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Xion DELING CITY
It's not just 'Basically Paris', It Is Paris.

It's early evening in Deling City, the city that never sleeps because the town is only rendered in nighttime and early eveing, but it's just as popping as any town of its size would be - if not more!

Rows of old buildings sit on winding streets around large squares, with great mansions sitting on giant lawns with rustic gates guarded by not-so-rustic soldiers in blue uniforms and cyclops-like silver helmets bearing modern-looking carbines slung over their shoulders and very anachronistic straight sabers with some sort of technological hilt on their sides.

In fact, military presence is pretty high all over, as Galbadian troops integrate at most major city checkpoints and thouroughfares, helping direct traffic and engage in a 'police force' atmosphere that's almost casual. The civilians don't even seem to mind, noses buried in smartphones or business, and the overall atmosphere is entirely laid back.

Besides that, it's a more militarized Paris, complete with Arc Du Triomphe at the center of the city's spokes, controlling the major arterial road and thouroughfare roundabout...

Or would, if the entire area wasn't bypassed and lightly cordoned by red-clothed and heavier armored and armed G-Force sergeants directing traffic and people away from the large, permanent Warpgate right smack-dab in the center of the Arc.

Traffic in and out actually continues, of course, with strange anachronistic vehicles from other worlds driving through and being immediately put through customs, as foot traffic is handled from the other end in the seamless bureaucracy of a military force all-too-accustomed to, and optimized for, garrison duty within the city.

Near the Arc, at a large park that spreads out near the central spoke as a place for people to enjoy a little nature and sightseeing, is the trio of black-coats, and hanging out of the park's rest stop door is a girl in a white dress with blonde hair and a sketchpad.

"Alright, you three. Here's your next mission: There's been word of a sewer invasion by Heartless, and it's your jobs to handle it."

Xion pumps her fist. "Finally, we'll get to fight heartless!"

"Not you, Xion." Namine smirks, flipping her sketchpad to reveal two people with absurd hair and angry faces with big, stupid angry eyebrows - one generically male with long spiky hair, and one generically female with two long popped-out bangs. "Marluxia and Larxene told me that if a mission was happening in Deling, that someone would pick up the groceries and their 'necessary product'."

Xion slumps, eyes lidding in defeat. "Grocerieeeees?"

Namine nods. "Yep. Groceries. Hop-to! Those Heartless won't wait around if there's people to eat!"

Xion kicks a can into the street, crossing her arms with an empty 'humph'. "Hair care products don't eat people... Hair care products don't eat anything..."
Roxas "Uh..."

Roxas stares at Namine. He was going to ask his question, but the last few times they've gone through this routine she has noped out before he had the chance to actually ask it. So he assumes that's what will happen very shortly, and just keeps his mouth shut unnecessarily. Instead his attention slides from Xion, to Namine, and back again with a rather confused question.

Why are Heartless hanging out in the sewers? Do people normally hang out in the sewers? Most of the sewers he's seen weren't as big as Twilight Town's. You couldn't just walk through them very easily! Even when you could, there wasn't anybody down there except the occasional city maintenance person.

There's not much for Heartless to aggress on, is the point.

"Xion, if you want to fight the Heartless while /I/ get groceries, I really don't mind." Roxas offers with a loose gesture of his hand, fully aware that Xion is simply more energetic about engaging things than he is. He, in fact, doesn't understand the difference between their Keyblades well enough to wrap his head around any sort of problem with this.
Axel Axel just sighs with a mild, sort of sad laugh as Xion once again gets thrown away from the 'exciting' part of the mission to do something else. Especially since it's Larxene and Marluxia's bidding she's doing, it's a little annoying that the three won't be working together (again), but oh well.

"I don't think that's necessary, Roxas. Next time we deal with Heartless, though, I'll see if I can deal with the 'dirty' work." Let the kids pair up and all that.

For now, Axel moves to check for nearby manholes, and if any of the authority seems to be watching, because black-coated people climbing down a manhole is absolutely going to get notice and suspicion. If the manhole seems clear, as people seem to be joining in, Axel will move to open it, snapping off the lock if he has to with his bare hands. "Well, then."

"Ladies first?" There's a dry wit to the way he speaks. Axel's totally fine going first though, it's just not comfortable wading into a sewer.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur Lowell is here. It's a terribly, terribly disorganized presence, uncoordinated with the others through any means but the quest marker that popped up for the latest mission of going to fight the Heartless. Least he's dressed for the part. He hopes an urban and modern city like Deling is going to be settled enough to have some proper nav points on Arthur's minimap, because Arthur intends to make the news as some kind of weird drone or something. "EVERYONE OUTTA MY GODDAMN WAY, I got a SEWER full of HEARTLESS, a BROOM full of FIGHTS, and a CHEST FULL OF CARDIOLOGICAL ORGAAAAAAAAAN!!!"

    Those on the ground won't get to see or hear much of this entrance besides a voice like someone yelling "AAAAAA!" and a sudden rush of weird light smoke as something arcs down from above and slams onto -- and then possibly through -- the nearest manhole or other entrance marked by quest markers for HEARTLESS COMBAT! It's likely to be the one Axel popped the lock off of, possibly just before he entered himself. Military police can't stop you for your papers if they can't identify you as something stoppable!

    What might this be called later? Weird drone crash? Someone dropping a fog machine from a window above? Ah well, it's probably not too intrusive.
Xion Namine looks at Roxas as he begins creating hanging anime questionmarks with his dull face and confused eyes and anime protagonist hair. Axel confirms that they have't been given any instructions, but Namine also seems completely unwilling to leave the safety of the stoop of the rest area to be more clear. "Oh, uh, down the street there is a sewer entry that I had someone undo for you. The Galbadians just finished cleaning out the catacombs, anyway, so it's not like it's unsanitary."

With a flip of the paper page, she sketches out an extremely confusing NOT-QUITE-A-MAP that looks like some Prima Games shit, with arrows and l-bends. "It works like that, okay? You'll start, uhm, somewhere? And then just work your way to the reservoir, and bust whatever's in there. And, Roxas, sorry: but I was strictly told to make sure that Xion did the chores, and you went on the mission! Axel, well, he's your minder, so he has to go."

Xion nods. "Well, if that's what the mission is, then it's fine. Okay? Have fun!"

Xion trundles off into the city to just walk up and ask a soldier where the botiques are. She has no fear... Of a man in sharp uniform.

Axel's sewer grate is EASILY REMOVED, and Arthur drops right in! To...

Hey, this sewer's pretty clean! It's more like an underground aqueduct, and beyond the tell-tales of light military patrols - hey, is that a Combat King Magazine on the ground? - it's empty!

Down the path, through a metal grate with a randomly open portion that you can just walk through, a few skittering forms and dots of yellow scarper off into the deeper recesses...

OF THE DELING CITY CATACOMBS!
Count Kord     Kord is here. He's tailing Axel, curious about the new recruit. How? He's literally shadowing him, dwelling in Axel's shadow. His pale and unnatural blue eyes can be seen among a silhouette that looks nothing like Axel at all, cast on a convenient surface to look more like a normal shadow. He has made his presence clear to the redhead, of course, not wanting to cause a kerfuffle, but he's staying out of the way for now, at least until something happens that requires his input. His physical presence is pretty easy to feel, since he has to move in time with Axel and that disturbs some air along the way.
Roxas "But I was on combat duty last time, so doesn't it make sense to--" Roxas is in the middle of arguing with Axel and Namine when ARTHUR just koolaid mans into the sewers ahead of them like a lunatic. He stands there staring blankly after the whatever-just-happened.

"I... guess... it did?" He replies to Axel's query on the radio, looking positively baffled. The answer to what Arthur will be considered-at-a-glance is in fact some dick flying a drone into the sewers for kicks.

With a heavy sigh, he hops through the manhole into the aqueducts beneath. It really isn't what he was expecting, because it doesn't especially smell or look dirty. The service lighting stops him from immediately going for his phone to light the place up.

"Uh... excuse me?" He's obviously talking to Arthur.

"Are you okay? Uh, the enemy is-- did you see those yellow things moving around? Like little lights. Follow those." He explains, only somewhat helpfully.

For his own part, the black-clad young man begins his trek in the direction of the eyes. Curiously -- and without the incredulity that would be normal for the question -- he wonders, "Do you really fight with a broom?"
Arthur Lowell     Arthur sticks the three-point landing DRAMATICALLY! With glowing smoke clearing around him, he hoists his big battlebroom over one shoulder, and strides forward. "HEYYYYYY!" He calls out. "Anyone down here got that HEARTLESSNESS on 'em! Who wants it, fuckers, I got the tastiest goddamn PUMPER here you've seen in YEARS!" He pulls a heavy ripcord on his battlebroom, causing it to start rumbling as an engine spins up. Time to take the paths further in! "Wow, this is actually super open. Do these guys sweep down here? Wait, shit, if people come around here to keep this place working, we definitely extra double gotta clear this stuff out."

    That's about the time that he starts actually /answering/ Roxas. "Huh? Yeah, homie." He says, gesturing broadly with the broom. "Rad, ain't it? ALCHEMIZED IT all by myself, out of HELP other people gave me making it." He flicks various menus. "'Course I'm gonna use a BROOM. It's the KIND ABSTRATUS on my STRIFE SPECIBUS. What'chu use for MONSTER FIGHTS?" He strides on through that grate, gesturing to summon up a tiny star and using it as a lantern!
Lilian Rook     Well, the newbie is here (which, by extension, means Lilian is no longer 'the newbie') and so is the crazy guy from the other day. That makes it a little less weird to butt into another city's business with regards to civil safety on roaming human-eating Problems, given that apparently there are a whole bunch of places in the Multiverse that are really bad at it(?) The idea of 'adventurers' still brings a sour cast to Lilian's face whenever she thinks back on it.

    Rather than screaming out of the air like a meteor as Arthur does, Lilian shows up with the exact opposite end of the spectrum: literally just being there. As in, not being there, and then being there, with the line between not really existing. Considering she'd heard it was a sewer run, she hadn't come wearing nice clothes for !Paris, but some fairly standard ops clothing instead, mostly coming down to a deep grey and black textured bodysuit with silver fittings, set overtop with limited armored plates which look half-tactical and half-knightly in cast, a waist harness for carry cases, and the sword strapped over her back. She has the ominous cyberdystopia glowing red optics mask, but quickly takes it off when it turns out the sewers are actually really clean and well lit where they need to be --y'know, like an actual nice city and not like a grungy boddy horror level.

    "Oh. Well this is a surprise." she says, putting it away. "A pleasant one, mind you. Never complain about good things. It tempts fate into not giving you any more." She depresses a button on her collar, and it projects a wide circle of bright but diffused, slightly blueish light, for the spots between the lamps. Rather than getting out the Jin-Ro thermals, she holds her breath and focuses in on sweeping the area with a rotating pulse of magic, slowly turning it around herself clockwise to pick up on any supernatural signatures she can. It makes a little tingling feeling when it passes over, despite being invisible otherwise.

    "So, what's the plan? Just kill anything with yellow eyes? How often do these, ah, 'Heartless', trouble major population centers like this? Is this what your organization is for?"
Roxas "Oh, uh..." Roxas isn't /that/ surprised by the usage of a broom as a weapon, the reason for which he demonstrates immediately because his weapon is fairly strange-looking too. There is a prominent ringing sound and a flash of light as a weapon appears in his left hand. He holds it up so that it's visible.

The keyblade is silvery-white and black, with a dark hilt topped with white spikes and a 'blade' that is lightly ridged, coming to a jagged mixed black-and-white tooth at the end. It resembles some sort of elaborate sword-mace-axe more than an actual sword, and it certainly doesn't look /sharp/ exactly. You definitely wouldn't want to get hit with it, anyway.

He gives a light start at the sudden Just Being There of Lilian, glancing backwards at her but getting over it pretty quickly.

"Er, well..." He takes a minute to collect himself, "Heartless sort of come and go, I guess. They're attracted to people because, if you take somebody's Heart out of them it becomes another Heartless. They're sort of just made of instinct, so mostly they just kind of wander around and cause trouble. I hear they hit Balamb Town real bad last year, but I don't..."

The thought seems to deflate him a little, "I don't really know what's 'normal', exactly. And um, that's part of what we do. It's sort of a self-defense thing."
Axel As Axel opens the manhole, he climbs in only after a massive blur bleeds by and into the sewer, a man on a broom, and squints for a second before following afterwards. Welcome to the Multiverse, he guesses. The fact that the sewer is clean and well-lit gets a 'huh' and an appreciative nod from the redhead, as he spots the yellow eyes and stretches his arms out and behind his head. It'll only take a reflex to summon his chakrams, so he doesn't, yet. The guy crawling in his shadow is a little weird but they're 'allies', right?

"Yeah, we tend to deal with monsters quite often." Axel responds about what their organization is for to Lilian, after a brief moment of 'where did she come from', but is off-handed, and then moves to the next part. "You'll know them when you see them, they don't look human." Roxas proceeds to explain more about Heartless, so Axel moves to try and take point with Arthur instead of clarifying anything.

"So it's a magic broom, huh? Let's see what it can do, then." Axel grins, but there's something a little off about it, as he prepares for the inevitable fight.
Xion There isn't really any trouble from the soldiers as a bunch of SHADY INDIVIDUALS just start climbing into the sewer, and in fact a large bus rolls up to everyone just hopping into (or METEOR DROPPING like a RADICAL LAD) a sewer cover. In fact, all the traffic is absurdly pedestrian friendly, stopping on a dime and patiently waiting for the road to clear.

And waiting.
And waiting. It's probably some sort of SmartBus or other self-driving form of municipal transportation.

Xion disappears down a street towards the stores waving at a soldier, who waves back before continuing on his lazy patrol right past the group dropping into the sewers.

"Be careful, kids!" He calls, with a wave. Namine waves back from the park rest-stop porch. "Thanks, you too!"

Then Namine disappears back into the closet, and swiftly departs the area.

Down in the sewers of Deling City, the dimness of 'videogame dark' is increased by Arthur's floating star to a pleasant 'videogame normal brightness slider', casting long shadows from the metal grates and random waterwheels all around.

Chasing the jumping shadows is easy, and as the group swiftly rounds a bend and bypasses A LITERAL FUCKING HALF HOUR OF POINTLESS BACKTRACKING AND DOUBLEBACKING JUST TO CROSS LIKE AN ACTUAL CITY BLOCK OF SEWER BECAUSE MUNICIPAL PLANNING IS FAKE with the power of 'maybe not being afraid to get their feet wet' the party finds their way to a tall ramp up and down - and a sea of orange-yellow eyes.

Bursting from their 'hiding spot', a bunch of Shadows leap out to alternatingly try and 'bite' people (without teeth) and claw people (without noticeable claws). Both, however, chomp and rend quite clearly, if people are caught unawares, as the doofy enemies alternate between prancing, idling, and viciously attacking as if their brains only work about 30% of the time, and pathing is more a suggestion than a rule.
Count Kord     Kord gets down the ladder with Axel without any problems, slipping down into the sewer. He 'unfolds' from Axel's shadow, emerging as a rather large Pokemon: Yveltal. His form billows as if made more of condensed energy and magic light than of physical mass. He doesn't look human in the slightest. He looks to the others, somehow fitting down here despite his size, like he doesn't really get impeded by it as much as a more realistic creature might be. Lilian's scan would pick up something probably just an ounce disquieting.

    Wow, Kord gives off a Bad Mojo feel. He matches the feel in look, but he doesn't seem the subtle type.

    He pursues the Heartless with everyone else, unperturbed by the underground tunnels, humming a cheerful little song to himself as he goes as if this weren't as serious as it should be. And then they get pounced by a bunch of monsters that resemble shadows. He doesn't look surprised by this, and responds by lifting a wing to block one of the claws as it comes toward him. "Hey," he says, "Stop that." He has a scuff on his wing after that. "That wasn't very smart."

    He sweeps his wings, and tries to pinpoint-impale as many of the Heartless as possible with an array of shadow spikes, carefully avoiding his allies in the process. "Troublesome imps. Begone."
Arthur Lowell     "Man, your STRIFE DECK got that AESTHETIC." Arthur says, regarding Roxas with a focused examination as he summons the elaborate keyblade. It's at least the kind of weapon he can comprehend, even if he never met anyone who actually used Keykind. But, he focuses on the way to the next area.

    Arthur dives in the moment he sees the sea of eyes. "FUUUUUCK YEEEEEES!" He calls out, flicking the cover off a heavy switch on his broom and causing its bristles to begin to spin wildly, lash brutally, and grind painfully. THAT'S what it can do, apparently! With entire Imps -- I mean /Shadows/ -- hanging off of both arms by the teeth, Arthur surges into battle, swinging wildly, rocket-blasting forward and around, refusing to let them stay out of reach, and pounding away at their forms with the blunt end of his broom while grinding into others with the bristles.

    Every so often, he begins to skid and strafe up and down the ramp, grinding with high mobility, blasting away from a distance with heavy barrages of starlight to light up the sewer chamber. "YEAH! YEEEAAAAAH!! You want this PUMPER, you better COME TAKE IT FROM MEEEEEE! I got HEART for AGES homie! HEEEERE'S DINNER, COME AND GET IIIIIT!" He roars, smack-talking the monsters for no other reason than the morale and fun. "YOU WANT A PIECE, COME GET SOOOME!!"
Lilian Rook     "A mechanized broom, and . . . I'm not sure what that is, actually." Lilian observes out loud when the party gathers. Roxas helpfully explains that it is a keyblade, and to kill time, Lilian continues with "Is it rude to ask why you'd make a key into a blade? Or a blade into a key, for that matter." She does not particularly mind getting her feet wet, as it were. It's different when wearing nice clothes, but the setup right now is obviously meant to go through sucky environments, and this is far from the worst sewer.

    Lilian is not caught unawares though. That is the point of scanning her surroundings on a constant rotation like that. When the enemy leaps out of the dark towards her, engaged in their mass lunging attack, claws outstretched, she--

                -----[stop]-----
    Lilian takes a moment to get a good look at the diorama of lop-shapen shadows poised in front of her, eyes aglow in baleful orange. She puzzles somewhat at the lack of actual attacking appendages, squinting in search of fangs or talons, but she hadn't stopped time in a totally relaxed manner, so she can't afford to wander around them for half an hour.

    Breathing in to center herself, she slides her heel back, lowers to stance, marshals her power into her limbs, and then strikes the Shadow directly ahead of her with an air-distorting uppercut, glancing quickly to make sure it's poised to move up and away from teammates. She steps forward to the next and smashes it in the side of the head with an elbow strike, then the next she brings a knee to, a swivel kick to the one next to it, then a foot snap back to the first, and forearm bar blow to the second again. Moving ahead a little bit further, she doesn't locate a safe spot on the other side of them, and so gives a parting back kick to the latest in the sequence, and quickly backs up the ramp, moving a few feet back from where she'd started, and closing out the stop after about ten seconds.

                -----[start]-----

    --is suddenly a foot backwards out of their reach, letting their claws whiff empty air as a chain of firecracker kinetic blows goes off in their midst, poised to hurl the squad immediately closest to her into all the nearby walls and ceilings and grates. There is no apparent motion from her, or flashy expenditure of magical energy. It just kind of Happens.
Axel Deling City must be a nice city, with how they act to random young people crawling down a manhole. Axel might have to check out the views around here sometime. For now...

The Shadows attack as the group rounds the bend and reaches a massive space to fight them in. There's a lot of them. Outstretching his arms, a pair of red and silver wheels with eight spikes appear in a flurry of shadow, one in each hand, as the Heartless manage to close up enough to bite and claw at Axel, cutting shallow wounds into him and causing him to oof as he slides backwards and slashes the chakram into those pursuing.

This is followed by the chakrams becoming positively wreathed in flames, and Axel diving into the swarm, moving to ignite the shadowy Heartless with rapid strikes and trying to help clear them out. At one point, a chakram flies from his hands, smashing into a Shadow, and flying back. He's not getting too deep inside the mosh, having room to pull back if they crowd him...but hopefully, they won't.
Roxas For somebody who seems scatterbrained, Roxas is on the ball in terms of combat reactions. As soon as they emerge into a space with a sea of RANDOM ENCOUNTERS, he bursts forward through the bulk of them in a sudden acceleration of motion that really shouldn't be possible, as if rockets momentarily propelled him forward. He emerges on the other side of them and whips around, bringing his free hand towards his keyblade. There is a momentary shudder from its substance as it becomes silvery and amorphous on one side and inky black on the other.

He pulls the Keyblade apart, rendering it into a white keyblade and a black keyblade that adopt their own unique shapes. Then, quickly, he crouches low and springs forward into the mass of Shadows. Though the keyblades themselves appear benign for weapons, the effects that tear through the air in their wake are anything but. Roxas spins through the air in a feat of impossible acrobatics that leaves gleaming trails of white hanging in the air where he swung, and a little farther out besides.

The lines widen and erupt like fissures in space, the Light of them burning on contact before fading away.

Roxas touches down next to Arthur, bringing both of his blades about in a defensive posture while he catches his breath. He replies, "I don't know what a 'strife deck' is, but I guess it must be something like that if you have something like that with 'brooms'! Did you pick yours, or did it just sort of happen, too?!"

"Oh uh--" He reacts to Lilian, "well, it's like I said, it's just sort of how it is. I didn't pick it! It picked me."
Xion It's that old Kingdom Hearts story:

You're just there, minding your own business, walking around, when your toe (or, in this case, your screaming rocket broom powered by chainsaws and hotblooded shouting who carries a star in the palm of his hand) breaches an invisible line of 'random encounter', and all hell breaks loose. The Shadows spring and bite, claw and attack, and then stand around waiting for a bit, and then repeat. The cycle is easily spotted, and as the group understands now, easily taken advantage of.

The Shadows scrabble and bite at Kord as he proceeds to use the dastardly power of SUPER ARMOR to not get hitstunned by being beat on, his wingflare heralding countless pinpoint stabs that out and out 'pop' a crowd of the shadowy doof-enemies, small motes of light bursting free from their bodies as they're defeated, drifting up intangibly through the sewer area through the cieling and presumably to the streets above.

Arthur's charge is much more spirited, but no less effective, skidding and strafing around and down on his rocket broom as he cleaves the lesser enemies in two while others grapple onto him - which appears to be his strategy anyway, able to tackle, bodyslam, and adroitly crowd-control the frontal wash of the enemies with his expert DEATH GAME BASED COMBAT SKILLS.

Lilian is about to be swarmed from her flanks, penned in by a veritable tide of a dozen bodies all leaping on top of her before she--

        --isn't even there, the Shadows falling all over each other in a big pile that immediately explodes into a kinetic menagerie of 'remote' attacks, the pile being crushed with a grace and effortlessness that isn't 'real'... but does look wicked sick.

Axel does what he does best, and unleashes his flaming chakrams through the crowd even as he takes ATTACKS OF OPPORTUNITY from a shadow here and there, their non-teeth attaching to his arm and requiring VIGOROUS FLAPPING to dislodge, though the flaming ace easily handles the heartless before him.

Roxas, in comparison to the flaming arcs of Axel's cool operation, goes Maximum Ham right out the gate, splitting his keyblade into two and going FULL parkour around the area, flipping over railings, sliding down spigots, and kick-flipping off the walls before doing a false-slash dash attack through the remainder of the Shadows in the area, all of them looking 'surprised' for a moment, freezing in mid air as Roxas steps his feet down and rights himself.

Then they heckin' explode in a shower of light, popping into warm red bubbles that also float up into the sky lazily.

There's a moment where that 'seems to be it', a long period of breath-catching (or screaming accelleration down to the next floor) and the hurrying-after of Arthur where the group encounters... An extremely Cliche Area, down in the lower pit. A raised, circular sluice-platform ringed by falling water, with a golden treasure chest on one end. It's a trap. It's clearly a trap. It's such a trap that it springs itself, to not waste everyone's time.

Crawling up the side is a Big Body - a fat heartless with ponderous stride and heavy arms on a squat pair of legs, wearing the silver arm-enhancements of a Galbadian Elite. All around the circular IT'S A BOSS, A BOSS YOU GUYS, THIS IS A BOSS FIGHT, Soldiers (that's a sort of Heartless, too) crawl up the sides each wearing a mostly-complete set of the G-forces breastplate and helmet combination from up topside, revealing why Organization 13 even sent their agents down here in the first place: A heartless threat dangerous enough to subvert an entire platoon of Galbadian regulars.

The Big Sergeant levels his silver arms at the group, crowing an emtpy 'SKRAWWWWWWWW!' battle cry, and firing the cartoonish wrist mech-guns at the pile of heroes, the bullets...

Oh. That's why. The Big Sergeant's guns shoot Shadows - Projectilely. THE PREVIOUS FIGHT WAS A TUTORIALLLLL!!!
Count Kord     Kord observes the motes of light as they rise. His eyes narrow briefly as they simply phase through the solid matter of the ceiling. "Souls?" he wonders aloud, moderately confused by the phenomenon. Moreso at the ones that Roxas creates, which seem just a bit more colorful than what he did. He cocks his head like a confused dog, and settles his wing-hands down on the sewer floor.

    Everyone rushes after Arthur soon, catching up with the enthusiastic godling. Kord takes up the rear of the group, chuckling aloud at his 'senior's enthusiasm for fighting these Heartless things. He isn't so enthused when they all end up in the middle of an obvious trap. He squints briefly at the treasure chest -- "I want that." -- and then he's beset by more Heartless attacks! This time some kind of gun that's shooting more of those things at him. He makes a squawking noise as he's struck square in the snoot by it, and shuffles back away from the pain. "These creatures...!" he huffs in annoyance, and then he opens his maw and emits a great black and red wave of darkness that washes over the room, yet doesn't target anyone but the Heartless themselves.
Roxas Unfortunately a part of going Full Ham for Roxas is not paying nearly enough attention to his defense. He also hasn't existed long enough to recognize the trap for what it is when they drop into the new chamber. He's in the middle of approaching the raised platform and its treasure chest -- somebody DID teach him that boxes are to be opened, after all -- before he catches sight of the Big Sergeant climbing up the structure. He only stops when a flash of movement catches his attention.

That movement is the Big Sergeant raising its guns at him and firing.

He gets slam-tackled across the room, /well/ away from the treasure platform and the boss proper. It takes Roxas several moments of being clawed and bitten in a cartoonish pile before he manages to get himself free of the Shadow, shoving it away with the broad side of his weapons and jumping backwards to get some space.

As he lands, both of his hands begin to glow brilliantly. It's time for Roxas to Be The Encounter Mechanic again-- and he knows the trick with these fat Heartless.

Nobody has taught him proper raid coordination though, so he doesn't bother telling anybody else.

Columns of light spiral out of the ground, most skating along the ground towards Big Sergeant but All Of Them In General providing what can only be described as Boss Encounter Zones Of Bad for the G-Soldier Heartless to contend with.

Even though he doesn't tell anybody /why/, all of the columns aimed at Big Sergeant are approaching it from behind. This is probably a Clue, if anybody is paying enough attention to follow the literal glowing columns of light to the 'weak point'.

"OKAY," Roxas shouts above the general roar of his own magic and everything else doubtless going on, "THIS ONE IS DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL!"

"WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT SOULS?"
Arthur Lowell     "Shit yes!" Arthur shouts, pulling back to back for a moment with Roxas and blasting away. "You had your stuff just HAPPEN? Fuckin' WEIRD! I wound up gettin' BROOMS because I picked it for--" He catches one set of teeth and then wrestles it to the ground. "BOOYEAH! For reasons, doesn't matter! You SLOWIN' DOWN ON ME, YIN-YANG? Get that BLOOD PUMPIN' while you still got your HEART!"

    He glances briefly, getting a solid look at what Lilian does. It looks... familiar to him. Reminds him of someone else he used to know, a long time ago.

    He surges into action, barreling right towards the next zone. He's practically on top of that treasure chest when the Big Body makes its entrance. He plants his broom bristles-down on the platform, pointing dramatically at the monster. "An OGRE! FUCK YES, I KNEW IT!" He clenches his fist close to his face. "COME ON, MOTHERFUCKER! Come get your SKULL BROKE!!"

    In a single dramatic motion, his broom is swept dramatically to one side, flaring the broom's many mechanical parts out in a roiling wave along the shaft and body, and unfolding another set of higher-powered rockets. Then, he blasts forward much like Roxas did, but this time with very, very literal rockets. When the Shadows are launched, he begins a dramatic rush of /bouncing/ off of them and through them, kicking off them like stepping stones and sometimes drilling through the barrage with his broom's blender. "Hoooooah YEAH! You wanna bring out the G-FORCE, homie?!" He shouts, shoving right up into the face of the monster.

    Roxas has something going on back there. Arthur notices, and acts. As he rushes, he almost /feints/, suddenly disappearing into a portal and redirecting his attack behind. "I'll show you a motherfucking G-FOOOOOOOORCE!" He brings the broom into a dramatic overhead strike, and a sudden burst of deep black energy gives it a tremendous feeling of /weight/. "YYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEAH!!!" The strike is with enough force to blast shockwaves around the falling water! It's meant to pulverize the bones and body of this subverted soldier with absurd amounts of gravity concentrated into a truly heavy strike.
Lilian Rook     "Would something called a Heartless have a soul? Especially if it's made from a human, but not actually a human." Lilian largely just contemplates out loud, rather than ostensibly engaging Kord directly. "I don't imagine they can somehow duplicate souls --that is unless they attack humans and steal those as well." The others actually appear to have the swarm well in hand.

    Without quite realizing she would be, Lilian is a little surprised at how smoothly they take it on. Even the random wander-ins are a pleasant non-burden. "Oh! Not bad at all~ I take it you've done this dance a few times before." she remarks as the heap disperses. Advancing on to the treasure chest, she glances at it for a second, narrows her eyes, gets as far as saying "Who puts a treasure chest in a sewer? This is obviously-" before the trap just dispenses with the pretense of being anything but.

    "Ah, here we go. A higher class of enemy. Something the armed police topside apparently couldn't handle. This makes more sense now." she remarks, a little too casually at the appearance of the much bigger Shadow. When it gets out its weapons, Lilian takes a quick glance and decides that the line of fire is extremely obvious, and if it's going to be a sustained stream, there's no point in exerting the effort it takes to toggle on and off that fast.

    When the spray of launched Shadows comes her way, she sticks to what she was already doing, waves of dust blowing away from her in a handful of intensifying ripples as she cranks up the rate of her personal time. The barrage is hammered out of the air by a flurry of accelerated body blows, smashed away by hands and forearms while she advances steadily on the Sergeant, pushing forward during the gaps where the volley sweeps off of her. It looks pretty well in hand.

    She may not have quite got the idea that it's spewing out fully functional enemies instead of just big blobby shadow bullets, because a couple of them she doesn't quite hit hard enough to poof them, and doesn't look back as she keeps moving, leaving her back wide open to attack when the few she'd skimped on get up and jump to attack phase. Lilian seems to pick up on it at the last second, but only just as the adds have got their claws in the back of her suit, ripping through the fastenings on the tactical breastplate and snapping loose the ceramic insert. She arches and clutches the base of her scabbard with one hand to turn it aside while the ruined armour crashes to the floor, then pivots to heel kick the attacker directly in the head by reflex, exhaling heavily with the sudden spike of adrenaline.

    There it is. The feeling of actually being in combat. Damn tutorial must have had her brain off. Now the blood's pumping.

    "Okay, this is more of a job!" she says, actually committing to properly dodging and counter-attacking now. Two fingers ignite with flickering black and white flames, weaving a flickering trail through the air with a few sharp motions before she brings both hands together and then extends one out towards the Sergant, unleashing a concentrated beam of monochrome fire that roars and shrieks like a jet thruster, hosing it down in the face while she resumes advancing. With the other hand, she draws a heavy, futuristic-looking handgun and begins offhand attacking on the tougher mooks with the helmets around the room, rotating her aim around her body in sharp ticks, firing in bursts of three five times--

                -----[stop]-----
    She pauses to reload quickly, flicking the magazine free of the well and slamming it against the fresh ones in the carry cases.
                -----[start]-----

--ten times.

                -----[stop]-----
    Flick magazine. Reload. Thumb charger.
                -----[start]-----

--fifteen times, just putting big, overpowered tungsten bullets in the meatier mobs while sustaining a nasty DPS beam on the boss' front, while the rest of the party goes around the back.
Axel In the process of ripping apart the heartless, they clutch onto him and bite into him, causing a groan of pain, requiring him to flap his arms like a weird spiky chicken to get them off, before rapidly moving to slash into those he knocks off to finish them. Once they're all clear, Axel sighs and wipes off his arms, but keeps his chakrams summoned. As they proceed...

Well, there's an obvious trap. Axel is about to hold back, when Roxas and the others approach, and the Large Body comes up, slams into Roxas, and hits him hard. Axel almost shouts out his name, but there's more soldiers there, too, As Roxas creates a boss zone of horrible light, Axel slides forward, maneuvering through it, as the Heartless fly at him out of the gun. He maneuvers out of the way of a few, but one hits him in the side, sending his sliding tumbling forward, bruised slightly, and, all according to plan, behind the big body.

From where Axel does a double attack. First, he throws his chakrams at the Big Sergeant's back, and then, with a snap of his fingers, rays of fire pour in to join with the chakrams, trying to hit the Big Sergeant from behind and underneath at an angle, attempting to juggle him into the air ever so slightly to knock him off balance when he returns to the ground. He might be way too heavy for it...but the fire should hurt either way!

"Coordinate, people. There's a lot of them around here, y'know?"
Xion Unfortunately for Kord - and everyone else - the treasure at the back of the platform in the suspiciously red box with gold banding and prominent gold padlock - is entirely and immutably stuck to the back of the platform, held there by a thin layer of darkness that extends from the shadow of the Big Sergeant.

It's a trap! You're trapped! Oh no!
Or, 'oh braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' as Kord draws in a great breath and exhales out a powerfully devastating attack that sweeps and scours the field, bowling away the lesser enemies that plague his allies and popping the Shadows that people don't deal with after they get done with their own attack patterns, blessedly sweeping away the Big Sergeant's incidental enemies he creates via shooting you.

Truly, he is the worst boss and filling the screen with enemies is a mechanic that doesn't exist in a fair space.

But this isn't a fair game for ages 8-16, this is the catacombs of a militarized city, corruptions of professional soldiers that now hunger to fill the void within themselves, via being a dick to children.

It's much different.

As the G-Soldier Heartless climb up, brandishing claws and running in, Roxas incidentally controls them, forcing the more elite Heartless to dance and jape around, moving away from the spiralling light pillars that surge back towards the Big Sergeant's rear hit zone and his BIG STUPID BOSS WEAKPOINT, before searing in behind him, sending him comedically tumbling forward in a cartoonish stumble-jumble of windmilling arms (that keep shooting out Shadows, which now arc majestically through the air to splat on the walls, cielings, or falling columns of water in the Boss Arena's background terrain). It's a shitshow, but Roxas' attacks are surprisingly effective at setting up the Big Sergeant--

--For Arthur's own expert offensive. His hot-blooded cries get the attention of the entire room, sans the Big Sergeant who flails in his 'please hit my weak point with a combo now' animation. Skirting the spinning columns of fire, Arthur sets up his gravitic G-FORCE snap strike, and whallops the Big Sergeant with the force of the Big Bang itself, blasting shockwaves fore and aft and lifting the tubby Heartless up into the air on the sheer cracking force of his broom-blow, getting MAD AIR on his target, allowing--

Lilian to shake her Shadow nibblers and start her Time Shenanigans to keep up an absurd pace of Cinematic Firepower Pouring, the massive slugs hammering into the aerial Big Sergeant and popping him just that farther up into the air.

Pop pop. Another air juggle.
Pop pop pop. G-Soldiers get helmet PKEWS as Lilian goes full Equilibrium on the room, ammo seemingly a concern for Lesser People as she engages in her bullet buffet, air-juggling and crowd controlling at the same time, giving all the time in the world for--

--Axel to power up his flaming discs, slinging both out in a wide arc that buzzsaws through the G-Soldiers, connecting at the apex of their arc right in the Big Sergeant's tenderized back with an audible 'bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztt!' buzzsawing...

And the pillar of flame that follows, complimenting Kord's sweeping crowd-control breath to drop the hammer on the Big Body and finish the massive combo, dropping the boss to the ground in a shower of flame that turns to steam when it falls on the boss arena.

Big stars sworl around the Big Sergeant's head, as he flails with his arms, and the G-Soldiers meanace the party who were focusing on their epic combination attack, but this one is... Well, it's pretty much a wrap.
Count Kord     Kord sweeps the battlefield of enemies in truly effective fashion, annihilating mooks in a big wave. This is satisfying for him, after getting pelted in the face by one of those mooks fired by that annoying bigger Heartless that showed up to interfere with them. Seeing that the box is guarded from his greed -- he used shadows to try to get at it and failed to open it -- annoys him further, and Axel's words get a great big sigh. So, he focuses on stepping back from the fight, as if upset that he's being ordered around, and seems to just blatantly ignore the Heartless as they lunge and claw at him.

    He casually leans away from their attacks, and they whiff through his body as if he's made of smoke. Then he flaps his wing-arms just the once, and ascends, then pivots in the air and lands on the ceiling. His footclaws dig into the stonework, and he hangs upside-down for a moment like a bat, peering down at his prey, cataloguing where they are. Then he just opens his maw, and releases a steady beam of red and black energy, dragging it along the ground and avoiding his allies in the process to hit as many remaining Heartless as possible. Stone gets scoured clean, and even rendered to nothing in a long, curving line beneath the impact of the beam, and sparks of red and black crawl along the ground in its wake.

    He has some boss monster moves of his own, apparently.
Lilian Rook     Lilian hasn't drilled with any of these people, nor had a real briefing on the enemy, and is essentially making it up on the fly, but it seems to be going fine for now. For being a room full of impetuous kids and their talking bird mascot, they seem to be relatively experienced, especially in keeping out of each other's lines of fire, which is good. It lets her pour on the heat without difficulty, maintaining some peripheral awareness of the squads around her, so she can weave back and forth across the boss platform, turning to shoot each new squad of baddies and strafe sidelong to the ones shooting at her, maneuvering back and forth with her head on a swivel and the minute hand of her gun sweeping around her.

    She can't stop without interrupting the scouring torrent of dark magical fire however, which she sees as a priority to keep on target. Though she steps quickly and adroitly between lines of fire, twisting from and ducking volleys where she can, some of the Heartless here are genuinely former soldiers, and a small, blank, flat boss room isn't ideal for dodging gunfire from multiple angles. She has to accept shielding her face with her arm or shoulder, or turning her back towards sprays of bullets that hit her with strings of loud thwacks, many piercing the suit or cracking the inserts, but none going straight through her. The slugs tumble in mid-air in seconds of odd slow-motion as she moves away from the points they'd hit her, their point force dispersed over extended time to leave rows of bruises rather than lethal wounds.

    Finally, the boss goes down. He's wide open. They did the Thing Three Times and the weakspot is right there. Lilian flicks the last magazine out, sending it skidding across the floor, then sputters out the firebeam with a snap of her fingers and tosses the handgun up into the air. Her hand claps to the hilt over her shoulder, the exposed portion of the blade becoming pitch black iron stenciled with glowing red vines and blooms, emitting a sudden wave of dread chill and piercing, fearsome bloodlust. She leans forward, just about to draw it--

                -----[stop]-----
    Night Mist leaves it scabbard with a scrape like ringing glass, spun once around her body and snapped forward. She blasts forward across the arena, ducking and weaving between the flying shots still frozen in mid-air, closing in on the downed Sergeant, then brings the black and red fey blade around herself in a cleaving arc, leaving long ribbons of black streaked with scarlet painted in the air. She pulls the sword all the way through the enemy's center mass, stopping her momentum with her forward foot and bringing it around a second time with a full spin, cleaving through again at a different angle, then again with the other foot and spinning even lower, slicing straight through a third time, and finally skids past the boss completely, sheathing the now-smoking blade with an icy snap.
                -----[start]-----

    --and reappears on the opposite end of the room. A *wave* of manifest killing intent ripples out from the center of the room, oppressive and sharp, like a curtain of needles against the skin. Dancing arcs of black painted with crimson follow in her wake, rapidly dissipating into nothing, but by the time they're visible, the Sergeant has already been run through --multiple times. There isn't even a blast of air or smashed concrete or flashy spark effect. It's like the malice of the sword itself suddenly inflicted a multitude of heinous injuries, without being drawn.
Axel The group is proving very effective in coordination against the Big Sergeant, who is now dazed. Though that doesn't protect Axel from getting further attacked, as the G-Soldiers claw into him effectively with their experienced strikes, knocking him backwards and off his feet, causing him to briefly give himself some momentum and suddenly lunge in their direction, dashing through the air, to stay from falling on his side. The chakrams, having returned to his hands again, are wreathed with flames and moved to slice into the G-Soldiers. "Finish off the boss. I'll teach these guys a lesson." Moving to avoid Kord's Oblivion Wing...

Axel can /feel/ that killing intent. But he focuses on the soldiers regardless, even if he feels a little weird about Lilian's sword. With a spin of the chakrams and a flick of a wrist...a massive fireball builds around the soldiers most grouped together, and moves to engulf them in flame, burning some of them them preferably to a crisp. "That should take care of that."
Roxas "I'm okay!" Roxas seems to pick up on Axel's momentary concern, shouting reassurances at him even as he's still in the middle of his extended attack animation. Truly, he doesn't expect the /Heartless/ of all things ot understand and adhere to the patterns of his attack to avoid them. It's actually astonishing when it happens, sort of like an enemy in a JRPG actually moving out of the way of an attack relatively consistently. Fortunately, the Big Sergeant behaves /as expected/.

"Are YOU okay?!" He wonders, suddenly.

But, the G-Soldier Heartless carry on with their bladed coordination attack.

With a flurry of movement, Roxas moves to intercept the incoming blades with his own. Recognizing that there are /just too many/, he focuses on turning blades aside so they don't meet vital areas instead of blocking them altogether. On the whole, the eventual result is a death-by-a-thousand-cuts escalating dogpile of fancy magitech claws being just-barely-stopped from inflicting a decisive blow. It's still a /lot/ of cutting strikes that find a target.

So Roxas does what he always does in response to being dogpiled by a swarm of enemies, competent or not:

A momentary gleam of light foreshadows what's coming, before the young man pushes his assailants back violently and launches into another gleaming spinning attack that leaves white X's hovering in the air several moments after they've been swung.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur calls out, "ALRIGHT, HOMIE!" He flips dramatically out of the massive overhead strike, landing hard. "You want that COOOOOOORDINATION?!" He flashes a dramatic grin to Axel. "Let's get shit COOOOOOOOOORDINATEEEEEED!" He leaps into action! He rushes along the heavy beam of power from Kord, somehow dancing around and sometimes off of something that one shouldn't be able to touch with careful bursts of gravity interacting with energy, whirling around it as if he were part of the splash damage itself, and using it to keep high mobility among the masses. They batter him in return, knocking chunks off his Health Vial.

    Arthur knows Time Shenanigans. He spent two years fighting in heated battles longside a good friend who made quite extensive use of just such a set of shenanigans. So he's not especially well-versed in combatting them, perhaps, but he is well-versed in working with them. That's why Lilian being just about to strike is something he can recognize, and something he can capitalize on; leaping high up, he backflips. At the height of the backflip, both hands *CLAP* dramatically. And a tremendous wave of gravity closes, intended to slam the mass of foes together in one line that Lilian can strike through for even more massive damage.

    If she looks closely, at some point, she might see him winking and grinning with a double-fingergun gesture in frozen time. He can't fathom time magic, but at the very least he seems to know when to time with those allies.

    He lands hard, suffering a few more strikes in an effort to work well with Axel. Both hands plant hard into the ground, and then raise dramatically; the platform might crack ominously under the gravitic pressure as Arthur combines the massive fireball with a black hole, turning the light of it into something like what one might expect from a star being devoured by a gravity well, a massive spiral swirl that whirls and lashes out brutally, while drawing foes in to cook horribly.

    Roxas goes in for the spin-to-win, which is when Arthur leaps to assist in his own way as well. He dives in, his broom giving him enough speed to stay always at Roxas' own back and out of the way. His hands shine with white energy, emitting barrages of starlight bolts meant to rip apart distant foes, always leaving the closer ones to Roxas, for however long he might keep that momentum up. It's not likely to be as long as Arthur does; when the assault is done, Arthur rises, arms wide, emitting a vast orbit of lights like some sort of display of a galaxy, and what few scattered Heartless may remain get precision strikes from stars above rained to clean the last up.
Xion The room is a symphony of colors, of monochromes, light and darkness, and perhaps even heaven and hell.

The room is filled with a terrible darkness that consumes all, the hungry snap crushing those that stand against the five.

The room is filled with a rippling bloodthirst, a maniac presence that carves apart the Big Sergeant without a motion or tell.

The falling water of the room's surrounding terrain that the platform rests in vaporize into a cloud of steam that creates a thick mist that is itself then burned away by purifying flame.

A full moon of sweeping swordplay leaves lingering flashes and motes of light hanging in the air, as freed Hearts rise up into the sky.

And a galaxy is born in an explosion, trembles, collapses, and dies in a matter of heartbeats.

When it's all over, water gurgles back through the emptied sluices and cascades down below.

Also the chest opens. There's, like, a few hundred bucks of mixed currencies stuffed inside the containers, as well as a single hat. It's not a very good hat, in terms of actual function - but it has a very "Galbadian" feel to it, as if a very high priced fashion designer was assigned the mission of "creating a hat to be worn by a JRPG protagonist that evoked the idea of a Galbadian Soldier".

The G-Hat has no other markings beyond the name 'AGRESTE'. Huh. Some sort of manufacturer?

Anyway, it's basically a paperboy cap that looks like a G-Forces helmet. Very stylish!
Lilian Rook     The fight ends and the treasure chest pops open, just like that. Lilian stands up straight and exhales again, twisting her shoulders uncomfortably and examining the bullet holes in her suit, turning this way and that with some displeasure at the stinging aches already setting in. Best not to let it on though.

    "That went surprisingly well, for a bunch of people who mostly haven't met before, and going in against an enemy with no information. A pleasure working with you." she says instead, going up to the chest out of curiosity and giving it the swift kick to fast-open it without the drawn out cinematic.

    "Why is there a chest here anyways?" she asks. "I don't think I heart an answer to that. Not really." she continues, picking up the hat and turning it around in her hands, examining the name. "Does the name 'Agreste' mean anything to you? French, I believe."
Roxas At Arthur's request, Roxas goes to retrieve the COSMETIC ITEM-- but other people are already handling it, so he just banishes his Keyblades with another distinctive ringing sound and attends to the rest of the chest's contents. After counting it, he divides and distributes it between assembled parties.

The trio of Nobodies really don't have an operating budget to pay people out of, and Roxas is only /just/ world-savvy enough to know that people probably prefer actual payment to ice cream-- even if it isn't a particularly /robust/ payment.

"It just happens sometimes," Roxas replies to Lilian cluelessly, "we think it has something to do with the Heartless-- but of course, sometimes somebody actually does stash something in out-of-the-way places. We store things like that sometimes, back home."

"Um..." He pulls a phone out of his coat -- it looks a bit heavy-duty, probably because he carries it on combat missions -- and taps it a few times. After a moment of obvious searching he replies, "I guess it's a big fashion label here in Galbadia. I've never heard of it before, but..."

"I've never heard of /most/ things before."
Arthur Lowell     Arthur adds the distributed MUNNY to his PORKHOLLOW CONVERTRIX, which begins several CONVERSION CYCLES using built-up MOTE WAKE. Immediately, a small SLOT MUCHINE is active; Arthur yanks the arm on it, and it spits out 6000 STEEL Grist, 500 GLASS Grist, and 10 COBALT grist. Arthur swears loudly, and kicks the MUCHINE.

    He heads over to examine the HAT, captchagraphing it with his CAPTCHAROID, a large retro-looking self-developing camera. "Well, whatever it is," Arthur says. "Get the HALF A FEELING this was supposed to go to a fuckin' FASHION SHOW, not FIRST-CLASS DELIVERY to TOILET TOWN. Let's SNAG IT. We can go take it back to AGRESTE, whatever that is, and see who put HELLA TREASURE in the SEWERS."

    He has, at the back of his mind, some vague idea that either Heartless are stealing from Agreste, someone is stealing from them and using their valuable fashions to attract Heartless, or something else wonky is going on. But he knows the best way to get back is to find whatever fashion genius designed this thing, and return his work to them!

    You know. If they're not too mad about losing their work.