4180/Dirge at Sunrise

Dirge at Sunrise
Date of Scene:	03 June 2016
Location:	A Quiet World
Synopsis:	Goodnight moon. This log is really unclean and will likely remain so. Sorry about that!
Thanks to:	Faruja, Arthur, Riva, Psyber, Eryl, Homura, Kyra, Priscilla, and everyone Mizuki knew here.
Cast of Characters:	2, Arthur Lowell, Staren, Priscilla, 152, 183, 253, Riva Banari, Eryl Fairfax, 626
Tinyplot:	Mizuki's End

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Mizuki (183) has posed:
00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)~~


Now, when I count to four, we will begin.


00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)~~

Mizuki (183) has posed:
The Clock Tower - <A Lost World> (Location #18)
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    A peculiar wind blows.

    The musty scent of moth-eaten pages dominates the landscape.

    From the look of it, the -feel- of it, one accustomed to the Quiet World would know that this is the site of the Clock Tower; any others would be left to wonder whether this is in fact a world at all. The tower itself has been reduced to a series of rigid, pitch lines drawn stark against the blinding white mist that chokes the atmosphere elsewhere. Its face is all that remains now, the numbers four, seven, and nine once again the only to give it definition. It seemingly floats without any support asides several more lines that might once have defined its various sides, but now would barely qualify as a cube drawn with a magnetized sketching board.

    Calling this place a purgatory would be doing it too much justice. It is clear that whatever has happened here has reduced it beneath primacy, even before it was given a fundamental sense of physical law. Whatever semblance of that that remains rests solely in the bodies of those who have found themselves here by some cosmic quagmire.

    The only thing that this place bears any resemblance to is the look of the districts once their respective sentinels had been either killed or removed. Fittingly, it might also bear resemblance to nightmares the ordeal on Mizuki's world might have conjured in the minds of interlopers before its conclusion. That's to say, it is the manifestation of those dreams exactly: it is a world where Mizuki's cycle has completed itself. It is a world where Mizuki has died, leaving the world incomplete and without any presence of matter, animate or inanimate, alive or unalive. By extension, it is a world where the echo of Mizuki's existence who initially set said cycle in motion has succeeded in her fate of annihilation.

    Every amendment to the Prognostics has been undone.

    The world and all its inhabitants have been erased, not only from existence, but also perhaps from memory.

    And on that note, it may bear mention:

    You feel as though you have forgotten something very important.


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Contents Exits
Shiori <#1>    ------'- -----
Psyber <Hindsight> <#2>    --- -----
Arthur Lowell <Mage of Void> <#32>    --- ------
Riva Banari <Left Behind> <#33>    ------ -- ----- ------
Priscilla <Stagnant> <#34>    ------
Staren <Misunderstanding>
Eryl Fairfax <Fallen Hero>
Kyra Hyral
Homura Akemi <Longing>
Faruja <Evangelist>

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Brief glimpses of the past flicker to life against the blank backdrop of the Quiet World. For an instant here, the tower regains its vitality and its Gothic spires pierce the encroaching gloom. For a moment there, the clock's face can be seen, all its numbers properly in place. In one of these bewildering visions of what-was, one can see black hair billowing a veil in an unseen wind; in the next, a proud posture held aloft by two wide ebony wings; in the last, a haughty smile set beneath two gleaming red spheres that can never be fully seen. Thereafter the breaks in time cease, overtaken by the thunder and rain of a storm that cannot be seen, and cracks of black thunder that leave behind yet more rigid lines in the sky. In time, more such shapes gather, twisting and curving until they have made the form of a familiar woman.



    Though not, albeit, the woman that anyone wishes to see.



    Shiori's hair hangs idle behind her, the comfortable err of the world's breath gone entirely. Her hand grips a sword, its tip pointed toward the lot of them such that they know their place with her. An empty grin like to a doll's holds her visage for several moments of almost mournful silence before at last her eyes, dark enough brown that her pupils are only scarcely visible, look up to the group in appraisal. The unrelenting light of the world in its pristine state reflects off of them in a way so intense as to be blinding.

    The flesh beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth curls upward in a way that foretells a sort of mad satisfaction. She says nothing - no, there were never words for this sort of circumstance - only summoning a distinct, glimmering, crystalline shield into her right hand to complement her rapier. It is in this moment that Palora rushes her, scythe appearing in her hands midway through an aerial leap, only to be caught by some invisible force guided by Shiori's left hand. Palora bars her teeth.

    "What did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO, DAMNIT?!" Her scythe sinks into the air in front of her as though it were a sword fighting against a magical barrier. "You can't be here! This can't happen! Do you have any idea how hard these people worked to --!" She chokes. Her scythe clatters to the ground before being consumed by the pristine white of the environment. Shiori raises a lone index finger to her lips in utter silence. In that instant, something strange occurs: beginning at her feet, Palora's body is dyed that same ivory. It crawls up her legs, her chest, her arms until, finally, it erases even her pupils, and the gleaming fuschia of her eyes. Once the last fleck of pink has been expunged from her scalp, her body falls limp and turns to face the group. Moments later, her scythe reappears in her hands. She poises for battle.



"They're all gone."



    The smile on Shiori's lips grows, faintly. Her shield arm faces upward, and her left hand curls toward her in invitation.

    Words lack the power to revoke what has been done.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "So. You survived."

    It's all Psyber can really muster to say in reaction to the reappearance of someone he thought he had put in a grave a long time ago. There's a part of him that shouldn't be surprised this happened. A part of him that blames himself for Shiori re-manifesting. It was like he had told Riva some months back, when he lets his attention drift or shift, when he leaves a problem unaddressed, it comes back in a way that usually hurts someone close to him. He had spent too long idle and hadn't kept up with Mizuki's well-being and now...

    Palora was dead. Everyone else, if Shiori was to believed, was gone as well.

    And thus was Psyber motivated to action. The half-angel didn't need to think twice about what to use in this fight. If he wanted Shiori to stay dead, Lifehunt would be the only answer that he deemed suitable, regardless of the pain it caused him to so much as use the weapon. There's a green flame that runs down his arm as the piece of paper in his hand evaporates, leaving the Sun-Slayer Greatsword in his grasp.

    "I will correct this error."

    There's a rush of air as Psyber simply vaults himself forward at superhuman speed. There's no flash or glamor to his attack. It's a total sacrifice of style in lieu of substance. He blows past Palora and right towards Shiori like a dog of war released from its chain.

    And, sword trailing sickly flames as he swings it, he tries to bisect her with a massive diagonal slash.

Faruja (152) has posed:
If there's one thing that can summon Faruja Senra out of interrogating a noble suspected of Heresy, that thing is 'danger involving Mizuki'. If there's one thing that can send Faruja into a frothing rage...it's many things, but 'Mizuki possibly being dead' is at the top of that very long list.

Which may explain why where once there was nothing, a quartet of holy-infused meteors appear not a couple inches away from Shiori's face as time reasserts itself, golden angel wings keeping Inquisitor Senra aloft as he looks down imperiously at the woman who's roused his anger like few could. The Burmecian's smile is shark-like, and utterly full of hate.

"Why, Miss Shiori, I would suggest making your amends with the Allmighty, for I do believe you are about to meet him post-haste. Pray for a quick death, for if you survive, you and I will be getting to know each other /quite well/, my dear!"

And that's about when those holy rocks explode, as with a wave of his cane, Bahamut appears on high to rain a proper laser beam of Esper-wrath right down on her head, the rat utterly heedless of things like 'collatoral damage'.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
Another routine Heaven or Hell job. Or at least Kyra thought. After spending the year or so with them, she had thought she had it figured out just to the lengths of what kind of crazy stuff they got involved in. She stared down a few elder gods, after all as part of her internship work.

    Only the barest bit of recognition flashes in Kyra's eyes as she sees Shiori. Having never met her personally before, the resemblence and the behavior told her more than enough about what she needed to know about the woman. The actions here were deplorable and frightening. The grey miasma that spread throughout Palora, alarming.

    But this is the person who she focuses on first. The grey skin reminded her of Petrification. The sudden heel turn reminded her of Charm. Charm, petrification, it did not matter. She casts her hands out before her, ignoring Shiori entirely as she summons her white magic to her fingertips with ease. Green light flashes around Palora as a purging Esuna spell is cast by Kyra.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    Knowing that something was wrong, when Homura did appear, she was already in her magical girl outfit. The purple, white and black of the 'uniform' are colors she'd seldom seen in the last few months, consumed by studies and shadowy plans she didn't share with anyone. Reliant on Psyber's ability to cleanse her Soul Gem, she'd almost given up on the hunt too, allowing Mami and Kyoko, the veterans, and Sayaka, the goody-two-shoes, to fill the quota of the loft on their own, something they'd not had too much difficulty doing.

    Truth told it'd been a few months since she even held a firearm, much less her bow. Showing up with the long black bow already out was both familiar and odd, a reminder she wasn't allowed to have a peaceful life.

    The spreading corruption that engulfs Palora and evidently turns her on the group is a worrying thing. There exists the hope however vague that what was done can be reverted, and so she does not target Palora. The Puella Magi instead opts to support Psyber, so that his more specialized and powerful weapon can do its job.

    Clocks are set back several minutes-- there's very little warning, and it'd take someone like Faruja to really sense what happened. Psyber finds himself supported by an artillery barrage in multiple stages.

    First, the massive beams of pink light, like arrows through the darkness, surrounding Shiori, blasting around Psyber and carving him a path through whatever counterattack might happen. Then, the artillery shells, heavy explosive ordnance one after the other blasting towards Shiori's location and behind. If anything, trying to force her towards Psyber.

    Then bullets. Hundreds of gunshots, encircling Palora, attempting to keep her from interfering without eating enough lead to qualify as an armory.

    Homura has not moved an inch from her position, but her hair blows back from the countless attacks launched in halted time.

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Hm.

    Right off the bat, Eryl feels deeply uncertain about everything. Original Face runs a quick check-sum and comes back with everything... nominal? In spite of massive gaps in its logs? Huh. That feels... wrong somehow. Like he was adding 2 and 2 and getting 5.

    Percieved internal inconsistencies would have to wait though. The world is... gone. Like a clear canvas after the work of art that stood upon it had been scoured with paint thinner.

    And before them is the vandal that did it.

    For once in his long life, Eryl is speechless. Somehow, he feels like this wasn't supposed to happen. Feelings bubble up in his gut, and for once it shows on his face, his implants so thoroughly bamboozled by his environs that they fail to suppress them. His face twists in anger, outrage, and sorrow in a way that suggests he hasn't worn such expressions in a long time.

SITUATION:

MIZUKI: GONE

WORLD: GONE

REASON: SHIORI

PALORA: CORRUPTED. TURNED AGAINST US? KYRA HYRAL ATTEMPTING TO CORRECT

RESPONSE: PACIFY SHIORI.

    Everyone else is already well underway on that, but Eryl recalls how Mizuki would fight. Twisting perceptions, moving outside of peoples visions. Shiori, as a twisted reflection of Mizuki, will likely employ the same. So rather than attacking immediately, as his gut screams at him to, his eyes flick about at a rate that would make visual information meaningless to a regular human, head turning to look all over, waiting to see if Shiori tries to appear elsewhere.

    And if she does? A hail of shots from both 'One Hand Clapping' units await her, the shots streaking cherry-red through the white void.

Staren has posed:
    Staren steps out of the warpgate. Usually, after entering, he shapeshifts into a bunch of things to test the control over reality they have here. Now, though, he's immediately struck by, well... Everything.

    "Why?! You MADE this world! Isn't it what you wanted?!"

    The battle's begun.

    While others are ready to just go all out whenever required, Staren is one who needs to take special preparation. Fortunately, in this world, he need only imagine that he's prepared...

    His armor appears on him. He holds his hands out, and in an instant, the cannon he used on Kalameet appears in front of him.

    the parts look like a mix of electronics, structure, and some kind of tech that incorporates lots of clear crystals into its parts. The machine has taken shape, and while /exactly/ what it does may be something only Staren knows, from its form it is clear that it is some kind of turret-mounted energy cannon, as wide as he is tall and a few times again as long, with Staren standing on a platform at the rear of the weapon to work complex-looking controls, the entire assembly swiveling to aim.

    This time, there's no complex set up. The crystals glow. Wind picks up. Staren doesn't even have to flip a switch. More parts begin to glow, some even crackling with power, the humming gets louder as more power flows into the machine from -- nowhere.

    It fires. The beam is small, compact, compressed. The pure blue light is about as big around as a human's arm. It bends around allies if needed, and it's /supposed/ to make whatever it hits explode in a brilliant shining light of blue resonance. But who knows how things work in this world? Is this a giant game of play pretend, where Shiori can say 'nuh-uh, that doesn't work on me?'

    Where before the machine began to fall apart, here it's ready for immediate and repeated firing. It ejects its Core Matrix, like a spent shell casing, but a new one is immediately imagined into place. The shots come with repeated shockwaves and blasts of wind, but the ground is empty of debris to show it...

Riva Banari has posed:
Forward. Backward. Inward. Outward. Bottom and top. Everyone can lose but no one can ever stop.

Riva sets foot into desolation. The sight of what spreads before her makes her skin crawl. Nothingness crunches beneath her boots, and her hands tighten as realization traces through memory like a lit fuse, creation flares of emotion. Reality and unreality intertwine and shatter while disbelief and anger flirt in the corner over by the punch bowl. Emotions roll off of her in waves, and Riva turns her gaze over towards Shiori, the presumed perpetrator of this deed.

"She knew." Riva says, frowning. "And it happened anyway."

She doesn't bother wasting time. There's a crackle of lightning as Riva pulls weapons from her Agartha Conduit, settling on the huge crook-headed hammer, the slim, well-forged rapier. She might not be the most impressive, but she does have something. "This is a cruel joke. Certainly not a story anyone would want to read, Shiori. Your selfishness knows no bounds."

There is a whirl as Riva steps in, swinging the Ajoran Mace and letting the augmented eight carry her as she spins around with it, using momentum to drive her forward and slam into that shield with a strike that would shatter a mortal man's arm. For Shiori, here, it probably would just get taken head-on... But that suits her fine.

A moment later, Riva cuts with the rapier, ripping forward instantly with a column dash strike to put herself behind Shiori, twisting to try to drive the thin weapon into Miz-.... Shiori's back. "Maybe you're hoping your work will be more popular after your death like most artists?" She asks, her voice dark and quiet.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Here comes Arthur Lowell.

    The entry was a mix of despair and desperation. The kind of approach where you dread what you'll find on arrival, but can't bear to wait another second to find it. Arthur's footsteps are heavy and uncertain. No floating today. No bluster. No aggression. "All... All gone..." The words come out as whispers. The blank white void stretches out in his vision. There's no way to see past this. It's all gone? All dead? Truly?

    Arthur's teeth grit. His hands tremble. Magic flickers in a way that can't be clear. Black, white. Glitching around his body in uncertain, agitated ways. He's not angry. The feeling is unlike righteous anger, indignant vengefulness, or hateful aggression. It is a sinking, despairing feeling. He can't muster the force of will to strike with rage. You can only do that when you know your world isn't ending. So instead he strikes with grief. He lunges forward, broom in hand. Psyber can handle himself. Arthur focuses on Palora, moving to help Kyra. She needs cover. Needs help, needs distraction.

    "This can't be it, this can't be it, she can't be here, she can't be alive, this isn't the way things are... PALORA! Please! PLEASE! You have to break out of this! You have to tell me, there's some kind of... There's some kind of solution! There's some kind of answer! There's some way to... To save... To keep some of it! To save some of it! There has to be something left! I can't all be gone! She can't be real! It has to have survived, just even a fraction! Some part of Mizuki, please! Some part that isn't... That isn't her! PALORA!!" He cannot bear to speak to Shiori directly. In some sense, maybe he can't bear to focus on her directly. The idea that she exists denies the idea that there's some part of Mizuki here that he can save.

    He focuses on what he can save instead of what he can avenge. The first stage of grief is denial, so he clings to the idea that there's something left. His broom is in his hand, lit by black and white lights that flicker and jitter with unsteady control. His heart drops in his chest while his voice rises in distraught pain. He feels sick. He wants to wake up from a nightmare, but for now, all he can do is interpose himself between Palora and Kyra, swiping his broom with tremendous strength. His hand is on the handle. He's going to execute some great and awful sequence hidden far inside the King Broom, one assumes.

Priscilla has posed:
    It has been a long time since Priscilla has been at a loss for feeling. Not so much bewildered, or even confused, as something implacable deep within her, falling into the pit of her stomach as a heart viscerally should, seems to know what greets her. Without thinking of it, or ever being aware of it, this is something she had always felt could happen, and yet even as she recognizes it the moment she sees it, she doesn't know what to think; how to feel; what she should do. In a way, coming back to this land of imagination, reflection and expression, always filled with infinite possibility, and feeling so lost and adrift inside, is perhaps the sickest way it could be twisted at all. No amount of cheap horror could sink in as this all-pervasive white does; weighing so oppressively on her that she has to wonder as if this is what Apathy had felt all this time.

    But as she has always done, a reject once long ago when she had first met with Mizuki, and a queen now after forming bonds with her, Priscilla displaces those feelings into the future; pushing her complicated thoughts to a place in time where there will be opportunity to reconcile them, because there is a problem, an enemy, and a possible solution. It is how she has survived all this time. She will not fear Mizuki is dead; only assure that Shiori is.

    "Unhumourous. I hath distinct memory of our number deciding it was best to burn thee rather than everything else, unanimously agreed to be of greater worth than anything thou couldst possibly become. It is not thine place to decide upon the opposite. I stood by Sir Lowell's decision then, and more than ever I stand by it now. Gladly, I shalt scatter thine ashes over the oaths I once carved into these Prognostics."

    At first, there is Palora to take care of. She knows these Elites well. They can fight. For the time being, Palora is a present, immediate thing to preserve; the only anchor that seems to exist to this world that she had cared about so deeply. Letting her slip into . . . whatever Shiori wants of her, would be something she would regret for centuries to come were they to fail. She at least has to make the effort; has to try. The Lifehunt Scythe rings into her hand, perhaps as 'glitchy' as it has ever been in this space, but before she joins battle, her eye uses all the power she can put forth to hold Palora, the screeching of reality protesting against the knives she drags across it a small price to help Kyra. As the white mage works her magic, she can perceive the shape of a baleful, orange eye blinking into wakefulness over the corrupted Palora's head, doubling whatever damage she can do to Shiori's work through her spells.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Shiori wields the Crystal Ring Shield against Psyber's initial onslaught. The sword explodes into pieces, many of which bury themselves in Shiori's abdomen and shoulders, but that moment of reprieve - that moment of lowered momentum when he hits her shield - is vital to her. She takes advantage of it, constructing a stasis field on top of his body, dyeing him black-and-white. She then places another field on top of her sword, hastening its movements, as she attempts to unleash a flurry of slashes in the pause. They aren't aimed in any proper sense of the word and have no focus for their attacks; no center.

    "Fate will amend the situation for you," She says through her nigh-silent tempest. "All I was has been erased. I am not long for this world. What you're doing is only a bid for your own satisfaction -- either way, my end is certain." Through it, she continues to smile.
Faruja is next. He summons four meteors -- an appropriate number. After finishing her prior attack and releasing Psyber, assuming that he is still bound, she time-skips backward and holds up a single finger for Palora. Mizuki holds time, fighting Faruja's exertion of will, whilst Palora rushes and cleaves two of the meteors, sending their collateral flying back at the caster and other members of the group. The final two make direct contact, however, searing her body and forcing a truly massive cascade of light to filter from her being. She practically spins back, only barely catching herself in mid-air, holding her wounded right arm. The latter of these is translucent and on the verge of complete disappearance.

    "I have no need to pray for it," She says. "Reason decrees that it will come."

    Shiori teleports behind Palora in a motion reminiscent of 'Castling' in Chess. No sooner has she done so, however, than has Kyra casted Esuna on Palora. Appropriate. Effective? Effective. Color flashes, fighting to constitute itself across Palora's body. With a series of pained, twitching gestures, she turns herself toward Shiori. She swings her scythe with as much strength as she can muster, leaving a gaping, diagonal scar on Shiori's chest. Again, she recoils.

    Shiori draws Aelinos, slashing back at Palora. She loses an arm, but the white reappears. Ultimately, failure. She looks back at Kyra. "You," She greets. "A blind spot. Someone I do not know? Someone I cannot know." She widens her grin. "Pest."

    No sooner has Palora turned to face the group again, though, than have Homura's bullets come to surround her. Without enough time, she cannot react; each of her appendages are pelted by gunfire, turning them all to dust. She is left little more than a corpse as she plummets to the Earth, the white of her body dimming at once to gray.

    The light lasers, likewise, catch Shiori off-guard. The first of them directly hits her right arm, obliterating the tattered remains of her shield -- and her shield arm. Azure flecks scatter in the air as she fights to dodge each of them with jumps through time, though her weave is ultimately broken by one of the explosions. Can't concentrate on so much at once -- her right leg, like her arm, is destroyed. The azure sparks pour from the wound like blood.

    "You," She says. "A part of me hopes that I am the last Witch that you will be forced to fell."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Shiori warps a last time, just in time to land beside Eryl. Her body several yards by one hand clapping, finally throwing her against the pristine ground. She bounces, then slides, then Aelinos ends up spiked into her left knee. She pauses time for several moments to get her bearings before rising again, manually removing the blade from her knee, and righting herself in the air again with her wings.

    "You are strong," She says. "But what good is a hero in a world that has already been lost? Only as much good as a sage in a world that will not listen." Shiori conjures a ball of what appears to be concentrated ink, conjuring several speeding fields to serve as 'gates.' Then she tosses it at him, directly, before turning to face Staren's canon.

    But again, the witch finds herself out of time. The ray of light runs her through. She is bathed in it and burned as though in a demonic fire. When she emerges, she's almost too light of feature to see; her whole body now is almost invisible. She looks like a specter.

    "Your imagination," She says, "is wasted on this world. You should find one more amenable to you. You have that power -- don't you? Or are you simply too stubborn to retreat?"

    Arthur next.

    What little remains of Shiori glides up to Arthur. She presses a finger to his lips. "Silence," She says. "Denial is a sin. A sin which you have indulged too much." All of a sudden, black chains in the same pitch color as the orb she cast at Eryl surround him, binding his body. They tighten around him. A purple-black crystal begins to form around him as Shiori slowly backs away.

    "Delight yourself otherwise in the fantasy of her company," She says. "You have no place in this conflict." The crystal attempts to close around him before vanishing into thin air.

    Shiori has only enough time thereafter to be driven against the ground by Riva's mace. Her body makes an indentation -- a crack -- in the ground as though it were glass. Spidering black lines spread from her point of impact.

    She smiles. "As ever," She says, "you are the first one to understand my motives. You are the only one to recognize me as being so simple. Everyone else -- they prefer to think of me as something human, something more than animal. But I am not. I have never been." She locks eyes with her a moment. "But you understand. Whatever does that portend?"

    In that moment, Shiori's body fades. She simply ceases to be.

    She is dead. Gone.

    But Priscilla still fights -- for Palora. As her body falls to the ground, she is seen by Priscilla's eye. Color returns to her in earnest. Life returns to her eyes. She is bloody, beaten, but not yet gone. She smiles to Priscilla and Kyra.

    "Thanks," She says. "I thought that I was --"

    Her body is again dyed monochrome.

    This time, so is everyone else.

    The world goes dark.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


REWIND


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LOADING STATE (1) - PSYBER . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
Mire of Elegies - <A Lost World> (Location #7)
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    Here is a vast ocean that has been tinted amber by silver and bronze islands that dot its expanse. Like it, the sky has been dyed a sickly gold that glints orange with the fire that dances atop pagodas and ornate, tiled roofs. In the shallows, skeletal appendages can be seen groping futilely toward the sky in attempt to extricate themselves from the brimstone that rests just beneath the top of the water. At intervals, phantasms reminiscent of the ash-silhouettes found after blasts of nuclear fire can be seen lumbering out of the burning buildings, only to collapse into smoke once they've found their way outside. This scene plays out for the group time and time again, seemingly without cease.

    The sea itself is scalding, emitting a smoke that climbs into the sky, joining with a fog-of-war that pervades the entirety of the visible world. A single mountain in the distance, curved downward as though it were a crashing wave, cleaves this mist in twain -- and spiked into its zenith is a sword that emits a primordial, emerald fire. Every several moments does an immense column of that same, blinding green light crash down as though it were a lightningrod, sending this energy flying outwards in a flat circle of rippling spikes. And every time this column is struck a deafening sound echoes throughout the realm, causing the ground to shudder as if in an earthquake, followed shortly by the screams of people whose lives were claimed in its wake.

    A pall of unimaginable grief falls upon all those who walk here, only relenting for the more emotionally formidable. Something about this place seems to remind those present of every failure they have ever suffered, every crippling inadequacy of their character, and every way in which their actions have disadvantaged or harmed others irrevocably. Then, as the feelings grow stronger and stronger, a crimson rain begins to fall: blood. Blood stains the metal of the ground and pools in-between its edges as the water swells, beginning to break against the shores as it, too, is dyed red.


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Contents Exits
Shiori <Reason Wasn't Enough> <#C>    You
Psyber <#U>    Will
Arthur Lowell <We Lost Valentine, Too> <#R>    Never
Riva Banari <I'm Beyond Help> <#S>    Find
Priscilla <I Couldn't Protect You> <#E>    Redemption
Staren <I'll Never Get Through To You>
Eryl Fairfax <Don't End Up Like Me>
Kyra Hyral
Homura Akemi <We Couldn't Save Her>
Faruja

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Amid the growing storm, a whirlpool opens in the center of a circle formed by seven of the islets. From it emerges a single 'head,' more aptly described as a scale-clad goblet clutching a rust-colored gem. It faces the group, flesh opening like a lotus around the stone and undulating to add yet another piercing screech to the already ungodly panoply plaguing the region. Once it does, no fewer than twenty identical heads rise from all sections of the water around a veritable mountain of the creature's coiled, serpentine body. At once they lunge, two or more toward every member of the group, with intent to kill. At a closer range, teeth can be seen between the flaps of the heads and the stones, the latter of which emit heat enough to melt metal.

    After the initial onslaught, another column of green light strikes the sword embedded in the mountain. A fetid haze reverberates around the point of impact until all the energy gathers within the various heads of the beast, allowing those few that did not lunge immediately to join in another chorus of grating, metallic cries: sound enough to shatter glass pervades the area as the fight wages, attempting to force thoughts of regret, anxiety, and abject fear into all present. At best, it would be a momentary fear that this fight might be lost; at worst, a mental breakdown so severe as to prevent one from fighting outright for a spell.

    No-one, however, would receive quite so concentrated a burst of this energy as Psyber. His mind is at once flooded with images he cannot dispel. Madoka becoming a witch; the final conversation with Shiori; Nathan's attempt to murder Elliana; Nathan's near death during the fight with the parasite; Priscilla being wounded by Kalameet; the argument he had with Nathan about whether Elliana should be trusted. Though all these thoughts are only precursor to what follows: The Scar of the Redeemer opens back into a gash on his hand, reverting again into The Scar of the World-Slayer. At once, an electric spike seems to drill itself into his skull. A concentrated pulse of the cries of all Annu's dead come rushing back as perhaps they haven't been heard for years in his mind. It is at this point that he hears sickened whispers that tell of this world's true nature, and reveal the name of the entity that they're now fighting:








=====================


THE SHAJEM OF REGRET


=====================

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur is wrapped in chain. Wrapped in crystal. Steel and shimmering. The blackness keeps his hands from trembling. The crystal keeps his tears from flowing. "There has to be something left, there has to be something left of the one I know, she has to be..." His voice turns to a tense whisper and then to nothing at all.

    He is absent when things resume. Crystal wrapped around chain, and chain lashed to the world itself. Where he is, isn't clear. What is clear is the gentle aura of flickering, glitchy stars and light that make their presence seen just at the edge of the storm. Lightning has struck the mountain enough. Its business is finished. The power turns elsewhere. The storm itself twists and turns. The lances of light like electricity crash and crack angrily, churning the earth. The group will contend now with bristling electricity. The wind tears against them, destabilizing, throwing blood-red rain into the eyes. The storm is a brutal one, and the stars beyond it are nearly invisible. Burning buildings collapse in repeat with tremendous gravitational force, ejecting stars and dust from their forms, filling the air with ash and risking the group with the harsh, slamming impacts of structures.

Faruja (152) has posed:
By the time Faruja can even think again he finds himself amidst snapping teeth that a last minute teleport /barely/ keeps him from being lunch. Snap! Bobbing from a Float spell, head in a hand, he tries to ignore the feelings of all those he's failed over the years, and all those he's sentenced to death, rightly or wrongly. It doesn't work.

Which might explain why the he's broadsided by a burst of electricity, send zooming down to land on an islet. By the time he's back up, the Burmecian is bleeding, gasping, and scowling.

"...Your nightmares are /horrible/, Mizuki!" He complains, only to start casting once more. First, Haste spells for the group at large, and then he starts individually slowing each head. Time for the time mage to do some debuffs.

Staren has posed:
    Staren doesn't know if killing Shiori will help, if it's even /possible/. He only knows that he's faced with an opponent /now/, and they won't be free to work on doing whatever they /can/ do, for Mizuki, for this place, until she is dealt with.

    Shiori's comments that his imagination is wasted here elicit only a cold glare.

--

    He should have been able to do something. He was a fool... Not that Mizuki wasn't competent, but everyone has blind spots another eye can help with. He should have been monitoring this world. Maybe he could have caught Shiori earlier, intervened...

    Staren shakes his head and looks around at their new surroundings. No time to think of the past now. They must move forward...

    Another monster is before them. Again, Staren doesn't know if it needs to die, but it's /in their way/ and clearly intends them harm. He summons his armor and the cannon...

    ...But nothing comes. He's just a squishy being of mortal flesh, barely protected. He twists a dial concealed in the design of his belt buckle, and a light washes over him, covering him in armor similar to but not quite the same -- but this emergency armor's ability to protect is limited. Staren draws his laser pistol and just starts repeatedly shooting at the heads, rapidly swapping through elements -- fire, electricity, air, ice, water, earth, holy, unholy -- looking for some sort of weakness. But he's not the heavy hitter here. He almost never is. There are people full of power. People like Psyber. And when push comes to shove, if that power is what's needed, that's power Staren will never have...

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Eryl was right to be aware of Shiori's capacity for movement, but it didn't exactly help him. He offers no words in response to the... /savage/. Trying his best to brush off her accusation of his uselessness. But a reflection of Mizuki still has some of her traits. And one of those is a way of speaking that makes the words stick in your mind.

    He raises his arms to block the accelerated attack, the ink splashing across his personage, some of it slipping through to splash across his face in a striking vertical mark. It stains his clothes, his skin, blinding him long enough for the action to pass.

    And for it all to come to an end.

==========

    Hell. That's the only thing that comes to mind when the diplomat processes his environment. 'I'm in Hell.'

    The screaming rocks him to his core, but he cannot afford to use his hands to block it out. Trembling, he ejects the now-empty clips from the blade of his hands and loads new ones extracted from within his cloak, regarding the monstrosity before him with wide eyes.

    In his mind, every failure in his life marches through, a parade of people let down, actions that could have been better, things that he missed in hindsight. More recent events on the Multiversal stage also run through, any event he was involved in that ended less-than-optimally weighing his shoulders down.

    And yet, he raises his arms, almost through instinct and muscle memory at this point. He is SAVIOUR-001 of the ReGenesis Corporation. To fight on in the face of hopelessness was groomed into his nature. Energy floods into his right leg from his KOAN Core, powering the coilgun in the lower leg far beyond its operational recommendation. And then, he kicks with it, his shoe exploding once his ankle points directly at the point where one of the many heads joins with the body. A grenade streaks through the air with so narrow a trajectory it might as well be a laser. But it has mass and impacts with massively accelerated force, before exploding. At this speed, the explosion is basically a drop in the bucket.

    And deep in the pools of his mind, at a level of computation below his conscious thought:

7J&HU@ - FC5D$?! - ^ZJ -M&Q- 9

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "Doubtful. Life is a carousel, revolving eternally around the same pillar. Until I break and fall off, I don't bet on anything being the last time," Homura answers Shiori, before the world turns grey and changes.

    Their new setup is hostile. Immediatly Homura feels the effects gripping against her Soul Gem. The bright purple slowly drains, black and sometimes barely rainbow bubbles forming in the purple diamond over her hand. She steels herself, as best as she ever has been able to against despair. For every terrible deed, a good deed remembered and a promise she still needs to fulfill.

    For every failure to save the person she loves, a bitter reminder the new world has saved everyone but her instead, and that might be good enough.

    For each time she's had to kill a friend and bloody her hands, a reminder it wasn't out of malice but out of compassion and for a greater goal.

    For each monster put down, a reminder countless lives get to continue thanks to her. Her mind was never one to wonder whether it was right to kill one to save a hundred, and so she can rest completely certain it was fine.

    Regrets. She tries not to have any. There's one, always there, that eats her, but it isn't that beast's right to call upon it.

    In support of Psyber, Homura produces Tyrfing, and the blade slams into the ground by him, waiting to be picked up. If nothing else, the purple lightning bolt of a holy sword is a reminder of the good he's done in at least one world and for two people in particular. She can't pretend to understand the pain the Scar inflicts on him, but she can try helping.

    "I'll need it back after, so don't die before you can return it."

    Homura's wings sprout out. The angelic pink and purple wings, sporting traces of black corruption like cracks in reality, carry the magical girl sky-ward into the storm. Her bow still out, she begins raining pink rays of light upon the area-- they streak, intercepting burning buildings to blast them into harmless rubble before they can hit anyone.

    The trade-off is that she falls pray to a lightning bolt or five, but remains vigilant in her use of the purifying arrows to give everyone else, especially Psyber, the cover needed to keep fighting without concern for the environment. If only she could do something about the blood rain and lightning, too, but she'll have to be content with intercepting chunks of structures.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva didn't think it would be so simple.

But killing is simple. As many of her close friends can attest, killing is the easy part. Living with it... That's different. Her expression is stony, a mask from which those eyes look down, showing that even in her last moments, Shiori can draw blood of a sort. What /does/ it mean?

But then darkness comes, and everything changes around them.

Hell. There is no better term for the vista that spreads before the Templar. Already, despair claws at her, the highly emotional woman trembling. Perhaps the envrionment is particularly dangerous to her, as that terrible sensation of having failed someone quite dear to her is already seething under her mind, bubbling up from her chest and that unreasoning darkness at the base of the mind. Already, she sags against an ash-shadowed wall, her hand clutching against the scorchmark burned into the wall.

The screaming, the overwhelming crash of the storm roiling around them barely allows her to shudder before the building being to crumble down upon her.

The Templar looks up, staring numbly at the falling debris. It will crush her. It will dash her against the pavement and obliterate her in a visceral way. And she can barely gain the presence of mind to move.

But the assault of the horrific Shajem, the beast, causes Riva to move. the snapping, terrible heads force an instinctive reaction as Homura buys her enough time. Flaring with the augmented speed of the Haste spell from Faruja and with arrows shearing through falling rocks around her, it gives her the ability to turn and lash out with the Ajoran Mace, hooking into the eldritch horror. This is something that she, ironically, can understand. That she can deal with. That she had been primed, even conditioned to address. Again, the Mace is ironically used as a mobility option, pulling Riva up onto the back of the head before the rapier flares with a spike of red-gold energy, the Templar driving it down like a needle toward the back of the creature's head. The actions happen almost without conscious thought, Riva currently trying to wrestle with her mind mostly paralyzed by contact with an entity that savages the Templar daily in its own way.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
Kyra smiles, silently thinking the thanks for the assist for both Arthur and Priscilla. She cannot vocalize them, of course, because white magic notoriously requires vocal components to work, such as the quiet words murmured by the white mage as she works.

    Seeing her friends stand up and help her fills her with determination. She can see the Esuna working too, much to her delight, because removing foreign status effects was always rather hit or miss amongst the multiverse. Once the spell is finished, she calls, "LOOK OUT!" to Palora as Shiori appears behind her, cringing as she loses an arm, then seems to fall, until Priscilla intervenes with her power. "Yes, well." Kyra sneers at Shiori, "I don't think we've met, no. Ever."

    "Not while we're around." she starts to respond to Palora. The sudden interruption stops her words dead cold and she starts to reach out for her.

    Then the world goes black.

    What emerges is a nightmare that Kyra does not understand-some small mercy. Since she doesn't comprehend the enormity of what she is seeing, the significance is lost upon her and thus so is some of the fear. Not all, for a giant, angry hydra-looking monster is still a giant angry hydra-looking monster, shajem or not. Normally she'd start buffing, but she can tell that Faruja is already hard at work doing just that. Instead, she reaches for the matter manipulator on the back of her left hand, mentally considering the stock she has along with her-which is /quite/ a bit of stock now thanks to the very selfsame device. But something this large and aggressive called for some bigger ordinances than usual. More than her regular tiny napalm potions that rarely did any damage to other Elites or monsters like this one.

    No, she reaches for several black flasks in the way back of her inventory, the contents so dark that they absorb the light around it. It is made with a rare and dangerous substance difficult to obtain on her world (and many others as Kyra learned): dark matter.

    She fires the potions at high velocity out of the matter manipulator, aiming not at the heads looming closest to her but the main, center hub of the shajem. As she fires off two from a distance, she is blown off her feet by a bolt of lightning. The Ramuhan white mage picks herself back up again and runs, now making herself a moving target as she fires off three more Antimatter Bombs.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "So this is your final play, then?" Psyber asks, his sword shattering her shield and the half-angel pressing his assault. Of course, he's caught in a stasis field a moment later, suspended for that moment. He's grown accustomed to jumps in reality, time, and the state of the world. When one has Homura as a daughter, one simply begins to learn that the world will occasionally record skip. It doesn't interrupt his speech.

    "How juvenile. Free will did not accomodate what you wished, so the solution was to wipe it all out to spite those with dissenting viewpoints," He narrows his eyes and frowns. The slashes across his body from her assault are there. He's bleeding from multiple points along his body. But he has killed Shiori. Or so he thinks, for that brief moment. And then the world changes.

    Psyber slams his sword into the ground and falls to a knee. Already, the drain of wielding it is showing, one of his arms wreathed in burns from the green flames. He forces himself to his feet and then drops back down again, crying out in agony as his scar goes through two separate regressions, becoming first a Sun Eclipsed by a Moon and then its original incarnation.

    For all the progress Psyber has made in the years since that self-shaping incident, he was not prepared to be put back to a wound as fresh as the day it opened. His Hand of the Redeemer has been extinguished by the scar's regression. He's robbed of his ability to stand for a pretty heavy period of time, left on his knees, staring off into space blankly.

    So many faces swamp his mind. Madoka as a Witch - He Thought He Fixed That. Shiori - He Thought He Fixed That. Nathan Attempting to Murder Elliana - He Thought He Fixed That. Nathan's Near Death At the Parasite - He Thought He Fixed That. Priscilla's Wounds from Kalameet - He Thought He Fixed That.

    From next to him, a sword slams into the ground. He looks sideways and, like a lightning bolt cuts the night sky, it separates his thoughts. He had fixed Madoka. He had fixed Nathan. He HAD fixed Priscilla. He HAD fixed Elliana. All that was left... was to fix this. One way or another. For better or worse.

    The Sun-Slayer Greatsword vanishes as he grabs Tyrfing. Einherjar appears in his hands a moment later. Wielding two copies of the same sword, one related to holy and justice, the other related to time and judgment, gives him confidence. The support of Homura gives him clarity.

    "I will. Do not die either, because the weapon will not be able to be returned to a corpse."

    With both blades in hand, he charges forward. He brings both swords up and then spins them, charging in towards the Shajem of Regret. As Homura covers his advance, reliable towards protecting his charges as he knows she can be, he brings the two swords up in a diagonal motion. Holy lightning, raw and cutting, splits the air in front of him in a massive X that swings in towards the monster.

    "Revelation... Sixteen... Eighteen... And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder; and there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since man came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty."

    After his upward diagonal slashes, he then twirls the blades and brings them straight down. Rather than the lightning of the storm, they produce their own holy bolts. A massive column of raw holy electricity that descends from the sky to smite the Shajem.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla has contended enough with this world's malleable sense of time, and fought alongside Mizuki's projection of the same, to get an idea of when it is being abused like this. Though that reflexive knowledge lets her hit the ground running in terms of both awareness and readiness, bolstered by the willpower and focus of the woman who had battled and won against the twisted Ariamis for a thousand years, and then all of Lordran itself, it doesn't help the situation she is deposited in by Shiori's near-omnipotent whims. If only her antipathy for her sordid ravings were capable of overturning the Quiet World's bending to her mad, spiteful whims, she'd have more of an edge to work with. Instead, no sooner has she apparently saved Palora than the muse of Mizuki's Id disappears, or maybe it's the other way around. Once again, she is made to shuffle the imaginary girl from her mind, placed on the bottom of her deck of worries to fluidly adapt to the new hand of adversity. Shiori is still here. Shiori still lives. The hunt persists. She will continue to fight.

    With aforementioned mental agility, Priscilla weaves in and out of the striking Shajem's heads as if she had seen them coming seconds before, an untouchable spectre pursued by the white and silver trails of her dress, hair and tail in her wake, painting her wild motions across the rocks. A streak of luminous moonlight joins her as the abstract lightning cracks across the sky, the soul-sword in her hand clashing with the celestial energies and splitting them into so much reality shrapnel. From the arc of her blade surges the root of magic, splitting the air and rending apart what further heads get in her way. No time to stop and think. No time to stop at all. Whether she knows what this place, this creature, or what it all means or not, she charges headlong onwards; if nothing else, a visible icon of resolute focus. "Despair of whatever it is thou hope to accomplish. Thou were no match for us this time last, thou shalt be no greater again." She speaks only between frenetic steps and swings, refusing to contemplate she might lose at all, no matter what the serpents might try to convince her of otherwise.

    Is it strength, or willful ignorance? Does the difference, right here and now, matter? There is a possibility far from zero that the longer they take, the more danger Mizuki is in. She will believe that the harder she fights, the closer she will come to that girl, or else what will she believe at all? If she can kill the keystone to all of this, if nothing else, she will not look back on this day and hate for feeling as if she hadn't put forth her all; not think of what she could have done if only.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    The buildings split wide, incinerating or ejecting their payloads of horrible ashen monsters. Inside, flickering lights, like shatter pixels. The interior within reminds one of the shattering of a mirror, or perhaps, the shattering of a screen. When the buildings split and their heavy weight fails to fall on the group, what's ejected from within is a spray of glass and sparks and ash like blood and gore. The hardware seems old. Aged. Cathode ray and lightning bolts.

    Haste is enough to beat it. To dodge the lightning, to tear past the storm. It stabilizes, and ensures that none are blown away. The buildings blown apart are harmless in their shattered state, even if the pagodas flicker and flutter in ruined television view. The storm is blown through and the medium that sustains it is torn instead. Its destruction isn't part of its design, so the fabric that sustains the design itself gave way.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The heads continue to thrash, but Faruja's magic manages to slow them enough for Staren's shots to make contact. All the elements pelt them, twofold apiece, from which he is able to derive that they do not all respond equally to the elements. The heads on the left seemed to respond to Fire, Air, Holy, Electricity -- he can't catalogue them all fast enough. The heads on the right responded to their polar opposites. In response to him, they scream at once. They raise to the sky, allowing themselves to be struck by the lightning of Arthur's storm. Then they bear down on the Earth at once, each of them unleashing attacks akin to railgun fire at Faruja and Staren alike. One of the heads seems to have been felled by the lightning, however.

    Shortly thereafter, one of the heads reels back, facing Psyber. The gem embedded in it glows red, pulsing energy that foretells of only death, destruction -- but Riva is timely. Whilst the archangel is kept immobile by the weight of his own history, Riva leaps above the Shajem. When she falls back to Earth, she cracks the gem outright. Shards fall into the beast's maw, eliciting an outpouring of blood as it falls back into the ocean from whence it came. Riva is given barely enough time to make an exit before she is burned alive.

    The two heads that had been directly adjacent Riva at the time of her attack snap at her, attempting to drag her into the depths with them. Perhaps only due to Kyra's intervention, they fail. Two black hole mixtures make contact at their necks, opening holes that cleave them from the larger body. Bloody, they descend into the water. The remaining heads take notice, snapping at her. They coordinate, one of them lunging in front of her to knock her over whilst another attempts to rip off one of her legs outright. Luckily, one of the mixtures falls close enough -- and just far enough away -- to destroy that head as well. Though she may be off-balance, she is safe. The same can not be said of two more heads, nearer to the back, that likewise collapse into the sea.

    Then, toward the furthest reaches of the mire, Priscilla strikes. The heads are none the wiser with her approach -- they cannot see her, nor sense her, nor have any bearing on her emotions. She is beyond them. They have only enough time when she appears over a quartet of them to see the visage of their reaper in earnest, and though each of them gather energy in their crystals for a counterattack, they have not the time nor the strength to deny her. All in a row, they are cleaved by lifehunt. Their scales slough off as they seem to age and dry, each of them crumbling to ash and dispersing in the water.

    Then, Psyber.

    Psyber survives the weight of his own guilt. That evident, there is nothing else that this beast could hope to do to him. He knows that. He rushes with full confidence in himself and his allies, cleaving a cross that rends the sky. There is another crack of lightning to complement that clash of his swords. It sails toward the Shajem.

    And it makes contact. The world itself shudders. For an instant, everyone present would see television static -- then feel nauseous. Time skips to a point where Indra's Arrow has already fallen from heaven, and the main body of the shajem is vaporized. the rest of the heads, now without a host to anchor them, sink. Static appears and reappears. A vast white gap lies in the area where Psyber first cut the 'X', like a tear in the page of a book.

    Regret is no more.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
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REWIND


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LOADING STATE (2) - RIVA . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
The Labyrinth - <A Lost World> (Location #8)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The Labyrinth, an impregnable maze whose original method of construction has been lost to time, just as those unfortunate souls who are thrown into its interminable wind of terracotta and stone. The minotaur, a creature with the legs of a man and the head of a beast, serves as its sole warden, an axe mighty enough to cleave the sky itself slung around its broad shoulders. It travels swiftly, never dissuaded by fatigue, the hard stamp of its feet against the infinite tiled floor being the only warning of its approach; even that is rarely enough to give prisoners the time that would be necessary to hide, or escape, from its boundless ferocity.

    The perimeter of this godsforsaken place, where the group would first find themselves, is easy to mistake for a fortress. Walls rise to meet with an impossibly high, cavelike ceiling that blots out any trace of the sky, preventing one from scaling or otherwise looking out over the walls for guidance. Likewise, the only light in the area is provided by braziers and torches set upon the walls, and when these stances fail to function as they should the entire realm collapses into pitch nothingness. Still, it may be comparable to a fortress in one sense -- this labyrinth, after all, seems as though it were just as much intended to keep would-be intruders out as it is to keep its occupants in.

    On that note, the innermost sector of the maze is entirely different from the rest aesthetically. It is brightly lit with electric sconces and lamps, its floor adorned with plush carpets, ornate marble tables, and cushioned chairs. Satin curtains cascade from the walls alongside exquisite paintings - Mona Lisa, Nighthawks, The Persistence of Memory, Starry Night, others - all of them arranged around a canvas in the center of the room. It looks in earnest less like an inmate's cell and more like a princess's dressing room.

    Yet the world outside is alltogether unchanged by this. The minotaur still stalks, the walls stand firm to beat back any and all who would seek the enter. If it is a castle indeed, it is doubtless that which was meant to hold Rapunzel captive.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Mizuki <#I>    Why
Crimson Shade <He looks so sad...> <#C>    Can't
Gregarious Shade <Come on, be natural!><#A>    Everyone
Riva Banari <#R>    Just
Frigid Shade <#U>    Get
Well-Intentioned Shade <#S>    Along?
Gallant Shade <Most Dapper Cyborg Ever>
Kyra Hyral <Something To Hold On To>
Dour Shade
Priestly Shade

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    A half-played game of chess lays atop a lone marble pedestal, and a raven-haired girl who had by all appearances been playing by herself flicks over one of the black pieces, a knight adorned with two wings, made out to look like a Pegasus. She smiles as it clicks against the board on its fall, fluttering to her feet from a crouched position, skipping over to the canvas where sits the room's only other occupant. That woman, one with fiery hair, a candid glint in her eyes, and splatters of color strewn across her face, seems to just have finished painting a landscape portrait. It depicts a placid river, purple-hued in the gloom of the evening, its form diluted only slightly by the impressionistic inclination of its style.

    "Whatcha painting?" Asks the former, peering over the woman's shoulder, "is it another landscape?" Another moment's glance confirms her suspicion, to which the younger girl inflates her cheeks and folds her arms. "You should really try painting people some time, too! I could even draw in the lines first, if you wanted; it's been a long time since we last did a collaboration!" At the thought, she silently claps her hands together, holding them at level with chest,the brightest plausible look echoing in her eyes.

    This young lady looks at once familiar to a point of monotony and nostalgic to a degree of melancholy. The ambivalent feelings clash with every moment that the pair share the same room.

    Elsewhere, away, the minotaur strikes the peak of its axe into the narrow entrance of the labyrinth. Smoke billows from its nostrils and it stands firm as the stone walls that flank it, its eyes trained unflinching on the group of malcontents who would threaten the occupants. Assuming their approach, the noble beast hefts its axe again, striking the ground with all the force held in its arms. Boulders and bundles of clay hail from the ceiling thereafter, guided by an unseen, unfelt wind toward the locations of each and every interloper.

    In time, the younger girl meanders back to the chessboard, moving a second, robotic knight and a queen in the aspect of an eye out of its socket to the frontlines.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    The maze is a twisted, awful thing. For a challenge that draws on the power of a Mage of Space, it's become something terrible. It doesn't hold in its walls any sort of traps, any sort of additional foes, any sort of scheming violence. What it holds is, put simply, a twisted web of passages that are near impossible to navigate. It's not just their complexity, it's the principles of their design. 'Islands' of twisted wall ensure that holding one's hand on a wall of choice will not let one who enters navigate by brute force. Torches go on and off to ensure nothing ever marks one place particularly, such that the lighting remains ever-changing. The design is entirely dynamic, shifting between high-density forks and long, seemingly unending halls eternally, and features enough false leads exploiting one's vision of the walls that it is clearly designed for that sort of cruelty.

    For the astute, they may note that its design flows in a familiar eight-pronged whorl, with the room at its very center. The floors and walls are erratically marked with black or white accordingly. It is the only hint there is to see here.

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Eryl's shot did not amount to much against such a creature, it seems. But his companions more than make up for it, felling it with a flurry of attacks he can scarcely comprehend. It's fine, it's over. He goes to congratulate everyone, to pat Psyber on the shoulder and reassure him...

==========

    The Gallant Shade stands before a great maze, the guardian of the place bearing down on he and his compatriots. "AH!" he exclaims as the sudden sense of being present here, sidestepping to avoid the swing. Looking up, he sees the boulders tumbling down. Looking forward, he sees the beast. There is a way to solve both these problems.

    With augmented strength, he sprints towards the minotaur, evading the boulders as he goes. If it is engineered as he assumes, the minotaur's position is a safe spot. And while that swing was certainly impressive, he will need time to bring the axe into position for another.

    So he charges, to take advantage of this opening. With a hiss, two blades erupt from his forearms, over his hands, the edges becoming bright red from friction as they vibrate. Once close, he swings with a furious precision, aiming to slash the creature's legs, to topple him!

    And within his mind, that process continues, that ink stain down the front of his face spreading.

4*HS!D - NJSBB?>& - @AX - O+A - 7

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

Faruja (152) has posed:
Teleportation only goes so far, as does haste. Railgun-like fire is far faster than Faruja can react, and his body is pelted, opening up horrible wounds that he'll definitely need Kyra's services for. Later, thankfully. Faruja is a stubborn little rat if nothing else, surviving on pure vinegar, vinegar, and lots of praying.

Also a lot of luck involved in things. Such as when he's punted out away from death, into a minotaur's vicinity. Just as dangerous, but there's only one of them. The labyrinth will have to be dealt with later.

The mage immediately begins to cast, grey whisps forming, and then a powerful burst of gravity tries to crush the minotaur right into the ground.

"Away, beast! You stand in the path of the holy!" At least Faruja hasn't lost his penchant for self righteousness.

Priscilla has posed:
    This world shuddering is nothing new. It is a feeling of visceral victory for Priscilla to perceive its shaking under the collective might, or perhaps the collective will, of those who care for Mizuki so, as it did twice before. That instant of static marks her instant of surging hope, and both end in abrupt synchronization. "More of this?" she spits out, her voice rising that one decibel, threatening to rise further in a way that would normally be characteristic of a building impassioned speech, but for her portends only something dangerous. "I feel them, Shiori. Thou cannot hide them from me. I knoweth this game and I knoweth what thou playest. Give up with this sad mockery of another trial of those venerable tomes."

    Anyone can tell a labyrinth is built to hide something, and innately, Priscilla can just barely sense what, as she always has in this world's ever strange and convoluted narrative. What bars her way -- /their/ way -- is this time, walls a minotaur. The Shajem, what it is, and what it all means, shuffles to the bottom of the deck. Draw two cards. Another beast. Another obstacle. Kill and discard. Mizuki is somewhere in the pile. Everything else is chaff.

    Arthur's departure is a mystery, but Priscilla is starting to get the idea, even as she blitzes for the massive monster as she has done so many times before. A flash of searing distortion obliterates her personal boulder, exercising more power than she should in the name of expediency, refusing to be slowed down. A streak of white, black and silver dives between the maze guardian's legs alongside the Gallant Shade, tearing through flesh and soul like a guillotine, followed by a wave of roaring magical fire to force the opening, toppling it from either side. All she has to go on is the presence of those two girls, so distant that she would normally wonder if she is imagining the feeling that she recognizes them, but it's enough to charge headlong into that maze, displaying her quiet faith in that always indirect way that she will be followed. "Split not. Falter not. Thou art all greater than this. I hath /seen/ that thou art greater than this."

Staren has posed:
    Staren's forcefield appears, a translucent amber sphere of force. The physical objects they spit, like railgun slugs, rapidly batter it down, turning it into a flickering, half-shattered mess, the remaining pieces spreading out thinly and shifting to the front to replace sections that have been shot out. "Shit!" Staren's energy wings buzz silently as he searches for someone tankier to take cover behind. He doesn't have to catologue which head is weak to what, fortunately -- his support AI keeps track of that for him.

    But that ceases to matter, as the beats is dealt with, and reality changes again...

--

    They're outside a fortress guarded by The Minotaur. Staren has barely begun to glance around before the minotaur starts bringing chunks of the world's ceiling down before he even gets a chance to ask 'So, I don't suppose you're willing to talk to us?'. Sensors in his armor help him to dodge even when he's not looking up, fortunately.

    Staren sighs. "Fight after fight, huh? What is this, some kind of boss rush? Who's /doing/ this? Shiori? Mizuki? Sophia? Are any of you out there?"

    He doesn't just stand there shouting, though. Or dodge there shouting. No, he fires at the minotaur too, it's the obvious thing. Still relying on his laser pistol -- it can run on resonance indefinately, and though he carries a small armory of spare weapons, they all have limited ammo and he has no idea how un-limited this boss rush may be!

    If they can actually slay or at least KO the beast, the labyrinth itself is something Staren's mapping software... makes not exactly /easy/, but at least keeps him, and anyone who stays with him, from getting lost.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Unfortunately, for this round, the act of charging forward took more out of Psyber than he normally uses. As Priscilla, a resident of Dark Souls, can attest: Power Stancing two weapons is an exhausting undertaking. The half-angel is going to need a bit to rest and recover. So while the others are charging forward, Psyber can only shuffle forward.

    As he walks and tries to catch his breath, he does take the time to answer Staren, "Shiori. She's using the world to probe our traumas and bring them out, I wager. If she's able to exploit my Scar, it's difficult to determine what she is NOT capable of in the current Tabula Rasa of this world."

    During this brief respite, Psyber reaches into his inside coat pocket and takes out a silver flask, which he takes a long drink from.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
Funny, Kyra thought that would be it. Now that Psyber has gotten himself back together, mended the awful wound on his head, they can get back to the world they were trying to save....right? But...

    Deposited outside of the maze, Kyra is only confused for a few seconds, her mind immediately latching onto the presence of an enemy-the minotaur! She's actually fought one before-though on her native world. But if what she learned from that one held true here...

    Her first act is to spread her hands out, concentrate her white magic on everyone here, and summon the strength needed from her deep pools of magic particles. "SHELLGA!" she shouts at the culmination of her murmured chant. Green flickers surround everybody here, bolstering their physical defenses. "Hang in there, everyone! Its only one minotaur!"

    And only one minotaur can only focus on one target unless they let it continue pounding the walls to rain down more stones on them-stones which Kyra aptly dodges. As she does, she rushes forward, not interested in facing the minotaur herself but for braving the maze beyond.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    The Shajem of Regret is beaten and the storm cracks. Homura doesn't get out of it unscathed, but getting electrocuted a couple of times won't down her so quickly. She's more worried about the morale damage she suffered-- well, the build up of grief in her soul. Coupled with the heavy use of her powers, one could see her clock ticking down more and more rapidly.

    Then the world changes again; a maze impossibly tall, a minotaur guarding it. The prize must, obviously, be in the maze. If nothing else, she's uniquely suited to exploring a maze and bypassing encounters.

    The Dour Shade grabs ahold of Kyra's hand, once she's done casting her spell, perhaps without warning. Time halts, colors draining even more from the already discolored world, sounds dying and drawing on forever at the same time. The impact of blows with the minotaur stretched on for hours if not days as a clock hand struggles to ever advance to the next second.

    So long as Kyra does not let go, they have an infinite (or at least, until Homura runs out of fuel, so less infinite and more 'long enough') amount of time to explore the labyrinth and reach the center, without costing the party any. And hopefully, the defenses of the labyrinth can't touch them like this, either.

    The cost is a darkening Soul Gem, but what's new?

    At least the White Mage is familiar with this, having experienced it once before.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    It's smart, to explore in a frozen time. Homura will see the marks in the walls where a strange power over space likely creates intense, disorienting shifts in location, moving bits of the maze around. The pair will also find that the walls are infested with crystal and chain. Rarely it bars the way, but more often, it's simply jutting out of the walls in a more chaotic way. It's a strange, uncertain sort of thing, dangerous to those in most a hurry.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Priscilla, should she make it, would find similar, though more viscerally. But in a sense, it's possible that her route, too, is functional. Very little physical space can fight the rule of this world, the rule of conceptual action deciding direction and progress. However much power this maze might draw on, it might not be able to fight that, if that one law remains in the collapsing, dying world.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The Minotaur is a creature of legendary might and resilience, but it is not swift -- mentally or otherwise. Eryl clips at the beast's legs in-between the swings of its axe, both of the attack piercing bone, and the latter of them cleaving its right hoof entirely. It staggers to remain upright, but in the moment Faruja's gravity bears down on it: it clatters to the ground in that instant, one of its horns snapping off under the weight of the Minotaur's own bodymass, leaving in facedown against the terracotta. In that moment, it is utterly defenseless.

    Priscilla, therefore, need no longer struggle to topple the beast, and the course of her strikes is changed. The streaks of silver instead slash cleanly down - and through - the sentinel's abdomen, eliciting a resounding scream. The shock of the wound is just enough to force it back to its one functioning hoof. It leans against the wall before tearing a chunk of clay, jabbing it into its own wound to function as an impromptu, spare leg. With renewed fervor it thrusts itself forward, just in time to be engulfed in flame. It is blinded by its own pain, allowing Priscilla, and likely others, passage. Even after the fire abates, Staren's gunfire strikes one of its eyes, preventing it for another series of moments from reacting appropriately.

    It roars. Its fury reaches a fever pitch as Kyra casts Shellga, and instinctively, it rushes her. It raises its hammer high, nearly to the ceiling, before bringing it down upon her...

    ... but when the hammer makes contact with the ground, she is gone. Homura's gesture might well have saved her life, though no-one can ever be certain. Using the pauses in time and the opening created by Eryl, Priscilla, Staren, and Faruja, they are allowed swift passage.

    Though things immediately become more difficult once they are inside the maze properly...

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
Knowing this, Kyra does not let go of Homura's hand, holding on tightly, intent on not getting lost in the annals of time as they explore the labyrinth thoroughly. She tries marking the way, spilling what looks to be glowstick fluid to try and indicate the ways they've been before. "Crystals and chains. Do those have any special meaning to Mizuki? Or that Shiori person?" Kyra asks her time-slowing companion.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    The automap may not quite work, considering the alterations being made to the world around, found by Homura and Kyra. Oddly, what it crafts is an image. As he progresses, it fills in. It's sketchy, crafted out of lines drawn for walls and floors. A heavy sphere, sequestered in some uncertain space, with chains emerging from it, lit by wavering lines past them. A familiar eight-prong whirl makes up the center of the sphere. He, as well, sees the chains and crystal infesting the walls, but since he's not the one in stopped time, he can also see them gently shifting, humming with energy and churning like muscle.

Staren has posed:
    "Ha!" Staren shouts as he shoots out an eye. That was lucky! He runs past with the others, and once they're away from the minotaur, dismisses his armor and pulls up his left sleeve. The combination device on his arm projects a little holographic map, and he has a few spare devices on him that can also display it if needed. As long as the maze /doesn't move/, the software can compensate for things like lighting issues and perspective tricks.

Priscilla has posed:
    "She is out there." Priscilla lets echo back to Staren, even as she faces forward, though is she sure because she knows, or sure because she is determined to be? "Whatever this witch is capable of, whatever she wouldst wish upon us, is irrelevant. Thou knowest this, Psyber. How many times hath we been tested at our cores by the Numbers? To what limits didst her Apathy push us? More dearly than this to be certain. If the Scar defeats thee not, than I shalt be likewise immovable, and so shalt every one of us here." The Dour Shade takes away Kyra, but the White Mage has done her work, and her guide is least of all who, she would expect to fail her where time and dead ends are their obstacle.

    She doesn't have quite that benefit, but if there is anything, /anything/ at all that Priscilla is good at, it is inexorably moving forward; that tireless, singular drive that had taken her to every corner of her world in the unsung days and weeks between the Union's great battle's to save it. If the path will align in any way to that same relentless pursuance that had served her across thousands of miles and through thousands of enemies, she will force it to. It brings to mind something that Nathan had once speculated to her in the depths of the Abyss; that it was a place that if you were to walk with a purpose and something in mind, you would find it no matter which direction you started in. She holds that in mind, or in the continued metaphorical sense, she plays it from her hand, face up on the table; the next in the sequence of the best, and only cards she can think to draw.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "I'm not sure. I thought I saw some earlier too...?" It was pretty chaotic. Around the time Arthur vanished? In the storm? She couldn't be sure. "Probably best we don't touch it," she settles on, although she's definitely as curious as Kyra. The two of them are definitely going to send Staren data on the maze once they reach the center (chronologically this has already happened??? time powers are weird to pose) to make everyone else's journey safer and faster.

    "What about everyone else? It's not relevant to me... not to Psyber, I don't think." Maybe it's not symbolic of anything and it's just chains and crystals in a maze? No, that'd be too easy.

    Finding the center might answer the questions they have.

Staren has posed:
    It /is/ immediately clear to Staren what Homura did, but he doesn't comment on it beyond 'Thanks! This way, guys!' And turning to lead the group with him down the most direct mapped route to the center.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Both swords are gripped in the Crimson Shade's hands as he walks alongside Priscilla. He can't quite keep up with her rush, as momentarily tired as he is, "I'm not saying we're up against an unbeatable opponent, you're right," He says to Priscilla, marching forward as he does so.

    He sighs and really wants a smoke at that moment, "But that we should be prepared for our greatest weaknesses to come to play in the worst ways. And steel ourselves to face that in this place."

    As he walks along, he slashes one side of the wall with his sword, leaving a deep mark in the maze just for his own reference if they walk in circles.

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Between himself, Priscilla, Faruja, and Staren, the minotaur has no more fight left in it. Eryl is not one to linger over a foe so utterly beaten, and the questionable reality of this place means he is in no hurry to show it cruel mercy.

    So, he just charges on, chasing after Priscilla as best he can. "Priscilla! I understand your rush, but this place is dangerous. We should try and stick together as best we can!" Kyra and Homura had already ruined that, but the majority can still cling together to avoid separation.

0J&*O0 - G^!NIQZ# - F35 - H@R - S

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

1@<H5S - J7M>R7RJ - C72 - !?8 - L

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

    Eryl frowns. Something is niggling at him. The ink spreads, covering half his face now.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
     The Minotaur's hammer lifts.

    Another spurt of air is unleashed from its nostrils.

    It unleashes a cry that can be heard throughout the labyrinth, even by Homura and Kyra. It is only muffled in the central room, where the occupants may still feel a slight quiver in the ground.

    It charges Psyber, and does not stop. It careens directly through a wall, crashing through to catch up to Eryl. It immediately tries a swing at him and Priscilla together before sliding against another wall, decimating it as well.

    The maze has begun to look more open.

Riva Banari has posed:
Hell strikes, and the world crashes down around them. Riva moved almost automatically, and it's only with the sudden cracking of the gem that she seems to realize what she just did. "Oh. I..." Uncertainty clouds her features, paralyzing her for half a second before she turns, leaping away from the core of the hellish entity a moment before she would be annihilated. She can't allow herself to die here. She can't afford to be sloppy.

Her leap takes her tumbling around the beast's heads, whom almost take her with them. As she cries out, flirting with destruction, Kyra saves her.

She always had her back, she reflects, as she falls towards the blood water... and the world resets once more...

There's a long, final stroke on the landscape as she finishes her work, and Riva looks back at the familiar girl. Her eyes dance for a moment as she instinctively tries to place her, details clashing and fuzzing as she replies almost automatically, "Definately too long! Maybe we'll have to start sometime soon."

She turns, though, setting down the brush for the moment as she leans in towards the chessboard. "Still playing games with yourself? Is this a new set of pieces?" Riva says, slipping over to look over the board and the girl, poking at the pieces curiously. "I always wondered what the point of a game is if you don't have an opponent."

She tilts her head. "Or did you find a new way to play?"

Something bugs her. How did she even get here? How long has she been here?

What was she even doing?

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "I'm not playing against myself," The girl replies with a vibrant smile. She jiggles the robot piece before moving to a rook. She flings it across the board and into a wall at the extreme of the room.

    A wall would appear in front of Homura and Kyra. Then behind them.

    She tries to box them in.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
"I really cannot think of anyone that crystal-focused or chain-focused here." Kyra remarks before quickly adding, "Homura! Quick, change direction, the maze is closing in on us!" Of course, there was always Plan Kyra in this case, which would involved some detonated shape charges from the redheaded girl.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    The path that Homura -- that is, Homura of her subjective future, and Homura of the objective past -- charted, was odd. It was not a path charted in walls. Instead, it was a path charted in chains. Priscilla will find the same. While the rooms may shift, while the walls may adjust when one's not looking, and while the overall construction of the area may alter, the way to find one's path through here lies in the chain.

    Once Staren's automapping is set to focus on the chains, and once Priscilla's intuitive understanding of this world is tuned to that direction, it's easy to mark the path forward.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Hey," Says the girl, standing, taking her eyes off of the chess game again. "Don't you ever get tired of this? Don't you ever want to stop?" She paces toward Riva, knife held to her back. "Why do you bother painting when you know it will only be destroyed eventually? Why do you bother creating when people are only going to destroy what you've made with their idiocy? It's like cleaning a house -- in time, it'll only become filthy again. What motivates you, Riva? What's keeping you from accepting a heaven where things can last forever, and will everyone will treat you and your imagination with kindness?"

    She pulls her knife on Riva, attempting to jab her in the stomach.

    "I should never have given you a choice."

    Reality cracks.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


PAUSE


 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!












LOADING MEMORY (1) . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The group had just arrived in the Quiet World.

Something had always felt wrong, there: like physical sensations were somehow incomplete, like their bodies were put into stasis moments before entry, like the whole of existence there was a dream. The sensation of cold that comes with water's touch seemed sometimes delayed, as did the sense of pain when wounds were inflicted. The same went for the transmission of sound, which was never appropriately muffled; sight, wherein everything seemed to be viewed through a sepia-rose aperture that made life a painting; taste, that never seemed to capture the distinctive flavors that people were accustomed to. It was like a sense of numbness pervaded the world itself, or a callous had been grown in the minds of those who entered.

    All of that was worse on this day. Sensations were delayed enough to instill a sense of vertigo reminiscent of inebriation; kinesthesis was weakened to a point where one could not be sure whether they were standing; television static occasionally broke the appearance of buildings and the ground. One might've guessed before that this world was terminally ill, but only now would they see it in a genuine relapse: a phase were it spat out blood, and convulsed so violently that one could not be sure it would last through that day.

    This made even the simple walk from the central square to the elevator of the Clock Tower a challenge, albeit not an insurmountable one. Palora quickly rushed the group inside, then up as quickly as she could muster. She forced the elevator to fly at speeds exceeding that which one might have believed possible to reach the top floor, Mizuki's impromptu 'throne.'

    They arrived to the familiar sight of the zenith's blood red carpet and four mighty portraits, each of the latter now blank and emptied of picture. Mizuki's head was visible over her crimson sofa, but she did not turn to greet them; she only lifted on hand, limply, to beckon them.

    Palora broke the gate on the elevator with her scythe before it could open on its own, immediately running after her mother. The others were invited to follow, each at their own pace.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


REWIND


<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<












LOADING STATE (3) - PRISCILLA . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
Celestial Sea - <A Lost World> (Location #5)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Leviathan.

    Shadows dance upon the surface of water that can be treaded as though it were solid ground, all of them in distinct shapes. Arthur, Priscilla, Frederica, and others too faded to make out -- they converse as Mizuki's shadow, furthest forward, waves Aelinos like a conductor's baton. The stars continually sweep and swirl with her gestures, creating beauteous constellations in the nighttime sky. The water is perfectly still, and the entire world perfectly silent; the shades make no sound whatsoever as this scene repeats endlessly around all who view it.

    In the distance can be seen the isles of Leviathan, just as they were seen long ago. Then beneath the surface of the ocean can be seen the Waterway, glimmering, the ethereal lanterns of cerulean that had defined its streets still illuminating it in the furthest depths of the ocean.

    Yet if one were to look to the ground, they would find things less beautiful, and less calm. The longer one studies their own image in the surface of the water, the more it seems to twist and corrupt. For some, this amounts to a rapid-aging reflection that culminates in the erosion of their flesh and the crumbling of their bones; for others, it contorts their features in more unique ways. Were they to look, Riva would see her features hardening, losing their innocence and zeal, and Homura would see her flesh unraveling into pulsing black spindles as a miniature image of Homulily buds in the water. Only whence they look away do these visions abate. Best not to look too long -- elsewise they may overspread reality, too.

    Then, once the visitors are able to look away from their own reflections, they may chance upon an altered view of the sky. Those stars that had made it so beautiful before seem to have fled entirely, leaving the world above a gaping, sanguine void. Likewise, the happy shades have ceased their conversation, and their crisper features have melted into a billowing smoke that swirls soon into complete indistinction.

    And then the ocean grows dark.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Mizuki <Dream Witch> <#9>    The Mystical Waterway
Arthur Lowell <God Tier> <#2>    The World
Priscilla <Mortal Guise>
Medusa Gorgon
Frederica
Chandra Naalar

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The previously translucent reflections in the water gradually become opaque. The Mystical Waterway grows hazier and hazier in the distance until it is invisible. In concert, rains begin to fall and stir the water -- but before the perfect mirror wrought by the ocean can be destroyed completely, another, larger image begins to form. At first, it is too large to see: all that can be made out of the image is a vast expanse of silver, as though milk or liquid mercury were spreading there. Soon, though, it becomes clearer. Crystals begin to spike out of the water, many of them beneath the gathered members of the group. Then a deafening screech and a simultaneous crack of thunder break the silence as, from beneath the surface, something pools. A mountain of liquid coagulates until it is breached by the gaping maw of Seath the Scaleless, his wings scything a horrific gash across what remains of the evening sky.

    The ensuing tidalwave scatters the group, save for one. Seath attempts to grab Priscilla, and if he is successful, he tosses her on to the ground beside the space where his body emerges from the water. Thereafter a cage of crystals forms around her, unbreakable from the inside. Worse, Priscilla would feel something unsettling from the place where Seath had first grabbed hold of her: scales. Scales are spreading across her body, and she can feel the proportions of her mortal guise reverting back to their standard against her whims. The crystalline cage shifts alongside her, too, hinting that Seath had foreknowledge that this - whatever /this/ is - would take place.

    Then Seath turns back to the rest of the group, slamming both his gargantuan palms against the surface of the water. More waves reverberate from the impact points as countless more crystals spear from the ground, making the earth impossible to navigate for long moments at a time. He jealousy guards Priscilla, and it seems that anything less than a seamlessly concerted effort will be unable to extricate her unless Seath himself is felled.

    Whilst in her confines, Priscilla hears the whispers of a voice disturbingly like Mizuki's:



"I can free you."



"You need only agree to join me in my heaven... a heaven like to that which I have shown you before."



"I can free you, reverse these changes, make you whole... human, if you wish... you need only say the words..."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber is bracing to be charged and gored by a minotaur, only to find that such attack never comes. Instead, the world around him goes through another pause, rewind, and reset. He is loathe to imagine how many more times this will be happening tonight. He guesses between four and six depending on if Arthur is still existant.

    He's at a new scene for him, but one that features an old enemy. He remembers his first encounters with a dragon of Priscilla's world. He remembers a lot of things, though the most annoying being that his encounter with Seath had ended in his death due to that strange crystallization effect.

    He's also still power-stancing Tyrfing and Einherjar, so there's that. He remembers that Gwyn had defeated the Dragons originally with lightning. He hoped that, in this strange and alien manifestation of the moments in time, that theory would still hold true. Swinging the swords in his hands, he sends two arcs of holy lightning towards the Scaleless dragon.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Crystals. Crystals and, soon, chains. They pulse like a circulatory system, churn like meat and muscle. From within the crystal, chain breaks free, lashing out at any that approach. They bristle with sharp danger, threatening to spear through anyone that approaches while the chains tangle and lash and obstruct, while still trying to emerge below them and impale them on thin, shining lances. They crackle and snap as the talk within the cage progresses, and threaten to lacerate and brutalize any that approach. Even Homura will find that whatever unearthly power is fueling this horrid mass is adapting. Stopping time still finds awful tangles and thorny protrusions blocking the way, meant to halt even instant travel, adding hazards to a frozen world.

    The opaque, faded form of Arthur himself is chained and encased in the crystal, deep in the reflection of the pool. But the shade himself keeps conversing, as if nothing was happening.

Staren has posed:
--

    Staren's reflection is similar to Riva's. Unaging but hardening, expression growing old and cold. As if it looks at the world and instead of saying 'I must fix it' says 'Bah, humbug.' Staren glares at it for a moment or two, then looks away.

    Seath. "Priscilla!" Crystals. He summons his emergency protoabstractum armor again and takes flight -- but not all of them can fly. "Any ideas?!" he shouts down to the others, while taking a cue from Psyber and firing lightning-aspected lasers at Seath.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva watches the way the girl flings the pieces. "You shouldn't do that, you're going to break the pieces." She says, reaching out to pick up a few of them and slide them forward.

But then the girl asks questions, and memory fractures, her mind slamming back into focus. "You, why... It's..."

Her eyes fasten upon the girl, and she grimaces.

As she formulates her response, that knive punches into her gut, and she folds forward over against the girl. The hot flash of cold steel cutting into her, the flow of crimson beginning to pour over the floor, causes her to stagger and clutch against the girl.

"Without choice, eternity is as hollow as your soul." Riva spits back, her hands fastening around the girl's neck as she uses her strength to efficiently twist and try to snap her neck before she collapses.

The world changes again.

Leviathan. A twisted reflection of the water. Riva staggers, holding her stomach with one hand. If she's still wounded, she's trying to not show it. One things' for sure, wounded or not, blood stains her clothing.

Before that can be answered, however, the waters split with waves of crystal, and Riva hurls herself backwards on the Waterway, the cascades of gleaming death barely mising her. She looks up at the sight of Seath, and gasps. "Well, this is more straightforward..." She mutters.

She looks up, looking around at the others and then back to the waves of crystal. With a groan, Riva begins hoisting the Ajoran Mace, trying to smash a path through the crystals. Chains lash at her, cutting her arms and legs, but she endures for the moment, even as she feels the crawling sensations of the living material trying to thwart her. "Dammit... Arthur, where /are/ you?" She asks, trying to ignore the terrible sight of that dark reflection from the water.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    'Change direction' she says. They're walking, it's not like turning around is going to help al that much! And true enough a second wall boxes them in. Homura frowns, and with her empty hand produces a brick of C4.

    "I was always one for backup plans, anyway."

    Then the world changes. They won't need to blow up any walls, thankfully. On the other hand, this world isn't much friendlier. In the water, there is no Homura; a skeleton wears her outfit, filled with red spider lilies. Some people have seen this before. Nox. Medusa. Himei might have; she couldn't recall clearly. It isn't a sight she stares at for too long.

    The Puella Magi halts behind Psyber, ignoring the waters-- but soon Seath makes himself known. Is this what this is? A best hits collection of people's sturdiest foes? It couldn't JUST be that, could it...?

    And a brief pulse of time magic informs her the chains and crystals are here too, and even more invasive than before. What IS it with those things? They've been in every vision so far. 'Vision'. Probably not an accurate word.

    As Seath scatters the party, Homura shielding herself with an idle magic shield and Kyra's still-active Shellga, the magical girl opts to let the others handle Seath. She wasn't there for that-- she doesn't know what he can do, what he's weak to. Others are more suited to it.

    Instead she aims for the crystals and chains. There's a shape within she can't discern. Riva is trying to reach it. They're attacking, besides, and that needs handled.

    She produces her bow again, angling it towards the central crystal. Pink and purple light gathers between her fingers, after it forms a string too, and an arrow of light is produced when she pulls the string back. Unlike the previous shots, which were wise, unfocused beams, this arrow keeps its shape, unstable with magical energy. Hope, and purification. Mostly the former.

    She fires the arrow for the crystal. It should be able to help clear Riva a straight path through, not to mention damage them significantly. Downside, if the crystals' chains are going to focus on anyone next, it's probably going to be her, and she's becoming increasingly weary. Not to mention the crystals have adapted past her magic.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla's mad rush breaks only momentarily for the change in elevator, and the abrupt sight of water ahead of her, registering with her reflexes before her conscious awareness. It then only slows for the sight ahead of her, shooting sharply back to memories of when Mizuki had first endeared her to this place and all that could be possible within it. As much heartache as it brings her to see it again, knowing that it has long since perished due to Shiori's self-centered spiral of destruction, even then, she can't afford to be slowed down. To the waters she goes, even as the waters darken, the sky fades, and the rains fall, uncertain as to whether the shades were only to lure her forward, or whether Shiori had failed to pull the curtains quite in time when corrupting this happy memory. It hardly matters.

    What does, is what confronts her. It was easy to tell the others to stand strong when the battles weren't hers, but to see this all over again hits her somewhere deep inside her confidence, prying at wounds she had long stitched closed with the resolute murder of her abominable father, reopened but once with the fitful nightmare that had plagued her whilst immersed in the Book of Heaven. That moment of hesitation is all it takes for the twisted dragon to clutch hold of her, crying out as she is hurled back to earth with a sharp blossom of pain radiating where her body slams against the forming crystal. The look in her eyes as she stands again is wild and tremulous, but if she must kill this nightmare she had thought dispelled yet another time to get Mizuki back, she will do it all over. There is no image of Seath that could possibly earn her deference any longer, and to renege on what she had told to herself as she killed him would destroy her.

    "Thou clutch jealous hold of these tired old tethers, hoping that I shalt be fooled by the same twice, and then think to offer me freedom from thineself?!" Her fingers tear away at the hideous scales like a rash, ripping them off in bloody handfuls as she grasps hold of her dagger. "End thineself now and save me the effort! Nothing thou couldst possibly make shouldst be considered worthy to exist! Everything that thou hast ever touched has been nothing greater than worthless and brought nothing other than misery! I will hath thine serpent's tongue!" She's gotten louder again. Her blade stabs into the crystal bars, working deeper and deeper into the embodiment of Seath's sickness. There's only so much she can do, but she'd die before showing weakness here and now.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Flying above is one way to go. Staren gets high above the lashing, aggressive chains bound by gravity, bound by earth. The sky itself seems to turn against him though. The stargazing void is ever more a void, an almost suffocating danger. While Staren might have a clear space, he's beyond the boundary, so to speak. Stars at the edge of his vision herald the danger of this place, of suffocating on the airless night sky. The comfort of this world is collapsing.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Riva's charge through the crystal puts her in the direct line of danger. Dangerous chunks of crystal and heavy lines of chain create an awful barrier that bring pain each time she reaches past the boundaries of her progress. Homura tears a massive hole in the crystaline briar, giving Riva a path, but the crystals constantly work to close it, in part or in whole. Her path is far from barred, but it's also far from safe.

Staren has posed:
    Staren's emergency armor isn't much protection against attacks (although it is /some/), but what it /is/ great at helping with is environmental dangers. Staren's immediately switched over to internal air, but this presents a problem for any /others/ that can fly. Staren radios a warning, since there's no air to carry it:

    <<There's no air up here!>>

    They'll need another plan.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Psyber's arcs of lightning find providence in Seath's bare body. Where Seath might be a stronger influence emotionally, for Priscilla, he lacks the strength and armored hide of Kalameet: he is weak to their strikes, as his name would suggest, and especially to those holy bolts loosed by Psyber. They are those same flashes of light and fire that felled the ancient ones, and he lacks any proper ward against them. They strike true, leaving two flaming gashes across his chest and searing his right wing. The latter folds into the rest of his body, recoiling from the pain, as he shoots another volley of crystals at Psyber from his palm. He lifts the opposite hand, attempting to drive the existing crystals up, and to summon new ones from beneath the water.

    He's doing everything he can to keep them away from himself and Priscilla.

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Something happens, and Eryl is not in the maze anymore. Instead, he is being washed away, grand waves sweeping him up and shoving him here and there. However, in such rough conditions, Eryl's build actually services him. Being much heavier than he appears, he manages to hold his ground, looking out across the twisted water, catching glimpses of himself falling apart in brief moments of clear seas.

    As the great scaleless beast snatches up Priscilla, his mind snaps into action. Seath was - is - a strong opponent, but there are some here who were there when he was first defeated. Best to leave him to them. "I'll get Priscilla!" he yells, voice carrying as far as it can in spite of the churning and roaring.

    And then he breaks into a sprint and dives straight into the water. Using his own non-buoyant weight, he allows himself to sink, bubble streaming from the corners of his mouth. And yet, that ink is not washing off in the slightest. In fact, it's spreading even further.

    Once he hits the bottom, he starts walking. The churning of the water hits his eardrums, allowing him to wade towards the source. Seath, and Priscilla by extension. But the chains, the chains lash and writhe. Eryl tries to block, using his limbs to deflect without getting cut. But underwater, his movements are slowed, several gashes opening in his torso and face, clothes opening up to reveal the ink spread across the whole surface.

    And still, he presses on. Towards the crystal prison, 'Ungraspables' unsheathed once more. They make an unearthly noise, even underwater as they grind against the crystal, trying to break through. But as he is, he's wide open to the <span class=" bold_bg_x fg_w ++ hains.

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Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
"I approve of this backup plan." Kyra says, eyeing the block of C4 with admiration.

    SOMETIME LATER...

    Kyra's washed away from Homura by the sudden tidal wave, which hurts because she does not have a Coral Ring equipped today. As she sputters and struggles to stand, Kyra spits out water. As her eyes clear, she sees that horrifying-looking dragon crouching around the crystal cage containing Priscilla. The ground shakes again and Kyra swerves, murmuring until she has a Float spell cast on herself, enabling her to easily avoid most of the water or the giant jutting crystals. It's a crazy obstacle course, complete with pushing off of crystals to get farther, until she nears close enough to float onto the crystal prison of Priscilla.

    "STOP!" Kyra calls out, "Don't you see? She doesn't need you! She doesn't want to be like this! Leave her alone and let her live her own life!"

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Now, the focus for Staren is flight. If the void won't stop him, the crystals will try. Their translucent forms shift and grow upwards, trying to interpose, but the lightning tears through them. It might cut some of the damage, but it can't cut it all.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    The chains intercept at Eryl, trying to bunch up and tangle. They try, less to damage, and more to slow. To distract, in a way. And in another way, to create conduits along his form, something for that strage ink to grow and slide over... It's not there to hurt him, at least, not directly. But it is doing its damndest to stop him.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Covered in that magic-resistant shield from Kyra's Shellga earlier, Psyber holds his ground against the volley of crystals coming in at him. In fact, his instinct is to take a step to the side and bring up both blades, moving directly in front of Homura and absorbing any retribution that might come her way.

    Most of the half-angels actions are meant to sponge damage and prevent Homura from darkening her soul gem any more than she already has for now.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva continues to try to fight against the seemingly interminable waves of crystal that cut back into her, slashing her and pushing her away. As Homura clears a path, Riva looks up at it, seeing how it is immediately trying to close back up. It's a Risk to push forward, she could be caught in the middle of a forest of hellish accursed crystal...

But it's a risk she has to take. Without more than a moment's hesitation, Riva throws herself into that opening, and she lunges forth, trying to strike for the main crystal even as her flesh begins to shred under the onslaught, gambling on a single powerful shot for that crystal so that msub the fundamental problem with the situation can be resolved.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Seath looms over Priscilla's cage. He seems to lock eyes with Kyra a moment when she comes to her defense, at which point he almost entirely freezes. Kyra and Priscilla are, for lack of better words, taken out of the bounds of time and space; there, an apparition of Shiori appears again.

    She smiles, but the expression is somehow... sad. It doesn't befit the impression of her that either Priscilla or Kyra would've garnered up to this point. "No," She says, "I suppose she doesn't. You've all shown me that over and over again. You would prefer a life of real danger than simulated perfection."

    "I've wondered why," She says, "but I think I know. You're possessed. You're possessed by the will of the world. You're possessed by something infectious and malign that absolutely refuses to cede reality to your whims. Like a parent, it believes that its progeny cannot and should not seek beyond the parameters it has set forth. Is that not so?"

    "Justify it to me," She continues. "Are you masochists? Is that why? Do you enjoy pain? You do not seem to enjoy it. I have given you heaven -- and you denied me. Now, I am giving you hell. Is hell temptation enough to hold you here?"

    "I don't understand," She says.

    "Perhaps I will never understand."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
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REWIND


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LOADING STATE (4) - STAREN . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
RETRO-GRADE! - <A LOST WORLD> (FPS: 60)
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    The world here materializes more gradually than it has previously, assembling itself pixel by pixel, block by block. This place - as well as anything and any /one/ in it - is rendered in the 16bit graphics one might expect from a SNES console. It may be somewhat apropos, then, that the party first finds itself in village of buildings with thatched roofs and simple stone walls, whose entirety is cast in the shadow of an imposing steeple in the center of the town.

    The church to whom this bell tower belongs stands sentinel in the orange-gold light of dusk, its doors thrown open in welcome to any and all. Inside, one can see a stretching, opulent maroon rug laced with what could only be authentic gold, pews lined symmetrically on both sides facing platinum-plated altar. In short, its extravagance is plain to see in its furnishings and in the exquisite craft of the idols that line its interior. This is to say nothing of the might of its walls, each of them built from silvering marble that is no doubt as resilient as it is beautiful.

    That said, it is certainly the only building in the immediate vicinity which could be used effectively as shelter from the billowing flames and clouds of soot that sweep continually through the area. Still, as houses burn to ash, the people who once occupied them continue to kneel and bend their foreheads to the ground in worship of some unseen deity. Though they could easily save themselves by taking refuge in the church, they refuse; in the most extreme cases the people continue in their fervent prayers even as their homes literally burn around them, their bodies catch on fire, and their faces are buried in the debris of their decimated homes.

    Further on the horizon, off the cliff upon which the town is situated, one could faintly glimpse the one responsible for all this devastation: A metallic sphere with long, spindly rods for locomotion and a blood-colored gyroscope for sight. At intervals, this 'creature' unleashes a brilliant beam in the same color as its eye, raining death upon distant lands as it slowly makes its way closer, closer, closer still to this place, here.


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Contents Exits
SHIORI <WITCH Lv. ??> <#1>    FIRST CHURCH OF CHAOS
PSYBER <KNIGHT Lv. 99> <#2>    TOWN CENTRE
ARTHUR LOWELL <MAGE Lv. 99> <#3>    FAR PLAINS
RIVA BANARI <BARD Lv. 99> <#4>    RUINS
PRISCILLA <MANAKETE Lv. 99>
STAREN <PROTAGONIST Lv. -->
ERYL FAIRFAX <PALADIN Lv. 99>
KYRA HYRAL <PAIN TRAIN Lv. 99>
HOMURA AKEMI <WITCH(?) Lv. 99>
FARUJA <PRIEST Lv. 99>

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    From the open doors of the cathedral, a younger man, nevertheless with silvering hair and amber eyes, emerges. True to the grandeur of the church's design, he wears beautifully woven robes laced to the cuffs with finest silk and silver, and wields a scepter tipped with a diamond massive enough that it could compare to the skull of an infant child. He studies the group a moment once he has made his way outside, pixels shifting back in a monotonous, twitching pattern, before he finally speaks.


"WELCOME, HEROES."


"IT IS GOOD THAT YOU HAVE COME."


"THE DARK GOD, WIRELESS, IS WREAKING HAVOC!"


"ONLY BEINGS FROM ANOTHER WORLD CAN STOP HIM, NOW."


"PLEASE! YOU ARE OUR ONLY HOPE!"


    Afterward, he turns to re-enter the cathedral, but suddenly pivots back around. An exclamation point appears over his head and his eyes lock with Staren's. There is a long ensuing silence before the deacon speaks again, and when he does it is in a distinctly somber, small voi<span style="color:e:


cxterm11"> "I FEEL A DARK AURA FROM YOU, MY CHILD." </span>


"YOU BRING TO MIND THE SHAMAN WHOM FIRST SUMMONED THE DARK GOD."


"HE WAS A GENTLE SOUL, BUT HE BORE A CURSE."


"A CURSE THAT DOOMED HIM TO NEVER PREVAIL WHEN TRYING TO SAVE SOMETHING OF CONSEQUENCE TO HIM."


"YOU WOULD BE WISE TO LEAVE THIS PLACE, IF YOU CARE FOR THE PEOPLE HERE."


"YOUR PRESENCE ALONE IS POISON."


"I AM SORRY."


    He retreats into the cathedral at last. The doors remain open in the event that someone should like to call after him.

    In all likelihood, though, he would not be their most immediate concern. Throughout the course of their conversation, the so-called Dark God Wireless has steadily made his way back to their locale. It is visible just over the face of the cliff now, and if the party does not do something, it will likely unleash another wave of death upon the people here.

Staren has posed:
--

    Staren holds a hand to his head. The world looks weird. What...

    After a moment, he's adjusted. His sprite is based on his outfit from Alfheim Online, clothing that wouldn't look out of place in the sort of world this land draws its aesthetic from. He looks back and forth, at the people staying outside. "What..." He shakes one's shoulder, "Hey, what are you doing?! Are you just an NPC, or... no, it doesn't matter! Get out of here!"

    His ears flick as he turns to the questgiver, and starts to approach him. He stops, blinking, as their eyes meet. "N-no... it's not my fault!" He shouts angrily. "Other heroes should have stepped up! The /Union/ should have stepped up, to save Rewire, before he became--" he shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. And there's no such curse. A curse is a magical effect -- you can fight it, break it, overcome it! I'm just /weak/, but I'll keep trying and getting stronger!" He kneels on the ground and starts digging through his bag. There must be /something/ he can use. Railguns and magic... He doesn't /use/ personal-scale railguns, and all his magic has either been lost or replaced by protoabstractum. He draws forth an ordinary-seeming pistol with a glowing magazine, sets it aside. Then draws forth the RAISER rifle and some vials containing crystals, looking back and forth between them. "No... there must be a way, I just need more time..."

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    From underwater to standing before a grand cathedral. Eryl blinks, his armblade poised to swing again, only a few patches of skin poking out from under the ink now thanks to the chains. He breathes, having been holding it all that time underwater, and retracts the 'Ungraspables.'

    He doesn't say anything in response to the deacon's request, nor to the follow-up warning he issues to Staren. By this point, he's far too tired to muster words. Instead, he reloads, putting a grenade into his leg and placing a hand on the cuts now smothered by ink.

    Wireless is here. It's time.

    Eryl points to him in the distance, as if issuing a challenge. 'One Hand Clapping' overcharges once more, as Eryl lets off shots travelling so fast the air ignites behind him. Against such a great target, he goes for the eyes, and hopes the Occult blessing on his weapon systems works on dark gods also.

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Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
"Is it /not/ the nature of the human spirit to want to be free?" Kyra says suddenly once she gets past the initial reality whiplash. Her time is improving, following the three flash-throughs of alternate realities that they have felt so far. "Doesn't everyone with free will have some desire inside them to grow? To evolve? Perhaps we're all a little masochistic, deep down inside, because the pain reminds us that we are alive."

    Kyra pulls a syringe from within her hoodie and offers it to Shiori. "Have you ever felt pain before...?"

    The world changes again into the pixelated mess of a FPS. Or is it an RPG? MMORPG? MMOFPS?

    Nevermind that. Kyra gapes as the robed man calls Staren literal /poison/. "...ouch. Well, clearly, then it should be /on him/ to stop the dark god directly, shouldn't it...?" the white mage suggests before she turns her eyes to encroaching monster. She stares up at it for a long time before frowning. "Who was it..." even as she speaks, she alternates words with speech and her chant, summoning up white magic to her palms, summoning up the /strongest/ white magic she can apply here. Holy. "Who was it that /you/ failed to save?"

Riva Banari has posed:
Oh God everything is pain. Riva can't even yell a response back before everything changes.

And now they're in a retro game? Riva looks around, holding her head for a moment as the Quest is laid out before them. "Hell, huh. It's... Not that simple." Riva replies, muttering. "Why does everyone want to find simple solutions to complex problems?" There's a beat, and then a sigh, a guilty look flashing across her face as she looks over to Psyber. Yeah. Yeah.

She looks down at her poofy outfit with big feathered hat, and then at the encroaching Dark Lord. "Looks like you're out of time, Staren." Riva says, unlimbering her rapier and pointing. "Staren. You need to make a choice. Now. there's no more time for research. There's no time for second choices. Get moving. You can work out the results after the fact."

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    With cover from Psyber, Homura continues delivering pink arrows of light to aid Riva, sniping at crystals and chains as able. She's thankful the half-angel is playing his part of guardian angel, because compared to him she's made of tissue paper, especially when stopping time isn't an option to dodge.

    Luckily, the world changes again before they're overwhelmed. This time it's more primitive, but still dark. No, not dark. -On fire-. Homura isn't sure if this is worse or better.

    She needs a moment to catch her breath. Her Soul Gem is fine, at least; or, well, halfway down. Considering Psyber is present, and Kyra for healing, that's 'fine' as far as she's concerned.

    "If... there's one of these worlds for each of us, I hate to say it, but she's going to wear us down until we don't have any energy left to deal with her. We don't even know if it'll stop there. She could produce a world for every major face within Mizuki's world."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    'One Hand Clapping' streams toward Wireless. One of the shots makes impact clean with one of the bolts holding the legs, sending one of them flying down to the ground below in a cloud of dense smoke. One is destroyed when Wireless finishes charging its laser and fires, but it explodes so near to his position that much of the shrapnel collides with Wireless' frame anyway. The final one strikes the front-right side, opening a vulnerable point for others to capitalize on.

    The laser shot, however, is not deterred; it knifes through the steeple of the church, sending the belltower flying down. The shadow collects over Staren, Riva, Kyra, and Homura. Before it becomes their tomb, however, Kyra manages to let off a cast of holy. Most of the beams of light only bounce off of the surface of Wireless' metal, but several of them - mercifully - hit in the vulnerability created by Eryl. A magical fire starts inside of his body, momentarily disrupting his sensors. This causes the laser to cut the steeple again, leaving Kyra and Homura out of harm's way. Staren and Riva, however, are still threatened by its fall.

    Thereafter, the laser briefly deactivates. Steam rises from Wireless' eye for a time as it presumably 'recharges.'

    The townspeople cease praying, looking to the group instead.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber's pretty banged up, but regenerating. He lets out a tired sigh and adjusts his stance a bit. He looks over at Homura and nods his head, "You're right, she could. Do you think you can watch the pattern of the world resets and try to damage the process every time she does it?

    Psyber spins the two swords in his hands, putting one into a reverse grip and the other into a normal grip, "Lowell's gone, which is also worrying, but not unexpected. This world seems to bring out the particular worst in his habits and tendencies," Psyber notes in a detached and professional tone, best known for being the way he copes with excess stress nowadays.

    "We need to figure out something that will prevent this from just being an eternal sequence of events until, as you said, we wear down and she wins."

Priscilla has posed:
    "As is usual, thine twisted obsessions fall so far from their purpose as to be lamentable! Thou shalt never hath an answer to this asinine question thou ask thineself over and over again, expecting a different outcome, because as long as thou attempteth to find it, thou shalt endlessly compel others to deprive thee of it! Art thou so simple of mind that it is impossible for thee to see that perhaps it is not heaven or hell that we find so detestable, but /thineself/?! I wouldst gladly forfeit thine tiresome little dream worlds if only to deprive thee of the satisfaction, so great and deep is my contempt for thine lamentably childish philosophy!" The crystal cracks, splinters, shatters, and then they are somewhere else entirely.

    This is Staren's past. That much is abundantly clear. The fabled Wireless is something even she's heard of, as agonized and hostile the tones in which Staren infrequently brings it up with. Another worthless illusion. Discard the last. Draw a new one. Don't even consider how many there are in the deck. Use the best one there is. It's too late to reshuffle. Barely having the time to let the awful feeling of that crawling growth all over her skin dissipate, Priscilla moves to Staren rather than the robotic 'god', outright kicking his bag out of the way. "And I wouldst expecteth better than thee, Sir Staren. Our dear companion hangs upon the line here. Our enemy stalls for time, over and over again. Art thou truly so obsessed with this old wound that thou wouldst hesitate here in order to fix a pale mockery of what was already broken so long ago? This is exactly what the witch counts upon. Sir Psyber didst not giveth into his regret. Lady Riva not into her ennui. I not into mine despair. Thou wouldst shame us all to giveth into thine disappointment here. Aim and fire boldly, as thou always hath whence needed."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Before the previous illusion fades, Shiori's 'ghost' widens her eyes and cants her head faintly to one side. Once that illusion has faded, for the first time, Shiori's voice hounds Priscilla, leaving her with a telepathic message that only relays itself later:

    "I had never considered that, because I am not a person. I am only a shadow -- a reflection of someone else's misgivings. And that considered, I wonder..."

    "Just who is it that you hate?"

Staren has posed:
    "That's kind of a long list!" Staren replies to Kyra's questions. "I'm trying to figure out what can HURT it! It's too late to save him." he replies to Riva and Priscilla, "But I'll make do-- shit, MOVE!" He picks up his stuff -- well, he tries to. The RAISER rifle is freaking heavy outside of the extradimensional bag. He glances up, then yanks the bag away and RUNS out from under the collapsing steeple, further boosting his speed with flight. "/I/ don't have his weakness, but /you/ do! Everyone who has magic, blast him! Everyone else, slam him with kinetics as hard as you can! Railguns are good!"

    He's not cursed, just weak.

    Not his fault

    But his are the only actions he can control

    If this mockery of Wireless kills them, what did he need to do differently...?

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
"Is this thing made from you, Staren? Because it really sounds like it! And if that's the case, I'm pretty sure some serious MAGIC should do the job!" Kyra fires back, then fires /again/, in the literal sense, queuing up another blast of magic, guiding and aiming it at the chinks. Of course, Staren a hundred percent confirms this weakness moments later. Good.

    She's a bit more strategic in aiming the point blast of Holy this time too, more deliberately targeting the openings that Eryl created.

    "Have you ever forgiven yourself for all that Staren? Do you still carry the guilt around with you? Do you think anyone is around to offer their forgiveness in person?" she says, eyes squinted as she traces a finger around to manipulate the tiny glowing ball of light that expands into the pure, searing light of unrestrained holy magic once she has moved it deep into the body of Wireless. "Maybe you should. Maybe you should talk to them if you can, take some of that weight off. Apologize. And stop beating up on yourself."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Holy is cast again, this time focused inside of the wound on Wireless' side.

    The opening begins to glow, brighter, then brighter, then brighter still until it is absolutely blinding. Seams break and panels of metal alloy tear, releasing steam and spears of pure, concentrated gold. They retreat inside of Wireless' body for only and instant, draping the world under a pall of unprecedented silence.

    Then, suddenly, the rubberband snaps back again.

    The rays of light pierce the metal, now; Wireless' explodes from the inside out. The legs, now motionless, topple, and there is nothing left of the 'head' but debris. The laser component of Wireless arcs over the cliff, landing at Staren's feet. Slowly but surely, the red glow it emits diminishes until it is clear that its power has been lost.

    The people at all extremes of the village stand, quietly bowing to the groupmembers. The priest, too, emerges, beholding Staren and Kyra with a sort of quiet awe.

    'My son,' Says his expression, 'your curse is lifted.'

Mizuki (183) has posed:
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REWIND


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LOADING STATE (5) - HOMURA . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
Old Mitakihara - <A Lost World> (Location #0)
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    This Mitakihara is eerily reminiscent of the one from which the 'new' Madoka had hailed. This is to say, it's little more than a ruin now, with what buildings that aren't destroyed lying empty, collecting dust and rotting from the inside out. A powerful atmosphere of yearning, of remorse hangs over this place, thick as the dust clouds that roll idle over the tops of its skyscrapers. It's almost impossible to believe this place was a town once, let alone one of the most beautiful and modern in Japan; it might as well be a massive graveyard with the way it looks and feels now.

    The atmosphere here is almost completely quiet, the only sounds to arrive coming from small gusts of wind and the rustling of leaves that have only just now started to grow back on the shriveled flora. Familiars can be seen dancing through the streets far, far below, off the side of the cliff upon which the group stands, but they do not pay them any mind. They seem oddly jovial in spite of things, prancing fluidly as though they were children on a playground.

    A light drizzle begins to fall here over time. Light reflects off of every droplet just so perfectly to make each one look like a mote of light hovering through the sky; so perfectly, in fact, that that is what they eventually become. Slowly growing, pulsing orbs of light appear all throughout the region, illuminating otherwise pitch streets and parks as they fly by. The wind picks up, too, until it is enough to whip the hair of those present. It seems as though a storm may be brewing, but for now it holds in the form of a gentle, pleasant Summer rain.

    The surroundings seem to gradually grow brighter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Mami Tomoe <Candeloro> <##>    Exit description
Sayaka Miki <Oktavia von Seckendorff> <##>    Exit description
Kyoko Sakura <Ophelia> <##>    Exit description
Homura Akemi <Puella Magi>
Psyber <Demon Hunter>
Kimiko Shinobu<Puella Magi>

Madoka Kaname

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Gretchen.

    The ruins and the motes of light are not enough to obscure her form -- not when Psyber and Homura are so familiar with it by now. Her body slowly grows, no doubt emerging from the grief seed of another Madoka whom they failed to save. As she grows, her arms reach up to the sky as if in prayer, and the pace of the wind intensifies. Gretchen's features are hazy, unreal, diluted as ever; they're enough to nearly break and certainly scramble Eryl's Original Face, at least at first. It is only a few moments before the great witch's form - and by extension, her barrier - have reached far enough to envelop the senses of the members of the group, drawing them in.

    Surprisingly, however, what they find on the other side is... perhaps nothing like they had been expecting. It is a wide open meadow punctuated only by a lone, ivory bench in its center. Seated upon that bench is Madoka clad in her school uniform, idly kicking her legs. She gingerly blows away the spores of a dandelion that she had been holding, scattering them to the ground, at which point she notices the others. She waves to them with a glowing, vibrant smile, beckoning them to join her on the bench. It is at that precise moment that Homura would feel a pressure on her shoulder, and hear the layered voices of Shiori and Kyubey speaking in unison.


"You're one of the most willful, stubborn people I have ever seen, Homura."


"You could have had heaven any time you wished for it."


"When I offered it to you... the countless many times when /she/ has offered it to you..."


"And here we are again. One more chance. But you'll only reject it again."


"Why, I wonder?"


"Is it not 'real' enough for you?"


"No... but it's more than that."


"You enjoy causing her pain, don't you?"


"Yes... it makes sense now."


"Why else would you deliberately cause her to suffer?"


"Why else would you ceaselessly beg her to join you on Earth when, whenever you wish, you can choose to believe that she is already at your side?"


"You're truly despicable, Homura."


"Jealous. Selfish. Impossible."


"Your existence causes her to suffer so much more than I ever could."


"If you really want to make her happy, Homura."


"You should cease to exist."


    Were Homura or anyone else to search for 'Kyubey' after their soliloquy, they would find only a storm of butterflies fleeing from the puella magi's shoulder. These butterflies make way for Madoka, pouring into her body from all sides, darkening her clothes, paling her skin. At last she rises from the bench, head lowered as she summons a bow wrought from a dead, graying branch with only a wilted, closed lotus bud at its tip. She draws an arrow, pointing it toward the group. A crack of thunder heralds a second coming of the storm, this time much more violent than the last. Then she looses her shot, sending a pair of arrows flying at all her enemies.

    The disembodied voice of Kyubey-Shiori speaks only one more time:


"You've already seen this so many times before, Homura.


"What's one more amongst thousands?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
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KRIEMHILD GRETCHEN
THE WITCH OF SALVATION

Psyber (253) has posed:
    It was Homura who gave Psyber her version of his sword when he had faced the embodiment of his great failures. It is, then, only fitting that Psyber give Homura HER sword back and lends her his own for her. He remembers these scenes, these storms and these failures. He also avoids Riva's gaze when she looks sideways at him from earlier. Of many people, he wants to avoid being looked at by her right now, because she might actually get to see through him for once.

    There's no Zelgius here to tank for Homura while she gathers herself. Not like before. So instead, it's Psyber. Stepping sideways and turning his back to the volley of arrows, Psyber immediately and decisively shields Homura from the incoming barrage from the witch. The volleys embed themselves in his back, piercing through his jacket and drawing holes and blood where they land.

    He thrusts both swords into the ground at Homura's feet, Tyrfing and Einherjar, "I'm gonna shield you for a while. You go handle this when you're ready, kid."

Staren has posed:
    Staren looks on as Kyra finishes the Mock Wireless. The laser eye landing at his feet is like something out of a story. But of course, this world /is/ stories.

    He turns to look at the priest and the villagers, not sure what to say.

    "..."

--

    "What's this place?" Staren asks, looking around. There's barely time to think or reflect. How long will it be before the next... whatever... attacks?

    Staren knows /some/ of the story of Homura and Madoka. This... doesn't make sense. They /have/ their happy ending. Homura is alive, and Madoka is a goddess who lives in her hair. So what is Shiorkyubey on about? "Don't listen to them!" he urges, and then...

    Madoka... turns into a witch?!

    "Oh, that's /mean/." Staren's quick to reactivate his armor again. The arrows... His shield hasn't had much time to recover. It's looking barely better, if at all. One arrow hits it, breaking a piece, allowing the second to hit his armor. A chunk of the protoabstractum's form is blown into nothingness. Not enough to entirely pierce the armor yet, but should a second shot hit just right, or an incoming volley of attacks... "Tch, dammit! They're right, we need to find a way /out/ of this!" He runs for Psyber-cover. "Do we... look for holes, glitches maybe, in the, in the story? Or...?"

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
IG+$RA - G3HF3@GT - 1K* - 3OM - P

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

    Eryl has been rather quiet ever since attacking Wireless. The ink has spread all over his form now, not an inch of him visible. This is probably cause for concern among his compatriots, but he's still up, walking, breathing. Not to mention, there's constantly bigger things to worry about.

3&#KGH - 9DK5$QZE - VT# - 8>L - 1

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

    Like another Madoka who is becoming a Witch. The barrier assaults his senses, but he doesn't seem all that affected. Right now, his implants are dealing with constant attempts to access his implant overrides. Thousands upon thousands every second, drawing resources from everywhere else, preventing him from even registering the impossibility of the situation.

Y6$>R7 - DCUSKT4Q - ^T7 - LU^ - A

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

    A field, a girl. Very meaningful to most people gathered. But Eryl is in the place beyond emotional thought. There is only moving forward and crushing everything in his way. Brute-force, gunboat diploma<span class=" fg_x bg_w ++ y.

cWx">TBR#JI - 8U*$KHNU - QVB - 738 - R

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT</span>

    His arms raise to block the hail of arrows, and also point his elbows at the growing Witch before him. With a hiss, the sleeves of his jacket and shirt shred to reveal his inky black arms. Two heavy slugs fly out from his elbows towards Gretchen. Partway there, they split up into ball bearings, fanning out to strike across a wider surface area. Three more from each arm follow.

Y*A*@L - ?&+#S94> - 8#& - >8> - P

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

$B0<0E - YO<ROPUZ - @W3 - J7U - U

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

Riva Banari has posed:
Luckily for Psyber, Riva is occupied with her own wounds... And eventually, Riva listens to that statement, and she grimaces, grinding her teeth. "... You... You just need one of us to validate you, don't you?" She grates. Her own healing takes longer to kick in than Psyber, which means despite almost getting crushed and spending most of her time in the previous world trying to urge Staren to move, she's still covered in cuts.. And her clothing is still stained in blood.

Nevertheless, she steps forward in the strange land, the nature of this situation familiar... But shudderingly different. Again, her mind crawls back to a gray room, a familiar face in a suit...

And she snaps. "Is... Is that what you want!? Do you just want /one/ person out of all of us to say you were right? To give in to you? Is that the point of this exercise!?"

Just a Psyber shields for Homura, Riva brings up the Ajoran Maul and slams it into the ground. There is a low rumble, and a crackling pattern of red-gold Anima shreds through the ground, moments before a blastwave of light and fury whips upwards in a 45-degree cone before her, consuming part of the hail of arrows that rip towards her. She charges forward, turning and using the hole thus made to twist... And hurl the hammer at the Witch like she was trying out at the Olympics, the weapon detonating on impact.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Here's the Barrier now, brandishing its own brand of Familiar. Gretchen it may be, but there's an entirely different focus now. Old names and old forms. The Curate. The Demon Queen. Melody. Laurel. Sheep. Telephone. Luther. The Artist. And many more. Some are more familiar than others. Faruja would know the artist. Some might know Melody best. The Curate was familiar to Psyber, most likely. The Artist was better known to Riva. All emerged from the Barrier, familiars of a Witch as Familiars must be, but now, they're no longer wrought out of matter.

    The familiar silhouettes are shapes punched like holes in the glass of an LCD screen, twisting and moving in fragments and fluttering, flickering colors as they move in for simple melee strikes, turning to a swarm of dangerous names and forms that assault.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "I doubt it. If I still had my shield, maybe," Homura answers Psyber, but not without due consideration. Her shield, her hourglass, was the source of her mastery over timeline resets. If this were similar, and if she still had it, MAYBE, big maybe, she'd be able to adapt to it. Not as she is. The alternative would require that she had way more time than they have, and maybe counsel with someone else good with time powers. Vruasa, say.

    And that's if what's going on is time manipulation at all. If it's anything else, it's outside her purview. Given they're warping rapidly between worlds and memories, not eras, she has her doubts.

    On the matter of Arthur, she frowns. "Riva saw him. I think I did, too. In the reflection in the water. In the crystals. Every world has had crystals and chains so far, it's connected." But that's all she pieced together.

    In the background, things go to hell, until the party seemingly defeats Wireless and nobody manages to die. Worlds shift again. Homura catches her breath, taking a quick rest for one run probably the best they can manage here. At least, until she sees the new memory they've been taken to.

    One she'd have liked not to see again.

    The Puella Magi frowns; her Soul Gem darkens immediatly, grief bubbling to the surface of the murky purple waters within. If the sight of the ruined Mitakihara wasn't enough, the inside of the Barrier and the speech delivered by the cross between Shiori and Kyubey sends chills down her spines.

    The worst part is, she isn't wrong.

    Even now could one find the book written by LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR of all people in one of her drawers. She'd spent more hours than she could count studying the retelling of his rise, rebellion and fall, for hints and pieces relating to undoing a celestial order.

    In another drawer, a notebook full of data on the CITY OF CYCLES, where a Witch, Kristiane, had used her Barrier to maintain the world within a certain state and set of days. Her attempts at replicating the effect even on a tiny scale have all failed so far.

    Meanwhile, the R'LYEH TEXT is at her service, full of forbidden knowledge she's been slowly combing through, looking for things to add to the pile.

    Countless other shady objects, notes and scribbles fill her belongings. Shiori is right. Homura is never happy and the world isn't real enough for her.

    If not for Psyber, she'd have taken those arrows straight to the chest. Instead she's brought out of her thoughts by their impact with him, and gives a slow nod. "Sorry. It seems people enjoy combing my head for this particular memory. Maybe one day I'll be able to move past it."

    Apologies to Psyber done, Homura marches for Madoka, swords in hand. She holds them not to stab someone, but to give her reassurance. She speaks aloud, to 'Madoka' and Shiori both.

    "I pursue her happiness. You won't convince me I'm wrong. I would have-- I would-- I will, do anything to achieve that. If it's selfish to want someone else to be happy then I'll be the embodiment of selfish love."

    She looks back. Eryl is getting progressively more damaged by the world shifts. That's getting VERY worrying. They need to hurry through. She resigns herself to what she must do, for the twenty-seventh time. Yes, she counted.

    "Please wait a bit longer, Madoka."
    Then to Shiori: "And you, stop sullying her image!"

    She lunges for Madoka, with both holy swords. To do what she has to do, yet again. At least this time, there's no doubt it's a fake.

Staren has posed:
    Familiars! Staren draws his beam saber and slashes at one, then starts to fly away, then realizes /that/ puts him where he can be shot by /arrows/, so he tries to fight the familiars behind Psyber, his sword splitting in two. As long as they don't try to grapple him, he'll probably be alright?

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
Having never had the 'pleasure' of meeting Kyubey, Kyra has no idea about the strange voice mixed into Shiori's-she just hears a strange-sounding Shiori taunting Homura as their friend transforms into a witch in front of everyone. She almost lifts a hand to unleash a blast of holy again but stops. What Homura said earlier stuck with her.

    This DID feel like an effort to wear everyone down, everyone here, with a glimpse of their worst nightmares. If she kept casting, kept using so much magic, how will she have strength to make it to the end? No, she had to be more strategic-though Wireless really did require the holy spell to be bypassed-

    An arrow sinks into the white mage, piercing her gut, while the other skims past her. She yelps and sinks to her knees, struggling and scrambling to pull out the projectile. "Hang in there, Homura...hang..in there..." blood follows the extraction of the arrow, and following that, a Cure spell cast directly on herself, sealing the wound. She pushes herself to her feet and steps over to Psyber, offering him the same healing before she darts in behind Psyber, using him as a shield as the familiars converge upon them.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The two slugs find impact on either side of Mado -- Gretchen's face. She remains strangely expressionless, robotic. Her bones crack and her neck dislocates, something that she is briefly forced to remove her hands from her bow to rectify. It's a grisly sight, but for Psyber and Homura, it would do the opposite of disturb: it would tell them, beyond a doubt, that this is not the Madoka they know. This facial expression, those gestures, everything about her bearing is wrong. Though she looks the same, this is not the same person. In fact, it doesn't even feel like Gretchen; the sensation of despair is not that pure.

    Whether she mirrors these sentiments or not, Riva likewise sees through the facade. And she is angry, perhaps moreso than any here have ever seen her. There is a two-pronged assault from the ground and sky, the latter being made impassable by a hellfire of arrows and the former by a gaping maw of magical energy. Gretchen decides to hedge her bets, rolling just as mechanically and breaking into flight just in time to evade the fissure, though in the processes her entire body is impaled by arrows. Seven - no, eight, nine - sink into her shoulders. As she swerves through the air, no fewer than five find providence in her torso. Toward the end, one strikes cleanly in-between her eyes.

    Gretchen manually pulls the arrow out, allowing a gush of blood to pour forward. It covers the left side of her face, twisting that half of her visage into Gretchen's. She removes the arrow just in time for the hammer to literally explode in front of her, an attack that she tries desperately to deflect with her arms. She loses one of them in the process.

    This ultimately leaves her helpless when Homura charges her. There is a moment of relative silence as, like Psyber before her, Homura draws an 'X' -- this time not in the air, but directly in Gretchen's chest. Surprisingly, there is no spurt of blood; rather, like Shiori, her body simply begins to... degrade. It falls into a cascade of light, this time pink rather than blue, as silhouettes of her body parts begin to fall away.

    Madoka's - no, Gretchen's - visage is covered in blood, gunpowder, and... tears. In that moment, her expression looks much more like Madoka's would, but rather than making her look miserable in a final bid for vengeance, reality makes this fabrication smile. Her eyes close slowly, peacefully; whether this makes this facisimile's death more or less bearable for the lot of them remains to be seen. There comes a time, though, when Gretchen's body dissipates entirely, leaving the space in front of Homura empty.

    The blades of grass blow throughout the meadow. The rain stops.

    A voice cleaves the silence, responding to Riva's earlier inquiry:

    "You're so close, Riva. So very, very close. But I ask you again:"

    "Who do you think I am?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


PAUSE


 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!












LOADING MEMORY (2) . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "I was wrong."

    Those were Mizuki's first words as they approached her resting place. "The cycle was never something that you all could have broken -- it was alltogether different in nature from what I had suspected." She set a tea glass down on the lone table flanking the sofa, brushed her bangs out of her eyes. "But I had best not get ahead of myself. First -- what's going on, correct?" She forced a smile.

    "My world is dying," She said, "I am dying. I first realized it several months ago, when I sealed myself away here and allowed Palora to speak for me. I called you here because this is to be the final day of my life." She allowed those words a moment of pause to sink in, to collate, before continuing. "Painful as it may be, I will tell you now in no uncertain terms: there is no way at this stage to reverse what has been done. The moment you leave this place, I will vanish. More accurately, I am already deceased; it is only by manipulating time within this microcosm that I have managed to make this moment within which we reside last long enough for me to speak with you."

    "Now the other important query, naturally, is: Why?" She lifted her teacup again, shakily, taking a sip. "As I said, the cycle is... not what I had thought it was. Sophia, Shiori, the writing in the prognostics -- all of that was only a story. But it was an allegory for something that you may consider more real." She raised a finger of her right hand, setting her glass back down.

    "It is something beyond us, larger than us," She said. "As we all know, novels are finite creations. They have a beginning, and they have an end. What I had misunderstood was that this life I've lived was never /designed/ to outlast a certain duration: my life, upon its conception, was a novel. It might've ended earlier had you lost your battle against the cycle, but that was only the cycle we saw. There is something else, too. A cycle we did not see."

    "Some might call it fate," She went on, "but that isn't quite accurate. Imagine for an instant the perception of God as a trickster, someone who is capricious, someone whose whims fluctuate just as our emotions do. Imagine that this deific presence were writing a story, and that I were its protagonist." She folded her hands in her lap. "Should I begrudge them that they do not wish to write the same book for the duration of their entire life? It is natural for people - and, I suspect, for Gods as well - to change. That their interests will transform and they will move to a different narrative outlook -- this is the way of humanity. Just as older generations must die so that the younger can instigate real change in a given society, so, too, must antiquated interests dim in the minds of individuals."

    "I," She said, placing the five fingers of her opened palm briefly to her chest, "am, for better or worse, at the mercy of that cycle of the human being. That is my cycle: my own existence is contingent on the investment, emotional fortitude, and circumstances of something I cannot see. Strangely, that same force has made me content. I cannot force myself to feel afraid, or angry; I can only feel content in the knowledge that whatever comes will bear forth its own joys and laments, just as this existence has. After all, nothing lasts for-ever. The nature of the world... of us... of everything... is change. The only constancy in this reality is an illusion born from equal-and-opposite application of force. There is no point of rest."

    "So you see," She says, "I have changed, now. And I must go. I do not know where I shall depart to nor, whom I will be when I arrive there, nor even whether I will see any of you again. But I do know with certainty that this is not the end."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


REWIND


<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<












LOADING STATE (6) - ERYL . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
The Ravine - <A Regenerated World> (Location #4444)
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    Here is a valley cast adrift in time, grown out of a ravine wrought by a catastrophic earthquake too ancient to be remembered. Two sheer cliffs face eachother like titans before a duel, and deep, deep below, amidst the lowest fathoms of the fault, two armies clash for reasons unknown. The sounds of clattering metal and screams of agony do not reach the zeniths on either side, however, and if you could not see the skirmish you may never have known that it were happening at all. This area at the peak, this area where you have found yourselves, is eerily serene -- there is no vegetation here, but only only a peculiar sort of azure stone upon which you stand. Wind rushes at an incredible pace due to the extraordinary elevation of these plateaus, and it may at times be a challenge only to remain standing.

    On the right side of this geological impasse lies a simple set of two ivory chairs and a matching table. Upon the latter rests a floral teapot filled to the brim, and two teacups that have been freshly poured. Steam billows from each container, providing the only warm respite from the stark chill that pervades this place.

    The sky is extraordinarily clear, given its character by a dynamic mixture of violet and amber; twilight. The sun is sinking in the West, perfectly splitting the two cliffs and two armies; equilibrium. What clouds remain in this dim light are thin and dark, falling closer and closer to the Earth until they seem to dissipate entirely. A sense of longing and mourning dominates the landscape far more than the hatred and fear that must be felt by the soldiers, calling into question whether those soldiers truly exist, or whether they are phantoms of a battle that took place in ages long gone.

    This place feels familiar, too, though at the same time you would easily know that the memories that generate these feelings are not your own.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Mizuki <Dream Witch>
Eryl Fairfax <Suit and Cape>

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
FUG59P - O#7G!*0U - @8E - AN* - 3

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

9R1IBG - >2$T0FU2 - MF# - JT> - Y

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY INCORRECT

5D8M8+ - 6QU&?AT# - DVR - W2& - E

NEURAL OVERRIDE KEY CORRECT

ADMINISTRATIVE ACCESS TO SAVIOUR - 001 GRANTED

INPUT ORDERS NOW




"Kill them."

    The ink runs from Eryl's body, revealing his form underneath. No horrible mutant he, no fundamental physical transformations. But his expression... he had long mastered the ability to force those little twitches and motions that make him seem entirely, relatably normal. None of those are present now. Only a terrifying impassivity, a blank expression that makes mannequins seem emotive. He looks among everyone, his mind opening up files and databases he has passively built on all of them over their time together. All while reloading everything he has.

    "No threat immediately presents itself this time," he notes to everyone, walking to the edge and looking down. "Perhaps those armies below us? It seems strange that they are not marching to meet us." His voice is rather... cold. But given what has happened until now, who can blame him?

STRATEGY COMPILATION COMPLETE
FIRST TARGET: HOMURA AKEMI
ABILITY TO STOP TIME MAKES HER MOST DANGEROUS TARGET
VIDEO 'WMATMATCHHOMURAVSSATSUKI' INDICATES THAT ANYONE IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH HER CAN MOVE IN FROZEN TIME.
FIRST STEP: USE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE, TAKE AS SHIELD.

SECOND TARGET: PSYBER
INCREDIBLY CAPABLE IN COMBAT. STRONG, FAST, REGENERATIVE.
CLOSE EMOTIONAL BOND TO HOMURA AKEMI WILL MAKE FIRST STEP DRIVE HIM INTO A FRENZY.
SECOND STEP: PACIFY IMMEDIATELY. OCCULT AUGMENTS SHOULD HARM HIM GREATLY.

THIRD TARGET: PRISCILLA
VERY FAST, CAN FADE FROM PHYSICAL SPECTRUM.
UNLIKELY TO RESORT TO IMMEDIATE VIOLENCE DUE TO CLOSE BOND WITH SAVIOUR - 001.
STRANGE ANATOMY MAKES IMMEDIATE PACIFICATION DIFFICULT.
THIRD STEP: CRIPPLE.

FOURTH TARGET: KYRA HYRAL
HEALER, COULD UNDO PREVIOUS STEPS.
SEEMS TO HAVE PHYSICAL CAPACITY OF NORMAL HUMAN.
FOURTH STEP: CRIPPLE AND RATTLE.

FIFTH TARGET: RIVA BANARI
SKILLED IN COMBAT. MAY ATTEMPT PLACATION.
GATHERS POWER FROM SURROUNDINGS.
FIFTH STEP: PACIFY.

SIXTH TARGET: STAREN
EMOTIONALLY RAW, NOT EQUIPPED TO USUSAL STANDARDS.
BETRAYAL MAY RATTLE HIM TO THE POINT OF TOTAL INEFFECTIVENESS.
SIXTH STEP: PACIFY.
SEVENTH STEP: CLEAN-UP.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki sets her teacup against the tea table with a small chink of the ceramic base, returning her hands to her lap. She rests her eyes a moment but raises her chin, allowing her gaze to fix squarely upon the peak of the opposite ravine when again she sees. She gradually raises her hands, palms flat but fingers limp as though she were preparing some sort of magical incantation. With a glance to the other seat, she smiles.

    "Are you ready, Eryl?" Narrowing her look just slightly, she continues, "Of course, that was rhetorical. Still, I would vastly prefer that you give me your undivided attention for the next few moments; I do not wish to have to repeat this simply because you weren't watching. Art takes time, after all!" Standing and summoning Aelinos into her left hand, she concludes, "But, without further adieu. Let us away."

    Mizuki puts her legs together and otherwise stiffens her posture, attributing all her fluidity to her left arm. With it, she guides the tip of Aelinos across the sky. With her motions, the sun travels Eastward until it is again at the top of the sky, and the rest of heaven's tapestry lights up alongside it. The clouds are restored to their full visibility and vibrant white colorations, rising ever higher, away from her.

    Then she holds Aelinos perfectly straight at her chest for a moment. She takes a deep breath before reversing it and spiking it into the ground, sending veritable wakes of emerald grass and golden rye spreading across the previously barren rock. Water pours forth, too, filling the ravine and transforming it from a grisly battlefield into the most beautiful, winding river which one has ever glimpsed, the water therein glistening as would any road to the gates of Elysium in the rays of the sun.

    In the furthest realm of visibility, mountains rise from the crust of the Earth. The previously empty backdrop resolves into a brilliant meadow to rival even that which appeared in Homura's nightmare. Buildings are created spontaneously; animals begin to graze in the literal blink of an eye; in time, even the feeling of melancholy is replaced by a sense of overwhelming relief. By the time that Mizuki lowers Aelinos and picks up the skirt of her dress in a curtsy, this previously unforgiving, harsh place has been remade in the image of the Garden of Eden.

    Then she casts her gaze to the left bank of the newly born river, where the others wait. Mizuki's grin abates only slightly before she turns to Eryl, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I lament that I will not be there to see the moment when your world is reborn like this," She says. "And I regret that I will not be there to speed that process along -- so much more than you could know now. That said, I hope that, in some way, what I have shown you today will be worthy recompense for my absence." She silently bows her head one more time.

    "But," She continues, "I have said enough. It is time for you to return to your friends, Eryl. You are not my tool of destruction, but their friend. My friend, too, when fate should will it; alas, that day is not today." She briefly cups a hand around his cheek. "Goodbye. Thank you for fighting by my side one final time." At once, his body fades into flecks of golden light that flutter to the left bank of the river, recombining in his normal form. Thereafter he would be free of Shiori's control.

    Meanwhile, Shiori rises from the right bank, her hair again cloaked in brown and her eyes drenched in that impregnable black. She levels her sword at them, as before, as four golden portals open in the sky. Two blank figures - like Palora - emerge from each, coming to a total of eight: The Artist assaults Riva; Apathy goes for Psyber; Boris, Faruja; Melody, Priscilla; Telephone, Kyra; Sheep, Homura; Callia, Staren. Shiori herself goes after Eryl this time.

Priscilla has posed:
    Wireless down. Staren sequence concluded. Discard that obstacle. Place the questions on the bottom of the deck. Draw a new hand of enemies. Keep cycling until all unwanted cards are purged. Have faith that the right one will come up eventually. By now Shiori is almost tiresomely predictable. Priscilla can tell as well as any other that she is throwing what she can at each and every person present, because all it'll take is one person to break down -- one person to not be just quite strong enough -- and everyone else goes with them. It's also a fact that Homura is right. An increasing number of 'how's and 'why's aren't any impediment to Priscilla, and she has long since learned to sublimate the dread, dismay and building frustration that are so often the mind-killer to weary heroes, but physically, there is only so long she can keep going. She's been pushing rather than pacing herself, and with some of the other flagging or cycling in and out, even if she knows the number of these they still have left, it's uncertain if the group will really have the stamina to see it through to the end, physically, mentally and emotionally. It only takes one weak link, after all.

    At the very least, the Puella Magi is definitely strong in the first two, and there isn't any way for Priscilla to guess how long her Soulgem will hold out anyways. If anyone needs to expend themselves here, it is Homura, and she has hopes that by the time traveller's actions, that this strange place is something she has seen enough times that she can handle it without worry, dredged up by Shiori only for lack of a better avenue of attack. Even in her mounting frenzy, she knows that Madoka, coupled with this place and these circumstances, is something held in sacred enough regard that it is best she not interfere for risk of pushing someone's buried, unhappy memories too far.

    Instead, she occupies herself with what she can. Moonlight shatters a magical arrow on its magic-reflective surface, the second rending her dress at her side where it strikes and painfully glances her thankfully naturally resilient frame, further augmented by the sword's passive effects. Invisibility is finally exercised here, reluctantly sacrificing some measure of deliberate, front and center focus to keep herself in better shape, dealing with the infuriating voice of her target, or else her prey, throwing up smoke as they draw ever closer to her. "Thou shalt find people care little for the nuance." she practically growls. "Whomever such misgivings belong to; such pointless, poisonous, sickeningly self-serving thoughts, is a worthless distinction. No matter how thou may deflecteth away such blame and erase and deny thine own agency, thou hast chosen to present thineself as human in order to appeal to us with words and sympathy, and in doing so, only stirred rejection and contempt for thine methods, thine desires, and thine justifications. Whether I hate thee, hate the part of another, or simply hate what thou represent, is beyond mine concern, and far from relevance. Shadow or not, even an animal is capable of learning whence hath made itself unwanted. Thou shalt never hath thine answer because all of us hath long since decided thou art not deserving of one."

Priscilla has posed:
    As if just to vindicate her, yet another pink haired girl wishing for anything else is torn to pieces, Psyber and Homura trampling their own feelings to stab at Shiori through the gesture, and briefly causing Priscilla's hopes to rise. There aren't many more of these left. Seeing her tactics shift from guilt to fear to lies to making crude shields out of memories and then devolving into bargaining and confusion is what she knows as the unmaker's panic; that same agitated vexation that she had felt mount in the same way as they shattered her plans the last time.

    "Truthfully?" she asks almost incredulously. "Even the Artist was able to meet the sight of her child's scribbles at her defeat with more dignity than this." But then there is Mizuki. Winning condition spotted. Remove from bottom. Place front and center. All she needs to do is get to her. Melody scarcely moves her, only veiling herself once again to gun straight for the Author, only her supernatural silence hiding her laboured breathing, and that whispered "Thou art slipping."

Staren has posed:
--

    Staren deactivates his swords -- there's suddenly only one hilt, which he clips to his belt. He sighs, "What is it this-- Mizuki?! Mizuki, you've got to-- aww, what is this, some kind of memory?" he waves at her as she paints the world. He can't properly appreciate the effect, in this state. He looks up at the sky and points at it, shouting, "Fuck you and your tricks! We'll escape this maze somehow, and--" Oh wait, there's Shiori now to the side. "There you--" he reaches for his pistol, but already she's sending... Mizuki's people at them! "Oh come on!"

    The scythe. In combat, its primary use is to allow one to concentrate great force and momentum in a single point, to pierce armor. But... The haft that gives it that momentum is a weakness too. Staren's arms reform into cannons, firing bolts of plasma at Callia as she comes for him. He tries to keep away, but if there's any sign that she's closing in, catching up, he doesn't try to prolong it -- he charges, cannons returning to hands, his right drawing the beam sword to try and skewer her, while his left is ready to try and catch the haft of the scythe and grab it so she can't use it effectively. "I don't know what you've done, Shiori, or why... but we'll stop you! You can't keep this up forever! And even if you can, so can some of us!"

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Eryl was about to enact his plan, when Mizuki appears. He stares at her, with impassive green eyes like dirty broken glass, Original Face scrambling to take this new variable into action. He looks as she direct, pretending to be normal until the time to strike

    The beauty of a world regenerating would fill him with joy, with hope and determination. Had he not been in this state. But still, he records everything, and can go over it at a later time. Hopefully, that will have to do.

MIZUKI
POSSIBLE MASTER OF THIS SPACE? CLUMSY IN COMBAT, THEATRICAL.
REVISED FIRST STEP: STRIKE WHILE SHE IS CLO-

    She disappears, taking with her the corrupting influence Shiori had placed him under. Original Face detects the several million failed access attempts and locks itself down, permitting no further external access. The diplomat turns, and regards the attacking phantoms, with the perpetrator for what was just undone charging for him.

    He moves, putting so much power into his legs the ground shreds. The equal and opposite reaction ripples through his body, bruising soft tissue but he cares not. Meeting Shiori's charge, he grabs for her head with one hand, attempting to drive it, and her by extension right into the reborn earth.

    And once he does, out comes the Ungraspable, which he starts driving into her body.

    Again.

    And again.

    And again.

    "No more," he hisses, pulling back and stabbing in. "You'll not get that chance again. Now there's nothing stopping me from stopping you." And again.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
"Is this..." Kyra trails off, staring across the river, seeing Shiori again, now instead starting to reach for her gun. That is, until the portals open up and unleash unfamiliar enemies on all of them, with a woman with a heavy iron spear gunning /specifically/ for her. She yelps, darting sideways, her hoodie tearing as she avoids a jab. At that point, the white mage notices that all of these figures also have the dusty, faded appearance that Palora undertook earlier in the fight (if that was an appropriate name for such).

    "SOMEBODY PLEASE COVER ME FOR A MOMENT! I need concentration on this!" Kyra calls out, cupping her hands to her chest, focusing on her white magic, the magic partciles within her have been mercifully tame this whole time. She murmurs, green light swirling around her, intensity of the healing magic building.

    It had been a long time in learning the oncoming spell, which is one of the highest levels of white magic. It isn't offensive at all, instead embodying the healing nature of the craft.

    "ESUNAGA!"

    Green light shoots out from Kyra in all directions, thick ropes of energy spiralling through the air and smashing up against each and every one of the blank figures impeding the progress.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Between his natural regeneration and the help along by Kyra, the arrows are pushed out of Psyber's back and sent clattering to the ground. He stands himself up straight and groans a bit, "Ugh, thanks, Kyra. That was a bit of a nasty wound," He says to her, rolling his shoulders and inspecting his back. Or trying to, it's more of a futile effort to inspect his own back, since he's not that flexible.

    Homura has both swords now, which means that Psyber can weapon-shuffle again. He switches to a different set of paired weapons, specifically Sovereign and Backbiter. The former is spun and flourished in his right hand and the left weapon is whipped and spun. He's not as good at using the second as its former master, but manipulation was never his strong suit, and was always Elliana's.

    He moves to parry Apathy's advance and then step over towards Kyra and intercept Telephone for her as well. He's less concerned about his well-being, and honestly more than slightly confused at the current set of circumstances. There's a lot going on all at once and Psyber's mind is about four steps behind the full pace of the world in terms of narrative reveals. About the only place he CAN keep up is reflexive combat.

    "I've got you covered, Kyra. Do your thing," Psyber is going to struggle against two opponents at once, particularly drained as he already is from the gauntlet of fights before now, but he's going to do his best to buy Kyra the time she needs.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    Homura kills Madoka for the twenty-seventh time. Copy or not, she's going to count it; mentally, it has almost the same weight and effect, anyway. There's a definite down, another bubble of black in her purple gem. The truth was, no matter the face she puts on, she isn't as strong as she says she is. But if nobody knows, then it doesn't matter. She just has to lie well enough no one notices that she's weak, and nowhere near as stoic as she'd have people believe.

    The world shifts again, this time to a desolate landscape. There's barely any time to take in the sights of what must be Eryl's world-- or Faruja's? Kyra's? Arthur's? There's only a limited pool of them left to guess from. Judging by the fact Eryl is no longer horribly corrupt, his'.

    There's the sight of Mizuki-- no, of Shiori, just like that. And she's calling in aid. Her servants come out, wielding scythes, and Homura brings both Einherjar and Tyrfing up to defend herself, crossing the swords in an X to block the incoming scythe blade from Sheep.

    Homura is a lot of things, but a skilled swords(wo)man isn't one. These servants know their way around scythes, though. She can defend herself, but she's weakened from the prolonged fighting, and having two of Psyber's holy sword isn't as great for her as it is for him.

    "This is tiring," she asides, to Psyber and Kyra, more grumpy than anything else. "I get the distinct feeling she's playing with us."

    Straining against Sheep's scythe, Homura finally pushes forward. She can't hope to overpower her in melee, not with strength anyway-- but bright gold-white and purple holy lightning crashes down, thundering as it courses through her two swords and attempts to slip into the scythe and then-- well, Sheep. If cheating's on the table, it's a tactically inferior choice not to.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Priscilla barrels past Melody's phantom, making way for Mizuki, whose likeness vanishes on her approach. Shiori attempts to take Priscilla's moment of surprise and strike at her side with Aelinos, 'helicoptering' with her sword in mid-air such that she comes around for several, successive strikes. To the comment of her 'slipping,' Shiori only smiles. "But aren't we all. It has been a rather tiring day, this; rather a long day. Best that it ends soon... I think I've had enough. And haven't we all? I think this is past the point of emotional excitement. We've 'slipped' into a mood where we are all just clinging desperately to our muse, fighting to stay conscious. I know." She attempts a final lunge at Priscilla. "Don't worry. It will all be over soon."

    She teleports away.

    Staren fires on Callia, leaving burns on various points of her body. This does not deter her, however -- these porcelain dolls do not feel pain, nor do they flinch when fired upon. She considers dauntlessly, even as hie successive fire tears off portions of her torso, then removes her right eye. Through it all she retains her same, unnerving grin, right up until the moment that she comes in for a close-range strike. Staren doesn't give her the chance: a single cannonshot obliterates her, spreading her ashes like chalk in the sky.

    Telephone and Apathy clash with Psyber, where they're held by the blade. Homura calls down a bolt of lightning behind Sheep, disintegrating her instantaneously. Almost instantaneously Shiori's 'army' is either preoccupied or completely destroyed. There's no one left to come to Shiori's side.

    And that's when Eryl rushes her. Her strikes her again, and again, and again, and again -- azure flecks rain out until Shiori drops Aelinos, then her shield, and then falls limp. Her head bows as her body is quite literally kept aloft by Eryl's grip and the blade that has impaled her. Bruised but never bloody, she looks like a ragdoll.

    Shiori has no words left for him. She only smiles until, finally, the 'memory' - if indeed that's what it was - concludes.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


PAUSE


 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!












LOADING MEMORY (3) . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "But that reason," Mizuki continued, "or rather that lack thereof... I know that will not satisfy some of you. And I can't blame you for that. After all, whom in the world is satisfied by a book that says 'it was all a dream' in the conclusion? It negates everything that had happened. It invalidates your feelings, as a reader, and quite often the experiences of the characters themselves." She shook her head horizontally. "No... it is natural, being dissatisfied with such an outcome. Moreover, it is irresponsible on the part of the author to saddle you with such a poor and ill-explained finale. In all truth, I am ashamed that it must be this way."

    "Alas," She said, "there is no time but that which we make for ourselves, now, and I know well enough that I cannot hold you here. Not with all the pain in the world, nor all the temptations of heaven -- no. You will still linger, you will still prefer that world over any which I could conjure for you. That, too, I can only respect -- that you harbor such a love for that world, this reality, you have chosen. Were I only so adamant myself I might have been spared much agony over the course of my life."

    "So," She said, laboring to lift herself from the sofa, "I will use these final, fleeting moments to conjure one more story. I will give you an alternative." She raised the palm of her hand flat, facing it toward the lot of them. "I will give you a final battle. I will give you a reason for my death. I will give you something of meaning, that you may leave here in the belief that I died for some purpose, and that you, to the very last, fought to save me. I will return to you the hope that I might have lived, that otherwise I have so cruelly stolen." With those words, her eyes closed.

    "It is up to you," She said, "which of these two realities you wish to remember. I will not prefer one over the other. If neither satisfies you, then you may also choose to forget me entirely. To 'retcon,' as it were, my existence from your memories." She re-opened her eyes, then, smiling.



"Now, when I count to four, we will begin."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
The Olympic Heavens - <Galianda> (Location ##)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    This is a realm that exudes the celestial, the heavenly. It is a realm that doesn't demand respect in the viewer -- it presumes respect. The clouds, the arches, the gold, the shimmering that falls upon every angelic, glimmering creature that calls this place home. To assign name to the structures and facilities that inhabit this land is to claim that one could possibly be more glorious and heavenly than the other. The court of the olympian realms of this land are universal, and all are a part of it. Perhaps this is some great end-state of a lifestream. Perhaps this is nothing but a metaphor for a state of pure light and positive, unoppressive order.

    What is known is that, despite it all being the height of glory itself, it pales in comparison to the empty throne that houses - and yet, does not house - the goddess. She is absent, and known to be long-dead. And yet she is there, in a way that is indescribable. She cannot speak, for her noble sacrifice is long past, and yet she does. Those far beyond the boundaries of What Is are past such paltry things as chronology, past such paltry things as the mere facts of whether or not they even truly exist when they come to manifest in a place like this. She has many things to say, or rather, to not say, and she says them in many ways, or rather, does not say them. The mind buckles under the weight of contradiction just as much as it scrambles to hold in its faltering capacity the words she says.

    Of course, it's all a metaphor. This was never the divinity, the aether from which Divines or their aspects emerge, aside the few that make a brief appearance. But it doesn't need to be more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Bismarck
Kyra Hyral
Tira
Raiden
Siren
Fenrir
Phoenix
Midgardsormer
Sylph

Mizuki (183) has posed:
"I want you to imagine, Kyra."


    The absent goddess does not speak. She can't, for she is dead if she ever existed. But the words are present.


"I want you to imagine what could have been. I want you to hold the story in your mind of what might have existed in my grace."


    Her heavenly host bears down on the group in a way that cannot be described. Angelic forms. Wheels of fire. Spheres of light. Nine-winged beings past the ability of the mind to perceive. Great and awful creatures of pure Holy power. Raiden, Siren, Fenrir, Phoenix, Midgardsormer, Whyt, Slylph, Bismark, Diabolos, Doomtrain, Carbuncle. Everything about the idea that this realm, this goddess, and these beings could exist seems to defy them deep inside Kyra. This isn't the truth of Galianda, but it draws on every inch of it, and simultaneously denies it, to hold up the allegory it demands.

    "Whatever I can conjure doesn't matter, Kyra. Illusions. Facsimiles. Thoughtforms borne across conceptual nerves. The mental landscape of what could have been. Those pale in comparison to the simple power of using my words to evoke what you could imagine. I want you to imagine, Kyra: What would things have been like if you gave up on your own path?" The absent goddess does not gesture kindly. The sacrifice and the nonexistence is not defied by her gentle gestures. "What if you trod something that I could give you? What if you left your feet on a path that someone else made? What if you let the burden of your life's journey be carried by someone? It doesn't need to be Cosmos. It doesn't even need to be me."

    The clouds roil with secretive thunders and danger. "You buckle and strain under the weight, begging your friends to carry it with you while you strike up your own path. But they fail you, no matter how much you depend on them. No matter how much you turn to them to support you when you need it, despairing from the strain of this. You've even given up on some of them before. Would giving up on all of them be so difficult?" The beings of holy power aren't as uncertain as the contradictory existence of the absent goddess. The shining white force with which they strike the allies around Kyra while the absent goddess doesn't speak to Kyra is as real as anything could be.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
"Trying to tire us." Kyra asides to Homura, taking in a deep breath as the last of the magic particles leave her body in her bid to neutralize the aggressions of Shiori's army of stolen Quiet World denizens. If anything, she hopes she at least gets through to Telephone so she didn't have to worry about being stabbed-or about anyone who jumps in her way being stabbed. But as they fight on....

    ...Kyra cannot help but feel a profound sense of sadness. Perhaps it was because, this time, Esuna did not work and the others had no choice but to brutally fight the monochrome constructs.

    The room changes again, leaving-no, she expects Arthur. She doesn't expect....

    She looks around, her eyes wide, her mouth limp as she finds herself in the hall of the Divines, before a throne that could have belonged to Her. But that was impossible. Impossible impossible impossible...

    She falls to her knees, clutching her head, refusing and denying what she sees, the locale shaking her to her very core. Had she been wrong this whole time? Had her parents been right?

    Shiori speaks and she looks up, tears clinging to the corners of her eyes, "No...no...why would I leave it to anyone else....why would I leave it to anyone else but me..." she shuts her eyes closed, even as the Divines around her start to maul her friends, "No...no, I've never...not when I support them...I have their back. And they have /mine/..!"

    But she doesn't rise. She doesn't help this time, too lost in her own break over the image she sees in this hall.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber would like to give Kyra the moral support that he's sure she needs, but at the same time he's not sure he can provide that for her.

    He's also not physically capable of doing so, because Diabolos is coming right at him. Psyber brings up the twin swords to parry a mighty claw that clashes with his blades and sends him skidding to the side along the ground. There's a grunt of exhaustion, pain and effort as Psyber brings himself to a stop and rights his posture again.

    "This is getting incredibly exhausting." He reiterates a frequently stated point about this series of events, which has been going for what, to Psyber, feels like an excessively long number of lifetimes. He lunges forward, hooking both weapons between the claws of the creature and trying to lock them in place as he digs his feet into the ground.

    He's hoping someone with a close bond to Kyra, like Riva, will be able to come through here.

Staren has posed:
    Staren hardens his heart as Callia is slain by his hand. His gaze, with a hint of sadness, turns to Shiori, turns to rage. "Now, you--"

--

    Staren's not sure what to say. Somehow he gets the jist -- this is the idea, of the home of the divines. The divines Kyra no longer reveres.

    The divines who are coming for /him/. Staren fires off some attacks, but the opponents are too numerous, too powerful, and soon the catboy is flying, desperately, because of course gods can fly too, staying ahead of Fenrir's jaws by meters.

    By feet.

    By inches.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    For something that's impossible it's being PAINFULLY HOSTILE right now. Phoenix swoops for Homura, and she raises a purple-y shield of diamonds with one hand in front of herself. The flames wash against the magical barrier, quickly ripping through the layers and giving the Puella Magi a nice tan and sunburns. She wouldn't be able to hold that much longer.

    "Yes, we have your back right now. At the risk of breaking the mood it's a pretty heated situation to be in," Homura assures Kyra, frowning. Idle explosives are hurled in stopped time for the firebird, but there's a real chance they'll just kind of bother it and make it be the sun that much harder. And it's already being pretty sunny. Painfully sunny.

    "More importantly you've had our back this entire time. Without your healing we may not have made it this far. No god or goddess did that, you did."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Psyber goes after False Diabolos. His blade and power are perfectly suited for it. He locks it into place, and it grapples brutally. So many different diabolical forms flicker and shudder as the mind struggles to grasp its form. A humanoid, almost insectoid being with awful horns. A strange, terrifying goat-like beast. All of it, every last form, locked on those awful blades, grappling with the angel aggressively. The fakery of a Divinity is still trying as hard as it can to gore him.

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Eryl regards the heavenly hosts, the glorious beings willed into reality by Shiori. His face is turned into a dismissive scowl as the woman rants, before siccing the gods upon them.

    "That's enough," he says as he rolls to avoid a charging Midgardsormer, his body and clothes singed. "Shiori, you will gain nothing from this." He ducks, to avoid the great serpant's bite, and grabs on to it as it slithers into a new position.

    "You throw great challenges at us, plucked from our personal histories. T what end, to show how things could be worse?" As Midgardsormer thrashes about, Eryl starts clinging to its scales to climb its form, the wind whipping his hair and clothes. In spite of the distance he has opened between he and the others, he calls out so that his voice may be heard.

    "Of course things can be worse. They can always be worse. But we persist to make them better. You can bring all your might against me, show me the worst suffering imaginable, and I will still believe this. As long as it is in my capacity to persist, to remember... I will do so." On the great serpent's back now, crawling towards the neck. Out comes the Ungraspable...

    "So, let us wrap this up." His words seem to carry meaning beyond the current situation. Like he's remembering other things. But either way, he stabs into Midgardsormer's neck, again and again to puncture something important.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    The lunging wolf-like form, flickering through deeply untrue shapes, lances teeth past Staren's agile form by decreasing units of measurement, until it becomes even more frustrated, aggressive, angry from the heavy shots tearing into its body, trying to tear Staren apart. Eventually, something tears, and when next it would try to bite at the flying catboy genius, instead, a deep and gutteral, aggressive roar, meant to tear his body with a strange sort of sonic and holy force.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Phoenix's assault on Homura comes with an intensity of heat comparable to the sun. The bird-like shapes vary, turning from one awful avian form to the other. Huge hawk-like claws lash at Homura, flickering to a heavy beak from a descending bird, to the massive, aggressive wings of an almost reptilian version of the fakery. Flames against magial barrier are unsuccessful, so the overbearing size of the thing tries to stun Homura with a brutal wave of heat, force her to close her eyes and wince, before thrusting out with a tremendous head that closes a beak around Homura's shield and starts trying to crack it open like a seed.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Eryl mounts Midgardsormer, the serpent of the earth, and brings it great pain. The many forms it could and does take flicker beneath, but all have ungraspable stabbed into a bleeding neck. As the fakery god flails under the heavy blade, singed by its dangerous properties and bleeding badly, it dives through the structure, slamming through clouds as harsh as earth to try to dislodge the cyborg, or tear through his armor with heavy 'earth', at least, wispy clouds as tough as stone.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The Goddess turns to Eryl. "Soon, now. Not much longer -- patience. Mortals nor even Gods can know what tomorrow holds. And tomorrow, for you, may cause you to drift apart from these people that you love. You never know when the day you are living is your last. Learn to relish every moment... such that you will not find yourself in the thrall of regret. Even and especially when those moments seem, in the present, inconvenient."

    Then The Goddess - no, Shiori - turns to Kyra. She cups a hand around her cheek, narrowing her eyes as if somberly. She no longer looks cross, nor even mildly perturbed; she looks like a mother too relieved to see her child safe at home to possibly feel an ounce of anger. "As for you," She keeps her voice small, gingerly.

"You made your choice long ago."

    Her eyes turn white. Her body goes limp, and her hand suddenly feels frigid against Kyra's flesh.

    Her corpse slumps against her, losing its unnatural luster.

Staren has posed:
    Staren's armor flakes away and cracks all over, starting to fall apart. His ears are ringing and he feels profoundly uncomfortable from the holy power directed at him. He reverts the protoabstractum to a belt to heal and recover, and pulls a heavy revolver from his bag, with a brace that he slips around his arm.

    With desperation, he pours on a last burst of speed, wings buzzing close to his back as he suddenly shoots up and then turns back the way they came. Hopefully Fenrir can't turn as fast. He fires down, the Mad Morg McGee Rattler firing supercharged shotgun shells. Can a weapon made by one god kill a mock vision of another?

    /Please... c'mon.../

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Normally, an enemy like this would be fairly trivial for Psyber. A false projection of a being that he naturally predates upon by form of concept. Unfortunately, he's exhausted from the gauntlet of encounters that have led up to this and not at the top of his game as a result of it.

    He struggles against the claws, pinning them to the side as a horn catches him in the chest and opens a wide wound. Letting out a cry of pain, Psyber releases the claws from the grasp of his blades in order to bring both swords down in a twin-stab right towards the skull of the creature in front of him.

    He wants to make quick work of the monster both in case anyone else needs help and in case this realm decides to shuffle again and he needs to prepare.

Riva Banari has posed:
That wasn't a pleasant time. But Riva, if nothing else, seems to have an uncanny knack for not dying. Or not staying dead. Almost the same thing, here.

But the next challenge lies ahead, and Riva looks up to see... Heaven. Well, /a/ Heaven. The forms of countless being of incomprehensible power surround them, each one of them a deadly foe in their own right...

And then she is faced by a small, cute little creature in all white with a red bowtie.

Riva tilts her head.

Whyt tilts its head the other way.

And then she's got a hammer bouncing off her head. Riva falls back grimacing before the ground erupts in a dozen spikes. "YIPE!" She hurls herself backwards in a dodge-roll, even as watery spheres rain down around her, attempting to pummel her.

Even while she's on the run, she sees the crisis of faith Kyra is going through. She grits her teeth, and lashes out with her rapier, column-dashing once more into a sword clash with a blade of the Divine's own, the whimsical creature beginning to overpower her.... Until she punts it up into the air, popping it up just high enough to smash it with a two-handed strike that sends it tumbling away.

Momentary time bought, she rushes over towards Kyra. "You could have stepped away at any time, Kyra, it's true. It might even be pleasant. But then you won't have control over that life anymore. Isn't that one of the reasons why you rebelled in the first place?" She asks.

She grabs Kyra's shoulder then, hurriedly shaking her. "You're right. You've got our backs, and we've got yours. You're not alone in this, Kyra. You've never /been/ alone." Sparing just a moment, she reaches down and hugs Kyra warmly... And then ducks away as a dozen wind blades shear past, slicing away part of her hair. "FUDGE!" She yelps.

"Look! Kyra! We're all looking for some way to figure out how to deal with life. To carve some meaning out of our universe. You're just /still looking/. That's why religion exists. That's why we have philosophy and art and science! But after all that... It's all up to you, Kyra, in the end!"

Priscilla has posed:
    "Art we? Truly? For I perceiveth the panicked tantrum of an irrelevant ghost attempting to forestall its rapidly approaching end!" Priscilla retorts in her increasingly scathing tone. This style if fighting isn't unfamiliar to it, with how often she's seen Mizuki do it. Sword in one hand and dagger in the other, she pivots, flourishes, parries and expulses, whirling back and forth to keep up with the barrage from all sides aided only by the fact that Shiori can't precisely see her, her incresingly heavy and ragged breathing betraying her flagging endurance, though the fire refuses to fade from either her eyes or her words. "If thou tire of this than do not feel obliged; feel most free to drop dead at any time! There was never a point at which anyone ever saw any value in thee, so if thou hope to change something about thine miserable, forgettable existence, thou art far too late to do so!" The final lunge skirts her guard, spraying sparks from an invisible blade, followed by a splash of blood from an equally invisible wound, followed by, in that brief moment before she teleports, one last vicious, close ranged strike at her hated foe.

    When she looks to the others, locked with their spectres, it is with the beleaguered feeling of being forced to choose who she rushes to the aid of, and how much she can spare, knowing there is only so much left in her, but determined that it'll last long enough to see Shiori bleed out. The others have suffered worse. /She/ has suffered worse. That determination is all that carries her through as they reach what appears to be the penultimate stage, unflinching at the so-called gods arrayed in front of her, remembering only a time at which thirty of the Union's finest had faced down an army proportionately such as this, and she had snuffed them out regardless. The Lifehunt Scythe becomes her new armament, so ineffably deadly to their kind, black and silver rending the core essence from the worthless immortality of a great bird, laying about with soul-extinguishing strikes in unadulterated fury.

    "Is this all thou art made of?! Is this truly the last, pathetic gasp thou wilst show us before thine demise, Shiori?!" It's so uncharacteristic of Priscilla, but it's the only way she's keeping herself going. Trying to be rational like Psyber, composed like Homura, or resolute like Staren, would make it too easy to cave in. Let anyone see something ugly out of her; so long as pure spite keeps her on her feet, and keeps her blades slashing, she will adhere to it. Just eleven enemies. Ten enemies. Nine enemies. One foot in front of the other. One edge following the first. All this nonsense about dreams and illusions and fascimiles, it's all beyond her care. The space she has to think with has shrunk so far that . . . it goes to the bottom. The card face up is the most important.

    "So help mineself and all the Lords, Lady Kyra, if thou art the one to be lesser than thineself and undo us all here, to give this demon her victory at her last, contemptible effort . . ." The voice she uses for Kyra however, though growing hoarse as it is, is suddenly far from blindly furious. It's frustrated, sympathetic, sad, urging, and angry all at the same time, audibly refusing to believe that she would cave in right at the last second, assuming it a /certainty/ that the girl is strong enough to get back up, but that she needs to get back up /now/.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
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REWIND


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LOADING STATE (8) - ARTHUR . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
The Book of Heaven - <A Quiet World> (Location #612)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The void of space, in close orbit of the Skaia corresponding to Arthur's Sburb session. Skaia's surface is scarred, evidence of the final fight against the Black King and the beginnings of the reckoning. More distantly, Bilious Slick is visible, beyond LOGAL and LOSAF.

    If one looks more closely at the quartet of planets inhabiting this region, however, they would find that their surfaces do not at all have the geography that some may remember. Instead, different things may be glimpsed: another replica of Boston, a Japanese school, Anor Londo, a Regenesis office building overlooking a splendid urban metropolis, others. They are fragments of what remains of the heavens that were created toward the end of the initial sojourn into Mizuki's world. They utterly lack the energy that they held then, however; there is no semblance or even imitation of life within them anymore, and they have been left, much like the buildings in Mitakihara before, to wither away.

    The circumstances here are presumably the same as they were in Arthur's heaven: this is a world where he died instead of Valentine. Visibly, however, things are identical; where there are not stars, there is only darkness as far as the eye can see. The world is silent until words are spoken by someone in particular. Unnamed nebulae provide some modicum of color in regions where there would otherwise be none, like ripples in the fabric of reality.

    Otherwise, this world is empty and pristine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Arthur Lowell <God Tier> <#0>    LAND OF SPIRES AND FROGS
<#4>    LAND OF GRIT AND LAMPS
<#1>    LAND OF GOLD AND SHADE
<#3>    LAND OF WOOD AND HAZE

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Just consider it."

    The group enters to the image of Mizuki pressing a finger to Arthur's lips, the both of them floating free in-between Skaia and LOSAF. "You don't have to decide now," She says, "just before this is all over. But I'm sure that you'll have plenty of time." She gives him a small smile, then falls wordless for a spell. This pause provides just enough time for Mizuki's expression to shift back to neutrality. "Whose sides do you want to fight on this time, Arthur? Or... if they wouldn't mind, you could watch if you wanted. Do you have a preference?" She waits for an answer that won't come now.

    "Well," She says, facing the group properly now, "regardless, I've kept them waiting long enough." Mizuki floats forward. Flecks of stardust cascade down, tracing along the threads of her hair, lightening them to Shiori's brown. Her clothing, too, changes to match Shiori's dress; yet even as she is so entirely changed, it is still abundantly clear that this is Mizuki's expression -- not Shiori's. Nevertheless, she points her sword in their direction.

    "Let us have an end to things," She says, voice soft. "One more battle. One more beautiful story." Her eyes seem to glisten. "Surely you've figured it out by now. Haven't you? This is all a dream. These awful things that have happened -- immaterial. Nightmares that I unleashed from your - our - subconscious." Her blade arm quivers. "Do you... hate me for that? I suppose that's only natural. Opening those old wounds... it was never my place. It was never my place, but I did it anyway." Tears begin to form in earnest, now. "... why? Arrogance? Because I presumed it would help you to learn?" She shakes her head to her own inquiries. "No. No -- it was because I believe we all enjoyed it, in the end. These small lives of ours, there's more to them than just the words. Just the events. More to them than lessons and plays at feeling superior, powerful, in control."

    Something in her voice breaks. Still holding her sword, Shiori Mizuki looks down to her feet, unable to face the group any longer. "These fabrications we've lived together," She continues, voice shaking, "they were more than all of that. I want to believe that. I want to believe that these names we've given ourselves, these stories we've written together, these relationships we've built together, will outlast the confines of this one reality. I want to believe that this is not the end."

    She faces the group properly, now. Even as tears begin to fall, she smiles. It's a sort of smile that she has never shown anyone before.

    "I want to live!" She says. "I want you all to live! And if I can't save you, if I can't seal us all away in heaven together for eternity, if dreams are not enough -- then this is my ultimatum!" She tightens the grip on her sword, twisting it to its side. "Change is the nature of this world. It won't falter for me or anyone. One day, this world - this shared hallucination - it will end. We will all end. I accept that now."

    "So let's have one more fight together!" She rushes the group, multiplying herself ninefold, sending one clone to each person present. "One for the ages! Something for us to remember! Let us write our names in these stars, here and now, so that the cosmos will never forget that there was a time when we were here, together!"

    "One, last time, tell me who you are. Make it so that I could not forget you across any number of reincarnations or realities!"





"Create a miracle that will allow this memory to persist forever!"





    The world cracks like glass.

    It feels, this time, somehow final.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
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REWIND


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LOADING STATE (9) - MIZUKI . . .

Mizuki (183) has posed:
Clock Tower Interior - <A Quiet World> (Location #20)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The doors creak open to reveal a room with floors wrought from fine, reflective wood and walls covered with an equally lovely, crimson, silky material. A surprising number of portraits line the walls as well, all of their eyes fixed on the rather peculiar display in the center of the room. There is a large area sectioned off by a wooden fence that does not seem to be directly connected to the rest of the floor. Above it hangs an intricately carved 'roof' of sorts, connected to the rest by equally detailed columns. Looking at it from here, it almost looks like it could be an elevator, but there doesn't seem to be anything that would help it rise into the sky. Still, it manages to rise and fall somehow, though it refuses to go any lower than it currently is for most.

    At the top of the tower is the 'audience room'. It's quite barren, really. The floor is covered by a bright red carpet, but is otherwise quite empty considering how spacious it is. On the walls hang portraits not unlike those in the entryway, but these are considerably bigger. So large, in fact, that only four can fit on the walls. On the opposite side of the room from the area where the elevator enters is the impromptu 'throne', a red velvet couch. And of course, right in front of that is the clock's most distinguishing feature: a stained-glass window depicting a girl clutching a rose.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents Exits
Mizuki <Dream Witch> <#18>    Clock Tower
Psyber <Casual> <#24>    Path of Candles
Arthur Lowell <God Tier>
Riva Banari <Casual>
Priscilla <Mortal Guise>
Staren <Boy Genius>
Eryl Fairfax <Suit With Cape>
Kyra Hyral <Desc Name>
Homura Akemi <Puella Magi>
Faruja <Inquisitor>

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    They're back at the top of the Clock Tower.

    The top, from whence Mizuki once watched the world.

    She lays on her couch with her hands crossed, one over the other, as though she were lying in a casket. She's smiling warmly.

    "Thank you," She says. "for indulging me one last time. Whatever you choose to remember, or not to remember... that is fine." She rests her eyes for one, long moment before adding, softly,

    "If you wish to remain and speak with me awhile, you are welcome to do so. I can hold the Quiet World in existence even in this state for as long as you may wish to stay, however... the moment you leave, you will never be able to return here. Once you depart, it is final."

    "Thank you, again, friends. And though I'll never deserve it, I pray that one day you'll pardon my selfishness."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
--- Disconnected on Saturday, June 04, 2016, 02:00 AM ---
--- Connected for 0 days, 9 hours, 47 minutes, 21 seconds. ---
______________________________________________________________________________

--- Received 7006 lines, sent 300 lines.
--- Output buffer has 5000/5000 lines in it (100% full).
--- Matched 0 triggers, 0 aliases, and 0 timers fired.
"Shiori Mizuki" has closed the connection.
Thank you for everything.
Goodbye.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "...I'll think about it, Mizuki."

    "...If this is going to end right... I need to be on your side. I need to take the choice that means a few more moments with you, Mizuki. If this is the last chapter, it can't... It can't be wrong. It can't come out wrong. It would be the Right thing to do if I fought you, if I... If I was cruel to you for what you did. To this world. To us. But I can't be that. I need to be on your side. I'm only human."

    "Yeah. Looks like they're here now. I need to be on your side. The story will call this one... 'Just'. Yeah."

    "SO! Looks like we're at the LAST LEVEL, yo!"

    "YEAH, it was ALWAYS gonna END LIKE THIS."

    "Think of it like ONE LAST SPAR! One last PRACTICE MATCH! That's ALL THINGS ARE sometimes, ISN'T IT?"
    "YEAH, you KNOW what I'm talkin' 'bout."

    "...No grudges. Right?"

    "I just... Don't want this to end with you hating me."

    "..."

    "ALRIGHT! It's time to DO THIS! It's time to END THIS! The WAY it OUGHT TO END! COME AT ME! All the POWER and FORCE YOU GOT!! I WANNA BLEED ENOUGH STARS TO PAINT THIS SKY!! I WANNA HEAR YOU SCREAM ENOUGH THAT I'LL NEVER FORGET IT, NO MATTER WHERE I GO!! GIVE ME ENOUGH THAT IT MARKS MY SOUL WHEREVER I GO!!"

    "BLACK PROTOCOL!!"

Staren has posed:
--

    ...

    Staren looks at Mizuki with sadness. "I'll save myself, and as many as I can. You know that."

    But he couldn't save her. One more failure. Not cursed, just weak.

    He draws his beam saber, but he doesn't have the heart to fight to kill. Even if it's not real. He defends as best he can, though.

    "I AM STAREN!" he shouts. "I'm going to HELP PEOPLE, and I'll NEVER ACCEPT the way the world is and that we can't change it! I'm going to fight for what I know is right, no matter what anyone says! I'm going to LIVE FOREVER, and I WILL REMEMBER YOU!"

--

    He's left standing there, at the clock tower, eyes wet. "...I'm going to remember the truth. How could anyone forget you?" He steps forward to hug her. It's getting hard to talk. "We're all creatures with our own nature. You're a part of this crazy storybook world... I'm sorry it can't go on forever. That I can't save you." He sniffles. "But that's me projecting my values on you." He lets her go, and steps back. "I want life and immortality, because /I/ value those things. But maybe... they're not for everyone. What matters is that you're happy and you have what you want. If you have that... If you're truly fulfilled with this ending..." He wipes his tears from his eyes with his sleeve. "Then I will miss you, but it would be selfish of /me/ to keep you around. G...goodbye... Mizuki..." Tears flow from his eyes.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber sighs as the final battle begins and ends just as immediately and unfought as it was from the start. Left at the clocktower, the half-angel sheaths his blades and looks to the girl on her couch, "I see. A final narrative that you felt fit your departure." He says it flatly, with a distance and detachment to his voice.

    "I understand the decision you've made. And I respect your desire to depart on your own terms," Psyber says with some finality. There's no tears on his face, there's no torment to him any more. He's had enough people he cares about die, be maimed, or fall due to his lack of being able to solve all problems. This will be chalked up to another lesson on his board. Another piece of the puzzle for what's to come later.

    Much later.

    For now, he simply looks upon her, "I accept your chosen course of action. You do not have to wonder as to my pardon, because it is given now."

    Both of the sheathed blades vanish from his hands and he looks to Shiori Mizuki, "Understand that I will mourn Palora's loss. As I will mourn yours."

    He doesn't have much else to say to her. She knows him well enough to know that he's not going to be as emotive as some, but that the cold exterior he's putting on indicates how deeply this series of events has cut him. And how long it will probably take him to fully settle out what has happened.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki conjures a handkerchief, using it to dab Staren's eyes. "You and I, Staren," She wisps, "are of a kind. Our goals are one and the same, yet our approaches to them... expressions of them... are so very, beautifully diverged." She returns the hug, tightly. "I will continue seeking immortality, in my own way. After all, though I cease to exist, I do not cease to think. I will persist out there, somewhere; be it as myself, or be it as a force of nature."

    "And I will never forget you, either."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Psyber. Mizuki rises, albeit gradually, from her couch. She hugs Psyber. Whether he reciprocates makes no difference to her -- she knows him well enough to feel his soul either way. She eases out of the hug after a time, stepping back, gesturing to the elevator.

    It's broken, as before. In its frame stands Palora, posed against the wall, smiling her fanged smile.

    "I stopped being a part of this world the second I started thinking for myself," She says. "So hey, big guy. Is that room in the office still open?"

    Priscilla and Kyra came through after all.

Riva Banari has posed:
The battle, such as it is, was met in the way only Riva could. A blade met with a paintbrush. "If you wanted to remember me for who I am, then this is how you do it."

Within the Clock Tower, Riva looks down on that couch that she spent so much time with this being. 'So close.' 'Who am I?' 'You have always been the closest to understanding.' These words and more echo in her mind as she looks down upon someone she called friend.

And it's at this moment that she shakes, her eyes closed. A brilliant piece of mummery. A denial. A way to wring meaning from meaninglessness. An irony that burns at her soul.

Finally, she whispers. "It's... it's so stupid." She bows her head. "It's always so /easy/ to sit there and deny things and to make grand statements about how everything has to come to an end, but when it happens to someone like /you/..." She grits her teeth for a moment. "You never think it might be just around the corner, and then..." She looks away. "You wish you had more time. That you could have said more. That you could have done more. Even though it changes nothing, and you know it has to happen, you always wish..."

She cuts herself off with a frustrated grunt, shaking her head, "I'm just a silly, irrational girl." She breathes for a moment, steadying herself before she leans in, totally ruining Mizuki's dignity for a moment with a tight hug.

"Your story might be over, Mizuki. But you're always going to live in my heart... And one day, we're going to meet again."

Those words delivered, she releases Mizuki to straighten up once more and give her room.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "... very well. Then, remember that I am Akemi Homura, the most stubborn person you've met," Homura answers, flatly. Still wielding Einherjar and Tyrfing, she raises them, ready to give Mizuki the final bout she wants, despite exhaustion.

    -----

    In the Clock Tower, Homura stands behind Mizuki's couch; from the side, the two girls would be back to back, with the Puella Magi's arms crossed and head lowered. There's a flicker of magic, the tick tock of the clock halting, drawn out forever in near-silence, as the world loses its colors. Intentionally, the effect doesn't target Mizuki; even weakened, her own magic would let her resist it.

    "I didn't know you very well, despite helping you a few times. It's unfair you knew me better than me you. I could probably draw this out for a few hours before I couldn't maintain the spell anymore, but I'd just be delaying the inevitable like I always have been."

    "..."

    "And it'd still be too short, anyway."

    "..."

    "Goodbye, Shiori Mizuki. When I too can call myself an author and paint the stars of my world, maybe that power will be enough to come looking for you again. To catch up."

    Ominous. A sincere promise, though.

    Time resumes its march, once Mizuki has said whatever she would want to in reply. Homura walks away; to observers, she's said nothing at all. No tears, but the most forlorn of expressions on her face, and a still darkening gem on her hand.

Staren has posed:
    Staren smiles a little. "I'm glad. That you'll remember me too... Whatever adventure you have, in the next world... I guess in a way, I'll be with you. And you with me." He takes a deep breath, and wipes away more tears. He's surprised to see Palora step forward. A hope appears on his face, and he looks from her to Mizuki. "Does that mean... any of the others, are any of them able to escape? Or are they already...?"

--

In a world, that doesn't exist. A possibility, a dream, a reflection in a broken mirror, a million shades of light, no more real than others, but perhaps, no less...

--
    He is left standing there, at the clock tower, eyes wet. In this world, ironically, he might have been more suited to the storybook world. He's no gothic lolita, true, but with long brown (yet greying) hair and a many-layered outfit including a coat and cape and jewelry and glasses, topped off with a wizard staff, he is perhaps suited to the aesthetic.

    "I'm going to remember the truth. Sheesh, Beautiful Moon, do you really think anyone would choose to forget you?!" He shakes his head, causing the end of his hair to whip about a bit. "I guess, in the end, we are still creatures limited by nature. I'm s-sorry, this has to end," his speech stumbles a bit as he gets increasingly choked up, "That there's no way to save you, that we can't just beat up some powerful dragon or dark god, or, or science some kind of amazing program that can fix everything. But noone really dies in this world..." He smiles sadly, and steps forward to hug her. He squeezes tightly, "We'll meet again, someday." Then he relaxes, and steps back. And... but until then... I'll miss you. G... goodbye..."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    In some sense, what happened in the battle was irrelevant. Arthur did what he did. It was quite a battle, and it shouldn't have to deal with the indignity of what I could say about it. The dream can be what it is without needing words as inadequate as whatever I could call it.

    Arthur is at the top of the clocktower. "As long as we stay... As long as we stay..." Arthur mutters. There's a heavy sigh. "Well. I don't have to be anywhere soon, Mimi. I'll stay until I can't. Maybe a little longer. I'm not sure what the rules will be like. I... Mmmh. I dunno if it'll mean I ever show up anywhere else again. This might be goodbye too." He turns back to the others. "Hey bros. I-- No, I should be honest about things."

    "You guys could always see through the act anyway, couldn't you? Listen, I... Think maybe it's best if I stay here for a while. You know, I was always a little past my own expiration date in a way. After Sburb, after everything that happened, I think... Maybe it's better if I stay. For good. Or... For as long as good can be. To make a little peace with this. Or a lot. Maybe I won't stop making peace." Arthur drifts over to Mizuki's side. He gently rests at it. "I've got the time I need to figure it out. The humanity thing couldn't stick as long as it did. We'll see what happens. You guys might not hear from me for a while. ...Maybe ever, for some of you. Maybe for all of you, even the immortals."

    "I don't know. After a while, most of wisdom is realizing you don't know these things. But I've made my choice. For now, call the end of that dream a Just ending for Arthur Lowell, Mage of Space. And maybe think well of me." He closes his eyes and sighs, heavily. "It needs to be like this, I think. To really move on. For continuity. There's other places. Other... Shores. I think this way I can spread out a little. See what the sea has to offer. Maybe you'll remember me a little bit if you follow along. I'll sure remember a bit of you, with a fight like that. And we can talk out anything else we need to."

    "Mimi... Yeah, I think I'll stay here. If you'll have me."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki hugs Riva, next. Then she whispers, lightly, in her ear:

    "Would it have been better for me to stay, dying in a sort of silent monotony? At least this way..." She tightens her grasp on her.

    "At least this way, we had an end. A final page. A moment where we were all together, even if only one more time."

    Pulling back but keeping hold of her shoulders, she concludes, "I think that is worth so much more, that one moment of concentrated emotion, even if it means that I must depart sooner. Such it is, so it will be, yes?"

    "The candle that burns twice as bright..." She begins to say, with expectation that Riva will finish.

Priscilla has posed:
    And yet, even as the last of Shiori's efforts fail, as Priscilla is left standing instead of her, the future refused to change. Her weapons slip from her blood-slicked grip, clattering to the floor of the Clock Tower, her breath coming blue and glittering from her lips. She's too tired to fall down. Too tired to- . . . to do much of anything. Some part of her wants to outright hit Mizuki for this self indulgence, having long wished she were better than the failing cracks in her persona she had showed, spreading subtly with time, but that has never been her. The bitter taste taste of all of her hard work -- of that rare and precious empathy she has so rarely ever extended to any other being -- burning up before her eyes, taking with it so many memories that she had desperately wished to remember fondly despite the signs, fills her with revulsion, but she's never been one for that either. As much as she hates Mizuki at this moment, she loves her in equal measure, and she cannot bring herself to part on anything but terms she won't regret.

    "Sadly, I do not." she finally says, plainly and without deception. "I am not willing to so resign mineself to find this acceptable, but I knoweth it is inevitable. I cannot find it within mineself to forgiveth thee for such selfishness. For destroying everything I hath reached out to thee with, and for taking so much else along with it. If I ever will, it wilst not be for a very long time. Had only I the power . . . things wouldst hath ended differently . . ." Her lip trembles for the faintest of moments. "But as it is, I will not say that I shall not miss thee dearly. I cannot value mine feelings over the destiny thou wouldst chooseth for thineself, even if I wish that I had done more. As much as what thou taketh away from me aches, there is ample else that thou hast given me in that I shalt not lose so easily. If there is anything I choose to remembereth above else, it shalt be that there was a point to all of this. For all thine prose and self-indulgence, thou were always a superb author, and I wouldst hate for such a story to endeth so plainly." And then, a rare smile that seems so painfully forced, and yet so genuine at the same time. "Though in truth, there is nothing I wouldst forget of thee. I wouldst not maketh mine life so retroactively dull, without cheer or imagination, or a single person with which I hath ever shared those thoughts between us."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "I don't feel that I knew you as well as you think," She says. "I only had a sort of... advance knowledge. The reality that you occupy is, in a word, much more accessible than my own." She offers a coy grin.

    "But I would welcome you," She says, "as I'm sure she will welcome you. And on that day... I will give you a welcome with enough fanfare to let you know, at last, that your long fight is over. Until then, remember:"

    "Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you."

    Time resumes.

    She watches her departure with a small smile.

Staren has posed:
    Staren shakes his head. "Ah, s-sorry. Old habits die hard. If they want to... if they can... they will, right?" Staren takes a breath to try and calm himself.

    He looks to Arthur, shocked as he explains his intentions, but then seeming to get it. He steps up to Arthur and holds out a hand for a fist-bump. "I'll miss you, too. The Multiverse won't be quite the same without its rocket-powered jerk." He smiles. "I suppose, in the end, whatever happens... Soon or an eternity from now... Perhaps I will see you in the next world. We can have a laugh if it turns out I was worried over nothin'."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber will return Mizuki's hug, albeit gently. He is ahead of his usual four-hug policy which allows him to supply her one. And this is a serious enough moment that he wishes to reciprocate the rare show of affection with an equally rare one of his own.

    A look to Palora and a soft smile, "Yes, it is."


    And then finally Arthur. Psyber turns towards Arthur and narrows his eyes a bit, "When I met you, you had no purpose. You were driven, but unfocused." Psyber sounds, almost, like he's scolding Arthur for a few moments, "But you have changed over the years. And the choice you are making..."

    "...is one I understand, Arthur," Psyber stares at the God of Space and clenches his hand slightly. He hates that Arthur is making such a choice, mostly because of Psyber's own selfishness. But the paternal figure inside him recognizes that he cannot watch Arthur forever, and that he has become his own man many times over by this point. So his hand unclenches moments later and he lets out a slow exhale.

    "I will see you again at some point. And you will tell me of what you both learned."

    And then he turns around and starts to leave. He won't blame Arthur for this decision. He wouldn't even question the choice. After all...

    He'd do the same for Elliana. He'd do the same for Homura.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki takes Arthur's hand. She locks eyes with him a moment. Silently, she cries.

    She turns to Psyber thereafter, nodding.

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    "Haha... in spite of all the prose, you are a simple creature Mizuki. You want what is best for us, even if we disagree. So you will argue, to try and make us see your point of view, in your own way. But in the end, you care too deeply to make us do things that go against our wishes."

    "Hate? I'll admit... I felt some awful feelings during all this. But, as usual, such feelings were born out of a lack of understanding. Now that I see the full picture, such feelings are gone."

"But, I see that your taste of theatrics remains, no matter what. And Mister Lowell remains hot-blooded as usual. Very well, a moment of high emotion, a tonic for what came before. Come then. I, Eryl Fairfax, diplomat for the ReGenesis Corporation, will meet your challenge. En garde!"

=====

    Eryl sits, gently sipping at tea as he regards his reflection in the liquid. "You are withdrawing then. And you are staying with her, Mister Lowell?" He drains his cup, contemplating this. It's certainly not the first time he'll have to leave, knowing he'll never see people again. His whole journey on his home world has consisted of that. To that end, he's not as affected as others might be about this. Indeed, his brain has been augmented specifically not to feel this way.

    That doesn't mean he isn't affected at all.

    He finishes his cup, and contemplates its emptiness... before pouring another. "Well, I suppose I had better stay for a while, hadn't I?" he says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "It would be a tragedy for this place to fade from the Multiverse entirely. It deserves to linger, even as just an echo in my memory banks. I want... I want to understand you both, understand this place, and take it back with me. Not just for the sake of record-keeping... I want to carry it with me, until the end of my days."

    He looks a little uncomfortable at speaking in such a way, but he soon recovers. "If you two would tolerate me for a while, that is. I would hate to intrude on anything." His tone is plainly innocent, but his words...

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki wipes a tear from her eyes. "Staren," She calls, voice miraculously free of shakiness, "when you leave here, keep a record of these coordinates. Once the Quiet World vanishes, my shack will remain. In that shack there will reside a distortion in space that shares the features of the Quiet World. Being there, you can imagine into existence anyone from this world. Their words will, admittedly, be fueled by your own memory of them, so it is not ideal, but..." She winces.

    "If ever you have need of comfort, please return there."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur delivers a firm fist bump back to Staren, grinning. One last elaborate handshake, bumps and pounds and slaps. "Yeah. I really shook stuff up out there. Changed the game. Only thing I could ask for out of what I got to do." He laughs a little. "Maybe I'll see you again in the next one, man. You just look out for the mage that calls himself something else. You'll know where to find me."

    Psyber gets a nod, after a soft, nervous swallow. Arthur's at peace with what's happening, but it still a hard thing to say. He squeezes Mizuki's hand for support in trying to think up how to say something back to a father figure of so many years. "Billions of years, man. Billions of years and I still feel like you're a dad to me. Thank you. I wouldn't have the purpose I've gotten without you. Who do you think helped inspire me to put a little bit of a human face on the divine things, huh?" He chuckles nervously, then... For a moment, he lets go of Mizuki's hand.

    Psyber doesn't have to hug back. But Arthur zips forward and delivers one before he leaves. The last of any they can share for now. "Thank you. You're someone I can't imagine not knowing. You gave me so much and asked so little. I hope beyond anything that I can see you again someday. I promise I'll tell you something good."

    He lets him go and returns to holding Mizuki's hand.

Staren has posed:
    "Y-yeah. See you." Staren replies to Arthur. At Mizuki's explanation, he runs a hand through his hair. "Sheesh, /that's/ not liable to terrible abuse. I could get lost in a Quiet World of my own imagination forever, and stuff..." Then he smiles, "Well, I haven't so far, and that's not changing! But, I'll keep it in mind, if I ever feel I need to speak to any of you. Thank you."

    He steps back and looks between the two of them for a moment. Hesitating. When he leaves, that will be it.

    He steps forward and gives Arthur a Man Hug, with backslapping. "See you in the next world, man." And then he gives Mizuki another tight hug, and then steps back. "Goodbye." He walks towards the gate, then stops again, before it. He turns back to face them. "Goodbyyyyyyyyyye!" He waves until they wave back, then smiles and turns around again, steeling himself before stepping through.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva has no answers for Mizuki. But she does have a response. "... Burns half as long." She says, nodding as her voice goes quiet.

And then Riva stands, only to see Arthur make his own declaration. She's not like Psyber. She wears her heart on her sleeve. Her expression goes to surprise, then flickers through it all over again. Pain, anger, and regret all over again. "You're..."

She deflates a bit, then, her expression cracking slightly. Defeat. Loss. "I see. Well, I hope things work out well, okay?" A weak thing in the middle of a time like this, perhaps, but... She stands there, fidgeting, clearly torn between leaving or saying something else.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki looks to Priscilla. For the longest time, she is without words. In time, though, perhaps out of necessity, she finds them.

    "I didn't understand it before," Her words are so quiet that they may well remind of the serene aura of Gravelord Nito, "but you are beyond me in maturity in so many ways, Priscilla. I had so much to learn from you. I still have so much to learn from you. I have taken something from you that you cared about... because, before this moment..." She squeezes her eyes shut a moment.

    "I had been ignorant," She struggles to continue, "of the depth of your feeling. I should have seen it. You have shown it to me so many times. But you -- you are not the sort to show your feelings openly. They are a thing you functionally reserve, to make them more impactful. Yet in that same way, the way you speak... even if your voice is often loud, your words, your meaning... is so soft. So gentle."

    She hugs herself lightly, her whole body beginning to shake. She bows her head, averting her eyes. "Thank you for your forgiveness," She says. "I do not know that I deserve it, but... I will not allow you to feel as though you have wasted yourself on me. I have learned so much from you, my friend -- so much. I should like to think that we will each continue, even if only upon reflection."

    When she raises her gaze to her again, her eyes are wide. She's crying. "I-I'll miss you," Her voice quivers in earnest for the first time. Her voice sounds like it did when they first met to speak in Ariamis, after the fireworks. "I have been so cruel to you, but please... please believe that it has been but a long, long list of misunderstandings. At times, those misunderstandings defined our interactions. I should've liked that things were different... but as you say, this is the end. It is final." She stops herself, taking a breath.

    "So a last time," She says, "thank you for your patience. Your courage, in always being so honest. Your candor and unique spirit are things I will never forget. Some day, some where, I hope that I can show you how much Lordran meant to me. It was my beginning with all of you -- and it was my end. Some days, our adventures there were the only things that made life worth living. I hope that you can believe that."

    Mizuki stiffens her posture, looking deep into her eyes before, finally, she bows. She does not rise again for a full half minute.

    "Thank you," She says. "My friend. My mentor. You are so much more patient than I will ever know, and in that patience, so very kind. I hope dearly that it is not final, but..."

    "Goodbye."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki turns away from Priscilla to the end of Eryl's 'speech.' Her face dyes beet red. She balls her fists.

     "WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING INSINUTAITON!!"

    She grabs a cushion from the couch, covering her face.

    ... wait. What exactly WAS he insinuating? Did she just make it worse??

    Ugh!

    Mizuki squirms in place.

Priscilla has posed:
    For the first time, Priscilla might have come to sympathize with someone here on an intimately awful level, and at the same time, she cannot hate a little girl while she expresses those truest of feelings. As Mizuki stands up, there is a brief, subtle first, the crossbreed turning invisible just so that no-one else sees as she wraps her arms around Mizuki and squeezes, for interminable, never ending seconds. "Goodbye, mine guiding moonlight." she all but whispers, releasing her friend with such incredible reluctance, before finally speaking loud enough to hear. "And her night sky of stars. If I see neither of thee again, believeth not for a second that I shalt hath not the power to find whatever strange place thou existeth and shatter it such that the both of thee fall most unceremoniously back to earth. Thou knowest very well judge the value of lives and afterlives most inconsistently selfishly."

    Now, she feels like she can go back. Her tail hangs low as she does, briefly rubbing her eyes with the back of her sleeve as she crossing the threshold of the door for what is more probably than not, in one sense or another, the last time.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur approaches Riva next. His face twists strangely, with a soft sort of distress. "Nnnhhhh..." He bites a lip softly, before he moves forward to hug her tightly too. "Rivs. I'm sorry. You know what I'm like. Gotta be human, you know. I'm... Not ready to let go of anything. Not her. But not you either. I wish there was some way to make things better. Some way to get a happier ending. I don't think there's anything like that in the world, though."

    "You know neither of us need to pretend to be cool. Don't leave anything left unsaid. No matter what, that's what you need to do now. We're immortals, and if you're gonna walk out that door... I want it to be with one more bit of wisdom. When you're immortal, that means living with that regret. Forever. Regret's the one weight you're going to carry longer than anyone else. Make sure you've got a light load, Riva." He squeezes, pressing the side of his face against her.

    "Maybe this is my fault in the worst way. It's always the romance that kills, you know, Rivs. You know, before all this happened, I... Heh... Kinda started up a crush on you. Embarrassing, right? You were always so... Present, so connecting. So reliable that way, charming that way. Always tuning in to what would stabilize me, getting as excited for everything as I was... Don't change that, Rivs. Please don't. I loved that part of you. Still do."

    "...I'm sorry, Riva."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki holds a hand after Priscilla. A slight blush lingers on her cheeks. Is it from the altercation with Eryl, or Priscilla's own words...?

    As Priscilla steps beyond the boundary, she is forced to acquiesce that she may never know herself.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "...Yeah. Big guy, if you'd stay a while, that'd be good. I never did get to know you as well as I should have." Arthur says, aside to Eryl. There's a soft grin. "Who knows what kind of cool handshakes you can do with hands like that, and Original Face, huh?" he chuckles at the joke... Then soberly nods. Immortals know time isn't of the essence. Let the guy stick around a few weeks. A few months. A few years. However long he wants, having someone else around is good. "Get some good pictures, tin man. I'm counting on you. Didn't bring my camera, you know? ...It'll be good, getting to know you before I go."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    There's a soft laugh to Priscilla from the Mage of Space. "Hah! Well I'll be braced then. Wherever we wind up, you go ahead and bust it up and bring us right back if you can. You'll always know how to find me, Great White. Just follow the biggest, tallest, toughest letters you can find." There's a couple of nods and chuckles, and... "I'll take good care of her. We didn't know each other the best, but I know you care about her just as much as I do. You're just the one with more unfinished business. So just remember I'll take good care of her. Someone's got to, you know." She deserves it.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki summons Aelinos. She runs a finger along its blade before regarding Riva.

    "I feel it in you," She says. "Our same melancholy. You are not to depart on our same ark, no... but you will, I feel, depart. And when you do..." She holds out Aelinos.

    "This sword, as a compass, will lead you to us. Wherever you are. Just be aware that that journey will be one that you must undertake alone... and that, in all likelihood, will be one-way."

Eryl Fairfax has posed:
    Eryl can't help but crack a grin at Mizuki's flustered exclamation... but the goodbye between Arthur and Riva makes that falter. It seems in poor taste now. He'll have to apologize when he gets back, he decides. Really, he should probably follow-up on all of them. They'll be eager to know how the two were when he left.

    "Thank you for permitting me to stay," he says to Mizuki, in all seriousness this time. He also notices the slight indentations in her clothes when Priscilla hugged her. He won't judge her too harshly on trying to hide it. She is unused to real affection. To Arthur, he chuckles. "To be honest, I first thought we would not get along well at all. But loud waters run deep, it seems. Perhaps I will have more heartache in store when time comes to leave." Another laugh, at the mention of handshakes. "I will devise the coolest and strongest handshakes you have ever seen. Such is well within my capabilities."

    And now the time comes to say 'farewell for now.' To the retreating backs, he calls out. "I will return presently! And I would be deeply grateful if someone let ReGenesis know that I am not dead!"

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva looks back to Arthur, holding him again as he hugs her back. He can't see it, but perhaps some others can see Riva's expression go from defeat, to despair, then... mild surprise. Arthur can feel the shudder that runs through the Templar's body as he says that, her mouth working like a fish out of water. Mizuki probably gets to get a great view of it before she finally puts her hands on his shoulders, and pushes back to they can stand looking face to face into each other's eyes.

"God dammit, Arthur. Do you have /any idea/ how hard I've been working to punch through that skull of yours and those vast neuroses? Yes, I've been your friend, you /dunce/. I was in love with you this entire time, trying to find a way to get through to you!"

For a moment, people might be worried at the way Riva's hands tighten significantly around his shoulder. So close to his neck...

But she sighs, and slumps a bit again. "So yeah. There, I said it. I love you, you big lug. But now I'm going to have to walk out that door, because I can't stay."

She looks down. "And the next time we meet... If we meet... We're not going to be the same. Because even if we're immortal, Arthur, we're not unchanging. And because fate isn't kind, you won't be able to have it both ways."

She looks away, then. "I'm sorry too, Arthur."

Mizuki then offers her Aelinos, and Riva takes it up in her hand, looking down at it with an inscrutible expression. "Maybe one day." She says. "But not now. One day, I'll follow this blade to you."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki's eyes widen at Riva. She looks feverishly between her and Arthur a moment before, with a deep breath, calming herself.

    "Y-Yes," She eventually manages to say. "Even if not in this life... there will be others. And in those worlds... I couldn't really explain it, but I feel that his relationship and mine is more akin to brother-and-sister." With a smile, she concludes, "If we are family, that doesn't necessarily preclude...~"

    She stops herself.

    She has no fucking idea what she's doing right now.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur is blushing a bit, but it's lost in the softness of the expression. He looks remorseful, in a pained sort of way. "Yeah. You don't need to stay like this, or go where I'm going. But we will meet again. Even if we're not the same. But you know better than anyone. People like us, we can hang on to the bit that's important, even if everything changes. Even if it all changes... I think we'll figure a way."

    He leans into her hands as if for emotional support. "You don't have to go right away, Riva. Maybe... Just a little while. A couple days or weeks if you want. Just to settle things out, if you're... Well, if you want to. Just consider it. Maybe we could do something fun. A few more memories for the road." He pauses for a long time... "This doesn't have a golden ending. I think we were past that option... Maybe too long ago. But it doesn't need to be too awful. Stay until you won't regret leaving, and then leave, like you need to. That's the only thing I'll ask."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    After Arthur speaks, Mizuki faintly nods.

    "Yes," She says. "Do as you feel is right. I will give the pair of you all the time you need, if you wish it, though I'm certain we both understand just as well if you do not wish to drag things on..."

Riva Banari has posed:
There's a certain look in Riva's eye at what Miazuki says, an expression of mild curiosity and disbelief. However, before she can ask about that, Arthur begins replying again. Arthur is blushing, and nervous, and, well... He's made his decisions. Riva nods. "I'm sure we'll figure something out, then. Somewhere, somewhen."

But then Arthur leans into her hands, and he suggests that she stays for a while. There's a moment of shock, and then she mulls that over in her head, clearly weighing it, silently. Even when Mizuki offers to help in her own way...

Riva closes her eyes, and her voice is quiet. "I could do that, Arthur. I'd stay for a couple days. And then days would turn into weeks. I'd start thinking that it wouldn't be so bad to stay longer. Weeks become months... I'd turn off my phone or hide it somewhere. Months would become years..."

She shakes her head. "There isn't a time when I wouldn't regret leaving. You know that's not how it works. It would just be worse over time." Her hand slips up to cup against his face. "There's just one thing I need to do, before I go."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki appraises Riva with a neutral, calm expression. Her eyes narrow faintly in some mixture of disappointment... and understanding. She nods to her, easing her eyes to a close.

    "I remember when Kotone told me why she would not allow herself to be fully human in my world, on the first day she came to me. She claimed that, if she gave into that desire, she would never wish to leave." Mizuki is silent a moment, her body almost deathly still.

    "One day I hope to understand why giving in to that is wrong," She says. "If not in this life, then some other." She tries her utmost to smile.

    "You and I are children, Riva, each of us trying in our own ways to learn. No matter the distance, we will never be apart; no more than you and Arthur will be." She rises from her seat, offering take take her hand, to hold it a moment. Regardless of whether she takes her hand, Mizuki speaks thusly:

    "Look to the sky at night. So long as you remember us there, perhaps believe that we are there, just on the other side... we will never truly be gone." Tears rise in her eyes again. "But you're right. This world still has need of you. You have a unique sort of fire, Miss Banari. So I will remind you of a conversation I heard recently, of heroes and villains. The difference between the two isn't that the former have good intentions and the latter do not -- it is that the latter, ultimately, gave up."

    She taps Riva's cheek, if she is so allowed. "Never give up," She says. "fight to the last. Fight until the very moment this entire Multiverse is swallowed in a maelstrom of despair. Do this, and surely your zeal alone will keep us alive." She sits back down at last, taking a breath.

    "Surely there is virtue in that," She says. "Surely, together, you, Psyber, Priscilla, Kyra, and the others can create a miracle. Surely. Just, remember..." She lowers her gaze, folding her hands in her lap. "... we will always be watching, Miss Banari. And you know how we hate to be disappointed."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "...Yeah. I suppose. It's a bit of a precipice. I know the feeling. I know... The truth of it. Maybe you're right. I guess maybe I wanted you to come along, in some sense. You've got unfinished business I don't have though. It's... You're right." Arthur swallows nervously, averting his eyes a little bit, still leaning into those hands. "Can't blame me, can you?" He looks down, and he tries to force a light chuckle through eyes that tear up a little.

    He's said goodbye to a lot of people today. Some, he'll never see now. This is a lot of this. "I want you to do what I said, though. Make sure... Really, REALLY make sure. Make sure you don't do what you'll regret. That's the worst thing an immortal can have. When it comes down to it... You do what you have to here, but when it really comes down to it, make sure when it matters, you choose like I did. Like I did back when I chose Mizuki over that... Cycle's end. The things that are truly, truly right, when you start picking those... That's when the regret happens. You need to pick what you won't regret. Whenever you can. Even if sometimes... Even if right now... You can't."
    Riva's hand cups against Arthur's cheek. They're soft. Almost delicate. It would have been hard to notice before, but for all the way he throws himself headfirst into everything, he never built up the scarring or roughness that anyone else ought to build up. All just something that should have made sense. He looks back to her, staring into her eyes with an affectionate expression from a face far more academic and artistic than it ever seemed brash and aggressive. He leans his head just a bit into the hand. "One last thing, then." He says, closing his eyes a little and nodding gently. He thinks he knows where this will go. He should leave Riva with the best memory he can.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva looks to what Mizuki asks, and for a moment, it looks like she's going to answer her... And then she shakes her head. "If I tried to help you answer that question, Mizuki, I'd possibly be here even longer than if I decided to stay with Arthur." She smiles kindly. A hand moves to take up Mizuki's squeezing it as she smiles.

She lets Mizuki touch her cheek. How could she deny something so simple to Mizuki, the girl who shied away from simple contacts like that when they first met? "I won't give up." Riva replies. "I'll do everything I can.... And I can't guarantee I won't disappoint you..." She winks then, a little bit of that mischief popping back up behind the tears of farewell. "But I'll try not to do it too much."

But then there is Arthur. She looks back to the young god, the coolkid... And her hands return to Arthur. "No, I can't blame you. It wouldn't be you if you didn't ask."

He gives the last advice he'll be able to give in his position, one immortal to another, and Riva nods. "Thank you. I'll try my best to travel light, okay?" She says... And goes quiet, staring into his eyes. For a moment, there is only Arthur and Riva, sharing a moment that allows them both to stop pretending, to express themselves how they could... but only now at the end of things, they can.

Her hand rubs lightly over that soft cheek, left unscarred by battle and time, fixing that look in her memory. And when he closes his eyes, she leans in.

There is a kiss. But Riva keeps pushing, bending him backward and supporting his back as she holds him tight, her lips grinding into his with a burning, fiery passion that she has always tried to infuse into everything she does, everything she's ever been. She holds him there, apparently uncaring for simple mortal needs as breath as they share that moment. It seems like it lasts forever, the way she stays locked against him, as if trying to leave some part of herself indelibly marked on him, to let him carry some bit of her wherever he might go...

But eventually, she straightens, and lets him go, breaking that kiss as she pulls away with smiles and tears. She squeezes his shoulder, turn turns to give Mizuki a final hug and a quick kiss on her brow, before she abruptly turns and heads to the door.

At the door, she looks back, and gives Arthur a fingergun gesture. "See you later, Space Cowboy." She says, tilting her head rakishly.

A moment later, she's gone, heading out the door.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The door closes behind Riva.

    Unlike the time when she came in, there is no procession of vassal and phantoms -- only the long, long road, leading into the sunset, back home. The warpgate waits at the end of that road, flickering -- this is the last time it will ever function, for her, for anyone.

    Back in the Clock Tower, Mizuki holds a palm over the elevator's gate, but she hesitates. Not looking back at Arthur, she idly says, "I think I'll leave it this way. It adds a certain kind of... flair. A clutter. It makes this place feel just a trifle more real, more lived in." Turning to face him fully, now, she says, "Isn't that what you said before, Arthur?"

    Looking at him, though, she quiets. She walks over in a few, quick strides, setting a hand gingerly on his shoulder. "I was thinking," She says, "that we might make our first project a scale replica of Lordran. We can recreate Afterus, too, or LOSAF... but I have the most niggling feeling that you came prepared. So maybe we won't need to worry about those for a while." With that, though, she steps back. "For now, though, why don't I have Callia get us a cup or two of tea? Then later, or perhaps gradually over the next month I can show you the whole interior of the Palace of White Lilies. Oh, and after that --"

    She goes on and on and on, compulsively listing all the things they can do together. In the end, though, she looks over his shoulder, out the window. She feels an aching at her eyes, but for the first time manages to fight back the tears successfully. When she's sure that Arthur won't see her, she mouths to the wind:

    'Goodbye, dear Reader.'

Mizuki (183) has posed:
00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)Counterclockwise (talk) 00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)


If we shadows have offended,

Think but this and all is mended:

That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream.

Gentles, do not reprehend:

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Witch,

If we have unearned luck,

Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Witch a liar call:

So goodnight unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Mizuki shall restore amends.


00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)Counterclockwise (talk) 00:47, 7 June 2016 (CDT)