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Marigold      THE DRAGON TEMPLE
     Approaching the final chamber.

     Jahn the Fire Dragon died an inconsequential death, at the end of an inconsequential life. Flamel had, in fact, seen minds like his before; the typical dehumanization, the typical cultural excuses for brutality. Stripping those away, it isn't hard to compel him to shell-shocked nausea. Rutger kills him anyway, if Petra and Nobunaga hesitate.

     Dragons and humans are hardly different at all. He even bleeds red.

     Still, a small man can speak heavy truths.


"What an odd human that 'Zephiel' is. Was? I assume you've done away with him."
"'I intend to deliver the world to your kind', he told me. How could I object?"
"'Iðunn'? Ah, right. That was what Zephiel called the Demon."
"It refused to fight for us. So we destroyed its soul, and rendered it an empty shell."

And on Flamel's dossier:
<Given the power to cleanse the world and bring true peace, she would not use it. There was still no end to her begging.>
<'Obey your masters' was the first order written on that blank mind, and the second was 'cleanse the world'.>
<How did that strange human awaken her? I may never know.>


     Fae stares pensively at the blood on swords, and Roy's anxieties are relieved not at all by Jahn's demise. Sophia too looks almost ill; her ability to sense other dragons is what guides the group forwards through the winding-drippy-dark tunnels, but this close to Iðunn, she must feel like she's staring into a flashbang.
Marigold      It feels like minutes before the young lord finally speaks again.

"... I still can't believe Zephiel was fighting for a lie," Roy says, queasily. "That man said Zephiel rebuked him when he tried to share the truth. Or... maybe Zephiel knew Iðunn was soulless, and thought that was what made her perfect."
"I guess it makes sense," Igrene says, holding a now-ensmallened Fae's hand. "Ambition, hatred, greed... all the things Zephiel hated in humans, dragons can show too. But not Iðunn."
"Roy. Fae wants to know... are we going to make her go away, too?"
"I... I hope not. Hartmut used the Blade to subdue her before. The Heroes must have believed she could be fixed. Even if none of them knew how."
"Not to rain on your parade," Echidna leans into the conversation while rubbing her sore shoulder, "but even if she's innocent, there's a lot more than one innocent life at stake here. We're not the Heroes, and she's not a child anymore. If we've gotta kill her, we've gotta kill her."
"Right. I... I know that. Just give me one chance. Please."
"... Alright."

     The writhing darkness all around, wherever the light doesn't reach, has relaxed in its hostile intent since Jahn's death. Though Rutger and Echidna still hew at limbs and heads that emerge, they don't lunge with urgency; it's more like trailblazing a jungle than wading through a nest of vipers.

     The slaggy cave, made through the rough shaping of lava-softened rock, gives way to properly smooth-hewn dark stone, carved with draconic designs through chiseling rather than clawing. It's as if the dragon builders of old were learning human architecture from first principles; adjusting to their new forms as they went, they made smaller passages with finer tools.

     Sophia is the first to have her breath hitch. Up ahead, in one last great chamber- with its high arches and rectangular alcoves, the first to deserve the name of 'temple'- a white glow leaks out, unlike the cool violet fire of the magical braziers.

"Is that...?" Roy whispers, hushed, around the corner.
"It is," Sophia says, quailing slightly.
Nobunaga     The demon king Nobunaga has no hesitation when it comes to Jahn, save to let Rutger have the satisfaction of the final blow. This is her homeland, after all. In this war, Nobunaga has intended only to serve as a weapon, after all.

    As she steps back so the Sacaen swordswoman can get in, Nobunaga swings her blade violently to the right, casting Jahn's dragonblood from the steel. Even though as a dragon he is physically larger than her, it's hard not to understand how she glowers down at him with such disgust.

    But that sword doesn't enter its saya. Not yet. There is yet work to be done.

> "Maybe Zephiel knew Iðunn was soulless, and thought that was what made her perfect."

    "Every time I have thought to make a determination regarding that man," Nobunaga says evenly, "I have been surprised. Perhaps you are right; or perhaps Zephiel saw something in her we missed; or something Jahn ignored." She pauses, glancing towards the ceiling. It's Fae's voice that brings her thoughts back to Now.

> "Fae wants to know... are we going to make her go away, too?"

    "'I wish the world had been kinder to you', those words of Lilian Rook's, ring all the more correct and clear now to me." The warlord's eyes lower, shifting sidelong to the young dragon, "I now understand the 'demon dragon's' answer. The world had indeed been so cruel to her that she could no longer even recognize it as cruelty."

    Nobunaga shifts her attention back ahead, "Having come this far, it may be the more difficult path, but I would see the end of Iðunn's life as a failure rather than any manner of success."

    Her eyes keep moving, past 'ahead', to rest on Flamel, "You. Thought-chaser. Are we in agreement?"
Flamel Parsons     "I plan to give you every chance you can have, to not kill her." Flamel mutters to Roy and Nobunaga, on the way. "She was... *programmed*. Back in the MAD outbreak, we called it, 'brainwashing'. When enough psychohazard converged, through the collective unconscious, and centered around one single person..." He shivers. "'Maligula.'" He says the name like a curse. "She was the 'Iðunn' of our world. Someone who only wanted to do good. Who kept her mind open to the goodness. Who had something special she wanted to use for everyone's benefit. And it meant the only solution anyone had to fight her, was to..."

    "..."

    "There's a good chance we might not survive. If we survive, there's a good chance we won't have whatever sanity we walked in with. If we go home sane, we might not go home *right* and *just*." He mutters. "I've never fixed something like this. I'm going to, but we might..." He reaches the doorframe, where the light leaks, where something like the new starlight can be seen. Doesn't take a clairvoyant to feel that dread down the spine.

    ---

    Every alarm screams, every light flashes red. The Parsons Institute is in Code Red, it's in DEFCON-1. Every display screen, every PA speaker, every alert on every computer, all recite the same thing:

    ---

    "Stop the launch." He whispers it like a doctrine. Like a prayer. "No matter what. No matter what happens. Stop the launch."

    ---

    The Director releases the button on the mic. He stands at his full height, rest his hands on his cane, bows his head, and hopes.

    ---

    Barriers. One, two, four, eight, twelve layers. Telekinetic hands, two, six, eighteen of them in a swarm. Two fingers are planted on both temples. Bandoliers of injectors, psionic amplifiers, holstered devices, hang off his body with a soft clatter. He enters.

    "IÐUNN!" He calls out. "I... I'm here to help. To help you with what you wanted, before. To stop the war, to make peace. Please." He enters with steady steps. "Let me do what you hoped for. Back then. I know it's late, I know it's a thousand years too late, but it's what I have. The masters are dead. If you rest just a little longer, we can make that hope you had real. I swear it."
Angela Gebura has at least calmed down, though Roland is still miserable and Love, well, Love is feeling a little weird too after Flamel used Fae to pry secrets out of the dragon's mind, so they're all pretty quiet as they move, ambient rage leaking off of Gebura like smoke. Not metaphorically, she's actually sort of steaming that red energy off her body as they walk.

''I still can't believe Zephiel was fighting for a lie.''

"Well we never believed dragons were this extra enlightened race, did we?" Roland sighs, kicking at the floor with his feet. "I always figured she was distant from her own people, enough strength tends to put people off, but I never figured she was just a good person they turned into a weapon."

''If we've gotta kill her, we've gotta kill her.''

"I don't think I can do that." Love says, which might be a little surprising considering. "I don't think we'll have to do it." She smiles at Roy, subdued. "Well, I mean, maybe it's because I'm a silly little magical girl who believes in conventions that aren't exactly real but..." She shrugs her shoulders. "They can be real if you believe in them enough. And sometimes, even out here outside of the storybooks, it can be like that. But I can't kill someone like that. It wouldn't be very magical girl of me. I promised Lilian I wouldn't eat any more heads and I think this is sort of an extension of that, even if it doesn't involve head eating."

"'Soulless', that wasn't my impression." Gebura says. "I'm not sure I want to rely on that guy's impression of what and who she is. But regardless, we killed a man she was close to. It won't be easy, might even be seen as a bit insulting to then offer an olive branch."

Roland thinks of Angelica. "Well, she did once believe in peace," Roland says miserably. "If you can't believe in peace even after losing someone to war, well... It wasn't such a strong belief anyway." He suspects he's talking about himself.

''Are we going to make her go away, too?''

"Fae, what would you like to happen?" Love asks. "As a champion of girls, I will do my best to make your dreams reality!"

Roland doesn't say it, but he is already grimly preparing to kill. He doesn't really want to, but he has already hesitated before and has seen the effect of his hesitation on others.

''The writhing darkness''

"Is it just me, or have these calmed down?" Gebura asks, swiping with Mimicry periodically. "Was Jahn directing them to be more hostile somehow..?"

They reach the temple.

"Let me give you some tips, Fae, to saving a girl who has been taken by the darkness. You need to make sure you understand their feelings, you gotta maybe take a risk to embrace them so they know there's still affection for them in this world, you need a strong belief in yourself and a strong belief in what you believe in, but you also need to be able to listen to their hearts and find common ground among them."

"After their soul was destroyed." Roland quips.

"''Especially'' if her soul is destroyed. Take it from me, souls don't just come from within yourself, they also come from those around you. That's how they strive and grow. Like, well, like seeds of light."

"We'll do what we can." She looks to Roy. "Can that sword be used for anything other than destruction? Would be something if after all that, we didn't have to use it."
Lilian Rook     In that moment, only waiting for Fae's safe return stays Lilian's hand from continuing the same way as Rutger. Then it was only that Rutger was a little faster. So soon after Zephiel's death, at her own hands, so close to where it happened, there isn't enough of anything to rebuild her catastrophically shattered sense of reluctance; especially not for a man like him. All Lilian can do is stare numbly at the blood on her sword, then flick it away by force of habit, sheathing it again for reasons unclear even to her.

    "Perhaps Elibe is like this because no one is immune to consequences." she says, haunted by her own contemplation's clarity. "Not even someone like him." For some reason, that thought makes her want to go to Fae; even though her shying away would be a horrendous blow, she takes the risk just to crouch down and say "Are you okay? He must have made you feel terrible. Please don't forget that everybody here loves you." It just feels important.

    '... I still can't believe Zephiel was fighting for a lie,'

    Lilian breathes deep, digging down for the momentum to say 'no', and only comes up short. She says "I don't want to believe it anyways." instead. "I don't know if it really matters. He died believing something better. If that . . . man, was right, and it meant nothing at all, then that makes everything we're doing and everything we've done very uncomplicated." Which should sound like a good thing, but, "I sort of wish it wasn't. It's too sad to think that there was never a better road. I don't want to."

    'Fae wants to know... are we going to make her go away, too?'

    Lilian exhales shakily at the words. She stands back up again.

    'I don't even fucking want Idunn to live.'

    She had felt the same way. Still feels that way. And yet, the same numbing propellant that had pushed her through the One Week War brings the words to her lips. "I hope we don't have to. If she had to die for the good of the world, it should have been a thousand years ago. If she dies now, it'd mean that Hartmut sparing her meant nothing. That it just hurt everyone, everywhere, and didn't even save the one girl he meant to save. If I have to choose between all this death for one person, or all this death for nothing . . ." Does she even need to finish that sentence? She doesn't think so, and doesn't want to.

    'We're not the Heroes, and she's not a child anymore. If we've gotta kill her, we've gotta kill her.'

    "I know." Lilian says. "I just want to say that if that man was right, her not being a child doesn't mean a thing. Everything is the same now as back then. So . . . all we can do is 'better' or 'different' from Hartmut. Anything but the same."

    . . . . . . . .

    Lilian doesn't remember drawing her sword again, but it's in her hand thirty malformed dragon-shades later. Pacing herself is absolutely vital, but it gives her too much space to ruminate. It's the light that shakes her out of it, causing her to shade her eyes despite it being nowhere near bright enough to blind.

    'Is that...?'
    'It is,'

    "Nothing for it." Lilian says, motone. Her voice only inflects upwards, in an odd way, when she takes her next steps forwards.
    "After this, there is spring."
Madeleine Cadrasteia     "Just give me one chance. Please."

    Madeleine nods. "You'll have your chance. When it comes, you'll have to *take* that chance, yourself." She doesn't mean it as a dig - she just wants him to be ready. She stands beside him, spear raised, fending off questing shadow-tendrils and dragon-claws as the group advances down toward the temple.

    "''Especially'' if her soul is destroyed. Take it from me, souls don't just come from within yourself, they also come from those around you. That's how they strive and grow."

    Although she keeps playing defense for Roy, Madeleine's mind goes elsewhere. She knows she's coming at this from a very different direction than the Magical Girl of Love, but she reflects nonetheless on emptiness, on nothingness, on non-existence. There can be nothing in a person that could be recognized as 'soul', and they may yet cling to the threads of fate like dewdrops on spider's-web. There are ways of being that are anathema to 'how the world works', practiced by the things that crawl out of the dark at the edges of conception. Things like herself.

    It's funny, and she "hmph"s once about it, that at the end of it all, after having learned so much, she's wondering again if Iðunn and herself - or the herself that she *used* to be - aren't or weren't so different at all. "Love's right," she says after a long contemplation. "An empty vessel might be filled."
Odette Raskins "maybe Zephiel knew Iðunn was soulless"
"But not Iðunn."
"I still can't wrap my head around it. If he knew it was a lie, and that Iðunn was aturned into a puppet, then... Was he even really fighting for her sake?" Odette wrinkles her nose as she tries to sort out the questions that keep coming into her head after the brief battle with Jahn. "But then he would've been angrier at the dragons if he cared that much right? And leaving someone like..."

Crap. She forgot his name already. There's too many things to keep track of already, between her medicine stokcpile and her gear, everyone's physical states, how much rationing she may or may not need to do depending on what they run into, and so on. She's looking a little frazzled just thinking about that, and she hastily shunts the worry away so she doesn't start jumping at shadows that aren't there.

"... That guy before, even though he was so callous about what happened to her? And it didn't sound like he was hiding that from Zephiel. I-I don't know. Something just feels.. Missing still. Or am I missing it?"

"If we've gotta kill her, we've gotta kill her."
"Just give me one chance."

Although she finds herself agreeing with Echidna entirely there, Roy's dedication still strikes a chord in Odette that has her moving over to give him a light nudge on the shoulder. "We'll get you that chance, Roy. If we can save one more person by the end of all of this, then it'd be great if it could be her. And between Father Lucius and me, everyone'll have plenty of juice going into this..."

Even though she's expecting there to be a fight, Odette can't bring herself to actually say it. She considers her words again, looking over at her companions with a relieved sigh as several sound off in agreement about what's to come already. Even though her hands are still shaking and sweating in anticipation of something she might very well not survive, there's also a lightness starting to form in her chest while she gives Roy another gentler pat on the arm along with a reassuring smile to Fae.

"... This rescue."

There's still traversal to get through before the rescue, though, and Odette settles right back into a medic-first focus as the group cleaves through the jungle of darkness. When she's not using her staff and the occasional injection of first-aid chemicals, Odette's shining a light into those shadows to keep them at bay. Sometimes, it's just with her PDA's flashlight, and other times it's with light magic that's steadily becoming second nature to her the more she uses it.

As the architecture becomes more recognizable as architecture and not just dug-out caves, the EMT slows down a little. Part of it is from not wanting to bump into someone ahead of her, but part of it also comes from marveling at the progression from clawed stone to built structures over who knows how many years it must have taken to get here.

She almost misses the glow of the chamber, but hearing Roy and Sophia commenting on it gets Odette's head back on track.

"That must be where she is... Okay." Odette hastily gobbles up a pill to calm her nerves, exhaling softly to steady her breathing, wiping her hands off on her skirt to dry them, then grips her staff firmly with both hands. "Ready. Any standing orders?"
Lilian Rook     . . . . . . . .

    ''I wish the world had been kinder to you', those words of Lilian Rook's, ring all the more correct and clear now to me.'

    Were she to have found this out only weeks ago, Lilian would have frozen in horror. Now she can only reflect on how true her baseless, nearly paraedolic glimmer of recognition had been, and rub the side of her face. "No one fights the world alone because it is kind."

    'Well we never believed dragons were this extra enlightened race, did we?'

    "Not since learning that mankind tried to forget they were slaves." Lilian says. "But I never entertained the idea that anyone else was like her. I suppose that's still true now."

    'Can that sword be used for anything other than destruction? '

    "If it can't, Bramimond was an idiot to give it to us, and a fool for bothering to seal it. So I'll assume otherwise."

    'There's a good chance we might not survive. If we survive, there's a good chance we won't have whatever sanity we walked in with. If we go home sane, we might not go home *right* and *just*.'

    "I'm glad." says Lilian, and laughs through her nose in desolate surprise. "I was worried that I'd impulsively spared you that risk." Back at the castle. "It's relieving to know that you have to take it as well."
Flamel Parsons     Before entering...

    Flamel's gaze swings onto Lilian Rook, and what he says sounds... This is odd, but for the first time in the world, his tone sounds like his single-continuity mind-age: Ten, maybe eleven years old. The words are: "Someone very, very important to me told me I'm a... good person. Now, after what I did to you, that, being a good person, it's fragile. Like it would break if I held it wrong. Not just killing, but... Hurting, the wrong way. I don't think I'm going to get this right, if I live through it."

    "And you, you're a great person. That's why there was so much there to shatter, when you had to do that. That's why it was such a big sacrifice. That's the only reason we made it." He turns away and makes his entrance before there can be more response to linger on.
Riku Asakura Riku stares at the body of Jahn for a minute.  It's hard for him to get over his weird feelings about death.  He feels that everyone should have a right to life, but even he was pushed to a point by Jahn's views and actions.  Would they have to do the same to Iðunn?  She felt, more now than ever, more of a victim in all of this.  Worse, he feels... bad about putting the actions into others' hands than doing it himself.  

Which... he doesn't want to do either.  What about those Kaiju he had stopped before?  Not everyone could be stopped with Tidal Moon Healing... Was he a hypocrite for killing them but worrying about killing others?  He could always fall back on 'protecting others,' but... this situation isn't any different.  

Does he kill to protect?  Does it violate his principles?  ...Lilian had killed to stop Zephiel.  Is there a right and a wrong time?  A way?  A reason?  He didn't know... and it hurt him that he didn't have any good answers.  It would be easier if he could save lives... but when is it okay to take a life to save more? It was an agonizing question... and he was done letting others answer it for him.

'... I still can't believe Zephiel was fighting for a lie,'

"...Sometimes we hear in others what we want to hear.  It could have been that way for Zephiel too.  He hated humanity and himself so much that he would hear anything in the words of those who hated it too," Riku reasons, but maybe it's not entirely accurate either.  

'If we've gotta kill her, we've gotta kill her.'

Riku struggles with answering back to this, but... he doesn't shake his head either.  Roy wants a shot at it, and he wants Roy to take his shot at it too.  However... if she really is without a soul...?

'If she dies now, it'd mean that Hartmut sparing her meant nothing.'

That's true... "I will put my hope on that Hartmut knew something we don't know at this moment, and that there is something of her to bring back."  The alternative is so much more heartbreaking.  

The fire of the magical braziers breaks him out of his thinking, and he looks up at them.  So this was it; beyond here was no turning back... Either Roy could reach her, they would have to kill her, or she would kill them... it felt like too much to carry on his shoulders.  It felt like LabCorp all over again.

Flamel makes his declarations, and the moment they enter the room, Riku grabs the Fusion Riser and two capsules.  Both were blue Ultramen.  One form could help Iðunn. That was the only chance he knew they had besides the Binding Blade.  

"Iðunn, I am going to transform.  I don't want to fight you, and I don't want to startle you either.  This form has a technique I think might help with your mind.  With Flamel, we can possibly return your soul to you.  I am going to put my hope on this chance we have." Just like Hartmut and Roy are.
Petra Soroka     For a long time, the campaign in Elibe had a sort of fairy-tale quality to it, at least in Petra's retrospective now. Being in the army for it, caught up in all the details of each individual flash point of conflict, it's not as though it wasn't 'grounded', whatever that means, but despite the overwhelming opposition and the bleak math of war, the Lycian League was characterized by a kind of hopefulness even when exposed to the worst of the world.

    Maybe it was because of the uphill struggle, rather than in spite of it. Because now, the grim necessity of extermination with their enemies' backs up against the wall, repeated over and over, makes the end of the war feel like something else entirely. The emptiness that drilled a hole through Zephiel's chest carries past the smear that was the last-- apparently the last-- conscious dragon from before the Scouring, and towards the Demon-shaped silhouette painted on the target at the end of the passageway.

"Or... maybe Zephiel knew Iðunn was soulless, and thought that was what made her perfect."

    "Maybe it was."

    Petra bites back her impulse towards snarky misanthropy hard enough to fill her mouth with blood. The blood on Eckesachs soaks the nook of her shoulder where the base of the blade rests as she carries it, cradling the fragile Divine Weapon rather than using it on the shadows, now that they're easily handled by others. She drags her attitude, with all the weight of Eckesachs itself, to something...

    She can't manage 'optimistic' or 'benevolent' like Roy or Flamel, but she can at least make it to 'not upsetting Lilian more'.

    "Imagine meeting Jahn. *After* having pinned all your hopes on Iðunn. Every human in the world is a vicious little lobotomite, and then you meet the one dragon who can credibly claim to represent the idyllic past world, and he's just as much of a deranged narcissistic freak as any guy in the court. Obviously he's wrong. Obviously, whatever Iðunn is, is what's right; the details don't matter except to clarify the specific ways she's perfect."

"Fae wants to know... are we going to make her go away, too?"

    Petra wipes her hand off on her pants before touching Fae's head. Partly to Fae and partly to Roy, and partly just to work the thought out aloud because she can't grasp it inside her head, she says, "She might already be gone. Remember Bramimond? They were a ghost given to the world, and that's why all they could be was the image of each of us around them. Iðunn's a ghost of the Scouring, and that's why everything she makes is an image of war. Whoever Iðunn was, is a stranger to all of us here."

    Petra sighs, equally unresolved as she was before. "... Not that that really matters. We'll see, I guess."

"Well we never believed dragons were this extra enlightened race, did we?"

    "No," says Petra, maybe the most uneasily of anyone. "But the 'civilization of dragons' from a thousand years ago was never on trial. What Zephiel imagined bringing back was the 'civilization of Iðunn'. If she's just a fucking sweet little pumpkin pie corrupted into the Demon, then that doesn't exactly prove him wrong. Just that the two of them really were meant to find each other."
Petra Soroka "If she dies now, it'd mean that Hartmut sparing her meant nothing."

    "I don't know Hartmut," Petra says while carrying his weapon on her shoulder, "So I'm not really going to afford anything, like, special to his judgement. I just know that at the end of the war, he had all his enemies pinned up against the wall and executed them one after another, just like we're doing, and then stopped at the very last."

    "I mean, if we can't figure out a way to heal her, but we can seal her again for another thousand years, would that make us *good heroes*? Would that kicked can down the line justify another war, and everything? If us replicating it wouldn't be good enough, then what does that justify about Hartmut?"

"If I have to choose between all this death for one person, or all this death for nothing . . ."

    Petra's definitely thinking about the same thing that Lilian is, even without it being said out loud. She averts her eyes, apologizing for nothing specific at all. "Sorry. The Iðunn I'd think is worth saving is the one this era of the world knew. I kind of can't bring myself to care literally at all about who she might be if 'freed'."

    Petra takes a deep breath, swinging the sword back off her shoulder at the glow around the corner. "I know. Sorry. I'm not going to, fucking, like, get in the way of saving her. But the worst thing I can say is that I feel like I barely care one way or the other at this point."
Angela ''An empty vessel might be filled.''

Love is reminded of Blackholeriffic. "Um." She says but ultimately decides that saying 'maybe put that another way' isn't exactly what's needed now. Roland is biting his lip to avoid saying something stupid because he's such a professional and he's being so good even though when he's in this sort of mood, sometimes his stupid quips are all he's got.

"It sounds like he didn't exactly insist either. Maybe he didn't really want to give the world to dragons, just Idunn." Roland suggests to Odette. "But to be honest, I hope we never find the answer to that mystery."

''But I never entertained the idea that anyone else was like her.''

"...Yeah. People like that don't show up en masse." He nods along, pausing to look at Flamel as he speaks about being a good person. He thinks about all the little bits and pieces he's heard about Flamel over the years. How often people have tried to reach him or understand him or find common ground with him. It makes him feel like an effort to reach Idunn is doomed, but at the same time it would be nice, wouldn't it? To see just a little bit that the world isn't just about poisoning children? To believe that for just a little longer?

He wants to ask 'how do you believe it when they're gone' but he feels that would be real bad for morale. Once Angela said to him that she couldn't stand girls being spent on pyres anymore. Well not really to him, it was muttered in his vincinity, but he supposes there has to be something to shatter in the first place. And what's shattered can be reforged into something beautiful. When he thinks of her, he can think that's true, sometimes, for just a little bit before the void returns to him.

"Well, seems like folks are speaking up. You're the one written for this." He tells Love.

''If it can't, Bramimond was an idiot to give it to us.''

"Can't exactly rule that out can we?" Gebura smiles with grim humor. "But I've defended silly dreams before. What's one more?"

"I..." Love admits after a moment. "I don't know what to say." Love says. "The truth is, I do want to fight, actually. I want to fight and clash and come to an understanding after all that, I don't really want her to just show up and ask to be friends. I guess it feels more real to me if it goes like that? But..." She looks to Fae for a moment and then to Roy. "Sometimes friendship means letting others take the lead, setting your selfishness aside. But I've wanted to hear Roy voice his heart proudly for so long, and I feel like I haven't yet. I want him to believe in himself. And she could be the sort of friend that Fae needs. I keep thinking of what Jahn said, about how the humans that struck down his people did it in the way that he would have done it. But we've spared a lot of dummies who fought on behalf of war, who allowed others to turn them into weapons. We killed too, but we spared when we could and helped when we could. I believe in Fae and Roy's hearts."

''Petra''

Roland sighs. "Well, maybe we can at least return her to civilization, but a thousand years is too long to keep someone sealed. Even if they cane take it." He's probably thinking of Angela there.

''The Idunn I'd think is worth saving is the one this era of the world knew.''

"She's still that Idunn." Roland says. "Maybe it's not wrong to care about who she is rather than who she could be."
Desire Stars > Rutger kills him anyway, if Petra and Nobunaga hesitate.

    *That's it? He gets to help ruin everything and then die thinking he's won?* Geats sighs, shakes his head, then says a few words for the departed. "We only knew him for a few minutes, but they were the most disappointing minutes of this lifetime."

>I still can't believe Zephiel was fighting for a lie.

    "People fight for lies all the time. Sometimes, even really talented, smart people who should have every reason to know it's a lie. Sometimes, people even lie to themselves. We could speculate all day. He isn't here to speak for himself."

>Was he even really fighting for her sake?

    "I... don't think he was, whether he thought so or not. He kind of told us so himself--he was fighting to prove something, and she just... happened to make him believe it more."

>Alright.

    "Thank you, Echidna."

>I hope we don't have to.

    "So do I. I don't want to have come all this way, and seen so much sacrifice, and changed so much, just to end up changing nothing at all. I think... that would be uglier than almost anything that's happened during this war."
Marigold      "Maybe he wasn't. But I think he thought he was," Roy says to Neon, of Zephiel fighting for Iðunn. "And I think she helped him believe it. To him, she was perfect. I don't think even Zephiel could bear to be completely alone."

     Nobunaga's words make Fae look down at the floor, meditatively glum. Sometimes she looks older than she is.

     "Fae wishes... I wish the world could be nicer," she murmurs. "It's easy in Arcadia. Everybody just works together. Why is it hard outside?"
"People aren't as connected, I suppose. It'd be nice if everyone could be like neighbors. Maybe the Warpgates will change that," Roy says, trying to soothe her a little.

     Fae nods at Lilian, earnest, and gives her a little hug around the arm with tiny hands. "... Fae's okay. Fae knows you... did your best. Fae doesn't have to listen to him, because Fae can listen to nice people, instead!"

     Nice people like Lilian! And Petra, and Love.

     The line of her mouth wiggles uncertainly, wiggling her fat cheeks, when Love poses that question. What does Fae want?

     "Fae... Fae wants all her friends to be safe." That's her first priority! "But Fae wants to make new friends too. Fae doesn't know how to understand her feelings, but..."

     She'll try her best.

     Roy gives an unsteady smile to Odette and Madeleine, nods, and then glances (guiltily) at Lilian again. "People have given up a lot to get us here," he says. "It'd feel awful to not at least try for something good to come of it."

     "Hartmut put her to sleep with the Blade before," he says to Gebura. "I think... I just have to hold that wish in my heart."
"Athos... had that odd ritual... he left, in the back of Forblaze..." Sophia murmurs softly to Petra. She seems troubled; almost anxious to change her mind. "He never spoke to me about it... but... if he meant it for Iðunn...?"

     It's a long shot, banking on one dead old man's guilt.
Marigold      He trembles, but there is no immediate attack; not when Roy rounds the corner with the Blade warily raised, nor when the Elites follow.

     In the center of that great bare temple-hall is the Demon Dragon herself, in human form. Some fifty feet away she kneels in the middle of a great magical circle on the floor, one hand on its central hub; its lines glow a radiant white, and its patterning is like the new constellations you've seen in the sky.

     Elsewhere in Elibe, the resurgence of old magic is something that can be abstractly studied or seen by its signs. Here it vibrates against your skin. Objects blur in slight chromatic aberration, twinkling with new and more vibrant colors at their edges. Fae's dragonstone glows brightly with new light.

     At your approach, she calmly removes her hand from it and stands. The magic of spring doesn't ebb when she stops charging the ritual; the ratchet is one-way.

     What can be seen of her face under that hood is blank. In her other hand, she clutches an awful crystal, red-violet energy visibly writhing within. Maybe it's a trick of the light, but for a second that crystal's squirming energy seems to form a screaming face.

     Roy had words he was going to say, but staring at the blank line of her lips, he forgets them. A long moment passes before she does, instead.

     "... I shall bring peace to this world. Why do you bar my performance?" she asks tonelessly.

     Roy visibly shivers. "That's-- that isn't the 'peace' you once hoped for. The person who ordered you to cleanse the world is dead! There's no reason for you to fight, anymore."

     "... A long time ago... I heard those same words. Soft words. Like a warm breeze." She pauses long enough that it almost seems she won't say more, but some tiny twinge compels her.

     "For a thousand years I slept, and in that sleep I dreamed. A colorless and empty dream. Empty even of a dreamer. In that dream, I am nothing. His Majesty's words awoke me. Those words... and that smile..."

     She pulls down her hood, showing a pale, beautiful, unwell face. One of her eyes is green, just like Fae's; the other is violet-red. They slide across the party, from Roy to Flamel and Riku.

     "... created me. And endure in me. I won't allow you to destroy them."
Riku Asakura 'Why is it hard outside?'

Fae asks a question so unbelievably hard to answer that Riku doesn't know how to answer it immediately.  Sometimes wisdom comes from the mouths of babes.  After some thoughtful reflection, Riku seems to come up with an answer... or at least his answer.  "Because people are complicated.  Everyone wants things for themselves and for those they love, and sometimes those things collide with each other."

"People should, however, work together more on how to compromise so that more people are happy.  Sometimes it's really hard to do that, and... I don't know why that is sometimes."

'I think... I just have to hold that wish in my heart.'

Riku glances at Roy for a moment.  This is a much gentler wish than when Zephiel tried to kill them and took the blade for a moment.  Riku hopes; he hopes so much that Roy's wish is something that they can work with, but... no, he can't voice his concern.  He has to hope he can make sure she doesn't get the blade if there is a fight...

'Why do you bar my performance?'

"Because your peace will come at the cost of the lives of people we care for.  There can be a better peace now, one that doesn't have to come at the cost of lives."

Riku stares at that stone; the screaming face isn't missed by his eyes.  The ritual they mentioned... could this help recover her soul?  Or at least purge whatever curse they put on this poor woman?  He grips the capsules hard in his hands.  There has to be a chance here... a way to prevent a tragedy.  

The violet-red eye that slides over them isn't missed by Riku either.  She is not well; that curse is still working... and even if she's regained something thanks to Zephiel...

'... created me. And endure in me. I won't allow you to destroy them.'

"We don't have to.  Those dragons a thousand years ago did something to you... It isn't right for you to keep living under their curse.  Let us try and break it and return to you both what you have lost AND what you have gained from your time in this era.  This... is much different now.  We are here... and the heroes also worked after your sleep on something."

"It doesn't have to be a world of zero-sum.  Both can stop this, walk away from this path, and work towards a world where nobody has to suffer as Zephiel did... or the people caught in the terrible wars of yesterday and today."

"I know it's not easy to stand down from what you think you have to do... heaven knows I've been talked out of terrible ideas in the past.  When a friend of mine was taken, I wanted to tear down the world to get her back, and a man stopped me, reminding me that throwing myself away to try and save someone doesn't do anyone any good."

"This is hard to hear, but even if standing around doing nothing won't get us anywhere, it's not about doing the first thing that comes to mind, but thinking through things and making sure you're doing the best thing.  Right now, I think the best thing for both of us... is to let us help you regain what was taken from you."
Nobunaga > "It's easy in Arcadia. Everybody just works together. Why is it hard outside?"

    "Unfortunately," Nobunaga lets out a breath in a tired eyes-closed sigh. Memories of the Sengoku Jidai flicker through her thoughts for just a moment, "...Humans forget all too easily their kindness, and it seems that dragons can too. So--" Eyes opening, she glances down at the young dragon, "It falls on those with strong hearts to remind them."

    It kind of mirrors the stuff Love had been saying, in Nobunaga's own way.

"No one fights the world alone because it is kind."

    The warlord lets out a wisened 'humu' sort of noise in response to Lilian, stepping into the light right behind Roy, Flamel, and Riku. Once she notes the glow from not just the sigils but from Fae's own dragonstone, she lifts her sword, twirls it, and slides it into the saya at her hip.

"If you rest just a little longer, we can make that hope you had real. I swear it."
"With Flamel, we can possibly return your soul to you. I am going to put my hope on this chance we have."
"I won't allow you to destroy them."

    "Listen!" With her hands free, Nobunaga throws her hands out to either side in a way that flourishes her great crimson cape, "We come not to destroy but to restore to you what was already yours! What was taken from you! One thousand years you have endured an existence of emptiness, so long that you no longer remember anything else."

    Reaching down, Nobunaga removes the sword from her hip and holds it out parallel to the ground, "Behold the surety of my conviction, Iðunn." And then she simply casts the sheathed katana away from herself. In the same instant, her form reverts back to the shorter human Oda Nobunaga; no longer clad in the vestment of the Demon King. Her hand remains outstretched but she turns it over, palm-up, and flashes her own broad, earnest and slightly lopsided smile.

    It's a bit stupid but this *is* the Great Fool of Owari.
Flamel Parsons     The dozen hands and barriers converge and compress around Flamel. Shivering. Quivering. "The you that heard those words -- that's in there too. Somewhere. Somewhere. No matter how much was emptied out, that's still somewhere. Is that something you want destroyed? Is that something that isn't worth preserving?" He shuts his eyes, an unwise tactical decision at a time like this but nevertheless one that clears his mind to call up memories. "We, all, can't help but remember Zephiel now. What he said and did is, I promise, still carved here, on our minds. I could *show you* if you wanted. Him, and his words, here, in us. And others, too."

    "Accepting help, choosing peace, doesn't mean abandoning the people we've lost and the things that made us. It just means that they never get closure. They never end. Their story is stuck without a climactic moment. Because that closure isn't real. Because if Zephiel had seen you cleanse the world, in his *last moments* while he died at your hands, he would have thought it wasn't quite right. That something was still wrong with the world. If he had lived to see it, he would have seen the maggots and the dirt in a dozen other worlds around you. You will too, if you go through with this."

    His hands tremble. "It's all fake. Cleansing. Reverting. Fixing what was set wrong. Making good for someone lost. It's never worked." Something pushes through his heart. Something coursing in his chest. "You have to move forward, always forward, into the future alone. And you can carry those unfulfilled things and honor them, but you can't force them to be fulfilled. So carry them, with us. Leave them unfulfilled. Let me help the healing. It'll be scarred, and it won't be like it used to be at all, and it'll leave so many important things un-honored. But I *promise* you those things will never leave your heart."



    The TK-hands rack backwards. Ka-CHACK. Like a mechanism loading.

    "Please. Put the crystal down. Stop the launch."
    Like a wish. Like a prayer.
Desire Stars      Na-Go recoils, at first, from Iðunn's almost vacant expression. Behind the mask, she chews her lower lip remorsefully, forcing herself to look at the person that part of her wanted to turn from. "I don't want to destroy anything," she says sadly. "Getting here at all has already cost us so many people."

    "I thought that when we got here, I'd have this... big... cathartic moment. I'd ask what gave either of you the right to destroy what you did. I... don't really want to do that either. I'm too tired to care about whose fault it is, right now."

    "I just want for people to be able to smile again, to be able to feel what love is without it being crushed to death by exhaustion and hunger and suspicion and fear. You're standing here right now because someone wanted that for you, once. I want it for you, too, despite everything."

    "Please don't make us choose between you and the people your performance is going to kill."
Lilian Rook     'I will put my hope on that Hartmut knew something we don't know at this moment'

    "I won't. I'm just sick of everyone following their own conscience making everyone suffer and saving no one."

    'I think... I just have to hold that wish in my heart.'
    'He never spoke to me about it... but... if he meant it for Iðunn...?'

    She'd completely forgotten. It had sat in the back of her mind for some time, but unable to make any progress on it herself, and with the campaign to worry about it, Lilian had let it go before long. Remembering it now just feels confusing. Nauseating, even. "Then it'd mean that the heroes didn't side with Hartmut for no reason at all, and that once again, someone wasn't quite hopeful enough."

    'Obviously, whatever Iðunn is, is what's right; the details don't matter except to clarify the specific ways she's perfect.'

    "I suppose you're right." Lilian says, strangely, despite seemingly contradicting herself barely a second later. "What's right with her is that she used to be kind and determined and irrational enough to think she could end a war if she just pleaded loud enough, believed intensely enough, and endured long enough; and then did it until she turned into this. If he knew what Jahn said, and what Flamel found, at the same time, I think he'd feel the same way anyways." Thinking about it that way sets Lilian's posture differently and pushes her mind in another direction; for making Iðunn somehow less of a victim, in some odd way, and more of a . . .

    'If she's just a fucking sweet little pumpkin pie corrupted into the Demon, then that doesn't exactly prove him wrong. Just that the two of them really were meant to find each other,'

    "I think that means she had the one quality that he lacked, and what she lacked instead was the power to make any of it matter. Divine fiat only chooses humans. It seems the unchosen get anything at all." She chose one word more carefully thank the rest.

    'I mean, if we can't figure out a way to heal her, but we can seal her again for another thousand years, would that make us *good heroes*?'

    "No." she says, unhesitating all of a sudden. "If Hartmut was a good hero, he'd have killed her. The entire continent paid for that mercy."

    'Sorry. The Iðunn I'd think is worth saving is the one this era of the world knew. I kind of can't bring myself to care literally at all about who she might be if 'freed'.'

    "If you want to try being as immature as I am for a change, you could try hoping that who she might be is exactly what we hoped for."

    'Fae wishes... I wish the world could be nicer. It's easy in Arcadia. Everybody just works together. Why is it hard outside?'

    All of a sudden, without warning, Lilian feels as if she's about to cry. She catches the burning feeling in her eyes and throat fast enough to swallow it down, but not quicker than the sharp, shaky breath that precedes it. "I don't know." she says, pushing a whisper to a speaking volume. "I've wanted to know for the longest time." She hugs Fae in return more tightly than she means to.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     "I thought that when we got here, I'd have this... big... cathartic moment. I'd ask what gave either of you the right to destroy what you did. I... don't really want to do that either. I'm too tired to care about whose fault it is, right now."

    Madeleine steps forward, spear in hand but not raised. Held like a walking-stave. "Yeah, I'm... not here to give my big speech about how the world is valuable and worth loving and worth fighting for. I did that when we fought the King and it didn't change how that went either. We're really here with a choice: do you want to fight and die for his last wishes, or try to live again as something new? I get connecting with the first person to understand you in a thousand years, I really do, but you can't define yourself with another person. There's gotta be something in there that's *you*." A pause. "What does that part want?"
Lilian Rook     'And you, you're a great person. That's why there was so much there to shatter, when you had to do that. That's why it was such a big sacrifice. That's the only reason we made it.'

    She doesn't know what she'd say if even there was time for it.

    --------

    Under any other circumstance, Lilian would first surrender to the feeling of being awestruck by the ritual chamber. She would spend a moment to take it all in, then draw the obvious connections, then compulsively describe it in a way that the others could understand, then inevitably leap to drawing the strongest conclusion she could. This is the first time she has ever been without that reflex, at a time like this. The purple robes in the middle of the room are too familiar. She came so close to that face; more recently and closer than any of the others.

    '... I shall bring peace to this world. Why do you bar my performance?'

    Lilian takes a slow, deep breath. The words that leave her lips are "I'm sorry." And then her eyes burn all over again. Her throat constricts so tightly she almost can't speak, squeezing her words hoarse. "It should have gone differently. Things should have been better. I don't want it to keep going this way. I can't stand it."

    She thought herself numbly resolved to the inevitable when she came here. The surge of emotion is too sudden to brace against, and too vast and old to name. Lilian almost gags when the hood comes down.

    'I won't allow you to destroy them.'

    "Then don't fight anymore. Please. Just let the words be real. Just let any of this stop. I want that more than anything."
Angela Love would argue that kindness is enduring and that kindness encourages further kindness!

Indeed, she smiles when Fae declares her desire for friends both old and new and their well being. "I don't know." She says. "I thought you were doing pretty good right then." Her smile brightens, patting her on the shoulder and placing her forehead to her forehead. "You're already a mighty magical girl. You remind me of my sister, Happiness."

She is probably referring to a state her sister never really was in rather than the King of Greed. "I'll support you, whatever you wish to say."

''Hartmut put her to sleep with the Blade before.''

"Is that your wish?" Gebura asks Roy. "Well, 'something good' isn't a bad thing to hope for, even if it's formless."

Roland is surprised that Nobunaga throws down her sword but is not surprised at all with the dramatics she chooses to do so with. He says, "We're not gonna take away your memories and feelings. Couldn't if we wanted to. But also, it'd make us puke." That feels honest enough to him. Some part of him thinks this must be some lingering determination from when Jahn had done just that. He thinks about what it'd be like if Angelica was purged from his mind and he shudders. Even with how far away she feels right now...

"Do you remember," Gebura says, predictably for a Sephirah. "Staying behind here to plead for peace? Lifetimes and lifetimes ago."

Love doesn't step forward to say anything. Instead she turns to Fae and says, "Give it a try..." gently. "It doesn't have to be perfect or correct, just do your best to speak your heart. You really haven't had the chance to right?"

She then looks to Lilian and then to Idunn. She thinks, why would she get in the way of peace? Because she can't stand it. Probably not the best thing to say right now.

The best thing she can do is make this world intolerable for her

"I feel, sometimes, like something important was taken from me. I don't know who or what, probably lots of people because I only started to remember recently, but Flamel made me forget stuff that one time I don't think he wants to do that again." She thinks for a moment and then adds, "I guess Peace and Oblivion are two sides of the same coin, sort of like Love and Hatred."
Odette Raskins "Can that sword be used for anything other than destruction?"
"So I'll assume otherwise."
"There must be a way, Miss Gebura. A scalpel's just a knife that can't do anything but cut, but it's a vital part in life-saving surgeries. Yeah, just like Missus Rook said. Bramimond must've had some kind of idea that people this many years later would've figured something out by now. If we just think of the blade like a really... Really powerful scalpel, then we can figure out the saving part just like they hoped we would."

"If we go home sane, we might not go home *right* and *just*."

"Y.. You could've just stopped at the not surviving part." Odette chuckles weakly, fighting a bit to not let her nerves get the better of her.

"Maybe he didn't really want to give the world to dragons, just Idunn."
"He isn't here to speak for himself."

"If it was all just for her... That makes a bit more sense, yes. People can really do some powerful things when their minds are set on it, huh? But... A-agreed." Odette nods quickly at Roland and Geats, shivering briefly at the idea that anyone might ever become so wounded to truly understand.

"Why is it hard outside?"

Fae's glumness strikes Odette right in the gut, and it has her shuffling over to give the youngest dragon a gentle squeeze on the arm. "Things were easier back home for me, too. I never even thought about something like that until... I started working outside of home. Things got more complicated once there was more than just mom, dad, and all the older folks back home to think about. And... Everyone else that I met has their own family, friends, homes to worry about, too."

She nods at Roy, then at Riku. "If we thought about everyone as our family and friends instead of someone else's family and friends... YEah, I think that'd be nice, and things wouldn't be so hard." Feeling a bit lighter, she keeps moving along into the temple, and she stops when she sees Idunn, all on her own.

"Why do you bar my performance?"

Like Roy, Odette's body shakes briefly, and her grip on her staff tightens briefly before she forces herself to lower it to her side. Roy says what she can't, and she feels another chill shooting through her before she finds her voice hiding in the back of her throat. She looks over at Lilian, going wide-eyed slightly at hearing what she says to Idunn.

Her grip on her staff loosens, and she swallows once before finally trying to get any kinds of words out.  As much as she wants to sound collected, it's hard, after hearing one of her heroes sounding so hurt.

"I.. Idunn. We're here because we want things to be peaceful, too. It's just... The peace we're looking for is one that doesn't have to... Doesn't need more people to die. To get hurt. Too many people already did, and not all of them deserved it. More people don't need to follow after them, either." She strains a little to get her voice loud enough to be heard, and Odette rests the bottom of her staff against the ground, holding a hand

"Nothing else needs to be destroyed. The world will find peace if you just let it be, and trust everyone here to help it along that way. Peace through destruction of everyone and everything is just..." She glances over at Fae, feeling another pang of guilt at her being involved in any of this. At her having to be here.

"It'd be lonely without friends around. It'd be too quiet without anyone else around. And the people that hurt you before... They're gone now. Please, just... Stop this. I won't say that everything'll be completely better and fixed right away because there's so much that happened, and there's a lot of healing to be done, but... But it doesn't have to get worse. Whatever comes from that will still be better than-"

She grips her left wrist briefly, to stop it from shaking. "-whatever comes from any of us having to fight anymore."
Petra Soroka "I don't think even Zephiel could bear to be completely alone."

    "Sorta the whole problem, wasn't it."

"If he knew what Jahn said, and what Flamel found, at the same time, I think he'd feel the same way anyways."

    Petra has been unsteadily teetering between bitterly misanthropic and melancholically reflective for hours, if not days now, but Lilian's voice is, as always, an anchoring force. It's easy to imagine, in some dim cluster of mirror neurons in a far off corner of her mind, the same being true for Zephiel in each of their relative Petra-ish positions. That he might have, in this same way, heard the awful truth from Jahn, and then settled his doubt in the tautological certainty if Iðunn's voice.

    "... Yeah. You're probably right. It would probably reinforce his beliefs, if anything." She falls silent for a moment, and then says, skipping over several associated thoughts, "I wonder if that's why he said what he did about Iðunn loving him."

"It seems the unchosen get anything at all."

    "Aw, man. Don't say that." Petra's halfhearted plea is rough around the edges, nearly swallowed up by the emotion-laden exhalation that surrounds it. She fidgets with Eckesachs, picking at the Maltet-welded bond between the hilt and guard with her fingernail.

"Why is it hard outside?"

    This, in the end, was kind of the entire reason to bring Fae out of Arcadia, wasn't it? Her desire to know the state of the world, and her dissatisfaction with not understanding death, are what drove her to strain against the limits of her home, straying out of the shadows in the cave and into the sun. Petra fought for that: so that Fae could know war, the ultimate truth of the world, in perfect philosophical sync with Zephiel before even meeting him.

    For Fae, the past two years have been theatre leading up to the apotheotic display of Jahn and Iðunn's deaths in front of her, and the realization that prevents her from ever comfortably settling back into the Arcadia she knew. That thought makes her recoil and flinch at her own ideological contempt for the first time since Zephiel's death.

    Petra's hand tightens on Fae's shoulder, and then she suddenly ducks down to squeeze her in a hug, incidentally at the same time as Lilian.

    "Because a lot of people made a lot of decisions over a long time that made it just a little harder, bit by bit. But that means the same's possible in reverse, even if it's just for you and the people you know for now. Remember how you had to hide who you are in the big cities, but then in the villages in Ilia and with the nomads in Sacae, everyone loved you? Maybe everywhere can't be Arcadia, but when you try really hard, wherever *you* are can be, and if enough people do that...."

"If you want to try being as immature as I am for a change, you could try hoping that who she might be is exactly what we hoped for."

    Petra gives Fae a little kiss on the top of her head before straightening up. She rolls her shoulders with the sword resting on top, taking a shaky breath in.

    "Yeah, okay, fine. God forbid a girl be a little idealistic. Alright."
Petra Soroka . . .

    It's good that Petra steeled herself to the concept of hope, or else Iðunn's words would've knocked the wind out of her lungs.

"His Majesty's words awoke me. Those words... and that smile..."

    "Hi, Iðunn. ... I'm sorry."

    Holding Zephiel's sword, arranged in opposition to Iðunn rather than on her side, Petra bitterly implicates herself in the same fate Lilian hoped the others would have to share with her. She's not willing to point it at her yet, defenselessly pointed off to the side, while trying to take in the details of Iðunn's face.

    "Please don't. I really, wanted Zephiel to live too. The peaceful world I'd hoped for still had you, and him, in it, and all the humans who corrupted it torn apart anyways. The only thing I ever disagreed on was 'all'."

    Iðunn's words settle Petra's feelings, contrary to what Zephiel had tried to convince himself of. For each of them, being given shape by another person is the greatest act of love in the world. "If one human could love you and earn your love in return, then the rest can try to measure up too. That's the kind of peace that's best for everyone, you included."
Marigold      Roy's expression, if any of you are far enough forward to see it, is nauseatedly pleading. For once the weight of his heart is behind the wish the Blade needs to fulfill, but even so, he wants to be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.

     Iðunn looks over the people arrayed against her. Does she look a bit wearier, being pleaded with?

     No. Not really. Whatever groove of weariness centuries of war and a millennium of isolation have carved into the Demon's soulless heart, this adds hardly a scratch to its depth.

"Please. Put the crystal down. Stop the launch."
"There's gotta be something in there that's *you*."
"Please don't make us choose..."
"I know it's not easy to stand down..."
"Behold the surety of my conviction, Iðunn."
"Then don't fight anymore. Please."
"Do you remember staying behind here to plead for peace?"
"We're here because we want things to be peaceful, too."
"Please don't. I really, wanted Zephiel to live too."
     "... 'The world is evil and it must be cleansed'. 'The world is evil and it must be cleansed'," she says, even more toneless than before. "In every age, there are those who say this. I hear and I obey."

     "What I remember, I remember only to serve this. What I do, I do only to serve this. His Majesty has instructed me to cleanse and rule this world. So it shall be ruled."

     Her mismatched eyes come to rest, not on Roy, but on the visibly-cracked Eckesachs in Petra's hands. What does she take from the fact that it's been broken and reforged? What does she imagine about the way King Zephiel died?

     Does she imagine it, at all?

     Iðunn is content to stand here and talk to you for minutes, or hours, or years, and simply run out the clock on the apocalypse. Why wouldn't she be? Up above, humans are dying by the hundreds, and her power waxes by the day. It's you who's forced to move.

     Roy takes that one more step forward, and raises the Blade over his head with shaky hands. "Iðunn. We have the blade of Hartmut the Hero, who took mercy upon you. Please..."

     But that movement crosses a line. Iðunn raises her writhing dark crystal too. It almost sounds like she echoes Lilian's words:

     "I'm sorry, filth. Please run."

     Fae, charged up by a hug and a kiss to the forehead, pushes out from behind Lilian: "They're not 'filth'!! They're Fae's friends! You have to--!!"

     Her protest is drowned out by the Temple exploding.
Marigold      Iðunn transforms in an instant, and the roof- no, the entire building- shatters off her back with a deafening rumble, boulder-sized rubble pouring off her like so much water. The blinding, jagged daylight of a blue sky stabs through.

     'Hardly more than a child', the Heroes had called her. The Temple had held her back then. Now the child is grown.

     Roy tried to bring the Blade down; got halfway through a swing; and had to be rescued by Rutger grabbing him by the waist and zipping away. Fae hurriedly transforms, trying to gather people against her and shelter them from the falling boulders with her back with scrunched eyes.

     If you were fifty feet away from her before, you're nearly between her fore-claws now. Each horrid talon is as long as a man is tall. When she screams- "AAAA--OAUU--AAGHHHHH!"- it vibrates against bones, bleeds eardrums, and makes vision swim with dark spots.


     "When you see her... truly, see her... you'll know, hahh, the weight... of our wrongs to the dead," Zephiel had said.


     She looks like a sick, neglected dog.


     There are mutated teeth erupting backwards from her drooling jaws. Her gut is sucked in, highlighting every rib. Her scales are snarled against each other like matted fur. Before she even takes a step, you can tell her claws are grown long enough to halfway lame her.

     Even those four wings that almost eclipse the sun are thin and ragged, too weak to ever lift her even-more-massive frame.

     In the distance, the Etrurian and Bernish armies hesitate in their fighting, both paralyzed by horror.

"--still collapsing!!"
"--get to even ground--"
"Fae! Get Roy clear!!"
"--uu--au!"

     A lash of the Demon Dragon's tail carves down one of the Temple's last remaining walls, spraying the area with rubble again just as the Lycian Army is starting to reorganize.

     Fae is running to rescue Roy, still lying dazed against Rutger's side with blood trickling from his scalp, when Iðunn stomps on the tiny dragon's body and wraps her claws around it. "Au--auuuu...!!" Fae whimpers desperately, with the talons digging into her sides and spilling blood.

     Then the Demon Dragon's body bows and shakes, jaws opening wider. A violet glow creeps up from the back of her throat.

     It looks like she's about to breathe fire. It looks like she's about to vomit.
Nobunaga > "I'm sorry, filth. Please run."

    "Disappointing," is all Nobunaga gets out. Her eyes close as the mass of Iðunn's draconic form blasts the Dragon Temple apart from within. She predicts a roar after spending so long in an alien form, plugging her ears and bracing, feeling that horrible voice shudder through her flesh and bones.

    Certainly Nobunaga is not defenseless without her sword. She's shown the ability to shift into Maou mode at will; and has even used Tenka Fubu *without* transforming in the first place. But she was hoping that the gesture of disarming would have done... *something*.

    "It can't be helped. I was hoping for more 'person' and less 'weapon'," she mutters, already switched back into the regalia of the Demon King. As she recovers from the roar, she holds out a hand. A rifle flickers into existence near her discarded sword, spinning wildly, slapping the saya and sending it careening into her waiting hand. The catch is instant, her free hand draws the blade free within a heartbeat.

    "If this is the form you wish to show us, in all the wretchedness your torment has laid upon you, then so be it!" Iðunn is winding up a flame attack in some wretched way. Nobunaga's stance shifts and she points with her sword, "Ultraman! Close that maw! Raskins! Get Roy!" Her blade shifts, "The rest of you! Break fingers!" The claws entrapping Fae.

    Nobunaga's stance shifts again and she bellows, "I am the enemy to all gods, the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven! Tenka Fubu!" The ruins of the temple around her become engulfed in blackened, charred Hellscape terrain, "You who would pass divine judgement on the world of humanity, be consumed until nothing but ash remains!"

    As she expands her devilish domain, the Demon King shoots a look Flamel-wards, "Parsons! Tell me you have a back door *right* now!"
Riku Asakura 'In every age, there are those who say this. I hear and I obey.'

It breaks Riku's heart to hear that she is trapped by the words of monsters who find so little faith in the world and want it to end.  Or at least be reborn on their own monstrous terms.  It reminds him so much of Fukuide before he stopped chasing a phantom that was Belial's love and learned that the person he met was corrupted.  It reminds him of the madness that is the current Belial...

'What I remember, I remember only to serve this.'

Does she just not understand..?  Does she just not care?  Can she care?  Riku doesn't truly know, but at the same time he can't STOP hoping there was a way to cure her current condition and bring back something she lost.  Even if time is not on their side, he has to at least try.  Ultramen are supposed to be people who make miracles happen, right?  It's time he started living up to that legacy...

'I'm sorry, filth. Please run.'

"No," Riku says firmly.  "Not from this, not from you..." and while that MIGHT be taken as 'I'm not afraid of you, do your worst,' it really was more of a promise to himself.  A pledge that he would try and strive for a better outcome... even if reality screamed at him that there was only one way.  Even if she was going to do her worst to them.  Even if he /failed/ to bring her back, the ideas he had... he had to go through with them, and if he failed...

Then he'd not run from that either.  

The temple explodes; Iðunn transforms.  The blade caused a reaction that forced her to protect herself.  He shelters with Roy, but pulls himself up as Iðunn reveals her dragon form.  Gathering under Fae, he grips the Fusion Riser and the two capsules.  

"You go..." he says firmly.  He slides the first capsule in.  "I go..." he slides the second into the holster.  He brings the Riser to the top of the first capsule. "Here we go..." He slides the Riser across each capsule.  On either side of him, a blue giant of light forms.  "I'll show you something shocking!" he says and raises the Riser above his head, before bringing it over his chest. "GEEEEEED!"  He shouts this as blue light errupts from his body.

FUSION RISE!
ULTRAMAN HIKARI
ULTRAMAN COSMOS
ULTRAMAN GEED ARCO SMASHER

'When you see her... truly, see her... you'll know, hahh, the weight... of our wrongs to the dead,'

Ultraman Geed raises to match the size of Iðunn.  In her, he doesn't necessarily see humanity's sins, but rather the sins of a desperate people trying to win a war at any cost.  Were the humans wrong?  Were the dragons right?  No, in war it's truly the innocent that suffer.  This was just one more victim of an ancient war.

Geed attempts to push debris away before aiming to confront Iðunn herself.  Arco Smasher was their best bet, even if he had Magnificent, which would theoretically be better in a straight one-on-one brawl... but this wasn't going to be that.  

He sees Iðunn getting ready to spit fire... and given their current organization, that'd be deadly.  There is the blade, there is Flamel, there is that ritual, and there is Tidal Moon Healing.  Okay...

Geed rushes forward, aiming to grab at Iðunn's neck and try to force her mouth upwards.  This had worked with the previous dragons and their fire.  Just redirect it safely away from the group; there would be a period of time between breaths, then they could make their moves.  Just... picture the next step as it comes!
Angela ''There must be a way, Miss Gebura''

"Then lets hope we get a chance to make a wish upon a sword." Gebura murmurs to Odette. She keeps Mimicry low, however, not really inclined to start this fight off. But when it starts...

Shwissh! Shwaack! She focuses on cleaving apart the boulders of rubble tumbling down towards the allies, using her blade to protect rather than to slay. "Roland! Get her off Fae! My hands are full right now!" It seems like Mimicry is less slicing the rubble in twain and more absorbing the temple into its mass with every swipe, rapidly converted into more of that sharp teethy flesh, eyeballs growing out of the EGO Weapon, glancing rapidly this way and that.

Roland rushes towards the claw, sort of. He can't pry claws off of Fae, what--is he going to outmuscle a dragon? He doesn't have Gebura's strength, not on his own, but he ends up fishing through the pages Angela has left him, and finds an EGO page which he promptly slaps onto his arm.

The King of Greed's gauntlet materializes with his hand as he throws several punches towards the limb pinning Fae to build up strength before finally going for a grab to try and pull Fae free.

"Love, got any more speeches here??"

Love does not. Fae is more precious than a dragon she barely knows. Perhaps like Fae, her number one priority is making sure HER friends are safe. Even if making new friends is also great. Or maybe she's just taking that attitude to support the young dragon. Either way, her staff floats away from her before plunging into her heart as she rapidly transforms into her own draconic form.

She doesn't go for Idunn, first, she instead snakes across the ground before bending her head low for Roy.

"Ride me Roy!" She offers.
Flamel Parsons     It is 1942; early Project MYSTIC prototypes are necessary to identify and relentlessly bombard physicist Klaus Fuchs with telepathic influence, torturing him and destroying any mental figure that would obstruct the path between him and delivering the secret of the nuclear bomb to global parties. It is 1962; Psychonaut agents are choking, drowning, in the depths of Valentin Savitsky's childhood and dreams as the Project MYSTIC antiwar-mind directs them to take any measure necessary to find undermining information. It is 1983; the Project MYSTIC antiwar calculations force an agent to field-execute his partner for the sake of operational security in deceiving Stanislav Petrov.

    It is AU 34. Flamel Parsons stands in the center of the launch silo. The engine has ignited. The launch is not stopped. It only needs to happen once.

    Everything shatters. Drawing distinctions between walls, floor, roof, body, that's an exercise in pedantry. Anything that can break is broken in the truth of perception. Layers of barrier shear off just from the force of the transformation. He slams backwards, barriers skidding and bouncing off buckling terrain. Rubble slams down from above and takes more. They fail to account for the sheer sonic damage, leaving Flamel's ears trailing gleaming psionic fluid and leaving him screaming in agony before he gets ahold of himself. Rubble from a whipping tail crashes against his barrier once, twice, before he can get a telekinetic hand up to get in the way, and then shelter behind Fae.

    Claws slam around the body he sheltered beneath. Eyes widen. "PETRA!!" He's shouting. One more manipulation on the pile: "HELP HER! HELP HER!!" He needs her working at one hundred percent. "SOMEONE, PLEASE..." He's calling out. "GET ROY, GET ROY!! SOMEONE NEEDS TO HELP ROY!!"

    Flamel can't do it himself. Yet he still can't abide Roy losing everything here. He calls out to Nobunaga as he rises to his feet, "Not for *her* mind, there's never been anything for a door! They destroyed her entire astral world! I'd need, I'd need *hours and hours* to reconstitute just a basic subcon!" The jaw is opening. Flamel goes pale. "Oh god..."

    Bip. He vanishes. He's got to pull back. He's *got* to.

    <I need time. An hour. Hours. Get me hours. I, maybe I have an idea. Hhhh.> He's grasping, grasping at straws, at the tiniest threads of possible survival. Dreamless sleep absent a dreamer in this temple, for one thousand years, maybe if he--
Flamel Parsons     ---

    The research team in the Parsons Institute work under constant blaring red alarm light. Desperate reconstructions. Corners, cut. Machinery overloading. They tear pieces out of records, out of containment cells. They use whatever UPEs are necessary. "Sir, *how* are we going to find the psychometric content for a *whole mind* here?!" A skeptical technician is shouting as he strips the gleaming purple out of a chunk of wall carted in from another chamber.

    "You find it or we *die*!" The Director is yelling, turning away from his ever-ringing red phone. "If you don't have an entire projection-grade subcon construct before the Lycians are out of units in the area of operation, then containment breaks, we die, they die, *Elibe dies*!! DO YOUR DUTY! *STOP THE LAUNCH!!*"

    Purple tape and framework marks the shape. A recreation of the Dragon Temple's core chamber, before it was torn open. "If she was dreamless here, in this exact containment structure, long enough, if her soul was *inverted*, then the temple was the *interior* of her *mind*. Jahn, the mental figure of the war dragons. The dark monsters, residual unconscious substance." A manic researcher is shouting. Her voice is hoarse. "There has to be, there *has* to be enough here...!"

    ---

    --can find enough data, enough data to solve this. Flamel's fleeing is desperate. His clairvoyance goes into overdrive, carving a trail of purple sparks from an invisible source in the air as he pumps wave after wave of psychic energy into the terrain that falls around him. Whatever meager trace mentality Iðunn has, he has to gather up from impressions, the way she looked at the interior walls, the groove her knees once pressed into the stone. It's impossible to get into the mind of someone like her. If there's anything left, it exists in the traces, in the world, and it would only be enough for the simplest mental constructs.

    And it will take so, so long to make, at this rate...
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine leaps back as the temple collapses. She isn't thrown off-balance by the sudden transformation - but she is staggered by its result. She looks at Iðunn in disgusted awe, then at a transformed Fae as if to remind herself how dragons look normally, then double-takes back at Iðunn.

    "Jesus, what did they DO to her?"

    But there is no more time for cryptozoological speculation. Now is the hour of action. As Fae is swept up in Iðunn's enormous claws, Madeleine is busy shielding herself and the nearby members of the Lycian League from falling rubble with a dome of ice. By the time the cascading stones clear, Fae is well out of reach - out of the way? Madeleine briefly wonders if Iðunn yet possesses some impulse to defend other dragons, and is simply clearing a path for her flames.

    Rushing forward before that fire can wash over the remains of the temple, Madeleine leaps into the air and lands on Iðunn's forelimb, precariously grabbing hold of a stray wild-hooked claw. Without a divine weapon she may not have much hope of piercing the Demon Dragon's scales, but if she lines it up right... Now!

    As the dragon's motions swing her side to side, she drives the butt of her spear under one of the claws grasping Fae and, with one hand, levers away like prying up boards with a crowbar. If Iðunn has some compulsion to protect dragonkind, having Fae in action will be a boon - and if she doesn't, getting Fae out of those claws is just as important.

    While she strains with Roland against Iðunn's might grip, she sees Flamel down below trying to build a psychogate and gets an idea. "Father Lucius! Can you help Flamel rebuild her mind, with your healing magic?" The healing magic of Elibe, she reasons, hinges on restoring a body to its past presumably-healthier state - even if either that or Flamel's methods alone would take hours or fail outright, perhaps there's some synergy to be found here...
Desire Stars I'm sorry, filth. Please run.

    "I'm sorry, too." Na-Go and Geats take off--towards Iðunn. They've fought together enough times by now that there's an unspoken understanding between them. Na-Go, cutting to the side of Iðunn that isn't gripping Fae, drives the massive Gigant Hammer into the ground. It pummels a fissure that races towards Iðunn--that fissure widens and deepens into a crater beneath the dragon's claw.

    Before the pulverized floor has even finished rising into the air, Geats, who cut towards the opposite side, shouts a battle cry. The roar of the Boost MkII armor is the prelude to a chest-rattling crack and a brilliant ignition. Rocketing towards Iðunn like a bullet, Geats leaps into the air. An explosive cross kick aimed at the base of Iðunn's 'wrist' aims to momentarily loosen her grip whilst Na-Go's attack hopefully has her scrambling for purchase. "This isn't all there is."
Petra Soroka "His Majesty has instructed me to cleanse and rule this world. So it shall be ruled."

    If Iðunn was capable of much more response to their pleas than this, then this war would've ended much earlier. Petra hadn't imagined any other response-- or, she had, but only for the sake of imagining it at all, because the alternative was too miserable to grasp for long.

    She twists the blade with her wrist, for the vibrant light of the ritual circle to ignite the welding in the innumerable fractures from below. There's nothing she can accomplish by doing so, but the indignity of denying Iðunn a full examination of Zephiel's sword when she still very well might have to die is unacceptable.

"It can't be helped. I was hoping for more 'person' and less 'weapon',"

    "Dark magic, dog." Petra murmurs in response to Nobunaga, not looking away from Iðunn. "If she'd chosen this herself, we could at least tell who she was by the outline left behind. But this is a golden calf."

"I'm sorry, filth. Please run."

    The bell-toned waterfall of the Beauty of Ash's eruption from Petra's mirror is drowned out a hundredfold by the destruction of the Temple. With Petra shielded inside, the mech leaps backwards to avoid the sudden appearance of Iðunn's massive claws, and Eckesachs, thrown just beforehand, is caught spiraling through the air in a crevice in the Beauty of Ash's head like jaws. It whips around in the rubble, brandishing the sword wedged in its face defensively.

"HELP HER! HELP HER!!"

    <Bitch> is the splinter-filled telepathic response, infected with the unnecessary background sentiments of 'I thought you weren't talking to me' and 'I know already'. Either way, she does exactly as he'd hope.

    The Beauty of Ash takes off in an instant, bounding on all fours. Dodging between the largest chunks of debris, skittering sure-footed over the treacherous ground of the rest, Iðunn's roar hits it like a physical wall. The sonic impact visibly passes through the mech with a ripple through the electromagnetic spectrum, the sound of creaking glass accompanied by a splash of color like iridescent oil poured over top of it before it reconstitutes.

    With Fae still caught, the Beauty of Ash pounces towards Iðunn's wrist. Eckesachs, angled alongside its body, bites into the scale with the full force of the mech's propulsion, then it swivels around on a dime to clamp full-bodied onto the limb. Smaller than Fae is, the Beauty of Ash is made up entirely of sharp angles unlike her, and each limb along with the metal tail is put to use scrabbling to force the claw to open and release her.

    <I've got you, Fae. And Love's got Roy.> Broadcast to everyone else, <Don't worry about accidentally killing her! Just hit her or we die!>
Lilian Rook     'Aw, man. Don't say that.'

    "You know why I did." Lilian breathes the words, rather than saying them. "It'll be that hard."

    --------

    It never works. It never has. For as long as Lilian lives, it likely never will. By virtue of placing herself on one side of her blade, by every mechanism it requires and every statement it makes, the divide between herself and 'the other side' is inherently absolute. No matter how clear the way across seems to her, no matter how it tears at her feelings, the idea that there could be any other way is always an illusion, tautologically created from her own choice to split the world in two and root herself far across from where she was meant to be.

    Usually it stings. The act of extending her hand makes her feel vulnerable, and the rebuke that sends her away again hurts both times crossing the gap. Opening herself up, trying to light the way, and being rejected in anger and derision; the pattern is familiar to the point of tiresome. It never gets any better.

    Except this time. She was just desperate. The only reason Lilian said anything at all was because it hurt enough already. The begging was for her.

    'I'm sorry, filth. Please run.'

    Lilian Rook, who had confessed to Guinivere that she didn't have the principled courage to see this campaign through if it might mean her own death, and had meant every word she said when she claimed that if she had to, she would leave this world to its fate, scrapes roughly at her eyes with her knuckles, and says,

    "Not without you."

    '--still collapsing!! --get to even ground-- Fae! Get Roy clear!! --uu--au!'

    She isn't aware how she escaped the temple exploding. The facts of why it had are sluggishly lagging behind the exigent demands of flying rubble and unstable footing and the sound that makes her eyes ache and bones feel like they'll shear free of her muscles. Those are reflexively solved and instinctively worked around while an accounting of them waits behind the even higher priority named 'I can see Fae's blood'.

    Lilian hears her own voice screaming in her ears. The scratchy-raw volume behind "LANN RÉALTA REATHATA!!" matches the blowback shock that overpowers all feeling in both her arms. The short-term memory of how she got there has already been discarded by the time Lilian strikes the inside of Iðunn's raised wrist-joint from what feels like it must have been from orbit. The thunderous boom that follows her is inconsequential; the feedback of impact alone is enough to feel like she's about to puke.

    Night Mist is harder than her body is, but it isn't a divine weapon. The only direction to go from her angle of deflection, chosen only to disable flexor tension, is catastrophically into the ground. Lilian twists her grip on the hilt and slides the blade under the reverse side of a scale in an instant that stopping time can't lengthen, hurling her towards Fae instead, which Lilian improvises into a desperate airborne tackle out of Iðunn's claws. Breathing back in before stopping feels like razors in her lungs, but the urge to scream again wins. "LEVE HER ALONE!"
Odette Raskins "The world is evil and it must be cleansed"
"So it shall be ruled."

"That's..." Not completely wrong, but Odette can't bring herself to say that. She's seen enough good in the worlds she's been to that she can't say it, but not nearly enough to dismiss the statement entirely. Could Idunn be a good ruler, if she had simply not been tasked with wiping out humanity? Could she be a good ruler even after wiping out humanity?

Odette's not even sure how she could attempt to reason with someone who's lived through so much more than she has, been hurt incomprehensibly more than she ever could, and seen far more than she could imagine in her blip of a lifetime. Considering the gulf in life experience, is she even someone that could attempt reasoning at all?

Content though Idunn may be to let everyone speak, Odette can't even imagine herself reaching Idunn if she was given yeras to try. Roy breaks the stalemate, snapping the EMT out of her funk as she looks up to see the young lord's grip on the blade, shaky as it ever is. She draws in an anxious breath, and she looks over at Idunn as that dark crystal goes up.

"We don't have to-!"

The temple explodes, and Odette's consciousness goes out for a moment as her body goes right into survival mode. There's a flrury of scrambling, grasping for limbs to try and get people in front of her away, and she isn't sure where anything is actually moving for the first few seconds. By the time she's cognizant of what's going on again, Odette sees Fae in front of her, and she sees those massive claws not far away enough for her not to be suddenly concerned for her survival again.

She hasn't gotten a clear look at Idunn's transformed state yet, but seeing those claws is enough to turn her face several shades paler.

More importantly for the immediate moment, though, is the clear danger everyone is in. Snapping out of her daze and running her sleeve over her face to clear blood out of her vision, Odette hurriedly shoves herself off the ground and steadies her breathing as best she can while she starts preparing to cast healing magic. She sprints low to the ground besides Fae at first, then yelps at the impact of Idunn slamming an oversized claw over the younger dragon and sending Odette sprawling across the floor again.

"Wh... Fae! No!" Not noticing the violet glow in the Demon Dragon's mouth, the EMT staggers back up to her feet annd sees her allies already moving to engage Idunn, to rescue Fae, and desperate calls to help her, to help Roy, to buy hours of time when even seconds feel like a stretch.

Directions come from Flamel and Nobunaga, and that helps keep Odette... Not centered by any means, but it keeps her from being paralyzed by indecision. Spotting Roy besides Rutger, the EMT sprints over to join them, sucking in a pained breath at straining her recent wounds just to get there. Slipping herself under one of Roy's arms, she wordlessly offers to take him off Rutger's side while pushing her staff into Roy's side for both support and to help focus herself.

"I've got him, Miss Rutger! Roy, can you hear me? We're still in what's left of the temple." She starts speaking quickly while starting to cast that healing magic. She's less worried about burning the staff out and more about getting him back into a functional state, and she flicks a button on the side of her medical HUD to make sure she's focusing that healing magic right where he needs it.

"Stay with us! I'll keep you moving as long as you need me to, but we need to keep moving!" Odette keeps talking at a rapid clip to try making sure Roy stays awake, too. "Just say the word, and I'll-ah.. I'll get you wherever you need to go!"
Marigold      Lilian slamming into Iðunn's 'wrist' rolls it and loosens her grip on Fae, by the simple physics of biomechanics and mass, and fails to cut the scales at all. Ace's kick adds to the effort, but it does nothing to mar her hide either.

     Echidna seizes the chance to wedge the axe Armads under one talon and put her weight behind the lever to wrench it upwards along with Roland's pushing and Madeleine's prying; the Divine Weapon etches a glowing scratch on the talon, but only a millimeter deep.

     "--aa------uuauau--!!!" Fae is squealing piteously. But the Demon Dragon has no pity at all.

     "Damn it... come on!!" she wheezes, at the Demon or Fae or Madeleine or Roland or all four, but Fae's desperate squirming fails to free herself until the Beauty of Ash joins the effort. Just like Armads, Eckesachs carves that characteristic glowing wound, but not even to the thickness of a scale. Contesting weight with force is more effective.

     Geed is just tall enough to seize the Demon Dragon's jaws, and he might be the only person who could wrestle with her. He delays her breath for a moment- but she cranes her neck to lift his feet off the ground, and then slams him down against the Temple's spiky rubble on his back. Her other foreclaw is planted on his chest, to pin him down if only temporarily.

     The moment that buys Fae is enough time for her to squirm out of the Demon's horrid grasp and through Neon's crater, four great bleeding clawmarks along her sides, and briefly hug the Beauty to steady herself. "Aaau--uu..." she whimpers softly, and a word like 'friend' is in there somewhere, before she bravely puffs a little of her glowing breath against the Demon Dragon's leg and feebly scampers to safety on all fours.

     Roy is regaining his senses already, steadied against an upright fragment of wall by Rutger as Odette sees to him. "I'm... I'm alright! I'm alright, thank you. P-please, see to Fae," he says, shaken to his core; but that bit of healing magic does him good, and refusing care is his deepest instinct. Love's offer is obviously terrifying- getting close again is the last thing his gut wants- but he nods shakily, hopping onto her back. "Thank you. I just... I just need one chance. Please."
Marigold      Lucius takes Riku's cover to 'blip' backwards out of the ruins alongside Flamel with an Etrurian warp staff, taking Lugh and Chad along with him. "I can't!!" he shouts at Madeleine. "I can only heal the body! But..." He looks down at Lugh, who nods solemnly, and takes up position to aid Flamel.

     But even if the junior psi-cadet could carry half the weight, half of 'hours' is still hours.

     Having fended off Riku, the Demon Dragon is readying her breath again, retching and kindling. Lucius grits his teeth and calls down Elimine's light magic; the beam of light washes away Iðunn's terrible visage into pure white for a moment.

     Only a moment, and then the darkness of her terrible fire eclipses it, vomiting over what used to be the temple and drenching out Nobunaga's flames.

     Her whole frontal arc is doused, down to almost every crevice and out to hundreds of feet, in black-violet fire, and--

     The 'anti-life' in her breath burns away the body and mind both. It's like a chemical, but not; needing to react with something, it attacks proportionally whichever is more vulnerable.

     It burns the body like fire would, awful sticky fire, black enough you can't even see your way out of it, clinging enough you'd have to scrape it off your charring flesh and clothes. Where you can see them, even the stones begin to melt and drip like wax, but the flames swallow up their magma-glow too.

     And it burns the mind like--

     --you've forgotten something. Something important. You are less than you were a second ago. Losing memories, losing bits of self, but it's painless and you can't tell how much you've already lost. Have you only been in this blinding flame a second? An hour? Have you lost only the tiniest fragment of yourself, or is this the last gasp of your consciousness before you come completely undone?

     How much of a person were you? Do you remember? Can you trust that memory? If a worm were eating your brain, how would you even know?

     Echidna blocks most of it by sheltering behind Armads, but when the flame finally ebbs, just what got on her hands is enough to leave her nearly blank-eyed, sweat-drenched, and heaving among the smoldering-melted ruin. Rutger has crawled to safety at the killzone's edge, using Durandal like a piton, but the bit that caught on her robe's hem has burned her leg horribly.

     As violet fire still clings and gutters on anything flammable, the Demon Dragon shudders with a rattling inhalation, looking slightly less sick for having purged that much from her insides. But only slightly. Sue on her pony in the distance fires a whistling arrow from Mulagir right into her (green) eye; it shatters off and barely garners notice, just like the three more that follow.
Marigold      After seeing Odette to Fae or to safety, Roy breathlessly guides Love around behind the Demon Dragon; avoiding her breath through the luxury of simply not being where she's facing, and guiltily scrunching his eyes tight as he clings to Love's back.

     "I know I can do it," he murmurs to her over the distant roar of flames, sounding terrified. "Because I don't want anything more than for this to be over, and for everyone to be okay. That wasn't enough for Zephiel. But for her..."

     If all of this is going to come to anything good, he has to believe that.

     He guides her into emerging from behind one of the still-standing remnants of the Dragon Temple's walls at the Demon Dragon's flank where they can try to catch her by surprise, once the peripheral spatter of horrid breath is low enough to make that safe. It's well-chosen. One of her eyes is being pelted by Sue; the other might still be blinded by Lucius's magic; she's still panting after her expulsion of breath.

     Everyone can see Love come into view beside Iðunn, and see Roy dismount to steady his feet. He lifts the Blade from some fifty feet away from her, and its edge shines with a beautiful fiery light. For a moment his face is serenely determined. At the moment it shines brightest and the Demon just begins to see it from the corner of her eye, he swings, the edge beginning to cast off a brilliant arc--

     Crack.
     "AU--UUUHGHREE--EE!!"

     There's a noise like a gunshot, and a plume of blood and glittering shards, as the Demon Dragon's whip-crack tail cuts through Roy's Blade, his arm, and most of his neck. The glowing arc fades just before it can descend, a miracle nipped in the bud.

     He drops, limp, along with the shattered hilt. The Demon's attention leaves him, not even bothering to savor the victory, and swivels back to you.
Nobunaga     The concentrated effort Nobunaga ordered pays off after much struggle; Fae squirms free, injured but alive. The Demon King briefly acknowledges the successful rescue before returning her attention to Iðunn herself. The effort to deflect what could only be a most vile dragonbreath has gone somewhat more awry.

    Blackened stone at her feet cracks and separates, lifting itself up in revealing she now stands in the palm of a great skeletal hand. The rest of the figure hauls itself up, its ribs acting as a cage for blazing hellfire, flames burning in empty eyesockets. Nobunaga braces her feet, lifts her sword, and points with a wordless roar.

    The monstrous manifestation of Tenka Fubu, three thousand souls burned on the alter of war, disgorges a gout of bright red-orange flame from its gaping mouth directly at the Demon Dragon's face. The true test of just how 'divine' the Divine Dragon tribe is... or at least, how much of that light might be left in Iðunn after what she's been through.

    Iðunn's own flames envelop the skeleton from the waist down. It endures, briefly, before the corrosive violet flames consume the fire-kissed bone. The figure collapses, taking Nobunaga with it directly into the dragon's fire right near the end of the breath.

    When the flames recede, she's there on hands and knees, tearing off a burning cape and casting it aside. She pushes herself up, using her sword's saya like a cane. She's winded but was that exertion or something else? Is it hot or has she already reached her limit?

    The warlord pushes herself back to her feet, unsteady, recovering. Her free hand lifts, wiping sweat from her face with the back of her hand, ignoring the blood that comes with it.

    "Pipyas Reborn, for even the heavens shall burn beneath my feet," she's more breathless than before but she calls it out anyway, "No matter what you burn out of me, I will *always* be the Demon King. Let all gods and demons alike be consumed... by my hungering flame."

    "Tenka--!" As she calls it out, she lifts up her sword again.

> Crack.

    She cuts off, eyes snapping to the source of the sound, locking first on the broken Binding Blade, then snapping to a fatally wounded Roy. For seconds that feel like hours, she isn't even processing sound beyond her own heartbeat.
Angela Roland grimaces as he hears Fae's cry. He grunts as he works, even with the boost of strength from the EGO--it's just so strong. Maybe he just doesn't have the right kind of attunement, or Idunn is just that strong. He finds himself genuinely relieved when Petra arrives to help in the Beauty of Ash, and he doesn't even have the werewithal to feel guilty about that. If Fae gets seriously hurt or, worse, is killed he'd never forgive himself and he already has enough in his life that he can't forgive himself.

"Thanks Petra." Roland manages. "Didn't think she'd go after Fae..." But perhaps it's strangely telling that even now she is--Well, Roland doesn't understand that tongue, all he can get is a kind of sad vibe from all that.

Fire, it's dangerous enough that she can't assume Roland will just survive it, so she has to choose to protect him over Roy who has Love looking after him. She swings Mimicry into the flame, successfully diverting the flame before it crashes into Roland but--

--Mimicry doesn't escape unscathed. It is ultimately an EGO Weapon, one with a mind of its own that subtly influences and guides the wielder. And it's not Gebura's personal weapon. Mimicry screams as the fire engulfs it, rapidly approaching Gebura's hands--the protection came at a cost and Gebura is forced to drop the weapon to the ground as the flame ultimately devours the sword and consumes it. The mind goes first, the massive mound of flesh exploding outward as it tries to establish a new identity, but soon what little concept of the self that infused Mimicry is devoured and the flesh collapses into mindless mounds of nothing, gradually burning to nothing.

"Pale..." Gebura murmurs. "An unreal amount of pale damage..." Now disarmed and absent all but her personal EGO Gear, she raises her arms up, feeling incredibly underequipped. Roland, sensing the shift in Gebura quickly tosses Gold Rush over to her. She catches it in midair and slides it on, but she's still uneasy. Maybe losing herself would have been better than losing her sword.

"I believe in you!" Love assures Roy as she slithers across the ground. If nothing else, Love knows how dangerous a dragon's breath attack can be and she has some instinctual sense on how to avoid it, at least. But she quiets down as she nears Idunn, sensing that not bellowing out catchphrases as she is getting closer might be a good idea.

A small glow builds up in her throat and--

''This is the real world, Love.''

Love's eyes cannot widen. She sees Roy go down.

She did totally believe in him.

She felt that he was a friend whose heart could bring about a miracle.

And she remembers hatred. Roaring, she charges Idunn.
Riku Asakura Geed COULD get bigger, but right now he's more concerned with trying to fight things at their level, and there isn't always an advantage to growing bigger than your opponent is.  Also, he's trying to fend her off, not destroy her... which he may grow to regret later.  Right now, however, Geed is lifted off the ground when she cranes her neck....

Then slammed painfully into the spikes from the temple itself.  Sparks ran from where he was slammed, and more from when she slammed her claw on his chest, pinning him to the ground.  He's not able to stop what comes next... that terrible and dangerous breath that is breathed on them all comes to terrible fruition...

The burning is there, her breath being hotter than the shadow dragons that came before.  Geed screams in agony as the temperature threatens to melt him.  However, the secondary effects of the breath are somehow worse.  Memories are lost, time stretches on for periods of time, and it feels like his own soul is about to unravel.

Why was he here?  What was he doing?  Why is he in such pain?  Does any of this matter?  Was there any sense to anything he was doing?  Fighting the sensations, he slowly puts himself back together.  The bits of memory come back, reminding him that he was here for a reason.  Enough of him comes back to consider that this must be what she feels now... more floods back in, and then finally...

It was in these moments, after putting himself back together, that he pushed back against the demon dragon.  He noticed Love, with Roy, flying around her... so in these moments he reaches up to try and grab her, trying to force her attention on him.  The chance they had to save her soul would be based on the Binding Blade and Roy...

'Crack.'

Geed stares, horrified by what he's forced to see.  The tail tears through both the Binding Blade and Roy like a gunshot.  The blade is destroyed... the blade of prophecy, the thing they /needed/ to pull off a miracle... shattered.  What was worse was Roy, his arm and most of his neck torn out by the demon dragon.  

Were they... stupid for thinking?  For trying?  ...Well, yeah, but it was that same hope that drove him to try for miracles.  It still tastes like ash in his mouth now.  He still feels, in this moment, that he failed in some way.  Even if she resisted all attempts to bring this to a different conclusion... even if she wasn't truly responsible for this...

Riku, inside Geed, closes his eyes.  Roy was possibly dead; the blade was destroyed.  This world was going to be destroyed... He couldn't force someone else to make a choice like with Zephiel.  

FUSION RISE!
ULTRAMAN ZERO
FATHER OF ULTRA
ULTRAMAN GEED MAGNIFICENT

The colors change on Geed; his entire body actually changes form.  The colors blue, red, and silver intermingle.  His shoulders become broader, and his head grows a pair of horns.  He punches up, aiming to push the Demon Dragon off of him, and stands up to face her.  He... he hates this.  He didn't want it to be this way...

He steels himself to fight with everything he has.  Otherwise, this world wouldn't see the next sunrise.  Even so, he hates himself for not being able to make a miracle happen.  
Petra Soroka     The failure of Eckesachs to so much as draw a drop of blood is chilling. Even if their combined weight can contest the Demon Dragon physically, without being able to *hurt* her, they'll only get whittled down more and more as the time passes. And for what? *Flamel* to save the day, possibly, hours from now?

    Both shuffling around in the beast's shadow as she grapples with Geed, the Beauty of Ash brushes its flank comfortingly against Fae's. Entangled in the contact is a secondary insubstantial touch: the belief manifested that, for the way this confrontation with Iðunn ought to have gone, there was no need for Fae to be injured. Matching as the claw marks in Fae's side fade to grazes, identical gouges etch into the Beauty of Ash.

"Didn't think she'd go after Fae..."

    <Maybe if we're very lucky, she can eventually feel guilty about it.>

    Fae's blood slathered on the transparent mech is almost hyperreal. It highlights every channel and facet when the droplets roll with the air as the Beauty of Ash dashes from place to place, taking opportunistic stabs at Iðunn with the blade in its snout. They naturally pool in the scratches in its side, drawing them like pen marks on a blank surface, until the color and canvas are mutually drowned by the Demon Dragon's fire.

    It's a full minute later that it staggers back into visibility. Struck animalistically silent, the normally nimble mech teeters on razor-tipped limbs that slip between shattered rock and pull out coated in a new layer of black fire. Beneath the flame, the crystal of the Beauty of Ash is spitting colors, crackling with a full prism of color as light melts into photons and then cools solid again, covering its surface with irregular melted drops and spikes.

How much of a person were you?

    Leg-tips drag on footing and push past rock. The Beauty of Ash, cloaked in a numbing haze of static, lurches towards Iðunn like a spider in its death throes, all hydraulic misfire and desperation. Eckesachs comes down again and again to jab between her claws, under her belly, and anywhere it might reach.

    What losing 'Petra' means, each time the fire washes over her, is losing the careful brick by brick arrangement of people who construct her. Zephiel justifies her presence, Fae demands that the aftermath of this fight be a world that can still be home, Lilian is the hand outstretched to the 'unchosen', and brave, hopeful, two years' navietie-forged-ideological Roy, who--

> Crack.

    The Beauty of Ash comes to a stop. Clotted chunks of black-violet flame roll down its skin, effect indistinguishable from the sight of Roy collapsing.

    Then with a silent flash of light from its back, the rubble around the mech crystallizes with glassy laminate, then shatters from a downwards strike of Eckesachs. Half of the telekinetically controlled cloud of glass clicks into shape as a triage dome around Roy, and the other half follows along with the Beauty of Ash as it turns away and wordlessly plunges back into the endless fight.
Odette Raskins With Roy ready to head back in with Love, Odette takes another unsteady breath before nodding quickly in affirmation. "I got her, Roy. W-we'll... We'll get this done. We've got this." She replies to reassure Roy and Love as much as she needs to reassure herself, already looking over towards her next target: Fae. She'd already glimpsed some of her wounds earlier, but seeing them after Fae's no longer covered by the Demon Dragon's claws makes the extent of the damage far more obvious.

Following Fae to safety, Odette has to really book it to not get caught up in all those life-purging flames. Thankfully, running after the dragon means she's headed away from the demon's flames rather than towards them, but a few clinging flames still catch onto her cape and singe her enough that she loses track of what she's been doing for...

Some amount of time. She's not really sure anymore, and she even looks surprised when she sees Fae in front of her, bleeding from so many wounds across her front. Stumbling a little in her apparent haste to join the dragon, Odette gingerly squeezez a patch of relatively unmarred fuzz to try and reassure her with a bit of contact.

"Fae, Fae, Fae, I'm here. You're... God, you're being braver than anyone should have to be. W-we'll get this figured out, and..." Odette rambles a little as she moves some medicated patches from her case to her mouth, following her routine where her memories aren't quite keeping up. She holds the bundle in her teeth while her other hand maneuvers her staff around to work some healing magic in first, spreading the care out as much as she can.

It's not the cleanest work, but it's fast between the healing magic tending to those wounds she can't see and applying patches to the wounds she can. With any luck, she'll even have a chance to-

Crack.

That sharp noise draws Odette's attention straight to the Demon Dragon, Roy, and the Binding Blade. "Roy! rap, crap, crap...!"

Healing magic won't reach from here. She needs to get closer, but Idunn's already facing her again, and everyone that isn't Roy. With desperation once again clinging to her heart, Odette's teeth chatter together as she rushes right back in towards the bloodied youngster, dearly hoping that she'll get to him in time beneath the safety of the Beauty of Ash's dome.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel gets in position for more readings, with Lugh. He's trying to get all he needs, and then... He's got so much faith in Elimine. But Saint Elimine, her time was a thousand years ago. And while her column of light consumes the dragon, it doesn't stop her. Gods, after all, those are human concepts aren't they? And it takes seconds for human concepts to evaporate.

    The rush of fire consumes him even when he's invisible. His scream of pain as fire's heat eats through the layers of shield is distorted. The psychic machinery responsible for it is--

    ---

    The Parsons Institute is burning. That horrible searing combustion leaves behind only inconsistent ash, rare evidence, and few memories. Psychic defenses are rushing to fight, mental constructs scrambling desperately. But researchers go missing and nobody can remember to summon rescue. Calls through the Communications Department are repeated and dropped erratically. Anomalies breach their cells when damage spreads, only to be consumed by the fire themselves, forgotten as quickly.

    The Director can't find charters for whole missing departments. He doesn't care. "GET THOSE EXTINGUISHERS TO LIGHT CONTAINMENT!" He's roaring over a radio, then picking up his phone and shouting, "Fire doors in the workshops sector, all engage, engage!!" It's enough to stave off the worst of it. But it strains his efforts. Badly, badly strains his work to create this prosthetic astral apparatus that would be difficult with weeks of time and no interruptions and a whole well-supplied team.

    ---

    --being consumed, at least his language centers, making erratic jittery stopping-and-starting distortions in his voice as he yells, "ANTIMEMETIC THREAT!! Chant your purpose! You are whole!" A lie. "*Don't* let that touch you! Set mental firebreaks!" Though, right now, maybe only a few have those to work with. "I've got this, we can get this if Roy can get her calmed down..."

    Disaster. The worst case. Code Gold, and Code Red, blare in the Institute. "ROOOOOOYYYYYY!!" He's shouting, desperately, seized with horror, eyes welling up already and breath catching in his throat. The Binding Blade is almost secondary to the hopelessness of losing the leader.

    ---

    "Keep WORKING!" The Director physically slams his cane into intruding anomalies. "Focus on your *duties*!" Executive function streams down both cheeks. He defends the project. "No closure! No *patterns*! No matter what happened in the Galle ambush," Wyverns tear at the door. "In the Dark Days," Embers and ashes creep along walls and floros. "In *Chicago,*" Empty sets of clothing swarm, smash, bursting violently or emitting inexplicable gunshots through bulletholes. But despite all those, the Director continues fighting. "We move forward! We continue! Into the future! WE *STOP* THE *LAUNCH*...!!"

    "This time, I won't break."

    ---
Flamel Parsons     And when he turns back to Iðunn, despite his face already being red with grief, his posture has hardened, focused. <Hurt, h-hah, hurts, so much for you to do that. Hurts. But it doesn't change anything, d-doesn't change, anything, about the truth. About what you're doing. Doesn't change anything, a-anything, about what I have to do. To help you. Heal you. Even though, even though you've done the one thing that would break, hhhh, break my mind, even though you've hurt the one person who could be the reason I'm doing this...> He plants himself firmer now. Stance lower. Fingers more desperately pressed at his temples. <The word 'cleanse' means nothing. Roy h-had, no evil in his heart. Your directive, cleanse an, cleanse an evil world, abandon that. Abandon the invalid directive.>

    Lines and waves and beams and gleaming refractive surface-reflections surge over every inch of the chamber. His effort to gather what he needs to breach her mind is renewed. <'CLEANSE THIS EVIL WORLD',> He tele-shouts. <IS NOTHING. NOTHING. The closure of it, the fulfillment of it, the satisfaction of it, the false threshold of a reset, they're *fake*! You *had* a true cause! A real purpose! Stop the war! That was the one that had terms! Made sense! It was tangible! You'll never achieve this, and a hundred more Zephiels and Roys will die if you do this here! You have to move forward! Forward!! FORWARD!!!>

    He's brittle. Struggling. Flailing to keep from suffocating. Seeing Roy die struck such a despair in his heart. But unlike the Dark Days, or Chicago, or even the Psychogate disaster, this time, he doesn't compromise anything. He clings to his own core like a drowning sailor holding on to a plank of their shattered vessel. If it takes hours, it takes hours. If it takes a day, two days, a week, he will be here. He will craft this mechanism and he will drill it into Iðunn and he will fix the psychohazard that caused this launch. Here, now, he may splinter, but he won't break; he was made for this moment.