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Link ZORA'S DOMAIN
EARLY EVENING

The streets are quiet. Glass underfoot, showing the water beneath, reveals most are in underwater buildings or at home. Some still walk the streets, but there's tension in the air, and most don't want to be around, especially since the Knights of Hyrule have set up outside the city, waiting for the time to enter.

The Zorans remain in their homes, and the Royal Family in their palace, as the perpetrator remains at large. Riots were expected, but...they didn't happen. The people seem to have taken a different path.

Lilian Rook's suspected perpetrator, the woman who works as steward for the Royal Family, Evan, has returned to the city. She has returned to her home, one of the few with balconies in the entire city, a fine estate in the residential district.

The Foreigner's District remains the entrance to the city. But this time, it's not a place for playing or eating. This time, they must enact justice. Even Link has arrived, having been unable to make it last time, to assist as needed, moving to find out what the group wants to do. His sword is at his side, Fi floating around him. Hopefully...this can end peacefully.

General Mikao is handling the annexation 'rather well'. He's currently been sweeping the streets with his soldiers, and is near the palace and Foreigner's District's cross section when people pass. Talking to him might be helpful, for those not entirely sure on what they're going to do next.
Revali Revali has the backroom of a cafe that he's managed to negotiate the use of for tactical purposes... such as a place to duck into and hunker down if things go south.

Things haven't gone south... arguably. The annexation is not the outcome Revali was expecting, nor was it one he would have hoped for if he was expecting it.

(The Rito will Remember That.)

Revali is out on the street, bow and arrows both prepped though not drawn. He's ready for whatever may come.
Mordred     Once again, the Knight of Treachery makes her appearance in the Zoran homeland. Rather than appearing in her casual clothing from last time, Mordred appears in her more familiar suit of armor and horned helmet. Even her sword is worn on her back visibly today, but her posture is actually somewhat reserved.

    She keeps to the main streets, moving along at a leisurely pace, and her first path is right through the Foreigner's District. Without much of any clues on who their culprit could be, she's headed straight for General Mikao.

    "General. You got any leads on who might..." Wait. Did they know it was a freaky worm thing? She takes a moment to glance around, grunting after a moment.

    Best not to risk it in case the culprit's close by. "... Be our culprit in this mess?"
Maksim Messerglas "The state of things here has certainly taken a turn for the worse," Maksim sighs. He's seated outside the cafe Revali coincidentally has co-opted for tactical espionage action, and is the only one so doing. Two men stand nearby, contrasting one another: one, a grimy man in dingy, stitched-up leathers, with dirk and pistol and bad attitude in his arsenal; the other, a tall, straight-backed figure in well-maintained plate armor and a closed full helm, draped with a white tabard displaying a red, jagged-edged cross and bearing a two-handed sword of some magnitude.

"Don't know why we're still here, if I'm honest," the shady one says. Dismas has acquired a flask of something local from somewhere. Maksim has not inquired as to the provenance of such spirits' arrival. "Should be on the road again."

"If Lord Maksim believes there is benefit to remaining in this beleaguered place," remarks the zeal-tinged Reynauld, "then here we shall remain. As the true villain has yet to appear..."

"...It would be premature to retire to the moor just yet," Maksim sighs. "This is not our home, gentlemen, but it is a place that is in need of our aid." He stands. "Keep your eyes open. I feel as though we're in a pot about to boil over."

His compatriots give one another a glance. Dismas tucks away the flask, taking up position on Reynauld's tail, with Maksim trailing a short ways behind. They set off up the street, through the foreign quarter and towards the palace, a well-armed cluster of the foreign devils this city very much wishes to cast out.
Edward Blackwell      The sky is the same. Distant. Quiet. Sinking blues, rising reds. Reflected in eyes like dead bark. Nimble fingers wrap around the cigarette. Another puff of smoke to dance in the dying blue. To dance in the growing reds. By the time the smoke reaches heaven, the red rays will die, too, into dull night. Perhaps it will be starlit.

     Starlit would be nice.

     He's in no hurry. Just like the smoke. Mind drifting under messy brown hair. He'd be floating if he still remembered how to swim. Cool water laps at slender hand. He'll settle for that. It's enough. Little things in life. The warm, clean white labcoat, just out of the dryer. The black tennis shoes with a hole in the sole to match. The tee-shirt of a faded woman's face, the words #1 PRINCESS already worn off. Have to keep getting the blood off. Nothing he wears lasts long but the labcoat.

     The world's peaceful, just for the moment.

     It won't last. Something'll happen. Too much in the air for it not to. Then he'll go to work.

     He liked working. Kind of fucked-up, really. Enjoying your job when your job is patching people up.

     But the payoff's nice. The smiles. The hugs. They don't belong to you, his thoughts dance. But they belong to somebody. And that's good enough.

     Edward sits up. Fingers slip from the water, shaken lightly to dry off. He stands. The labcoat falls around lanky frame. Left sneaker is shaken with the fingers. Some water got in. Probably inevitable. A lot of things are inevitable today.

     His smoke's running low. Not replacing it yet. He forgot to buy them yesterday. Stupid mistake. Maybe he should quit.

     Wouldn't be hard.

     Would mean nowhere else to light his troubles into embers. Nowhere to scatter those embers to the winds. To let ash disappear into trays mingling with other problems. He walks, hand in his pocket, wondering if Mikao was the only Zora to take up smoking. If the only ashtrays he'd ever see here would be Mikao's. If no Zora stranger's miseries wound up along with his.

     Kind of sad, really.

     He's heading for the Hylian Knights. It's unprompted, but he hasn't met them. He's met Mikao. He's met the Zora. Hylians? Not so much. Their Princess. The Princess isn't the people. Gotta meet the people, right?

     A ghost through the Foreigner's District. Trailing little ashes. Little embers. Little dreams. Nobody to fix. Tiresome.

     He passes by Dimas and Maksim.

     Edward stops. He turns. Those dead-bark eyes are listless. Apathetic.

     "Shouldn't drink on the job," he says. "Might get someone killed."

     The listless stare turns away as he continues on his way out.

     Sneakers stop at the edge of the border. The Hylian contingent gets a long, distant stare. Without a word he trudges towards them, one hand in his coat pocket, the other on his cigarette. He does not stop at the outside of the camp. He does not stop if soldiers try and stop him.

     Just a glance at their eyes. Then,

     "Hey, buddy." A clap on the shoulder, and an echoing word in the ears, "You promised to let me have a talk with your captain. Remember? Over cards?" The words dig in. They're a worm burrowing into the soft parts of the brain. Touching the dials and turning them sideways. The cards become memories. The laughing. The late night game of Hold The Castle. Winning hands. Losing hands. Shared joys. Shared miseries. Edward, losing the pot.

     "I said I wanted to meet him sometime and you said you could make that happen."

     "And hey, while we're both in the neighborhood, seems like a pretty good time. Convenient."
Rean Schwarzer Rean's here again. He's out on the street, his sword resting at his side as usual. He's also a bit more bandaged and beat up than last time.

The annexation not turning into a giant riot is reassuring, but also worrying. Was something under the surface waiting to just explode, or even just lurking in the shadows? Given how Lilian had proof of who was actually responsible for the god-parasiting, the latter seemed likely.

Either way, it was up to them to make things right.
Lilian Rook     Just when Edward is done talking to his knight of choice, there is one extra voice in the foreigner's district. Young-ish. Female. Received pronunciation. Hard.

    It says "Quickly now." and there's a swoosh of air from something being hurled at the back of his head.

    A carton of cigarettes with the sticker seal still on. Bought from some upper range small business along the way.

    A gift from someone who never gets anyone anything unless she wants something. 'You'll need them', perhaps.

    Lilian isn't dressed up like the last couple of times. She is neither meeting with the royal family nor doing reconnaissance. The appearance of the Hylian contingent had forced her hand ahead of schedule. The opportunity to elegantly string up the problem and push it down the stairs has vanished, and the one she'd created for herself with a long night of coercion, bribes, and physical persuasion, is a brief one. She's dressed for business. Black-grey military bodysuit, heavy sidearm magetized to one thigh, hard case against the other, tactical mounts around the waist, long black scabbard strapped over her back, matte plate inserts attached and silver etchings inlaid, hair fully tied up by tungsten pins.

    Straight to Evan's place. Eyes and ears enhanced by magic, wired into the building she patrols around. A black crow perched on the balcony. One for sorrow. Another on the roof peak. Two for joy. Another at the plaza. Three for a girl. She looks for where the lights are on. Where the activity is. Strains for the sounds of footsteps and conversation. Scents the breeze for traces of magic. Dissects the area.

    Then goes straight through the balcony level door.
Edward Blackwell      The carton hits his head. It tumbles to the ground. Edward crouches. Picks it up. He pats the guard. "Rain check. See you later. Gotta win my paycheck back." He walks backwards, giving the man the classic fingerguns. Then he turns to follow Lilian. Smoke in his mouth's almost out. Now he has more.

     Long legs fall into step beside the lady in the bodysuit.

     "Gonna be a bloody night," he says.
Revali Revali lands next to Lilian, on the other side from Edward, instinctively getting into formation.

"Could be worse," says the rito.

"Could be all this and poes, too."
Link Mikao is approached. He stops, glancing at Mordred. "Why in Hylia's name should I tell you?" Is the first thing to come out of his mouth, but then he sighs. "Fine, fine. We're getting nowhere, and we've been having to keep the peace. It's absolutely one of the Council of Elders. Evan, the palace steward, Toto, the finance minister, or Japas, the foreign minister. Many of the elders have mysteriously died - they've been spared."

Revali screwed with guards. He should honestly be arrested. Maksim's pulling favors to keep the investigator safe, though, but the soldiers seem nervous as he passes by. He's too skilled with that bow. What if he's going to hurt somebody?

Edward slips towards the camp, and whammies the guards. They're...more resistant than normal people. The knights are extremely well trained. But, Edward's extremely good at what he does. He's about to get led to the captain, when Edward is then abducted by someone else. Woops! That's a great impression!

Lilian heads towards the balcony. Her eyes spot the lights all throughout. Her ears hear two people - a man and a woman. They're talking about politics, about riots. Lilian goes in through the balcony. They're not in there, they're downstairs. Facing right away from the staircase. Anyone who enters hears it.

"Where's the screaming? The looting? The riots?! The Foreigner District should be in shambles!" The woman in a silk dress says, blue fins marked by sharp violet eyes. She's chewing on her fin-thumb. The man across from her, closer to the stairs, clearly a bodyguard or soldier of some sort with the short spear on his back and the way he's dressed compared to others, sighs. "Ma'am, perhaps this is for the better. If you play this the long way..."

"The long way?! Those cattle-farmers have ruined everything. The Hylians /annexed us/, Finley! They've got /outsiders/ working with Mikao now. What's next? Are they just going to bust down our doors?! No, no. Don't worry. Time's almost up. Everything's falling into place." She laughs, but it's strained.

Everything's gone to crap for her. She instinctively clutches a pouch on her dress. It's important to her.
Maksim Messerglas Dismas and Edward have a brief, grim exchange. Maksim watches, but doesn't interject. The crusader in the lead of their little band doesn't say anything, but the sense of eyes on Edward's back is clear for at least a few moments more.

The two warriors look back at the noble bringing up the rear. Maksim looks from one to the other, then brushes his palms together and sighs again. "Alright. He clearly has some information we do not. Dismas, if you please? I'll be right behind you." Maksim shakes out his hands and abruptly vanishes.

"Never going to get used to that," Dismas mutters.

"There will be cause to distract you," Reynauld says. "Let's be off."

The trio-turned-duo moves through the district. Dismas leads the way, shadowing Edward through the streets while Reynauld trails behind. Maksim is nowhere in sight, despite his actual position being merely a few steps removed from his prior location in their little column. The trick he used to help the Princess escape is much simpler to enact on his own person.
Lilian Rook     Lilian doesn't seem to react to Edward or Revali falling in, until at last she motions them to stay outside the balcony while she enters. They can broadly intuit a couple of hand signals as 'up high vantage' and 'cover back street exit', though it seems to be for lack of desire to speak rather than need for thorough discretion.

    Lilian laces her fingers and bends them one by one as she walks, though it's the small articulated plates that click rather than her joints. "It depends." Lilian says to Eward. "Now that I have to do this the easy way, how troublesome it gets is all up to her." It doesn't sound like she misspoke.

    Eavesdropping from the floor above, Lilian is most interested in the position of the two voices, with the content shared between them as a distant third place concern; there will be all the time in the world for confessions later. She paces an arc around the stairs, slowly and silently, maneuvering herself to be just overtop of the source of the male voice, visibly keying in.

    Lilian smashes into the bodyguard from behind, both weights combined thrown into a rolling takedown, in which she grabs the back of his head and quickly slams it against the floor twice, then tosses him out on across the ground, fluidly standing up out of the end of it, planting her heel against his back, and drawing and aiming her gun at Evan all at once.

    "Yes."

    "Now get on the ground before I do you worse."
Mordred     Mikao can't see it with Mordred's helmet being as... Helmety as it is, but he might be able to feel that stare of 'really?' coming right off of her complete with just the slightest lean of her head. Luckily, Mordred's not feeling particularly stabby (yet), and so she simple listens to his description of the whole situation. After a few moments, the knight nods while chuckling confidently.

    Or menacingly. It's kind of echo-y with that helmet on.

    "Three of 'em, huh? Easy enough. Just tell me where they are and I'll get the rest sorted out." As always, the confidence is practically oozing off Mordred as she turns to glance arund in the different directions she could be going. Even after all this time, though, she hasn't quite gotten the hang of where everything is. That's why she's going to wait for Mikao to (hopefully) give some directions on where their three potential culprits is.
    
    "Alright... Come on, hero boy. Let's solve us a crime so you can get back to gettin' things done." If directions are given for all three of them, she'll prioritize Japas first, Evan second, and Toto third via going straight to their given locations and announcing her presence before kicking down the door if she needs to. If none are given, then...
    
    She looks for the place that looks like it has the most non-Zora looking stuff on the outside and do the same thing.
Edward Blackwell      Lilian does the thing.

     Edward stands outside for a few seconds before glancing at Revali.

     "You wanna go high?"

     It's rhetorical. Edward's already on his way to the back door. If Revali is paying attention he'd probably see the scalpel fall into Edward's left hand on the way around the corner.
Revali Revali takes to the air, and hovers up high, drawing his bow and a quartet of ice arrows as Lilian signals for him to get an up-high vantage point and watch the back street exit.

Overwatch mode active.
Rean Schwarzer Rean follows after Edward, crouched low with one hand resting on his sword's hilt, ready to draw. He's standing pretty close to the door, and can hear the two people talking about politics, especially one lady who sounds lik she /really/ wanted riots to happen.

Ream lets out a sigh, rolling his eyes. Seriously, lady?
Anywway, he's ready to go whenever Lilian gives the ok....then again, he probably also heard someone getting pinned to the ground, so.
Link Link follows Mordred, to the same neighborhood as the others, but a different house, once they're given directions. "Uh...I don't recall your name. Who are you, again?" He moves to knock on the door after asking that rude question. A butler appears. "Can I help you?" He asks.

But that's going to be irrelevant, because they have the wrong house!

Edward and Revali take overwatch. Lilian moves down, grabbing the guard by the skull and knocking it against the ground, rendering him unconscious. He slides forward, becoming Lilian's rest easily, as she points her gun at Evan.

Evan's first reaction is panic, a shrill cackle of fear. But then, as the situation gets to her, she starts laughing - adrenaline? Fear? Both? She starts to crouch, seemingly cooperating. "Do worse? What worse? Nothing ever goes to plan, Hylian dog. They'll hang me. Nothing will change. Nothing will get better. We didn't even have the /riots/ I predicted!"

Kneeled, she starts moving again, but slowly.

"This world is corrupt. It needs to be cleansed, like you're trying to cleanse me."

Her arm suddenly rushes for the pouch. Super fast. A planned reaction. Lilian might intercept, and be able to throw her back or hurt her, but she succeeds in grabbing something inside.

It's a sphere. It's pink and red, and it's seemingly alive - pulsating, oozing, with fluid and flesh. It just gives off malice.

"It needs a /calamity/!"

If Lilian's first reaction is to shoot Evan, it's smart, and an advantage in that it sends Evan flying backwards, injured and bleeding, but the Malice Parasite does its job. Either way, it merges with her, pink-red flesh wriggling and forcing itself into her own. Her body starts giving off /hate/, somehow, and then...

Pink and red energy rushes around, as she grows in an instant. She reaches almost fifteen feet tall, her fins turning blood-red, as her body starts to corrupt. Her eyes go darker. Her teeth grow sharper. Her hands grow claws. Tendrils rush out of her lower half, and immediately wreak havoc. One moves to hit Lilian - it feels like a semi-truck. Another moves to smash through the walls and tear the building apart, smashing into all the visible Paladins/support. Every hit is powerful, and feels like hate itself has torn through you.

BOSS BATTLE:
AQUATIC MALUS - EVAN
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crE9NgC1CVo
Revali (Someone runs out through the backdoor, and slips and falls on the ground Revali has just frozen around them with tripleshot ice arrows, freeing Edward up to go in for the pin.)

That's the plan Revali has for his overwatch. It probably would work quite well.

Unfortunately it doesn't turn out to matter, because as he aims at the back door, the target exits through a different way. (That is, it grows to fifteen feet tall and exits out through the entire house.)

"What the-"

Revali turns his head, and sees a tendril rushing towards himself. Time slows for him for a moment as he hyperfocuses, tracking its path while he stows his bow and then flaps his wings, trying to get out of the way-

He doesn't make it. The blow sends him spiraling away and downwards, smacking into a wall.

"... Ah..." he says to himself, getting back up to his feet and getting his wits back together. "That's... troubling."

"Nothing the Rito Champion can't handle, though," he says confidently, grabbing a set of three electric arrows and nocking them, letting loose into the side of the overgrown zora!
Mordred     "Did I not tell you last time? Mordred, Knight of Treachery, future King of Britain. Just don't forget it." Mordred's words are significantly more hostile than her tone, as the knight sounds in rather good spirits considering the general mood of the place. Or is it because of the mood?

    "Just be prepared to grab 'em if they try to make a run for it. Otherwise, I might break something by accident." That is not going to be an accident in the slightest. Luckily, Link's door knocking technique keeps her from needing to kick the door in when they're greeted by a butler. "Mordred, future King of Britain. Link, Hero of Hyrule. We're here to-"

    Mordred stops when she hears the cackling in the distance. She doesn't know who it is or what it is, but it's ominous enough that she turns away quickly and points at the inside of the house. "Stay inside, old man. We got this." The sword comes off Mordred's back, and she's just about ready to leap right in the transformed Evan's general direction.

    "... So what're you good at, anyway?" She's got enough sense to ask that first. If he responds with something vaguely close-range sounding (like swords), she'll grab for his wrist to try and just bring him along as she beelines for the transformed cultist. "One chance, Link... Let's see just how much of a Hero you already are!" Even with only one hand free, she's got her sword raised and ready to thrust into the biggest, fleshiest part she can reach on impact!
Edward Blackwell      Guard the back exit. He's playing with his scalpel. Dancing it in his fingers. Flick, flick. Flick, flick. It spins. It settles on a knuckle. It embeds itself in his throat.

     Wait.

     Edward doesn't fully know what happened. One second he was watching the back exit. The next second he was on the ground six feet back, his scalpel lodged firmly blade-first in his throat.

     God dammit.

     Swallowed his cigarette.

     Edward spits up ashes as he pulls himself to his feet. The scalpel is plucked out, flicked out, spilling his own blood onto glass. Well.

     Suddenly the scalpel seems a little more like a joke.

     Dead-bark eyes are wide. He has no idea what to do. It's the demons all over again. Crazy. Chaos. Things others are used to. He's not. No idea what to do. Fingers twitch.

     Can't fix that.

     But.

     No hesitation.

     He breaks into a run. He's fast! Surprisingly so. He doesn't look like it. Explains why his shoes have holes in them.

     He throws himself up the tentacle.

     It's not fancy. It's not even mobile. It's pure brute force, raw strength. He's clinging to flesh. He's climbing wherever he can.

     Go for...something. Find some point. Break it. No idea where. He's not trained for this.

     God, this is weird. This is fucking strange. This is bizarre.
Maksim Messerglas 'They're just breaking into a councillor's home,' Maksim thinks from his position across the street. He's standing on the side of the road, out of the way. The world is very slightly hazy around the edges, to him; his shroud of invisibility makes everything a little more grey, makes shadows a little more intense. He only spots Dismas lurking nearby by virtue of being the one to tell him to do it, lazing around near a street corner in a patch of shadow that seems to swallow him up. Reynauld is briefly visible further on, light momentarily reflected on his armor.

Something is happening, though. Maksim slowly moves closer, excruciatingly conscious of how loud his footsteps seem to his own ears. Nothing goes beyond the shroud, of course; he's undetectable until he does something drastic. But he can only partly hear what's happening, and he needs to know. Maybe if he can tell Dismas and Reynauld what's happening, they can formulate a plan of attack --

The front of the house explodes. Maksim draws in a sharp breath -- and the world seems to stop.

He's looking right at it as it emerges. Splinters of wood and fragments of glass and stone are frozen in the air between himself and the creature. Some kind of monstrous tentacles plunge through the floor and the wall; claws are in the middle of peeling back the formerly-beautiful facade of the residence to expose the horrible truth tearing its way out. It's enormous, bigger than any creature he's ever seen. It's hideous, with the magnetic quality of a witch-burning. Looking away simply is not going to happen.

They need to do something. His heart hammers in his chest -- will hammer in his chest; it's caught between beats. His mind races, grappling with the enormity of the thing, trying to fit it into the world as he knows it. It simply does not belong. It should not exist. It is not the first time he has encountered a creature that defies natural philosophy, and it will certainly not be the last... but he has never before been so /close/. They need to do something, but he, firstly, needs to /get away/.

The moment passes. Maksim twists with astonishing reflexes literally nobody else can observe. His clothes suffer the worst from the first blast of hateful debris; he himself is tossed against a wall, where he slides down and wheezes in an invisible heap. Dismas, nearby but not as close, hunches his shoulders and staggers under the oppressive weight of malice, taking a step back. He reaches for his gun, looking around frantically.

"Kill it," Maksim wheezes. He clears his throat, coughing out, "Kill it!"

Footsteps clad in steel ring out through the street. Reynauld, Crusader, Servant of Light, charges down the boulevard. The man whips his zweihander off his back with the hiss of honed steel, taking it up in both hands and fearlessly charging the mass of tentacles and anger. He hacks downward, a blow some might call righteous -- and others might call simply insufficient for something so terrible and so enormous. If he were alone... but he isn't, is he?
Lilian Rook     Lilian sighs. The holograhics aligned as a gunsight over the chromed firearm pulse subtly. "Yet another one planning against prophecy and predicting against destiny. You're all so perfectly *common*. So desperate to believe anything you can do or say matters here. Try reflecting on it in a dungeon somewhere."

    The instant Evan makes a move, Lilian fires. Four times. Starburst flashes. Streaks of blue. Magnetic cracks and incendiary hissing. Edward is right outside. It'd be a simple matter to blow her head right off and have him put it back on.

    But she doesn't. She aims away from the head. Away from the chest. Multiple frangible rounds are aimed into the viscera. Gorey and agonizingly painful shots, certainly, but patently against the holy doctrine of center mass in disabling an assailant.

    It costs her. Evan doesn't pull a weapon, or a radio, or even a magical teleportation crystal, but some deranged cult's take on the idea of a suicide vest. A repulsive and fleshy detonator on the metaphorical string of plastique strapped to her cells. The building's limited space isn't nearly enough. It'll erupt. A tentacle comes at her. It might as well be an explosion, for all the energy involved and all the space she has to remember. Lilian lets her weapon slip from her grip, shifting her stance forward and letting it snap to its magnetic mount as it passes her leg. She takes in a deep breath. The air shudders around her, a shimmering ring of distortion passing down over her and away from her feet like a pulse of sound.

    Lilian squares her footing and catches the enormous blow against her outstretched hands. The flooring isn't nearly enough to resist the impact, and it cracks instantly beneath her when the strike connects, swinging her backwards through the foyer and the solid wall into the next room. The etchings in her suit glow hot. The wood and glass break on her, rather than the other way around. He elbows almost buckle absorbing the impact, but she turns with it, lowers her center of gravity, and throws her shoulder up against the inner side of the tentacle, bashing it out of line with a sudden elbow strike that splits the air.

    In the fraction of a second she has, Lilian ducks beneath the tip of the thrashing appendange, crosses the room, and leaps over the body of the tentacle, skipping the stairs and launching herself out onto the balcony, before catching the railing under her boots to come to a standing stop. With a lightning quick hand gesture, she traces burling circles through the air, lingering as ribbons of flame until she thrusts two fingers forward. Slender blades of ink black and scarlet faerie fire coalesce out of trailing sparks, automatically orienting their points towards the monstrous Evans, and then firing as a full volley with a swift slash of Lilian's wrist.

    The score of uncanny flames lances scattershot into Evan while Lilian springs in the opposite direction, falling almost down to the foreigner's plaza, before angling up and away into the air, trailing a hazy mirage in her wake.

    Lilian shakes her wrist. Rolls her shoulder. Flexes her elbow. Perfectly adequate.

    "Do you still understand language?" she suddenly asks the monster. "Or does that cause enough brain damage that words are pointless for now. Not that you had anything valuable to say before."
Rean Schwarzer Boom.

The backdoor (More like the entire building) flies open, sending Rean flying through the air. He bounces against the ground, stopping a few feet away from it.

"...Well, crap." Rean says, sitting up slowly. He lets out a few coughs, and then gets a good proper look at the now very tentacled Zora lady. The heck did she even do to herself?

"...ARCUS, Activate!" Rean shouts, blue light surrounding him for a moment. The spell loads, and a blade of darkness whirls through the air, darting towards and around the various tentacles, hopefully severing at least one.
Link Revali smacks into a wall, but gets back up. He fires electric arrows at Evan, and finds that while they zap her really well, causing arcing pain through her body as she roars out, that her body is weird. It's...amorphous. The heads don't quite latch onto her, as she suddenly squishes down, avoiding another volley and moving for the street.

She's moving for the street because it's made of glass. As Mordred and Link come flying forward (Link absolutely says swords), the two double-strike on her. They slice across her gut, Mordred's sword feeling that amorphousness but causing oozing blood, while Fi's combination strike with the sword causes Link's blow to be far more devastating. There's something about her form that empowers it, apparently, as she screams out.

Edward moves for the tentacle. He looks for something to break. It's hard to /break/, but it's easy to hurt. The flesh rips and tears, as suddenly, the tendrils move thrashing down. Into the glass. She's trying to shatter the street and bring everyone - especially her - into the drink.

Reynauld takes his massive sword and slices it into a tendril. It doesn't split - not until Rean joins in and cuts into it too with his ARCUS as she thrashes him about, ripping it straight off. It begins to dissolve into nothingness slowly, leaving only a bloodied stump.

The magical volley of faerie fire burn into her face, scarring her heavily as she stares Lilian down. Her eyes, the way her face moves - she understands her clearly. She has kept her intelligence. But she doesn't speak. Perhaps she can't.

The tendrils lash out. Several move into the people on the street, trying to crush them into it and open up the passage to allow her into the water for an escape. One surges for Lilian, encased in pure malice, to burn at her with hatred and tear off the balcony.

It's probable she doesn't actually care that she can't speak, either.
Revali "Damnit-"

Revali quickly stows his bow, and crouches, putting a hand to the ground and channeling the winds.

Time slows - in a matter of speaking. Not literally. The tentacles are moving, coming down at the people on the street. Evans is moving as well - he needs to keep in mind her path, his allies, and their movements as well...

... But at the moment, the priority is the people - the ones in the way, the ones going to be in the way, the ones that are already in imminent danger.

Making sense of the chaos is a lengthy task. Fortunately, Revali has time, one long moment stretched out.

That one - that one needs to be rescued immediately. That one over there, as well. The one across the street really only needs a push to get brought back inside to relative safety...

... launch here, in this direction, grab the first one by the arm, bounce off of the ground here, hip-check that one, and then drop the one he's dragging by the arm into the fountain.

There's more to be done - there's always more to be done. But Revali's out of time to plan if he wants this to work. He'll just have to wing the rest of it.

The rito is already in motion as his Gale forms - and he launches laterally, skimming across the ground like a blue feathered bullet, darting around the street over and under tendrils as he attempts to get bystanders out of danger.
Edward Blackwell      He hits the glass, a meat rock against a water window. Peeled off and slammed again. And again. The scalpel goes flying. She's trying to crack the street. To break it. To force him underwater.

     It's starting to crack. Spider-webs along the surface. It's probably not thin. Needs to support foot traffic. Lots of weight. Good, it won't crack immediately.

     Bad, the cracks are gonna cut him bad.

     Also bad, just because he doesn't die doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

     Every thump is something breaking. The space between the thumps is the broken thing knitting itself back together. He's pinned, for the moment.

     For the moment.

     Edward is very strong. He has a strong grip. What he doesn't have is leverage. He needs leverage. A way to exercise strength.

     Scalpel would be great.

     Nope.

     He sticks his index finger in his mouth.

     Thump.

     The taste of his own blood is vile. Copper and raw pork. He spits the finger out onto the glass. It hurts like a bitch. No time to consider. Teeth get around the rest of the finger bone.

     His head jerks backwards.

     Thump.

     The bone rips out in his mouth.

     Good. Sharp. Clean.

     Edward jams the bone into the side of the thing's tendril and just *pushes* with all his might.

     The bone will probably shatter.

     It may shatter *deep* inside her tentacle.

     It is a makeshift scalpel bullet and it is probably going to hurt her more than it hurt him.
Mordred      First strike, a success! But it's not quite enough to put the transformed Evan down just yet, and Mordred's already twirling her blade once to rest it against her shoulder while turning to face the monster.

     The monster that's trying to collapse the entire street, apparently. With Revali moving to rescue the bystanders, Mordred refocuses her efforts on Evan entirely. "Plenty of fingers you got there... Can you still control 'em if we cut the hand off?!" With a raucous shout, the knight bounds forward again, but finds herself falling moments later as a tendril slams down right on top of her, breaking the glass below moments leader.

     "Gah... Nuts, ain'tcha? Public servant my ass... You're not even fit to wipe 'em!" A burst of mana from her feet lets Mordred bound right off some debris towards the transformed Evan, barely letting that full-body impact slow her down. As she gets closer, she grabs onto a tentacle to try latching on before starting to climb the main body.

     "What, lost your nerve? I'm right here, asshole!" The knight wields the sword as both a climbing tool and an extension of herself, moving towards center mass while stabbing gauntlets and that long silver blade in repeatedly to cause as much damage and draw as much attention as possible from Evan.

     All the yelling and insults might help, too.
Maksim Messerglas Reynauld's sword is heavy and sharp, but this monster is not merely flesh and bone. His helmeted head twitches towards Rean for a second, then goes back to the thrashing mass of them. He backs off, sword held at a guard, trying to find a way to the body of the beast to properly end it.

Dismas' gun goes off. The report of the pistol is loud, and the shot is not aimed at anything in particular besides the creature itself. Normally deadly, at that size, it's probably just a sting -- but he has to do *something* to shake off the terrible awe. The Highwayman moves in to support Reynauld, facing down the monster as other Elites swarm over to destroy it. Maksim is still nowhere to be found, but his voice reaches them from behind: "Hold the line! I- I need a moment!"

"Right." Dismas raises his knife, drawing a second, loaded pistol. Reynauld steps forward, brandishing a scroll in his left hand, the script and adornments igniting in blazing Light. He yells wordlessly, becoming a beacon of radiance in the midst of the chaos, a great big 'HIT ME' sign practically hanging from his armored neck.

Maksim is kneeling on the glass street. He pulls a small case from inside his vest, drawing a metal stylus from the interior. He drags the tip into the surface of the street, the diamond tip leaving clean and clear lines that appear out of nowhere. Tightly-written script gradually appears, arcane glyphs becoming manifest as the invisible Heir scrawls them across the surface. Finally, he jabs his fingertip with the stylus, a blot of red beading at the end and immediately swiped across the strange text.

The street abruptly solidifies -- for the monster. That hate that he felt... Maksim isn't totally sure what it is, but he is absolutely sure he can isolate it and ward against it. The horizontal barrier springs into existence, glowing with oily iridescence wherever the malicious monster tries to breach the thing that keeps it from the water.
Rean Schwarzer Evan moves out into the street, trying to break through the glass forming it. She's even trying to use the people standing in the street to do so.

Like hell he'd let her do that.

"/Move!/" Rean shouts. He rushes forward, swinging his sword up to try and block for the first person he sees,  even if the tentacle is too thick to really block.  He's not as fast as Revali either, so he can't go around grabbing a bunch of people, but if he could get just one person safe, it'd be fine.
Lilian Rook     Lilian slowly tilts her head by degrees as the obviously cognizant but uncooperative silence stretches out over her question. When she reaches the limit of her neck's mobility, she taps her chin, and quietly utters an "Ah."

    "So you haven't gotten the picture yet. Unfortunate."

    This time, the tentacle strike that comes at her is a blazing mass of dark magic as much as a physical blow. Without hand or foothold, Lilian flips herself over in mid-air, her fulcrum of movement above her head rather than her center of gravity, performing the not at all nauseating maneuver without issue. She spins upright again as the tentacle slashes underneath her, kicking both feet against its dorsal side to launch herself straight at Evan before she can retract her limbs to defend herself. In the process, burning malice boils and peels away the surface of her combat suit up to her calves, melting the armoured toe and sole inserts which come flaking away when she kicks off. She aims straight for the transformed Zora's midsection.

    Lilian flips halfway over in a split second, connecting with Evan with both smoking heels rather than with her face, and at far greater speed than her merely concussed bodyguard. She bends her knees to absorb some of her own impact, just so she can reach upwards and snatch the Zora by the throat to secure her anchor. Her other hand snaps to the hilt of the sword across her back, and is shortly engulfed in a blaze of unnatural black mist, trailing tangible, heart-stopping bloodlust from her fingers even as she releases it but a split second later. Lilian cocks back her arm to then plunge her fist straight into the bullet wounds from earlier with a percussive crack.

    Given that Evan is fifteen feet without the tentacles now, there should be room enough for Lilian to slam that murderous magic deep inside, especially with the weird and amorphous nature of the mutated tissue. It'll hurt a lot-- no, Lilian makes certain it hurts as much as possible. She savages the earlier injury with the most violent of pitiless tearing and twisting, and then releases her clenched fists along with the mote of black mist held inside it. The instant it makes contact with blood, the hateful fog bursts into a halo of pitch black thorns, becoming an explosion of two foot long spikes violating the Geneva Convention every which way at once.

    "You're a traitor. You're scum. Living trash. You don't get to be a martyr. You don't get to go out in a blaze of glory. You don't get to die at all, just yet. If the king decides he wants to have you beheaded after you go before him in irons, that's fine by me, but don't blame me if you don't have any limbs left to attach those irons to. No matter what happens, a treasonous Gerudo sympathizer and agent provocateur is handed over to Hyrule, and everything goes exactly like it's supposed to."
Link People try to evacuate their homes. They're not fast enough. But Revali is. He starts swooping down and grabbing people, dodging tendrils and grabbing them to safety. At the last moment, though, as he's grabbing another person, the tendrils shift again, and move to try and make him one of the final cracks in the glass, trying to pluck him straight out of the sky. Rean assists, and a tendril sends him smashing into the glass.

Edward creates a horrifying finger scalpel bullet and shoves it into a tendril. There's a horrifying roar as it goes all the way in. She thrashs, moving to take him with several tendrils and just send him /flying/ behind her into the glass.

Mordred climbs up the thick tendrils, and starts stabbing at center-mass. Link joins each of her strikes. They're searing, but she focuses on both of them very hard, and moves to grab Mordred and Link in one tendril...

And smash them into the glass. The tendril hits the glass either way, causing it to...

Shatter.

The water flows underneath. The cracks spread, and the entire street becomes a river. As Evan moves to sink into the water, she's shot in the torso, causing more bleeding from the amorphous mass, and then...

She can't meld into the water. Why can't she meld into the water?!

A ward. She starts searching for what caused it, and finds Maksim's group. She moves to thrash them into the water, as her ENTIRE AQUATIC BOSS PHASE is skipped. Instead, she moves to start grabbing people and juggle them into the water, attempting to drown them with the sheer pressure of the tendrils moving at breakneck pace.

Lilian had jumped onto Evan when she channeled the energy of her sword and moved to slam it into the malus' wounds.

The result is /horrific/. The spikes go all throughout her blood, tearing through her flesh and veins, ripping her apart, causing a bloodcurdling roar. She thrashes onto her back, into the ward, and the tendrils start lashing every-which way, especially at Lilian, trying to just maul her apart senselessly.

She knows she's lost. But she wants to take someone with her.

Also, she doesn't seem to be parasitizing. It's symbiotic...but it might not work the way Lilian thought. A read by someone capable might be necessary.
Edward Blackwell      Skidding on the glass. His skin picks up little flakes at high speed. They dig in. It's not pleasant. But it's not worse. The ward saw to that. The glass doesn't break more. No more scattered, sharp little knives. Just the ones already present.

     He's doing a public service. Cleaning the street. They ought to thank him.

     Edward rolls over. The sky's still red.

     That's nice.

     He sits up. His finger's already closed over. Regrown up to the knuckle. Helpful. She threw him near the scalpel. He's got a lot of glass in his body. Plenty to work with to pin her down.

     Lilian's torturous attack, Maksim's wards. Fish God. He's in so far over his head. Stabbing? He gets stabbing. Arrows? He gets arrows. His own thing, that's fucked-up, but he gets it. But that's...

     Well.

     No point in mulling that over now.

     The monster's trying to take somebody with her. Probably Lilian. He doesn't really blame her. He has no idea what Lilian did but it looks like it hurt like shit. It looked pretty damn fucked-up. It looked like it was probably worse than killing.

     On the other hand, he kinda likes Lilian, and he kinda really doesn't like Feeplepus. He's decided to call her Feeplepus. It fits.

     So he just moves. No thought. Just action. Swift feet and strong legs send him up the tentacle, onto her stomach. From there, he just dives in the way.

     Several tendrils aiming for Lilian punch right through him.

     Just, right out the other side. A whole bunch of places. The tendrils start pulling, thrashing.

     Inside him.

     They tear. They spread and tear. The hole widens. He gags.

     He manages, "Payback for the smokes," at Lilian before he's torn like a ragdoll and tossed across the glass in two very unclean chunks.

     He'll be fine.

     In a bit.

     Not right now though, that's for damn sure.
Mordred     Back into the glass she goes, and down into the drink Mordred goes when the monster starts dunking people in with those powerful tendrils. It takes quite a bit of getting knocked arund until Mordred's able to pull herself out through sheer stubbornness and yanking herself out with one of those tendrils. She coughs a few wet coughs as she drags herself back up to face Evan, laughing darkly beneath the helmet.

    "You're a tough one, at least... But how much do you really got left in ya?!" Undeterred by the glass shards getting into that suit of armor and likely Mordred's helmet as well, she's about ready to take advantage of the creature getting distracted by Lilian being... Lilian when Edward ends up moving to take those hits in her place.

     Instead of posturing further or taunting the monster, Mordred gets right back to work. The shift in her demeanor is apparent even without anything being said as the armored knight grips the blade with both hands. Red lightning crackles around the blade, and Mordred starts dashing about at not-quite-blinding-but-still-stupidly fast speeds, bounding off surfaces while lashing out at the monster from multiple angles. Her slashes haven't necessarily gained any more power than they had earlier, but the sheer number of them has increased dramatically from that sudden burst of mana usage bolstering her speed.
Revali Revali moves. He ducks, dives, flaps, and at one point 'runs' along a wall for the half moment it takes him to reorient and go after his next rescue target.

It works. It works quite well - at least until, en route to another civilian to get out of harms way, the tendrils shift, going off of the path he's guessed they'll go on, and he doesn't react quickly enough - can't react quickly enough.

It smashes into him, knocking both the bird out of the sky, and the senses out of the bird.

There's a moment of darkness - of words flashing through the stunned archer's mind, knocked to the forefront.

<Edward Blackwell says, "I mean, look. You seem like nice birdle to me. Good shot. Why do you care that he's gonna save the world? Save another world. Save a bunch of worlds.>"

The ragdolled rito slams into the ground, bouncing once and rolling - and this brings him back to his senses. This is a curse. This is a terrible curse, because along with awareness, he's aware of just how much he hurts all over. Nothing broken - not even his pride, that's strong as steel - but lots of things bruised.

He slowly rolls and staggers himself up from prone to kneeling, and looks over. The monster can't escape through to the ocean - good. It's a sitting duck for the others to deal with -

- and as he's watching, the monster grabs tendrilfulls of others and slams them into the water.

<Edward Blackwell says, "Guy's destined to do, what, one thing? Do more of that thing."

This is what they're up against. This is just the start of it - if what the others have said, there'll be more of these. More monsters popping up instantaneously in the world. Wrecking havoc. And not to mentoin what'll happen once the Gerudo actually start marching.

Revali shifts slightly.

<Edward Blackwell says, "Nevermind that I think destiny is horseshit, you obviously believe in it, and that's what's important.">
<Edward Blackwell says, "So yeah. Save a dozen worlds. Then you're a dozen times better.">


"... No," says Revali, to himself.

The winds swirl around - rapidly, quickly, centering on the rito. He digs deep, as deep as he's ever done, going from simple gale to nearly tornado-force winds, all with himself at the epicenter.

"I'm not waiting for Link to get his act together... This world..."

And then he launches - flying fast, skimming the surface of the water, dipping down to swoop in and grab those in trouble and get them out, regardless of what tendrils or dangers he runs afoul of.

The blue featherd bullet streaks across the water. He takes hits, takes damage - not just from the tendrils, but from the sheer forces he's putting on his body.

                                "This world..."                                
                               "IS MINE TO SAVE!"                              
Maksim Messerglas Maksim's triumphant 'HA!' is perhaps somewhat poorly timed, because that tells the monster roughly where he is. Tentacles come down --!

Maksim looks. Everything crawls to a stop. The ringing in his head goes nowhere, much to his immediate chagrin. He judges the incoming angle of the tendrils, the speed, and determines immediately that there's no way they'll all get out of the way. Realistically, he can move enough to vacate the vicinity and avoid the worst of it, but Reynauld and Dismas are right in the midst of it. He stares, racking his brain, running the possibilities again and again, turning the problem over in his head once, then twice, then thrice, then...

Eventually ('instantly') he makes a decision. Things move. "Reynauld, fall back! Dismas, jump!"

The Crusader backs up, his scroll tucked away and his sword used to ward off the lighter of the whipping tendrils. Dismas leaps over the biggest one yet, but gets caught by another one above him, shot off the side of the warded street and plunged into the broken fragments floating on the water. He goes under, but he doesn't lose his grip on his knife, turning it over in his hand and stabbing the appendage trying to drown him over and over again in a desperate frenzy.

Maksim and Reynauld are at the edge of the battlefield, where things are somewhat more solid. Maksim scrambles to his feet, the hazy outline of the young man suddenly flickering and vanishing entirely from the monster's sight. Reynauld seems to be alone, but he refuses to stop, hacking and slashing in an attempt to keep a single space safe, even while the real dangerous ones dive in to be the heroes this place needs.
Lilian Rook     Evan hitting a ward is good news. Lilian hadn't kept track of much of what the others were doing, if at all. Her 'strategic control' of the situation had stopped being exerted the minute she shot the Zoran retainer in the gut. From there on, it's resembled less a tactical situation unfolding, and more and more a private vendetta. A grudge for which she will punish Evan.

    The aquatic phase skip is nice, as is the damage the others are contributing as a group, shortening the whole ordeal, but as far as Lilian seems to care, it's just her and the Zoran woman. Because, even more than a lightning rod for her contempt and spite, Evan is the shortest and straightest way. Not an obstacle along it. The route itself.

    Evan, the monster, tries to take Lilian with her. It drags a sick sort of grin to her face. That shared moment of mutual hate in the tangle of blood and smoke and pain all around them. The knowledge that hers is by far the stronger. The sharper. The fitter. Lilian clasps the hilt of the blade again, gathering that vibrating energy around herself, suit filigree glowing white hot around her arm--

    And then: 'Payback for the smokes.'

    Lilian blinks a moment.

    "Oh. Then I'll call us even."

    There's a sound of hot metal scraping on ice. Lilian's arm blurs. Edward tears in half down the middle and sprays his gore and innards in her way. The lurid tapestry of viscera deflects sideways as if hammered by a crosswind. Razor thin lines of perfectly cursed blackness crisscross over and through monstrous Evan's upper arms at one end of Lilian's reach and the upper tentacles below her ravaged boots, intersecting her waist, shoulders, and where one line stands out from the others by gleaming red, her throat.

    "Thirteenth Code. --Thou shalt never heed the words of that which cannot speak." says Lilian. "Though I didn't need to hear them to begin with. It's just unfortunate you so happily dove over the line into subhumanity."

    There's a click of the sword settling back against its locket --the one that nobody got to see. Lilian half-leaps half-falls away from the monster Edward took the hit from, and grabs the upper half of the man she'd cut straight through to make her attack of opportunity. Specifically, she snags the part of him with his head still attached before it falls into the water as she gains her distance, though she is eager to drop it at the first opportunity it won't result in him drowning repeatedly. She does actually still need him.
Rean Schwarzer Rean blocks for Revali...and is unable to hold up the tentacle, breaking through the glass. He falls into the water with a splash, sinking under rather quickly. And then the spot where he sank glows with blue light. Rean casts once more, creating a spell circle above Evan. Several flaming rocks fall out of it, raining down on the tentacle-zora-lady, as Rean finally comes up for air, a split second later.

He coughs, treading water and trying to find a spot to get back on 'land' as it were.
Link Revali saves everyone. Everyone. He strains his body beyond what he should to do it. He actualizes on an ideal and manages to get everyone out of harms' way - except for the bodyguard, but he's a fish, so he probably didn't drown.

Edward intercepts the attack meant for Lilian. It tears him apart. But this means Lilian doesn't get nearly as harmed, if at all. Evan would be grinning if she wasn't in so much pain, because she does not know he's immortal.

Mordred's slashes and lightning start carving through tentacles. They start falling off. One. Another. Another. She's getting maimed. But not to a point it'd kill her - she's amorphous. She'll survive.

Dismas slashes at tendrils from the water. Reynauld attacks from the remaining glass. They cut off more tendrils, and Dismas gets less blowback, allowing him to swim to safety and not drown.

Rean's spell circle drops rocks on Evan, causing her flesh to burn, causing her bloodcurdling scream to continue.

Lilian makes a choice. She deems Evan subhuman, and makes those black lines, through her limbs, her waist, her shoulders, and her throat.

All explode but the throat. The throat splits last. It stops shy of decapitating her, but is the actual blow that would cause her death, if Edward can't get something done, or at least patch it back up.

It's highly probable he can't cure it. There's something wrong with this. All of this. What the hell is going on?

The soldiers are soon on-scene - they were evacuating the other districts, because Mikau realized that he probably didn't want to get in Lilian's way. They'll help contain her, if needed.
Edward Blackwell      Half a man dangles in Lilian's grip. One of his arms is still attached. Fingers twitch. He gasps for breath.

     One of his lungs has reconstructed enough for him to speak.

     "Put me down near her throat."

     One way or another, the moment he's put down, his one arm just starts *dragging* itself up the body.

     Once he's at the head, he sits there for all of an instant, running through theories. Fastest procedure? Fastest procedure for a damaged throat? Bood and bile boiling up. Trepanation, but he's not strong enough right now. Missing most of his body. Broken aura? No rupees. No incense. Makeshift incense. Smoke? Smoke.

     He fishes into the coat. Digs out the carton. Rips it with one thumb. Pops one into his mouth. He pulls out the lighter. Snap, snap. Come on. Snap, snap. Come on! Snap, snap. Stupid thing. Slick with his blood. Snap, snap. Snap, snap!

     Desperately he snaps the lighter. Desperately he fights it, watching the blood drain. The clicking is more rapid. More intense. Finally, a spark, a light. The smoke lights up. The lighter disappears into his pocket.

     Smoke in the nostrils. Smoke in the gills. Chase out the excess fluids. Restabilize. Stop the bleeding. He blows the smoke gently in her face. It's smoke. It stinks of cigarettes. His thumb moves to hold the bleeding throat closed. His fingers pinch the skin to make sure.

     Slowly, slowly.

     Each breath is a careful one. There's some kind of method to this madness.

     Probably.

     By the time he's done, he's regrown most of his torso. Not the other arm, but most of the torso. He tries to sit back, remembers he only has one arm, and balances himself on her stomach. "She'll live," he says to the area, before the soldiers arrive.

     "Can't fix her."

     "But she'll live."