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Evehime Gevurah     You've not been summoned here. You've not been called. You've not been invited. You've come here of your own volition, because there is something to fight for. Just as you were told, you venture onto a battlefield, towards a fight there is slim hope of winning, in order to triumph over yourself. A battle like a stage. A spotlight to show your 'conviction', whatever that means. To have your wish brought about by someone with sorts of power beyond imagining. All you've been told is that you will not die. Somehow, that feels like it makes this more difficult, rather than less scary.

    The place chosen is somewhere deep in Special Zone of The Line, off the famous track circling the Superplanet, to a stretch of barren badlands that must have once been the site of some tremendous wreck. A vast plateau is enclosed on all sides by scattered cliffs in the distance, and riven in two by a pair of deep chasms, flooded at their base, which nearly touch.

    The arid ground is spiderwebbed with 'cracks' formed of local hyperglass --a luminous sort of fulgurite that accelerates motion and eliminates friction the longer one moves in contact with it-- radiating from the ostensibly vehicular wreckage of two Speed Keeps, each large enough to host a small town, now reduced to a miles-wide tangle of finely scattered scrap.

    Studded around the plateau, piled up with the rocks or stamped into craters, are formations of ambient megadiamond; the Line's materialistic immovable object to its irresistible force. Exotic matter that absorbs and dissipates immense amounts of kinetic energy; the ultimate brake, nearly indestructible. Enough to provide meager cover. Enough that the edges of the round plateau ultimately have no grounded sight-line into the geometric center, past the smooth pillars and piled debris that eventually exists at some point in each degree of the circle, despite the wide spaces between them.

    The Gevurah is waiting at the very middle. Geometrically perfect, whether by accident or intent. A convenient piece of half-buried wreckage, like a steel apartment block embedded in the earth at an angle, serves as a useful perch to stand out on, though her presence can be felt from miles away. A quickening in the blood. A tingling on the skin. A sense of being watched by a vast and expectant crowd. All the weight and pressure of every expectation you've ever suffered, and then some. The unshakable gravity of being in the presence of the very best of your kind, no matter what that might be.

    The twenty feet of metal beneath her feels like little more than a decorative podium for the eight feet on top. Arms folded, hair and rope sash bobbing lightly in the arid breeze, she watches each new arrival with oppressive, electric focus. For the few that have met her before, it takes a while to notice what stands out. The way her eyes saccade to each of them, flicking with lifelike eagerness, rather than tracking smoothly and coldly like a machine.

    "A worthy crowd this is. The first of many, I will hope. Carry for the rest of your lives, the knowing within you, that on this day you were braver than all the others. Even in the falling, by moving forward, you gain the experience and confidence of being here." Without the radio in the way, her voice is like the heavy weight of imminent thunder, sharpening every other sound and sense by the way it quiets all else.

    There is the nagging feeling that she is . . . she might be, excited to be here. Just a little.

    "Come then. You will strike first. All at once. I will have you know the height of your foe, before I join battle as well. And so is the correct way of things."
Remee Halcyon EARLIER

Remee lies on the couch in her apartment, staring up at the ceiling.

Her phone vibrates. Absently, she reaches for it, having to fish admidst the piled up takeout containers and empty drink cans to find it.

"... A challenge? Only for those who don't care about defeat?"

She drops her phone. It bounces on the floor. She can't bring herself to worry about whether it's cracked.

"I mean, I'm practically already defeated..."

NOW

Remee manages to pull herself together and get a shower. She's glad she does when she starts feeling the Presence. She'd be more self conscious if she wasn't clean.

... And the feeling energizes her. If nothing else, it's a welcome distraction. "Alright then," she says, with a bit more vigor once Evehime finishes speaking. She's warming up a bit more, now, out of the neutral gear she'd been stuck in for the last couple days. "If that's the case, then I did have a-"

She quick-draws a pistol, and fires mid-sentence. Evehime's challenge did say there were no rules after all.
Ishirou Not every other person's dream was known to him, but to him...right now, he knew that he would do anything for this one.  Once upon a time, it was to be recognized as human, but it was 'as a person'.  Persephone had reached out and given him this dream, despite it being impossible to his mind.  Never knowing the real truth.  

Now, he wants to know the real truth, to tear back the veil of the hidden memories.  To...to finally know the real truth of their world.  Of course, Ishirou knew that everyone in his world deserved the right, to know who they were.  He also knew it would give the androids more insight into the humans that were turned into robots against their wills.  Knowing that not everyone was the one that did what they did to them.  Before they died, they too took advantage of that system.  

It was...it was the only way that there would be peace.  The only way where he could return home.  The only way to stop the terrible domino that Eggman had set off.  It was the only way he could...he could make up for what he felt were sins he made.  Even if he felt it was right, it was still something he had done against his people.  He had hurt them, even if he had the best intentions.  

He flies in, the RESCUE unit trailing every single OPTION unit he has available.  Even before he gets there he can hear her voice, hear how the start will happen.  As he approaches, he breaks off and after a quick scan of the battlefield, two options fly off.  One moves towards Go, attaching to his suit and connecting with him.  Data telemetry is directly fed into him, to help aid his strikes.

The second flew towards Nephra, hanging around her like a drone and aiding in her strikes by firing its attacks.  It always hovers slightly behind her, funneling its weapons into everything she does, aiming to help increase her damage output.  

Ishirou then banks back right but does not dive right for Evehime.  He doesn't have to engage this like a warrior...he is /not/ a warrior.  Dimo has told this to him enough times.  Lilian has tried to drive this into his head more than once.  He has to believe in himself...and not feel like he has to be the one to do everything.  He has to rely on his strengths...and every lesson his friends have tried to drill into his twink ass.  

Missiles launch, while a barrage of energy pellets starts raining down from him, turning slightly as the missiles fly down at her after him, and he turns again, banking so as not to lose sight of her.  
Ophrys     A low-altitude flight path to keep off radar and to use ground obstructions to avoid line of sight. A soft landing two miles out. GhostWare camouflage and careful approach on foot.

    An oily shape crossing incongruant and irregular rock and wreckage formations, blending in near perfectly. It's taken several hours to reach this point when the Gevurah's voice booms out The figure goes still-- completely disappearing against the backdrop in the process.

    I've already been made?

    The shape shifts where it stands, clinging to the side of some ancient engine housing. Supported by just her feet, Ophrys frees up her hands and sweeps her sickle weapon forward.

    Nonsense. She must be talking to the others.

    Silently, the sickle separates into two halves, folding down to either side. The weapon's haft slides forward, exposing a barbed harpoon head. Gingerly, she pulls the haft back again, drawing the sickle blades in with the same motion until it locks in.

    The assassin braces her feet on the vertical surface she's perched on, lifting the weapon up in both arms to aim. There is just the slightest distortion in the reactive camouflage surrounding her body when the lance fires with only the snap of the sickle arms rocking back into place.
Kukuru Since Kukuru's last meeting with Evehime, quite a bit has happened. Purely from a 'number of things' viewpoint, far more good things have certainly happened to Kukuru than bad, but it's those few bad things that stick out in her mind. They stick out so much, even, that upon hearing about Evehime's call to join her at The Line, Kukuru is still thinking about those very things right up until she starts seeing some familiar faces and unfamiliar terrain.

Mostly, though, familiar faces. Evehime's presence hits Kukuru before seeing her, but that intense pressure is strangely comforting to the drill-headed woman. Looking up at the Gevurah above her, she greets her with a gnetle wave that's somewhat less energetic than how she's greeted Evehime before. Her practiced instinct to start pulling out all manner of food has her reaching into one of the too-small pockets of her blue-gray jacket, but Kukuru actually remembers where she is and instead just pulls her hand right back out.

"He-llo, Evie! That's... Yeah, that works. We can work up an appetite with this, but... Important things first, right?" She chuckles, but it's a bit forced even for Kukuru. It's clear she's distracted by something, but it doesn't seem to carry over into her movements as a cloud of crackling inky blackness appears beneath her, swallowing her up in seconds.

It also doesn't stay her hand at all as Kukuru reappears several meters above Evehime from another cloud as it drops her right down at the Gevurah, diving right at her with both hands pulled back before slamming downwards at the last moment to ty and catch her dead on with a mighty blow right at the start.

"... Are you eating okay?" Despite her best efforts, a little bit of the usual Kukuru still slips out.
Redshift Operators "I could have driven us here."
"I know you can *drive*. Don't think you can send a car to run off."
"They're too loyal."
"...What?"
"Don't expect cars to survive what's gonna happen next."
"I predict doom and darkness for a vehicle in the midst of this."

    Being dropped off in a rideshare by one of the Combustish linerunners who can get out of here fast enough, the gang of four operatives step out, armed and ready. Shining green optics regard Evehime, but the one with four of them seems to pierce her. The gruff-looking gunman is the one who steps ahead of the other three. "I beat your ass, I get my favor. That's it, right? 'Cause this is *important*." He takes a heavy, deep breath, and then another. He's accelerating his own breathing, doing something strange with his mindset. "Alright, lady, get ready to owe. Ops, tight formation. Newt, piercers until you're dry on ammo. Giant, you heard the lady, she *wants violence*, fists up and give cover. WD, close it fast and go for the samurai-style. Take her down!"

    "Of course."
    "*Hmh.*"
    "Yeah."

    The other three start moving fast. The astronaut doesn't move *fast*, but moves with incredibly practiced efficient motions to brandish, aim, and fire armor-piercing heavy rounds on repeat from their marksman rifle. The giant quickly boosts the cyborg's leap with clasped hands, and then rockets his way up on a heavy jetpack, intent on crashing down fist-first onto Evehime, the minute that the ninja lands behind her and rushes to perform a lethal dash attack.

    And the gunman's own breathing reaches a certain drum-like rhythm. He's muttering something to himself, "Come on, come on, get what you came here for, come on, let's go! Let's go!! Hhhh... haaaahhhhh... Come on!" He stomps a hyperglass crack, kicking off it with immense force, as if rushing on some kind of exotic grindrail straight towards Evehime, a brandished SMG blazing with inhuman accuracy.
Metaphor A cloak blows dramatically in the breeze, because it's supposed to.

A woman matches in stature, yet she pales in presence.

A display runs a thick, red line, the peaks and valleys subsumed under overwhelming terror.



Metaphor feels like she has made the most grand mistake of her life.



Something presses on her mind as she shadows Ishirou, yet she cannot discern it from the background tension. It's natural, of course, against untenable odds. Anyone who heard her yesterday is acutely aware of exactly how ( BRAVE / INDESCRIBABLY STUPID ) she's feeling about this; but even past that, it only takes a glance at her body language to quickly gather it once more. Unsteady, practically shrinking into herself - a stark contrast to her showing against a far larger foe (at least in size).

She watches Ishirou; watches the others arrive. They have a purpse. Better than I could ever be. A shaky hand clenches around the grip of a dart rifle slung horizontally under her cloak: nothing fancy, mass produced security equipment. The polycarbonate creaks gently, like it's attempting to mirror her distress all on its own.

"Come then. You will strike first. All at once."

Ishirou launches a volley. Someone she doesn't recognize takes a cheap shot. A dropkick, an entire squad. No turning back now. They need me. A suffusing of a particular variety of purpose fills her limbs; fills her mind; fills her reality. Slowly, methodically, the rifle is pulled off her back. A dull grey syringe, loaded, bolted and chambered. A scanner display, folded down over where an eye could be construed.

Right. They can't do this without me.

The shot is loosed.
Go Shijima      Go Shijima has come here of his own volition. A bandage is still stuck to his cheek, a dark red line on his lip shows the place where it was split--wounds from a previous fight. He is used to the stage, and, recently, used to triumph over himself. He recognizes the Gevurah, and a complicated brew of emotions stirs in his brown eyes as he approaches and looks up at her. Residual anger. Questioning. A little fear. Determination.

    Hi-top sneakers tread with purpose across hyperglass, stepping over scrap. For a moment, and only just, he takes his eyes off of the Gevurah to survey the megadiamond flanking this riven plateau. Maybe she remembers him. He certainly remembers her. And he remembers, all too well, the days following his crushing defeat at her hands. Even without the influence she exerts, his heart would race, the hairs on the back of his neck would tingle.

    As hopeless as that fight was, as miserable as his obsession at that time with being able to destroy as a means of punishment, he is able to take a steadying breath, because of her. Because...

    "I've moved forward since the last time we met. It sounds like you have, too. You want us to attack first, huh?" He smiles, despite himself. "Okay." He nods.

    A shiny belt, white with a chromed silver exhaust (it resembles a motorcycle's exhaust) is retrieved, fastening itself around Go's waist. It announces itself, as he slots a tiny white supercar into a windowed chamber above the exhaust:

                              Signal Bike! RIDER!!                              

    "Let's..." An honest-to-god cellphone dialpad sprouts up from the belt. His right arm is held up, bent upwards at the elbow, left hand resting beneath the elbow. There's a dramatic flourish to reverse their positions, and a self assured nod with a grin. "Henshin!"

                                   MACH 555!                                    

    The armor is flash-forged onto his body as a set of hardlight components, resembling an engineer's multilayered blueprints. His armor is sleeker than it was, when they first met so long ago. It's an homage to the sport of racing, with sharp aerodynamic lines, white coloration with classic red racing stripes down the center, and a circular badge bearing 5 at the center of the aerodynamic breastplate.

     Twin shoulder capes, white with red racing stripes, billow behind him as wheels at his ankles peel out across the hyperglass. "Drift!" Calls Mach, as Ishirou's option interfaces with a slot on his left pauldron. He cuts right, twirling across the ground as his belt revs, belching flame. He's drifting around the pillar, opening up with a volley of three blue lasers from an energy pistol with a large wheel at the front.

    The third shot has scarcely left the pistol, before his speed, coupled with the hyperglass, already has him side-by-side with Ishirou. The belt revs again, and his ankle-tires spin faster, carrying him past the Rescue unit and up the pillar. "Overtake!" He's a blur of red and white. "I'm always at..."

    Racing up the pillar, his speed carries him over the top of the twenty-foot rise in the blink of an eye. "Mach speed!" If Gevurah is the audience, Mach is more than happy to perform--to see for hismelf if she really has changed. If *he* really has changed. Chemical thrusters burn blue-white, feathered to add force to his backflip and make it into an attack, swinging underhand with the spinning wheel of his pistol.

    "Kamen Rideeeeer..." Thrust is applied in a different direction, for a blisteringly overhead trio of roundhouse kicks, his ankle-wheels spinning to add extra force to each impact. "Mach!" He lands, precariously on the pillar, opting for his usual low-wide stance at the end of his show-off windup despite the extreme inadvisability--complete with the arms wide open, palms-out, light jazz hands.
Reyes     Reyes has never met Evehime before. Only the bits of info contained in Paladin databanks and audio logs give him any idea of what he's up against today. If all of it is true, his path to victory is narrow and crumbly, but...

    You never know until you try.

    Which is why a figure clad in heavy, bulky, but intricately interlocking, finely-molded power armor quite literally rockets onto the scene, propelled by numerous rocket thrusters mounted in the back and along the legs. It's painted blue with the emblem of the Tomorrow Legion blazed in gold on its chest, and still bears the logo of Northern Gun on its hips.

    The armored figure comes slamming down at the battlefield's edge with a thunderous impact, servos whining in protest against the strain. Closer, now, it's evident that numerous weapons have been mounted to the armor. Some are detachable, some integrated to hardpoints. In fact, this is no ordinary NG-X30 Aurora Blazer. On close inspection, the blue paint serves to mask a great deal of intricate runes and circuit-like patterns carved into every bit of its surface, an elaborate pattern of etched, integrated spells and stranger things that glow a luminous lighter shade of blue.

    "I've heard a great deal about you, Evehime, the Gevurah!" The young man's voice calls out. "And it's an honor to meet you, and see the truth for myself." With a thrum-whoosh, a vivid blue-white wireframed, transluscent layer of extra shielding springs up around the armor, the phantom plating dazzlingly ornate.

    The armor's thrusters once again flare to life and send him skyborn at the opening challenge. Panels flip out on the shoulders and thighs, revealing what look like shining lenses... they glow with a mighty brilliance, and then unleash focused beams of radiant blue light which curve inwards, converging towards Evehime!
Persephone Kore      Persephone isn't here. The man here instead is very unlike her: he is tall, and there the similarities end. Slender, pale, frosty-blonde, he dresses almost like a snotty private-school student and carries with him an air of proper restless discontent. He's wearing just a touch of red eyeliner.

     Marc Heller has presence, undeniably, but no Presence.

     "Gevurah," he says, with a polite up-tilt of his chin. "Again. I'm certain I'll be grateful for the experience. And for the... the 'wish', should you choose to grant it. These are unusual circumstances for me, but..." But she's made him an offer he can't refuse.

     "... on this day you were braver than all the others."
     Marc chews his lip for a moment. His eyes wander in thought. "No," he says first. Then, correcting himself: "No, perhaps the kind of bravery you consider, yes. I apologize."

     Before the battle erupts, he makes sure to kneel down and tie his dress shoes extra-tight, then fidgets with the buttons on the cuffs of his white shirt, as if there were something irritably disagreeable of them. His eyes wander over the assembled crowd; Ishirou and Go both get an acknowledging smile.

     "Well," he says, standing back up. "I am a poor substitute for the Hesed. But if all you require is conviction, I can hope you will not find me lacking."

     The arid ground between hyperglass lanes bursts up around him, crunching and condensing under his telekinetic force into a geodesic translucent dome that glitters like the Line's own megadiamond. The air around it is compressed into a layer of crackling golden plasma. Then the process repeats a dozen more times in the span of a heartbeat, leaving Marc barely visible at the center of a dense layered fortification that shines like a diamond held up to the sun.

     "Part one: I wish I wouldn't be hurt," he murmurs to himself, and blots away the first drop of a nosebleed with his handkerchief. "Part two:"

     The ruined metal building that Evehime is standing on rips itself out of the earth, flips over, and drops on top of her. "I wish you'll have fun, Evehime."
Hibiki Tachibana     It is not the first time Hibiki has crossed paths with the Gevurah. Of course it isn't. Though it's been a fair time ago now, the battle that had occurred on Mars is still as fresh in her mind as if it had happened yesterday. As is the bread-breaking that came after, where she learned a couple of very important things.

    Though maybe that's only because she's standing here, now. In this dry and debris-strewn waste, with the effects of Evehime's overwhelming existence shooting through her spine and running down to the tips of her fingers. Just being in her vicinity, let alone being regarded by her directly, is an experience that can't really be replicated by anyone or anything else.

    But it's different today. Hibiki doesn't only feel it, but she can see it. In those eyes.

    And for some reason, it's making her pulse pound a little more than it otherwise would. Some of the weight that's been on her is relieved, in the moment - and thanks to that she thinks she knows, after struggling to think of what it would be the entire way here, what the 'wish' she'd like here is. And it's definitely something she doesn't mind fighting or defeat to see.

    "...Then I don't mind if I do. I think I know pretty well just how tall you are compared to me...maybe even more than before, from the looks of it. So I really won't hold anything back. That'll get across anything better than words. Here I come, Evehime...!"

    Hibiki is of course, already clad in Gungnir - and from her position looking up from below, at the woman perched atop metal, she bends both knees and braces before kicking off into a strafing run. It follows along one of the veins of hyperglass, used to pick up speed further and further until she hits the point where she twists on a heel and launches up in a leap.

    And there's no tricks or gimmicks to her opening blow. When are there ever? She's transfering all of that momentum into a rising uppercut. Is she just barely smiling beneath that scarf of hers?

    If she is, it only be apparent for a split second before she spins around into a mid-air roundhouse towards Evehime's head immediately after.
Nephra Tangent     Surrounded by the dry bluffs and impenetrable crags, Nephra feels oh so very small. If she had to ask herself why she'd bothered to show up, on foot no less, she'd probably just laugh it off and leave it at that. Still, her bootprints trace the pathway behind her, until distant gusting winds clean the canvas blank again. Tentative breaths pull air deep, and subsequent rising shoulders scratching at the jagged not-quite-fixed Androktasia suit stored collapsed in her spine, its quiet presence made concsious.

    The pressing gravity- not her reactor's, nothing so mundanely physical- of the woman standing at the center pulls at the pit of her stomach, as Nephra stands, neck craned upwards at her. She drops a heavy duffel bag with the sound of softly-crashing metal, and hefts the five foot metal stick she's been using as a walking pole. The broken half of her spear, with ripped duct tape wrappings revealing the wound chains encircling it underneath, is the only real weapon Nephra has with her, but its still hers. She sighs, quiet in the surrounding crowd, and stows her precious raincoat up in the bag. Extra turqoise tape marks the spots she's had to patch up recently, far more than she'd have preferred. A shed piece of armor far more protective than her suit.

    Metal electrodes glint in the sunlight as she starts to extend her exoskeleton, with sickly creaking and groaning. The cold burn and pins and needles of new neural connections makes her posture falter and shudder for a moment, even as the bracework takes the pressure off her bones. No words come to mind in response to the Gevurah's invitation, and for once, it's hard to even smile. Hard, not impossible.

    The second her body is covered in metal, Nephra starts her attack. Clambering up the pile of metal, she barely notices the drone sent out to shadow her, as her fingers cut grooves into the metal of her broken weapon. She's not elegant, trying to flare up enough of her own weight to make her bludgeoning blows more than the sum of hydraulics and motors.
Evehime Gevurah     Remee shooting before the word go seems to be just fine by Evehime. One can tell by the fact that her gaze locks onto her the instant her hand reaches for her gun. The bullet whizzes towards her before she twitches a muscle; there's not that much space between them, and Evehime is only even half-clothed, never mind armoured.

    Then that sense of presence explodes all at once. An exponential multiplication of energy that surges outwards, like the first wave of heat from the roar of an ignited bonfire. That split second contains such immensity of energy --such crackling will and overwhelming violent intent-- that it feels like it rattles bones; distorts the air like sound, catching and refracting the ambient light through a razor thin partial ring around her; the bright line of a transcendent Halo.

    If one blinked, they'd miss it; a frame or two of a second silhouette, faint and see-through, but insubstantially shining. Like a ghost. An afterimage. Evehime hasn't moved at all, but it's like glimpsing a potential future where she did; an intention from her mind's eye that was strong enough to be real anyways. It appears for an instant, arm outstretched, fist clenched, and disappears in the same heartbeat. A flattened bullet clinks to the ground and rolls down the side of the ruin.

    "Come then. Name yourself and your heart's desire. Then, do it justice. Stoke it with fire to rebel against the void, and make it real."

    Ishirou keeping his respectful distance is met with the twitching beginning of a grin at the corner of the Gevurah's lips. She follows him out of the corner of her eyes while remaining in place, as she promised. The barrage of energy blasts gets no further than Remee's quickdraw. Ghosts of Evehime; potential defenses that have come to her in less than an instant, flash and fade in a three step circle around her, blinking in and out in single frames. An overlapping kata of backfists and wrist catches, palming blasts and smacking them aside, shattering them like rain hitting a windshield. The missiles land; one is split down the middle by a phantom straight, catching the others in the close range detonation. Fire and force blow back Evehime's clothing and hair, but gravel and shrapnel breaks against her skin.

    "You've grown, since your battle on Ares. But how closer are you to the place you yearn to be? Have you grown closer to 'wisdom'?"

    Ophry's sneak attack is clearly launched undetected. The lance diverts sharply against an elbow thrown backwards by a phantom; unconsciously, automatically, an instinct made real, cleaving down on the head and driving it into the rubble. Kukuru falls on Evehime from above, and the Gevurah unfolds a hand from the crook of her elbow, gesturing upwards, and an imprint of herself reaches out to meet her, a doubled open palm strike clapping against Kukuru's hands with a sound like thunder and throwing her off with a ripple of precisely balanced force. "Well enough. Drink and smoke are fine indulgences as well. I wonder what fire drives one as serene as you. The one who seeks freedom from debt is here."

    She looks to Red Dwarf next. "I would expect nothing so unreasonable. What matters isn't the result. What matters is the crucible of self. The god within you that is named 'I'. It is my hope to teach you, people of the Multiverse, of that truth. What is to be gained by fighting, rather than what there is to be taken."
Evehime Gevurah     The flashes of Evehime's Conviction catch Neutron's anti-materiel rounds as the others, but further back; dangerously close, each one projecting force down a phantom arm. Red Giant comes down opposite of Kukuru, and the wreckage warps and buckles from the clash of a flicker-fade silhouette catching his knuckles one one flat palm, grabbing his inner arm with the hand outstretched, and pulling him down over its shoulder to send him smashing into the wreckage instead. White Dwarf streaks past in the same instant, and a second imposition of Evehime's will guards against her sword with forearms up, twisting with the blade's vector of force. When Red Dwarf gets in, his bullets inheriting the velocity of his body moving along the hyperglass, Evehime makes a sound approximate to rumbling amusement, or perhaps approval; his bullets stop merely a foot from her skin as they pierce the fainter exterior of her aura and halt only at the dense zone closer. "You've recognized the importance of this field. Excellent. But there are many reasons for which it was chosen. I wonder if you will know them all by the end. You command your allies well, at least."

    Metaphor's syringe is caught in flight. Evehime extends her hand to catch it where the phantom fades after its blink of existence, examining it in her palm. "I struggle to believe this a warrior's tool. As the other. Declare your name and your heart's fire. You have won against your fear so as to come here. Surely there is something that drives you." When Go addresses her though, he receives a nod of familiarity by contrast. "Forward. So I have, in recognizing that there is a new goal set ahead of me." She looks slightly up, towards the distance. "Far ahead, in untrod territory. I wonder, if I show it to you, if you will be able to see some glimpse of . . . why it mattered."

    The energy bullets breaks sharply, overpowered and crushed into toku sparks in clenched phantom fists. When he burns in at hyperspeed for his wheeling kick, the phantom, and Evehime's actual movement to raise his hand against him, nearly completely overlap at his speed. He feels the shock of his own blow run up his leg, at the same time he sees her slight grin. "Better." she says. Reyes scattering of homing lasers converge on her all at once from around Go. "Clever, but . . ." A dozen shapes, stepping past one another in optical occlusion like the many arms of a Hindu god, intercept them all at once. "More than ingenuity, you will need pride and conviction in it. Any strike thrown at me without a warrior's intent, without the heat of the universe in it, is worthless."

    She acknowledges Marc with . . . that's odd. It looks like she nodded to him. "Heller. Marc. I remember. And I am warmed just to see you here. See yourself not as a substitute. She has already reached the gates of Heaven with her fire. You struggle bravely up its more winding path. Your courage is no less for the weight that pulls at your heels."

    She looks surprised when he telekinetically pulls the terrain out from under her. The red markings next to her eyes accentuate the slight widening of her piqued stare. Dropping her arms, Evehime adjusts her balance by degrees and effortlessly slides her heroic frame down its side with the sound of scraping metal, and thumps into the dirt, then throws one forearm over her head and catches the descending hulk physically, biceps tensing against the shock. The force of it should drive an object of any hardness deep underground, but somehow, the earth beneath her feet refuses to yield. The cracked stone and sand and glass, crushes itself down as if under the weight of her authority, and the apartment-sized ruin cracks down its corner axis and bursts into a million falling pieces instead, briefly drowning out words in its cacophony. "Recite them all. I will hear."
Evehime Gevurah     Hibiki whizzes in like a streak of lightning on the hyperglass track. The blow is caught by Evehime's Halo, but even the phantom silhouette ripples with the blowback of rushing air through its insubstantial cloth and hair forms; the sand visibly parts and shrieks past to either side of her. The roundhouse to her head is the same, an extrusion of Evehime's aura that looks like a high snap kick of her own catching the inside of Hibiki's leg and hurling her into the air. "In many ways. But it is better that way." she says.

    Using the rubble to her advantage, Nephra closes easily on the crater, and the invisible weight of her unassuming spear seems to catch the Gevurah slightly off-guard. There's a moment where a phantom catches the spear, then lets it slip through its semi-corporeal grip, disappearing too early, and forcing a second one to plant both legs and halt the spearhead with both hands clenched tightly around the shaft, fixing her with the glowing suggestion of eyes for an instant of intensity. "You clutch that weapon in desperation. It ill matches the smile on your face. I wonder, that if you truly fight for pleasure, how you could respond to the call to fight for your dreams, heart thundering in your ears; if you have thought of what it is you hide from me, and what it is you hide of yourself."

    Seemingly pleased, by some invisible metric, Evehime finally shifts her stance. Her hands fall to her sides, then rise up, one kept loose and low to one side, the other with fingers curled hard, ahead of her and in line with her center axis. A foot slides back, to counterbalance her weight forward. The force diffused into the space around her contracts. A sense of oppressive heat wells up from within her, flowing out into the shape of her stance and causing the air to shimmer. Standing so perfectly still, she evinces an enormous sense of speed and motion all the same; the danger of an oncoming train, simply contained in circulation within her.

    "Passable. No, better. But I would see much more. Remember. You will not die."

    Evehime starts to move, and the shockwave alone causes the earth to rumble like the slip of a tectonic plate, throwing grounded fighters off their feet. Her attack is launched so quickly that it feels more like an area of effect than a sequence of discrete motions; a flowing assault launched overwhelmingly at all of the Elites, so tightly linked, without an instant of stillness or wasted motion, that it all happens at the same time.

    Her lead foot stomps out and breaks the earth. Her back fist lunges forward and strikes Nepha. The universe briefly goes dim in a split-second sphere, then flashes white right behind it, as light itself is deflected away from the force of the connecting shockwave. The rubble littering the crater with her steams and boils away in streamers of vapourized metal. Nephra is struck at with power sufficient to reduce her to her component molecules; by all rights it should turn her a mile long streamer of red mist from a solid connection. But it doesn't. The feeling is like every iota of being is shattered into a thousand billion sublimely ordered pieces. But Nonlethally. Almost gentle. Like a firm and stinging, yet patient rebuke.
Evehime Gevurah     Evehime pivots around her lead toe. Her back leg rises up and whirls around to kick Hibiki in the air with similar space-splitting force. She uses the connection to lunge towards Marc so fast it's like teleportation, her whole upper body pivoting around her hips to throw a haymaker into his diamond fortress that drives a deep triangular gouge into the badlands for three miles back. She works backwards through the crowd, in deliberate order.

    A flurry of hyperglass and diamond shrapnel rockets towards Reyes from a sequence of punches that sound like a line of artillery. Vapour cones blast away from the ground, and the chunks catch fire, painting the sky with burning lines. Evehime is already vaulting over Marc, and a single step blasts her into Go with a shoulder check that feels like all of his insides should occupy different postal codes; her following open hand straight to his ribs is even faster than he could possibly fly back, catching and doubling his force. He's aimed, tactically, straight at Metaphor, and yet even a collision between the two of them won't inflict lethal force; only the overwhelming sense of being obliterated by the weight of a planet, and the chance to get back up again.

    A piece of hyperglass, shaved from the track, is snatched up before it can fall an inch from the air, and swung in an arc under White Dwarf's blade that paints a solid streak of light in the eye. A vacuum wave collapses behind it, shearing into Red Dwarf beyond. Flipped overhand, it's thrown like a dagger at Neutron's sniping position, carving a six foot deep, razor fine furrow through the ground beneath it, without even touching. The arm bar thrown at Red Dwarf as she spins around uses his own velocity against him. Her full on sprint carries her into Kukuru, where Evehime lunges from the ground with a rising knee strike into her collarbone that should shatter glass and puncture the eardrums of anyone in the plateau; but it won't.

    She kicks off, driving Kukuru deep underground, to precisely catch Ishirou's flight path with frightening accuracy, coming down on him faster than gravity should allow with a revolving axe kick on top of his suit that briefly makes him psychically experience it melting around him from the sheer force, sending him into the ground like a jet of liquid metal, except he's fine. Finally, she lands right on top of Remee, stomping down on top of her shoulders with a flurry of downward kicks that exceed the supersonic speed she could theoretically be buried.

    The violence is sublime. Her form is immaculate. Each motion gets slightly faster than the last. The air burns and blisters with her passing. The ground glasses in her footsteps, and becomes hyper. Blows that should hurl Elites over the horizon are aimed with uncanny expertise so that they hit the megadiamond pillars instead, and can use the tracks of hyperglass to get right back. The sense of heat and pressure and force only continues to build. Energy circulates faster and faster, far outstripping the mundane comparison of a speeding train and reaching the realm of staring into a particle collider.
Petra Soroka To have your wish brought about by someone with sorts of power beyond imagining.

    No. Petra isn't here for that. Everything that Petra wants, she has to fight for herself. For Petra to craft herself into the shape that she envisions, no one can be allowed to help her, especially not someone like....

    Evehime's aura bears down on Petra not like the tingling excitement of performance, and instead like a spotlight so bright and close that it feels like every individual photon pricks hot and painful against her skin. If anyone stood behind her, the Gevurah's aura would feel broken and inconsistent, the shadow of Petra's presence disrupting its radiation into swirling eddies. But no one is standing behind Petra, because despite her presence, she isn't joining the heartfelt heroic scuffle of wishes and determination happening on the plateau.

    Wishes and wants aren't the same thing. Petra knows that as well as anyone. And maybe, that dissonance is what drew her here, to perch on the cliffside overlooking the plateau, furtively curled up against a hunk of megadiamond in anticipation of any enhanced senses glanced her way by coincidence.

    Around Elites, not having a grand vision to fight for feels like missing a limb. Petra can't muster any fire inside herself to defend people from evil, or to change the world, or even to solve a mystery or help a friend; the driving furnace inside her is cold and dead except for scattered coals smoldering with spite. As she's insisted, she *can't* want anything important enough to fight for.

    But Petra is still drawn to it, imagining wanting to wish. She leans against the glittering rock with an unreadably neutral expression on her face, watching the battle from a mile away through the feed of her drone. With the scale of some of the attacks, her phone screen makes for a less clear view than her own eyes at this distance, but she watches both.

    Nephra is here, and despite fighting her and winning just days ago, Petra feels slightly weak and ashamed, seeing her now, fighting in a way that Petra can't. Ishirou is here. Heroes will always find a way to recover, that's what they do. Remee is here, and the cold shame in Petra's stomach hardens and glistens with something bitter. Hibiki is here, and Petra realizes with a shock that she has no idea what Hibiki is even fighting for, despite how much they've talked.

    I'm a horrible friend.
Redshift Operators     The wild-eyed gunman now seems a little manic. He's shifted his brain into a different gear. His speech sounds more primal, more urgent, stripped of certain conceits of civilization. "Already know what you *get from fighting*. Already had people teach me that lie that you gotta *wait* and *negotiate* and *think about it*, already had reality teach me that truth that the handrails got sold for scrap a hundred years ago, already tired of the lie, I already take the *simple route*!"

    He drops the SMG, and skids a heel on a patch of megadiamond hard enough that the tumbling weapon catches up and slams into a magnetic hardpoint on his back, hands free, while he busies them readying a grenade. "They're the Redshift Operators, what I do is *trust* them! Give a command and they'll do *everything* else." The precognitive ninja carefully maneuvers in all the chaos, choosing to blunt the incoming wide wave with a brute-force-solved prediction on which angle to sweep hard light through it. It washes over them both, slamming them back anyway. The armbar catches him in the torso, sweeping him off his feet, but he's capable of rolling with it, bouncing off a chunk of megadiamond.

    Before he's even done landing, he's popped the pin on that grenade. "And the name's--" He fastballs it with bruising force, before it bounces off of the hyperglass, accelerating hard straight for Evehime's jaw. "Red!" The moment after it makes contact or gets near her, it detonates with high-explosive impact. "Dwarf!!" The battered gunman snaps his fingers. It's a signal for a shot from the astronaut to strike for the spot nearest where Evehime might have gotten hurt by that detonation! Then he jerks his hand in a quick tactical motion, signaling the cyborg medic to give him a quick shot of something medical, something to keep him in top form.

    The giant's smashed form claws out of the wreckage, hoisting a too-large chunk of metal over one shoulder. The gunman signals something to him quickly, approaching from the opposite side, now blasting with a shotgun and roaring with valorous irresponsibility, trying to force Evehime's martial phantoms to focus on sprays of bullets and not the massive home-run swing from the giant.
Remee Halcyon "My name... is Remee."

There's a lot of energy flowing out. Remee tries to weather it - pushing through it to keep standing firm in front of Evehime.

"... My heart's desire..."

"... I'm tired of being alone."

She pushes harder, trying to keep her sights locked on Evehime. The first bullet didn't land. Well - it did, just on the ground, crushed. That's fine.

"I'm sick and tired of feeling ashamed for who I'm associated with. For feeling like I can't depend on anyone but myself, or that I don't have anyone at all to really... talk to."

Steady aim. Wait for the right moment. There has to be a hole in Evehime's defenses, she just has to find it and hit it before the aura of conviction wears her down.

"More than anything else, more than anything else I'd be willing to fight for and face defeat for, not least because I've already lost..."

... There. Is that a point of weakness, or just a trick? She still has to try.

"I want to have a family again."

She takes her next shot.
Ishirou "You're grown, since your battle on Ares. But how closer are you to the place you yearn to be? Have you grown closer to 'wisdom'?"

"Trying to find my place to it every day.  I haven't given up, even if I can't find the path quite yet...and even if things keep getting in the way.." he says, firmly.  "But that's not why I'm here today, is it?" he says, but... "...Though thank you for saying so.  You've changed too, it looks like.  Phony has that effect on people, I feel."

However, the scene becomes chaos, movements are hard to follow, and sensors send him info that just seems impossible.  Though he knows that it's, not when dealing with Evehime.  Unfortunately, he can't move quickly enough.  She collides with the RESCUE unit, and it goes spiraling down to the earth in a massive bulk of metal.  Or at least that's how it /feels/.  That is how the data comes back to him, but he's...not.  

Pulling himself up from the ground, shifting the RESCUE into humanoid mode he tries to burst off again.  Right as the explosion of her coming back to earth was too close to him.  Instead of trying to get close to her, his arms cock back.  Electromagnetic force starts to gather on his hands before he starts lifting up as much hyperglass as he can and then LAUNCHES it right towards the Gevurah.  

This is followed by a burst of blasts with the same force, trying to push her back.  If he can't piece that shield, then he can at least try and force her into bad situations until someone can pop that barrier.  At least, that is...the idea.  

His OPTIONS fly off, one heading towards Remee and joining her with her offensive, trying to help pierce Evehime's defenses.  The other flies towards Hibiki, aiming to start sending data to her, trying to make the next shot piece that barrier at a critical moment.  
Ophrys     No sooner is the harpoon loosed that Ophrys writes off its existence. A fresh haft is produced from behind her back, slotted into the crossbow. However she pulls the haft back, closing the sickle blades up into the scythe-blade shape. Eyes hidden behind reacive camouflage follow the Gevurah as she begins reacting to each person in turn. One at a time, demonstrating incredible, mind-bending might.

    Hasn't spotted me. Have to move.

    She leans forward in her perch, unfurling glasslike wings. In that split second is the shockwave from striking Nephra. On reflex, Ophrys' wings retract again as her body gets flattened against the wall she'd been clinging to. She squeezes her eyes shut, rebreather mask concealing clenched teeth as-- for a brief moment, the reactive camouflage concealing her position fritzes out in a shower of blue-white sparks.

    Veil Interrupted. Rebooting.
    Crap!

    GhostWare alerts pop up in the corner of her vision. She steadies herself by placing a hand against the ruined housing she'd been using, her weapon hanging loosely in the opposing grip, now in full view-- save the glitchy, blocky distortions winking in and out of existence.

    Body plates stressed in places, she leans forward. Wings unfurl once again, glittering in the flickering light of the Gevurah's rampage. The sound is akin to that of a helicopter taking off, carrying the cyborg into the air.

    As the Redshift team starts engaging Evehime at close range, this is when Ophrys descends. She locks the pointed end of her weapon in with one foot and retracts her wings, descending on the Warrior from above. She leans into the impact enough to spring off in a flip that follows up the spear-like end of her weapon with the sickle end.

    Wielding her weapon one-handed, Ophrys' left hand has all fingers spread out and hooked. A glowing blue-white circle has formed, connecting her fingertips together in a magic ring. As her feet touch down, she's already launching herself forward again, driving her fist forward without much strength behind it-- especially comparatively-- but with a joint-locking, muscle-spasming electrical jolt.
Metaphor It just stopped midair. Everything stops midair. She's a fucking wizard. We can't fight this. What are we doing? Declare your name and your heart's fire.

Metaphor is stock-still, in her half-assed firing stance most of the battlefield away. She hasn't moved an inch since that trigger was pulled, and sure isn't inclined to change that fact as nothing I do matters. She's taunting me. A question. A warrior's tool. Does she know what the hell a warrior's tool is supposed to be? Like something someone would use in a drama? I already yelled about that.

Of course it isn't a warrior's tool, her mind throws up as a worthless internal defense against a falsely-perceived slight. I'm not a warrior. But she can't force the thoughts to reach her voice.

Seconds have passed. A deer in the headlights of the embodiment of my hubris. But there's a certain level of grounding, within this work. A health scanner relays the only thing Metaphor holds truly concrete in this world; numbers decreasing. The reverbations through the earth don't even register to her (they can't, right now) as her mind suddenly and violently clicks onto a different track. Endless self-produced visions of doom reroute. Hands recall a purpose. Problems with solutions.

This could loosely be described as "work mode".

And like that, her entire bearing shifts. She straightens and begins booking it towards Marc's dome, free hand ejecting, loading, bolting, grabbing a shining metal canister and throwing it directly at the field - strong enough to be an attack in its own right. A few seconds after whatever impact is made, a cloud of faint pink mist (mannitol, synaptizine) bursts - output feeling just a bit less straining. Invigoration hitting the dome. Take it." Her tread shakes the earth, unnoticable under the Gevurah, yet a physics-enforced reminder of her reason to fight.

And then, Go smashes into her. The blow catapults her backwards, his body keeping time with hers - yet her feet never leave the ground. Like the scour left by the strike levied against Marc, a dense rut in the rock is carved in her wake, until eventually friction takes its toll and they both stop. He's hurt by this. Scramble. Faster than she can think, an autoinjector (libital) is pulled from her bag and jammed directly into his ribcage before he can take off once more.

And there she stands. That's all? Something swells, clicks into place. Right. Her voice is raised over the din - loud, yet flat. The voice of someone requesting a scalpel during an operation.

"Metaphor. Ensuring nobody gets hurt. Aiding Ishirou. Is that enough?"

She raises the rifle once more as Go tears away. Timed detonation. She will have to make do with this. I am not a warrior.
Persephone Kore      The voice that answers is muffled by the gentle roar of stars. "'Not as a substitute', hm? I can't help but feel a bit inadequate on my own merits. But if you think me worthy of your attention, I'll not second-guess you, Gevurah."

     Through layers and layers of gleaming diamond and radiant star-fire, Marc's silhouette at the center can only be seen as a vague suggestion, even to Evehime's heightened senses. The punch she throws punches clean through the front and back of the dome and sends a plume of plasma and diamond shards right through the center, obliterating-

     -the pile of rocks he'd been levitating, in approximately humanoid shape.

     The spray of shrapnel barely passes him by as he presses himself against the dome's wall. A hissing breath of relief escapes between gritted teeth, and then he breathes in Metaphor's pink mist that follows. "My name is Marc Heller, you already know." It's muttered, but he expects she hears it.

     As she vaults over the dome, it shatters into pieces; before she lands, Marc telekinetically hurls one of the larger chunks at her back, point-first. It detonates in a spray of stellar plasma and diamond shrapnel, ineffably gentle just as her own attacks are. Not that she particularly needs the gentleness, but it's the principle of the thing.

     "My wish--" Five huge shards still orbit him, their plasma still contained like slices of a layer cake. He glides along the hyperglass veins, figure-skating by telekinetic impulse, trying to maintain a reactable distance from her. "--is that you talk to my sibling, Emery, who became a type of human I cannot reach by a path I cannot follow."

     He presses a hand to his temple, under some ill-defined distress. With the medications, his nosebleed hasn't picked back up, but he still doesn't sound like he's quite caught his breath from the near-miss. "Everything I do is for that. Test my conviction, please."
Reyes     Reyes's mind is locked into high-gear, psionic focus buying him the time to observe over a half-dozen tactics and attacks which Evehime soundly counters with hardly a breath wasted in the efforts, and certainly no major injuries. That his own homing barrage is so handily tanked comes as no surprise at all, but his utter shock that she can parry ALL OF THEM AT ONCE is at least, thankfully hidden behind the full helmet...

    Reyes... begins to laugh for a few awkward seconds. It's not a fun laugh. It's the laugh of man who's just seen the greatest absurdity, and found it both freeing and terrifying. "Absurd. Just... COMPLETELY ABSURD. I really might as well be facing a God of War."

    He regains his composure quickly, pumping energy into his mystical shielding just in the nick of time. A notable portion of debris slams into the shield and is deflected every which way with heavy spangs and sparks, the Armor of Ithan glowing hotter and then fizzle-shattering after just a second though, subjecting Reyes to a heavy impact of all kinds of shrapnel. The heavy-duty armor dents, cracks, and caves in places, damaging some internals and causing one of his jets to briefly sputter. He briefly drops in altitude before regaining balance.

    The mystic circuitry laid out across the armor sizzles, arcs, and surges with a fresh wave of power and the Armor of Ithan comes back.

    "D-damn, the armor barely held up..." Just one volley? JUST ONE? He's not sure whether to laugh or cry, thinking of what sort of damage that would've caused without the absorbent shielding.

    "Reyes..." He announces over the speakers. "Reyes, Son of Enki. Enki of the Anunnaki! If you're hoping for some great warrior like Heracles, I'm afraid I'm not him. I'm an engineer... a sorcerer... combat is just one tool in the arsenal for me, not a way of life... not a philosophy..."

    With a whirr-click-thunk, Reyes brings his heavy arms clunking against the power armor's waist and leans forward, power gathering and focusing as torrents of mana are summoned forth.

    "If a warrior's pride is in their martial talents and victories, mine is in my craft, like this armor!"

    Leaning forward until he's head first at Evehime, Reyes kicks up the thrusters. What was originally completely normal rocket thrust is overwhelmed by far-larger plumes of thick blue light, forced out with tremendous speed. The armor creaks and groans as it's sent far past its factory tolerances, holding together only through the magical reinforcements. He swoops down upon her like a meteor, evening out his angle of approach to almost parallel the ground and eventually touches down, scraping up a cloud of dust and debris and bringing forth a swift, if plain, uppercut, a nasty-looking wrist-mounted spike popping out and locking into place. Should his blow strike Evehime, the Pile Bunker will erupt several times in succession with grenade-like shockwaves, compressed magical energies simply detonating in her face - or potentially just inside her skin, if the spike penetrates.

    "And I dedicate all of it for a better tomorrow! Where fearmongerers, savage invaders from beyond reality, and cruel tyrants are a thing of the past!"
Hibiki Tachibana     Better that way...maybe it is. Hibiki gets a firsthand view of exactly how things have changed, after all.

    Sent up into the air after her attack is deflected by the split-second appearances of Evehime's conviction, she has a moment where she can see when the Gevurah goes on the offensive; Nephra is struck with what looks to be a full-force blow, might surpassing might. But though the surroundings buckle underneath that strength...

    Her target did not. And the magical girl experiences that same effect herself when the retaliatory kick strikes up at her. A quick twist of her body, a sudden jerk to the side to try and get out of the way, doesn't entirely save her from being hammered into hard enough to evict all the air from her lungs and send her flying. That motion is the only reason it's not 'up, possibly through the clouds'.

    It's at an angle, giving her the chance to intentionally aim herself at a protrustion of megadiamond to stop herself all at once and drop back down to the ground - and then spring back in, making long and leaping, booster-assisted strides to close the distance, boots pushing off of hyperglass every time they touch down.

    So that's why she's able to fight like this. Haha. Maybe she shouldn't be surprised it ended up like this. She thinks she's happy for Evehime.

    "To tell you the truth, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to wish for, at first..." Hibiki huffs out as she goes, while rearing an arm back. "But when I saw you waiting for us, like this, it clicked for me...! What I want from you, Evehime--"

    Back into the heated air of the melee. She goes to get back into the Gevurah's face, straight on, and throw a punch. Then another behind it, and a third. The fourth - her armor's pilebunker primes back right before she swings, and on impact, as if readied for another shade of Conviction to intercept, slams back in on contact to deliver a forward burst of raw, air-cracking force.

    And more than that, it has feelings behind it. The same kind of feelings as when she was told mutual understanding was impossible, and when she realized the most 'human' of humans is still, after all, human.

    "--is to understand you better! More than just that little glimpse from before! That's a wish only you can grant - and one I'll fight--/have/ to fight, to see happen!"
Kukuru When Evehime's imprint meets Kukuru's hands, there's moment where the latter looks like she's smiling. That's because she actually is, feeling her heart lightening up considerably just seeing Evehime smiling (grinning, but same difference). That deflection sends Kukuru back into an acrobatic looking series of flips before she actually lands on her feet in a low squat, arms held out at each side before she less-gracefully wobbles forward and pushes herself back up.

"That's great to hear! Oh, I just bought some good stuff yesterday, so maybe we can have some of that later, too." She offers with a pleasant tone returning to her voice, pausing briefly to glance over at Ishirou and Hibiki before lowering her voice. "After they're asleep."

Her mood can't stay up the whole time, of course, as Evehime reminds her why she had come here in the first place. No, why everyone had come here. Of course everyone has their own reasons for coming out for the Gevurah's invitation, and they're probably far more important than Kukuru's own. Better to let them be heard first and...

... No. Waiting for everyone else to make the first move is how things went so badly last time, isn't it? That's exactly the sort of thing Kukuru's resolved to change about herself, right? Closing her eyes, she takes several moments to muster up her willpower, get that fire going in her gut that she so rarely ever lets go of, and then she shouts in response to Evehime, possibly shouting right over someone in a bit of awkward timing.

"My name... My name is Kukuru! I'm here to get stronger!" No, that's not all. "I wanna be smarter!" That's not entirely it, either. "I... I want to be able to protect my kids and everyone else, even if they think I shouldn't." She's getting closer, but it still feels off. What is it that Kukuru really wants, even to the point of facing utter defeat to get it?

She hears some of the other wishes already. She sees people with far more drive than she does, more power, more conviction. She listens to Red Dwarf's path, to Remee's wish for family, and realizes that everything she's told Evehime thus far have all been different ways of saying how she wants to ultimately win at something. But for something that isn't dependent on victory...

"I want my..." Right. They're not all her kids. "I want people to believe in me, that I can do what I tell them I'm going to do, that...  I can keep them safe as long as they trust in me, no matter what." "I want them to need me as much as I need them."

A shiver runs through Kukuru's body as she says that last part, and she stares ahead dully as her brain takes a few moments to process what train of thought brought her to that conclusion. By the time she snaps out of it, she only gets to open her mouth to start trying to pull it back before Evehime is already upon her. Kukuru only gets to bring her hands up before that knee crashes right into her, her head and neck tilting in the wrong direction for a moment in a way before she's sent crashing right through the ground and hyperglass alike.
Kukuru Rather than digging her way out of that hole she's gotten stuck in, Kukuru pulls herself through another teleportation cloud. She deposits herself back on the ground well within Evehime's field of view rather than even atempting to catch her unaware, letting her nanites put her head and collarbone back in their proper places before rolling her shoulders and settling into a wrestler's stance.

The look on Kukuru's face is troubled, but she doesn't say anything else. She just starts running at Evehime (legitimately, even) and leaps from a good ten meters or so away, landing about half that distance to slam her fists into the ground so as to yank a solid slab of it right out. Kukuru spins to build up momentum, eventually pivoting into a high-arcing slam to bring it down at the Gevurah's head, inefficient use of energy though it may be.

Kukuru's not here just to win after, all. It's clearly a show of brute strength, to show Evehime just how much power she can bring to bear when teleporting gimmicks aren't involved.
Go Shijima      A surprised grunt ecapes Mach when his leg is stopped cold by Evehime's multifaceted, phantom defense--but his reaction time is better now, too. A quick feather on the thruster pushes him laterally in the air, across her block, scraping up and amplifying what momentum remained from his attack into a whirling fade. This is different, from how he fought before. "Ha... that's just the tip of the iceberg!"

    "Yo, Marc!" Mach's retreat includes a backflip off the pillar, at the sight of the approaching missiles, opening fire with the pistol again to make pursuit more complicated. The rider gives him a two-fingered salute as he glides back down to the ground on those bright-burning thrusters at his back, moving in an unpredictable, erratic path.

    As he darts, rolls, and flips his way down, he answers Evehime's question: "I didn't give you my name before... it's Go Shijima. And my heart's desire... is to bring back what I took from the world out of anger!" His ankle-wheels carry him down the hulking section of earth at blinding speed as she lifts it, forearms moving rapidly to parry the more problematically sized pieces falling after she shatters it.

    "To create, and not destroy! To be strong enough that I can protect smiles instead of punishing hurt--" She is on him in an instant, her shoulder crashing into his armor with a hail of sparks. The wind flies from him. Her followup is faster than he could hope to fly back, or the force from her blow could make him. The thing is... he doesn't -want- to, and he's fast enough to put that particular quarter on the table.

    When her fist crashes into his ribcage, he accelerates with his thrusters and his wheels at once, rolling around the force of the blow and using it against her, to deliver a breathless rattle and an immediate counterattack which cuts across hers, a left hook aimed at her temple--it misses, such is the strength of the force he's trying to move laterally around. But she gets the idea: this is a style he's learning specifically to deal with people overwhelmingly stronger than himself.

    Even Metaphor has only a split second to jab her syringe into the bodysuit beneath his armor plates, as he flows around impact with her like water. "Thanks!" he says, giving a thumbs up in the brief, utterly ephemeral moment before he glides off of her.

    Tires at his ankles squeal for a brief moment, as he drifts around Metaphor to race back towards Evehime, while rubble rains down all around. "I want to see the world grow into that, too!" He shouts, making a long leap and mashing three buttons on the dialpad jutting from his belt.

                                  525 - JACK!!                                  

    His flying kick is assisted by a pneumatic jump-jack that sprouts from the back of his boot, adding extra force to the kick after impact, and springboarding him off from her. He is in constant motion around her, whether it's drifting to harass with lasers, bursts of speed to frustrate efforts to catch him, or sudden bursts of those jump-jacks to leap clear. And all of them are movements which he readily funnels into attacks--such as the rising knee which comes from a forward jack-assisted leap.

    "That thing you see... show it to me, when you feel it's time! Because even though I'll fight for my wish no matter what, I came here for the same reason Hibiki did!! To see this new you!"
Nephra Tangent     "You clutch that weapon in desperation."

    Nephra's expression falters, for just a moment, but enough for the smile to fall off her face. There's no room for crowd-stirring banter, no space for flashy tricks. By words before force, in response to her own attack, Nephra's already disarmed.

    "I- Then, can't actions be enough? I-" I'm not hiding, is what she wants to say. It's what she wants to think, too. But if it wasn't true, it wouldn't have felt like there was a knife stuck through one of the many ever-shifting seamsof her armor.

    The next seconds play out all too fast for Nephra, half her thoughts on the battlefield and half her thoughts deep in the corner of themselves. The sudden upwelling of force tremoring through the ground below isn't enough to pull her off her feet- but it doesn't matter.

    As Evehime's fist impacts her square in the heart of her armor, shattering the focus from her bones through the metal and gravity. There wouldn't even be enough time to think 'Oh, I'm dead, this is it', if it was, indeed, a mortal blow- but it isn't. It's a feeling she's -all too familiar / all too afraid - felt before, but this time there's no wound, no scar, no gaping empty hole in the left side of her head. She wishes there was.

    Left reeling, feet still somehow planted firm, the still-beating hearts within her and the synthetic adrenaline coursing through neural bridges that didn't quite break apart push her back into action. She tries to speak, and the words that come out are small and weak.

    "I don't-" It's a start. There's so many don'ts. I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want to be hurt.

    "I want to believe I could have had a future."

    This is a stage more than any stage Nephra's ever set foot in, but her words, for once, aren't for the audience. They're not for Evehime. They're not entirely true, but they're fully honest. They're for the split-second fear that, in that catastrphic blow, Nephra was scared the disassembling she felt couldn't ever pull itself back to the shape of her, because underneath all her armor she doesn't know what that is. Nephra drops the remnant of the spear, and puts up her arms. This time, the weapon can stay here for all she cares. Charging serpentine with jets flaring and joints click-snapping forward, she kicks off the ground, releasing her stranglehold on the ground's pull beneath her, cocking her left arm back until hydraulic thresholds catapult it the opposite way again. Part of her hopes she doesn't even land, that this effort won't go through. There's no way you can give me that. That part alone is enough for her to try a step further, a step harder, to see how far out of her grasp it really is.
Evehime Gevurah     "You know to defend the sanctity of self. To feed the fire of 'I'. This is true." says Evehime to Red Dwarf. Somehow, despite the roaring tempest billowing around the plateau in circles, wave after wave of rent air crashing against the other, her voice pierces right through it with absolute, resonant clarity. "But you've no concept, or perhaps only a glimmer, what it is that the striving is meant to add to yourself. The hunt for your enemy will be endless as long as you remain the same. Feeding your foe to the flame inside of you is the art lost to you. The way towards your blaze growing so great and terrible that it consumes the 'egregore' in your path as you walk it."

    The grenade comes within feet of her head. Then Evehime smashes her hands together; palms together like a Buddha, muscles tensed like a tiger; and the explosive becomes a paper thin black film between her hands; the clap is louder than the detonation that never happens, causing rubble to rattle against the earth. The anti-materiel bullet strikes the back of her hand, crunches, and spangs away. The ghosts within the territory where her martial will overrides reality step this way and that, blocking sprays of buckshot with their forms, but Evehime herself pivots, drops her elbow, extends an arm for balance, and swings a ridiculously high roundhouse kick straight into Red Giant's improvised weapon. Inanimate matter is shown no such clemency as living flesh; it disintegrates into a great, roiling plume of fire, licking the upper atmosphere and coiling back in on itself as ashfall. And yet still, only the slightest, most precise twist of her frame is needed to divert the momentum of that kick into a straight down heel on Red Dwarf's back, nonlethally crushing down on the opposing giant.

    "You've named a foe. A hatred. That is something. But hatreds are easy." says Evehime. "Violence is universal. Wanting and wishing is harder. The path to 'God' is open to few." The second bullet streaks much closer. A phantom interrupts it automatically, but the next shot phases through most of it, cutting away incorporeal energy before it fades away. "Yes. More of that. A family. That is a want. But more than a family, you must envision a family you would fight for!" The two-dimensional grenade remains are thrown like a shuriken, but Evehime doesn't half-measure it with a flick of the wrist, her entire upper body bends with the olympian windup that paints a trail of light-deflecting blackness through Remee like the slash of an inked brush, shearing apart her atoms non-lethally such that she feels the indescribable heat of fission blossoming in fire around her.

    Electromagnetically driven hyperglass bullets crackle against the Gevurah's aura. Ghosts leap to the fore, shattering the hypervelocity shards and crackle-boiling away in the same moment of reaction. Evehime turns towards him, and begins to advance. First at a jog, for a few, terrifying moments, where the ground flashes and turns molten orange under her footsteps as if she'd struck it at meteoric velocity. "Changed? I feel more myself than I have in a long time." she says, and then the molten blots become a single, straight, deep, and half-mile long line through the earth. Air compresses and blows outwards in great ring-shaped sprays of liquid oxygen. She's in front of him. Her guide hand comes up, fingers splayed. Her fist twists upward, underneath, a low hook striking him in the midsection, and blacking out the universe with a roar of microscopic fusion. Stars spark around him, and burst, blowing Ishirou back from his ranged challenge.
Evehime Gevurah     "You should begin to see. When I spoke of 'strength', you had taken me to mean 'war', in your conception. The function and means of slaughter and victory. But this is strength achieved for its own sake. Strength to usurp 'God'. Cleverness cannot suit you. Wisdom to outwit 'God' is the only goal worth your pursuit. Think upon how your old memories can b melted in the heat of that drive, and rendered as your new steel."

    Finally, Evehime reacts to Ophrys preemptively. It's the sound, or so it seems. The spear is caught by hand. Given the barest instant, the tip is snapped free of the shaft and wielded like a dagger, swung over Evehime's head in a booming arc and slammed down into Ophrys with the savagery Cain murdering Abel. The electric shock discharges into her body, flows through every muscle and synapse, and then crounds out her feet with visible tendrils of lightning. "Tell me how it is that you can think to flee your debt with a heart full of fire, when your very flesh was bought with the tithes you now owe. It weakens your bite. Enough to kill, but not enough to win. That you would be no one without that very same debt. That you may yet be no one without it."

    Metaphor's grenade explodes between them shortly thereafter. Evehime blows the mist away from her with a single wave of her arm that sends the drug mixture rushing out over the badlands like a tidal wave, accelerated unevenly by the hyperglass. She probably assumes it's a poison, if she's amplified the distribution back. "It could be. But you sound uncertain. Whether you are here as his tool --his sword and his shield, infected by the burning of his own soul-- or whether you are here for yourself. For the hidden embers within you, smouldering and bringing you to fever."

    When Marc skates behind her using the hyperglass, Evehime laughs; one single syllable, yet so intense, so unguardedly sincere, that it tugs the heartstrings to hear. A sound so rare and strangely precious that it begs a moment of gut wrenching yearning to laugh too, with the person that might still be somewhere in there. Someone who can enjoy and celebrate this. She's smiling, even, as the zigzags from Ishirou to Ophrys to Metaphor, leaving her improvised dagger behind and all but flash-stepping up to her rifle, snapping it upwards and outwards with a forearm to the receiver, pinning the bolt, followed by a rising elbow straight to Metaphor's center mass, striking with such single point precision that a lance of crystallized air stabs out from her back. Now that she's categorized herself as 'Ishirou's', Evehime has no problems with lifting and using her as a shield against Marc's counterattack. After all, if it's him, she won't die.

    "To see that kind of human . . . even were it not what bleeds beneath your nails as you claw your way towards 'God', I might be tempted to try. The way that you do battle so differently from the Hesed, though . . ." Metaphor is cast aside again. The distance he's choosing to fight at, with the air of the Line, is respectable. Evehime grips the air with clawed fingers, and it shatters. Iridescent light chaotically spills through. Proto-matter spills forth in misty plumes, dissipating on contact with reality, and then space seals itself back up, as she drags out the curve of an immense black bow, strung alike mercury. Scores of tungsten arrows thud melodically into neat rows in the ground, point down.

    Ten of them disappear in the same blink. The motion of Evehime's hand is a single, imperceptible streak. The string of her bow hums like a strafing fighter and the flurry of arrows booms like the carpet of bombs following them. A visible fan of laser-like plasma streaks paints over Marc's entire path. The dirt dislodged by the first arrow finishes dripping back to Earth.
Evehime Gevurah     Reyes comes in at a hard burn. Evehime tosses her bow up into the air, freeing both hands. She squares her stance to accept the pile-bunker; and then returns an exacting flurry of countering blows. Force concentrated into one knuckle. Fa-jin to bunker tip. Power intercepting power. The tankbusting stake sparks wide, scraping her skin, through its entire magazine. A snap knick out to his shin makes it feels like his lower body liquiefies through the armour. She catches the bow and swings it in a full moon crescent at his neck, breaking it non-lethally, for an instant.

    "A god of war is one who embodies the rules of war as designed by 'God'. He is one step short of usurping that design. His defeat is a battle I hold in high esteem, even now. Craft is well and good, but bringing only a warrior's craft to a battlefield is dooming yourself to fall short of one."

    Spotting Hibiki's approach, Evehime flips her bow around by her fingers and snatches up the rest of her line of arrows in a single, fluid roll, stringing and firing too fast, to see; the RPM of an autocannon, which should mulch Hibiki out of existence in an instant. It all goes skyward, and the bow is thrown away. Hibiki comes into close contact, and Evehime is laughing again. Fist is met with palm. Kicks are intercepted by careful preemptive placement of her own ankles. The Halo isn't appearing at all, as Evehime takes on the force and rolls it away with shifts of her mighty arms, until Hibiki is thrown off, and then finally smashed away with a backfist; straight into the path of the descending arrows.

    "Truly, your wish is both the most foolish and endearing of all. You understand more than you should. That is why you are able to enjoy this." Her grin shows tooth, slightly menacing in its sincere abandon. A gleam in her eye at Kukuru. "Then we shall enjoy it together, with those of you who are worthy." The air breaks again. A flash of quicksilver sheen, traced with gold. The lightning thrust of a spear, head slightly split down the middle, straight through Kukuru's slab of rock, faster than she can even bring it down. The circulating force within Evehime, raging like a solar stream in orbit, turns downward, carving straight through the slab with ease, and slashing straight into Kukuru. Bisecting her down to the atoms, nonlethally detonating outward along a razor thin line, blueshifting light in the weapon's arc as she catches it low, without touching the tip to earth. "Your children. You once asked me about mine."

    The haft spins as a pitch black blur about her, then jabs backwards, blunt, into Go as he strikes, cross countering such that her doppelganger catches his return blow, pushed all the way back to her skin from his strength whilst hers is like colliding with a black hole at transluminal speed. "The smoke style! Miyamomo has trained you well! And more than that, you have gone through much. The fire inside you is gentled, as it is brightened."

    She steps around Go, stirring up the dust in elaborate dance, rather than throwing him aside. She flows around him. Readies against Nephra. Her own spear darts out first. Faster. Surer. Yet somehow with even less killing intent. The heads spark off each other, her own attack displacing Nephra's. The world shifts blue around her and collapses into and instant of blackness. The broken sound barrier collapses in on her. Her spear bounces off Evehime's shoulder. Evehime's passes through her without wounding as if could keep going forward. The blast wave clings helplessly to the point, dragged behind only after the fact, compressing against her ribs and propelling her explosively away a split second later, like she'd been shot out of a cannon.

    "That is the first time you have ever voiced it. Even to yourself. Tell me how it feels."
Ishirou The Hyperglass shatters, and his plan is already executed.  Though he still has to survive to make it fruitful.  His scanners are going almost non-stop, trying to calculate her moves as far into the future as he can.  However, her tremendous power makes this nearly impossible, all he can do is plan as far ahead as he can.

"You're right.  I did...and for that, I apologize.  I claimed to try and understand people, but I wrote what you said off in my arrogance.  You...seeing you as you are now, becoming more like 'yourself' I can see the picture I wasn't able to before..."

The exchange happens right before the fist comes up.  The air liquifying...the pure force being thrown at him being 'impossible' by reality, but here we are.  Her strength breaks possibility...but he's still working on something.  He flies forward, enough to fight that terrible wind, slightly right to avoid that terrible fist.

It's not enough to cleanly avoid it, but enough to not take the full brunt of the devastating blow.  The RESCUE unit screams as it sparks, and it tears apart in various ways, as does the body protected underneath, he screams to escape, but right when it looked like he was about to get plastered, he soars up, finally escaping the force.  Warning lights are all over his screen, and he releases replacement parts to connect and shed off what can't be repaired.  

"Wisdom to outwit 'God' huh.." he says, and his hands make a fist.  The shattered hyperglass is grabbed by electromagnetic force.  It's pieces being forced together, though he couldn't FUSE them, he could use them individually.  He uses it like a river, and combing it with his own speed and flight systems to create boosts of speed.

His OPTIONS are sent, one flying to MARC and hovering over his shoulder, providing assistance with his own attack, while another connects to Nephra's armor and provides the telemetry data into her head, trying to guide here where to strike to try and bypass the halo.  

"The memories...their memories will remind them that they were human, it must...no it /will/ remind them...it will bring back what they've lost...what we've all lost..." he says, gritting his teeth.  He uses the hyper glass to try and hyper-accelerate his speed again, trying to make side-swipe attacks with summoned short blades again and again, trying to keep accelerating.  

"I make peace happen...I'll reclaim our home..." he says, pushing his straining body forward.  "Then I'll surpass Eggman...!"  
Ophrys     The pointed end of her weapon is broken free. In the split second it takes for Evehime to swing it overhead, a single thought runs through Ophrys' mind.

    Why did I think close range was a good idea?

    The blow is a bit too far back, no doubt intentional, the Warrior's extended forearm striking the cyborg's head and pitching her forward. The spearhead slams into the center of her back, between those wings. As it pierces, the impact also smashes her into the ground hard enough to crack the hyperglass underfoot. A blow that bends her arms and legs at unnatural angles until they catch up with her body.

    The only part that remains upright are her wings, cracks radiating through twitching, vibrating crystalline panes.

> "Tell me how it is that you can think to flee your debt with a heart full of fire, when your very flesh was bought with the tithes you now owe. It weakens your bite. Enough to kill, but not enough to win. That you would be no one without that very same debt. That you may yet be no one without it."

    "You wouldn't understand," the cyborg's voice crackles through her rebreather, pitch-shifted. Or maybe that's just the damage she'd sustained. With Evehime dashing away to deal with others, Ophrys pushes herself up on her hands, skimming through damage readouts across her vision. Ignoring the gyro warnings, she hauls herself up to her feet, staggering in place until she catches herself.

    "Born with a perfect body that you're perfectly content with," her voice loses volume, a static-laden whisper. She's pretty sure the Warrior won't even hear what she's saying, "You'd never understand that misery. Trapped in a prison you hate, that you could never escape on your own."

    As she mutters, Ophrys dismantles her spear-sickle, discarding the broken haft. A new one is produced from behind her back, twirled, and slotted into the sickle weapon's receiver, "How could Perfection ever understand that. Why would Perfection even need to?"

    "I made sacrifices for my own happiness," her volume raises, much more audible, though the static remains, "Now I have to deal with the consequences, and I won't let you or 'God' or anyone else judge me for that."

    Every plan I think of is just a disaster. All I can do is fight.
    Reboot completed. Veil ready.
    Let's go then.

    Ophrys plants her right foot behind herself, swinging the sickle up. Once again the blade splits into two halves, becoming the arms of a metallic crossbow. This time, as the harpoon rolls back into the firing position, the pointed spearhead glows with purple light. A heartbeat later, it erupts into a barbed harpoon of crackling violet plasma.

    With a snap of the crossbow arms releasing their tension, she fires the bolt, tracing an energized arc straight at the Warrior's predicted position. Another heartbeat later, Ophrys' silhouette melts away into her adaptive camouflage. The oily smear can be seen rising-- though not heard-- and all but disappears against the sky.
Redshift Operators     A heel slams down onto the back of the gunman. "I don't got the time for selfishness, for sitting down and getting all enlightened, I got kills to rack." But Evehime can feel something down there, his soul through her sole. His breathing is a pounding, slamming thing, practically larger than himself. The more one is in contact with his breathing, the more one can feel it more like a possessing force than a respiration. Its unbearable consistency is matched only by its urgency. In, out, in, out, it crackles through his helmet's sound system with more volume than it should have.

    "Whatever lessons I could learn from the egregore, I don't want to know. It ought to be gone, completely. Kill it, burn it, burn the ashes, burn the traces, erase it, *erase* it, ERASE IT...!" His armor cracks, a noise like a bowl shattering, but he's carefully keeping his essentials from being crushed, and he rolled well with the initial impact. Eventually, Evehime has to go advance on someone. Somehow, his breathing never struggles. In, out, in, out.

    A shadow passes over her, a few moments later in her violence. The cyborg ninja, blade sweeping to strike her down, leaping silently from behind. Only after the ambush strike does she speak up, continuing her swipes and thrusts without hesitation, knowing that Evehime won't have been felled in any future she can see.

    "People like us are no rising inferno, to be fueled. We are shaped by our wounds, and endure!" Her robotic arm's articulation shudders in the combat. "Outrunning time's ruthless pursuit, trying not to bleed out before we can learn enough lessons to survive another day. I have re-created myself amid an inferno twice before, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, least of all my closest friend!"

    She's not future-optimizing her strikes, strangely. It's because she's trying to brute-force predict a moment where her blade can draw the most attention it can, giving Evehime the least opportunity to block another shot from the astronaut behind a piece of megadiamond cover when the gunman struggling back onto his feet snaps his fingers.
Go Shijima      Something once thought impossible happens. Beneath the sky-blue visor of the sleek 555 armor, illuminated in the gentle glow of HUD elements, Go Shijima beholds Evehime and smiles.

     "You know it... yes, that's right! I'll tell her you said that--it'll make her smile for sure!"

     This armor is unlike the one he'd used against her, that last time. Focused on speed and versatility over strength. As she flows around him, Mach sticks to her with dogged persistence, making use of the hyperglass's veins for added boosts of speed, surging after her and turning to deliver elbow strikes, or else funneling the momentum for leaping uses of his leg-pistons. Where they intersect with 'normal' solid ground, the ankle-wheels on his boots squeal satisfyingly, especially when he accelerates into one of her strikes.

     With each attack of hers, sparks fly from his armor, budging him off-target even with the assistance from his wheels and the thrusters at his back. She can hear him panting with effort, but he refuses to let the flagging of his body dim the fire inside him.

     "You've changed, too! You look happier. I'm glad!" He changes it up, mixing in the aggressive, straightforward cross punches and snap kicks of his original style with the ever-moving whirling defense-counterattacks of Smoke, before adding in a new element with a quick code on the dialpad above his belt. But she's still so much stronger...! I need to catch my breath. I won't let this fight be over without it being fun!

                               456 - ILLUMINATION!                                

     The wheel on the armor's right shoulder isn't just for show! The hubcap opens up to reveal a headlight, which flashes blinding light at Evehime. Disengaging with an impressive backflip, Mach lands on Ishirou's newly-made hyperglass highway and takes off, skating across it and using the rise and fall of it for high-flying leaps (definitely because of Smoke style demanding movement, and not to show off for Marc or Evehime).

     The headlight is articulated on a telescopic cable, swiveling independently of his movements to track Evehime and open fire with superheated pillars of light. Leaping off the highway in a sideways flip, he makes a triumphant "Hah!" and lands on the rim of the arena, now making use of the megadiamond.

                                   775 - SPLIT!                                  

     Mach is a blurry trail of red and white, the revving of his belt echoing across the plateau. He weaves erratically in and out of the megadiamond pillars. While his headlight-laser winds around corners to shoot at Evehime, his laser pistol's function is now altered, too--shooting the megadiamond pillars causes one blue laser bolt to disappear into its surface, each time the trigger is pulled. And each time, seconds after Mach has passed, those pillars spew a barrage of energy needles from within, creating a multi-angled offense by using the immovable things as both cover and attack, and adding multiple angles to his offensive. At any given moment, both the headlight-laser from Mach's position, and the pillar two or three intervals behind him, must be watched.
Persephone Kore      "Oh g- oh no, I'm so sorry," Marc chokes out when his attack backfires on Metaphor. His face scrunches in mortified sympathy- she helped him! And now look at this. When he fades back, his eyes stay on her: "Look, I'll- I'll make it up to you somehow! Do something nice after!" It's as frantic as it is sincere.

     That apologetic demeanor lasts until the incoming barrage. Marc's head knows the volley of arrows won't kill him, but his heart knows no such thing, and it nearly stops in his chest. He desperately holds out a hand against it, adrenaline flooding his system.

I wish that didn't hurt me. The arrow curves around him with room to spare.
I wish that didn't- Glances off an invisible force twenty feet short.
I wish- Shatters off an orbiting shard, annihilating it.
I wish- Nudges just enough to scream over his shoulder.
I- Stops dead inches from his eye.

     That's five out of ten. The next arrow will get him, or the next, or the next. Anyone else from Sapient Heuristics would be too dulled to the idea of physical danger to be afraid like this. But Marc- too old to fit in, too poisoned by the world outside, too familiar with mundane cruelties- can't help but be, on some level, terrified.

     The adrenaline coursing through his veins slows the world to a crawl. He has one moment of clarity between the arrows.

     I wish she couldn't fire that bow.

     Evehime's fingers release the drawstring, but another strength holds it back in place of her own. Marc's fingers tremble from a thousand feet away. Blood drips from his nose onto his perfect white shirt, because there always has to be a price for miracles. I'm not pure enough to get anything for free. But it won't hold for long.

     He only takes a second to undo the top button of his shirt.

     I wish I could fight her up close. A piece of metadiamond whittles itself into a glittering longsword that deposits itself in his hands. I wish she didn't see me coming. His two remaining layer-cake shards float in front of him as he dashes in along the hyperglass, obscuring his exact position. Then he lays into her while fading in and out, evasion his only real defense.

     "The way you do battle so differently from the Hesed, though . . ."

"I'm not as pure," he murmurs in the moments when they're close. "We're on the same path, but... the world shaped me. In ways it didn't get to touch her." He doesn't sound proud of that. "She can just 'do'. I have to do 'despite'. Gevurah... which of those are you?"

     No training, but he has the instincts- more than anyone else in Persephone's 'family' does- and the glass makes him fast, and each of his swings is backed by an ineluctable, nonlethal wish. The sword is likely to break against her skin or aura, but he will break it.
Reyes     Two mighty blows from Evehime clash not just with the force of Reyes's switch to a ballsy assault, but with prodigious shielding. The projected protection, drawing upon the legend of a famous Dwarven King's mighty armor, holds out for a bare few seconds.

    Behind that finely-engineered helmet, Reyes is sweating beads, the power armor's supercharged and enchanted servos straining, struggling.... forget trying to advance, simply not being bowled over is taking everything his best engineering's capable of and more.

    The shield buckles and flickers out, and not even a heartbeat later... disaster strikes. With a metallic screeching no mechanic wants to hear, the mystic circuitry on that arm sputters out and Reyes's outstretched arm is battered away, leaving him off-balance and vulnerable to opposing snap-kick and bow-strike, together knocking him clear off his feet and into a comical ragdoll spin.

    Knocked back, Reyes armored figure topples to the ground in a heap of overwhelmed Techno-Wizardry, the glow of its mystic circuitry sputtering out. Seconds pass with him laying motionless, reeling from the sensation of a briefly broken neck.

    "This is... ridiculous... heck, seems... pretty near hopeless."

    Without the aid of the power armor's supporting servos, Reyes somehow clambers up to a kneeling position, limbs moving like big lumpering logs. There's no way he can continue fighting like that, is there?

    "But the situation I'm staring at every day's not much different!" At that shout, the stressed, heavily damaged armor roars to life, blue-white bolts storming across it like a lightning storm. Dents, tears, and mangled components reshape back into position, even the mangled arm mostly restoring itself to working order. The mystic circuitry snaps back to life with a vengeance and - for a third time - the finely-tuned Armor of Ithan manifests. Reyes stomps to an upright position, and reaches out with both arms horizontally, posing like a living cross and steadily spreading the fingers of his armor's heavily-engineered hands.

    "The battlefield belongs to warriors first and foremost, sure..." Reyes brings those hands together, outstretched in front of his chest, and rotates them 90 degrees. The fingertips all recede, each revealing a magnificent brilliant-cut ruby in its place, tips converging out just in front of his hands, aimed straight at Evehime.

    Mystical power surges from his body center down the circuits in his arms and into those rubies, all ten of them suddenly casting forth a red-orange-white glow and focusing that crimson power into a converging orb hovering just beyond his claw-like double grasp, which grows larger and larger...

    Wait, claws? No, it's more like fangs-- DRAGON FANGS.

    The deafening roar of far, FAR too much flame is unleashed along with a roiling plume of red-white blaze which VAPORIZES the ground a foot deep and leaves the resulting trench molten and steaming.

    "But it takes all kinds to win a war!"
Nephra Tangent     There's no air to scream as shockwave and ethereal unwounding blows turn Nephra into a one-ton cannonball, metal crunching against a plinth of impervious megadiamond. As she half-crumples back to standing upright, she lets out a shaky cough. Everything in her core hurts in a way that bedrest and bandages can't fix.

    The fight presses on, though, in the utter abject chaos. That's the point. It has to go on, because someone still has to lose. That's the game that's always playing. She tries to bring the smile back to her face, as dust sticks to growing sweat-mixed-with-faint-tears, but reverberations sing through the metal of her armor and the rigid tissue of her bones. The dermal sensors shattered and bent from the impact send feedback static up Nephra's spine with each step she takes forwards, but she takes them nontheless. She collects her spear back up from the ground, resuming a makeshift stance, trying to put on the preformance of composure that is just another layer of armor.

    "That is the first time you have ever voiced it. Even to yourself. Tell me how it feels."

    "It hurts." She whispers, through the small gaps in her clenched front teeth. A few damaged plates of her armor fizzle and recede beneath themselves, staggering back and away from her wrists. Bare fingers, both flesh and metal, wrap around whats left of the implement.

    Ishirou's drone meets her, finding no dirth of inputs to the conglomerate nervous system and processing core that runs itself through Nephra's suit and body both, and while it may face a wildfire of messy feedback, she picks up its sensors like a new eye.

    "It hurts, and I can't take it back!" The weight around her sinks down and crushes, each footstep forwards impacting rough dirt like meteors into tinfoil. There's anger in her voice, and other messy things. The strained whine of the Penrose reactor buried in her chest blurs out the line between her thoughts and her words, neither of which she can more than faintly hear, its heartbeat the metronome to her desperate attacks. Every thrust is strained against gravity closer to star-like than Earth's, and every slash whips metal through air like a drowning limb thrashing for a handhold.

    "You can't make me deserve to get that!"

    Even if I hope you could.
Kukuru The thought of sharing drinks with everyone brings some of Kukuru's usual mirth back to her face, even if it's in the middle of having her terrain-swinging assault stopped long before it can even reach Evehime. "So strict... Ah, but that's what makes everyone trust you like right now, I bet." Even though she's finding some humor there, it doesn't take away the sting of having a great silver and golden spear coming right down at her, and there's a brief moment where the idea of catching the weapon flashes through Kukuru's head.

Her reflexes, of course, aren't quite on point, and she's only able to get the tip of one claw out of her pocket before the tip cleaves right through her unarmored and otherwise unprotected body, leaving a nasty gash across her entire body that would be fatal if not for Evehime willing it not to be. Despite the pain running through her entire body, meanwhile, Kukuru refuses to allow herself to cry out in pain, and...

Well, of course she can't die here. Evehime promised everyone that nobody would die here. Kukuru's not about to let her be a liar by dying before she can make sure everyone else is fine by the end of this fight, after all. It doesn't stop Kukuru from getting flattened by the weapon, either, laying flat on her back for several moments while considering the topic of children again.

More specifically, Evehime brings up Kukuru's children, and that has the horned woman sitting up again while her nanites piece together the halves of her body that most certainly shouldn't be that far apart from each other. "My kids? Oh, I... Um. I can't have any real kids of my own since I'm... Different from everyone else back home."

It sounds like it's an awkward topic for Kukuru, and it's certainly a hard one for her to go over in the middle of fight. Nevertheless, she continues because Evehime asked, and Kukuru's still an open book. "So I guess all the kids are more like... People I like to treat as if they were mine? My parents never treated me differently even though I was... Um. A freak, you know? And I wanna share that with everyone else."

All at once, Kukuru remembers the vitriol, the pleading, the limpness in her arms. She remembers the conviction in some, the pain in others, and her inability to save a single person in station. "If I can bring them all into my family, then nobody would ever need to fight again.  People keep telling me that's weird, that it's wrong to try pulling everyone into the Concord.  But why can't I have what I want, too? Is that really so bad?"

Kukuru's body shivers again while her body finishes mending itself enough for her to get back on her feet, but not from the effort expended in putting herself back together. Unlike before, however, her hands are visibly shaking as she slides her claws out of her pockets, and she's hesitating more even before squaring up with Evehime once again. Something's gnawing at her, but she's clammed up once more while focusing on the fight.

All that hyperglass is giving Kukuru one whole idea. Following Marc's and Ishirou's leads, Kukuru teleports herself onto one of the tracks while sliding forward across one, building up speed faster with far less effort than she would normally need on her own. When she far overshoots Evehime's position, Kukuru teleports herself to another track heading back towards the Gevurah, then throws herself off of it like a cannonball with her claws crossed in front of herself to add some extra stabbing power and metallic hardness to her blow.

It's easier not to think about what she's saying if she's busy fighting.
Metaphor Another terrible shot. Adjust approach. Holy fucking shit. Why am I here.

Why am I here?

Metaphor can't react, consciously. But here, she's operating on instinct. A voice in the back of her mind hitches as this thought comes to bear. I know what I stand for. Stand for? Gears spin, and spin, and spin. Why am I here?

Evehime executes a completely successful disarm - the rifle explodes into pieces as the grip is knocked out of Metaphor's hand, blown even further away in the backblast from the sternum jab. Blows dent her frame, but even still something stops her from breaking under force that could level a mountain. Even past that, even through the shrapnel slicing through her, (cloak undamaged somehow) even in the face of a legitimate force of reality - her feet never leave the floor. Further ruts carve into the ground as she's tossed aside as the unworthy stranger she is, and she braces before colliding into one of the pillars in the distance. ( UNSTOPPABLE / WAVERING ). She remains upright.

Metaphor pushes away, going through the motions for reloading a rifle she no longer has, then flounders. Her routines fragment and derail through a simple lack of the unquestioned habits she's been running on for decades. She freezes again, indecision once more flourishing from the ever-present seed and extending roots from her into the ground.

I want to help Ishirou. Right? It's important. But this isn't just help. This is for me. But why?

Why am I here?

Something flashes orange in her peripheral. Status. This, she has a call-and-response to. Why can I only do this through muscle memory? Reality fails to recognize how many canisters she pulls out. It's always enough. Always. One in Go's path, detonating into a bright red mist (salicyclic, libital, bicaridine), mending wounds as soon as he stops thinking about them. I believe in him. Another strikes Ophrys (ditto, solder), shimmering-red in the sun, welding components back together through false mechanisms. Epinephrine plumes around Hibiki. Repeat BRAIN 100u on Marc's zigzag in the distance. Ephedrine is pulled into Nephra's event horizon, stimulating. Ishirou. Ephedrine. Body runs faster. He knows what he's fighting for.

And yet, she can't bring herself to attack Evehime like that again. It's failed all the previous times, simple modern tools against infinite might, but that isn't the reason for it, is it? I'm different from them. They get it. They're heroes. Her legs start moving, almost of their own volition - a sprint towards the center of the arena. I can't let them die. I'll die for that. I want Go to be right. I want to never have to work again. I want to protect them all. I want to be a hero. I want to fix their problems! I want them to see their dreams!

I want to not be forced to worry about them!
Metaphor It doesn't seem to register to Metaphor that she's started yelling her internal monologue out loud. She sprints towards not just the center of the battlefield, now, but Evehime - the patches of hyperglass her footsteps occasionally land upon failing to adjust her momentum. It's a clumsy sprint; almost as clumsy as her blatant upper-body windup.

"Maybe I should just try to punch her. Because of how low the stakes are."
"Yeah. You should."

Metaphor is not a bare-handed fighter. The wild haymaker she throws is pathetic from a skill point of view - and yet, there's enough force behind it to flatten a car.

Out of the corner of her vision, she sees Go doing his giddy backflips. His new style, just for this. His light-hearted banter. I want that!

The root of every single one of these wishes fails to dawn on her. Fist contacts halo; and as Evehime moves to go after Go once more, Metaphor is already in the path.
Hibiki Tachibana     This is what Hibiki wanted. No, this is what feels good. Feels right. Fist to palm, kick to kick, direct contact. It doesn't matter that none of her attacks are making it through compared to the fact she's able to have a proper melee with the Gevurah in the first place. She could've avoided it entirely were those shots aimed straight at her, or relegated the defensive to the shades of her will.

    Maybe that's why she's still able to have a small smile even as she gets battered away. It hits her, for a moment in flight, how many other wishes are being fought for here. Go and her are in alignment. But there's everything from Marc fighting for his sibling, to the unexpected desire that Kukuru voices, to Nephra struggling to put hers out in the open.

    She might process all of them and what they mean, later. But right now, with battle rushing past her, Hibiki only has the ability to focus on the wish right in front of her, listening to what those fists that are refusing to kill are saying. And just as dangerous, the tungsten arrows now raining down on her. Her arms cross up - and horizontal momentum becomes vertical as they slam into her one after another and slam her into the earth.

    No, just one. It belts her back-first into the ground hard enough to make her bounce off of it, before she catches herself with a palm, spins, and flings herself to the side out of the way of the rest. The magical girl sails over the arid surface for a dozen meters before a boot comes down and she springs forward in a high leap.

    "I think just seeing you enjoy it like this...is already enough to make coming here worth it!" It's almost funny, how unthinkable seeing this, or even Hibiki herself feeling like this would have seemed to the 'her' that was facing down the ultimatum back then. But now...

    Now she has gravity on her side as she comes down from above, just as fast as the arrows that had been loosed, with a singular punch primed for Evehime's head. A heavy-handed falling strike, with the machinery within her gauntlet once again slotting back before pounding back down.

    Hard and heavy enough to turn the dry earth beneath Evehime's feet into a several meter deep crater. She /is/ enjoying this.
Petra Soroka "... I'm tired of being alone."

    Faint and distorted under the crackling booms of martial violence peaking the microphone on her drone, the words still make Petra's stomach drop. Breath lingers on her lips as her chest tightens, heavy and hot as if the blow to her gut was literal, and blood dribbled out of her mouth. Remee definitely came hom--back to the space station and saw that Petra was gone.

"I'm sick and tired of feeling ashamed for who I'm associated with."

    The tension leaves Petra all at once, unclenching muscles across her entire body. Her head sags, and the phone nearly slips out of her fingers, risking an unlucky bounce thousands of feet down the cliffside. That's better. And worse.

    The experience of listening to the gathered elites declare their dreams as they and their divine foe tear through the environment for a kilometer around is... dissociating. These aren't her peers. Even imagining herself down there in the fray feels more like fanfiction than a possibility that was open to her less than an hour ago, her perspective of scale skewed and tilt-shifted by distance, literal and emotional. Earth shatters and air is rent by unimaginable force, and Petra watches it all through her phone now.

    She turns her head to the side, rolling it against the megadiamond boulder, sticky tracts of faded tears gathering dust that was knocked up by one of Evehime's blows, a million miles away. Petra fishes around in the pocket of her bomber jacket, pulling out a crumpled bag of beef jerky, half empty. Her stomach grumbles; it's her first meal of the day. She gnaws on a chunk of jerky while watching Hibiki get batted into the air.

    They all look like different people than before. The protagonists of a dozen arcs in a climactic battle, each one fighting for their dreams so earnestly that Petra isn't any more than a speed bump to any of them. Everyone except Remee, who lingers in Petra's perception like a spot, the cold bitterness inside of Petra refusing to let her reinterpret the werewolf as a character like the rest.
Evehime Gevurah     Evehime's eyes sparkle with some fiercer and less gentle cousin to delight at Ishirou's improvised approach. "Finally! After all this time, your form begins to change! Even slightly, you drift towards the road you need, and not towards mine; to rise to meet your foes full of indignance and fall short of their Truths that they have pursued!" She matches speed for speed, warding off his blistering assault with her spear. Despite how enormous it is, she uses it exactly like the lightweight fighting spear of certain martial arts, her footwork stepping deftly over itself as the haft and blade twitch, spin, lock, and whirl back and forth, slashing away as he scrapes closer and closer on each pass. "But if you would see that wish granted, I have no need to hear of how it will soothe others. I must hear of how it will guide you to 'Wisdom'."

    And then, Evehime's hands weightlessly slide all the way down the haft, and swing it like a bat, to rocket Ishirou again with a thunderous crack. So she can turn to Ophrys, let down her hands, and, spreading her arms wide, laugh in a very different way. The way she bares her teeth is a shade short of vicious. The sound coming up from her chest is a mixture of amusement and bitter nostalgia. The bolt thuds into her chest. She doesn't step back. "That one had feeling behind it. Conviction born out of spite, at least. But I will command you to contemplate a simple contradiction."

    "If my heart's desire was for 'Strength', if I strove for a hundred years, and then one hundred again, to master the peak of the warrior's arts, if I would settle for nothing less than the absolute apex of might, then contemplate why I would wear this form before you. Surely, the shape of a man would better serve. Even the slightest discrepancy in strength would make all the difference, between the greatest that is possible, and simply the greatest. And yet, I am a woman. Surely, if my body were forged to the arts of war, perfectly suited in every aspect, it would be better to shear my hair and clad myself in steel, and not be as I am before you now. And surely, if I sought to usurp 'God', I would take on form of the Divine, as you have traded for iron, and not the flesh of mere humanity. Contemplate deeply, why 'God' teaches in flawed designs, and how anyone so content with their birthright as you believe could ever learn burn so bright and hot as to render down physical law with their own hands."

    She kicks the spear up from the ground over her toe, then spins with her knee bent and kicks the butt with her heel, launching it as a hypersonic projectile. A falling star, shredding the air, rending apart the earth and shooting crackling bolts of atmospheric lightning into space all around it, scrawling a melted wake behind it where electrons are torn away by pure kinetic energy.

    A dagger, this time, flashes into Evehime's hand from behind space, long and single-edged, gripped reverse, and held up behind her back to clash with White Dwarf. Streaks of gleaming light crisscross back and forth as the two meet edge on edge over and over again, spraying molten metal and electrostatic charge this way and that, splashing onto skin and suit. "This is the wrong that you have taught yourself. Not that your foe should be left rather than slain. That you must spend yourself to lay it low, and that you should look for nothing of yourself in the laying low. You do not learn to emulate your foe. You learn of yourself in destroying them. How to call the god named 'I' within you. How you are defined in terms other than the negative space of your enemy. It takes more than wounds alone to truly be shaped." The last anti-materiel shot pierces all the way through the crossed guard of her phantom and flattens the last of its energy at the small of her back, finally parting her hair, puncturing her clothing and marking her skin.
Evehime Gevurah     Finally, Evehime steps forward right into the path of White Dwarf's sword, and simply strikes with such overwhelming ferocity. There is no way to parry or deflect it. No space to dodge it. The gap in sheer strength is so immense as to end the bout of technique against technique in a single explosive swing. It's just so that she can get the time and space to guard against the energy needles.

    The sheer volume of them, using the megadiamond pillars, seems to be something that sparks pleasure for her. She stands still, on purpose, crouching low and raising her arms, and contracts her aura inwards, increasing its density and redoubling her Halo's durability around herself. And it's clear why. The energy needles inherit the immovable properties of the megadiamond, hammering against her without being actively deflected. "There is a light in your eyes as well, when before there was only rage. A purpose to put your strength towards has accelerated its growth immensely." It's during the absolute slightest gap that she spins fully around, overhangs her dagger, and hurls it at Go in the midst of one of his leaps, so hard that it cracks megadiamond.

    Then, she charges straight into Reye's magical attack. The destruction it wreaks on the terrain is evident; her boots splash ankle deep at its molten prow. The way it is forced to split around her, even as the tips of her hair turn red hot like wire, speaks as loud as her words. A sword, straight and heavy coming down overhead. Ten cleaving slashes that harmlessly shred his cells apart and blend his bones in ten strobing flashes before he can so much as blink. "This is true. But it is not their aid as combatants that wins wars. Your ingenuity can do far more than develop weaponry. Even from moment to moment." Her metal-shoot foot, now several hundred degrees hot from his weapon, shoots out straight to catch him in the middle to break contact. Marc replaces him.

    Megadiamond doesn't yield to her blade; not straight away, and not from the interplay of a wish made with the mind clashing against a wish made manifest with the hands. Each of Evehime's blows grows stronger, faster, and vibrating with energy, far more quickly locked in frenzied combat with him now, compared to any of the others. Though her unblinking stare radiates fierce joy, her face is set in something like stoic respect. Her words are chopped into a million fine fragments, so finely as to still be perfectly intelligible, by the lacing of mercury silver and glittering crystal. "Heat is the substrate of rejection." says Evehime, repeating herself from once before.

    "Everything I have ever done has been 'in spite'. I could never be so pure as to love all humanity as she does. One could say I was scorched so severely that 'Severity' could be my only calling. But I made it mine. Taint will only lessens you as long as it shames you. Though it has shifted your path, it is always yours to align with it, rendering it merely 'change'. To control and move with the flow of force; of fists and of life; is the core of martial arts." The martial heat built up within her by now is blinding. Her final slash streaks wings of plasma, and bites deep into the megadiamond blade. Evehime twists the grip and throws both away to strike Marc barehanded.
Evehime Gevurah     Nephra sets upon her, and Evehime says "Good. It is long past time that it hurt." The flurry of thrusts is countered in equal measures by phantoms stepping into her reach, taking aggressive stances of arm bars and palm deflections, and by Evehime herself bearing down on her, churning up earth and pushing her back. A blow sparks perilously close to cutting her; no, Nephra is fairly sure she felt the edge bloodlessly rake her skin. So close. She just needs more force. More feeling behind it. "Foolish enough. I can make anything at all happen. 'Deserving' is mine to decide; an authority higher than 'God'. I have more right to decide what you have earned than you do. Now swear you will earn it." The point connects with her shoulder. Evehime rolls with it and shrugs it aside, sparking blue. Turned sidelong, fist cocked back, Nephra has but an instant to see the next blow coming before it obliterates her consciousness and smears it across the stars for half a second, awakening inside a pillar a ways away.

    "The virtues of what you want matter not, Kukuru." she says, and her voice softens just enough to use her name, in a strangely familiar way. "They are what you desire. They are what you need more than anything else. What give your existence meaning. Even if they were foulest evil, it would be right to chase your dream. Even if it hinges upon others, you cannot let them stand in the way of it." The accelerated slash is traded with Evehime whipping fully around and catching Kukuru in the face, claws meeting arm and arm meeting neck, driving her at hyperspeed down below her feet, where she is kicked away again. "You cannot hope to be their mother if you feel you do not deserve to be. This should be obvious, even to you. No one would want a mother who bends to the immature whims of her children."

    And for the second time, caused when Evehime turns to look at Metaphor's rush, she stands still. The pitiful punch thumps solidly against her abs. It feels like regular flesh and blood. She can feel the woman's pulse, just a little. The warmth of her skin. Someone who, by all rights, should need more emergency care than anyone here. And yet has simply decided she shouldn't, because she doesn't want to need it. A moment of silence. "That's much better. An answer. You are not Ishirous' sword, nor his shield. You are something else." A simple grapple and throw, albeit ridiculous as usual. "Say it then. What you are. Mean it. Deserve it. Make it real. Finally, at last, have it, rather than live the rest of your life thinking about it. You can do that much. You have the potential. Be someone."

    Hibiki's falling blow makes the phantom that catches her flicker and distort. The energy is nearly expended. Evehime's willpower no longer overflows out of her body and into her surroundings, finally falling under its own cap and merely suffusing every inch of her body. The Halo's impression passes Hibiki along to Evehime, who, with a smile on her face, steps past the Symphogear user as the bleedover of force breaks the ground, and then drops back with her elbow on the back of Hibiki's neck, hard enough to triple that depth. Painfully, dizzyingly, overwhelmingly, yet somehow playfully. "But still. I will enjoy it all the more if you fight for something selfish."
Ishirou Ishirou is LAUNCHED straight into the air, ass over kettle as he soars into the sky.  However, no satisfying crunch comes for Petra, as he recovers high into the sky, and just /narrowly/regains control thanks to some remaining hyperglass he's managed to hold onto.  Everything /hurts/, everything on the RESCUE is flashing red, and he's pushed it well beyond the limits.  

"But if you would see that wish granted, I have no need to hear of how it will soothe others. I must hear of how it will guide you to 'Wisdom'."

"You need to know yourself, right?  That part of me was stolen...used to make a slave out of, and the parts that I want were burned away.  I...need to be able to look forward.  The only way to do that is to resolve the past, to know what I lost.  To...bring peace to my home.  Then...only then can I seek the wisdom I want."

His OPTIONS fire off again, but this time one connects to Go, and the other hovers over his shoulder.  Another Option fires out, aiming to attach to Metaphor and enhance her speed and provide her flight to better get out of the way of Evehime.  More than that, another OPTION attaches to Go, and he can see various missiles, guns, and such are ready for him to use, and energy is being routed through his unit to try and offset his exhaustion.  

Ishirou isn't done yet...not yet!  Missiles fire, aiming to blot out the sky as the hyperglass is brought around like a hurricane around Evehime.  She's right though, he has all of this equipment now, but what he needs to do is belief in what he's built with Maria.  The training he's gotten from Lilian...and in himself.  Ishirou uses hacking on his missiles and stops them in midair.

Then, using the hyper glass tries to accelerate them as fast as he can toward Evehime.  Aiming to use the glass to both enhance their speed, but also to try and blind her to their exact trajectory.  
Redshift Operators     There is no time nor space to dodge what happens next. It knocks the cyborg ninja on her ass, sending her flying, face bruised, mask shattered, dazed beyond the ability to fight. A woman obliterated the moment she speaks.

    But that's not what this story is about.

    That timeline is a needless dead-end, and so, it never comes to pass. It's not that her reflexes are fast enough to dodge, it's that she's beginning a subtle dodge before Evehime even thinks of the strike. No, even then, Evehime would have too much strength. This prediction started much longer ago -- the gunman had obliged a quick request, providing a smoke grenade that rolled to Evehime's feet sometime before the punch that would have ended her part in the fight. The blast of obfuscating smoke gives the ninja an appropriately ninja-like evasion.

    There was no way to escape this, not in *this* possibility.

    Still, the effect of that strike leaves both the gunman and the swordswoman blasted back. Even just the shockwaves are too much. "Think it's that easy? Hundred years of bastards throttling the failure-learning cycle out of the brain, we're barely even the same species. You've got those *human defaults* I've been writing manifestos about for years. The things I want to *bring back*. But just what the hell kind of time you think I've got to carve that for *just me*?"

    He calls his squad back, urging the cyborg especially to take a moment to pull back. The giant gives physically obstructive cover while the gunman blasts with a rifle, just enough to try to keep Evehime at a distance. They intend to cover near the astronaut and regroup after a moment after that close call. But he left a parting gift: An incendiary grenade, primed to try to set Evehime on fire, for all the good it'll do!
Kukuru At those speeds, dodging Evehime just isn't possible for someone with Kukuru's reflexes. Striking at the Gevurah means putting herself within her attack range, but it's a valuable experience even with all the pain shooting through her body when fingers crash into her face, bicep slams into her neck, and a foot launches her into one of those hyperglass tracks that could threaten to take Kukuru far, far away from the battle with how fast she's moving after that punt.

The only thing that saves her from speeding off into the horizon, though, is actually remembering to teleport herself back to the fight, albeit with some skidding from the maintained momentum carrying her back towards the battlefield again.

"Eh? The virt... They don't?" Kukuru sounds positively dumbfounded as she slides to a stop, only partially bothered by the left side and sleeve of her jacket getting torn up in the process of slowing down. Sitting up slowly, she considers what she's being told closely (along with Evehime's tone), biting her lip and pulling her legs to her chest to really mull it over even as she watches Evehime grab and toss the not-doctor with her own words of wisdom and encouraging Hibiki to be more selfish.

"But if what I want is wrong, does it... I mean, can I really...?" There's still lingering doubts there, but they're stamped out easily enough as more of it starts to click together.

Of course it's right to do. What's wrong with wanting to care for so many people? That's what her parents did before her, and she turned out okay. It's only when she came out into the greater world that anyone ever told her such behavior was wrong, and that she needed to be stronger. "... I can. I can be strong enough to protect them. Smart enough to raise them right." A bit of a stretch there, but the confidence is definitely returning. "The ones who don't want to listen... They must've had it really rough, but kids always say they want things they shouldn't. They don't know any better, and if there's nobody else that can show them a better way, then..."

Kukuru starts giggling, and she wipes her face off. There's both tears and blood mixed around in there, but she sounds happy again, and she doesn't even seem to notice the blood from the glass and diamond fragments still in there. "That's my job, isn't it? To convince them, to guide them, show them that there's nothing to worry about with me. It's for their own good, even if they don't get it yet."

She wipes her face one more time, notices the glass in there after wincing, then flashes Evehime a wide, shark-toothy smile. "Thanks, Evie. I... I really needed this. Now I just need to show off a little, so the kids here can see it, too!" Clapping her hands together, Kukuru does a few squats to limber up, then hops forward as she dives through a cloud that opens up in the ground in front of her. It drops her out of another cloud not far above it, dropping her back into the first hole, back out of the second, back into the first, and building a terrible amount of speed.

Another cloud appears in front of Evehime, and it's pretty apparent at a glance what's going to happen in the next second: Kukuru, charging forward at a speed she can't even control, with both claws clenched together for a high momentum high power double-fisted hammer strike to center mass. Considering how many times they've already clashed, though, it's far more likely that the impact is going to hurt Kukuru way more than Evehime, but she doesn't mind.

Evehime promised nobody would die here, and Kukuru trusts in her fully enough that there's not a single thought in her mind about this being a bad idea. It's too busy swimming with thoughts of how to expand her family instead.
Go Shijima      "I can't take all the credit--gh!" The dagger hits Mach directly on the shoulder, hitting hard enough to send him spinning out of control and sending a dramatic shower of sparks. His balance thwarted, he tumbles on a dip in the road, skidding along the rim of the arena on his side, with sparks flying from his white armor. A palm is thrown out to keep him from impacting with the next megadiamond pillar, Even with his strength, the speed at which he was going and the suddenness of Evehime's attack leave little room to mitigate the impact of the pilla.

     The gentle glow of the HUD behind his visor is replaced with urgent, angry red and blinking exclamations. Even so, Mach forces himself back onto his feet with a fluid, quick and agile kip-up, hips extended, chest and head swinging forward. "I had help from people who cared--enough to realize how important that can be!" His helmet bobs in the affirmative, as he jabs a thumb into his breastplate.

     I don't have much gas left in the tank--so it's time for the grand finale, while I can still give it!

     "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Calls Mach, leaping to stand atop a megadiamond pillar. "It's Time for... Superstar Action!" One hand is thrown wide, like a carnival barker. The other crashes into a button atop his Mach Driver, sending a cone of flame lancing from the chromed exhaust as the belt revs. The belt's AI clearly announces:

                                  Ride Macher!!                                  

     The whine of a performance engine approaches. Mach folds his arms over his chest as if he were being laid to rest, falling backwards from the height of the pillar. A second later, a performance superbike with a white, red-stripe paintjob howls over the pillar, with Mach seated. He gives Ishirou, Marc, Evehime and Metaphor his signature two-finger salute (one for each!) as the thrusters on his suit coax the bike into a smooth landing back on the edge.

     Ishirou's options plug into both Mach's pauldron and his bike, as it weaves between the pillars even faster than the rider had on foot. Missiles supplied by the options scream from the bike's blue headlights as Mach guns his thrusters again, lifting the vehicle back onto Ishirou's hyperglass highway. Popping a wheelie at extremely unsafe speed has no effect on his ability to control the craft--it's a trusted friend. With that wheel-fronted pistol of his, he shoots the hyperglass veins around Evehime, causing the resulting spew of laser needles to travel much faster than they otherwise would. The bike's nose lowers, just in time for a masterful drift.
Go Shijima      Mach is inches from the hard surface of Ishirou's highway, the bike nearly sideways on the ground as it aggressively takes a corner. Even like this, he has no fear taking a hand off the wheel to mash that button on his belt again.

                            HISSATSU!//Full Throttle!                            

     The bike grows faster and faster as it works with speed provided by the hyperglass and energy provided by the options, until the air around it visibly distorts like a heat mirage, and crackling blue energy begins to leap and dance across its surface. It whips back upright, and Mach pumps his fist, before the speed robs his physical form of any identifying features but the colors of his armor. Even those begin to bleed into blinding blue-white, as the bike approaches a slight rise in the highway.

     At this speed, that slight rise sends it flying into the air. A white line, formerly a rider and cycle, cut a steep change in direction, racing towards Evehime with such purpose as if it were an arrow from her own bow. Finally, the rider is visible, having made a backflip from the bike-turned projectile. Caught in the slipstream, Mach looses a war cry increasing in volume as he races down to meet Evehime. The bike passes through, then Mach, and the impact is felt a second after. Exhausted, Mach hits the ground in a knelt stance, as an explosive discharge of the energy buildup occurs behind him.

                                   Mach 555!!                                  
Ophrys     I was right. She doesn't understand. She doesn't need to.
    Pieces on the board arguing with the player.

    The Gevurah's form is precisely what the Gevurah wants it to be. That much is plain to Ophrys. And yet, she is chided for pursuing that same desire simply because it is metal and carbon. The debt she so passingly alluded to before-- immaterial. The offense is that she abandoned her flesh.

    An offense that I couldn't rectify even if I wanted to.

    The shooting star spear catches her as she's taking off, impaling that oily, diffused silhouette at a point where she's still somewhat visible. The impact throws her back, breaking the camouflage in a shower of blue-white sparks. The spear impacts a megadiamond, flattening against it and slamming her body into it a quarter-second later.

    Static fills her vision, further obscured by damage readouts and system alerts. Shifting, Ophrys grabs on to the metal haft of her spear and wrenches, snapping it off. The flattened head is discarded one way, the broken haft the other. Unsteadily, the cyborg climbs to her feet again, clinging to the Megadiamond's sheer surface with one hand to steady herself.

    "So that's it, then. It's because my body is 'artificial' now. I abandoned what I had for something different. What I wanted or why I wanted it doesn't actually matter, it offends *you* that I did it at all," she mutters, her voice filled with static again. Faintly glowing golden eyes narrow, her expression otherwise unreadable behind her mask, "Go ahead and kill me then. It won't break your promise." Her posture straightens, the run of fluid and sparks down her mechanized form ceasing as damage control systems hum to life, "Promises are something you keep with people, not objects. You've made it clear that's all I am."

    Ophrys' silhouette melts away into the reactive camouflage of GhostWare.

--

    It's some time later in the melee when the assassin becomes visible again. Moving perfectly silently, aiming with mechanical precision. In her hand, a nanofiber vibroblade, its edges wirring at thousands of cycles per second. The menacing red-orange glow of the edge when it spun up is what prompted her to drop the Veil--

    --Right behind Evehime, in that close range she already learned the hard way not to do. At this point she doesn't seem to care. Her pupils have shrunken, tiny points of black amidst the glowing golden sea of static-obscured irises.

    Left side. Second rib. Definitely won't kill her. If I can just leave a scar before I die. Something that aches when it rains would be nice.
Persephone Kore      The heat in Marc's gaze is a long, long way from equaling Evehime's, and yet he doesn't break eye contact. Or maybe not "doesn't", but "can't". He's searching for something in her face, almost pleadingly. Swordfighting him is a bizarre exercise: Evehime obviously outksills him, but half the time her blade effortlessly pushes his aside, and half the time- when he has time to wish- he can hold a lock with her nearly evenly.

     "But I don't want to let it change me," he says between clashes, under his breath and out of it. A swordfight is an odd time to show this kind of vulnerability, but he has that in common with the rest of the 'family'. "Or- no, even if I wanted to, I can't. If I'm going to be with them again, then- I can't make my own path. I have to help Sapient Heuristics with theirs."

     "So it stays damage. Forever. Or until the work is done. I can't be like you, or like her."

     Marc's eyes widen again. He puts his hand up against the incoming punch, and wishes. The universe contorts itself with the effort of complying with a wish that contravenes Evehime's might, rippling space and spinning off tiny black holes that evaporate in bursts of light, but her fist halts just short anyway.

     A capillary in his right eye pops, starting to stain the sclera. He wipes his lower face with his sleeve and it comes away bright red. Because I don't deserve to do this for free. There has to be a cost, somehow.

     "And this gets me closer to Emery. So it's 'the work' too."

     He wishes, and the ground underneath Evehime is erased. For a fifth of a second, she is hovering over a void fifty feet across and a thousand feet deep, created by solid rock being compacted like tinfoil. Then he wishes again, and the force that acted on the rock acts on her.

     Abruptly accelerating downwards at a good fraction of the speed of light feels like a hammerblow. Decelerating via lithobrake at the bottom is just as bad. The only indication of what happened is the glowing plasma trail left behind.

     Marc floats above the pit, his clothes fluttering in telekinetic zero-G. His blood drips in as he looks down.

     His voice quivers a little, but the tone is steady. "Does this conviction satisfy you, Gevurah? I've been on this path ten years. You can't make this harder than another ten."
Metaphor Thud.

Nothing. Wasn't that supposed to do something? I was yelling like them. It's like the dramas.

I can't be that, though.

"You have the potential. Be someone."

"I can't be that, though." She doesn't expect to say this out loud. It was a thought intended to stay within the ( WELL-ARMORED / HIDEOUSLY VISIBLE ) fortress of her mind. But, like so many others she's expressed over the past week - it stubbornly refuses to settle down and be ignored. It comes out whisper-quiet, practically inaudible within the roaring, thought-drowning silence surrounding Evehime; of course, volume means nothing to the Gevurah.

Nothing except inertia of will resists as Metaphor is swiftly grabbed and shoulder-thrown a quarter of a mile - but the hovering path Ishirou shifts to her safely ablates her landing, once more ending up on her feet amidst eddies of glittering glassdust. Something happens, then. She looks at her contemporaries; battered, bruised, broken on the wheel that is the Warrior - a state that she does not share. Cloak billows, unscathed; plating has been dented and scratched but remains unharmed. A moment. She glances down at herself. There's a massive hole blown through her lower torso; the arm she swung with is almost non-functional. Plating has been scattered as debris across the entire path of the throw. That makes sense.

Despite the damage, though, she just picks right back up and starts sprinting again - and it's like she was never hurt in the first place. Something baseline allows this as a concession; she doesn't consciously acknowledge when Ishirou's Option starts giving more of her momentum than her legs. Plating fragments on the ground have always been part of her. A drawing on the side of her head is miraculously untouched. What I am. I'm a doctor. I can't be anything else.

"If you want to do more, know more, broaden what's meant by 'what you can,' then come and visit me again, and we can discuss it at length."

I can't DO anything else. Something is thrown at Reyes. It's a bruteheal mix, now. There's nothing but a glance of recognition at Go's salute.

"'Supposed to' is an interesting way to put it."

I'm not SUPPOSED to do anything else. Grenades make their way to people. They feel better. Is she even drawing them? They're already in her hands.

"Maybe, we're not suicidal idiots who go out, looking to get ourselves hurt, just to stress you out."

They CAN'T let me be anything else. A final canister is palmed.

Metaphor once more winds up to punch Evehime. There's a raw desperation in her voice; an unworded plea to not just her opponent, not just the world, but to herself within the completely nonsensical statement she screams.

    "IF I'M SOMEONE I'M NOT ME!"

Fist impacts something, and violently detonates. Inane thoughts flash through her mind in the split second. RDX 100u. Efficient. Took forty three minutes to make this much.

A solution; a denial.
Nephra Tangent     Nephra wanted it to hurt her back. She wanted to at least draw blood. It's not fair that she can't hurt/drag her back/down like how this feels to her. The best she gets is sparks.

    "I have more right to decide what you have earned than you do. Now swear you will earn it."

    Nephra bares her teeth and-

    -Spotlights blind and burn against the cold concrete of unconsciousness, like bleeding out under rattling, cheering gaze, her blow knocking her everything out and-

    -Until she's back, cratered into material that shouldn't ever break. On instinct, she tries to spit, assuming incorrectly that the knotlike lump in her throat must be a tooth or wad of cheek tissue. It's nothing so tangible.

    "That's it? You just want me to say it?" Nephra's suit starts to fold itself back up, the heart still blaring its constant thud-thud. Without the support of its exoskeleton, her legs strain under the pressing weight. Without the comforting grip of its frame, her arms shake. Without the touch of its nerve analogs, she visibly winces.

    "Haha." Dry, hoarse. A gloved hands wipes liquid from her eye and face. Shuffling footsteps carry her forwards.

    "Just a few words? It's that easy? If you tell me it's always been, I'll hate you forever."

    The smile's back on her face, because if someone else can think she's enjoying it, then someone's version of her gets to. Her spear's long-since discarded, and the gravity beneath her feet is utterly close to sapping all the strength from her flesh, adrenaline doing its best to keep her other heart pumping. There's no flair to this all, a walk more than a charge, moving after the Gevurah. Nephra wants nothing more than to feel her knuckles- three bone, two metal- impact her face, just once. It's the most strained form of conviction she can put into this all. She can still fall short.

    "Okay. Fine. I swear it." Her teeth are gritted. Left arm cocked back, then, punctuating her statement, the punch is thrown, wrist twisting and muscles screaming. There are tears on her face, now.

    Are you happy enough with me to care, now?
    Am I?
Hibiki Tachibana     Ah. That one simple motion leaves Hibiki wide open, entirely unable to get out of the way of the descending elbow hammering into her from behind. Playful, exactly the same as it felt with her, despite the fact her vision is blanking out for a split second and she finds herself face-first in dirt and stone. Her head is swimming, but all the important things as clear.

    Selfish.

    "...Ugh...haha, I probably am more than you think..." It takes her a few scant moments to push back up onto her hands and knees, and shake the blurriness out of her vision. More than once, she's gone and called herself that. She even disregarded mentions to the contrary. "Even me enjoying this so much is just a little selfish. Just a little bit..."

    From there, onto one leg, as other attacks pile in. "...There are plenty of others here who have way bigger problems than me. Wishes I'd all wanna see answered before mine. But even if I'm not the one who has to fight to see them happen...I'm still not here, right now, for any of those. It's not even just for you, Evehime..."

    "Trying to still understand you and close that gap, when you've told me to my face that it's totally impossible...I think that's about as selfish as it gets--!"

    And then she's up, whirling around to rush back towards Evehime, in the midst of everything else. One last machinery-assisted blow is readied, pilebunker shifting to whirling turbine and flaring boosters shooting out the back of the gauntlet, firing in time with her Symphogear's existing thrusters to propel her into a straight-line punch for the Gevurah, to impact into her like a train.

    One that won't be satisfied just by landing a solid blow, as contact will only make the numerous rockets double in intensity; Hibiki wants to make her /move/, an improbable goal made a little more possible by the trails of hyperglass she tries to brute force her onto, then ride into a steadily continuing acceleration that'll absolutely tear it apart behind them.

    And, of course, end with Symphogear machinery pummeling back in and causing further egregrious terrain damage with the both of them at the centerpoint of the violent explosion.
Reyes     Reyes predicted a fair few maneuvers on Evehime's part before he committed to filling the battlefield with dragon fire.

    And stomping straight through it waas NOT one of them. He can't help but gape. And while Evehime might not be able to see his face, the way his posture shifts, flinching back a degree, makes it very clear just how beyond ridiculous he thinks WALKING STRAIGHT THROUGH DRAGON FIRE is.

    At the very last moment - unfortunately, too late - Reyes withdraws his outstretched hands and curls the fingers of his right hand almost into a fist. They lock into place and more gems emerge from different panels embedded into the fingers. This time, gleaming topaz. The jewels pulse with power and with a sizzling crackle, a blade made of what seems to be solidified lightning, vivid blue-violet, its shape ever-so-faintly bending, twisting, forking and re-merging, extends from the shaped grasp.

    Just how many integrated Techno-Wizard features did he ADD to this thing....?!

    Nevertheless, the blade moves too slowly in his grasp, and he can't quite bring up a guard in time.

    Before he knows what's happening, the young man finds himself launched backwards, pain seared through his body in ten separate points. As he tumbles, chunks of his armor break away with small bursts of wild magical energies set loose. Its integrity is SHOT at this point...

    Groaning, Reyes rises from the wreckage, pushing ruined plating and broken machinery off of him and stumbling to his feet, panting for breath.

    "No question there. And I vastly prefer it." He seems quite unharmed himself, no doubt thanks to Evehime's strange techniques inflicting injuries-that-aren't, much to his confusion.

    This time, there's no fancy armor at play. Reyes stretches out his empty hands and begins rapidly chanting what sounds gibberish to those without the proper learning. Plasma-like blue power flows along his hands, and with a clenching of his fists, ghostly-translucenct dwarven armor exudes from his skin and locks into place. Crimson flame concentrates in his right, igniting into a blade made of the same dragon flame as before. His left hand glows strangely with a gathering of fine blue filaments growing ever-more complex, like a one-handed attempt at cat's cradle, weaving more and more finely...

    "But this is hardly the time and place to be waving around a helmet for facing your own fears in your dreams, a kiln that bakes and animates little clay dolls to dance for kids, or a boat that sails the ley lines...!"

    And with that declaration, he leaps. The Bruteheal Mix is caught by an unseen force and flies straight towards him mid-maneuver, with Reyes quickly using it at the top of his arc whether that means ingestion or injection and a quick smile for Metaphor.

    At that top of his arc, he stretches out with his left hand and sprays what looks countless tiny blue silly strings all over Evehime and her immediate surroundings.

    They're sticky. They're INSANELY sticky. Hundreds of times stickier than duct tape, a normal person would have no hope of even taking a step. They'd instantly fall on their rear, and then be stuck fast there too.

    Seemingly heedless of the dangerous hazard he's just caused, and sucking down the panic that's turning his face pale, Reyes descends in an attempt to get the best possible jump slash he can manage down onto the warrior-of-warriors!
Evehime Gevurah     "When you free yourself from the weight of your past, you will not remain still. As removing a great weight while drowning, you will ascend, quickly. Ensure that you are poised to rise towards the place you must be. If you allow yourself to swing away from your past without control, you will rupture and die."

    "It is anything but easy. That is why it is worth doing. What value you see in me is what I gained through conquest, not birthright. You need not slow. You need not pause. You need not show mercy. It is all the better that you do not. That I might show you how is the crux of your wish, though you cannot yet imagine it. The bonds between you are something you have gained by consuming your foe in your pyre. There is no need to flinch away from the heat when it comes to everything else you stand to gain, still."

    "How you've grown, from raging against those who have less. I feel the Rejection of 'God's in your voice, young as it is."

    "I care not what your body is made of. It matters that it is 'bought'. Shaped by others. It is fine, to begin somewhere, if you are unable to change the shape you were born with as I have, but it is contrary to buy your shape and then flee from the paying. If it has not served you well, it is one thing to regret what you have sacrificed. But you have profited, and yet you are unable to escape it. Now, tell me what part of 'no one will die' it is that you have failed to understand."

    "Contemplate why it i that there are innumerable paths, yet ten Truths. It is not that all but ten lead into the void, but that it is true that we all take our own ways, some longer than others, to arrive at the destinations we share; the places we finally meet one another again, and share our experiences. You cannot be just the same as them. That is a fact you have already accepted. But there is no reason your course cannot wind back to theirs. You may move with the deflection of your life's path. Bend it back, gracefully, so its arc does not break you. Rather than resist, you may still walk towards that future through the places that the present screams to show you. That I will show you. From one to another, who bravely, dutifully, and naively fought where her heart knew she must go, thinking it would take her from 'the work'. Then share what you have learned with them, when you meet at the place their path cut shortest to."

    "Even if you are nothing to you, you are something to someone else. By your very nature as a healer, the you that lives in the minds of others is a titan next to the 'I' within you. Be something, or something will be made of you."

    "The words are easy. All things that condemn you to struggle later always are. This world is built that way for a reason. What will hurt you more than anything is when your belief in 'could have had' becomes 'could have'. Whatever fondness I hold is irrelevant. What matters is that I have no time for dead women. Signs of life, that you wish some version of yourself to have lived, are enough to begin."

    "It remains impossible. For you alone. And for I. But the way of gaps is that they halve in size when bridged from both ends. Tell me. Do you think there is any way I could be, any new shape I could become, where I can convey to you what it is that I love?"

    "That thinking, of time and place, is learning the law of 'God' by blind faith. Seeking reward for blind mastery. Consider that you face the illogic that I have used arts to kill you a million times over, and yet urge you to stand. Why I feel such warmth in your survival. That you may survive even this that I show you!"
Evehime Gevurah     Evehime tears at Reye's bindings with strength even beyond what she's already shown. She breaks the slash with a straight thrown right through it, against her knuckles. She slugs back and forth with Hibiki, laughing as the blows land on her and she throws them right back a thousand times harder, too thrilled to guard against them. The RDX explosion blows back so hard that the black cloth of her garments tears. Nephra runs up and her augmented knuckles are met with similar carelessness, stopped just short, even, by the Gevurah leaning into them, as if to feel for herself, whilst throwing back. The sneak attack cleaves through the smoky shroud billowing out from the detonation. Kukuru's tremendous, gravity manipulated lunge is met head on, as Evehime trades her to ground with both arms occupied via spectacularly vicious headbutt. The rifle hits closer and closer, until the bullets strike flesh dead on. Go's ride bike sideswipes her with such ferocity that Evehime leaves the ground and streaks sidelong through the air, visibly, if lightly, scorched and battered, turning and crouching low with uncanny grace, catching earth with one foot first and bleeding it all into a barrel roll kick. Ishirou's hyperglass attack Marc slams down with his telekinetic force, dropping Evehime straight into a pit so immense that it seems only she should have been able to create it in the first place. She disappears from view.

    "Come, Haevateyr!"

    All of that 'heat' built up within Evehime is suddenly released. The loop of the collider is broken. The solar loop breaks out of orbit and lances into the void. Divine fire vents a mile upward and another mile again, overflowing the crater and piercing, towering, into the sky; it wipes out shadows, blacks out sand, melts down hyperglass into glowing lakes, and reduces wreckage into plumes of toxic smoke. The ambient heat rises so high that the air catches fire, in little fits and bursts, embers forming out of nothing and breaking apart. It should be instantly lethal from sheer biological shock. It is not. I don't want it to be. I have such things to show you.

    Evehime lands on the edge of the crater, from some impossible leap, and the impact splits the earth throughout the plateau into a spiderweb of smouldering chasms. The hellish heat and radiant fire follows her like a flowing cloak. black armour, old and flanged and gothic, sheathes one arm and extends out to partially cover her torso, a shoulder guard and collar crawling up her neck, to a shot of red through her hair and a single matching horn. A template, overlaid on one part of her body, wrestled into a warrior's shape, as if radiating out from the sword in her hand.

    Haevateyr is so enormous that it makes even Evehime's wielding of it look absurd. The hilt is a long iron staff even for her. The guard rests across both shoulders, dark and brutalistic. The blade is enshrouded in such immense, world-burning heat, that it is barely visible as more than a glowing outline amidst an entire building of fire, slung over her one armoured shoulder, like the heart of a star hammered into a fluked sword-blade. The fact that she grips it in both hands to ready it is frightening. The fact that she takes a stance with it is even more alarming.
Evehime Gevurah     But there's nowhere to go anyways. Evehime swings it once, and it's still faster than sight. The entire world is briefly painted over with such intense flame and motion that even reflected light paints every inch of the world red-white. Night blackness collapses into its wake like a vacuum. The grainy rumble of a nuclear bomb following. She somehow reverses it, and swings back across again; the sharp, deadly arcs of a saner sword. The paths it leaves in the air cross over each other, a third line cutting through the asymmetrical X formed from sustained atmospheric burn. Back and forth, flame and blade dancing this way and that, slashing away at the world as if painting it, scouring away the landscape as if erasing it. A flurry of ten, exacting blows happens in an instant--

    And then it stops. All at once, though it takes light a moment to realize, and sound far longer to rush past and cease its wailing roar. The heat used to materialize it is spent. The flame burns out into an immense, swirling constellation of embers, like a billion fireflies. The landscape has been reduced to a perfect level of clean white, flat and pristine, superheated glass. Like a blank room, save that the air shimmers. Ash drifts from the sky like snow. Nothing is left but you. Because I want you to know what I want for you. How much I long to reach you.

    Evehime rocks back and then drops back to the ground. She's seated on the only feature there is; the only place left raised and rocky is what was contained within her own protective Halo. Sighing with satisfaction, her breath steams and away; as does, more slowly, the trickle of blood oozing from her cheek, and another, from her waist. It's the first time she's bled, in all this time. The burns and bruises appear superficial at best, but she stops anyways. Reaching into her top, she draws out a long, black gilded pipe. The contents spontaneously catch light. "I'd not waste it." she says, putting the metal tip between her teeth.

    "Now. I see several wishes to grant."
Ishirou Ishirou has exhausted so much of his kit, just to make it this far.  He breathes heavily, knowing that it's not over /yet/.  But he can't back down yet...he needs to do this, not just for himself but /them/.  For his home...for his future...

Then it comes.  Destruction on a scale compared to only by stars.  His sensors scream that this isn't possible, but he /knows/ it is.  It's a star, and the only reason he would survive this is that she willed it so.  However, despite everything...he didn't want to go down.  He wanted to show more...that he wanted more.

The hyperglass superhighway is broken down and redirected towards himself.  He throws everything at it, but as that sword swings and the world becomes white, he has to throw MORE.  Pieces of rocks, the earth, nearby metal slags, anything he could get his hands on is thrown.  He doesn't have to block it, he just has to /withstand/ this for a fraction of a second longer.  

Everything he throws is immediately consumed by the fire.  But...it subsides, with the sword being placed tip down at her feet.  He stands, sparking dangerously.  Pieces of his armor are just gone.  Melted, or sacrificed to keep the rest alive.  The boy is /hurt/ but he's not dead or knocked down.  He sizzles though, his heat warnings out of control.

He breathes, "I guess...I still got...a ways to go...haha..." And then he collapses on the spot.  The RESCUE unit fading away and the Boy just laying back first on the ground looking up.  "Everything hurts...haha.."  
Metaphor "The you that lives in the minds of others is a titan next to the 'I' within you."

That's all I am anyways. Dead.

Metaphor's mind doesn't have the right avenues to process any of what happens as the blade is wielded. She hasn't been thinking straight regardless. It's too much. The backblast from her punch gambit propels her backwards, feet still planted, but she just stops. Stares. Frozen in... something. Nothing. A dreamlike detachment from herself and the lightshow.



Metaphor dies in this moment.
Metaphor is unharmed in this moment.



Metaphor lies shattered on the plain. Parts of her; limbs, plating, servos, spread back from her like a blast cone. A torso; a left arm; skeletons of these remain settled within an unharmed cloak. A forensic investigator would note extreme discrepancies, however:

- No parts are truly wrecked, past twenty minutes of repair.
- No parts are missing.
- Her paint hasn't even been scuffed.
- All of this wreckage is, somehow, in blatant violation of applied rules.

A cube flickers with ( LIGHT / LIGHT ) within a damaged superstructure; the sole remaining arm sparks, before reaching up towards the sky - if her head was still attached, she would be blatantly staring at the back of her hand. She limply drops it after a solid five minutes, before dragging herself over to the vestige of an upper arm nearby. Click. A slow, methodical reassembly. Time to think.

Yet, the thoughts don't come. She doesn't know how to react to this. More than anything, she's just tired.

"Be something, or something will be made of you."

I thought I was already doing that.

...

She leaves, at some point, once she's put her legs back on (faster than she should be able to) and collected all the rest of her spare parts. Nothing is spoken during this; but as she sets off in an arbitrary direction down the Line, she stares at Evehime, for a few seconds.

The first time she'd made eye (equivalent) contact since the start of the fight.

Thanks.
Go Shijima      For a moment, Go is surprised. Surprised that the armor withstood what he just put it through, in his desire to give Evehime an entertaining conclusion. When he stops--not phyiscally, but when his mind settles upon something--it's as if Evehime's followup kick is a return to reality. It isn't unpleasant to come back to. It isn't unpleasant to realize that this is me, and that's her.

     I didn't think I'd even budge her. I guess Ishirou's help was proof enough of what I said a minute ago, huh? Angry messages about the suit's kinetic redistribution tolerance flash urgently on his HUD. They are joined, on the coming of Haevateyr, by warnings about atmospheric heat. It is a terrifying weapon, an alarming weapon--but to see it brandished before him in a practiced stance mingles in a kind of thrill, that urges him to his feet even as his muscles ache and the suit complains. He sprints--at a normal, human speed--towards her. There is nowhere -to- go, so he might as well run straight towards her. It's exhilarating, even as the flame washes out his vision. The Zenrin Shooter--that wheel-fronted laser pistol, feels like a thousand pound weight in his hand.

     Whatever his attack might have been would surely have been haggard and exhausted. Even that is cut short, by ten strokes in a single, blinding, blistering instant. His exultant shout is drowned first by deafening silence, then by the roar of sound which seems as if it remembers it ought to exist.

     When light and color and sound return to the world, they paint a picture of an exhausted Go Shijima, lying on his back, chest heaving, sweat matting his red tee to his body, new burns and bruises on his arms, his neck, his cheek. "You see?" he says, between breaths. "I told you... we'd live. Stop being... such a baby, Metaphor." He is elated.

     "Evehime..." He swallows, forcing himself to sit up. Standing needs another minute or two at the least. "...you really read me like a map, didn't you. Yeah. I was angry at people who had less than me. And I wish I could say I didn't know that, but on some level, I did."

     "Several of those people are gone, because of me," he explains, eyes cast downwards. "Because I was so angry at them for something they took from me, that I didn't care how little they had. Much less, how we'd all been affected by someone who took from us. They needed help, not punishment. The ones who are left need help, too." He takes a steadying breath.

     "To be the best they can be. That's why I want to protect and restore. And because the world also tries to punish them for hurting, I need to change that, too."
Hibiki Tachibana     To imagine Evehime had something like this in reserve is honestly unthinkable. With how overwhelming she already is, the thought that there was anything 'more' is just something that doesn't occur. But it does, right before their eyes, in a wash of heat and flame. Armor. A blade. It's all so patently ridiculous that Hibiki, still clutching her arm in the wake of her own attack, can only watch with wide eyes.

    And fade out of view and into white, when the overlapping slashes scorch the landscape, surge over each and every one of them, and leave nothing in their all-searing wake other than...them.

    Them, and her, only still here because the one responsible wishes it to be so. That fact is not lost on the magical girl, now on her back and panting for breath. Evehime is, so much more than when she had threatened that battlefield with destruction from above, on another level entirely. It's truly terrifying. Not funny in the least.

    So why is she laughing?

    It's a tired laugh, far more from the exhaustion that comes with a hard fight than injuries that were denied existence. And it laughs for an entire half a minute, lying on her back and chuckling like an idiot, before it begins dying down. Though even when it does, even when her transformation ends and puts her back in her normal clothes, there's still an unbidden and subdued smile on her face, as her eyes close.

    "Bridged from both ends...yeah. You're right. Understanding doesn't only go one way or the other."

Do you think there is any way I could be, any new shape I could become, where I can convey to you what it is that I love?

    It's hard to tell if Hibiki is answering directly, or simply musing to herself, several seconds after thinking about it. But she does answer, quietly and without changing expression.

    "...I might not know what that way or shape would be, exactly," she doesn't mind admitting. "...But I think you came one step closer to it. And as long as you keep wanting it...we'll find ways to make that gap smaller and smaller."

    She has to believe that. And not just for her and Evehime's sakes.
Redshift Operators     A certain woman sights the blade as it's drawn. A third optic blazes, and two eyes widen below a mask. She whispers something under her breath. "I thought it only possible in the darkest eras of an artistic mind..." Then the shockwave of its effects ripples, from the future to the present. "Cover. Now."

    A certain giant grips the other three behind a chunk of megadiamond. Even in spite of total incineration, he's somehow the one to bear every part of it that would have been lethal. It wasn't, thank goodness. But somehow, even still.

    The world is flame. This is what a certain man has always lived, in a way. This heat, this fire. This death. No, maybe not quite this intense, not condensed into sweeping slashes. But something close to it, the closest that human hands and human tools and human fissile materials can get. The giant is slumped over, breathing heavily. The woman crawls with her good arm, moving to inject various medications, salve wounds, apply bandages. The man rests against the giant's side, head propped up on one massive leg. One hand struggles up, to grasp at ash.

    The astronaut stands in the superheated clearing, staring up at the ash. They sling the heavy rifle over their shoulder and approach Evehime. They walk, seemingly fearlessly, somehow machine-like, until they're several feet away, and then they stare at her.

    It takes about ten seconds before they speak. "'Wishes.' He wants a favor. I think he wants help killing The Company, once he knows more about something. I don't know if he earned it. Maybe next time." They look at her in silence for another several seconds, speaking up only just before Evehime might in reply. "You're still not getting what you want. You're a step closer. But there's unfulfilled objectives. You're not able to stop wanting this. Or even try. Fulfilling this has got you stuck until it's done."

    Another awkwardly long silence. Then they sit down with weirdly clumsy movements, crossing their legs and messing with their PDA to call a ride. "Maybe." They mutter.
Reyes     Sublime skill, unmatched strength. The power to sunder the heavens themselves.

    Unleashed, in the blink of an eye, smack dab in everyone's faces.

    Reyes throws everything he's got into his defenses, but just as before, the Armor of Ithan simply cannot hold, and he's blown away as the world goes white and searing pain briefly obliterates his consciousness.

    For all of two seconds, maybe.

    Dazed, drained, his whole body deeply wracked with exhaustion, he slowly raises his head, although is laying face-down in what's LEFT of the plateau in a sorry state.

    "Blind... blind faith...?" He sputters, tired mind trying to wrap around the meaning of the message that has been scorched into him with the fury of the sun.
Persephone Kore      "That... may be so. That other paths could lead to the same destination. But I don't think I'm strong enough to walk them alone." Marc's eyes shut peacefully, for just a moment, as he levitates over the pit. "I'm lucky, then, that I don't have to. You and her are better to me than I deserve."

     Marc is, of course, directly above the ascending column of fire. This is a problem, though not an insurmountable one: I don't want to be hurt, and the jet parts around that force like a stream around a rock. His clothes are toasted at the edges, which will make him grumpy later.

     He floats back down to the ground as Evehime draws the vast blazing sword, gracefully alighting near the fore. Self-induced strain aside, he's barely been touched. With a gesture, the notched metadiamond blade from before finds its way back to his hand. A kind of desperate disbelief is written on his face- does she really expect us to fight against this?- but he raises the blade anyway, braced against it.

     He is struck by ten atmosphere-burning blows before he can move a muscle or articulate a wish. Marc's body is no tougher than an ordinary person's. If not for Evehime's mercy, he would be dead.

     But with that mercy, the body's toughness is not the limit. Persephone has said, before, that even a little child could beat her if they wanted it more. Maybe that was an exaggeration, but a fight without true violence is a fight about feelings, and feelings play a role in whether one stays down.

     When the blinding light fades, he is already walking towards her. His shoes smoke on contact with the superheated ground. His clothes are scorched at their edges. His nosebleed soaks the front of his shirt. The hilt of his sword, melted, seeps between his clenched fingers until wishes it into the shape of a new blade.

     "Will you speak with them, Gevurah, or must I prove my conviction further?"

     "I see several wishes to grant."
     When he hears those words, the strength leaves him. He collapses immediately, and laughs, and gasps for air.
Ophrys     Ophrys had been at Ground Zero when the sword came out, trying to find purchase with her knife, to leave something behind. She is, as a result, one of the first to vanish in the blade's all-consuming heat.

    When everything comes to pass, she is there. Heinously damaged, sparking in multiple places. One leg gone at the hip, the other at the knee. Only one of her wings survived, though glowing hot and alarmingly floppy with vibration.

    She still has the knife, but has been blown clear of being any further threat with it, immobilized as she is. She can hardly support sitting up, and after a few failed attempts, collapses back and folds her forearm over her eyes. A harsh, rasping sound statics its way out through the breathing mask she wears.

    Who cares where it came from. I chose it. Don't my feelings matter at all?
    Of course they don't. Not to someone like this.
    She can only be right. So if I'm wrong. There's nothing that can be done.
    Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. It could never be that easy.

    Unmoving, she speaks out loud after several minutes, her voice croaking with resignation through the static, "I get it. Just mail me to Monarch's engineering department. Overnight post is fine. I'll reimburse it, and you'll never hear from me again. I deserve at least that much."

    It's what I deserve after falling for something I knew was impossible from the start.
Nephra Tangent The shift in Evehime's fighting catches Nephra off guard, but where leaning into a blow ought usually cheapen the satisfaction of landing one, she finds that somehow, this time, it doesn't. It's the words that came just before that sap strength from Nephra, as her armor clambers its way back down her limbs and around her torso.

    "I know that's what hurts more. I know it will. That's what I'm most scared of." Her voice is barely a whimper, in the brief moments of something close to respite, before the sky is lit with the Gevurah's monumental armament.

    "What matters is that I have no time for dead women. Signs of life, that you wish some version of yourself to have lived, are enough to begin."

    Staring down the nigh-unfathomable destruction incarnate that Evehime wields, there is just enough armor to be found in those words for Nephra to stay standing- not through the blow, heavens no- but to face it.

    Other than the magnitude of the tugging feeling at her gut, all-too familiar, the neurotransmiters and synthetic warning sensations cascading up her central nervous system, there is no real difference between this and the atomizing blows. Either she will die, utterly and immediately, and as such why think about it, or she will face the kind of hurt she's good at- the kind that the brain isn't even built to remember- and there's no corpses to be made today.

    When it's through and done, she's laying on her back, head ringing, body sore, in the endless plane of glass, afterimages seared into her eyes alongside dancing embers, the distinction between the two lost on her. It's not her muscles that pull her back up, but pistons and motors, and the weight needed to stay that way.

    She coughs into a gauntleted hand, once. Twice. And then a short, hollow laugh.

    "You're bleeding." Is the first thing she says, awkwardly, at the titanic woman. A muttered, awkward, "Thank you..." the second, her target less clear.
    For bothering. For trying.