Scene #4357: The Quest for the Golden Bow

Owner	Pose
Weiss Schnee	Abandon all hope, ye who enter here - so says the inscription on the gate allowing entry to Devil's End, the high-level, end-game raid our party of heroes has chosen to plunder in search of the fabled Golden Bow. The island it inhabits looks a bit different from the last one the party tackled; no trees grow on the beach, nor does dense vegetation provide a vague path for the party to follow. Instead, a clear pathway is carved out of the island's tall stone crags - first leading to a sandy clearing, then plunging into the island's rocky depths. The environment becomes sweltering as the party travels downwards, even with small streams of lava pouring from the walls at the very bottom. Of course, it's no simple trek to the island's core. The party must find a way to dispel barriers in their path while fighting off swarms of cultists, typically by holding their position atop demonic seals. A definite musical theme permeates the raid, with an abundance of buffing bards and a killer rock soundtrack throughout the entire adventure - some enemies even wield musical intruments as weapons, charging the party brandishing guitars or fiddles. Luckily, the crew of the Windstar is far from unprepared! They've crushed many a raid before, and this one shall be no different! This is no paltry task, of course, but it's made a bit easier with Snowflake leading the charge today - who has a mysterious foreknowledge of the raid's every detail, pointing out ambushes before they strike and tossing a well-placed grenade into a few perfect spots upon entering each arena. The party's valor pulls them through to the final boss portal, with today's guide Snowflake chugging a healing flask and stopping in front of it like a tour guide. "This is it, crew! The final encounter!" She turns around with a calm expression, rifling through her inventory for something. "Hope you all saved some of your stamina from that miniboss with the flamethrower guitar."
Zephyr Windstar	Auralia is, once more, part of this raid. She's not her usual self though. Yuuki would likely spot it first, but Kirito and the other SAO Survivors might understand the meaning behind what the Captain is doing. She's quiet. No joking, no banter like normal. She's nearly robotic, as she hacks cultists with her hand axe, fires into ambushes with her pistols, tosses grenades and uses her cestus to heal... right up until that miniboss. She changed instantly when he appeared as if from nowhere. Twin axes, one pulsing with Holy, the other with Darkness, sang out from her inventory, and she descended upon the maniac with an unbridled zeal, using all her skills as they came off cooldown to dodge, duck, dive and dodge the flamethrower blasts and melee hits. She kept the guy busy enough for the others to not even need to try tanking it, left wide open for ranged or flanking melee fighters to pick the miniboss off. It's only after the dust settled and the boss shattered into fragments, did Auralia drop to her knees, axes clattering to the ground.
Yuuki Konno	Anything that can help the group get better, Yuuki approves of. Of course VRMMOs are pretty much literally her life, so little excuse is needed! If she doesn't quite lead the charge every time, she's pretty quick to jump up and dash towards the next fight once stamina's nominally high enough, charging and punching the air as enthusiastically as she cuts down demon cultists. The theme of the island seems a fun one. She may not be much for creating or performing music, lacking even the normal experiences of schoolgirls of her age and the various clubs and activities they tend to try out, but she does know how to have fun! She wipes her brow with one sleeved arm, grinning at Snowflake. "We need all our stamina. Boss fight!" she declares, though of course they're all pretty well topped up by now thanks to potions - er, to ale - and other buffs. "Aaah, too bad Nori isn't here. She'd totally love this whole music thing!" Yuuki beams. Little does she know that Nori HAS been here. As well as the other Sleeping Knights too, of course. Her little Guild had visited her at Beacon Academy a short time ago, and had met her 'real life' friends there. Including one special little Snowflake known as Weiss, who they already knew somewhat from Yuuki's stories about CCO. Weiss may not have been quite as warm and friendly as Yuuki's tales made her out to be, but if anyone sees things through rose-colored glasses it's Yuuki. Of course when Weiss needed experienced VRMMO players to scout out a raid, the Sleeping Knights were a damn fine choice. They'd do far more than enter into a strange new MMO to help a friend of Yuuki's. It seemed weird to do so without Yuuki herself, but they figured it out quickly enough. Weiss may not have explained her reasons, but the wise Siune had enough information to make a shrewd guess, and convinced the other Knights to go along with the request without letting Yuuki know. Letting it be 'a surprise'. So Yuuki's only impressed at Snowflake's leadership, though she's never assumed the girl anything other than highly competent. She's happy enough falling into a secondary role in the adventure, simply enjoying the fights and carving through cultists with light dancing movements. She doesn't disdain the grenades and guns, not exactly, but she doesn't feel the need to use them either. She's got absolutely no qualms about being outnumbered or surrounded. Such situations, after all, mean simply that her every motion becomes an attack.
Cirra Constantine	Palmira came along just in case the ghost ship landed on their heads. But so far, nothing of the sort has happened, fortunatly. The purple haired woman in her black long coat continues to use her favoured silver inlaid estoc and the shattering obsidian throwing knives in clockwork holsters. As the mini-boss fight winds down, she looks at Auralia as she single handedly lands the deathblow but gets winded for her efforts. "Are you sure you feel alright? IF you've taken to bed outside the game-" She tries to help her up "For an illness, then you should focus on recovering."
Kirito	Kirito doesn't fail to notice the strange attention to detail Snowflake's paying this raid! An almost uncanny foreknowledge. He'll have to ask her about it later.... if he feels like it. For now though... he enjoys the raid! Not leading it, not worrying too much about anything... just enjoying the fights and being his laid-back self... though this includes COPIOUS amounts of high-speed enthusiastic swordsmanship with every enemy in sight! He's some kind of combat fanatic, really! Not that anyone didn't know that already many times over. "Really looking forward to seeing this Golden Bow and what it can do!"
Weiss Schnee	"Everything okay?" Snowflake comments to Auralia, not quite understanding where all that unbridled rage materialized from and left as quickly. "You really tore that guy up, you know." She shrugs, continuing to fish through her inventory. "Well, the more energy you've got, the better, I suppose. Cmon, chin up. See if you can keep riding that into the main boss room, yeah?" Turning her attention to Yuuki, she shoots her a thumbs-up. "It's a shame, yeah, but there's always more raid nights." Of course, she won't admit that she knows why Nori is absent, nor does her voice betray anything secret - She's Weiss, after all. She has a reputation of awesome to uphold. Finally, she looks to Kirito, nodding in the affirmative. "Trust me, it's worth all this," she says, gesturing around and to the portal. "I've been training my skills all week just to use it." "Ah, there you are! Okay, first of all..." Finally locating what she was searching for in the depths of her inventory, Snowflake holds out a large bundle of assorted elemental grenades by their fuses for all the party to see. There's enough for each player to take a few, and then some. "You guys might want to grab a few of these. AoE damage is a premium here. Don't worry, I've got plenty more." Taken or not, she sticks whatever's left back in her inventory and motions to the portal behind her - a giant, solid oval of flame spouting from a small obsidian pedestal. Pretty much how one might expect a portal to Hell to look. "As I said before, this is the final boss portal. Before we charge into it swords swinging, there's a few little details I need to warn you about." "The weird... hard rock/demonic dual theme we've been dealing with this whole time is about to hit its peak. When we jump through here, we'll have thirty seconds to prepare before some enemies show up. Don't waste your time on the big guy in the center yet. When they start appearing, we'll have to defeat two hundred of 'em before the boss activates. Then we just kill the boss, and we win. Sounds pretty easy, right?" She shakes her head and gives a small chuckle. "Unfortunately, it's not that simple. We'll all be afflicted with a debuff while we're in there, and when it starts, music will start playing. You can read the fine print in your character sheets, but the gist of it is that if you move, attack, use items, do ANYTHING in time with the song, you'll get a stat buff. If you attack on-beat, you'll hit harder. If you move on-beat, you get a speed boost. You get the point. Even better, the longer you go without missing a beat, the more boosts you get. And on the other hand... if you do anything OFF-beat, you get debuffed into oblivion. Attack damage down, defense down, movement speed down - you get the point." She shrugs with a little knowing smile. "So basically, don't do that." "Oh yeah, one more thing. We only have until the song ends to pull this off, which is, I'd say... about three minutes. It speeds up with every refrain, too - meaning we have to keep up with a faster rhythm. To top it all off, enemies start hitting harder as time goes on. On the plus side, your 'combo cap' is increased, so you can get even more buffs from staying on-beat continuously - meaning as long as you don't slip up, the enemy damage boost is negligible. If you do slip up, well... don't slip up." She checks her in-game clock to make sure she hasn't rattled on for -too- long and claps her hands together. "Alright, any questions?" she asks while reviewing her grenade stores one more time.
Zephyr Windstar	"M'fine." mutters Auralia to Palmira, shrugging off the help with a grunted "Thanks." She stalks over after retrieving her axes, but abhors the grenades. Instead, she listens to the explanation, then huffs. "Stay on beat, break the boss's ****. Got it. Lets go." she says curtly, then stalks on toward the portal, waiting for the others to catch up before stepping through. No point in triggering the boss before everyone's ready, after all.
Cirra Constantine	Palmira's forehead wrinkles as Auralia brushes off all attempts to aid her. But the explination of the fight draws her attention. "...attacking and moving to the beat? My Job isn't Danc-" but then remember that might confuse some people "-related." she looks at the portal and tilts her head to the side. "If one of us does have a hard time keeping to the beat, should they back off?" She tries to think of what she has that can be used in such a timely fashion as to not intterupt her during the faster portion of the fight.
Yuuki Konno	Nori and the others couldn't make this night because, well, because they have lives and families. That much would've been made clear to Snowflake as part of their assistance. They could help for one evening, but once time was up they'd have to go. Yuuki can game at just about any time she doesn't have classes, but then that's been the case for her for years. Yuuki just grins and returns the thumbs-up. She and the Knights do tend to run other VRMMOs from time to time. They'd stopped on ALO for quite a long time, having decided it'd be their last. Things have changed, but they still haven't really chosen to give it up. Eventually though, the Knights may well set their sights on other games... if Yuuki's own unique situation comes to a good end at least. She glances aside at Palmira and Auralia. She could say something, sure. A snarky girl might well say something about how if she stopped gaming just because she was sick, she'd never game. But Yuuki's not at all snarky or mean. She just shrugs. "VR gaming doesn't stress the body." she explains. "It's fine if you're not well, as long as you get food, water, and enough real sleep." she says. She sounds confident of this, and well she should. Yuuki knows it better than most, from direct experience. Still she looks uncomfortable at the topic; wary in case it leads to things she'd rather not discuss. She speaks with confidence, but definitely not with ease. The purple-haired girl looks a bit more serious as Snowflake explains the boss mechanics. The question of how Snowflake KNOWS all this so well is active in the back of her mind, but she doesn't speak the thought aloud. This isn't a brand new unlocked floor boss after all. People have presumably been here before. Strats and guides are no doubt available somewhere. Still, the mechanics seem quite elaborate. "Two hundred enemies." Yuuki considers. No wonder the grenades are needed. She takes two gingerly, looking at them like they're going to explode in her hand. She doesn't much like using this kind of weapon, but she'll take them in case she has to. That's a LOT of adds! Hopefully they aren't too tough. "And only three minutes? That's really short for a boss fight." she observes. "We'll need that stacking buff to go really high, I guess. Try to avoid losing it, and it's probably better to not attack than to break the beat. Save stamina and consumables for when we're fully buffed." she says. Boss fight planning, while not exactly her strongest point compared to boss fight improvisation, is something she's been picking up on.
Kirito	Kirito whistles appreciatively. He knows well the grueling endeavor that such grinding can be! "Then you'll have to show off to all of us. I wonder how good bows are in this game!" He's... ... UNIMPRESSED with them for the most part in Alfheim Online, apart from Sinon's exploits... He snags a few of the grenades, definitely not going to say no to that! "TWO HUNDRED?!" He blurts after listening to the briefing otherwise unbothered. Boss fights are always a challenge, but... THIS? This is... whoah. ... then the song part. "... Oh great." His sense of timing is EXCELLENT... but it's always been moving to his own beat. "Do we get any practice time?!"
Weiss Schnee	Snowflake watches Auralia curiously, returning the explosives she scorned to her inventory with a raised brow. "Oh... kay then. Be careful." She's clearly not very good at being warm and fuzzy. Turning to Palmira, she nods, waving a hand dismissively. "Yeah, it should be no problem. There's a visual representation of it that should help you along. If you need to recover, fall back and get your head back in the game, I'd suggest, but it might be rather difficult to escape." "Yep, you got it. Like I said, don't slip up and you should do fine," she responds to Yuuki. "Oh, that's right," she notes. "I probably don't need to say this, but if you don't attack, you have to at least keep moving. Though that's kind of a given anyways, since you'll have devils on your back." Finally, turning to Kirito, she crosses her arms and nods. "Yep. Two hundred. Shouldn't be too much of a challenge, right?" Of course, she knows that's a lie - from her prior experience, it's a very real challenge. "Nope!" She grins at Kirito before she spins around and prepares to enter without another word. "Well then, let's get on with it, crew!" Pulling a handful of proximity mines from her inventory, Snowflake leads the charge into the boss room, hopping through the flaming portal and motioning for the party to follow her. On the other side of the portal lies what many would describe as Hell itself. The arena is shaped like a rounded plus and made of a deep red stone, surrounded by tall, impassible walls of the same material. Rivers of molten lava snake all around the arena with only a few stepping stones dotted within them, ending in large pools. Probably a bad idea to fall in there. Over the wall, fire and brimstone rains down from above on twisted, craggy stone spires - it doesn't seem interested in entering the arena, though. The most striking part of it all is the raised portion in the center, with spiraling stairs around it to allow access. In the center of that, surrounded tightly by a lava moat, is a tall pedestal with engravings of battle between man and demon. Atop the pedestal rests a devil of colossal proportions, hunched over and seemingly inactive. He possesses all the features of a traditional devil, with red skin, goat legs, pointed tail, horns, huge bat wings, and a bushy goatee. In his hands lies a golden electric guitar, as if he could spring to life and start playing at any second. If one tried to attack him, they'd find him to be untargetable and invincible, still unmoving. Something floats above his head, written in fire: ':30'... ':29'... ':28'... It's a countdown, giving a loud drum beat every second. Snowflake seems wholly uninterested in any of this, instead dashing to each corner of the arena, dropping her mines as she goes. She doesn't seem to be affected by the rhythm mechanic yet, but the debuff does still appear: 'Rhythm of the Damned'. "We need someone defending here, here, and here!" she barks, pointing to strategic locations in each point of the plus. "If you need a break from the front lines, take a position up there, but keep an eye on that counter!" She points to the raised platform in the center surrounding the pedestal. "Prepare yourselves!" The heiress herself takes up a position in the northern quadrant, opposite the one from which the portal originated.
Yuuki Konno	"Two hundred." Yuuki repeats solemnly. Then she breaks into a beaming smile. "We won't be able to swing our blades without hitting an enemy!" she claims, raising a fist and bouncing into the air. With that said, she bounds after Snowflake. She only skids to a halt once she sees the arena. Practiced eyes scan the battlefield, noting the 'entrances' the adds will be streaming through. The places each of them have to hold so they can keep the stream of enemies from flooding through. Not that it's a bad thing to have all the enemies everywhere. They DO have to kill 200 of them after all. But by holding the chokepoints, the enemies bunch up outside and... yes, that's why the grenades. It makes sense. Yuuki also notes that deep bass drumnote. A pounding rhythm. One beat a second.... sooooo slow. This is going to be HARD! Yuuki takes up position in the West quadrant, drawing her rapier and beginning to tap one foot to the rhythm. It's not hard, not when she's outside combat at least. Her fighting style is a whirlwind of flesh and steel, but she's not entirely without rhythm. She might lose the beat in the heat of combat, and she's close to incapable at holding back a strike when enemy minions freeze before her off the beat... but that's going to have to be part of learning the fight!
Xiaomu	If this were ALO, Kanokon would likely have been happy to help in dealing with the wards along the way. But since it isn't ... The best that Sunshower can do in terms of dealing with the wards is to provide some brews that might assist the process - and she certainly did what she could to help prepare for the raid, mixing up some useful brews and getting them blessed for the best results. And as usual, in between encounters, she's 'topping off' everyone's HP and status. Rather than just depending on a keg like previously, she also stocked up on wineskins - and those are probably running pretty dry by now. "Certainly works up a thirst, in any case," Sunshower grins as she puts the refreshments away and gets ready with her staff. She's ready to pull a knife and throw it with either hand, and a couple of wineskins are ready for emergency use - whether to debuff the boss (or more likely, the boss's adds) with a baneful brew, or to revitalize an ally with a good stiff drink. Still, the sight of Snowflake's grenades makes Sunshower grin WIDELY and she happily takes at least half a dozen, if there are that many to go around. If there are more, she'll take more. "So, two hundred enemies in three minutes ... eh, we just gotta do more than one per second among us. The faster the better, right?" she grins with a devil-may-care gleam in her eye.
Kirito	Kirito rushes into the boss chamber, though once the beat starts gripping him he slows, experimenting with a weird stance-shuffle to the beat. It'll probably take him thirty seconds to really get with it, but if there's ONE thing he's always been good at... it's timing. But man... "Rhythm games were never my style." He's always been big on RPGs! Though ones with 'timed hits' were always high on his favorites list. "One enemy, one second!" He declares Zekken's way, daringly. Probably impossible, but that's just how this business goes.
Cirra Constantine	"Two hundred in three minutes." PAlmira puts a hand to her chin, and looks at Snowflakes landmines. "Doable. If we maintain this rythm buff." Once through the portal, Palmira looks around to get the lay of the land and quickly takes up the position Snowflake points out. "Where did you learn so much about this boss? These mechanics are awfully contrived." She reaches down and grasps an obsidian throwing knife between each finger.
Zephyr Windstar	Auralia is eerily calm. She's murmuring something softly to herself, as she takes up a position, always shifting to the beat. Get into the rhythm. Her blades are primed and ready, Ebony and Ivory gleaming their dark black and blinding white from their enchantments. Her outfit glinting in the hell light as her eyes focus onto the middle distance.
Weiss Schnee	Snowflake can't help but return the smile at Yuuki's enthusiasm, a softer grin still on her face as she dashes inside the arena. "That's what I like to hear!" she exclaims both to Yuuki and to Xiaomu, swiping her rapier at the air for effect. "Just keep up the pace and we'll emerge victorious, no sweat!" She shoots another grin Kirito's way, tossing her sword back and forth. "They're easy with enough practice. Perks of being clasically trained," she proclaims with a proud 'hmph'. Snowflake then glances to Palmira, her grin fading and her mouth drifting open just a bit before she composes herself again. "Oh, I just, uh... looked it up online. There's tons of guides about this sort of thing," she dodges. Keep it together, Weiss, keep it together. "And hey, people, stay optimistic, but save time for the boss, too!" Once she gets settled, she eyes the timer - ':10'... ':09'... With a deep breath, she turns back to the wall of her chosen quadrant. However, her gaze doesn't fall to watch the entrance the adds may seem to spawn from - instead, she looks above it, up to the sky. Her foot taps silently, and the watchful eye may notice it moving at a faster tempo than that of the drum's beat. She almost feels like her heart is pounding instead of the drum, though - can't fail again. Cannot fail again. She takes a deep breath as the clock counts its last. ':03'... ':02'... ':01'... As the timer hits ':00', it fades away, changing to the number '200', announced by a loud, demonic roar and the appearance of a vertical bar at the bottom of everyone's HUD. Slowly, the colossal devil in the center of the room stands up to his full height, a glint in his eye and a wide grin on his face. He raises an arm to the sky slowly and painstakingly, letting it hang for a moment as thinner bars begin to move in from the sides to meet the thicker one in the center. When they finally meet, he lets his arm drop like an anchor. Just like that, he lauches into a guitar solo that seems to herald the end times, over which the attentive ear could hear the rhythmic flapping of wings steadily approaching. Near the end of the solo, they grow even louder, almost impossible not to hear over the guitar. Just when the soundtrack's fiddle kicks in, the source of the flaps is made apparent: Swarms of imps flood over the walls of the arena like a miasma of fighter jets and land on the ground in front of each player, wasting no time in charging forward to attack. Their health is low and their attack is weak, but there's so many of them! The tempo of the song is clearly faster than one beat per second, shown by the new beat counter in everyone's view. Snowflake demonstrates this by lunging forwards with perfect form, stabbing an imp through the chest on one beat and kicking another in the face on the next. She flows through the song with little pause, as if she's done this before.
Zephyr Windstar	3. 2. 1. Okay, lets jam. When the song kicks in, she's off, dancing amongst the imps. One loses a head to Ivory, while another's swipe is parried by Ebony, a third receiving a kick in the jaw. She's not as graceful at Snowflake, but she's certainly fast, bouncing away only to lunge back in, swiping with axes, lashing out with kicks, and even breaking out a HEADBUTT, leading into a backflip kick. "Never miss a beat, never miss a beat." so focussed she is on the battle, she's pushing herself to the point of getting the 'Overextended' debuff, which is slowly draining her HP with each high speed attack, though her Amulets are helping stem that a little.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki runs some quick calculations. She's not the DPS-calculator of her group but again, it's one of the things you pick up when you're around those sorts in the toughest of tough fights. 3 minutes. 180 seconds. 6 fighters. 200 kills. If they can kill one mob per second each, they'll clear the trash in just over 30 seconds. Leaving two and a half minutes to face the boss itself. That is, assuming the adds stop once 200 have been killed... if not, they get to burn down the boss while also dealing with a flood of minions. She grins to Kirito, flashing him a V sign, taking his challenge seriously and howling a wordless agreement sounding vaguely like 'HAO!'. One enemy per second. She supposes Palmira's right. It's doable, particularly if they hold to the beat and maintain the escalating buff. It also means that she'll be swinging to kill, not wasting a single beat on wounding attacks. This suggests the minions will be weak trash that could actually be dispatched by a single hit... or quite likely they'll run out of time. Since this fight was presumably made to be beaten, she has no reason to assume otherwise. The opening moves of the fight go well enough. The imps are slow and stilted compared to what she's used to, moving and attacking only on a staggered beat. She has little trouble slaying them, leaping and twirling about like she's dancing some dance... a dance involving a sword. Turns out she's wrong though, and the beat is considerably faster than she'd realized... but she has enough time between the end of the countdown and the appearance of the imps to get used to the devil's aggressive rhythm. Yuuki only gets in trouble because in a way the trash mobs are TOO easy. They move and swing on the beat, and their moves are interspersed with brief pauses. It's too easy, and she can't help but swing off-beat. She staggers, struck by the debuff, her blade ringing tinnily off the demon's skin like she were wielding a SORD rather than an end-game rapier. She takes a hit on the next beat, slowed and off-balance from the debuff, squealing in distress more than pain, before recovering and beginning once again to build the buff on the beat. This time, she disciplines herself, forcing herself with sheer concentration and will to NOT take advantage of the off-beat pauses. A tough thing to do... but she's one of the best and more than up to the challenge. Slash-move-slash-THRUST-pivot-parry-feint-SLASH... and on she goes, holding pretty close to Kirito's challenge of one per second. As the buff begins to build, and her lighter attacks start to carry more weight, she even begins to make up for her earlier error.
Xiaomu	Ah right - Sunshower almost missed the tempo, if not for somebody mentioning the 'rhythm buff'. And turning down any advantage a game gives you is, in general, a really stupid move. So she's on the beat, and stays on the beat: her staff lashes out at the imps like the most badass drumstick ever, the smack of wood against imp potentially helping her allies keep their time as well. She's kind of wondering how actions longer than the rhythm will be accounted for; for the time being, she'd rather not need to find out; instead, she focuses on making each beat count as best she can - even if she has to start alternating beats, so she DOESN'T lapse into the [Overextended] debuff that Auralia is flirting with, while judging how effectively her strikes are landing. After all, if the imps aren't going down in one hit each, the entire calculus on which this strategy seems to have been built is going to need to be recalculated on the fly ... either that or they'll need to try this dungeon AGAIN.
Cirra Constantine	Palmira isn't really trained in dance and music. Unlike PRince LAndon's Princess sister, she was trained in matial duties, to be a body gaurd and a tactician. The demon's guitar riff only makes her narrow her eyes, it's a distraction she intends to focus through. When the monsters come in their first wave, PAlmira uses the beat counter to execute her usual thrust-slice combo. THis si the stage where you learn the mechanics, and she intends to use it appropiately. Thrust, slash, skewer. She tests the health of the enemy. IT seems like she's going too slow compared to everyone else. But once she understands the monsters, she takes a sudden step sideways, spinning about as she executes a single slash through two of them, and at the final beat of the bar, throws out her hand, sending a wave of obsidian throwing knives that shatter, debuffing a few of the monsters with the Bleed DoT and promptly leaves them to a slow death that she no longer has to be concerned about.
Kirito	Four beats a second! This is a pretty fast pace, but Kirito eventually gears up into a weird hop-step to get around! He's waiting for the monster hordes in a way that a certain musically-named girl might approve of, hopping around in a circle. ... Boy does this ever look ridiculous. He's INCREDIBLY grateful Asuna's not here to see it. Or a lot of his other friends. Because yeah he looks a bit embarassed. There's no way to be his usual composed and smooth-slashing self - or even a properly berserk swordsman - here! "Got this spot covered!" He's not using Swashbuckler Skills though. instead he makes precise swings and thrusts, aiming for necks and heads for maximum damage. Anything that gets near gets stabbed! And anything that gets TOO close... he circle-hops around. It's a very lopsided-looking dance...
Weiss Schnee	Luckily for the party, the imps are practically made of paper - their health is low enough that most hits shatter them into a fine red pixellated mist. The counter ticks down with every kill, reaching 175 in no time flat. To replenish the rapidly depleting supply, more and more continue to stream in over the top of the wall, filling in the ranks as fast as they fall. Snowflake easily keeps up with the rhythm due to her extensive musical training, careful not to Overextend herself by attacking on the up-beat and parrying or retreating as necessary on the down. Each step counts as a beat, after all - she could just dance circles around one of these imps, if it weren't for the strict timer. One thing she's learned is that she cannot be indecisive - if she stumbles for a moment deciding what to do, she'll break her combo. Instead, she commits to every action, even whiffing numerous times when she finds her course to be erroneous. Stepping backwards for a few beats, she grabs one of the grenades she's readied on one beat, pulls it back with the second, and lobs it with the third. It impacts the center of a cluster of imps, easilly killing several of them at once in a flurry of ice shards. She continues on to use a few of her Swashbuckler Skills, multi-beat area-of-effect swipes with at least a wind-up or recovery on each beat. It takes at least two to fire and holster one of her pistols, depending on how quick she is about it - and with her high combo chain, she's buffed up enough to pull it off. Meanwhile, explosions echo around the arena while the mooks set off Snowflake's pre-placed traps, sending clouds of red pixels bursting into the air. The devil lord in the center simply looks horribly pleased by all this, a sinister grin on his face while he hops around and plays. "It's 3 years to the very day/Since a pirate captain said to me/'Hey lad, come join our crew/adventure and glory waits for you!'" Auralia starts off running, cleaving imps to pixelated bits left and right. They take a few weak swipes at her, but her rhythm proves too much for them - really, it's too much. "HEY AU RA LI A DON'T HURT YOUR SELF TAKE A REST" Snowflake shouts in her direction, even speaking on the beat. The brief distraction earns Weiss' avatar a few good swipes from an imp, and she almost loses track of her rhythm - almost. Yuuki's frantic pace easily manages to keep up with the beat and slay any imp she takes a slash at, until she gets ahead of herself. A dissonant guitar chord echoes in her ear as her combo meter resets to zero, the debuff icon glowing red as it saps her stats. Luckily, she doesn't fall too hard, recovering from the stumble in no time flat and returning to the rhythm of slaughter. Sunshower keeps the beat just as well, whacking imps left and right with her staff. Just because it isn't sharp doesn't mean it isn't effective, as proven by the rate of her rising kill counter. Palmira and Kirito pacing themselves a little more slowly than the other players is a valid strategy as well, taking more time to assess the situation and practice before going all-out. A wise strategy indeed, given the fact that the tempo's about to increase! "You're banjaxed, you're screwed!/And death is coming for you!/Trapped on an island, lost at sea/SHIPWRECKED! Your destiny!" With that final syllable, the pace of the song suddenly picks up - the only warning is everyone's rhythm guides picking up a few beats before. The debuff flashes before a moment before a small number 2 appears in the corner of its icon - the combo cap is now increased. Finally, jets of lava erupt from the pools located in each quadrant, from which emerge one larger demon each, bearing more resemblance to the devil lord than his peons. Seems like these guys won't be such pushovers like the imps!
Zephyr Windstar	Panting for breath, Auralia presses on. Step, turn, sheath, draw. She swaps Ebony and Ivory for Benjamin and Nikola, both of them crackling with a yellow electric enchantment. "<Die.>" With the Imps still streaming in, and now the bigger mobs spawning, she shifts to her own AOE method. With the beat, her Gunslinger Skill triggers, firing at targets all around her, each shot coming out on the quicker beat, building her meter higher and higher... but also triggering <EXHAUSTED> debuff, starting to tick down her HP faster than her Amulets can replenish it. "Not yet. Not done yet."
Xiaomu	Pacing herself sounds like a good idea; in fact, when the tempo picks up, Sunshower actually 'slows down' - rather than alternating between attacking and moving on every beat, attack every third beat and move on the other two, or maybe attack once per four-beat measure. She's played enough DDR to know how to economize with her movements ... even though the parallels kinda come to a screeching halt right around that point. The emergence of the larger minions gets her attention, though. Time to use what she'd been saving. Sunshower's staff lashes out, drumming a couple more imps out of existence, and then she unslings one of her wineskins. She's putting some extra showmanship into it, even as she stays alert for any imps that might try to sneak up on her while she's busy; if she's not interrupted, though, she'll uncork a wineskin, draw a knife, and spritz one of her baneful brews over the blade, twirling the dagger with a flourish - seemingly 'playing' with it for about one bar of the song ... And then, on the last beat of that measure, the knife FLIES into the nearest big minion's face. Literally into its mouth, if she can aim that precisely, but she'll settle for an eye or the nasal cavity or whatever. DOTs are probably proccing on the beat instead of the game's normal timing for 'ticks,' aren't they? Well, either way, Sunshower follows up by almost dancing into melee range and administering a downbeat beatdown, taking the rest of each measure to recover from one blow and wind up for the next.
Kirito	Imps die in droves! The moment Snowflake launches a grenade, he's reminded of his own... and fumbles briefly in actually using the thing. "Gah!" Precious time is wasted as he figures out the best trajectory... time that would be trivial in any other context. MASSIVE PENALTIES STRIKE as the grenade is looses... and Kirito takes a flying leap back away and towards the 'safe zone' with a sheepish look on his face. Gonna need to build a rhythm back up... Yeah this is all just in time for the Rhythm shift. Kirito twirls his sword daringly at the rhyming pirate boss and growls. "Alright, we'll do this to the beat of your drum... but it's your funeral march!" THE HOP APPROACH COMMENCES, MUCH FASTER.
Yuuki Konno	Even moreso than her skill with a sword, Yuuki's thing is the inhuman speed at which her perceptions work. She sees the dozens of imps all chittering to attack her or bypass her. She sees her friends hard at work. She sees the countdown timer and the rhythm-guide. When the beat changes, she has little trouble switching gears to match it. She's not so much attacking in a rhythm, but holding her actions until her guide reads that it's safe to act. It's like a deadly game of red light green light, in which she waits for the green light before acting. She continues to cut down imps, and the beat buff means she actually accelerates her killing pace. With the buff, she doesn't need quite as precise an attack to kill her targets so she's free to slash and stab more frequently. No longer does she attack merely once every four beats... once every second. Now it's more like every other beat, even considering how the pace has sped up. She whirls and steps during her attack movements, combining two acts in a single beat, trusting to her ludicrous speed to keep herself safe. Killing everything that comes close enough to attack, after all, is a valid strategy. The best defense is a murderously good offense. As the counter makes its steady way towards zero, Yuuki cries out. "ATTACK!" she screams, hoping she has the time to finish the minion before the boss animates and joins the fight. The counter's not quite yet zeroed. But she's lofted one of her grenades, flinging herself back from the mass of imps trying to destroy her. It will hopefully buy her the chance to focus on the lieutenant and, even if the boss awakens earlier than she hopes, she's willing to tank it until others can join in. With luck she won't have to, but she goes at her lieutenant-devil with full fury, a cuisinart to the beat, leaping and stabbing and slashing with every beat of the pounding music.
Cirra Constantine	As Palmira gets a feel for how this works, she realizes that this is isn't that different from regular combat. At least the way she was taught. 'Don't waste your movement!' she recalls the elder Judge's training. 'If you have time to stand there thinking about it, you've wasted an opportunity!' Step-slash-parry-doubleslash-spin-knife throw. It was like her teachers always taught her. Move, and control the flow of battle. It's her battle, not the enemy's. That said, it's a little harder to defend when you're forced to keep everything to the beat, and minor scratches from the imps are start to show in tattered clothing and red pixel scratches on her flesh. When the larger demons appear, she doesn't allow her self to show surprise. Instead she steps sideways to avoid an imp, and rolls a grenade out, parrying another attack before spinning around to unleashe a hail of obsidian knives to strike the larger demon just as the grenade runs through it's short timer, exploding and showering it with Bleed inducing obsidian shrapnel.
Weiss Schnee	Auralia's strategy proves effective, however risky it may be - as her own kill counter skyrockets, the fiery one floating above the devil lord drops below 100 and continues to dwindle. Though her overexertion drains her life points, the whirling dervish of crackling electricity and bullets augmented by her rhythm buff to create a truly formidable imp-slaughtering machine, even managing to slay the larger demon in the crossfire with little trouble. Yuuki apparently hasn't the slightest trouble with the increased pace, even using it to her advantage. The battle's kill counter drops ever more quickly as imp pixels scatter the ground, Yuuki's exceptional offense carving through them like Moses through the Red Sea. It's likely even enough to send her into Overexertion as well - flurries of blades don't come for free, after all. Though it manages to connect a single good hit, with her well-placed supressive grenade and frantic stabs at the larger demon, the larger demon topples into digital dust before it can even manage to land a second. Sunshower's slower and more deliberate attacks pay off in the exertion department, trading a faster pace for more consistent hits and damage. Her poison gambit goes uninterrupted, the giant victim staggering backwards as the knife impales the back of its throat. It keeps charging towards her, its health weakened from the blow and dropping further with every slash - indeed, it doesn't take long at all for the creature to crumble and die. Kirito seems to have a little more trouble, fumbling with his grenade and losing his combo meter as a result. The brief moment of vulnerability allows some imps to get a few good slices in before he leaps out of range, falling back in with the rhythm to put enough distance between him and his foes. The devil lord only responds with an evil sneer, even with the counter reading 25 and dropping above his head. Palmira's trained combat expertise really starts to show, helping her to flow with the beat and roll with the punches. Her rhythm combo negates the imps' increased power quite nicely, allowing her to get straight to their bigger brother. It flinches as every knife lands, stumbling and falling easily with the explosion. Snowflake is certainly in her element - for her, every battle is a composition, every move is practiced and rhythmic. Of course, she's more experienced with classical orchestra music, not -this-. Spinning around in circles in time with the beat, she lobs a grenade here, fires a bullet there, and stabs another imp there - meaning she isn't quite paying attention when the larger demon rapidly closes in and whacks her daylights out. She lands on the floor a few feet away with a skid, quickly pulling herself up to get back on beat before her opponents can take advantage of the weakness, and unleashes a flurry of bullets at the big guy every beat with a trained Swashbuckler Shill. It collapses and explodes into bits with that, another demonic roar commanding everyone's attention to center-stage. The kill counter has hit zero, and the devil lord has stopped playing the guitar. The soundtrack fills in for him as he leaps from his pedestal, giving another primal roar and brandishing his guitar like a baseball bat. "You're banjaxed, you're screwed!/And death is coming for you!/Trapped on an island, lost at sea/SHIPWRECKED! Your destiny!" The chorus echoes from every living imp as well, heralding an even further increase in the song's pace and another wave of large demons. Finally, the Boss has become targetable - and -very- angry.
Zephyr Windstar	Auralia's twirling, rhythm synced Gunslinger Skill comes to an end, and she keeps moving, rolling over an imp's back, as the Boss comes leaping down with his Axe(Guitar) held like an Axe(Weapon). She's panting heavily, her Combo at it's peak for the previous refrain, but her <EXHAUSTION> debuff ticking ever higher with each swing and shot. She knows she won't survive attacking the Boss, but she doesn't care. "Oi, you. G'ui's a beer." she yells, then starts that weird hopping skip motion to get close to the Boss, keeping her step to the higher tempo. And once she's in range, her pistols are tossed aside, flaring away into her inventory, while her hatchets come back out, flaring into her hands as she sweeps low at the Boss's legs, before she does a very fast pirouette to slash all up along the Demon Lord's body. She's coming from the furthest side from everyone else, leaving other flanks open for them to attack from!
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki's blown most of her stamina in a balletic display of epic swordness. Somehow she kept to the beat, nearly on full-time offense, as she cut her devilish lieutenant down to size. And to a spray of red pixels, of course. As the devil lord ceases his playing, Yuuki pauses in dismay for a heartbeat. Not for a music beat however. The rhythm guide, still flashing, compels her to move. A moment's stagger, a raise of the sword to guard position, a step, reaching down to her pouch, another step, an arm raised, a gulp.... then a salute. Abruptly the Imp turned pirate girl grins. The song hasn't stopped. They haven't lost yet. This is just the next stage of the battle. Sure her stamina's depleted, and she can't attack without serious risk of health loss, but so what? They're still FIGHTING and she just downed a replenishment draught! She moves on the beat, advancing on the boss. Movement doesn't cost stamina. She gets right in, facing the guitar-wielding devil, and roars her challenge at it! She jams her rapier straight out, needle-sharp and needle-quick, jabbing into its thigh. A single attack on a beat, just to get its attention, then a series of moves and parries on the beat. She whirls, jumps, dodges and sidesteps, using all the experience she's gained tanking. She doesn't have the health or armor to really tank, and in this game she lacks the aggro skills, but she's persistent, annoying, and has no qualms about being within attack reach. And meanwhile, while she puts her virtual body to the ultimate test of reflexes and agility, her stamina bar continues to regenerate.
Xiaomu	Sunshower allows herself to smirk briefly as the big boss finally comes down off his stage. So much for the minions; now, it's REALLY showtime. She's not going to push into close range quite yet; for the moment, she 'dances' sideways, pivoting through one measure to make sure nothing else is about to sneak up on her - or on her allies for that matter - before she comes out of it, facing the big bad demon singer ... and lets fly with her knives, aiming two daggers for each knee, alternating back and forth. Fortunately, she was depending heavily enough on her staff against the two verses' worth of mooks to have plenty of knives handy. Her supply is NOT unlimited, though, so she wants to make them count as much as possible. And she's still keeping the beat like the old-school DDR vet that she is.
Kirito	OH CRAP, the rhythm's gotten zany-fast! Kirito's confidence is actually on the lower end of things here. It's getting down to the wire and he's ever-more-intensely embarassed by this LOOPY display of hop-step combat-dancing he's improvised on the spot. ALL of his normal technique's completely out of the question and he's operating without ANY of the highly-honed muscle memory he's built up over YEARS. In a few ways it's crippling. But in others... The enemies obey this general rhythm too, the only saving grace he's got to work with. And if it's one thing that carried him through Aincrad... it's knowing his enemies. He easily follows their eyes, a tiny telltale that most World Seed developers neglect to alter. Monsters ALWAYS look straight at what they're going to do. Where they're going to walk, what they're targeting. The music speeds up, but this time... Kirito's ready for a reprise of epic proportions. The Black Swordsman's warcry thunders out, and FORWARD HE GOES into the Imp Hordes, moving in what looks to be an EXTREMELY risky path - especially given being at around half-health. Is he crazy?! Probably. But it's a good sort of crazy. This is made all the more evident when he executes a flawlessly synchronized SPINSLASH-FORWARD-LEAP chain and starts churning through the imps like some weird lopsided weed-whacker after getting into the densest part of them. "let's see those numbers help you now!" He crows tauntingly at the boss!
Cirra Constantine	Palmira turns about as the guitar wielding demon leaps down and ...literaly wields his guitar like a weapon. But the beat indicator is still going, so Palmira has little choice to bide her time with simple dance steps. But then Auralia launches into a risky close range attack. "Aur-" but it's too late. "Just because it's a game..." She moves forward, zig-zagging to the beat as she makes her way closer. "Doesn't give you leave-" Her Estoc slashes out - the silver inlaid blade gleaming as it's holy blessing activates, "-To be a pain!" slashing up through the thigh of the demon.
Weiss Schnee	Once again, Auralia pushes herself past her limit and drives her stamina into the ground for the sake of DPS, earning a very concerned expression from Snowflake. Her clever taunt earns the Devil Lord's attention, evidenced by a wide swing of his guitar in her direction. At its apex, a bolt of flame bursts forth, aiming straight for her - if that fails to deter Auralia, she'd be able to get in close and take a decent chunk of his HP. Snarling at her, he plants his back foot and takes a fast swipe at her with his guitar - and boy, does he hit hard! Meanwhile, Yuuki certainly succeeds in attracting aggro - the Devil Lord keeps his momentum going and directs it at Yuuki, smashing his guitar into the ground when she gets close and creating a radial shockwave along the ground. If that fails, he takes several wide swings at her while she attacks in an attempt to counteract her fast movement. Sunshower wisely keeps her distance, instead pelting the boss with throwing knives and dealing a fair bit of damage in the process. This doesn't go unnoticed, unfortunately for her - swinging that guitar through the air in an X pattern, he launches two more firebolts her way, a loud growl with each. Kirito's alternate strategy of dealing with the imps absolutely pays off, helping to combat the still-growing masses of them while the other players focus on the boss himself. Snowflake works on building her combo back up while she joins him, chucking grenades into the crowds to cull the hordes and keep them off the other players' backs. Turning her attention to the larger demon that spawned with the boss' arrival, she looses another volley of bullets into it, then downs it with yet another well-placed grenade. Her second-to-last one, actually. Palmira's holy blade proves to be especially effective, earning a loud screech from the boss before he becomes especially angry at her. He starts wildly flailing his guitar in her direction, then spins around rapidly in a circle to throw off any more aggression, launching more fireballs here and there with it. His health bar flashes at about half - time for phase 2. The Devil Lord stomps both feet, throws his head back, hoists his guitar over his head, and roars horribly, slamming the instrument into the ground in front of him. The previously atmospheric fireballs falling outside the arena move inwards as chunks of molten rock rain from the sky, pelting the arena and its contents. He returns to his attack, moving a lot faster than before - and leaping forth to crush Yuuki!
Zephyr Windstar	Auralia's already midair when that bolt of flame comes at her, It nails her square in the chest, taking a chunk of HP out of her pool... and then that guitar comes swinging around, and SMASHES the Captain aside with a discordant thudding sound. To say Auralia's combo is broken is a vast understatement. She skips across the ground, and smashes into the perimeter wall, groaning on a sliver of HP as Imps swarm around her. "I... wasn't good enough... again." And then an Imp, buffed to the belfrey, slashes at her, and her HP gauge dips to zero. Her form shimmers, she slumps over, and then shatters into little green fragments... leaving behind a tricorn on a cutlass stabbed into the ground, glowing with St. Elmo's fire. This game's version of a Remain Light.
Xiaomu	"Hup!!" Sunshower exclaims with, probably, more alarm than her choice of utterance would convey normally. Those firebolts are a problem - and she has to DODGE on the beat or lose the combo bonus buff she's been nursing all fight. Fortunately, a staff is good for more than just swatting things with; Sunshower sways away from the first firebolt to be addressed to her - and plants her staff, pole-vaulting past (if not over) the second firebolt without losing her rhythm. Sadly, that plants her right where one of the descending meteors is about to land ... She realizes it just in time to roll forward ... and there, most likely, goes her combo bonus. Hello debuffs. On the other hand, she's still in the fight and her HP hasn't dropped to zero yet. Sunshower glances up and around, bolting back to her feet and trying to get on the beat again, staff whipping around herself as though batting away more mooks ... and as the next meteor comes down way too close, she tries to whip around extra-hard and bat it towards the Devil Lord. Her aim sucks, she'll be lucky to even HIT the boss with it, but if she can even bounce it off of him, she'll take what she can get. One more good hit is going to take her off the field, though; she's just hoping to stay alive liong enough to see the boss go down first.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki's no stranger to being attacked by an axe, though this one is a bit more metaphorical than her typical axe-wielding bosses. Still, the guitar swings like an axe and she's used to seeing such attacks. Hard and fast linear blows, easy enough to avoid. She leaps the shockwave, turning a flip in midair to keep to the beat, lashing out with her blade on the next, and landing on a fourth. Not a major attack, just keeping her blade in while she desperately tries to avoid attacks while keeping to the beat. "Auralia!" she cries out abruptly, seeing her friend become a remain light. It's not horrifying, not like a death in RL would be, but it's still shocking. She clenches her jaw, narrowing her eyes. Fire rains down and all around, and this isn't quite so easy to evade. She ends up taking some hits, chipping away at her health bar. But she's not about to turn and flee. She's here until she falls or the boss does. Auralia leads the way in that regard. Yuuki hangs back only long enough to let the boss finish its anti-aggro spin. Then she sets herself, prepares a charge. Her stamina's recovered enough to make it worth attacking again, and her combo meter's up high enough to make every attack hit like a ton of bricks. Like a ton of... very pointy bricks. Only then, the boss pounces. The only bonus of this is that the meteors aren't likely to rain down on Yuuki. Because, of course, the boss is right on top of her, and what kind of boss rains down attacks on its own head? She's moving frantically now, dodging, slamming her blade against the guitar in a powerful parry. With her buffs, she might actually be able to knock it off-course. She tries to drive the axe into the ground, to make the boss delay half a beat to get the axe out of the ground. Because, of course, if THEY get debuffed by failing to follow the beat... well, it's worth a try? Either way, parrying the massive blow gives her an opening. With a cry of effort, Yuuki stabs into the boss. StrikestrikestrikeSTRIKE! Four beats, as fast as the song, Yuuki's stabs aiming to stitch a diagonal line across the devil's chest. Her arm and blade move like an engine's piston, looking almost like she's making a single slash rather than a series of piercing thrusts. Those who have seen Mothers Rosario may recognize the move. And of course, for Yuuki to have created that monstrous combo in Alfheim Online, she had to be able to perform the legendary attack unassisted. The attack isn't finished however. She withdraws her sword for a beat, raising it to high parry. Then down again, stabstabstabSTAB! Again, four hits carving a line down the opposite diagonal.
Cirra Constantine	Palmira swings her estoc around to try and deflect the axe, but it's too massive. The second swing sends her off balance- it's all she can do to accomplish a half tep to stay on rythm, turn towards where Auralia has been struck down. "Tch-!" And braces herself for what she knows is coming. The third swing smashes the holy wielding pirate backwards across the entire arena and into the rock wall, smashing it inwards in a crater as her HP drops like a stone. Thump thump thump. Palmira's fist hits the wall in time with the beat, maintaining her buff status as she slides down the crater. "I should perhaps tell you-" Palmira pulls three crystals out of her pouch, crushing them one after another. Palmira leaps upwards, augmented by the consumables andn tosses obsidian knives into the ceiling where they stab in. The constellation of Pisces drawn between them. "I really don't like." A jet of water from the Navigators Sign propels her downward, silver Estoc held outwards in a lunging stab followed by the water jet, landing her in a crouch. "Heavy metal."
Kirito	Mowing through the imps! Kirito's refining the spin-slash motion after the first dozen... landing with greater balance and dancing between the groups. This insane manuever is only possible thanks to an incredible sense of timing and uncanny knowledge of how FullDive AIs make decisions... when restricted to a situation like this, even more so. Eventually he chops through all of the nearby Imps, their density reduced considerably. That's when he transitions back to a normal series of hops... well, a kind of wobbly series... "Uuuugh, too many spins!" If it was one of his Sword Skills he'd be just fine, but that lopsided manuever has him a bit nauseated. He stagger-stumbles, only somehow avoiding the rhythm penalty by transitioning into a strange somersault-tumble and springing back to his feet! Saved! "So glad there wasn't a gimmick like this back then." He mutters to himself, teeth clenched. This situation frustrates him on so many levels! But it's time to turn that frustration on the boss. As well as that combo bonus he's been racking up and just barely salvaged from the brink! "Right then, here comes the end of this gig!" Straight for the boss he goes... and once he arrives... he'll trigger the craziest Swashbuckler Skill in his repertoire!
Weiss Schnee	The Devil Lord stays on course straight for Yuuki, having taken a rather large amount of damage from her already. Her rapid, on-rhythm attacks have managed to keep her long combo intact, allowing her to deflect the attack with much effort. The giant boss staggers backwards for a measure, still staying on the beat - allowing Yuuki to slice and dice at his chest, stealing another large portion of health. Just as he starts to recover, though, he's impacted in the head by Sunshower's masterfully reflected meteor, stunning him for another measure or two. This opening allows Yuuki to get in even more attacks - and, as Snowflake spins around and turns her attention to the boss, allows her to prime and lob the last grenade she saved especially for the boss, inflicting him with a debuff causing him to take -loads- more damage from all attacks. All of this has the Devil Lord on the ropes, earning another loud roar from him. He winds up to deliver one strong swing at Yuuki, continuing to sing his wicked song. "You're banjaxed, you're screwed!/And deaHRRK-!" Right at that moment, Palmira and Kirito impact simultaneously, running him through with their swords and chomping away the last bit of his health. The song ends abruptly with a final, thundering guitar chord, the Devil Lord slowly toppling backwards with a loud THUMP. The imps and demons surrounding the party all crumble into pixels instantaneously, their master defeated. Victorious fanfare echoes around the arena as the guitar tumbles out of his hand, floating up into the air while his body starts to deconstruct as well. The boss' former weapon levitates to the center of the arena, atop the pedestal where he once stood, and emits a burst of golden light. With much ceremony, the light fades, revealing the ultimate spoil of the raid: An ornate violin bow of gold, strings crafted of gilded silk. The Golden Bow. Stone stairs rise up from the moat as the lava drains from the arena, allowing easy access to the loot. Finally seeing what she came here for, Snowflake's eyes sparkle as she takes a step forward. Then another, and another - and soon she's sprinting up the stairs, stopping at the top. She gingerly takes the bow in her hands and looks it over - just how she imagined it. Spinning around, she hoists it above her head triumphantly as the Devil Lord's body explodes into doubloons and loot. "YEEEEAHHH! WE'VE DONE IT!"
Xiaomu	"WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" That's about all Sunshower has to say about their accomplishment - but actions do speak louder than words, don't they? Her first action, accompanying the verbalized cheer, is to hold her staff up with a pointed shake. Her second action is to unsling the recovery keg and plant it solidly on the floor, laying some of the recovery wineskins across its top. Sure, we might not have a 'next fight' to recuperate for, but a celebratory drink is certainly in order, right? And then she's going to count up her share of doubloons and figure out what loot she can make use of for anything other than vendor trash. "So did you say you've got an epic drop violin to use that thing with, Snowflake?" asks the Brewmeister, somewhere in the middle of that - or maybe while she's serving drinks. She's also checking to see if she can revive Auralia - say, by pouring a libation of healing mead over the spirit-fireball she left behind, or something.
Yuuki Konno	It wasn't quite Mothers Rosario, of course. That attack has 11 hits, and it's guided by the sword skill system. The 11 hits is very important though, even moreso than the elemental damage boost the skill gives. This attack lacked elemental damage, not to mention the big finisher. Still, it WAS a sweet attack. Yuuki falls backward, thudding to the arena floor with relief and a certain exhaustion. She holds up an arm however, raising two fingers in the victor's salute. Then, grinning, she looks over at Auralia's remains. "I hope someone's got some sap of the w... er, some Siren's Tears that is! We need to get Auralia up and moving so she can celebrate with us!"
Weiss Schnee	Snowflake opens up her inventory and tucks the Bow away, into a special slot so she doesn't lose it later. "Something like that!" she responds to Sunshower with a wide grin, stepping down from the pedestal as the stairs retreat into the rock behind her. "I left it back at the Windstar, but this is just one piece of a greater weapon." She chuckles, glancing over to where Auralia's death marker floats. "Glad we don't have to deal with that mechanic very often, huh? The rhythm thing, I mean. Not... death. Though thankfully that doesn't happen often anyways. Eh, you get my point." She shrugs and steps over to Yuuki, staring down at her and offering her a hand. "Nice job there. Must take a while to perfect such a rapid attack," she comments. "I'm glad you're on my side," she adds with a little laugh.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki rolls, and springs up to her feet without any real difficulty. Soreness isn't really a thing, not in VR. She grins. "Snowflake's been working on crafting that for a while!" she claims. As Yuuki moves, collecting up loot and stuff, she's still keeping that eat. It's not obvious at first, but her steps are oddly rhythmical. It's not really obvious until she stops walking and her foot keeps tapping out the beat. Yep, she's hooked, at least for now.