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Lilian Rook	It wasn't supposed to go this way. Since Nevada, or perhaps even well before, none of it has turned out right. Too late, or too early. Wrong place, or the right one at the worst time. Something had been just slightly off, ever since that vision in the Urals; ever since that feeling of lagging behind in second place to a person no one had ever met, when you should have been the vanguard. And somehow, despite everyone's best efforts, that discrepancy-- that slight divergence from how the story should be-- has only widened more and more over time, and not narrowed.     Or at least, more and more over time, and not less, things fall apart and you're suck picking up someone else's bottomless tab. You, and Lilian, and now everyone who just happened to be around her at the time. Because every single soul involved wanted nothing more badly than to sit down for a heart to heart talk, somehow, this had to happen instead.     And she didn't even call you. It had to come through the Elite crisis dispatch band. Evac in progress. First response WIA/MIA. Holding action by Chev. L Rook.     You're summoned to nowhere special, on a day at which nothing exciting was supposed to happen, to a city that only matters for being a capital, and a part of it that has no more relevance than its fully booked convention center. A low-key event quietly scheduled months in advance by heads of state to meet with Commonwealth ambassadors and discuss the prelude to the debate to the preparation to the motion to consider seeking Commonwealth membership. The type of security detail that would normally be well beneath Paladins of Lilian's calibre, only taken on with a a number of other menial tasks to give her spare time for getting the thirteenth Association up and running.     It should should be a generically bright and subtly beautified cityscape under a forgettably foreign sky, and instead you arrive to the wail of sirens and alarms and the mass panic of a crowd stampeding past you. Amidst rubble and broken glass and the smoke of catching electrical fires, a higher vantage shows you innumerable holes and gouges carved through the exterior of the Center complex that takes up most of the block; now in an advanced state of collateral damage well in excess of the two minutes it took to get here.     Police cars and fire trucks lie crushed under collapsed architecture. Crowds of attendees are ushered or carried away by emergency workers and low-level Paladins deputies. Helicopters circle overhead, at too long of a distance to be useful, keeping well clear of the burning wreck of a craft that had crashed through the west skylight. And in the midst of it, a higher-up rooftop explodes from within, setting off a fresh wave of screams from the evacuating civilians, and the plume of rubble rebar hangs in the air as weightless as glitter. Two figures emerge from it at speed, one pursuing the other, weaving back and forth over the roof level amidst percussive clashes that sound like machine gun fire.     Closer than anyone else should be, you can overhear them between the sounds of buckling supports and crumbling concrete. A familiar vocoder distortion, even, on the words. "--like nothing's going on at all! Are you fucking with me?! These nobodies aren't worth your life, right?! So why are you--" "I don't revolve around you, Ash! No matter how important you think you are, you don't matter more than keeping my word! Why don't you get--" "Hahahaha do you think I give a shit?! Do you see Red Team anywhere?! That's what I think of promises to them you fucking slave! You're taking me way too lightly!" "You think far too highly of yourself if you think I need to take time off work just for you!"
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Convene at the Center     One key rare fact: Every convention center in the multiverse that has ever been host to an event related to videogames has created another nexus in a series of geometric leylines. This is why almost every world has fully cancelled E3 or multiversally-equivalent expos. It's why Arthur Lowell can only approach from a distance. But he can approach quickly. He can dive through the falling or fallen architecture, he can swoop his rockets through tiny gaps in crushed vehicles, and zip past active fires so fast that it deprives them of oxygen and leaves them embers.     God. He's not remotely ready for round-two with Ash.     He can't even see their presence yet. Mecha, or no-mecha? Pre-or-post hardware-drop? Arthur hasn't even *remotely* gotten his plan together, and this wouldn't be a good spot to deploy it anyway. What's going to make this go better than the last time? It's going to be just as bad, maybe worse. Arthur knows this, the thought's racing in his brain, it won't stop. He's not immune to that sense that nothing's going right. > Arthur: You've got nothing for this. Soften the blow, do the dredgework     "LILIAN!!" He hollers as he rushes to keep pace with the running battle. "Gonna get this FUCKING FURBALL CLEARED and CLEANED." Furball? Oh, like a horrible tactical fiasco. "Shit don't REVOLVE AROUND HER but keep the FOCUS, I'll get that WIND OUT OF SAILS!" He dives low, and as he does, lines of power rush out of him. Temporary moderate antigravity effects ease building damage, conduits of power enhance rescue vehicles, and spreading networks of Gates get citizenry out of the way as Arthur darts through the mess below, bobbing above the skyline only long enough to identify where the running battle is going and to assess Ash's armaments and tactics.     It's, actually uncharacteristically cowardly. It wouldn't take a dossier for Ash, and Lilian, and anyone else here, to see that Arthur's mentally licking his wounds after the last skirmish. But he won't back off of being involved and present, and at the very least this should take Lilian Rook's mind off of dealing with her duties and her code and keep her fully in the game on dealing with Ash.
Angela	Angela certainly has immense faith in Lilian Rook's competency and skill and she has noticed that the Dame COmmander seems to be bristling at offers of assistance as of late. And so she, at first, considers just letting Lilian handle this without lending a hand at all because--but then she thought back to the time when she WAS able to help the Dame Commander and even if it annoys Lilian a little, she decides she has to be ready with support every time just in case it's one of the times she actually needs it. It is not something she can compromise on. She does not send a small team. Nonon and Shajo arrive, the latter wearing the Eggpack. "Careful Shajo. Captain Petra's a bit particular about who uses the pack." Nonon says. "Don't worry, I'll be careful. We're not even going to be the front line. Evacuation first." Someone runs right into Nonon and she hefts them up in one arm before snagging another one in her other arm and just marching back towards the evacuation line. "Nonon I think there might be a more efficient--Ah nevermind." Shajo says, drawing out Smile into his hands and shouting, "Right this way everyone! Try not to trample each other!" He shouts. A fleeing civilian sees the giant horror-hammer and horror-suit that Shajo is wearing and runs off in another direction entirely, screaming even more. "...Oh right. Hammer is a bit spooky with all the teeth. Hohm..." Shajo is in a pickle! But if people like Shajo and Nonon are the support, who has Angela sent out to be the vanguard? A full squad of R-Corp personel, led by Myo, move past the crowd and the other Agents, each carrying assault rifles and large oversized knives. "Ugh..." Myo complains. "What kind of deal did that machine make in order to send us out here? Clef?" "Dunno. Seems like we'll have to use our ocular implants." Clef says. "This Ash character must've done a real number on 'em if they chose to send us." Myo thinking about her struggle against Gebura during her Meltdown says, "Arright let's get situated. No need to rush. She's fighting a Color after all." "Hmmm?" A third Rabbit, Clara asks. "I thought she was a Grade One." Myo doesn't answer as the team takes a readied position. She knows better. She saw enough. And anyone who could give ''her'' trouble. Instead she says, "The Rabbits have come to graze the grass." The others repeat the phrase like a rallying cry.
James Bond	So, where are we at right now?     The black Aston is out of place here--untarnished, not sporting so much as a single dent, driving the wrong way. The distorted shapes of rubble and fleeing civilians crawl across the chassis from grille to boot. Last time, it was finding out your cage was built more sturdy and more cleverly than you thought it was.     An explosion overhead sees Bond's hand reach for the radio console; he pulls the power button rather than pushing. The console flips backwards to reveal a spread of toggle switches and buttons more suited to a plane's cockpit. One labeled MISSILE B is flipped.     Panels hidden seamlessly along the grooves of the hood slide open, and two articulated racks of micromissiles rise up to greet the air so full of circling helicopters, falling glass, screams and debris.     Red crosshairs projected onto the inside of the windscreen track falling chunks of rubble, a beeping in the car's interior growing steadily more rapid until a sonorous, solid tone emerges and Bond presses a blinking red trigger button on the front of the gear stick.     Swarms of missiles break the rubble into stones before it can smash the car. Over the sound of the constituent concrete pebbles raining onto the chassis, he ponders further as he draws nearer. No--I see it now. Biting anyone who comes close, because it's easier than straining against the bars.     The V8 growls as Bond weaves through detritus already fallen. I remember those days. I even remember hating these people for how often they managed to win. Why should they, when I never did, in any way that mattered? I wonder if that's what she's thinking. Shit don't REVOLVE AROUND HER but keep the FOCUS, I'll get that WIND OUT OF SAILS!     Smart. But spite tastes sweet enough that we have a word for it. Would she give up the advantage on Lilian, even for a second, just to spit in our eyes? I can't be sure she wouldn't. There were times I came within inches...     Bond's foot slams the accelerator and the Aston surges forward. As Arthur slows the descent of the rubble, the car passes beneath it harmlessly, beelining for an already-fallen chunk of wall resting against the entrance to a subway. The front tires climb up it, the car goes up at a 45 degree angle and ramps off of it, earning a few seconds of airtime as his finger presses a red button labeled 'FLASH.'     A compartment hidden similarly to the front missile racks reveals itself--this one a tube-shaped launcher at the back of the car over the left taillight. With a soft whir, it swivels towards Lilian and Ash, firing.     The trajectory of the smoking projectile places it behind Lilian just as the car makes contact with the ground again. The flash is blinding, but the shot was made such that only Ash would suffer its consequences, effectively opening up a second or two for Lilian to press a momentary advantage however she sees fit.
Xion	Xion didn't really go 'in' for the Commonwealth situation. It was always words that meant 'wait, longer' in different orders. She didn't jive with inactivity, didn't wait for the meeting to discuss the plan to maybe table the novel issue of actually doing anything. It grated on her, so she'd take a shift at a florist shop over a security detail for the sub-committee member of the potential progress administration every day of every week. That was just the way things were for her, but, a distaste for the grinding wheels of bureaucracy that always seemed to be in park or reverse might be obvious. It is 'from a stop' that the text alert finds Xion, taking a nap on an all-white and extra blocky couch in the Castle That Never Was with a black coat draped over her front like a hooded blanket. Groggy, she almost doesn't take the alert, though her sassy hamburger girl helper swiftly moves from 'vibration and beep alerts' to 'KitchenAid's Greatest Hits: Sounds Of Products Self-Mangling, Vol 7 - Stand Mixers' and jumping the noirette out of her restful doze into action. Catching her launched phone out of the air, Xion thumbs through the lock screen and stares down at the screen while rubbing the corners of her eye with left knuckle. > Holding action by Chev. L Rook. "Oh--" --- Nowhere special gains a fresh hole, this one sworlingly vertical and two-dimensional. The Corridor of Darkness as punched-through to reality by Xion lurches in askew disgorgement, Xion finishing her next syllable while second-step into a sprint and one arm into a coat. "--dangit! How long has this gone. . ." Cut short by fleeing civilians stumbling back into her and bouncing off her upstream path towards the convention center. The screams and shouting and state of palpable collateral-damage causing slugging match nearby answers all of the Nobody's available questions of 'how bad it is'. Bad. The answer is emphatically 'bad'. Pulling on coatsleeve in motion, Xion's left arm wraps right shoulder to drag protective black coat with silver draws over black long-sleeved turtleneck and shorts over tights. With a snap of cloth at a full sprint, Xion brandishes two medallions before her - earthen-sable, and black-gold - one held in knuckles and the other flung out before her path. The first and held, earthen-sable, howls as a wolf and canyoncrack, lifting concrete dust about the Nobody and re-arching her forebangs to give the vague antenna-hook impression of black ears hidden in her hair. The second and thrown, black-gold, splits into a trine-angled puzzle of dragonfly wings and fairy balls of paled light, which Xion races through the split-formation of and gains a trio of followers. She can *hear* Lilian and Ash, tearing at each other with words, but it's all so abstract it's like two painters arguing over one canvas and to be a figure upon the artwork itself. Racing past Rabbits and with Arthur's antigravity lifting the structure up, Xion at least spots a moment to be useful. "Hey!" She calls back to the Rabbits. "Since you're running the 'wrong way', I appreciate the help! But this structure might be pretty unsafe --" The antigravity applied to the structure and surrounds clears one of the potential issues with radical redecorating causing more problems, Xion skidding to a halt at the entrance. Tilework and debris gather like putty at her sneaker'd feet while Xion takes one big rotating step forward and the whole ground floor snaps to a certain kind of attention with the fall of her heel, and then with a metaphorically meaningful heave up and back like bracing a table above her, rising up a proud-fingered hand.
Xion	Concrete and debris, rebar as chewed cud, is gripped and repillar'ed in structural supports, ugly pylons of stone redistributing weight as Xion calls the Archwolf's power to reset the 'held model' of a whole conference center up on something more solid than wavering gamer god magic. Panting and puffing for a second, Xion whispers a 'find her' to her orbiting Arbiter fairies - which causes the trio of dragonfly-winged balls to streak off in speedy-judgement search.
Petra Soroka	<Q-Conversation> Angela says, "Petra, is Ash someone you consider a friend?"     This question, in the fretting and foot-tapping hours after her last conversation with Ash, consumes more of Petra's thoughts than she'd like. Partly because it's irrelevant-- whether or not she does feel positively to Ash, that's never been contradictory with fighting someone *before*, and it certainly isn't going to start now-- but partly because that line of thought forces her to confront something else.     Why *is* she fighting Ash? The obvious answer, and the true one, is to protect Lilian. Lilian being hauled off to some NAZCA blacksite for apocalypse probing so she ceases existing or whatever would be *bad* for Petra, and it's an easy goal to be in opposition of.     But in a more practical sense, who is she, really, to protect Lilian? She can't disagree with Ash on some of Lilian's various hypocricies, and in some sense, 'protecting' Lilian means protecting her from confronting those problems. NAZCA is one thing. If she had the opportunity somehow, Petra wouldn't mind killing them just for being annoying and gross government goons, and imagining them snickering about how they're totally going to *outsmart* Lilian this time just makes them priority targets instead. But when it comes to mustering enmity to feel towards Ash, Petra ends up just feeling contempt for literally everyone else instead.     Pacing and worrying and glancing at her phone for any new texts from Ash, Lilian, anyone, doesn't actually get anything done. No matter what she wants for Lilian, for Ash, for the Blooms as a whole, for herself-- the one thing she absolutely, never ever ever wants, is to do nothing, so she scoops up her phone, slips her pistol into its holster on her ankle, untucks her shirt to pull it over the transteam gun on her hip, pushes open the door to her apartment, and gets on the move hours before the distress call is sent out.     "Hey, Heyalexa? Could you find some way to get Lilian's schedule for today, and text me the warpgate coords she's at?"     So Petra is there in that unremarkable capital before anyone else. In a cafe a couple blocks away, Petra sits in a booth fretting with a sandwich she doesn't have the apetite for, getting angry at her radio and keeping an eye outside.     Lilian isn't told about this, of course. It's for practical purposes!!! It's so if something happens, Petra's close! Having a livestream on your phone from a little spy robot you set up to watch over the building that a girl you aren't even dating is in is normal! For security!
Petra Soroka	When hell breaks loose, Petra dines and dashes. She doesn't think about it at the moment, but she'll remember it later.     Even pushing against the flow of the fleeing crowd, Petra is there early, early enough to watch a wall of the convention center blow out. Now that it's back to being about collapsing buildings and world-ending psychic powers, instead of complaining about humanity while texting for hours, Petra is struck by the sensation of being infuriatingly small again. Not because she's physically helpless in the face of overwhelming odds, but because blowing up buildings is a kind of rhetoric too, and trying to match the literal and rhetorical scale that Ash is operating on instantly makes Petra feel helpless and already too-slow and stupid.     At least, she won't waste time or narrative weight on the panicking civilians. They pass on either side of her like faceless water, while she grips her Silver bottle in her fist. "--like nothing's going on at all! Are you fucking with me?!"     "Ash!!" Rails and platforms of morphmetal, forming and melting away as Petra needs them, gives her a way spiraling up through the chaotic cityscape to be much, much closer than she should be. "You already *have* her attention! Isn't this kind of the perfect time to do, like, anything but this? Just randomly swinging at her while a fucking audience takes potshots at you?"     Petra's interference takes the form of morphmetal walls pouring down like waterfalls or bars lancing across Ash's path. This isn't exactly out of a refusal to hurt them, but instead, just not really thinking anything else would help much.
Lilian Rook	The paired figures cross the entire length of the rooftop and back, drop through the top floor and burst out the side onto a lower section of the convention complex, fight a shallowly arched curve all the way into the adjacent tower, crash through its windows, then spiral up two floors and back out into the air again in the time it takes you to arrive. There are no signs of military hardware, nor a prototype mech, nor teammates or air support; and yet the destruction mounts faster by the second for being a one-on-one duel.     Lilian in armour is at the leading position of the pursuit, rushed down by her opponent wearing a barely different G-suit from before. Though Ash is forced to approach her over and over again, contending with withering bursts of gunfire and perfectly placed trap-runes just to get within reach of their chrome-cored spear, Lilian doesn't seem to be able to slow them down at all. Violent flashes of fire last only split-seconds before they turn to furious clashes of steel-on-steel, bladed staff turned against Night Mist until the building starts to collapse around them, and Lilian relocates once again, rapidly shifting course in minute increments that Ash doesn't lose track of.     Neither of them seem to be injured. It looks like neither of them have even really taken damage. You know perfectly well just how serious that means the fight is. More than that, it doesn't look as if Ash is trying and failing to catch Lilian, so much as Lilian is being forced into convoluted loops around the building just to keep the battle away from civilians and emergency workers; and she's quickly running out of places it can go before the whole block collapses. And Ash knows it too. "What's the matter, Rook?! Haven't you hit me yet?! I didn't feel it at all!" "Keep talking shit, Ash. I know the adults aren't here to clean up after you. This is just to gratify your own ego; you can't win here in any way that matters!" "I don't see your big sister here to do everything for you either, little miss entourage! You don't think about a word that comes out of your motherfucking mouth, do you?! Forget support staff; you never go anywhere without a tour bus of losers to do everything for you!" "So then where are they?!" "That's my point you stupid bitch! You think this is a fucking game, huh?!" "I don't want to hear that from someone so pathetic they stalked my schedule!" "A public schedule is a fucking slap in the face to what you are! You think I wouldn't take you up on your dare?!" "What I am is better than you and bigger than this! Grow up Ash! Stop trying to drag me down into your bucket and get a life too! That is if you're even half as strong as you think you are!" "If I were only half as strong as you I'm still going to win, Rook! Isn't it getting a little cramped trying to keep this away from the nobodies?! You can't move around like you want to, right?!" "!" "I'm right in front of you and all you think you can spare time to think about them?! I can tell just from looking at you-- you're fighting me half-assed because they're all looking!"
Lilian Rook	'LILIAN!!'     "Lowell!" "Black Two!" "Understood! I'll--" "Kill you first!"     Ash rushes straight into Lilian's guard. The steel fused to the spear-tipped staff crashes jarringly into Night Mist's edge, and Lilian pulses her mobility magic like a thruster flare just to stay in place. Ash reaches out for a bare (suited) handed grab and throw, then Lilian blinks aside, brings her sword down on Ash in passing with a brutal lack of second thought-- and the floor is cut to ribbons in a ripple pattern.. Ash lunges off the side of the building at Arthur; and then just as suddenly swerves off, backing away and leaping to one side as his lines of gravitic power flow through the ground. It's hard to tell what they're thinking, but they watch the magic only for a split second, then start gathering speed again.     The flash bomb lands right behind Lilian. She jumps to one side to get Ash out of her shadow. The taller Bloom is looking head on; polarized visor or not, it should slow them down. But it doesn't at all. Lilian's instant advance only crashes against an upraised forearm, to no effect, and the cracking sound is the armour around her waist as the staff-butt trades with the blow, hurling her away again. The only thing Bond has to go off is the fact that he didn't see Ash's shadow on the adjacent wall. Even in light that bright, the was only a bleary smudge. "Cute fucking trick. I bet all that precious trust and coordination got you through lots of tough scrapes, huh?" ". . . Just a coincidence. Don't worry about it." "Hahaha whatever; I'll beat it into you anyways. Teaming up with the weak only gets in your way! I ditched my baggage to fight you seriously, and you still think you can just tag in someone else and outsmart me?" "It must be nice, being so tough you don't even realize how stupid you are." "Block my fist to your fucking jaw with that IQ score then!"     The groaning floor shudders and goes silent above the rush of earthen supports piling up under it. Glass and steel falls steadily from above, but the tide of masonry pouring onto the streets stops up like a stanched wound. The fairy-spheres have no trouble tracking down Ash; Xion finds the pair of them straight away on the top floor of the west building under the skylight, near the burning helicopter. Ash makes a pissed-off-sounding vocoder noise through their helmet. "God they're like roaches." they say, then turn to one of Xion's lights as if it might be a microphone. "You think this is going to help? Like you're picking up slack? The more you try to make her rely on you, the more hopeless this gets."
Lilian Rook	'Ash!! You already *have* her attention! Isn't this kind of the perfect time to do, like, anything but this?'     "Oh my god you're even uglier than I remember." Ash lets down their stance by a hair at seeing Petra break in, and is instantly shot in the helicopter's tail blade. Spent ammo clinks against the floor and rolls into the fire. Ash shouts over vented aether. "I came here to see Fenrir, not you, so fuck off! Stop ruining everything!"     Somehow, Petra briefly seizes aggro over Lilian. They lunge at Petra in a way that breaks the floor beneath them, a convention column to one side, and every morphmetal wall beneath them and Petra, all in the same continuous motion. Something blunt strikes Petra hard enough to drive the wind out of her, then turns out to be Ash's hand, balled up around her shirt, lifting her up off the ground, where she feels completely weightless; without solidity; a leaf before the great winds of change.     She feels the start of an effort to throw her back through the hole she came from; and the window of the skyscraper across the street, then Lilian carves away the floor beneath the both of them in an instant, Ash begins to fall, and releases Petra in the reflexive motion of grabbing something to hold on to; one that turns to ripping a support out entirely, as if it were one fully discrete piece from the floor and ceiling, and hurling it at Petra just wide enough to miss, break through the wall, and land in the street right on top of James' car.     "Just let me have this! This is the last chance there is! Ever! so stop fucking interrupting!"
Angela	''Since you're running the 'wrong way', I appreciate the help!'' Myo scowls, taking this as a direct insult to her competency. "Hey you...!" She says, briefly distracted from the task at hand but not for long since shortly thereafter, Myo starts taking aim with the rifle, her eyes glowing red as she narrows them. She jerks with her head, indicating to the other Rabbit Team members to split up and avoid making any of them an easy target for splash damage or, as Myo tends to call it, 'Horizontal Cuts'. Nonon and Shajo continue their aid work. Shajo has hidden the giant awful hammer in a trash bin which lowers his terror-rating a bit so he can actually lend a hand. The faster they evac this place, he figures, the easier it'll be on Lilian. "Are they really as strong as a Color?" Shajo asks. "How should I know? I am not a warrior nor do I particular care about scaling except insofar as it prevents me from doing my job. As should be the case with you." Angela says. She is having a pretty easy time FOLLOWING the fight, actually, but all that means is that she gets to see the violence in slow motion. It doesn't actually help in solving the issue. "Yeah, yeah..." Shajo says. "Starting to see why they made a Thirteenth Association to begin with. Figure the Head will apply to the Commonwealth next?" Angela really hopes not. How would she take revenge on a Head that's part of the Commonwealth? Would they even take in a place like The City? No, she figures, it's pretty unlikely the Head would go that far. Not that she knows a lick about what they're thinking. "Mm. Well I hired the Rabbits since wasting Agent resources on this at this point is unviable whereas the Rabbits are increasingly extraneous." Angela says before realzing she's probably saying too much to an Agent. "Ah, I suppose I am getting a bit careless when I am so close..." ''Teaming up with the weak only gets in your way'' Myo, at this point, has gotten a line. She takes a quick burst shot towards Ash, aiming for their left eye right as Ash is distracted with Petra and yelling at people to stop interrupting. That seems to be the best shot she can imagines getting. 'Treat her like a Color'? Alright, machine, Myo thinks. Shortly after Myo opens fire, the other Rabbits, scattering in numerous directions follow through with machinegun fire of their own, always moving, always staying out of the way, keeping mobile as they pile on the firepower.
Petra Soroka	"Oh my god you're even uglier than I remember."     "Pfuh--" Petra had been prepared for some variation on 'you should've killed yourself, f-slur' as a greeting, but the much more mundane insult makes her choke. Instinctively, she fires banter back, just like any other time. "What, was I so photogenic that all your stalker dossiers made me look gorgeous?"     Getting Ash's full-force assault turned on her isn't something she expected to prompt by her appearance, but in retrospect, maybe she should've. Seeing all her morphmetal walls torn through like paper, she barely gets her hand halfway to pulling out her transteam gun before she's grabbed, tucking her knees to her chest to throw an impotent kick at Ash's chest. The deflected little 'thud' of the impact hitting the ground instead is drowned out entirely by the collapsing floor, and Petra takes advantage of being dropped by diving onto a grip of her own morphmetal, hanging one-handed until it glides to drop her on the lower floor with Ash. "So stop fucking interrupting!"     Petra's mind races with her attempts to conjure up any way to *physically* affect Ash. It's not her goal, like the others, to just beat them into submission, but being a vulnerable target just tottering around in a battlefield that Lilian has to protect is a net *detriment*. If she can't take any pressure off Lilian besides by getting punched instead, then she's worse than useless. <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "I told you. She's not *her*, not all the time. Everything she touches, or, everything that's a tool or in her hands or-- She's messing with mass, sure, but she's *Heart-aspect*. It's about self. It's about what's part of the self. The way you feel like something's part of you, just 'cause you're holding it."     That's how Arthur puts it, but there's a certain other influence tugging on Petra's conception. Inviolability, complete denial of any invasion on your 'self', the psychological aspect of absolutely loathing giving up control-- the deep rooted need to control what influence is allowed to permeate your identity is the *same* wish Petra made. Just, in Ash's case, it seems like the answer was 'none'.     She doesn't come up with anything to do about *that* at the moment. But with her own black-and-color-streaked glass EGO spear in hand, pulled out of the morphmetal surrounding her in a loosely hexcombed bubble, Petra has an idea for something *else* at least.     "If you want them to get away-- you can't fight right as long as these creeps keep getting involved, right? There's no point until they're all away. So--" Petra glances at Lilian, momentarily guilty like a dog right before shoving over a plant. "Sorry, Lilian."     "--Just take one of those skyscrapers down. They'll all have to go stop the civilians from fucking dying. It'll get them out of your hair." Petra looks back at Myo for a moment, sneering. "Except Rabbit Team. But they're some of the most killable people you'll ever meet. Seriously, I've seen a *lot* of them die already."
James Bond	Damn. I didn't see the visor until I was already in the air. Is it that shielded? No... there's something else going on. Why didn't I see any shadow? You think this is going to help? Like you're picking up slack? The more you try to make her rely on you, the more hopeless this gets. Hopelessness is addictive, too, isn't it? At least when you're sinking, you can feel that you're moving. But there's a way out of it. If I found it, you can. Much more easily than I did.      Bond flips a switch: LOUDSPEAKER. A small microphone extends from the center of the steering wheel, out from beneath the branded horn panel. A subtle black button on the inside of the wheel, able to be held down by the index whilst driving, extends, and Bond holds it down with a slight 'click.'      "You're just a little too old to believe that you got here without Mum and Dad noticing. And you're too smart to think they *can't* stop you--rivers of money, 138 years' worth of knowledge and they don't have a single thing to leverage against you? No."     "So why *didn't* they? Is it because they know they'd 'slow you down?' Or is it because, despite you being a Bloom, they have a plan in place to move on without you, if they have to? That maybe, they're fine with giving up the promised land as long as they can fall back on business as usual."     "You figured that out when you learned they moved on the Urals without you. And now that you've realized how closely you've danced to their tune, you're desperate to make even one step off-tempo, just to prove that you had a thought, an impulse, a feeling, that didn't come from *them.*"     The massive support flies through the air and tumbles end over end. Bond's knuckles grip the wheel tightly. He could swear above the din that he hears his blood pumping through his body. The cars abandoned by fleeing civilians, the broken glass, the smoldering fires, none of that seems as real as the weighty implement rapidly threatening to crush him to death, even as the panorama of the city swipes blurringly sideways across the windscreen.     The Aston's tires bark a short squeal as he rips the wheel in the opposite direction--the car pops sidways on two wheels to side-profile through a labyrinth of haphazardly-abandoned automobiles and chunks of rubble. His left hand holds the wheel steady, his right smashing a button on the console as his heart pounds: CUTTER     The wheels of the car facing the air sprout narrow cylinders from the center of the branded hubcaps. Two high-strength, thin red lasers pierce the sky, cutting the support first into halves and then again into quarters as the rear wheel passes. Fragments of sliced support rain down--one, two, three...     The fourth smashes clean through the impact resistant glass of the Aston's rear passenger-side window, and when Bond puts the car on all four wheels, it bounces in the seat, rocking the car's suspension, before it shatters the driver's side rear window on its way out.
James Bond	<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "It's like they're-- that felt like they're some kind of, touch-based telekinetic or something? Like anything that makes contact with them is just moved, or lifted, or deflected however they want?" <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell says, "I told you. She's not *her*, not all the time. Everything she touches, or, everything that's a tool or in her hands or-- She's messing with mass, sure, but she's *Heart-aspect*. It's about self. It's about what's part of the self. The way you feel like something's part of you, just 'cause you're holding it." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Yeah, so-- the alcohol thing too. She just has total control over her 'self'." <J-IC-Scene> Arthur Lowell tries to explain more tensely. "The body isn't the body. The nerve endings don't end. Ash decides where the boundaries are on 'Ash'."     Then I'll have to use something that doesn't affect the body. I guess it's a good thing I know how to use those now, isn't it? Just let me have this! This is the last chance there is! Ever! so stop fucking interrupting!     "No it isn't. You know it isn't. You're just trying to justify this being some kind of last stand--so that you can have your closure, whether that means beating Lilian or losing to her. But there's so much more for you than the narrow crawl space you imagined for yourself."
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Do your best to chirp with Ash     "GO GET A SIXTY MILLION BUDGET TO BID ON *SHUTTING YOUR FUCKIN' MOUTH*!! LILIAN COULD BEAT YOUR ASS WITH ANOTHER THIRTEEN CODES AND AN ARM TIED BEHIND HER BACK IF WE WEREN'T ON THIS COSMIC FUCKING FLOWER-ARRANGEMENT DESTINY AND YOU WEREN'T TAKING SWINGS AROUND INNOCENT RANDOS!" Arthur's banter game is weaker today. But conversations on the radio have gotten to him. He didn't manage to evade that rush, but he has to assume, maybe James Bond's cover drove them off?     What IS that? What's happening? > Arthur: Are they actually here? > Arthur: Doesn't NAZCA track them everywhere? > Arthur: Why are they saying these things? > Arthur: Saying that this is the last chance?     Arthur's broom-rocket cuts, spins, and burns retro for a moment, before swerving into the building that now hosts the duel. Shots keep moving through them. Their projection of the self, it lets them control density, inertia... spatial compression? The gaps between atoms? The bonds in molecules and proteins? Is this how they always fight, outside the mecha? Or is this something different?     They were cautious. Looking at his magic. This was scheduled, there was an interruption of a plan... did Ash set something up again? "She couldn't have gone on this on a fucking random impulse." He mutters. "She's got a chance. Something we're messing up..." The way they work, the disruptions of density and gravity, he should be able to detect them. If there's a convergent alignment of planets, if there's a cosmic opportunity, if there's a bunch of geometric leylines, or even if Ash themselves just set up a huge amount of work around the city, Arthur should be able to trace the interactions using that density and gravity manipulation and its spatial side-effects. Everything about Ash is about Presence or Non-Presence, more or less self, more or less gravity and density and Thereness -- a set of influences whose side-effects Arthur can easily detect if he knows what he's looking for.     Or, if they're worried that NAZCA is about to come down too hard... well, their strike teams have plenty of energy sources that run pretty hot. Here's hoping that's not the case.     But what if he finds *nothing?* > Arthur: Then keep up what you're doing > Arthur: Get every bystander out of this building     His broom fires Gates like machine-gun shots, spraying over anyone left in the building who hasn't escaped, teleporting them out of here while the terrain is ripped apart by the fight. And flooding the environment with more lines of gravity, trying to make sure the broken-up chunks of architecture drift down slowly, float freely, or otherwise make the disaster more of a beautiful ballet than an ultraviolent slaughter.
Xion	Bending under the weight of the building and pushing up with a core-and-back lift and a clenched-teeth seethe of a tensed exhale, Xion pushes back against the world and the war upon it. The crawl, clamber, and leap of the convention center masonry and concrete back into rough-shaped and pillar-fused supports occupies the Nobody for several long moments of further gesticulating and commanding. Even with all her mobility and the ability to pinch space together and appear -- she couldn't find Lilian by searching for Hearts and feeling them, so she had to find the Dame Commander the manual way. Zipping through the crumbling venue, the trio of fairy-lights split up. One, trundling through the air in a weaving path, remains low on the first stories, gullet-gobbling up chunks of unshaped rubble and trapping pieces of terrain with a very large big bird beak. The second, drawn to active girder and glass-fall, runs right into the dangerous debris and is torn and ripped and smashed - only to enrage, emerge unscathed, and furiously powder and metal-pinch the falling bits with violent barrages of pecks. The third, and last, sees all, rising high up the buildings and chasing fight as panopticon chased prisonbreak. It searches, and finds, and is addressed like a particularly sassy promo dropped by a hardcore heel. 'You think this is going to help? Like you're picking up slack? The more you try to make her rely on you, the more hopeless this gets.' The birdseye gazing-back fairy weaves under attention, both a vaguely 'shaking head' and a camera held in frame and gaze. Outside, Xion drops from her tensed-lifting pose to a single cycled breath. Hands to thighs she makes a furious-frustrated noise, crouches with one fist cocked back, and slams a punch into the ground. Like hitting the pad under a swing tester, a column of ground beneath her elevators her suddenly towards a high rooftop curled with the smoke from burning avionics. The little eye-fairy dips in the air and retreats in pre-called stage direction when Xion screwballs through the upper part of wall behind the camera-point as if it was fake blocks and loose dirt, dragging a black-purple-white medallion across the brushed metal length of her summoning-'shwink!'-ing Kingdom Key. "When all you do is talk trash I'm not interested in picking up every piece of garbage!" Xion's voice roars over the surge of black flame her third medallion becomes in her left hand. The flame extends, black 'metal' or burnt-stake lingering with heat at the tip to form one of the burnt-Joan's spears. "I'm pretty confident--" Weapons at her side for just a beat after summoning, Xion's flick-up twirl to bring spear to a directed point drags the hate-flaring tip deeply against the floor and pours a flare of directed-thrusting ground spears up from a melting path. "--in hope!" Xion finishes, bracing the Kingdom Key across the length of the spear and drag-slashing the weapons against each other in a diagonal draw cut that slings a chasing wave of black flame and stardust after the eruption of ground spears. She's almost about to leap in to try her approach on Ash again, only slightly changed in type and power-backing, when Petra says something - offers something - so thunderously off that Xion stops cold just to turn and shout-ask-- "Petra, what?!" Having to work through the wild barrage of feelings. Could she fix this? Maybe! It'd sure tie her up. "Don't make them *right* to help out! We're *just* talking about this!"
Petra Soroka	"Don't make them *right* to help out! We're *just* talking about this!"     Petra winces, holding her hands up in a gesture of mild placating surrender. What comes out of her mouth, though, isn't that-- she's just not trying to escalate yelling at Xion about how stupid and cringe she is, like she's doing to everyone else.     "What's shouting about how wrong they are really helping? What's a whole gang of people-- fucking *Myo*-- all squadding up and trying to find the right sequence of syllables to get in a verbal teabag *accomplishing*?" Petra swings a hand in Ash's direction, while they rip out another chunk of concrete and rebar in the midst of explosions and gunshots that aren't touching them.     "Like, this is a fucking *Bloom*. Do they really seem like someone who hasn't been told they're wrong *enough*?! What are you all planning on doing, shouting louder than the entire fucking world already has? It's a *dead end*. Everyone who can't listen to the words they're saying is better off playing cleanup duty with the civilians."
Lilian Rook	There are only a limited number of people that can need evac from a finite space, but a big city convention center poses that limit very high, even with most of it reserved. Those able to flee under their own power are pushing down every single street they can, jammed up with those in the adjacent offices trying to get down to ground level so they can flee, emptying giant vertical stores of screaming human mass down onto the street.     So despite the cliche, Shajo's presence alongside the new emergency workers rushing to the scene is genuinely helpful; the crowd is crushing into itself at staggered points on every intersection, and it takes redirecting the flow in bulk to get the human herd instinct to go along with it rather than try to fight through it. Further away, people are evacuating well enough in advance, but further beyond that, a ring of gawkers who feel safely distant from the dramatic event has already formed.     High-calibre gunfire strikes Ash directly in the face. The reflective helmet; more like something meant for EVA in space than piloting a plane; makes the location of an individual eye close to guesswork, but still not difficult. The crack of clean impact fails to materialize in the glass itself. Or even the bullet, which should have fragmented as it was designed to. It's the helicopter hull, fanned out over a spread of miniscule punctures directly behind Ash's head. They react only after being shot, making it clear that they weren't aware of Myo at all, but the following volley of support fire from the rest of Rabbit Team doesn't have any greater effect either.     Several more shots fail to penetrate Ash's visor, but for a moment, all they do is raise one arm and palm to guard their face and crouch down beneath Myo's line of fie; then, while countless bullets are striking the rest of them, they drop their guard and lunge at the closest Rabbit, and the resulting blow shears through reinforced combat gear-- blade, rifle, armour-- as if it wasn't even there. It's not just that, either; powers or not, Ash is ridiculously strong. There's no way that staff-turned-spear shouldn't shatter into a billion pieces being swung like that; the air sparks tongues of flame when they move that aggressively, and carves furrows into the concrete in the wake of their swing. A pillar on the floor below crumbles under the shock of their leading step, reformed again by earth magic only after.     'You figured that out when you learned they moved on the Urals without you. And now that you've realized how closely you've danced to their tune, you're desperate to make even one step off-tempo, just to prove that you had a thought, an impulse, a feeling, that didn't come from *them.*'     "Shut the fuck UP!!!" gets through the car speakers even over the sound of quartered architectural cement crushing the road to either side. Foot traffic well outside the splash zone surges in the opposite direction anyways. "I can't understand you past the boot in your mouth!" Ash yells towards the Aston in passing. Bracing the spear against their back under their arm, they slam their hands together and then drop to one knee on the upper floor, and lightning arcs between their fingers and the concrete in the instant of their closing. "They aren't all-powerful or all-knowing, no matter how fucking scared of them you are! Whatever fucking five dimensional chess you ghouls think you're playing, it doesn't matter if you can't back it up with violence!"
Lilian Rook	Something dimly circular lights up on the floor around Ash. Lilian advances on them again, and this time the floor fifteen feet away, crumbles into severed chunks, and Lilian falls-- and catches herself-- instead. A bolt of lightning drops from a cloudless sky, straight through the rising smoke and lands directly into the Aston's path. The booming clap of thunder is certainly natural; so of course it's magic. There was no reason to believe that Ash couldn't use something hereditary too. Is it only Nika that can't?     'No it isn't. You know it isn't. You're just trying to justify this being some kind of last stand--'     "I'm saying that you can't beat them! And even if you could, I wouldn't let you! I'm the one who has to stand there while they put the final fucking touches on your execution, watching you all do fucking nothing, no signs of life at all! So I don't want to hear anything from a man who's completely fucking beaten and whipped by his agency; all I hear is your own FEAR!"     'LILIAN COULD BEAT YOUR ASS WITH ANOTHER THIRTEEN CODES AND AN ARM TIED BEHIND HER BACK IF WE WEREN'T ON THIS COSMIC FUCKING FLOWER-ARRANGEMENT DESTINY AND YOU WEREN'T TAKING SWINGS AROUND INNOCENT RANDOS!'     "Wowwwww it took ten of you to get in my way?!" Ash jarringly snipes back at Arthur. Even if the words are childishly sarcastic, the vocoder robs them of necessary tone, turning it into harsh static-laden roar all the same. "I could have stayed home and done nothing and half of you would be dead tomorrow!" they shout, jumping upright under heavy gunfire. "And Rook would already be dead if I wasn't trying to squeeze one single fucking drop of something special out of this bitch that nobody can shut up about!"     Lilian hauls herself out of the collapsed passage, finding the breath to gasp out "What in god's name are you even babbling about? You sound like Petra had a stroke." with a moderate floor of dignity, taking up her sword again. Ash only turns their head at the distance between them. "Defanged. Declawed. Utterly fucking pathetic. Why do you even bother? If you're waiting for them to save you then you already know you're weak. So if you actually believed you still had any of what drove you to be special, you'd quit fucking around and playing this character in front of them, and COME AT ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT!"     Arthur doesn't sense any distortions in something like mass or gravity in the terrain, but he feels something like a null pointer on both where Ash is standing. A continuous circle, roughly the size of where Lilian had cut up the ground and surprised them earlier, returns not a wrong value nor a zero nor nothing at all, but something like a function directed at the wrong line of code. Queried for its local properties, the higgs mechanism replies 'No'. All he can find relevant to his web of antigravity is that Ash still seems hesitant to approach it, but is standing closer than they would maneuver before.     Spraying mass teleport fire on his breakneck speed journey through the inner center tells him more than enough about the lack of NAZCA jamming. It also pisses Ash off even more. The whirl of their spear sounds like a localized hurricane, and a sharp jab of the staff end through the floor sends coruscating shocks through the multiple levels between he and they, collapsing a ceiling on him in total disregard of force propagation through mass.
Lilian Rook	'When all you do is talk trash I'm not interested in picking up every piece of garbage!'     "You are trash! What the fuck else is there to say about you?!" Ash turns and fires a second bolt-from-the-blue on Xion, aiming by voice proximity, and misses, hitting the ceiling and causing every functioning light on the floor to flicker and blow out, leaving the only source the muddy streaks of sun from outside and the fire-gleam of burning helicopter fuel. "All of you! There only thing you ever did right was fucking up a few people so badly that they were forced to stop acting like you!"     They turn and face Xion where she lands, and bring the spear back up to their side with a light kick to the haft, levelling the end at the direct center of her Keyblade, and then dramatically sweeping it through the wave of fiery ground-spikes that sprout up around them. Energy shatters as if tangible. Points that skewer their feet puncture and scorched the ceiling instead. The fire caught in the transparent crystalline layer causes the shard of chrome trapped inside to glow, highlighting the naggingly familiar geometry.     "And now you can't even do that. All of you were worthless, but at least you were so irredeemable that you made a version of humans better than you; and now that it's too late, you just have to go back and ruin the work that you made! Clinging, grabbing, dragging, smearing, grinding down and defacing everything; first Rook, and now you want me to go down with you when this shitheap you call Earth burns with you trapped in it, LIKE YOU DESERVE! You had your way with us forever! Isn't it enough?! Can't you fucking let go just for a second?!"     They step aggressively towards Xion, and something familiar catches her eye. The faint smudge of a rapidly fading footstep, glowing in the wrong colour on the concrete.     'Sorry, Lilian.'     That makes Ash stop and pay attention. Lilian looks past them to Xion, and starts to hand-sign a plan for a high-low pincer attack, then startles with "Petra--"     '--Just take one of those skyscrapers down. They'll all have to go stop the civilians from fucking dying. It'll get them out of your hair.'     "--What is wrong with you?!" "God you're so stupid you're actually fucking perfect." Ash laughs through their helmet, and it comes out like cosmic noise. Lilian takes a deep breath, and settles into a ready posture that corresponds to four possible Cleasa. "Then all I have to do is kill you, and Fenrir finally has to--."     "--Lasrach Roinnte!!"     The helocopter splits in half down its entire long axis, and burning fuel billows away along an invisible wake across the soot-smeared conference floor. Ash shifts their head just barely to look over the edge of Night Mist against their arm, down at Lilian. "You're really pissing me off. Why do you keep doing that?" "I know you have a limit, somewhere." "Oh my god not attacking me; you know what I mean." "Elucidate me." "Stopping short." "Beg p--" "Why do you stop using your power right before you hit me?"
Angela	Nonon and Shajo eventually move to stand guard. This is an amazing job because they get to help people and not murder anyone or even put themselves at risk of dying, really. The collateral damage is significant but their job is to help guide people away from it. Nonon approaches the gawkers and says, "This ain't far back enough! Gotta go back at least another block!" Nonon shouts at them while Shajo continues his own work. They keep an eye on the fight as best they can but their great record against 'Color' is slowing one down for a few seconds. They're not inclined to push their luck this far from L Corp and healing bullets. "Motherfucker..." Myo mutters but doesn't stop shooting. Neither do the other Rabbits. It doesn't seem like they have a proper survival instinct. Maybe they ARE just killable. Myo is the only one who is backpedaling while she's firing. Clef is punched clear through, the two halves of his body splitting off in two different directions. One splatters against a wall, the other is simply tossed aside, dropping to the floor. Clara backs up as well, mantaining her fire, but the fourth Rabbit--seeing that the bullets don't seem to have an effect, draws a very large and very sharp combat knife and darts in quickly, going for a swipe against Ash's throat. Angela examines her nails, listening idly to the conversation but doesn't seem inclined to jump in. She pours some bubbly champagne into a glass and listens to the bubbles pop. She doesn't seem inclined to jump in on the arguments and attempts at convincing and the like. She's just inclined to listen. Because, in truth, she doesn't actually disagree that Lilian may be better off if she stops trying to be who she is trying to be and just indulge what she desires past that. But it is important to Lilian. And so it is important to her. She leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. Contemplating.
Xion	'What are you all planning on doing, shouting louder than the entire fucking world already has?' "If that's what's required, yes!" Xion fumes back, partially consumed by mantling three loud personalities and finding her mouth more and more full of bile and pride and self-enforcement. "Turning the wind and bending beams of light back into place if I have to! I'm not the all-giving Hero of Everyone's Hearts, I quit that, so if someone's taking a swing I know whose side of the fight I'm on!" Weary-wailing beats of Xion's heart pulse in her neck and pound in her head and force her to take a hard swallow, willing down the belligerent organ that demanded more hot satisfaction while boiling in hate and impulse. Hate came so naturally to Xion, a complete knowing of the world that let her understand even love, and now it was like blinders around her eyes and a choker tightening around her neck. "Your answer sucks!" Xion swings keyblade point to waggle at Petra's petulance. Exasperated, Xion can't contain a hot heave of breath and a roll of the eyes away from the I get that you love to be bullied but the answer wasn't for *Ash* to give into the cycle of abuse and it's not the answer for us either! We can't let them hurt Lilian, and we can't let Lilian fight alone. You're here too!" Considering a dozen things and discarding them with a swing down of her Keyblade's tooth, Xion doesn't - can't consider clearly - any real aggression more forceful than a twist of tone and an accusing question. "What are you planning on doing, Petra?! Who're you here to care for?" Why didn't it seem to include her? Re-acquired and forced to react even though the bolt-from-nowhere zings wide, Xion's spear and key cross in a guard and her foot scuffs the darkening-room floor as she wheels to face anew. Focusing so much on Petra, contextless from the heart and blind-left to faith, was a full attention activity for Xion. Splitting it with Ash oncoming would be lethal. "Plenty!" Xion protests of what there is to say, game face returning as the duelist gets back to her honed skill. "You keep finding things to talk about, even! And I've done-" Her voice turns grave. "-plenty of things I know were right." In the dimming light, Xion remains highlit in sound and showing. Flickers of dark flame that emit a kind of moving-black glow define the edges of her ready weapons, Kingdom Key catching every stray ray of sunlight--         --and the whole artfully-swung length of Ash's center-strike swing. A weapon of the Heart and no magic duplicate or thin-slice borrowing, the Kingdom Key holds steady in Xion's grip and takes the whole Nobody with. In a flip that looks like animation error, Xion's fore-pointed speartip reverses in grasp and is driven down into ceiling ground, biting deep-fangedly into ground and putting more and more of the building and the earth-under as counterweight and still being scraped across the surface like a spooned-over condiment. Impaled dozens of times by the hedge of spears that both tear at Xion and shatter behind her wake, Xion gack-coughs dark ichor and wobbles at being fed back her own power the less-than-metaphorical way, releases her grip on the Kingdom Key to banish it and slip free of Ash's spin control in a soft spray of silver motes in centrifuge. Collapsing to a knee and sliding her motion-arresting black spear fierce circle about her, a fresh column of occluding magic fire disappears Xion and frees her from her own burnt-stake hedge in the same motion, surging up as curtain rather than attack.
Xion	Emerging in a roll that comes up across from Lilian in a dark-dripping crouch, Xion must look up at Ash while her right hand closes around a fresh Keyblade -- this time, Starlight's silver-and-blue and not the Kingdom Key 'shwink!'-and-keychain-sussurating onto the darkened stage. 'Can't you fucking let go just for a second?!' Despite the instant desperation of the step placed in her direction, Xion's fingers firmly settle around Starlight's black handle and tighten audibly in time to the drawing of a soft smirk across her dark-smeared face. "Sorry. It's one of my rules. Always reach." It was, a long time ago, 'someone's rule'. That Xion had retired from those rules towards 'Everyone' was her (and Lilian's) little secret. But Petra's gambit gets a real rise out of Ash in an unexpected way. It buys Xion a (belligerent, stupid, useless, needy) heartbeat to catch the summon and make ready. Lilian would go 'high'. Xion would go-- Streaking in frames of animation that leave a disjointed blur, Xion skips a tooth-shoveling early plunge into the ground, sending a wet wave of earth magic low over Ash's legs and reaching with a hand and empty-star hook or net out - as she promised, all but declared - to reach with her whole Heart out into the geometric snarl and yank at it, drag it, draw it out as a medallion just to take grip onto it. "Why did you stop using *your* powers on us?! This isn't about what we'll do - it's about what she won't, isn't it?!" Xion howls while dragging back against the 'impossible force of self' with a swung kind touch.
James Bond	And even if you could, I wouldn't let you! I'm the one who has to stand there while they put the final fucking touches on your execution, watching you all do fucking nothing, no signs of life at all!     That's when the lightning strikes the Aston. The engine stalls, the panels blow outwards and the power steering locks up, at speed, and Bond jerks the uncooperative wheel to the left to compensate for the sudden sluggishness. Though it loses speed, the loss of power means no brakes--that speed won't be lost nearly fast enough to keep him from impacting the now much more dangerous rubble. So I don't want to hear anything from a man who's completely fucking beaten and whipped by his agency; all I hear is your own FEAR!     The solution is almost worse than the problem. Under normal driving conditions, he'd just let the car lose speed. But there's too much rubble in the street for that to be safe--it'd only be a matter of time before he made a head-on collision with something while wrestling with the wheel.     So he aims the front left wheel at the nearest chunk of fallen building to force a roll. The reinforced chassis doesn't crumple, thereby keeping him from being crushed. The force of the impact is more spread out than a head-on collision that'd risk driving his head into the steering wheel.     It still hurts. His head still whips around like it were mounted on a spring--the impact-resistant glass still shatters and spills out in a thousand jagged pebbels over his hands. One, two, three rolls and his ears ring.     The loudspeaker is dead, too. When Bond realizes that he isn't, he twists the bezel on his expensive-looking wristwatch and shakily exits the car.     "All you can hear is my fear? Then listen, God damn it, because my fear has something to say to you."     "Yes. It's frightening to be in charge of your own destiny after realizing that you weren't, at all, for most of your life. What if I fail? What if I make things worse by trying? In spite of that, I'm here. Because I want to swim, and not just float."     "I'm here because I'm trying to reach you. I knew that I had to before I even knew your name. I'd be here even if Lilian didn't care in the slightest," he says, as blood from his forehead splatters onto his wrist, trickling down to menace the band of his watch and his brushed silver cufflinks. "*You're* the one saying that you *have* to stand there and watch us die. *You're* the one saying 'this will be the last chance there ever is.' Is that what you want? Or have you just *accepted* it?" You had your way with us forever! Isn't it enough?! Can't you fucking let go just for a second?!     "Why?!" He bellows into the sky as much as into the watch's receiver. "So you can build a new world on the same kind of automated violence that kills whatever it can't weaponize? So you can get your *turn* at the God-damned controls? So that whoever is the best at killing anyone who tries to take their seat at the machine, or, God forbid, turn it off, gets to drive it forever? That's exactly how things are *right now.* That's what I've decided to spend the rest of my life, whether it's days or years, fighting!"     "You said that all the mindgames in the world won't matter if they aren't backed up by violence. But here you are, talking exactly like -they- do, thinking like -they- do, acting like -they- do, and somehow, you're convinced you're outsmarting them, just because you're saying their quiet parts out loud."
James Bond	"It wouldn't matter to them if you killed every last one of them and burned the place to the ground. They've defeated you, humiliated you so utterly you don't even realize it. How's that for 'violence to back it up?'"      His brow furrows. Thoughts of another life dance at the edge of his mind and in his eyes. "...I was made to think had a hand on the world in the first place to 'let go.' But they already decided which way it would move, how my fingers would land, before I even reached out to touch it."      His chest heaves with the extertion of standing after such a spectacular crash, his superhuman physiology to blame for it. "I didn't ask to be born, and neither did you. Don't waste your life on this."
Arthur Lowell	> ==>     The mass collapses around and onto Arthur, impacting him loudly and painfully and interrupting his little rescue revelry. That spear HURTS, and smashes him all around with its storm of violence, pushing him away and completely breaking his focus, to say nothing of the intense bruising and crashing impact damage. Ash's shouts start him on trying to call back some kind of banter, but it stops when he processes what he's sensing.     "What's she doing to space, to--? To herself?!" His eyes go wide as he extricates himself from the collapse, stumbling into more open space. He tries to remember... "I think I know what this is. I think Ash is doing what the tree offered." Are they even here? Here in the traditional sense? Arthur thought it might be their particular Bloom-power, their malleable and expanding-contracting self, but no -- it's something else, isn't it? It's the Bloomness itself, the contact with the separatory force, the cleaving from what is into something else. Leaving the humans and the antegent to fight each other, and escaping to a way of being that isn't being. Arthur remembers that tree in ruined London, and he slams a palm down to launch himself back to a run. > Arthur: Ash has a challenge for Lilian, to not stop short. Help her     "LILIAN!!" He calls out. "*TRUST ME!* TAKE A SWING AND *CLEAVE WIDE!!*" Rushing at her, he does several things all simultaneously: First, a series of concentric pocket realities are generated "above" this plane, each structured as a handhold and anchor. Second, a massive buildup of high-level short-range anti-gravitational magic, angled in absolutely every direction perceivable within this reality -- and therefore, away from it, innately, as a plane. Third, a web of enchantments to latch onto Lilian and channel into her body and blade. And fourth, a complex geometrical magical system designed to completely invert the antigravitational effect in an instant.     "*Cleave wide,* and I promise I'll pull you back!!"     He rockets towards Lilian, blasting that magic forward. Ash is cleaved off of things, they're angled away from reality, they're something that people aren't and they're existing in ways that people don't exist. That's the time limit, isn't it? That's why there's a chance -- because Ash is in the process of embracing this in spite of everything NAZCA would want from them. And Lilian can do this too. But she's always turned it down, never had any opportunity to let loose from the world for a moment.     Lilian may have Thirteen Codes, but there's an unwritten Zeroth Code, a presupposition of existing as a person that people are in an paradigm that people exist as, an assumed prerequisite of even being allowed to engage with the rules from the start. It's a code of sorts that she can't afford to risk breaking, not without something to guarantee a safety net.     It might be giving Ash what they want, just a bit, but if Lilian can get one good swing in while cleaving away, he'll help her cleave right back, so she doesn't give away more than she can afford.
Petra Soroka	"What in god's name are you even babbling about? You sound like Petra had a stroke." "The only thing you ever did right was fucking up a few people so badly that they were forced to stop acting like you!"     Petra can't help privately disagreeing with Lilian here, in a way that privately makes her a little happy. She doesn't think they sound like a stupider Petra-- she thinks they kind of just sound like a Petra, with *more* justification and coherency, if anything. The fact that Petra, whose ideological wit is painfully subpar, is being upheld as the higher point of comparison here, reveals a phenomenon that Petra is acutely aware of in herself and even plays into on purpose: Petra is a little more coherent, to Lilian, for the simple fact that Lilian likes her! "--What is wrong with you?!"     Petra cringes, braced for the difficult task of forging ahead while being scolded by Lilian. Despite the building falling apart in the light of the helicopter's flames, the constant sound of concrete shearing around Ash, the drumroll of gunfire and muffled crackling and shouting in the city, she feels oddly distanced from the fighting itself. Rather than frantically rushing around to try and find some tactical advantage, she just keeps throwing minor impediments in their way, moving to survive, navigating a messy argument instead of a fight.     "I-I don't care that much about not doing terrorism! Sorry! And I'm, you know, I'm on your side, forever and against anyone, no matter what, but--" It doesn't feel good to add a qualifier after saying that. The twinge of tension she feels is reflected in the morphmetal scattered in strands and walls and darting flechettes all around the battlefield of the convention center, warping and distorting-edges in fluid jitteriness. "But, like, l-listen to them? They obviously don't hate you."     "I'm *on* Lilian's side. Lilian, and the g-- people like her. So--" Petra can't spare the same attention to Xion that Xion is spending on her, not without getting flattened in the chaos. Her sentences come scattered, fragmented, clumsy as she's forced to expend brainpower on the most difficult thing of all to her; translating her gut feelings into a concise, compelling, purposefully-empathetic declaration of ideology.     "--So that's why! I'm *not* on the side of taking care of these random civilians. I'm not even on the side of most of the Elites here! If the best way through this was for all of them to die, then I'd just, like, do that! Not you, but-- you're not even really the one in danger, right?" She would be, if NAZCA was here. The reason they aren't, instead of this happening tomorrow a thousand times worse with them here, is because of Ash.
Petra Soroka	"So that's *why*. There's a *way* Ash is like Lilian. So I'll treat their words like they actually mean to say them, unlike how fucking everyone else talks. If they *say* that they want to be alone with Lilian, then, like, they have a *reason* for saying that. They're not here for some stupid fucking pride duel or bitchbreaking argument to shut her up or anything like that. Obviously."     The most incredibly, embarrassingly obvious thing. Petra doesn't shout it for the whole world to hear, but she doesn't try to conspiratorially sneak her last sentence to Xion while they clatter and flicker around either. She just says it, like it justifies all of her wibbly mediation and the suggestion to threaten thousands of civilian lives, self-explanatorially.     "They're here because they're *lonely*."     Petra continues on, expositing while the others make their attempts at suppression and trash-talking. "And no one here is their 'people'. No one sounds right, whether they're trying to be pitying or reaching out a hand or just fucking shouting 'no you' over and fucking over, because it's all the same shit coming from people who don't get it, so it's just insect buzzing noise. And then Lilian doesn't seem like their 'people' either." "I didn't ask to be born, and neither did you."     "See? Like that? What's the point?" Her attention's shifted, to half-Xion, quarter-Lilian, and quarter-Ash. None of it's to Bond, being derided as an example, and none of it's to any of the others, like she's doing her best to pretend like they're not here while openly wishing they weren't. "I hope Ash's power spares them from fucking wasting breath too."
Lilian Rook	'Motherfucker...'     "Like a little dog bark bark barking at a grizzly." says Ash. At the fourth rabbit. "No way in hell it can do anything, but it just can't help itself."     Ash turns their face away from Clara's and Myo's gunfire, and ceases to notice it. The lightning quick slash to the throat catches them off guard, and accomplishes nothing for the effort. The knife stops cold as if they'd never swung it at all; there isn't even a feeling of shock or impact or the arrest of inertia; only the rib-shattering force of a closed-fist low hook in return, so heavy that it makes a sound like a cannon. "And it's not even the dog's fault; we made them that way." A dull line of off-cherenkov glow quickly fades from Ash's neck.     'Sorry. It's one of my rules. Always reach.'     "Like I fucking said!" Ash blasts off in pursuit of Xion without confirming the first or second Rabbit. They double Xion's backward speed before they raise the spear, then accelerate with the second step that hits the floor right after. The wave of earth magic strikes their legs at the same time Lilian crosses up from the other direction twice overlapping, drawing a lurid red X in flowing calligraphy with her sword and leap-back-blinking away from the return strike, and neither seem to do more than slow their momentum for split focus.     The earth crumbles around them as if it had no friction whatsoever, passing over them in melted-hyperfluid collapse, whereas Lilian's next variation of magically empowered strike dissolves into quantum scatter on both the physical and mystical level at once. Lilian's internal combat monologue is silent, but Ash is loud. "You just can't help baring your teeth at me anyways! It's your undeniable animal instinct, and you're making up the rest after!"     'Why did you stop using *your* powers on us?! This isn't about what we'll do - it's about what she won't, isn't it?!'     In tones of exasperated-fury 'finally' utterly contrary to their declared intent, Ash bellows "What else would it be?!" They swing their arm out to collide with a piece of floating rubble, and their fingers sink into it like putty, dragging it effortlessly into the same arc and casting it at Xion. It shatters the instant it leaves their grip, in an impossible lengthwise way, splashing her with a mach-positive spray of mingled concrete-metal slivers. A conflagration of black-gold spatial distortion rips through Ash's middle, and leaves only a faint ultraviolet mark along the plane everything else around them collapses.     Just as they nearly catch up to Xion, Lilian appears in the way, blade to blade, and the frenzied chaos of metal and and motion carries an explosive argument between them.
Lilian Rook	"Do you hear yourself?! I have to be just as transgressive as you to even count as 'one of us', but only in the way that you like! You expect me to hold everything and everyone in contempt, like the rules don't even matter, except yours, that I have to bow down and follow!" "Now you're finally catching on." "Shut up and drop dead Ash. If I'm so fucking special that you'll fight the world for being close to me then why do I have to look just the way you expect?!" "All I expected was anything else than exactly the same as everything else! These nobodies can scream all they want about my being just another part of the fucking system or whatever; the words don't mean shit as long as they're head over heels for a bitch who works a nine to five wiping their asses so she can earn enough thank you points to exist!" "And you can't even begin to conceive of the idea that you're getting it! You're so shallow that it beggars imagination!" "Wipe off your fucking foundation and try that one again!" "There it is! Like putting on a helmet and squeezing your tits down makes you more rich and complex than me! You don't give a shit about what I am! If it were about us both being Blooms-- Sparks-- then you'd treat me like an equal and not like an idiot fucking child that needs you to direct me!" "Looks that way from here, Rook! Ever considered why you're the only one with any of this?! Do the other two even have a job, never mind a public appearance calendar and a clique?!" "And they'd be worse Blooms if they did?! Are you so fucking consumed by the optics of being special that you can't even comprehend reality anymore?! You don't want a peer, or an ally, or even the truth; you just want someone that conforms to you and your pet fucking theory!" "As if you--" "I know more than you Ash! I don't care if you don't like it; all that broody moping on your own didn't teach you a tenth of what I got by experiencing the world you can only talk about!"     Those threads of the heart hold stubbornly taut, rigid in sheer, volatile untouchability, right up until that moment, where a tender flinch and the broken floodgate of raw-scathed rage loosens them. And even then, the medallion that forms in Xion's grasp feels 'off' somehow. A token of perfectly translucent glass, hollow in the center, marked with a symbol the light doesn't catch, as weightless as if it were half-there.     The story it tells is when I tell you. The representation of Ash's psyche is what I want. The bond connects through one-way glass. The power it gives her is if I feel like it. As if materializing it in her hand were still incomplete; as if it weren't hers. Nearly useless on its own; only able to protect the ground around her in the way Ash had just adopted to counter Lilian; but with a lingering feeling of intentional superficiality; a recalcitrant refusal to allow Xion to infer, decide, classify, or believe anything about the original bearer by carving anything out to examine.     The medallion denies the reality of what it touches, and thus denies itself.
Lilian Rook	'All you can hear is my fear? Then listen, God damn it, because my fear has something to say to you.'     "I don't have a shit to give for anything you say! NAZCA already broke you! All you can think now is that they're these-- omnipotent genius puppetmasters who can't be beaten, and I don't want to fucking hear it!"     "I'm here because I'm trying to reach you. I knew that I had to before I even knew your name. I'd be here even if Lilian didn't care in the slightest"     "So stop lying!"     '*You're* the one saying that you *have* to stand there and watch us die. *You're* the one saying 'this will be the last chance there ever is.' Is that what you want? Or have you just *accepted* it?'     "Fine with me! I accepted you're all going to hell no matter what happens, and not even long from now, and when I heard it, I fucking smiled! I can't wait! You don't even have a 'last chance' anymore; no matter what they think they can do!"     'Why?!'     'You said that all the mindgames in the world won't matter if they aren't backed up by violence. But here you are, talking exactly like -they- do, thinking like -they- do, acting like -they- do, and somehow, you're convinced you're outsmarting them, just because you're saying their quiet parts out loud.'     "So you don't salt the earth and fucking poison whatever comes after you!"     The fight with Lilian breaks off into a panting lull, and Ash screams at the limit of their vocoder back at Bond. "You should know that! Whatever fucking insidious mind games you think are going are; they're bullshit! You, NAZCA, everyone here but Fenrir and I is walking dead and then every shitty fucking thing you'e ever said and done and thought won't matter and won't ever have even happened and I'm this CLOSE!"     'It wouldn't matter to them if you killed every last one of them and burned the place to the ground. They've defeated you, humiliated you so utterly you don't even realize it.'     "Don't treat me like I'm too fucking stupid to make up my own MIND!" Ash turns from the combat zone and onto Bond. The corner of the storey collapses as they leap down to the street. Lilian collides with them from the side, then vanishes away just before Ash can touch her, leaving behind runes that throw up a wall of rippling flame to capitalize on the little mundane reality that Rabbit team had revealed; Ash can't see while being shot in the face, and won't be able to see where Bond goes in the moment it takes them to push through the fire.     'I didn't ask to be born, and neither did you. Don't waste your life on this.'     "You didn't deserve to be born! All of this; every moment of it; is a fucking waste! The person you think you're talking to isn't real, and won't be born until you're all finally gone!"     "Two years from now, there won't be a NAZCA, or an America, or a humanity, or 'life' or 'born' or 'waste', and I hope Fenrir doesn't remember a single thing you ever said!"
Lilian Rook	'I-I don't care that much about not doing terrorism! Sorry!'     "Apology not accepted!"     Lilian, out of breath, fingertips starting to smoulder, slaps Petra across the face at the end of her apology. She should look furious, but instead her wide-eyed stare feels hauntingly distracted by something that has nothing to do with this. "I should have fucking known you'd go like a leaf on the current towards the loudest and most rebellious shouting. You're infatuated with the idea that a Bloom can be as messy and miserable and awful as you are. If you're on my side then why make me have to do more?"     'If the best way through this was for all of them to die, then I'd just, like, do that! Not you, but-- you're not even really the one in danger, right?'     "You've been wanting to see me go just as rotten as you since the beginning. Ash went ahead of you and you're giddy at the possibility I might follow, aren't you? For all that talk of 'being on my side', you're still waiting with bated breath for me to declare war."     'They're here because they're *lonely*.'     "Then they can stay that way. I'm not whatever they want, and I won't make myself become it."     'LILIAN!! *TRUST ME!* TAKE A SWING AND *CLEAVE WIDE!!*'     Despite everything she wants to say, Lilian freezes up in thought, wracks her brains for anything better to try, and lets out her held breath as her burnt fingertips touch the fractured armour at her injured waist. Reluctantly orienting herself towards him, Lilian's eyes open wide as the barely-comprehensible psychic impression of what he wants to try filters out towards her. "You're completely insane, Lowell." she says, raising her sword and taking a deep breath. "I hope for both our sakes that you've figured out something based in fact."     Arthur picks up top speed, and magic rushes towards Lilian. Lilian takes her stance, stills herself, and braces for just the right moment. The one where gravity shuts off, mass-field variance equalizes out to zero, the law of exclusion fails, and infinitesimally briefly, 'Lilian Rook' ceases to be an actual numerical value in space. It's the moment she chooses to no longer be one in time, as well.     And in the minuscule gap between the two, owed only to Lilian's finite reflexes, one could swear that they see §her§ standing there instead.     Ash pushes through the flames without effect, and stalks out onto the street level towards the tide of screaming civilians. The corner skyscraper is reflected in bubble-distortion on the face of their helmet, where they crane their neck up to look. They take their spear up in both hands, automatically shift their grip down its length to just the stance for hewing low, and then crash into the shattered column lying in the road, bleeding from a diagonal tear in their g-suit across the midriff. A §ghost§ with a drawn sword flickers out of reality.     Ash shoves themself away from the rubble, which then bursts into two-hundred seperate fragments. Static-garbled gritting their teeth, they lash out with their spear at thin air, parry something once, twice, bringing out white-hot sparks and air-ignition lines of amosphering shear-fusion, only to cry out and stagger under a blow to the shoulder, blood smoking on the pavement.
Arthur Lowell	> ==>     Arthur's following fast into the street. Eyes are wide, teeth are gritted, long hair scattered wild, arms lined with spellcircles up to his shoulders. "You got it! A little of what you wanted! I don't know what the hell it is but that's *it!* NOW *FUCK OFF!!*" He shouts in a panic.     "You wanna be something that isn't, that isn't like all of us? You wanna be a person that people aren't? I don't fucking understand you, not even a little bit! I'm not gonna, ever! But Lilian gets you! And you act like she's not like you because of us, because of her shit-ass parents and her society and whatever else! Fucking *self-centered cunt*, you think the minute anyone gets an ounce of freedom, they look exactly like you?! She *chose the codes*! She turned the Tree down! She has her choice and she's making it! Being who she is, is gonna be however she picks, even if that means holding onto this kind of way!"     Fists clench, circles turn, and magic tries to yank Lilian back. No-- offer her the handhold and tug, but she could escape if she pulled, if she yanked back hard. "She! Wants! To be the way that people are! She wants the chance to have all the stupid little nice things a person gets to have, just for being a person! She wants to stay with us and fight! And if she doesn't, she'll pick that herself! But I know she wants it! I *know* she wants it!! Because she never had a chance! She never got to have what you're trying to make her give up!!"     He pulls. Gravity reverses. What was cleaved apart is, hopefully, cleaved back to being this way, though it'll take a little clawing back and pulling in towards this way of being. "You can tell her to be like you after you've helped her be like her! After she's finally, fucking *finally* had a turn to be Lilian!! And that means staying and fighting for this!! *So help her or go away!!*" He practically screams, deepening the return-path gravity hard, as far as it goes.     Hopefully, Lilian's a person that people *are* again.
James Bond	...the words don't mean shit as long as they're head over heels for a bitch who works a nine to five wiping their asses so she can earn enough thank you points to exist!     Is that what it comes down to? That I can't reach them, without choosing between them and Lilian?     Bond leans on the car. The metal of the scratched and scraped hood is still warm from the friction of the asphalt.     Don't ask me to do that.     The skin on Bond's fingers breaks as he grips the hood so tightly that they drag across metal filed to jagged edges by bumpy streets and rubble. The sensory input might as well be miles away.     Don't ask me to choose between someone who's drowning and the person that helped me *stop* drowning. If I made that choice, I'd choose the one who helped me, every time. Because I'm weak. Because I couldn't find my own way up without an example, and because I couldn't bear to look into her eyes and see... resignation. I don't think she'd feel betrayed. I think she'd feel resigned--the way that you do when it's a foregone conclusion, something that's happened again and again and again. And that would be worse.     Ash can't see where Bond goes. But they don't need to.     Even then, I'd still lose. Because I have a feeling that's what I'd see in Ash, too. 'Of course you'd do that. You're part of this grotesque world, and you always protect your own.'     Two years from now, there won't be a NAZCA, or an America, or a humanity, or 'life' or 'born' or 'waste', and I hope Fenrir doesn't remember a single thing you ever said!     When they emerge from the flames, he's there. Watching them. You didn't deserve to be born! All of this; every moment of it; is a fucking waste! The person you think you're talking to isn't real, and won't be born until you're all finally gone!     Bond lowers the wristwatch. There's no need for a loudspeaker at this distance. "You're right. I didn't." Neither did any of the other men with this name. But we were, anyway.     "When you come to that realization, there are only a few things that you can do. You can try to fix it, by undoing it. You can try to make something out of it and repay what you owe. You can blunder through it aimlessly. You can strike out against the people who inflicted it on you. You can plug your ears and deny it."     He fixes them with a long, intense stare, his blue eyes failing to pierce their helmet but not at all for lack of trying. He's looking death in the eyes; placid, unafraid, uncannily so--like a deer that locks eyes with a hunter, knowing nothing of what's in the hunter's arms but for one moment, knowing exactly what it will do.     "But you did something different than all of that. Didn't you? It's why you didn't leave a shadow when I used the flash mortar on you. Why Lilian and the others couldn't even scratch you."     No matter what I decide to do, who I decide to help, I'm one more person in a long line of letdowns that never should have happened.     Bond checks his watch, as the moment passes and Ash stalks out towards the civilians. He sighs.     If I try not to decide, I may as well not be alive at all. Sorry, Ash.     He tails them. Sees Arthur's gambit pay off, Lilian's stroke finally break the skin. It's now or never. Bond lifts his watch, but not to talk. An electrified dart zips through the air towards Ash's open wound--a measure to extend the opening Lilian has just a little further with a few seconds of stunning discharge.
Xion	Xion fights a battle cycling through several of her best ideas at reaching out farther and keeps coming up short. It *is* a battle to her, must be, because of all of the window dressing and stage work of the theater. The screaming people, the crumbling building, the burning helicopter, the distress signal. It was a battle to Xion before, when she followed along with Lilian and the NAZCA team tried to kill them, and again the centerpiece of that was Ash. It was a battle,     wasnt it? Despite Petra's thoughts that Xion is the one least in trouble, and there being a kernel of truth in whose relative trouble things were, the noirette Nobody does not dissociate away from this fight back to their cozy nap. She could not do so. There was a standing rule. And, Arthur had observed that it would be a lot easier to care from fully laid out in bed. Flagging in swinging with her whole heart and coming up empty for want of contact, flagging and holding on to being a part of Lilian's fight plans and trust, Xion slides past on the wobble-wave of earth and the twirl of Starlight's tooth about a knot of nothing. Swinging back to facing, holding Keyblade ready, Xion's wobble is one that she feels the simple shame of limited options. 'Dang.' Xion decides. 'This is going to hurt.' and in that moment Lilian interposes between the attack from Ash, and Xion feels a more complex shame. 'Ah.' She realizes. 'I've created work.', and pulls her left hand from its place at the center of her collar, looking down at the almost-imperceptible nonexistent medallion her fingers clasp around. Faceless and hollow, but even being pushed away leaves a handprint. Stealing eyes up from their precious moments of downward-casting, Xion fully gets both feet under her and straightens. She does not have the firm power of another knight's lesson to lean on, and the spear she claims as her own burns with a useless fire of rebellion that could not reach with heat or flame the person she swung it at. Fingers clenching tighter around hollow medallion, Xion tucks the item into her coat pocket and stabs Starlight down into the floor, pointing with her emptied right hand. "You haven't decided. Who's right. Or else you wouldn't even be talking, even be trying. If you wanted to destroy her, you'd just be trying to snap me half, or drop down and saw James' car in two. You *know* how to win, and you're not even here." Her eyes widen more, dashing away from her planted sword medallion-handed for a moment to follow the motion. "You're -- this can't be you wanting her to get Lilian to go off, or you'd act totally differently! You're seeing how far this goes!" 'I'm on your side, forever and against anyone, no matter what, but--' 'Not you, but--' "Stop saying 'but'!!!" Xion shouts into the air, demanding, tortured, turning topics. Ash is someone Xion can't touch but Petra's eagerness strikes such a negative note the noirette comes off her dogged mission for another series of heartbeats. "I'm no longer asking you - I am *telling* you to *think*, Petra! It's not about the people, it's not about toppling a building because you get to be the one having a go at it! It's about who has to clean up! It's about who you volunteered to clean up!! It's about me!!! Tt's about Lilian, and not your *bad cat* cavalier swat of a glass of water off the table as some neutral act!"
Xion	"You're spilling it to watch me forgive you and clean it up again! Don't test my patience, or her mercy, and call it on her side forever!" Disgust boils in Xion's chest. "Don't join the kick-me-twice and call me stupid for growling club. I know what you're doing." She hurls at Petra's feet, and then-- Even the echoes of 'If you're on my side then why make me have to do more?' don't linger in the air. Xion feels she's been gone too long, and catches up time by dropping backwards from Petra and down through space to land outside, looking up once more to see §omeone el§e she knows stagger Ash with a ghostly move backed by the Mage of Space. Empty-handed but for a glass medallion, Xion takes a step forward, and then stops. "Are we really going to start killing each other after all this trying-to-warn-each-other stupid we've been doing? Is all this because you're going to 'win anyway'? Winning by doing nothing's a myth. Otherwise - you'd have stayed in bed too. So *what* are you trying to *win*, Ash?!"
Lilian Rook	Finally wounded, Ash's bone-deep reflex is to swing back, bloody-minded into the assault, and make the enemy pay unbearably. Bond's electro-dart catches their midsection, and its form stutters just before it falls away from a glowing, steaming point. Ash's vicious counter-swing diverts at a right angle, and a slash opens on their thigh)] for the effort, incrementally more accurate than the last two; compensating bit by bit even within the frenzy of non-physical motion that lasts less than half a second.     And then, as Ash begins the first syllable of a helmet-garbled laugh, they, too, halfway cease-to-be. Blood and skin and mylar weave and polarized glass and steel and haft and newly torn flesh submerge, somewhere, in some axis you can't perceive, and turn over the reverse side above the surface.     A mere suggestion of a figure in their place; impossibly translucent, drawn only in the fine limning of ambient light caught by an infinite refractive index at their edges, within which is only a core of impossible reflection; a mirror-beyond-mirror ever-shifting shape of something too complex for all five senses to register as anything but alive, animated by a beating core of ultraviolet distortion that blots out everything within it.     The mingled reflections of the city street smear into banded glittering chrome; they run like fluid and coil and tense like sinews and drive a sheath of perfect nothingness in the shape of an invisible hand, and a razor-thin iridescent halo of fingers catches §her§ by the wrist.     Then Arthur pulls back on the skein of space, and bit by flickering, unsteady bit, Lilian returns to normal; out of synch with her own shadow, the past half-second replays in fast forward-- and Ash maintains the exact same inverse shape, grappling her by the wrist, and though you can now only hear them inside your own head, their tone is that they're doing it on purpose.     The look in Lilian's eyes is the too-late realization of having habitually thrown in a hand-to-hand counter while Arthur had briefly allowed her to fight normally; and made the grave mistake of touching Ash, even after believing what Rita had said. Denied mass, velocity, inertia, vector, charge, even coordinates, the blow itself scatter-strikes the rubble beside Ash, and Lilian's arm, at the point Ash has caught it, remains anchored against Arthur's pull in higher-plane limbo.     Live metal that is like staring through it into a pitch dark room takes its place; riven with infragold fractures, broken off completely at the wrist, and clenching scores of aggregate fragments into a fist-shaped flower of folded-in blades.     ØI <see/understand>. Now I know what you <didn't>Ø     Lilian recoils at the 'sound', and starts violently wrestling back her hand. Planting her feet makes no difference. Engaging mobility magic next doesn't help either. Desperately, she slams Night Mist point down into the pavement and pulls against it for leverage, moving painstaking centimeters away.     'You can tell her to be like you after you've helped her be like her!'     Bit by bit, Lilian drags herself away, and through the conversion of planar space, Ash comes with her. Seized through anti-anti-gravity in all directions, the un-form compresses back down into the bloodied human being, who stumbles away where Lilian shoves them, and regains her five fingers sans-armour. Ash presses a palm to the wound across their middle-- shallow and haphazard, not lethal-- and stares at their own blood through their visor.
Lilian Rook	"You don't get it. That's not her. This isn't me." says Ash; disoriented; strangely subdued. "You're not even the one talking. No matter what you think, what you want, there's no trace of it left once it gets out of your mouth; you can't win against all the layers of meat in the way. You're shackled to the lightning that lets you think and it doesn't have room for anything true. All it does is lie." They tense up, then press their hand to their visor, accidentally leaving a bloody handprint on the glass in their confusion. "I'm-- Trying! To help her be like her! Not like-- the versions of her you made up! Or the version she made up either!"     'But you did something different than all of that. Didn't you? It's why you didn't leave a shadow when I used the flash mortar on you. Why Lilian and the others couldn't even scratch you.'     "Shut . . . Fucking . . . I did what we're supposed to! The only thing we're for!" Ash gets only that far, fruitlessly smearing the blood this way and that, growing agitated again in the way of gathering their wits. A sound of frustration peaks the helmet mic, and they tear it off at the neck seal, blinking in the smoke-shrouded sunlight. "How dare she reject it?! How could anyone choose this over what we have?! I don't understand!"     'Are we really going to start killing each other after all this trying-to-warn-each-other stupid we've been doing? Is all this because you're going to 'win anyway'? Winning by doing nothing's a myth. Otherwise - you'd have stayed in bed too. So *what* are you trying to *win*, Ash?!'     Ash grits their teeth, pushes their hair out of their face, and wipes the back of their wrist furiously over their eyes. Throat and tongue convulse with the urge to spit invective at Xion, and still in the absence of anything cutting to say. Rather than choose to be pathetic and save face in anger, Ash balls up both hands into fists, squeezes their eyes shut, and screams at Lilian instead, "I only stayed behind to be here for you! Why don't you want to go?! You already came so far! It's only a little more! Why draw the line here and say that this is all there is?! I can't just leave you behind!"     Lilian goes so still that pink-tinged sweat reaches her chin. Her mouth opens after several long seconds, and the word "I . . ." forms on them.     And then, held loosely by their side, a light inside the helmet blinks, and Ash blearily glances down at it. Perhaps a hovering fairy can see better than a glimpse, but a faintly glowing heads-up display is still running on the inside visor; mostly red, owed to the number of channels turned off. Ash looks nauseated when it receives something anyways. The prelude of a text transmission, scrolling ASHLEY. IF YOU RETURN IMMEDIATELY, I CAN VOUCH F...     Ash hurls it at the ground, where it shatters violently on contact. "Yeah. There was no point." they hiss through their teeth, winding up and bracing. "Now I just can't wait to see them murder all of you. I hate you so fucking much--"     The asphalt implodes. The air screams. Lilian sidesteps-- and Ash carries right past her, blasts through the bottom floor wall of the convention center, and keeps going. You hear a second boom down the other side of the block, and a sharp turn away from the Warpgate, out into god knows where. Then the sound of screams and sirens washes back into your awareness like the tide.