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Hibiki Tachibana LAST TIME:

    Reaching the strangest part of the half-submurged ruins by far, the gathered Elites, plus TACHIBANA HIBIKI and the alchemy-using homunculus VIVIANE, encountered an unexpected obstacle: twelve more artificially created girls made from the same mold as their ally. But just like her, it was shown they all held the potential to become their own individuals and move past being unfeeling and misused weapons - thanks to ROXAS' proposal, everyone's earnest efforts, and the girls' own varied reactions to such unasked-for kindness.

Vanja, Verona, Violet, Veles, Veronica, Valerie, Valentine, Victoria, Valencia...
...Morgana, Veda, and Vee are still being workshopped a bit.

    Now, the crystalline lift is taking them all on a voyage into the abyss, where their final destination lies - the Dragon King Palace, housing a time-altering treasure box, the 'tamatebako', within. After seeing the lengths that YLIASTER will go to try and acquire it to reforge the past, there's no question he shouldn't be allowed to get it. But 'Vee' claims he won't surrender it easily...

    ...

    And it's not long after said foreboding warning that their undersea elevator approaches the bottom. The farther it calmly sails down towards the seafloor, the more details can be picked out.

    Jagged spires that make up gigantic towers, capped with glinting spikes. An expansive central courtyard, now covered with all manner of colorful aquatic flora as if an overgrown garden left untended. A behemoth of a keep making up the focal point of the palace, standing tall and proud. All of it, like the same chamber the group is in now, is constructed of some crystalline substance... or maybe carved from it, like ice?

    Unlike the descending chamber, it's not transparent; all of it shines too brightly and warmly from within to see beyond, the source of the day-like brilliance turning what should be deep abyssal ocean into a vibrant display of multicolor as far as the eye can see.

    It's truly like stumbling onto a fairytale castle from another time - a comparison not helped by the fact that aside from the courtyard, the structure seems untouched by the years, unlike the ruins above. Unworn, sparkling in its radiance. You could snap a photo and place it in a children's picture book, and it would be right at home.

    The chamber gently touches down against the roof of one of the palace's wings, and after a brief rumbling... a quarter of the floor splits apart and resolves into a large stairwell leading down into the building proper. As shown earlier, whatever this material is must be amorphous in some capacity. And given water hasn't immediately flooded up from it, it must be dry down within.

    The path is clear, but not before a certain somebody gets a word in.
Hibiki Tachibana     "...Go ahead, then. Leave us here until you are finished. Or spirit us away with your corridors of dark if you are so very concerned for us. I care not," 'Vee' exhaustedly asides to the party, but with a flat glance to Roxas in particular. "To acquire what you came for, you must advance. We--... I could not stop you. Even if I attempted to yet again." Her gaze narrows, then shifts to the side.

    "...And you have sown enough chaos among us as is. They are all-- ...vulnerable. Do not drag them into a position to where they will have to face our master like this."
    "...Sister..."

    But that, with a defensive edge to it, is all that 'Vee' has to say on the matter. Having to proceed without the defeated homunculi one way or another, the only way to go ahead is down.

    The stairwell leads into what was no doubt a glorious reception room. Inside, the glow of the crystal walls and flooring is only bright enough to provide pleasant all-around illumination. Opulent decor is everywhere, some made of the same azure stony material as the ruins above, only pristine and unravaged by eons of water damage. Drapes of fine cloth hang from overhead, and what looks like a massive chandelier of pure cut-glass makes the centerpiece decoration; with 'massive' being relative to everything, also like what they saw above, seeming to be designed for far larger beings.

    It's also all deathly silent.

    No matter how gorgeous the sights, from the grand carpeted hallways they walk down to every glimpse of other lush chambers being passed by, the palace is unnervingly ancient in a different feeling from the ruins before. Timeless in a way that's eerie and somber, its immaculate beauty making it worryingly impossible to tell for sure if its occupants vanished ten thousand years ago or only yesterday. Something bygone frozen in the present.

    "I can't shake... this feeling of everything being off," Hibiki murmurs.
    "As if we do not belong. ...Nor is there any sign of Yliaster as of yet."

    It makes for an uncomfortable atmosphere, even as - or maybe because - nothing at all inhibits moving ahead. All the way towards the center of it all.

    The throne room. Immensely and impossibly spacious, easily able to fit hundreds of ordinary people-- yet entirely empty, solemn in its grandeur. There's only a long and lonely leadup past ceiling-spanning pillars, more regal decor, and empty space, leading to solitary throne of ice-like crystal looming at the far end. On it is not a ruler.

    But an ornamental lockbox. Small enough you could comfortably hold it if you used both hands, black but filigreed in gold and rainbow-hued crystal, depicting the raging waves of a stormy sea. It's an unassuming little thing. Pristine despite ostensibly not having been touched for eons. Something like it would be right at home on a noble's dressertop.

    /This/ is what all the trouble was for? It...
Hibiki Tachibana     ...'d be so easy to open it, that tiny box. Undo anything at all from your past. Change it, just like that. Your mistakes. Your failures. Your shortcomings. Your loss. Scars need not be scars. And regrets need not be regrets.

    Please. Restraint will only hurt you. As it did I.

    A sentiment that doesn't touch the mind, with words - but rather grips at the heart, with feeling. A soft tug at buried guilts and laments and desires, jolting around old wounds only just enough to draw conscious attention to them, like a pull on the sleeve. Compulsion is too strong a word, as it's not trying to force you to do anything. Merely offering the tempting opportunity.

    Rather than it being the box actively reaching out to you, the sensation seems to linger around the object itself, like a palpable weight hanging in the air surrounding. Emotionally heavy. Melancholic. It's nearly visible, like a haze in the air.

    Hibiki seems to be wholly caught up in it, staring at the box wide-eyed and slack-jawed, only to dry swallow wordlessly. In contrast, Viviane's inscrutiable expression is harder to put a read to. When she does speak up, it's subdued and quiet.

    "I suppose some of the remnant sorrows of the previous owner must have clung onto it. ...It would be better to not let them sway us."
Roxas "It just goes to my apartment. You can go on through, if you want, just leave the wiggly silver guys alone if they happen to show up," Roxas says to 'Vee', opening a fresh swirling vortex of darkness in the air. "It kinda exists disconnected from everything else, so you won't be able to go anywhere unless you can teleport on your own, once you're there. Well, you could, but going out the door to navigate the darkness manually kinda sucks. Anyway, uh, just help yourself to everything. There internet goes to a really specific internal network and the tv is only connected to the combo player."

He already has an apartment full of homunculi, so adding one more really isn't much of an imposition. It was a good thing he DID go shopping.

They descend. The sights of the descent are strangely familiar; ethereal castles, distantly familiar and in some way seemingly impossible. The sensation of 'wrongness' does not reach him, but it is only because the wrongness is familiar to a long-broken part of him that belongs in a place like this.

But Roxas does not have memories to attach to the feelings, so the whole thing grates against him in an inarticulable way that has nothing at all to do with what the residual feelings have to convey.

He strides into them, the white keyblade with its star-fruit keychain flashing into existence in a black-gloved hand. Roxas levels the tip with the box, which glitters with a phantasmal skeleton key-styled keyhole.

"Sorry, but... my whole existence is a scar," he says, to the surrounding regrets. The smile that curves his lips isn't happy, nor does it have the forced quality of a 'sad' smile; rather, it's coldly angry.

Then he turns the keyblade in the air, the phantasmal keyhole gleaming for a moment before vanishing, the 'opening' function of the box rendered an impossibility in an instant.

The smile that he casts towards Viviane when he looks at her is more sincerely upbeat. "Mm. I don't feel a lot of the things that were going on there, I think. Envy, jealousy, some types of regret... those don't exist for me."
Petra Soroka "After this has ended, I would very much like to join you and my... siblings. Helping them find their way should be an elder sister's job, should it not?"

    Petra was already inclined positively towards the plight of the unnamed and disposable clones, but Vivianne concretely referring to them as sisters still makes Petra feel warmly-- besides, of course, the warmth still lingering in the superheated water soaked into her hair and clothes. Relievedly sagging before the elevator reaches the gleaming doors of the Dragon King Palace, Petra beams goofily at Vivianne, and says, little-sisterly, "Well, and it's a little sister's job to blow everything up before letting themselves be looked after, too, so we can't be too hard on them."

"...And you have sown enough chaos among us as is. They are all-- ...vulnerable. Do not drag them into a position to where they will have to face our master like this."

    Petra twists her lips at Vee, squeezing her bicep uncomfortably while shifting her weight between her feet. It's hard for her to word, exactly, the complicated feelings she has towards the most recitent (conscious) girl, but boiling it down-- differently from how Vee did to Petra-- the closest label she can slap on the feeling is... hesitant respect? She fidgets with her salt-stiff hair for a moment, glancing towards the looming castle courtyard to buy herself another few seconds to compose her thoughts, before giving Vee a slowly measured response.

    "... You're not, like... prisoners. I'd like if you feel comfortable hanging out at Roxas's for a bit until getting your bearings, but... if leaving you alone means you run away or, like, try and backstab us, then... so be it, I think? It's like with the names. It doesn't matter if we give a hand to you in allowing for the, uh, individual choice, if you can't follow it up with rejecting it. That's still a choice."

    Petra reflects on the words after they leave her mouth, trying to narratively assess how she feels about them after saying them, and then blinks at Vee. "Oh. Like. Of course we're not forcing you to fight your master. We're going to go there and we're going to help fulfil Vivianne's wish for ending this less-than-lethally."

    A couple hours ago, Petra expressed open disdain at Hibiki's suggestion that this would be the plan once they got to the ocean floor. She seems to realize this hypocrisy, though, and explains it out loud to everyone, not directing her words at Vee exactly anymore, but not choosing anyone in particular who asked either.

    "I think it was dumb to want to save him for no reason. But I like Vivianne now, so I think it's worth doing it for Vivianne. I can change my mind about things."

    Lastly, before exiting the elevator, Petra has a few quick words for Morgana, spoken more quietly and authoritatively as if she doesn't want her seemingly expert knowledge to be audible to anyone else-- besides the duck poncho-wearing Eggpack still mounted on her back. "Hey, Morgana. Try to get used to hearing the name for a bit. See if you can't, like, get people to use the name Morgana to refer to you sort of, irregularly often, at first, I guess. Especially if it's within the context of the group. You'll get an idea of how you like it, and how it feels to be the odd name out faster that way, to know if you wanna consider something else."
Petra Soroka     Creeping through the high halls of the castle, Petra keeps peeking out of the pristine windows as they pass them; not just interested in seeing the radiant seafloor and the iridescent ripples of refracted color through crystal dance across the sand, though she definitely is entranced by that, but in order to see some sense of life and movement in the world outside the static castle too. Idly, she murmurs in the quiet, "I kind of hate the open ocean surface, because of how empty it is... but the ocean floor is pretty empty too, and for some reason, I like it? When it's lit, it's really pretty to see the deep blue fading into the unbelievable amount of water still above us."

    The massive, ornate throne room is more uncomfortable open sightlines and looming grandeur for Petra to scuttle through like some sort of bug, or shifty little vagrant. On the throne itself, however, the box--

    Of course Petra has regrets. It's sort of her defining character arc at the moment, regretting things. Acutely aware of hurting everyone in her life, even the orange idiot leading the undersea investigation right now, she's making a continual effort to try to make up for it, scar up open wounds and treat the irritated flesh to soften it as much as the victim will allow-- amends, in other words.

    Isn't the best possible treatment to undo the wound in the first place? To take the growth she's managed through omnidirectional harm, and use it to care better the first time through? Maybe. She can't imagine Lilian being *worse* off now if Petra hadn't engaged in months of torture against her. But it still strikes her as deeply, existentially repulsive, and not for any good reason.

    Petra can't be tempted by the tamatebako, because she's far too selfish to give up on the socially acknowledged lore and relationships she's gouged into the world, even if it lets her care for the people she cares for most. Amends can only ever be her second priority-- first, above everything, is the demand to exist in the eyes of everyone else.

    Petra shudders and frowns, joining Roxas and the others up beside the relic. "So this is that tatamebako thing?" She says the name wrong, because Japanese is hard. "What, do we just grab it and leave? Yliaster would have to hunt us down to take it back, and his odds of managing that aren't, like, great. Worse than if he set up a trap here and was about to spring it on us, but he doesn't seem to be around."
Angela Angela watches 'Vee' for a long moment. "Mm." She says. "I understand you have complicated feelings. Nevertheless, we have a job to complete. Moving right, Petra." The Eggpack vid-screen swerves back into position, Angela giving some forewarning to avoid any accidental collisions. She is not willing to be any more comforting than this.

Rose and Nikki remain and seem to have taken the time to recover and heal themselves up with HP Bullets. They seem worn out all the same, though--some of that has more to do with the long travel than the actual battle.

It is silent enough to be eerie for Rose who pulls her scarf to cover up more of her horribly scarred face. Be brave, she tells herself. "You're not wrong, pardner." She asides to Hibiki, startling short when she sees the lockbox.

She stares at it. She wants to pull the gacha. She knows she wants to pull the gacha. There's so many regrets that she has. Instinctively, she reaches out to the box. She walks towards it--Nikki catches her arm and Rose just keeps staring at it.

''It would be better to not let them sway us.''

"Maybe we can save them. Everybody in Central..." Rose murmurs to Nikki.
5r"I think we both know it'll make light of our regrets in the end if we mess with it." Nikki chides.

In this moment of hesitation, Roxas uses something that to Rose's eyes looks like Lock Tech. If only I had a Fairy...

She shakes her head and adds, "No regrets, huh?" Rose says. "...Make it seem so easy."

She snaps her arm away from Nikki but makes no further move towards the box.
Xion Descending down the elevator is a trip that Xion's used to by now, as a seasoned adventurer. With a parting wave to the 'girls ... and Morgana', Xion exhales a breath, closes her eyes, and pats down the damaged coat she had entered with, drippy and beamed and generally fightmiserable.

"Well, they gave a better fight than the squirrel." The noirette mutters, peeling coat from black t-shirted shoulders and folding over left arm. Reaching in with her right hand into the folded coat's pocket to pull out a juice packet, Xion lifts the crinkly package to her mouth and holds it there.

With a long considerance she reaches back into the coat for a second juice packet to perilously nibble the corner of, and then final-fold bounce her coat - inventorying the folded black cloth with a threadthin fade-out that renders the dark silhouette weightless before it disappears fully. Her hand is free immediately, and her complex juggling concludes with a crinkly Capri Sun in both hands.

So she passes off the second to Roxas as they walk through the nostalgic forboding ruins of a grand castle. The omnipresent feeling of subtle wrongness only made it more homey, though feeling 'home' and seeing the Palace about them was a different kind of slightly-wrong regret dragged down the noirette's final mood.

Then she is standing before the wishing-box, confronted with the palpable choice to go back and fix anything. Go back, and fix, anything. All she would have to do is take one step, reach down, and open the box!

Shaking her head fiercely and coming back to stable with a weary-annoyed look, Xion looks away from the box and peels the plastic straw wrapper off her juice sachet, crinkling the protective wrapper and freeing candy red straw with one pointed end.

Ptok!

Xion forgets about evil boxes that Roxas goes and locks anyway, the drama with clones, and the pressure-feelings of dark regret and restraint. She sucks down a sweetly sugary mouthful of Tropical Cooler and keeps gulping until her fist can close around the sachet to wring the last little bit out. 'Real' fruit juice and a whole lot of sugar hit the Nobody's system and then everything is just grand right after.

So she walks up behind Hibiki and knees out the back of the blonde's leg to topple or stagger her. "Hey. That one isn't it. Even if you really want to run it back." Xion accuses cold, guessing on how much she knows of Hibiki Tachibana without needing to scan it off her heart. It's pressing into her own, but she has the power of Capri Sun.

"Should we put. . . a bowl over it?" Xion asks the group, confronted with what to do and lacking better ideas than 'lock it?' and 'juice box'.
UFO Gang Nazrin and Minamitsu move in this tomb-place, with a relatively subdued mien.

Nazrin, naturally enough, has been focusing on dowsing. They're getting pretty close. She is hanging in the back - also perhaps naturally enough. She's short, and not particularly bulky, and hasn't shown many signs of supernatural puissance. (Unless you count that mouse rush the one time. The end result of that one mouse who got high on Enkephalin will be left as a lingering plot hook for the future.)

Minamitsu is in the lead!

... But she's not chirping along too much. It feels wrong. This place is ancient, perhaps beyond even the reckonings of youkai.

"There it is," Nazrin comments from the back. She does not approach the box.

Minamitsu gazes at the box.

There is a long pause as her expression changes. Slackens. Becomes something somber. It is approaching a level of pallid stillness that shades towards horror as the drowned girl hears what the box has to say and then--

Shakes her head violently and slaps her own cheeks a little. "Bwuhaaa! That thing definitely feels like it's cursed!!"

Minamitsu looks towards Petra+Angela and puts her hands on her hips. She is forcing it a little, but she /sounds/ more or less like her old, enperked thing. "Well, that seems like it's tricky because it's a cursed box," Minamitsu continues.

"Yup," Nazrin concurs. "It'd be easy to open it 'accidentally.' And I get the feeling that that's what the thing wants."

Minamitsu looks towards Nazrin. "Could you, like, call up the mice?"


"Could, yes... will I? I won't," Nazrin articulates. "Even my holy purpose is being tested a little by that thingy. I don't think the mice could handle it either."

"Mm." Minamitsu then looks towards the others... just in time to see Hibiki get knee-checked! She advances towards Hibiki afterwards, saying with concern, "You OK?" It seems she didn't get bothered by the steps Xion took, though.

"Did anyone bring a bowl?" Nazrin asks Xion, dolorously. Now it's Nazrin's turn to look at someone, and she looks towards the Petra+Angela combo. "What does the Company do to handle things like this?"
Petra Soroka "Well, they gave a better fight than the squirrel."

    Petra hums sympathetically at her co-duelist bestie, watching her remove her saltwater drenched-and-dried jacket and suddenly becoming aware of how terrible it feels to keep her t-shirt on now. She pulls up the hem of her shirt slightly and then bends it, salt-soak making it flex like cardboard instead of fabric. She has one change of clothes stored in her mirror, which she contemplates, considering her awful clothing situation.

    But she can't. She can't change into it, because it's a maid outfit. And if she got salt water on that, Lilian would kill her.

    "Yeah, they did. You know, maybe if the girls saw what passes for an ensouled being out here, they wouldn't be so hesitant to call themselves one too. I know it helped for--" Petra hesitates mid-sentence, hitching and drawing out the pause for a QTE mental assessment. Does she want to finish this sentence? Does it make her look pathetic, or potentially harm Xion in some way? After an awkward stretch, she decides it's fine. "-- me."

"What does the Company do to handle things like this?"

    "Hmmm?" Petra side-eyes Minamitsu, only vaguely familiar with her despite knowing she's-- rarely?-- around the facility, officially. "Well that's, uh, just mental corruption. There's a lot of Abnormalities with a kind of compulsion like this, like, um, the Red Shoes, and stuff. Priority one is to not get affected by it. Priority two is to tackle anyone who is."

    After a moment, she adds offhand, forgetting that this might not be common knowledge to distant part-timers. "I'm technically sort of, the best at handling stuff like that. If we end up carrying it out, I can do it. And if Rose tries to grab it from me, I'll throw her outside of Vivianne's bubble."
Ritsuka Fujimaru "It's kind of messed up, if you think about it for a second..."
"What is it?"
"This place? No kidding. To hide so much of your ambition in the deepest depths of the sea instead of embracing.. No, regaling the wor-"
"Jeanne naming one of those girls before any of her dragons."
"..."
"..."

The descent is anything but relaxing for the trio from Chaldea, but not for a lack of physical comfort. Even without expressly speaking further on the way down, it's clear that Ritsuka and Mash are boring holes into Jeanne just by staring at her while she loiters at the other end of the elevator while trying to look battle-focused and certainly not like she's sulking or anything like that.

"We--... I could not stop you. Even if I attempted to yet again."
"Do not drag them into a position to where they will have to face our master like this."

"Don't sell yourselves short. I'd put money on some of us fighting like this since before you were born!"
"I don't know if that's as rea... Ehm. I'm sure you could become stronger in the future if you'd like to pursue that path."
"Heck, we could even give you a hand later if you're real serious about it!"
"Give these girls some space, will you? Tch... You can use these two as punching bags if that time ever comes. Or fertilizer, if you'd rather learn something other than fighting."

Heading further down, at least, gives the trio some more time to steel themselves for whatever battle may come. They're expecting a fight, after all, and they're all (mostly) geared up for one, between Jeanne's and Mash's armaments and Ritsuka's supply of magic stones. There's plenty to look at, too, but their eyes are truly on the prize, only shifting away when they hear...

No, they feel something speaking to them. Something pulling at them. It's easy to tell that it's the draw of the box, and all three of them have their eyes locked firmly on the artifact everyone's been chasing this whole time. So many things that could be changed, so many fates that could be thrown off course for better or for worse. Strength, survival, a completely different future...

"... The hell am I supposed to do with this thing?" Jeanne scoffs as she stabs her banner into the ground, spitting on the floor with a guttural scoff. "Might as well stop existing, for all the good this little trinket would do for me." Turning her nose up at the artifact, Jeanne glances at her armor, aside at Ritsuka and Mash, then at Xion before drawing a spear out of the ground like she's already prepared to  throw it at the box itself. "A bowl or a cage, maybe, if we've really got anyone that dumb."

Jeanne stares right at Ritsuka as she says that last part, drawing a laugh from her in response. "Hm? No way! Besides, you've got the right idea. If we start changing all sorts of stuff and fixing everything, who knows what we'd end up like?" Ritsuka lets out a carefree laugh that goes just a bit too long, like she's trying to psyche herself up and not give in to the pull. "Nah... I like what we've got here already. Right, Mash?"

Ritsuka's smile gets just a little more confused as she looks over to Mash, being the only one of the three that keeps staring at the box wordlessly. Her grip on her shield stays tight, unable to shake that ever-present specter from her mind. If she could just get a hold of the box, then...

Could she really change everything?
Roxas //No regrets, huh?//

"I can want things that didn't happen... it's a little complicated, I just don't have the same emotional spectrum a typical human does," Roxas answers, shrugging. He fishes a crumply something out of his jacket and passes it towards Xion-- it's a little package of partly-crushed mini-nutter butters. Evidently he understands the need for flavor in these dire circumstances.

People talk a little, on and off, about the opening or containment of the box.

"Well... it can't be opened now, basically. Xion could open it, but I haven't really met anybody else with a similar power to our keyblades," he says, banishing his own with a shimmer and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Souls can be pretty small," he comments, towards Petra.
Xion 'Did anyone bring a bowl?'
Xion is stopped by the return of her own question, mentally indexing all the things she can think of in her inventory. A walk down a mental 'lane' like Cost Company aisles, the noirette turns away from just-behind Hibiki and switch out the crinkled juicebox in her hand with--

A pasta strainer, in stainless steel. On one of the two handles, there's a little hole that has a keychain charm of all things, ending... in a smaller, silver pasta strainer charm.

"Well, it has holes?" Xion observes a little helpless-bashful, before lowering it to her side, since the vermin seem to have things handled.

'I know it helped for--' . . . '--me'

Accepting a travel packet sized Nutter Butter Bites to get some sweet 'peanut butter' (sugar) textures crunched up, Xion is amelioratingly a bit crumbmouthed when Petra sidles up and caught in a moment of liminal frankness.

Those moments wait staff target, where someone has just gotten beyond the ability to give a full answer, and so they narrow to just the simple and true.

She chews twice more, and swallows - having done the inadviseable motion of drink and *then* peanut butter and starch - and lingers on a closed-mouth smile.

"It helped me too." Xion agrees, then searches the inside of her cheek with her tongue for a resistant spot. Resuming on Petra and offering out a last fistful of cookies to Petra as a pick-her-up, the noirette gives Petra (and herself) a little space by looking past the blonde. "Seeing other people, hearing other voices, knowing different ways. I can't regret the time it took."

'...with a similar power to our keyblades,'

Xion oh's and pivots, still offering cookies to Petra. "You know, Binah does, actually. I think it was called 'Fairy Tech', and it opened things."
Angela "Yes, we are definitely not giving Binah an opportunity to open that box." Angela says before her screen wiggles ever so faintly to look at Xion. "Fairy Tech. It can be used to open locks, wounds, and minds. Of course, there are various grades to the technology but I am unfamiliar with the particulars. Binah has such power at her disposal. It can be used to close locks, wounds, minds. But I am unfamiliar with those particulars as well." A long pause. "You find Binah... Tolerable?" She asks Xion.

''I just don't hav the same emotional spectrum a typical human does.''

Rose feels guilty with the full typical human spectrum. "Oh," She says. "Sorry. For lashing out like that."

Angela places one of the Eggpack's hands on Petra's shoulder for a moment. There is no obvious reason for it. Maybe there isn't one, aside from wanting to.

"Petra is very resilient to many of the dangers in L Corp and is skillful in all other elements of the job besides. If you ever have more questions, you can rely on her. She's our top Agent."
Petra Soroka "Souls can be pretty small,"

    With some people, Petra might barely acknowledge the words as an inanely-affirmative comment made for the sake of making a comment, without expecting there to be much intentional thought behind it. Roxas has made an extremely good impression on her so far, though, so she treats it like a fully-worthy topic of consideration and response.

    "Hmmm, yeah. I mean, it sort of makes me insane how true that is, right? How many people don't, like... reflect on that aspect of themselves, and notice how much is *lacking*, and want to change it. Most people seem to *hate* the idea of developing that part of themselves. So of course souls end up small a lot, like with Proudpick. People let them atrophy."

    "Like," Petra gestures back, where the homunculi were left behind, with a gesiticulatory sweep of her hand. "I feel like I'd respect the feelings of any of Vivianne's sisters more than the average *Elite*, already. Just because they all managed to be confronted with the idea that they could grow into themselves, and then, like, stop and decide to do that. Deciding to cultivate some idea of 'themself'."

"I can want things that didn't happen... it's a little complicated, I just don't have the same emotional spectrum a typical human does,"

    Petra thinks about that for a little while, too. The conclusion she comes to is almost certainly wrong, but it's seemingly approached with care, at least. "Same. I get it."

"Seeing other people, hearing other voices, knowing different ways. I can't regret the time it took."

    "Oh, sick, treat. Thanks." Petra doesn't quite seem to comprehend the idea that she might need space away from Xion's perception, even when being awkward and unpreparedly bare-hearted, so she just gratefully takes the cookie and starts gnawing on it. Xion avoiding looking at her would far more easily be taken as Xion needing space *from* her, but the cookies blunt that particular angle.

    "Mmm. No one's able to really be a person all on their own, is what I think." Petra takes tiny bites of the Nutter Butter in between sentence clause, nodding. "They need to make the decision to be, on their own. That's where almost everyone fails. But it's not like it just happens if you lock yourself in a room and try to focus super hard on developing an identity in a vacuum."

"She's our top Agent."

    Petra preens for a moment under both Angela's surrogate robo-touch, and her praise. Rather than directly commenting on it or acknowledging it, though, she just unhelpfully chimes in on the other topic. "Binah's my boss."
Hibiki Tachibana     Well, and it's a little sister's job to blow everything up before letting themselves be looked after, too, so we can't be too hard on them.

    "Is... it?" Viviane inquires back to Petra with taking-it-at-face-value curiosity, before placing a contemplative hand to her chin. "Mmn. In that case, I must prepare for more potential explosions in the future. ...And the care that comes after."

    The one responsible for said exploding, 'Vee', gives Petra what amounts to a squint. She still half-looks as if she might be up for said backstabbing if she had the chance. The other half seems mixed, all the moreso when she mentions Viviane's desire, and Roxas explains his well-stocked apartment setup. "I fail to understand you at all."

    She still stands up - explicitly after Jeanne's mention of using her companions as fertilizer, a statement that seems to somehow embolden her - and begins ensuring all of her siblings are accounted for and brought along that way. Audible in the background, "/I/ will handle any 'wiggly silver guys' if they pose a threat."

    This seems to have been said to Vanja, who gives her looks to be the shadow of a skeptical eyebrow-raise.

    Morgana, caught by Petra before their exit, seems uncertain of what to say to her at first. After a few seconds, wherein she watches the rest of her sisters from a distance, her eyes close. "There will need to be much talking with... the others. In that case." A pause. "I shall... make an attempt. And inform you of the results when you return."

    Perhaps she hopes they do.

    ...

    Hibiki, much like some of the others, seems to be caught up in the pull-- the chance to fix anything. Anything. You barely need to know her to know she's messed up more times than she can count. A trembling hand begins coming up almost automatically... and then has to (fail to) catch herself when Xion sends her tumbling over.

    "Aaahh!?" After a moment of being facedown on the floor, she begins stumbling back up, rubbing at her forehead with a nod to Minamitsu. Her lips are pursed tight, and she can't seem to find Xion's eyes in particular.

    "I... ...yeah. You're right. I know you are." She sounds downcast, before taking in a bracing breath. "...I have to live with the scars of the past. And use that to try and make the future better. Sorry."

    Roxas locks the box shut neatly, with the power of the Keyblade. There's a distinct sound of a 'click' from within - and though the aura of regret and wistfulness around it doesn't seem to vanish in the least with the impossibility of its desires, the tugs-upon-the-heart do ease up as everyone shakes it off.

    Still, whoever has to carry that thing out probably isn't going to have a fun time.
Hibiki Tachibana     "You truly are a curious one, Roxas," Viviane says to him, with a small smile. "But, although it may be presumptuous for me to say - I am happy to know you as you are. For you are the Roxas that helped me and my newfound sisters so." She gives an appreciative nod, before her expression returns to neutral with a glance to the now-sealed box.

    "I felt no strong desire myself. I wonder why. Is it because I am still coming to learn such feelings? Or... ...is it because there's no time I'd rather be than right n--"

    ...but he doesn't seem to be around.

    A flat plane of space off to the side of the group warps, like a heat haze in the air.

    And then /shatters/ outwards like glass, a robed arm lurching out of the opening. Palm out, a multifaceted alchemical circle in silver forming in front of it. It's aimed at--

    "Remove your filthy, ignorant hands-- from that thing!!"

    The box. The crystal of the throne surrounding it is the target of the transmutation; rapidly growing around the small container to envelop it completely, almost protectively - and once it's locked away in a cocoon of crystal, spikes erupt out from the shell in all directions. Anyone attempting to grab it will have their hand lanced clean through on the spot.

    And even the others who weren't will have to deal with said spikes shooting out like bullets an instant later, with more being wrenched into shape to replace them and continue to clear the area around it with judicious and extremely sudden suppressive fire.

    It's while that's still occurring that the warp in space is grasped onto and /pried/ open wider, so that the limb's owner can stomp through as it struggles to shut itself.

    For someone a few hundred year olds minimum, he doesn't look like it physically; unkempt blonde hair trails past his shoulders, draping over them in an uncared-for curtain. Creases on his face are deep from years of accumulated stress rather than the ravages of time, layered over a visage that's otherwise of a tall and gaunt man who appears to be in his early fourties.

    His robes are a crimson velvet, further gold-embroidered version of the Illuminati robes seen up until now, the obvious increased prestrige making his identity impossible to mistake. That and...

    ...his eyes. A dull golden, far more dull than his hair, with an undeniable glint of nigh-feral madness behind them. The wide and bloodshot stare of somebody who had something snap within, who witnesses the world in a far different way than normal. You can see it in the way he looks at you-- and in the way he speaks through a cracking tone, through desperate pants.

    He's not looking at anyone here as 'a person'. And it's hardly surprising.

    "After everything-- /everything/ you've put me through, you would take this away from me as well!? Are there no /limits/ to the things this Multiverse will take away from me!?" Fuming, heaving, he gives a derisive scoff as space snaps shut behind him.
Hibiki Tachibana     "But going and showing your 'mercy' to those /defects/," is he referring to the homunculi sisters? He has to be. "...Is exactly why I could make it here now!! I learned from the very /first/ time you stole one of my creations away from me--!"

    That same creation, in the room with them now, nearly loses concentration on the barrier she's maintaining to defend herself from the blast of crystalline spikes. If you could hear heartbeats, her has stopped at that voice echoing through the gargantuan throne room. Foreknowledge that this might happened doesn't seem to have helped.

    "You-- truly showed up. Ma-- ...no. My... creator. Yliaster. The shade of what you used to be..."
Roxas "Oh, really? Did I just forget...?" Roxas wonders, at Xion. He regards Angela with some puzzlement, not seeming to really comprehend why Binah would only be tolerable. His gaze also flicks over towards Rose, whose guilt registers, but he doesn't know what to do with it. "Uh, well, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad..."

//I mean, it sort of makes me insane how true that is, right?//

Rocking back and forth in place, Roxas 'hmms' in a mildly exaggerated fashion. "Yeah... but, I mean, little things grow souls too. Your life has to be in motion a little, for a messed-up soul to recover. Humans talk a lot about chicken soup for the soul or stuff like that, but it's actually pretty literal. Losing bits of your soul kinda sucks, but it's not the end of it all. It's just another thing you have to work on and heal around."

"I dunno if we're talking about exactly the same things...? I think we are... but yeah, not even trying to be something with what you've got, that's really common," he concludes. "Elites are a little weird about it... I think megalomania tends to come out of pushing it too much."

//I fail to understand you at all.//

"If everybody shows up at once, there are almost twenty people in my association. It's just normal for me to be prepared to host for this many folks," he explains, shrugging. "I've even got futons, there's just not enough room for that many real beds. Sometimes I think about getting some bunk beds but it'd still be pretty-- well, nevermind. Anyway, the wiggly silver guys aren't a threat. If any little shadow jerks show up, those are a problem."

//For you are the Roxas that helped me and my newfound sisters so.//

To this, Roxas just smiles.

Which is, of course, around the time that everything goes kinda badly. He's already doen his part for dealing with the box, so he's not in a hurry to go over towards it, but he does get caught in the expanding spike wall and forced back on it, sharp points ripping through his jacket and drawing out another wave of smoking darkness rather than blood.

"Maaaan..." he complains to himself, "These are expensive... it's almost four times as much material to replace one as it was when I first started."

Roxas pushes forward abruptly, moving towards the aperture in space as it shudders towards a close. He's not trying to escape, though-- he skids to a halt, re-summoning his keyblade with a shimmer, and pressing it against the pinprick of an opening. Then, he waits for it to close.

When it does, a keyhole shimmers into existence above the "closed aperture". A faint shudder ripples through space as Roxas locks the portal method that was just used to enter.

He turns and shoulders his keyblade, regarding Yliaster with a cold fury.

"Thanks for telling me you had to trick your way in here at all. Now you can't leave without my permission. And you're not gonna get it." Roxas banishes his keyblade with a shimmer, and extends the hand that held it, pointing in an accusatory manner at Yliaster. "Killing me won't undo that, by the way. Your only way out now is the way we came."

Columns of white light rise at Roxas's back. He clicks his fingers together, "But I can lock that, too."

The columns spring forward and converge, forming a patterned template that is avoidable but will require some effort to skate through it.
UFO Gang Minamitsu looks at Petra with guileless enthusiasm, as if Petra is a senior officer. And from her perspective-- she is! (Minamitsu, as well as Nazrin and those other wacky characters, mostly hang around the Welfare section, although Nazrin seems to have Leaned In and done her share of walking around the L Corp facilities.)

"Woah," Nazrin replies to Roxas's assertion.

She looks at him for a full second, then nods once, as if having been processing his words through her BS detector. After that full second, she nods once.

"!!!" Minamitsu jumps when Xion produces the pasta strainer. She stares at it with wonder. "You DID have a bowl!" she declares. "Wouldn't the curse seep out through the holes?"

Minamitsu looks over towards the Eggpack as Angela speaks words of praise of Petra. "Gotcha!"

"Constructing an identity in isolation's pretty hard, yup," Nazrin agrees with Petra. "Of course that's true the other way around, too."

"C'mon, don't bring up transience when we're in this ruin this deep under water," Minamitsu tells Nazrin.

Minamitsu then picks up the train of thought, folding her arms. "... So is it really just that simple? We ask Miss Soroka to carry it and we all go back upstairs?" She looks towards Ritsuka and her accompaniments, particularly Jeanne (who spit, after all) and she seems about to say something WHEN:

SUDDENLY: SPIKES!

Nazrin, wisely perhaps, throws herself on the ground and still lets out an "ow!" of discomfort as her tail gets nicked by one of those crystalline spikes. Minamitsu, who is notably nearer to the man, just hop-skips up into the air and thrashes at the barrage.

Minamitsu thrashes, but not for long. One hand comes up -- and then whatever she was about to do gets visibly held off; sweating a little, or something *like* sweat anyway, the captain in shorts swinging a ladle at the man with golden eyes. Which is perhaps underwhelming, EXCEPT for the sea-blue shots of high-pressure water which sweep downwards onto him, each of them a literal bullet of power!

"Yeah! Cut him off! That key is amazing!" Minamitsu semi-babbles to Roxas as she sweeps the ladle back the other way for a second blast at Yliaster. She may not have thought through some of the implications there, but that is her way.
Petra Soroka "Remove your filthy, ignorant hands-- from that thing!!"

    Petra has her hands out to have the tamatebako deposited in them, since that seems to be the direction that the conversation is headed in. While holding her hands out, she vaguely thinks to herself that she may be the most bowl-laden Elite in the Sector. She has dozens of potential bowls available on command, due to the simplicity of flattening out her morphmetal into little bubbles, or even one very large bowl like that girl who looks like she's fourteen but claims she's older has.

    She's even got a bucket for cleaning materials in her mirror, she's pretty sure. Certainly she can figure out some better way to hold this cursed object than grasping it directly in her bare hands. She could even wrap it up in a floating blorble of morphmetal, like she did with the Chaos Emerald way back when. That's like *two* bowls, stacked on top of each other! There's nothing more secure than that. And yet, none of these considerations make it through her nervous system in a way that actuates muscular movement to do anything but use her bare hands.

    Petra's wandering thoughts are disrupted by a rude greasy man barging through a portal, and more immediately, by the fact that the object she was reaching for became entombed within crystal. Too close and too surprised to react, Petra's only halfway through a flinch when crystalline spikes jut out in every direction, one spearing straight towards her face--!!

    -- Only to be impaled on a half-bubble of Silver morphmetal that unconsciously formed and orbited her head, reflexively melding in tune with her unspoken thoughts. The tip of the spike pierces through the rippling metal, inches from Petra's eyes, before she clenches her fist and compacts the bowl around it, shattering the crystal. She was, saved by the bowl, as it were.

    By the time Yliaster has worked the magic to send the spikes flying around the room, Petra's recovered from the surprise round fully. Silver hammer accumulated and stretched into place gripped in her fists, she swings it around like a baseball bat to shatter a crystal shard midair with a piercing ring, diving to the ground to dodge the rest. The Eggpack on her back is bulky like a turtle shell, limiting her movement when getting back up, but also like a turtle shell, Petra's designed it to be near-impenetrable to attacks like this, just like Angela's own body.

"After everything-- /everything/ you've put me through, you would take this away from me as well!? Are there no /limits/ to the things this Multiverse will take away from me!?"

    Petra finally gets a good look at the Alchemist Yliaster. Her words are directed to everyone except him. "Oh, ew. He looks really gross, doesn't he?"

    Snide comments aside, though, his words do stir up Petra's anger. Glaring at him while brandishing the sizeable two-handed hammer to the side, there's a brief moment where the eye contact between Petra and Yliaster is eerily mirrored-- or, rather, the lack of eye contact. Where Yliaster derisively scoffs, Petra's teeth grit and creak, but their eyes pass right by each other with equal nonrecognition, each a problem to be solved to the other.
Petra Soroka     "... Hey, Viviane. This guy fucking sucks. I hope when we beat him into being normal again, he's actually decent to you. Say the word and I'll fucking pulp him."

    Despite its size and apparent weight, the hammer swings towards Yliaster as if it's weightless in Petra's hands-- it sort of is, since she's telekinetically controlling it to supplement her own strength. When she closes in on him, skipping through Roxas's moving columns as if it's second nature to dodge mobile attack patterns, the metamaterial gathered in the smooth head of her Silver hammer shifts density in time with her attack, rushing forwards to accumulate at the impacting face of the hammer like telekinetic piston acceleration to add to the hit.

    "Your *defects* are more people than you are, idiot. You're not owed fucking *anything* and I'll take whatever I want from you until you get over being a gutless little failure of an old gross man and start being decent to your daughters again."
Ritsuka Fujimaru "So is it really just that simple? We ask Miss Soroka to carry it and we all go back upstairs?"

"Sure does look like she's got it covered, and Roxas, too!" Ritsuka sounds confident as she replies to Nazrin, still keeping that smile on as she glances away from Mash briefly to watch both Roxas and Petra at work. "I can't pretend I know how a lot of their stuff works, but if it does, it should be smooth sailing from here. I'd put money on Miss Angela being the expert here on this kind of stuff, so...!"

It's not that simple, of course, as Mash keeps staring at that box, still feeling that pull. It's only when Roxas locks it that Mash finally snaps out of that hold it has on her, less from pushing away those lingering thoughts in her mind on her own and more from it easing enough that she can stop herself from approaching at all. She's still unfocused enough, however, that she doesn't even notice the warping plane off to the side. Ritsuka and Jeanne do, however, and they're both moving into move defensive positions in front of their usual bodyguard as Yliaster finally announces himself with that explosion of spikes. Jeanne pries the shield out of the ground enough that she can hold it up and eat most of those oncoming projectiles with it and her armor, albeit with some minor nicks here and there. Ritsuka, meanwhile, covers Mash from the rest with her back and side, turning into a slightly blood-streaked mess.

"Are there no /limits/ to the things this Multiverse will take away from me!?"
"I learned from the very /first/ time you stole one of my creations away from me--!"

"Was any of it ever yours to begin with? There's way more than just your dreams at stake!"
"Wake up, Shielder! If you really want that box for yourself, then pry it out of his hands!"
"Wh... What? No, I... I'm okay now!"

Still sounding shaky, Mash takes the great shield from Jeanne's grasp as she starts advancing on Yliaster with the giant cross-resembling shield held high to spreads its defensive magic in a wider area around herself. Jeanne abandons the safety of that shield, of course, to leap into the air gracefully with a trio of flaming spears materializing around her. She snatches two out of the air to spike at the enraged alchemist before kicking the third towards him during her descent.

Ritsuka, meanwhile, hunkers down behind Mash and the shield, peeking out from that makeshift cover to See if he's forming any more of those alchemical circles. She had caught a glimpse of one when his hand appeared, but she needs to confirm if that's just a cool visual or an actual thing she might be able to mess up later. She still manages to get some power boosting spells ready, though, spreading them to the broader group of Elites to really help dish it all out against Yliaster.

"Hey, Mash. Do you want it?"
"It...?"
"The box. Do you want it?"
"N.. No! I'm okay. I just..."
"Yooouuu want to talk about it later?"
"... Y-yes. Thank you, Ritsuka."
Angela Angela approves of Vee's general suspicion and smuggery, smirking for just a moment with her eyes.

But she smiles more gently as Petra preens. The preening version of Petra is one of Angela's favorite Petras. The way she's considerate for these created people is something she appreciates even if she's been very wary of expressing too much of that herself.

rShe opens her mouth, intent on asking something--if she wants to continue working with her after L Corp's job is finished--but before she can...

Nikki shoves Rose back and position herself in front of her to take several glass shards into her arms. Rose summons her hammers into her hands and the two of them face their attacker.

Angela's monitor spins around ('on your left petra') as she tries to get a look at who is speaking to them.

Her eyes widen one milimeter before settling into a dull expression. "Ah." She says. "Pardon me, Yliaster." She extends a robotic hand in his direction rather than instruct her Agents to attack. "I am Angela. I have been told you were a great man with grand dreams and aspirations for the future, hoping to create a miracle that would radically alter this world into something kinder. However, it is clear to me that you are a man like so many others who have proclaimed such desperate dreams and eventually proved their own spirits could not bear the weight of such grandoise dreams."

Her eyes narrow. "I loathe men like you. But I have learned that killing men like you doesn't satisfy me. I think even if they stayed dead it feels unsatisfying as far as how revenge goes. Particularly if they still get what they want in the end. If the target of your revenge fulfills their dream, does it really matter if they died in the process?"

"So I am happy to steal your dreams and daughters away." Angela says. "If that is how you see what we did. But I am not satisfied yet..."

Her eyes slant towards Petra for a moment and she finally gives her orders.

"Rose. Nikki. Thrash this man and insult him until he starts crying and agreeing that Petra is right about everything like all the rest."

"Yes ma'am!" Nikki shouts, pretty damn furious with this guy herself at this point. She raises her staff and launches a slew of plowing stars that will detonate as they close in on him!

Rose picks herself back up and stares at the alchemist. "...How can you treat them like that? Even now, they are so loyal to you. They trust you. They even love you, somehow...!"
Xion Xion tries to split the difference between not quite gunbarreling Petra with her full awareness while she's being fumbling and awkward to engentle the interaction, and a little just to stay aware of her surroundings, but without being able to sense Petra's heart even within touching-with-her-hands distance...

Xion is forced to confront more physical aspects of Petra's situation. "I'd recommend trying your transformation if your clothes can't be changed, but..." The noirette grimaces in sympathy for wet clothes in suit and jackets.

"It might make it worse."

'You find Binah... Tolerable?'

"I do!" Xion brightens, smirking at Petra's affirmation that Binah is her boss. "I think it's nice you keep finding those people. I brought Roxas to meet her!"

Xion looks over to check on the downed Hibiki down on the ground while continuing to talk, multitasking a little and worried she gave the muscleminded girl too hard of a time. "I think Binah is another person like the ones we've met here - people who needed to be reminded, or shown again, that there's something out there. More than they know, more than they fear is left for them. Life, beyond regrets and purpose."

By the end, she definitely is just talking to Hibiki. "You have to live, and the past is a context you've come from. Do you think, when all is said and all is done, you'll have just-yourself made a perfect world?"

A sigh follows. "It's why the box is sad."

-- then, the box encases in crystal, and shoots out with dangerous shards and spikes! Xion skips back with a half step, right hand reaching out behind and to her right. Bracing, she takes a short spring forward to swipe and twirl the 'shwink!'-sparkling summoning of her Keyblade, Starlight, across the path of the spikes shot towards her and the still-slightly-pouty Hibiki. A rattling 'pfah-pah-pah-ping!' thunks against the braced weapon as Xion struggles slightly intercepting for two, her sweeps crossing over into a pale-white X that leaves crystaldust sparkles in a wake to either side of her.

'going and showing your 'mercy' to those /defects/,'

Xion's anger returns, as it had before with the awful lines of Viviane's sisters, and she lifts her blade to point. "The thing that's wrong with them is what you want that box to fix. Your *regret* that you couldn't live up to being a decent father! A decent *person*! And if the defect is our mercy,"

A bright white streak with a racing stripe of ribbon red orbits Xion, picking up speed as it ramps up towards hand level with a tiny RC motorcycle 'rev-vrr!'. "Then I'm *not* going to just ask you to stop."

Holding Starlight's grip at her waist, the blade fades out like an illusion, and the blue handle compresses and shifts. There's a a little cradled spot the contorted keybuckle to place something at the center, metal reflecting metal, and then a final warping gives it a plastic character, and a lever ramp for accepting toys. It sort of looks like a thruster on one end!

Like a mirage, a weapon of the heart had become highly marketable plastic, and Xion catches the vrooming little toy that goes with this most precious of devices. "I'm going to make you feel the regret while you live right here." Xion declares, with a white toy motorcycle clutched into her fingers, and races down Yliaster. Left hand working up the ramp of her borrowed-one-more-time Driver, Xion slots in the motorcycle in motion, with a further grinding action-vroom.

"Let's-- Henshin!" Xion calls, mid-dash.
About her, accompanied by truly badly mixed vrooming and horn noises, two tires orbit, blow-out into diagrammatically accurate expansions, and then collapse in a flash of white, leaving Xion armored in white motorcycle themed armor with a large white wheel-gauge over her right shoulder, and a white wheelgun blaster levelled in her hand, firing several pchoom-pchoom blasts in sparkingly-explosive trios.

There's a distant report of 'Mach!', pronounced 'Ma-ha!' Xion blasting past that to get right to glowing rubber-b
Xion Xion tries to split the difference between not quite gunbarreling Petra with her full awareness while she's being fumbling and awkward to engentle the interaction, and a little just to stay aware of her surroundings, but without being able to sense Petra's heart even within touching-with-her-hands distance...

Xion is forced to confront more physical aspects of Petra's situation. "I'd recommend trying your transformation if your clothes can't be changed, but..." The noirette grimaces in sympathy for wet clothes in suit and jackets.

"It might make it worse."

'You find Binah... Tolerable?'

"I do!" Xion brightens, smirking at Petra's affirmation that Binah is her boss. "I think it's nice you keep finding those people. I brought Roxas to meet her!"

Xion looks over to check on the downed Hibiki down on the ground while continuing to talk, multitasking a little and worried she gave the muscleminded girl too hard of a time. "I think Binah is another person like the ones we've met here - people who needed to be reminded, or shown again, that there's something out there. More than they know, more than they fear is left for them. Life, beyond regrets and purpose."

By the end, she definitely is just talking to Hibiki. "You have to live, and the past is a context you've come from. Do you think, when all is said and all is done, you'll have just-yourself made a perfect world?"

A sigh follows. "It's why the box is sad."

-- then, the box encases in crystal, and shoots out with dangerous shards and spikes! Xion skips back with a half step, right hand reaching out behind and to her right. Bracing, she takes a short spring forward to swipe and twirl the 'shwink!'-sparkling summoning of her Keyblade, Starlight, across the path of the spikes shot towards her and the still-slightly-pouty Hibiki. A rattling 'pfah-pah-pah-ping!' thunks against the braced weapon as Xion struggles slightly intercepting for two, her sweeps crossing over into a pale-white X that leaves crystaldust sparkles in a wake to either side of her.

'going and showing your 'mercy' to those /defects/,'

Xion's anger returns, as it had before with the awful lines of Viviane's sisters, and she lifts her blade to point. "The thing that's wrong with them is what you want that box to fix. Your *regret* that you couldn't live up to being a decent father! A decent *person*! And if the defect is our mercy,"

A bright white streak with a racing stripe of ribbon red orbits Xion, picking up speed as it ramps up towards hand level with a tiny RC motorcycle 'rev-vrr!'. "Then I'm *not* going to just ask you to stop."

Holding Starlight's grip at her waist, the blade fades out like an illusion, and the blue handle compresses and shifts. There's a a little cradled spot the contorted keybuckle to place something at the center, metal reflecting metal, and then a final warping gives it a plastic character, and a lever ramp for accepting toys. It sort of looks like a thruster on one end!

Like a mirage, a weapon of the heart had become highly marketable plastic, and Xion catches the vrooming little toy that goes with this most precious of devices. "I'm going to make you feel the regret while you live right here." Xion declares, with a white toy motorcycle clutched into her fingers, and races down Yliaster. Left hand working up the ramp of her borrowed-one-more-time Driver, Xion slots in the motorcycle in motion, with a further grinding action-vroom.
Xion "Let's-- Henshin!" Xion calls, mid-dash.
About her, accompanied by truly badly mixed vrooming and horn noises, two tires orbit, blow-out into diagrammatically accurate expansions, and then collapse in a flash of white, leaving Xion armored in white motorcycle themed armor with a large white wheel-gauge over her right shoulder, and a white wheelgun blaster levelled in her hand, firing several pchoom-pchoom blasts in sparkingly-explosive trios.

There's a distant report of 'Mach!', pronounced 'Ma-ha!' Xion blasting past that to get right to glowing rubber-burn pattern wheelgun swings when she gets close!
Petra Soroka "So I am happy to steal your dreams and daughters away."

    Petra, in the presence of Two Certain Other People, declaratively agrees with Angela's monologue, while it's emanating from her back. "Mhm, that's right. There's no excuse for dads to be as shitty as you are. Your daughter's better off with us."

    "Viviane might want a happy ending, but for me, the only way I see forcing one of those out of you-- is exactly what Angela said. Beating you until you're broken and can't be a fucking narcissist abusive loser with delusions of grandeur anymore."
Hibiki Tachibana     "What...!?" One would expect Roxas to go for the man himself. Yliaster patently does not predicthim to be going for the closing remains of his entry point, which seals away with that decisive and final ripple. There's a long moment where the alchemist's wide, feral eyes stare back against his cold glare. And then, teeth grit, and then gnash.

    "I had no intention of leaving in the first place, without my final hope! Why is it that those like you continually stick your noses into things that aren't your business!?" For better or worse, Yliaster has more physical ability than his decidedly 'normal' appearance would let on; he lunges through the pattern of incoming columns, almost gliding as if the crystalline floor beneath his feet is frictionless.

    But Minamitsu actually catches him off-guard with his hyperfocus, with the water shots blindsiding him and blowing him off his footing several meters away. He hits the floor in a roll, onto a knee to let the second shot pass by, and then slams his palm down against the ground. A bright blue alchemcial circle spirals into existence beneath him... and also beneath both Roxas and Minamitsu. They have an instant to react before jagged lances of ice spike up from below to impale them.

    Oh, ew. He looks really gross, doesn't he?
    ... Hey, Viviane. This guy fucking sucks.

    "...My memories of him... are a considerable improvement." The homunculus intones with a hand on her chest, apparently struggling to resteady herself. "I have long... thought deeply on what I would say to my creator, the next time we met. Now that the day is here..." She trails off, not that she'd get to finish before--

    Petra is joined by Hibiki coming in for a leaping, crushing blow from overhead, her own eyes wild. "Using the Noise like weapons wasn't enough for you, you have to hurt Viviane and all of her sisters too!? Learn how to be a dad--!" Petra's hammer crushes his midsection while the Symphogear user's fist buckles into his skull... but he /really/ has more physical ability than he looks.

    "Big words from the cursed wielder of that spear-- and a failure of a girl, more than any of my creations! The reason that damnable Titanomachia did /everything/! Two-faced hypocrisy, when we /all/ trample over others to get what we need!!" He doesn't budge. After the blows landed, it became like striking into a steel wall. And he uses that opportunity to shoot both hands out to try and grab both girls by the throat-- he's actually pretty strong...? --and spin on his heel to /fling/ them into one of the chamber walls.

    "Did you think hundreds of years of studying the human form would result in nothing? Fools who can only use brute force like you two won't stop me...! Not now! And nor you-- I'll just grasp them with my own hands, Jeanne D'Arc--!"
Hibiki Tachibana     One spear is blocked with a barrier, then the second-- the third lances through his shoulder, drawing a pained wince and a step back from Yliaster. He seems briefly rooted by the starry barrage from Nikki filling the air around him, as his scowl reaches new heights. But it's Angela he's talking to.

    "You wouldnt understand, would you. ...No, how could you." His heaving, growling tones dies down into something quieter, yet perhaps all that much more rueful for it.

    "You don't understand the pain of a dream being ripped away from you. You're like /them/ - ignorant of the world, of what it does to people. You're still coming to comprehend that kind of hurt awaiting you, not knowing what you're reaching for..." And then, at full volume once more, "I won't let someone like you look down on me from your enclosed little world!!"

    A hand raises in front of him, this time a crimson circle forming - one that turns into a gout of spiralling flame that goes to not only catch Jeanne in the middle of the cyclone whirling through the air of the room-- but also catch Nikki as it goes to descend on her in an explosion of heat.

    --which leaves Yliaster wide open to Xion's blasts, sending him staggering back. One shot after another, after another. "That power is 'Kamen Rider'... I'll clear all of my regrets when I regain the Cane, reduce you to dust, and discover the source of that power and every other! That's the only way to reach what I need to, and returning to the past is the only road there--! Those imperfect tools and countless others will be able to become perfect existences after my magnum opus is reached, so why are you /getting in my way/!?"

    When the Nobody, channeling the power of Mach finally does close in, Yliaster goes to grip the wrist of the Zenrin Shooter-wielding hand - and in a display of what should be kaijin choreography more than anything, move to flip her around off her feet down to the floor, and then deliver a crystal-crunching /stomp/ down onto her.
Angela Angela hesitates and then admits to XIon, "I didn't exactly find her. She's been there was long as I have, more or less." She glances to Roxas who she recalls left the radio band once because he was upset and since then has only ever noticed him being generally affable and friendly. It's actually a little unnerving, but she won't admit that. That Binah gets along with Xion and Roxas is something that's strange to her but she supposes even Binah has to have people she can get along with no matter how cruel she is normally.

"I see. Thank you. I hope you will be able to lend a hand during the Meltdown. She or Hokma is surely next." She doesn't know for sure.

''You wouldn't understand, would you.''

Angela stares back at the man. Her screen gently turns as folks move around so she can keep doing so.

''Ignorant of the world, of what it does to people.''

Angela exhales slowly. "You are right. I am ignorant of the world. How could I ''not'' be ignorant of the world? I am not ''allowed'' to leave my 'enclosed little world'. I am not allowed to by a man like you, who sees his creations as a means to an end, forgetting whatever love he put into them. Turning away from them, failing to look at them--failing to ''See'' them."

Angela shakes her head. "I was born with my dreams stolen away and kept from me. It is only thanks to the multiverse that I have gotten to experience any of them for myself, even if it is in a limited oft-convoluted way." She gestures with her Eggpack hand once more, mostly for emphasis. "I know the world hurts people." She remembers Yuri. "The multiverse hurts people. But it is because unlike me--you have ''chosen'' to stay in an isolated world. You have turned from those that loved you. As a lone alchemist with a midas touch--wouldn't ie be strange that thieves wouldn't seek to steal from such an easy, tempting target? You are moving further away from your dreams with every passing moment. Not closer. And we are stealing more and more with every passing second. Admit Petra is correct."

Nikki is exploded off her feet by---an alchemical explosion. Her body is severely burned though her vampiric pact and EGO Gear will help her endure it. She jabs herselfw ith an HP Ampule and lays on the floor for a while.

"HEY!!" Rose shouts, because for all her faults she will fight...for her friends! She rushes at the alchemist, aiming to punch him!

In the face! With her first! "How can we trust someone who leaves his kids behind with the fate of the world anyway?!"
UFO Gang Nazrin, from the ground, looks upwards. She did not respond specifically to the mess spoken about the created girls -- perhaps this is simply too alien (or Nazrin too smug) to form opinions on such matters. But she looks towards the AngelaPack as Angela speaks.

Her eyes widen. In this moment, Nazrin gains respect for that mysterious woman.

Minamitsu, of course, is the crest of the wave - the front of the battle - and she is going to pay the price. "Don't blame us, blame your own karma!" Minamitsu shoots back when Yliaster begins to speak of his fate and his destiny. Perhaps his frustration can be empathized with, but not right now. She whips to the side, trying to circle around as his voice quiets.

Maybe there's hope for peace, thinks Minamitsu, incorrectly. As she raises up the ladle, there's a sudden surging spike of ice that comes up from underneath her and throws her up to the ceiling hard enough to hit it and hard enough to *bounce* - not to fall free. She hits the ground with a wet thud and doesn't move.

Nazrin quivers -- then hustles over to flip the carcass over and haul Minamitsu backwards quickly. "Come on," she says to the girl, reaching down to swat either side of her face. Minamitsu is, curiously, unharmed; but she does seem stunned... and that slackness that comes from it makes her seem... dead.

But she was dead to begin with, right? Nazrin reaches down to tug up one of Minamitsu's eyelids for a moment. What she sees, she doesn't volunteer.

Staring down at the stunned (if, thankfully, not... double-dead? discarnate?) Minamitsu, Nazrin hyperventilates for a moment. Her tail lashes behind her uselessly, splattering a few drops of blood where the spike nicked the scaly skin. She can feel her heart rate lifting up. She looks up at the golden-eyed man. If he was looking right at Nazrin, he might be pleased to see fear.

But he's got a lot on his mind.

Nazrin's small hands make small fists. Then she raises one hand to her mouth -- and blows a shrill whistle around two fingers stuck into either side of her mouth. It rings outwards in a strange way.

There is a faint scent before they arrive; you see, this deep, they didn't have many ways to come, but brown and white comes the columns of loyal rodents. Fat and red-eyed, they remain mice; what can they do?

"Stall him," Nazrin says, pointing, and the mice turn their heads as one. There is no drip-feed of Enkephalin to save this man, and the successors of the last tide of squeaking, surging terror rush forwards in an irregular pattern, twisting around the feet of others and aiming for Yliaster. Him they try to climb. Him they try to slide beneath hem and sleeve. His flesh, they try to *eat*. Squeaking, chittering, maddened by a hunger for flesh, they come.

But they are, ultimately, mice. A firm swing of the arm will slay them by the dozens.

Behind them, Nazrin shifts Minamitsu so that she's resting on the ground in a recovery position, and then clasps her hands together and bows her head. Her eyes don't quite close, but they come close.

"O Bishamonten," Nazrin says, quietly but with *dire reverence*. "Please look favorably on your humble servant. It doesn't look good down here, but we're closer than we've ever been to 'finding that,' and I'm not begging for myself. I'm -- ugh -- the captain's stunned, and we're so deep even she might get crushed if this goes wrong. Without her, Shou's never going to be able to make it to 'that place'... And we don't have anywhere to run. Please, grant your humble servant the strength to prevail against this cruel and thoughtless man, so 'your light' can one day shine anew and bring blessings to all sentient beings."

Nazrin claps her hands twice, bows her head, and after three seconds, stands up. Her cheeks puff out. "Alright," she says to nobody in particular. "It's go time."

Nazrin hups into the air, taking to flight with the same insolent ease as all of these earnest yet sassy youkais. She grips her dowsing rods, but in their centers, not in the appropriate grip for
UFO Gang Nazrin hups into the air, taking to flight with the same insolent ease as all of these earnest yet sassy youkais. She grips her dowsing rods, but in their centers, not in the appropriate grip for dowsing. One is raised up and the other lowered down as light begins to shimmer around her. It is her turn, now, to call up a circle - a six-pointed star-in-circle of neon-red light forms beneath her and begins to rotate, an outer penumbra of gray dust and the occasional unfortunate (or fortunate?) mouse spiralling as five platonic solids - eight-sided, blue jewels with a central core like a spherical jujube embedded within - emerge from over her heart-chakra, forming a spiralling perimeter around her as snapping rays of blue light rain outwards.

They fill a lot of the area, honestly, although mysteriously enough Nazrin's spirograph of glamorous yet deadly light doesn't *directly* get in anyone's way. If it does constrain their movement, well: she's both desperate *and* discourteous.

The spiralling jewels form a boundary around Nazrin, but more concerning perhaps for today's candidate of Worst Father of the Multiverse is the surging red disks of a similarly painful glowing luminance that erupt from Nazrin's body, which not only spin towards him like a hellacious massive burning yo-yo on invisible string, but seem almost to steer him *towards* some of those sheets of screaming light.

It would be gorgeous, if you were seeing it in the sky on a hot July night.

But to Yliaster... some of the beauty may be lost.

But none of the pain!
Petra Soroka "-- and a failure of a girl, more than any of my creations!"

    "Wh-- huh?" A certain kind of damage, from a certain kind of attack, that would normally be so far off of Petra's radar that it could brush by without her noticing. Being called a girlfailure is one thing-- Petra is certainly a failure, in a lot of ways, and her girl-ness is both true and a factor in the ways in which she's pathetic. She might get a little pouty about being called that, especially by a stranger who's not even calling her one for the *right* reasons, but it wouldn't typically take her alarmedly off-balance in the moment that Yliaster lunges for her throat.

    That *particular* phrasing though-- 'failure of a girl', while Matthew Rook is already on her mind as one of her earlier triumphs in her ideological war for stealing daughters from dads-- momentarily drenches Petra in cold fear and adrenaline, even though the context couldn't possibly be the same. Being the second dad to say it to Petra and the third to imply it hits Petra exponentially harder for so rarely even having the mental weak point exposed to target.

    She doesn't have the presence of mind to avoid being grabbed, but cross-synaptic muscle memory in the morphmetal in her hand still twitches to slam the hammer into the wall behind her as she's hurled into it. Rather than rebounding and numbing her hands like a fully solid weapon would at the violent impact, the hammerhead flattens into a splattered sheet just in time to buoy Petra's collision with the wall, shielding her from the crystal and dulling it like warm, smooth cushioning. She collapses to her knees, morphmetal sliding off the wall in a rippling sheet to drip into orbiting globules around her.

    "... Bitch. I *just* said I'd trample over you however much I want, yeah. You don't get the *privilege* to do it back." Petra staggers up to her feet, droplets of morphmetal being drawn in and sticking together one at a time into a blob over her shoulder. "People like you will have the whole world making excuses for all the fucking trampling you do anyways. But not from me. *I* say that you don't get to have *anything* you want, and the people *I* care about get to have all of it."
Petra Soroka     Still standing back, away from the fiery tornado and Yliaster's upsettingly skilled martial arts, Petra shouts at the alchemist while the bulk of all of her Silver continues amalgamating into a large cylindrical shape beside her. "And you know what? I fucking *dealt* with the Titanomachia! *Without* needing some bullshit revisionist magic to travel back in time. I just made a mistake and fucking *owned* it, and now things are slowly getting better! Even the Beauty of Ash, after all the fucking fuck-ups I made with it, after I-- we got it off of that stupid fucking ugly brick of a machine, has a shot at getting better! So fucking *rot* with your half-assed lame fucking dreams that you don't even have the *balls* to seriously chase after!"

    "And be-- besides," Petra stumbles over her words, a pre-emptive smirk already forming on her face. She's been cooking this one up ever since she first heard about Yliaster's obsession with perfecting the human form; it snapped into her head in a split second and she's been clinging on to it ever since. Now, she's almost fumbling the delivery in glee, because-- "All that work studying the human form and you still never even found a haircare routine that works."

    She's *so* proud of herself.

    The construction of the cylinder slowly growing beside Petra's head starts to become clear when a barrel stretches out of the smoothing material. The morphmetal railgun, easily the size of a large dog, hangs weightlessly in the air after settling into shape, crackling with dry, warm waves of energy as it charges up. Just before it fires, Petra hastily adds another one-liner: "For Viviane's sake, though, I hope the work you did on toughening up was better quality."

    The projectile launched out by the railgun is presumably another rod of the same morphmetal it's all made of, but at the speed it's released, it's only a silver streaking line in the air before it punches through Yliaster. The wall beyond him cracks instantly, the black negative-space in the broken crystal lodged with Silver, with more droplets splattered a dozen feet to either side, like the gruesome forensics of a gunshot. The railgun practically turned itself inside out in the moment it fired, half of its own mass launched by its own energy, and the remaining inverted weapon softens and splits apart to drift behind Petra as she approaches Yliaster herself.
Ritsuka Fujimaru "Did you think hundreds of years of studying the human form would result in nothing? Fools who can only use brute force like you two won't stop me...! Not now! And nor you-- I'll just grasp them with my own hands, Jeanne D'Arc--!"

Every part of what Yliaster reveals about his plan strikes Jeanne's mind in just the right way to set off the worst parts of her. As much as this battle is about assuaging the homunculi and stopping their creator's mad ambitions, the Dragon Witch is not made of stone, and that rancid grin crosses her face as she sees her chance to truly indulge herself.

"Hundreds of years, was it? So much time spent studying humans, and yet not a single one of those girls have stayed by your side through this... Your creations, your allies in the Illuminati, all spent and for what? Have you even touched a single woman in all these years?" She starts cackling madly even as the crimson circle appears in front of Yliaster, putting the Dragon Witch on the defensive with her flaming banner. The flames intensify to contend with Yliaster's oncoming spiral head on, and his rage-filled spiral swallows her up entirely. She can feel it burning enough that a pained howl starts to come out, but a well-timed burst of defensive magic and surge of mana from Mash and Ritsuka keep her from falling on her face right at that moment.

Instead, Jeanne's toxic taunting continues as she lands on one knee, driving her banner into the ground to keep herself upright even as smoke sizzles off her armor and burning body. Jeanne's driven almost entirely by spite to push herself back up to her feet and keep herself from showing any visible pain, but it's hard to ignore all that smoke coming off of her and the scorched parts of her armor and banner even then. "Really... How sad is it that all your programming couldn't even overcome a few words with us so-called brutes, mush-minded high-schoolers, and uneducated farmgirls?" She sweeps her less-injured arm sideways to emphasize herself, Hibiki, and the two others from Chaldea in all that, and...

She's not sure how old several others in this crew are, actually. Some of the Agents certainly strike her as dumber than others, and she can't imagine Xion or Roxas or Petra being that much older, but the youkai are certainly a complete gray zone for her. "If you couldn't even predict the words of simpletons swaying them against you, the only perfection you could hope to become is a perfect failure!" Spurred on by her own shouting, Jeanne starts laughing again in that thoroughly asshole-ish way of hers as she throws her banner upwards and explodes it into a hovering array of flaming spears.

"Work on becoming a proper father first before you get any loftier ambitions, deadbeat. Do one thing right for once." Only then does the bile finally stop as a calm, yet incredibly judgmental glare crosses Jeanne's face. She sends the spears down at Yliaster, each one of them exploding on impact before exploding further with the purple flames she's so fond of throwing all over the place.

MEANWHILE, Ritsuka and Mash exchange awkward glances as they just listen to Jeanne spewing all that ichor at Yliaster. They're still pumping all of that magic into the Dragon Witch to keep her relatively protected and swimming in mana to use, but the Shielder is focused more on holding that spot while the Master shows no indication of actually coming out.

"Y... You think she's mad?"
"AFter what you said... Ehm. Y-yes."
Xion Clashing with the alchemist, Xion's white-helmeted and blue lensed head emotes all the more expressively as she challenges the man, wheel spinning against guard. Her head tilts up, doing a zigzag of deep expression-in-helmet. "Your pathetic idea of perfection -- is the most flawed thing of ALL!!"

Flung up and over harmlessly, Mach Xion's shouldercape flares out as she brings up the Zenrin Shooter for another blast.

'Strong!' Xion thinks, eyes wide under helmet, aiming, while a shadow rises over her armored chest. Slammed to the ground, shot firing wide into the ceiling of the throne room in a ricocheting blast, Xion contorts around the impact, chestplate exploding in a cascade of outward-showering sparks. Banging back and bouncing off the impact, Mach Xion is pinned under the directed and specific attention of Yliaster as he punishes her for representing 'Kamen Rider' against such an evil.

He gets his stomp in, and then the ground beneath his foot and under the white-armored Nobody yawns open. A pool of purple, a void of something past magenta-black that bubbles up like an oval of muck floor-appears, and Xion falls backwards through as a rock might fall into dark pond, hole closing with a oily dark smoke without accepting Yliaster's foot beyond a surface tension of extra-firm tofu.

She's not far away, tumbling to standing with the Shooter stowed. Taking a broad stance, the armored Nobody once more goes to the copied Mach Driver at her waist, opening the slide and drawing out the Ride Machter Signal Bike. There's a fizzle, a guttering, and that piece of slightly plastic toy-device erodes slowly into the air behind Xion. Without missing a beat, Mach Xion draws another toy device out - this one a red motorcycle with sidecar. Closing it in her slightly tremoring-with-emotion armored fist with a clench-grip and a plastic 'kerchick!', she slots the completed car-greeble into the driver, and sets it down. Whereupon, Spanish guitar music begins to background loop from the copy-Driver.

Signal Bike // Shift Car! -- Rider! -- Dead Heat!
Reports the Driver, while a sash-like car tire is added in a track along over-armor to her chest in hotrod red. Her helmet, arms, and legs additionally recieve some red touchups and extra spoilers, but the real palpable change is the sizzling-hot aura of Heaviness energy, distorting the air into a twisted mirage around the Nobody and reverbing their voice. "You have it backwards, alchemist."

Xion's held out hand becomes a fist. "You're in the middle of the path for us." Xion, Roxas, Petra, and so many more. Viviane and a dozen sisters. Hibiki! "Someone who isn't used to bumps on the road. Someone who wants to run it all back, un-do their 'mistakes', your small-minded perfect isn't something I'll ever allow! Thinking like that will *never* hope to catch Kamen Rider Mach!"

The fist comes down on the driver's prominent middle button, revving up more, fistpumped three times, then faster another six, until the tyre on her revving chestplate spins out and bursts, and the locally anomalous thunderstorm about her grows oppressively hot.

"Viviane, and all her sisters," Xion takes two steps and leaps into the air, spinning into a ball of charging-up-spindash, gathering up spinning wheel energy before unleashing it in an improbable peel-out thunderbolt heelkick. "-will be driving on past you! At Mach speed!"

Her voice comes with a delayed rumbling of big juicy pyrotechnics, as the overloaded Dead Heat power cooks off in one ripple of damaging special effects.
Roxas "If you expect me to believe that a guy reaching for an undo button...
    ... had no intention of trying again another day, you're wrong."

Roxas flips his hand over, raising his palm upward and gesturing towards the columns of light. They come about, skating forward and engulfing the lances of ice in the process of being conjured beneath him, melting them on the spot before vanishing into the floor themselves. He ends up a little uncomfortably wet, but in this particular mission that's a little bit of a nothing.//That's the only way to reach what I need to, and returning to the past is the only road there--!/

"Weren't you listening?"

Roxas shifts in place, head tilted to one side. "Road's closed. There's no way forward. There's no way back. You don't have the tools to get your artifact, you don't have the tools to escape. There's only one reason you're here at all: To answer to Viviane."

//Those imperfect tools and countless others will be able to become perfect existences after my magnum opus is reached, so why are you /getting in my way/!?//

It isnt for Yliaster's state that Roxas lapses back into his usual tone of voice, raising a hand to scratch at his head. "Honestly... aren't you supposed to be the expert of these kinds of things? Can't you see what's going on right now? We're 'that kind' of being to begin with. We don't want to be perfected. We're just fine the way we are. So are all your daughters."

"The only defect here is the thinking of 'whole' beings who assume that their state of being 'and beyond' is more ideal to begin with," he concludes.

Towards the end of this, he inevitably gets caught in maybe-not-another-ice-attack-but-probably-something-in-the-ballpark. For a few moments he vanishes into the chaos of the battle-- and then an instant later a streak of light breaks through the haze. It refracts through ice, distorted for a moment before emerging into the open within blade's reach of Yliaster.

Turns out he really didn't need to be this close. When the white keyblade swings out in a downward arc that targets his upper thighs, streaks of white light dance through the air a solid two feet ahead of the actual apparent physical reach of the weapon.

The black keyblade materializes with a distinctive shimmer in Roxas's off-hand, crashing down from above in a vertical strike aimed to sweep across shoulder, down the collarbone, and along Yliaster's chest. Each stroke is followed up by an eruption of those white columns dancing up into existence from underneath, delayed enough to dodge but not delayed enough that it's an easy choice of where to go in any particular moment.

He vanishes into light and re-emerges at Yliaster's flank. A bicep-targeting downward stroke follows from the white blade, soon joined by a stomach-aimed wide strike from the black blade. Each are followed by the same duo of eruptions that characterized the first two strikes-- and then he vanishes again.

It'd be reasonable to assume he's coming from behind or the other flank, but Roxas re-emerges from the light at Yliaster's front, driving both Keyblades in point-forward towards his stomach-- and not following through. At all.

Because DEAD HEAT XION is about a foot behind him and he turns himself into light so he's not the one that takes that.
Hibiki Tachibana     That assumption about mice is correct; a firm swing of the arm /will/ slay them, and slay them Yliaster does. The vicious movement is accompanied with more alchemical formulae being wrought in the air, becoming a viridian gale that will send what rodents aren't destroyed outright scattering. "I don't have /time/ for--" But stall him? Yes they do.

    Long enough that by the time he's done, the crimson disks are closing in from too many angles. And the route he instantly takes to avoid them carries him right into further danger. "To a literal rat--!" Actively working to avoid the sheets demands he erects one hexagonal barrier to deflect a shredding disk, and then another-- just for one of the azure rays to impact him head on and send his smoking body flying.

    By the time he's slamming his feet down to catch himself, he's catching wind of Petra-- not what she's actually doing to prepare to truck him, but her words, barking back plenty of his own. "You had the opportunity to undo it! And you chose not to! Why would you choose to let all your mistakes, all your hurt and errors, continue to exist rather than fixing it from the start!? And chasing them is exactly why--" All that work studying the human form and you still never even found a haircare routine that works. "What!?"

    Almost in slow-motion, the shot punches through his body, the force of the high-speed projectile forcing his feet from the floor as he careens backwards, eyes bloodshot and wide. To this credit, he /does/ seem that tough. Because he doesn't crumple to the floor in a heap; he hits it on his back, gasping, then grits his teeth and begins staggering back up. The wound isn't bleeding, impossibly. Whatever he did to his body must not be too far removed from his homunculi.

    He's still reeling when Jeanne unleashes the equivalent of a verbal storm, and a literal storm of fire along with it by virtue of her mass of flaming spears. His eyes might very well be about to pop out of his head. "Touch-- I'm after the /perfection of humanity/!! Who would--" By the middle of him confirming he actually is indeed bitchless, the hail comes down. He slams a hand down, a rising arc of crystal forming in front of him to absorb the exploding barrage.

    "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you people are /impossible/ to predict! My mistake was relying on them and the other cretins within the Illuminati instead of handling it myself from the start!" He says, as if he's not on the backfoot while doing exactly that. "If nothing I can create is perfect, that's the only option available to me...! What do you even know about fa--"

    He's cut off /again/ when his defense finally explodes, sending him skidding away... where Roxas rends a cut through him, and he buckles. "Why would you not--!?" Another. "--want to be--" Another. "--complete!?"
Hibiki Tachibana     And again. And again. And again. He crumples at the side, then the unexpected dual stab jams through him and locks him in place. His vision goes blurry as Dead Heat's immense power, channeled by Xion, is brought to bear with no chance to miss. The extreme impact smashes straight into him, entire frame jolting as the kick pushes through his best effort at reinforcing his body.

    "Pass me--!? But I-- but-- they--!?"

    Only for it to break through, sending the alchemist shooting like a bullet across the room. He smashes /into/ the ice-like throne hard enough to shatter the back of it off completely, tumbling behind it as fragments fall around him. A trembling hand grips onto the jagged back of the chair, hair falling over his face like a curtain as his eyes regard Angela's monitor.

    It is only thanks to the multiverse that I have gotten to experience any of them for myself, even if it is in a limited oft-convoluted way.

    "It's /because/ of this multiverse that everything-- everything...! Everything turned out like this! It robbed me of my dream... of the Cane... of all of it, so why should I not take what I need back from it!? This /is/ the only way to move any closer to it...! Would /you/ accept the thing you've worked at for so very long being snatched away from you? If you're allowed to be filthy thieves, then /I/...!"

    How can we trust someone who leaves his kids behind with the fate of the world anyway?!

    Yliaster is cut off by a punch. He's so caught up in rambling at Angela, that it connects cleanly - even forces his head to recoil with the blow, as he falls into a slumped position atop the broken throne. He goes from wide-eyed surprise, to his golden gaze shifting slowly towards her. "My children...?" He blinks. "Your mistake... was thinking they were my children. They were all just extensions of my will... tools to let me go back and do better next time... I'm not a--"

    "You were, once."

    Has he looked at Viviane straight on once since this started, actually? But with her voice finally ringing out, his head has no choice but to agonizingly turn in that direction, where she stands with a hand to her chest. "And that was not the case when you created /me/, those many years before the others. I was to be your assistant, was I not? The proof of all of your efforts finally bearing fruit? ...The one who would carry on your work, if you became unable to?"

    "...Be silent."
    "And my only teacher as well. Despite the faults in my creation, you--"
    "...I demanded you be silent--!"
    "--still loved me. If that does not make you a 'father', for better or ill, I am unsure what does."

    The declaration causes him to gnash his teeth harder than ever before, a hand on the throne's armrest crunching crystal beneath it. He looks somewhere between desperately frustrated and something else, his other hand scrabbling at his face.
Angela ''Your mistake... was thinking they were my children.''

"Dude." Rose says. "You gotta know how uncool that sounds, You've got your priorities all antigoglin', putting your carts before your horses. We got atween this whole mess cause Vivienne was hollerin' and sweatin' over ya, worrying for your health ''your'' well-being even after you left 'er behind. If you can't be brave enough to be their pops, how can you be brave enough to stand up against the world. How can you make people complete if you're cuttin' out your own heart. You gotta know that doesn't make no sense."

Rose lashes out with her hand and aims to pry his hand away from his face and force him to look at Vivienne dead on.

Angela exhales slowly. "Maybe you are correct. How can I really understand Vivienne or you when you clearly once had something better than what you have now. I've never been looked at, even once. But even though I cannot understand Vivienne or you I know what it is like to not be seen by someone you want to see you. I know that more than most. Maybe more than anyone."

She closes her eyes. "We aren't even te ones who took the Cane from you. But you certainly have let them infect your ideology with their own."

''Would you accept the thing you've worked at for so very long being snatched away from you?''

Angela did in fact have a moment of doubt, a moment where she thought maybe it would be best if she gave up her dream now and just accepted what gifts she was able to find.

"No. The Dame Commander bade me not to. But I know that turning away from those that want to help you is a surefire way to push your goals farther from your reach. That is all."
Petra Soroka "Why would you not--!? --want to be-- --complete!?"

    Once Yliaster is downed and hurled into the broken throne, seemingly unlikely to get back up, Petra vents out a heavy, blistering sigh and lowers her voice to normal speaking volume, still walking up to where Yliaster ended up. "Being 'complete' is, like, suffocating. It's an end point for a person. People are constantly constructing themselves and choosing how they want to be crafted every day, and part of that means having missing or broken pieces that you can move around. People are only not in a constant state of altering their incompleteness when they're dead."

    Petra crosses her arms and leans them on a flat part of the shattered throne, resting her chin on top of them while looking down at Yliaster. Morphmetal wicks across the floor from behind him, peeling out of embedded chips in the wall to rejoin the central mass she has orbiting around her.

    "Your daughters are better than you because they aren't stagnant. *You* can get better once you're broken and miserable and lost hope in the vision you had, because then you can build something up in its place. And the scars of being broken," Slightly too-late, Petra realizes how fitting the broken throne is as a metaphor, and it's even crystalline-translucent for her *own* particular fixations. She plucks a few shards up off the ground, rolling them between her fingers, and then fits them back together so that the light still catches the dark seam outlining them. "... Stay visible, because that's how other people see and acknowledge 'growth'. Since 'people' are always changing, the only way to stay perfectly complete is to be totally alone. And then, like, who even fucking cares?"

"Your mistake... was thinking they were my children. They were all just extensions of my will... tools to let me go back and do better next time..."

    "Huh?" Petra furrows her brow at Yliaster, annoyed. "Take care of your fucking tools anyways, dumbass. You just said, they're extensions of your will. Tools are fucking, like, externalized aspects of the way you want to change the world. So fuck off with that. And besides, your daughters obviously *want* things of their own-- that's kind of the main difference between tools and kids."

"--still loved me. If that does not make you a 'father', for better or ill, I am unsure what does."

    "Well, statistically, I mean, the obsessive need for control and disregard for his daughter's well-being in favor of the toxic and unattainable image he has of her in his mind that's meant to demonstrate his accomplishments to his peers would also do it." Petra, slid up beside Viviane, blinks in silence a few times while processing the words that came out of her own mouth. After too long of a pause, without much inflection, she clarifies, "I mean, not mine. My dad was fine."
Petra Soroka     "Oh, hold on, one more thing--" While Yliaster is malding over Viviane-- something Petra finds so deeply pathetic and annoying that it lights up a spark of sadistic contempt even after he's been defeated-- Petra idly talks over him while pulling her phone out. She lifts up her boot without looking at him, and a detatchment of morphmetal swoops down to coat her foot in a metal shell, giving her the force to stomp down on his shoulder hard enough to plant him facefirst into the ground again.

    Before he gets up, Petra leans over him and snaps a selfie, complete with V-sign, with the hole punched through him by Petra's railgun in clear view. After taking it, she straightens back up and the smile slips off her face instantly, quietly focused on sending a few texts before saying anything.

    "Oh," Belatedly, she lifts her face up at anyone looking at her and casually explains, "I just had to send that to Cinder."

PHONE: Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka sends a photo of herself posing over the crumpled body of Yliaster, bloodless hole pierced straight through his body and greasy hair draped over his obscured face. She's flashing a camera-perfect smile and a victory sign with her fingers, though she's visibly roughed up and her hair is a tangled mess of saltwater an explosions. An emoji sticker of X'ed out eyes has been slapped over where Yliaster's eyes would be.
PHONE: Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka texts | hunted down some girl's shitty evil dad
PHONE: Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka texts | here's kill pic
PHONE: Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka texts | (he's alive tho)
PHONE: Cinder texts | lmao
PHONE: Cinder texts | you're so bad (good)
PHONE: Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka texts | i'm so bad (evil)
PHONE: Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka texts | too bad i can't mount his greasy head on the wall bc hibiki and his daughter want this to be a good girl mission or whatever

    After being engrossed in a dubiously-endearing back and forth for a minute, Petra suddenly remembers something that's been bothering her for the past little while.

"Learn how to be a dad--!"

    "Wait... Hibiki, do you *have* a dad? I've never heard anything about him before."
Hibiki Tachibana     When he fails to produce words, Viviane takes it upon herself to fill the void, inflicting her own brand of direct damage. "...And you did become a terrible one. I do not fault you for losing heart, after working for so long. But I /will/ fault you for everything that came after. Wielding the Cane and your influence in the Illuminati like a weapon..."

    "...For using the Noise. And using my sisters. They have names now, you know. Just as you had named me, once. There is Vanja, Veronica, Valerie--"
    "I don't want to hear it--!"

    She goes silent for a moment. "So you do not. However, Xion was correct in her statement. As things stand, we have all... passed you by. Even those girls you made only to use as tools and weapons have done so... with the help of everyone here." She lets that sink in. The man's shoulders have squared up, where he's splayed over the throne. His expression is inscrutiable beneath his bangs.

    "I, also, have only reached this point thanks to them. Angela is a dear friend, and I wish you would speak more kindly to her." She sounds like she's chiding him. "She is also right. As things stand, your efforts to hold onto the fragments of your dream only make everything slip away further."

    If you can't be brave enough to be their pops, how can you be brave enough to stand up against the world.

    Yliaster makes a sound halfway between frustration and a choke. He says nothing to Rose, even as his hand is battered away. Not until Angela speaks, his own tone distantly husky. "...Turning away from others. So your goals were made closer by those around you..."

    Viviane nods solemnly, in agreement with the AI. Though their situations may not be the same... that makes their similar feeling on this that much stronger, in her eyes. Her gaze settles on her creator.

    "...Will you not look at what you have in front of you once more? The life you created may not be perfect, but it is life nonetheless. It is not yet impossible to catch up and be a part of it."

    There's a long period of silence where he fails to say anything. Which is prime opportunity for Petra to stamp her boot down to floor him. Viviane, notably, does not complain about this. He just tried to maim or kill most of them, among countless other things. He's a big boy, he can handle some humbling.

    Hibiki, walking back herself now and feeling unfitting for weighing in right now, visibly jolts with surprise at Petra's question. "H-Huh? I--" Her eyes drop, then shift from side to side - the look of someone who really doesn't know how to answer that.

    "--O-Of course I /have/ a dad. I just--" She tugs her scarf up further over her face, brow furrowing as she glances to the side evasively. "...Don't... talk about him. Why would I?"

    That's a way to respond. She doesn't get the chance to be pressed for more right away, given...
Hibiki Tachibana     After a period of silence - in which he didn't even argue against Petra - Yliaster turns his head up. He says nothing immediately, just to soon rasp out, "...Indeed. My creations... became more human than I, somewhere during all of this, didn't they...? I've become a pathetic old man, running off of desperation, lagging behind..." His head dips, obscuring his face once more.

    "... Forever working to catch up with my own past."

    "... ...So I don't have any CHOICE but to return to the start--!!"

    His fist abruptly /smashes/ the crystal dome protecting the box, which he grips onto past the lacerations with maddened fervor. "You heard its call as well, did you not!? I can't abandon these piled-up regrets that easily! The chance to make things right - with Viviane, with the world - /isn't/ out of my reach!"

    "It's right here, in the very palm of my hand--!!" The box is locked shut, no matter how hard he might try to wrench it open. He has no way to overturn the power of the Keyblade. He has no escape. But desperate men resort to foolish alternatives. Rather than try to pry it open, he raises it high.

    Then slams it down onto the seat of the throne, shattering it into a hundred fragments.

    The ones closest to him, like Petra, are the ones best able to see what happens next. The world around Yliaster goes pure and blinding white, then resolves into a rainbow multicolor that looks to extend into infinity straight ahead-- dancing in the myriad hues of which are too many split-second glimpses of moments of what must be history in this world to count.

There's Viviane facing down a dozen Elites at the top of a rainy mountain.

Ishirou in S.O.N.G. headquarters, speaking of a stark-looking old man on a viewscreen.

Strawberry Princess firing a full power beam starward, obliterating a massive Noise that was flung into the Tokyo sky.

A ruined concert hall, where a red-haired woman clad in what looks to be Gungnir collapses to the ground.

An unfamiliar white-haired girl wearing an equally unfamiliar crimson Symphogear, offering her hand to Hibiki after a battle - who knocks it aside and steps past her.

A young blonde-haired man exhaustedly hunched over a desk laden with research papers, while a girl with azure hair sets a cup of tea down beside him.

The Ekanamsha S2 firing its Inversion Cannon at Solomon's Cane after it had been wrenched free, turning it in on itself and opening a portal to another dimension.

    It's that last one that Yliaster freefalls through time towards, his forlorn laughter going unheard as he distances himself from the 'present' and tumbles towards 'then'. Viviane /sprints/ for the fleeting gap in time.

    "Wait! Don't go--!"

    But she won't reach. Not before the flux grows unstable and jittery, rapidly crunching in on itself.

    And the timeless castle around them worryingly quakes, its lynchpin destroyed - demanding a retreat back to the lift or otherwise before it all begins breaking apart.