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Sarracenia	Last time...      The various Gregory Rescue Team members did some investigating! Schneider Greco and Love found a way into the castle that was relatively unprotected. The servants entrance. Arthur tracked the path of energy being drained from the city dwellers to the castle. It was drawn up into the tallest tower of the castle then redirected down to someone within the castle, most likely the dark fairy Lila. It's unclear if only one of those things needs to be dealt with or both, but Sarra thinks it should be both.      Those in the tavern found some information as well. Its importance is unclear, but they were able to learn that the trouble started some 10 years ago. They also learned some of the lore of the land. A bard's song about how once upon a time the dark and light fairies were both allies with the humans of this land. But eventually, the people grew tired of the dark fairies' mischief and the light fairies became favored. Dark fairies were then captured and used as attractions and subjects for experiments. It took a decree from the previous queen to free the captured dark fairies. It was shortly after that when this all started.      Today...      Sarra has once again gathered everyone in the impromptu war room in front of the book pedestal. Today though...she's using the war map! There is a decorated piranha plant admiral standing beside her, wearing a classic white sailor's cap and jacket, and still giving the princess some last minute instructions on proper use of the map. Sarra clears her throat. "First of all, well done everyone on the last mission. Without you...we would not be here, ready to save Gregory from whatever the evil queen has done to him."      She then gestures to the table. There are pieces similar to chess pawn pieces in the spot representing the cave they arrive in. "The plan is quite simple today. Using the entrance and path explored by Miss Schneider, we will invade the castle. Stealthily, if possible. We will get as close to the queen as we can before any attacks are launched. Remember, our goal is to capture her if possible. It sounds as though Gregory may be under mind-control, so we may have to capture him as well. If Gregory is seriously harmed..." Her temper obviously starts to rise, but she takes a few breaths and settles back down. "...well, let us just say he had better not be harmed."      She moves one of the pieces, which is painted red and wearing a small golden crown. "I will once again draw the queen's attention before you head inside. Hopefully if she is having her minions chase me her guard will be down for you all." She moves her piece away from the cave and the castle. "I will remain on the run until I hear that the queen has been engaged. I want to be there when Gregory is rescued."      She then takes a few more pieces. "Whatever is in this tower, I want it to be dealt with. Arthur, Marcus, and Greta seem the most qualified for this task." She moves those pieces to the tower. "We do not know what is in this tower focusing the curse, so...just destroy everything in there if needed." She then takes the rest of the pieces. "Everyone else, follow Schneider in. I will provide flying power-ups so that you can drop in from above once she signals it is clear to do so." She motions and the admiral pushes a box of Cloud power-ups over, plenty for everyone on the team to take at least one. "Any questions?"      Once questions are answered, Sarra once again approaches the book and once again everyone is engulfed in a swirling array of blues, pinks, and purples. They appear in the cave, and Sarra heads for the exit immediately. The great deer waits in the cave, and she gives him a few affectionate pettings. "How did you know we would be here? Will you be serving as my noble steed today?" The deer nods, and Sarra hops on his back. "Okay everyone! Move out!" She rides out quickly on the deer, leaving the others to make their way to the castle however they see fit.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Hit ready, host can't start until everyone does     Arthur takes a posture of readiness, and light above him slightly intensifies for no especially clear reason. "I'll hit the TOWER, you sure I can GET IN THAT FUCKER without getting ton of ATTENTION? Ehh-- I'll drop wherever fits LOW PROFILE and MOVE FROM THERE. Hey book lady--" His focus selector hits-- Sarracenia? "Wait, no, I mean MAGICAL READING LADY." The selector hits Angela's representatives here. "Fuckin-- MARCUS. MARCUS AND GRETA." It selects the Storm Investigators properly. "I can fuck with GRAVITY to get you two in FUNNY SPOTS, we'll do some SKIPS up the TOWER. I'm a FIGHTER not a BODYGUARD though, you two better go in SWINGIN'." He limbers up. "I'll bog down a LOT of DEFENSE and do HELLA BOOSTING on your ANALYSIS ARCANUM, you get me that INFO. We're still in ENCOUNTER TWO, so I don't think we can DISASSEMBLE IT."     He pounds one fist to its opposite palm. "We oughta TRY ANYWAY though. Just a little." > Arthur: Experience the power of reading, which can take you anywhere     The power of reading takes Arthur Lowell to the middle of the woods in a kingdom that sucks!! He takes off on his broom, which he can keep the energy-signature on low enough to mostly fly with the clouds the others have. "I'll aim for the TOWER OF POWER and wait on that SIGNAL. Hey, LITTLE GIRL BIG GUNS," That's Schneider. "You ever tried an ARTILLERY TRAJECTORY? See if you can get me some DEGREES IN MINUTES AND SECONDS, I'll see if I can BREAK SHIT on my way in." > Arthur: Take off, become an assist call-in     He's ready to rumble, rocketing amid the clouds, immediately.
Schneider Greco	Schneider has concocted a little chess-piece for herself, using the red jasper bead that Trudy gave her as a 'head', and a soot-smeared silver bullet casing as the 'body'.      Given the size of her bullets, the chess piece makes her look a bit taller than she really is.      She makes a little small-talk, leaning over the table and poking at her figurine while people filter in:      "Who is this 'Mes-mer', my La-dy Rook?" Oh no. "Is she some-one I should be ridding you of?" Oh no.      "Any questions?"      Schneider raises her hand, self-consciously indulging the fantasy that she's a well-behaved child in a classroom. "The guards, my lady Princess. Do we, ah, just shoot them? What a bo-ther, keeping them a-live could be, but..."      . . .      Once inside the storybook realm, Schneider bids the others to wait outside the castle grounds for just a moment; dips in to 'clock in' at her job with Love as a barracks cook; lays her grubby little mitts on a tarp and whatever wagon they use for transporting ingredients from market; and comes back out to the other Elites.      "If you can't con-ceal yourselves, my-lords, jump in," she says with a grandiose wave to the little wooden cart. Yes, you're going to be covered with a tarp and smuggled past the guards as ingredients. That's the price to pay for not being sneaky yourself!      . . .      That only gets you all as far as the entry to the servants' quarters, though. Pulling the tarp off her wagon-friends, once she's arrived at the unassuming back-entrance: "Now, these were most-ly empty on my first try, but we may-not be so luck-y again..."      Schneider knows the way through to where she heard the Queen's voice the first time, but what follows is an anxious sequence of pressing her ear to doors to see if anyone's on the other side; turning doorknobs silently, through pantries and past bedrooms; and really really hoping nobody barges through a side-door or happens to be staring down a corridor.
Storm Investigators	"An invasion... Will we be alright?" "Don't worry, Marcus. Our job is just to investigate whatever's in the tower and collect as much data as we can. We can leave the bulk of the fighting to the others." Despite Greta's reassurances and a firm pat on the shoulder, Marcus continues to clench her fists over the sides of her coat anxiously. They exchange brief glances as Sarracenia gives her briefing on the situation, then follows her hands to the pieces being moved around. Greta keeps her mouth shut as she looks over the pieces slowly, and it takes a bit longer for Marcus to finally raise her hand when the call for questions comes. "Princess Sarracenia? What are we... How are we meant to fly? You medntioned 'power-ups', but will there be a lesson on how to use those? Marcus asks, looking and sounding even more nervous than before. "Wh-what if we fall? Or if we lose control and end up too far away? W-will that jeopardize the mission? If we can't get where we need to go..." "We'll be fine, Marcus. The princess would not be offering these if she didn't already have their use and contingency plans covered." Greta tries to assuage Marcus' fears in a calm tone, although she does furrow her brow slightly as she lets those thoughts linger. "What is our exit strategy if we are unable to locate Gregory? More flying powered ups or something else?" "Do we, ah, just shoot them? What a bo-ther, keeping them a-live could be, but..." Greta glances over at Schneider at that question, but it's not one of disapproval. Instead, she follows her gaze over to Sarracenia, getting an almost curious look in her eyes as she awaits the answer. "MARCUS. MARCUS AND GRETA." "Ah! O-oh. Um. Y.. Yes, Mister Lowell? Funny.. Spots? Skips? Oh, that should help with ascending, but... Will it make us motion sick? Will our brains be able to keep up with such rapid movements?" Once again, the concerns keep coming, and Marcus keeps worrying at the sides of her coat while Greta- "We'll be counting on your fighting prowess, then. Do not worry about our safety. We're trained to avoid harm well enough, and we will manage." -doesn't try to calm her junior this time around. "As long as Marcus has enough time to analyze it, we can gather data and figure out how to dismantle it later. We can leave some detection tools inside as well, if we must make a quick getaway and return later." "You ever tried an ARTILLERY TRAJECTORY?" "Math..." Somehow, Marcus' face looks even more dejected at that. That's probably a no.
Petra Soroka	Of course, Petra's back to save Gregory. She'll definitely do that! Her claims of misanthropy are often overstated, as long as someone does anything to foster a positive opinion with her at all, and Gregory surely has. Just, probably, she wouldn't consider that enough of a motivation to step foot into the Sundew Kingdom if this wasn't *also* a chance to hang out and gossip with Lilian.     And today, they might get to see *the dark fairy Queen Lila*, and Petra wouldn't miss that for anything.     Looking at the war map, Petra stares at the little pawn piece that's supposed to represent her. She's uncharacteristically quiet through Sarracenia's explanation of the plan, distracted by something, until near-inaudibly mumbling something under her breath.     She shakes her head and focuses. "Anyways. Capture or not-- god, trying to *kill* her would really fuck with the genre conventions-- once we *get* to Lilia--" That was a long 'a' as in 'Liliana'. "Lila, I have to imagine that we'll be able to get her to answer some of our questions."     "Last time, we got this whole song about how the dark fairies were enslaved and mistreated in favor of the light fairies and all, and the last queen freed them from literal slavery before kicking the bucket. We're at least gonna have to hear her out a bit, rather than just dropping in and ambushing her."     Honestly, Petra will take a cloud power-up. It's a rare chance for Sarracenia's weird little magic suits to not be automatically evil-aligned, and these look innocent enough. If it gives her rabbit ears or something when she puts it on, she's immediately going to shoot herself to lose 1 HP and the power-up, though. "Will you be serving as my noble steed today?"     Inside the storybook, Petra murmurs as Sarra is greeted by yet another friend within the narrative's world. "The animals here *really* like you, huh...." "If you can't con-ceal yourselves, my-lords, jump in,"     Petra can't turn invisible! And also, really, hopping into a wagon and being covered up by a tarp in order to sneak into a castle is one of those things that she also never gets a chance to do.
Angela	Last time... The Magical Girl of Love was trapped in the closet!!!! So truly things were pretty dire. And it seems like today she's going to be trapped... as Schneider's MINION. But that's okay, Love likes helping dark haired women who wear outfits that are one rating level above hers. She's all for helping dark magical girls because dark magical girls are the best friends you're ever going to make, that's what Love believes! ''Who is this Mes-mer', my La-dy Rook?'' "I think Mesmer is a Dark Kingdom lieutenant, it's sort of in her name right? She probably has the power to ''Mesmerize'' people and then she does that to steal their energy." Love says despite having never met the woman and judging her entirely because her name is Mesmer. "Usually people who mesmerize are in the bad guy groups." ''If Gregory is seriously harmed...'' "Then it's LASER time right??" Love perks up hopefully. Sarracenia being glowery about this is only encouraging her, though she seems a little disappointed when the threat is left vague instead. "Probably lasers..." She murmurs to Schneider. Love would probably be pretty good for destroying everything in a tower, but she's determined to be extra helpful to Schneider this time since friendship, right now, is slightly more important to her than getting to punish evil. Just ever so slightly and maybe she gets to at least blast a really bad person instead, so she's still pretty hopeful about this adventure module. ''The selector hits Angela's representatives here.'' Love's tongue is sort of sticking out like a cartoon character until Arthur's selector moves on to the others. "We can just blast 'em, Schneider!" Love says. "If they didn't want to get blasted, they wouldn't have been evil. It's possible they don't know that evil gets blasted by pink lasers, but this will help educate them so they know to be good in the future." She Magical Girl Makeups back into the chef uniform once she's in and follows Schneider along. Occassionally a pink cartoon heart flies off her body before popping like a balloon.
Riku Asakura	Riku is here, standing around the table in his usual outfit.  For those who don't know, Riku's outfit consists of a jean jacket, an orange shirt with some space-themed elements, jeans, and tennis shoes.  He's skeptical about this plan because it seems too easy.  Too straightforward with everything they've heard about the light and dark fairies.  It's almost like a story instead of real life.   Then he looks at the book and makes a 'oooooh' expression.  He feels a bit silly about it, but when Petra pipes up about wanting to ask the queen some questions, he nods to her.  "That seems reasonable.  She might not act in kindness to us, suddenly popping up in her space, but we should at least give her the chance to explain her side of things." 'The guards, my lady Princess. Do we, ah, just shoot them? What a bo-ther, keeping them a-live could be, but...' "We should be strong enough to not hurt them if we try," Riku pipes up to Schneider.  "So let's try our best to just knock them out or disable them without murdering them..." he tries to convince her that murder is not the option here, but he's also afraid of her.  Afraid of her and what she'll do if let loose. Inside the book, Riku waves Sarra off with a smile.  "Good luck on your end, Sarracenia.  We'll do our best to rescue Gregory!" Breaking up with her, the group heads to the castle, where Schneider has him hide in a cart.  That's fine, he can do that.  Inside the cart, Riku has a nervous energy about him.  He's still smiling, though.
Calvin Nash	Calvin arrives again in his thrown-together 'adventurer' outfit, which is just casual clothes with a hooded rain poncho thrown overtop to conceal the anachronism. It doesn't reach down far enough to hide his blue jeans, but the western snap-button shirt is at least hidden. I think Mesmer is a Dark Kingdom lieutenant, it's sort of in her name right?     "The mesmerizin' she does for a livin'," Calvin bluntly asserts. "The energy drainin' she does just *by* livin'." Is she some-one I should be ridding you of?     "It's bein' handled internally, by the books," Calvin says. "Better if you don't." We're still in ENCOUNTER TWO, so I don't think we can DISASSEMBLE IT.     "Aight," Calvin says. "Didn't understand most of what you said, but that part I got."     He takes one of the proferred cloud powerups, seemingly in mild disbelief that he's holding one. He turns it over in his hands, holds it up to the light, then up to one ear. Any questions?     "What do I do with this?" he asks Sarracenia. --- If you can't con-ceal yourselves, my-lords, jump in.     Calvin does exactly that, enduring the ride there in silence. He hops out and gives the cloud another glance, then stores it in his COMP's virtual storage for later. "You been here before," he says. "Lead the way. I'll map it as we go. That way we got a clear way out."
Lilian Rook	'First of all, well done everyone on the last mission.'     That's what gets Lilian thinking, honestly. Though it's already kind of preposterous that she's helping Sarracenia at all, never mind with the level of seriousness she's already mustered, hearing the word 'mission' used to refer to what was, for her, a short walk to slum it at a bad bar with Petra for a while, makes her stop and take in the silly little war room all over again. The piranha plant admiral doesn't even register to her at this point. She lingers entirely too long on the map instead. The tiny painted pieces, the little crown. She looks up, lifelessly, at the box of cloud powerups.     Lilian dissociates for a little while. "Okay." is all she says at every step along the way. Until,     'Who is this 'Mes-mer', my La-dy Rook?'     Neuron activation. Lilian looks at Schneider before even fully comprehending why.     'Is she some-one I should be ridding you of?'     "Oh god I would get in so much trouble." Lilian blurts out on reflex. She hides her gasp by suddenly raising her hand. Like the problem with saying that was that it was impolite. "Wait-- You don't know about-- Surely you know the Mesmer family." Lilian says, confident in word and doubtful in tone. "The psychiatric freaks. The ones that call you crazy and stick you in a brainwashing machine to edit your personality. She's just their awful daughter. Nothing to speak of."     'Usually people who mesmerize are in the bad guy groups.'     "Exactly." Lilian nods.     '[incoherent mumbling]'     "What the fuck?" Lilian spins around. "Excuse me?"     'once we *get* to Lilia--'     This is such a bad day for neuron activations. Lilian narrows her eyes, but says nothing.     'We're at least gonna have to hear her out a bit, rather than just dropping in and ambushing her.'     "I'd hope so." Lilian says. "Trying to rush the royal chambers and beat the mastermind down as a group before you even know what's going on is what every annoying little 'rationalist' armchair general slash teenaged boy thinks you should be doing and it almost never is."     Lilian is not jumping into the funny cart. She waits outside, looking sooooo cool and aloof, basically just waiting to see the group go in, then finds Schneider via unclear means.
Petra Soroka	"What the fuck?"     Petra yelps and holds up her hands like Lilian has her at gunpoint. "Nothing! I was just remembering something!" She points at Arthur, for something that happened over three years ago, and in Petra's perception, longer than the entire recorded history of mankind-years ago. "It's his fault!" "Trying to rush the royal chambers and beat the mastermind down as a group before you even know what's going on is what every annoying little 'rationalist' armchair general slash teenaged boy thinks you should be doing and it almost never is."     "Right, I mean, we don't even know if Gregory is any immediate danger. Maybe she's treating him completely normally, besides the mind control. Getting super aggressive right off the bat just means making things really bad if we don't immediately succeed."     Really, Petra would be in a similarly dissociative state to Lilian, if Lilian wasn't here. Noting Lilian's lapse in being able to handle existing here-- a kind of hopelessness that Petra herself has experienced in this kingdom, like how much of an effect the Everhood had on her-- Petra takes it upon herself to boost her mood.     "And, like-- we've just *gotta* hear her speak. The entire *genre* of this book depends on the exact tone that she uses when she says 'kneel'."     Later, Petra is in a vegetable cart with Riku and Calvin. Before getting in, knowing that Lilian wouldn't in a million years, she gives her a quick "See you soon!", and then regrets not figuring out how to go along with her a moment after. She stares, in light filtered to brown by the tarp overhead, at Riku and Calvin, with her knees tucked up to her chest.     "... So. How about that weather."
Sarracenia	Schneider's Question:      Sarra sighs softly at the question, but nods in agreement with Riku. "While I understand it may be an undue burden, I must ask that no one be killed unless absolutely necessary. These people are under a curse and being manipulated. Even the queen is not to be killed, by request of Alina." Sarra notices Schneider's personalized chess piece and lets out an impressed 'oooh'. "What a lovely figurine."      Marcus's Question:      Sarra looks a bit surprised at the question of backup plans. Sarra keeps so many power-ups on her that she doesn't even consider backup plans since she always has one. "Er...well, power-ups do not go 'out of control' as far as I am aware. They are very intuitive and endow one with at least base knowledge of how to use them. But, if you are uncomfortable with the cloud then you are welcome to the P-wing." Sarra pulls a few out and sets them on the war table. They are white wings much like a dove's with a flashing P on them. "Once used, they will grant you the ability to fly and glide until you are damaged. Take a few if you wish."      She then looks at Greta. "I find it unlikely that Gregory will not be found, but if for some reason you cannot find him then focus on capturing the queen. But, if for some reason he is not with the queen then I have confidence in your abilities as investigators.      Love's Question:      Sarra doesn't explicitly say yes, but the look she gives Love is definitely a 'I am not saying no to laser time' look.      Calvin's Question:      Sarra blinks. "Why, you ride it, of course. Merely squeeze it as with any power up and it will manifest in a puff of smoke as a person-sized cloud beneath your feet. Then just...fly." She says that last word as if there isn't a way to explain how you fly on a cloud. You just do.      Lilian: 'Okay'      Sarra gives her a slightly confused look. That's an odd thing for Lilian to say. Either it would be nothing, or something insulting. Just...okay? That is weird. Sarra isn't going to poke the bear today, though.      The plan to be wheeled into the castle as produce goes off without a hitch. These guards are on alert for princesses, not barely concealed intruders of other types. The servants areas are not empty this time. There are servants scuttling around taking care of tasks. But, drained as they are of hope and energy, they barely register the group making their way through. Just more servants stuck in a crappy place feeling tired all the time.      It isn't until they get up to the top of the servant stairs that they finally encounter resistance. The two guards that Greco encountered the first time are once again here. It would be easy to catch them from behind or simply by surprise, incapacitate them, and continue on. Judging by where she heard voices, the throne room is straight ahead. But of course...the doors to the throne room are also flanked by guards, and they are staring right toward the servants hall where the group would be emerging from. It would be pretty difficult to incapacitate them before they could raise the alarm. Possible perhaps, but difficult.      Those that choose to fly in will find that...they could really just fly right up to the tower and likely force their way in through a window. There is a fairly large one at the room that is supposed to house the curse's source.
Riku Asakura	'... So. How about that weather.' "I think the weather is the last of our concerns today, but uh... It's all right today?" Riku responds to Petra with a smile of his own to try to cheer up the villain.   Climbing out of the back of the cart and hiding behind Schneider and Love, they trace their steps back through the kitchen and the servants' quarters to the stairs right outside of the room with the Queen.  There are guards everywhere.  If he were to try to take them out, they'd need to go loud starting now.   "Stealth isn't my way. If I transform now, we go loud, do we want that?" He asks the group.  Otherwise, he'll sit back and wait for others to come up with a plan to take down the guards.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: It's his fault!     Arthur's response to that is always simple: "YEAH!" And a big shitty grin. > ==>     With Schneider unlikely to do the call-in, Arthur's got a good focus to aim for: Window. "Alright, G-and-M." He calls out. "You wanna BREAK A WINDOW?" He shifts to a bracing position on his broom, coasts around a cloud... "Let me take FIRST SHOT here." It's sounding like the people inside are encountering guards, so, best that he get to work actively... >Arthur: CRASH THE CASTLE     Crack... Crack... Crack-crack-ka-FWOOSH! Arthur, covered in a protective bubble of gravity, rushes the window at rocket-speed ahead of the sound of his own broom, intending to strike directly through the window. He's expecting it to be covered in a barrier, the Fairies here are prone to advanced magical walls, which is why he gives it enough force to pound through just about anything. That'll leave him skidding through an interior chamber, broom already out, to slam into knees and arms of anyone who looks likely to cause trouble.     "EVERYONE DROP YA CURSES AND FREEZE YA HEXES, I'M HERE FOR BONE-FRAGMENT REAGENTS AND I'M GONNA GET 'EM FROM YOUR KNEECAPS! *PLUG YOUR FUCKIN' DRAIN, ASSHOLES!!*" He *would* be shouting. He might actually *be* shouting! He's going to improvise based on the level of sustained stealth here. He might just be doing all this silently and shouting in his head. He's gotta read the room, and furthermore, the entire castle.     Who am I kidding. He's screaming.
Schneider Greco	"Trying to rush the royal chambers and beat the mastermind down as a group before you even know what's going on..."      "Mmmh. My hands were temp-ted, when I might have had the shot before," Schneider says casually with a loose gun-recoil motion of her hand, "and yet..."      She's been the main voice saying "maybe all this isn't so simple", but even she wishes it was. Oh well.      The two guards that Greco encountered the first time are once again here...      Inside, Schneider presses her ear to the last door out of the servant quarters, frowns, silently raises two fingers to the Elites behind her, and points: one to the left; one to the right.      She flings the door open, steps out smoothly to the left, and--      Well, one doesn't hear much, and it's hard to see what she's doing until you round the corner either, but following behind one sees her putting the left guard in a piggybacking blood choke with her left arm cinched across the throat and the bend of her right leg cinching the arm.      The point of this is to have her right hand free to point a handgun at the right guard's head, just in case, but someone else can hasten to solve that quieter.      - - - -      The two guards staring from straight down a hall, in the next segment, are tougher.      Schneider breezily advances with a gun aimed at each of their heads and immediately says "Don't yell, if you val-ue your lives" in a hushed but urgent tone, but she doesn't know how brave they feel like being.      It's probably wise for someone else to capitalize on whatever moment of hesitation that brings, too!
Angela	''The mesmerizin' she does for a livin', The energy drainin' she does justy *by* livin'.'' "Woah..." Love says. His statement being wordplay only makes it more effective on Love. AND THEN... "Are you doing okay under there...?" Love murmurs to Petra, worrying a little that she has turned into vegetables while she's been under the tarp. It could happen. This is a storybook world, sometimes weird things happen to people in storybook worlds. ''Don't yell, if you value your lives.'' At this point, Love who has been very good and hasn't blasted anybody prematurely can hold off no more, she draws her staff out, performs a little pirouette, and immediately sends a pair of pink laser blasts towards the guards that Schneider is holding hostage with a great big friendly smile on her face. "We're a good team...!" Love beams at Schneider. She loves the teamwork of 'Schneider points guns at people' and 'Love blasts them with lasers'. It is an incredible combo technique it turns out! She giggles just thinking about shooting more people with hot pink lasers that Schneider is pointing guns at and she presses both hands to her cheeks and gets this far-off dreamy look in her eyes as she tries to contain herself.
Storm Investigators	"I must ask that no one be killed unless absolutely necessary." Even though that answer does make their job a little harder, neither of the investigators seems too bothered by it. Marcus in particularly even looks relieved, and Greta just takes a moment to make sure her pistol is properly loaded. "They are very intuitive and endow one with at least base knowledge of how to use them." "I-I'm okay with a cloud!" Marcus blurts out hastily, trying to stave off the fear of having to fly without something beneath her feet. "I.. I'm sure I can figure it out. Thank you, Princess Sarracenia. " The answer to Greta's question earns Sarracenia a nod as well, and Greta is predictably much calmer about the answer than Marcus was a moment ago. --- And so, the approach to the tower happens via clouds! Marcus is about as fidgety as one would expect from someone like her, but she does calm down considerably (not completely) when Greta's own cloud is position just beneath hers to provide her some extra insurance in case of a fall. They're both packing extras, too, with Marcus taking just clouds while Greta packs a P-wing just in case. "You wanna BREAK A WINDOW?" "Would that be wise, Mister Lowell? If we draw their attention, it may make our approach more-uh. Madam Hofmann?" Before Marcus can finish weighing the pros and cons of the plan, Greta is already nudging her own and Marcus' clouds to follow Arthur's broom. "After me, Marcus. Cover your face." Without giving Marcus a chance to ask why and only enough time to wrap her face up with her scarf, Greta speeds along and crashes right in after Arthur. The senior pulls her coat up some just before impact to shield herself from the broken glass, deliberately crashing through it so Marcus can follow them in more safely. They take advantage of Arthur's screaming entrance, too, with Greta whipping out her handgun and keeping it leveled steadily at any guards she sees in the room. If she sees one so much as reaching for a weapon or gripping it with a second hand, she's already moving to either pistol-whip somebody or shooting them in the leg to discourage further responses. Marcus, meanwhile, tries to distract herself with anything but possible fighting and Arthur's choice of words even if she's totally listening closely. She gets her lantern up to see if there's anything worth reading in their immediate area, resorting to reading the air for magical residue only if there's nothing immediately visible once they're inside.
Calvin Nash	Merely squeeze it as with any power up and it will manifest in a puff of smoke as a person-sized cloud beneath your feet.     "Aight." That seems to satisfy him! ...     Calvin has to think about the narrative role he's playing. Storming the castle and crashing into whatever is going on doesn't suit the role of anyone trying to find *out* what's going on. He doesn't know what an armchair rationalist is, but Lilian said it with enough disdain to make him believe it'd probably annoy him too.     His brow furrows in concentration. A pale blue ball of energy winks into existence, resting on thin air just shy of touching his palm. It flickers almost like a candle. As Schneider steps out to the left, he braces himself against the wall, peeks around the corner to spy her reaction, then swings out right. Right hand bracing the left, palm extended, "Dormina."     The orb rockets away, stretching from the speed of its flight into a thin bolt that strikes the ungrappled guard. Twisting at the hips, he blasts the other; both are affected by a potent sleeping spell. ...     Love handles the next two. "What's that, a knockout spell?"
Petra Soroka	"I think the weather is the last of our concerns today, but uh... It's all right today?"     "Are you, like, autistic, or something?"     The small talk going on between the vegetables is not promising. When Love addresses her, though, Petra whispers back, perfectly pleasantly. "Yeah, I'm alright. ... You know, we haven't shown you Ratattouille, have we?"     Petra clambers out of the wagon once inside, stretching biiiig and wide like she was in there an hour instead of, like, ten minutes. She's wearing her-- according to her-- slutty pirate outfit, which does absolutely stick out in comparison to the hopeless and sack-adorned servants in the castle, but she just couldn't stand *not* dressing to tone. Slinking around the service hallways, Petra almost feels embarrassed for how little the servants seem to care about their presence here, which makes her start thinking about some of her college reading on the topic of the inherent revolutionary properties of the peasantry even when they're acting in service to the system.     Idly, in order to test this out, Petra withdraws a gold coin (gotten from Elibe) from her hip pouch. Handing it to a servant at essentially random while passing by, she says, "Hey, man. Could you leave all the doors exiting the throne room unlocked? Thanks." "If I transform now, we go loud, do we want that?"     Petra shakes her head at Riku. "I don't think we need to get out the superpowered armor suits to deal with this one, and ideally we don't, like, make a huge explosion right outside the door."     To that end, when the guards flanking the door are ambushed by Schneider, two puddles of Silver snake along the ground towards each of them. When they aren't looking, the Silver grabs them by the calves and yanks them downwards, forcing them to their knees for the attacks coming from Love and Calvin. Two more droplets dart through the air out of Petra's palm when she rounds the corner, slapping across their mouths as gags.     Because she assumes that it'll piss off Calvin, Petra steps ahead and pushes the throne room door open, holding it for everyone to pass through. "Ladies first."
Calvin Nash	Ladies first.     Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect. "That's more like it," he says, sotto voce. Index a-pointing, "Next time, start from there. I shouldn't have to get on you for you to have some damn respect."
Lilian Rook	'It's his fault!'     'YEAH!'     Lilian looks at Arthur. She looks at Petra. She looks at Arthur again. Twin competing belief systems clash with each other. After heroic effort, Lilian flippantly decides to say "It probably is." and ignore it.     'Mmmh. My hands were temp-ted, when I might have had the shot before,'     "I know, I know." Lilian says. "It doesn't get easier, but you do get used to it."     What?     'And, like-- we've just *gotta* hear her speak.'     "Obviously we're going to." Lilian says, first brusque, then sighing. "It'll just be such a disappointment if . . ."     'The entire *genre* of this book depends on the exact tone that she uses when she says 'kneel''     "Oh my god you're right." Petra's ploy works. Something sparks in Lilian's mind, and she straightens up immediately.     . . . . . . . .     'Dormina.'     'We're a good team...!'     'Don't yell, if you val-ue your lives'     Lilian is actually prepared for this particular genre! Incidentally, but still! It's the easiest thing in the world, actually, when guards are being held up at gunpoint and zapped with spells for Lilian to unroll a big stupid spool of-- well it's not, like, cartoon grade rope, but it's enough basic cable tie to clap her hands off and put them on her hips classical style when they're rendered helpless. In pairs, too! Back to back! Slumped over all defeated!     'Ladies first.'     Lilian naturally walks on through as a matter of course.
Sarracenia	Tower Team      Arthur CRASHES THE CASTLE! And just as he expected, a magical barrier flares up! Swirling colors of dark purple and magenta surge around the tower at the impact, until it shatters much like the glass does a moment later. But, perhaps to his and the investigators' surprise...there's no one here? There is however, a large pedestal about chest high with a dark purple lotus atop it. Nestled within its petals is a large glowing orb, swirling with the same dark purple and magenta colors as the force field.      They can only catch a glimpse of it though before the lotus slams shut, apparently some kind of protective barrier. And from the lotus shadows start to emerge and gain physical forms. More of those monkey bat things that they encountered before! The shriek terribly before throwing themselves at the trio while tendrils of darkness extend from the flower like roots and start lashing out.      Throne Room Team      The guards are merely run of the mill non-elites. Great for patrols against typical citizens. Terrible for actual protection against actual dangers. The first pair are easily dealt with via a mixture of martial arts, threats, and a sleeping spell. The second pair is just as easily dealt with, though they are just barely starting to show hints of movement toward Schneider when Love blasts them. Lethal or not, they are down.      Petra hands a random servant a gold coin. The servant blinks in surprise, as if snapping out of a trance, and gives Petra a questioning look. "Uh...I...uh..." The chosen servant is a rather young woman, probably younger than Petra, with dirty blond hair and blue eyes. And the look on her face is like she has just been handed a thousand dollars out of the blue. "Sh-sure!" she says, her bewildered face gaining a bit of life back to it as she clutches the coin to her chest.      Guards are further bound by Silver and cable ties. Petra holds the door open for the others, and inside are...more guards! It is the throne room, after all. But, also inside are the King, Queen, and...an odd looking human with slightly red skin wearing a well-tailored butler's suit. His hair looks a bit odd, being dark green with strands that are a bit too thick for hair. They look more like thin grass.      There are only a dozen or so guards in here, but instead of rushing forward they form a wall between the intruders and the royals. And perhaps to Petra's and Lilian's disappointment...the queen does not look like Lilian. Or even act like Lilian. "What is the meaning of this?!" the queen demands. She is a tall figure with silver hair and blue eyes. She looks to be in her thirties, but she has many more wrinkles than a typical thirty year old should have, as if time simply forced itself upon her at some point. She also has an oversized scepter-staff that she taps firmly on the stone floor to send a deep, bass-filled thud through the hall. This is much less like Lilian and much more like...      "How dare you! Peasants bursting their way into the castle?!" she exclaims in a high and shrill pitch that is very clearly modeled after a certain princess. "I am Queen Lila, Ruler of Starmist, Savior of All! Bow to me if you value your lives, for I am amazing and of much higher class than everyone else around here! Guards! Arrest them immediately!"      The butler stays back for now, observing silently and standing at proper posture even now. Meanwhile, the queen looks the invaders over. "...she is not here..." she says quietly, then in a bellowing and once again screeching like nails on a chalkboard voice says, "So! The princess somehow found allies? How much did she pay you for your services? There is no way that -that- princess has this many...or any...friends!"
Riku Asakura	Back at the cart! 'Are you, like, autistic, or something?' "No?" Riku responds, not taking it as an insult because he isn't sure that it was an insult.   In the castle! 'I don't think we need to get out the superpowered armor suits to deal with this one, and ideally we don't, like, make a huge explosion right outside the door.' <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, to Riku, "Don't just-yet." Riku holds his Fusion riser, but doesn't go through the transformation sequence yet.  Instead, he waits for the guards to go down thanks to others and breathes a sigh of relief when they do without casualties.  He runs behind the group when they hit the top and face down the evil Queen.   'How dare you! Peasants bursting their way into the castle?!' "I'm not a peasant!" he exclaims and then... He draws out an Ultraman capsule, and exclaims, "You go!" he clicks it as he dodges out of the way of people trying to stab him.  He clicks a second one after sliding the first capsule into a holder.  "I go!" he slips this one into the holder after kicking off a guard trying to impale him with a spear. "Here we go!" he says between dodging spear strikes, one or two striking him by the chest or arms as he does this.  Blood trickles down, but he's not deterred by the guards.  He scans the capsules with the Fusion Riser as he does so, and then says, "I'll show you something shocking." He pulls the trigger and brings the Fusion Riser right across his chest.  "GEEEEEEEEEED!" FUSION RISE! Ultraman Hikari Ultraman Cosmos Ultraman Geed Arco Smasher Bursting from the ground where he stood, the giant of light rises in Blue and Silver colors.  He avoids smashing the soldiers, but instead pulls his hands out and then forms a circle with them.  Bubbles foam around his hands as he does this until he pulls them together after completing the circle.   Then a beam of soothing energy tears out across the battlefield, aiming to not only soothe the guards, but also remove the control over their minds from the control the Queen is enforcing on them.
Schneider Greco	Schneider gives Love a wink for the (quieter-than-gunshots, presumably) laser-blasts!! Yay! "Dulci serpenti, we make a good team, right? Mhmhm...."      "Thank you, my-la-dy Petra," Schneider purrs, holstering her guns on her way in to the throne room. No bullets fired yet, still a spring in her step...      "How dare you! Peasants bursting their way into the castle?!"      So this doesn't make her grimace as much as it might. She waltzes her way closer across the open floor, appraising the butler- does he seem cognizant that he's a prisoner, here?- and the King, who might or might not be a willing pawn as well.      "Please, my-la-dy the Queen," outstretching her hand as if to beseech, "we have come on-ly to speak to you of a certain mat-ter. The truth of it, we are not yet cer-tain, but..."      "Guards! Arrest them immediately!"      BANG.      Schneider, before the guards can rush her, has already manifested a smoking gun in her hand. The shot is aimed neatly through the intervening crowd to splinter open her arm and make her drop the scepter.      No time for a steady follow-up, though. Defending herself from a guard is easy; defending herself from several is hard; defending herself from several without killing them proves burdensome.      She trims off the tips of spears coming for her with a defensive whirl of black razor-feathers that follow a twist of her fingers, but blunt strikes and grabbing hands still catch her in the melee and force her to defend herself with a kneecap-and-elbow-aimed BANG-BANG.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: STRIFE!     A lotus barrier... familiar in several ways. But it isn't connected, surely. Even if it's full of an orb, or depositing scary chimeras, it's not related to the old lotuses he remembers. Ahh-- the chimeras. Right. The monkeybats!     He slams one foot into the ground hard, brandishes his broom, and rushes forward, hollering. Where he left, though that stomp, there's a shimmering starry constellation in a bright green circle on the ground. Whenever Marcus is near it, she'll find her arcanum heavily energized by Arthur's powerful magic, a stream of refined fuel that makes any power-hungry process easy! Arthur himself... he's moving to smash and crash against the monkeys and the field both at once, rocket-blasting straight at them and revving his blender-bladed broom up to a carving, violent roar.     Rocket-dashing around the chamber and bouncing off the walls and protective field, he strikes at the orb over and over! ...Though he doesn't expect he'll be able to get much traction in the second encounter...
Angela	''You know, we haven't shown you Ratatouille, have we?'' "Oooh, I don't think so! Rat A Two Ee... Gosh, I wonder what that is." She doesn't quite realize it's a movie, of course, though endearing Love to a rat that helps one cook might have unusual reprecussions about Love's feelings about her favorite type of snack. "Sounds fun, Petra!" She is feeling so much better. She hasn't been put into any closets today AND she got to blast, like everybody promised! ''What's that, a knockout spell?'' "Sometimes it knocks people out." Love tells Calvin. Love doesn't really have a 'pulled punch' setting even if she's not really the sort to specifically go for murder either. It's just that sometimes shooting laser blasts at people result in people not being people anymore. She hasn't even chomped Sarracenia's head off either. She's been so well behaved! And whether someone is blasted to ash or falls over with swirly-eyed is about the same to her. ''Dulci serpenti'' Love can infer from context that dulci serpenti is words rather than incantations and she giggles. "Aww I like you when you call me that." She beams, offering Schneider a HI FIVE. It's okay to HI FIVE teammates mid combat because the bad guys will be patient and wait for you, usually. That's what Love believes with all her heart. ''Evil Queen Sarracenia!!'' Love gasps, bringing both hands to her mouth. "Wow... I was right that this was a sort of themed around Sarracenia's own beliefs, expectations, and experiences!" She is so happy about this. "Maybe she'll unlock a NEW FORM if we do this right...!" Love's occassionally antagonistic past with Sarracenia is completely irrelevent to her being excited at Sarracenia getting a second form. "Perhaps she'll learn a magical girl lesson of the day! I wonder what it will be!" The guards attack! Love, ever committed, doesn't immediately blast them but instead allows them to grab at her and roughhouse her a little bit. "KYAAAAH!" She yells as she throws herself to the side, a shocked expression on her face. "EEEEEK!" She throws herself to the floor exageratedly when the Guards smack her around. r"OOOF!" Love adds, standing up, strained as she brings her magical staff before her. "There's so many dangerous dark lieutenants here...! But how can we defeat the Dark Queen...?" She looks around for Sarracenia. "I mean...HOW can we defeat the DARK QUEEN without Sarracenia?" She waits another moment and then sighs, sending flying glowing stars at the guards. "Maybe I got the timing wrong... I'm sure Sarracenia will have her character moment any second now!" She's rooting for her!
Petra Soroka	"Sh-sure!"     Petra's misanthropy takes another hit. Frantz Fanon wins again. Before splitting off, Petra gives the servant a reassuring bump on the shoulder with her fist. "Be careful, though."     Like a butler on her own, Petra cheerily ushers Lilian through the door first. Given that they're sort of here to coup a queen, it's natural for Lilian to be the one stepping into the throne room to be their face, but then Schneider makes it a vaguely positive feeling in general to hold the door, and she pretty much forgets about intending it as a spiteful thing. Being the last one into the throne room, though, means that she's the last one to see-- "How dare you! Peasants bursting their way into the castle?!"     "N-no...."     Petra staggers backwards when Queen Lila shrieks. Her hand covers her mouth, eyes wide in horror, as stunned as she would be if the evil queen was revealed to be her own mother, or some other suitably betraying plot twist. Not even capable of shouting defiantly, and hardly noticing the guards mobilizing, Petra tries to protest through this revelation.     "Not *you*. I-it can't be *you*. This wasn't... this isn't... you were supposed to have black hair! And wear Lilian's colors! Your name is *Lila*! What is this?!"     She's not even prepared for the guards closing in to try and batter her down. Petra struggles to pull her Silver together into a shape solid enough to contend with the guards' weapons, with each time she dodges an attack from them breaking the accumulating surface tension of the morphmetal in her hand. "You're telling me... this whole time...!"     Petra finally conjures a metal scythe in her hands, cutting through one guard's spear and battering one to the ground with the tip of it, and then whips it up to gesture accusingly at the queen while standing over both of the disabled guards. "... You've just been a *dark mirror into her own future*?!"     Even more aggrieved, with her voice nearly reaching the screechy pitch of the queen's, Petra complains, "And your name is *Lila*?!"     Her morphmetal scythe disintegrates with a swipe of her hand, turning into a ring of metal bubbles floating around her. Each one rockets towards one of the guards, hitting them in the chest like a solid punch, while Petra herself stalks towards Lila. "Obviously she doesn't have *friends*, you *pervert*! What's your fucking issue?!"
Storm Investigators	Nobody to shoot? Not yet, so that gives both Greta and Marcus a chance to breathe sighs of relief, although neither of them put their handgun nor lantern away. They're still prepared for anyone to come in at any moment, after all, even as Marcus turns her attention towards the strange orb on the pedestal. "That must be the... Something?" "Likely. See what you can find, Marcus." Both Marcus can even utter a 'yes', however, the lotus closes, and the shadows appear. Caught off guard, Marcus trips over one of the grasping tendrils while Greta backs up towards her while tryign to fend off those horrible monkey bats biting and clawing at her. "Annoying little things... Marcus, just focus on reading! Arthur and I will handle the creatures." Greta directs, pulling out a combat knife and hacking away at some of those tendrils before turning her attention to the bats still harassing her and Arthur. As one of the monkey bats comes swooping in, Greta intercepts it with a knife in the side followed by two shots at close range. Twisting the knife in, she holds it against her shoulder as a makeshift shield while starting to fire on the rest of the monkeybats, keeping fairly still to make herself an easier and larger target compared to Marcus. "Ow ow ow! Get off, get off!" Marcus shouts while tugging at the tendrils, trying to blast them apart with the lantern's light. With Flamel's constellation giving her extra juice to work with, she takes a second to steady her breathing, then gets her eyes back on the orb. Activating her Reading ability, she starts trying to decipher what's within the pages she's poring through. "There must be something about it.. What's keeping it going, or maybe what's powering it? What it's made of..."
Lilian Rook	Being suddenly walled off by a fence of living bodies does less to give Lilian pause than it really should. Even someone who doesn't view them as a threat at all at least takes a moment to look at them, right? She's almost on collision course before having a a good enough reason to stop, because she is utterly fixated on the queen, given--     'How dare you! Peasants bursting their way into the castle?!'     "Oh my god this is Petra's fault. This is a couch cushion adventure!" Lilian gasps, pointing towards the queen and looking at Petra. "This is where you put the old isn't it?!"     'How much did she pay you for your services? There is no way that -that- princess has this many...or any...friends!'     Lilian has perhaps misunderstood the entire premise of this question. Carried forward by a fixated inertia best-described as 'hushed awe', she says "I believe it was 'anything we wanted'.", which is also wrong. "Oh goodness this is just--"     Schneider firing guns less than twenty feet away drowns the rest out. Lilian only remembers to rattle off "Ach ansin arís-!" when Love starts shouting called attacks (well, action scene miscellanea, really), and blip around past the line of guards. A solid defensive formation is excellent for dealing with a bunch of aggressive bastards on one side (her allies) and not quite designed for what happens if someone just appears on the other side; because that would be stupid; it's not real.     'And your name is *Lila*?!'     "Is she even a dark fairy?!" Lilian shouts, drawing her sword and spinning around to whang a guard in the side of the head with the flat. Sarracenia had made a specific request, so it's just sloppy not to honour it, but she's not particularly fussing over how realistic that is to disable someone without a dangerous concussion. "Like, Sundew is a human! Or at least not a fairy! So-- Are you certain you didn't fuck this up?!" she yells across at Petra, then turns on another guard to cleave his spear in half, trip him up with her leg, and accelerate his head into the floor with a simultaneous pommel bash on the back.
Calvin Nash	Arrest them immediately!     Calvin readies his sleeping spell, palm outwards as the guards rush in. Hot on the heels of Geed's soothing energy, he selectively blasts any that still try and put up a fight. Weaving around a spear thrust, the point catches his abdomen before he can put the wielder to sleep. He hisses a hushed swear. How much did she pay you for your services? There is no way that -that- princess has this many...or any...friends!     "I ain't her friend," Calvin answers testily, palm lowered temporarily. "And she didn't pay me. I'm here 'cause one of her friends is missin'. He don't deserve to get wrapped up in all this." I'm sure Sarracenia will have her character moment any second now!     "That's her problem," says Calvin. "I just wanna find the damn butler." He lacks crucial information.
Sarracenia	Throne Room Team      Riku: I'm not a peasant!      The queen huffs. "Of course you are! Everyone is a peasant to royalty except MAYBE other royals!" His soothing beam though is quite effective! The guards have their minds soothed! But...they aren't -actually- being controlled unfortunately. They are actually guards and so are guarding the king and queen. They do seem more suspicious of their queen, though!      'Please, my-la-dy the Queen, we have come on-ly to speak to you of a certain mat-ter. The truth of it, we are not yet cer-tain, but...'      Sarra would certainly appreciate Schneider's efforts to talk it out first, especially knowing how much Schneider likes guns. But, this queen is not interested in talking. Three shots go out, and a shield much like the one that Arthur encountered appears around the evil queen. Each shot staggers her, and the third finally shatters the shield and hits her knee. She yelps and goes down, dropping the staff in the process. And...her persona shatters along with the shield. She cries out pitifully, like someone who has never been hurt before much less shot. "By the divines?! What is wrong with you?! I said -arrest-! ARREST! This is how you respond to that?!" She crawls toward her staff and clings to it fearfully.      'Maybe I got the timing wrong... I'm sure Sarracenia will have her character moment any second now!'      The guards that picked Love as a target quickly tackle and cuff her, then move to help with the others. At least until...glowing stars! Those guards are knocked out...maybe swirly eyed...by the attack. But, so far there are no signs of Sarra showing up. She did say she was headed to them, didn't she?      'Not *you*. I-it can't be *you*. This wasn't... this isn't... you were supposed to have black hair! And wear Lilian's colors! Your name is *Lila*! What is this?!'      The Dark Queen looks entirely confused and scared by Petra's ranting, at least until the dark mirror part. "It is your fault for not being her! This is all wasted on you lot! She is supposed to bust in here herself, mindlessly swinging a hammer and throwing bombs!" the fairy shouts, still clinging to her scepter.      'Is she even a dark fairy?!'      Lila blinks in surprise as Lilian appears suddenly. The question though brings her out of fear enough to object. "Of course I am a dark fairy!" she exclaims, insulted. "Do you think some mere fake queen could-" She goes back to being scared as Lilian dispatches guards.
Petra Soroka	"This is where you put the old isn't it?!"     "No!!! I put the old in my *machine*!"     As nonsensical as their conversation is, Petra's mind immediately starts racing to double check whether it's possible that she *did* put the old inside of this book. Her jury-rigged TimeTrack is sitting in a warehouse lab in the Grand Dorado-- so, locationally, the old would still be stored nearby somewhere Sarracenia frequents, and so could stumble upon, if it somehow left her machine. In terms of transforming objects or concepts into a book-- that's Angela's domain, and she can't imagine that there's some Angela EGO-copycat running around. Coming at it from the other angle, it's the Light that gave Angela that power in the first place-- if TimeTrack has any ties to the Collective Unconscious, could Sarracenia's oldness have been so repulsive to the psyche of the world that it was spat back out in physical narrative form?     But, there's no way. TimeTrack can't have any connection to the Light. Petra's the only person in the entire City who's ever been elbows-deep in both of them, so she should always be a step ahead of anyone trying to use a combination against her.     No. Actually, there's one other person who would know even more than she does. Petra's eyes narrow in suspicion. "Benjamin..." "So-- Are you certain you didn't fuck this up?!"     But that's ridiculous! Hokmah doesn't even like Sarracenia! "There's no way! I sucked the old out of her and put it in my machine, and it's supposed to stay there until I put the old into something else! Putting it into a book would just make it rot, anyways!"     "No, this has to be--" Petra stops her moving around and swivels towards Lilian. An orbiting blob of Silver juts backwards to knock the wind out of a guard who tries to take advantage of her looking away. "It's gotta be a manifested fears thing! A ghosts of Christmas future!"     "This is made by someone who *knows* Sundew, or read her mind, and they hate her *guts*."
Sarracenia	Tower Team      Arthur: STRIFE!      Arthur clashes with the protective lotus many times, and each time a petal dents or falls off. But there are dozens. It is quite possible the orb won't be reach in this encounter.      'Annoying little things... Marcus, just focus on reading! Arthur and I will handle the creatures.'      'There must be something about it.. What's keeping it going, or maybe what's powering it? What it's made of...'      Greta's efforts prove quite effective at defeating the monkey bat creatures. But, her plan to make one a shield goes up in smoke quite literally. When killed, the creatures dissolve into blackness and disperse back toward the lotus, only to be recreated and sent at her again. She does draw their attention much more than Marcus, though! So, Marcus is safe from monkey bats for now. The tendrils are kept mostly at bay by Marcus herself, and as she tries to read the lotus and the orb she discovers...      ...that both are ancient dark fairy artifacts. One, a carefully crafted shield to protect precious things, grown from the very swamps that the dark fairies call home. The other, the orb, is a focus for a dark ritual. It may have once needed an outside power source, but now it is self-sustaining on the energy of the city. As long as it is within the city it will keep drawing energy and feeding it to the dark fairy. The orb itself seems to be made of crystal. Heavily enchanted, but still merely crystal. Once they can get it out of the lotus it will not be hard to destroy.      Back to Throne Room Team      "I am so out of here! There is no way I am dying for this cesspool -or- that warlock's plan!"      The form of the queen shimmers then disappears in a burst of darkness, and a glowing firefly-like orb of purple zips away for the nearest exit. As she is fleeing, a blast of dark energy is shot at the butler. "Gregory! Take care of your -former- princess's friends for me!" before she zips like through an open window.      The butler...suddenly looks much less composed. He growls, then starts to grow and change like some Super Sentai enemy. He loses his human form and reaches nearly 20 feet in height. If not for the high ceiling of the throne room he would probably break it.      The king, who has so far not even left his throne, suddenly seems to snap out of it. Then...promptly shrieks and flees. The guards, now also shaken out of it, follow the king out. "Protect the king! Let this thing deal with the troublemakers!"      Now looking much more like a piranha plant...Gregory Piranha growls menacingly as two cages full of dark fire appear in his leaf-like hands. He roars at those gathered in the throne room, then magical darkfire starts shooting out of those heavy iron cages.      At the same time, up in the tower, the lotus opens just enough that the glow of the orb can be seen between the petals, and beams of pure dark energy start lancing out.
Riku Asakura	'Everyone is a peasant to royalty except MAYBE other royals!' '<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Also, you are a peasant."' "Yeah, but you're not even royalty, you're a fraud..." Ultraman Geed Counters the 'Queen'.  He gives Petra a look, but doesn't say anything else on the subject of peasants, because everything he said was already said on the radio, but she gets such a look.   'I am so out of here! There is no way I am dying for this cesspool -or- that warlock's plan!' "Warlock..?" Geed asks. There seems to be more going on here than just a simple storybook kingdom takeover.  The guards seem to have calmed down, so this gives Geed time to consider things. He's about to do something about her escaping, but then suddenly... 'Gregory! Take care of your -former- princess's friends for me!' Gregory goes sicko mode on them, forcing Geed to be on the back foot.  He manages to dodge the majority of the plant's attacks, using a strange form of combat that allows him to deflect blows.  However, the body slam is a bit much for this fighting style, and knocks Riku back, despite the size being about the same.   "Gregory!  You have to snap out of it!  She's not the one you serve!" He says, trying to reach through to Gregory, while tackling the juiced-out butler to the ground and attempting to hold him while someone else tries knocking some sense into him.
Schneider Greco	a glowing firefly-like orb of purple zips away for the nearest exit      BANG. Entangled with a guard she's disarming on the floor, Schneider wrestles her arm past his head and tries to put a slug directly in the fleeing dark fairy orb. She's got the ghost-effective bullets! It's worth a try!      "Lady Love! Get up!" she shouts, after kicking the guard away. Slipping through the melee with a deceptive amount of weight behind her guard-shouldering, she tries to give the Magical Girl a hand up while dispersing her gun into those whirling dark-feather blades to cover it.      "This is-not something the Princess must do for herself! Eh-- Evil! That was evil, running away just then! The thing you are always wanting to blast! Go! Get it, serpenti!"      Love's her fastest flying friend, after all!      . . .      That just leaves her with Gregory. Hm.
Angela	Love flexes her hands and snaps the cuffs because of course she does but she puts them back on when she's done blasting. "You won't get away with this, Dark Queen! Once we're all united--" The handcuffs slip back off her hand since she broke them the first time. "...Sarracenia does love swinging hammers and throwing bombs... I'm sure she'll throw a hammer and throw a bomb any second now!" She thinks it over. "Unless maybe the lesson is to not throw hammers...?" She can't know what Sarracenia's lesson of the day is, she's not Sarracenia! She's the one who should be here figuring it out. But it's okay to be late, she tells herself, that's perfectly fine. ''I just wanna find the damn butler.'' "I think that's him." Love says, pointing to the butler that's getting big. It's totally normal for monsters of the week to be very tall, after all, even if they came from someone who isn't tall at all. DARKFIRE is actually reasonably dangerous to Love and she is blasted back, spinning around across the floor, slightly covered in dash and visibly dizzy. She rubs at her head, "Ooghie..." ''Lady Love! Get up!'' The urging of a dark magical girl is bound to get Love up to her feet. She bounces up right to her feet like she was made for it! "It's not?" She asks. ''That was evil, running away just then! The thing you are always wanting to blast! Go! Get it, serpent!'' "That IS pretty evil..." Love says and then, like her pokemon master has just given her a command--she transforms from a chef-themed magical girl.... TO A GIANT WINGED SERPENT. She busts through the castle walls, chasing after the purple orb, tail thrashing as it knocks chandeliers and torches all over the place and breaks all manner of architecture. MAJOR ARCANNNAAAA SLAAAAAAVE! The massive serpent's jaw opens up as a purple light emits from her mouth-- --before bursting out like artillery after the dark purple fairy orb, threatening to engulf it and, like, a fair chunk of the scenery along with it before exploding into a giant purple heart in the distance. Schneider is going to be so proud of her! Maybe they'll even...prepare a meal together!! She's so excited!!!
Storm Investigators	"I can see it... I almost found it. But which one of these is right?" Marcus hunches over as she keeps poring through the pages, trusting in Greta's and Arthur's protection all the while. A skim, a read, some deeper focus, and she finally gets it sorted out. "The lotus is made to protect the precious. Originating from the dark fairies' homes, it... Oh! The orb! It's being powered by the-" This might be something everyone could use, actually. She fumbles around in one pocket, then the other to get her communicator out and activated. <<Everyone! The orb here, it's powered by the city itself, and it's feeding all that into Lila. If we can break it or get it out of the city, we can stop the dark fairy! Ah, but this lotus protecting it...>> "Do we have anything else on the lotus, Marcus?" Greta sucks in a sharp breath as her attempt to use a monkeybat as a shield doesn't work quite so well, forcing her to actually try and block against those continued attacks with nothing more but slight movements that keep her right in between Marcus and the continously regenerating monkey bats. Having to reload gives them plenty of opportunities to continue blasting away at her, and she's doing a far better job keeping quiet about the pain than she is at actually avoiding it. Still, the shots keep coming, and she even focuses her fire on those going after Arthur. "Lowell, do you have anything that can open it up? If not, we'll have to fall back. Do you need more time?" "There must be something about the barrier in here! What the dark fairies use to construct their magic, or how to pull it apart? Something hidden about how their magic works..." Marcus finally chimes in again, shivering slightly as she keeps switching her focus from reading to blasting the tendrils so she isn't fully tied down to the ground. Watching Arthur in action with all those rocket dashes gives her an idea, though, and she turns her gaze just a little lower towards the pedestal itself. "Perhaps... Is there anything holding that together?" She blurts out, trying to read into its construction, to see if there's anything actually protecting it compared to the way the lotus barrier is protecting the orb. "If the barrier is too strong, maybe we're aiming at the wrong spot..."
Lilian Rook	'Of course you are! Everyone is a peasant to royalty except MAYBE other royals!'     "That's literally-- fucking-- stay down! That's literally wrong!" Lilian huffs amidst the struggle. She'd turned a deaf ear to it earlier, given the shock of the reveal, but now it's stuck in the gears. "Is this about how you never learned anything about being a princess?! Or-- Ugh!"     Anyone can see the train of disjointed thoughts that there really aren't time for here start to pile up into a thirteen car collision. Two more guards down, Lilian's irritation reaches a peak, she cuts off to a sharp sigh, and skips three thoughts ahead to blurt out "What is a queen to a goddess?" three-quarters seriously.     'By the divines?! What is wrong with you?! I said -arrest-! ARREST! This is how you respond to that?!'     Lilian immediately understands that she has two options:     One, underscore that the evil queen has a better understanding of force-escalation by far than Sarracenia and encourage questioning and literary analysis about why this story contains a narrative theme of proportionate and responsible use of Elite power.     Two, blurt out "We all know what happens to girls like that in prison." because she thinks she's really funny and didn't think very hard.     Lilian stage whisper "Oh god dammit." after realizing that she'd already just said option two.     'She is supposed to bust in here herself, mindlessly swinging a hammer and throwing bombs!'     "Oh god dammit this whole thing was about how the evil queen is smarter than her!" Lilian groans.     'No!!! I put the old in my *machine*!"'     "Then that's literally the most likely thing to result in a couch cushion!" Lilian yells, getting shrill with overdone emphasis. "You know Sundew! You hate her guts!" She's even pumping her fists about it now.     'I am so out of here! There is no way I am dying for this cesspool -or- that warlock's plan!'     "Fuck me she even has self-preservation! I--"     Gregory turning into a giant monster very suddenly and very severely limits just about everything Lilian can do to handle this situation smoothly. She has zero reason whatsoever to chase down the fleeing queen, and the dark orb situation is both at the top of the tower and Arthur's problem; she'd just snag the butler and leave if this weren't now a second phase boss encounter.     So Lilian reaches for her marriage benefits. Not the tax ones; the little tactical case that carries ofuda and charms instead of handgun magazines. Flooding the paper talisman with a burst of her own magic, she slaps the coruscatingly gold array on the side of Schneider's gun as she passes, boosting her metaphorical Luck to metaphorical EX+++ for maybe one or two shots. Sprinting towards Gregory, she catches the very tail end of a dark flame blast because she insists on trying to cram "Ansin!" in there without a solid grasp of verbal timing, then reappears at the giant boss plant's feet and slams on a few situationally perfect talismans for good measure: sunlight-aligned 'anti dark-magic' blessings that drain away magic.
Petra Soroka	"Of course you are! Everyone is a peasant to royalty except MAYBE other royals!"     Petra wheels around to yell at Lila again, veering off of the other topic that was making her angry in order to get angry about this instead. "Okay, now, hold on. Words fucking mean something, okay? 'Peasant's not an *individually* comparative word like, I don't fucking know, 'stupid', or 'weak'; it's a *structurally* comparative word, because it's about a particular role someone takes in a *society*."     She points emphatically at Lila, jabbing her finger like she's trying to psychically stab her with it. "We're not just gonna start *saying* shit. We're talking about a concrete and observable network of *ownership relations* and not whether you get to point at some other princess and laugh at her because her kingdom's too small. If you start introducing a subjective definition of a class-for-itself then literally nothing anyone's ever written makes any sense because a united social identity doesn't *exist*. Okay? So shut the hell up." "Yeah, but you're not even royalty, you're a fraud..."     Petra huffs and meets Geed giving her a Look with a side-eyed stare of her own. "Oh, and now we're doing *phrenology* about the *mandate of heaven*. Great." "She is supposed to bust in here herself, mindlessly swinging a hammer and throwing bombs!"     Petra clicks her tongue, hand on her hip. "Then you should've hung a sign that says 'FREE BOYFRIENDS INSIDE' over the door, genius. Fuck off." "There is no way I am dying for this cesspool -or- that warlock's plan!"     "Behind every great woman, there's a warlock pulling the fucking strings, I guess..." Petra is having such a tantrum about all of this that she doesn't even shoot the dark fairy as she flies off. What's the point? It's all been some secret evil man's plan anyways! "Then that's literally the most likely thing to result in a couch cushion!"     "I'll check! I'll check when we're out!" Petra really really hopes this isn't her fault. This being a deranged fanfiction about Lilian would've been awesome, but being to blame for something involving Sundew is the worst!     Gregory's transformation and the swing of his cages knocks Petra back, forcing her to pay attention again. Her Silver, thrown around by the impact, rolls in droplets across the ground back towards her to coalesce into a javelin in her hands. She hefts it threatening, bouncing it in her hand while circling to find an angle on Gregory.     "Come on, dog. You're literally right here. One good hit and we'll haul your ass back to Sundew, where you want to be, for some reason."     Each blast of fire forces her to jump or slide across the ground past them, spear levitating out of her hands when she's forced to roll underneath one of the fireballs. Getting in front of Gregory, she rears back, and then hurls the spear as hard as she can directly at his exposed throat. Rather than piercing through-- this might kill him!-- all the force of the impact disperses through the spear once it hits his neck, softening it into a cord of metal that violently snaps around his neck instead and yanks him backwards, teetering to the ground.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: do you have anything that can open it up?     Arthur staggers to his feet, having been knocked on his ass by a heavy strike to the torso from an unexpected beam. "Hhhhh. Not sure." He mutters to Greta. "This is an artificial universe, workin' on narrative terms. Not a lot of victorious upsets in act two. You've set me up a turnaround, but it's not one I can capitalize *here*." He picks his broom back up, cracks his neck, and flicks his arms out in a pair of crunchy 'reloading his fists' type of motions. "That's why it ain't gonna work, and it's gonna hurt a *lot*, when *my* dumb ass goes and does *this*."     Crack. Crack. Crack-crack-FWOOSH. The rocket engine reignites with force that's enough to nearly blow out a chunk of the wall behind him, then slams handle-end first towards the gap. The bayonet on the end of the rifle end of the broom should lodge in, wedging it open and forcing Arthur to endure the lasers all the more. "DEEP READ!" He shouts at Marcus. "TELL ME IF, HHHH, TELL ME IF IT'S GOT *GEOMETRY DISRUPTORS*! THE ORB, THE PEDESTAL, THE TOWER..."     Arthur knows how this goes. He knows the way a world like this, a bookworld like this, is built. He lived in a thousand of these damned things. So he might not have a chance to rip it open here, but from what Marcus said, he's caught a hint of a foreshadow of a twist of a turnaround. If given enough time, Arthur might be able to devise a way to enact a mass teleportation of some kind, one that might separate the orb and its sources of power. But not here, not now, and not without... 'setup'.     Having spent so long living in that clocktower, having spent so many lives in the books of that library, comes with a few... benefits? Delusions? Maybe this world isn't like he thinks. Maybe he could rip this thing open, trying as he does. Or maybe this is doomed to failure either way. He hollers at Marcus still, and endures the blasts and searing beams anyway.
Schneider Greco	"It's not!" Schneider tells Love, giving her one last pat on the back. "Get her! And the 'warlock' too!"      Deep, deep breath. Right.      Schneider's palms are slightly clammy. Her heart is beating faster than it should. One of those guards hit her on the cheekbone with the blunt end of their spear and the room still hasn't quite settled down.      These are all very distant facts, relevant only to the ninety-pound body of some nameless Sicilian girl. More relevant to Schneider Greco, who is above such trivialities:      'Gregory' is currently a magically mutated monster, her ally Sarracenia will probably never forgive her if Schneider doesn't fix that, and the only tools available to her for doing so are a pair of loaded handguns.      she slaps the coruscatingly gold array on the side of Schneider's gun as she passes      "Ah... haha, thank you, Lady Rook." That, and a probably-magical talisman sticker.      The dark flame washing over Schneider as she braces herself and carefully aims both guns is a physical triviality. The cost to her skin and body can be tallied later. Right now the path to 'succeeding at the mission', and therefore 'having allies', and therefore 'surviving the Storm', draws her irresistibly towards-      BANG - BANG      Gregory's leaf-hands are pruned from the cages by two shots right at their tips. And then, not wanting to waste the blessing on her gun, Schneider runs up, plants a foot on the plant-butler's chest, kicks off it, and twists her whole body into crack-pistolwhipping his lower jaw up with the temporarily-blessed handgun.      "Come off it, my-lord," she reprimands with the blow, as if it'd just be rude for her work to not be rewarded.
Calvin Nash	I am so out of here!     "Shit," spits Calvin. "There went our lead. Now we gotta find a damn warlock." Of course the more pressing issue is Gregory, who Calvin now knows to *be* Gregory.     Dark fire collides with Calvin, throwing him across the throne room. Hitting the floor with gritted teeth, he slides across the room on his back with a spell readied. "Diarahan!" He shouts, a small starshower glittering about him before coalescing and washing over the burns on his forearms. The injuries melt away, and he flips open his COMP to tap a hurried few commands.     What's the most heroic... no, least ominous demon he has? .summon 4     Cerberus, a three-headed dog that clears Calvin's chest just standing on all fours, appears in a cloud of green data-artifacts and binary integers. His segmented, serpent-like tail ends in sharp, menacing barbs, and flame roils from the mouths of his three heads with every breath.     "Cover me while I scan 'im!"     "Very well." Cerberus weaves in and out of the fireballs, but leaps headlong into any that would hit Calvin. The fire that hits Cerberus in Calvin's place washes harmlessly over him like rain.     .analyze Analyze v. 2.3.2 developed by Trina McElwain 'Berserk Gregory' Affinity: Fire Threat: Uncommon Notable Techniques: Dark Fire (Cage), Dark Fire (Mouth) Observations: Topheavy and reckless, prone to losing balance.     "Careful 'round his mouth, he can shoot from there too," Calvin shouts to his allies. "Get 'im to swing on you then knock his ass over!"      Geed tackles him to the ground. "That's it, Riku! Now... let's see here. Enradi... nah. This here's too advanced. Gonna have to be..." Calvin takes a steadying breath, drops to one knee, closes his right eye and levels his left palm at Gregory's head.      "Endradion!" A beam of washed-out red energy erupts from Calvin's hand. One could certainly be forgiven for thinking it's an attack--especially with the effort Calvin's taking to keep his aim from going wild. In truth--it's a high-powered, concentrated cleansing spell, targeted at erasing magically-induced rage by scouring any such effects aggressively away until they no longer have the energy to reassert themselves..
Sarracenia	Throne Room Team      Lila is baffled by Petra correcting her and Lilian blurting out something that makes no sense to the fairy. She doesn't care to respond at this time since...you know...people apparently trying to kill her, but she is baffled!      Gregory is tackled by Geed, but unfortunately Ultraman's words are lost on the currently mindless butler-turned-monster. Schneider performs a series of very tricky shots. The fleeing dark fairy yelps as a bullet manages to catch her tiny fairy form, and she goes bouncing like a pinball around the room from it impacting yet another energy barrier she's managed to conjure, which shatters once again from the impact. She is bouncing her way back toward the window when...a certain sweet serpent lets out a massive blast. It engulfs the tiny glow and when it passes...there is no glow to be seen. And less castle to be seen.      Meanwhile, those cages fall from Gregory's grasp as the tips of his leaf-hands are sheered off by those skilled shots. They burst open on impact and the dark fire disperses harmlessly.      With Geed's tackle and Schneider's pistol whip, Gregory loses his balance and falls backward. Lilian applies power draining and Calvin applies powerful cleansing magic. With the dark energy quickly being sapped and cleansed, Gregory is soon shrinking. He goes still as he shrinks, an audible hiss like steam escaping issuing forth as darkness flows out of him. Eventually, he is his original self. Just a short plant person with a tulip-like head, a stalk-like body, root feet, and leaf hand-arms. His butler suit is gone, likely shredded by the transformation, so he looks particularly weak and withered. Or...maybe he actually is weak and withered?      Tower Team      Marcus continues her investigation into the Lotus shield. It seems to be just a very special lotus flower, grown specifically for this purpose. There isn't really magic holding it together. It's a plant. It is being fed by the dark energy of the orb, and in turn is protecting the orb. But at the end of the day, it is still a plant. The fairies are at their core nature spirits, whether dark or light. That means a few things could potentially weaken it. The easiest would just be...weed killer. Do they have any of that? They could also try drying it out, or maybe cutting off the roots. They may be dark tendrils, but they seem to be limited in number.      Arthur goes for the berserker move and jams the petals open. From Marcus's readings, all it might take is one direct hit to the crystal. A bullet. A bayonet. Something hard enough to break crystal. But then, there are a lot of beams to deal with.      But, as Arthur predicted, they might not get the chance. A sputtering, barely lit purple glow appears at the window they broke, and a dark energy flows out from it. It engulfs the lotus and the orb, and unless stopped both it and the dark fairy Lila disappear in shadow.
Sarracenia	Just as Gregory is shrinking, the main doors of the throne room burst open and Sarracenia gallops in on the great deer. She rushes toward him without hesitation, leaps off the deer, and lands beside him with green mushrooms already in hand. "Gregory! Hang on!" she exclaims as she quickly drops to a seated position with her legs gathered beneath her and gathers his head into her lap. "Here, take these. Y-you will be alright." she says, but...for some reason she looks very concerned. And if one looks at Gregory...he looks to be in very bad condition for a plant. Wilted. Withered. Discolored. Sarra presses a mushroom to him...but nothing happens. She tries again, and still nothing. The mushroom doesn't poof. No green glow surrounds him. He does not stir.      Sarra tries a few more times in desperation, though her expression is cracking more each time. After the fourth or fifth try tears start flowing down her face. After the tenth...she finally gives up and just sits there, holding him, as sobs start to escape. "N-no...Gregory..."
Sarracenia	Sarra just sits there for a few minutes, and as sobs start to flow in earnest, she lifts Gregory's head and leans in enough to give him a kiss on the forehead. "...thank you. Thank you for all you did for me..." she barely manages to whisper between hiccups and sobs.      There is just enough time for the loss to truly settle in before...a booming laughter starts to echo through the castle. No, the very air. "Now, you have lost everything, Princess! Just like I lost everything thanks to you and your friend with that space laser! Hahahahaha! Do you still want to be a hero now?! HAHAHAHAHA! Maybe now you regret interfering with the Darkmancer!!"
Arthur Lowell	> ==>     "Rrrrrrr... RRRRRRRRR... RRRRRAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" Arthur roars, trying -- god, he IS trying -- to rip that thing open. And it doesn't. Like he predicted, it's interrupted and avoided, and he slams backwards as its own warp knocks him away. "Dammit!" He yells, when it zips away. But there's something... out there. What is that?     The 'Darkmancer'...?     "Fuck." He mutters. "Who's *this* fuckin' asshole? What'd she just.. just lost everything?" He snaps his glance to Marcus and Greta. "We gotta bounce, this is fucked. I fucked it up, we weren't in a good-faith story." He's put his broom away, wrenching his hands in a series of complex motions to form a spirograph. "Fuckin', didn't even *try* making this particular dumbass mistake." A portal's open, and he's gesturing to go.     He hops onto the radio as well, as he does...
Storm Investigators	"You've set me up a turnaround, but it's not one I can capitalize *here*." "... *GEOMETRY DISRUPTORS*! THE ORB, THE PEDESTAL, THE TOWER... "That will do, then. Let's not push our luck while we still have the opportunity to leave." Greta nods once in agreement with Arthur, her expression barely wavering when he does his arm-reloading motions. She just takes it as a cue to reload her own handgun, but she turns her attention to Marcus instead while hurrying over towards her. "Geometry? N-no, I don't... This seems to be more of a special plant rather than anything based on its shape. But.. It's still a plant! Unless you have some kind of plant poison, or enough time to do heavy gardening..." Marcus calls out for Arthur and Greta, hurrying through those pages as quickly as she can while the clock keeps ticking down for their presence there. She doesn't even notice right away when Greta picks her up right under her arm, only looking over at Arthur in confusion when he pops that portal open for them and seeing it draw closer while Greta hurries on through. "We gotta bounce, this is fucked." "Eh? Oh! Y-yes, we can always come back in we more time to prepare. But what is this about it not being good-faith...?" "The butler is dead. The mission is over, Marcus."
Petra Soroka	Petra's seen a frankly unreasonable number of people die, mostly through Angela's memories. She's never gotten 'callous' to it exactly, not when it's someone right in front of her at least, but Sarracenia is far from the person with the most ability to pierce Petra's heart with her grief. She'd argue extensively that it's Sarra who would deserve to die for her moral failings, and not Gregory who should die for them, but in the end, it's still....     But looking at Gregory's withering leaves and dessicated roots, and the splotchy yellow discoloration that Lilian told her to watch out for, he reminds her less of a person, and more of Norton. And that makes her feel a lot worse.     Petra heaves a sigh and turns away from where Sarracenia is kneeled over and crying. The Silver pours limply from her palm, gathering around Gregory and gently cupping him. Sarracenia will need to be nudged away from him a bit, but Petra's not going to do that. Once she's helped up by someone else, Gregory is picked up in a Silver stretcher that spills upwards to surround him in a smooth shelter, so they aren't popping back out into the war room with a corpse visibly hanging out.     "Let's..." Petra starts to say, but nothing really comes to mind. There's not any path to take tomorrow that makes this better, and she's certainly not in a position to try and help Sarra get through it herself. It's simultaneously a circumstance that warrants genuine grief and sympathy, and one that she has no place in soothing or repairing afterwards, giving those feelings no direction to go.     "... Sorry." That's all she eventually decides on saying before bringing Gregory's body out.
Sarracenia	As Petra tries to get Gregory prepared for the journey home...she finds that Sarra is not about to let him go. Sarra is helped up, but she picks Gregory right up with her. He's barely a weight to her. "...I will carry him..." she says. It takes quite a bit of convincing for Sarra to let him go, and even after he is in the Silver pod she remains as close to it as she can with a hand resting on it as much as she can. Her sobs lessen somewhat as they move, but tears keep flowing all the way back to the portal. The deer walks with her the entire way, allowing her to rest a hand on him as well and stroke his fur. Even the bat appears and lands on her head and tries to trill soothing sounds.
Schneider Greco	Schneider pants, softly, and wipes her bangs out of her face with the barrel of her gun before appraising the damage to the body she calls home.      It could be worse. She'll need a new jacket, again, or at least a lot of patching-up. Her skin's going to be blistered, again, mostly her knuckles closest to the flame. Bearable.      And Gregory...      Schneider's no medic. She's only just starting to kneel by him and lift his head as Sarra bursts in. "My-la-dy Princess, we've done it. But please, I don't think he's well. If you could..."      . . .      Ah.      A tightness is forming behind Schneider's collarbone. Her face contorts, and she turns it away, slipping her hand gently from behind the butler's head.      Someone thinking of this as a story would hold out hope a little longer. Maybe Sarracenia's tears could bring him back. Schneider Greco doesn't think in those terms.      This is real life, whether or not it's happening inside a book. He's dead, dead, dead, and she's mostly sorry for herself or so she thinks, but she can't deny she's sorry for the dead and for Sarra too.      "Mannagghia," she mutters tight-jawed, standing turned-away with Petra. "I could've done something, right?"
Calvin Nash	Calvin ends his spell, wiping the sweat from his brow. "How we lookin' over there?" he asks, rising to his feet.     "Not good."     "What? What the hell happened?" He closes the COMP monitor and rushes over to the spot, looking over Sarracenia's shoulder.     "The curse took its toll on his body even as you stripped away its layers," Cerberus intones, black wisps of smoke escaping from his heads as each head speaks in turn. "Though the energy to twist him so far out of shape was supplied, the vessel couldn't contain it."     Calvin grimaces and looks away, hand shading his eyes. He and Sarracenia don't really get along. He doesn't even particularly like her--but that doesn't and won't mean he can be happy or even unaffected by this.     "Shit. Sarra," he says, "I'm so sorry."     "We gotta go." His hand is gentle but firm on her shoulder. "Right now, that's prolly the last thing on your mind. But we gotta go." ...I will carry him...     "Let Petra," he interjects. "Focus on gettin' outta here so you can... deal with this shit where it's safe. Someplace where you can get some rest and eat when you're ready. C'mon."
Lilian Rook	Lilian's own words, carelessly spoken and yet deeply seated in a sincerely bitter corner of her heart, come back to her again; unbidden, unwanted, and unhelpful.     §What was I ever doing here? Rescuing Gregory? Why didn't I just tell her to do it herself? I knew, I said that it was set up for her from the start. The fucking reward? Of course not. Was it just to come and see? Sheer, morbid, rubbernecking fascination at this stupid fucking debacle that'd fallen into her lap? 'It's a storybook, it's a narrative, it isn't serious, there's a point.' I was grading people on that during the sim; the basic, minimum bar of being able to play within the guide rails; understand the conceit and honour the unspoken rules, or else escalation happens, just like--§     §This is fucked. No matter what Arthur or Petra or whatever want to believe, this is fucked and I knew better and I should have told everyone to go home. Dreaming up a sick little murder plot that was never in good faith is just a bad coping mechanism; we took money, we took orders, we-- there was a war room for Christ's sake! There was a magic storybook and we let her buy her way through it with armed troubleshooters because we just couldn't take it seriously! Did I just think 'nobody could hate Gregory, so nobody would want to hurt him; it's just to get at Sarracenia'? Because that doesn't even matter if the main villain is fleeing for her life and doing anything to escape now does it you apathetic--§     Lilian lets go of the breath she'd been holding until it made her dizzy. She unclenches her fingers, and feels the stinging pain of where her nails had been digging into her palms. She stares at Sarracenia, waiting for either unwanted sympathy or disgusting satisfaction to grip her. Waiting, and waiting, until a vile thought intrudes on her inner quiet, and 'What if it were Cecilia?' makes her feel a little bit like she wants to throw up.     'I could've done something, right?'     "We could have gone home." Lilian says. Numb. Monotone. She begins to walk.