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Vergil	A small Japanese village situated in the hills above a thick forest is in disarray. A call has been put out for an exorcist, a mercenary, or both to come and aid them. Those who arrive are ushered up the stone steps that make up the main street, all the way up to a shrine set in the edge of a bamboo forest.     Past the tori is two carved wooden statues before a small shrine. One of the statues depicts a classical oni, but the other depicts a non-traditional bug-like humanoid clutching a scythe. The two of them seem to be locked in battle in the depiction. The shrine itself, once having its doors sealed via yorishiro, the braided ropes with paper charms attached, has had its seal cut open. Within is a sword stand, now empty. Behind the shrine, a path has been cut through the bamboo.     The village elder explained in Japanese that a man came to visit. Upon finding the shrine, he produces a katana, cut open the shrine, and took the village's ceremonial sword. According to legend, the blade was left behind when an oni was slain by a foreign devil, and left to them by said devil to seal away. With the sword taken, they all fear that disaster will befall them once more, that the man may be overcome by the oni within the sword. Hence, they wish for him to be located, subdued, or exorcised, and the sword recovered.     It's a bit of a hike through the forest, but the man has made no effort to hide the trail he has created by slicing through the bamboo. After about 15 minutes, he is found standing in a clearing he has created. He is a severe looking fellow, with slicked back white hair, sharp facial features, and clad in a blue coat with yellow trimmings. A katana hangs from his belt, and clutched in his hands is a tsurugi, a classical Japanese double-edged sword. It's rusty, and covered in paper charms along the flat of the blade.     "Who goes there?" the man demands, pivoting on the spot to face those who have come looking. He levels the pilfered blade at them with one hand, while his other drifts to clutch at the one on his belt.
Kirito	Kirito's been rather low-key with his Multiversal explorations. And for good reason: He needed time to hone his skills back to what they were when he wandered Aincrad. Survival is paramount. Having his warrior's edge fully sharpened is critical.     And adventure is calling. Or rather some scared village folk he's surprised even knew how to use Multiverse Call-for-Help methods.     He does stand out a bit, what with the pointy ears, unusually soft face for a supposed warrior, and all-black attire, but he's somewhat polite with the village folk throughout the question-and-answers...     But that was then, this is now. Unsure if he's going to find a man or a demon or some strange mixture thereof, he zips through the bamboo forest carefully on wings of black light, darting between stalks as stealthily as he can. Upon nearing his target Kirito drops down to the ground, engages his Stealth skill and begins sneaking up to a covering bush to use to observe the man practicing.     And yet, within a minute, it seems his presence is noted. Or perhaps someone else set the man on edge...     Nevertheless, after sucking in a nervous breath and putting on his best game face, Kirito slowly walks out from behind his cover, and turns to face the man.     The boy's a lanky, lean sort. A full foot shorter than the thief-swordsman. No, his physique's not very threatening. And yet he stands confidently, with a black-handled blade sheathed across his back.     "Just a wandering swordsman. Kirito. I take it that sorry-looking rusted-over hunk of metal's the demon sword everyone's stressed out about."
Tomoe	This was supposed to be a day off, with Tomoe taking a break, doing some fishing, maybe cooking up a bit to put on the market in ALO's capital city. That had gone well enough when she was going to head back to her fishing hole she'd caught wind of some trouble and headed out and ended up falling in with Kirito on the way. She made a note to talk to him about a few other things, however, those could wait the matter here was demanding their attention. She did look quite strange pale, purple hair, the pointy ears, towering heigh and what looked like it might be old armour from the West. She would follow along taking in the situation and eying the sword for a moment. "I am called Tomoe." The Salamander woman note and she looks at the blade again trying to get a good look. "Looks can be deceiving don't forget that. Also what else can you tell us about the state of the blade and the situation here?"
Xion	The call went out for mercenary, exorcist, or both to come and assist a place with a problem, no doubt many people would come to this most vague of callouts. Xion arrives in the village through a clandestine Corridor of Darkness, stuffing her black cult coat into her 'inventory' with all the grace of shoving an entire article of overclothing into a pocket. Really, just jamming it in there. Dressed in a black zippered hoodie with silver and purple accents, a white top, black skirt, and matching shoes all with black and white checkerboard accents, she approaches the VILLAGE ELDER to help out. "Don't worry, sir." Xion places a thumb confidently on her chest. "I'm definitely a both." Real convincing. JUST A BIT LATER, IN THE FOREST, Xion waves down the Mysterious Whitehair Sword-guy, before cupping both hands at her mouth. "Hey! You can't take things that aren't yours! Unless you find it in a treasure chest!" "And I didn't see any chest in the shrine!"
Sanary Rondel	Hitting banks is good money, but it doesn't hurt to do honest work once in a while. Having good PR helps for her own business, after all, so Sanary arrives at the designated spot in the village, ready to do some good today!      And then she hears that it's a fancy-ass sword that got stolen. With danger mounting, she's actually looking somewhat intrigued as she hikes through that forest. She doesn't even look annoyed by the time she reaches that clearing with the others, having had a rather relaxing stroll through a scenic bamboo forest.      "Yo. Name's Sanary. I'm here with these people to get that shitty sword back." She gestures towards the rusted blade, apparently sharing the sentiment with Kirito. "Cursed swords ain't that healthy to be swingin' around."      Xion's got a point, too, and Sanary nods once in her direction. "Yeah, that thing's dangerous. You really cleared the way over here with /that/ thing?" She glances back once, gesturing at the clearing in the bamboo.
Vergil	The man regards the five before him sternly, before lowering the rusty blade for a moment. He looks to Kirito and says, "This is the sword that was contained, yes. I suppose you were all lured by promises of reward? Ignorant of the history of this Devil Arm? Tch." Tomoe seems actually curious, so he begins to answer. He raises the tsurigi up so it points at the sky. The rusty blade dully glinting as the man recounts the story.     "This sword was once a demon that ravaged these lands. It slew any who rose against it, until another demon arrived. The dark knight Sparda, he who defeated the demon king Himself." His tone becomes over so slightly softer when he invokes the name of this dark knight.     "Sparda defeated the demon, and in the throes of defeat, he accepted Sparda as his better. In doing so, he became this sword, which Sparda gifted to the humans living her to seal away." He cracks a smug, slightly cocky smirk as he looks to Xion. "I am the son of Sparda. Hence, I am merely reclaiming my inheritance. In essence, it was already mine, girl." Sanary poses a question, and Vergil raises a brow. "Of course. As ancient and rusted as it looks, this is still a Devil Arm." He swipes it at a stalk of bamboo, and the unwieldy thing slices neatly through.     "I had hoped to speak with this Devil Arm, and learn more of my father's journeys in the world of man. But the blasted thing has drifted to slumber after so many years."     A thought seems to occur to him. He looks at everyone, and puts the blade over his shoulder where it somehow clings to his back. "But perhaps battle would reinvigorate it." He takes his other sword from his belt and carries it within its sheath in his hand. "If you want it, you'll have to take it."     He steps forward, and in an instant, has crossed the clearing and is /behind/ the ground. The air whirls as a multitude of slashes from that katana comes at them, while the man is already sheathing said sword in an overly dramatic flourish behind them.
Sanary Rondel	"Devil whatnow? For a sword, that sounds..." Sanary doesn't finish her sentence, but it's pretty apparent from the look in her eye that IT SOUNDS SO COOL. Demons? Demons that went on rampages? Demons that foguht each other to the death until one turned into a DEMON SWORD? "Huh. No wonder you cleared through here so easy." It's obvious she wants the blade for herself, sword or otherwise. The healer looks mildly confused when Vergil speaks of... Speaking with the blade, but it only lasts for a moment until things start making sense. "Oh, because it was... Got it. Alright, don't say we didn't-" Before she can finish, the stranger disappears. It takes a moment for Sanary to even register that there is an attack when the wind doesn't feel quite right, the air distorts in front of her, and there's suddenly slashes coming at her from all angles. Twisting sideways, she grunts painfully as slices appear all over that coat of hers and leaves multiple bleeding marks on her arms and face. "How the hell did you move like...? Oh, screw it. LET'S TAKE THAT SWORD!" With all the heroism of a common bandit, Sanary turns to face Vergil and utters a savage battle cry as she just hauls ass right for him, going for a jumping chop! It's a little careless, but she's loud. That has to count for something!
Kirito	There's a lot of things that Kirito wants to say. To a lot of people. There's the people who are just dashing out full of hostility. There's the stylishly dressed girl spouting nonsense at an obviously dangerous swordsman. And there's Tomoe, thinking he would actually underestimate that thing just based on looks. There's the fact that he would much rather talk this over - or TRY to anyways - instead of go straight to fighting.     As it stands, he can only lightly frown through the story, wait for his chance to speak up... but then. A sudden feeling of dread strikes him when Vergil's stance shifts, long before he reaches for the katana.     Danger. DANGER! the boy's instincts suddenly scream. "EVERYONE MOVE!" He screams. Time slows down. The world slows down. His senses sharpen and speed picks up. His right hand grasps the blade behind his head and draws it wicked-fast. The black blade shines with blue light nearly the instant it's free of the scabbard, and Kirito's arm moves in a blur that coincides with the rush of wind!     Sparks fly in that one instant as the boy's sword arm moves with freakish speed, the energized blade arcing this way and that and deflecting four of the six slashes he was able to detect. but still...     Steel draws hot glowing lines across his body. It's an odd thing to see. Where most would gush blood, he just gains a glowing grid-pattern crimson decal where the strikes landed, which begin to fade. But the boy hisses sharply nonetheless, clearly pained from both the strain of deflecting the blows with all his might and the strange injuries he suffered.     Not staggered at all, he spins around in place to face Vergil. "If that sword was going to be put to a decent use I wouldn't care if it was stolen from a shrine, but something tells me you don't give a rat's ass who's on the wrong end of it."     With his determination steeled, Kirito raises his blade to point straight at Vergil. It begins to glow again - and to generate a high-pitched humming-whine noise as though power were charging. With a single twitch of movement, his whole body becomes a blur of light not unlike the maneuver that Vergil just did as he draws a slash line straight across the son of Sparda!
Tomoe	Tomoe was ignorant but sought to learn more she knew enough the blade was bad news from the sounds of it and she's clearly paying attention. She thinks back to a cursed blade that nearly claimed her a very long time ago, had not someone she considers a friend warned her from picking it up. She listens making notes about the blade and Sparda too as well. She pauses for a moment and listens. "So it's taken a nap then and you need the information about your father?" The man's lineage isn't lost on her at all but since nothing had happened to her just yet. Then the means of waking the old weapon up comes up, fighting them. "I see where this is going." Thankfully there a split second warning before the attacks come and she's able to get some level of defence up, had she not? She could tell from the sword work alone this guy was pretty damn good. Even then several rapid strikes had goe past her defences leaving strange glowing red gashes on her body where the blade connected. "A Devil Arm a weapon for a demon? I see!" She's very glad Sanary and Kirito are here, she knows them both very well and Xion seems to be an up and coming from the sounds of thing though kinda strange. Is it an act on Xion is it not? Does it matter, right now it does not at all really. They are all under attack now and they need to deal with it. "Dawn Breaker!" She pulls a blade out it seems simple but very well made if one gets a look and Shield is in her off hand, names ripple on its surface changing every once and a while. She shifts and moves to attack the mysterious Deamon Arm Weidling man, with a rapid combo of attacks too, she's agile for her size and is clearly trying to put it to use in a lighting combo of attacks. "I guess I could some more sword work. Kirito? Sanary? Xion? Let's go." Tomoe is also clearly trying to keep herself in Vergil face. She will intermix her own assault with Kirito's own as she's long used to working with the Black Swords Man and she clearly trusts Sanary!
Xion	Things are explained pretty clearly. Sparda, who was a hero, beat up a demon. That tracked. And this is the son of Sparda. Sure. So the sword... was his? "Mmmmm... Ok! That makes sense. So the sword's yours. Good luck waking it u-!" In a burst of motivated speed, Vergil disappears. Kirito, meanwhile, another Dark Coated Black Haired Blue Eyed Swordperson (wowwww, he's just like meeeee!) shouts for everyone to move. Her own survival instincts, a bit slower on the uptake, agree pretty wholeheartedly (or noheartedly?) that she should get the heck out of the way, but her combat backstep doesn't get her fully out of the way of the turbulent wake of the flashing slash. So Xion is blasted out of the air, tumbling once before coming up into a crouch, one hand swept back as she skids across the path, a dust trail in her wake. "Hey! Don't just..." -- Attack people to wake up swords? Honestly, Xion had attacked weird people for less, and even if she wholly believed that she was human and 'normal', she did have to admit, she was pretty weird. "Well, at any rate, that's rude! See how you like it!" Her outstretched, steadying hand twinkles with dark motes and a windchime sound as a really, absurdly overwrought jeweled-to-the-point-of-uselessness sword shimmers into being in her grip, before she launches herself towards Vergil as Tomoe's flurry happens, aiming to give him a slice for his rudeness.
Lilian Rook	Personally, shitty shrine swords don't much interest Lilian, and Japan is sort of an entertaining curiosity rather than a country she adores the idea of visiting, especially these super rustic and rural sort of parts of it. The amount of money they could pay her is basically pocket change, but her Paladins job is an 'extracurricular' worth big credits and big credits of the other kind, and 'a demon-possessed sword that corrupts the wielder' sounded like something an Immune is qualified to handle.     She arrives from the air, drifting down in that lazy shounen anime flight-esque way, though clad in the black and grey light tactical bodysuit instead of some kind of bright orange or dark blue protagonist outfit. She hadn't ostensibly come loaded for bear, given the minimal state of her harness (really just being an ammo belt and one gun), but it sort of doesn't matter as long as she has that sword strapped over her back, for when she really needs it (to show off).     "That's really interesting." she says in a tone that is neither excited nor sarcastic. "I like that kind of backstory, where the big bad monster loses and gets turned into something for humans to use. It warms my heart. I'm not really sure that's how possession works, though. Unless he explicitly left it to you in some kind of documented inheritance, you can't just come back claim things your ancestors used to own at any time you like."     She then sounds slightly less blase at the next part. "More importantly, if you know perfectly well that thing *is* some kind of demon, those village hicks might have legitimate concerns about it messing with your head. It's probably better off sealed, so, if you wouldn't mind." Lilian intones, drawing the machine pistol from her belt, twirling it back once, and snapping it in Vergil's direction. "Reinvigorate it later. I'd rather not have to shoot-"     Lilian cuts off just an instant *before* he disappears, eyes suddenly widening in the couple of frames preceding the input into ground trick. A severe, violent warning, with extremely little time to spare, trickling down from the alternate futures that spin off from the moment Vergil decides to draw his blade. A wordless insight of where he will attack from, while he's too quick to track with her eyes.     She tastes the blood; tastes her fate. For a moment, she has to swallow her pride, with her hate.     Lilian's hand snaps to the hilt of her sword as the very first thing she does, in an instinctive recognition of the magnitude of threat. The hilt goes from steel silver to cold iron black and lurid scarlet at her touch, and she ducks as she draws it, spinning and weaving in a too-fast erratic motion that accomplishes narrowly deflecting the barrage of strikes with the exposed portion of her sword throughout its draw, angling her body so that the blade she has to work with is in the right place.
Lilian Rook	Night Mist escapes its scabbard right at the end, making a sound like hot metal scraping through ice. Pitch black fog issues from the sheath, flowing to the ground and dissipating around her feet. Almost glowing blood red light suffuses its fuller and draws floral vines up the blade, seemingly ridiculously polished raw black iron, with an oddly translucent edge.     Lilian is turned around to face Vergil, only just remembering to breathe out slowly when she has the luxury of taking a stance. She shifts her shoulder awkwardly, popping the joint correctly after such an impromptu and poorly leveraged defense. Her eyes have gone from bright green to an off rust red, and dark grey markings crawl to the corners of her face. The ominous aura exuding from her drawn sword is so intense that it becomes retroactively ridiculous that she'd told Vergil to turn over a demon sword. The bloodlust radiating from it is palpable.     "Nice moves. Makes me wonder what you're doing out in this backwater, practising on bamboo. Since you're not bad though, it won't matter if I rough you up a little bit." From a misleading stance with her sword, Lilian flicks the handgun up at Vergil again and rattles off two dozen rounds in a blaze of sideways muzzle flash, emptying the mag and then flinging the weapon up into the air to put both hands on her sword's grip and thrust.
Vergil	The man is so committed to sheathing his sword that Sanary jumping at him actually catches him by surprise. He twists, and attempts to pull the stolen sword from his back in order to block it, but he's too slow to get an effective guard up. Sanary's axe bites into the blade, chipping it, and pushes it aside to sink into the man's flesh. "Damn!" he snarls, pushing back to get the healer off of him.     Kirito dashes in at speeds that rival even his, and his eyes widen. In that still moment shared by those who fight at high speed, Vergil anticipates the incoming attack, and dashes away from under Sanary, leaving behind a blue afterimage of himself that quickly fades, especially as Kirito disrupts it with his swing. "You won't catch me like that twice," he says from across the clearing, slowly pacing about as he watches the group.     Tomoe makes the next move, charging forward and swinging at him in a flurry of blows. The man starts out by bending his body to avoid the blows, suddenly shifting in place to show that speed isn't just for show. But even that doesn't quite keep up, so he starts having to swat aside her strikes with his sheathed sword, the two moving in tandem to fill the clearing with ringing steel. "Foolishness! Is swinging wildly all you can do?"     Xion slips in during this, and stabs at him with the most garish sword ever. "Grah!" he snarls, dashing back once more to make some room. While the attack did seem to hurt him, it's quite concerning to note that the wound is gone, as is the one that Sanary caused. He chuckles, and points at Xion. "You at least saw sense. I'll finish you last so you can have time to run."     Lilian finally makes her move, her aura alone pulling Vergil's eyes to her. "Are you-" he begins to ask before she empties her handgun in a blink. The man's frown deepens slightly as he begins to whirl his katana and the stolen sword in tandem to deflect the shots. "A firearm? Unsightl-" His taunt is tragically cut off by the follow-up thrust finding home and launching him back whereupon he slides to a stop on his feet. Again, the wound is gone in an instant. "Not bad," he grunts.     But then, one of the seals upon the tsurugi falls off. A palpable aura begins to emanate from it as all the rust purges itself, and the nick Sanary caused repairs. "Ahhh, I was right," he says sounding incredibly smug. "My turn." He begins with Lilian, appearing before her in an instant to quickdraw his katana with enough force to knock her skywards, then using that same speed to join her at the apex of her arc and bring them both down with a two-handed helmsplitting slash with the formerly sealed sword. Next is Tomoe, before whom he appears in a blink, lashing out with two strikes of his sheathed katana before another quickdraw slash to exploit any openings he's made.     After that is Kirito, whom he calls out by pointing. "Don't move!" he shouts, before dashing in one direction, then seemingly teleporting entirely to come at him from another direction to try and impale him on his katana. "You're not exactly human either. What are you?" After pulling the blade free, he appears in the air above Sanary and comes down on her like a buzzsaw, spinning himself and the two swords in a blur. And finally, true to his word, he leaves Xion for last. But he doesn't come directly at her. Rather, an array of blue spectral swords appears in the around him as he attacks Sanary, and fly directly at her, point first!
Lilian Rook	Lilian draws her sword right back after a quick but forceful reaching stab, pulling the hilt back to head level and reinstating her guard in an instant, not overextending herself or trying to press a hard offensive on someone who claims to be the direct son of some kind of archdemon, and is currently backing it up. "The bullets were already loaded. Might as well use them, right?" she responds, cracking the slightest bit of a smirk at being taken seriously in return. Her eyes flit down to the stab wound, and the grin slips a little at the lack of puncture.     The blood still on her sword disappears, absorbed into the black iron like a sponge, causing the red filigree to grow a little brighter. The grey markings darken incremetally, growing past the corners of her jaw and cheeks. "Go right ahead. If you can."     Vergil flashes into her even quicker than before, drawing the eastern sword that she estimates is his mainstay on her, instead of swinging the tsurugi. That obnoxious quickdraw style catches her on the defensive, and she brings Night Mist across with a stupidly fast frameskip motion to brace against the flat of the blade, spitting ghost white sparks as the sheer force launches her upwards with a gasp. Where someone would normally be defenseless in the air though, Lilian arches herself to look up at Vergil flashing upwards and coming down from above to complete the combo, and then-                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian twirls backwards of the way, regaining her combat float and drifting back from the sword as quickly, making the most efficient use of her movement as she can, already expecting she'll need to do this a lot if she wants to get an edge over that kind of speed. Instead of taking a full swing, she swirls Night Mist up from underneath, trailing foggy darkness and streaked red, and cancels the stop early.                 -----[start]-----     -she is just an inch out of the way, already halfway through her own upwards slashing swing that should take Vergil through the waist on his way down, using his own momentum to enhance the force of the smoking slash, biting with a hot, acerbic quality that leaves a lingering, corrosive 'burn' that withers and disintegrates. She makes the most of her opportunity and twists back around to thrust out her palm and fire a barrage of black flame, scattering darts of dark fire with white cores in a thick volley from above.     Then Lilian is on the ground, and she rushes towards Vergil with a single, sprinter's kick-off motion, aiming to try and catch him while he's distracted with another person, and suddenly swing past him from the side.
Sanary Rondel	"Yes!" Wait. He was asking Tomoe that. Burning with both anger and awkwardness, Sanary exchanges a few words with Lilian and just grows more irritated even as she actually manages to nick Vergil before getting shoved back. "Bah... Come on, if you wanted a fight, you could stand to be a little less..." Sanary proceeds to just gesture at Vergil. She can't quite put her finger on it, but something about his entire appearance just has her on edge. His demeanor. His sword. ALL OF IT. There is a slight grin, though, when he goes after Lilian first. "Heh. Call me oblivious, you... Weird teleporting jackass." She scoffs, and then she readies her guard once more as the man bounces from person to person. Try as she might, Sanary is still having trouble keeping her eye on his movements. By the time she's watching him go after Kirito, he's already disappeared again, and she only catches sight of him coming down towards her at the last moment yet again. "Holy hell... Are those moves because of the sword, the demon part, or somethin' else?" Bringing her axe up again, Sanary's not quite fast enough to block against any of it with her weapon. Instead, she twists around to keep her head from being split open, content to just let her arms and torso take the hit instead. Blood sprays, she cries out, and she staggers back for a moment as that white coat turns crimson! With blood. It's not fully red like certain other white-haired assholes, but it's getting redder. "Freaking... Goddammit, where do you get off callin' people dumb, anyway?! You damn fancy jerks with all your fancy-ass teleporting...!" Shouting angrily, green light surrounds Sanary as healing magic stems the bleeding from her wounds, although there's not nearly enough time to outright mend them yet.  It'll have to do for now, though, as she plants the head of her axe on the ground to steady herself. At first, it looks like she's not even attacking. There's a gleam around her eye, however, and then a laser bursts forth from it towards the swordsman! There's multiple explosions around it, too, threatening to ignite whatever's in a large cylinder in front of the healer's face!
Kirito	As always, a many-on-one fight with a human-sized opponent proves incredibly difficult. Kirito's gaze tracks Vergil through MOST of his movements, but the guy's too fast. He can barely keep up with everything. And that's causing his heartrate to soar and thoughts to sizzle into a heated blur, spurred by adrenaline.     As much as he'd like to, it's hard to keep track of everyone around him. He'll have to focus on his teamwork with Tomoe first and foremost JUST TO SURVIVE this fight!     Which leaves him maintaining a guarded stance and frantically switching through menus. That means that when Vergil comes at him... the boy's making all kinds of weird nonsense gestures, poking the air with fingers.     When Vergil commits to that thrust...     Light glows on the youth's back. A new scabbard materializes in place and his left hand grasps a golden sword hilt.     As the stupendously-quick Vergil's blade goes straight through Kirito's body - meeting a weird kind of gelatinous resistance, the rough CONSISTENCY of human body, but too solid and even - the boy turns a pained hiss into a growl and a BATTLE ROAR.     And a glowing HOLY SWORD EXCALIBUR is brought down on Vergil in the middle of that fully commited thrust! "Defeat me and I'll tell you!" He spits out, returning Vergil's challenge from earlier.
Tomoe	In the first moments of the fight one thing becomes plain to Tomoe's, Vergil this man clearly is skilled with a blade and thinks nothing at fighting the entire group of them. Yet he does seem to think they are good enough to get what he wants from a fight with them. She keeps that in mind and she replies. "It's not the only thing I can do." She quips back at Vergil, and she's on the move again not wanting to keep still. Like Kirito she's had little luck getting past the man's defences however Xion, Lilian and Sanary have far better luck with doing some measure of damage. She also takes note Xion made use of her attack to get in her own which makes her not as useless as it first seemed. The counter attack is brutal with the formerly sealed weapon, but Tomoe has had got a bit of a feel as she moves her shield to intercept the worst of the strikes. Even without the attack getting back the sheer force of the impact does damage to her. "You want to see more of what I can do? Fine!" She then acts to trigger a defence buff from herself on to Kirito while she moves. She waits for Kirito to make his attack and that will buy her the time start chanting, in Norse. Runes dance about her body as she chants the spell, and then comes a barrage of bolts of light seeking out Vergil, with that done Tomoe takes off at him like a shot launching into an attack there's a glow across her blade edge, a green sickly one. "SNAKE BITE!" She launches two swift strikes for Vergil's right flank.
Xion	It's pretty lame getting told 'hey don't worry, you can bitch out, I got this', when you're friends are fighting against an extremely quick, powerful foe who also has a real interest in beating them perhaps-to-death to rattle a saber into wakefulness. And Lilian is acting like Xion is just dead weight. It feels awful. Xion's stomach turns as she stands there gormless for a few moments, posture slack, swordtip dipping low. "W-well, maybe I want to help my friend!" She doesn't get much more out of that line of thinking, as a cloud of swords engulfs her position, her own blade coming up to defend herself -- as the first strike bashes against it, the second snaps the piece of expensive garbage clean in half, shattering her guard and leaving long red rents in her body from the flurry of phantom blows. They begin closing, but disarmed and disoriented, Xion stumbles out of the cloud, looking at her now-useless weapon. And at Lilian, and the rest of the party, still fighting. She kind of wanted to leave. It would be easier. But thinking about it just makes her more and more sick, more gutwrenchingly awful about everything. Reaching up with shaking hands, she grips the edge of her hood tightly, tugging it down up and over her head. "Not going to leave someone just because they ask." She mutters, practically under her breath. "Twinbrand!" Flaring her hands dramatically out, one colored mote floating before each palm - fizzy grey-white and dark purple-black in left and right respectively, she closes her fingers around the spheres, which extend like lightsabers when 'crushed' into a pair of long blades - one of non-elemental 'light', and another of smoking gravitic 'dark'. Taking an extended stance that Lilian would vaguely remember (probably) as Roxas', from the airship, Xion's own speed blurs into anime zwee-zip territory as she closes to X-Cut her two energy swords not across Vergil's front or back, but laying into his left side, especially his arm - which, ideally, would be his less defended side! "You're a really bad teammate if you send your friends away right at the start!" She bites at Lilian, a deep mix of offended and 'audibly sick to her stomach'.
Vergil	With a satisfying clang, Vergil renders Lilian skyward, but doesn't breech her guard. Warping above her, he smirks confidently as he prepares to spike her down. But in an instant, she seems to shunt out of the way, making his swing wide. "What?!" he exclaims, shifting the stolen sword so the hilt can catch her retaliatory slash. The burning eats into the sword, which tries to regrow the damaged bits as Vergil is knocked into the air this time. He swings it as the dark flames encroach, each one kicking up a massive gust that knocks them wide and sends them sailing into the bamboo forest, where they potentially catch and alight.     Vergil has already moved on though, sending Tomoe sliding back with his blocked strikes and lunging at Kirito to impale him. He smirks as Kirito retorts his own challenge back at him. "I wonder if you'll live long enough to tell me." But then Kirito brings a sword form nowhere and brings it down on Vergil, eliciting a snarl from him as he pulls back to try and avoid it. But the strange resistance Kirito's body offers slows him, and he is scored right down the middle. Blood spills, and the wound closes immediately as usual. Not even his clothes leave a trace. But he's angry now. Angry enough that he whirls his katana to dispel the worst of Tomoe's supportive barrage of magic, leaving only his hand burned. It is at that moment that both she and Lilian lunge at him, and he responds by blinking into the air to stand atop Lilian's blade, even as he clashes against Tomoe's with the shrine's sword. "Pathetic," he says, tone dripping in condensation. "Why does the one with the shield cower behind others instead of claiming the front lines? Why does the one with obvious power rely on trickery and firearms?"     He's attacking Sanary now, letting out that wry laugh as he comes down on her. "If you are so aggrieved by me, but lack the power to stop me, run. If you can." It is as he lands that she fires the eye laser, something truly unexpected by the look on his face. He blurs, the beam only catching him on the shoulder, but eliciting a pained hiss regardless. "More firearms, built into the body this time. Have you no shame, relying on that to cover your own weakness, human?" But Xion, who he took it 'easy' on is upset, and taking it out on him. She lunges, two phantasmic weapons of her own closing in on him. He responds, bringing up katana and tsurugi both to push back against the X-slash with a block of the same shape, the force of it sliding him back. "Impressive," he concedes, as another seal falls from the stolen blade.
Vergil	Abruptly, teeth erupt along its edge, whirling like a chainsaw as the weapon makes a sound like sawing logs. Is that a threat, or the demon's snores? Either way, the man is regarding it with a glint in his eyes. "Interesting..." He vanishes, lunging at Kirito first this time, thrusting forward with the transformed blade, but stopping short of the man, only for the sword to extend, the metal of the blade now having a tonguelike texture as the teeth saw at him!     Next, he's charging at Tomoe. Having apparently divined that her shield is going to take a lot more to get through, he just starts swinging both blades at breakneck speeds, hammering on her defence as hard as he can before ending it with a forward flip that brings both weapons around in massive, punishing arcs. Lilian receives a visit from the shrine sword's new form as well, the blade extending to try and wrap around her leg before yanking her towards the man, who swings it in a furious way all about him. The weapon bends and moves like a chainsaw whip, rendering the air around him highly hazardous.     Sanary gets only a contemptuous looks. "Scum," he calls her, before looking to Xion. Does that mean he's going back on his word? No, it just means he doesn't want to deal directly with Sanary. So he just creates a ton of those magic swords above her head and brings them all down on her like razor sharp rain. With that, he smirks at Xion and takes the toothy blade from his back. "Stay where you are!" He says before throwing the sword at her. It spins and whirls, lashing out with tongue and teeth as he assumes an iaijutsu stands. His hand appears to merely twitch, but in an instant the Nobody is subjected to a personal experience with the man's first attack, but at range, a bubble of whirling slashes encompassing her.
Sanary Rondel	"First the teleporting space cop tells me to run, and now you?" Spitting out some blood with another grunt of pain and discomfort, Sanary braces her axe on her shoulder as she focuses once more on fixing some of those wounds. Even with the swordsman facing so many opponents, he's moving too quickly for her to focus just on healing without defending herself, and she'll just have to take whatever pauses she can get to recover! As the fighting continues, though, she has an opportunity to study his moves. How he's shooting magic blades out of nowhere, how his sword strikes past its visible range, how his speed isn't any indication of potential weakness in physical strength... That last bit has her even more irritated, of course. "Tch... You're one to talk, being born with all that fancy inhuman zippy bullshit built right in... Did you even work to get that strong, or did you just inherit it like that rusted sword?!" The contempt is audible in her tone and visible in her expression as she practically spits that out, dragging her axe along the ground to defend herself from the blades raining down upon her. Aside from those directly striking the axe, though, the rest still hit their marks, and Sanary's coat is practically in tatters as she drops to a knee. "Smug bastard... Quit barkin' orders and fight for real, dammit!" Instead of taking a moment to heal again, the healer opts instead to just launch herself right at the swordsman with as much force as she can muster. She's bleeding rather heavily at this point, but anger seems to be dulling her sense of pain as she beelines for Vergil not unlike her first leaping chop. Instead of swinging straight at him, though, she feints! Sort of. Instead of just bringing the axe down towards the man's head again, Sanary instead aims for quick step forward and stomp at his shin before slashing at him rapidly to ^keep the pressure going. After the fourth swing, she only then follows up with a big upwards swing.
Kirito	The sword that Kirito now wields, having been brought into the light and with its Sword Skill glowing dispersing, is revealed to be a strange one indeed. The blade is a solid hunk of finely polished golden metal that shines and gleams, as if aglow from within. The grip is a bit oddly lengthy, classifying it as something like a hand-and-a-half. An aquamarine-colored ornamentation is fitted firmly to the flat of the guard, and two blade-like wings extend from the guard. A practical and straightforward design, no frills and meant for pure combat. The only trick is that strange radiance. The sword bears an actual mystical aura of purifying light that starkly contrasts his other - pure black - blade, which seems to be made of enchanted obsidian or a similar material.     "We'll find out soon enough." Kirito states firmly, almost growling. The extending sword bites into his shoulder, but he clamps down on the pain and batters the offending weapon away to chase after Vergil, swooping in on him as he goes after Xion.     As Kirito closes in, BOTH of his blades take on an uncanny gleam. Shades of radiant purple-black and white-blue swirl up in unison around his whole body and gather in his blades as he lets loose with a fierce battle roar... and upon reaching Vergil, unleashes the skill he was readying.     This isn't like the earlier swipes he took. As Vox Unitas and Excaliber are swung with the rapidity of a machine gun in criss-crossing patterns that physics and common says ought to be impossible, they cast HUGE plumes of sparkling light and arcs of luminous shadow through the air. This power BURNS as much as the blades - propelled by some prodicious and unearthly force beyond mere strength - cut deep into whatever they can, without losing any real speed. Pairs of slashes come in one after the other quick as heartbeats, and from multiple directions. As if that wasn't bad enough, the light giving off from the weapons is blinding, making predicting the strikes rather difficult.     To look on from afar, it's a hell of a lightshow. The arcs of power cast off from the swings resemble solar flares, while the rushing energy resembles twinkling starlight. It's appropriate because...     "STARBURST STREAM!" is the name of this technique.
Tomoe	Lilian's comment about how strong this guy is apt, Vergil is very strong. Memories of the old war come back, she has no idea bout Vergil's origins but one thing is clear he's strong enough to handle them all at once. Kirito as much as she hates to admit it, but he may have a point. Vergil hits hard and is very fast he's clearly the sort who keeps moving. If they could just get him directly? He might be the sort who is more focused on evading and moving than taking hits. "We find ways to overcome our weakness or surpass them." It wasn't to her but she felt the need to say something back at words like that. Tomoe has also been positioning herself to cover Kirito for when he needs it. Tomoe has a flawed laid open she's used to slower foes, with how fast Vergil is she's been on the back foot for the most part. She does, however, give into his taunt and will move in to get right into his face and does something he might not expect she throws her shield like a boomerang, which will then move to return to her, she keeps up her movement and moves to get in Vergil's face if she can just hold him down or pin him down just a bit here. He may have got her but she's fighting at a pretty intense phase. She's timing her attacks as she moves to strike high, low mid, then high with her blade and will catch her shield on the way back even as she keeps up in the guys' face now. There is one other things Vergil can put his money where his mouth is. "Not done yet and I will correct that mistake now hold still!"
Lilian Rook	Vergil deflecting her surprise strike at the last second sends another mournful ring splitting into the clearing, and swatting away a storm of black firebolts immediate causes the bamboo to combust into white hot flame, so intense that it turns patches of them to fine ash before it can really spread. Lilian tries to press the offensive from there, knowing he can't defend against *everything*, but ends up mouthing 'what' in a surprise double take as she plants her boots and comes grinding to a dead halt when Vergil uptricks onto her sword. It sizzles slightly under his shoes.     "You think you're all that, huh? I get that you don't like guns, but you sound pretty sour that it worked. Trickery though? You're doing almost the same thing. Don't blame me that your eyes are too SLOW!" she says, heaving the final two syllables as she ups her strength and swings Vergil from the flat of her sword. The air around her thumps with a compressive wave of displacement as the localized flow of time briefly crashes into the movement of matter in contact with her.     A second seal comes away from the tsurugi, and the demon starts to stir inside. Lilian no longer cares. Her eyes are focused on only Vergil. Her teeth grit. Her fingers creak around the hilt and ink black mist hisses from between them. The glow intensifies. Elegant, intertwining marks of flowing grey, darkening towards black, continue extending over her face, reaching towards her eyes and over her cheekbones. Her eyes have gone from green to rust to wine red. The edges of the sword catch the light in a queer way, flickering with inverted rainbow embers.     She explosively rushes headlong into the chainblade maelstrom, breaking past the extended rawhide sphere barrier and going straight for the throat. Her motions are no longer just 'inhuman', but now actually 'completely impossible', seemingly disobeying the usual expectations of momentum and inertia to move even faster, as if she had next to no mass but incredible speed. She ducks low under a blade, slicing the tips off her hair, then tilts to the side past a cleaving downwards sweep, stepping twice and inward past another and lunging over one at foot level. Machine gun clangs of her sword deflect twelve more slashes in a constellation of bursting white stars, and not all of them seem to even move, as if the blade is skipping from blow to blow like it was predestined. The blade twists off of one parry and snakes around her leg, digging saw teeth into the carbon-coloured material of the bodysuit and raking through the thick layer, blood oozing down her calf before Lilian slips out of its grip, briefly becoming semitransparent and blurry, like an afterimage, before finally zoning into Vergil's range in a final flicker of motion.     "You wanna go toe to toe big guy?" Night Mist begins 'singing', though it's more of a melodic wailing, the edge seeming to twitch and vibrate as if filled with uncontrollable tension. She swings a blistering volley of blows from a power high to a rapid left to under and across into a flicker right cut, then a center mass short blow to pommel bash to a lunging thrust to a full body spin and snap kick to the chest. Where the sword hits, it connects with disproportionately amplified force, as if twenty swords had struck all at once.
Xion	Xion's X-Cut (every protagonist has an X-Cut) strikes shallowly, the smoking blade of dark gravity crossed with the thrumming blade of pure elementless magic not quite getting there. In fact, not really getting there at all. The smallest solace of connecting is that it wasn't entirely wasted effort - but still, biffing it with Lilian watching, and dropping those hot lines, is a stomach turning and butterfly-causing wreck of effort. Sure, he says 'Impressive', but it doesn't FEEL impressive. It feels like-- Like--! "So this must be what Frustration is..." She mutters. Kipping back as Kirito takes over, Xion clenches her teeth and circles, blade of light and dark sizzling against the ground as she steps carefully. But, not carefully enough by half. Vergil shouts at Xion to 'stay where she is', alerting her at least that 'something' is coming. The demonic, living (snoring?) chainsaw blade's flight right at her is met with flashing magical sparks in white and black (metal sparks against... magic?) as she crossblocks the awful licky-blade, pressed back and held in check by a flying asshole sword. "Ghh!" Comes her strangled cry, but Vergil isn't done with her - and with her guard locked in place by the Devil Arm, she is forced to stand there and soak another eviscerating cloud of blades that consumes her in a cloud of blue slicing blades that come away with splashes of red. It's a very pretty circle of cartoonish gore around her, though uncartoonishly the Nobody staggers and drops to a knee. Lilian, of course, keeps going. So, like a particularly stubborn NPC with 'when not watched, their health refills' she takes a knee while the others unleash more and more dramatic combos, catching her second wind. 'It's like she doesn't see me.' 'Maybe I should leave.' 'She's not one of us...' 'She told us to go, too...' Letting her two magic laserswords (her Brands) dissipate with unclenching hands, Xion presses the two motes still burning just off her palms together into a single mass, pitching it overhand like a fastball special at Vergil. "Ruina!" As the hazy white sphere gets close (or connects) it explodes outward in a mid-sized saturation explosion of pwoofing neutral magical energy.
Vergil	Vergil was not expecting Lilian to just rush into his maelstrom, but his smirk suggests that he's impressed by it. He watches her clash through it, taking hits but frame-skipping between blocks to get at him. The weapon retracts, and his hand drifts down to clutch his katana, but it's too late. He eats Lilian's whole combo, her perseverance earning her a nice satisfying wheeze from the man before he goes flying through the air. But he warps to the ground to recover, not out of it yet.     If Sanary is getting mad at Vergil, her words are certainly having the same effect on him. He replies to her taunt, his tone cold. "I have trained, and suffered much to attain the power I have, fool. If your own power is not enough, blame yourself. Not me." She challenges him to 'fight for real,' and he can only laugh as he meets her assault. His knee rises to clash against her kick, and his katana clashes against hers, pushing back against her strength with his own. Indeed, he is frustratingly strong in spite of his speed. "You would not live long if I were to 'fight seriously.'"     Kirito charges in, his frenzied skill clashing against Vergil's active defence as his swords meet the swordsman's. But the overwhelming charge forces him to close up, bring his swords together and make the defence passive, until that too is blown open. He takes many slashes to the body before he can warp away. They close immediately, but he's breathing hard from it. Tomoe rushes in, taking the frontline as he suggested. He tries to sway to avoid her attacks again, but she's measuring them now, and some catch him off guard to open cuts on his body. Eventually, he just dashes away again rather than deal with it. "You should have known that before facing me, fool."     Xion pitches a fastball of non-elemental magic at him, and it catches him right in the head. He goes tumbling, but turns it into a cartwheel before landing on his feet. His hair has been rendered a mess by the impact, but he brings a hand up to slick it all back into place. The hell kind of hairgel is this guy using?     "My name," he says, as another seal falls from the tsurugi, leaving just one more. The hilt shifts to become an oni's leering face as the sounds shift to that of an eerie, wheezing cackle. "Is Vergil. I suppose you all deserve to know that before you die."     Sanary is first this time. He flashes over to her, and almost as punishment for trying to kick him, he kicks her with a flurry of combinations, the last lifting her into the air before his sheathed katana comes out to slam her hard into the stomach and send her flying. Out comes the oni sword, the tongue blade lashing out to ensnare Tomoe and yank her towards Vergil before it resets to a blade shape. He swings it at her, the teeth sawing against her violently, aiming to mangle and tear. He warps again, appearing above Kirito's head and coming down on him with a vicious quickdraw chop from the katana before thrusting with the oni sword, the tongue extending to impale him and send him back. As he does this,     Lilian finds herself surround by those spectral blades. They slowly revolve around her, pointing towards her and moving with her. Then Vergil is before her, thrusting the tsurugi in a blurring flurry. It distorts the air, the teeth buzzing with every uncountable thrust before the final blow knocks her back, and /then/ the swords around her fly towards her with a vicious finality. And again, he leaves Xion for last. True to his word, or not taking her seriously? He attacks in a frenzy, this time with the katana, the blade hissing against the air as he aims to cut her, over and over, before bringing the stolen blade up in a vicious arc to knock her into the air.
Kirito	There's blood on Kirito's blades. it's not the first time, but he makes a disgusted face at seeing it. As Vergil swoops away, he takes a half-second to slash his blades at the air and flick all the blood from them... but never once does he stop doing his best to keep an eye on the eerily speedy Demon Swordsman.     The situation is largely beyond words at this point, but the Black Swordsman's mind is tracking every detail of his attack pattern... and every word he says.     He moves more on instinct than planning when Vergil appears above him. UP COMES HIS TWIN BLADES, overlapping in an 'X' pattern. Common sense says that this SHOULD NOT WORK. Dual wielding along is nearly impossible to do properly, and this maneuver should be a quick path to death. And yet...     The Katana slams hard into the valley between Kirito's swords, pinched between them, with a thunderous impact that causes his knees to tremble briefly and the ground to crack... but Kirito just looks up at Vergil with a warrior's mad grin on his face.     He spins about, shoving the offending katana away and into the thrusted demon sword to deflect it as well...     And then BLACK WINGS appear from his back and Kirito kicks off the ground, taking advantage of this opening. Propelled by all of his strength and a SONIC BOOM BURST of momentum that sends a shockwave of dust every which way, he drives his knee for Vergil's gut. He might hit the man's chin instead.     In a sword fight, after all, you're an idiot to only use swords.     Should that strike though, he will take the opportunity to then lash out with a quick flurry of rapid slashes to Vergil's front, this time without all the special effects. Just pure skill!     "I'm not going to die to someone who'd murder on a lark!"
Tomoe	Tomoe is on the frontline where she should be she does what she can for Kirito trying to keep him in the fight a bit longer with what buff support she's given him also an attempt to intercept attacks. "What can I say, a mad man expected me to die because he wanted his own precious little world of swords." The fight goes on and keeps up her combative stance with Vergil. It's also clear this is not a just a walk in the park for Vergil but he does clearly have the upper hand at the moment. Tomoe does end up ensnared taking a nasty hit and where the blade stuck her there's the red wire frame sign of her injuries. She does attempt to break twist and takes the attack to the side. She is chewed up and then she sees Lilian and there's a cringe inwardly as does the assault on Xion, wait where's Sanary? Oh, this is getting bad Kirito takes to the air as his wings flare put. She knows she could do the same but she needs to keep in Vergil's face. She'll keep up her attack even before Kirito starts his attack. Tomoe keeps up with he own. She will mix some thrusting actions in with her slashing motions as she just tries to keep Vergil pinned down as best she can. "Now that I think of it you remind me of someone Virgil..." All the while she's trying to keep up in his face and keep him attacking her rather than her allies.
Xion	'Get with the program.' It's not really satisfying or calming to blast Vergil in the face. For the first part, Paramagic doesn't have a lot of the Associated Effects of being blasted that 'just getting blasted' does. A sword will cut, and a bomb will vaporize, but Paramagic just sort of cartoonishly explodes into big clouds of 'HP damage', and Vergil's MOTIVATIONAL hair-gel holds fast. With hair of that mass and texture, it'd take a Heartless Tornado Copypasta Boss to unseat it! Xion's motions, frustrated and sickened as she is by the awful physicality of unfelt emotions bubbling up and compounding on one another, are sloppy - much like a desperate and frustrated player in a FromSoft game against a seemingly impossible boss. She side-dodges, and is clipped. She backsteps, and is cut again. She tries to forward roll around and under his sword, but Vergil corrects and slashes down her back, leaving her skidding on the ground before she's High Timed into the air, swept into a high parabola of pain that isn't capitalized on, letting her collapse on the ground. She doesn't get up for a second. 'Get your head in the game.' It's not the stomach-knotting illness of failure and frustration that boils behind her eyes, itches at her stomach, and tingles at the palms of her hands and arches of her feet - it's real, incited, passionate anger. Shoving with her hands and the tip of a boot, Xion lunges forward into a hole in the air, righting herself as she drops from another hole on the opposite side of the forest 'arena' higher up in the air so she can land in a crouch and pant heavily. "My head IS in the 'game', Lilian! I'm only here because I didn't want to abandon you! Not because I don't trust you, and not because I don't want to - I do! I super do! I'm so sick and awful-feeling because I don't wanna be here getting beat up, but what I don't wanna do more is abandon you! I'm trying to do my best to be a hero, and a hero doesn't let their friends fight alone, especially against super powerful demon guys with two super-swords! So maybe get YOUR head in the game, and figure out how to beat this guy before we all get hurt!" After her emotional explosion, Xion concentrates on a little spell-work. "HiBarrier. Protect. Shell. NulAll. Haste!" She finishes, multiple layers of defensive spells working themselves around her body, from honeycomb barriers to veils of green light to a spirograph zooming out under her feet. Levelling a finger at Vergil, she chants another spell. "Darkra!" Which, as the name suggests, is 'merely' a gale of directed dark-aspected magic shot out of her finger towards the Motivated Swordsman and his freaky chainblade Devil Arm.
Lilian Rook	Lilian huffs out when she fully connects, sending Vergil flying away. Her breath turns to steam on the way out, winding black markings incrementally ink blooming into her face. Breathing back in, it looks as if her incisors are unnaturally sharp, and her ears slightly pointed. Her hairpin has come loose, and the style starting to come loose around her shoulders, long and black and wild. She issues a sharp, guttal 'hah' when the half-demon puts it to Sanary and Tomoe, reaching a state of mind where the derision pleases her more than she can be frustrated on their behalf.     "Vergil, huh? I guess I was wrong to think you weren't a big deal. It's just unlucky for you that it's five on one. Even if all they do is swing blindly, you've gotta have a limit to your attention and your stamina, right? I have to say though, this is the most of my power I've drawn out in a long time. Not too shabby."     She doesn't flinch as the summoned swords flash into existence around her. Doing that would just bring her right into their trap. Her eyes rove back and forth as she tracks their revolution around her, memorizing the rate of their spin, how many there are, and how large the gap is, until she can predict where they are without looking. She brings the grip of her sword low and tilts the tip forward, letting the overwhelmingly ominous aura of hate roll off of it in visible streams of fog. She remains waiting.     When Vergil comes at her, Lilian speeds up *again*. The difference this time is practically a square root of even the enhanced speed of before, able to fight sword to sword on par with Vergil, so fast it frequently looks like she's barely moved. She challenges the assault blade to blade, the fey weapon clashing with the devil arm with such speed that the exchange almost sounds like one continuous crash of steel, igniting the brush with stray sparks and causing the bamboo to flex and shed its leaves from the air pressure.     Right as the summoned swords contract to close the trap, Lilian feels the precognitive fluctuation in the future, and having committed to memory where they'd be, deftly turns and slips between them, for an instant not quite seeming like she's going to make it, but slipping through the gap quicker than blinking. Between them, at this point, half the swordfight is invisible to onlookers.
Lilian Rook	Her arms crackles with arcs of red and black lightning. Lilian weaves sideways and sends a blast of writhing scarlet electricity raking across the clearing, zigzagging back the other way and following up with a suppressing fusillade of explosive darts of spiraling fiery smoke. Twisting and reversing direction a third time, she lets herself skid long through the dirt, the sword having continuously absorbed the aura from the arm still holding it, and now blazing with bloodred fire of its own.     Where she finds an optimal angle, she stops and unleashes a heavy triplicate of wide, hewing slashes, sending arcing waves of coruscating energy crashing through the battlefield at alternating angles, wide enough to catch a sideways dodge, and tilted in opposites to make jumping or ducking much more difficult. As soon as the third slash comes, she palms the pommel with her free hand, blurs forward with a ridiculous series of advancing stabs, and then swings her arm over her head and back down across her side, deftly spinning the two-handed sword into a shrieking buzzsaw motion that she brings back up and across Vergil from hip to shoulder.     "Lilian Isabelle Rook! Immaculate Extinguisher! The Killer in the Night Mist! Powerful blood like yours is the best!" The black vine markings have blossomed into inked flowers on her skin, visible even through the rip in the suit on her leg and the back of her hands, where the suit is burning away. Her eyes have gone bright vermilion. It's far from her usual fashionable, elegant, and casual manner of dispatching foes. She exudes bloodthirst and ecstasy in equal measure, as well as a dark, uncanny aura that is clearly inhuman, though not exactly demonic either.
Vergil	The last seal on the sword is starting to flutter free, but it's clinging on stubbornly regardless. Vergil scowls at it, and the blade is encased in crackling blue energy. The devil is channelling his own power into the sword to try and get it off.     But the fight is still going. Kirito actually manages to halt his attack in its tracks, drawing a "Hah," from Vergil. He takes the kicks, but manages to push through the worst of the following swings from both Kirito and Tomoe. "Spare me the backstory. I did not ask."     Lilian is certainly setting the stage right now, her form distorting as she taps into more and more of her power. Her assault catches him off guard again as he was dashing away from Kirito and Tomoe, forcing him to give her all his attention. He struggles against her blow, taking note of her ears, her eyes, the blooming marks on her body. As he once again goes flying back, he turns in midair and lands his feet against some bamboo, sliding down it to the ground again. "You have power," he concedes. "But how much of it is your own? Look at you. At what point do you stop swinging the sword, and the sword starts swinging you? Note that I am not being overtaken by this one," He holds up the toothy blade. "Can you say the same?"     Xion interrupts with a gust of dark wind that lifts him from his feet, but he lands again and looks to her. He cracks a smile at she and Lilian both. "Did you even hear your friend beseech you, Lilian? Or have you closed your ears?" Now he addresses Xion. "Worry not girl. I'll separate her corpse from that sword, and the two of you can reconcile in the afterlife."     Finally, the last seal comes free.     The teeth on the sword are now spinning so fast that they seemingly become light, framing the blade in a laser edge. The tongue texture vanishes, as does the oni's face. It almost seems like Vergil has utterly dominated the Devil Arm with his own power. It's become sleek, keen, no-nonsense, just like the wielder.     "I shall show you all what I am capable of!" He puts the oniken against his back, and assumes an iaijutsu stance once more. But this time, his form explodes in that arcing, electrical blue energy, rending his form a silhouette. It seems to shift and distort, gaining new lines, new /appendages./ His eyes glow red from deep within, and when he speaks, it's guttural and distorted. "My power shall be absolute!"     And then he's gone.     His occupied space seemed to bloom into multiple after-images, all zooming in different dimensions, filling the whole forest with his presence. And then blue and purple lines trace through the air in an instant, following the path of his blade. Not a single gap in space was spared. He reappears in the same spot, his back now to everyone as he lovingly sheathe his sword. The click of the guard meeting the sheath is like the bell tolling for everyone in the clearing. The cuts in the air leave distortions, reflecting everyone from multiple angles, as if reality were a screen that had just been smashed.
Tomoe	Tomoe says "You gave us some I figured I owed you it back." That's all she has left to say here, she's able to take a hell of a lot of damage sure but even she's clearly showing that she's near the end of her rope or just about there. She does have a reply to his own words. "I never looked for it, it found me. I made it my own." At the words I will show you what I am capable of? Tomoe will pop her panic tank ability, she only has a brief time and even with the protection, it gives her? Vergil savages her, there is no other word for what happens during the high-speed savage attack the best Tomoe can do is attempt to block or parry a fraction of the attacks headed her way. It's like facing a force of nature and when reality somewhat reasserts itself she wavers and starts to drop to one knee breathing heavily there's a look on her face of someone who is certain she's facing a bigger fish and she knows everyone else did not fair as well as she did. She holds the Dawnbreaker in hand as she looks at Vergil and makes her move it's a simple attack she moves in trying to get him before he can draw again with a blade strike aimed for Vergil's sword arm. Does she expect to cost him his arm? No, maybe she can force him to act to protect it in a way that is less optimal for a counter-attack and set him up for anyone still standing.
Kirito	Absolute madness! Kirito's been keeping an eye on that sword. And his fears are confirmed as another seal comes off and... yeah, they're all screwed now. His gut sinks.     He thought he was ready, but the Multiverse threw another twister at him.     Vergil is everywhere. Against this strange spatial rendering there's simply no defense. DOZENS of crimson gashes are drawn across Kirito's body, drawing a gargling scream from the youth. He's slashed, slashed, and slashed some more from every direction until his entire body is covered in glowing red decals, leaking pixels into the air and dripping an increasing amount of blood onto the forest ground.     The boy collapses to his knees after the assault finishes, leaning on Vox Unitas impaled in the ground for just a bit of support.     In his head, an alarm's ringing. An annoying, blaring siren as pulsing red fills the corner of his vision. His HP's down to just a SLIVER left, and Battle Healing can't possibly recover all of that in time.     "This guy's... a monster." Kirito exclaims weakly.     Gathering his strength, the Black Swordsman wobbles to his feet and grips his blades despite increasing panic and extreme pain and exhaustion that's biting even through his transformation. "You're kidding." He exclaims woozily, loud enough to be heard. "Someone this skilled... needs more power?" It just does not compute.     "Just what are you trying to kill? A god?"
Xion	For Nobodies, beings of Will, putting their 'everything' behind a task very directly means putting their everything behind it. Xion's self preservation instincts, keenly felt as her physical displeasure gives way to the real displeasure and pain of 'being beaten up this violently'. Being 'consumed' in the Biggest Sword-Cloud, a sword-cloud that literally cuts apart the air like shearing apart glass, Xion's multi-layered barrier is carved apart like a turkey and, at the end, she's completely defenseless and out of energy. Like a particularly stubborn floppy-eared cartoon tank, Xion drops to a knee, before falling back on her bottom and fighting to control her breathing. "Even saying all that stuff..." "I can't let Roxas down either..." Planting a hand on the ground, the earth tesselates under her as darkness spreads beneath her knee - and she drops into the hole of her own creation, not reappearing.
Lilian Rook	"Who knows?" Lilian shoots back, albeit with something of a grin on her face. "This sword's power is my family's power, and this is the form in which my power is most in tune with it. Don't you worry, I feel great!" she says. Of course it's extremely easy to mistake her current attitude for some sort of corruptive taint. Lilian wouldn't really be that transparently, ecstatically bloodthirsty under ordinary circumstances, right? Right?     The last seal falling off the Oniken, due to Vergil's own forcing the matter, draws a long, wide, appreciative look at the weapon, as it ceases being a repulsive oni weapon left in a dilapidated shrine, and molds itself to suit Vergil's whims, as the lesser demon submits to the greater. Lilian isn't the type for corny whistles, instead only heightening her exuding tension, excitement, and overflowing violence when Vergil's form *changes*, and his own unleashed power blasts out like a tidal wave. She waits with the blood almost frozen in her veins, for that one moment, where the devil's power comes to a crescendo, and space itself splits into a thousand pieces.                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian finds herself frozen in a veritable spider's web of glowing lines and split air, as if caught inside a tangle of gleaming wires, itself caught inside a refractive prism. She'd slammed time to a halt with the full force of her will at the exact instant Vergil had struck, but it has already unfolded all around her, making for a beautiful, surreal display of the world being cut to pieces everywhere at once.     She still has a good thirty seconds in her, if she pushes a little. It's Enough Time, but not so much that she can take her sweet time weaving her way out of the slashing zone. She hops back, starts floating, weaves her way under and around a couple of bright lines, and then gasps out loud where she'd brushed with a razor fine split in the air. There's no slash line there. Vergil's sword doesn't exist in a moving, cutting capacity in this frozen instant. The hairline fracture where the two pieces of visual information don't line up quite correctly *itself* is what cleanly bites through the suit around her waist and draws a short-lived sheet of blood, dripping down her thigh and shin. Realizing how much more dangerous this situation is than she'd thought, Lilian hurls herself out through a narrow window between gleaming cuts, and dive rolls out the other side with a handful of narrow slices exposing yet more pale skin patterned with black.                 -----[start]-----     Lilian tumbles out of the Judgement Zone, droplets of her blood splashing into the air at a dozen points, for the first time marking the path of movement she'd actually taken through it. Though properly injured and bleeding now, the absurdity of the situation is that it'd taken an infinitesimally non-existent motion to escape the near-infinitely fast attack from Vergil. An attack faster than light can only be countered by moving faster than light.     Lilian scrapes to a stop and rises to her feet, pressing her hand to her side, then looking at the deep red that it comes away with stuck to her palm. "Finally got me. You absolute bastard." she says, wincing, but not sounding as broken up about it as she should be. "What's with that ridiculous strength? You're the first in the Multiverse I've met who's gone toe to toe with me like this. I'm glad you trained and suffered for that level of power. I'd be upset if you hadn't~" She shoots a look at Kirito, managing to stare at him down her nose, in the midst of this. "Don't be ridiculous. There's never such a thing as *enough* power. You keep seeking it until the day you die, and then maybe more."
Lilian Rook	She turns back to Vergil, flexing and cracking her shoulders, lowering her sword to a tail guard, leaning deep forward with the blade held ice still behind her, twigs and debris crackling under the slow shift of her weight. "So that just means I'll use even more of *my* power~!" she cries out in a way that is just as much a laugh. When she disappears, without the incredible flash and palpable aura of Vergil's own flash cut storm, the bamboo scatters and the leaves become a shredded whirl in her absence, her laughter echoing into the thicket. It's already happened when it bounces back.                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian is merciless with the time she has remaining. She speeds across the distance in a single step, twisting her sword sidelong and using the whole of her momentum to bring it through Vergil as hard as she can. Before even fully passing him, she twirls it over her head and cleaves back down with the backswing, twisting her body around completely in the followthrough to leave another parting slash.     Rather than red-black, bright white-gold magic circles appear staggered through the air where she passes like an 'exploded' clock stretched out horizontally. A spirographic helix of same-coloured breaches in reality appear, patterning a clockwise spin that tracked her route. Each one is just a white hot point of fourth dimensional potential while she kicks to a stop, rockets back the way she'd came, and slashes over Vergil again, then back again, and back again, in a twelve pointed assault from all around him.                 -----[start]-----     The clearing erupts into a storm of crackling scarlet and swirling black from all around Vergil, not tracing itself into existence so much as erupting from nowhere, all at once. Bright bloody ribbons trace back and forth through him at each hand of the clock, and scattered all around him are hundreds and hundreds of bubbling white-gold arrows of pure energy that lance inwards from all directions, adding a fractal light show of piercing, disintegrating rays seemingly made of millions of tiny blots.     Lilian is at the opposite end of the clearing from where she'd started, her hair kicked out behind her like a long, wild, black tassel, kneeling with Night Mist halfway sheathed again, holding it in a half-sword grip. She's audibly panting, sweat beading on her patterned and bloodied skin, but she has fight left in her, turning back once again and drifting off the ground, readied like a ghost; a murderous apparition, in contrast to the mighty blue demon.
Vergil	Vergil turns and surveys the results of his power, and looks... disappointed. Xion finally backed off, but that's one out four still present. Kirito looks on his last legs, but Tomoe looks good for a few more. Lilian is the problem through. She's still raring to go. And while he can't help but crack the smallest of smiles for that, the situation alone answers Kirito's question.     "That you are all still standing is reason enough, Kirito." He raises a hand, and clenches it into a fist before his eyes. "I need more power...!" Tomoe hasn't entirely lost her nerve, and rushes forward to try and stab his sword arm. He actually lets her, but adjusts it so she doesn't hit anything major, and allows it to heal before her very eyes. "Weak."     But as he delivered that line, Lilian assaulted him in the frozen time. Red lines trace through his form in an instant, much more localised than his own attack, but effective. He cries out, and sinks to a knee. Again, the wounds she caused, multiple bisections in his form, close over. But it almost takes a full second this time. He's faltering.     But he doesn't show up. He's up again, and dusting himself off. "You're not bad, human. More beast than man though." He holds up the blade, resplendent in his own power. "But I can still fight." He dashes towards her... but in that same instant, he diverts to Kirito, delivering a mighty blow to his stomach, before flashing back to Tomoe, bringing the laser sword up with both hands to launch her into the air and juggling her with those spectral swords that rapid fire from around his form. "Just need to clean up first,"     He's upon her, slashing twice diagonally down then up with the tsurigi, then bringing it around in a wide arc. He swaps the hand he holds it in behind his back, then brings it around again before lunging forward and slashing with both that and his katana in an X-cut. But that's still not the end. He charges, slashing both in a measured frenzy, assailing her seemingly perfect guard. He then leaps up into that massive swirling arc he used against Tomoe before, but suddenly, his foot lashes out to step on Lilian and leap higher into the air.     From there, he lashes out with the laser sword, it's light springing forth to snag her and pull her up to him, whereupon he whirls his katana with such speed that it actually lifts him higher into the air, before slamming them both down with the helmsplitter with the tsurigi, then thrusting it forward with enough force that the air pressure knocks her back.
Lilian Rook	"I'll take the compliment~ Fighting is a primal instinct; even an animal knows what it means to struggle against another and to kill. No matter how skilled you are, you won't get anywhere if you're unwilling to be aggressive. To be ruthless. To spill blood without hesitation." Lilian gasps, trying to catch her breath, waiting once again for the offensive to escape and viciously counter.     She barely bats an eye at Kirito and Tomoe getting flattened on Vergil's way to her. Not valuing them more as allies might be a mistake. With all of his concentration and effort focused on her, exercising the fullness of his power a *second* time in a row, Lilian is hard-pressed with the amount of sand she had left herself in the hourglass. She can feel the strain of just trying to accelerate it, more palpable and heavy than the fatigue in the muscles, and more difficult than her injuries, unjustifiably light as they are.     The uncanny sword darts back and forth to clash against the white-limmed oni blade, cleanly parrying it back and forth, but with its user grunting behind each blow, losing a little distance. Swapping hands behind his back mixes her up, and she leans back to duck it at the last possible instant, completing the full flip and delivering a backflipping kick to Vergil in the process.     She has to simply brace the flat of the blade against the X-Cut, righting herself from her head over heels posture to do it and leaning her body into the strike to leverage more of her waning stamina. She takes the tiny gap to blast a scatter of flash bolts at him, before blocking the next swing, and the one after that sends her reeling back on her heels. That hole in her defense ceases to exist where she appears low and sweeping at Vergil's legs, but the jumps are getting smaller and smaller, and Lilian is getting tired *exponentially* faster now than she had for most of the fight, as if the bottom quarter of her bar is emptying at ten times the rate as the first three.     When he leaps to step on her shoulders, Lilian hisses in annoyance, turning just slightly too fast to cleave at his ankles, but Night Mist is far too sharp for that to actually impart enough gross force to knock him out of the air. Instead the tangle of light snatches her up with a yelp, throws her into the air, and--                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian falls, crumpling ungracefully to the ground and panting as if fresh off a marathon. Staggering to her feet as fast as she can, she grabs a bamboo stalk for support, and becomes ghostlike again, flying straight on to leverage the maximum amount of distance she can get with her head splitting, heart pounding, and abstract life force starting to gutter. She has to grit her teeth and deal with the undignified retreat, only consoled by the fact that it'll look like she just ominously disappeared for Vergil, who won't get to see this. It's pure frustrated stubbornness that gets her another twenty seconds of straight, fast flight, before she can't sustain it any longer, and tumbles to the ground at the base of a creek trench a couple of kilometers away, putting her back up against the wall and trying to catch her breath.                 -----[start]-----     --she's gone. Just when he might have had her too. It *seems* like she couldn't have gone far, but there really isn't anything in the bamboo thickets, nor any sign of any path she may have taken. It's that ominous 1 HP cutscene where you just know that boss you thought you'd defeated is going to come back later.
Tomoe	On her HUD? Her HP is not in a good place it's getting near the point where her form the multiverse knows will give out. Leaving her the sort of person who'd just get stepped on. Vergil isn't down and out of it. Her allies and friends are not looking that good at all either. She gets caught by Vergil and tossed into the air where she's hammered by the assault of light swords. She starts to fall, but then bright red translucent wings which help her avoid a due and she pops the last of her defence abilities, she will then find her HP is a sliver, she's on fumes and there's no way she can win this on her own. Xion is out, Lilian has just up and vanished, it's now just her and Kirito facing Vergil. This is a wipe situation and she knows it. She will fly down for Kirito and banishes her weapons into her inventory, and now she has a crystal in hand, she'll grab Kirito if he needs it then call out a city name. "Ruthen Villiage." She will vanish in a burst of light after that, and in Ruthen Villiage? Bolt and Dedira are going to get one hell of a surprise as Tomoe drops into the village square right outside the Tavern. Where she will promptly collapse.
Kirito	There's not much Kirito can do while still winded to deal with that punch! He's struck, the wind knocked straight out of him... and he goes flying back to crash through some of the bamboo, snapping stalks one after another until the sturdy stuff bounces him back to the ground. "Hnnnnnghk..."     But waiting that way did a good thing for his hHP. Battle Regeneration healed it enough that this blow didn't finish it off. His transformation is sustained! "Guh... we've got a serious problem here..."     He'd like to go back to the village and tell them it's a lost cause, but the people there looked smart. They'll probably figure it out in no time. And this man doesn't seem like the sort who would wreck the place for jollies...     "There's no helping it..." The boy softly cries to nobody in particular, reaching into his coat and pulling out a strange rectangular blue crystal. With a deep breathe he holds the thing up towards the sky and says, "Teleport: Coral Village!"     The Crystal shatters into rising, fading flat polygons. A weird energy encompasses his body and with a whoosh... he's simply gone.
Vergil	Vergil snarls in frustration as Lilian vanishes in the middle of his combo. He would start looking, but Tomoe is still here with Kirito. But one by one, they leave too. Leaving the man alone in the clearing. His breath his hard, his clothes are filthy, but he drove them off. He smirks, and takes the tsurugi from his back and holds it out. "Not bad. Now, tell me of my father. Of Sparda."     A single leaf falls from one of the bamboo trees and slices in twain on the sword, the soft noise bearing the tired sigh of an old man, before the weapon breaks, the blade left in twain. Both halves become rusted metal once more. Vergil is left holding it for a long time before taking both halves and stabbing them into the ground.     "I suppose you became too old and tired. Out of respect for your assistance, I'll leave you here instead of taking you back." He draws his katana, and slashes it twice in the air, leaving blue scars that bleed into a purple portal. He lingers for a long moment, just to see if Lilian is lying in wait, but nothing comes. He snorts, and strides through.     "The Multiverse, huh?..."