Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Evehime Gevurah     At the nameless settlement of ten thousand, the Firewall team finishes up their transmission. Nina calls the group over encrypted channels again. "Backup transfer complete. We've used up all of our qubit allotment. The data will be waiting at our offsite hideout. From there we can decompress the data and transfer it back to civilization." On the tactical band, Kleff asks "Bert. ETA to nuclear intervention." There's a moment of silence. "What do you mean you can't read the satellite anymore? What about the crew?"

    Reasonably spooked, the impromptu team is eager to hurry the hell out of there while they still have the opportunity. They're intercepted by Darren's Pokemon on the way out. Expecting literally anything else other than an eleventh hour double cross, only Bert has the augmented reflexes to turn and shoot a few times before they're flattened and held back. "What the fuck are you doing?!" Nina spits over the radio. "Probable TITAN threat. He went outside, and now he's been mentally compromised." adds Bert. "We might have to farcast back to the hideout if we want to secure the data for physical pickup." A distress signal pings from his location; probably integrated brain hardware.

    Not there, further east along the Valles Marineris, Evehime sends the group well past the broadened area currently being used for live combat exercise, back into a narrow fork of the canyon complex, feeling claustrophobic for its sheer height to width ratio, despite the fact that it's still wide enough to use as a main highway. Well beyond the bubble of warmth and light and blue sky and clear water left behind, the air is thin, the temperature is back to being near-freezing, only a sluggish, slow river of silty red water runs through, and everything is heavily shrouded in shadow, the stars clearly, if somewhat hazily, visible as a ribbon of night above. It's far from an ideal battleground.

    The Gevurah wordlessly agrees. Examining one of the seven kilometer tall canyon walls, Evehime plants her feet apart, presses her hands together, breathes deeply of the barely-there air, and her mind briefly blanks out; all thoughts of where and when and why and what are consciously purged, so no part of her believes for an instant that anything has to be any certain way. Then she lunges forward and smashes her palm into the cayon wall.

    The canyon wall ceases to exist. Kilometers of rock vapourize into fine red dust and are swept away on a nuclear blastwave of directed wind, the spreading shock of the impact peeling away a miniscule fraction of the surface of the planet and rolling back the horizon. A vast, level flatland, semicircular in shape, takes its place, its gently sloped walls sandblasted smooth, its floor hard and faintly glassed. Identical to the 'crater' the settlement had been built in.

    The dark is not to the Gevurah's liking either, it seems. Remaining empty of all logical, analytical thought, Evehime exhales into her cupped hands, as if breathing on them for warmth, and her breath sounds like the crackling whistle of a charcoal furnace. Sparks catch from its heat, and then a bright ember of flickering golden fire bubbles into existence between her palms, coalescing into a tiny sphere. Clapping her hands together over it, Evehime focuses tremendous amounts of energy, for those who can sense it, into a circuit flowing through her arms, pouring herself into the tiny flame. Pulling her hands apart, an exact copy of the mystical sun from before gradually expands in size between them, growing to the size of a marble, an apple, a basketball, and then settling at the size of a human torso. She cocks back her arm and pitches it into the air, where it comes to rest at a weightless zenith over the cleared field, now cast into the midst of a warm blue day.

    "If you think to even beg me to let my people go back, then you will prove it to me, here and now. If you flee, you will be killed."
Sleek Shimmer     "She Who Outshines the Sun, we came here thinking this place needed rescue. I never cared how the rescue was achieved. So... I've already achieved what I want here." True, she did growl a bit when thinking that the people might be enslaved, but now she sees the situation for what it is - these are not slaves, they are a god's followers.

    And she has no right to intervene here.

    "But... I will not turn away from a challenge!" Still, as the group travels into the cold, thin outskirts, she changes once more. Her form shifts, fur growing under the clothing, her face remaining largely human but taking on a more vulpine aesthetic.

    It's COLD out here. Fur is very helpful for keeping warm.

    "What challenge do we face?" An aura of power begins to slowly build as she focuses on circulating her qi and trying to infuse herself with elemental power. Resultingly the aura, mostly white, flickers with other colors at random occasions. For a few moments it looks like that might go well... but the colors fail to merge. With a grimace, she settles on... Wind, perhaps? The aura takes on a green film and a faint breeze swirls around her.
Corona Arclite It wasn't specifically this scenerio but being the sort to repeatedly wonder just where and when something is going to come out of left field and go messing up the plan that had been going smoothly, Corona is caught less off-guard by the Pokemon Inquisition no one expected, and at least is quick enough on her feet to reverse course and put her back up to the wall, while Hopalong hunkers at her feet. For all the good cover will do knowing some of those critters are psychokinentic and what not. "Pro'ly what he said," Corona hisses under her breath, even as she's adjusting something in the magazine of her handcannon. "Reckon we ain't gonna have a choice but go through 'em..." Though charging headlong would probably be foolish. Instead she's waiting for the little beasties to come to them...
Darren      Darren's form shifts above the ground. Feet skid across the bottom of the canyon complex. As dust slowly billows out under reduced gravity, he stands up straight and adjusts his backpack. A grounding deep breath is taken, his breath visible in the cold air.

It's not TITAN, Darren telepathically responds, to the Firewall team (and Corona) trapped on the other side of the Valles Marineris, beneath that spire. Just because you can't perceive of a constructive mental influence doesn't mean one doesn't exist. Ask the Paladin with you about society. Just because the Consortium is a toxic form of hierarchy, doesn't mean every hierarchy is as maladaptive or abusive.

     In the canyon, Evehime vaproizes the wall. Darren stands fast as the impact shock rattles the ground beneath him and sends particulate debris blasting, his clothes briefly buffeted by the displaced, scarce air as much as his body is. He hears her challenge and nods once.

     In time time with Darren's wishes, Saucer, Bert's bullets striking sparks and digging scores into his shell, forms a screen of faintly shimmering light around the spire. It's very tall, could be flown over, but is too step to climb--the only other way past it would be brute force, which is certainly possible. Darren's voice rings clear again.

Have you talked to any of those people? I have. You saw 'mental influence' and ignored 'community.' You saw 'combat' and ignored 'internalized growth.' It's ironic, with that killsat gone. But I actually got -less- time to go back and forth with you. So I'mma just give y'all a suggestion. If you don't wanna be on the wrong side of the woman that canceled that sucker, I'd seriously consider putting that stuff back.

     The giant bug UFO takes off, leaving them to their decision and joining Darren, his shadow looming over the newly created battlefield. Darren's already made his request to Evehime. His body is at once relaxed and coiled like a spring, his heart pounding in his chest. Reaching into his backpack, Darren procures a blue-and-yellow sweatband, slipping it on and freeing up his piercing green eyes from behind his medium locs. He adopts the stance.

     Feet--shoulder width apart. Knees bent, flexed downward, body bent forward at the waist. His eyes are locked on Persephone. "Potion! 19!"
Ishirou They walk to a place outside of the nameless city, this is enough time for the heated emotions he felt to settle down to a simmer.  The more rational parts of him take hold once more, and he realizes just how bad of a mistake he has probably just made.  It takes every ounce of control to keep himself from hyperventilating, which would be bad if not for his own personal environmental outfit.  

The Gevurah then just casually smashes the environment to her liking.  Curiosity overcomes fear at this moment, as his internal sensors start trying to scan her and what she's doing, trying to analyze what exactly she is doing and /how/ she is doing it.  Even if she's not showing her entire hand, she is at least giving him a baseline to start from.  Then, she levels her ultimatum.  

The way she describes those people...the singular word that boils his blood again.  'Her' people, not said in the way that others might use it.  They are hers, as in her property, and that brings back the horrors he suffered because of Indus.  Constant self-doubt, the feelings of being malfunctioning, the desire to be anything else but what he was...the eventual bridge to equating self-worth with being human.  

Ishirou steadies his breathing, he's talked a lot of knowledge being better than strength, but right now he feels that he wishes he was stronger.  All those ideas seem to melt away when faced with something like Evehime and Persephone.  He feels entirely inadequate in the fight they're about to have, all he can do is support them.  Is that all he can really do, force his will by only aligning with who has the closest ideas to him?  Is anything he does really his own ideas or just borrowed?  

The armor starts connecting to his outside suit.  Eventually taking the configuration of the flight units, he already starts hovering over the ground.  He can't do anything but just doubt everything about himself, he concludes.  Those stark blue eyes finally focus on Persephone, with a bit of a sharper edge to them.  He isn't smiling, he isn't looking rather happy about all of this.

"They're not your people," he says firmly at Evehime.  "I'm not fighting for those people to go back to their previous lives, I'm fighting for their right to chart their own futures and make their own decisions.  Even if those decisions are bad ones, or 'weak' in your opinion.  It's /their/decision to make.  Nobody else!"

It sounds right, it might even sound right in his head.  He can't escape the fear he feels right now, and knows the crushing that's about to happen.  Then again, what he says rings true to his heart.  It was his decision to make to be here and fight for them.  
Hiromi     Having already agreed to whatever this trial should consist of, Hisako checks over her gauntlets (needlessly, the dirt from her stealth efforts being no detriment to them), and starts pulling out her supplies of talismans. While largely impossible to identify, for anyone but another practitioner of the miko arts, she does have a large variety of them, likely meticulously sorted across twine bundles, given how quickly and purposefully she removes and applies them. Some tear into little pieces, some are slapped over her gauntlets, some over her clothing, some specifically over the few areas of bare skin, and some burst into flames, as if all on their own. These, especially, have a sense of having done 'something,' if unclear what. For a sufficiently sensitive sense, they're more like sleeping spirits, things readied, but inactive.

    She's broken from this repetitive, practiced task by what Persephone says. First, she needs a moment to remember that she did say something about that out loud, and then takes a few moments more to think about it. "If we'd told them, 'we're here to help the people you're going to rescue, but we're not on your side,' they'd tell us to leave, right? Because nobody goes hunting together with someone who's not on their side. So, they probably thought that, and to them, it's a betrayal. But you could say it's a trick, instead. Like saying 'I never said I would help you.' It's not a lie." But it still feels dirty. Would she do that?

    Hisako continues her preparations with a series of minute flexes that begin at her core and extend outward. It's definitely a routine taught by someone with a very precise sort of mind, and familiar enough to her that she can still talk, and with more calm confidence than a minute ago, while doing it. "Gevurah must be stronger than their old leader. Their weapon was defeated that easily, right? And they're scared of the places she goes. If they want to keep their people in that soul prison, they should prove themselves, too."

    In the middle of pulling one foot behind her head while standing on the opposite leg, Hisako thoughtfully pauses. "I wasn't told what I should do, so I'm going to do what seems right. Allying with someone, and abandoning them because they're weak and a little foolish doesn't seem right. I know that it's only natural for the weaker side to lose, and the stronger side to take. But... she can just go and take back whatever she wants from them, if they aren't strong enough to oppose her. I don't think it's too sad for their souls to be split between worlds until then." For reasons she's only aware of in the abstract sense, Hisako flushes when she's gotten that far. "I mean... it's a little sad, but they'll survive. Part of them will be here, and part there. If I'm wrong, then I wasn't strong enough to be right. That's all." That's the best I can come up with. But I know I'm not strong enough, anyway. There must be meaning to losing here. I'll learn what it is after it happens.
Persephone Kore      Phony is slow to arrive at the eastern battlefield; she's no faster than an ordinary person to start with, and nobody here has ever seen her hurry (except Ishirou, just that once). Considering what's to come, she seems remarkably serene. And why shouldn't I be? We'll be fighting like humans are supposed to. To learn, to teach, to grow. It is wonderful, isn't it?

     She is strangely unbothered by the thinning air. Eventually, she does catch up.

     "I wondered how you'd made all that," Phony murmurs, her hand on her cheek and eyes softly marveling as she basks in the warmth of the new sun. "Up until now, I think I'd only seen you break things, ahahaha. Not that that isn't still amazing! But I like this part even more. Is it okay if I help a little?"

     I wish everyone could breathe easily. And her wish comes true; the air stirs, kicking up dust around the flattened arena as it rushes inwards to compress to full atmosphere. I wish the gravity were like Earth's, and that comes true too; a persistent, gentle downward force on everyone and everything calibrates the world to 9.81m/s/s, settling the dust back down.

     Those are her preparations. Hisako's are more thorough. She answers the wolf-miko's musings as thoughtfully as she can while waiting, her smile settling into something more solemn. "I guess it is a betrayal, in a sense. I don't like that either. But I can't think of a way to be faithful to them that doesn't lead to an awful future. Can you? Maybe I can talk to them, later, and help them appreciate this future more instead."

     Evehime's "If you flee, you will be killed" draws a little laugh out of her. "Don't say things like that, Evehime. It's easy to make sure, isn't it?" The semicircular plain on which they're to do battle is already walled around its outer, curved edge by the smooth glassy walls where the cliffs have been pushed back. Behind them is still wide-open, though. I wish that nobody could run, and the loose ground behind them rises up and compacts down into a towering, hundred-foot-thick wall of glass shot through with glittering iron veins.

     "Oh," Phony says, looking back at the gleaming barrier with a thoughtful pout. "Usually I get diamond. Is this a Mars thing? It must be a Mars thing."
Persephone Kore      "What challenge do we face?" "Me," Persephone answers sweetly. "And you're mine! But please don't go easy on me, okay? Making sure that nobody gets hurt..."

     The Queen in Veils- a three-story-tall doll-mech of glossy white plastic, with a halo of rays and hair like smoke- shimmers into existence behind her and lifts her up in the palm of its hand. She disappears in a little flash, presumably warped into its cockpit. It cups its cheek with its hand, perfectly mirroring her body language.

     "... is my job, okay? So worrying about me is completely and utterly forbidden!"

     Corona Arclite, miles away, is seized by an invisible telekinetic force. Subjectively what happens next feels like teleportation, but if she's got very good senses, she might be able to notice- for a few milliseconds- the world blurring past around her. There is no shock of acceleration or deceleration, as every atom in her body is being moved perfectly in sync; even the air parts ahead of her to nullify friction. She curves above Darren's barrier, above the glittering glass-and-metal wall, and ends her journey in the Queen in Veils' outstretched hand, which gently sets her down in the arena along with any of her essential gear.

     "There. We're all here! Is it okay if I 'go first'?"

     The Queen in Veils holds its hands open and parallel. Dust swirls, compresses, and ignites between its palms, in something reminiscent of how Evehime created her own sun. But this sun isn't meant to burn forever. Its binding gravity is too weak, its spin is too strong. It spins itself out into whipping arms of glowing plasma, an accretion disk in reverse, something like a galaxy in miniature.

     Those arms twist and sweep across the arena like scanning beams. Where they touch the glassy ground, they melt it into searing red. But hair and flesh, they refuse to burn. Against people, it is impossible for them to cause serious harm. Instead their warmth is like the warmth of a fireplace, draining energy into smoky slumber with their gentle power. Everything that stellar fire should do to the body, it instead does to the will to fight.

     Further away, it's easier to evade the twisting sweeping stellar arcs. Up close, near their origin, their suffocating warmth is nearly unavoidable. But I'm sure you'll manage anyway! Show me how special you really are.
Evehime Gevurah     The Firewall team is not having it. Nina snarls the most vehemently, over the open band for all to hear. "I don't care whatever new age anarchist political bullshit you want to spew; I've seen people lose their minds a hundred different ways on this job --we all have-- and it never gets any less fucked up. These people have been abducted, brainwashed, enslaved, treated as property, and forced to fight and kill each other. How the fuck do you not get that?! What batshit mental gymnastics are you on?!"

    "So their previous lives were shitty; so what?! So were ours! Is that their fault?! They had shitty lives to go back to, so whatever abuse you want goes?! These people had a future, ten, fifteen years from now! And you're taking it from them!"

    Elsewhere: "You're fighting to take what is mine." Evehime replies simply to Ishirou. "The only praise I can give it is that you will at least fight in hot blood, instead of your lukewarm conviction sputtering out to forgive out of fear, like the others."

    His scanning is only barely helpful. There is no magic or psychic power involved here. The Gevurah is actually that strong. Realistically, that much force would have dug a deep and narrow sideways channel into the canyon cliff and turned mostly into heat; the way she'd distributed it so widely and evenly can only be called 'martial arts', dubiously, given the circulation of qi beforehand, but perhaps closer to 'sheer confidence it could be done, manifest'.

    'What challenge do we face?'

    "The Hesed has nobly chosen Generosity, as is her nature. I have humoured her; for as long as you do not disappoint me, I will withhold my Severity, and see how her choice plays out. Of course, if you bore me, I promise nothing. Ordinarily, you would be punished severely for your transgressions."

    'I wondered how you'd made all that. Up until now, I think I'd only seen you break things, ahahaha. Not that that isn't still amazing! But I like this part even more.'

    "Battle, conflict, confrontation, if fought correctly and sincerely, is a form of communication. A deeper conveyance of Truth. By clashing with others, sharpening view against view and mind against mind just as much as skill against skill, one discovers the true essence of combat, and then one learns from others."

    "I learned this method of creation from fighting God. My strength is sufficient."

    To be cleanly out of the way, Evehime exits the battlefield by jumping seven kilometers straight up the one canyon wall she hadn't demolished. Every time she decides to move with any kind of speed, it sounds like gunfire and explosions. It feels somehow fitting.
Corona Arclite After Saucer says his part (or Darren says his part through him, she doesn't know how this psionic junk works she's a friggin' engineer) Corona just sighs and rubs her forehead with one hand. This is becoming one big entangled mess of philosphicals and morales and stuff that outlines just why she hates dealing with such matters. "Y'all ever get the feeling that nuthin' is as clear as ya thought it was?" At this point she's not really sure which side of the line is good, there's too many holes in what's known. "Considerin' ya beamed all the brain scans already, well.. technically the mission's already done." She gives a polite tip of her hat. "So's my part. Ah ain't in no position to tell y'all what to do with what you've done."

And then something grabs at her. Corona does indeed have very good senses (and sensors), but it's mostly that her goggles were modified for dealing with The Line for the big end race that she's able to tell the sudden rapid shift in position... And deposit her amongst everyone else. "Oof!" The vixen takes it in stride though, getting to her feet and dusting herself off, and giving Hopalong a kick with her foot to tilt him back on his feet. "That was... unexpected." She takes a look around. "This ain't the same crate--"

And then there's attacks. Gun-fu reflexes kick in without really thinking about it, and Corona dive-rolls to the side on an impulse. The attack shears really close, burning into the protective plates that line her dieselpunk duster. As she comes up into kneeling stance, now looking a bit more perturbed, mostly that it's one of their own group attacking them. And while Evehime's comments make sense (she's a gunslinger, it resonates with her to a degree) it doesn't really clarify the matter. "Someone mind givin' me a quick lowdown on what the blue hell is goin' on with this hootinanny?!" Shit, she's going to need a moment to change her munition loadout to deal with this.

Fortunately, Hopalong doesn't have such an issue, or a mental connundrum over being attacked by a previous alley, so he's quick to step into protect his master. Arcs crackle up the robo-jackalope's antlers like jumping between two tesla coils, then sending the charge of electricity cracking through the air towards Kore.
Darren Okay.

     Darren tunes Nina out. Kleff and Bert, too. He tunes Hisako out. He tunes Ishirou out. Any sort of dissent, spoken directly to him or just spoken -near- him, it doesn't matter. Words of any sort no longer register--this is the field, and the field is Different. With another grounding breath after Phony changes the gravity and atmosphere, it is simply expelled from him along with that breath.

     No distractions. No debates. No doubt. No fear. No restraints. No limits.

    Set the tempo. Call an audible; change the gameplan. "Red! 23! Huuuut!" A spiral galaxy stretches out across the battlefield, iron veins glimmering in the light. "HIKE!" A pokeball is snapped into Darren's hand. Spiral arms whip towards him. He ducks under one, tucking the ball between his hands.

     A pump-fake, then a toss. Darren's mind races with routes, defenders, offense. Out comes Roswell. High above, the massive, UFO-shaped ladybug makes an echoing cry. A protective screen washes over Darren and Roswell. The little alien's eyes scan over Phony, and his mental presence blazes like its own tiny sun.

    Phony had said not to hold back. Darren holds her to that, as does his team. High above, the Orbeetle bears down on Persephone with a concentrated cone of gravity-intensifying energy that cracks and fragments the earth in its wake. Forming a pincer attack with his partner, Roswell manifests four glowing purple swords, animated and moving of their own volition to slice, batter, distract and harry with all manner of flourishing strikes. Darren and Roswell then run a route together, alternatively leaping over and vaulting under the arms of that spiral galaxy--both of their eyes are locked on Persephone.
Ishirou If Evehime isn't fighting, and it's /just/ Persephone, then their chances have gone up significantly.  To live, not victory.  Ishirou is under no delusions that he could win against Persephone more than he could against Evehime.  The deck is stacked against them...but...he chose this, and he won't go back on that.  Even when Evehime addresses him directly, he just holds...or attempts to hold her gaze.  She is taller than him by far.

The data coming back from her actions is utterly non-sensical.  No magic, or reality-bending, just the force of her will and life energy forcing the world to her shape.  It's...frightening to think about, but something he can put aside for another day.  She isn't the opponent he's here to face.

Ishirou radios to Firewall op team, and speaks firmly.  "I'm fighting for their futures, alright?  Lay low and don't get yourselves killed.  I know you don't know me, but /trust/ that I'll do everything I can for that," and he breathes out again.  So much is now riding on him, and he can't back down.  They're right, this is their future, their right to exist by their own choices.  Even if he's doubting his own abilities against this.

God this would be easier if Lilian was here, or Strawberry, Tamamo, Candy, Go, S6...he could support them, they'd be strong enough!  But they're not here, they can't save him...so he has to try and save himself, and these people.  The pressure is enough to make him hyperventilate again, but he holds himself together.  

I4 flips, the suit changing into flight mode, and soars off, right as the Accretion Disk blast would strike where he was, and he soars off into the air.  For just a moment, it looks like it might try and see if it could break through the dome, but it banks right and starts circling the battlefield.  Information is sent to people fighting with him, aiming to provide support, and highlight places they can strike.  

His analysis already has helped him become quicker and respond faster to her attacks, but he sighs.  He is serious now, and he'll prove it.  "POD, activate program overrides.  Link directly to my systems, and enhance reaction time by point six seven percent.  Release all limiters, and disregard safety warnings."

He banks again, flying overhead to Persephone, remembering her words about not holding back.  "I won't," he says firmly, "Not only because of this but because of what you said about worrying about you.  It's forbidden, right?" Ishirou says, before using a burst of wind magic to enhance his weapons, and then firing a barrage of missiles at Persephone.  They were strictly more missiles than were necessary, aiming to carpet bomb an entire side of The Queen in Veils, before attempting to keep flying by.  

"I don't disagree that the life they had before is awful, and I'd do anything to stop that too.  But going from one extreme to the other isn't an improvement.  It doesn't matter how happy they are if they don't willingly /work/ for it together with their own hearts and mind.  It's hallow!"  
Sleek Shimmer     The arena is set, and Shimmer responds by banishing her recent transformation in favor of her more human look. She strangely doesn't more than look about in awe at the changes, taking these wondrous events to be work of people far beyond her level.

    Which, in a way, is so.

    Though when the Queen in Veils appears, her jaw drops. "What... is... that..." Some kind of gigantic vehicle? Shimmer blinks a few times while her thoughts grind at making sense of this development... but settles into a loose combat stance when Persephone begins to make her move... and then breaks into an all-out dash. She can't afford to teleport about constantly and recklessly in a fight like this!

    The sweeping, twisting arm of blazing might nears. And as it does... Shimmer brings her arms in over her navel, open, slightly cupped palms facing each other, bracing for the impact...

    What happens next is quite strange. Huge amounts of the twisting arm of stellar flame are ripped away from the structure, drawn into a much smaller accretion disk which spirals and shrinks inwards. Only a small portion slams into her and causes her to stumble as the last dregs of the energy she redirected seem to be absorbed into her body.

    Breathing heavily and a little dizzy from that exertion, Shimmer steadies herself and resumes her charge towards the Queen in Veils.

    There's no point asking what the heck that attack was, because, having absorbed it, she already has a fair idea. But how to USE that energy...? That, she's still thinking on.

    Eventually, she nears Corona... and directs a fragment of will at her. Shimmer's voice simply echoes in Coronna's head, instead of her ears. <Evehime, She Who OutShines the Sun, has declared trial by combat. Fight Persephone's warrior form with your all!

    Someone has -really- got to get this girl a proper education one of these days.

    Nevertheless, Shimmer's path across the martian soil is quite rapid. She moves with the wind at her back and lightening her form, and vaults upwards, soaring clear up, and begins to arc down towards Phony's mecha. As she does, she pulls her body inwards and enters a dizzying somersault. During the descent, her aura pulses again, becoming mostly brown but with streaks of Mars's rusty-red soil flowing through it. The power of Earth.

    And with that flowing through her, Shimmer's descent accelerates PRODIGIOUSLY. Down she goes, aiming a mighty heeldrop with thunderous force at the Queen in Veils's left shoulder! It's rather like a rockslide in force. There's an awful, unbalancing WEIGHT behind it.

    "Then I won't be considerate, Persephone. If that shell cracks like an egg, is it our victory?"
Hiromi     But I can't think of a way to be faithful to them that doesn't lead to an awful future. Can you?
    "I don't know, Ms. Persephone." Calling her 'Hesed,' apart from 'to Evehime,' sounds wrong, and so, Hisako doesn't. She'll ask someone what those words mean, later. "But isn't it something you can fix by being strong enough? If you don't think of an answer now, you'll think of one later, right? Their souls will still be here, even if their bodies are destroyed again."

    As if only just thinking of, she tilts her head to one side. "If someone told you to wait for ten years, and then you'd be saved, would you?" I would.

    She's only a little distracted by the extra sun that Evehime makes. Now there are three -- four, after Persephone acts, but that will happen a moment later, and be a temporary addition. "How do the fires keep burning...?"

    There. We're all here! Is it okay if I 'go first'?
    Bronze hits bronze with a clear note, more a bell than a clank. "Yes!"

    Fires beam outward and, of course, Hisako elects not to be in their way. It's the first spin she avoids entirely, along with the second, and the third. But she'd chosen to approach, and it only gets harder the closer she gets to the source.

    Or, 'softer.' When she isn't quite fast enough to either dive below or leap over those galactic arms, the effect isn't anything like what she'd expected. Purely by reflex, as one would when touching 'something unexpected' while standing near hot irons, she flinches back out of the way, not before being struck, but before she can fully enter the draining spray.

    Without really thinking about it, she checks her condition, in the middle of arresting her momentum into a forward, somersaulting leap, chin and arms tucked in to increase her spin. Breathing, fine. The same air she's used to, when not training in the mountains. Gravity, normal. Her only real weights are on her hands, and she knows where they are, brought to the center of her spin. Something is difficult, but she can ignore it. It's the force telling her to stop. For now, her resolve is enough to set it aside.

    Her feet hit dirt, and her hands strike it, immediately after. Both disappear into Martian soil, as she lifts up the ground beneath the foot of Persephone's doll like it were a single chunk, holding together for her just long enough to attempt to topple.

    That probably won't work, but it also hides her from view, which gives her the chance to destroy the ground-chunk with the force of plowing through it with her elbow, her right fist held behind her, wound up to strike.
Persephone Kore      For all its size and regal-divine elegance, the Queen in Veils is a toy. It is less imposing than its pilot, despite its size; its overbearing reality-pressure is 'only' a fraction of Persephone's realer-than-real density, and its armor- however thick- is only plastic.

     Plastic burns, scorches, and bubbles when it's shocked with lightning. Plastic cracks and splinters when it's subject to crushing gravity, and mars with white scratches or deep gouges when it's cut. Plastic ball-joints crunch and slip when they're drop-kicked. Plastic fractures when it's elbowed with earth-shattering force.

     Plastic is especially pulverized and pitted when it's struck with missiles, forcing the lashing sun to dissipate. Ishirou's explosive attack ought to have exposed its mechanical guts- wires, gears, hydraulics, something. But there isn't anything. It is solid white plastic all the way through, save for the cockpit. Its limbs have no way to move at all.

     Because I'm moving them!

     All throughout, Persephone makes no attempt to dodge. Instead she marvels gently at each incoming attack, as evidenced in her voice and the doll's body language. "Your friends are amazing, Darren," she says warmly. "Ishirou, I'm so sorry. I can feel your determination. You really are incredible. I've never seen you shine this brightly before. You really do believe in letting these people go free, don't you?"

     "Maybe you could make me believe it, too. But if you're showing me how brightly you can shine, I'll have to show you the same! I couldn't be so selfish as to deprive you of that."

     Persephone goes quiet for a moment. I don't want to be hurt. This isn't the way that I am. The Queen in Veils stands still. Its injuries smooth over, not as if regenerating, but as if simply photoshopped away- reality deciding that they aren't there anymore. "Ahahaha. If you think I can't fight without this 'shell', you're really wrong! But it's a projection of my heart. As long as I still want to fight, it will."

     "You win when you impress me! Or when you make me want the same future you do. That's the kind of fight this is. So try your best, okay?"

     I wish we had someplace prettier to fight. The Queen in Veils creates a new landscape: a lush, flowering meadow spreads out from its feet to fill the whole arena, with trees and boulders and burbling streams sprouting out of the once-red soil. They, too, simply appear as if blurred into existence.

     Conveniently, they give cover against what happens next. "Even if I can't make diamond here, this should still be the same, right?" A black hole forms in the Queen in Veils' palm, sculpted out of nothingness as if her telekinesis had simply gouged a hole in the fabric of the world. New air is created as quickly as it's devoured, but the result is still intense gravity and torrential winds sucking in towards it. Trees bend. Flowers are ripped out of the ground (and, strangely, swiftly regenerate).

     But nobody is given a chance to be sucked into it. Knowing Persephone, that wouldn't be lethal anyway. Instead, the Queen in Veils lazily throws it towards the opposite, glass-stone wall of the arena- anyone without a superhumanly strong hold on something solid is likely to be sucked along in its wake, slammed into the far wall, and then buffeted by a similarly-nonlethal kinetic pulse as the black hole unravels at her mental command.

     "No," she says thoughtfully, finally musing on Hisako's question. "I don't think I could wait ten years for my wishes to come true. Ten years is short if you're who you want to be, where you want to be. But it's very, very long if you're in pain. Don't you think?"
Darren <J-IC-Scene> Sleek Shimmer says, "How is doll shell so crazy hard?!"
<J-IC-Scene> Evehime Gevurah says, "Because the Hesed does not wish it destroyed."
<J-IC-Scene> Evehime Gevurah says, "Such is the privilege of true humanity."

    To Darren, it doesn't matter--because--

Your friends are amazing, Darren.

You win when you impress me!

You'll always be blood to me. But one way or another, first down or fourth down, we're moving those chains. She can take his meaning from that expression--'moving the chains' is forward progress.

     "DON'T STOP!" Bellows Darren, arms and legs pounding as he maintains his blistering pace. Pass play got shut out. Try an off-tackle run, then.

     The black hole passes by, as the arena is rendered more beautiful. Darren wills himself forward, transitioning flawlessly from sprinting to flight and back again--Saucer's gravity contests the singularity as it passes, keeping Roswell from getting pulled back.

     "KEEP THE PRESSURE UP! ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE! STEALTH! 42! HIKE!" This is a different Darren--there is an intensity in him that borders on zealotry; a drive to succeed that far outshines even his impressive physique and athleticism. If the season goal is 'impress Persephone and the Gevurah,' he's going to break his ass to do it in the first game. It's just the kind of player he is.

     Saucer shrinks down to his normal size--his normal form, once the black hole disperses, a sudden barrier from Roswell shattered by the force of Persephone's telekinetic pulse. Bathed in white light, Saucer is swapped out mid-sprint by Darren, substituted with a roaring yeti. The moment Harry enters the field, the air chills. In the span of seconds, currents pick up, swirl, frost begins to gather in the lush, flowering meadow, clinging to the glass barrier and fogging it up.

     A roaring blizzard blows in, with fist-sized hailstones swirling around the Queen in Veils, crashing into it in tandem with the animated psionic swords. A two-pronged attack; grinding down the Queen with passive hazards, and--

     And sending Harry barreling down the middle of the battlefield with Darren taking cover behind his bulk. The bulky yeti lifts two arms thicker than a human torso and is hurled forwards by Darren's telekinesis. He turns midway through the air, forming a powerful lariat, large fists spinning like hammers aimed at the Queen's head, a heavy swing made on the heels of a litany of nickel-and-dime attacks from the hailstones and Roswell's swords.
Sleek Shimmer     Still airborne, there's very little that Shimmer can do when Persephone suddenly recovers from that impact and creates an INSANE GRAVITY WELL. "Wha--" Whooosh! Shimmer's sucked towards the growing singularity and enters a strange, vortex orbit. Whipped around at crazy speeds, the G-forces must be INSANE! "Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-----"

    And then, off she goes, dragged in the singularity's wake thanks to its awful gravity. And yet, in the middle of that tumbling her aura shifts back to green with another pulse, purging the martian earth-tones. With a screechy howl she spreads all her limbs and clenches her arm and leg muscles, ROCKETING against the gravity on a jetstream of wind. She blip-blip-blips in and out of reality several times, earning a mere fifty feet of distance. Strangely, not even her Null Shift technique can break free of that gravity well...?!

    What that does buy her though, is time. Time for the singularity to begin dispersing. When she's inevitably hurled at the wall, she slams into it with enough force to rattle her bones, knock the wind from her lungs, and tear at some muscles - or at least, that's how it would be, without Persephone's strange power at work - but the damage is greatly mitigated by the lessened impact force.

    "Never seen a fight like this. NEVER. Learning a lot. Will show you some of it!" And so, Sleek Shimmer briefly closes her eyes, awareness sinking deep into the sea of her own spirit. She's been steadily refining bits and pieces of that energy she absorbed earlier. Working harder to merge the warring powers of those elements in her system.

    As she softly falls to the ground, Shimmer spreads her feet slightly for firmer contact with the ground. The power of Earth once again emerges in her aura, swirling browns and rusty-reds entering an infinite spiral with the green.

    And then, something truly weird happens. The foxgirl extends her arm, fingers straightened into a knife-hand. A glint of light appears just beyond her open palm... and the rusty red dust of mars flows inwards in abundance, swirling and heating to ferocious temperatures until it melts into a mass of star-like flames. At the same time, Shimmer's hair begins filling out with a different color - a deep red. Similarly, her aura compresses tighter, and a new layer appears at the fringes. A halo of stark grey.

    With a flicker-flash, a BEAM-BLADE erupts into existence, composed of the flashy molten starflame Persephone wielded in her opening assault. Shimmer aims this column of roaring power for the Queen in Veils... and it extends at terrific speeds like a blade. No, like a...

    "Star-Flame Mind-Sword!"

    As Persephone might expect - if she's not caught entirely off-guard, that is - this is her very own trick turned back against her. It saps at her strength and fogs her will to fight...
Ishirou "I can't say the same...I hate fighting.  I hate the feeling in my chest, I hate the pain it causes, I hate worrying if I'm going too far, or holding back and hurting others that are my allies in the process.  I hate it, all of it...but I can't escape that peaceful means, don't work.  That having the right knowledge can't fix every problem, no matter how hard you try.  There is no perfect solution for every problem...but I can at least try and mitigate pain and suffering from fighting."

The back hole threatens to suck him to one side of the arena.  He activates the thrusters on the flight unit to force himself to go as fast as he can, trying to simply force himself against the inevitability of being swallowed.  When it bursts out in the gust of wind, he cuts them off and uses the wind and normal thrusters to coast it along, avoiding the debris.  Even if the presence of standing near Persephone is eroding his will to fight, he at least continues on.

"And I'll fight for what I believe in if I have to.  I can't stand by and see others enslaved to another's will, either through modern bullshit political or corpostate bullshit or through magical big mystical ki bullshit.  If I'm shining that brightly, then maybe it's because of the others who've shared their lights with me and helped me become the person I am now.  Even if I'm about to get crushed like a bug.."

The machine flips over again, turning into a more humanoid appearance instead of flight mode.  It hovers, and can still boost, but is more like a traditional mech than a plane.  Magical energy starts to gather on its shoulders, before two beams of energy fire down, aiming to try a different approach, and pierce through her willing herself back together with every blow.  

"Again!" he shouts, as another pair of shots fire down, once more trying to pound through the defenses she has up.  Trying to burn, however small, brighter than her if even for a moment.  
Corona Arclite "A harder shell just means getting a bigger cracker," Corona quips. Though she's slightly annoyed at the lack of mechanics this thing has, because that could of been used to an advantage with her technical skills. Oh well. They're suppose to fight to make an impression, and that she can certainly do, loading something into her gun and locking it into place.

Then turning her arm to glance at her analyzer as it bleeps a warning at her. Sensors are picking up the distortion being created by the singularity forming for Persephone's attack. All the reality shifting may defy conventional science but it still produces detectable signals at least. "Sunnova -- Hopalong! Anchor!" The robo-jackalope response by hunkering down, wedging his shovel-like paws into the ground to brace himself as Corona fires her grappler to latch onto him.

Just as the wormhole-like projectile is passing by, yanking her off her feet. But the tether pulls tight, whatever it being made of being strong enough to withstand the force as the source of the suction continues to move towards the fair wall, preventing her from being more violently flung around. But it doesn't stop the force of the wind being sucked back from battering her around, throwing about debris to rattle and rumble the fennec as she's flicked about in the ... can't really call it winds but you get the idea. It's far from a clean defense but it kept her from being slammed into a wall or some such.

Being slapped and swung about by the suction isn't enough to deter Corona from continuing on, even if all the morality arguments going on in the background aren't really her concern at the moment, as it's turned out to be bigger efforts in motion here and it's kind of like both extremes aren't all that. There will be time for philosophicating later. Even in the thrashing forces the gunslinger's aim is precise and steady, though the stabilizer gadgetry in her smartgun gauntlets helps with that too. Corona squints one eye out of habit though, taking aim and waiting for the singularities force to start to break down before firing a shot from her handcannon. The oversized and overclocked blaster puts out more than enough kinetic force to send it's shell screaming across the length of the crater, ricocheting off the ground, then off one of the bent trees, and rebounding one last time against the wall to come at Persephone's construct from an angle behind it!
Hiromi     Seeing how dangerous it had been up close, Hisako doesn't press her attack, but gets her hits in and backs off again, keeping her eyes on her opponent while somehow knowing, perfectly, where to put her feet, in hops that barely lift from the ground.

    Ten years is short if you're who you want to be, where you want to be. But it's very, very long if you're in pain. Don't you think?
    "I think... it is. But if you weren't in pain, you wouldn't need to be rescued, right? If you can become who you want to be in only ten years, I think... that I couldn't grow up that quickly. Your own journey couldn't be something that short, right?" It would be harder if I wasn't sure of myself, though. I know I'm not bad because I was given this strength. But do these people know? What memories would keep them warm, if they were left alone? Would having each other be enough?

    Hisako is caught by the pull of gravity, and having expected a push, she's yanked off her feet. Her bow comes off her shoulder midflight, she places it between her shins and bends it with the audible groan of metal, looping the string. She's back on her feet when she hits the not-diamond wall, though it's her feet on the wall, itself, rather than the ground. She's pressed to it, brought to one knee, and from that position she knocks her arrow, pulls, and lets fly.

    It's a bronze arrowhead, but not from any Earth-like Bronze Age. It would be easier to list what couldn't be pierced by this well-cared for weapon, in capable hands. But the Queen in Veils is all plastic, through and through. With that in mind, it's the talisman tied to the arrow that should be of greatest concern, as it explodes with pure, concussive force, and deafening sound, as if the piercing projectile were followed by a giant's irate slap.
Persephone Kore      Cold embrittles plastic; hailstones and swords scratch it. The yeti swings. The Queen in Veils, as before, fails- declines- to protect itself. The head stays stationary as it's struck; the halo cracks, a piece of the face is broken off. Both gleaming, starlike eyes still regard Darren warmly. Ahahaha. 'The desire to win'- I've never fought anyone who embodies it more. Even a silly little game like this, you'll give your all. I love it.

     Persephone isn't caught off-guard by Shimmer's trick- I can see it in your mind, you know!- but she might as well be, still refusing to defend herself. The beam passes through the cockpit of her mech, melting metal but giving no sign that Phony herself is harmed, and her oppressive presence does dim just a little. But not enough, just yet! This is my favorite way to fight, and I'm so glad you've learned it. But my determination is still strong, too!

     Her response to Ishirou's attack is almost fawning. "You're really beautiful like this," she says out loud. "You know, even if I believe in it, I do feel bad for standing in your way like this? I've never seen you be so... brave and heroic before. You really have grown since the last time we spoke." Energy beams lance through the Queen in Veils exactly like they should, leaving gray-smoking holes in its body. It is, after all, nothing but a particularly lovely doll.

     Corona's attack is extremely creative, but attacking the Queen in Veils from behind doesn't accomplish much but finding a novel surface to put damage on- there's little point in feinting or backstabbing when your opponent is determined not to defend herself at all. The shot tears a furrow between where the Queen's shoulder blades would be, if its design were less simplistic. "I'm sorry you got caught up in all this too, Corona. You really are trying to help people, aren't you? And not even for a reward of your own. Even though I've barely met you, I feel like I know you a little already."

     "Some of my journeys were happily short, and some of them have been very long," Phony answers Hisako. "But there's a big difference, isn't there, between the kind of journey where you can feel yourself getting better every day, and the kind of journey where you're just suffering with no way to do anything about it? And told maybe there's an end to it someday, if you're good. I couldn't stand that kind at all." The arrow works just as expected: it strikes the Queen's torso at the shoulder, then explodes to crack its body. For a moment Persephone herself is visible in the cockpit, smiling; there are screens but no controls.
Persephone Kore      If it remained like this, scorched and shattered with its pilot exposed, the Queen in Veils would be all but inoperable. I can't let that happen, though! Again it mends itself, though not as perfectly as the last time; where once there were gaping holes there are now smoldering pittings, where gouges once laid it open there are now scratches. Persephone said that, as long as she had the will to fight, it could keep going forever. If that's true, her will must be flagging.

     "I really almost feel bad about this now," she says with a little laugh. "About standing in your way like this. You understand why I have to fight you, don't you? Even if I don't feel great about it. I really do still believe in the future I'm fighting for. And you're all so incredibly special, I just have to see more!"

     "For that, I'll keep going."

     The Queen in Veils gathers dust and accretes a blade of glass and metal in its hands, appropriately gigantic. 'Blade' is generous- its edge is dull, and knowing her, even if it were sharp it couldn't cut. The doll-mech moves elegantly, swinging it in lazy arcs: horizontal, diagonal, even vertical once or twice. With each swing, it casts off nebulas of that relaxing-warm starstuff, each one traveling and expanding in an arc until it splashes against the ground.

     This isn't hard to avoid at all; even if one fails to, it's gentler than the earlier accretion disk. But there is an art and a beauty to it, and to the movements one would naturally take to dodge it. It's a simple, earnest request to show off.
Ishirou Behind the protective armor of the suit, Ishirou might be blushing at being called brave and heroic.  Though it doesn't stop him from continuing.  With the giant sword forming, he's forced on the defensive.  "POD, Activate blade!" he says, and a large energy blade forms out of the armor's hand, aiming to collide with Persephone's own.  The two clash as she attempts lazy swings at them.

Though he tries, the force of the blade is enough to overpower parts of the suit, though they repair because she doesn't wish for them to be broken, instead slightly withering his fighting spirit.  Though it's not a palpable blow, more papercuts to that desire to achieve his goals.  The sword dissolves and he flies up before switching things up.  

"Drill mode!" he shouts, before two drills form on each hand, and the machine changes shape, before 'diving' into the ground and burrowing under.  He uses his new mode to try and throw Persephone off by burrowing up just long enough to fire more missiles, and burrowing again.  Switching his tactics to more hit and run, instead of trying to take her directly. Perhaps thinking he can aim at more withering her own fighting spirit, instead of clashing on her stage.

"Is this the only way to settle how the future has to be?  Even if this is gentler than real combat, is /confrontation/ and might making right the only way forward?  I...just can't believe that /strength/ is the way forward for the world...for humanity.  For us all!"
Darren Every game is a little silly. But this might be the most important one I've ever played.

     Harry lands with a heavy thud opposite the Queen in Veils, revealing Darren, sprinting towards the doll full-tilt, a sheen of sweat forming across his brow. He winds back for a pass. Harry is gone, though the blizzard rages on. Roswell's swords dissipate.

     The blade strikes Darren in the side--but his bodily control is incredible. As he falls to the ground, his eyes are locked on his friend, the little alien. Mid-descent, the pass is made. The pokeball sails beautifully through the air, right into the wide receiver's waiting, light-studded hands.

     When Darren hits the ground, he and Roswell are joined on the field by an animate stone arch--Slabb. The Stonjourner's very presence carries with it the invisible power of earth. Roswell studies the Queen in Veils intently, gathering his strength and nimbly weaving beneath the glass blade as Slabb rockets into the air.

     Fist-sized hailstones continue to collide with the doll, and one very large mass of stone makes a simplistic, time-buying attack--letting his weight do most of the damage, as Darren, rolling to get to his feet, calls the next play.

     "STONE! 14! HUT, HUT!"
Corona Arclite Once the suction has died down and she can put her feet back on solid ground Corona retracts her grappler, which also pulls Hopalong back to her. She catchs him, and slings him over her shoulder as he folds up into his backpack formation once more. Then just sort of shrugs at Persephone's concern. "What can Ah say? Ah'm a magnet for weirdness." She flicks her gun around and drops it into it's holster, already considering a different option. "But where Ah come from, lotta time it don't even matter who's rawht or wrong... It's that ya stand up and fight fer what y'all believe in." She takes her hat off for a moment to flick some martian dust off, then redoffs it on her head. "So while Ah ain't got all the morale complexities to debate about, as long as yer all willin' to fight fer what yer holding true, Ah'm not gonna hold back from helpin' anyone. This is some kinda test so holdin' back wouldn't be no fair to you, either."

Then out comes the starstuff attacks again. This is why she put Hopalong back in his assistance mode though. He reconfigures his legs into a pair of thrusters, which work in tandom with the boosters in Corona's boots to send her rocketing into motion. Zipping and weaving through the swinging swirling energies, but unable to avoid them all as she zigzags about. Not being as intense as the previous version doesn't mean they don't sting something nasty on contact. Is she going to need a decon shower after contact with the stuff? Eh, we'll worry about that later.

As she's maneuvering about Corona pulls out an odd weapon from her hammerspace arsenal. Is it even a weapon? She doesn't even fire it at Persephone's construct. Instead she's circling around the Queen, shooting a few times at the crater floor and boulders, and even into the walls.

From which unfold small turret guns, which turn and open fire with rat-at-tat-tats and pew-pew-pews at the Queen. They're not very strong shots, but the sheer number of them and the rounds per minute they keep belching out does even it off some.

Someone once challenged Corona that you couldn't make a gun that shot guns. This was how she proved them wrong.
Hiromi     And told maybe there's an end to it someday, if you're good. I couldn't stand that kind at all.
    "That depends... on whether you trust those words, doesn't it?" Part of Hisako's pause is to think, but part of it is to breathe. The black hole is gone, and her feet hit the ground, but everything is more of an exertion, more of an effort of will. There's little feeling of difference between 'can't' and 'won't,' in moving her body. Willingness and ability are more closely linked for her than most, but it's the circumstances of fighting Persephone that make them one and the same.

    "If my sisters said it, I'd know they believed it, and they're probably right, because they're wiser than I am." And if she said it, I'd know it was true. Even if it didn't sound possible. But... oh. These people have someone they trust like that, too.

    Hisako moves into a flowing dance across the field without a second thought, striking the ground with her feet here, hitting on all fours and leaping away there, merely intuiting that the path she's being led is an honest one. It's not that she can't imagine it being a trap, but that she's judged that her opponent 'probably wouldn't do that,' without going as far as to put it into words.

    Her bow is put away again. The path through the field, with all its strangely soft close calls, takes her in toward the center, toward the Queen in Veils. It's not avoiding her, so she can do this. She's not really thinking about hurting Persephone, nor is she planning to stop the doll from working. She just wants to reach it with her hands, and show the strength of these precious gauntlets.

    That does involve reaching for and tearing her way through to the doll's core, willing the plastic to come apart in grippable strips, but that's simply the straightforward path to her goal.
Sleek Shimmer     The strange extra transformation fades away as Shimmer stops imitating Persephone's power. However she did that... well, who knows. This leaves her hair back to normal and just the swirling merged powers of Earth and Wind. But that's... something quite different from before. Before, she was switching between the two and now they're combined into one. Just what the heck might THAT mean?

    "Hah... both at once! Super rush!" Yep. This is definitely something new. As for what it means...

    Shimmer has her attention locked on that giant sword as she begins to dash closer and closer. And as it passes... she zigs and zags and flips in some spectacular acrobatics, each time avoiding the giant blade and its freakish wake by a foot at most. Exactly when she figures that Persephone cannot see her because the blade obscures her, Shimmer blur-ripples out of sight, crossing the vast distance over to just before Persephone's toy mecha in an instant. Planting both feet on the ground hard, she then SPRINGS upwards like a rocket, trajectory shifting subtly as she focuses on her target and rides the winds of battle.

    And then... launches into a sequence of spinning kicks. One, two, three, four, five! And more, all the way up towards the head and beyond! The maneuver altogether looks too flashy to be as effective as one would hope, but in truth, is more effective than it should be. There's great weight behind those blows...
Persephone Kore      "But that's wrong," Persephone answers Ishirou. The missiles are just as effective as they used to be, and she does seem annoyed by his disappearances, but- insofar as her attention matters- she doesn't seem to lose track of him, either. "Do you think a little child couldn't beat me, if they had a tiny bit more love and conviction than I do? And do you think there's anything at all I couldn't beat, if I were fighting for what's dearest to me?"

     "This isn't about whether you're stronger. Of course you're not! Nothing happens unless I give it permission to. So it's a conversation, instead! Show me how special and amazing your heart is! Show me how much you believe in the future you want! And get me to see it the same way you do. Do you get it now, Ishirou?"

     Corona's turret guns are so delightful that I don't even want to break them! They really are precious, you know. So she's given free reign to set them up. Even if each individual shot doesn't do much damage, plastic isn't like steel; the cyclical stress of hundreds of bullets begins to fatigue its integrity, eventually chipping the material. "Ahahaha. You really are pure, aren't you, Corona? I like that a lot, actually! Being so willing to humor me like this... it is charming, you know."

     Shimmer similarly finds that Persephone is perfectly capable of tracking her even when line-of-sight is broken, but it doesn't make a difference except I want to see all the cool things you do! As she is now, serenely refusing to defend herself, it doesn't matter if an attack is underhanded or announced. Each kick cracks the weakened plastic a little further, though the Queen doesn't flinch or stagger away from the blows. "Awwww. You're doing so well, too! I could never move like that. How'd you learn?"

     The Stonjourner's charge, logically, ought to send the Queen reeling; plastic is not as dense as steel. But I don't want to move, so it doesn't- instead the plastic cracks and splinters, punished for its refusal to yield. The Queen's hand comes down to playfully rub the top of the Pokemon's stone head. "You're doing amazing," Persephone murmurs to the monster. "Hang in there a little longer, okay? I'm proud of you."

     Darren, up in the sky, receives a friendly wave.

     Hisako has no trouble at all reaching the Queen in Veils. Plastic is plastic, and even though there's a lot of it between her and her goal, the Queen in Veils makes no attempt to stop her from tearing its heart open- instead it cups its cheek with its hand and looks down at her warmly. When Hisako tears through to the cockpit, she finds Persephone sitting there in a simple modest chamber, legs crossed on her comfy-looking chair and bathed in the crimson glow of video screens. Phony's hand is on her cheek, exactly as the Queen's is.

     "Ahahaha. You got me! Tag; am I 'it'?" Her eyes sparkle with- amusement? Admiration? "But tell me, while you're here: do you think these people have a reason to trust the people who kept them in a box? Who were making them work for free? I think they trust Evehime a lot more. You see that too, don't you?"
Persephone Kore      "You've all done really amazingly!" Phony gushes. She might sound patronizingly effusive if she weren't so obviously sincere. "I'm absolutely sure Evehime will be impressed. But I have to show off too, you know! You won't hold that against me?"

     Persephone makes a terrible wish. As physics bends and rearranges itself to accommodate her whim, there is the narrowest, cracked-glass instant for a gut-dropping, hair-raising, instinctive sense of danger. The conscious mind knows Phony could never harm, could never intend to harm. Spinal reflex knows no such thing.

     Centered on each and every combatant is a hammerblow of force- mercifully not targeted at them directly, but at the space they occupy, making dodging just narrowly conceivable. It'd be kind of terrible of me, otherwise!

     And then it is as if a spiral galaxy's worth of weight bears down on them from above. Ground shatters beneath them, turns to fire, turns to glass. For agonizingly long instants, moving is as impossible as escape from a black hole. Breathing is only possible because it'd be mean of me to take that away! Pressure that ought to shred anything down to its constituent atoms, ought to create a new black hole on the spot, is rendered utterly harmless to the body but as fatal to the will to fight as it ought to be to life.

     And then it relents, barely two heartbeats later. Persephone exhales, and she sounds tired, and then she laughs. "But you're too wonderful. It's really, really hard for me to wish things like that when you're all so precious, trying so hard. I guess you really have gotten to me! Ahahaha."
Corona Arclite One has got to give Corona some credit. Getting randomly yanked out of one weird situation and into an equally weird one involving a fight, only having the vagest idea of what was going on because this entire situation had become more than she really understood... and still sticking to go through with it because she was here to help. When she said sticking up for your stuff was more than how right or wrong it might be, she wasn't being snarky about it. She comes from a world where 'frontier justice' is still an acceptable methodology after all. It's what you make for yourself.

But still, she can only push it so far. There's no physical attack, but that feeling of impending assault is enough to make her fur stand on end, tail doing the whole bottlebrush thing as she tilts her head as if to look up, the expression of her ears draping back exaggerated by their length. It's possible the analytics in her goggles can 'see' the force that's about to come even if it isn't visible. "Sunnovabi--"

*WHAM*

Even if not being a deathly direct blow is enough. The defensive countermeasures Corona had at reasonable hand have been expended at this point, fights that hold out long like this don't really suit the gunslinger style. So the impact just being in her relative space is enough of a shockwave to slam her to the ground. "Uuugh." Her stetson drifts lazily to the ground afterwards, which she reachs over to grab with one hand... and then just plop down over her face so no one has to see her grimace.

"Sorry pardners... chamber's empty this time." At least she's not, you know, beaten into a pulp. But one can only do so much with grit and gumption against cosmic entities well out of your league.
Ishirou "Is it wrong?  It is this way to /you/ but what about Evehime?  To Hiromi?  To people who are less powerful but still rely on strength to get what they want.  Even this is a form of strength.  It shouldn't /need/ strength for people to understand each other, for the future to be written...not like this, not like they do.  It shouldn't be /strength/ that dictates the future...it should be /wisdom/ and /will/.  Not strength to crush the weak, but the wisdom to guide others, and the will to withstand roadblock."

Even as she gushes at them, Ishirou knows the worse is about to come.  How does he know?  Because in all of his combat analysis knows this is the right time for the big blow.  The pressure around them gathers, and it starts.  However, he knows that she doesn't want to harm them, even if his reflexes scream at him.  They want him to do one thing, but his mind overcomes that.

Instead, he works mentally.  She might recognize the reaction response almost as immediate as Lilian.  The difference is that Ishirou draws information around him, simply able to see nearly perfectly in all directions and able to process this information inhumanly fast, instead of stopping time and being able to hold the time to do this.  The problem has always been his body hasn't been toned to keep up...but that seems to be changing.

He sees the way out, the field threatening to crush his will to fight with the force of the universe, but he sees the path, even as he strains, and a moment later he shoots out of the field, the thrusters reconnecting to his machine as he bursts out of the ground.  He's coming right at her, the drills leading the way.  Literally attempting to ram The Queen in Veils.
Darren      Darren Spears thrives on 'just barely conceivable.' In his career, and in his greater adventures, he is always chasing that--always looking for the next summit even as he crests another. When the space he occupies is targeted, he simply doesn't occupy it. Slabb, rolling off of the Queen in Veils, is swept up by his pokeball before he can hit the ground. Darren and Roswell perform a more unusual maneuver--in each one's case, the physical form flickers and thins out like a powered-down CRT television.

     All three reappear, side-by-side, a split second later. Roswell's always been an analytical player--watching footage just as obsessively as Darren, but dissecting it with a passion all his own. Cutting routes on game day to poke massive holes in d-lines he'd spent hours picking apart. There's only so much good that studying Persephone will do. Things happen, or don't, according to what she wants.

     The only chance of breaking through is to want something so badly that she can see it. To play her game, but to play it so well that she can't question the outcome. Roswell is not human--he could take or leave Evehime's instruction. But he knows that Darren wants her tutelage more than anything he's ever wanted--that she represents everything Darren upholds as the ideal human existence.

     "HIKE!"

     Love for his QB, his best friend, the person he grew up with, radiates outward as Roswell musters every last bit of psychic strength he has, bolstered further by the presence of Slabb. It all comes impacting inwards on the Queen in Veils, an adorable, endearing attempt to replicate the psychic force Phony so easily brings to bear herself.

     Slabb lifts both arms, his plaintive cry filling the meadow, as the last of the blizzard blows away. Phony can read his emotions--he's pledged himself to this team, sweat for it, bled for it. He's exulted in victory and weathered defeat, and 'win' or 'lose,' he's going to give his all to this silly game, just like Darren and Roswell.

     Rushing through the dissipating cover of hail which shatters harmlessly against him, he is given a push from Darren, who wants, with all his being, to impress the Gevurah and Phony. To learn how to cultivate this potential inside me, and take my first steps towards becoming Tyfereth.

     His added might has Slabb moving so quickly that the air around him ignites, his body hardens--it needs to, for the impact will trigger an explosion of superheated air, so violent as to briefly engulf everything around him.

     Sweat mats Darren's clothes to his body, in the aftermath. His chest heaves. But even so--that tension, that thrill, is still alive within him, and will be until Phony calls the game.
Sleek Shimmer     "You could learn! But it takes hard training. Months. Years." Shimmer answers with what she knows to be quite true. But, perhaps it's not something Persephone would be very inclined towards. "The one step anywhere move though... nifty trick I learned after swallowing a magic ring. Really dumb idea. Don't do it. I am lucky."

    How... how does one learn to teleport by eating a magic ring...?

    And then, she's crushed to the ground with absolute, overbearing force. slammed hard. The wind knocked out of her. Her spirit falters. The aura of merged elemental power dwindles.

    Though her strength's leaving her, she flips to her feet the moment it relents, gasping for breath and struggling to keep her focus. The will to fight is actually rather crucial for some of her abilities to function right, after all!

    Shimmer banishes the powers of Earth and Wind as she focuses on just breathing for a few moments. She'd better do something good and quick, because she's not so sure she can get back up next time.

    "Heh..."

    And right then, with no warning whatsoever, her body's engulfed in an ERUPTION OF FLAME. Red-orange-white and roaring like a bonfire, the heat rolling off of her body is searing, intolerable. The flame is wild, uncontrolled. It sets her spirit and mind ablaze, drawing deep from reserves she has little conscious control over. It's painful. She's hissing and snarling through it, a combination of agony and overwhelming fighting spirit that, while this flame lasts, almost seems to have undone all of Persephone's hard work in subduing her spirit.

    She once again blips out of existence, but this time without the spatial ripple. It's not teleporting, it's just speed. She rides the updraft of her own flames at prodigious speed, appearing and disappearing again and again all around the Queen in Veils. Every single time she delivers a hard knee, a driving elbow, a spinning kick. Though they lack the WEIGHT of the previous blows, the searing heat and sheer spirit are penetrating and fierce, likely to tear great gashes many times beyond what the size of her limbs would suggest. The onslaught is as rapid as a machine-gun, growing faster and faster.

    Something about this maneuver feels incredibly dangerous though. There's probably a reason she hasn't used it until now...
Evehime Gevurah <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou to Persephone, "That's unfair and hurtful to turn it like that. You know very well that I wasn't going to alter anything BUT outside influence. Trying to frame it as if I was going to change them fundlementally is dishonest. There is a /canyon/ of difference between getting someone to see your point of view, and bending their wills to serve as your property. No matter how comfortable it is."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "And how do you know it'll be clean, Ishirou? They've been through a lot. Without Evehime's influence, the memories they have of fighting could become really painful."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Will you take away those memories too?"
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "No."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Ahaha. I thought you'd say that. You really are consistent. But it means they'll be even more unhappy."
<J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Hisako says, "I don't know if you need to worry about that, Ms. Persephone. Because... people remember how scared they were, and how worried they were, and how much 'it hurt them,' but they don't remember 'being hurt,' right?"
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Ah... maybe you're right, Hisako."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "I have memories that I didn't mind at the time, but that I'd rather not think about now, though."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Because I'm a different person than I was then."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Do you ever feel that way about anything?"
<J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Hisako says, "...maybe. I don't know. I was still little when my sisters accepted me. I remember everything being scarier, before then."
<J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Hisako says, "I remember dreams that didn't worry me, even though something bad happened in them. And I don't remember why. Isn't it like that?"
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Awww. Ahaha, that's so cute. I'm happy for you!"
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Evehime, you've changed a lot, haven't you? What do you think?"

<J-IC-Scene> Corona Arclite says, "Now really ain't the time for tragic backstories!"
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "I think it's a great time for tragic backstories."

    Seated at the top of the cliff, arm over knee, watching closely even from miles away, Evehime breaks from her sharp, semi-interested analysis of the battle below. Despite her lengthy silence, her thoughts are clear. This is the first in a long time anyone has asked me such a question. One about myself. Born from a desire to know, rather than to use or be given.

    "All influence is 'outside influence'. Wills are tested and tempted every day, stressed lightly and greatly. Weak ones bend because they are designed to, in order not to break. It takes no divine power to leave an impression in other minds. People change, suddenly, dramatically, when they finally realize what it is they were missing all their lives. You cannot make them 'normal' in any way but forgetting that they ever knew. Returning them to the dull malaise of waiting for meaning. For anything to get better." Evehime replies from the clifftop. Her eyes slowly shut, and a period of slightly turbulent silence follows. One that bears the faintest sooty marks of old mourning. The spectre of nearly forgotten, but carefully recorded, grief.

    Ten years is short if you're who you want to be, where you want to be. But it's very, very long if you're in pain. Don't you think?

    "I am better. I became it. I embody it. And if there were any power in existence that could make me forget, should I ever learn that it did, I would destroy it on principle alone. Even I would never give up a single chapter of my life, in the tale of becoming myself here and now."
Evehime Gevurah     The Gevurah's intense gaze lingers on the back of Shimmer's neck for moments. "A beast clawing at the path of enlightenment. Tapping the almighty nature that it knows, attempting to forge it into the shape of martial arts." It slides over to Corona. "And their complete opposite. One whose heart is enraptured by the craftsmanship of deceiving metal into life. Without impure intent to proliferate it."

    She watches Darren and his pokemon. "His unintelligible language, words of command, heeded by creatures that ache to hear them; the early dominion of a human setting feet at the very start of the road to becoming human." Then Ishirou. "And his nascent determination, the beginnings of self-choice, wasted on those that he fights for. Wasted on the fighting itself." And lastly on Hisako. "One who is neither? No. One who loves and is beloved by the most supreme of nature's kin, for lack of humanity to fill that place in her heart, but for knowing that it is there. Which way will she stray?"

    Somehow nebulously . . . not unsatisfied, by something or another, Evehime allows a reluctant smile of fickle humour to tease her lips. "So this is how a Hesed fights. A battle that isn't. Conflict that is not combat. A fight without violence; one only in the euphemistic sense. An argument, friction of wills, the guise of war apparent as a prosthetic instructor and guide to the truth that trading blood arrives at."

    "Is that so? How impossibly amusing. To bend the precept of love towards the purpose of resolving conflict, without betraying the spirit of its truth. As bending the precept of severity towards the purpose of giving life. Giving to refusing. Withholding to bestowing"

    The faint smile slides away, but not fully. It merely grows older. "You've known, then, a heart that your love could not reach without conflict. An argument that couldn't be won, by the very nature of that one's existence. And you persevered in your truth beyond it. Didn't you? Perseverance in absolute rightness, expanding one's truth to reach where it could not, rather than changing it to suit one's experience-- that is the only way to arrive at power like yours." A brief, thoughtful moment. "Like the Archwolf's too, for those without the spirit of Humanity with them."

    Of all things, she finally seems compelled to respond to Ishirou, then. Not 'call out to', because somehow Evehime never needs to raise her voice to be heard like this. She could probably shout across the ocean if she had to. "Strength is but one tenth of Absolute Truth. But even a fraction of it is enough to overcome those without any Truth at all. Curse not the designs of God for praising strength and condemning wisdom; they contain both in equal measure. A mere love of wisdom will never overcome manifested strength; as much as you desire it, as much as you laud it, in your very bones, you respect strength more deeply."

    "You cannot hope to change the way the world works to suit you, as have I and the Hesed, so long as you know in your heart that the world is has more authority than your wish." A pause follows, with the thoughtful weight of one of Persephone's gravity wells. "You will never change anything as long as you fear that the world is more correct than you."

    "Now. Have you had your fill of this?"
Hiromi     Who were making them work for free? I think they trust Evehime a lot more. You see that too, don't you?
    "They'll trust her. I'm sure of that. But then, couldn't they trust her to bring them back, if their old promises were broken?" There might be a disconnect, here, in values. It doesn't take a mind-reader to tell that Hisako doesn't view a decade or two of suffering as an unthinkably terrible thing. She can imagine it clearly, and accept it as a time to be endured. It's only the idea of it being for naught that can disturb her.

    She reaches inside, thinking about 'tag,' but only up until she senses that incoming TK hammer.

    It had taken a lot of preparation for Hisako to even enter this contest. The dormant magic in her talismans has been building over time, but it has limits, too, and she can feel those being reached, at the time when Persephone decides to 'show off.' This time, it isn't something she can just narrowly avoid, brushing through with minor, false injuries.

    Her endurance hasn't yet failed, but it's Slabb who comes in clutch. She has only a little of this power, usually, but amplifying the solid power of earth is the perfect combo for the situation. It's enough that, just for a moment, though the weight pressed onto her is beyond her comprehension, though it should destroy the ground around her, she no more than falls to one knee. It's not something she needs to maintain for long, nor could she have.

    The premise of Persephone's gentleness being what it is, it follows that this is something Hisako, herself, would survive. There's no explanation for how this could be, even in her own mind.

    She doesn't look that much like Hiromi, even apart from her size. In that moment, though, there is a point of clear similarity, along a particular axis that had been remarked upon, before. Withstanding that pressure, Hisako looked much more real than the glassed, fired ground around her, a local focus, clarity of being achieved, if imperfectly, only through her own form. It can't extend to the space around her. She lacks that aura.
Hiromi     Still, because she finds that she can stand, even after all of that, she must. Evehime hadn't given the choice of holding back. Persephone had forbidden worrying for her. Hisako wouldn't, in any case. Serious feelings must be shown seriously, and others must be honored with a similar effort. Even if she doesn't know 'what should be,' nor what form her feelings should take, nor what world she would create for these ten thousand foreigners, people who will never be of her pack, she knows, at least, that she wouldn't be the person she's meant to be, if she gave up, merely because it was difficult.

    She'll search for the meaning in her loss after it happens. There is no meaning in a lesson abandoned halfway, just as there is no meaning in undertaking a challenge that doesn't challenge.

    "I don't think the Gevurah is wrong. But I don't think Ishirou is wrong, either. I think... it doesn't matter who I say is wrong." Only the winner matters, in the end. When the weak decide, they're overturned. Only the strongest can end a conflict. Following that rule is good for a society, but it can still hurt. I don't like how little time these people have for being together. They're comrades, but are they a family? That future is sad, too.

    Those feelings are left unspoken, but that glint of clarity of self remains, as if fueled by it, when she takes a step forward. All that she still has to give, the final point of her demonstration, cracks the glassed ground, crushing it beneath her foot. Eyes closed, ears high and focused, she turns her body in a second, thundering stomp as her fist extends, bronze-clad fingers striking the underside of the Queen in Veils in an uppercut not to damage it, this time, but to force it to move.

    The gauntlets are very important to her, and not just for what they allow her to do.
Persephone Kore      Darren's combo attack smashes the doll-mech, crunching its torso with fissures that almost run all the way through. A little houseplant is visible through one of the cracks. Its heat, too, melts the doll's edges, drooping and dripping them like candle wax.

     Shimmer's repeated blows give it a more distributed pattern of injury, with more localized heat. Here, it burns, smoldering from patches along its limbs and back to mingle with and thicken the smoke of its hair.

     Ishirou's drills, without resistance, bite deeply into the Queen's chest and into where the cockpit ought to be. They encounter no resistance until they almost strike Phony herself within- then they are gently deflected to either side, kept from actually harming her by millimeters. You wouldn't want that, would you?

     And Hisako's strike- the Queen in Veils wavers for a moment on impact, reverberating with the blow. But I couldn't possibly bring myself to hold it still! Without Persephone keeping it steady, for the first time, it is forced to take a step back to catch its balance.

     Somehow, even in ruins as it is, the Queen in Veils has a comfortable air about it. It seems less 'damaged', more 'well-loved', like a teddy bear that's gotten frayed and lost an eye. Its limbs are splintered like kindling. Its childishly simple ball-joint anatomy is laid bare by deep gouges. Both starlike eyes still blaze through bangs of smoke, but one is now disembodied, the plastic it was anchored to blasted away.

     Again, it begins to mend. But Phony thinks better of another round. "Ahahaha. Okay. You did it! I'm impressed! And I think I've gotten way too fond of all of you to keep going. It's just too hard to want anything bad to happen to you, you know?"

     One of those star-eyes twinkles. "Except the ones who want bad things to happen to them. They can get another round, sometime." That feels directed specifically at Darren, because it totally is.

     Shimmer's flames are extinguished by a telekinetic absence-of-air, and she's set down on the ground with a gentle ruffle of her hair. Darren's hail clouds above are dispersed with a thought, scattered into nothingness. Corona's turrets are neatly deactivated and packed up for her to retrieve. And the Queen in Veils itself shimmers out of existence, leaving Persephone floating where its cockpit used to be.

     She floats down to ground level again, eyes shut and smiling warmly. The hundred-foot-thick wall of glass and iron behind her is ground back down to sand and rust with a wish, making little more than a whisper as it returns to the soil of Mars.

     "Someone who could not be reached without conflict... haha, you get it exactly, Evehime. Of course you would. But it didn't feel like doing something strong or brave at the time, like you're making it sound. I'm just not strong enough to want to hurt anyone. That's all."

     "Thanks, though. For giving me that favor. Aren't they wonderful? I really did enjoy it!"
Ishirou The collision is enough to damage the Queen, but the fight ends because at this point Persephone simply wills it too.  The Flight unit flips again, transforming into humanoid mode again, and the drills vanish.  As Ishirou slowly lowers himself to the ground but hovers just above it.  He breathes a sigh when she says she doesn't want to keep going...and that's something.  He really doesn't have more in the tank, and the Queen seems like it could keep fighting.  

Evehime speaks to them, and he turns the front of the armor towards her, as the face part retracts so that Ishirou can speak with her directly.  She says he respects strength deeply, and it hurts to admit she might have a point.  He hates it, absolutely loathes it, but the people who he supports...he does remember each and every one of them is strong.  

'You cannot hope to change the way the world works to suit you,' which is a simple truth that hurts.  Is it stronger than he is?  Though the words she says at the end of that statement get to him...as long as he fears the world is more correct than he is.  Is this as far as he can go..?  Is his nature itself fighting against him, the desire to know versus knowing the limits and accepting them..?  

Though to her next question, he looks firmly at her.  "That depends, are you going to remove your influence on them?"
Sleek Shimmer     Everything finally comes to a crashing halt. The Queen in Veils has finally stopped. The winds of battle calm. Shimmer sets down on the ground, the flames surrounding her dying down. Gasping for breath and grunting in obvious hurt - Persephone could protect her from her own attacks, but not the spiritual burns caused by that move she just unleashed.

    As the flames sputter, gutter, and die, leaving Shimmer with no aura now at all, she drops to her hands and knees, struggling, shivering, and straining to support herself.

    It's just too darned much. She's never pushed herself THAT hard in such strange situations. Her human form melts away - she shrinks down, down, fur replacing clothes and animal features replacing human ones until once again the red fox is among the group.

    And what does the fox say? Just a weary, chattery whine, as she lays down on her belly and curls her tail towards her head to rest for a bit. Just breathing.
Darren      Darren drops out of the QB stance, at the sight of that lone, twinkling eye. Good game. He knows. And that smile on his face could very easily be taken to mean that I'll take you up on that.

     Slabb stomps over to Darren, scoops him up in stony arms and places him squarely atop his head, arms raised in celebration as Roswell flies a sprightly figure eight. The team has put forth a huge effort for this win--they're exhausted. But there's no celebration that's quite as well earned as one you have to make covered in sweat, with aching limbs.

     He looks up, at the top of that glass dome, as it evaporates and lets the rest of the native Martian climate back in. Cool air breezes past him, all the more cold for the exertion. He breathes a sigh of relief, feeling for all the world like this planet is breathing with him, for just a moment.

     Evehime may not have been addressing him directly with that question of hers. He imagines she meant Ishirou. But he answers it anyway.

You said to show my determination. And she asked me to impress her. I've done that. If y'all have had -your- fill, I've had mine.