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Xion The Unit Captain throws back his head and laughs, echoing throughout the clocktower as the debilitating, disorienting tinnitus vibrates with his unhinged mirth. "Suffering is too good for you. Instead I will give you despair."

He hop-floats backwards, phasing through the dark clock-face that seemed so impervious before, as more of the jagged pieces of shattered glass around the large door-like hole crumbles away.

Following him, in the immediacy, proves fruitless - he's Horror Movie Gone as soon as he breaks line of sight by fading through the clockface.

The badlands that stretch out on the 12:00 Midnight side of the clocktower sit below the rocky cliff-face that the Clocktower room sits upon, a point in space almost utterly arbitrary.

The ridged edge of the coin between face and tail sides.

Down the ARPG hillside is a vast open plain, continuing on forever left and right and studded with more rock formations here and there, with the land between spangled with fallen weapons. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Glints of metal and esoteric shapes and colors all washed out with time and rust. They seem unified in their general structure, a hilted weapon, though the various idiosynchrasies just keep multiplying. Fanciful weapons jammed tip-down in the earth.

Keyblades, each bearing a rusted keychain with a unique charm on each.

In the center of the awful battlefield - clear to all the 'sympathetic connection' they were chasing, the last age's greatest conflict spoken only of in dim legend. The Darkfont - it sticks in the mind as this, for there can be nothing else to describe it but a fountain of pure darkness, a pit from which darkness erupts tesselated into the dusty ground like a vortex - and the creature that crawls forth from it unleashes a tortured cry like a sonorous newborn of some sub-abyssal creature from the depths.

The tinnitus clears, as does the disorientation. Zack, Cloud, and Jessie continue to be out of action for long moments after, though Zack begins to act clearheaded first, gripping his weapon tightly. He audibly swallows a few times to keep from throwing up, and looks around. "Everyone alright? My support magic is Scan, so I can at least give us an idea of what we're looking at. Just..." He steadies himself again, swallowing hard. "Give me a moment to clear my head. What the hell was that darn noise?"

He glances at Roxas without any of the rogue charm he had previously. "Hope you're up for a fight, kid."
Seifer Almasy      Keyblades.

     Sora.

     General Fury's words cut deep all over again. He had an assignment. Expecting a report. The knowledge that he had, effectively, failed. Gotten separated. Gotten distracted. Unprofessional. Hot-headed. Putting himself first.

     Seifer's fingers go to his temples. "This isn't right," he manages through the haze of frustration and damaged memory, "There's only one Keyblade. Just one Keyblade user. There's only supposed to be..."

     He rubs his temple again. Half-formed thoughts run through his mind. He fights it down as best he can. They're on an operation.

     Brief conversations dance through the mist of his mind. Him laughing with Sora. Him pretending not to be wildly jealous that destiny had chosen Sora and not him. Him determined to push onwards, to work harder, like he always did. Seifer, quietly wondering if that was ever enough - if working hard ever let you match up to the gifted.

     Seifer, pushing through it to achieve his rank in the Concord, only to be brought down by a man who frankly should mean nothing to him at this point other than nostalgia.

     His fingers tighten around Hyperion's hilt. No, he was past wanting something like this. He was past reaching out to one of these swords of destiny. Seifer had determined that long ago, and General Caroway and anyone else who expected him to be nothing more than the same soldier he'd been when he left could get stuffed. He might still be hot-headed, but he wasn't a lackey to anyone anymore, and he didn't need a weapon like this to tell him so.

     "Be careful," Seifer says aloud as he moves to take point, taking up his...unique, and amateurish-looking, stance, "Where there's any Keyblades, there's Heartless."

     "Stick and move. Don't let them surround you. And if there's a central Heartless, keep the little ones away from it. Otherwise it'll gang up and take you down."

     Now he's feeling like himself again.
Axel It all happened so fast. The Unit Captain appeared, struck Captain Galbadia, shattered his helmet, and escaped. There's a horrible creature coming out of the Darkfont. There's going to be a fight. Axel knows that. They have to stop whatever just happened. They can't abandon now - not that the others would, anyways, even if the thought crosses Axel's mind.

Axel moves over to Cloud. "You alright, Captain? Keep your head in the game. We need to finish this once and for all. Even if you're no longer a superhero, well...you're still a soldier, aren't you?" There's a sense that Axel's trying to shake Cloud into a moment of understanding and to take some sort of initiative, because he's likely to feel weak after all that.

And then, Axel moves over towards Seifer, and with a flick of his wrists, summons his red-and-silver chakrams to hand. "Right, boss. Let's clean up this mess, shall we?"

The fifty billion keyblades does get Axel to speak up, though, squinting. "Why are there so many? How long has this been here?"
Raziel The shadow was gone before any of them could react.  Raziel immediately abandoned his physical body and lept after the creature, trying to keep up, but in that small shift in time between it losing line of sight and his diving after it...it was lost.  "Damn," Raziel says to his self, as he pulls himself back to the material realm.  

Only to look around where he was now, as the others follow he frowns.  This was...unreal to his eyes, blades stretching out as far as the eye could see.  He also felt a presence...

'I was greeted by a large dusty plain, the clocktower clearly behind me, but before me was nothing but old rusted blades stabbed into the dry dead earth.  No...not just blades, some strange large keys with rusted chains attached.  These were...keyblades?  That strange weapon that Roxas and Xion had used before?'

Raziel moves to touch one, before pulling his clawed hand back.  

'I could feel a relentless sorrow from this place, some great tragedy had been set in motion here, but I knew not what.  To produce this many...potential bodies it had to be catastrophic, to say the least.  However, there was something more pressing.'

The roar of the creature and the well of darkness swelling up from the bottom causes Raziel to leap back, the Reaver slashing out from his arm as he looked forward.  Seifer gives out his warning as Zack tries to regain his composure.  

"No need to worry, right?  Just some monsters...don't act like you haven't faced death down before," Raziel says with some darker humor to Zack, "If not, I can tell you from personal experience that you should try and avoid it."

'This many enemies would be a dangerous task...not because of their number, but if I allowed the Reaver to become over-aroused, it would turn itself on me.  I steeled myself, however...the only thought worse than losing myself to the blade, was letting my allies die because I was too afraid to face my inevitable destiny.  Maybe, there was no answer to fate and destiny.  No matter how far I ran, and I saw it then keenly for what it was, I was always bound to this fate.'
Roxas You would think, being 'a literal child who wandered in out of nowhere', that Roxas would be most susceptible to the screaming tinnitus effect that ripples through everyone else. And yet-- and yet, it does not reach him. Others clutch their heads or fall to their knees and he simply turns about in confusion, utterly bewildered. This insulation is twofold, though he has no idea of either of the reasons behind it.

The first is that his mind is strong. Strong enough to address -- if imperfectly -- such an assault, if need be. An equal force that was purely physical would doubtless have brought him to his knees at once.

But his Heart is a broken thing, empty of darkness to call to. The anger that boils underneath is real, but fundamentally the dark has no toehold. All the wickedness that can be summoned from within Roxas is the wickedness of Light.

And so he hears no offer.

And so he does not crumple.

The hooded youth, who is probably the most suspicious person here in light of his NONREACTION TO THE HORRIBLE THING, looks towards Zack and nods affirmatively. A firm affirmative vocalization comes from him, though there are no words as such.

It's the Graveyard that starts to get to him.

As they venture out into it, Roxas pulls down the hood of his coat and looks around. A part of him, the part of him that is new and chimeric of composition, regards it with unfamiliar wonder. But another part of him, borrowed but udeniably his all the same, looks out from his eyes and sees something familiar, and terrible.

"There's so many of them..." Roxas says, and seems to stall out entirely. His face proceeds through quite a few emotions back-to-back, in what isn't a very natural way, but isn't mere imitation either. It isn't to the vortex at the center of the battlefield that he proceeds, but in among the dead and grey Keyblades that surround him.

He seizes one of the dead blades and lifts it to hand. Roxas's breathing unsteadies audibly. His heart pounds in his ears, a distant ringing resounding in the distance and overwhelming all local sound.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur can hear the sound. He can hear the SONG of the distant influence. And, under normal circumstances, this would be a profoundly shitty situation. But Arthur... has a familiarity with this. More than the weird little imps, more than the esoteric Grists, more than anything else, /this/ is what he recognizes, because he's dealt with it since birth. The twisted cry of a great umbral creature in what passes for pain for such things. It's not that he isn't hurt by it, it's that when it disables him, it does so with more comprehensible pain than most.

    As a prince of the Dark Moon, he recognizes a Dark Song when he hears it.

    "BYPRODUCTS of all kinda INHUMAN SHIT. Something out there with a WHOLE LOT OF FEELINGS and NO HUMANITY in it. I've run into this fuckery ONCE before. It's like that fuckin' PARSER." He grits his teeth, and sends air between them frustratedly. "Christ. TIME SHIT and this FURTHEST RING shit at the same time. We gotta go after that SINGULARITY. I might have enough JUICE and SYMPATHIES to figure... I dunno. SOMETHING out. Gimmie that SCAN on it, can ya? Or we gotta get CLOSER?" It's weird space shit, and weird dark shit, Arthur can figure a solution. "And fuck's sakes, watch for that CAPTAIN, I ain't got shit to do if we eat an AMBUSH. Motherfucker gonna straight MURDER US if he gets the DROP, with all he did to CAPTAIN G."

    They're headed out. He leaps out the passage that the Unit Captain took, joining the others with a levitation maneuver and surging forward at a speed properly matching Seifer. Stick and move, after all. He's bringing out the light again, a small cluster of orbiting suns meant to keep everything alert or back, but he can tell that here, it'll be less effective. He's ready to have to smash his way through what's found here, and he's fixated on heading to that one particular connection, the thing that most connects with the history he's had since the plurality of days that he was born.
Riku The Sunbeam Crystals radiate as the hellish noise grows, and Riku produces a handful, clutching several between his fingers to let them shine out in the face of the overwhelming, hellish noise. It threatens to overwhelm his thoughts, crush sanity, drag him kicking and screaming over the precipice he has always danced along. Focus. He needs /focus/...

In a fit of needing to do SOMETHING, Soul Eater flashes into his hand and he threatens to lunge at the powerful creature, but it's already gone. What isn't gone, however, is the land that expands around them, taking up his sight as far as the eye can see. The plain that expands before him, begins to resolve as the noise fades away... And those shapes resolve before him. "... Keyblades..." He mutters. "But... There's so many."

His fists clench as anger flashes through his expression, lances in his chest. Memories roil through him, memories of pain. Betrayal. Loss. And all through it, something chuckles, as if it knew this time would come.

"What are you laughing at?" Riku snaps to nothing in particular.

"The fate of all 'chosen ones'. Isn't it better this way?"

Riku scowls. "Shut up. You don't know anything about it." Even as he says it, though, he knows it's a lie. A lie that gains only more low laughter.

"Of course. I don't know anything. Maybe that boy could help you... What was his name? Sora?"

Riku's anger spikes, his fists clenched, his body tense with aggression as black flames begin to leak up around him, his power responding to his unbalanced emotional state. "That's none of your business!"

"Why so angry? Here is the opportunity you were owed, is it not? Just go and take one of these rusted, powerless husks and swing it around if you desire it so much."

Riku's open hand slaps to his face, and he grimaces, clearly wrestling with something as he yells, "JUST GO AWAY! I'M TOO BUSY FOR THIS!"

And like that, the chuckling dies down... But there is the small problem of Riku holding a conversation with someone who isn't there. When he realizes that, he looks around, blinking as if coming to his senses... And then another wave of embarassment and anger rushes through his expression. "Just... Let's just get this done." Without waiting, Riku begins rushing forward, Soul Eater ready to dispense a lot of pent-up aggression.
Lilian Rook     Of course Lilian chases. Letting the enemy run off and take up a position back in its territory is an idiot thing to do, given what they can often do in their chosen domain. The Academy teaches not to stand slack-jawed while something is transforming or integrating into something, after all.

    Flying through the broken clockface and arriving there to find the corrupted Captain gone is no particular surprise. Lilian blows a long, slow breath out through her lips, then says "Well, it's not as if we had the option of just turning back. Eyes up." She says that, but then begins poking at the keyblades littered all over, re-drawing her sword and tapping them with the tip like so many metal fenceposts, occasionally yanking one out of the ground to see what's so special about them, given the diagram in the book (with the missing charm).

    "Long enough that asking is pointless." she decides, responding to Axel. "Take care of the Capt- the one that isn't a monster, obviously. She reaches out to bap the keyblade out of Roxas' hand when he starts freaking out. "You have better things to be paying attention to." she coldly insists. Still not one to waste seconds (in general) trying to comprehend the thing that they're supposed to be dealing with, largely as training, part personal habit, she points towards the Darkfont and 'asks' Arthur "You'd like to see if blasting *that* with sunlight helps? I feel like the APC would have been a little more than insufficient."
Xion "Jessie, take care of Cloud." Zack orders. The brunette engineer does not give him lip, shaken as she is, instead swallowing and noding. She shuffles over to the bleeding Cloud and places a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, soldier, we gotta get out of here." Cloud continues to stare, shaking like a leaf, at where the Unit Captain disappeared through the clock-face, but allows himself to be dragged towards the window the Operation party came through. "I'll go get back up, alright? Everyone? Don't die before the Commander gets here!""

Jessie unlimbers one of her two sachels, sliding it towards Zack. "Here! I brought the good stuff - I'm sure logistics won't mind. I'll get the rookie out of here - promise." She adds, quietly

Zack sucks in a breath, before nodding. "Just go. I work best under pressure." He mutters, forcing a smile.

Jessie and Cloud exunt, retreating back through the clocktower's machinery while the rest of the party chases after whatever's issuing forth from the awful Darkfont.

Joining up with Arthur and nodding at the 'gimmie that SCAN', he reverses his grip on his sword and prepares.

Gathering up paramagical power, he casts his fist forward. In the distance, crosshairs and data-displays pop up around the THING. Everyone is immediately assaulted by the normally entirely benign effects of the Scan spell.

ZACK casts SCAN
>>J E N O V A<<
> A Great Calamity That <Befell/Is Befalling/Will Befall> The Planet <
Statistics: You , Abilities: Are All , Weaknesses: Puppets

Zack recoils, shaking his head as his hand comes up to shield his eyes momentarily. "Can't get a good read - but it's bad!" He lifts his G-Saber. "Really, really bad!"

The tentacled monster with the misshapen body that drags behind it what seems to be an aphotic beating heart as a bulbous tail wriggles and rears back, blasting the entire area with a bubbling tidal wave of dark water magic, the bubbles bursting like hand grenades and the surrounding liquid clinging like tar and burning like acid before the effect dissipates.

Zack is blasted back, tumbling into a pile of lost Keyblades and skidding across the earth, shouting in pain.

--------------------LINK ASSIST--------------------
Party May Select One Command Per Round
Zack Fair <G-Forces Elite>
A> Desperate G-Saber <Deal 300 Direct Damage to the Enemy>
A> G-Restore <Heal all allies 100 HP>
A> G-Down <Automatically revive first fallen ally with 25% HP>
Raziel Raziel moves forward, trying to fight his way towards the creature before it could overrun them.  He wasn't expecting to know much about the creature, so when Zack says it's 'bad' he just...well he doesn't grit his teeth, but he would if he had a lower jaw.  The Reaver comes out, aiming to try and cut through the dark water attack to try and clear a way through it.  

This is about /half/ successful, cutting a way through, but not large enough in the end as the edges of the spell still pound the corpse-like body of the wraith, and send him sliding back before he pushes forward again.  He felt that he didn't take a direct hit and he still felt that.  The eyes of the Ghost narrow...this was not good for anyone involved.

The Reaver changes through colors, before settling on Red as he launches forward.  He's going to need some time to get closer, so instead, he attempts to aid in the others who would need to close in to do just that.  His clawed hand comes out, releasing a burst of telekinetic force that crackles with fire.

The burst explodes near the 'face'...front?  Wherever he thinks where it can see from, aiming to try and distract it long enough.  Also, trying to burn it's eyes.
Lilian Rook     Lilian presses her thumb between her eyes, squeezing them shut and shaking her head as she opens them again. "Please don't cast that again." she says to Zack in a tone that sounds like she'd wanted to have begun with an exclaimed 'Jesus Christ'. Inhaling and exhaling to steady herself, she takes Night Mist in both hands, and blurts out the first shitty thing that comes to mind, in the time honoured practice of 'the unit commander isn't concerned, so you soldiers shouldn't be concerned'.

    "You all saw it. This thing's weak to puppets. Fuck it up."

                -----[stop]-----
    A giant tidal wave of awful shit crashes across the whole field and Lilian doesn't want to be anywhere near that. She pulls the stop slowly and early to burn less time, launches high up into the air at top speed, and disengages it as soon as she makes it past spray level, assuming she'll need to stretch out the time she'd conserved so far to kill this this . . . Jenova..
                -----[start]-----

    Lilian falls out of the air, somehow, right by the abomination dreds up from the dark in the wake of its saturation attack, clipping it on the way down with an overhead strike and bouncing off both heels to spin off without ceremony, immediately regaining the air, slinging the rifle under arm, emptying it completely into the creature, shrugging the sling off her shoulder, and following it up with two grenades. Putting both hands on the hilt of her sword again, the designs on the blade begin to pulse and churn, issuing cold smoke, as her eyes discolour and dark markings crawl over her skin, magnifying the aura of bloodlust to a level of physical pressure.
Seifer Almasy      Alright then.

     Seifer can't do anything with explosive dark water except try to avoid it. He's mostly successful, dancing over it with his absurd Hyperion acrobatics, but he's not *totally* successful - he mistimes his landing, his foot winding up in the stuff. It burns. It burns like hell. It clings to his pantsleg and eats straight through, hissing as it digs into his skin.

     "That's not a Heartless," Seifer manages through gritted teeth, stating the obvious more to avoid screaming than because he feels it really needs to be stated. After all, the thing has a giant beating heart. That should be really obvious.

     Alright then.

     Zack's scan gives them nothing, so it's best to just go on instinct. Seifer is best on instinct. Even if his instinct is muddled by J E N O V A 's mind-magic, by the pulsing of the puppet-thought in his mind. Seifer trusts his instincts even through the pain.

     Seifer's instincts are telling him he's glad he packed grenades.

     So when he lands, Seifer drags out the grenade belt and throws it firmly into J E N O V A 's pulsating heart in a pretty decent imitation of a G-Soldier. Something something Garden training.
Roxas Roxas is too busy ZONING OUT to have a good lock on what the VORTEX OF DARKNESS is doing, and as a consequence by the time he realizes that there are BOSS MECHANICS on the field he's already eating explosive bubbles like a bad PUG party member who is probably just a bot. He gets blown back through piles of dormant Keyblades, ripping him and his coat up pretty good along the way, and ultimately coming to a halt at the base of a rock.

His vision swims. It's only partially because of the murder magic and resulting impact.

He exhales sharply and uses the Keyblade that he picked up to push himself to his feet. It doesn't respond to him, though. It's not his. It hasn't been anybody's in a long, long time. In spite of the danger of doing so, he still takes a moment more to look down at it. It's familiar, in a way. But like so many other things that have come to him here, it's familiar in a way he would find entirely inarticulable.

He turns his attention, finally, towards the creature itself. This thing from the dark.

The hooded youth steps forward. The world disappears for an instant as he becomes a streak of light, dropping back out mid-air within close striking distance of Jenova. When he emerges both hands are filled with a Keyblade -- a live Keyblade, not one of the dead things littering the surroundings -- one black, and the other white. Roxas brings them down in what appears to be a great hammerblow, but actually carries him forward in the air, a wheel of light dancing around his person and biting in towards the... /thing/.
Axel As they approach outwards, and Zack casts the Scan, Axel shuts his eyes briefly, clutching his head as Something Weird Happens, before breathing as it ends. That was painful. But then the tentacle monster comes in.

It's horrifying. Axel grimaces looking at it, when it then blasts explosive dark water magic, which slams straight into Axel, damaging him and his cloak. The chakrams spin in his hands, as he wreathes them in flames and throws them back at JENOVA's horrible beating heart.

"Hey!" Axel shouts to Zack as he throws. "Get on the offensive! We need to tear it to bits!" He wants Zack to attack with the G-Saber so that they can continue the damage against this monstrosity.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur pushes on. Lilian issues certain orders, and Arthur intends to follow them. "Alright!" He shouts. "You want some SUNLIGHT? Let's FILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER WITH DAYLIGHT!" He surges forward towards the horrible creature with a rocket-blast, shouting all the while. "YEEEEEAAAAAAH!" The tidal wave comes for him, but he's ready. "COME ON!" He screams, surrounding himself with a starry night sky of a barrier. "FUUUUUCK YOOOOOOUUU!" The waves crash against it and /stop/. Arthur's not going to be taken down by something he's this familiar with!

    "You wanna GET UMBRAL, motherfucker? Let's bring out the LIGHT you got any GODDAMN SHADOWS to CAST FROM! YEAH! COME ON! LET'S DO THIS!" He roars!

    He moves in as close as he safely can, claps both hands together, and starts forming what looks like a small sun. This is normal. The fact that the small sun starts becoming a less-small sun quite quickly is less normal. Arthur's swirling mass of starlight is already starting to blast waves of cosmic wind and light at the tentacled monster JENOVA. "TALK, motherfucker!" He shouts. "I ain't some BULLSHIT SMALL-TIMER! I'm ARTHUR GODDAMN LOWELL, and I'm a goddamn PRINCE of the FURTHEST RING'S MOON, baby! If you got a GRIEF, you best fuckin' SAY IT STRAIGHT or I'm 'boutta SUNBURN YOU INTO ASH, you PIECE OF SHIT!"

    His sun isn't even going at full power yet, and it's already pouring out the damage! Speaking of damage, as his LINK ASSIST menu opens up, he motionlessly selects a vote for DESPERATE G-SABER!
Riku Riku might be in a party, but he may as well be alone with how he's moving and acting. He isn't keeping with the group at all, immediately bouncing back and forth in order to get into range of the inhuman creature dragging itself out of the Darkfont. Part of him is horrified. The Scan information doesn't help matters. He doesn't even know what a 'JENOVA' is.

But that doesn't matter. The rest of him cries out with glee that his anger has a proper target. The bubbles blast out across the field, and with a scream of anger, Riku hurls a black ball of flame into the dark water, the pair colliding in the air as Riku lunges through it as it blasts into a miasmatic wave of umbral fog that clings and scorches his body... But he doesn't stop as he leaps forward, his Eidolon rushing out of his shadow and coalescing around his arm as he slams his free hand down upon the beast, the fist burning with black flame.
Xion JENOVA is apparently weak to puppets, as Lilian says. Apparently.

It is, at least, buoying to have someone in apparent control. Not much, considering the literal crawling abomination, but a little. The awful monster continues to crawl-slither out of the darknes, a seemingly-endless mound of oozing viscera and twisted flesh being dragged out of the darkfont. Raziel's telekinetic blast of fire sends it back by inches, causing it to rear up and back in a clear pain response. The 'head', such as it is, is scorched by the attack, allowing Lilian to re-distance herself into the air, flickering into a drop attack with her sword right to the head, causing a large gout of the awful water-acid to bubble forth like blood from the wound. Her sidehop off the head should be timed, precisely, to avoid getting xenomorphed all over.

Thankfully, Lilian's pretty good at hitting timings.

Seifer falls back on age-old GARDEN training which goes a little something like 'this is your standard grenade. It's good against a mid sized target. This is an entire bandolier of grenades! it's good against any target!'. The string of detonators beep thrice before exploding back at JENOVA with the concussive force sending the lower body sliding back and revealing the upper body and back for striking. This forward fall is good for Roxas to start flip-blowing with his twinned keyblades (he has two? THERE'S ONLY ONE KEYBLADE WEILDER, AND THAT'S--) on the monster's back, a mass of tentacles and throbbing veins and undifferentiated aphotic meat.

Axel hooks his chakrams around under and behind on JENOVA's "tail", the throbbing heart, which cauterizes as it chops away at the thick flesh of the heart.

The good news: It does quite a number of sizzling, smoking damage points! The bad news is that unlike most monsters with a visible, audible, detailed heart, it is NOT A REAL WEAKPOINT. It's just gross.

Zack hears the call for him to get in on the action, and readies his sword.

Meanwhile, Arthur Lowell turns into a Literal Sun while Riku unleashes his Eidolon's power, the solar power of the Mage of Space burning the entire length of the awful, glistening flesh of JENOVA with his solar blasting. The swollen muscles of Riku's Eidolon layer over his fist as he delivers an empowered hammerblow to Jenova's stupid dangly 'head'.

Following right behind is Zack, sliding in to deliver a chop at Jenova's neck with his sword, which itself is engulfed in the lightning of a BOLT spell. "KID, SERIOUSLY, THEY'VE GOT MORE OF THIS STUFF WHERE YOU COME FROM?" He shouts at Arthur Lowell.

Jenova manages to right itself, the awful outpouring of darkness bursting out like a struck well of oil without all the 'we're rich!' implications, fountaining out like inky rain across the battlefield and dousing everyone - but actively burning like a hot, dark chemical burn to Roxas and Arthur's diametric opposition. It is raw darkstuff, and you absolutely, definitely, beyond a doubt do not want to swallow that down.

For the rest, one of the high-pointed tentacles from the fan around its right torso wriggles and emits a blue laser that erratically scythes across the field, looking more dangerous than it actually is. There is not a tracer explosion afterwards: it's just a blue laser.

Zack Fair uses Desperate G-Saber! 300 Damage!
Seifer Almasy      The heart isn't a weak point.

     That is somewhat disheartening (ha ha) for Seifer Almasy, because usually, when he fights monsters with hearts, it is the clear weak point, and the rest of the time, they're Heartless. This is slightly distressing. He is now not sure how to kill(?) this thing.

     On the upside, the blue laser is much easier for him to deal with. He goes charging straight at it, taking a burn across the shoulder. He's favoring his left leg, since his right has been badly burned, so he shoulder-checks the beam with his right and then turns right on back to the left. The beam actually gets close enough to burn his neck, but that's fine. He's not dead yet.

     Seifer grabs Hyperion with both hands and brings it stabbing straight down into J E N O V A. He pulls the trigger.

     He pulls the trigger a *lot*.

     He's mostly trying to distract it and pull it off Roxas and Arthur. He said he'd keep everybody safe. So he's gonna do that. As best he can.
Axel The heart isn't a weak poitn. What the hell? Axel grimaces, and then, a blue laser fires out of a tentacle. Axel brings up the chakrams to guard, but the laser overpowers, blasting Axel backwards, forcing him into a tumble, which he eventually lands in a skid on his feet.

"Where the hell do we hit this thing?!" Axel shouts, as he points a chakram at the heart again. It might not be the weakpoint, but it's where he's focusing, and where it hurts.

"Firaga!"

Massive lances of fire manifest in the air, and then fly at the heart-tail, moving to try and pierce into it and continue to cauterize it with horrible flames. Axel keeps moving while he does so, preparing to follow this up, eventually, with a powerful melee strike. But he needs to set up for it, first.
Raziel The words 'puppet' go through Raziel's head, he hears the words, but he denies them from the very bottom of his being.  He is not anyone's puppet, not Kain's, not the Elder God's, not this monster's.  Raziel continues to close the distance, as the others use his distraction to buy them time, he uses theirs.  

The laser aims right towards Raziel, and he slashes forward with the Reaver, and the force of his swing just tears the beam into two as he dives under the rest of it as it scorches the ground behind him.  Finally, he leaps forward, the Reaver coming right towards the creature's lower body, as he swings in a wide arc.

He spins as he does so, releasing a blast of telekinetic force towards the creature's center of mass, but also gaining something in the exchange thanks to the Soul Reaver's nature.  He's faster, quicker on his feet, as he starts maneuvering around the larger creature.
Riku Riku smashes into the thing. It hits. It helps. He feels a little better, unleashing raw, brutal violence upon the horrific, writhing thing. However, the laser death blazing through the area requires him to adjust his tactics. He abandons the Hulk Smash idea in favor of getting the hell away from the lasers, one of them grazing him as he backflips away, the Eidolon interposing itself to take tbe brunt of it. Even as it shears from the laser blast, it immediately begins reconsittuting. Riku can play this game too.

He lands there, about to attack again when a glint catches his attention and he looks over at Roxas. At that point, he stops, his jaw almost dropping as he stares, transfixed for a moment in a sudden shock. /Two/ Keyblades? It's all he can do to not scream 'THAT'S BULLCRAP' in the middle of the life or death combat. Dark energies rise up around Riku as he continues to draw out the storm of his emotions, the energy manifesting around him in burning, seething waves of black. "If that's going to be the way it is, fine! HAVE SOME KEYBLADES. WHY NOT?" He turns, pitching the Soul Eater up in a high arc as the Eidolon merges back with Riku's shadow. He spreads his hands outwards, and his shadow /spreads/ like ink across the Graveyard's ground, writhing as it grips around the rusted memorials and yanks them up into the air. They do not burst to life. They do not glow with the power of a true heart. But that's not what he's doing right now. Instead, he throws his hands forward. "DARKNESS!" He yells...

And the dead Keyblades begin firing at Jenova in a burst of shadowy shrapnel, the weapons being cast towards her at high speed and force to try to simply tear into her. Meanwhile, Riku charges forward, leaping through the air in order to catch his weapon and cap off the barrage with a powerful downward cleave. It's impossible to know what's needed in this horrible thing. Maybe /nothing/ is necessary. So all he can do at the moment is cleave and depend on massive damage.
Roxas Roxas isn't quite certain what to expect of the /darkness rain/ until it starts hitting him. He jerks his hood up reflexively and takes another firm STEP that converts him briefly into a ray of light-- but it doesn't do the greatest of jobs in keeping him out of trouble. He emerges with holes eaten in his coat and blistering burns peppering his body. The darkness that had made contact with him seeps off into the surroundings, but it doesn't move to rejoin the place from which it came.

"I don't think it matters!" He calls back to Axel, looking down at himself.

"It didn't do that to anybody else, did it...?"

He looks around. But he doesn't really have all that much time to investigate whether or not that stuff is MELTING OTHER PEOPLE. Not even the one other person it was actually aimed at.

One thing does catch his attention, though.

"No, don't--" He starts to call towards Riku, but he's too late. Dormant Keyblades are torn from the earth.

Truthfully, Roxas doesn't know why he said that. Or why anyone /would/. They're just lumps of metal, at this point. Maybe a bit of magic.

Nothing to be done about it now.

Roxas hurls both Keyblades through the air towards Jenova and punches the ground in front of himself. A great column of light rises from the ground directly before him, and then another, and another. A line of lights burst up into the sky, racing towards the grotesque thing from the dark, with the final column of light bursting into being in time with the paired Keyblades whistling through the air for their improvised distance strikes.

There is a RINGING as Roxas calls them back to hand, whether they make contact or not, preparing for whatever awful thing comes next from this abysmal creature. All evidence suggests that it can /only/ get worse.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur eats hot, raw darkness. "You got MORE OF THIS STUFF right goddamn HERE, homie! You want more? You want MOOOOOORE?!" He's accelerating. He uses his own sun to sear away the raw darkness from his body, taking a flash-burn but blasting it off of his body with its diametric opposite. Polarized mutual weakness is horrible! But he's working with it.

    Seifer's drawing the heat. Which means Arthur can bring more. "Let's unload MORE on this BITCH!" Within his sun -- it's large enough that it's encompassing his body now -- he presses both palms together, and begins tracing out elaborate, esoteric magic designs. The sun roils and churns, and accelerates through stages of stellar lifespan. It beats like a great human heart, and begins its main phase of light generation, unloading huge piles of damage onto the body of the creature. Somehow, he's directing its main output like a spotlight!

    He answers Axel succinctly. "EVERYWHEEEEEEERE!" And the spotlight blasts over the whole mass of the thing! As for Roxas, he shouts, "Motherfucker nicked me with it! Keep goin'! Get a STELLAR BATH if you need it, but we ain't got TIME to DIE!"
Lilian Rook     Lilian responds to 'where do we hit it' by yelling "What a stupid question! If nobody knows, just keep hitting it in different places until you find out!" She discards the pulled pins with a flick of her wrist and sends the spare magazines she had remaining clattering into the keyblade forest, having seen what the full group had done to the foul, dripping monstrosity lurching into their midst, and knowing that the hardware won't cut it this time.

    She stands there. Focusing. Sword up. Point drifting down, slowly down, towards 'Jenova'. Even when the oily black rain sprays up into the air, she stays rooted, regulating her breathing, centering her gravity, drawing her energy into herself. Markings like twisting black vines crawl all over her skin, coming up from her collar and the edge of her face and splitting into curls and fractals. The colour of her eyes turns negative, looking like the signs of a hostile, malevolent possession.

    "More."

    The black blade lets of smoke with the quality and smell owed to a powered bone saw. The pulsing light inside the red etchings weeps droplets of blood down its length, rolling down her knuckles and dripping off her fingers. The air fills with the sound of a quiet, shrill, long, drawn out scream, faint as if by some extreme distance, but going on indefinitely. The keyblades around her rattle and shake like blades of grass caught in the wind as the screaming grows imperceptibly louder. The laser comes towards her.

                -----[stop]-----
    ???
                -----[start]-----

    Lilian flashes by the dark colossus with her sword making loud, screeching ripping noises where it cuts, tearing away the thing's substance as if caught and dragged in the wake of the slashing, and absorbed into the blade itself. She zips back and forth across and around the monster, in and out of the barrage of fire from Axel and the waves of stellar energy from Arthur, directly crossing trails with Roxas and Riku, weaving a thin ribbon of bloody red light between the spirals of white and trails of black.
Xion Seifer starts off strong, jamming his sword into the mass of JENOVA's pale outer body and squirming, squelching flesh underneath.

BANG, goes the blank loaded into Hyperion.
WWWWIBBLE goes the surrounding meat. The whole of the body, down the umbilicus, undulates at a growing synchronicity.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. Seifer unloads a pile of his loaded blanks into the body, and the whole body begins vibrating. The flesh around the sword-wound spills more of the caustic darkbad blood, bubbling up like muck from a burbling sinkhole.

Seifer, even if he doesn't cause meaningful damage, draws the entire attention of a ship-chewing, scenery displacing monster.

It is almost a loving mercy - almost, as it sweeps a tentacle at him covered in dripping film about the size of a treetrunk - that Seifer feels Jenova's nascent love for him. The tentacle being sticky is only half the awful horror.

The stickiness of uncovered flesh adhering to it - fusing to it like a glue trap - is perhaps all the worse. It wants to be closer than touching, Seifer.

Thankfully, Axel is there to help a brother out, with FIRE. Fire is like light. It's familiar, too. The scorching heat turns sticky spreading to a dry and humid explosion, freeing Seifer from the tentacle with absolutely no lingering effects anyone should be worried about, the flaming lances burning and cauterizing and turning the birthing of flesh into a burning to ash. Convenient!

Raziel's Soul Reaver, and Riku's Soul Eater (a convenient naming convention by any metric) are a ballet of swordstrokes and blasting secondary magics, Raziel leveraging his telekinetic blasting while Riku sticks to dark flame (dark flame means Chosen One PLUS) and channeling the dark power to seize ancient keyblades like missiles.

The telling blow combines with a hail of once-glorious weapons to cut and carve, Jenova pincushioned with a few dozen keyblades of various shapes and sepia toned colors, roaring in exaggerated (or real) agony at the weapons' new home.

Roxas uses his own keyblades to channel a pillar of Light magic, at the same time Arthur summons up the Sun itself, the giver of light, a massive outpouring of unstoppable, tremendous LIGHT to spotlight upon Jenova.

Spotlight on the thing crawling out of the Outside Dark.

Roxas' magic does damage, of course, and he can feel the connection, but Arthur struggles against something more Metaphysical. Something altogether more abstract.

He shines his light: all of his light, into a dark place. Overflowing, abundant, raging light, from an overflowingly abundant eternal teen ready to strike out against something exactly like this creature. A believing heart is his magic. And he believes this will work.

The Darkfont, behind Jenova, suddenly contracts in the absurd lightshow, and while JENOVA takes no direct damage from this metaphysical eruption of solar light--

The Darkfont, under such a sun, gurgles, boils, and then, like a garbage disposal, makes a TERRIBLE NOISE.

Grinding, spewing, and belching, the last of Jenova's tail emerges, the umbilicus cut off at the source as the great being slithers out and the Darkfont itself shrivels up and pops, leaving only the dusty broken earth.

Oh, and an ENORMOUS MONSTER.

Lilian goes ham on JENOVA's corpus, her blade, like Arthur's overflowing solar Light, quite attuned at this sort of thing. Specialized in removal, like an especially vicious scalpel that cut away the impure outsider.

The crawling alien.

Jenova begins to recede, to shrink under the assault, before bursting out with a disgusting discharge of dark magical miasma, a lung-searing cloud of bleck that feels like the inhaler smoked four packs a day for twenty years. Lilian gets that the worst, being point blank at the point of contact.

Arthur, meanwhile, feels TREMENDOUSLY drained, as if the vastness of space was sucking away at his very bones, the universal enormity of expanding infinitely into nothingness, forever.
Xion Zack, coughing and retreating, throws up a shining rainbow vial, which bursts in mid air and spread sparkles of healing light across the party. "Whatever you did, it looked like it won't keep growing and coming out! Just kill it! Backup's coming!" Zack shouts rallyingly.

Zack Fair uses G-RESTORE All Allies Heal 100!
Axel The group continues to fight. Fire spreads to free Seifer, and Axel nods to him, before he watches Arthur obliterate the Darkfont. "Nice going!" He means it sincerely, but then, there's the cloud of miasma, and...

That hurts his lungs. He's not a smoker. He doesn't know how it's supposed to feel. But he starts wheezing, choking, trying to pull out of the miasma. It's Zack's rally that keeps Axel going, as the healing light bleeds through him. "Right...alright!"

Axel slides backwards out of the miasma, and then looks for the heart-tail again. And then, dashing forward, he leaps upwards, bursts through the air, and moves to impact it in melee. Right before he hits, the chakrams start spinning like buzzsaws, and fire spreads around them. Axel doesn't scream or do anything like that, though, he's cool and collected, and doesn't actually feel much of anything - he's just trying to get this fight over as soon as possible. But there's something important about his buzzsaw fire slash.

It's an X-Cut.

The chakrams move to slice into the tail and try and rip it to chunks, doing as much damage as possible in a single strike.
Raziel Poison floods through the area, Raziel does not immediately bother even trying to avoid it...he should be immune to this because there are no organs to hurt, nobody to meaningfully damage.  Raziel is...half right, this was some sort of magical attack, and it would hurt him in a way he wasn't sure about.  Even if he can not comprehend /how/ that is right at this moment.  

He looks towards the light...it is diminishing the font of darkness, and he squints.  With that much light...

He sees it start to form, a coalescing of light energy building into a font.  Weak, but it should be enough.  He runs straight for it and with a thrust of his reaver punches it down into the well of light created by the massive sun Arthur just dropped.  There was a burst as Raziel was pulled up for a moment and unceremoniously dropped back to the ground.  The Reaver took on a white-yellowish color, instead of its normal blue hue as he turned right back towards JENOVA.  

'It was not unlike the fonts on Nosgoth, with the Reaver already being forged by the Light Forge, it was able to rekindle that power by dipping it into areas of a pure element.  It seemed these creatures did not like the light...well, I would be sure to use this to full effect.  Even if I felt something stirring in my body that felt...odd.'

Rushed straight for Jenova, putting the Light Reaver to as much effect as he could.  He dives under Axel, aiming to come up in an uppercut slash with the Reaver, before bringing the weapon down towards the ground in a massive overhanded slash.  With that, he raises the Reaver up...

And unleashes a massive burst of light elemental damage in the form of a strange mist around him.  It would strike out at any foe around him, aiming to burn away natural darkness.
Seifer Almasy      Well that's

     horrifying

     on a number of levels

     Seifer's first response is to move to parry. This is a stupid response, and in the middle of deciding it, he reverses it, rolling backwards into Axel's fire as the tentacle makes a grab for him. It very nearly catches him. It is close enough that he can feel his skin prickle and pucker in biological rejection of the horror.

     His blade actually carves *through* the fire, clearing him a path as it hits the tentacle. Axel's fire is working, and it's working well. Roxas's light is working, and it's working well. Seifer...

     He could borrow the light. He could borrow the fire. But it's better if he keeps doing what he's doing.

     There's a wild grin on his face as, contrary to all common sense, Seifer Almasy dives right back into the mess of burning tentacles. He spares a moment to mostly cover himself in his coat, to shroud as much of his flesh as he can, including his eyes and his mouth and his nose, but he goes right back in.

     This is what he did for Sora. This is what he should be doing. He gets right up in there and he draws all the aggro.

     Hyperion flashes against the flames. It flashes not for vulnerable points that will cause the most damage, but for points that he can annoy the monster the most. He drives Hyperion into bulbous points. He drives Hyperion into the ends of tentacles. His only goal is to cause as much pain as possible, and in the process, allow everybody else to do what they do best.
Riku Riku might have to send Zack a card or something, as that rainbow vial cracks and heals his wounds. The sudden consciousness that the backup is helping him too helps snap him partially out of his scrapper-lock and gets his head back in the game. Also, Roxas is yelling at him to Not Do The Thing He Just Did. "Explain!" He yells back to Roxas, but it's unlikely that either will have time to really explain or listen.

Arthur cuts off the Darkfont, which is great. Riku was just considering trying to Superior Cleave the tail to cut the thing off from the Font physically, now he doesn't have to. More importantly, the thing is spouting Actual Miasma at him, and Riku can't dodge /the air/. The horrible mess gets into his lungs, and he feels his body begin to churn and seize up under the mess of supernaturally horrible stuff that just invaded his airways. He coughs and chokes, bailing backwards to get the hell out of the cloud until it dissipates. While everyone else cuts into the thing with various forms of light, Riku only has one hammer. He sharpens his emotions into a singular, murderous intent while Seifer gives him the opening he's looking for.

His Eidolon rises, and Riku leaps onto it, the thing hurtling him Hella High as he flies upwards. He brings the Soul Eater back behind his head, holding it with both hands as that intent surges through his blade, creating a long, deadly scythelike blade of black flame that extends off of his weapon.

He comes down, spinning like a buzzsaw in a slam-dunk vertical chop that tries to cleave down through Jenova. Moments after the impact, however, his Eidolon grabs him and resets, spinning him around and through a gaping portal of black that swallows Riku whole. It might have been dangerous to do this while the Darkfont was open, but now...

Riku begins blazing through the area, leaving purple-black flames ripping through the air as he slashes through and around Jenova, delivering slash after slash in an attempt to overwhelm the abomination's supernatural vitality with BIG DAMAGE. Every time he slashes, he falls into another Corridor, maintaining a combo as he warps around to Deliver Swordings.

Finally, he reappears high above Jenova, blade held high as he drops down and attempts to straight skewer the thing through from behind with his final strike.
Lilian Rook     "Perfect! Exactly according to plan!" Lilian shoots in Arthur's direction, actually encouraging for a startlingly rare change of pace, clearly ecstatic that what she'd ordered had worked exactly as she'd hoped. It's a little bit weird though, because she says it with a voice possessed of a subtle, secondary echo to it, distant, distorted, happier with being obeyed and inflicting pain than mere operational integrity. Blood drips in her wake that is neither hers nor Jenova's, as she speaks over the constant, eerie, vibrato whine of her sword.

    The great abomination erupting with a massive area gas attack out of its wounds is more than Lilian had been anticipating. With the opposite of a telegraph, no energy spike, and no immediately lethal threat to be precognitive over, she takes the wash of acrid fumes to the face right away, accidentally breathing in a half-breath of it, before-

                -----[stop]-----
    Lilian recoils from the cloud, violently coughing exhalations of black soot that swirl and freeze as little black puffs in the air, following where she staggers back. She swipes her sword, and the miasma parts cleanly down the middle, not flowing back in instantaneously like smoke actually does, but looking cut apart like gel. Slipping from the gap, she juices her slightly sudden and shakey grip of time to get some more distance from the expanding cloud, and takes a few, ragged, heaving emergency breaths of 'fresh' air.
                -----[start]-----

    -and blipping out of the cloud to a safe distance again, thwacking her collarbone twice and exhaling hard and ragged for a moment. Not stopping long enough to display a potential effect on her, Lilian tears forward again, this time weaving through attacks manually at an absurd, weightless, zero inertia sort of speed rush with left and right controls to dodge scripted obstacles, then throws the whole of her body into a forward snap-lunge to bury the entire length of her longsword into Jenova's mass. It doesn't seem to be anything critical. Just ramming the whole war blade as deep as it'll go, into a big, gooey mass.

    The low background wailing becomes a splitting banshee scream where Night Mist bites into the Outsider, like hacking into bone again, or completing an uninsulated electric arc, and the small quantities of mysterious blood weeping from the sword's inlaid etchings become an explosion of high velocity 'jets' inside the monster, which instantly crystallize into scores of long, slender, jagged, internal thorns, some of which could punch right back out the surface Lilian stabbed at to begin with. When she wrenches the blade back to disappear and gain a new angle, the cluster of spikes left behind will glow bright red, then explode into a million pieces.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur's getting badly drained. His ASPECT GAUGE is visibly eating absolute shit, and it's causing his SUN to falter. "Ghhhh... Fucking... piece of shit HORRORTERROR..." He mutters. "You think you can BEAT MY ENERGY? You think you can OUTLAST me? No. NO! YOU MOTHERFUCKER," Arthur grits his teeth and bites his lip. "Hhhhhhh... NOT LETTING YOU! You wanna RUN? You wanna HIDE? BITCH, you can't HIDE FROM THE SUN! I'll fuckin' SCOUR YOU, you OVERGROWN SQUIDMIST!"

    He's burned away the DARKFONT, but he's not stopping there. He won't let his ASPECT GAUGE fall. No, he reaches deep and relies less on his coolness, his bravado, or his boundless enthusiasm. No, this, in particular, is closer to his /duty/ than anything else; his role as a Prince of Derse means he has to make this happen.

    Zack's healing seems to be the moment that perks him up. Because he digs DEEP now. If Zack is going to give him a little extra to his HEALTH VIAL, he's going to dig /into/ it. His ASPECT GAUGE starts to boost hard, draining from his HEALTH VIAL directly. The sunstuff itself twists, churns, turns red, and makes... a noise. Like a gun chambering a round.

                   +--------------------------------------+                  
                   |            FORTISSENOVA              |                  
                   +--------------------------------------+                  

    Arthur pops a Fraymotif. The sun goes from red all the way back to a deep blue. If sympathies happen to be /just so/, geiger counters all across Galbadia briefly, momentarily, all jump in perfect unison. He finds the closest thing to a mouth on this thing, and he slam-dunks the sun in there before it goes supernova.
Roxas The well of darkness... disappeared?

Roxas is given momentary pause by this, his gaze drawn towards the bare earth from which the monster had emerged. He doesn't get much time to think on it, though, as it is immediately followed up by the CLOSE COUSIN of a disgusting Malboro's BAD BREATH ability. Being familiar enough with this sort of ability to try to stay out of them, he leaps backwards and misjudges the exact distance that he needs to cover in order to escape. The miasma sweeps in over him, which is followed soon by the sound of coughing and gagging.

A moment later there is a burst of FIRE as Roxas dares to simply ignite the disgusting miasma around him to disperse it from simply lingering atop his person. He squints, blurry-eyed, through the rest of it around him. The great silhouette of the figure from which it came looms at the edge of his perception.

That thing is too big to miss, even with his eyesight compromised.

A distant part of him wants to shout, to tell the thing... something. But once again what Roxas feels and what he knows pass by one another but do not connect. Like parallel railways, with one train passing the other. From one you could look out and see another person waving at you from the other side.

But no matter what, you're in this train, and they're in that train.

In the absence of something to say, something truly meaningful to express, Roxas screams incoherently into the surrounding miasma. Something, anything, to let the incomprehensible feelings out.

Out of the miasma...

Two points of light come spiraling out around each other, twin 'bullets' cast from the point of a Keyblade. Their overall physical impact in and of themselves ie little, but they have a powerful concussive effect-- enough to lift something very large from the ground, into the air, if only for a moment.

Roxas follows soon afterwards, blister-skinned, with red and visibly aggravated eyes. The moment he leaves the cloud the lightshow begins. Multiple columns of light burst forth from the ground as he sprints towards Jenova, each with its own mild destructive force, and considerably more concussive force.

The Nobody leaps, and for a moment remains aloft as he swings his Keyblades, arcs of light dancing off of them as he goes -- not for a coherent target, because his eyes are too messed up to follow that at the moment -- for any part of the large mass of Jenova that seems within arm's reach.

And then he falls, barely managing to keep his feet as the geysers of light cease. Both Keyblades ring as their tips hit the ground, used as physical support to keep Roxas upright.

Roxas looks about, for Riku-- who asked him to explain. He takes a long moment to catch his breath before, finally, he chokes out, "I can't."

It isn't a refusal, Riku can tell that much on first contact. Roxas very literally cannot answer. He doesn't know. All he's gotten looking for answers here is an infinite variety of more questions that he can't even really parse.
Xion It is a climax in two parts. First, come the blades.

Seifer takes the fore, emulating the legendary knight he drew his inspiration from, denying the siren song of power that the Outer Darkness - that JENOVA - promised. He was not a pawn or puppet. He was the Sorceress' Knight.

Raziel rushes in, striking with his burning spirit-blade in a covered combo, given all the room he could ever want at the fore with his blazing arcs of burning light.

Axel goes for the long tail, and charges the tail, and finds someone at his shoulder, burning with a golden aura. "Let's show this stupid thing Galbadia's pride!" Zack roars. Zack carves a deep vertical slash along the tail, a heartbeat before Axel's twin chakrams fall in a powerful X. Zack finishes squaring up the CROSS-SLASH with a cleaving L-slash that leaves a burning outline in the flesh, the crackling aura of his blade paralyzing the flailing monster for long enough for...

Riku's own darkly burning trail through the air as he unleashes a flurry of blades in tandem with Lilian's draw-forth of the bleeding Night Mist, pushing through the miasmic cloud around JENOVA to go absolutely TO TOWN on the chest.

The second part of the combo-finish comes more orbitally. Roxas initial sword combo joins Riku and Lilian's graceful, brutal slashing orchestra before he leaves the cloud and goes all in on pillars of bright white light, throwing RAID MECHANICS right back at Jenova to blast, burn, and scour away the monster.

All the while, the SUN burns.

All the while, Arthur Lowell powers up in HD 1080P. The sun blueshifts. It becomes a weapon, a terrifying upwelling of power that the Mage of Space motherheckin' CHAOS DUNKS right down on JENOVA's stupid dangly head, cratering the center of the KEYBLADE GRAVEYARD with the whitenoise deep-rumble of plate tectonics and classic JRPG 'krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'.

When the burnt smoke clears, and the miasma fades, there's nothing of Jenova left. The chopped pieces that weren't immediately atomized quietly fall like chunks of immolating flesh, blackened and useless.

The keyblades seems largely unaffected.

There is no sign of the Unit Captain, but seeing as he was never really physically 'there'...

It's most likely he had fused with the creature, like Seifer almost was consumed.

Things grow quiet.

You are allowed to take a breath.

LINK ACTION - Zack Fair uses Pride of Galbadia! 500 Damage!
Axel As Zack joins in with his own attack to fight with Axel, Axel grins shallowly. He does genuinely like the guy though - he's a good guy, and his heart's in it. The slash works, and everyone's attacks together, with that burning sun and those various strikes, finish off JENOVA.

Axel pauses as things grow quiet and he watches it fade away. He takes a breath. Once it's clear that the danger is gone, he desummons his chakrams. And then, he turns to the others, and thumbs up.

"We did it. I think that goes on the list as the worst thing I've ever fought, and probably the ugliest, too."
Xion From above, in the clock tower, there's an older voice that calls out - familiar, as the adrenaline starts to fade. "Looks like you won't need my help, eh?"

Commander Angeal Hewley, his enormous sword still on his back, but a more stadard G-Saber held in his right hand, starts hopping down the rocky cliffs, with Jessie in tow following slowly. "When Jessie radio'ed for serious backup and reported a man down, I had thought the worst... But it seems you've exceeded the mission expectations entirely. Are you all alright?"

Zack falls onto his butt and starts laughing. "Nearly died, sir, but I think I've still got all my fingers and toes."

Angeal finishes his approach, smiling with genuine warmth. "Glad to hear it, soldier. The rest of you? Private Strife was evacuated to the medical tent before we turned around. Got held up at the water-lock, sorry I couldn't help sooner."
Raziel Raziel watches the thing fade away, nothing left to consume either.  With a heavy sigh and a release of tension, he stands up fully as the Reaver slowly fades back into an angry crackle of energy along his arm.  Fortunately, it wasn't a large army of creatures, but a singular entity.  He has no idea what just happened other than...well it was a large monster they just killed, so there is that.

Turning towards the new voice, and the reveal of Angeal, Raziel gives a small wave.  Looking towards Zack he gives a laugh.  "For almost dying you look pretty healthy," Raziel says, before looking around.  

He didn't get a chance to before, but he looks for ghosts...spirits, anything that might remain of the dead that should be at such a sight as this.  If this place was such a place.

"It is good he made it to safety.  Aiding a comrade who definitely needs your assistance is by far more important than a group of heavily armed and trained group fighting."
Xion Angeal nods. "Well, when I was getting warnings from Central about a 'massive power spike' that had the entire city go into lockdown, I had some incentive to hurry up either way." He chuckles. "But it was the good kind of power surge, so it'll be easy to excuse. Either way... looks like one heck of a battle was fought here."
Lilian Rook     With the monster finally dead, though more likely just repelled for the time being, Lilian takes a moment to-

                -----[stop]-----
    Drop flat on her ass, heaving, coughing, and hacking until she spits up small quantities of blood, rubbing her eyes and wiping sweat and miasma residue from her face, until she just tilts her head back and pours her water in both. She stays like that for a while, coughing up smoker's gunk, repeatedly rinsing and drying her exposed face, and then when she feels like she can breathe properly and her vision isn't all blurry, she lets down and then re-ties her hair again to straighten it out, getting back up her feet with an exhausted sigh, wanting to stay sitting and resting for longer, groaning "Fuck that useless Captain, fuck that revolting soup of alien evil garbage, fuck this nonsense clock basement, and fuck keyblades." She slaps her cheeks, taking a breath, and straightening up.
                -----[start]-----

    -look intensely self-satisfied, putting away Night Mist with a fancy couple of twirls and no-looking perfect sheathing motion. "Perfectly fine. The script was a little wild, but this one went by the books~" she replies to Hewly, sequentially cracking her knuckles one after the other. "I appreciate the competence and discipline of your men. Normally, bringing soldiers along is an exercise in babysitting, but Galbadia's finest were a big help."

    "I don't want to jump to *conclusions*, but I think this one is pretty neatly wrapped up for now. Where exactly this is and where it goes to is worth investigating, if its connection holds to the Train Graveyard, but that's for another time and place. I appreciate being given this opportunity. It's necessary to remind creatures like these, from time to time, that the reason they live underground is because they should be afraid of humanity, and not the other way around. Rounding them up, exterminating them en mass, and executing the mastermind in its own home, is exactly the kind of response these things should learn to expect and fear."

    Lilian stretches her arms out over her head and relaxes her posture a little, cocking her hip and waving offhandedly. "Anyways, I expect everything topside is fine if you got down here without any real problems. Entrusting the quarantine to the G-Forces was clearly the right decision." She gestures broadly at the rest of the group. "These guys held up pretty well, all things considered. Yes, Almasy too. I wouldn't mind putting them to use again. The UV tipoff was especially helpful. Glad your guys seem to know their stuff."
Arthur Lowell     Arthur takes a few moments. He needs five seconds just to pant, and recover his breath. He seems to get it, as he drifts to the ground. accosts the new visitor. "Yeah boy yeah, gimmie that skin." He approaches Angeal Hewley and harasses his arm with an elaborate multi-angle sequence of a coolkid handshake. "Yeah dawg, s'ALL GOOD! Had to pop a FRAYMOTIF to take BIG J down. BAD NEWS is, couldn't get a nice HEARTFELT THING with the UNIT CAPTAIN, do whatever SOUL-SEARCHING ya gotta do to BRING A GUY BACK FROM THAT. GOOD NEWS is, think we GOT IT! Found the WEIRD SHIT on the other end of the UNDERGROUND SYMPATHY, had to BLOW IT UP. Think if we HEAD BACK, I can get this shit SHUT TIGHT. Here, lemme try to..." He snaps, casting a GATE. If he's /right/, his checkpointing should let him bounce the Gate relays back to the entryway, around the trainyard. And conveniently let them back out, so he can try un-screwing the space!
Riku Of course Roxas can't explain. He just /knows/ somehow, huh? It just adds onto the pile of reasons why Roxas just bugs Riku some more. It's already getting pretty tall.

Meanwhile, Riku cleaves and slices and cleaves, doing his part to slash through the darkness, using his own to purge the enemy. There is nothing that says that Darkness cannot purge Darkness. Far from it. It happens more often than you think.

Regardless, Riku finally drops to the ground amidst that burning sun, seeing that Jenova and the Darkfont have both been purged. With a flick of his hand, the Soul Eater is banished. The job is complete. "Looks like everything is handled." He says, looking aroung and turning to Angeal. He gives the man a wave. "No problem. Was worse than we thought, but it was handled."

At that, he turns to Lilian and holds out a hand. "The book. I know someone who might be able to translate it. If you give it to me, I can get it to her." Yeah, now that the threat's been removed, now is the time for make his requests.
Lilian Rook     Thus Lilian immediately gets selfish and shitty.

    "How does that track? If you know someone, just give me her number and I'll see her myself. I don't have to give you the book just for that. You obviously want it for some other reason."
Raziel Raziel watches the fight over the book start.

Riku claimed he knew someone, but Lilian's point to be suspicious was not completely invalid.  It was probably going to be a situation of nobody trusting the other.  

"Riku has not shown himself to be untrustworthy, he has stayed the course and has provided his full support.  If he wanted to run off with the book he could have easily done so in the middle of the battle.  He did not."

"Our personal differences aside," Raziel says, towards the boy.  "However, Lilian's request is also a valid one, and we're all very exhausted from a tiring ordeal.  I am sure we can come to a compromise we all can live with."
Roxas Even absent the font of dark, the Keyblade Graveyard is a grim place. Endless grey clouds roll through the skies, dimming the blasted, rocky terrain below. The only gradient of weather is 'shady' and 'dark', though the sun never sets, and it still has all the heat of a desert to it. Try though one might, it is not possible to find lingering ghosts here. The battle that made this place came and went long, long ago, probably before anyone assembled at this place and time was even born.

Exactly one thing lingers, and it is not a readily graspable thing.

There is a slumbering intent to the Graveyard. It is neither loud, or pronounced, or easily perceived when all is at rest. If something had not stirred it then, perhaps, it would not even be here just now to be detected. It is best described as nothing more or less than a feeling of "well meaning" that, undoubtedly, came to nothing in the distant past.

Roxas leans on his Keyblades for a while before he collects himself enough to carry on. Slowly he straightens up, the tips of the weapons rising from the ground. After a moment of staring into space, he banishes each weapon with a pronounced ringing.

He turns to face Lilian.

"All battlefields are the same battlefield and all graveyards are the same graveyard," Roxas explains to Lilian, with confidence undue his actual knowledge here, "But... this place hasn't been important in a long time."

This is a flawed understanding of the situation, while also not technically being incorrect.

His expression turns forlorn, "That book... it had a picture in it of a keyblade I know. But the others didn't have keychains. That's not right. They always have a chain. See?"

Roxas re-summons Oblivion, and displays the black crown keychain that trails from its hilt.
Riku He was expecting it but it's just as annoying to him regardless. Riku gets an irritated expression and folds his arms. Sure, Raziel actually is going to bat for him which is a nice change of pace, but there's still the matter of convincing the person with the actual book to hand it over.

And so he sets to making his case. "Like what? I can't read it either. If you're going to be paranoid, do it on someone else's time. It's not your book, I'm just trying to get the stupid thing translated so it can actually be useful. You want to come with me, fine. I don't care."

He looks to Roxas again as he tries to explain things in his... Roxasy way. "That doesn't even mean anything." Riku says. "It doesn't even make any sense. But you are right about something... Keyblades do have keychains."
Xion Angeal stands up a little more straight as Lilian returns with her 'perfect' affectation, nodding. "I thought things were going to get a little hairy down here, Ma'am, but that's why the operation was put together the way it did. If you had hit hard opposition, that's what the entrenchment around the area was for. We don't send people in alone - and we don't run operations without an exit strategy and backup waiting."

Even for a military man popping hot military words, Angeal exudes the sheer upright aura of a man who means every syllable of every word from the bottom of his heart.

"Cleanup operations are proceeding apace, and we should have the Train Graveyard cleared and secure for re-development within a few weeks. After you defeated the Sweepers, everything else began to fall into place."

Arthur engages Angeal with HIP HOPPIN HAND-JIVE, but Angeal is a military field commander, and keeps up, if a little stiffly, going in for too many FIST BUMPS and not enough hand waggling he ends it, clasping Arthur's hand in his gloved mitt. "People like you are an inspiration. And: what we fight to protect. Galbadia thanks you for your impressive service."

As he speaks, the portal opens back outside - in fact, it's quite easy to LEAVE this area now that the threat is gone. Arthur is, once more, right on the money.

Angeal watches Riku spat lightly with Lilian, raising an eyebrow questioningly at Riku's accusations, and...

Roxas. "You're in the middle of a G-Forces operation, kid. What are you doing here?"

His tone isn't harsh, but it is decisive.
Roxas "I was looking for answers, and this is where they lead me. I don't really know how you guys got here, but it doesn't sound like it was anything at all like how I got here. I just walked through town." Roxas replies to Angeal, gesticulating vaguely with the hand he's not carrying the keyblade Oblivion in.

He looks between Lilian, Riku, and Raziel.

"Uh..."

He raises a hand as the argument goes back and forth a little, "Excuse me--"

"Lilian is really reliable, and if you need copies, why not... just have the G-Forces digitize it and distribute PDFs? That's a lot easier than carrying it around. That book is really familiar, though... I can't read it, but I think I might have seen it once before. Or maybe I had a copy?"

"Xemnas could do that, too, if you wanted." He adds, off-handedly.
Lilian Rook     "It's not your book either." Lilian snips back, rapidly regressing from pro military showoff atmosphere to 'really not much older than Riku' when Angeal's attention shifts away to Roxas. She scoffs at 'could have easily taken it', appearing to have zero respect for her elder(vampire)s when they don't have rank and effusive praise to give her.

    "If you're going to whine for things that aren't yours, do it on someone else's time." she parrots. "Unlike yours, mine is valuable. If you just give me the contact details, *you* can come along. Otherwise, I'll find someone else to do it. Didn't you loot enough from those ridiculous treasure chests? My operation, my find, my rules."

    She briefly breaks off being a snobby rich contrarian tttttteeeeennnn???? to reply to Roxas being Roxas. "Well, apparently it wasn't supposed to be important. That black pit probably cropped up when the Sorceress nuked the place, or shortly thereafter anyways, like a radioactive footprint. Not sure why it'd choose here, but just because it wasn't important for a long time doesn't mean it isn't *potentially* important. I get the feeling it's going to come up again." she says.

    Her thoughts on keychains are a big, emphatic shrug. "Aren't keychains something you attach yourself?" she says, in the most clean, unangled way she's said anything all day, like she's just reminding him of an innocent fact. "Keychains are how you personalize your keys, or your phone I guess. If it's just a drawing, and nobody's in particular, obviously it wouldn't have a keychain."

    Eventually, she decides to listen to Roxas. Not particularly because Roxas is very convincing or eloquent, but because he isn't Riku, and he starts off his suggestion with praise and a compromise. "Fine. You can have the scans. That makes sense. Try listening to this kid more. Take them to whoever you want and I'll chat up this Xemnas guy."

    That all settled, she puts back on the more professional face when walking up to Angeal again. "Excellent. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Once I offload some things and finish a report, I'll see if I can set aside some time to stick around and see the cleanup through myself. No reason to leave a job half-done." She seems to agree with Arthur on 'ollies outie'. "Good work in advance if this leads right back outside." she says to him, a moment before going through the gate. "If it doesn't, I'll think of something suitably bad."
Raziel Raziel's eyes narrow, the pools of light becoming narrow slits as...

Well, Lilian decides to be a petulant child, in Raziel's eyes, as she decides to simply try and refuse any compromise or any reason.  He's about to say something else when Roxas comes up with an alternative, which is...actually a fair trade.  Copying the book and distributing it for translation would be a much easier thing.

Also, it keeps the book from being potentially damaged.  Also, did he...just play her?  Raziel isn't sure if he did it on purpose or not, which is odd.  Usually, he's good at detecting this kind of thing.

"If we're all done quibbling over a toy, then let us be on our way."
Riku There's a thousand things he could say at this point, both to Lilian /and/ Raziel. None of them would help. For now, he simply grits his teeth and reins his emotions in. "Fine. Give me the scans and I'll drop it. For now."

He turns away and stalks over to the gate, following Lilian out. He is /not/ letting her get away without holding up her end of this. And once she does, he's gone.