Scene #9585: BINDING BLADE Ch51: Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

Owner	Pose
Marigold	There is a small mercy in the awful pseudo-dragons oozing up from the long shadows Iðunn casts in defiance of the sun: they're wetly malformed, unwholesomely premature- or, perhaps, given how the more perfect war-dragons rot back into gooey darkness once slain, one could think of these new ones as 'born half-decomposed'. From where Lilian hides, she can see the awful creature shambling away from her catch a dozen arrows from Kutolah riders at five hundred feet. They stick in its tarry flesh, rather than bouncing off of hard scales; it lazily turns attention to them, smolders some kind of eerie imitation-fire in its mouth, and-- --gets its neck sheared through. The light in the eye sockets of its fallen head gutters out silently; the body, with its blazing neck-stump leaking magic into the air, lurches and takes stupidly longer to realize it's dead. The next one, even if it can't follow her movements, seems to know she's coming. It turns to meet her with body tensed; this time the blade cuts deep but doesn't come out clean, and it vents eerie fire to complicate her approach and disengagement. Experimental dials are turned, now that Lilian has someone's distant attention. The next three are formed in only a few moments each, but are drippier and less solid; then there's a longer pause until one more, this one hardier and almost scaled. All inherit a pre-awareness of what has and hasn't availed them before. Calmly, an endless throughput is being tuned to optimally exhaust her. Geed and Nobunaga only have a finite number of dragons to deal with, but these are the more-familiar and stronger solid versions, with real red scales instead of naked drippy darkness. Even wounded by Lucius's magic from afar, the one Geed is grappling with doesn't go down easily; as he holds it still, it tries to wrench its head down to lock its massive jaws around his neck, shrieking in his ear and beating at him with flaming wings as it does. Echidna leaps off of horseback and takes advantage of its immobility by burying Armads in its lower spine, five seconds later. "KREEEEE!" "Great job, big guy!" That still doesn't quite put it down, but if he can wrestle it to the ground for her to put the divine axe through its neck too, that will. Nobunaga's mecha-beam washes out the head of the dragon grappling with it in brilliant light... and when the light fades, leaving it scorched but intact, it retaliates by breathing out an inferno hot enough to start melting the mecha's metal. Foreclaws dig into the mecha's chest and shove it back; then, rather than press the mecha further, the dragon pivots away from it to lunge and crush the tanks underfoot, like a cat pouncing on mice. The back ranks of the Bernish formation are frightened, clearly, but they can more or less hold their own against the lighter armor. If the mecha tries to go for it again, a second dragon swoops down from circling above to claw at its head. Including Geed's kill, that's three occupied, out of... maybe twenty. It is going to be a very long and very bloody day.
Marigold	Geats and Neon, battering the cohesion of the central Bernish formation that Nobunaga's declaring war on and picking off the squad leaders who could rally it back together, exacerbate the damage. They'd be dangerously exposed to Mulagir, but Flamel has that tied up; and to Brunnya's artillery-like magic, but Petra and Gebura are menacing her at the moment. That only leaves the occasional squad mage hurling fire up at them from below, and- more pressingly- a band of Djute skirmishers, matching their speed from the ground and forcing them to fly through a constant hail of arrows. Shanna and Thea stick close to Neon and mirror Ace's tactics; the former looks pleasantly shocked to still be flying after her durability-enhanced pegasus takes an arrow to the side. "Neon, you're the best! We're doing it, we're--!" "SHANNA, DROP!" "Huh?!" A fourth dragon, breaking off from the Etrurian assault across the river, flaps into the sky and lunges for Shanna jaws-first; she narrowly dives under it, and the sisters split to dodge the following jet of flame that cuts the airspace in half while angling for Ace. "I can't hurt that thing! Neon??" It's slower than them, and doesn't like to stay in the air for long, but that fire breath means it can control space and bully them away from the front. Love, writhing on the ground, has to deal with Bernish soldiers bravely trying to take stabs at her while trying not to get tail-battered. "Marcus, over there!" "Lord Roy, are you sure...?" "Just help her!" Roy calls out; the old knight interposes his horse and lance threateningly against the small detachment while Roy slips off the horse's back and lays a hand on Love's side. "Lucius!" the young lord shouts. "Here, please!" The priest tells his Kutolah horseman to drive him close, and tries to patch the poor magical girl's glowing-golden wound. "It's awful. I know. Just a moment, it'll stop hurting..." Roy murmurs as Lucius hurriedly works. He really does know, from that one time Durandal struck him. "Right. We'll be okay," Sue says to Odette, galloping towards the mountain's foothills and loosing a couple of arrows mid-conversation to deter Djute pursuers. "... If we get Mulagir, I'll try using it." But no promises. On the topic of danger, she says only: "I trust you. So it's alright." Someone putting their life in Odette's hands... oh no...
Marigold	"Sometimes loyalty means clocking your boss upside the head." <How do you think that loyalty's gonna be rewarded?> "Tch!" Brunnya's thumb shhhhff-riffles down through the pages of her tome, holding it near-shut in one hand; her other hand grips a staff, sparing enough fingers from it for gestures. Woman successfully enraged. "You're those Otherworlders, aren't you? If I must explain the 'rewards' of loyalty to you," she says with one part intrigue to five parts contempt, "you're too far-gone to be worth the bother. I can imagine nothing worse than to die without having found something to die for." A one-two-three conducting gesture with her right hand, on the staff, is followed by a delicate flourish; as Gebura swings the biting sword at her, a sudden hurricane-wind condenses sharp shards of ice out of the air. The largest shard spears down to block Mimicry's teeth and blunt the blade's swing; the others follow through to pepper Gebura like a blast of knives. Brunnya sees the mech's charge telegraphed just enough to dip her right-hand staff, and blink behind the Beauty in motion, leaving it to bowl through her panicked officer corps. One-two-three, a slightly different flourish-gesture, and this time the hurricane-gale condenses a single greatsword-sized ice-spike to try to pierce the Beauty's back. The spearmen and horse-archers accompanying her are just now finding their courage; Gebura seems like a less intimidating target for their aggression than the mech. It's easy to see why Brunnya has a prodigy's reputation. Her ice magic is bizarrely flexible by Elibe's usually-rigid standards, her staff teleportation is refined into nearly a flinch reflex-- but, of course, she's laser-focused on the interlopers, and that means Flamel's already succeeded. TWANG-twiiii. "Sochi, what are you doing?!" "I...! I didn't mean to!" The dragon-slaying arrow, guided by Flamel tugging at the tall archer's keenest instincts, shrieks across the plains between the two mountains. It must have hit Iðunn, because on impact the arrow shatters into green shrapnel-streaks cast off in a cone. The unnaturally-cast shadows that loom west towards Etruria stutter, then begin reaching their long fingers towards the northern mountain with Brunnya, Flamel, Gebura, and Petra instead, like the swiveling of a gaze. It's a snap decision, mid-fight, for Brunnya to pierce "Sochi's" chest with a shard of ice. She falls from her horse with a cry. "One of you, pick it up! Now!" she demands of the Djute horsemen cowed by the conflict, but none of them hurry to.
Flamel Parsons	The bow is on the ground. Flamel has his chance. Not a single fragment of archery skill in his brain. No use in having the bow in his hands. But if it's in his, then it won't be in theirs. And he needs to find someone, anyone who can put it to good use. If he invades the mind of one of the Djute, under conditions like these, he'll get detected. There's also one more problem. The short, intense yelp of pain that Flamel cries out with, when Soichi is slain, and her astral landscape starts dissolving around Flamel, forcing an emergency retreat. He didn't think she'd KILL the archer! It gives away his position with a rush of pain, and it's precious seconds before his mind's in a state of coherence, able to process things. Focus. Focus. Focus. There'll be some way to deal with this. If Flamel turns his back he'll be dead; the bow will enter Djute hands and track him easily, and Brunnya will tear him apart. If Flamel rushes the bow and tries to use it, he'll be dead; inadequate personal archery skill makes that equivalent to just standing in front of Brunnya, practically asking to be killed. But the Imagery Estimation department is empty. The Executive Department is still full of a targeted cross-cell all-agency data analysis and projection team. Between him, Gebura, and Petra, he should be able to survive for a few seconds, maybe a few minutes more. And if he has the bow in his hands when he does, all the better. That's why he's wrapping his free hand around the grip of it, hoisting it urgently as two fingers of the opposite hand plant on his palm, and meeting Brunnya head-on without it. The shield is dense, hopefully enough to endure the strikes for a few seconds. The beams he has, ready to activate the minute she opens fire with her magic, are strong enough to tear apart tanks. "Hi! Please get that woman a vulnery quickly, that wasn't her fault. I'm Flamel Parsons, acolyte of a vague but ominous order, and I was performing mind control." He says. The Communications department, under blaring red lights throughout the entire Parsons Institute, works closely with Empathy Simulations, trying to orchestrate a well-targeted and persuasive challenge. "I think you've given us enough of a demonstration of what loyalty buys you." He says, trying to buy time or at least throw off her precision if she engages immediately. Someone come help him, please, god, he's surrounded by incoming shadows and next to a woman whose idle gesture is an artillery gun and all he's doing is saying things that piss her off and squaring up with her. He can make put-upon, miserable girls even more unhappy, that's a known skill, but can he make them less inclined to kill him for it? "Any chance you picked up that meaning of 'loyalty' from Zephiel's dad? That word actually means something else, where we come from!" His tone is bright and cheery. "It means that people trust and help each other, instead of killing each other. Like you killing your archer, or Zephiel ordering Iðunn to slaughter everyone here with black magic monsters because he blames you." A complete bluff. Flamel doesn't know that. But it might be worth a second.
Riku Asakura	The dragon goes down, one of about twenty. It was going to be a long day, and honestly, Geed did not know how long he would last against these forces. They needed that bow and soon. For the moment, all he could do was tackle the next Dragon. <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Lord Roy says, ". . ." <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Lord Roy says, "Is there anything we can do about the stone bridges over the river?" <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura \| Ultraman Geed says, "I could try and destroy those." Geed waves to Echidna, before turning his attention towards the front itself. The bridges would be the support the front needs. So with a liftoff from the ground, he soars over the armies, thankfully without a bow to shoot him down, and towards the upper bridge. He lands in the river at full height. The first thing he does is take the Geed Claw to smash against the bridge's supports in the middle before smashing down with his free hand. At this size, he's like a moving skyscraper, aiming to smash down with amazing force to try and change the very battlefield itself.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	When Sue turns around expecting more Djute pursuers to fend off, she sees something else altogether. A flock of blue-white canine beasts, each approaching the size of a horse, rushes up the path from the warpgate to mingle with the Djute skirmishers. Madeleine rides atop the largest of the wolf-like ice monsters, arriving with her hunting pack in full strength. On her back, a pair of crossed spears: one her signature weapon Drogrung, the other the snowflake-headed Maltet. Knowing that her beasts might collapse if caught in the open by dragon-fire, she directs them with shouts and whistles to tangle closely with the Djute cavalry. Flowing between the riders, the wolves force the archers to tangle at close range without a single massed target to fire upon. Light blades only chip away at their icy armor; hatchets fare a little better, but the skirmishers' paucity of hammers or other heavy weapons will be sorely felt. Horses are dragged to the ground, riders savaged with claws and teeth or left pinned under fallen mounts. As the Djute scatter or are overrun, a handful of the wolves, including Madeleine's mount, break away from the pack to dash ahead, drawing even with Sue and Odette. "Sorry I'm late," the huntress says. "Let's get you to that mountain-top while the Gale Bow's up for grabs, yeah? We have to keep Iðunn off-balance!"
Nobunaga	Great Mecha Nobbu is incinerated and pushed back, deep gouges in its black and gold armor. This gives the dragon the opening it's looking for to wheel about and pounce into the formation of Nobbu Tanks, causing chaos and scattering the formation amidst the gunfire of shoulder cannons and arm machine guns. In one of those pounces-- the scorched ground tears open without warning, giving it nothing to land on. Anticipating a panicked last-second attempt to take flight rather than fall in, it's the C-clamp hand of another Great Mecha Nobbu that shoots out like an extenso-arm right for the wyrm's neck. Without hesitation, the machine drags the dragon into the earth amidst a geyser of searing hot hellfire. The remaining, heavily damaged Great Mecha Nobbu then hunches forward. Golden beams erupt from its back, arcing out and down amidst the Bernish formation... until the machine gets flattened by another dragon hard enough to break one of its arms off. When the beast's weight shifts, Great Mecha Nobbu's head pops off and bobs on a giant coiled spring. Something clicks, then starts beeping deep within its bulky torso, faster and faster, until the mecha self-destructs beneath the drake that crushed it. "These 'war dragons' are no joke," Oda Nobunaga remarks. The admiration in her voice is plain, though she doesn't relent. Slashing her free hand aside, she tears open a new crevasse in the hellscape of her inner reality. A fresh Great Mecha Nobbu climbs out, declaring its presence in a warbling mechanized tone, NO BU. Behind it, emerging from the opening in the scorched earth, another squadron of floating Nobbu UFOs drift upward. Drawing her sword, the warlord point directly ahead; "Victory is inevitable! Uwahahaha--! Show your corpses to the Three Thousand Worlds! Behold, a Demon King's three-line formation!" In a half-circle fan, countless ornate rifles materialize in flares of golden sparks, "Carve my truth into your wretched mortal souls!" It's not even a heartbeat later that the guns fire in volleys; maybe a full second between waves. Each gun that shoots lifts itself up out of the way and vanishes, with a replacement reappearing beneath it and swinging up to aim right when the previous one has moved. Nobunaga personally lays into the Bernish backline trying to surround her in the flaming hellscape she brought with her; while the general chaos of Nobbu soldier familiars dash in amidst them with swords, guns, or even exploding like dynamite. Even the Djute cavalry archers find themselves harassed by the UFO Nobbu who either attack with ring-shaped theremin lasers or drop regular Nobbu soldiers or samurai Nobbusengumi right on top of them. And with Ultraman Geed going after the bridges into Etruria and Lilian disrupting the War Dragon reinforcements, this can't be feeling like a good situation for the boots on the ground.
Angela	Love is vulnerable and weakened and smacking about soldiers with her tail while covering her face with her two hands. She is not someone who frequently REMEMBERS suffering grievous wounds, when she dies she forgets everything and is reborn. A true Magical Girl is only wounded in certain and particular ways! Some of them can be pretty monstrous too. They can lose their soul, they can be transformed into a horrible undying monster that corrupts everything in range--there are endless fates worse than death but actually bleeding from an ugly wound like that? No, that's definitely illegal. Gebura, on the other hand, is defending herself from getting skewered. Her time at Lobotomy Corp and, more generally speaking, during her time as The City's Hero have given her an experience with a large variety of weapons both in her hands and being swung, launched, thrown, or teleported in her direction. She's dealt with a lot of nonsense in her life which includes thrown knives, explosive blasts of wind, and sharp ice. Though usually in her case, the sharp ice was usually a sword rather than knives, so this is only partially within her wheelhouse of experience. She swings heer hand up, punching through several shards with her fist only for for several shards to sink into her left shoulder. "Tsk." Gebura complains at receiving a wound at all but shakes her head. "Already died plenty for a cause. But surely a smart lady like you knows we wouldn't have wasted time saying that if we didn't know it'd draw blood." She is startled by Brunnya stabbing 'Sochi' in the chest with a shard of ice but that gives her time to look towards the fallen bow.She brings Mimicry to her back, running towards the bow-- "Since they don't see mto want it no more..." But Flamel picks it up first. Gebura pauses as the shadow approaches. Does he have a plan? She doesn't have psychic powers outside of her EGO so she can't exactly read the guy and the guy is WEIRD so she has no idea what he's thinking even when he says exactly what he's thinking because she thinks that he's sort of convincing himself of what he believes at any moment. ''Any chance you picked up that meaning of 'loyalty' from Zephiel's dad?'' Oh my god, Gebura realizes, he hasn't planned past this. She lashes out with her hand for the Gale Bow and says, "Give me that...!" She says to him. And then, to the bow, since she thinks it's basically an EGO Weapon, "And YOU? Aren't you EMBARRASSED that you're fighting for draconic annihilation right now??" She wags a finger at the bow like she's scolding it. "If she bothers asking say it's from me. Otherwise I'll try to lead her away from here. If it doesn't work I'll double back." This does mean she's going to have to detangle from Brunnya and start moving away from the capital at a fast dash. Love sees Roy, blasting any Bernish soldiers that imperil Roy and Marcus with dragon lasers. She's whimpering, a bit like a child, though the age is a little obtuse because she's not really a child nor really a person, she's a story and so she behaves in how she is designed to, her path ajar from Tamamo and Flamel's influences, but hardly free of them entirely. "Thanks Roy..." Love says. "Did you get hurt before? When...ooohhhfffh....when you're hurt you should seek a parent and get it disinfected before putting a bandaid on it, Roy..." Or use healing magic, but she's doing her best to give a magical lesson appropriate to the situation for the viewers at homes.
Petra Soroka	Taking Brunnya down would be ideal of course, but when the Beauty of Ash snaps into empty space where she teleported away, and then into the officers behind her, she still hasn't failed. At the sound of Mulagir firing, Petra shifts into focusing on getting her bearings and protecting herself rather than attacking, to track where Brunnya's gone, and what happens with Iðunn next. The mech's head whips around-- and with it, a soldier whose quiver was caught on the sharp tip of its head is flung thirty feet incidentally, like a toy, while its one glowing eye sweeps the opposite mountain. The hardlight and the ice both seem delicate and fragile like glass, but when they collide, neither get off unscathed. Brunnya's icicle blade shears across the back of the mech and shatters, but the scrapes it leaves behind refract through the visual spectrum like prisms, with scattering rays of purple, blue, yellow, and red like blood. The Beauty of Ash snaps onto target after being hit, kicking one leg back to send a bravely opportunistic spearman crumpling to the ground. "One of you, pick it up! Now!" In a tactical and psychic sense, Petra can't tell whether Sochi being killed is good or bad, but it does make her wince. She can't even be happy about Flamel experiencing genuine pain over getting a girl killed for the first time because he has the fucking bow, so it's her job to actually fight Brunnya while Flamel posts and Gebura nabs Mulagir. "If I must explain the 'rewards' of loyalty to you," <You don't.> The Beauty of Ash intercepts a magical shard of ice being launched towards Flamel before it connects, shattering it with an abrupt appearance and a swipe of its arm. In return, the arm fractures, then breaks into a cloud of shards, mirroring Brunnya's arcane technique to swarm at her. <I know about that basically better than anyone. But Zephiel's loyal to Iðunn and not you, and fighting for him isn't even something that he respects. Don't tell me you're in agreement with his ideological rationale; you're just another example of humanity's soulless failings to question anything going on around them besides their own self-interest. The exact thing he hates.>
Lilian Rook	§This is the worst it can possibly be. Whoever said she was brainwashed is an asshole; which was fucking everyone.§ The second time her blade makes contact, ice cold dread floods through Lilian's veins, chasing the aftershock through her arms rather surging from the chest. The dragon's head hasn't landed before she switches to breathing meant to prevent battlefield panic. §How is she even aware of what's going on down here? Surely she isn't inhabiting them all consciously. Does she know automatically what kills them? Is she manually swapping between them? I don't sense any other magic laid over the area, so no one is helping her. Can she see me that well from up there? Or are the shadows somehow a proprioceptive medium for this?§ "Fáinne Gréine Óir!" Three fast-produced dragons are rent through their middle from breast to tail, along with a perfect horizontal triple-ring of earth and burning rubble. The technique that turns fortress-remnants into a brief orbit of white-hot fragments is hardly one Lilian can throw out sequentially, but it spends from a reserve she happens to have more of at the time; or did until just now. §Fuck . I don't have twelve other idiots hurling themselves at her to generate data points, and I don't have the luxury of backing off to test her either. There's hardly anything I can do but try to eliminate possibilities one by one.§ The enormous burst of light from invoking the solar wheel erases every shadow in her vicinity for an instant. Lilian uses the opportunity to duck behind rubble that blocks sight from the southern mountain, and then circling around to the next disturbance where the dragon won't see her either. Whether or not it suddenly notices her, and when, is a confirmation that she desperately needs right now. §They lose their weakness a short while after being created too. It's not a long gap, and it's not a linear decrease either. Is there some sort of background process reconciling whether they're real or not? If she creates one far enough away from me, I won't be able to sense it in time; I'll have to go entirely off of precognition, and that won't let me probe her magic. Even without knowing that, she must have guesses. Is this one 'more real' for taking her time, or only 'more durable'? I'd love to know, but you will too.§ "Briseadh ina píosaí!" Lilian conceals the magic itself until the moment it's already launched. She has no doubt Iðunn could tell otherwise. The carefully woven array implodes in on itself and directs its collapsing energy forwards, shattering into a thousand high-speed vectors and riddling the next dragon with holes that bore all the way through the stumps of castle walls between them. Her work with the sword next is something she commits to in confidence that there are no vital organs to strike, attacking the compromised substrate material instead.
Lilian Rook	§If I keep my magic, ammunition, stamina, and time all in mind, I can drag this out a while. If she's testing me by brute force or automatic combinatorial magic, the next one will be adjusted, but if she has a plan in mind, she'll do the same thing and dare me to do it again; that'll just confirm for her that the hard-formed ones 'don't count', which probably isn't true, and it'll take her a minute extra to finish it.§ Lilian draws Winter Crow with the hand still shimmering with heat at the fingertips, cycling the action to the Sol array and preigniting the chamber by flash-fusing the entire loaded amalgam rod off the clip. She turns and shoots at the first sign of a dragon, bracing against the wrist-numbing recoil and following up the grand blast straight to the join of the neck and shoulders in the same way. §Let's have her do it another time before I dig deeper into magic. Leaving room for combat flight and a few emergency disengagements, I can't afford to repeat that more than two or three more times. After that, I suppose we'll both get our answer. If that coin lands her way, I'll have to gauge the smallest yield that'll still breach the exterior and lean on more sword-work. If it lands my way, she'll just try something completely different next; so show me how aware the next one is of being shot compared to where it was shot from. So I can--§ . . . . . . . . "Tormáil in Aghaidh na Haille!" §--how many at once are aware of--§ . . . . . . . . "Loisceadh!" §--experiencing this or is it post-death memory transfer of--§ . . . . . . . . "Lann Réalta Reathata!" §--exhausting. There's enough smoke, so how well can you see--§ . . . . . . . . "Fuck my life. Two feeds left? What happened to my-- No never mind. I can still . . ." §Fuck me! Does she talk to Zephiel about this?! What's going to happen after?! I'm having to use nearly everything at my disposal just to keep every one of these things from slaughtering a hundred more troops each! Can't they hurry up?! My arms feel like they're going to fall off!§
Odette Raskins	Riding with Sue, Odette's doing her best to keep her anxieties at bay and to keep her head down. She doesn't want to get in the way of Sue shooting off her arrows, after all, and she practically huddles flat against the pony's back to do just that. Even then, however, she's still calling targets out for Sue, partially because of just being scared enough to do that normally, and- "I trust you. So it's alright." She can't just focus on watching herself, especially after she said that! "R.. Right! We'll get to Mulagir, and then... We'll make sure everything works out after you use it.... Left, behind!" She calls out, hastily flinging a bottle at a pursuing rider to keep them occupied for even a second longer until Madeleine's wolves can draw them off. "Just need to catch up with everyone else... Oh! Miss Madeleine, hi! Yeah, that's the plan. It's gonna have to be a sprint so we can get there in time, though, so..." Holding the flap of her bag open with her mouth, Odette fishes one bottle after the other while drawing their contents into a smaller injector. "This should help ease Little Red's pain, and this should keep her energy up." She explains for Sue before rubbing a little numbing medication in and popping it with that injector. "That might help her go faster, too! A little. And if we're in the right spot to get a hold of it..." She swallows lightly, then takes a deep breath. "I'll get in and toss it your way so you can focus on where to shoot. J-Just focus on hitting and nothing else, okay?"
Desire Stars	I can't hurt that thing! Neon?? "Don't try to!" Calls Na-Go as she pulls a tight bank and dip to put the blades of the Armed Propeller between herself and the fire breath. What else can they do? There are a lot more dragons--more than she's ever seen in one place. Even the one she did help kill felt like an exhausting uphill battle. It landed pretty quickly after that attempt on Shanna, didn't it? "It's... it can't chase us, it's just trying to keep us away!" The Djute skirmishers very much can give chase, and they'll be a problem wherever they are. "...Fighting retreat! Let's knock out what we can here, then make problems somewhere else and force another one to move!" Arrows strike her armor as she pulls up, sending out showers of sparks that draw a stifled yelp from her, but she grits her teeth and retaliates with a scything arc of fire from the Beat Axe towards any that peel off to chase. Doing that leaves Geats open for the dragon and for any skirmishers that attempt to focus on him. If I try and force it into the sky that mage of theirs can clip me. And if I try and fight around it and these skirmishers I'm working twice as hard. Well... The Boostriker utters another shrill fox cry, as Djute arrows strike it and Geats urges it into picking up speed. Let's see how smart it is. His attention now fully on the dragon, Geats measures the effective range of the fire by darting in and out, attempting to lab out what that range is. His fox-themed helmet darts back, over his shoulder, to measure too what range the Djute keep in relation to him and the dragon. Doesn't seem the type to get frustrated. But to make a mistake? Here's hoping. Deliberately, his riding is fast, but not the fastest the Boostriker can go, keeping himself between the Djute and the dragon, and keeping the Djute within what he discovers through his experimentation to be the dragon's breath range. Waiting until he sees the breath clear the dragon's teeth, he slams the accelerator on the mechanical fox, surging forward and leaving red-hot flames clinging to the empty air he occupied a heartbeat ago.
Marigold	"Sochi's" horse is half to panicking. One of the Djute dismounts to try to pull her towards some bushes, with the frightened tenderness of a relative; hard to tell if it's too late, but she isn't moving. Brunnya makes a vexed-dismissive noise at Flamel's pleas for a vulnerary, as if to say 'you would say that'. "... or Zephiel ordering Iðunn to slaughter everyone here with black magic monsters because he blames you." It's plausible enough that he can see her neck tense in anger and her eyes widen in fear. Her second answer is "He wouldn't," and her first answer a split second before that is a near-point-blank lightning bolt that passes through Flamel's space, rakes up the ground, and explodes a tree behind him into splinter-shrapnel. She's almost forgotten about the oozing shadows. When he retaliates, her thumbnail clicks down a single page in the book she's holding; the fourth beat of her piano-quick gesture is an upwards pivot now, and an interposing shield of ice shatters while diffusing the beams. "Already died plenty for a cause." "Good for you, try again. Get it!" she barks to her attendant nomads, who've backed up and drawn their bows a good few moments ago, but were betrayal-stunned out of throwing themselves into it. "Isn't Mulagir your treasure??" That does jog them into action, parting on both sides around the clearing, riding down the forested mountainside after her with startling agility, and peppering her back with iron-piercing arrows. The eight Divine Weapons seem to vary in their degree of personality. Durandal and Armads have enough to be called haunted; the tomes seem to have none. The bow Mulagir, tragically, remains stony in its un-haunted silence rather than give Gebura her deserved apology. She points her blue-crystal-tipped staff at Gebura's back, too, charging it with that teleportation magic- to reel her back in?- but Petra forces her to defend herself instead. On snap judgement, Brunnya makes another one-two-three-four flicking gesture to catch the 'glass' shards in an ice barrier, just sidestepping in time where the shield fails and becomes more shrapnel itself. Petra's words irk Brunnya enough to twist her cheek. She can't resist rising to the bait a little: "So am I cravenly self-interested, or stupidly suicidal? You don't seem to know, do you? I have the duty Heaven and the king set me to. How do you delude yourself you understand, little commoner girl?" Her blue-glowy teleportation staff tries to find a lock on Petra inside the Beauty's cockpit if Brunnya can get a couple seconds' uninterrupted line-of-sight, threatening to dump her out onto the dirt. In the background- Brunnya picked a good vantage point- Riku is visible soaring towards the northern bridge, where Bernish soldiers scatter off it like ants. A good number of Bern's troops have already pushed west past the river in the north, but his smashing the masonry now cuts those divisions off from reinforcements. "Tch, what a... word to the south, now! First and fourth, push across the southern bridge! We can't lose that one, too!" she barks to the members of her officer corps who haven't already found a sense of self-preservation, and most of that remainder take that task as their excuse to flee down the mountain too.
Marigold	With Bern on the alert, destroying the second bridge will be harder. Independently, somewhere out there in the sea of green, Cecilia seems to catch on to Roy's strategy- a great fire-strike from the sky, the work of the Forblaze tome in her possession, aims for the southern bridge; a dragon swoops down to voluntarily take the strike on its side instead, grievously glowing-gold-wounding it. The war-dragon wounded by Nobunaga's mech exploding heaves itself back up, drizzling blood from its chest and neck that sours goopy-black on touching the ground; sweeps its ugly beady-ember gaze around, and pounces to grapple with the new mech emerging from the ground, trying to shove it back down into the chasm with lunging weight alone. Without a Divine Weapon's special effectiveness, they're obnoxiously difficult to kill. Bern's soldiers... aren't so much. They'd rather not stay in a fiery hellscape if they can help it. The rank-and-file near the riverbank shrink north and south to give Nobunaga room, which soon frees a wounded Marcus from his duty guarding Roy and Lucius in their Love-attending. The old knight nods, giving her a tired-anxious-pained smile as he dismounts to lean, pained, on his lance. "I did," Roy murmurs to Love, crouching by her head to try to soothe her as Lucius works. The gold-glowing wounds of a Divine Weapon against a dragon (or a quarter-dragon, for that matter) are slow to heal, but not unfixable. "All the way back when we first got Durandal... it feels like forever ago, now." A small smile, nearly as pained as his knight's: "You're right. It'd be nice to see my father again, wouldn't it. ... Feeling better?" "R-right!!" Shanna practically squeaks at Neon as her pegasus flaps its hardest away from the sky-lunging dragon. "Yes ma'am!" Thea says, no less eager to take an order to retreat. "I mean, yes ma'am!!" "Hmph. So where to?" Thea, for now, leads a climb out of arrow distance and away from dragon range, eyeing Neon's armor. "There's Brunnya, the south bridge... you're not hurt too badly, are you?" "Left, behind." Twang. Sue flatly snaps off a shot on Odette's guidance; she doesn't use her hands to steer Little Red at all. A wary glance at the needle, but then she nods. It's distinctly to Ace's advantage, in his cheeky little maneuver, that these dragons don't have much regard for their human 'allies' at all. The breath range it has is a hundred to two hundred feet, wind and force depending; when he swerves its aim to get it to scorch the horsemen, it doesn't even hiccup, carelessly blowtorching through the Djute formation while trying to track him. The horsemen scatter as its wings tire and it lands, trying to save-and-extinguish their allies and horrified by the apparent betrayal; soon they're pursued by Madeleine's wolves, hounded out of regrouping.
Marigold	Madeleine catches up, while Little Red gets their Little Red-icine from Odette, to the sight of a glinting arrowhead pointed directly at her. "Oh. It's you," says Sue mid-gallop towards the mountain foothills, swiveling her aim away. She hasn't seen the Scary Ice Wolves before, after all! "... I could try shooting Iðunn again. She was shot once, somehow. I'm not sure what it did. Should maybe focus on the war-dragons. Productive." Sue rounds a corner of the foothills, of course, and nearly slams facefirst into Gebura carrying Mulagir and the larger force of angry Djute riders right behind her. "Oh," Sue says as an arrow whistles through the six-inch gap between her head and Odette's. As Lilian tests Iðunn, and is tested in return, some things become apparent and others can be formed as suspicions: - Iðunn is seeing through her creations' eyes; if Lilian is hidden from them, the next dragon doesn't automatically track her. - The fully-'cooked' war-dragons, when one happens to soar overhead, don't seem to be actively feeding Iðunn intel on Lilian. The drippy, half-finished ones may have more of a link. - There is conscious intent and strategy, or something close enough to consciousness. When Lilian makes a large energy expenditure to down a 'more-cooked' one, the next is slightly even moreso, accepting that as a good way to exhaust her. - But . . . The swivel of Iðunn's attention, and her shadows, from 'west towards Etruria' to 'north towards Brunnya is both a gift and a curse. The shadows of trees, all the way towards Sue, Odette, Madeleine, and Gebura, surge with drippy half-life; ink-black heads halfway emerging like decaying crocodiles breaching water, claws lurching out of dark spots in the forest to snag the unwary. That pivot blessedly lets both Lilian and the Etrurian troops rest for a moment after she kills the current 'near-fully-cooked' dragon, but without the need to form full bodies to slog a longer brighter distance, there's less to be done to stymie it. That's the gift. This is the curse: A smaller shadow emerges quickly from the castle ruins nearly in arm's reach of Lilian. It isn't real- it can't be- because the edges of its purple cloak are still ink-drippy. And yet it has white hair, and pale skin, and a thin golden-glowy scratch on its cheek where Flamel must have shot her with Mulagir. "That is not Durendail," says the shadow that surely isn't Iðunn, eyes on her sword. Its voice is even and empty. For a second it seems like that's all she wanted the puppet to confirm, before, after a blank-dumb little pause, it adds: "Then the Otherworld is wintered, that your blade rejects this." It's hard to tell if the words are meant to be wondering or satisfied or grim. They seem to drop from the figure's lips with an absence of desire only barely matched by an absence of inhibition.
Riku Asakura	The bridge goes down without much fanfare, cutting off that section of the Bern Army. Ultraman Geed turns his attention towards the southern one and notices that the forces there are already taking efforts to defend it. This is not good; he needs to take these bridges down quickly, or at least before most of the army can cross the bridge. Geed looks around quickly, looking for anything he can use to try to make crossing the bridge more difficult. That's when he noticed the ruined fort. "That'll do..." he says to himself and flies over towards it. Upon landing on it, ignoring the stinging attacks of the army he flies over, he attempts to lift the entire building. This will take time, but he launches the building, like a giant boulder aiming for the southern bridge itself, trying to create impassible terrain and destroy the bridge, but if he can't get the bridge, make it nearly impassible for use by Bern forces. It takes time to lift the building, but far less time to chuck it like a giant boulder. He doesn't notice Idunn or Lilian right away, focused completely on his work.
Nobunaga	When it locks eyes with the wounded dragon rising from the previous Great Mecha Nobbu, the replacement swings its arms out to either side as if to let out a roar or a war cry, even though all that comes out is NOBU. The wyrm charges and in response Great Mecha Nobbu II unleashes that laser beam from its mouth again. This is certainly not enough to drop the beast or push it back, but in great cinematic fashion the bolt is charged right through. The dragon slams into the second Mecha Nobbu with a crash of flesh and steel. It winds its extenso-arms around the dragon's body as it topples back into the blazing crevice it emerged from, dragging the siege beast down with it. Nearby, an ordinary Nobbu soldier pauses in its fighting to remove its hat, the one big gormless white eye closing, Nobu... At last, the infernal advance of the Demon King has caught up with Love, Roy, and Marcus. She's pierced right through the center of the main battle front, leaving a burning wake of scorched earth behind her that still sears those who try to cross it. A formation of Nobbu soldiers file out and surround the two men and the wounded snake-dragon magical girl, their rifles aimed outward towards the scattering soldiers. In the thick of the knee-high familiars, Oda Nobunaga strides right up to Roy. "Glad I could make it in time. How bad is it?" she addresses the guys and then Love, "And a fine idea, Roy," casting her crimson gaze northward when the northern bridge collapses and Geed gets into his dangerous (and pretty cool?) plan for the Southern span. Her eyes don't follow Riku's projectile castle, though. Instead, she follows the oozing shadows further north into the pass. Red eyes squint. A rifle materializes within reach. Rather than command it, the warlord seizes the weapon directly in her hands and plants her feet. The weapon is shouldered, raised. She pauses, one eye closed, letting out her breath in one long, slow, practiced sigh. After a few seconds, Nobunaga pulls the trigger. The matchlock snaps down. In a blast of smoke and flame and golden light, the rifle fires a single iron projectile laced with all of Nobunaga's hatred for gods and demigods right for the head of the gloopy, ink-like simulacrum of Iðunn. It might not kill her, but by Nobunaga's reckoning killing the vessel will at least hurt. Especially if the Demon Dragon has any divinity to her essence for the warlord to burn.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	As Gebura arrives with the Gale Bow, Madeleine gestures in Sue's direction. "Give it to her! I can cover us, and she's more familiar with this make of bow." Satisfied with her arguments, Madeleine sets to work. The task of defending Sue's position is threefold: present threats are (in descending order of scary-for-Madeleine) the half-formed shadow dragons, stray lightning from Brunnya's position, and Djute skirmishers and Bernish foot troops. Brunnya isn't easily dealt with, but she may be more easily stymied. To cover Flamel's retreat from the Wyvern General, and to interfere with the lightning barrages generally, Madeleine readies her bow and aims up in a high arc to fire three arrows up the mountain, soaring over and past the troops pursuing Gebura. None of them are aimed at a person, so any real damage is incidental, but they burst on impact with the ground around Brunnya into clouds of oily smoke. With a lower-than-usual concentration of Drogrung's poisonous vapors the low-hanging bank of fog isn't taking anyone with a respectable constitution out of the fight, but it should be enough to limit Brunnya's vision downslope beyond a handful of meters. That, hopefully, buys Madeleine time to handle Iðunn's liquid shadow-dragons. Confident in her usual weapon's efficacy against the oozily-formed scales of recent 'arrivals', she keeps Maltet on her back and Drogrung shifts into its spear form. Relying on the spear's reach to defend herself and others from larger foes is familiar for Madeleine; killing things with largely amorphous internals, less so. Based on Lilian's information, there's also no time to waste in dispatching them, because they'll only get tougher. Madeleine and Drogrung fight as one, the huntress attacking with broad sweeps and sudden haft strikes and the weapon expanding those gestures with its ghostly thrashing claws and lashing tail. The objective is to give Sue time and space enough to bring Mulagir to bear, whether on Iðunn's position or the more 'complete' war-dragons. When Madeleine has the chance she goes for a killing blow on the creatures, generally by thrusting her spear deep into a gelatinous body which Drogrung then rends from within. She just has to hope she and Gebura are enough to stem the rising tide, and that Odette has an answer to the onrushing human foes...
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's shield rips away in layers. Burns transfer through it, lashing through his combat suit but leaving him standing, as bolts crash through his space. He grits his teeth and hands the bow off quickly in all the light and sound to Gebura. That hand, now free, plants on his temple. Somewhere deep in the Parsons Institute, the Damage Control team fights off distracting Pains while he stays fully, absolutely squared up. "You're, well, I can't really blame you! For keeping a sane view of the world in your mind." Beams meet barriers, bolts meet shields, and both parties slug it out brutally. "In a sane world he wouldn't. In the world that there's supposed to be, he wouldn't. In a sane world, his father would have poisoned him. He would have escaped the castle and gone underground. He would have found that woman. He would have fought, he would have, hhhahhh... gathered... Galle, Murdoch, you, all together. He would have fought his father. Fought the corrupt nobility of Bern. Fought to restore the woman's mind. Fought to uncover the past and build the future. Fought for Galle, and Murdoch, and you. Found the weapons, pushed, learned, grown, become a king of Bern to lead it into a new thousand years of peace with three great generals at his side." Flamel dodges to one side when his shield gives out completely for a second, one of the lightning bolts grazing him. He keeps his upbeat, positive, chipper tone. "That isn't going to happen. The world has gone insane, see? I'm a mental healer, but I can't help you and change you, because you're sane and the world isn't, not anymore. You use the old meaning of loyalty but the world has made it something else. What a mess, haha!" The barrier is back, but it drains energy that would have gone to making the next beam properly punchy. Flamel isn't a match for her, but he's got startlingly substantial ability to deal with her for a while. And hopefully long enough to fire up... a single big, translucent telekinetic hand. Suspended in the air, hopefully the Kamen Rider(s) can get him out of there by engaging with it, like a fulton balloon. Ideally he'll do something moments after Madeleine's smoke arrives. Flamel engages his invisibility and tries to break off from the slugfest either way. "I really wish you wouldn't kill me. You're sane, after all. You can't truly look at this, all this, and think it's... normal?" It's entirely possible he's trying to crystalize the effect he had on a dozen burdened girls and apply it to her. Can't get into her mind right now, that's for sure. Not without some gaslighting.
Odette Raskins	"There, there... Brave girl, you did it." Odette stage-whispers to Little Red with another pat following the injection, lifting her head up a little once she hears Sue firing off an arrow at one of their pursuers. She glances back briefly and winces at the sight, but doesn't dwell on them for long before keeping her head on a swivel again to watch out for more. She inhales sharply when she sees Sue pointing that arrow towards Madeleine, then relaxes a little once the recognition hits. "If you can get a clear shot at Iounn, that's not a bad idea, but we've got a whole bunch of dragons gliding around up there still. Maybe-oh! Miss Gebura!" Spotting a familiar face with a strange looking bow that could only be Mulagir, the EMT starts to raise a hand, then quickly lowers it when she hears an arrow speeding right between her and Sue while trapping a noise in her throat at feeling a hot trickle of blood coming down the side of her face. "S... Straight, little to the right!" Odette calls out based on that sound alone, followed immediately by hunkering down to try and get Gebura's attention again. "Miss Gebura! Is that it?" She calls out while hastily unwrapping some medicated gauze. She applies to Sue first if she needs it, then wraps some more around her own arm and that sharp cut across her cheek. "Pass it this way! Sue can fire it, and we can... We can keep her covered!" She calls out while covering up her own wounds with the gauze, squinting slightly when the shadowy figures start emerging from the forest. Covering Sue is easier said than done, but Odette almost sounds like she isn't questioning herself for once. After hearing from Lilian about the shadows' sensory link to Iounn, Odette hastily starts packing away and mixing together different things from her carrying case again. "Sue, go straight past the shadows, and make sure you and Little Red don't look backwards for at least five seconds once I give the signal. Gebura, Madeleine, this way, please! I've got some extra... Bandages, too!" With a slightly shaky hand that's only partially due to the galloping, Odette gets her bottles mixed together, drops a lit match into one of them, and then she jams both of them into a gray casing. She looks around for another second to try and guage the best spot to throw that device out, soon settling on the densest-looking pack of those liquid shadows and pursuing hunters alike as she finishes twisting the wires together with her teeth and clamping the whole thing shut with her thumbs. "Five seconds. It's going!" She shouts in warning to Sue, Madeleine, and Gebura before flinging it right in the path of the oncoming shadows. Exactly five seconds after she calls out, a blinding light and deafening noise blasts out from the makeshift flashbang, loud enough to even daze Odette for a second as she hunches over into Sue's back to keep herself from falling off. Even after she recovers, though, she lingers there for a bit to make sure Sue's physically protected from any lucky shots before she's had a chance to get a grip on Mulagir.
Angela	Gebura doesn't need to piss Brunnya off anymore--actually, pissing off Brunnya even more now (at herself) is actually a bad idea! Instead, she needs to let Petra keep at doing what she's doing. This means that Gebura doesn't have any words for Brunnya. She clearly didn't think about too much about the possibility of being able to teleport her back but why would she WANT to? She somehow doubts that Idunn is going to be too picky about who actually shot her when it was explicitely a dragon slaying arrow that shot her. If someone shot her with a Gebura Slaying Arrow she'd be pretty miffed about that herself. She runs into Sue. "Oh. Hey. Sue right?" She is not a Sephirah with perfect memory but her eye (she only has one right now) does notice that Sue has a bow with her already. But still she hesitates. It's one thing to give that weapon to her when they're ready to make a final move on Idunn but that's not NOW. Right now, it'd make her a prime target and Gebura already decided that she would paint that target on her back. Not Sue's. It's been made abundantly clear to her just how easy it is for an archer to just die in an instant. Can she really protect her? She thinks of Carmen, of course, and then she thinks of her team. All of them have escaped the Library. They've all moved onto their normal lives. And they seem happy. Even Ceri. Then she thinks of those who fell during the battle for Apple Island. "Alirght." She says after some discussion, handing the bow over to Sue. "Move however you need to, fire however you need to. I will adapt. And I will make sure nothing threatens you. If you don't choose your targets well, and if we can't keep you flinging arrows..." She doesn't need to say. This is the only path forward she can see that leads to victory. Or even survival. To Odette she says, "Better be 'we'. I am not going to be looking after ''your'' backside. Can't afford to. So stay alive." And then it's the time to kill shadows and trees. "Keep moving." She instructs the others. Don't hurt yourself by overextending. I will handle whatever gets past you too.")] And then it's shadow cleaving time. She protects Sue from all forms of assault, no matter how tricksy or how shadowy, she swings Mimicry in impossibly arcs. She takes cuts and swipes across her body when she has no choice, but she endures. And she will endure so long as Sue has the breath to wield that artifact. Even when she has to turn her gaze to avoid being blinded, Mimicry has eyes of its own. And she relies on those in the blindening flash to keep on swinging, a wall of flesh and teeth and sharpness serving as shield and blade. MEANWHILE Love smiles at Roy. "Hmm... You can't see him right now? It's hard when you're far away from your family, but if you close your eyes you can still feel them in your heart. I'm sure he's not even hiding around in there, you'll find him easy." Is she feeling better. She exhales out a smoky breath and then bobs her head to Roy. "Mhmmm! I'd hug you but my arms are a little weird right now. You're really kind, Roy. So long as you have a kind heart, everything will be okay." She starts to turn and steady herself back into a straightened position. She hasn't seen any arrows launched in her direction in a while, though she's still weakened from the strike. She curls around to protect Roy while breathing laser at any who so much as look in their direction oddly. She has to protect the junior magical boy! That's the job of every magical girl. Mhm!
Lilian Rook	Lilian doesn't have time to check on Brunnya's spellcasting, nor try to learn where the last arrow from Mulagir must have gone, nor what condition Love is in, or Roy, or Petra, nor even where her own allies are, much less the direction of the Bernish army. The report of Forblaze striking terra firma is utterly unmistakable, but she can only guess where it landed. The fact that Cecilia is still up and fighting injects a fraction of a second wind into her fighting stance, and then the thought that she only hadn't noticed because she could half-truthfully describing her burden as 'soloing the Demon Dragon' bolsters her a little more. It's the swivel of Iðunn's attention that finally tells Lilian what's really going on. Spacing out the use of her gun more and more, committing to less and less powerful spells, taking each summoning pause just to breathe and sweat and push from her mind the growing burn of retrocausal rejection in her extremities, Lilian feels the instant her body's emergency reserves kick in when every single shadow in the valley suddenly turns elsewhere, and the feeling of being within the saccade of a vast and unknowable eye fires ice cold adrenaline through every vein and nerve. She doesn't have the reserves left to burn on scouting ahead and stopping to come up with a plan. What she has left is enough for two minutes of dragon-fighting at best, and then immediate, unconditional retreat. Having already exceeded the time guarantee she had offered the others, Lilian just cannot make herself take any risk of being stranded on the battlefield. What she has is, scraping the sides, enough magic for one low-power area saturation spell over Sue and Odette, and less than five minutes of flight. Lilian checks her harness with burnt and quivering fingers anyways, just in case she finds more ammo. She doesn't. 'That is not Durendail' Lilian's lead hand has only just finished the first sign when the stirring shadows so close to her make her jump back on reflex. For an instant, the chaotic thoughts that first come to her wonder if Iðunn has gotten impatient and tried to finish her off early, then realize it can't be a dragon if she'd make it so easy for her up close. The words she just heard lag in third, with the shape of the person saying them in last. Struggling to process, Lilian can think of nothing but to catch her breath in the length of time it takes a faintly glowing footprint to fade. Her feet have only just stopped smoking when she finally glances to her sword. 'Then the Otherworld is wintered, that your blade rejects this.' Somehow, after all this time, even after meeting the real thing already, Lilian still feels shock, bordering on both suspicion and awe, that Iðunn would choose to say or do any of this. Whatever kind of person Lilian had imagined she was, it was always one who had no interest in sharing words with anyone but Zephiel. For some reason, talking in the midst of the fire and ruins and shadows feels too eerily intimate for that to be true anymore. And so she replies without any handhold on what to read into the woman's toneless non-inflection at all, telling herself that it's to stall, and half-believing it. "Here and there." Lilian says, between ragged breaths, staring past the edge of her sword. "The Otherworld is so vast that many can still believe that their summer will last forever. I wish it would." She dares to glance, just for an instant, towards the river and back. Her blade is just a little slower to cool from being made to grind against reality than she is. "It won't. Everything else to say is already in my title. Except . . ."
Lilian Rook	Across the length of a single breath, Lilian searches every corner of hr thoughts for the one right thing to say. Something that might stall her a little longer, or something that might tell her something she needs to know about her, or something that could put any kind of crack at all in her confidence. The moment comes and goes without any closure. Instead, Lilian says, "I wish you wouldn't make this world do it twice. And I wish it was any better to Zephiel. Or to you. This isn't how it should be."
Desire Stars	"The next bridge!" Na-Go shouts. "Riku is going to need support with what he's doing! Let's get over there and cover him!" She leads the charge towards Riku's position, where he is currently attempting to lift the fort. As she draws nearer, and her music is within earshot of Riku, he finds that the Bernish weapons don't hurt as much--but just as importantly, that the fatigue of being in his giant form weighs less on him. When the fort is thrown, she follows up with an attack of her own--"I'm going in! Hang back then cover me on the turn-around!" Na-Go slicks the Propeller Buckle on her transformation belt, setting the tiny propeller to spinning and beginning an energy buildup. It travels from the Desire Driver at her waist to the Armed Propeller holding her aloft, the blades beginning to superheat as the energy reaches them, glowing molten red. Just as a visible shimmer appears over the spinning blades, she divebombs, chasing the flying fort and cutting a crescent around the impact zone, attempting to break the ranks of the defending Bernish forces there. The energy discharges in her wake, leaving a trail of explosions, before she angles back up and moves to rejoin Shanna and Thea. PROPELLER STRIKE! On another front, Geats is racing against the limited time on the Boostriker. The fuel gauge on the mechanical fox's back ticks ever lower as he maintains the speed from his little friendly-fire inducing trick. Leaning forward on the mount to reduce drag, arrows zip overhead and stick into the robot's plating. Madeleine's smoke cloud appears and races faster, but the red needle edges closer and closer to the E that will send Geats plummeting to the earth and the Boost Buckle rocketing off towards its next deployment. Flamel is within sight. He could reach out and touch Madeleine's smoke, if he stood on the nose of the Boostriker. The jets of fire from the robot's annealed metal pipes sputter out. Geats, standing on the saddle, leaps for the remaining distance as the Boost Buckle shoots off of his Desire Driver like artillery, screaming through the air and depriving him of the lower half of his armor. Momentum alone carries him through the air to snatch Flamel by the scruff of his collar. When gravity begins to gently remind of its existence, and the two of them begin to descend, Geats twirls the Magnum Shooter and one-handedly converts it into its pistol configuration with a pump at the apex of the spin. MAGNUM TACTICAL BLAST! The laser pistol bucks from the effort of loosing the nearly torso-sized burst from its nose. Searing red energy collides with the mountain at just the right spot to start a rockslide. Geats' feet collide with the largest among them--large enough to be a stable foothold, though Flamel dangles perilously over the edge for a moment. Careening down the side of the mountain at the rear of a rockslide, Geats hurriedly swaps in the Powered Builder buckle. The lower half of his armor is replaced by caution-striped yellow plates reminiscent of construction equipment. Moreover, the sudden weight of the massive, half-heavy-weapon, half-power-tool Gigant Blaster dips their shared foothold alarmingly downward. "Now," he says, "Here comes the highlight." Firing the Gigant Blaster from the hip, he rapidly constructs reinforced concrete pilings further down the mountain, and up from those pilings spring steel I-beams to support a perfectly sized railway to carry him and Flamel away from the mountain, ramping up at the last minute to set up another high-speed downward slide.
Marigold	"It could be worse," says Marcus to Nobunaga, which is true because Love's still alive, and which isn't more precise because he isn't an expert on dragon injuries. Marcus and his tired smile could be doing worse, too. "Th... that's right. My father's making sure everything's still okay in Lycia," Roy says, tentatively stroking Love's head if she seems like she'll allow it. "That's why I've had to do a lot of things in his stead." Lord Eliwood is also very sick, which makes Roy's heart uneasy to think about, but that's not a magical girl sort of problem, so he doesn't say that. "So long as I have a kind heart..." Lucius finishes his work, and Love rears up to defend them, and Roy smiles queasily. Is that something anyone, at times like these, can keep? Hartmut did. But where did that get Hartmut? "That's right. Gebura," Sue says very calmly in mutual recognition; then immediately turns her horse around and flees back down the mountain to get away from the Djute pursuers' following arrows, casting a glance back only to make sure that Gebura's keeping up. At one point Sue has to push Odette down under an arrow; she takes it in her own back, and even the stony-faced young woman can't keep down a sharp hiss. "Five seconds," Sue repeats, nodding, scrunching her eyes shut, and then leaning forward to cover her horse's eyes mid-gallop. Odette's flashbang topples several of the pursuing Djute from their horses, briefly banishes the shadows behind them, and in doing so 'cinches' them around the not-yet-formed limbs and heads. For a few seconds the shadow-creatures are withered, but Iðunn herself doesn't seem disoriented. On the way down, Sue silently accepts the burden of Mulagir from Gebura alongside her. Near the foothills, one of the swiping shadow-dribbly forelimbs catches Little Red mid-stride again, and for the second time they take a spill down the side of the mountain; but it takes Sue only a second and a whispered prayer at the edge of the trees to make sure her horse (and Odette) will live, before drawing the bow and taking aim. The shadows keep lunging at her, forming just-recognizable draconic shapes from whatever darkness they can to swipe with claws and teeth. The first few times someone has to defend her, she winces. But she focuses, past the pain and the arrow in her back. Tweee, to put a shot in the dragon grappling with Nobunaga's mech, giving out its shoulder just in time to be finally buried. Tweee, to wound one lunging for Riku as he wades in the river. Tweee, to finish off the one Cecilia wounded by the southern bridge... Blood runs down her side with the draw, to her hip.
Marigold	Far away there's lightning striking, and glass shattering, and the howl of fire in the sky; the cries of war-dragons, and the breath of Sacae passing over Etruria's teeth. Here, in the cold mutilated corpse of a fortress, Iðunn and Lilian can be quieter. The shadow of the Demon Dragon barely raised her voice above a murmur. For a long moment, as the breeze stirs her hair, she's so still that one could doubt if she had heard Lilian at all. But she did. "I wish you wouldn't make this world do it twice. And I wish it was any better to Zephiel. Or to you." "Or to me?" It would be human, or even animal, to be either warily touched by Lilian or to be startled that she cares. But the tiny trace of surprise in Iðunn's voice is much, much worse than that. She sounds surprised by the idea that bad things have ever happened to her at all. Nobunaga's bullet pierces through the mock-Iðunn just then, putting a hole in the vessel's chest and splattering shadowstuff on the wall. From the edges of the hole it begins to burn, lazily, like a piece of paper with a lighter held under it. It turns its hooded face to look west over the battlefield, near-indifferently searching for the bullet's source, but even as the vessel burns away its expression is flat. Riku gripping the ruined fort's remains, too, goes unremarked-upon; her vessel keeps its ghostly balance as the building begins to shift. "All is well," Iðunn murmurs to Lilian serenely through a slowly-crumbling puppet while looking down on a bloodsoaked battlefield from a teetering structure, which she must believe, because it would be so obscene a lie as to be pointless. Perhaps this gory field is like a thousand others she's seen. "You did this. Yet after winter, there is spring." She doesn't seem compelled to say anything else, which is fortunate, because the burn widens enough for the shadow-vessel's head to fall off a few seconds later, and then the rest crumbles away. The real Iðunn, on the southern mountain, is neither agitated nor hurried by her puppet's destruction. But when Riku heaves back to throw the fort at the bridge, she finally seems to recognize a tactical necessity. Lifting a building creates a huge shadow, and clawing dripping dragon-limbs-and-jaws lurch upwards out of that shadow, grasping at Riku's arms and legs to try to bind and stop him. Neon rallies the fliers to Riku's side. "Yes ma'am!" "Yes ma'--" "It's not sincere if you just started doing it." "H-hey! I'm trying to learn from you...!" "Okay, okay...!" The shadow-stuff trying to grapple and immobilize him is less reactive and swift than a real dragon; they realize they can take prying, swooping strikes at the 'joints' of the mass of drippy limbs, trying to weaken its hold. Twi-twi-tweee, and a trio of Sue's dragonslaying arrows cut through the remaining limbs, with little to impede his toss. A couple of Bernish mages on the far side of the bridge get the panicked idea to use their destructive magic to knock the soaring fort off its course, like deflecting a meteor away from the Earth. Fireballs begin to strike it- but they're driven aside by Neon's explosive dive before they can make enough impact. Crunch. The second bridge gives way.
Marigold	It takes Brunnya a minute to realize her offensive has been stymied. She's still trying to electrocute-and-impale Flamel, you see. "Wrong. He should never have met that wretched woman," she hurls in response. A torrent of lightning tries to find its way through his psychic bubble-shield; then, frustrated, she teleports inside it and tries to slam him from behind with an already-formed spike-burst of icy shrapnel. "... But to be sane is to live in the world as it is. I don't have time to entertain such childish fantasies." Without any allies in the clearing to worry about, she turns it into a tree-hewing blizzard-blender, blinking back to a safe distance but tunnel-visioning dangerously on him with a duelist's instincts. "The duty placed upon me is--!" Just then the clearing is filled with smoke, reducing her to coughing just long enough for Ace to pluck Flamel away on his infuriating little railway. The shock of that, at least, sobers her up enough to put her off the idea of pursuit. "Ghhhh. You miserable little dogs..." she growls, magically clearing her own lungs and stinging eyes in the aftermath. "And where's Mulagir? Don't tell me those Djute haven't..." She's three steps behind. If Flamel and Ace see another vessel of Iðunn appear from a shadow by Brunnya's side in that clearing, it's only at a distance. "His Majesty wishes you to know both bridges have been destroyed." "Tch. Of course. Have him know I'll freeze the river and--" "His Majesty demands a retreat." "What?! No! I can still do this! Look at that sorry lot! Look at...!" ". . ." "Ghhh." ". . . His Majesty demands a retreat." The river is frozen, a minute later, but Bernish troops only cross it backwards. The dragons still fight; the shadows still ooze; the chaotic noise and bloodshed go on for a long hour or two afterwards. But from that moment forward, Etruria is not fighting for its life; it is only fighting, as Bern is, to inflict a cost.
Nobunaga	The shot hits. She can see the faintest flicker of unholy flame from here, consuming the simulacrum from the inside out. Lowering the rifle, Nobunaga squints, surrounded by the wages of war and the crack of gunfire, the screech of arrows from Mulagir, and the shouting of soldiers. She releases her weapon rather than reload it, the steel and wood vanishing in a shower of golden sparks as it drops. "Not quite as dramatic as I was hoping," the Demon King murmurs. After a moment, she lifts her shoulders and closes her eyes, her hands swinging out, "Oh well. It can't be helped." With both bridges destroyed, Bern's forward lines can no longer reinforce with what parts of the rear guard haven't already been mauled by her own offensive. When the water freezes, she tenses up and steps forward past Roy, trailing flames with each footstep-- and she only stops when it becomes clear that Brunnya is just giving her troops an avenue of retreat... right into the burning Hell of Oda Nobunaga's inner reality overlaid atop the Sacaen plains. She sweeps her sword forward and plants it point-down in front of herself, resting both hands on the hilt. Bloodied, sweaty, and tired; she still pushes forth that exhuberant and energetic smile of hers that's just a little unhinged when taken alongside those wide, glowing red eyes of hers. The thermals of heat around her gather and push up strands of bright red hair, forming slight curls not unlike the spider lily; a flower known to bloom in the aftermath of bloody battles. "Soldiers of Bern, you have before you a choice! Flee for your lives, or submit to the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven!" Around her, lines of battle-weary Nobbu start gathering. The battered Nobbu Tanks that can still move, the arrow-rich Nobbu UFOs floating back and forth, worn-out sword-wielding Nobbusengumi, battered and sparking Mecha-Nobbu, and the swarms of standard Nobbu soldiers all collecting at the ready behind her in roughshod formations. From a flaming fissure, Great Mecha Nobbu II reappears, its armor scorched and torn and leaking golden embers of magical energy. "Should you surrender to the Lycian League, you shall at least retain your lives!" She already put a one-koban reward out for any Bernish prisoners, but it seems like the warlord is eager to round up some herself-- or further the body count. At least she's giving them the option of surrender rather than just ordering a slaughter, which is more than some might have expected from the Demon King. She really is accepting that her normal brutality isn't welcome in this crowd and adapting accordingly.
Odette Raskins	"I am not going to be looking after ''your'' backside. Can't afford to. So stay alive." "Don't worry. I know where... Ah. Where the priorities have to be for us to win this whole thing." Odette answers Gebura with a firm nod and non-stuttering tone, although the fear still visible from her teeth chattering while she tries and fails to look cool and collected. There's too much at stake not to be worried, d much to worry about, after all, but she can at least sound like she's okay so as to not be an extra distraction for Sue. Or more of one, anyway, when Sue pushes her head down and gets shot for her trouble. Sucking in a breath, Odette gets her case open again, not to prepare more flashbangs, but to treat Sue on the way. Some painkillers, some numbing cream, and some medicated gauze help her extract and treat the wound for the time being, but that's something she'll certainly have to check on after they're no longer in the middle of a battle. Falling off Little Red again is far more jarring than that, but not as shocking this time around. Even though her body's a little more used to the sensation, though, it doesn't make getting laid out any more pleasant or breathing after the fact any easier to do. One quick jab of medicine into her leg, and Odette's practically forgotten about the pain enough that she can even get back up long enough to do the same for Little Red. She doesn't forget her duty to keep Sue safe, either, hurling more random things at the shadows as she hastily limps over to get to her: Bottles and scalpels mostly, but discarded arrows and weaponry are quickly mixed in just to aid in keeping her covered. The visible bleeding is what she's more focused on, though, once she's close enough and safely behind the cover of Gebura and Madeleine/Madeleine's beasts. "Nice work, Miss Sue. K-keep it up, and I'll make sure you don't run out of blo... Blood!" She states in a slight daze, already bringing out blood packs and the gauze again, the former attached to the latter as she does what she can to stem the flow of blood and keep Sue from bleeding out on the spot. She jolts a little each time that arrow is fired, though, knowing and seeing firsthand how its affecting Sue and fighting to keep the archer alive throughout all that. The crunch of the second bridge gets her to look over for just a moment, and then she breathes a sigh of relief while getting a second pack in place on Sue's side. "The bridge is down... Th-they did it! You did it, Sue!" Despite her audible relief, however, Odette's still scrambling to get that bleeding and the rest of Sue's wounds treated before moving on to Gebura, Madeleine, and Little Red once more.