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Owner	Pose
Riku Asakura	Pega's call for help will come from a part of the City Riku lives in; this city is a dense urban environment... which makes it the worst place for Fukuide to have a sniper set up.  Worse if he decides to use his own Fusion Riser to make a monster.  Right now, Riku is stuck standing, while Fukuide himself is sitting on a park bench.  Behind Riku, standing a few feet back, is a young woman, Laiha.   Finding the sniper and waiting for you to arrive will take time, which Riku is doing by listening to Fukuide while you search.  Thankfully, there is a light on her forehead in the shape of a bullseye.  Tracing it from where she is to a high-rise building nearby, you can see what looks like a lumpy-headed alien in a hoodie pointing a large gun towards the crowd below.   A similar lumpy-headed alien, in his own hoodie, is across the wide street in a different high-rise building.  You can tell this is the spotter because he's got a pair of binoculars and seems to be speaking into a radio.  It seems this is an intelligent mercenary operation, because he says the words 'the client' a lot, rather than speak about Fukuide directly.   Revealing yourselves before you have the sniper under control might get him to shoot Laiha.   Meanwhile, Fukuide is talking to Riku like he doesn't have a care in the world.  Right now, he currently holds the cards, or so he thinks.
Riku Asakura	"Twenty years old, eh?  Time really flies.  I remember leaving you at the observatory like it was yesterday," Kei says to Riku. "What do you mean?!" Riku questions him, knowing full well that was where he was found as a baby.   "Before I kill you, I wanted to tell you that twenty years ago I was the one who delivered you to that observatory."  He pauses to look at Riku, who has a realizing look followed by a deeply troubled one, seemingly unable to talk.  "I like that reaction.  If an artist were here, I'd love to see that idiotic expression captured in a picture." Kei continues teasing Riku, seemingly not caring about the rest of the world around them. "Just what are you?" Riku asks, to the bemused Fukuide.   "You should be worried more about what you are, boy.  My objective is to gather the activated Ultra Capsules, but the Little Stars needed to activate them will only transfer to an Ultraman.  That is why I proposed an idea to Master Belial.  Why not create someone to aid in the activation of the capsules?  He entrusted to me a sample of his genetic material, and in my laboratory, I created a lifeform with the potential to become an Ultraman, and that lifeform is you." "What are you talking about?" Riku asks again, maybe trying to draw this out, or maybe he really doesn't believe what Fukuide is saying.  "Activating the Ultra Capsules?" "You... seem to think that becoming Ultraman Geed has made you some sort of superhero, but I was the one making you fight." "I... I chose to become Ultraman of my own free will!" Riku says, perhaps more desperately than he wanted to sound.   "I manipulated you so that you would make that choice.  Doesn't that make the Little Stars that pinned their hopes on you seem like such imbeciles?" Fukuide pauses to watch Riku seethe, unable to say or do anything... the words hitting harder than he would admit.   "I have come here today to retrieve your Ultra Capsules. Thanks to your friends' interference, it has become a more urgent matter.  It may not restore him to his full glory, but it will be enough to allow Master Belial to move to a new base of operations.  Now, hand them over..." he doesn't ask, but commands as he holds out his hand. "No way!" Riku bites back, refusing to give up the Ultra Capsules. "If you don't, your friend will be shot," Kei Fukuide taunts.   At this moment, the Sniper seems to be peeling off the hood of his hoodie from his head, his eye still in the scope of his sniper rifle instead of looking around himself.  His other hand was still on the trigger, but the arm that was bracing it was off.
Petra Soroka	On a technical level, Petra is pretty well equipped to counter a hidden sniper threatening an innocent girl in the streets of downtown, at the command of some evil devil worshipping smug villain. In Petra's firm ideological worldview, a man should never be in a position of power, and she's not really pro-girls-getting-shot-dead-in-the-street either.     She can loose a handful of ratbots to surreptitiously float between buildings and peer down towards the scene of Fukuide's confrontation with Riku, trying to ascertain what angles a sniper could possibly be using to see them. She can keep her transteam rifle subtly disassembled to either countersnipe the alien, or take advantage of its shorter range capabilities if she confronts them directly. She can quickly and efficiently breach a high rise, and rocket up to the top floors before a sniper could take the warning to escape, disabling them without any shooting openly in the streets.     All of this is true, and yet, once the ratbot microphones start picking up the conversation between Fukuide and Riku, Petra has none of that on her mind at all. Clustered in the hiding place some distance away from the park to not be caught by Fukuide, Petra's tablet screen's focus swerves away from triangulating the angles of a sniper's possible approach, to instead zoom in on Fukuide's face, as Petra makes the most unwholesomely delighted gasp she's ever made. "Why not create someone to aid in the activation of the capsules? He entrusted to me a sample of his genetic material,"     "Hhhhhhhhhha--! Huh?! Are you serious?! Look, look, listen, are you kidding me?!"     Petra thrusts her tablet into all the other Elites' faces, pointing emphatically at the guy on screen. "Guys, I kind of thought I was joking with this whole thing, but holy *shit* he's actually just *banging* Riku's *evil dad*! He's extracting genetic material from the fucking, de-powered vessel of the apocalyptic space devil! Am I the only one paying attention to this?!" "It may not restore him to his full glory, but it will be enough to allow Master Belial to move to a new base of operations."     "Oh god I wanna know what else he's got to say *so* bad."
Sarracenia	Sarra makes her way here as fast as she can. But, unlike with most situations, she doesn't come in guns blazing and bob-ombs exploding. This is the sort of scenario she pictured when Petra and Lilian all but said they were going to kill her. She isn't -as- worried about that these days, but it does mean she's thought a lot about what to do in that sort of situation.      So, when she arrives, she is actually not in her princess outfit. Instead, she arrives as quietly as she can, wearing a completely normal outfit. It's a blue denim jacket with a white undershirt, a knee-length red skirt, black leggings, and red tennis shoes. Her hair is still sort of princess-looking thanks to how she just tends to keep it styled, but her crown is nowhere to be seen. Her lotus hairpin is still in place though, as is her purse.      Once she has made it into an alley, she reaches into her purse to deploy the other part of Queen Meresankh's gift. A drone! A gold and red ladybug drone. She tosses it up into the air, and it starts buzzing around, making its way upward to try and get a line on the sniper and spotter. The white part of her green eye turns entirely black as she is linked to the drone, and her tongue sticks out the side of her mouth in concentration as she flies it upward with mental commands. And so, the shiny metal laydbug floats its way up. It is just an innocent ladybug. Do not mind it.      As she starts searching with the drone, Sarra radios to Riku quietly. <"Riku. Pega. I am here. I am going to try and find the sniper and stay out of sight myself. Fukuide knows my face."> she says as her own drone joins the ratbots in the sky, with much more focus on finding the snipers.      And also trying unsuccessfully to ignore Petra. Her teeth clench as the tablet is thrust into their faces. "Is that really important right now?!" Sarra exclaims in her most exclamatory whisper.
Flamel Parsons	This is where Flamel can shine.     While he keeps his clairvoyance running hot, tuning the screens of his van in to the nearest source of tension and catching flickers and flutters of the the disasterous killing intent (sans locale). "Come on, come on..." But, coming to a stop in an alleyway, he slams the van into park and pulls a lever. The antenna of his van rises, begins to spin.     All the screens in the van begin to flicker through more minds... Specifically, this is a *densely* populated zone! Flamel can't risk invading Fukuide's mind, who knows what kind of gray alien anti-telepathy might get set off if he does mass-area clairvoyance or tries to get into the spotter's mind... but a gun is a gun is a gun! That had to get carried, by a person, to a location. And in a place so densely populated, it's *impossible* for that assassin to go un-seen at least once.     Flamel begins to reach into *every mind* in the vicinity, bouncing astrally between a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand civilian minds, checking their internal psychic plane for all of their recent sensory information. *Their* psychic defenses are low, and he can thereby create an incredibly unethical surveillance state from practically nothing, all at once, and scan it for every humanoid shape anyone saw, holding any type of long or hardened container.     He won't get an exact location. But he'll hopefully get approximate locations and trajectories, and that can help everyone else narrow their search for no risk at all.     He rolls the van's window down, peering at the tablet. "There's a long, one might even say *pedigreed* history of alien invaders engaging in genetic-material harvesting. Towards humans, from humans, between each other -- really, the harvesting of genetic material is sort of a unique cultural gesture between conspiratorial alien organizations." He shakes his head. "It's honestly more like a social activity than an intimate one." He says, generally wrong.
Angela	Roland wasn't in the mood to engage in sniper combat so Angela has decided to come along today herself. It doesn't really feel like all this business is getting her closer to reaching Ultraman Belial but she supposes that's how Riku feels about it. So she has come along with Petra wearing the Magic Bullet EGO uniform but not presently summoning the rifle that goes along with it into her hands. With Magic Bullet, she's confident she can hit any target so long as she can spot the target. She doesn't have any particular rat bot minion that she can bring along unless she counts people who don't really want to get shot in the head, even if they'd survive it, but she reasons Roland's reluctance is due to her having worked him pretty hard lately. She does consider just shooting the 'spotter' so that the 'sniper' doesn't have one to 'spot' with, but the EGO's instincts are telling her that would be a good idea which makes Angela think it will be a bad idea because the weapon has the soul of a guy who killed all his loved ones and then lost his soul. Laiha isn't a loved one of Angela's but EGO can jump the gun some tof hte time. ''I manipulated you so that you would make that choice.'' Angela sighs. "I suppose these ultra capsules are important then." She looks to Petra. she shakes her head to reassure her that she's also pretty confident that Kei is banging Riku's evil dad. "Well, it will likely take us some time to find the other sniper. Maybe Riku will stall, allowing us to learn more." Once she's nice and properly crouched down she summons Magic Bullet into her hands. Angela has never actually directly personally killed anyone before though she has taken actions that have resulted in people dying in more indirect ways, such as locking doors that had to be open or assigning them to works that she knew would be fatal, and so on, but she's never done anything like shooting someone real with a gun. That's pretty new to her. Even the simulacrum of the false Tiphereth wasn't exactly ''real'' after all. But she seems relaxed about the idea.
Petra Soroka	"There's a long, one might even say *pedigreed* history of alien invaders engaging in genetic-material harvesting."     "I'm something of an alien invader myself, you know." Heretra leans up against the alleyway wall outside Flamel's inconspicuous van, raptly attentive to her tablet. To Sarracenia, she retorts, "Everything is important all the time. What, do *you* know anything about his master plans or his history with Riku? Riku's learning about the forbidden love affair of his two dads right now. Don't you think that might be important? Are you trying to erase queer history?" "I suppose these ultra capsules are important then."     "Maybe." Petra shrugs. "I don't even really know what they are. Energy orbs for aliens? Is that why they'll power up Belial?"     She tip-taps away, swiveling the three-sixty degree view from the ratbots' cameras to try and spot which vantage points the sniper could be using. "Been reading Paradise Lost, by the way. Really wanna know why he's named 'Belial' specifically. He's kind of acting like a sneaky fucker now, but also he almost ended the world, so...? Who knows."     "I dunno if we wanna be shooting out in the street like that, anyways, Ange. If you shoot someone, won't we immediately get shot dead the second after? Not to mention causing a scene."
Lilian Rook	<J-IC-Scene> Pega says, "Um, hello? If you can hear me um... Riku and Laiha are in danger. There's a sniper and Kei Fukuide and...so many people..." <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "I see. You want a counter sniper?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Pega says, "I um..." he sounds like he's panicing, "Um... yes? Please. Anything to stop the sniper...I don't know where the sniper is though..." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I'm sorry? Is that some sort of kaiju?" <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Oh my god. A sniper? Like a whole ass gun?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Pega says to Lilian, "No! No Kaiju!" to Petra, "Y-yes, he already took a few shots at Laiha." <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Pega says to Lilian, "But there might be a Kaiju, Kei Fukuide is here and he can make them, I think." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, giddy, "He can *make* them?!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I . . . How did . . . ?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Pega says, "Um... yes!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Like, a gun that shoots bullets?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Bullets that kill you?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Pega says, "Yes!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, ". . . Metal ones?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "--Beg pardon, I'm on my way."     Lilian wouldn't admit to feeling sort of embarrassed by the time she arrives; because, you see, that would be a psychotic thing to be fixated on while a woman's life is in imminent danger. The time she had spent underestimating the seriousness of the situation is bad enough already, in fact! But, because she had to hurry here with such severity, even leaving behind some of her work, anyone would forgive her for her pacing, her mild avoidance, her restless habits, and her needless throat-clearing and hair-tidying, which lasts up until someone else is far, far more embarrassing.     'Hhhhhhhhhha--! Huh?! Are you serious?! Look, look, listen, are you kidding me?!'     "Petra can you please just focus?! Or do you want to go down as the girl whose brains are so rotted out by boy's love that she'd let another girl's brains hit the sidewalk?!"     You can say that, Lilian, but you're sooooo close to laughing that anyone can tell. Disguising it as an angry exhalation or a sudden cough doesn't help.     'It's honestly more like a social activity than an intimate one.'     Lilian claps her hand over her mouth (disgusted! appalled!) and strains to say (for the sheer offense of it!) "Parsons, if you think that's helping right now, you're wrong."     Unfortunately for Lilian, her Concord allies acting like clowns doesn't absolve her of responsibility to protect the Paladins asset here, nor the innocent civilian; both uniquely her burden in this situation, as she realizes in a particular moment of bile fascination with Kei playing mindgames that are clearly kneecapping Riku's confidence while everyone is fussing about yaoi.     §Aside from that stupid laser sight, it isn't sensible to assume I'll be able to see the gunshot before it hits the pavement; I don't know the rifle or the alien. Taking out the sniper immediately just means that the suit on the street is going to have to resort to using his own force; which means a kaiju in a heavily populated downtown area. Asakura won't do anything useful so long as the woman is in harm's way. Removing her without immediately taking out the leveraged threat creates confusion and potentially delays escalation for a moment. So . . .§
Lilian Rook	Lilian has made up her mind by the time she's done tying back her hair. She had planned to change into her armour, just in case of bullets, but her current plan doesn't care about that. "And, seriously?" she says, all of the agitation and uncertainty having dropped right out the bottom of her voice. She looks Sarracenia in the face, and says "Green?" just before disappearing.     . . .     And she doesn't even end up mysteriously out of sight either, actually. All she did was grab Laiha at some point and appear a couple of buildings down, still within sight of most of the Elites! Just not within sight of Kei, or Riku, or the sniper, because she's at the back alley instead of right out in the street. Not informing Riku is actually the point, too!     It's just maybe a little worrisome that she then has to put a hand over Laiha's mouth and hold her still with her other arm in the six seconds it takes to say "Be quiet. Stay quiet. Don't let the sniper know where you are. Don't tip him off. You're being rescued. Stay quiet." in an intentionally repetitive patter-pattern to bludgeon through the average level of panic a normal person would probably feel about that.
Riku Asakura	The message from Sarracenia goes into Riku's ear, which almost forces him to smile.  Thankfully, he recovers just narrowly to avoid tipping off Fukuide.  Laiha is a bit more controlled than Riku is, her eyes searching the tops of the buildings where she thinks the sniper could be.  Pega is nowhere to be seen... at first.   Pega actually comes out of Petra's shadow.  Well, just his head, really.  Of course, that's just a pair of eyes on stalks and a large ribbed object with a yellow heart where his neck would be.  "Um.  Sorry for interrupting you, but being over there is scary.  Um... is it really the best time to be discussing Fukuide and Riku's dad... like um... that?"  He pauses and then, "He really did almost end the universe!  I was uh... a baby when Belial did it, but like he ruined a lot of planets across the universe." For Flamel, there is no bloodlust per se, except for Fukuide himself.  It's obvious that Fukuide /loathes/ Riku.  However, the thoughts of two aliens who are here to murder someone stand out from the other humans.  Also, given the angle of the mark on Laiha, it puts them somewhere on a roof.  In a half-mile radius around Fukuide, there are only three buildings that are both tall enough and not too tall to make the sniper stand out.   The Ratbots, if they are still searching, and Sarracenia's drone can search the locations quickly.  It doesn't take them long to spot the sniper,  while the spotter is in a different building across the street from it.  They are Alien Bado's, and their lack of disguise probably means they aren't compliant with the AIB.   This is one problem; the other problem is that if a Kaiju fight happens here, there are a lot of civilians in the way.  There is almost no way to start evacuating civilians without alerting Fukuide that there are now elites here.  Meaning he might do something drastic, either ordering the sniper to fire or transforming himself into a beast.   Riku, on the other hand, knows he's got to stall for time.  His throat tightens as he tries to think of something... anything.  "What do you mean my friends have forced you to act early?"  Riku is clearly struggling to hold off on handing over the Ultra Capsules. "The AIB, of course.  They found out that I am a servant of Master Belial." Those who were there at the AIB sting know that they also possibly found out where Belial is, too.  "Now, enough questions ha-" he starts to say before he notices something.  Or rather, a lack of someone.  Laiha is gone, which means so is his leverage.   Laiha, to her credit, doesn't scream or shout, but she does tense up like a fighter just about to throw someone off of her.  When she hears Lilian's voice, familiar because of both Riku and watching stuff happen in the Multiverse, she relaxes and nods to Lilian.   Riku turns to face where Fukuide is staring, only to turn around and take a step back.  There is still a sniper, of course, but people know where he and his spotter are.  This is also tense because... "You know, without your friend there, this town will be reduced to rubble.  It's a shame that all of these people's souls will be on your conscience!" The sniper on the roof gets a signal and starts changing his aim to a random person on the street.
Angela	''Energy orbs for aliens? Is that why they'll power up Belial?'' "All that time under observation and I suppose we didn't really know to ask the right questions. Which capsules are ideal for your health, what kind of orbs do you eat? Perhaps a sign of the facility's hesitancy to adopt alternate forms of analysis even for Outsider entities." But she's distracted by talk of Paradise Lost. "Oh! I've heard a great deal of Paradise Lost. It always seemed to be the sort of book that people talk about due to some famous passages but never really get around to reading." She frowns a little at the idea that someone's name might make them into an automatic fallen angel figure just by fate. "He was named Belial even when he was ''not'' evil, but perhaps it was just prophecy." She sighs. "He did seem interested in the making of the Riku, but I didn't expect him to completely give in to corrosion--and yet, from what I hear, he hasn't. It was just him. So I suppose it is a mystery that I am just curious about, but I've rarely found the answers to the mysteries to be ever satisfying, usually it is distressing, so I suppose I've been a bit reluctant to investigate." She holds her rifle in her lap as Petra mentions that it would make a scene. "...Would we get shot dead?" She frowns a little. "Is our goal to take the snipers prisoner to interrogate? If so, I have prepared the incorrect tool, but I can move us in a hurry should it come to it." ''Pega actually comes out of Petra's shadow.'' Angela almost shoots Pega in the head but fortunately her sense of time does mean she has time to process a sudden head poking out of a shadow before firing a weapon. She stares at him for a moment and then reaches out with her foot like she's about to shove Pega back down into the shadow with it. ''I was uh... a baby when Belial did it'' Angela pulls her foot back. "I want to know the specifics and I am certain I can only get them out of Belial himself. We worked together before. I have no reason to trust a baby's memory." "It seems you've found the target. I ought to be able to take us there."
Sarracenia	Sarra blinks in surprise as Pega emerges from a shadow, and again as Lilian appears with Laiha. She huffs in annoyed appreciation of Lilian's time powers. At least Laiha is safe.      And is gradually losing control of her volume as the Torturous Trio goes full in on her /in the middle of a terrorist situation/. "Are you serious?! -That- is what you are focusing on?! Right now?! Not everything is about you, Lilian!!" Sarra screams both out loud and into the radio. "Sniper found!!" she shouts suddenly, and pulls out a Bullet Bill power-up. "Perhaps focus on that!!" she screams angrily before she leaps upward, then starts wall-kicking her way up quickly and out of the alley.      Once she is clear, she is engulfed in an explosion, and a car-sized Bullet Bill comes rocketing out and arcs toward the sniper. Meanwhile, the red and gold ladybug divebombs them. The ladybug can't really fight at all, but Sarra can't stop time and isn't lightning fast, so she needs some way to distract them until she can rocket her way in.      Instead of impacting the building and possibly hurting people, she explodes in front of the sniper, trying to cloud their sightlines as she comes spiraling in, Silver gloves on and rapid firing fletchettes at that gun.
Petra Soroka	"He was named Belial even when he was ''not'' evil, but perhaps it was just prophecy."     "Lucy, short for Lucifer," Petra burbles aimlessly. "I keep forgetting that you'd met the guy. I never did." "Or do you want to go down as the girl whose brains are so rotted out by boy's love that she'd let another girl's brains hit the sidewalk?!"     "Noooooo! I'm focusing! I'm just multitasking! It's got two totally different parts of my brain engaged, so I'm actually working *twice* as hard!"     You know, Petra's made it so clear where her interests in this world lie-- *not* yaoi, but she has been interested in Fukuide expressly for some time! For reasons even besides the boy's love! Really, it's not like people's dads are allowed to be sexual objects at all, so that's out of the question. She's just got ideological fascination with people who are devoted to some evil overlord in an ambiguously sexual way. Um. Sorry for interrupting you,"     Petra yelps in surprise, startling away from her own shadow. "Who the fuck are you?"     It's not because she recognizes his voice from quite literally under an hour ago in the radio, but because he's got such a soggy and wimpy tone, that she quickly relaxes. "Look, man, it's work. If we can't chat on work time, then everything we do would be *so* boring. Also, it's, like, plot relevant."     Now, Petra is actually capable of working while gossiping about the sex life of someone's evil dad. The ratbots are *made* for surveillance, and the angle they get on the world is totally different from what a person walking in the street would see. A sniper hiding out of sight from the average civilian is in plain view to a drone, and either Petra or Sarra eventually spot the guy with the gun. Petra zooms in on his weird lumpy head on her tablet, in awe for a moment.     "Look at the size of that thing. He's calculating every trajectory in his head at once. He came straight here from sixty reps at the library." "Is our goal to take the snipers prisoner to interrogate?"     Okay! Enough funny business now! The near-constant stream of jokes coming out of Petra's mouth has to come to an end at some point, and she actually does not want any random civilians dead on her watch. She beckons Angela around to join her as she circles through the alleyways towards the apartment complex that the sniper is hiding in.     "No, our goal's to not die and to keep anyone else from dying and to ideally not turn this into a national incident. Riku's still supposed to be, like, secret, and all."     Leaning back against the door that leads into the apartment building, the Silver floating by Petra morphs into a razor sharp hole saw, drilling around the handle of the door. The knob falls, and the door swings open, and Petra hurries up the stairs with Angela to the floor that the sniper's on. On the way up, she takes out her radio, trying to coordinate a simultaneous strike that'll keep Fukuide from being alerted to his backup being taken out.     All the way up the stairwell, Petra raises up her transteam pistol while slowly and quietly easing open the roof access door. She whirls around the corner, shooting the sniper with a trio of energy bolts, then rushing over to grab him and duck behind his cover on the roof. From here, they should have a clean line of sight to the (hopefully distracted) spotter, so Petra points to direct Angela to shoot him from here.
Swords of Justice	A real gun with real bullets. Most Mages wouldn't openly admit that a weapon like that is actually terrifying, but Shirou's not hopped up on the arrogance and hubris to deny that this is a rather horrifying situation. He dies when he's killed now without Avalon and her, just like everyone else, and while that's the way it ought to be, putting himself in a situation that puts his life at risk should be the second thing he tries so he can at least pretend he cares about his own safety. Even if he was bulletproof, which he isn't, it doesn't change the fact that the target the sniper has chosen isn't.      He turns his radio on again, hoping someone has an idea on what to do, but... <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "We're operating at five hundred milli-wokes."      He places a hand up on his earpiece to remove it, but Medusa, who had been standing beside him, grabs his hand and puts it back to his side. He lets out a frustrated but understanding sigh.      At least for now, it sounds like the target is safe, but Medusa soon notices that the sniper is changing targets, and forces Shirou to look by simply grabbing and directing his head.      Shoot. What do they d-      Shirou doesn't have time to finish his thought as Medusa once again grabs him by the arm, pulling him into an alleyway she knows the spotter can't easily see.      "We're waiting for an opening."      She knows if she didn't say that, Shirou would honestly consider running up to the sniper and confronting them before they can do anything a valid strategy.      She's actually right, Shirou was considering that, but now that he can't, he just wishes he could make his swords reach farther somehow...
Flamel Parsons	Flamel rubs the bridge of his nose. "For better or for worse," He says, laughing a little under his breath. "You're one of the least alien people I know. You just elevate strange substrates out of the human unconscious. You're more like a hollow-Earthenoid than an alien, I know you come from space but--" He jolts. They've made contact. And Fukuide's delivering his threat...     He knows that posture. Just about to act. Delivering his ultimatums just before he deliveries his consequences. Flamel floors it out of the alleyway, lifting aside civilians telekinetically to give him the room to just barrel straight towards Fukuide.     The first thing he attacks is Fukuide's clarity of focus. He uses this by way of a powerful parapsychic technique, where he manipulates a wheel and several levers to move multiple tons of steel all at once, and it's called "driving". He opens the door moments before the van careens into the side of the building, and vanishes, presumably jumping out of the thing. He's trying to impact the super-powered man roughly, or at least force him to dodge back away from Riku. But where did he invisibly jump out to?!     As smoke clears, that question *doesn't*. Not unless you look very, very closely at the seatbelt still clicked into place on the driver's side seat. Flamel never bailed at all; one way or another Fukuide's focus is going to be broken and his impulse to summon the Kaiju will be *right at the surface*, ready for a shot of willpower.     <GEEEEEED!> Flamel's telepathic voice calls out -- astrally pulling Geed, and anyone nearby he can manage, into the surface of Fukuide's mind! He's rushing, along with his ally, into the man's brain to try to fight with the *idea* of the monstrous kaiju! It won't be a great opportunity to gather information, sure, but it'll make sure the kaiju battle -- an inevitability -- is contained in Fukuide's psychic plane, at least temporarily. And it'll let Geed and anyone else fight at full power, with the civilians likely keeping their distance from a mundane, everyday (somewhat severe) van crash.     Flamel flickers back into visibility, somewhat limp in the driver's seat.
Angela	Angela sighs as Sarracenia indicates she won't wait. She wishes she was so carefree. But then again, Sarracenia doesn't exactly seem all that happy does she? Maybe a bit of hesitation to pull the trigger, metaphorically or literally isn't such a bad thing. "I was a little surprised I was not named Lucifer. Or Lucy. But I suppose that would have been a bit too on the nose." "I don't recall him visiting." Angela jokes though maybe only Petra can tell it is one from her delivery. "I see, so open gunfire would be problematic because of political reasons." She rushes after Petra. She can run if she needs to, especially with the EGO augmenting. "Fortunately these are not normal bullets." She ducks down by Petra's suggested cover. In Elite activities, she knows to trust Petra's experience and instinct even if she doesn't understand the whole of the reasoning. She takes aim with the Magic Bullet--carelessness would disrupt its true power--and lets loose with a shot towards the spotter--A dark flame bullet pops through a portal before a second one appears, launching at an unexpected angle from underneath the spotter's chin.
Lilian Rook	'I'm something of an alien invader myself, you know.'     "How do you continue to find new and more esoteric ways of being a frightening little chaser?" Lilian rolls her eyes, and yet finally allows herself to laugh about it.     'Don't you think that might be important? Are you trying to erase queer history?'     "It's fine, it's fine. If she erases queer history, I'll just continue to make more." The only way she could possibly be any more smug about it is if she could puff out steam like an anime character.     'Been reading Paradise Lost, by the way. Really wanna know why he's named 'Belial' specifically.'     "Okay well that's good for you but I don't think the alien demigod chose that name because of Paradise Lost."     'If you shoot someone, won't we immediately get shot dead the second after?'     "Perhaps you will, but I'm built different." She pauses. "Don't get shot, though."     . . . . . . . .     All of that affect is nowhere to be seen after the split second plus two minutes it took to move Laiha. Of course, she isn't about to be thrown off easily when it's Laiha's life on the line, but she still exhales a sigh of relief once she appears to understand. Glad to release her, Lilian still hovers only one step back, quickly rattling off "Don't run. Walk normally. Jog through the gaps at most. Go diagonally between the buildings-- that way-- you'll be spotted going orthagonal. Riku will be fine. Your job is to be as far away from here as you can. I'm going to tell him that you are. Okay?"     She's already turned her head around the corner before Laiha has a chance to answer. Sarracenia going off and then blowing up is such an inevitability that she's only of mind to check whether she hit the building and is mildly shocked to see that nothing more than the windows are broken. Petra's breach and clear is something she simply assumes will be successful. She expects Roland to be able to take out the spotter, both knowing Magic Bullet particularly well after Tennant, and Roland as a person. Which leaves only Kei as the glaring issue; she has no idea whether he's the type to throw a tantrum as his plan falls apart and try to take out everyone on the block with him.     So she offers no explanation for vanishing again before Laiha has even made it past one office building. Though Night Mist is objectively more threatening, attempting to discourage a transformation means invoking something that screams 'instantaneously deadly' as a threat; which means having Winter Crow on Kei's head from just within his left peripheral vision, and praying that's enough for him to hesitate while half a dozen Elites storm the scene to take out his allies.     Lilian has a lot of things she'd like to say right now, and even more she'd like to ask. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the luxury of doing anything other than grabbing his attention, which goes like "Don't. There aren't normal bullets in this thing." in the two seconds before Flamel has charged the van right in and opened up the mindscape.     She makes a note to ask Riku how susceptible this guy is to bullets later.
Riku Asakura	Pega stares widely at Angela, who moves her foot towards him slowly, then back.  Pega is a huge pushover, like Petra thinks, and shrinks back when Petra pushes back on the idea that she's allowed to make up fanfiction of Kei Fukuide and Ultraman Belial.  "You worked together with Belial before..?" He asks, shocked.  But she is also right; you can't trust a baby's memory. "Oh, I'm Pega, from the radio?" he introduces himself to Petra.  When Petra starts to leave, Pega decides it's better to leave too, and sinks back into the shadows, probably heading towards Laiha's shadow. Sarracenia shouts at Lilian and Petra, and then launches herself in an explosion towards the sniper nest.  Fukuide's head immediately spins towards the yelling and explosion, then back to Riku, who is looking a lot more relieved.   The sniper, on the other hand, is being attacked in two different ways.  He rolls back as the bullet bill lands in front of him while he's swatting away the ladybug that is assaulting him.  The fletchettes are caught by the gun because he's specifically using it to block them... but it doesn't throw the heavy weapon out of his hand.   It's about this time that Petra comes out of the roof access door and shoots the sniper.  He goes sprawling onto the ground, desperately trying to hold onto his gun.  He looks like he's in serious pain, and he aims his weapon up, first at Petra and fires a single shot from the sniper rifle at her, before swinging it around towards Sarracenia, aiming another shot at her.   The spotter is still in sight, but he's seemingly starting to escape.  His partner is caught, and he's smart enough not to stay where he can get caught or shot, too.  Of course, Angela's shot comes from under his chin and hits him across the face.  He goes down in a slump before even getting a few steps towards his own roof access. Lilian is there right in front of Fukuide, with Winter Crow pointed at his head.  With the warning that there aren't normal bullets in the gun pointed at him.  He smiles, despite the situation, still firmly sure of himself.  Riku breaks the illusion, "Careful, he can absorb energy with a barrier he can put up around himself." "Nobody likes it when someone ruins the story for them, boy," Fukuide says irritably.
Riku Asakura	Flamel's van drives crazily through the road, but fortunately his own telekinesis tosses people and cars to safety.  Before it can hit Fukuide, he immediately draws a barrier around himself to absorb the kinetic energy of the crash.  The van wraps around him, and he immediately unleashes the force he had just saved up into the van that crashes into him... Which will throw the van back.  Thankfully, Flamel got his gambit off, as Riku and anyone else nearby are sucked into Fukuide's brain, or rather his surface-level thoughts.  This, of course, paralyzes Fukuide because now both Lilian and Riku (and anyone else close by who wants to be here)...
Riku Asakura	INSIDE FUKUIDE'S MIND Inside Fukuide's mind is a city just like the one they were on.  Mind Fukuide unleashes a wave of dark energy to push both Riku and Lilian away from him.   "From the moment I stoke the risers from the Land of Light, you and I were destined to fight.  Master Belial... grant me your power," as he says this, darkness gathers around him, pulling out the Riser.  This expands into a cloud of darkness that swallows him up. "King Joe," he says, activating a Kaiju capsule.  Sliding it into a holder just like Riku has.  "Zetton," he says, activating a second capsule.  It slides into the same holder.  He drags the Riser across each kaiju capsule. "I will mark the end!" He pulls the trigger on the Riser and transforms into Ultraman Belial.   FUSION RISE! KING JOE ZETTON ULTRAMAN BELIAL PEDANIUM ZETTON! Pedanium Zetton is mostly grey, looking like someone put divots into a lot of concrete.  He does have two yellow orbs on his chest, and various red spikes sticking out of his body, including his shoulders and two antennae on his head.  His face is a yellow diamond, and his hands are red claws.  Riku, standing up immediately, starts his own transformation. "I'm going to protect this town.  And I choose to do it!" FUSION RISE! ULTRAMAN SEVEN ULTRAMAN LEO ULTRAMAN GEED SOLID BURNING! The inevitable battle between Fukuide and Geed seems to be happening, but thankfully in a mindscape instead of the cityscape.  The two giants form a block between each of them as they stare each other down for a moment.   "I'm not your pawn." "Then prove it!" Fukuide spits back.  To which Geed immediately charges at Pedanium Zetton, closing the distance with a flying knee to the chest of the giant monster.
Angela	''You worked together with Belial before..?'' "Yes. He didn't exactly seem the type to destroy planets, plural, but it was not as if I read his mind. But at one point, he was 'corrupted' by an entity called Reiblood. The corrosion was terminal, at least through our methods. The idea came about to create a 'copy' of himself, one that would not be bound to either the Ultras or to the Reiblood." Angela continues, seemingly unaffected by her own words. "He said that Ultras were ultimately genetic copies of one another who developed individualistic traits. One of the last words he exchanged with me that if he were to make a copy, it would have to be a son--rather than bound to whatever fates bind the Ultras. I am no expert, so I cannot surmise what those would be." You can practically imagine the supercut of Riku fighting Fukuidea over Angela's words, as the latter seeks to bind the former to the lineage he was meant to be turned away from. "It is possible that I've had some small hand in Riku's existence." Angela admits. "Riku's existence was Belial's idea, but what that exactly entailed was a product of a discussion between myself, him, and another you do not know." She had been rather careless with Riku, Angela thinks, in light of that. But he'd already grown up into this before she knew him. Somehow. "I don't particularly care if Belial has become some manner of destructive tyrant. I am not a saint, Pega from the radio, and I wouldn't say I was close to Belial either. But I respected him for acknowledging he wished for a 'son' rather than a copy. I am not particularly concerned Riku will become one, even before his 'corruption' Belial was a very different being, but if Belial no longer feels that way then he is truly gone and I need not meddle any further." rShe finds that she doesn't particularly feel anything when she's pulling the trigger herself. She supposes that after dancing around it for a while, using your own hands doesn't actually feel all that different. The rifle vanishes away from her hands. "I've heard that there are those that seem to consider Riku to carry the sins of his father. I think he should kill those people for failing to look at him properly."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel stumbles out of his van and straight into the mindscape, panting and coughing. "...not gonna buff out..." He manages to mutter to himself. "Alright!" He calls out! "Alright! Anyone else in here, hit Zetton as hard as you can! There's no civilians-- but! The city probably represents his perception of the city, its citizens, Earth... It's the *idea of peace*! So you have to defend it anyway! Do your best, he's... probably even more confident about this in his head!"     "So take that confidence apart!" His levitation kicks in, two fingers planting on each temple as he assumes psychic battle position. Channeling Belial's power straight into the mind... Scary. *Scary!* But Flamel knows it's an opportunity too. What secret lie in that mental image this close to the neuron? Flamel musters his two huge psychic hands, then surges forward, grappling along the city structures! He whirls around one of the skyscrapers, grabbing its corners with those huge grabbers as he does to build speed, and then launches towards Geed's shoulder, landing tight...     He's been trying to keep up with kaiju combat. Surveiling Geed. A strike to damage the upper body that leaves Geed without stable footing is likely going to to result in a long delay on the heavy impact, a hard swing to set up a sequence of blows in response that keeps Geed off-guard... Flamel's huge telekinetic hands are already up, strings of light trailing from the human-sized figure on Geed's shoulder. If this were composed in Tokusatsu style, one can imagine now, the cinematographic maneuvering done to cut in footage of a darker-suited man with streams of lit suit, and his great glowing hands. It's like Geed's got a second set of arms, trying to block, strike, and flurry blows against the monster at just past Geed's own arms' reach!     Once you lose a fight in your mind, you've lost it in the real world too. That's a fundamental rule. The stakes are much the same here, though it'll be a more pitched, difficult fight to take on someone's own confident idea of their own strength. So, what does that come from? From Belial? Amid the strikes, Flamel aims to get a clairvoyance-charged strike on Zetton's torso orbs.
Sarracenia	Sarra isn't even mad that the sniper got shot. She may not kill people, but she isn't going to complain if someone who was ready to just kill random people doesn't make it. And she isn't about to let up when that gun swings toward her. She leaps forward and spins to the side, a hammer of Silver as tall as herself flowing into her hands before being swung at that gun and the hands holding it. "Cease this at once! What can you possibly gain by hurting random people?! If you surrender now, you may just make it out alive!"      Presuming that the sniper will say no to that, Sarra leaps upward as if to swing her hammer downward...and gets caught in the mind-wave. Sarra blinks in surprise. "W-wait! The sniper!!" she exclaims before being pulled in.      When she arrives, she looks around in confusion. "...where are we?" she murmurs before hearing the explanations. Geed and Zetton clash, and Sarra stares wide-eyed. Can she even help in something like this? Even if she can't, she growls a bit. "Take him down, Riku!!" she exclaims, then moves toward the battle, digging in her purse for a good power-up.
Petra Soroka	"Okay well that's good for you but I don't think the alien demigod chose that name because of Paradise Lost."     "Might be the other way around though, huh? Now we're really thinking with gas. How old's Belial, anyways?" "Don't get shot, though."     "I'll be careful!" The number of times Lilian has deigned to express care for Petra's well-being isn't zero by any means, but it's still precious enough that Petra can't help responding sincerely and actually committing to the effort. Through the power of affection shown to her by a woman, boys' love has temporarily left Petra's mind!     So that means, later, on the rooftop, Petra doesn't play games about having a sniper pointed at her. When the gun swings around towards her, she retreats to duck behind the roof access door, letting the shot ping off the metal. Now the reason she chose this particular approach to disabling the sniper is that, with such a long-barreled gun, the amount of effort and motion necessary to pivot between targets at close range is way higher than for her transteam pistol: by the time the alien's taken aim at Sarracenia, he's slowed down for Petra to close the distance between them from out of cover.     She kicks his legs out from under him, twisting his arms to break his grip and jamming the transteam gun into his chest. With another pull of the trigger, a pulse of kinetic light knocks the senses out of him, and Petra releases him to drop onto the rooftop. The driplet of Silver floating beside her darts forwards and snaps around his wrists, tightening to secure them behind his back while Angela takes out the spotter.     Petra stands up and dusts her hands off, leaning over the edge of the roof to survey the park below. Probably, at this point, people are freaking out a bit about the car crash and the Bullet Bill's explosion, but Petra can't rrrreally bring herself to be too disappointed by that. These people live in Kaiju World. They just have to accept these sorts of things, sometimes.     "Fuck. Ange, I think I wanna see inside that guy's head. I mean, I'm sure we've done enough at this point, but, like-- like, what's going on in there? You know?"     Petra groans, looking down at the bench where Fukuide's got the portal opened up into his mind. "Ugh. I hate letting Parsons do any of his bullshit, but if I focus, I can probably keep myself reined in enough to not disrupt it. Hold my hand for a sec?" "It is possible that I've had some small hand in Riku's existence."     While closing her eyes and breathing steadily to ensure that her telepathy-disrupting aura is controlled enough to allow her safely into the mindscape, Petra snickers. "You're supposed to hold onto saying that until you've got a gun pointed at one of his friends. Good thing I don't think he overheard."     Then, sucked into Fukuide's mindscape, Petra is... pretty late to get involved with any of the actual fighting! Long after transformation greebles have already been pulled out and activated, she cups her hand around her mouth and shouts up at the kaiju that she... assumes is probably him, on account of talking.     "Hey! So what are you-- why are you so interested in Belial, anyways?!"
Angela	''Fuck. Ange, I think I wanna see inside that guy's head.'' "Understood." Angela offers Petra's hand without any hesitation. "It's only natural to be curious, he might be the only one with reliable answers." She doesn't know exactly how jumping into someone's mindscape works with regards to hopping into someone's mind, exactly, and she's not so eager to test it. She supposes, on reflection, that she should have expected a Bullet Bill explosion and she no doubt hesitated a bit too much in lieu of that reality. Maybe anticipating around the inevitable will be a pleasant change of pace. ''You're supposed to hold onto saying that until you've got a gun pointed at one of his friends.'' "I'll keep that in mind," Angela has a small little smile. "To be honest, our connection wasn't something that felt particularly real until I've walked this world." She's pulled in alongside Petra. As Petra asks a question, Angela reaches out with a hand to try and draw a page out from Fukuide--it isn't subtle, golden threads of light pull into the form of a page into Angela's hand. "Are you dating?" Angela asks Fukuide.
Lilian Rook	'Careful, he can absorb energy with a barrier he can put up around himself.'     "Say that earlier!" Lilian shouts. Her volume is no indicator of anything; her focus doesn't waver even the slightest from Fukuide after hearing it. Her thoughts are on which Cleasa could work instead.     'Nobody likes it when someone ruins the story for them, boy'     §What a prick. Impeccable style. I finally come across someone who believes in not just giving it all away and he's an aura farming twat. Unbelievable.§     Lilian will never, ever tell Flamel how glad she is that he happened to be here to pull this stupid stunt right now. Between 'attempt to kill Kei instantly' and 'attempt to relocate him miles away' in that split second, the puddingworld third option of 'fight a mental kaiju battle inside a psychic pocket dimension' is so gladly received that reflecting on it later will be delirium-inducing.     In the illusory city at the forefront of Kei Fukuide's mind, staring down the double transformation, Lilian exchanges her handgun for her sword, grips it firmly in both hands, aligns the edge to the center of her vision, sights down its length, and takes a deep--     'But at one point, he was 'corrupted' by an entity called Reiblood...if he were to make a copy, it would have to be a son--rather than bound to whatever fates bind the Ultras.'     "Say that earlier!!"     There's not time for more than that. Flamel is correct and she knows it; men do think everything is so much easier and so much more straightforward in their mind! She's always saying this! She got a front row seat to Ayin's manifestation of this critical fault! And she could already see it plain as day most of the time!     Though her familiarity with kaiju choreo may be lacking compared to Flamel, she has gotten a lot of practice in something similar lately, and it's the best tool she has to apply to the situation. So when the two giants collide, Lilian finds the fire escape to the nearest building, vaults up over the rail, and begins bounding straight up the side of a skyscraper, using the landing between each staircase in place of the steps. Her armour is still coming together as she overshoots the roof, so she launches herself to the face of the next building, and keeps accelerating upwards with a burst of black static building even more speed, so that she is carried over the road, above even Geed's head, and hits the third, tallest building. Upwards and onwards, higher and higher, until she can kick off the edge of the top floor and translate all her momentum into air; and then translate that air back into momentum and more.     Falling out of the sky, glowing from the air friction like a tiny black-gold star, straight from the bloody battlefields of Elibe to the peaceful downtown of Japan, the specially adjusted 'dragon decapitation maneuver' lands on Pendanium Zetton at the moment Geed and Flamel have knocked him off balance, skimming just past his head to the neck and shoulder, and setting off the meteoric impact energy high in the air instead of down on the street.     The attack callout goes "Cleasanna Lilí Dubha ~ Lann Réalta Reathata!"
Riku Asakura	Pega listens to Angela before the split.  He doesn't know what to think about this... "You mean that... he was in the Multiverse before the events of Crisis Impact..?"  He doesn't know how this is possible.  Could someone leave the Multiverse and join another universe before that one merged?  Were all of the universes with Ultramen in them already merged?   "Y-yeah... a lot of people in this world don't see Geed as a hero, despite the fact he puts himself on the line a lot... but I think it'd be against Riku's ideas to hurt them for not seeing him that way.  He's way too kind for that, and that's why we're roommates.  He found me when I was separated from my people, and we've been together ever since." The sniper's ability to hold onto his gun is good, but not 'get smashed by a silver hammer' good.  The blunt weapon collides with the sniper rifle, knocking it far from his hands as he's forced to consider his life choices very carefully.   Of course, Petra takes no chances, spinning him around and immediately shooting him with the kinetic light to knock the crap out of him.  He falls back immediately, completely out of breath due to having the literal air knocked out of him.  It seems like the sniper is handled.  The AIB would be happy to get the pair of alien mercenaries off planet.
Riku Asakura	INSIDE FUKUIDE'S MIND Geed and Pedanium Zetton are fiercely going at it.  Geed strikes it across the chest and takes it directly without even flinching.  The two start to glide, while still in direct melee combat, to the south while still hitting each other with their blows.  It's one that Geed already seems to be on the back foot for. Flamel joins the fight; getting on Geed's shoulder is a brave thing to do, especially when the fight seems to come to melee blows like they are doing.  The giant giants he manifests are a relief to Geed, though, helping cover his weaknesses and even hit back against the center of mass on Zetton.   It's tough, however, tougher than it has any right to be.  Fukuide's belief in Belial's power is so absolute that in his mind it is the worst place to challenge it.  It's worse for Geed, who's never seen this monster before, so he's trying to make it up as he goes along.  Flamel's strike hits home, enough to knock Zetton back and cause dangerous sparking... only for him to immediately use his clawed hands to swipe at Flamel.   Geed, however, manages to throw himself slightly, taking the blow meant for Flamel.  The sparks that fly off of him are dramatic and are enough to throw Geed back quite a few paces.  He struggles to recover, but thankfully it's more a matter of willpower than it being all physical. 'So what are you-- why are you so interested in Belial, anyways?!' 'Are you dating?' "Isn't it obvious!?  That one such as I should serve a great being like Master Belial!  I was just an empty husk before he found me and brought to me his truth of a new universal order!  I will serve him with all of my being!" Zetton, now more incensed to fight Geed, continues his rant.  "Ultraman Geed! Being forced to strike someone who looks so much like master Belial is nauseating! You don't deserve master Belial's favor! I do! I am better than you!"  It seems he might be a bit jealous of Belial being proud of his son's progress with the Ultra Capsules.   Those words throw Riku off, reminding him of Dysnomia's warning that he was potentially playing into Belial's hands, that he was proud of him... that this entire fight nearly got a friend assassinated and an entire section of the city destroyed.
Riku Asakura	'Cleasanna Lilí Dubha ~ Lann Réalta Reathata!' That moment in time where Geed was on the back foot, realizing just how much shit is happening, is all the time Lilian needs to unleash the 'dragon decapitation maneuver '.  A line of energy burns across Pedanium Zetton, forcing that much larger kaiju back and screeching, falling down to a knee in pain.  Dark energy evaporates from the wound given to him, creating a burst of electrical energy around him to try and catch Lilian in it.   "Master Belial's power is infinite!  I can't lose here!" Kei growls; he forces himself up again, and this time starts charging a beam of energy, black and red energy, to fire at Geed.  "You seem to think you're some sort of savior, but you're not!  If it weren't for you, your friends wouldn't be trapped in my mind about to be destroyed!" Geed, baited by this, immediately recovers and rises to the challenge.  "STRIKE BOOST!" he roars as he fires his own attack into the beam fired by Pedanium Zetton.  The two beams collide, and as the two giants circle each other, blasts of energy are shot out into the city around them.  The collateral damage is extensive, and thankfully all in a mindscape instead of in reality.   "Now witness the misfortune that your presence and presence and decisions have wrought!"  Fukuide shouts at Riku.  All Riku can do is scream back, putting as much energy as he can into the Strike Boost, trying to stop Zetton's attack... The result is a massive explosion, enough to create a massive shockwave in the middle of the mindscape city.  It's also enough to immediately eject everyone in the mindscape out of it and cause a localized explosion at the source.  Damaging, but again... it could be far worse than if the fight actually happened in the middle of the city. When the smoke clears, Fukuide is standing over a very injured Riku, reaching for the capsules he has on his hip.  Ripping them off, he is momentarily stopped by Riku's hand, but Fukuide is able to pull them out of his grip.   "Still clinging to life, eh?" he chuckles, and despite his mood, he seems to be struggling.  The mental combat has strained him, as well as potentially injured him.  "How pitiful..." he says, and pulls up his cane, sharpened at the end.  "This marks the end..." he says, aiming to get ready to thrust it into Riku.
Angela	Angela isn't really here to fight Keiji Fukuide, mostly because she doesn't want to break up a cute relationship if that's what's going on here. ''Isn't it obvious!?'' "Not really." Angela says, "I feel we are hearing the conclusion before the premises." She understands jealousy, but isn't sure she understands the situation properly because if Zetton IS Belial's Woz, then that means there's really no reason to be envious of Riku. He should be, like, adopting him or something. Playing catch? What would Woz do in this sort of situation? Angela racks her mind. "You shouldn't fight over his favor. You're his herald, aren't you? Riku is his son, that is totally different. I know someone who excels at heralding." Maybe this is what would've happened if Sougo wasn't convinced to kiss Woz, Angela laments, truly a bit of romance will save time and space. ''Your friends wouldn't be trapped in my mind about to be destroyed!'' "Hey." Angela complains of being murdered in Keiji's mind. "I never said we were friends." But despite this, when Fukuide goes for the kill, sunglasses appear on Angela's eyes as she extends out a hand and a Flamel-style telekinetic hand lashes out and catches the cane to hold it off from gutting Riku. "..." Angela wonders why she just did that. Why her face feels hotter. "Don't. Accept a gracious victory." She wouldn't be able to point a gun at Riku's friends while claiming to have a hand in his existence if he died here, she supposes. Maybe it's just a pleasant favor for Petra who enjoys stylistic moments such as that. In her unextended hand, the page finishes it's form. But she doesn't look at it yet.
Flamel Parsons	Struggling to cling onto Geed's shoulder, Flamel grunts, "I wish they wouldn't turn this into an alien yaoi thing." Who fucking taught him that word. Trying to stay on Geed's shoulder in all this combat is a *lot*, though, thank goodness his larger hands can stay active while his real ones are clinging tight to the giant... And then, just as he thinks things are going to be going the right direction, he realizes what's about to happen.     "Beams! Two beams!!" He knows where that goes. "HIT THE DIRT!!!" Diving away from Geed, yelling on his way down, he flares up his levitation just in time to break his fall by braking his fall, and forms his shield...     ---     The whole Institute shakes. Everything rattles, equipment falls off shelving in labs, men stumble and pitch face-first into the ground in hallways.     ---     The layers of his barrier peel away in the real world, and the bruised Parsons emerges, blinking dust out of his eyes and coughing. "Crap,crap, what can I do here..." His eyes widen. "His confidence in his strength's *way* too high to contain this, he's gonna pull that to Belial and amp up his trust in..." Then he blinks, eyes briefly visible behind sunglasses. "...His trust in Belial..."     The others got ejected. But Flamel still has juice. <GET RIKU!!> He yelps telepathically -- and rushes into Fukuide one last time, alone. Getting into his surface thoughts was easy, but this maneuver is less so. A thousand times less so if Flamel is aiming wrong. He's looking for a crack in the armor of the deeper subconscious, a simple and subtle question: *Could* Geed be more favored by Belial? He aims to crash and smash through the surface psyche, to slam his way through a dozen mental images of alien worlds, to find his mental image of Geed...     And, through puzzle or platform or combat, *guide* that mental image of Geed to Belial. To bring that concept of Geed into Belial's attention and benefit. He wants to pit that concept of Geed the Belial-favored, at the height of Kei's anxiety and Riku's exceptional combat showing, against Belial the Purpose. He has to hope someone else is about to protect Riku; right now, Flamel's experimental maneuver is meant to tear a wound in the mental machinery of Kei's codependency psychohazards that will fester untreated, because a man like Kei will never seek aid and a being like Belial will never give it, even to a toxic mental pattern. It's the hope that a world bereft of its strongest hero won't be totally hopeless for too long, if Riku is really losing those capsules... And maybe Flamel can have a lead on tracking Kei, or keeping him from giving up those capsules too soon to his master.     If he guessed right, and he gets deep enough, the psychic gears of his codependent psychohazard are just as liable to grind Flamel real bad when he reaches his hand in, so to speak.
Lilian Rook	'Isn't it obvious!? That one such as I should serve a great being like Master Belial! I was just an empty husk before he found me and brought to me his truth of a new universal order! I will serve him with all of my being!'     §Oh my god. You're joking. Don't say that. Now I feel like I'm the bad guy!§     So thinks Lilian and absolutely nobody else.     'Ultraman Geed! Being forced to strike someone who looks so much like master Belial is nauseating! You don't deserve master Belial's favor! I do! I am better than you!'     §Why did nobody explain any of this?! I knew there were Ultramen and aliens and that was it! Should I have asked?! I thought Petra was joking! She thought she was joking! This is actually really serious isn't it?! Can we get a second to talk about this after?!§     She only has time for all of those after she's already landed her killer move on the kaiju, though. Combat is combat, mindscape or not. As soon as she's absorbed the landing shock (sorry, simulated street symbolizing peace, the road requires repairs now), she breaks line of sight in her next sideways lunge, blending into the city block, then switching to the one down and across the street, where even a wide area attack shot at the last place she was won't get her.     "Be that as it may, Belial isn't here."     When did she get back into the air? How is she already landing another-- "Cleasanna--!"     The next moment, Lilian hits solid asphalt with her shoulder, grits her teeth, turns the uncontrolled tumble into a hard roll, and springs back up to her feet down the street; which would be much more impressive if she didn't have to reach out and snatch hold of a lamppost with on hand to keep from flying any further backwards. Performing that move back to back is far from easy on her. The explosion being added to the mix has driven the air out of her so badly that the street tilts and blurs in her vision.     'Still clinging to life, eh?'     Lilian breathes in, wincing at the strain on her chest.     'How pitiful...'     The sword is still in her hands from entering the dreamscape. She chooses a forward pointing guard, forces her knees into a ready position, and gathers her energy.     'This marks the end...     Lilian blurs into view so abruptly that it's almost as if she were 'just there'. The blade swings down with very real momentum. Through the haft of Fukuide's cane while it's held still by Angela, and twisted just-so in the midst of its arc to draw the tip straight through the holster for the ultracapsules without contacting Kei's hand, and thus contend with the energy barrier she hasn't yet sene. Surely sending them scattering is better than leaving it all alone.     But she does turn and fire a flurry of alchemical gunshots from the hip as her momentum carries her past, just to be sure. "You don't have the luxury of taking your time to enjoy it right now! Eyes off Geed and up here! You've got worse to worry about than Belial's pet project!"     God only knows if she meant to time with Flamel or not.
Petra Soroka	"I was just an empty husk before he found me and brought to me his truth of a new universal order!"     Petra clicks her tongue. That's a great answer! But, she realizes that it'd be incredibly bad form to keep gassing up this bit-villain by reinforcing his philosophical surety in his devotion, when that directly correlates to his beam girth, or whatever. If she got in the habit of doing that thoughtlessly, it'd be fair to never let her participate in any Paladins field work ever again.     So she pinches her temples and bites her tongue, resisting the impulse to keep up the dialogue. Really, she can even justify her curiosity by saying that Fukuide's motives for following Belial are helpful to know in dealing with him, and that's partially even true. The energy of pretending that things are more interesting and romantic than they are, as Lilian pointed out in the radio, is a bit of a knowing performance on Petra's part.     But, there's no time for her to suit up or mech up before Zetton begins charging a beam in response to Lilian nearly cutting him down. The Silver blooms into a hex-patterned dome to shield her, ducking to yank Angela behind the barrier as the explosion grows to white out the screen with the two boys yelling over top. Launched out of Fukuide's mind, the two of them emerge encased in a Silver bubble that bounces on the street before melting back into an amorphous cloud. "This marks the end..."     STEAM BREAK! SILVER!     A flash of light launches out of Petra's transteam gun, blasting the cane in Fukuide's hand. She's got scuff marks on her face from the explosion, hair singed at the edges, and the smoke wafting out of the gun bursts into fireworks as she lowers it.     "Come on, man. You can't kill him. Not that easily. If Belial's world is inevitable, then prove it; and justify it, too. If you can't argue the virtues of your master's world, then you're just, like, a pawn, not a herald."
Sarracenia	'Isn't it obvious?!'      People start asking about the history of Belial and Fukuide. Sarra is surprised that others don't know these things because...she actually does! Well, she knows why Fukuide is devoted to Belial and hates Earth, anyway. But, he is kind enough to regale them with the 'tale'. Sarra hmphs at the rather short and uninformative speech. "So, does that mean you would have become devoted to Zero if he had found you first?! That seems more of an excuse than a reason!"      'I am better than you!'      "If you were, then he would not favor Riku over you!" Sarra calls out as she pulls a black metal box with a red button on it from her purse. She sets it down, then presses the button, and the box unfolds steadily, larger and larger.      Flamel talks about belief being the power here. Well, one would be hard-pressed to find someone more delusional or stubborn in their beliefs than Sarracenia Sundew! And she believes in Riku wholeheartedly! "Riku is better than you in every way! He is a true hero fighting for something actually worth fighting for! Fighting to protect people even when they do not appreciate him, sticking steadfastly to his own beliefs rather than merely adopting the beliefs of another, having heart instead of just emptiness and rage! Fighting against Belial even though he is both infinitely powerful -and- Riku's father! I bet those are the reasons that Belial is proud of him!"      'Beams! Two beams!!'      Sarra hasn't seen a lot of beam use, especially not at this scale. Even with Flamel's warning she Sarra's Banzai Bill launcher hasn't quite unfolded all the way when that beam explosion happens. Thrown out of the mindscape and crashing through a building, she slumps down from the Sarra-shaped crater in the wall that finally stopped her.      'Now witness the misfortune that your presence and presence and decisions have wrought!'      'Still clinging to life, eh?'      Without even thinking, Sarra spins and...throws her Silver hammer. It goes somersaulting through the air with the same speed and precision of all the items she throws, aimed to fly through the many holes left in walls by her. "Get away from him!!" she screams, rushing toward Fukuide and Riku after her hammer. She's nowhere near as fast as Lilian or Flamel or Angela or Petra, but she can't just let one of the few true heroes she's found be killed by scum like this!
Riku Asakura	Flamel once more tries to inflict psychic harm on someone in their moment of triumph.  In the mentalscape, there is an image of Fukuide kneeling before the giant head of Ultraman Belial.  The conversation plays back from before, about Belial talking wistfully about his son, and about Fukuide's discomfort in this particular talk. However, there is a skip; now it's his idea of the future.  Belial looks as Fukuide hands up the Ultracapsules to him.  At this moment, it hits: Flamel's attempt to inflict the psychic wound on him.  "Ah, the capsules... and I have my son to thank for this gift." This phrase literally stabs Fukuide in the emotional heart.   The wound sits there, but not before his mental defenses kick in, the energy barrier kicking in to invert Flamel's energy and reflexively directing it right back into his own mind.  Unlike Flamel's pointed control, the redirection is messy and undirected, aiming to hurt Flamel, but not directed at a specific core belief/value/center of the brain.  Flamel uses a scalpel; Fukuide uses it like a bomb. Fukuide's cane stops mid-air. He presses down for a moment until Angela's voice cuts through the air.  Accept a gracious victory, she demands.  However, right at this moment, Lilian is there, in his face and clashing with his cane.  Unfortunately for Lilian, he's not an untrained swordsman.   He manages to change the momentum, but Petra's Steam Break catches the cane and smashes it away from him.  Right at this moment, Lilian's sword catches the capsule holder, staggering Fukuide back and causing one of the capsules to hit the ground.   Staggering back from the clash, he's forced to throw up a barrier to eat the shots aimed at him.  Sarracenia's hammer also smashes into the hexagonal field.  He's already got what he came here for, as far as he's concerned!  Staying here puts that in jeopardy, so as some smoke floats by, he starts to disappear, teleporting away from the group of Elites before they can stop his lord's plans.