6442/The Countdown Is At One

The Countdown Is At One
Date of Scene:	30 April 2019
Location:
Synopsis:
Cast of Characters:	Theo Morrison, Maya, Staren, Inga, 6802, 6909, 6906, 6880, 6895

---

Theo Morrison has posed:
The CITY OF MOUTOPIA exists on the edge of the Soft Expanse, a modern metropolis of peace and harmony. Its inhabitants, predominantly mouse-like humanoids with a not insignificant number of minotaurs mixed in, export bottled magical energy generated by the enormous river of unstable reality and import basically everything else. They thrive in a place a bit off the beaten path, but have no shortage of treasure hunters and adventurers passing through, either.

And, as today has shown, no shortage of villainy, either.

MOUTOPIA has been put under siege. Enormous brass and steel engines with spherical bodies and spider-like legs move through the streets and over manicured lawns, chasing panicking citizens and laying waste to the scenery sort of incidentally. What looks like overdesigned zeppelins bearing a curious emblem -- that of a lightbulb with a mushroom cloud inside -- lumber above them, unfurling ropes, cables, and what looks like enormous vacuum hoses as they approach the places the citizenry is being herded.

Exchanges of (mostly magical) fire throughout the city are evident, though Moutopia Monument Park -- an idyllic public space full of statues and memorials -- is where they're most concentrated. The central monument, formerly some symbol of peace and brotherhood, has been toppled and shattered, replaced with a titanic statue of polished copper featuring a tall man in an long, tailed coat decorated with medals and epaulets, with sharp features and a sinister look to him, one gloved hand raised to the sky.

The same man -- albeit one with a few (dozen) pounds and a couple (dozen) years added to his frame -- hovers in front of it on a saucer-shaped contraption, cackling madly. Beneath him, the ground swarms with smaller spider-like robots, ball-shaped and featuring a central eye and scuttling legs, maybe four feet tall apiece. They're presently rounding up... squirrels. Lots of them, all cowering fearfully in front of the small army of whatever-they-are. Is no one safe from this menace?!

"Well, mayor?" The old man's voice booms from loudspeakers. "Are you prepared to surrender the key to the city now? Or must I, the diabolical BARON VON COUNT, unleash my most sinister creations upon your feeble homes?!"

Maya has posed:
Maya had a long history with this day, April first often it was a hole in her memory that she could not recall what happened. Those were the good years for her this was not one of those years or could it be? She wouldn't know till the next day but the call for help from Moutpia had gone out leaving Maya being ready to respond. Maya was keeping under a cloak for the moment only leaving her rather simple looking rifle visible as an idea of who she might be a she stood forward to face down the Mayor and the rotund man before them.

"Baron Von Count? I'm going to only ask you once, stand down and surrender to the custody of Paladins."

Maya flips back the hood and lets her hair fall out her green eyes are fairly intense today as she looks the man down, and she also may be trying to distract him as well and get the focus on her rather than the locals. She stands her ground firmly and she doesn't seem afraid of the man or his minions, also of note if any of the beings can sense magic? Maya has way too much of it, way too much magic flows within this blue-haired lady.

Staren has posed:
    It's a bird! It's a plane! it's... a flying man in a tanuki mascot suit? He lands in front of the saucer.

    "BARON VON COUNT!" He points. "I am Staren Wiremu, Hand of the Concord!" However silly the tanuki suit looks, Staren manages to at least sound serious.

    "And I want you to stand down and go home, you can't just take over towns unless you join the Concord and give us a damn good reason! And you'd still need to find new homes for all these people even then!"

    And here you thought it was going to be the outfit undercutting his point.

Inga has posed:
What is Inga even doing here? Was she bored? Did she get lost? Did the gods need a laugh? No one knows.

Here she is though, sitting on a bench in the very same park, a bag beside her from which a string of yarn is pulled to be stitched into the shawl she is apparently knitting while some madman rounds up squirrels and more or less makes a mess.

She's been here for a while already, and has been watching this all take place with a furrow between her brow, but none of the creatures have bothered her yet. Some charm of concealment perhaps.

"Obviously, she's going to have to deal with this situation.

Riiiiight after she finishes this row. You just don't stop mid-row in a lace pattern. That would be /madness/.

Maya and Staren have arrived, Staren is dressed like a racoon or some such, for some reason. She looks up from her neeldes and calls. "One moment! Almost finished..."

Jeanne Alter (6802) has posed:
Jeanne's been losing her edge. Working in more modern and considerably more mundane settings, although good at losing some heat, has made the Avenger feel like she's gotten soft. No more! Today, she rectifies this problem! Today, she...

... Got lost and found herself stuck in a weird city full of mouse people. She'd almost feel bad about burning the place down just because of how silly it all looks. Is this really the place she should be trying to get back into the swing of things?

Better late than never. She hasn't started immolating anything just yet, instead opting to scope th eplace out in a more civilian-y garb of a leather jacket and jeans. As luck would have it, though, her plan to start her rampage at a church had been interrupted by someone else setting fires and trying to take over the place! Also, likely heroes and sports team mascots showing up to stop the mad scientist.

This could be better than expected. Stomping lightly as she forces herself to actually get up off one of the park benches (surprisingly comfortable at that), Jeanne grabs one side of her neck and pulls while shifting her head the other way, smirking as it makes a satisfying pop while she stops to stare upwards at the...

... Wait. He's not seriously an old man in there, is he? "You there. In the machine." She gestures at the saucer, then glances around slowly. "You're not really settling for squirrels and a useless novelty key, are you? You already have a flying machine and an army."

She doesn't don her armor just yet, instead looking between Baron Von Count's machine and the Elites gathering to face him. "You could do far better than mere vermin. Or is that really the extent of your ambition?"

Xion (6909) has posed:
The Diabolical Baron Von Count attacks the idyllic burgh of the CITY OF MOUTOWNSVILLE which actually is more like a Zootopia situation whose primary export is macguffin energy.

Xion and company are just there for ice cream. When spider-bots smash their way into town, and DOOMZEPPELINs hover overhead, the world cries out for heroes!

Will anyone save them?!
A hero, in shining armor, to defend...

Xion, in the park, in her best 'shady cultist coat' - a black hooded coat that reaches to mid-calves with silver accents and zippers/drawstrings - with the hood drawn, licks an ice cream cone. It's soft serve.

"But why squirrels?" She asks, as Jeanne Alter drops a hot mixtape on Baron Von Count.

Is there anyone ELSE who will save them? Any... r-real heroes?

"Hey, is the Concord really okay with conquering places as long as you're on their side? That sounds pretty rude. Axel said they were nice people..."

Xion goes back to licking her ice cream, deeply in thought.

Staren has posed:
    "It depends on the situation!" Staren shouts back to Xion. "Suppose, for instance, that it turned out the locals were opressing some kind of minority and he wanted to overthrow the regime and install a meritocracy? We'd be cool with that!"

Xion (6909) has posed:
Xion nods academically. "Oh. That makes sense. Like if there was a type of person who people wanted to murder to maybe bring back dead friends but they have their own hopes and dreams and personalities?"

"That makes sense. So they are nice people!"

Roxas (6906) has posed:
"Uh oh."

That's the first thing Roxas says upon witnessing a MULTITUDE OF SQUIRRELS being rounded up by SPIDERBOTS. He's standing next to Xion, likewise still in SHADY CULTIST garb. The crazy nonsense going on isn't so wildly unusual that it catches him particularly off-guard, exactly. But he knows what this means. He knows what it /is/ when a bunch of little things get collected up into a big group.

Although he /is/ capable of being emotionally moved by the plight of cute, furry animals, in this specific case he is moved by survival instinct honed by COUNTLESS RANDOM ENCOUNTERS with the same boss battle.

He takes a large, painful bite out of his own popsicle, trying to finish it quickly.

Half-muffled he explains, "Whenever /that/ happens--"

Roxas points towards the squirrels being collected.

"It's just a matter of time before we end up fighting another tornado. And I'm /really/ not into fighting another tornado today."

Lancelot du Lac (6880) has posed:
     Normally Lancelot should be guarding the gates of Camelot, but today he was feeling a bit restless. It's fine though, the Enforcement Knights are more than capable of picking up the slack without him, and it was now the perfect chance for them to make a name for themselves now that he wasn't there taking up all the glory, even if he really didn't mean to.

     Doing what Lancelot does best, the knight was busy mingling with the town folks. Mostly women, but also a few men as well. It's not often he gets to socialize with people in a carefree manner like this, even if they're mouse-shaped.

     Unfortunately, Lancelot's happy fun times apparently made to last, as BARON VON COUNT attacks the city and demands... A key to the city? Aren't those just suppose to be a reward for being an upstanding individual or something? He doesn't really have time to question that as the place is now under attack, causing his mousey friends to flee in terror.

"Wait, don't... run...away... recklesssly... Ah... Of course."

     There's a mixed expression of sadness and annoyance on the Knight's face, though it only remains for a moment as it's soon replaced with a stern look.

"You have erred, BARON VON COUNT! You best stand down now, for once I draw my sword I will not stop till your machinations are stopped!"

Theo Morrison has posed:
The mayor, a minotaur in a nice suit, is standing on the wrong side of a podium on a ruined stage nearby, wringing his ham-like hands in fear. He hasn't given over the comically-large and ornate KEY TO THE CITY, though: that's dangling from a chain around his neck, and glints importantly in the sunlight. His answer of surrendering or not surrendering (choose one (1)) goes unheard as the HEROES OF THE MULTIVERSE show up.

Or, well, people who can fill the role, anyway.

"Paladins? /Paladins/? Fah! Knights in shining armor in-/deed/!" The Baron adjusts his coat with thick-fingered hands. He looks between Lancelot and Maya and assumes they're being literal rather than speaking organizationally. "I didn't win the League's Villain of the Year award sixteen years running by surrendering to /paladins/!"

Staren is... less good at the heroing today. "Concord!" The Baron laughs. It's a very phlegmy laugh. "Better you to join me, boy! I've heard of you. You could do great things! Come! The LEAGUE OF DASTARDLY DOOM,"

                                  THUNDERCLAP                                  

"will teach you to harness your diabolical mind's /full potential!/" He clenches a gloved fist. Leather creaks. "Why, when I was your age --"

A laugh issues from the swarm of robots. It's feminine, a woman with a cultured accent. She's hard to pick out at first; she blends quite well with the ball-shaped, spider-legged metal 'bots all around her. Her dress and parasol are armored like they are, red where it isn't grey plating, and extremely round from the waist down. She looks more like a red-headed lady with the lower body of a ball robot, but at least she kinda pulls it off. "I don't think he would pass muster. The examinations would chew him up and spit him into a petri dish."

"Mary," the Baron asides in a mildly irritated, somewhat admonishing tone, "what have I told you about interrupting my speeches to promising young ne'er-do-wells?"

"Nothing worth committing to memory, Baron," the lady replies smoothly, smiling and shouldering her parasol. The robots around her chirp and click in a way that is simultaneously kind of endearing and also distinctly their whirring equivalent of laughter.

The Baron harrumphs. Jeanne and Xion bring up an excellent point. "I'll have you know that squirrels are a valuable commodity in Bablovia, ever since the white mouse went extinct due to over-experimentation. Furthermore, the key is a valuable artifact of unimaginable power! You cannot comprehend the true machinations of BARON VON COUNT!"

"We're going to pilot the city upriver," Mary asides, idly petting a nearby robot, much to its delight. "I hope you don't terribly mind."

"MARY O'KILL WILL YOU PLEASE CEASE YOUR ACCURSED LIP-FLAPPINGS AT ONCE."

One of the zeppelins drops a comically large tube over a herd of squirrels. There's a sound of suction, and they start to get vacuumed up into the sky in squeaky streams. It's right behind Inga, and slowly but steadily approaching her seat. A heavyset (human) youth in a black hoodie with one hand in the front pocket shuffles up next to her. "Uh, ma- miss, you should, uh, you should probably move? There's a, uh, a zeppelin."

Roxas (6906) has posed:
Roxas stares at Baron von Count for several long, awkward moments with his popsicle stick hanging out of his mouth. He looks between Xion and the Baron a couple of times like this before he apparently decides that he has to ask the question. He takes the popsicle stick aside for a moment and asks, "Are you... are you trying to make Kingdom Hearts? Is that what the giant key over there is really for? 'Cause we know all about keys with unimaginable power."

"And how do you pilot a city?" He asides to Xion, completely baffled at the mere concept.

Inga has posed:
More people seem to be arriving. There's a couple of people in dark robes (as a witch, always a look she can appreciate) and a warrior or some kind. A knight? Interesting. Maybe they'll have it handled?

Inga grumbles, her needles clicking quickly as she looks up toward the heavyset man. "What a ridiculous word. Zeppelin. Sounds like a pastry," she says, then looks behind her. Her braid starts lifting toward the sucking streaming of squirrels. "Yes yes, one...more...THERE," she says, then stuffs her knitting in her bag, grabs her walking stick, and stands to shuffle away from the zeppelin with an exasperated sigh.

Since it seems these strange people want the key to the city (which as actually an oversized key, worn by the mayor?) Inga guesses protecting him would be wise. She pulls the knife from her belt and gets stabbing--herself. Blood rises from the wound she makes in her arm, which is then flicked with the knife toward the mayor, casting a shimmering crimson ward around him.

She looks toward the others, gradually making her way toward Lancelot because he has 'Tank' written all over him and Inga does best when there's a lunk of warrior between herself and the enemy.

Staren has posed:
    Staren gives Xion a confused look, and then Doctor Von Count or whatever tries to recruit him. "UGH! It's people like you who /make/ people think the Concord are villains!" Mary makes her appearance, and Staren points at her. "No, it's YOU who wouldn't pass OUR examinations! The point of science isn't to wreak havoc, it's to improve people's lives!"

    Staren glances over at the zeppelin sucking up squirrels, then back at the Baron. "It's not too late, Discount Doctor Robotnik. What do you need the squirrels for and why do you want to move the city? Maybe there's a peaceful way we can all get what we want."

Jeanne Alter (6802) has posed:
Even more people show up. Some of them are youngsters that look like cultists, others remind her too much of home, and yet others are here to sass on this Baron despite working with/vaguely around him.

Jeanne is legitimately confused on how to proceed here. All but maybe two or three of these people even strike her as potential heroing types, and the rest... She's not sure what to make of the rest. Even Staren she had picked out as a heroic type, but the more he talks, the more it seems like he's... Maybe at best? Maya and Lancelot are easy enough to sort out, at least, the latter getting raised eyebrow from the Avenger.

She clenches her fist briefly, then turns her chin up slightly while grinning for a moment. It's a challenge!

And then she turns back to Xion. "That's reasonable enough. If that were his goal, then he's doing a terrible job at appearing heroic." She responds to the comment about the Baron's potential motives, then narrows her eyes. "Is that a uniform? Who put you in that?"

Jeanne may or may not have to rethink her targets later. She doesn't sound all that impressed when the Baron goes on about Bablovia and experiments, although the mention of it being an artifact does pique her interest. It all becomes clearer when Mary spells it out plainly, and the Avenger furrows her brow as she looks a little more intrigued before.

"That could be a good start. You plan to crash it into something and bring untold death and destruction, then? On the inhabitants here, perhaps, or on another city entirely to really crank up the death count?" She chuckles at her own conclusions, turning after a moment to stare right at Roxas.

^"... Did they force you into that getup, too?" She looks between him to Xion a few times. It's not a happy look.

Roxas (6906) has posed:
"He just said that he needs squirrels because there are no more mice." Roxas points out for Staren, helpfully. He doesn't actually understand what that means at all.

Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
    Bottled magical juice can only be a hot hot item to base an entire economy on through export alone. Not only is it useful to a good third of the Multiverse, it's also convenient, and importantly, there is *exclusive designer* magical juice (which is basically the same magical juice but in a fancier bottle and of a marginally higher grade) which is a collector's item for having come from the Soft Expanse itself.

    Coming out of a store with a pile of crystal bottles in a shopping bag is also not the greatest time for a city invasion to happen. Bottles are fragile, and the most expensive ones have to be the most fragile (that's how you know they're expensive). Frankly, its'a bag full so that at least one survives getting home. With terror robots climbing all over the town though, that may not have been *enough* of a hedged bet.

    It also means Lilian doesn't show up in any cool tactical mage police armour, and now has to try especially hard not to ruin her nice casual shopping clothes. With a great big, irritated thumbnail-biting huff, she floats up, hangs the bag from a light post from its straps, and then zips off to the giant obvious doom zeppelin slurping up squirrels.

    She arrives *just* in time to hear 'artifact of unimaginable power!', and *that* gets her incoming 'I can't believe you wasted my time with your bullshit' scowl to change to . . . well no, it doesn't change at all, but now she just wants the key. Clutching her sword in one hand by the base of the scabbard, she flies up to zeppelin level with distinctly less aerodynamic and/or warm clothes than tactical gear on, and yells--

                -----[stop]-----
    "Oh my *god* would you just *fuck off!* Why can't I just shop somewhere in peace?! What is this entire last month?! Can't you just go and invade some other dump? Or at least invade this place *after* I've already left. If anything is broken when I get back, I'm going to *pull your arms and legs off* you gross old sack of shit. And *that* thing, whatever she is. Killer robot? Hideously dressed supervillain? Scottish? I actually don't know which one is worse. Lord almighty."
                -----[start]-----

    --"Okay, I'm going to have to ask you to stop by there. By ask, of course, I mean politely tell you to knock it off or I can't guarantee you won't 'slip off a curb' before the handcuffs go on. Of course, that last part is going to happen anyways. It's too far to pull out and say you're sorry now, after causing this much of a mess. You can apologize to *me* though, and make this a lot easier." She then spins around and points dramatically at the mayor. "And I'll need *you* to cooperate with putting that key into safekeeping! You're nothing but a liability standing around out here in the open! Go find your presidential bunker or something, and hand the key off to me! I'll take care of it!" Yes. Take care.

    She turns back around towards the zeppelin and robot army. "And run fast." she adds as an afterthought, stopping just to clip her hair behind her ear, before thrusting her hand skyward and conjuring an elaborate multi-layer setpiece of gold and white holography, spinning in all sorts of intricate and interlocked patterns, marked by the churn and click of glowing characters and tracery. The layers collapse into a single, flattened disc that is ten times more complex for it, and then about a hundred streaking beams of visually 'boiling' white-gold energy seemingly just fall out of orbit, crashing down from beyond visible distance up above the clouds.

    Lilian just begins saturation bombing the area like an extremely hyper-aggressive magical girl with way too much magic to be hyper-aggressive with. A non-stop salvo of sky lasers come smashing down on the general vicinity of robots, zeppelin, and related villains, without any real discrimination in aim, putting 50 foot holes in the ground and blowing city memorial monuments to tiny smoking pieces in the process.

Xion (6909) has posed:
Xion gasps. "A giant key! It could be!" She agrees with Roxas emphatically, Xion's bright blue eyes suddenly lively and glimmering with uninhibited desire. "And then we'd get to go back to the Castle..."

Xion opens her mouth wide and jams the rest of her ice-cream cone into her mouth, biting twice on the shaped cup-cone of generic extra crunchy styrofoam waffle-y product and then clutching her head as the immense headache takes her.

A few seconds later, still groaning and with gloved hands splayed over either side of her hood, Xion looks up to Jeanne. "N-no. We wear them to keep us safe. From, uh, darkness? They're pretty comfortable."

"I wear pajamas under mine." The secret IS OUT!

But, her recovery is swift thanks to terrible heart-optional powers, and she points at the Minotaur Mayor. "I'll get the key."
Then she points at the pile of Spiderbots. "You stop the tornado!"

Leaping into action, moving from a dead stop to a pell-mell sprint across the grounds of the park, Xion leaps the podium - while, mid-air, managing a 'Hi miss Rook!' excitedly with a goofy handwave - tactical rolling across the raised platform with the Baron and the Mayor, and grabbing for the key with a sure hand.

Oh yes. Keys. She knows keys. "It's shiny a gold - clearly, a powerful weapon! Ooh, it may be rare!"

Maya has posed:
Maya is not the only responder, Inga and Staren drop in in short order, followed by Jean Alter? Which raises some concern for Maya just looks at Staren for a moment her eyes narrowing at him she does not seem pleased at all with the words that have come out of his mouth.

As for her? Not a single word is said. she's known him for a good decade and change after all but now isn't the time to argue things such as his current company. Xion is a total unknown to her and she's not sure just how much chaos there is going to be here.

She's also keeping an eye on Jeane Alter as well knowing this could very quickly get far worse than it already is.

Maya oddly doesn't seem bothered by the strangeness of things it could be stranger after all. Lancelot showing up is welcome as is Roxas.

"I see you have made your choice."

Then she says something she hadn't planned on today. Which she deadpans in reply.

"The League's Villain of the year? Really? Dastardly Doom? "

Maya clearly seems to think this guy is dangerous but the whole deal with the league clearly has her baffled at it being like that. She's about to do more when someone else comes in a woman a very strange woman.

"Mary O'kill?"

Seriously all this over what is often considered a borderline pest animal on various versions of Earth?!

"I have given you your warning."

She will give Maya due warning though.

"Same to you stand down and release the wildlife."

Maya moves towards the Mayor intending to get him out of harm's way.

"Come with me I'm a Paladin as well let us get you elsewhere."

Then to her horror Lilian just opens up starting to level everything or attempting to.

"We need to get you clear now."

She says to the Mayor and will if she has to carry them/drag them the heck away from the danger. She'll get into the fight once the Mayor and any other bystanders she might find are out of harms way.

Lancelot du Lac (6880) has posed:
     Lancelot just blinks as he tries to parse what BARON VON COUNT just said. It just seems very...cartoonish... for a lack of better words. Not that he's really going to complain about that. Makes it very easy to not have to worry about if what he's doing is right or not.

     "I see. It saddens me greatly that is has come to this, BARON VON COUNT."

     Lancelot pauses mid speech to throw his blue cape dramatically, letting it flow in the very convenient breeze that is just now taking place so that this can happen.

"But I am a man of my word, and I, Lancelot du Lac, Knight of the Lake and member of the Round Table, will not let your actions continue any longer! SO I SAY, PREPARE YOURSELF!"

     The time for words are over, now is the time for action. A white and gold sword materializes in Lancelot's hand as he storms into the crowd of spherical robots and begins the process of smashing them with extreme prejudice.

He's not really picky about how he ruins BARON VON COUNT's robot army, thrusting and slashing in equal measures. Whatever slows them down enough to let the poor citizens to escape.

Jeanne Alter (6802) has posed:
Pajamas. That's a... It's not a terrible idea, but Jeanne sure as hell can't SAY that. The idea that the strange robe even has protective properties isn't as farfetched as it should be, either, even if 'darkness' doesn't sound quite so menacing coming from a teenager.

"If you say so. But if it's only good against this 'darkness', then I'm going to guess it's not going to protect you as much from that." She points up, raising an eyebrow again as Lilian makes her appearance and begins raining down explosive light death on the city. She's about to warn Xion to get out of there, too, when Xion just hurls herself into the fray to try and grab that key, leaving JEanne looking just a little dumbfounded.

What is wrong with kids these days?

Theo Morrison has posed:
"We /are/ improving lives, dear," Mary O'Kill (yes, really) replies, still smiling faintly. "Ours."

The Key to the City is a big, ornate, golden thing. It's got a comb-like array of tines instead of a couple stereotypical big ones, and it dangles from the mayor's neck on a gold chain. It's big on him, and he's a minotaur. It's like wearing a longsword around your neck. It's ridiculous.

It's also important. A shield springs up around him, which is good, because Lilian's saturation bombing is causing rubble to fly every which way. The blood barrier soaks up the worst of it, leaving him only peppered in pebbles as he hustles off the podium and tries to get in Maya's vicinity. Xion, however, has the ability to hold down the sprint button for literally ever, and she charges straight on in and grabs at the key --!

The clasp on the chain breaks, already stressed by the weight. It ends up in her hands, thus turning the attention of the gathered and exploding killbots to her. The Mayor continues running, unable to effectively counter a QUICK-TIME EVENT BUTTON-PRESS.

    Key to the City
[ ATK 6, STR +1, MP +2 - It would be unfortunate if the key fell into the wrong hands. ]

Oh, right. Everything is exploding now.

The killbots swarm forward, scattered in every direction like terrain in a war movie. Lancelot carves into them without mercy or much effort, the things making up for quality with sheer quantity, coming at him with scything claws, snapping shears, and an angry click-whirring that accompanies the baleful red glow of their mono-eyes. Mary disappears in the press, seeming to vanish entirely, right up until she practically materializes behind him and moves to stab him in the back with the blade that /of course/ deploys out of the top of the parasol. She's a lot quicker than she looks. "Nothing personal; you understand~"

BARON VON COUNT, on the other hand, moves away from the violence. "DEPLOY THE SHIELDMOTRON!" he shouts. The back of the saucer opens up, and a huge glass-like dome shimmers into place over him, protecting him from the downpour of explosive force. A bottom panel follows suit, and a classic-looking death ray deploys, spitting red bolts of searing, arcing energy through the sky up at Lilian while she does her damnedest to ruin his plans. Several of the molten gold beams strike the statue of himself, blasting it apart, to reveal...

...a clock? It's huge, analogue, and overwrought with black metal and gold accents. It starts to count down, with ominous-sounding 'clacks'. "The countdown begins!! Do you truly think your paltry magics can save you now?!"

The heavyset young man hustles across the park, moving with the crowd of fleeing mouse- and minotaur-like citizens. More zeppelins -- the ones not on fire -- are rounding them up, but they're ignoring him. "H-hey!" He's trying to wave down Roxas or Xion with his visible hand. "The key! Pass it over here! I dunno about this Kingdom Hearts thing, but I, uh, I can, uh, I can stop them!"

More killbots flood out of the exploding park. Squirrels are forgotten in favor of targets: you*!!


*except jeanne, who is too much a kindred spirit to be sliced and diced; isn't that nice?

Roxas (6906) has posed:
"H-hey, wait--" But Xion is already off and running. Roxas scarfs down his own icecream, attempting -- pointlessly -- to sweep the headache away with a quick Cura. Alright. Alright, he needs to stop the inevitable squirrel tornado. So how does he /do/ that, effectively. They're being rounded up, sucked into--

Into the sky?

He looks towards the tube being used to collect squirrels, and the zeppelin to which it is attached. Man, that's such a funny looking gummiship. Why does it need a balloon? Then again, he's not sure why a gummiship needs almost /anything/ it has. Some of those designs are pretty dumb.

Some of them make him wish he had a gummiship.

Pocketing the popsicle stick to avoid littering, Roxas breaks into a run, leaps onto the side of the tube, and transforms briefly into a line of light that zips 'round the tube in a great spiral before arriving up on the zeppelin's balloon. As it ascends, Roxas calls, "Leave the key to Xion! Magical keys are--"

He sweeps both empty hands out, a shimmer filling the empty air before them. A black-and-white keyblade pair materializes to hand, "Kind of our specialty!"

Unfortunately, having done this Roxas has accidentally removed himself from a position to help Xion OR notice the guy trying to take the key-- immediately, anyway. He frowns slightly, glancing over the side towards the ground below. He looks down at the balloon he's on. Then down towards the ground.

Ok, well there's only one thing that a reasonable person can /do/ in this situation.

Roxas flips his weapons into a reverse-hand grip, jams the keys down into the balloon's "skin", and begins to run towards the end of the zeppelin trying to tear it open with /every intention/ of riding it down into the killbots in a giant messy-but-awesome freefall.

Staren has posed:
    DESTRUCTION RAINS FROM THE HEAVENS! thanks to Lilian. Staren takes to the sky, the costume's tail flapping as if that somehow provides flight, getting out of the way of the killbots.

    He was trying diplomacy, but now things have gone to fight. People are fighting Doctor von... no, Baron von Count and Mary O'Kill already, so he can focus on something else.

    Like that clock.

    Staren flies over to it, fumbling with the costume a bit and managing to pull goggles down over his eyes under the hood -- he scans the clock apparatus for magic, and if it seems to be connected to somewhere he heads over that way to check it out. If the clock itself seems to be the DOOMSDAY DEVICE, then Staren... goes to town on it!

    That is, he lands in front of it, fumbles with the costume a bit as he tries to get his gun out somehow, leading to eventually spinning around -- causing the costume's tail to whack the clock with force equivalent to several grenade explosions.

    When he realizes what just happened, his facial expression says 'I know this is stupid but it works so I'm doing it anyway' as he continues tail-whacking the clock.

Inga has posed:
This has all gone from crazy to batshit, but her plan of action remains the same for most situations--protect people, heal the injured, occasionally throw lighting and curses. As it seems the knight (Lancelot? Never heard of him) is going to rush in with a sword, she's guessing a ward might not go amiss. So while her arm is still bleeding, she flicks a blood-ward to him, similar to the one she's cast around the mayor. It would soak up damage and keep his own natural healing running on overdrive.

Inga looks over toward BARON VON COUNT, narrowing her eyes. "Did he call my magic 'paltry?'" she asks no one in particular. She'll deal with that later--right now, there's a bunch of killbots heading in her direction. A quick ward goes up around herself before she sheathes her knife in order to take up her staff. She holds it high, the runes carved into the length of wood glow with an eldritch blue light, the air around her buzzing with electricity.

Thunder cracks as lightning surges, multiple bolts slamming into the creatures that try to approach. "Machines," she growls, hoping she will not be overun.

Maya has posed:
Inga's support is quite welcome, as Maya makes her move to get the Mayor, she watches as Xion makes her move and get the key? She's unlike Xion unable to hold down the sprint button forever. So she comes up short on that she will get the Mayor though and star moving them away to safety she will also shoulder her rifle in the process and will also cast a protective ward on the Mayor and will see him away from the worst of the fighting and Maya will tell him to get moving further.

Once she's certain she's clear she'll get her rifle back and turn about into the fight she also starts looking for where Xion went, damn it chaos is raining pretty hard right now and Maya knows it.

Though when Roxas speaks up about Xion having the key? She realizes they can worry about it later with it in her hands. The Count or Mary do not have it which matters more to Maya at the moment also hey death bots, a while there's a whole lot of death bots, coming her way.

Maya draws a card and start to cast letting rip a whole barrage of magic, lightning and fire for the most part on the oncoming horde even as Doom Clock is deployed into the mix of thing and the count down does worry Maya the man behind it is quite confident and he's going to have to cut through a horde of killbots to get to it at the moment.

"The clock! We have to do something about it!"

As she keeps blasting the Killbots between it and her.

Jeanne Alter (6802) has posed:
Diplomacy doesn't seem to work, and so things turn to violence! That works just fine for Jeanne, although not being the target of any of it is a little disappointing. Still, between zeppelins, giant clocks, skylasers, lightning, and spiders goddamn everywhere?

Jeanne has her work cut out for if she still wants to make a splash. "If that's how it will be, then fine! I, Jeanne d'Arc, will make sure this city is destroyed by the end of the day!" Thrusting her hand forward dramatically, a dark flame bursts around her arm followed by the rest of her body as black armor materializes onto her. A swing of her hand to her side, and Jeanne has a sword grasped in that hand while a massive banner unfurls behind her.

With the transformation complete, Jeanne gets to work doing what she does best: FIRE. She has no particular targets in mind, instead opting to just start burning GODDAMN EVERYTHING. Trees, statues, buildings, anything is treated as kindling by the Avenger.

There's a small, nagging part in the back of her mind still trying to figure out what or who she should target next.

Xion (6909) has posed:
Xion has to take a moment after QUICK-TIME EVENT'ING to figure out how to hold this absolutely awfully designed Nomura-please Keyblade she's acquired. The grip of it feels weird and pokey, and it doesn't have the long metal rod she's used to, but she knows in her (lack of a) heart of (lack of a) hearts that this important key is a truly powerful weapon which gives at LEAST six points of attack. That's five more than one!

Managing to grip some of the clockwork by wedging her finger into the machinery of the strange head, Xion swings the comb-tipped KEY OF POWER experimentally, dodging a killbot and, with a round-slash, bisecting it horizontally with a flash of golden light arcing off her newly-acquired weapon.

"Don't worry, mister!" She calls to the shady guy going 'hey little girl gimmie the magic key (to Kingdom Hearts)'. "Magical keys are--"

Xion hops forward, vaulting off a snapping killbot and swinging again, this time tearing through the ONE TOUGHNESS of the killbot vertically as she lands in a crouch. "Kind of our specialty!"

She even says it in the exact same tone that Roxas does.

A weird witch-lady is supporting a knight in shining armor, and so Xion continues Enemy Stepping across the field, vaulting from killbot to killbot with the Key To The City slung over her right shoulder. "Hey! Knight-mister! Is your name Michael Carpenter? You've got a super nice sword, and you're all shining, and--Watch out!"

Lancelot du Lac (6880) has posed:
     Lancelot gets a magic buff! He doesn't really bother to figure out what it is though, or even to ask who . He just yells out 'Thank you' to whoever it is who did it. Probably the girl behind him, but really there's no time to stop.

     The knight continues to effortlessly carve his way through the hundreds of ball-shaped robots, the occasional scythe-shaped appendage managing to graze against his pristine white armor only to be met with his sword in retaliation.

He really didn't have a plan outside of mindlessly trashing these things now that he thinks about it. Normally that'd be a problem too, but he's pretty sure he heard Roxas' voice at some point, and that boy seems like a pretty trustworthy fellow who can figure things out. Hopefully.

     Hopefully because now he's got someone to deal with that isn't just expendable fodder. Mary O'Kill manages to land her sneak attack somewhat successfully. The blade sinks part way after facing a bunch of resistance from both Lancelot's armor and Inga's magic before a combination of Xion shouting out and pain cause the member of the Round Table to quickly spin around and attempt to weakly smack his assailant upside the face with the back of his blade.

Oh. So it was that kind of magic. He's pretty sure without it he'd be in worse shape without it, but at the moment the only noticeable damage done is a puncture hole in his armor and a trickle of blood on the woman's parasol.

     "I would call your attack cowardly, but you seem the type that would take that as a compliment."

Inga has posed:
"You can repay me by trying to keep me from being stabbed!" she shouts to Lancelot, who is doing a pretty good job of cutting through killbots and keeping the numbers off of her so she can cast her spells.

That is, until something distracts her.

Inga's attention snaps toward Xion as she enemy hops toward them. "What? How do you know Michael--" she begins, then is bowled over by a killbot.

Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
    Lilian seems pretty okay with calling down an orbital bombardment on what is probably a very important city park. It's quick and expedient, and she looks good doing it, floating up there under a revoling cluster of magical circles while god rays demolish everything. When Staren complains about her blowing up the city, she tosses her head and replies "Oh whatever, it's already like eighty percent blown up."

    Seeing Roxas zip up to join the fray brings a little bit of a smile to her face, despite the raised eyebrow and meaningful look clearly silently directed at hoodiejamacloaks. "Oh, that's relieving. Xion is a good girl. I'm glad I can rely on someone to get that part done." she says, slowly twisting her wrist through the central of the churning holography as if turning a key, contracting it down, and along with it, the radius of the bombardment, rapidly narrowing in and becoming a focused pounding on the zeppelin's obnoxious shield, slamming it with hundreds of heavy beams of . . . actually it doesn't quite appear to be magical energy. Odd.

    She dismisses it with a flick of her wrist when the clock comes out though. Though she regards it with a look of bored contempt, giving it little more than a dismissive sniff, the second she'd laid eyes on it, she'd felt that prophetic pang of Bad News as a spread of future timelines branch off where everything goes to shit.

    "Oh? You're not going to take me seriously?" she shoots back, with that too-feather-light tone of voice that usually comes before someone gets really mad. "Then I'll break you in half, you fat fuck lunatic." she then follows up, dropping from a sarcastic soprano to menacingly displeased alto. "Let's try something other than magic, then."

    The air around her is displaced with a localized soft *boom*, visibly compressing like a blast wave without an explosion, and then unraveling and wicking away into nowhere, leaving the replacement atmosphere charged with free-floating static, destabilized at a detectable level. She stands directly in the way of the unfolding death ray, floating dramatically in front of the barrel without moving to dramatically Chad it up now that she's been taunted.

    When the flashy red ship-launched death bolts come at her, she lets the lead ray get ridiculously, dangerously close, and then is already smashing it away with the back of her hand, having ostensibly struck so fast as to be completely invisible, and hard enough to send it sailing off into background collateral damage land, protecting her fist with congealed time such that it subjectively experiences almost no exposure. She does the same with the following series, remaining rooted in place and blatting death ray bolts out of the air with shows of frame perfect action game parries, Staring To Assert Her Dominance until she's made a mess out of even more city with death bolts that would have just gone off harmlessly into the sky had she actually dodged.

    After a few more of those, she finally draws her sword, casting the scabbard spiraling down into the park, and takes up the uncanny blade in both hands, assuming an aerial stance, and then blasting forward at hyper speed, like she intends to break through she shield just by ramming it at super velocity. Right before impact though, she extends her sword arm and thrusts directly into the barrier, whereupon the blade abruptly becomes an immaterial smoking shadow, extending outward into more of a sharp black blur than anything definite, aimed to phase through the obstruction and skewer the components behind it.

Xion (6909) has posed:
"Uh, I heard of him?" Xion replies to Inga as she's killbotted at. Whirlygigs and spinning sawblades grind into her key-based guard and pile onto her, and with some mild effort she sends them back from the clash with a thrust that transitions into a shining, cartoon-star spitting roundslash spin. "He's, uh, a legendary knight and saved some kids before disappearing?" She recites.

As Roxas rides his way down, Xion waves the Key to the City. "Roxas, I got the key! But there's a Doom Clock that doesn't have a snooze button, what do we do?!"

Theo Morrison has posed:
It turns out the killbots cannot fly, nor shoot down flying things. This is regrettable, because several of their opponents are, in fact, flying things.

Roxas ends up fighting on top of a zeppelin. He tears through the balloon, opening huge gashes across the top and venting the gas inside with a startlingly explosive burst. It gets stopped by armor plating haphazardly strapped to the top, and the mechanics crawl out of the interior onto the balloon, approaching like pirates in the rigging.

Goblins. A dozen of them. With murder in their eyes, and wrenches held in their teeth like knives. Half of them throw tiny bombs as they swing around the top of the balloon, while the other half leap at him with an incoherent yell as if they were murderous chimpanzees armored in scrap and scrappy while armored.

He absolutely rides the balloon down into the swarm on the ground, though. The explosion is something to write home about.

It intersects neatly with Inga and Maya flinging elemental energy everywhere. Killbots explode gloriously, apparently designed to go up in round, neat fireballs, satisfying the need to destroy that heroes and rival villains both crave. They briefly overrun Inga, but the swordplay of the knight in front of her -- and the incidentally passing-by Xion -- keeps her from getting diced to bits, instead surrounding her with diced bits of robot. Mary, practically on top of them, brings her closed parasol (it looks like a grey metal spike like this) up into a vertical guard and parries Lancelot's half-hearted strike with a smug look and a contemptuous sweep. "Really? I would call it --"

A killbot leaps at Lancelot's face from the exact spot Mary was standing a moment ago. She approaches him from his left, having seemingly switched places with another killbot, swiping the narrow blade at the top of her parasol at his face and then abruptly opening the armored object. A little exhaust pipe deploys out of it, and a gout of fire blasts downward across his body, rolling over the ground near his feet. "-- /inventive/."

Lilian showboats with the best of them, deflecting BARON VON COUNT'S best(?) attempts at blowing her out of the sky. He picks up the pace on the bolts of energy,

                                 >> Time stops.                                

"Temporal Trespass," says the young man in the hoodie on the grass below. He's taken his hand out of his pocket, holding flat, black-backed rectangles between his fingers. "Blessing of Leeches. Aspect of Gorgon." Something inky black and roiling twists over the Baron's body. His eyes turn flat white and his skin crawls visibly. "That oughtta do it."

                                Time resumes. >>                                

and rapidly backpedals towards the Clock that Staren is trying his damnedest to smash. The tail jolts and jostles the huge thing, but he finds an unfortunate discovery: it's at least in part made of Darksteel or something like it, and putting even a scratch on it through brute force isn't easy. He's managed to dent the outside, and the ticking becomes erratic...

...and then rapid. The ground trembles, and not from the second zeppelin that abruptly comes down in a flaming mess, either. That one is courtesy of Jeanne, who filled its hold with fire instead of squirrel to predictable results. Enormous tesla coils suddenly pop out of the top, humming dangerously.

The Baron then gets skewered, and for a second, it seems like the day is saved, albeit horribly violently. He blinks his eyes, and his skin bulges in weird places, turning black and patchy. The blade gets forced out as the shield collapses, and the Baron opens his eyes widely, a hazy flare of grey magical light erupting in a conical shape that threatens to petrify everything in front of him -- like Lilian, and the currently-burning bushes nearest them in the park.

Theo Morrison has posed:
The guy in the hoodie takes cover behind the mayor, apparently freaked out. Who could blame him? At least killbot numbers are dropping... but what about the clock?!

Inga has posed:
Inga is temporarily bowled over, but with the held of Lancelot and Xion, she is not so overwhelmed that she can't get back up. Surrounded by mechanical bits and looking quite shaken, Inga looks around at the fire and destruction around her. People are yelling about the clock. She isn't entirely sure of the significance, and hopefully someone is dealing with it because there are more immediate issues--such as the crazy woman attacking Lancelot, only a few feet away from where Inga is. She raises her staff to direct another lightning bolt in her direction.

Roxas (6906) has posed:
Goblins.

Roxas has probably seen a goblin before, but he's never seen /these/ goblins before. Incidentally, he's also still in the wrong ZONE for a little while, so he can't hear basically anything people are asking of him from below. Regrettably, this means that XION goes without advice or back-up for a little while, and he can't weigh in on the situation surrounding the KNIGHT OF THE CROSS.

A bomb goes off next to him before he quite registers what it is, hurling him off of the plummeting zeppelin to what the goblins might momentarily assume to be his death. It turns out not to be, because he is an annoying action RPG hero who gets to press QTE buttons to stay on the zeppelin.

Battered and burned, he throws himself inexplicably back towards the zeppelin, briefly transforming again into a streak of light before only /just/ managing to hook onto a piece of exposed superstructure with one of his keyblades. Roxas swings himself back up onto stable -- albeit still falling -- footing, and resumes engagement with the acrobatic little bastards.

"Yeah!" He shouts to Lilian in the middle of it, "I just wish I'd stayed put!"

The battle turns into a frustrating stalemate as they hit the halfway point towards the ground. With a great battle cry, Roxas sends a shockwave of light racing out in a circle around him, buying himself space-- to jump up into the air.

He looks a goblin in the eyes as he points both Keyblades towards the FLYING METAL DEATHBOX they are fighting from.

"THUNDAGA!"

So Roxas helps the process of the whole thing along by running lethal amounts of voltage through it as highly flammable gasses escape from it. It's probably an even more spectacular fireball than it already would have been.

He hits the ground separate from the zeppelin, his own body smoking and emitting an anomalous dark substance that doesn't really seem to correspond to anything recognizable. Somehow though, he manages to land on his feet all the same.

Roxas turns one of his keyblades and uses it to push himself to a stand, his whole body rattled by the fall. Hazily, he assesses the ground situation. Somebody is freaked out about a clock. A clock...

Don't clocks have keys to wind them up? Could a key /stop/ a clock from being wound up?

He's going to be a moment recovering from being GOBLINED and BASICALLY BLOWING HIMSELF UP moving between ZONES, either way.

Jeanne Alter (6802) has posed:
Jeanne cackles madly as a zeppelin crashes nearby, her flames spreading as wildly and untamed as the person spreading them. Indeed, she seems to be reveling in simply adding to the chaos, entirely unconcerned with that business with the clock that everyone else seems so preoccupied by. There's flaming zeppelins and all sorts of destruction to cause on the ground, after all, so why should she worry about lesser things like that?

Although the ground shaking beneath her is something to be wary of, all things considered. As maneuverable and powerful as she is, Jeanne still has to obey the laws of physics (mostly), and she pauses in her merrymaking/firestarting to take note of just how rapidly the clock is ticking down with how much worse those earthquakes are getting.

"Even that clock is useless, but... Idiot mascot!" Jeanne shouts towards Staren as she stabs her banner/spear through a chunk of zeppelin debris, raising it overhead and advancing towards the clock. "If you want to break something, then do it right instead of shaking your ass at it!" The debris bursts into flames along with the banner on Jeanne's flag as she leaps towards the clock, bringing the improvised hammer overhead and landing with a mighty blow against the clock!

Staren has posed:
    On the bright side, Staren is pretty unmolested while everyone fights it out. On the not-so-bright side, though, the clock is resistant to damage. Staren starts flying up, narrowly avoiding her improvised hammer! "Shut up, it's a cursed and I can't get it off! Supposedly they wear off, and it actually hits pretty hard this thing's just tough!" Staren shouts down, as he flies up and up and up in a spiral above the clock accompanied by 8-bit sound effects.

    Once he's way high up, he flies directly over the clock and--

    --transforms into a statue.

    Which falls, and falls, and falls, finally smashing down on the clock from above!

Maya has posed:
And then things get worse how do they get worse? Jeane is shooting at everyone and everything in range. Inga is down, and the clock is ticking down eve as Mary moves to keep cutting her way through to the Doomsday clock. She knows Inga can regenerate and she doesn't like to rely on it but right now she can't even get to her old comrade. As the Killbots are everywhere and even as she's thinning the out there seems to be more also she's having to watch for the fire from Jeane as well. Thankfully there's help from Lancelot but Mary is now in the mix as well. Maya looks to MAry and the remaining kill bots the Baron has people on him and there's someone on the Clock, right? Maya's going to break out some heavier firepower here also. As Inga cast her own spell Maysa works on weaving her's a trio of cards rise up from her hands. One Green One blue and the last one is red.

Maya flows a good deal of magic, into this calling if you will a massive form seems to pull itself free of the ground made of the loving earth, it's humanoid in the sense it has arms legs and a 'head' and the head has a single yellow massive gem of an eye.

"Humbaba!"

Maya calls out as the called elemental lord movest towards Mary and her minions aiming to smash as many of them before shortly after the spell fades and this aspect of the Elemental Lord of Earth is returned to them.

"Inga! Sir Lancelot! HIT THEM NOW!"

Even with what she summoned? It's never caused Earthquakes before? That can't be her can it?

Lilian and Staren are also in it thick but at least if they can keep Mary out of play with them they won't have any /new/ problems from her right?

Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
    Once Lilian is done letting Trample happen to all of the city's Life Points, she goes for the throat, and for a moment, it seems like she'd met with instant success. Never mind the fact that it involves stabbing a dude outright that she said she'd handcuff. She doesn't really pay attention to those things. Not in the 'hooray we saved the day!' casual murder sort of way; in the 'no real moral regard for what to do with an acceptable target' way.

    Some *meddling interference* has happened without her notice though. Without her notice, but not without her knowledge-in-hindsight. The Baron is very clearly an artifact/technomancer/mad steampunk inventor sort of guy, so suddenly having 'surviving fatal damage'+petrification magic on deck, from himself rather than some sort of ray, is way too suspect.

    It's also something Lilian can't parry out of the air. That kind of thing needs a saving roll, not AC. Specifically, it'd call for some sort of FORT or WILL saving throw, so Lilian ROLLS REFLEX INSTEAD--
                -----[stop]-----
    Throwing herself back and away from the zappy Gorgon eyebeams attack, Lilian tumbles backwards through the air in a thoroughly undignified manner, cursing out loud in a panic as the big grey obligate 90 degree cone blast erupts just in front of her face, and then halts overhead like a freeze-frame sneeze blasted right through where she just was. Righting herself from her head over heels tumble and straightening out her person again, she remembers to take a deep breath in again, and then checks to see what Roxas is doing, barely sparing a glance for the now-exploded zeppelin or the state of the battle down below. She gets the general idea. Now to pretend that absolutely nothing uncool had happened and do a Nothing Personnel Kid.
                -----[start]-----

    --succeeds with Superior Evasion on deck, disappearing from the Stone Zone in a skipped frame and having moved to the other side while the GPU was chugging while trying to render the petrification FX. Not having a lot to say in the rush of the moment, she gathers a whirl of blistering fire in one hand, coalescing from a vortex of summoned flame into her fist, which she then plunges down into the dirigible with a magic-enhanced gunshot thrust of a spearhand to try and pierce through the exterior and release the big, built-up incendiary explosion into the interior, throwing off a storm of firemotes and swirling black !smoke.

    "Roxas! What's Xion's status?! I feel like we'd need the key right about now!" she shouts over the incredible amount of noise of the aerial blimp battle. Realizing how annoying it is to get her voice to carry, she appears beside him in a small explosion of goblin body parts, standing in a clean circle splashed deep red all around and asks again. "I don't think whatever that clock does is set to nuke the place, given he's right here and it'd put him in just as much danger, but whatever it does, it's *bad*, and the cat 'genius' seems to have to decided to try and twerk it to death." She's scanning the ground while she's talking though, using the briefly cleared space not just to look for the key, but also to try and shut out the bedlam and focus her mystic senses on the streets, aiming to zero in on outstanding magical auras beyond the pile of them already being flexed by Lancelot/Inga/Jeanne.

Lancelot du Lac (6880) has posed:
     Lancelot's half-assed blow is deflected. That's to be expected honestly. The knight falls back, only to be subjected to more bantz. Also understandable, he was laying some bantz of his own after all. What's less understandable is the sudden surprise Killbot attack followed up by a gosh darn flamethrower.

     Okay, actually that's also understandable given his opponent, but dangit he really wishes he got someone more honorable.

Lancelot's sword dematerializes as he grapples the killbot with both arms while also doing his best to fall back so that he isn't set on fire. It works moderately well, although he's also given a bit of safety cushion with Inga's magic. It's ok though, even though it looks like he's struggling he's totally just waiting for an opening.

     And it looks like Maya just gave him the opening he was waiting for. Capitalizing on the moment, Lancelot pulls the nugget-shaped bot off of him and proceeds to chuck the thing at Mary O'Kill with all the might he can muster, running up towards her afterwards in an attempt to follow up with a full on punch to the face.

     Not the most elegant of solutions, but it's hopefully effective.

Theo Morrison has posed:
The goblins are basically terrible to fight. They fling tiny explosives with no heed for one another's lives, try to loosen bolts where Roxas's limbs connect and no bolts exist, and also, they bite. They might have some kind of horrible goblin disease. How could he know! How could he know.

They're also pretty bad at noticing imminent destruction. The BOLT3-triggered fireball is more expansive than ever, taking the goblins with it. A thing like a diving capsule jettisons from the blast with a 'foompf,' catapulting into a storefront nearby. An armored window shows it is full of way too many squirrels, all of which are freaking out. The cargo must have been set to do that in case of catastrophic equipment failure. Convenient!

The local zeppelins' days are pretty much numbered by this point. Further magical assaults from the too-cool-for-school Lilian tears the nearest one left down and into a crash course towards some scenery that nobody will miss in a big fiery mess. It adds to the fiery mess already present from Jeanne and the various explosions that have gone off nearby. It's... well, we've said 'mess' a lot already, so let's go with that.

Finding local magical auras is tricky. Narrowing them down past the already-visible Elites and their own various brands of sorcery makes it somewhat clearer, but there's a lot of 'noise' from the battle. She can sense a number of subtle but persistent workings layered in the vicinity of the Mayor and the various people huddled near him, though she'd have to go over there to narrow it down more closely. She can also pick up a very out-of-place aura off to one side of her: very powerful and very short-range dampening magic against interdimensional travel, focused on one point and found literally nowhere else she can find, and presently active to boot. The source is a backpack underneath the park bench Inga was sitting on earlier, presently holding a carved stone octohedron the size of a basketball that looks like nothing else she's seen in the city.

Meanwhile, Humbaba happens to the battlefield. There are no survivors.

Wait. Hold on. Let's try again.

Meanwhile, Humbaba is summoned. The tremendous monster rampages amongst the remaining killbots, crushing them underfoot without much effort on its part. They're scattered like bowling pins, and only regroup long enough to be destroyed by further stomping. Mary herself continues to lay down suppressive fire (eh? eh?) on Lancelot, keeping the small army of killbots around her milling constantly -- which makes them easy targets for Inga's lightning. Bolts ripple over the round metal bodies, making high-pitched warbling noises before plumes of smoke puff out of vents and smokestacks and they just kind of keel over.

Mary herself has to swing her umbrella around to intercept the bolts before she gets blown up. The electricity scatters off the surface, and she desperately bats the thrown bot out of the air before it collides with her -- but totally fails to stop Lancelot's fist. He hits her, hard, and she keels over, pitching over backwards like she was poleaxed and toppling into the few remaining killbots. They scatter again.

She's gone. Somewhere. Somehow. She doesn't come back, though, and the only killbots left are incidental instead of organized. Victory! Mostly!

Theo Morrison has posed:
The Clock continues to menace with tremorous, temultuous ticks. Jeanne tries to stop it via raw firepower (heh heh heh... heh), hammering down and jostling it to throw internals out of alignment. The minute hand spins wildly, and bolts of lightning fly in every direction from the tesla coils, torching the surroundings. It freezes up near, but not quite on, midnight... and then Staren drops on top of it at that exact moment, triggering another ridiculous cascade of lightning in the immediate vicinity, reducing the stage, busted statue bits, and everything within about twenty feet to ash and scorched earth.

Except the clock. And, of course, the statue that is Staren. He's going to be mightily singed, though. The clock itself looks pretty battered by this point, crumpled in two places, and still angrily hissing with electricity. It could probably be successfully smashed with another hit or two like that... but it would be very, very violent when it went off. Still, time is rapidly running out...!

Xion (6909) has posed:
Xion continues to apply her fray dice by swinging the Key To The City in tight, star-casting loops and rounds as she swings the key like a finey-wrought blade to clear out the Killbots that Mary O'Kill brings with her. Reversing a thrust into a vertical cleave, she spins the key around to run the tip and comb through the eye of another chipper killbot, drawing the blade forward as she steps away. "There's tons of these guys! But no tornado. I'm gonna help Miss Rook and Roxas - Good luck!"

"Watch out for tornados!" She adds, as Lancelot hammertosses a killbot into Mary O'Kill's face.

With a mighty hop, a swift skip, and a spinning jump, Xion lands next to Lilian and Roxas in the wreckage of the burning Zeppelin, looking around while booting a Goblin Pirate in the face.

"Hey! I got the key, Miss Rook. I think it can help, but... That doom clock seems weird - and so does the Baron! Something happened to him. Is it his Heart?"

As an aside, to Roxas, Xion pouts. "You didn't save the Squirrels. I don't think I'd mind a squirrel tornado."
Immediately, she shakes her head, her hood falling around her neck. "Actually, nevermind. Tornados are awful even if they're fluffy."

"Ok, so, I think I've got a plan. I'll use the Key to create an opening, and then you two do hero stuff, and with everyone else's hero stuff, that'll be good, right?"

With her free off-hand, Xion incants quickly, another set of clock hands under her feet tick-tick-tickticking up, swallowing up the ground under Roxas and Lilian. "Hastega!"

"Ok, so, I'm gonna create that opening now -- City's Key!" Raising up the Key To The City, Xion points it at the Clock of Doom, and a very audible, yet soft and satisfying 'click' rings out in the air.

"I... think I did it? Is that this Keyblade's special power?"

Inga has posed:
At a loss of what to do now, Inga leans on her walking stick and watches Xion and her key. Inga would never have thought to use a key as a sword before--or a club, whatever it is. It is puzzling, but it seems to be doing the trick. She has /many/ questions, as usual, but it seems that would have to wait.

Well, in the meantime, Inga scans the area to see if anyone is injured, and if so will make with the healing. She looks pale and shaken, though she does not appear to be injured aside from a bit of blood on her sleeve that's from her own blood magic.

Roxas (6906) has posed:
"Xion? Xion..."

Roxas reacts to Lilian woozily. It's only then that he spots Xion waving the key. He didn't hear what she said just now, but-- he waves the keyblade he's /not/ bracing himself against towards the clock.

"GO UNWIND IT! OR... or something?" He calls, at a loss for anything /else/ to do. Were he a more /savvy/ adventurer, Roxas might suppose that the entire thing was intended to lure somebody in to using the key on the clock. As it is, he's clever enough but just too inexperienced to put those sorts of pieces together or be possessed of such paranoia.

Raising Oathkeeper skywards, he calls, "CURAGA!"

A sparkling wave of light passes across the battlefield, providing modest but tangible healing to most anybody close enough for Roxas to perceive-- including himself. He straightens up a bit, no longer needing Oblivion to lean on.

"H-huh?" Then Xion just comes right on over. There is a distant shuddering THUD, with the container of squirrels landing a distance off. With a slightly blank look on his face, he just /points/ at it.

Roxas didn't expect he saved the squirrels.

But then everything slows down as /he/ speeds up. Roxas would've been about done for now, if not for that-- thankfully, /that/ gave him the juice needed to actually do something. He raises both Keyblades, focusing on the clock. If they want to keep the key -- and he would /prefer/ to do so over using it to stop it, so 'or something' was just fine by him -- they've gotta just eat the problem.

So Roxas remains at a distance and chucks his Keyblades at the damaged clock.

Then he calls them back to hand, and throws again--

And again.

And again.

In all Roxas hurls his Keyblades into the clock a total of twelve times between them, a brilliant light gleaming a little more brilliantly along their edges with each successive throw.

Staren has posed:
                               Dyoot dyoot dyoot!                              

    As lightning cascades over him, Staren is knocked out of statue form and then frozen in place for a second as the suit flickers notthere-there-notthere-there-notthere

    Fortunately, invulnerability frames dodge the rest of the lightning, but now Staren's unarmored! (does... does a tanuki suit count as armor?)

    He looks at the clock, reaches into his bag, jams a magazine of a half-dozen high-explosive minimissiles in the nearest crack that's been smashed into the thing, then crouches and JUMPS. Jets in his shoes let him jump as high as a videogame character, and then the energy wings manifest and buzz furiously as he gets to what he hopes is a safe distance before detonating the missiles!

    NOW it's safe to comment: "FINALLY out of that thing! ...Although I guess if it took the hit, it wasn't all bad..."

Lancelot du Lac (6880) has posed:
     Lancelot feels a bit of remorse as his fist connects with Mary O'Kill's face. It's always a shame to hurt a beautiful woman after all, even if they're comically evil. She's probably alright though, given as they seemed to have flee the scene shortly after. Either that or they died in a fiery explosion befitting a villain such as them. It's pretty fifty fifty.

     As the rest of BARON VON COUNT's lackeys flee, Lancelot takes this time to catch his breath as he steps away from the action, his massive shoulders sagging a bit from exhaustion. He's just gonna let the others deal with the rest. It's probably fine. He's claimed enough glory as is and really doesn't need to steal the spotlight anyway.

Maya has posed:
Mary has been handled, not dead but she's lost a lot of bots and she's been driven off that will have to do for now while she rises up a bit more now the constant assault on her is over for now. She'll look to Inga and Lancelot calling out.

"Good job but the clock's still ticking."

She'll turn her attention now to the Doom Clock. She's however fairly far away and she sees others already working on it Roxas with the mysterious Xion and Lilian.

She's just let off a fairly big spell and will fall in with Lancelot and Inga, she does, however, cast a protection barrier spell on anyone nearby her in the event there is a boom they will have some additional protection. Those on the clock got it handled right?

Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
    Despite everyone apparently losing track of her, Xion is still around, and is fine, and still has the key, and hasn't been rused out of it by a savvy visiting non-minotaur boy. Good. Excellent. Great. "That's fine." Lilian settles on, coming down from a good lagging pace off the burning/exploding/crashing zeppelin so as not to actually be there when it hits the ground. Maybe the Baron is dead. Maybe he's not. Who knows. He's currently not her problem anymore. Not a lot of this really is. It's mostly the doom clock. The closer the hands approach midnight, the worse and worse Lilian feels about it, as more and more timelines where it doesn't go off close up, and more and more where it has split off, as probability shifts distinctly in the favour of it activating.

    The fact that the deep-seated sense of uneasy premonition hasn't gone away causes her attention to swivel straight to the counter (regrettably, she has to forget whatever Inga was sitting on for just a moment). Seeing that it's still *somehow* functioning, and not only that, but spitting hot lightning and thunder *everywhere*, she bites back an exasperated tirade she really doesn't have the time for, and--

    Oh, Xion is using time magic on her. Speedy time magic. Stacking time with time. Time^2. Time(2). Time to fix this stupid situation.

    "Good for you." she says Staren's way, not at all impressed by his escaping the cursed tanuki suit of spinny jumps and wail waggling flight. She's already there. She lets Xion have that moment with the clicky key mechanism to see what it does, and if it isn't an immediate, dramatic deactivation, she brings up Night Mist with both hands, the cold black smoke seeping through her fingers as if burnt, dark characters creeping the corners of her face, eyes deepening towards red. "Now let a professional handle it."

Lilian Rook (6895) has posed:
                -----[stop]-----
    Lilian has about a hundred seconds of stopped time left easily accessible. Given Xion's hastega buff, it may as well be a few minutes. That means she takes her time to be thorough with it.

    Countless slashes and thrusts come down from the semitransparent gossamer edge of the black and scarlet sword, spitting white sparks when scratching Darksteel, and shearing through the components that aren't, as Lilian hacks and stabs away to probe for the weaker components all over. She simply steps around lightning bolts and superheated explosions, weaving between, ducking under, and jumping over the frozen tendrils of brilliant plasma. She works the whole thing around, until she finds exactly the places she's looking for; the seams between plates, the joints where components are fitted together, the bearings and screws and bolts that aren't made of darksteel, and most importantly, the places where existing damage has created openings.

    Huge, powerful, plunging thrusts go through those, carving through exotic metal like only even more exotic and special-er metal can. She leverages enhanced strength to widen gaps, rip parts out, and extrude mechanisms. She meticulously butchers springs, axles, cogs, bezels, crystals, wires, coils, and generalized tesla clock visceral, committing to excavating its guts as thoroughly as possible with the double superspeed she has while it lasts, aiming to disembowel the thing like a pumpkin using the cracks made by the others.

    She doesn't actually *know* when it'll be non-functional. Lilian keeps going as far as she can, just to be sure, going so far as to thrust an arm in to run blasts of lightning through it and plunging a magic-superheated blade into sturdier works and screw back and forth to melt it. Several minutes of uninterrupted 'someone with a +10 sword and combat magic and super strength going ham' on it, go by.
                -----[start]-----

    Then, she puts her sword away. Criss-crossing whirlind orbits of light and shadow and fire and smoke swirl around the circumference of the clock in all directions, filling the air with the cacophony of shrieking metal and cracking glass amplified way too many times over. Every less-than-indestructible part is laid out of the thing in a massive, messy scatter of meticulously pulled-apart internal pieces, covering the surrounding area in piles of internal components that are now outside, most of it likely completely savaged to scrap, like the worst clockmaker in the world had pulled it apart in a fit of rage.

Theo Morrison has posed:
The Key to the City does... something... to the Clock of DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!, but it's hard to tell precisely what. It rattles, shakes, and the hands on the face spin wildly for a few seconds before settling down and... ticking normally. The warped black metal shell abruptly pops off, revealing a smaller, elegantly compact and much more intricate array of gears and things underneath, connected to a glassy pod containing some kind of gently pulsing stone with a bluish glow. A pendulum swings, seemingly inexorably.

The clock strikes 11:59.

Explosions engulf it shortly thereafter, followed by repeated application of Keyblade from a safe distance. Neither are precisely what the doctor ordered to take this thing apart, but the theory is that the more delicate mechanisms will get hammered to crumpled bits by the repeated impacts, knocked loose by the blasts or melted from the wash of heat. It ends up becoming a much worse mess as the stacked Haste and Time Bullshit buffs coupled with a really sick sword turns the openings the immediately visible blows give into a...

Well, a mess. Everything here is a mess.

As for a retributive strike, it is mercifully brief: the ground beneath it shudders, cracking the pavement in a localized tremor. It falls off the pedestal the statue used to be on. The savaged armorglass container breaks, and the object inside rolls out, still remarkably intact. It radiates magical energy that causes a palpable sense of disorientation to anyone sensitive to magic in the vicinity.

It also flickers blue and fades away, vanishing entirely, looking briefly like it disintegrated and wicked away into the air. So much for whatever that was.

Still, a ragged cheer goes up from the citizenry. They're so thrilled that they're alive that the damage and all the fire isn't even that big a deal. And hey, now that everything is destroyed, it just looks like it's... fading away, all the scrap piles turning into wisps of something like smoke that dissolves harmlessly into the air. The actual devices used by this League of Dastardly Doom are gone, like they'd never been, though the damage -- plus the key, and whatever the huge stone d8 is -- remain solid as ever.

One of the bystanders -- some guy in a hoodie, probably one of the various adventurers that pass through now and then -- is nowhere to be found. None of the locals really notice.

Maya has posed:
Maya watches the clock ticks down and then it stops the sheat amount of force seems to be enough to stop it from Xion, Roxas and Lilians efforts Maya relaxes a bit as they are not dead. She looks at the carnage and just sighs. This was going to be one heck of a cleanup operation.

"Look I'll coordinate the cleanup and aid."

Then the remains of Mary's and the Baron's minions just up and poof in a way she has seen before. Her eyes narrow a bit at it, she'll have to talk to someone later about this, for now, cleanup and aid time.