575/NODE: Game of Souls - Episode 2

NODE: Game of Souls - Episode 2
Date of Scene:	11 September 2014
Location:	The Homeworld
Synopsis:	An investigation crew climbs the Archmage's tower, while another team handles a raid of players led by a powerful trio.
Cast of Characters:	Kirito, 2, Tomoe, 38, Staren, 73, Vruasa Telash, Fiora O'Brien, 236, 253, Theo Morrison, 347, 357
Tinyplot:	When They Return

---

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    There is no gate today. No door and hallway acts as the entryway to the Node proper. Rather, all there is is a simple IP address - the IP behind the URL of Abstractum.Net - and a port therein, though port 111111 is technically not one that ANYONE should be using, right?

    That doesn't much matter. What's relevant for now is that when they join, even without Kirito doing any fussing with logins, the server recognizes him as the leader of a lobby; the others are forced into pending connections as they wait for him to approve them individually. And, apparently, to actually download the game client for this server. It looks like he still has control over who gets to access his Node! Just like anyone else. Even the Abstractum seem to be connecting, though they seem to be doing it on another port. It looks like they'll be along too.

    OPERATORS.NET.SPEAKS is not here today, and likely won't be again for some time. Oh well.

Kirito has posed:
    For better or worse, Kirito currently has no reason to reject virtually anyone or their Abstractum, with very, very few ones to ponder over. None of them are here. So everyone is clear.

    The WHITE Swordsman is already waiting in the lobby. no, the Spriggan Kirito is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there's a young man who looks ALMOST EXACTLY like Kirigaya Kazuto in the room. He's dressed in a whole body white robe-longcoat kind of outfit, with some crimson insignias of of a guild long-forgotten. That of the -Knights of the Blood Oath.-

    Yes. This is his Sword Art Online avatar, and twin swords adorn his back. One is Double Fault, the other is a black demon blade known as Elucidator.

    There's no sign of the crystallite 'Dark Repulser.' That one broke in the final hour against Heathcliff's shield. It will apparently never exist again.

    Whenever people arrive, he looks uncertainly in their direcction, but eventually sprouts a smile.

    "So before we head in, I'll give a briefing on our goals... but first, any questions about the Game of Souls? Is everyone's communications setup?"

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    The game's a small download for multiversal broadbands. Upon full connection, several things are immediately obvious to the group. The first is that each of them are being given options to create or import characters. Those who have played ALO are given the option to import their characters; others are given ALO-like character creation options, and most (those among the group that are actually, you know, human) are given the default of presenting themselves as simple humans with their real-life appearance. Even those who have AmuSphere, and should not have their real-life appearance visible. Hmm. No classes or anything like that; one has to assume there's a certain degree of skill translation, or that it works like ALO, where all that skills do is let you equip a wider range of mostly-equal weaponry.

Staren has posed:
    In the lobby, Staren looks like he went clothes shopping in a JRPG world, or possibly in a Wayne Reynolds illustration. The colors and inclusion of a long coat match his normal clothes, but the details involve more belts and layers and leather and such. Two daggers are sheathed on his belt. He nods in greeting to those here, and slips his hand into his coat pockets. "I'll be checking out the Archmage's Tower, if we can. But first, Theo came up with a plan for us to try..." Staren looks around expectantly for Theo and Auron.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber is here. He looks almost no different than his day to day self. He's wearing his usual longcoat, jeans, work boots, and a t-shirt which today reads 'I have a six pack under my Keg' along the front of it for the sake of a hipster irony considering his fitness level. He also has Adjudicator across his back and seems pretty casual about the entire affair.

    To Kirito he responds pretty directly, "I was gonna go kill the people ganking NPCs, try to keep them out of your hair for a while so you can investigate whatever you need to without worrying."

Frederica (73) has posed:
    Frederica, having been to the Game of Souls before, has no difficulty logging in and choosing her avatar. Frika, of course. It's almost eerie how comfortable she is as her avatar these days... but then again, that's probably no surprise. Many of her best friends were involved in Alfheim Online. It's where she had her first real major successes... and it's where she first really fit in.

    Frika's grinning broadly as she appears, catching sight of Kirito, Staren and the others. She's usually pretty cheery as Frika, as much for being with friends as because being the Cait Sith allows her to be less reserved. She tilts her head, looking over at Staren, then shrugs. "Better be careful, Psyber. Some of the gankers are probably Pures. You might have to run away in a hurry." she claims.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Once everything is worked out, though, the group is going to find its spawning point is particularly unusual. It is... What appears to be a massive, dark throne room. Huge obsidian spikes from the ceiling and floor make massive, sweeping columns to support the chamber. Around the room is a ring of boiling lava that emits a soft, warm, cozy kind of heat, with a bridge leading over it from the main entrance, which is a carved stone door about five stories tall and extremely wide. Massive firey wrought-iron torches burn pitch, attached to the walls. It looks very, very much like a final boss room.

    There is also a humanoid figure here, who looks very much like a final boss sort of fellow. A titanic fellow, at least ten feet tall, clad in jet-black plate armor. It is the very cliche of the dark lord, with a shadowy helm that bares vicious spikes, intimidating pauldrons, sleek and cruel-looking gauntlets, and a powerful, black, burning aura, with a titanic mace clasped in one hand and two deep red fires visible under the helm. They sit on a throne at least a story tall, which bristles with black spikes.

    "Oh! You're back." The Lord of Shadow says. Their gravelly voice and reverberating tones are familiar to Kirito and those who have joined before. And it's... And it's friendly. Like a co-worker relieved to have some help on a job. "Welcome back, and welcome, to the new friends who are joining. I was hoping you'd come around soon. We've managed to shut down raids on the Archmage's tower, since you wanted to investigate it. It won't hold for too long, but it should hold for a while, if you want to wait a little longer." They say, gesturing in a friendly way.

    "I'd hate to demand you go solve more inane problems, but there's... Well, there's a rather major raid going on. One of many, but if you wanted to start somewhere in dealing with these Players... It's a place to start."

    The other higher-ranking mage assistant who was here before isn't, right now, unfortunately, and neither are many of the mages. Looks like their redirection is holding fine all on its own.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    Homura appears in the lobby, after a few long minutes of toying with chargen a bit. Though she sports mostly her normal appearance-- purple eyes, long black hair, red ribbon in her hair-- her outfit, on the other hand, is a bit different. Long white cape, purple skirt without leggings but instead white thigh-highs and purple boots, a fancy tube-top-like dress that goes down to her skirt, sleeves not connected to it, and white gloves. If you guessed that this is Sayaka's outfit, with a dark purple color scheme instead of blue, you are right on the money.

    She seems distracted, standing next to Psyber and tugging on the cape. "I always wondered how that felt. The cape, I mean. How do you... how do you even wear this? How do you fight with this? This is unwieldy. I'm afraid I'm just going to trip in it and stab myself."

    Clairvoyant Rush, her Abstractum, is worn over a glove, no doubt, since it's a ring. Wouldn't do to hide it, it would be kind of rude.

    "Oh. Right. Business. I'll go with Psyber."

    Tug tug. This cape is awful.
    Why would anyone ever wear one?

Auron (236) has posed:
    Auron's appearance inside one of these VR game world always has one difference from his real appearance. Since there's nothing wrong with the areas in his brain that produce sight, he always has both his eyes. So here, his right eye seems to work fine.

    Aside from that, he too doesn't look much different than his real self. He has apparently chosen not to import his ALO appearance into this. And his clothing's as similar as he could get it to his normal attire. Except his hair's a little different. Less gray, and the ponytail is a little neater.

    He's not alone, though. He has an Abstractum! It's a large, anchor-shaped thing. It's on his back in place of his usual Katana, in a gray sheath. Yes, Suchiru has sword pants! That was what it had referred to it as, right?

Staren has posed:
    Staren has Eureka on his left hand too, of course. And there's a desc for this outfit btw. He looks to Homura as she arrives, opening his mouth to comment on the cape and then closing it again when she points out what he was already going to ask. "...It /looks/ cool, though." he says, after a moment.

Kirito has posed:
    "We're heading into the Game of Souls. If you've not been here before, it's like an MMORPG, but the NPCs are real people, the Gamemaster is a bastard, and the only players left are here because they've taken a liking to murdering the NPCs. For some reason I have the power to ban the players, but shutting them all down that way won't be easy. Our headquarters is the Lord of Shadow's castle. I know they'll look like some evil and imposing final boss, but they're anything but. We have two goals for now: Save the NPCs and investigate the game master. I aim to take down the most active players first and take some heat off the NPCs, but we also have to investigate the base of a murdered Archmage who was probably on to something big. That's the situation we're in."

    Kirito's not used to big speeches, but he gets that out quickly.

    And then they once again appear in the main room... he smiles the Lord of Shadow's way, but it doesn't last long. Soon he's frowning.

    "Yeah. It's good to see you again. ... Splitting in two groups might be best. What's the raid situation? I can start banning the murderers." He takes a deep breath.

    Yes. Murderers. Not players.

    This isn't a job for Kirigaya Kazuto. He must, HAS to be the Black Swordsman here. The warrior who stands by his sword in life or death. It's been quite hard to manage after rescuing Asuna... but he can't give less than his best here, can he now?

Tomoe has posed:
Sheena is elsewhere as she's often wont to do here. Likely in Kirito's family's place in her borrowed room, or she's at the Union HQ once of the two she's logged in and she looks to Kirito as well she listens for a moment. Kirito gets a look and she gets a nod.

"Thats the question do we pose as new players or some event raid mob with a loot table these pyschos can not help but gun for? WIther way I'm ready and it is good to see your still all right. I never thought ... how twisted things could be ... if something lik ALO wasn't just a game."

She's got Moon Cutter across her back at the moment and seems ready enough.

Fiora O'Brien has posed:
    All of a sudden, though it's entirely unobtrusive, Fiora O'Brien has appeared. She is not in an Avatar form, or anything - she's just there. As Fiora. In her Very Witchy God-Tiers. With her astounding power to be wherever she needs to be to do a whole lot of nothing in, she has mentally prepared herself for the Serious and Meaningful tasks before her.

    Which, currently, amount to clapping Kirito on the back and fingergunning him.

    "Sup, guy? I heard you had more deathgame problems. I guess I'm here to repay you or something, one horrible death-gamer to another." She offers with a broad smile. "I think Vruasa is around here somewhere. He's actually the one with the notion of paying everyone back. I'm just interested in rubbing my broom on things and helping out." She explains, waving Hecate (in Broom form) back and forth a bit before resting he haft on her shoulder.

    "I really hope my machine holds up for this. Oh! Right, we're in a video game." She mutters, before placing a cat-ear headband on her head. It is woefully out of place. "There. I'm Anime now." She nods, with finality.

    She does, however, seem to be LAGGING INCREDIBLY, jumping around the room like a stuttering connection in Mega-Slide-Show mode.

Theo Morrison has posed:
"Capes are coolest if they provide good stats," Theo remarks, showing up just before then. He shows up in his ALO Avatar form, the Leprechaun with the power armor-esque full plate. His Abstractum, Aetherwright, is affixed to the breastplate like a personal sigil. "Or if it brings the whole outfit together, I guess. Aesthetics can be pretty important."

He takes a look around, and then takes a moment to listen to the briefing and the new problem. When he spots Auron, he heads over there, raising a hand. "Yo! Do you have all the stuff? Did it work?"

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "I dunno, Homura. Maybe you just lack style," Psyber replies to the girl next to him, shrugging a bit before deliberately flourishing his long jacket. It's his counter to her oft-toted hairflick maneuver. He then lets his hands drift to the pockets of his coat, not bothering to adjust the greatsword slung across his back.

    He looks over to Kirito and then adds, "I'm on board to follow your lead with pretty much whatever gameplan you wanna run." He pauses, hearing the briefing from the Lord of Shadow and then adding to Kirito, "But it sounds like you have a lot to delegate. So what's your call?"

    Internally he wonders if he remembered to pack digital cigarettes.

Staren has posed:
    Back into the game they go! Staren nods to himself as he sees the Evil Overlord's castle again, and offers a smile and a wave to the Lord of Shadow. Kirito gets a pat on the shoulder. "If we're splitting the party, then good luck out there. I know you can do it, though." He then turns to approach the Lord. "You said the tower is still being raided? I thought before you said it was destroyed, or at least, there was nothing left... is it some kind of resetting dungeon? Also, we have a present for you... It's Theo's plan, so we should probably let him explain."

Kirito has posed:
    Kirito's taken by surprise with the 'repay' comment. He had hardly thought much about the aid he lent Arthur. It felt like the payback was going the OTHER DIRECTION all this time. So he gapes momentarily at Fiora - then blinks as she goes fluttering around the room. "e-er, what's wrong with your connection--... er... yeah. Deathgame problems." He nods once, showing a glad smile at Fiora.

Vruasa Telash has posed:
    The avatar of VRUASA TELASH just looks like a human version of him wearing his usual outfit, minus the horns. This isn't that hard, because his appearance is already outlandish and JRPG-ish as it is. Black coats with elaborate trim are easy as hell in this place. When did he show up, and why the hell is he here? As usual, that's difficult to figure out no matter what angle you look at things. It's only once he opens his mouth to talk for the first time since logging in that it becomes completely evident that this is who that is, instead of some douche who just happens to have a similar avatar.

    "Jesus fucking christ, what is it with the opposition around here being made up of the shittiest GMs that the cosmos have ever seen?!" He demands, loudly. As tends to be the case, Vruasa's aggravation here is paper-thin and more about being energetic and loud than they are about any sort of real feelings of anger. Aggression, though. He's got that in spades.

    He wanders over to Fiora as she speaks to Kirito, looking her 'avatar' up and down.

    "Let's be completely fair here," He says, "every single motherfucker here is simultaneously so anime and mythological that we could overdose the universe on that shit easily. I'm sure back home there's a fat lonely bipolar shut-in writing slash fiction where you fall down some stairs and die and I end up marrying Arthur."

    "Oh, and hi." He asides to Kirito.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    Homura throws her hands up at Staren.

    "Cool does not save your life!"
    A real argument she must have had with Sayaka at least once. A real argument she probably lost, because Sayaka's kind of thick-headed. A real argument she retroactively super-lost when Sayaka was the last survivor of the final timeline. That might be why she's salty.
    Evidently the cape was good for something.
    Maybe stats like Theo says.

    The Lord does not get a proper response from Homura, so much as Kirito and Psyber. "I'll go with whatever, yes. But unless my powers haven't translated here, I'll be most useful making the Pures leave by force, just like Psyber, while those of you more vested in investigation go up that tower."

    An idle glance at Vruasa.
    She can't really find a counterargument.

Auron (236) has posed:
    This is a pretty weird place to start, for this supposedly being a VRMMO. But then... it's a Node, so nothing's likely to be what it seems. Kirito's rundown of the situation, as well as this very large not-endboss character's explanation, pretty much confirms it. For the time being Auron remains mostly quiet, as he has no previous experience with this place, so he isn't quite sure what's going on.

    Though he does ask one question, to whomever can or will answer. "This seems like... the opposite of one of the games from Kirito's world. Am I understanding this correctly?"

Staren has posed:
    Homura just gets a 'Yeah, that's true.' look in response to her observation that coolness does not save your life. He agrees with her, he was just trying to be posi-- "Wait, then why are you wearing it?" Staren says, after suddenly turning away from the Dark Lord mid-conversation to address Homura.

Kirito has posed:
    And Kirito answers Auron, first with a grim nod. "Right. Normally the players would be teamed up to enjoy themselves and compete against imaginary monsters and NPCs that aren't really people. But here the NPCs are really people, and every player that didn't bail out upon realizing that is here for bloodshed. They're no better than that one guild..." he doesn't even WANT to say the name.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "I was curious why she wore this outfit!" Homura tells Staren.

    Tug tug. No, that cape won't come off. It's part of the costume. She could bite and chew it and it still wouldn't come off. And she LOOKS like she's about ready to sprout fangs and chew it off like a hyena chewing a leg off because it's stuck.

    "Hnf. Well at least it'll be a learning experience."
    She flicks her hair to the side, to brush off her discomfort by looking extra cool. The cape follows her arm's motion and dramatically flourishes along with her hair.

    "Oh. That's why she wears it."

Auron (236) has posed:
    Auron nods to Kirito's statement... and frowns when the Laughing Coffin are referenced. "...A whole game full of those lunatics?" Pause. "Are they trapped, like in Sword Art Online?" He pauses again, though, as Theo addresses him. Is the 'inventory' command the same here as it was in the other games? He'll try both gestures. Eventually he'll get the inventory open, and check. If so, he'll probably need to transfer the stuff to someone else, which he'll do.

Staren has posed:
    "Oh." replies Staren. Then he shakes his head to Auron. "No, the players aren't trapped. They're the ones who /want/ to be here, murdering people. The ones who are still around, anyway."

Frederica (73) has posed:
    Frika never knew Laughing Coffin, but she has heard enough that the mention of their behaviour brings her a frown. Odious people. She's not entirely sure about all the details and lets others fill things in, at least for now.

    "I'll go with the investigations group." Frika offers. "I'm no front-line fighter like Kirito, but I do okay in combat and I've been working on my spearwork a bit. Besides, investigation requires brains, and I'd rather use my brain than my weapons." she says, grinning wickedly enough to suggest the hidden joke in her words. Her brain, after all, IS her weapon... at least in the outside world.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Well, the raid scenario is how, precisely, we've managed to redirect them. My personal mage - you met him the last time you're here - set up a secondary diversion base, trying to draw off Players." The Lord of Shadow says, standing and beckoning to the group. "This way. The buffs some of you have from your last visits shouldn't have been used up yet, but we don't have time for another meal, if you're planning on getting to work."

    The titanic figure of the LORD OF SHADOW stands, slinging that huge mace over one shoulder as they tromp their way out of the huge climactic boss room and to a side-room off to the side, "backstage" for all intents and purposes. A few cramped hallways. There's a lot of dark knightly figured hustling around, and magical noises come from the rooms off to the side. They're teleporting in and out, presumably to other lo<span class=" bg_r fg_h ++ ations!

    "cHr">The Archmage's teleporter still works. His place is ruins, but... Well, it's the only lead you've got for now. My own personal mage has set up a temporary one at the fort he's fending them off at, to keep your activity from tripping any Player awareness.</span>" The Lord of Shadow says. "If you're heading out to the Raid, please stop in through here." They gesture to a small chamber off the right, where a crowd of knights are going through. "Men! We've got important allies coming through, give them priority on the next teleporter cycle." They're taking turns going through a magical circle that seems to teleport them.

    There's another long walk to the next location. "This will take you where the Archmage's tower used to be. He was trying to locate the Hollow Avatar before he was killed. But Players like that don't care about information, books, scrolls, maps, that sort of thing; the important stuff probably hasn't been looted. Please... Anything you can find."

    Another teleporter. Easy enough to figure out, right? Run on top of it, go spawn somewhere else.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber cracks his knuckles and nods to the Lord of Shadow, "Right-o. Adjudicator, power up Strife Drives. I wanna come in making a hell of a show, so try to do the wind and energy thing this time," He says to the sword on his back, giving it an explicit command, "Homura, slot the combo frame and lets get going."

    Without waiting for much more in terms of orders, Psyber dashes off through the portal towards the raid interception without waiting to see if anyone follows after him.

Hana Umikazeno (357) has posed:
    "Given a choice between investigating and getting into combat, I think I'd rather like to hone my skills in this body," Blossom Seabreeze declares, adjusting her hand crossbow carefully and hefting it a couple of times to ensure she's got a feel for its weight. "The physical parameters are a bit below what I'm used to, so I imagine I'll have some adjusting to do. So I'll be going with the raid." Hana must be the type to teach swimming by tossing someone into the water.

    And then Psyber is off like a shot. Sigh. "Higanbana, if you'd be so kind. It looks like we're going in now." And without skipping a beat, 'Blossom' breaks into a run, diving in right behind Psyber.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "It's important to fit in with the locals, of course." Hecate says in its usual dry tones, looking with good-natured humor at Fiora's cat-ears. "Now, I wonder, what could a /lack/ of connection do, in your hands..."

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    Running late, but managing to make it just in time it seems, Noble Six quite suddenly logs into the game. The SPARTAN comes in just in time to catch the tail end of the Lord of Shadow's description of what's going on. She'd have been here soon, but you know, login queues.

    "I'm here, sorry." Six says, looking around to the rest of the group. But then it seems that people are already on their way towards their deployment. She hefts her sword and follows towards the raid group. Thankfully she seems to have finally found a closed-face helmet, so she won't be worried about that as much.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "Right. Well, good luck to those of you going tower-climbing. We'll scream in pain if we need help," Homura says, before she casually walks after Psyber, not quite in the hurry he seems to be. Her cape follows dramatically! She is starting to understand why Sayaka wears one more and more.

    She does, before they leave, activate her Combo Frame with him. Probably can't go wrong having the two top Reds using a Combo Frame on a battlefield, but then she's not quite sure what they're about to face.

    That, and Regiswords.
    She attempts to produce two out of her hammerspace.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Aetherwright and Suchiru don't seem to much like each other for some reason. That's irrelevat, though.

    "Swordsman to dead-guy to mule, huh? We're just on a downward spiral here. Good to work that load-bearing stat though, huh?" Suchiru says, wryly.
    "It is the most effective transport method." Aetherwright says with its usual harsh tones. "Let's get it dropped off and given to the locals. It sounds like they're already in need of help with the combat. This sort of direct supplying is good. Simple, but efficient. Keep at this, Theo."

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "The tower gets raided for extra loot, and because the Archmage had several experimental soldier-creatures for us that occasionally emerge from the rubble, and the Players seem obsessed with hunting them down. We recovered enough and deployed them elsewhere to divert their attention." The Lord of Shadow explains, to Staren, before he makes his choice. "As for presents, I'm extremely grateful for whatever contributions you can make." They seem pretty genuinely grateful about that.

Theo Morrison has posed:
The commands appear to be pretty much the same, last time they checked. Theo makes a gesture to get to his, and trades a bunch of things with Auron. He's really glad he's used to lugging around a huge amount of stuff. His inventory is always neatly organized. "Awesome! Exploit /get/." He raises a hand for a high five, looking at Auron with a big ol' grin. He will totally understand if he's left hanging and has to awkwardly lower his hand.

He glances down, and then up, between the two Abstractum. He doesn't usually hear much out of Aetherwright; bickering is even more surprising. He smiles, though. "I thought you might like it. I'm thinking we can make it standard procedure to load up new arrivals with imports. Maybe we can even convince the Union to put out a call for the gamers in their ranks to come here once just to do that."

Theo goes along with everybody else. He plays with his inventory, pulling out what looks like a small metal box inscribed with a sunburst. He affixes it to his armor at the waist. "I've got, uh... an armory," he explains to the Lord of Shadow, looking up at 'it.' "It's pretty substantial; I've got a manifest if you want it. Do you have someplace I can drop it all off before we take off?"

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Ulixes clears his throat at Vruasa, as if about to read from something.

    "'I warned you about stairs.' Vruasa cried, kneeling over her body. 'I told you.' He began to sob, as Arthur put a hand on his shoulder." Then a disgusted noise comes from the little compass. "Eugh. I really wish your precognitive godly power was less accurate sometimes."

Vruasa Telash has posed:
    "She's telling you to exploit the lag." Vruasa says to Fiora, immediately after Hecate chimes in. He wanders along lazily after the Lord of Shadow, passing up the raid group. It was requested that he go help do something about the investigation, so he's going to do exactly as he was asked. It won't be a problem if he really needs to fight, though, so the investigation team is reasonably covered on heavy hitters. Between himself and Fiora, he's pretty certain that most elder gods would think twice about picking a fight with them.

    Then again, those assholes aren't always known for their intellect.

    Vruasa waves at Homura as she takes off after Psyber. No surprises there. They should be able to take care of the real violence pretty quickly. He knows pretty much everybody going to join that team, and none of them are the kind he'd take lightly in a fight.

    A critical glance is cast towards Fiora's cat ears again.

    "You look better with horns." He remarks.

    Vruasa would look at Ulixes, if he wasn't literally one of his eyes right now. "That wasn't godly precognition, I just fuckin' know people."

    << Hey Ulixes, how is this shit working with my eye here? This is kind of an odd situation. >> Vruasa communicates privately with his Abstractum, through an instant messenger window.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "A hammer doesn't make everything a nail. This is a goot route to go with." Shinrin says, to Frederica. "I may not be able to help much, but I can certainly approve of the choice."

Kirito has posed:
    That's the crux of the matter, isn't it? What feelings do you put into your sword? Behind your swings? In Aincrad, his own survival - and eventually, saving his friends and loved ones - gave him tremendous power and determination. He was nearly as effective helping Arthur and the others with the Sburb issue, but recently...

    Except for the few times Samael pushed him into a panic, he just hasn't been able to keep up his edge.

    So as he looks around at the others who've gathred to his call, his gut churns with nervousness he refuses to show. Much.

    Perhaps Asuna would be easily able to tell how anxious he is from his expression, but those who aren't REALLY familiar with him will just see a warrior's eyes widening and breath quickening.

    "Yui, are you there?" He finally blurts out.

    Nearby him, light gathers and swirls, and *BLIP!*

    A young girl appears. She's in a simple child's dress, and her hair's a classic hime-cut. "Papa! It's the Game of Souls again?"

    Kirito reaches down to pat his daughter's head. "Right. Like we talked about. Please keep an eye out for anything strange. We're headed to stop a player raid, and if we finish fast enough we'll go help the others investigate."

    The little girl nods quickly and eagerly, and... BWIP! With another flash of light, she's now a tiny pixie in a dress made of flower petals, flying about on tiny wings and stuffing herself in one of Kirito's pockets.

    He turns to ace the Lord of Shadow, putting on his best 'intense business face he can.' Because all it takes is summoning up the anguish these NPcs are feeling in truth at their predicament to steel himself. That's what he'll put behind his sword!

    "I promise to do everything I can to stop this slaughter. ... Hopefully it will be enough." The Lord of Shadow's staked EVERYTHING on them, and they've hardly met. That's kind of normal for NPCs, in a sense, but when they're people...

    A lump forms in his throat. Yeah, he doesn't want to see her skewered.

    Opening his menu, Kirito sets the ban properties on his attacks to 'indefinite.' And then tromps towards the raid teleporter.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "M-miss Akemi. If it makes you... If it makes this any easier..." Claire is saying, with nervous tones, to Homura. "Um... I think it makes you look... You know, really cool..." The ring trails off a little bit.

Auron (236) has posed:
    Auron smirks at Suchiru's words. "On the bright side, once we reach the bottom, there's only one direction to go," he notes as he draws the sword-Abstractum from its sheath. He recognizes the raised hand from Theo, and chuckles. He does indeed return the high five to the card mage. "Take care, all of you," he notes.

    Then he props the sword-shaped Abstractum on his shoulder to keep it out of his way as he heads for the portal that will take him to the raid area. He does have a question for Sichiru though. "...What are you capable of doing?" He should probably ask his weapon's capabilities before wading into battle, right?

Fiora O'Brien has posed:
    Fiora nods at the general gist of things. "So, we've got team 'Be Raid Bosses', and Team 'Re-Pillage the Pillaged Tower'." She recounts, before glancing at her broom with a quirked eyebrow. "Right. Are you telling me to just go totally unconnected then? Wear a t-shirt and jeans and just not even try to fit in?" She wonders, smirking. "Not like anyone would notice. I'm not trying to fit in, Hecate. I'm just amusing myself." She retorts, before shuffling over to TEAM INVESTIGATION. And by shuffing we mean LAG-STUTTERING. She finally sighs, turning to Vruasa, and trying not to gag at the story. "God, that's just murder-smut. And /I/ get killed stupidly, too. It's just a double whammy of bullshit. Also... The lag? I'm apparently no good at stupid riddlebroom puzzles. Whatever." She shrugs, before reaching up to ruffle Vruasa's hornless mass of hair.

    "And you look fine either way, but... Yeah, I agree with Ulixes. Don't make really educated guesses abut murdersmut involving us."

    She glances at Staren and Theo, mildly confused but... surprisingly okay with not 'getting' the shenanigans, waiting by the portal. "You know, we could try Comboing together me and you, so you add my Voidy Bullshit to your Time Stuff and then you can do cool things? I guess?"

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is now just catching up and listening she listns to the Lord of Shadow she listens and mills over it. She follows for the old teleporter and knows they got a bit of a hike she's sad it sounds like the Archmage was one heck of a brave man from the sounds of it.

"We will do what we can sir."

She's ready to get on the teleporter and she grips Tazinoa for a moment.

"Ready?"

She asks before she gets ready to go.

"I'm a combat sort I'll leave the snooping to those whom are good at it."

Staren has posed:
    Staren nods to the Lord of Shadow's explanation. He'll be along in a moment, first he needs to see how things worked out with Theo...

    And they have supplies, apparently! "It worked? YES!" Staren pumps a fist in victory, then does his own quick item trades. After a moment of fiddling around with the equipment screen, new pieces of gear appear on his person -- mostly small accessories and weapons, rather than anything big like armor. He activates one of the photon bla--err, plasma swords, and swings it arounds a bit before turning it off and putting it back on his belt. "Excellent." And then he takes off his bandana, physically, and removes the clasp, which is a grey metallic ring with clear crystals on it. He puts a hand on Kirito's shoulder again, "Hey, just a sec. Present for you." He holds out the ring. "I noticed you're not a spriggan here, so here are your wings back. Enjoy, and give those jerks /hell/." After that, he walks back to Theo. "So, can you summon stuff? And which team will you be going with?"

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Those heading through the INVESTIGATIONS teleporter find... Well, it's tough. The outside air is thick with dust, and stale, an intense indicator of recent destruction. The sky above is heavy, dark, and gray, saturated with some kind of ash or something. The teleporter room itself was near the base of the titanic spire that was previously here. It was as ominously and menacingly-designed as the Lord of Shadow's fortress; plenty of threatening gargoyles and similar things litter around the broken base of the structure.

    The thing itself looks like it was split in half by someone breaking it straight down the middle. Sections of the structure are strewn everywhere. It was large, though, and sturdy; whole rooms have survived either partially or fully intact. There's bookcases, alchemical equipment, and other things all over the top of the massive rubble-pile that's been created.

    There's an open, precarious passage to lower areas, framed by several doorframes stacked up. There's also a lot of stray materials around the upper sections of the investigatory area that might be worth picking through. The area surrounding it is plain and barren, and looks like it suffered a horrible fire recently. There's nothing worth seeing in the surrounding barren fantasy landscape.

Frederica (73) has posed:
    "You help just by being here, Shinrin." Frika says softly, reaching up to pat the medallion around her neck in an affectionate manner. One that might be adorable or kind of sad, depending on the observer.

    "Right then." she says. Wandering around with the Lord of Shadow is no great chore. If anything, she's a bit hyper, bouncing around impatiently and then trying without much success to contain her excess energy. Cait Sith are bouncy by nature, and Frika's pretty fast on the ground even among the Cait.

    Entering the wizard's tower mellows her somewhat though. She looks around at the destruction, subdued. Maybe it's all the obvious fire damage. She frowns, shaking her head, then shrugs. "Okay. Hollow Avatar." she says. Whatever that is. "I can fly, so I guess I can go search the heights? This body's light too, so I'm probably least likely to set off any collapses. What about the rest of you? Split up and search, maybe?"

Vruasa Telash has posed:
    "It's some wish fulfillment bullshit. Bitch writing it views you as competition, so you've gotta go even though she's not self-inserting. Frankly, there are better ways to write that sort of bullshit, but they're not thinking hard enough to actually make a plausible scenario." Vruasa replies to Fiora, with a shrug. Regarding her outfit, he shakes his head, "Nah. I just like your troll costume. Frankly I don't give a shit about fitting in, but I fit in by default." He grins toothily when Fiora ruffles his hair. This isn't at all threatening like it usually is. He has normal teeth here.

    To the suggestion of using their combo frame, Vruasa shrugs and readies it. He doesn't waste a lot of time, motioning her to go on through the portal before pressing on into it himself. They've been asked to go do something pretty specialized, so they're either going to fail entirely or not be a part of the main group regardless. He raises the combo frame in Fiora's direction.

    "You've got the right idea. We're going to want to avoid being seen going backwards." He says, matter-of-factly. While he's at it, he issues a quick order for Ulixes to form a tandem between himself and Fiora. Might be they could sustain a cross-time tandem, but he's sure that's not necessary just now.

    Coincidentally this specialized task by necessity removes the two heavy hitters from the rest of the investigation team, making it potentially mor tricky if they run into a doom golem.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    The teleporter room that the Raid Group gets to s rumbling with heavy impacts elsewhere. It's a fort, not a fortress, so this is a sturdy wood structure instead of the usual stone. It looks like it already suffered, but resisted, a small impact, but judging from the heavy thumping sounds, it won't last too much longer.

    Outside, moving through the cramped, spartan barracks (which have their own minor arsenal of basic-level gear of all kinds, just in case), one can see the fort itself; a wide, enclosed space, previously surrounded by a single tall wall. There's a LOT of shouting. Dark-armored knights rush to the area most affected by the combat. The Lord of Shadows' personal mage is up on one of the few remaining sections of wall that haven't been blasted apart, trying to snipe beams of fire down at a small group fo Players.

    Structures are damaged, some have collapsed. There's a lot of gold coins and potions dropped everywhere, for some baffling reason... Or, at least, it'll be baffling until you see one of the knights run by and suffer an arrow through the throat, before they turn a brilliant white and disappear, leaving only coins and a small red vial.

    Yui would be able to detect the source of the disturbance. Thirty meters ahead. Three Players; two in front, one far in the back. One of the front-liners is in quick motion, and has slammed through the mess hall of the fortress.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Powering Strife Drives." Adjudicator and Clairvoyant Rush are the first to say. "Combo Frame active." The pound releases an intense shockwave of red fire, and both Users are flooded with a surplus of extra power that crackles along the surface of their Abstractums. Psyber's overwhelmingly high power is shared and surged into Homura. Homura, for her part, finds something unusual: Her hammerspace effect is replaced by, apparently, full access to all weapons within Mystic Clash Online that don't require skills to wield. That's a LOT of relatively generic weapons, but several gimmicks as well. Simple regisword replicas are easy to find.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Stepping out of the portal, Psyber draws the sword from his back and flourishes it in a calm motion. Gripping a hand around the hilt of the blade, he looks over the battlefield with a very calm red gaze, trying to carefully survey the battlefield. He swings the sword in an idle motion, getting a feel for it after not having used it for a little while.

    When Yui points out the three players remotely, he calmly turns his gaze towards them, narrowing his eyes. He reaches into his jacket and takes out a pair of blue-lensed sunglasses (the Cirn-glasses that Cirno gave him) and puts them on before he starts to head that way. Only three hardly makes a raid, though, and Psyber is cautious in his approach.

    First he slots his cartridges. A Himei Level One, A Homura Level 2, and then finally the Staren Level 1 gets inserted in. No reason not to test it right away. And then he raises the sword up over his head and slashes, trying to create a ripple of energy and force directed at the trio to get their attention.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Of course, ma'am. Powering Strife Drives." The Abstractum on Hana's feet, or rather on Blossom's feet. Her movement speed is quickened heavily, and her crossbows will be glowing with a soft red light. "I'll be keeping an eye out for any tricks they try."

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is going to attempt to tap her old attack list that much is certain as she now finds the raid as it were or are they the bosses. She checks her menu to see if she has a loot table ot not out of some morbid desire to know. FOr now she does however she sees the drops and now looks to the player her eyes narrowing."

She keeps Moon Cutter ready holding the Naginata at the ready chants a quick self buff she calls to any knights who yet remain.

"Flee, we will handled the interlopers."

Yes RP script what can you say if she's going to be a raid boss she's going to be a raid boss. She darn well actites her own Abstractum Tizona as she gets ready for the pending fight. Man open loot drops as well? What the hell was this a MMORPG from the early 2000s?

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Auron's sword looks back at him with a good-humored sort of expression in its eye. "Swing me." It says, simply. "Do the usual. I'll handle the rest. Promise you'll like it. Wouldn't be fun if I just explained it boringly, you know?" A bit of a grin. "Powering Strife Drives."

Theo Morrison has posed:
Hi-five!

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Five Up High

Theo dumps most of his armory in the NPC armory, picking a nice open spot. It manifests as myriad weapon racks and armor stands, and then the gear starts to drop onto it in neat rows. Bundles of arrows and piles of small, extra things -- stuff like potions, with a lot of raw materials for repairing or manufacturing more stuff -- fill up the extra space.

There is a /lot/ of it.

"I'll head with you guys to the tower and figure it out there," he asides to Staren. Theo heads over to Noble Six, stopping in front of her. "Okay! Here you go." He pulls a somewhat ornate-looking bow out of his inventory along with a matching quiver, apparently in a dark wood, brass-accented style. The actual stats on it are excellent. He also pulls out a simple and elegant dagger, approximately the size and shape of a modern combat knife but with a similar flair. /That/ is even better.

"You seem like a knife-for-all-occasions kind of person," he comments. "If you think of anything else, tell me when we meet up and I'll get to work." He tosses her a quick thumbs-up and heads through the INVESTIGATION PORTAL.

As soon as he's on the other side, he pulls his gauntlets off and hangs them on his belt. Then, he takes the contents of the metal box on his waist out, shuffling up the cards inside with a thoughtful look and drawing a hand. "Let's see..." He kneels down, pulling a fancy-looking wooden tray out of his vast inventory and setting a couple of the cards down on top of it. "Plains, and... uh... Ardent Recruit." If it works, he /should/ summon up an armored human with some kind of metallic growths like organic cyberwear coming out of the side of his head. He hopes it works.

He also really hopes it doesn't turn out to have terrible moral implications.

Kirito has posed:
    Kirito doesnt' stay in one place long after appearing. Yui peeks out of her pocket and points in a direction! "Three players, that way!"

    He doesn't really have any reason to wait. nor does anyone else, really, do they?

    he bursts outside and immediately hits full sprint. Thankfully, his SAO avatar as MAXED Sprinting.. and he goes from 0 to YES in no time flat. He spotted the arrow... but failed to get there in time to do anything about it.

    The knight bursts into loot the moment Kirito reaches him, and the Black Swordsman's gut sinks.

    NPCs don't run like that. They're never afraid for their lives.

    The gravity of this situation's really, REALLY sinking in now.

    A cold fury fills him as he draws Double Fault and Elucidator. "... We're not holding anything back today." He mumbles grimly to his partner.

    But Double Fault probably already knew that would be what Kirito was going to say, wouldn't he?

    Off he goes, dashing for the Mess Hall, and grateful he's currently the WHITE Swordsman, for anyone looking his way. But he can't help but feel weird about this...

    He'll just have to make the switch at the right time, and get his point across...

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "That's not my inventory," Homura frowns.
    Until she mentally flips through what seems to be available.
    "... on the other hand..."

    Homura lands atop a large wooden pillar after she appears, glancing as Psyber immediatly attacks the three powerful-looking players. She grabs ahold of her cape, discarding one of her blades in order to do so.

    "I should have no difficulty doing this. I am much smarter than she is. And much more skilled." Dramatic cape flourish! Towards her enemies!

    A dozen blades of different sizes and shapes appear within the cape. In an ideal world, they would have been sent hurling towards her foes. In the real world, they clatter to the ground at the base of the pillar, and one gets stuck in the cape. Homura frowns.

    "Oh come on! How does she DO IT?"

    Sigh.

    Homura slaps her FREDERICA-1 cartridge in.
    And then she produces a bow.

    She's going to let a few arrows off towards the trio, try to slow them down a bit while Kirito and Psyber get in position fully. And see what Frederica's cartridges do.

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    The SPARTAN has her bow, which doesn't seem to go well with her two handed sword, thankfully Theo seems to know her well enough to provide her with the dagger. She looks at it, and actually smiles, as she puts it into place on the left part of her chestpeice, "Thanks. I owe you a beer sometime."

    She takes the bow, and hefts it a bit, before she moves to get into a better position, to rain down fire from above the other players, "Enforcer, I hope you're awake. I don't know how much use you'll get when I'm fighting at range, but I'd rather be safe than sorry."

Hana Umikazeno (357) has posed:
    The movement speed boost will be quite welcome in overcoming her reduced combat abilities. Blossom even smiles just a little, readying her crossbow. The fact that Higanbana will be able to boost it, and even automatically reload for her according to the Abstractum, should make it much easier for her to do her thing.

    And so when Kirito goes on the move, she's (almost) right behind him, though hers is less a true sprint than a loping, almost gliding stride. As they dash on, she lifts her crossbow and pulls back the bowstring, readying the weapon for firing. The first target she sees is going to get her first bolt right to the face.

Auron (236) has posed:
    Well, this is a mess. But truthfully, Auron expected that. Radio confirmation of the non-lethality of 'lethal' attacks in this game gets a nod. That means he's clear to employ full-power attacks here. Hopefully he can bring his full strength to bear. He isn't quite sure how this particular VRMMO works.

    Suchiru's words get a chuckle. "Easy enough. Though we're playing defense." Blitzball reference, not football. As for that he means? There are already heavier hitters on the field than Auron, and he needs to stay out of their way. And his specialty is in tanking.

    So for the time being he heads to where the mage is at. He doesn't get too close, but he positions himself so that any Player that wants to get at the mage will have to get through him first. This should let the others fight without having to worry about the mage's health too much.

Fiora O'Brien has posed:
    Since half of the investigation group seemed pretty set on being in THE PRESENT - and also becuase Theo had his own thing going on - amusingly, something she trusted to be able to handle his shit from previous viewings of his tactics - Fiora laggishly tapped Hecate against the glass eyeball of Ulixes. "Let's combo this. It may not be your past, but it is The past. Let's see what out powers combined can get us... And hopefully, Void doens't fuck up anything. We should be causality-proof, though!"

    Fiora gives Vruasa a slightly dirty look. "You should point out this writer to me sometime. I'm feeling a touch vengeful and vindictive." She grins, as they MOST LIKELY DISAPPEAR IN A PUFF OF VOIDTIME.

Staren has posed:
    Staren waits for Theo, then walks with him to the Investigation teleporter.

    Staren glances around the tower. It's... SPLIT IN HALF? "What HAPPENED here?" He blinks. "Ah... I guess we'll know that in a moment." First off... he slots in a RAN I cartridge alongside the ADJUDICATOR I cartridge that's already in. "Alright, Eureka... any kind of scan you can run, for... let's say paper, and writing..." He begins searching one of the upper areas for exactly that. Hopefully, he can quickly tell notes apart from... random books. If not... Well, guess he'll be stuffing a library into his inventory... Can he /do/ that? Hmm.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Whatever the combo frame is doing, the fairly substantial power Vruasa and Fiora have is shared with a sudden, crackling burst of green and gray lightning, as well as the soft green burn of a Tandem. The mixed powers here are complex; it seems like they'll only really come up if we see things in action. But the boost in power should definitely make it possible for Vruasa to do a quick timejump. Ulixes gives its quick explanation wirelessly. << It's working well, I'd say. 'Eye' is not a usual equip slot, but it seems valid for me. Don't worry about it. I'm here to handle the uninteresting worries, you can focus on the interesting side of things. >>

    It waits for Vruasa to begin.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Theo's effects are unusual.

    Specifically, his imported cards WORK. But they're summoning a flickering, slightly glitchy variant of Magic the Gathering creatures from a different online game, modeled out as they were in that version. It's a little offsetting. At least it's nothing horribly immoral.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Cartridge Activating. Scanning for paper-processed cellulose." Eurkea says, simply. "That should be a simple enough scan to run with the data-gathering that Sakura's cartridge allows me." Adjudicator's effects of turning off friendly fire don't seem relevant here, but they do take effect!

    He can definitely stuff library books into his inventory. There's a lot of magical history here. Earlier magic history tomes seem to have been written in a time period when the Kingdom of Light wasn't at war with the Kingdom of Darkness, which is your first clue here. The archmage was investigating pre-war matters. Some of the historical texts Staren is able to find are heavily discussing weapons development during these prewar periods. A LOT of those books, actually.

    There are many more to find, if you look for something in particular.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Frederica's flight is easy. The TOP OF THE TOWER is actually mostly intact... In halves. There's a left half and a right half. The right half is completely burned, but the left half has some unusual materials in it. It looks like it was some sort of alchemical lab. There is a rack of some kind, used to hold up some extremely important artifact, something worn over the body. Unfortunately, it's been looted.

    However, there's a magical spellcircle still remaining, flickering under it. It might have information of value, if copied and analyzed properly. Basic appearance looks like it was altering the gear that was previously here...

    Scraps of cloth around the area show that the gear itself was a massive cloak, rather similar to that worn by the "Hollow Avatar" of SAO. Though somewhat smaller. Odd.

Vruasa Telash has posed:
    "We'll see you guys later." Vruasa asides to the other members of the investigative team, before hitting REVERSE with his powers, dragging Fiora and himself backwards. It'll be a bit tricky to figure out when to stop, but Ulixes probably has a handle on that. He leaves that part to the compass/eye, with that in mind. Regarding the matter of shitty fanfiction writers, he says, "I don't actually know them. I'm just making educated guesses. We could probably track them down with the Moderator's help, but he'd disapprove pretty strongly of that kind of use of his networking skills."

    "Just hassle Arthur. We can make their computer loop through a portal on the floor and ceiling until it's caught in an eternal freefall at terminal velocity." He adds, as he awaits the environment to come back to something that can actually be recognized as a proper place again.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Psyber moves forward. The knights have all cleared out, someone having yelled at them to get the hell out of the way. His increased athletic powers provided by Himei work fine here, as do the ATTACK MULTIPLIERS provided by Homura. Staren's ability isn't yet clear; what's that cartridge doing? We'll see another time. It's much less combat-oriented, though, so it's not showing up.

    The point here is, Psyber's blast makes a good attention-grabber, disorienting and staggering the players he has yet to see quite yet with a bit of damage, though mostly on one in particular...

Theo Morrison has posed:
"So the verdict is, uh... 'mostly'?" he reports, observing his glitchy creature. Theo scratches his head a little, eyeing the recruit. He shrugs. "Okay, sure. Dungeon mode. It's like an event deck, only..." He looks up at the split tower. "...crumblier. C'mon." He waves the Auriok trooper along with him. The display is really weird. He feels like the art assets are clashing, somehow. It's creepy.

"Don't suppose you have any idea what's up with this," Theo asides at Aetherwright. He pulls the Abstractum off his armor and puts it on the table, tucking the whole setup under his arm. He starts walking towards the tower, gesturing at the weird summon as they go.

Theo goes up the harder way. He starts checking the interior of the tower, deploying his mechanical-looking wings (and assist controller, a touch embarassingly) to get from floor to floor and over the gaps. The Recruit shouldn't have a problem following him. He's looking for anything notable besides rubble -- or maybe notable rubble.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Tomoe's got this handled. Her calls to flee are, apparently, followed immediately. The knights evacuate to let these convenient saviors help out! Tizona likes this. "Here we go, got the space cleared up for the proper party. You ready? Powering Strife Drives."

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Kirito advances a bit further than Psyber with his strength and speed focus, and when the dual-wielding boy reaches the mess hall, he'll be heading in through a hole crashed in it by a man knocked over by Psyber's attack. He's huge. The guy has to be something like nine feet tall, with sharply styled gray hair and HUGE red armor, with even BIGGER gauntlets. He's softly glowing from buffs and heals, provided from... Somewhere!

    KING, the tank, is here! He clenches both fists and assumes a ready position, roaring a greeting! And around him... There's a cluster of familiars with what appear to be cameras? They've focused right on Kirito. KING appears to be streaming this.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Homura's arrows sing out of the bow, and Frederica's cartridge suddenly saturates them with a small amount of redirecting power. It looks like, for every category-1 Frederica cartridge that is slotted, you can do one edit to the trajectory of a projectile or something like that!

    A shadowy Player, seen between the remains of buildings, dodges most... One that's headed to the third, yet-unrevealed Player, though, is halted... The shadowy second Player apparently shot another, smaller arrow THROUGH its midsection! The damage inflicted to the shadowy player is yet unclear.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Oh yeah, you know it. I'll keep you safe while you take down one of these guys. I'll be watching out for any counterattacks and keeping you defended, don't worry!" Enforcer says, encouragingly. "Gonna track the Players based on data from the others. Data onscreen!"

    KING, the tank, is easily seen, marked in red. The second Player is marked in green, but flickers all around the battlefield as they dash around. The third Player is heavily defended, behind cover, but stationary, and marked in blue.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    KING's primarily focused on the first thing that entered his vision. But Hana's bolt to the face gets to be shot off!

    This is the tank, though, and despite having no helmet to speak of, the bolt slams into his forehead - a pinpoint accurate shot from an expert marksman - and crumples, leaving a softly glowing red mark and a hit to the HP, but - jesus christ - only a fraction?? This guy is pumped up on so many buffs, stat bonuses, armor ratings, and similar suchlike that you'll need to deal with some of those parts of things first. Doesn't draw the aggro Kirito's got yet, though.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is also not intending to hold back today. She's also not going to play nice, if they have a healer? She's going to /nuke/ them the moment she figures out which is which oh is she ever going to do that. For now as she looking at the players and she's flat out charging them now.

"You bet I'm ready for them!"

She's going to try to ounce upon them. She's going to go right not the king but the backline. Taunts ain't going to work well on her and she's hunting the clothies as it were.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber twirls the sword in his hands after he fires out the impressive attack meant to get him some attention. Unfortunately, the others who are advancing seem to be pulling the lion's share of the aggression from the three enemies, leaving Psyber at a bit of a loss for what to do. The half-angel blinks a few times, "Fine. If no one's going to come stop me, I'm just gonna start fuckin' with shit."

    And then the half-angel kind of makes a mental map of the area, "Jude, we're just going to go for raw destruction for a while." And then he lifts the sword up over his head. With an incredible amount of force, he brings the sword down to the ground in a cleaving strike. His goal, while everyone seems distracted by enemies, is to start trying to cut large chasms of impassible terrain into the ground to prevent future sieging or anyone who respawns from coming back. He will be doing this one huge-powered strike at a time.

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    Noble Six looks across the battlefield as Enforcer highlights all three of the enemy players, "Hmm. KING is the big one, he'll want us to focus on him, as he'll have the most armor and health.." Six considers, as she looks at the other two, "The fast one will be dificult to hit while they're on the move. Enforcer.."

    Six turns her attention to the shielded green target, the one behind cover, "Can you paint the optimal trajectory to hit target Charlie?" She pulls one of the arrows out of the quiver and nocks it on the bow, angling it upwards, as she waits for him to give her the best trajectory. If he can't, she'll just eyeball it. If he can, she'll follow his path. Either way, she'll let one of the broad headed arrows go sailing into the sky, headed to indirectly strike at the target tht's behind cover.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    There's arrows coming around from all over the place. Someone is dashing between buildings loosing arrows at Auron's charge. "Heheheh. Don't you worry about that, then." Auron's Abstractum says, confidently. "You know, for a sword, I'm actually - Incoming, two-o'-clock!"

    A volley of five arrows are streaking towards the mage, who immediately returns fire. He'll be suffering some more arrow wounds, unless Auron helps! That wide sword can be useful for blocking, but it won't be able to block everything!

    Lucky for Auron, IF he takes a hit, he'll find that even the blunted, limited pain caused in VRMMOs seems to be... Unable to force reflexive action. He can feel it, a lot, but it just doesn't seem to affect any decisionmaking or movements in any way.

Kirito has posed:
    Kirito goes sailing through the opening with a loud yell. more from SURPRISe at the man below him than any exertion it might be, but it's a mighty one nonetheless. Yet twists about in midair and goes skidding over a table feet-first, BACKWARDS, and eventually springs off it to land on the ground. His white coat flutters and flaps dramatically the whole while, but really, it doesn't suit him.

    Then he's on his feet again, with Double Fault in one hand and Elucidator in the other. He quickly takes stock of the situation. "..." His clenching, grinding teeth tell far more than any curses could.

    "... recording this?" He's being recorded?

    Quick thinkin has always been one of Kirito's better traits.

    Seeing no other enemies around but KING quite yet, he decides to face a camera after mumbling for Yui to keep a watch out for any other players approaching.

    "Would it be more fun if there was some announcer screaming about how awesome your killing spree is?" Kirito declares in cold rage to one of the cameras, before stabbing Double Fault into a table and quickly futzing with his menu. He's holding his finger over some button only he can see. "You stroll around this land like immortal gods, killing everything and caring nothing for the pain and anguish!" he's SEETHING inside. Speeches aren't really his thing. Ever.

    But he feels the need to put on a dramatic show for whoever's getting kicks from watching KING and the others' spree. "The end of this madness starts today, with this counter-raid! We're just as immortal as you, except your respawning means nothing to us."

    He hits the button. His outfit sizzles blue, then changes entirely. A black longcoat with golden trim flutters into place, and he grabs Double Fault in a cold fury, eyes turning towards King.

    "Your fun's at an end. It's game over for you!"

Frederica (73) has posed:
    Frika can see little more she can do on the top floors. She spends some time studying the cloak fragments, even pocketing a bit of shredded cloth in case it can be useful later. She's no arcanist however, and she leaves the spell circle alone in case Staren or one of the others wants to analyze it. All she can do is announce the discovery for now, and hopefully someone else will be able to investigate.

    After searching about in the top of the tower a little while longer, she heads down a level, her wings fluttering into form and taking her out through the damaged center of the tower and down. Maybe there's more to see still?

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    "That big one's pretty tough," Homura remarks, stating the obvious, if only to herself, but probably more to Kirito and Psyber. She discards the blades, instead producing large, twin knives. These are not just any knives! These are a rogue's best friends. These have bonuses to backstabbing! When attacking from the rear (or in more friendly and recent games, from the sides as well) their damage is arbitrarily higher.

    Producing more cartridges, Homura slots them in.
    PSYBER-2, HIMEI-1, HANA-1, VRUASA-1.
    She needs speed, accuracy, and attack power here.

    Leaping off the wooden pillar, the Puella Magi attempts to tap into her ability to stop time. If it translates correctly into this medium, she will reappear behind the shadowy player-- he may be hard to hit for normal people, but Homura's got an advantage on that front. And predictably, she's going to try to plunge the knives into his back, and cut TANK off what appears to be his DPS, while others seem to have singled the healer out already.

    Unfortunately there's the chance her powers don't translate to this game 1:1, so the effectiveness of this maneuver might not be quite as good as it could otherwise have been.

Auron (236) has posed:
    The alert from Suchiru is heeded, and Auron looks up. Now he has both his eyes, so he doesn't have to worry about that blind spot here. And as soon as he sees the arrows, he mentally marks their trajectory, and heads immediately to where he thinks they're going to land. Indeed not, a wide sword won't block everything. But the zweihander is Auron's preferred weapon outside of the game too, so he knows this. So he places himself so that he presents as large a barrier as possible to the incoming arrows.

    Auron's also used to getting hit, since he wears very little armor for a functional 'tank'. He's probably done the same here, with little more than a breastplate for damage mitigation. Hopefully whatever stats govern HP are very high for him. It would be very similar enough to his real-world self to be the case here. Either way, he's going to try to block as much damage form the mage as possible, either with Suchiru's blade or with his own body. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be any knockback. Which is good, the last thing he needs to do is disturb the mage during casting.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Vruasa leaps into the past.

    Technically, this should be impossible, as the relative past of virtual spaces is completely different, and neurological links to that should be near impossible, or at least painful, like Ulixes in Shift. Apparently that's not the case here; Vruasa finds that he's in an intact structure now, alongside Fiora. Unfortunately, he can't go too far back, before a violent event "trips" the time travel process and stops him shortly before it.

    The thunderous impact noises make it clear that this is only a short time before the destruction of the spire. Various mages run in panic up and down the stairs of the dark, ominous area in a panic for about three seconds before Vruasa sees the event that tripped him up: A tall, bulky man in HUGE red armor, with a jet-black Pure lodged between his teeth, goes rushing by. The Pure is... A flask, in his mouth, full of some glowing red substance that he's drinking down casually as he smashes his way up the floors, not caring at all about the people here.

    He is loud, brash, and followed by a small flock of Familiars carrying cameras to stream what's going on. He is not the important thing Vruasa can see here. The other thing Vruasa can see in this chamber, before it collapses, is someone carrying what appears to be an entire limb of a Player; it is marked with the same marks a Player gets when viewed, albeit only partially. Dismembered limbs are supposed to disappear. What's going on here?

    Well it's gonna be tough to see, because the ceiling's about to collapse into the floor on this and a lot of other nearby levels.

Staren has posed:
    Staren searches this way and that. "Not just paper. Vellum and papyrus and whatever too, if there is any." Magic and weapons... before some war... Well, that thread will be followed. But there's something else Staren wonders: The NPCs they've met all know the situations. Does any writing, anywhere, talk about the nature of reality? "Man... wish I had some library searching spells..."

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "You're commanding the local world to pull in things. This place seems defined by laws. It's coming up with the best approximation it can. Work with what you have. Or, alternately, we could change the way this world's laws work and force it to let us do what we normally do." Aetherwright's harshly objective-oriented focus seems apparent.

    "He was looking for information about the Hollow Avatar. If Staren is right, he was doing it by researching their methods. We need to find the results. Anything he made. Things he crafted, things he devised, and any data from it. Records or results. The others are picking at the top, maybe we should go underground."

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    A shadowy figure is all that Tomoe gets to see in the corner of one eye before a huge throwing knife is headed her way. "WOAH! Hey, back row rights, asshole!" Tizona calls out to the hit-and-run man who's launched that huge blade.

    A barrier driver intercepts it, cracking and then breaking under the assault as it slows for just half a second, blunting the impact or maybe even letting tomoe dodge, but it's clearly meant to interrupt any support. The dashing man is gone, though!

Hana Umikazeno (357) has posed:
    "Well, that's going to be a problem," Hana remarks dryly. "I had planned not to load cartridges, but..."

    It looks like Vruasa and Zephyr are the order of the day. Their two cartridges are quickly slotted, and then Hana brings up her crossbow again. "Higanbana, can you find me weak points? Ways to shatter his armor or remove his defenses?" She's looking for those herself with a sniper's eye - and even takes a shot at a joint in the interim - but it never hurts to see what Higanbana can offer. Aside from the cartridge boosts, that is.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Got it." Jude says, simply. "If they're not planning on facing us directly, they can take some consequences." Psyber begins his rampage and takes a LOT of attention. It looks like he wound up getting a ton; KING isn't going to intercept him because he's not attacking his allies. But with all the dust kicked up, it's hard to see the sudden web of traps set up for Psyber, presumably by that rogue who keeps running around, what a DICK! It's a series of explosive tripwires set up in the next area he's headed towards, near impossible to see until the first goes off with a massive point-blank blast.

    The man himself is long gone though, because he's a jerk.

Theo Morrison has posed:
"That tracks," Theo remarks, a touch absently. He's examining the structure, possibly giving it a closer look to make sure it isn't going to come tumbling down. Nothing seems unstable, though; it'd have already broken loose. He gives Aetherwright a curious look. "I'm all for reinforcing our position here. I don't want it to turn out we're all flash and no substance." There's a beat. He nods. "Good idea... hm."

Theo starts looking for a way down instead of up. "Wizard towers always have /some/ kind of creepy basement, right? It wouldn't make much sense to just build up." He's a little nervous. He babbles when he's nervous. He changes tracks away from architecture. "So," he asks Aetherwright on the way downward instead of upward, "Are you able to you tweak the rules, make ours take precedent over the local world's? If it turns out we have to fight, I want it on our terms."

He doesn't play anything else from his hand. He's still bound by his rules, even if the result might be sub-par. Theo does still have the glitchy recruit follow in his wake, though; two (and a half) sets of eyes are better for spotting potential complications.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Noble Six's arrow sails through the air with the roughly-calculated trajectory Enforcer provides eagerly. It's not specialized for this, but it can help, at least a little bit. Noble Six had to be the one to figure out the wind, but, the arrow sails to the target, and... She gets a hit! That'll be interrupting KING's buffs and heals, at least a little, though there's no confirmed kill message.

    "Haha! I think we got them, actually, if Yui's data is-- SHIT!! NINE O'CLOCK!"

    While Noble Six was busy with that, a man in all black, with a mask over his lower face and long dark hair, covered in bows and knives and other such things, has beared down on her; there's a blast of smokescreen as he's detected, then he tries to hard-tackle Noble Six, intending to pin her down and stab her in the chest several times with a heavily-poisoned dagger.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber jumps back, trying to avoid the explosion of the traps. With no defensive capacity on his Abstractum, however, Psyber is forced to take the blunt of an explosion directly to his front. He does so with a relative amount of ease despite the damage, his face and arms cut up and scorched from fire and debris, but Psyber himself still walking forward purposefully.

    The blue lenses of his sunglasses flash idly and Psyber looks around. Kirito wants his help over at King and Psyber doesn't want to dilly-dally too much getting over there. So it's best to deal with the rogue first and the tank second. Careful eyes try to sense out the location of his opponent, glowing behind the sunglasses he wears.

    At the first sign of the rogue-ish figure, Psyber uses a burst of superhuman speed to try to catch up with his location and then swing a massive, cleaving strike at his midsection. There's no mercy or pause behind it, he is trying to cut the rogue clean in half with a single strike before he can set more traps.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Of course I'm recording! I'm the KING!" The tall man slams his two massive gauntlets against his chest. "I'm NUMBER TWO most popular streamer on Fidget.TV! You think I'm gonna do a raid event like this with no coverage? You think you can stream-snipe me, you no-name scrub, you'll just be a boost for my views. All the way to number one, baby, HAIL TO THE KING!"

    Then the black outfit comes out. King assumes a more serious, aggressive posture. "Oh... Oh here we go. This? This is gonna be top views here." He charges. And holy shit he hits like a train. Whether or not he impacts Kirito, the overbuffed, overpowered man slams THROUGH the opposite wall and the explosion is with such force it takes out part of the neighboring structure! Sword strikes can chip his HP, because he's not dodging, but this guy is minmaxed to hell and back if he's getting his buffs! His gauntlets are the worst offenders, one can see that they're very often popping an ability that increases his offensive output based on equipment load.

    There is a moment, though, where his buffs are interrupted by a shot from Noble Six. In any case, the TANK is now mobile! The rest of the group can work with this to draw him around, if they like. He's mumbling softly, though; presumably he's sending messages to his rogue about the new target.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe says "Oh I'm sorry you though using mechanic's would save you?!"

Tomoe is clearly. The Barrier eis enough to catch it and she thinks that a bit on the new side, she's able to dodge away from it. She was almost hit and sh wonders for a moment.

"Just what ... damn it where did he go?" R
She looks about at this point.

She's looking about for him but if she can't find him well she's going to pick other options like going for the big guy.

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    Six's warning from Enforcer comes with just a moment soon enough for Six to turn and spot the rapidly approaching assassin. But she's not unskilled in the art of assassination herself. She moves fast enough to avoid being caught totally off guard, but she still winds up knocked onto her back.

    She moves to grab his arm as he tries to stab her, struggling with the knife to keep it from stabbing into her, "Enforcer! I could use your shield right now!" She yells out to her Abstractum, trying to get herself something to fend off her opponent with, as she struggles to hold his arm with both of her hands.

    Then she gets an idea. She has a full face helmet. He only has his lower jaw covered. She jerks her head upright to try to headbutt him in the nose.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Frederica can find some very unusual things just near the entry of the lower sections. There's... Something rather baffling here. It's really nonsensical. It's a menu. Specifically: A seed-world-type interface menu, the kind you get when you swipe your hand. It's cracked in half, this is just the lower half, and it's lodged halfway into a bookcase.

Fiora O'Brien has posed:
    As Fiora flickers through the Lag-Space-Continuum, and the pair of Gods kerzap through Time, she's hopeful that by combining their powers in a non-offensive combo, they'll be able to boost their way into the past.

    And it works! Fiora waves her hand before her, cloaking Vruasa and herself in a thick, clinging screen of black smoke that hangs about their persons and half-phases them out of existance. Essentially, punching them out so that they were observers unless they messed with shit.

    "We can't mess with time, if we want anything useful... But we can try to save information and spy on these guys, retroactively! Hecate, be sure to mark and punch out of phase any useful information you can hunt down, so Theo and Staren can retrieve it in the present" She orders, before wandering on in behind Drinking Pure McJagoff Boozehol The Third.

    "Well, come on then... We've got time-splorin' to do!"

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Psyber 2's effect is helpful here. Increase damage relative to violent inclinations of target. Since these guys are violent by definition, it's doubled. Himei gives bonus athleticism, Hana provides her a speed bonus, and Vruasa provides a bonus to perception and temporal accuracy.

    The ensuing timestop works... Fine, really! Seems a bit laggy, but it's mostly working. Plunging a knife into the back of the shadowy man works fine, while he's struggling with Noble Six. The man's brought into the timestop too. He jerks his head around to stare at her and gives out a petulent, frustrated cry of "BULLSHIT! Time spells got nerfed way past this, you SHITTY CHEATER!" He tries to pin her arm to him, then bring that poisoned dagger around for a vicious strike on her! It'll either get her to go away, or poison the SHIT out of her with debilitating status effects, but either is a victory for blackSlide, the ninja-man who Homura gets the first chance to see clearly. "Completely unfair! How do you still have this OP shit? KING, finish off the swordsman, I've got stuff I need to do on the forums!" Whine about this, apparently.

Vruasa Telash has posed:
    "Hmm. So fundamentally the key to making successful use of backwards time travel without involving time loops is to Do Nothing in order to improve chances of acquiring something useful in a time period that hasn't reached a conclusion yet. Void, and Time..." Vruasa thinks aloud as the cloak of void descends upon them. He applies a mild acceleration effect to the both of them, stepping over to loop an arm around Fiora's. Since nobody messed with local time in the past, he can't alter the local time. But there's nothing wrong with boosting theirs enough that the collapse is a very slow process to them. He strides forward confidently, following in the wake of the Pure's destructive rampage.

    It's like a horrible, horrible date.

    "Don't forget that this place is going to get split in half. We'll probably need to ghost out entirely sooner or later. Assuming we don't have to just leap back forward abruptly or something. There's no telling what the Pure guy can do. Sure you can handle that just fine, though." He says to Fiora, carefully timing things so they're moving in the same rhythm. Falling out of synch would be bad back here.

    << Hey. Ulixes. Record EVERYTHING. And point us at anything worthwhile. I don't know if it'd work if I did it just now, and my attention to detail can be pretty fucked. Tho', Fiora probably has that handled. >> He asides, to the eye-compass.

Kirito has posed:
    "Uweh... what a foul personality..." Kirito mutters disgustedly, but immediately readies his weapons. Both the loyal Abstractum and his faithful demon sword - or so it's called - are raised and crossed at the last moment to parry. Kirito braces himself for impact, and IMPACT SURE COMES.

    He's driven THROUGH the wall, and the hit's enough to screw his face up tremendously. He can feel that one some, even through FullDive!

    Like a compressed spring, he rebounds - sailing BACKWARDS and tumbling through the air in a panic. when he lands though, it becomes evident that Kirito must be part cat. SOMEHOW he lands on his feet and goes skidding across the ground on all fours and is quick to rise.

    Crap, Sword Skills won't do any good if his opponent won't die from them or at the least flinch. He'll have to settle this without using them!

    Immediately the Black Swordsman suffers a flashback to his fight with Heathcliff and trembles inside. No Sword Skills? He can't afford another blunder like that. Never again.

    THAT blow was a heavy one though. It reduced Kirito's HP to around half just like that! Thankfully, with Battle Healing active it'll fill back up in no time... presuming he can avoid getting pulverized for about 25 seconds.

    Idly, he ponders bringing out the wings Staren gave him. They would definitely be a gamechanger. And his opponent is practically cheating here!

    Thankfully, Psyber's here. So all he needs to do is keep KING busy until Psyber can slam this juggernaut like the broadside of a barn.

    "The King of Murderers, you mean!" Kirito retorts, dashing in at full speed. This avatar's of his is naturally maxed out in all kinds of things, and his skills are among the best of all VRMMO players when push comes to shove. Even if he's not buffed, chances are he should be able to keep KING busy for psyber's moment.

    Because psychological warfare counts for a lot in a fight like this too. He doesn't even really intend to deal serious damage, just ANNOY King and dance around to evade counterattacks!

    "Even that impressive build with all your buffs can't cover your worst weaknesses! ... now, explain! You must know the NPCs here aren't mindless scripts... how can you justify this massacre?!"

    Of course, Kirito already knows several possible answers to this question. But he'd rather hear the answer from King's mouth.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Auron's HP is definitely high here, though that seems more governed by his chosen loadout than anything else, and apparently his Abstractum's equip stats boost those hit points. He's got the toughness to deal with them, and now, asshole rogue is dealt with, primarily. "Th-thank you." The mage is saying nervously. "Keep me covered. I'm going to try to fire on their healer." He's gesturing again, firing beams of fire down at the healer...

    Shortly afterwards, there's a huge slab of wood suddenly incoming at him. Apparently someone ELSE is taking a MUCH MORE DIRECT approach to killing the mage! Probably the tank, somewhere below, amid all his combat. The healer must be calling for backup...

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    This close, Homura won't be able to dodge the counter-stab.

    blackSlide shanks her, and poisons her!
    And debuffs the hell out of her, too. That is way less pleasant.

    She's going to keep it cool, though. Just smile at him.
    "For someone zipping around stabbing everyone, you certainly complain a lot. If you insist on an encore, though... Claire, repeat!"

    She doesn't use her knives.
    She merely pumps magic into her Abstractum.

    The exact same attack she performed repeats itself, as if stuck in a loop. The same backstab, with the same output as the first time. Whether blackSlide reacts in time or not is going to make all the difference here. With how much poison he pumped into the girl, though, this is much better than trying to attack him in melee. He'd have too much of an edge.

    She's kind of a sitting duck though, if he decides to go on the offensive rather than sit still and complain about time magic. The debuffs sure aren't helping.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    More and more, Staren finds, the reality of this is actually different. It looks like the world itself is altered by Player presence. Only the Kingdom of Shadow wizards have any data discussing the slow alterations, but it seems that players, and the things they summon, enforce game mechanics on the world.

    Eureka peers at the additional books. "This seems like one of those explanations for game mechanics provided by the backstory." It says. "But I see little indication that they know they're in a game."

Staren has posed:
    Staren glances at key sections with interest. "I don't know. It also sounds like a newly unified world dealing with elites from other worlds for the first time... At least, in theory. Never got to witness such a thing recorded. I really should go hit up some other libraries. ...Wait, but every player is an elite? That doesn't sound right either. Yeah, you're probably right. But I wouldn't call it a sure thing yet." Okay. Now that that's covered... He chases after the trail of the records of weapons research. Looking for the most recent records he can find...

Auron (236) has posed:
    Auron nods to the mage's request, and positions himself more properly as a Guardian should. His experience in covering a mage in battle -- Braska when he was young, and both Yuna and Lulu later -- lets him get between the mage and the incoming attack barrage, yet not block the mage's line of sight or fire.

    Until that slab of wood comes in. "Suchiru, get ready," he says. He gives no explanation; the Abstractum probably sees the slab of wood before he did. He leaps at the incoming slab, swinging the Abstractum-sword in a diagonal-down motion. He's /hoping/ to cleave the slab of wood in half, but if not, the attack should at least change the projectile's direction away from the mage.

    He's heard these Abstractum have the power to augment a person's normal abilities. Perhaps the Abstractum can employ something here to make this task more effective.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "We're fast enough that we could do some hit and run on their healer to really mess with them, ma'am." Higanbana says, with a professional tone. "Cartridges installing." There's a sudden wave of red fire. Higanbana's speed is MAJORLY boosted, but it's doing chip damage to Hana, due to Zephyr's conceptual power issues. Vruasa's allows her speed to dilate her perception of time as well; her mind moving faster her body moves.

    As for the strikes on the man himself, ARMOR-BREAKER STRIKES are something that can definitely happen! And they're chipping away at his armor rating, but jesus christ, there's JUST SO FUCKING MUCH. It is helping, though, a fair amount.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Not normally." Aetherwright says, simply. "But I am an Abstractum made for rules. I enforce the rules you're familiar with on surfaces. Find the right surface. It's simple." It says this as if it's obvious. DUH, Theo!

    Further down, past what Frederica found, there's something a little more strange. It was previously on a large table. Now, it's not. It's... It's not a corpse. It looks like a corpse. It's dismembered like a corpse. But it's a player. A player with a blank name, starter gear, and empty eyes, a player who isn't moving. They're missing their entire left leg and much of their right, and have no left arm or left eye. Their right arm is the only complete limb. While the body was previously resting on a table, it's now in a corner, in a crupled heap. Some other Players who visited after vandalized the area around it with rude messages.

    100% HP, though.

    Potentially valuable investigation material.

Hana Umikazeno (357) has posed:
    So it's a self-stressing combo, but one that allows Hana to operate at truly superhuman speeds. That's something she can use quite well - and her spotter's advice is more than a little welcome. "Well-spotted," she says simply, before blurring into motion.

    She's an assassin. A markswoman who picks the weakest point she can possibly hit. And sometimes, that weak point is someone else. And so, with all the superspeed and time-dilated perception her cartridges grant her, Blossom Seabreeze darts right up to the healer, unloads a crossbow bolt, and then darts away. She stops again, halfway across the room, to fire another bolt and then disappear.

    The crowssbow-wielder quickly becomes a rapid-fire series of brief pauses and blurring moves, darting all over the room unpredictably and only ever stopping just long enough to fire a shot.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "GOT IT!" The projected shield Enforcer gives should be helpful in keeping the rogue away, but he's vicious and really strong! Psyber's going to wind up atop that perch Noble Six is at though, swinging at the rogue. It moves clean through the foe, Psyber and Homura's tandem attack cutting a full half of his HP and cutting him down to 1/6th HP while he struggles with Noble Six. The headbutt slams him back and off. "Fucking... I'm down to a thousand here, sweet!! What the fuck are you doing?! Give me heals you /dumb cunt/!"

    What an unpleasant guy.

    His HPs is going up, though, as he tries to get away. It's clear he's bitten off more aggro than he can chew, doing the cardinal sin of DPS. "KING, what are you doing?! TANK! You're the TANK! God, you people! What the fuck?!" He screeches as he elegantly parkours his way off the perch and through a broken building, trying to escape.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Tomoe's the one who gets to see him, at about a third of his HP, dashing between buildings. Pursue? Or go help Kirito, who's engaging the tank between structures in the opposite direction!

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    Once Homura and Psyber do their job of getting the rogue off of her, and the headbutt makes him take a step back, Noble Six decides to finish the job. She kicks herself up to her feet, and then moves to grab the rogue, tightly, around the waist. Assuming he's not fast enough to evade her, she has a plan.

    That plan is not a good plan, but it's a plan none the less. She's at full health, he's almost dead. So she takes him and hauls off towards the edge of her perch, intent on suplexing him off of the ledge and down to ground level, the intent being to leave him with just enough HP for Kirito to swoop in and finish him off with the Ban Hammer <tm>. She knows this'll hurt, but it's just a game...Right?

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber barely takes a moments pause before he completes the swing of his sword and then uses the momentum of the swing to send him flying in another direction, "Leaving." He says simply to the two of them with a flat tone. Letting them know he will not be around to provide further cover. This is because he needs to go help Kirito IMMEDIATELY with a tank swap.

    The half-angel easily backflips and lands on the ground, swinging the sword up and across his shoulder, "Adjudicator, we're going to crack him wide open. I don't want us to hold back a bit." He commands to the sword, dashing in towards King.

    As he runs, he shouts authoritatively, "Jude. Gimme the highest level of Shift available! NOW!" If he's right in his ability to Shift, his arms and body should immediately become covered in runic scripture of an ancient language. Above his back is a halo-like apparition that spins as he charges in. Potentially other effects if he manages to hit Shift Three.

    When he arrives at King shortly after, he swings the massive sword in an uppercutting motion, shouting, "Morality Paradigm Activate: Live by the Sword!" He commands to his weapon while making a massive golf swing with the sword, trying to both devastate and distract King from Kirito so he can deal with the Rogue.

    "NOW KIRITO! MOVE!" Psyber says in a resonant voice, ready to face off with an incredibly overpowered armored man for the second time this week. He should really evaluate how he winds up in these situations.

Frederica (73) has posed:
    Frika's not sure about this whole directory thing, but Kirito seemed inordinately weirded out by it. She is NOT getting it simply to impress him. No, certainly not. She's here to investigate, that's all. To do what needs doing. If she wanted to be impressive, she'd probably be with the others trying to murder PCs.

    There is definitely something odd about this menu embedded into the bookshelf. Frika muses as she works at it, trying to pry it free. Clearly it's not something that should have physical form. It's also not something that came from the archmage's tower and was broken by a greedy player. It was stuck here, probably as junk from some player's action. That means it probably wasn't simply left because it couldn't be freed... it was probably left because to the players, it was useless. To them however, to the heroes, it might be interesting indeed. Frika's not terribly strong but she's patient and focussed. Plus, if it proves stubborn, she has a short sword in her inventory that should prove useful as a pry bar if nothing else.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    The crashing man goes by, in slow motion, and the ceiling crashing goes in slow-motion too. HECATE is smugly doing as asked. "Of course. All the important things... Let's see." Hecate begins arbitrarily designating scrolls out of the huge piles that are strewn about by magely laziness and violent crashing. And Fiora's VOIDY POWER is being applied to them, to mark them, and apparently while its in Combo, it's even able to protect them a little bit.

    Alongside the literature, there's one notable things the pair can see. There's a particularly calm-looking elf that's not fleeing, and apparently is undamaged by the events surrounding him. He's shoving furniture out from over a secret magical circle he presumably inscribed earlier, just like the teleportation circles elsewhere. He's got that look about him that really heavily implies he knew what was coming.

Homura Akemi (2) has posed:
    Oh, that worked.
    Good, she wasn't sure if it would.

    Homura would join the assault against KING, but right now it looks like she's rapidly bleeding HP and stats from the debuffs. Those are probably going to be there a while, though fortunately they probably won't be enough to bring her from full health to dead with just the one application. So she'll at least provide some support.

    She shuffles through her inventory, looking at the higher tier of swords and blades for special effects. Finally she finds one, aptly named Lightninganger, Buffed Sword of the Gale Finder. She produces it, and then shouts towards Kirito: "KIRITO, CATCH!"

    She then proceeds to throw the large one-handed sword towards him. It looks rather ridiculous, less like a sword and more like a hollow cavalry lance with a lightning bolt imprisoned inside. Standard fare for an endgame MMORPG sword, though.

    It has the power to slow its target's movement speed!
    And also shoot lightning.

Theo Morrison has posed:
"Huh. I guess it is." Theo idly wonders if he can find a server box for this game and make some peoples' days very bad.

And then he goes into the Corpse Room.

Theo stares at the mess for a long moment before he realizes that, no, that's a /virtual construct/, and a /player/ to boot. "But it should be Remain Lights, shouldn't it," he murmurs to himself, voice confused and quizzical. He walks over to the body, taking slow, cautious steps, as if on the look-out for traps.

Theo tries to move the body back onto the table -- or, well, what's left of it. Then, he tries to examine it. 'Tries' is the operative word, here; it's in bad shape, and he's not sure what he could find out. Maybe there's something left on it? Starter gear, vacant eyes, no name...

"I don't think I need to say it, but this is /really/ weird. The game doesn't work this... way..." He trails off thoughtfully. Putting the tray down on an empty spot on the table, he packs in his cards, banishing the glitchy Recruit and putting away the table and the deck. He picks up his Abstractum, and looks down at Aetherwright for a moment, as if weighing it in his hand.

"So you do rules, right? That's your 'thing.'" He angles to put Aetherwright on the rest of the body. "Could you tell me if there's an anomaly with this, um, quasi-corpse? Like, if someone /else/ changed how it interacts with the game, or if it's even remotely aligning with the way things are supposed to be?"

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe sees the guy she's got the oders to go after the healer. She will trust in Noble Six to go after the speedy and sneaky guy. She lets him go for the moment she does send a short communication to Noble Six. <<I spotted him.>>

She gives the location and moves on to seek out the healer she doesn't make use of her wings just yet but as she activate them however as she moves making ready to she's going to go for the Healer leaving the other to Noble Six whose better suitd a sshe springs upon them aiming to impale them.

"Rule number one of PVP, off the healer!"

Tomoe is also pretty vicous in her strikes no she's not /being/ nice to these people at all.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Doesn't matter what you're king of, so long as you're the /best/!" The massive man roars with confident tones. "I'll be king of whatever I like! If these dumb videogame men were supposed to not die, they'd not die! That's how programming works, you scrub. The viewers want blood, that's what I'll give 'em!" He's lunging again for Kirito! "So get on your knees and get HAILING, or get dead, you nerd! You think you've locked in my weakness, you're DEAD WRON--" And Psyber's barreling in out of nowhere.

    Psyber's pure DPS build comes roaring in. "Not holding back, then. MORALITY PARADIGM LOADED: LIVE BY THE SWORD." The slice slashes right through KING's midsection with a HUGE gush of red fire, as Psyber's body is saturated with the red lines of Shift and the brilliant light of a huge amount of Resonance energy. KING goes flying. His HP takes... God damn it, what the fuck is WITH this guy? His HP goes down a third or so. He takes huge stun damage, but something's still mitigating damage?!

    No, apparently not. He takes another third of his HP when something else happens, elsewhere. We'll see what that's about in a moment.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    More recent weapons development is a little more troubling. Fiora has managed to mark the relevant papers, which would have otherwise been burned in the rubble or be nearly impossible to find. Apparently it seems to be about reverse-engineering certain weapons used by the Hollow Avatar, rather than anything related to these Players. Apparently a spy for the Kingdom of Shadow managed to steal enough samples to reverse-engineer direct from the Hollow Avatar shortly after locating his home resting place.

    "Much more useful." Eureka says, frankly. "So we just need to find this spy, or whoever gave the spy the relevant information."

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Cleaving the slab in half - it looks like KING tossed that thing up here when he was recovering from being thrown off by Psyber - keeps the mage safe, though the slab itself does wind up interrupting the rain of fire on the Healer, and the Healer's healing resumes... But then ceases, for a moment! In any case, the mage can resume his efforts anew! We'll see what that's all about shortly.

Kirito has posed:
    "SWITCH!" Kirito howls after countering the thrust - if only barely. He only needs to avoid a direct hit, at least!

    The boy's legs bunch up and he LEAPS backwards just in time for Psyber to come in. And he ALMOST fumbles with Homura's sudden tossed weapon, but he somehow manages to sheathe Elucidator and grab the 'blade' by its proper grip. Phew!

    The instant Kirito's feet hit the ground... "Your weakness doesn't have anything to do with stats." He declares simply, and... WHOOOOOOSH! Turns all that potential energy into momentum. He dashes clear of the Mess Hall, silently praying that PSyber can handle the lug while he goes after the apparent rogue.

    Kirito has several tricks for doing so, too. His Scanning skill should see through pretty much ANY Stealth attempts, for instance, and he's uncannily good at detecting things like the tiny telltale disturbances in FullDive rendering caused by a player's nearby presence.

    So once he's clear of the immediate mess, he halts... "Yui, where 's the other one?" And the third method is, of course, Yui, whose connection doesn't care about stealth!

Staren has posed:
    "A fake player? Could be related..." Staren checks if any of these papers mention, specifically, what the reverse-engineered weapons were...

    "How could there be a _spy_? That doesn't make any sense. The interface would mark them as an NPC!" A moment after he says it, he freezes in thought for a moment.

    Then he opens his map and makes his way down to join Theo. His eyes widen a bit at Captain Bitsnpieces here. "...Well, /that's/ kinda messed up." But, at least there's no actual gore. He strides into the chamber. "Eureka, can you get anything with Sakura's cartridge? I'm gonna try these." Staren opens the menu and resses a black glove on his right hand, with a clear crystal on the back, and then touches the NPC's torso, feeling for psychic impressions.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Hana darts into action like a red streak of fire, blasting her way to the cover of the healer.

    The healer is an extremely young-looking girl. She's got about half her HP, and is glowing red from burn damage and an arrow in her shoulder.

    Tiny, pink-haired, and in a healer's outfit that looks like some weeabooish mix between a meido outfit and a nurse's outfit, she immediately goes into a panic, doing a bit of crying-like screaming in panic and pain, curling up and trying to cover her head with her big gnarled green staff. Kinda cliche cutesy. Jeeze, she looks, what, 15?

    "Nononono! Please! Please, I'm sorry, we'll go away, please stop it, it hurts!!" It doesn't really matter whether Hana stopped or not, because Tomoe slams through the wall like the fucking koolaid man and impales her right in the midsection while Hana's managed to get her stuck and stunned.

    She pops into a remain light!

    Tomoe, having koolaid-manned her way through the wall, is now koolaid-manned herself by a SUDDEN KING ATTACK, the roaring, boisterous bulky asshole trying to smash her through the opposite wall and pick up the Remain Light that was left behind. Apparently he got up.

Auron (236) has posed:
    Well at least the mage isn't about to get hit with a chunk of wood. Now he(?) can keep up the pressure on the enemy Players. So Auron waits where he is, in case anything else comes his way.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Yeah you'll be the king of sucking and dying is more like it," Psyber says in the aftermath of his heavy-handed attack on King. He adjusts his grip on the blade again. He elects NOT to use a new morality paradigm, wanting to keep the rest of his in check in case they need to come up later.

    Instead, he hoists the sword up over his head, "Your mistake was this: Whatever buffs you've got, you still suck at life. And therefore you suck at all things. Get wrecked, shitlord. I have crazy ass powers too."

    Hoisting the sword up over his head, "Judged by the Blade, sentenced and tried. JUDGMENT BLADE!" His entire body courses with energy as he channels one of the Holy Knight spells through the sword in his hands. He attempts to thrust it square through King's chest and then pin him to the ground.

    Upon impact, the blade releases a powerful blast of holy energy, trying to use its magical powers to make King STOP.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Noble Six has suplexed the rogue off of the perch, instead of allowing him to elegantly parkour his way off. He's not nearly dead as he falls - there was a bit of healing left to do before the healer wound up dying, so by the time he's at the bottom, he's at half health again, and then, back down to a third! The impact has a sickening crunch and a spray of red light.

    "Holy shit, that was kinda awesome." Enforcer says, frankly.

    Then Kirito is hunting for the rogue! Yui can find him easily. Even if she couldn't just detect player, she could easily just follow the string of expletive reports. "Holy fuck you are AWFUL! This grapple exploitation is shit, you're shit! Fucking try this when you don't got some kind of time hacks on your side you dumb bitch, I'll show you what's up then, fucking GET OFF!"

    He stabs at her arms, where they're wrapped around him, still trying to inflict horrible toxic status on her and get away. Then he screams out, "HEALS, GOD DAMN IT. SWEET. SWEET, HEALS?"

    No heals happen.

    "Fucking stupid bitch doesn't know how to play videogames, god /damn/ it!" There's a flurry of smoke bombs as a skill is cooldown-exploited to create a HUGE volume of smokescreen. "KING, GET SWEET AND GET THE FUCK OUT. We'll try this again when you two aren't so /goddamn retarded/." He's clearly intending to flee, but where?!

Hana Umikazeno (357) has posed:
    As it so happens, Hana does stop. There are a lot of things she will do, but 'commit a war crime' isn't one of them.

    ...usually.

    So she's given a front-row seat to seeing Sweet ended. Sigh. "...That one really shouldn't be here," she decides simply. "No place on the battlefield at all." A pause, and then a thought comes to her. If they could get her to stay off the battlefield, the Players would lose a large advantage...

Kirito has posed:
    Target acquired.

    If you're going to make so darned much smoke, at least shut up, rogue, right?

    Kirito's having none of this. He's far too pissed and desperate to at least land one ban on THIS trio. Getting the healer would be perfect, since it would cripple the group's ability for later. But nothing doing, probably.

    But King's no big threat if all he does is run around and punch stuff. That's predictable. His foul personality is also predictable, Kirito bets.

    "Geeze, you're not even worth half a Eugene!" He mutters irritably and somewhat nonsensibly. King just REALLY PISSES HIM OFF.

    He breaks into a dash, homing in through the smoke, he aims to just BODY SLAM the rogue - since he's not sure where his allies are through all that. But he can defintiely hear the rogue running and yelling, that should be good enough!

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Trying to pry it out of the bookshelf is a bit difficult; just like ALO's menus, too much movement and you just sorta pass through it! Slow enough, and you can extricate it though, if you can build enough force. It dislodges with a splintering crack and the whole thing flickers, buzzes, and makes various denial noises. Looks like none of the buttons actually do anything, or at least the remaining buttons that you can see here. It doesn't... Frederica can't put it in her inventory, but she can physically hold it, which is good enough. It'll be a useful thing to get information out of, if she can get it analyzed.

Fiora O'Brien has posed:
    Fiora nods to Vruasa's suggestion, and splits off from the path they had been going on, using Hecate less as a shoulder-prop and more as a walking-assistance stick, feeling out the path in front of her as she approaches the circle the SHITTY WIZARD had fled towards, letting Hecate pick out the 'important' things.

    In retrospect, this situation will probably lead into a CRYPTIC LUDONARRATIVE BULLSHIT SPIRAL filled with STUPID PUZZLES and SLOWROLLED EXPOSITION. She just knows it. This will be the most goddamn stupid thing ever.

    However, it still gets them SOMETHING, even if it's what the Riddlebroom thinks is important. Woe be to Team Figure Shit Out.

    Moving to the portal after Jerkass McMagicpants leaves through it, she raises Hecate high and waves the Shitty Riddlebroom in the air meaningfully. "Alright, shield and scan and whatever this area, and I think we're done here. We're looking for Krokodil-Chugging Dickbag in the present, and any of these clues from the past. Simple, yeah?"

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "I do rules, yes. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there's nothing about this Player that defies the rules you have set up on your own bodies. It is, simply, another Player. They appear to be incomplete. You know, I expected something a little more, here." A dry sort of frustrated sigh comes out of Aetherwright.

    "Only thing I'm detecting here is a null connection. Zero data for any incoming links, unlike yourself. It's not disconnected. It's just connected to nothing."

Vruasa Telash has posed:
    For his own part, Vruasa just tags along with Fiora. He has no interest in splitting this group. They're just going to have to bookmark things and come back again later. In fact, just to ensure that they get things done efficiently, he slams the acceleration on both of them to ludicrous levels. This is fairly easy, between the two of them. Having done so, he lets Ulixes get a recording of the emergency escape "hatch" that's been uncovered, and waits for Hecate to be done analyzing the same.

    Once THAT'S done, the silhouette of a red clock surrounds them and it's back towards the present go, the surroundings fast-forwarding unfathomably quickly as they spiral back to now. It would be disorienting, if they hadn't done it so many times before now.

    "So I'm thinking douchebag mcescapehatch there," He says to Fiora, "probably opened up whatever defenses this place had, let mr. gallon-of-pcp and crew in, and then scrammed out his emergency exit. It's a lot easier, even for a strong army, to get in with some inside help instead of going through the trouble of physically forcing their way in."

    "Or something." He adds, uncertainly.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is looking at the healer it doesn't really matter at this point as Tomoe moves in without much other words. She knows these guys respawn right it's mostly just an act, they feel it? Well if they feel it maybe they will learn thier lesson right? Tomoe's not in a forgiving mood to this guys she lowers her weapon now and turns be broad sided as she knocked off her feet and sent flying as things get crazy.

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    That was pretty awesome, Six would agree. Too bad she rattled her own cage in the process of doing it. She winds up thankfully taking the rogue down to a third health and her own health down a decent chunk. She ends up getting caught by the poisoned blade and her target escapes into the smokescreen. Damn. She can feel her actions slowed by the poision. She wonders if her team brought a healer.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Eureka's cartridge slot glows again as it scans the torso. "The emblem is right. Null connection. Psychometric scans active..."

    Staren gets a particularly strange bit of data out of the only psychic imprint that seems to be on this body. It's Earth. And, well, it's just Earth. That seems to be the only psychic imprint of substance, just a traditional image of Earth, as if from space. A little rough around the edges.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    The weapons of the Hollow Avatar are not mentioned much in detail, but it's heavily discussed that these weapons come from harvesting life from the enemy Kingdom of Shadows. It's a little bit troubling, and the mages seem very urgent about avoiding having to harvest living beings for resources.

Theo Morrison has posed:
"Little bit," Theo agrees, nodding at Staren as he comes down.

Theo folds his arms, looking down at the body. "Yeah, I was expecting more, too. I thought maybe the Pure had done something to it. Maybe they were a player that got stuck here, and they had some power to cut them up...?" He shrugs. "No evidence of that, though... it's like someone just generated a starting character without ever doing anything with it and left it logged in."

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks. "Earth. All I saw was... Earth. Like from space. In low detail." He stands there a moment and starts looking around for papers, notes, anything. "Gah! This /can't/ be another dead end..." He looks to Theo. "So I'm thinking: Somehow, the Archmage made a fake player. Used it to infiltrate them and learn about them. But fakey got found out and..." he gestures to the pieces.

    "...Wait. If that's what happened, wouldn't Maoh-sama have been told? We really need to ask for more details on what the archmage told them..." He scratches his chin for a bit. "C'mon, there has /got/ to be a wizard's lab around here somewhere..." He starts to walk out, then stops and looks back at Pieces McGillicutty over here. "...Although, maybe we should bring that back to the castle for study, too. Well... first..." He heads off in search of the wizard's lab. There's gotta be one, right?

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Psyber pursues KING and winds up stabbing his shit with a HUGE amount of offensive power and swording. His HP is going down... Down... Down... He's stopped, in that he's stuck in place. But it's almost impossible to see it when his hand moves, with incredible dexterity and quickness for someone with those huge gauntlets, to his side, retrieving a flask and jamming its open end into his mouth. The flask, notably, has a small hemispherical black gem...

    Brilliant red fluid pours into his mouth and he guzzles it in the span of less than a second, keeping it lodged betwen his teeth as a sudden rush of red fire washes over him. He props himself up off the ground with such incredible force that Psyber, his blade, and the ENTIRE SECTION OF GROUND UPON WHICH HE WAS PINNED is moved.

    He is technically STOPPED because he is redefining what motionless is, relative to the sword. "/Motherfucker/," He says, his eyes burning red, looming over Psyber. "When I take out that bastard black swordsman I'm gonna put your permaban on /pay-per-view/."

    And then, ground and all, he LEAPS, still grasping that pink remain light. The leap is HUGE; he winds up hundreds of feet in the air. If Psyber can hold on, he's gonna be taken for a ride. If he can't... Well, I mean, it's not like he's losing his real sword. It'll still be in his inventory, and it's just a digital projection in the first place. But jesus christ it'll be hard to hang onto. This guy seems intent on leaving, though, as according to the orders of his Raid Leader.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Hey now, just because I'm a motherfucker doesn't mean I'm a bad guy." Psyber says, straining to try to keep the man in place with his hand on the hilt of his sword. He's trying his best to keep the man from getting away, "I provide your mom, who by the way is so fat I took a picture of her last Christmas and it's still printing, a very valuable serv- WOAH FUCK!"

    Psyber attempts his best to hang on for Mister King's Wild Reality Ride. The half-angel's legs come out from under him while he's rocked around and hanging on for his life, "CLEANSING STRIKE! NORTHSWAIN'S STRIKE! FUCKING FALL DOWN ALREADY!" The half-angel shouts over the woosh and rush of air. He doesn't wanna let Kirito down and let this guy get away, so he slams two more moves into him back to back. Two heavy pulses of holy energy that try to KO and then outright kill him. He's trying to make a status effect stick.

    However, his grip is slowly loosening despite his lack of desire to let go, and if King keeps up with his current actions, he will probably fall off next round for narrative convenience.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    The rogue is bodyslammed by Kirito... Or so it initially seems. He seemed to have been a lot closer than his voice sounded! Kirito impacts him, and that sword Homura provided even winds up cutting him for some slowing and other status effects... The black pair wind up tumbling over each other, as one tries to violently beat the other...

    Until blackSlide the rogue is pinned under Kirito. There's a silent but completely hateful look from him... Why's he silent? You'd expect more yelling. Kirito will unfortunately find the solution to this when he tries to deal the finishing blow.

    The body flickers and sputters, visually glitching and jittering under him, until it sudenly disappears, apparently replaced by a jet-black throwing knife that glows a soft green.

    "Oh that is some bullshit." Double Fault says, frustratedly. "Come ON. I think that was some Pure gimmick. Yui! Yui, tell me you've got a bead on this guy!" And she will, but he was, apparently, just a meter or two more through the cloud, and is trying to escape through a hole in the wall. He's heading to KING's landing point.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "Shielded and scanned." Hecate says, smugly. "Ah, but who's to say, sometimes, if you must /necessarily/ look to the past? Learn from the past, but act in the present, right? If my guess is right, you might find some very productive routes of information if you find where these things come to rest."

    Ulixes takes its usual friendly, professional tone. "Sounds like we have a survivor, then, and someone who knows a lot about this. So we just have to track them down, right? Should be simple enough, if the circle tells us where they went."

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    Eureka speaks up. "I believe miss Frika already visited the archmage's lab. We may be able to help analyze her findings there, if we can get back to the Lord of Shadows. Everything is worth recovering, here, though. Perhaps the mages can do something about that."

    "Harvest every possible vector of information. Exploit any possible option to learn. There is nothing to be lost, picking up a lead." Aetherwright says, simply. "The greatest sin is not knowing all the cards in your hand."

Kirito has posed:
    "He's escaping! Further ahead!" Yui frantically waves an arm from Kirito's pocket while Kirito splutters. Failure! It's like some sort of SHADOW CLONE stupidery! "Pure gimmick?!" He's up in a flash, but this darned smoke! Kirito then, however, notices the shape Noble Six is in.

    This is not the time to worry about who will die if they're killed or not.

    In a panic, he rummages through his inventory and pulls out a tiny crystal vial with a straw-like protuberance! "Here, drink this! quickly!" He's bending down near Noble Six and offering the antidote in a rush!

    He will NOT let any party members die, not if it's the last thing he does.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
    "I'M POWERED BY MURDER." KING declares as he soars through the air. "AND YOU CAN'T STOP THE KING ON HIS WAY TO THE TOP!" He sails up, and then sails down. His camera-bearing Familiars sail up with him, and then sail right back down with him. But Psyber's chipping that HP away again, in spite of KING attempting to punch him square on the face repeatedly.

    By the time Psyber falls off, he'll be barely escaping, only helped by blackSlide suddenly showing up right next to where the two men slam into the ground and using quick trap abuse to LAUNCH them both away at high speed.

Noble Six (38) has posed:
    Taking the vial, Six lifts her helmet enough to drink it, and then waves Kirito off, "Just go. Don't worry about me." She motions for him to go again, muttering about how aparently real world poison resistance doesn't mean a damn thing as far as the game systems are concerned.

Theo Morrison has posed:
"That's right." Theo nods once in agreement. He picks up Aetherwright again and affixes it to his armor. "No sense leaving it here if we can examine it somewhere else. If the mages can transport it easier than we can, then..." He shrugs. He doesn't really want to carry a mostly-hacked-up corpse back unless he's gotta.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Good for you! You still fucking suck at life," Psyber points out amidst several blows to the face that cause him to flinch and twist the sword spitefully. He really wants to finish this fight. Unfortunately he doesn't get a choice in the matter.

    Psyber is thrown backwards by the explosion of traps, sent tumbling backwards through the air with the sword in his hands. His cheek is bruised and he's definitely bleeding from several head and mouth wounds, but he looks mostly pissed off at being cheated out of his kill. Instead of summoning his wings, he flips backwards and rights himself, heading straight for the ground.

    Due to the offensive boosts of Adjudicator mixed with his own speed, Psyber landing causes a massive crater to indent in the ground under him while the air whips and pulses from the static levels of power it emits. Psyber mostly just looks pissed off, though.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is back on her feet but not back in time. She's not sure about all these guys power but she's one her part for today she's however moving to try and help now. She's not about to let party memebers die hwoever Kings words her eyes narrow a little bit ans she's not very happy. She's going to try to get back into the fight if it's needed but for now she's got a lot to think about.

Abstractum.Net (347) has posed:
(!) Kirito's legacy will change because he chose to confront the Raid first.

(!) Psyber's legacy will change because he chose to reveal the (spoiler) secret.

(!) Staren's legacy will change due to initiating these investigations into MCO

(!) Hana's legacy will change because she advocated for nonviolent handling.