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Lilian Rook     After weeks of this vastly out-of-scale simulation, more or less now on par with a real supervillain invasion, it's almost hard to believe it's drawing to a close. It doesn't necessarily feel like the right close, but you'd been told in no certain terms that the fictional villain is done with letting you scamper around the village, the countryside, and the megacastle, and has finally challenged you directly. Albeit, it would perhaps feel better if you were the ones doing that.

    Your reception in the staging area is strangely grave, despite the fact that the people greeting you are there to watch cameras and move props around, and so have the least reason to be immersed out of all of you. A patter of free coffee and snacks, encouraging words, 'helpful' tips, autograph requests, your official merch, and ridiculous office memes come your way. You catch Eleanor and Sabrina hanging around out of character, who scuttle away from the group with gossipy whispers and saucy looks.

    You move past a poster of blurry Aidan charging through a dark room with giant impact font saying THAT'S IT! THE KITCHEN!
    A bobblehead plastic figure of Ivy flanked by chibi demon girls so that she nods goofily over her drink
    Someone's weird dakimakura of chained up topless Ru-Li sensually surrounded by forms like rose petals
    An incredible dynamic action mural on one wall of Satsuki's Sankenso-Kai written in slash calligraphy
    Someone's screensaver of pixellated sunglasses shittily photoshopped onto a dramatic angle of Brick posed with his arms folded in the middle of a sun
    A cardboard standup of Princess with angry eyebrows and 'I said elevator pitch!' in the corner of the lift
    Someone's psychotic sketch of Petra Cecilia toxic bloodstained gothic maid dark yuri composition, stolen and left out on a table
    Fridge magnets of Sougo and Woz with the letters spelling out 'Iwae!' and 'Naruhodo!' set up on the staff refrigerator
    A handmade high-detail 1/6th scale plushie of Ritescu with soft machine-washable detachable cape
    A print-out of Odette in a maid dress sweatily scrubbing the floors on the roomba
    A paper-and-tape poster of Elena and Hafren in an edit of the classic oujo 'easy mode?!' pose, scattered with the words 'loser loser loser loser loser!' all over it, hung over a whiteboard betting pool with a grumpy scribbled Sarracenia on it
    A cutout of Cinder pensively fishing attached to the water cooler so as to appear as if the bait is in the water
    And humble group project plaque signed by Marc, Dylan, and Persephone(?)

    Someone at some point recognizes Kale, and double takes. And someone else leads the defeated to their ringside seats, which have been sloppily redesigned as coffin-shaped with cardboard taped to the chair backs.

    And you finally enter through the Warpgate setup, detour through the stained glass window portal, cruise through the final Ritescue Shop only to find it temporarily closed, and return to the top floor where you were 'all along', to the slightly desolate sight of the empty throne and the open gate.
Rita Ma      'Trashed' is a good word for the Ritescu shop. It seems closed-for-repairs, but none have actually taken place yet.

     If you peer through the half-battered-down door, nothing of value is left inside, but it looks like the wooden shelves have been neatly sliced by great whirling blades(?). The back wall is cratered by a stone-cracking impact. The nurse-area's pink curtain has been torn down.

     A couple of gleaming-clean human and squirrel bones stick out from the wooden wreckage.

     Someone's seen Aidan and Sarra lately, right? ... I mean, those are plastic, surely?
Ivy Carrow     The Vice-Captain tapped on Ivy's shoulder, as they walked. "You see that?" They pointed to the poster.

    Ivy just stared, for a long moment. "I do."

    "Embarrassing isn--"

    "Not today, Alex." She snapped. Sighed. Then, more softly. "...Please."

    "...Okay."

    Nina wasn't with them, anymore.

    Ivy has much more to say about the Rita shop than she did the posters. "...Maybe we should have stopped them after all." For a moment, you could be forgiven for thinking she meant for Sarra and Aiden's welfare. But then--"That has to be why the shop is closed down. 'If you let people rampage in places that benefit you and your friends, there will be consequences for everyone.'"

    "Likely." The Vice-Captain frowned. "Frustrating...And losing them brought down our manpower too."

    "Oh THAT's just fine," Ivy brushed it off, a pale mimickry of her idol's meangirl bluster. "I thought at least they'd be out of the way, but no. Of course they ruin stuff for everyone else on the way out."
Lilian Rook     The way up is through the centermost tower of the castle. High above even the inner walls, the simulation area is constrained to level after level of 'merely' house-sized dimensions, passing rapidly through the gorgeously ornamented yet strangely understated interiors of a private study, a lounge and tea room, a walk-around wardrobe, a blood-spattered stone altar, a pillow parlour with a giant gold cage, and so on.

    For whatever reason, the interiors feature entirely different colours and textures than elsewhere, using boreal woods and rustic stone, black iron where gold was and silver where once was steel. Drapes are hung in green and tawny, candles are lit in saffron, rugs are fur as often as woven, desks are littered with ancient cord-bound books, and the air is vaguely misty with incense, nearly cold. There isn't a hint of clockwork. There isn't even a clock. The place for one final exploration and shop visit is sped through like an afterthought, as you're accelerated to the top by a magic platform, for only just long enough to feel nerves.

    The place you emerge, just past the dying of day after the final floor, is a momentarily overwhelming vista of the singularity looming overt the edge of the highest tower like a setting sun. This close, you only have to look up a little bit to see its bottomless center. Your teeth vibrate in your head, from the ceaseless roar it emits, far below the range of your hearing; screaming a near-soundless hum that presses into your chest.

    Overhead, so far away from the town, you can see every star in the sky, and a bright aurora that stretches from the mountain to the horizon; one that occasionally flickers with an erratic cascade of brightness. Terra firma is merely a sport field of blasted black granite, covered in runes across every inch that have been eroded into near-illegibility. Ten massive iron flanges rise over you at its edges, forming the vague impression of a 'cage match', with the black hole just outside.

    The Queen stands in the middle of the scoured plane under the night sky, back turned and fingers laced behind her. More interested with the singularity than you-- no, perhaps 'entranced' is the right word, it's hard to tell if she's speaking to you, or to it.

    "One hundred years. A century since finding the star expelled from heaven in the ice of the north. The light that was turned into something else, and will never return to the sky, fated to one day consume everything under heaven and make the earth its equal in darkness; how long I've laboured to bring about the inevitable under my terms; how long with its urging, its hungering, to see every detail perfect in the forever that will follow after."

    "And days before it finally comes to fruition, the greatest nuisance that all the stars of destiny could contrive has conspired to ruin everything. That there should be a last, great battle . . . if only."

    The Queen looks over her shoulder, and says "Your last words. Speak."
Sarracenia      Sarracenia enters the area ready to see the finale, but gets distracted as she starts seeing merch of...them!

     Aidan's gets a bit of a sour look from Sarra.
     The Ru-Li dakimakura gives Sarra mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's a dakimakura. On the other...Ru-Li is kind of hot...
     Ivy's bobblehead gets a giggle and a little 'cute'.
     Sarra contemplates smashing Brick's screensaver.
     Princess's standup earns a giggle.
     Sarra doesn't really get the Petra x Cecilia thing. It isn't her kind of art.
     Sougo's and Woz's magnets are gazed at appraisingly, but the words are lost on her.
     The Ritescu plushie is in danger of being stolen, and Sarra squeezes it a few times with a child-like snicker.
     The Odette Roomba makes Sarra laugh outright.
     And then...Sarra ends up staring at the betting pool. The only thing of her in the whole place is a grumpy scribble. Not even a proper drawing, and not even on her own piece of paper. It's beneath ELENA and HAFREN!

     Sarra starts to tear the entire thing down, getting so far as placing both hands on it with a frustrated and angry growly huff. But, after a moment's pause and consideration that she already looks bad having been 'killed' she ends up taking the whiteboard eraser and angrily erasing the scribble before stalking to her chair.

     She stares with a flat expression when she sees it, lets out a whiny cry, then plops down in it before her face lands on the table in front of her with a thump. "Good luck in there." she says to the others, still with her face down.

     A camera naturally catches Ivy's thoughts on the shop, and Sarra whimpers softly and shrinks down in her chair. That one stung a bit. She thinks Ivy is pretty cool.
Odette Raskins So much has happened since the start of this entire simulation. Odette still can't believe it's been over half a year since she embarked on this whole thing with everyone, and only a few months more than that since she's even started her career as an alleged Elite. It still feels all so surreal, but seeing the invitation to come for the finale really puts it all into view for her that it's finally almost done. The simulated village, the wildly out of scope encounters, the terrifyingly realistic simulated singularity that she still swears might come to life and eat everyone at any moment.

Did she do well? IS she going to get a good grade in this? Everyone else had to have been more impressive by far, but to be able to keep up this long without stopping still feels like a massive accomplishment to her. That's why, when she comes into the staging area, she's absolutely floored upon seeing people actually coming by to cheer the group on. To ask for autographs. To ask for.. HER autograph? That's a surefire way to get her stammering and blushing at the recognition, shakily signing her name as legibly as she can.

Odette only fares a little better in the merch shop, as she gets to at least gawk at everyone else's stuff while trying not to get too self-conscious about anything that even remotely looks like her. She pays up ahead of time to get posters of everyone and a few figures of Princess, Ritescu, Marcellus, Caecilia, and Woz, then sets a reminder on her PDA to pick that all up after everything. She needs to optimize her carrying weight for what's sure to be a grueling battle, after all, and-is that a picture of her on the roomba?

"Geh-buh-fff.. Get back here!" She shouts at the roomba like it'll actually listen, chasing after the shoe-height machine to try and snatch that print-out right off. It's not even that she hates the reminder or anything, but the embarrassment at seeing it suddenly short-circuits her brain into giving chase.

Eventually, though, it's time to actually get into the swing of things, and Odette's ready. The Company-issued duffel bag with Company-issued-or-otherwise supplies is filled to the brim. Her Company uniform and Trideag Association standard-issue sidearm and sword are ready. She even makes sure her boots are laced up properly once more and double-knotted to minimize the risk of untimely slips or loosening, and then she heads on through the Warpgate.

The closed Ritescu Shop gives theEMT a foreboding feeling, but only partially because it's closed and seemingly in a state of disarray. She still remembers what happened the last time everyone was here, and she sees the skeletal remains inside. Even though the logical part of her mind says it has to be props, seeing that all at once and hearing those thoughts from Ivy and Alex feels like several punches straight to the chest.

"Y... Yes. That's... I mean, I don't think they would've stopped because of their pride, but it's... A-all of it's a big loss, yeah." Odette murmurs, making an uncomfortable noise while rubbing her arm and forcing herself to look towards the portal to the final floor. "B-but it's too late to really get hung up over that now. We've got one more fight ahead of us, so... Um. A-any plans?"

A beat, and then she remembers to finish that thought. "Er. F-for the battle, I mean. What does... Do we have any real functional intel on Queen Liliana's.. Anything? I-if she's anything like-" Wait. She can't bring the real Lilian's combat skills into this. She pauses for a while longer, then swallows lightly. "If she's as strong as all of her warriors combined, then... Do we need a formation? W-we need some kind of plan, I think."
Kale Hearthward Kale Hearthward had to miss the last few sessions. He's blissfully unaware of some of the things that happened, and unblissfully aware of some of the things that he missed. Aidan and Sarracenia ate dirt? That would have been great to see in person.

... He'll just have to see if he can check the replays and official reports later.

Kale has a little notebook with him this time, and as he's making his way in he's scanning through it, only half paying attention to where he's going. "Are you another band of heroes to be added to my collection..." he mutters to himself, and flips a few more pages ahead. "These lost lambs don't need to be saved, darling, they need to be taught..." And then flipping towards the end. "Towns, cities, human civilization is built upon control. Humans naturally..."

He trails off as he finally looks up from the notebook and glances at the Aidan poster. "... crave... it?"

The notebook is put away inside his vest pocket, and he spends a bit staring at the various fanart(?) that the production company have made. He has, by choice, stayed out of elite fandoms for the same reasons that a recovering gambling addict stays away from Las Vegas, so it's always an unfamiliar shock to stumble onto creations like this.

... He snaps a cell phone photo of the Easy Modo poster, and tries to ignore the double take. No offering autographs here.

Back into the simulation! And, as always, first stopping by the Ritescu shop to-

"The squall did I miss..." he mutters. It was such a cute shop. And he was getting used to wasting the team's money on homemade food that he only ended up getting to eat half the time.

Seeing it wrecked up like this feels like - like, well, a shop you frequent regularly has closed down. Something's missing from your routine, now, and you aren't really going to grasp the hole it's left behind until the second, third, and fourth times you go to visit and remember that it's not there anymore.

... No, wait, it's not closed permanently, it's just closed for repairs. Well, it's not like they'll be back to shop there again(?) so it might as well be closed forever.

Onwards, and upwards... and, in surprisingly short order, arriving at the Queen.

"... Our last words..."

Kale frowns. He stances up.

"A moment, held frozen in the Hungering Star forever... that is far from perfect."

"Not if it's so easily disrupted, in - mere days. You were so certain of your victory. What was it you said? 'Towns, cities, human civilizations, all built upon control? Humans naturally crave it? They can scarcely exist without it." And yet, for all you claim the very land craves it, we were able to so easily disrupt it..."

"And here we are, past your defenses, past your vaunted castle. Such a flawed moment you were about to capture, that we shattered the peace of it so."

Smoothly, he reaches back, and draws his left-hand sword, holding it at the ready - but not making any further aggressive moves than that. Yet.
Timespace Riders      Sougo is a social butterfly as ever, enthusing with the staff despite the grave atmosphere. The refreshments are accepted as graciously as the encouragement and advice (even if the latter isn't all that helpful). He and Woz both are happy to give their autographs, too.

     Eleanor and Sabrina get a polite nod of acknowledgement from Woz and an enthusiastic full-bodied wave from Sougo. It's not that the would-be Demon King doesn't see the gossipy whispers or the saucy looks. In fact, he's gotten plenty of both in his life. It's either a defense against it, or he could genuinely be happy to see them, even in passing. Who could say but him?

     The office memes are (mostly) adored by Sougo, who stops to comment on each one, except for the speedlined Aidan poster. Woz seems to find that one much funnier than Sougo does. At the sight of the fridge magnets bearing their likenesses, Sougo fixes Woz with an expectant puppy-dog look. The retainer nods, procures the same marker they'd used for autographs, and the two of them sign their names on their respective magnets.

     Past the trashed store (which also draws a sigh from Sougo) and up through the castle's central tower, the two of them have some time to appreciate the decor along the way--namely, its stark differences from the other areas of the castle.

     The subsequent ascent to the final battleground is made in quiet, where those two are concerned.

Your last words. Speak.

     Between the the king and his retainer, Sougo is the first to speak. "You have a kingdom," says Sougo with a frown, driver in hand. "But what you want is a snowglobe. Stuck inside a little bubble that's cut off from everything else. Nothing moves or changes except the snow--and if no one is around to shake the globe, not even that moves. 'I have a good feeling about this,'" he smiles thinly, "...is what I want to say. But I really don't know if I can win, even with everyone here. What I do know is that I can't turn a blind eye to what you're doing and call myself a good king. If that makes me a dead king... well, that's better than a bad one."

    Woz takes Sougo's hand with his free hand, the other clutching the Beyondriver. "I am the somewhat unusual time traveler, Woz, retainer to the rightful King of Time, Sougo Tokiwa, and chronicler of his glorious advent. I have no need for last words--not because I am unprepared, but because the body of my work will speak volumes even if it is cut short here today."

    Woz squeezes Sougo's hand, and the two of them share a smile, before turning their attention back to the Queen. Each Kamen Rider prepares his belt--

                               TIMESPACE DRIVER!                                
                                  BEYONDRIVER                                  

--inserts his transformation watch, and...

    "Henshin!"

    "Henshin."

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

                 Amazing! Time! Future! KAMEN RIDER WOZ? WOZ?!                  
Aidan Proudpick "We DID do something stupid, Sarra." Aidan grins as he watches her react to Ivy on the camera. "You gotta just grab it, yanno? Live with it. Learn from it." He has a couple beers in front of him. And a small merch bag. Just enough for a light football watching buzz. He wears a shirt that says 'Deez Nuts' and shorts, leaning forward to watch the screens intently. "It ain't the whole of who we are, or the last thing we'll ever be."

The mood is... well, not cheery for Aidan, but clearly not as devastated as Sarra about the whole thing. Like being at the Super Bowl where your favorite team isn't playing, but you are still invested in at least one of the teams.

His smile wanes when he turns it on Sarra, "What didja learn?"
Ivy Carrow     "Your last words. Speak."

    Ivy's response is surprisely subdued and serious. "I could tell you that you're squandering people's potential, by never giving them the chance to become." Ivy said, matter-of-factly. "But, I'm sure you'd say, 'they would never become anything. Some people just don't have that inner spark.' And it's not like anything I could say would change your mind."

    "But some of them, their whole lives, they've lived in the dark. Without a dream of the idea of what light would be like." She looked up at the hungering star. "Taught to fear the idea of even holding it. And then, someone like you comes around, and says...'Look! There's nothing behind their eyes! They have nothing to offer! I will remake them into something useful!'"

    "It's taking someone locked in a room for all their lives, and making them a slave because they never learned how to paint, or sing. People, like anything, need to be nurtured, if they're going to become. And if they just become whatever you feel like you needed...You might change the world. You might consume it. But you'll never change."

    "Like this star. Devouring everything around it, warping it. But never changing. Consuming, but never incorporating. Never even allowing the chance that you might be wrong, that there could be something in the unrealized potential of the world that could make you better, that could show you other ways of being, other paths that could be taken..."

    "That's no way to live." Ivy drew her sword. "Not for me."
Angela An Angelapad has been set up in one of the ringside chairs. Not next to Sarracenia or within reach, but still in conversational range. She seems intent to watch the rest of the event from here. On the screen next to her she has a glass of champagne in one hand and nearby is also a bag of microwaved popcorn (buttered). Angela pops one in her mouth as she observes the proceedings before spitting it out into a nearby trashbin. Angela is not an AI that can eat (without Lilian's assistance).

"Hey," Angela says to Sarracenia and Aidan. "Losers."

She sets the bag aside as if she wanted it more for the popcorn aroma than the popcorn taste, further suggesting she put the popcorn in her mouth purely as part of the bit.

"You'll be happy to know that I took Tennant and used the compactor to crush them into a fine paste. They should not be bothering you anymore, Sarracenia. I hope that is sufficient punishment to your satisfaction. There were more longform tortures I could have employed but I felt a quick annihilation was the most merciful act I could take."

Angela is in her labcoat, suit, and skirt but she is wearing that scarf that White made her, purely as an expression of appreciation. It doesn't really match the suit.

MEANWHILE

Cinder is arriving with everyone else. She gushes over the little fishinhg cutout of Cinder and the fish and points it out to Petra excitedly. "It's so cute!! Gosh I love this setup!" She doesn't really seem to see any of this as mocking.

But In truth, she's a little relieved the event is coming to a close. It's been a long battle and she's worn out and feeling beat up even with the rest stops and soup. And more to the point, she wants to know what the deal is with the jewelry box she found! That she has actually given to Petra. She has to know the lore and part of her is worried that they skipped past the entire explanation of that story which feels distressing. What if they never get the answer?

The Queen starts speaking about lore that at this point, Cinder can't make heads or tails of really. Gosh, she bets that if they didn't destroy the poor shop they could've gotten all sorts of little tidbits. Stars of destiny? ... Cinder's head jerks up. Stars have keen meaning for those living on the Oustkirts.

Her last words?

"I'm not saying any last words today..." Cinder says, readying Fourth Match Flame before her.
Rita Ma      From the shadow of one of the iron flanges, beyond Queen Liliana before you, a familiar shape materializes.

     Miss Ritescu steps out of the gloom. The distant aurora and the black hole's edge-corona cast light through the jar of petals, aggregately gleaming like stained glass condensed into a great gem.

     When her little cape billows back, it might be the black hole drawing it in and not the breeze.

     "Here you go, Queen Liliana. It's a good amount this time."

     There's her little bow to the Queen as she hands off the jar. There's her dimly appraising look over the Queen's shoulder at your lot. It's clear what she thinks your chances are, or aren't.

     The heroic speeches put a funny melancholy look in her eyes. It might be you don't know what you're getting into, or it might be so that's how you all really feel?

     Even so: "... Liliana, you're sure you don't want me to stay?" Spoken like she already knows the answer is 'No; I've looked forward to crushing them myself.'

     She's already turning back to the shadow she emerged from, uneasily.
Powerpuff Girls Princess has an uncertain sort of experience, expression in the moment. To her, there was a dual element to the strange episode shooting of the simulation: if she was the hero, then, shouldn't it work like those episodes she had seen from the sideline? If she was the villain, then, shouldn't it work like those 'episodes' she had engineered and engaged in?

Why was it this third thing? Ugly and exhilarating and risky, a massive bear upon her time, where she was handing out her personal information to demon ladies in the aftermaths of being jeered at!

Why did she care?
    Because Blossom cared.
Why was she playing along?
    If she gave up, they'd make fun of her.

Despite being able to point at the aspects of the simulation she thought were 'wrong' or unrealistic, while she was in the middle of it in a different role she was too close to the issues as they occurred to feel much other than the startled confusion a student who was only reading the syllabus for their assignment just before the final exam.

Blossom is far better off for, simply, having always been in attendance for her own reasons. The somber atmosphere of the final stretch of off-screen prep had the same funerary air as many dire situations before. The Utonium woman signs autograph requests like a trained celebrity and passes off helpful suggestions with a serene smile. This, of course, is exactly where she should be, and getting a bad grade at Multiverse Team Heroism would simply mean she'd have to argue about how wrong reality got it with the dean after.

She catches Princess looking at the graffiti, trying not to drill Eleanor and Sabrina with a spookily glowing primary color care-stare and instead giving it to Morbucks who minds it a lot less.

"Find something you like?"
"They got my good side." Princess admits."Your front?" Blossom asks, faintly incredulous.

Princess grips the worn frame of her armor 'perfume diffuser', the same Hardened Heart armor she had started the examination with back at the start, and thumbs the neck seal open and shut in a faint stimming loop ending with a confirmatory click in either direction.

"One more, right?" Princess asks, swapping subjects wordlessly.

Blossom gives the same performative paint-on smile of absolute controlled serenity in Morbucks' direction, eyes drifting down to the faint damages and bypassed failures she can see in the minute details of the superscience construction in Princess' hand.

"After this, there's still tomorrow to go. And tomorrow after that." Blossom answers, and heads for the entrance.

It's not an answer that fills Princess Deliliah Morbucks III (first name Princess, of the hereditary oligarchy of mighty California) with any peace. "Figures." She observes dryly, spraying on the black suit-material on over her Business Uncasual fit and swirling with the applique of stretched-taut graphite and threads of nano-gold. The muted technological transformation leaves Princess wrapped in her usual hornet gold-yellow and underlayer black, ending with a red flash at crownpeak and the pink crystal drop of visor over eyes.

It's Blossom that actually checks out the Ritescu shop, Princess seemingly dissociated disinterested in following up, having guiltily failed to make eye contact with Aidan and Sarracenia in the prep area (they're 'dead'!) and not wanting to brave the shop.

"No more free rides, hmm? I'll have to remember to comment about that in the post-exercise review." Blossom notes, before giving Odette a prebattle look. "Plan? Protect the people who need protecting, defeating the people who need defeating-"

"The same as you, right?" Blossom asks of Odette.
Powerpuff Girls 'Your last words. Speak.'

Before the queen, though, Blossom and Princess are in as synch as they can be, with Princess slightly turned and gold gloves arched over black middleband and settled on hips and Blossom's arms crossed -- though the red sweeps her arms out open-handed to bow slightly.

"Queen Liliana, you're clearly powerful. And, I've seen that you've memorialized how much more powerful you are than all these other heroes, others ideals, other ways of thinking. Other wishes, other perfect worlds, other absolute ways. It's impressive."

"Tacky museums about how many places and people you've taken from only impress your rich friends. I've tried every kind of gallery, and it was a better show when it was your generals and give-alls. But--" Princess starts working up a good head of steam that not even the Multiple Sequential Belt Boppit Sessions can out-mix, but then Ritescu leans out into frame to pass off the jar of colorful petals she had gathered.

Princess processes faster than she speaks, but doesn't get to a new word in time to seem clever. The air of 'ghhk' and a deeply angry 'nevermind' hitch in her, and Blossom reaches over to pat her gold-armored shoulder.

"She asked for your last words, not your full complaint."
"Tacky and self-centered."
"The fight's at the start, not the end."
"Might not get to tell her after."
Blossom shrugs.
"I think it could have worked out if we were all interested in working together. But, the way things have gone? It's just not that kind of episode."
Odette Raskins "The same as you, right?"
"R... Right. That's.. Um. That's all we really can do, huh?" Odette manages an anxious chuckle at Blossom,  straightening out her jacket and trying not to look like the stage fright is getting to her. "I'm packed with the good injector mixes today, so we should have.. Plenty to work with, even if we need repeated uses. I-I mean, I'll still be careful not to give anyone too much at once, but..."

Blossom wasn't asking about that. Odette closes her eyes, slaps her cheeks, then pumps her fists at her side. "Right. We'll make it work. They need saving, and Queen Liliana needs defeating. Th-that's all there is to it."

__

Odette still isn't used to the sheer size of everything she's seeing in this simulation even after seeing it this many times, but she might not need to after today. One more battle. One more round, to see everything to the end. Her nerves are starting to get to her again as she could've sworn things in old areas looked different last time instead of realizing that she's in new territory again. Weren't there more clocks? More people?

The terrifying singularity is almost a welcome sight to give her some sense of normalcy and familiarity in comparison to her mind gaslighting herself about everything suddenly changing between now and last time. Seeing far below, meanwhile, gives the EMT a sense of real scale as to how far she's come with everyone here. The town being so far below, strangely enough, doesn't feel as alien to her as everything else, and especially not as much as the cage match-feeling that she gets from the room where she comes face to back with The Queen.

Odette's danger senses are screaming at her again. This is not a good place to be in. Her teeth are already chattering inside her skull long before The Queen even starts speaking, but she doesn't dare to move nor make a sound when The Queen speaks. Even breathing feels like a risky move once The Queen looks over her shoulder at the group, and the EMT straightens up on the spot like she's being addressed by someone with explicit authority over her instead of just being naturally terrifying.

Swallowing doesn't help her throat from feeling any less dry, but it does give her some valuable time to just try and think about what to even say. Hearing others speaking gives her more time to let her thoughts settle, and Sougo's own uncertainty of victory gives her some sense of calm in knowing she's not the only one feeling that. That calm starts fading quickly, though, by the time she realizes there's enough of a pause that she should probably say something, too.

"W.. I.. I'm not here for anything grand. N-nothing like what you've planned and worked at for so long, and I don't think I ever will. I-I just got involved because there were..." Her eyes shift over just a moment, at where she had last seen that town so far below. "There's people hurting, way down there, and I know why. I know who's the cause of it. I-I can't be like my heroes that take the fight to something big enough to threaten all of humanity, that have the power and the... The drive to do it, even when everyone calls them evil. Terrorists. Traitors. But..."

Odette's finally teeth stop chattering, and she finally looks at The Queen instead of past her. "I can still fight... You. I can..." Her nerves get to her again at that last bit with a slight squeak in her voice, and she's back to staring slightly over The Queen's head, at the comfortingly terrifying singularity that probably isn't judging her.

"Plan? Protect the people who need protecting, defeating the people who need defeating-"

Odette remembers what Blossom asked her, and she draws in a sharp breath while forcing herself to make eye contact with the Queen again, terrifying as that might be. "I-I-I can fight a person! And if I can do that much, I can fight... Something bigger! N-next to the heroes that... E-everyone that's counting on me, even if it's.. J-just a little bit!"
Sarracenia      'We DID do something stupid, Sarra.'

     Sarra lifts her head enough to look over at Aidan, takes in a deep breath, starts to say something...and sees his shirt. Her breath just kind of escapes her like a deflating balloon. "...stupid...sure." she finally says, then is quiet a moment before continuing. "I did something stupid. You just helped a friend. Which some might call stupid but to me it is noble. And it makes it even worse that it ended up like it did." Sarra props her cheeks on her hands, elbows on the table. "I am sorry, Aidan. You could have continued your journey if not for me."

     'What didja learn?'

     Sarra is quiet again, this time for a long moment. She is just about to answer when...

     'Hey...Losers.'

     In her current mood, Sarra is on her feet so fast the chair tumbles backward and glaring at Angela. A look that turns to horror as she hears that Tennant is now a fine paste. "I suggested cleaning as a punishment! CLEANING! Them cleaning things, not them being cleaned up from something! What is wrong with you!"

     Sarra apparently completely believes that Angela would paste-ify an underling without any remorse. Sarra starts to sit back down, realizes her chair is still knocked over, sets it back up with a huff, then plops back down. "I do not know what I should have learned from that." Sarra replies to Aidan grumpily, probably looking much like her scribble now. "I apologized, I offered to help with repairs, you gave the books back. She was being completely unreasonable!"

     There is another moment of quiet. "...I guess I learned I should pay more attention to my comrades. Apparently Sougo and Petra tried to warn me and smooth things over. I suppose I was -expected- to learn not to pick fights - not that I did that. I did my best to placate her short of turning to worshipping the Queen. Or perhaps I was supposed to learn to back down when faced with a very strong opponent - something that I just...cannot do." Sarra seems a bit distressed herself at that one. "If I did, then...my enemies would simply walk all over me..." she adds, then looks at Aidan. "Would they not?"

     "I also learned that most of the 'heroes' here will simply let those around them fall if someone does something they do not agree with. If we had all fought together then we would have defeated Ritescu, and it makes no sense to think that someone so dedicated to her queen would simply accept it if the Quean -is- defeated. She is likely the actual final boss and we simply unlocked her too early."
Petra Soroka     So long as she's in the staging area and not on stage, it feels a lot more like Petra is gearing up to fight *Lilian* than Liliana. After all, the entire building is drenched in the atmosphere of Lilian Rook, not Queen Liliana Lycoris, and it's *her* Petra's 'here' for. Saving the village and stopping Queen Liliana's plans are, and have always been, low priorities for Petra, compared to performing the role that Lilian implicitly asked of her, because she really can't muster up any ideological disagreement to a world-ending supervillain, especially not when that supervillain's plan is still literally the kindest thing she's ever heard any Elite attempt to do.

    In fact, Queen Liliana being *still* so kind, makes Lilian bleed into the role in Petra's mind. Rather than being a cut-loose villainous indulgence for Lilian to work out some frustration on all these other losers, it's ended up feeling just the same way Lilian always acts around them, but with costume and set design-- which is great, and Petra adores seeing the artistic care Lilian's excitedly poured into the project, but it's not *enough*. In the end, Queen Liliana barely feels any different from Lilian does.

    And counter to how Sarracenia would think that sort of thing, it's because of Lilian's omnipresent kindness rather than because of some hidden villainous intent all along. And counter to what practically anyone else would think about Petra feeling that way, it doesn't make the upcoming fight any more difficult for her.

    Ash comes to mind, as they often do. A dim glow of the resentment at Petra's core flickers slightly brighter, while she's sitting with her lips pursed and brow furrowed on a couch in the lobby, watching the staff grimly scamper around. Supervillainy is a kind of play, sure, but it's a kind of 'honest' play, where the stakes are contrived but the feelings are real. If the extent of feelings that Lilian is capable of showing even in a situation like this is limited to being domineering and dismissive but ultimately good-hearted, then Petra just feels vaguely alienated by the whole scenario.

    I'm hoping we win, because that's my job. But I hope she makes it hurt more, or I'll have to vent out whatever this is by building a death laser or something.

    Without thinking about it, Petra wandered over to the tables and offices strewn with merchandise, absentmindedly laying a hand on the art of herself and Cecilia. She stares down at it, and then dully passes her eyes over all the rest, lingering on the plaque and then flicking her gaze off of it to exclude it specifically from her observation.

    To Cinder besides her, Petra mumbles, "Somehow, this feels wrong. It feels like, mocking. Like we've missed something big, and everything's been messed up somehow, and they're so comfortable with making fun of us because there's nothing we can do. I don't know if I'm missing something or if I'm just fucked in the head."

    She stares at the drawing of her and Cecilia for a minute longer. "... This is pretty cool, though."

    The busted up shop gives Petra a pang in her chest when she sees it. She already feels lingeringly guilty about her last tense interaction with Rita, but Ritescu was another source of purely positive interactions that's now gone and ruined. For it to just be a victim of Sarracenia and Aidan...

    "Oh my god, what the hell is *that*?!" Petra gasps with disgust and points at Aidan's corpse, unable to recognize a massive squirrel skull by sight. "Or-- wow. That's supposed to be them, huh? People don't even rot that quickly. Fucking deserved. Next time I do supervillainy, I'll have Heyalexa as a shopkeeper and I'll give her permission to strip anyone who annoys her down to the bone."
Petra Soroka "Er. F-for the battle, I mean. What does... Do we have any real functional intel on Queen Liliana's.. Anything?"

    Petra's tone is flat and grim, exactly as you'd expect from the tragically-backstoried morally grey heroine in the cutscene before the final fight. She's back in her Victorian-esque ruffled dress shirt with a string-tied neckline, though there's a bloodstain around the collar that wasn't there at the start of the simulation. Monochromacity is broken up by the compact mirror tucked into her breast pocket and held by a silver chain, matte steel glittering with iridescent flakes of mica and mother of pearl inlays. (She had to get a new compact mirror after getting the Beauty of Ash back-- it's just usually in a less visible pocket!)

    "Don't underestimate her. She won't hold back, and she'll hit harder at anyone who does. Expect her to use a sword, and don't expect that to be something you can take advantage of unless you're way more skilled than you are. Her sword's a bit under five feet long, but you should treat it like it's longer. She's got magic too, and if your brain starts feeling weirder than fucking normal for you, then either get behind me or jump off the roof."

"Your last words. Speak."

    Petra is the last of the heroes to step onto the top of the tower. She takes a bracing breath, holding it because of and not despite the apocalyptic vibration from the black hole making it hurt in her chest, and double checks the carvings on the ground before meeting Liliana's eyes with her own.

    "... Queen Liliana. I'm not here to fight you for the same reason anyone else is, so I don't have any stupid fucking heroic speech to give you. Obviously, anywhere you've got designs for will end up better off because of them. I mean, we can literally see that from up here." With the village, and the castle, decorated more lovingly than they possibly could've been *before* she was here. Petra wraps her hand around her compact mirror on her chest like she's holding her heart.

    "So what I want to know is... why does it still feel like you're holding back? Why does it feel like you're setting yourself up to lose and smile about it and move on because you gave it your one shot?" Her grip tightens around the mirror, and a squealing-crack of glass escapes from inside it. "If you're going to set your sights that low even after all of this, then I don't have any choice but to fight you along with everyone else. If you're willing to just stand here and let these losers hit you and fucking *talk* at you until it's all better, then I'm going to hit you harder for my own sake."
Aidan Proudpick "Hey, Losers."

Aidan lifts his eyebrows at that, actually getting a grin. "Miss Angela." That is quickly wiped out when he hears that Tennant was crushed into a trash compactor. "Couldn't you just give them a punishment? What did they d-"

"I suggested cleaning as a punishment!"

He glances back at Angela, "Did you torture Tennant just to make Sarracenia mad?" There's a sort of incredulity, a desire for those not to be the words he heard. "Why did you torture them at all? Torture doesn't teach people anything."

"Oh my god, what the hell is *that*?!"

"My head isn't that long at all!"

He picks up back with Sarracenia, "First, ya didn't take it seriously. We're dead. Dead dead. Your parents won't have a Queen to inherit the kingdom. The people of Quicknest might stay under the Gale Empire, they might not. But Kale's not ready to handle the whole mess. I've been working the hardest I have on myself for the past six months. And all of that would have just gone out the window," eyes travel back to the gathered forces at the screen. "And second, ya didn't listen to a word miss Rita said, Sarra. We coulda ran. Instead, you wanted to stand your ground. What if they need that little bit extra to do this?" He shrugs, "Would we have won? Then what? We'd be weakened, or someone else might die. It all coulda been avoided."

"I dragged you into some stupid stuff, Sarra, but... the next time we get to something like that, I'm gonna focus on the mission, not fighting a losing battle where I'm gonna die."
Lilian Rook     The store has the energy of a dark path ending. You can hear a tiny music box playing a quiet rendition of the previous theme. The hum of the black hole transmits an onimous, cave-like ambiance through its empty rooms.

    'Other wishes, other perfect worlds, other absolute ways. It's impressive.'

    "Of course it is." says the Queen. A hint of that playful condescension creeps into her voice again, and it feels like a gasp of air between the drone of crushing apathy. "If only you'd been like the others, and impressed to make a bargain rather than to make war." She sighs, and the spark of amusement leaves. "This world is filled with people who spend their entire lives unable to reconcile that their beliefs aren't the destined ones; the ones that will be heard where the others were not. They'll be the first I remove in the new one."

    'But I really don't know if I can win, even with everyone here. What I do know is that I can't turn a blind eye to what you're doing and call myself a good king. If that makes me a dead king... well, that's better than a bad one.'

    "Then we will agree to disagree." says the Queen to the Future King. "A negative number has a higher absolute value than zero. In life, it's far better to be hated and feared than to have no one notice that you lived at all."

    'And if they just become whatever you feel like you needed...You might change the world. You might consume it. But you'll never change.'
    'Tacky museums about how many places and people you've taken from only impress your rich friends. I've tried every kind of gallery, and it was a better show when it was your generals and give-alls'
    'And here we are, past your defenses, past your vaunted castle. Such a flawed moment you were about to capture, that we shattered the peace of it so.'

    The Queen's stare smoulders on the party. The light of the singularity reflects in her eyes at an angle it shouldn't, as if a burning coal is behind them. "So down to the very end, your last words are little more than pointless, petty words of the noxious masses; nothing but hoping against hope to somehow wound the pride of those they envy." The last hint of interest dies from the Queen's stare. She turns her head back towards the void. "No, I think I shan't bother to commit them to history. They'd fill all the volumes but one if I did."
Lilian Rook     '... Liliana, you're sure you don't want me to stay?'

    Ritescu's appearance draws out the oddly uninhibited smile that the Queen seems only to reserve for her personal henchmen; or perhaps, in actuality, her only friends. She takes the jar atop her fingertips, balancing it with perfect poise, and coos "You've done a wonderful job, Ritescu. Even though it was wasted effort in the end, you've shone brilliantly for all your efforts to teach these berserk derelicts the error of their ways and to bring them into the fold. If I asked you to fight them again yourself, it'd be an affront to my pride."

    With a flex of her fingers, she lets the jar drop into her palm, and then her squeezing hand cracks it. "A Queen's role is to enforce order. She has to protect her subjects, and avenge the wrongs done upon her people. Having you avenge yourself would be unworthy of royalty; and that's exactly what I am now."

    'I-I-I can fight a person! And if I can do that much, I can fight... Something bigger! N-next to the heroes that... E-everyone that's counting on me, even if it's.. J-just a little bit!'

    "If I'm to respect your perseverance and nothing else, I'll tell you this before I consign you all to nothingness."

    "I'm smarter than you, stronger than you, older than you, and superior to you in every single way. I see things your dull eyes cannot, I know truths your feeble imaginations cannot dream, and when I proclaim my judgements, they are perfect and absolute. Everything you've done has been well within my expectations, and you haven't exceeded them even now."

    "In the fullness of eternity, I will come to know everything of human worth on this earth, all those who possess it will be raised up, and the teeming hordes without it will be recast. And if you'd choose the fate of the discarded of your own volition, then who am I to argue?"
Lilian Rook     'So what I want to know is... why does it still feel like you're holding back? Why does it feel like you're setting yourself up to lose and smile about it and move on because you gave it your one shot?'

    For a moment, the Queen's delivery cracks. Something sparks again behind her eyes. Her lip twitches, first towards a snarl, and then inexorably towards a cracked kind of fractional smile. Her voice comes out as an unstately, purring slow-roll of lovingly delivered fact; and she says "Aren't we full of ourselves? Especially for a pack of writhing maggots that can't so much as crawl without someone to eat alive. Do you really think you can even make me take you seriously? I dare you, I challenge you to try. Give me even one worthy foe before I end your rebellion forever."

    Her grip crushes the jar completely; and then the petals inside. The sharp glass, rather than stabbing her fingers, fuses together into its higher denominations, becoming a fist full of brilliant white lilies, which then finally condense into a single bloom of countless red strands; it transforms into a vivid red spider lily.

    Previously divided amongst innumerable fragments, you feel a concentration of magical energy that is nothing short of blinding. There was lore about this, that you barely grazed. Now it's like staring into the sun.
    "In the end, you were only ever born to be my puppets; and you will die my broken playthings."

    Black ripples cascade over the tower top, centered on Liliana. She rises from the ground, levitating to a position of ominous superposition against the heart of the singularity at her back. Raising her hands, she takes up the posture of a conductor, and then turns her hands to the open-palmed pose of a puppeteer, loosely holding invisible strings. Gravity bends forwards, pulling you forward as well as down at a fifteen degree angle; the air swirls around you, and the stars overhead diffract

    A single gesture causes the black hole to strobe lights on its surface. Without warning, a wave of pitch dark rays of force; identical to those that had levelled your tower, only smaller and more numerous, rake over the towertop and you on it. One row scrapes across the entire platform head-on, then a tug from her other hand causes another row to scythe across it from left to right. A twitch of a finger fires a pinpoint beam at the first person to dodge out of position. A clenched fist causes a flickering point of blackness to appear where she looks, and implode an enormous bubble of obliterated stone where you group up.

    Where they touch the iron flanges, they're shorn right through the middle, 'spaghettified' on touch, leaving only cut surfaces that radioactively glow and tumbling hundred ton masses of metal. Where they touch you, however, you feel like the wind is punched out of you. You feel unbearably heavy. Devoid of energy. Almost sleepy, in a mentally exhausted and physically crushed way. It doesn't even seem lethal? Which coincidentally mean that the defensive spell cast on the area doesn't help you.
Angela Angela says, "Well they weren't sorry, and they targeted a Partner. It is only natural that I prevent them from being able to do such a thing again." She is hardly surprised that Sarracenia completely believes that she would pastify an underling without any remorse. Aidan asks if she tortured Tennant just to make Sarracenia mad.

"I know your reading comprehension is negligible, but perhaps you should work on your listening comprehension. I clearly said I annihilated Tennant quickly." She sighs, leaning back in her office chair, swishing around her little champagne glass. "You know, that is what it means to 'mess up' in The City. It does not really matter if you are correct, or if you did the right thing, or if you are the most kind--you will simply be killed." Angela says. "Protesting whether it was 'fair' or not--well you won't be able to do that if you actually die." She pauses, thinking of the Boos. "Probably."

She turns her attention to the feed. "By the same token, if you--say--have a fight in a store designed to help you, preventing your allies from being able to make one last stop before the final batlte to prepare and, for that matter, down two allies--well, you can also get ''others'' killed, you see?"

''If we had all fought together tthen we would have defeated Ritescu.''

"A way to comfort yourself after defeat." Angela says. "Assuming that is true wouldn't it be best to stall that fight as long as possible? You cannot blame others forever."

''Somehow, this feels wrong. It feels like, mocking. Like we've missed something big.''

"Um, I'm pretty sure we did miss something big," Cinder admits. "Like, we didn't even figure out the deal with the jewelry box or ... lots of the other items. And ... like there is that war in the backdrop and... Well to be honest it kinda felt like how people were with The City sometimes? Like, busting in and assuming they knew all the details of the world we're from and making declarative statements about how x and y should be the case? It's died down a lot now that people know the place better but ... like, it feels like we missed a whole bunch of the Setting details? .. But some of this stuff is pretty cute, it can't be...all mocking right? ... Though it is weird it's placed here now rather than later."

She beams at the Ceciilia/Petra drawing. #-1 FUNCTION (ASNI) NOT FOUNDYeah! it's a nice setup!"

Cinder is uneasy about the shop and startles at the skull being pointed out. Squirrel skulls are pretty creepy, Cinder thinks, somehow creepier than human skulls? Human skulls are actually kinda goofy...

Cinder glances to Ritescu and gives her a little wave when she shows up, looking a little sheepish. She knows that Lilian is smarter and stronger and .... wait how old is she? Anyway, she beat the Legendary Color, sure, so that means this version has to hold back.

But even a holding back Lilian feels pretty spooky.

"Aw geeze we'ren ot gonna figure out the deal with the jewelry box I knew it...!" Cinder laments as she uses Fourth Match Flame to propel herself away from the first aoe platform strike only to get struck by a pinpoint blast. Cinder feels a strange lethargy hit over her and she stumbles, exhausted. She smacks her face with her hand and launches a wave of fire towards The Queen in retaliation.
Kale Hearthward > "So down to the very end, your last words are little more than pointless, petty words of the noxious masses; nothing but hoping against hope to somehow wound the pride of those they envy."

"..."

"... No. No, you know what, you're right."

Kale's sword drops from ready position, and then his grip shifts to one handed as the sword dips down and drops to his side.

"All that stuff? All that... bluster, and trying to throw your words back at you."

"All that's hero stuff. And it's... stuff I don't really believe in. Words I don't really believe in. Speeches I prepared and rehearsed on the way here. Even undercutting it merely a breath later with a joke that I like someone else's last words better. It's an act, an attempt to play the part."

"Hollow words, putting the lie to false feelings. No."

"If I'm gonna be honest, while all that's true that I want to protect these people and stop your plans..."

He lifts his sword back up, and grips it - in a much more confident, much more aggressive stance.

"What I really want, more than anything, is to fight you."

And then there's no more words. Kale gets into motion, kicking his jet boots on and taking off, just as the rays start raking the rooftop. But if the Queen is aiming at the first person to make a move, that's probably him. (Even if it's not him that's targeted, he's likely to end up dodging into one accidentally.)

"Hff-"

And down he goes - the exhaustion sapping away his breath-powered equipment, at least for the moment. He's back down to the rooftop, but even momentarily grounded, he gets moving again after a bit. "Really..." he says as he charges towards her. "Really, want to fight you!"

And that sounds like the first really truly sincere thing he's said today.
Sarracenia      'First, ya didn't take it seriously. We're dead.'

     "You think I did not take it seriously?! Did you miss the part where I broke down after because I was more than half certain that Rita might actually just kill me?! I have thought this entire simulation was entirely too realistic and possibly actual reality almost the entire time!" Sarra exclaims, her voice reaching that particularly high pitched incredulous tone.

     Sarra mmphs after that and crosses her arms. "And I am fairly certain I listened to her quite well. I just did not give in to her demands. We could not have run. We -could- have compromised ourselves and given in to escape." Sarra says, then hesitates moment. "...but...if I missed something...what was it?"

     'Instead, you wanted to stand your ground. What if they need that little bit extra to do this? Would we have won? Then what? We'd be weakened, or someone else might die. It all coulda been avoided.'

     Sarra can't really argue the 'what if they need that little bit of extra' point, but she is stubborn about the other point. "I am quite confident that Ritescu will attack after the Queen is defeated. She was even there, waiting to attack just now. It might have been out of order, but they should have helped us either way. It was clear that Ritescu would not tolerate her queen actually being defeated."

     'I dragged you into some stupid stuff, Sarra, but... the next time we get to something like that, I'm gonna focus on the mission, not fighting a losing battle where I'm gonna die.'

     Sarra's angry and stubborn face fades to a more somber one. "...good..." she says finally, seeming to agree completely with Aidan there.

     'Protesting whether it was 'fair' or not--well you won't be able to do that if you actually die. Probably.'

     Sarra gives Angela a bit of an odd look. It almost sounds like Angela thinks it would be better if they did not die. Sarra almost asks about it, but Angela continues. By the end of Angela's speeches, Sarra is not angry or trying to argue. It is the same point that has come up multiple times already in her time being a Fixer. "...if I die, I cannot help anyone else."

     Sarra takes a deep breath and lets it out as she goes back to watching the screen. "...if they do lose because we are not there...do not let them blame you at all, Aidan."
Timespace Riders In the end, you were only ever born to be my puppets; and you will die my broken playthings.

    "Hoh? Then by all means," says Woz, lifting his free hand to shield his eyes as the other hand grips the Jikan Despear. "Let us play."

    Not responding to a statement as declarative and final as that may well have done physical harm to Woz, so it only makes sense that he'd respond. Despite the cavalier reply, however, his engagement is conservative, testing the Queen's abilities to try and find vulnerabilities.

    Being hit when he dodges the rays of force doesn't discourage him either, even if he can't ignore the supernaturally induced fatigue--it's the first piece of valuable information about her strong points.

    Zi-O clues into what Woz is trying to do, and begins putting himself in harm's way to give his retainer more opportunities to prod and observe, even as his rescues become sluggish and clumsy in the wake of her blasts of darkness.

    Not willing to let that get in the way of Woz's analysis, Zi-O compensates for his induced exhaustion by way of precognition, the twinned watch hands on his helmet winding in fast-forwards to give him time to deflect attacks with his silver wristwatch-themed greatsword even in his state of lethargy.
Ivy Carrow     "In the fullness of eternity, I will come to know everything of human worth on this earth, all those who possess it will be raised up, and the teeming hordes without it will be recast."

    "Maybe you're right. But I can't count on someone else's future."

    "In my experience, everyone who thinks they know exactly what the world should be are missing something big." Ivy's frown wasn't deep, but it was there. "And worse. When they finally touch it...They don't even realize it's what they're missing."

    "Even if we're not that special something, even if we don't have the power to oppose it, it goes against everything I stand for. Discovering the world together..."

    "...And building the world together." The two exchanged a terse nod.

    "If we die chasing that, so be it."

    The rays...The same rays that had ripped apart her tower, not so long ago, spun outward from the great star. Ivy and Alex flickered, and were gone. Now, on the other side of the ray, just in time for another to come spiraling toward them. "You know the plan," she murmured to Alex. He grinned a tight, stressed grin, and vanished.

    The pair of warprunners stood on differently parts of the platform, appearing and disappearing to dodge the rays. But instead of fighting Liliana directly, they opened great rips in space, leading from one side to the other. Giving the other elites moments at a time to slip through the gates to reach the other side, a little something to make dodging stage hazards simpler. To give the other elites more options.
Aidan Proudpick "I clearly said I annihilated Tennant quickly."

Aidan scratches at his chin, "That-" does that make sense? "It should be fair," he finally says quietly. "Finn, anyone, shouldn't need a gun and a sword just to go anywhere in the city. I know. Life ain't fair. It just- it just should be. Or at least people like that shouldn't suffer. 'Mess up' just for being alive." He rotates his beer can in his hand, staring at it. A grin forms on his face as he listens to the streaming screen, taking him back out of the melancholy. "But, yer right, if we die, we stop being able to make it fair."

actual reality

"That's what I mean, Sarra. You thought we were just gonna go for a round with Miss Rita. You talked about fighting against a friend. We weren't fighting against a friend. We were fighting someone who definitely was gonna cream us."

It was clear that Ritescu would not tolerate her queen actually being defeated."

"That ain't the story, once the Queen is gone, everyone will just stand down. That fits the pattern of the story she's trying to make." This irony appears to float past Aidan's head. "Miss Angela is right, that's why I was trying to get you to put your pride down. We needed her to be nice to us one more time, and hopefully it wasn't the time everyone needed. There's a time to stick your chin out and, well, that wasn't it."

"...if they do lose because we are not there...do not let them blame you at all, Aidan."

"They might. I still did something stupid, yanno. Twice!" He shrugs his shoulders, "We just gonna have to do better next time. Focus on the mission."
Powerpuff Girls Blossom had been bothered by how things had went, but her presumption of the 'Supervillain Simulation' had come with its own inherent biases. A long history of being called in as a ringer (literal, on the clown phone) with her sisters to biff!, pow!, and socko! the super-stirrers of problems and hammer down the nails that stood upright at the costs of others (and giant dinosaur lizards walking in off the coast).

The start of the exercise had set a tone, and Blossom had followed it - initially startled at Ivy's fortifications being blasted and the elimination of several members of the party, she had discarded the thought that they were to negotiate.

And then, a township to investigate, castles and clues to follow, puzzle rooms and social engagement floors... The killer ghosts were a bit much, perhaps, but at each stage there were invitations to wait and taste and understand. Some of the understandings were ghosts!

Buy ghost potions, clearly.

Rolling her hands down as the wish to understand is too little, too late, Blossom gives her painted-on smile at the playful condescension. Supposing she deserves it, Blossom is gentle where normally she might bite back. "I suppose it is on White to move first in chess, too." She 'agrees' with the faintest intellectual crypticism. "And my friend is used to playing black."

Blossom isn't in the habit of apologizing for herself, especially not to ''supervillains'', taking a pride in getting things right the first time and being held back by that pride otherwise, but being hit by the concept that preconceived notions were being tested on reveals to the ruby red that she had underestimated the test and would most likely have little luck grade-grubbing too. Half-apologizing 'for Princess' being the best she can do is a little pathetic as well... But she can't work on improving the grade until she was done with the essay portion. This was why tests were fair.

Princess had said her piece - and had been saleable early, but has felt many discomforts of many different kinds. Now, twisted up, she was playing for the attention of the person that had brought her along for the test in the first place... and didn't feel like she was doing too hot, either.

"I've wanted to show you my best shot since saw each other outside." Morbucks declares, rising up as well with a pink crackle about both fists and a jetwash from both feet. "All your minions? *You* made me go through them as warm-ups. If you don't get my hundred percent it's because you took *last* bite, and not the first one offered!" The ginger pom-pom haired power armor specialist corkscrews once to stabilize as she approaches in a quick dash forward, immediately lept in front of by Blossom mid-block.

Liliana's first-mover black hole blast hits the crossed-arms-and-raised knee core block of the red Puff and skips her off the platform like a stone across a river, sending Blossom into a smoking flat spin. Princess jinks through one of Captain Carrow's team portals, frontflipping through a visualized drift path that skates her close to the exploding ground. While flying, quick and heavy swings of arms fling charged balls of pink plasma hooking in towards Liliana's floating casting posture and exploding into blooms of gravity-splashed heat on impact.

Weaving between blasts in a blue-white zigzag of sharp turns and quick redirects while flinging plasma, Princess' path is cut through by a straight highlight of SKRR!-pkew signature superspeed utterly lacking in compensation for the waves of gravity, tornado-spinning up before letting the instant cyclone go to batter Liliana with wind force and hurl away the flailing and enervating apple-peel of gravitational battery.
Rita Ma      "If I asked you to fight them again yourself, it'd be an affront to my pride."
     Ritescu does a little hands-folded-in-front bow, notably maid-like. "I understand, Queen Liliana. I regret that I couldn't get along with them, in the end. I hope..."

     Her eyes scan the situation again. She waves back lamely to Cinder; gives Princess a dimly wary look. I guess the soup didn't help her. What well-wishes can you make, here?

     "... I hope they make it easy on themselves." There.

     She lingers on the edge of the iron flange's shadow long enough to see the opening moves over her shoulder. Her mouth uncomfortably wobbles. Not guilt exactly. Concern, maybe. For who?

     Her lips part, but she doesn't speak again, and vanishes into the darkness at the arena's edge.
Petra Soroka "In life, it's far better to be hated and feared than to have no one notice that you lived at all."

    Petra runs her thumb along the case of her mirror like it's a locket, held to give her resolve in the final battle. "I think that's true in death, too. Once you're gone, the only things that 'you' are, are whatever other people saw of you. Whether it's good or bad, a person's existence only means anything interpersonally. Anything they don't know doesn't really exist. That even goes for someone like you, Queen Liliana."

"Give me even one worthy foe before I end your rebellion forever."

    Petra smiles, and a thrumming pulse from the singularity overhead tugs her hair up and drops it down messily, making her look a little bit unhinged. "Nothing would make me happier, your highness."

    Petra squeezes her fist around the compact mirror, and with another scraping crunch, it shatters. Broken glass spills down in glittering shards, each one unfolding into more splinters of solid iridescence and then more from that. Diamond dust becomes diamond fragments become a continuous pearlescent surface, covered with sharp angles and facets that catch the looming orange glow from the singularity and hold it captured within prismatic light. The Beauty of Ash unfurls into the roughly humanoid mech around Petra, translucent like glass, with its arms and legs ending in dagger-sharp points instead of appendages.

    The mech vanishes in a flash, skimming weightless across the granite and leaving a perfectly straight scratch from a single foot across its surface. Slamming to a stop and redirecting to dodge the cross attack causes the mech to explode in the direction of its inertia, a quarter of its bodyweight spraying off in shards that lag behind the heel turn before telekinetically rubberbanding back into place.

    When caught on edges and stray shards, the blackness seems like it would miss Petra herself entirely-- she's in there, in the chest of the Beauty of Ash, though it's impossible to make out any details besides color and shape through the frosting refraction-- but it catches like fabric on staples, soaking and staining into the glass. Black swirls inside the mech like corrupted blood, darkening the orange hydraulic fluid flowing through it.

    The crystalline forearms of the Beauty of Ash both shatter into a million sparkling flechettes, then reverse course and implode. Fragments of glass click tightly together, forming blades twice as long as the arm itself attached at its elbows, that spear towards Liliana with neckbreaking force. Upon impact against anything, they split down their length and explode into a swarm of scintillating daggers that harry Liliana.

"What I really want, more than anything, is to fight you."

    <Behold,> Without a mouth on the Beauty of Ash's diamond-shaped snoutlike head, Petra's 'voice' is telepathically broadcast out, breathless and tinged with contempt more clearly than her words could convey. And also tinged with the vague sense that she does really like acting. <The totality of human worth.>

"If we die chasing that, so be it."

    <How often do you think they mean that?> She's definitely talking to Lilian, not Ivy or anyone else. As the mech zips around and backsteps with hummingbird-precision, her telepathic voice dopplers like void and vacuum instead of sound. <Do you think they really would die for it? Or do you think they just feel safe saying it, even to you, even now?>
Odette Raskins "Expect her to use a sword . . . get behind me or jump off the roof."
"D.. Definitely shouldn't use a sword, then. But the gun probably won't be a great match, either, and... OH boy." Odette's suddenly feeling better and worse at the same time about Petra's intel, suddenly feeling the weight of her sword and sidearm more keenly. "The injectors'll... I'm hoping I won't run out before we finish, but there's all kinds of reasons that might end up happening, if we're being.. Um. Realistic."

She doesn't say it, but she's hoping that the reason isn't 'getting taken out instantly at the start'. "And if she can do magic mind stuff... Um. A-alright. Thanks, Petra. I'll be counting on you if I can reach you, then." She adds, actually managing a slightly relieved smile at Petra even with her nerves being as shot as they are.
__

"Here you go, Queen Liliana. It's a good amount this time."
Seeing Ritescu there, even though Odette's known her to be a faithful ally to Queen Liliana this whole time, still gives her a pang of guilt at forcing her to see this betrayal. They'd shared meals together (or at least she's purchased them dutifully on each visit), she's been helped directly through medical aid and moral support, and now...

She's put Ritescu into a terrible (to herself) position of seeing all of this playing out. She sees the melancholy look, and Odette might be one of the few people that's both fully aware of what she's getting into while simultaneously missing so much information at the same time.

"I'm smarter than you . . . you haven't exceeded them even now."
It's nothing Odette doesn't already know, but but she still feels those stabs in the chest regardless. Liliana can see some of that adrenaline-fueled fire dying in the EMT's eyes a fair bit even before she finishes addressing her, too.  The idea of coming up with any kind of response doesn't occur to Odette, either, since she really doesn't have anything she can say to counter any of those points being made. If Liliana had everything predicted already, then...

No, of course she'd have something planned out for interruptions like this. Why, though? There'd be no need for any of that if she had just placed more of her generals in the earlier floors, or directed that tower-destroying power right at them at the start, or any other number of things that could have wiped out even more of the group. The why bothers her, and hearing about The Queen's plan to elevate and destroy parts of humanity as an immortal overseer gives her only a little more to speculate on there.

Actually putting any of that together into real sentences still feels like a herculean task, however, there's already the impossibility of actually having to fight her at this very moment. Odette's chattering is practically a vibration inside her head as she sees The Queen crushing the jar of that familiar currency into something new, something terrifyingly beautiful with in her hand.

Once again, Odette's instincts are to run, to hide, to do anything but be here. Where could she actually go, though? It's not like she could survive jumping off the tower, and there's no convenient warpgate to just leave from. Even if any of those escape routes existed, meanwhile, there's also that pulling feeling practically forcing Odette forwards and to the ground as she struggles to not get bowled over immediately.
Odette Raskins Her survival instincts kick in, and she makes the mistake of jerking herself sideways just to try and get out of whatever's pulling on her before she can get swept across by the wave of dark rays. That earns Odette a beam right through the shoulder, and that gets her howling in pain as she lurches over to grasp at where she was struck just then. Gritting her teeth, she pushes herself up on her elbows enough to yank out one of her injectors, jabbing it right into the wound to dull the pain.

After readjusting her aim to hit the side of the wound so she actually hits anything, Odette next has to contend with that heaviness making it so hard to even want to stay awake. The ground IS a lot more comfortable and more inviting than standing up, especially with those flanges cutting into everything around her. The exhaustion reminds her of Petra's warning from earlier, however, and a second injector gets yanked out and jabbed right into her thigh to stave it off with another jolt of energy.

It doesn't get Odette very far, but it's enough to get her back on her feet. She just needs to survive long enough to figure out... Something? Anything. Or for Woz to figure something out, at least, as she sees Zi-O acting as a shield for his retainer.  Feeling that lull from the mental magic again, she sprints over to the Beauty of Ash to hide behind Petra as cover. She only stays there long enough to pull out another fistful of injectors, then makes a break for Zi-O to try and jab medicine and stimulants into him right through the suit so he can cover Woz even a little bit longer.
Lilian Rook     Petra's intel would have been very helpful if Lilian were fighting as 'a version of Lilian' and not 'Queen Liliana Lycoris'. The fact that she's taken on the persona of an ominous floating dark wizard for the final fight feels vaguely remiscent of     something Rutger said, once.

    Rather than evading it, the wave of fire suddenly halts, twists in around itself, spirals down to a single bright point, and vanishes. Where it'd nearly reached Liliana, an orb of pulsating blackness flickers in thin-air, releasing a two-sided needle of spiral light before bursting into little embers. Kale's headlong rush comes close, then gravity lurches against him, pulling him backward to suddenly slow him, before he's blasted out of the air. The Queen cackles at the sight of it, cradling her face as if thrilled by her own power; or just at the lack of opposition. "You really had no idea, did you? You didn't once question any of my titles! Did playing with my cute little followers give you so much misplaced confidence~?!"

    'And worse. When they finally touch it...They don't even realize it's what they're missing.'

    "But of course, its only the powerful who can miss something, isn't it? If you're weak, if you're pure, then in your humility, you understand everything."

    Liliana snaps her fingers. Redhsifted sparks fly from her nails. A hovering stage hazard black hole opens up in front of one portal. Then another, and another, following the delicate gestures of her other hand, twitching fingertips dragging tangled strings of space together into dark celestial knots almost as fast as the portals are opened. "Do your friends 'know the plan', I wonder~?"

    'All that's hero stuff. And it's... stuff I don't really believe in. Words I don't really believe in.'

    "The second thing I will remove from my perfect world." says Liliana. A swipe of her hand pulls a curving ring of lashing gravity from the singularity, rippling across the Warprunners and Cinder together like a string of cracking whips. "If you were so desperate to face me in glorious battle . . . No, 'Queen Liliana Lycoris' doesn't do that. You're many years too late to face 'that person'." A twist of her wrist and backwards sweep tangle the threads of gravity together and cleave an entire multi-ton corner off the tower lip, arcing back towards Sougo and Woz, with Kale incidentally in the way; the combined wave is so heavy it's difficult to even get away from it without just being dragged into the attack.

    'Hoh? Then by all means, let us play.'

    "Do your best to entertain me, darling." replies the Queen, crossing one hand under the other and firing a beam with two fingers from her blind side. His testing strikes meet the same point-defense distortions as Cinder. Energy attacks are sucked in and obliterated, while his melee attacks are instead yanked aside by miniature black holes appearing to drag them aside. Each one evapourates from its own radiation mere seconds later, as if they were the real thing, but the fact that they can't seem to kill doesn't appear to be diagetic. None of the defensive singularities are bigger than the others; they appear in a regular band of spacing around her, all the same size. "But with all this power you've given me, delaying my work by destroying my materials seems to be no real loss at all~"
Lilian Rook     'All your minions? *You* made me go through them as warm-ups. If you don't get my hundred percent it's because you took *last* bite, and not the first one offered!'

    "Oh my. Pre-excuses, is it? Truly you must be my least favourite meddler left alive." says Queen Liliana. The bitterness is at-minimum in her 'character voice', but there's some sizzle on it. She doesn't look at Blossom, but she can tell that the words are for her. "Don't bother apologizing for her. I won't excuse the way she spoke to Caecilia, and I won't excuse your allegiances either."

    Talk is cheap both ways, however. The Queen catches the massive plasma blooms, but it creates an entire half-spherical wall of mini-singularities to absorb it, tearing the pink apart and pulling it into a hundred tiny voids. Blossom attacking her from the other side hurls a tornado towards her that is sucked right into the same voids while they last; which are behind her. The Queen thrusts out her hand to break the cyclone with an undirected blast of dark energy from her palm, but the wind still hurls her out of the air and slams her to--

    Well. The way she tucks into the impact and disperses it into a double backward roll and handspring into a fighting position probably isn't in-character. That kind of reflex isn't easy to suppress. She brushes herself off and returns to hovering as quickly as possible. "Worm." feels like 'pretend you didn't see that'. Reaching upward and slamming down with both hands, gravity reorients downward and buries the both of them under what must be a thousand gs of force; something that should turn someone to a red smear, but within the bounds of this fight, instead squeezes the air along with the fight out of you. "You should have stayed knelt." fires at Odette, as a slight flattening of the gesture catches her too.

    '<Behold, the totality of human worth.>'

    "And to prove your worthiness over them, you take on the form of a dog~" Queen Liliana returns to tittering, first gliding back out of the way of a spear arm thrust, then twirling around a second, one hand still engaged in holding down gravity. The third is countered with a blast of dark matter, shattering it into pieces; and then she has to throw up both hands instead to create a wall of vortices to contain the barrage of daggers; Lilian knows how the Beauty of Ash doesn't, but the supervillain is seeing the gimmick for the first time, and leaves an opening after already being hit once.

    "You were certainly at your best when you used to be loyal!" With her focus on Petra, she she rolls her fingers and slashes with both wrists to send the defensive singularities at the Beauty of Ash, drowning her in a barrage of hawking-radiation-imploding micro black holes to tear apart the machine and devour its hardlight fragments.
Angela Angela frowns but honestly fear is something Sarracenia should feel more of so she doesn't speak up on Rita's behalf to suggest that she shouldn't be afraid of a sweetie pateetie like Rita. Just a little longer, she thinks.

The horrible murder of Tennant seems to no longer be all that relevant so Angela neglects to mention that Tennant is not dead.

''...if I die, I cannot help anyone else.''

Angela hesitates, and then nods. Sometimes she wishes she could just... But even now she can't help but...

Angela has no idea who Finn is. Ceri hasn't passed on the full roster of Trideag so much as just informs Angela of the general situation with the group but Amgela, gloomily, recalls that at this point maybe even Aidan knows more about the City than she does, somehow. Sure, she has heard a lot and educated herself but that's not the same as walking its streets. When Aidan even says she's right, Angela immediately starts doubting her own words.

Cinder scowls when she sees her fire schlooorped up by--well, what it comes is like the very light has been crushe down into a miniature black hole. If she could corrode on command she could tap into more of the Fourth Match Flame's power but she can't really get that kind of emotional resonance stirred up during a, well, a simulation. She glances over to Petra and adds, to her, quietly, "Do you want to do one of our team attacks...?" She asks, though she's not sure Eighth Match Flames will be a better match than the Beauty of Ash--no, don't doubt yourself, Cinder, she tells herself.

The gravity slams into her left side and then catches her across her right. She gags out spittle as she collapses to her knees, struggling to hold onto the Fourth Match.

''But with all this power you've given me...''

"Huh...?" Cinder asks. "...You mean the uh...flower petals or...?"

She pushes up to her feet, using Fourth Match as a lever as she tries to close in on the Queen, taking quick swings rather than trying to go for a decisive strike.
Kale Hearthward > <The totality of human worth.>

How nice of her, she's holding me up as an example, thinks Kale, who does not get it.

There goes Kale, rushing in at speed.

And there goes Kale, being flung outwards at speed. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

> "Did playing with my cute little followers give you so much misplaced confidence~?!"

"Uh," says Kale, trying to think of an answer that isn't 'yes', failing, and then deciding that silence is probably the better option. "Yes?" Oh, wait, he impulsively said it anyway.

Now...

Picture a dog, chasing cars that are driving down the road. It'll chase cars all day and never manage to catch one. And then suddenly, somehow, it does. And it doesn't know what to do, now that it's caught one.

Kale's got his fight with Lilian. (Or a version of Lilian, at least.) It's been a desire that has been pushed to the backburner, not so much because the desire itself faded, but because he's realized that he won't get it easily, and (to be more charitable) he's matured (at least a bit) and self-examined (at least a bit) why he wants it. And suddenly, he has it. And-

- Well, he's feeling increasingly outclassed.

Queen Liliana Lycoris of the Hungering Star is not Dame Commander Lilian Rook. There's a clear difference in skillsets, fighting styles, and powers - a thought reinforced when she does a cool flip that she clearly wasn't supposed to be able to do. But Lilian wouldn't be the sort to *massively* overinflate her prowess, even for a simulation, if it was her face and sort-of-name in front of it.

So, the dog has caught a speeding automobile. Now what?

Well - surviving, first. The rough landing from the first time he's flung backward isn't outside of his wheelhouse, he can get back up from that easily enough. The incoming gravitational wave, when he's still getting back up onto his feet, followed by the giant chunk of tower... not so much.

(The giant drill sword, by a quirk of localized physics fuckery, isn't any harder to lift under a dozen g's than it is under normal gravity. That is small comfort when the rest of the bird cannot get away.)

Who's around... "Uh - Sougo, Woz, do you got-" They've got something, to slow it down. And as Sougo gets similarly equipped, Kale holds his drill upwards, and breathes out.

Sparkling breath flows out, swirling a lazy circumnavigational path past Kale's wrist on the way to the small engine inside the weapon's hit - and it spins faster and harder, going into overdrive, with a matching strain and drain on its wielder.

"Drill... THROUGH!" he yells. And then, when through, a moment to catch his breath before, like a dog chasing cars that hasn't learned the first time (or every time), he's marshalling his strength and going after Queen Liliana again...
Timespace Riders      Zi-O's hands move in fast-forward once more--the potential futures in which he tries to take it upon himself see him crushed. Those in which he tries to get himself, Woz and Kale clear see them no better, for the massive size of the chunk of scenery headed their way. The only way is--

Drill... THROUGH!

    "Right!Woz! Slow it down!"

    Woz procures a different Miridewatch, one with the face of a wrench-antenna'd robotic warrior. Hastily opening the side-gate on his Beyondriver, he inserts it and slams the gate closed with his palm.

           Future Time! Dekai! Hakai! Gokai! Futurering Kikai! KIKAI!          

    Four golden mechanical manipulator arms spread out wide from a similarly golden circuitboard cuirass, their claws opened to receive the projectile. The impact is that of wrenching metal-on-metal, Woz's boots digging furrows into the blackened arena as sparks fly from sorely taxed motors.

    Meanwhile--

    The LCD chronometer on Zi-O's belt reads AU25 as he likewise rapidly switches forms, with the help of a Ridewatch bearing the striking red-blue likeness of a two-toned, composite Kamen Rider.

                                  ARMOR TIME!                                  
.

                          o/` BUILD-O! o/` Best Match!                          

     The knightly, wristwatch motif of the Zi-O II armor shifts to a more heavy-industry flair, the swept pauldrons now looking more like chemical storage canisters. The helmet's face has clock hands resembling a tank's cannon and a rabbit's ear. Most pressingly, Zi-O's weapon has changed as well, from a regal greatsword to a two-handed drill that looks like it came from the development department of a dubiously civilian laboratory.

    As Woz makes a herculean effort to slow the projectile down, Zi-O makes a battle cry and leaps into the air alongside Kale, the spring on the blue side of his armor tensing and bursting forward to rocket him into the air. The drillsword powers up, its lines blurring, as a yellow corona surrounds him. Cracking through the other side of the hurled chunk of scenery, he puts himself on a collision course with her directly.

    "She is redirecting our physical attacks and absorbing directed energy," Woz calls out to everyone, as the massive projectile is split apart by Kale and Sougo's drilling and his own teeth-gritting push. Heavy fragments rain down in ground-shaking, uneven staccato. "Do as Blossom and Princess have! Attack from multiple angles--force a block in one direction so that *re*direction must still be towards her!" To that end, his mechanical arms begin lifting large fragments of what was thrown his way, hurling them at different speeds and trajectories as he strafes a circle around her. What his arms don't grab, he sends flying her way with the now wrench-tipped Jikan Despear in the occasional surprise attack, to further throw off her rhythm.
Odette Raskins The way Queen Liliana fights isn't anything like Odette was expecting and, somehow, also exactly what she'd expect. She's not fighting like Lilian the Hero would, but as a true dark wizard supervillain that this whole ordeal is centered on. Having seen plenty of wizards and magic users fighting elsewhere, it gives Odette a little more of an idea on what to possibly aim for, but only in theory. In reality, she still needs to actually do something, and that run up to get those meds jabbed into Zi-O doesn't get her any closer to the supervillain before she gets flattened to the ground again.  

As Liliana pins her to the ground with enough force to draw out coughing spasms, however, ODette notices something else about the way She fights. She's doing a lot of hand gestures, presumably to control all that magic at her disposal. All of it seems to be hand gestures, even, including that beam that pierced Odette's shoulder, and the crushing explosions that have followed with the heavier-handed gestures. The flattening force comes with that downwards motion from the Queen that she feels immensely, too, only allowed to breathe again once her attention shifts to the Beauty of Ash.

"H-hands... Gotta-guehk.. She can't keep.. E-every side covered!" The EMT shouts out in a hasty attempt to signal that there might be some kind of limit to the Queen's abilities, and she rolls onto her side before pushing herself off the ground with a pained creaking in her ribs. Stumbling halfway into a sprint, the EMT abruptly trips three steps in, then springs off her hands in an almost panicked state for that moment before continuing to rush ahead.

"I can't kneel forever! I ne... Need to..."  She starts to shout in the same tone she and many a villain have probably heard way too many times from offending heroes, but trails off partway in. She already called out The Queen's apparent weakness, so there's no need to mince words further. Odette just needs to focus in on what to actually do about her here.

The Beauty of Ash has her attention on one side. Cinder's taking swings from straight on, and Kale is coming at her from a similar straightforward direction. That means Odette needs to come in from the other side, but with what? Both she and The Queen know her aim with the sidearm isn't good enough to be a proper threat. No, she needs to use something that could force even Queen Liliana to either split her defenses or use that uncharacteristically agile flipping...

Throwing things. Odette grabs two handfuls of injectors from her bag, sprinting in from the side opposite Zi-O as Woz comes to the same conclusion she had. "Circle around." She mutters as she joins the retainer in circling around Liliana, moving in the same direction as him on the opposite side, hurling those injectors rapid-fire as though she's trying to pump her full of... Medicine? It's all medicine, normally meant to heal wounds and stabilize blood clots in controlled doses, but terrible side-effects and sneezing fits if overdosed in the way that Odette's aiming for at that moment.
Powerpuff Girls Blossom doesn't get to cutely maneuver through good words and clean hands through the problems put before her, and certainly isn't feeling like solely a match for the supervillainess before her. Much of her unease, the sickness she feels, is understanding steadily as she is expounded upon (and pounded upon, as gravitics go) the fullest scope of the challenge.

'Don't bother apologizing for her.'

"Allegiance seems to be why I'm here at all. That, and power. Sometimes, it's a shame how far being powerful and wrong can take you." Blossom observes, arms out and air-stopped with the tips of her shoes pressed against the lip of a crater like the empty space behind her was a fulcrum that could weigh against the world. Ripples of air flutter her long orange ponytail, the little indestructible red bow tying it more untouched than the Puff's cheek - or the warped twistings where her sleeves had experienced the same gravitational shear forces that cracked planets and bent beams of light.

"But in most worlds, I'm probably wrong this way." Blossom decides, doing an acrobatic flip over one of Liliana's swept out lasers, suffers another dark matter blast like one might a haymaker to the torso that leaves a spiral impression, and landing in time to spot the Witch-Queen's rather martial roll and recovery, pausing just long enough to hit 'neutral flying' with a deeply wincing wariness that tracks Liliana until she's reset in the air. Nursing her stomach for a moment with an arm, Blossom takes a second to breathe and take stock.

Calling Odette a 'worm' is free! It's like tagging back in in wrestling. Mostly. For Blossom.

Princess doesn't do a whole lot of waiting, but also has a lot harder of a time doing anything in the face of Liliana's zoning wall of singularities. Kicking back and into the air as ripples of force lash about her, Princess 'returns fire' in a further force-to-force matching as she throws heat and pink crackle in blazing cones to anti-air gravity projectiles and realizes the singularity witch's shots penetrate instead of dissipate in the scramble and is crashed into with waves of gold sparks and pink crackle thrown off of her in rough X'es of damage. Pushed back and rolling into a radioactive crater scooped out earlier, Princess doesn't need the suit alerts of !!High Radiation!! flashing in her eyes to see that she's been thrown on her back in a glowing crater that makes her skin itch and the warm cross-shaped rip in the top of her gold leading to black underlayer and circuit-pattern internals exposed -- and should probably leave.

Princess doesn't get to see the Martial Focus stand from Prone, but perhaps she doesn't deserve it. Shoving herself up on a gloved hand that melts the floor beneath her worse, Princess struggles to escape the hot jello cup of pillar arena, shaking off melted floor while getting back up to speed and circling at growing velocity.

"Sorry." Princess sneers, at the person least liked left alive. "That I'm a veteran villain!" Princess claims, about to make a maneuver when she's hit with thousands of gravities of force, her super speed hitting the leading plane of the effect and crashing through it like water for a moment. The whole arm and side of her armor erupts into a black back-shading blur under a bloom of pink and gold. Then, like water, she's through the diffuse scattering of energy far worse for wear with much of the upper body gold of her armor and down her sleeve on one side patched in splotches of black undersuit. Cracks across her crystal visor render illegible parts of her visor display, but she's through, and running for Blossom.
Powerpuff Girls Blossom, with her own super speed, instead lands planted under the thousands of gravities of pressure and waits while holding her own weight up and pressing as much force as she can down and away from herself. It's Princess picking up all the speed, and all. When Morbucks charges right in under less-than-super speed, Blossom reaches out a hand and --

--begins to spin Morbucks around, using the weight on her to start putting all her reduced absolute power behind one hell of a hammer toss. While that's charging - not more than three go-arounds! - the girls have a moment to speak in the speed force.

"Are you sure you're good for this?"
"Of course I am??" Princess scoffs. "I think Cinder will *literally* die if I don't get Liliana!"
"No, I mean," Blossom can't sigh in a meaningful way in conversation going this fast. She squints instead.

"Are you being 'good', for this?"

Letting Princess go, Blossom slings Morbucks towards Liliana at escape velocity and the crackling plasmamancer somehow remembers she was going to 'punch' Liliana. This is a good dream, but the truth is that she is more offensively cannonballed into Liliana at a cartoonish relative velocity and the thought of how impact was going to happen was more mental.
Yuuki Kuran In the viewing stands, a large tub of seasoned pop corn with a black hole motif covered in hot sauce butter that rendered the corns drenched in red (for motif! it's not blood!) has sat idle getting cold while a rather fat bat to sleep standing on the edge and rested against the chair behind. It might seem like a placeholder, until, just before the start of the fight...

The fat bat starts eating pepcorns one at a time, chonching on the big greasy kernals with a small animal deliberance. It's a lot of popcorn for one (somewhat sized) bat! It's a whole singularity of flavor!

Eventually, though, Kuran Yuuki appears in a flutter of wingbeats and a collection of butterflies and bats, until the shadows of their colocation congeal into a person. Wearing a white top and silver cross necklace over a black skirt with belt and leggings, she seems out rather casually.

Being held out a large red-drenched kernel of popcorn by the bat, Yuuki takes the treat with a smile, and crunches a treat herself. "Angela, did you hear any of them ask why the Concord stayed outside and watched except for you? I mean, even you watched! Of course we were happy to offer any support she wanted, but... I wondered if they said! Anyway, I left this little one to watch in my stead for a meeting, so I didn't miss the part where she unleashed her ultimate Black Hole Level 99X power. Her 'yami no chikara', or however Kuroto says it! He's got the best words for it."

Offering her pepcorn blackhole bucket down to the other spectators, Yuuki gets out a foam reaper scythe with the words 'DEATH' stenciled on in the messed up Nordic-Japanese runes there are native to her world.

"I couldn't miss this part, she's built up to this recital for a while."
Petra Soroka     Unfortunately for Odette, Petra's estimation for how useful of a defensive pillar she'd be was somewhat off. Against these psychically-softened singularities, the best service the Beauty of Ash can provide is body-blocking, and as gangly and translucent as it is, it isn't the best for that either.

    That isn't to say that it crumples into the black holes thrown its way, though. Telekinetic tug-of-war hauls fragments of the Beauty of Ash back against the gravity of the singularities, only managing to hemorrhage matter slower and stall out the timer until they dissipate. Eruptions of crystalline hardlight stay locked in the air where Liliana peeled them off of the mech, like spikes of clay pulling off the surface of it from the pinch of a gravitational hand.

    The Beauty of Ash skids to a stop on all fours, scraping against the granite with the sound of glass nails on a chalkboard. Vantablack energy clings to the chips and pits carved in its surface, prismatically scattering un-light through the three-dimensional space. The glittering storm of crystal fragments trying to find an angle to sweep through Liliana's point defenses and score some hits all pull back and snap into the Beauty of Ash, tiny slivers fitting into cracks where they can.

"And to prove your worthiness over them, you take on the form of a dog~"

    <It's not a dog!!> The floating trio of hardlight crystals that form the Beauty of Ash's 'ears' flick like a dog's, rattling against each other like windchimes. <And if it was, then that *would* prove my superiority *anyways*. But I don't need to prove anything.>

"You were certainly at your best when you used to be loyal!"

    <During the entire assault on Cinniuint, everyone keeps saying that.> The Beauty of Ash moves practically unhindered by the larger inversions of gravity, launching itself towards Liliana like a jousting lance no matter how oppressive the looming black hole's gravity gets. Twisting upside-down through the air, shattering at a stop on a dime and doubling back for a second charge accompanied by a hailstorm of glass, the field of infinite gravity or no gravity are equally accounted for. <Doubting whether I'm loyal, talking about me betraying them. You, Caecilia, and especially all of my allies.>

    <But this entire time, I've done everything *right*. I've done everything the way I meant to do it. I didn't say anything I didn't mean and wouldn't stick by. I haven't had to compromise with myself on anything, even when other people disagree.>

    <I'm the *most* loyal one here,> The Beauty of Ash lands on the ground and wheels around, leveling the twin prongs extending from its giant shoulders at Liliana. A vacuum entirely unlike the ones already dotting the battlefield swells into existence between them, suspended over its head. <Because I'm the only one taking you *seriously*, Queen Liliana!!>

    Without a dramatic tooth-rattling thrum or an accompanying explosion, a streak of blinding white light cuts through the black and orange towards Liliana. Impacting with nothing but the sound of glass tinkling and an afterimage seared into the backs of eyelids, the impact feels like a black hole superimposed on a higher dimension. Ego is dragged across the invisible event horizon and crumpled into the infinite dissociative void in the center, dulling the world of color that light can't illuminate, devouring the 'you' that inhabits your body and leaving it directionless, senseless, and empty.
Angela Angela, upon being confronted by a fat bat eating popcorn, slowly turns her head to stare at the creature. Bloodfiends in her world do not get the 'turn into a cute critter' power, as far as she knows, so she isn't actually clear this is Yuuki until she poofs on in in a flurry of butterflies and bats. Angela tries to imagine someone being composed of multiple creatures. Are butterflies typically associated with vampires?

Wait, Angela thinks. She is in sports manga thinking mood so the action and world slows down around her as she overanalyzes the situation. Spoilers!! Angela is always thinking in sports manga time. The Director seems to be suggesting the bat is more a familiar, a semiautonomous critter she can swap places with. Or perhaps she can transform a familiar into a new body for herself and simply transplant her mind within it? What would happen to the old Yuuki's body, however?

"Well...Sougo and Woz are participating and so are my agents, though I myself cannot participate since I am not an aspiring heroine. Also the Dame Commander promised to let me read the lore bible of the scenario so I do not want to participate directly. A lot of work went into this that I cannot appreciate as someone taking the test. So I shall jot."

She pauses and adds, "Though I do not believe anyone asked the question in of itself. Ah but if you mean in the sense of working under the Dark Queen? Phony's friends assisted but I suppose I have not seen Phony. Perhaps she is the secret super final boss?"

She gives a half shrug. "I am glad you are here. It is good company." She pauses a moment, wondering id she should tell the Director she maybe sort of sent a hit squad after Sarracenia. ......... Well she can always tell her after the fact, she reasons. "I do not know what a yami no chikara is, but wouldn't a 99 times more powerful black hole obliterate everyone spectating as well?"

Well not Angela she isn't actually here but even so.
Yuuki Kuran 'Sougo and Woz are participating,'

Yuuki blinks her large red-brown eyes owlishly, two pieces of popcorn in her fingers and one in her mouth as she :o-faces. The director's clean hand smacks her in her cheek. "That's *right*!" Yuuki gasps, astonished, like she had been so cleverly clever and confidently wrong this whole time, and then laughs it off.

"Well, I'm sure those darling boys couldn't help but want to see the trial to the end on their 'path to kingship'. I bet Ganondorf and Bowser are just getting refreshments before returning, I'm sure the pair and Ivo are sure to already be plotting something in the snack line. But don't they know - it's better to save your seat and pace your snacks out!" Yuuki carries on like she didn't just forget the plain truth right before her.

Then again, she also has several brooding male secretaries to remember things for her (and was herself currently somewhere else, as Angela might surmise or guess at her appear-out-of-thin-air-trick).

"It'd be terrible to miss any part of it. I'm so glad you'll be going over the lore of this with her afterwards, she spent so much effort on it. This whole production, well... It feels like a movie! And I'd love to spend my time with the artbook too."

A gleam takes Yuuki's large eyes as she scooches in to grin conspiratorially at Angela, full of energy. "Or the light novel! I might have time to read if it's good!"

It's good that Angela doesn't tell Yuuki about Sarracenia. 'We put someone in the race and then they died' would make her extremely sad. Right now she's rooting for death and yami no chikara!

"It's a way to talk about certain powers. And-" Imitating Genm for a moment, Yuuki seems both more cuttingly hard as well as several steps more of a cartoon. "Ninety-nine" Noine-tee-noine. "X." Ecksu. "The variable X is actually an unknown variable, unlimited, not just an exponential, like a mere ten digits would be." She even does a 'huhuhu'.

"It would be 'to attain all the known levels, and then to have power beyond' - that's Ninety Nine X!" Yuuki puts her foam scythe on her lap before settling popcorn bowl (and fat bat) back onto it. "Or something to that effect. It's a feeling, not a direct comparison. Maybe she's that much more powerful because a whole black hole is contained perfectly within her. Ninety Nine X is mysterious."
Lilian Rook     'Huh...? ...You mean the uh...flower petals or...?'

    "Oh you fool. Did you never even ask why the Royal Consigner would take payment from what anyone can already find around the castle?"

    Queen Liliana doesn't wear armour. Whether that means she's vulnerable to swords, or whether she simply detests the idea of letting lowly Cinder sully her skin, is unknowable. Even though Cinder's slashes aren't especially well-aimed at a vital point or using much built-up power, she deflects each and every one of them, repelling flame and blade with a smugly dismissive look on her face.

    "Did you think you're just that naturally likeable? Or did you not question what was going on for even a second~ You liked my cute little consigner so much that you let her kill two of your own. Don't you think that might have been a trap I laid~?" the Queen says over the exorbitant waste of energy that is keeping the barrage of speed-focused slashes at bay to monologue while still pushed back by the Beauty of Ash.

    'I can't kneel forever! I ne... Need to...'

    "You have no use but to kneel." The Queen huffs in irritation, thrusting her latest parrying singularity towards Cinder, within range of tearing her jacket and throwing her on the ground, so that she can get her orbits free to sweep up Odette's syringes, batting them out of the air as if by swatting them aside with a slash. "How dare you presume." she hisses, using the briefly reversed output of gravity to throw the broken syringes back at Odette in a shotgun burst, having to turn her back to the others while the black hole she'd used on Cinder sputters out on the end of its timer. "If you can't kneel any longer then I'll simply remake you as someone who can."

    'Sometimes, it's a shame how far being powerful and wrong can take you.'

    "Darling, no one in existence is right." says the Queen, sighing as if it were a regretful trifle. "Everyone, everywhere, always, is wrong about something; and so the measure of the world becomes only 'how far being powerful can take you'."

    'That I'm a veteran villain!'

    "And your groping for it is why you fall in so well with the rest."

    The hyperspeed swingaround maneuver obviously catches her off-guard. She knew it was going to be a problem when she had to release them, and she's already lost too much momentum dealing with Petra, Cinder, and Odette; but the choice of double team maneuver is problematic for a very simple reason. The expiring black holes are thrown through Princess' plasma blasts to batter her and keep her at bay while she reaches to grip Odette and squeeze her until she feels like she'll explode in a complex web of constricted spacetime, but the physical slingshot requires her to physically reposition and gesture faster than Princess is moving and respond to it with the powers 'Liliana' has and not the one she doesn't.
Lilian Rook     She fails. She doesn't even partially deflect it. Princess slams into her at mach speed and the two tumble into the ground so hard that it scrapes the surface inches off the stone. You hear a sharp intake of breath and uncommon vocalization after the crack and grind, and then a strained sound through grit teeth as the Queen(?) reflexively grabs Princess, pulls her head under her arm during her roll, and uses the momentum to hurl her aside into one of the standing flanges as a backstop. With her dress ripped all down one side, making for Action Cut exposed thigh (bleeding), Liliana drags herself up to her feet, partially slouched at the shoulder, and wipes a smear of pink from her mouth on the back of her hand. Her lipstick hasn't smudged.

    "Villain . . . ? Darling, you're the absolute worst sort of bad." Liliana spits off to the side. "The kind that isn't even sick."

    Lilian can't actually turn off being built tough, but if her character were a fragile sorceress, surely she'd play to the part, right? So it's strange when Woz's wave of attacks is being repelled by blasts of dark gravity, one after the other, until she adapts to his process and begins dragging a long 'ribbon' of staggered black holes around her, catching his projectiles in their wake and accelerating them out of her orbit into battered Sougo, Cinder, Odette, and incoming Kale.

    Not about to chance a repeat, she braces with both hands before impact, bites down and squares her shoulders as a wrench strikes her, tearing away a piece of dress and revealing-- crisscross scars? under the injury? "I can hear you 'strategizing', imbecile." Liliana hisses, gathering energy from the singularity behind her, and waiting until the last second to counter Kale at point blank.

    <I'm the *most* loyal one here>

    "Not to me, and not to Caecilia; and those are the only loyalties of value in this world."

    <Because I'm the only one taking you *seriously*, Queen Liliana!!>

    At the last moment, as the rumbling howl of the Hungering Star grows to be nearly deafening, Queen Liliana Lycoris cackles from the bottom of her chest, and shouts over the silent roar, "Perhaps~! But let's see you withstand this first!"

    She times Kale's final approach with a titanic blast over overpenetrating energy that carves a furrow through the tower, and hits the Beauty of Ash behind him. It's easily the strength that levelled the Warprunners' tower, if not even more powerful for its lack of elegance.

    Periactus being immune to gravity isn't something Lilian even knew though; it never came up. She hasn't quite realized that she's trading blows with Kale until the very last second.

    'The Queen' reduces the damage on reflex by throwing herself back and away with a burst of gravity assisted acceleration, but the mutual impact still sends her flying off the edge of the tower as well, clipping one of the cloven flanges on her way out, tearing open another bloody window of old scars, just before she catches the edge with her fingers out of raw instinct. She still finds the strength to laugh uproariously from the edge. "Now you're finally beginning to excite me! Perhaps it is time for--"

    Her eyes shoot wide open, pupils dilating in dread realization.

    "Wait Petra don't--!"
Angela "I suspect many of us in the Concord who identify as 'villains' wouldn't feel a bit awkward taking a hero's role but..."

She trails off as Yuuki starts talking about X as a variable and all the power levels of the black hole. She focuses first on the easier topic to comment on

"...Yes..." her fists tighten in her lap. "...Ah there were certainly some striking visuals."

She wonders why Yuuki is grinning at her like that and, once again, wonders why she treats her like she's an equal, if perhaps an equal in need of mentoring. A machine must be as a machine. She doesn't know how to deal with it or with the energy or the way at looking at the world through such a comprehending and relaxed lens.

"...If you do not have time to read it, I was asked not to share it but I suppose if it is a story you have access to and there simply is not enough time I could perform a dictation."

To obtain all levels, she thinks, or to obtain all knowledge.

"I wonder if such mastery gets a touch lonesome." Angela wonders aloud.
Lilian Rook     Once upon a time, that weapon was fired at Lilian Rook.

    Its horrible war-sibling, perhaps. A version borne of cruelty and malice far greater than Petra's for its sheer apathetic blindness.

    Out of all the other Elites gathered, she was the most blindingly vulnerabl to its effects. If there'd ever been a silver bullet for her, that had been the closest.

    Not for the reason that it would kill her, however.

    Out of all the Elites that had been there, she was the only one to pull herself back together from the infinitesimal indivisible particulate of identity that the eversion leaves in its wake.

    A normacausitive pressure weapon she'd loathed, despised, and been shaken by, but learned well enough from the first time; she has no reason to fear it so much a second time.

    She'd called out to Petra by name because of where the both of them are.

    A normacausitive pressure weapon being fired in a normacausitive pressure zone so carefully modulated at such a low value that it can permit the sustained existence of a black hole borne of Persephone's limitless power and her own imagination.

    One she had already made ready for the final stage just miutes away.

    Lilian blinks away from the impact, being nowhere near the horrifying gouge-mark in the world; 'leaving behind' thin air in the void of meaning and causality, as she does.

    §Lilian too§ turns §her§ head, fixing you through the glassy breach in §her§ infrablack gaze with not quite enough surprise. A pitch dark grin splits the featureless fuzzy white void of §her§ face; a smile that Lilian never smiles, but always could.

    The words that come to you form without the movement of §her§ lips; meanings that are forced into your mind with the paradoxical sense of being rendered deaf and mute in an airless vacuum, where they condense on the inside of your skull and drip chill rivulets down your spine; tracing the curvature of raw and primal nerves with the bated breath of a lover's fingers, greedily drinking in the sensation of communicating to parts of you that were never wired to understand.

    §<<Oh~? Are you all really, truly, so <instiable> to taste <deadly sickness/cold reality> that even this <simulacrum/second coming> is ju~st <too little/too late>? If you're so <hurried/eager> to meet 'me', then it can only be that you won't be <satisfied/pacified> with just <battle>, right~?>>§

    §<<Right~!?>>§

    §She§ barely flickers on the spot. Not like 'Lilian'. The gap is visible, and the gap is also no gap at all, merely 'partially' existing for less than the blink of an eye. In the viewing room, §her§ hands; more than §she§ has, latch on to Sarracenia's arms, waist, and throat, and drag her shamelessly from the chair, as if down to hell. The touch is lukewarm static and poisoned anodyne, flaying nerves as it numbs them.

    §<<I'll be <borrowing> 'this'~>>§ §she§ says, in two places at once, plucking Angela's viewing pad from the seat next to her, and leaving only just barely enough time for Aidan to potentially grab on to Sarracenia before both of them appear on screen.

    It all happens in an instant; the words are all instantaneous. It's over before even the staff can process that anything has happened. Dangling Sarracenia by the wrist like a plush animal, §Exigent Serenity§ spreads §her§ arms, mimes breathing in the hellish vacuum of the Eversion Cannon as if it were sweet fresh air, and then re-opens §her§ eyes to upturned slits to look at you.

    §<<Then I'll gladly <answer/elucidate/give it to you raw>.>>§