Scene Listing

||

Scene Schedule

||

Scene Schedule RSS

Owner	Pose
Marigold	CASTLE EDESSA, ILIA      In the middle of a foolproof plan.      There is a light rain that can't make up its mind whether it wants to be gritty snow. The sun shines through thin gray clouds. The cold seaside air smells like crisp wet earth.      It's a weather that isn't appropriate or inappropriate for anything. You've probably lived a hundred days like it, but for its meaninglessness no-one ever writes about it; it is a symbol of nothing. Heaven neither smiles upon nor frowns upon you.      That ambiguity is, at least for Cath and Raigh, the most unsettling thing.      They share a glance, before Raigh is forced to share a rooftop hidey-place with the man he won't call father, and Cath has to step into Flamel's mind to guide him. It says as much.      Although, what they actually say with their lips is: "Don't die in there, okay?" "Me? You don't get Parsons killed in there." "You're the one I had to rescue." "You're the-- nevermind." "Dummy." "Stuck-up."      Melady, dressed-down as merely a messenger from Galle rather than Galle himself (after panicked bargaining Nobunaga down), holds her breath as she descends through the cloud layer with Petra. Niime clings to the younger women a little tighter, but Lugh did sabotage the ballistas as-hoped-for, and her wyvern's silhouette reads 'friendly' anyway.      She lands on the rooftop and disembarks, making small talk with the bored Bernish guards to keep their eyes off the blonde girl and suspiciously dark-mage-coded crone. Nearby, Maddie's able to scale the wall to give a bit more overwatch to Niime, but it'd be unwise to pop up roofside until the guards thin a bit...      Odette and Roland have been working in the kitchens for the last couple days. They've heard tell of 'that useless dark mage'- Lugh, of course- being confined to the dungeons. That means Flamel's on Plan B. Today's a work-day for them too, prepping bland slop for the prisoners in the cellars below and slightly-less-bland cheese and bread for the Bernish sergeants.      Nobunaga's dwarf minion in the cellars has been able to warn Juno and Lugh that rescue is coming, and to cooperate with it, but it wasn't long until they were sequestered in different cells.      Talia the traitorous Blackwing is of course let in the front gate, after a conversation with the guards that- from the hundred-feet-distant shaded rooftop vantage Lucius has with the waiting frontal-assault team- seems nervewrackingly long. There's little way to tell the difference between 'pleasantries' and 'interrogation' from this distance.      You can see the tension in Talia's shoulders as she walks in, though. One way or another, this is the end of an era in her life. That little village out west would be proud of her, one can hope.      Neon's hired ship is visible a couple thousand feet away, not-long-from-now to pass by as a cliff-dive extraction option. With the gate opened, Lucius has line-of-sight to the inner courtyard; he lifts his warp staff to infiltrate Riku on his signal, on standby along with Ace to handle the dragon.      Lilian can make her own way in stealthily; the less-sneaky members of the frontal assault team can wait until it gets loud with their long-distance line-of-sight, or chance slipping closer to the walls.      Everything's converging just-so. It's like the last few minutes before an eclipse. Hold your breath. No steps out-of-line.      - - - -      There's an exact instant where it goes wrong.
Marigold	Just as Flamel's approaching Niime, and Lilian's infiltrating the central courtyard to go where she pleases, and Petra's disembarking the wyvern and Maddie might consider hoisting herself up from the edge, a door creaks open from the adjoining tower onto the wall-rooftop with the ballistae.      Out comes a Bernish sergeant who's nervously cracking a joke that you can only hear the back half of- "--really makes me wish I hadn't sold my horse, haha! ... You know?"- and, behind him and ahead of the small handful of his men carrying empty crates down probably-towards the treasury, the unamused visitor he's trying to appease.      Out by Lucius on that rooftop, the frontal team can see a splash of bright-blue hair.      "Spare me, Pavel," the 'chalcedony devil' Sigrun says. Her gaze is laser-straight ahead as she swishes past him. There's just enough time to seem like she'll pass the rooftop team by, but before heartbeats can slow, the click-clack of her hard boots comes to a sudden stop.      Her sole-visible, cold cold eye slides past the drab-disguised Melady to Niime and Petra. Flamel's facial-recognition-jamming psychic effect only halfway lodges in her brain. Her cheek twists with a funny feeling.      "Don't I know you from somewhere?" she asks the two of them. Melady, uninvolved, still goes stiff and quiet. Niime's calmer; she just smiles in her impish old-woman way.      "Oh, no. I think I'd remember having met you!"      "No, it's the strangest feeling. Hold still and I'll..."      "Now, perhaps you've seen me in--"      "Quiet."      That one cold blue eye tightens. Recognition almost glimmers. Her hand flexes.      Deep in Sigrun's brain-stem the fuse to a stick of dynamite has been lit.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's montage-ized process cleanly links, in his memory, with what happens next. If you examined his mind, there would be a seamless lack of gap between his explanation and the actual events, right down to the narration.     "But no plan ever survives contact with the field." He had explained. "Two dragons, maybe. Something dropped at the wrong time. Or a badly-timed visit." His voice had spoken, around the time in the plan where his eyes drew onto Sigrun and her higher resistance to the facial obfuscation. In the present, he's freezing. He's silent. "When it's time, you need to be ready to improvise, and you need to be able to improvise *decisively*. Can't have contingencies for everything."     <Sigrun on me. I've got almost nothing, her mental countermeasures are too active for me to work with and her facial recognition is too deep in the spine.> He broadcasts tensely. <Lucius, maybe something with your warp staff, *anyone*, if you've got ideas...!> His temple gleams softly with a short click, gut-fear surging and readied to act himself... There's *one* plan he has, but there's plenty of risk in it. A sneaky little telekinetic hand moves to fire one of the sabotaged ballistae and get Sigrun into a fury about poorly-maintained defenses (alongside crowding the roof and causing more combat-readiness in the building).
Riku Asakura	Riku grabs the Fusion Riser in one hand and has capsules ready in the other.  He's prepared to be teleported in and immediately transform into Ultraman Geed.  He looks at Lucius and nods, indicating that he's ready to be teleported in once they have the signal to go loud from Flamel or Lilian.  He's ignorant of Sigrun's presence in the castle, as nobody has said anything over the radio yet.   Riku himself is still dressed as he was for the meeting.  Long leather coat with a hood to keep the rain out of his face and hair.  He's got jeans underneath the coat and a pair of sneakers.  Things are about to go when they get the mental message from Flamel.   "Maybe send me in, my distraction might cause her to ignore the situation unfolding?" he asks and transmits over the mental field.  It would mean, however, dealing with both a dragon AND Sigrun at the same time... and he simply did not like those odds.  He himself isn't confident in this plan, so what could he expect to do? But standing around doing nothing doesn't accomplish anything.  The Geed Motto.  So he's ready to get teleported and then transform the moment he needs to.
Angela	"Don't like this." Roland says to Parker (who is acting as unpaid assistant for Roland). "Yeah they don't even feed their mercs well. You'd think they'd at least give them some chicken nuggets." "They aren't mercs and---you hate chicken nuggets, you said you're worried about dinosaur curses." "Well these are the bad guys...!" Parker hisses at Roland. "They don't believe in dinosaur curses. They believe in dragon curses which is made up." Roland isn't so sure about that. "Anyway, I just mean I ''could'' make something better with these ingredients they actively said I should water down the broth and there's nothing for spices and there was a rat in one of the cupboards--it's not right. You think they'll notice if I sprinkle in a little extra salt?" "Just keep it hot." Parker suggests. "They're going to make their move today." 'Keeping the slop hot' is relevant because the fact of the matter is... Roland and Parker can't that readily sneak in weapons so they had to leave their 'good shit' behind. Instead, Parker has confiscated the sharp knives and has given a couple to Roland and one to Odette. Helpfully, Parker has shown Odette her preferred method for stabbing people in the face. "You got the bread ready, Odette?" Parker asks. "The faster we can get the bread in their bellies the better." This is because Parker, Roland, and Odette have decided to poison the bread today! It was a bit of an off the cuff improvisation to make the Plan work out a little easier. They left the which poison to use up to Odette, Roland meanwhile just disguised the taste with the power of baking. And so off they go, Parker sticking with Odette to help deliver the poisoned bread. Roland is making his way down to the cellars with the slop soup.
Nobunaga	No Bu No Bu No Bu     It had taken a whole workforce of the little homunculi soldiers the better part of a day, painstakingly lifting and transferring rocks, to uncover/excavate a route for one to wriggle through. They all extinguished their lights except the one who squirmed forth with a little hard hat and a head lamp (and still the golden sunburst crest). It emerged on the other side with a little *pop* and a Nobu!-- right into the hands of waiting Bernish guards. In the awkward pause, the little soldier had closed its eyes and rubbed at the back of its head nervously, Nob nobu?     Smash cut to Now, Nobbu In Prison. Nobunaga has already relayed her message to Juno and Lugh, and now the little homunculus has been moved to its own cell by itself. The eyes light up, casting crimson light as the creature glances about. After assessing its surroundings, the light fades.     In the same moment, crimson glow fades from Nobunaga's eyes and she glances up at the castle from her hiding spot. Waiting in this uncommitted rain sucks, but at least she has her cape to keep the water off and break up her silhouette, "I could order the Nobbu to explode, but that would draw attention in the wrong direction." Eyes shifting towards Riku, she nods once, water dribbling off the brim of her cap, "Might be our best option to pull the Ultraman trigger early."     Her eyes shift back to the castle, "At the very least, once Sigrun takes flight, my soldiers may be able to keep her busy. Gunfire is a lot harder to guard against than arrows." In the bushes around her, as if they had always been there, more Nobbu soldiers peek out from behind cover, under bushes, and even one popping out of a badger burrow with a bunch of leaves and branches tied to its hat.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine is one heave shy of cresting the rooftop when Sigrun speaks. The huntress freezes. Half-perched atop the frame of a window or arrow slit, half-danging from one hand between crenelations, is not a good spot to be when a keen enemy makes an entrance. But there's barely even time to think. She hauls herself over the edge to huddle behind a ballista while its crew is turned away to salute their commanding officer (whether the Bernish captain or Sigrun herself), and her choice of cover finally gives her a glimmer of an idea.     Grasping her knife in both hands, she reaches up to the war machine's cables, sets the blade against one of them, and drags downward, sawing through the twisted cord of sinew in a single motion. Under as much tension as it is, a sudden snap of the cord will tear the machine apart entirely, harming its attendant crew in an apparent mechanical dysfunction. In the chaos, she tumbles forward to cover behind another, less exploded ballista, paying no heed for now to whatever horrible splinters she just got from the blast. Hopefully it's enough to grab Sigrun's focus, especially if any of these crewmen are Ilian and not all Bernish imports...
Odette Raskins	"I don't think dinosaurs had curses back then. Heck, I'm pretty sure even the smartest chickens nowadays are still using knives. And for any dinosuar curses to still be working today... They'd have to be as strong as the weapons from the Sundering to last this long. M-maybe even stronger...?" That's a thought Odette was really hoping not to have today. Even though she's deep undercover, she's still able to find time to banter with Roland and Parker. She feels right at home working in the kitchen of Castle Edessa, too, even though she's way more used to baking than soup and stove work. She's been working closely with Roland and Parker throughout the whole planning process, too, although they might have noticed that she's been keeping her distance from Roland whenever anyone else would be looking. It's particularly deliberate when the other kitchen staff happen to ask her anything about him, too, going as far as acting like she's annoyed at him for no discernible reason, almost like she's acting out something in one of her shows. Knowing that Lugh's in the dungeon helps focus the medic through those days, too. Knowing that an escape will have to happen sooner rather than later, Odette's taken the initiative to start memorizing floor layouts and gather up local herbs to supplement the supplies she snuck in to prepare for the big day. "We still need more bowls! We've got plenty of spoons, but we can't serve this stuff one spoon at a time!" It's on this very day that Odette's started putting her supplies to good use. "The bread? O-oh, coming right up!" She calls out, balancing a tray full of delectable-looking dinner rolls overhead while shimmying out of the way of someone else coming through with a pot of slop. Part of her feels a little bad about lacing the bread with all manner of drugs and debilitating, but otherwise non-fatal poisons since she's actually put a lot of work into making the bread look particularly good! It's just also really likely to convince someone to sleep for a few hours, throw up yesterday's dinner, start seeing things that aren't there, or some combination of all three. She passes off some of that bread to Parker while plying some of the guards herself with plenty of expert bread-cutting and cheese-spreading action! Hopefully, she won't need to actually put Parker's face-stabbing lessons or all those knives hidden under her skirt to good use.
Lilian Rook	Though the increase in risk is of a great magnitude than the difference it makes to do so, Lilian completes her tactical insertion with less than half of her armour. 'Lugh as hostage' is the sort of stake where even a modest reduction in already eerily mild noise feels irresponsible not to make concessions for. With things being what they are, Lilian perceives too many weak links that are not herself to take her time with a plausible disguise and careful mental influence on each guard; speed is of the essence, which means no speaking, no ambushes, and no being seen at all.     Dispensing with even a cloak, affording herself no more protection than the innermost base layer, breastplate, and hand protection of her armour, Lilian 'hides' in any corridor empty at the time, taking doors only when they're opened, and taking stairwells all in one stretch. She paces herself to a level of negligible causal strain, touching and moving nothing where it can remotely be helped, divining, constantly, each fork in the paths ahead of her. If she really must be where anyone else is, it's higher than the torches or the windows get. The natural flow of people around an established castle is quicker to follow than trying to lead away or take down individual human obstacles.     It's all very smooth, up until the exact instant it isn't; and it isn't even one of the Elites fucking up, either. The broadcast she picks out of the air from Flamel fills her with a kind of dread certainty even before she fully grasps the situation.     §It's not her face. The last time we met her was a battlefield; the way she'd recognize us is-- posture, motions, physical tics, gravity; that sort of thing.§     She has no real basis to say so, considering 'strong will' would be just as good an explanation, and she doubts that anyone else knows how to do anything about it, but it's the first, gut-dropping fact that leaps out of her; if Flamel is using her data to do it, then that's exactly how she would recognize someone.     §Seriously. What do you expect me to do about it? Run all the way up there and karate chop her in the back of the skull? Can't you improvise even a little?§     Both grateful for the progress she's made and resentful for how much more there is to go, Lilian quickly accepts the present reality and decides that there's nothing to do but push. Taking a few seconds to herself to brace, stabilizing mind and body, letting her latest exhalation taper away into nothing, she gathers up the longest buffer she can, and--
Lilian Rook	-----[stop]-----     Takes the closest door, leaving it open behind her. No one is looking, and these things are designed to swing closed under their own weight anyways; a deviation louder or quieter is more noticeable.                 -----[start]-----     --and--                 -----[stop]-----     Hustles down the stairs on foot, taking them three at a time, hand hovering over the rail. Hovering and intangibility are magic; both distinctly so, and thus obvious to a nearby dragon.                 -----[start]-----     --and--                 -----[stop]-----     Paces a quick round of the corridors that run through the cells, mapping them out once and mentally sorting their occupants and relevant exits. No use exfiltrating blind.                 -----[start]-----     --before pausing behind a blind corner to stop and focus instead on the idle thoughts of nearby soldiers. 'Cooling down' while she searches, Lilian refrains from actively searching for as long as she can-- magic, again, versus 'psychic'. She wants to pick up anything that points out a warden; or someone with keys, so she can--                 -----[stop]-----     Walk right up and take two off the ring by precognitive intuition. Much less likely to be noticed than instantly losing half a pound of weight off one side.                 -----[start]-----
Petra Soroka	Petra's fondness for the cold last time seems to vanish when she's on a wyvern, submerged in damp snowy clouds soaking her to the bone, and it's twenty degrees cooler and windy. She's wearing her typical accidentally Bernish-coded white with red and gold accents and her adventurer's pants, but her outerwear is all bought from Edessa itself to more easily come across as a faceless everywoman. Scarf pulled up over her face, cloak hood up, Petra clings to Melady's back, enamoured by the rare gaps in the clouds that let her see the sea and city below. A cord of Silver wraps around her and Niime like a seat buckle, securing them to the wyvern.     As frigid as she is, though, there's one topic that gives Petra warmth while babbling to Melady mid-air. "Okay, b-but, like-- you totally said *again* about disguising yourself as Galle. And doing a v-*voice* is, like, *so* much. Does that actually *work*? Is it actually convincing at all, or is this a 'tuck your hair up into a baseball cap and say dude a lot and act like it makes you look like a guy', type of thing? Also, like when? *Why*?"     Disembarking onto the roof, Petra's legs wobble from her unfamiliarity with riding a wyvern. Her goal is to tug Niime towards the doors into the castle and then down towards the study, as the most unobtrusive escort not already occupied by anything else, and to do so, she taps into a forbidden, intentionally-starved lobe of her own brain. These guards are bored, and, fundamentally, extremely normal. The cultural network of vague dismissiveness and resentment, the baseline of social antipathy shared by every suburban American office worker, exists nearly identically here, and by accessing the long-dead language of 'implicit small talk', Petra can answer every question that might be asked of her by simply saying nothing at all.     If she's looked at questioningly, Petra tugs at her cloak and grimaces sympathetically, sending the universally-understood symbol of 'this weather, right?'. If it's Niime being looked at instead, then Petra tugs on her arm and rolls her eyes in chagrinned exasperation, reducing Niime to the essential symbol of an obstinate old woman that Petra is forced to drag somewhere, and surely she knows well enough what she's doing if she's subjecting herself to that. It's a little infuriating how well suited she'd be to the Psychonaut philosophy if she wasn't bitter at Flamel.
Petra Soroka	With the guards being face blind, all Petra has to do is pinch her nose and submerge herself into the ocean of unremarkability. It works seamlessly, drifting along with the currents that nudge them towards the study, until they're interrupted walking atop the wall. Just meters away from Petra, Sigrun walks out towards her, and-- ... and Petra actually barely even recognizes her herself, without any psychic influence. She's only seen her for a brief moment while Lugh was already being led away, occupied with things other than fighting the dragon at the time as she was. She *has* heard her voice, though, and Petra's voice has been heard in turn, making it difficult for her to capitalize on that partial-anonymity to protect Niime. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"     Well, last time Petra spoke to Sigrun, she said that she sounded like a boyish peasant girl slouching in a baggy tunic, which Petra definitely doesn't remember word for word because she's still mad about it. If she can just avoid sounding like that-- she already doesn't *look* like that-- then she can try her best to shield Niime from further examination.     "Um-- you're the Wingleader, right? I'm sorry she's bothering you; we're just-- ahh-!" Her explanation cuts off in a conveniently girlish shriek when the ballista snaps due to either Flamel or Madeleine's interference.     Intuitively taking it as the sign that it is, Petra gives Niime as subtle of a push as she can in the circumstances, trying to hurry her through the door Sigrun came out of so that they can escape her scrutiny inside the castle hallways. She spills a small puddle of morphmetal onto the floor behind them, ready to trip Sigrun's guards and hold the door shut to force them to break through it if they come running after. Despite the sudden escalation in noise and threat, though, Petra doesn't immediately abandon her persona, trusting in her relative unfamiliarity to help for at least a bit longer.     "Um... that's bad, isn't it? Are we under attack?" Petra turns her face up to the sky-- where no one of theirs is-- while backing away towards the door after Niime. She's trying, Parsons-brained as she currently is for his concocted plan, to take advantage of that instinctive brainstem alarm of Sigrun's, and redirect it either towards the ballista or the sky in anticipation of a more dangerous threat than 'a person she might know', like throwing a toy for a cat to make it whip its attention around.
Desire Stars	Kamen Rider Geats doesn't chance getting closer to the walls. Neither part of the frontal assault nor intending to infiltrate, he instead waits alongside anyone watching the castle from afar. The construction-yellow of the Powered Builder armor's greaves is ill-suited to infiltration, as is the stark white of the Magnum armor's breastplate and bracers and the white-red of his fox-motif rider mask. The Gigant Blaster, a burdensome two-handed energy blaster that looks half-heavy weapon and half-construction equipment, is resting against his shoulder. A caution-striped cylinder not unlike a cement mixer turns slowly as the weapon idles. At this distance, all he can do is speculate.      These aren't unfamiliar circumstances. "Held up already, huh?" He sardonically muses to himself. There's an edge to his joke. If he moves too quickly, especially without the cover of noise, then the whole castle will hear him building an escape ramp. Sigrun on me. I've got almost nothing, her mental countermeasures are too active for me to work with and her facial recognition is too deep in the spine.      <I thought you were taking a while. If you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly equipped for stealth or subtlety at the moment. Aren't you some kind of secret agent? Figure it out.>      <Did you just set one of those big arrow things off? Maybe that will help... sorry, if I fly over to help they'll definitely know who's here!> Helicopters and motorcycles aren't known to be common in Elibe.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel knows that, even if they *distract* Sigrun, even if they get out of her line of sight, even if she's focused on something else -- that signal is on its way. They have minutes, maybe seconds. So as Petra pushes all she can, he books it subtly, offloading his physical movement to Cath (whose gait is less familiar) as Lilian recommends. <Sigrun is in play.> He says. <She's here and that image processing is going to finish soon. Move, move, move!> He urges, keeping his smile placid. When the sneaky telekinetic hand, and Madeleine's excellent sabotage, activates some ballistae's self-destruction, he says, "Uh oh-- I'll go get someone about that!" Lugh, thank god for that kid.     His speed-walk turns into a dash. <Cath!> He calls out in his internal mindscape. <Take the wheel now and get ready for the front gate, we have *seconds*! Talia, get that gate open, Geed launch! The Nobbu's reported Lugh in the cellar! I need Neon in the air ASAP before the ballistae are back, and Geats through the gate before they can get it closed. Niime, let's get that storm going to cover her!>     He lets go of all motor skills to let Cath get to the study. And then a tense glance to Petra. <Get ready for the drop. If Sigrun is in play and we don't stun the dragon early, level of violence spikes. We have *too many children on the field* for that level of violence, for all of them to get out without...> That's the core of his fear here. And for once, he thinks he can probably get Petra on his side for this. With Sigrun primed to attack someone who looks like Lugh...     Flamel readies up masses of confusion-stun blasts to take advantage of Odette's drug-work as he has Cath guide the way to the study. The moment it goes loud, those go nearly everywhere. And he can track the fuse on that brain-dynamite, trailing down the brainstem, about to go off in five, four, three, two, one...
Desire Stars	<All of that buildup gone because you couldn't maintain eye contact with a woman? Some secret agent you are.>      Nevertheless, Geats lowers the Gigant Blaster and pulls the trigger, the mixer spinning rapidly up. Scaffolding, brick and mortar rapidly pile upwards, forming a wedge that keeps the front gates from closing. He breaks into a sprint, then, charging for the gates and occasionally hip-firing the heavy weapon to litter the ground with cinder blocks, buckets of wet cement and loose piles of planks to trip up anyone rushing to stop him.      <Mr. Ace, I don't think he... you know, nevermind. I'm on my way!> Na-Go takes to the sky with the Armed Propeller, flying low across the water and pulling up at the last minute to crest the castle walls, tucking into a nimble frontflip to batter the siege crew working the nearest ballista with the propeller, twirling it overhead and going for low sweeps as if it were a quarterstaff.
Riku Asakura	<Launching!> The moment he's teleported and hits the ground on the other side of the teleport, he shouts.  "You Go!" he activates a capsule, revealing an Ultraman on it.  Ultraseven to be precise.  "I Go!" Once more, he pulls the trigger on a second capsule, revealing Ultraman Leo.   "Time for my courage to burn bright!" he says upon landing.  "GEEEEEEEEED!" And he shouts upon pulling the Trigger of the Fusion Riser.   Ultraseven! Ultraman Leo! Ultraman Geed Solid Burning! With that transformation sequence, Geed grows in the middle of the courtyard.  He grows to his full height and makes a sound of breath leaving his mouth through his nose that sounds like a 'Haa'.  He was ready to take the dragon on, and possibly Sigrun.
Petra Soroka	<We have *too many children on the field* for that level of violence, for all of them to get out without...>     Petra's expression sours a bit at Flamel's telepathic contact, but he's right, as he is frustratingly often. She slips a hand below her cloak, palming her compact mirror pendant and tensing to crack it when Geed and Geats go loud. Her thoughts in return are like fiberglass packed into Flamel's meninges, prickly even with her efforts to lower her psychic defenses. That might just be her manifested intent to make interacting with her unpleasant for him specifically, though.     <Yeah, yeah. I've got it. If you can get Niime to the study, then I'll get in the Beauty of Ash as soon as I can.>
Nobunaga	When Riku teleports, transforms, and enlarges right there inside the castle, Nobunaga can't help but whistle, "As impressive as ever, that Ultraman." Shooting a look over her shoulder, she calls out, "Time to do our part!"     The Nobbu poking out of a badger hole salutes, then jumps out and whirls around, waving its tiny little nub arms, Nobu no! Nobu no!     In response, the other assembled Nobbu erupt into a bustle of motion, pulling bushy disguises off of tiny vehicles; little tanks and saucer-shaped flying machines. Escorted by a formation of infantry Nobbu, the tanks roll out of the treeline and set up with clear view of the Pegasus launch, ready to shoot at any unauthorized outbound flights.     The little saucers, once mounted, serve not only to turn the soldier familiars into an aerial nuisance but also adds a spooky vibrato to their voices as they take off; No-o-o-o Bu-u-u-u. More forces to harass Bernish air support and try to maintain air superiority above the castle.     And above it all, in the drizzly noncommittal rain, Oda Nobunaga rises to stand confidently upon the rock she was crouched behind, rainslicked cape now catching the breeze (as well as it can when this heavy). Producing a rifle from within her cape, she swings it up and rests it over her shoulder, overseeing the troop deployments before her, then lifting her eyes to the castle with a challenging smirk.
Marigold	The Bernish sergeants are collecting their dole of breadrolls from Roland, Parker, and Odette with a cheerful obliviousness: "Ohh, smells pretty good this time." "Hey, you put a lot more heart into it than the usual folks, huh?" "Saint, almost reminds me of home." "Everything reminds you of home, Gerard..." "Oh, shut up. Where're you from, knowing how to make it like that?" "Oh, don't flirt with her--" "I wasn't!!"      Within two minutes' time all the people in this room will be passed out or delirious, their spears and shortswords free for the taking. It's a little sad, having had a couple days to get to know them, but it's better for them than being stabbed.      Lilian heads to the wine-cellar-turned-dungeon, passing Roland in stopped time and filching a keyring off a sergeant who'd staggered down there to be sick. The stone-carved cellar is shaped like a 'U', with the sole stairway down at one tip; set into the outer and inner walls are broad alcoves, formerly for barrels, now with steel bars to serve as cells.      There are a little shy of twenty prisoners all told, from all of the city's demographics; locals and foreigners, wearing silks-turned-rags and rags-that-were-always-rags, huddle in corners for warmth. How much their bruises have faded mark their arrest dates.      Nobunaga's agent is in one of the near end's cells; at the bend, three guards lazily shoot the shit; at the far end is Lugh, curled up and mid-sob in Lilian's timestop snapshot with an older man clumsily comforting him; and opposite that is a violet-haired noblewoman in her thirties, who must be 'Juno', whose matching cloak has long-ago been given to the peasant grandmother sitting next to her.      All that goes smoothly, but . . .
Marigold	Sigrun is one woman. She isn't especially taller than Petra; if the lean muscle on her pushed her over a hundred-thirty pounds, she'd never be able to ride a pegasus. Her armor is light. Her armaments amount to a cavalry saber, un-drawn, and a steel spear on her back.      For backup she has a lax and off-guard Bernish garrison, perhaps a handful of her squad nearby, and at most one dragon. Her position is exposed to gunfire, and she's nearly in stabbing distance of everyone on the rooftop.      Her stare is still something to flinch from.      It passes over Petra after a long moment (surely Sigrun didn't see her features back then, right? Is having short blonde hair that weird in Ilia? Oh god, is she exotic?) to fix on Niime. <Lucius, maybe something with your warp staff...> Lucius: <I'm sorry, Riku was the last use...!> Cath: <Don't look at me!!> Niime: <I'm doing my best, boy.> Melady: <I could say you're my prisoners-- no good, damn it...> Talia: <Ohh, Saint protect us.>      Flamel, if he cared to, might be able to trace the neuron activation creeping up from Sigrun's spine like the rising rattle of a snake. "It's that way you slouch," she's saying. "Ohhh, it's the hunch of many an old woman." "Lady Sigrun, is this really important? The monthly--" "Shut up," she says to the Bernish sergeant. "Y-yes ma'am."      Seconds pass. The rain bends a little more towards gritty sleet. It makes a light, harsh noise against the stone roof.      "Um-- you're the Wingleader, right?"      Her one eye slides to Petra smoothly, without saccades. The omenless wind flutters the hair that always covers half of Sigrun's face, affording a tiny glimpse of raw, ugly red.      Recognition is working its way in from the ears now. It's on the tip of her tongue. The Bernish soldiers around her are becoming uneasy, although they could never say why.      "I--" Snap tinng!.      Ballista explodes. A piece of wood is deflecting off Sigrun's saber. She drew it when? Her eye snaps to the sky, then down to Petra and Niime.      Recognition. The neural hiss, for those with ears to hear it, is louder than the rain.      "YOU!!" she shrieks, cutting above the Bernish ballista-crew's yells.
Marigold	Up above, Nobunaga's air force has little contest; a couple of enterprising pegasus knights on another wall scramble to throw their javelins at them, but their mounts are still outside. In these clammy first few moments, they can't contest the skies. Guards yell to close the gate, but Talia takes a deep breath and draws her sword against them one-to-six, keeping it open for moments.      Geed is rising up like a titan in anticipation of the dragon. He doesn't have to wait longer than a moment; at the unmistakeable clamor of battle in the courtyard, the scaly monster transforms from somewhere within the keep's left inner wall, not far from the study-tower, and leaves the brickwork a ruin as it turns towards him with howling fire as its drool and eyes.      "KREEEEEE!!" That prehistoric, anti-human noise, one never gets used to.      The rain steams off it with a constant kettle-shriek and the crushed stones shed from its back like water off a duck. Around it, Bernish soldiers are trapped in the rubble or pour out of the ruin it made of the west wall like ants from a kicked nest. If it wades into the tight cage-match of the inner courtyard for a slugfest, this whole place is likely doomed. But for a second, it's still blossoming; its wings haven't yet spread, its head hasn't yet lifted...      . . .      All that, though, is a near-irrelevant slow-motion backdrop for most of those unfortunate enough to be on that rooftop with Sigrun.      The wounded ballista-crews are half beaten-down by Neon's passes and half cowed into submission by the explosion and prospect of the same, but they aren't the worry.      Cath, in control of Flamel's body, is yelping an oddly-inflected "Sorry!" and grabbing the old woman's wrist to drag her southwest towards the study-tower (and also towards the dragon), while he peppers the remaining Bernish rooftop guards with confusion-blasts.      It takes her (and him) a split second to realize that warm blood is spattering them instead of the cold rain.      Sigrun's cavalry-saber, aimed for Niime's neck, has buried itself deep in Melady's collarbone instead. Melady's blocking polearm falls into two halves. She'd lunged in the way to protect the old crone, but a wooden haft only does so much. "Traitor! Don't you run from me!" Sigrun howls past her current victim. "You young fool--" "Go! Take her and go! I'm, fine!" Melady lies.      The cavalry saber pulls free from the bones of her shoulder with an awful noise, and the drizzle sounds twice as heavy for a moment, and then the flashing crescent blade comes around for a second stroke. Melady won't raise what's left of her weapon in time.
Odette Raskins	"This time? It always smells this good when it's coming out fresh." Fresh-ish, anyway, since there's a LOT of dinner rolls to go around. Even though Roland's done most of the legwork on the baking side of things, Odette's still got some pride in her own baking as well! "It's an old family recipe, back in... eh? Ah, r-right. There'll be more time for that later after we get these handed out!" As the distribution finishes, however, she can't hide her mischievous giggles forever, and she leans in to nudge Parker's side with her elbow. "Look at you, already getting attention."  She stage-whispers, apparently kind of oblivious as hell evenw hile she's hyper-focused on everything else going on while waiting for the special ingredients to kick in. Does she feel bad about the deception? Kind of, but not too bad considering the circumstances. She helps pack away as many of those swords and spears into backpacks and tied-up bundles as she can with Parker, but doesn't linger for long considering the time limit. "Mister Roland went to join Miss Rook, right? Then we should..." Odette glances at all the swords and spears, then tenses her jaw as she hears all those rapid-fire directions from Flamel on who should be doing what. Even if she can't see what's going on with Sigrun up on the rooftop, she still doesn't like what she's hearing and has to actively try not to look like she's hearing any of it. "... Need to make sure we can get Lugh out of here."  Fumbling with her microphone and earpiece briefly, Odette holds the now-empty tray of dinner rolls on her head to mask her face a bit while she talks into her radio. <"Guards are out of commission, we've got weapons. Are we heading out the front or back? A-and do you need me and Parker with the prisoners?">
Petra Soroka	"YOU!!"     Petra clicks her tongue, grabbing hold of Niime's wrist with one hand and the pendant under her cloak with the other. This is a plan that, on every level, fell apart from reliance on other people, but there's nothing Petra can do about it now besides go the hard way through. Lilian's in the cellars ensuring that Lugh and Juno escape, so topside, Petra just has to-- "Traitor! Don't you run from me!"     "She's an old woman, you fucking *scumbag*!"     A groan of exasperation tears out of Petra's throat, shattering the demeanor of her already-failed disguise. With Melady wounded, she abruptly has to swivel her attention off of the dragon and onto Sigrun, in the split second before the sword comes around again. Hand already on her mirror in preparation to break it, she can't release the Silver in time, so the best option she has at hand to interpose between Sigrun and Melady is the bayonet of her gunblade.     Midway through the motion of drawing it, Petra toggles a series of switches along the plasticky-gizmo handle and squeezes the trigger. With a thud and a burst of gunpowder smoke, the bayonet blade violently racks forwards to affix to the end of the gun, intercepting Sigrun with explosive momentum and reach before cooling and sliding back under the shotgun barrel.     "Fucking *seriously*! She's *Ilian*, you know?! If you're doing this for your fucking country, and you're so goddamn fixated on your *contract loyalty*, then, what? Is it your fucking moral duty to execute every Ilian who doesn't fall in *line*?! Have you been gleefully fucking waiting for permission to execute Lady Juno too?? What *traitor*?!"     One of Petra's hands slides off the hilt/grip of her gunblade, uncorking the Silver hidden by her waist. Melady is tugged around her waist by a shimmering cord of metal to help her back away from Sigrun, which then coils around her and rolls down her arm to pool in her hand and accumulate into a smooth metal spear to replace the polearm she lost.     "Madeleine! The other soldiers!" There's easily, what, a dozen plus Sigrun up here? Flamel has to escort Niime downstairs to the study, and no one else is within reach besides Madeleine, who Petra knows she can't rely on. If she had a moment of peace to draw out the Beauty of Ash, she'd be in a much better state, but that same moment that would let her get into her mech would let Sigrun mount a pegasus.     For now, all she can do is keep Sigrun as occupied as she can to prevent her from following Niime or Melady, or escaping to somewhere where she can become more dangerous. Toggling switches and twisting knobs again, each pull of her gunblade's trigger swaps erratically between launching a burst of pellets at Sigrun or giving her a foot and a half extra reach with the blade. Even when the bayonet retracts, Petra shifts her grip to the back of the barrel to use it like a stocky polearm to catch an unexpected attack.     "You're fighting for the end of the world on one side and occupying your own fucking capital on the other! You're such a *loser*!"
Riku Asakura	The dragon arrives on cue with Geed's transformation into his large form.  So far, this was the only part of things going as planned.  Fortunately for him, the head of the dragon hasn't come up, and its wings remained unfurrowed.  However, that sound it made... reminds him of the beasts back home, the dreadful creatures who only survive on eating humanity.   The rain runs down the titan's body, as Geed took a brief moment to consider his position and where a good area to fight was.  He quickly snapped out to grab the head of the dragon in a headlock and attempted to spin the monster around in a circle.  Around and around they'd go until Geed would release.   Geed's aim?  Was to toss the Dragon away from the city and towards the water.  The perfect place to fight the dragon would be on the water.  Geed follows up the throw with a burst of steam from his legs to jump after it and to try to land on the creature mid-air.  Trying to drag it down towards the water with him.
Lilian Rook	A single entrance isn't ideal. It means that Lilian has to be quick; she knows that she can't afford to get bottlenecked with the people she's trying to extract. It's almost irrelevant, as far as complications go, compared to the other problem to deal with: fifteen other prisoners.     The issue of getting them out is secondary to the issue of what to do with them at all. She was never here for them. Lilian curses herself for not even imagining that there would be, so that she could mentally prepare in advance. Though it costs her no time, only time, every subjective second of deliberation feels like a fresh wave of dreadful pressure that she was all but sure she had near-permanently left behind.     First she thinks that there's no strategic value in releasing the other prisoners, but then an intrusive thought naggingly corrects her that she doesn't actually know that, especially if she can't identify them. Next she reasons that letting them escape will unacceptable compromise her extraction with Lugh and Juno, but Lilian is equally swift to reason that if she's going to think that way, they'd actually be more of a smokescreen that splits the attention of the guards. The factual detail that it'll take longer to get them all out is a weak defense; quickly overruled by the fact that escape will be as slow as Lugh and Juno anyways. How any of them feel doesn't matter either way, since in all likelihood she will never see them again.     Having only herself to blame for her frustration, Lilian curses at some abstractly invisible other for not being able to shut up and just let her make excuses without grilling her. She flips it around for a moment, assuming it must be inevitable, because Juno will demand it, and complicate escape if she doesn't, but that's pure supposition about someone she barely knows. Lugh might, but if he does, then he'll probably want to slow himself down helping them. The thought of making eight more trips enters her mind, and then is discarded with a derisive scoff just for herself. As always, she turns to the Code, but . . .     'The many outweigh the few' may be a clear maxim, but tempered with its following line, Lilian can't make a decision just off of that. Her word to retrieve her two targets at all costs is binding, but it certainly isn't 'the fullest of her competence'; skipping out would undoubtedly comprise a cowardly shortcut. 'The laws of the land', at the moment, are laughable under Bernish occupation; she'd already decided to defy them. 'Dignity and value' demand their freedom from this impromptu hole. Finally, there are greater than negligible odds that, amongst those imprisoned here right now, at least one more soul is 'blood shed for thee'. Fuck.
Lilian Rook	-----[stop]-----     Lilian first makes the rounds of each cell. The keys are already in her hands, and there's no way she's doing each of them in real time, so the cost incurred is irrelevant; the prisoners all being ready to go at the same time is more preferable than not. She walks past the guards at the bend twice to do it, not even acknowledging their presence except to squeeze around them. Averting her eyes from the crying boy as best she's able, Lilian tosses the keys into the hardest to see corner of any of the cells she can identify, then returns to the guards.     Lax. Bored. Focused on each other. Predictable, given the successful infiltration, and ideal. Lacking access to runestones given how heavily she'd stripped down, Lilian's solution to the very real risk of one of them calling out before she takes them all down is to grimly search for a rope or chain-- surely trivial in a dungeon-- and carefully adjust it to angle around each of the guard's necks; each with a single loop, no knot, an inch or so away from skin, with no irregularity. Bringing the ends together with what slack she has remaining, Lilian leaves her work paused in mid-air, scans each body for knives or anything similarly wieldy, removes them as light-fingered as possible, intending only to toss them, and then, taking a bracing breath--                 -----[start]-----     --Lilian appears out of nowhere at the corridor bend, foot braced against the opposite side, pulling as hard as she dares. A blood choke on three men at once is ridiculous and impossible; all she can rely on is a rather slow and grimly unpleasant air choke, erring only as gentle as to not crush someone's windpipe. The only thing to count on is that humans all lose consciousness at roughly the same speed. The biggest risk is that one of the prisoners is both stupid and energetic enough to start screaming-- so during the deeply horrid minute or so it takes, Lilian raises her voice just enough to say, "Each of your cells is magically unlocked. You will follow me exactly on my signal. Those who split off, run ahead, or stop, will be left behind. Do I make myself clear?" It helps distract her, too.     Only once she has three unconscious guards does Lilian move to Juno's and Lugh's cell in particular. Opening the door herself, she leans down to gesture at them, not needing to explain herself to one, but "the Lycian League has come for you, follow me" is necessary for the other.     Then Madelienes blows up a ballista, and the rumbling throughout the castle as a dragon ploughs through a wall as a result makes everything about a hundred times worse. Lilian yells "Move!" without even thinking. It's only her training in handling squad commands under fire that keeps her from sounding panicked.
Angela	''Parker's side with her elbow'' Parker hisses and for a moment it looks like she might draw a knife on Odette but then she remembers that they're friends and she shouldn't pull a knife on friends. "Don't like being touched." She says. "...They were talking to you, you know. You're the hottie they were after." Roland answers Odette, <"Yeah there're prisoners here and they're pretty beat up. I think we've caught em off guard enough that we can actually take time to free the other prisoners."> Maybe he's a bleeding heart relative to Lilian but he isn't sure that having an entire army escorting Lugh is the best way to avoid him getting recaptured or targeted. "Lilian," Roland says once he catches up. "I'll follow them by the rear, catch anybody who stumbles and falls behind and bring 'em back to the group. Between everyone we've got here we should be able to get them all out. If you want me to split off with them to take heat off of Lugh..." Parker helpfully starts handing spears and weapons to prisoners before looking to Odette, "Hurry and treat anybody who needs help to move." She tells her, bluntly, but she doesn't even seem to think twice about getting everyone out of here.
Nobunaga	"Forward!" Nobunaga unsheathes her sword and uses it to point. Before her, the armored Nobbu Tanks and Nobbu infantry advance on the castle. Nobbu UFOs meander about in the air, returning fire against harpoon-throwing Pegasus knights with beams of concentric rings and theremin noises. When one takes a direct hit, the saucer spirals down to the ground-- the little pilot hops out, takes up a rifle, and assumes a position with the infantry.     Riku takes on the dragon and she can't help but follow the throw and subsequent followup. There's a knowing little nod, there, before she returns her attention to her soldiers. She sweeps her sword aside, "Seize the stables first; I want those knights *permanently* grounded!"     "--Hooh~?" Nobunaga pauses, the red irises of her eyes adopting a sudden glow, "What's this?" -- EDESSA DUNGEON     "What's this?"     Nobunaga's voice comes out of the little Nobbu infiltrator that had been captured earlier. Its eyes, normally unemotive white discs, are now bright red, signaling the warlord's presence. > "You will follow me exactly on my signal. Those who split off, run ahead, or stop, will be left behind."     "You heard the Dame Commander," Infiltrator Nobbu declares in Nobunaga's voice; it comes off as her pep-talking the prisoners, but she's also actually ordering the Nobbu directly; "Move when she says, and you shall guard the rear."     Nobu?     "Yes, you!"     The little trooper reacts by drawing its little sword. With its free hand it tears off the infiltrator outfit to reveal a new one underneath; white hakama and teal green haori with a distinctive white sharktooth pattern on the sleeve. NOBUSENGUMI has joined the DUNGEON CREW. > "Move!"     Nobu!     NOBUSENGUMI kicks open its unlocked door and hops out into the hallway, waving its empty hand to usher on other prisoners ahead of itself. The eyes have faded back to empty white, indicating it's acting entirely on its own again.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel watches Melady's blood splatter. His eyes widen. A second spray when the blade leaves. Improvise. Decisive. Fix this. Be the counselor that your cadet needs, Flamel. Handle it maturely. Do what an adult is made to do.     An adult should trust. He casts Cath to Niime's mind. <Work together and get there, I'm on you in a moment!> Don't gather everything up, share and connect others instead. Trust that Niime's competent, that Cath will adapt -- Melady did, after all.     Melady.     He rushes to Melady's side, tugs her arm to one one side, and shoves a palm against her head, psychically yanking a thread of the burning hot sensation of pain out of her brain. This searing link to her mind, he twirls around his body in the same motion as he used to grab her, and then lashes out with it on thar rotational momentum -- not at Sigrun. At Tryffin, her wyvern, the spinning thread of connection twirling into the knot of reins. It's to make the beast unspeakingly aware of the peril of its rider, in gratuitous detail, and to forcibly activate survival instincts that will keep Melady safe while she's unarmed.     Trust Melady. Don't coddle her. She took that hit. She did it on purpose. Let her own her decision and support her through it. That's what an adult would do. A *counselor*.     If she needs distance, then her wyvern will be the one to get her it. If she needs teeth and claws, it will be her teeth and claws. For so long as she feels pain, Tryffin will understand the nature of it and react appropriately.     (A plan, discarded, chunks out of the back of his head like an expended shell from a round. If one looked closely, one might see the inscribed cartoonish image of him using Petra's mind as a focusing mirror for that sensation of pain to attack Sigrun. He won't keep doing it. He will move past this. He's discarding it -- forcibly. He will become something else.)     Sigrun and the fray of battle all slam down on him before he gets a chance to flicker into invisibility, causing his body to light up with gleaming psychic bruising and cuts as he dodges directly with only agility, still in that spin. He's tried to cover Melady, but... Petra and Madeleine have to handle this. He's needed elsewhere. <Keep her pinned down! Don't let her follow, don't let her get in the air, she'll cut off our escape routes! We need to get Lugh, and Juno, out of here, whatever it takes!!>     "I'm taking my cadet back." He growls, suddenly bitter, at Sigrun. "And we'll heal *all* the pain you caused him until one day he *forgets you ever lived*." The tone is venom. It's like a threat of death. He's still furious at her.     But he flickers into invisibility. He knows better than to engage the martial experts of this world in direct combat without plentiful advantages and tactical support, and he'll only slow Petra and Madeleine down by letting an expert mercenary bog down even more Elite forces. The Lilian tulpa in his head, that he uses for figuring out ideal tactics in open warfare scenarios whenever Roy isn't available, is telling him to re-maneuver, flank, focus on maximally-efficient positioning. And his own deep, strained impulse, that counselor focus, won't let him do anything but move down level by level.     First the study. Get Niime's storm up and make sure wyvern riders won't be able to harry their escape. Trust that the lower team has the rest in hand, and they're getting the VIPs out of the cells. He'll get Cath's projection back out of Niime's mind if it's needed, but he also offers the mental option to cut the link at any time and cast her back to the front forces if she'll serve better there. Either way, he does his best to keep Niime protected and get into that study -- by Cath's hand, by his own, by whatever moves Niime fastest and safest.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine's distraction buys a moment, but it's far from enough. She winces as Sigrun yells out her recognition of Niime, and that hesitation costs Melady a nasty blow to the shoulder. The wyvern knight's arm won't be good for much fighting - get in there, Maddie!     As Sigrun draws her sword free of Melady's arm, Madeleine pounces from out of cover. Announcing her presence with a scream of effort in her kick-off, she's counting on the signal to be not enough warning for the Bernish guards to intercept but ample for Sigrun to respond - and of sufficiently uncertain danger to force the wingleader to abort her killing blow on Melady.     It's ultimately a feint, however: Madeleine's spear is raised to defend rather than strike. If Sigrun counterattacks, weapons will clash and Madeleine will bodily collide with her on momentum, and if she moves out of the way, that just puts Madeleine between her and Melady, prepared to fend off the wingleader's next move. If she can keep Sigrun at spear's reach, or get in close enough that there's hardly room to swing a weapon at all, Madeleine reckons she can hold an advantage; it's that middle ground, where there's better room for a sword than a spear, that will be really dangerous.     Petra engages with her gunblade, and Madeleine decides to take advantage of the breath's worth of time that buys to indeed handle the Bernish soldiers and their sergeant. A breath's worth is what she needs for that - one deep inhale, and out of her mouth rolls a great cloud of chilling vapor, clinging low to the ground and flowing *past* Petra, Melady, and Sigrun. At the perimeter of the roof the mist solidifies into a ring of jagged, up-and-outward-pointing icicles that freeze the ballistae in their positions and threaten to do the same for the soldiers, or at least give them a wall of spiky ice to clamber over before they can enter the melee.
Desire Stars	"I'll just be a minute longer, Petra!" Kamen Rider Na-Go, having landed atop the castle, is one of the people out of Petra's immediate reach for assistance. Partly because she landed on the roof, partly because she's focused on destroying or disabling the ballistae--Ultraman is a big target, and (optimistically) so is the ship she hired for escape.                                 PROPELLER STRIKE!                                      The Armed Propeller spins up, the rotors accelerating so quickly that the air displaced around Na-Go is forceful enough to push the nearby soldiers off their feet. She leaps forwards just in time for another burst of speed, the blades of her weapon glowing red hot. Na-Go becomes a human missile, tearing through the ballistae in a circuit. Sparks fly from her armor upon impact with the weapons of passing guards, but everyone is trying so hard. I can't let them down!      Geats, in the courtyard, takes the opportunity for some cheap shots while Ultraman spins the dragon; juking an oncoming soldier and clubbing him in the back of the head with the outsized Gigant Blaster, he makes an axe kick to keep the downed fighter on the ground and levels the weapon at the courtyard proper.      The Blaster's large, cement-mixer-esque revolving chamber spins up, and massive stone pillars are mortared and dried just in time for the dragon's ribs to crash into them with each revolution. He wheels around afterwards and points it at the portcullis. Rammed-earth pilings erupt from beneath it to force it upwards, compromising the castle's security. No one else is coming, but the soldiers don't need to know that.
Odette Raskins	Even without a knife being drawn, Odette is quick enough on the uptake (especially with Parker hissing) to realize she messed up. "Sorry! I... Erk. Sorry. M-my bad." She replies quickly, withdrawing her arm with an apologetic frown. That frown fades fairly quickly, though, and turns into a confused eyebrow raise with her mouth hanging open in that  nonverbal 'uhhh' shape when Parker clarifies who the guards were talking about. "R... Really? But there's so many way hotter people around here." She tries to deflect verbally, but there's a slightly smug grin creeping onto her face. "Maybe..." That distraction, doesn't last long, either, once Roland gets her mind back on task. "Freeing the prisoners... Yeah, good idea! Even if they don't stand a chance against dragons, they still need help getting out of here, and they can help us, too. Easier than carrying all this stuff on us, right?" She wiggles the bundle of spears and swords briefly, then adjusts her hold on it against her shoulder before scurrying down to the dungeon to join them. She's already getting her improvised healing supplies ready to go. Odette's bracing for the worst when she hears orders being issued by Lilian to the prisoners, and another voice she only somewhat recognizes as Nobunaga's coming from... One of the strange little things. She's only taken aback for a moment before she starts scurrying ahead. "Who's hurt? Point me their way if you see someone that needs help!" She calls out, jumping a few times and waving her arms to make sure the prisoners even know where she is amidst what's looking to be a more chaotic situation soon.
Marigold	"And we'll heal *all* the pain you caused him..."      "I was younger, coward. Take responsibility for your men."      "Is it your fucking moral duty to execute every Ilian who doesn't fall in *line*?!"      Sigrun feels little obligation to not just answer questions with 'kill yourself', but in the second's freezing standoff with Madeleine, this is juicy to seize on. "To scab-" translation finds that a better word than desert or betray- "from the Ilian Knights is to steal food from Ilia's children. Look in her eyes. On whose coin will your grandchildren eat, hag?"      Niime has had about as long as any human being gets to question the mores of her culture. She knows she's- you're- in the right to oppose Bern. Even so, in the instant she looks back at Sigrun, her eyes slightly tense with shame.      . . . The saber, for nearly every pegasus knight, is a weapon of final resort. Shanna and Thea never draw theirs, if they remember to carry it.      Sigrun's is worn to the shape of her hand. She'd drawn it on instinct simply because the spear at her back would've been slightly too slow.      So, too, she turns the twisting motion of juking Petra's aim into drawing-and-throwing a knife from her boot, whistling past towards Niime in answer to that look. She'd dodged by just enough that a slug would miss her; the cone of the pellets instead slashes her cheek and tosses jaw-length hair.      "Ah-- thank you, Petra!" Melady can't take the flinching opening, but at least raises the new weapon with a grimace to provide a wedge of shelter against the omnidirectional blizzard that Sigrun shortly-after paints with her blade.      The ballistae are destroyed before the guards can man them, whatever lunging strike Sigrun or the few feet-steady guards can manage on Na-Go in retaliation. The ship she'd hired is cruising-by close below now; who knows how long 'til they'd have noticed it.      The fallen soldiers stay fallen when Madeleine ices them to the floor; there's maybe a half-dozen left who can limp to their feet, but they look too afraid of the furball of violence surrounding Sigrun to approach it. "Go on!" their commander shouts, defended by their spears- "The treasury, they're here for-- we've got to close the treasury...!"      Melady's wyvern- 'Triffin', she'd said their name was, on a happier day- lunges protectively to snap at Sigrun, already in motion but spurred to snarling urgency by Flamel. Sigrun slashes the wyvern's neck; Melady locks her new Silver polearm with the blade before she can do worse; as they struggle Triffin bears down on her, and Sigrun draws-and-braces her spear one-handed against the cobbles to keep them off...      In the locked struggle, the cutlass flashes, once-twice, through Melady's back. Still, with wyvern shrieking and arms trembling, she tries to keep Sigrun pinned down and open to attack for a few seconds longer. "Galle taught you." "Ghh. He's my--" "Poorly." "--boyfriend, you bitch!" "Hm. About time."
Marigold	Cath piloting Niime along the parapet-rooftops goes at a surprisingly brisk skitter, after an early stumble. <What's wrong with your legs?!> <It's called being old, girl! Don't make me jog like that!> <Well I'm not letting you die, granny!>      After a harrowing scramble that might take Flamel helping them slide under the dragon's lashing tail and dodge falling masonry, they reach Raigh's study at the opposite corner, entering through a cracked-open wall. It's a humble space lined with books, but most of the floorspace is taken up by...      "Thank the Saint that Lugh kept the ritual circle. Ohhh... here it is!" Niime grabs a sheet of vellum from between two books, spreads it out on the ground, and crouches gingerly to start the weather-altering ritual. "Let's see. First I've got to light these candles--"      KRSHHH. Kreee...!      The dragon incidentally smashes into the study-tower as it struggles outside, sending the whole room askew. Niime curses and holds on as books topple from their shelves. "Don't just stand there, sonny! I can't do the ritual if the place falls down!"      - - - -      Lilian's simultaneous chain choke raises a brief hubbub from the assorted prisoners, ranging from 'startled' to 'aghast' to 'grateful' to "Lilian...!" , but it's cut off before it can rise by a sharp "shhhh!".      "I have material to gag them with. It's faster. Shall I?" comes that hushed voice, from the cell around the corner. Whether Lilian takes the expediting offer now, or says "Move!" later, its owner is of course revealed as the lady Juno, albeit badly-tattered and bedraggled.      Lugh pushes past her before she can say anything, hugging Lilian about the waist for whatever brief moment he's able. His eyes have been cried red. "I thought... I thought...! It would've been okay to--" To what? Leave him?      "... You heard her! Double-file, everyone able pair with the old and wounded!" Juno barks backwards while grabbing a shortsword from a fallen guard, then glances to Lilian as everyone makes their way up to the courtyard surface.      "The Lycian League? Oh, thank God... what news of Zelot?"      ... There's been no such name in any news.      Light should mean freedom, but up here it's tainted with smoke and ash. Odette and Roland can find the little procession of over a dozen there, hesitating behind Lilian as the fight with the dragon rages in the background.      "Oh, a healer, thank goodness-- Andrey has a sprained leg, he'd be the slowest." Between variable age and illness, about half of them can gratefully take a weapon from Parker. "Um, if you could get me a book...!" Lugh manages blearily. "Is Lucius here...?" But it's enough of a mob that one or two Bernish soldiers wouldn't think well of stopping them.      It won't do too much against the most pressing threat, though: that dragon. "Saint preserve us. So it is all true..."      Iðunn's creations have a sadistic tendency to pounce on vulnerable-looking humans like a cat on mice. It won't do to rush out unprotected, at least not without distracting it. Geats' concrete columns smashing against its ribs drives it back and points its flame-breathing wall-blackening ire at him, but that's a brief opening for the bold.
Marigold	Geed grabs the dragon as it's distracted and hurls it over the walls of the keep... but its fiery wings billow out, catch it midair, and bear it back up. When he pounces to tackle it down towards the water, it howls deafeningly and swoops to bear him back down against the keep's outer wall, tangling talons with him and slamming him back into the cliff-facing masonry.      Its back is to the ocean; his is to the crumbling wall; and it KREEEEEE-shrieks while trying to drive claws into his armor and paint him with fire point-blank.      A whole wall of the keep- the one that Sigrun is on- threatens to crack and crumble inwards. Fire still jets over it and into the inner courtyard in unpredictable sweeps.      Talia has the good sense not to be there. Where she is might be worse. Nobunaga and her minions are attacking the stables with the pegasi, before the trio of Sigrun-allied Blackwings there can saddle up; they're fighting back with thrown javelins and elite-unit swordplay.      Talia's gotten locked in with one of them. "So you've turned your back us, Talia? Is that it?!" "Please, no! Lady Juno has a different--" "We stand together or we starve! What did that oath mean to you?! Do you think your village would be proud?!" "Don't say such things...!" "When you said you were like a sister to me--!"      She doesn't want to kill her adversary, clearly, but they have no such restraint.
Riku Asakura	Geed is thrown against the wall of the keep, causing sparks to run down his back as he recovers from the heavy blow.  He recovers just in time to see the dragon's head snap back, and prepare the dragon flame from a position of flight to cover half the keep, including the courtyard where they started this fight.   Caught up at first in the dragon's fire, Geed's body sparks dangerously before he can get up the GEED BARRIER to help protect himself and the town from the dragon's flame.  The moment it stops, the barrier goes down, and Geed is flying towards the dragon, aiming something right for its throat.   Geed's right hand is glowing brightly, as he drives it into the neck of the flying Dragon, attempting to repeatedly strike it with not only the punch, but a burning, bright light that seems to be coming from projectors on the hand.  It's a combination of fire red and bright green as it slams into the throat of the monster, trying to drag it down into the ocean with each hit.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's levitation and a firm grip on Niime bring the group under one of those lashing tables, and his telekinetic hands hold up dangerous masonry. One quick wrench of those giant hands splits the crack...     "I can't do the ritual if the place falls down!"     Flamel doesn't speak. Barely thinks. He just acts. Lunging forward, he plants two fingers on each temple and shouts. Hands coalece from nothing, surrounding the tower, each as big as one of the dragon's claws. He usually can't get the telekinetic leverage to shift large structures like this, but when one's already in motion, his grip has meaning. Braced against the crumbling ground, his skull emits wave after wave of white and purple light.     "Cast!!" He shouts. "And brace for getting out *right after*!!" Flamel can hold the room up long enough for what he vaguely guesses is the duration of a ritual. He can't do much longer. Groaning with effort, one more wave of hands -- two, no, three -- form, pointing fingerguns and blasting to defend the tower, arcing shots over Geed's shoulders. "Get... Ghhh, get some lightning on that dragon or something if you can!"     Where's Lugh? Where's Juno? Where are the VIPs? Flamel needs to find them, needs to focus on protecting them! But that wave of psychic anguish from Melady... All of Flamel's spare attention turns on that. He can't... *do* anything for her. He can only psychically observe that surge of emotion crash through her, and hope that she can be brought to Odette soon...     No. The focus on Lugh crashes through. Protect Niime. Then, when the casting is done, let the study fall gently. And get her, and the VIPs, back out of here.
Angela	''There's so many way hotter people here.'' "You know I'm married right?" Roland asks since he doesn't consider himself to be hot at all and, really, like, objectively he has a pretty average attractiveness quotient under most standards of beauty, maybe even a bit sub-average because his face has some lines from frequent grimacing. "Uggh..." Is Parker's reaction to Odette's humility(?) and she pushes her along impatiently. Parker doesn't have her gear since she was infiltrating, it's pretty hard for her to smuggle a two handed sword and most forms of EGO while pretending to be a chef. Roland could if he was wearing his suit, but he wasn't wearing his suit, because he was dressed as a ''chef''. But it's much easier for him to hide his weapons even so so he is considerably more well armed than Parker is though he won't be able to use his weapon swappign technique nearly as quickly without Audrey's stitching backing him up. Roland exhales slowly. Is he enough of a bastard to protect his cover by letting a dragon immolate twenty dudes he doesn't know in a world that seems mostly alright all told? Ugh. He removes his tote and collects the gauntlet he's been hiding in there and slides it across one hand, and then reaches into his uniform to pull free a hammer. "Cover 'em." Roland says to Parker as he charges towards the dragon, punching through flame that threatens to immolate some stragglers. "Hurry!" He clambers up the crumbling wall and leaps towards the dragon, hammer first, he's aiming for the underside with the hammer with an upward swing and then goes for rapid punches with the gauntlet. He's trying to force it back too, it seems. "Fucking hell dragons, generals, pegasi knights what's next some sort of demon??" He hisses under his breath. Parker says, "Let's go...!" She'll cover any civilian with her own body if she has to, especially if they're small and adorable!
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"To scab from the Ilian Knights is to steal food from Ilia's children. Look in her eyes. On whose coin will your grandchildren eat, hag?"     Madeleine's lip curls in disgust as she circles the wingleader, striking here and there to keep her foe on guard while watching for a real opening. "Look around you!" she shouts, pointing with a jerk of her head toward the edge of the rooftop, the clashing titans below. "The great city of your people in the hands of destroyers. Its citadel crumbles underfoot." The dragon's screeches pierce the air. "Whose mouths are fed by this? You don't see the damage you've wrought on your own land, your own *people*," the huntress spits. "You may not even live to see this land heal."     Sigrun lunges for Melady, and strikes home - but there's little Madeleine can do for that. Instead, she growls as she raises her weapon in turn, "I hope this was worth the coin." She charges forward, seemingly heedless of Sigrun's counterattacks. Her spear-tip won't reach the wingleader, not from a move like this-     -but it doesn't have to. Drogrung's ghostly jaws appear around the spear's head, snapping shut to grab and crush Sigrun between huge venomed fangs.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's levitation and a firm grip on Niime bring the group under one of those lashing tables, and his telekinetic hands hold up dangerous masonry. One quick wrench of those giant hands splits the crack...     "I can't do the ritual if the place falls down!"     Flamel doesn't speak. Barely thinks. He just acts. Lunging forward, he plants two fingers on each temple and shouts. Hands coalece from nothing, surrounding the tower, each as big as one of the dragon's claws. He usually can't get the telekinetic leverage to shift large structures like this, but when one's already in motion, his grip has meaning. Braced against the crumbling ground, his skull emits wave after wave of white and purple light.     "Cast!!" He shouts. "And brace for getting out *right after*!!" Flamel can hold the room up long enough for what he vaguely guesses is the duration of a ritual. He can't do much longer. Groaning with effort, one more wave of hands -- two, no, three -- form, pointing fingerguns and blasting to defend the tower, arcing shots over Geed's shoulders. "Get... Ghhh, get some lightning on that dragon or something if you can!"     Where's Lugh? Where's Juno? Where are the VIPs? Flamel needs to find them, needs to focus on protecting them! But that wave of psychic anguish from Melady... All of Flamel's spare attention turns on that. He can't... *do* anything for her. He can only psychically observe that surge of emotion crash through her, and hope that she can be brought to Odette soon...     No. The focus on Lugh crashes through. Protect Niime. Then, when the casting is done, let the study descend gently. And get her, and the VIPs he hopes to wind up approaching, back out of here.
Nobunaga	Nobbu UFOs continue to hassle the grounded Pegasus Knights from above. Direct hits on the little familiars disperses them into golden magic, but just damaging their vehicle isn't enough to stop them. They just take up arms and continue on as ground troops with the other infantry Nobbu. The longer range exploding shells of the Nobbu Tanks act as suppression, and between that and the rapid fire of their hand cannons, a single Nobbu infantry-critter charges forth.     Clutched in its little nubbin hands is a squat tea kettle. As it draws near to the wall, it raises that kettle overhead and squeezes its eyes shut in a triumphant, cheerful Nobu! followed immediately by an explosion.     Splinters and smoke cover the sudden ingress of a short Japanese warlord, sweeping in with a twist to thrust her sword into the path of one of the Blackwings' weapons bearing down on Talia. Her boots scuff to a stop, cape swishing about her legs as she recovers her posture and balance.     "Three against one is hardly sporting," Nobunaga states evenly, "Just let me apply a little leverage~..." In flickers of golden sparks, several dozen rifles materialize in the air around her. The ominous clicks of readied firing actions rattle through the stable space as the weapons swing around all at once to aim at multiple targets; Not just the Blackwing knights, but the Pegasi still in their pens.     The gunfire from the soldier and tank Nobbu outside peters off. The theremin woobles of the UFO Nobbu have also stopped and the craft float up and back out of javelin range.     "Has Bern even paid you three? Talia's village is starving, she certainly hasn't gotten her stipend, but perhaps Sigrun's favored bodyguards matter more than the rank-and-file."     Red eyes shift from the Blackwing knight in front of her to one on her left, "Of course you would never break a contract... But what does your code say about an employer who refuses to pay you?"
Lilian Rook	'I have material to gag them with. It's faster. Shall I?'     "I was worried you'd tell me to slit their throats." Lilian grunts, nodding instead of answering long-form. "I mean, seeing as that'd be quicker and smarter." Relinquishing only so much as Juno can actually speed anything up, using the chain to tie what minimum amount she has to delay guards by a few minutes, Lilian--     'I thought... I thought...! It would've been okay to--'     --makes a quiet 'pwuh' sound at suddenly being grabbed. There's something reassuring to say to a kid like this, probably. Father Lucius would know exactly what that is. In the heat of the moment though, all Lilian can think of is to sound genuinely, reflexively incredulous, and say "Dame Commander Lilian Isabelle Rook swore an oath. Why on earth would you expect anything less?"     'The Lycian League? Oh, thank God... what news of Zelot?'     Now that stealth with this many people is impossible, she allows the rest of her armour to materialized, condensed from a spiral cloud of dark iron. "I don't know the name." she answers quickly, businesslike, and drawing her sword. "Ask Lord Roy when you meet him." She is, for the time being, entertaining the idea it's just some guy she hasn't heard of. She'd prefer that.     'Oh, a healer, thank goodness-- Andrey has a sprained leg, he'd be the slowest.'     Lilian is hustling less than she'd like, but more than she'd feared. As much as she wants to scream at whoever fucked up, they fucked up badly enough that nobody has time for them. Short of thirty men, fully armed, all jogging in formation down a corridor, she has no reason to worry about incidental encounters along the way. Structural integrity is her bigger worry, but if the roof starts collapsing, she's spent long enough without using time manipulation to have plenty to spare on grabbing and moving people out of the way; provided it isn't an entire wing. Which it still could be.     'Um, if you could get me a book...!'     "No such luck." Lilian says, instead of 'you've done enough'. She's focused already on the necessary gestural precision to draw the live array she knows she'll need to put a scratch on one of those dragons. "Lucius is outside. I infiltrated the castle alone. Anyone else would be insane."     'Saint preserve us. So it is all true..'     "Unfortunately." Lilian exhales, just now finishing up the diagrammatic work to draw a maximally charged anti-armour attack spell. Thank god for Geed. Ace's opening isn't enough for her liking, but it's opening enough for her to pry it open further. "Treasury! Now! Run!" is the last thing anyone behind her can hear before the air is rent by a sound like ultra slow-motion lightning, bathing everything in chiaroscuro light and shadow and the smell of ozone and burnt carbon.     Lilian lays one hand over the other arm to brace herself against the backwards wind pressure. She pours her magic into the circle as it drains as fast as she dares, until she feels briefly lightheaded. There's no way she's jumping off the cliff with sixteen people, so she has to rely on someone else for a bit; and Ace is who she's freeing up with the catastrophically intense beam attack that pierces through the masonry before it melts it, slices across two of the dragon's ankles, and stutter-cuts through the cliffside where its durable body isn't blocking it.
Petra Soroka	"On whose coin will your grandchildren eat, hag?"     Petra doesn't have a well thought-out moral principle to refute this, but it registers as so deeply wrong to her that her face contorts. Attempting to match that pattern onto any of the Lilian-shaped philosophical pillars in her mind fails, as she instinctively feels like Lilian would have sympathy for a determined grizzled warrior-woman doing the hard thing against common sense by default, but it's not something she can accept. It's both meditatively helpful and deeply irresponsible to ponder while also fending off Sigrun's sword, needing to split her gunblade into two pistol-blade halves to catch an unexpected twist towards her in the gap between the barrel and bayonet.     She bites her lip. Obviously there's no point in arguing with her, but still, Petra's too antsy not to. "I don't think I can have any respect for a fucking national culture of being so morally bankrupt that you'll gleefully end the world just so you're not the only ones fucked over. Die."     Petra can't do anything to stop a flying dagger, not when her Silver's already occupied, so she'll just have to hope that Flamel or Madeleine keeps Niime from getting skewered. She takes advantage of the extra motion not being directed towards fighting her by lunging towards Sigrun instead, slapping her pistols together so that the nonsensical arrangement of metal and plastic parts merge into the full-sized blade again. The sword juts forwards towards her, launched like an eager racehorse by her pull of the trigger, to slash the shoulder Sigrun used to throw the dagger while her saber is held on the opposite side of her body.     Once she's pinned down by Melady, rather than going in for the kill, Petra rips the compact mirror off from around her neck as the wall shudders under her. "I need to stop the dragon! Na-Go, stay here on Sigrun; I'll help Geats!"     The mirror shatters in her fist, and the iridescent shards of the Beauty of Ash click into place all around her to jigsaw together into the mech already in-motion. Its razor sharp legs bite into the edge of the wall as it hurls itself off into the air on all fours, arcing around in flight to zero in on the dragon. Even the Beauty of Ash is dwarfed by a dragon, matching Fae's size, not an adult's, but like a chihuahua, it makes up for it in fighting spirit.     The Beauty of Ash slams into the dragon from the side, forelegs raking down its shoulder. Stomping its back legs into the dragon's side, they shatter and scatter up through its wings, while the mech's sharp head buries into a wound it make to wrench sideways and carve a gash where there was just a puncture. It harries the dragon away from the walls and the city, wrestling over the harbor.
Desire Stars	Kamen Rider Geats is the worst kind of bold--the kind that's tempered with experience. As he sees the dragon's fire belching, he quickly fabricates the front facade of a bunker, with a slitted 'window' just big enough to point the end of the Gigant Blaster through. The flame whips across the surface of the bunker and spews through the opening like sheets of rain in a hurricane, blackening the concrete bunker and completely occluding the form of the Kamen Rider behind it, but--                               GIGANT TACTICAL BLAST!                                    A bright red, spherical nova of energy plows through the other side and collides explosively with the dragon's open jaw in the split second that it passes by.      Geats' HUD sports a flashing red indicator warning about armor integrity. "All yours, now, Ultraman. Keep it away from the boat," comes his voice over the local radio.      He utters a low whistle at the sight of the piercing beam from Lilian. "Guess that's my cue." The little recess in the Powered Builder buckle currently holds a miniature laser pistol. He removes it, and replaces it with a miniature hammer--                                  GIGANT HAMMER!                                        The fabricator arms on his armor stir into a frenzy, flash-printing a heavy two-handed hammer with a turbine on one end of the head and a heavy brace on the other. It falls into his hand like an old friend, and he smashes through his bunker with it, before breaking into a sprint towards the wall. The turbine spins up and a jet of brilliant blue flame spews from the end of the hammer, driving it forwards and down into the ground. Geats polevaults himself into the air, feathering the throttle on the hammer to drive himself further up in a frenetic spiral. He swaps the weapon out for the Blaster again after clearing the inner wall.      Reinforced metal beams sprout up from the water at his urging, a rail just barely keeping up with his downward momentum. His boots touch down and strike up sparks as he surfs rapidly downwards, where he fabricates a wide stone staircase leading from the treasury wall to the surface of the sea below, diverting the rail away and towards the dragon to keep it between himself and the ship. He switches his stance with a short hop to face the treasury and place his final touch--an arched doorway wide enough for a crowd to leave.
Odette Raskins	"You know I'm married right?" "Y... Yeah, but still. Married people can be hot, too." Odette asserts with a firm nod, grunting lightly at Parker's shove and holding in a quiet snicker. It's one of the few moments of levity she can find in this situation, so of course she's going to take it! And then she sees... One of their VIPs! Odette can hear Lugh and barely see him when he hurries over to Lilian, breathing a heavy sigh of relief at his continued state of being alive after being gone for so long. She's still not able to relax yet, though, since they're all still in the dungeon along with all the other prisoners and hoping to not get crushed by the dragon or those fighting it overhead. She can just barely pick out some of the shouting, but any words are drowned out by the din in the dungeon keeping her attention firmly on the injured and escaping with her. "Double-file, everyone able pair with the old and wounded!" "Mhm! Don't rush, we'll be safer as group!" Odette adds on after Juno, hurrying over to her and just shoving a patch into her while glancing around quickly. "Combat stimulants. The crash sucks, but it'll help you focus for a few minutes if you get hurt real bad and need to go. N-now, where's Andrey?" She asks, already starting to move the moment Juno or anyone directs her attention towards the person moving the slowest in order to fashion him a splint out of whatever spare rope, spear hafts, and loose scabbards she can find. Also, some painkillers made (mostly) of local herbs she's been able to find. "Sorry, but you'll need to dry swallow this... Give it a second, and you should be okay to get out of here. R-remember to stick together, everyone! Keep your..." Odette's voice dies in her throat when she sees the dragon's wings overhead, and then she grabs onto a prisoner's sleeve when she sees it battling with Geed too close by for comfort. "B.. Back! Down, down!" She shouts in warning to the crowd before just trying to hurl the nearest pair of prisoners behind her and away from the fire. She dives on top of them a moment later and covers her head with her arms, desperately hoping that that's enough to not get burnt to death as she feels the air rapidly turning hotter. Through sheer dumb luck and diving just far enough, she actually manages to avoid getting baked. The wrappings holding the swords and spears on her back aren't quite so lucky, though, and the weapons themselves become terribly hot to the touch. Yelping and throwing them to the ground beside herself, she turns back to the prisoners she was covering to help them up. "Treasury! Now! Run!" "Come on, I gotcha... A-anyone hurt? Y-" Coughing through the smoke, Odette waves some of it away before pointing in the direction of the Treasury. "You heard Miss Rook, we need to move!" She shoves those two ahead, then spares another few moments to start checking on the other prisoners. Like Roland and Parker, she doesn't have all of her supplies because of the infiltration, so she has to ration, but... She still has to see if there's one more person she can save through all this. She really can only spare time to treat one more person before starting to run for the cliff as well, scooping up a few of those swords and spears on the way. She's still focusing on treating the ones that can still run, though, to make sure at least some of these prisoners are still armed and able to fight if there's guards remaining to stop their escape.
Desire Stars	I need to stop the dragon! Na-Go, stay here on Sigrun; I'll help Geats!     "Got it!" Na-Go's cat-themed helmet bobs in understanding as the wake of destruction cools behind her and she rises from a three-point landing. She breaks into a sprint towards Sigrun without realizing it.Pressing the throttle down on the Armed Propeller turns it from a polearm into a circular saw with half the reach of one. Holding it high, she leaps in a sudden moonsault, spinning her Desire Driver--                                   REVOLVE ON!                                       --and, midair, her armored portions swap places, the simple brace of the Propeller 'armor' swapping to her legs, and the more substantial, equalizer-subwoofer Beat armor becoming her breastplate. The equalizers immediately begin bouncing, the speakers thrumming to the beat of the spirited anthem that now fills the air. More than the air, it seeps into Melady's muscles, her bones, her fighter's intuition, evening the odds by sharpening her reflexes, dulling her pain and guiding her strikes.     Na-Go lands, whipping her torso in an evasive, fluid roll that also drags the Propeller in a hip-to-shoulder slash that harries Sigrun while harmlessly passing over Melady. Back upright, she steps back with her front leg, leveraging the rapidly spinning Propeller as an outsized shield for both herself and Melady, only to abruptly stop the rotor and jab at Sigrun's calf with the blunt end of the blade, gunning the throttle for an attempted trip.
Marigold	In the background, the dragon is thrashing and wailing; Sigrun rides the trembling of the wall like a rolling ship's deck, and doesn't spare an eye for the gouts of flame that send the Bernish soldiers scattering.      Triffin whines, trying to sink their teeth into her shoulder (failing) or rip at her arm with their claws (succeeding). Melady grits her teeth and grabs Sigrun's wrist with both hands, keeping her from pulling the sword out. "Whether I kill or die today, Ilia's honor lives. No-one buys a craven knight." "You're, khhh, just as crazy as Galle is...!" "I have my responsibility. You don't appreciate the luxury of defection that being Bernish gave you." "The world's, hahh, ending! What responsibility?!" "A shame you'll die a child. Come on then."      Kicking the several-hundred-pound Triffin back in a savage display of strength, Sigrun frees her spear one-handed to parry Madeleine- can't account for the ghostly jaws- and--      Crnch. Shhhk.      The jaws gouge her shoulders and back, each tooth making a wound. If they don't pierce her heart, it's only for the breastplate she wears and her bracing elbow prying the jaws slightly apart. A split second later, she can't lower that arm to guard against Na-Go's helicopter blade, and the blood from a deep gash on her side splatters against the stone.      Melady breathes out in shaky relief, right before Sigrun knees the saber up into her bottom rib. "Aghkk--!!" With that shock, Sigrun breaks her wrist-hold to yank the blade out, whips it around to force Drogrung to disperse lest he be beheaded, and headbutts Madeleine with a sickening noise before weaving in inside the spear's reach to carve her up with the saber.      Near-simultaneously, she's kicking away Na-Go's second attack and trying to impale her even as the roof they're standing on begins to collapse.      "Come on," she repeats breathlessly, while blood runs freely down her legs. After the headbutt, the hair that always shrouds half her face is smeared-back and stringy with blood and rain. Showing behind the stringy veil is a ruin of scar and missing bone around an empty eye socket. In the cold light it is like the face of Death.      "I've had worse."      Behind her Melady is on both knees and one hand, clutching the wound in her gut and trying not to collapse. The Silver-spear is right next to her, but she may not have the strength...
Marigold	"Do I look like an artillerist to you?!" Niime grumps at Flamel from above, but she's working earnestly and as quickly as her old hands can. While he focuses on the tower and the dragon, Lugh hustles through the gate and to his side to blast away falling debris and any Bernish guards who get ideas...      Wait, that's not Lugh. Lugh is over there, following Lilian and Juno. ... Raigh?      "I'm not gonna let you die heroically," he grouses, not looking Parsons in the eye. "You don't get forgiven that easily."      At last the clouds swirl overhead and darken near-black. Wind howls, making life hard for Na-Go and Nobunaga's fliers, but making aerial pursuit practically untenable for hours. Lightning crackles, and despite Niime's protestations, the dragon is the tallest thing around to not be touching the ground- it's struck on the third or fourth hit, convulsing, giving everyone an opening but causing the top floor with the ballistae to calve off into the courtyard like an avalanche.      Fortunately, the freed prisoners are already hurrying into the more-fortified treasury at Lilian's command.      Concussed and shocked, the dragon for a while keeps trying to get its jaws around Geed's throat- but each time, he punches it in the throat, driving it back. The momentum of Petra's prying and Geed's pushing makes it teeter, until it has to dig into Geed's armor and the Beauty of Ash with its foreclaws to keep itself from falling backwards. Even Lucius, from far outside the keep, is able to train a great beam of light on the easy target, blinding it and scorching its scales.      It could save itself if only it spread its wings and took off into the sky. But like a starving animal it craves its kill. Fire after all is its eyes and its spine, its wings and its drool. Still it tries to burn and gouge anyone it reaches. Were dragons really ever like this? Did Iðunn recreate them unfaithfully? Fae doesn't seem like she's even from the same world as this hateful thing, which would rather kill than live. But the Old Man from Arcadia saw them. Surely he'd have distanced himself from this awful thing of fire-wearing-scales, if he could. "Destruction given form", Saint Elimine had said...      . . .      The long, shrieking, burning moment ends when Roland strikes it with his hammer, and Lilian turns her terrible magic on it. It reels backwards just a little more, and then as she burns at the grasping limb that tries to anchor it, it plummets backwards into the sea. The boat below has wisely diverted; howling, spreading its wings too late, spitefully gouting fire back up at you, it hits the waves.      For a moment the dragon glows red beneath the water. And then drowning, or crushed by the impact, or simply extinguished, it sinks and fades.      Still, relief doesn't come.
Marigold	Out there by the stables, the fighting goes on. Sigrun's Blackwings can't all be as skilled but they stand for Bern more resolutely than the Bernish guardsmen have.      Talia's opponent collapses from a gunshot wound to the thigh- "Alina!!" "Gh, stay back!"- and the pegasi panic, and some of the unhurt ones scatter.      The other two Blackwings tense and threaten Nobunaga with their spears, but when they realize she's talking, just brace against her approach. "They pay us," one says, tensely, warily. As if this might be a trap. "We take the money home as victors, or it's sent home in our coffin. Why else would they have a treasury here?"      "Starving?" Talia startles, at Nobunaga. "I've sent messengers home, with some gold, but..." ... They might not have made it. Better to ride back with full pockets than try to find a courier. Still, Bern having to welch is a compelling idea...      - - - -      "I'm sorry. I'm so-ho-horryyy," Lugh coughs up, wiping his eyes and doing his best to stand on his own. For doubting Lilian, or being this much of a mess, it isn't clear. A kindly scruffy man touches his shoulder and leads him in towards the still-intact treasury.      "I don't know the name."      "Ah. I see," says Juno, vaguely un-eased. "Well, thank you..." As everyone else hurries indoors as-directed, she stands by the door with shortsword in hand, compulsively acting as a rear-guard. Even shaken and a bit malnourished, she's bound to be more capable than the rest.      As Odette tends to Andrey's leg just inside that doorway- "ah, thank you, miss... oh, haah, I can put a little weight on it...!" Juno smiles at her, elegantly and a little sadly.      "... Dame Commander Rook. What is the Lycian League's goal here exactly? Anything I can help you accomplish...?"      - - - -      The awful rainy-rooftop butchery, with the upper story's avalanche-like spill into the courtyard, finally comes to a breather. Triffin has rescued a limp-and-incoherent Melady to a safer-seeming corner of the inner yard, trying to shade her with their wings as she limply holds the spear.      A hand, of course, erupts from the rubble, and hauls the face of Death back up to the light. Sigrun's one cold eye and her black empty socket sweep the field as she stands, still draining blood, still perfect of form. "... Old friend. I understand why you're doing this." Juno's gentle voice barely reaches through the wind and rain. "I don't understand why you aren't." Sigrun doesn't look at her. "... Four years ago I might have agreed with you. We're already trading with the Otherworlds. With the portals--" "'Ilia can live another way'. You'd be the first to be right and the hundredth to be wrong." "So that's it then? Someone has to die for the old ways?" "Don't count your wheat before the harvest."      -      There's a whipcrack-noise as Sigrun hurls the spear of a fallen Bernish soldier at Juno. It's fast enough to gouge a trail through the raindrops and embeds a foot deep in the stone, just beside Juno's head.      The next several, for anyone else who looks dangerous, are not aimed to miss.
Riku Asakura	Hovering in the air where the Dragon fell into the water, Geed wonders why these dragons desire nothing but destruction.  They're a little better than mindless Kaiju where he is from, and even then, Kaiju at least act on instinct.  What instinct goes into these creatures?  These dragons?  He's not sure what Idunn has created with them.  Rather, they are faithful creations or not.   But then Fae comes into question.  How could she exist if dragons were such harbingers of death and destruction?   Geed's suffering damage from the Dragon's dying throes, sparked from where its claws slash and its breath burns.  Still flying, he holds his hands up to where his arms are bent at the elbow.  The hands are balled into fists as his breastplate charges a blue beam.   Then the beam fires down at Sigrun, aiming to pound into her from above and stop her rampage across their forces.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Drogrung vanishes into ether before Sigrun's saber finds purchase, but the wingleader's headbutt sends Madeleine reeling. When she recovers her balance, seconds later, she's bleeding from a crooked nose. She pulls a hand away from her face just in time to see the extent of Sigrun's old wounds. The sight is enough to shake her, just a little.     "I have my responsibility. You don't appreciate the luxury of defection that being Bernish gave you."     "You- there's more to responsibility than pigheadedness! Commitment can be more than just holding on to something with a death-grip wherever it takes you!" Madeleine's words start out halting, uncertain, like she doesn't know where she's going. But her tone builds to a steel-hard edge. "If Barigan saw what you've made of his legacy, his duty to Ilia twisted into duty to coin, he would weep." There are tears in her own eyes too, but not for reasons she could explain on even the best of days. Not yet.     Then the roof is tumbling into the courtyard, and there is time only for survival. Madeleine leaps for Melady at the same time as Triffin makes their move, and she helps lift the half-limp knight into the wyvern's waiting talons. That's all she can manage by the time the roof falls through, and she just has to hope she isn't crushed under *too* much rubble.     By the time Sigrun is digging herself free of the collapse, Madeleine is too. She waits, tensely on guard, through the wingleader's exchange with Lady Juno. "I'd hate to kill you in front of an old friend," she growls. Then spears start flying, one of them painfully grazing Madeleine's shoulder as she's just a hair too slow to dodge entirely, and the decision is made. Madeleine pounces, leaping high into the air, and comes down toward Sigrun spear-point-first.
Flamel Parsons	"You don't get forgiven that easily."     Flamel looks Raigh in the eye. Seeing Lugh, seeing Raigh, seeing all this, *feeling* so much of what happened when he only did ninety percent of his role...     "Then I'll never stop trying."     The hands firm up. The study steadies. A stream of shimmering purple fluid leaks from Flamel's nose. Two of the grand telekinetic hands press two fingers against the sides of the study. He roars as the lightning crackles, surges, and strikes. The whole structure rears like a psychokinetic in motion, and blasts.     Then it all trembles, starting to sag slowly. "Brace and, hhhh, get ready to...!" He calls out, before the trembling telekinetic hands slowly, *slowly* lower it down to the ground. One hand rushes to protect Niime, either quickly hoisting and sending her to a more stable spot, or keeping her protected as the falling study slowly descends and crumbles. But for Raigh... Flamel's instinct is to grab him and physically cover him with his body when the study comes apart and falls.     Telekinesis slowly surges, and unearths the psi-shielded Parsons in his spherical barrier from the avalanch. Niime should have been gently deposited *atop* it instead. "Treasury... Hahhh... We gotta go...!" He dispells the barrier and rushes with the two. "Please. Please..." Wide eyes look up at the roaring dragon's flame, at the stone slamming to the ground, but he can lock on to one signal: Lugh's agony and pain. It's like a beacon, it's something he can perfectly focus on.     And as he approaches... there's Sigrun. Fighting to the last. He can't interrupt the exchange with Juno, staggering and stumbling the way he is. He can't even think about it. His eyes are fixed on the passage to the Treasury, repeatedly glancing to Raigh. Raigh, whose Lugh-like appearance keeps short-circuiting his brain. In the rain, water flows down his face freely and makes his feelings impossible to read but impossible to ignore. His breathing is heavy, his heartbeat is pounding, and...     "Raigh. Please. *Please.* Protect Niime. Get to Lugh. I..."     "I need to fix this."
Nobunaga	> "They pay us."     "Yes, of course they do," Nobunaga sweeps her cape back and brings her sword up. In a single practiced motion, she slides it into the saya, though keeps her hand on the hilt, "You are the trusted retainers of Sigrun, the Wingleader and effectively Bern's second most important general. It wouldn't do to miss *your* payments, or all of Ilia would riot." > "Starving?"     Nobunaga's head turns slightly towards the startled knight, "We passed through your village when we first arrived in Ilia. They haven't received any word from you in a long time and are all quite worried." Eyes closing slightly, she adds, "We gave them a little to tide them over, but of course, you know how hard those mountains are. It won't last as long as we'd like."     Her attention returns to the Blackwing who had spoken to her directly. Free hand lifting, she rests it on her breastbone, "Ask your underlings. Bern has not had the funds to pay the Pegasus knights and those who are paid, their villages aren't receiving it." She flicks her hand upward. In an instant, all the rifles vanish in flares of golden sparks, "You are all being taken as fools! It's almost insulting how easily you are letting it happen!"     "Why would humble couriers not make it, if not Bernish soldiers reclaiming Bernish coin? Having marched with Lycia as I have, I swear on my honor we have not so much as met such a person, and yet with all of the Pegasus knights, should it not be a common sight in your lands!?" Fiercely, Nobunaga takes one step forward, pointing at the satchel on Alina's hip while her injury is tended to, "How many Pegasus Knight hands have those coins touched before they landed in that pouch?"     Her hand drops to her side in a shrug, eyes closing, "Besides; Bern's King wants to destroy the world. If you help him win, everyone you love whom you are supporting with this campaign is going to die. The only choices are to resist or submit." Her head tilts slightly, one eye opening, "And no Pegasus Knight has ever entered Oda Nobunaga's sight who was willing to *submit* to anything."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel loosens his tie. He throws his jacket to one side. He pulls his sleeves up. And he grits his teeth. "You're never going to hurt my cadet again." He stumbles forward. Then strides. Then runs. A spear impacts him with enough force to blast dust and smoke around -- no, three telekinetic hands managed to slam closed around it, and the sound of metal strain rings through the yard. "We're *adults*, Sigrun!" His run re-starts immediately. "And *nothing* we do gets forgiven, nothing goes *unpunished*...!!"     He leaps off of a chunk of rubble, telekinetic hands whirling around him, psychokinetic beams lancing the space around. The martial specialists in this world are nearly impossible to endure, impossible to face directly for Flamel, because they all-too-often move faster than the speed of thought. But with Raigh's words ringing in his ears, with tears streaming down his face in empathy for the pain he can feel coursing through Lugh's heart, he can't do anything else.     "IT'S *UNFORGIVABLE* IF WE TAKE *CHILDHOOD* AWAY FROM THE *CHILDREN WHO COULD LIVE IT*!! RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"     The pain in Lugh's heart surges straight into Flamel, and his roar of anguish blasts out in a telepathic broadcast.     There's no one big strike. There's just a relentless rush of anguish. Whirling telekinetic fists, vicious searing red beams, smashing and bludgeoning shields -- and a terrifyingly focused lack of vulnerability to the melee strikes, wholly uncharacteristic to Flamel's battles with powerful Eliberian martials. Harsh, brutal shield-projections and near-instant grapples with the weapons, made with such force that shockwaves blast the rubble around them. He's so fast in darting in and out to exploit Riku's beams or Madeleine's descending attacks.     "SO *GO*!! *JUST GO* AND **NEVER CROSS LUGH'S MIND EVER AGAIN!!**"
Lilian Rook	'I'm sorry. I'm so-ho-horryyy,'     Lilian doesn't say 'it's okay', or 'you didn't do anything wrong'. She chooses "Everything's going to be fine." instead.     '... Dame Commander Rook. What is the Lycian League's goal here exactly? Anything I can help you accomplish...?'     "To be honest with you, Lady Juno, rescuing Lugh." Lilian says. She has neither the time nor focus nor mood for sensitivity. "But we're hoping to secure your cooperation as well, as an anti-Bern sympathizer. It was convenient timing." Completely insane thing to say while a dragon is rampaging around. "I imagine what you'll help accomplish is helping pivot Ilia away from the brink it's careening towards."     . . . . . . . .     '... Old friend. I understand why you're doing this.'     'I don't understand why you aren't.'     Lilian wasn't asked. She doesn't have to answer. Hearing it still kindles enough heat within her to feel uncomfortable. She hadn't intended to run into Sigrun at all, but now that things have gotten worse, Night Mist rises practically of its own accord. "Sometimes people are different. That's why things change with time." For some reason, the only way that feels right to ay it is purely matter-of-factual indifference. "You don't need to understand it."     Lilian isn't taking chances with the javelin aimed behind Juno's head. She displaces herself to intercept it, smashing it with the strong and flat her her sword with judiciously excess force. The second aimed at her, out of position, is only just far enough behind that she is able to slam her sword back down on it from its arrest position, cracking off her armoured thigh instead. Her heart lurches into her throat from how close the point had come to her face. She locks all the muscles around her knee to keep her struck leg from shaking.     "Keep going you idiot!" Lilian snaps over her shoulder at Juno. With no firearm, runestones, and heavily depleted magic reserves, she's forced to drop into a sprint posture balanced solely by her sword and takes up Sigrun's entire sight-line to Juno. She leads with the point, launching three consecutive raking cuts; quick and shallow and bouncing between both her targets writs. Keeping the balance of her weapon close to her body, she follows through with a raised pendulum guard into a point-blank range uperward hip-to-shoulder slash that she doesn't have the room to actually extend through, serving to lock Sigrun from turning with both sharp and crossguard.     Lilian defends herself with the hilt more than the blade, warding away strikes towards her neck and face foremost and using the hanging blade to protect her waist by leverage. Fighting to push her back, she circles along with Juno's progress, backing up only as far as she has to avoid imminent lethality, then closing with strikes that don't have a lot of killing power, but are tremendously difficult to keep from simply repeatedly biting into Sigrun's body, hampering her attacks and, if sustained, rapidly increasing the rate of her bleeding.
Angela	In The City you don't walk away when something is dying unless the alternative is dying yourself. You keep hitting until the monster is dead. At the very least, that's the philosophy of Charles' Office and Roland has never had reason to doubt it. An enemy you simply thought was dying could get a second wind and stab you in the back. An enemy you simply thought was dying might not be dying after all and would catch you unaware. Best to leave no room for doubt. Monsters that would rather kill than live, Roland thinks bitterly, she knows too many like that. His life is littered with the corpses of such beasts. He wishes he could help the kids better. He wishes he could protect better. But he was never good at protecting, as it turned out, and he's only ever read books. Flame plows into him but in The City the attacks you can't clash against you use as an opportunity to inflict more pain through. That's He throws one last punch in the throat to make sure of it, but he isn't going to follow into the water. Covered in dragon blood, Roland turns. A javelin is thrown at him and it slams into his side, impaling through him. He rips it out bloodily and hobbles towards Sigrun. "Looking for a better life, who cares who you bury huh?" He has no sword, but he has a hammer, cracking for a leg of all things--judging from Lilian's reaction, the best thing he can do is harm her ability to give chase--not go for the kill. "Then you shouldn't shout 'treachery' when it happens to you."
Odette Raskins	For Odette, where the nearest people to her are Parker and the prisoners, the dragon in the background is still the scariest thing around right now. Although she can't ignore the presence of the guards, she also doesn't have as much to worry about from them while so many of them are still asleep. She can't even bring herself to relax when Andrey's able to put weight on his leg again, focused as she is on making sure she can get him down in time if the dragon starts hurling flames their way again. "Don't go too hard on it now, but... Don't loiter, okay? We have to keep moving. Easy now, can one of you get..? Thank you!" After making sure Andrey's in good (enough) hands, Odette exhales softly and only gets to return Juno's smile with a brief nod of her own before nearly choking on nothing when she sees Triffin bringing Melady down to the courtyard. Seeing that her work's never quite done, she glances up at the dragon once more, then starts sprinting for Melady instead of stopping to watch the bloody lightshow. Everyone's got the dragon handled. The fight with Sigrun must be coming to an end with Sigrun in that condition, even though Odette's not sure how she's still standing in her current state. Does she even have enough bandages to stabilize Melady with all those wounds through her torso? She'll have to make do with what she has, at least- Before Odette reaches Melady, she hears Sigrun nearly impaling Juno's head with a hurled spear. It's that first noisy throw that even sets off the warning bells in her head that she can't relax just yet. She only has a moment to realize that another spear is being thrown and coming right for her, and the memory of a particular axe flashes through her mind. Her terrified instinct to duck out of the way winds up saving her from another gruesome injury as the spear only ends up clipping her shoulder instead of piercing right through. The impact is still enough to dislocate her shoulder and draw a pained scream from the EMT, but the lack of blood spray that follows is probably a good sign, right? Right. Sucking in air through her teeth, Odette's fight or flight reaction actually ticks over into fight for once, and she rips that soldier's spear out of the ground to fling it right back at Sigrun. At the last moment before loosing it, however, Odette nudges her aim downwards and ends up hurling the spear at Sigrun's legs rather than letting it loose directly at center mass. Still shaking after that, Odette resumes hurrying over to Melady, trying to turn her mind away from the fight so she can refocus on doing her actual job here. "M-Miss Melady! Ow, fff...  St-steady breathing. I got you. I-I just need to..." Shivering through the pain, she takes out the last of her painkillers and feeds them to the wounded wyvern rider, then starts treating the worst of those injuries with a combination of healing paste that she cooked up in the kitchen, disinfecting bandages, and slicing parts of parts her own dress off to fill in the gaps that she doesn't have enough bandages for. "Y-you're doing great.. Mmn. Steady breathing, okay? Stay with me... Can you see if I'm bleeding? Like a palm size, or.... Or a bigger fruit size?" She asks, sounding semi-delirious herself.
Marigold	"Sometimes people are different."      For all that Sigrun seems friendless now, her touch runs through half the enemies and allies you've had. Mentor to Galle, who mentored Melady and served under Murdoch. Colleague to Juno, who mentored Shanna and Thea...      What she might've once meant to any of them, isn't worth recounting now. "You don't need to understand it." "... Suppose I don't." Even yelled-at, Juno still can't quite look away from that scarred face. "... I promise you, Sigrun, that there's another way." "I hope you're right." "What does that mean?!" But the years have led Sigrun to become the kind of person to survey the rubble of her keep, look at her odds several-to-one against Otherworldly heroes, and reply instead: "What I wouldn't give even for a horse."      Finally, then, Juno finds the strength to look away from the hollow socket of Sigrun's horrid skull, and flee into the Treasury.      Sigrun grips her cutlass by the blade, and threads a dead man's spear through the empty handguard. It's an odd and beautiful technique: use the ring to steer its thrusts, to give its blows a swirling impact and its parries a vicious quickness.      It serves her well in flinging a huge piece of rubble straight up to absorb Geed's beam; in pole-vaulting away from Flamel's assault to keep it from bearing down too heavily and trying to brace a spear against him; in swirling and entangling Drogrung's plunge, darting just away from where its jaws might emerge.      "IT'S *UNFORGIVABLE* IF WE TAKE *CHILDHOOD* AWAY FROM THE *CHILDREN WHO COULD LIVE IT*!!"      "THEN DON'T BRING THEM TO WAR!" The spear breaks with a straining swat to keep Flamel at bay; in the same movement she takes another one from the ground. Death seems to feed her.      Niime extricates herself from the ruined tower, takes Raigh by the ear and shouts something at him, and then they both flee across the courtyard. Sigrun has her shot now, through her crowd of assailants; her pupil twitches at the instant where she could pierce the hearts of both of them. But the spear doesn't leave her hand.      Nor does it leave her hand for Melady and Odette, in that corner. "O... Odette?" she murmurs, as the wyvern parts its wings for her- the beast is at least that smart. "I'm-- I'll live. I can still feel my legs... ohhh, Odette, you're bad. Help me up- help me up, and we'll fly you to Lucius, yes?"
Marigold	"Looking for a better life, who cares who you bury huh?" "You don't understand a single thing," she says with flat disgust. In the whirl of battle, the momentum of Roland's hammer is harder to gracefully deflect. He gets the blow to her leg; probably he could outrun her now, but it doesn't compromise her forms.      Nor can Lilian's pressing offensive and notching-up of wounds stop Sigrun from laying out the kind of violence that could be reconstructed from the scoring on the stones underneath. That makes four more enemies than she has eyes; one a hundred times her weight, two jittering faster than she can follow.      Wounds slow her the least amount their anatomical compromise possibly could. She doesn't seem to run out of blood; perhaps, one might think, the rain is refilling it.      There are no purely supernatural beings in Elibe. Not in the way that Sigrun's half-Death's-head and apparent sustenance from battle would imply. But around the time she parries the fifteenth blow she couldn't have seen, shatters her fourth spear about someone's head, and divides another psychic blast with her sword, one might start to wonder.           Sigrun's eye that's intact is dry and tearless; bloodshot with frenzy. It's only the one she lost to battle long ago, the empty socket, that overflows with rainwater and drips down what you could call a cheek. "COME ON! A HORSE, A HORSE! I'VE HAD--"      . . .      At the stables, the three Blackwing riders are huddled close to one another; in their befuddlement at Nobunaga's words, they've almost accepted the traitor back into their number on instinct. "Talia, is that true...?" "I-- I don't think it is. Nobunaga, what are you talking about?" "I know Bern's doing... awful things. But they're the ones who hired us."      In the background, there's still the din of Sigrun's mortal struggle. "If her cause is wrong, the most a knight can do is hope to be defeated. If we laid down our swords, who would ever pay for us again?" "The High Wingleader's our advocate. She wouldn't let Bern--"      They're the ones who see it first, with their angle to the cliff.      While the other prisoners stream down Ace's stairwell to escape by the boat, Juno is hanging back. She's grabbing the chests from the Treasury- she can't get all of them, but she knows the most valuable- and pitching them off the cliff into the sea. "Help me!" she calls out between thunderclaps, carried by the wind, when she sees she's been noticed. "What's she--" "Wait, that's our--" "Sigrun! SIGRUN! JUNO'S--"
Marigold	Her skin is pale and drawn, but her breaths are fogging the air now. Rationally, one knows that Sigrun must be just about to drop.      Irrationally, it feels as though she would continue to fight even if beheaded.      In the distance a wooden chest smashes against rocks far below and spills its guts into the surf. Surely that noise can't reach her. But the indistinct sounds of alarm from the stables not-far from the cliffside, and the direction Juno went in, and the note of nervous jubilance in the voice of her old friend, make some nerves deep in Sigrun's spine go cold.      The posture of battle goes out of her, several minutes after it was last believable she could possibly maintain it. If needed, she sweeps aside or tolerates a last few blows; but it's clear to look at her, aghast and almost-sleepwalking towards the Treasury, that this is the 'walking ghost' phase.      "Juno..." she says, to the empty doorway where her friend went. The weapons clatter from her hands as she looks around the corner, still failing to find her. For the first time in a long time, her living eye looks uncertain. "Juno, what have you done?"      In the distance, back towards town, there's a rising clamor. Nothing stops you from lingering a minute or two more... but it's probably best to let the dead past bury its dead.