Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Eggman      It's a beautiful day in the Shroud. The vast, sweeping branches of the primordial forest criss-cross against a bright blue sky, beams of light poking down through the canopy to the bed of leaves below. Monsters of a plantly stripe wander about amidst giant fallen logs as bandits lurk in the shadows, hiding behind trees to wait for someone to pop out and get robbed. The whole place has a faerie air to it, a sort of lackadaisical and whimsical feeling, a taste of a world that no longer exists but ought to still. The sheer scale of it looms down over the world below; though it's nothing compared to the vast skyscrapers of a modern society it's nonetheless a fierce reminder of the sheer power of nature, of long-past eras man should not be playing around in, lest he invite disaster into the world.

     Speaking of inviting disaster into the world, here's Doctor Eggman.

     The rotund roboticist has set himself up inside an egg-shaped bunker, open to the rest of the Concord should they so wish to observe. Viewscreens throughout the egg-shaped bunker show a clearing a few malms to the west through the eyes of flying drones, some on high, some down at the ground-level. There's a strange ring of pulsing light just under the dirt, a steady heartbeat not unlike a loading symbol. Some bandits have wandered over, poking at it inquisitively, uncertain as to what's going on.

     Text flows across one of the screens.

TRARRCHOGHWASABOYOFBEGINNINGSHESHOVELEDTHEHAYANDHECLEANEDTHESTALLS
BUTTHENDESTINYCALLS

     "We're on the three-thousandth iteration now," Eggman says after checking a digital pocketwatch with his own face on it, "The mythological drift should have settled enough to be a stable foundation."

     He snaps the watch shut.

TRARRCHOGHSLEWAMANINTHESTABLESANDTOOKUPHISBLADEANDBECAMETHEPIRATEKING
THECRESTOFTHEOCEAN
TRARRCHOGHJOURNEYDTOTHEOCEAN
TRARRCHOGHDIEDUPONTHEOCEAN
TRARRCHOGHWAITSTORISEFROMTHESURFUNTILTHEHOUROFNEED

     As the text flies by and begins scrolling again ("Trarrchogh was a boy of beginnings...") Eggman seems satisfied. "Yes, there we are. Now, all that's left to do is..."

     He snaps a remote control with a long antennae out of his coat. He holds it in his white-gloved hand for a moment, waiting for the line "but then destiny calls" to pop up on the screen.

     Dramatically, he presses the button.

     Presentation.
Eggman      On the screens the light begins to shine. Outside, the world begins to shake. The weather twists. Wind starts to blow. Aetheric harmonics go absolutely mental. A light pours out of the ground, piercing the clouds, a wave sweeping outwards from the underground ring.

     A figure emerges.

     It is a tengu, of sorts. It's huge, massive, much too large to be a person, nearly twenty-five feet tall and counting. Its body is metallic, every black feather glimmering with an iron sheen, each feather engraved with a wavy pattern that catches the light and glistens. Its wings are blades. Its talons are blades. It has but one eye, the other hidden under a stylized mechanical eyepatch. One of its hands has a massive cutlass made of its own black features, with the same wave-pattern ripple etched into it; the other hand is a cannon.

     The bandits who had been poking at the light have turned glass-eyed. The great tengu lets out a loud, mechanical shriek, and the bandits echo it, swinging their sabers. A ripple of power tears apart several of the observation drones.

     Eggman taps the side of his big bald head. "That may pose a problem for someone else."

     He snaps his fingers. "Ah!"

     A bunch of bars that had been filling and emptying meaninglessly for the last hour or so suddenly max out in the red. Eggman taps the screen. "This *WILL* be a problem for someone else!"

     "I'm going to try and stabilize it. You all....go out there and cause trouble for the people planning to stop it. Or help stop it. I don't care either way, really, it's just phase one." He starts pulling on levers on the side of the bunker. "Just make sure it stays alive long enough for me to get complete readings, will you?"

     Captain Trarrchogh begins walking through the Shroud towards one of its small settlements. The former bandits are now singing a loud and brave pirate shanty. It would probably sound Limsan were it not for the odd echoey whistle in every word - a bird-whistle call.

     "YAAAAAAAAAAAARRWWWWK!" The great Primal cries, "YE LANDLUBBERS THOUGHT YE COULD ESCAPE THE CAP'N, DID YE? WHEREVER WATER FLOWS...THERE IS THE SEA!"

     "NOW YE LEARN THAT DEAD BIRDS TELL NO TALESSSSSS!!!!"
Majima Goro     A black leather glove claps on Eggman's shoulder. There is the sound of a sharp inhale through teeth, and a grinning man leans over, watching the screen. "Ya actually fuckin' did it! Ya crazy -bastard-. I fuckin' love it. Alright, ya set the bait, I'm gonna go wait 'round for the adventurers ta show up." Majima tilts his head. "Nishida! You and the boys hang out in here. If he needs ya ta press a button or pull a lever or somethin', do it."

Majima Construction's employees--five of them, from the looks of things, stand loyally in the bunker. Nishida, a nervous looking man, puts on the bravest face he can, bowing deeply.
"R-right! (..it beats being out there with the bird god, though.)"

With that, he swaggers on outwards. It's not that he doesn't *want* to fight the giant primal. It's just that he's set up a whole *thing* here in Eorzea, and it would absolutely ruin it if he started helping the adventurers NOW. He adjusts his snakeskin jacket. Eyepatch is shifted just a bit to the side. Spit in gloves, comb through hair.

MAJIMA TIME
is it majima time
i think it's majima time

Mini-Boss Loading...
Arkae Zellar ARKAE, FIVE MINUTES AGO: "Yes! The Pirate King Trarrchogh! Yeah!"

She perches (not literally) on an instrument panel in the Egg Bunker, watching the displays with the giddiness and general demeanour of a grown adult waiting for a favorite nostalgic saturday morning cartoon to come on. "This is great! The Pirate King Trarrchogh story is one of the ones that inspired me to go out and adventure and-"

ARKAE, FOUR MINUTES AGO: "The 'crest' of the ocean? What? It's the Respect of the Ocean - what it means is supposed to be vague and symbolic-"

ARKAE, ONE MINUTE AGO: "Wait, wait, wait, Trarrchogh DIED? What the hell! This isn't the right story!"

She doesn't seem satisfied with the explanations Eggman gives on the radio. "Argh. I'm feeling like I should go stab it before too many people get the wrong story set in their heads..."

The tengu alchemist gets down from her not-literal perch and starts getting her gear sorted out.
Amelris Belthrone      In case you didn't know, The South Shroud should NOT have /ROUGH SEAS/. Being in the middle of a thick, dense forest, the SEA is the last thing that should be there, right next to the SANDS.

     Belthrone deploys straight from Gridannia, scooped up on his chocolate-feathered chocobo, holding on tight to his hat as he stomps through the woods. It didn't take the Alliance to call to them to explain that SOMETHING wrong was going on here. He could feel that all on his own.

     Then he sees it up in the distance, frowning and staring at the scene. Is that... a bird person, a GIANT bird pirate person? Some kind of raven? Long beak? Something similar?

     Whatever.

     The Red Mage leaps off his mount, giving it a slight tap on the side to make it run away. He draws his rapier, spinning the gem up to his free hand as he strides forward, staring upahead at the group of, evidently, Tempered Bandits and the Primal itself.

     "...I don't know what pisses me off more," Amelris comments, sliding off the slight cliff he had. "The fact he did it or the fact it's not a /parrot/."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry Princess steps through the local warpgate in her full Golden-Age-meets-mahou regalia- steps, not flies, because the nuclear-powered wand in her hands is still cold and dormant. She takes a moment to orient herself; the salty air, the crash of waves, the-

     The giant birdman robot. Ah. There it is.

     This is sufficiently outside her experience, however, that she doesn't immediately conclude that the giant monster is a Thing What Must Be Destroyed. After all, it's talking, isn't it? She sets her sights on the first extremely Multiversal-looking person she finds, which just so happens to be Majima, with his important-person-eyepatch and stylin' snakeskin suit.

     The mahou- significantly taller than anyone wearing pastel ought to be- strides up to him with an uncertain urgency, the visor over the top half of her face only partially hiding her concerned expression. "Excuse me, sir. That thing's... it's the monster, isn't it? I don't want- you know, to go getting mixed up. You can't un-shoot something."
Arkae Zellar "..."

"Actually I'll go stab that guy first, since he called Trarrchogh a parrot," says Arkae, gesturing with her sword at Amelris on the monitor.
N'Raha     If you were to ask N'raha, "N'raha, what would ruin your date night?" he'd probably respond "Fighting a Primal." This is in fact Date Night, and there is in fact a Primal, and there is in fact a very unhappy looking N'raha lumbering into position to take up position on his trusty Chocobo. The greed bird warks uneasily as Raha sends it away, and the Warrior takes up a position next to Amelris.

    "...Fake primals. Swiving hells, he's really done it. I... Should I be impressed alongside being angry, or should I just be angry?" His axe comes up and around, and the Tank takes up position in front of Amelris, and sets himself for those bandits, who are probably going to be the vanguard here.
Tina Natsumi "... And here we've got more of those pukin' jerks, a nice leisurely path through some more trees. All in all, not a bad place if you like some danger to go with your nature walks!" Tina announces proudly to a grand audience of nobody as she holds her phone up, keeping the camera facing herself while spinning every now and then to get a good shot of the Shroud's natural and sometimes-horrifying beauty.

And then the weather starts going to shit rather suddenly. Holding her hat in place with one hand, Tina slips the phone into her jacket's front pocket with the top sticking out just enough while she looks up at the emerging mechanical birdman. "Well! Ain't that just a hoot?" Checking her pockets, she makes sure all the flaps are closed and buttoned firmly before drawing her revolver and tapping it against the brim of her hat. "Stream's goin' a little longer, fokls!"

With her plan of action (mostly) decided, she whips the phone out briefly as she calls out a red, white, and blue robot of her own. "DNothin' personal, Doc! I got an audience of my own to entertain. You know how all that goes." She takes a potshot at artifical Primal to see if it even notices something of that caliber first.
Ishirou I4's head snaps up as his blue eyes look up towards the drastically changing storm.  He'd been taking readings in the area in the hopes that maybe Eggman was just bluffing, but wanted to be ready just in case it wasn't.  With a sigh, his hands grip a blindfold-like visor and tie it over those eyes.  The black box with arms floating near him starts speaking.  

-Aetheric readings becoming chaotic, showing a rise at the source, while nearby local readings are being depleted.  Expected devastation of the land to happen without a few centuries should the situation not change.  Detection of Collective Unconcious derived being.  Updating scans, please move to the combat area to get more detailed scans.-

"What a pain, alright.  Let's go, POD," I4 says, leaping off of the La Nocia shore and running towards the source.  Already he gets the word out as readings come in.  He already notices Strawbs and S6 is on the way, which gives him some small comfort.  

"POD, start taking readings, looks like nobody has taken as hot yet..." he says, looking at the normal people nearby.  "Scan the people there, what is going on with them and see if we can reverse it," I4 says, taking a back seat and starting to try to focus on collecting his own DATA first.  

Of course, he notices that Eggman specifically WANTS a fight to happen.  Was there some other game being played?  Was there simple scientific curiosity?  Damn...he just doesn't have enough data, and with that thing where he can't just abandon his allies and go for the Egg...whatever.  Also, he felt ill-prepared, because he didn't have any egg puns saved.

He didn't want to have egg on his face.
Majima Goro     The Mad Dog of Shimano looks over. This is a girl two inches taller than him. In a visor. Semi-nervously asking him where the primal is. "...Eh?" He scratches his head. "What, the robot bird?" He jerks a thumb over. "Yeah, that's the one, girlie. I'm just here ta make sure it ain't too overwhelmed, 'fore Eggman gets the data he's lookin' at, ya know?"

He stretches his arms up, bending one elbow over. Arches his back. "....I'm thinkin' mostly I'mma wait for the cat guy with the axe ta get really into it, and just kinda ambush him with a bat in the back of the head. Should be funny as shit! Neeehahahahahah!"

That said, he's letting Strawberry pass, it seems, stepping out of her way. "Don't get me wrong, I'd fight ya too, but I gotta make this entrance work and I'mma need a minute."
Tomoe Tomoe has taken a liking to Eorzea, she often went to Limsa to buy foodstuffs or eat at some of the local restaurants. That was her plan today, hell she was thinking about dragging her family along at some point for an outing. Those plans go up in smoke in short order at the radio chatter she hears, she sighs. She refrains from messaging her parents and will end up pocketing her phone, she'll take a moment to shift her avatar's appearance and off she goes to the nearest gate.

Once she's out of the gate she will summon her wings and takes flight, she will arrive just a bit after Amelris does as she finds clear spot to land, she looks to Amelris for a moment and seems quite concerned about what they have to face.

"You can take it out on him when we get ahold of him. For now, we got to stop this right? Anything I should know about fighting something like this?"

She would draw her sword and summon up her shield from her inventory as she makes ready for the fight to come.

Others like I4 are arriving along with N'Raha and more. This was good news to Tomoe and then Tina speaks up that she's going to stream it.

"... Really? Tina?"

She has no idea for the moment that she's going to have to face Majima /again/ on top of a Primal.
Corona Arclite Big energy spikes and unnatural weather for a freaking forest is enough to get anyone's paranoid hackles on end.
Finding out it's Doctor Eggman's doing in some way, that's just extra motivation. Corona would be lying if she didn't admit she was curious to see just how the Evil Genius pulled off what he intended to do, but that was also in part because finding that out would help in figuring out how to stop it, as well. But she's taking this seriously. She saw what he did with that airship-deathtrap-maze.

A short trip later and the vixen saunters onto the scene, handcannon already resting against her shoulder in one hand. There is dramatic fluttering of coat and loose hair behind her, though that may just be the storm stirred up in the Primal's presence. "Yup. This ain't good at all."

She lowers her weapon, audibly cocking it as she does so. "Pirate, huh. Did anyone pack some extra ninjas?"
Staren     Staren watches in the bunker, sitting in a chair and sipping iced tea. He had started to look zoned-out, focused on other things on his head computer, but when Eggman says it's time, his ears perk up and he sits up attentively. So this is the summoning of a primal!

    It's... less terrible than he expected, honestly. And he's relieved to hear Eggman doesn't care if they fight it. He stands up. "Congratulations. I think few CAN say they've programmed a god... now let's see what we can learn from it!" He dashes off...

    As the heroes gather to fight the monster, joining them is a machine half as tall as the primal itself! Staren's taken one of his walkers and modified it into a proper battle robot, with armor plating, wings, a second set of arms, a properly-sealed bubble cockpit, and a lot more weapons stuck onto it!

    The machine lands near the heroes. Staren's voice comes over the speakers: "Is it really a 'fake' primal, or is it a real primal made artificially? It does look a tad... robotic, doesn't it? I wonder if the story of this event -- a primal made solely by the famous roboticist Dr. Eggman -- is already affecting the primal itself? Hopefully, this will teach us a lot about how to fight other primals better, all the same."
S6     While those not caught in the Primal's tumultuous birth flee from it, a white-haired woman in black approaches. If the Primal's size and robotic construction weren't enough to draw attention to it, there's no way she could miss how noisy it is. It isn't long before I4 finds himself accompanied by his willowy companion. S6's visor is already in place, her POD floating beside her.

    -GREETINGS TYPE 6X.-
    -REQUESTING UPDATE ON MAGICAL DISRUPTION.-

    S6 leaves the PODs to their conversation, taking in the situation with her own (obscured) eyes. A large axe flickers into being across her back, amidst a flurry of golden sparks. This is soon paired with a smaller curve-bladed sword, that white katana she seems to prefer.

    "That is the enemy? The unit is not quite what I was expecting." Although something feels ... comfortable, about the idea of fighting what appears to be a large, chunky robot.

    -CONDUCTING SCAN.-

    S6's gaze lifts, as data starts filling the HUD projected inside her visor.
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry, even with her eyes concealed, gives Majima an incredulous Look. Her mouth opens, as if about to say something. Then it closes. Then it opens again, just in time for her to draw a Glock and point it at Majima's kneecap. Her thumb flicks the safety off, but it's telling that she doesn't have the guts to aim for center-of-mass. Probably the hesitating sort.

     "Sir," she finally manages, clearly discombobulated. "This is soon to- it's gonna get real bad. If I understand you, you're... planning to hurt people, doing the relief efforts. I don't know what grudge you have, but I can't- allow that."

     She gestures towards the warpgate with her head. "Let me... escort you out. You'll be free to go once this is over. Please." The way her voice quavers, it's almost hard not to sympathize with her, even at gunpoint. But then, Majima's a hard guy.
Eggman      Eggman gives Majima a hearty thumbs-up as Majima claps him on the shoulder and heads out. Staren goes running off with a hearty congratulations and a "Let's see what we can learn from it," to which Eggman replies, "Exactly! That's a good man."

     Arkae gets annoyed. Eggman tries to explain how archaeological and oral drift works, and gives up halfway through. Best to let her go do things. He might apologize later. He thought he mentioned the mythological drift, but...

     Maybe he hadn't. Oh well. He might have to apologize properly later. Maybe a nice gift basket.

     As expected, people make their way to the giant metal bird pirate. Captain Trarrchogh(?) turns to face the group of gathering adventurers. The bandits are sent forward as the metallic tengu pirate raises its cutlass over its shoulder, its cannon-arm dangling with wire rigging like some sort of climb-here prompt in a video game. The Eiggkon looks over the party.

     Arkae and Majima receive a squawk of approval. "GOOD. GOOD! THE CREW NEEDS MORE SOULS! STICK WITH ME, YOU LOT, AND WE'LL ALL DIE RICH AS GODS!"

     The Tengu stomps one foot on the ground.

                                 FULL PARTY                                
                             FEATHERED MAJESTY                              

     The world twists.

     The ground solidifies into a...

     ...rowboat.

     Granted, it's a HUGE rowboat. It's a giant's rowboat with enough space for everyone to stand on any single part of it, run along the seats, or disappear under those same benches. There's massive oars. There's huge cracks. There's also the deep, unpleasant sense, as Captain Trarrchogh sits down, that that's going to play an important part in how to kill the Captain.

     The metal Eiggkon lets out a loud shriek.

     "AN' SO WE SAIL FOR THE OCEAN BLUE!" Trarrchogh cries.

     There's a lurch.

     The boat is moving. Fast. The Captain's feet come stomping down onto the people on the deck. Cracks spring up throughout the boat; water rushes in, smashing about the sides, and probably the people caught in the middle.

     "THE FIRST ADVENTURE BEGINS, ME HEARTIES! WE SAIL TOWARDS A HILL OF GOLD, BUT THERE'S MANY STOPS ALONG THE WAY! LET'S SEE HOW LONG YE CAN STAY ALOFT!"
Arkae Zellar Any good primal fight has an add phase.

The add phase in this case comes right at the start and continues on for practically the whole fight. Some of the water seeping up under the floorboards gathers around Arkae as she downs a potion, and it literally sweeps her off her feet-

-that is, sends her surging across the rowboat battlefield, without her having to so much as lift a toe. "Die at the hands of the crew of Pirate King Trarrochogh!" she calls, trying to get into it. "Even if it's not the real Pirate King Trarrochogh story!"

Arkae doesn't look very piratey, but the curved sword looks vaguely exotic enough to fit. She dashes by Amelris and I4 in turn, swinging out at them!
Majima Goro     Majima's response to the gun being pulled out is not, perhaps, the one Strawberry is used to. He doesn't move, at first. His brow raises a bit.
"..Ya for real? 'ssat a fuckin' pistol?" He asks, scratching his head with one hand. There's a pause.

"NEEEHEHEHAHAHAHA!" His hands clap. "That's fuckin' new! I love it! But alright, alright. Ya made your point. I'm...absolutely gonna have ta fight ya instead." He grins.

On the other hand, he does have to dodge the first bullet. It's a tense moment.

And then the world suddenly shifts, and Majima is ready. As the boat cracks, and a geyser of water shoots out, Majima simply flows with it, pushed out of the way of the pistol. As he's pushed along, stabilizing himself, he's left a further distance than he wanted to be from the magical girl. And if he runs back over, she gets the first shot. That's a problem. He's actually -kind- of crap at ranged. What to do. What to do--

That's when he notices--there's one of those weird robot-chicks--S...X? Yeah. SX. That was it. She's got some weird floating thing above her head, and that's when he gets an idea.

Specifically, he flares with a pink light, sliding along the slickened metal surface like a slip and slide, before launching himself upwards. The intent--first, to deliver a jumping kick to throw S6 off long enough to grab her Support Pod. Ideally, the support pod will start firing at him. At that point, he immediately drops down, to grab onto it to force it to fire onto Strawberry. Does this mean he's probably fighting two people instead of one?

Yeah. That's, like, the best part.
N'Raha     Okay. This is... unexpected. The Rowboat is new on him. Like, super new. He's faced a NUMBER of Primals that go and do rude things to the landscape, but this is.... this is different order of things. Raha reminds himself that this is to be expected, and also that he needs to physically punch Eggman in the face when he finally meets the man.

    That said, there's a primal and there's... uh... This is like Leviathan, so Drowned bandits.

    It's him thinking about that, caught in actual contemplation that he missed the water rushing in at him, and warrgglbbles a bit as he surfaces and... puts his pirate cat hat on. "RIGHT! I be assuming you haven't met with the local cuts, or ye'd know that yer trespassin' on some dangerous turf!" A moment, and then it literally his his Pirate Hat. Because he pulls his Maelstrom Officers hat out and plunks it on his head, and then resets his combat stance. "THIS BE THE ADMIRAL'S SEAS, AND YE AIN'T WELCOME, CUTTER." He yowls a challenge, the lion's roar escaping him, as he charges in, taking up the Front positions, and yanking all the bandits along with as he Gets Aggro. "Come on, ya bastard, let's see who's saltier!"
Tina Natsumi "Y'expect anythin' less?" Tomoe gets a hearty laugh from Tina at that questioning tone, and she braces against her robotic Persona's leg as the giant metal bird pirate sends his minions forward and turns the entire foresty field into a magnificent rowboat. She whistles softly as she takes a moment to gawk at everything, even taking a moment to pull her phone back out and get a nice, panoramic shot of the whole thing.

"See this here, folks? This is the kinda stuff I do so y'all don't have to. Now without further ado..." The cowgirl counts to herself silently as she fires one shot each at the bandits' shins, then hunkers up against her Persona with her phone safely in her pocket again as the water starts churning arund them. She winces as it slams her and the mechanical spirit thing around, weathering the worst of it even as she gets blasted.

"Let's get this show goin'. Cap'n!"

Uncle Sam rises to its full height as Tina braces Thompson submachine gun in both hands while the Persona wields two of its own. "Time to mutiny!"

So many bullets. She's firing, her Persona's firing, and there's just this incessant noise from the bullets churning out of the three guns. They're not aimed anywhere in particular so much as they're intended to just hose the Eiggkon down with sheer volume!
Corona Arclite For all her twitchiness, the actual shift in environment caughts Corona off-guard for a moment, wasn't expecting that. And the sensors that should of picked it up have been going off-kilter because of all the bad mojo aetheric energy this thing has stired up. "Sunnova--"

She kicks back as the Pirate Eigg-whatever it was called stomps on the rowboat deck, avoiding the boot and the splinters but getting sloshed by some of the spray of water even as she slides back underneath one of the benches. As she skids out at the back she flings her grappler glove to grab the bench and zip herself up onto it. As she lands she holds out her handgun, but then pauses as she taps her chin with the other hand. "Ah'm normally doin' cowboy thin's, so forgive me iffen Ah ain't got the venacular completely rawht. But..."

She shrugs, turns back to the fight and opens fire, weapon yowling loudly and recoiling as it fires an oversized round at the pirate captain. "YO HO HO AND BLOW THAT MAN DOWN!"
Tomoe There is reality-bending. Okay hasn't known to expect that and even less than that? The thing that forms is a rowboat? A rowboat? Forms? It's a big one to be sure but it's a freaking rowboat. It also makes promises of riches to its minions as well. Then comes the water Tomoe isn't quick enough to reform her wing to fully get clear of it, she's roughed up but it but she's able to survive it and get into the air enough to get back into the fight.

"So that's how you want it then we're sending you to meet Davy Jones."

A name that likely means nothing to anyone whose, not from Earth.

With N'Raha's fearsome banter at the Primal she will move in to back him up aiming to off-tank for him if it becomes needed.

The moment she hits the make a flying attack for the Primal keeping up her speed as she does so. She'll make several rapid attacks with her sword and she zips about the Eggman made Primal. She'll then fly up and drop back down for a flying slash to finish up her assault upon the unholy creature.

She's got to keep up in its face enough to make sure she can step in, should she need to fill in for N'Raha.
Ishirou -Greetings, Type 4X, transferring data updates, handshake recognized and update protocol engaged.-

I4 is glad S6 is here, but even as data comes in...the world changes.  The large rowboat is the stage, which means the water is likely dangerous?  Maybe he can mess with this world manipulation in a bit, but right now he has...problems.  

The slash draws the fluid from his body causing the poor android to stagger and take a knee.  He wasn't ready for that, as he turns his head to take a look at Arkae.  Scans come up, as his POD starts to draw on information to try and formulate a plan.

                        Arkae Zellar
                   ----------------------------
                     Not so enthusiastic pirate.

His eyes gleam for a moment, as a rapier appears from his systems, producing it in hand as he flips back away from her.  As he does so, blasts of fire rock the area around her (and hopefully with her) trying to counter the high amount of water aether with direct applications of it's opposing element.

"Ok, everything you are doing right now is very wrong, bad, and probably stupid for the continued existence of this region and its ecosystem.  In other words, it's highly illegal, and when I figure out what place has authority here, I'll arrest you in their name."  There is a pause, "Sorry update.  /Extremely illegal/, the data has been updated thanks to local sources."
Staren     Staren's hands unclench and clench around the control sticks a few times as they prepares to fight. His thumb hovers over the trigger--

    --and the world twists! It's not that Staren's never seen such an effect before, but he wasn't expecting it here! His machine is blasted by water from one of the cracks, and stumbles. Staren tries to find a dry spot -- or at least a stable spot -- and plants his mech's feet, stabilizers unfolding and digging into the wood of the boat, as Staren brings the weapons online:

    The smaller set of arms under the mech's body wield dual machineguns, which Staren turns on the onrushing bandits, sweeping high-caliber rounds across them. Staren aims one of the larger forearms at the primal itself, an ominous hole revealing itself to be the launch tube for an anti-tank rocket launcher!

    "Your story's only gonna get told this once, buddy."
Amelris Belthrone      This is not the first time that something like this have been noticed to be done by a Primal. That STILL makes is damn surprising.

     Amelris' first instinct was to balance himself, arms stretched out, tail puffed straight behind him. Soon enough, sealegs of any good Lominsian comes rushing back as he relaxes, scowling up at the sight of the Giant Bird Pirate.

     Just in time for Arkae to come dashing at him. Oh. Right. He remembers her, from the Last Illusion. And... inside the mansion. IS she the one that fed the story that spanwed this damn off-brand Primal to Eggman!?

     Amelris dashes against her, lifting his rapier up to deflect one end of the curved swords or at least deflecting it enough that he don't get completely skewered. Still, cuts are there as he slides back, tail jerking around to keep himself on balance.

     "I'd be a LOT more sympathetic to that if it wasn't Tempering anything in sight and draining all the aether around here, Arkae!" Amelris calls out, lightning gathering on his gem-hand, thrusting it out into a streak of electricity. They're on water, sure. That should still work /fine/.
S6     S6's attention is focused on the Primal itself, such that a Crazy Japanese Man from the side quite successfully blindsides her with a kick that sends her tumbling across the forest floor. While the android girl sorts herself out with a dramatic braking maneuver using her sword, the POD wheels around on Goro just as he had predicted, unfurling its casing to dispense two small rotary-barreled machine guns. Before it can open fire, it's snatched and aimed elsewhere, spewing off a stream of tracer rounds before it self-corrects and ceases.

    -ALERT-

    While the POD starts sounding its Manhandling Alarm, S6 returns to the fight with a propelled dash. The axe across her back wheels forward, hands-free, but it's the hammer-like back side of the head that leads the strike rather than the bearded crescent blade.

    If it's banter Majima wants, this lady might be a bit disappointing.
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry, to her credit, manages to keep her footing on the shifting ship. She does not, however, manage to hit him: she stares right into Majima's eyes as he weaves and slides; her lips twist into a grimace. Her finger tightens on the trigger... and then grudgingly relaxes. She can't do it. She can't.

     Instead, the mahou drops her gun to the deck and spins to track him as he leaps into the air, her fingers instinctively finding the electronic controls of her feathery-winged nuclear wand instead. The POD-grab makes her jaw visibly slacken, but she's already responding- bending her knees, settling into a combat stance, flicking ominous switches.

     The gunmetal tumor on her pastel wand rumbles and cracks to life, glowing a faint Cherenkov blue even in the midday sun as control rods shift and pull out with dire warning tones. A faint shimmering second skin envelops her in protection just in time; the fire from the POD washes over her, but sparkles shine through the smoke before it parts. An instant later, she's erupting upwards from the ship, soaring hundreds of feet into the air on wings of white glitter before elegantly flipping upside-down at the apex.

     If anyone's eyes are keen enough, they might see Strawberry wince as she pulls the trigger. "Blueberry. I'm sorry."

     A single laser-pulse of white-pink energy spears towards Majima, slagging metal and boiling water on contact. Instants before impact, he's engulfed in a pink bubble of force... and the shot ricochets around inside, threatening him from every angle in a rapid game of ping-pong until he can break the bubble and escape!
Eggman      Raha goes running forward, spinning, dragging along with him a horde of brainwashed ~~bandits~~pirates. They go flying in every direction as the axe comes crashing down into Trarrchogh's talon. The bird pirate lets out a loud caw. It's about to kick the tank with a foot larger than he is when the anti-tank rifle goes off, firing directly into the thing's chest alongside Corona's handgun shot and Tina's rapid-fire bullet assault. Tomoe brings her blade up and carves across the thing's metal chest, sparks drawn from the grind of blade on steel. The lot of them together throw the Eiggkon off-balance, and rather than getting kicked in the face, Raha (and everyone else) is subjected to the boat listing to the left, tilting the battlefield and the water inside it at an unpleasant and slippery angle.

     "YARRRRRRWK," the Captain caws, "SPIRITED, AREN'T YE?! LET'S SEE HOW IT AVAILS YE NOW!"

     The Captain brings his cannon-arm down, pointing it at N'Raha. The rest of the party merely gets the shockwave - the explosive force of the cannonball hitting the boat, and the small but ferocious waves that erupt around it in its wake. "BE PATIENT, YE LOT - WE'VE NOT EVEN REACHED THE FIRST TRIAL!"
Arkae Zellar "So this is... the second time in as many months as I've been on the job here that someone's threatened to arrest me, and-"

What Arkae is saying is cut off as blasts of fire blast out. She pulls back on the imaginary throttle of her wave of water, causing it to splash up and dampen the fire, causing her to become merely singed instead of the intended extra-crispy. The sudden change in motion just *barely* causes Amelris's thunder to skim past her, shorting out on the wave of water instead of hitting anything useful.

Amelris himself, coming at her with a rapier, is met in kind. "- I am literally a pirate right now, the job is 'stealing stuff', if being arrested was going to threaten me I would have -"

Her sword parries and then swings at Amelris, and- is that something unpleasant looking coating it? "- done something else?"

Amelris recognizes her from Last Illusion. He might recognize something else as well - the Red Bird relic she's holding in her offhand. As the slipstream wave goes cresting at I4, Arkae points the relic at it- and the wave bursts, turning into superheated steam as fire and water collide!

"By the way, I get what you mean about it draining magic from the land, sure, but this isn't the real Pirate King Trarrchogh, either! Which is also bad! The real story is a lot more good! I can tell it to you if you want!"
Majima Goro Majima is absolutely a Crazy Japanese Man. He lets the support pod go shortly after it fires its barrage. He's got to get back to the fight with the magical girl, see. He's just starting to work himself up for that run, when suddenly, The Situation Has Changed.

S6 finds that Majima Goro is not an easy target. She makes the slightest noise running up, and he's already turned around. "Nehehe! I was just *borrowing* i--"

He doesn't get to finish. She's just swinging. And once that happens, he's already on the move, sliding out of the way with a surprising deftness. "...Arright, I'll take ya on too!" He's not taking her too seriously at present, though, mostly just keeping up speed and circling around her, throwing quick jabs and a kick or so. Mostly, because there's another problem in the corner of his eye.

That is to say, the chick with the glock just came back. He's not, by any means, able to dodge being trapped in the pink bubble. However, the shot ricocheting around inside? For some reason, he's got that. He's not just dodging around it. He's -dancing- around it. He is, unironically, disco-style dancing inside the bubble, and the shot only grazes him a few times before he manages to deliver a forceful kick to bust the bubble open.

Fuck. She's in the air. Alright. It's time to try out the new plan. The pink corona of flame flickers away, replaced by a yellow one, as he draws a wooden bat from..somewhere. And then a baseball. He eyes it up, and then...the ball is thrown upwards.

And then he swings. He swings hard, and true, and sends a single white baseball blazing through the sky towards Strawberry Justice. It's not a shot from a nuclear-powered magical girl wand, but it's going to hurt.
Ishirou I4 could see the heat and energy behind that superheated steam.  He moves to try and avoid it.  However, he also focuses on trying to get movement data on the Tengu, trying to keep one step ahead of her if he could.  Flipping back, the blast of heat does hit, but only at his back and singing the synthetic skin under the military outfit there.  

He gets thrown to the ground, staggering as he tries to get back into control of the situation, finally skidding into a stop.  His back hurts, his systems are warning him to get behind something.  Right now, however, he has a duty to perform.  

"Yeah?  I mean, it'd be poor form of me to at least not inform you of it.  Rather you choose to give up or not is on your terms in that case, and can't be used for attempts to wiggle out of proper sentencing on technicalities once the law is being done."

"Also, I mean, making sure the paperwork is done right the first time..." A pause, "I'd like to, but...right now is kinda a bad time?  Also, I think you're also trying to kill us.  While that would make sure we're paying attention, I think your story might miss its cultural marks."

There, he has it.  

The POD levels next to him, and this time a beam of energy fires across the field of battle, aiming to try and knock the Tengu off her feet, while he gathers another set.  He's trying to plan his next move while trying to keep Arkae on her toes.
S6     An axe is hardly ideal in close quarters. S6 grips the weapon defensively when Goro goes on the offensive, then releases it. It floats upward, swinging around to float behind her back while she dances with her opponent. It's not like hitting a human, though. S6 is a lot more solid in places, more resistant to bare hands. An invitation that treating her delicately might not be necessary.

    When the bubble goes up around Majima, S6 skips back across the boat's planking. She takes a moment to assess herself and her POD, which chimes when glances at. Her attention returns to Majima himself and his evasion technique. He produces a weapon; takes his shot at the airborne Strawberry Princess. S6 lifts one hand, fingers spread.

    A golden ring of runes appears around the end of the bat in Majima's hands. S6's hand closes into a fist, wrenching on something unseen. The bat in Majima's hands lurches very suddenly towards his own face.
Corona Arclite As soon as she's fired her shot Corona darts down the length of the bench, and leaps over to the handle of one of the giant oars, intending to put her parkour skills to use to get a little closer.

It doesn't quite work that way, she lands just as the pirate captain fires, and while she's not in the direct line of fire the shockwave literally rings in her ears and throws off her balance. There's a brief curse as she rocks backwards and tumbles.

Instinctively she points her handcannon down and fires without actually shooting a round, using the recoil to rocket herself back up onto the bench so she doesn't slam hard into the deck from a nasty height. The landing is still at an awkward skid, she doesn't do that as often as she should practice.

"Ah reckon we need a dif'rent approach." Corona mutters as she straightens her stetson, and then stows her firearm for the time being. Then taps a few quick strokes at her arm controller and pulls a metal cube from her inventory. As soon as she tosses it on the bench next to her it click-a-clacks to unfold and shuffle components into a large cannon. Which opens fire with a thunderous roar, hurtling one of the armor piercing explosive rounds she normally uses for stopping rampaging Molemen drill-machines at the giant pirate primal thing.
Tomoe Tomoe is able to help the rest of the party push the Riggkon off-balance and others are also doing some serious damage to it, the Captain is far from out of the fight, and she back off for a moment as she tries to get an idea of what the Captain is doing to do.

"We ain't dead yet Cappy!"

Tomoe retorts as the Captain fires his shot at N'Raha and Tomoe like the rest of the group is caught in harm's way via the shockwave. It hits she's able to ride it out but it rattles her doing a fair bit of injury to her. Tomoe's HP bar down and it's into the yellow a fair bit already, worse she's already feeling it too.

"Ugg..."

She will hold back this time hovering aloft a few feet and chants, runes of gold dance about her for a moment. She stops chanting, and a burst of flame is launched right at the Captain.

"Corona you got any really big booms with you today!?"
Strawberry Princess      Despite the hundreds of feet between them, Strawberry's gaze is fixed firmly on Majima as he draws the bat and ball. Her preternaturally expanded awareness tells her every stitch on the baseball; every shift and waver in his stance. She doesn't start to dodge until it's almost too late, too transfixed by the patent absurdity of it. "You've got to be..."

     Thwack.

     An acrobatic defensive twist at the last second saves her from catching it straight in her face, instead glancing off of her temple with a flare of pink forcefields. She twirls to realign, lining up the nuclear wand like a rifle while tacking to avoid follow-up strikes. The control rods lift with a grinding crunch, one by one. A blue spotlight of Cherenkov radiation illuminates her firing lane, shifting to track him and altering its angle with her zigzag swoops. "You're right. I'm sorry. Firing on High."

     Something is wrong about this. There's a taste of metal in the air. A pricking feeling on the skin, like a deep sunburn. A high-pitched squeal that might be tinnitus. Strawberry's reactor is howling like a tortured animal as more and more rods are pulled out; the light of its crystal grows and grows until it's unbearable to look at even through one's eyelids. She pulls the trigger. Her fuel timer drops by thirty seconds as ounces of plutonium are converted to raw energy.

     04:02

     There is a light that isn't light, washing out every shadow. There is a sound that isn't sound, a bonerattling tsunami of air like a thunderclap. There is a hole through the ship, through the water, through anything in the beam's way. In an instant, tons of seawater flash-vaporize into a secondary explosion of scalding steam- a new Sun dropped into the ocean.

     Evasion is necessary, but not sufficient, for survival.
Amelris Belthrone      "Yes, technically, it /is/ very illegal to summon Primals or Primal-Like entities like THIS thing," Amelris prattles on, not letting that his VerThunder sails RIGHT past her, rapier clashing with her curved blade, peeling back and leaping back from the swing. It wasn't a big hit, just a scratch -- but that's enough to get the unpleasantness flow into his veins.

     He can feel a sudden wash of fatigue taking him over. The Miqo'te stumbles back, holding his head briefly to shake it. He'll get over it but that took some wind out of his sails, there. It's also hard to tell if he's paler or not -- he IS kind of gray-ish colored. Still, he looks a bit deflated.

     "Look I know you didn't particularly SUMMON that thing, you are /still/ kind of helping it ravage around, here." Amelris takes a deep breath, lifting his rapier to point it at the Tengu. "That's not something I very much appreciate! Also that poison you just junked into me!"

     The Red Mage tosses up his gem, dark energies gathering around him as he snaps it right back, flying off a fireball aimed at Arkae -- then take a step forward, making a complicated flourish with his rapier to unleash a brighter-colored gust of wind to spread that fire a bit wider -- and cutting.

     "After this? MAYBE I'd be interested to learn the real story--"

     He pauses, looking up at the EIGGKON. He wonders...

     "--Why not /NOW/? I'm Lominsian! I LOVE a good tale of crusty salt pirates! It's in my BLOOD. COME ON!"
Staren     Staren smiles when he sees his rocket connect. It's just so satisfying! And the mecha-bird-pirate goes down, making the whole ship, and battlefield, list to one side. "Urgh..." Staren detaches from the ship and takes to the air, hyperglass nozzles under the wings spouting small plumes of fire. So Staren's in the air when the shockwave hits -- it still shakes his machine around him, rattling a few parts loose, but it's not as bad as it could've been.

    Staren shouts back at it over the speakers: "You're not even the real story of captain whatever-his-name-is! If you want to be told, you'll have to show us everything you can do!"

    Then, with the speakers off, Staren comments into the microphone, "commensing supplemental experiment: Depleted uranium rounds are known for interfering with supernatural regeneration. Let's see what they do to a primal." His machine points at the captain with a finger. There's a loud K-CHAK sound as something inside it moves, and then a POW as it fires the heavy slug.

    He fires twice more KCHAK. POW! KCHAK. POW!

    Also, Staren sees Strawberry Princess boiling the ocean over there. "Nice!"
N'Raha     THIS? This Raha is used to. At least he's taking the brunt of things ahead of everyone else. He sees the attack on its way in, and Hollars. "MOVE! GET AWAY." Before he sets his stance deep, calls up his aether and makes himself a Rampart by which the others might survive better. This would work better, if say, he was carrying a shield, but the Catman makes do.

    The blast itself rattles his armor and his brain, but he comes up from it not... entirely worse for wear. A growling, angry noise in the warrior's chest, and he dives in at the Pirate Primal again, trying to keep the thing's attention as he makes his way back into position. It's been a while since he's needed his sea legs. He feels a little put out that he's been reduced to a land lubber.

    A hop, and then a jump over shockwaves, if they're still rumbling about, and then the Warrior lashes out again, a gleaming, swirling strike that seems to gather up energy around him, makes that dull red aura that's gathering on his body a little more certain.
Arkae Zellar "It's an important story!" yells Arkae. "And I appreciate Doctor Eggman trying to show it off with the thing but it's also-"

She gets cut off by the floating pod thing blasting her with energy beams, sending her staggering- right into the one-two punch of Amelris's magic and also Amelris's magic. That dualcast thing is a neat trick.

"Alright, the story- argh-"

Arkae is interrupted by the boat presumably sinking. She shouts to be overheard. "He's doing Pirate King Trarrchogh and the Adventures on the River, so I'm gonna tell you a different story! Pirate King Trarrchogh and the Three Ales!"

"Pirate King Trarrchogh, having earned the Respect of the Ocean - not the Crest of the Ocean, okay, set out to build his fleet! Anchored at the port were two pirate captains and they-"

She pours something nasty looking on her blade as she works. "They scoffed when he told him he had the Respect of the Ocean - though he did, and the other captains had lost it for being anchored and away from the seas for so long - and scoffed again when he invited them to join his fleet! And so, with ill aims, they challenged him to a drinking contest!"

"And they had been anchored there for ages, and-"

She pours something *nastier* on her blade as well.

"- And being that they had been anchored for so long, there were only three barrels of ale left in the whole port! So the challenge was that each captain, Trarrchogh included, had to drink one of the barrels!"

And then admidst all the carnage, she wave-dashes forward again, swinging her sword - first at Amelris, and then dashing again to swing at I4! The blade is not only glistening with a deadly cocktail of something as it swings, it's practically dripping with it.

"And the other captains, having lost their Respect, sought to sabotage the very contest they'd set up!"

"Pause for dramatic gasps!"
Eggman      Corona's large cannon opens fire. The Captain is about to return the shot when Strawberry Princess just outright blows a nuclear hole through the boat, blasting open everything that exists straight down through. There's a world-shattering pause as the boat cracks, as the story tries to bend itself around the event. It's enough time for Tomoe to blast the Captain with fire and make that explosive round lodged in his arm *really* erupt, a huge blast of fire that consumes the birdmanbotgod's face in a conflagration of flame, for Staren to blast the thing with depleted uranium, for Raha to hammer his massive swirling strike into the thing's leg. The ship shakes again under the sheer force of the assault, the rowboat's oars spinning up and down furiously as the Captain attempts to get hold of them.

     Capsize.

     Everything goes over. Everything goes upside-down. Water fills the battlefield. For a heart-stopping moment anybody who can't breathe underwater might very well feel like they're drowning.

     Then...

     The waves recede. The Captain stands on the shore of a small island, his cutlass high, his gun-arm higher. The metallic Eiggkon lets out another loud squawk as the party arrives. "MY BEAUTIFUL SHIP HIT A ROCK, AND RAN AGROUND! I HAD NOTHIN' LEFT BUT ME BLADE AND ME WITS! AN' THEN, I SPOTTED IT!"

     A huge shovel falls out of the sky, stabbing into the ground directly in front of the party. The earth shakes around it forcefully, hard enough to tip people over, to bring nearby palm trees crashing down onto the group.

     "X!"

     "MARKS!"

     "THE SPOT!"

     The earth erupts upwards from beneath the party as a massive treasure chest lid opens, throwing off sand, and probably everyone on top of it.

     "CAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAW!"
Majima Goro Majima Goro has a serious problem.
The first is that the lady with the nuclear wand just screamed to 'cover your ears'. Now, he kind of assumed some sort of crazy ass supersonic weapon was about to land, and he definitely brought up one hand to at least cover one of his ears..

When his own bat suddenly smashes into his face. He grips it again, but the damage is done.

"...Th'fuck was that?" He demands, looking around. There's some blood trickling down his forehead, but he seems to be alright nonetheless.

His intense philosophical monologue is interrupted. Strawberry Princess is firing the wand. He's not even able to look up at her. The crystal is glowing markedly uncomfortably bright, brighter than any real sun.

The beam fires. At its very edge, what remains is a tattered snakeskin jacket, half-burnt away, the remainder scorched. It flaps in the breeze. Majima is nowhere to be seen. Well, that's deeply unfortunate, and poignant, and a great time to depressedly ponder our collective existence, while the ship sinks.

And then, as the scene shifts to an island, an arm erupts from the sand. Then another. And then, rising from the sandbar is a single shirtless man, with an eyepatch and a knife. "Neehahaha! That was some fuckin' shit, though! That's what I'm looking for!"

First, Strawberry Princess. Sure, the robot chick is terrifying, but he's pretty sure he accidentally nailed himself with the bat harder than she hits him, so he'll deal with her in a second. She'll be ready for another baseball. So instead, he draws a knife. It's thrown into the air upwards..maybe five feet. Strawberry may, in fact, take this time to consider that there is no world where Majima could physically throw the knife this far.

And then, as he spins around to kick it towards her, she can recalculate and determine he can kick things far, far further than he throws them. At least he won't be up there to rip it out of her, if it lands.

That leaves him with S6, who is hopefully still a little thrown off. Or short-circuited, maybe? Is that how robots work? Fuck, he's no mechanic, what does he know?

He knows, at the very least, that the bat has betrayed him, and he's sticking to the knife for now. A second knife, covered in a thick red liquid that is either blood or hot sauce.

And as he strives forward to stab it into her stomach directly, it becomes potentially agonizingly clear: for some reason beyond everyone's ken, he keeps around a knife covered in hot sauce.
N'Raha     Oh. Oh. Midfight Cutscenes. What are you doing, Eggman we tried to get rid of these!?

    First things first, N'raha is now soaking wet, and his hat has floated off... somewhere. That's no good. He has not dorwned, that IS good. Ears and tail droop from the water, and he's literally shaking himself off when the X Marks The Spot hits. He's got the barest moment to raise his defense again, before he's sent skidding across the sand, and he just... wails. a bit. "Oh come on! This isn't how these are supposed to go. Eggman, you... first, stop, second, this is Sub Optimal!"

    And with that... less than fascinating battle cry, he leaps across the battlefield, slashing out with another wave of energy backing his axe, befor he turns and braces and SMACKS the Pirate King with a massive swat of the flat of his blade. That aura around him is getting more ominous.
Ishirou "Gasp!" I4 says right on time, even as the DANGEROUS BLADE OF YUCKY POISON goes for him.  he moves to try and avoid the strike, and while the blade cuts deeply, she will soon realize that the body itself is metal.  The poison corrodes and damages, but it does not actually slow or weakens I4 noticeably.  

Instead, he draws his rapier, even as the field changes, as they plunge into the water, he drives the Rapier up towards Arkae.  The blade enhanced by aether in the air as he slashes with pure mana behind his strikes.  Flipping back right as the shovel came down to make the spot he lands as the POD fires a barrage of rockets at the Tengu.

Then a rock from the sky aims to form, aiming to drop right on Arkae's head before it explodes in a burst of fire magic.  Even as his body suffers from the acidic nature of the poison, he forces his own aether to work double-time to try and put her down.  
Tina Natsumi Tina whistles lightly as she feels the first of the shockwaves from the Captain's cannonball hitting the ship, then crouches atop Uncle Sam to let it withstand the brunt of the violent shockwaves coming her way. "Nasty bugger, ain't he?" Hauling herself back up, she gets up just in time to see a giant laser tear right through te boat, and she holds on for dear life as the ship capsizes. "Hold on to your asses, folks!"

She's not holding onto Uncle Sam or anything. No, she's got her hands on her hat and her phone. She lets the water overtake her, floating for a moment to just get her bearings straight before noticing that the water is suddenly... Gone? No, it's just over there, and their locale has changed once again.

"Remind me to ask just how he that." She comments to nobody in particular (probably the viewers back home), then looks up and flings herself backwards when that shovel slams into the ground before the group. Tina yelps as the shaking grounds takes her off her feet once more, stopping only when she catches onto her Persona's arm and pulls herself right back up to her perch.

"Lemme guess... Ya got the gold, the treasure, but ya got..." She might actually have something for this. Uncle Sam's shoulder pops open as a mortar-like thing launches into the sky, aimed to fall directly in front of the Captain's face. Once it's in front of him, it explodes in a bright flash of light to try and mess with the robo-pirate's vision.

"... Blinded by greed?" Her delivery's kind of off there. At least the explosion is bright, and Tina follows that up by turning Uncle Sam downwards to fire another, more regular mortar directly at the Captain!
S6     Strawberry Princess issues her warnings. S6 responds in two ways. First, she dampens her auditory input, something not outwardly obvious. The second is when the android woman bends her knees, then springs back in a flip. She catches herself one-handed, springing another bound further away, propelled even further by the force of the Magical Girl's explosive attack. Alarmingly, S6 finds herself in the water-- until the Primal's arena warps itself and her feet find themselves ankle-deep in sand.

    The relief is briefly visible in S6's posture, before her attention refocuses on Majima the Mad Man. When he approaches her, she reaches back to grab her axe, hurling it forward and right past him. An easily avoided attack. Panic, perhaps?

    S6 digs in her heels, skipping back when Majima closes, though his knife does find purchase with a solid thrust, wrenching free in a spray of crimson-tinted oil and sparks. And then she grabs at his wrist. Her other hand lifts, grasping at empty air, wrenching back.

    That discarded axe whips to life, spinning end-over-end straight for the former-gangster's back.
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite instinctively holds her breath.... and it after a short time of getting sloshed around becomes a moot point as the water dumps them on an island somehow. Ugh, all this space dimensional warping is messing with her head. But at least it's solid ground.

That still proves to be a hazard as the ground erupts underneath them and she's thrown aside by the treasure chest bursting open and showering sand everywhere. The vixen growls as she rolls, worse for wear when she finally gets back onto her feet. This is not going so well, she hasn't found a way to get a solid hit on this whatever it is Eggman created. And now her cannon was busted and lost somewhere in all that watery wibbly wobbly to boot.

She thumps the side of her head with the heel of a hand to knock some water and sand out of the opposite ear, muttering about prefering to stick to deserts. Then sucks it back up and, well, what else can we try...

She pulls a different handgun, slapping the side of it to spin the chamber, and holds it off to fire several shots in rapid success. Shots that not one are towards the Pirate Captain.

They don't have to be, as despite going off in various directions the high energy shots abruptly change at nigh impossible angles to surge back towards their target from multiple vectors at once.
Staren     It's unclear if depleted uranium rounds have any special effect on primals. Well, not every science experiment does something exciting!

    More worrying than exciting is being plunged into the water. Staren hasn't actually equipped this machine with an air supply yet, but that's okay, he carries plenty on him. The problem is the thrusters don't work underwater! As he considers abandoning ship, though, he washes aground! Before he can even right his machine, it's shaken by the shovel and then flung through the air, crashing against the sand! There's a crack on the back of the cockpit, and some of the armor plating has fallen off, revealing... wood? And the mini-arms with the machinegun are sparking and jerking around. Staren's getting a little bruised in the cockpit too from being shaken around with these hits. He'll need to refine the design more. Still, Staren's able to use the thrusters to quickly right it...

    ...and take aim again, with weapons mounted on the side of his cockpit pod, under the rocket launcher, a pair of beam cannons. Staren is studiously cycling through various kinds of weapons to study their effect on primals! Twin beams of particles blast across the sand!

    <"I gotta say, I'm glad to hear that neither version of this story pulls a 'but the real treasure was the memories you made along the way.'">
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris, really, can't fault anybody from using poison in a fight. It's a legit tactic. Hell, /he/ uses it!

     Admist all the chaos of a WHOLE AETHERIC SHIP capsizing, things becomes a little hard for Amelris to deal with. Stepping back from the wash of water, leaping to get himself out of the 'fake' water from drowning -- and the explosion of WEALTH is the more important one. This, unfortunately, kind of get him STRAIGHT in the way of Arkae's poisoned blades but not before he brings his cape up to defend himself against it. It rips into him, slicing straight into his side and he feels the unfortunate, familiar feeling of the sting of poison.

     "Hah... hahah..." He laughs, stumbling back, feet crunching beneath an ENDLESS FRONT of gold beneath his boots. "Now that's a good start to a story! Did he die?"

     The Red Mage take a wide leap backward, kicking up a spread of coin from his launch, spreading out his arms into a graceful landing, swinging off a stream of crystaline swords to home down at the Tengu, some plowing into the gold all around them but some definetively more distinctive in their targeting.
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry's reeling from the abrupt 'scene transition' when the knife finds her- her 'Shimmer Aura' transforms the cutting edge into a blunt impact, but it's still enough of a blunt impact to knock the wind out of her; send her spiralling into the sand. By the time she realizes that she hasn't reinserted the control rods, her wand is outputting enough radiation to scorch the skin on her face red. God knows what her hands look like under those cutesy gloves.

     But she picks herself up, molten glass running in rivulets off of the staff, and trudges towards him. The display is flickering, stuttering between nonsense numerals as she brings it up towards Majima, barely thirty feet away. Her aim is shaking. She can't feel her fingers. The buzzing in her ears is getting louder and louder, and the taste of metal is unbearable. But they can fix that back at the base.

     This is about here and now. She'd like to tell herself it's about being a hero, too, but it's not. It's about proving a point. It's about the raw edge of panic you get when 'losing' has never meant anything but death. "Please move," she says, and it might either be for S6 or Majima.

     00:01

     The reactor is going critical. Strawberry hits 'fire' and 'SCRAM' at almost the same time. A spotlight of Cherenkov radiation illuminates her firing path. And then a new Sun is born here for the second time, and the water turns to vapor and the sand turns to liquid and everything that can burn is lit on fire.

     Somewhere, out on the horizon, the clouds are parted. Somewhere out in space, someone has a bad day.
Tomoe Things are going okay for the most part in Tomoe's mind this foe is powerful. Yet they haven't been dropped things should be all right if they can keep it together. Then things get freaking nuclear, that is something Tomoe did not see coming as a hole is blown in the boat. Still, it's worked out it allowed her enough time to get her spell off. It looks like she set off some sort of ammo explosions, which works fo her. Staren keeps hammering away at it as the boat capsizes. Now she's off her game, in the water, soaked through.

The good news is the water will recede in short order, this is good she's not very good at fighting in the water.

"Wait! You what?! Oh, come on you have to be ..."

Tomoe is cut off as the tree starts falling and she's forced to leap clear she's able to not get pinned but she ends up diving so hard she hurt herself in the process form the force of the impact.

"Okay now I'm mad."

She notes to the cawing horror that Eggman has birthed.

She darts in as her comrades keep up the attack she keeps going her blade starts to glow, as she launches into a rapid combo of sword strikes.

"LIGHTING EDGE!"

Several more strikes rapidly are fired off as Tomoe keeps up with her sword art. Though this might leave her a bit exposed in the aftermath.
Majima Goro     Majima does dodge the axe. Frankly, he's not got a clue what that's about, but throwing axes happen. She's probably got more weapons. Who doesn't keep a huge supply of weapons on them at all times? Nobody, that's who.

The knife drives in, she's... a robot, so like literally everyone else in the world, they don't die when you just stab them once in the gut with a knife. Obviously. Simplest thing in the world. Then she grabs ahold of his wrist. Eyebrow raises. He prepares to counter whatever she's about to do with her other hand, and then... nothing?

Tick. And then--right! Right. There's literally only one way this can go. And so, he drops to the ground, twisting his arm around. The good news is, the spinning axe flies right past him. The bad news is that this requires him to drop to the ground while S6 is holding his wrist, and wow, that makes his arm twist in a way he's super not fond of, and he's just in time to see Strawberry Princess again.

Right. The mega wand thing. Wow. He's absolutely not at all ready for this. The light is all-consuming. The only really good part about this is that there's no way in hell S6 is still standing directly next to him, so at least--*bwoom*

...He's not dead. The fuck? He's not dead? Why the fuck is he not dead? Sure, there's heavy burning. Unimaginably heavy burning sensations. But, uh. He's not dead. He's okay with this.

He gets up, slowly. He's..he's not feeling so great. Kinda woozy. Sick. But he's not done yet. He's..gonna need to do something about this, to take the edge off. He grabs a bottle of sake from...somewhere, using a knife to flip the lid off. He chugs it back. This doesn't cure heavy radiation, but it's enough alcohol that he can ignore the pain for now. It's enough that he can at least get something else done in this fight. "Alright." He scans around. S6 is still lurking out there somewhere. He's going to have to deal with this real quick-like. And so he lurches forward towards the robot, grinning like a madman. "Fuck it. I don't care. I survived *that* shit. I'm good. I wanna see the best *you* got now, eh? Make my fuckin' *day*." He's still got the bottle. And at this point, he's not quite ready to make the final move. Right now, he's just going to wing a glass bottle of beer directly at S6's head, and prepare one last shot.
Arkae Zellar Arkae has a bad time.

There's rocks. There's swords. There's lots of rocks, lots of swords, also lots of gold coins for some reason - but at least that's part of the story!

The tengu staggers out of the aftermath, coughing. Her clothing has some new holes in it. The tengu also looks like she has some new holes in herself. And yet, she can't stop, not yet.

The story still needs to be told.

"They took the last... the last three barrels of ale in the entire port!"

She reaches into her bag of holding and pulls out three bottles of glowing liquid.

"The contest was simple - Trarrchogh would drink from the first barrel, and the other captains would drink from the second and the third, and whoever drank the most would win!"

She uncorks the three potions, one after the other.

"Trarrochogh went first, and he drank, and he drank!"

She upends the first potion into her beak, and chugs it all in one go.

"And seeing this, how easily he could hold his ale, the other two captains schemed, and they cut a hole in the top of Trarrochogh's ale barrel while he was busy drinking, and they started pouring theirs in!"

She chugs the second potion.

"And Trarrchogh drank, and he drank, and he drank..."

She upends the final potion, the glowing liquid cascading down her throat.

"And... he drank it all!"

And then she attacks.

Whatever was in those potions is... something. She's moving more swiftly, more forcefully, striding across the treasure island and swinging her sword again -

"And the first captain, seeing how Trarrchogh could hold his ale, was ashamed!"

- at Amelris, and then turns in the exact same step towards -

"The second captain, seeing how Trarrchogh succeeded in spite of their treachery, was impressed!"

- I4, the curved sword flashing out. On both, she aims for critical points, ones that if she's successful will aid in how well they can drink -

- that is, their bodies drinking in the poison coursing through their systems!
Eggman      The huge flat of Raha's blade hits the side of the Pirate King's leg, a resounding hit that sends the sand shaking away from them, that sends the ground rippling. It looks down at him. The single eye stares at him for a long moment, as if unsure that he actually just did that.

     And then Tina shoots it in the eye with a flashbang.

     The bird-pirate screeches, stumbling backwards, away from Raha; it moves to rub its eye with its giant cannon arm, which...well, you figure that out. As it does so, Corona and Staren launch into a set of blasts, hammering into it from every side. Beam cannons, rocket launchers, laser blasts, Tomoe's swinging electrical blades - the Pirate King is under a fierce and ferocious onslaught that it's only managing to weather thanks to its iron plumage. Staren can't tell if anything in particular hurts it more or less than anything else, but at least, for a god, it's still weak to good old-fashioned being punched in the face. A lot of things aren't.

     Back in the bunker, one of the bars Eggman is currently working furiously to stabilize goes flat white. Eggman's eyebrow raises. He looks over at the monitor.

     Ah.

     The island goes nuclear. Strawberry Princess's reactor overloads, a blast that punches straight out into space, smashing through the island. The false island twists around it furiously as the Captain's aether continues to build.

     The Captain's still standing. Indeed, the aether is so great that its single eye is practically ablaze as it stands.

     The world goes still.

     Above, the sky begins to open. Rain pours down en masse, sizzling around the radioactive crater, hammering the ground below with furious flooding. The bird himself shoulders his cutlass. "CONGRATULATIONS, MORTALS. YE DID A FINE JOB THROUGH THE FIRST TWO TRIALS."

     "WHAT LAY AT THE END OF MY RIVER WAS THE OCEAN. THE OCEAN WHERE I MADE MY PLEASURE. WHERE I SAILED TILL THE DAY I DIED, SURROUNDED BY ENOUGH GOLD TO FILL A MOUNTAIN."

     "WHAT LIES AT THE END OF YOUR RIVER IS, AS YE GUESSED, ENOUGH GOLD TO FILL A MOUNTAIN."

     Oh no.

     The rain turns to coins. Hard, painful coins, pouring down in a deluge. If every water drop in a hurricane was a gold coin, whipped about by gale-force winds, it would, roughly, match this.

     So billions of gold coins just pouring onto everyone's heads. All at once.
Staren     Holy shit, THAT just happened. Staren has to close his eyes, but he can see through cameras on some of the weapons he installed, so he's not blinded. Even through the mech, he's not sure he's safe -- but radiation is a slow killer, so he'll have plenty of time to get treated; he reminds everyone else here to do the same.

    And then apparently they've reached the end of the story, and the end is a RAIN OF DEADLY COINS. Staren tries to dodge the most concentrated coin cloudbursts, but even so, his cockpit canopy is spiderwebbed with cracks and his wings are dented and warped. There's no more time for methodical tests.

    It's time to end this!

    Staren fires everything the mech has! The machineguns, the depleted uranium, the particle beams, the anti-tank rockets... from elsewhere on the machine, lasers and various kinds of missiles fire as well. God or not, everything dies when you shoot it enough!

    Staren sure hopes he has 'enough'.
Ishirou I4 couldn't follow her this time, the concentration had been snapped with both the story and the attack he just launched.  He'd need more time to calculate such a perfect and massive attack again, even as the stage around them spun terribly as the Eikon came into its full glory.  Poison leaked into his systems.

Worse, something exploded, his every aether was being corrupted, as the cut sliced him from across the chest.  Staggering, he falls to a knee gripping at the wound.  He can't deal with much more, he's already pushing himself beyond what he should fight.  He's not a front line unit, is what he keeps saying.

Then he looks at Strawberry and S6, who are fighting with everything they have.  Taking a breath, he stands and some sort of white aether overtakes him.  Flushing his systems of the corrosive poison and restoring will to fight.  

Lightning collects in his arms as the pod fires a barrage of mini-missiles.  His hands are thrown up, as the lightning arcs from missile to missile before attempting to connect the entire web of missiles.  Then they all point in the same direction, all of them pointing right at the Tengu.  

"FIRE!" he shouts as the rain of missiles fall towards her in a single wave of fire, trying to simply overload her with pure numbers.
N'Raha     N'raha can FEEL the awful tickle of that radiation aether just... broiling at the island, at this ripple of reality, and he can only hope that when they come back to the Shroud, that this place isn't going to be HORRIBLY TAINTED FOR GENERATIONS.

    That said, there's been another change in scenery, and now N'raha is on the edge of what appears to be a deluge of False Booty or Fools Dubloons or whatever you want to call it because it's not Gil and it's not going ot be here after the Pirate King dies. That said, it still hurts like hell, and he can hear... someone behind him eat it.

    "Hells, we need to finish this." He staggers back in, squares up with Pirate King Trarrchogh, and then growls. All of that raw aether roiling around him coalesces into a horrible glistening energy on the edge of that axe of his, and he leaps up, whispering a silent prayer to Halone that this actually lands, for once.

    The blade comes up and around, and a horrible grinding noise of One Thousand Strikes follows in its path.
Corona Arclite Between the aetheric energies going crazing from EGGMAN SCIENCE and whatever nuclear shenanigans Strawberry is pulling over there, Corona's various sensory devices are constaintly screeching and buzzing in loud, obnoxious retro-scifi sound bits. To the point that when it starts physically sparking from there being too much information to process with it's reverse engineered technology she finally pulls the device off her arm in a fit of frustration and shoves it into her inventory. "For cris'sakes, show some RESTRAINT people!"

Yeah, no luck in that.

Corona deploys a metal shield and holds it up over her head when the rain starts. Only for the rain to turn into chunks of metal -- no, coins. Definately coins. They can be heard clanging loudly of the sheet of metal she's used to shield herself. "This is smeggin' nuts, even by my standards." She pulls out her big handcannon again, and peaks out to try and aim a shot.

Only for a dubloon to hit hard enough it punches THROUGH the shield and wedges into the weapon with a hideous screech.

There's just long enough for Corona's expression to go flat as she realizes, ears splaying back. "Oh son of a bi--"

*BOOM*

The handcannon jams, causing the pulsarium core to blow out, and the resulting explosion hurtles Corona helluvafar across whatever the arena is at this point. Whatever the edge is when she finally skids on the ground.

A few coughs follow, and she holds up one hand weakly. "Ah'm.. just gonna lay here a moment... ya all got that handled..."

And collapses back down.
Amelris Belthrone      Ignoring the poison is getting him nowhere. There's not much he can do about it at this moment. The sword strikes cuts into him despite his attempts at blocking them. Oh, sure, he BLOCKS, deflect some of the momentum, but the avian's strikes do strike frightfully true into his side. He can feel the poison, accentuating the already existing build up in his system. His vision is clouding, the Miqo'te staggering. His sword is brought up with less energy, his step a bit slower.

     "Ugh..." Amelris comments, stepping back with his body slumping a bit, wiping off his mouth some drool off the corners. "Now... now that's one hell of a deed, right there." He mutters, mentally slapping himself in an attempt to get his brain back together. He CAN feel his energy within him. It's primed. It's pretty ready.

     A Crimson Duelist wont go down like this, this easily, without giving it his all!

     A burst of adrenaline surges into Amelris, his eyes bursting wide as he DASHES for the Tengu like an arrow, his rapier ahead like a charging deer, streaking over the the explosion of gold around them and pushing aetheric metal out of the way.

     "So did they join his bleeding fleet!?" Amelris exclaims, using the story to achor himself while his hand blurrs, unleashing a flurry of thrusts, destined to aim at her torso and shoulders.
Tomoe Tomoe will attempt to make us of the slight breather that Tina buys the party with her flashbang. This lets her manoeuvre a bit more and makes ready for the next attack. Things go nuclear for Princess Strawberry Tomoe is concerned for her well being, but there's not much she can do right now as the false island twist itself at the Captian's will. She has no idea about the magical end of things, she just knows the Captian is still standing it's also raining now into the radioactive crater. Tomoe's really going to have to ask for some help from the Paladins or Concord after this.

"There are more Trials?!"

Wait enough gold to fill a mountain? She doesn't even need to do the math on the weight of that. It's going to squish anything caught under it, it's now raining, and now it's raining gold coins.

So many gold coins and it's like she's being constantly hit with arrows or the mother of all slingshot volleys. She struggles to not end up buried and even then her body is a mess of blotted angry wireframes as she struggles to get out from the gold and there's nothing she can do to protect her comrades from this. It does not look good for Corona and the best way to protect her now is to bring everything she can against the Captain.

She pushes her shield up her arm as she takes her sword in both hands. She breaks into a run right for the Captain leaping up trying to slices at the Captain's gut with a wing assisted leap.
Tina Natsumi Something glints in the corner of Tina's vision. "The heck is...?" She glances over, and she's treated to some eye-searing whiteness as Strawberry Princess does something more nuclear than whimsical. It's actually kind of terrifying to see it in action again in such a short time. It almost distracts her from the Captain's changing of their surroundings and his next attack.

Almost.

It's a classic story, to be sure. There aren't any particularly dramatic twists or turns, but it's an entertaining story to say the least, and Tina can appreciate the production values going into all of it and the show her viewers are undoubtedly getting from the hurricane of coins buffeting everyone in the area. It's enough to crack a person's skull open, to turn bones to dust, and it's absolutely fitting with the pirate using such vast riches as weaponry.

And yet, Tina can't use it herself. She sees her allies getting beat up. She gets a pretty hard beating herself, having to twist and turn against her Persona to avoid getting hit in the eyes and focusing on minimizing damage to herself even as she gets bruised and beat up by the storm of shinies. It's actually kind of irritating, and by the time the storm settles, the Persona-user already has her next maneuver in mind.

"Gotta hand it to ya, captain... You sure got a way with words. If I was just watchin' this, you bet your ass I'd be hootin' and hollering. But right now, as a participant? I gotta show off, too!" Instead of hiding behind the Persona, Tina charges ahead of her mechanical protector as she takes potshots at the Captain's eye in her run while the Persona braces itself on one knee. A large cannon with a smaller cannon on the side appears on its back, visibly charging with a glowing red-white-and-blue energy.

After only a couple of seconds, there's a bright flash of light as fireworks start erupting out of the cannon, creating an impromptu lightshow all arund the Captain! The smaller cannon, meanwhile, launches off the big one, sliding conveniently into Tina's waiting hand as she gets into position beneath the Captain. She skids to a stop, raises the cannon, then winks for the camera on Uncle Sam's belt before firing that laser cannon upwards from close range.
Arkae Zellar "And then..."

Arkae is interrupted by FIRE.

"... then he-"

Arkae is interrupted by STABS.

The tengu - the smaller one that's not a robot primal - sways. "He..."

She collapses, falling onto her side on the coin-strewn ground of the island.

"... He got chased out of the port on his rowboat for hogging all the ale to himself," she manages to say.
S6     When Majima drops to avoid the axe, he's given a glimpse of what S6 is doing with it. There's a golden ring of runes orbiting the weapon's haft, and when he drops out of the way, the weapon suddenly stops where he was, crescent blade holding right where the center of his back would have been. If he hadn't dropped, that would've been a very bad day.

    But other circumstances result in S6 releasing his horribly twisted arm, springing back amidst the flash of Strawberry Princess' magical explosion. Elements of her uniform burn away, the red sections now burned black when she lands on the simmering sand. Her eyes dart across her HUD, now fraught with static, when an alert begins flashing about radiation levels. Cherenkov-type, Human-hazardous. A time limit before she is considered At Risk is imposed, which she minimizes to one corner. Her HUD further distorts when a bottle shatters against her visor, cracking the headpiece.

    The axe S6 had been using glows, where it had been discarded, and then disappears in a shower of golden sparks. She raises a hand, "I was not built to fight humans. This has been an important experience." Her fingers close, wrenching on Majima's body directly-- so that she can meet his chin with a rising heel. She's determined he'll do everything he can to avoid weapons. So her hands will have to do.
Eggman      The Eiggkon is certainly becoming unstable. The world is flickering in and out, the weird half-real half-aetheric existence the party is trapped in disappearing and reappearing at every pulse. The strange machine-god stumbles forward under the combined firepower. Staren's entire-fucking-arsenal. Raha's massive, hammering axe-blow that cracks the ground around it. Tomoe's gut-stab tear, slashing at the metal-god's midsection in the hopes of hauling his keel open. Fireworks erupting around, lasers blasting, blaring, flaring. Everything is bright and distracting and smacking into the last of the Captain's aetheric reserves. The bar is dropping, dropping, dropping. Tina shoots right through the side of its head. Tomoe drags her blade down the stomach. Raha's blow is hard enough to topple stone. Staren unloads even more.

     The machine-born god hesitates, ticking and sparking like a broken machine. But it's not a machine. It's a god that simply looks like one.

     The Captain's singular eye blazes with light. It's a last, final, screaming strike.

     The Captain launches himself straight into, and possibly through, Tomoe, expending the last of his aether in a furious, murderous strike. It's a tidal wave of pure energy as the god disintegrates into nothing but whorls of magic, vanishing along with its landscape.
Majima Goro     Majima probably shouldn't have survived that initial blast. Frankly, he shouldn't have survived the first one, let alone the second one. He's an absurdly lucky man. Obviously aetheric radiation messes with real radiation, or..something. Who knows? It's a mystery. Majima is a perpetual mystery.

Now he has the big time problem, however.

The robot lady. "...Weren't built ta fight humans? Heh. Well. Ya doin' alright." There's an odd glint in his eye, though. When S6 grips forward to yank -him- --sure, he's a weapon, he'll accept that argument... he moves with it.

That heel comes up, and Majima just so very subtly, and carefully twists his body. That devastating blow just barely scraps the stubble of his goatee, and there's a slow horrified look on his face for just an instant. But he's fine. And he has all of one chance left before this lady puts him into the weird coin-covered sand...dirt.

He draws something from his pocket. It's almost impossible to tell what, at first, before there's a 'flick' of something, and the quiet noise of a burning fuse. He's got.. firecrackers.

He's got a bundle of firecrackers in one glove. Small. Maybe fist sized. And as the world itself starts to fall apart, he makes his best effort.

He's going to try to shove those firecrackers into her mouth, and *hold* them there until they explode. He has nothing else left in him.
Ishirou I4 slumps to his knees after all of that, sighing for a moment.  He looks over towards Amelris and shrugs.  "I'll let you take it from here.." he says, and stand-boom.  "Crap!" he says, running over towards Strawberry and S6.

"Hey, you guys alright?" he says, trying to get through the coin island and funny Eikon related screwery.
Staren     It's done. The eigkon is gone and reality is back. Staren lets out a breath he didn't notice he was holding, and looks out through his cracked cockpit canopy at the fighters in various states of exhaustion and injury. Well, there's no rest for the nonwicked. He pulls a spacesuit from his bag -- it'll do to prevent him from breathing radioactive dust, at least -- and puts it on, then opens the canopy. "I got three spare seats in here for anyone who needs a ride, and I can carry a couple more if need be." The mecha's hands flex, and then the construct squats down before Staren climbs out to help people inside, carefully grabbing a couple with the mech's hands if needed. Once he's got everyone he needs to, he flies off towards the warpgate. The Concord made this mess, and the Concord -- or at least Staren -- will see that everyone is cared for this day.
N'Raha     And as the field clears from the Rowboat of Doom and the Islands of Massive Booty, it's clear that... they were all still fighting inside the Shroud. The forest is twisted and wrecked and there's some very... scorched everything where Strawberry Princess was fighting with Majima.
    And as the Eiggkon's energy cooks off, there's a vaguely... uneasy feeling in the woods. Like something, or someone is watching all of you. And it's not pleased.

    Discontent.

    There's two people who seem much more content with what's going on though, as they stand in a tree just close enough to the action to have watched what was going on. Two robed figures.

    A male voice, smug. "Honestly, had I know the Offworlders were going to make such... interesting toys, I would have enlisted them straight away. We really need to get that technology to Garlemald."
    A female voice. "You know very well after Gaius' failure at the Praetorium that they are... less than interested in harnessing the eikons."
    The male smiles under his carved mask. "Well, we'll just have to make proper contact and see how much more the Good Doctor's contraptions can do."

    And then with a flutter of dark energy, they were never there.
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris is, admittedly, not in a much better state!

     The Red Mage is slumped, breathing hard and even harder to think, the poison still going through his blood. The story ends, leaving him to let out a series of choked laughs, shaking his head.

     "Yeaaaah..." He drawls on, stumbling on, giving a look to I4 to see if he's still, admittedly, standing. "Yeah, that sounds about right. That... was a gooooooooood story."

     Then the world becomes, well, /worse/, the aether exploding out, adding to all the radiation plowing into everyone here. He's starting to feel woozy, tilting his head at I4 as he runs off. While he's visibly starting to fall apart.

     He frowns. He focuses his mind, trying to dig into his aether the cadence of a healing spell, weaving it into his glowing, wriggling hands then channel it into his gem. He don't know if it works on people like him but it's worth a try.

     Amelris toss up his Rapierod, unleashing the healing spell on I4 as he steps back to the Tengu. The Eiggkon is down. He spins, twirls and flourish his combined weapon and points down at Arkae, glowing, spinning energy folding into her.

     "We best get the hell out of here."
Majima Goro Majima, for his part, is not getting up. Normally he'd get up. You know, clutch his stomach a bit. Congratulate people on a good fight. Drink a beer. Lean on a wall a bit, and get back to work.

That's not happening here. That's not happening here at all. He's just laying on his back, staring upwards. He coughs, once or twice. It sounds disturbingly wet. Those burns are blistering a bit more. Oh, right. Radiation takes time, doesn't it.

He's quietly talking on the radio.
S6     Even when affected by the VRCS, this man is remarkably slippery. S6's heel misses by stubble, and her reward is a face-full of small explosives. Her HUD fills with static as her visor breaks down, the android woman staggering. She leaves Majima to his devices, slumping into the sand as it turns back to the floor of the Black Shroud.

    When I4 approaches, she mutters something. Her POD helpfully supplies more details to I4's POD via a databurst.

    -DAMAGE REPORT SUPPLIED.-
    -VRCS OFFLINE. MOBILITY REDUCED. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION SYSTEM HOLDING.-
Corona Arclite Oh, right, fight is over now. And there's probably some residue radiation going on.

Survival kind of overrules being nearly dead, and Corona musters enough energy to use her grappler to yoink herself over to Staren's mech. "Ugh, Ah'm gonna need a detox and an extra stiff drink. Or three."
Tina Natsumi Tina holds that pose with the cannon aimed upwards for a little longer, waiting just long enough for the energy to disperse before dropping the weapon and dropping flat on her ass. She breathes a heavy sigh of relief when the Captain's aetheric scenery begins to fade, looking around slowly while the adrenaline finally winds down.

"Hot dang... Good work, everyone Y'all...?" She doesn't finish that sentence. There's quite a few injured or unconscious or horribly irradiated people, and she gets up to start lending her assistance in carrying those who need it off. It's all she can do at this point, and there's a moment where she looks angry about something.

Just as quickly, she goes back to her practiced grin. "Come on. Let's get y'all back home and.. Such. And remember, folks watchin' this: Don't try this at home!"

She sounds chipper enough, but there's something incredibly fake about her tone. Faker than usual, even.
Tomoe There comes certain times in her life when you know you are about to take a tank buster as Tomoe might call it. This feels to be one of those times they have done a lot of damage to the Primal, still, it keeps going. The machine seems to stop for a moment. It's like a machine but even Tomoe knows it' not. He's coming right for her she will move to get her shield out as she moves to try and brace herself, she also pops every tanking ability and then the attack does not finish she's there left staring for a moment and is not going to question what just happened.

"Is everyone alive?"

She lets out her breath as she banishes her weapons to the inventory and she cringes a bit. Clean up is going to happen soon.

"I think I need to get to see a doctor..."

Given all the things that been going on she wants to be certain she's not been exposed to something nasty.