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Owner	Pose
Marigold	THE ILIAN TAIGA      Among a snarl of rivers near a Bernish supply depot.      LOCAL MAP: https://i.imgur.com/ivihmAf.png      The warpgate directions are even more tangled than usual this time, but eventually (hub, metropolis, abandoned space station, antarctica, other antarctica, tiny desert island, finally Ilia) you make it back to the land of thin-iridescent gritty snowfall and proud pines, with friendly faces waiting for you right there.      Echidna believes in "sun's out, guns out" even when the sun isn't pushing the temperature more than ten degrees above freezing; and is also nearly-smothered by heavy clouds. She wasn't joking: it looks like it'll start raining any minute now, and feels like it with how weirdly clammy-muggy everything is, but the sky patiently withholds its wrath.      Larum, dressed more warmly but still with her flowy "dancer-rogue-y" sash for splash, squats next to her by a stump where they've spread a scribbled map for Roy's studious examination. Shanna and Thea are both dismounted nearby, holding their pegasi by the reins; Lugh and Chad have both sweet-talked their way onto this mission, and look equally glum, while Lucius has the 'well, alright' demeanor of having politely given up asking why.      Surprisingly, Melady is here too- they really must've needed all the fliers they could get, to persuade her to leave her lady back with the wagons. A Lugh-provided flame warms her wyvern steed, 'Triffin', against the reptile-hostile climate.      You can catch an ongoing conversation as you pass through the warpgate:      "If we could just pass by that village..."      "I'm sorry, but it's no good, Lord Roy. We just don't know their loyalties."      "Larum's right. Only takes one nosy person to raise an alarm." 5R     "... I don't like being on hostile ground."      "That's what winning feels like. Anyway, if we wait 'til nightfall, they're due to get even more people in. So..."      And simultaneously, among the fliers:      "They couldn't actually dive us from the west, could they?"      "Right, Melady. It's against discipline to swoop uphill. They'd want to encircle and come at our ground forces from the mountains, or at least from the northeast."      "It's not that hard to, actually!"      "I said it's against discipline, Shanna...      Both conversations taper off with your arrival.      "Hey! Ready for some banditry?"      "Oh! You made it. I'm glad."      "Good evening. We've been trying to work out battle plans, but..."      "Oh! Mr. Parsons! Petra! I'm glad you're here..."      The edge of a fairly dense forest isn't far from where you stand, and a craggy mountain range erupts from the ground behind. Circling around the tip of the woods lets you see the supply fort: its walls are just sharpened logs driven into the ground upright, although it has a couple of ballistae. The various rickety-bridged rivers range to twenty feet wide, although it looks like they flood wider, and you shouldn't gamble on them being wadeable. A pier loads and unloads from small boats traveling the river, and inside its palisades red-covered wagons do the same.      The white shapes of pegasi can just be seen within- some already saddled- and three circle loosely over the depot on disciplined aerial patrol, readily pointed out by Shanna. "That's why we haven't taken flight yet. They'll see us the moment we do..."
Nobunaga	The Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga is in her element here; the siege and conquering of a fort. Well, a logistics outpost pretending to be a fort. As soon as she exits the warpgate, red eyes turn skyward to evaluate the impatient clouds overhead. She feels the humidity in the air. There's a brief nod. Just as Echidna said; and the sort of weather that the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven is happy to take advantage of.     That settled, she relocates immediately to the stump with the map, one arm folded, the other supporting her chin in thought. Lowering her hand from her chin, she traces one of the riverbanks with a white-gloved finger, "I will set up my soldiers here, on the opposite side of the river. Do we know the depth? If fording it isn't a possibility, then what are our options for a temporary bridge here? We could bypass the town entirely and come back to it later."     Already, the Nobbu are here. It's unclear just where they're coming from or how they've manifested. Little knee-high soldiers resembling a chubby chibi caricature of Nobunaga herself, each one wearing a similar black and red Owari uniform and carrying a long rifle with a bayonet. In groups of three, the homunculi sneak into their positions on the southern riverbank with the logistics fort in sight.     "We'll wait until we get the signal and open with artillery. 'Shock and awe', right?" The warlord glances at Roy with a toothy, maybe-too-excited grin. In a flurry of her cape, she turns to join her soldiers. More of them keep appearing, coming out of the woodwork pretty much. From behind trees or rocks just out of sight, rustling out of bushes or holes made by foxes or rabbits and other places nobody has any eyes on.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia feels herself drawn into the crowd of fliers. It is, ultimately, where she feels most at home. She's still dressed in the clothes that she bought back in Lycia, but clearly, she's been making the effort to maintain them. Someone has been mending all the rips and tears--the violet skirt and blouse looks at most well-loved, and the only rips her in leggings are from something that snagged it in Antartica 2. "It seems as though we'll have knights in the air. No matter what we do."     "I can afford to take a few hits with ordinary weapons, when they strike me, so I think I will be best at handling them." Everyone here already knew why. "I'll focus on trying to unset and drag the knights to the ground without killing them, and then providing you cover." She very much doubted any pegasus knight could do much about being grabbed and YOINKed by her, if given the opportunity. And Dysnomia didn't know many people who could really outfly her.     "The villages will be happier about an embarrassed knight coming home than a knight not coming home at all." She crossed her arms. "Leaving you free to mobilize as you will."     "Flamel and I have discussed this plan at some length already. He will be providing mental unwellness support."
Audrey Basque	Two surprise trips through antarctica don't hit nearly as hard as the weather did last time, now that Audrey expects maybe it won't be super warm all the time here. Though her outfit choice hasn't changed, complete with her hair being down, though the interior of the cloak is dark and starry like the sky, she's got gloves on this time, which lets her hold her cloak closed without any issue. It's the small things, sometimes.     Her last interaction with Melady was... a bit awkward, come to think of it, and so Audrey feels the need to approach her and apologize, at least briefly, before things start going.     "Melady. I ah... wished to apologize, for that time at the castle. It seems lately I've very little ability to avoir embarrassment."     Massive understatement.     They trek a bit, to have a good position to look at the enemy camp. Three pegasi in the air already, and who knows how many inside. But they can see the camp, and that's what matters to Audrey.     "I do not need to be any closer than this to work my magic; from here I can alter space around their whole camp to be heavier. Not too much as to harm them, but enough they won't be able to have their pegasi take off, and the ones already in the air will be forced to land. I can keep my magic from affecting allies, so there won't be any problems for us."     She waits to be given the OK, of course; whether that's by Lilian, or Flamel, any of the local commanders, or even just Petra. Once she IS given the go-ahead, she gets to work.     She spent a few minutes preparing, of course; feeling out the exact region of space occupied by the camp, including vertically. She needed a good view of it, which might have meant getting a bit closer with Flamel, as instructed earlier. But once she gets to work...     Gravity around the entire camp is increased to about 1.3 for the enemy forces there. It's not a lot, for trained knights and soldiers, but certainly enough to inconvenience; it's the pegasi who are going to suffer the most from this, because that's enough extra weight on their backs they'll be forced down (not catastrophically) to land, and won't be able to take off either.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel Parsons is here, though he's got a longer coat instead of the regular old blazer -- still something appropriate to his men-in-black aesthetic but just an inch warmer. "If you want," Flamel offers to Roy, among the non-fliers. "I'm happy to swoop through the town first, if you want the light touch, but I gotta say I think my focus would be put to better use at the camp. While you sweep south through the town, I can do *all kinds* of stuff to soften them up and force an early surrender!" He explains quickly -- but he's fast to follow Roy's orders if they countermand his own intentions.     He knows how to do fieldwork. He's done fieldwork all his life! In the most literal sense of 'all his life'! But he always defers to Roy specifically in tactics here. And moreso now than before, given what he did to the boy before. Discomfort still surges whenever he joins him in a fight, though never so much that he can't keep a sunny grin.     If deployed over the river, he'll surge into the camp invisibly and get to work on finding primary sources of defensive motivation and destroying them. If reserved for the town, he'll fall into formation, readying his mental arsenal to search minds, detect intention to raise an alarm, and negate it as quickly as he can.
Desire Stars	Hey! Ready for some banditry?     "You know just what to say to make someone feel welcome after a long trip," says Ace with his characteristically smug smile on full display. He and Neon both wear cold-weather versions of the DGP activewear; their lined coats are heavier than the usual windbreakers, but they do look quite warm.     "If it'll warm me up, I'll do whatever you say," says Neon soggily, stifling a sneeze.     "I wouldn't be too free with that around Echidna," Ace teases. "Or maybe you know exactly what you're doing."     "Huh--hey!!" #-1 FUNCTION (ANSI) EXPECTS 2 ARGUMENTS BUT GOT 1     "But that river is ice cold," Neon says with a frown that quickly dispels the heat Ace's remark brought to her face. "And if we could walk through it, those people probably would be, too." She goes over the details in her head and they amount to a bedraggled, quietly aggrieved sigh. "So, what are you thinking, Echidna?"     Ace, meanwhile, pursues Melady's misgivings. "But what?"
Lilian Rook	Honestly, Lilian has come to kind of admire Echidna and Dieck, in her own way. She's already come so far from dressing like a doll all the time, but maybe, just maybe, she might one day go a little further. Not with her armour on, at least; though even that is simultaneously better-plated and less shape-obscuring that a suit that has to be strapped and buckled on. She's at least exchanged her cloak for a similar, blueish-coloured, fur-lined design.     She stares at Triffin for a mintue, by the fire, and says out loud, "You know, I hadn't thought about it before, but it's a silver lining that we shouldn't see any wyvern riders for a while. Regardless of how much we hate Bern, I have to admit those are always trouble." Lilian is, technically, a flier. Though she's no aerial dogfight ace, the Immunes corp ensures everyone has the ability (because frankly they'd be stupid not to), and so she offers her opinions there, crouched amongst them. "An individual might try it, Shanna, notably an especially daring captain, but twenty or more people will stick to what they're trained in, and especially put-upon riders being interrupted on their payday."     'Hey! Ready for some banditry?'     Lilian sniffs. "It's a raid. We're at war. For it to be banditry, we'd have to be paramilitary at most." She refuses, under any circumstances, to be a bandit. That's too much of a stoop for a noble knight! "You weren't lying though. That's barely a palisade without abatis. They were lax with construction. I understand that the terrain should confidently handle what little enemy presence they could expect, but that's still no reason to be lazy. They've had all this spare time doing what? Playing dice?"     One look up at the patrols tells us enough. "It was certainly too much to hope for different squadrons to all be conveniently housing their steeds under one shitty little roof. I suppose this is what it'll be like in Bern-held territory, rather than places their agents are stationed to support traitors." Lilian pauses. "It's refreshing. Even if we're the underdogs, 'enemy territory' makes things nicely less ambiguous. I like being on the vanguard, not the backfoot." Sighing, she laces her fingers and cracks her knuckles outwards; usually not possible in gauntlets.     "Like I said before. We're here to take their valuables. That's not a fast process. We can't blitz them like usual; we need them to stand down and surrender. That means we convince them they're surrounded and outnumbered-- which they frankly almost are-- and apply immediately intimidating force to their perimeter to shock them. Then we should aim to sever the chain of command and take a decisionmaker or three hostage. The pegasus knights won't be too loyal to their Bernish employers if we're obviously carting all their pay away, so keep that in mind too. Look for a wingleader." Lilian thinks to break and say, "--Oh, Shana, Thea, is there a way we can easily identify one?"     Waiting long enough for an answer, she continues, "Regardless, to hold up to our word, we should avoid targeting the riders in the air. Forcing them to stay at bay when we capture a commander should be amply useful. Our flyers here should be plenty to establish air superiority and chase them back for long enough to do that. Melady, if you don't mind me riding with you for a while, I'll employ combat magic from the air to rattle the ground forces, and I'll leave aerial maneuvers to you. We can split up without landing, if need be."     Doing so from wyvernback is preferable, since she doesn't have to focus on flight magic at the same time.
Desire Stars	Hey! Ready for some banditry?     "You know just what to say to make someone feel welcome after a long trip," says Ace with his characteristically smug smile on full display. He and Neon both wear cold-weather versions of the DGP activewear; their lined coats are heavier than the usual windbreakers, but they do look quite warm.     "If it'll warm me up, I'll do whatever you say," says Neon soggily, stifling a sneeze.     "I wouldn't be too free with that around Echidna," Ace teases. "Or maybe you know exactly what you're doing."     "Huh--hey!!" That's why we haven't taken flight yet. They'll see us the moment we do...     "But that river is ice cold," Neon says with a frown that quickly dispels the heat Ace's remark brought to her face. "And if we could walk through it, those people probably would be, too." She goes over the details in her head and they amount to a bedraggled, quietly aggrieved sigh. "So, what are you thinking, Echidna?"     Ace, meanwhile, pursues Melady's misgivings. "But what?"
Odette Raskins	After a brief scare going through that abandoned space station, Odette's breathing a little easier in Ilia despite hearing and seeing that the weather's about to get worse before it gets better. She'd normally be okay with the rain since it's just so different from what she's used to, but the strategic concerns outweigh the novelty of it all. Her clothes are a little closer to Larum's than Echidna's in general coverage with the white tunic and blue cape getup she's been favoring for a while now, although her higher-tech carrying case and fancy-ish medical HUD glasses does break the illusion of feeling like she really belongs here. She also looks like she's hauling (or will be soon) quite a bit today thanks to also having her old trusty duffel bag on the opposite side. It looks weirdly empty, though, having dumped out its contents back home so as to have plenty of space for all the- "Banditry? I thought we were doing piracy." She replies to Lugh with a somewhat stilted delivery, trying to lighten the mood a little for him, Chad, and Lucius alike. The latter is what has her stumbling over her words immediately afterwards, of course, as she quickly adds "Not that I normally do bandit or pirate things! I just.. I mean, this is for a good cause and all!" Not quite satisfied with the attempted save she just made, Odette immediately looks over at Roy to try and shift focus away from that. "O-of course we'd be here, Lord Roy. Still a lot of work to do before we can rest, but we'll push through this and get everyone the supplies they need and the support we want." She comments, apparently trying to be a source of reassurance as well rather than her usual anxious self. Seeing into the fort, meanwhile, has Odette pursing her lips as she tries to figure out how to best approach any of this. "If we can get the jump on the riders first... I've got plenty of sedatives in here if I can just get in close. Some of these are way too strong for people to take, but I've seen them put cows to sleep before. A pegasus shouldn't be too far off from that, but..." She stares at the river with another furrowing of her brow in thought. "That could be trickier if we can't get through the town. Unless..." She trails off, gesturing at those red-covered wagons and the boats on the river. "A few of us might be able to get in that way. I'll check it out." And so, Odette starts watching for a passing wagon she can sneak aboard! She tries to look disinterested as she wanders along the edge of the river, too,  practicing her 'facing one way while glancing the other' maneuver until it seems like there's a wagon moving slow enough to hitch a ride into the fort.
Petra Soroka	Cold! Clammy! Forest! Piracy!     This is practically ideal terrain for Petra, in terms of vibes, at least. She's still a little chilly, but the fruity little mantle of her outfit is slick and silky-waterproof, so she won't switch it out with a heavier one just in case it starts raining. The travel time is long, but nothing uniquely annoying. All it means is that Petra needs company to endlessly chatter at along the way, and as is often the case, Audrey is forcibly placed into that role due to her proximity.     "You know, Ange's got a real fascination with piracy and stuff. Not this kind-- not, like, the actual monetary, smashing and grabbing and stuff, but she really likes the classical pirates. Hats and boats and peg legs and whatever. I figure it's not, like, out of the budget to rent or buy a pirate ship for a little while, but it feels sort of silly to do it just for fun. Maybe one day we should go on a little boat trip with her, when we've got days of Light to go out of the Library. No warpgates, no planes, no cars, whatever; and then with my luck, I figure we'll be forced to do some real piracy. I think that'd be fun." "Oh! Mr. Parsons! Petra! I'm glad you're here..."     "Yo," Petra raises up a fist to mime a fist bump at range with Lugh. The specifics are probably a little incomprehensible, but it's a vague demonstration of cameraderie at least. "Let's do this."     "I'm *so* ready to do some banditry. Especially because we're, like, objectively the good guys." Petra settles down by the map, dripping a small puddle of morphmetal from her bottle onto it in order to do tabletop figuring wargame planning as usual. It forms into a teeny little Petra-blob, accompanied by a slightly less teeny Beauty of Ash spike.     "Okay. I figure I'm probably the most useful in the air as opposed to anything else. I'm sure I can keep up with a horse, and... well, I can't make any promises killing-wise, but I'm at least pretty confident in managing to not do it, or to catch them if they fall. I'd volunteer to sneak in and take hostages like Lilian talked about, but I figure she's so much better at that than me that there's no point."     She stares at the map for a few seconds blankly, the little Silver Beauty of Ash figurine flying in circles around the symbol of the fort. "... I guess that's it? Once the fliers are down, I can just drop into the fort in my mech, since it's open air and stuff. Then I'll probably need someone looking out for me while I hand stuff off to Qetra...."     Preemptively, Petra pulls up the compact mirror hanging on the cord around her neck and flips it open. More politely than she's done it before, she knocks on the mirror, hitting her reflection's knuckles once, twice, and then on the third rap, the hand behind the mirror moves differently than her own. "Hey, Qetra." "Wuh? Why're you bothering me?" "Would you be able to hold a bunch of stuff we're stealing for the army soon?" "Ohhh... hm~... but what if I *don't* wanna?" "Hahhh... what do you want?" "I wanna... spend time with Lilian!" "I-- I mean, that's not really something I can promise." "Well, nyeh. Figure it out, ajoeto~ I'm soooo cruelly taken advantage of *all* the time and you're *never* nice to me, so you have to or I'm gonna be mad."     Petra looks up at Lilian a little helplessly.
Lilian Rook	'I'd volunteer to sneak in and take hostages like Lilian talked about, but I figure she's so much better at that than me that there's no point.'     Lilian frowns deeply, but doesn't bring herself to actually object.     'Well, nyeh. Figure it out, ajoeto~ I'm soooo cruelly taken advantage of *all* the time and you're *never* nice to me, so you have to or I'm gonna be mad.'     "Funny." says Lilian. "Petra doesn't seem to mind that at all." she adds, semi-incorrectly. "If you want my time, I'm not going to give it to some lazybones who won't do her fair share of the work. Be a good girl and prove that you can work as hard as Petra; then we'll talk."
Marigold	"Do we know the depth?"      "Eight or ten feet of water. Saint knows how many of muck. Cold and good current too," Echidna tells Nobunaga, shaking her head. In other words, you could swim it if you're brave and lightly-laden, but you'd lose a horse in it like a sock in a dryer. "I could have you three logs tied together as a 'bridge' in twenty minutes, but they'd see me do it."      "I ah... wished to apologize, for that time at the castle."      "... I'm sorry; who are you?" Oh god, that's the worst possible answer. Fortunately for the last shred of Audrey's dignity, Melady's eyes widen a second later. "Oh! You're the one who... yes, of course. I'm quite sorry, too. I... had been under a lot of stress, but even so, it was... unbecoming of me to be that snippy."      "Go for the camp," Roy agrees with Flamel, albeit still a bit uneasily. "We'll have to make our way through the town, but we won't show ourselves until you've made a move. It just means ground backup will be slow."      "I wouldn't be too free with that around Echidna..."      Echidna laughs and claps Neon on the shoulder, but it's a lighter clap than she usually gives. "Oh, be nice to her," she cajoles Ace. Back to Neon: "I'm with Roy. Lucius teleports, but it's obvious, and only a couple people at a time... so ground forces are going to raise an alarm one way or the other. Might as well take the safe route. That leaves the fliers to you all, though."      Melady shakes her head at Ace while stroking Triffin's face. "... but being outnumbered in the sky is worse than being outnumbered on land. Everyone knows that. However good I am, I can't fight three of anybody in the air. If there's twenty of them... if two of you fly, that's four-to-one. And I'm meant to be gentle?"      "For it to be banditry, we'd have to be paramilitary at most."      "It was banditry when I did it in the Misty Isles," Echidna smiles lopsidedly at Lilian, and gives Petra a firmly approving nod. "The work looks the same. You're just changing the words." Lugh returns Petra's smile, but it's Chad who nods seriously: "Let's do this," he echoes, with the dead level only a teenager in genuinely severe circumstances can muster. "Remember, he..." Lugh starts to say, but then looks back, and decides it isn't important enough to say in front of Lucius.      "Of course, Dame Commander. Hold onto my waist," Melady tells her while saddling up- Triffin looks at Lilian with the air of a slightly dopey dog, but doesn't protest beyond nosing at her- and then walks them to the forest's corner, just out of the fort's sight. Shanna and Thea do the same, and Echidna gestures the ground forces to follow her south by the town...
Marigold	Nobody can contest Flamel's invisibility, though the feather-light snowfall might give him away if he's too brazen. 'I hate it in Ilia. Just want to get home.' 'Bern's pride rests with me.' 'Maybe Martel will give me a promotion...' 'I can't sell them out just yet.' 'My village is counting on me as a knight.' 'Ilia lives on its warrior reputation.' Unraveling the Bernish guards' will to fight is easier than the pegasus knights, actually.      Wait, what was that one in the middle?      'The signal'- for Nobunaga to fire, for Melady and Shanna and Thea to lift off, and for Echidna and Roy's pals to break cover towards the village- is Audrey's ritual completing. The effect is instant. The three pegasi circling in the sky start to glide down, to their riders' confusion and panic; in a bubble, the thin snow falls slightly faster, making the air seem subtly clearer.      "Triffin! Up!!" Melady barks with a tap of her heels. The two pegasus knights flank Dysnomia on their way up, too. But this won't be completely free: it takes less than a tense minute (accompanied by the sharp tolling of a bell in the town) for the pegasus knights in the fort to figure out that the anti-flight effect has a border. They gallop out on the ground, disorganized and confused, but still hoping to mobilize; when they reach the edge of Audrey's field effect they're able take flight in straggling twos and threes.      Down in the fort, a ballista's great arrowhead glints as a Bernish soldier aims it. "Lilian! Hold on!!" "Shanna, Mia, break left!" "Breaking right!" "Shanna--" The diving and barrel-rolling evasive maneuvers aren't needed; Audrey's gravity-field makes the first bolt go low. The next ones don't, whistling ominously closer.      The fort's second ballista, of two, tries to shoot out a bridge as Roy's forces cross it, then turns its attention to whoever else is a visible target; the half-dozen enemy pegasus knights in the air by now, not yet assured of their numerical superiority, try to avoid the aerial allies and instead swoop down from the east to harry whoever they can spy with plunging javelin throws from a hundred feet up.      Down at the fort, Bernish footsoldiers try to close a gate, but it likely won't do much good.      Of vastly, vastly more concern is the fact that, a minute after first alarm, the dark clouds in the sky have begun to spiral as if forming a windless whirlpool in the sky. To anyone with the eyes to see it, magical energy crackles from a low central log-building within the fort.
Marigold	Odette has to wait a minute to find a wagon passing by- even a dedicated supply depot isn't that high-traffic- but waiting on Audrey's ritual gives her time. She's able to slip into alongside Flamel- without the benefit of his invisibility.      Outside her little covered wagon, she can hear pegasi neighing, the crackle of ominous magic, and men in clanking armor yelling and milling about in a sudden panic... probably her allies are soon to start blowing up the place, too.      Maybe this wasn't a great idea, but...      "This was a great idea," Chad stage-whispers, hopping out of the empty wagon next to her. Score.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia rises in harmony with the other flyers--even without a sign, the resonance of the other fighter's readiness is instruction enough. From a three point stance, she leaps into the air, half-dissolving as she spirals through the air in whoops and whorls.     There is always an element of arithmetic, in when it came to fights like this, especially in Elibe. There was the question of troop morale--and the risk of rallying the enemies. The sheer scale of a draconic mass would make it easier to pluck riders from their place, Dysnomia was sure...     ...But appearing before shoulders with the mantle of a demon always, always risked demoralizing their friends...and rallying their foes to fight bravely to the death.     This would have to do.     She moved through the air in bold, tight circles, fast and erratic, to try to send the ballista off course--before veering, sharply, toward some of the enemy riders, as misty hands reached toward them, trying to wrench them free of their pegasi. When Melady, Thea, or Shanna accosted them, Dysnomia was there, anticipating their thoughts, to take advantage.     That by itself, would have been hard, but the wind stirred, and stirred, and stirred...she was forced to stabilize--     --And a ballista clipped her shoulder, carrying a trail of smoky blood after it through the air.
Nobunaga	As Audrey works her magic, Nobunaga has relocated to her new position and now peers through cupped hands as if she had binoculars (she doesn't). One it completes and the airborne riders start descending in confusion, Nobunaga lowers her hands from her face, "Showtime." > "Eight or ten feet of water. Saint knows how many of muck. Cold and good current too."     Echidna's intel on the river is clear in her thoughts as Nobunaga enacts the next stage of her plan. She'd declined on the log bridge, having formed her own solution after assessing the river's depth and width. She thrusts her hand out, fingers spread. From the treeline emerges a single Nobbu which is distinctly different from all the others.     Firstly, this one is covered in unpainted silvery metal and has mechanical arms ending in c-clamp claws. Secondly: It's HUGE.     Great Mecha Nobbu trundles across the meadow with a thunderous declaration, clamp hands held overhead; NO BU. It wades out into the river, turns, and reaches out to either bank. Immediately, the army of Oda Nobunaga surges up one arm, across the shoulders, and down the other to take up positions in the field between the fort and the river. Others follow the river east and north, and still others go west to cut off access to the village and the road. Along the river, covering the repositioning forces, it's the crack of rifles from behind stones and logs and trees.     Nobunaga herself has relocated to stand atop the hat of Great Mecha Nobbu, her sword drawn. Her shoulders shake with a little laugh; "'Shock and awe', they asked for..." Lifting her gaze, she fixes crimson eyes on the fort. Swinging her sword forward, she points, "And that's what they'll get! Fire the Owari Cannon!"     NOOOOO--!     Great Mecha Nobbu, some thirty feet tall, swivels its head like an owl without disrupting the chibi soldiers using it as a bridge. The mouth opens, a nondescript 'square' of darkness that promptly lights up with blue-white energy. Just as it fires as a big explosive laser, the head turns sharply, dragging the beam across the ground just shy of the camp's ramshackle wall.     --BUUUUU!     The weather turns. Nobunaga turns her eyes from the lightshow to the sky, evaluating how the clouds are changing with her smile replaced by a tense and thoughtful frown. Her attention shifts back to the battlefield; Pegasus Knights racing out of the fort to try and take to the air; the warlord shouts, "Ground them!"     Nobbu soldiers, digging in with makeshift cover, lean out from behind stones and stumps to aim their rifles.     "Don't kill them!"     The troops pause, some visible confusion and confused No bu? No? Bu no? rattles about the meadow. Eventually one gets the idea to ditch their rifle and just-- jumps onto one of the horses. Scrambling, it manages to hold on to one of the wings, weighing it down and throwing off the balance. Others, seeing this, decide to do the same thing-- jumping at pegasi that have yet to take wing to keep them from doing so.     Those already in the air have their pick of Nobbu soldiers to dive-bomb. They even burst satisfyingly into multicolored magical light when killed. It's normally gold but just for this month I changed it!; Flamel might pick up the boisterous warlord's thoughts amidst the sea of nationalist propaganda.     When a javelin is thrown her way, Nobunaga swats it aside with her sword. In her free hand, a rifle materializes in a flash of rainbow light. Already aiming it at the offending rider, she barks, "You challenge the Grand Unifier; I am Oda Nobunaga! You brave knights who charge forth to fight rather than cower behind walls-- Give me your names, that we might know each other as warriors!"
Audrey Basque	Melady almost had Audrey dead for a second.     Small mercy she remembered.     "No, you were right to-- well, this is no game. So I mean to say that, I will take this seriously," she fumbles a bit.     But that was then! This is now.     It was predictable, really, that if she blocked access to the sky for the mounted riders, they could go for the camp exits and take off that way. Sure, flying above the camp would still be off-limits, but they'd be able to flee, or harass those not yet in the camp, or mount a counter-attack or...     Audrey rumbles to herself. If it was predictable why didn't she think about it and do something about the exits first?     It's okay, there's time to *right now*.     She steps forward, reality cracking like a mirror in front of her, pearlescent white-blue light that makes her refract and reappear in front of the main gate of the camp. Javelins fly past her; one, then two, almost strike at her, suspended in the air in front of her like they're incapable of crossing the distance to her. She grits her teeth, half-angrily at herself, the javelins ripping to shreds of metal and wood that orbit her like a little storm of splinters trying to deter anyone from entering melee range with her.     As the pegasi head for the gate to leave, she traces a line on the ground with her foot, feels out the area-- the stars in her cape brighten, some of the math handled for her by wearing the sky so nearly literally.     She reaches out, closes her fist, compressing the space around the gate to be thick, hostile, a wall made of distance and gravity that threatens to push anyone down right into the dirt before they can even think of stepping outside the camp. By the same token, to keep the doors from closing at all. No one leaves-- and no one stops *them* from coming in.     On the other hand, she's right in front of it.     And wide open while she's focusing.
Lilian Rook	'However good I am, I can't fight three of anybody in the air.' [ansi(198,"Galle could.")] Lilian says, darkly. She clambers into the saddle without complaint, nor worry at the beast that had been the hallmark of her enemy up until now. Adjusting her sword to rest at her side, with clearance from the ground to hold it at her hip, her hand rests on the pommel as she says, "Besides. We're a wyvern rider and an aerial mage. We have the element of surprise and they haven't been paid yet. If I were them, I'd fight at four to one, and back off the minute it's closer to two than three."     It's a good thing too that it's two or three at a time. The ballistae are worryingly good at their work for such a backwater depot, and so both she and Melady are under the pressure of time. Lilian first draws her sidearm-- having already cycled the array to connect under the Saturn configuration for the least amount of power and amalgam consumption-- and takes aim at the pegasus knights, taking wing first, waiting until they rise to nearly the same elevation, then--                 -----[stop]-----     --pausing to aim carefully, breathe deeply, stance with both hands, and fire several shots at a measured pace, one after the other, in a walking forward line to make up for how difficult it is to judge leading speed while nothing is moving.                 -----[start]-----     --ejects the smoking clip-block amidst several horizontal sprays of fire, relying on volume of small calibre shots to at least wound some of the pegasi themselves, and hoping Triffin is too big and reptilian (and thus possessed of reptile hearing and instincts) to be spooked by the noise. She's just holstered it again, and begun focusing on the delicate gestures required to draw energy from aether and condense it to a useable point to draw lines from, when the next ballista bolt comes dangerous close.     The hand on her sword comes away with it drawn. Interrupted magic splashes against her armour as her other hand releases it, bursting in high winds. Gritting down and bearing the wave of heat, she grips Night Mist with both hands, clambers up higher in the saddle, and swings for the next bolt with a blow that's all but strength and nothing else. With no time to try and adapt the necessary footwork to use a special technique in the air, she has to take it on the shoulders to hack into the side of a bolt-head and hurl the hefty projectile away from Melady, then sit right back down and continue.     The same work again. One-handed as before. Create the anchor, draw the lines that feed into, and paint the geometry with trace energy released from her fingers. Reinforce it in place, grasp and pull, twist and flick, lay circle over circle, intersect circuit over circuit, until the heat shimmers on Melady's back and the black-gold designs are visible to the naked eye.     First, into the ballistae. A concentrated beam would risk cutting open the palisade, so Lilian disperses it into a scatter of random trajectories that revector mid-air into the ballista she can see. Draining the array down to half, she stops to recharge it, and then twists it into a tighter configurations, magic circles collapsing into a dense column that flashes as if containing an explosion, and causes several to suddenly ripple and burst both inside and outside the wall, leaving deep, ragged holes and thick airborne ash rather than setting fire and flattening fortifications. She stops, regathers her energy, and fires another burst of terrifying explosions, seemingly coming from nowhere, and then as many as she can for good measure, before finally leaping from the wyvern with her magic half-spent, and vanishes just as she begins falling towards the depot.
Petra Soroka	"... I'm sorry; who are you?"     A ways behind Audrey, Petra fails to contain her snickering and it bursts out with a snort. She covers up her mouth and looks away, shoulders quaking. A few seconds into her laughing fit, the thought suddenly strikes her that *she's* implicated in the same humiliation from back then, and it's become retroactively a million times more embarrassing now that she's actually slept with Audrey. Her giggling cuts off with a cough and a soft wheeze into silence as she gets back to planning. "Be a good girl and prove that you can work as hard as Petra; then we'll talk."     Qetra gives a goofy little salute, eyes-closed beaming. "Yes ma'am!" Petra snaps the mirror closed with a grumbling "You're so fucking embarrassing," but she got praised simultaneously so she's also suppressing a smile. Lilian has just executed a powerful technique that increases both Petra *and* Qetra's mission efficiency! "It was banditry when I did it in the Misty Isles,"     Petra thinks about this for a minute, while her thimble-sized Beauty of Ash figurine buzzes around. Language sure is a weapon that's wielded to enforce expectations of righteousness and evil by assigning connotatively-loaded synonyms to identical activities based on how society would prefer the people doing those activies to be seen, especially when it comes to political warfare! After meditating on this idea, she comes to a conclusion with a nod. "Fuck yeah. Banditry." "Remember, he..."     Just about ready to take off with the other flyers, Petra has her hand wrapped around her pendant when Lugh calls out to her and then trails off. She shoots a reassuring finger gun at him with her free hand, one eye winked closed-- she figures that's a cool, reliable soldier thing to do, probably-- and then squeezes the mirror until it cracks, causing sparkling glass to spill out and around her, forming into the Beauty of Ash leaping up off the ground. <Q-Conversation> (NPC) Lugh says, "He said he was going to learn dark magic, since he thought he had a talent for it... but there's hardly anyone who can teach it." <Q-Conversation> (NPC) Lugh says, "The villagers said the kid who looks like me was the mountain hermit's apprentice, so..." <Q-Conversation> (NPC) Lugh says, "Yeah. They said the mountain witch was taken by Bern..." <Q-Conversation> (NPC) Lugh says, "And they didn't know if it was willing or not." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Hey, quick question. Does dark magic ever look like ominously spiraling clouds?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Lugh says, "Um--!" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Echidna says, "Does right now." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka sighs. "Motherfucker."     There's no concrete evidence for it, but Petra feels absolutely dead certain that this is either Raigh's work, or his teacher's, with him nearby. It's hard to say for sure whether this counts as another betrayal in the long string of them that the army has experienced, given that they were probably pressured by the Bernish army to help, and they had no way of knowing that Roy, much less *Lugh* himself, would be traipsing through Ilia to win the war, but it's at the very least an *ideological* betrayal to fight alongside the same forces that spooked the orphanage enough to run away from it. And that abstract hypothetical of a betrayal is enough to make Petra intuitively assume that it *has* to be true.
Petra Soroka	In the air, the Beauty of Ash is a terror to the straggling pegasus knights. Being unbound from inertia and able to make hairpin turns at full speed throws aerial tactics in disarray, with the crystalline mech getting nearly within spear's reach before veering to the side and letting the pegasi sail past it. For the ballistae going faster than the mech can move, flickers of instant relocation let it dodge aside untouched, switching in a single moment from aerial quadrupedal flight to bipedal and 'startled backwards' like a human. It's not quite a dogfight, because where the Ilians likely have ranged magic on their side, all the Beauty of Ash can do is charge and tackle, like a mount and spear combined together.     But, once getting through a pair of flyers and at least being *reasonably* sure that Melady, Shanna, Thea, and Dysnomia can handle the incoming trickle with Audrey's support, Petra has to revise her mission objective. In a strict tactical sense, she'd definitely be more useful staying in the sky as one of the few fliers available, but she thinks Lilian would agree that winning a battle while killing an orphan who's also the brother of one of their allies and the foster child of another is a pretty fucking terrible trade for morale. Also, Petra would feel really bad if such a thing happened! If she can stop the spell from going off, then that's a bonus, but it's not how she's justifying turning the Beauty of Ash's snout towards the fort.     Petra takes a deep breath inside the cockpit, and then without jet thrusters or a sonic boom, the Beauty of Ash accelerates at full, reckless speed towards the fort. Streaking down from the sky like a comet, the mech impacts a patch of open ground with high enough speed to shatter with fluid dynamics, splashing glass around the field in ripples. The shards freeze in the air, telekinetically quivering where they were shot out to, leaving them as weapons held up. The Beauty of Ash pulls itself onto all fours, mud slicking off of it to leave the hardlight crystal clear besides the cracks running through it. Its head sweeps back and forth, singular eye scanning for the mage.
Odette Raskins	Lying on her back in the wagon in breathless terror while waiting for the ride to stop, Odette has time to think of what she's done in her life to get into a situation like this. If she had just been a little blinder to things, she could still be safe on one of the stations, maybe even taking some time off to visit her folks at home. At least she's the only one in danger in the back of this wagon. Hearing the sounds of pegasi and crackling magic nearby, she flicks on her radio while carefully sitting up so as to not make too much noise. Carrying case? Check. Bag? Check. All she needs to do now is sedate the pegasi, maybe sow some more chaos among those panicking soldiers, and interrupt the mages without getting herself killed. Easy. "This was a great idea," "Chad?!" Odette stage-whispers right back, eyes widening immediately with intense 'oh fuck oh shit' energy. It's one thing if she's the only one in danger with this half-baked plan, but now that Chad's here, she has a lot more to worry about! What if he gets hurt? What if he gets killed? What if- "Hh... Okay. Okay. Um. Alright. One step at a time." Odette lies to herself as she feels the years draining right out of her, teeth chattering lightly while trying not to let it show too much (and failing). "Let's see if we can't get some of those pegasi under control... Uh. Here." She hands Chad a few disposable syringes while huddling closer to Chad, holding her cloak over him to keep him (barely) shielded from view. "Don't stick yourself with those, just make sure it goes in straight and fast. They're pre-loaded, and they should be enough to knock a cow out for an hour, maybe... Worse for a person, if you really have to." Are the pegasi even close enough to inject? She glances out from under the cover of her cape, then turns back to Chad. "And then... Do you think you can get us in there after?" Her free hand gestures towards the crackling noise and also the visible energy coming from the log-building, although she looks visibly anxious about even going near the place. "Whatever they're doing in there... W-well. First things first." Odette grabs her own handful of syringes, pauses, then hands Chad some safety goggles. "Keep these on, too, just in case." She doesn't explain why before starting to slink towards the nearest grounded pegasi she can find, trying to get in close enough to them to get started on sedating the creatures. She still needs a plan for whatever's going on with that magic building, but that'll depend on Chad's ability to get them inside after this.
Desire Stars	And I'm meant to be gentle?     "Gentle and decisive, yeah. But there's a silver lining." says Ace. "Both Neon and I can fly. In my case, I don't have to be close up to handle them. We don't need to beat four for each one of us; we just need to beat enough to make the rest think we have it in us."     "You *are* good. Neon can guarantee you'll be at your best. Maybe even better," he says, his brown eyes flicking briefly towards her.     Neon beams and gives a cheery thumbs-up. It's effortful, but she imagines Melady will appreciate the energy even if it has to be affected.     The two of them wait for Melady, Shanna and Thea to lift off before transforming.     Neon inserts the colorful, musically-themed Beat Buckle on one side and the dull yet aptly named Armed Propeller buckle on the other, her right hand rising, limp at the wrist as it draws across her chest like a curious cat's paw. With a flick of her wrist, she extends her arm and makes a circle--"Heeen..." Both hands just under her chin, she strikes a second catlike pose, activating the Beat Buckle by turning the small vinyl record and dragging a glissando across its ivory keys. "Shin!~"     Ace inserts the Magnum Buckle on one side, the Boost Buckle on the other. He turns to the left, his right hand swept in a circle and held before his downturned face like a performer reaching for the brim of his hat. With one knee slightly bent, he turns his head to the right, extends his hand, and snaps his fingers, activating the Buckle with his other hand. "Henshin."                          Set! DUAL ON! Get Ready For...                                                         BOOST & MAGNUM!                                                             BEAT & ARMED PROPELLER!
Desire Stars	Ace, as the fox-themed Kamen Rider Geats, turns the motorcycle-accelerator handle of the Boost Buckle, summoning a burning-red superbike to his side.                                   BOOSTRIKER!                                       Rather than straddle it as one would a motorcycle, however, he stands atop the seat, the red plates of his greaves (and their annealed-metal exhaust pipes) gleaming in the light of the flames which quickly erupt from the bike. The vehicle's parts slide into a different configuration as it takes the form of a motorcycle-sized mechanical fox, which rears its head back and utters a cry as it takes to the sky. Leaning forward, Geats shoulders a white-red energy rifle and aims down the scope.     The figures of the swooping pegasus knights flit in and out of Geats' crosshairs. "That's it. Keep trying to hit them. That's when I can..." The crosshair trains expertly on one knight, watching how they sit in the saddle; how their weight shifts and how the stirrups strain against it. At the nadirs of their respective swoops, right when they're closest to the ground, Geats feathers the trigger, his aim diligently snapping from one to the next as he makes a series of difficult, disciplined called shots. The intent there is simple--dismount them without it being fatal, yet precisely and decisively enough to seem intimidating.
Desire Stars	Neon, meanwhile, as the cat-themed Kamen Rider Na-Go, holds a bladed flying-v guitar-axe in one hand and a hand-controlled propeller in the other, sticking closer to the other fliers than Geats does. The equalizers on her colorful breastplate bounce in time with the music that thumps the electric blue woofers and subwoofers set into her pauldrons.     'The melody of courage,' as she calls it, sharpens the reflexes of her fellow fliers and their mounts alike, eases the strain on their muscles from the exertion, hastens their flight and sees their weapons strike true and hard. The ballista's bolt flying through the air clips her, sending her into a violent spin as sparks explode--but despite her pained grunt, she steadies herself, her grip tightening on the Beat Axe.     Holding its neck close to her body but more awkwardly for the necessity of using it one-handed, she presses down a pink fret and clubs the strings with her ankle until her boot catches against it and strums out a power chord.                                    ROCK FIRE!                                       As the air around the guitar's blades ripples with visible heat, cinders swirl in the air around it. She lifts the axe and swings it underhanded as she falls back into formation with Thea, Shanna, Melady and Dysnomia, flinging a fireball towards the offending ballista.     "Heads up," she calls. "Something's happening with the sky! What is that?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel Parsons maneuvers among the Bernish defenders (the Ilian air force are swiftly outside his range, beyond a few key maneuvers) and yanks thoughts out while he unravels things within, carefully avoiding snowdrifts. Passive mental defenses distributed among the forces by the machinations of ultranationalistic conquerer sentiment, itself a kind of psychic organism with incredible mental defenses, *does* wear on Flamel's brain more than a little bit.     Storms are arriving. Between the mecha, the ballistae, the air-force undoubtedly swooping soon, the space-warping, and everything else, he darts through chaotic movement of man, explosion, guiltar riff, and impossibly-mobile steed, he moves between segments of the camp. He halts in place, disperses his invisibility, fires a massive barrage of psychic flak -- and then he's invisible again right away afterward. He targets the pegusi rather than their riders, barraging them with a rush of phobia-inducing strikes meant to add fear of heights to a horse's psyche. Horses, as you know, are already filled with perpetual terror directed towards all of existence, so anything they're not afraid of is an unusual mental exception. He should be able to get them grounded soon, but it'll take *work* to dart around and get a minute to unload that psychic flak.     Those allies who graze too close to the neon-orange airbursts and aren't notably psychically resilient will suddenly feel the ground simultaneously rushing away from them while also accelerating towards them at terrifying speed. Did you know it's morally neutral to induce fear and cognitive dissonance in a horse?     Gotta make his way to that low log-building. That's where something pretty important is. Is that someone trying to defend this place... or someone trying to break out? What sort of hostility is coming along with that magic? Can he read anything? And that selling-out... is it connected?
Marigold	The spell doesn't take as long as you'd like. A great hollow noise fills the air all around, like blowing over a jug. Purple sparks reach up from the central log building. The spiraling dark clouds, up above, hitch as if they'd hit a snag--      And a cold snap spreads across the land, creaking blades of grass as it limns them and grinding the rivers to a glasslike frozen halt. It isn't focused enough to wound, but it prickles skin, burns nostrils used a second ago to not-yet-freezing air.      Wait, but that's...      Good, actually?      The almost-marshy taiga ground is suddenly hard, stable frost underfoot. The rivers are crossable with only a little care, frozen all the way down to their beds. The pegasi panic and squeal; but horses are always doing that. Roy's forces immediately take the shortcut from the town, hurrying to the depot's walls.      Audrey bravely holds a few pegasus knights at bay at the front gate, overwhelmed by the spatial distortion or too unnerved by it to get close; a knight already in the sky plunges down behind her and tries to liberate their comrades by applying their spear to her back, but Echidna, gloriously unrestricted in her weight class by the lift capacity of a pegasus, catches up in time to hurl (the blunt side of a) throwing axe at the knight's back and then try to wrestle them to the ground off their steed.      But up in the sky it's still fierce. "Saint--!" Melady yelps on the second ballista close call. She'd already started rolling Triffin and lifting her own polearm to roll her dice on deflecting the bolt, but sighs in explosive relief when Lilian does.      With the ballistae dealt with, sky combat opens back up. Lilian, in turn, gets front-row seats to a pack of three knights trying to engulf and pick apart Melady; she gets to see the feigned desperation, the altitude-shedding as Melady lures them back towards her allies, then sharply cuts one off before they can realize they've overextended, hooking her bec-de-corbin behind their neck as Shanna binds their spear and flinging the rider down to Mia's waiting arms. "Catch her!!"      In the same way, Shanna keeps trying to seem like she's abandoned Neon to the wolf-circling knights, then flitting back in and swoop- pincering whoever takes the bait. Three times out of five it doesn't work; the fourth, augmented by Neon's song, she sticks a merciful slow-falling wound on an enemy mount; the fifth...      "Your own countrymen! Don't you have shame?!" "Uaah-- THEA! NEON! HELP!" A longer-haired, slightly-more-grizzled knight pretends to take Shanna's bait just to reverse it and stab her through the thigh, into her pegasus's lungs.      The wound won't kill. The sharp fall's more pressing. Two hundred feet's a bad altitude. "SHANNA!!" Thea calls out, diving after Shanna's disastrous plunge with hand desperately outstretched.      She might save her sister before impact. There's no way she'll save the mount.
Marigold	Ace does drop two more swooping, in the meantime, tipping the odds over into a six-on-six; one tumbles across the hard-packed dirt, tries to get up, and stays down. The other- challenged by Nobunaga- rises to a crouch, clutches a wounded abdomen with a wince, tests her ankles, and then rises with weight on her spear.      "I'm a mercenary knight of Ilia," she answers the demand for a name. (Her face is unscarred- this can't be that village's darling daughter, Talia- but she is still someone's child. Her white armor once had gold leaf; now almost all eroded by long campaigns.) "There's more honor in that than a name. Do you stand for anything more than yourself?"      Her back hand holds the spear tightly; her front hand forms a ring, and the narrow-smooth spear slides fluidly across her gloved palm to adjust the length. It's long when she needs to push Nobunaga's rifle-barrel aside to keep from getting shot while lunging; it's short when she presses in, bodies half a step apart, and tries to gut the warlord like it's a shortspear. Someone born a century after Nobunaga would name it 'owari kan ryu'.      Overhead, one more drops to Flamel's psychic flak, cursing her afflicted mount; another almost does, narrowly pulling up at its rider's jerking assistance. The dwindling odds don't seem to faze the apparent wingleader on the ground.      Down in the camp, 'artillery'-fire, Lilian's magical explosions, and Petra's crystal-fracturing landing have the badly unprepared Bernish footsoldiers scattering like ants from a kicked anthill. They're more of a challenge if they can get in formation; here they didn't have half a chance.      "Are you kidding? You're thinking about the flying horses? Raigh could be in there!" Chad protests, clearly wanting to go to the log building first. He still cedes to Odette's authority as an Older Kid(?) for at least a second, hurriedly hip-throwing two syringes at a pair of unlaunched pegasi Audrey's holding at the gate from behind- that's definitely not veterinary best practice- and jabbing a third into the thigh of an unlucky Bernish spearman who rounds a corner at him and Odette. "Come on, come on..." he murmurs, trying to wedge his knife into the crackling cabin's locked door...      But neither of the voices barely audible inside, to those close, sound like a young boy's.      "... now, I told you, young man..."      "I don't want to hear it!"      "... unreliable..."      "Traitor! TRAITOR!"      It's not too hard for Flamel to get in through the other door, and Lilian and Petra can more or less breach however they please. Parsons and Chad, though, both enter near-simultaneously on opposite sides of the same scene: a mid-grade Bernish commander in bulky armor bashing a shady-looking old woman to the ground in the middle of an elaborate ritual circle; realizing he's now surrounded by hostiles; and gripping her by the front of her robes to pull her up with his sharp axe under her chin.      "N-not a step closer! She's yours, isn't she?!" the man who must be 'Martel', from the soldiers' thoughts, says in a cold panic. The witch smiles at the new arrivals, with a bloodied lip, and winks fatalistically with her un-swollen eye.      Flamel can see Chad's shock-widened eyes do the math. This woman is likely the only one who knows where Lugh's brother Raigh is. If she dies...      In the moment Martel's back is turned, Chad panics and lunges at the six-foot-tall armored commander with Odette's sedative syringe in hand. This is a terrible, terrible idea.
Nobunaga	With the bayonet fitted, Nobunaga's rifle is really comparable to a heavy spear. It's poorly balanced, making up for lost finesse with the added weight and its primary purpose. The wounded knight, now grounded, gets right up in her face and that's a whole new problem. > "I'm a mercenary knight of Ilia. There's more honor in that than a name."     The spear pushes aside the rifle and finds itself redirected by Nobunaga's sword. There's a wild fire in her eyes, an unexpected heat in the chill air and frozen water that's pinned Great Mecha Nobbu in place. The grin on Nobunaga's face, highlighted by the sparks of metal striking metal for that briefest of seconds, isn't perhaps what's to be expected from a hateful foe. > "Do you stand for anything more than yourself?"     "Hooh~? You Pegasus knights certainly earned your reputation." When she puts her weight into it to force the spear away, it comes out trailing a thin bloody stream. There's a golden flicker behind the warrior and Nobunaga braces her feet against the metal 'hat' of Great Mecha Nobbu, throwing her weight into her foe and against the rifle that just materialized, floating behind her at knee level.     Right where she would fall, Great Mecha Nobbu's C-clamp hand waits to close around her and hold her still.     NOBU!     "There we go," Nobunaga breathes out a stream of misty breath, drawing her sword up along the saya and then sliding it inside and away, "You went straight for a general's head. I'll credit your instinct and your ability. You are most definitely a great warrior, and your village must be proud of you." Raising her hands to either side, Nobunaga turns her back to the depot as chaos envelops it. Great Mecha Nobbu obliges by moving to keep the captured knight in front of her.     "What I stand for is a world that continues to exist; and an end to this war. I stand for lands whose peoples need not suffer under the yoke of oppressors and madmen. I stand for all of Elibe who dream of a brighter tomorrow!" She turns slightly, one hand dropping, the other thrust out towards the depot itself, "Bern's campaign of devastation has seen the face of its end, and that end is Oda Nobunaga!"     A rifle materializes, dropping into her hand with a scattering of golden sparkles. Great Mecha Nobbu lifts the knight, placing her gingerly back atop its hat; and Nobunaga holds the weapon out for her to accept.     "If you truly wish for a better future for your people; for Ilia; for the village you call home-- take this, and fight the true enemy with us." That smile returns to her face, earnest and sincere now, "And don't worry about the pay. I know your village relies on your income and I'm not going to expect a proud honor-bound mercenary to work for free."
Odette Raskins	"Raigh..." Odette can't say no to that, but she also doesn't feel safe with the pegasi around even with Audrey's magic weighing them down and Flamel teaching them to fear the skies as nature intended. She can't even blame him for chucking the syringes at the horses or jabbing them into that guy, and she hurriedly follows after him once she gets a few of her own syringes cleanly jabbed into a few other flying horses on the way. "Sorry. Figured we'd be safer heading in if we took care of those first, so..." Feeling a bit guilty about that, she takes a deep breath to steady herself as he gets those doors open, then pats her case to indicate she's ready. "Okay! Ready when you are." Thankfully, she doesn't hear anyone's voice that might be Lugh's brother, but Odette does hear and see something else a just as worrying: An armored guy beating up an old woman! confusion settles on her face when he threatens the older woman, too, although Odette still looks uneasy at the obvious threat even when it's not leveled towards her and Chad. "Is that...? Do you think that's the moun-" Odette starts to ask Chad in another stage-whisper, but she cuts herself off when she realizes he's not next to her anymore. Yes, it's a terrible idea, but Odette's seen what happens when people with terrible ideas charge in alone: They get hurt, they get killed, and nobody's happy. At least if she can turn it into a two on one, she can improve the odds of survival drastically for both Chad and herself! That's just what she has to tell herself to cope with the fact that she's already started sprinting after Chad towards Martel. Rather than taking out more sedatives, she instead brings out her injector gun and loads it hastily with a pre-mixed cocktail of muscle relaxants. She comes in from the side opposite Chad, aiming her own injection from that side to try and catch Martel with a double-whammy of cow tranquilizers and paralytics before he can muster any more strength against the witch.
Lilian Rook	Firing any more bombardment magic might risk hitting someone Lilian doesn't want to, and besides, is costly and not what it's specialized to do. The rest of her fall is carried out unseen, where she lands in the back of a supply yard near the palisade with barely a snowy crunch. There, she waits for long enough to interpret what she's seeing with the dark ritual, holding her breath for the moment she may have to 'teleport' to the mage and take him down, only to release it in a foggy stream when it turns out to help rather than harm their side; she'd like to imagine it's a friend, but it's also, plausibly, panic and incompetence, though she hasn't yet met a dark mage both that powerful and that inexperienced.     That question is answered as soon as she breaches the building opposite of Flamel. If a Bernish commander is screaming about treachery and trying a hostage tactic, she can only be local. Lilian, sword in hand, raises an arm to gesture where Flamel can see it, signalling to do something about Martel's proximity to the witch as soon as it's safe, planning to do something about his weapon herself. It falls apart when Chad leaps out of hiding.     §Shit! Don't yell or he'll see him! Too much armour to take him down on the spot! Axe is right in front of her; can't shoot! One thing to do--!§     Lilian skips from the door to Martel, sword sheathed and empty hands pressed to his outer wrist and grabbing under the head of his axe; a curled-finger empty-palm strike to the back of the former and a wrenching twist with the other, with iffy odds of actually harming him, but which puts her in a position to hold back his axe even in the worst case, so long as the witch doesn't do anythng stupid trapped between them.     Lilian knows perfectly well how tough (and weighty) Bern's heavy commanders are, so her next instant of motion is spent leveraging the weapon back while she attacks his footing from the side below, aiming to knock him down in a moment of surprise; not much advantage to herself, but leaving Chad perhaps able to reach above the collar.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel breaches the log building with tactical precision and expertise, synchronizing with the rhythm of nearby mental processes in their low points and rushing inside in a battle-ready stance. Two fingers from his left hand on his temple, two from his right held like a gun. "MARTEL! *DROP YOUR WEAPON*!" He calls out, in a serious tone, brandishing the gleaming fingertips in a tight, tactical stance. "*Nobody* has to get hurt! Stop, deep breaths, and think *now*!" He firms his grip when he sees that axe press under the chin... "I SAID *GROUNDING EXERCISES*, *NOW*!"     The SWAT-team tone mixes with the therapist's tactics in a... confusing way. But he works to try to occupy the man's attention -- and he's hopefully doing well when Chad jumps in. Irresponsibly trying to slip a syringe into the gaps of armor meant to stop vastly more powerful piercing weapons. Ah, fuck. Fuck. FUCK! CHAD!! *AXE BEATS LANCE CHAD NOOOO*!!     Flamel moves fast. He wants to protect this old woman, but Chad is a young, out-of-place, struggling child -- Flamel's gut moves to support him more than it moves to pursue his actual objective. And despite what the Psychonaut-Gastronaut feud may say, the gut decides this first. His hand-gun construct fires, attempting to blast the man dead-on with a stun round that risks the old woman's life unless someone else can get the axe handled or that injection takes FAST with a classic choloral-hydrate-gargle-blast. But it should get Martel disoriented enough that Flamel can tear down his coordination and keep him from hurting Chad -- maybe even let Chad and Odette get that syringe in, and hopefully Lilian can stop the axe...     Flamel is one of the ones who encouraged bringing Lugh and Chad along, making sure they wouldn't get sent back. If one of them died on his watch, he wouldn't be able to bear it. His telekinetic marksmanship moves before his conscious thought does, even when he should prioritize an important objective.
Dysnomia	Spears rip into Dysnomia. Knights, realizing what's happening to them, throw their lance at her in riposite in a last gasp. Others, seeking to stop her from harrying their countrymen, stab through Dysnomia with a spear. She grunts, and cries, and holds at her wounds...but within moments, the mist of her body closed back over her.     Yet, her blood still lingered in the air, and her presence just that bit thinner with each strike.     But, Dynsomia wasn't alone. "I have her." Dysnomia's thoughts rang in Shanna's ears, and just so, another misty hand snagged the falling knight from the air--seized her spear--hurled it deep into the woods--lowered her to the ground, letting her roughly--but decidely not lethally--fall.     It was impossible to hate the knights, even as they were entangled up here. She felt their determination. Their conviction. She could feel, in the texture of their thoughts, the desperate faces of the people they'd left behind. I'm so glad, she allowed herself to think, in the tumult of battle, in the privacy of her own thoughts, We get to let you live.     The ballista found her before guilt did, landing straight in her midsection in a moment of piece, and in shock she falls, sharply, downward.     Still falling, she grabs hold of the ballista bolt, and with a hiss, pulled it free in a smoky shower--     --a figure plummeted past her face--     --It took a moment for her to register what she'd seen. But as her eyes slipped down, they caught hold of Shanna's falling body, and her heart dropped. Momentarilly, her thoughts wandered.     She could feel the whisper of intents around her, aimed at Shanna. Thea, sharp and distressed, close behind. And... "Neon." Her thought found the rider in a whisper, at the back of her mind. "I'll save the pegasi." Without words came through the intent, So you can focus on her.
Audrey Basque	The sudden snap of COLD makes Audrey shiver; it's enough to mess with her focus, when everything indicated whatever was brewing in the sky was going to be some kind of tornado spell. It may not be harmful, but she's not dressed for the cold much! And she's under fire, and focusing on the gate, and--     Echidna swoops in to save Audrey.     "T-Thank you!"     Well, she is in every way the mage you want to give cover to. She might be really good at defensive applications of her tricks, but under concentrated fire, or a surprise attack, she'd be in a lot of trouble.     Chad comes in hot too! Sedating some of the mounts as he rushes past takes heat off Audrey, who can turn her attention skyward to rectify *that* problem. But it also distracts her, with how chaotic everything became all of a sudden. A stray arrow, a stray javelin, it doesn't take much; her field is unfocused enough they don't bend all the way, and she gets a shoulder nicked by a javelin, tearing her cloak a bit too, while an arrow narrowly grazes her hip and pierces the cloak to hit the ground.     It's not an 'ouch!' so much as a grunt, like she's trying not to vocalize any louder than she has to but really wants to.     If not for Petra this would be debilitating pain.     Audrey feels a certain way about having that thought at all, and she's not sure where she's leaning on if that's good or bad.     Though right now, perhaps, it's simply unquestionably good, because she still has the focus to reach up and try to pull down one or two of the knights and their pegasi still harassing the airborne fighters.
Desire Stars	Uaah-- THEA! NEON! HELP! I'll save the pegasi.      "Okay! Shanna, I'm coming!" Na-Go tosses the Beat Axe aside; it disappears into electric pink-blue voxels after crossing a few feet away. The subwoofers on her pauldrons continue to thrum and fill the air with her empowering song as she flicks the Propeller Buckle.                                 PROPELLER STRIKE!                                      The rotor's buzzing grows louder, the revolutions of the blades so fast that in addition to their strobing effect, a burning corona surrounds the outer perimeter. She rockets through the air, empty hand outstretched to catch Shanna in the crook of her arm. As the ground approaches at frightening speed, the only thing on her mind is preventing Shanna from meeting it.      She won't save the horse--but maybe Dysnomia can. Shanna, she can save by a margin of inches, digging cracked furrows into the frozen ground and sending up a spray of ice cold, muddy earth in clods. The energy discharges explosively behind her, and the landing is rough enough that the two of them tumble, but they'll live, with some bruises to show for it.      Geats, meanwhile, covers her with a sustained hold on the trigger, sending a concentrated lance of energy between the two grounded fliers and their more experienced adversary.      "I don't want to hear about shame from someone helping Bern!" says Na-Go, rising to her feet to summon the Beat Axe back to her hand. "Do you think being a mercenary absolves you of having to choose who you work for?! It doesn't! I'm here because I want to fight for the things that Bern steps on everywhere their soldiers go!"     She opens fire with a blast of lightning from the Beat Axe, swinging it back overhead for another as she protects Shanna. "The bonds between people, the love they have for each other, whether it's between family or friends or something more romantic, Bern is tearing them apart like they're nothing, turning people against each other and hardening their hearts--and I can't be who I say I am if I just sit and let that happen!" She squeezes the throttle on the Propeller and takes to the sky again, swinging the axe to ward off a strike without actually hurling a projectile this time.      "So even though you're better at this than me, I have to win. Especially if there's a Talia here to give a message to." Na-Go is the less experienced combatant and the less experienced fighter; she is, however, not the same fresh-faced, intimidated greenhorn she was when she first put on her belt.      Compared to the rider opposite her, her discipline falls short, her training is less substantial, her understanding of her weapon's reach and angles of threat are incomplete. But, in tune as she is with her own melody, Na-Go takes trades in the way that only the daring and the desperate can, absolute in the certainty of their cause. Rather than striking to kill, she strikes to ground, letting her armor distribute the punishment it costs to get into range and going for meaty impacts with the flat of the Beat Axe at low points to try and either knock the rider off her mount or wind her through sheer blunt-force fatigue.
Dysnomia	Moving downward along with Neon, Dysnomia moves in a sharp spiral. Through her head, she started to calculate against the weight gravity, the momentum of an extended fall. While she felt Neon focused on Shanna, Dysnomia's attention curled around the horse.     Mist congealed and swirled around her, forming one great hand?, large enough to hold Shanna's horse easily in its grasp. She seized it...held it...Careful, now. So careful...     With thrust, she changed the direction of her fall--not sharply, that could risk whiplash--but gradually. The straight-down fall evened out into curve, with all of the speed no longer pointed down but sideways.     She allowed the pegasi touch down...or even fly free, if it was able.
Petra Soroka	Without anyone with little dark magic robes and green hair running around in the scurry of Bernish soldiers, nor blue-haired village darling mercenary knights, the Beauty of Ash quickly moves on from the yard. Spinning glass shrapnel from her landing darts around to slash at the soldiers' hands or weapons, more pressuring them to be disarmed than going for a kill, while the mech itself limps away on uneven legs that shattered along fault lines at different lengths. When the magic emissions shoot upwards from the cabin, the Beauty of Ash pounces on it in a second, scraping against the outside like an entire squad of pegasus hooves.     Its head rears back to rip a hole through the roof and scuttle inside, but a moment of intuition causes Petra to hesitate. Bringing down the roof on top of the person that she's theoretically trying to save is likely a *bad* move, even if it's the most direct and simple path towards what she wants, and would certainly be intimidating enough to stop a spell. She's not in a position to notice any beneficial effects from the magic, and even if she was, her gut instinct would tell her that this is just the first stage to a spell that *will* totally fuck them up and maybe freeze all of them, until the words through the door are dimly audible in the cockpit. "Traitor! TRAITOR!"     'Traitor'? But that's *our* word!     Petra slides off the roof in a waterfall of broken glass that follows her as if magnetized, drawn towards filling in the mirror hanging around her neck. She steps into the building behind Chad-- which is the first time she's noticed him in the fort because of his sneaking, causing her to double take for a moment-- and then there's a flurry of movement that happens in an instant when Chad lunges towards Martel.     The assertion that 'she's ours' penetrates Petra's mind more by instinct than by conscious realization. The expectation that they'd be fucked over by *someone* today is too deeply rooted in her chest to be fully extracted over the course of the several heartbeat exchange, but this old woman is being held at axe-edge by a big scary evil general who's very obviously the target for Petra's hostility right now. The slurry of the defensive expectation of betrayal, the shouts of 'traitor', and the image in front of her, blend together into an irrational emotional sensation that somehow, it's *Martel* who's betraying them, and he needs to be stopped from doing anything further.     Petra presses her hand to her mirror and draws out one of Angela's loaned glowing Pages, which dissolves into golden light around her to be equipped. The Page of Audrey Basque takes shape as a night-black silhouetted version of Nova Heliosanctus's uniform scattered with stars, and Petra reaches for Audrey's magic to stretch the space around Martel's axe like taffy. After Lilian's brief disruption of his movement, any way he swings the axe will have the mountain hermit or Chad out of reach, dragged away by pulled-apart areas of the room.
Marigold	Shanna reaches up. Thea reaches down. Drops of blood and tears, stationary in the air, communicate between them. I'm not going to make it, and Yes you are you idiot, struggle to connect.      Neon's swoop steals the air from both their lungs: third option. Shanna's eyes widen, and her hand grips tight enough to bruise just before impact. "Ahhhh---! Ghhhh... I'm, okay..."      "Elimine preserve us," Thea can be heard murmuring as she pulls out of her dive and wheels around. "SHANNA, NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!" "I didn't- guh- do anything, Thea!"      The wounded pegasus makes absolutely unholy noises in Dysnomia's palm(?), but that's normal for horses. It doesn't seem to want to stand, but lies on its side and weakly squirms its legs when she sets it down; probably it'll be fit to fly again after Lucius works his magic later.      "Hey. There, there. See, I made it too..." Shanna blearily says from the ground nearby, reaching out to touch its hoof comfortingly and smile at Mia in a silent thanks.      "So we'd be better off tearing each other apart?!" the long-haired pegasus knight barks back at Neon, catching one of Ace's shots on her quick-drawn saber and another on her breastplate. "We don't need your opinions, or your 'Talia's'," she doesn't recognize the name, on what's best for Ilia! A good civil war would soften us up for Etruria now, wouldn't it?"      Rhetorical, sound and fury. Her Wing's falling apart behind her. The veteran lashes out and trades blows with Neon for a minute, but Neon's got more of an appetite for that than her. When she takes two good hits and her spear breaks blocking a third-- "Shit!!"-- it jars her into reassessing her position. Judging by the snappy seething retreat that follows, she could tell it wasn't good.      Melady does her final high-circling rounds, but the remaining knights scatter now rather than engage her against anti-air fire. And down below...      The other grizzled knight coughs on unexpected hard landing from the trip, blearily looks up, takes a moment to get her bearings after relocation, and then... hesitates to take the rifle. But she does consider it. Her pegasus re-lands nearby.      "Thank you for your compliments, strange lady," she mutters, "but even if it's right to fight Bern, what am I supposed to do? No-one will buy our loyalty if it's fickle. Betraying an employer is betraying one's village. Besides, if the High Wingleader knew I was in breach of contract, she would..."      ... She thinks of something. Reaching into her belt, she pulls out a black handkerchief; tucks it under the metal headband at her brow; and thus makes it a gauzy anonymizing veil hanging over her upper face.      "Ahem. Rather, it seems I've tragically died in battle, and you've obtained the services of the mysterious masked knight... Sekva. How's that?" And then she takes the gun.      ITEM GET: x1 GENERIC PEGASUS KNIGHT
Marigold	Echidna stands up with a junior pegasus knight limply under her arm like a sack of potatoes. "You're welcome. Good work there, I think," she says, gesturing at the weird spatial morass that she doesn't fully understand but that seems to be keeping Bernish and Ilian soldiers tarpitted.      Pulling a lone knight out of the sky isn't too hard when Audrey can put her focus behind it. Unfortunately, it's that focus that's the problem. When an arrow hits her, Echidna gets distracted from bonking loose spearmen again, pulls out a vulnerary, and nearly pours it down Audrey's throat. "Here, girl. Haven't you thought about wearing armor out here?" she says, with the tone of a sympathetic 'well, shit'. "You're everybody's favorite to bully, looks like."           The hissing of Chad's sharp inhalation just before the pounce alerts Commander Martel to look behind him. The boy's eyes are tiger-wide, every cord in his body tight. Thank Elimine it's a syringe he happened to have in his hand, and not the knife.      It'd all be over for Chad if not for the axe being bound, warped, and then grabbed. After a failed attempt to make good on his hostage, he lets go of the mountain witch to throw a punch at Lilian to try to get his axe back- but that lets Flamel jolt him, as she slumps to the floor and no longer act like a shield-      And that lets Chad grab Martel's shoulder, practically climb the man's back, and plunge the syringe into his neck from above the armor's gorget just as Odette does the same. "Haaaah--" comes out of him more like a leak than a sound of triumph as Martel slides to the floor with a strangled noise.      Chad punches the fallen man in the face once. Then waits about two seconds, to see if that felt like enough. It doesn't, so Chad does it again. "Stay out!" he says, pointlessly, and then finally pants and straightens up to look at the hermit.      "Oh, my. Thank you all, darlings. You're with Etruria, aren't you...? And I'd just gotten in over my head," she mumbles, sitting up and trying to smile again while rubbing her jaw. "It would've been more convenient, I suppose, if I'd died, but..."      "What's that have to do with anything? Where's Raigh?!" Chad says, still obviously adrenaline-shot.      "Ohoho, excuse you, boy. Mind your--"      "No, where is he! His brother's here!"      "... Ah. Well. They took him, boy. But first, someone help an old woman up?"      There's no way she actually can't get up off the floor. She looks near eighty, but she sure did take a jab to the jaw like a champ.
Audrey Basque	Audrey, in no state to argue with Echidna even if she were completely pristine and fresh out of bed, almost has a conniption when she's offered the healing draught. "A-Ah, no, it's-- I shouldn't-- I mean--" It's panic, in the moment, until things slow down just enough for her to actually think about it. No, this isn't-- she's allowed to have *this* healed, surely?     She takes the vulnerary, hesitantly, eyeing it like it might be poison, or somehow lead to worse than just gashes ruining her white blouse right now. It takes her entirely too long to finally pop it open and sip, but very pointedly she seems to not want to drink it all the way.     "Thanks... and ah... I guess it'd be handy to wear something or another, yeah..." Favorite to bully... even she's picking up on that, huh?     "It's not supposed to be a problem if I can pay attention, but I'm off my game. What little of it I have."     Oh... right... they don't have infinite time.     "We should probably start moving stuff now that things seem calm. Oh... here." She reaches into her cloak, her hand disappearing in the black starry pattern, and pulls out a black cloth bag, offering it to Echidna.     "This bag's magical. Fill it up as much as you like with whatever's not bolted down around the camp."`
Flamel Parsons	Flamel "holsters" his hand-gun with a quick jab of the palm against the temple. There's even a soft click of a safety. He checks Chad first, then Martel, and then, well, by then Odette's probably got this witch well in hand, but he keeps guard, and tilts his head to one side to greet her.     "Flamel Parsons, agent of a vague yet ominous order. Looks like you helped out a lot! I'm going to interpret everything you say with the best possible sentiments, in the immediate future!" Always so *clear*. "We have a lot of interest in Raigh, in Ilia, and in enacting a varied and disruptive agenda throughout the entire continent of Elibe! Specifically, stopping Bern's dark agenda. You *need* to meet the commander I'm backing. Good for walking? Our medic's a genius, but you can ride the wagons while we're getting out of here with them!"     Once things are loaded and prepped, and they better be loaded and prepped fast, he's going to telekinetically grab one of the wagons and get the hell *right out*. "This is gonna be a lot easier now! That rain was gonna be a mess." He calls out, excitedly levitating the entire thing over a frosted river.