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Marigold      Lycia, March of Araphen, near Bern's border
     Village of Laphet

     Unfamiliar words: 'Lycia', 'Bern', 'Araphen'. The names change, the realities stay the same. Armed men terrorizing a small pastoral village- maybe you've seen that story before. Rain drizzles on thatched roofs but it doesn't put out the burning church, or wash away the blood of the priest slumped against its door, crowded around by sobbing children.

     The gate puts you down on its outskirts, with not even a dirt path through the grass to evidence multiversal traffic. Past the one-street hamlet and its fresh-plowed fields, lush mountains rise up smoothly, but the gray clouds and black smoke steal away their green. Most of the villagers must be in their stone-walled homes, doors barred and windows shut with wood. That'll stop an arrow, but it won't stop the spearmen.

     The red-clad soldiers, maybe three dozen in all- well-armored spearmen with round shields, the fore half of them, and longbowmen the rear half- stand in loose formation in the village's cobblestone square, just around the corner from the church.

     What breaks the mold is the black wyvern next to them, and the blonde man who holds its reins. His back is turned to the warpgate, but even from behind, his insouciant hunch reads as smugly intolerable. The noblewoman he has cornered against the wall of a house clasps her hands together and begs.

     "--surrender! Just please, don't hurt them any more!"
     "Mhmhmhm. And you'll return what you stole? Or will we have to turn over the whole village for it?"
     "I-!! I don't know what you're speaking of, Narcian!"

     When you emerge, the red-clad woman looks over his shoulder at you in pleading disbelief.
Ru Li Cheng      The names are always different. For everyone else, the realities are the same. For Ru Li, they're new, and different, experiences he's never had save through vicarious reading of reports or assets or other bureaucratic interactions. Armed men terrorizing a small pastoral village is the sort of thing he *read* about, not took part in fighting. It's the sort of thing he used to fantasize about, in the quiet parts of the evening, when he was all caught up on his work and had nothing to do but sit in silence. He'd say something like, 'stop, villain' and point dramatically and fight them off, and even though they'd get some good hits in he'd prevail in the end.

     But in fantasies you can't smell the blood of the priests. You can't taste the iron tang on the blades. You can't feel the warmth leaving the body.

     You can't hear the sobbing of children.

     Any motion he had to be heroic (forma Flashy) dies the minute the world hits him in the face. His hand goes to his mouth, as if that would stop the taste. He retches at the feeling of it hanging near his tongue.

     He musters himself as best he can. He's been in worse. When he was hosting Ultraman Belial he regularly wound up at the site of those kaiju disasters, and so many people-

     But it's different when humans are doing it to humans, isn't it?

     ...maybe a little.

     He steps forward, attempting to regain his balance and his confidence. "I am Ru Li Cheng, ninth of the nine Ru Cheng Gods of the Empire of Yinghua." He bows, very slightly, as is appropriate for a god to a mortal. "These people have requested intervention. I humbly request, then, that you cease further hostile activities in order to straighten out this situation. Otherwise, violent dissuasion may be necessary."

     Ru Li is pretty sure the man won't stop. But there's rules to this kind of thing, right? That's the kind of thing the War Gods would say when they arrived at a conflict, probably.
Dysnomia     Absent time to research this new world, Dysnomia was still dressed the way she had been as she scurried out of a Watch hideout hidden in a cellar, behind an old resteraunt in some world's Chicago; a baggy grey hoodie, gloves, jeans, boots--and, as always, her collar.

    Grass crunched under her feet, as she stepped through the portal, her eyes wandering idly over the collected warriors, expression creasing in mounting disbelief. Primitive steel weaponry and armor, an ancient terran village...Dysnomia had never seen its like before.

    But the fear of those children and villager washed over her, along with the steely cruel determination of the soldiers--Ah. If she imagined them with guns and psychic payloads, they weren't so strange, were they? It was almost familiar.

    It didn't do anything to stop the way her gut churned, though.

    Ru Li had begun addressing Narcian, and so Dysnomia turned her eyes, and thoughts, toward the noblewoman. "Guinivere, is it?" Dysnomia reached out from mind to mind. "Your subordinate called for help. And we've answered. What needs doing most? You don't have to say it aloud; think it."
Trudy Grimm     Invasion and war. Not exactly the sort of place one might expect to find a witch, and yet Trudy has arrived all the same. It's the clicking of her metal shoes on the cobble that gives her away, alongside the light of the warpgate.

    Without saying a word, her shadow darkens and extends forward. From within it, as if ascending a flight of stairs, the Black Knight rises into position. His greatsword lifts, resting across his shoulders as he advances. When Ru Li starts speaking and ruins the element of Surprise, the Knight stops moving entirely. Diplomacy first, he seems to accept.

    "My, my~," the witch's tone is teasing, "Bullying those weaker than you is hardly sporting, now isn't it?"

    The Knight recovers his posture and swings his sword down to the side. The blade is twisted, rammed into the cobblestone and braced one-handed. The other hand reaches out to the side in a taunting gesture. His eyes aren't visible, but the mockery is clear. Even the clear disrepair of his dark armor, the Black Knight remains confident.

    "If the item you seek wasn't stolen by these people, clearly you must search elsewhere--" Trudy comes to a stop, her hand resting on the Grimoire dangling at her hip. The man who spoke steps up beside her; an older gentleman with a thick white beard and matching hair escaping from under the brim of his wide traveller's hat. "--Is there really any reason to mistrust the word of someone who knows you'll take their life if they're lying, I wonder?"

    He comes to a stop beside the witch, only somewhat taller than she is, leaning heavily on an old walking stick and sizing up the red-cladd spearmen and archers with his one good eye.

    "Is this only the behavior of a man with power who shouldn't have it? I tend to think so."

    "I am inclined to agree. Ahh, Lady Grimm, I'll leave the roughhousing to you. These old bones aren't up to the task any longer."

    "Fortunately, Grimnir," Trudy shifts her posture as the scholar steps away from her, "I know some old bones who certainly are." In front of her, the Black Knight wrenches his blade from the street, sweeps it up, and points directly at Narcian with it.
Desire Stars EARLIER:

    Far away from burning churches and armed men, a superstar stands alone, looking out over a much more modern city. He observes, held between his thumb and forefinger, an aged golden denarius, bearing the likeness of a long-gone Roman emperor. Ace flips the coin, sending it tumbling through the air and glinting in the sunlight. He catches it with the same hand, a swift swipe. "No matter where you are," he says, as a blimp passes by playing a cologne advertisement with his smiling likeness, "I swear I'll find you."

    His rumination is disturbed, by the chirp-chirp of a phone notification. Not his personal phone, but the bulky, battle-girded Spider Phone given out to Kamen Riders like himself.

                              BONUS MISSION START                              

    "Oh?" Ace smiles at the notification on the screen, as his Spider Phone patches into the multiversal broadband...

<J-IC-Scene> Elen says tensely, "Oh, and I use it like... this? Hello? Pl-- Please, if anyone from the otherworld is listening! My mistress Guinivere is-- Bern's crossed the border into Lycia, it's going to be war, I don't understand! They're going to- the whole village, I just know it- oh, please help!! We were in Araphen, there's one of your gates, just--"
<J-IC-Scene> Elen gasps for breath.
<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Copy."
<J-IC-Scene> Aidan Proudpick says, "Okay! Who should we look for on the ground as our contact?"
<J-IC-Scene> Trudy Grimm says, "Mmm, yes, I hear you. Araphen, you say?"
<J-IC-Scene> Elen says, "Ah!! So you do-- um, please, the lady in red is Guinivere, but..."
<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, veteran of a colder war, hears "crossing the border" and "war" and "the whole village", and gets a solid C-grade mental picture of things in about ten seconds. "Loading up the van, on my way!"
<J-IC-Scene> Elen says, "If you're coming, I must go back for her too." Off-mic: "Yes, thank you, I'll..."
<J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "War? V-village?" Deep inhale, then a quieter exhale. "On my way."
<J-IC-Scene> Aidan Proudpick says, "Don't panic, we'll be there soon!"
Lilian Rook     Kind, dead men are not something so unfamiliar to Lilian. More common than living ones, perhaps, though she has only modest experience with corpses, and they yet remain something she cannot quite look upon casually. It's the children that make it nearly unbearable. She almost doesn't want to approach. She has to, but the visceral, wailing knowing that this someone had been the world to them, and what the rest of their lives has become, makes every step a fist-curling march down death row.

    Of all things, Lilian didn't need this right now. But these people need her, and so there is no calculus anywhere. Another tomorrow that came in twenty-four hours. Another footstep forced in front of the last.

    Forty soldiers-- likely an elite retinue-- is far from inconsequential, but while someone in charge still needs something, she can afford to take a moment. Pushing herself towards the church doors, as close as she can despite the heat, Lilian in armour slides herself gently through the little crowd. With her ears sharpened on the 'negotiations' happening not far away, she stoops to the blood-soaked body, and moves to carry it into her arms first, before daring to speak to traumatized children.

    "It's not safe outside. Please, go home to--"

    Lilian breathes sharply. A thought of pitch black plausibility enters her mind.

    "Stay away from the building. It could collapse, and you could get hurt. I'll fix this, okay? So find somewhere out of the way, and wait."

    With dull pain throbbing behind her eyes, Lilian wonders how many times Aobheil must have seen something similar over her life.
Desire Stars NOW:

    A navy pinstripe suit with a rose corsage, and a stylishly unbuttoned black dress shirt. Ace Ukiyo is overdressed, for giving aid to a small town.

    It's the people on the periphery like this who suffer first. "Just like in the old days," says the celeb, both hands in his pockets. The soldiers are easy enough to spot from where he's standing. The blonde man and his wyvern, Ace doesn't spot until his self-assured stroll places him in the square. He meets the pleading look of the woman in red with a smug smile that seems infuriatingly ill-matched to the danger of the situation.

    Procuring a black rectangular device about the size of two human hands back-to-back, he presses it to his waist.

                                 DESIRE DRIVER!                                

    A grey waistband spools from the Driver, fastening itself to him. In the center of the driver, there's a white circle, split diagonally down the middle with a black bar--and at the very center of that circle, a small circular token rests, bearing the red stylized visage of a fox over a field of white. "That armor... your tabard, that sword of yours, and your 'steed,' there. It all looks expensive." He's one to talk, showing up here dressed the way he is.

     "Like the dog who saw his reflection in the water," he says to the blond man, with that same gratingly smug smile, "You're diving into rapids and forgetting the bone you already have."

    Is this really the time to recite fables?
Ru Li Cheng      Ru Li's face takes on a very unpleasant frown.

     There's a step.

     He's gone. There's just dust where he was a moment ago, and a footprint.

     He reappears standing in front of the Black Knight, with two fingers wrapped around the blade. He is *really*, *shockingly* strong despite his fragile appearance - stunningly so.

     His eyes are narrowed at Trudy and the Black Knight. His normally-gentle expression is suddenly very sharp and very hard.

     "Diplomacy is not the act of asking politely with a blade at the throat," he says firmly, his eyes still fixed on them both, "For anyone can see that such a thing is not an act of peace but seeking an excuse for war."

     "Please do not seek an excuse for war under my name or the name of Yinghua." With that, he finally releases the sword and stows his hands back in his overlong sleeves, and bows, slightly, apologetically, to the man on the wyvern.

     "And please excuse the overzealousness, sir."
Odette Raskins Usually, Odette only hears about villages and war in the context of fantasy stories that need to start somewhere. When she hears about it today from a complete stranger pleading for help, though, those stories don't even register in her mind while she's busy preparing to find and treat the wounded or dead she might soon run into. After making sure she has all her tools and assorted bottles of medicinal and non-medicinal concoctions safely stashed into her duffle bag, she takes a quick detour past the cafeteria in her (current) home station before rushing through the warp gate nearby.

She's just not expecting to see people so shortly after coming out the other side, and the EMT's method of stopping herself from running into the black wyvern is to whip her bag sideways so its momentum throws her sideways into a clumsy stagger and...

Actually, she manages to keep her balance after doing that. She has to stomp once a bit too loudly just to stop herself from falling, but she does remain upright! Odette blinks away the surprise on her face just in time to see the man in front of the wyvern, then holds up the lanyard around her neck with her Company-issued ID on it. "Ah... G-good afternoon! Odette Raskins, C... Company outreach and emergency med-!"

Before she finishes her somewhat stilted introduction, she catches sight of the woman in red, and then her gaze drifts over to the crying children around that priest at the door. It takes a moment for her to register what she's seeing, and then she just starts heading towards that door, one hand unzipping her bag while the other reaches in to start rummaging around for.. There it is.

"What's the situation? H-how long has he been in this condition?" She asks while switching her regular glasses out for a pair of fancier and high-techier ones, not actually making it clear whether she's asking Guinevere or Narcian. Her tone is relatively less anxious than before, but there's still a clear fear response if her deliberately avoiding eye contact with the blonde man and those red-clad soldiers is any indication.

She just needs to keep looking at the priest. That'll keep them from trying to stab her, right?
Flamel Parsons     Flamel Parsons understands the nature of a situation where men of war are near a village of civilians. Donated memories and veterancy of MAD outbreaks, ones he was born and made to resolve, taught him this a long time ago. So when he arrives in his fancy men-in-black van, with all its monitoring equipment and suchlike, he has the pedal to the metal and doesn't hesitate to make the suspension pull its weight. Flamel skids to a stop in the mud before the road gets too thin and crowded, and he doesn't wait for motionlessness to slam the parking brake and leap out the door. His levitation carries the momentum, letting him glide over the village square.

    "Flamel Parsons! Special agent of the Psychonauts Multiversal Affairs Bureau!" He brandishes the badge's brain icon, putting utmost faith in his position while having no illusions that it's going to be followed. "*Sir*, cruelty and violence towards civilians with less power and standing are psychohazardous activities. They're at risk of mass death, and *you're* at risk of severe damage to your empathy and social faculties."

    Two fingers rest near his temple the way that one might keep a hand near the grip of a weapon. That is because he *is*. He's already scanning the rough shape of their psychological profiles to assess them for severe desensitization, authoritarian dehumanization, and other signs of military-grade psychic damage.
Aidan Proudpick Guinevere... Guinevere... Is that a normal name? It could be a normal name. And a village. Not just a town, not a city. A village. An ache that builds up in the chest. An inability to swallow, a lump in the throat. Three years ago, this would have been everything. A true and wondrous moment to step out of the warpgate and feel tall. Feel within the element. Ready to shout his name and his kingdom and his title to the heavens and fly right in.

That Aidan has to wait. Wait for another day to be brought back forth. When he can be trusted at the reins. Get in, make a few walls, get out. Do it clean and simple, don't make any waves. Don't make any big judgment calls. Nostrils flare, taking in the blood. The burning smell of wood and fabric.

His eyes close and Aidan remembers. A dozen stupid teenagers with guns, barely old enough to be called adults, harrying soldiers and running. Trying to take down airships.

I humbly request, then, that you cease further hostile activities in order to straighten out this situation. Otherwise, violent dissuasion may be necessary.

That's certainly better than Aidan can say it. And Ru Li cuts a more heroic figure than he has lately. Damn, that blade grab. He's not the big name. He's not the main attraction. Every inch of him aches to walk menacing towards Narcian with his shield in hand and his gun in the other. But he already has eyes on what he wants.

Aidan clambers over several buildings with that distinct squirrel like hunch, leaping from the back of each building to another until he's behind the retinue.
Blemishine     Unfamiliar words, indeed. If the situation is a border crossing, a potential war among nations, and a village caught in the crossfire... there's almost definitely some complex matters behind such a thing happening so suddenly, for someone to so desperately be calling for aid only now. It's the kind of thing that gets written about in fantastic stories all the time; a sudden act of unwarranted aggression, as the prelude to much, much worse on the horizon.

    ...But there's nothing fictional, nothing to doubt about that earnest plea for help. Or the flames ravaging the buildings of Laphet, and the sounds of cries in the air...

    One Maria Nearl, codename Blemishine during operations, rushes through the streets - she's not terribly anachronistic for this world at a glance, in armor of gleaming white closely fit, shield at her arm and sword at her side, flowing cape and long blonde hair streaming behind her as she dashes ahead. It'd take a closer eye than the average villager has to note the equally golden tail, or the equine ears atop her head, at the stride she enters the scene with.

    With the wyvern rider having whom she can only imagine as the woman described to them backed into a corner, she slows to a stop to meet that disbelieving look. "Lady Guinivere...!"

    Now that there's a moment to really take in the sights, the atmosphere, with eyes and ears...

    ...it's all worse than she thought. Even a corner away from the church that Lilian went to personally, the sobs are enough to make her dryly swallow as her brow quivers.

    Despite that, she wills her voice steadier as she stands upright, looking up at the rider. "...Lord Narcian, is it?" The title comes with the sort of quality that can only come with using it out of negotiational politeness more than anything. Her fist clenches tightly at her side, in lieu of the blade still firmly sheathed at her hip. There's too many lives at stake right this instant to do anything hasty.

    "What could have been stolen, that's worth risking war like this? Or harming innocent people and priests who surely have nothing to do with this!?"
Trudy Grimm     When Ru Li pins his blade, the Black Knight's helmet tilts down towards him with a rusty grinding sound. The shift of green light where eyes should be behind the dark visor slits indicates his gaze back towards the hostile troop leader.

    "Very well," Trudy states with a shrug, her green eyes closing for a moment.

    The Knight lifts his blade free and rests it across his shoulders once more. Like this, he goes still as a statue, radiating background levels of malice.
Kayoko Kirenai     It's not as though Kayoko doesn't feel the urge to leave Kagoshima just as often as Meika does. The difference between them is that, rather than absentmindedly wandering through the warpgate whenever the whim strikes her, Kayoko has to tactically manage that need, sublimating it away into performing duty of another kind. When the distress call comes through the radio in a perfect confluence of inspiring the urge to help in a clear-cut battle between good and evil, and falling after school where Kayoko wouldn't need to slip out with an excuse that would get the Sisters gossiping about how she's on her way to becoming as unreliable as Meika, Kayoko doesn't hesitate for a moment before hurrying to the Holy Refulgence's chapel in the yard to explain the need to go.

    Rather than stepping out of the warpgate, Kayoko appears in the village nearby it with a monochrome distortion, warped in by the Refulgence. She's not nearly jaded enough to take the shift in perspective without a flinch; going from seeing Our Lady The Second Eve and the surrounding city blocks to her encompassing view of Laphet's fires and the bloody priest forces her to take a moment to readjust herself.

    Already transformed with her blue armor and magi-knight style skirt and cape, the flash of 'Player Phase' would be color-coordinated with Chevalier Cobalt as she regains her focus and wheels around to hold out her hand at Narcian. Golden motes of light swirl in the air around her empty gauntlet to coalesce with a flash into her sword, pointed out in declaration at much too far a distance to constitute a threat. At the same time as the briefly blinding flash, hearing Lilian through the radio, a lensing effect warps the area around the church to refract the air all around the children, disjointing their visual images from their true location in case they're attacked. On that large a scale, it's not so subtle an effect that anyone looking in that direction wouldn't see it happening, but with Lilian directly stating that she needs attentiveness besides her own directed towards the civilians, Kayoko doesn't feel that bad about making it obvious.

    "Stop, villain!" It doesn't hit as hard as she imagined in her head, at this distance and with her thin-sounding voice, but she can't *not* act the hero here. The red, villainous armor, the village in peril, the damsel in distress, the *dragon*-- it's *storybook*, and Kayoko has been dressed for the role for long before she's ever really gotten the chance to play it.

    "Can't you see how much you've hurt the people here? Aren't you ashamed? Let Lady Guinivere go!"
Meika Kirenai     Guinevere? Like the princess in those stories Kayoko used to-

    Meika clicks her radio off, and stuffs it into the drawer of her bedroom desk, only pausing to pull out a certain dilapidated sketchbook. Okay, there *is a warpgate, and the place's name is... She rips part of a page from the notebook- there's scant few left -and scrawls out the mentioned details on the backside of the slip. She doesn't turn it over to look at the drawing on it before it's summarily shoved into her pocket, the rest of the book, too, left behind as she stands.

    "... Hey, Kyou? If you're home, I've got to..." Meika's words fade out, with growing hesitance. But no answer calls back.

    "I'm heading out, and I'll be back late." Another try, same intentional silence. That's enough to give in, throw her coat on, and just go before she has to think about it any more.

. . . . .

    Without the magical aid of the Holy Refulgence, Meika is forced to rely on public transit infrastructure and manually navigating warpgate networks, to arrive- but arrive Chevalier Vermillion does, eventually.

    Wailing. Bootsteps. Taut bowstrings. Rain. Burning wood. The sensory gut-twist is like freefall, stepping right out into an emergency like this. It's worse that it still crosses her mind how quaint it feels, to emerge into a fairy tale.

    Every skate-sliding step she takes makes no noise, rushing out, a tell-tale glow of her own magic being called forth, just to rest around her limbs for now. The rain may be gentle, but thunder crackles through the clouds above anyway.

    "Hey!" Vermillion stops further central square, and knocks an armored fist against her own cuiraisse to punctuate. "Leave her alone! She already-"

'Stop, villain!'

    Whatever words come out of the magical girl's mouth next aren't heard. She freezes on the spot, running into her sister- even if just heard, from across the square. {"Cobalt? Why are you here-"} Her whisper doesn't continue past the realization she wouldn't have a good answer herself. Skates grind into cobblestones, chipping them soundlessly, and she watches the town flicker and twist as Cobalt works her own magic. Okay. It's good. We can keep people safe- that's-

    Vermillion's eyes unfocus, just for a second, staring out at the dozens of enemies, and the threat of the archers. Her lips move, unheard to any but the other red-clad soldiers, twisting whispers into binding influence- reminders, whether of briefings, stressed training, anything that makes sense, that they're under instruction to not hurt townsfolk. It's not wrong of me to trick them, if it helps people. It's fine.

    She coughs, fully out loud, and finally looks back towards the blonde man- Narcian, across the square, her voice sapped of most of its conviction. "... This is just a town. Nobody needs to get hurt.."
Marigold      Narcian straightens up and turns with a satisfying expression of shock. His soldiers tighten their guards and glance at each other nervously, but hold their ground.

     "Oh? My dear, gorgeous, stupid lady," he says to Trudy while raking a hand through his own hair and making a broad gesture at 'everyone present', "if I can't bully those weaker than me, who can I bully?" Having a sword pointed at him doesn't phase him. Ru Li's introduction gives him a brief bit of nerves, but he papers it over:

     "A god! Ahaha. But surely a god, in their infinite wisdom, would know better than to challenge me!"

     The noblewoman against the wall, who must be Guinivere, doesn't look any less intimidated by him because of his buffoonery. She's even more shaken-up mentally than she looks outwardly, but she manages to answer Mia's telepathy: Oh, I... I wish we needn't fight, but you must stop them from hurting the villagers, whatever else! Peace depends on it.

     Flamel finds the psychic damage he's looking for: the soldiers are ready to kill, glutted on easy conquest and the old sweet lie. They aren't fully seasoned, but that might be worse: their own mortality is far enough from their minds that it'd take a lot to remind them. This is just a fun little adventure.

     The hard part of pushing through the crowd of children, for Lilian and Odette, isn't parting them but being in proximity to that much grief. One of them clings to the priest's side, heaving dry sobs. Another holds their hand, squeezing it. The children murmur, hushed: "Father... please... I found your staff, you have to get up..." "Lugh. Please. We have to get out of here. There's no point." "How can you say that?! Let go of me!"

     As you get closer, it gets harder to guess the priest's gender, not easier. Blood pools in their lap from the vicious stab-wound in their gut, and runs down from the arrows in their side. It's hard to tell if they're breathing, but the blood still oozes in time with a heartbeat.

     Narcian's patience with banter starts to visibly run thin. "'Innocent' people! 'Risking' war! It's almost as if you're calling me evil!" Then Kayoko does just that, and he recoils as if struck. "The gall of you children! She's a traitor to the Kingdom of Bern. If nothing else, she's stolen its pride! And you're trying to steal mine!"

     He waves his hand dismissively and hops up onto the wyvern's back, a great stupid-eyed thing that seems to have barely noticed you 'til now. "Anyway, this bores me. Tedious people unworthy of my time. Kill them all."

     Meika's nudging tugs the soldiers towards interpreting that a certain way. Unfortunately, it's the way where they focus on the Elites first. The spearmen assume defensive position in front of the archers, polearms braced against their shields; twenty arrows whistle through the air not two seconds later, aimed squarely at the biggest grouping of Elites.

     Narcian goads his wyvern with his heels, and it lurches into the sky some sixty feet up with a tremendous beat of its wings. From there he draws a rune-decorated sword; one swing causes a glowing purple glyph to appear beneath Aidan, erupting into crackling malign energies a second later. A second swing does the same for Lilian and Odette, and if not for Kayoko skewing their location, it'd threaten to hit the children too.
Ru Li Cheng      The moment of nerve, followed by the certainty of action. Unfortunately laudable. Ru Li is the kind of person who can accept that there are heroes like this, after all - though whether the man is actually able to keep to his own word is an entirely different story.

     The man gives an order. Arrows are loosed.

     Ru Li surges forward, his hands dropping out of his robes. Two fingers sweep around to catch one arrow aimed at Trudy. Two more fingers pluck an arrow meant for him.

     His body absorbs the other five.

     Five arrows stick out of his flesh. Electrum-colored blood spills down his robe as he crouches, without a second thought, and the sound of the clock ceases for a brief and singular instant as his eyes light up. Heat builds in his limbs. Tension climbs. From around his ankles, silver light shines.

     The spring releases. The tension snaps.

     He leaps.

     A moment ago he was standing in front of Trudy. Now, there's merely a massive cloud of dust, two footprints in the center, and an impact crater. A moment ago he was on the ground in front of the archers. Now, he's in the air, above even the wyvern. A moment ago, there were five arrows in his chest. Now, there's seven arrows in his hand like fanned ninja stars.

     One hand opens like an unfolding star, silver light and foreign characters appearing in front of it as meat and flesh and clockwork and gears all reveal themselves. A brush appears directly in front of him, with a long, unwieldy blade attached to the other end.

     Ru Li flings the arrows at the wyvern's wings with the force of five gunshots. It flips him backwards - and the long blade flips underneath him to catch him. Slippers settle onto the brush unsteadily. He can't let himself wobble right now, so he simply flicks his glowing, open fingers in an imperious gesture, disguising the awkward rebalancing as just redirecting the blade.

     Nothing more to be said, is there? Take the pressure off of Lilian and the others so they can get the kids to safety. He's fast. He's durable. He can't stop twenty arrows but he can stop seven and then pin one blade and one wyvern.
Flamel Parsons     In a one-on-one context with Flamel, he could get these minds working healthily again about five minutes apiece. And without a powerful and compelling commanding officer on-hand, he could at least introduce some hard cognitive dissonance. For now, the best he can do is load his mental magazine up with the mirror neuron bullets, intense psychic payloads meant to force the visual center of the brain to process outgroups more like ingroups. And when the orders are given...

    He vanishes. Did he teleport away? No arrow seems to strike him, at least. But then there's a harsh *snap* of the fingers when he pops back into visibility behind the shield-lines. In a series of incredibly professional motions, he starts doing the psychic-gunfire equivalent of dancing. With two fingers, he blasts heavy orange payloads straight for hearts and heads. They're meant to concuss and crack, but also meant to unload their mirror-neuron stimulation straight into the brain.

    Since he's maneuvered his way around the lines, he also rushes straight for a spearman -- chosen at whim with pure battle-intuition -- to rush at and grab the head of, and pump an absurd amount of direct psychic control into them through an already worn-down auditory cortex! He may not be able to help them, or substantially influence them all, but with Meika already having done a good bit of work, he might be able to force one of them to go defend the children for some inexplicable reason. That can at least sow some chaos!

    "Due to psychohazard-grade violence and cruelty, you're ordered to put down your weapons *and* your giant mutant lizard, and surrender immediately! Please!" He calls out, still keeping that brightly friendly tone as he does these maneuvers.
Aidan Proudpick The squirrel face sticks around the corner of the building, tail twitching around the other corner. Claws dug into the wall between whatever material holds it together. His ears move back and forth, trying to pick up every sound. A shift of boots. The movement of the wyvern.

As soon as the soldiers move, Aidan is already in motion, landing on the ground. The fact that they are all aiming for the elites only makes it easier for Aidan to prepare. A deep breath. Lifebreath across his lips. His hands go out, palms flat. Focus. Breath out. A quick sha-

The burning starts in his feet, moving up in jagged trails of light. By the time the light reaches Aidan's chest, all of his muscles contract. Several pops of air as Aidan's back contorts into a bow. As it moves up into his chest, the desperate howl of pain forces the spell from his mouth in a white cloud of air.

Muscles loosen before the pain recedes into the back of his mind. From an insistent scream to a dull roar. One foot barely catches underneath him. The other one sways, but Aidan's body knows where just to lean to catch himself, to step to get himself to lean forward into a trot. But already Narcian is aiming at the children!

A weight in the chest. The children? Can he do anything? Could he throw himself at the wyvern like Ru Li? What about the soldiers? Can all of them take them? Should he even be h-

Aidan arrests his train of thought from moving into the final station of despair by moving into action. Another sharp breath, another forcing together of his palms, and another rush of air, this one not interrupted by pain. A sudden rush of air leaves Aidan's chest, bisecting the section between the children and the soldiers, forming a semi-visible white plane of air, not quite solid, but enough to slow any attack.
Dysnomia     "Done, then."

    She promised, as the little lordling continued on his power trip. "...I hate it when people like you take command." Dysnomia grated. "Petty little who'll do anything to feel on top of someone else."

    The children caught Dysnomia's eyes for a moment, and she nearly moved--But then she caught something, slipping in wavelengths of light past visibility. Something didn't line up. It was like--

    And then, arrows loosed through the air. Ru Li could catch seven, but the rest, the elites would have to deal with themselves. A tremendous, misty shape that...could have been a wing propelled from her back, forming a barrier that stopped the arrows in their tracks--by letting them bury into Dysnomia.

    Growling softly to herself, she reached out her hands, ethereal tendrils spreading out toward some--maybe ten? Sometimes she lost track of herself--of the archers, to wrap around and and crush their weaponry in their hands.

    "Ru Li. I have an idea." Her thoughts reached the god now. "That thing is just a beast. And beasts aren't good with mental assaults. When he loses control, take advantage."
Trudy Grimm > "Oh My dear, gorgeous, stupid lady, if I can't bully those weaker than me, who can I bully?"

    The witch's lips split into a wide shark-toothed grin, "Oh, that's quite easy actually. The answer is 'Nobody'." comes the simple and straightforward answer.

> "Kill them all."

    Trudy's stance shifts. The Black Knight places himself between her and the archer formation with a quick sidestep. Ru Li snatches the projectile that gets past the Knight, as if to make a point, while the Knight himself is impaled multiple times in the chest, abdomen, arms, and thighs. That would certainly kill a man-- if he wasn't already extremely dead.

    With multiple arrows lodged in his armor, the Black Knight swings his sword down off his shoulder, slamming the tip into the cobblestone at his side with the resounding ring of metal. As further arrows pelt him-- either glancing off or lodging in the plate armor he wears-- the Black Knight storms straight into the archer formation, dragging his sword behind him with a spray of sparks. Once within range, the warrior lashes out with the greatsword near-indescriminately. He clearly sees the archer formation as the greatest threat.

    Trudy's eyes meanwhile follow Ru Li, having taken a step to protect her and now leaping up to fight Narcian directly. She hums thoughtfully as she draws up Malice, the Grimoire of Despair. The book's buckle unfastens and it flips open, running through multiple pages on its own. Once it settles, she places her free hand over the seemingly blank pages.

    "How very respectable. Oh, but let me repay you for the kind lesson, hmm~?" Above the pages forms a blazing red-orange rune of Kaunaz, the Rune of Flame. Shifting her hand, the witch pulls up a companion, the versatile Rune of Gifts, Gebo. When she pushes these together, they form a runic circle in her hands which mirrors itself around her feet as he twists them like a key in a lock.

    Should the curse take hold, Narcian's armor begins to warm up. Subtle at first, it grows more intense, approaching something not at all unlike wearing a cooking pot over a roaring fire.
Blemishine     'Innocent' people! 'Risking' war! It's almost as if you're calling me evil!

    "There can't be any need to terrorize an entire village or bring this many soldiers just to get something stolen back!" Blemishine barks back, although any attempt to try and reason with Narcian quickly shows itself to be impossible; in fact, she's half-sure that had to have been sarcasm, for what he says after. Surely a man like this has to be the leader of some kind of border platoon; if he's any higher, what kind of country could this Bern place...

    Those thoughts will unfortunately have to wait, with the kill order given out. "You--!" The hail of arrows rains down, but Maria already has her shield at the ready; a glance as they rain in has her focus rapidly shifting between the speeding projectiles, and she throws herself into the closest thing to a gap the barrage has while bringing up her left arm.

    One arrow then two deflect off at an angle, leaving thin gashes in the metal as the swordswoman closes in, her free hand darting down to the hilt at her side. They outnumber us about... one to three? Spearmen aren't so simple to just run into, but they're also not Elites. If I can get to the backline and stop the next volley, that's less risk of the children getting caught in any crossfire.

    ...The best place to break through is... ...there!

    With that pinpoint vision of hers, Blemishine locks in on the spearbearer with the sloppiest stance and posture; the one who's caught most off-guard by the various and otherworldly appearances and tactics of the fighters present - and her dashing charge, shield up, intends to barrel into him at full tilt and blow him clear off his feet and to the ground, hard.

    Where, unless she's stopped, she'll be free to wreak havoc among the longbowmen.
Lilian Rook     More than corpses, Lilian is intimately familiar with blood. She's used to feeling her own, in innumerable private hours; and in combat, it's everything else's; oceans of it parted by her sword. The hot rivulets running down her arms for . . .

    Still hot. It's still flowing. He's--

    "Still alive?!"

    Lilian gasps the words before reason can temper hope. There's a staredown with some sort of evil lord happening a hundred feet away. There's a princess in need of rescue, the invading soldiers of an enemy empire, a terrible wyrm to slay; everything she'd ever read about, right there, where she could be standing right at the forefront, hands over her sword, and yet, even still--

    She thinks Aobheil must have seen many more crying children and kind, dead men than lords and dragons.

    "Kayoko. Ninety seconds." Lilian calls out; the element that hadn't so much as introduced herself; hadn't even looked at Narcian properly. Her self-harming bile determination to protect the children has lead her down this road to ignoring Guinevere too. With someone precious-- even to someone else-- possibly bleeding out in her arms, all she can think is "Odette! He's lost too much blood! Follow me, check if he's breathing and prepare for transfusion! I'll stabilize him; worry about sterilization later!"

    Lilian doesn't dare carry him like this, but she can't do this near a burning church. Looking around, she--

                -----[stop]-----
    --stands up with the body she hopes against hope isn't a corpse, frozen rigid in her arms like a statue. A droplet of blood hangs suspended in the air behind her; the river it flowed from is held like sculpture of tinted red glass adhered to his side. There's no safe place to do this, she all she can do is retreat further from the church and the children, staying immaculately in line with Kayoko's magic.

    "I'm so sorry." she whispers under her breath, to no one, for no reason, and pulls back the torn clothing around the wound. Having sat useless in her bag for a year, her Paladins rescue kit, even in its slimmed down waist-ready incarnation, finds its fourth use in fewer months.

    She wipes away blood that turns liquid beneath her touch, and follows with a quick mist of fast-acting antibiotic spray. Organic scaffolding foam is injected into the wound, then shuddering blots and sparks of magic follow her fingers as she accelerates the clotting of the blood still frozen at the surface. A clear corrective sealant patch bonds to the skin overtop, and then emergency oxygenator is readied beside a rolled up sleeve.

    It's a lot to decide has already happened at once, but it's only Lilian's fingers burning. The searing 'heat' doesn't touch the man on the ground, because she hasn't decided to let it.
                -----[start]-----

    --settles in a spot not far away enough for Odette to lose track, but easily enough to startle and dissuade the children from following, and where the warping of light will still conceal them. Expended medical tools are already strewn in the dirt, alongside dissipating particles of magic in the air. She doesn't explain how Odette could have zoned out for a solid minute like that?, not does she move when Narcian takes to the air, but Lilian does move for the glyph.
Lilian Rook     §That light. Just a split second ago. Lightning? Can't risk it.§

    She lunges up just as the gylph is being aimed. Night Mist is drawn(?) from her back with a burst of inky smoke that dissipates instantly under the harsh light called down on her. Thrust blindly into center of the blast, Lilian aligns her body as best she can to ground her feet away from the Father-- and so her core isn't fully in line with it. The surface of her armour crawls and sparks with magic. A strangled gasp slips from her shocked throat. Her body spasms, and then she tenses all of it at once, holding her ground.

    "I don't recall giving you permission to speak to me!" tumbles out of her before she even thinks about what she's saying. Four swift gestures draw figures of light from the air and into her fingers, pulled like ring and pin and key, and then a bright flare of magic sends retaliatory discoloured lightning back, forking into an upwards-aimed airburst.
Kayoko Kirenai {"Cobalt? Why are you here-"}

    The same way that Meika heard Kayoko's presence the moment she stepped through the warpgate, Kayoko saw Meika without needing to turn her head around to face her. Galatine sinks in her hand, the swordpoint not quite touching the ground, and her other hand clenches into a fist. The heel of her sabaton digs into the mud as she makes a quarter-turn back towards Meika, not so much to look at her, since she only turned a fraction of the distance she'd need to, but so her voice can project back to be audible to her (and everyone else).

    "'Why am I here?' I hadn't realized that *you* were the only one allowed to leave home, *Meika*. As a *Paladin* and a magical girl, I was sent by the Holy Refulgence to help defend a village in crisis, since there's supposed to be another one who's already *lost* her privileges to go out, so she could stay behind and protect the city." Broad-scale illusory lensing of the children takes enough of her focus that she can't hide the abrupt flash of sincere contempt across her face. "I really can't believe you'd ask that, even after making such a mess. I'm not going to abandon my duties as a Paladin just to enable you to do whatever you want without caring."

"if I can't bully those weaker than me, who can I bully?"

    As upset at Meika as Kayoko is, the gloating villain still fully draws her attention, and with it, all of her built-up ire. "You shouldn't bully *anyone*! And this is so far beyond bullying, this is *monstrous*! Acting like this makes you weaker than any of them, you bloodthirsty animal!"

"If nothing else, she's stolen its pride! And you're trying to steal mine!"

    Cobalt, still just standing out in presentory cape-fluttering defiance in the middle of the street, materializes her golden hardlight shield strapped to her other arm, angling her sword down and back behind her. "Someone like you doesn't have any pride at all. And neither does anyone you serve, if *this* is something that's acceptable to them!"

    The attack coming out is a foregone conclusion from even before Narcian makes the call. *Talking* down a villain like that, at the cost of letting all the villagers here see that the Elites wouldn't fight for their sake, wasn't ever an option. Since there's a dragon here, it's only right that the knight save them from it.

    The red gem in the center of her shield flashes bright, and translucent wings of golden light flare out to either side, flickering with the impacts of the rain of arrows. With the last arrow shot, the barrier dissipates into motes of light, which swirl around and condense into a platform that Cobalt leaps onto in the air. She kneels down and grips the edge of the hardlight platform with her offhand, holding Galatine out to the side as she flies through the air towards the wyvern before leaping off.

    "How *dare* you go after the kids! You're *not* getting away with this!" Galatine is, despite its appearance as a sword, entirely blunt. The slash across the wyvern's scales is more like a hammerblow drawn across its flank, leaving sparkling fragments of light in its wake that linger and cling to it.

    "I'm protecting them, so leave it to me!" That's to the other Elites, even though it was probably apparent when the runic magic explosion passed right through the illusions of the kids. Landing on the ground with a solid crash, Kayoko wastes no time before warping the vision around Narcian even further, into less believable illusions. His flight path never takes him in a straight line according to his own vision, and glaring lights in every direction force him to squint, with blurred shapes just barely in the corner of his view flitting around to bait reactionary strikes against fake enemies.
Desire Stars 'Innocent' people! 'Risking' war! It's almost as if you're calling me evil! The gall of you children! She's a traitor to the Kingdom of Bern. If nothing else, she's stolen its pride! And you're trying to steal mine!

    Ace looks Narcian in the eyes, smiling, infuriatingly, as if the officer and he were old friends reuiniting. He hadn't been standing near many of the Elites, but there'd still be a path to the villagers behind him, if it weren't for Kayoko's misdirection.

    Arrows fly through the air as Narcian takes to the sky atop his wyvern. As casually as he'd strode in, as confidently as he'd made conversation with the officer just moments before, he faces down the particular two of twenty arrows headed his way.

    With that irritating smile still on his face, he brings his forearm swiping through the air as if he'd read the archers' intentions from the moment they raised their weapons. His parry snaps the shafts and bats aside the arrowheads. They clatter to the ground beside him.

                              SECRET MISSION CLEAR                              

    The announcement rings out, loud and clear. Ace doesn't bother checking his Spider Phone. A pink-and-black box, far more futuristic in its design than anything of this world, falls from the sky, right into his outstretched hand.

    "Now... here comes the highlight," he says, that smile still on his face as he retrieves his prize: a white revolver cylinder attached to a black grip with a red tigger. He wastes no time slotting it into the right side of his Desire Driver, spinning the cylinder and pulling the trigger.
Desire Stars Set! MAGNUM!                                  

    The trigger pull causes a red crosshair to materialize at his right, the word MAGNUM superimposed over it. A swarm of six red orbs bursts forward, striking the spearmen with enough force to seriously test those wooden shields, before they double back and coalesce over the matte black armor that's formed on Ace's--Kamen Rider Geats'--body. His face is concealed by a white-red fox mask, and the upper portion of that armor is quickly replaced when a hardlight crane arm pulls a disembodied white cuirass over it.

                                MAGNUM SHOOTER!                                

    "Let's see if they spent as much money on your armor as his," Geats calls to the archers with a challenging little nod of his helmet, before sprinting... sideways? Not towards the archers or even the spearmen, but towards the burning church. He leaps into the air with practiced grace, making a front flip and pulling back the charging lever on a bulky-looking white handgun.

    BULLET CHARGE! calls an authoritative voice from the gun, as Geats' feet plant on the crumbling walls just long enough for him to stick for a second and change in a low crouched stance. From his ephemeral vantage point, he rains down a hail of large, white-hot lasers with a substantial kinetic punch to them. The spearmen aren't spared, either--any of them that try to stop the one that breaks ranks under Flamel's control have their hands or weapons targeted with exacting precision, before the Rider slides down from the burning building and lands in a roll, coming up and immediately breaking into a sprint towards the rest of the spearmen.
Odette Raskins The sight of several familiar faces provides Odette with some relief, but not enough to distract her too much from her task. Her priority so far is just making sure the priest gets treated, and anything involving the soldiers can wait. She keeps her movements steady as she heads forward, only diverting briefly in sparing a slow nod towards Lilian when she sees her moving towards them as well. "Th... Thank you, Miss Rook. We'll fix h..."

She can't actually tell what their gender is. Not wanting to mess up again like she had with her first meeting with a certain pilot, Odette holds back a strained noise in the back of her throat while hearing and seeing the pain of the children beside them. More importantly, however, is seeing the blood and the wound, along with the pulsing that tells her more than enough.

"... still alive. H-he's still alive!" She announces with a relieved exhale, already shoving her hand right back into her bag to start grasping around for several things inside in preparation for dressing their wound. Narcian's shouting responses to the Elites addressing him directly go largely ignored at first, but Odette's blood runs cold as she hears his command to the soldiers:

"Kill them all."

That's the only signal Odette gets that she might be in immediate danger, and her panic reflexes wind up saving her. Without even looking backwards at Narcian, she just starts sprinting immediately, not realizing she's even in/leaving that terrifying glyph's range and shrieking a second later when she hears it erupting behind her. She only spares a quick glance backwards, then turns right back towards Lilian and the priest...

Wait. Weren't they over there a minute ago? Odette shakes off that discrepancy in her mind, as it's irrelevant to keeping them alive, and she dives for where Lilian's brought the priest. "Go go go! Gogogogo! W-we've got him! Get somewhere safe!" Rolling onto her back after trying to shoo the kids away to safety (and not realizing they're actually somewhere else), Odette yanks out a bag of blood from duffle bag in one hand and a roll of medical tape in the other, then scooches over to priest before sitting up besides them.

"Stay with me. They'll be okay. Breathe. Need to stick this on." Odette tells the priest relatively loudly (for her, anyway) while unhooking a small IV from the bag. She checks the label on the bag afterwards, only allowing herself a moment to sigh in relief at seeing it's O- before slipping it into a vein and taping the whole thing to their arm.

"There we go... Breathe. On my back. You'll be okay. Breathe."

Finally, Odette turns around and stays on one knee in front of the priest, keeping her back to them with her arms held out behind her so they can climb aboard. Facing the battle, though, means she's also actually seeing the fight going on, draining yet more color from her face as she starts to realize how much more stabbing there could be in the next minute.
Meika Kirenai 'I'm not going to abandon my duties as a Paladin just to enable you to do whatever you want without caring.'

    "You- you didn't *say* anything!" She didn't either. "How was I supposed to know you had this- this covered? I wouldn't have even come if you'd let me know, and-" She stops, aware herself that she's lying about that.

    "It's- it's good you're- you're here. I'm glad. That means everyone's going to be safer-" Vermillion can't ever hide how her face sours, forming those words and thoughts. Have fun in your spotlight, sis.

'The gall of you children!'

    "Shut up! Don't talk to her like she's-" Anger wipes the words from her mind, embarrassed as she is to even try and argue with someone so consistently acting the part of a storybook villain that it makes her self conscious to have ever fashioned herself as a knight. But it's easier to be angry for the sake of her sister, than angry at her and herself, too.

    "You're just some freak with a- a dragon. You *are* evil. But that just means you'll-" She falters, again, listening to her sister's conviction. "... You'll lose. That's how it..." That's how it goes. But it's the actual heroes who get to- She turns away from even looking at Narcian, and-

    Arrows are loosed. Metal doesn't chip or crack, when stray archer's arrows catch Vermillion, and puncture through. Instead, it resonates with a screeching f-f-flickering distortion, overall not quite right. Blood still flows- less than it should, especially given the flash of pain across the magical girl's face on each caught strike.

    Clad in red, the spear- no, it's just a shard of flickering red magic, barely shaped like a weapon at all -that Vermillion summons up casts an uncomfortable, if small, parallel to the soldiers bracing against the Elites. Nobody would think I'm a bad guy, here, it's just coincidence. It's fine.

    There's no time for the magical girl to wince as cobblestones crack behind her, from the concussive force of launching herself forwards, and skywards, to come at the grouped spearmen from above. Mid arc, as the next volley of arrows clatter through the air, her arm bends back like a javelin thrower, and her skates catch midair on absolutely nothing-

    "°Vermillion Pandemonium : Hailstorm !°"

    -Stopping her dead-still before she can impale herself on any braced spear, and transmuting her velocity into the thundering force for her shard's throw.

    Even as it shatters, just before impact with the soldiers, into awful, screaming-loud overlapping noise, Vermillion still doesn't have the heart to use any of her more lethal magic on real, living people. The shards hurt when they phase into flesh, they deaden and make muscles useless, they fill the space behind eardrums with pain, but skin won't tear and blood won't flow, as the airburst catches more and more of them.

    Quickly, from midair, another concussive blast redirects herself downwards and away, in front of the soldiers again to catch her breath, and interpose enemy bodies between herself and the archers. Only then does she bother to pull the arrows that caught her out, seemingly ignoring whether their heads ought to snag like barbs on anything, as that same f-f-flicker reverses.
Marigold      Lilian stops the priest's bleeding and Odette tops them back up with a transfusion. Most people would be out for hours after something like that. But it's only a matter of moments before they stir and force their eyelids open, fingers tightening against Odette's shoulder.

     "Thank you." The voice is soft and tender even though it trembles with pain. "Please... sister. The children. Are they...?" They struggle to lift their head from her shoulder, but don't seem to have the strength to. Clear blue eyes turn to Lilian, too, shrouded behind now-messy hair, and frame a helplessly grateful smile. "My staff? And then... I won't be a burden."

     There it is: a jewel-tipped thing, near the bloodstain where they fell. But crossing the empty space to get there is a risky endeavor, even with Aidan's cover.

     Satisfyingly, Narcian isn't as good as he thinks. Tragically, he's still pretty good. Indignant shock flashes across his face when Ru Li leaps; four arrows pierce the wyvern's wing-membrane, but the two that would've hit its joints are intercepted by Narcian's armored forearm instead. "You dare damage my property?!" he snarls. Then, suddenly contenting himself as he swoops in with dark-magic-crackling blade: "Hm. I bet the King would like a god's skull."

     Kayoko's blow lurches it to one side, but where Narcian ought to be thrown off by the twist, he steps up to stand on its side like balancing on a log and lunges to swipe at her. "Ha! Weren't you just bullying that red girl? The inferior bully, getting insecure...

     Blemishine, Mia, and the Dark Knight's disruptions of the backline are slowing the hail of arrows, but the spearmen are still a threat unto themselves. It's very easy to lose track of how menacing a simple troop of fit, well-armed, professional soldiers can be, regardless of technology.

    They're well-drilled but not blooded enough to fully appreciate the danger they're in, which only makes them more of a menace. Being near them means being constantly menaced by a half-dozen sharp points at minimum, and if you think you're just out of reach, a quick lunge or javelin-throw proves you wrong.

     The laser-blasts and sound-shrapnel fell several- those round metal shields are no joke, though- and the wind-wall restricts them, but the rest maintain a steel hedge against Geats. While the disarmed bowmen slink back to draw shortswords, a handful of spearmen advance out of position to menace Mia and Trudy, evident long-range threats.
Marigold      "It's a wyvern, you mediocre trollop!" Narcian insists to Meika over the straining of his swooshy-dark-magic aerial swordfighting. "And I'm not a frea--aiiiiieee!!" Lilian snipes him in the back with a lightning-bolt just as Trudy starts to cook him in his armor. He seethes and steams, then jerks its reins to swoop back towards the ground and--

     Stabs one of his own downed soldiers??

     Crackly purple magic oozes back up the sword and into him, and the sizzling stops. Even the burns fade from his face. That's bad for his soldiers' morale, but Narcian brandishes his blade with renewed vigor while his wyvern paces and bares its teeth in the square. "I see. You mean to overwhelm the great Narcian from all angles, to make up for your inferior quality!" says the man who was commanding forty soldiers a couple minutes ago. Even so, he eyes the tactical situation with increasing nervousness. "I suppose a rat can show cunning."

     He draws in a sharp breath, then musters a frantic assault. While his wyvern lunges and snaps at anyone close enough, he targets everyone he can see with those rune-summoning swings, or traditional blows if they're close enough. He's skilled enough to make the ranged magic look like an automatic lock-on, but a keen eye can see it only fires at the exact middle of each swing's arc. Houses are scoured down, leaving their occupants to scream and run for other cover. Whenever it hits- friend or foe- his vitality is bolstered.

     Lady Guinivere crouches behind a barrel, hoping desperately not to be hit and flinching at every bit of shrapnel that comes close. Amid waves of crackly violet vampiric magic, it's hard to blame her.
Marigold      Being well-drilled novices means the soldiers have less fear of death than they ought to, but it means they're not as psychologically hardened as they should be, too. Scrambling their ingroup/outgroup associations has them reeling back on attacking those who aren't attacking them- and, funnily enough, becoming warier of Narcian himself, making it a little harder for him to use them as health packs.

     A very out-of-breath brainscrambled soldier passes by Lilian and Odette not long after, a laser-scorch-mark on his chest. "No, wait, uh, don't shoot," he pants, before trying to shepherd the gaggle of children to cover behind the church. "I'm here to help!"

     A hard-eyed teenager socks him in the jaw on sight, which immediately leads to intra-children conflict. Still, he did his job. It's intra-children conflict behind a masonry wall.
Ru Li Cheng      Ru Li *really* wishes he could take credit for the dodge.

     He *really* wishes he could say that he fell off the brush intentionally. That he slipped backwards, just underneath the first slash, the violent outburst of magic, purposefully. He really wishes he could claim that it was all to avoid Narcian's blade.

     The truth is, though, that having very extended senses does not mix well with unexpected ultra-loud omnidirectional noise bursts when you're balancing very carefully on an object that isn't designed to be balanced upon using your miraculous ability to move it with precarious concentration.

     So while it certainly *looks* impressive, as the blade sails right over Ru Li's face, the honest truth is that he just fumbled in a helpful way.

     He falls to the ground, flat on his back with a loud *thud*, dust kicked up around him, ears ringing and head spinning. His brush falls next to him and disappears back up his sleeve as his hand closes and the silver light dies.

     Bother.

     He springs back to his feet just in time to see Narcian stab a soldier. His eyes widen as he feels the blade pierce the other man's chest.

     And then Narcian starts swinging. All thoughts of Mia's plan are thrown out the window (and she can tell) when that happens. Dark magic punches through houses. Shrapnel explodes across the field. Ru Li's fingers tighten.

     He's not a good fighter. He knows that. This man massively outskills him. All he has going for him is raw strength and endurance.

     And then he takes a hit to the chest, and grabs at it, and there's a gasp of silver light out of his mouth as the machine that is his body stutters. Narcian gets a blast of divine vigour, the overwhelming well of durability and vitality and never-ending energy that has kept the gods of Yinghua around for four hundred years. It is probably very tasty and very appealing.

     The clockwork kickstarts itself again, muscles pump, coolant flows, and Ru Li makes an executive decision.

     If the man can drain vitality, then let him try and drain Ru Li's. At least no one else will be in danger.

     Another step. Another burst of speed. Another massive footprint. His hand goes into his sleeve in between the moment he takes a step and the moment he arrives in front of Narcian.

     His blade snaps outwards. It's unwieldy, but sturdy, and while he's not an expert, he is physically far beyond humans. It's the only advantage he's got going for him.

     "If you think you can take my head, then by all means!" Ru Li brings the brush/blade around again to try and intercept another arc. "I welcome your attempt, little mortal!" Play it up. Play up the angle. Don't speak like yourself. Speak like a war god. Speak like a god of another world.

     "See if you will be the one to claim the head of Ru Li Cheng, ninty-ninth god of Yinghua!"
Trudy Grimm     The Black Knight is one of those sorts of units with the terrifying ability to keep fighting despite having no HP left. As more arrows and even a spear bury themselves in his armor, he keeps fighting. At the very least, he's become a grand distraction amidst the line of soldiers under Narcian's command. The Knight's blade sweeps in broad arcs, his movement slowed but unceasingly ever forward.

    Narcian heals himself by running through one of his own soldiers. A horrible yet swift demonstration of his ability. Trudy hums, tapping her chin with a fingertip, "Oh, so that's your game~?" She fixates not on the wyvern knight himself but on the blade in his hands, her head tilting thoughtfully.

    As a result she's caught flat-footed when Narcian rallies himself back onto the offensive, mount and all. A life-stealing bolt lances directly into her chest and knocks her flat on her back in a bloody spray. She doesn't manage to recover her feet-- only managing a pained groan as she rolls herself over and splatters a bloodsoaked hand onto the blank pages of the Grimoire.

    "You aren't-- the only one full of surprises..!"

    Narcian's shadow, or rather that shadow cast by his mount, grows void-pitch black. Quite suddenly an enormous skeletal arm reaches out. Easily the forearm and handbones of a giant, glistening like black marble, the hand reaches up and out of the shadow beneath the rider and mount in an arc fully aimed at shoving Narcian right off the wyvern's back and smashing him into the ground.

    "Now! Give it all you've got..!"
Desire Stars I suppose a rat can show cunning.

    "Whoa now," Geats pipes back, keeping up the banter even as he makes a sideward salto, narrowly avoiding one of the runecircles as it erupts beneath the spot he was just a moment before. "Didn't you know?"

    He lands, as if planned, on the spear of the spearman heading for Mia, locking eyes with them and offering a smug chuckle. "Foxes are known for outsmarting people," he calls up to Narcian, running nimbly up the length of the spear and pulling the barrel of his laser revolver outwards--extending it into a scoped--

                                     RIFLE!                                    

    --as he takes up a grating firing position atop the shoulders of Mia's would-be attacker, aiming down the scope, waiting for another one of Narcian's swings. Right before ths sword hits the midpoint of another swing, Geats pulls the trigger, sending a bolt of energy flying to knock the sword off-course, keeping some heat off of Lilian and Odette. "Always have been," he concludes, before leaping off of his no-doubt aggrieved choice of firing perch.

    As smug as he is, it's apparently not without good reason. The man fights like a Hero unit that just wandered into the field. Landing in the middle of swarming spearman seems like it'd be a bad idea--but he does, and with the same apparent aplomb he's shown the whole fight. He sidesteps one thrust, uses the barrel of his energy rifle to deflect another, and swats aside a third with an impressive vertical kick. Geats makes a short, staccato cry of effort and cracks the butt of the rifle across the jaw of one spearman, makes a point-blank shot at the wrists of another, and dissuades the third with a jumping back kick, before quickscoping to interfere with another swing of Narcian's sword, striking it off-course from Ru Li after his ploy to get the officer's attention is succeeded.

     He looks over his shoulder at the church, very briefly, when he overhears the telltale 'smack' of a sock across the jaw. "Hmh." It's all he has to say, regarding the heavy-sounding impact he just heard, before he charges headlong into the archers drawing their sidearms.
Flamel Parsons     The rune-summonings catch Flamel in the worst way. He can turn invisible, but wider-area strikes really don't give a shit! He winds up flickering into visibility, skidding as a spot smoulders on one of his arms. "Augh! I'm not seeking to do anything to the great Narcian -- I'm trying to make sure nobody gets hurt physically or psychologically! The great Narcian's overwhelmed-ness isn't the important part!!" He's gritting his teeth, nervously. This guy's kind of a doofus! But he's the kind of doofus who would only be doing this if he had a larger society, one that excuses the casual cruelty...

    So, he halts his skid with a hefty translucent hand clamping into the surface of the village square, and plants both hands firmly on his temples. Eyes screw tightly shut and he vanishes again, evading more blades or arrows. And he *focuses*. It's not just one village at stake here, after all, there must be a lot of other people like Narcien if he can get a command position. "The people you work for... they'll really allow this? This *slaughter?!*" He tries to cue it up in Narcien's mind...

    And then he goes for the *wyvern*. This is an animal, a beast, something without a complex mind. It probably can't even recognize the difference between humans. The simple training and obedience it has probably can't be turned around much, but he might be able to temporarily redirect it into badly disobeying Narcian when he locks onto its mind...

    And get Narcian unfocused enough to breach his mind's outer layers. He's looking for signs of a military-wide issue, or even a society-wide issue. The way that he is, is that just Narcian? Or is that something larger? Is there a psychohazard here that's bigger than just one guy and his group of soldiers? And what was that he'd been saying, when they arrived...

    "And you'll return what you stole? Or will we have to turn over the whole village for it?"
    In the heat of all this, can he rip a memory, even a fragment of one, out of Narcian's head to explain that? An image, a name, something that might explain some things?
Lilian Rook     'Please... sister. The children. Are they...?'

    "It's taken care of." is what Lilian thinks. "Everything is okay." is what comes out of her mouth. She looks away to find the staff, settling on the glint of the jewel, but her mouth doesn't move for a little too long. "Please. Don't make me watch those children cry a second time." Lilian says. "You weren't a burden before." It's neither a yes nor a no, but . . .

    The priest is laid emphatically in Odette's arms. With a meaningful glance, Lilian vanishes in a blink, like a hallucinated guardian angel. The staff lies between them, with only an eerie whisper of unseasonably warm air to keep them company. If nothing else, it'll handle the dumb bastard getting beaten half to death by angry church orphans if he suddenly gets a clue.

    Lady Guinevere is next to find her feet out of the way. The impression of armoured arms; smaller than a soldier's, but not so soft as a magical girl's; lingers in her short term tactical memory for a moment. The barrel where she was settles into so many charred splinters around the same time.

    Lilian walks the straight path into the melee with regally cold confidence. Trusting Odette with the wounded priest, the children safely behind her, Guinevere out of the way, her footsteps almost forget gravity. Relief alloys with purpose and accelerates her pace.

    The air whines, and an arrow splits off her sword with a crack and glasy reverb. The ballistic hum of another wind-tosses hair hair seconds later passing over her shoulder. Ten paces ahead, a leaping arc of magic is skewered with her blade and tossed aside. Five more, and a glyph lights and shadows her features starkly from beneath. Her step disjoints by a fraction, and mere moments after the explosive rumble, she comes striding out of the smoke.

    Whether or not it's apparent to soldiers of this intermediate calibre, she is visibly loosening up as she goes.

    'I see. You mean to overwhelm the great Narcian from all angles, to make up for your inferior quality!'

    "They do." says Lilian, with confidence that finds the fact unremarkable. "Are you hoping to appeal to their pride? They of course have nothing but, when they're talking, but I assure you, they've none to speak of in combat." she adds. "Your odds aren't so bad if you let them, but they aren't so good, either. If you don't like it, then . . ."

    In a brief pause of fire focused downrange on her, Lilian-- catches and turns aside another arrow on the flat of her sword, right by her head-- then plants the blade point down in front of her, hands folded across both quillions. "Your alternative is to challenge me. On my word, as Dame Commander Lilian Rook, Knight of the Ring of Solstice, disciple of Scáthach, I won't allow them to interfere. We may fight as lords do, and allow the soldiers to settle each other."

    Her sense of Narcian's pride against his shrewdness is still in flux, but Lilian thinks it's still worth the blow at morale. Holding a steady gaze to his, when she can catch it, isn't hard. She's had to meet the looks of crueller men, if only just.
Dysnomia     As quick as it's come, Dysnomia's new limb dissolves away, leaving the arrows it caught to fall, uselessly, to the ground. She's turned her attention to the other archers in the distance, her outstretched hand overlapping with them, when the spearmen find her.

    Staying together in a tight formation, they thrust at her, a wall of sharp objects--too fast for her to stop. She raised her hands, and the spears rammed right into her. But where they should have carved into flesh, they found the tips of their weapons press back through into her body, only to bounce back out--save one daring fellow, who put a spearpoint right through Mia's wrist.

    With a hiss of ozone-rich air, she snaps it in twaine with her other hand, but the damage is done. And, smelling blood, the other spearmen encroach on her position, all the while Mia's attention flickered back to Ru Li and Narcian. Everything was going wrong, and she needed space to think, to process, make it work. Just one moment--

    --And just like that, the Kamen Rider bought it for her. As he stood atop their shoulders, Dysnomia kicked out in a sweep--a sweep that shouldn't have hit anyone. But as her leg extended outward, it extended outward, something long and ethereal, smelling like exposed electrical wires, and very much SOLID, hoping to send the off-balance spearmen toppling over.

    She wasn't looking at Ru Li, but she could feel the shape of his thoughts. Narcian would strike him. Freed as he was by the Kamen Rider, she turned her eyes toward the lordling, and waited for the moment he moved in to strike, the moment his sword was high in the air, the moment he was sure he would take the head of a god, and--

    --Before life crawled onto land, before it grew teeth, before it touched the sky, it knew the sea. The hungry abyss, dark, full of things with spines and tentacles and imomprehensible maws. To see eyes in the dark, and know it would take an instant to devour you.

    She reached into the wyvern's mind, and she conflated the divine of Yinghua and that feeling. Your rider is forcing you to death. To abyss. The maw of the hunter. Your rider is killing you. For you to live? Your. Rider. Must. Die.
Odette Raskins "Please... sister. The children. Are they...?"
"Everything is okay." "Please. Don't make me watch those children cry a second time." "You weren't a burden before."

Odette's eyes widen as she hears the priest speaking and their hand gripping her shoulder, and she feels her throat tightening for a moment while she focuses her gaze anywhere but on the priest. That means staring at Lilian instead as she speaks, but even that only lasts for a second before she starts staring off into the distance with that same feeling in her throat and too many conflicting thoughts racing in her head.

That look from Lilian gets Odette to inhale sharply and nod quickly in return, and then she's looking confused briefly when she disappears. There's no time to think too hard about that, though, and she adjusts her hold on the priest to make sure she's got them nice and stable against her back.

"The children are okay. N-mo obvious injuries, and they're..." She sees one of the soldiers going for the children. She's about to swing near him to give the father a chance to do an improvised drive-by, but when he states his intent and actually moves to help the kids...

One less thing to worry about. Maybe. She hopes. "They'll be okay. D-don't worry, father. We'll make sure nobody dies after all this."

As she makes that impossible promise, Odette turns back to the village-turned-battlefield, trying to find a clear path towards... Anywhere, really. Safety? It does look like a lot of the fighting is focused around the soldiers and Narcian, at least, so there might just be a clear shot towards the warp-

"My staff? And then... I won't be a burden."

As quickly as the color returned to Odette's face earlier, it's gone again at hearing that. Still, if the priest requested it, it has to be for a reason, and... Did it just get closer? Was that something else Lilian did? "The father's staff... Uh. I-I can get it for the father. Okay. Okay. I got this. I got this. L-leave it to me, Miss Rook!"

Although she's psyching herself up for the deadly (but now shortened) run, Odette doesn't sound nearly as confident as she did when she was trying to treat their blood loss. She also doesn't have enough time to even do that sufficiently before Narcian starts slinging that purple magic death all over the place, prompting her to start sprinting again. Like the wyvern rider, she's moving with renewed vigor as well, but a lot of that comes from knowing that even getting clipped by one of those blasts could be fatal for her and her passenger.

The fact that she has a passenger also prompts to really go all out with her scrambling. Each time a rune explodes right in front of her, she screams and throws herself sideways, staggering on one foot at times just to keep her balance. Ace's covering fire, although she can only spare a hastily screamed "Thank you!", is certainly appreciated through all this. Even with that aid, however, she also has to keep the priest upright without jostling them around too much lest she risk the IV getting pulled out prematurely. Worse still, she also has to make sure that the priest is (relatively) behind her and that Narcian is in front of her at all times!

Odette can already feel her head pounding trying to keep track of all this while also sprinting and weaving through those explosions just to get to the staff.
Aidan Proudpick The itch. The itch to fly up there. The itch to plow through soldiers. To do something dramatic. Powerful. To... lift tanks, and take down buildings. None of which he can actually do.

"I really need to listen to people I date more, they are all SO much smarter than me."

A rune opens up underneath Aidan, but he's already running. A building nearby takes a slash across the front, sagging forward as it comes down. Another townsfolk goes in a splash of blood. Red uniforms suddenly become bathed in scarlet as blood pours out of wounds induced by their leader. That fire. Odette.

The last one. Aidan grasps on to that. No one is going to get saved if Odette isn't here. Is that true? How many other medics do we have? Does it matter? Just storming act!

Aidan acts. He rushes up the side of a building, leaping over each sword swing. A burst from his shield pushes him into the air until he lands down in front of Odette, landing in a better Widowmaker three point pose than usual. He snaps back up into a light jog in front of Odette, keeping his shield at the ready. He smiles at her, hoping she finds some reassurance in it, before turning forward again. "You got this, Odette! I'll worry about the attacks, you worry about saving people!" A coruscating red light flows out from the shield as it transforms into a small buckler into a massive shield.
Blemishine     Spearmen are certainly not to be underestimated, no matter any perceived advantages; were Blemishine fighting alone, even powered armor or any number of tricks up her sleeve would only go so far against trained numbers at all sides. Luckily, they're all far from alone here. Trudy's Black Knight wading through the fray takes much-needed pressure off of her in the thick of it, as does--

    The split-second before Meika's airburst roils through the crowd, the knight bunkers down as her ears flatten down against her head, body racing on instinct - and holds out through a shudder as the roiling boom in all directions dies out and the vibrations finish running down her legs and into the dirt. With the area around her cleared out for an instant, she glances past her raised shield with a blink. "...Oh! That did it...! Thank you for the assist!" Chevalier Vermillion gets a grateful, glowing smile for a moment.

    But only one, before it's back to the focused concentration necessary to fend off not only weapons from all sides. That, and Narcian going even more off-tilt than he already was. After deflecting a spear thrust aside, she's just in time to turn her head, wide-eyed, at the sight of him stabbing into his own man. "What are you--?"

    It steals... life? Is that it? He'd use his own men like resources!?

    "...Even your wyvern is just 'property'... you're not fit to call yourself great, Narcian!" Unfortunately, he /is/ exactly skilled enough - as the constant barrage of attacks from differing angles combined with his own relentless runic strikes are too difficult to entirely escape from. When she's in the midst of trying to determine the trick behind his accuracy, the exact point of that swing where its devastating magic is unleashed... Right there! The midd--

    A pair of spears strike past her guard, piercing through metal to cut into her body. The immediate wince of pain and gritting of teeth doesn't stop her from refocusing and retaliating on the spot though, slicing one off at the shaft and pulling away from the other. After a spinning swipe at the one still holding a weapon, she pushes through the melee... to get even deeper into the fray?

    It seems like a foolhardy thing to do when she was just injured, like she's inviting more onto herself on purpose. But the idea she has only becomes apparent when she's adequately got enough attention onto herself, shield raised not for defense, but--

    --to release a radiant, sun-bright, short-lived flare of light. Like a flashbang to the face, a blinding and stunning assault to the eyes and the senses that'll catch up every soldier around her at once to effectively disable them and take them out of the running.

    Making sure Narcian can't murder his own soldiers to benefit is hard enough when they're /not/ still actively trying to kill all of them.
Kayoko Kirenai "Ha! Weren't you just bullying that red girl? The inferior bully, getting insecure..."

    Kayoko takes Narcian's sword against her shield, purple sparks of dark magic mixing with the gold radiating off the hardlight shield. She winces and then heaves her weight forwards, swinging his sword off to the side with his own inertia and following up with a swipe from Galatine; a little too reckless, but he obviously made her angry.

    "I'm not *bullying* her! She's my *sister*, and you don't know anything about us! And no matter what I say, *you* don't *ever* call her something like that!"

    Kayoko recoils when Narcian skewers his own soldier, frantically double-checking to make sure she didn't lead him to do it with a double image or some other misdirection. When the reason becomes clear, she gasps in quiet horror, but in another way, it almost seems to invigorate her. The clear demonstration of foul demonic magic, evil for good to vanquish, and a new objective. Brandishing her sword towards Narcian in the sky, since she can't possibly keep up with him in the air, the red gem in the crossguard of Galatine starts to glow brighter and brighter.

    "That's despicable! Using your own soldiers for your dark magic?! You're the lowest of the low; anyone who even thought for a moment that you were worth following should see it now." The glow in her sword hueshifts from red to harsh gold, and Cobalt swings it overhead, releasing a beam of light that fires directly at Narcian's eyes to blind him for a short time. "Cobalt Gleam: Nightfall!"

    The wyvern, though, isn't blinded, and when it swoops down and snaps at Cobalt, she's not able to dodge away quickly enough, and ducks her head behind her shield. Its jaws clamp down around the shield, and in a flash, Kayoko unmakes the illusory straps holding the shield onto her arm, freeing herself, and uses the seconds it takes for the wyvern to shake its head side to side and fling the shield away to get a hit on its neck with Galatine and put distance between it and herself.

    "But as a knight, I choose to stop *anyone* here from dying. Cobalt Radiance: Routing Strike!" 'Radiance' is the indicator for an illusion, rather than an attack, but that's not apparent to anyone besides the Chevaliers. To each of the soldiers, it looks like Kayoko charges up an arc of light within her sword and then sweeps it out at the battalion, with every soldier besides them scrambling to get out of the way. With at least some of them giving in to the induced group panic, Kayoko has a clear line to slip through their ranks to one of the downed soldiers and teleport away--

    Turning invisible, along with the still-breathing spearman that Narcian impaled. Picking him up one handed to carry them both out of the line of fire, folds both of her hands over the sword-wound to conjure up her healing magic. Golden particles of light wink into existence, swirling into an ambient cloud that slowly focuses and flows into the wound, repairing the damage.
Meika Kirenai     Chevalier Vermillion, magical girl, has so rarely fought against real people with real weapons. The threat that encroaching spearmen should carry doesn't register exactly how it should- she's genuinely more scared of hurting them than getting herself hurt. That they aren't scared of the danger, either, truly does only make it worse.

    Once more, chips of cobblestone masonry fly at Vermillion's motion. It's not silent- the air around her is roiling with thundering energy, visible in that angry red so signature of her magic. She's seen what it does against enemies with blood, flesh, and bone- and so even diving back towards the formation of spearmen, it's just the dulled-down reshaped shards she dares actually fight back with.

    Spears that thrust her way crack on impact with her armor, or where a wildly swinging elbow collides with them and shatters wood like cardboard and play-doh. Getting in close to soldiers that want to keep foes away is tricky- weaving past blows and bodies, pushing them into one another, and occasionally just f-f-flickering straight through them or their shields are all necessary efforts to stab shard after shard of paralyzing magic into the foes.

    Her armor should be more chipped and marred than it is, given the number of glancing blows she's taken and the pained expression growing on her face each time she dips back away to catch- Her breathing is uncomfortably static, too, silent and mismatched in depth and intensity, too.

    'Thank you for the assist!'

    "Huh- who are-" Blemishine's call catches her off guard, as she's preparing still to venture back into the fray. Is she from here? She's got armor, a sword- Sudden self-consciousness flashes across the magical girl's face. At least this one's not an enemy. The glowing smile makes her turn away, as thoughts muddy. "Don't- don't worry about it. 'Welcome."

'It's a wyvern, you mediocre trollop!'

    What the hell is a wyvern? "Shut the fuck up! I didn't ask what- It's just a monster, and so are-" Her breath catches in her throat before that specific followup, but the swallowed word quickly boils away into anger as Narcian dives, only to butcher one of his own. Unthinking, and planning actions purely on visualized echolocation, instead of sight, Vermillion shoulder-blocks a soldier brave enough to seize a moment of apparent distraction, and grabs their arm. She doesn't think to stop squeezing until her armored fingertips connect, despite bone and metal in the way- she doesn't even look, until something cracks-
Meika Kirenai     She still doesn't notice, as she walks a few steps away, horrified at Narcian, pupils shock-wide. Is he okay? Did he kill him? Oh, God- {"Odette- that's you, right? You're here-? You'll help even the-"} Her whisper shorts out for a moment, still only audible to the EMT. {"Even the bad guys, right..?"}

    Vermillion grabs a- *pulls* a cobblestone out of the ground, in a quick motion, and levies it to throw, until:

'Your alternative is to challenge me. On my word, as Dame Commander Lilian Rook, Knight of the Ring of Solstice, disciple of Scáthach, I won't allow them to interfere.'

    "Ah-? Huh!? Chevalier Rook, why would you give him a chance like-" She cuts off, still staring daggers at the enemy commander. The magical girl falters, half-lowers the rock she'd planned to chuck at Narcian, and instead catapults it directly into the fray of the remnant spearmen. Right. Don't fuck stuff up, Vermillion. There's a plan, so just do what you're-

    She winces as the rock impacts against shields and armor, echoing, thrown far harder than she'd meant. Finally, she does actually just stand there and watch, eerily silent and awfully still, barely even catching Cobalt's trick, with that familiar invisibility not being quite enough to hide from her. You got him, sis. Come on...
Marigold      "No tears," the priest murmurs. "I promise." They see Lilian off with weakly smiling eyes, then hug Odette for security. Once the staff's deposited in their hand, they sigh in relief. The tip glows, and soon its radiance suffuses their whole body, giving them strength to peel themselves off her and stand on their own two feet (with a little wince at the IV pulling itself out).

     Oh no, they're gorgeous. "Thank you, sister... truly, you are in possession of a beautiful heart." For a moment's rest behind the church, his hand cups her cheek. That grateful smile could make flowers bloom.

     Then he's swarmed by hugging children. "Father Lucius?!" "It's you! Oh, I didn't know what we'd do. I'm so sorry..." "So the otherworld has healers..." "It's alright. I'm so sorry I worried you all. It was her and that knight... ah, but there's something I must attend to."

     The soldiers' resistance has totally crumbled, between sustained assaults and Kayoko's climactic illusion: it took a lot of chipping away at their unwarranted confidence to teach them fear, but peer pressure is an effective crowbar. They finally break and run towards the foothills, those who are able, or lay down their weapons who can't. The one Kayoko's rescued from Narcian's blade grasps at her shoulder weakly while he's healed. "Why?" he croaks. "You're... weren't you just...?"

     Sweat is matting Narcian's foppish hair, and scorches and chips are marring his very expensive-looking armor. The deflections and parries imbalance him for a little longer each time, making the gaps between lifesteal-healing slowly widen. Even if he keeps being revitalized, he's being worn down in other ways. One of them is psychological. He'd laughed at Ru Li before, but now that war-god bluster visibly unnerves him, and he tries to force him back with reckless swings.

     "Not the important part?!" he squeals indignantly at Flamel. "My overwhelmedness is the most important part! Of everything! I! Me! Narcian! Do you hear me?! How dare you?!"

     Flamel can tell, because this man's mental infosec is like silly putty: Narcian is a uniquely unhinged man. His culture isn't typically warlike, but there's been a recent shift; glutted on aggressive rhetoric and a string of easy victories against unprepared opponents like this village. And the stolen thing-- something like a ruby, in a gilded inset. Its colors match Guinevere's outfit.
Marigold      Narcian's still huffing and puffing when Lilian plants her sword and looks him in the eye. He meets her steely gaze. "Hmph," he says with a big stupid grin. "What an idiot, to throw such a gorgeous body on my sword! You can't really mean to stake your life against a Wyvern General's! To truly believe that you could even begin to challenge me, the crowning jewel of Bern's military! To... to, um... to challenge... uh."

     The bloodlust and courage visibly drain from his face, second by second, when matched against her confidence. His sword trembles. "I. I see. You're, offering single combat, because you're scared. Of the superiority. Of Bern's rank-and-file troo--oooOOAAUUGH?!"

     Kayoko's magic blinds him, and then Trudy's giant skeletal fist grabs him and slams him into the cobblestone at the exact moment his spirit breaks. Then the wyvern, under Dysnomia and Flamel's guidance, picks him up and thrashes him around like a chewtoy. "Ghhck! Put me down! Mongrel! Beast! Ingrate! Unfit to--!!"

     When it finally throws him with a violent jerk of its head, he skids and tumbles halfway down the cobblestone street out of town. Unbelievably, he still manages to pick himself up, completely red and panting while drizzling blood from just about everywhere. He raises his sword with a badly trembling hand. "Y-you. I'll... hahaha. You haven't got the best of me! I'll show you worms! The great Narcian's supreme technique. Unsurpassed in a thousand battles...!"
Marigold      There's a pause of three or four seconds.

     Then he turns and fucking runs through the warpgate. The wyvern spat him out not far from it, after all. Unfortunately, it chases him.
Marigold      In the aftermath, Lady Guinivere peeks out from behind a building, rubbing her own arms where Lilian had held her. The sight of Bern's wounded soldiers lying in the town square wracks her face with a hard-to-name emotion, and she kneels next to one to clumsily try and tend their wounds. In the distance, the church roof gently extinguishes itself, and Father Lucius descends to the square to take her place.

     "Please, let me tend to them. You are kind-hearted, but it doesn't suit your hands." "But they're--!" "Children of God. Let me tend to them." "Ah..."

     Guinivere stands, with now-bloodstained hands, and manages to flash the assembled Elites a meager, tired smile. "I am so, so sorry. I... I couldn't give them what they wanted. But you saved me from that weighing on my conscience too terribly."
Flamel Parsons     This, fortunately, is a classic Psychonauts situation. Flamel uses perfect, well-practiced clairvoyance to see a future where he runs after Narcian, chasing him as hard as possible and then, as a result of various shenanigans, falling into a wagon full of pillows or tripping and tumbling into a river or something. As an organization of well-trained international super secret agents, the Psychonauts recognize this threat for what it is: A victory that one shouldn't over-extend. And besides... "We gotta let him run! It's for the kids-- just trust me!"
Desire Stars We may fight as lords do, and allow the soldiers to settle each other.

*That's smart. Playing to his pride--maybe it even keeps him from using that sword of his on his men.* He's proven right, a moment later, when the transcription his armor provides of the local radio frequency scrolls in the corner of his vision, alongside a dancing waveform:

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I mean it. A cornered asshole with a wide-range life-draining weapon who somewhat knows what he's doing is at his best in a target rich environment."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "If he rises to a face to face duel then he's a solved problem."
<J-IC-Scene> Ace Ukiyo says, "I thought that's what you were getting at. Smart. Sure, I'll lay off him if he takes the bait. The rest of these guys are no problem, anyway."

    As he charges into the archers, Geats gives Lilian a self assured nod of acknowledgement, one-handed salute to Odette, and then turns his attention fully on the archers, converting his revolver carbine back into a--

                                    HANDGUN!                                    

    --before the soldiers break ranks and flee. "Hoh?"

The great Narcian's supreme technique. Unsurpassed in a thousand battles...!

    "A fearsome, effective technique," says Geats, as Narcian flees. "A strategic mind like his would've been the target audience for Sun Tzu's work." A book lauded as the work of a tactical genius--but, in truth, written for moronic lordlings with too much money and direly scant experience in the field.

We gotta let him run!

     "Yeah." Geats removes the Magnum Buckle.

    The armor dissipates in a wash of blue pixellated light, revealing Ace's smug smile. He twirls the Buckle between his fingers in a display of dexterity, going so far as to blow upon the Buckle's cylinder. Those chambers--they look a little like magatama prayer beads, as did the stylized imitations on his breastplate, for anyone who might've recognized them as such.

    Ace's rose corsage is unblemished as he tucks the buckle into his suit jacket. "It looks like your challenge worked wonders," he says, snapping his lapels and smiling at Lilian. "A pleasure to work with you again, Dame Rook." He strides then, over to Father Lucius, as he takes over from Guinivere.

    I am so, so sorry. I... I couldn't give them what they wanted.

    Ace's smile fades, replaced by a more businesslike, serious expression. "What *did* they want?" He gestures to the wounded soldiers. "Those 'Children of God' weren't very experienced. There's a light behind the eyes, still--they haven't realized this kind of thing isn't fun and games, yet. Did you steal anything at all, or was that just bluster from the lordling?"
Trudy Grimm     Soldiers flee or otherwise drop their weapons and surrender. The Black Knight stays his blade for those who do either of these things-- though he's not above lurching towards them when they drop their guard, just to spook one or two. Once Narcian's true colors are revealed, the undead slows his rampage, then stops. The bloodied, rusted greatsword sweeps down to the right in a sharp swing, then lifts up and rests across his shoulders once more. He then goes still, like a statue filled with arrows and spears.

    While the Wyvern was thrashing its rider about, Trudy found the time to regain her feet, clutching her chest with blood seeping through her coat. Her other hand holds on to the binding of the Grimoire, holding it at the ready, a serious look on her face. Once Trudy realizes what Lilian meant by her demand for single combat-- eliminating Narcian's advantage-- she relaxes her posture a bit.

    The wyvern knight, however, bolts with his mount in angry pursuit. Trudy inhales deeply, then lets it out in a slow, painful sigh. The blood-smeared Grimoire snaps shut, its buckle refastening. It drops to her side, dangling from its strap, "That's some secret supreme technique..."

    The witch raises her head, eyes skimming the ruined village. Lilian saw to the children. She and Odette saw to the priest. Kayoko was tending to the wounded enemy soldiers, even. Had they managed to avoid any actual deaths this time? "Everyone alive? Just so you know if you're not, I get your bones."

    The laugh hurts. Trudy winces and pushes through it.
Ru Li Cheng      Next time, eight.

     Next time, eight.

     Every blow he delivers, every strike he makes, every clumsy block against the superior swordsman, Ru Li is holding on repeating that thought. Next time, eight. It's the singular, sole thought in his head. That next time he will shoulder a little bit more so no one else has to. That next time he will be better so that Lilian doesn't need to be. When she calls Narcian out, Ru Li's blade disappears back into his sleeve, and he steps aside, with a look of frustration on his face. Even though she said before that she was exhausted, even with all that...

     And then Narcian gets bodied and runs away, leaving Ru Li staring after him, perplexed. He tilts his head sideways and blinks twice.

     "Erm."

     "...."

     "...he certainly is...swift."

     It's really all he can think to say. He's more than a little taken aback, having been prepared to defend himself from some sort of god-cleaving sword or something, and he looks a tiny bit sheepish at the whole thing. Since nobody died, he doesn't really feel the need to pursue the man all that aggressively.

     When Guinivere approaches, Ru Li immediately offers her a cloth to wipe her hands clean. He lowers his head slightly in polite greeting. "I think whatever they wanted is something they should not have, though I am, admittedly, an outsider here. I am Ru Li Cheng, ninth of nine Ru Cheng gods, ninety-ninth of the ninety-nine gods of Yinghua. I am pleased beyond words that no one was harmed."

     Ru Li tilts his head sideways as he considers the village. "Erm...though much was damaged, and I am happy to stay for a bit and help you rebuild them, if necessary. I have little experience in construction, but I am physically capable of doing the work of many, many, many humans."

     A moment later, some of his quicksilver coolant drips on the ground, mingling with some of his gold blood, and he visibly remembers that he is wounded. Awkwardly, he just sort of tears the uniform of one of the downed soldiers and wraps it around his chest without saying anything else. He coughs into his hand, as if to ask people to please ignore that, it's not really a problem, don't worry about it, he's fine.

     The sound of a clock ticking rapidly around his silence only serves to highlight his embarassment.
Flamel Parsons     Okay, now that the big fight is done, Flamel can rush to the survivors. The children, he's not legally allowed to go help. Otherwise he'd be aiding with intensive anti-trauma psychonautics. No, Guinivere is the priority. He approaches her, brandishing the badge in a way that he can finally expect to do something meaningful.

    "Flamel Parsons, special agent of the Psychonauts Multiversal Affairs Bureau. Miss, I think you're going to be in need of my help. And I'm going to be in need of your information. I'm seeing some signs of a building psychohazard in the 'Bern' leadership and military, and that can get *really bloody*." He looks her outfit up and down. "Luckily... I think you've caught the eye of some capable people, who can all work together to make sure this turns out okay! As long as you can work with me, at least."

    Ace is asking about the stolen thing, and Flamel is nodding. "I managed to pull a few fragments of a memory out of his mind before he pulled out. Something like..." He plants a hand on his own head, and pulls out a glimmering mental image of some kind of ruby. Its size varies in his hand -- his mental image didn't get a size, just a vague shape and color. "Something like this...? But we can figure that out later."

    He looks around, urgently. "First, we need to get you out of this village before they come back, and make sure it gets some local defense. We'll make sure everyone's safe!" He also calls over to Father Lucius. "Hey! Do any of you know who we can get into contact with, to make sure this village stays safe? The kinds of psychohazards I know cause this sort of thing tend to *hate* getting a little pushback!"
Odette Raskins BEFORE
Odette's starting to understand the timing (kind of). If the explosions are only happening in mid-swing, and with Geats firing at Narcian to slow him down further, she might just have a shot at getting the priest that staff without either of them exploding! She's also rather grateful that he's got his attention on the archers, too, since she sure as hell isn't going to be dodging any arrows at the rate things are going!

Aidan's landing, like almost everything else that happens too close for comfort, has Odette yelping briefly before she recognizes him. "Huh? A-attacks? Oh.. Um.. O-okay. Thank you!" She shouts in return, not quite able to smile just yet as she's still in the middle of freaking out.

Less than before, but still.

NOW
"Odette- that's you, right? You're here-? You'll help even the-" "Even the bad guys, right..?"

"Meika...? Of course. O-once this whole mess is over and everything's calmer, I can..." Odette gasps out as her sprinting catches up to her and she's forced to slow down despite the steadily decreasing threat. "Y-yeah, of course! At the end of the day, they're still-"

That just so happens to be when the priest holds on tighter, and it takes everything in her power not to let out a quiet squeak at that. They might still hear something trapped in her throat again, and it's just her luck that they let go of her in time for her to finally catch her breath. She hunches over with her hands on her knees, holding up a finger as a 'just a second' signal while she watches their work with the staff.

Wincing a bit herself at seeing the IV removal, Odette takes the thing and is partway through sliding the needle back into the little holster on the side of the blood bag before realizing... Oh geez, they're hot. Oh no, they're holding her face. Oh crap, her face is burning up. "Uhhh... Buh? O-oh! Thang.. Thank you! Beaut...? No, you're...! Um. What?"

In her confusion, Odette doesn't notice the children approaching until they're already swarming the priest, and then she finally straightens back up to at least attempt to look like she's got her shit together. "S-see, kids? Father Lucius is okay! Now you all behave for him, alright? There's still a lot to do, and..."

Right. There's still a battle going on as far as she knows. With her focus mostly returning, Odette holds up a hand to signal Lucius and the kids not to approach as she inches slowly towards the battle. She takes note of the fleeing and injured soldiers while Narcian makes so many noises that she can't help but bite down on her lip to suppress some cheek-puffing snickers. She almost feels bad for him, even, when he gets thrown off by his own mount, but she makes no attempt to even track him in favor of just getting her job-face back on.

"Looks like that's.. Over? Um. M-Miss Guinevere, could you help locate the wounded? Th-that'll help us get them all fixed up faster." Odette asks as she joins Kayoko, Guinevere, and Father Lucius in treating the wounded, taking a moment to pull a sheet with a big cross stitched into it. She throws it up onto the highest still-standing pole she can find to signal the triage zone, then starts laying out body bags and spare sheets as extra areas for the wounded to be laid out and patched up.

In her focus on getting those wounds cleaned and closed, she almost forgets about what Guinevere mentioned until Ace brings up the wanted thing (and transforms flashily enough she can't not see him). After gawking at his face for a bit more, Odette remembers to actually speak again. "Oh... R-right. Is it a physical thing, or is it some magic mental thing?"

She glances over at Flamel, perhaps/definitely getting that idea from him when he mentions memory fragments and psychohazards. Odette snaps her fingers a few times afterwards, then nods at Ru Li. "Or.. Yes! Maybe land? Or something that got buried here?"
Blemishine     Then he turns and fucking runs through the warpgate. The wyvern spat him out not far from it, after all.

    Unfortunately, it chases him.

    "D-Did... um, he say he was a /general/...?" As Narcian shamelessly turns tail, and the battle begins dying down at last, Blemishine spends several long seconds blankly staring in the direction of the warpgate. The description of her expression right now is 'dumbfounded'. Maybe just a hint of not entirely being sure she actually saw that happen. Or heard that properly.

    After the moment passes, she takes in a breath and straightens up, slowly slotting her sword back at her side. Despite the escape, there's no doubt he was capable of some serious, casual cruelty. "...Not to mention there's really no telling where he ended up," she adds onto what Flamel had mentioned. "Besides..."

    She turns to glance over towards the various fallen soldiers, just as Lucius makes his appearance. Stepping over just as Guinivere is relieved of her efforts, she gives the priest a small smile. "...Excuse me. Would it be alright if I took some of the burden off, then? I'm not an inexperienced healer myself, you know!"

    The little warm, healing glow she summons up in her upturned palm is emphasis to her chipper words. But in all honesty, she'd just rather not leave three dozen men laid out to one who only so recently recovered from their own injuries. They have a good few skilled healers around as is, but more hands means less work. Notably, she still has yet to do anything about the spear wound in her own side. It's fine.

    Regardless of the Father's response, she'll glance to Guinivere all the same, while working if necessary. "...He mentioned you were a traitor to Bern, Lady Guinivere?" There's a pause after. Her tone isn't judgmental, just questioning. "If that's true... you must've had a very good reason for doing something like that. And it sounded like he was searching for something... material? What happened...?"
Aidan Proudpick Feet planted firmly, shield out in front of him. He's giving everything over to his shield, hoping its field will keep him from being turned into ground meat. He pulls the shield up against his shoulder, bracing it. Preparing all of his meager weight to lean into it. He just looks back at Odette, nodding his head. This will go fine!

After about ten seconds, Aidan carefully peers over the top of his shield. "Oh." The buckler wielding arm drops to his side loosely, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Maybe that is better than feeling slightly inferior once again by watching Lilian cut Narcian in half. A feeling that dwindled every time it happened. Which was quite a bit.

Aidan lifts a hand. "I've got some construction experience," the squirrel immediately throws in with Ru Li, eager to chip in one of his few but specialized skills.

As it ends, and Guinivere thanks them, Aidan feels a warmth again. He looks around the battlefield. Everything has been settled. No one has even perished. Ru Li's bloody chest is out for a short moment. He didn't have to bathe in human chum. He didn't have to drive himself through sea monsters, choking on their ichor, and then immediately flounder in human chum. Aidan allows himself a smile. He has to think about it. It feels like every time he allows himself a smile, it's at the wrong time.

No, he earned a smile. He lets it warm up his face.

I couldn't give them what they wanted. But you saved me from that weighing on my conscience too terribly.

"It sounds like something important. And that's going to be more trouble in the future."
Meika Kirenai 'The great Narcian's supreme technique. Unsurpassed in a thousand battles...!'

    Even standing a decent ways away, not engaged in fighting him, Chevalier Vermillion winces- and raises her arm to shield her face, from whatever he might be about to pull. The soldiers are gone, if he's scared, and this is his last try-

    "... Huh? He's just... leaving..?" Vermillion doesn't, at all, want to imagine what'll happen if the angry seeming dr- wyvern, actually catches him, and she's glad she doesn't have to see it. Done is done, I guess.

    Looking back over the wreckage, it doesn't really feel like a relief.

'Just so you know if you're not, I get your bones.'

    Vermillion stares daggers at Trudy. "That's not funny. If- if anyone is, you'll leave them alone." Quietly, she scans over the battlefield, looking for motion and checking for sound from the fallen soldiers- ... Breathing, breathing, breathing, not br- She bites the inside of her cheek. -Oh. Breathing, just faint..

    She coughs into a metal-clad wrist. "Think, first, before you- you make hurt people hear that, Miss Grimm. And if you tried to take anyone's bones- I'd-" She turns, and stomps off, skates making sharp click-ringing noises as she does so.

    Awkwardly, she winds up hovering near Odette- and thus also her sister, for the assistance she could lend. "... H-hey. Miss Odette, you-" In interstitial time, a cigarette, unlit, has wound up in Vermillion's hand as a fidget object. "... Do you need any help with the people who are hurt? I don't- my magic can't help, but I can carry people, or tie bandages, or just..."

    I sound so embarrassingly desperate. Like I'm useless. Just shut up, Vermillion. You shouldn't even have been here. Absentmindedly, an arrowhead that's still lodged in her arm catches her attention enough for her to just pull it out, and drop it to the ground.

'First, we need to get you out of this village before they come back, and make sure it gets some local defense.'

    "... Do they have anywhere else to go, Mister- uh, Parsons..? It's-" A shallow, silent breath. "It's a whole town of people. What if they can't?" Awkwardly, she looks back to Lady Guinivere, who he's talking to, her glance extending that question to her, as well.
Lilian Rook 'What an idiot, to throw such a gorgeous body on my sword!'

    "Thank you." says Lilian. "But don't worry about me. I've had bigger."

    Lilian remains unmoving as the resolve of Narcian's troops crumbles. It's easy to do, now, and obviously effective. Though she holds her distance until Narcian gives a clear acceptance or declination, it's painfully obvious just from the minute tilt of her head that she has already taken his measure. She barely turns her neck to track him being hurled from the saddle.

    'Y-you. I'll... hahaha. You haven't got the best of me! I'll show you worms! The great Narcian's supreme technique. Unsurpassed in a thousand battles...!'

    "Have it your way, then." says Lilian. Laying her fingers over the pommel, she plucks her sword out of the earth and catches it by the grip on its way up, twirling the five foot solid metal blade back into ready position with the apparent weight of a keychain. Shifting a foot back, her body sidelong, weight forward, lead knee bent, heel raised, Lilian arrives at a posture of stillness so perfect that the gentle stirring of her hair in the breeze seems wrong. She doesn't need to say it. The path of her gaze is like a string pulled taut, to its utmost limit, straight between her eyes and his neck.

    And thus readied for explosive violence, even Lilian Rook can be so badly caught off guard as to have nothing at all ready when she fumbles around her head for 'what to do when the opponent shamelessly runs away'. They never do that. They never have. Usually she has to struggle not to kill them, not stand blandly confused and motionless at their self-preservation instinct.

    Lilian lets out her held breath, and the terrifying focus out of her bearing with it. She flicks her sword habitually before swinging it up over her shoulder to rest on her back, and the little motion draws more attention for the lack of blood to warrant it. Even Lilian pauses for a quarter second to process the empty space where she should hear percussive drizzle. When she looks forward again, she sees Guinivere rubbing her arms, and Lilian forcefully blanks her expression.

    "My apologies, Lady Guinivere. I judged that the circumstances demanded that I lay hands on you, if only for a moment. I will not argue against any reparations that you think appropriate." she says. She attempts to bow her head, but realizes she's already let her gaze drift to Guinivere's mouth away from her eyes.

    "Minutes back from the grave and already healing the enemy?" Lilian distracts herself instead. "Small wonder why you were as wounded as you were when I found you. I can only pray that this should be the last time that determination causes you grief." Compelled by god knows what, Lilian hesitantly adds "I'm sorry to you too."

    'D-Did... um, he say he was a /general/...?'

    "I believe him." says Lilian. "Elites aren't usually so smart."
Dysnomia     She took some small pleasure in watching the man get thrashed up and down by his own wyvern. Dysnomia took her stance, between Narcian and the townsfolk, to make herself a wall to prevent him from drinking up their lifeblood the way he'd tried to swallow his men.

    Squaring up, Dysnomia readied herself to watch the grand, final duel between two powerful swordsmen.

    ...

    He scurried into the warpgate. Dysnomia just stared after him for a while, and then laid a hand over her eyes, fighting to hold back laughter--badly. "Oh, stars! Do you think it followed him to thrash him around some more? I hope so."

    There were all sorts of holes in Dysnomia's hoodie, where the spearmen had tried to run her through. By the end, it looked more tattered than she did...If you didn't know to look for the way her edges lost began to lose coherency. But she was smiling as she approached the noblewoman, her mood lightened by something that seemed to have, finally, just turned out well.

    "Everyone alive. Imagine that." She approached the Lady. "Well, it was your subordinate that drew us here. They can thank you for that, I guess." A frown. "I don't believe I caught their name."
Desire Stars I managed to pull a few fragments of a memory out of his mind before he pulled out. Something like...

    "A bit small, isn't it?" asks Ace of Flamel. He knows it's much more significant than its size would imply--but *his* implication is that it only makes the destruction here worse.

Luckily... I think you've caught the eye of some capable people, who can all work together to make sure this turns out okay!

     "If work takes me this way again, sure," says Ace noncommittally.

     "As for you," says the celeb to Guinivere. "I'm afraid I agree with him. I understand, if you can't give it back." People don't withhold that sort of thing from armed soldiers, small though it might be, for trivial reasons. "But you can't keep it *and* stay here."

It's a whole town of people. What if they can't?

     "They might not have to," he says, giving Guinivere a meaningful look. The implication is that she leaves, the villagers have a convenient scapegoat, and the soldiers might then leave them alone, so long as it's someone reasonable commanding the next party.

D-Did... um, he say he was a /general/...?

    "Why not? Once," he says to Blemishine, "On my world, a long time ago, it was common for people to hold rank because of their blood relations. Or their social standing. He might be one of those cases. Or," he further postulates, "He might be someone's political tool. He might even be just a middling talent." Ace smirks at her. "Hard for an Elite to believe, I bet, but those do exist. Anyway, they probably thought this was something a type like that and some fresh-faced recruits could handle."

Elites aren't usually so smart.

     Ace smiles at Lilian.
Meika Kirenai 'They might not have to,'

    "... Isn't that close to the bad guys just winning..? That's kind of..." Vermillion's expression sours. She doesn't like that implication, just on gut feeling.

    Whatever local politics and histories present, Vermillion is actively and directly sweeping everything under the blanket assumption that 'the soldiers here attacked civilians, wore red, did awful magic, and were mean' indicates unforgivable evil. But she did ask about what-ifs. Instead of any real argument, she just gives a quick, apologetic glance over to the noblewoman.
Trudy Grimm     > "That's not funny. If- if anyone is, you'll leave them alone."

    Closing one eye, the bloodied witch fixes her gaze on Meika with a tired smile, "It's a *little* funny." Twirling a hand, she gestures at the Black Knight. His shadow darkens and, slowly, he sinks into it in a way that snaps off a few of the arrows and spears still lodged in his armor. The last bit to vanish is the tip of his sword. And then it's like he was never there at all.

    "Particularly because your sister, Miss Rook, and this helpful medic were so quick to act." That one closed eye opening, she shifts her gaze to the younger Kirenai, "Speaking of-- thank you for your concern over the soldiers, Chevelier Cobalt."
Odette Raskins Odette certainly isn't going to refuse Blemishine's assistance, and there's a visible (if slight) relaxation in her posture when the knight comes over to help with that healing glow of hers. "That'll help a lot, I bet. If we can get them all stabilized, then this might even make treatment of the smaller stuff more not needed so we can focus on the bigger stuff." A pause, and then she adds "Less... Necessary, yeah."

After confusing herself briefly with her own statement, Odette sits up a bit at hearing Vermillion coming by. "Oh! Hey, Vermillion. Help with...? Oh! Y-yes, if you've got a minute." She replies with a quick nod, still managing to sound chipper even with as tired as she looks. "Bringing them over'll help plenty if you can move them safely. No.. Um. Bones sticking out, for one." She suggests with a quick addition at the end, opening her mouth and shutting it when she sees that arrowhead getting yanked out and discarded.

"Um... H-here. Bandage for that. Does it hurt?" Odette's already getting some gauze and a bottle of a (possibly familiar) cut-sealing concoction, guaranteed to sting like hell while sanitizing and closing up wounds!

"D-Did... um, he say he was a /general/...?"
"I believe him."
"Why not?"

"Was he...? O-oh. Oh no. Did we do... Are we going to get our homes involved in this whole... This?!" She looks from Ace to Blemishine to Lilian while starting to look freaked out yet again, perhaps the first time she's done so in a while without even being at risk of immediate physical harm.

Either way, though, Odette's going to be hard at work focusing on triage, and it's only when that's all done before she finally lets herself fall over from utter exhaustion.
Blemishine     Hard for an Elite to believe, I bet, but those do exist.

    "Ehehe... easier for me to believe than you might think! I'm pretty middling as a knight myself, as far as they go." Blemishine responds to Ace with a wry smile, tone nothing but bright despite admitting to something like that - well, not that that's even a wrong thing to say in the presence of one Lilian Rook. "You're really one to talk, with the kind of gunplay you did, you know?"

    After that though, her expression trends back towards the neutral, glancing in the direction of the warpgate Narcian fled out of. "...Politically useful, family connections, or otherwise... I can imagine what a man like that would've done here if we didn't show up. I suppose I just don't ever like seeing people like him throw around their power for... this."

    She shakes her head, shaking whatever she was feeling off in the process, and then gives another of those half-awkward chuckles in Odette's direction. "No, no, I'm pretty sure our homes are going to be just fine. Um, d-don't freak out too much, okay...?" Now that she's looking at Odette, she's almost worried about that level of skittishness.

    Either way, she'll be working right alongside her this whole time - quick to explain that her healing arts certainly aren't a replacement for proper medical care like she can provide, but they can definitely make the stabilizing part of things infinitely easier!
Marigold      Lucius smiles indulgently at Odette as they part, and his hand trails down her shoulder. "So I am. And you are quite a pleasant sight as well! But you're too young to make anything of it but a compliment, he says with a little laugh. How old is he? How young does he think she is?!

     By now a few of the older children are starting to cautiously filter into town, and the braver villagers are starting to open their windows for furtive peeks.

     Lucius looks back at them, brushing his golden hair out of the way, and smiles patiently while pouring a soldier an herbal concoction. "Lugh. Chad. Could you please gather the wounded for me? The unresponsive first." "Oh! I'll try!" "But, Father--" "Yes?" "They ki- almost killed you! And our home..." "Yes. And that is why they aren't ready to move on." "Ghhh..."

     He turns his heartmelting smile on Meika, next. "You as well, sister, if you're offering. Bless you for your compassion," says God's least cisheterosexual-looking clergyman.

     Guinivere looks startled, and a little embarrassed, that Lilian noticed her arm-rubbing. "Ah. No, please, feel no guilt for it. I... surely saving my life is more than recompense for anything." She smiles awkwardly, then shakes her head. "I suppose, in a certain sense, I have become a traitor."

     She draws herself up and shuts her eyes, finding the dignity to prove the words: "I am Princess Guinivere of the Kingdom of Bern, sister of King Zephiel. And I fear my brother has lost his mind. He has invaded Ilia and Sacae already... I came here to Lycia in hopes I could avert war, somehow." So that's why she looks sick halfway to throwing up. She might have caused it, instead.

     Flamel deflates her. "Ah... I suppose the secret is past keeping, now." She reaches into the back of her dress, into what must be a hidden compartment in the spine of a corset, and pulls out a truly breathtaking ruby set in a spherical enclosure of gold. To any magical senses, it appears stunningly complex.

     "I took this. The Fire Emblem." With how even the rain-grayed sunlight catches it, it's an apt name. "A dusty old relic, but Zephiel took it from its ceremonial place. I feared he'd use it to complete the Binding Blade. And so..." Fleeing was the only sensible course. Any practiced mage could find it.

     Ace's words make her flinch, guiltily, a little. "You're right. We weren't staying; we had only just fled over the mountains. The safest place for it is with the Lycian nobility. And..." "And the Marquesses are meeting at Castle Araphen," Father Lucius picks up, "to speak of Bern's mobilization." He nods to Flamel; that answers his question too. She smiles gratefully to him. "Yes. That's so."

     "What will happen in the coming months, I do not know," Lucius says as he moves on to his next patient. He touches their cheek, murmurs something comforting, and then rummages for another concoction. "But I know that tonight, our orphanage will need a roof-" Does he mean the church? "-and so will many of the houses, and new walls as well. If you can do this, you will have my gratitude forever- though I suppose you already do!"
Ru Li Cheng      Ru Li's focus had been on the battle the entire time. The little pulse of divinity here and there was not hard for him to ignore, or write off - they were near a church, after all! It just made sense, right?

     But the moment the Fire Emblem is brought forth he recoils as if struck. He'd been expecting a precious item, or some low magic trinket, or something to that effect. Not...this. He tries, and fails, to keep his face neutral, to keep himself from revealing just how impressive and dangerous this thing is to a whole bunch of people who are *not* Paladins and thus whom he does *not* ambiently trust. His attempt is a bold one but ultimately between his immediately near-physical recoil and his widened eyes it's really pretty easy to tell that this is Something Big.

     Again, Ru Li coughs into his hand, and when Lucius says they need a roof, he welcomes the distraction. "Then, I will answer your prayers," Ru Li says cheerfully, and hurries away to take stock of building materials so he can start building immediately.
Flamel Parsons     "Well," Flamel peers at the little artifact. "You should be the one to hold on to it -- the way I hear it, important gems love to cause trouble if they wind up in vaults or change hands too often. Plus, you've done a great job so far. If you're worried about keeping it safe, we'll worry about keeping *you* safe!" Always the optimist, and furthermore, always brightly friendly. But...

    "...So your brother's changed somehow? Some type of psychohazard, maybe? If something's hit a king that badly... it could be a horrible situation for Bern -- not to mention everywhere and every*one* else. Luckily, you've got me on the case! I'm a Psychonaut, and it's my job to solve problems *exactly* like a king suddenly going mad, or like a brother suddenly struggling with something beyond him." His smile is full of a surreally eager energy, not too intense but unwavering where it normally would.

    "I'll be at that meeting. I know that for sure! Sounds like the perfect time to learn about what's happening, and get some good ideas and good resources about how to stop it."
Marigold      "Minutes back from the grave and already healing the enemy? ... Small wonder why you were as wounded as you were when I found you."
     Lucius stifles a little good-natured laugh, and shakes his head at Lilian without looking up from his newest (unconscious) patient. After examination, he decides to use his glowy healing staff; it seems to be a last resort. "I told that man that he must know he was doing wrong. And that I hoped God would turn his heart from that dark path. And that I was prepared to make that choice very easy for him."

     Lucius checks heart rate and breathing again, sighs in soft relief at the soldier's wellbeing, and then stands to move along again as one of the teenagers brings him a new patient. "Ah, thank you, Lugh- and I was a mercenary for many years, of course." He says 'of course', but with that gentle face and those gentle hands, it's impossible to imagine. "But one of the archers... oh, it isn't worth dwelling on now."

     "Tell me. Is the Eliminean faith not known in the otherworld? I'm only acting in the example of the Saint." That one needs the staff, too. And he stands once more, but this time he turns to her and smiles with knowing and pleasant surprise, and opens his arms to offer Lilian a hug. "Thank you. I forgive you."
Marigold      "Well, it was your subordinate... I don't believe I caught their name."
     "Ah, Elen? My lady-in-waiting. I hope she's quite alright. It isn't dangerous beyond that gate, is it?"

     Just then, a white-robed woman mildly out of breath wanders through the portal. "Oh! Lady Guinevere! You're alright!" "Elen, thank goodness!" "You'll never believe this, but I passed this strange, terrified man..."
Desire Stars ... Isn't that close to the bad guys just winning..? That's kind of...

     "Awful?" Ace is lost, for a moment, in a hazy recollection that simmers to the surface of his mind. *Gijs Kuiper...* Military advisor to the Dutch princes in the 19th century. It's been a long time, since he lived that life. "Yeah. It is." He nods. "Look there," says Ace, pointing a mountain range in the distance out to Meika. His characteristic smile is gone, as is the usual smugness in his voice. This is more like the tone he took, when he told her it's okay to be honest about fighting for *your* world, instead of *the* world.

    "That's where they would have come from, based on the way most of them ran when they broke ranks. Narcian could've flown over it; the rest of them would've come down the pass. It's not cheap to march an army through a mountain--but if you think you can roll over the people on the other side, you take the risk.'" He glances to Guinivere, pausing, allowing her to explain about the Fire Emblem.

He has invaded Ilia and Sacae already... I came here to Lycia in hopes I could avert war, somehow.

    "In war, there aren't 'good guys' and 'bad guys.' Those are stories that young people tell themselves to make it easier." 'Young people?' He looks like he's early twenties, at the latest. "There are powerful people with strong desires, and then there's everyone else caught in the middle. Sometimes, you give up ground, to get more later."

    "Narcian knows the safest place to hide here is the church." The largest, most solidly built structure in town. It's not on fire any more. But... it's definitely seen better days. "There's no castle, no walls, and the other three sides of the village are wide-open foothills. The only thing this place has going for it is the Gate. If Bern gets serious, and comes back with siege weapons--if they see Guinivere here--that building is as good as finished, and so is anyone in it. Then, they get her, the Fire Emblem, and the Binding Blade, and all of her efforts are wasted."

    "The teacher Lao Tzu said that whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard." Ace places his hands into his pockets, and looks out over the mountain range in the distance. "The best way to protect these people isn't uprooting their lives and moving them somewhere else, or digging in our heels here. It's letting Guinivere yield now for a victory later."
Meika Kirenai 'It's a *little* funny.'

    "Just saying that doesn't change anything about-" A frustrated groan, and she drops it. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. Everyone's fine-"

'Particularly because your sister, Miss Rook, and this helpful medic were so quick to act.'

    "... Yeah."

'You as well, sister, if you're offering. Bless you for your compassion,'

    Chevalier Vermillion, perfectly normal magical girl, fate-blessed soldier of God, flinches like a demon in a baptismal font. She spends just a few seconds too long staring at Lucius's face, and hair, and smile-

    "... Are you a priest?" she asks, the words stumbling out of her mouth at the same pace the thoughts even enter her mind. Awkwardly, she doesn't try and take them back, her tone somehow less sinister than franticly confused-and-curious. Laced in with 'priest' is that other intended question-line. Is he of the cloth, and is he a man, and if he is, is that godly?

    No break from fluster-causing occurences comes, even as she's ready to set off helping the wounded-

'Still, please do it under Odette's supervision.'
'M.. Miss Rook's right! I.. Um. Y-yes! I'll get you a... Here. Bandage, for that. Does it hurt?'

    Slightly embarrassed, Vermillion sticks her arm out towards the EMT. "It's- it's not bad, see? I'm fine." She's sort of correct. By no measure is it healed, but also it's not the severity a pulled-out arrowhead should have, more superficial and tamer. It's also not the only wound of its kind on her.

    "... Of course it hurts. I'll- I'll deal, though." With her other hand, she grabs the offered bandage, and nods, fixing to put it on herself. She winces worse at the sanitizing solution, but flashes a smile anyways.

    Maybe she's just trying to look a little bit tougher. It doesn't make it clearer, that her eyes are looking anywhere and everywhere but right at Odette, as she supervises.

    "Is- am I good? Is that okay? Can I get back to helping, now..?" Regardless of answer, that's what she'll do.
Marigold      "... Are you a priest?"
     Lucius smiles with a familiar, patient, well-worn tenseness. He has to look comforting, too, which makes it harder. "I am a man of the cloth, yes," he says, with a cadence and emphasis that makes it very clear he heard what she didn't say. "It is 'Father', not 'father'."

     "It can be both," a child chimes in, carrying a double armful of medical supplies. "Oh, Lugh. Thank you. ... Why do you ask? Are you in need of comfort or guidance?"
Blemishine     Guinivere has quite the story-- and even more than that, quite the reveal of exactly what object Narcian and his lot were trying to steal back from her. "The Fire Emblem... and the Binding Blade..." She repeats the Capitalized Words with one part wonder - and two part commiting them to memory as things that must be of immensely great import in this world, focusing the ruby for a long while.

    "...Going against your country, and your own brother, to do what you felt you had to do... you're incredibly brave, Lady Guinivere. That's not something just anybody can do. And... I'm sure it wasn't easy to make that decision." The words come somewhat solemnly, as if she's imagining what it must've been like to flee her home in such a way. And after that lingers for a moment, her face eases into a more relaxed, warm smile.

    "I'm really relieved we were able to get here in time. And I hope we'll be able to take some of the burden you've been bearing off. There's plenty of people here who won't be content to let things stand like this, especially after your story."

    The smile widens further after, actually looking to grow somewhat embarrassed as her eyes close and she rubs at the back of her neck in between assisting with the remaining injured. "A-Ahahaha... now I'm really glad I addressed you as 'Lady Guinivere' at first, too! I seriously had no clue you were royalty..."

    After she's gotten that out of her system, Lucius is given a set of nods. "I'm not sure I'd be able to sleep tonight, knowing your village and home has been left like this. It's not exactly my forte, but I'll be more than happy to do what I can to help patch everything up!"

    And then later... Castle Araphen, huh? With what sounds like two nations conquered by Bern already, she wonders if avoiding it a third time is really possible...
Meika Kirenai 'Why do you ask? Are you in need of comfort or guidance?" '

    "N-no, that's- I'm fine. I don't need c- I don't need guidance." Answered too fast. "I just- I wasn't sure how... that could be..." She's floundering, it's painfully obvious, and wilting worse under his gaze- which she's struggling both to meet and to avoid meeting.

    "W-wait, both?" Her skates scuff at the cobblestones, a quiet, uncertain motion. Any apologetic glance she throws Lucius is painfully drawn out, as thoughts she can't quite place or process race behind her eyes.

    "S-sorry to bother you, Father- I'll- Yeah." She's outie, cheeks red from exhertion and embarrassment. That won't make anything else easier.
Lilian Rook     Lilian, meanwhile, seems only relieved at Guinivere. The little smile she puts on is ashenly polite. Her eyes don't quite meet.

    §So she's desperate enough to tolerate it for now. I suppose that's fortunate. I should remember not to be so presumptuous next time.§

    "Traitor, martyr, sympathizer, hero; you may as well choose whatever you like; everyone else will." Lilian replies. "As far as I'm concerned, doing something that any decent person would do, should only they be brave enough, can hardly be called treachery; it should be entirely expected."

    Lilian isn't someone who meddles in wars between humans. Choosing the side of 'humanity' is about as much as she can do, ordinarily, no matter how much more egregiously dangerous doing so is. This sort of thing is something she studied in school and listened to stories about from the ghosts of her ancestors. It's not something she's lived enough to know.
    But sobbing children and a burning church are still fresh in her mind, and Lucius' smile makes her chest tighten up to the point she nearly can't breathe; so she imagines she might know enough.

    "Let's not abandon that hope too quickly. It's one worth having." Lilian says. Her thoughts wander away from her for a moment, slipping between her fingers at the sight of the jewel; or rather, the 'sight' of it more so. The back half of her slightly too-long silence is spent marvelling at Guinivere rather than the gemstone. "Complete-- Pardon? If this is relevant to a war, then I really must insist on knowing." Lilian says. "As much as it pains me to pressure you any further, after you've already shown a stronger will and moral urgency than most ever do." She barely notices Elen at this point, only dimly registering a reminder to thank her in a little.

    'I told that man that he must know he was doing wrong. And that I hoped God would turn his heart from that dark path. And that I was prepared to make that choice very easy for him.'

    Lilian laughs by accident. It's short and sharp, but a sincere release of tension all the same. She even lets 'of course' graciously slide right past. "And to think I'd just warned one of my-- comrades of the same error." Lilian says. "Regarding knowing that you can beat someone. That all it takes is one desperate or unruly factor to make a straightforward confrontation a disaster." she says. "I'm happy beyond words that it didn't have to end that way. I really, truly am." says Lilian, and finds she means it.

    'Tell me. Is the Eliminean faith not known in the otherworld? I'm only acting in the example of the Saint.'

    "I myself don't know of it." An unnecessary hedge, but an inviting one. "But I suppose I'd never win an argument where I tried to imply you've been anything less than saintly. I think I couldn't be convinced to try."

    'Thank you. I forgive you.'

    "I . . ."

    §That's-- different. Am I crazy? I didn't hear a hint of 'because of the circumstances' in his. Isn't that bad? It is, isn't it? It would have been much better if I was wrong; so . . . why does . . . it feel like this?§

    Lilian catches herself a little too late. She's been staring at an offered hug like a kind of berry she's never seen before; as visibly hungry as afraid it might kill her. She can't take it back now; even if no one else noticed, Father Lucius has certainly has, and he can't know what she doesn't say.
    The idea that he might is too frightening to seriously consider.

    With delicacy slightly in excess of what should be given to a recently wounded man, then a compensatory lacking of it, Lilian returns the holy man's hug with the faint aura of not knowing what to do with her hands. The fact she'd been holding her breath comes out into his shoulder a while after. "Please be more careful. The world already suffers too few men like you to live." Lilian says, and then finally finds it in herself to squeeze as tightly as won't hurt, then back off again.

    
Lilian Rook     '... Are you a priest?'

    "Obviously." Lilian says to Meika; an automatic attack of opportunity from an offhanded weapon that she has to retroactively declare non-lethal. "This is a church, and the hearts and minds of the flock are with him. To say nothing of 'Father' being a dead giveaway."

    Almost apologetically, she lowers her voice to the point Meika wouldn't be able to hear it if eavesdropping wasn't her thing already. "I'm sorry; the holy woman she's used to hasn't treated her very well. I think she rather likes you, so it can't be easy to sort out those feelings." Lilian says, in utter, perfect, innocent sincerity.