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Arthur Lowell	The sound is ungodly, which is ironic. Rushing water and sparking lightning. Every part of a storm and yet not a storm. Waterfall and crackling excesses of energy emerge from the sky. A scattering of massive stone spires breach the space above, pushing through a green spirograph, and inching through the air at unthinkably high altitude, and streams of water and lightning pour through with it. Arthur's here, and he's bringing something of a disturbingly ambiguous size with him.     A planetoid slowly inches into being far above the ground, somewhere... SOMEWHERE IN NEVADA NAZCA EX-BLACKSITE RUINS > Arthur: Return to where you found them > Arthur: Grant. Jackson. > Arthur: It's still under eyes     Down below, at the surface, Arthur's gleaming beacon guides the mass teleportation. It shines on every radar for miles. He knows this: It has to look like a desperation-move, bringing in massive resources with a clear space-magic beacon to a NAZCA site, to Do Something. Something, one assumes, that will threaten NAZCA's interest. Something that comes with massive, truly direly intense space-magic that seems to gravitationally oppose the eversive impulse. It should draw Ash out. It has to.     The beacon's not necessary. He could do this much more quietly. But he uses this device so sparingly that it's impossible for even the greatest of intelligence agencies to truly know that. It's a convining play-acting of a desperation move, a perfect mask of Arthur's actual, sincere desperation move.     More on that later.     Arthur runs over the plan again. "Gonna need heal-types on-call. Supplied for days of work, we don't know how long this is gonna last subjectively. Lilian, stick to that pipe organ and don't move for nothin', I need you playing a time-song so damn sweet or we're fucked. Rest of you all got your gravity-gate relays. Do *not* pull against it. You lose enough stability, you let the spirograph's gravity take you out for triage and come back fresh. No pushing past it unless you're immortal, I *don't* got the kind of respawn shit you guys can *share*."     Lilian's position oversees it all. From the planet that's slowly inching its way into the airspace above the NAZCA facility, the tower-house that Arthur lives in offers a view of the Earth above from the pipe organ at the top, the one hooked into the planet's clockwork-metal clouds and vast crystaline cave-pipeworks. All others, though, are told to join Arthur. Stay here, investigate the devastated NAZCA site convincingly, and keep your enchanted spirographs on-hand. Absolutely be in the blast-zone when the Armillary is deployed. Pack heavy. Get your mind for some hefty defense construction. And be ready for hours, days, maybe weeks of conflict in sudden, violent bursts.
Tamamo	Tamamo has had a lot of work to do. So much, in fact, that she has to say to those assembled, "I must leave much of the work in the foreground of our stage to others. Take comfort, at least, in that I have prepared ample supplies for healing, and for swift recovery in matters apart from wounds." This is all true. No matter what affliction one suffers, there are few better suited to treat it than she. Poison, disease, curses, magical madness, exhaustion from staying up until 4 a.m. -- she has it all.     "You must, however, avoid 'death.'" Except that one.     For Arthur, especially, she's devoted a large chunk of her own reserves to providing nearly raw arcane power, flavored only by its solar origin, channeled through her own drawn and talisman-bounded arrays. The leylines, too, she's using to keep herself energized just in case of sudden need, but also arranged to feed into the truly, truly massive warding placed over the entirety of the planetoid. At the bare minimum, they need to avoid the lunar menace. Having seen several wards for that specific purpose beforehand, she's well prepared to weave that particular defense in among her other preparations.     She's also spent some time at Lobotomy Corporation's facility, but that's a different matter.
Angela	Angela has made her own plan because Arthur, it should be noted, has insulted his own plans repeatedly and has seemed uneasy about it amounting to anything--but her plan mostly involves bringing something a little different this time than the usual brand of support she brings. Well mostly. She is here in her Eggpack and Cinder is also present with a gun on top of her usual gear. The gun is filled with the 'healing bullets' normally associated with Nonon or the Safety and Training teams but this is essentially an acknowledgement that Cinder'd be better off taking the role of support. Arthur has asked for healing and Angela has no reason to hold back the amount of support she provides Lilian today. Not just because she owes her or because she loves her but because she has never seen Lilian pushed like this before. She has to help her. She knows, on some level, that maybe it'd be better for Lilian to listen to Ash rather but Lilian has told her her why she doesn't. Angela knows any reason to get in the way of that would be selfish beyond measure so that is what she is relying on to keep going here. ''Gonna need heal types on-call'' "Guess that's why I'm here. To help with that." Cinder quips. "And we've got Safety on standby if we need more." ''I *don't* got the kind of respawn shit you guys can *share*.'' "...Uh what? You respawn?" Cinder asks before sighing. "Of course you respawn." "I will be of limited use I imagine but I will do what I can. At the very least if there is a matter where a simple matter of heightened and enlongated perception may be of use, I can provide it." Angela says. She's feeling a little comfortable with the knowledge that even if she were here personally, she doesn't think she'd be able to be fo much more help than her in an Eggpack. Considering everything, she's probably the one in the least amount of danger, for a given value of danger. "Besides. If the leash is dropped on the King, I can probably redirect her for a moment. I know what Works she likes." Ah, that's right. The new brand of assistance Angela has brought along is the King of Greed. The King of Greed is broadly nearly immune to physical assault (Red Damage, as the LobCorp team calls it), but that doesn't protect her from being controlled by Tamamo. She is a white haired woman with a strange golden dress. A massive gauntlet is on one of her hands. She is marveling after Tamamo with clear desire and fascination in her eyes. "Rest assured, Tamamo-no-mae, you cannot kill Desire. I will fight for months, years if need be. I've already fought for thousands, haven't I, sister?" Angela sighs, "Just focus on the task. You are here to help this time. Then you'll have to return to the cell." This must be why Tamamo was spending time at LobCorp.
James Bond	Do *not* pull against it. You lose enough stability, you let the spirograph's gravity take you out for triage and come back fresh.     "Understood." Bond has worked with Arthur enough to know how to navigate his particular way of speaking; when something throws him for a loop, it's generally true that whatever Arthur meant will be made clear in practice.     He has packed heavy, so to speak. The newest iteration of his standard issue watch gleams at his wrist, a single point of refinement on an otherwise very blunt outfit. His black fatigues bear no identifying marks, the various pockets laden with the miscellany needed for a long deployment like this. A carbine with an underbarrel grenade launcher is clipped to the front, while the strap of a heavy duffel bag pulls insistently across it too. You must, however, avoid 'death.'     'Provisions' in this case includes not only food, but cigarettes. He indulges in one now, in fact. "So far, so good," says the middle-aged superspy whose favorite breakfast is steak, eggs, coffee and a cigarette.     In these sorts of engagements, he's found that he works best as a constant drip-feed of stress for his adversaries, striking from stealth and fading. Picking off opponents opportunistically, wild goose chases, disruption of materiel and breaking ranks are all on the menu. To that end, he keeps his eyes open for escape routes, choke points, blind corners and whatever high ground might still exist.
Trudy Grimm	I should just ask her about it. Not now. Obviously not now. I'll have to blithely speculate in darkness for a little longer. Right now it's time to get some work done.     Green eyes open, staring out across the Land of Spires and Frogs. Rune-carved cairns intersect with leylines in perfect positions to interface with geomatic arrays. The witch lets out a satisfied little noise, briefly inspecting what she can see from this perch. Her left hand rests on the spine of the Grimoire, tightening anxiously. After a moment, she nods once and pulls the book up. Its buckle unfastens, covers flipping open through seemingly blank pages.     "If it's a legion of warriors who never flee and never tire, look no further," The faint shadow at her feet deepens to a dark pitch, then expands into a wide circle across otherwise ordinary grass. First to emerge is the Black Knight, and beside him the Samurai Brothers of Red and Azure. A squadron of six early 20th century soldiers in heavy coats with rifles and gas masks. A new addition, a tall lanky man in a ragged long coat and heeled boots, his face concealed behind a bleached bandana and the shadow cast by a tattered but still recognizable cowboy hat.     Between these notable Unique figures-- one might consider them to be Commanders-- scores of more simplistic skeletal warriors begin crawling out, standing up with basic weapons in hand, some even start assembling others. The numbers keep increasing even as formations start gathering and marching out of the shadow-- only to be replaced by more. Closest to Trudy, the Black Knight turns his helmet slightly towards her.     "Fight until told otherwise. You know who our allies are." With the Rune of Death burning its sickening green above Malice, Trudy's eyes flick to the great Knight. He responds by drawing his greatsword from his back and resting it on his shoulder, joining one of the departing formations alongside the other Ascended Undead under her command.
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Phoning Ash, Petra Soroka | night ash PHONE: Ash | bye forever     Petra actually really hopes it's not forever. The stakes of every engagement with Ash-- mostly the physical ones, but each conversation over the phone has the potential to be the last too-- are always inflated to 'forever', between Ash's unstable temperament risking being exacerbated by Petra's emotional clumsiness, and the simple fact of maybe getting killed by NAZCA. Every time is ideologically nerve-wracking, the tense culmination of Petra's personal arc to throw herself into the intersection of 'like her, and like Lilian'; and somehow still, talking with Ash is soothing in a way almost nothing else is. Which is also scary!!!!     So, in totality: there are only two times in her life where Petra has taken something more seriously than this. Due to her predilections, it's nearly impossible to meaningfully separate things she is invested in for her personal feelings, and things she's invested in for Lilian as an individual or an ideological idol. This thing-- dealing with Ash-- is one that's both.     But, of course, her focus isn't allowed to really be single-minded. Before leaving from Lobotomy Corporation, she explained all this to Angela, but she goes over it again to the Eggpack while fussing with picking the locks on filing cabinets inside a decimated building.     "Okay, like-- the Eggpack's rigged up to work cross-dimensionally already, so that's not going to be a problem. I tuned that one up after the Pokemon stuff. And, uh-- like, I can't be *sure* how it'll work with desynced time stuff, but with the data from the tablet and Lampport I'm pretty sure it won't go insane, but... it's still going to be a *lot* of time for you, Ange. I only *think* that the, like, perception stuff will let you step away if you get stuck, but... I don't know for sure, and if you do, then it'll be over before you can come back. Like, I tried my best, but it's still a risk. You can shut it off if, uh-- like that time in the Infinity Train? It *could* turn out like that."     Besides Angela, what Petra brings in a tactical sense is fairly limited. Her mirror contains plenty of snacks, changes of clothes, the mundane living supplies that might otherwise be sorely lacked after Arthur does his thing. Her healing capabilities are restricted to a non-replenishing first-aid kit and a few healing bullets, her magical resources are completely nonexistent, her combat prowess is small-scale at best compared to NAZCA, and she's not creating any new planets or reshaping the world or holding time still or anything like that. Hopefully, though, what she brings to the table emotionally is worth her presence.     Oh god. Petra is relying on her emotional rhetoric and heartfelt connections and sharply defined ideology. Who the fuck allowed her to get this far? "You must, however, avoid 'death.'"     "Yes ma'am. I'll do my best." Petra automatically gives Tamamo a clumsy salute, which morphs into an awkward thumbs-up of acknowledgement because a salute isn't actually called for. A moment later, she considers that a promise to survive is actually a form of doing harm to Tamamo, so she adds, "Sorry." "If the leash is dropped on the King, I can probably redirect her for a moment."     "Yep. I'll get you to her if we need." Petra's also, in preparation, done some training on the King of Greed's suppression. A backpack pocket stuffed full of candy, and a black glass spear thrumming with corruptive alien energy, are the carrot and stick at her disposal, but hopefully she doesn't need to use them. "Fight until told otherwise. You know who our allies are."     Back to Trudy, Petra mutters under her breath, "I bet you do."
Xion	Xion had been ready before the point - had been ready months ago, had been ready when she first met Ash - to 'try her hardest', to put herself behind a wish and push with both hands, both shoulders, the whole of her arms braced against the whole of her self. It had not, really, mattered how ready Xion was. Not how ready she was to fight uphill against those that hated her specifically and dispassionately, hated her to death but for the doing, and certainly not how ready she was to accomplish anything. In a way, it was familiar. In a way, it was surreal. To 'not exist'. She had reached out to touch Ash, and had grasped firmly upon 'nothing'. Then, frantically, as if it would justify herself, she had chased after Arthur and begged for him to try to make it work with a bigger heart-aspected bomb instead of a bigger space aspected beam. They weren't that different, the gamer and the girl with a sword in her hand, in the end. They just cried and gritted their teeth in different ways. Also, Arthur had salamanders to remind him of the Prophecy. Xion just had Larxene to remind her that the world was a bitch and to 'dress warm' in a skirt and boots. Dressing warm for martial weather in a half-zipped black coat tailing from the bottom to sway out the sides and provide more leg motion. Hood drawn, Xion arrives with a hexagonal-twisted pylon Keyblade of black with a crimson red bead on the tooth and a vaguely boned or spinal curl of a hilt in hand, hooking the Antegent themed Key over her shoulder and somberly looking over her allies. 'You must, however, avoid 'death.'' "I'll try my best. I always do." The noirette assures, then glances from hood-shaded corner of an eye to glance between Petra's apology and Tamamo. Sorry? "James?" Xion turns on the agent. "Do you need me to hide a tank in my back pocket for you? I'm really not feeling like sneaking around *or* getting put in the military industrial wiggler." Unfortunately, the mil-ind wiggler might be exactly what they're dropping into.
James Bond	Do you need me to hide a tank in my back pocket for you?     "It wouldn't hurt to have it in reserve," says Bond, taking a pull on his cigarette. "For a grand finale or a last stand. And I'll even keep the obvious joke to myself. But so you're aware, I intend to be doing plenty of sneaking around."
Lilian Rook	If Lilian had ever imagined she'd visit Arthur's house one day, this wouldn't have been how, and it wouldn't have looked like this. Pushed this far, this close to the wire, with this much at stake, she barely has the presence of mind left to think about it.     His plan beggars belief in the first place, though she'd come to him early enough to fully grasp it. The absurdity of both its scale and its abstract laterality requires that she suspend most of her better sense to work with it, and thusly navigate its blank spaces nearly blind. Triple review of what ensures anyone's survival come after the export of creative capital by necessity; how to hold Red Team at bay, by what means to spread around genre-appropriate 'rewards', the design of progression metrics, the emergent area, what to play, all take up so much that sitting down before the keys is the first moment Lilian has to genuinely, seriously, wonder.     §Was this really a good idea?§     But of course her first doubt must be her last. The others are already gathered. Arthur is reiterating the crucial points of the drill. Weeks of blood sweat and tears are already stained into the stone. And she can already see the place; the twisted ruin, ravaged by the Cycle of Tears, in the shimmering between-space along the road through what used to be the Nevada desert. She has time to tap her radio, just long enough to say "Stay safe. It isn't worth anything at all if you don't come back.", perhaps to Tamamo, or as a warning to Arthur, or to everyone, no one, or some combination. Then she has to play.     . . . . . . . .     What was once an outpost has been torn apart years ago. The original signs of violent combat that erupted in its lower levels are all but invisible by now. Ripped apart once by the Antegent brood unleashed by Rita, then a second time by the agents that had come to collect what was left, and at some point, a third time by whatever freak weather is endemic to the coralized desert, a hidden place of science is reduced to a metallic scab in the earth.     No physical evidence of the tests nor the samples remain. No bones, human or otherwise, can be found. Blood is peeled from plastic and steel with acid and then rain. Databanks are nothing but magnetic splinters. Shattered glass has blown away in the wind. The rusting hulk of a severed satellite dish, too big to haul away, unnecessary to cut to pieces, rests amidst the carcasses of lockers and once-bolted down tables, as if the vast servers that once listened to the sounds of void never were. And Arthur needs Lilian to play a song on that pipe organ, so she does.
Lilian Rook	It's debateable if the first sound qualifies as a note. A key, somewhere, certainly, has been struck, but for such a fraction of an instant that it carries no pitch or tone at all. But even had it been so short a press, the residual oscillation of the organ should have carried its fading remnant, betraying its original key, so even that is abruptly silenced. It's noise. A single sharp tick. One that is immediately followed by a softer echo. It too, is pitchless, but intuitively 'at the other end of the keys'; its counterbalancing weight, rocking the first note back into alignment. For four full bars, you hear the world's mightiest pipe organ, crowning piece of an entire planetoid, perfectly imitate the soft clicking of a watch wheel.     When the music begins; a certain tune that a few may recognize as something hummed or quietly sang by Lilian in idle moments, few and far between; it slides in alongside the atomic clock precision of the metronome keys, and utterly desynchronizes right away. The beats-per-minute of the music doesn't match at all to the relentless click-and-counter, heedlessly running at exactly one full cycle per second in the backdrop of the heartfelt art. It should take at least four hands to play, and two brains to manage the dissonance. You can almost hear the negative echo of "Má shíním seal uaire faoi chrann ag déanamh só, ó cad é sin don té sin nach mbaineann sin dó"?     . . . . . . . .     And you needn't wait for long. However long it would have taken NAZCA to move into position for 'the real thing', it wasn't much longer than this; Arthur's last, desperate play must be mere days, if even that, before the projected 'D-Day' on their whiteboards. Sensors went wild the moment Arthur opened the gate, not when your boots had first touched the dust. Somewhere, a briefing wrapped up faster than his. Craft were being loaded as you first ventured out. A hundred miles from the base you know of is nothing. The time you wait is measured in minutes, and few enough to count on one hand.
Lilian Rook	The encryption changed, of course. The radio chatter you catch is unintelligible for the few seconds it exists, before abruptly switching off. Heat flares are caught on the Northeastern quarter horizon; thirty in total, with another wave of thirty winking into existence along the network's edge. You can barely see the lights in the shimmer, but it's the best you have, so far ahead of their own sound wake.     The wave of missiles arrives first. Launched from multiple wings simultaneously, the contrails are like a starshower headed in the wrong direction. Bursting mid-air, they dispense a toxic tide of fuzzy black chaff that eats holes out of spatial and geomantic senses like a bacterial infection. The same thing as before, miniaturized to the point of an ambient pollutant, rapidly spreading to fill the airspace.     Next is the radiological spike underground. Boobytrapping points of interest is so obvious that it may have been done before 'Blue Team' ever even met you. The signal is beamed directly to a set location by laser, as radio coverage rapidly decays. Third is a horrendous flare of IR and EM emission thrown off the desert; precisely tuned to reflect off the alien, terraformed sands, until everything but your eyes is like a heat mirage, masking the signatures of sixteen dread-familiar machines in the vanguard.     Then comes the one thing they can safely accelerate ahead of even the planes; the one payload that will survive impact at any velocity. The ground rumbles before you hear the bomb blast of a landing. The sharp garble of synth-audible "Tally, tally, riser is bandit; hold buster." cuts through it in the short time just before the Armillary Sphere is active. As if you needed to check.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Avoid 'death'     Arthur's use of her power has massively bolstered the planetoid, but the manipulatable sky-leylines and water-flow leyline-mechanics allow him to really integrate some helpful Tamamo warding excellently. As for what Tamamo brought from Lobotomy Corp... *wow* this one's gonna have a good time with what comes next, probably. He gives her a wink though. "No worries on the DEATH BIZ for me. I know how to DEAL WITH SOME STUFF. Don't gotta worry 'til the CLOCK STRIKES." > ==>     "If that leash gets yanked out," Arthur says to Cinder, watching Tamamo and the King of Greed. "Then it better be Ash doing it. But if they do, that's..." He scratches his chin. "It's not the end of the world." He mutters. Despite the absolutely massive amount of preparation that he did, certain lapses just sound like non-issues to him. He even smiles a bit. > Arthur: Fondly regard dead nation     That one's a little tortured. But anyway, Arthur looks to Trudy's entourage and smiles. "Gonna need you helpin' boost the numbers for what's coming up. Pace it though. Fill out where the others don't got enough. You'll get it when we're in." > Arthur: There's Petra     "Hey. Look. I don't know where this is about to go, but--" Arthur's tense, for a moment. Teeth clench. "No matter what happens, you can't let NAZCA do what they're doing. I know we don't agree about a ton, but you know those fuckers aren't good enough for them." He mutters. "In more than one way." > Arthur: Weigh in on the tank     "Shit, don't hold a damn thing back, yeah." Arthur grumbles. Then... "Keys, you know better, how to get to 'em than I know. Lot of this is your idea. So get to 'em. If you can. This is your shot."     The scrambled response is so fucking fast. He doesn't get to say more.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Endure until they get here     Easier said than done. Missile-intercept is simple enough. Shoot them down. Ah-- nope, they thought of that. The chaff makes him wince, makes the portal flutter, but the sheer power held in the planetoid is overwhelming. It blocks everything out. The emitted energies of the planet are purging it *aggressively*. Arthur's going all out on this. The jamming, that's just to be expected. He knows what it's a preface for. Blindness is nothing to someone who knows exactly what's going to happen. Arthur doesn't have to win on their terms right now. He can push back, in overwhelming power, in tremendous confidence. No words, no screaming. Just waiting for the right moment.     In the strange machine of gleaming, interlocking rings that he raises. > [S] Arthur: Activate the Armillary     Sound of a flywheel. Sound of a jet engine. Sound of something doppelerized the way it never should. Sound of a process that produces energies so exotic that they're studied by astronomers and particle-accelerator technicians. Sound, indescribable. No sound at all, pure silence. Then, a soft metal click. Rings spin, and the cosmos is somewhere and something else.     The Land above begins to take aim.     Within the Armillary is another experience entirely.
Arthur Lowell	i hear fire                                                                    a warm crackle                                                                                                                                                charring and heating                                                 embers made from something that isn't embers                                               do you hear it? feel it?                                                  time. light. mind. and now you, heart.                                             are you the spark? the fire? or                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              wake up, ash                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 he hit you with something                                                                 a weapon                                                             they were all there, all of them                                          and you were ready for everything in the world                                              except for another one                                                               he got lucky                                            and there are some things you only need to get lucky once for                                                                                                                        like hitting your target                                                        like getting out of a jail                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     they're all still in here with you                                                   (as trapped as you are?)                                                            each one is a key                                                             each lock can be opened                                                      you always find a way through                                                       nobody can keep you here                                                              not even them                                                                                                                                       he gave them each a layer of the puzzlebox                                            and trapped them just like you                                              so they always come back just like you                                           so they have to fight just like you                                                 (but you're better at this)                                                        he gave them power too                                                        enough to fight you alone                                                      too much to be near each other                                                      (isn't that familiar)                                                                   (ha ha)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            get out                                                                     beat the jailers                                                            destroy what contains you                                                  you won't hear from me again like this                                                i won't wish you good luck                                                      i'm not doing this for you                                                     i'm only doing this for her
Arthur Lowell	nobody can keep you here                                                              not even them                                                                                                                                       he gave them each a layer of the puzzlebox                                            and trapped them just like you                                              so they always come back just like you                                           so they have to fight just like you                                                 (but you're better at this)                                                        he gave them power too                                                        enough to fight you alone                                                      too much to be near each other                                                      (isn't that familiar)                                                                   (ha ha)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            get out                                                                     beat the jailers                                                            destroy what contains you                                                  you won't hear from me again like this                                                i won't wish you good luck                                                      i'm not doing this for you                                                     i'm only doing this for her
Arthur Lowell	ARMILLARY SEGMENT FOUR-TWELVE ALPHA CAELI     Entering this segment is an impact, as if from orbit. With the power of the Armillary, Arthur has crafted his layer with surprising precision and grace. His is a series of games: Chambers and structures wrought of shimmering green glass accentuated and trimmed with white on black-glowing voids, suspended in darkness. Strict rules are set: This sphere must not cross these lines without this penalty, that type of foe must only be struck in that zone, only pass once you meet the challenge inscribed. Failure to adhere to the game's rules floods the area with uncountable hordes of Underlings. The creatures, all bone and metal and strange stones and dark-black ink, use all variety of weapons and come in all shapes, humanoid and otherwise, and all sizes, from half a person's height to the size of great giants.     The first time Ash arrives at Arthur's core subsegment...     "BEEN WAITIN' ON YA." Arthur drifts down from a relaxed spot atop the star in the center of the vast, complex circular chamber, grin wide and eager. "COULDN'T BEAT YOUR GAME! COULDN'T BEAT YA WHERE THERE'S NO REF AND NO RULES! BUT HERE," He cuts his descent short, slamming into the ground with powerful gravitational force. "THERE'S SOME GODDAMN CIVILIZATION UP IN THIS." The broom is drawn, dramatically, brandished at them. It revs with tremendous force, swirling blender-blades and gushing rocket-exhaust, while Arthur's eyes flash a gleaming white. "LET'S SEE YOU WIN FAIR!"     All the challenges arrange themselves in a spiral moving inwards to the core of Segment Four-Twelve, the core of Alpha Caeli: Arthur's playing field, a chamber encircling a great central star. There, each mechanic from earlier chambers layers on itself simultaneously, and unspeakably high-intensity gravity enforces it, pulsing violent bursts of spatial compression and starfire from the great referee of the core.     The fight here is one of momentum, orbits, and gaming: Arthur's rocket-broom makes a fight-pattern and a flight-pattern that bend starfire projectiles into concentric circles of heat and light. Bolts, beams, multiplying seekers, and all other sorts of things. All the while, his screams telegraph an incoming brutal blending or vast, complex blasts of brilliant projectiles.     If or when he scores a victory over Ash...     Arthur's shit-eating grin is wide and bloodied. "GEE-GEE. NO RE. YEAHHHHH!!" He hollers, as the Armillary's gravity takes them and forces them back to the start. Later on, it's feedback, of a sort: "LEARN YA PERIAPSIS AND APOAPSIS, DUMB ASS." Or things like, "TRY ACTUALLY BURNING RETRO FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE NEXT TIME! HAHAHA!"     And the first time he's beaten...     "Urgh... best of three? Dammit... Hahaha, whatever. Whatever! Winning doesn't matter. Only the game matters, only *fairness*, only the Magic Circle means a single damn thing. You beat me, but I'm gonna win when... hahahahah... when you have *fun*!..." He goes limp, and starts to drift.     Before gravity takes him, he says, "Don't you hate it? Don't you hate the bullshit refs and their fake-ass unfair rules? Don't you *ever* want to *quit* them? No-- You do. But it's the best chance you've got in an unfair game to win, working with the bullshit unfair refs. That's the only reason why. Always been the smart move. Isn't it..." Then, the gravity sends him drifting off into the heart of that sun.     Arthur's keys, left behind in the cycles when he's beaten, are Cosmic Coordinates. Not numbers, literal points in space, the raw stuff of geometry itself in tangible form. Useful for anyone wanting to find the 'where' of nearly anything at all.
Angela	"In the worst case I'll close my eyes." Angela promised Petra. "Walk away from the console. But this involves LIlian and also your friend. I cannot simply ... not try." Angela manages to make the words come out confident. In truth, this wouldn't be the first time she ended up in some terrible situation because a situation that shouldn't have reached her did so somehow. Maybe it's just because she gets to be with people she loves like this. Certainly, she sees Petra frequently, but Lilian? Tamamo? It is unreasonable to ask for more time as it is. Perhaps one day, she won't feel like between every meeting there is an eternity in between and she can finally be normal about anything at all. ''FIght until told otherwise. You know who our allies are.'' "Haha." Cinder laughs tonelessly. ''Do you need me to hide a tank in my back pocket for you?'' Angela takes a long look at Xion. One day, soon, she can ask Xion to put everything she has in her back pocket, perhaps, and then she'll really be able to help. No more asking for permission, no more being stable in order to fulfil a goal. Freedom, true freedom. She smiles badly at the noirette. ''Stay safe.'' "Will do!" Cinder says. "Mm. Understood." Angela says. "Never." The King promises. Of course the King really has negative interest in examining the surroundings but Cinder makes a good show of running an enkephalin scanner uselessly around. It's just for appearances--she's not actually expecting anything. ''I know we don't agree about a ton, bu you know those fuckers aren't good enough for them.'' "There's no need to worry, Arthur. We'll do it or we'll be on the run forever. Or dead, I suppose, though that is against mission parameters." The King of Greed nearly runs past Ash to try and fight everything else but remembers she really wants Tamamo to think she's the best. She grins excitedly and punches her fist into her palm. "Oh we're going to have so much fun...!" She pushes her body in the way to intercept missiles certainly which fucks with her perception but she wants Arthur's plan to go through, she genuinely wants it to go through even without Tamamo's mind control because it's HER KIND OF PLAN. Cinder stays back rather than participating in any of the fighting before they get into the Armillary.
Angela	THE ARILLARY Cinder doesn't act as a boss of any sort. She acts as a general harasser and while she does occassionally cut off a path with a wave of fire, she never attacks Ash directly. Instead she shows up to other people's fights when they're starting to flag, punches them with a healing bullet, and then runs. She does this once per ''run'' as per roguelike gaming logic but also because she only has so many ampules and she has to spread them out over the weeks this is going to take. She doesn't get too chatty with Ash directly, since she's not really sure anything she says would be that convincing and what could she say anyway? What she can do is make sure this takes longer and longer by supporting the others. Once she's out of ampules she'll fall back and say, "I hope I made things a little easier for everyone..." before fleeing. Angela, being confined to the Eggpack, doesn't make her own stage. Instead she acts as support for Petra during encounters with her. She gifts Petra healing ampules and warns her of incoming attacks, occassionally acting as an extra pair of hands. She does talk to Ash more than Cinder. "I understand that in your own way you are trying to help her. I don't even disagree. But it is her life to live, her Code to uphold. If you care about her, you should respect her chosen burdens. You can challenge them, but you cannot force her. I won't allow it." If or when Petra scores a victory over Ash... "Hm. So this is what fairness feels like. I better not get too accustomed to it." Angela says. "I am glad I was able to prove useful to her." She gives a small little smile, the only time she smiles during this entire endeavour. If or when Petra sets her aside or lose... "...You know, this reminds me of how Lilian said she'd run a supervllain arc, having them go through all her subordinates first. Thinking of it like that, it is a bit endearing." She considers Ash. "Well good luck then, I suppose, I hope you two can work out an agrement."
Angela	As for the King of Greed... The King of Greed has established her own stage. It's a castle made out of candy. There are rivers of chocolate to drown in, quicksand-like sugar traps, and candied minions all throwing themselves at Ash violently with mad glee. The King of Greed praises Tamamo-no-mae's beauty, charm, and elegance and wonders aloud what she might taste like. She's that kind of monster. The King of Greed fights in a throne room arena with candied minions lurking around at the sides holding peppermint spears. The King of Greed is nearly immune to physical damage and has a ton of endurance and she is all too happy to keep fighting forever and ever and ever and ever. When she's knocked down, she gets back up more energized. It's like fighting Nonon times a hundred. She is in this for the love of the game. Her gauntlet gets stronger and faster the longer the fight goes on until she wrecking her own throne room with her punches. She does not slow her roll no mater how many weeks pass. She is chatty and flirtatious with Ash. She's that kind of monster. As a monster, The King of Greed is hyperfocused on one element: Desire. She encourages Ash to give into their desires the whole while--she doesn't really care if those desires are antithetical to the plans of everyone else and even the mind control can't really entirely change her nature. But she does keep fighting and does not quit because she is in search of Tamamo's favor. She doesn't stop fighting until she is 'killed'. She has a boss theme track that actually plays while fighting her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S77Dfzzyf-c. If and when she wins... "Ehh? Is it over already? But I've barely begun to enjoy myself...! Surely you've only just begun to enjoy yourself too? Oh please come....again and again and again... I've never fought someone as wonderful as you before..." When she loses... She collapses to a knee suddenly, her gauntlet dropping to her side. "Erk...what....? I've hit my limit? Oh how disappointing... I wanted to have a wonderful time with you...forever... Hahhn... Please show Lilian a good time won't you~?" She then collapses and transforms into an egg, leaving her EGO Gauntlet behind.
Trudy Grimm	> "I bet you do."     This isn't the time to dogpile Petra and Cinder under an army of skeletons and strangle the life out of one while forcing the other to watch. No matter how much she'd like to. With her face still turned away, though, she does shift her eyes in Petra's direction with a distinct scowl. And if we fail, we'll know exactly _why_. > "Gonna need you helpin' boost the numbers for what's coming up. Pace it though. Fill out where the others don't got enough. You'll get it when we're in."     Arthur addressing her wipes the look off her face immediately and she redirects her attention, "Ahh? Of course, of course." She closes her eyes, lifting her free hand to rest gently above her breastbone, "A wretched creature such as myself is best when working from behind the scenes, after all. These upstanding individuals are more than welcome to make use of my cute friends. Even the traitors, I don't mind at all."     She hides the annoyed strain in her voice remarkably well.
Trudy Grimm	Entering the realm of Grimm is to enter a realm of cold, clammy forest of dense and twisted trees. Dirty paths cut through them in multiple directions, winding away into a twisting, misty labyrinth. The sun casts a feeble light and, if looked at, shines green with distinctive facets; a colossal gemstone.     The goal is to reach the end before an arbitrary time runs out. Time expiring prompts the gemstone sun to Smite, casting Ash back to the entrance with a searing jolt of pain. Trying to jump or fly over the trees to see the way doesn't work-- the trees are always, always Above. They grow to compensate. Shrink when Ash descends. The treetops always that same arbitrary distance. Blasting holes in the walls calls down the sun's painful gaze, too.     The maze is not empty, either. Filled with legions of skeletons, each and every one committed to wasting their time, delaying, or overwhelming them. Pit traps and spring-loaded walls of spikes, crushing ceiling traps, pits of corrosive slime, hallways of poisonous mist or troublesome curses.     Every single time Ash is returned to the start-- by the 'Sun', by getting overwhelmed, by running out of time-- the entire interior of the maze shifts and changes and warps, repairs, and becomes a fresh challenge. A new seed. Memorizing it is pointless. Cheating it is impossible. The only way out is to follow the rules, mind one's steps, and fight.     And once they finally reach the end-- it is a larger chamber lit by green-burning flames. Sitting atop the exit door is Trudy Grimm, kicking her feet. Eiwaz, the Rune of Death, blazes like a sun in sickly green flames upon the stone wall at her back. In the center is a young man in a fine ermine cape and regal clothing, tattered in places. He has no face, only a smooth black surface where a face should be.     The First Regent is his name, someone that Trudy had never employed before, not on this world or any other; not since he first joined her retinue back in Strawberry Princess' homeland has the regal magical boy ever been brought afield under the witch's command. Going after Trudy directly is fruitless; a barrier keeps her quite safe. To proceed, Ash must fight the First Regent.     Ash quickly finds out he hits like a truck and takes his punches like a brick house. For so long as they fight for NAZCA's ideas or beliefs, defeating him seems unreasonably difficult. What's worse, fighting him is part of the time limit. Trudy's own peanut-gallery commentary is the biggest hint of all for what has to be done, spaced across several encounters. "It's quite simple, no?" "Selling your soul to the soulless weakens you, you know?" "So long as you fight for _them_, you will never defeat _me_." "I fight for _her._" "You could stay loyal to that hollow organization operated by hollow people and continue to die in my clutches forever, hee hee hee~... I don't mind~..." When defeated...     The First Regent skids back and drops to one knee, sinking into his shadow. Atop the doors, Trudy claps with a bright smile on her face. The Death Rune burns itself out at last. The barrier that's kept Ash from proceeding out of this terrible place is now gone. A great amount of the power Trudy had been granted rests within the Regent's heart-shaped brooch, which Ash is now free to take.     "Ahaha... So~, did you figure it out? Or--" Resting her chin on one hand, the witch leans forward, "Did you just get lucky? We'll have to find out, I suppose~."
James Bond	The initial assault is probably the least important--but Bond is a consummate actor and won't allow his adversaries to catch on if he can help it. Accordingly, sprinting for cover when the scream of missiles fills the air, he unleashes... not so much a countermeasure, but a retaliatory strike. 'If I can't orient myself, neither will you.'      A 'thoonk' from his carbine's underbarrel attachment fires a bizarre payload into the sky--almost like an oversized length of prayer beads. With an explosive pop, the dull metal spheres separate, each one orienting in the air with an audible hum. Tiny propulsion systems carry them in formation, asymmetrical and odd thanks to the chaff. But the formation doesn't matter so much as their purpose: piercing sonic shrieks meant to attack the human sense of balance, detonated blindly from Bond's watch the moment the sixteen figures make impact. A few token potshots are made in the ensuing heat-mirage haze, but it's all just talling for the eventual highlight of the operation.
James Bond	--BOND'S STAGE: NIMUE--                                 Ash finds themselves in a hotel room overlooking a beautiful old city on the coastline of some country or another--maybe Greece? A manila folder rests open on a coffee table in the well-furnished room's living area. OHMSS CLASSIFIED Mission: Nimue Hostage Situation Background: A thriving satellite settlement on an Earth (see file: NIMUE) recovering from extradimensional attack has recently suffered another, following an act of industrial sabotage. Operations have ground to a halt following a hostile occupation by paramilitary forces under the command of mining magnate William Faulk. This one won't be easy, 007--Faulk's men have released a psychopathogen into the air, codename 'Luna.' Early analysis shows anyone infected suffers rapid mental deterioration and eventual psychosis if they glimpse even a sliver of moonlight. We've enclosed a sonar apparatus to help you navigate the settlement safely, but expect to be watched. Don't look no matter whatever you hear. No mirrors, night vision, no scopes, no cameras. No drones with visuals either. If it sees, consider it gone. If you look, consider yourself dead. Objectives: - Locate and apprehend William Faulkner - Critical: Secure Luna virus antidote - Critical: Ensure survival of Nimue settlement hostages     What follows for Ash is an FPS style hunt through the 'Nimue' settlement. Bond plays the role of Faulkner, carrying the antidote on his person. The 'mercenaries' are simple hardlight projections, occasionally with hardlight hostages which must be saved; otherwise, Ash is returned to a checkpoint a ways back. Removing the sonar headset is a game-over, as well.     The more bastardly things Bond has set up are situations in which Ash's ability to dictate what affects them is irrelevant--hostages which get desperate and flee eyes-closed into the night, only to get gunned down by thoughtless automated drones, or else tripping and accidentally opening their eyes.     Occasionally, loudspeakers throughout the 'settlement' play voice clips very similar to Ash's teammates, and even if they're calm enough not to respond, the clips still trigger as false positives on the echolocation readout screen.     The midboss is a quadrupedal DARPA nightmare with a loudspeaker that tries to lure hostages out and has to be disabled before it can venture to their hiding spots with false messages about being an 'Mainland Emergency Response Unit.'     By the time Ash reaches 'Faulkner' in his fortified bunker, it's of course time for the villain monologue.     Bond has played up the tactical gear from 'actual operative' to 'LARPer' for the role. And sure, there's a hammy monologue about progress and the natural order of things and the danger of toying with market forces. Of course there is--he wasn't going to play a lunatic CEO without having his cake.     "Ms. X, could you drop off my daily driver? Thanks a heap," 'Faulkner' says in a near-perfect southern US accent. Xion drops his tank off, with a spawned-from-the-console drop-and-bounce, and a chase through a forested minefield takes place as the finale, trees whipping past as Faulkner opens fire on Ash's conveniently-spawned off-brand mech in chase.
James Bond	'Faulkner' drops character, and is just Bond.     "I remember something you said, the last time we met--that it wasn't really *me* that was talking; that *I* couldn't win against all the layers of meat talking. Well, I'm sorry, but it's just too late for me to learn any other way," comes his voice from the loudspeaker.     "They actually did this, you know. All of this really happened. To a settlement called Caelton. Your people released the Man in the Moon on the people living there rather than risk something new being built."     "I know you're tired of hearing about them, but you seemed surprised when they acted on the Urals without you knowing--so I thought you might like to know about that, too. Maybe you'd also like to know that we stopped them, since I know I gave the impression they can't be beaten. So if we can, you absolutely can, too."     "But... the other three, they've made each other very happy with one another's company. If they're only 'for' one thing, then they certainly don't seem any less happy for it. You can make up your own mind--but whether I live through this or not, I'd like it very much if you could be a part of that. And I'd like to believe it's more than just the lightning that lets me think saying so." Throughout the chase, Bond has the advantage of knowing where the mines are, and the skill to detonate them prematurely with the tank's cannon; Ash conversely is much more durable than the tank. It's pitting their skill against his, and eventually theirs will win out, giving them the cure--the key to the next level.
Tamamo	WITHOUT:     Tamamo has certain abilities unaffected by chaff, even where it interferes with magical detection. Tossing lots, she says, "Fire here, here, and here." How utterly random.     One would do well to trust the diviner. WITHIN:     Tamamo's crafted level involves both chance and showmanship, though the former hides certainty, and the latter hides sincerity. THE INTRODUCTION:     "You are rather driven, to be here at all. I would like it if you could slow down a bit, to see what is in front of you... and I would say that I cannot force you to see me, but, the truth is... I can."     The stage itself is smaller than others, though that size is impossible to measure except by traversing it. A misty, ruined town, seemingly built near a thousand years ago in a mountain valley, surrounded by forest appears at random, following some other stage, and before another. Every 'room' is a bounded street or courtyard space, rife with details that appear identical only at a glance, and and fade into noise when unexamined, each one a possible hiding spot for cheaper versions of the same curses she usually employs through her ofuda, ready to blast Ash with alternating hot and cold winds of Naraka, lightning, blindness, weakness of the limbs, and on and on. Each trap clearly indicates what it will do, if someone bothers to notice and read it. But it's so tempting to simply blast on through, because Tamamo-no-mae herself is visible just a few 'rooms' away.     She appears far larger than life, dressed up for the occasion, and at the same time, the opposite. The edges of her appearance burn with light, glimpses of exposed divinity, normally kept politely subdued. There's no use here in a pretense of humanity, after all. She has no expectation of Ash appreciating such a thing, and it would be a wasted effort.     Moving over the edge of the first room toward her, passing between the pillars, reveals the trick. One is instantly elsewhere, in another space in the town, but not in the room they'd just seen ahead. Anything thrown through is lost to sight, Tamamo herself seemingly unreachable, though she looks on and smiles, exerting her personal gravity to say 'come to me.'     It's a stage that exerts suffering directly in proportion to haste, with no other obstacles but its variety of traps, and no true randomness in its design, but only misdirection. Arranged by the diviner's touch, it hurts exactly as much as it's disrespected.     Throughout, Tamamo calls, "Oh, not that way. Perhaps if you tried a little harder...? I am waiting for you, here."     "You could try a little less hard, too. It is only the two of us who are here, after all, and I have no intention of fighting."     After a trap fires, "Just a little prank, you see! You have cursed all here far worse, have you not?"     "The rest of the world... if you cannot help even one person, what does it matter? I chose my one, of course."     "While I wait, shall I read some poetry? Or else, shall I recount the many ways I love her?"     If rebuked, "Perhaps you should come here and say that to my face. Come, pour out your heart! I have the time to listen."
Tamamo	WHEN "DEFEATED":     Tamamo immediately retreats without a fight. "Well done! Did you have a nice rest? ...Oh, did you truly not believe me, when I said I had no wish to fight?"     She disappears in a pillar of light that flies upward, leaving behind some homemade cookies. The dusting over the top harmlessly glows like twinkling stars. Just carrying them has a warming effect, and eating them moreso. They're accompanied by a note that says, "Enjoy," but no guarantee of safety. ENCOUNTERED AGAIN:     "We meet again. Ah, what are the odds? No, no, of course I know them. It is only a little fortune-teller's joke. Are you in a rush...? You should not." ELSEWHERE:     Those returning for healing do not find a gigantic, Amaterasu-outfitted Tamamo. She is in her usual getup, her hair does not flicker with solar flame, and she calmly or cheerfully (depending on the recipient and mood) dispenses her healing supplies and energy boosting blessings.
James Bond	Apart from the key to the next area, Ash receives, for completing the NIMUE scenario, Faulkner's watch. It comes with a variety of nonstandard features such as means of incapacitating opponents via stun darts or flash capsules, breaking and entry tools like precision cutting lasers, a grapnel, and even an EMP. The catch is that packing all of that into such a compact tool plays hell on the power source! At most, Ash can call upon it for one of its features before the last of its juice is used up. Faulkner must have used up a good deal of it in mapping out the landmines ahead of time.
Petra Soroka	"No matter what happens, you can't let NAZCA do what they're doing."     Petra looks to Arthur, similarly tense. She shifts the Eggpack on her shoulders, fingers coiled around one of the straps for support. "... Yeah, duh. No one wants that." She hesitates for a second, before adding, "Not even Ash. I know what I'm doing. No matter literally anything else, the most important thing is to support Lilian. I've got my way to do that, and I'm not fucking with your way to do it unless it sucks and doesn't work."     To Cinder and Angela, after the scrambling begins and before the Armillary provides a means to do anything about it, Petra mumbles, stressed. "The goal's to survive. Ash's goal is to kill us all and get Lilian alone, because Lilian can beat NAZCA if she's alone in a way we can't do all together. Don't die, don't try and dunk on them for being stupid like they just haven't thought through siding with NAZCA enough. Don't come across as a handicap on Lilian. I'm not any fucking good at this myself, though, honestly. When's that fucking thing going to fire? Come the fuck on, Arthur, fucking any second--"         THE RESPAWN HUB     Typically, of course, only friendlies would be here. There isn't much to do on Ash's first pass through-- it's not a respawn hub on the first run! It's just a spawn hub! And Petra's got nothing to say to someone who *hasn't* gotten the shit kicked out of them already.         THE RESPAWN HUB, AFTER ASH'S FIRST DEFEAT     Wherever Petra is meant to fight Ash, she's further along in the sequence than they got. Their first glimpse of her within the Armillary is in the empty void of between-attempts, the places where no one should be or tolerate being, sitting on the featureless un-ground. She's got a cigarette and some snacks, trying in vain to start a little fire out of some firestarter she brought and the absolutely-nothing that this section of the world deigns to provide for her-- or for Ash.     "Oh-- hey. Wait, um, don't hit me. This isn't my stage, or whatever." Petra puts her hands up nonthreateningly. The Eggpack's gone for now too, so the only one here besides Ash is Petra alone.     "Uh, I don't know how long this all is gonna take, and I'm pretty sure NAZCA and Lilian are all stuck out there, so it's kind of just you here for a while. Versus a whole world designed to kick the shit out of you. Yeah."     "I've got, um, some snacks, coffee, beer if you're into that. And I've got this thing too--"     Petra holds out her hands, with a slowly rotating glass prism floating above it. Etched in the three-dimensional space, precisely shattered in careful layered sheets, are semi-transparent sculptures of hypothetical scenes in the upcoming run to choose from: a scene of REVENGE, granting Ash a single-run boost to offensive capabilities; a scene of INVULNERABILITY, granting some kind of defensive boost; and a scene of REJECTION, granting Ash some specific gimmick-bypassing power. The specifics change randomly each run, of course-- she has to keep it fresh!
Petra Soroka	THE RESPAWN HUB, AFTER ADDITIONAL DEFEATS     "Yo. Dead yet? --N-no, no, sorry, ack-- I just thought it was funny! Look, sorry, buffs, fine, here."     "Do you think it's fucked up? Do you really think this is all 'staying behind' has to mean? I mean, not just this whole game world-- outside, too. It's *all* just people making worlds on purpose and forcing you to do dumb fucking rules and rituals and shit. I know you stayed behind for Lilian, but, like-- the place you stayed is kind of turbo shitty. I don't care if it's, like, convenient to use NAZCA. If you want to stay behind, for now, and you also want to not be treated like shit, and you also want to get what you want from Lilian, then you should just stop getting scolded for sneaking out and forced into dumb fucking meeting and presentations, and just get all of those things."     "I say that to Lilian a lot. About just, like, wanting all the things you want, instead of settling. I think she's starting to listen. It's fucking exhausting on your own, sure, but what kind of company is a bunch of braindead fucking goons whose main benefit is jerking themselves off over how superior they are to a mutual enemy that they only hate a little more than they hate you?"     "Anyways. Totally unrelatedly. Good luck beating the shit out of them. I think this one would really trivialize the shit out of Trudy's dumb fucking undead spam."         THE FALL OF MIRRORS, FIRST ENCOUNTER     The sections leading up to Petra's boss fight are unnervingly un-gameified. The aesthetics, at least, are reassuringly surreal, and the omnipresence of glass and glittering rainbow iridescence in the downwards climb of several stages of crystalline fracture-cavern descension might tip Ash off that this is Petra's, after seeing the Beauty of Ash (name unrelated). The threats, though, are anything but surreal.     NAZCA operatives, faceless even if unarmored, deploying guns and mechs. Indistinguishable human enemies throwing viscerally impersonal attacks, blocking pathways forwards and babbling circuitously meaningless justifications for why they need Ash to do this or that before they can move forwards. Saferooms with event NPCS offering risky deals that only ever lose if they play along, and only ever win if they hurt them.     At the base of the cavern, through a razor-edged slit shattered into the glass floor, is Petra, in a finally-gameified boss room coated in mirrors. Her boss fight is strictly melee and stage hazards that threaten both of them-- with pressure or positioning, Ash can force her into some blast of reflected light or spray of broken glass that her morphmetal isn't angled to protect her from. The problem is, though, that Angela's 10x speed of perceiving Ash's attacks means her input can be chattered directly to Petra, and Petra, mindlessly trusting, follows through on reflex speed before letting her conscious mind process the words.     "I mean, you get it, right? I'd help you with anything besides hurting Lilian. So I'll beat you up as much as I can to stop you from doing that, because I have that responsibility to the ones like us. It's us against them. We both get that, right?"
Petra Soroka	THE FALL OF MIRRORS, SECOND ENCOUNTER     "Do you ever stop and like, look around? Do you ever think maybe, you don't hate them enough? Burning down the world is fucking great and all, but you're still in it for now. You're still *letting* yourself be a convenient f    t weapon for people who *fucking* hate you. You're tied for the most powerful fucking person in the world! Fucking act like it! *Why*, are you still going to *strategy meetings* ran by *weaponized normies*, trying to hurt one of the only people in the multiverse who's anything *like* you?!"     THE FALL OF MIRRORS, UPON DEFEAT     Before figuring out Petra's synergistic gimmick with Angela, she's frustratingly good at dodging Ash's attacks. The key, of course, is to separate them, and as a retry help tooltip, Petra remarks as Ash despawns,     "It's something about my head, kind of, that's always been this way. If Ange tells me to do something, I'll just do it. If Lilian wants me to do something, I'll do it. It's kind of fucked up to say, but it's like I'm a prosthetic. An external thing linked to the same neural impulses."     "Lilian said I'm a bad influence on her, because I keep doing the things she wants to do, but won't. I think it's more like, I'm sort of like an easier avenue for her to do those things through. It's still her doing them; I wouldn't do any of that without her influence. It's just, uh, externalized through me, sometimes."         THE FALL OF MIRRORS, UPON VICTORY     Angela can provide tactical support, and Cinder's timely arrival gives extra health bars-- exactly on time, in tune with Petra's combat rhythm, like an extension of an intentional hivemind, or absolute trust-- but Petra is still utterly fucking exhausted by the time she's knocked down. Her morphmetal loses its aerial suspension all at once, plopping to the cracked and splintered glass floor in perfect hydrophobic puddles quivering with exhaustion, and Petra coughs raggedly.     "E-eh. Ow. Fuck. I knew it'd happen eventually, but I had to try like it wouldn't. It's only fair, after how many times it's been for you. No offense, but hope I see you again soon."     Petra's reward, on defeat, is a little pocketwatch on a chain, but rather than a clock face inside, there's a compact mirror. When the crown knob is clicked, the reflection in the mirror goes greyscale and still-- stopped time, but uninteractable, only within the mirror's view. Using 'Lilian's perspective' within the mirror shows exits from the boss room, and holding the mirror up to look behind themselves and walk backwards into temporally-broken areas that are inaccessible from a normal perspective opens up secret areas around the game-- some of which don't seem to be intentionally built into the structure.         THE RESPAWN HUB, AFTER BEING DEFEATED AFTER DEFEATING PETRA     "Yeah, I'm still here; no, I haven't killed myself yet. If you're too mad to sit and snack, then at least take one of the buffs. I'm still rooting for you, against literally everyone but Lilian-- like, getting pummeled doesn't change that."
Xion	Xion, in a bitter moment after swallowing down the shouting of the ambience and the screaming of her belligerent heart, had all but demanded others stop their plan with only feelings for her own. It had to work. Just one more shot. It had to work. Just let her try a different key. It had to work. This is what she was good at. It had to work. She didn't know any other way to be. '"It wouldn't hurt to have it in reserve,' Trying to play off her pulled-taut attitude in their short briefing period - mere minutes turned down to their composite seconds by circumstance - Xion smiles a little too jagged and a little too thin for her usual at the ex-alphabet agent. "You didn't skip the joke, just the heat for saying it, *James*." Xion chides, groaning, shouldered blade disappearing-shifting like a glitchy animation artifact into a spun-about-wrist keychain length, dangling a charm from her wrist. Extending gloved hands to stretch, first, out, popping fingers, then up, twisting shoulders, then sweeping from high outside to low. "I've got a lot more than two tanks in my pocket, I just can't really *drive* them. They're not really blocky enough, the controls are dumb." Xion is forced to admit, once again incapable of driving around or piloting anything that isn't a jumbo space jellybean with triangle cone blasters and two ball-capped sticks for All of their controls. "Just phone it in - I'll pick up." She assures. 'Keys, you know better, how to get to 'em than I know. Lot of this is your idea. So get to 'em. If you can. This is your shot.' "Arthur," The time is short - seconds. Missiles, flares, monstrous mecha on the horizon. Xion sighs, and lifts her head, and laughs. "I--" Has no idea what she's doing. The truth in simplest terms. "...'ll do my best." She repeats. It might be hard to stay alive and win, but, the best she can do is try. > She smiles badly at the noirette. Xion smiles back, perhaps-equally bad in the smile, and spares Angela one last rallying cry before the gun at the head of the world is shot. Instead, she just has a pithy line: "Alright. Let's reach out and touch someone." --- The moments before the Armillary forms and fires, space warps and wobbles like clingfilm around ever-increasing weight. Like a fat meatball dropped right onto clear, something threatens to come through -- and it is not one something. Not checking for visuality, and certainly not blinded by any hot sand because she definitely isn't looking, Xion upends the part of her parazonal Inventory voidspace that holds 'large rocks', casting the Meteor Swarm spell the tangible way and rolling several stolen shooting stars from Gummispace down through the air at irregular patterns and intervals. Spawning in tears and bouncing peels of cold-misting tumbles, a whole lot of Spacey Shit comes falling out of the sky to signal the (fake) apocalypse. ARMILLARY SEGMENT FOURTEEN MONOCHROME ZONE Entering this segment is like falling through water without the fluid, landing softly in a empty plane of pale white with no source of light. In this place, even a person gives off a faint glow, and as Ash might explore the place, there is a click-chunk of a spotlight over a cross of two strange baseball-bat like soft-sided Struggle sticks. Both of them hang with a Keyblade keychain, and at the end of each keychain is a brass puzzle piece charm. In this place, the first zone, Just Xion shows up, appearing spotlit as she takes a few testing swings of her soft practice-fighting bat, the same as every time, and looks to Ash, and then smiles.
Xion	"You need two puzzle pieces to continue through the next door. The game this time is--" It starts with 'first to three points' in Struggle! It's never actually a martial contest, a who-can-hurt-the-other contest. It can't be, Xion knows, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't try. Of course, Ash applying their ability can get all kinds of 'free' hits-- Except, that's not the game. The first location is just a practice fight, and to win, all Ash has to do is actually acknowledge Xion as real and present. Cranked down to Tutorial Mode difficulty, Xion does more showing off and trying Cool Things than actually fighting, and there's no risk with the soft bonking sticks. The harder Ash fights, the more violently dispassionate the combat is, the more Ash simply disagrees with the rules, the less 'real' Xion becomes until she disappears completely... ... and the fight resets. Spotlight! Strugglebats. Xion, ready as if she would always be back that way, reset like a program. But it's pretty easy to smoke Tutorial Xion and seize her second puzzlepiece to continue to the next zone, featuring . . . Xion again! Sitting at a white table, in a white room, shuffling up a deck of cards. "So I'd like to learn a little bit about you. Is that okay?" Xion begins, before starting to deal poker hands. Violence past the first stage simply 'kills' Xion, and... sends Ash back to the Struggle room. A 'fresh' Xion appears, and the cycle starts again. More and more social games, or social deduction games, or even games where 'being social' is exactly how you beat the competitors ensue, in rooms two through twelve. None of the games are really trying to beat Ash - all of them are tilted in the Ash's favor, really! But in the slow, material sense. Skipping, forcing, harming, it 'works', but then it's back to stage one. One realm is a footrace where Xion absolutely abuses a violently tilted-her-way racetrack joined with track ghosts skating and sliding around -- and if Ash manages to talk to her, she slows down! Holding a conversation and talking naturally slows the noirette's pace and even keeps her rubberbanded close to carry on, allowing for clever pull-aheads after long sprints. 'Cheating' just forces Xion to annoyedly teleport to the end, or disappear, and then it's... Back to stage one again. Back to the Struggle. Cinder's appearance never happens during Struggle, but in every other course she can feature, usually seconding for games that need more players. The only way to beat Xion at Uno and get the second puzzle piece is to convince one of the girls to sabotage the other, or get distracted by table talk. The only way to get a higher score than Xion and Cinder at crooked popguns for stuffed animals at the monochrome faire is... Actually Ash probably usually wins that one. Ash can 'win' whenever they want, and send Xion to the start again too - and she doesn't want to start over, either. Despite the look - she has to bear the full pain of her minigame party strategy.
Xion	After what might be hundreds of loops through the Xion Party levels a phantom crowd begins filling in with excited-yet-silent others that rise in empty cheers for various 'teams', holding up banners for both sides besides might become tense and threadbare or a kind of rote exercise, a 'fun' to do while talking (howevermuch Uno is at real 'fun'), some for Ash and some for Xion (and some very niche members of the crowd practically spoiling the Cinder run-ons, who gets called the Red Comet in footraces). There's a buzz, a reality to each phantom shape, inspection details and a hidden model and lore for each character. Hundreds of people, captured only in hype-silhouette and populating a palace for talking. Knights and kings and saints, legendary devil hunters and legendary devils, robots and reploids and roidmudes, and even stranger shapes and ways of being than the bipedal - even they can hold up signs. --- The fourteenth, though, is special. It's an actual place, or, two. Accessed by a silent pine rowboat trip across a dark river, Ash must enter a dark and shadowy forest surrounded on all sides by forbidding and harshest danger... And find herself in a quiet, after-hours University setting, before a testing device that is now out of season. In the place of the Seven Worthies, there are just two - Xion with a puzzlepiece on her wrist attached by charm-chain, and the second puzzlepiece simply sitting in obviously shining-brass key item position across the magical aptitude tester. Or, rather, what would be there in the real space. There's no grand gimmick - there's no game to this one. "Hey," Xion begins, smiling faintly. "Sorry for all of this. I know we probably don't have time before the 'end of the world' to become good friends. But I bet on becoming real to you," As a sparring partner also trying to have a good time, as a footrace competitor, as a very wiggly dance game score attack partner, as an Uno player (this may not have helped), as someone who talked too much with her eyes at poker when she got to chatting, as someone who had to be defeated at challenge fishing and precision baking and lights out puzzles, every kind of inane game that was just there to pass the time... Especially across from someone listening, trying, reacting as a real opposite. "... if we did enough stuff together. That's how I became real to Lilian, even though I couldn't 'hear' her like most other people. I knew she was real, even so. And this world --" Xion looks up, around, at the surrounds of the testing room, of the recital-hall like location in the shadowed forest fairy island final destination. "Barely saw me. Only would admit I was 'magic' begrudgingly. And even though I wanted, even though I pushed and wanted and was, even a mirror wouldn't see me. But I wanted to hear Lilian, and I did. And she wanted to hear me, and she did. And... " A scoff follows. "Well, that's society, isn't it? Killing us without seeing or hearing or knowing us at all." NAZCA, too, but, that's implied. Laying puzzlepieceless one hand on the testing-basin, the final game is simple, as a Pylon-core red glass sphere emerges, held in pulsing sphere-color by the Nobody's sole input. With her other hand, she holds out the puzzle piece on her palm, as if offering it without fight -- as she is. "You've come this far, so I don't have a last test. It's just, that, I was interested." The noirette looks from Ash to the sphere between them, interposed. "Just like with Lilian -- what color it'd show, if we both tried together?"
Xion	... The final door, the fourteenth, opens to a simple straight hallway onto the next place. Along the way there's an unmissable pick-up - a single Struggle bat in whatever color Ash favors, with two puzzlepiece keychains hanging off the base. It has item text. [Puzzle Solver] +5 Strength, +3 Magic, +20 HP Allows the user to 'Solve Puzzles' the faster way! Every puzzle has a solution! Sometimes, the solution is struggling through it! Other times, it's hitting the bricks!
Lilian Rook	A trickle of cold alarm pools in the bottom of Lilian's chest. She'd expected, in the abstract, for NAZCA to have refined their weapons even more than before, but the first contact with the new threat is enough to cause her shaky confidence to sway. Isn't Arthur's plan entirely predicated on exactly what this counters? But surely he'd have accounted for the natural countermeasure to his power. But can Arthur actually do it? But everything is riding on him. And her. And so it goes until the sound of the Armillary Sphere revving to activation is all she can perceive anymore, filling up her every sense, and then she remembers the sheer simplicity of what it is she has to do, and therein is the one thing that she has no doubt anywhere in mind towards.     '>S Arthur: Activate the Armillary'                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian stands up from the organ, and lets go the breath she was holding for long enough to lose track of. Out of habit, she softly taps two keys, four more times, letting the sound trail off where only she can hear it. Then, out onto the absurdist suburban-escher balcony, she sights down to the capture point of the Sphere.     Black chaff hangs smouldering in the air, casting the daytime desert into forest-dappled half-light. She regards the vines of contrails strung between the blooms of dark aerospace canopy, idly musing on if she could slide down them. The animated shimmer of heat, rendered as a static marble, whorls the shape of jet craft and robotic frames only as she moves.     The enemy; numerous, close, filled with hot blood and cold adrenaline, determination, triumph, focus, bloodlust. The entire remaining field force of NAZCA; five times as many as they fought against with Ash. Newly coordinated, freshly drilled, efficiently organized, and informed of every detail of the handful of friends she has. Near as a blade to her neck.     Lilian glimpses the ultraviolet gleam of energy weapons, finally scaled to their full size, caught in the contours of sleek, modifier, streamlined armour and musculature. She senses the residual prickle of magic, woven into the human shape with mercenary opportunism. The battery-taste of psychic murmur is paused on the air.     And just like that blade to her neck, they may as well be infinitely far away; here and now, just for her. Ignoring them, she vaults the edge of the balcony, gliding down and descending to touch . . .     . . . . . . . .     wake up, ash     "Ash, no surname, E eight, master sergeant, NZ one five two one three six one four four eight. Suck me."     Up to the end, the utterance is sarcastically movie-like. Up until the end, the lone figure spends the entire time first looking for their machine, and then looking for the source of the words. Reduced to a futuristic G suit and polarized EVA helmet, all they have to check is the SERE kit buckled to their hip and an heirloom spear looped through a rifle carry strap. They project a sense of eerie, faceless calm, despite the incendiary words. More than just the helmet, under the unfamiliar emergency circumstances, they even seem to move more like something not quite human.     "This was your plan? Are you serious? Do you think this is a fucking game?" Ash calls out into nowhere. The single layer distortion through their helmet isn't enough to synthetically anonymize their voice, but just enough to make it unrecognizable when it echoes. "You know that dumb bitch is getting thrashed out there. Maybe this would have worked if you switched who's in here and who's out there, but you're dead meat already, and when I drop your bit like a flaming sack of shit, I'm going to see maybe five or six bent HT0s and your pretty princess in cuffs."
Lilian Rook	They wait just long enough to receive no response, and then breathe out, making a sound of annoyance. "Nah. If he were here it'd be way more fucking stupid. And less sappy. Have to find him first."     Easier said than done. The 'hub', little more than a nothing between nowheres, provides no clues at all. Striking out in a random direction, 'provisions' are the furthest thing from their mind, much less 'pacing'.     Grimm Labyrinth:     Trudging through clammy mud, carelessly snapping gnarled twigs against each stride, Ash mutters "I kind of got my hopes up this would be interesting. Multiversal shit. But it's just some boggy fuckassed woods." under their breath. The reflex to push aside strangling greenery and duck under thorns and around brambles is totally absent. They walk through the brush as if a scenic detail in a dream; something that stops interacting when you forget it's supposed to. The first thing they do in the maze is to walk into a wall and passively rip right through it.     They end up back at the start, partially shrouded behind a fading point of vanta-violet shift. "What the fuck?" is the first thing out of the helmet, boots stomping back into the muck. Aggressively smashing through another wall drops them back in the same spot, luridly smoking off-spectrum cherenkov vapour, and swearing. They angrily jog back to where they were, grab a single branch, and casually vault up over a wall, getting even more pissed off when the stupid barrier they're not allowed to break goes and grows.     "You think you're so fucking clever, don't you?" Ash yells at the dreary sky. "I read this in some young adult trash book from a fucking scholastic catalogue I swear." is followed by "And I can do this all day!" It's convincing, even. But the fact is that an operational clock is ticking. Or at least they believe there is.     Time is the next cause. Then time again. The skeletons never are. Force doesn't just break on them; it's like air. As water to a fish, they swim through force and violence as their natural habitat. They don't seem to even notice that the sun should hurt. But the teasing maze is smugly infuriating for long minutes, before Ash seems to remember that they only need to kill Arthur to leave, and they turn around--     Nimue:     --somewhere else.     "How much fucking spare time did you have?!" they shout, looking for a camera, wiretap, anything. "Stalling?! Really?! You're so whipped by her you think she'll win?!" Ash searches under the table before they open the file, flipping through it out of sheer lack of direction. The pages flicker by in the reflection of their helmet, spotless even for the dreary forest. "Are you fucking kidding?" crackles loathingly under their breath. "My dossiers don't look like this." they say, missing the point. "Well sit back and fucking learn." They open the window; not so much petulantly as purely driven by apathy, or even by a sense of 'the right tool for the right job'.     And then it resets. They looked. Ash stands there for long, gobsmacked seconds, and upon less time in furious contemplation than expected, rasps out "Games. It's a fucking video game world." It's immediately followed by savagely smashing the table in half, incidentally destroying the sonar gear and resetting the game again.
Lilian Rook	It's the other Bloom of Staves who can tell reality 'how to be'. This one only tells reality 'no'. Denying, rejecting, casting aside the microscopic urging of atoms, the insistence of energy, the rules of form and force, is a form of power that warrants this Bloom's confidence in absolute terms. But rejecting the rules doesn't change the fundamental nature of the game. A game is the opposite of 'the world'. If it's cheated, or quit, then it ceases to exist. The other Bloom knows games. She plays them, loves them, and speaks their language. This one is the other way. They cannot tell the game to stop being a game.     Ten minutes of frustrating navigation around the urban landscape turn to fifteen turn to wenty. Hardlight soldiers spray Ash with gunfire and are crushed. Hostages flee into the night, flatline, and make it all worthless, and they do it all again. Civilians are pounced on and wrestled into submission; or tossed indoors injuriously and left to figure out the rest. The stumbling inelegance of sonar is a minor impediment to absolute force, in a different way than it would be to absolute patience. The midboss arrives, and without drawing their spear, Ash charges into the hellstorm of military hardware, rips it limb from limb, and is sent back to the start by a hostage. Starting to breathe heavily from exertion, they roar in frustration, kick down a wall, and unwittingly end up in--     Naraka Bhavaagra:     "Another fucking maze?! Take me back to the goddamn--" Ash whips around, but they're already lost. Storming through one room takes them somewhere else entirely. In their impatience, they're blasted by cursed ice, startle, curse, and go right back-- to somewhere else again. When they finally recognize who it is that's calling out to them, they slow, then stop, and then raise their head in focus. It's the quietest they've been in the majority of an hour. "You." comes first, then, mechanically, "Yeah. You're Fenrir's. They really committed you to the field? Oh that's a big mistake."     They seize on the opportunity. The perceived one, at least. The first sign of genuine leverage, dangled just ahead of them. Now, they show that, when they need to, they can be a certain kind of maliciously patient. Not enough to respect the traps-- though they should-- but enough to start to memorize the layout, scratching marks more memorable than the rooms and counting under their breath, while petulantly crashing into them. Bloody-mindedly focused, they trudge through room after room after room, scorched by fire and lightning, until they reach Tamamo while wreathed in persistent distortion, breathing heavily, and announce "Got you."     And catch nothing. Battered by a hundred traps, no wiser for the effort, they scan wildly around--     Kingdom of Desire:     This is finally simple enough. Ash scoffs at the 'childish' aesthetic, but crashes forward anyways, gradually building up momentum as they go when no bullshit game mechanics rear their head. They kick through the gates to reach the King of Greed, not recognizing her in the slightest, and not caring. Without even a word, they leap headlong into direct combat, beginning with putting the Abnormality's face through multiple walls.     To no real effect. And now one hour becomes two, and two becomes three. Two vast and hardened boulders smash into each other, over and over and mind-numbingly over again, pitting 'near-immunity to force' against 'immunity to near-everything'. Even as the enormity of the task dawns on them, Ash only doubles down harder, refusing to yield. For a while, they're winning, and then--
Lilian Rook	"FUCK you--! I'll--!"     Cinder's full heal of the King distracts Ash, and it costs them a trip through the floor. The fight resets all over, and the slog is twice as exhausting for hour four. Trading blows ad nauseum, the shimmering heat surrounding them, mounted from gunshots and magical traps, grows to the point it taxes their breathing, rasping through the helmet as if suffocating in the heat, and finally--     Nowhere:     "BULLSHIT! YOU CALL THIS A FUCKING GAME?! I WAS WINNING!" screams the exhausted loser, pulled away by the Armillary Sphere's safeties before collapsing from exhaustion over the King of Greed. They only notice Petra after.     'Oh-- hey. Wait, um, don't hit me. This isn't my stage, or whatever.'     Ash hits Petra anyways, but leaves it at one. "You know, even if you keep me here forever, they're just going to break me out when Fenrir is done. Right?" they say, looking up all of a sudden. "There has to be some kind of dilated time, right? Or this is a simulation. Or we're all stuck in some shitty dream. But you're going to tire out before I do. And whatever basically correct dogshit you have to say about NAZCA, I'm smarter than you and I came here with a team that's at least stuck with me, so I can absolutely rely on them to unfuck your petty bullshit."     'Versus a whole world designed to kick the shit out of you. Yeah.'     They fall to dark laughter, and reply to Petra after with "So literally no different from the world outside." They simply take a beer as if it were possible to steal what's freely offered, turning around so Petra can't see before cracking the helmet visor, even though she's seen their face before. They chug it like they're badly dehydrated; which they are. The way they thirst, the way they gasp for air; it seems somehow similar to the times when Lilian burns and bleeds.     'And I've got this thing too--'     Ash regards the glass skeptically for a while, then says "Well if you're just gonna help me win, I don't mind telling them you turned traitor and letting you live. Not like they can stop me." Snatching the shard of REJECTION, they mutter "I knew you were the least uncool one." and storm off.     But they pause for a moment. Reflected in the visor is the glitch-stuttering, luridly tinged glow of the words SYSTEM CORRUPTION: 4951
Lilian Rook	Ash considers the value for a little while, and says nothing out loud. Exploring the hub for a little while, quickly recuperating from their exhaustion (as if it isn't really physical; not rooted in acid buildup and oxygen deficit, but merely the somatic symptoms of some other overdraw; quicker to recover than lost blood and damaged skin) as they go, and patient only in as it takes so long.     Not far from Petra, twelve black swords are arranged in a point-down circle, embedded in the nothingness. Above each hilt, similarly corrupt phrases flicker in and out of place through the air, duplicating and overlapping, oozing blood-tinged light as if carved into space.     SECRET - FACES: 3000        SECRET - NIGHTMARES: 5000     SECRET - LIES: 10000        SECRET - HEARTS: 15000     SECRET - SERVICE: 25000        SECRET - BRUISES: 50000     SECRET - FALLING: 66000        SECRET - TOUCH 120000     SECRET - FRACTURES: 240000    SECRET - BRANCHES: 360000     SECRET - RIVETS: 999999        SECRET - BLADES: 4444444     "You do this?" Ash asks Petra, over their shoulder. But Petra didn't. Arthur had consulted Lilian for her expertise, and Lilian just so happens to know exactly how to tempt rebellious heroes into taking assistance when offered; by tricking them into thinking they're stealing it from her.     And besides. A Bloom of Swords has things they want to share with a Bloom of Staves. Aligned along another axis, opposite on one more, that bitterly patient, poisonously veiled Bloom, as much as she tires, mislikes, the angrily open, violently perceivable Bloom, there is a bridge that must be crossed, and a tenuous, undeniable wavelength that might be shared. With them if anyone else.     Only having the 'currency' for one, Ash seizes on it the minute Petra takes no particular responsibility for the clear error, they go for the jugular in exploiting it.     Faces ~ Locations of Key Bearers are marked     §I've never been good at telling people apart. Not since I can remember. It's not that I don't see them, but as if I just can't be interested enough to absorb it. It's like highway hypnosis? Do you understand? The human mind discards monotony without committing it to memory, but it's also supposed to see faces in everything. They call it pareidolia. It's an effect of just how important reading expressions is supposed to be to us.§     §If I focus, I can tell you how someone's lips curve, or the colour of their eyes, but I can't recall what it all looks like from memory. It could be something neurological, but I really think it's just that there's nothing more monotonous than people. Voices, posture, mannerisms; that's enough to label and distinguish them, and to read the animal part of them that matters. If I try to see the light behind the eyes, though, they all look the same to me. I hear eyes are a window to the soul. You wouldn't bother to remember how an empty room looks, right?§     It's the first thing Ash receives in silence. Whatever kind, it isn't respectful. Thoughtful, perhaps, but only in the way of strategizing. Cognizant of having seized something they aren't supposed to have, they don't blather about their advantage so easily. Seeing Tamamo's icon in the inside of their helmet, brightly lit up, causes them to swear under their breath. "All in one run, huh? Fuck that." says Ash, angling towards the bright green marker.
Lilian Rook	Alpha Caeli:     'THERE'S SOME GODDAMN CIVILIZATION UP IN THIS.'     "Fuck you and kill yourself." Ash exhales like carbon dioxide. "There's nothing here but petty nuh uh I win you lose dogwater time-wasting slop. You're so pissy about getting your ass kicked you literally made up fake        rules to kiss your fragile ego better. I already won fair, because there's nothing fairer than blind, naked power."     Going into Arthur fresh should make the battle a one-sided stomp. What happens is that Ash overestimates the simplicity of the battle after the King of Greed, and almost immediately crashes into one of the Rules of Danmaku. creatively cursing out Arthur at extreme vehemency, before finally responding to the comment about retro with "YOU'RE ONLY NOT BUSTER IF YOU'RE A BITCH!"     The fight takes another hour of resets before Ash has finally laid out Arthur, then thirty minutes more for the attempt where Cinder's fucking heal doesn't ruin it. Then they've finally snagged his key. Breathing heavy again, crackling with radiation, they lean in over their intentionally provoking step on his body, and with less malice than they'd like, say,     'You beat me, but I'm gonna win when... hahahahah... when you have *fun*!'     "Cope harder pussy. You lost by your own rules so now you're making up even more about how you actually won. You're pathetic."     Tough words, but they don't mean shit until Ash wins. And unfortunately, Arthur is yanked away by the safeties, pissing them off even more, and making them choose another key bearer at near-random, charging on without resting. Near random because Tamamo's realm was a prior success, but absolutely beat the shit out of them, so they plan to save it for last.     Monochrome Zone:     "What the fuck? This is just a nerf sword. This is calvinball."     Xion's realm is so ridiculous compared to the others; spiteful, authoritarian, bratty, misleading, or delusional as they are; that Ash can't help but be taken aback by it. The course of burning mad and hot for half a day now . . . well, hasn't really come close to running them out of anger, but does somewhat lack constant momentum.     'So I'd like to learn a little bit about you. Is that okay?'     Ash hits Xion as hard with possible with the play-sword, disintegrating it instantly, and then aggrievedly sighs gravelly synth when it starts over. "Fucking why. So I can bore you to death?" they reply, bored.     Ash tries progressively softer swings, until one doesn't flunk the tutorial and derealize the Xion. Not really sure to do from there, they try it again, and then end up in a noxiously dogged rapid bonking chase, freerunning while rapidly whapping Xion like a customer service bell they're rapidly losing patience with. It's so training wheels that they eventually become laser focused on figuring out 'gentle enough to pass', for the wrong reasons, that they eventually brute force it, and end up in games that make them want to groan and quit. But there's no fucking point, because they have to get through them all eventually.     'Sorry for all of this. I know we probably don't have time before the 'end of the world' to become good friends. But I bet on becoming real to you'     "Don't fucking apologize to me while you're still doing it." Ash says over cards.     '... if we did enough stuff together. That's how I became real to Lilian, even though I couldn't 'hear' her like most other people.'     "She like a sociopath or something?" Ash flat-tones over DDR.     'And this world -- Barely saw me.'     "Mood." Ash tiredly rasps, in the testing hall.
Lilian Rook	'Well, that's society, isn't it? Killing us without seeing or hearing or knowing us at all.'     "I'm happy to kill it without looking at it back." Ash says, staring at the puzzle orb misgivingly. The way it takes up their visor reflection somehow emulates intense visual focus. "I don't just mean when the world ends. I mean the way I always have been. Like, I didn't even see an Urban Center until I was fourteen or something. First time I can remember that I saw more than four human beings in the same place. Didn't understand a fucking thing; except everyone was sick to their stomach just looking at me. Nothing's changed since then. Just that I steal everything now instead of half and half with organs for pennies."     As they reach out to touch the orb, they helpfully clarify "Not mine. Too dirty and all."     'Just like with Lilian -- what color it'd show, if we both tried together?'     As if in panic, Ash shatters the REJECTION, and skips the very end. This time. The moment of sincerity had grazed their cheek, deftly avoided for now. As long as they can. With the SYSTEM CORRUPTION stockpiled from two successes, Ash greedily steals another SECRET.     Nightmares ~ Hidden paths and objects are highlighted     §What you want to become . . . what you already are, somehow, at the same time you're human. I looked upon the face of what would become of me before you did. I was six when it started. Nine when it ended. I'd see it every night I slept, and wake up crying. Sometimes bleeding. Cecilia said I must have scratched myself, but I think I used my powers in my sleep. When I saw it back then, I didn't recognize it as me. I thought it was coming to take me away. The only thing that worked for a while was trying to get it out of my head, onto paper, but they didn't make a colour that was just right.§     §Nobody paid much mind. I know you think yours is special, but everyone knew about mine, and all it did was piss them off. More than if it was just annoying. It was so strange. Like if somehow some nightmare I was having was obscene. Offensive somehow. The first real sleep I had in years came when a dead woman gave me a sword. You know the one. It's a sword that hates 'the outsider'. The inhuman things that devour human lives. It was for faeries and monsters, back then, but it kept 'the other me' at bay. So what does that make me?§     "Tch."