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Lilian Rook     A nebulous amount of time later, which is definitely not very long, honest:

    The return to Glascail is once again as simple as a two step blind Warpgate jump through a very comfy R&R slash repair and medical building. Despite not being scheduled far apart, the exercise still has to be scheduled, or else everyone has to live on-set (and, more importantly, Lilian has to stop doing any other Paladins job for the whole duration).

    Appropriately, the town is in the process of cleaning up after the mitigated disaster of the dramatic opening. Though the signs of damage remain all over, the lack of quasimechanical troops in the streets is a welcome sight, largely withdrawn for the sudden shortage of ammunition and power from sabotage of the chain of supply. What remainder can be maintained as force projection cast a wide patrol net between the town and the forest, to block escapees, though that doesn't seem to have stopped a few townsfolk from fleeing into the countryside in other directions.

    The town square stage has displeasingly been restored first, with roofing from the aerial chase next, storefronts still in progress Equally unpleasantly, the church is still broodingly boarded up, and every major inn and outlet is cheerily open for business, as it seems at least a full quarter, possibly a third, of the townsfolk have 'fully adapted' to their roles. It's not exactly easy to take a census.

    Unless the participants have plans to buy a nice dinner or almost neurotically detailed fantasy exploration supplies with gold coins, there's little reason to stay. And a lot of good reasons to try and proceed to the castle on the mountain.

    The best one being that the daark void above the castle seems to have grown. Just slightly.

    Your prior reconaissance had been limited. It's deceptively distant enough to require flight, or something else quite fast, to get there in a timely fashion. Halfway up the mountain, the road would no doubt be perfectly treacherous on its own; and is littered with conspicuous places for boulders to fall down and ambushes to jump out on narrow paths.

    Having a better chance to look at it this time, you spy the classical moat first, filled with ominously deep water that would no doubt be called 'winedark' in an excitable report somewhere, and a closed drawbridge. The windows appear to all be unnecessarily stained glass, but have metal framings that bar easy entry. The size of it is frankly unnecessary, and the baroque gothic architecture in smooth black stone leaves little place to climb, and plenty to scamper around countless perilous rooftops under watch from its surplus of towers.

    Flying near it begins to feel like a bad idea. The closer you get, the more the pull of the singularity seems to exponentially multiply; or rather, it does, because that's how real black holes work.. Aiming for a top window would probably drag you right into it.
Ivy Carrow     The time between sessions has given the runners plenty of time to recover, assess and mend whatever damage was done to them. Ivy come onto the scene with a brand new arm, much to Luz's audible disgruntlement, after the last had to be taken to be cleaned and fixed up for ,later--if it even could up. She couldn't help but reflect on the ruins where her own castle used to be.

    "W-we can't beat her, can we...?"

    "Nina, don't talk like that!" Ivy said, jovially. "If we start to think like that, we've already lost. Besides, you've got something ready, don't you...?"

    Nina frowned. Nodded.

    But Ivy's apprentice's eyes lingered still on the black hole hovering over the town, biting down on her lip. "Anyway." She turned, addressing the rest of the elites. "Whoever can't make it to the castle on their own, my runners will be leaving portals for you." A pause, then, addressing the rest of the Warprunners. "You hear that."

    Playing taxi to the elites comes second nature to the Warprunners by now; half their duty is opening gates for people and helping them get around. Alex and Ivy advanced first, scouting the immediate surroundings, with Nina and Luz opening the way again for the others once they got confirmation over their headpieces, each portal carrying the group forward a truly staggering distance.

    It wasn't long before the castle rose like a monolith above them. Ivy imagined she could feel it plucking at her hair, buoying it up, threatening to carry her away. "What style." She admired, taking copious notes for her own castles in her head. "But, it's not like I expected anything less~"

    Nina rolled her eyes, a flicker of a scowl touching her mouth. "A-anyway..." She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out...

    ...Sougo would recognize its like. It was a red-green speckled stone, carved with glyphs. If you held it to your ear, it could almost hum. "W-we can't open gates to somewhere we haven't seen...Unless we have something to go to..."

    She looks to Ivy, waiting for her to finish the explanation. Ivy just smiled, looking back and Nina, and waited.

    "S-s-so this is a beacon we can uh...Teleport too w-without seeing. I-if s-s-s" A deep inhale. "Someone can get it i-inside...We can..."

    Another pleading look. This time, Ivy shows mercy. "Open a portal from here, no matter where the other side is. Nina made this one herself."
Kale Hearthward For once since the mitigated disaster of the Quicknest Incident, Kale Hearthward is back in good shape. No extant physical injuries, and only minor emotional ones.

... What's all this about supplies? Pff. Who bothers with shopping for supplies at the start of the adventure? You just go get started, send your pen and paper blorbo into the goblin cave of beginnings, and then later, if it's needed, you can tell your DM 'Oh, well, of *course* my character has a light source and 100ft of rope, I mean that's standard, I didn't think I needed to bother to write it down on my sheet'. In reality, though, Kale's got some medical supplies in a belt pouch, his swords and boots, and that's it. That's typically all he really needs.

And of course, he tries flying there first. Of course he does. It takes at least one close call with the hungering void before he gets the idea that that's not going to be an option. Sticking near the ground it is, then.

... Being barred from flying high, though, doesn't preclude him from scouting. He tunes all six senses outwards. His hawk eyes scan the horizon, trying to spot dangerous terrain and ambush locations... and his mind's eye looks as well. People, after all, are tiny stars. They shine brightly, even with the Hungering Star hanging low in the sky, blocking out the light.

Any ambush spots he finds, he relays back to the group, along with whatever other intel he can come up with. If they can't route around the ambush spots, then the group will at least go into them well informed.

"We can beat her," says Kale, when he has a moment inbetween trips of scouting ahead. "I mean, we're the heroes, right? Of course we have to win."

He pauses. "Don't tell her I said that," he says, forgetting Lilian has cameras everywhere.
Sarracenia      It came as quite a disappointment as the simulation was paused right as Sarracenia was rushing recklessly toward the Queen of the Hungering Star. A disappointment, and a bit frustrating. Someone else got kidnapped while Sarra was /right there/!!!

     Sarra is not a Paladin, so while she is fairly certain that Ru Li would not have been held all this time...she is also somewhat certain that Lilian is devious enough to have held him and Ru Li likes her enough to have been held.

     ...possibly doing paperwork in a similar scenario to what Kale imagined...

     The princess does actually do some shopping before they leave. Perhaps it is not well known, but she enjoys visiting such modest shops and street vendors as the type that might be found here. She ends up buying a overly extravagant two-handed sword with a rose gold flower as a pommel and similarly colored leaves as its crossguard, with a green ivy-like pattern along the blade.

     Is it magical at all? Probably not, but it is elegant and neurotically detailed. Both things the princess appreciates. She gets a back scabbard for it since it is nearly as tall as her, then feeling more like a proper adventurer she heads off with the others toward the castle.
%      Flight is something Sarra has available, but as Ivy says portals will be available...well, Ivy's powers are pretty cool and Sarra is happy to take advantage of them. "Thank you~" she says to the runner that provides her transportation.

     Not flying turns out to be the right choice when she arrives and feels the increase in pull from the singularity. She frowns lightly as she hears the talk that they can't win. The princess takes a moment to touch the silver lotus in her hair, then goes through the motions of putting on gloves. Which changes her usual black gloves to metallic rose gold gloves. She then pulls out her hammer and takes a deep breath before letting it out. "I can get inside. And we can definitely win. Lili-...*ahem* Liliana Lycoris is not invincible." she says, even as she hops a couple of times to test the gravity. She floats back down slowly after each jump, then hmphs. "This will be useful once inside, I think." she says.

     The drawbridge is up, which makes things mildly more difficult. Sarra pulls out a leaf and in a puff of smoke she has a set of racoon ears and a tail. She flies across the moat, going into a spin and aiming to smash a hole through the draw bridge.
Odette Raskins Having a scheduled time for the next round of the exercise proves to be invaluable for Odette. Even though it hasn't been all that long, having a little time to decompress and sort out her thoughts works wonders on her mind. A quick break in the building in-between helps quite a bit, too, and she shows back up looking rejuvenated and refreshed!

The lack of troops in the town means she doesn't have to worry as much about rapid-fire injury treatment, too, although she does do her rounds around the town to see if anyone needs a painkiller or two, or even a quick stitching and splint-attachment for particularly nasty-looking injuries she didn't catch the last time around. She's still wearing her usual EMT uniform, of course, with the puffy jacket and the matching duffel bag slung over her shoulder to keep all her stuff  in one place.

The lingering concern, of course, is that singularity that seems bigger than she last remembered, and no amount of telling herself it's just a special effect can stop ODette from shooting wary glances at it every few seconds. Despite her wishes elsewhere, a speed demon she is not, and Odette's best shot at getting to the castle in any reasonable amount of time means...

<J-IC-Scene> Ivy Carrow says, "Whoever can't make it on their own, my runners will be leaving portals for you."
<J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "I'll have to take you up on that... Thanks! Uh. M-Miss Ivy."

It's time to take a trip through portals! Slowly and slightly blindly, of course, since walking through such things requires a certain amount of faith that she still doesn't have just yet, and the EMT even has her eyes shut the first few times she heads on through. By the time she gets to see the moat, though, her fear of stumbling into something solid is (mostly) gone, and she peers downwards into the water whiel slowly settling onto her hands and knees to really make sure she doesn't fall in.

"Think we can just head right in? Um... A-at least, if the bridge was down." She suggests, squinting all the way across the closed bridge before turning ot Nina and the stone in hand. After gawking at it for a few moments, Odette raises her hand with her own bit of anxious fidgeting mirroring Nina's.

"I-if we just need to get it somewhere over there... I could chuck it across? Maybe." She suggests, glancing arund briefly before picking up a small stone that's roughly the same size as the speckled one Nina has. Odette tosses it up and down a few times to feel its weight, then chucks her own stone with pretty damn good accuracy and distance to see if she CAN even get a stone over there from here first.

If she can land the throw comfortably, then she'll repeat her offer to do the same with Nina's stone at a location of her choosing! If her throw just lands in the moat, though, she'll get right back on the ground to stare into the moat sullenly while avoiding eye contact with pretty much anyone for a minute or two.
Timespace Riders      The familiar rustle of fabric places Sougo Tokiwa and his retainer, Woz, within a vortex of grey scarf. That vortex is within walking distance of the castle. Woz frowns--the scarf takes a moment to return to its usual spot on his shoulder, tipping upwards under the pull of the black hole.

I-if s-s-s-... Someone can get it i-inside...We can...

    "Leave it to me," smiles Sougo, extending his hand. The sleeve of his pastel pink button-up slides as he extends it, revealing a bruise from the last excursion here.

I mean, we're the heroes, right? Of course we have to win.

    Woz looks up from his book. "Victory is had with information and preparation," he says, lips pursed. "That she has withdrawn into the castle means she expects us to follow. All the moreso, given the lack of common soldiery in town."

    "Rather than ascribe to some narrative with presumes our triumph by virtue of 'heroism,' I suggest we spread her forces thin with multiple areas of entrance, keeping our engagements to areas which favor our smaller numbers. If you allow me a moment, I shall consult this book to refine the general idea into an actionable strategy."

    While Woz peruses the book, Sougo gives a bit of context: "If they're going for--" He stops himself, remembering to be 'in character.' "If this is like the medieval castles on Earth, we might not luck out with 'hallways,' because not every castle was built the same, and the ones from that period didn't use space all that well..." He rubs his chin. "And there were a lot that were, um, more strictly military structures. The queen seems like she'd have a little of column A, and a little of column B--some rooms to impress, but definitely room for soldiers too."
Aidan Proudpick Perhaps trying to earn extra points, Aidan arrives one hour early. He spends a bit of that hour trying on fantasy exploration cloaks. After numerous colors and dashing(?) flips of it over his shoulder, Aidan sheepishly puts it back. He does buy a couple of pieces of chalk, just in case. Okay, and this compass.

Wind walls appear in front of the Warprunners, Aidan breathing out a wisp of white air, grabbing it, and snapping it out into the air over the portal, keeping each trip free of boulders and avalanches. Aidan keeps an eye on the castle with each trip. "My guess... she's got the people in a dungeon, some kind of prince-ss, princess in a tower... Maybe an evil magic lab?"

Several VRRRTs of portal travel later, Aidan nods along with Nina. "We just need to get in there." He takes his time, staring up at the drawbridge. No, every time he second guesses himself and tries to play by other expectations, he gets himself in over his head.

"I mean, we're the heroes, right? Of course we have to win."

That and the radio makes Aidan give Kale a curious look, his ten foot pole wobbling across his back. Oh, he doesn't think they can beat- Aidan slides a grin onto his face. "Of course you are. Save the people first, get Ru Li out, and FIGHT Liliana if we have to."

Breathe in. Four seconds. Breathe out. Four seconds. A grin at Sarracenia. Even if everyone can find another way in, they have to get across the moat first.

A white wisp of air slips out of Aidan's mouth. He keeps his lips puckered, breathing the lifebreath out of him until it forms a long rope, trailing slowly in the sky towards the drawbridge's top. The wind lashes around the top of the drawbridge's chains, holding tight. Aidan grabs the air in both hands, plants his feet and HEAVES. Lanky muscles aren't being used here, but magic itself, trying to drag the gate down by main force. Not his strong suit, but it's medieval chains, right?
Angela The idea of Lilian being someone they can beat doesn't really cross Cinder's mind. If they could do that, even as a group, that would suggest they could best someone on par with the Red Mist--even if she feels Lilian is sandbagging somewhat by not using certain abilities she actually has.

But at the same time she doesn't like the idea of having a defeatist attitude. Defeatist attitudes are, in her opinion, lame. Even surrounded by people who outscale her by legions, she is confident in that much

But at the same time she doesn't want to be useless. Some small thing to help--She'd take that. Proof of her existence.

Cinder draws Fourth Match Flame quickly and gets to work on the bars. The benefit of Fourth Match Flame is she figures she can melt the bars on a window without causing a huge commotion

She pats Woz on the shoulder once. "Don't worry. I'm just talking about fiction there." She'd reassure him she thinks they're actually boned if she wasn't determined to not be defeatist about all this. Yeah, she thinks Lilian is real strong--even in a holding back scenario--everyone at L Corp knows how much above their level Lilian is (except for Nonon).

As she works on the bars, Cinder's Video Pad lights up as Hod appears.

"Oh! Don't mind me!" Hod says. "Just thought I'd take some notes on the seminar!"
Powerpuff Girls LAST TIME...

Princess had scraped the edge of a massive beam attack off the hanging singularity, taking on a high amount of stress to her latest Power Crown super-suit. Diving back down to directly confront 'Liliana Lycoris' with the surge of plasma power and solar energy, her straight charge down into the final boss' zone had come with wave-wings of heat.

What was supposed to be a fight finished in one exchange became two, three, a half-dozen.

'Masked' clones of the golden super with pom-pom fluffs of plasma fire palm-blasted and plasma booster kicked and struck the guard of the heavy general, but Princess' clones were scraped together from loose solar energy and projected off of damaged armor, and the real ginger with gritted teeth under pink-red visor had both fists full battering against Lycoris' guard.

Sent tumbling and rolling to jet-recovery from misjudging the villainess of the exercise's reach, a missile of a knee-out lunge-back into the fight is interrupted.

> "Princess, pull out." Blossom directs the Morbucks girl from her earpiece.

"I've got her! It won't be like those times with you, I'll show--!" The yellow protests, desperate because of the performing desire of her actions... and the present state of her armor's damage - made worse from the long seconds of fighting. Two of her plasma mirages are blasted through, and her 'reinforcements' dwindle.

> "I'm not coming to get you if you're captured. Pull away."

'Convinced', as much as she can be, and the emotional heat of her quite genuine in the moment yanked out from under her, Princess palm-breaks her own assault, bidding back and ceding ground while her copies close ranks, the plasma echoes spending themselves while the gold-armored Morbucks villain jumps back through a curtain of fire created earlier, and blasts off to circle around the long way.

TODAY...

Blossom and Brick, as a pair, have committed to spending the day in the village area as backup and 'fast response', having realized the whole castle hardpoint outside of the village was a terrible idea shortly before it was summarily scrubbed from reality by stolen solar fire. Making sure that there's not any foul play -- and getting a vibe off the simulated town is one reason...

... and having a day in a timey inn and coordinating the 'base' for a day was sort of like a date.

Princess Delilah Morbucks III wears a Powerpuff Pink-red band-aid across the bridge of her nose, and a second on her cheek, the former of which sits just south of the meeting-point of pink Power Crown visor. Peeved in the way of someone coming back to a boss fight after a day to 'cool down', Princess emerges from the Warprunner's provided portals, her resting villain face 'favoring' Nina with a blank look.

'Yes?' Her eyes demand. 'And?' Comes from the ever-so-slight downturn of her lips, and the ever-so-automatic lift of her nose. Nina has a moment to see a passive scan data readout of herself in dense shorthand and backwards symbols, and then Ivy bails her out, and Princess relents by taking the glyph in a black-gloved hand.

"Sure, girlie." The gold-dressed grumbler asides. "Shortcut stones. We won't need one. This time it'll be different." She won't be interception tackling for a half-dozen people plus civilians. Blossom wouldn't give her the hard job... right?
Powerpuff Girls "We just need to get across, right? Flight distortion's only active on the outside?" Princess asks, but seeing Sarracenia tanuki-float across the flight 'floor' gives her confidence. "No need on throwing - I'll just..." And, regardless if Odette's depression rock falls into the moat gets it gloriously across, Morbucks just grabs the medic up in a princess carry (of course!) and boosts over in a quick low-angle jump.
Petra Soroka     Petra wonders if Lilian ever feels this confused when Petra does supervillainy. Probably not-- the dynamic is entirely different, of course, and Petra is fully willing to admit to being stupid and prone to confusion in comparison to Lilian, but there's still something weird about this dynamic, right? Just last night, Petra was over at Lilian's house again, doing-- normal things, and now she's a heroine opposing the evil Queen Liliana and her cool castle and everything.

    Obviously, she's supposed to play the role of heroine; that's what's expected of her here, no matter what else happens outside of the simulation. In fact, that might be the best way to conceptualize it during each training session: Lilian's normal actions towards Petra, the ones that result in the fresh spread of scabbed over bite marks all across her neck and collarbone, are *actually* just the foul machinations of the villanous Queen Liliana, attempting to... corrupt and sway the innocent heroine, to shake her resolve and... at the very last moment of standing off against her, see her willpower reach its limits and break... casting the realm into darkness forever while the former heroine becomes her most loyal guardian and right hand... because she could totally do it *just* as well as Satsuki and Arina....

    Dazedly, Petra considers that this may have literally been Lilian's intention. She reassesses her opinion: Lilian does *not* feel this confused.

    Still. She's here as a heroine. And she's sooooo resolute, you wouldn't even believe it, because she was asked to be a heroine and she's sooooo good at doing what's asked of her. That's right; that's what it is. It's a test of her mental strength. It's a test of her mental strength.

    "It's a test of my mental strength... it's a test...." Petra does not inspire confidence when stepping through the warpgate while muttering this to herself like a mantra. She seems to have somehow taken *more* morale damage (enshrined as physical damage) since last time, and she was already teetering on the brink before. She'd like to believe that pressure-- even an impure kind-- makes her stronger and more focused, fusing carbon into diamond. Whether this is true remains to be seen.

And of course, he tries flying there first.

    Even before getting close to the castle herself, to feel the pull of gravity herself or to see the bars on the windows, Petra scrubs her face with the palm of her hand to focus when Kale makes his preparations to take off. "She's... not going to just let you fly right in. You can't just take the shortest route you see first thing, and expect it to not already be accounted for. I'd... I don't think that applies to the Warprunners, though. I was about to say it for them, too, but... skipping hazards and stuff is... the point? It's stupid to just run face-first through stuff and eat all the defenses she set up just to engage in the space; that's not how reality works. Just... the less self-important methods are more likely to not be accounted for with defenses, I think...."
Petra Soroka     There is, however, an important diversion for Petra; her last allowance of non-heroic behavior during this simulation. It's vital, unrelated to the simulation itself, but Petra absolutely has to take a trip into town. Sarracenia also being there is irritating-- Petra shoots her scrunched-up annoyed looks barely one step short of sticking her tongue out, any time they pass by each other in the shopping district-- but Petra has a mission, and she won't be distracted by bickering in accomplishing it.

    She has two goals: the first is admiring the details put into designing the town at this point in the arc, taking in the aspects where Lilian's hand is most clearly felt in order to guarantee the effort doesn't go unacknowledged, taking a quick glance by the church just in case there's some valuable detail just out of sight that Lilian has been frustratedly excited for them to spot. The second is picking up an outfit. Not for changing into now, but for subsequent visits to Lycia to continue aiding in the war effort. Not only are the clothes here period appropriate-- they're *pre-vetted* by Lilian!

"I mean, we're the heroes, right? Of course we have to win."

    Petra, while stuffing a set of clothes into her compact mirror after her shopping trip, raises an eyebrow at Kale. Without segueing into it or bothering to mask her passive-aggression at all, she says, "Oh, by the way, Kale. I've got plans for the East Wind, actually. I was sort of stuck for a bit, but I didn't want to turn it into scrap, so you'll see it again at some point."

    Seemingly contrary to that point, though, maybe sensing Cinder's defeatism and maybe even hearing that other people expressed hopelessness too, Petra shoves her hands in her bomber jacket pockets and looks up at the looming singularity. "We can win, though. She won't make it easy for us, and I think she'd be okay with either option, so there's no point in talking about 'how it's supposed to go', or whatever, but, uh..." Petra trails off for a few seconds to piece her words together.

    "I think, um... this entire simulation is designed to be 'fair', which is kind of surprising to say out loud, but I think it's true. Villains are never really 'unfair'; no one ever chooses the plots that make you untouchable, because everyone wants to be interacted with. Uninteractability is the death of relationships. Like, for example,"

    Nina holds up a rock of some kind, while explaining how useful to their entire entry plan it is. Petra waves her hand to point at it for a second, hanging there silently, and then drops it to her side. "See? Lilian could've stopped by and grabbed that right out of your hand, without anything you could do. It's 'fair'."

    Petra flips over her Silver bottle to let the morphmetal spill out, setting out briefly hovering platform points to double jump her way to the castle itself with the others. Idly, while passing over the moat, her mind dredges up a phrase she's aware she's overused in her past encounters with authorship, melodramatically echoing Homeric writing. It's just a *good* descriptive phrase.

    Before the gang all splits up to infiltrate, Petra has a warning, dubiously sourced. Conveying this information at all makes her flustered and stammering in a way that's instantly suspicious, though it's hard to be certain exactly to what ends you can lead that suspicion to.

    "S-so, um... before we go in... watch out for diagram circles on the floor all around the castle. They'll let, um, her minions teleport around between them, so be on-- on guard, for that. And the... if we manage to get to-- to it, the princess is being held in a-- an *indecent* cage all the way at the top, like, I mean, the princess of this-- the one who used to be, ruling here. I forgot her name. But she's up there."
Kale Hearthward > "Oh, by the way, Kale. I've got plans for the East Wind, actually. I was sort of stuck for a bit, but I didn't want to turn it into scrap, so you'll see it again at some point."

Kale *knows* he shouldn't. He remembers he shouldn't. He's not that dumb or forgetful.

But - it's like being shown a hot stove, and being told not to touch the hot stove, and - some part of you wants to touch it anyway, just - just because.

Kale reaches out mentally, trying to read Petra's mind to see what she means.

He regrets it *immediately*.
Rita Ma      Down in the moat's cool deep-dark, something shifts. It's as subtle as the focusing of an eye. It doesn't stay subtle for long--

     Kshhhhh-crack. The surface erupts in spray as if something truly huge burst through it, but nothing's there. Odette's rock is sliced cleanly in half midair. Something coils around Sougo's arm like a python, and either rips the teleporter-stone from his hand or pulls him up to dangle thirty feet above the moat depending on how tenacious his grip is. Sarracenia, mid-flight, is grabbed by something clammy and soft around her waist, and it drags her down towards the water with a menacingly sadistic slowness.

     Cinder is seized, flung across the moat, and dashed back against the ground away from the castle almost dismissively. Princess's momentum slams her into what feel like crossed swords in a head-on collision, and the X-slash shoves her back and threatens to topple Odette into the drink. Another invisible blade tries to 'cut' Aidan's wind-rope, might find it too intangible to sever, and then aims to give him a sucking chest wound regardless. And Petra is snagged right off her platform, smushed against the castle wall, and has something slick and cold start constricting her ribcage like she's going to be eaten by a snake.

     --And after that second's dizzying flurry, your adversary politely becomes visible. A dozen writhing smooth tentacles, each as big around as someone's leg, lash and menace before you. The way they aim their sharp-tapered points gives the impression of a den of vipers, or maybe a spear wall. Some press themselves into sharp-edged ribbons.

     The ones that rear up highest are some three stories tall. Water drips upwards off of them and spirals into the black hole overhead. There's no way to fly high enough for one and low enough for the other. A certain myth might come to mind, about an impossible threading of the needle:

     S C Y L L A  (and CHARYBDIS)

     ... Of course, it's Rita. Anyone who's seen her fight, Petra excepted, knows that. But shhh!

     Anyway, there's no time to think about that, because down on the ground it's hell, and in the air it's even worse, and shudder to think of falling in the water. Half the tentacles slice in whickering arcs through the crowd, and half of them lunge and stab in bulletlike strikes, shattering stone on impact. Their reach is maybe thirty feet past the moat's edge, but while retreat might be smart, it isn't completely safe either- as a secondary mode, the tentacles spit bursting globs of cerulean acid too, just to keep you on your toes.

     Woz doesn't have much uninterrupted time to read or think, but 'splitting up' or 'a very quick and very loud breach' seem like the best options. Rita's main body must be down there somewhere, but going in the water to fight her is tactically reckless to the tune of suicidal; she can't be everywhere at once, but splitting up might mean sacrificing some teammates to her undivided attention.

     There's the feeling of being watched by something probingly malignant, too, the telepathic equivalent of being sent an empty message. Then, surely for no evident reason, the coiling tentacle on Petra awkwardly shuffles downwards so it's squeezing her diaphragm instead of her chest.

     https://youtu.be/aBzN7cgajw0
Powerpuff Girls Princess is, in the end, lucky she is the equal to at least one Powerpuff Girl in strength, toughness, and speed even without the support of her Satellite System to make her the equal of all three at once. The latest in power fields and vainly designed low impact armor and super suit design, complex crystal focusing arrays fed by the best generators money could design, and the razor margin between failure and heroism for Odette.

Princess maneuvers at speed across the moat-space, leaned forward and arms comfortably around Odette, and tries to follow the atmospheric anomaly of the singularity as it shifts and roils before her. First like spires, then like--

Her eyes only widen on the moment of impact, hearing enough to know about danger but not even the proximity warnings in her visor alerting her until afterwards. The medical readout warns her of a mild concussion - which she also detects.

Slashed out of thin air unblocked, a bloody-nosed Princess maneuvers back for altitude with a complex sway-out of just her legs and spinning the momentum out. "Hang on, girlie!!" Morbucks orders Odette, without room for argument, squeezing the medic to her gold and black chest.

Palms releasing Odette, Princess trusts the medic to cling to her for dear life and uses the palm thrusters to take direct and dramatic control of her aerial momentum and direction, weaving around tentacles at sub-light speed. She'd go faster - she *can* go faster - but with Odette clinging to her, Princess first has to fight as a hero before a super-villainess.

Power Crown's ruby-red centerpiece jewel Kirby crackling with potent yellow polka-dots of energy, Princess blasts a thick visor beam out ahead of her flight path in a lingering sweep and bids up and through the flight corridor created, following her path with a sweep from her plasma channels to leave flame in her wake.

The path is short, for Odette, Princess coming up through the moat's crummy tentacle QTE corridor and lightly crashing into a skidding stop to release the. . . probably very distraught woman. "Hey! Time to get *off*, girlie! I can't fight if you're stuck to me!"

Morbucks desperately searches her mind for a reason, a tangible token. What would Blossom say? In the moment, she doesn't know, too busy trying to intercept incoming acid bombs before they land near her -- or Odette!
Lilian Rook     Annoying as it is, the fantasy inn vibes for Blossom and Brick are immaculate. If you can ignore the very subtle corruption of a handful of staff, the experience transcends 'perfectionist detail' and genuinely leaks a hint of sincere desire to have one of these around. The food is hearty and surprisingly upscale, the music is great, most of the people populating it seem very content with (probably?) getting paid to chill out and eat, the interior design is warm and cheerful, and alcohol is plentiful and decided by someone who is particular and experienced about it.

    And while it's relatively clear that Lilian has sourced a lot of outside help for this, swords are something she covers herself. Sarracenia is granted something annoyingly well-balanced and sturdy, sharp enough to cut a falling leaf, and obviously alchemically treated. It'd have been easier to just install a prop, but leaky is as leaky does. What is Sarracenia's mixed-bag is Petra's pleasure, seeing as fashion is easily something up there with swords for Lilian; it is functionally impossible to buy a shitty looking outfit, and Lilian is clearly enraptured by Bernish and Etrurian drip. Most of it is romanticized period-appropriate, but just a little is fit for a medieval gacha game. Blame Clarine and Cecilia. And Dieck.

    Enjoy it while it lasts. The moat sucks, is probably filled with like fifty other smaller monsters, and to make matters worse . . .

    On a balcony above the drawbridge, with a locked and barred door leading into a ceiling shortcut that requires the triple jump powerup, there is a thrum and a flash of light, and a pair of girls materialize side by side looking down on you. Blonde and brunette, dressed in juxtaposing white and black outfits, practically ballroom ensembles with gloves and fans and all, the two girls are--

    Wait. They're totally familiar. Someone here knows who they are.

    "Did you really think you could just swarm into the castle like that? Surely you noticed that you weren't allowed to fly up there."
    "Hahaha, no riffraff allowed~! Honestly, going through the front door is too good for you!"
    "Maybe if you crawled through the underground aqueduct like the rats you are, you'd stand a chance~"
    "Too bad! Looks like you're going to add your bones to the bottom of the moat! Failing on the first obstacle--"
    "I know right? They're totally embarrassing."

    It is . . . unclear if Lilian actually coached them to act like this.

    "Oh my god. Hafren, look!"
    "Seriously?"
    "I know! That's pathetic!"
    "A silver lotus? Really? Who does she think she is? Does she think that makes her some kind of rival foil? Give me a break!"
    "Hahaha! At least she admits she's a second-place medal! Frankly it should be bronze!"
    "And a lotus? Girl you are white as snow; have some dignity."
    "And the sword?! Can you be any more desperate! Oh my god where do you get off copying her that blatantly while bitching about her all the time!"

    Wait. 'Liliana Lycoris' hasn't appeared with a sword?

    "What is she even going to do with it?"
    "Trip on it and skewer herself!"
    "God if only!"
    "She deserves it! Way over twenty five, no boyfriend, pathetic copycat loser! Loser loser loser loser looooser!"
    "Loser! Get your shit together! Hahahaha!"
    "Ahahaha!"
Lilian Rook     They're. Obviously supposed to be some kind of hit and run 'you'll never make it any further!' main progress route types. But this is. Kind of mean.

    "Pffft. Elena look!"
    "Count to four little guy~"
    "I'm shocked he can count that high."
    "By copying her too, duh! Desperate pathetic little freaks want to be her sooooo badly!"
    "How does he even get out of bed knowing how worthless he is?"
    "By sleeping on the floor in a pile of stinking rags! Hahaha~"
    "Are the animals just like that? 'We're the heroes right?' Get real~"
    "The obvious hero here is the Queen~ Imagine deluding yourself into thinking you can win because someone called you a good little boy?"
    "Right? God they're coping so hard already; I can't wait to see them wash out at the first general."

    Okay could they like . . . stop? All they had to say was 'you'll never make it past the moat monster!' or something.

    "That poor little gay disaster too."
    "She's going to cry. Look at her! She's going to cry!"
    "Oh god are you like five? How do you even stand patching these losers up?"
    "Being a useless sub~"
    "Speaking of . . ."
    "Snrk! Look at her! She's already out of her mind!"
    "Well, she's right that the Queen could end this at any time, at least~"
    "I bet she's soooo hoping to make it to the luxury floor so she can get defeated by a succubus maid~ Looooser!"
    "Desperate. Pathetic. Her knees are shaking."
    "Oh my god she's so gross!"
    "Come on, be fair. They're all gross losers!"
    "Can't wait until they're dead~"

    The two of them cackle together in perfectly rehearsed unison, flick out opera fans for a sarcastic little polite wave off, and teleport away again.
Timespace Riders      Woz doesn't have time to get much farther than a few 'sentences'--in the first place, because of Rita, but in the more immediate sense, because Sougo tackles him to the ground.

     "Henshin!"

"Henshin."

                                   RIDER TIME!                                  
                  KAMEN RIDEEER.. (RIDER..!) ZI-O--ZI-O!! II!                  

Valiant! Victorious! Futurering Cobalt! COBALT!

     "Give me the talisman, sire," calls Woz. His usual smartwatch-themed armor here takes a knightly appearance; the cuirass forming the frame of the 'watch' is contoured and sectioned like platemail, his 'app icon' pauldrons housed protectively in swept metal reminiscent of a royal guard. The 'wristband' of the watch is a tabard in blue and gold, while the 'hands' forming his antennae have become wings much like Chevalier Cobalt's headdress. His faceplate sports blue katakana, reading 'COBALT.'

     It isn't that simple for Zi-O--the twinned, symmetrical pairs of watch hands over his katakana lenses race forward, and he makes an awkard tumble, roll, and deflection with a forearm to avoid being bowled over before he can make the handoff. After a struggle, he manages to pass it off.

     "Split up, and be mindful of your step," Woz calls out to the others. And, as if to follow his own advice, Woz himself splits into six duplicates--each one seemingly carrying a talisman.

     The illusory Woz-es split off in a star pattern. One makes a long leap over the moat, another brandishes a green-tipped halberd and fights side-by-side with Zi-O, each swipe causing blue-gold aftershocks of energy. A third leaps directly into the fray of whickering tentacles, kicking off of them to try and make a platforming session out of the death blender. A fourth attempts a suicidal dive-bomb into the water itself, halberd aimed downwards, while the last two collaborate; one stands on the halberd of the other while that one catapults him across the moat.

     A mass wave tactic, then--even if they're dispelled, there always seem to be more, and only one needs to get to the other side for the real Woz to swap places with him and open a breach for the others.

     Zi-O, meanwhile, shifts forms into the DRIVE armor, his own knightly aesthetic shifting towards that of a candy-apple-red supercar, with his katakana RIDER lenses looking more like headlights and the watch hands over them looking like speedometer needles. Leaning on the superhuman speed the form provides and its precognitive capabilities, the Demon King zips back and forth across the shore, yanking allies out of trouble while keeping himself from getting snatched by margins of inches.
Odette Raskins Even before the rock goes where Odette hopes it does, it gets smacked right in two! Although she can't quite believe her eyes at that moment, she can certainly believe her ears, and the cracking noise has her yelping in terror. "Wh-wh-what was that?! Okay, maybe we... I-if we run really fast, can we get across the bridge? Or if the fliers can go really fast, like..."

As she leans over the edge to peer into the moat, she squeak-yelps in terrified surprise at suddenly feeling the floor pull away from her. Did she just discover a new suit power without transforming?! No, there's not enough control for that, and her first instinct to not die is to hold onto the sturdiest thing nearby she can reach!

Naturally, that means throwing her arms around Princess Morbucks' neck and clinging on for dear life. It's only a full three seconds into that does she finally realize that she's holding onto said Princess, slow-blinking at her like a deer in the headlights without making a single move to escape. Her cheeks start to burn a little more, too, shortly before she starts to remember where she is (above a scarydeep moat).

"Uhh... P-Princess?! Wait, how high are we? Where's-geh! Th-the water's..!" After a quick peek to the side, Odette promptly tightens her holds around the Princesspuff's neck with quiet teeth-chattering noises all the while, not letting go even when she feels more turbulence and makes more audibly terrified noises courtesy of something she can't even see. The temptation to just bury her face in Princess' chest is strong, too, and...

Oh. She totally just shoves her face in there. Is it Princess pulling her in, or is Odette pushing herself in? Either way, the medic needs that moment to just block out everything that's overwhelming her right this moment, and the closest and safest place to do that is right there. It takes a few more seconds before she finally pulls her head away, then freezes up again at the sight of so many tentacles stretching into the sky as far as she's willing to even look up at them all.

"Oh come on... Th-this isn't fair, is it?!" Visibly panicking between the great mass of tentacles and that odd feeling in the back of her mind, Odette half-throws herself and half rolls along the ground as she's commanded to by Princess. She starts panic-scrambling, then flings herself sideways just as some of those tentacles crack the ground where she was lying down. "Wha... Th-that's too.. D-definitely not fair!" Yelping at that near-death experience already, she scrambles backwards on her hands and feet as another set slice up a small boulder right next to her, and she outright screams when she feels something just barely skimming over her face.

Equipped to fight a giant tentacle mass, she clearly is not. All Odette has in her bag to come anywhere close to fighting ONE tentacle would be a circular saw, and she can't even get that out in time with all the panicking she's busy doing and being taunted about. Try as she might to ignore the verbal abuse from the pair of girls atop the balcony, she can't help but hear all of that anyway. She knows it's just words for now, and there's a far bigger physical threat to worry about, but...

She's still tearing up, and not just from throwing herself to the ground. Even if Odette doesn't understand everything they're taunting her about (she'll need to ask Petra about that later), it's still enough to have her fight back some crying! Or is that crying because of the painful crack of those tentacles against an arm? Either way, she sucks in a pained breath as she tries not to think about what may or may not be fractured, instead shoving her non-busted hand into the bag to withdraw...
Odette Raskins Several injectors at once. Three of them are useful right this moment, at least, and she jabs one of them (painkillers, mostly) into the injured arm before rolling around to stay low to the ground, stay mobile, and get most of the less-useful ones back into her bag before catching a glimpse of where Princess Morbucks is handling all those acid bombs for her sake. "P.. Princess! Th-this one's for you!" With less consideration for her own safety than she probably should, Odette jumps up and goes into a full on sprint over, tripping over another tentacle aimed at her le before making a desperate dive for Princess to...

Jab her in the leg with the second injector. This one's particularly good for recovering from chemical burns and dulling pain generally! That leaves the third injector Odette's kept between her fingers, and that one is raised slightly in front of her face with one eye narrowed before she flings it towards...

Rita! Or her mass of tentacles, at least, like a hail mary in dart form. This third dart is packed with chemicals meant to induce muscle stiffness in a way not unlike rigor mortis. Surely feeding this into the mix wont' have any ill-effects, right?
Angela Cinder is pretty easy to read for Petra and she startles a little even if she wasn't really directly called out. "Ahah...." Cinder manages. "Was it that obvious? I don't think she won't be ''fair'' but--" A Color's idea of 'fair' tends to be a bit skewed from the norm. "I didn't want to cheerlead exactly but I was trying to be optimistic. I guess I couldn't quite manage it. I'll... I'll definitely keep my eyes open."

Her head turns at that moment and--

Cinder is seized by a tentacle! Her eyes widen. "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck--!" Cinder says, forgetting for the moment that this is a training exercise in the way people do when an unexpected tentacle has hold of them. Mercifully, she is YUCKED away rather than squeeeeeze. She hits the ground roughly which hurts her pride more than Cinder herself but that's enough for her to have a small panic attack as she rolls onto her back and try not to think too much about what a slightly squeezier appendage might have done to her.

Fuck fuck fuck, she's supposed to be better than this. It's a training exercise. Convince your body of the truth, Cinder.

She breathes. In. One Two Three. Out. One Two Three. In. One Two Three. Out. One Two Three.

"Cinder...You okay there, buddy?" Hod asks.

"Juuust peachy." Cinder says. "Not feeling overwhelmed at all." She is an Agent that can lie.

"...Well, I know it's a little hypocritical of me to say his..." Hod says. "But I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed. If you can't trust yourself, maybe try trusting your friends--"

Cinder sighs. "...A third of our team isn't even here..."

"Ahah...sending Rook and Random would've been a bit much wouldn't it?"

"I'm not talking abot them..! She would've been perfect for this situation!" Cinder says.

A realization hits Hod and she manages a soft, "Oh... ... Well ... Yeah it sucks doesn't it?"

Cinder sits up and gives her pad a glum nod.

"...Well..." Hod says. "I know I've seen you do incredible things. You just...get in your own way sometimes. I guess...sometimes you just have to believe in ''you'' so you can believe in others too."

Cinder looks at her pad for a long moment. "Arright. Sure."

''Way over twenty five, no boyfriend, pathetic copy cat loser!''

That seems somehow more effective than Hod's attempt at a peptalk. She stands herself up and she declares, triumphantly.

hr,"I am under twenty five..! And I have a girlfriend! That's right, I don't ... I don't ''need'' to be somehow really good in a fight, I've already had better dates than some people get in their entire lives! I haven't gotten murdered yet and... Heck, some people haven't even had dates! Even if I'm torn apart, I already lived more than most people do in their entire lives!")

And with that she propels herself in the air with a fire burst and then flings a second fire burst towards the the base of the tentacle gripping Petra! "What am I doing feeling outclassed by people who practically only go outside for ''missions''????"

"Okay that works too!" Hod cheers.
Kale Hearthward Kale *did* warn everyone that Ri- that there's a 'water specialist' in the moat. Of course, he also touched the Petra stove and got burned immediately after, which distracted him from emphasizing his warning. C'est la vie, tel est le birb.

For his part, for once in possibly the entire time anyone here has known him, Kale Hearthward is the *last* one into the fray. This is because Kale doesn't have filters in place yet. The act of pinpointing Rita's location also means he's picking up a large share of her surface thoughts, and doesn't have any control over finding out what they are.

Kale tries to hold people blameless for what they're thinking about, since they don't have any control over it. At the same time, though... he's staying well out of reach of Rita right now.

> "Did you really think you could just swarm into the castle like that? Surely you noticed that you weren't allowed to fly up there."
> "Are the animals just like that? 'We're the heroes right?' Get real~"
> "The obvious hero here is the Queen~ Imagine deluding yourself into thinking you can win because someone called you a good little boy?"

Oh no. Kale's got the type weakness here.

"Hey! You can't say-" Kale starts to say, advancing towards their position.

Right into Rita's tentacle range.

Kale's course of action is, after that, blindly trying to advance, and starting to panic. Not reading Rita means he's not seeing her attacks coming, but reading Rita means he gets a personal view into her wondering how hard she'd have to bite down to crunch through his bones. It's hard to say which is worse for him right now.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia notices Petra's face scrunching like that. The princess had let her guard relax somewhat after she thought they had built some kind of comradery in the battle and after they had actually not been terrible to each other in a little bit. But, seeing those faces brings her back to reality. They aren't friends. After a few encounters Sarra starts eyerolling in response and does actually stick her tongue out at Petra one of the times close to when they are leaving. "You are going to get wrinkles doing that!" she adds.

     Sarra grins back to Aidan as he flies overhead...only to shriek as she is suddenly grabbed mid-flight! "Wh-what in the...?!" She had not intended to use it so soon, but she did buy a sword! She pulls her sword and starts to swing when it turns out to be Rita! Rita is pretty nice and rather polite, and so Sarra's swing faulters.

     "Miss Rita?!" Sarra exclaims, then looks at the tentacle that is slowly dragging her down. Rita is tough and this sword is untested. She slides the sword into her purse of holding and extends a hand. Her metallic glove flashes. "I am sorry, Miss Rita! This is not personal, but you -are- playing the part of a monster trying to stop us!" she says, then fires dart-sized spikes of metal from her glove along the tentacle holding her.

     Just as those taunting, just flat out mean words start raining down from above. Sarracenia's head snaps upward. Their words...they hit a bit too accurately. Sarra's teeth clench as she tries to formulate what to say. "T-this lotus was a gift from Dimo and Emmy! DO NOT MAKE FUN OF IT! And what does being white have to do with not wearing a lotus?!"

     Sarra has kind of been operating on the assumption that this is basically all real and Lilian really has taken over a nation of some kind, so it doesn't really even register with her that this might be off script for the pair above them. "And I was not copying her! Does she have a two-handed sword that looks like this? I think not!! And I am not way over 25! 28 is not that much difference!!" She definitely was thinking of how elegant Lilian looks when using her sword.

     Since they have seen fit to be needlessly mean, Sarracenia decides she needs to be needlessly destructive. She pulls out a Bullet Bill, swings her hammer, and sends it sailing up to try and knock those girls off their balcony with an artillery shot and an explosion. Then she finally pushes on the tentacle, hoping the Silver flechettes have loosened its grip somewhat. "Let go! I do not want to have to hurt you!!"
Ivy Carrow     Ivy's hand reaches out, coralling Nina back just before something whizzes through the air, cracking the ground beside her. She draws her cloak back over herself, and the lashing blows that crack across the ground abruptly stop behind her, before picking up as though they'd never been interrupted. "You've done well, Nina. You can just sit back and relax~"

    She draws her sword with a gentle sound, lifts it to gleam in the apocalyptic light of the Hungering Star. Her clawed, metal hand scraped against it, and valves in its fingers opened up, spilling dark blood down the width of the blade--Ivy had never seen enough of Rita to understand what she really was.

    ...But then, even if she had...Would that have stopped her?

    She couldn't see the main body, and it didn't particularly matter. All she needed was put something into its veins. She flickered across the field, following tremors of red across space. One minute, she's there, where Petra is held in the air, blade already outstretched, mid-lunge at what held her--then, Cinder--impulse and reflex, refined to razor of a knife.

    And each slice carried the threat of Ivy's curse, pins and needles and spasms flowly along with the Warprunner's own blood.
Petra Soroka     Oh no! It's some kind of fucked up sea monster that Petra has never seen or gone on a date with before!

    Petra's utterly unprepared for the lashing tentacles, snatched from her rippling metal platform before she can react. She hadn't even imagined the possibility of Lilian somehow finding a *sea monster*, much less keeping it in the moat-- as deep as it looks, there's no way it's deep enough for *that*, it hadn't even crossed her mind. Her shriek of terror might be the most sincere one here, besides Odette's, whose fear reactions are dramatic enough to rival Petra's own.

    Thrashing around in the tentacle's grip, hair mussed and face scraped up from being dragged across the wall, Petra's pinned hands strain to reach the transteam gun on her hip, fingers quivering with effort. Her breath picks up when the constriction begins to tighten, shallow hyperventilations shivering in her ribs beneath the crushing tentacle's grip, flexing and straining her shoulders helplessly while writhing as if there's any 'away' to escape to.

    Still though, when the tentacle momentarily loosens to slide off of her chest, Petra is too startled to take advantage of the movement to slip out. She ceases her thrashing abruptly, looking down at the tentacle confused, with her eyebrows drawn together in what almost seems like worry.

    "H-hey, what did I do?" Doesn't she not know it's Rita?? What is she talking about???

"Did you really think you could just swarm into the castle like that? Surely you noticed that you weren't allowed to fly up there."

    "Hey!! *I* said that too!" The appearance of the colormatching subheathers makes Petra squirm around in Rita's grip even harder, frustrated for all the wrong reasons. Of course she recognizes Eleanor and Sabrina, and she's hardly the type to get angry on other people's behalf for mean words from villanous women. No, she's mad because-- "Look, there just-- she could've done auditions, or-- I just feel like you guys are relying-- relying so much on surface-level details, because it's all you've *got*, and--"

"A silver lotus? Really? Who does she think she is? Does she think that makes her some kind of rival foil? Give me a break!"

    "Right?? She's a loser! A loser!" Coincidentally, this happens to be in time with Hafren and Elena's jeering of the same. "She stole that from me! Anyways! She took it from *my* territory, and if *any* of us are rival foils, it's *obviously* me, and the fucking Princess isn't even dignified with *third*!"

"Are the animals just like that? 'We're the heroes right?' Get real~"

    Wounded, by more than being crushed up against a wall by a tentacle the size of her thigh, Petra only mutters her retort, since it's too similar to her previous complaints to shout out loud. It's still important to *say*, though, just to keep the record straight. "I said that too. I've said all that before. I could totally-- I could be a really good minion. Come on."

"That poor little gay disaster too."

    "H-hey!" Oh, wait. That was for someone else. Petra ducks her head and silently busies herself with stretching her fingers towards the grip of her transteam gun.
Petra Soroka "Snrk! Look at her! She's already out of her mind!"

    "H-hey!" Take two. "I'm normal! I'm not a-- I'll do fucking great at heroing! I'm not even listening to you!"

    As Petra continues to reach for her gun, she's assisted by slashing arcs of morphmetal, criss-crossing in darting lines through the air across the tentacle holding her. Her own strength can't even budge the tentacle, and she's too tightly bound to wedge any of her morphmetal between to wrench herself free, but she only needs it to convulse from a pain response in order to wrap her fingers around the transteam gun and flip it upside-down in her hand, Bottle-magazine pointing upwards. The morphmetal condenses, then rockets down into the bottle, jolting Petra's hand from the impact and snapping the cap closed simultaneously with her squeezing the trigger and hissing "Vaporize."

    Black glittering smoke pours out and over Petra, obscuring the end of the tentacle coiled around her. When it explodes like fireworks, the tentacle is scorched both above and below with Cinder's help, and Petra is clad in her black and yellow Rider armor, strong enough to tear herself free from the weakened limb and leap back to shore with a few propulsor bursts, flailing daggerpoint tentacles only glancing her and sending sparks scattering.

"What am I doing feeling outclassed by people who practically only go outside for ''missions''????"

    She lands beside Cinder, sinking into the wet dirt, and fumbles into a three-point landing to keep her balance. The mask turns to the side to look at her, expression unreadable, and her silence is immediately recontextualized as tongue-tied when she manages to clumsily force out, "... You're so fucking cool. Let's go-- go be heroes."

    Across the moat, Petra's gauntleted finger indicates a particular window to Cinder, not elaborating further. In typical dumbashes fashion, though, her plan is incredibly simple-- she means to smash right through it and dive inside wherever it leads, combining the concussive blasts of her transteam gun with Cinder's fire to weaken the metal. If she gets a chance, she'll even pick up Cinder and launch herself right through, body-slamming through the glass with enhanced strength and momentum from her armor.
Aidan Proudpick I've got plans for the East Wind, actually.

"No one asked," Aidan butts in.

"Come on, give me some help!" He shouts to anyone at all as he pulls on the drawbridge with the strength of his wind, twisting around to get any sort of leverage.

Tail freeze. Ear twitch. The sound of the water tension bursting as the tentacle flies out of it, trying to lash into the wind magic. Magic in one hand, a twist of the hips, a shift of the half chest armor to get a glancing blow from the tentacle. Just a bit of wind, and-

The tentacle slides all the way across the front of the armor, ignoring the curved shape made to deflect blows, immediately tearing through the metal with a howling shriek. The red and ragged edges split. Below, where the tentacle has cut through the armor, the flesh has split in a wide and quickly bleeding gash. His under tunic is rapidly soaking up blood. The sheer FORCE of the blow throws Aidan to one side, dropping his wind magic and putting him in the dirt.

"By copying her too, duh! Desperate pathetic little freaks want to be her sooooo badly!"

Oh good, they aren't talking about him. Aidan spins around to give them a parting shot, lifebreath drawing into his body. Disappeared. Instead, he pushes up a wall, acid slowing down to fall harmlessly to the ground before it hits the squirrel and makes things worse.

"Kale, you have a SHIELD, use your SHIELD!" He spreads the wall out wider to give the rest of the outer moat group some protection before breaking into a dash towards the warprunners. His jog is uneasy, turning into a full blown run as the portal opens up. He gives the Vice Captain a salute, appearing on the balcony.

He bumps himself up against the door to hide from Rita's tentacles. He starts to break out his Lockpicking Astartes brand tool kit, thinks better of it, then just SLAMS one of his shields down on the lock.
Ivy Carrow <J-IC-Scene> Aidan Proudpick says, "Miss Carrow, can you get a portal up to the balcony?"
<J-IC-Scene> Vice-Captain Perrodon says, "Don't distract her from the fight, Proudpick. I'll get you your portal."

    "Back me up, girls." Alex said, stepping back--even if they couldn't remove themselves entirely from the tentacle's reach, they could make it longer. Even a fraction of a second could give them enough time to do something. "We'll give the disaster his damn gate." He clapped his hands together, even as Luz and Nina drew their firearms, trained on the moat beast's arms, in case it retaliated.

    A portal irised open, slowly. It took only seconds, but, in this atmosphere, seconds counted.

    Would it be enough?
Rita Ma      "H-hey, what did I do?"
     The tentacle constricting Petra hesitates, then squirms back upwards, and squeezes a couple of times for affirmative-sorry.

     Princess's visor-beam trims the edge for an emergency landing, and Sarracenia and Cinder riddle them with holes for a moment's relief. They get that, and not a second more. *Tsssssssh*, and the tentacles surge to regrow with a sizzling hiss of metabolic heat; steam substitutes for amniotic slick, and it takes only seconds for the new flesh to take the sheen of the old. (Didn't the Queen of Rita's world do something similar?)

     Unfortunately for the Princess pair, the moat-monster is much too canny to just let Princess fight unburdened: the viper-knives exclusively lunge for Odette, threatening to gut her if someone doesn't fend them off. When one contorts with Odette's paralytic, the others cannibalistically turn on it, severing it and letting it regenerate 'healed' again. They do similar to quarantine Ivy's venom, stopping systemic issues at local cost. These things can't have much of a sense of pain.

     Sougo is a valuable ally, but soon he can't be trusted. The Woz catapulted across the moat sees Sougo's hand extended to grab him and pull him up to safety- and the instant he takes it, that Sougo-lure detonates in a spray of acid. More fake Sougos dart in and out, shell-gaming with the real one's superspeed zips and gruesomely betraying anyone who accepts their help. Maybe it's safer to stay away from anything Sougo-shaped.

     Petra and Cinder can punch a hole through a window together- that's easy. It's jumping across together that's the hard part. A tentacle erupts from the water to strike them from below, launching them upwards towards the black hole- and past the point where its gravity overtakes the earth's. Unless they can snag an upside-down handhold together, they might be consumed by the symbolic representation of Lilian's dominion. 'Scylla' really does have a flair for the dramatic.

     But the moat-monster's theatricality is losing ground. A dozen tentacles, nearly a dozen heroes, and several are in the process of regrowing at any one time. Kale can make it to the other side if he's willing to pay the reckless price in blood. Alex's portal makes him a priority target for gouts of acid and fake Sougos, but if he's protected, he might manage. It seems dimly aware of shenanigans ongoing on the balcony, but unable to dedicate more than a cursory swipe to them. A change of tactics are needed.

     The water bubbles. A huge spherical shape hauls itself up to breach by octopus-clambering the castle's wall, threatening to impale the diving Woz on a conch-like spike in the process. It's like a hermit-crab's shell; like a knot of coral; some artistically pallid organic hardness with irregularly-spaced gaps through which the tentacles extrude.

     And through those holes, it starts to glow. First gently, and then like a bulb's filament, and then like a second sun radiating even through the solid shell itself, accompanied by a high-pitched squeal. It might be a good idea to seek cover.

     "KREEEEEEEE-!!"
Ivy Carrow     When the tentacles retreat, so do Ivy's targets, her attention drawn to the scuttling creature climbing the wall out of the drink. When it starts to glow, she doesn't react. But, when the light begins to burn her eyes...

    "...Behind me! Now!" Ivy falls to one knee, pressing both her hands into the ground. Abruptly, a stone wall rises from the earth, like it was grown from the substance of it, reinforcements propped up against the wall by her side to steady it. Then, another wall, just beyond that. And another. And another, a messy copy-paste, five times deep.

    But, to her horror, as the creature screamed and the shine of its light burned, she realized...It wouldn't be enough to completely stop it, would it?

    She pulled her cloak around herself, one last protective step, and prayed the others could pick up her slack.
Timespace Riders      Zi-O--the real one--is locked in momentary paralysis the moment he recognizes the tactic being used against him. Skidding to a halt and sending up a spray of earth and grass, he reaches out towards the Woz on the other side of the moat, then towards Cinder, his helmet whipping around as another illusion attacks.

     The Woz on the castle-side of the moat takes the illusory Zi-O's hand, unsuspectingly. It's at that moment that the real Woz switches places with him. Acid washes over pristine silver armor, as, in the water, an illusory Woz is crushed into motes of fading blue light. Sparks erupt from the unsuspecting vizier's armor in a dramatic burst, and for a moment, it seems as though he's going to slide into the drink.

     Silver fingers grip mud with spiteful determination, gleaming armor tarnished as Woz drags himself up in gasping fits and starts.

    KREEEEEEEE-!!

     The guardian of the moat forces his hand. What better place to take cover than inside the castle? The talisman in his hand is hurled with all his might, sending it crashing through a window on the castle. With a final heave, his halberd sinks into the earth, and he pulls himself the rest of the way up.

    "Your conveyance is ready, Captain," says a no-longer illusory Woz, gently tapping Ivy on the shoulder, having evaded a fake Zi-O to take cover behind her walls.

     Zi-O, meanwhile...

     Is he *throwing?*

                     ARMOR TIME! Level UP! o/` Ex-AIIID! o/`                      

     He's got to be, right? That's the only reason he'd be implausibly video-game triple-jumping (complete with bleeps and bloops) across the moat, *toward* the rapidly brightening armored moat guardian. Surely, that HP bar on his colorful, 90s-gaming themed breastplate is about to hit 0. As it turns out, he's counting on that.

     When his boots touch solid ground, he removes the Ex-Aid ridewatch and replaces it--with a Rook ridewatch. Not Lilian, but--

                      ARMOR TIME! Justin Time! Captain Rook!                    

     Zi-O trundles hairpullingly slow in this form, his sleek gamer-themed armor replaced by bulky white plates that make him look more like a walking fortress than a knight. Two cannons mounted on the shoulders are loaded with very familiar mace-heads. As the light in the area begins to wash him out, he waits until the last minute and... fires.

     The piledrivers in the legs meant to keep him from flying backwards aren't extended. His back hits the wall of the castle hard enough to crack it--and when that blast hits just a moment later, it'll drive him *and* those loose morningstars into the wall, the Demon King intentionally taking a haymaker to punch a hole in the castle.
Powerpuff Girls Princess Delilah Morbucks III. . . is used to hearing the jeers. For every person bought and for the few convinced, there was another faceless dozen online and a handful in real life that would never let her hear an end of it. Some people just would never stop posting, foolish and ''safe'' from behind some threat (in most cases, The Powerpuff Girls).

Sometimes it was her, doing the threatening from behind the giant mechanized weapons platform she built to make Blossom notice her.

While it might have been stupid to retreat, and beneath a Powerpuff of her, the simple logistics of the sudden attack put Morbucks at a disadvantage. A 'real' member of the classic trio and their Rowdy sequel would simply fly as they saw fit, float and drift and stop with or without a distressed damsel - the honorary Yellow's Chemical X deprived derivative works in power-granting devices and mechanical support armor work a little more physically and have the thrust come out of predictable places. Boot-jets and glove-emitters guide her thrust, and until Odette is out of her arms, she's hobbled. While Odette brazenly (needfully???) jams her blubbering face directly into Princess' chest, Morbucks doesn't know what to think and seriously needs a second just to maneuver, and then loses her chance to talk trash at the Heatherettes in return. Odette's wailing, and the regenerating tentacle threat blocking the way, are a lot more controlling. Thankfully -- seconds are long enough for even the copycat Powerpuffs.

In sizzling-hot sprays of denaturing acid that fizz through the air in the wake of Princess' blasting, lashing knives narrowly zip in towards Odette while the Yellow and Medic fight closeby. "Real happy for those girls." Morbucks dourly grumbles, ginger brows fully furrowed as her visor crunches numbers and the heiress takes a breath. "They're really going for the crocodile tears ending. You love to see the classics."

Odette, a woman with many wishes, gets to see one of them go into action in absolute overdrive. One moment she's jamming Princess' leg with an injector between skirt and thighboot, and then the next she can see the misting spray of the injector's final gasp escape into the air, her protector having shifted in a shift of speed to cartwheel forward on a flamewheel of jet thrust, axekicking down with landing steps on the viper tentacles. Her palms pilot light with pink crackles of compressed energy at the core of each hand, controlled beams spearing out at mid-apex points.

It's all a dance, twirling and firing, stepping and roasting, hands out, carried by the thrusts of her interception. Even up close - Odette might barely catch the mesmerizing flashes of speed and heat as lashing snakes reach for her and are dedicatedly fought back.

Until a whole mega-octopus-kaiju breaches the water to climb up the castle side. 'Pausing', posed in a half crouch with black gloved wrists pressed together, Princess' palms whine with a closing-together frequency. The pilot lights of her palms glow and grow, merge, and in an instant, collapse and expel a hot cone of dense pink energy limned in crackling dots. "Wow I could *really* use my orbital satellite right about-- now!" She complains.

Immediately, Blossom sends her a message from the village.
> "Do you need help?"

> "No!" subvocalizes Morbucks while Ivy calls for a stack up.

. . . That makes sense for Morbucks, rising from her crouch to keep suppressing any direct attacks at Odette. "Come on, girlie, we're moving!"

Dragging Odette with a scooping jet-boot zoom the short distance over if necessary, Princess is already talking while Ivy sets up her manifold barrier. "Perrodon! Portal!!" The heiress demands. "Odette's paralytic worked -- you can see the meat, right? Land one near, and girlie can *throw* it!"
Sarracenia      Loser. Loser. Loser. There's a lot of loud and annoying voices saying Sarra is a loser and a copycat. "At least I am not some 'simp'..." she uses the word like she doesn't really understand what it means. "...letting her walk all over me just for a pat on the head and a 'good girl'!!" she exclaims.

     She gets free of the tentacle holding her. Ivy calls for them to get behind her. Odette is in danger, but Princess has proven to be a steadfast protector for the medic. And they /really/ need to get inside the castle! "I am tired of sewers! I have been in two in my life and that was more than enough! There is no way I am not going through the front entrance!!"

     That snail kraken form is revealed, and Sarra's eyes widen. She leaps to join Ivy, but doesn't sit idle. She pulls out a black block with a red button on it, then places it in an open area and hits the button. The box unfolds...and unfolds...and unfolds some more, finally forming into a cannon big enough that a car could fit inside. Sarra stands atop it as a hydraulic sound is heard, and a massive shark-faced bullet can be seen peeking out. "This has to get us inside! Hehehehe~"

     It is possible that Sarra appreciates the architecture and work that went into building this place...but that isn't going to stop her from using her big toys. She stomps on the button again and the Bonzai Bill fires toward the drawbridge and the snail creature protecting it.

     There isn't a lot of distance between the group and the bridge, so they will definitely feel some powerful gusts of wind from the explosions that follow. A series of around a dozen explosions, each slightly larger than the last, with the last one a bit delayed and leaving a mushroom cloud in its wake.

     Sarra isn't laughing maniacally this time since Rita is the target, but she can't help a bit of a sadistic grin and a hopeful look toward the drawbridge. Surely that destroyed the entire front area, right? That's what the princess is hoping for, of course.
Petra Soroka     Petra is heroically, barely resistant to tumbling into Lilian's dominion. The willpower it takes is incalulable, and no one will ever truly understand the stress she's going through right now, even though it's so unfair and she doesn't deserve any of this. Attempting to speed across the moat with nothing but the strength of her armor and the maneuverability of her thrusters was more like a reckless trackle in the first place, performed by simply seeing a goal and launching herself towards it with Cinder in her arms like a football. Being slammed from below sends her flying, knocking away sparks from her armor and worse-- hitting her offcenter, so that she's sent spiraling, barely maintaining her grip on Cinder.

    The whirling motion provides a solution in another sense, though. Fragments of morphmetal fling off of her in pristine mercury raindrops, torn away from her arms by centrifugal force. The droplets orbit, and then combine into a solid floating wall, with Petra judging that their upwards acceleration was too fast to risk trying to grab onto anything one-handed. Petra slams back-first into the wall to shatter her momentum, bouncing off and drifting downwards before the black hole's gravity reasserts itself. She leans against it for a moment, squeezing Cinder unconsciously, while the semifluid wall-floor above her shields the pair from being dragged away. It'd mean respite, out of range of the tentacles, except that's right when Rita's shell emerges from the moat and begins to glow.

    "Um, shit-- fuck." Ivy's pulling up walls, but she's too far away. The castle towers might be able to shield them from the blast, but there's no guarantee they won't trigger more defenses just by trying to dive behind them for shelter. Suspended high above the battlefield, isolated in the air, Petra intelligently assesses their options for survival. "Fuck. Shit."
Petra Soroka     That isn't to say she's gone entirely catatonic. While swearing over and over, Petra wriggles her position around in the air, easily adapting to the dreamlike low gravity of being suspended between the two points of mass. Flipping over so that Cinder is facing away from the incoming blast, shielded by Petra's armor over (under) her, Petra keeps just enough morphmetal invested in their makeshift platform that they don't fall into oblivion, peeling away the rest to encase the two in a rippling silver bubble right before it goes off.

    The shrieking explosion rocks the bubble like a tidal wave, stripping away later after layer of metal that replenish by draining Petra's reserves, wicking away more and more of her energy and armor while she presses herself against Cinder. It glows so bright that light seeps through patches in the bubble, the thinnest portions of the metal shell glowing and translucent. While the rumbling of the impact and shrill release of energy nearly deafens them, Petra mumbles to Cinder, not even hearing her own words herself to be certain she's saying them out loud.

    "Okay, but, like, don't die, though. I get what you meant, and everything, but-- like, our last date was watching a fucking clown show with all of our coworkers. And if it was a perfect one instead, then it'd still fucking suck, actually, so I don't-- fuck the idea of it being 'enough'."

    Once the explosion's passed, and Petra's bubble melts away, that moment of shocking vulnerability boils away in the harsh light of the Hungering Star and Rita's dimming radiation. Petra hops to her feet, still upside-down relative to the earth below, and wraps her gauntlet around a comically large lance that congeals into shape within her fist. "Alright! See you inside, past the window, okay?"

    In concert with Cinder's own fiery propulsion, Petra gives her a boost downwards by simply hurling her at the expended shell. She follows behind soon after, her thin platform tearing with the force of her jump, and aims herself to crash right through the shell-- eyes closed, instinctually, for whatever reason-- and pierce through to the broken window beyond, acting like a bullet with a lancepoint.
Ivy Carrow     "Odette's paralytic worked -- you can see the meat, right? Land one near, and girlie can *throw* it!"

    Alex's back was propped up against the side of the wall Ivy had summoned, at the Princess' approach. For a moment, it almost seemed that he'd deny her. "Good thinking." They said, instead. "Anything to give Woz and the Captain more time to work..."

    He stared at Odette for a long second. "Make it count." He looked from around the barrier and, with his hand held straight, he plunged it into reality, carving a hole no larger than a clenched fist in reality.

    The other end flashed to life, near the beast's vulnerable flesh, opening a passage for one final attempt to subdue the beast...!

    "Your conveyance is ready, Captain,"

    "Atta boy." Ivy's grinned showed so many teeth it was almost a snarl. She clapped her own hands together, and a vibrant red, like a gushing wound, poured from her palms. "All runners! To ME!"

    The stone, on its own, flashed, its runes shining where they'd been etched. It rose into the air, floating, sparking with something too crimson and too deep to be lightning. Something THRUST outward from inside, carving a hole in the world.

    ...And then...Before Ivy, against her impromptu barricade, another yawned to life in a vertigo-inducing lurch. "Everyone IN!" She shouted, throwing herself through portal in a clumsy lunge, racing against the clock before her fortifications were blasted to slag.
Kale Hearthward Okay. Focus.

The Moat Monster is going all out and-

-

-... Kale's...

... Got a problem thinking of Rita like this.

The concept of a 'monster' is still a relatively new one to him. There weren't any monsters in his world. (There weren't any non-person animals, either.) It's something he had to come to grips with soon after leaving his world, shortly after it unified. Giant things that aren't people, that don't have person-level intelligence (or sometimes have too *much* intelligence, like dragon monsters or alien monsters?) and that don't have person-style bodies, and so people who would, in any other situation look down on Kale for how violence-prone he is, would pick up a sword and slay a 'monster' and continue on without a second thought. It's kind of weird.

This is Rita. She's looking and acting different, but it's still Rita, and his sixth senses make it impossible for him to forget that fact no matter how she looks and acts. And she's presenting as this sort of... thing she's not? Thing she was worried about becoming? Kale's not about to pity her (and she seems to be winning, anyway), it's something different he's feeling now. But the net result is that he doesn't really want to fight back too much.

"(Are you okay doing this?)" he says softly, though that's all he has time for - he's not fighting back, but defending himself is taking up enough of his attention. His sword's up, fending off tentacles as best he can - which isn't much, given his other distractions - and after a moment of indecision he decides to just go for it. Charge on through, heedless of the danger and the damage he'll take, and get inside the castle via whatever means have opened up.
Angela Cinder almost thought that 'poor little gay disaster' line was for her too but she was too busy pumping herself up with the other words to dwell on those until the latter comments clarify it. Cinder gives Petra a look for a moment, suddenly insecure as Petra is silent--and then recontextualizes that silence. She keeps that unease with inner Cinder largely by reinforcing herself that true things are true, real things are real--she was simply taught to not believe in real things. This is the sort of thing that L Corp is trying to spike out of people, right? That hesitance to believing in what's real rather than what's constructed and consuming you from the inside out.

It didn't have to be done so cruelly, she knows, but it has to be done. How liberating that would be, how heavenly. She can see it in the flames of the Fourth Match when she really squints.

She looks up for a moment, towards the black hole above and--

''Petra: Wahhhh--!!''
''Petra: Vore--!''

Why are you thinking about that now, Cinder?!

Fortunately, in this moment, Petra has a plan. Cinder can use fire to help break the window but for the rest of it, she's pretty much at Petra's mercy here, particularly as she gets scooped up and starts spiraling around. Cinder brings her hand up to cover her mouth because she doesn't want to do anything uncool like throw up, but ends up swallowing whatever's trying to come up back down when she feels Petra's grip slipping and she wraps that arm around Petra as tightly as she can--for dear life. Which it might be! She doesn't know what would happen if they actually FELL into that black hole. Thankfully, she was able to get some work done on the window before, right now she's just holding tight and trying not to fall into either hte moat or into oblivion.

''Okay, but, like, don't die, though.''

Cinder stalls for a moment. The Fourth Match Flame flickers and sputters, the heat fading as Cinder's world view suddenly slams into a wall.

"I...Sorry, I didn't-- I was just trying to psych myself up." Cinder says, cheeks reddening and eyes lowering guiltily. She knows she can't actually promise she won't die with her kind of life--but she says, "I'm in no hurry to die, I promise." That feels more honest. "I'm happy I don't want it to end."

AFter that, she's stable--the flame's weaker, but still enough to propel the two of them. Acting as the jet flame, she lets Petra take the role of the jet.

Thankfully, it CAN melt steel beams.
Aidan Proudpick "Who gets people to just INSULT us," Aidan mutters as he slams back and forth at the lock.

The good news is: Aidan's portal trip has lured Rita out of the moat.

The bad news is: Aidan's portal trip has lured Rita out of the moat. His irises shrink to pinpricks as he gazes on the creature, lashing lines of tentacles, exposed meat at the base of each tentacle. A high pitched scream. A flash back to the final battle. Human chum in the water. Nearly drowning. He gulps down the fear.

Eyes quickly snap around the battlefield. Protected, protected, protected, protected. Everyone's in the portal. If he was smart, he'd just hunker down and wait. He could bring a wall up, sit in a corner, and be just fine, and hope everyone was fine too.

He stands up at the edge of the balcony, taking a deep breath as if he might shout. White wisps of air suddenly form, spinning around on themselves until they form darts. The air around him fills with roiling arrows, his silent screaming adding more. Then, with a rush, a whine of piercing through the air, Aidan hurls them all towards the tentacles, trying to attack every octopus arm at once, threaten every exposed limb in hopes of dropping the moat monster back into the river.
Odette Raskins Avoiding one swing by sheer luck is simple enough (if not necessarily reliable), doing the same to a dozen of them is not. It takes Odette throwing herself all over the place just to get away with nicks and cuts here and smaller gashes there, and it quickly becomes even clearer that she doesn't have the footwork or presence of mind to truly handle a prolonged, focused pursuit like this. Even tumbling around unpredictably only remains unpredictable for so long, and it's largely through all of Princess' efforts that she's able to get away with just that instead of getting cut right in half or some similarly terrible fate.

"Croco-gyah! D-do you know those two? They're so...!" Odette yelps and screams in-between her frequently interrupted questions to  Princess, jerking herself backwards once with both arms flung up as another viper-knife swing opens up her jacket a bit with a sizable cut right down the center. "Dang-ergh... Darn it. I-I just brought this one out, too! A-and what's this about the classics?" She calls out, wiping her eyes off briefly just in time to see Princess' flaming interception of so many of those tentacle-knives still coming her way. It's awesome just to see in the moment, and even if she knows she can't keep up with any of it yet...

It's hard not to admire all that in action right in front of her. IS that the kind of power she could have herself one day? All it'd take is winning the DGP once, and then such a dazzling display of beauty-SPEED. Speed is what she needs. The speed to save everyone, to stop real threats like this in their tracks, and then maybe even....

No thinking about and thens. How long has she been watching Princess already? Seeing her moving so quickly certainly makes Odette feel more conscious about her own sluggishness, and even smaller about own place in this whole scenario to boot. She does, however, also see something promising for this specific battle against the tentacle mass: Paralyzing one of the tentacles seems to work... Briefly! Very briefly. Briefly enough that when she sees it working, it's already not working from the tentacles tearing the afflicted one off soon afterwards. The act of self-preserving cannibalization has her screaming momentarily, of course, but it starts to give her some ideas. If she can just get enough of that muscle-stiffening agent in, maybe the tentacles won't be able to spread out enough to threaten everyone else (and herself by extension)!

That's still so much easier said than done, of course, especially when the moat beast reveals its main tentacle-ball form to the group. Or... Is that actually easier? With a central focal point to aim at, it should be technically easier to afflict all the tendrils at once. The ominous glow has Odette plenty concerned, though, and she can't figure out if that's something to defend against, or something to stop before it can reach a tipping point.

Princess seems to have the same idea, too, and that proves to be the tipping point in Odette's mind as she hurries along behind the golden hero. With another yelp as she pulled along, her free and mostly de-busted arm opens up her bag in one swift zipper-damaging motion. "R... Right! I-if this works, anyway, but the distance...!"

"Odette's paralytic worked -- you can see the meat, right? Land one near, and girlie can *throw* it!"
"Anything to give Woz and the Captain more time to work..." "Make it count."

Princess just called her by her name, didn't she? And the serious-sounding Alex acknowledging those efforts, too... It's still just a little surreal to hear that from both of them. "Throw...? R-right! I've got the corpse stuff and plenty others, so..." She's already digging through her bag while considering how to best aid in finishing this battle, getting enough of a jolt to her spirits to spur the otherwise cowardly medic into action. "I'll give it everything I've got!"
Odette Raskins Indeed, she truly is ready to throw everything she has at the meaty mass, especially with Princess Morbucks right beside her to make sure she can utilize that opening provided by Alex. Sparing no expense, Odette not only tosses more of the paralytic/muscle stiffening injectors right through the hole, but she even digs out a jar full of the same stuff to hurl at the core to douse it in enough of that same substance that could've been used for at least five actual corpses.
Rita Ma      The whining and brightening reaches its apex. What might have been a 'bang' is instead a 'FWOOOSH', a concussive powerwashing of blinding light that scours stone inches deep and continuously craters the water below. Nearby trees bow away before disintegrating. Shadows stretch out until there are no shadows anymore. Only the windows don't shatter, being windows.

     It goes on long enough to feel like it'll never end. Whatever you're sheltering behind, whatever armor you're using, it wears perilously thin. The last sources of darkness start to show light through them, like onion-skin, and--

     It stops with a cracking of chitin and an explosion of water. The paralytic took just enough hold for the tentacle-attrition and shell-rocking attacks to pry 'Scylla' off the wall, and as soon as she struck the moat, the murky water buffered most of the horrible radiance. The world once again goes comfortably dim. Bubbles drift up from the water- bloop, bloop.

     One tentacle reaches up, slightly shakily, and grabs Petra and Cinder's bubble to help pull it down to earth. Once it's set down ashore, the tendril wetly pat-pats on top before slurping back into the water.

     Some kind of big sackcloth thing floats to the surface too, then sinks again. Little pale hands try to push it into surfacing from below, with increasing insistence, and finally just throw it onto shore huffily. It splits open, revealing a shower of little stained-glass flower petals in varying shapes and colors. They seem like... money, maybe? You can just imagine a triumphant jingle.

     "(Are you okay doing this?)"
     "Huh?" comes telepathically, for Kale alone. When she's sending on purpose, there's thankfully less cannibalistic undertone. "Of course I am! Ms. Rook's acting like a scarier version of herself too, right? So I'm not alone or anything. It feels... a little cathartic, maybe."

     "... Hey. Can you tell Ms. Petra that the moat monster says sorry? Thanks!"
Lilian Rook     Both girls snicker about Sarracenia's whining. "You're right~" 'Hafren' says smugly about the sword. "Hers is bigger~" Elena titters. The two of them share the mean laugh afterwards, escalating and shifting tone when Cinder argues back. "Hahaha that's one of them at least!" "Low-hanging fruit too. Getting with used goods . . ." "Don't go too hard on her~ How many of the others even have a job~?"

    When Sarracenia decides to fire a giant cannon shell at the effectively harmless duo, the two start yelling at the top of their lungs in panic. "What the fuck?!" "Psycho! Psychotic psychopath psycho!" Aidan following up shooting at them turns it into a dual shriek. "Oh my god what's their problem?!" "Did you creeps take guns to school for your bullies?!"

    Unfortunately for them, neither of them is actually in a position to do anything about it, and have to dramatically teleport out at the last second in the scripted cutscene, on account of being basically normal people with no meaningful powers and not wanting to be murderously blown to pieces over a couple of insults.

    The combined fire against the drawbridge improbably fails to actually break through the seemingly-wood exterior, but the overwhelming force is easily enough to shatter the fastens anyways, dropping it in thunderous freefall without its fixing chains. The simultaneous blast against the window--

    Is reciprocated with an incandescent flash of warding magic. For some reason, the stained glass is protected better than the giant bridge slash gate. It takes repeated bashing to break through the spell, itself shattering like glass, and then one more to mangle the iron bars. The balcony level leads to a locked door with a special-looking keyhole, and behind it, an interior balcony with . . . the drawbridge mechanism.

    But all the same, tumbling into the grand hall is enough. Cast in near-darkness, all that lights your path is the illumination of gothic-coloured streaming god-rays from the windows on each side of you; until between each beam of light, shining golden candle stands light up one after another with eerie whooshes of ruby red flame, painting a dramatic line of revealing light all down the impossibly massive corridor. Chandeliers ignite overhead, and the marble floor reflects their amber glow, mingling with the other colours, such that, at the long shadows around the columns, the overlap of hues happens to look like the iris of the singularity above.

    Then, from somewhere high above, you hear the steady notes of distant, fast-paced pipe organ music, coupled with dramatic piano and someone playing strings. Rather than the slow dirge on the way to a stereotypical lair, it manages to be both menacing and something you'd play to get yourselves pumped up.

    And with good timing. Now begins the dramatic arched corridor level; you can see the ranks of animate armoured soldiers rushing out to meet you, joined by steel gargoyles with stained glass wings, and some sort of floating robed caster surrounded by a ring of colour-coded crystals. The stairs are far away, but there's only one way to go!

    Next time!