Scene #7909: Signal Echoes: Gilded Coast

Owner	Pose
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Stepping through the golden portal, you emerge into another world. The designator for the Safe Travels' support drones blinks a 'disconnected' error message. Though there is a tapestry of unfamiliar stars in the night sky, there is, notably, no moon. Late evening light shines down on a small archipelago--small in both the sense that the islands themselves are only a few hundred feet, and in the sense that you can cross shallow water from one to the next very easily. The starry sky is reflected on the surface of a placid sea that seems to stretch infinitely outward. Here and there, great interlocking bangles of gold and stone rise high into the sky, well above the highest branches of the trees that grow here--even when those trees cling to the massive links themselves. Encircling this tiny archipelago is a ring of crude shrines, constructed from scavenged stone, felled trees, bound together with vines. Rita will notice, perhaps before Providence, that they aren't here alone.Why, then, are beetles and Lemurians beginning to congregate placidly near Rita? Why are stone golems emerging from the earth to meet the Archwolf? "Mithrix... must have taken pity on it. Given it company. If he could understand it would be lonely, then why even..." Providence's eye closes, and he grounds himself. "The shrines. An imitation of my brother's craft," he notes with concern. "Almost certainly not part of his original design. We're meant to summon it. With an offering." With the only meaningful resistance coming from those greater versions of the diminutive wisps, it's easy enough to make 'offerings' of spoofed credits at the shrines--intent seems to matter more than strict mechanical interface. Activating the shrines builds up a gradual sort of tension. There are seven in total. By the time you and your allies have activated four, that tension boils over and Aurelionite appears. It is not unlike the giant version of the stone titans Hiromi controls. But this one is not a servant. It's a fully realized being, with the kind of blinding radiance that people ascribe to visionaries and radicals. It is real--eminently so. Realer than real. Its body is comprised not of gold but of [gold], as if the very idea of brilliance and plenty had been given life. Its cyclopic red eye blazes angrily upon the sight of Providence. Its voice echoes throughout the Gilded Coast. It is carried effortlessly through the air, paradoxically no louder than conversational despite Aurelionite's towering size. "You and your brother imprisoned me because you were frightened of what you had made. Now you return, after all this time, and your first act is to steal my followers from me. To deny me even the company of others. What do you have to say for yourself, before I destroy you?" Providence stands tall, forces himself to meet the red glare from his creation. "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I should have stood up for you. I should never have let Mithrix put you here." "Correct. And for that, you will now pay the price."
Hiromi	"Stone heeds Hiromi," comes the introduction of the Archwolf, carrying with it the shape of that name that can hardly be put into words. There's no need to specify that she refers to herself. To fail to recognize her is far more difficult. She spreads out her arms. "Come, come! We've meetings, after long seasons. Warrior owes debts," her eyes turn to Providence, for a moment, "paths left abandoned, but now, we walk! And what," she addresses this tallest yet of stone titans, "will you? You wish, for what paid? For gold? Shining gems? For 'credits'? Or for stone to crack, blood to spill? I've that scent, now. Fighting, and then, more fighting. Imps, usurpers, kings, heroes, let them come." She doesn't offer to give back the stone golems. They're merely following her Authority, and hers is real. There is no trick, and that means she has nothing for which she could apologize, nor anything she owes. "Dull endings, if he stays here. That price, I'll trade for better." Hiromi rolls her shoulders, effectively communicating, 'Well? Show your hand.'
Kukuru	A strange double-chambered bauble, half the blue spine of a madman, and a moonless night. It all sounds so romantic to Kukuru, but there's little love to be found in this new archipelago's strange terrain. The great gold stone construct has her looking at it in awe, and Providence's words are the only things that keep her from wandering towards it idly. Instead, there's creatures moving to join the group already, and Providence gives some context for the shrines and a clue as to what needs to be done next. "He might not be all lost, then. You..." There's a moment's hesitation as she considers whether or not she should try and keep his hopes up, perhaps fruitlessly, but only briefly. "You gotta believe that you can help him. That we can help him. That way, you can really reach him once we meet him." She offers Providence her usual sleepy, yet unwavering smile, although it might look a little creepy when she still has it on while leaping towards wisps to rip them back to the ground. Kukuru's clearly conserving her energy in this initial approach of each shrine, however, focusing more on bolstering the rest of the group's strength and healing them with vague clouds of scientific whatever to mend even smaller scrapes and burns from the local defenders. The Aurelionite appears, and it airs its grievances. She listens to it, to Providence again, and then she takes a deep breath before approaching the titan with a raised open palm and barely suppressed throat yawn that takes a while to push down before she finally speaks up. "He-llo there! We already beat him up before coming here 'cause we're here to fix what happened. Do you wanna come with us?" Kukuru goes right back to that gentle smile, only mildly smeared with wisp juice and dirt. "You won't be lonely that way, we can fix everything, and you can even beat him up later a bit if you're good." She addresses Providence in a hushed tone a moment later, sounding completely confident as she does. "Don't worry, you'll be fine. I can fix you back up even if he kills you."
Raziel	'The other side of the portal was slightly different than I expected. I had expected monuments of gold, idolatry of greed, and other things that humans seemed to be in love with. Instead, the starry sky above, and the calm sea around us. Shrines dotted the islands before us, inviting us to pay homage to the prisoner of these lands.' Raziel walked forward, even as others gathered up their minions, and only stopped when Providence spoke. Listening to what he had to say about the shrines, and exactly what they were. He ponders this for a moment but does not immediately speak his thoughts, instead, he felt something coming. 'The creature of immense size stood before us. Despite his size and his rage, his voice was calm and measured. However calm the voice was, the tone was accusatory, hurt, and painful. A creature sealed here because its creators were afraid of it. Its anger is righteous, and was he not similarly looking for revenge against his own creator? I was damned to this form I inhabit...I consider his fate far kinder.' "You could seek vengeance for your imprisonment. I would not blame you for it, for I too seek vengeance for the form you see before you. However, I ask that you stave it off until such time he has paid his debt to us. I have no desire to fight you, nor do I have any desire to cause you pain," he says, looking to Providence. "I would say you could make a strong case to ask for your release, but..." "Whatever you chose I can not judge you for it. Just know that I will act in our interests, and I would rather they align than not."
Redshift Operators	It's once again the gruff bastard who steps in. "You," He jabs one of those gloved hands at Providence. "Better not back down on that. You feel that guilt-pang? Get that heart pumping and bring it through the whole body. Listen to what it says, not what'cha think is gonna fix it. And you!" He readies his gun. "Big guy. You got stuck here, huh? Screwed by the system, left behind by the bastards who couldn't agree? I've gone to shitty prisons too. If you don't want to be stuck here, you better say what you want. Are you wanting to get outta here? Are you wanting revenge?" He racks the gun's components, ready to act as his allies form up with him. A hand rests on his grenade belt. "'Cause the Redshift Operators are here to grant a couple wishes, but I better hear it loud and clear that what you want is a fight, and you're not just swinging for the hell of it."
Rita Ma	No bison or imps here; Rita's army is significantly restricted. Deprived of a proper mount, she wades through the shallow sea on her own instead, her beetles and lizards sticking to dry land instead. Knee-deep water ought to inconvenience anyone, but it doesn't seem to soak into her clothes at all, nor does it slow her steps. "Are you sure it was Mithrix who gave him company?" Rita says, audibly baffled. "Someone who wanted to destroy the Earth, doing something like that..." She clearly can't reconcile that, and eventually dismisses the thought with a little shake of her head. "I guess it doesn't matter." But it does, and it'll continue to nag at her. When the shrines are lit, and Aurelionite rises, a stunned gasp escapes her. They'd been expecitng something, but not much could prepare them for this. Larger than the titans, more brilliant than the wisps, with an eye that burns as brightly as Providence's- whatever she was imagining, it fell short. It takes her a moment to gather up the nerve to step forward. But she does, with arms outstretched. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this. You've been thinking about this for a long time, haven't you? About what you'd do to him if you got the chance. It's your right, to do to Mr. Providence what he did to you. But..." "I think we can build a happier ending than that. For you, and everybody else. One that doesn't start with you destroying the first person to love you, and end with you being all alone again. Please. Can we just leave here together?" But she only half-believes an appeal like that could work. Anxious anticipation is written on her face, waiting for a violent reply.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"I certainly hope it was," says Providence to Rita. "There would be grave implications, otherwise." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "To be honest, I do not expect anything less than a fight to the death...it would be no different if Kain was before me now." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says firmly, "If we're just going to kill him, we might as well have not come here at all." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "But..." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "He's probably going to make it hard. Yeah." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "I suppose the decision is in his hands, ultimately." <J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators \| Red Dwarf says, "We give him what he wants." <J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators \| Red Dwarf says, "He wants out, we get him out. He wants a fight, we get him a fight." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Fighting, maybe. Needed. Killing? Sounds not." <J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators \| Red Dwarf says, "Then we get it out of his system." Aurelionite stands straight up, his shadow stretching across the leagues between you and him. "My freedom is no longer something you can give, [hero]. The only thing I want from you is satisfaction." So Red Dwarf was right. Listen to what it says, not what'cha think is going to fix it. Providence steels himself, grip on his sword tightening. "If you're already free, then take your satisfaction." Aurelionite's eye glares all the brighter, and a red laser sweeps across the battlefield, flash-boiling water and glassing sandy coasts as it passes.
Kukuru	"Not what's going to fix it..." Kukuru repeats those words (sort of) to herself as she tries to absorb that concept, although she still manages to smile in vague satisfaction when Providence seems willing to give Aurelionite his chance to vent those earlier mentioned frustrations. "I get it... Fight as much as you need. Don't hold back, either of you!" It almost sounds as though she's cheering both of those giants on even as the laser comes sweeping right towards the group. There's a rare moment where she can actually see where the laser's going to probably move, and her predictions are right for once as she launches herself into the air with pure arm strength to deftly avoid that awful burning menace. There's still the matter of actually striking back, of course, as she weighs her options while she's still reaching the top of arc of her jump. Kukuru reaches into her pocket as she takes out that strange spine once again, then comes back down to raise that thing aloft to draw upon its power! She hasn't figured out how to use it, though, so she waits to see if it does anything before going for a more direct approach with Aurelionite: Running right at him with her claws brandished to start smashing them into his shins and ankles to try and get the giant off balance.
Raziel	Raziel sighs, he knew this is what would happen, even if he hoped for better. The years have made him jaded about these things, though at the same time he could not blame it for its anger. With a measured breath, he flexes his hand, and the energy swirling on it forms into a spectral blade. The ghost of a sword, radiating with ravenous intent points towards the giant. "I am not that, if you must refer to me as something then call me Raziel," he says, before leaping forward. The beam fires, glassing large amounts of the beach, but he continues on. The beam does not directly hit, but the after-effects burn his undead flesh as he comes through it, and leaps at the creature. He thrusts the sword into him but uses his other claws to grapple onto the giant, aiming to ride him, as he positioned himself in a more advantageous position. 'At that moment, I knew words were not going to reach him. Was strength the only thing he would listen to? Would he even listen then? Would he fight until he had expended all of his life? Revenge drives people...and that feeling I knew all too well. However, unlike this giant, I could not be killed.'
Hiromi	"'Satisfaction,'" Hiromi repeats, gnawing on the shape of the word to make it give up its secrets. "This," she says, turning to Providence, "is your debt." A red laser sweeps across the field, glassing sand, boiling seas, setting clothes alight where they do not scatter as ash, and tearing into the unprotected back of the Archwolf, leaving frightfully ugly paths through stripped flesh. It is no less a sight to watch the muscles regrow in moments, knit and draw together, skin fresh and pink before fading to her usual, darker tone, now spotless. One could still notice those muscles, when her shoulder moves, the motion carried down to the flexing of her fingers, claws of bone erupting bloodlessly. "Yes, good. If challenged, I'll accept." The smaller golems, any that entirely avoided the opening laser, are ordered, wordlessly, away from the fight. Only any hit are so much as permitted to join, under Hiromi's command. Striding forward at a measured pace, the build-up is revealed when Hiromi reaches the 60-yard line. She practically disappears, both from the suddenness of her acceleration and from the cloud of water and sand that hides all behind her. She couldn't be more straightforward, otherwise, aimed as she was. In what may as well be the same motion as her leap, fist already drawn back, she strikes it forward, timed with the unerring precision of an unthinkingly intuitive, mad genius in that specific field of 'applied strength.' It's straight to the center of mass, which lets Hiromi drop straight down to the shallow water around her opponent's legs, in the moment after. Getting in close will be useful in another moment.
Redshift Operators	With a single, practiced motion, the giant swings his arms wide, showing a thickly armored front to the other titan and taking the laser on to give the other Redshifts a clear moment, searing a heat-resisting layer off in a spray of sparks. As soon as the sweep is past, the other three redshifts scatter wide. "You want satisfaction? How about putting that Mithrix bastard out of all of our misery?" A corrosive grenade curveballs ruthlessly through the air towards the side of the golem's head, blast into an airbursting spread of chemistry by a precise shot from the sniper, who follows it up with shot after shot from the anti-materiel rifle to the hopefully-corroded zone. Raziel's already mounting, and the corrosion means the ninja shouldn't add more risk. She mirrors Kukuru instead, rushing at incredibly high speeds with broad sweeps at the ground, and making it difficult to track her through frequent deployment of tha gooey mirror of herself. "But you're gonna have a whole lot more satisfaction if you put the hurt on both, not one. And trust me: You want all the damn revenge you can get. It feels good, it gets good things done, there's a reason it's built into the blood. You really not gonna double down to get more of it?" The gunman's hefty rifle probably won't do too much damage, but it's good to keep up the damage while he's fishing out another grenade.
Rita Ma	"'Grave implications?'" she says to Providence, sounding as if she doesn't like to ask. "But then it'd be Aurelionite's doing, right? And he's the one we're here to save, so... why would that be 'grave'?" With the golem's reply, Rita's arms drop to her sides. Her expression shifts to a pained grimace, and then more slowly, to a determined look. "Satisfaction," she murmurs. "So, they were right after all. Well, I'll do my best. But please forgive me, okay? I know you really do deserve better." Rita's diminished army scatters; beetles and lizards have their uses, but denting a titan like this isn't among them. When the laser fires, she doesn't bother with decoys. Where Rita was a fraction of a second ago, there's now just an eruption of sand and seafoam left in the wake of her hard acceleration. She circles around clockwise, staying ahead of the beam's sweep until she can dive into slightly deeper water. Once she's submerged, even in shallows like these, she seems to disappear. She reappears behind him paltry seconds and staggering hundreds of feet away, as if being underwater could let her teleport. When she breaks the surface in a violent leap, it looks like someone set off a small bomb in the sea. She strikes his hip at an angle and twists sharply in a midair ballerina spin. Invisible tentacles are extended and buzzsaw into the golden surface of Aurelionite's back with the spinning motion, gouging it and carrying her from hip to shoulder with the rotational force. Her sparks-showering trajectory carries her past his body, further up into the air, until she lands on a massive chain link far above. From way up there, she can get a quick bird's-eye view of the unfolding fight. "Is everyone still okay?" she calls down anxiously, Aurelionite implicitly included. It's a dumb question, but she can't help worrying! Even at that distance, the noise of Hiromi's impact makes her reflexively wince and try to cover her ears.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	BGM: https://youtu.be/KEqMGuTOB5Q Providence is ready. Where Aurelionite's laser strikes Providence's sword, it diffracts, the giant's blade evidently possessed of some quality that allows such a defense, held in just the right way. Aurelionite is taller than him by a considerable margin--as one would expect of a golem built by giants. A golden blade is held in the golem's right hand, brought down and thrown off-target by Kukuru's surprise strike. Knelt down by the claws, he is easy for Raziel to climb astride--moss, vines and even a tree have grown from Aurelionite's left shoulder. He is -also- easy for White Dwarf to harass in this knelt state. Your attacks carve gouges into him, but it's slow going, as if he can decide which aspects of gold he wants to represent at any one moment--density, but not softness. The grenades from Red Dwarf and Neutron's similarly corrosive bullets seem particularly effective--for the simple fact they represent an attack vector the golem is unfamiliar with. "Only now, at the end of things, do you think even to come at all, much less to apologize. Did you think it would be that easy?" "No." Providence's sword pins Aurelionite's much larger blade to the ground. Spikes erupt from the golden blade at odd angles, forcing the alien cyclops away. It's then that Hiromi's strike lands, driving the golem backwards through the water on heavy, stumbling steps. His red eye glares, and for a brief moment, every successive blow bounces off of him harmlessly. <J-IC-Scene> The Engineer says, "Sudden cessation of exotic particle emissions. Target is between dimensions." <J-IC-Scene> Phreak says, "'Cessation?' What are you, a fucking cyborg?" <J-IC-Scene> The Engineer says, "Yes." <J-IC-Scene> Phreak says, "What he -means- is we gotta go turn those fucking things back on now, or else he's gonna shrug everything off. You guys handle him, we'll take care of the shrines." A few tense moments pass. Providence apparently didn't get the memo--or is otherwise keeping the golem busy while its apparent invulnerability is up. "Mithrix is next," the golem answers Red Dwarf, warding away an advance from the cyclops with another laser sweep. "This accounting wouldn't be complete without both of my creators. When his grip is pried from the world outside, my followers and I can live there in peace." "He didn't create you. He drew up the design--but I deviated from it. I thought he would be proud," Providence sadly muses, his blade clashing in brief, violent bursts with Aurelionite's, before the golem's foot crashes into the hero, flinging him across the surface of the water. Slowly, Providence rises to his feet, in time to avoid an erupting spike. "Your abundance of soul he called a deficiency; your capacity for love he called weakness; and the ability to direct that inwards, when you yourself needed love, this was called volatility." "Why didn't you stop him?! Why didn't you argue? Why did I have to be punished for what I -might- do, before I even had the chance to live?!" Phreak gives the go-ahead. Aurelionite's head turns to Rita, erupting behind him. He tries to swat at her awkwardly with an elbow harried by Raziel's tenacious assault. Sparks fly from her flying pirouette, and in retaliation, Aurelionite plunges his hand into the ground. On his own body, in the shallows before him, on tiny islands--even on the giant chain link where Rita gracefully lands, golden spikes and golem-sized hands erupt, to impale and crush the unsuspecting.
Raziel	The spikes impale into Raziel, tearing through his clothing and his flesh as if it were no more than paper. He coughs up some blood-like substance that looks green and glows. However, those claws still cling to the surface of the giant, despite those wounds. With that blow, he forces himself up trying to climb higher. "It sounds like to me, he created you to be more a person than you were intended to be. What happened to you is terrible...but I feel you're blaming the wrong person. He gave you life, where otherwise you would have none...or are you really so far gone as to not realize how precious that gift is?" Raziel attempts to climb the last bit, revealing the wounds. His body is nothing more than a husk created by projecting his spirit into the material world. Though with that, he swings, aiming the shot for the shoulder of the giant as the Soul Reaver attempts to cleave through the giant's body. "Do you want vengeance, or do you want justice? There is a difference. Once is noble, the other will set you on a dark path," Even as he says this, the irony to those who know him and his goals is massive.
Hiromi	It's not so much that Hiromi waits, after that first strike, and she hits the water. One colossal blow, and she stands in that hunched, balanced pose, unnatural for how little gravity seems to hold her and, just briefly, easy to miss. She's not usually easy to miss, but gathering strength for another leap, standing next to a giant's golem, is such a time that someone might, if only briefly. In the moment just before the spikes appear, Hiromi's eyes snap open, her ears straighten, and she raises one leg, knee bent. It crashes down at the same time as the attack, driving straight through. Gold snags her calves, scratches, then the tips break off, sent flying from the force of her body reasserting itself as perfectly healthy. The forceful restoration is still nothing compared to the impact of her foot to the thigh-high sea's floor, first in how it drives all water from where she stands, second in how the shockwave severs the spikes around her, and third in what occurs immediately afterward. Stone heeds. Even beneath the sea, there is the Underworld. Feel its pull, waiting below. Even the seas may be swallowed. Aurelionite's advantage of height may be less so, with the seabed falling away beneath his feet, sinkholes that just keep going down to trap his stone limbs as their upper sections crumble. Water rushes back in, as it tends to, buoyancy being an aid to some, but also, here, a force of weight, to keep him trapped and centered. Attempting to avoid the traps is a complicated affair, when they're not so much 'prepared' as they are the direct result of Hiromi's will being communicated through the seismic rhythm of toe and heel to stone. The very environment thus becomes hostile, with the exception of the water, which is merely in obedience to its desire to flow down prepared paths.
Kukuru	The hands bursting out of the ground catch Kukuru off guard, but not enough to bring her down completely. She certainly yelps as she's crushed by one of them in a mighty grip, but her survival instincts kick in well enough that she starts pushing back. She lowers her posture to make herself a smaller target within the hands for a brief moment, then bursts upwards violently to tear herself out of their grip before they can break her too much. "He messed up, mhm. They both did, and you don't have to forgive them for that. It'd be really unfair and... Um. Kind of gross to demand that from you, right?" As Kukuru hurtle upwards, a dark cloud appears above her, and it swallows her up whole before reappearing above Aurelionite to drop her towards him with her claws still brandished and glea-actually they're not really gleaming anymore. They're still banged up and jagged in parts, but they haven't lost any of their weight. "But people aren't always perfect. Everyone messes up, everyone lets someone else get hurt because they don't wanna hurt someone else, and even if they wanna do something nice... They can mess up really bad." She brings her claws down at Aurelionite's shoulder on the side holding the golden blade, aiming to catch herself against the golden giant's arm before starting to wrench and tear at it violently from side to side. She's clearly aiming to disable rather than kill, although the amount of force she's using and the wrenching method might be closer to an alligator trying to murder the shit out of something. "But what do YOU wanna do? Do you wanna help us save you and your followers from all this and ever having to be lonely again? Or... Is it more important for you to hurt and kill those two?" Kukuru asks, still managing to sound like she's gently scolding Aurelionite rather than still manages to sound like she's gently scolding Aurelionite. Despite her rather barbaric fighting style, she stops in mid-wrench after the fifth to suddenly rest her forehead against that massive arm. "It's okay to feel mad at them. Are you mad at us, too?"
Rita Ma	"Built wrong?" Rita murmurs. It's something she's prepared to sympathize with, but a moment later: "No. Built right, but he wouldn't see it. I'm so sorry. That's worse in some ways, isn't it?" Dysfunctional family dynamics are something she can only foggily grasp, but she manages to arrive at: "To not still be seeking your creators' approval, after being denied it... that's really strong of you, isn't it? I think it'd take a lot of self-love to move on like that. Even if it's causing us problems right now, I you're amazing, Mr. Aurelionite." Her attention's split between watching Phreak and the crew reactivate the shrines and the ongoing conversation. It ought to be enough, by any measure, for the spikes and grasping hands to catch her off-guard. It is not. As a spike begins to sprout from the chain link behind her, she twists around as a blur to catch a glimpse of it over her shoulder, then leaps high off of her perch in a metal-cracking backflip- hundreds of feet away from any solid surface, the hostile terrain can't touch her. It's easy to tell exactly when Rita's mind catches up with her reflexes, halfway through the clothes-fluttering dive, because she yelps in shock when it does. She has barely three seconds to think in freefall. The Redshifts' corrosive attacks have been successful. Hiromi has, mercifully, created a sinkhole full of water around the Aurelionite to cushion her fall. Put those together: the tentacle-wrappings on Rita's hands begin secrete an awful blue acid. As she falls past the golem, her fingertips dig into the Aurelionite's back again, leaving behind furrows of smoking corrosive liquid. Her slide ends at the water, where she disappears into the depths again. It's hard to tell what she's doing below the surface, but the turbulence and bubbles hint at something violent. Unseen blades gouge into Aurelionite's legs as long as they remain submerged.
Redshift Operators	It's the speedy ninja who manages to pull back and yank her allies out of the way of incoming spikes. First the astronaut in their softsuit, and then the gunman in the hardsuit -- though the latter suffers a brutal gash on the way. "Will you be able to defeat him without Providence, then? You have such a grand and complete power? Maybe. But predict, instead." The cyborg ninja brandishes her sword, point-first at the invulnerable Aurelionite. "Perhaps you are right, and perhaps you are wrong. If you work with Providence to slay Mithrix, and find yourself unable to kill Providence, would you regret it? Would you regret it more, should you slay Providence, and be slain by Mithrix?" She takes a dramatic attacker stance, ready for what's next. "Take your revenge! For it is deserved and righteous, and will feel wonderful when you do. But look to the future as you do. What would you regret?" The others are getting those shrines dealt with. Once they do, the cyborg flashes into motion. "With me, Giant!" And the titan of a man surges forward with strength-infused dashing, not keeping up, but he doesn't need to. He slams hs body against the hand, and with unbelievable strength, yanks up, trying to simply rip it from the ground. "You've stopped caring about yourself enough to focus on getting everything you want. If you don't start, you're going to die." His gravel-filled voice, and the busted filter in his mask, grant a tone of powerful menace... as he implores the golem to focus on mental health and self-care! He goes to town. The sheer volume of physical strength is actually unbelievable for someone of his relative size, heavy shoves and strikes that make the armor on the man scream. His hunched posture and ragged breaths sound like a menacing, incredibly dangerous berserker state. It is, of course, not; he's simply incredibly tired, and this need to hurt someone in pain has him emotionally exhausted. It's hopefully enough to shove it into some of Hiromi's traps, among other assaulting efforts.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	...he created you to be more a person than you were intended to be. Do you want vengeance, or do you want justice? Built right, but he wouldn't see it. I'm so sorry. That's worse in some ways, isn't it?. You see, again, the fault of weakness. You, against your brother. Your brother, against him. Let's see that guilt act, not paralyze. What do YOU wanna do? When Providence's sword is held aloft, a golden fist erupts beneath him, the impact hurling him into the air. His gaze hardens as the water rapidly rises to meet him, his graceful landing causing his mantle to billow backwards. "I created you because I missed someone very badly." Rita's underwater assault cuts ribbons into the golem's legs, chipping them down farther than he can outlast. He topples forward, adding force to Raziel's cut with the Soul Reaver, virtually throwing him across the golden construct with the blade dug in. A deep gash channels the water of the resulting splash, which rises up all the way over the golem's body and falls back to the surface in droplets. "And when I was done," continues Providence, sprinting at a full tilt despite a bioluminescent injury spreading across his chest from the punch. "I was so very happy..." Aurelionite thrashes, but soon begins to slide, without the use of his legs, into the enormous sinkhole. "...that someone new had come into this world." Providence leaps into the air, just in time to deflect the golem's fist--slapping it into the water which now engulfs it from the chest down. "I should never have let him make me ashamed of that. Because it's beautiful. And so are you." What would you regret? The golem's every attempt to get -out- of the trap is thwarted by Red Giant and White Dwarf--and if he's going to hear nothing else, he's going to hear the people he's trying frantically to laser. While the laser is slow, it also has the unfortunate side effect of boiling the water to an alarmingly deep extent.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	His shoulder is raked by Kukuru, the impact driving him forward and striking the surface of the water with his hammer-shaped head. The golem's back is its weakpoint, with new gouges from Kukuru neighboring old ones from Rita and Raziel. "I'm..." "I want to live out there." The golem stops trying to rise through the water, instead sinking to the bottom of the pool created to trap him. "I won't stop you. But Mithrix will. And I don't want him to do that--so I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep it from happening." "You're lying. Just like Mithrix lied when he said we were going to visit friends." Golden links break free from their chains, raining down with massive impacts, sending up plumes of water and sand where they land. They don't fall over. Rather, bidden by Aurelionite beneath the waves, they rapidly spin up and roll across the ground and water, forming intersecting lines of attack and changing direction abruptly.
Raziel	Raziel slides off the giant, hitting the ground and rolling back to his feet. When the giant chains swing, he seems to disappear from reality for a moment, only reappearing after they had passed. Though what Raziel was not expecting was the chains to snap back in the opposite direction on a dime. The strike is devastating and sends the ghost tumbling across the ground until he comes to a stop. The damage was catastrophic. It should have killed any other person...but Raziel did not have organs or biological functions that would be in shock right now. He feels it, but the fact that he's non-living is the only reason he's still going. Pulling himself back on his feet, Raziel once more brandishes the Soul Reaver. "Why would he lie? What more could he do to you that hasn't already been done? Why come here only to lie to you now? If we're fighting you as successfully as we are what is the point of trying to deceive you now? For all of his faults...lying is not one of them. Or is that what you are afraid of, not knowing what to do if he is, in fact, telling the truth?" He swings the weapon, as the color of the Reaver seems to take in a lighter green appearance. A shockwave bursts out of the reaver, aiming to hammer the back of the Giant even more.
Rita Ma	Once Aurelionite's legs seem to be crippled, Rita floats back up to the sinkhole-pool's surface, paddling in place with just her head above water. The flow of conversation, for once, seems to be building towards a positive resolution. She allows herself a relieved little sigh. "Please, Mr. Aurelionite. You don't have to forgive him. But..." That ends, abruptly, with Aurelionite sinking and making that ominous final declaration. Rita's eyes go wide in shock as the golden chains rupture. But she's a smart girl, and she has her wits about her. What's the one place Aurelionite wouldn't drop a link? On top of himself. Rita appears to panic and run out of the pool, but that decoy dissolves as soon as it's out of Aurelionite's sight. The real Rita, invisible, swims to the bottom of the sinkhole with him. He thinks he's alone. He'll be complacent. She picks her targets oh-so-carefully, circling around behind him and finding the deepest gash on his back. Her hand lines up inches away. The most warning he gets is the white glow that suffuses the water a fraction of second before Rita's enormous venting of life-energy slams him right in the spine. "My friends came here just to save you, you know! Please stop trying to hurt them!" From an outside perspective, the water briefly fluoresces, then erupts in a plume of foam with a sharp crack.
Kukuru	As the battle rages on, Kukuru notices something rather curious: There's no witty quips behind the strikes. There's no taunts, no jeers, no provocations preceding these impacts. There's logic being used, strategies being offered, prioritization recommended, and most importantly for her... Compassion for the construct. It may just be a vague sense of camaraderie with some of the circumstances of Aurelionite's creation, but that and the care shown by everyone has Kukuru making absolutely no efforts to evade the golden links as they lash out all over the place. Instead, she breaks into a run right at those links, slamming herself into the headfirst with her claws acting as the closest thing she has to a shield for her squishy meat person body. The impact sends her rolling back into a boneless heap, of course, and it takes a few more moments for Kukuru to restore herself to a more functional state with her healing abilities after taking those strikes head on. It takes a little longer for her to start running again, and yet more time to remember that she can teleport the rest of the way. Naturally, she does exactly that, leaping into a cloud only to reappear a short distance away from Aurelionite's face to latch on with both a mangled claw and an uncovered hand. "If you can't trust them, fine. Trust us instead. Even if we're not related, me and Razi and Hiromi are still family, and we're all in this for the same thing. And even if not all of us are with the Concord, we're..." She hiccups, looking back at Rita, the Redshifts, and even squinting a bit at those among them working on the shrines way over there. She's visibly trying not to cry, but her eyes are pretty puffy already. "They're really good kids, too, a-and they're making me so proud right now, and... We all just wanna make things better for everyone, you know? So..." Steeling her resolve, Kukuru clambers up a bit further to tighten her hold on Aurelionite before suddenly shifting her weight backwards and pulling with all her might to try and drive his face to the ground. "If he really is lying, then we'll beat them both up for you later!"
Redshift Operators	A focused and somewhat desperate barrage comes from the heavy rifle in the sniper's hands, as they struggle to shoot down the incoming links. Shot after shot after shot is needed to knock them off course and keep their friends safe, and even then there are some dangerous close calls that leave the giant, gunman, and cyborg bruised and jarred from the impacts. The astronaut's voice finally is heard, speaking briefly and with startling clarity, a focused drone. "Did you want Providence to come back or not? What is your objective? Is your objective killing him for what he did? Was your objective waiting for him to come here, and answer your questions?" Bang! Bang! "You want closure. You need objectives to have closure. If what you want is living out there, this isn't going to help. Mithrix wants to bring a human invasion force here. Mithrix wants to bring his invasion force out there. You need to kill Mithrix and then live to complete your objective." "But you're trying to force something out of Providence instead. There isn't an answer that Providence can say that will fulfill your objective." The sniper stumbles as one of the links grazes them hard. "Because you're not telling the truth about your objective. Your objective is to find out why the people who were supposed to love you didn't love you as much as you know you're supposed to be. Because you were taught that you could and should be loved." For just a moment, they hold their rifle aside, looking with a piercing lack of expression towards the pool. "You'll fail that objective if you kill Providence. He wants to love you as much as you know you deserve, and he can't do that if he's dead. Objective failure." The astronaut kneels and readies their shot. "You're not doing better achieving objectives, Providence. You should tell them how you feel instead of what you're going to do. Focus on objectives. You're supposed to love what lives on this planet, and it's supposed to know that." Rita's plan to blast the golem out of the pool should bring it into Neutron's range for a camped sniper shot or two, or five, or twelve, if those rapid blasts have anything to say about it.
Hiromi	"You see!" Hiromi replies to Providence, her booming voice easy to identify, even as the chain links fall and spin toward her. She's happy. Clearly happy. "You know your path. Now, prove you can walk it!" More than at any previous point, whether the raking lasers, thrashing limbs, or golden spikes, the power of this last effort to clear the field of all opponents batters Hiromi, visibly. When she takes a step, earth and water erupt, knocking one of the massive links aside. Another hits her, and her feet lose contact, taken by its momentum up into the air. She falls onto yet another piece of chain, striking it with her palm on the way down, at an angle that reverses its spin and direction, to impact a fourth link. "You know betrayal. Lies. Deceit. Good! Be wary. But, know this, too." A fifth link gouges out the ground where she would have landed, and a sixth bashes her against it with a crunch. All her bent bones pop back into place in the moment she lifts and tosses both aside, before dropping her fists to her waist, lifting one leg, and suddenly spin-kicking a seventh into the air. It'll be some time before it lands. "Lies, too, show weakness. With strength enough, fear flees. Traps, not needed. Do you see? You can trust that strength. I tell no lies, because, this. I am Hiromi." And contained within her name is strength enough. The next of the spinning chain links to come her way is upended by the terrain upset beneath it, then struck so it embeds. The next is done likewise, not embedding in wet earth, but deforming the half of the first link as Hiromi slams them together hard enough to fuse in a chaotic splash of still-solid metal. There's another, and another, forming a vibrating tower of forcefully restrained violence. It's a good enough place for Hiromi to stand while saying, "He can change. Can grow! See, now, how he does! Trust yourself, to survive, even betrayed, or, trust those stronger. Either path leads to freedom." It's the perfect place, too, from which to leap high into the air, and fall like a star, one elbow leading. Perhaps words could have been enough, but she hasn't really shown her strength, even now. Revealing this much is to emphasize the point.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Raziel's shockwave cuts beneath the surface of the water, illuminating the flayed and flagging form of the golem for just a moment. A moment later, he is illuminated in white by Rita's, already attempting to climb his way out of the trap--and with a new wound to sport for it. "Save me? But... but you're strangers to me." All around, the golden rings crash, many in the water. Hiromi's made this portion of it so deep that a great deal of droplets return to the surface after one of those giant links impacts the place. Splattering against the surface, it almost sounds like rain. He's scarcely made it to the ground before Kukuru forces him down. His body sends up clouds of sand when it collides with the shore. Neutron's bullets find him trying to get back to his feet, knocking him back down as he tries in vain to ward the fire off with the flat of his sword. "I feel... awful, when I think about how long you've been here, because of me... But when I think of you, with real sunlight gleaming from you, exploring what we made, in those halcyon days... I feel, despite all my many failures, that I still have something to fight for." Hiromi's elbow hits Aurelionite so hard that sand, dry and wet alike, is blasted outwards, and a crack runs through the earth below. "I yield." Providence nods, a glowing substance leaking from the corner of his cyclopic eye, trapped at its triple point as it falls to the earth, rapidly fluctuating between liquid, solid and gas. Standing on the shore, Providence wades across uneven terrain to gently place his hand upon the golem's finger. "Take this. I'll use it to come with you. While I rest here." His finger points, towards a chain, which, bidden by Aurelionite, shears off one gold nugget for each of you.