Scene #9426: Tae-Young Produce Company-3

Owner	Pose
Distortion Dets.	Down, down, down. Moses shouts, wordless, at the sight of her sidekick falling, launching into frantic, unsteady demands that the group backtrack to the monolith chamber, the clear answer to what is 'below', at the base of the central channel of the facility. A fall like that is disastrous, clutched in the monster's grip- the lockdown is lifted, the exits opened, getting out is possible, but Moses won't, without Ezra secured and with her, dead, alive, or in any other form. As such, with no room for negotiating- it's back to the elevator shaft she trudges, any in tow who will. -CLANG- -CLANG- -CLANG- There's no disguising the sounds of combat, echoing out from the basement chamber. Even before crawling back out of the elevator's hatch, metallic ringing, mass against hard surfaces, fills the air, and begs one to wonder what the distorted monster must be doing to the Detective's assistant. Throughout the rushed backtracking, Moses has looked absolutely nauseous with worry, imagining worst-case possibilities as to what state she'll eventually find her loyal sidekick in- But whatever she's imagining, it can't be the one the Elites emerge out into, can it? Ezra(?) looms, shoulders heaving, in the center of the room, holding the monster's fleshy mass beneath her, slammed again, and again, and again onto the smooth face of the monolith until the floor around it has started to crack and crater. As if in some manner of acknowledgement to the group's presence, hands covered up in bloodstained gauntlets grab the shoulders, and start to rip, bones crackling and distorted flesh falling to pieces, all while still in the heart of the monolith's column of smoke. When she finally looks over to the group, a smiling-yellow mask obscures her face, not letting even one drop of blood stay stuck to it from the spray- and jagged, metal-crafted antlers jut out from the sides of her head. Where tears and gouges have damaged her jacket, shining metal is visible underneath, but the frayed edge-threads bleed that same hazy smoke. Evident to even those with a limited knowledge of the phenomenon, Ezra has distorted. "Detective, you made it! I got a little lost, I think, but look, I handled our little problem!" "Ezra, get out of that smoke." "Huh? But, why? I think it looks a little scary, but I feel as good as ever!" "No, Ezra. You're Distorting- or you already have. Step out of it, we'll see if it's not too late for me to fix-" "Why?!? Detective, I'm as happy as can be, can't you see? Here, look, I'm smiling, you always worry less when I'm smiling!" "I can see that- but it doesn't change anything, get over here and-" "Detective! Look me in the eyes, and you'll see!" "What- I can't, Ezra! Take off that mask, and maybe-" "Okay, if you can't, I'll do it for you, just let me grab you, I'll make you look myself!" Stumbling, Ezra(?) steps out of the thickest reaches of the smoke, starting a charge in the detective's direction. Panicked, cursing, Moses exhales a blood-red cloud of smoke, shaping itself into a blade in her hand where her pipe should be. She takes a guard stance, blatant panic on her face, mixed in with frustration, guilt, and anger. "She's not being reasonable- well, then that means we've no choice but to treat this unruly child as any other Distortion to solve." The emotion in Moses' voice seems out of place, anathema to the pleading words of her distorted sidekick- but, it will be a fight.
Vantablitz Remnants	Ahn's utterly irrational believe that there has to be a way out of all of this, temporarily adopted for the purposes of mindset only, pays off one more time. Nerves soaked with adrenaline, too wired to shiver, she hammers the last few keys, throws the final row of switches all at once with the back of her hand, and staggers away from the console with the look of someone searching through the next exit to doggedly stumble through, just ahead of disaster. When Moses stops to draw and shoot, Ahn skids to a halt and watches, stunned. Seconds after Moses has actually fired the shot, when Ezra seems to be in control, Ahn blurts out "You could do that the entire time?" with a betrayed-sounding edge to it. She abruptly goes silent again when Ezra falls down the hole instead. Stuck in place, staring into the darkness at the bottom, transfixed, Ahn struggles for words. All she finds in the end, when she dares to look at Moses, is, "I'm so sorry . . ." ". . . Wait we're going back?! N-no way! That's-- Are you kidding?! All over again?! Are you crazy?! Now's our chance to get out of here! That's what she-- wh-what she was hoping for! Snap out of it!" . . . . . . . . Unfortuantely for Ahn, no matter how much she might try to argue 'secure your own mask first' in the face of overwhelming odds, the survivalist-minded majority of her is still shouted out by the bone-deep reflexes in the minority: helping someone scared and desperate, and, not being left stranded on her own. During the run back, she finds just enough time to marvel at the fact that she still feels either of those things, and to wonder if the length of time since it last mattered is responsible for their intensity. Clambering out the bottom of the elevator shaft, she's working on a more deliberate choice of words to try and convince Moses not to linger, regardless of-- 'Detective, you made it!' "Whoa you're alive?!" Twice in two minutes. Ahn is slower than she'd like to be in noticing the mangled corpse of the Distortion(?) underneath her. The chills that drip backwards up her spine kick her back into the air of nervous forced-politeness she had back in the office. "W-wow! You're amazing! Is that mask like your secret weapon? Like, your 'final resort'? Th-that's so cool!" she says, laughing nervously between breaths. "I really never expected . . . I-I guess sometimes miracles really do happen. Haha! Wow. Um. No, sorry! We have to go! Quick!"
Vantablitz Remnants	'No, Ezra. You're Distorting- or you already have. Step out of it, we'll see if it's not too late for me to fix-' "What?" Ahn turns her head to Moses, searching expression. 'Why?!? Detective, I'm as happy as can be, can't you see?' "Huh?" Ahn turns her head to Ezra. 'Here, look, I'm smiling, you always worry less when I'm smiling!' ". . . Oh . . ." She purses her lips together. 'Detective! Look me in the eyes, and you'll see!' 'What- I can't, Ezra! Take off that mask, and maybe-' None of this has anything to do with escaping from plant-derived biohorror; different gears turn inside Ahn's head than before. A creeping pall of recognition comes over her. Her voice comes out reluctant; nervous, halfway between what she knows she should say and knowing better than saying anything at all. "Um. Detective. I don't think you're really listening to . . ." 'She's not being reasonable- well, then that means we've no choice but to treat this unruly child as any other Distortion to solve.' "Detective!" Ahn gasps out, exasperation cut with shock at Ezra's approach. Diving ungracefully out of the way, Ahn stops herself against the wall, catching and supporting herself with her hand, the other wobbling in Ezra's direction with her gun out. "You don't actually mean we're going to kill her! You just made us run all the way down here to save her!!"
Veronica	Veronica probably shouldn't be surprised that so much smoke exposure has caused Ezra to distort, but she still gasps a little at what she sees. This is her first time interacting with a person both before and after they've distorted, and the difference is remarkable to witness. "Woah, uh-" she says, visibly impressed (if a little grossed out) by the sheer violence Ezra demonstrates on the hostile giant. "So, does... we don't have to stay down here now, right? Unless-" she's cut off by the tense exchange between the Detective and Ezra, before she can suggest a next course of action. Seems like Ezra is going off the plan. "Okay, woah, woah," Veronica says as Ezra rushes Moses. ...that means we've no choice but to treat this unruly child as any other Distortion to solve. Veronica holds out her concrete left arm to raise a chunk of shattered floor as a makeshift barricade between Moses and Ezra - it may not keep them apart for long, but hopefully it buys enough time for Moses to react. "We're- you're not just gonna beat her up, right? There's like a core, an emotional core - you've talked about this, we have to figure out why she's like this-in-particular, right?" Then, turning slightly to face the onrushing Ezra, she calls out, "Hey! The Detective is safe now, you've dealt with that monster! I don't- we can just deal with the rest of the sickos running this place and be done with it!" Veronica waves her telekinetic shield around to try to keep it between Ezra and the Detective, though it's not a very committal gesture. She doesn't know if she'll get in trouble for attacking Ezra directly, and isn't desperate enough to try regardless!
Petra Soroka	Given how Petra's been acting today, maybe it's a surprise that she's as amenable to joining Moses as she is, for no sake besides checking on Ezra. Then again, maybe it isn't. She could have any number of reasons, more if Moses includes the uncharitable ones-- from perverse voyeurism as she has been this entire mission, combined with a lack of regard towards the danger that this situation poses to her, or maybe she just wants to see the monolith and the monster again, or even the unlikely possibility of being worried about Ezra herself. Either way, after a minimal, but extant, amount of help in the tower, Moses's fears have brought along her blood-splattered specter trailing along beside her. Watching Ezra plummet down into the column of smoke, Petra doesn't immediately leap into action, uncertain of the effect the smoke might have on her, and-- whether or not she's willing to help at all, she's definitely not willing to play hero, it seems. Her boots paff-crunch on the mud and trampled greenery when she drops down from the catwalk, still unarmed while they head towards the elevator shaft. Eventually, when stepping into the monolith room, Petra asks Moses, "So. How do you usually treat Distortions, when you find them? They're monsters, sure, and the true nature of most of the people in the City is completely abhorrent, but do you prefer to treat it as a disease or a cure?" "I've always liked the idea of 'crucibles' for people. Trials of moral character that you can't deny or escape. So on average, I think I like most of the Distortions I've met, personally." "Here, look, I'm smiling, you always worry less when I'm smiling!" Metal flows in fluid rivulets up the outline of Petra's body, down her arm in coils until pooling in her palm. In the pure-metal sword that contorts into being, Moses can see slices of a reflection with blonde hair, corpse-pale skin, a black suit, and a glimmer of 220,gold). This isn't really a battle Petra needs to fight, verbally or physically, but she's here to observe, and that means getting up close. ... Also, she just can't really accept the particular apathetic cruelty of walking away when Moses looks like that and Ezra's fate is unknown. At least she has the dignity to keep the notepad out of her hands for now, even if her phone is still scrolling with bullet points to be edited later. Among those notes is a glimmer of curiosity at Moses's weapon, and thankfully, there's someone right here to ask! "YuRia, does the color of her smoke mean something?" Meaning Moses's, not Ezra's, though there's a lot of smoke going around in this room. Petra's participation in Ezra's first thundering charge is to melt her own weapon again, quickly morphing it into a metal shield that intercepts Ezra at an angle to throw off the momentum of her sprint before returning to Petra's hand as a sword. Somewhat distant from the melee, Petra carefully angles herself around in an arc to get closer to the monolith behind Ezra herself.
Regulus	Regulus retrieves her gear, shoves it back into her bag, and follows along with APPLe down. She'd say she's sure that Ezra's okay but the last time she said someone could be okay, they found a corpse! So she's going to try reverse psychology and fear the worse to see if she can trick fate. This does mean that she can't reassure Moses but she'd feel a little strange reassuring Moses again after what happened last time. Of course, as she hears the sound of combat, Regulus is at least assured that she's fine enough to be fighting! ''Are you kidding?! All over again?! ... Now's our chance to get out of here!'' "I...I've got enough candy to invisible us once we're ready to make a break for us. So it should be fine. We can't leave Ezra behind right?" Regulus asks of Ahn. "She's part of the Watch too after all and it sounds like she's still fighting--" And then they find her, having trounced the monster! "Oh marvy, Ezra! You were able to take down that Distortion all by yourself, that's incredible!" And then she sees the mask. Regulus quirks her head to the side, not really seeingf this as a sign of Distortion--it's a mask, not a dramatic transformation! For all she knows she just put that on her face! But then she sees the antlers which clues her in. But she squints. As far as changes go, it doesn't seem like they're that intensive, does it? ''The charge'' "Ah! Wait! Wait!! Sensitive equipment are in here!" She tosses her bag aside but ends up clotheslined, all the same, spinning around twice dizzily before she outright does, in fact, duck behind Hibiki. "W-woah woah Detective, we're going to fight her? We RAN LIKE HELL from the Distortion we just beat up!" Regulus stammers. "Is there another way? What's her favorite tune? Maybe we can hum it and she'll chill out?" Regulus is, it seems, not exactly willing to abandon Ezra in this state but is PRETTY UNEASY the idea of trying to overpower her. And she squeaks faintly as Ahn suggests their job if to actually kill her. "W-w-woah! I'm not killing a fellow mate from the Watch--!" She throws up her hands. "How do you normally handle Distortions, Detective?" But she steps back, snapping her fingers, unleashing small colorful firework flashes around Ezra to try and keep her distracted. ''Does the color of her smoke mean something?'' She sees Petra making her way to the monolith. "Petra, mate!" She says, oblivious to the idea that it probably won't affect her. "You don't want to distort too, do you love?"
Hibiki Tachibana	"Ezra--!!" Hibiki is less following Moses and more sprinting alongside her on their way back down to where they were before, panting for breath beneath her scarf and refusing to slow her pace for anything until they're back down there. Damnit, she should've found a way to stick with Ezra the entire way...! If anything happened to her because she was fighting alone, then it won't just be bad for Ezra, but Moses... It's hard to tell if what they encounter is better or worse than the various alternatives that the detective was turning through her head. Wide-eyed, she slows to a stop as they enter, jaw slack and focus drifting between every distorted aspect of the Fixer clear and visible through the plume of smoke. The glint of metal, the dark clouds billowing, the brutal violence that feels gut-droppingly familiar... and that mask obscuring her face. Entirely silent as detective and assistant have their back and forth, eventually her mouth closes back up and she dry swallows. The responsibility from that day-- the aftereffects of the White Night and Dark Days feels heavier than ever. It's not her first time facing a Distortion, and far from the first time that gravitas has sunk in. But it's different when it's a friend right in front of you. That charge towards Moses gets her body moving faster than her mind. Before she knows it, she's sprung forward and gotten in the way to intercept Ezra head-on, throwing both arms forward to catch her by the arms and make an effort at slowing slow her up. Yet another physical blockage between her and Moses-- and Regulus too, actually. There's a dangerous metallic whine from her gauntlets as she tries to contend strength against strength, but she slams her feet down, sparks flying, to brace as much as possible. "Listen, damnit...!" Hibiki huffs out through clenched teeth, face scrunched with strain. "Listen! If you want Moses to look at you straight, you should /know/ trying to force it this way isn't how to do it!" She looks like there's a half-dozen more things she wants to say, especially in the wake of Moses' cutting words but far different expression, but Ezra is strong even when /not/ Distorted. After a sharp inhale-- She leaps back a meter, just to dive back in right after her feet touch the ground again, going to try and get back into a more favorable grapple to keep her stalled for as long as she can. Pulling her punches against people is something she does almost automatically - but they can't really /afford/ to pull too many of those right now if they're going to hold her off. At least she has the advantage of a lot more non-lethal ways of contending than some of the others.
Petra Soroka	"You don't actually mean we're going to kill her!" "Distortions are complicated, kinda like people. Sometimes there's no choice but to execute them, sometimes not." Petra feels increasingly bad about Ahn's presence here, because that swivel from 'grim, numb task-completion' to 'secondhand grief and distress' to 'terror and shock' from Ahn over the past few minutes has started to stress her out too much to keep up her Bit. "Maybe the Detective even knows something I don't, haha. But either way, we can't leave her like this, and we can't take her with us like this, and if a Distortion like this got out into the Nest then it'd just totally waste it. Does it help to think that we might be the only thing preventing potentially thousands of people dying on the surface? Er-- well, it probably doesn't." "You don't want to distort too, do you love?" Petra covers her mouth with the sleeve over her elbow to shield herself from the smoke, sidestepping between two sets of hands from crushed, gory corpses laid on the ground. "Ah, well, maybe if mine turned out as pretty as Ezra's, I wouldn't mind much. Really, I think a bunch of my friends would be pretty happy if I did." This is a little joke. Petra would mind very much. But there's a lot of questions that she has about the monolith that could even be relevant to the fight they're having now-- primarily in the way that it mimics the early Cogito injections that created the Abnormalities, but to produce something that's distinctly a Distortion instead.
Distortion Dets.	'YuRia, does the color of her smoke mean something?' "Yes!" Any amount of further prodding gets her to actually spit out the answer, albeit only ever whispered, "Four colors of them, different use, and different feelings associated with each! You'll see that red a lot, she's got a lot of it. Oh- don't tell her I'm saying this?" YuRia stays put inside the elevator, leaning out of the doorway and not minding the not-yet-dry blood of Manager Kang as she does so. "Watch, watch! You'll see a lot here, you know. If you can record it, show me later? We can take notes together- no, wait, Moses won't ever say yes to me doing that, so... slip me the recording before you leave today!" She doesn't know if there even is one. 'Um. Detective. I don't think you're really listening to . . .' "I'm not, because she's speaking nonsense. 'Look at her' like this? I haven't seen anything but that mask on her face for months. Its useless, for her to want that from me." 'You don't actually mean we're going to kill her! You just made us run all the way down here to save her!!' "Of course I don't!" Hissed, Moses barely looks Ahn's way- "'Solve', I said! Confront and pacify, through whatever means prove necessary, to ensure she'll be safe enough to leave with. Challenge, call-out, assuage, these make themselves obvious, they paint what they're saying into form and image, so- I digress! We are saving her, and if you even think to try and kill her, I'll kill you first." A moment passes, and Moses goes back on her aggressive tone- "No, it won't come to that. Eyes up-" Hibiki's intercept succeeds- the first charge from Ezra(?) hits Hibiki, palm-to-palm, throwing up fragments of tile from beneath the pair's feet from the impact. Unfortunately, the fixer's gauntlets can deform under grip and pressure, letting chipped and squealing metal break to pull out of Hibiki's guard and casually shoulder-check her, carrying on through- Fireworks explode in front of her, posing enough of a distraction for her to giggle and bat at them, landing herself open for Petra's morphmetal to collide and knock her off course again. Veronica's barricade of concrete, Ezra(?) hammers through, blow by blow, offering time to scramble for cover but still turning into a spray of rough shrapnel, blood, dents, dust, all collected up on the oversized gauntlets. When she finally gets through to the detective, it isn't immediately clear whether Ezra(?) means to actually attack Moses, but it is clear that whatever she intends isn't gentle. Be it a hug, a grab, a strike, fast as lightning, the distorted fixer's palm shoots towards Moses' skull like a battering ram, without even as much as a shouted-out battle cry. Moses's blade deflects against the metal of Ezra(?)'s gauntlet, the effort causing her to skid and stumble backwards until she finds traction on the cracks of the chamber's floor paneling. Moses is fine, but the sword she held dissipates into nothing.
Distortion Dets.	With Ezra(?)'s run towards the group, a tide of the monolith's smoke flushes in, eliciting a woozy momentary disconnect from the moment in those who it washes over, still a small enough amount that it can't start to bring out the same change as it has in Ezra- but Moses won't give it the chance. Inhaled, exhaled, a cloud of her white smoke pours out, drowning out the monlith's smog and even dousing Ezra(?). "Nnnngh, Detective-!" Shrugging her arms, the heavy gauntlets fall to the floor, letting her clutch at the sides of her mask with her fingers, tearing, squeezing, cracks forming- "If this isn't the time for being happy, if it'd make it better, I'll find another one for you to look at!" It's hard to trace exact cause and effect, but it seems like Moses' smoke is causing some reaction in her sidekick- though, adverse or helpful, it's hard to say. At the very least, it cleans out the area around the fighting elites of the monolith's influence. 'Hey! The Detective is safe now, you've dealt with that monster!' Bright, happy-go-lucky tone, "Can't you see her fighting? She's still got foes to bash up, she's not calm or happy, even if she tries to look it! No, until then-" Still tugging at her mask, bits of it give way. Before the yellow flakes of the mask give way, signs of a change appear first in the antlers- jagged metal starts to bleed, too-red, as she shakes her head in some hollow-looking mimicry of pain. Like peeling off skin, the smiling mask is nothing but crumbling motes on the floor- and a screaming, red one sits where it had, overtop Ezra(?)'s face. "I'll just have to tear apart whatever won't leave her be! I'll scream and kill, I'll hate, I'll hate you, I'll kick and hurt-" Another weapon is in Ezra(?)'s hands this time, the same two-handed axe she'd used on the monster earlier. With low, animalistic dashes, she swings it at any elite she comes across, not even trying to dodge attacks, especially if it buys her a moment to strike to take a blow head-on. "Detective! Captain! It doesn't matter if I'm a 'soldier' or a 'sidekick', I'll get angry and bloody as I always have, I won't even pretend I know anything but! Eheh- hah! Die, I hate you, just like old times, in ugly battlefields!" Moses struggles against the onslaught her companion puts up, barely able to hold onto a weapon long enough to deflect or parry, let alone strike back. Breathless strikes are hard to respond to even in words- "You're being an idiot, Ezra! If I wanted you to be that 'soldier I'd made you- you'd grown to be, why would I try and give you a better life? Do you want that thrown away?" ""Hurk- no, Captain! That can come after I've torn all these little guys to pieces, hrah-!" Guilt-bound chains lash out from where Moses held her pipe, twisting barbed-wire into her own arm and latching onto her sidekick's weapon, pinning her in place for a moment. She doesn't look scared or panicked at the change, the mask offering no further insight, but the fixer, at least, is caught still for a short moment. "Ezra! Listen, you daft buffoon, idiot sidekick- stand down, that's an order." Hissed, to the group- "Tear that damnable mask off of her face! Quickly now!" Moses, really, truly, does not want to seem to engage with her associate on this- against all she's cautioned about how to handle Distortions, she's far from able to be impartial.
Regulus	Regulus isn't exactly comfortable letting thousands of people die either, but fortunately Regulus isn't exactly gushing with combat ability. She's got some tricks, sure, but she's not a trained soldier like the SPDM kids. At the end of the day, discounting the morality of it, she's pretty sure she couldn't kill Ezra if she tried. She couldn't even kill the first monster! So for her the only option, really, is to listen to the detective and try to snap her out of it some other way. She gets a 'clever' idea. Namely, that she could make Moses disappear and then perhaps with the object of her fixation vanishing she might alm down but she discards that idea pretty much immediately. If it goes badly, it'd go real badly, and while Regulus isn't above a gamble--Kang's corpse is still fresh on her mind. The smoke hits Regulus, sending her reeling. She backpedals quickly away from Ezra, nearly pulling back enough away that she's caught up to Yuria. APPLe is staying close to Regulus but. "Ezra, love--" Regulus says, ducking under an axe swing but it still sends Regulus's hat flying. Any one of those swings would spend a premature end for this pirate captain! And after all the smoke and the exertion, Regulus is starting to run out of energy. Eventually she's not going to be able to avoid those swings. "Ezra, love." She repeats. "Your...buttons. Your patches--I really like them. They're very cool. You picked them all out for yourself, right? They're not for the Cap--The Detective, right?" ''Tear that damnable mask off her face!'' "She's putting them on for you!" Regulus retorts. "Can't you just ask her to show her true face?" And would forcing it off really be the thing that helps her? Survival first. Regulus takes hold of APPLe and holds him in front of him, using him as a channel to launch a big bright flash of light towards Ezra. ''I think a bunch of my friends would be pretty happy if I did.'' "Well I wouldn't, love! Do you know how to shut it off at least?"
Veronica	Confront and pacify, through whatever means prove necessary, to ensure she'll be safe enough to leave with. Challenge, call-out, assuage, these make themselves obvious, they paint what they're saying into form and image, so- "Right," Veronica says. Confront and pacify. She can at least have a go at that, even if her de-escalation skills aren't exactly well-honed. Finding her makeshift shield pulverized, and noticing Ezra shifting into "angry axe rampage", she backpedals a few steps to stay out of reach. Better, she thinks, to let those with armor (specifically Hibiki) take the brunt of the assault than to risk being cut in half! If I wanted you to be that 'soldier I'd made you- you'd grown to be, why would I try and give you a better life? "You two were- soldiers?" Veronica wonders aloud, briefly distracted by the new information. She files it away to ask later if they were involved in the Wing War. "Ezra, listen!" she calls, scrambling to think of an angle. "If you're Moses's soldier, you need to listen to her! Remember your- your discipline, we're a team here!" "Tear that damnable mask off of her face! Quickly now!" "Y-yes! On it!" Veronica reaches out again with her EGO-corroded arm, her physical link to Baker and Seventh's power. Fundamentally, the drive behind that power is the drive to act, to help not only oneself but those around oneself. The wish, answered by that mysterious voice, to protect people. Calling on as much of that strength as she can muster, Veronica reaches out to that mask, to the barrier between Ezra and the rest of the world, and pulls.
Petra Soroka	"Four colors of them, different use, and different feelings associated with each!" "Four... I thought so, yeah." Pale, red-- soon white, too, to vindicate Petra further. She knows those colors, that welled up from the collective unconscious with the names Death, War, Conquest, and Famine, so seeing Moses default to red when faced with a Distortion either means the Detective knows more than Petra does about them, or less. YuRia has an ally here in watching Moses fight, and since the ratbot wasn't destroyed in the monster's initial rampage, it's still hovering overhead for prime video recording. Petra would love to just sort of stick by YuRia and gossip, but she's got a more important mission in mind. She isn't quite so bold as to make a dash towards the monolith just because Ezra's attention deflects off of her to hammer Moses repeatedly with her gauntlets then axe, because whatever bravado Petra has, Ezra could just turn her into paste with one solid swing of that weapon. The wide arc Petra takes around the room is meant to keep her in less danger, continually facing towards Ezra. Bullet-hell droplets of Silver peel off of Petra's sword, picking up acceleration slowly then quickly to hurtle at the Distortion like rockets. Upon hitting her or the axe, they distend and splatter, gripping around Ezra's body or the haft of her axe with vice-like strength to anchor in place, dragging her movements. Ezra can force her way through them, and exerting the strength to wrench out of the Silver's grip causes the fist-like tension of the droplets to melt away, splashing against the walls like a much less viscous fluid before slinking back wards Petra along the floor. "Confront and pacify, through whatever means prove necessary, to ensure she'll be safe enough to leave with." "How do you mean 'safe enough to leave with'?" Petra's retort is an indecipherable blend of prying and sincere, slightly breathless between the running and fighting. "Have you had reliable success with pacifying Distortions? Are you expecting the smoke's effect to be temporary?" "Do you know how to shut it off at least?" "I like to think I'm good at thinking on my feet." So, no. It's not even like it looks like interactable 'technology', though with the way City tech works, there's usually some way, and it's usually much more esoteric than wires and switches.
Petra Soroka	"It doesn't matter if I'm a 'soldier' or a 'sidekick', I'll get angry and bloody as I always have, I won't even pretend I know anything but!" When the wildly swinging momentum of Ezra's axe brings her crashing into Petra, the Silver sword is snapped up to catch the underside of the axe's head, and twisted out and to the side. Ezra's own strength brings the axe slamming into the ground, shearing by Petra's side, but the full-strength impact rips through the sword to spray Silver gore across the floor. Quivering droplets leak from the gash in the blade to slam into Ezra's chest, shoving her back while Petra steps away to get distance. "Oh. It's about roles, isn't it." There's not really a difference to Petra whether the mask is there or not, when she affixes her head-tilting stare on Ezra's face. She's close enough to the monolith now that the smoke is spilling all around her, but she doesn't take note of it, focusing on Ezra instead. She falls silent for a stretch of several seconds, while the Silver on Ezra's chest crawls upwards to grip at the edges of her mask like so many fingers. Then, calculated like a headshot, "There's nothing more repulsive for a loyal dog to do than have an uncontrolled outburst. As a right hand, your duty isn't supposed to be to be the best, it's to be reliable at everything, and every tantrum means that she can trust you less. So pull yourself together and listen to your orders."
Hibiki Tachibana	That shoulder-check strikes clean and sends Hibiki reeling, tumbling for a few meters across the floor before she finally catches herself. This is something personal between Ezra and Moses - that much is obvious as day, even putting aside talk of soldiering and more. As much as Moses might say this is how she's /been/ seeing her, she's emotional and avoiding addressing things directly as much as she can. And Ezra... No matter what she's after, even if that's something that'd be good for the both of them, trying to do it while Distorted and caught up in her own emotions isn't going to go how she'd want it to. That's the feeling she gets, at least. Picking herself up off the ground and back to a stand, right as Ezra is ripping off one mask in exchange for another. Her eyes close and her expression tenses... and then she's running back in. Right into a series of vicious slashes from that massive axe, one of which she leaps over, another she 'parries' with a kick to equalize the force, and after landing down onto her feet again, yet another she braces against with both gauntlets-- the blade digging in deep into solid metal portions and carving out a gash, along with making Hibiki's knees buckle under her strength. "You /do/ know more than that...! You're not just... ngh... some attack dog or soldier or whatever!! And lashing out like one won't make her happy! I know that much--!!" Forced into skidding back afterwards, a chance comes after Moses manages to bind her for a short time. Hibiki grips onto the piston of her right gauntlet with her left hand, yanking it back in its moorings up towards her elbow, but her shouted words as she rears back a punch are aimed at Moses, rather than her Distorted sidekick. "Do you remember something Ezra told you back when we first met YuRia!? 'I know you don't like to talk about it, but shouldn't you?' What I'm trying to say is, /just/ stopping her or ripping that mask off isn't gonna fix the real issue here, and you know that too--!" Even if she doesn't understand the full history of these two... neither pent-up guilt or mask after mask are going to patch things up. But they do have to stop Ezra from doing something she might regret later, and for that, Hibiki lunges in, twisting her body into a hook for Ezra's stomach. A heavy blow, followed by the machinery slamming back into place - sending hairline fractures through the metal after - to deliver a secondary impact, rippling through the air in a shockwave. That should at least stagger her for a little longer than she otherwise would be. Whether it'll actually be good to open her up for that mask leaving her face or not... they'll see soon enough.
Vantablitz Remnants	'Does it help to think that we might be the only thing preventing potentially thousands of people dying on the surface?' "No! It doesn't!" Ahn shouts at Petra. Even though she'd predicted it before she said anything, she can't suppress the need to say it. "Why would that help?! Ezra or everyone else?! Is that supposed to make killing her feel good?!" At least yelling about it seems to be helping get her head on straight; she's much quicker to get herself balanced and moving again. "Who says we can't?! She didn't do anything wrong! Moses is the one being a bastard! Why does wanting her not to worry mean that she's dangerous?! Who says?!" 'I'm not, because she's speaking nonsense.' "She's not!" ''Look at her' like this? I haven't seen anything but that mask on her face for months. Ahn pauses, but only in speech, and only for a second. The shock of that bizarre revelation has nothing to do with her physical situation, and so her body disregards it. Her brain does too, a little after. "That's not what she's asking!" 'Of course I don't! 'Solve', I said!' "Don't talk to me like I'm stupid!" It takes Ezra charging at her with an axe for Ahn to finally muster up violent intent. Backing up as fast as she can, with almost nothing to use to break the distance between them in the vacant basement, Ahn locks eyes with where she must think Ezra's are behind that mask, her face frozen in reluctant panic. She takes her weapon in both hands, and hesitating for one dry twitch on the trigger, squeezes off barely a handful of rounds before Ezra catches up to her. Even with biological acid tooled into each unassuming round, it's much too little and much too late. She backs away from one blow, scrabbles under a second, and has nowhere to go from the third. Ahn shrieks just before impact. On instinct, she ducks her head behind her arms, turning one forearm in and bracing it with the other, tensing up all of her muscles, and her feet leave the floor just as she's hit. The backswing comes away with her blood on it, and not quite in line with where it should end up. Ahn thumps back-first into the wall across from Ezra, apparently thrown by the force of the blow combined with her own jump. Collapsing, winded, she catches herself before her face hits the floor, and fresh blood squirts through the rip in her jacket sleeve and pools around her hand. The slash wound underneath is ugly and off-angle. Droplets of black oil bubble up inside and cling to broken skin, slowly stanching the red. Ahn's breathing is fast and ragged when she pulls herself up, but not shallow or unsteady. She's clung to the gun for dear life.
Vantablitz Remnants	'You're being an idiot, Ezra!' "Stop talking to her like she's stupid!" Ahn shouts at the top of her lungs. Even with the renewed string of gunfire from her, faster-paced, tighter-grouped, her body properly set in a leaning-forward firing stance, that's still somehow the top thing on her mind. "You're so shitty to everyone! You didn't explain anything at all before we got here! You just that you're special and you can see things, but you keep acting like you expect us to read your mind and do everything you want before you know you want it! And intead of taking responsibility, you just keep getting mad! I'm already sick of it! Do you really not know how Ezra put up with you all this time?!" Ahn counts the magazine empty and holsters the gun under her arm, with pounding heartbeats and stressed-out angry tears threatening her eyes. Working herself up with fast breaths and warm-up bounces on the spot, Ahn shouts "Why should she listen to you if you're never honest anyways?! Do you think she's too dumb to tell that you're only ever talking to that mask?! What do you know about how anyone feels when they're 'given a better life' at the expense of someone they care about?!" Reaching whatever pace she intended, Ahn holds her next deep breath, rocks forward into a surprise sprint at the next point she lands, and accelerates into Ezra from behind. Hitting her top speed just as Hibiki makes contact and Veronica gets her hold, Ahn throws one hand against the back of Ezra's elbow, reaches out to grasp her wrist with the other, and throws her weight into a body tackle meant to trip her over while halting the axe in front of her. Even from there, she looks up at Moses, and yells, "Stop being such a stuck-up bitter old lady! I'm not dumb and neither is she; you're just terrible at communicating!"
Distortion Dets.	'Stop talking to her like she's stupid!' 'Do you really not know how Ezra put up with you all this time?!' "Tsh- she isn't, obviously, but-" Moses doesn't follow that up, immediate ire fading into faint red-tinted smoke on her breath. "No, I've known her since she was little, this is unlike-" Again, a cut-off, her breath purple-tinted instead. "I know she has put up with me, and for that, maybe she's an idiot, but, I- I need her at my side, not like this! She stayed outside, put herself into that risk, it's against everything we've worked for this last decade- I won't be lectured on how I treat her by someone I barely know-" Moses huffs- "I don't know how else to treat her, harshness in caution saves lives, even if it isn't palatable." Cope cope cope- it's clear on Moses' face she's guilt-ridden, for all that matters. 'Oh. It's about roles, isn't it.' Shouted from the sidelines as Petra joins the fray, YuRia adds, to her makeshift ally, "It sure looks that way! This is the most interesting I've seen her act, good luck in there!" In the thick of the melee, Ezra's swings as downright monstrous- whether that's to say about her capacity as a fixer, or an affect of the distortion, no-one present but Moses has truly see much of how she fights, so the answer evades. Swings, exchanged blows, stray bullets connecting into metal, mask, or thick cloth, they don't slow her enough at once, obstacles distracting but the wild onslought continuing in an absolute tantrum, with combatants dashing in and out in their efforts. 'There's nothing more repulsive for a loyal dog to do than have an uncontrolled outburst.' From a very different angle, Petra's words have an affect. Ezra(?) stops her wild swinging, and adopts a guarding stance- still, she pulls at the limb-wrapping chains Moses has bound her in, unable to feel the barbs the way the Detective does. ""Argh- I'll hit you, kill you, don't say that kind of thing, of course she's gonna use someone so trustworthy at killing as me, or the Captain would just use me up like any other soldier!" While her words don't fit the response, Ezra(?) does let go with one hand of the axe, and start to claw at her face, trying to, as ordered, pull the mask free. Ahn's bullets strike into the red, screaming mask, seedbed points from which it, too, begins to crumble and chip. Hibiki's strike shatters them loose, and the loose pieces fall, clattering away and sublimating into vapor. Paired with Hibiki's lunging attacks, Ahn's tackle takes Ezra(?) down and out for a long moment, even as she struggles all the while to try and get free, to stand up, and continue this meltdown. 'What I'm trying to say is, /just/ stopping her or ripping that mask off isn't gonna fix the real issue here, and you know that too--!' Hoarse, Moses spits out a frustrated reply, guilt-stained, "I know, I've known, but resolving this in her- I don't have any right to, when I'm why she is who she is! What problem can I fix when I've caused them?"
Distortion Dets.	Moses' words, too, have an effect- and Ezra(?)'s mask shatters, almost concussively- she twists back, sits up, stands- "Captain, that isn't fair! If you think that's true, that I'm a pitiable, broken thing-" Wiped away with a sleeved wrist, the last flakes of the screaming red mask fall, and when her arm moves out of the way, a sobbing, pathetic blue mask sits on Ezra(?)'s face. "Eguhh, then look what you've made me into! Hideous, hic, good for nothing, blood everywhere I look, a fixer's what I am, what I'll live as, and what I'll die as, all thanks to you, dragged out because I'm the only one who guilted you enough to get saved! In fact, I couldn't do anything to save them, either! Aren't I so pitiable?" Every sobbing noise is narrated, tone flat. Of all the masks, this is the most forced- cracks are present from the start. The weapon Ezra(?) picks to fight with is her trusty sigma-workshop sword, and, with her off-hand covering her eyes like covering tears, she backs up from the group, a de-facto invitation for Moses to approach, her own sword in hand. Facing each other, words echo in between sword-clashes, distancing themselves from the other elites- each moment they get to speak, beween clashing blades, is frantic, chipping away layered parts of masks after masks from each of them- "Ezra. Is this what you really think I want from you?" "No! You want to feel guilty, looking at me-" "I don't, I feel guilty that I don't know how to do better by you-" "I don't know 'better', Captain, I know how to be a soldier, a sidekick, how to kill and hurt and hate and fight and bleed-" "I want to trust you, but I'm tired of anyone bleeding for me, Ezra! Especially you, after everything! I need you safe, and happy, or I'll have failed at something too costly to fail at, too late to undo-" "But I am! I'm good at being happy, see! Won't you see?" "I see that, Ezra! But we both know it isn't real, that you're doing it for me, so I don't-" "So you don't look at me like you're scared and sad for me," -Clang- "So you don't blame yourself for all I want to do for you," -Clash- "So you don't forget I've been there, too, through everything we've lived through, Detective!" ". . ." "Detective!" "Ezra, I rely on you. I can't take you for granted- so, I'll-" The blows have stopped, wading deep into the room, Moses' smoke counteracting the most of the monolith's. The words Moses tries to muster are almost stuck in her throat- "I'll say that, that I'm thankful, even if following me means being dragged down to whatever damnation I've earned, to have you at my side through it. The last one loyal, and I've left you like this..." She trails off, breathing heavy in the midst of that smoke. From whatever well of energy Ezra- just Ezra, the last of the masks having fallen off for now -had drawn from, to fight this long, even after having killed the monster, it's spent, now. She doesn't collapse, but she does fall to her knees, with Moses barely able to support her. So close to the monolith, it must be a dangerous place to linger- but as the detective's smoke hangs in the air, it's a moment to rest.