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Rita Ma      Outside, the near-white-noise of sea monsters thrashing and snapping calms. Bota's eyes are only joyful in the loosest sense. 'Disbelieving' might be closer. He looks at the green blood on his sword like he's double-checking if it's real.

     "I can't believe it. It's finally... but Rita..."

     It's easy to miss it.

     It happens quickly as a gasp, with the most disgusting noise in the world: on some final impulse, the Queen's corpse extrudes just a handful of needles. One stabs through White Dwarf's incendiary grenade, pinning it to her hand. Another pierces Candy's backpack and shoves it away. The others drink. The collective slurry of blood on the floor, belonging to nearly everyone, flows into her. Her abdomen tints crimson instead of green, and then turns radiant white.

     The flash is beautifully blinding. The noise is absolutely sickening. You can just barely glimpse something rip itself free of the corpse and take shape.

     "Haaaah. Much better," a dreadfully familiar-but-unfamiliar voice says aloud.

     You recognize their snow-white hair from Kana, or White Dwarf, or maybe Meika. You recognize its slightly-wavy shoulder-length from Candy or Petra or Madeleine. Their hands, subtly clawed, might be Kukuru's or symbolically Hibiki's. Those obsidian teeth could only be Dysnomia's, and their scary chartreuse eyes ring dead for Lilian's, still limned with red at the borders.

     Their androgynous build is a matter of averages, and when their lungs unwholesomely glow with each breath, it feels like a biological mockery of Kale, Stanley, and Aidan. That their skin is an inhuman alabaster shot through with uncanny magenta veins derives from no-one but the Queen.

     "You can't be," Bota says, eyes wide and voice trembling. They don't deign to answer.

     They rub their own wrist and crack their neck, getting used to how the body moves, and smile unwholesomely. "Some of these ingredients are colder," they say. "If only I'd known I could banish Lisa's compassion so easily."

     They breathe out air in the shape of a blade in their hand, then snap their fingers to ignite it into glowing plasma. Lilian would recognize the sword.

     Thousands of feet down, the bombs explode, sending bubbles rising to the surface. The sea monsters are stirred into snapping frenzy again. "Shame about the nest," they purr with an insouciant tilt of their head and a broad gesture with the tip of their blade.

     "But I've only got to kill you and try again in twenty years. 'What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief,'" they quote, eyes landing on Stanley. "Isn't that right?"
Rita Ma      It's over. The bombs are away. The nest and all its eggs are destroyed. Who-knows-how-many other worlds are saved from infestation.

     And it's over. The reborn Queen is going to kill you all.

     Bota clutches his wounded arm and breathes heavily, his face drawn in disbelieving grief. Kana smolders while trying to hold her blood in, leaning heavily on one sword. Sonia lies dead on the floor, impaled a dozen times over. Brune crouches trembling over her body, maybe too stricken to even realize what's happened.

     What-used-to-be the cargo bay is now an open-air alien arena, walls and floor and scattered crates overgrown with fractal calcified tendrils. The noonday sun shines down. It isn't any mercy. The Queen doesn't blister or shrink from it in the slightest.

     The tortured, barely-holding-together Union Busan creaks and groans. Waves beat against its hull. Sea monsters don't bother attacking it, but you know the other ships aren't as lucky. There are dwindling murmurs of their fates over the radio, and the quiet's punctuated by occasional distant cookoffs.

     How long has it been since this fight started? Your bones tell you it's been hours.

     "Oh," they say, clawlike nails grazing their lips. They pretend to just now realize something. "One more thing~" Still holding the coruscating Night Mist knockoff in one hand, they kick Clark's spear up from the floor, grab it in the other, rear back, and hurl it through meters of solid steel towards the bridge with an expert hunter's technique.

     Something pops. That's where the Artificial Warpgate was. No escape.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine was halfway to the queen and drawing her ritual knife when the gestalt body emerges. She stops in her tracks, the knife clattering to the floor. Before she moves, she whispers a word in some unfamiliar language and exhales. Her breath, despite the heat, mists in the air - and grows, the heavy white cloud briefly surrounding Madeleine. As the vapor disperses, she is ringed by five large wolves, with the appearance of carved blue ice. Where they step, blood freezes into a gooey slush. The creatures do not leap onto the offensive, instead keeping their distance and blowing puffs of vapor that hardens into ice on contact with the queen's new body. Madeleine also hangs back with the wolves, loosing the occasional arrow in hopes of making an opening.
Ishirou Ishirou is not even allowed to grieve.  He turns his head up from the remains of the Busan, only to see the sickening creature emerge from the bowls of the Queen.  Their features are an array of whose blood was spilled during the fight... but sadly for it, not the non-organic fluids.  The spear flies faster than he can track and smashes into the gate.  The explosion of the gate catches Ishirou off guard...

He falls over from the shrapnel, catching some across the leg and one across the arm.  Thankfully, none of them were direct hits, but if they had been he'd be dead on the spot.  Even this much was enough to hurt him severely.  

"We're not even allowed to greave..." he says, muttering to himself as he stands on both legs.  A visible limp on one leg as he drags himself forward.  He recognizes the sword in their hands, and the various features... and he's sure not all of this is inconsequential.  Ishirou is visibly afraid because he has faced down an unrestrained version of this before.  Combined with everything else..?  He's absolutely terrified about what they are about to fight.

The remains of the flight unit are cast off, and the only thing he has left is the base RESCUE suit options.  POD is available of course, floating near him as he grabs his rapier from POD.  The first thing he does is start trying to analyze her completely, then send that data to Lilian through an OPTION he releases.  He coordinates a plan, aiming to lay down blasts of energy from POD to try and keep suppressive fire upon them.  

He changes the volley of his shots to try and make sure that Lilian can get in there and changes his position so that he's always keeping suppressive fire on The Queen.  Pushing himself past his breaking point and trying to keep fighting.  It wasn't anything to fight for right now but to survive.  To love to see tomorrow... and whatever that tomorrow holds for either side.  
Redshift Operators     White Dwarf screams as the grenade is pinned to her hand, as the spine slams through her palm. There wasn't any way to see it coming. She wasn't tuned to this, how could she have ever known it was going to happen? There was no predicting it. But luckily, she was holding it in the non-dominant hand.

    That, and that alone, is her only good luck.

    When she manages to pull away, putting pressure on that awful wound in her hand, she's already searching fractal futures. "No, no! No!!" She's crying out. "Not more, not... Not *this!*" Staring up, she sees that white hair. She knows it. Everything she did to change herself, rendered down to one ingredient in a slurry. She trembles as this being unfurls themself, and she tightens her grip on the blade in her hands.

    "Please. Just *stop*...!" One bloodied hand wraps around the hilt near the other, and steadies. "Just get out of their life! Leave them alone!! *Leave them alone!!*"

    No gunshot dashing this time, at least not without a short delay. Instead, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand futures blossom. Ten thousand, and hundred thousand, a million. Swarming the Queen -- or searching for a way to the warpgate, a way to fix it, and failing to do it. Or rushing to Kana and Bota's aid, and administering the fastest first aid possible with that field-surgeon arm. Every role Lilian offers, every plan she considers, every possible future for the team and its plans. The hold is crowded in the phantoms and choked by alternate future after alternate future, an unspeakable swarm of one precognitive ninja testing every future conceivable for a moment to behead, to impale, to bring in a more powerful ally, to do something to finally get this being out of Bota and Rita's life... such as it is, now.

    An overwhelming effort, done out of a deep and intense fear that some part of her precognition might have found its way to them. Overwhelm, take no chances, allow no options. And don't hesitate to strike with that blade, at maximum possible force, when menaced, in every future simultaneously.
Combaticon     The new Queen hurls the spear. Thinking it was thrown at him, Blastoff lurches to one side, only for it to sail past him and into the bridge with destructive results. Staring at the outcome, he realizes right away that he wasn't the target to begin with, swinging his red optics back to the pale-skinned humanoid.

    Seconds later, Vortex floats down beside him, her rotors kicking up the wind, "This is so much worse than I was expecting." Glancing down, she shakes her damaged leg. Finding it serviceable, she shifts and tries her ruined arm. When that fails to function, the robot lets out a sigh. Explosive bolts erupt at her shoulder, jettisoning the useless weight.

    When her severed arm hits the deck, it crumples and splits open, exposing one of her handheld blaster pistols, ripe for the taking.

    "What do we do now?"

    "We get in there and bring an end to this," Onslaught descends between the pair of Decepticons, his optics fixated on the Queen; with his battle mask in place, his expression is as severe as ever. His stark white pupils glance left towards Vortex, then right towards Blastoff, "Transform and interlink. We are fighting together."

    Vortex straightens at the command, though reacts first by flipping backwards and folding in on herself. This time, as she becomes a helicopter, her size does NOT increase. And then, from the shape of an attack aircraft, she transforms again into an enormous arm with a massive five-fingered hand. The four rotor blades all fold together, aimed down the bicep.

    Blastoff lifts one hand to the edge of his helmet, tipping two fingers in a casual salute, "It's your call, boss. I'll be your right hand any day." He then also tips forward and lifts his arms, unfolding panels on his body into the form of a jet fighter; then transforming further into a second enormous arm. His wings fold up and together across the upper shoulder like an armor plate.

    Onslaught's remaining left arm folds away while his shoulders rotate and transform, exposing the enormous sockets for his subordinates to link into. Once the connection is completed, the joint armors over. The huge hands are lifted, fingers flexing, then one forming a fist and smashing into the palm of the other with a sound not unlike a car accident.

    "I will maintain. You can put your trust in me."

    Onslaught drops, slamming into the deck with a heavy sound of metal on metal, his ginormous hands striking it a millisecond later. There is no hesitation. He's not even done recovering from the landing before he's brought his left arm up; three autocannons have all unfurled from the wrist in different positions. By the time Onslaught is approaching at a steady stride, the guns have opened fire. The distinct ring of bullet casings falling to the deck surrounds him, just under the roar of machine guns.
Dysnomia     As the queen was felled, the whorling nebula drooped, slowly, as the queen died. Dysnomia spilled over the ground, like liquid, permiting gravity to touch her out of sheer exhaustion, her blood floating down like mist, condensing on cold steel, already steaming away and mixing with human blood in messy rivulets.

    A kenning, sound vibrated outward from her body, surrounded by bodies, feeling conciousnesses flickering out around her, never to ignite, like stars in apocolyptic night. She couldn't separate her own feelings from their grief and she didn't care to. Her thoughts turned to Rita, sluggish and half-drunk, much of her 'mass' and mind already spent.

    They had to get to her. They had to--

    --How had she missed it? That flicker of will in the dark, lost in the waves of relief, the 'it has to be over.' By the time it burned bright enough for her to acknowledge it, it was too late.

    Too late.

    A presence that had previously swelled to try to engulf the whole of the cargo bay shuddered on the floor, those strange eyes disbelieving. "No," threads of horror can't help but spill out of her soul, like watter from a fractured vase. "You can't--!"

    She choked off the sentence before she managed to utter utter it, the oppressive atmosphere enough to choke on. It was over. This was how it ended. Where her future finally sputtered out into lifeless stardust.

    Unbidden, staring into the eyes of death, she remembered Rita, frolicking under glowing polyps, biolumscent microbacteria swirling around her in half a dance. The unbridled joy singing from her heart. "Oh! Ms. Mia!! It's just like...!"

    Just being impaled, that couldn't be the end of her, right? She couldn't have bled out. The queen's monsters couldn't have chewed her into chum. She couldn't be gone.

    Miller, he wouldn't have had the chance, if it weren't for--This creature--this THING killed--WANTED to kill--
Dysnomia     Color haloed Dysnomia, her body solidifying, rising. A humanoid, ethereal shape, with burning claws? at the ends of her fingers and toes, with flowing, glowing hair? drifting in the air as though it was adrift in water. Her face a featureless swirl, with eyespots burning bright.

    She was so much smaller, like this. Whittled down to her very core.

    "Everything has to be as you want," molocules vibrated in the air, in echoey imitation of a voice. "Everyone has to fit, or you'll cut it away. If you're the world, it's just because you've carved away everything that wasn't part of you. If they don't please you, if they're not your--your perfect slave--"

    Something in the air growled, barely high enough to hear, low enough to feel resonate in lungs.

     It's difficult to say whether it appeared in her hands, or if her hands themselves warped to become it, (there was never a distinction, for her) but a burning spear materialized either way, pointed to the gestalt monstrosity, this collective child of theirs, born from a womb of blood. "This won't be the end!" Was she trying to convince the queen? Herself? This, she manages to keep from leaking from the sieve of her mind.

    She thrust forward, her body eerily stretching across half the cargo bay in an instant, trying to pin the Queen between Madeleine's wolves, the shadow of White Dwarf's possible futures and the sputtering fire of her will.
Kale Hearthward It's done. It's over. Again. For real this time. That last kamikaze run in with the point-blank spell took a lot out of him, but now it's done, and now he can relax. He didn't die. It's done.

Kale's foolish enough to believe that.

"Rita..."

Kale peers over the side of the ship. If she were okay, she'd have come back up by now and fought, surely. Meaning...

... No. Right now, there's more important things to focus on. The battle's won, but the efforts aren't over. He needs to-

> "Haaaah. Much better."

- and that thought gets cut off. "No..."

He turns. She's there. And she's... sampled from all of them. Bits and pieces.

He goes to grab his sword - no swords. He lost both of them. There's spares of both, but he doesn't carry those on him.

The warpgate goes. Kale takes a breath. It sinks in. No escape.

No escape. No swords. And a refreshed opponent. He really is going to die here.

"Boots! Coming in hot, heads up!"

Kale looks up at the source - just in time for the East Wind to fly by over head. Two swords drop from the cargo bay, embedding blade-first in the deck on either side.

"Told you all to go rescue people," Kale calls up. "And not to get involved."

"Yes, well, people includes you! Give her heck!"

Kale grabs and sheathes both swords, and then turns his attention to the problem at hand as the East Wind speeds away in an attempt to stave off the ongoing extinction.

> "Hearthward, limit the Queen's mobility; intercept physical attacks and repel projectiles as possible."

"Right." He kicks his boots on. Maybe he'll die here. But for now he's still breathing.

He gets into motion, casting - trying to thwart whatever the Queen's next move is, by wind spell or sword parry or by whatever means he can.
Candy      Candy's eye twitches with something between anger and disgust, as the Queen stands back up. There is no denying what's been done--too many familiar details are present, in that alien visage. By far, however, the most familiar to him, is the way the Queen speaks.

If only I'd known I could banish Lisa's compassion so easily.

    "Are you stupid, or just gloating? You never had it to begin with, thief."

    Candy's armor disintegrates into so much grey ash, blowing away despite the absence of any eggs. What's left is a bloodstained red-white striped shirt reminiscent of early 20th century sailors, work boots and rough hewn canvas breeches, torn through by one of the Queen's spears on one leg.

    The skin there is still broken, still regenerating from his last use of an HP Bullet. His nose still trickles blood, from his overuse of his temporal talents.

    "Everything you ever had in this world, you stole from people. You even stole the way the stupidest ones justify -their- stealing. 'Oh, I am doing you a kindness, ah? This is mercy, when you get torn to pieces. It's kindness, when you are stuck between my fucking goons and the worst bullshit people can make.'" Candy snorts, then spits. "'When you go to bed at night wondering if it's my ugly little freaks or the rich bastards' dogs who'll kill you, that's me, showing you how much I FUCKING care.'"

    Smoke swirls into his hand, billowing impossibly outwards and elongating until it forms something long and weighty. "I'm glad you got back up," he says, as the smoke blows away. It reveals a macahuitl, in an unusual configuration--sized, balanced and weighted more like a greatsword than a club. Obsidian teeth draw sparks across the floor of the open air arena as he approaches, walking more steadily thanks to Kukuru's healing. "And I'm even gladder you broke that gate."

    "'Cause I wasn't finished with you."

    Holding the macahuitl in a side stance, he shifts his hips and shoulders, dragging it rapidly across the metal floor. The sparks struck up by the motion grow wildly into a directed conflagration, a crescent of broiling flame hurtling towards the Queen as Candy rushes in to follow up with a bellowing cry.

    Hot on the heels of his projectile, his grip and stance changes as he sprints, the weapon held with the flat behind his neck with both hands on the grip. Using the advancing flame as a screen, he opens up with a brutal slash, before stepping back with one foot, lowering the 'point' of the macahuitl, and holding it in a low guard. But--that Candy is a fake, and was from the moment after that first swing.

     The real Candy, a few yards back, just blinked into space, with the weapon shouldered using one hand, and two heavy crates tucked under the other. "Spacefolks!" One crate of supplies (plus some HP bullets he's made himself) is dropped, kicked across the deck to the Redshifts. Another dropped, "And, ah, 'Agents.'" He taps it with his weapon, before sawing off the lid in one stroke.
Rena It's over.

And yet, it's not over.

Rena had been separated from the main assault force. Not by intention; she'd gotten pretty close, but on her motorbike Outlaw, when the Butan rocked under an erupting flood of tentacles, she had ended up in a different sector. It was a wonder she'd managed to keep Outlaw on the ship at all; she'd come within about an inch of being tossed into the sea, and Rena would not be willing to put any money down on her surviving in there.

(Here's a fun fact: Rena does not know how to swim more than a bare handful of strokes. She has been trying very hard not to think about it the entire time she was on the Busan, and was mostly functioning by deciding it didn't matter anyway; the sea monsters would get her before she managed to swim anywhere.)

But she hadn't been idle. There had been sea monsters to fight, people to scoop up, even bits of the ship to try to bash back into operation. She can't hold it together herself; it's too big for that. But she can at least try.

The whole time, though, she'd been working her way back toward the front, back toward the now-open cargo bay. An opportunity had presented itself, and she'd taken it, crazy - stupid, really - as it was.

The sound of an engine revving up echoes as one of the calcified tendril-vines-whatever vibrates. A moment later, and Outlaw rockets over the edge, Rena having used one of the outstretched vines as a ramp to boost herself up to the edge of the ripped-open cargo bay - up, and over.

Outlaw hits the apex of its jump and begins to fall. It looks like it is going to crash against the floor and kill Rena that way, but at the last quarter or so of the fall, Rena jams the jump boosters to maximum output. She can't actually get any height but she manages to slow Outlaw enough so it lands with bone-jarring impact - but she remains clinging to the back, tattered coat billowing out behind her on Outlaw's descent.

Rena is definitely the worse for wear even if she didn't fight the Queen; infinity sea monsters is enough for anybody. She's missing both her back-carried long guns and the grenade launcher, either having broken or lost them. Both her arms are ripped up with a variety of scratches, scrapes and wounds from reaching past shattered metal and fighting injuries - right through her bracer, even - and a variety of other, smaller wounds adorn her body. She's going to have a black eye; she must have fallen at least once. Outlaw, too, shows signs of battle damage, with the blue paint she likes scraped off in places and several visible chassis dents.

But she's still here, she's still functioning, and so is Outlaw.

Outlaw skids to a stop, swerving to put the length of it between the Queen and Bota. "You missed one," Rena says, hoarsely. "Me."

Outlaw has missiles. Rena doesn't use them; this place is ready to fall apart without it. It has some front-mounted guns, too; a miniature gatling on a pintle mount, and two mounted lower, under the headlight. Rena doesn't use them, either.

Instead, she draws her revolver left-handed and, with pin-point aim, starts trying to pick at the Queen. She aims at eyes, at throat, at midsection - and she fires all six shots, one after another, before quick-loading it.

"You don't get a second chance. Not in ten years, not twenty, not ever. One end of the world's enough for anyone, do you hear me...?!" Rena has been bottling up her anger, her frustration, her rage at this entire scenario. Nobody deserves this. It hits too close to home, for some reasons, and completely differently, for others. But everybody is dying, and she can't do anything about it.

Well, now she can. There is a problem. And she can, finally, FINALLY, shoot it.
Stanley Padgett     Stanley's laughing... stops. It stops as he watches the body reform.

    As he sees himself inside of the new Queen.
    And as he sees her suddenly focus on him.

     And then he's got the worst feeling. A horrible yawning sense of danger. Stanley, move. "...I can't, I've...

    Her words compel him. "Prithee, bring me to the dead bodies of my queen and son. One grave shall be for both: upon them shall the causes of their death appear, unto our shame perpetual." Stanley's words resonate in the chamber, as he clambers up to his feet, Mercut- The Persona fizzes for a moment or two, fragmenting into other forms, before reforming back into the silent killer fuckboy it's supposed to be.

    Stanley starts to speak, but the words aren't coming from his mouth, but rather from behind the implacable, faceless mask of Mercutio. "Queen Mab. This is she... Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep..." The swords come up and he starts to circle The Queen. Stanley saw her take from him, but he's not sure... quite what else she stole, save for the Bard's Words. He's wary, cautious... rightfully so.

    Lilian's orders ring in his ears, and Stanley is already on the attack, not even waiting for- It's one straight lunge, fast and swift and terrible, Mercutio's massive blades aiming for The Queen's knee. To cut tendons. Rend ligaments. Cripple her. HOBBLE HER. The ranting continues, as Stanley's attack goes high, aiming for her elbow, her shoulder. Cut off her access. MAKE HER WEAK.

    "YOU STOLE THEIR LIVES YOU LOWBORNE SACK OF GOO. YOU MOBILE GLOB OF SECOND HAND TOOTHPASTE. SLIME MOLD CRAFTED OF EEL TRIMMINGS AND DANDRUFF. THE SUN THAT SHINES ON YOU IS WASTED, LOST TO WARM SOMETHING NOT WORTHY OF DRAWING THE SAME BREATH AS THOSE WHO OPPOSE YOU."

    He gets face to face with the Queen, and spits in her eye. "Fight me."
Aidan Proudpick At any other time, the sight of a AidanxStanleyxKaloxet. al. love child might be a curious sight.

With a spike piercing his arm into a lung, blood dribbling from his mouth, and his leg in a split. The injected adrenaline makes his head pound as his heart threatens to burst. It's a terror. His vision swims as each thundering beat of his heart makes even his eyes throb in pain. He looks half dead already.

"I have to live," Aidan murmurs to himself.

Alerts sudden go out that the warpgate is destroyed. Escape is impossible. Can he even go back? Can any of them go back? Aidan's heart sinks deeper. It's a coldness in his heart, a feeling like dying.

In a coffee shop, the mouse and Kale's Crewmember Hazelthistle and Aidan sits across a table.

"We're not superpowered titans, either. You or I can't just..." she waves her non-scone-holding-hand. "Wave our hands and just *wish really hard* if things don't turn out how we like, or if we don't get our way. We aren't going to be able to freeze time till everything's perfect, or laugh off a gaping chest wound, or hack literally anything, or pick up an entire building as if it was a child's toy, or whatever else the next person who comes along can do."

Do, don't try.

RADIO: Lilian Rook says, "Tamamo, when you have time, see to myself, Candy, Vermillion, and the others in that order for energy supply. Petra, your life is on the line to protect our support; if they die before you, I'll kill you. Proudpick, Hearthward, limit the Queen's mobility; intercept physical attacks and repel projectiles as possible."

Aidan coughs up another wad of blood. He doesn't know if the spike is better in or out. But his breathing is shot.

"A Knight must have heroic courage. It is to live life completely, fully, and wonderfully." Aidan recites his own code under his breath. The deep well of hatred for Lilian, perhaps leaked into by the DEEPER well of hatred for his mother, doesn't matter for the moment. She has an idea. That's enough for him.

White hot PAIN radiates out from Aidan's chest as he breathes out, trying desperately to expand out his lungs far enough to get the breath needed. His entire vision goes white in pain before he thrusts his hands forward, cutting off the Queen's exit with a wind barrier. When he has enough vision to actually see, he charges to the other side of the Queen from Kale, ready to deflect from the other side.
Kukuru LAST TIME
...
Reality starts to hit her. If the Queen isn't stopped here, they'd be able to spread the threat again even with the bombs destroying the nest. The only way to prevent that, then, is killing them here. Again.

She's feeling so terrible about her chances right now, but everyone here is still counting on her. She can't lose her cool now.

She really wants to.

NOW
Kukuru's body is still in rather terrible shape after so many consecutive battles. Between all the healing of those fighting on and alongside the Busan, contending with the pre-reborn Queen and all the accumulated damage to her allies while running on empty already, and still having a tentacle punched through her abdomen while facing the reborn Queen now, she certainly isn't looking fresh in comparison.

And then they smash the Artificial Warpgate. That means there's even less room for error than before, with any real escape routes for anyone here being countable on one hand. And with the Queen so keen on killing everyone here, a failure here would mean the deaths of so many. Friends and family here, even those on other parts of the superplanet that might not even know about what's going on until it's too late.

Even Veleres was't this bad, and it's all starting to set in. Grimacing at the gravity of everything starting to hit her all at once, Kukuru's eyes widen as she stares at the Queen, struggling to figure out how to even approach them.

Lilian issues a direct strategy, and some of the clouding starts to fade. Kukuru's good at following directions. She's never been particularly smart despite her efforts, but she's also never been disparaged for not being able to heal people. Even with her body in this battered state and her nanites struggling to keep up with just closing those wounds up, she's feeling...

Better. For once since this whole battle started, she's actually feeling just a little better. She looks over at Tamamo, banishing those creeping memories from her thoughts before giving her a slow nod. "Ta-ma-mo. I'll... I'll go as hard as I can. I'm counting on you!" She calls out, then crosses her arms over each other and starts forcing her nanites to work harder than they ever have before. "The Queen can't...  We can't let them take Rita's world now. Not after all that... And not a second before we've found her and brought her back with us!"

Kukuru's body will recover eventually from letting those technological things feed off her, as long as she survives. She just needs to make sure everyone else does, so she can actually get there. A cloud of green starts to flow out of her, and it spreads through the alien arena rapidly to spread a dose of healing power all over the place. Plenty of it settles on Candy to keep him steady after getting shot and stabbed so much, and plenty more surrounds the Redshifts after their own work on both fighting the Queen and wrenching that door open at the same time.
Angela Gebura is, as ever, a moment early. And Angela is, as ever, seeing the incoming danger well in advance even if she can't say anything. She works her mouth as soon as she sees something moving but by the time she gets it out, "It is not over." the Queen is already reforming--and on the attack again.

Gebura turns away, unwilling to watch anymore. She starts making her way out of the office.

"Where are you going?" Angela asks.

"Disconnect me from the Sephirah System. I'll turn the tide."

Angela shakes her head. "He won't, Gebura, and besides which-- .... She just destroyed the Warpgate. You can't possibly get there in time."

"...Am I just supposed to watch them die? ... What about Lilian, huh?"

Angela's eyes slant down. "...If we wanted to give them more support, we should have done so before. But it doesn't matter. You can't go because if she absorbs your power it'll be even more hopeless--"

"I'll just dodge everything."

"Are you faster than Lilian?" Angela asks and that gets Gebura to shut up and instead she just punches a wall hard enough to crater it.

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Gebura, rally your surviving Agents. Don't let them try going out in a blaze of glory."

Gebura hesitates, then makes her way back to the comms.

Meanwhile...

Most of the Disciplinary Team is dead. Tweed has decided enough is enough and turns for the Artificial Warpgate, intending to run for the rest of her life. Clark's harpoon slices across her cheek--causing her heart to skip a beat, and slams through several layers of wall.

She hears a pop. The artificial warpgate is down. Tweed sinks to her knees and thinks about her options. She sits herself down, points her rifle at her own face with the solemnity of one who considered this well in advance, and the shaking hands of someone who doesn't quite have the courage to pull the trigger.

Shajo is beat up. Nonon is less so, but she's cut up. Shajo's back is riddled with Gate shrapnel and he spits out some blood to the side.

"Least we're together." Shajo says.

"Now and forever," Nonon breathes out. "We bought twenty years, at least..." The waves lap at her legs and she brings her gauntlet forward. In the occupation of 'monster hunter' the most common form of death is 'monster'. The loner they last, the more likely others can escape, or Rita can get a second wind, or...

...It also just feels real shitty to give up now.
Angela "Agents. Everyone. If you fall here, then everything we did to get here is lost. Forget about glory, or Fixer Levels, or Colors. None of that matters right now. Right now we're just all people trying to have a future. Fight for ours. Don't forget... This is our job. This isn't the first unkillable monster we contended with. We never knew when to quit before so..."

She leans and shouts, "So don't you fucking dare now! Hurt her. Hurt that Queen so much that even if she lives, she fears humanity for the rest of her bitter little life! Make her so TERRIFIED that she dives into the deepest ocean and cowers there for the rest of time!"

Tweed lowers her rifle. She nods once to herself. This makes sense. She stands herself up and readies her rifle once more but before she--or any of the Agents really--can do anything...

           __________________________________________________________          
           |ARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING W|          
                             |=|WAW CLASS THREAT|=|                            
                                                                                
                        DREAMING CURRENT - I'M A SHARK!                        
                                  RAWWRR!! :EE                                  
           __________________________________________________________          
           |ING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARN|          
                                                                                

The Dreaming Current explodes out of the water and throws himself at the Queen, two sets of mouths first as he attempts to CLAMP DOWN on her and grind his many many MANY teeth into her body.

I'M A SHARK!!!! AND YOU!!! HURT!!! MOMMMMY! RAAAAAAAAAAWWRRRR!! I AM AN ALPHA PREDATOR!

He roars impossibly but he roars all the same.

"Holy fucking shit!" Shajo shouts.

"Gnarrrr!!" The legs of the Abnormality flap from side to side like fins. The teeth don't just bite into flesh, but also the mind like being attacked by a shark in the dreamworld as much as this one.
Tamamo     When the Busan was pierced in multiple places, broken holes all through it, Tamamo wasn't standing in their way. This is, simply, because the attack was not aimed, and if mere good fortune is enough for her to avoid danger, then Tamamo-no-mae, while at the height of her attention to violent conflict, cannot be harmed. The same was not true of an attack that left no space to dodge, and could only be blocked at great effort. Having leapt high to take a view of the other ships and offer aid while so many elites focused on the Union Busan, this is the moment at which she became separated.

    This, on its own, doesn't suffice for an explanation of why she said nothing. That is instead due to several factors which may be explained later, but are hinted by her fresh appearance. Her silk robes are rent in several places, and her newly exposed left arm, along with her navy blue stockings, are covered in overlapping paper talismans like partial casts, the ink starkly colored. No wounds are visible, nor has her silhouette changed but for the torn clothing, but sweat beads amidst the ocean spray.

    Now she's here, making her way back into where it's the most dangerous, because it's where she was asked by the one she's chosen to follow anywhere. Immediately, of course, she's called on to heal -- after having already exhausted so much of the preparations she was able to make just for this day.

    "Of course," is all she says, worry lining her face, though it vanishes in a moment, to be replaced by something beyond an unnatural calm, at around the same moment Kukuru looks to her.

    The Busan hasn't yet sunk. The physical site is still present, and she'd just drawn down the connection from the midday Sun. A swift gesture of one hand, like grasping a thread, a tug and twirl, and the bunrei blazes with light and flame.

    Pulling a little more won't hurt, at this stage. She would have liked to avoid it, but that's a luxury they've not been given. She can always consider the emotional wounds later, when the ones for whom she cares are safe.

    Her stores really will be exhausted, at this rate, but that's only true of her healing charms. Blessings of fortune are something she has in greater supply, and are mixed together with what she throws toward -- as requested -- Lilian, then Candy, then Meika. It's more than a little good luck, there to stop them from getting hit again as much as it is to reinforce wounded and tired bodies.

    "'A world,' are you? You do seem... an amalgamation of many things -- bits and pieces, shallow cuttings, twigs without roots -- together, though lacking in divinity. No, your drives are 'growth' and 'conquest,' I suppose? How very... earthly. And how can growth and consumption be infinite? Shall you become Ouroboros?" It's a detached sort of focus, like she's paying close attention to something for which her eyes are only a distraction.
Hibiki Tachibana     The bombs on their wheeled racks slide forwards into the water--
    --All the vast tentacles piercing the Union Busan shudder and go slack.

    The door gives way. Hibiki barely manages to shove herself out of the way of the explosives falling free, battering against the cargo bay walls and using them as the only support keeping her on her feet. Panting for air, she shifts herself just enough to watch the final blows be struck. Finger dig into steel as the Busan quakes one final time.

    And then it's over. Cheers erupt out, but she spends a few seconds longer with wide eyes. And then she collapses down to slide against the wall down to the floor, finally gripping onto her gashed-open shoulder. "Hah... agh... hah... is it...?" It's not. Brune is still right there... and Sonia. Sonia. And who knows how many others in the same exact position as them on the ship. Her heart twists. And out there... there's still Rita--

    It's not over.

    Hibiki's eyes shoot open just in time to see the utterly terrifying death throes of the queen, and have to shut tight again just as quickly, in the face of the blinding light. She very nearly wishes they didn't open back up again.

    "What... the hell..." It's terrible. That it's her meetings with Qetra that have helped her be able to pick out all of the stolen, amalgamate details. The hair. The eyes. The too-familiar blade of air, and then heated plasma. The clamoring monsters as the nest is destroyed doesn't even reach her. Her eyes are locked on the Queen and the Queen alone, as if seeing her and not seeing her at the same time.

    It's the thrown spear, and the sinking instinctual knowledge of what exactly was just hit that makes her finally breathe out. There's no going back. The adrenaline from the fight has already started fading, and the soreness in her body is starting to finally overcome her. How is she supposed to mov--

    Promise.
    How do you know when to push yourself like that? When it's okay, or when it's worth it?

    "...Yeah, okay... I didn't have anything to say back then, Rita, but now..." Hibiki grunts, stumbling back to a stand at Lilian's orders being pushed out. 'Take Vermillion and Padgett and press offense.' She inhales sharply, even though it hurts, to fill her lungs back up. "...I get it. It was always going to be right now. ...Okay. Let's go, you two...!"

    She doesn't wait for confirmation. She doesn't have to. Before she knows it, she's already sprinting ahead, fists forced tight. In the next instant, as Stanley gets to striking high, Hibiki is low--

    Twisting her body into a full-strength hook to crash into her side with a blow that would crumple anyone else and shatter bones. Behind it, a second in the same spot, air cracking around her gauntlet. Simple punches, even if they're absurdly forceful. But the feelings behind them...

    "You won't take anything else...! From Rita, Lisa, or from anyone-- when you don't even understand why they carry those things in the first place--!"
Lilian Rook     "You can't be betrayed by someone who didn't promise you anything."

    Lilian manages to say that in the pause after the queen's collapse. The rest of the air escapes her lungs in a rasping gasp after. "If only? If only you'd listened to anything I told you. If that's the only way out you can think of, even now, then it's obvious this would have happened." She withdraws her sword slowly, with the unwholesome sound of slick bones snapping. The gore steams along its length, cooled in fresh blood. "Don't you know? Anyone can do anything to anyone. What you did to Rita proves that. If you think you're above--"

    Lilian watches the first flake of the disintegrating body flutter away, and sighs. "Well. Too late for that advice anyways. Don't bother reincarnating." She finally turns away, and begins walking. Give White Dwarf space to say her own. And Ceri . . .

    'Kill her now! Don't let her recover! Die if you have to; I don't care!'
    'It has been an honor madam.'

    Lilian has to stop to breathe. She suddenly can't remember how to let it back out. Her eyes unerringly find that corpse, slumped on the floor of the cargo bay. One of Petra's coworkers. One of Gebura's understudies. One of Angela's family, however distant, in whatever miniscule way. She hadn't really meant it like--

    No, she had. In that moment, she was so determined, so desperate, so focused, so scared, so angry, that she'd never have forgiven someone who could have stopped the worst but was afraid to die. Really, Lilian realizes, she just wished it was someone else. She doesn't even know Ceri, but she still wishes it could have been almost anyone else. Lilian tears her eyes away, swallowing down something horrible in her throat. Her body is paralyzed by a wave of exhaustion. She remembers how to exhale when she nearly falls over.

    "Rita. Her next." says Lilian. "No lingering here. If she could have held out a moment longer, but we were all too busy weeping--" A deep, shuddery breath. "I'm going out to get her. Do whatever. I can still fight." she says, and stalks towards the bay doors, now torn into open space, leaving the Queen behind.

    So her back is turned at the critical instant.

    Lilian is left staring at the newly emerging Queen, eyes wide, pupils prinprick dots, lips parted, sword squeezed until her fingers ache by her side, without fully comprehending what's happened; all the way up until they speak. The whiplash from hope to dread at the bombing, from fear to desperation fighting the Queen, to relief and to grief at their defeat, takes her a fourth, sickening time all the way back to something like despair. She's so tired; it feels like the emotion could break her neck.

    And it isn't hard to discern what's happened, either. Even if most of it is abstract, the mishmash of ugly iconography and emblem, thoughtlessly stitched together as if nearly random, into a pastiche of human average; something like that could only ever happen when the ends are power at all costs. What are they to do about the Queen when the Queen has everything they used to kill them?

    'Some of these ingredients are colder,'

    Lilian's eyes find the Queen's face successfully this time. In that moment, in something deeper than her heart, she knows they were right to give up their ability to see.

    'You can't be.'

    "She isn't." Lilian whispers, and starts trying to believe it. "She never was."

    
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou straining, "Is there a plan, Lilian?"
<J-IC-Scene> Aidan Proudpick coughs, "Shoot it."
<J-IC-Scene> Combaticon Onslaught says, "Destroy the enemy. Any means necessary."
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "...Then we're fighting to survive."
Lilian Rook     §Come on. They need me. They're looking to me. They're about to lose all hope. They've hit their darkest time, and they've come back to me again, because in the end, they all know that I can take it. I can always take it, and now they need me. Typical. Fucking typical. Of course they did.§

    §But they should. The one and only immutable rule is 'I get to exist'; I told Rita that. They know they have to, because they know I'm the one who wanted to lose hope and die, over and over and over again, and never succeeded. So it has to be me. Always the last one standing. Like I used to cry about back then.§

    Lilian glances twice around the cargo bay, then begins to move.

    "See to Kana and Bota. We need them fighting immediately. Leave Brune for support personnel; we can't sacrifice a combatant. No heavy artillery like last time or we'll sink. If the Busan falls apart, I can save three or four at most, and the Queen will escape."
    "Gebura, rally your surviving Agents. Don't let them try going out in a blaze of glory. Kukuru, work with Tamamo to patch up those near death first; Redshifts first of those; then our most experienced fighters. Have the robots get to ground; we can't withstand the Queen evading too many aerial attacks against our own footing."
    "Tamamo, when you have time, see to myself, Candy, Vermillion, and the others in that order for energy supply. Petra, your life is on the line to protect our support; if they die before you, I'll kill you. Proudpick, Hearthward, limit the Queen's mobility; intercept physical attacks and repel projectiles as possible"
    "Tachibana, take Vermillion and Padgett and press offense. Candy, retrieve ammo and supplies for the Agents and Redshifts from the coordinates I designated, then fall into overwatch. Ishirou, help him; forget scanning and add every bit of power you have."
    "Any others rejoining, fall in with Tachibana and protect the Harpoonists. I'm going to . . ."

    The orders go out in a frenzy of activity. Lilian turns to each individual in turn as she addresses them; strongly, specifically, gesturing to where they need to go and saying it as if she expects it done. Exactly what people need in a crisis situation. Look as if you have a plan, and all they have to do is trust you. But just the one thing at the end makes her slow down.

    "I hope you won't mind, Tamamo, if I bend the rules a tiny bit. It's for the sake of a happy ending."

    Lilian swings Night Mist out to her side. The Queen's own blood streaks along the floor and splatters up the adjoining wall, following the perfect nine o'clock hold. The sight of her own sword-- her own childhood friend-- in facsimile like that, causes something hard and resolute to come over her face.
Lilian Rook     'What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief. Isn't that right?'

    "Yeah I thought so." says Lilian. Her eyes glint dangerously. Her breath fogs despite the lack fo cold. "If you took anything at all from me, if you were like me in any way shape or form, you'd already know deep in every single cell of that hideous body, that past this and past that-- too late and can't get it back-- all of that is nothing."

    A complex flick of her wrist and two fingers reloads Winter Crow with a fresh stack of alchemical rods. Attached to her forearm instead, she draws back Night Mist away from a monster-slaying stance; all power and speed and aerodynamic momentum; and into a perfectly balanced gate guard, meant for duelling between warriors.

    "You'd know alread that all the time in the world is mine."

    Lilian had spent the first fight circling around the Queen, looking for openings, fending off attacks, trying to target their weak point with everything she had. This time, she takes one step, and her sword flashes to a millimeter from the Queen's neck.
Petra Soroka Ceri interposes herself between the encroaching tentacles and those going for the bombs . . .
"HP Bullets, fuck we're out of HP Bullets...!"
. . . and then her arm goes slack and her body goes still.

    Exhausted, absolutely certain of victory against the Queen in Lilian and Kana's hands, the shudder of the Busan pinned through with the quaking tentacles as they squirm in death throes, and the slamming of a massive body hitting the ground, doesn't surprise Petra at all. It'd happen to any monster, eventually, with Lilian and everyone arrayed against them like this. She hangs her head and breathes in an unsteady gasp of cold ocean air, blasted into the cargo hold by the violent removal of the doors. Just one second to breathe, and she'll get Lilian and figure out some way to dive down to get Rita, and then it'll be fine.

    And then Shajo's shout reaches her ears, and the air she sucks through her teeth while wheeling around is only *half* annoyed, and half rejuvenatative. Only partly aware of what Shajo's even needing them *for*, but still trusting that the Captain's got a good reason to sound that way, Petra pats her hands through her trench coat pockets while running back to the Queen's corpse, then swears. She doesn't have any HP Bullets, employees newer than a year aren't allowed-- the Training video she watched on the subject helpfully explained that inexperienced agents might waste company resources by using healing on themselves.

    She's not *out* of options, though. Skidding over to Ceri as blood drains out of her, still totally deaf to the Queen's dying screams, Petra has the tourniquet rubber from her first aid kit held between her teeth while laying the rest of the kit on the ground. She ties it tight around Ceri's bicep, on the arm she used to take the brunt of the tentacles' attack, tilts it above her head to slow the bloodflow, then does the same for the other. She's unconscious, dying, but there's proper healers here, and she's not mashed into a pulp or thrown into the devouring sea like the other agents, so she'll probably be alright.

    "Okay. So that's that. And now--" Petra heaves out a breath, wobbling to her feet, hands sticky with blood. She's drowned out by a flash of light and a wet tear of flesh and tendrils.

You recognize their-- You recognize their-- You recognize their--

    Hollow horror leaves Petra's expression and chest empty except for one vague feeling that slips free and floats through the void. Staring at the amalgamation of all the Elites here, turned humanoid by mimickry rather than an intrinsic sense of self, the most damningly hypocritical sound slips past Petra's lips. "... Ew."

"Some of these ingredients are colder,"

    Petra winces, sluggish stunned arms still numb to the screeching alarm of fear in her head. There's no need to guess what *that* means, not when the dynamics of mimicry are worn so nakedly open on her skin, and blazing orange in her hand. Petra curls her hands up into fists, practically expecting to see heart-shaped hairclips next.
Petra Soroka     "You really *are* just a parasite, huh? It wasn't enough to steal the ones who've died, but you just had to go for all of us left, too?" It's not despair, exactly, that makes Petra shudder when the Warpgate's destroyed, or at the vision of all their fallen allies and the Queen, as healthy as ever. The trembling doesn't stop, little muscular spasms in her arms slowing her down even as she just tries to fumble for any of her weapons.

    Drawing her first revolver, she flicks open the cylinder, shaky-careful. The others kick into motion, shouting and running around, preparing attacks and regrouping, and Petra twitches when Candy drops the box of supplies, jarred out of her immobility. "Really desperate if you're imprinting off 'vermin', right? But-- but you know. Every thief knows, when they steal something. It's because there's something there worth having."

    Petra rips the lid off the supply box Candy made, shoving six HP bullets into her revolver then slamming it shut. Two for Ceri, one for Shajo, Nonon, Tweed, herself, gun shifting cleanly between each target whether they're still or panicked, ending with the muzzle twisted right around to press towards her heart. Orders might have been to get to Kana and Bota first, but the real healers can do that-- Petra wants to make sure her coworkers don't die, too.

    Dropping the revolver to the ground, Petra grabs Pillar of Creation out of the air, morphmetal melting away to let the spear slip into her hands. Looking at the Queen again, it's practically funny that she chose Night Mist of everything-- that's the one weapon Petra's practiced fighting against the most. And fighting against a nearly-indistinguishably mixed-up tumor made up of most of the people she knows, including herself? That's the *other* thing she's fought against the most.

    She knows Night Mist's reach down to the centimeter, and knows where to hold Pillar of Creation's haft to outmatch it. The obsidian-black blade of the spear, splashed with riots of other colors inside, streaks through the air to stab low when Lilian goes high, halo of morphmetal coiling to her side to shield her from the counterblow.
Meika Kirenai     When Chevalier Vermillion's skates once more click against solid, and weight rests again on her un-bitten leg, the sudden shock that cascades through her bones and nerves makes her feel like she'll fall to her knees and heave. She wobbles, and her foot catches a remnant calcified root-tendril- the tndril shatters silently with contact, but still succeedstripping her enough to stumble, and only catch herself by leaning too much weight into the butt end of her hockey stick.

    She's still just that faint amount smudged and smearing at the outline as she's been since that earlier blow, even as the overhead sunlight does its best to gleam properly off her knightly armor. As the Queen's spear is hoisted and thrown, careening towards the warpgate, Vermillion's eyes actually follow it. Her heart plummets-

    Oh. There's no way home. This really could be it. A breath catches in her throat, silently strained out through clenched teeth. She tastes blood, god knows from what. The Queen's speech, the Queen's appearance, the Queen's everything, is just a hair too horrible to think on. I always thought it'd be faster.

    {"But that's okay, right..? We got the bombs, we won, so if now's when we..."} Her whisper doesn't find anyone, as she looks up towards where the warpgate used to lie. Her lips still move, unbidden and unaware, and the glare of her armor sharpens- like an image more clearer coming into focus. The flickering magic dancing up and down her limbs tightens, pouring strength back into burning muscles, clamping a few torn blood vessels closed and-

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Tachibana, take Vermillion and Padgett and press offense.
. . .
<J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana only transmits heavy breathing for several long moments. And then, tired but tightly, "...Okay. Let's go, you two...!"

    It's easier to run plays with a team than without. The words she can barely even focus on, as she tries to steady and stand, carry an ugly and bitter kind of comfort- Right. It isn't over. It'll be slower than I thought. Aha... One more shot at this, really. I'll do it right. I'll try to...
Meika Kirenai     "Okay, okay, yeah. I got this. I'm- I'm reading loud and clear." It's almost tangible, the shift in Vermillion's voice returning from the empty clarity of her whisper-like projections, to the fascimile of confidence she carries in-costume. She doesn't as much look Hibiki's way as nod in the direction it feels like she must be, shaped out by the echoes Vermillion uses when eyes just won't do. "Tachibana-" There isn't the cutting weight to that wording. Quickly, she shifts to whispering, cautious of the Queen hearing. {"Let me know when you need setup. I'll pin what I can down, just give a signal. I'll catch it."}

    Rubble, metal scrap, and calcified remnants of the Queen's old fortress flare out in an eerily silent burst, as the magical girl is already cutting across the meters between herself and the Queen. Hibiki goes low, Stanley high, and she, circling in a spark-showering screech, circles around as close-in as she can to get right behind the foe, and launch into them with a sudden kick-off momentum shift- colliding in a hull-echoing shoulder check, the flare of searingly red magic flowing off her crashes and sprays as if it has mass, fizzing into the air around the alien monarch with overlapping staccato static-crackling.

    The Queen might be used to it by now- or at least expecting it, that the flow quickly sharpens itself into an array of flechette-shards. They still can't tear flesh the same way Chevalier Vermillion wishes in this moment, but the splashing cloud of paralytic little spearheads pierce flesh like soldering irons to tallow- sticky, aching, and everywhere she can get them.
Rita Ma      The Queen figures things out as they go, which is a terrifying prospect. Early attacks are lazily skated around or batted aside with their faux-Night-Mist; then they zip away from blows so quickly that it's only distinct from teleportation in the backscatter of shredded metal from accelerating; then attacks start hitting hollow 'decoys' that look like shed skin, the real thing materializing somewhere else.

     Toying with you. They haven't even started attacking yet. The attacks that do land true- grazing bullets, arrows, crushing punches, hacking slices- find a target harder than steel, and worse, one that heals over in a sizzling second. Is that just the Queen, or is it Kukuru?

     "I'm perfect, aren't I?" they purr while shoulder-rolling around Hibiki's fist, in a tone that could be either Kale's or Lilian's. "That's the beauty of it. Your thoughts. Your words. Your accomplishments. The only thing wrong with them... was you. The rough edges you got while finding them for me. They're so much better on someone without all your unsightly damage."

     Then they stop toying. There's only a fraction of a second's warning; a sharp inhalation, a flare of those unwholesomely glowing lungs. Then a concussive wall of sound impacts everyone, bruising flesh, jarring bones, rattling metal. Ears ring and bleed. Vision swims with dark spots.

     "KREEEEE!!"

     For a second all the air leaves the arena. Then it crashes back in. The implosion's almost as bad as the first shockwave, but they're already moving, flickering between targets at immense speeds with lazily immaculate swordplay. The plasma-replica Night Mist is light enough to wield like a fencing foil, and they do, with sizzling flicks-of-the-wrist and cooking-from-the-inside impaling lunges.

     Bota holds his own against the assault for just a few seconds, but takes a scorching slash to the chest and nearly collapses. Kana improbably matches the Queen blow-for-blow for a heartbeat's worth of reprieve, but pulls back when her swords threaten to melt.

     They lunge for Stanley's rallied low-rank harpoonists, backed into an adjoining hallway. A single wrist-flick turns several of them into smoking halves. They draw back for another neck-level sweep across the crowd--

     "YOU." Brune finally rises to grab the Queen by the head from behind. Tears have washed the blood from his face. "GET OUT OF HERE!" he roars to them, and then looks back at Petra, Stanley, and Hibiki. "KIDS! LEAVE! SONIA WOULDN'T--" They twist to slice his throat open, but that can't stop him from pounding their chest with a fist and throwing them against Dreaming Current before he collapses to his knees clutching his neck. He isn't long for the world.
Rita Ma      White Dwarf, in her forecasts, finds herself actively opposed- no, hunted across timelines. Subjective months of forecasts play out, showing deaths in every combination and defeat at every speed. There's one narrow thread with even the possibility of victory; one where she frantically mends Kana and Bota's wounds while staying in the fight. But even in that one--

     Lilian's true Night Mist is a millimeter from the Queen's neck. Petra's spear is a millimeter from their heart.

                                       o                                      
                                     0   0                                    
                      BUT THAT'S NOT HOW THIS STORY GOES                      

     With an unwholesome eye-gleam, they extinguish and reignite their plasma blade between Night Mist and their neck, reacting as if they'd foreseen it. Their other hand grabs the spear just as it's piercing their spine. Blood trickles from their back and their neck smokes, but they still smile with (false?) serenity.

     "That's fascinating, limey," they purr in a voice that doesn't really match Candy's. "You two have different angles on it, ah? But if I tilt my head just right. I think I can see it."
Combaticon     "'Perfection'," Onslaught's synthesized tone comes out as if he were sneering behind his faceplate. He's only audible because he's stopped firing those machine guns, lifting his left arm up. All three autocannons eject spent ammunition cases with streams of smoke, then recede into the forearm once again.

    "There is no such thing as 'Perfection'. You have merely replaced what you perceived as flaws with flaws you are unable to perceive."

    Blasting the air out of the arena doesn't affect someone who doesn't breathe. The robot's approach is only slowed by the pressure wave, reaching down with one enormous hand to steady himself and brace for the inevitable smash of air rushing back in.

    "I have had my encounters with 'perfection' before."

    When the reborn Queen begins their swordwork, Onslaught swings his left arm forward and presents the bicep, curled at the elbow. The rotor blades fan out and begin spinning faster than the eyes can see, intercepting strikes through sheer speed and the time-trusted durability of Cybertronian metals.

    His right arm, held back, splays the fingers out. When he senses a warning, the Decepticon suddenly switches sides-- rotating at the waist, folding his rotating 'shield' away in the same motion that he lashes out with his bare hand, right for the Queen's midsection.

    That metal hand and long fingers are easily large enough to encircle their waist and clamp down. Pushing forward, Onslaught lifts them and then bodily slams them into the metal deck, glowering down at them with glowing crimson eyes and tiny, stark white pupils.

    "The end is always the same."
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine's wolves shatter under the sonic assault. No more playing around. She draws her spear and moves in for the kill. Immediately, she is run through with a blade of plasma. The plastic decoy melts almost instantly from the heat, and the Queen was ready for this, her sword already sweeping wide to catch the huntress as she approaches from the side - the replica Night Mist cuts through the second decoy like butter. Shattered and melted plastic and scraps of burning cloth and wood litter the floor as Madeleine fights from every angle and with both ends of her spear. "Your precognition can see the future," Madeleine taunts, "but *I* can change what's already past." It's true, at least as far as the decoys are concerned. While the Queen's next killing blow sinks into a wooden body, the real huntress is attacking again from the other side.

    "It's funny, how time repeats itself. I've been here before, you know. Losing a friend who I barely knew, but knew well enough to see she was better than me. Last time we had to name a park in her memory. But this time... I know something you don't," she teases. Even as the last word leaves her lips the faux Night Mist is bisecting her skull and finding only another decoy.
Ishirou The swordplay goes for Ishirou, and it takes everything in him to use his own blade to try and parry the blow.  He's taken lessons from both Lilian and S6 and had settled on using a smaller blade that made his attacks lighter but focused on what he was good at, hitting weak points.  The blades spark as they connect.  

If this were a one-on-one fight, he wouldn't have been able to perform the maneuver.  However, the sonic blast forces him to brace, and is sent flying back across the arena.  Sparks fly as he digs the rapier into the ground to try and slow his momentum as he comes to a complete stop.  He feels small cuts from where the blade did get around his guard, and his hands are numb from the few blows he had blocked.  His legs are shaking, and he breathes in and out to try and steady himself.  

It was more luck than training that had gotten him through that, but without the training he had no amount of luck would have saved him there.  Back on his feet, he throws ammo packs towards both Candy and Onslaught.  He pushes himself, thanks to Lilian's leadership forward again.  And this time, he could see some predictions going forward.  

He fires again, energy bullets flying like a small minigun towards the Queen and attempting to repeatedly strike her in a stream of energy.  This time, however, he doesn't go to specifically aid Lilian's movements, instead he provides cover fire for Meika.  His shots aim to protect her so that she can attempt a heavy assault on her, while also making sure that her path to the Queen was impeded.

"With all of the memories you have, why do you think you're going to win?  If you wanted to win you should have cut your way to my blood, but you didn't..." He grins a little, trying to put The Queen off her game.  "We can keep getting up to fight no matter how scary you are because we're all fighting for the same thing.  You can't win, and if you saw what I can see you'd be more humble about it.." he says, trying to shake the confidence of the queen even a little bit.  

All he needs for her is to slip up once.  A small crack in her facade, a small break in her overwhelming confidence.  Make them think you see something that they don't because it's your /job/ to see that... and if Lilian knows that, so should they..!
Dysnomia     The budget Night Mist carved through Dysnomia's arms, and then cleaves off her 'head.' Through her midsection, carving her apart. The head spun out tendrils of smoke and melded back together with her body. The arm dissipated, only for another to emerge seamlessly from its place. Her midsection lagged shut, leaving a thin trail of floating, smoke blood trailing behind her as she moved.

    But Dysnomia just! Wouldn't! Stop! It was like hitting a cloud, like killing an idea.

    "All you have," the psychic said. "Is the flesh." Dysnomia moved across the room like a whipcord, spear splitting seamlessly into a blade in each.

    When her limbs moved, they twisted in ways that would have made joints and muscles scream. Her insubstial body curving at wild angles through the air, and when the Queen's sword took her through the middle, all it was to her was painful opening.

    "You can't beat the spirit with the flesh," she growled, and as their strikes truck her, because Dysnomia believed it, it was true.

    For now.

    She closed on the queen without heed for her own body, striking her once, twice, thrice with searing plasma. Who had made her flesh so sturdy? So impossible to break? She didn't know. But, frantically, she carved again and again, to batter down her defenses, to expend her regeneration, to just keep her FOCUS long enough for someone who could to do SOMETHING...!
Angela The Dreaming Current thrashes wildly against the Queen before getting thrown off and onto his back. He stands up and cries out before falling flat on his fours and crawling back towards The Queen, wagging his feet dangerously.

It isn't really that surprising to the Agents that Petra is a wonderful ally and star agent with whom they can trust with their lives. Her reputation is glowing as the ultimate company woman. It hasn't been a year yet, but it's getting there. Ceri's bleeding stops though she'll likely need more attention later. Shajo, Tweed, and Nonon all take numerous slices from Faux Night Mist, Nonon even gets her arm chopped free, a trail of blood spraying out as the hand flies free---only for Petra to jam her with an HP Bullet and the hand suddenly reverts, flying right back into Nonon's arm socket.

"Really glad you're on our side," Nonon says to Petra.

"Yeah we'd be done for twice over by now..." Shajo chokes.

"Fuck... Fuuuck this..." Tweed manages. "Covering fire. Again. Try to make this count."

Nonon worries about Brune but she's not a medic--but the guy gave her an idea anyway. She waves between tentacles and swordplay as Shajo defends her flank, blocking tentacle strikes even as they're bodies and spirits are on their last fringe.

Angela watches Lilian's reaction to Ceri's fall and then replays it in her head for good measure. Was Petra able to help? She might not know for objective days. Years for her. She wonders if Lilian ever feels like all her best efforts just leads to more harm.

But all she and Gebura can do is watch. Gebura shouts out orders that shift Nonon's approach. She punches into the deck with Gold Rush to throw herself on top of one of the tentacles, running along it as she makes her way towards Dreaming Current.

Dropping down next to the Shark Abnormality she hefts it up into her arms and slides a foot back, nearly slipping with the water underneath her feet but at this, at least, her movement remains solid. She was born to fight on a ship.

...But she's still getting tired. Her mind is struggling. She spins on her heal, bringing the Dreaming Current up higher and higher.

I'm A Helicopter?!

"Choke it down!" Nonon shouts as she brings the Dreaming Current down towards the Queen, teeth first.

Weh!

"Yuck it up all you want, but you'll die shouting 'How Can This Be??? As many times as it takes--'"
Kukuru Kukuru's mind boggles at how the Queen could possibly heal that way. Is it because they already could prior to being reborn? Or is it because of all that blood they drank from everyone here?

That's why they have those familiar weapons. That familiar hair. That familiar explosion of air that sends Kukuru hurtling back into one of those pulsating walls and sucking in a sharp breath as it forces that chunk of dismembered tentacle that was embedded in her abdomen out of place. She drops to a knee as that impact, combined with the terrible noise reverberating through her skull, keeps Kukuru floored and bracing her hands against the ground just to keep her from falling back onto whatever bloody mess is just beneath her.

It might've been a person at one point.

"You can't be perfect... Nobody's perfect. Nothing's perfect yet." She chokes out an uncomfortable noise while pulling herself back up against the wall, refocusing her gaze briefly to get a better look at just how bad everyone's injuries have gotten. "Everything you're trying to do here... It doesn't have love for anyone in it."

Kukuru's finding her footing again. Figuratively, anyway, as she's losing the feeling in her foot as more of those nanites start to flow, bursting outwards and concentrating themselves in Bota's chest wound and that hissing hole in Brune's neck. They're more vital as fighters than Kukuru is right now, so she can afford not to run so much for a while.

"All those kids of yours that died down there... You didn't cry for them at all!" She feels that fury starting to build, but she still has to focus for everyone's sake. Kukuru just lets it out in her words instead, shouting at the Queen while those nanites continue to surge out of her. Some of those slightly older wounds start to bleed again, but it's a small thing compared to how much more could be done by fixing White Dwarf's fractures and Aidan's wounds.

"A world where a parent wouldn't grieve over even one child dying... And the parent that wants it is worse than garbage!"
Candy      *They're fast. But I can't cheat. Lilian's always went over mine. A wish, instead of a scam. Better to use what Tamamo gave me for something else.*

    Candy's decision is made for him, when the Queen uses Kale's magic. His eyes widen at the sight, and a split second decision keeps him from being blasted into the ocean. The teeth of the greatclub snag into metal, keeping him in place as he takes refuge behind its turquoise-embellished flat. Even so, he is pushed, and whatever sound the rent metal might have made is drowned out by the implosion, which knocks him on his side and sends him rolling.

     Determined not to be on the back foot despite all available evidence--this is Candy, after all--he rises to one knee and then to his feet from the roll, dropping into a fool's guard with the end of the macahuitl pointed down. The Queen is faster, and stronger, so he relies on his technique and decisionmaking to bridge the gap, the guard chosen intentionally for the ease with which he can deflect and counter-thrust. Indeed, where it meets the wooden flat of the club as a result of his deflection, the Queen's plasma duplicate of Night Mist sends up a cloud of hot steam, rather than igniting it--the work of a shimmering sheath of water down its length.

     Even so, what could something like a club do, with a thrust--something whose toothed edges suggest anything but a focus on thrusting? When the Queen makes their lightning-fast dart towards him as he rises, Candy demonstrates, pivoting his stance and making an equally skilled counter--upon which, a flat, razor-thin plane of pressurized water launches from the end of the weapon.

KIDS! LEAVE! SONIA WOULDN'T--

     Candy's draw is superhumanly fast--not so much as Lilian's might be, but fast enough to matter. From the moment he sees the scarlet spray from Brune's open throat, the muzzle of the farmer's pistol is level with his waist, even as he's just finished his up-close exchange with the Queen. The automatic barks twice, as Candy is suddenly Away from them in the blink of an eye.

*Don't listen to nothing they say. They're fucking with you. Keep cool. These people need you at your best.*
Kale Hearthward > "That's the beauty of it. Your thoughts. Your words. Your accomplishments. The only thing wrong with them... was you."

Kale flinches. He grits his beak. The fact that the Queen is landing the verbal jab is bad enough already - that she's saying it with his voice makes it a million times worse.

Any thought of following Lilian Rook's plan, of staying on defense and making openings and opportunities for the others, is forgotten in the moment. Kale is reaching for his swords-

And then the Queen stops toying.

All of the air goes out of the room. Violently.

Kale, in the airless void, is struck by two irrelevant thoughts rattling through his stunned head - irrelevant, and also irreverent to some extent, but they're the first things that come to the surface.

First: Can lifebreath do that?
And then a moment later: Can I do that?

And then the air rushes back in. Just as violently. Kale takes a gasping breath. He's on the floor - he didn't even realize he'd fallen. As quickly as he can manage, he gets up onto his feet again, trying to get eyes on the Queen - and the Queen's already moving.

"Ugh..."

And more people are dying. More people are dying - because he's not fast enough? Because he's not prepared enough? Because he's not good enough?

"I'll show you..."

He grabs his sword.

"I'll show you what... that..."

"... Stale winds." He abandons any pretense of wordplay. "I'm going to kill you!"

He dives at the Queen, swinging Periactus as it revs up.

The Queen's wrong about one thing. Having Kale's ego in a flawless, perfect state isn't the true ideal.

It's really at the most dangerous when it's bruised.
Rena Rena, having decided to protect Bota, is foiled by two things.

One, the Queen is a hell of a lot faster than her. Rena is fast, sure, but there's nothing supernatural about her. She has no precognition; she has no super speed; she's just a girl with a gun and a bike and a lot of determination. She's out of her class. This is the kind of threat she wants a tank for.

Two, though she may have swerved her bike to cover him and then come to a halt, there is no cover she can provide that will protect someone from having the air screamed out of the room.

The scream slams into Rena like a fist of an angry god. She hunkers down on her bike, bracing against the floor with one foot, but she still feels it in her bones, as a dull pulse in her bruises. She squeezes her eyes closed hard enough that they water. She's not sure it helps; when they open again, her vision is blurry until she wipes it away. It's not bloody, at least. She thinks.

Outlaw's engine revs as she reflexively accelerates, tilting hard to one side as the follow-up lunge misses her by millimeters. She's left Bota alone for a bare instant, though, and that bare instant is enough -

"No!"

Once again, she can't save someone. Her heart pounds. Her teeth grind. There's been so many - so many! - deaths today, and she can't stop them. This whole situation is intolerable. And the architect is *right there* and she can't stop them, either -

Rena wheels. She's cavalry, on the bike, not infantry; she can't stay planted in place in front of someone, no matter how much she wants to protect. The only protection she can do is by eliminating the target. "Someone, they need help!" she calls, trying to attract someone else to Bota and Kana, before swerving the other way. She scoops up a length of piping, sheared off about ten or twelve feet long. She doesn't know what it was for originally. Some mysterious ship thing, she figures, but it's not doing any good on the floor.

Rena knows what she wants to use it for, though.

Tucking it just so and bracing it, Rena lowers it like a lance as she picks up speed. There's a crate she has to avoid, but she nearly slams into another one - she only makes it around that one by firing the back-wheel boosters, threatening to send Outlaw out of control if she hadn't been the one to rebuild it from scratch. She knows every quirk of the vehicle, after all. The wide curve takes her around so that she won't accidentally slam into the shark, which terrifies her in its own way, bizarre as it is.

And then - Rena literally tries to run down the Queen.

It would not be hard for the fast-moving Queen, of course, to shear through the pipe with that sword; to carve right through it and let the chunk of metal go where it may. It's more reliable than just dodging, after all; Rena can turn too. (She hopes it doesn't occur to the Queen to simply kill the motorcycle, but since the pipe projects forwards, she feels it's worth a shot.)

The thing is, Rena is counting on her to reflexively parry and cut the pipe. Because it is a *pipe* - which means it has a hole in the middle... and she has tucked her light sword in there, pointing down the length of it. If she does cut through it, Rena fully intends to embed the laser weapon right through the Queen as hard as she can.

If nothing else, it might keep her busy for a few seconds while she impales me, Rena thinks, somewhat fatalistically.
Stanley Padgett     The fight is brought. The Queen is a lightning flash across the field, carrying all of the powers of all of those gathered here. All of the Elites gathered to oppose her.

    Each attack, each slice of Night-Mist splatters death across the field, around the hold. But each time it reaches for Stanley, reaches for the Brave Fencer, he isn't there. He's not there. He isn't there and he won't be, each time The Queen strikes at him. Not again.

    Brune goes down, bravely throwing himself at the Queen to save... him and Petra and Hibiki. Kids. Stanley's rampaging Shakespearean monologuing continues, the Bard keeping him above water for now. "By medicine may life be prolonged!" He frees his hands, Mercutio interposing itself between Stanley and the Queen, as he scoops up Brune in his arms, and scampers. "Death will not conquer you this day, brave knight." There's precious little space to get to, but Stanley's going for it anyways... past the second deaths of the Harpooners he led here. Past gaping holes in the Busan, until he can reach the far wall of the cargo hold. He's ripping pieces of his outfit from his body, the digital tabard willing itself into reality as he does so, to press it against Brune's neck.
    He stares into the man's eyes, and whispers. "The only one who gets to quote Hamlet this day is me, and I refuse to ask 'to be or not to be' for you or anyone else today."
Aidan Proudpick Again, long welled up anger bubbles up under the surface. Aidan rarely gets mad. Troubled and annoyed, yes. But rarely mad.

Radio: Chevalier Justice says, "It seems he is battling a powerful enemy within himself. I pray he fells that particular dragon ere he seeks to fight a real one."

"That's the beauty of it. Your thoughts. Your words. Your accomplishments. The only thing wrong with them... was you. The rough edges you got while finding them for me. They're so much better on someone without all your unsightly damage."

"Suffocate you!" Aidan shouts back, throat raw from blood, from rage. His voice climbs in volume before. He sees it. The air shifts. The lungs swell. It isn't skillful, but it's the same idea Aidan has done so many times. But better. All the air in the room vanishes. Aidan has a terrifying moment, his rage subsiding as his body staggers forward. Blood vessels pop in his eyes. His vision darkens. All of the sound around him because a high ringing. Then comes in the wave, pushing him to the walls of the Cargo bay. A sword joins the wound in his lung, stabbing through his shoulder. Aidan lets out a howl that he can barely hear as pain lances through him. He is only 'lucky' it missed the rotator cuff and just pierced muscle and bone.

"Suffocate... you." He flings out a bloody curse, spitting out. "You think you earned it! You think it just comes to you!" Aidan forces himself away from the wall, reaching down into the holster of his gun. "You don't lie awake at night, struggling to think if you did enough that day, or the day before. You don't have the entire world mocking you because you want to save people."

A dam breaks inside Aidan. "You didn't have your conquerers be the ones who got to side with the one legitimate group everyone cares about! Everything crushed because some asshole was there first! You are NOTHING! You don't have the WILL! The will to keep standing up after being kicked near to death by your so called blood."

"I...," Aidan takes a moment, remembering Petra, Meika, the Operators, the Agents, Mia, Rita, Stanley, "WE earned this through the world crushing us down! You. Are. The Weakling!"
Aidan Proudpick Inside a barn, the same barn where a few years ago, a dozen jackanapes came up with a new Knight's Code, a skunk holds up a black paper sphere. "I designed these as anti-Wind Knight tools."

"What's it do?" Aidan casually pokes a finger at the top of it before Cole, the skunk in question, pushes it away.

"It's a recipe I found on the internet. Simple really. You take the hottest peppers, ground up glass, ashes, even just flour and wrap it up. You throw them at anyone and, assuming you can hit, they will be coughing too hard to cast. It should even force them to stop using their breath weapon."

CAREFULLY, Aidan picks up the thin paper wrapped ball, bouncing it. He considers briefly, a little smirk on his face, the look on Kale's face if he got hit with it, then shakes his head. He didn't want to win like that. "We need to make a ton of these."

He doesn't have arms for pitching, but at this close range, he won't need it. The wound in his arm closes up as Kukuru's nanites fill him.

Among the flashing weapons. The powerful magic. The guns. Among the greatest elites in the world.

Aidan throws a fucking bag of glass and ash at the Queen.
Redshift Operators     There is no way to visibly see what happens, but for the psychically sensitive, the sensation of time whirling in a circle faster and faster, like an overheating centrifuge, until the cycle finally shatters and continues on is undoubtedly one jostle and one burst of pain amidst dozens or hundreds, but it's noticable.

    White Dwarf winces hard as she finally makes it through, enduring a hell in her mind just to find the right path of triage to help Bota and Kana. Again, and again, and again, hypospray and suture and cautery and anything it takes to keep them whole, standing, fighting, not stopping, and most of all, striking back as hard and as fast as she can when Naught-Mist lashes out against her.

    God. Not more in that time-loop nightmare, though. She screamed in enough futures that it probably gets through the static: "Shut up! Shut up, I *know!* The *substance* isn't what matters, I've always known, and I know it only holds things back, I know it's *me* holding me back by being this mess of wounds and junk and trash body, I already know! But you don't get to say that! *That truth belongs to people like us, you don't have the right!!*"

    HP bullets. Without their medic in play, it's the best that the disoriented astronaut can use to help the collapsed giant and the leaderly gunman -- though in the end, Kukuru's efforts wind up being more effective. It's enough to start them getting on their feet. While those two prepare a hefty LMG, in slow, desperate motions, the astronaut loads the ammo into it. Candy's efforts won't be wasted. Not, at least, by the absence of a stream of brutal machine-gun fire trying to light the Queen's body up with flame. Red Dwarf's restored his breathing, his pacing, his rhythm, just enough to keep up rhythmic volleys that are meant to give Kana and Bota the opportunities they need.

    Fire. Fire still has to work. It has to. Remember? No matter how many humans the Leviathans took, humans that can endure the heat and light, they never developed an immunity to that. It's no Tamamo, but it's a little more on the pile, thanks to everyone's efforts to restore the Redshifts.
Tamamo     Tamamo reels back at the screech, then forward again, her flames fluttering but they can't be put out. What burns is within her, without the need of anything on Earth to fuel it. It's the sword that's more dangerous to her, even if it's typed wrong against her -- making up for that deficit with sheer force and swordplay is trivial, at this scale.

    Her mirror is there, the Yata no Kagami, immediately when it needs to be. Light and heat projected in a blade at once rebound from its surface, yet still push her back in the process. She takes that lightly, reacting before the follow-up strike, again and again and again, side-stepping and guarding into the position most difficult to reach.

    She's no faster than anyone here -- in fact, she's far slower, but in terms of reading the future, her own changes as soon as it's seen. Her surface thoughts are a slurry of falsehoods that carry into minute body motions, deception carried out to the point that one might guess that the fox was practicing with illusions. That would be wrong, too. Her sole advantage is in being the better deceitful seer.

    'I'm perfect, aren't I?'

    "You will not hear of love, I suppose." Where Tamamo's attention focuses, there's a passion that draws in the mind, though it disappears again like a summer breeze. "Of what use is mere strength? Of what purpose is a sharper sword and a louder voice? Whyfor bear children for whom you care not? Without love, how can you claim more purpose than a mold?"

    That's not to say it isn't wearing against her, but the healing talismans covering her are active. There's not yet a need to change the dressing of her wounds. It's the dwindling supply of charms she's supplying for others with which she should be most concerned, and the few opportunities she has to reach any of the dying while pressed and thrown about. She doesn't manage to throw out any attacks of her own, precisely.

    What she does manage is to slip a few curses toward Lilian and -- seeing the opportunity, Petra. She doesn't foresee making contact on her own, and the curses aren't harmful on their own, either. They merely massively magnify pain in one's every motion.

    Behind her protective mirror, a device for reflecting the truth, Tamamo's fingers move as if twisting threads, weaving a terrible fate for a queen.
Lilian Rook     The sounds of affirmation pouring in from the cargo bay around her set Lilian's focus tightly in place; on the only thing here that matters. The tactical broadband picking up energy, the activity of Elites readying once again for combat all around her, the grim affirmations, the emotional outpourings, the sparse beginnings of a strategy, even the sort of rallying speech she might usually find tedious, swell to take the place of the guttering quiet of the other ships fighting to their last breath, and help drive back the cloying sense that this is already over. Over long moments, the shift in context reframes itself within Lilian's mind. The way she has to be thinking becomes clear to her.

    §I remember. She was 'the world' right? I was fighting the entire world before. That's how I took it, and how I survived. But now that she's taken in this much humanity; now that she's lost her roots to the piece of planet she came in from, I'm fighting a person. The most horrible fucking person I can imagine. One that's far too powerful, too. But they're one thing, now. Not 'infinite'. That matters.§

    §The world hasn't ever succeeded in killing me, but it's hardly as if I've never lost to it, either. Scraping by, bloody and empty handed, holding out hope for another day; I know that. But when it comes to colliding into other people, my will against theirs, everything I'm carrying against whatever drives them too, whoever limps away at the end wins. And I can't think of a time I've been totally outmatched like that.§

    Words are one thing, but it's clear to everyone that Lilian has decided she sees a way forward, and not just the possibility of a way out, when for a short while before her first strike, she stops and holds her stance, and only watches-- closely-- the Queen's movements.

    The way they move around on defense, tearing up the deck under heavy assault, parrying away strong individual attacks with the sword, shifting with the slight movements of a master at sloppy blows of opportunity, throwing out clones and decoys, taking incidental damage to counterattack before healing--

    §They're enjoying trying out everyone's mainstay techniques. It's a problem that they intuitively know which ones are the most powerful, just by comparing them. But they're putting them where they think they might work; they don't have the years or decades of training it'd take to intuitively use the where they're appropriate. Their kit is too big. And that regeneration . . . That's a massive problem, but they're not rooted to the seafloor anymore, are they?§

    The way they move around on the attack, too. The sonic burst to clear the press and control space, the way they recognize openings and leap on moments of vulnerability, the tightly controlled way they handle the sword without excess followthrough, the otherwise incompatible style, the horrible damage it does where it strikes, the utterly tireless energy of it--

    §Because it has no weight, they're using it like a lighter weapon? That's intuitive. Take the best of both worlds. But it's the kind of mistake an apprentice would make. Not having any mass robs the blade of half the ways you can use it. They know I love Night Mist, but they know Stanley loves fencing, and took them both instead of being able to read any of my training. Is that what it is? The parts we each care about most? That speed is obnoxious. I'm not sure I can react to it at all. I can still go further on my turn, but I'm at the point it'll hurt soon. The way they're fighting obviously says that they aren't selecting a target priority, though. They aren't choosing dangerous opponents. They're taking opportunities by predatory instinct. They aren't taking this seriously as a battle. That's a relief.§
Lilian Rook     The way that Lilian watches it is so breathlessly complete that her eyes weave zigzag light trails in her shadow against the sun at her back. There's no doubt she's even hit pause several times to be absolutely sure. Wary, scarred, neurotic, risk-averse, controlling; they've all been some degree of true about her; so she can only be about to gamble more than she's prepared to lose.

    The sonic blast rushes through empty air and flattens the water where Lilian stood. Unlike the radial spines, a sound wave doesn't linger, and she doesn't have the entire Busan to navigate anymore to get distance. Her boots crash to the cargo bay floor from above, and she takes her shot from a cold start.

    The sudden parry shocks her, but it's only revealed in the minute widening of her eyes up close. Which means she isn't fighting precognitively like earlier. Trying to outmatch White Dwarf and fight at the same time would be pointless.

    "I have two different angles on a lot of things, freak. Be more specific." Lilian says, with blades crossed. Candy's inflection makes her skin crawl, but she holds her blade firm. "You can't really see anything though, can you?" A scrape of her toe, metal against metal; her opposite knee rockets up to strike the Queen and break the bind. Lilian blinks around just before it'd hit, foreseeing its pointlessness by experience rather than futuresight.

    "The only things you can grasp are through us. And those dim eyes of yours can only spot the brightest sparks of passion. Even consuming Lisa, you only felt a fraction of what she did." Her blade sweeps low by the twist of her body and turns up through both the Queen's calves with the uneven extension of her arms-- then she maneuvers again, to already be thrusting at her side, testing the limits of her ignition speed.

    "'Perfect'. 'Us without the damage'. That's not reality. That's just what you desperately want, isn't it?" Molten footprints sear into the deck surface, scouring off rust and blood and leaving steaming seawater where Lilian was each time. The air hisses, then shrieks, at the incendiary pass of her sword where she follows the Queen's footwork. Each time they relocate, Lilian does too. Each time they swing that sword, she rushes to strike from a different quarter.

    §How many blades. Just one? How fast. Is that the limit? How much they can scream or skip. How much they can regenerate. Where the softest pieces of armour are. Where they'll try to defend the most.§

    "If Rita becomes the Queen for humans, then they have everything, don't they? They even have one kingdom, under an infinite, perfect being. But a beautifully human one. With beautifully human subjects. Not cold, dull, lifeless, barely sentient animals, like you and yours." Once she can get the queen to focus on her again, Lilian leans into exactly what she'd already shown Petra; defending with the same stroke as attacking; turning away even a plasma blade while striking without lag. Each time a fraction closer to the Queen. The sweat boils on her skin. She leaves steaming breath in each millisecond wake. The blood is-- where is the blood in her side?
Petra Soroka "Really glad you're on our side,"

    Petra takes a slow look at the Queen, pieced together with others' tricks and aesthetics, throwing out targeted barbs to mock the Elites' damage and their justifications to deigning themselves as people. She slowly looks back at Nonon. "Where else would I be?"

"The rough edges you got while finding them for me. They're so much better on someone without all your unsightly damage."

    Petra hisses through her teeth, somehow both expecting the answer and caught so off-guard by it that she feels vertigo. Please god let that not be from my personality. That sounds so bad.

    "It doesn't, work that way," Mid-fight, the thoughtlessly absent way the words leave her mouth averages out with choking tides of adrenaline to almost sound casual. "You don't understand things just by copying the surface. When you're really rotten like that, painting over it, picking up the-- the accessories, and words, and everything, it just lets you fester more. You're not *perfect*, you're just *gilded*."

    Petra's forced to drop Pillar of Creation at the blast of sound, curling up to shrink into her EGO for protection. She read once that sonar's bursts of sound waves are strong enough that divers caught in them get vibrated into pulp, and it *feels* that way now. Warmth in her stomach feels like she's tasting blood with the entire volume inside her body. Her teeth rattle, eyes squeezed shut and she's suddenly intensely aware of the fact they're full of jelly, like the sonic vibration is enough to distort them, shielded from it in her torn trench coat like it's a blast shelter.

    The implosion knocks her back, away from Pillar of Creation, and when she extends her morphmetal to grab it back, the Queen slices through the snaking fluid. Plasma vaporizes even liquid metal, turning it to glittering steam like her gun, but without any ability to use it. She's on her hands and knees, diving for her weapon when the Queen's attention is turned, when Brune shouts at her and the others.

    "I'm *tired* of that! I've been through *all* of this, already, why would I go now?! I'm *not* a--!" Brune collapses, nearly beheaded. "-- k-kid."

    Brune, Sonia, Max, others, definitely, but Petra's head is already pounding with pulse that blurs her vision, and the ground is sticky with blood and it tears when she pulls her hand up off of it. Rita-- but definitely not Rita, because that would be wrong, so there's no way she's dead. People can't die offscreen, where Petra can't do anything about it. Kukuru's by Brune's side, and so is Candy, and Petra twists her shoulders awkwardly around to make sure Ceri didn't explode from the shockwave.

    Matched opposite Lilian, both their weapons stalled in place, Petra seems almost surprised she was allowed to get *this* far. Battling precognitive narratives play across her skin in itching waves, and she tugs back on the spear to no avail. The Queen's grip is like trying to pull Pillar of Creation out of concrete, and even with the third arm of her diminished morphmetal coiling around to help, she can't possibly budge it.

"You two have different angles on it, ah? But if I tilt my head just right. I think I can see it."

    "H-huh? Really?" Petra's shocked to be *complimented* by the Queen, no matter their tone. Of everyone here, after the torrents of emotional abuse that she was mostly deaf to, the first time she's being addressed directly is... positive? She said 'you two'. Eheh. "Th-thanks?"
Petra Soroka     The followup attack isn't going to delay itself long enough for her to get Pillar of Creation free. A tiny hesitation when letting go of its haft might get the entire side of Petra's trench coat charred by a swipe of Night Mist's plasma simulacrum, even the ALEPH gear becoming useless at this level of abuse. Morphmetal boiled away, Pillar of Creation abandoned, gunblade on the ground somewhere, Petra reaches for her last weapon, her revolver.

"*That truth belongs to people like us, you don't have the right!!*"

    "You'd think," Petra's voice takes on a harsh rasp, tense enough that it barely comes out. It's not as artistic as being purely an emotional reaction; she's struggling to even get breaths out. "That with all this fucking pow-- power, and experience, she'd be able to be something other than a fucking tourist. I guess there's just things you don't learn until they're carved into you."

    Sparse droplets of quicksilver orbit around Petra bobbing in layers of circles without thought. While thumbing bullets into the cylinder-- she doesn't carry the moon clips anymore, they'd be with Qetra, but her mirror's gone-- one of the globules catches Tamamo's curse out of the air, bringing it gingerly to hover in front of Petra. Raising the gun, both hands wrapped around the grip, Petra has a sightline down to the Queen with a dozen mercury dots tracing the bullet's path.

    She fires, the recoil kicking the gun up, and the tracer line of morphmetal is instantly compressed into a shining fluid comet trail, behind the bullet with the cursed talisman caught in front. When it hits the Queen, the metal burrows into their resulting wound, telekinetically blossoming out in a razor starburst to dramatically increase its damage.

    
Lilian Rook     "I'm right, aren't I? You want what we have because you're fucking obsessed with us. You hate Rita because you know you aren't anything but a fucking incubator. A tool. You think you're perfect because you collect stolen cares and passions. You want it all without the rough edges because you know you couldn't build any of it yourself if you tried. Compassion? You couldn't kill off humanity because you couldn't let go of that need."

    There's one thing the Queen absolutely doesn't know of. Can't possibly know. Lilian is waiting for the instant they finally focus everything on her for even a second. The most human thing about them, their biggest flaw, she'd thought, had been their ego. But now . . .

    "Alone. Useless. Hated. Surrounded by bright and beautiful people. Unable to live with them. Unable to even begin to understand them. You can only exist, only be defined, in fighting with them. Pressing them down and holding them under feels better. You know they revile you. Perspective is terrifying." Lilian takes her next parry in a flurry of simultaneous motion, absorbing all the aggression she can, even as bloody burns sear her exposed wound and crawls up her neck. She overextends, and leaves an opening; created by exhaustion, punctuated by defiant, ragged gasping, and utterly on purpose. Unlike the Queen, she is an immaculate liar.

    "If only you'd listened to anything I said. But I guess we're only really alike in that I'd be just like you if I were completely, hopelessly, hatefully pathetic."

    §Take it. Take the bait. You know I mean it. You know every word is true.§

    The instant the Queen goes for her, Lilian strikes simultaneously, seemingly going for a last ditch suicide blow to try and take them both out at once; something the Queen should know they can survive, even where Night Mist flares with a destructive Cleasa. And in that moment, §someone else?§ who is bright and weightless and preciously, dreamily, completely non-existent-- like a secret waiting to be shared at just the right time, showing from news depths even deeper than could be-- §does/didn't§ parry it herself, weightless fizzling static blackness against incandescent roiling amber.

    Lilian strikes closer than a millimeter this time.

                -----[stop]-----
    Night Mist's red glare switches to gold. So does the gash in Lilian's side, and her scar. Metallic blackness creeps through her pale skin beneath.

    "Cleasanna Lilí Dubha ~ Fáinne Gréine Óir!"

    Lilian stomps forward. The deck crumples. Rings of light expand from the blade of her overheated sword.
                -----[start]-----

    The Queen can attack instantly. Lilian can decide she already attacked. That's a crucial distinction she's gambling they haven't grasped. It costs an immense amount to her reserves to harm someone like that, so she rarely ever does, but a second of her private, special techniques is fired off through the Queen's middle before anyone can even see Lilian behind them.
Hibiki Tachibana     I'm perfect, aren't I?
        ...Not even close.
                The only thing wrong with them... was you.
        You don't understand at all...!
            They're so much better on someone without all your unsightly damage.

    "That 'damage' is one of the things that gives all of it weight and meaning in the FIRST place! Just taking it like it's some thing that's been made to be handed to you--"

    Hibiki's voice raises just in time to be cut off by the terrible sonic burst that obliterates air, visibly blasts outwards, stopping her from chasing after the Queen instantly - her fist freezes in place and then shudders, then the rest of her body, and a split-second later a dozen bruises blast across the front of her body before she's blown backwards off her feet.

    She only doesn't hit the deck because of the implosion battering her from behind, making her stumble back right into a heated swing from 'Night Mist'. It sears across her side and leaves a blazing-hot gash in its wake that refuses to bleed through the burning cauterizing it on the spot, bringing her down onto hands and knees. "Agh--!"

    She can't afford it. There's no time. Sore muscles tighten up again, and Hibiki half-throws herself back forward to catch up. She's too late. Too slow. Again. Like in slow motion, she can see harpoonists hit the ground in halves before her legs can carry her. She can see the rest of them helpless for the follow-up, when she's supposed to protect them. And she can see exactly what Brune is doing, in as if in slow motion.

    "BRUNE!" Him, too...? How many others...? How many more times is she going to have to see it? Agents? Harpoonists? After she /just/ said the Queen wouldn't take anything else? "SONIA WOULDN'T WANT YOU TO EITHER, YOU IDIOT--!" He might still make it out, after all is said and done. Sonia might, too. That's what Kukuru is for. If Stanley gets him to safety, then all they need to do is win for that to be reality.

    If he gets away.
Hibiki Tachibana     But even if he does, that doesn't undo what's done. It doesn't undo the pain, or heartache, or feelings that come from it. It's always been like that. Why, even when someone like Kukuru is around who can even undo deaths that shouldn't have happened, they still happened. Just like with Petra and Ishirou, back then. It won't unmake the hurt... or diminish the kind of bravery it took for Brune to do that in the first place.

    And it'd be spitting on that if she did what her legs are begging her to do, and fall back over. There's still people who need to be protected. And Rita's world still isn't safe.

    Let me know when you need setup. I'll pin what I can down, just give a signal. I'll catch it.

    After a shaky exhale, Hibiki only barely even looks in Meika's direction. "...Meika." I don't care how it's done. But right now.

    --I'm relying on you.

    In the next instant, she's already halfway to the Queen. An instant after that, off the floor and in a full-force lunge, fist cocked back and hydraulic gauntlet primed. Meika said she'd pin her, and she'll trust her implicitly. There's no attempt to aim herself, only get in as quickly and as rapidly as possible, in a straight line.

    For all intents and purposes, Hibiki is just going to hit her even harder than before, even if it's to an obscene degree. That's what she does best, after all. Her only trick. The only thing she's good at. Her fist aims to once again crunch into that steel-like carapace--

    --where the bunker fires, with a boomingly loud, directed kinetic shockwave blasted into her body point-blank to try and break through. A visible eruption of raw force potent enough to explode out the other side--

    --and it's going to heal back over in an moment anyway, no matter how big of a hole she beats into her, isn't it? She knows that. Even if she punches her clean in half, with the sacrificial opening that Meika is going to try and create. It won't matter in the long run, beyond maybe slowing her down for a short time.

    But. Hibiki doesn't pull her fist back after. If that wound closes, it'll be around her arm. In other words, she's not going anywhere. Cursed with an annoying screw-up of a magical girl hanger-on who's going to weigh her down, keep her stuck, and hold on with everything she has.

    Girls a lot stronger than you can't seem to get rid of me, so you definitely won't. If you want to steal something from everyone, then I'll give you as much of 'me' as you can handle. Even if it kills me.
Meika Kirenai     The buffeting torrent of sound aches, and tries to tear at Vermillion's eardrums- and washes through her, nearly rippling at the edges of both the magical girl, and the searing-red aura around her, like heat lines over desert asphalt. Her skates brace her against the floor's material, silently tearing meter-long gouges as she's pushed back, blades an inch deep in metal and bracing her posture to still lean forwards.

    In the split-second while the air is still crashing back inwards, with crushing intensity, Vermillion soundlessly kicks off. That's not fair. You can't steal us from us. I hate that. I hate that you're right. I hate you. Ducking under some of the sweeping trails of plasma, and clipping more of the thrusts, armor evaporating under its heat and burning enough to not even hurt- At the instant crash of the implosion, Vermillion's form clarifies once more, crushed back into shape by bleeding necessity. Renewed vigor in that anger, that jealous acceptance of the Queen's nagging torment.

    Shock flashes across Vermillion's face as Brune's neck is- It's really awful that the color is so similar. Not when it dries. Just when it's- She looks away, Ishirou's fusilade, hopefully sparking the foe's ire and filling the air with threat, thankfully breaks Vermillion's attention too. But Brune's action, the trick he was desperate to attempt, still latches in the front of the magical girl's mind.

    I can handle that. I know I can. If she tries to kill me like that, maybe there'll be-

'Meika,'
{'I don't care how it's done. But right now.'}
{'--I'm relying on you'}

    {"I hear you. It's coming up. I hope this'll work. But if it doesn't-"} It's immediate- no gap between when the girl's lips move and the sound hits Hibiki's ears. {"Don't worry if you can't get me out afterwards."}

    Her course sets in action immediately, nigh-thoughtlessly. Hesitation is death. Vermillion can't waste her one shot at avoiding that too early. With every air-ringing, gouge-smearing skating push-off, the magical girl seems to glow brighter and sharper- even some of the molten away plates of armor, the large and obvious cracks in them, start to mend.
Meika Kirenai     There's a sharp *crack*- silent, oddly enough, but felt in skin and bone, as Chevalier Vermillion snaps her held hockey stick in half. Nearly no time passes between that, and her rushed-in contact with the Queen- the magical girl drives both held metal fragments as deep into their flesh as she can, crystalizing shards of sound reverberating down the metal hafts and puncturing intangibly where even immense force won't pierce. The same ethereal spikes jump to pierce Vermillion's white-knuckled hands too, through her gauntlets. It's barely an attack. She's just building handholds.

    Vermillion's burts of percussion don't shake the ship's hull, and don't drive air from the arena itself- again, she's silent in that same still-tangible way. That more of her magic is dancing through to crack and cut at the Queen's body is accidental, a result of proximity. By far the majority is being channeled to Vermillion's own limbs, to wrench the monstrous monarch up and off the ground with impossible seeming strength, where Vermillion is even holding herself pinned and braced down by dozens of her aching little shards through her legs and into the floor's metal.

    It's endlessly reckless. She is cutting off her own escape route. A trade of safety for success. Something burnt up to pay for it. That's what's right, that's what has to work. Her voice is strained, in the too-few moments she can keep it up, trying to grit teeth, trying to hold her air and blood and bones in the right way.

    "F-fuck you, for this! If the problem is us, always- then I'll at least make it yours the hard way! Go on! Try your worst! Vermillion Pandemonium : You'll Fall Too !"

    There's just one pleading glance Hibiki's way- other's ways, too. This is Vermillion's play- Please count. Please matter. And if it doesn't- hopefully I'll be out of your ways.
Rita Ma      "Hm? But that's all there is to anything, dearie,")] the Queen drips in a mockery of Kukuru's voice. One eye slides up to Tamamo. "Your kind has infested and consumed thousands of worlds. And you're picking on me just for one~?"

     Immaculate becomes maculate pretty quick on contact with the world. The Queen doesn't seem to notice it, but each new scrape or bruise they take lingers a little longer than the last before sizzling away. Shark-teeth marks and water-pressure gouges have time to bleed green before they fill in; half-parried light swords leave a lasting carbonized mark; blunt-impact bruises stay for a few heartbeats before fading.

     Slowly, their skin tinges a rainbow of colors other than just red spatter.

     Brune pounds the floor, heaving himself up to his feet one last time with a hand pressing the tabard to his throat. It's his third down. People don't usually come back from that. But he's got someone to fight for. His silent, smoldering eye contact with Kukuru says a lot.

     Bota doesn't question his arm suddenly feeling better. He lunges in to clash blades with the Queen again, sunlight blessings brilliantly flaring against plasma. With dismissive confidence, they parry prime and riposte to gouge directly through his chest. He stifles a scream and stabs his gas sword through their elbow, keeping it there.

     "If you're so strong... you could've chosen to be different. I thought it was just your nature. Knowing you could've been anyone you wanted..." He grits his teeth, eyes ablaze. "Why this?"

     And just as they look up at him in wild confusion, Kana slaps a freezing talisman to one of her blades (what had Tamamo said about safe ranges? Surely nothing that important) and leaps off a cargo container to whirl and bury her sword's edge in the top of the Queen's skull. Every muscle strains, but it only goes an inch deep into embrittled flesh and bone.

     "BRUNE! DO IT NOW!" He rushes in with a throat-tearing roar and slams a hydraulic fist down on the back of Kana's blade. With a grinding crunch of bone, it goes in another half-inch. The Queen tries to pull away by simply letting Bota's sword rip through their arm, but Meika's already there holding them still, turning it to weak thrashing.

     The Queen howls and snap-ignites another blade, this one like Mercutio's foil, to push back against Kana's sword. Then more and more weapons in the styles of assorted Elites, growing extra arms just to wield them all, to try and parry or deflect the rain of incoming finishers. It only barely works. They're carved off or blown apart nearly as quickly as they grow.

     But they don't feel so pressed that they can't be outraged by Lilian. "She's NOTHING without me," the Queen hisses through the hedge of weapons. "I made her. And she doesn't rule you; you pity her. Admit it. She's just a pathetic little worm you can't help but want to resc--"

     A blade lashes out for Lilian, opening a gap in the hekatoncheires defense. That's her opening. In stopped time, her blade cuts spine-deep, spraying green blood all across the opposite wall.

     The Queen gasps. Then sighs.

     "Oh. That's the trick."

    
Rita Ma      The world shimmers with a magenta illusion. The flickering image of a world where the Queen wins comes into being. They're holding Petra's spear, the Pillar of Creation, in two of their remaining hands, already across the room. Heads and throats and chests are rendered into explosions of gore in their presumptive path. You're seeing the frame after stopped time, where she butchers all of you at her leisure.

     "We are alike. Death to those who have wronged my people."

     And that fake world tries to become real. Paracausal fatal wounds start to bloom across your body as she asserts the future. Only by holding tight to your sense of self, the glimmering core of your identity, can you resist. Even then it's suffocating. If it goes on forever like this--
Rita Ma      --And Kana, bleeding from her one (formerly) good eye where the Queen did/didn't gouge her fatally, turns her gas blade on full blast for the final push to slice off half the Queen's head. They never quite moved after all.

     She pants raggedly and collapses to her knees, clutching at her hemorrhaging face. "Bota," she says. "Bota. Are you okay? Is it over?"

     She can't see at all.

     He's on the ground, cooked through the chest and gouged across the neck, but he manages to subvocalize an answer. She sobs with relief. Brune lies unconscious on his side, but anyone bleeding that quickly must still have a pulse.

     The Queen, it seems for a second, might die standing. Their second body is starting to flake away and disintegrate just as their first one did. But then they teeter to the side, unbalanced by missing half their head, and collapse. Those uncanny eyes stay open even as the light in them fades.

     Their last words are raspy, in no voice but their own. "Hhhhah. It's beautiful... isn't it..."

     It might take a moment to see what they mean. The ocean is blossoming with an orange glow.

     Even with the nest destroyed, the volcano is still going to blow.
Redshift Operators     What does it mean to hang on to the core of an identity?

    It means acting on it in spite of everything.

    The only way forward is through. The only way to endure is to endure more. Walk forward. Approach the Queen. Despite everything, no matter what, approach the Queen. Endure the slashes that bloom, the impalements that encroach on identity. Paracausally, what does it look like, for White Dwarf to endure a fatal wound, but retain her identity? Like this. A leg is robotic now. Part of the face. Tubes, indicating multiple replaced organs. The mask is affixed as a permanent breathing apparatus. Clothing is perpetually struggling to cover and reshape. Extensive craft is dedicated to reshaping to maintain silhouette. Her long ponytail unbundles, flowing freely in the shockwave of the attack. Uglier and uglier. More and more beautiful. Tears flow down her cheeks.

    She drops her blade. It's not sharper than her words.

    "Rita knew in her heart that she'd go the same place you will. Just like how it's been since all this started. I don't want her to be right. I don't." She rasps, through the paracausal damage. "...But if it is, I take one thing back. Don't apologize to her. Rita's too kind for that. She'd forgive you."

    "She should never hear your voice, ever again."

    The paracausal damage fades down to something more sensible. Simple wounds, wounds that were close to lethal but weren't in a more traditional way. They're not worth treating at a time like this. White Dwarf sees the glow. She returns to the rest of the Redshifts. They kneel together, awaiting annihilation. Three of them hold hands, tightly. The giant hugs them all tightly. They knew this might happen. Still, it's horrible to experience. At least they can do it together.
Angela When time snaps back into place, Shajo and Nonon are on the floor. Nonon is bleeding out--she has always struggled with her sense of self. Shajo is desperately staunching the floor of blood. Tweed is half in water half out, staring up into the sky.

They aren't in a position to stop a volcano. They gave everything they had the first time and then they offered up their fumes.

"Nonon, the bleeding won't stop, it won't stop. It's over so... Just hold on, Kukuru's here, okay? God, I can't... handle another Wing Forsaken..."

"It's okay..." Nonon says. "We weren't nothin' compared to them, but it was so close that every ounce was worth it..."

She made a promise.

She only just got to know her but she made a promise.

But she doesn't have the answer to keep that promise anymore, can't grasp it anymore. "Sorry Rita..." She breathes out a sigh. "Maybe next time."

The Dreaming Current dives down says, Momma... though you can't understand him most likely. He dives back down under the water once more, searching, not realizing he's going to be engulfed in magma and scalded by boiling water.

Nonon turns her head to look at the Red Giant hugging his team and she smiles. She raises her hand and holds Shajo's tight.
Ishirou The fatal wound forms.  The spear would drive right through Ishirou, through his protective chassis, and directly into his brain.  It would shatter the glass and pierce the organ completely.  That would be what would kill Ishirou, and as the wound started to form he pushed against it.  She didn't do that...

Even if she did...

He could avoid some of it, he could shoot at her, deflecting the shot so that it wouldn't impale him so completely.  The body itself is tougher than it looks, it would still have to pierce through that.  The jar itself is also made of sterner stuff, easily able to deflect blows.  When the wound finally manifests...

It pierces through him but stops right before it gets to the brain case.  He falls back, staggering as the wound forms.  He looks down towards his chest, the gaping wound there.  His hand moves to hold the important bits inside as he slowly staggers back and then slides down a nearby wall.  He's gasping for breath, but not because he needs to breathe, but because his body is acting on instinct.  

He's not dead, but it's not in great shape.  No time to die... the volcano is going to blow... but...

Their only way out is destroyed.  They won, but the explosion is still going to get them all.  Even if he could make enough OPTIONs in time, there is no way they could get everyone in time. "Candy.." he says, solemnly.  Looking around for him while still trying to hold together his insides.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine blinks once, and cocks her head to one side with vague interest, as the illusion of the Queen's victory washes over the cargo bay. The end of a world spreads before her. She's seen worse. Maybe not worse for *her*, personally, with such a grisly end. But she's seen worlds end in such worse ways. The huntress looks down at her arms, her body, ravaged by the queen's psychic assault. She takes a half-step backward and the injuries... don't move with her, as if they were just superimposed images. Deep gouges and spouts of blood and sucking punctures hang in the air for a split second before collapsing in a pulpy mess.

    Madeleine takes another few steps backward, scanning the floor for something. She finds her ritual knife, then notices the queen starting to disintegrate. The huntress picks up her knife anyway. She should probably be more worried about the volcano, but in this moment of detachment from reality that's not a cause of much concern. Instead she watches the Queen's skin flake away, and tries to glean what she can from the corpse's withering entrails.
Dysnomia     Dysnomia felt reality twist around them, and the Queen tried to manifest her own ending. A true psychic impression. A delusion, believed so strong it became real. For a terrible, beautiful moment, she marveled at it all.

    Then it was over, and she was left staring at the ominous looming glow of the volcano.

    For a moment, she stared. And then she was gone.

    She rushed across the Union Busan, a smear of color, rushing toward the shattered warpgate. 'It's too late' 'it's too much.' So they should just wait to die here, with the Queen?

    No. She couldn't accept that. Even as the volcano began to breach, and the sound of the upheaving earth rose to a roar behind her, she was there at the ruins of the warpgate, multitool in hand, piecing it back together with expertise. With the time, she knew she could do it.

    But they didn't have time, did they? Would she be fast enough?
Aidan Proudpick Aidan heaves out a breath, building up for one final attack. He may not be able to do a shockwave of that caliber, but he can do SOMETHING. The Aegis comes in front of him, unfurling as Aidan puts a rasping breath into it, preparing the kinetic field to deflect the blow. Aidan heaves out his last breath, only to see the back of the shield glowing a sudden orange. The plasma blade rips through the shield as if it were made of paper. Time slows down as his brain struggles to understand what is going on, an infinity passing before the plasma enters through his eye, cooking his brain instantly.

No.

A sharp intake of breath. He drops the shield, throwing it off his arm. Pointless. He brings both hands up instead, spreading his fingers out. He has only a single lungful of breath to give. Pushing out the final breath he may ever take, Aidan forms a barrier in front of himself. The orange blade cleaves through it, a swipe cleaving his arm off in a neat strike. The wall falls as Aidan howls out in pain, grabbing at the seared stump before the blade swipes again through his neck. Again, an eternity as his mind struggles to stay alive, to comprehend.

NO!

Aidan brings up his gun, snapping it up to shoulder height. He trains the muzzle on the Queen, firing a stream of bullets at their arm, desperate to slow the blade down. Wind magic shoves him against the wall, then further, a torture wail coming out of him as his spine snaps.

I want to live!

Aidan drops to the ground, only to be impaled by the plasma.

I want to prove myself!

Claws pierce under Aidan's chin.

I want to save my people!

Hands grab at Aidan's chest, digging in.

Time resumes.

Bracing himself for another blow, Aidan staggers after nothing comes. Instead, he only gets to watch the blade go into the chest of the Queen, their neck, their face crumble away. Then down, to see the volcano begin to bubble up.

No thought. No consideration. Aidan holds his hands out in his wall making pose, reaching into his chest for his life breath. There's enough for a single wall that would shatter under the instant. He can't tie together enough wind from outside. If only he practiced! If only he knew more.

But he's not a Paladin. He's not Kale. All he has is desire. So he reaches deep into that desire.

Yes. There's one place he hasn't looked for Life Breath. There it is. In his blood.

Aidan breathes. He breathes not just the air in his lungs, but the air in his blood. It bubbles up to his throat, his skin turning white underneath the fur. Just as he starts to fall to his knees, just as he begins to pass out. He summons a tremendous wind wall at the front of the Busan.

"Now who's the kn-"

This quip is cut short by Aidan smashing into the floor of the cargo bay.
Tamamo     'Hm? But that's all there is to anything, dearie.'

    No. All that leads away from the Answer is without meaning.

    She's been here before. Not against this particular threat to her, but in this situation in which her survival rests on setting a boundary between herself and another. It was different, then. It was a world of hatred. It was the same, then. It was a world of destruction, of death, of seizing anything to which another would cling.

    I reject it. I reject your world.

    For what do you wish? For myself, it is for a blessed future, in a blessed world, together with her.
    And thus do I deny you.

    Scattered talismans form perfectly imperfect geometry, layers of obstruction with eight sides broken / unbroken segments, a sealing away, breaking space by isolating it and asserting one world and identity over another. There is a war that she ultimately wins, and the pain she endures in the process is something she can still hide.

    "No, it would not do any good to tell you, I suppose. But... 'my wish was greater.'"

    Lilian calls, and Tamamo's attention snaps toward Kana -- who did something about as dangerous as strapping a depth charge to a sword -- and from there to Bota, to whom she hurries, tossing a swiftly drawn healing talisman in a two-finger gesture from her dwindled stock. It sticks to his back, but that's close enough to where it needs to be to keep him from -- to keep them from having to rely on Kukuru in this case.

    Only now can she let herself feel that pain, even as Lilian's words call her to hurry. She'd really banked on Kukuru's resurrection power, and on taking all the corpses out with them.

    "If only I could... if I let myself..."

    It's a waste of time to think about just now. In this incarnation, that's not a power she possesses.
Kukuru For Kukuru, hearing something resembling her own voice is truly an uncanny experience. It'd almost be fun to hear what else could be said if it wasn't coming from the Queen, but she can't afford to let herself get distracted more than even that much. So many to protect, but the fight still looks like it could go on forever if not for the fact that Kukuru's attention is directed more towards treating all the fighters' injuries rather than actually attacking the Queen directly.

Sonia's still down, but she can probably still be saved. Now would just be a bad time for it, considering the extent of her injuries next to those still fighting and fully awake through all this. Kukuru looks down at her arm as the numbness continues to spread, and she blinks slowly as she notices the world shifting colors. She looks up, and she sees a truly terrible sight: Things going wrong, everyone dying one by one, her healing and Tamamo's not being enough to keep up.

There's still one contingency plan left. If she can get their bodies teleported back home, out of Rita's world, anywhere but here, then there's still a chance. She opens a portal and reaches for-

Her hands are gone. Kukuru tries to scream, but she feels blood pooling in the back of her throat. That's much too fast, and she wants to scream. She can't, though, and the last thing she can think of is how disappointing it is that the last thing she ate was that foul tentacle.

... That's not right. That's not how this is supposed to go at all. I'm supposed to be going home with everyone after this. Rita's supposed to be with us. Bota and Kana, too, and those kids in love and the one with the big hat and even that old one that we helped with the pipes. Then I can go home and tell mom and dad about what happened, but not all of it. They'd worry too much.

Kukuru still can't feel her arms quite right. Her legs still feel terrible, too, but at least she isn't choking on blood any more. She can even taste the inside of her mouth, too, and clenching her hands feels... Not normal, but possible before long. She doesn't fully understand what happened or what's happening right away, but the relief she feels is...

Temporary. Kukuru sees the glow, and she recalls what led to this strict time limit in the first place. Now, there's even less time to act, and more people to save. As she takes deep breaths to try and keep her mind focused (or as focused as she can), Kukuru goes right back to forcing her nanites to fuel themselves on her body.

She's looking sickly, but still standing. "Everyone, get to... Ugh. Get to safety, get the bodies, and... I'll get Rita. I think I know where she is!" Kukuru tells herself, scraping her memories to try and recall where she had last seen her.

She remembers seeing Rita far ahead of the Union Busan, while they were still approaching the target area. She remembers the Manhattan firing on her, and that Rita had sunk into the sea. She remembers the feeling of the waves, just before getting thrown into the extended battles against the Queen.

"Anyone that's..." She bites her lip while looking over at Sonia, at Nonon, then inhales again while wiping her face off and turning to Tamamo. "... I'm really counting on you, okay? Get them somewhere comfy and cold, and... I'll be back to fix them right up later." Kukuru steps through one of those teleportation clouds, and she disappears from what little remains of the deck.

She needs to find Rita, and she reappears several feet above the water, where she last saw her before the Manhattan shot her down. Little care is given to the orange glow deep below her, as Kukuru just starts diving deeper and deeper in a desperate bid to try and find her before the imminent eruption.

If nothing else, she can at least make sure Rita and Dreaming Current aren't alone.
Stanley Padgett     Time dilates. Stanley can feel the sins of his life creeping up his body, the scars The Queen wants to give to him crawling up his flesh, across his face, opening his cheek as an insult, the fatal stab through the heart that seeps his lifeblood all over the decks.

    But no. Those aren't The Queen's powers to have. They were never The Queen's powers to begin with, no matter what the being thought. And the causality recuses itself, back to the real-
    and Stanley is left next to Brune on the deck. He goes right back to applying pressure to the man's neck. Keeping him alive. He pulls out his phone, and desperately starts searching for signal. There's... some, just enough. He could open up a Gate to the Reversal, but... who knows what's on the other side.

    People are rushing around him, and he just goes back to holding Brune's wound. He's got nothing left in the tank for anything else, really. "Hey. I did my best. Kept... as many of your people alive as I could, okay?" He huffs, and slides against the side of the cargo bay, cupping at the wound. "You didn't need to save me. But you did. Thanks, man."

    He hovers his thumb over the 'Enter Reversal' button on his phone, and whispers. "Last resort. Okay? Promise." There's plans being shouted around him, and... "I'm breaking a promise for this, Brune. I'm breaking a promise and I'm not sure if I feel bad about that."
Meika Kirenai     Forever in this illusion, Chevalier Vermillion grabs at her own throat. Any gore is just hazy, fuzzy streaks and smears of smudged-out grey, eyes shock-wide and squeezed-shut and not even looking. No matter how she scratches and grabs and tries to hold on, slow-motion, that same flash undoes itself with a sound like shorn paper and bent metal, hurting and dying in that drawn out moment, just slowed down long enough for-

    As the Queen's head rolls, Meika- not Chevalier Vermillion, her transformation shattered off of her -clatters to the ground of the arena like a sack of wet concrete. That's it. She's out of it. Her head hits the calcified floor with a rough sound, and-

'Hhhhah. It's beautiful... isn't it...'

    The glow stars to wash over the world. Right. Right, how could I be so stupid like this? This isn't the end. Well. Not of everything else, at least. The world's about to explode, right? Just like it could at any second, aha. Does ash still fall if it's under the water? I guess nobody would ever find the remnants, even if it's like those sculpture-mold bodies in Rome...

    Aha. That's-

. . .
<B-anter> Kayoko Kirenai says, "Isn't this topic of conversation a little... morbid?"
<B-anter> Kayoko Kirenai says, "Weighing the pros and cons of being... entombed?"
<B-anter> Kayoko Kirenai emphasizes, "Be*sides*. We talked about this in Geology. Scientists would know if it was going to erupt."
. . .

    Meika's laying there, flickering on the edge of consciousness. Breath is coming, still. That's good, right? So is a small, frustrated, pained smile, as thoughts wander on how stupid of a way to die this'd all end up. Limbs aren't moving enough from where she's fallen to get herself up. There's the ghost of a little snort, barely making it out of her throat. Her words come pained, embarrassed, and quiet.

    "I don't- I don't want to be a liar..."
Lilian Rook     'Your kind has infested and consumed thousands of worlds. And you're picking on me just for one~?'

    "I'm going to kill you for what you did to Rita. That's it."

    'Knowing you could've been anyone you wanted... Why this?'

    "Ask every human being on Earth. It turns out this way because with all those possibilities, they don't choose. They turn out like this because it was easier to stick to whatever came first."

    'I made her. And she doesn't rule you; you pity her.'

    "You've never made anything beautiful in your life. Rita took what you did to her and made it that way. The rough edges and the damage-- those are the fucking point! How desperate are you to look away?! All these people wouldn't gamble their lives for someone they pity!"

    'We are alike. Death to those who have wronged my people.'

    A chill runs down Lilian's spine. Blood-tinged sickness rises to the back of her tongue. Her gaze wanders, just a tiny bit, for a fraction of a second, and finds no trace of the dedication hidden in the mounting of her sword. Not an ember. The words leave her lips just before she realizes why. "Survival isn't retaliation. You can't be wronged by someone so much weaker than you."

    The attack incoming is a genuine shock. Without precognition in play, it's only the dreadful words 'that's the trick' that put Lilian on guard, and the natural fact that--

                -----[stop]-----
    §Haha, what a sore loser.§
    "I almost feel sorry for them."
    §She touched something she absolutely shouldn't have, though.§
    "They won't. We both know we won't let them."
    §Of course~ After all, if this came down to whoever went first winning, it wouldn't <narratively align>.§
    "I get my turn."
                -----[start]-----

    The floor around Lilian flowers into a molten blossom of radioactive gouges. The air shrieks from tortured physics reconciling the properties of its individual molecules. Near-spirographic patterns glow with some exo-red equivalent to deathly cherenkov light. Paracausal sparks shower her from fireworks of un/crossed blades.

    The volcano is . . .

    Lilian breathes deeply. In. Out. Only once.

    "I've been clear on what I'm going to do. I hope you can figure it out too." Lilian sighs, then raises her voice. "Tamamo, Bota, Kana, Petra!" she calls out. "You'll live to see Rita. Pray for the rest."

    She has just enough time to gather the mentioned. She's recovered just enough magic through time and blessing and link to lift labouriously from the ground on a ring of weak black static, and start to fly clear of the blast zone. Her plans for after are vague, but the explosion, at least, can't be reasoned with. It should at least take out the leviathans swarming in the area.

    Silently, Lilian curses the words 'die if you have to'. She'd rather no one else did.
Petra Soroka "Death to those who have wronged my people."

    Even a clumsy rendition of Lilian's wish contains orders of magnitudes more pressure than Petra herself. The will to enforce action over reality, singlehandedly, without a pressure differential or an unfathomable tumor of flesh lurking behind the projection to skew gravity in its favor, is something Petra could never match. Wanting what someone else wants is as good as she gets, and the second to follow a path has it infinitely easier than the first-- if anything, she teeters on the brink of paracausal collapse more eagerly than anyone else, even a fake void feeling like movement worth taking.

    So, naturally, she reaches fumbling for her anchor. The gravity well she orbits a mile above Earth, strong enough that the tug of a black hole or supernova in the distance can't make her budge. Head split open in theoretical futures, she stumbles blindly towards Lilian, reaching out to touch her, the real one, to put her trust in an external future she knows is right.

    Petra's sense of self alone is like dully warm ash, but here she's perfectly certain about where in the timeline she's supposed to land: right here, besides Lilian, drained and battered but able to keep going as long as she's needed to. Hand drops from Lilian's back, retempered in her causal position.

    "You don't fucking *have* people, freak. You're not good enough to be a-- a society of one. And everyone that you are fucking hates you." Petra takes solace in the idea that only *most* of the people whose hearts she wears on her sleeve hate her. "So fucking death to no one. You didn't even get her cadence right."

    The ocean glows, leviathans screeching like a scene from hell. It doesn't seem real, in the way natural disasters never do, but especially after going through so much. "We can't... how do we fight a volcano? How do we get everyone out? The nest is dead, but the world-- the Busan, and-- and Rita--?"

    They're not properly her team, but Disciplinary is by Petra's side often enough that she can name-- at least the living ones, off the top of her head, which is rare. Responsibility to Angela dilutes down into responsibility for her coworkers, as a tangible justification for why she feels the urge to protect the, despite their technical narrative superfluousness.

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook calling out, "Tamamo, Bota, Kana, Petra!"

    There's no question that Petra goes for Lilian immediately. Angela herself could be dangling above the volcano and she still wouldn't question the command. Still, a stressed look lingers on the Disciplinary agents, transferred over to a glance at Lilian, nauseous-bubbling words in her throat. "Running? Is our option? I know, we have to survive, but-- but Rita, if Kukuru can't, and-- and the agents-- I trust y-you. Tell me what you need me to do."

    Mercury raindrops fall from the sky, superheated morphmetal cooled enough to fall. Globules slow to a telekinetic halt, drifting around the Disciplinary agents. Pence, too, makes a triumphant return, bobbing wearily through the air to hover near them. If it's the only option available-- Petra's gadgets will carry them, acting like assistance to walk, or outright lifting them in Pence's case, to Lilian's chambers, where the teleportation circle is. She has to at least *try* right, after so much effort went into keeping them alive already.

    Delayed, she blinks at the Queen's corpse-- "Wait, that's my fucking spear--"
Candy      "All of that talk about being infinite," Candy raggedly prods, as he steadily advances, despite the acausal hole in his chest.

*You would fucking do this, wouldn't you? After all the time I spent trying to get past it.*

    "About being perfect," he continues, wading through a suspended ribbon of his own future blood, streaked through the air like smoke. "And the best they you did was to copy the stupidest--"

    Every step is leaden. Every muscle burns. "--Most flawed parts of the world," he spits. "The parts that people are good in spite of, not because of."

*I said I wouldn't get no angrier. But they had to fucking go and do -this.-*

    "The not-giving-a-shit, the fuck-you-got-mine, wanting to be fucking *thanked* for it, and now what?" He spits. "Stealing what you can't kill."

    "My 'unsightly damage' is because of you," he says, as numb, icy fingers dig into his pocket, the macahuitl shouldered through his determined, glacial march. "You don't fucking get to criticize. That anger you feel, don't you wonder why it don't quite sit right with you? Why you can't bring yourself to look at me, the way I look at you?" His brown eyes burn, even as his death is being foretold by the Queen's wish.

     "It's because it's pointed -at- you. Dumbass. At cowards who think the best use of power is being a fucking locust, and all the people they trick into thinking there's no other way. That life isn't fair."

    Candy stops, his chest heaving, a few feet from the Queen, his macahuitl dipping and digging into the deck once more. His body slumps, as he leans upon it. The Queen dies--but the volcano is still going to go.

    "You drank it all up--everything we worked for, everything that was given to us, everything we lucked into--but you never FUCKING got it."

    Candy draws in bloody spittle and spits upon the deck. "Good riddance. You never taught 'your people' songs. You never taught them how good it feels to meet new people." Spots, at the edge of his vision, as his hand barely retrieves the deck of playing cards from his pocket.

    "You never taught them how to play, or love. Rita knows all of those things and she keeps them in her heart, always."

    "The only thing you knew was how to steal and kill. Fuck you, and fuck 'your people.' Life is fair here, from today."

    Candy bids his body to move, while it still can, managing a bellow like waking up from a nightmare, a clumsy convulsion of the upper body as he crushes one of Tamamo's talismans from before.

    Time stops--for the world, for the volcano, but not for anyone else present. Not for Rita, wherever she may be in the cold fathoms of the ocean. Not for Kukuru, who searches through motionless water, bubbles suspended in inky depths. Not for Meika, who would otherwise break a promise. Not for those repairing the gate, not for Lilian, making her own plans. Not for anyone here. Not even Candy--who pays the price for this cheated moment with a dry, retching cough, bowled over, as the enchantment on his weapon fades and sloughs through the myriad holes in the metal floor.

     "Whatever you're gonna do, for fuck's sake make it worth what this did to me," he wheezes, between his body desperately attempting to be rid of something it has no name for; at once starving for air and eager to be free of it. Flecks of red stain the fleeing water, but the moment is stable, for now."
Hibiki Tachibana     Oh. That's the trick.

    Ah. It's the same thing as before. That sinking feeling that she's about to die, and the only reason it didn't actually stick before was because there was someone who desperately wished otherwise. This time...

    ...She has to hold onto 'her' as much as possible. Even when arcs of blood bloom, gashes open from nothing that's actually happened yet, and wound after wound tears through. Her arm nearly goes the same way it did once, but it doesn't. She holds on tight, bracing her heart with the small but potent desires that have made her able to keep moving after coming this far.

    And then it's over.

    In more ways than one. Hibiki falls away from the collapsing Queen to an ungracious and bloody heap on the floor, heaving for breath and gagging on blood, spitting it out so that it doesn't choke her up. "Meika--" The first thing she forces out is the magical girl's name, biting back a yelp of pain as she rolls over to look her way. Is she breathing? Is she alive? She doesn't deserve something to happen to her for opening up a chance for her. Any relief at her still holding on is--

    --stifled. At the dawning realization of what's happening.

    Her head turns up. Brune is on the ground, but alive. Some harpoonists are still standing. Everyone is either making their peace with what's going to happen, or enacting last minute and desperate plans. A few moments pass where not a single sound reaches Hibiki's ears, only the pulse of her own heart. Still breathless, "We can't... just... leave here like that... when Rita is still-- Rita..."

    It's not even just Rita. It's everyone else here. Brune. Sonia. Every Elite, everyone she knows, who might get taken away, too. Before she can catch herself, she's already staggering up and over to where the cargo bay's doors were wrenched open. Teeth grit beneath her scarf. The hand on her injured arm struggles to close all the way. "Damnit... damnit--! I'll go out there... and do something about it myself if I have to...!"

    Not like this. It can't end like this. She won't forgive herself otherwise.

    ...

    Standing at the edge, Hibiki stares down into the water shining bright orange. There's barely a minute to actually take the plunge before it comes up to meet them anyway. She can't afford to hesitate.

    . . .If I use that, maybe I can stall the eruption for just a little bit. Lower the damage. Make sure some of them get out. Even just one more is better than nothing. If Kukuru can get Rita. If Lilian can definitely get them out. Maybe they'll even get the Warpgate functioning in time. Candy and Ishirou are smart enough. Even if... with my body like this, I won't...

    No. It's totally fine. Even if I die. I promised.
Rena Rena slams her improvised pipe lance/laser sword home, discarding it afterwards - it's bent, and she can't get the laser sword out of the middle of it without some work. If, by some miracle, they survive, and she can find the pipe, she'll do it then.

She circles the motorcycle around, Outlaw responsive even with its damage, just an instant before damage she isn't really equipped to understand washes across her.

Rena barely comprehends what the attack *is*, let alone how to protect herself against it. She tries as if it was physical, bracing against it, but that barely works. What works is when she almost gives into it.

I'm sorry, mom.
I made a promise to avenge you, and here I am, dying at the end of some other world, hoping like hell it doesn't end.
I did what I could, but -
but
I promised.
I PROMISED.
I promised the Union Busan and I promised you and I promised myself and by God I am not going to break every promise I have ever made at once!
And if nothing else, I promised Pochi.

Rena rolls over, then sits up. Outlaw is idling quite happily next to her, but Rena looks like she's come through hell, probably because she has. Or - wait, Outlaw isn't idling. It just hasn't fallen over yet.

Rena stares at an impossibility for a moment before she vaults to her feet. Everything hurts when she does it, but she forces that down. She can hurt later. Rena spits something when she does, than hops onto Outlaw - which begins to move again when she does. It's hers. She never feels so alive as when she's behind the wheel of SOMETHING. It may as well *be* her, in some ways.

Rena guns the engine. Outlaw responds, though not without a hell of a noise that she'd be worried about at any other time whatsoever, but right now is not worth the thought. "Hey," she says, followed by: "HEY!"

Outlaw drives. Rena leans over, once, to pick up an unconscious body - Aidan, who gets put in front of her because he's not conscious enough to hang on behind. She has to lean around him to see because he has several inches on her, plus a tail that seems custom-designed to get in her face; she shoves it out of the way about every five (apparent) seconds.

She's not sure where she's going. 'Up.' Up sounds better than not-up. 'Up' has the possibility of survival. She can't rely on anyone else this time; it sounds like the rest of them made a good go at leaving while she was semi-conscious.

'Up' is where the warpgate is. She doesn't hold a lot of hope she can fix it. Maybe that circle Lilian mentioned is working? It's worth a shot.
Combaticon     Onslaught releases the Queen when they announce that something's been figured out, stepping back and bringing the left arm forward again. It isn't a physical attack that comes, though. Something metaphysical. An assertion of a new reality, centered on the Queen themself and their blood-soaked victory.

    His head inclines, obscuring one eye with his visor as he leans forward. The wish for conquest collides with the combined will of three Decepticons. Onslaught steps forward again, closing that distance. The left arm gives way first, falling back covered in slashes and sparks. He takes another step. The right arm gives way, exploding in two. His real left arm returns, raises, covered in the possibility of grinding white-hot cuts into his steel body. His blaster flips out into his grip.

    "I refuse."

    Reality as it affected the Combaticons reverts. The ruined Vortex is suddenly just slightly wrecked, sitting up in robot mode with a bewildered look. The destroyed Blastoff lurches to his feet with a startled sound, glancing back and forth.

    "Blastoff. Get us out of here."

    Breathing a sigh of relief once he's sure most of his parts are where they belong, Blastoff tips his battered helmet visor with two fingers, then flips forward with that distinctive sound. Rapidly reconfiguring and expanding into a fighter jet. On the side of the jet, a gangplank extends and a hatch opens for others to board.

    Picking herself up, Vortex glances at her companions, then through the evacuating crowd of elites and agents and harpoonists and-- She shoots a look back over her shoulder, "Take who you can and go without me! I can still fly on my own!"

    Onslaught's eyes narrow, but he offers a nod of acknowledgement before turning his attention to other things. One by one, he collects the agents of Lobotomy Corp; Tweed first, then Nonon. Lastly, Shajo are all gathered. One over either shoulder and Tweed in his remaining arm. Like this, he returns to Blastoff. At the foot of the gangplank he glances back, surveying the hold. Only then does he duck into the aircraft. The doors close and Blastoff lifts vertically; orients; and escorts the East Wind in a close formation with Agents on board.

    

    Vortex, meanwhile, vaults the wreckage, landing on her damaged leg and collapsing; scrambling; hauling to her feet again. In all the chaos, one girl had been overlooked. It is Meika Kirenai's barely conscious body that she crouches next to. "Hey, easy. Enough organics went offline today already, yeah? Let's get you outta here."

    It's a little rough with only one arm, but Vortex manages to scoop Meika up and hold the girl to her chest, ascending in a form of limited flight. Once clear of the Union Buson, she backflips-- with the girl still in hand-- and unfurls her body with that distinctive (kinda sketchy, grindy and distorted) noise. In a flurry of activity and moving parts, Meika now sits in a remarkably comfortable pilot's chair in the nose of a sleek attack helicopter.

    Vortex tucks her rotors back into a V-shape, igniting jet engines and accelerating to catch up to Blastoff.
Rita Ma      Bota (once healed) and Kana let themselves be taken by Lilian, but they're both listlessly gutted, too drained both emotionally and physically to do much but hang on. It's no wonder why. It cost them everything but their lives.

     Brune sits up, just barely, and manages to force his eyes open one more time. His hand grabs Stanley's wrist. "No. Wait. Sonia. Her body... Kukuru... can't leave her. Please."

     It's the least of anyone's worries right now, but the Union Busan is very quickly sinking as the Queen's tentacles disintegrate. Anyone who wants to stay dry will have to climb higher and higher; in just a matter of seconds, the cargo bay is knee-deep in seawater, and totally submerged in a few more.

     Fortunately, the sea monsters outside aren't so much a threat anymore. They're just as dense, but they go completely wild without the Queen's influence, thrashing and seizing up or even turning on each other.

     And then they stop. They spiral inwards, towards a center. It's a center that Kukuru and the Dreaming Current are already seeking.

     "You did so well," says a familiar voice, in an unfamiliar way. "And I barely did anything. I'm sorry I had to ask so much of everyone. But I can still make that right."

     Far under the water, at the center of a shimmering spiral of fish, Rita looks at Kukuru and the Dreaming Current warmly, with her one cold eye. Her tentacles wave gently too. It's hard to tell if the rest of her is still moving at all.

     They're the first to see something beautifully horrible and horribly beautiful happen, not long after Candy freezes the world.

     All dozen of Rita's tendrils stab into the twelve closest frozen fish and drink. And with that mass, each bifurcates into two more and stabs the next two closest fish to drink- twenty-four, forty-eight, ninety-six, geometric multiplication out to the horizon, until she's glowing as brightly as the sun.

     That's when people under the water can see her stop looking like Rita at all, and when people above it can see her as a truly vast, branching mass that shines even against the volcano's heat- those who went to fix the ruined warpgate best of all, from their perch, and those in the air even better.

     It looks up at the Union Busan with two huge, blue, cruciform eyes.

     "Rita," Bota says with dread in his voice (somehow he knows he'll be heard). He only has a guess. He's terrified it's right. "What are you doing? No, wait. You can't! Stop!! After all this--"

     "It'll be okay," she answers telepathically, achingly bittersweet. She tries to keep the despair out of her 'voice' with a smile, and fails. "It's not as though... there's a good part of me, and a bad part. Or a human part, and a monster part. It's all just me, isn't it? So it'll always be me. Whatever happens."

     ---------------------------
Kale Hearthward It's over. For real, now.

And... of course it isn't really over. It's over for the Queen, it's not over for the fight for survival.

"East Wind. Get clear with whoever you have on board right now. That's an order."

And - Kale's going as well. He doesn't have a lot of options for stopping a volcano, and the East Wind's priority is the souls it has aboard so he can't bring it around and have it still get clear in time. He himself can carry someone - just one, but that's it.

He's going to leave, when time stops. A reprieve. "I can..." he says, trying to find something to do. The disaster response specialist, without a response to the ongoing disaster - though to be fair to him, 'directly above an ocean volcano' is far from standard.

And then Rita speaks.

Kale pauses. He recognizes the voice and the tone, even if he can't recognize the speaker physically anymore. He goes to the side of the Busan, looking at her.

"..."

He locks eyes with her. Those big blue eyes that are bigger than normal.

"... I'm... glad to see you're okay, Rita." He means it, somehow.
Ishirou Ishirou is surprised by how Candy has managed to avoid their destruction by telling everything else to shut up.  He goes to him, trying to help him up because he knows this has got to be taxing, while his own body is threatening to shut down on him.  It's fine, they can go together.  He moves up towards the warp gate, where others are fixing it.  

Also because it's where the water isn't.  However, he then hears Rita through his mind, turning to see the massive creature that has formed from Rita and he looks... surprised?  Shocked?  Afraid?  Concerned?  So many emotions at once that he isn't sure what to say.  That was until she made something somewhat more known.

"Rita, come on, we can get the portal open right?" Of course, she's going to come with them, even if she looks like this. It doesn't matter what she looks like, it just matters that his friend is going to come with them.  His eyes start tearing up because he knows that she isn't going to come, but it's just a delusion he can tell himself so he doesn't try and stop her.

It's her choice.  
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Rita's voice snaps Madeleine back to full lucidity. She gazes out over the edge of the crumbling cargo bay, in awe at the vast spread of tendrils under the water. She's seen people come into their own in vast and supernatural ways before, but never has it been so physical, so grounded in the real. The huntress crouches down, swirls a finger in the water for a moment. "Yeah, Rita," she says softly. "It is just you. I think you should be proud of that." Madeleine stands and turns to go to where Stanley is working on a portal into the Reversal, but before she takes a step she chances a look over her shoulder, at those great blue eyes deep under the water. She smiles a little, and blinks back tears.
Dysnomia     Dysnomia's facade of humanity was still abandoned, as Rita began to rise. She hadn't had time, or inclination, to reassemble her disguise. Strands of color wrapped around pieces of the warp gate, holding them in the shape of the finished product. Her multitool Ch-CHUNKing as she moved from piece to piece, reassembling it steadily, piece by piece, as lines of plasma blazed in the air to weld it back together--

    It's not far from finished, when she feels Rita--And she does feel her. Her presence swelling, growing, but--but not distorting--Mia turned slowly to face her, but she wasn't prepared for what she'd see.

PHONE: Rita Ma says, "I don't want to be this kind of thing. And so, when someone says 'I accept you', how am I supposed to feel?"

    "...Rita." Her voice was soft. Her breath hitched. "...I'll prepare another gate for you, on this world." She murmured. "For when you come back to us."

    "...I don't know you well enough yet. But. I'd like to."

    The last pieces of the warpgate fell into place with a clunk, and Mia turned around, beginning the process of spinning it back to life.
Kukuru There she is. There she is! Kukuru's eyes widen and her dive speeds up shortly before she remembers to actually call out to Rita, although her adrenaline-fueled haze only lasts so long before she realizes that only Rita's eye is moving. There's a brief flash of despair on Kukuru's face when she sees the tentacle moving, and then that quickly turns to relief when she realizes-

"Nonsense, dear... You've done so much more than you think. Aah... I'm just so glad you're okay! I thought you were..." All at once, despite being underwater, the waterworks start, and Kukuru becomes a blubbering mess as she dives deeper to get closer to Rita. She's moving slowly, though, as all that nanite-pumping from earlier is really catching up to her. Despite that, she still manages to wipe her face off with a weakened hand, sniffling and babbling incoherently as she watches her starting to drink with those tendrils.

Rita glows, and that's what finally reminds Kukuru why she was in such a rush to get here again. "Oh! Rita, there's a volcano that..." She hears Rita speaking, sees her changing form, sounding so... Sad? Why would she be sad? Why does she sound like she's saying some kind of farewell to everyone?

The volcano's the culprit for this, isn't it? "That's why you're eating so much so fast..." Kukuru comments with a lower tone in her voice, looking back over at the volcano as the competing glows clash before her eyes. She closes them after a moment, then drifts over to Rita (or wherever her original-looking body was) and pulling her head in to cradle it against her chest softly with one arm while holding the other aside for Dreaming Current to join them.

"That's not true, Rita... All of you is good, human or monster or whatever. You've had to do too much, and even now, you're still thinking about everyone else instead of yourself." Kukuru laughs lightly and kisses the top of Rita's head, squeezing her (and possibly Dreaming Current) a little more tightly. "If I could have children, I think... You'd be just the type of beautiful little girl I'd want." She closes her eyes, letting herself daydream for a moment. "One that's just... So kind, so fun to be around, so cute... Someone anybody would love to bring home for their own parents to meet, and someone I'd be worried about being taken away once you finally fell in love with somebody..."

Kukuru knows Candy can't keep whatever he did to the world going forever. She knows she couldn't possibly teleport Rita to safety, either. She remembers what she saw of the reborn Queen mimicking their powers, and what Rita was able to do from drinking those fish. "That's why..."

'Sorry to say but in the face of an Eighth Devil or worse, one fresh Rita or Kana is more important than a hundred half-exhausted . . .'

Kukuru's not sure if Rita's mouth still works in this state, but she keeps holding her head against her chest. She sees those tendrils, too, and she gestures at one, like she's beckoning Rita to bring it closer. "Eat up, dear. You need to eat something more nutritious, and... My healing still works, even if it's kinda slow now. And then you can rejoin Bota and Kana, once we all get back home. They're still waiting for you, and... We can't disappoint them, right?"
Redshift Operators     White Dwarf, kneeling with her fellow Operators, whispers softly into her radio while tears stream down her cheeks. "Girls who do everything they can to be good, but who aren't good girls, one way or another..." She takes a big breath. "Even the end of the world won't stop it from turning out this way. It just makes it even moreso." She smiles up in the distance, looking to... Meika of all people, far away? She thinks back to something she said before. "Do you see, Chevalier Vermillion?"

    "Rita is making her choice. The one I told you about."

    "Isn't it terrible? Isn't it beautiful?"
Rita Ma      "Yeah," Rita 'says', with a little despairing mental giggle. "I'm okay." And then Mia's heartfelt offer extracts from her, almost tenderly begrudging: "Thank you, Ms. Mia. I'll come back, when... when I'm okay again." Contradicting herself.

     Tears blend in with seawater, and if Rita still has a face like this, it's impossible to make out beneath the angelic glow. That's for the best. But Kukuru can still hear the little sob in her mental 'voice', and see her eyes scrunch. "Ms. Kukuru. No. You don't... you don't know what you're asking for. You wouldn't really want someone like me," she tries to 'say'.

     The way that a tendril comes up to wipe where-her-face-might be is very human.

     Hesitantly, she extends another to Kukuru, and touches it feather-delicately to a wound. A tiny trickle of blood flows up. "Okay. But... just this much. No more. Please. I couldn't come back if I hurt you."
Rita Ma      ---------------------------

     Whenever Candy allows time to resume, the light becomes blinding, and the sound becomes deafening, and it's hard to tell if that's the volcano erupting or something else. It's like being flashbanged drawn out to ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Everything rattles apart: the Union Busan, the air, the water, your bones.

     The sheer heat of it craters the water, and the Union Busan rides the edge of that crater down, down, down in a gutdropping freefall, until on its way down it slams into something on its way up.

     . . .

     https://youtu.be/R-P05FMnFMM

     The world isn't as bright as you remember it. It's quieter, too. Maybe that's your eyes and ears being damaged. Maybe it's not. A feeling tingles in your body, reminiscent of Kukuru's healing, that soothes away pains.

     There are black clouds overhead, casting everything into a gentle twilight gloom. It's raining gently, and the rain is dark with ash.

     Anyone who was in the air might now glimpse a foggy dark shape through the mist and rain. And anyone who was underwater or on the Busan, finds themselves instead lying on soft green grass in the shade of a vast tree.

     Waves gently crash against dark craggy rocks. A cool breeze rustles the enormous apple tree's leaves- once one of those growing in the Union Busan's glass-domed garden. The Union Busan's wreck, tilted at an angle but barely holding together, groans as it settles into the stone.

     Surviving ships chatter among each other and slowly approach. They say the same thing Kana does after blinking the blood out of her one newly-healed eye: "Land. After a hundred years. There's finally land."

     Sea Monkey drags herself up on the rocks and collapses, panting. Brune tries to gently shake Sonia's shoulders on the grass: "Sonia. Look. Please. You have to look. We did it. It's..." She wrenches herself up, covers her mouth, and coughs up nearly a gallon of seawater. The noise he makes is indescribable.

     But there is no sign of Rita, except for the pale blue tentacles that sculpted the lava and shaped the explosion, still wrought all throughout the island and intertwined with the grass and tree.
Stanley Padgett     Stanley grips onto Brune, and murmurs. "Hey, right now you worry about you. You're... we're getting you out." The Fencer looks up at Madeline as she approaches. "You ready? Rita's... I..." He glances over his shoulder to Rita in the distance, and the-

    Time unfreezes, and there is once again land. There is green grass. Rain falls on his face. He is rapidly becoming filthy with ash. Stanley blinks a few times in confusion, his brain simply... there's not enough energy or calories or magic or whatever teenager obstinance powers him left in his body to handle this right now.

    Brune has found Sonia. Stanley manages to see that much. He smiles back up at the sky, at Madeline standing there over him, at the dull rain soaking his body.

    Stanley Padgett closes his eyes, and falls asleep.
Combaticon     Onslaught dims his optics when light overtakes Blastoff and his passengers. The jet wobbles but maintains an otherwise stable course. After a few moments to realize what's happened, Blastoff banks languidly to the left, dipping the wing. From inside, this puts the passengers in prime position to see the results of the eruption for themselves.

    The Commander's eyes brighten again with an audible click, the white pupils sliding sideways a second or two before his head turns. He doesn't say anything. All that emits from Blastoff is a thoughtful, low buzzing noise.

    At a lower altitude, Vortex has switched from rocket boost to standard flight with the noisy chop of her rotors, mercifully muted on the inside of her cockpit.

    > "...W-wait, I don't know how to fly a plane..."

    The Decepticon buzzes. It's an amused noise. A console on the dash lights up with the distinctive symbol of her faction, pulsing softly, "Don't worry, I'm a pretty good pilot." When Blastoff banks into a turn, Vortex just-- rotates and starts flying backwards. Once she spots the newly formed island, though, she gently alters her direction to circle around it.

    "Would you look at that? This is the first time I've seen any land on this planet."

    Onslaught leans back in his seat, eyes closing, "I believe this is 'Mission Accomplished'."
Angela What is Dreaming Current anyway?

Dreaming Current is a boy. No. Dreaming Current is a dream. No. Dreaming Current is a boy's dream. No. A shark's dream. No.

Dreaming Current is the representation of a shark through an innocent mind.

Is the dream of a shark or is it a shark's dream? Are those Agents being escorted into safety real or did the boy shark imagine them? Was the Queen a nightmare? Was Rita a dream? Or was Rita the nightmare, the idea that she slipped out of his dream and that warmth would never be felt again?

There she is, with two cold eyes. Are those her real eyes? There's a good part of her, there's a bad part. A human part. A monster part. The Dreaming Current doesn't comment on this because The Dreaming Current is human and monster and good and bad. Today, the Dreaming Current chased the warmer waters and was able to be a good boy. He is excited. He'll get grape candy.

He was left behind because of an infection, a Sickness that was sure to kill him in two years.

But he survived. He was stabbed with needles and he survived. That entire story was a lie and he survived. He is a shark. He is a boy. He is an Alpha Predator. He is the most pitiful victim.

The Agents gradually recover when they are tended to. Nonon hears Rita's voice. Shajo reflects on Sonia's last words to him. "It's possible to defeat something like that, people with all the power. It takes everything, you break your bodies again and again upon it, but eventually... You go strong."

Images flash through his mind. He remembers being angry. He wanted to kill the monsters. He was a psychopath. He would have killed everyone around him to make it happen.

He remembers getting tattoos, purple tattoos across his whole body. Tattoos that he can't remove. Tattoos that mean he could never return to a normal life. Tattoos that means for sure he'll die in body but just as surely, they protect him like scars--scars he's chosen.

He was going to be a Little Brother, but the Family he had found grew stale and cold. They wanted to hurt other people more than they wanted to love aech other and he couldn't stand it forever, even though it's exactly what he wanted.

He found Nonon and it was like a dream. He found her and she shook his world. He had nowhere to go, but she gave him a place to be. And then...together...they came to this world, fighting for a place they'll likely never see again. He watches Rita's light and he's crying. For all the people he lost today, for all the people who get to have a future. He didn't think it was possible, really, even though he worked for L Corp.

The only thing he knows for sure is that they didn't overcome because of strength, or because they wanted to hurt anybody who slighted them to cave out their little hell amongst the dark cosmos. That was the way of Queens and Kings. No, today they made it through it all because they didn't want to hurt people. They didn't want to see people die.

The most useful thing Lobotomy Corp brought was Healing Bullets. Nonon's fist helped, his axe helped, but at the end of the day what really happened was the desire to not become fish food. To live.

And Nonon smiles at the light, holding his hand. "...Understating your contribution to the very end, huh Rita?" She asks. "Course you're you, dummy, who else would you be?" She laughs hard enough that her bones ache.

And Shajo looks up. People died. People he loved. People he'll have nightmares about forever. He'll never forget how Max was crushed, how Will was devoured, how Jenna was cut in half, how Sonia and Ceri (forever or for now) were killed but...
Angela Ah. His worries fade for now because...

It's possible. It takes everything. It takes more than everything. But sometimes you can look at the cruel tyrants dead in the eyes and take something back and it doesn't require what he thought he abandoned just to indulge in bliss with Nonon. In actuality, letting Nonon to make him the happiest man alive was the correct choice. That was the victory. And it's those victories that are the building blocks that build a real family.

That is the dream of this boy.

Or maybe it's the boy that exists because of that dream even now. Maybe that land is only there now that it can be believed in.

The Dreaming Current headbutts Rita gently like a cat before curling around her. Lobotomy Corp isn't in a condition to retrieve him.

And...

Angela doesn't have much to say. They succeeded. It cost nearly everything, and Angela didn't pay the price, but they helped a whole world.

Even for Angela, that's a good feeling.

The only one frowning in Lobotomy Corp is Gebura who can't help but wonder...

Was it just my Strength that was not enough?

But Gebura pushes that thought into the back of her head. With this done...

She has a duel to prepare for. She has rust to shake off and maybe after she duels the Commander, she will finally find what she has been looking for in the twisted halls of this hell.
Candy I'm sorry I had to ask so much of everyone.

    Candy pulls himself above the cargo bay. Where his hands might otherwise be cut by the jagged, metal edges of the massive hole, there appears a small field of smoke and light, almost like armor. The same appears, in brief flashes, when he rolls over onto solid ground, to take a brief but well-earned respite, his chest heaving beneath a sea-soaked striped tee.

    He coughs again. "That's just like you," he nevertheless notes, with a little chuckle. A familiar voice, in an unfamiliar way--unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. "To say something like that." says Candy fondly, looking up at the sky. A tear rolls down his cheek. "'I barely did anything.' I know you don't like it when I argue, but... bullshit." He chuckles, and slowly gets up.

    "You did help. I don't just mean today. Or even... working together. You just help. Bota, Kana, the Watch, the people on this ship... me." He says, smilingly. That's what you do. That's Rita Ma. So thank you..."

    "And I'm glad you're okay.. If this is some kinda goodbye... I'm, ah, gonna miss you." He sniffles, takes a breath.

I'm sorry, boy. There isn't much more this moment can yet fit.
*I know, C.*

    He laughs--weakly. He doesn't want to go, even if he knows he needs to. He clears his throat, and his expression turns more thoughtful than nervous laughter. "...listen, there's nothing anybody can say, that'll make me sorry to have met you." He pauses, for a moment longer, awkwardly striking a fist into the opposite palms a few times. "..okay," he says, after a steadying breath--realizing that no further amount of waiting will make it any easier to leave.
Candy      One near-catastrophic crash later, and Candy is on his back again, sucking in a hissing breath. Reaching for his pistol with one hand and rubbing the back of his head with another, he asks, "Anybody need one? The healing kind, before anyone makes a funny."

     Rising to his feet and looking out over the bow, he lowers the gun and blinks. "Is that what I think it is?" He pauses. "...holy shit."

     "LAND!" Candy shouts, firing the pistol into the air, before letting out a whoop that sets him to coughing again. All of the overreliance on temporal chicanery must have taken a lot out of him--but he does seem genuinely happy for these people and their discovery, even if he wishes badly that Rita were here to share in it.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine stands up almost right away, but after that she doesn't move from her spot for a while. It even takes her a minute or two to check for her weapons, and find them missing. Destroyed in the wreck of the Union Busan, surely. But there doesn't seem to be a need for them here. Madeleine turns to look at the tree, and as she notices the tendrils intertwined with its roots she fingers the hilt of her ritual blade.

    But, no. Now is not the time, nor ever. Enough blood has spilled here. Instead Madeleine walks up to the tree, leans her back against its trunk, and ponders the horizon.
Kukuru "Rita..." Kukuru sighs softly, and she reaches up to one of the tendrils to rub her cheek against it softly. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life." She declares with a slow look down towards the other tendril drawing that blood from her. She giggles softly and sniffles once, then nods as though she's finally relenting. "Alright, alright... I'm still tougher than this, but I know you need to focus on-"

She glances at the glow further below. "Finishing things up here first. But you know... It's an aunt's job to spoil her niece."

--------------

Kukuru doesn't remember ever leaving Rita's side even after time resumes. She just remembers seeing the growing light, she remembers holding onto Rita and Dreaming Current (probably) tightly, and then...

Whatever happened between that and waking up on the grass is a complete haze. She's comfortable, sure, but she can't help but feel like she's forgetting something while she curls up into a ball to get right back to napping in that gentle rain. The sound of other voices brings Kukuru back to reality, though, and she lets out a wide-open yawn before slowly pushing herself right back up.

"Where's..? Oh? Kana? Brune... Sonia? Shajo and Nonon, Angie and Gebby, Candy and Maddy, and..." Still half-asleep, Kukuru wobbles back up to her feet, then staggers a little more on the way to joining them on that new chunk of dry land. "Where is all this...? Why are...?"

She trails off, looking over at the water again and the familiar tentacles, then realizing that there's still someone missing in all of this. Swallowing once, Kukuru rubs a healed-over wound lightly, then falls right back on her back while staring up at the sky once again.

"Let's... Get things fixed up. Still so much work to do, and we've gotta get everything..." Rita's just missing for now. Kukuru just needs to believe in that. "R... Ready before she comes back. That's all."

She refuses to believe in any other possibility.
Hibiki Tachibana     "...Huh...?"

    Hibiki hasn't moved. Even at the edge of the open cargo bay, water trailing up past her waist, she hasn't budged. There's no reason, when the only way to go is down anyway. But that voice gets her heart to stop in her chest and look up. For a moment, she thinks it's all in her head.

    It's not. Beneath the waves that once looked so terrifying, there's something else now. Someone else. Even though her tired and exhausted, desperate mind doesn't understand what she's looking at, another part of her does, staring back at those eyes. Even before Bota speaks up.

    It's not the reply that gets to her. It's the sadness behind it. For the first time today, Hibiki lets every last bit of strength leave her body. Her legs tremble and then give way, and she falls down onto her knees with a splash of water. The liquid running down her face isn't just murky seawater - it's two clear streams of liquid.

    Messy and sloppy, completely unrestrained tears leaking out from two tightly scrunched eyes, only getting worse through every sniffle. "R-Rita... Rita... s-shut up, shut up, shutupshutupshutup... you don't get to act like-- act like you have anything to apologize f-for... now of all times... you..."

    The rest of her breath leaves in a shuddering mess, and comes back in an even shakier inhale. But after it does, her words level out. Just a little, with the kind of smile that hurts her to make too. Her eyes force back open. "...Yeah. You're Rita. That was always... all I ever cared about. And that means-- that you don't get to stay gone for long. Okay? Because--"

    "...Because you'll always be you. You said so. So h-hurry it up, or people are going to... to... come get you themselves..."

    ...

    When Hibiki slowly wakes back up, the darkened clouds she can barely see past still-bubbling tears aren't the first thing she wants to see. Overcast skies have never sat well with her. She prefers when the sun is shining bright, and there's not a single thing hiding it.

    But maybe that's too much to ask for, just yet. Bare hands, now back to normal rather than transformed, brush across dry earth and soft grass. A slow roll of her body has her looking at the trunk of the towering tree, and a slight turn to a familiar sound lets her see Brune... and Sonia.

    And past them, one of those towering tentacles, running through everything. She stares at it for one second, two, five, ten. And then her eyes close again, unable to keep themselves open any more.

    Ah. She'll have to wait a little while longer to see Rita, Bota, and Kana together after all. Get to see her reaction to being with everyone from the Busan again. This sucks. Oh well. With how long Rita had to wait to come back home at all, she can manage. For a little bit.
Lilian Rook     Lilian doesn't need Bota and Kana responsive, she just needs them both alive for now. Everything else can come later. That's how it is.

    No matter how bad it is right now, no matter if it's the end of the world, tomorrow still comes in twenty four hours, and you have to be ready, back on your feet, to do it all over again. Otherwise you die.

    Lilian takes to the air hauling far too many bodies at a pace that briefly scares her. Each moment she thinks of slowing down, relaxing, just a little, stopping to look, to see who else might still make it, she considers if a few meters of difference might mean Rita's family, Tamamo, herself, died when they could have lived. So her back stays to the ocean, and the frothing mass of blood and teeth choking it, and she strains against the calamity she can't see, but feels right behind her. Just like she always does.

    'You did so well'

    Until all the energy suddenly leaves her. Her urgency, fear, simmering distress, barely repressed grief; all driven out like the words are a blow to the diaphragm, leaving her dizzy and breathless and utterly overwhelmed with relief.

    "I knew it. God I knew it had to be okay. If something had happened, I'd have-- I was looking for-- this was-- I knew that you had to be okay, if all of this happening was supposed to be the one future where I could be happy."

    Lilian squeezes Bota in his panic. Enough to make sure he won't fall, and a little extra. Just enough that when she says "Please. She's come this far. I'm certain it'll be alright." he knows that she's lying.

    'It's not as though... there's a good part of me, and a bad part. Or a human part, and a monster part. It's all just me, isn't it? So it'll always be me. Whatever happens.'

    Lilian's eyes slide around the enormous pair-- both cerulean-- looking up from the ocean, and come to rest on her wounded side. The dark black, unreal see-through-ness of it, brushed across the skin, and the suggestion of shining points inside. She doesn't need to touch it to know what it will feel like. Lilian lets herself look back up, and meets Rita eye to eye.

    "Thank you. For finally listened to what I said. Hah . . ." She breathes in harshly, and it rasps in her throat. "I know. No 'versions'. Good or bad. You promised me a long time ago, so I promise you too."

    But it's all Lilian can do to keep hold of those precious to her, and to Rita, through the ordeal that swallows all of her senses and feels as if it might shake apart her body entirely. She doesn't know where to go. She can't see, can't hear, can't think, and doesn't dare try. She has to believe that Rita is alright. Even if it feels like the end of the world, tomorrow is always there.

    The sight that welcomes her when she opens her eyes erases all doubt of that. It really is the end, for this world, in almost every sense that matters. And it's beautiful. Never did Lilian ever think that the sight of green grass would ever hold such near-mystic power over here; but what struggles to be expressed on her face as she gradually lands, lets off the four she has, and nearly collapses from the depletion of every store she has, is awe.
Lilian Rook     §You did, though. Do something. Something nobody else could. I hope this finds you, Rita. The fact that those people are still alive . . . You're the reason I can look them in the eye tomorrow. That's a secret for just the two of us.§

    Lilian can't help but take a moment just to hold onto Tamamo-- to prove to the parts of her embodied consciousness that still doubt that she's still here-- and then, with an enormous, bracing breath, the storm of feelings she can't all put names to sinks lower than the surface of her face, and she starts walking out into the field.

    "All personnel, check in! Assess our casualties ASAP! Don't leave anyone dying just as we've won! Verify radio; check in with any survivors of the other ships and begin immediate- . . . . .

    The Busan is still going to be here tomorrow. These people will be too. There's no time to not be ready for it.
Petra Soroka     The sudden transition into deafening silence rings in Petra's ears-- the groans of the ship crumpling around the massive perforations the Queen left and the numbingly endless sound of water and the thrashing monsters inside, when they're frozen in time it feels like they leave negative-sound in their place. It takes her a moment to register why, when she automatically stops and quiets herself, breathing light on high alert like the silence is the warning before the eruption.

    When the world ends, when she's fought herself into delirium, when she's just seen more death up close than ever before in her life and the execution of countless more is rising in the superheated ocean, when one in particular that she wasn't even allowed to be close for feels more crushingly certain with every passing second, the only place that it can all possibly be okay is with Lilian. Petra is stiff and deadened quiet, robotically following through on any adjustments Lilian tells her to make to be as convenient to carry as possible. Dully, staring listless down at the frozen, bloody sea, Petra wonders whether Hibiki has any plan to survive. She's probably thinking of doing something stupid and heroic and self-sacrificing. And it won't make anything better for anyone. The pressure in Petra's chest, throat, and behind her eyes builds, there's no other response to the thought.

"             ,                      ."

    Miserably, her words fall on deaf ears. Needles prickle across Petra's skin, shocking her out of her catatonic state, so when she feels Lilian slump in relief, she knows what-- who-- it has to be about. She jerks back to life, craning her head back both to look away from the potentially dangerous ocean and to look towards Lilian, like seeing her face is the only way to verify that it's actually true.

"I knew it. God I knew it had to be okay."

    "She's-- Rita's-- i-it's her? It's-- she's okay?" Petra full-body twitches, like she was jolted with electricity, and her voice clogs up. Abruptly, she starts squirming in Lilian's grasp enough that she almost slips out, before managing to maneuver her *backup* set of Cognition Goggles up to her face. Before clumsily affixing them, she contorts to wipe her eyes on her arm, shaky sobs already rattling out of her. "S-so it's all-- all going to be a-alright. F-f-huck. I'm-- I'm s-so-- fucking g-glad."

    Petra's barely even saying it out loud, it's not directed to anyone. She's just murmuring low, broken up by sobs and sharp inhalations, trying to convince herself. "I-if this is the best fu--hyuture, th-then-- then it won't be like-- she w-won't come b-back right at the end... j-just to-- for the...." Yearningly, against the rules, Petra chances a look down at the ocean to imagine she might see Rita there, perfectly fine somehow. Instead, what she sees through the Cognition Filter, glowing through the leviathans and the web of light, doesn't look like Rita at all. If even the Cognition Filter can't synthesize its chibified Rita mask from whatever's down there, then it must not be Rita at all.

    But Rita's safe. And she has to believe Rita will stay safe. So when the light overwhelms all of them, and the explosion shakes the air so much that she holds on to Lilian tightly enough to cramp her battered muscles, her eyes are already screwed shut and squeezing out tears to vent a little bit of the pressure behind them.
Petra Soroka     Petra comes back to consciousness-- for a loose definition of the word-- sprawled on the grass, dumped unceremoniously when Lilian went to hug Tamamo. Bleary, awareness wavering on the edge of slipping away again, Petra stays facedown at first. It wouldn't be *too* bad, to take a moment to rest right now, would it? The ordeal of even opening her aching eyes seems impossibly beyond her, standing up even more distant beyond that. The post-victory warmth feels more like numbing seawater, waterlogging her bones, and voices exclaiming relief or shock blur together into hazy buzzing.

    Every voice, except one.

"All personnel, check in!"

    Petra is dragged to her feet like a marionette, head hanging and eyes still half-closed. Even when the world ends, tomorrow still comes just as quickly as always. Lilian won't have to face it alone, Rita won't have to face it alone, not Rita's family, not the Busan, and not the agents either, even if the only person Petra can guarantee is at their side is a bloody teenaged girl who's shuffling like a zombie. Hoarse as if she hasn't spoken in days, Petra mumbles to Lilian's call. "Here. Um. Accounted for. Tell me where to go. I can... triage supplies are... totally gone. But I can treat. Make records. Wherever I'm needed. I can be useful."