Scene #6748: *Marama's Fell

Owner	Pose
Bloody Revelations	With the way things have unfolded, finally, the plan is really, really simple. All the hard and complicated obstacles taken care of, the big step to resolve 'the fact that there is a mutant crazy gladiator warlord smashing together evil armies from beyond the grave that increasingly menace this area of the north' is, at last, 'kill he'. With a name like 'Thrice-Dead Achiba', it doesn't sound terribly easy or pleasant. The fact that he's a ghost that came into being through a grudge over being literally put through a genocidal Holocaust-esque death camp to execute all non-humans thousands of years ago is also a little bit menacing on its own, and also normally makes it that stabbing him wouldn't 'take', which has only just recently been resolved. Calling on the mad ghost of the big war crimes commandant who ran the whole death camp, herself a victim of fucked up Solar mind control abuse in life, didn't make the chain of turtles any less pleasant, but due to that resonant, post-death bond, the mad wanderer has finally lead people right to Achiba, and essentially broken his tethers to undeath with the help of the Bureau Necromancer assigned to the group intending on assassinating said warlord. As usual, the bleak intersection of the Underworld and Creation called Marama's Fell, where the land of the dead bleeds over into the land of the living, its land tainted and marred by the mass violent death of millennia ago, is a cold, barrel, frozen hole. Rotten and petrified stumps of an ancient forest razed to the ground, encased in layers of unmelting ice and half-buried under drifts of stone hard frost, stretch for endless miles upon miles, frequently dotted with the dusty, abandoned hulks of all manner of creative execution apparati in various sub-camps and bases, their roads to each other all long crumbled or buried, and now haunted by little more than skulking spectres, giant ravens, and weird skeletal creatures, now that their inhabitants have all been recruited into a gigantic warband. After several treks through it, a useable 'main path' has been more or less cleared of random encounters, and set up with protections by the Bureau Necromancer attache last time. This is ideal, because Achiba's war camp appears to be, predictably, right in the northern central territory of the thousands of square miles shadowland. It consists of tens of thousands of ragged black tends stretched on frames of bone, and scavenged ancient magitechnological parts slammed together into more immediately useful forms than their ancient extravagance, with ancient communications and artworks and transport wonders lost turned into crude shelters and heaters and Essence recharging fonts. Thousands of eerie green smokeless bonfires dot the midday night of this place, and the grumble and bustle and low roar of clanging and creaking common to places like these is entirely affected --a distant echo of the sound its inhabitants all remember from life, but no longer create themselves, merely going through the motions of drink and mess and maintenance and games in pantomime. Of course, there isn't a single human being, or rather, the ghost of one, to be found. There are weird, hairless, winged people; short and overbroad people with blank eyes jade as skin; hybrids of multiple animals that walk on two legs; elaborate and unique mechanical automata; but no humans. All of them are armed and most armoured.
Bloody Revelations	For the most part, they're with standard (if unnecessarily cruelly modified) swords, axes, polearms, javelins, bows, black powder grenades, crossbows, scale mail, lamellar, and the like, but a goodly portion of the more intimidating specimens bear weapons made of strange black metals and glowing blue-white crystals that look distinctly more like rifles or cannons, wearing elaborate suits with luminous visors. The sheer number of them is effectively 'kind of too much'. It's almost every ghost in the whole Fell, which is 'a large fraction of every non-human ever executed at Camp 17', which is 'most of them in the world'. Even if you somehow killed five thousand each, you'd still be swarmed in the end. There isn't enough stamina, magic, and ammo, to take them all on in a headlong charge. Achiba has to be somewhere in there though.
Gawain	Gawain has been a vanguard of the expedition, his armor and strength slicing through monsters and trying to keep the others safe, Slicing through dangerous skeletal creatures when they cross pathes, the sunshine knight has kept as bright a smile as he can. The smile fades, only a little, when he realizes there's absolutely /thousands/ of enemies. Some with power armor and First Age-looking tech. The knight steels himself, sheathes his sword, and then tries to be at least a little stealthy before they rush in. Gawain does this by looking for the highest point overlooking Achiba's land. He wants to use his superhuman mobility to scale it, runs and leaps and rocket thrusts up to the top, and then look for the biggest point of interest inside the camps: what is likely to be Achiba's tent or arena or fortress or whatever. However, as he does so, he radios the others. <"All-Seeing Eye, you'll probably have a better chance locating Achiba from the ground than I would. I'll try my best from up high before we proceed!">
Tomoe	Tomoe is uneasy with them not sending the ghost when they found her. Still, it is not her world thus Eye and Empty Tidings had far more of a say in her mind than she did. She was still going to see this through to the en and expect this Thrice-Dead Achiba to be one hell of a durable man to fight. Likely more than her and that concerns her, it's going to be a hell of a fight even if they can handle him. She also gets why he's not going down, too. The more she learned about this mess the more horrified she became at it. The daisy chain of suffering went quite far back on this world and just got worse with every discovery. Still she was here back in this bleak part of creation and feel on edge. Even after all her previous trips to this shadowland or others like it. She would be keeping near the front of the group as she's wont to do and she would spy the green fire ahead it looks like there's not a normal human in the massive group of the dead she spies as she moves in, all of them are likely the murdered creations of the Solar Exalted. There are way too many of them to fight it would be like a wave survival game where you are always eventually overrun in the end it's only a matter of time a direct assault on the camp would be a terrible idea. The idea of dying in creation scared Tomoe on a fundamental level if she has a soul by this world's standard she dared not think about what might happen to her if she did perish here. She forced her mind onto the mission at hand. Find the target, put him down for good one way or another. Given her ability to fly she's going to try to get a better view from above and cover an line of sight that Gawain isn't. <<Gwain? Eye? I'm in the air. I see, if I can get a better read on where Thrice is.>> Hopefully she shouldn't be too easy to spot as she gets some air and starts to survey the camp as best she's able to.
Majima Goro	Majima, for his part, has no idea what's going on. He heard something about 'beating up a ghost', and wiggled his way in to what, as far as he can tell, is Halloween Hell. He doesn't have rocket thrusters. He doesn't have the ability to fly. The man does, however, have a snazzy outfit. We could try to describe it. Talk about the orange headband with yellow stars. The feathers sticking out. The shiny silver and pink jacket with pointy shoulders and a star motif. The white boots designed to hitch into rollerskates. https://pm1.narvii.com/6615/9e06836123423f1cd78aa6f66f6538ef4238a9bf_hq.jpg But we're going to do that instead, because it'll save us nine hundred words or so. "Ehhh," He complains as he walks. An aluminum can crushes in his hand as he finishes consuming its caffeinated contents, the word 'Tauriner' collapsing into a semi-singularity before it's chucked to the side. ..With a sigh, he goes to retrieve it. No. No, this may be a ghost-ridden hell land, but you don't suddenly start littering. That is Not Okay. "...ahh..ya know, I think I cap out at like, three hundred people or so, yeah?" He rotates his shoulder a few times, looking around. "...looks like ya gonna need a real good strategy for this one, eh? I don't think I got a clue how ta find a particular ghost in this mess."
Staren	Staren's mecha flies over the group. After what happened back at the camp, this time he's ready to bomb something to hell -- well, further to hell -- if needed. Hopefully he won't need to, because they have a plan this time: That ghost they released from the prison. It was supposed to track down Achiba and soften them up. So, they just need to follow it. Someone here knows how to do that, right? Right? Well, shit. Plan B: Sweep the camp with drones with light-amplified vision, looking for signs of fighting. If the ghost is fighting Achiba, that should make quite a commotion, right? Plan Z is mounted to his wing hardpoints, just in case.
All-Seeing Eye	Eye nibmly hops off of his hover bike, just far away enough that he wouldn't be considered worth chasing if someone were to eyeball him. The whole thing folds and clicks into itself impossibly, as if some exacting mad scientist had designed the entire thing from beginning to end. It all slides into two ports on his palms, without any trouble from the synthetic leather gloves he's wearing. He's also wearing a heavy, but form fitting overcoat, synthetic leather boots with artificial fur lining, and a black ushanka bearing the emblem of the state of Claslat. His eyes emit faintly audible whirs and whines as he zooms in. <"Roger that, comrade,"> says Eye from his position on the ground. He's scanning the sea of tents and repurposed detritus for any kind of visibly obvious Central command tent. If he can't find that, then he searches instead for any sufficiently large concentration of ghosts with the more menacing weaponry. These, he imagines to be officers. And if he must, he'll approach them directly to announce the delivery of a prisoner. Their Trojan horse.
Bloody Revelations	Between almost half a dozen people with largely applicable scouting abilities, who are smart enough to not try to beat their way in, the process of locating their likely target isn't terribly difficult. Staren's drones don't find any real fighting going on (outside of random tough guy brawls or less humanoid creatures savaging smaller entities that stray too close or make some unknown offense), and several of them end up just . . . shot down for fun. Literally, with no understanding of what the drones are or do, picked off by a bored rabble of 'soldiers'. He does, instead, find a small trail of already 'dead' ghosts, already starting to melt away after a few minutes have passed, their usual death-wounds visible in their ectoplasmic bodies looking strangely fresh --again. Gawain's high vantage and Tomoe's outright aerial recon easily triangulate (well, between two points) the general endpoint area of the path, leading further to the northern end rather than straight into the middle of the camp, apparently putting some distance between the common thugs rather than being nested in the middle of them. This is also where All-Seeing Eye finds the largest concentration of the biggest nasties with the biggest nastiest gear, along the lines of hulking chimera of spider and therapods, or eyeless creatures of animate fire, clad in the magitech stolen from the local Deathlord he'd heard about. Between the three of them, (so, an actual triangulation), they track the spooky trail and gradient of increasingly more difficult minibosses up to a natural pit almost past the camp entirely, but ringed in its own mini-fortress of petrified stakes, steel wire, burning patches, and burly lieutenants. It's gated off, of course, much like the fighters' entrance to a colloseum floor. There are two plated and cannon-wielding '''guards''' standing outside, one being the ghost of some two-headed wolf giant that was clearly decapitated in life due to one neck being a stump, and the other being some scaled monstrosity with an unclear number of limbs. Eye's plan of just 'immediately smashing interact buttons without waiting for 100% recon completion' results in, for once, a mostly useful reaction, in that neither bodyguard has a goddamn clue what he's talking about, but prisoners being dragged to this pit must be a common enough event that they don't call him out on why, just 'what and when'. The wolf thing pokes him with the end of its huge gun several times, but mostly out of being confused by his smell, clearly not mistaking him for some incredibly stupid living human walking into the depths of the camp. He declares that 'Eye smells like oil and smoke and vaguely like 'black steel' despite the fact he doesn't really smell of those things in an olfactory sense, and seems to uncomfortably conclude he's some kind of especially complex automaton. There are a few of those, after all. They aren't technically dead, but the old execution camp did sabotage, disassemble, or deactive them all where they could, and a few are occasionally switched back on.
All-Seeing Eye	"What prisoner?" He chuckles, allowing himself to be prodded and inspected. Anyone else would take offense to this kind of thing, but some people just love to be the center of attention. He continues after the inspection is over. "/The/ prisoner, darling..." says Eye, with the confident smile of an underling who's finally earned himself the promotion he deserves. "Anjei Marama, all the way from the Fell. She'll be here within minutes." The Exalt frowns, like a bureaucrat anxiously checking his clipboard for affirmation. "Achiba... /has/ been notified, yes?" He observes the surroundings, while his eyes stay focused on the cannon-wielding guards. A large circular enclosure. Gated off, under guard. Either an expertly designed prison, or a crude fighting arena. He peers through the matter of the fortifications in an effort to see which of the two guesses is correct.
Tomoe	They had a good deal of firepower here with All-Seeing Eye, Staren and Gawain. Goro was new but he had a reputation of getting stuff done with whatever he had on hand, so she wasn't worried about him, she would be normally curious to see him in action, but today. She wants to get the job done and get the heck out of here, maybe she'll hit up Goro for a challenge later. For now, she'll keep scanning the camp, hoping they can find their target, this would be a get in and get out. Things are going well working with Gawain however with him adding his eyes and her vantage point. Then throwing in Eye? They are successful in pinpointing where they need to go, she will shadow the group from above as she's very much /still/ alive and likely stinks of it to the local guards she keeps tab on Eye and it seems to be going well she'll be ready to swoop in as soon as it time to strike. With likely Staren when the time comes. She will keep an eye out for trouble that might be approaching, Goro and All-Seeing Eye on the ground. Hopefully Eye's plan will succeed in getting them closer to the target. <<I'm ready to strike soon as it's time.>>
Staren	Staren lands between the camps and sends a drone Eye's way to watch how this goes down. He... COULD try to bust into the arena? But why not wait and see how this goes.
Gawain	Once they've triangulated a point, Gawain waits. He readies his sword and thrusters on the side again, as he narrows his eyes forward. As Eye moves to get the guards out of the way, Gawain waits just a few more moments... And then when it appears they might be leaving, or otherwise some sort of opening for him, Gawain jumps. He moves to use the thrusters to control his fall, trying to land to the safest spot nearby so they can begin their assault. He doesn't attack immediately - he wants to cooperate with Eye, who is currently lying the best he can. <"On my way shortly. Will be landing as soon as I can!">
Majima Goro	Majima, for his part, just kind of whistles obnoxiously. His bat's slung over one shoulder, and he just follows along with the rest of the group. He's swaggering side to side. On the upside, standing behind All-Seeing Eye, frankly, even in that outfit, he looks like the kind of criminal who would help you bust up and apprehend someone to be thrown in a fighting arena. "Neeheheheheh!" He laughs as the Eye's deception continues. To be fair, it sounds weirdly sadistic in that 'Hi, I'm an aggressively annoying miniboss On Team Evil' way. The creepy, bloodthirsty grin on his face doesn't hurt either. But for now, he just continues to gaze around idly, with his single eye. His time's coming. He knows.
Bloody Revelations	Despite 'the' prisoner, or 'do you know who I am?' being some of the oldest tricks in the book, the ghosts All-Seeing Eye are dealing with are . . . probably older, honestly. That, and Achiba has ostensibly charisma'd and terrified them all into line, and there really isn't any tight regulatory procedure going on here, like any kind of actual prison (of a camp variety or no). They seem to assume Eye is bullshitting about it actually being Anjei Marama, in the way that the Romanov's personal security would be shrugging about the tenth person claiming to have found the lost Anastasia, but they let him through, along with an entourage incapable of descending from the air, probably assuming the squishy living couple are the actual sacrifices, or batshit insane death worshipers (Majima certainly looks the former part at least). It's to his benefit that, having followed the trail of scattered, mysteriously re-dead ghosts on the way here, the dazed, haunted, half-lucid spectre of Marama has actually somehow made her way here, though whether ahead of, or following behind, the party is unclear. She's still stumbling around as if in a sleepwalking torpor, but she arrives in the pit all the same. She is, in fact, in the process of strangling some unfortunate, hulking slimey amphibious horror, with her boot on its back and a cord of wound Essence wrapped several times around its trunk-like neck, garrotting it for several seconds with some evident, half-asleep pleasure in the act, before it just tears its head right off. Even the half-a-ghost seems to still feel the compulsion to exterminate the untermensch in vicarious place of the Solar, and it's a fair given that an ancient Dragon-Blooded officer (ghost) is probably stronger than a random genetically engineered soldier (ghost). Laughing disjointedly to herself, she waits precisely as long as it takes for the group that promised to absolve her fetters to show up, and then calls "Come out come out, pathetic little Achiba! It seems I wasn't thorough enough getting rid of your degenerate 'species' the first time! I'm happy though. I get to enjoy killing you again!" Which results very quickly in the black barracks at the far end suffering its iron doors slamming outward, and its prime occupant stepping out more on trigger reflex than stopping to think about how it's infinitely more likely the voice is just a trap laid by an imitator. There's no mistaking him at least. The ghost before you is an eight foot tall malformed monstrosity, only vaguely humanoid, with gigantic, gorilla-like arms and huge, wolverine-esque claws, but covered in black chitin and coarse bristles like a tarantula, with a matching set of hideous compound eyes and fanged mandibles. Not even remotely 'gladiatorial' in image, just his fake species strongly underlines the mildly nauseating spectacle and novelty his ancient creators were more interested in. Also in keeping with having raided a Deathlord's convoy for loot, he's wearing an ill-fitting chunk of heavy, solidly reinforced soulsteel armour over his torso, 'Bionic augmentations' of a ghostly variety also seem to have taken, as he's implanted some of those stolen weapons into his own spine, resulting in a an array of animate bladed chains writhing from his back, as if vaguely intelligent in of themselves. He also has what might as well be described as a giant hand cannon, the likes of which is unfortunately reminiscent of what one would see a decorated fascist officer with. He also has a surprising basso profundo voice, despite talking through a mishmash of horrid fangs. "Who dares bring this misshapen imitation puppet to my door? Who has the pair to pull this insult? Huh? Who do you think you're dealing with? Thought you were clever? What did you expect out of this huh? Conjuring up an image of that hag? You want to die?" He identifies the culprits pretty quickly, given they're right there, and pulls his giant gun on them immediately.
All-Seeing Eye	Eye continues his tradition of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. The Exalt lashes out with a whip. The weapon is aimed at Achiba's hand, a stunt meant to wrap around one of his digits--whichever one is his trigger-digit--and keep him from pulling the trigger. "Ah ah ah," says the Exalt condescendingly. "Pull that trigger and /I'll/ be upset," he adds with a merry inflection and a wag of his finger. "What you see is the genuine article, and not a puppet. Anjei Marama herself. Now, you can swing me around by this whip, as many of Creation's denizens seem fond of doing. You'll find it to be a mistake, as they have. We've brought her here because you and your little boys' club are making a tremendous mess of this country side. Frankly, it's getting dull." "If you're going to point that oversized thing somewhere, point it at her and off each other so we can all put this dreadful place behind us."
Gawain	When Gawain arrives, he's in full shining armor, holy sword brought out. As Marama lures out Thrice-Dead Achiba, and Achiba threatens them, Gawain gets into a battle stance. But he doesn't attack. "I am Sir Gawain, Knight of the Sun, Warden of the Paladins. What he says is true. This is the genuine Anjei Marama." He's waiting for Achiba to attack them for what they've done. He's going to try and solo the whole group, probably. Eye has a plan, so obviously Gawain isn't going to begin the fight, but... If Achiba lashes out at anyone but Marama, Gawain suddenly dashes in with superhuman speed, holy sunfire blazing over his sword to burn into the ghost's corpus and try and brutally injure him, with the swordmanship of a Knight of the Round Table.
Staren	Alright. Is the plan to let them fight or just all attack Achiba right away? Staren's thinking is along similar lines to Gawain's -- using his drone for spotting, he prepares to shoot a railgun burst from a distance if this becomes anything other than a Marama vs Achiba duel.
Tomoe	Tomoe joins with the others forming up and is a bit after Gawain forms up and she'll make ready with her blade Caliburn. It might be a copy of ALO's signature weapon but it's served her quite well in the end. She will soon be flanking Gawain with her blade ready. "I am Tomoe the Iron Lily of the Gate Crashers, we have indeed found Aneji Marama that is indeed her." She's an unknown too but she also made herself ready to watch and wait for when to strike. If Achiba moves to attack her allies she'll attempt to intercept the attack and take it in their place and put her own blade's holy to work if she needs to.
Bloody Revelations	If it were possible for a hideous wolverine gorilla tarantula man to appear even kind of shaken, this might be the time, but it very well might not even be written into his designer DNA. Achiba responds with those urticating bristles standing on end like needles, huffing louder and louder in a way that makes is howering physique seem even greater, chitin creaking at the joints as his muscles beneath swell, and then a bass roar drowns out the ghost of Marama's deranged laughter. 'Eye's whip snags around the trigger guard with Achiba's finger in it just as he squeezes it to fire, disabling the weapon for the moment. The lash of pure Essence, albeit of the distinctly underworldly type now, that Marama wields strikes out at him only a split second later, immediately carving a flurry of scorching wounds into his hide, slashing up his arms and legs unprotected by the breastplate, not even aiming for vital wounds, but to cause as much injury and agony as possible. He refuses to let go of the gun. He's stronger than the Alchemical, but not anything close to the Mask of Winters, so his best efforts are clinging onto it and hauling it around. He attempts to charge right through Marama with his overall bulk, who slips to the side in a haze, allowing him through without concern. Two of the semi-sentient bionic chains on his back slash out at her, but two more curl to the fore and strike out like snakes to skewer 'Eye and the offending Gawain as well, tanking a blow from Galatine to close in and try to crush him under repeated, hammering, gorilla-like haymakers plus his massive rending claws. He wrestles and wrangles with the Alchemical's whip for a little while longer, before one of the chains just snakes right into the trigger guard and severs his own finger at the joint, coming off with a spray of translucent blood, and dropping the gun one finger length down in his grip, pulling it with his middle rather than index digit. Rather than a blast of essence or crude bullet, it launches what is, horrifyingly enough, a ghostly, plasmic worm or leech or maggot of some variety --possibly all three-- which screeches horridly through the air, hits its target with a great deal of force, and then begins rapidly shredding away with its multiple layered maw of serrated teeth, trying to burrow right into its mark and devour its internal organs. He manages to crack a shot off at 'Eye, at Tomoe, and then at Marama, before he loses control of the weapon again.
Gawain	Gawain makes his slash as it turns out Achiba's going to be their enemy. Achiba just /tanks/ the blow, and massive rending claws and haymaker punches slam from one gorilla-strengthed man to a man who has been called a gorilla in the past. Gawain's armor allows him to bolster against the bulk of the blows and the chain, but those rending claws tear a chunk of the mana-created armor open, sending Gawain spiralling backwards and actually drawing blood from the knight. Achiba is going to require more than casual blows, it seems, which makes sense. He's a living war machine. "Well, then, Thrice-Dead Achiba! Allow us to put you out of your misery...!" The knight rushes in and moves to slash in two directions, trying to confuse the chain and any other blocking tools. The holy fire remains lit, to add extra pain to his damage, as Gawain moves to continually carve into him with repeating slashes over and over. He expects Achiba to block most of them, but he's hoping putting pressure on him will allow Marama, Eye, and the others to tear into the beast of a man. "Don't underestimate him! He's strong...!"
Staren	Yes, automatic weapon arms count for the sake of triggering Staren's readied action, and a hail of hypersonic metal is fired Achiba's way, through the walls of the arena if need be. He'll keep this up, the gatling railgun spinning and firing a constant stream of shots. Why engage in melee? If the walls of the arena prove tougher than expected, Staren will stand and fire over the edge, or just fire down from the air if it's taller than his machine. "Four-times-dead Achiba just doesn't have the same ring to it. Ah well, he doesn't deserve to be remembered with a snappy moniker anyway."
Tomoe	The fight is well underway at this point now as she watches the strange chimera man looks shaken for a moment. She didn't think a man like him made to do what he could to be made in such away. All-Seeing Eye acts quickly and she'll move to get ready. She sees how it's going as the angry ghost is slashed up by Marama. It's about time to move in as she sees All-Seeing Eye is in the thick of things now. She dashes in but just in the assault start on Gawain, in turn, her blade blazes with holy fire, at the ready, then comes the shot. She's hit it catches her on the side and it's eating into her causing massive jagged wireframe wounds she had to pause to shake the thing off her, and then crush it underfoot. The attack got past her avatar form, doing damage to her true form under it. She keeps going, though it is clear she's in pain as Gawain seeks to distract Achiba? She will make use of us using her burning holy sword to strike over in a serious of inhumanly fast sword strikes, as she makes use of sword art. "Snake Bite!" She cries out, and she will keep up the attack even as Staren takes his shot. Goro seems to have been missed and she has a feeling their foe will regret that.
All-Seeing Eye	Eye digs in his heels. Against someone with Achiba's strength, it doesn't do what he hopes. He's dragged around as he tries to tip the battle in Marama's favor, his heels cutting furrows into the ground. The grisly sight of Achiba cutting off his own finger for the use of his weapon draws an almost gleeful smile from Eye. This'll be a spirited fight, then. He's ready for the attack, certainly. There's a steel cable twirling through the air on an intercept trajectory. What he wasn't prepared for was the projectile--namely, its teeth. The maggot slips past the whip by simply chewing through it, and slams into Eye chest-first. A spray of black, anti-luminous lifeblood splatters upon the ground, and Eye is knocked onto his feet. The burrowing plasmic projectile sends up a spray of advanced ceramics, sparks, and the odd bit of metal as it attempts to bore into the Alchemical. Eye grimaces with determination, digs his fingers into its plasm, and electrocutes both the worm and himself. Once's he's sure he's fried it, his chest is a smoking crater, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He's back on his feet with an agile kip-up, and making evasive maneuvers, running counter-clockwise around Achiba to try and sever his augmented tentacles with expertly-placed, ricocheting crossbow darts from his wrist-launchers.
Bloody Revelations	Being ganged up on by multiple expert fighters is already bad enough, but with the demented ghost of his own murderer at his back, Achiba freezes up at a crucial moment when the words "Hey. Where are you looking?" slur out from behind him, and repeated slashes of ghostly elemental fire rip back and forth across him in a self-perpetuating roll on whipping, arcing columns, back and forth, back and forth, boiling away his hide, turning his breastplate red hot and fusing it with sizzling, smoking skin, causing chitin to crack and rupture, and steam escaping his joints, all while Anjei laughs. That's too much to tolerate. His ghostly shape flickers and contorts, and he becomes more of a smear of mist than a mutant warrior for a second, ending up right in Marama's face from his previous clash, and letting loose a savage roar as he tries toppling her with brute strength, focusing all of his animated chains on her along with both hands, smashing and tearing and ripping in a paroxysm of blind, animalistic fury tinged with desperation. The shade that the group had summoned last time isn't quite up to that kind of challenge. It turns into a protracted, ugly, bloody scrap from there, both sides tearing the faded phantasmal blood out of each other, fueled by nothing but pure, demented, ancient hatred, worse than anything either could summon up when alive, as death has long winnowed away at their less essential aspects and crystallized their strongest pieces of character. The spray of railgun fire comes in from above, beats against the poorly fitted soulsteel armour, punctures several places where it doesn't properly cover Achiba, and then overpenetrates to hit Marama behind, both reeling and gasping blood with the 'hydrostatic' shock of the projectiles. Achiba turns in blind fury and fires the remaining three chambers of his maggot caster, then tosses it aside, sending the plasmic beasts arcing high into the air in fast, wiggling trails, which'll then land on the Star Hawk, and immediately begin voraciously chewing through the shields, then phase right through the canopy glass (they're ghost critters) and start chewing up Staren too. Without his ranged weapon, he can't especially prevent Tomoe's or Gawain's approach. He turns both hands and all four chain blades on them as they duo up on him, meeting both swords with an avalanche of savagery that in of itself is a wall to overcome, overpowering and trading with half their blows to give as good as he gets, though the sunfire of Galatine eventually causes the undersized soulsteel armour to simply come apart at the seams with explosive bursts of golden steam, unable to handle the stress. His massive chest ends up torn and burnt and bloody with piling wounds, continuing mostly on adrenaline and the power of 'not realizing he should be dead' made manifest through more minor ghostly magic. All-Seeing Eye gets a clear shot at his back, and multiple crossbow bolts either puncture the spine apparatus, or just shoot through the links in the chains and jam them up uselessly --suddenly cutting out half the assault on Gawain and Tomoe. Unable to circumvent the latter's shield or entangle the former's sword anymore, he loses ground rapidly, then loses one arm, then the other, to flaming cleaves, and collapses on the ground beside the flagging, bleeding, lolling over Marama.
Bloody Revelations	"Ahh . . . I would have liked to strangle you myself . . . and showed you to my . . . more elegant inventions . . . created since you were beheaded . . . but this will do." gasps Anjei. "Shoulda . . . showed yourself to one . . . branded bitch." wheezes Achiba in reply. "Haha . . . those were for . . . disposing of . . . the leftover toys . . . made for their amusement . . . and no other reason. I . . . we . . . were disposed of long before that . . . for more interesting toys like you freaks." she sighs back, collapsing and turning ashen pale. "This whole . . . bloody, shitty world . . . is a collection of toys. You idiots don't ever . . . learn anything. It always belongs to someone . . . and they throw away bits and pieces of it." Achiba collapses second. "Don't worry . . . soon there won't be anything left of it . . . and you'll never have to think about it again." "Still . . . I'd have liked to have stood on the top . . . just that once . . . instead of at the bottom of the pit . . . as someone's entertainment." The two of them expire almost simultaneously, both ghosts dissolving into nothing from the cumulative wounds of tearing each other to pieces and being blown to bits by Elites. There is a sound that comes from Nowhere In Particular that sounds like cracking glass, or drops of water --distinctly teardrops, somehow-- shattering on hard stone, and then both their bodies disperse into white light that drifts off into the air, while the black shadow left behind soaks into the dirt. Also, the massive amount of noise everyone just made has the camp in an uproar already. The gates are already opening, and there are soon to be about a bazillion war ghosts swarming the place.
Gawain	As the two ghosts lie dying, Gawain allows them to speak. He looks up to the sky as they do, waiting until they fade away. "Well, then, friends, our work here is done." And then there's an army of ghosts incoming. So, Gawain moves to start leaping up the wall, expending more mana for his escape. He'll carry anyone who needs a prompt exit out with him, though Tomoe and Staren can fly, so tehy should be fine.
Tomoe	Even with them ganging up on Achiba? He's shown why he was so dangerous both in life and death. Thanks to Achiba being out of ammo she has no issue in getting in close. She strikes true on some of her attacks enough that she's certain she's done some serious damage to the ghost. She can see the damage being done by her allies as well, all the while Achiba gets a few more hits in on her in return. For all his might? He can not last forever and finally falls to the combined assault of everyone there. She lowers her weapon as the ghost speaks some of his likely last words, she seems to heed them though, and doesn't seem happy or sad about it's just over something left to rot for so long is over as both ghost finally move on. Gawain was right and she can fly still which she does. Her red wings flare out and she takes off to fly the heck out of here. "My you're next life be kinder." She muses in regards to Achiba, maybe even to the monster who caused this? It's hard to tell but either way, she's getting the heck out of here as fast as her wings can carry her.