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Petra Soroka     Petra told Candy where she was. She hasn't left the body, or gone somewhere to hide, or made it difficult to access her in any way other than traversing a hundred miles of dense Canadian taiga. The vista is placid and green and cold, and nearly unbroken in its completeness until you arrive at Petra's coordinates.

    Smoke can linger in the air for weeks after a fire, and if you arrive by flight, the faint haze and acrid smell still clouding the atmosphere is the first indication that you're getting close. The second is the shallow, rocky lake, stretching out through the pine trees in a rough L-shape, glittering with afternoon light reflecting off of ripples. Once closer, the clearing itself is visible, a scorched hellscape that's just barely begun to scab over.

    The twisted metal scraps of what used to be RVs are strewn around, the interiors spilling out like guts. Debris collects in a dozen craters, meters across and deeper than a human is tall. Water pools at the bottom of the basins, and the edges scrape into the surrounding treeline and leave splinters instead of trees. A wooden building is half-destroyed, the remnants of the campsite office blasted and crumbling. The Ekanamsha S1 itself, as if protecting its nest, crouches in the center, covered in blast scars and seemingly powered down. Ishirou is probably in one of those pits.

    Petra herself is laying down in a cluster of scrubgrass on a rocky outcropping into the lake, one leg extended and one knee bent. With one hand, she idly spins the reel of a fishing pole that she took from the wreckage of one of the RVs. There's no line on the pole, and it's just laying in the grass beside her, unused. Her dented metal water bottle leans on the rock beside her, along with her gunblade. Her other hand is keeping her phone balanced on her chest while she talks.
Petra Soroka PHONE: Father Berislav says, "Yes, I know. You wield culture like a sword, hoping that someone will knock it from your hands. But you don't know how old that weapon is, the collective knowledge put into making it as deadly as possible. You swing, with purposeful clumsiness, but the only one who can drop the sword altogether is you. You seek out the worst outcomes as a matter of course, and so 'winning' in general is an alien and terrifying idea to you--because, as you said, it's followed by 'then what.'"

PHONE: Phoning Father Berislav, Petra Soroka says, "I... just really, really can't stand, being shrapnel to people like this."
PHONE: Phoning Father Berislav, Petra Soroka says, "Bikki. Buttercup. R-Rita. All of the Watch."
PHONE: Father Berislav says, "Make your first brushstroke. Put down your first brick, or pluck your first string. The longer you put off deciding who you are, the more bitter you'll be about the gulf between those two shapes. And the easier it will be for you to hurt the people you care about. Start thinking about it now, because you won't have time during the fight."
PHONE: Phoning Father Berislav, Petra Soroka says, "...Yeah. Yeah. I see what you mean. And I kind of have an idea."
PHONE: Father Berislav says, "I believe in you."
PHONE: Phoning Father Berislav, Petra Soroka makes a small, choked laugh.
PHONE: Phoning Father Berislav, Petra Soroka says, "That's dumb."

<X-Watch-Chatter> Petra Soroka connects and says, with her voice quiet and not raspy or cracking for once, "I'll make it easy for you, Bikki. You shouldn't be here, and shouldn't stand up for me, whenever it happens. Whatever happens will happen and you don't deserve to be in the line of fire for it."
<X-Watch-Chatter> Petra Soroka disconnects, and her name disappears from the list completely.

    Petra Soroka, unaffiliated terrorist, turns her phone off and closes her eyes to bask in the sunlight without any warmth. After a few seconds, she sits up, looks down at her trembling hands, tears rolling off her cheeks to drip onto them. She coughs, swallows, and then lights a cigarette, ready to wait however long it takes.
Kale Hearthward Kale's had a few people he knows die on him like this. He's a soldier, it happens. Not someone as close to him as Ishirou had been, though.

How often had they doubled up on missions in the Paladins over the last few years - Kale scouting, feeding info to Ishirou for maps and analysis? It's not going to be like that anymore, now.

... There'll be time to process that later. After the paperwork, the notifying of next of kin, and the end of life ceremonies - he's already planning on taking it on himself to handle and arrange everything. Lilian was also close to Ishirou, as was Tamamo, but the former might be needing to focus on herself for a while, and the latter might be needing to focus on the former.

... Before any of that, though. Retrieving the body. The East Wind lingers for a moment near the closest warpgate, taking on anyone who needs a ride before it sets off. The interior is very spartan, with just a few rows of seating in the empty warehouse-sized interior - normally a hospital ship, it had been stripped bare for renovations when the crew had heard the news, and there wasn't time to do more than add some extra seats.

"... There." Kale's riding inside in the cockpit for once, instead of on top. "That's close enough to POD's coordinates, and it looks like someone's lit a fire."

He peers closer, his hawk eyes peering down at the ground.. "... And there's the Ekanamsha. And what looks like.. an RV graveyard."

"I'm going down directly. Skye, put the East Wind down at a safe distance away."

The pilot nods as Kale heads for the ceiling hatch. There's a brief blast of cold air (tinged with the scent of old smoke) as he climbs out of the ship, and from there simply steps off the edge to freefall down towards the center of the 'nest', activating his jet boots to slow his fall in the last few seconds. If there's a trap, he's going to try to set it off early before the others arrive.
Futaba Nuki 'At least I'd be doing /something/ to rein her in. And what's this about BFFs? I've only talked to her... Like... Twice!'

Futaba's certainly said worse things to people shortly before never seeing them again, but this would have to be the first time she's said something that directly led to someone dying. Even though she hadn't known Ishirou for long, the feeling in her gut is still incomparably awful compared to anything else she's experienced. There's still knots in her throat as she departs the East Wind, gliding over the target area to scope things out and find her target..

With so many ways to detect Petra, reaching her and getting the jump on her would be fairly easy. After everything that's happened and all the pain that's been caused, would it even be unexpected? Perhaps, perhaps not, but that question isn't anywhere in Futaba's mind because she doesn't sneak up on the unaffiliated terrorist.

Insetad, the ninja approaches her from open space on dry land, deliberately crunching through burnt grass and crunching leaves to make her presence obvious even while dressed in the full black and gray ninja-outfit.

"Hey, Petra." Futaba's voice doesn't have that usual upbeat energy to it. "You know why I'm here, right?" She sniffs once and wrinkle her nose slightly at the cigarette smell, hands held inside her pockets as she glances around once at the soon-to-be battlefield.

"You still have a chance to get out of this. Just... G-go along, and maybe they'll go a little easier on you." That horrible feeling in her throat still won't go away. It's making it harder to talk assertively.
Dragonfly      By all rights, Dragonfly shouldn't be here. Unaffiliated and uninvolved, just the way she likes it, and also completely dwarved in ability by all of the apparent actual fucking Elites present. But she's got business here with Ishirou- Metaphor is going to want his corpse, obviously- and so she's somehow found herself being carted over by Kale, on the East Wind. Benefits of being the "ship's mechanic" of an actual Paladin, is that you can beg their co-workers to take you along on their little missions, ostensibly by request of your "captain". Corpse retrieval probably counts under the job description if you're the only other permanent crew member, right? Not that Metaphor actually asked her to do this.

     Following after Kale in exiting the East Wind, Dragonfly tries really, really hard to look like she doesn't actually have anything to do with him, fussing with the contents of a rather large and otherwise mostly empty-looking duffel bag. To nobody in particular, she states, "Hey, I'm just here to run in and grab something really quick, so it'd be nice if you all could let me do that and not involve me in any fights that are about to break out. Thanks."

     Ahaha, like that's going to work.

     Right.
Ishirou The corpse of Ishirou is in fact laying in one of the craters. Blasted against some piece of debris, and lay flat on his back. Dried blood stains the ground underneath him, his chest where the blade went down with enough force to cause a small crater on the ground, and around his lips where he likely choked on his blood.

If this was the worse thing that he experienced, then he might have survived. Parts of the RESCUE Unit are completely melted. They seem to have melted very quickly and suddenly. In fact, to the degree that one arm is...well, gone. Much of his skin is covered by third-degree burns at best. At worse, is like his arm.

When S6 gets close, POD disengages from the RESCUE unit, and Ishirou lies there in an outfit. The one that Miku had picked out for him, completely soaked in his dry blood.
S6     A sleek black craft swoops out over the treeline, banking sharply over the lake and the devastation surrounding the charming campground that used to be located on its shoreline. It's no discernable Earthen make, but a distinctive Indus design. The FANTOM logo can still be seen, mostly worn off the undersides of either wing.

    - TARGET LOCATED -

    "I am disembarking. Keep it in a holding pattern."

    - UNDERSTOOD. -

    The belly of the craft unfolds and draws back, releasing a silver-haired woman in a black dress. Striker Six flips to right herself as she descends and then drops like a stone, impacting the charred loam hard enough to rattle flame-scarred timber. From the shock-absorbant crouch, she dashes, kicking up ash and debris-- and not at all approaching Petra Soroka's obvious position. Instead, S6's main priority becomes incredibly obvious.

    She skids to a halt at the rim of one of the craters. Blue eyes search the wreckage until she finds what she's looking for. Golden runes ignite amidst the ruin and she extends a hand, lifting with her palm upward. Resistent at first, the shredded ruin of the RESCUE hauls itself free, captured in the runic rings of the VRCS.

    She freezes, squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw. It's impossible to miss how limp the suit is. Taking a step back, she turns and swings the RESCUE out over more stable ground to gently lay it down. She holds out her hand, manifesting the Virtuous Contract in a flash of golden sparks. Using the sword, S6 carves into the RESCUE's mangled torso. With a flash of the VRCS, the weakened chestplate is torn off and hurled aside.

    She was hoping it would be empty.

    It is not, in fact, empty.

    The android's hands shake, her head bowing until silver bangs hide her eyes. The Contract drops from her hands, embedding itself in the scorched soil by her feet. Gently, she lowers to her knees, resting one hand on the ruined RESCUE and reaching in with the other to touch the pilot's cheek.

    Her shoulders lift, then sag once. Her hand raises, touching her own face with gloved fingertips. In a flash of golden sparks, the FANTOM combat visor flares in to cover her eyes. Something she hasn't worn in months.

    Slowly, S6 rises back to her feet. The VRCS's golden ring manifests once more and, violently, she wrenches a panel off the RESCUE's wreckage so that his POD can float free, "Temporary offer. Assist me in place of POD-94."

    - FUNCTIONALITY WILL BE LIMITED. -

    "I do not care."

    - UNDERSTOOD AND ACCEPTED. -

    Equipped now with a black POD in place of her usual white one, Striker Six, Model 18A spins in place to approach Petra and Futaba's location. Her hand holds out to one side. The Virtuous Contract shudders where it got stuck, then sails back into her waiting grip.
Lilian Rook PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "This is what happens to people who get involved with me."
PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "There'll always be people like her. Always situations like this. Around me."
PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "Everyone stood back and let her go at me, and go at me, and push me, and push me. Just like always. Everyone was sweet and soft on her, patient, giving her all the retries she wants, chiding a little, but not really serious. Just like always. Everyone cared about if *she* figured her shit out, and ignored me, because it's my problem and I can deal with it; if I didn't want it to happen, I should just be different; I'm invincible and she needs care. Just like always."
PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "This all happened because, on some level, you thought her second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth and ninth chances were more important than me. Or him."

PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "You had six months to notice the cracks forming. Six fucking months."
PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "None of you are going to do anything about it. Nobody is. Just like always. Nobody cared until Ishirou-- . . . So you don't get to tell me what I can and can't do."
PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "Whatever I do has nothing to do with you anymore."
PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "I'm taking care of this, like I should have from the start. Don't be there."

PHONE: (To Candy, Hibiki Tachibana, and Rita Ma) Lilian Rook says, "The stupid thing I did, and now I've learned not to do, was feel safe."

<B-anter> Petra Soroka says, "...I don't really like that it turned out this way."
<B-anter> Lilian says, "He mattered. You don't. No one will come to save you."
<B-anter> Lilian says, "And there'll be nothing left of you when I'm done."

<X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Lilian Rook says, "ETA thirty six hours."

    The forest is alive with pattering crunches of twoscore heavy gaits in the brush. Heavy boots mangle boreal growth underfoot. Bodies crash swiftly through wild branches. The sound, subtle only at first, approaches the clearing from the entire four o'clock arc. By the time the noise is pressing, it's already too late to do anything about it. At least a dozen figures, tall carbon black, powered armour slashed with Paladins olive, melt out of the treeline at a headlong sprint, military boots tearing up the brittle grass where they suddenly halt. A line of rifles swivels up from the hip in clockwork clattering unison, putting Petra against ranks of glowing holosights.
Lilian Rook     Two more appear from the middle, at the head of the chevron formed by the Paladins special forces. Two girls in the charcoal grey, gunmetal silver, and dull gold of Immunes battlesuits, one blonde, masked, and cloaked, carrying a gnarled staff, and the other black-haired, partially lacquer-armoured, and gripping a sheathed odachi over her back. Both vibrate with a level of readiness that verges on bloodthirst, staring at Petra with the gaze of an experienced hunter waiting for a bear to charge.

    The overwhelming force brought out against her only somehow makes it feel worse, when Lilian saunters out of the trees and up to the very point of the spear. Already clad in the Lady in Black, Night Mist over her back, she slowly thumbs ammunition rods into Winter Crow's open en bloc with cold methodical patience. The quiet click, click, click, of her loading, is the loudest sound her entire unit makes. The way she speaks is chillingly recognizable. The way her eyes slide right off of Petra's face and down to center mass. Her voice is sharp. Frosty. Callous. Enunciated to a glassy edge. Leaden with unexcitement.

    "Petra Soroka. You know what you did to end up in this situation, yes?"
    "Do you know what's going to happen to you now?"
    "I really wonder if you even know why you did any of this; why you felt the need to be what you've chosen to be. I can't fathom your reasoning. I don't even know if you got what you wanted."
    "But you already knew, that I always win in the end. I hope you said your goodbyes, because you can surrender now, or . . ."
    "Well, I'd be grateful if you resisted a little. I'd enjoy taking you by force."
Tamamo     The last time Tamamo had seen Petra Soroka had been during the failed assassination of Dr. Eggman. Around the same time, she'd learned some of what had gone on between Petra and Lilian, not just from their immediate interactions during that conflict, but of what had gone on through other channels. Things she'd never expected. Things she could barely comprehend. If there was one thing she'd understood clearly, it was that Petra's every action is aimed to pull Lilian further away, and that's sufficient reason to never let the two be alone together. Even if she finds many aspects of this course distasteful, and would rather it be handled by others, there's no better option but to involve herself. Soft as she is, she can still be a shield, when it's fully necessary.

    Her usual robes are also her battlewear. There's no distinction. Her preparations, the ones that don't require her to be on-site, are fully completed well before she arrives. Future readings. Blessings. Arcane protections. Rolls of curses prepared based on the knowledge of her opponent she's already gained. She'd been insistent and persuasive, though not as swift, in inserting herself into the operation, coming up right behind Lilian.

    Lilian always has a supply of her talismans, but Satsuki and Arina, the lieutenants, now do, too, together with charms of protection. Taking half-measures, at this point, doesn't suit her. There is, in fact, no smile on Tamamo's face. Her look has a distant calm.

    "No, we know how this story unfolds," she murmurs, just loud enough to hear. "To grant the dignity of an offer to surrender, the opportunity to explain, to voice defiance, or to beg -- this is an unnecessary kindness."
Petra Soroka Petra's phone rings again, and she staunchly ignores it for as long as she can resist. Whoever it is, she's probably already made her feelings clear, and talking to them now on the precipice will only make it worse for everyone. She lasts almost an entire minute before flipping it open to check the caller ID.

PHONE: Rita Ma says, "I don't know when you'll get this, Ms. Petra. I don't know if you'll get it. But I'm sorry I couldn't be better for you."

    Petra's eyes start stinging immediately, and her breath hitches. Staring at the screen, she almost misses the flicker of movement on the horizon. The East Wind, she's certain even before it's close enough for her to make out its shape. Petra takes a breath and holds it, then lets it out with a gasp and picks up.

...

PHONE: Rita Ma pours it all out. "I don't know how to feel about that. I still don't know. I don't. I miss him already."
PHONE: Rita Ma says, "We were... we were in a little cooking chat together. You know? And he was finally getting better. He used to be awful, and then he held that party for us, and it was so good, and he had the raw stuff just for me, and-"
PHONE: Rita Ma says, "And now he's gray. In the chat, he's ray. And he will be forever."
PHONE: Rita Ma says, "... But I don't know. I don't know how to put that together, with how I feel about you."
PHONE: Rita Ma says, "It's still hard to think you're awful."
PHONE: Phoning Rita Ma, Petra Soroka shakily inhales. "Yeah. Yeah. I-I-I. It doesn't. I liked him too, you know? I wish... it hadn't gotten to this."
PHONE: Phoning Rita Ma, Petra Soroka says, "But." A cough, and a sob, "One thing I do know, is that I'm awful. And that it'd be better if he was alive and I wasn't."
PHONE: Rita Ma tries to swallow a heavy sob, but it spills out anyway, shuddery and awful and a little gross.
PHONE: Rita Ma blubbers, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I just want it to be okay! You'll be okay. I know you will, somehow. You have to be. You have to be."

    Petra's still sitting in the grass when the East Wind and S6's craft arrive at the clearing. One hand still holds her phone to her ear, and the other one pushes her up standing, wide-eyed and freshly-teary as Futaba and S6 approach her. She hasn't even reached for her weapon yet.

PHONE: Rita Ma takes a deep, shuddery breath. It only steadies her a little. "Be safe. It'll be okay. I'll miss you. I love you."

    Boots crash out of the forest, surrounding her with overwhelming firepower, and Lilian makes her appearance. Petra's breath dies in her throat, and the phone slips out of her hands, cracking on the rocky cliff and falling into the water.
Petra Soroka     Petra shudders, trying to catch up to the abrupt shift in mindset that she's being required to do. The soldiers are a shock-- almost physically so, like she's been doused with cold water and her chest is seizing up. She looks at Futaba first, pupils pinpointed and shaking, and then nonverbally glances over to Tamamo.

    "...No. Tamamo's right. It's too late for that. I'm not going to lay down and die, and I-I'm not-- whatever happens, happens." She's holding the gunblade now, both hands wrapped around its hilt, with it already configured as a sword. Despite everything that she'd said, everything that's happened, and all the dread and tears leading up to this moment, Petra hums with anticipation. Finally, her eyes rest on Lilian, and a stinging shock of thrill runs up her torso.

"I don't even know if you got what you wanted."

    A little smile creeps onto Petra's face. Not exactly happy, but in that overwhelmed way, expressing a torrent of feelings and accelerating heartbeat and adrenaline. "I really, honestly, don't know either."

    There isn't a trap waiting for Dragonfly or Kale, in the clearing, other than the existence of the mech itself. The Kana stirs to life once approached, spiderlike legs pushing the bulk of its hull up into the air, and the turret whirring into motion. Without its jets blazing, it's a surprisingly quiet machine, mechanisms smoothly gliding against each other despite the battering it's obviously taken. That quiet is awkwardly maintained for a moment longer, when the turret locks on to the lakeside shore and fires a thin projectile with little fanfare.

    The antimatter round connects with the rock just behind Lilian's feet, and instantly, the battlefield is thrown into chaos. A flameless explosion eats away at the ground in a huge semicircle beneath the Paladins' feet, and simultaneously, all of that mass is converted to energy. Pure concussive force blasts a shockwave and sonic boom outwards through their ranks, sending them rocketing back in scattered directions, thrown into the lake or slammed into trees. The carved out hole in the ground floods with lakewater, crashing thousands of gallons of rushing water into whoever remains in the crater.

    The instant before Petra sends the command to fire, she dashes forwards with a shotgun blast to her back, charging in to Lilian alone, swinging upwards into her hip with the blade. Whether it hits or not isn't the point-- Petra fires again, scattering shot into the Paladins special forces, and jumping back from Lilian to flip onto another rocky overhang over the lake. She'll dodge the explosion, of course, and she'll immediately go for me, and it'll be harder for anyone else to follow.

    The Kana's engines roar to life as it lifts off into the air, kicking up ash and smoke and debris and spraying Dragonfly and Kale with it. The mech hovers over the battlefield and pings each enemy in Petra's ears, and she glances in the direction of the clearing. After Lilian joins her on the overhang, if she does, the Kana drops down to cut off access to the strip of land, blocking it with threat and mass.
Lilian Rook     'No, we know how this story unfolds. To grant the dignity of an offer to surrender, the opportunity to explain, to voice defiance, or to beg -- this is an unnecessary kindness.'

    "Yeah. We do." says Lilian to Tamamo, though she does not look. The last rod inserted, she flicks Winter Crow with her wrist, and the gun snaps shut along its axis. "But I want to see her throw it away one more time. I want to know that, even at the end, she chose what I'm about to do to her."

    'I really, honestly, don't know either.'

    "Isn't that a shame." Lilian says. For a minute, it looks as if she were smiling. "I'm finally about to get the only thing I ever wanted out of you." She sighs as she raises the gun, arm extended, settling into sidelong stance. "Satsuki. Arina." "Don't have to ask me, Commander. I have to get revenge for him too." "Of course. I won't let all of his help go to waste."

    "Sword One. Sword Two. Sword Three. Sword Four. Move as planned and fire at your discretion. You are free to engage Drives. Bring the hammer down on the subversives who think they belongs to society." A chorus of "Affirmative."s roll through the ranks. They fan out and begin to advance.

    The explosion rocks the space in the middle of the chevron almost instantly. Lilian disappears, as expected, but the blonde and the brunette to her sides vanish nearly as rapidly as well. In the rumbling boom, Petra can barely hear the scrape of steel and the howl of wind, both girls splitting up and circling past the edges of her vision as a reflective streak and a streamer of smoke respectively.

    'Sword Team', as Lilian had referred to them, cast beyond the shadow of a doubt that Lilian has already told them all of Petra's tricks. At least one of the power-suited soldiers should be sent flying, or fall into the crater, but a sound like sixteen charging flywheels rises just prior to impact, and then glowing optics, holosights, and function lights, paint a scatter of glowing trails through the clearing as they seem to flash step every which way, leaving glassed bootprints scattered around their winding tracks.

    Petra's gunblade swings out to hit Lilian. Night Mist arcs down like a stroke of black paint to effortlessly turn it aside, years of swordsmanship and physical enhancement overpowering the reckless attempt in an instant. Lilian's eyes follow the barrel of her gun rather than her sword hand, practically glowing in the dust and smoke as the pistol sweeps around to crack Petra in the side of her skull and the point down to flutter the trigger and empty a spasm of solid gold rounds into her chest. Lilian is better at making it hurt Petra's psyche than her flesh than she was last time. More than just draining, it causes active, psychic anguish, along with its shallow wounds.
Lilian Rook     The shotgun spray slips into the gap between Sword Team's members and vanishes into the tree line. Laser dots appear as pinpricks all over Petra's body, as if they could burn her skin. Lilian's final shot, and the first of theirs, perforate the empty space Petra leaves behind by jumping, mowing the grass with the opening burst. Where she flips onto the overhang however, the two junion Immunes are already read.

    Satsuki nearly appears out of nothing right behind Petra, decelerating from some unholy speed, murder in her eyes and dead calm on her lips, as she swings her oddly coloured sword free from its saya. The air blisters with the heat of its friction. The back edge comes forward first. Arina appears falling from the air, staff levelled and hand over the shroud, her voice lost in the whipping wind. The humid lake air freezes solid around her and shatters, barraging Petra with hundreds of chunks of high velocity ice.

    There isn't so much as time to breathe before Lilian appears in her face again. The pommel of Night Mist snaps up with her elbow, aimed to break Petra's jaw from beneath. Stacatto rifle cracks sound in the distance, and Lilian is gone again. Scores of bullets fill the space she just was, buzzing angrily. Solid rubber fast enough to break skin and bones.
Futaba Nuki Futaba sees the blood stains, and she sees the melted unit. Drawing in a long breath through her teeth, she just watches as S6 goes to retrieve Ishirou and the RESCUE unit, then back at Petra while more Paladins and Immunes come into her peripheral vision. She slumps slightly as Lilian speaks, wincing at that last bit and looking like she's gotten stabbed in the gut again when Petra agrees with Tamamo.

"... You're so stupid." Forcing down another pained noise, Futaba draws her katana from her pouch as the Kana comes to life, already advancing on Petra while the machine fires something that doesn't sound like she should be worried about. It does turn out to be something she has to worry about, though, as the ground arund her promptly explodes, launching her high into the air and spraying her back with painful debris on the way up.

"Dammit, Petra... You could've been better than this!" Sprouting wings from her back, Futaba rights herself in midair before diving for Petra, but she's stopped by the Kana's sudden landing and forced to fling herself sideways to halt herself enough that she doesn't get crushed in the process. Kicking off the Kana, the transforming ninja launches herself back into the air before diving towards the machine next. The katana bursts into flame, and she thrusts it downwards at one of the Kana's legs before turning her legs into spikes to start stomping on it that same point in an effort to take the machine apart before it can get in everyone's way for too long.

"You didn't need to do this! If you had just fought it out and stopped with that, this wouldn't have..." Futaba knows why Ishirou had come out here. If she hadn't said what she did, he might still be alive now. The least she could do is... She's not sure what to do. At the very least, she can try bringing  one of his killers to justice.
Kale Hearthward Okay. No trap, just Petra. Petra, and the Kana.

Petra, and the Kana, and antimatter rounds. Kale has no idea what those are, he's only been out in the multiverse for two and a half years - there simply hasn't been time to learn about literally everything. He likely still wouldn't understand what happened even if he did know what antimatter was - he just assumes it's some sort of magical ground exploding bullet. He can't worry about that now, anyway - he's dealing with the Kana's messy liftoff, which his defensive contingency spells unfortunately don't recognize as an attack.

Ishirou can't be retrieved like this, they'll have to deal with Petra first...

(Some part of him wonders if there'll even still be a body left, after blasts like that... No, can't think about that right now. Focus.)

"Not going to let you leave here," he declares, as he gets clear of the spray of debris. "You're either coming back in handcuffs, or in a second body bag. After everything you've done. There aren't any second chances, and there isn't going to be any escape."

He ascends higher into the sky, holds out his hands to the sides, and starts casting. A steady stream of magic, visible as currents of sparkly air, flows from his beak to both of his hands - and from there, out in all directions, in wispy strands that disperse into nothingness as the magic spreads out.

Immediately, clouds start to gather. Angry clouds. Angry clouds, heralding the wind picking up, storming and turning around the area.

This is the center of a new storm. Hurricane winds buffet around the area, uprooting trees and knocking over the abandoned vehicles here. The surface of the lake ripples. And yet, it's worse further out. The area the group has congregated in is the eye of the storm. Surrounding them is practically a solid wall of wind - blowing essentially inwards at an angle from all directions. Getting through it is like facing the storm head on.

It's mildly more hazardous for everyone now, but much worse for both Petra and her mech - Kale's controlling the storm, after all, and while he's making sure Petra can't get away in general, he's also making sure she can't get away from Lilian specifically.
S6     From its perch the Kana fires. In the same instant, the toe of S6's leading foot digs into the scorched loam and she hurls herself into a dash, kicking up ash and cindered wood. She's caught in the explosion mid-stride and-- briefly-- disappears completely within the sphere of the blast. A heartbeat later she exits it, smoldering.

    S6 casts a look behind herself to verify that the RESCUE wasn't caught in it, then returns her attention to Petra's acrobatics. Her head tilts downward slightly, "Pod."

    - RECEIVED. -

    The Contract floats from her hand to rest across her back as, in a flare of golden sparks, a high-tech spear appears with a perfectly machined, multi-edged diamond-shaped head. The VRCS's golden ring manifests around the weapon and she simply releases it.

    The Type 4-O Lance hurls itself as if fired from a cannon the second S6's fingers part from it. Only then does she stop, digging her heel in as a spike brake. While the android is stationary, the POD's shell unfurls to reveal its mounted vulcan gun, spraying a trail of small-calibur rounds more in an attempt to restrict Petra's movement than to actually hit her.

    While the Pod does this, S6 reaches out with her empty hand. A golden spark materializes above the dense metal breechblock of Petra's weapon, expanding itself into a ring-like shape. The instant the ring is permitted to complete itself-- S6 engages the VRCS and yanks. Hard.

    "That is forbidden."
Tamamo     Even if she hadn't been reading the future, there are things Tamamo could have predicted. There are things she did predict. The violence, confused and excited, should be easy to guess. That's a continuation of what came before. The attack on the spot immediately behind Lilian -- where Tamamo is standing -- could only have been a mystery in the exact form it took. Its intent, to pull Lilian away from her, is precisely what she came here to prevent.

    "Aphotic Cave."

    It's an attack that could have been avoided by retreating, or by taking to the air and allowing that energy to convert more safely into motion away, either of which would be far safer than dropping a barrier circle of talismans and placing her materialized mirror in front of her to absorb the impact. Shields crack and fall, but she acquires what she needed. This isn't just a shield for deflecting or dispersing, but truly for absorbing, and its surface glows with the same light of that antimatter explosion. By the time the water comes in, Tamamo is already moving.

    She's not as quick as some, to her detriment, but when the Kana drops, Tamamo's mirror goes high, she leaps onto it, and it holds in the air, launching her further upward and into a spinning leap of fluttering cloth that ends with her landing face to face with Petra. Determination, mobility, and disposable defensive enchantments make up for what else is lacking.

    "I know what you want. Your desires are, in truth, far too obvious." Does she? There's no way to tell, without elaboration, though her confidence appears unassailable. If only she weren't immune to that variety of psychic bullying, Petra could at least relax into the total, doubtless certainty of knowing every word of Tamamo's to be true.

    This isn't to say that she's permitted the least bit of personal space. Tamamo wields that ornate mirror as both shield and bludgeon, without any need to touch it, though linked to the motion of her hands. At each strike, as if knowing the precise timing ahead of time, Tamamo is there to the side, splitting attention, advancing, pushing, pursuing, looking each moment to be brighter, a trick of the eye replacing her aspect with flame and light out the corner of one's vision. It's something about those steady, golden eyes.

    It's not as if there's a sword or fist-blow to worry about, here, and in some respects, that's easier. Rather, it's the tugged, flying ofuda that are the true danger, every other blow a cover for the approach of a cursed talisman that will sap the vital energy of a target struck by it, and continue doing so until torn off.
Dragonfly      By all rights, Dragonfly is not here- in the area of the attack, that is. She switches from apparent disaffect to flight mode in an instant, immediately jumping far out of the area of the debris and leaving Kale completely behind, not a speck of it making contact with her.

     Nobody can hear how fast her fans are turning, in this gale, and she's thankful for both that and the fact that the breeze itself is helping her cooling, because it helps her focus when she reaches into her duffel. It would have been pretty stupid to have not come here armed.

     Better to focus on that mech, than to have anything to do with this Petra situation, especially since she can probably (probably) apply any of her knowledge of machinery to the thing. So, from the duffel bag she pulls what is almost certainly a bog-standard laser rifle with more than enough utter nonsense strapped to it- lenses, batteries, capacitors, nonsense- and gets to trying to figure out where they keep all the important parts in mechs wherever they make this one, and how to actually land a shot on those parts.
Petra Soroka I loved him, you understand?
"I won't let all of his help go to waste."
"I have to get revenge for him too."
"I don't know how to feel about that. I still don't know. I don't. I miss him already."
"He mattered. You don't. No one will come to save you."

    It's enough to almost make Petra glad she killed him. The thought bubbles to the forefront of her mind and dizzies her with a wave of disgust, still feeling residually dull from every despairing conversation she's had in the last week. Getting scraped by Tamamo's charms doesn't help, amplifying that sick, hollow emptiness in her stomach, and she swings her gunblade around to slice through the flying ofuda. For some reason, she doesn't feel entirely capable of intentionally drawing Tamamo's blood, even knowing that Tamamo being in her weapon's reach while Lilian steps away is a rare chance to push a brutally effective button.

    "You don't know what I want. If Lilian isn't able to say it out loud now, that means she couldn't explain it to you, and you know *nothing* about me yourself." Petra hisses at her for the time that she's in close range, then fires a shot through the swarm of ofuda to shred them and launch herself backwards, onto the edge of the overhang.

    She distances herself just in time for the Kana's vents opening up on the sides of its hull. White smoke pours out, heavy and abnormally dense, clinging to the ground and clogging airways. Visibility for those around the mech is reduced to a blank haze, and it creeps down into the craters where Dragonfly and Kale are with the weight of pyroclastic flow. A moment later, it ignites, sticking faintly to skin and lungs as vaporized white phosphorous. Kale's directed winds blow clouds of it away, scattering it faintly enough to extinguish, but clumps still melt through plastic, cloth, and flesh, condensing and burning in the humidity produced by heavy breathing.

    Shouting down at Futaba while the Kana's turret swings upwards in an arc, Petra seems, for a moment, like she's just having another no-stakes shouting match, utterly unconcerned with the ongoing fight in her petulant focus. Dry eyed this time, though. "God, Futaba! Don't you think I fucking know that? I *tried*, I tried to be good, for so fucking long, and it's just not natural for me! I wish it was! And then I tried the other way, being dangerous and threatening so idiots like him don't harass me, and he did it *anyways*! No matter how many times I told him to stop! What was I supposed to do?" The barrel of the Kana's main gun, heavy with a metal bludgeon-like protrusion on the end, swings around to batter Futaba away, hammering her with the incidentally bone crushing force of its motor.
Petra Soroka     That moment of distraction is when S6 tries to yank the gunblade out of Petra's hands, and Petra stumbles trying to keep her grip on it. Kale's wind pushes her off-balance, right on the edge of the cliff, and with the VRCS steadily tugging her closer to falling off, it seems like Petra has no choice but to let go of the weapon. Instead, she flicks a switch on the side, and it discorporates into a pair of bladed revolvers-- one of which is still snatched away by the VRCS, but the other remains triumphantly in Petra's hand.

    Teetering over the lake is exactly the moment that Arina freezes the air, and shards of ice slam into Petra's back, some of them piercing into her unprotected legs through her overalls. She whines and shakes her leg to overcome the numbing feeling of the cold, and barely pulls her dagger up in time to deflect Satsuki's blade-- the blunt edge of her blade?-- away from hitting her directly, and the residual heat scorches her already-burned face.

    Even with instinctual recognition of Lilian's arrival, there's nothing Petra can do but take the hit to her chin, hard enough that her teeth clack together and the world goes white. Petra spits out a glob of blood, then her eyes widen with realization, and she hisses at Lilian. "Nonlethal weaponry? Are you trying to *arrest* me?" The fact that Kale already mentioned handcuffs escaped her notice. A note of actual panic enters her voice. "No! Absolutely not! I'm not fucking going to *jail*! Fucking kill me yourself, I'll make *absolutely* sure you don't get to throw me in some cell and forget about me." The secondary barrel on the Kana whirls over, tagging Lilian with a slowing projectile before she can get away. It's not teleportation, but it'll make her movement in real time slow enough for Petra to track. "That can't be what you wanted out of me. I know it isn't."
%
Kale Hearthward "Smoke!"

Kale immediately falls back, but it's too late. "Ugh-"

His magic and his gear blink out. The storm continues on its own, but he loses fine control of it as he coughs, trying to get his airways clear.

"En- enough of your whining," he calls, once he's put some distance between himself and the Kana. "Dealing with the consequences... refusing to deal with the consequences, I mean, you're lower than the lowest."

"Even the heroes and villains are defiant till the end - you're going out *sniveling*. Like some sort of child."

He turns his attention to her mech. That thing, that's causing just as much trouble as she is.

Kale draws his left-hand sword, and holds it out in front of him. "You're a petulant little child, who refuses to understand what she's done wrong..."

"... And for that, I'm going to take your toy away."

Breath Weapon Periactus revs up - a terrible grinding noise as its gears start spinning, echoing across the lake towards Petra's ears. Kale closes in on the Ekanashma, drill held in both hands... and brings it down on the mech. Not to thrust and pierce through it, no. He swings the spinning drill down like a normal sword, pressing the side of it continuously against the mech, going to start shredding it into tiny pieces from the top down.
Futaba Nuki As dry as Petra's eyes are, Futaba's are starting to do the exact opposite. It's hard to see with those markings around her eyes already, but there's hints of moistness there as she tries to find another angle to strike at the Kana while shouting back at Petra.

"Doing what's right isn't supposed to be easy! That's what makes it different! Do you think I don't know that already?" With another stop into the Kana's leg, she kicks herself off of it just before the terrible burning substance can cling to her too tightly, although she has to hastily transform her legs into a more watery substance when part of it gets ignited around her. "Geh... If all I did was what came natural, I'd be a lazy piece of crap sitting on thrones and eating all day. I wouldn't be a ninja or a hero to anyone!" The burns are superficial, at least, but there's still specks of dark red in the water that does come down even as she looks for another opening.

The gun barrel comes swinging in at her, and her wings can't take her out of its path fast enough. Diverting those wings back into arm and chest size, she absorbs the blow head on, clinging to the weapon for dear life after S6's suggestion. "You could've fought him the regular way! Beat the crap out of each other, maybe you win ,maybe you don't, and then you go from there. Maybe you could've been friends, or rivals, or even...!"

She stops herself before she finishes that last one. Even that's a little too far-fetched for Futaba. "... But it's too late now. Now they're all gunning for your head, and... It sucks! You're gonna die, and Ishirou's dead because of me, so... You tell me! What do you want to do?!" She's starting to freak out a bit herself now, but fighting the Kana still keeps her head focused at least somewhat. After righting herself on the bludgeoning gun and coughing out a mouthful of blood, Futaba's head and arms turn into a trio of crocodile heads, all biting down on that barrel to aid the efforts in taking it out of commission.
S6     Still down on the beach, S6's outstretched hand wraps around the revolver she'd snatched from Petra's hands. Half of the weapon is still in the target's possession, but this should at least limit her ability to continue resisting. Attention briefly on the weapon, she wraps the handgun in another ring of mystic script and then releases it-- the device disappearing into her storage in a flare of glowing golden sparks.

    - ALERT -

    S6's eyes shoot up to the rocks Petra is fighting Lilian so directly on top of. She then shoots a look down at her feet at the white fog pouring out of the Ekanamsha's vents.

    - WHITE PHOSPHORUS. -

    The Striker crouches as she's enveloped by the ominous white cloud. It ignites in the same second and she erupts out of it in a leap, trailing flames. Damage indicators are swiftly acknowledged and dismissed from her vision in favor of focusing on her landing point; one of the few trees that had survived the girl's first, solo rampage.

    S6 jams her heels into the wood and hangs like that, maintaining herself vertically as a logger would with boot spikes. She releases the Contract, dismissing her bladed weapons in a cloud of golden sparks.

    "That must be what was used against Ishirou," she comments out loud.

    - CORRECT. -
    - USE OF THIS WEAPON IS IN VIOLATION OF MULTIPLE PEACETIME AND WARTIME TREATY ACCORDS. -

    "I see," She casts a glance towards Ishirou's POD, then returns her attention to the stonetop duel. A swirl of golden sparks shoot off her wrists, manifesting what amounts to brass knuckles perfectly fitted to her hands and fingers. The tree she's on begins to succumb to the flames spewed by the Kana, but only when it begins to topple does she settle on an opening and leap from her perch.

    It's in a brief gap in the melee between Lilian and Petra that S6 descends with an overhead axe-kick, leading with the steel heels of her impossible stiletto boot, striking hard enough to crack the stone where she lands-- in a crouch with her hands held out straight. When she resumes a standing posture it's in sliding motion that puts her opposite of Lilian's approach.

    The VRCS winds up again, the hem of S6's dress starting to produce a steaming haze of its own. She's trying to snatch at the remaining revolver with the VRCS system while striking with her limbs; a steel-covered knuckle strike aimed at the back of the skull, a steel-heeled downkick at the knee and foot. The android's martial approach is to restrict mobility. Divide attention. Wear her down. ~~Work out some of her frustration and grief.~~ Emotions don't factor in at all, judging by the stoic set of her jaw and the cloth-like visor obscuring her eyes.
Dragonfly      Machines blowing hot air. Dragonfly, the Kana, a number of components attached to Dragonfly's gun. She's well out of the way of the flow itself already, but the sheer heat of it starts putting some strain on her systems, Kale's storm be damned.

     Taking in mind S6's advice on the Kana, but not responding as though those communications were meant for her (wait, isn't that person giving tactics from Ishirou's world?) she starts firing directly at the base of its turret's barrel, trying to disable it. Trying to not think about her offer to Ishirou, to help with the Indus situation- her business here is solely because Metaphor probably wants that corpse.
Lilian Rook     'Don't you think I fucking know that? I *tried*, I tried to be good, for so fucking long, and it's just not natural for me!'

    "Haven't we heard that story before?" says Lilian, suddenly standing directly behind Petra. Back to back. No attack is even withcoming. The instant Petra pays attention, she's gone again. Just in advance of S6's drop kick. "I feel as if we have. I think they did it better."

    'No matter how many times I told him to stop! What was I supposed to do?'

    It's a feint, of course, to open her up again to Tamamo. As she assails Petra under mirror and ofuda barrage, Satsuki skids past Petra, blade sparking, then twists in the air and catches the edge of the overhang with just her toe, crushing the rock beneath her and lunging forward again. "Do you even hear yourself?! You murdered him because he annoyed you! How is anyone who was counting on him, anyone grateful to him, supposed to accept that?!" She yells. The swing at Petra's head suddenly diverts down. She dives and slides low, along the axis of her thigh, and drags the curve of her sword through Petra's leg as she passes.

    Arina lands atop a geyser of water erupting from the lake, turning to mist and forming a frigid nimbus beneath her. Raising her staff with both hands, she rushes out two sentences in Russian, and swings it down in Petra's direction. A cerulean lightning bolt falls from the smoggy sky, landing on her with scorching, convulsive energy, like sticking her hands into a breaker. "We already know the story, Miss Soroka! You lured him here! This was your intention all along! There's no point now! Give up!"

    The Kana's inhibitor shot flies right past Lilian. She leans back in place, so that it skips less than a foot from her chest, ruffling her hair with the wind cone. "Slow wits and a slow machine. You know I can see where that barrel is pointed, right? Did you really think that would work?" A sharp gesture to three of the four Sword Team squads has the scatter of menacingly armoured men in the clearing surge towards the machine immediately. Twelve men leap wreckage and slide into craters, shouldering rifles and unlimbering futuristic man-portable rockets, loading them with munitions alchemized and enhanced by Lilian herself, and firing into the Kana's flanks from opposing sides, circling and covering to avoid its turrets.

    "A machine can't overcome a wish. Something designed by extras can't touch me. You keep talking about 'society', but you already know, right? That it doesn't matter how many people are on your side." Lilian says, still in that excruciatingly calm voice. Relaxed, even. Devoid of any hint of her usual, passive tension. Like she's not thinking half as much. Winter Crow rises lazily, targeting Petra at the fullest extend of Lilian's arm, punctuating every few words with the flash of a fiery magical circle and a slug of pure gold. "No matter how high you heap a pile of maggots, they're still just maggots. Did you forget? Everything you think is 'normal' only exists at my forbearance."

    'Fucking kill me yourself, I'll make *absolutely* sure you don't get to throw me in some cell and forget about me.'

    Lilian laughs with airy, faintly disbelieving amusement. The break action triggers, venting waste aether, and she holsters the gun, gripping Night Mist in two hands and holding it with its point nearly to the ground. "You really thought you were going to get to die? That you were a special exception? Oh goodness no! I already promised; Tamamo, Hibiki, Rita, that I wasn't going to let you ruin me. You aren't important enough for me to kill, Petra; not even close."
Lilian Rook     'That can't be what you wanted out of me. I know it isn't.'

    Again. Right in Petra's running direction. Sword held only to balance, leg up and bent, twisting 180 and extending to kick Petra in the face with her armoured shin and break her nose. Lilian sighs. "How many times must I tell you, little Pettie. I don't want anything from you. There's nothing you can give me." She blinks around to Petra's opposite side at the sound of gunfire. The last Sword Team squad she tasked is kneeling at range, formed up and firing rapid, semi-automatic shots at Petra from the shoulder, scouring the rock with bullets that'd probably kill her at point blank, but at this distance only remind her that she's just another insurgent to them.

    "But after all of this, I suppose I'd kind of like to see you suffer? I think that'd make everyone happier. If you crawled around in the dirt, bleeding and crying and begging for mercy. If you said you take everything back, if you confessed to how just pathetic you are, if you whimpered and pleaded to try and make it up to me somehow, I think I'd be sort of interested. But you can do that in a prison cell too, so I can wait~"

    Lilian turns her attention to Tamamo. Briefly, uneasily, her voice tenses once more, losing half of its coldly dreamy edge. Something sparks behind her eyes. It's dangerously precarious, riding the line like this, right on the precipice, but she's managing it for now. "Hey . . . Try to box in the robot, if you can. I'll pin her down, and then you can put whatever curses you want on her." Lilian breathes in, tense and full of exertion, as if that much were effort. "Everything will be fine, once she's gone."
Tamamo     Petra fires, and Tamamo's shielding artifact is there -- but she isn't. Tamamo moves like she knows where every blow will land ahead of time. She spins to the side with her eyes closed, shot deflected from her mirror. As if she doesn't need to see. It's uncanny, confusing to watch, shouldn't be possible, and that's the point of showing it, how she 'just happens' to select the appropriate defense without paying attention or awareness. What's hitting her isn't enough to slow her down.

    '...and you know *nothing* about me yourself.'

    "You greatly overestimate your own cleverness, or perhaps mistake the silent tolerance I have given you for stupidity." Tamamo's voice is clear and sharp. "Did you think that only she could perceive you, and that all others would need wait for an explanation?"

    There are more ofuda. Whatever her limits, they're still beyond this. That this is at least partially a function of how seriously she's taking the fight isn't something said aloud. Better to let it appear graceful, elegant and effortless, despite all the work she put into reaching this point, to twisting fortune and misfortune to ensure that there's no way to escape her -- no way for Petra to get what she wants, with Tamamo around. All the worse for Satsuki, Arina, and Lilian being there, with S6 supporting at a distance to pull at her weapons.

    Another swing of her mirror, another feinting punch that actually releases a swarm of talismans. Another leap assisted by that telekinetic mirror, and a leaping kick --

    Wait, no, that kick was real. There's no supernatural force behind it, no explosion of ice or flame, but only a six-inch solid heel aimed to the jaw with a forward driving snap.

    "Foolish child. Your desire is for her, and it is obvious in your every action. To separate her from others, to have her to yourself, to have some dramatic duel to the death, to forever etch yourself into her as her 'first.' You wish to matter to her enough to die for it, all because you know no better way."

    She backs away again at the very moment her physical approach would have left her vulnerable, mirror up to shield her -- and in the same moment that S6 arrives to close range. That distracts from the double-handful of talismans that fly up, around, and strike the earth to sit and wait like so many cryoexplosive landmines.

    "You could not gain the attention you craved through impressing anyone by being better, and so, you chose to impress them by being worse. You would be pitiable if you were not so utterly, predictably ordinary."
Petra Soroka     The Kana isn't going to be easily shredded, even by Periactus. It's not a toy. There's no color, no symbolism, no soft shapes or textured gentleness to the war machine, and that means that the person playing with it can't be a child. Kale jumps onto the flat, stable edge of the hull at the base of the large turret, and though its dense armor puts up incredible resistance, Periactus slowly chips through it, and if ignored, Kale could completely disable the turret. Positioned at the base as he is, the barrel itself can't swing around to knock him off, and none of the Kana's munitions are capable of targeting him.

    So Petra does the reasonable thing. Ducking under S6's axe kick with her revolver blade-up to stick into her leg and throw her off-balance, she fires one more shot into the android's chest to send her stumbling backwards and hopefully off the cliff, launching herself towards the Kana. Her boots slam into the hull right behind Kale with a disproportionately loud clang, and she spits at him with her bayonet blade pushed up against his back. "You think you're so fucking important, don't you? Making speeches like anyone cares to listen to what you say, treating me like I'm lesser than you, like I'm a child, under your authority to punish. Get the fuck out of my show, Hearthward." Petra pulls the trigger, and the bayonet slams forwards through Kale's torso.

    Kale isn't the only furry boarding the mech, and Petra turns to Futaba next, jumping up onto the barrel to walk down its length like a balance beam. Her steps slam into the metal, assured and stable despite the relatively narrow platform, and the metal in Futaba's mouths vibrates in her teeth. "I chose not to be friends. I wouldn't want him as a rival. And if you say that last one again then I'm going to blow you to pieces like I did him." Petra cuts off, looking confused and dizzy. Her foot slips off the barrel, and she tumbles down to the hull, clinging on and clambering back up underneath Futaba. "Th-that's not true. I-I don't mean that, I just-- I just--." Petra shudders and turns away, gesturing to the Kana to whip its turret around until Futaba flies off, launched away from the mech to collide with Dragonfly. For good measure, it follows up with an explosive shell, shattering the ground-- in front of them, not on top of them-- to delay the pair's reentry into the battlefield.
Petra Soroka "How is anyone who was counting on him, anyone grateful to him, supposed to accept that?!"

    Petra staggers as Satsuki's sword cuts into her left thigh, overwhelmingly outmatched by trained swordsmen. She lashes out with her knife, trying to catch her with a swing as Satsuki slides past her, but her main goal is to distract her attention long enough for the inertial-stalling projectile launched from the Kana to connect with her. "I don't fucking know! Maybe you all could just blame yourselves for not doing enough to prevent him from doing something stupid! That's what all of my friends are doing!"

    Arina's shock strikes her and-- it's all too muddied up, now. Everything hurts and there's too many sources, conflicting and overlapping and shouting over each other, for her to pick out what to pay attention to. I wish it was just me and her. Machines don't answer wishes, though, and Tamamo's words jar Petra enough to delay her command for the Kana to follow through on her desire manually.

"Your desire is for her, and it is obvious in your every action."

    Petra flinches, so pathetically visibly, and the kick sends her sprawling to the ground, jaw snapped to the side and blood staining her lips. She glares at Tamamo, trembling and struck wordless, the seconds of silence embarrassingly honest, before her stare and nose is broken by Lilian's foot.

    Petra rolls to the side and scrambles to her feet, blood streaming down her face as she faces the pair, upraised gun wavering. Pettie sends a shiver down her spine, and the motion settles in her stomach, quivering with sick, desperate anger.

"I suppose I'd kind of like to see you suffer?"

    "No." Petra's voice rasps, bubbling through blood. "No. You keep your hands off of me. If you can't stand the idea of me being anything like you, then stop accusing me of that, you fucking faggot."

    The wish goes through. The Kana turns to aim at the trio, and without Petra moving to dodge, it fires an explosive round into the rocky shelf, shattering rock and sending it crumbling into the lake with a torrent of sound and flame.
Kale Hearthward Kale grinds the drill sword against the Kana, gritting his beak. Just a bit more. Take this out. Take her out. Get Ishirou back. Actually properly grieve.

Petra appears behind him. "You *are* a child. You don't-"

"- think... you're any..."

... Something's distracting him. Why can't he breathe?

Periactus slows down, stops spinning, and folds back in on itself, becoming a normal sword once again. He needs to keep breathing. Keep it spinning. Stop Petra. Get Ishirou back. Fix... not fix things, things are beyond fixing. Mitigate things. Make things stop being worse. Why can't he?

He looks down. Oh. That's why he can't breathe. It's obvious, once he stops to think about it. There's a big hole in his lungs...

Not a single person was rooting for you.

The sword drops from his hands, and a moment later he drops - first to the surface of the Kana, and from there slips off and falls down towards the ground below.

Just against me.
S6     Striker Six is stabbed in the leg, drawing forth a splash of-- not blood. It's red, but Too Red to fool anyone familiar with combat or medicine. Not the deep crimson found in humans, even stranger cases like Ishirou. It's slick. Almost oily. S6 almost ignores the damage as she recovers from the impact and presses the attack, only to get shot by that revolver's ridiculous muzzle velocity.

    It's enough to knock the android off the rock the quartet had been fighting on and around, trailing smoke and what passes for android blood. Her arc is arrested, her body twisting to recover in midair. Kicking off Nothing through magic trickery, S6 hurls herself back into the fight.

    - CAUTION -
    - THE EKANAMSHA IS TAKING AIM -

    "I see it," S6 affirms. In midair she lashes out. There's a horrifying instant snapshot of the VRCS winding up. The round, travelling at hundreds of meters per second, trails golden dust as it unexpectedly veers off course into the wilderness, drawing an impossible arc to the left for a direct-fire weapon.

    "Unfortunately for you," she mutters, her voice ice cold, "I am not an Inspector."

    S6 lands back on the rock's surface amidst the brawl between Lilian and Petra. Her leg snaps up as if to kick at the girl's head, then suddenly stomps down at a sharp angle right at the side of Petra's right knee, at the inside angle.
Dragonfly      Dragonfly lithely sidesteps the tanuki being launched at her, directly into the path of the explosive shell's blast. Force crushes into her plating, crumbling it like paper, and she falls onto her shiny metal ass, laying still on the ground for far too long.

     Pain sensors are screaming far too loud. Have to take a moment to- to repair. Right side, heavy denting to all parts but head. Right leg rendered unsalvagable by damages, will need to be replaced. Gun is sparking and popping- she kicks it out of the way with her remaining leg before one of its capacitors explodes. Should still work, though. Allies- Kale is down. Okay. Right.

     Dragonfly limps back further, stuffing her gun into her duffelbag (should have stocked more body bags in this thing) and trading it for a number of pieces of sheet metal. She starts work on self-repair, banking a little too hard on being far enough away from the fight and irrelevant enough to it that she's not made vulnerable for the downtime.
Lilian Rook      "Or maybe you could blame yourself for failing the bare basics of being human! I'll blame your friends for not stopping you, you fucking animal!" Satsuki howls back, at the top of her lungs, breaking character just long enough to vent her grief with foul language. The knife glances right off the edge of her shoulder armour, not even bothering to deflect it, so that she can turn her sword over and twist it free of the ragged wound. "So what if he isn't-- wasn't, perfect?!" Arina cries. "He helped us over and over again! He put his life on the line at London! And for Blueberry Princess! With the Grave Blades! Winter Hazel! At Dunscaith! Doesn't that mean anything to you?! Are people really supposed to die for one pointless mistake?!"

    The lightning is held in a constant beam, raking over the crumbling rock to chase after Petra, torturing her with stray tongues of electricity. Satsuki leaps back, rocketing into the sky at a precise, acrobatic angle, and gaining more height by kicking from the rubble. Bullets rain down from her sidearm, insultingly rubberized, and then she draws her sword again with another discoloured flash, slicing apart a line of falling boulders and splitting the lake behind. A fresh wave of rockets explode against the Kana in the distance, as Sword Team's numbers and armament batter its heavy armour down. Bullets rip angrily through the air.

    And then Petra goes and says it.

    "Oh Pettie. Is that supposed to mean something?"

    Lilian appears beside the lake, at the shore, leaned on the crossguard of her sword with the point in the dirt. She waves her hand to Arina and Satsuki. The both of them visibly flinch at Petra's choice of defiant speech, in their own separate ways, and thus seem to understand why Lilian stands them down, though Satsuki looks away. Brisk strides carry Lilian inexorably closer, advancing on where Petra fell.

    "Do you really think that word gives you any power over me?" she says, and her voice is like inhaling cold smoke, bitter and acidic, settling in the lungs like tar, taxing the heart to its limits. "Am I supposed to cringe away and sob? Fall to my knees like a beaten dog?"

    Lilian blinks forward as Petra emerges. Her leg is already up and snapped forward, armoured boot to her diaphragm. Loud enough to sound like a gunshot, and hurl her away. "Idiot girl. Do you think you're the first?" Behind her again. An elbow coming down to break her shoulder. She all but breathes on her ear. "Stronger men than you have tried." Blink. Too late. The air whistles with the whirling pommel strike coming at her head from the side, elbows in and sword aligned. "Many, many more, tried much, much harder than you. And where do you think they are now?" A foot sweeps out from behind to trip her onto her back in the same motion. "I've been through more than you can possibly imagine. That doesn't riddle me with weakpoints for you to attack, Pettie. It makes me strong and you weak."

    Finally, Night Mist snaps back along Lilian's body, crossing over her breast and aligning with her forward arm, guided by her fingers along a straight and deadly vector. Lilian looks down on Petra with the faint, twisted smile one would imagine a cat with a dying mouse might wear, if it could.
Lilian Rook     "You'll never even overcome the grip of that word, Pettie. You'll never rise above the dregs. Nobody will ever love you. You'll never matter to anyone. A year from now, I'll have forgotten you exist. So if you think you can leverage that word, that culture, that hatred against me; if you really think your pathetic, cold-forged and press-molded judgement has any meaning to me, then--"

    Lilian darts forward. Some of the motion disappears. A single step. The high shriek of blade through air. A trail of burning black and red embers. The sword goes exactly where Lilian has foreseen it will hurt Petra the most; the future that contains the single greatest concentration of agony for the girl across from her. It plunges into her shoulder.

    "Welcome to Earth, Petra Soroka. I'll be leaving you behind."

    Lilian leans forward, elegantly twisting the blade with her palm on the pommel, placing her heel on Petra's ribs. Her hair slides forwards from her shoulder, framing the cold glow of her eyes and the lurid line of her scar. Her contemptuous smile shows pointed teeth.

    "So enjoy it while you can. This is the deepest in you that I'll ever get."
Tamamo     A moment's indecision. Not for the actions of the war machine -- Tamamo knows that it will be fine, even if she doesn't consciously realize that it will be S6 who delivers the action. She's untouched, because she'd made the preparations to ensure that this wouldn't be the moment danger reached her. Her hesitance is for Kale having been stabbed through. The wound could be fatal... if there was no healer present. If he were finished off. If nothing were done.

    Tamamo's hand snaps out, dispensing talismans to find Kale and, if not able to heal his wound, at least stabilize him, miraculously redirecting internal flow around the violent break. He still needs to be taken out of here, where even a stray shot might catch him and leave yet another body, another man dead, because of--

    She should just go, herself. She really, obviously, should, rather than leaving it to someone from Lilian's squad or Kale's ship. Then Petra could get one step closer to her wish. She doesn't.

    "Need this keep going until you give in...? Yes, of course. You still seek to impress her. You cannot stop, when there are lows to which you might still sink. To be just a little worse, you might become memorable, or so you think. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... and yet, it will never be." While she talked, Tamamo's circled around, arriving behind Petra just as Lilian's sword reaches her. "On this point, you speak in the direction of the truth. Where possible, one should avoid touching Petra Soroka. Still, her blade has tasted far worse. A sword is made for such things. Worry not. The cleaning will be thorough."

    Of course, if she gets that close, Tamamo takes the opportunity to slap sealing talismans onto Petra's back. Maybe she'll enjoy the lightheaded unreality of her body slowly ceasing to obey her direction from a fresh batch of curses.
Petra Soroka     The constant electric convulsions from Arina's lightning and the stinging rain of rubber bullets leaves red and purple welts even through padding irritate Petra about half as much as the Immunes' incessant praise for Ishirou. The physical wounds hurt, of course, but Petra's demonstrated that she'll grit her teeth through any amount of physical pain. The dizzying weight of years of heroism, important, meaningful connections, remembrance and grieving, is something she can't shrug off, twisting inside her with jealousy for the murdered Elite, unable to come up with any response.

    In the background, the Kana is battered and dented, even its armor unable to withstand the sustained onslaught of the Paladins squadron and accompanying Elites. One of its legs buckles, a joint weakpoint pinged and weakened by Dragonfly enough that the next rocket salvo twists it into uselessness. The Kana, stoically expressionless and showing no signs of being wounded, or hurt, or tired; no matter how close to collapse it is, that kind of sympathetic, emotional display is out of the question for the machine.

    The Kana is practically gone from Petra's mind, though. Hurt or not, captured or not, the mech never had a strong enough hold in her psyche to earn a thought when faced with--

    Heat radiates through Petra's chest like blood, almost certainly along with blood, but the numbness of the impact feels wet just by default. Her arm hangs uselessly by her side, blood fills her mouth and runs down her throat, choking her while her diaphragm seizes with too much pain to prevent her from coughing it up. On her back, the world spins around her until an anchor point leans forwards into her vision, and her eyes lock on to Lilian's. Petra's mouth hangs open with the desperate effort to breathe, and blood stains her teeth and tongue bright red, bubbling on her lips. Her eyes are wide and her pupils shake in a mixture of terror, horror, pain, and who knows what else, absorbed into Lilian as if she's the only one there.

    But she isn't. Tamamo is there, and she keeps talking, and Petra writhes on the ground to put up resistance to that more than she does to Lilian's beating and berating. S6 is, and Arina is, and Satsuki is, and so is Kale and Futaba and over a dozen special forces operatives and even Ishirou. Petra locks eyes with Lilian again, trying to quell the choking panic, just in time to recognize the intent in her eyes the moment before Lilian swings for her shoulder.

    Something breaks. Designed for a nine year old girl and not to stand up to combat, much less Dame Commander Lilian Rook's full, surgical fury. Petra's whole body shudders, her eyes wide, utterly, helplessly terrified. In that instant, she stops being an Elite, even a tourist. She looks like a girl bleeding out from a car crash, frail, curled up, and experiencing a kind of final, terminal fear she'd never imagined before.
Petra Soroka     The Kana has no such reservations. It knows who its enemies are, and unlike its pilot, never considers half measures for getting rid of them. Now practically immobile from the beating it's taken, the Kana lines up both of its barrels, enormous and small, in a vertical stack, and rotates them together like the hands of a clock, in quick, precise angles. Each of the cannons fires simultaneously, incrementing the angle of their projectiles with computer-perfect accuracy to have them intersect just over the heads of each of the clustered groups of Paladins.

    Explosives meet with antimatter, and the resulting detonation is a confused mix of fire and its negation. The explosions expand out in irregular, patchy spheres, pure concussive force alternating with fire and shrapnel, sections as small as fingertips or as big as cars, and regardless of which material hits them, trees are ripped from the ground and disintegrated into splinters, rock crumbles and is blasted away, and humans risk being turned to red smears.

    The final shot of the twinned cannons aims directly at the rocky overhang again, to match the overhead explosion with a second one below. Rock vaporizes under the Elites, Petra is pinned and in the line of fire, and where the two spheres of antimatter force overlap, the air trembles as if in a mirage. The distortion hangs above them for seconds after the explosions resolve, until a sharp whine whips down from impossibly above human hearing in pitch to impossibly below, the brief moment of being audible deafening and shrieking, and then the disortion implodes, rocking the Elites with a final impact.
S6     Lilian goes in with her sword. S6 retracts her leg and balances on one foot briefly, ready to bring her heel down again as needed. Petra's will to fight, however, seems to completely collapse. Slowly, the android lowers her foot to click on the broken stone, lifting her visor-concealed gaze to the craters in the distance and the mangled RESCUE still visible from where she stands.

    - ALERT -

    S6's attention snaps immediately to the Ekanamsha as it starts going berserk. Her stance shifts back to an alert one, "What did you do?"

    There's no chance to wait for an answer, though. The hemline of her dress, steadily heating up through the combat, now ascends to an angry red glow like a stovetop element as she engages the VRCS on high-speed projectiles directed at this little group. One is redirected. A second veers violently off into the forest.

    The third strikes S6 directly in her torso, at last blasting her off the rock in the way Petra had been trying so hard to accomplish throughout S6's involvement. It's a quarter second and several dozen meters later that the shell detonates. Fortunately, a standard explosive rather than one of the matter-annihilation rounds.

    The explosion is compounded by a metallic, shattering noise. Shards of black metal shoot out. A mass tumbles out of the explosion, shedding smoke to reveal Striker Six as she slams into the ground in a scattering of metal shards and too-red fluid. Flipping after impact, she plants all fours and grinds out her momentum. The heat-dissipating flare of her combat uniform's skirt is gone, scattered across the terrain as smoldering shards.

    - VRCS FUNCTIONALITY COMPROMISED -
    - HCS JETTISON CONFIRMED -
    - MGS OPERATING AT THIRTY PERCENT -

    Gingerly, S6 touches the bare metal in the center of her chest where the explosive had impacted, feeling the dent in her exposed machinery, the mangled edges of her exterior coating. She skims through damage readouts swimming across red-tinged vision filled with multiple alerts. She lifts her masked gaze to the tabletop rock Petra still occupies, then glances towards the Ekanamsha.

    S6 excuses herself from the company of Lilian and Tamamo, her gait stilted and unsteady as she makes her way back towards the scorched and battered RESCUE.
Lilian Rook     Satsuki and Arina stand back at range, uncomfortably watching the final exchange, too far away to hear much, but clearly unnerved by Lilian's hair-down savagery, and at the same time, spiritually aligned in taking some simultaneous vindictive pleasure at seeing Ishirou's murderer battered and beaten and stabbed and cursed and tortured. It's not humane or professional, but the two steely stares radiate the same, angry message: Petra can be an exception.

    With Dragonfly's assistance, Sword Team is gradually making mincemeat of the Kana. Sword inside Petra, fingers delicately laid across the hilt, Lilian looks over her shoulder to the ongoing battle, watching nearly twenty men, with heavy armament and extensive experience, work together with flawless precision to wear it down, navigating its arc and punching through the weakpoints.

    "I feel sorry for that thing, you know." Lilian says, chillingly conversational. "It really was better at fighting than you. More loyal than you. More dedicated. What a fine weapon." She looks back down. "If it had gone to someone else, the pilot it deserved, I wonder what kind of story it could have had. Truly, that poor machine was wasted on you." It's just like her to sympathize with the cold and dispassionate implement of death, in its repeatedly, artfully broken state, and to reserve her look of fascinated contempt for the girl sobbing at her feet.

    "What's the matter, Soroka? This is what you wanted, isn't it? This is what you spent six months trying to get to. 'No matter how many times I told you to stop', right? 'What was I supposed to do'?" Lilian pulls Night Mist free, slick with Petra's blood and sticky with some other fluid. "I did warn you, you know, and everyone else tried to stop you. Why do you seem so surprised you finally manifested it?"

    The last, devastating shots of the Ekanamsha S1 come thundering downrange. Lilian isn't quite so absorbed as to ignore them. "Sword Team. Engage Drives. Break to the treeline. Lily Two, Lily Three, form up and cover." A wave of acknowledgement pings filter in. The entrenched soldiers scatter into the trees with the immense speed they arrived, their commander unwilling to gamble their lives on Petra. Satsuki and Arina follow suit, leaving just Lilian in the way with--

    Tamamo drops onto the grass below, out of the way of harm, the phantom feeling of strong and gentle arms still lingering on her back and legs. Petra is dumped not far away, face down, within supervision. The Kana's hatch isn't open, but the console registers someone in the pilot seat. New biosigs. New commands. Stand down, girl. You're in better hands, now.
Lilian Rook     It isn't long before Lilian returns. No time at all, actually. Making sure to lock her eyes on Tamamo for just long enough that she can strain every last emotional fibre in her body to wobble back from the edge she'd balanced on through the entire, dark experience, Lilian says "Petra Soroka, I am arresting you on authority of the Immunes corps, Squad Commander Lilian Rook, for multiple severe counts of criminal tresspass, espionage, sabotage, disrupting peace, disrupting Phantom Circle private affairs, politically motivated violence, damaging criminal libel, theft, and illegal surveillance. You'll be transported to temporary holding at an undisclosed location, and held in solitary confinement awaiting final sentencing. There will be no trial."

    Lilian sighs, as if dropping an enormous weight. Looking over Petra, she says more softly to someone else "Come on. Let's not leave him here." Then the black cable comes out. Wrapped around Petra's throat, so Lilian can drag her away through the mud. "Where possible, one should avoid touching Petra Soroka."
Dragonfly      The Kana and its owner are close to out of commission by the time Dragonfly's finished repairing her chassis back into a workable state- but only close. Ideally, they're completely out of the action so that Ishirou's body can be taken safely without either of them being blown up, again. There's little she can truly do, but something spiteful takes Dragonfly, so in a fit of whimsy, she takes the jury-rigged laser rifle back out of her duffel, does something to its wiring using a screwdriver (?), and chucks it squarely at the Kana, where it detonates on impact. Barely a dent in the flurry of attacks from better combatants, but oh the fuck well.

     Once things are finally clear, Dragonfly sighs, gets up off of the ground, and trudges over to where Ishirou's body still lays in a crater. She injects it in the arm with something vaguely pen-shaped (an emergency autoinjector filled with chemicals both to keep the dying from being fully dead, and to keep the dead from rotting deader) and unfolds a black body bag, unceremoniously stuffing Ishirou's body inside it and then the bag itself into her duffel bag. She's resigned about the entire thing, methodical, like she does this shit every day; "working" on an emergency medical vessel probably does that to you, right?

     Limping all too slowly back to the East Wind, Dragonfly's gaze falls over Kale and Futaba both unconscious, to the Paladins still conscious, and back to Kale. Paladins can get the other one, I may as well take him back to his own damn airship. She sighs, limps to Kale, and carries him back to the East Wind, too. Dragging him across the ground. By the leg.