into it - and the backblast of the force put into it extinguishes the flames and leaves her down on a knee, panting and heaving for air, scorches streaking her body and limbs trembling.     "...I'm not even the 'me' that belongs here in the first place... I've drenched my hands in blood doing shitty things... but I'm still here. And while /I'm/ still here... I'll put /anything/ of mine on the line to make sure they live."     Staggering back to her feet, with that mortally exhausted yet wild glint in her eye, it's for some reason Carol and not Lilian she settles on while saying such. "As long as they still want to live, I'll give them that chance. And I /will/ go home to Miku after! No matter how much it hurts, I'll do it knowing I tried as hard as I could instead of sitting on my ass--!"
Hibiki Tachibana	Back to Lilian, who's now tearing through the Beauty of Ash. She buckles her knees and springs ahead to charge, again. Her fist pulls back, again. The piston in her gauntlet primes back, again. It's all nothing new. She can fight the burning ache pulsing through her muscles and numbing her skin all she likes, but it's nothing Lilian hasn't seen. Blink and she's there, ducked low to the floor and primed to rise up and strike.     But it's her other hand that shoots up first. She grips for Lilian's upper arm, slides her foot forward, and simultaneously goes to yank back to unsettle her stance - and pull her back into the fist that'll smash into her, with grotesque amounts of kinetic impact behind it. Enough to send the shockwave straight through her body and out the other end.     It doesn't even need to be a clean hit. One good glancing blow. Something that'll sting for the next few days. Make her have to clutch at her side and wince before making herself stand up straight again. Lilian's time and effort and energy is worth a lot more than hers, in this war.     So that's all she needs.     And if not today, they have the whole rest of the week ahead of them. She's made her choice. It hurt to make. So much.     But she'll see it through.
Rita Ma	In this blood-suffocated room, Rita's breathing harder than she ought to. Her chest rises and falls; her pupils are blown enough that, in the dim light, it's as if her eyes are purely white-and-black. Still, she's the least-exerted one present by an uncomfortable mile.      "It... Really is better raw, isn't it?"      An itty-bitty noise that could barely be called a laugh comes up, bubbling the blood at Rita's lips. "Yeah. You get it, Ms. Kukuru."      "Awful, isn't it? Aren't I?"      "Don't agree with me," the bloody-mouthed girl demands of Flamel, while trying to run him through with jabbing tentacles. "That's worse. Out of everyone, I'd mind the least if you really died."      She's still in a fit state to take on Sougo- even two Sougos, though her assumption that one must be an illusion gets her an early kick to the ribs. Struggling for control of one's gun, the words get through her blood-fogged head, and even glassy blown eyes like hers widen slightly.      "Huh?" is said softly; under the sonic blasts it might as well be silently-mouthed. "I didn't--"      He's just one person. I'm fighting for the City. However strong his heart's feelings are, however much compassion he has, I can't let myself get swept up in it. I've already committed to estranging everyone here for that. But--      And he's gone. They're both gone. "... mean you, Mister Sougo." And an empty pang.      But as always, when hollowed-out, Rita keeps moving.      Flamel's smoke has cut off off one of Rita's senses. Gunfire and Sougo's piercing shrieks have left her half-deafened. That leaves her with only scent to go off of. She lunges for Rufus's arm just like she should, like it's a flitting prey-item; zips back from the shotgun blast when she sees its barrel through the smoke, teleports out of the crashing rubble that drowns her minions, and gives chase.      Even half-blind and half-deaf, any time one of the Cycle alerts (or dies), Rita's there and pounching. After a half-dozen rapid-fire pursuits, she's catching a hurled chunk of wall from Kukuru- punching through it, and staggering, out of breath- and looking up with pained eyes. <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Rita." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma pants, "Yeah." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "I have Shajo here, and I'm going to tear him in half. Let them go." <J-IC-Scene> Rufus Shinra starts to say something, stops. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma freezes. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, ice-tense, "Ms. Rook. Does she." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You're not serious Rita."      Her gut is frozen. Her eyes sting. It'd make me awful. The worst kind of hypocrite. It'd make Sougo and Flamel right. Is that my limit? Bereaving Ms. Nonon, right after her marriage? Is she the face in front of me I can't look away from?      Every second she spends frozen is one that Rufus, Riku, Sougo, Woz, and Flamel get further away. Her minions are still doing their best to track and encircle, but could she even catch them if she did leave Shajo to die? Why do I really believe she'd do it?      Her best chance is to try to kill Kukuru right now, probably.      <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma finally transmits plastic crackling, then a 'snap', and disconnects. Radio crushed.      "I love you too, Ms. Kukuru," she mumbles miserably, and then holds out her hand towards what is- after all- a monster. Kukuru's psychic stability implants might well creak under the command. It's not, anyway, one she's likely to resist.      "Go save Mr. Shajo."
Sarracenia	Sarra blinks in surprise as Mikey runs over to their side. "H-hey! It is really not safe over here!" she exclaims, and to try and give Mikey some sort of protection she throws a hammer brother suit at him. If caught or taken, it puts Mikey in an all black body suit with a thick black helmet and a large black shell on his back. It also lets him spawn average-sized hammers perfect for throwing!      'Hey you f------ piece of s--- you d------ mushroom choking flower b---- princess! Gonna rip you apart and--'      Sarra hasn't had someone fly at her in a cussing rage with their sword swinging in a while! She is so surprised and shocked that she almost forgets to defend! "H-how can you say so many of those words so easily?! And to a princess?!?!" Sarra exclaims as she pulls her hammer out to block those sword strikes. "I am not a cowardly loser! If I were, I would have just given up on everything a long time ago!! Who even are you?!"      Even with all the cursing, Sarra doesn't want to hurt any agents. She pulls out that ice flower again and in a poof of white smoke she is now wearing icy colors! And instead of swinging her hammer she fires ice at Tweed's feet to freeze them to the ground. "Just stay there! It would be terrible for you to make it this far only to be lost now! We...well, I anyway...am trying to save everyone I can!"      "And I will have you know I do not like violent...l-lovemaking!!" Sarra adds with her cheeks turning red before she returns her attention to Lilian.      'Borrowing this!'      Sarra flinches in surprise at the unexpected touch, then watches in confusion as Xion comes away with a grapefruit-colored medallion. "Uh...o-okay!" Even though she doesn't know what it is she trusts Xion to use whatever it is properly.      'Petra, Sarra, stay close! Hibiki, don't get pinned down!'      'Did you think it'd be fun when we did?'      Sarra doesn't really have time to answer since she is stuffing a mushroom into her mouth. It disappears...just in time for Sarra to cry out as irony hits. Sarra is impaled. She trembles at the feeling, her eyes widening as she realizes she actually -has- been impaled. She cluches at Lilian as she is lifted up by that sword and stuck to the wall, then she feels that hand. Her eyes widen even more as that black-gold glow takes hold of her. A strained groan escapes her as she is ravaged by time, and a cough accompanied by a little blood from the corner of her mouth escapes her as she dangles. She doesn't realize quite how bad it is yet, because she is glaring at Lilian. "T-take your hand off of me!!" she demands, and a shaky hand reaches into her purse, the rapidly wrinkling and atrophying limb having trouble with the movement.
Sarracenia	It emerges a moment later...with a certain beautiful tanto. "I have almost been hoping for another reason...and Miss Tamamo is not here to separate us this time!" she says a bit darkly before thrusting the tanto toward Lilian's sword shoulder. Petra might kill Sarra if Sarra manages to land the hit...but Sarra might wish she were dead before she actually withers away if she doesn't. Already she is starting to lose the color in her hair and skin, and her usually toned body already looks pretty weak and frail.      After the stab, Sarra tries to hold on to Lilian's sword hand as she pulls out another flower. This time fire. She holds it up to her lips, and with point blank range on her side blows a torrent of searing flame at Lilian until she runs out of breath. And if that isn't enough to get Lilian to back off...she takes a deep breath and does it again! With how closer they are, Sarra risks burning even herself!      Once she is free, Sarra slumps to the floor. Her legs are too weak to hold her up effectively, and she cries out again as her bones threaten to - or actually do - break at the strain. "Of course Petra will sacrifice us all for this." Sarra says, her voice sounding almost as frail as her body. "She made it clear that she is doing this to save Angela and...somehow to help you at the same time. You are fighting us because you think Angela taking the Seed means this is all for nothing. But, there is always another way. A way to save everyone! And this is not like the Union Busan! We have enough power to achieve that Golden Ending, even if it takes a bit after this seven days!"
Sarracenia	The call to retreat goes out. Sarra pulls out another cloud, unsure if she could run away under her own power. She practically rolls onto it, then starts flying. Sarra face twists in a horrified expression when Petra skewers Shajo. "Wh-what are you doing?!" Sarra exclaims, coming to a stop just before escaping.
Angela	Shajo shouldn't be so surprised by the sudden strength of Petra pushing through Smile's strike, bowling him over once more, and impaling him in the chest. He hacks up blood, his glasses knocked askew as he struggles to lift Smile up from another strike and can't quite manage it. His local radio is shattered badlyt enough it's knocked into receive mode only. "Hrrk...You got priorities...? Everyone's got priorities... thought... your friend there was for a little more than crushing..." He turns his head towards Rita's general direction. He'd shout this out but he doesn't quite have the strength for that. "Don't listen to 'er..." He mumbles, the strength leaving his body as his arms slump to the floor, Smile slipping out of his hands. "If we falter whenever..." His head slumps to the side as he passes out from the pain. Tweed meanwhile is distracted by Shajo's condition, but before she can move to try and recover him, Sarracenia freezes her feet to the floor. "I'd rather fucking shout it at a fucking princess than fucking anyone!" She swings her sword repeatedly at Sarracenia just out of reach. "Get back here I'll shove this sword so far up your ass you'll fucking forget about bagging a hero shit fucking balls get back here!" The swearing only gets worse and less printable with every swing. Nikki seems to be having better luck. "Haha! GOTCHA!" Nikki shouts only...for Hibiki to.... "She's still monologuing?!" Nikki shouts in disbelief, preparing a heftier blast but she's not going to have time to finish that incantation. "...If they wanted to live why are they trying to die!" Carol shouts, rushing back to Tweed to help free her.
Kukuru	<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "I have Shajo here, and I'm going to tear him in half. Let them go." <J-IC-Scene> Rufus Shinra starts to say something, stops. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma freezes. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, ice-tense, "Ms. Rook. Does she." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You're not serious Rita." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma finally transmits plastic crackling, then a 'snap', and disconnects. Radio crushed. "Go save Mr. Shajo." Something snaps inside Kukuru's mind. The implants strain to resist the command coming from Rita, and that strain is evident just from her movements as her running slows to a stop. She looks over at Rita with a confused look at first, like she's having trouble even understanding what's happening. Isn't she supposed to be getting the group out of here first? Yes, Petra and Angela gave the command to go! She'll get them out, then rejoin them once... After she does this one little thing for Rita. "O-kaaaay~ Just a minute, then." She chimes pleasantly in that way she normally would, opening up an ominously evil looking cloud in front of her and stepping into it. It takes a moment longer for her to figure out where Shajo even is, largely working backwards through hearing Petra talk about him and then remembering that Petra was going to face off against Lilian... Somewhere? Somewhere. Once she finds him pinned beneath the Beauty of Ash, Kukuru teleports her right on over besides the pair. "Oh, three you are. I'll just taking yoooou..." Kukuru says as plainly and mind-emptily as she usually does, even letting out a pleasant little hum that doesn't quite match how she's missing half of an entire arm while she squats besides Shajo with those familiar nanites starting to flow out of her stump to close up that impaling wound. "Oh, there's your problem... Get out from under there, Shajo dear. Petra, could you lift that for just a second? Gotta save Shajo here, you knooow?"
Lilian Rook	<Mine too, Lilian.>     Lilian laughs, humourlessly, and then says "Don't make me fucking laugh." after it's already pointless. "Stop clinging to my sleeve, desperately trying to get me to notice you. Yours doesn't work at all."     <Why do you *think* I'm doing this, anyways? It's what you would do.>     "I know why. Just like you know exactly why I'm not going to pat you on the back and let you do it. But all things as they are, you're still a deplorable fucking greasy creep about it, and everyone is still sucking you off for the magnanimous act of using them up like tissues."     The hardlight shards can't reach her. Not from any safe range. Her reflexes are too good, her sword is too fast, and she has too much time to catch every stray that slips through. It's like trying to shoot the moon. "Where the fuck do you get off wanting to be the only one who understands me when people thank you for abusing them and hate me for helping them?"     §Shit. I might have kind of meant that.§     But she means for all of it. For Petra's breathless frinch. For Xion's sudden freeze. For the abject horror at what she's saying. What she's doing. Feeling the psychic currents of misery; of queasy denial and confusion rendered aghast by her; makes her pulse quicken and her breath speed up.     'I have almost been hoping for another reason...and Miss Tamamo is not here to separate us this time!'     Lilian catches Sarracenia's wrist with her gunspare hand. She squeezes the embrittled bone until it creaks and splits and gristle and sinew start snapping with it. The words she chooses are hauntingly familiar. "An insuperable wall that you can't possibly cross already separates us, 'princess'. No matter how much you scrabble and connive and sacrifice, you're merely mortal, and I'm just about a god." She twists the hilt of the sword through Sarracenia's organs for emphasis. "You think this is bad? You'll be suffering worse than this for six entire days, and only because I permit you to draw breath. The moment you locked yourself in here with me, you gave consent."     'Did I miss something?! I can't see a reason why you're trying to make yourself the monster too, with me!'     "Only the same thing you've been missing since the start, Xion." says Lilian. Her voice quavers in the middle with an undiscernible emotion. "I always was. I can't ever remember a time I wasn't. And if I kept trying not to be right now, then I wouldn't be trying at all." She grinds the blade into Xion's ally just a little more. Enough to feel the intense body horror of a perfectly tactile blade severing the walls of things that shouldn't be cut open.     "If the call asks of me 'everything I can do', then I have to do this. Much worse than this. Because to hang my head before the faceless billions and say it was because 'I wanted to be good to you' isn't an excuse."
Lilian Rook	Then, finally, she's so taken up in the moment that Sarracenia's point blank suicide fireball finally takes her by surprise. Lilian recoils away from the burst of flames, snarling, shielding her face reflexively to protect her vision. The sword slicks free of Sarracenia's insides, nauseatingly slicked with gore and bile and cerebrospinal fluid; as is the horrid reality of impalement. Her gun springs to hand again, aims at Sarracenia's head, then in a split second, swivels to her chest instead, aiming away from her brain before shooting the fleeing opponent in the back.     She blinks out of the way of the hammer, then stutter steps back from the gnashing followup, pulling her sword back to herself and firing a triple burst into the chomping head to blast it back. She flicks open the chamber, vents aether, ejects the spent rod, snaps in another, all business. She micro-leaps against gravity over Pylon low, parries Starlight across the chest, spins violently around without her feet on the ground, snaps two shots off at Xion, fires counterbalancing maneuvering magic, slams her feet against the back wall, braces against the flurry of followup kicks, and takes the flat of her own sword to her left shoulder when the wall gives first; it cracks against her and her foot slips.     Lilian tilts sideways amidst toku sparks of defensive magic. She grits her teeth and lashes out with her hand rather than her blade, making a savage noise in the motion of grasping Xion by the ankle and pulling her forward into her opposite elbow at her inner knee, aiming to dislocate it on impact. She fends high with the cross of her sword against Starlight, then grabs at Pylon barehanded, taking it to the wrist, and rips her forward a second time, head to head, thorns to rider helmet. The pommel of Night Mist strikes the back of the elbow, placed to fracture a human joint into a hundred unbearable pieces, and then Lilian finally kicks off the wall, driving Xion to the ground with her fist poised over her rather than her sword, and an unfamiliar, wild look in her eyes.     She has the momentum of a drop from an unscalable cliff behind her. A freefall into sacrilege she can't believe she's committing. The hand still on Xion lights up, and suddenly coruscates nerve-cooking electrical magic through her at point blank.     'No matter how much it hurts, I'll do it knowing I tried as hard as I could instead of sitting on my ass--!'     Hibiki catches her fist while it's raised. Lilian intuitively understands that the sideways grip disadvantages her and not the other way around. She partially dismounts to stop-kick Hibiki's lead foot before it can accelerate, striking her knee unsafely on purpose. Her ankle armour cracks, to tear ligament from bone and push bone through skin. Xion escapes. Hibiki swings for the fences. Night Mist spins hand over hand in the corner of Hibiki's vision. The point flickers up into her field of view, braced with Lilian's forearm across the guard, flat against the armour below her ribs.     The crash sounds like the collision of a hammer with an anvil. Lilian lurches back sharply, surrounded by a cloud of sparks. She's thrown upright, off her feet, then spins as she lands to bleed off the momentum and minimize the damage, breathing slightly too heavily for the damage that she actually sustained, and much too heavily for how much stamina she's spent. She doesn't look Hibiki in the eyes, but raptly searches for her handiwork.     The moment she'd positioned the blade to ram through Hibiki's throat on the way through. Far from cleanly losing a hand, the message is meant to be a crushed windpipe, severed artery, lungs filling with blood, gasping and coughing through bubbling gore at the agonizing onset of hypoxia. The type of trauma that gives people a lifelong fear of the water. She took a bruise for it. She seems excited that she did.
Lilian Rook	"God it's so easy for you to scream that getting hurt doesn't matter; that Petra is right as usual, your lives are worthless, you'll just put your heads down and slit your throats to bloody my nose. But you have no idea what that's actually like. You've never once amputated something of yourself to win. All that's left for you is to break and break and break and finally hollow out into nothing but a shambling corpse that can't think of anything but its own worthlessness."     "The price you're paying to win is letting her turn you into what she already thinks you are."     <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma finally transmits plastic crackling, then a 'snap', and disconnects. Radio crushed.'     'Don't listen to 'er...'     "You're joking." Lilian whispers as much as she shouts. Her eyes rove to Shajo, pinned under the Beauty of Ash, and not for an instant does she look like she thinks Petra won't do it. The way she looks at Shajo says it before her lips move. "I've spent your lives to save Rita. I ordered you to die to protect her family, and you did. Why now?!"     The last word is screamed angrily at the same time she whirls on Petra. Adrenaline numbs the pain on her left side, and blinds her to Sarracenia escaping. "You slimy piece of shit!"     Lilian closes instantly, cleavinghaving cleaved the mech's skewering limb and grabbingripping Shajo free in the same didn't happen. It's definitely a wound that will bleed him out in minutes, but she has ample medical aid on her side. She throws him behind her as she turns, slapping her offhand to the exterior of the Beauty of Ash, and with the word "Ídigh!", pours hellish black-gold fire through the cracks in the hardlight, fluidly surging through each disjointed seam and to bathe Petra in a skin-peeling furnace within. The explosive shock throws her and Shajo back as well as pushing the Beauty of Ash.
Sarracenia	Sarra's wrist is caught, and she practically growls as she tries to finish her thrust. The growl turns to a whimper and finally a full on scream of pain as Sarra's wrist is sundered completely by Lilian's grip. The tanto falls from Sarra's hand, clanging on the floor, but the sound is lost amongst her screams as the sword is twisted in her. Tears stream down her face. This is far beyond anything the princess has been subjected to before. Focused, purposeful, physical torture. Sarra has been complimented for her ability to bounce back, but this might be her limit.      When the sword is ripped free, it draws another pained scream before Sarra slumps to the floor and ends up on her cloud. Forget asking Petra what she is doing. Sarra is lucky to get out of there on her cloud at all after that.
Hibiki Tachibana	She hit her. Head-on.     It's a fact that she has to take in through half-lidded and hazy eyes, having collapsed down onto her hands and knees for the second time today - and with a rip shorn straight through the scarf that's always covering her neck and the lower half of her face, crimson bleeding into the dull gold more by the second.     The price you're paying to win is letting her turn you into what she already thinks you are.     Petra doesn't have a single thing to do with /this/. I'd be fighting you like this either way.     --is what she wants to say. But the moment she opens her mouth, her eyes shoot wide and she lurches forward completely, forehead meeting floor as the hands she was using to support herself compress her scarf against her wound as she clutches desperately at it. The only thing that escapes her is a mess of burbling hacking and gagging, yanking down on the cloth enough that the splatters of blood she rasps out hit the floor.     It hurts. She can't breathe. She can't sing. She's going to die, choking on her own blood, just like she died years ago, also at Lilian's hands. Persephone undid that one. Kukuru will have to undo this one. Another body-wracking and bloody, wet heave nearly makes her fade out on the spot.     The last thing running through her lagging mind is how she'd have died years ago if it wasn't for other people always being there... to...     . . .     ...If they wanted to live why are they trying to die!     "... ...You really... d-don't... understand... ...?"     Carol probably can't even hear her, barely wheezing out words under her breath at her, while the Agent goes off to help Tweed. But it's that, going through her thoughts on a delay, that makes her tighten her scarf-covered grip on her throat and find the strength to hobble back up into a sitting position.     "I-It's when... people know... they're gonna..." Another hacking fit hits her, nearly flooring her yet again. It's a miracle her windpipe even works enough for this much. "...die. That they... actually... want... to live... the most..."     They all gave up their lives for this project. Of course they're not selfish enough to go back on that now, just because they have new things to live for.     ...So I'll fight for them. Even if they hate me for it.     Against all odds, she stymies the bleeding enough that she won't pass out from that. Right this second. She's still going to suffocate or drown in no time at all.     But that's still long enough to weakly rise to her feet and stagger away, while Lilian and Shajo are blown away from the lot of them.
Xion	'Only the same thing you've been missing since the start, Xion.' It would be easier to fight this war if Xion had, at the start, pried free the thing she called a heart from her chest and threw it aside. It would be easier to fight this fight without a care at all, just blade-edge and sharp length. Perhaps, in this, Scathach was merely the fairy granting the wishes of those that asked. To turn everyone's favorite disciple into the weapon of destiny. "I don't think I was wrong." Xion, hoarse, declares. "To believe in your heart without seeing it. Almost everyone does it, so why couldn't I? To trust without knowing. To do this -- after this, Lilian, do you really?!" Lilian blinks away as Xion tries to follow up, Winter Crow sending hammer scattered away with giant crocodile tears in the eyes of the Keychain Chomp. The weapon has a sub-explosion and a large set of X's in the Chomp's eyes when it's scattered and Lilian pivots, Xion maneuvering into strike position. "Do you really look like this going 'all out' for everyone? Is this your most righteous self, or some miserable mask for this miserable war?!" Lilian levels Winter Crow at Xion herself and no soon does she commit to the shots as Xion fouls them with a mid-motion corrective re-stance, rolling Pylon into a guard that deflect-absorbs the two shots from the sidearm with cast-off sparks of purple that orbit back to the blade. The bided energy has plenty of places to go in her flurry of kicks, every deflect shattering the wall around Lilian and not even slowing down the Gungnir-enchanted boots of her glass and silver armor. Lilian's foot slips and Xion reverses grips to go for a slash that will drag both dangerous hook-keyblades up Lilian's front in a certainly debilitating and fierce strike. Lilian doesn't let that happen. Shooting out her leg and snatching her stance away from her, Xion doesn't wriggle or glitch out of the hold on instinct, unused to someone going for her ankles. Instead, she's brought to the ground in a thick crack-thunk as her glass-approximate armor connects with ground and absorbs damage not with toku sparks directly but with glass trauma first. Bounced on the ground, there's a pleasant, bitter-citrus fruity scent from her grapefruit armor! Her body doesn't have the same boniness that a human does, but, she does have a comparable kind of nervous qualia. The dislocation happens, but, using force, it's not altogether hard to contort Xion into whatever shape Lilian wants. Less, the fracturing, chrome-bleeding armor suit she wears. All the extensions and turns break *glass* just fine. Turned into a crack-riddled prickly pear by the leaking metal turning into pineapple spikes as she's grabbed forcefully and cutting back on contact, close quarters becomes a mess as Lilian goes for savagery to Harm Xion. Crunch. Thorns to glass plate, reels from the impact that makes her face become indistinct, as if her features swam with liquid and no single part of her face could be made out. Instead, a mask of piecemeal facial focals and bleeding kaleidoscopes with an interior, past the silver, of faint white and grapefruit red smears away 'Xion' for simply Lilian's victim. Xion looks up into unfamiliar eyes, trying to bring a blade on with dazed slowness, to react with some strength. She. . .
Xion	Expected Lilian to just pin her. There wasn't an idea in her head for what worse was. The cracks spread across the whole 'All together now' effort Xion had cooked up and fill with electric glow rather than silver blood, and Lilian's shocking grasp transmits through Xion at a 'huuuuuuuuuuuun...' of muffled excruciation. She doesn't scream - not quite - but it is a close thing, leaving her panting after as pieces her armor-mosaic fall from her. Hibiki is there just a hair of a moment after, and Xion isn't even done flipping up before she teleports 'away', rolling to a crouch outside of sword range. Her shattered armor begins reforming into a stained glass grapefruit mosaic barrier that hangs about her, but her summoned weapons disappear as she narrows down to just keyblades and hanging shards of glass. "You'll spend lives for Rita. But you'll call my life worthless to my face." It's agony to Xion to perceive this. "You'll act surprised, when some person slips out of line. Why not me?!" It gets to a hoarse shriek at the end. "Am I not a part of your everyone?! Not a word to sway me!!" Xion can't keep engaging. Angela's already called the peel away. Petra's done disgusting things to ensure that the other group could get through the *first* day. All she has left are the blades she started with, the frying and cuts she didn't, and disbelief. "Don't TELL me," Xion shouts, howls, dares Lilian, the already-levered on abysmal mentals letting her keytips drop. "That I'm the part of you you're amputating for this!" She seethes, glass-gloved hands running with a curtain of bloody silver down from the wrists. "I DON'T believe it. Which means," Strangled. "Which means--!" "Petra is right." Xion hates this beyond everything. Every disgusting action, every motion, every underhanded strategy was because Petra was putting something's priority first. Lilian. Not herself - of course not. Not Xion. Lilian. And while Xion could work with that -- she couldn't fight 'this'. Not... not right now. Releasing keyblades, Xion instead summons up the whole cloud of glass about her and throws it down, exploding the area around her in a mirror-powder smokebomb that partially reflects the passage of hundreds of Xion all through the spreading and thinning effect... But Xion goes for a predictable angle. Teleporting through to grab Hibiki, Xion is dragging the bleeding Symphogear user through the Darkness with a stopover at Sarracenia. Petra, already blown back, will be doubled back for if necessary.