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Owner	Pose
Persephone Kore	Tick Tock      Climbing the great tower isn't easy, but it's not fatal. It's a final exam of sorts, every platforming challenge from before- riding gears, weaving through pendulums, spin-boosting off axles- mashed together with added verticality and nowhere to rest.      Tick Tock      The only new challenge is that the pianowire cabling, used for pulleys and chime-weights, gives way to some kind of vantablack string. It's like the black hole itself drawn out into taffy strands, as nonsense as that is. Being sheer black, it's deceptively hard to get depth perception on them; a strand could just as easily be thin and far away, or thick and up close, and you probably shouldn't risk grazing them. The gears they're attached to need magical jewels inset to stay intact.      Tick Tock      https://youtu.be/MsTQjB1f4-A      Further up, the black-hole-strings get denser until at points they feel like dancing around lasers, and dissonantly soulful piano music replaces the castle's normal orchestra, metronomed by the castle's workings. As you leave the great gears behind, the drumbeat of ages gets quieter, solemn.      Tick   tick.      Finally a plain, ordinary stained-glass platform at the top rescues you from the agony of the climb, like an oasis in the desert for the floor-bound. A spiral staircase of stained shards rings the inside of the tower from there, and leads you up, safely around the increasingly dense mesh of black hole strings.
Persephone Kore	At the top of the glass stairs, an alabaster double-door woven with those dark metal vines with blue petals opens without resistance. Beyond is a hardwood floored ballroom-turned-workshop-turned-personal-lounge, surprisingly free of cluttering gears or menacing threads, but for one wall which must be a clock-face's inner workings.      Tick   tick.      The gorgeous piano music isn't sourceless. The grand piano is in a corner of the room by a scribble-bearing drafting-table, and a man sits at it, only missing half a tick when he hears the door open. Finishing his measure in easy relaxation, he stands and turns to greet you, and a ghost musician materializes where he'd sat to pick up the measure.      He is tall and slender, pale, frosty-blonde, elegant and beautiful and mean. The blue of the petals was that of his eyes. The blue of the ghosts was that of his nails. His silken red-black patterned waistcoat is just slightly rumpled, and his perfectly-combed hair slightly disheveled by the playing; he belongs in a private school, or leading the French Revolution, or both. His riding heels clack-clack closer.      "My friends, my friends, amicacxoj mia," he purrs with a sweeping gesture, in exactly the voice he should have. "To what do I owe your visit cxi-nokte? What could you possibly want from the humble Architect Marcellus?" He must have a key like Dylan did, but he's smarter than to wear it on his waist.      On the wall behind him are great white curtains that must be covering a window. To his right- your left- is that great watchface-back, with complex machinery and dozens of black hole threads wound around a familiar-looking jewelled cog.      Tick   tick.
Sarracenia	At first, Sarra welcomed the challenge and heroicness of the clock tower climb. She got to show off her practiced acrobatic platformer skills! And she was carried at least some of the way by Princess!      But, as the climb continued it quickly became irritating. Making carefully calculated jumps at high speed with no place to take a breath might have been fun...if not for the need to weave so carefully through wires that surely should not be touched.      And it does not help her mood that she is doing this while still bandaged. She could probably have lost them by now, but as she is quite conscious of skincare they are still on to ensure the burns heal properly and completely. Which means that still only her face is actually exposed even after her usual dress and gloves combo. Given they cover even her head and ears, it is entirely likely her head is akin to Krillin's beneath the bandages.      The music that starts trickling down the tower as they climb offers some measure of relief, and Sarra has recently come to appreciate music even more than she did before.      When they finally reach the top and meet the musician, Sarra eyes him for a moment as that ghost replaces him at the piano before she curtseys politely. "An architect that is also an accomplished pianist. I suppose I should not be surprised that...Queen Liliana employs such a person for this."      Sarra looks toward that jeweled cog before back toward Marcellus. "I am sorry to pull you away from the piano, but we require access to the path upward. If you would be so kind as to point the way, we will leave you to your playing. I am quite enjoying it, after all."
Odette Raskins	Odette's seen the platforming challenges before. She knows the patterns by now, and what to expect the moment she'd land on a gear or  hang onto a pendulum. Even without obvious rest points, she should have this in the bag, right? Not really. Her nerves are still the biggest obstacle to getting through these challenges, and the addition of the ominous black strings doesn't help that one bit. At first, she just assumes they're decor items used instead of standard metal cabling because of the black hole motif, but it's when she actually works up the nerve to start jumping that the danger of the strings becomes a lot more obvious. Her first injury comes from trying not to touch one of those wires and bashing into one of those turning gears. Naturally, that comes with some panicked noises before having to jog in the opposite direction of another gear platform while she gets some bandages to wrap her hand up. The next several come as she's jumping again, but she doesn't clog up the path forward by stopping to patch herself up. There's still a time limit, presumably, and her allies need that space way more than she does, so she just hurries along while popping carefully-measured pills three at a time to keep her moving and not slowing down too much. The EMT just needs a minute once she gets to the ordinary platform, lying down on the side of it while finally getting all those wounds covered up with bandages. "OW, ow... Darn it. Did anyone else get hurt? E-everyone make it through okay?" She asks as she sits up, backing away from the edge to peek on through the double-door and gawk at the piano player in the grand lounge. "Um... H-hi there! We're here to..." He's got to know why they're there already, right? He wouldn't be here if-well, no, he's playing the piano. He might just be there for ambience, and a potential ally! Then again, he might also be here to test them in some way, either by fighting or some other way thatmight involve all those scary-looking threads. Still, just about everyone here besides Ritescu has been working against them, so... "I am sorry to pull you away from the piano, but we require access to the path upward." "R.. Right. We need to have an... Audience! With Queen Liliana up in the... Further up." She follows up on what Sarracenia says, shifting to her right/Marcellus' left a bit so it's just that little bit easier to keep him, the great watchface, and the curtained window all in her view. "So... Er. I-if you don't mind, we'll just be going! Um. Thank you for playing, mister!" She looks like she's in a hurry to leave, going as far as tugging the brim of her cap down slightly like she's trying to nonchalantly keep attention off herself while inching slowly towards the curtain.
Timespace Riders	The two Kamen Riders, king and retainer, begin to struggle when the thin strings grow harder to judge in their distance. Though both wear armors suited to mobility--Woz in the ninja-themed Shinobi armor, and Zi-O in the 90s gaming-themed Ex-Aid armor--it's their patience and judgment which is truly put to the test. A few times, one has to double back and bail out the other after an ill-conceived bweep-bwoop leap or deer-scare thunk-smokepuff teleport has their armor pay the price with showers of mitigating sparks.     At last, the stained-glass platform is beneath them, supporting their weight and allowing each to catch his breath. Climbing the spiral staircase after a moment's respite, Woz turns to Zi-O--and to Petra, in whose care was left a certain item.     "I suspect the time draws near," says the retainer simply, in hushed tones so as not to rise over the piano. "Prepare yourselves." What could you possibly want from the humble Architect Marcellus?     "Hi. I'm Sougo, and this is my retainer Woz! We'd like your key, please," says Zi-O, his helmet (accented with the stylized 'hair' of a video game character above his katakana lenses) dipping in a conciliatory nod. "But you're not going to give it up without a fight, are you?"
Kale Hearthward	> Black-hole strings Kale, of course, almost goes to touch one before someone points out it's probably not a good idea. Beyond that, it's time to focus. Probably past time. Fullest of thy competence. Magitechnically-enhanced flight should no longer be saved as a just-in-case measure while you do the obstacle course 'the right way' - it should be assumed that the course designer *is* taking into account that some/most of the party isn't restricted to terrestrial means of locomotion. Thus, the jet boots are on all the time for the ascent. Various contrivances keep Kale from burning himself or others with the exhaust flames, but they are pretty loud. It's not even easy mode with those on, though, is it? Being saved from falling and being able to skip past platforming sections does not prevent one from, say, being crushed to death between two giant cogs. Or bludgeoned in the head by a falling chime weight. Or wandering straight into lasers. Or getting too close to Petra Soroka. ... He lingers, for a moment, examining the magical jewel he spots in one of the gears. "Hey, hang on a sec." If allowed, he has whoever's holding it get it out so he can compare the jewels on the two. This takes an infuriatingly long time while people trying to get around him are likely stuck in a holding pattern jumping back and forth between the same two cycling platforms, like someone trying to march in place on an escalator. Finally out of the platforming section, and into the study of... ... Someone who Kale has mixed impressions of. Someone pretty. Someone a bit imposing. A rival? Should he be squaring up right now in case humble Architect Marcellus decides he wants to take Kale's place in the group? Is that what this room's challenge is about? "... Ah, we are brought together de paso," says Kale, trying to remember his language briefings. Marcellus isn't the only one who can speak in ancient dead languages. Everyone needs to be aware of how much more cultured Kale is than this interloper. His eyes go to the jeweled cog. Oh. That might have been more efficient to examine than the random magical gear in the platforming section. "While we'd love to continue to enjoy your geistly music, I'm afraid we must continue on in a very arrivederci fashion." The sooner they get going, the fewer opportunities Marcellus has to, to- - to... uh, what? Kale's feeling some disconnect here between his body and his thoughts. The concepts of 'territory' and 'mates' float somewhere out in his subconscious, but - neither of those are in question here? Is he worried that Marcellus is about to intrude on his house that's literally an entire multiversal region away? "Yeah, we should - probably get going soon," he says, vaguely. "Allons-y."
Powerpuff Girls	Blossom, together with Brick, had engaged in a team effort to pull everyone through the rise up the tower. While their incredible zappy-zippy super speed and effortless one-move-action arrivals was quite safe for them, it was a team action to make sure everyone of their party could continue up the tower without being captured and bound up by the increasingly laser corridor hazard-lines of black danger. No matter how good the Puffs or Ruffs were, there was always the chance that someone like Aidan might 'defy expectations' by testing to see if the threat was a real danger. Neither classic Red nor limited edition Yellow especially wanted to test their toughness or luck against the strands. Leading the Powerpuff pair, Princess weaves without carrying, nimbly maneuvering up clocktower until stained-glass platform landing. Switching back to walking with a needless cartwheel flourish of jetboot acrobatics to land, arms out and palms open for her black-and-yellow super suited arrival at... Stairs. Dropping arms and grumping as pink plasma sparks snap in time to the 'tch' of having more marching to do, marching up the steps with the announcing click of her heeled footwear (the thrusters fit into the arch, it's quite clever). With pompoms of ginger hair and freckles rising developing facial emotion, the crowned Princess Morbucks looks at the 'humble architect'. There's less of the showing flare of arms out, just the closing curl of gloved fingers and the narrow of grey eyes cast in tactical HUD ruby red and wrapped in pink visor. "Since we're friends, maybe this'll be real easy." Princess thumbs back at the plucked pianostring blackhole accoutrements all about, some conveniently behind her. "If you're the architect, could you explain your decor choice? Or should I call your *designer*?"
Petra Soroka	It's impossible to *not* get swept up in the grandiosity of the clocktower. Knowing that it's Lilian's doesn't lessen the scale at all, not even-- or especially not-- for Petra. The rooftop bridge leading into the tower, the setting sun over the kingdom, the crisp gust of wind blowing across after the exertion of the first platforming segment; the fantastical unreality of the physical environment lends weight to the narrative unreality of the simulation, the kind of suspension of disbelief that doesn't require any intentional buy-in from the participant.     But this is Petra, and intentional buy-in is her most reliable trait. So she lingers for just a moment longer, taking a steady, centering breath of the cold elevated air, eyes sparkling when looking out on the sunset reflecting over the journey so far, steeling her resolve to continue on further.     It's easy for her to want to continue, anyways, and not just for the integrity of Lilian's simulation. Platforming is just a good time! And so's seeing more of Lilian's artistic handiwork! And, despite her bitching, maybe so is playing the hero.     Petra is laser focused while hopping her way up the gears around the central axle of the mechanisms. Moisturized, thriving, and in her lane, opposing Queen Liliana in this environment is about the most enthusiastic and focused most people have seen her be, on the side of defeating villains rather than supporting them. Her morphmetal's deployed not just to help herself jump and boost her way up, but a semifluid bolt zips through the air to make a platform on demand when other people need them, and she's actually willing to give a literal hand to anyone teetering on the edge (except Aidan, but some things never change). Unlike Kale's uncalled for and unfair narration, getting close to Petra today is, probably, a good thing!     Overabundant energy leads to bouncing on the balls of her feet in time with the piano, keeping time while a gear rotates her nearer to a series of vantablack strings for her to precisely hop over and duck under. With her bomber jacket shucked off now that motion substitutes for warmth, Petra is wearing a ruffled white dress shirt, laced up in the front, along with black gloves, pants, and boots, with the jeweled cog on her hip, hair touseled by the exertion and wind, a little flushed and out of breath-- in other words, she looks like a tertiary protagonist for exactly this sort of environment. Still, she huffs a little at the stained glass at the top. Seriously!!! She could've been a good evil general! Maybe she would've needed some lessons on *manners*, but if *Dylan* could do it--!!! High-speed mental processing, tuned to genre and scenario, quickly packages and reprocesses this thought without internalizing it: a spiteful personal connection with the villain in her backstory is kind of hot and cool, actually, and it makes her a better *heroine*. "My friends, my friends, amicacxo mia,"     Petra crosses her arms over her chest and defiantly puffs air between her pouting lips to blow some of her disarrayed hair back into position. Lowered psychic barriers (metaphorically; in the literal psychic sense she's still a seething mass of blinding splinters) seize the prompt Marcellus gives her, and match it.     "Vi ne havas amikojn cxi tie, Marcellus. Sed vi jam sciis tion, cxu ne?"     There's no doubt in Petra's mind, that this evil-looking fancy blonde man playing a piano at the top of a platforming tower is anything but an imminent boss encounter; even when the others approach as if he can be conversed with, Petra remains fully dedicated to completing the two-dialogue-box-long pre-battle repartee.     "Ni estas cxi tie por trovi Queen Liliana, preterpasi vin, aux through you if we have to."
Persephone Kore	Architect Marcellus finger-combs a stray lock back into immaculate place, then drags his nails down his cheek until the pinky rests at the corner of his amusement-tilted lips.      Tick   tick.      Just when Kale might expect something flirtatious, he instead says "Are you perhaps some manner of cretin? Kio estas al vi? Or is your heart merely too weak to behold me?" Head-tilt to Princess, eyes still on Kale: "In part, the 'decor' is to weed out people like *him*. Bedauxrinde, Liliana's audience is yet unworthy of her."      Tick   tick.      "Vi ne havas amikojn cxi tie..."      Petra immediately becomes the most interesting person in the room to him. His free arm crosses to support his elbow, smugly leaning down: "Cxu vi, sklaveto? Ili scias ke vi 'tas avidulo."      Tick   tick.      Marcellus stands straight again with a little palm-up flourish to the music. "But I should demonstrate the decor's greater purpose, cxu ne? You wish a meeting with la sagxa Regxino Liliana, but she should slaughter you on sight. I'll spare her the trouble."      It's a simple twist of his fingers that sends the other jewelled cog, in the inner-watch-face black-hole-thread-bound machine, whirring out of control to rewind the hands outside. It snags the taffylike strands, yanks them taut, and just then the huge white curtains behind Marcellus are flung open to reveal the looming singularity just outside, casting purplish god rays down on the room.      Its surface ripples.. And--      Tick      tick.      You start to feel as though you're moving through molasses. Your mind can race all it wants unimpaired, but your body slows, slows, slows in the black hole's enhanced distortion. The other jewelled cog in the machine shatters utterly with a second gesture, preventing the hands from being turned the right way, the black skeins from being un-tensed.      Marcellus forms the words "Black Noon Execution", but they crawl slowly to your ears, and when he snaps his fingers the sharp echo is in time with the ticking.      Tick       snap,       snap,       snap,       tick.      At that signal, sharp-edged and well-defined 'ghosts' emerge from the walls and floor, emboldened by the black hole's un-light. Each is an appointed executioner for someone here. Some hold great ghostly chopping swords for ordinary necks; others sawtoothed blades or huge shears to work at tougher flesh. Each holds a bucket in their other hand.      Of course they, somehow, aren't affected by time precipitously dropping towards zero. Lazily, as you slow, they put their buckets at your feet to catch the blood and line up their killing shots; the faster Elites have more time (and more ability to save their friends), but eventually the temporal suffocation will subsume them too.      The receptacle for the backup jewelled cog to undo all this is right there, barely twenty feet away. But in a heartbeat that might as well be two hundred feet, and then two thousand.      A serene, peaceful smile is frozen on Marcellus's face. He can't act either. He doesn't need to. The piano holds a single unbearable note.      Tick
Kale Hearthward	> "In part, the 'decor' is to weed out people like *him*. Bedauxrinde, Liliana's audience is yet unworthy of her." Kale's hackles raise. Marcellus *is* a rival. You should never trust pretty people. > "You wish a meeting with la sagxa Regxino Liliana, but she should slaughter you on sight. I'll spare her the trouble." "Oh are we-" Time ripples, and then starts to slow. "Going- to-" A trap. How foul of Lilian, setting up someone this pretty as a distraction. Time slows. Each passing moment cuts the available remaining actions further, and then further again. There's little enough time to think, and certainly even less time to move. Kale takes the one option he always has close at hand. He breathes. Gale force winds erupt from his beak, flowing mainly towards Marcellus solely due to that being the direction Kale had been facing, but otherwise undirected, bouncing off the walls and starting to cycle.. Even with Kale slowing down, it's enough wind to start turning the room into an ersatz hurricane simulation chamber. Hopefully, enough to slow the ghosts down. Enough to buy the others a bit of time before the spectral assailants close in.
Timespace Riders	The clock hands on Zi-O's helmet move in rapid forward motion, pink afterimages trailing in their wake. One bracer is lifted to parry the saw-toothed blade of a conjured ghost as it falls, the weapon striking a colorful B-button. His left fist comes around for an uppercut, his bracer sliding forward to form a punch gauntlet just before impact. A colorful HIT! effect plays on impact--but the cheery video-game blip glitches out and stretches in duration as time begins to dilate. The Demon King's followup snap kick is extra laborious, and he grunts with effort.      "He's... slowing us... down, " Zi-O struggles to get out. "Petra, do it! "      But someone isn't slowed down. Woz, his faithful retainer, conjures an exploding shuriken to hurl at Zi-O's assailant and strikes a kuji-kiri just in time to avoid the blow from his own. "My Demon King's powers over time may still be incomplete--but as the prophet of his radiant and inevitable coronation, I would be a fool to leave myself vulnerable to such chicanery," Woz smugly declares, never one to leave a chance to Post on the table. A spread of five purple hardlight shuriken fly, one after the other in rapid flicks of his palm, towards his would-be ghostly assailant.      "It will avail you not, this day."      With a flick of his purple scarf, he snatches Petra free of danger, the iridescent garment ensnaring her and lifting her up. "Brace yourself," is the only warning she gets before she's flung towards the receptacle for the cog.
Sarracenia	Sarracenia gives Kale the flattest of expressions as Kale asks them to hang on. "...I do not think so." She certainly isn't holding the gear, so she employs her jumping skills and power-ups to skip the annoying bird stage hazard. "...jerk..." she mutters after she is past.      'I'm afraid we must continue on in a very arrivederci fashion.'      "...what...are you doing...?" Sarra asks, staring deadpan at Kale. She shakes her head.      As Odette reaches the top and starts applying bandages, Sarra offers her a couple of green mushrooms. "I am alright. You look like you could use these, though. We cannot have our cute medic going down, you know? It would be quite unheroic."      'If you're the architect, could you explain your decor choice? Or should I call your *designer*?'      Sarra giggles lightly at the jab.      'Ni estas cxi tie por trovi Queen Liliana, preterpasi vin, aux through you if we have to.'      Sarra blinks in surprise and raises an eyebrow. "...How do you know that language?" she asks. "      'Black Noon Execution'      Time starts to slow. Sarra is startled at first, losing precious seconds. "I am- tired of- being- told- I-- should--- die----!!!!"      Sarra pulls out fireflowers as quickly as she can, but rather than using the power-up as normal she brings the flower to her lips and blows across the petals.      Creating a veritable flamethrower! She tosses them to others nearby while sweeping so that the torrent of flames forms a wall of protection between them and the incoming ghosts while she moves toward the cog spot. She may not have the cog, but she can at least protect the person who does! And she certainly gets some amount of joy out of seeing Petra being flung at what would surely be dangerous speeds if time were flowing normally.      And just for good measure, she throws a couple of bob-ombs at Marcellus. It may take them ages to reach him, but he will be exploded eventually. Hopefully he is more durable than the Subheathers!
Kale Hearthward	As a result of the fire flowers being tossed out, the gale force winds are now a localized firestorm. It's going to get toasty in here but should(?) bother the ghosts more than the people(?)
Rowdyruff Boys	Boomer had been absent up until now. He was off-rotation for reason of doing the filling in, but another brother has picked up the slack with great enthusiasm. Which was to say that another visitor zips through the entry area in a bolt of blue, rushing to catch up. Brick is already here and has been; he never left. He hovers beside Blossom, examining the structures around them in silence. He's trying -- she knows this, intuitively -- to figure out how to make it all fall apart without doing the fullness of the work to do so. In fact, he was seriously considering reversing course and going to find the foundations of this place, but he figures that there would be somebody -- probably Rita -- hanging around in the basement to make certain that nobody got that sort of smartass idea. Lilian, he thought, would definitely have a blind spot for her normal idiots outside -- as she seemed to -- but he doubted that she'd have a similar blind spot for the straightforward structural vulnerabilities of her own 'home'. A glance is cast towards Petra, and then Kale, as they speak with Marcellus. He's missed enough of this that he doesn't have the context, and doesn't really want to get involved in what he mostly -- probably not entirely correctly -- perceives as some kind of pissing match. Red eyes flick from Blossom, to the gears, to Marcellus-- and then finally to the ghosts on the peripheries. Things are just starting to slow down around the time that Boomer arrives, and while Boomer is not very smart he can connect all of the surrounding gears -- erroneously, in the grand scheme of things -- to the source of the slow-down. That's how it goes in video games, right? His eyes momentarily overflow with electricity, which he projects out of his hands in a wide fanning arc that focuses on ultimately peripheral environment rather than anything actually important. It's a spectacular sight, for as ineffectual as it's probably going to be in the moment-- lightning slowing to a crawl as it runs through platforming gimmicks and makes them more dangerous, long after anyone has been navigating them. Brick is becoming a giant before the time stop is in full effect. He starts slowing down as he gets towards the apex of his height, and in not-quite-slow-motion reaches into his pocket and withdraws his salt shaker, popping the top of the shaker off and spinning about in place with a downward angle. The thing is-- The things he's carrying get bigger when he does, too. The grains of salt that spill out of the salt shaker are closer to the size of cars than they are to grains of salt, and subject as they are to the slow-down they more-or-less immediately form an impassably large barrier in a broad space around him. They're moving pretty forcefully, though-- it's going to be unpleasant (for the ghosts, too, if they stick around) when time is unsuspended. Especially with the localized hurricane-firestorm nearby; it's just going to be a total mess.
Odette Raskins	Taking the green mushrooms from Sarracenia, Odetter chuckles lightly and munches on one gratefully, then pauses as she looks at the mushroom itself. "Th-thanks, Princess, Sarracenia. Ah... I'm supposed to eat these, right?" She asks, not sounding particularly worried about the side-effects even while asking about them. She wouldn't be offering if it had anything to be worried about, right? Right. "Huh? You can understand that?"  Odette looks over at Petra in surprise as she recognizes just enough of what's being said between PEtra and Marcellus to know that she doesn't understand a word of it. She gives Marcellus that universal look of 'huh?', but her attention sticks instead to his obviously pre-battle dialogue indicating his loyalty to Queen Liliana and the intent to kill everyone before they reach her. It does remind her, though, of another flaw in going up to find her in the first place: How are they even meant to defeat Queen Liliana to begin with? She'll have time to worry about that later as Marcellus begins the battle with his strangely slow words, the movement of the jewelled cog, and the arrival of all those ghosts. Noticing that movement in the curtain as well, she braces for something to happen, then gasps silently in open-mouthed horror when the curtains reveal the singularity right behind them. Odette's frozen in fear for one of those precious few seconds she might have to actually do anything, but she realizes in that second that she might finally have her chance to be a hero like everyone else for once. Why? During one of her earlier meals... She drank Ritescu's patented Potion of Black Hole Resistance. Odette doesn't know much that'll help her against those minions that definitely can't be ghosts, though, and she's not sure if this time mess is a result of the singularity or something else entirely. She does know, however, that she might not have much time to act, so she reaches into her duffel bag, feels that bottle of holy water she bought last time, then pops it open and scatters it at the oncoming ghosts with what may be her last remaining moments!
Petra Soroka	"Cxu vi, sklaveto? Ili scias ke vi 'tas avidulo."     Petra's brief smug look out of the corner of her eyes at Kale, to snicker along with Marcellus calling him a cretin, is dashed in an instant and replaced with mortified horror. The obvious reality of the situation catches up to her all at once: that this is surely someone from Sapient Heuristics like Dylan, who knows Lilian well, and has entirely plausibly heard of Petra even without coming across her in the radio, so--     "'S-sklaveto'? Bonvolu diri al mi ke vi diras tion nur pro la afektiludo. I'd fucking die." The immediate mental image Petra gets of all the kids in Sapient Heuristics snidely gossiping about her and insulting her without her even *being* there is enough to dash her protagonist bravado and make her eyes widen. It's enough that it happens at Applied Ontology, but at least she's *been* there!     "A-and you're wrong, anyways!" Petra takes a half-step backwards, looking like she's being loomed-over from all the way across the room. Decisively, she's lost the introductory bout of quipping, forced off-balance and on the defensive against the tempting forces of darkness. "I want to-- I'm *going* to stop Queen Liliana, no matter what you say!" "...How do you know that language?" "Huh? You can understand that?"     A faint blush gradually suffuses Petra's cheeks, now that everyone's looking at her. She'd been more diligent when it came to Dylan, but she got too caught up in the bit this time, and now she has to pay the price of being known.     Quick!!! Mentally reinterpret this embarrassment into a narratively-satisfying and personally rewarding story beat, draped with enough fantastical trappings to fit the scenario but with enough emotional truth to it to apply generally!     Petra crosses her arms and looks away from Sarracenia and Odette, slowly struggling through her answer as she thinks out each word. [[Stargazer (Impossible: Success!)]]: "Well, there's a *few* reasons I could've been a good lieutenant for Queen Liliana, but" [[Toybox (Easy: Success!)]]: "You've got me on your side now, so" [[Cruelty (Easy: Failure!)]]: "Maybe, like, literally don't get on my ass literally right when we're getting in a fight."     Petra is prepared for a fight with Marcellus, but she wasn't prepared for *this* without Lilian herself present. The *spectacle* of time stop is something that really only lands when it's a surprise, and Petra and Lilian both saw how people acclimated to Lampport until they started disrespecting the environment casually, so having it be thrown out before Liliana herself is a rugpull.     She's fumbling for the cog on her belt, getting increasingly frustrated and agitated in her full-speed mind while the hook of the side strap gets slower and slower to cooperate, when seconds stretch into minutes and hours. Her neck is conveniently craned down for the executioner ghost looming over her, and she squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation of it when instead, Woz gets to her first. In the moment she's picked up, a series of intrusive thoughts about the statuesque manipulation of her body in stopped time invade her brain, and they're all blown out by the subsequent process of being hurled through the air.     Sailing past the immobilized Marcellus, Petra does her best to make tiny adjustments in the air so that when she bonks into the opposite wall, the cog is as close as she can get it. When she slowly, slowly pushes it the last centimeters in, and time snaps back into normal motion, several initiated neural commands all attempt to complete at once, resulting in a garbled half-yelp of surprise, a reflexive 'ouch' from hitting the wall, and a bunch of other impossible to decipher words all strangling together in her throat.     Petra coughs, then shouts, "Dankon-- thanks, Woz!"
Powerpuff Girls	Princess, a woman used to healthy prefight, duringfight, and postfight banter - banter at all, really, banter as simply a way to get to know people. The soul revealed itself during banter, just like careful listening to music revealed the emotions of the composer. Banter was creating art - and as such, Princess engaged in banter as an art-form. Or, would, but unfortunately Princess is given barely a tilt of the head and an 'it keeps out <foreign language> like *him*'. The use of Esperanto completely baffles Morbucks, a California native and thus vaguely conversant in Spanish for convenience sake despite acting like she doesn't know any of it for being a rich white woman. Trying to follow the conversation and tilting her hair-poms like a puppy might tilt the head to consider something from a different angle (literal), Princess gestures through a menu with a what-might-seem dismissive pinch of thumb to ring finger twice, quick swirl, and a shift of hand to side of crown's rounded pink visor. 'Bedauxrinde' comes and goes and Princess taps her foot and waits for a translation as her suit's onboard codex of languages finds a false match before a positive and finally feeds her the speech-to-text translation beneath. And it's just 'Unfortunately!', and the impatient Morbucks feels no greater enrichment for it. She feels stupid, actually, and she hates feeling stupid. The ones who were nice to look at were always the most insane, though, Princess knew. She knew, and examined herself not at all. Getting every other word as she's borne away from and the 'humble Architect' speaks to Petra in <foreign language>, having expected to get a (somewhat lengthy and performative) explanation of exactly how everything worked directly for her, is stymied as her eyes continue to read the scroll at the bottom of her screen and make a deeper face. "I know you're doing a bit right now," the hornet yellow and black woman declares, fists closing at sides and boot scuffing stained glass floor as stance widens. "But--" Twang goes gestures, taut goes strings. Something as simple as 'curtains' spill wide open to reveal the nearby somehow-calm singularity and Princess' genius ginger head has several things that are not a hokey retrospective of her life flash before her eyes. Blossom, meanwhile, arrives with Brick to the absolute Adult Swim show, chasing and overtaking the growing Rowdy in a power-stanced and cocked-leg flying ascent that sees her all the way up to top of the arena as the slowdown starts to hit. Ghosts approach to fetch spectral buckets for the red Puff's flying head and unlike the whimsical flyby of the ballroom prior her eyes turn to rolling riot of energetic-hot red before brilliant heat-ray lasers aim at one of the slowing Large Salts. Sticking in the atmosphere as a strain against the pull of the Singularity is something the Puff is capable of doing, an immovable object in space, but that doesn't help her against the slowing strokes of the clock, neither does it help her laser-aim. Recalculating for the light-lensing of her own beams of hot light from nearby Semi-Calm black hole, Blossom turns her head and curves the stolen-angle beam into heating a salt crystal. A sodium explosion would be pretty bad, but she knows she and Brick can handle it. And until it explodes - frozen in time, it will be a glowing bright light against any possible Bucketry.
Powerpuff Girls	Princess does not stand there. Princess does anything but. Even if time slows, her mind sprints so far ahead to the possible horrors of being thrown into a singularity, or have her head chopped off, or really *die*, actually be killed, here, with the awful spooky specters chopping off her head or being flung into a black hole while she couldn't do anything and and and-- -- Princess Morbucks narrows down, as a person, as a being, to a cornered thing with wild eyes under pink crystal panes. Her eyes dilate, brain coldly sorting and sifting available survival resources. Checking off options, discarding 'maybes' for sureties. After freezing up for a slowed down beat and a half, the hornet woman braces toe to glass ground and launches forward on crackle of plasma pink and fwoosh of jet blue-white. Transitioning the whole distance between her and their *foe*, in the middle of a *fight*, Princess Morbucks goes from 'Hero' to 'Zero' to 'It's Me Or Them'. In sudden motion Princess' leading hand reveals itself and the rest of her behind in ring of atmospheric shock absolutely failing to keep up. The plasma aura, dots and flash, wash past her target as her energy aura is stolen towards the hole but Princess's path is mechanically calculated. Disable safeties. Jet burst to zero distance. Hard stop. Hand out. Spend everything in the first move. You don't get a second. Thermal shock happens like a pleasant summer sunbeam that keeps getting hotter, a runaway train of kinetic force in slow motion chasing Princess, landing on the fulcrum of her planted feet, and transfer out with a sudden blooming cone of hot pink.
Persephone Kore	Marcellus's eyes turn just a few degrees to track Woz through the onrushing fiery winds. Whatever he feels, his face doesn't have the time to show it. But it's probably something very like: bastard.      Ritescu's old mostly-expired 'black hole resistance potion' lets Odette keep juuust enough speed to narrowly duck under executioners' lazy swords, and to maneuver around huge salt if need be- or maybe that's just her adrenaline. The salt hedges them out, they avoid light and fire (and fade away if struck by it anyway), and the frantically-splashed holy water does get them to back off- though, since they aren't really undead, are they just roleplaying the unholy bit?      Only a couple of the dozen- those too close for the salt circle, shaded by something from the brilliant lamp, but still able to weave around lashing flame- remain to stalk and menace. But when Petra goes for the dial, they all snap their attention to her, swooping in along narrow shadows with sword and saw and shear to stop this awful second from ending.      But forever doesn't last forever. The jewelled cog clicks into place. A bit of friction from Petra's fingers turns it the slightest bit clockwise, and then it frantically ravels, discharging the black-hole-strands' tension back into a flywheel shriek winding up to one-second-per-second. The most beautiful noise in the world:                              tick      --and Marcellus goes from 'vibrating hitstop' to 'hard coup-countercoup', with (I wish that wouldn't hit me trying to part the beam just a little too late) the near-simultaneous sounds of 'Princess blasting him' and 'him slamming the reinforced window behind'. He drops like a sack of potatoes behind the remains of his work-desk, and followup explosions bury him in shallow rubble. Robbed of their advantage, the ghosts wisely sink back into the floor and walls. The black hole outside the window crunches back down into a sphere, no longer pulsing like a ferrofluid.
Persephone Kore	For just a moment, you might think that's all.      Tick   tick.      For juuuust a moment.      https://youtu.be/bEZE_eMrcOo      Wooden splinters and glass shards and chips of stone and salt-hewed-to-flechettes explode outwards from where Marcellus fell in an undirected flechette blast. He levitates up with scorched clothes and sooty hair fluttering, wipes the copious blood from his face off on his formerly-perfect white sleeve, and breathes out a crackling sigh that sounds like a million degrees. There are probably several things wrong with his body. A psychic doesn't need their body to work well.      Dust and fine-grained debris flows around him like a nebula, then compacts down to form telekinetically-orbiting polyhedral diamond shields, ready to swerve into the way of attacks. Healthbar two has more crunch to it than healthbar one.      "Damn you. 'Afektiludo'? 'Ludo'? You think this is a game?!" he says, while putting pressure on a scalp cut. Even after having been briefly KO'd, he won't break character for a second. "You so clearly want to be ground beneath her heel. And better that than the malsagxuloj kun vi-- hundacxoj tearing down what they're too *small* to understand. At least *they* have a sense of gravitas."      His eyes slide over to Princess at the end there. When the remaining dust compacts into diamond javelins, the first to form are hedging against her. Once there's a full flock, the javelins start to school like hungry fish, encircling and preying on whatever vulnerable targets his eyes flick to while others ready to interrupt big attacks. Crisp, tidy, multitasked efficiency.      Desperation has made him a bit more stridently legible: "A singularity is the *absolute predomination* of one force. All models of our reality are compatible with it existing inside a black hole. Aren't you the least bit curious what absolute tyranny is water-to-a-fish to us? Don't you want to *escape*?"      Through the rotating diamond-fire facets, you might see him tilt his head back at the black hole through the window.
Sarracenia	'Th-thanks, Princess, Sarracenia. Ah... I'm supposed to eat these, right?'      Sarra can't help a bit of a laugh and a nod as Odette asks that. "Yes, in one gulp." she says, and if Odette did bit into one she'd have already found that the whole mushroom practically evaporates like cotton candy when eaten whether she stuffed the whole thing in her mouth or not. In one bite it is gone, and healing green sparkles flow over her.      The cog is clicked into place. Sarra's brain struggles to resolve all that she has thought and experienced in that expanded time. "...is this how Angela feels...?" she wonders quietly.      The spectacle of Princess's all or nothing gambit strikes, leaving Princess Sarracenia a bit awed. "Spectacular~" she calls out to Princess. Sarra enjoys a bit of chaos, after all. The firestorm is also pretty spectacular, but she isn't about to compliment Kale. "Nice throw!" she calls out to Woz.      Marcellus seems to go down, and Sarra falls into the trope completely. Kale asks if they survived, and she feigns confidence that of course they did.      Only for purposely shaped debris to pelt them a few moments later. Sarra yelps and quickly brings her hammer up to block some of the incoming flechettes, but a number of them cut into her shouders and legs through her dress. The princess yelps again and stumbles for a moment, then growls. "So, it is not a game, hm?! Then, perhaps you will pardon me if I take it seriously!" She pulls out a black box with a large white ! on its sides and a red button on top, then sets it down and presses the button. "I have been holding back out of respect for the care that when into this. I may not like Li-...Queen Liliana, but this has all been rather impressive despite that. But, if this is the stance you are taking...so be it!!"      She hits the button, and the box unfolds...and unfolds...and unfolds, until it is the size of a garage. With a loud hydraulic sound a shark-faced projectile the size of a truck slides into place. "If we wanted to be ground beneath her despicable heel we would have surrendered long ago! But, if you like being ground under heels that much then here is my biggest heeled boot!"      "Oh, and by the way!" she adds. "Do you know what happens to black holes once they have devoured everything?! They explode, destroying themselves and releasing everything they had devoured! I learned that on Viewtube!"      The Banzai Bill fires. It is a pretty reckless move, but Sarra is pretty reckless. The series of gradually growing explosions that follows promise destruction in spades, with the final powerful explosion leaving a mushroom cloud in its wake. Is Sarra counting on the surprisingly sturdy construction that allowed her to hammer a fish tank and it not break? Possibly.      Or she is just tired of this guy who is perhaps even more full of himself than kale. "Escape this, you...you simp!"
Kale Hearthward	tick                                       Time resumes. Kale clears his throat. Breathing fire is something new. And it tingles in an unpleasant way. > "You so clearly want to be ground beneath her heel." "..." He squares up. "Liliana is ever the goal." "And yet-" He draws. "You act as though I'm in a rush to be nothing but defeated by her. That I'm so far beneath her that I'm not even worthy of meeting her." "Do you think I could ever accept this?" "Do you think-" He brings his sword up to his beak. "- Do you think my heart would ever accept this!" One expects his weapon to activate, forming one of two flashy effects. It doesn't. Instead, when one of the javelins comes at him - he lashes out at that, his untransformed sword suddenly swinging around to parry, and he gets moving. It's a mad dash around Marcellus - no, it's one towards him, angled to hide Kale's true intent. Another parry, a dodge, and a sudden leap to entirely clear an attack coming in low... ... And then going at Marcellus himself. Compacted diamond, against a steel sword (transformed or not) is a losing proposition for the latter, but Kale seems determined to try. He winds up an overly telegraphed swing- - another feint. An attempt to draw Marcellus into positioning one of the shields *just so*, with Kale's foot already raising to plant itself down and use it to launch himself up and *over* Marcellus's zone of defense - - and abruptly twist himself around in midair, the heels of his jet boots clicking together as the trigger to fire, and he airdashes down, attempting to dive through whatever gaps in the shield wall there are, and land uncomfortably close to Marcellus, sword going to poke at the other man's skin through his clothes. "And I'm not the least bit curious what'll happen if I end up inside your black hole," he says.
Timespace Riders	Petra's thanks are accepted by Woz with one hand over the heart and a slight bow at the waist--courteous, without taking attention wholly off of Marcellus. You so clearly want to be ground beneath her heel.     "I applaud your devotion as surely as your skill," says Woz with a little hand flourish and a conciliatory nod of his head. With a flick of his wrist, he gestures to himself, palm pressed to the large purple shuriken on his breastplate. "I assure you that you shall find no shortage of either within me." Aren't you the least bit curious what absolute tyranny is water-to-a-fish to us? Don't you want to *escape*?     A whirring, half like the sped-up gears of a clock, half like the buzz of a cicada, picks up in the air around Woz. "Hm...?"     One of his futuristic pocketwatches is going a little crazy--larger than the others, with a bezel that extends asymmetrically past the face, which presently displays a cameo of Earth's solar system. He presses the stop--but despite the influx of energy, this one still isn't ready yet.     "A compelling offer..."     "Woz...?" Without time dilation to slow him down, Zi-O can stay (more or less) ahead of the diamond javelins. Precognition doesn't come standard with preternatural grace, even in an agile form like his Ex-Aid Armor. For every two or three platformer-style leaping evasions, there's a clumsy scramble or a brute force deflection that leaves him staggered and momentarily on the back foot.     "...but one which I must refuse. Your escape and mine lead to different places," he says, having more difficulty than his king in keeping clear of the javelins. Unlike Zi-O, who can occasionally attack back with his A and B button punch gauntlets, Woz can't predetermine attacks and spends most of his effort keeping clear, striking kuj-kiri handseals and teleporting across the room.     "Enough of this," he says, after striking into the wall with his sickle-tipped polearm and halting a wall-slide to procure a different Miridewatch.
Timespace Riders	Woz presses the stop on this other Miridewatch--bearing a question-marked, red-blue armored warrior on the face.                            Action! Touei! Future Time!                                                     Fashion! Passion! Question!                                                         Futurering Quiz! QUIZ!                                 As Woz slots the watch into the neon green side-gate of his sleek black Beyondriver, a colorful array of lasers prints new armor over the Shinobi Armor to the tune of exultant, brass-heavy fanfare that fades to a pleasant correct-answer *dingdingding*. The app icons on his pauldrons shift to opposing red and blue question marks, and his helmet's antennae merge into a single question mark. His tabard is similarly question-marked and symmetrical, white marks over black with red trim on the right and blue on the left. As a final touch, he taps a new icon on the touchscreen haft of his weapon, shifting the sickle to a crooked green question mark.                                  CANE-NONICAL!                                       Sliding down the wall, he lands to rise with arms spread wide.     "True or false--Queen Liliana has earned your support."     A stormcloud gathers over Marcellus, lightning flashing within before a bolt streaks outwards, heading straight for him. "The correct answer is true," says Woz, as his right shoulderpad swings wide to reveal a red-hot correct-answer O.     "True or false," Woz calls again, helmet held high, cane-staff rapped against the ground. "All that exists within gravity is subject to its whims. The correct answer is true," he again states, his right pauldron again swinging out for a red-hot O. A second bolt of lightning streaks out towards Marcellus.     "True or false!" calls Woz a third time, swiping his finger rapidly on his weapon's touchscreen. A fast-paced drum loop sounds with intense synth sweeps as he swings the cane in circles overhead, like calling a storm. "I shall be content to escape gravity before I fully understand the universe of potential within me." As he swings the cane, hardlight red-blue questionmarks swirl overhead, colliding with the javelins and exploding. The ones they don't strike catch him, sending up sprays of sparks and even at one point driving him to one knee. Still...     The left pauldron swings wide, revealing an icy-cold incorrect-answer X. "The correct answer is *false.*"                                 FUKASHIGI MAGIC!                                     The question marks grow in size and number until, with a downward swing, Woz sends them all flying after Marcellus. They swarm him, forming a little prison with their square crooks, rotating rapidly around and pummeling with hard edges before their grinding against one another ignites and sets them all off in a dramatic explosion.
Odette Raskins	"Maybe, like, literally don't get on my ass literally right when we're getting in a fight." "Huh? O-oh. Uh. Sorry! I just thought it was... Sounded... Cool." Odette murmurs with a slight sag in her stance, sounding genuinely guilty about that as she winds up looking away herself. Thankfully, there's ghost-themed people going after everyone, and there's even one with a giant scalpel coming just for her! For better or for worse, she's gotten too into the bit to remember that these undead non-ghosts aren't actually undead. She just sees them backing off from the 'holy water' and uses that to buy herself some more time to survive until the jeweled cog can be placed where it needs to go. She's still terrified of all those executioners the entire time, of course, so she has no qualms whatsoever about using Brick's giant salt chunks and kicking off of them to get a little more distance as well as putting them in her personal executioner's path. When she sees things startign to move normally again, it's right when Princess' explosive blasts bury Marcellus in all that rubble. There's that moment of relieved elation as she sees the area boss down along with the ghosts backing off, and she has just in time to be worried for Marcellus the actor to start heading towards where he got buried shortly before he explodes that debris every which way. "Ow! D-darn it, that... Cheap shot!" Odette winces as she touches a gash on her cheek, inhaling sharply through her teeth at realizing how close that came to her eyes. "Thought we were finished, but... Nn. O-of course we don't want to be grounded by a heel! We're here to stop Queen Liliana, not get beaten up by-ow... B-by everyone here!" Going wide-eyed again at all those diamond javelins, Odette wastes little time in getting back up and booking it once he sends those swarming javelin around, yelping and making all those frightened noises she often does while she's being pursued. She has't even had time to really get used to this room yet, either, so she mostly just improvises while scrambling around to try and find some cover besides the grand piano. "A-and of course I want to escape! Plenty of other people trapped outside do, too! If Queen Liliana's wasn't grinding so many of them down, maybe we-" Another yelp as she half-collides with the piano and swings herself around it, tumbling into a crouch and hiding behind it to buy herself a few precious seconds away from the javelins. "M-maybe we wouldn't even be here, but.. We are! So... Y-yeah!" A wordsmith, Odette is not. Realizing she can't just come up with half-baked responses or run away forever, though, she finally tries going on the offensive. Reaching into her bag again, she pulls a jar filled with an itching powder out of her duffel bag, hesitates for just a moment, then realizes that Marcellus will probably be okay (he survived Princess' epxlosive power, after all). And then she whips the empty bottle right at him at full speed, curving it in the air with an impressive arc not unlike a fastball. She aims it a little too high though, like she was intending to aim it at his chest and subconsciously curved it towards his face instead.
Rowdyruff Boys	Brick didn't and does not eat a giant mushroom. This is such basic you're-a-faerie shit that he doesn't even need to think about it, even when he comes back to normal temporal progression. His gaze tracks along the path of the flying salt, which he can't immediately reclaim because of all the other environmental effects going on in the room. The thing he actually seems the least bothered by is the whole singularity thing. It's not that he doesn't consider it a problem, but for him personally, it would be survivable. He does cast a glance in the direction of Princess, who went all-in in the very direct understanding that that might not actually be the case for herself. He's busily weighing how true that would be-- he has a lot of faith in her technology, but there IS a difference between being Powerpuff and Rowdyruff-tough and adaptative and wearing something that confers the same. He makes a mental note of that, because he always makes a mental note of vulnerabilities in people who build tech to equal him. //O-of course we are~ We are the heroes here~// "No." No clarification, no elaboration. Just No. Boomer flies up into the ongoing conflict zone, fully expecting that his lightning to the gears had halted the timestop, and finding himself in the middle of an ongoing dialogue with a boss that is face-transitioning. He hovers in the air, mouth half-opened, absolutely bewildered-looking. "Hey, Brick, do black holes expl--" "We've never seen it happen, shut the fuck up Boomer," Brick snaps. "Oh, ok." A pause. "Hey Brick, do we want to be ground under the heel of Liliana?" "No, I've been grading people as liabilities for that specific trait, and too fucking many of them have it," Brick says, darting forward and putting his immense -- and extremely dense, nigh-invulnerable -- bulk between the others and the fletchettes. "Hurry up and get in there or I'm calling Butch to replace you, where the hell have you even been?" "Cats," Boomer says without elaboration, super-sizing himself and assuming an attack posture that's distant from Brick's-- he actually is grabbing directly at Marcellus's defensive diamond mass and attempting to squeeze it as hard as he can, which as it turns out is hard enough that it doesn't take that long for anything -- even diamond -- to start audibly cracking and breaking down beneath the sheer force being exerted.
Petra Soroka	"You think this is a game?!"     Oh, he's *committed* committed. Petra has two options here, and reflexively teeters towards the easier option of continuing to get caught up in her own head and trip over her own feet, as she habitually does every time she's exposed to Sapient Heuristics. Her other option, which she wrenches her mind into allowing, is matching Marcellus's intensity just as hard.     Petra pulls herself up from the wall where she inserted the cog, and shields her eyes from the burst of heat and light from the psychic phase change with her forearm. Squinting out from under the shadow, Petra tries to place why this seems familiar, besides it being a habit of Phony's, and then her eyes widen when she recalls a fight she didn't participate in, but watched through a drone from a long distance away. That isn't part of the bit, so she has to put it aside in her mind, but it might be part of her tactics. "You so clearly want to be ground beneath her heel."     "You know--" A diamond javelin lances out at her, and when it buries in the metal beside her head, she catches her reflection in a facet and pulls her transteam gun out through it. "Basically *every* one of Liliana's minions have said that to me at some point. At this point, I kind of think she has to be *briefing* you on it, or something."     Petra pops up from a roll past another javelin, fires a few energy beams from a kneel, and then puts a hand on her cheek, smugly mocking. "Can you *imagine*? Liliana with all her little cronies, insisting that the heroine making more and more progress into her castle is just *moments* away from falling under her control, and that this is *all* according to plan. We've already made it way further than that other heroine, you know."     Petra clicks the morphmetal bottle out of its magazine on the bottom of her gun, and when the fluidic metal spills out, instead of forming a weapon, it goes into orbit around her with angular nodules interconnected by thin trails, a wet mimicry of Marc's own defenses. Similarly, flechettes are jettisoned out of it in his direction, burying mostly in the compressed material of his shields; but unlike Marcellus, she's got a limited quantity of material to work with.     "Well, after we send you crying back, tell your queen she can have me, once we've kicked down the door to her throne room!" Wait!! Petra, don't accidentally foreshadow your imminent betrayal! "-- because I'll be there, to take her down once and for all, I mean!" "Aren't you the least bit curious what absolute tyranny is water-to-a-fish to us? Don't you want to *escape*?"     A faint swell of itch surges around Petra, loosely conducted through the cybersnaptic poison in her Silver. She glances out the window at the black hole, just as her last orbiting shield splits and fires off to be embedded in Marcellus's as a spray of needlepoint shards.     "Well, go ahead and drown in it. I've still got stuff to do here. So, sorry about your gravitas, but you're still standing on the surface of Earth, not the black hole."     All of the rigid morphmetal shards buried in Marcellus's defenses lose their surface tension and slacken into tendrils, psychically dragged around in the air by the orbiting of his shields. The tendrils connect to each other like a web, still anchored inside the shields, and then snap taut again to grind backwards against the telekinetic force and wrench them into place, symbiotic strength directly competing against psychic so that they're slowed enough for Boomer to grab hold and attacks to slip through.
Powerpuff Girls	Blossom, speeding back up in relative experience, doesn't actually get the hanging moments of full-stop noticed. Of course she wouldn't, but the result is a bit strange. She lasers a big block of salt and casts a terribly bright flash of light that sends hot burning salt scattering about, but the ghosts retreat for other reasons that are primarily advantage-based. "Princess!" Blossom calls, bouncing away from the broad reinforced window in her air-stop as her resistant force of propulsion overbalances the shift in suck. Worried, and worse, having an experienced hero moment of 'did Princess just kill that pretty guy?', Blossom doesn't consider the danger presented and swoops into a walking landing to put a hand on Princess' gold suited shoulder around her left pom-puff. Princess, for her part, breathes hard and counts heartbeats while her whole suit cooks off a molten gold mirage. Her outstretched weapon-hand, curling fingered, closes into a fist in the post-flash moment where a body collapses on the back wall. Touched, firmly, adrenaline crashing through her veins and barely recognizing Blossom speaking words to her, Princess swallows hard and hears the whole mechanical action of her dry mouth like it's the only sound in the whole world besides the thrum of suit systems. "What was that? That was way too far!" Blossom insists. "I almost died." Princess is at shivering hiss. "You could have killed him!" Blossom does not let up. Princess whips her head around to stare at Blossom. "You almost died." It hangs. Blossom and Princess both look, dire-eyed and wild-pupil'ed aside, as Marcellus rises from fried-alive knockdown to undirected flechette explosion and psionic rise. Blossom is able to bring her arms up in a cross block over her face and eyes, skin ricocheting bits of debris as sweater and skirt get holed and shredded. Princess, both figurative and literal systems in hard shock reboot, brings across one hand in a flinching guard and lacks the natural Powerpuff willed-motion flight to lever against the blast, being sent skidding back across the glass floor in a backslide. "I'm taking this very seriously!" Blossom declares, an artful short-hop into twirl being just the torqued prelude to the Powerpuff hurling a forceful tornado filled with shrapnel back at Marcellus to test psionic barriers, the faintly ruby wind tunnelling tightly but still hitting more like swung furniture than fist. Sliding back across stained glass arena, a shocked Princess Morbucks finds her abyssally-aimed thought processes aborted by the person she almost killed right in front of Blossom Utonium getting back up again, completely dumping the self-reflective bleakness that had consumed her and switching back on the 'still in a fight' supervillainess. Following the lingering ghosts of sentences on her Marcellus subtitle track, Princess pushes herself up with a hand to get onto her side, bare wafts of pink mirage dully licking from spent armor. A progress spinner fills dangerously slowly at the edge of perception, following Morbucks' eye saccade to remain just-out-of-the-way enough while palpably reminding her of how spent and vulnerable she is. "You've got a real," Princess brings hand to nose and snorts, clearing sinus and blinking eyes. Puffy-cheeked for a moment after, she hangs pre-sneeze and then push-boosts to her feet with a groggy flare of palms and adjustment of legs underneath her. "-attitude you haven't earned a penny of."
Powerpuff Girls	Schooled in the way of fish battering a predator or missiles rippling against clustered target, Princess is crumpled by the diamond tips unbreakingly hammering her in a kidneypunch blow that skiddingly grinds the just-slightly floaty stance of the armored two-pom Puff. Rolling away from the motion as the tips rip a fleet of ribbontears across her gold suit and black stripe, Princess sweeps out both hands parallel to ground and flares both palms with heat, shooting away from the abouting school of javelins and blasting the attack vector in the same motion, rising on legs and stabilizing cape of pink plasma as suit generators fill back her aura visibly. Blossom, intercepting with a fresh flare of precision heat vision, long-beams through the crowd of sharp point (and create a pretty prisming effect) while beaming them like a broom into Brick's grasp, tandeming without needing to be told. "Cats?" Banters the beaming Red. "Was there a plot thread about cats?" Princess has a moment as she rises from a shaky sixty percent through the comfortable eighties of well charge. "You must actually think you're better than me. Dog?" She definitely isn't hiding her translator running. "I don't have your full and proper sense of gravitas, pal," She does not even codeswitch language or do a this-for-that switch - she just takes the tone with a bittered girl's accusatory growl. "-because I engineered all my suits to protect me from some dweeb's latest get-one-over-on-Morbucks plot. You reality shapers, you're all the same." Now, mocking, sneering, stress overflowing and wanting something to shake and throw and break, it's almost funny though the breathy laugh she manages is too-fast for humor. "All models that I've just made up exist where I'm right and you're wrong because I've skipped all the intermediary steps and I just *get* it. Huh? Buzz off, 'absolute tyranny'. Escaping a black hole on my own power is the minimum of wanting to be *near* the Powerpuff Girls!!" While claiming to want to be 'near', Princess makes her budget on recovered power short of full, circling Marcellus close to the to skid through warped atmospheric sound barriers, dashing through her own delayed sonic boom, She talks as she moves, voice bouncing around delayed due to gravitic effect. "I had to build it with my network, my genius, my hands, and now that I have it you think because you float wearing *carbon ash* and I have to wear alloy gold you're better than me?" Her voice calls, snapping one step delayed through the pinballing and leaping spin, to drive a spiraling down-heel axe cartwheel kick to the diamond barrier around Marcellus, voice and woman joined. Aiming arms, both palms turning into tiny pink stars, Princess lets the escape velocity zip happen hot and slow and burning to back away - impact, temperature, and several kinds of shock to join the other princess' massive detonation. "Throw yourself in a black hole and big crunch in the next dimension!"
Persephone Kore	Operating about three dozen telekinetic weapons-and-shields at once is, even for Architect Marcellus, taking a clear toll. When he swats a shield at Kale's feint, a drop of blood rolls down his upper lip. When Boomer crushes the diamond shields, Marc puts a hand out to directly telekinetically contest the giant's grip and Petra's constricting tendrils, and the drop becomes a drizzle to the floor far below.      Dylan hadn't bled at all, not really, even when cut; Marcellus seems to pay it as a cost.      "A pointless reactionary, then," he snarls, souring from his initial interest in Woz. "Ostagxo de la Tero. As if potential were only in fitting *yourself* to the world, and not-- hhh!" Past the shields, he's more or less a normal human; the question marks gouge his body, but before they can explode he makes a tearing gesture, telekinetically compacts them into a little ball of sunlike energy, and then lets it vent itself as a retaliatory laser. From his floating posture, he hunches forward and pants.      The Banzai Bill comes at him, and every cord in his neck stands out when he spares a hand to reach out towards it. Despite its huge thruster, it grinds to a halt twenty feet away with great telekinetic fingerprints pressing into its metal... and then flips over, aimed back towards Sarracenia and Brick with an extra push. The white of one of his eyes blooms red with a burst capillary.      "*Gleefully* incurious," he pants bitterly while wiping sweat-matted bangs from his face- mostly at Petra, but more than just her. "Mi eble savis vin cxiujn, sed vi 'tas-- so *determined* to damn yourselves! For what? Some falsa ideo of sovereignty? Of pride?"      Wherever his eyes flick, he can pay a lesser cost in blood and strain to stop harm cold. But eyes can only be in one place at once. Blossom's tornado adds to the shrapnel stuck in his body and the speed of the red drip, and when he focuses on keeping the tornado at bay, his shields get crunched down by continued pressure like shedding electron shells. No win.      Still, he's got enough presence to eye Princess's shark-circling and bring up diamond shields against her shockwave trail. The fake noblesse oblige left him around the second pint. "Temper, temper," he scolds, in the cold way people scold when they only mean to tear down. "Where is this coming from? You're an open wound who won't even let me sew her up, aminjo. Defenders of the world who've been chewed up by it are the *wor--*"      Princess axe-kicks down. Kale zips down and stabs up. Crunch, pierce- Odette's jar adds insult to injury- and in the moment Marcellus's focus cracks, everything he's holding at bay crashes in on him in a crush of diamond shards. Crack.      For the second time, he hits the floor hard, leaving beautiful red droplets suspended in the air among the black-hole-gleaming diamonds.
Persephone Kore	"but you're still standing on the surface of Earth, not the black hole."      "Throw yourself in a black hole and big crunch in the next dimension!"      From his crumpled-up place on the twice-shattered ground, Marcellus gasps and makes a clawing gesture over his chest.      A beautiful little black hole ignites where his heart should be. Gravitationally, every drop of blood from around the room rushes back into him. He floats up to his feet, and for a moment before the cosmic rupture obliterates him, there's color in his cheeks again.      "Well. It's been fun," he lies, shittily, while adjusting the collar of his shirt. "I'll be waiting for you sur la aliaflanke." Then the black sphere overtakes him.      Everyone has uncomfortable little time to plunge back down the tower's platforming challenge, or otherwise escape, before half of it is swallowed by the flash-expansion-and-crunch of a brief second singularity.      At the bottom, a black-and-teal key falls to clink against the floor. It's followed a moment by a pattering of stained-glass petals.